Saraband: Ingmar Bergman
GIÒ: That piece, and the Great Movies piece that accompanied the passing of Marlon Brando, was actually my favorite by Roger until his blog entry about “The Tree of Life.” Roger is right - is it not amazing that perhaps no picture has maturely explored eroticism and sex in the now forty years since “Last Tango”? His thoughts on that picture exemplify my best experiences and future hopes for truly great cinema; a picture that exists so resolutely on the level of emotion, one whose story is so simple that it doesn't need to be cluttered with plot. What's it about? The emotional crises of its two central characters fill the entire expanse of the screen, what happens in that apartment between two people, where outside influences and torments and even identities cannot enter. As Roger says, the man's hunger for the touch of another human heart and the woman's realization that she may never again be needed and desired as much as she is now.
More recent motion pictures that evoked for me a similar experience as “Last Tango” are “Saraband”, which was Ingmar Bergman's last picture, and “Two Lovers” by James Gray.
I hate having to qualify a claim I've made but...I think home viewing is great in that it allows a viewer to see so many titles that may not be available otherwise, and also to further explore a picture on one's own time. But I'm a big advocate of seeing motion pictures in an actual theater. Obviously “Saraband” and “Two Lovers” haven't been in release for sometime. Just a heads up...I saw “Last Tango” for the first time on DVD and felt mostly unmoved. Later that year I saw it in a theater and was haunted by it for the next two weeks.
The two by Bergman and Grey are also without the clutter of what appears to be plot and instead exist in a life of emotion and human behavior with actual characters. You don't know where the movie is going from moment to moment because our lives aren't laid out conveniently from moment to moment, but I was always nourished by the authenticity of the characters, especially in the case of “Two Lovers” with Phoenix's, who obviously has already traveled somewhere emotionally even before he's presented to us within the frame of the film, and who now sincerely tries to explore the possibilities between these two women --one who is sincerely interested in becoming his partner, and an other who, though without malevolence, perhaps isn't one who would be the right choice but is sure enticing. It's not a picture about him traveling the wrong road before finding the light with the one we knew was the right choice all along. It's about his process of discovering small but exciting moments of intimate life that inform our senses, which are always valid even though the contours of life are imperfect. I found it was like a living heart in front of you doing a specific function in physical reality while, astonished, you consider its poetry as a fundamental force in all our lives. The picture reveals itself in moments that are lived by actors in specific and particular circumstances that are guided by the hand of a director who knows that for a seed to bloom, you have to recognize it as a living being. I would say much the same for “Saraband”, but with more piss and vinegar.