Futuristic science fiction provides artists with a veiled means for critiquing their nation as it exists, in their eyes, in the present. In cinema, a prime example is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), adapted from their own novel, The Roadside Picnic, by Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky. There, in a grim future police state[, I have written,] […]
Daily Archives: October 5, 2007
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from disquieting dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” Written in German, Czech author Franz Kafka’s satirical 1912 The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) weighs the sense of isolation and alienation that has overtaken a travelling salesman. Gregor’s “disquieting dreams” reflect his waking life, which, except […]
Marco Bellocchio’s Devil in the Flesh, the one with the blowjob, befits the maker, at 25, of Fists in the Pocket (1965), the most perverse (and stunning) debut in Italian cinema. By comparison with the one in this powerful film, no family since, in either real or reel life, has seemed quite so dysfunctional. In […]
Jacques Tati’s comedies, including the beauties Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953) and Playtime (1967), derive much of their delicate though combustible humor from the little bits of mayhem that Monsieur Hulot causes unawares, this obliviousness of his a defense against a capricious and, increasingly, mechanized and dehumanizing universe. (Personally, I find Tati’s Oscar-winning My Uncle (1958)—Mon […]
