NYFF: Brian De Palma's Passion

Passion

A Film By Brian De Palma

France/Germany

This is the first in a series of posts about the 50th New York Film Festival. Look for coverage also in upcoming episodes of The Cinephiliacs, as well as other outlets as they are announced.

            Seeing is believing in Passion, the latest hypnotic work from the legendary Brian De Palma. Throughout the film we are exposed to digital cameras that record our inner desires, truths, and fantasies. Perhaps that’s why the director took the narrative from the French film Love Crime, a melodrama that includes some naughty sex and even naughtier violence, because his interest in the text is only secondary for his visual text. He’s beyond any convention of classical narrative filmmaking (though one might have to ask when he ever was) and engrosses you with his ecstatic vision.

            This is De Palma doing what he does best, which means those who aren’t converted will most likely throw their hands up at the film’s ghastly direct dialogue, constant twists, and in-your-face crassness. De Palma doesn’t seem interested in bringing anyone up to speed who hasn’t drunk his Kool-Aid. But within his world, he indulges as he has wont to do with his emblematic color palette that exposes a world of truth and lies as told by cameras and hidden by performance.

Prometheus: Origins of the Creature from the Space Lagoon

Prometheus

Directed By: Ridley Scott

Written By: Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green, and Patrick Wilson

Director of Photography: Dariusz Wolski, Editor: Peitro Scalia, Production Designer: Arthur Max, Original Music: Marc Streitenfeld

WARNING: Like my review for Cabin in the Woods, I plan on discussing Prometheus in full, without any consideration for what are considered “spoilers” If you are curious to see the film, just go see it. My opinion of whether I liked it or not shouldn’t be the factor. If you are curious to read on why I think the film functions as it does, without any consideration for hiding the aspects of the narrative, then read on. Also, I’m also going to spoil Lost.

            In 2010, the hit ABC series Lost came to an end with what many considered a crashing thud. For six seasons, audiences watched a show about constantly accumulating mysteries on an island. Lost fed its hungry fans with more and more—polar bears in jungles, buttons that saved the universe, alternate timelines—and then abandoned it all for a spiritual sit down with its characters, discarding the main reason that it originally drew viewers. For months before the finale, showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse warned their fans: “true fans” only care about their characters; the mysteries were irrelevant.

            Why this long primer on Lost, when the film of the week, and for many their most anticipated film of the summer, is a prequel to Alien? Because as much as critics will be discussing the craft of director Ridley Scott, Prometheus is assuredly a Damon Lindelof work. His hands are all over this film about a group of scientists traveling to a mysterious planet to find the origins of life. And in many ways, the faults of Prometheus lie in his blame (though Scott shouldn’t escape all the blame).