maxwellhoffmann
Joined Aug 2001
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Reviews6
maxwellhoffmann's rating
I viewed this film in 1994, and feel like I can remember nearly every frame. It is a film I recommend with reservations: I was enthralled, but Cineplex film-goers weaned on THX and kinetic editing may find this Opus about as exciting as watching paint dry.
Sokurov has created an almost wordless visual poem ... compelling, watery dream-like images, with subliminal sounds of half-heard conversations and rushing water leaking in. Orthogonal camera distortion, murky still images, matted backgrounds and miniatures create a world that taps heavily from the universal race consciousness: a heavy dose of deja vu will set in as you "remember" images that nearly every citizen of the western world has experienced in universal dreams and nightmares.
WHISPERING PAGES is based on "images" from 19th Century Russian novels. A scrap of plot, with nameless characters, involves a Dostoyevski-esque tragic hero who's evidently murdered an old woman to collect on her estate. A waif-like heroine, reduced to prostitution, is so ethereal that you suspect she may be a figment of his imagination.
The 77 minutes pass quite slowly, with some camera pans (e.g. from the top to the bottom of a statue) taking nearly five minutes. It's not a bore, though. The alert viewer will catch occasional freezes into a still shot, and a watery drifting in and out of color. The film is a brilliant textbook on camera technique; required viewing for any serious students of world cinema. Your appreciation will increase if you're also a fan of German Silent films. Many of the overhead shots of murky urban miniatures bear a startling resemblance to the workers quarters in METROPOLIS. At times the camera lens is so distorted that the crooked alleyways resemble the twisted sets of CABINET OF DOCTOR CALIGARI. A bureaucrat who administers red-tape surrounding the old woman's estate is identical to the police clerks in CALIGARI. All that's missing are the elevated desks and chairs. Long shots of the hero, in supplication in his cell-like apartment, chill the blood as much as the infamous camera shot receding from the tragic Emil Jannings in THE LAST LAUGH.
WHISPERING PAGES, though, is far from being a silent film; the use of sound is brilliant. Through the film, there is the constant sound of water; running through pipes, rushing by opaque windows, dripping. You can almost "hear" the omnipresent vapors. In a chalky image of birds hovering above the river's surface, we hear the heart-like beat of wings.
The lead actor, Alexander Cherednik, is lanky, and very Christ-like in appearance. Unless you notice that his fingers have mysteriously elongated, several encounters with a distortion lens during his scenes may escape your notice. This film has many searing visual images, that match the greatest moments of German Silent Cinema; for instance, when Cherednik awakens under the monstrous statue of a lioness and sucks on her teat. Camera pointed at ceiling, with severely distorted lenses makes a four-story stairwell appear like something from a medieval miniature; we see nameless characters climbing over the rail, and plunging, in slow motion, into an abyss. Doors open onto plunging shafts. Exterior shots of tenements on the river reveal ladders and stairs that end in mid-air. Much of the imagery is nightmarishly unforgettable.
Experiencing the film is a bit like being in a convincing seance, summoning up images from a the world of the dead. You feel like a time traveler, drifting, ghost-like, in the netherworlds of Russian poverty sometime around the 1830s or 1840s. You'll derive an almost voyeuristic thrill in picking up snatches of conversation that you weren't intended to hear.
If this type of film or subject matter interests you at all, I encourage you to alter your calendar to accommodate it's rare showings. Like the watery, ghost-like images it contains, sadly, this film won't see the light of day for long in our channel-surfing world. Ironically, unlike most current popular films, which evaporate from your memory by the time you get to the parking lot. WHISPERING PAGES leaves indelible images floating before you vision upon waking the next day.
Sokurov has created an almost wordless visual poem ... compelling, watery dream-like images, with subliminal sounds of half-heard conversations and rushing water leaking in. Orthogonal camera distortion, murky still images, matted backgrounds and miniatures create a world that taps heavily from the universal race consciousness: a heavy dose of deja vu will set in as you "remember" images that nearly every citizen of the western world has experienced in universal dreams and nightmares.
WHISPERING PAGES is based on "images" from 19th Century Russian novels. A scrap of plot, with nameless characters, involves a Dostoyevski-esque tragic hero who's evidently murdered an old woman to collect on her estate. A waif-like heroine, reduced to prostitution, is so ethereal that you suspect she may be a figment of his imagination.
The 77 minutes pass quite slowly, with some camera pans (e.g. from the top to the bottom of a statue) taking nearly five minutes. It's not a bore, though. The alert viewer will catch occasional freezes into a still shot, and a watery drifting in and out of color. The film is a brilliant textbook on camera technique; required viewing for any serious students of world cinema. Your appreciation will increase if you're also a fan of German Silent films. Many of the overhead shots of murky urban miniatures bear a startling resemblance to the workers quarters in METROPOLIS. At times the camera lens is so distorted that the crooked alleyways resemble the twisted sets of CABINET OF DOCTOR CALIGARI. A bureaucrat who administers red-tape surrounding the old woman's estate is identical to the police clerks in CALIGARI. All that's missing are the elevated desks and chairs. Long shots of the hero, in supplication in his cell-like apartment, chill the blood as much as the infamous camera shot receding from the tragic Emil Jannings in THE LAST LAUGH.
WHISPERING PAGES, though, is far from being a silent film; the use of sound is brilliant. Through the film, there is the constant sound of water; running through pipes, rushing by opaque windows, dripping. You can almost "hear" the omnipresent vapors. In a chalky image of birds hovering above the river's surface, we hear the heart-like beat of wings.
The lead actor, Alexander Cherednik, is lanky, and very Christ-like in appearance. Unless you notice that his fingers have mysteriously elongated, several encounters with a distortion lens during his scenes may escape your notice. This film has many searing visual images, that match the greatest moments of German Silent Cinema; for instance, when Cherednik awakens under the monstrous statue of a lioness and sucks on her teat. Camera pointed at ceiling, with severely distorted lenses makes a four-story stairwell appear like something from a medieval miniature; we see nameless characters climbing over the rail, and plunging, in slow motion, into an abyss. Doors open onto plunging shafts. Exterior shots of tenements on the river reveal ladders and stairs that end in mid-air. Much of the imagery is nightmarishly unforgettable.
Experiencing the film is a bit like being in a convincing seance, summoning up images from a the world of the dead. You feel like a time traveler, drifting, ghost-like, in the netherworlds of Russian poverty sometime around the 1830s or 1840s. You'll derive an almost voyeuristic thrill in picking up snatches of conversation that you weren't intended to hear.
If this type of film or subject matter interests you at all, I encourage you to alter your calendar to accommodate it's rare showings. Like the watery, ghost-like images it contains, sadly, this film won't see the light of day for long in our channel-surfing world. Ironically, unlike most current popular films, which evaporate from your memory by the time you get to the parking lot. WHISPERING PAGES leaves indelible images floating before you vision upon waking the next day.
The USA Film Festival described this as Twin Peaks directed by Erich von Stroheim. Not a bad description. It's an uproarious satire, in the vein of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN ... but the film often so beautifully duplicates the material it parodies that your breath is taken away. It's a little like reading a hysterical comic book, and finding original paintings by old masters salted throughout!
This brilliant Canadian film heavily borrows from the high-camp expressionism of German silent films and early talkies, especially the "mountain" films of Leni Riefenstahl. Anyone who's read FROM CALIGARI TO HITLER will recognize dozens of scenes in this film as near carbons of stills from the book. Perhaps more than any other films before or since, German silent cinema created compelling images that tap into universal race consciousness, portraying grainy, moving archetypal images all of us vaguely recognize from dreams or nightmares. Because of this, CAREFUL will often take your breath away with unexpected moments of quiet majesty and beauty. But there are plenty of laughs in between, (with "sick," 70's style National Lampoon-like humor). If you've never laughed at seeing an eye poked out, leave political correctness at the door and give this film a whirl!
The soundtrack if often deliberately scratchy or muffled, and in several scenes easter-egg like colors are used that resemble the early two-strip technicolor process. Ominous title cards are used to introduce scenes. This bizarre film is salted with unexpected dialogue like this: BOY: "My, aren't you the frisky one today." GIRL: "Even the reindeer are such, when Spring is coming!"
Enough of the aesthetics, what is the film supposedly about? The action takes place in the 19th century alpine village of Tolzbad, that is so precariously poised under constant threat of avalanche that villagers have learned to communicate only in whispers. Animals have had their vocal chords removed, and gramophones have lambs wool stuffed in the horn. Villagers keep time to the "sound" of silent instruments at a "concert." There are handful of soundproof ice caves where the villagers can frolic and shout, letting out their pent up, pagan passions. The film is clearly a biblical parable about repression. Jackie Burroughs does a brilliant bit part as the puritanical teacher, who closely resembles the Cloris Leachman role in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.
All of the characters display a surface naivete; actresses speak in the perky, breathless voices reminiscent of badly dubbed post-war European B films; "strapping" young sons still wear short pants'd school uniforms. The film quickly descends below the surface to show the village as a cauldron of incestuous flirtations, violent retaliation and explosive "family secrets." The plot follows an arc of forbidden loves and passions, leading to retribution on a biblical scale. What may appear to the modern audience as "cheap" special effects are actually loving recreations of how ghosts and visions were portrayed in silent and early talking German films. Many of the images are unforgettable, like the "trolley" cars pulled by oxen, or the mine workers wearing crowns of flickering candles. Uncoated lenses and back lit hair make some closeups resemble images from early Garbo or Dietrich films.
CAREFUL warrants multiple viewings. Watch it with a friend; this is definitely a film you'll want to dissect over several capuccinos.
This brilliant Canadian film heavily borrows from the high-camp expressionism of German silent films and early talkies, especially the "mountain" films of Leni Riefenstahl. Anyone who's read FROM CALIGARI TO HITLER will recognize dozens of scenes in this film as near carbons of stills from the book. Perhaps more than any other films before or since, German silent cinema created compelling images that tap into universal race consciousness, portraying grainy, moving archetypal images all of us vaguely recognize from dreams or nightmares. Because of this, CAREFUL will often take your breath away with unexpected moments of quiet majesty and beauty. But there are plenty of laughs in between, (with "sick," 70's style National Lampoon-like humor). If you've never laughed at seeing an eye poked out, leave political correctness at the door and give this film a whirl!
The soundtrack if often deliberately scratchy or muffled, and in several scenes easter-egg like colors are used that resemble the early two-strip technicolor process. Ominous title cards are used to introduce scenes. This bizarre film is salted with unexpected dialogue like this: BOY: "My, aren't you the frisky one today." GIRL: "Even the reindeer are such, when Spring is coming!"
Enough of the aesthetics, what is the film supposedly about? The action takes place in the 19th century alpine village of Tolzbad, that is so precariously poised under constant threat of avalanche that villagers have learned to communicate only in whispers. Animals have had their vocal chords removed, and gramophones have lambs wool stuffed in the horn. Villagers keep time to the "sound" of silent instruments at a "concert." There are handful of soundproof ice caves where the villagers can frolic and shout, letting out their pent up, pagan passions. The film is clearly a biblical parable about repression. Jackie Burroughs does a brilliant bit part as the puritanical teacher, who closely resembles the Cloris Leachman role in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.
All of the characters display a surface naivete; actresses speak in the perky, breathless voices reminiscent of badly dubbed post-war European B films; "strapping" young sons still wear short pants'd school uniforms. The film quickly descends below the surface to show the village as a cauldron of incestuous flirtations, violent retaliation and explosive "family secrets." The plot follows an arc of forbidden loves and passions, leading to retribution on a biblical scale. What may appear to the modern audience as "cheap" special effects are actually loving recreations of how ghosts and visions were portrayed in silent and early talking German films. Many of the images are unforgettable, like the "trolley" cars pulled by oxen, or the mine workers wearing crowns of flickering candles. Uncoated lenses and back lit hair make some closeups resemble images from early Garbo or Dietrich films.
CAREFUL warrants multiple viewings. Watch it with a friend; this is definitely a film you'll want to dissect over several capuccinos.
A remarkable film with an astonishing capacity to touch your heart and open your mind. A refreshingly original story that doesn't lapse into exploiting potentially "adult" themes.
Hardy Kruger succeeds in taking you with his character into his child like view of the world (caused by shell shock in Indochine). Patricia Gozzi is a rare child actress whose performance is completely free of the usual self-conscious effort found in recent films. Entire cast is strong.
The black and white cinematography is amongst the best I've ever seen. The camera seems remarkably aware of textures and temperatures. Some images are reminiscent of Ansel Adams' silver gelatin prints. Don't miss any opportunity to see this rare gem of a film. The characters, stories and images will follow you for a long, long time. It will make you wish that Director Serge Bourguignon had a much longer filmography.
Hardy Kruger succeeds in taking you with his character into his child like view of the world (caused by shell shock in Indochine). Patricia Gozzi is a rare child actress whose performance is completely free of the usual self-conscious effort found in recent films. Entire cast is strong.
The black and white cinematography is amongst the best I've ever seen. The camera seems remarkably aware of textures and temperatures. Some images are reminiscent of Ansel Adams' silver gelatin prints. Don't miss any opportunity to see this rare gem of a film. The characters, stories and images will follow you for a long, long time. It will make you wish that Director Serge Bourguignon had a much longer filmography.