InRO Monthly — October 2023

IN REVIEW ONLINE 

STITCHING REALITIES 

An Interview With Eduardo Williams — 1 

A CONTRACT WITH THE AUDIENCE 

An Interview With James Benning — 5 

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 

Ferrari — 13 

The Beast— 13 

Maestro — 13 

Janet Planet— 13 

The Shadowless Tower — 14 

Trailer of a Film That 

Will Never Exist — 14 

La Chimera — 14 

Close Your Eyes — 14 

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus — 14 

We Don’t Talk Like We Used To — 14 

The Settlers — 14 

Bleat — 14 

KICKING THE CANON 

The Passenger — 15 

Lost in Translation — 18 

FILM REVIEWS 

The Exorcist: Believer — 21 

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial — 21 

The Royal Hotel — 21 

The Burial — 21 

Foe — 21 

She Came to Me — 21 

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines — 21 

When Evil Lurks — 22 

My Love Affair With Marriage — 22 

Totally Killer — 22 

Once Within a Time — 22 

Dark Harvest — 22 

Anatomy of a Fall — 22 

Divinity — 22 

Dear David — 22 

Fair Play — 22 

Killers of the Flower Moon — 23 

The Delinquents — 23 

Onyx the Fortuitous and 

the Talisman of Souls — 23 

Silver Dollar Road — 23 

Pain Hustlers — 23 

The Pigeon Tunnel — 23 

Butcher’s Crossing — 23 

Boudica: Queen of War — 24 

The Holdovers — 24 

Suitable Flesh— 24 

Four Daughters — 24 

October 2023

STITCHING 

REALITIES 

An Interview With 

Eduardo Williams 

Argentinian filmmaker Eduardo Williams’ new 

film The Human Surge 3, which premiered this 

summer in competition at the Locarno Film 

Festival, is his first feature since The Human 

Surge. But there’s no missing second part, nor is 

the film a sequel, at least in the sense that it 

doesn’t rely on having seen the first film — nor 

continue its plot. What the two films share is an 

international set of performers and shooting 

locations, though the characters in the new film 

move much more freely between settings. The 

film also shares a shooting style with Williams’ 

2019 short film Parsi, which was recently 

available to stream on Le Cinema Club. Both 

films were shot with 360° cameras and then 

framed in virtual reality by Williams after he cut 

the film together. The result is one of the most 

energizing two hours of the year, featuring some 

of the most novel images in recent memory. We 

spoke to Williams during the New York Film 

Festival, where The Human Surge 3 had its U.S. 

premiere. 

When you made the first film, The Human 

Surge, did you start out thinking about that 

as a project that might continue over 

multiple films? Or was there something 

afterward that made it feel like it was a 

project you wanted to continue? 

I mean, when I did The Human Surge, I didn’t 

think about having another film with the same 

title. So, it wasn’t a project in that sense. But at 

the same time, I see all my films as quite 

continuous, you know, and as the same project, 

they are very connected. So for me, it’s not a big 

surprise. But then, when I was thinking about 

what film to do after, I had the idea of naming it 

The Human Surge 3 because I realized that many 

of the ideas were very continuous. I also thought 

it was interesting to also go a bit against [the 

idea of] the notion of a single human surge; [if 

you have a first human surge and a third human 

surge,] there seem to be many possible human 

surges, let’s say. 

1

What were the specific ideas carrying over from the first film 

that led you to want to use the name again? 

I think a very simple and basic thing was the idea of making a film 

in several countries, in different continents. So this idea of 

connecting countries and people that I 

don’t see connecting so often, that was the basic thing. And then 

probably similar things that I was thinking about naturally, about 

my life and about many people’s life, like moving, transporting, 

using technology, how that changes our way of seeing everything; 

our relation with nature, and with everything that’s nonhuman, and 

other things like friendship and work. So I think in this one, I wanted 

to say, “okay, we have the same worries about the working world,” 

but also I wanted to go a bit further into the fantasy — or at least try 

to. So that was what I saw in continuation and evolution from the 

other one. 

Coming from a math background, when we’re mapping 

three-dimensional space in terms of rotation [which is to say, 

in the context of film, panning,] we can do it as a sphere or as 

a cylinder. The cylinder is nice in some ways because it’s 

closer to how we map two-dimensional space rotationally; 

we’re just adding in the up and down movement, but you have 

the rough edges in the up and down directions. The sphere then 

solves that problem in that it’s smooth all over, but it can be 

harder to conceptualize [or, as the three-dimensional space of 

this film captured by the 360-degree camera and then 

represented digitally, to program.] There are moments in this 

film where you do include that area directly above and below 

the camera, which I’d imagine is not designed so much to 

capture, so I wonder when you were doing the framing in VR if 

you felt more like you were looking around a sphere or a 

cylinder. 

I think in my experience I felt more in a sphere than in a cylinder, 

though it’s true that when I take the sphere to the screen, maybe it 

turns a bit more into an open cylinder. And then a sphere, I don’t 

know. But it’s true that what the camera creates is a sphere. So we 

see the stitches and lines when we look in front, but when we look 

up and down we see like a flower or a star, you know, where the 

eight cameras get together. So yeah, it was less smooth. But as you 

see in the film, I really liked that. So I tried to look there on purpose 

[at times,] and also I was thinking about what types of images to 

put there. 

We have a very important moment in the film where the camera 

spins. So there was also a circular energy that came to me very 

intuitively, like this desire of looking around that came because I 

could do it with this camera. And then thinking about it, I think it’s 

an important thing to have as the film advances; we started looking 

around more. And then in the spinning thing, we try to leave or 

break the image, let’s say, through [stitching]; I really liked this star 

or flower that was formed [through the stitching], although I think I 

could have tried to make the stitching there better. I don’t know if I 

could have done it totally invisible, but I didn’t even try because I 

really liked to see the seams in there. 

And then just before this, we have a very short segment of someone 

sleeping, and I put the camera on top of the person so the face 

would be in the stitching point below, where the eight cameras 

come together. And I realized when I saw this in my iPad, which is 

the direct streaming image, that we saw three faces. And when I 

stitched it afterwards, in the computer, this was lost. So I kept this 

preview image, which is the worst quality that you can get, because 

I really liked the three-faced living person that I would have lost if I 

made a better stitching. And at another moment, near the 

beginning, we have one face that is right in the stitching of two 

cameras, which is not below or under. And I knew that if you put the 

face very close to the camera, the camera couldn’t stitch very well. 

So we lost part of the face. And I really like this feeling of people 

blending into the digital image. So I used this, and in the end I did it, 

but artificially, so I generated the same deformation in the face of 

another actress. And in the moment I made the other actors react 

to this because I wanted to have this feeling of, okay, at the 

beginning we think this is just a glitch in the camera. And then we 

realize the actors, or the people we see, can see it. You know, we 

thought they couldn’t, but now we see they can. 

I have a couple of questions about the framing of the film and 

the post-production in VR. First, specifically in the scene you 

were talking about with the spinning, did you have to stand in 

the middle of the room and spin in a circle? Or is there just a 

button that you press and the image spins? And then more 

generally, how much time did having to do the framing, as well 

as the editing, during post-production add to the process? 

The spinning I made on the computer first, while I edited the two 

hours [of the film]. But it’s super fast, I couldn’t have spun so fast, 

so I added movement — I had the spinning already happening in the 

VR, but I added movement to that, slower movement, but still. I 

2

Something that I noticed both watching The Human Surge 3 and 

Parsi is this: when I’m watching a movie with subtitles — 

whether it’s a movie in English where I just happen to have 

them on or a movie not in English where I need them to 

understand the dialogue, or when there’s a lot of overlapping 

dialogue (like in your films) — I’ll often see the subtitles pick 

out pieces of that dialogue so that it’s a reasonable amount to 

read. And I really like that the subtitles to your films embrace 

the chaos of the overlapping dialogue, such that all of the 

dialogue being spoken in the scene is on the screen for you to 

see, even if it’s more than most people could read. Do you take 

a really active role in doing the subtitling? 

3 

wanted to try to connect this computer movement to a more 

organic one. It’s a bit subtle, but I think it added something. 

And then how much time… I don’t know exactly how much time 

because really, I was doing everything at the same time. So while I 

was editing the sound, I was still framing. Also, after each shooting, 

I edited without the VR first because I couldn’t solve the problem of 

how to record my movement until the end. I mean, for Parsi 

[Williams’ previous film shot with a 360° camera] I could do it 

myself, but it was with a GoPro. So the image was easier for me [to 

work with] on my normal computer, and I just screen-captured the 

computer. But here I didn’t want to lose so much quality, so it was 

difficult to handle it on my own. So afterwards, we had a fund and 

we went to India to a post-production company called Media.Monks. 

And they made the system in Unreal, which recorded my movement 

and gave me keyframes that I could put in the good-quality image 

(because in the headset, you really cannot see these images in good 

quality). So I don’t know how much time it added; I would say maybe 

a month. I mean, I went for a week to India. And there they gave me 

the system in Unreal on a computer, and I could travel with that 

while I was doing the other post-production parts. It was very 

intense, working every day all day for almost a month: waking up, 

[working on the] computer until I fell asleep, and then again. It was 

also intense because I always try to do post-production a bit fast. I 

like to feel a bit of pressure about time. 

Yes, absolutely. For me, these moments are super important. As we 

know, translation can be very different. I mean, even if it’s the 

“correct” translation, you always have options. And sometimes for 

subtitles, you need to be more concrete [about your decisions]; 

maybe you need to be shorter if you can while maintaining the 

same meaning. So it’s important for me to choose in which way [the 

dialogue is translated,] at least for the English subtitles; then for 

the other languages that I don’t know, I cannot. It was a very special 

thing to think about. At the beginning, I translated everything. But 

even if I liked the overlap there was too much. I mean, one of the 

reasons for doing that was that I thought if the spectators feel it’s 

too much to read then maybe I would invite them to stop reading 

for a while. I did the same thing in Parsi, in the moments where we 

have the poem and the dialogues of the people we see, but we can 

physically not read everything. So I was trying to say this here as 

well. Of course, some people still read all of it; it depends on your 

personality, how much you can not care about it or if you feel you 

really need to read. But I felt I had to reduce it a little bit, because it 

was maybe too much. I mean, I tried for it to be too much, but not 

so much, I don’t know [*laughs*]. So if you understand one of the 

languages, you can get a bit more, but it doesn’t change radically. I 

still try to keep, like, the general meaning of the conversations they 

were having. I just maybe took one or two phrases out to make it a 

bit less crazy. 

Yeah, and I think it works really well at emulating what the 

experience would be like if you understood one or more of the 

languages being spoken, and while at a certain point you pick 

up some of the meaning, the actual sound of the combined 

voices becomes just as important. 

Yeah, for me too.

I think with these emerging technologies like VR and 360° 

cameras we’ve seen a lot of technical demos, but there haven’t 

been a lot of users with the express goal of making cinema or 

art. Are there more ideas with these technologies you’d be 

interested in continuing to explore, or other new technologies 

you’re interested in employing? 

I mean, as you say, the most important thing for me about using 

these technologies was how I used them and why. And there were a 

lot of reasons with this film, but one main reason relates very much 

to a basic question we have in cinema, which is how to frame — 

how we decide the frame of — a film. So in this case, I was moving 

the moment of the decision from the shooting to post-production. 

And also changing the state of mind [I was in]; you’re not in the 

same state of mind during shooting as in post-production, sitting 

alone in a room with time dedicated only to watching the images. 

So for me that’s the important thing, it’s not about technology so 

much as just how you use tools to think in a different way. 

But going forward, I’m not really sure. I have an idea — a very loose 

idea, I’m not exactly sure what I want to do next — but it doesn’t 

relate so much to a new technology as much as maybe a type of 

lens I’d like to use. In my mind, my ideal would be going back and 

forth, maybe using film and thinking if I’d use it in a different way 

now that I have all this experience working in virtual reality. In The 

Human Surge I used 16mm film as well as a small and a big video 

camera, and for me the idea was how would I use film with the 

mind of someone who watches YouTube videos as well as 

conventional films. In my mind that’s the question: how do we use 

both old and new technologies in the present? 

In my mind I won’t use VR and a 360° camera next, although maybe 

something happens and I change my mind. With Parsi I didn’t know I 

wanted to use VR, I just knew I needed a small cheap camera, and I 

started googling what are the small cheap cameras I could get, and 

then I saw the GoPro 360, and I wanted to use it because it was a 

good way of being able to give the camera to the actors without 

them having to think about framing. So the next time I’m working 

on a new project, I’ll probably also look on the Internet to see what I 

might be able to use. 

Have you gotten any opportunity since you started working 

with the 360° cameras to do more traditional work and see how 

your approach to that has changed? 

Not really. I made one installation for a museum called A Very Long 

.GIF, but that’s with a pill camera which isn’t traditional at all, 

though it’s also with a tele lens, which is more traditional — I like 

that combination of looking in our bodies and looking very far, 

within the same video. I’m not sure if it’ll really change or not, but 

it’s a curiosity I have. — INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY JESSE 

CATHERINE WEBBER 

4

A CONTRACT WITH THE AUDIENCE 

An Interview With James Benning 

James Benning, the legendary moving-picture artist known for his durational portraits of America, has made one of his most personal 

works yet. Shot not too far from the cabins the artist reconstructed for his Two Cabins, Allensworth contains only twelve shots of a 

reconstructed version of California’s first town founded and run entirely by Black people that, years later, met an unjust end. Though a 

formal description may make Benning’s work seem simple — just as his Ten Skies (2004) might be described as “ten skies” — each minute 

spent with the work encourages the cogs in the viewer’s mind to turn on their own, allowing them to notice details that other filmmakers 

would’ve cut away from or to ponder the image’s relationship with the political history that birthed it. 

Benning himself notes in this interview that his simple approach forces a more engaged style of viewing — something quite rare in an age 

of political movies that opt for condescending exposition. Paying attention is good for both politics and art, so we talked to James Benning 

about both during his time at the New York Film Festival. 

You've been a teacher longer than you've been a filmmaker. Have you noticed a big difference recently in how different 

generations might approach art or what you teach? 

5

Oh, that's a really hard question. I've been making films for over 50 

years, so certainly it changes from day to day almost. When I 

began, I was connected to an avant-garde experimental film world 

influenced by Michael Snow and Hollis Frampton and less 

influenced by people like Brakhage, who made things that were 

more lyrical. 

I was more interested in the conceptual use of film. And now I'm 

very far away from that beginning. I'm kind of rooted in 

structuralism from the '70s, but I'm maybe more interested in the 

content that I'm putting in the film. And as far as students over the 

years, sure they've changed, just kind of like me, because the whole 

film world has become much wider, and I embrace the art world 

now more than the film world, so I tend to get students that are 

doing the same. So the kind of students I get today are almost the 

exact opposite of what I began with, and they're interested in those 

issues that are in the art world. 

I suspect that there's a little bit of self-selection with some of 

your students, though. That they might know what's going on if 

they choose to do a class with James Benning. 

Yeah, it's true, but we, at CalArts, tend to choose a lot of graduate 

students that maybe haven't even made films yet, that they're in 

the art world, or maybe they study mathematics, or history, but they 

have an interest in kind of expanding the film vocabulary. So, I tell 

them I don't want them to make another good film. We've had way 

too many of those. I'd like them to push the vocabulary and add to 

the film language. Which is a big challenge. 

Yeah, that's probably the best class I've ever taught. I continue to 

teach that, although it's getting more difficult because I'm not as 

mobile as I used to be. But I teach a variety of other classes that I 

enjoy, too. I teach a class called “Acting Bad,” where we deconstruct 

acting. It leans toward a kind of performance art. And I'm teaching 

a class on installation design this fall to allow students to design 

installation work without worrying about the amount of equipment 

they can get access to and the money. And then to pare down these 

kinds of grandiose proposals into something that's usable. So, this 

is a new class, and we've only taught it for two, three weeks now. 

But it seems like it's gonna be valuable. 

Do you think patience has declined thanks to the rise of things 

like smartphones, or kind of a constant stimulation? Do you 

think patience can be taught, either at a university level or just 

throughout one's lifetime? 

Well, I talk a lot about that, and I think through observation one 

gains agency. And I think just by talking about that concept that we 

can learn in different ways. You know, a mother can tell us 

something to do, or a cop can tell you what to do. You can read a 

book or whatever, but you can also look and listen. 

And that's really hard work. First, you have to even know you can do 

that to learn that it's an option of learning. And then once you know 

that, then you need to practice because it's a discipline to stay 

focused and to look at something for an hour to see how the light 

changes or to contemplate what are the social and political 

implications of a space. 

I'm curious if you've also noticed any kind of big bureaucratic 

changes that have taken place whenever it comes to teaching 

something like art or film. 

Like the outside world, everything is becoming morbid, and even in 

CalArts, which is a private school, those structures become 

top-heavy with administration. And it's only damaged the kind of 

freedom that I instill in students, you know. And then there's a lot of 

concern about lawsuits and providing students with information so 

they don't get into trouble. And I think to make good films, you 

almost have to get into trouble. So it's kind of a conflict. 

Do you have any favorite classes that you're teaching 

nowadays? I know you have that legendary "Seeing and 

Listening" class that everyone brings up. 

And then you can look things up and, you know, the actual 

observation can give you ideas as to which direction it goes. But, I 

think we're very far away from that because of the cell phones and 

things that are always distracting us. We have to have such 

discipline. The phone makes us look at it constantly. I don't have 

one, because I'm afraid I would just do that all the time. It is a trap. 

Friends of mine and myself — a lot of times we’ll select to go to 

movies in theaters simply because it can be so hard to watch 

movies or to engage with art at home with those distractions. 

But the theater has developed a contract with the audience that's 

stronger than real life. I can have a 10-minute shot of the moon 

rising, and people sit there and watch it. And, because they know 

when you come here, you actually do observe. But to get somebody 

6

to watch the moon rise outside for 10 minutes, they'll be looking at 

something else. You know, it's hard to stay focused. And it's an 

interesting thing now with installation art and installing films: that 

contract is much looser than the contract with the theater 

audience. So, that has to be developed too. Although, I think 

galleries and museums are perhaps much more social than viewing 

a film. So you go there to have a cup of coffee and you spend time 

— ten seconds — in front of each painting, and, you know, that 

contract has never been defined very strongly. But I think there are 

attempts now by artists and gallerists and museums that when you 

install work that has durational components, that somehow you 

have to allow the audience to know this is durational and you won't 

get it if you just watch it for 10 seconds. 

To get the people to do that is another thing. Now, I have a 

particular following, so if I do installation works, I'll get some of the 

people that know my films, knowing how to watch them. Others can 

be very difficult. 

How would you arrange the space in order to maybe 

communicate to somebody who wouldn't know your work that 

it would be durational? My first thought would be something 

like hiding it around a corner. I've seen museum installations 

where you hide a work around a corner and it's its own private 

space outside of the rest of the museum where you can engage 

with the art and leave on your own contract or will. 

Well, I don't really have an answer yet for that. But one is to just be 

straightforward and say this piece begins every hour on the hour, 

and it's durational and it lasts 45 minutes. Oh, and then it's also to, 

as when you build installations, consider this lack of contract and 

make work that can be seen just walking by. 

And then when they walk by another time, something else is 

happening. I've installed my film Twenty Cigarettes, and there it is 

without any explanation. And it's nice if it's at the beginning of a 

gallery space or museum. Because somebody will come in and 

7

there will be somebody smoking. And they might just see that same 

person and they walk around and they can pass it again and 

somebody else is smoking and then they look at it and then they 

come back. And then once you realize, oh, there's a number of 

people — maybe it draws you into it. But if I want an audience to 

actually experience it like in a theater, then I would have to have 

some kind of statement saying, you know, it starts at this time. 

So, one can have the different expectations of the installation: that 

you can have it so people actually watch it as a film, but then why 

not have it in the theater anyways? Or you can live with how it's 

viewed without any explanation. When I've installed [it like] that, I 

didn't expect people to watch the whole thing. I kind of like the idea 

that if it's near the end or beginning, people would pass it going in 

and out and see somebody else. 

Location is obviously a very important part of your work. I'm 

curious as to what your pre-production research process might 

be whenever you decide to film on a new location, and whether 

or not that varies whenever you're doing a project that's very 

specific to one location, like Allensworth, or perhaps something 

like North on Evers or The United States of America, where it's a 

much broader portrait. 

Yeah, it varies from film to film. I mean, the remake that I made of 

the U. S. A. that Bette Gordon and I made in 1975 was just crossing 

the U. S. with shots occasionally taken from the back of a car. And 

it played on one of — I can't remember, it was on streaming for a 

while [note: The United States of America briefly streamed on The 

Criterion Channel] and it got a great response. 

And then I thought, oh, I'll remake the film, but not really remake it. 

And then I just used the same title again. And for that, it was during 

Covid and I thought, well, I want to make a film that represents the 

whole U. S., but I don't want to travel that much during Covid, but I 

do want to get out of the house. 

8

And I know California worked very well, so I'll shoot everything in 

California. It'd be kind of a playful joke, and I reveal that at the end. 

But also, I thought it spoke to other things. How Hollywood movies 

do that all the time — where they are and where they're shooting. 

And then it became a kind of a fun project for me to find in 

California to represent Georgia, for instance. 

And then I realized that at one end of the county are my replicas, 

and then at the other end of the county there's this state park now 

that's replicated the town of Allensworth. So all of a sudden, my 

project was connected with that. And then it connected with my 

interest in how I've been fighting against the kind of prejudice that I 

grew up with. 

9 

Do you think that work has an anthropological element to it? I 

mean, it's mostly landscapes, but I feel like every once in a 

while we do see people and different kinds of people creating 

different kinds of environments. 

Well, Allensworth is a town that was built in the early 1900s in Tulare 

County, and it's in the Central Valley, which feeds a third of the U. S. 

with large corporate farms. And that happened after Allensworth 

was started in the early 1900s. And I was interested in that 

particular place because I'm interested in the evils of white culture 

toward Black culture. 

I grew up in a poor white ghetto in Milwaukee that was adjacent to 

the small Black ghetto. And I was being taught to hate Black people 

and that Black people hated us. We didn't know each other, but we 

did apply for the same job. So it was an institutionalized way to 

keep labor costs down and to keep the fighting in the poor part of 

town. So that took me some time to understand, that kind of 

systematic prejudice that I grew up in. 

So I've been trying to rid that from my system my whole life. And 

then when I found out about Allensworth, a town that had great 

promise, only it couldn't succeed mainly because of that [system]. 

The way white culture made it very difficult for them. The land itself 

was sold to the Black people that were trying to start the town at a 

cost that was three times the rate of good land. 

And this was really poor land. And then the train was moved from 

their place to the close-by white town, so they lost that kind of 

revenue and distribution. And it goes on and on. They didn't get the 

water that they were promised when the irrigation systems were 

set up. 

In the end, the town fails. And then the town was rebuilt as a park, 

and that interested me because I have a place in Tulare County at 

the other end of the county that's up in the mountains. That’s where 

I built replicas of Thoreau's cabin and Kaczynski's cabin. So I have 

this as a kind of questioning of outsider-ness. 

So that all kind of connected and made me think, well, I'll just look 

at this place and see what I can learn from observing it. I thought of 

it as a mystery film where I wouldn't tell you anything about it. You 

would just observe it as if you stumbled onto this place. And then, 

through certain hints through sound and performance and poetry, I 

would give enough hints that you could kind of figure out what you 

might be looking at. And then in the end credits, there's a little more 

information. But hopefully, because everybody has these devices, 

they can look at it and can type in Allensworth and learn. So the film 

is a mystery film that gives you hints as to what it is, but it doesn't 

really completely describe it. But you can quickly find that 

information out. It's online, and now I've drawn great attention to 

that place. And to this event — the whole history of Allensworth. 

And it was a hidden history. So I'm hoping that the film does some 

teaching in that respect. But it doesn't do it itself. You have to be 

proactive and react to the film. And I think most people do that. And 

now it's got many reviews, and I'm really surprised. I was really 

pleased that almost everybody reviewing the film did extensive 

research about the place, and it's exactly what I wanted the film to 

do, so I think it's very successful in those terms. 

That's pretty good that you can have that secret pedagogy 

there to give them just enough information so that they want to 

learn more and teach themselves. 

That'd be the best way to do it. Otherwise, if I watch documentaries 

and they solve all the problems, I seem to think, okay, I know that, 

and then I never think about it again. So I have this opinion that 

documentaries should kind of motivate you. Some kind of activism. 

Be a participant within the film. 

How did you first come across the story of Allensworth? I was 

also going to ask how far it is from Val Verde, but it seems like 

it's closer to your cabins. 

Yeah, and it's not on the way between Val Verde and Pine Flat where 

I live at the moment, but it's directly west of the road that I go up 

into the mountains. When I come back down, if I don't turn on the

65 and keep going, I run right into Allensworth. So, my Two Cabins 

project is in a direct straight line with Allensworth. I stumbled on it 

just riding around Central Valley. I didn't know about it when I made 

El Valley Central. 

And then I stumbled across it 20 years ago. It happened to be on 

the day of the year that they celebrate the founding of it. So there 

were maybe 60 or 70 Black people there, and they were giving 

speeches, and I think there might have been one or two other white 

people at the time. So I was really surprised — it was an accident, 

basically. 

But then I didn't think about doing anything about it until so many 

years later after I had built my cabins, and then at some point it 

occurred to me: Oh, this fits exactly into what I've been struggling 

with my whole life. And so I've always been prepared to be kind of 

attacked by, I don't know, liberals I guess, that would say, oh, what 

right do you have to talk about Black people? But I'm not talking for 

Black people. I'm pointing the finger at the poor way white people 

act. So that's my interest: to point out these kinds of mistakes and 

how evil it is and what it can lead to. 

You say the town is a park now. So is there even a town that is 

operational and running? 

The park itself, no one lives there. And it's very spooky, and you kind 

of get that feeling from the film where you see one or two people in 

the whole film, and they're kind of hidden. 

The park is about two-thirds of what the town was. And so, south of 

the town, there's part of the [original] town, then there's a grade 

school there, and there's maybe 20 houses, and it's mainly, I think, 

Mexican at this time; maybe there's a few Black people. The 

graveyard is on the other side of that town — so the graveyard in 

Allensworth is outside of the park; it isn't part of the park, and it 

hasn't been restored. And it hasn't even been researched to figure 

out who's even buried there. It's just falling apart at this time. 

And I've gone there a number of times and I've met one of the Black 

10

11 

families that live in that part of Allensworth. And they were trying to 

raise money to do research to find out who is there and, at least, 

put it back into some kind of shape. But, it's still being used. There 

are a few graves that are only five or six years old there. But most 

of them are just little wooden crosses, no indication of who's buried 

there. 

The “December” shot in your film almost looked like a set, 

because the gravestone is still pretty legible, and then the 

crosses are set up in no order. 

And in the background of that shot, you can actually see some of 

the houses that are in the livable part of the town. But they're at a 

distance. And I think you hear a dog barking from there. And a plane 

flies overhead. 

Did you have to ask permission from the Parks Department? Or 

did you just show up and start filming? 

Well, the park is interesting, because I got stopped a few times. And 

the other interesting thing: the people who administer the park are 

all white. So, you know, it just continues on. They asked me what I 

was doing, and I just said that I'm interested in the place and I'm 

making a film to show my friends, you know. 

I showed the film at the Academy Museum in L. A., and there was a 

Black man who came to that screening that's connected with a 

group of Black people who are trying to have some say in 

Allensworth. And he liked the film a lot, and he wants me to show it 

at one of these yearly events there. So I'd like to do that. 

There are a couple of shots in this that I think are what you're 

referring to as these hints as to what is going on here. One is 

the big “August” shot with the student reading Lucille Clifton 

poetry where she's dressed like Elizabeth Eckford of the Little 

Rock Nine. And then you also have two songs: one's by Lead 

Belly, the other one Nina Simone. Was there anything that led 

you to those particular choices? Or did you want to just have 

some sort of rhyming with the bigger project of talking about 

Allensworth? 

Well, the two artists — I respect their work, and their own histories 

are interesting. Nina Simone is somebody who fled America 

because of racism, and that song is kind of brutal. So I thought it 

states what I'm interested in, the result of this kind of racism. And 

then Lead Belly — somebody who was let out of prison because he 

could make some music, and then had a song that Kurt Cobain 

made more famous than him — so it's this idea of Black culture

eing appropriated by white. He doesn't make money from it. So, I 

mean, I don't know if people watching it think about that, but it's in 

the film, it's something we can talk about. 

Also, the quality of the buildings themselves — and I'm guessing 

this has to do with the fact that it is a park now. They do look 

old, but they certainly don't look like they're from 1912. 

The choice to dress a student like Elizabeth Eckford — it's a 

very particular kind of outfit. 

I was very young when that picture was in the newspaper, and I was 

appalled by it. And that was kind of a beginning for me to start 

questioning. Because I could relate to this kid as a student, but I 

couldn't relate to going to high school the first day and having such 

stress, you know. And I thought, oh, this is what my neighborhood 

brings about, this kind of evilness. 

They were built from 1975 to '85. So they are like 40 years old and 

look like that. And some of them had just maybe been repainted a 

few years ago. Others, I’ve noticed they're repainting a lot of them 

this year. So it looks more like a park. Also, there’s the park rule 

about having wheelchair access. I had to try to shoot so I didn't 

quite show all the ramps that are in the place. And the interiors are 

all furnished with not the exact furniture that was in there, but of 

that period and that place. But, you can look in the windows, and 

once a year, I think they open the doors. 

So it's a reference to my own coming of age, kind of. But also, that 

photograph is kind of the quintessential meaning for what I've been 

struggling with my whole life. And it's such a beautiful dress. And 

that's such a tragic story for her because her family didn't have a 

telephone and the other eight students were alerted to enter the 

school from the back door, and she wasn't told. The information 

didn't get to her, so she was by herself confronted by this. 

I mean, I also feel bad for poor whites that, even today, a lot of 

Trump followers, when you have nothing, then you can be so easily 

manipulated. So it's kind of also a portrait of madness, that we have 

to look beyond who's actually yelling. 

I'm also curious about the structuring device of the film. It's 

separated into different months, but I think there's something 

interesting about that particular part of the California 

landscape. I suppose I was trying to look for the changes in 

maybe the flora or something. But I think the biggest visual 

indicator that the months are changing is maybe just the 

quality of light coming through. 

Yeah, California's upside-down because it's green in the winter and 

it's brown in the summer. So, in the very first shot, there's frost on 

the ground and there's actually green grass, but it's very muted 

because there's not much light. It's foggy that day. And then the 

next three or four shots are where you can see the grass getting 

greener in February, etc. And then by September, it's yellow, so it's 

the opposite. And there's not a lot of rain there. The rainy season is 

generally in the springtime. And so I had some cloudy days, but it 

was unusual for me to find it raining in October. But I took what I 

got. 

I took pictures through the window of the school and then I 

actually recreated the blackboard and the wainscoting exactly. So I 

made a replica of a replica, and shot it at school where I could have 

more control over things and didn't have to get permission to go 

inside. 

With digital technology developing so quickly and all kinds of 

new equipment coming out, do you find yourself trying to keep 

up with that — trying out new equipment and whatnot? Or do 

you have some standard digital tools that you like? 

Yeah, I shot on 16mm from 1970 to 2007, and I used two Bolexes: one 

was a hand-cranked Bolex, the other was an electric one that I put 

in a 400-foot magazine so I could do 11-minute shots. And I got 

familiar with that equipment and I liked it, and then it became 

impossible to get good lab work and I was forced into digital. I 

didn't go in until there was high definition digital. 

And so I bought a Sony camera in 2009, and it's just HD — I don't like 

4K. I’m still shooting HD because I don't like that ultra sharpness. 4K 

is great for if you're shooting at night or in darkness; you can get 

good quality in darker settings. But for what I do, I'm very happy 

with just HD, just the 1920x1080. I'm not trying to make films, but I 

think Allensworth almost looks like 35mm. It has kind of the same 

resolution. It isn't as sharp as 4K. I won't change that camera. I'm 

trying to keep it alive. So I've shot, I don't know, more films with that 

in 15 years than I shot [with the Bolexes] in 35 years. It's so cheap, 

and I made Allensworth for, I don't know, a thousand dollars. And 

that's just mainly gasoline. — INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY ZACH 

LEWIS 

12

FERRARI 

Michael Mann 

“Perhaps Mann is attempting to find a 

more natural approach to shooting a 

digital period piece, one that flattens its 

inherent contradictions rather than 

heightening them, Public Enemies-style. 

Still, there are moments when the film 

feels like Mann simply and 

uncharacteristically transplanting his 

script to the screen. The images and 

textures captured by his 21st-century films 

aren’t just incidental — they’re the very 

essence of his cinema, invigorating and 

investigating his scripts at every turn, and 

Ferrari becomes somewhat more 

conventional in losing them.” — BRAD 

HANFORD 

THE BEAST 

Bertrand Bonello 

“Premonition, made sublunary thus, is 

proclaimed over in Bonello’s daringly sci-fi 

tour de force… What Bonello realizes so 

radically throughout these interwoven 

periods is how the malaise of the present 

forever haunts its visions of the future, 

just as how the future has always arrived, 

is always the age of unattainable nostalgia 

for the light. With stylistic precision and 

visual panache, he fashions a haunting 

metaphysical reverie of the human soul, 

condemned to meaning it cannot 

decipher.” — MORRIS YANG 

MAESTRO 

Bradley Cooper 

“Cooper attempts the high-wire act of 

appealing to the living children of his 

subjects (i.e., the estate), while also 

depicting Bernstein honestly and artfully, 

but he’s ultimately undone by this 

challenge, falling into a number of 

biopic-specific traps along the way 

(clumsy expository dialogue, undermining 

dramaturgy in favor of chronology, etc.). 

Maestro isn’t a totally starry-eyed 

depiction of Bernstein by any means, but 

the way it apologizes for and redeems 

him… feels unsatisfying and evasive, and 

at odds with what Cooper seemed to be 

angling for.” — M.G. MAILLOUX 

JANET PLANET 

Annie Baker 

“By and large, Baker avoids rendering 

objects with pat allegorical import. For 

example, the small figurines and detritus 

that dot the tiny stage in Lacy’s room are 

mementoes in the constructed play of her 

memory. Indeed, the image of a child 

overlooking ‘the little world’ of the stage is 

redolent of nothing less than Ingmar 

Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. Baker 

earns the comparison without resorting to 

facile pastiche, as the film’s climactic 

moment also incorporates an enigmatic 

disappearance that teases the outer limits 

of magical realism without breaking its 

own inimitably cast spell.” — NICK KOUHI 

13

THE SHADOWLESS TOWER 

Zhang Lu 

“while Gu is central to the film narratively 

speaking, the true geographical center of 

[the film] is the White Pagoda, a 

13th-century structure that, it is said, 

casts its shadow many miles away in 

Tibet, but leaves no such impression in 

Beijing. This architectural anomaly speaks 

to the complicated place of Buddhism in 

the People’s Republic, but Zhang, even 

more than this, allows it to serve as a 

looming metaphor for a solitary life, for 

people who — for whatever reason — 

refrain from making their presence felt in 

the lives of others. — MICHAEL SICINSKI 

TRAILER OF A FILM THAT 

WILL NEVER EXIST 

Jean-Luc Godard 

“The existence of the new Trailer For a 

Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars 

presents, then, a confounding (if 

extremely beautiful) object — a 

fragmented preview of a larger work that 

will never come to fruition, a suicide note, 

a communique from beyond the grave. — 

DANIEL GORMAN 

LA CHIMERA 

Alice Rohrwacher 

“La Chimera is powered by such cycles of 

excavation and potential rebirth, during 

which Rohrwacher’s approach constantly 

shifts, jumping between three shooting 

formats and corresponding aspect ratios… 

and throwing in direct address and scenes 

of sped-up motion that resemble silent 

comedy. The effect is one of instability, 

where everything about Arthur’s situation 

feels tenuous, most of all his mercurial 

nature and wavering feelings about his 

profession, exacerbated 

by a potential new love in the 

suggestively-named Italia (Carol Duarte). — 

RYAN SWEN 

CLOSE YOUR EYES 

Victor Erice 

“Close Your Eyes treats mise-en-scène in a 

way that allows the natural flow of the 

actors’ rhetorical abilities to play a crucial 

role in enhancing the whole of the film’s 

beguiling atmosphere. Utilizing plenty of 

various materials, from books to 

photographs, archival footage to movie 

posters, and even a couple of songs that 

assist Miguel’s (personal) investigations 

along the way, Erice’s unique visual 

regimen and tranquil narrative 

distributions embrace a very specific 

archeology of the past.”— AYEEN 

FOROOTAN 

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO | 

OPUS 

Neo Sora 

“Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus achieves a 

similar phenomenological effect as light 

and shadow subtly morph the composer’s 

gaunt features and slender fingers. 

Watching Sakamoto play arpeggios, I was 

reminded of my own father playing the 

piano and subsequently seized with 

emotion. This empathic recognition of 

Sora’s haptic engagement with his father 

through his camera only enriched my 

appreciation for the artistic equilibrium 

achieved between both filmmaker and 

subject. — NICK KOUHI 

WE DON’T TALK LIKE WE 

USED TO 

Joshua Gen Solondz 

“We Don’t Talk Like We Used To proceeds 

with the manic energy of one recognizing 

FESTIVAL COVERAGE 

in the world what was previously known 

via instinct. If it’s a redoubling of his 

strategy, rather than a reinvention, it 

raises the question of post-pandemic art 

to the level of urgency. Covid didn’t reveal 

anything especially novel about society, 

but it did make pre-existing 

contradictions impossible to ignore. — 

DYLAN ADAMSON 

THE SETTLERS 

Felipe Gálvez Haberle 

“A lush, elemental reckoning unfurls across 

the relatively condensed runtime of Felipe 

Gálvez Haberle’s debut, The Settlers, even if 

few of its proceedings strictly qualify as 

terse. In fact, the film’s tersest narrative 

developments are matched by a formal 

languor which, enveloping the 

mountainous landscapes of Patagonia 

alongside its portraits of fin de siècle 

colonialism, conjures the phantasmic 

imprints of a history hastily realized and 

therefore not quite resolved. — MORRIS 

YANG 

BLEAT 

Yorgos Lanthimos 

“If the spiritual dimensions of Bleat feel 

overly calculated, that may be because 

Lanthimos is a filmmaker who’s more 

comfortable in the realm of the senses. 

Goats aptly abound throughout the film, 

occupying a metaphorical parallel to the 

human figures driving the wisp-thin plot. 

Their presence calls attention to the 

peculiarity of human behavior, yet the 

brutal fate of one poor bovid seems 

distinctly informed by a vestigial echo of 

Greek antiquity. In this respect, Bleat 

yields a flash of historical specificity that’s 

refreshing in the wake of the director’s 

burgeoning overreliance on anachronism.” 

— NICK KOUHI 

14


THE PASSENGER 

Michelangelo Antonioni 

Michelangelo Antonioni’s endlessly digressive Blow-Up (1966), the 

Italian director’s first of four films produced outside his home 

country, features a particular digression that links it directly to his 

final international production, The Passenger (1975). Blow-Up’s 

central character, Thomas, is a hot-shot fashion photographer 

living a materially successful but emotionally unfulfilling life in 

Swinging Sixties London. His dissatisfaction has many sources, but 

he — in a particularly unpredictable moment — links his emotional 

sickness to disdain for his job. He wants to escape (fashion) 

photography’s vanity; to, in his own words, “go off London” and be 

“free.” When his editor asks what he’ll do, though, he has no answer. 

In The Passenger, personal disillusionment from professional (and 

political) dissatisfaction is the film’s central conceit. Unlike Thomas, 

The Passenger’s protagonist — a war reporter doubling as 

something of a documentarian — seems to know what he will do 

when he’s free. 

This clarity, primarily political in nature, comes from the two other 

(de)tours Antonioni took between Blow-Up and The Passenger. The 

first one, Zabriskie Point (1970), is his most overtly political film. It’s 

an expensively mounted “fuck you” to America’s rapidly expanding 

consumerism of the late ‘60s. (The film’s original ending really did 

have a sky-plane writing, “Fuck You, America”; unsurprisingly, it was 

rejected.) Sympathizing with the counterculture movement of the 

time, its two protagonists — initially disillusioned in a 

characteristically Antonionian way — do attempt to implement their 

ideas, failing which they endeavor at least to dream about them in 

an explosively radical fashion. Chung Kuo, Cina, his three-part 

television documentary, is much less of a call-to-action film but 

rather a curiously self-reflexive and experiential work about the 

People’s Republic of China, made at the behest of Chairman Mao 

himself. Its depiction of the country and its Maoist values is, 

unsurprisingly, primarily positive, and only the narrator’s stray 

comments about their restricted access to major shooting locations 

qualify as an overt critique of the State’s now-documented 

totalitarianism. 

Despite (or perhaps because of) their political clarity, both these 

projects received heavy criticism, most dishearteningly — for 

Antonioni — by the leftist groups that he supported. His cinema of 

inaction conflicted with the era’s political activism in Zabriskie 

Point; his honest, matter-of-fact observations as a stranger to a 

foreign land in Chung Kuo, Cina included passages that didn’t 

conform to the picture-perfect depiction of Maoist China desired by 

the state. The anti-Antonioni reaction against the latter was 

especially vitriolic, with the Communist government banning the 

film in 1974. The Passenger was thus made when Antonioni was 

15 7 16

going through a phase of professional discontentment. Whether 

intentional or otherwise, it serves as an intersection of the other 

films: an idyllic common ground where Zabriskie Point and Chung 

Kuo, Cina’s political clarity greets Blow-Up’s ambiguity. At least, 

that’s where our protagonist, John Locke (Jack Nicholson), wishes 

to be. Burnt out from his passive role as a war reporter in Africa, 

Locke wants to “trade his identity” with that of David Robertson, 

another white man who’s an active participant in a radical 

separatist fight against what appears to be an authoritarian 

government in Chad. The details of the country’s political struggles 

and leaders are intentionally hazy; the active foreign participant 

remains distant in a war not involving himself. But is it possible for 

Locke to escape his discontented self and emerge into radical 

political consciousness? 

“[Antonioni’s] cinema of inaction, 

despite being endowed with 

concrete clarity, will always 

remain too fragile to become 

radically political. 

The film’s unforgettable opening twenty-five minutes answer this 

question in the most beguiling way. Its first eleven-minute stretch 

has Antonioni operating at the height of his power as a visual 

storyteller; almost everything about Locke’s role as the titular 

“passenger,” punctuated by his breaking point, is communicated 

visually. The Passenger’s very first shot depicts Locke as a stranger 

lost in a tiny village in the middle of the Saharan Desert. 

Cinematographer Luciano Tovoli uses an extreme wide shot, not so 

much to establish the film’s setting but to highlight our 

protagonist’s displaced, unimportant position within it. Antonioni 

repeatedly uses such long shots throughout this stretch to dwarf 

Locke’s presence within a space that’s alien to him, and he 

occasionally “forgets” to follow his protagonist — the camera pans 

or tracks before Locke motivates it. This “lag” is, arguably, the most 

apt representation of Locke’s helpless passivity as a foreigner, for 

even the camera, as much of a stranger to these surroundings as 

Locke, knows more than him and “drives” him toward the action. 

The final shot of this near-wordless eleven-minute sequence 

verbalizes what’s already been expressed quietly. Locke’s Jeep, the 

one thing he controls, also gets stuck in desert sand. He repeatedly 

tries to dig its tires out but ultimately gives up, falling to the ground 

and shouting, “All right! I don’t care!” It’s the only loud, declaratively 


performative moment uncharacteristically tender of Nicholson’s 

onscreen presence, making his desperate cry for help here doubly 

impactful. Following which, he seeks an escape from passivity. This 

is the film’s pivotal sequence: Antonioni, narratively and formally, 

counters the opening eleven minutes’ stark, precisely stylized 

realism with an unflashy and hence even more hypnotic touch of 

surrealism. After returning to his hotel on foot, a physically and 

mentally exhausted Locke calls out for Robertson, and, upon 

entering his room, finds Robertson lying on his stomach on his bed, 

dead. Rummaging through the dead man’s belongings, Locke comes 

across his diary. As soon as he flips it open, we hear a soft but 

high-pitched beep fill the silence, somehow more calming than 

distracting. The absence of non-diegetic sound has played such a 

critical role in conveying Locke’s isolation until now, that its sudden 

presence pushes The Passenger, strangely, into a realm of 

(momentary) connection. The two-shot — of Locke looking at 

Robertson, thinking of becoming him — materializes this feeling 

conjured up by the mysteriously meditative note still percolating 

through the atmosphere. 

But once the music fades away, Locke still hasn’t decided whether 

he wants to become Robertson. As he continues to examine the 

similarities between his and Robertson’s passport photographs, an 

even more confounding non-diegetic audio track takes over: it’s the 

first conversation between the two men. The camera, initially 

focused on Locke’s face, begins to drift gently away from him, 

determined to fill in the visual absence of the voiceover, willing to 

bend the rules of space and time to open a literal and metaphorical 

window to the past. And yet, for every moment that tries to push 

past Locke’s passive reality, another instance pushes back. Even in 

this most transcendental sequence, Antonioni ensures that we, like 

Locke, don’t get carried away. He intercuts the magical intrusion of 

the past with the concrete reality of the present. The fluidity of 

moving from one moment to another, one identity to another, is 

undercut by showing the mechanical process of Locke cutting, 

replacing, and pasting his photo onto Robertson’s passport. 

Furthermore, the dialogue between the two men – initially perceived 

as a non-diegetic jolt to Locke’s desolate reality — is also 

demystified. Antonioni reveals the audio source to be Locke’s tape 

recorder — a device he plays to presumably convince himself of the 

possibility of escaping from himself. 

Antonioni’s screenplay (co-written by Mark Peploe, Peter Wollen, and 

Enrico Sannia) bifurcates the rest of The Passenger’s narrative to 

maintain this tension between Locke’s ability to become Robertson 

17 

16


and his inability to unbecome himself. The former is the film’s 

driving narrative: Locke drifts from country to country, dutifully 

following Robertson’s meeting schedule to shape his identity bit by 

bit around him. He relocates from Chad to England, then to 

Germany, and finally to Spain, where he meets an unnamed young 

woman (the elusive Maria Schneider) who encourages him to keep 

following this path. But (narrative) speed bumps consistently 

disrupt Locke’s forward movement; the parallel narrative involves 

Rachel (Jenny Runacre), Locke’s estranged wife, piecing together 

the reasons behind her husband’s death. This search, more than a 

detailed investigation of her character, is representative of the 

consistent presence of John Locke, objective war reporter. In a 

way, it marks a grand narrativization of another moment in the film, 

when Locke-as-Robertson tells (or rather shows) the young woman 

that what he is running away from is also chasing him. 

The closer the impending collision gets, the less certain hitherto 

established things and places get. The Modernist buildings in 

Barcelona that the woman describes as “big enough for [Locke] to 

hide in for days” flatten into the sparse, desert terrain of Almería 

(also in Spain) that, yes, provides more room to move in, but also 

provides more vantage points for searching eyes to spot our 

protagonist’s movement. The silences and stillness, earlier symbols 

of peace and calm, also become signs of threat and tension. When 

the collision eventually happens, the feeling that dominates, even 

more so than uncertainty, is that of profound sadness. The 

penultimate six-minute take of The Passenger, now (rightfully) 

championed as a significant technical achievement, mirrors to 

some extent the initial sequence of identity transference between 

Locke and Robertson. But the movement in this shot is not towards 

an open window of infinite possibilities. It is, in fact, a circling back 

to the distanced, “objective” reality trapped inside a barred window. 

It is also, perversely enough, precisely the moment Locke becomes 

Robertson. 

The Passenger’s aching tragedy comes from its acknowledgment of 

our protagonist’s inability to escape his own self when he’s alive. 

People, as Locke describes it to Robertson in their first 

conversation, “translate every situation, every experience into the 

same old codes.” They are “creatures of habit,” unable to escape 

their constructed and rehearsed identities. For Locke, this means 

always remaining impartial, observing his and other lives from the 

sidelines. For Antonioni, there’s a dispiriting realization that there is, 

perhaps, no meeting ground between Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point or 

Chung Kuo, Cina. His cinema of inaction, despite being endowed 

with concrete clarity, will always remain too fragile to become 

radically political. But it’s precisely that fragility — a spontaneous 

moment of connection, a sudden realization of purpose, a 

momentary liberation from the burden of an otherwise mournfully 

futile world — that makes The Passenger feel hauntingly alive. 

Antonioni’s failed search for permanent escape provides us, in the 

strangest way possible, with a reason to try. — DHRUV GOYAL 

17


LOST IN 

TRANSLATION 

Sofia Coppola 

When was the last time you visited a foreign city and didn’t look up 

things to do? Didn’t crowd-source recommendations, rely on offline 

maps and translate apps, or post a constant stream of pictures and 

videos? Didn’t even take them, maybe? These days, it's tough to 

even go out to lunch in one's own neighborhood without looking up 

options ahead of time. But in 2003, when Sofia Coppola’s 

sophomore feature Lost in Translation was released, iPhones didn’t 

exist; instead, people sent faxes or drew maps by hand. 

Experiences were meant to be enjoyed, not documented. 2023 

marks the film’s 20th anniversary, its famously (and perhaps 

frustratingly) sparse plot all the more poignant when we consider 

how much has changed in those intervening years. 

Bill Murray, in a role written with him in mind, stars as Bob Harris, a 

washed-up actor who pads his bank account with lucrative but 

mind-numbing commercial work and is staring down the wrong side 

of middle age. He’s in Tokyo to shoot a Suntory Whisky ad, staying in 

the same hotel as the much younger Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) 

and her photographer husband John (Giovanni Ribisi, loosely based 

on Coppola’s ex, Spike Jonze). Harris is sullen and sarcastic, a 

fading star with a faltering marriage and a career that’s running on 

fumes. But even if he were pulling in more substantial work, he’d 

probably still be a bit of a loner. Even though Murray plays him as a 

generally surly crank, he finds an almost tender inner core: a tired, 

unhappy man whose impatience is in direct 

18

19 


proportion to his own shortcomings. As a result, he comes across 

as somewhat non-threatening, even a little silly — the bumbling 

tourist doing the bare minimum, not out of disrespect but because 

he knows no one expects anything more substantial. In this light, 

even his cringiest interactions with the locals come across as more 

boorish than intentionally racist, though some critics and 

audiences have certainly pushed back against that interpretation. 

While John is off on assignments, Charlotte, a recent Yale 

philosophy grad, wanders around the drizzly Tokyo springtime or 

listens to self-help CDs. She’s frequently perched against her room’s 

massive windows, trying to figure out where she belongs in the city 

below. Johansson, who was 17 during production, delivers a 

vulnerable, yearning performance that conveys the helplessness of 

someone whose estimation of their sense of self outpaces reality. 

She’s old enough to be a wife, but too young to articulate her 

unhappiness in any real terms — instead, she tells a friend that 

“John’s using these hair products. I don’t know who I married!” After 

visiting a Buddhist temple, she breaks down and cries, 

overwhelmed not by emotion, but by her own apathy. This 

manifests day-to-day as snobbery, especially at the expense of 

John’s ditsy client Kelly (Anna Faris, whose performance was 

supposedly based on Cameron Diaz). “I’m so mean”, Charlotte frets 

as she and Bob lay in bed, fully clothed, talking. “You’re not 

hopeless,” he replies: not refuting her claim, but nonetheless 

offering reassurance. 

Coppola foregrounds the interpersonal and cultural 

misunderstandings implied in the film’s title, whether it concerns a 

semi-hysterical prostitute who’s sent to Bob’s room or the dandyish 

Suntory director, who gives comically lengthy directions only for the 

translator to pass along two sentences. But underneath these 

surface-level misunderstandings is a cache of the deeper, more 

liminal stuff that Bob and Charlotte, along with viewers, spend the 

film trying to access and articulate. Separately and then together, 

they struggle to grasp the limits of their own understanding. 

Hovering just beyond their sight lines are the things they want to 

understand and know they never will. At least, not without levels of 

dedication and commitment and humility that currently seem 

beyond their reach. Coppola doesn’t ask them to make any 

decisions, but instead allows them come to the realization that, one 

day, they’ll have to. Look at Bob and his wife Lydia, who, like many 

long-married couples, seem to love but not particularly like each 

other. Or John, who often clutches Charlotte, squid-like, as she 

squirms out of reach. Since their absent spouses seem to have 

little regard for (or even interest in) their counterparts’ interior life, 

the film’s emotional core is the off-kilter acceptance Bob and 

Charlotte manage to find in each other. 

In many ways, Lost in Translation’s autobiographical slant and 

quasi-romantic depiction of both youthful and middle-aged 

aimlessness presaged a slew of other critically successful 

autofictions, even across mediums; two of the more instructive 

examples include Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series (the first 

volume published in 2009) and Ben Lerner’s debut novel Leaving the 

Atocha Station (2011). In the former, Knausgaard transcribes and, 

one presumes, embellishes his memories and experiences in 

almost excruciating detail. Over 6 lengthy volumes, the deeply 

personal act of remembering becomes an overtly exhibitionist 

activity, his most personal experiences transformed into dinner 

party fodder for the self-consciously highbrow. Meanwhile, Adam 

Gordon, Lerner’s fictional analog, is a young poet on a writing 

fellowship in Madrid, where he masks his deficient language skills 

with a form of culturally transcendent intellectual posturing that 

requires the implicit — and perhaps unknowing — participation of 

his Spanish girlfriend, Isabel. Their conversations have almost 

nothing to do with actual communication; instead, Lerner scaffolds 

elaborate layers of presumed meaning that hinge on what he hopes 

is her idea of him: “[she] assigned profound meaning to my 

fragmentary speech… and because she projected what she thought 

she discovered… she experienced, I like to think, an intense affinity 

for the workings of my mind.” Of course, he can’t ask her outright if 

this is the case, nor does he actually want to know the truth. For 

him, these mistranslations are more meaningful than the banality 

of genuine connection — yet his naked desire to be respected and 

admired is its own form of honesty. 

“Lost in Translation’s 

autobiographical slant and 

quasi-romantic depiction of both 

youthful and middle-aged 

aimlessness presaged a slew of 

other critically successful 

autofictions. 

Like these and many other contemporary narratives, Lost in 

Translation hums with a now-familiar vein of postmodern 

melancholy. Bob and Charlotte are stuck in a discomfitingly familiar


paradox: their lives are marked by a lack of urgency or forward 

momentum, even as they’re glumly aware of time passing. Bob is 

missing his young son’s birthday to shill whiskey, while Charlotte is 

simply there, tagging along. But when John goes away on 

assignment for a couple of days, the unlikely pair finally get a 

chance to shake off their inertia. After meeting up with a couple of 

her friends, they have the sort of exuberant, serendipitous late 

night, the kind that can never be replicated, only cherished in the 

moment. They get chased out of a trendy bar by a stranger with a 

stun gun; they run through an arcade, in one of many sequences 

that highlight the city’s gorgeous neon palette; they wind up at a 

house party, then a high-rise karaoke den, where they serenade 

each other off-key. Along the way, Charlotte acquires a pale pink 

wig. 

In other words, it’s the sort of night that increasingly seems to exist 

outside time, and certainly outside modern technology; nowadays, 

people would be snapping pics, adding each other on socials, 

Shazaming the music. Instead, Coppola presents an organic ebb 

and flow of strangers, laughing and drinking and singing to each 

other with no expectations for anything deeper or longer-lasting 

than this one shared and delirious night. And in each other, Bob and 

Charlotte find something more valuable than sex: companionship. 

Marooned and alone in this densely packed city, they forge a 

connection that’s intimate but never illicit. In fact, its chasteness 

casts it even more special, because that’s what makes it so 

unexpected and irreplicable. Their relationship is platonic and, 

above all, co-conspiratorial; by the time they part ways in the film’s 

enigmatic final scene, their brief time together has changed them 

both. It’s not a sentimental goodbye — they don’t exchange contact 

info or pledge to be better people. Audiences don’t even know what 

Bob whispers when they embrace for the last time because the 

dialogue is purposely inaudible. Once again, any understanding of 

their relationship is tantalizingly out of reach to everyone but 

themselves. Despite all the technology now at our disposal, there 

are still some secrets that are better left unshared. — SELINA LEE 

20

FILM REVIEWS 

RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 6 

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER 

David Gordon Green 

“The most grievous sin committed by The Exorcist: Believer is how 

rank dull it all is. On the most basic of levels, the film fails to 

quicken the pulse or truly shock the viewer. There’s nothing 

particularly transgressive or gutting about the possession of the 

girls — the sexualization of tweens has become such a third rail in 

recent years that even demons know not to touch it — and as 

neither they nor their parents register as living, breathing creations, 

their torment is strictly academic. Further, Green’s filmmaking is 

entirely anonymous, skimping on sustained dread and malevolent 

atmosphere in favor of jump scares… hurtling along from incident 

to incident, with nary a moment to reflect or allow the enormity of 

the subject matter to permeate.” — ANDREW DIGNAN 

DIRECTOR: David Gordon Green; CAST: Leslie Odom Jr., Ellen 

Burstyn, Olivia O'Neill, Ann Dowd, Lidya Jewett; DISTRIBUTOR: 

Universal Pictures; IN THEATERS: October 6; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 1 min. 

THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL 

REVIEW BY: Liam Kenny; DIRECTOR: William Friedkin; CAST: 

Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Clarke, Jake Lacy, Monica Raymond; 

DISTRIBUTOR: Showtime; STREAMING: October 6; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 

48 min. 

FOE 

REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Garth Davis; CAST: Paul 

Mescal, Saoirse Ronan, Aaron Pierre, Jordan Choziesner; 

DISTRIBUTOR: Amazon Studios; IN THEATERS: October 6; 

RUNTIME: 1 hr. 50 min. 

THE ROYAL HOTEL 

REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Kitty Green; CAST: Julia 

Garner, Jessica Henwick, Hugo Weaving, James Frecheville, Daniel 

Henshall; DISTRIBUTOR: NEON; IN THEATERS: October 6; 


SHE CAME TO ME 

REVIEW BY: Travis DeShong; DIRECTOR: Rebecca Miller; CAST: 

Anne Hathaway, Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei, Brian d'Arcy James, 

Joanna Kulig; DISTRIBUTOR: Vertical; IN THEATERS: October 6; 


THE BURIAL 

REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Maggie Betts; CAST: 

Tommy Lee Jones, Jamie Foxx, Jurnee Smollett, Mamoudou Athie; 


STREAMING: October 13; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 6 min. 

PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES 

REVIEW BY: Steven Warner; DIRECTOR: Lindsey Anderson Beer; 

CAST: Forrest Goodluck, Jackson White, Henry Thomas, Natalie Alyn 

Lind, Isabella LaBlanc; DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount+; STREAMING: 

October 6; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 24 min. 

21

WHEN EVIL LURKS 

REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Demián Rugna; CAST: 

Ezequiel Rodríguez, Demián Salomon, Silvina Sabater, Paula 

Rubinsztein; DISTRIBUTOR: IFC Films; IN THEATERS: October 6; 


MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MARRIAGE 

FILM REVIEWS 

REVIEW BY: Joshua Minsoo Kim; DIRECTOR: Signe Baumane; 

CAST: (voices) Dagmara Domińczyk, Matthew Modine, Stephen Lang, 

Cameron Monaghan; DISTRIBUTOR: 8 Above; IN THEATERS: 


TOTALLY KILLER 

Nahnatchka Khan 

“The best film that Blumhouse and Amazon have delivered since 

joining forces in 2020 for an annual October scarefest. That bar has 

admittedly been set quite low so far in the young collaboration, but 

in a genre increasingly inclined toward the leaden, having some 

legitimate, lightweight fun with one of these ventures is no thing to 

turn your nose up at. Here’s to the next batch.” — STEVEN WARNER 

DIRECTOR: Nahnatchka Khan; CAST: Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, 

Julie Bowen, Randall Park; DISTRIBUTOR: Amazon Studios; 



ONCE WITHIN A TIME 

REVIEW BY: Michael Sicinski; DIRECTOR: Godfrey Reggio; CAST: 

Mike Tyson, Brian Belott, Sussan Deyhim, Aaron Kingsley Adetola; 

DISTRIBUTOR: Oscilloscope; IN THEATERS: October 13; RUNTIME: 

52 min. 

DIVINITY 

REVIEW BY: Conor Truax; DIRECTOR: Eddie Alcazar; CAST: Stephen 

Dorff, Bella Thorne, Scott Bakula, Caylee Cowan, Moises Arias; 

DISTRIBUTOR: Utopia; IN THEATERS: October 13; RUNTIME: 1 hr 28 

min. 

DARK HARVEST 

REVIEW BY: Daniel Gorman; DIRECTOR: David Slade; CAST: Casey 

Likes, Emyri Crutchfield, Elizabeth Reaser, Jeremy Davies; 

DISTRIBUTOR: MGM; IN THEATERS: October 11; STREAMING: 


ANATOMY OF A FALL 

REVIEW BY: Morris Yang; DIRECTOR: Justine Triet; CAST: Sandra 

Hüll, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner, Antoine Reinartz; 

DISTRIBUTOR: NEON; IN THEATERS: October 13; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 32 

min. 

DEAR DAVID 

REVIEW BY: Emily DuGranrut; DIRECTOR: John McPhail; CAST: 

Augustus Prew, Justin Long, Andrea Bang; DISTRIBUTOR: BuzzFeed 

Studios, Lionsgate; IN THEATERS: October 13; RUNTIME: 1 hr 34 

min. 

FAIR PLAY 

REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Chloe Domont; CAST: 

Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich, Eddie Marsan, Rich Sommer; 

DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; IN THEATERS: September 29; STREAMING: 


22

FILM REVIEWS 


KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON 

Martin Scorsese 

“though Lily Gladstone gives a performance worthy of the 

unanimous praise, this isn’t a film about Mollie Burkhart. While she 

is the only character who’s rewarded with a rich interior monologue 

(that acts as a moral guide throughout the film), Scorsese focuses, 

as he always does, on the people who fuck it all up. One may be 

tempted to see Scorsese’s protagonists as an ever-evolving portrait 

of American criminality, from the footmen of Mean Streets to the 

mid-level mob families of Goodfellas to the legitimized crime 

business of Casino to the fully “respectable” criminal enterprise of 

The Wolf of Wall Street… With Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese 

has taken his journey’s final step by circling back, telling the story 

of the snakes and coyotes and wolves that stole a nation and its 

spirit.” — ZACH LEWIS 

DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese; CAST: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De 

Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemmons; DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount 

Pictures; IN THEATERS: October 20; RUNTIME: 3 hr. 26 min. 

23 

THE DELINQUENTS 

REVIEW BY: Jesse Catherine Webber; DIRECTOR: Rodrigo Moreno; 

CAST: Daniel Elías, Esteban Bigliardi, Margarita Molfino; 

DISTRIBUTOR: Mubi; IN THEATERS: October 16; RUNTIME: 3 hr. 9 

min. 

ONYX THE FORTUITOUS AND THE TALISMAN OF 

SOULS 

REVIEW BY: Luke Gorham; DIRECTOR: Andrew Bowser; CAST: 

Andrew Bowser, Jeffrey Combs, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Barbara 

Crampton; DISTRIBUTOR: Cineverse; IN THEATERS: October 19; 


SILVER DOLLAR ROAD 

REVIEW BY: Michael Sicinski; DIRECTOR: Raoul Peck; CAST: —; 



PAIN HUSTLERS 

REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: David Yates; CAST: Emily 

Blunt, Chris Evans, Catherine O'Hara, Chloe Coleman, Andy Garcia; 

DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; STREAMING: October 27; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 2 

min. 

THE PIGEON TUNNEL 

REVIEW BY: Chris Mello; DIRECTOR: Errol Morris; CAST: Jake Dove, 

Charlotte Hamblin, Garry Cooper, Simon Harrison, Douglas Rankine; 

DISTRIBUTOR: Apple TV+; STREAMING: October 20; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 

32 min. 

BUTCHER’S CROSSING 

REVIEW BY: Paul Attard; DIRECTOR: Gabe Polsky; CAST: Nicolas 

Cage, Rachel Keller, Jeremy Bobb, Paul Raci, Xander Berkeley; 

DISTRIBUTOR: Saban Films; IN THEATERS: October 26; RUNTIME: 1 

hr. 45 min.

FILM REVIEWS 


BOUDICA: QUEEN OF WAR 

Jesse V. Johnson 

“[At times] the film approaches the austerity of Rivette’s Joan the 

Maid duology, or even Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac. Everything Johnson 

chooses to put on screen is essential, even if because of practical 

necessity rather than “artistry.” But the end result is the same — 

everything superfluous is simply cast aside. There’s a kind of 

beauty to the formal and moral simplicity on display, as Kurylenko 

splits the difference between Renee Falconetti and Milla 

Jovovich-type action hero. As the saying goes, your mileage may 

vary, but for those inclined to embrace the bootstrap ethos of DTV, 

Boudica is a fist-pumping delight.” — DANIEL GORMAN 

DIRECTOR: Jesse V. Johnson; CAST: Olga Kurylenko, Clive Standen, 

Peter Franzén; DISTRIBUTOR: Saban Films; IN THEATERS & 


THE HOLDOVERS 

REVIEW BY: Jesse Catherine Webber; DIRECTOR: Alexander Payne; 

CAST: Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa; 

DISTRIBUTOR: Focus Features; IN THEATERS: November 10; 


SUITABLE FLESH 

REVIEW BY: Morris Yang; DIRECTOR: Joe Lynch; CAST: Heather 

Graham, Judah Lewis, Barbara Crampton; DISTRIBUTOR: RLJE 

Films; IN THEATERS: October 27; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 40 min. 

FOUR DAUGHTERS 

REVIEW BY: Dhruv Goyal; DIRECTOR: Kaouther Ben Hania; CAST: 

Hend Sabry; DISTRIBUTOR: Kino Lorber; IN THEATERS: October 27; 


24

Photo Credits: 

Cover - Melinda Sue Gordon/Apple Original Films; Page 1 - Norman Wong; Page 3 - Courtesy of 

Rediance; Page 4 - Courtesy of Rediance; Page 5 - Sharon Lockhart; Page 7 - Courtesy of the 

artist; Page 8 - James Benning; Page 10 - Courtesy of the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin; 

Page 11 - Courtesy of the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Page 13 - NYFF, Courtesy of 

Lorenzo Sisti/Forward Pass; Page 15 - MGM; Page 17 - MGM/Mubi; Page 18 - Focus Features; Page 

20 - Focus Features; Page 21 - Universal Pictures; Page 22 - Prime Video; Page 23 - AppleTV+; 

Page 24 - Signature Entertainement/Saban Films; Back Cover - Deborah Stratman/Film at Lincoln 

Center

InRO Monthly — October 2023

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