I ran across this 18-minute film called Plastic Bag that Ramin Bahrani directed, wrote, and edited. Despite what you might expect from the title of the 2009 film, the movie is not about the recent environmental debate about plastic bags. Instead, it is about what it means to be human.
The gravity of the film’s themes is amplified by the narration of famous director Werner Herzog. The addition of Herzog’s voice to anything makes it sound important.
Open Culture reports that Plastic Bag was one of several films “released in the Internet Television Service’s Futurestates film series exploring ‘what life might look like in an America of the future.'”
When he was asked to do the narration, Herzog recognized that the short film is about something more than a piece of plastic or arguments about plastic bags. As he explained to The Guardian, “the movie’s about something else, something more … it’s about a journey.”
The film reminds me of Steven Spielberg’s AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001). Plastic Bag takes something non-human, and it discovers something human in the act of taking a journey to find meaning.
You may find the existential movie funny. Or you may find it strange. Or you may find it touching. But Plastic Bag is worth a few minutes of your time. Check it out.
What do you think of Plastic Bag? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Seven years after the release of the excellent film Sideways director Alexander Payne released his follow-up film, The Descendants. I hear Oscar buzzing. . . .
Slate reconsidered Blue Velvet 25 years after the film’s release.
For Veterans Day, the Los Angeles Times chose the best war films from American cinema for each war.
The “Atlas Shrugged, Part 1″ producer is planning Part 2 despite the poor box office for the first movie.
Television Piers Morgan quit “America’s Got Talent” to focus on another talent show: the 2012 presidential election. In related news, Howard Stern might join “America’s Got Talent.”
The producer of next year’s Oscar telecast, Brett Ratner, stepped down after making a stupid gay slur. After Ratner’s announcement, the Oscar host, Eddie Murphy, announced he would no longer host the show, apparently because he had only agreed to do the show because he had worked with Ratner on Tower Heist. Vegas just announced that the payout on bets for “Eddie Murphy wins an Oscar in the next decade” went up 1000%.
Regis Philbin’s last week on Live! with Regis and Kelly will include guests Kathie Lee Gifford, David Letterman and Tony Bennett.
13-year-old “X Factor” singer Rachel Crow started out life in a crack house before she was adopted. Although I had been favoring Josh Krajcik to win, Crow’s performance this week was probably the best of the group.
Other News ‘Family Circus’ creator Bil Keane died at age 89.
Slate had an interesting discussion of “The New Classics,” enduring books, films, ideas, etc. since 2000.
“This is Nixon unplugged“is how Historian Stanley Kutler described new recordings of the former president available online for the first time, including Nixon’s grand jury testimony.
In honor of Joe Frazier, who passed away, Life magazine presented a slideshow of never-seen photos from “The Fight of the Century” of Ali vs. Frazier in 1971
Two new biographies about Charles Dickens are out. In related news, I have had a two-volume Dickens biography on my shelf for more than a decade that I have yet to read. Now, I do not know where to start. Maybe I will watch a movie. . .
What was your favorite pop culture story this week? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The two German-language films in this edition of “Movies You Might Have Missed” each feature an ex-con and a prostitute trying to escape to a better life while also touching on universal existential themes. The stories are very different, but both movies are outstanding.
The Austrian film, Revanche(2008) may not be full of as much action as one might expect from the name, which is French for “revenge,” but it will keep you glued to the screen. The movie is a meditation on themes often seen in film noir movies of loss, connections among humans, revenge, and redemption. Ex-con Alex, played by Johannes Krisch, comes up with a plan so he and his prostitute girlfriend Tamara, played by Irina Potapenko, may escape to better lives. But some bad luck leaves Alex and a police officer fighting their own demons as they struggle to continue living in the face of tragedy.
Revanche shows the existential struggles of every-day life — chores like chopping wood and going to the grocery story — while raising questions about who we can blame for our life’s misfortunes. The Austrian film, directed by Götz Spielmann, is in German with subtitles and was nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It also is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. DVDTown has a longer review.
I recently watched Werner Herzog’s Stroszek (1977), about an ex-con, a prostitute, and an elderly man who leave their troubles in Germany to make a new life in Wisconsin. Well, that is the nutshell description but it does not capture this poetic existential tale of human existence. Even Herzog notes in the commentary that he does not fully understand the symbolism of a scene with a dancing chicken, but he claims it may be the best segment he has ever filmed. And that is from the guy who filmed the ending of Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) with the monkeys.
Will you be blown away by Stroszek? Maybe not, but what I loved about the movie was that the next day after watching the movie, I could not stop thinking about it. Rotten Tomatoes gives it an amazing 100% rating from critics (and 92% audience rating). If you want to read more about the film, including some of the background behind the film and Bruno S. (who played Stroszek), check out Roger Ebert’s review. The official trailer tells too much of the story in a 1970s kind of way, so instead I am including a fan’s montage of scenes from the movie with Radiohead’s “No Suprises.”
{Missed Movies is our continuing series on good films you might have missed because they did not receive the recognition they deserved when released.}
