Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Under the radar comes the crap artist.,
By
This review is from: Barjo [VHS] (VHS Tape)
When I initially discovered this video at a video clearance outlet, I found it in a section with children's movies. Let me be very clear that this IS NOT a children's movie. Characterizing this movie is very difficult. It is a french movie based on Philip K. Dick's "Confessions of a Crap Artist". I assume that is what the word "Barjo" means. If nothing else was good about this movie, I would have appreciated it just for being titled "Crap-Artist". It has an innocence (primarily in the title character) that is endearing, and manages to be darkly comical without leaving a sour taste in your mouth. I can think of no easy referents or comparisons. The story revolves around two twins. Fanfan (a woman) is strong-minded and manipulative. She drives her husband to madness through her insensitivity towards him. Her brother "Barjo", who is an eccentric clairvoyant apocalyptic inventor requiring some element of guidance, has organized a note file to help him understand the emotionality he observes when he comes to live with Fanfan and her husband, Charles. This is a very strange movie, at turns comic, harsh and fantastic. It contains philandering, an occult tinge and the killing of a menagerie of animals. Yet it remains lighthearted. There aren't any obvious moral judgements in it, so you are on your own when it comes to figuring out the film's intent. It would take more than one thousand words to do it justice in a review, and I'm not prepared for the effort at this point. Incidentally, I've decided to name my next pet "Barjo" and you can come to any conclusion you want to about that.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Enjoyable!,
By AMC "scifiali" (Atlanta, Ga) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Barjo [VHS] (VHS Tape)
As soon as I learned of this film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "Confessions of a Crap Artist" I had to get a copy of "Barjo". It's only available on VHS and only in French with English subtitles and still I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the novel. In this film the dysfunctional family lives in a bold and futuristic home that's been worked into a natural environment very nicely. Barjo's a little different than Jack from Confessions - he's recognizably strange immediately. Charlie's a little more normal and Jack's evil sister Fay who wasn't watered down at all (Thankfully!), makes quite an impression even when you're keeping one eye on the dialogue lines. I'd like to see an American version of the story, but Barjo is a worthy adaptation. There's comedy, tragedy and a catchy little song. Of course, the novel does the shifting character perceptions even better and creates an even odder country setting. My preference is always for the written version over the film, however "Barjo" was much more enjoyable than I expected.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A French "Crap Artist",
By
This review is from: Barjo [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Along with Jerry Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft and Woody Allen, the French seem to have cultivated an interest in the work of American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick long before he was taken very seriously in his own country outside of a few pulp sci-fi magazines. Founding "New Wave" director Jacques Rivette knew his work by the late 1950s and there are subtle references to Dick in his first film, Paris Belongs to Us, released in 1961. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard certainly knew his work by the 1970s, and Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 science fiction-noir Alphaville strikes me as "Dickian" in many respects. So it's no surprise that there would be some interest among French filmmakers in actually adapting some of the writer's work to cinema - though given the challenges that have always surrounded obtaining the rights and getting films made from the author's work ever since his untimely 1982 death, I guess it's also no surprise that Jerome Boivin's 1992 BARJO, adapted from Dick's 1959-written/1975-published novel "Confessions of a Crap Artist", should be the only Dick film to date from that country.
I haven't read the novel, Dick's only "straight", non-genre novel published during his lifetime, but I'm told that this film, adapted by the director and Jacques Audiard, is one of the most faithful adaptations of his work overall, despite moving the action of the novel from late 1950s California to early 1990s alpine France. The film is narrated in fits and starts, at breakneck speed, by "Barjo" (Hippolyte Girardot) the rather mad and paranoid twin brother of "Fanfan" (Anne Brochet), whose life with husband Charles (Richard Bohringer) and two young children Barjo invades and disrupts after burning down the house he lives in early on. Charles is a small-time factory owner and Fanfan is a housewife with a model-thin figure obsessed with how people view her and with sex. Barjo is seemingly oblivious to sex and much else that is part of normal life, and his incomprehension and obsession with recording facts and keeping files on everything and everybody end up helping to worsen the rift that has started to appear between his sister and brother-in-law, both manic and emotional in their ways - and both completely misunderstood by the owlish, eccentric Barjo. Add to the mix a couple, Michel and Gwen, that Fanfan becomes infatuated with, and Charles' first wife Madame Hamelin, a believer in spiritualism who attaches herself to Barjo, and you have the recipe for disaster - though for the most part of a comedic variety. BARJO captures the paranoia and outsider eccentricity of much of Dick's writing pretty well; as I said, I've not read the book, but the character of Barjo is quite reminiscent of Ragle Gumm, another good-for-nothing brother-in-law who lives parasitically off relatives in his own little world, in Dick's Time Out of Joint, written the year earlier (1958). I liked Boivin's choices of modernist, somewhat bourgeois and pretentious trappings for the family, which contrast with Barjo's termite-like nest in the basement and his completely un-selfconscious nerdiness and obsessiveness. Fanfan rarely engages him directly, but it's pretty clear that she's even more upset with having him around than her husband is, ultimately. The bright color scheme and slightly off-kilter narrative, with it's seemingly random ellipses of childhood memories, works pretty well also, but the screenplay's turn to a somewhat conventional destructive third act struck me as a little obvious, especially given the almost heart-warming conclusion, and in the end Barjo himself just doesn't register as a very strong character but rather as a pretty harmless crank. Acting honors I would say go to Bohringer, whose Charles becomes more and more sympathetic and yet remains obnoxious throughtout - always a mean feat to accomplish, but Bohringer carries the day well. Ultimately, while all the pieces are in place and the basic narrative and characters do have that "Philip K. Dick" feeling, the presentation just feels lighter and fluffier than I'd expect in any work from the writer. Whether the novel is uncharacteristically optimistic or allows humor and humanity to dominate the paranoia and cynicism the way the film does, I can't say. But in the end, the film can't quite reconcile the lighter humorous elements with the misanthropy that it displays at various points towards all three main characters, and it feels a little unbalanced and thin in the final act. Still, it's well worth seeing for all Dick fans and I guess it's a good companion to director Boivin's previous film, Baxter, another black comedy - but one which pulls out the stops and offers little if any of the softness on display here. The New Yorker VHS looks about as good as you'd expect a commercial VHS from the early 90s to look, and it's letterboxed at about 1.85:1; the yellow subtitles are perfectly legible. It would certainly be nice to have this on DVD, but I'm not holding out for any miracles.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Look for Similar Items by Category
Look for Similar Items by Subject
|
