10 THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER23, 2020
1
For more reviews, visit
newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town PHOTO 12 / ALAMYOne of the most fertile and furious blends of literature and cinema,
“Malina,” the German director Werner Schroeter’s 1991 adaptation of
Ingeborg Bachmann’s 1971 novel, is available to stream from MUBI. Its
pedigree is imposing—the script was written by the Nobel Prize-winning
writer Elfriede Jelinek—and its embodiment of Bachmann’s harrowing
vision is exhilarating and terrifying. The film stars Isabelle Huppert as an
unnamed writer in modern-day Vienna, who is tormented by memories
of her abusive father (Fritz Schediwy), a Nazi, and of the Second World
War. She lives with an elegant literary man named Malina (Mathieu
Carrière) and takes a younger lover, Ivan (Can Togay); she teaches
philosophy and writes poetry in a state of ecstatic rage (in the form
of letters, most never sent). She’s driven by nightmares, abuses pills,
and lives at an exhausting pitch of impulsive chaos. Schroeter conjures
her creative and destructive energy with color-streaked, high-contrast
images, culminating in a conflagration that evokes the passions of a
mind on fire.—Richard BrodyWHATTO STREAM
1
MOVIES
A Bread Factory
A conflict over a performing-arts space in
a small New England town gives rise to
an intricately plotted, boldly imaginative,
richly humane two-part drama—running
four hours—by the writer and director Pat-
rick Wang. Tyne Daly stars as Dorothea, the
founder of the space, which is threatened
with a takeover by a pair of celebrity artists
with Hollywood connections. Dorothea is
directing a new production of “Hecuba,”
starring her partner, Greta (Elisabeth
Henry), while trying to persuade local
board members to retain her forty-year-
old company. In the first part of the film,
Wang introduces a vast array of distinc-
tive, memorable characters—actors, parents,
merchants, journalists, teachers, kids—and
builds to an impressive set piece of a pub-
lic hearing. The second part takes a leap
into satirical fantasy, with musical numbers
and tap-dance scenes that foreshadow the
play’s majestic opening-night performance,
set against a backdrop of political turmoil.
Despite its loose ends and plain style, this
impassioned movie distills community and
culture into a vital cinematic force. Released
in 2018.—Richard Brody (Streaming on OVID.
tv, iTunes, and other services.)Kiss Me Deadly
Robert Aldrich’s flamboyant and hectic 1955
film noir opens with a pre-credit sequence
that announces its blend of sexual voracity,
sadism, found poetry, sharp-edged perfor-
mances, and visual invention. The story is
adapted from a pulp novel by Mickey Spil-
lane, and its detective, the brutish Mike
Hammer (played by Ralph Meeker), has
none of the suave command of Sam Spade or
Philip Marlowe. He crashes blindly through
his case—a forbidden quest for a mysterious
object of surprising importance—and leavesa trail of collateral damage, both human
and cultural. Along the way, the film offers
verse by Christina Rossetti, a recording of
Caruso, Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony,
souped-up cars (with a man crushed under
one), a whiff of narcotics, a primordial an-
swering machine, bloody street fights, and
nuclear catastrophe. The actors’ idiosyncratic
voices, wrapped around such chrome-plated
phrases as “the great whatsit” and “va-va-
voom,” are as hauntingly musical as Aldrich’s
images. In his vision of ambient terror, the
apocalyptic nightmares of the Cold War ring
in everyone’s heads, like an alarm that can’t
be shut off.—R.B. (On TCM Nov. 22.)Sunset Song
This mighty drama of emotional archeology,
from 2016, adapted from a novel by Lewis
Grassic Gibbon, deepens the director Ter-
ence Davies’s career-long obsession with
intimate and historical memory. It follows a
sharp-minded young woman, Chris Guthrie
(Agyness Deyn), who lives in a farm village
in Scotland, from around 1910 to the end
of the First World War. Brutalized by her
tyrannical father (Peter Mullan) and unpro-
tected by her long-suffering mother (Daniela
Nardini), Chris plans to leave home and be-
come a teacher. But her parents die and she
marries Ewan Tavendale (Kevin Guthrie),
a young farmhand, and settles down with
him on her family’s property. Chris bears the
drudgery of farming and the stifling norms
of rural society in order to realize a passion
even greater than romantic love or intellec-
tual achievement: an ecstatic devotion to
the land, which she fulfills only by liberat-
ing it, and herself, from the power of men.
Davies depicts Chris’s dedication in sensual
and glowingly lyrical images that compress
grand-scale melodrama into the quietly burn-
ing point of a single soul.—R.B. (Streaming
on the Criterion Channel.)With a Friend Like Harry
A smart horror story, at once thrilling and
upsetting, from the director Dominik Moll.
Michel (Laurent Lucas), a typically fretful
father on vacation with his wife and chil-
dren, meets an old schoolmate named Harry
(Sergi López), who promptly starts chang-
ing Michel’s life for the better. This entails
buying him a new car and then getting to
work on his ornery parents, his tired wife,
and his frustrated ambitions as a writer. You
can’t really fault Harry’s logic, and that’s
what makes him so daunting; his analysis of
Michel’s messy existence would do for just
about anyone. It’s his homicidal methods
that somehow feel de trop, although Michel
can no more be rid of him than Othello can
slip from the clutches of Iago. All this is told
with a tight, sweaty concentration. Anyone
thinking of getting married and starting a
family should probably stay clear of Moll’s
movie. As for driving around Europe, for-
get it. With Sophie Guillemin as Harry’s
inflatable girlfriend. Released in 2000. In
French.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue
of 5/7/01.) (Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, and
other services.)homage to Riley with an original composition,
titled “In D.”—S.S. (Nov. 21 at 7; ragaslive.org.)