Author: Doug Cummings

Given the pervasiveness of prequels, it’s not so unusual that French director Philippe Ramos’ second feature imagines the early life of Moby Dick‘s dark, enigmatic Captain Ahab. (Melville provides scant backstory himself, but alludes to Ahab’s orphaned childhood and late marriage.) But Captain Ahab (which won Best Director and a FIPRESCI award at Locarno last year) is far from the typical plot-in-reverse exploitation of popular narrative; conceived as a tribute to mid-19th century Americana (particularly Romanticism and Mark Twain), it’s a personal meditation on childhood, nature, and fate. Like the book, Ramos presents his protagonist through the eyes of …

I’ve had Bazin on the brain lately, partly in conjunction with spending last week discussing the form and function of criticism as well as reading the Winter 2007 issue of Film International dedicated to Bazin. It’s a provocative magazine (expect a blog on it soon), such as when guest editor Jeffrey Crouse highlights Bazin’s “striking assertion, a dazzlement” traced through the work of Flaherty, Renoir, Vigo, Chaplin, and the neorealists: “In my opinion,” Bazin wrote, “the cinema more than any other art is particularly bound up in love.” This wasn’t rhetorical flare or mere sentiment, but a sustained argument about …