A MAGAZINE ABOUT STYLISH CINEMA
A monthly focus on the profound impact of film. Photographer Zoë Ghertner selects her three titles
FILM PICKS WITH
ZOE GHERTNER
The Tree of Life (2011) Terrence Malick
“Four decades into an already legendary career, Terrence Malick realised his most rapturous vision to date, tracing a story of childhood, wonder, and grief to the outer limits of time and space. Reaching back to the dawn of creation, Malick sets a story of boyhood memories on a universal scale, charting the coming of age of an awestruck child in Texas in the 1950s, as he learns to navigate the extremes of nature and grace represented by his bitter, often tyrannical father and his ethereal, nurturing mother. Achieved with the aid of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designer Jack Fisk, The Tree of Life marks the intimately personal, cosmically ambitious culmination of Malick’s singular approach to filmmaking.” (Criterion)
Gap-Toothed Women (1987) Les Blank
"Les Blank’s 'Gap-Toothed Women” is an admirable film that all but reviews itself. It is a documentary about women who have only one thing in common: a gap between their front teeth. Blank, one of America’s most prolific and unfailingly interesting documentarians, apparently shot this film on the way to, and from, other projects, whenever he found a woman with a gap between her teeth." (Roger Ebert)
Paper Moon (1973) Peter Bogdanovich
“Paper Moon remains most effortlessly magical, a bittersweet black-and-white Depression-era comedy in which real-life father and daughter Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal bootstrap their way across America selling Bibles to grieving families, aided by lying their butts off. Nine-year-old Tatum’s Oscar-winning performance is one of the most captivating yet unsentimental roles to make a child star, and the whole film is serenely confident in its storytelling, armed with the roguish charm of on-screen con artistry.” (Ian Mantgani BFI)