What I watched at metrograph last month

& art digestion

I want to share the films I watched at Metrograph last month, because it means a lot to me to see films in person as a shared experience between both friends and strangers. However, I write this post with the need to give a disclaimer that I don’t believe in the maximalism of art consumption. This may be tacit in a space like this, but the idea of consuming just to consume on most scales is off-putting, and while when it comes to art that is a mostly harmless practice, consuming just to say you have seen something can be subtly insidious. Some of the most important steps in processing art, and in this case, watching a movie, take place after seeing the piece. I like watching movies, because I like the stillness I get for those couple of hours, but some stillness after is just as significant. The best works of art don’t change your life in an instant, but in some slow, creeping way that demands healthy digestion. We can’t think if we don’t allow for stillness, and I am scared of a world where there is no space to think, to wonder, to break apart, and to put back together, to deconstruct and synthesize. If we can’t think for ourselves, how can we create for ourselves? 

I write this disclaimer, because I don’t believe in consuming as much art as possible just for the sake of it, because then the act of consumption wins above art. I do, however, write this piece, because I believe in the collective experience of seeing a film in the cinema. I believe in the singularity of that experience and the vitality that the collective effervescence of sitting in a room with a group of other people effuses. I want to resist being trapped inside with content being shoved down my throat, so I go outside to experience the world with other people. I don’t watch all of my films in the cinema, but I try to watch as much as I can. The city I live in is special in the sense that other people like to prioritize this too, so I have access to a vast amount of global cinema from across history at theaters like Metrograph. 

Admittedly, Metrograph is a space that walks this line between over-consumption and community access to art. It’s also one of my favorite places to hang out in New York City, not only because of their confoundingly vast program, but also because of the way it facilitates conversation and community. There is nothing quite like leaving the screening of a Metrograph film and standing around debriefing what you just watched, and maybe even spontaneously flowing for a drink upstairs or a cigarette outside. It allows me to live out my fantasy of going to a cine club in 1960s Paris or being back in Madrid where it’s so easy to make plans, because of the way the city facilitates them. Metrograph may be a business, but it also gives the space for the healthy digestion of art, which can come in two very important stages: the social and the individual. Interacting and sharing opinions with others is a very important step in processing art, and Metrograph gives the space for that even if you have shown up alone. Sometimes I stand in the lobby after a screening pretending like I am waiting for someone just to listen to other people. It’s a rare place in New York City where striking up a conversation with a stranger is natural and almost even makes sense. 

In this spirit,

Here is what I watched at Metrograph last month and Here are some of my thoughts:   

L’AVVENTURA (1960) BY MICHAELANGELO ANTONIONI   

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999) BY SOFIA COPPOLA 

GHOST WORLD (2001) BY TERRY ZWIGOFF

DIABOLIQUE (1955) BY HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT   

L’AVVENTURA (1960) BY MICHAELANGELO ANTONIONI   

This was my first Antonioni film, which was sort of unexpected, as I had always imagined it would be RED DESSERT after being shown a clip from it in an early film class in college. Antonioni is one of those directors that I have vowed to only watch in theaters, and when I saw L’AVVENTURA on the calendar at Metrograph I took advantage of the chance to see it. I was blown away by the first film of his trilogy on ‘modernity and its discontents’, perhaps more than I was expecting. He so poignantly deals with questions of modernity, youth, heartbreak, pleasure, morality, existentialism, bourgeois ennui, and my favorite, ghosts. The spaces in the background of the film are beautiful, but the characters cannot fill them; instead, the beautiful frames are filled by echoes and footsteps. The characters are so disconnected they hardly ever look each other in the eyes, and Antonioni always frames them facing apart, because even though they share the space physically they are isolated emotionally. These shots of disconnected faces like puzzle pieces remind me of what Bergman did some years later and is often recognized for in PERSONA. Despite all of the emptiness between characters, after Anna’s disappearance into the beautiful background of the film she haunts every frame that she is not in. I felt Claudia’s and Sandro’s disregard for anything but the whims of desire even more deeply, as I wondered if Anna would ever return. I was so lulled into it, I gasped for air during that final shot. This film is a very tough look for men, and I loved it. 

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999) BY SOFIA COPPOLA 

This is the kind of movie that has been really hard for me to admit that I have never seen over the last decade of my life, especially because of how the score has become such a big part of my life’s soundtrack. First and foremost seeing THE VIRGIN SUICIDES felt like the closest I have ever come to seeing Air “live”. Every time I heard a familiar tune it felt like seeing it in concert for the first time, I was so deeply moved. I know the rest of the audience felt the same, because we all clapped at the end. I like how that just happens sometimes, and I think in this case it was prompted by both the 35mm and the way Air sounds set to the big screen. It’s funny to me the way some groups of people together just work better than others, because starting that type of applause is vulnerable, and it demands a special kind of trust and alignment. There are definitely some real moments of brilliance in this meandering depiction of girlhood intertwined with suburban ennui, disillusionment with the media, and the repurposing of the male gaze. Coppola is one of the best nepo babies around—at the very least she has excellent taste. 

GHOST WORLD (2001) BY TERRY ZWIGOFF  

Like THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, Zwigoff’s GHOST WORLD is a film that I was scared that I was too late for and maybe it would have changed my life if I had watched it as a late teen. I was surprised at how deeply the film resonated with me. In other words, I still felt identified even as a 25-year-old to the point that it was actually hard to watch because of how close it hit to home. Zwigoff helped me conjure some awkward memories from when I was their age, but the hardest part was that I saw a little bit of myself now in the film. I was glad to be accompanied by roommate for this one so we could squirm and cringe together, and I could certainly feel that she was doing the same. Set under LA’s suffocating sunlight and what feels like endless empty sidewalks, GHOST WORLD starts off as a series of gags between best friends, Rebecca and Enid, but it quickly descends into a nightmare as they are forced to confront conformity and the demands of our world. They try to resist it, but you can only resist for so long without feeling alone, and Rebecaa is seduced by the idea of a normal life. Enid, on the other hand, would rather disappear than sell out, and she chooses to run away into the ghost world. Enid is insufferable: her outfits are awful, she’s mean-spirited, and clearly insecure, yet I understood it when she hopped on the mysterious bus. I understand what it’s like to be torn between worlds. It was a much darker viewing than I was expecting.  

DIABOLIQUE (1955) BY HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT   

I don’t want to say too much, because I have been warned not to (I also just don’t want to), but this film made me feel like an absolute fool. If you have seen it, that sentence will make a lot more sense. I don’t remember the last time I felt so immersed in a plot; it seems like there may have been some sort of Lacanian identification at play, because by the end after having seen Nicole’s grief slowly manifest across her face throughout the film, which is both a testament to Vera Clouzot’s acting and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s careful direction, I felt totally identified with her descent into madness. Close ups of her face reveal a woman making herself sick through guilt, and I was scratching at my seat, waiting for some sense of relief. Clouzot is a master of suspense and illusion—it’s easy to feel that cinema can really be like magic after watching something like this.  

Sometimes when you watch movies as often as I do you wonder why. Then I am reminded that it’s both about learning and connecting with others.