The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Syndromes and a Century, Mr. Arkadin, Get Smart, & The Jane Austen Book Club

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is a mid-70s Werner Herzog film. To give you an idea about the film, it is based almost entirely upon the extremely strong performance from Bruno S. And because it's Herzog, Bruno S. is crazy. Here's his biography from the IMDB: "The unwanted son of a prostitute, Bruno S. was beaten so severely by his mother at age 3 that he became temporarily deaf. This led to his placement in a mental institution; he spent the next 23 years in various institutions, often running afoul of the law. Despite this past, he a self-taught painter and musician; while these were his favorite occupations, he was also forced to take jobs in factories such as driving a fork lift. Director Werner Herzog saw him in the documentary Bruno der Schwarze - Es blies ein Jäger wohl in sein Horn (1970) and vowed to work with him, which led to his major roles in Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974) and Stroszek (1977). He was very difficult to work with, though, sometimes needing several hours of screaming before he could do a scene." It's absolutely insane, and it's based on a true story. A guy is found in Nuremburg in 1828, with a note, and saying that he had been kept in a dungeon for as long as he could remember. And he has problems adjusting to society. Kinda depressing film, and I'm not sure exactly how this fits in with my idea of every one of Herzog's films being about someone being obsessed, but it could work somewhat as an outsider, rather than being obsessed, as Nosferatu is more outsider than obsessed.

Syndromes and a Century is by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a Thai, whose parents were both doctors, and it's basically a fictionalized version of how they met and fell in love. I'm not sure I could do much better than A.O. Scott's opening paragraph of the review of this, "Ever since his films began to attract admiring attention from the international film festival crowd, the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has encouraged his tongue-tied Western fans to call him Joe. That friendly, disarming gesture reflects the sensibility behind the movies, which are at once stubbornly difficult — resistant to summary, at times even to understanding — and surprisingly warm and gentle. Unabashed art films that demand patience and close, quizzical attention, they are also generous, unpretentious and funny, posing thorny formal questions in a relaxed, democratic spirit." It's a slightly meandering film, intentionally so, with a final couple of scenes that seem to have little to no relevance to the rest of the film. But if you allow its rhythms to flow over you, it's a very enjoyable time.

Mr. Arkadin is a film that may never be what it should have been. Orson Welles had the film taken away from him in the editing room. The film actually started out as three episodes of The Lives of Harry Lime, a radio show based on his character from The Third Man. Then he started to film it as a multi-European country production, refilming two scenes with Spanish actresses for the Spanish producers. And over the time in the editing room, there were at least five different versions of the film. Two Spanish ones (named for the fake names they've given to Robert Arden) and three versions in English, one for European audiences called Confidential Report, one for American audiences, both of which were butchered from the complicated flashback structure, and a version found by Peter Bogdanovich in the Corinth film vaults. There was also a novelization that was "written" by Orson Welles, but was actually written by Maurice Bessy. So Criterion used all five movie versions, and put together another version in attempting to conform as much as possible to what Welles probably would have done. Unlike with Touch of Evil, where he wrote a 58 page memo detailing the changes he wanted to make, the only way anyone has any idea about what he wanted were some remembered conversations and taking the earliest films as the best indications of Welles's vision. There were some major changes to the structure, including scenes that were put before scenes that clearly said they were after others. The final Criterion Comprehensive version is really the only one that is needed. The film itself is actually pretty good in every scene that doesn't include Guy Van Stratten (played by Robert Arden), and is also good in some scenes with him. When I watched the three versions on the Criterion collection DVD set, I figured he was a terrible actor, mispronouncing words. Now, after thinking about it more, I'm not as sure, thinking that, especially with Welles' tendency to overdub everyone in his films, maybe this was intentional. Maybe he was supposed to be the obnoxious and ignorant American idiot. But man, I was really rooting for him to die.

Get Smart is far too big of a movie for the plot. It's really just too much. The special effects were extremely distracting, and the big action bit at the end was studiously not funny. I like Terrence Stamp, and basically everyone in the cast, but it is never as funny as the original show, just jokes spaced too far apart for any humor to build throughout the film. Sorry film.

The Jane Austen Book Club has a Buffy conference as a punchline (and has a girl identified as only "Girl with a Dog Collar" played by Messy Stench, and that might actually be her name). I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be offended or not. And I'm not sure Grigg is not supposed to make me feel terrible for being a guy who likes Jane Austen, and also is a big fan of science fiction. It's a fairly cheesy romantic comedy, with the Jane Austen hook being the only thing to make it remotely interesting. I didn't regret watching it, but it certainly isn't anything special. Just an inoffensive movie, probably more enjoyable for those who have actually read Austen's books, because otherwise, the parallels will probably be missed. Not that it makes the film much better. Maybe the book is better? Wait, I mean, I'm sure the book is better.