Cinematic Distractions

[dulcedemon]

Three Resurrected Drunkards (Kaette kita yopparai - 1968):
Written by: Masao Adachi, Mamoru Sasaki, Tsutomu Tamura, and Nagisa Ôshima
What we have here is a case of cinematic happenstance so uncanny that it knocked me on my ass. This and the second entry on this list were both released in 1968. Both star a pop group. Both deal with time loops. Both are anti-war and use almost identical imagery to convey that message. Both overlay the anti-war sentiment with zany romping and hijinks. Only one has trains.
I knew almost nothing about Three Resurrected Drunkards going into it. I chose it solely because it was directed by Nagisa Ôshima. I had seen Taboo, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, and In the Realm of the Senses. Any one or all of which I wholeheartedly recommend. I wanted something from earlier on in his career, and this was what I picked.
It just happened to arrive the same week as Head (1968). I knew what I was getting into with The Monkees, but there was nothing to prepare me for the misadventures of The Folk Crusaders.
Here is a musical interlude while I gather my thoughts:
Kaettekita Yopparai - The Folk Crusaders
https://youtu.be/ZTlJR6ZuhnE
The lyrics are translated into English in the subtitles of the movie. The official English title of the song is I Only Live Twice.
The real-life wartime imagery that these two films share is the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém, a suspected Viet Cong officer, on a street in Saigon during the Tet Offensive. The use of it is more subtle in Head but only comparatively. Here, it's unavoidable. Maybe not so noticeable or identifiable at first, but eventually, unmistakable and looming larger-than-life over the entire landscape with all the subtlety and grace of a bullet to the temple.

Head (1968):
Written by: Bob Rafelson, Jack Nicholson, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith, and Davy Jones
I have lost count of how many times I have seen this movie. Let's go with several to many. I don't own a copy. I wish I did. It's not so easy to obtain. I may or may not have a VHS bootleg that may or may not have been copied from AMC. If such a VHS bootleg exists, it may or may not still be in playable condition.
Ask a Monkees fan about Head, and they will probably tell you that it was a demonstration of the band's genuine musical prowess combined with an earnest anti-war sentiment in an effort to prove that they were more than a manufactured sugar pop boy band. Ask anyone else, and they might tell you that the Monkees got to together with Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson, did a lot of psychedelic drugs, and made a very bad movie while they were at it. I tend to agree with the fans, but both opinions are at least partially true.
Not long after it begins, the basis of the entire movie is explained with a spoken piece known as the Ditty Diego-War Chant. It plays over a scene featuring a wall of televisions. Each screen shows either actual news footage, a person-on-the-street interview, an old movie clip, or a scene from the movie yet to come. The television screens are shown all together as well as individually until it hones in on one final screen in particular. That screen shows the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém. Cut to a beautiful, blue-eyed, blonde, teenage girl screaming her head off for The Monkees as they take the stage. Cue the plaintive wail of Mike Nesmith singing Circle Sky intercut with footage of the Vietnam War with emphasis on villagers fleeing for their lives. It's a heavy beginning for a movie often dismissed as a bit of fluff.
As I have mentioned, both movies involve time loops. The first entry begins with three college students frolicking on a beach and ends with them in a predicament on a train before looping back around. The time loop in Head centers around trying to escape a box or avoid becoming trapped in the box in the first place. The box can be a physical construct like a prison cell or shipping container. The box can also be something less tangible like a genre or stereotype.
It features several great songs and numerous celebrity cameos. I love the Porpoise Song, but Can You Dig It? and Circle Sky were the ones I played back the most. My favorite cameo is Frank Zappa, who offers some words of wisdom to Davy Jones, while simultaneously leading a cow off a soundstage. My second favorite cameo is Vito Scotti. The scene in the desert with Micky Dolenz versus the vending machine is probably my favorite of the whole movie.
Timothy Carey plays Lord High 'n Low. It's a part just big enough to not be a cameo, but if this movie were made today, his role would probably be edited down to a cameo for the sake of sensitivity and political correctness. He does not make fun of the disabled. I can see how some people might interpret it that way. Without going too much into it, there is one scene in which Timothy Carey portrays a disabled person. Some people laugh and make fun of him. There are swift and severe repercussions against those people. That bit of his performance is hard to watch. It's jarring in part because it's unexpected, but also because it's done by an actor with a knack for the uncomfortable. It's not meant to make you squirm in your seat. It's meant to make you ask yourself why you are squirming in your seat (if applicable). Despite his appearance and demeanor, his character is not the heavy. His part is that of a petty showbiz tyrant more than anything.
Throw in some madcap antics, silly skits, Eastern spiritualist philosophy, a troupe of belly dancers, a groupie or two or ten, psychedelic and surreal imagery, a god-like main antagonist, and it's a party.
My favorite sound bites from the wall of televisions:
Bela Lugosi: Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not.
Person-on-the-street: Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people?
***
Commentator's Epilogue or Why Oh Why Ye Gods of Cinematic Happenstance Did You Do This to Me:
Here is a not funny story about the week these two eerily similar movies arrived at my house. They both arrived a few days before the Texas mall massacre that left entire families in piles of chunks on the ground. I was not in a good headspace when I sat down to watch these.
Talk about squirming in your seat, this had me crawling up inside myself looking for a place to hide, and I have had all of May to stew about it. I got sick at the end of the first week. COVID tests were negative, but whatever I caught turned into pneumonia just the same. I have been recovered for less than week now, which is why it took me until June to write it up.
Three Resurrected Drunkards was particularly hard to handle. It doesn't just show that violent piece of imagery from Saigon. It dwells on it almost to the point of absurdity, and it got me to thinking. I thought long and hard back to a much happier and more innocent time in my life, when the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém was the worst and most violent image of reality that I had ever seen. Agree with the execution or not, feel that it was justified or not, be shocked and appalled by it or not, the action is understandable given the context of war. I'm deeply sorry that I now live in a world that forces me to look back on this horrific image of one of many horrific events that were part of the Vietnam War and view it as something almost quaint in comparison.
There is an obligation to bear witness, but does it have to be my obligation? I am disgusted and exhausted by atrocity after atrocity after atrocity. It's all the horror of war without the rationale of war, and it's being foisted upon civilians almost every damn day anymore. I am so fed up with this country and the aggrieved entitlement zealots and gun fetishists that drive this bloodlust and madness. They are forever crying about their freedoms. There is no freedom which guarantees the right to carry a massacre machine. There are guns, and there are massacre machines. I have no time for those who refuse to acknowledge the difference. No one needs or is entitled to a massacre machine.
Speaking of freedom, what about my freedom to not have to see fellow citizens on a routine shopping trip shot to smithereens like enemy combatants? I didn't seek those images out. Between television and the internet, they were unavoidable. It takes but a glance to be saddled with indelible horror. The ghosts of atrocities past remind me of this.
Movies are one of my favorite means of escapism, but there was no escape this time around. The shocking image that these two movies repetitiously examine was ripped straight from the headlines at the time. It was probably the most shocking image that many people had ever seen, so much so that it was burned into their individual and collective memories.
50 years ago, a photo of a Vietnam execution framed Americans' view of war
A photograph of an execution on a Saigon street remains one of the defining images of the Vietnam War, 50 years later:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/50-years-ago-photo-vietnam-execution-framed-americans-view-war-n843801
Warning: Despite being relatively wholesome and G-rated, it is now illegal to show either of these movies in proximity to minors in a non-zero number of states in the USA due to cross-dressing on the part of one or more characters.

The Ornithologist (O Ornitólogo - 2016):
Written by: João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata
An ornithologist kayaks through the breathtakingly beautiful wilds of Portugal while doing a species count of black storks. Immersed in his observations, he drifts into rough waters which capsize his craft and knock him unconscious in the process. He later awakens disoriented and lost. It marks the start of a rich, strange, at times perilous, occasionally delightful, and ultimately spiritually transformative journey. His first unsettling encounter comes courtesy of two young women who are also lost in the woods.
The women claim to be pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela, but they are way off course. They insist that the ornithologist must help them find their way. Fernando (Paul Hamy) reluctantly agrees. He may or may not have unwittingly consumed a hallucinogenic "medicinal" tea, and it's just one bizarre encounter after another from that point onward.
Half-naked huntresses, costumed drunken revelers, a shepherd who may or may not be a divine being...
The synopsis says it's based on the life of St. Anthony of Padua. Even though I was raised Catholic, I'll just have to take their word for it. It's not bad, but it's certainly not great. The scenery is absolutely stunning with forested cliffs and exposed sheer rock of many colors towering over both sides of a river. There are several good moments of suspense and surprise. I liked the way it defied my every assumption. I also liked the romantic and rather poetic song that accompanies the closing credits: Canção Do Engate by António Variações. The lyrics are translated into English in the subtitles of the movie. The translations that I found online were not as good.

Silent Running (1972):
Written by: Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, and Steven Bochco
This gets all the stars for creativity and zero stars for pacing. My late father was a fan of actor Bruce Dern, yet he never mentioned this movie to me. I learned of its existence from someone on Mastodon. It's not hard to figure out why this movie is like a forgotten secret. It's not without problems. Considering that it was director Douglas Trumbull's maiden voyage, those problems are perfectly understandable.
Bruce Dern plays botanist Freeman Lowell. Apparently, things are so bad on Earth that the only way to preserve any flora and fauna is by launching it into space inside specially engineered biodome habitats. That's the good news. The bad news is that those last chance to avoid total extinction space flights are at the mercy of a conglomerate of corporate entities that jointly own and command the entire fleet of spaceships. That conglomerate ultimately decides to return the fleet to commercial service. Saving the very last trees, flowers, birds and bunnies just isn't profitable. The news is well received by everyone aboard the fleet, except the botanist.
There are holes in the story and flaws in the logic that a whole fleet of spacecraft could fly through, but don't let that dissuade you. The helper robots are cool and the actors who played them are even cooler. It was clearly not an easy job. It's just Bruce and the robots for much of the movie, which is why I complained about the pacing. The bulk of the action happens early followed by a long, slow slide toward the inevitable.
I really appreciated the making of featurette included on the DVD. It was quite fascinating. Given the year this movie was made, it leaves you with a lot of questions as to how they did things. All of my questions were answered by the making of featurette and a more recent interview with Bruce Dern also included on the disc. I strongly recommend avoiding any trailers prior to watching it. They give away entirely too much.

Cheeky! (2000):
Written by: Tinto Brass, Carla Cipriani, Nicolaj Pennestri, Silvia Rossi, and Massimiliano Zanin
I saw Tinto Brass in the news recently, and two things happened:
1) I realized he was still alive.
2) I rented probably one of his best movies for the third time.
Boasts profound love for the butt, and the director put himself in one of its best scenes. It's a fairly convincing softcore with full male and female nudity, featuring both lesbian and heterosexual pairings. Definitely adults only. Don't overthink it just have a good time.

Kamikaze Girls (Shimotsuma monogatari - 2005):
Written by: Nobara Takemoto and Tetsuya Nakashima
This is a very silly, highly entertaining comedy about an unlikely friendship between a sugar-frosted, Rococo lolita (Kyôko Fukada) and a grease-streaked, Yankii biker (Anna Tsuchiya). One of the cool things about renting the DVD is that it has a special mode in which a cabbage will periodically appear on the screen. When you click the cabbage, it reveals narrated text offering a cultural note, geographic description, or terminology definition.
It has a rather unique look. Some parts are animated. All the live action is in supersaturated color almost like a cartoon. There is also a flashy yakuza guy (Sadao Abe) with an enormous, jutting, regent pompadour that earned him the nickname "The Unicorn". As bizarre as it might seem, it's a sweet and adorable coming of age and learning the true meaning of friendship story.
Bosozoku, Yankii And Sukeban - Japanese Gangs:
https://skdesu.com/en/japanese-gangs-yankii-bosozoku-and-sukeban/

Syndromes and a Century ( Sang sattawat - 1968):
As I pick my way through writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's body of work, I'm finding that it's hit and miss. This one bored me terribly. It seemed promising at the start, but my interest quickly waned. It's supposed to be the story of his parents' courtship, but it tells two slightly similar stories with very different outcomes.
It's not a contrast of his and her perspectives. It's two different stories. Not knowing which if either to believe made me not care. Both stories are bland, meandering, and lacking in coherence. It was not a good use of my time or a DVD rental. Cemetery of Splendor (2015) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) were far better. Syndromes and a Century lacks the meditative, spiritual qualities, and whimsical moments of those other titles largely due to being set in an austere medical environment. Sticking with it becomes a chore long before the end.