Eddie Yang wrote:
All the Vermeers in New York (1990), Jon Jost 8.5 First Jon Jost film I have witnessed really stunned me, since it was so original no matter how simple the film looked from the outset. Jost presents his story; well, it has no apparent narrative center, but what Jost tries to capture is mood and place, and this is what he is succeeded so gracefully. A bit of a plot synopsis: "All the Vermeers in New York" is about three people, two girl roommates, and a stockbroker who falls for one of them. But the film is does not center itself on this scenario, rather it shifts away to moments that are inconsequential to the story. Scenes, about people alienated in either their own apartment room, the place where they work at, or at an art gallery, that are hauntingly beautiful and seductive. Circling around and away from the storyline, Jost does not capture either character development or any psychological whatnot, but he gets the feeling. That feeling of living in a bustling metropolis and yet feeling as isolated as you can be - just check out the scene where the stockbroker meets up with the two roommates at a restaurant, and the two roommates leave hastily due to the fact that the stockbroker is not an interesting man, and then Jost does not show his reaction shot but rather shoots him from the back of the head as he watches the two girls leave the restaurant, then the camera holds and suddenly we can actually feel his sheer disappointment. Through an assemblage of wondrous Steadicam shots, amazing improvised acting, and a real cool score, the film is a like a jazz piece, like the whole story is improvised and not one scene can say just a simple statement but a whole variety of things. That seductive scene when the stockbroker meets the French roommate is a masterpiece of mis-en-scene: we see the girl looking at the Vermeer painting with much concentration, cut back to the stockbroker who seems to be interestedly looking at another painting, then Jost cuts to master shot to show that the stockbroker was actually looking at the French girl. I was, though, very taken aback by the ending which was like the film took a huge spill towards melodrama, and the last narration added nothing to what was already a near masterpiece. But Jost's eye for image and sound to create feeling, and a narrative that relies on non-narrative elements, makes "All the Vermeers in New York" a pretty radical, and even seductive, film to see.
Frameup (1993), Jon Jost 6 One of the most stylish exercises I have seen in a long time albeit with some of the most reviling and disgusting content that ever was in a love story. I have to praise Jost's style though: how he turns this tale of doomed lovers into bits and pieces, making into twelve fragments once again making non-narrative aspects the filling for a narrative, by using a whole lot of graphics and a mish-mash of playful tricks ranging from super-imposition, split screens, long takes, vistas, title cards, over saturation of film, and an odd utilization of voice over. All the thingamajigs in cinema are roughly applied here in some really radical ways. And to see how Jost experiments with these things is really the main joy in watching this film. Yet, a film with some of the most atrocious acting ever and spoken dialogue always being pornographic, this is surely one nasty film. Yes, the acting was intentional, but why? I do not sense any good reason why Jon Jost would make his two leads act like petrified zombies - just to hear both of them speak, the man talking about "atomic pussy" or the girl comparing her tits to others, becomes monotonous and in moments I just did not want to listen to them anymore. "Frameup" could be considered in this equation: rad style + disgusting content = mediocre film. If Jost had treated his characters with more respect and actually lent some humanity in them, this film would actually be going somewhere instead of wavering all the way down to nothingness.
he sure does, a true gentleman.
