These notes on Wes Anderson's Rushmore were written by Austin Wellens, UW, Madison student. Rushmore will screen at 9 p.m. on Friday, July 25, in the Marquee Theater at Union South.

While his first feature Bottle Rocket bears all the trappings that its director would come to be associated with, it was Rushmore that inaugurated the world of Wes Anderson as we’ve come to know it. Where his debut film feels a bit like a collision between the universe we all share and the one he envisions, its follow-up is more distinctly defined by its artifice (transparently foregrounded by the “acts and seasons” structure imposed on it). At the same time it shows a much deeper, personal connection between the art and the artist; the story of a kid struggling to belong to his prep school world is straight out of Anderson’s past in Houston, with the actual school he’d attended serving as Rushmore itself (they were filming in the building while the director’s ten year class reunion was taking place. Anderson failed to attend) and the high school his father had gone to doubling as the public school from later in the film. If the first film provides an introduction to the world of Wes Anderson, Rushmore is an invitation.

Inside, we find the characters of Max Fischer, Herman Blume, and Rosemary Cross, three people sharing the same ailment; loss. For Max, who is the closest Anderson has come to writing himself into his films, it’s the childhood loss of his mother. But more than that, it’s a loss of that childhood sense of everything fitting together, of having control over everything. In the face of his early childhood tragedy, Max tries to find something comparable in an adopted, premature adulthood, re-staging mature works like Serpico and Platoon as school plays and trying to consort with authority figures as equals.

But beyond constantly performing his idea of a grown-up, Max works to control the world around him with almost total indifference to its reality; he imposes a post-graduate year on his school, he orders piranhas from “his guy” in South America, and he alternatingly works to destroy and resurrect Latin as it suits his purposes. And as far as we can tell, he believes these fictions whole-heartedly. It’s as if by simply willing himself to be in command, he can convince everyone that he is. The one lie he can’t be forced to believe is the one he tells about his father working as a surgeon, rather than a barber.

This balance of would-be adult swagger and childish desperation is carefully struck by first time actor Jason Schwartzmann, who would go on to become one of Anderson’s many regulars. Hair swept back and eyes deadly serious behind oversized glasses, he embodies both the fear and want driving Max, and the sincere confidence that he surrounds it with (his drunken “Oh, R they?” impression of “grown-up” humor perfectly, hilariously marries the two). In giving the audience access to the raging bravado of his character without letting them forget his fragile sincerity, Schwartzmann’s performance lets the viewer cringe at and sometimes hate Max while at the same time wishing he could pull himself back together.

As it began one career, Rushmore marked the rebirth of another. As Herman Blume, Max Fischer’s friend and adversary, Bill Murray found a second life as an actor. Anderson had the famously reclusive Murray in mind for the part, and sent him the script with little hope that he’d even read it; he not only read and loved it, but agreed to be paid union minimums to accommodate the film’s meager budget (a story of his writing the director a personal check worth more than his sum payment to fund a helicopter shot the studio wouldn’t cover is not apocryphal).

Murray’s casting turned out to be perfect. Having built his earlier work on a sort of affable goofiness that was effortless to love, he stretches into a darker, lonelier dimension of the same; something like Ghostbusters’ Pete Venkman sitting up alone at 2 o’clock in the morning. In this context the tired hound dog eyes lose their goofiness and gain a profoundly heavy, relatable, everyday sort of sadness that’s perfectly matched to the loss his character feels in the film. His world is as disheveled and out of control as Max’s and to some degree Rosemary’s, but if Max and Rosemary crashed into loss, Herman arrived on a long slow downhill, a much truer, more recognizable type of loss than the childhood loss of a mother or the death of an oceanographer husband. For the most part, we don’t get to watch that sense of childhood “rightness” disappear; we just sort of notice that it’s gone.

Regardless of how they arrived at this pain, both Max and Herman try to get their respective worlds reassembled through their pursuits of a relationship with Ms. Cross, played by Olivia Williams. And at least part of their attraction is rooted in the idea that the losses they’ve all suffered are the same. Yet while Max’s mother had died when he was a child, Rosemary has lost a husband. Max can still imagine some perfect and impossible world where everything is right again; Ms. Cross knows that it can’t be, and there’s a sort of mature resignation in that. While she’d been happy until her husband’s death, Herman may have never actually had his world that together. Herman and Max blur the lines between adult and childhood in their impossible pursuits of control, while Rosemary (a kindergarten teacher, of course) enforces the separation between the two while allowing them to exist side by side. Yes she’s in pain, but she’s come to understand it as a part of life; the world doesn’t get to be as perfect as we want it to, but it can still be pretty good (her husband’s being an oceanographer is a typical Anderson touch, as he’s frequently expressed his admiration for Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and made a full film tribute to him. But where in The Life Aquatic he revisits these childhood fantasies as an adult, in Rushmore they serve as the shining marker of a lost past).

This reconciliation of childhood “all together-ness” with the absurdity of real life is at the core of all Anderson’s work. Rushmore serves, effectively, as a construction piece, the building of a world on this tension, a world that he would inhabit for many of his following films (he wouldn’t address this conflict so directly again until The Grand Budapest Hotel). Despite the immaculate details of all these worlds, he always hints at the violence and messiness of the reality surrounding them. This is, I think, what he had in mind when he originally wanted to score Rushmore entirely with music by The Kinks, referring to their “madmen in blazers” vibe, and in his frequent visual/audio references to Peanuts (the profound melancholy wrapped in the wonderful imagination of a cartoon). My friend is fond of pointing out Anderson’s penchant for breaking characters noses; I prefer to notice that Felicity Fox always paints thunderstorms, and Richie Tenenbaum just paints poorly.

One complaint I’ve heard is that Wes Anderson’s films feel like giant inside jokes. If they are, then the joke is that while the universe is big and scary and never fits the way we want it to, for a little bit it doesn’t have to be. It’s not just being an adult and building a blanket fort with friends; it’s making eye contact with your best friend and knowing that you’re both thinking of that time you built a blanket fort as adults. During a thunderstorm. And for a little while everything felt the way it was supposed to. And missing that feeling.

UW CINEMATHEQUE ADDS LIFE ITSELF

TO SUMMER 2014 SCREENING CALENDAR

NEW DOC FROM HOOP DREAMS DIRECTOR COVERS LIFE AND TIMES OF ROGER EBERT

A late addition to the UW Cinematheque’s Summer 2014 screening calendar, Steve James’ new documentary Life Itself will have its only Madison-area theatrical screening on Saturday, August 9 at 3 p.m. at the Marquee Theater at Union South.

James, the director of Hoop Dreams, tells the life story of the most beloved and influential film critic of our times, Roger Ebert (1942-2013). Based on Ebert’s best-selling memoir, James’ funny, revealing, nostalgic and emotional bio-doc covers all of the major chapters in Ebert’s life: his childhood and university education in Urbana, IL; his Pulitzer Prize-winning career at the Chicago Sun-Times; his alcoholism; his marriage to Chaz Ebert; and his frequently tumultuous television partnership with fellow critic Gene Siskel.  For some of the most memorable sequences, Ebert allowed James to film him in the final months of his struggles with cancer, an illness that took his speaking voice, but not his ability to experience the joy of living.

“Life Itself is a work of deftness and delicacy, by turns a film about illness and death, about writing, about cinema and, finally, and very movingly a film about love.” (Geoffrey O’Brien, The New York Times)

Following its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Life Itself received another acclaimed screening at the Cannes Film Festival, and was released theatrically around the country earlier this month.

Life Itself and all other Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public. Please see below for a complete listing of programs and series descriptions. The Cinematheque’s website (http://cinema.wisc.edu) currently features further information on the rest of our Summer 2014 lineup.

Life Itself will screen August 9, 3 p.m. at

Marquee Theater at Union South

1308 W. Dayton Street

Madison, WI 53715

Admission free, seating limited. No admission 15 minutes after scheduled start times.

Our website: http://cinema.wisc.edu

See you at the Movies!

Jim Healy, Director of Programming

These Notes on Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up were written by Hamidreza Nassiri, a Teaching Assistant and Ph.D candidate in UW Madison's Communication Arts Department. The UW Cinematheque will present a 35mm print of Close-Up on Thursday, July 17, at 7 p.m. in the Chazen Museum of Art.

Abbas Kiarostami is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of the last two decades, one who represents “the highest level of artistry in cinema” according to Martin Scorsese. His initial studies were in painting at the University of Tehran, later embarking upon filmmaking in the 1970s and 80s at Kanoon, an institute in Tehran that played an important role in forming young filmmakers during this period. Kiarostami first became known to international audiences with the film Where Is the Friend’s Home? (1987), which won the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno film festival. In 1997 he won the Cannes Palme d’Or for Taste of Cherry (1997). Kiarostami has made films in so many different fields and styles that David Bordwell has acknowledged him as the filmmaker with the “widest octave range” he has ever known. The most well-known Iranian director in the world, Kiarostami has influenced such filmmakers as Michael Haneke, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Aki Kaurismaki, and Ramin Bahrani.

Close-Up followed Where Is the Friend’s Home? and Homework (1989). Prior to its production, Kiarostami was already in pre-production for Pocket Money when he read a piece of news about a man who impersonated the famous Iranian director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, in order to take advantage of a middle-class family. Kiarostami thus decided to postpone Pocket Money, and Kiarostami and his crew began shooting Close-Up shortly thereafter.

The news of this impersonator, Hossain Sabzian, was published in Soroush magazine and the film itself begins with a sequence where a Soroush reporter, Hassan Farazmand, accompanies a soldier and a taxi driver to arrest Sabzian. Following a non-chronological narrative structure, Close-Up also depicts Kiarostami’s efforts to make a film about him and Sabzian’s trial. Flashbacks of what happened to Sabzian and the Ahankhahs are interspersed between the courtroom scenes. Finally, the film ends with Sabzian’s release from prison, and his encounter with the real Makhmalbaf. This structure is a departure from the chronological order of the film’s first edit. As Godfrey Cheshire elucidates, the projectionist at a festival in Munich made a mistake and showed the reels in the wrong order. Kiarostami for his part liked this new version of the film, compelling him to re-edit the film to its current iteration.

Close-Up is a combination of documentary and fiction. It is based on a real story and all the people in the film play themselves as they are in the real world. Even the soldier who arrests Sabzian in the film is the same individual who did so in reality. This blending is to such an extent that it has made it difficult for audiences to realize which parts of the film are documentary filmmaking and which parts were re-enacted or constructed.

Close-Up is, more than anything, concerned with illusion and identity. Farazmand, the reporter, is another version of Sabzian in his emulation of Oriana Fallaci, the great Italian journalist. Later in the film, Mr. Ahankhah (the father of the family that was infiltrated by Sabzian) claims that he had realized Sabzian was not the real Makhmalbaf, while Farazmand writes in his magazine that it was he himself who resolved the case and the flashbacks confirm this.. Farazmand aspires to the persona of Fallaci in order to achieve the fame, respect, and perhaps even the money such figures earn. For his part, Sabzian also craves respect and money—though more the former than the latter. He confesses in court that he found pleasure in the Ahankhahs obeying him when he asked them to do something. An unemployed man burdened with financial issues, he further confesses to the judge that he can sometimes not even afford to buy anything for his family’s breakfast. In spite of his disparate social positioning to Farazmand, the film draws distinct thematic parallels between their impersonations of more successful figures.

In our reading of this piece, we can further extrapolate this depiction of impersonation to the illusions implicit in cinema itself. According to Alireza Zarrindast, the film’s director of photography, the flashback scenes where we see the story of Sabzian and the Ahankhahs were shot on 35mm film, while those in the courtroom were shot instead on 16mm. In the courtroom, the camera is also relatively restless in comparison to other scenes, zooming in and out several times. Such cinematography is reminiscent of news reportage and documentary filmmaking. Moreover, the performances, from Sabzian and the Ahankhahs to the judge are very realistic. However, this scene was in fact recreated, but with the intent of remaining faithful to the actual words recorded in the courtroom. Even, according to Cheshire, interruptions in sound in the final sequence were created in post-production and are not real. Close-Up as such questions not only documentary cinema, but cinema in general, and challenges viewers to distinguish the reality and its imitations.

This theme is achieved in a confluence of both style and narrative. Sabzian is an extreme cinephile, sacrificing his life and family for the cinema. He is enraptured not only by movies themselves, but also by the aura that surrounds them and their makers. It is for this reason that, of all the people he could impersonate, he chose a film director. Hence, Close-Up underlines its critique of the illusionistic quality of cinema and its peripheries. As Werner Herzog remarks, it is “the greatest documentary on filmmaking” he has ever seen.

Issues of alienation stemming from socio-economics are truly transnational, and the commentary on these issues in Close-Up has engendered its warm reception with audiences around the globe. In this critique, Kiarostami discusses the similarities between Sabzian and the Ahankhah family, pointing out how their similarities draw them to each other. The Ahankhahs are likewise challenged by socio-economic problems and unemployment as a result of both the revolution and the 8-year war with Iraq. The Ahankhahs belong to the middle class, but their sons, both educated in engineering, are either unemployed or working in unrelated fields.

We can track Close-Up’s influence on different films. An example could be Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell (2012), in which, like in Close-Up, different characters tell their own stories about a unique event and it is hard for an audience to find the truth. Polley’s recreation of real events and combining documentary and fiction in the way that it would be sometimes hard to distinguish them is another important thing inspired by Close-Up. Many filmmakers and critics around the world have admired and drawn upon Close-Up. In 2012, Sight and Sound chose it as one of their “Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time.”

Close-Up ends with a frozen image of Sabzian, regretful but smiling. His dream has come true; now his picture is on the billboards on the streets and festivals around the world. With this framing, I am compelled to say that, while criticizing the illusionistic quality of cinema, Close-Up is also thus an act of homage to it, an art that can make dreams and illusions into reality.

- Hamidreza Nassiri

These notes on Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan's 1972 documentary Marjoe, were written by Leo Rubinkowski Ph.D candidate, Film Studies, Communication Arts Department. Marjoe screens Friday, March 7 at 7 p.m. in the Cinematheque's regular venue, 4070 Vilas Hall

“No matter how you slice it, it still comes out as self-exploitation of a sort that strikes me as being exceedingly sleazy.”

Vincent Canby chose these words to describe Marjoe in a New York Times review of the 1972 documentary, but his acid criticism arguably applies just as well to Marjoe Gortner’s first brush with national exposure. At four years of age, the “World’s Youngest Minister” married Raymond Miller and Alma Brown in a ceremony apparently calculated to prove the adage “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Indeed, while clergy, legislators, and onlookers criticized the Long Beach wedding and its pint-sized presider (Life Magazine quoted one Catholic priest: “The child is as incapable of witnessing a contract as Charlie McCarthy.” ), the Gortner’s reaped just the rewards they had sought. The boy’s fame spread within Pentecostal communities, he toured the revival and church circuit as a star attraction, and his income supported the family for several years, until deceit, divorce, and disillusionment ended that part of Marjoe’s life.

The sensational details of our protagonist’s early years exist primarily as background, though. In a sense, it is the cherubic tyke greeting viewers with his excited “Howdy, neighbors! May the Lord bless you!” who justifies the documentary, but Marjoe’s ambitions exceed the biographical in at least two respects.

First, the filmmakers have clearly designed the film to comment on the Pentecostal community through which Gortner escorted them during production. Juxtapositions between images, as well as between sound and image, allow Kernochan and Smith to substantiate Marjoe’s cynicism in interviews. During the first extended sequence in which we see Gortner work a crowd, there is an abrupt and brief change of scene from the tent to an office, wherein we find Marjoe and his host dividing the night’s take. Later, during the 24-Hour Prayer Crusade sequence, a close-up of the lead preacher’s gaudy, glittering broach complements audio of her assurances that donations will not be wasted on foolishness. At every turn, Marjoe works to remind its audience that big religion means big business for traveling evangelists. Most often, it is Marjoe himself who makes the case, his status as a leading participant grounding his authority as a chief skeptic. Who but a professional could have provided the film crew with careful instructions for filming congregants speaking in tongues?

Significantly, however, Gortner’s expertise also complicates whatever commentary viewers find lurking within the film’s mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, and editing. For one thing, Gortner’s explicit criticisms of the business of religion are just that: criticisms of the business of religion. If he is frustrated with the close-mindedness of his flocks, his comments are more damning of their shepherds. At the same time, and still counting himself among the wolves in sheep’s clothing, Gortner is also on record rationalizing the business. In a conversation with Grace Lichtenstein for a Sunday issue of the New York Times in August 1972, he explained: “I justified it, in a sense. These people don’t go to any musical comedy. They spend no money on alcohol. It’s a sin to go to the movies. [Was this a source of comfort for Gortner?] Their only form of entertainment is these revivals. You figure you spend $3.50, $4 on a movie, well, that’s about what I got [per person in offerings]. And I gave them a show.”  By this logic, entertainers who entertain deserve compensation for their labor, even if they are frauds. Though Gortner apparently never wholly embraced this position, it remains a provocative one, especially in light of Marjoe’s second aim.

In the same review cited above, Vincent Canby observes that the film is “less a documentary about Marjoe’s final weeks on the Pentecostal church-and-tent circuit than a feature-length screen test.”  Indeed, at the time of Marjoe’s production, its namesake was looking for an opportunity to leave preaching for work as a musician or an actor, and this film was only the latest attempt at making the transition. He certainly had chops. Many reviewers echoed Lichtenstein’s claim that Gortner was “evangelism’s answer to Mick Jagger.”  The justification is obvious. Microphone to his lips, left hand on his hip, arm cocked back, and marching his svelte frame before the pulpit, Marjoe reproduces the lead singer’s mannerisms almost to a tee. (There’s a joke about Marjoe’s sympathy for the devil’s music hiding here…) To extend the comparison, Marjoe itself treats its subject as though he were a famous musician on tour, perhaps inspired by the example of vérité films like those of D.A. Pennebaker. Much of the 88-minute running time is organized around three tent meetings and a 24-Hour Prayer Crusade. In each case, footage and audio organize our attention around Marjoe, so that he is always either audible or visible. Viewers are also regularly treated to the sounds and images of Gortner’s audiences as they react to his presence and message with devotion and fervor. In between these gigs, Marjoe takes its audiences “behind the scenes.” In the last of these sequences, when Marjoe converts a dog, the two threads running throughout the film intertwine – Gortner may not believe in what he is doing, but his talent is so thoroughly honed that his audiences cannot tell the difference between performance and witness, if there is a practical difference at all.

Marjoe may have been exploitative, but it was also successful. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature of 1972, and Gortner quickly found his way to Hollywood. After peaking with his appearance in the disaster classic Earthquake (1974), Marjoe continued to work through the next two decades, taking primarily minor television roles or leading and supporting roles in minor films, such as the Star Wars knock-off Starcrash (1978) and the Evel Knievel vehicle Viva Knievel! (1977).

Lasting fame may never have been in the cards for Marjoe Gortner, but thanks to Marjoe, he remains something more than a footnote in history. “Glory gee to besus!”