958 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

[black&huge]

what is the story behind Le Samourai with not getting a new master?

[tenia]

what is the story behind Le Samourai with not getting a new master?

I suspect that whoever holds the material rights estimated the financial offer made to them wasn't interesting enough so they didn't give access to them. I wouldn't be surprised if the reality of this was a slight variant : a "take it or leave it" stance from Pathé, who only offered Criterion their new awful restoration and nothing else.
With no access to the material, it was either using the awful Pathé restoration or re-using the older Criterion master.

[movielocke]

On the other hand, the hold up could be mungiu wanting to tinker with the film’s edit.

On the latest episode of criterion now, David blakeslee implied (from what he learned at his visit to criterion’s office) that mungiu was never happy with the “work in progress” he showed at Cannes, but that after the film won, his producers nixed the idea of further editing and insisted on releasing it as is.

So the upshot is that we may be waiting on a directors cut of the film, the downside is that could take a while and reviving digital non linear editing is never a reliable process (presuming the unused film material even still exists and wasn’t recycled)

[Close The Door, Raymond]

Artificial Eye release date: 23 April 2018

With Special Features:
Interviews with Director Cristian Mungiu
Interview with Actress Anamaria Marinca
Interview with Producer Oleg Mutu
The Romanian Tour Featurette
Alternate & deleted scenes

Does this mean a Criterion release will be soon?

[domino harvey]

This isn't new, AE released it in their Cannes Blu-ray box already

[swo17]

Jan 22

[domino harvey]

2.35:1

I knew they'd do this, glad I didn't get rid of the IFC DVD

[movielocke]

2.35:1

I knew they'd do this, glad I didn't get rid of the IFC DVD

Huh?

[mfunk9786]

That was the theatrical aspect ratio, and the release was supervised and approved by Mungiu.

Anyway, this is an excellent film and I'm looking forward to revisiting it (which feels a little odd to say)

[domino harvey]

There are pages of discussion in this thread and elsewhere linked in this thread about this, it's not as meaningless as you're trying to make it sound

[swo17]

2.35:1 is technically the correct AR though some like domino feel it looks better opened up to 1.85:1, which is why he just announced on the Blu-ray.com forums that he is canceling his preorder and sticking with the DVD

[mfunk9786]

I'll err on the side of the director. I think No Country for Old Men's open matte looks better too, but if the director has a personal preference I think someone like Criterion should be following it, not ignoring it.

Sounds like the Artificial Eye was released in 1.85:1 if you really want to upgrade, though.

[domino harvey]

2.35:1 is technically the correct AR though some like domino feel it looks better opened up to 1.85:1, which is why he just announced on the Blu-ray.com forums that he is canceling his preorder and sticking with the DVD

Haha touché

[FrauBlucher]

Beaver

[Aunt Peg]

I wish that Beaver had reviewed the Artificial Eye Blu Ray as well. Those 1.85.1 DVD caps look better than the 2.35:1 ones from the Criterion in terms of what is in the frame. I had cancelled my AE and was going to purchase the Criterion but now I don't know what to do. Of course the Criterion extras are very good but I have stacks of films in my collection that I have never gotten around to watching the extras so thats rarely a selling point for me nowadays.

[cdnchris]

Interestingly all of the new supplements were recorded in 2016. So they weren't at all in a hurry on this one.

[FrauBlucher]

Bluray.com

[ianthemovie]

I just watched the footage from the Cannes press conference and was very surprised to hear Mungiu make several comments to the effect that he wanted audiences to come away from the film questioning the moral implications of abortion. He says that the close-up of the aborted fetus was meant to remind audiences that a fetus is "a life" as opposed to "a mass of cells" (words to that effect); that in his opinion the up-tick in abortions after their legalization in Romania was merely an act of political protest; and that one of the negative impacts of communism in Romania was a de-emphasis on religious education, which led to a moral looseness about abortion. (!) I don't even know where to begin with all of this, beyond being struck by how wrong an artist can be about his own work...4 Months certainly is a morally complex film but it seems best interpreted as a film about the limiting of individual freedoms under communism, specifically the policing of women's bodies, and lends itself much more readily to a "pro-choice" reading rather than one in which we're meant to cast judgment on the women or question their decision to get the abortion in the first place. If Mungiu was trying to get across some sort of pro-life message in this film I'd say he failed spectacularly, at least with most critics and audiences in the West, since I've never once heard anyone discuss this film on those terms...

[knives]

Perhaps because most audiences of the film are pro-choice and are bringing their own biases to the film?

[MichaelB]

Perhaps because most audiences of the film are pro-life and are bringing their own biases to the film?

What are you basing this claim on? I’d be very very surprised if this was true of the film’s British audiences.

[knives]

I mispoke, meant to write pro-choice there.

[ianthemovie]

Perhaps because most audiences of the film are pro-choice and are bringing their own biases to the film?

You may be right, but I have a hard time even imagining what a convincing pro-life reading of this film would look like. I'd be curious to hear one.

[swo17]

I can see Mungiu's reasoning at least for that one scene. And then the rest of the movie is just, like, a fun thriller?

[knives]

Perhaps because most audiences of the film are pro-choice and are bringing their own biases to the film?

You may be right, but I have a hard time even imagining what a convincing pro-life reading of this film would look like. I'd be curious to hear one.

It sounds like he's doing it right there to an extent. This reminds me of those Paul Morrissey films where his goal was a critique against certain low class individuals, but he was willing to imbue them with so much humanity that the films came across quite different from that intention. It's pretty easy to see this film as a critique of communism, I doubt there will be argument there, that uses the struggle of unwanted pregnancy as a spine. The film happens to come across as pro-choice because it is honest about those struggles and humanity, but with his comments in mind it is easy to see the intended critique being one which the reduction in morality by the social system would lead to a woman have sex when she was not ready to have kids and then to find abortion as the most reasonable option out of that problem. In short the film could serve a critique for a society which does not help unwed mothers to enjoy the idea of pregnancy.

[ianthemovie]

The film happens to come across as pro-choice because it is honest about those struggles and humanity, but with his comments in mind it is easy to see the intended critique being one which the reduction in morality by the social system would lead to a woman have sex when she was not ready to have kids and then to find abortion as the most reasonable option out of that problem. In short the film could serve a critique for a society which does not help unwed mothers to enjoy the idea of pregnancy.

Possibly, yes, though if his intended goal was to give a society-wide portrait of degraded morality (in which the women are implicated along with everyone else) the film really fails, I think, because everything about the way it's structured, framed, etc. makes it virtually impossible not to sympathize and identify with the plight of Gabita and Otilia. (How Gabita got pregnant and her decision to terminate the pregnancy are, significantly, never discussed.) If there is any blame to be leveled at them it seems nearly insignificant by comparison to the monumental oppression they're shown to face. While the film certainly encourages us to confront abortion in a visceral way (ex. the close-up of the fetus) I just can't imagine someone coming away putting the blame on the women for seeking it out in the first place.

It's funny that you bring up Morrissey because he's another example of a filmmaker whose work seems to me successful in spite of his proposed aims. I remember hearing him speak about Flesh--a movie I enjoy very much--as a sober, serious Marxist critique about the commodification of the body under capitalism and thinking "that's what you were trying to get across?"