Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,
I hope you had a nice day (and also yesterday). I haven't seen you on FB for a couple days, but I imagine you are probably working on your personal video project, the one with Tina, or maybe a professional job. I did see the Alcest post, and I think that is a great song, with many different guitar textures involved. I especially like the somewhat Pink Floydian picking style he uses on a riff in the second half of the song, and also when they turn up the energy on the closing chord sequence. I am looking forward to this album (obviously!) and it comes out on the same day as the new Opeth, which sounds great too, a fact I no doubt already mentioned. :)
This evening at CSUN, we saw "Diary Of A Country Priest" (Bresson, 1951). Just before the Professor gave his opening talk, I looked around the audience and saw Grimsley sitting about halfway back. He sometimes comes to the screenings, and I had left him a message that this one was not to be missed.
I've mentioned this movie a bunch of times. I have it on dvd, which I bought and first saw in 2005. I've probably seen it 5 times since then (all at home on dvd), but tonight was the first time I've seen it on a movie screen, with cinematic sound as well.
I don't even know what to say about "Diary Of A Country Priest". It is a work of such high art that few examples exist in film to compare it with. Maybe something by Ozu, but even as high reaching as his movies were, they were still anchored in recognisably human drama, the drama of the everyday.
The Priest of "Country Priest", whose parish is in a small French village, encounters real human problems too, though they are a bit more sinister than in the world of Ozu, but the main thing is that he lives in his own world, so close to God and so attuned to human suffering that he takes his parishoners ills upon himself and it makes him sick, literally. His health, already fragile, worsens throughout the movie.
The script is a high concept analysis of how his compounded suffering either delivers the villagers from or reveals them in their true nature. The cast is small, and he basically interacts only with one family and an older priest who tries to offer him guidance.
The lead performance by an actor named Claude Laydu is one of the greatest ever put on film.
The black and white photography is both crystal clear (in the faces) and hazy around the edges, as if you are looking at something mystical, in a beautiful countryside landscape frozen in time.
Every shot is perfection, every line of dialogue imbued with meaning or questioning. The movement of the actors is choreographed unspoken dialogue as well.
It's a heavy movie that on the surface might seem depressing, but you live inside it as you watch it. You are right there with the Priest in every scene, and because the movie is almost literally told through his eyes, and his writings, what you are left with at the end is an uplifting of the spirit that you will not experience in any other film, as least not in this way.
Straight Up : I think it is the greatest film ever made.
I was already heading in that direction after seeing it at home all these years, but seeing it on the big screen tonight clinched it. Not only the greatest movie ever, but a work of art of the highest possible order, an examination of the elevation of the human spirit.
That's all I know for tonight, SB. See you in the morning. Post if you get a chance.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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