LOVE DOESN'T STOP: GENA ROWLANDS AS DIRECTED BY JOHN CASSAVETES
July 27 - August 8
What's your take on Cassavetes? Not a lot of figures in cinema have been as debated, hated, celebrated, adored, canonized and condemned as John Cassavetes, ‘the godfather of independent film’. His outsized influence and reputation have been elevated into the suffocating heights of the mythic. But if you approach these films on their own, free from the cultural weight they’ve accumulated over the years, something staggering happens. They reach inside you and they take hold.
Gena Rowlands’ shattering performances are the source of the energy, lifegiving or toxic, which radiates out of this body of work. Created alongside her director husband with their own money, in their own home, surrounded by friends and family, these films pull us into the lived world of characters whose emotional realities exceed their limits and overflow. We are present, we are implicated, we are involved. From a world-weary sex worker to a mentally ill suburban wife; from an aging stage actress coping with trauma to a gun-toting protector of a little kid wanted by the mob, each Rowlands character contends with the multitude of contradictions hidden behind every human action. These are films digging through layered identities, constantly in flux. Rowlands' performances are explorations of the questions, tensions and ideas that emerge out of the filmmaking process itself. Jonathan Rosenbaum describes these movies as a “cinema of doubt;” one which is more interested in posing questions than offering answers. If that’s true then the questions being posed by Rowlands seem to be: “How much do you feel? Can you cope with this? Do we share problems? And what more can we know about life?”
And on top of all that we’ve also got Cassavetes’ THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE in the mix (no Rowlands in this one) because who doesn’t want to watch Ben Gazzarra as a low-rent strip club owner in over his head with debts and a spiralling criminal disaster which he’s determined to simply perform his way out of? A real gem.
Gena Rowlands’ shattering performances are the source of the energy, lifegiving or toxic, which radiates out of this body of work. Created alongside her director husband with their own money, in their own home, surrounded by friends and family, these films pull us into the lived world of characters whose emotional realities exceed their limits and overflow. We are present, we are implicated, we are involved. From a world-weary sex worker to a mentally ill suburban wife; from an aging stage actress coping with trauma to a gun-toting protector of a little kid wanted by the mob, each Rowlands character contends with the multitude of contradictions hidden behind every human action. These are films digging through layered identities, constantly in flux. Rowlands' performances are explorations of the questions, tensions and ideas that emerge out of the filmmaking process itself. Jonathan Rosenbaum describes these movies as a “cinema of doubt;” one which is more interested in posing questions than offering answers. If that’s true then the questions being posed by Rowlands seem to be: “How much do you feel? Can you cope with this? Do we share problems? And what more can we know about life?”
And on top of all that we’ve also got Cassavetes’ THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE in the mix (no Rowlands in this one) because who doesn’t want to watch Ben Gazzarra as a low-rent strip club owner in over his head with debts and a spiralling criminal disaster which he’s determined to simply perform his way out of? A real gem.