A Gilded Planet

The Trial 1962.  119 minutes. Directed by Orson Welles. Watchdate: 12/08/2011. As I began to be drawn into Orson Welles' haunted, meditative Kafka adaptation, I found myself trying to put as much distance between myself and the images on the screen as possible. I pushed the movie away. My body seemed to be rejecting it. I wanted more than anything to go to sleep and not have to see what I was watching. A couple of days later while lying down perhaps nearing a nap, I found myself stricken rapturously with a mysterious fear that seemed to me to be a realization of what the movie meant. Or if not what it meant, then what it represented. Our minds seem programmed to look for more order and tidiness than this world could ever provide. This movie's dark caverns, its squalid canyons of confusion, its enigmatic hierarchy of colliding characters strips away that programming slowly, subtly yet inescapably. I have never experienced such a strong emotional response from a movie days afte...

Institute Benjamenta  or This Dream One Calls Human Life 1995. 104 minutes. UK. Directed by Stephen and Timothy Quay. Watchdate: 10/20/2010. Institute Benjamenta is an exquisitely surreal diversion that reminded me a lot of Guy Maddin's Careful in a very good way. They both have lots of great imagery and are about men training to become servants who get involved in odd, Freudian love triangles.  In Benjamenta , I was especially struck by the bizarre choreography of all the men training to become servants. They move with an eery synchronization, and hit each other with dusty towels and things. I was also surprised and delighted to realize that Herr Benjamenta was played by none other than Gottfried John, who I haven't seen in anything other than the James Bond movie of the same year. In Goldeneye , G-John takes a completely one-dimensional villain character (he's the underwritten part of a nefarious trio that includes Famke Janssen and Sean Bean) and actually made it a bi...