[MY NAME IS IVAN screens Saturday September 15th at 5:15 pm and Sunday September 16th at 8:20 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
People who stumble across my writing on this blog have had
two reactions to me: 1: “Charles Cassady? You’re still alive?” And 2: “You don’t
like Andrei Tarkovsky? What are you, un-American?” Okay, sorry, on both counts.
In the latter case, much as there’s the mandate to be
world-cinema-alt/foreign-University-Circle-pseudo-intellectual dressed-all-in-black pretentious,
I just can’t get enthused about the late Russian filmmaker (1932-1986) and his
extraordinarily long-winded philosophical musings and endless camera takes. Don’t
get me wrong, some of his material I rather enjoyed (THE MIRROR, especially),
but most of the time I feel like the Communist Party officials who must have
watched his SOLARIS readied for the international film-festival circuit in 1972
and said to each other, “We’re sending THIS as the Proletarian’s response up
against decadent Kubrick’s 2001 – A SPACE ODYSSEY? Comrades, our system is
doomed. Ronald Reagan could beat us!”
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
