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December 29, 2009
The White Dove
For the last several years my wife (and sometimes son) and I have been on an epic, joint art movie tear, usually taking in two to four a week .I've written a lot about them on other lists but not much if anything here------maybe there's an idea for a new group? Anyway, tonight i saw one of the most perfectly paced and flawless (not to mention) beautiful art movies i've ever seen, Holubice (The White Dove), which is a 1960 Czech movie by the amazingly underappreciated Frantisek Vlacil .
Incredible semi-linear, yet simple story, told with an uncanny attention to shear cinematic beauty and a persistent homage to the surreal imagery of everyday things. I've seen several Vlacil' movies now, and they've all been great, but this one really is something-----imagine all the hyper-melodramatics of say The Cranes are Flying, or The Shop on Main Street (or even something like To Kill a Mockingbird) sans the obviousness of that melodrama mixed with an photographer/artist's eye for detail a la Antonioni in La Notte and a ultra-humanistic black and white cinematographic scope on par with Nykvist's work on Through a Glass Darkly all mixed with a certain underlying dread a la Berman's Hour of the Wolf, yet all in the service of an obvious, but not too obvious ,message that is ultimately in some ways uplifting .
whew….okay that's a lot to live up to, but this is really great stuff, so check it if you can
Originally from Discussion Forum - NetNewMusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Dec 29, 2009 at 12:26 PM