alison is going to hate me.
Generally when Mohammed and I are together, we get to do what I want to do, because I am more strong-willed and selfish. We call it our cultural imperialism, partly ironically and partly because there is a real measure of actual cultural imperialism in there too.
This meant that it took me over a year of hanging out with him before I saw Emir Kusturica's Arizona Dream. We'd started Underground before and I hadn't liked it at all, so I wasn't keen to try another, but anyway: Arizona Dream is one of the best films I've ever seen. I am announcing this because I know nothing about cinema and it is probably one of those established-fact things amongst film nerds or conversely, some sort of film nerd faux-pas, but I don't care, it's beautiful, compelling and amazing.
A tons of things happen but it doesn't really have a plot-plot. There is a ton of character development but it doesn't really matter. There's probably a bunch of sexual politics but it's not about that, and nor does it ignore that in a male-privilege sort of 'arthouse films can do that' way. It is a snowglobe of a film, an insane little world sealed off from other things but with a total clarity of its own. Everyone in this film serves themselves, perfectly. There is no guilt or obligation. It has the darkest humour, moments that are so incredibly, wildly funny yet you're in shock at the same time. It has lines you are desperate to commit to memory, yet which don't feel like quotes. Nearly every scene, for no special reason at all, you just can't tear your eyes away. One of the sex scenes goes onto my top sex scenes list. It's basically down to the DOP and the cast, who are without exception brilliant together - Johnny Depp, before he became that irritating fuckwit of a Johnny Depp brand; Faye Dunaway, playing the close to impossible-to-like role of a middle aged insane and needy seductress; Vincent Gallo, before he started taking himself too seriously, and Lili Taylor, who I fell in love with all over again, and who beats everybody, everybody out of the room.
God, I love Lili Taylor. I'd marry her in a heartbeat. I'd run off to a log cabin with her and never see anyone else again. She's my ideal woman.
The only thing I didn't like was the flying metaphor. Even though the film kind of depends on it. It's too cheap, used too often.
ETA I forgot, Alison, the soundtrack is by that famous guy you love! You know, the one that Eugene Hutz worships. What's his name. That guy. It's amazing, all that sort of thing but with loads of 80s synth. Brilliant soundtrack.
Arizona Dream is one of those films that reminds you how magical realism should be. I hate the genre of magical realism, at least as it is repackaged for popular culture. It's awful, a sort of predigested wackiness and superficial spiritualism that makes me want to puke. That's why I really couldn't stand the new Alice in Wonderland (which is fantasy, not magical realism, but anyway I'm talking about wackiness) : I can honestly say I prefer the Disney vision to the Tim Burton one (Alison is going to kill me) because Disney took the story at face value and animated it well for the time: it's a good story with strongly hallucinatory elements. Tim Burton, admittedly, saw a kindred spirit in Lewis Carroll, that's clear enough, but he then turned the whole thing into a repository for his style. And it's all style. Some of it is nice, some of it is derivative, but honestly I can't care less about Alice and whether she's this dream-messiah figure for Wonderland or not. In the book, all you care about is whether she is going to get out of this dream world or not: that's enough of a motivation, and then you encounter all sort of beautiful, nonsensical and perplexing things on the way. Many of these are a bit tired now, but Burton has no respect for their possibility to amaze, nor for the character of Alice (who is a genuine, selfish, strong-willed child in the book, not some proto-feminist magic sparkle pixie) so hopscotches over them scattering special effects and white face powder all the way. Nothing in this makes you genuinely uncomfortable, and even proto-surrealism has to do that. I've started watching it twice now, and it's totally boring.
Anyway, Alice was originally a brunette. So there.