Why So Blu?

Boyle, Akerman, Sayles, the Coens in 4K & More Coming to The Criterion Collection January 2024

Coming in January: Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978, the revolutionary first decade of a singular filmmaker; Mudbound, an American tragedy set in the Mississippi Delta of the 1940s, written and directed by Dee Rees; Trainspotting, the 1990s British indie phenomenon directed by Danny Boyle, and John Sayles’s Lone Star, a neo-western mystery set in a small Texas border town. Plus: Satyajit Ray’s milestone of world cinema, The Apu Trilogy, and Joel and Ethan Coen’s scorching neo-noir, Blood Simple—now on 4K UHD.

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THE APU TRILOGY

A breathtaking milestone that brought India into the golden age of international art-house film, Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy follows one indelible character, a free-spirited child in rural Bengal who matures into an adolescent urban student and, finally, a sensitive man of the world. Ray’s delicate masterworks—Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)—based on two books by Bibhutibhusan Banerjee, were shot over the course of five years, and each stands on its own as a tender, visually radiant journey. These films—which have risen from the ashes in meticulously reconstructed restorations, after the original negatives were burned in a fire—are among the most achingly beautiful, richly humane movies ever made.

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital restorations of all three films, undertaken in collaboration with the Academy Film Archive at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and L’Immagine Ritrovata, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
• Three 4K UHD discs of the films and three Blu-rays with the films and special features
• Audio recordings from 1958 of director Satyajit Ray reading his essay “A Long Time on the Little Road” and in conversation with film historian Gideon Bachmann
• Interviews with actors Soumitra Chatterjee, Shampa Srivastava, and Sharmila Tagore; camera assistant Soumendu Roy; and film writer Ujjal Chakraborty
• Making “The Apu Trilogy”: Satyajit Ray’s Epic Debut, a video essay by Ray biographer Andrew Robinson
• “The Apu Trilogy”: A Closer Look, a program featuring filmmaker, producer, and teacher Mamoun Hassan
• Excerpts from the 2003 documentary The Song of the Little Road, featuring composer Ravi Shankar
• The Creative Person: “Satyajit Ray,” a 1967 documentary short by James Beveridge, featuring interviews with Ray, several of his actors, members of his creative team, and film critic Chidananda Das Gupta
• Footage of Ray receiving an honorary Oscar in 1992
• Programs on the restorations by filmmaker Kogonada
• PLUS: Essays by critics Terrence Rafferty and Girish Shambu, as well as a selection of Ray’s storyboards for Pather Panchali

 

PATHER PANCHALI

1955 • 125 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Bengali with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

With the release in 1955 of Satyajit Ray’s debut, Pather Panchali, an eloquent and important new cinematic voice made itself heard all over the world. A depiction of rural Bengali life in a style inspired by Italian neorealism, this naturalistic but poetic evocation of a number of years in the life of a family introduces us to both little Apu and, just as essentially, the women who will help shape him: his independent older sister, Durga; his harried mother, Sarbajaya, who, with her husband away, must hold the family together; and his kindly and mischievous elderly “auntie,” Indir—vivid, multifaceted characters all. With resplendent photography informed by its young protagonist’s perpetual sense of discovery, Pather Panchali, which won an award for Best Human Document at the Cannes Film Festival, is an immersive cinematic experience and a film of elemental power.

 

APARAJITO

1956 • 110 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Bengali with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

Satyajit Ray had not planned to make a sequel to Pather Panchali, but after the film’s international success, he decided to continue Apu’s narrative. Aparajito picks up where the first film leaves off, with Apu and his family having moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of Varanasi (then known as Benares). As Apu progresses from wide-eyed child to intellectually curious teenager, eventually studying in Kolkata, we witness his academic and moral education, as well as the growing complexity of his relationship with his mother. This tenderly expressive, often heart-wrenching film, which won three top prizes at the Venice Film Festival, including the Golden Lion, not only extends but also spiritually deepens the tale of Apu.

 

APUR SANSAR

1959 • 106 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Bengali with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

By the time Apur Sansar was released, Satyajit Ray had directed not only the first two Apu films but also the masterpiece The Music Room, and was well on his way to becoming a legend. This extraordinary final chapter brings our protagonist’s journey full circle. Apu is now in his early twenties, out of college, and hoping to live as a writer. Alongside his professional ambitions, the film charts his romantic awakening, which occurs as the result of a most unlikely turn of events, and his eventual, fraught fatherhood. Featuring soon-to-be Ray regulars Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore in star-making performances, and demonstrating Ray’s ever more impressive skills as a crafter of pure cinematic imagery, Apur Sansar is a moving conclusion to this monumental trilogy.

Available January 2, 2024

 

BLOOD SIMPLE

1984 • 95 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

Joel and Ethan Coen’s career-long darkly comic road trip through misfit America began with this razor-sharp, hard-boiled neonoir set somewhere in Texas, where a sleazy bar owner releases a torrent of violence with one murderous thought. Actor M. Emmet Walsh looms over the proceedings as a slippery private eye with a yellow suit, a cowboy hat, and no moral compass, and Frances McDormand’s cunning debut performance set her on the road to stardom. The tight scripting and inventive style that have marked the Coens’ work for decades are all here in their first film, in which cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld abandons black-and-white chiaroscuro for neon signs and jukebox colors that combine with Carter Burwell’s haunting score to lurid and thrilling effect. Blending elements from pulp fiction and low-budget horror flicks, Blood Simple reinvented the film noir for a new generation, marking the arrival of a filmmaking ensemble that would transform the American independent cinema scene.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• Restored 4K digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld and filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Conversation between Sonnenfeld and the Coens about the film’s look, featuring Telestrator video illustrations
• Conversation between author Dave Eggers and the Coens about the film’s production, from inception to release
• Interviews with composer Carter Burwell, sound editor Skip Lievsay, and actors Frances McDormand and M. Emmet Walsh
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by novelist and critic Nathaniel Rich

 

Available January 9, 2024

 

LONE STAR

1996 • 135 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • In English and Spanish with English subtitles • 2.39:1 aspect ratio 

A keen observer of America’s social fabric, writer-director John Sayles uncovers the haunted past buried beneath a small Texas border town in this sprawling neo-western mystery. When a skeleton is discovered in the desert, lawman Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper), son of a legendary local sheriff, begins an investigation that will have profound implications both for him personally and for all of Rio County, a place still reckoning with its history of racial violence. Sayles’s masterful film—novelistic in its intricacy and featuring a brilliant ensemble cast, including Joe Morton, Elizabeth Peña, and Kris Kristofferson—quietly subverts national mythmaking and lays bare the fault lines of life at the border.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director John Sayles and director of photography Stuart Dryburgh, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New conversation between Sayles and filmmaker Gregory Nava
• New interview with Dryburgh
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by scholar Domino Renee Perez

Available January 16, 2024

 

CHANTAL AKERMAN MASTERPIECES, 1968–1978

In the revolutionary first decade of her filmmaking career, Chantal Akerman devoted herself to nothing less than the total resculpting of cinematic time and space. Journeying between Europe and New York City, Akerman forged a highly personal style that fuses avant-garde influences with deeply human expressions of alienation, desire, and displacement—themes that she would explore in a series of increasingly ambitious shorts, documentaries, and features, including the towering Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. With immersive rhythms that render the most minute details momentous, these landmarks of twentieth-century art continue to reveal new ways of experiencing cinema and framing reality.

THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration of Les rendez-vous d’Anna and 2K digital restorations of Saute ma ville; L’enfant aimé, ou Je joue à être une femme mariée; La chambre; Hotel Monterey; Le 15/8; Je tu il elle; Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; and News from Home, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
• Hanging Out Yonkers, an unfinished film from 1973 by Chantal Akerman
• Film-school tests
• New program on Akerman featuring critic B. Ruby Rich
• New visual essay on Akerman featuring archival interviews with the director
• Autour de “Jeanne Dielman,” a documentary made during the filming of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, shot by actor Sami Frey and edited by Agnès Ravez and Akerman
• Interviews with Akerman, cinematographer Babette Mangolte, actors Aurore Clément and Delphine Seyrig, and Akerman’s mother, Natalia
• Appreciation by filmmaker Ira Sachs
• PLUS: An essay and notes on the films by critic Beatrice Loayza

SAUTE MA VILLE

1968 • 13 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio 

Made when the director was just eighteen, Chantal Akerman’s debut film is a blistering first expression of what would become one of her major themes: women’s confinement in and rebellion against the domestic sphere. Akerman plays a young woman who, alone in her kitchen, enacts a savaging of traditional domestic rituals that leads to a literally explosive climax.

L’ENFANT AIMÉ, OU JE JOUE À ÊTRE UNE FEMME MARIÉE

1971 • 32 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

One of Chantal Akerman’s most rarely seen works is an intimate portrait of a young mother (played by Claire Wauthion) whose day-to-day routines are intercut with her stream-of-consciousness ruminations on her family, sex life, relationships, and body. Though Akerman (who also appears in the film) was later dismissive of her second directorial effort, its patient focus on the tension between domesticity and a woman’s inner life marks L’enfant aimé as an important link in the development of her artistry.

LA CHAMBRE

1972 • 11 minutes • Color • Silent • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

Chantal Akerman’s dialogue with the 1960s avant-garde movement of structural cinema begins here, with the first film she made in New York City—a breakthrough in her experiments with the bending of cinematic time and space. As the camera completes a series of circular pans around a small apartment, the interior’s furniture, its clutter, and the filmmaker herself—staring back at us from bed—become the subjects of a moving still life.

HOTEL MONTEREY

1972 • 62 minutes • Color • Silent • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

Under Chantal Akerman’s watchful eye, a cheap Manhattan hotel glows with mystery and unexpected beauty, its corridors, elevators, rooms, windows, and occasional occupants framed like Edward Hopper tableaux. Filmed over the course of fifteen hours, from evening to dawn, with cinematographer and frequent collaborator Babette Mangolte’s carefully controlled camera gradually making its way from the lamplit lobby to the rooftop overlooking an awakening city, this radical, silent experiment in duration stands as one of Akerman’s most arresting formal achievements, collapsing time and charging the quotidian space it surveys with an eerie unreality.

LE 15/8

1973 • 43 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.33:1 aspect ratio 

Shot and directed by Chantal Akerman and Samy Szlingerbaum, this quietly revealing variation on the filmmaker’s recurring themes of dislocation and alienation unfolds on one day—August 15, 1973—in a Paris apartment, where Finnish expat Chris Myllykoski opens up to the camera about her anxieties and uncertainties, her aspirations and ennui, and the sense of vulnerability she feels being a woman alone in an unfamiliar country. As Myllykoski’s voice-over narration shifts between the mundane and the searching, Akerman’s observant camera remains attuned to tiny gestures that tell a story of their own.

JE TU IL ELLE

1975 • 86 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

Chantal Akerman’s first narrative feature is a startlingly vulnerable exploration of alienation and the search for connection. In a performance at once daringly exposed and enigmatic, Akerman plays a young woman who, following a lengthy, self-imposed exile, ventures out into the world, where she has two very different experiences of intimacy: first with a truck driver (Niels Arestrup) who picks her up, and then with a female ex-lover (Claire Wauthion). Culminating in an audacious, real-time carnal encounter that brought lesbian sexuality to the screen with a new frankness, Je tu il elle finds Akerman wielding her radical minimalism with a newfound emotional and psychological precision.

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES

1975 • 201 minutes • Color • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio 

A singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow, whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son, and turning the occasional trick. In its enormous spareness, Akerman’s film seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. Whether seen as an exacting character study or as one of cinema’s most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time, Jeanne Dielman is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment, one that has been analyzed and argued over for decades.

NEWS FROM HOME

1976 • 89 minutes • Color • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

Following her time living in New York in the early 1970s, Chantal Akerman returned to the city to create one of her most elegantly minimalist and profoundly affecting meditations on dislocation and estrangement. Over a series of exactingly composed shots of Manhattan circa 1976, the filmmaker reads letters sent by her mother years earlier. The juxtaposition between the intimacy of these domestic reports and the lonely, bleakly beautiful cityscapes results in a poignant reflection on personal and familial disconnection that doubles as a transfixing time capsule.

LES RENDEZ-VOUS D’ANNA

1978 • 127 minutes • Color • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio 

Chantal Akerman’s narrative follow-up to her international breakthrough, Jeanne Dielman, is a penetrating portrait of a woman’s soul-deep malaise and a mesmerizing odyssey through a haunted Europe. While on a tour through Germany, Belgium, and France to promote her latest movie, Anna (Aurore Clément), an accomplished filmmaker, passes through a series of eerie, exquisitely shot brief encounters—with men and women, family and strangers—that gradually reveal her emotional and physical detachment from the world. Mirroring the itinerant Akerman’s own restless wanderings, this quasi self-portrait journeys through a succession of liminal spaces—hotel rooms, railway stations, train cars—toward an indelible encounter with the specter of history.

Available January 30, 2024

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TRAINSPOTTING

1996 • 94 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

A jolt of adrenaline shot straight to the heart of 1990s British cinema, this darkly funny adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel was a major breakthrough for director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald, and screenwriter John Hodge. With live-wire energy and stylistic verve, Trainspotting bounces across the life and times of Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), a Scottish heroin addict who, along with his misfit mates, gets high, gets in trouble, gets clean, and gets high again, all in a bid to outrun the banality of modern existence. Kinetically cut to an iconic soundtrack of techno, rock, and Britpop, this indie phenomenon chooses life in all its ugly, beautiful, terrifying exhilaration.

 

FILMMAKER-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Danny Boyle, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Alternate 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Audio commentary featuring Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald, screenwriter John Hodge, and actor Ewan McGregor
• Nine deleted scenes with commentary from the filmmakers
• Off the Rails: The Making of “Trainspotting,” a documentary featuring archival interviews with cast and crew and behind-the-scenes footage
• Memories of “Trainspotting,” a documentary from 2008 featuring the filmmakers and actors McGregor, Kelly Macdonald, Ewen Bremner, and Robert Carlyle
• Reflections from soundtrack artists Iggy Pop, Jarvis Cocker, Bobby Gillespie, Damon Albarn, Leftfield, Underworld, and more
• Theatrical teaser and trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• More!
• PLUS: Essays by critic Graham Fuller and author Irvine Welsh, Welsh’s glossary of terms from the film and book, and glow-in-the-dark packaging for the 4K UHD edition

Available January 30, 2024

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MUDBOUND

2017 • 134 minutes • Color • Dolby Atmos • 2.39:1 aspect ratio 

In the Mississippi Delta of the 1940s, two farming families—one of white landholders, one of Black tenant farmers—are bound by the unforgiving soil they share as they struggle to survive amid the upheavals of World War II and the poisonous hatred of the Jim Crow South. Each family sends a young man off to battle; when they return home, scarred, and find a common bond, the community is ripped apart. Writer-director Dee Rees, with cowriter Virgil Williams, crafts a uniquely American tragedy, imbuing bitter historical realities with a timeless weight. Featuring bone-deep performances from her ensemble cast—including Carey Mulligan, Mary J. Blige, Jason Mitchell, Rob Morgan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, and Jonathan Banks—and backed by Rachel Morrison’s darkly burnished cinematography, Mudbound is a searing humanist study of inheritance based upon Hillary Jordan’s novel.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 2K digital master, supervised by director Dee Rees and director of photography Rachel Morrison, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New audio commentary featuring Rees
• New documentary featuring Rees, composer Tamar-kali, editor Mako Kamitsuna, and makeup artist Angie Wells
• New documentary made on set, featuring members of the cast and crew
• Interview with Morrison
• New interview with production designer David J. Bomba
• Trailer and teaser
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio
• PLUS: An essay by critic Danielle Amir Jackson

Available January 30, 2024