A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through Early Noughties YouTube
Charlie Bit My Finger
What makes this picture so captivating for me is its rawness, the verité style. They shot it completely on location, using this very light camera — a Motorola Razr I believe, which moves and sways in the hand of the filmmaker. It really brings the audience right alongside the action. The most powerful moment, of course, comes right at the end. I’ll never forget the way Charlie looks directly at the camera in the final moments, silently beckoning us, the audience, to pass judgment upon his actions. He has bitten his brother on the finger, his only brother, and he looks to us for his salvation. Suddenly we are participating in the scene — playing God, if you will. That, to me, is cinema in its purest form.
Scottish Mom Yells At Her Kids
The sequence in which the mother enters the room, a terrific sequence, still haunts me today. She’s a wonderful actress, completely non-professional, by the way. She bursts into the scene just as her daughters are about to sing, and she cries out, “Which one of you has done a shit?” I can remember shaking, literally shaking in my chair in the theater. Her ferocity, her pain, her frustration at her situation, it all comes out in her performance. “It was fucking one of you… disgusting”. That was an improvised line from the mother, I believe, and it is completely authentic, and completely to the credit of the picture. As with many great noir pictures, the identity of the culprit is irrelevant in this case, but the motive, the “why?”, is a question which troubles me to this day.
Nyan Cat
I remember watching this for the very first time, the second half of a double-bill with Rocco and his Brothers, on my daughter’s iPad. It played in grainy 240p. I must have been 62 or 63 when I saw it. Even though it was not well-received at the time, I responded very strongly. The colors, the movement, I found deeply captivating. It’s hypnotic and beautifully realized in three-strip Technicolor. Throughout the picture, I was puzzled — the character of the cat, what drives him? He moves endlessly, but towards what? Are we witnessing a flight of self-destruction? Perhaps, since he is certainly no saint. Or does he move through space towards redemption? It’s very complex, but it rewards our engagement.
Sneezing Baby Panda
It was Hitchcock who famously said that if a ticking bomb is placed in a scene, the longer the bomb takes to go off, the greater the tension for the audience. That’s suspense. Here, we know that the panda will sneeze, but we do not know when. That is the engine that moves the scene along and provides the narrative drive. It’s tremendously involving, so difficult to look away. The way the panda finally sneezes, explodes really, is a stunning pay-off. I screened this for Jack Nicholson, actually, as we rehearsed for The Departed. That masterful layering of tension as the panda holds its sneeze, followed by a sudden flash of movement, was very influential to us making that film.
Star Wars Kid
Here we experience the virtues of the static camera which silently, unobtrusively observes the action. We do not feel the presence of the director at work; we see only the truth that is placed in front of us. The elegant composition reminded me of Chaplin, who would always say: “Why do the camera angles need to be interesting when I am interesting?” The kid, the Star Wars kid, carries the picture on his shoulders. He’s such a powerful presence, drawing our focus always towards the center of the frame with his anger. The setting here is very stark, very minimal. That dark room underground, dimly lit and decorated very simply with a single curtain, is so bleak, so expressive of the character’s destructive tendencies. So deeply nihilistic and disturbing. I’ve seen this picture only once, at a festival, and I’m not sure whether I’m ready to go there again just yet.
Rebecca Black’s Friday
My daughter is a huge fan of this and screened it for me on my birthday. It’s not for me. The lead performer is doing her best under the circumstances, but as I watch I feel no intrigue, no vulnerability, and ultimately no revelation. This is not cinema; it is a theme park ride. We are transported constantly from the girl’s home, to the car, to the school, but where are we being taken emotionally? It’s stylish enough, but where is the feeling, the emotional truth. Granted, it still requires a certain degree of talent and artistry. But it’s not cinema. Rebecca Black does not dazzle in the great tradition of D.W. Griffith, of Buster Keaton, or the Sneezing Baby Panda. That’s just how I feel. I hope I haven’t ruffled any feathers in saying this.
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