A follow-up to his 15-hour-long 2011 TV miniseries, “The Story of Film: An Odyssey,” an offshoot of his 2004 book “The Story of Film,” “The Story of Film: A New Generation” introduces viewers to a new wave of auteur filmmakers, or at least those who award-winning writer-director-narrator Mark Cousins dubs auteurs.
At the start of the film’s two hour, 40 minute running time, Cousins, in his droning professorial tone, tells of the connection between the famous scene of the Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) dancing wildly on the steps of that outdoor Bronx staircase and the performance of “Let It Go” from Disney’s beloved musical “Frozen.” For me, it was not a great start, a bit too facile and a harbinger of things to come.
Of course, Cousins evokes Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the magical realist conjurer of such mysteries as “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” (2010), “Memoria” (2021) and Cousins’ favorite “Cemetery of Splendor” (2015), a prophetic effort involving a plague of sleeping sickness. Part 1 of Cousins’ film explores films that have extended the “language of cinema,” showing us “things we haven’t seen before,” and while I’ll allow Cousins’ inclusion of Jordan Peele’s “Us” and the shattering documentary “Leviathan” (2012) in that category, I’ll have to say a big, loud no to the wildly overrated and deeply flawed “Hustlers” (2019).
