Harry

Kon-Tiki and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen.

Romance and The Marriage of Maria Braun.

Caché and Post Tenebras Lux.

Directors:
(Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg/ Zacharias Kunuk, Norman Cohn)
(Catherine Breillat, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
(Michael Haneke, Carlos Reygadas)

The space between two films, films which share a theme, an affect, a bit of the uncanny, is where meaning lies for me. Films either in harmony or in conflict or an uneasy space between extremes.

There’s no pattern of similarity between the three pairs I chose above. I didn’t really choose them. They latched together in my memory. Somehow, this double (not triple, not dozen), this connection, is the place where I feel art.

How can you say that a film is the best of a decade? Why must you pretend you’re omniscient? Why must you be hard as concrete? Sarcastic and brutal? Why must you be glib, cold, bitter? Authoritarian?

Trite twitter witticisms ennoble no one.

Be gentle, enthusiastic, emotional. Vulnerable. You can be all these things and remain critical.