Volume 136: Art College 1994 / Terrestrial Verses
The Voice of Energy Vol. 136
Gotta make this short as I’m under the gun of a bunch of deadlines and other busy work today. Got a couple of reviews for you and another FTA pick chosen by my kid. Dig in and let me know what you think.
Art College 1994 (2023, dir. Liu Jian)
As the dust continued to settle in China in the wake of the Tienanmen Square protests, a new generation of artists emerged from those clouds, bringing renewed energy and scrappy purpose to their work. Among these voices were the filmmakers known as the Sixth Generation (Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, etc.) and the members of the Beijing East Village community (Xing Danwen, Ma Liuming, Zhang Huan, etc.).
These new waves of thought and action wash through the minds of the young people attending the titular school in Liu Jian’s latest animated feature Art College 1994. It’s a weight that looks to physically be on their shoulders as they trudge through their days, discussing the nature of art, seek minor and major pleasures, and try to produce work of their own that might stand up alongside the likes of those names listed above.
Liu does nod to the Sixth Generation by having directors like Jia and Bi Gan provide voices for some of the characters, but the tone of Art College is much more in line with that of Western filmmakers who arrived around the same time. The loose structure and talky scenes echoes the work of Whit Stillman and Richard Linklater.
It can be, then, a tough sit for some viewers who may want a little more cinematic flash or forward movement. Liu seems to know that the expectation of an animated film is something visually dazzling, but chooses instead to evoke a very specific time through color and atmosphere. The studios and shared dorm rooms of the male characters feel dank and slightly greasy, and what would be idyllic backdrops of nature and centuries old architecture in the small city in Southern China looks dingy around the edges. Even as my mind started to drift away from the furtive romance growing between some of the characters and the petty grievances that they’ve blown up into major crises, I still found myself lost in the details scattered around the edges of each scene.
Art College 1994 screens for one week at Metrograph.
Terrestrial Verses (2023, dir. Alireza Khatami & Ali Asgari)
Iranian filmmakers Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami, and the many actors that appeared in Terrestrial Verses, must have known they were risking a lot by making this film. And the blowback they’ve received at the hands of the repressive government in their home country has been swift. Asgari, much like his fellow Iranian director Jafar Panahi, is now banned from leaving the country and making future films. Several of the people who appear on camera have, according to the press notes, had their passports and phones confiscated by authorities.
That alone is worth praising these brave artists, but the appreciation is trebled by the work they did in front of and behind the camera. Terrestrial Verses is a series of vignettes set amid the regressive politics and bureaucratic bullshit of modern Iran. Each scene portrays a single citizen interacting with an off-camera authority figure as they deal with seemingly simple tasks like filling out a birth certificate or applying for a job or are forced to defend themselves for upsetting the rule of law.
The camera doesn’t move from one spot, pointing straight at these characters and forcing viewers to pay close attention to every slight shift in expression or body language. As a result, the horror and dark comedy of each exchange only feels more weighted and bitter. We hold on to flashes of hope, like the young woman applying to work for the head of a large corporation who quickly understands that sexual harassment and abuse will be prerequisite of her employment and finds the strength to walk out of the job interview. Or the mildly optimistic conclusion of an otherwise frustrating scene of an older woman hoping to get her dog back from the police.
But what Asgari and Khatami never let us forget is that, in modern Iran, it is illegal for a woman to walk a dog on the streets. Or, as we are reminded in one scene, women aren’t allowed to drive without wearing a hijab. In another bleak scene, a man desperate to get a construction job is quizzed on his knowledge of the Koran and made to demonstrate the proper way to wash before prayer. In nearly every case, the people not seen abuse their power enormously so that any small way that these citizens have to push back feels titanic.
Terrestrial Verses opens today at Film Forum.
Our regular feature — a recommendation of a movie to watch that is hiding below the fold on one of the major streaming services. In other words: fuck the algorithm. Once again, our pick this week comes from friend of the newsletter, Liz Ham.
Big Fan (2009, dir. Robert D. Siegel)
What would you do for the team? Some people only catch the highlights, some people see every game live on the television, and a select few see every game in person. But there are a few, and I mean very few, that will go someplace even higher. They are so enamored by the idea of their favorite players that they will go to extreme lengths to protect the honor of the players, and in tandem, their own. This toxic relationship is what Big Fan is all about. Starring Patton Oswalt as Paul Aufiero in a searing depiction of obsession, it follows the story of Aufiero (the self-described “biggest New York Giants fan”) through wins, losses, and his otherwise meaningless life. Eventually, he finds the linebacker of the team driving through the bad parts of town. After a bit of shadowing, they meet. What happens next, I will not describe to you except to say that it dives through the cave of the human psyche and doesn't stop until it gets trapped at the very bottom with no way out. The final lines are something that cannot be understood until they are seen, heard, and ruminated on for a long time.
Big Fan is streaming on Peacock and Tubi.
That’s what we got for you. I hope the week treats you well, and I hope you watch some movies. A lot of good stuff out there right now incl. The Beast, La Chimera, and even the silly vampire flick Abigail. Talk at you soon.
Artwork for this edition is by Nadežda Petrović.
This newsletter was written on the unceded land where once stood the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area.