“Brighter Summer Day” (1991), directed by Edward Yang, Brooklyn Academy of Music, March 11-14Edward Yang, who died in 2007 at the age of 59, was one of the leading figures of the Taiwanese New Wave, along with his contemporary Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Of his seven features, only one is easily available in the US: “Yi Yi” (2000), his last completed and most well known film, for which he took home the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival and which was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection. Most of the others have only screened here a few times, most notably in a retrospective of his work at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2011. It was there that I first saw “A Brighter Summer Day” (1991), routinely heralded as his masterpiece, and which, like so much of his other work, only existed here in very poor quality copies lacking adequate subtitles. But the film is finally, much to the delight of cinephiles everywhere, getting a proper release in New York in a short run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music March 11-14.Based on a true story and set in Taiwan in the early 1960s, the film centers on 14-year-old Xiao S’ir and the world around him. At night school, where he is assigned in the prologue of the film due to bad grades, he is bullied, caught in the middle of street fights between rival teenage gangs, and suffers under the authoritarian rule of his teachers. At home, his family, transplants from mainland China, deal with their swaying existence in their adopted homeland. One day at the school infirmary he meets Ming, the girlfriend of a fugitive gang leader, and their relationship results in tragedy.Part of the brilliance of Yang’s sprawling film — with a running time of just under four hours — is evident in the way his visual clarity rests up against the complex narrative, which includes more than 100 speaking parts. The camera often sits back, observing from a distance, and some of the most beautiful moments take place in the family’s home, where the camera observes the dynamics of the characters through doorways, with a series of different actions happening within the same frame. The new release is a DCP restoration, and the film will be released on DVD by the Criterion Collection on March 22.“My Little Loves” (1974), directed by Jean Eustache, Metrograph, March 10-16After a stellar opening weekend, the Metrograph theater is starting off strong with a complete retrospective dedicated to the work of French director Jean Eustache. Best known for his post-New Wave classic “The Mother and the Whore” (1973), he is, despite cult recognition, still underappreciated. The film not to miss in the series is “My Little Loves” (1974), which deserves to be in the same pantheon as Maurice Pialat’s “L’enfance nue” (1968). It concerns the autobiographical coming-of-age of a young boy who is whisked away from his grandmother’s home to live in a one-room apartment with his mother and her boyfriend, who take him out of school and force him to work at a local repair shop. Exquisitely photographed by Nestor Almendros, the film captures the intimate moments in one boy’s transformation over time and still resonates today because of its sophisticated simplicity.“Cracking Up” (1983), directed by Jerry Lewis, Museum of Modern Art, March 13The last film directed by Lewis (who knows, he may have one more up his sleeve) is also one of his best, hinged on the premise of an outcast who is being examined by a psychiatrist. Lewis plays his typical half-wit who can’t do anything right. “You’re playing with half a deck,” the doctor tells him. “You don’t have two oars in the water.” Each of the memories he recalls for the doctor is played out on the screen as a separate skit, some more firmly connected to the main character than others. But as a possible swan song, it also bears some of the darkness that might have rubbed off the famously shelved “The Day the Clown Cried,” the film Lewis made about a clown in a concentration camp that the comedian has refused to release despite its completed state. “Cracking Up” beings with a series of gags about trying to commit suicide, as if Lewis was once and for all attempting to kill of his joking persona.The Films of James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Brooklyn Academy of Music, March 10As part of its annual Migrating Forms festival, BAM presents a screening of short films by James N. Kienitz Wilkins, who is loosely tied to the “Friends with Benefits” crew and whose work shares a similar interest in playing with the boundaries of fact and fiction.“Knight of Cups,” directed by Terrence Malick, Landmark Sunshine Cinema, ongoingAs I mentioned in my review, this film, and the work of Malick in general, is not for everyone. But I was pleasantly surprised by the direction Malick seems to be taking his work here, and it signals, at least hopefully, something new from the all-of-a-sudden prolific filmmaker.
↧