Punishment Park

While never subtle, Peter Watkins' Punishment Park (1971) is riveting and willing to engage in political discussion through dialogue and crosscutting give-and-takes, rather than brandishing a singular viewpoint. So although it is clear where Watkin's politics lie, they don't intrude upon a film that is successful on a cinematic level, negotiating between an action-based documentary and a think-piece about the role and responsibility of individual dissidence. And, of course, there is the machine of government that hands out discipline to any voices that chooses, rightly or wrongly, to dissent.

Beyond the fascinating juxtaposition of criticizing objective/subjective responsibilities of media and the visual medias, which Watkins forcibly critiques at the film's end with the narrator (himself, natch) speaking against the system that he's documenting, the film adroitly considers the willingness to let institutions rather than individual choice decide the ethics of speaking out. And while a few bits of dialogue feel a bit too crafted in 70s brotherhood and peace to a contemporary viewer, the fact that we're only ostensibly closer to that dream reveals the worth of reconsidering it anew. I especially enjoy the ambiguity prevalent in the ending, when it feels some of the police forces feel they must still justify their reasonings, which speaks to a sense of humanity and possibility still prevalent in this bleak future, even if the park itself threatens to perpetuate its nihilistic attitudes toward the oppressed.

The last female interviewee, the one who comes to the aid of the downtrodden African-American (she's the 23-year-old feminist, I believe) offered the moral framework for the film, grounding her beliefs in enough detail and consideration that these sections personify the dedication Watkins received from his actors and fellow creators. It's a visionary film, and one I want to think and talk about long after it's finished.

Punishment Park: 10/10

Sherlock Jr.

Just over 40 minutes long, Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. (1924) is built upon one of the more self-reflexive ideas of silent cinema—accused of a crime for which you are framed, what would occur if you were to be transplanted into the veritable fantasy-world of cinema, blessed with the candor and intelligence of Sherlock Holmes, and given the opportunity to expose the cocky [CENSORED BY BLOGSPOT MANAGEMENT] who tried to set you up.

In Sherlock Jr. what follows are the typically genius Keatonisms, a tender love story crafted around meticulous stunts, visual gags, and commentary on the nature of the filmgoer, with this latter idea buttressed by the psychological split between time and space as it corresponds to the filmgoer imagining a reverie of participation in what is only a medium mediated by all that is cinematically shown. That is to say, cinema itself predicates how we dream, how we fictionalize ourselves. Thus, in order to win the heart of his beloved and regain his good name, the bumbling squire (Keaton) goes into the movies and becomes an enforcer of the law with the pedigree of absolute assurance, outsmarting the conniving villains at every turn.

Yet within all of this there exists a commentary of class and the cultural expectation for the proper social work of marriage. Keaton is judged by the counter girl at the shop with chocolates (it is chocolate, right?) when he lacks the proper money to court his beloved, and this unspoken bemusement by the counter girl sets in motion the rest of Keaton’s misfortune. Of related interest is the manner in which Keaton suggests that for all of the elaborate designs and giddy fantasies, in reality it is the woman, who of course suspects that something is afoul by the perpetrator once Keaton is accused, who does all of the real detective work and rights the wrong being perpetuated. She, not Keaton, is the true hero in all of this, for cinema also has the potential to blind us to action, allowing daydreams and reverie to be conflated with a genuine real-world response. Moreover, as we see so memorably at the film’s close, it still doesn’t instruct us how to have babies at this point in time.

Sherlock Jr.: 10/10

Three Colors: Blue

Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors: Blue (1993) is one of the three immaculate films that came out of 1993, along with Jane Campion’s The Piano. Moreover, though, Kieslowski’s film, along with the remaining top ten on my list, is one of those films that are perfectly attuned to a visual as well as aural rhetoric, celebrating every bit of minute composition. A composite of the three colors of the French flag, this first piece of the trilogy focuses on freedom apart from historical memory, with the widowed Julie (Juliette Binoche) struggling to lead a new life liberated from all threads of connection. Yet the philosophical implications that Kieslowski and co-screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz question are whether or not such a life segregated from all social and psychological contact is deserving of high praise or melancholic regret.

After the car accident that claims her composer husband and young daughter, we see Julie try to commit suicide by swallowing pills in a recovery hospital. But she cannot give in to desires to end it all, at least not physically. Psychologically, though, her seclusion away from all former employees and acquaintances signals how that she cannot yet confront her pain. She destroys what she believes to be her (or is it her husband’s—an ambiguity that rightly affords Julie more dimension) sole copy of a commissioned symphony for the Unification of Europe, epitomizing the metaphoric destruction of unity. Instead, she remains adrift, visiting her institutionalized mother, a sufferer of Alzheimer’s, who is the personification of total freedom away from historical memory or connection.

These visits to her mother plague Julie’s perfect exterior of wishing this life for herself. Significantly, whereas she has habitual visits to a pool and swims in the waters, her mother spends her days watching the television as individuals bungee-jump toward the water below, though they are unable to penetrate the ambiguous form of baptism that Julie is unconsciously enacting with her laps in the pool. As such, the water becomes one of the many transformative healers in the film, and it’s no surprise that the final scene at the pool has the water, Julie’s haven, invaded by many youths. It has achieved its ambiguous aim and now reminds Julie of the world outside her small seclusion.

Over time, she comes to rely on her pleasant rendezvous with Olivier Benoit (Benoît Régent), a former benefactor of her husband and a man who urges her to finish the symphony. As she begins work (anew?) on the piece, the frequent fade-to-black intercuts of music and their symbolic indecision fade away, giving way to a new authority and open, structured self. The film closes by connecting the many disparate people that we have seen in what appears to be a single, unbroken tracking shot, antipicating the themes of fraternity that would later follow in Red.

The idea of returning to society despite heartache, together with the visual patterns that frequent the film, make Blue an exemplary film for trauma and recovery, and, moreover, position Kieslowski as one of the most literate and humane of directors.

Three Colors: Blue 9/10

Basic Instinct

While Basic Instinct (1992) received much of its attention to a certain leg-crossing scene and a lowbrow but quality-in-its-meta-ness Joe Eszterhas screenplay, it is Verhoeven’s touch that makes so much of this film’s noirish material flow with ease. Certainly this is partially due to the fact that the story is basically a re-baked The 4th Man, with the lesbian elements filling in for the “troublesome” androgyny elements. However, whereas the former film aspired to contemplation with its Bergmanesque juxtapositions of the cross/spider, existential images that continually haunted the protagonist, Basic Instinct celebrates its crassness, wallowing in its psychological depravity and utilizing the noir treatment in a shorthand form that extends the themes of denial and refutation.

By now the story doesn’t need much summarizing, since the noir elements reveal much of the desperation and fatalism that will follow: Det. Nick Curran (Michael Douglas), doubted by the police squad because of an accidental shooting that killed an innocent, investigates a string of murders that a literate and sexually promiscuous author, Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), has endless ties to, and he gradually becomes so taken by her that he denies all the obvious signs of her guilt. The subjective psychosis of Nick’s character, also famously, best finds its externalization in a scene where he and his on-again-off-again shrink (Jeanne Tripplehorn) engage in what can only be described as non-consensual sex, existing as nothing but rape/violation. Thus, we realize that Nick is no mere innocent in the transgressions that follow, but rather that this rape has consequences and any desire to cover up those consequences is a part of Nick’s unconscious. So, in accordance with noir tradition, only the innocent (the shrink, Nick’s partner) are at risk, as the amoral (Nick, Catherine) have nothing to lose.

The film is slickly shot, but that same slickness acts as part of Verhoeven’s mise en scene, offering a vacuum, a blankness to the compositions that is in accordance to his lead’s interiority. So this film isn’t even about moral ambiguity, but about how the vacuous Nick unconsciously believes that washing away all ties to innocence will cure him of his own moral blankness. It is the appropriately blunt masterwork of Verhoeven’s engagement with Hollywood.

Basic Instinct: 9.5/10

Total Recall

Total Recall (1990) creates more of a dilemma than the other films that Verhoeven has crafted, as there are two distinct paths to a review of it—as an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, and as a Verhoeven picture. If viewed through the former lens, it would have to be considered one of Arnold’s very best pictures, somewhere behind Cameron’s first Terminator flick, which perfectly matted Arnold’s imposing frame onto a narrative that likewise suited his speech. Further, the meta-questions regarding epistemic reality and ontology at the halfway point of this film would place it at the top of Arnold’s filmography, as the entire oeuvre of Schwarzenegger would then be metatextually revealed as disparate dreams valorizing the very persona of Schwarzenegger as monolithic hero.

If viewed through the latter lens, though, as a Verhoeven film, it’s slightly less successful since Verhoeven’s trademarks are distilled and only there peripherally, such as the absurd three-breasted woman and the hints at a dreamscape rather than reality that Schwarzenegger’s Douglas Quaid is experiencing. Some of these ontological questions receive consideration but whereas the sociopolitical and propaganda messages behind Starship Troopers are overt, here they seem more implied and distantly contemplated. The shift between Quaid’s loyalties to the underprivileged and devotion to the bourgeois society are perfunctory, for example, and never granted much depth.

Still, there’s much joy to be found in Arnold’s performance, which carries an understanding of how best to utilize the Schwarzenegger persona, externalizing confusion, mystification, and glimpses of ironic humor. Moreover, Michael Ironside displays a typically wonderful performance, full of psychotic anger and brewing jealousy over letting his mistress (Sharon Stone) serve as Quaid’s wife if the pre-awakened scenes. The film never really lets up and the ride is always enjoyable, with trademark moments throughout, such as the robot taxi, Quaid/Hauser’s double-crossing,, and quality chick fights (and what film isn’t bettered by Arnold’s cackling with obliviousness DVD commentary—here’s where I use a guy as a human shield!). The special effects still hold up nicely, and the fade-out at the end reveals that there’s still a subversive streak behind Verhoeven’s Hollywood cinema, should one choose to examine it. Largely, though, it’s a high quality Arnold film and a good Verhoeven film with glimmers of his traditional sarcasm and subversive streaks.

Total Recall: 8/10

Spetters

A film that seems to anticipate the amateur dirt bike revolution that would be epitomized by the awesomely bad film Rad, Verhoeven’s Spetters (or, loosely translated, HotShots) chronicles three would-be motorcycle racers as they struggle to use their talents for capitalistic profit. So the film tries to understand why these desires for speed are in place, and within this microcosm the film paints a study of Dutch youth. As long as you a part of the clique, you are lusted after and cared for, but once you fall out of touch with the clique, be it through a racing injury or a sexual difference, you are exiled and abandoned. These ideas are bluntly hammered home in this film, and it is these ideas, not the racing sequences, that linger after the film is finished.

I emphatically wish to highlight the film’s engagement with capitalism, since everything in this film is inherently based around a capitalistic desire. Fientje (Renée Soutendijk), the girl all of the racers lust after, is willing to bed anyone who might offer a promise away from a miserable and miserly life selling junk food at raceways. This economic exchange finally results in her settling for a big dick and a true restaurant she can fashion for himself and her hubby (one of the racers). Likewise, Rien ‘s (Hans van Tongeren) dreams of securing a position in life are based around this same yearning for financial reward, and his fate suffers once he is injured, wherein the ostracization from his group is revealing in its study of camaraderie.

Some of the film’s adolescent humor works, such as the scene in the abandoned building where two couples enact a façade of copulation for the benefit of the others in the next room to underscore how masculine they are. However, this aggressive display of and commitment to conventional masculinity is, in true Verhoeven fashion, subverted by the biker who is secretly gay, yet maintains a bravado of machismo and beats up the town’s homosexuals for their money. His eventual comeuppance is simultaneously haunting and disrespected in the Lynchian way that Verhoeven cuts between glib humor and genuine compassion through the picture (a blueprint that may in fact be Verhoeven’s raison d'être).

The film’s failing are the fact that the racing isn’t really all that exciting now, and the glibness of Verhoeven’s treatment of his characters sometimes subverts the melodrama that he wishes to instill in the film. Still, as an admittedly broad character study, you could do worse.

Spetters: 5.5/10