Now, I don't have to listen to my podcasts in chronological order. And I don't have to have seen a movie in order to listen to someone talk about it on a film podcast. (I "listen loosely" in those situations, or if I'm really trying to avoid it, I've been known to just fast forward through the segment in question.)
But with the acclaim I'd heard for Past Lives specifically, I thought it would be good to go in fresh. And for the past few weeks, I've been close enough to my viewing of Celine Song's lauded film -- my first official film of MIFF 2023, having watched a MIFF film on Wednesday that I rented through U.S. iTunes -- that I thought I might as well just wait until after I saw it to continue listening to the podcasts Filmspotting, The Next Picture Show and The Slate Culture Gabfest in the order in which they were released. I have other podcasts to catch up on, right?
Well ...
While I clearly do -- two other Slate podcasts, a fantasy baseball podcast and a podcast put out by two ranting screenwriters -- I ended up catching up on them pretty quickly. For a while I had plenty of old Slate Culture Gabfests, because I'd gotten really behind on those, but then I heard them introducing a discussion of Past Lives in that one as well.
It got so that as I boarded the train into the city to see my first MIFF film, I was listening to an NBA podcast about summer league games -- about players I'd never heard of. That was really a case of "listening loosely." When that ended, I listened to -- gasp! -- music.
The walk from the train to the theater was about 25 minutes, which was good, since I'm doing a steps challenge for work. I had plenty of time to get there, plus stop for a slice of pizza as well. The movie started at 6:15, and I figured if I rocked up about 5:55 I'd be in great shape.
Guess it really has been four years since I've seen a MIFF movie in person.
The Comedy Theatre, my old nemesis (the seats are really uncomfortable), is also the place that most screams out "MIFF" to me. Queueing up around the corner, waiting in the cold to get in, passing the large fish tank of the seafood restaurant where all the lobsters have no idea why you're standing out there (or how short the remainder of their live are) ... these are all ingrained in my memory from many previous MIFFs. Even with the prospect of the uncomfortable seats, I was looking forward to this little ritual again. For context, consulting my notes, I can tell you that the Comedy Theatre was where I saw The End of the Tour, The Salesman, Certain Women, Paterson, Ingrid Goes West, a retrospective screening of Fantastic Planet, Let the Sunshine In, The Square, Climax, Shoplifters, Cold War and Everybody Knows. With the large seating capacity, it usually hosts buzzed about movies and big directors.
Except this year -- the first time I've been there since 2018 (it wasn't in use in 2019, my last in-person year) -- they lined the queue up on the other side of the building.
No lobsters.
And my goodness was it long. Twenty minutes was not nearly long enough beforehand to get a decent seat.
Fortunately, my idea of a decent seat differs from that of other people. While most people seem to prefer the image to be as small as possible in their view -- which I will never understand -- I prefer to sit up close, and the second row actually gave me a great vantage point on Past Lives.
Unfortunately, the film that I thought might be a contender for my #1 of the year wasn't a personal favorite at any distance. Oh, it's really good, no doubt about that. I may sit and think about it and it may get even better. But I knew in the moment that I wasn't wrapped up in it like I expected to be, liked I hoped to be.
But at least now I can go and listen to my podcasts.
I had about 45 minutes after getting out to get over to Cinema Kino, the one downstairs from where I work, to meet a friend and his two work friends to see Dario Argento's The Bird With the Crystal Plumage from 1970. The fact that they are showing all (?) of Argento's films this year was particularly fortuitous for this particular friend, because at MIFF 2019, we had also seen not one but two giallo-inspired films, both directed by Peter Strickland: his then-new film In Fabric, and his film Berberian Sound Studio, which I was seeing for the third time, and at which he himself was in attendance.
We were supposed to meet for a drink after he finished dinner with his friends and after I got out from Past Lives, but that wasn't all that realistic, especially when they finished late and didn't rock up to the theater until about ten minutes before the movie was supposed to start. So we took our drinks in with us.
Big mistake.
Actually, it was the drink part, not the taking it in part, that was the mistake.
I usually don't drink before or during a film, because it just makes me sleepy. Having gotten a glass of pinot noir at the Kino bar (hey that almost rhymes), in part because I thought the blood red color was well suited to Argento (and in part because they wouldn't make me an old fashioned), I got sleepy in no time. The theater being excessively warm (I had to shed a layer) and the film being in Italian also conspired to keep me fighting off sleep for much of the running time. A 9 o'clock start and a second film of the evening were the other main opponents.
I did enjoy what I saw (probably 90% of it) but Argento will continue to have trouble living up to the standard he set with Suspiria. Who can blame him. You can't hit like that every time out.
But it was good to see my friend -- who has also accompanied me to I Lost My Body and First Reformed at MIFF -- and his friends seemed nice.
Well, with the timing of my writing this piece, I've actually already seen my Sunday night film ... but two is enough for this first proper MIFF piece of 2023.
No comments:
Post a Comment