7 years ago
The Second Criterion 9
The Second Criterion: “Persona”
Few films have been written about and scrutinized as much as Ingmar Bergman's Persona. With so many elements of the feature ripe for discussion, from the unsettling opening sequence to the perceived merging of two separate women, the film has bewildered and fa...
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The Second Criterion: “Close-Up”
In Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up, art imitates life. Or perhaps the other way around. Frankly, it's kind of hard to tell, though the film very handily proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the hoary old adage that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. For many, Kia...
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The Second Criterion: “Three Outlaw Samurai”
When we think about narratives woven around samurai, those noble, ornately armored dragoons from Japan's feudal days of yore, we tend to think of them in terms of thematic frameworks. Honor, loyalty, devotion, and servitude; these are just a few of the primary...
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The Second Criterion: “Badlands”
At the age of 27, Terrence Malick created what would be the screenplay for one of finest feature debuts for Badlands. It was loosely-based on the story of Charles Starkweather, a 19-year old warehouse worker who had a taste for murder. In December 1957, Starkw...
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The Second Criterion: “The Great Beauty”
If Italian maestro Paolo Sorrentino had chosen to begin his most recent film, the Academy Award winning The Great Beauty, with the picture’s extended introductory saturnalia, viewers might not have missed a beat; the movie’s very first scene almost feels like ...
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The Second Criterion: “Breathless”
The definitive film of the French New Wave, Breathless set the bar for everything that was to come. Nothing since has drastically changed the way films are concocted quite like this 1960 gem. For all its many accomplishments, the film itself is a miserable aff...
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The Second Criterion: ‘Walkabout’
Mankind's ability to come together and form civilization is a key feature that distinguishes him from the rest of nature. Yet there is a thin line between civilization and nature. In Walkabout, The Australian Outback provides a visual space to explore the rel...
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The Second Criterion: ‘Three Colors: White’
One of the highest ideas of a free society is equality. Krzysztof Kieslowski’s second entry in the thematic Three Colors trilogy delves into this concept, turning this virtue on its head. While I would be skeptical to call this film autobiographical (I think C...
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The Second Criterion: ‘Days of Heaven’
In any Terrence Malick film, themes are essential to understanding his film. While his later work are overt about their ideas -- The Tree of Life presents the entire thesis of the film in voiceover -- Days of Heaven is the film I’ve always found his most diffi...
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