Few directors are as interested in the interiority of their characters as Robert Bresson. His ascetic style strips films of their furnishings, leaving behind a bareness of images and sounds, to be seen and heard with intensified awareness, as if we stand in the protagonist’s shoes during his most private moments. Pickpocket is one of Bresson’s […]
Tag: Outsiders
Lili cycles alone down a barren freeway in an image straight out of an apocalypse film. It is not a horde of stumbling zombies that chases after her, but a swarm of dogs. As the music builds to a crescendo, the animals pass her by. From these opening shots, it’s clear that White God is […]
It’s a trait that has remained constant throughout much of his career, but the dangerous consequences of obsession were never more strikingly explored than in Darren Aronofsky’s distinctive debut. The high contrast provided by the jarring black and white reversal film stock on which Aronofsky filmed Pi (1998) is emblematic of the madness/genius see-saw its […]
After Charlie Chaplin, who wrote, directed, edited, composed for and starred in his own pictures, Stan Brakhage was the only true auteur of the American cinema; a painter with light whose most innovative works were produced without the need of a camera. Brakhage’s oeuvre is best viewed chronologically, not only for the interest of seeing […]