Favorites Of 1993

[Chris Knipp]

THAT was a while ago, but it's nice that you didn't let it drift away. I could see more of Ken Loach, I'm sure. Glad I'm vindicated on Jarman's Wittgenstein. It has little to do with Wittgenstein, whose thought is worth attempting to understand. I don't know who Stanley Cavell is. I'm not clear on why film theory is worth studying. Art theory, for example, would not interest me. I know (I think) quite a lot about art, but in college a course in aesthetics taught by a well known philosophy professor was a disaster. I wasn't good at it. My paper didn't cut it with him. Modern philosophy is a tough nut to crack. It's fun, sometimes, though. I guess if you get a PdD in film to teach it, film theory is something you are going to be examined on.

I, Daniel Blake touched me. I saw it in Paris before it came here. But I could not bear to watch it six times. That shows an obsessive involvement. I once watched Patrice Chéreau's L'Homme blessé six times - in a theater, over several weeks. I identified in some profound way with parts of it, and found it hypnotic and haunting. I often rewatch all or parts of films I like the style of at home. When I had a screener of the droll Norwegian crime film In Order of Disappearance last year I kept sampling segments of it for days and days, till it expired. I did the same with that Polish film that's like a more fun and sensible Terence Malick film, All Those Sleepless Nights. I kept dipping into my screener of it - till I finally couldn't any more. It seemed magical and dreamy. The opposite of Ken Loach!