Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Sunday, 9 June 2024

Outlandish.

Somebody asked me
which film characters I identified with 
– and I couldn't think of any,
except, possibly, ridiculously,
Tarkovsky's Stalker.

Films and books are about Other People.

I just want to look at my aquarium, look at my sea horse, read my Murakami,
watch Bergman. I’ve been on a great Bergman run. I just saw “The Virgin Spring,” “Hour of the Wolf,” “Persona.” I also love Tarkovsky. I love “The Sacrifice.” I looked at “Stalker” again. I have all the time in the world in between movies to lose myself in these maestros’ films.
  – Nicolas Cage in a New York Times Magazine interview, March 2024.

I almost identified with him in the wonderful film Pig (2021).
I identified even more with the sow, seen only for half a minute.
The Virgin Spring was the first 'proper' (and 'foreign') film I ever saw, almost alone in Mayfair's splendid Curzon cinema on a wet afternoon
in 1959 or 1960.  It shaped my whole attitude to cinema
after a childhood of seeing only hyped American propaganda-trash
such as From Here to Eternity, The African Queen and High Noon.


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