The past week has been three radically different flicks.
"God Said Ha!" is the 1998 film of Julia Sweeney's stage presentation of the same name. Julia performs the monologue in one long unbroken torrent, filmed pretty much as it was presented on stage. She sometimes isn't looking at the camera, and in a couple of places the stage crew is visible between her and the camera. Otherwise it's just her, speaking to a silent audience, the camera. She speaks forcefully and assured and mostly without sentiment.
She tells the story of her divorce, followed by her brother developing a very serious cancer, followed by her brother and parents moving in with her. She puts her newly-single life on hold to deal with her brother's chemotherapy.
Then she herself is diagnosed with a rare form of cervical cancer. Her own mortality is put on hold as her brother declines and ultimately dies. Luckily her own cancer is less deadly than her brother's, and eventually she gets surgery and chemo and she makes a complete recovery. But for a couple years there, though, she was on God's shit list. Which is funny, if you've ever heard her other famous stage show, "Letting Go of God."
Jacques Tati's 1967 comedy "Play Time" is an absurdist farce, as only the French can do it. Equal parts "Waiting For Godot," "Being There" and Buster Keaton, it is a comedy without laughs. A farce without irony. A play without a script. It is all done in shades of gray with glass doors and walls. It is impossible to describe, and nearly as difficult to endure.
2013's "The Nymphomaniac" is a four-hour, two-movie marathon of explicit sex, European sensibilities, literate references, quiet contemplation and odd, odd framing starring Charlotte Gainsborg, Christian Bayle and Shia LeBeof. It reminds me very much of the bizarre Swedish film "Kitchen Stories," which must be seen to be believed. This one has lovely cinematography, and some very powerful sequences. One could question the length though. Compulsively watchable, though it's an endurance test.
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