Heart of Glass

The quintessential Herzog film. Mystical, hallucinatory; difficult to pin down and categorise. Wins through in the force of its imagery, atmosphere and in the strength of its vision.

There's seven; if I had to name art eighth film, then I would put together the two first halves of The Tenant and Cross of Iron and supplement it with the intermission at the Audrey Rose screening.

One other observation to be made about films this year is to lament the dearth of humorous features available. Can You Keep it Up for a Week?—perhaps not. Pleasure at Her Majesty's certainly deserves a public showing though.

The Penthouse cinema has earnt a pat on the back for a year of great quality and variety, including two films that figure in my Top Ten of all time, namely 81/2 and Rashomon.

And one last thing. If you only see one film between now and February, make sure its Sleeping Dogs. It looks like having plenty of action for the smash-bang coinnesseur and, to judge by what was shown on TV last week, features what appears to be a future SIS in the role of law enforcement officers.

—David Beresford.

A list of what would probably be considered the year's major films reveals an unsurprising theme running through nearly all: social decay. The American bicentennial year did throw up Nashville and one or two other celebratory works, but it was films like Taxi Driver and Network which set the tone. Of course there was a counter-reaction, with That's Entertainment II, A Star is Born and Rocky still pretending the American dream is real. We hardly need the satire of Carrie and the like to tell us how ridiculous that is.

Western culture has for a long time been shot through with psychological probing. The aim has been understanding of ourselves, usually of what is wrong with us. We have constantly been split up into individual units alone in front of either some uncontrollable force, or a void. Sometimes culture has provided us with a means to escape, but necessarily escapism cannot make problems go away. And sometimes a method of coping has been tentatively suggested.

Of late that uncontrollable force has often been political, but the films which suggest the people has a strength greater than the sum of its parts are few and do not come out of the United States. Look at Bound for Glory, conveniently evading this stand by divorcing Woody Guthrie from his origins, colouring him with social stigma (the inadequate treatment of his relationship with his wife), and sending him alone down the romantic path to 'glory'. Travailing Players is the most excellent case to give this the lie.

My choice of best commercially released film is Taxi Driver, because its condemnation of our social system is the most viscious and the best executed. The film opens in hell, out of which we know something terrible will emerge. That thing is Travis Bickle. He makes his mark but society ignores him and makes even him into a hero. At the end hell remains, with the implication that next time it won't be just one "demented" individual who reacts. Travis is beaten but not the forces which created him.

The prize for worst resolution goes to Face to Face, for daring to tell us that everything will be okay if we can only touch somebody else and know we are doing it. Effectively the film maintains that insulated isolation (alone or in pairs) is the only way to cope, and that if we are to function on a broader social scale we must extend our insulation. Along with this goes the assumption that nothing can ever be done to alter the power structure. That is about Bergman's most reactionary statement yet.

I have this year criticised The Mother and the Whore, Seven Beauties and Last Tango in Paris along similar lines. The Story of Adele H also falls into the bracket. These films mark the death throes of an ideology. Certainly most people in our society find themselves in varying degrees able to identify with Adele Hugo or Li v Ullman's Jenny. Vet the way the problems are recognised (with Adele, that the whole thing is grossly unfortunate!) cannot be of significant use.

I go back to my earlier point: if we are treated culturally as isolated individuals we will tend to remain so. Social critics can create ways and means of demonstrating what is wrong in these terms until the cows come home, but they will never have a role in developing a society capable of effective change.

In this sense Roger Donaldson's Sleeping Dogs could well be the most worthwhile film in quite some time. It shows up the fallacy of the "I don't want to get involved" ethic, and asks, what would it take to mobilise the New Zealand population against Fascism? See this film before it's too late.

—Simon Wilson