Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 04/05/25

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, April 5, 2025

Queer (Luca Guadagnino, 2024)

Daniel Craig in Queer

Cast: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, Henrique Zaga, Drew Droege, Andra Ursuta. Screenplay: Justin Kuritzkes, based on a novella by William S. Burroughs. Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. Production design: Stefano Baisi. Film editing: Marco Sosta. Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross.

Daniel Craig's terrific performance as the junkie exile William Lee in Luca Guadagnino's Queer makes me wish that Craig had been freed from Bondage much earlier. Whether it's enough for me to recommend the movie as anything more than an acting showcase for Craig (and for Lesley Manville in a wonderful supporting turn) is another question. It feels a little slackly paced to me, and the character of Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), who becomes a partner in Lee's sexual and pharmacological obsessions, remains something of a blur. Director Luca Guadagnino also persists in the "pan to the window" discretion in filming same-sex coupling that for me marred his Call Me by Your Name (2017), although he's a bit bolder about it this time. On the whole, though, Queer seems to me a solid attempt at capturing William S. Burroughs's dark tragicomic tone and vision.