You know, as someone who has been an almost New Yorker my whole life, I'm not sure if truer words have ever been spoken about a city (and to a... Hey, that's Thora Birch in a movie again!)
It's hard for me to find the right or easy words to compare this to other films because Im not sure I've seen something quite like it. Maybe there's aome fluorishes of cinematic (and I mean fully, lyrically, poetically, if not quite to the philosophy plane) that Malick does, but only in fluorishes. Someone I read said Scorsese in some of the surreal touches. But this has such a lush look and feel, and in depicting not just how a place is on the surface but how it feels and its soul, what the people mean in it as well as the smoke and fog and the flowers and trollies and the whites and the blacks and those in between, that it feels akin to a city symphony film... That also happens to have a strong story about two friends trying to figure out their place in life/the world/San Fran/that house that was (but wasn't) build in 1946 by our heros grandfather.
It's a film by Joe Talbot - and holy moly do I want to see everything he will do for the rest of his life - that doesn't shy away from, for lack of a better phrase, lifting ones spirits while at the same time depicting the people in these places as honestly as possible. That may be slightly Scorsese as well, without as much or the usual element of street crime... No, that is there, but it's like this presence that is there but, one hopes, only on the periphery... Until it isn't. These two friends just want to live on their own terms, as far as the basics of a place to live that makes one feel at peace, and also for a place to create (one draws and writes plays, the other keeps fixing up the house to look just right).
What's against them? The conflict? Oh, systemic racism and poverty, class warfare, throw in some gentrification too; an interesting but important side note too is the detail that the neighborhood with the coveted house used to be Japanese dominant, until WW2 changed that with the camps, then black people cane in (and then the... Last 25 years of making everything prohibitively expensive to live in a city that isnt on the fringes). One (more ignorant) might look and say, "pffft, get a job and work so you can get that house, or who even needs that house anyway."
But this is ignoring everything that makes up the foundation of these young men and what their options are. At the same time, this is all larger-issue points that come up when looking at the films characters and this beautiful but complicated (and sometimes quite violent) world of San Francisco. Why it's so great is that the filmmakers find fresh and original ways of bringing visual umph and lift to the emotions they're feeling - or that they would like to feel, or aspire to.
Like Moonlight, this is a filmmaker (I mistakenly assumed he was black but looking at Talbot that's not the case, albeit a native of SF) looking at life in a city and showing us something we either may have not seen before or not in such a way that demonstrates what cinema can do. It can bring us up as well as crash us down. It can find the unique and... Unusual people who may be frankly neglected by those in a city who would look the other way (or not at all). It can make us laugh at some absurdity, or, in a lot of cases here, make us unsure what to feel at times, like at one point where the theatrical playwrite artist comes in to the group of street guys (all of course talking s***) and acts as though he is putting on a play with them (a Stanislavski mention gave me a big laugh). And it can make us wonder what is in ourselves and what we want out of life and what it can provide as well as easily/tragically/crushingly take away.
This feels really special, in ways that another viewing will hopefully make clearer. AND it's the *other* (superior) black-led film this year where "I Got 5 On It" gets belted out.
It's hard for me to find the right or easy words to compare this to other films because Im not sure I've seen something quite like it. Maybe there's aome fluorishes of cinematic (and I mean fully, lyrically, poetically, if not quite to the philosophy plane) that Malick does, but only in fluorishes. Someone I read said Scorsese in some of the surreal touches. But this has such a lush look and feel, and in depicting not just how a place is on the surface but how it feels and its soul, what the people mean in it as well as the smoke and fog and the flowers and trollies and the whites and the blacks and those in between, that it feels akin to a city symphony film... That also happens to have a strong story about two friends trying to figure out their place in life/the world/San Fran/that house that was (but wasn't) build in 1946 by our heros grandfather.
It's a film by Joe Talbot - and holy moly do I want to see everything he will do for the rest of his life - that doesn't shy away from, for lack of a better phrase, lifting ones spirits while at the same time depicting the people in these places as honestly as possible. That may be slightly Scorsese as well, without as much or the usual element of street crime... No, that is there, but it's like this presence that is there but, one hopes, only on the periphery... Until it isn't. These two friends just want to live on their own terms, as far as the basics of a place to live that makes one feel at peace, and also for a place to create (one draws and writes plays, the other keeps fixing up the house to look just right).
What's against them? The conflict? Oh, systemic racism and poverty, class warfare, throw in some gentrification too; an interesting but important side note too is the detail that the neighborhood with the coveted house used to be Japanese dominant, until WW2 changed that with the camps, then black people cane in (and then the... Last 25 years of making everything prohibitively expensive to live in a city that isnt on the fringes). One (more ignorant) might look and say, "pffft, get a job and work so you can get that house, or who even needs that house anyway."
But this is ignoring everything that makes up the foundation of these young men and what their options are. At the same time, this is all larger-issue points that come up when looking at the films characters and this beautiful but complicated (and sometimes quite violent) world of San Francisco. Why it's so great is that the filmmakers find fresh and original ways of bringing visual umph and lift to the emotions they're feeling - or that they would like to feel, or aspire to.
Like Moonlight, this is a filmmaker (I mistakenly assumed he was black but looking at Talbot that's not the case, albeit a native of SF) looking at life in a city and showing us something we either may have not seen before or not in such a way that demonstrates what cinema can do. It can bring us up as well as crash us down. It can find the unique and... Unusual people who may be frankly neglected by those in a city who would look the other way (or not at all). It can make us laugh at some absurdity, or, in a lot of cases here, make us unsure what to feel at times, like at one point where the theatrical playwrite artist comes in to the group of street guys (all of course talking s***) and acts as though he is putting on a play with them (a Stanislavski mention gave me a big laugh). And it can make us wonder what is in ourselves and what we want out of life and what it can provide as well as easily/tragically/crushingly take away.
This feels really special, in ways that another viewing will hopefully make clearer. AND it's the *other* (superior) black-led film this year where "I Got 5 On It" gets belted out.