Bill Cunningham New York

Brilliant writer and great guy Les Phillips turned me on to Bill Cunningham New York, a film I otherwise wouldn't have seen, with this review.  I loved it, and I think you deserve a chance to have him talk you into seeing, it too.  With Les's permission, here's his review.

BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK (2011, directed by Richard Press).  The legendary photographer and dancer Editta Sherman, well into her nineties but quite frisky and saucy, looks straight at the camera:  "You want me to say something about Bill?"  There are many things to say about Bill, who is one of the most celebrated fashion photographers in the world.  Bill Cunningham goes to all the New York fashion shows and takes pictures; he goes to all the most important charity events in New York and takes pictures; but, very especially, he takes pictures of random women on the street.  I should not say "random" women; Bill prowls Manhattan looking for well dressed women, fashionable women in all modes of fashion, sometimes leaping off his bicycle and into a broken run, through Fifth Avenue traffic, to capture that perfect woman in her perfect clothes. 

Bill Cunningham is 82 years old, and his photographs have appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES forever and ever.  He is trim and energetic, and he has the face of a slightly mischievous 12-year-old -- full of joy verging on ecstasy, pure delight at his work, which he does all day and all evening. all the time.  For years he has traveled to Paris to photograph the new collections.  He says that he goes to Paris "to re-educate the eye." Bill is a Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres!  He was the only member of the working press invited to Brooke Astor's 100th birthday party.  We see Anna Wintour, the real one, describing him as one of the most important people in the entire fashion industry.  Certainly he must be the least pretentious person in the fashion industry.  Until recently, he lived in a one-room studio over Carnegie Hall, no kitchen, no room to turn around, bathroom in the hallway.  ("What would I do with a bathroom or a kitchen?  I've never eaten in in my whole life!  More rooms to clean!").  His residence is crammed with filing cabinets and more filing cabinets; they contain the negatives of every photograph he has ever taken.  Cunningham has no wardrobe of his own to speak of, and no time for restaurant meals, in New York or Paris either; that would be time not spent working.  He loves stylish and beautiful people because they are stylish and beautiful, but is entirely unimpressed with celebrity itself; he passed up opportunities to photograph Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford because "they were not stylish."  He loves the philanthropist Mercedes Bass because he thinks she's kind, and because "in that dress, she looks like a John Singer Sargent portrait."  So Bill photographs her, and, indeed, when he's done, she sure does look like a John Singer Sargent portrait. 

Back to Editta Sherman, who lived down the hall from Cunningham for 40 years, in her own Carnegie Hall studio.  "Some people say I'm a legend," says Sherman.  "Other people say I'm a fixture.  I'm both!"  She talks about Warhol and Leonard Bernstein and the many other famous people she's photographed and worked with.  She worries about Bill.  What does she know about Bill Cunningham's personal life?  "Nothing!"   Bill himself reveals only that he's had no romantic relationships because he's been busy working, and casually brushes away questions about his sexuality.  When asked about his religious beliefs, he becomes uncommonly silent and closed, looks at the table, and mutters something about how Catholicism has always been of deep importance. Bill Cunningham goes to Mass every Sunday morning. 

Bill Cunningham's bicycle is a Schwinn Classic.  It's his 29th Schwinn Classic bicycle; the other 28 were stolen.  He dropped out of Harvard.  He used to design shoes.  He runs through city traffic like a war photographer.  Bill may have met more fabulously rich people than anyone living; he says that "money is the cheapest thing, the least important thing; freedom is what's expensive."  Go see this marvelous film.

Synecdoche, New York

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK made me want to jump off a cliff. A 50-footer, with a sheer face standing against the swell of a royal blue sea. It made me want to stand on the precipice, feeling the sun on my face and the wind on my body. It made me want to leap forward, chest out, arms back, and feet together, and fall a perfect arc through the air before clasping my hands above my head, tucking my chin into my chest, and entering the ocean like a knife into butter. It made me want to relish the sharp contrast of warm air to cold water, revel in the sharp forces of momentum and buoyancy when I arch my back to change my body’s direction and stroke the two short meters back to the surface. It made me want to live, to revel in being alive, to bask in the joy of simple existence. And it did it because SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK doesn’t understand what it means to be alive. Not at all.

This film is so consumed with death, so focused on the existential dilemma, that it forgets what makes life valuable in the first place. Its protagonist ignores his family in favor of obituaries, which he reads not as celebrations of lives but as harbingers of doom. When his family chooses to ignore him, he wallows in self-pity. He feels stunted and frustrated with his career putting on the theatrical Standards for the people of Schenectady. When given the freedom create his own original work, he puts on nothing for nobody, wallowing in his sense of importance but refusing ever to actually put his work out there to succeed or fail. He wants, he wants, he wants, but he gives so very little. He doesn’t get it: he never does. And the film wants us to take this journey with him, wants us to find meaning in his lack of such, wants us to feel the existential dilemma for ourselves.

But there is no dilemma. We live. We die. We like to tell ourselves that there’s more to come but, in our heart of hearts, we doubt it. We do some good, we do some bad. And we have a choice. We can run away from life in contemplation of death, or futility, or the inevitability of physical and mental decline. Or we can embrace life, embrace everything about it, do the good we can and avoid the evil we can. We can laugh and cry and love and hurt and run and fall. We can succeed spectacularly and we can fail miserably and, occasionally, we can touch a higher plane that we think does not exist but, in our heart of hearts, we know really does. And we’re gonna die. You’re gonna die and I’m gonna die. Even the Sun is gonna die, a blink of an eye on the galactic timeline. But while we’re here, while we have minds to think and bodies to feel, we can revel in the joy of existence.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK doesn’t even know that joy exists, so I’ve got no time for it. I’ve got living to do.