Notes From The Program Director | Week of May 31st, 2024

As we reach the midway point of the year, critics, programmers, and movie lovers of all kinds begin to consider which films should be included on “Best of 2024” lists. A handful of titles stand out above the others for me as films that are masterful in both form and content and as films that can only be characterized as having that rather mysterious but transcendent “elan of the soul” Andrew Sarris described in his famous essay “Notes on the Auteur Theory.” Among these films for me are Victor Erice’s Close Your Eyes, India Donaldson’s Good One (two films I hope to bring to the Pickford soon), and Evil Does Not Exist. 

Evil Does Not Exist is extraordinary. But not in that showy, look-at-me kind of way. It’s more like that kind of film that is rather straightforward on the surface, but from almost the first moments, quietly creeps under one’s skin, and by the end of the film, you’re so thoroughly immersed, it’s like being under a magic spell. It’s a spell that has lingered with me for months. 

Set in a tiny, mountainous town just outside of Tokyo, the story follows the dilemma of the townspeople when they find that a talent agency is moving forward with plans to build a “glamping” site in their community, a site that promises city folk an “escape” into the wilderness but threatens the simple, peaceful existence--as well as the only water supply--of those who actually live there.

Hamaguchi adheres in the film to such an uncompromising kind of realism that the daily patterns and stripped-down subsistence-living of the villagers take on a vividly detailed authenticity. There is one sequence, for example, where our main character (marvelously played by the filmmaker Omika Hitoshi in his first acting role) chops firewood: a sequence filmed entirely in one long shot--each piece of wood neatly sliced down the center on the first seemingly effortless chop--and a sequence that underscores the character’s quietly powerful competence and his comfort in the natural world. 

The strict realism of this sequence and others like it, however, is perhaps ironically also a tool Hamaguchi uses to weave the film’s irresistible and uneasy magic. For there is a sense that the film is something of a fable, too: there is a beautiful but mysterious forest, a woodsman, a little girl, woodland animals, and an outside evil that threatens them all. Each of these elements has a fundamental connection with reality -- this is undeniably the real world, where people expertly chop wood to survive -- but each of these elements, too, might be part of a fairy tale. And those of us who grew up on fairy tales, particularly Grimm’s fairy tales, know these tales often contain sudden, matter-of-fact, brutal violence. And it is this foreboding sense--along with Ishibashi Eiko’s incredible music (which formed the actual origin of the film)--that underscores the strict and even mundane reality of the film at every moment until the film reaches its ending, where, like it did for me, it just might knock viewers off their feet.   

There is really nothing else quite like it this year, and it won’t stay on our screens for long. Don’t miss this chance to see it. 

I’m also thrilled to say this week marks the first film in our Summer Camp! Pride Series: Jennifer’s Body. 

Summer Camp! has been a labor of love from start to finish, created in a collaboration with PFC managers and staff and with our series speakers, Greg Youmans and Chris E. Vargas, who, in years past, helmed the wonderful Queens’ Vernacular series, which played at the Pickford. We could not be more delighted to have Greg and Chris back this June, and you can read more about their biographies and extensive accomplishments on our Pride series page.   

Greg will be introducing our first two films in the series -- Jennifer’s Body and All About Eve -- and Chris will be introducing the final films -- the double feature of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Mommie Dearest and Showgirls -- and they’ve invited us into our series in this way: 

“Welcome to Summer Camp!  Unfortunately, this camp isn’t easy to locate, but those who know will know how to find it. “Camp” is an exaggerated, over-the-top, often-in-bad-taste style that’s hard to define. According to Susan Sontag in her seminal 1964 essay “Notes On ‘Camp,’” it’s a particular mode of aesthetic appreciation that celebrates the artificial, the frivolous, and the extravagant. Those of us who are queer or otherwise on the margins, with our fine-tuned skills at observing mainstream culture, are particularly adept at knowing it when we see it. 

“As Sontag points out, camp originated as a sensibility among “homosexuals,” which is itself such a wonderfully dated and campy term. Along with being a “private code” and “badge of identity” for sexual outsiders, camp is also genderqueer, or as Sontag put it, “androgynous.” Camp puts everything in ironic quotation marks, especially “femininity.” It loves a double entendre. It’s theatrical, flamboyant, and rococo: camp is a Tiffany lamp. It’s also sentimental about the past and melodramatic. Camp is failed seriousness. Camp is “too much.” Camp is best when it’s naive, because camp that tries to be camp isn’t satisfying. Unless of course it’s all-in and fully committed, but nothing in between! Camp is “instant character”: it’s the actor who can never disappear into a role but will always remain irrepressibly themself. Camp is Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Camp is Gina Gershon and Megan Fox.

“Ultimately, camp is not judgmental: it wants to laugh at the world and have a good time. So grab a tree branch and some marshmallows and join us, fellow camper, as we bask in the glow of five magnificent films, all with fabulous scripts and scenery-chewing performances, spanning the history of camp cinema from 1950 to 2009.”

Join us at the campfire, then, for this first of five glowing films, Jennifer’s Body, on Thursday at 7:45 pm.

See you at the movies, friends! 

Melissa