We saw trailers for two new black and white releases, one of which is already playing (Belfast) and one of which opens next month (C'mon C'mon). Those were the only two trailers that played. (There were promotions for the cinema that were in color, but go with me on this.)
Then the cold open of Death on the Nile also has no color. (Incidentally, being another Branagh film, this was also shot by Branagh's personal cinematographter, Haris Zambarloukos, who shot Belfast.)
Finally, the color kicked in with the opening credits.
I'm not here to tell you about Death on the Nile -- my review is going up on Monday if you're curious -- but rather, the two trailers I saw.
My God they looked gorgeous.
I have always been a fan of modern-day uses of black and white, despite my occasional reservations that they reveal an artist with a certain level of pretentiousness. It really looks great, if you've got a good DP. So great, in fact, that I wonder if a lot more movies wouldn't be made in black and white if it were considered commercially viable. All you have to know is that they made and released a black and white version of Mad Max: Fury Road, and you'll realize there's something magnificent about the chiaroscuro approach -- even in movies that must make back their large budgetary investment, so can't take this sort of risk on the most commonly available version of the film.
I said these trailers looked gorgeous as though anticipating my first opportunity to see the films in question. In fact, I already saw both and was not particularly kind to either in my 2021 rankings.
Belfast was the one I liked better, ranking it at #71 for the year. That's still well within the top half of the films I saw, but it's pretty low for a best picture nominee. I kind of figured Belfast would be one of those movies that the Golden Globes feted, but it would have lost any heat it had accumulated by the time the Oscar nominations came out. Instead, it received seven nominations, including nominations for Branagh in both the screenwriting and directing categories. It's not a film that just eked in there.
So why wasn't it a bigger hit with me?
Fatigue certainly had something to do with it. Belfast was the third-to-last movie I watched before I closed my list, on a Sunday afternoon. Instead of finding a suitable showcase for its beautiful cinematography, I split my viewing between the pool and the garage. That's right -- I watched about 15 minutes of it while lying on a floatie thing in my pool. That turned out not to be very practical, so I shifted to the garage and that worked better. Still, it felt like a "catch as catch can" viewing.
Fatigue doesn't entirely explain it though. I watched fellow best picture nominee King Richard that night, and ranked it 30 slots higher. Maybe it was watching King Richard on my TV rather than my laptop. I allocated the afternoon slot to Belfast and the evening slot to King Richard after a friend tipped his hand on the comparative strengths of the two films.
No, I think it had more to do with a sort of shruggy feeling about everything that happens in the film. That's up to the point where it really sticks the landing with a sneakily powerhouse emotional ending. Before that, I found the events of the story charming but somewhat lacking in stakes, and they ultimately didn't make a huge impression on me. (That said, I have used an image from Belfast as the new banner for this blog. I am a little bothered by the inconsistency of my behavior in this regard -- my last banner was from Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which I dearly love -- but the image was too illustrative of my blog not to use it.)
I was significantly harder on Mike Mills' C'mon C'mon (#138). I might have gotten off on the wrong foot on this one as well, watching it too late at night on a night I had planned to watch Annette but couldn't rent it due to a mismatch between the region of my Amazon account and the region of my AppleTV. (I later rectified that issue.) It shouldn't have been too late if my other choice was a 143-minute musical, but it felt late and like a clear second choice for the evening's viewing.
I can't blame the circumstances for this impression though. I found this movie really twee, constituting a hopelessly square look at a relationship between an uncle and a son, full of superfluous narration. I really didn't enjoy the running conceit about Joaquin Phoenix's character interviewing the schoolchildren about their thoughts on the future, which seemed to just make the whole thing feel more silly and unaware of its own terminal squareness. Don't get me long, I'm an earnest person at my core and can appreciate earnestness in movies, but this was not the right sort of earnestness. It left me rolling my eyes, and I thought the reason the movie is called C'mon C'mon is dumb.
Seeing trailers for both of these movies on the big screen, though, made me wonder if I'd missed the boat.
I don't know if it will be possible to go back and undo the impressions I've already created of these movies, and I'm certainly not going to devote my limited available theatrical outings to go see them on the big screen. But I am now encouraged, especially given their critical acclaim, that it will be worthwhile to watch them again in the future -- not on a night I was expecting to watch a different movie, or an afternoon I was lounging in the pool.
I should remind you of a third black and white movie from 2021 that I loved: The Tragedy of Macbeth. I also did not see this on the big screen (though I had the opportunity), but this one connected with me so fundamentally, I had to rank it #10 for the year -- despite preceding my viewing of Belfast by only a single viewing. So, fatigue was obviously not a factor there either. (Maybe it was also that unlike Belfast and C'mon C'mon, Macbeth had a little black -- Denzel Washington -- in among all its white.)
I guess it just goes to show you that black and white cinematography can be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, but it still comes down to something that has nothing to do with the visuals if you want to judge the film's effectiveness: its script.
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