Lost in Criterion

Our experiment of walking through Stan Brakhage, An Anthology Volume Two at a reasonable pace comes to an end this week. After our rush through Volume One years ago we had liked Brakhage, and now after spending so much more time with him, well...we definitely still love his work, but here's hoping it's another few years before Criterion puts out Volume Three.

This week we cover films from the last years of Brakhage's life, including what he was working on when he passed away. And we finally get a behind-the-scenes look at Brakhage filming in "For Stan", a bonus feature short film from Brakhage's wife (and editor of this anthology) Marilyn Brakhage.

This week's selection of Stan Brakhage films has works from 1982, 1992, and 1994, all multi-media, mixing many of the Brakhage "genres": painted frames, manipulated photographic images, layering. We also get another with a soundtrack from Rick Corrigan, and one with probably the most on-screen (and almost legible!) text of any Brakhage film at all.

By Brakhage Volume Two Program 4 is totally dedicated to Stan Brakhage's 1989-90 four film cycle Visions in Meditation. Inspired by Gertrude Stein's Stanzas in Meditation, the films take us on a journey into a meditative state, working better as a complete work than as four individual pieces. This is the only complete cycle of Brakhage's work in the Criterion sets, despite other films drawn from cycles being included in Volume Two.

We continue our journey through By Brakhage, An Anthology Volume Two with a collection of works from 1972-1982 including the remix-y mashup of violence that is Murder Psalm and a few others that are less intense than that.

For By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume One many years ago we tried to do the whole set in a single episode like we were trying to get the new world record for getting through the Louvre the fastest. These are art films, so for Volume Two we're taking our time to appreciate them and dedicating an individual episode to each of the six "Programs" that Criterion breaks the set down into. This is episode two, covering Program 2 including Stan Brakhage's Scenes from Under Childhood, Section One (1967), Machine of Eden (1970), Star Garden (1974), and Desert (1976).

Many years ago Criterion served us up By Brakhage: An Anthology collecting a nice cross section, or so we thought, of the works of experimental American filmmaker Stan Brakhage. We're back with Volume Two and a much wider cross section of the man's work, including styles of piece completely missing from Volume One.

Back then we tried to talk about 26 Brakhage films in a single episode. It was a foolish thing to attempt. This time we're swinging the pendulum the other way and taking the set week by week with Criterion's "Program" subdivisions of the 30 total films. It means only covering about 4 films and about 1 hour of material each week for six weeks, but it also means maybe actually intelligently talking about any individual Brakhage work.

This week we're joined by Adam Spieckermann to talk the stunt work, beautiful setting, and class politics of John Ford's Stagecoach (1939), the star-making role for John Wayne.

Somehow The Fugitive Kind (1960) is our first Sidney Lumet film for the proper podcast despite having done three Sidney Lumet films for our Patreon bonus episodes. Based on a Tennessee Williams play (in turn based on the Orpheus myth), we spend most of this episode trying to put our fingers on what doesn't quite work about it.

I don't know if we ultimately got what Ang Lee wanted us to get out of Ride with the Devil (1999) but we still got something. An interesting, though perhaps too neo-liberal, look at how young men turn to (and from) extremism in extreme times. Still, it's a pretty movie with Jeffrey Wright and Jewel turning in phenomenal performances.

Olivier Assayas' look at what we inherit from our parents was sponsored by the Paris Musee D'orsay for their 20th anniversary and from that partnership came a movie with a satisfyingly over-ambitious art direction in any modern film we've seen.