Dagmar Versus 1001 Movies: January 2022

Introduction

1001 movies you must see before you die. Must I? Let's see.

My name is Dagmar and I am from Czech Republic. I have a bachelor's degree in screenwriting. I study movies. I watch movies. I write about movies. I kind of mention movies a lot. I even cross stitch things I like in movies. My views on cinema could be described as peculiar. My views on the "1001 movies" list as complicated. It happens a lot that I get the feeling it wasn't that necessary to see some particular movies. Sometimes I'm really grateful I saw them. And there are also times when I don't watch any new movies for six months straight. And they keep adding new movies every damn year so I might have to never die to watch them all.

What's the score right now?

606/1245 - That's 639 left to see.

I started this experiment on July 3rd 2009 and the latest update was made on April 19th 2023.

You can find the full list here.

Monday, 24 January 2022

La Vie en rose (2007)

La Môme
France/United Kingdom/Czechia
directed by: Olivier Dahan
written by: Isabelle Sobelman, Olivier Dahan
starring: Marion Cotillard, Sylvie Testud, Emmanuelle Seigner
commented on 24th January, 2022

I prefer when biopics examine the art rather than the artist's lives themselves. (Which sadly is not the case here.) At least we got the comparison between the composer demonstrating it and the interpret than taking it and making it her own.

After some deliberation I am ready to say that the time jumps, which I've seen people to criticize as disrupting their viewing experience, made the film better in my eyes. It was a way to make an "ordinary" (predictable? I swear to god all life stories of great singers are the same) story stuctured in some artistic way and give it a glamorous aura of mystery.

When the ending made me cry, it was because of the music itself shaping it and filling it, not because of the life that preceded it.

Wednesday, 19 January 2022

The Beautiful Troublemaker (1991)

La Belle noiseuse
France/Switzerland
directed by: Jacques Rivette
written by: Jacques Rivette, Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent + Honoré de Balzac (story)
starring: Michel Piccoli, Emmanuelle Béart, Jane Birkin
seen on 19th January, 2022

When I watched The Troublemaker for the first time (14. 5. 2011), I thought I either didn't like it or didn't understand it. Today I know that I was bothered by the trope of a tortured artist (or worse, one who tortures others) to have someting to make art about. I will probably need to revisit the film in a decace or so again to figure out my stance on it. But I am still not intrigued enough to want to see the painting.