Movies: February 2008 Archives

Jacques Rivette's latest, a bitterly romantic adaptation of Honoré de Balzac, is exquisitely realized, even by Rivette standards. Costume design, art direction and cinematography all work together in concert: early scenes in which the titular Duchess is a woman of great mystery and allure are lit like Caravaggio paintings; a later passage, which takes place after we see how she's been wrecked on the inside — she stands on a Parisian street in buttoned-up clothing, wearing a tall hat and a lost, wistful expression on her face as autumn leaves swirl around her feet — has the look of classic Hollywood melodrama, or even the arch magic of Pressburger-Powell. (I admit, Black Narcissus was never too far from my mind.)

After too many years away from the camera, George Romero, in his advanced years, is enjoying a vigorous second wind. It's Romero, of course, who defined the contemporary zombie movie (even though he still insists that he wasn't aware, at the time, that his I Am Legend-inspired Night of the Living Dead had anything to do with zombies), and as zombie movies have grown ever more commercial and crass, it's Romero's legacy — exemplified in the great Dawn of the Dead and culminating in 1985's Day of the Dead — that they've been systematically departing from. Romero proved he still had some stuff with Land of the Dead, in 2005, which dramatized issues of class in the U.S. against a backdrop that was simultaneous heavily suggestive of the Iraq War. It was the biggest budget he had ever worked with, and to some degree the new, ultra-low-budget Diary of the Dead represents his retreat from Hollywood sensibilities.