Last piece of art that truly moved you

I'm going to cheat a little and pick 2 films I saw within a week recently by Japanese director Yasuzo Masumura - Irezumi (1966) & Blind Beast (1969) that I posted about that are more interesting to discuss than being "merely" good or great etc......I think they're just amazing in how you can read them as feminist works or misogynistic works simultaneously......as utter trash or deeply profound underneath the plots - and as a whole cult waiting to happen all by themselves - in how they tie (in Blind Beast especially) themes of power, Death, free will, lust/sex and more - together in ways that seem genuinely fncked up/disturbing maybe MORE disturbing now than when they were made ......I haven't thought about movies that deeply in sometime - particularly in how I can't believe I never saw either in my 204 years on Planet Earth until now.

They're films that have that subversive thing I like in a lot of Art - while you're watching, you feel on some level that you shouldn't be looking at this - like you've stumbled on something you shouldn't .......a very specific kind of thrill where you want to tell everyone and keep it to yourself simultaneously

“Blue is the masculine principle, astringent and spiritual. Yellow the female principle, gentle, gay and sensuous. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the colour that the other two must oppose and overcome!”

I was recently moved when reading about the German artist, Franz Marc (1880-1916) who painted animal subjects because they represented for him a sacred, pre Eden innocence, freedom and a purity of spirit. His exploration and theories on color (as above) are fascinating. The First World War shattered his artistic and spiritual world of idyllic nature and his painting, The Fate of the Animals (1913), a much darker painting, is almost a premonition of the horrors to come. I cried when I read that he died in battle during WWI, only a few days before all artists were recalled from the battlefield. He was 36. His life story is filled with so much beauty and sadness.

I have a sensual side too.

Gosh, this reminded me of one of my favorite Taskmaster moments.

As for the question, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat "Emperor" absolutely moves me every single time and leaves me speechless (especially at the 1:36 mark). Absolute chills! I'm so grateful to be alive in a time where I'm able to hear it.

Yeah, hard to beat that!

I also initially misread this post because it's not the most recent... but I always come back to it. 

So I've watched Bo Burnham's Inside twice now --- and I can't think of the last time something has impacted me this greatly. Introduced it to my friend the other night and we were both on the brink of sobbing a couple times and lead to some great discussion. That thing took me to fucking church and back (especially Eyes on Me). Opening up a lot... processed a lot. Came out to my fucking parents yesterday. It's been a lot.

Last was Giotto - who may seem quaint and simple compared to later Italians, but is just as big of a titan as they are. Most moving are the Lamentation and the Massacre of the Innocents but across all his work I'd highlight his blue, the bluest blue we'll ever see.

The Pandoras - Stop Pretending (1985) -


I decided to talk about this record even though I've posted it to death in music posts - but in a longer form to give it its due - and even though I heard it first a long time ago obviously which I don’t think is really the intent of the thread but.........these days I hear it differently and through the lens of its creator - Paula Pierce - more and more and I think about it in real life ways not theoretical or critical of the work itself.

Pierce had made an album before this (a good one too) - but here she isn’t just doing an act - she isn’t just playing at it with her fun girl band - rather her girl band becomes the conduit of the expression of herself - in the moment - and like she would never really be again.

On a simple level this is just 12 songs of great pop music......but the reason it moves me so much is the context around it - because she almost immediately doubted it, doubted herself and her Art, her bandmates, what she’d have to do to make it big next and be accepted or get praised. That happens of course but rarely did it happen as fast as it did with her and as sadly.

Pierce is so confident and gives such a committed performance on Stop Pretending it’s just breathtaking to me - and she did it all herself - the band backs her up only: she wrote it all herself, plays all guitars, handles all lead vocals and arrangements, she picked the cover song herself too - no female in a major band did that in this way at that time - or much after either. The entire concept of this record is hers too - and there was a distinct concept in every way with this album.

After this record came out and didn’t break big - she became unsure of everything and changed the band’s sound and look almost immediately and shockingly to those who knew her - to a clearly lesser and - less personal - kind of Pop Metal - where she no longer looked sexy (and she was very sexy) - but more like a stripper selling herself - and now she suddenly sounded dumb too (and she wasn’t dumb).

Her bandmates revolted and eventually bailed out on her......she died of a brain aneurysm in her shower in 1991.

She was 31.

That’s the reason it moves me so much is her story is a tragedy in a very specific way - from someone that confident and secure - to the complete opposite because of the perceived failure of something genuinely special that she created herself.

I don’t really know “how” that all moves me exactly but it does more than make me merely sad....... I can think of better records of course but not one that plays on my emotions as much sometimes..........it makes me not want to be so hard on myself or others, to be more encouraging, to remember people when they were at their very best ........and it makes me want to play this album again because it’s how I always think of Paula Pierce.

RIP

The Mad Fox (1962) : directed by Tomu Uchida

Not sure if anyone knows this movie - it's yet another "Wow" from Arrow Home Video btw - this is the 3rd major Japanese first time watch that I've seen this year that's in their catalog (!) - Fnck Criterion - Irezumi and Blind Beast being the other 2 - also covered in this thread.

I don't recall it being talked about - themoviesinner might know it - or if not I think may be intrigued by this movies components .........also @tyler who has an interest In Japanese Art/History may be intrigued and Martin Stett may like the animation aspect of the films aesthetic (it' s not animated however, though there's some of that here too) and.........................ireallyamsomething maybe who might be on this movies wavelength

This film is in many ways - utterly undecipherable - the "plot" is symbolic and hard (impossible?) to digest - there's shapeshifting, multiple characters representative of others, heavily trippy with dream logic.........this is essentially an Alice in Wonderland type of film that mixes many things inherent in Art against each other - visuals, theater (and theater sets), literary motifs, fables or myths and storytelling.

This is just a beautiful movie - and I don't just mean visually -  though in that it's one of the most beautiful looking films of all time - I think Coppola snagged some elements for Dracula......it evokes Onibaba, Kwaidan, Kuroneko - and it precedes ALL of them and is not a horror.

An essential work .......I saw it a few days ago and if I close my eyes I can pull whole sequences up so vividly it's almost uncanny.........makes you see the world as something alive with mystery, wonder and endless possibility instead of mundane, suffocating and limited.

"Ain't It Fun" - Peter Laughner (1975) -

This song - re-recorded in fine but inferior versions by The Dead Boys and (less so) Guns and Roses is one of the most moving and frightening songs ever recorded in Rock and an influence on some of my favorite artists (Johnny Thunders, Paul Westerberg).

What makes the song so amazing is that when recorded there was little hope that many (or any?) would hear it - though the "right people" did hear it then - and the song is an anomaly - a lyric based song like say Dylan writing for Iggy Pop.

A song that recognized the life you were leading would kill you (Laughner died of something like it - pancreatitis brought about by well you know ........at 24)........it stated things in Rock that had always existed but never quite been articulated - it is a kind of Rosetta Stone - you hear the expression for the first time here.

When Laughner cut this song none of the big "Pre-Punk" figures had yet died (aside from Billy Murcia who never recorded so he was like a ghost in a way - he lived what the song mythologized) and the deaths in Rock in the broader sense (Hendrix, Joplin etc) were seen as tragic not yet through the spectrum yet of "fucking up" .......the closest prior corollary it has is to The Velvet Underground's "Heroin" and "I'm Waiting For The Man" but those songs were specifically about a drug and this one is specifically about a feeling - it is "Blank Generation" - the first song that approximates its vibe but not exactly and it is not connected and not codefied like that and it predates that classic too anyway.......... it is removed.......isolated......alone.

The song then romanticized Death in a way the opposite of its intent - it stands precisely on that weird tipping point between historical revisionism and predecitive, visionary forewarning.

I don't play this song much these days - but when I do it's like "Gimme Shelter" or "Like A Rolling Stone" or "So Alone" or "Here Comes A Regular" .......it makes a lot of stuff seem like nonsense by comparison. I never play anything for a while after playing it .....it's too much.......and the fact that in his version it sounds so thrillingly amateurish makes it hit like a punch to the gut ........on some level there's an act where you have to sell a song like this.......but I never hear the "act" while the song plays.

One of the greatest songs of all-time and in this version, by far the least well known ....

The whole of The Beatles: Get Back but especially the third part. The rooftop concert was just an incredibly moving experience for me. Everything leading up to it is about the band trying to get back (yeah) into their collective groove, to find their new songs and to resurrect some of that unique symbiotic energy that they had. And the rooftop performance is an unbelievably joyous climax to those struggles. Seeing the four ease into their element and once again become one whole entity was almost a tear-inducing experience for me, especially with the knowledge that this concert was to become their last. The people unassumingly walking the streets and not even realizing that they're literally becoming a part of music history. The twinkle in their eyes as they're presenting their new songs to the public in such a different and fun way.

The whole documentary is a wonderful chance to simply hang out with The Beatles, to be right there with them and dive inside their creative process and their interactions in all of their anxiety, brotherly love and silliness. But the climactic concert is just an explosion of utter joy. For every fan of The Beatles the cumulative effect of it should be a profoundly moving experience. Was for me anyway.

Benilde or the Virgin Mother (Benilde ou a Virgem Mãe) - 1975: de Oliveira


Some of this is really masterful at a director level and rarely is anyone ever moved by someone's intellect but here I was moved by de Oliveira's intellectual choices. What a way to start 2022........

Not sure if anybody has seen this - there's no mention of it on MAR that I can find - maybe themoviesinner has seen it(?) 

It's here for the curious, interested, morbidly obese :

rarefilmm.com/2021/10/benilde-ou-a-virgem-mae-1975/

Manoel de Oliveira directed this austere (of course), extremely slow paced (of course but REALLY slow paced),  (somewhat) Dreyer-like religious themed allegory of an 18 year old who claims a virgin pregnancy, while her family assumes she is simply insane, in denial or has betrayed her fiance (and cousin).

The movie is very talky even for de Oliveira - it's based on a play, some will find it dull I guess.

But he shoots the play - while also framing it to a staggering, stylized effect. People speak just slightly "off" to the camera (if you've seen de Oliveira you'll know what I mean)......they are separated by objects which enhances real and allegorical separation between characters visually  (memorably - a vase of flowers in one example in the closest this movie gets to "action") ..........and as is typical in his later more widely seen / acclaimed work (Francisca (1981) etc) - no actor dares to raise their voices or naturally emote or "pushes" the dialog at all. Stylized doesn't fully grasp this hallucinatory, zombie like cinematic palette in effect here.

Which this time dovetails with the idea of "sleepwalking" which is a plot point replicated here in presentation and reinforces the political allegory of a "sleepwalking populace" which is never addressed as a theme unless you draw it out yourself from the setting.

Several scenes enable the actors to get maximum effect but not through their performances but rather through de Oliveira himself - in one scene the fiance ever so slightly steps closer to the frame behind Benilde - who is in the forefront and the only one speaking - until he is almost imperceptibly and slowly just over her shoulder - from two sides (i.e. encroaching on one one side then switching to the other side - reinforcing the idea of the duplicity of man - created by God and "us acting as God" too).

This is quite striking and defined (ie he only switches once)............and then when Benilde looks (almost) dead into the camera (briefly) to speak - the fiance then slightly after looks into the camera too (briefly) as if communicating "something" to the audience........is it "the truth"?
 
There is a bravura small sequence in this movie - very early on -  where one character describes an event that happened and we immediately see this event overwhelm the current scene in real time that is unlike any scene I can think of - framed in darkness and a sleepwalking Benilde - with horror movie-ish sound design, lighting, music - I actually stopped the movie to watch this one brief scene again immediately and I never do that.
 
Dazzling stuff and so fleeting - it disrupts but does not intrude on the current scene as is gone like a ghost or a memory.

The movie has a lot of political allegories but like I said only if you bring them to the setting - coercing confessions, demanding an adherence to facts, science vs. God (a doctor vs. a priest), rationality vs. feelings and transcendance - willing self-delusions across more than 1 character (?) and an ominous unseen "evil" that is merely "heard" and discussed by others the way a growing revolution or government crackdown might be........as a whispered gossip or "on the wind". 

As mentioned this marriage is between cousins which the man of science (the physician) judges as "a bad idea" (iirc) and as the play / film progresses that seems to have another political level between the corrosion of the family (or the "house") and government -  a corrosion of both the political and personal.

When this movie starts - the political subtext is already established though we have to bring it later - I recently made fun of The Lost Daughter for not using setting very well or logically - well de Oliveira uses it how it should be used.  This starts by weaving / tracking behind the sets (another brilliant touch) into a photo of a wheat field (not coincidental - strong, bending to the wind -  but not breaking) - with the text that says the story takes place "in the 30s" .

Later .............  we see this photo in the movie's central house settings. This is amid a house where the mother - deceased, seen only in a photo - went mad (like her daughter?).........or did she go mad at all - did either?  Do the people relegate themselves to delusion and repeat it? 

The film / play is done in such a way that you are unclear as to who is a (or "the') hero, villain or who is "right".  Constructed in 3 "chapters" each of which ends with a memorably laid out last shot - including words going silent and pulling the camera backwards through rooms to place everyone relevant there within the frame in one of them.

A movie that is much like Fassbinder's Effi Briest (1974) - which has a seething social outrage core implicit but hidden within its mannered and placid surface.........this is a deeply moving film depending how it is read - on faith, politics or both.

One side God (who we look towards), one side the state (gazing over us) and looking out for your "future" :

Fontaines D.C.
Skinty Fia (out today April 22, 2022)

I have had this album (their 3rd) for about a week - it comes out today officially - and I think, I can say aside from Van Morrison's masterwork Astral Weeks - which is a different thing anyway and carries a heavy artistic burden to even discuss tbh - Skinty Fia might be the finest, most ambitious album to ever come out of Ireland (?) - artistically it compares at the same general level with their first 2 ........but in many ways redefines those too - so it seems "bigger".

It's a work of such mystery and density that it does what Rock music almost never does any more.......it baffles and mystifies - not merely entertains and the more you play it, the less it reveals to you. I can't think of an album as challenging as this - that is also as great - at least since Dylan's Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020) - and in its specific genre.........you'd have to go back a looooooooooooong way to find a comparative point.

I reviewed this album - extensively too - in the "Last Album You Listened To" thread and gave it an 8 + because frankly to review this record is to dig so deeply into its dense framework that you don't know whether you're in it or whether it has changed once you began listening to it and shapeshifted away.

So many great lines, in couplet form, as in great poetry - "I loved you like a penny loves the pocket of a priest"......"and I'll love you 'til the grass around my gravestone is deceased" or "I don't wanna see the Queen ........I already sing her song" - the band in an act of insane hubris posted this album in ALL full lyrics videos on Youtube - showing off how good they are at lyrics (and they're great at it, every word specific and considered) and pretentiously showing off just how good they are at it too

.............in Rock and Roll self-awareness and pretentiousness are killers - Fontaines D.C. are both - and very rarely do I ever praise these attributes - and instead I often mercilessly mock them..........but this is clearly poetry and it's as profound and disquieting as the best poetry can be....... it's those things that Fontaines D.C. turn into almost heroic attributes.

The album also evokes rumbling, vague feelings - rumbling in its sound - pounding drum and bass which don't just serve as cool to the ear but troubling to the mind........this album sounds like a storm feels - dark, recognizable, unknowable, frightening, beautiful........and it's about the past and the present simultaneously .........an amazing record.......but it feels like not an album at all .........it feels like a novel, a movie, a personal diary entry too.

I particularly love how they don't care - at all - if you (or I) like it. There are complexities here that are made to leave the listener out in the cold - songs on this that are sort of sequels to each other "Big Shot" sets up the haunting "Bloomsday" (sounds like an Irish "Doomsday", eh James Joyce? - quite a "celebration" that is.........not) - and they sound the same but they are really one longer song .......separated - like a reprise would be........... but one that also extends the lyrical theme of the first to something else.........something further.......something other and more tellingly observational / specific.

I can see someone thinking they are dirge-like and dull ........but they can only be heard, to me, within the collective whole......it is not just an album that requires repeat plays (like their last one) - it's an album that requires a specific frame of mind while playing it.

It's an album of overwhelming feeling.....