Is what we see Simon’s dream? Inspired by “The Prisoner,” from Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, Chantal Äkerman’s La captive opens and closes on the sea. At the outset it is empty; at the end, it takes a life. Simon is obsessed with Ariane, who has her own room in his grandmother’s flat. She also […]
Daily Archives: October 12, 2007
A sometime (and brilliant) documentarian, Chantal Äkerman remains a documentarian of sorts even in her fictions, seamlessly blending the two modes, for example, in her first masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. In addition, the particularity of the title yields to a generalization on the modern human condition. Äkerman’s minimalism assists this […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Films from the Soviet Union, Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis Detstvo Gorkogo, the first part of Mark Donskoi’s trilogy about friend Maxim Gorky, the founder of […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Films from the Soviet Union, Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis The second part of Mark Donskoi’s Gorky trilogy, V lyudyakh, finds Aleksei Peshkov—the future Maxim Gorky—out […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Films from the Soviet Union, Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis Whatever its goals, Maxim Gorky felt that the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution would bring only heartache to […]
Dennis Grunes 