Chicago Filmmakers - Saturday, 8pm
Overarching and overreaching, DIALOGUES
is autobiographic lying at its most sincere. Vignettes in various shapes
and sizes populated by various japes and friars make the flimsiest of
narrative plausibility possible. Legendary Structuralist filmmaker Owen
Land's tongue is not much in check as he pretends to tell the story of
his 1985 return to LA after a year spent living in Japan. Representing
two halves of his persona--the Trickster-Literary Land and the Pure
Fool-Visual--by using two different actors, Land take turns re-enacting
significant encounters with the director's past. Seemingly every tale
ends with a woman removing her clothing for reasons that would make a
porno screenwriter blush and, for the first portion of the film, this
misogyny and self-indulgence takes us hostage. Soon, however, the
stories become less the embellished tales of an aging icon and more a
lighthearted attempt to contemplate religion, language, audience's
expectations of narrative structure, and hero-worship in the art world.
Transforming itself from pathetic to introspective to reflective and
then to sorrowful, Land's newest work makes you work for the reward, and
then rewards you with mental work. (2008, 133 min, video) JH - Cine-File.info
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