Breaking the Waves

8 1/2

2007-10-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

It is only appropriate that we honor those works which were so much a part of our formative experience with cinema. Now while this may open up reasons why either Lady and the Tramp or Home Alone should receive consideration here, there are also those foundational films that allowed for film to be viewed through a fuller, more comprehensive lens. For me, no film better exemplifies these qualities than Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963). Few films are as successful in their representation of cinema imitating cinema as this one, and the audacity with which Fellini consistently employs in this work remains visionary.

In it the filmmaker Guido (the great Marcello Mastroianni) is being restricted both financially and artistically, confined to fashioning a science fiction film that now fails to keep his interest. He feels psychologically pressured by an asphyxiating circle of colleagues, denied the ability to pursue his artistic visions, and unable to craft a self-definition all his own. He turns to evasion, but that is ultimately a facile escape, leaving him in a spa and still pestered by the colleagues. Restriction, in sum, is all around him. However, in fantasy he escapes and is free—free to retreat into childhood memories and free to imagine taming a harem of women, from his wife to his mistress, to anyone generally. This desire goes into excess and, indeed, Fellini celebrates the excess, for in it we find life and genuine art.

Within all of this excess there are endless doubling of Guido and Fellini, whether it be the mistresses, the licentiousness, the tawdry offenses, even the seemingly pigheaded visions of what art can become, but through it all Fellini defends his discipline with artistry and craft, something that is more problematic for Guido. Yet Guido too earns a sense of order as he makes his cast and crew conform to his outlandish efforts, culminating in one of the most singular scenes in cinema: the parade of actors that is complete transcendence. Rarely have I been euphoric while watching a film, but this conclusion earns its euphoria every time.

So what, then, might we say this film shows me? It educates me about the context of cinema, pinpointing the struggle for artistry within an industry that tries to dissuade directors from venturing beyond continuity style and renders visible the efforts of a visionary. It also exposes me to a multiplicity of narratives working simultaneously within one mind, chronicling the true-to-life willingness to drift off into space and freedom, composing such oscillations in pure cinematic terms. Finally, though, it is a celebration of art and a argument for the positive, life-affirming qualities that the best of cinema (and all art) can offer, and on those terms I wholeheartedly welcome it every time.

8 1/2: 10/10

The Piano

2007-10-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) is, to my eyes, one of cinema’s great beauties, filled with the rapture of beatific images and music, of spiritual and sexual yearning, and of the embodiment of the titular musical instrument for a voice. As such, Campion’s film chronicles the myriad loves that mute Ada (Holly Hunter) holds dear, entrusting her daughter, the piano, and the prospect of emotional love with her undying devotion. More literally, its high status is often entrenched as a feminist critique of the objectification of women, when women were considered the property of their husbands. Yet such a narrow reading precludes a study of how Baines (Harvey Keitel) exploits Ada for his personal interest, even though she soon reciprocates, and so such a definition must be reconsidered to include the appropriation of objectification that the characters confer upon themselves when their sexual exploits evolve into something deeper and more profound.

Yet this is not a solemn film, even though it concerns itself with muted self-expression, both figuratively and, in the film’s climax, literally. Instead, it is a joyful film, one that celebrates the awakening that may be found in even the greatest torment, and so Campion’s vision arrives at a grace that is its greatest virtue. Ada and her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) survive through the ravages of their time, transcending any petty betrayals that each might commit upon the other, and refuse to submit to the cultural landscape that demands public and private submissiveness in a marriage.

Ultimately, this film’s claim toward greatness was conferred in my eyes at the ambiguity that lies in the climax and coda of the film, when Ada unwilling and later willingly sacrifices herself to be at one with her voice, her piano. The shots that follow are held in a capsule by my mind, as Campion took a very good film and crossed the threshold to greatness in those moments. The Piano is a magical film, and Campion’s lasting legacy to cinema thus far.

The Piano: 10/10

Ratcatcher

2007-10-19T13:34:00.000-07:00

Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher (1999) is perhaps the biggest surprise on this list for me. It was one of the last additions, largely because I kept deliberating on what makes this film so different from other stories about preadolescent males who grow up amidst poverty, secrecy, and self-reflective guilt. Ultimately, it comes down to how Ramsay eschews conventionality to tell a more panoramic case study, allowing the narrative to unfold naturalistically, yet with flair and elegance, so that Ratcatcher becomes a document of an entire city seen through the extremely subjective viewpoint of one boy.

And immediately the film announces its narrative subversions as our expected protagonist drowns in the early minutes of the film, settling upon the guilt that James (William Eadie) finds himself plagued with, internalizing feelings of the waste and wreckage that sit alongside the Glasgow homes during the 1970’s garbage strike that the film is based in. Yet James finds security in his escapes of reverie out into the countryside, where wheat fields and empty houses show him a promise and allure that is entirely beyond impoverished family. Moreover, Ramsay fashions a facsimile of an adult relationship between James and Margaret Anne (Leanne Mullen), as the two are appropriately confused and understanding of the responsibilities that attraction and adulthood are supposed to bring. There is an understated reciprocity in a scene in which the two bathe one another, and if they nonetheless draw away from one another, it’s because neither James nor Margaret Anne have a good same-sex parental figure to emulate.

The film reveals itself to be a marvel during a sequence in which his friend Kenny ties his newly purchased mouse to a balloon and releases her from his upper-level apartment. The extended sequence that follows was a transcendent moment, full of narrative and creative aplomb. Likewise, and in a moment that reminds me of the similarly-minded tranquility that exists, albeit briefly, in Lukas Moodysson’s A Hole in My Heart, James’ trips through the countryside are the respite to his habitual oppression in his familial life. Throughout Ramsay and her composer Rachel Porter find a quiet lyricism to alleviate the bleakness, resulting in a poetic masterpiece of mood and character, with an appropriately ambiguous ending.

Ratcatcher: 10/10

Grave of the Fireflies

2007-10-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

Looking at my animated selections in this blog (Toy Story 2 and Whisper of the Heart), it should be readily apparent that I am most attracted to anime and CG films that tell realistic rather than fantastical stories, albeit even as they utilize the strongest aspects of their exaggerated style to construct that sense of realism. It is little surprise, then, that I find myself most affected and emotionally devastated by Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (1988), as this film showcases all the hope, the pride, the desperation, and the immorality of survival in the firebombed ruins of Kobe, Japan.

As families are torn apart, so are our protagonists, young Seita and his little sister Setsuko, stripped of their immediate family as firebombing ravages their town. As Seita shields his sister they turn to their extended family, seeking shelter with their aunt. Yet Seita is defiant in his refusal to sacrifice much of their freedom to aid his similarly displaced and hungry relatives. Rather than submit to his aunt’s harsh but fundamentally sound criticisms, Seita internalizes his pride and he and Setsuko steal off to fend for themselves.

Much of this film concerns familial responsibility and examines the repercussions when that responsibility falls beneath the indifferent eyes of society and nature, which is also caught up in simple survival. Most of this film concerns Seita’s attempts to feed his sister, to prove his capabilities at adulthood. Without revealing anything more than superficial plot, it’s little wonder that he fails to consider the longevity of such efforts. More vitally, this film is a token to the desperation that haunted any survivor, and Takahata thankfully refuses to placate his audience or his film with artificial intrigue.

Everything follows matter-of-factly, but the film still allows for small poetic moments, and their grandeur is strengthened by their limited appearance. There are few films that express the wonder of being alive as succinctly and intelligently as this one. To my eye, there are few images in all of cinema more powerful than the bookends, which simultaneously express melancholy and the most extreme devotion between siblings. Beautifully orchestrated with lilting images of the fireflires and music, these scenes expose the fragility that is behind all lived experience in wartimes and they possess a sort of raw power that is unbearably affecting.

Grave of the Fireflies: 10/10

The Thin Red Line

2007-10-19T13:27:00.000-07:00

There is a melancholy beauty in all of Terrence Malick’s films, and in The Thin Red Line (1998), Malick simultaneously fashions his most intimate and classically universal examination on life, innocence (lost), and the pursuit of paradise. Coupled with John Toll’s breathtaking camerawork and Hans Zimmer’s singular score (Journey to the Line is moving even after wearing it out these past nine years), Malick appropriates James Jones’ novel and filters it through his transcendentalist lens, chronicling the devastation of war and the philosophical/theological desire to do honor in this world.

Situating the film around ellipses, allowing characters to rise and fall with the same ebb and flow as his pacing, Malick is able to examine multitudes of perspective, yet the film is governed through Pvt. Witt’s thoughts and memories and, indeed, the core of the film is situated in his opening voiceover about his mother: “I just hope I can meet it [death] the same way she did, with the same... calm. 'Cause that's where it's hidden - the immortality I hadn't seen.” Within all of Witt’s actions lies the attempt to dutifully face death with the same calm and grace, and the opening and closing of the film reveals the consequences of that faith, situating immortality in the typically Malickian image of nature (an idea that is returned to in the closing of The New World).

Among the many wonders of the film are the characters, and few possess the honor and grace of Captain Staros (Elias Koteas), a character who grows more profound in his care of his men with every viewing. And, of course, Lt. Col. Tall (Nick Nolte) is the doppelganger to Staros, abusing the hierarchical military structure of the war for professional recognition, yet he too expresses fear and regret, allowing Malick to posit the various shades that chronicle duty. When I refer in the opening paragraph to the classical-ness of the film, I do so noting the deliberately idealized role of women in the film. Yet within that idealization exists the “Dear John” letter which divests the film of this idealized quality, rupturing the exterior transcendence that the men bestowed upon women (though Malick never judges the men for these actions) and revealing women to be just as confused and lost at home, and Bell’s Wife thus epitomizes the women’s struggle through the indignant horror of war.

All in all, it’s the first film that revealed to me the wonder that cinema can offer, and it’s a film I regularly return to, only to be as astonished as I was during the first viewing.

The Thin Red Line: 10/10

Breaking the Waves

2007-10-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

It is one of cinema’s great dilemmas—if a director falls into a habit of repetitious themes and characterizations yet still broaches those topics with ingenuity and insight, should he then be regarded as a one-trick pony? Since his 1996 breakthrough, Lars von Trier has seemed almost calculated in his chronicling of female subjugation and martyrdom for a man/Man, but even so, with his first foray into these topics in Breaking the Waves (1996), von Trier constructed one of the most exacting studies of unwavering faith amidst social prejudices and hierarchies.

Utilizing a narrative that questions the fundamental idea of religious truth, of the Word of God being channeled through the devout yet dim Bess McNeill (Emily Watson), von Trier explores the murky area between extraordinary devotion and absurdity of faith. Certainly here he remains critical of the institutionalization of faith by church elders, who prioritize tradition far more than they prioritize true love for their neighbors. Yet sexual love, voracious though it may be, is combined with something akin to a native spirituality when Bess finds a husband (Stellan Skarsgard). However, when Bess’ husband suffers a paralyzing injury and asks her to commit sexual acts with others and then report those stories back to him, as these words will aid his recovery, or so he believes, there is the foreboding sense that Bess is falling into a trajectory of degradation without principle or purpose.

Still, von Trier is humble in his treatment of faith, even if he isn’t humble in the face of the institutionalization of it. It’s a fine line between mockery and humiliation, but von Trier positions Bess as less an idiot than an idiot savant, devoted to granting her husband the same faith that she grants to God as she regularly visits the church. Here, in an auspicious debut, Emily Watson shines as a film actor, and Skarsgard and Katrin Cartlidge provide quality supporting work, yet von Trier does the best work, balancing secular and religious devotion for a final image that is humbly poignant and heartrendingly transcendent.

Breaking the Waves: 10/10

The Red Shoes

2007-10-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s collaboration with The Red Shoes (1948) is easily one of the most captivating experiences in cinema to me, serving as an exemplary account of formal mastery and ingenuity, yet the film is tied to a philosophical core that intrigues given what it advocates. Especially coming on the heels of World War II, this tale that affirms, though tragically, the beauty of sacrificing oneself for one’s art is challenging, since Powell would later note: “For ten years we had all been told to go out and die for freedom and democracy; but now the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art.” Yet this notion is itself problematized over the course of the film.

Simultaneously a more romantic and radical idea than dying for either freedom or democracy, this film considers the investment that goes hand in hand with a conscious desire to climb to the highest ranks of art. Yet this desire threatens to become hyperconscious, that is to say, understood as a desire that will consume life itself, and so it must be tempered lest one become a shell of a man. Thus, against these ideals lies the polarity of love, which could afflict and remove the single-mindedness of one’s art, yet could also ground one with a stabilizing force. The question, which Powell and Pressburger wisely leave open, is whether or not one is better suited to sacrificing all for the sake of their art, given that Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) has artistic success but no real personal life beyond his dedication to ballet, while Julian Craster (Marius Goring) has a love in Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) yet denies her the license to practice her ballet, adhering to a (unwitting) model of patriarchal oppression.

Fascinatingly, Lermontov would also clearly like to possess Page in some manner, but until the end this desire is unfulfilled. Yet his perspective embodies the third act, even if he’s relatively absent from the narrative itself. What is stake if one surrenders their single-mindedness to the arts but a surrendering of the transcendent heights into the pits of respectability if not absolute mediocrity. This fear haunts our heroine Victoria Page, and the film is attuned to her rise to fame, so that her ascendance into her imagination takes place solely on the stage, allowing Powell and Pressburger the opportunity to deliver a sequence that is full of haunting virtuosity and expressive metaphors. So we must arrive at the fundamental question—is Miss Page’s life, if denied her artistic expression, worth the same amount as it was formerly worth?

Beyond existing as an immaculately crafted melodrama, The Red Shoes also serves as a case study of the patriarchal oppression which comes at her doubly and from both sides, allowing us to sympathize with whole generations of (female) performers who have acquiesced to their dreams for the sake of a man. Yet what awaits those who do not conform but celebrate their art, in an ode to Hans Christian Anderson’s own tale, is not much better. Yet there is a sense of the sublime in the final dance sequence, where one’s absence underscores how important the presence truly is, and it is that sequence that allows this film to reach the rhapsodic heights as it concludes.

The Red Shoes: 10/10

The Goonies

2007-10-07T18:38:00.000-07:00

Ah, childhood. Being a product of 1982, I came of age at the tail end of Hollywood’s 80’s appeal to suburbia and our inner Pan. Still, I somehow escaped my childhood without seeing The Goonies (1985), as my cinematic ventures instead aligned with hundreds of viewings of The Lady and the Tramp, Home Alone, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. What does this mean? Well, beyond the obvious bliss that all three films yielded to me, this fact means that there’s an absence of nostalgia behind my viewing of Richard Donner’s film today. Whether this damages my take, you’ll just have to read on…

Given that it’s a product of 1980s Hollywood, one shouldn’t be surprised that The Goonies contains such odd tonal shifts, yet the tonality here suggest a direction that is still searching for continuity. That is to say, there’s a crudity in how it contrasts the sensibilities of suburbia and the adventure/caper aspects. Yet this isn’t designed to be kitsch, so there’s obviously a layer of unintentionality as Donner works the plot mechanisms to get to the discovery of a treasure map for Mikey Walsh (Sean Astin) and his friends, who seek the treasure to salvage their homes from certain takeover by a property magnate (boo on capitalism, yo).

Yet, beyond Mikey these friends never express any innocence of youth, either, as the tone frequently highlights the maliciousness that is prevalent in the town, but especially in our main characters. We are entrusted to laugh when Mouth, who knows Spanish, preys upon the new (obligatory Spanish-speaking) maid that the Walsh family has brought in. We are entrusted to laugh when Chunk is ridiculed by his friends for his continual need to eat (as well as his absurd penchant for pratfalls to introduce the very plot mechanism of the map). Elsewhere, we are entrusted to accept it when Mikey’s elder brother is thrown off a cliff on a bicycle by a cocksure jock, rather than the girls in the car reporting him for attempted assault if not murder. Nay, you say, this is a children’s film and concern ye not with logic. But between the insistence on objectifying all the women and especially the minorities, see Walter Chaw’s review for a vitriolic attack, and the film never managing a consistent tone, there’s little to enjoy from a pragmatic sense.

Now, this can be saved if the main performances are quality, but only Astin and James Brolin as the brother redeem themselves, though Martha Plimpton (?) also delivers a nice performance as the awkward girl tagging along with the boys. Otherwise, though, we’re doomed to performances that are firmly modulated in the range of shrill, suggesting that these actors lack internal expression and express all emotion through bombastic shouting.

Granted, such limitations can yield to a fantastic drinking game, I’m sure, where one takes a shot every time a kid shouts his line, but I fear for the hospitals that would be plagued with terminally ill patients as a result of such a practice. However, the sequence once they find the treasure is exciting. And Plimpton has some good handling of her material, such as her nice delivery here: “Brand, God put that rock there for a reason... and... and I don't think we should move it.” As a director, Donner also gets a nice moment when he references his earlier film Superman. Yet every moment like that is counteracted by Mouth in a performance that epitomizes one’s asking, “Where’s the gun? Someone fire the gun.” Ultimately, it’s an excellent case for a guilty pleasure as it works better as moments than as the sum of its parts, though I still hesitant to feel The Goonies succeeds beyond any nominal level.

The Goonies: 3/10

Punishment Park

2007-08-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-08-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-26T12:05:00.001-07:00

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

2007-08-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

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

Muriel's Wedding

2007-07-23T06:01:00.000-07:00

P.J. Hogan’s Australian film Muriel Wedding’s (1994) is one of the premiere exhibits of what honesty and comprehensiveness can do to what is ostensibly a genre product. Only in the most shallow of terms can this be called a chick flick as it’s more a film that simply appropriates those tropes in order to stage a psychological drama of womanhood as it corresponds to the awkward and callow Muriel (Toni Collette), a woman so desperate to be considered beautiful that she acquiesces to external definitions of beauty and accomplishment. And while this merely demonstrates the superficial showiness that weddings and marriage can attain if wrongly desired, and thus the superficiality behind “chick flicks” in their most rigid definition, it is integral precisely because Muriel believes in the one-to-one correlation between marriage/happiness.

When mediocrity becomes so conditioned in the interiority of Muriel’s character that she begins to compulsively lie, fabricating untruths in the attempt to win friends and respect, she loses her individuality. When she first meets Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths), she constructs a false engagement to a man to keep from revealing the truth that haunts her—that she is pointedly, inflexibly alone. And while we see that this shifting of character is not entirely bad since there are numerous negative personality traits she has that have damaged her socially, it’s still a fundamental change in her character and thus is one that lessens her dedication to her individuality.

For her part, Rhonda possesses a volatile personality, one that is willing to lash out savagely to avenge the wrongs of adolescence to hilarious results, as when she honestly yet spitefully reveals the truth about another’s bridesmaids, but that same instability is cast inward and internalized when Rhonda becomes aware that she has cancer on her spine which dehabilitates her early vitality and leads her into depression. Thus, we start to see Muriel and Rhonda each invert their depression, with Muriel projecting outward after years of internalizing and Rhonda internalizing after years of externalizing.

The titular wedding sequence chronicles the giddy and oblivious Muriel, who’s so attuned to her need to upstage her friends’ disparagements at her spouselessness that she commits to an artificial marriage, one designed merely to satisfy country politics so that her new spouse, David, can participate for Australia in the swimming meets at the 2000 summer Olympics. In committing to this artifice of a marriage, though, Muriel loses Rhonda’s respect for her, as she surrenders to her dream rather than her individuality. Yet at the wedding we begin seeing glimpses of Muriel’s natural beauty that is only countered when her honest giddiness transforms her beauty into pointed naïveté, trusting in the dream to the detriment of her integrity. Yet her eventual shedding of the narcissistic desire for marriage leads her, and the film, to a greater awakening, one that instills in the whole affair a sanctity of friendship that is largely absent from the marriage.

My singular fault in this film is Muriel’s decision to bed David. While such a scene suggests reciprocity and genuine communication between her and David when he formerly despised her, as when he secured Muriel and himself separate bedrooms and thus neutralized any thoughts of intimacy, the two later come to understanding about each other. Both of them understand the other’s game and Muriel’s naïveté is revealed to be her way of consciously hiding all of her transgressions, so that we see the fragility at work in her mind. Yet while the sex affirms the attraction of marriage, it is also paradoxically negated by her realization that she must leave the marriage. At this point I am unsure whether this is a regressive or progressive gesture, as there’s some slippage in the connotations (does this mean there’s no longer a one-to-one correlation between sex and love for Muriel or is this merely a means to sanctifying the marriage before she realizes what she’s done?).

Still, this is the only flaw in the film, and it’s one that is comfortably in my top 100 now as an embodiment of how to fashion a near-perfect film from the constraints of genre. This is one that only a film swap would have forced me to watch, and it’s one that will be suggested to others so that they too may see a quality example of the “genre.”

Muriel's Wedding: 9.5/10

2001: A Space Odyssey

2007-07-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

Few films are as directly meditative as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Constructed around visuals and music rather than conventional dialogue, this is one of those few films that underscores its intelligence, and the intelligence it seeks to impart onto audiences, vis-à-vis pure cinematic framing. Throughout the film Kubrick absolves words of their standard power, placing rhetorical power instead in the frequent ambient sounds and the transformative energy of the photographic lens. Thus, the film exists on a scale that truly surrounds the mind and body as one watches it.

Moreover, it is this dichotomy of the mind/body split that Kubrick seeks to consider in new terms, starting with the Dawn of Man sequences. Here we see the apes struggling to survive even as they are at one with nature. However, once the mysterious monolith appears as they will throughout the film, the apes begin to learn and create (fashioning weapons here), so that nature is a construct that can be subject to domination. Thus, we arrive at a first thesis—wherein because mankind is vulnerable to the outside interference of the monolith, though that word interference has problematic rhetorical connotations, they are here able to survive attacks at a greater frequency. Violence and intelligence collide, then, contributing to the first growth.

Later growths in the film concern how that intelligence is to be used, and how humanity responds to the monolith, so that the outlets that these monoliths present are seen as reservoirs of untapped potential and transcendence, seen in new technological, ethical, and biological changes. The humans change, but then so too does the super-computer HAL 9000, and not all of these changes bode well for the future of individual humans. Yet the sense of awakening that the monoliths present allows new forms of existence where intelligence is shifted from a physical dominion into something metaphysical, so that in the end when the physical body falters, the mind can begin again, transplanted into a more perfect, more harmonious (and transparent) union as the star child at the conclusion. Yet even here the film does not end; it does not end until the camera lens brings the star child’s gaze directly to our gaze, wherein the child seems to be questioning if we too are ready for the next stage of evolution.

2001: A Space Odyssey: 10/10

Linda Linda Linda

2007-07-13T17:36:00.000-07:00

Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Linda, Linda, Linda (2005) is an appropriately odd film, one that celebrates the innocence and fearlessness that comes with being a teenager. Structured around four teens in suburban Japan who plan to play at the school’s rock “concert,” the film doesn’t quite a singular tone, partaking in both the ambivalence and latent desire of attraction, as well as the contemplative struggle for one of the four, a Korean, to be an individual in the midst of country expectations from Japan. Through it all, there’s a sublime joy to the characters and their endeavors that makes the film take flight, even when some of its realism fades into fantasy.

However while the Korean/Japan juxtaposition is initially emphasized with the schoolmates, little is actually dealt with. One expects a bit more engagement with the Japanese/Korean dynamics, whether through a study of the ennui that threatens to swallow up the outsiders in Japan or through an examination of the singer's social situation at home. Additionally, while it's almost pleasing to see a film that leaves so much of the boy-girl relationships muted and unresolved, it kinda feels like there needs to be a bit more concrete there.

Essentially, this is a quality film through and through, but to lavish it with rhapsodic love seems a bit much. Because of its lack of socio-historical engagement at times, the film can feel slight, though always enjoyable. For example, while the enthusiastic response from the attendees at the concert's end when they take the stage felt just a little too emphasized and thus unreal, the film is successful enough in its character types that we forgive it and soar along with the girls.

Even with its various shortcomings, it's still eminently viewable.

Linda Linda Linda: 7.5/10

Pump Up the Volume

2007-06-03T17:58:00.001-07:00

Updating the vitriolic hatred of the blind conformity found in Network and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Allan Moyle’s Pump Up the Volume (1990) appropriates these anti-authoritarian classics and channels them through the lens of a teen movie that is smarter than its peers. As such, and as it is bound to, it succeeds at building up the heroic stance of its protagonist, anonymous Mark Hunter and his far more imposing on-air personality Happy Harry Hard On (Christian Slater), so that we come to understand how a singular voice gains in strength and resonance when not held captive by societal pressures. When allowed the autonomy and creativity of self-definition that the formerly shy Hunter finds with his radio show, he truly possesses the power to expose the abusive regulations and hypocrisies that the adult authorities adhere to in their exploits.

At its heart, then, Moyle’s film is an empowerment tale, struggling to work within the margins of teen genre cinema and still speak of larger issues than simply guy-desires-girl teen material. And while the film still possesses these latter issues of sexuality, it complicates them by allowing the gothic-attired Nora (Samantha Mathis) to be the aggressor in the relationship between her and Mark, shifting the complexities of subjectivity onto her persona rather than being the stereotypical victim figure. In some way it’s a symbolic superhero she’s drawn to in her adulation of the vehemently outspoken anti-conformist Happy Harry, but we soon see her appreciation and love for the more underachieving Mark Hunter persona as she works to negotiate his passivity and plan to quit speaking out. Her strength soon transforms Mark, allowing him to build a continual critique of the abusive school administration and the willingness to shift the blame onto his radio show rather than dig deeper into the societal problems themselves.

Perhaps most fundamentally, though Pump Up the Volume draws parallels to Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio, which featured a similarly minded independent-thinking protagonist who desperately wanted to awaken minds to the complexities of life and society. Here, rather than focusing on those who empty lives inspire them to call into a personality who despises them, Mark actually empathizes with his fellow youth listeners. As such, he wants to exposes the improprieties of a system that often treats teens like chattel, throwing aside the weak or unmotivated while manipulating school figures so as to score higher state funding. The finale, though, feels just a bit too positivistic, so that, while inspiring, ignores the reality that most youths don’t aspire to grow out of passivity.

Furthermore, at times the film feels like its themes are a bit too shallowly drawn, as the shy Hunter is almost too inward in his stereotypical aloofness. Additionally, most of the secondary characters are rather one-dimensional, with the exceptions of Mark’s creative fiction instructor and his father, who develops complexity after initially seeming to be the father figure who pacifies his family with empty assurances. Also, even as the film avoids overt emphasis on simple sexuality, the film seems to shy away from it as well. Here, Mark has the goth hottie Nora lusting after him, but he never takes her and [CENSORED BY BLOGSPOT MANAGEMENT] and [CENSORED AGAIN] while he is [SERIOUSLY, YOU DON'T WANNA READ WHAT'S UNDER HERE].

That said, this is eminently watchable and a very noble film in its admittedly broad politics in the end, one that benefits from smart dialogue and a strong partnering of two actors (Slater and Mathis) who have characters that are alive and never less than engaging. Well worth a second look if you disregarded, as I once did, and worth a rewatch for a personal reappraisal.

Pump Up the Volume: 8/10

Miracle of Morgan's Creek

2007-05-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

Much like his earlier films The Lady Eve and Sullivan’s Travels, Preston Sturges’ Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) is an entertaining melodrama and exercise in rapid-fire comedy, though it is a film that, if the viewer is lacking in metatextual knowledge, initially seems devoid of any ties to reality. That is, this is a film so reliant on absurdity that it is only after understanding what Sturges attacks (specifically, the Hays Code’s restrictions upon cinema) vis-à-vis the film’s themes that the true wonder and appreciation for the film becomes known.

None too bright Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) is a small town girl who just wants to have fun with the American soldiers before they are sent overseas. Consequently, she flippantly rejects the attraction that dorky Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) seeks to bestow upon her, abdicating any desire to him. Such a renouncing takes place until she wakes up married and impregnated the morning after a night out on the town, when she (literally) hits her head on a lamp but (symbolically) was drunk from a spiked drink. After that she and her prodigious younger sister Emmy (Diana Lynn) try to fashion a workable excuse, including marrying Norval (which Trudy can’t do because she’s too kindhearted to hurt Norval). And after all that we still haven’t arrived at the “miracle” behind the title.

Sturges continually offers the juxtaposition of obvious vs. latent intent, corrupting the characters with implied controversial ideas yet maintaining the air of innocence, and the way in which he manipulates our central emotions about the easygoing Trudy is perhaps the clearest example. Norval truly loves her but her first reaction to him is to maneuver his affection to her own advantage. Though my opinion of Trudy isn’t as appreciative as others, I respect how Sturges finagles and appropriates our conception of Trudy.

Unlike earlier Sturges films mentioned above, however, the most entertaining characters are not the main characters but rather the supporting cast. Because everyone is pretty much playing a caricature, it’s dependent on those actors who most embody their characters to give the film its comedic potential. For their part, the politicians fielding the small town’s phone call offer a nice amount of the hilarity, constantly usurping the hypocritical authority of the community (re: the Hays Code), and the Kockenlocker father (William Demarest) adds an edge that is simultaneously eyeroll-worthy and genius in its mockery of the stereotypical father, especially when he’s trying to convince the rather simpleminded Norval to knock him out in self-defense.

Yet the very fact that such knowledge (once obvious to its contemporary audiences but now steeped in a tradition of film history) is necessary to appreciate the hyper-caricatures and mockery of the Hays Code precludes more than just a bit of my enjoyment. This is not to say that preliminary legwork isn’t needed prior to watching a film, but rather this is to say that without such knowledge this film loses all basis in reality and instead becomes a lightweight comedy and not the hyper-critical attack on misguided censorship that Sturges truly wants it to be.

Miracle of Morgan's Creek: 7/10

Ugetsu

2007-05-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

Prior to starting this blog I had always written off Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953), though there was seldom a good reason and thoughts devolved into such axioms as “Japanese ghost stories? What is Ugetsu, another Ringu? Lolzzz,” “It doesn’t have Mifune, so why bother?,” or “In Her Shoes is assuredly a better choice for a blind rental.” Thus, when Ugetsu finally showed up in friends' top ten lists, I resolved to correct this neglect on my part. And lo, it was good, extremely good. What I always feared would be a stagnant fable, wizened and overtly preachy, instead became a wonder of character and atmosphere, allowing Mizoguchi’s immaculate mise en scene to express inner psychology while simultaneously allowing characters to follow their particular stories with self-critiques rather than moralistic decrees.

Moreover, this is one film that offers a brutal assessment of male-female relationships, and it’s one where Mizoguchi seems to side most with the feminine even as he suggests a way in which masculinity can be devoted to the feminine. That is, while Mizoguchi tells a universal story of man’s deterministic pride and delusional arrogance, detailing men who carelessly leave behind their wives and families to pursue their own gilded desires, by film’s end he expresses an innate humanism, allowing the men to shoulder their blame and acknowledge the hurt they have inflicted upon their wives. This extreme dedication to reciprocity is what enables the film to transcend the machinations of gender and become something simultaneously more universal and primitive, since modern society exists here as the pollutant of the soul and desire, what with its emphasis on bureaucracy and politics.

In using the generic conventions of the ghost story, a genre staple that, while universal, is most native to the Japanese people, Mizoguchi subverts the typical caricature of female malevolence, instead offering Lady Wasaka a mournful and existentialist sensitivity that demonstrates his humility toward women. Indeed, it is this humility that is most woven throughout Ugetsu, effacing these men and their materialistic sense of pride, so that their desires become grounded around devotion and responsibility, even if they can only prove this realization to their wives after the fact. Yet, again moving beyond traditional ghost stories, this after-death devotion is how our main characters bond together the most. Ultimately, this is a film about the violation of the world and ourselves, and works masterfully as an appeal to reappraising our desires for a higher sense of virtue.

Ugetsu: 10/10

The Road Home

2007-05-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

Zhang Yimou’s The Road Home (1999) is a fascinating work of memory and reflection, yet it is a film that sustains itself largely through its simplicity. Initially leaving behind most of the subterfuge and political critique of his earlier works, here Zhang crafts a story of love between the young beauty in the mountains and the schoolteacher from the city assigned to educate the village. Within this traditional flashback narrative, though, there still lies an undercurrent of critique, as the old ways are valorized and the freedom to come back home to marry is celebrated amidst the enforcement of Communistic ideals and the threat of jail. This ability to work at both levels of character/story and political critique is what elevates this film beyond the prototypical flashback exercise that I had initially feared it would be.

It first helps to identify some of the main ideas, such as one’s story becoming legend and how small artifacts (especially the bowl, in which Zhao Di (Zhang Ziyi) places all of her trust to woo Luo Changyu (Zhend Hao) with her cooking) become imbued with such power that any damage to them becomes irrevocable. Rather than language, artifacts such as the hair clip Luo bestows upon Zhao become the mechanism through which longing is expressed, as we come to understand that Zhao and Luo’s relationship is not predicated around open communication but instead is one of furtive glances and unnecessary treks across buildings, their devotion to one another manifesting itself in the way in which each symbolically commits to the other.

This is why most of the powerful scenes are so simply orchestrated. Called back by the authorities over an unexplained transgression, Luo leaves the mountainside with an authority figure and a horse escort and we immediately cut to Zhao trying to reach him with a bowl of one of his favorite dishes before he is gone, watching as she dashes across an expanse of land in her devotion to him. It’s a breathtaking moment, even as we recognize the impossibility of her logic, and Zhang masterfully executes the scene. Similarly, when Luo returns to her after a prolonged absence (because the villagers have gotten word back to him about Zhao’s unending devotion to him), he is again collected by the authorities, and here the ordeal of having to serve a two-year sentence for his flight from the city back to the mountainside seems so contemptible that it can’t be anything less than a subversive commentary on the blind enforcement of Communistic ideals against the similarly blind love of men and women.

Beyond the delicacy of the young love story, there is also a noticeable touch of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami in it, with Zhang, similarly to Kiarostami, framing the mise en scene from a distance so that the landscape shots start to have their own subjectivity, moving from mood to character with ease. Lastly, this was the first feature film that Zhang Ziyi worked on, and, beyond possibly Wong Kar Wai’s 2046, it remains her strongest work to date, as she centers her performance through her expressions and demeanor rather than dialogue, as here and in 2046 she demonstrates what a command she has over her body. While not quite effervescent, The Road Home is certainly a strong piece of Zhang’s cinema.

The Road Home: 8/10

Werckmeister Harmonies

2007-04-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

It is fascinating how some films with long takes display such intimacy, such as the works of Hou Hsiao-hsien, while others, such as Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, create a vastness that is simultaneously cosmic and clear, each director layering the depth of their compositions over their framing. Still, few films are as affecting in their cinematic magnitude as Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), as it alternately comments upon the inevitability of revolution for its world-weary patrons and the lingering repercussions that psychologically await them.

In a small Hungarian town, the natural order is thrown aside as foreigners, a circus bearing a dead whale, and an extreme frost blanket the once peaceful town. Gradually this disruption becomes more than just murmurs, shifting to a more rebellious insurgency that threatens violence and the promise of restoring quietude once more to the natural order. Meanwhile, Janos Valuska (Lars Rudolph) is the town's postman but also their idiot savant, and the film blurs whether or not the constellation of peace that he dreams about in the beginning can exist outside of his distinction of reality. As it stands, much of this film's core can be found in the title of author Laszlo Krasnahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance, which serves as the basis for Werckmeister Harmonies. Order and resistance are twinned, and which wins out is a subjective decision that all of us must process for ourselves.

Everyone already knows about the film's composition (140 minutes in 39 separate shots), so what is fascinating is how these moments both stand alone and build to crescendo with the storming of a hospital, wherein angry rioters' violence exists as a counterpoint to the inertia that grounds so many of their lives. Still, the confrontation ends with something akin to a spiritual awakening, a moment of quiet repose and reflection in the midst of such unmistakable degradation and soullessness, and these are the counterpoints that give the film its endless power. The rioters come upon a helpless elderly man, and his simple resignation to his fate disturbs them similarly to the way it disturbs us. Here and elsewhere the film's score of piano and violins swell up, and Tarr uses it sparingly, but never less than effectively.

One of the singular gems of this decade, Werckmeister Harmonies is hypnotic in its structure, its story, its framing, and its contribution to the cinematic world. Thoroughly entrancing, it is a demanding view, but one where, if you surrender to it, you come out having witnessed a singular visionary at work.

Werckmeister Harmonies: 10/10

Double Indemnity

2007-04-11T18:52:00.000-07:00

Access to a would-be lover is perhaps the most frequent reason for murder. That said, what do we then make of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944)? This is a film that obstinately suggests Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) could have immediate access to Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) after their first meeting. Despite a warning from Mrs. Dietrichson that there’s a “speed limit in this state,” both knowingly enter into a flirtatious rapport. Still, if sexual attainment were the goal, adherence to the machinations of murder would not be necessary.

This, of course, gets at the heart of deception in film noir, since protagonists such as Neff follow the circumscribed machinations laid out in front of him as he heads toward the goal, making sure that every detail has “got to be perfect” and revealing that often such strict adherence to an ideal is more important than the goal itself. That is, in denying the goal itself (sexual union with Phyllis) Neff remains pure of any mundane reality of the sex. Here, Neff continually finds reasons to avoid the inevitable consummation of the sexual tryst with Mrs. Dietrichson, since the attainment of sex will destroy all that he desires and effectively defraud him of his very desire.

In this sense, he is unmistakably fetishistic, so that in not getting “it” he avoids any contamination of attainment. He becomes caught in his own artificiality, treasuring the appearance of superfluous details over the consummated act. In a Freudian reading of fantasies, Freud famously noted that the realization of a fantasy is often seen as a nightmare. In Double Indemnity that idea stands true, since the consummation of sex ruptures the ideal that Neff had been able to impose over all the details. While this can be more easily read as part of Mrs. Dietrichson’s calculating plan as femme fatale , there’s a fascination in examining Neff’s getting it as precisely tied to why the plan fails.

Ultimately, what all of the above is trying to say is that Double Indemnity is a fascinating case study in prolonging the attainment of what was always available, so a study of why Neff avoids immediate access is an interesting idea. So while the pitch-perfect mise en scene, dialogue, and performances are the immediate pleasure, think about the lingering pleasures, those that don’t desire to be consummated.

Double Indemnity: 10/10

Hollow Man

2007-04-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

In one of the most spectacular displays of special effects, Paul Verhoeven crafts the otherwise muddled Hollow Man (2000). Despite the impeccable artistry devoted to rendering our lead Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) invisible, the same craft cannot be attached to the script, which is alternately negligible to simply silly. In taking the classic trope of the scientist who ends up sacrificing his humanity for his obsessionality after becoming invisible (becoming a peeping tom, a rapist, and a murderer), Verhoeven takes a limitless philosophical concept and reduces it to frivolous fun and suspense. Unfortunately, there is no real character for the audience to attach itself to, so the whole affair becomes a meaningless one, lacking purpose or value.

Our seemingly surrogate protagonist becomes Linda McKay (Elisabeth Shue), ex-girlfriend of Caine’s and a fellow scientist now bedding another member of the research team. Yet because McKay demonstrates a conflicted attraction to her new beau while allowing Caine far too much leniency with her, she herself becomes as deluded as Caine. That is, any objective identification is derailed because her own actions damage credibility and therefore leave audiences devoid of reason.

The whole film seems to disregard intellectual logic, which is self-defeating for a film ostensibly concerning scientists. The animal trainer at the scientific hub is felt up in her sleep by Caine, awakens to find her shirt unbuttoned yet doesn’t mention this to anyone because… well, the film never concerns itself with answering these questions of logic. Verhoeven seems to have gotten caught up in taking care of the admittedly wonderful visual effects to predicate any concern with the script.

After a fascinating premise, this is a film that devolves and loses any intellectuality, substituting empty thrills and spectacle for story and development. This is a shame because this idea is indeed limitless, but the film neglects actual considerations for pointless wonder.

Hollow Man: 6/10

Business is Businss

2007-04-06T18:35:00.000-07:00

Business is Business (1971) is Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s very first full-length film, and it would be a discredit to his future work to not acknowledge that this film is largely a middling affair with mere glimpses into his later talent. Taken unto itself, though, this is a typical story about humanizing a prostitute and details the many struggles that one faces when tricking.

Blonde Greet (Ronnie Bierman) is a middle-aged prostitute who earns her fancy abode more through entertaining her clientele’s eccentricities than through any ravishing beauty. Enlisting the aid of her fellow prostitute Nel Muller, who is continually trying to avoid her violently physical live-in pimp, Greet provides the fetishes that these men’s fear alerting their wives to. Yet in the midst of this projected ideal, Greet faces disillusion as the one client she depended on to secure her escape finds himself unable to divorce his wife, fearing any reprehensible damage he might cause her. Thus, the film becomes an ode to decay as Greet comes to realize that this life she chose is in fact interminable, that she cannot simply marry out of it (this theme will be repeated in Verhoeven’s marginally better Katie Tippel).

So if the film details the corroded dreams of a desperate woman, why is that not engaging cinema? The answer lies largely in a script that neglects to consider any of the past history of Greet, which would offer some psychological foundation and provide an entry point into an understanding for her character. As it stands, we understand that she means to help her fellow prostitutes secure a better life for themselves, as she does with Nel, even if that security becomes belittling and monotonous. What Verhoeven does manage is to suggest that that same monotony is prevalent in Greet’s life, and that eventually her body will fail her and that her life will soon wither, since her life is directly linked with the currency of her body.

If you need to see every film about prostitution ever made, you might find something to enjoy here. There is a mild joy in the film’s unbridled carnality, but it’s there in Verhoeven’s stronger work as well, so better to appreciate a better film than this one. Largely, Business is Business suffers from a nondescript approach to the script and a tone that often slights the more serious themes of psychological and spiritual decay.

Business is Business: 4.5/10

Flesh + Blood

2007-04-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

Flesh + Blood (1985). Ah, European sword epics dedicated to history anywhere between the 9th-16th century. Gotta love Paul Verhoeven’s specificity. Despite a storyline involving a dislocated king who betrays his medieval mercenaries, those same outcast mercenaries then preying on religious superstition in order to transplant themselves into glory and riches, the betrothed maiden to the prince who must manipulate the mercenary’s leader in order to survive, and the desperate son of the king working to find his betrothed, all of these elements fall away into superficiality, largely because Verhoeven alternates tonal arrangement far too often to ever craft a film that is anything more than intermittently entertaining.

Despite having a game Martin (Rutger Hauer) as the leader of the mercenary clan evolving and trying out the rule of monarchy, and thus subverting it, which is apparently Verhoeven’s critique, what ultimately makes this film worth a viewing is the treatment of Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Though she has promised herself to the prince via a mutually and faux-beautifully romantic eating of mandrake, after being unknowingly kidnapped and discovered she must win Martin over as his personal mistress rather than getting passed around and raped by all the mercenaries. While this opens up interesting issues of identity as she works to keep both Martin and the prince eternally devoted to her, securing herself safeguard no matter which victor wins, the film (and thus Verhoeven) problematically cloud this issue by conspiring to utilize a shrilling soundtrack that swells tenderly any time Agnes and Martin bed together, making Agnes out to be singularly focused on survival with Martin rather than focusing on her true duplicitous nature.

This type of indeterminacy is further undermined by the prince himself, who early on in the film regards his father as villainous and a traitor to those who won him back his castle, yet the son seemingly sheds this contempt for his father the very second he loses his betrothed, thereby repeating his father’s same contemptuous mannerisms in order to secure his betrothed. The film never dwells on this fact, nor does it show Agnes’ recognition or ramifications of this newfound character reversal, but instead cheerfully marches on, never really deciding whether or not the prince or Martin is a more virtuous character. While this allows Verhoeven an opportunity to claim that Agnes is the only character with true virtue, it’s simple-minded and lessens the complexity of character motivation.

That said, this film deserves props for a few rousing action scenes and a truly glorious moment where a dog infected with the plague is cut up and catapulted over a castle wall. That alone raises the grade a half point. Even so, though, this is one of Verhoeven’s weaker efforts and it is deservedly marginalized, despite ample Jennifer Jason Leigh nudity. After all, what film isn’t Leigh naked in any more?

Flesh + Blood: 5.5/10

The 4th Man

2007-03-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

After a consideration of his filmography, even detractors must note that few filmmakers are as brazen as Paul Verhoeven. Though he might not give utmost consideration to the depth of a character, he will always try to combine entertainment with a consideration of intellectualism. That is, though he clearly prides himself on his work as producer of entertainment, he wants to work with film as a duplicitous medium as well, analyzing paranoia and delusions as a characteristic of the human condition, even if he shortchanges that analysis on occasion.

With The 4th Man (1983), however, he bridges those two ideals fairly evenly, allowing a consideration that rises above the dualism of humanity that is suggested in the opening symbolism with a spider climbing over a statue of Jesus. While some might view this as simple lip-service to Bergman’s metaphor in his religious chamber trilogy, it’s paramount to a thematic consideration of the hybridity, rather than mere dualism, of The 4th Man, for the film seeks to undermine these notions of either/or with its analysis of Christine Halsslag (Renée Soutendijk), a woman who can initially be viewed as causing the murder of her previous husbands or be viewed as a helpless pawn in life’s misfortune. This accusatory viewpoint is complicated in the paranoia of our protagonist, Gerard Reve (Jeroen Krabbé).

Between Gerard’s paranoia and delusions, Verhoeven creates an indeterminancy that adds greater psychological weight to the affair and makes the story into more than a film noir and femme fatale picture. Verhoeven’s aesthetic is perfect for a scene in which Gerard learns of the fates of Christine’s previous spouses vis-à-vis a film projector, and Gerard’s simultaneous disgust and intrigue is matched by own captivation for how Verhoeven manipulates his sordid material. And though Bergman analogies are a bit heavy-handed, they are overall in tune with the goals of the film and work in nice contrast to the Mary metaphors. Very good stuff, and it features some very interesting expansions into film noir, specifically a treatment of homosexuality and androgyny within the genre.

The 4th Man: 8/10

Ikiru

2007-03-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

There is an incredible humbling power felt whenever filmmakers resolve to explore the end of one’s life, since the looming presence of death impels all to reconsider life and to reevaluate how one’s myopic and self-centered vision might be better spent building toward a more communal ideal. That is, death is the ultimate equalizer, where the powerful realize their weaknesses and transgressions that were used to achieve power, and the attempt to humble oneself becomes paramount in the face of death.

As such, few films leave as indelible a mark upon the viewer as Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), wherein a listless bureaucrat, Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), eventually finds spiritual motivation within the discovery of his stomach cancer and impending death. Yet Kurosawa knowingly does not suggest that sweeping displays of remorse and redemption are possible, since Japanese culture has long been accustomed to an internalization of illness and news of one’s own death; rather, Kurosawa focuses on a very minute and miniscule demonstration of individual will over empty bureaucracy: to build a park for the citizens.

In Watanabe’s defiance and subversion of the conventional runaround, we see Kurosawa make his philosophical plea for man to dedicate himself to a communal way of living, but moreover to understand that you are defined by what you do and what you contribute, and these choices that you make, of lack thereof, dictate how others view you. Thus, we understand that because Watanabe’s estrangement with his own son is far too gone, his failure there can only be reconciled by an improvement of the neighborhood space. As a result, a life that was once built around ceremonial, though futile, assembly becomes transformed by a spiritual desire for giving and charity.

At once a film that cinematically critiques the sanitary conditions of postwar times, a plea for human goodness, and an examination of how communities mistakenly appropriate one’s goodness for the sake of their own profit, Ikiru never fails to humble and overwhelm one’s senses.

Ikiru: 10/10

The New World

2007-03-25T06:41:00.000-07:00

Terrence Malick’s films have always been about the struggle for wholeness, redemption, and transcendence, with the image being linked to startling revelation vis-à-vis music or voiceover rather than traditional plot. In The New World (2005) more so than any of his other films plot is incidental, which for some generates a disinterest as the most formal of cinematic devices is shed, yet the plot, such as it is, is still advanced through thematic considerations and circular, modulated images.

This is a film that masks its observation of the Indians in transcendentalist musings, sifting through Captain John Smith’s (Colin Ferrell) voiceover that reveres the harmony of the native people. Yet in the same manner that Private Witt in The Thin Red Line idealized the island people and believed there to be no inner conflict or animosity, here we find Smith similarly romanticizing. We later understand that conflicts are if not constant, then they are at the very least chronic, and it is Smith, and not Malick, who fails to consider this reality. Likewise, Rebecca/Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Filcher) finds her father casts her out of the tribe because of the Europeans’ betrayal, which she has helped foster, and so here as well Malick refuses to sentimentalize the natives. We also receive the critique that the men with power (here the colonialists) seek to remake new worlds in the image of their own, to the detriment of those already peopled there.

In the film, action is often viewed through objects/doorways that filter and obstruct the totality of one’s vision, allowing for a romantic and idealized interpretation of what one sees, which allows Malick the opportunity to mix naïve romanticism with a more critical and judicious eye. For instance, in the opening we find Captain John Smith chained below the deck since the crew had already mutinied, and his vision of the new world is filtered through the tiny window that he gazes out of. Similarly, this same idea will later be seen and modulated when John Rolfe (Christian Bale) gazes upon Rebecca / Pocahontas through a doorway and fetishizes her beauty as opposed to realizing her lingering attraction to Smith, as well as in other instances.

Ultimately, this film becomes a consideration of what Pocahontas is meant to be read as—is she to be seen as Indian or European, or does she exist beyond the parameters of either/or? Though her freedom is most celebrated when she is in her Indian apparel, the film is not locked into an idea that she is caged after she is brought to Jamestown and Europeanized. Once she has born a son to her husband and becomes Europeanized, similarly to how North America is Europeanized, are we to feel betrayed, resentment, or gratitude? Ultimately, despite the romanticism of the natives, it must be decided that Malick celebrates and understands both the benefits and restrictions that followed such a move, and the vestiges of the past make way for the wholeness of the present.

For me personally, there have been few experiences as great as seeing The New World on the big screen twice, letting the film’s emotions wash over me in both small waves and large crescendos. Serving as the opening, middle, and climax of the film, the prelude to Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” receives the same transcendent treatment that Kubrick gave Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarathustra” in 2001, creating a poem of music and images that cumulatively leaves me euphoric after every viewing.

The New World: 10/10

Katie Tippel

2007-03-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

Despite his shortcomings as a director, Paul Verhoeven typically circumnavigates his weaknesses by telling stories that are sensational even if they occasionally veer into the histrionic performance-wise. Well, Katie Tippel (1975) manages the unenviable task of being the first Verhoeven film that is thoroughly mediocre on every fundamental level, so that even though there may be a beautiful moment or sequence, it never truly adds to any tension or development in the film since the film ultimately becomes a cinema of static characters.

While lead actress Monique van de Ven is probably one of the most beautiful women ever captured with a camera, the film surprisingly lacks tension, character development, and actual interest. Most of the film is governed around the politics of late 19th century Holland, with lower class unrest and the agony of immigrants trying to build their pot o' gold, forcing their children, including the titular Katie (van de Ven) into prostitution, but the film largely doesn't work because Tippel, herself a real person, is too much of a nonentity with regard to her value of political upheaval. That is, she is portrayed in a fashion that upholds her own vain and conceited ideas, but lacks any true compassion toward others. Thus, once she finally transcends her lowly status, she disregards any of those in her former class; yet she herself is disregarded by the man she loves as he too works to climb the social pecking order. These parallels, while existent, never become anything more.

Yet while even this aspect of being a nonentity could make for fascinating social critique, the film never tackles this facet onscreen. In the commentary, Verhoeven mentions how the production planned to show Katie’s explicit lack of growth or consideration from where she came from, but decided against it, much to his dismay now. Such a change would have elevated the material and built a stronger narrative, complete with subtlety and a critique of the complicity of the lower class that ascends their former status. This is, unfortunately, a rather pedestrian film.

Katie Tippel: 5/10

In the Mood for Love

2007-03-22T14:30:00.001-07:00

This high rating to In the Mood for Love (2000) should not come as any surprise to anyone, since this film is not just necessary to an understanding of viewing Wong’s later 2046, but is itself more nuanced and invested in the possibility of expression rather than foreclosure. Moreover, whereas the latter film examines the issue of suppressed desire circling in upon itself, this film is more thematically vital because it analyzes a desire that still has the possibility to be consummated and not simply become pathological, as 2046 does.

In the Mood for Love finds two cuckolded spouses in the 1960’s, Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-Zhen Chan (Maggie Cheung), working to disassociate the affair their respective partners are carrying on with each other by acting out and fictionalizing the affair via role play with each other. This reversal lets the cuckolded spouses secure control of their lives as they alone animate the actions of their partners. This act, however, finds complication when Chow finds himself attracted to Su Li-Zhen and discovers that the attraction is not shared. The emotional damage sustained at the hands of the unfaithful partners leads each to a place of avoidance.

Moreover, the residue of Su Li-Zhen is a stand-in for Chow’s adulterous wife. He enacts a form of transference between Su Li-Zhen and his wife, whereupon his attraction to Su is negotiated through the initial love he received from his wife, but is elevated by the additional virtue that Su possesses, in that Su rejects the possibility of their ever descending to the same unfaithfulness that his wife demonstrated. This is the very essence of Chow’s paradox: he loves Su precisely because she will not love him. Instead, Chow unconsciously introjects the heartbreak that his wife caused him and substitutes Su Li-Zhen for her. With this disassociation, Chow denies any psychological suffering that his wife caused him, since she is inscripted through the melancholic gaze that Chow thrusts onto his remembrances of Su. As such, Chow still denies himself any possibility for recovery by not being honest with himself, but it is honesty and integrity that suffers, becoming barricaded as a secret that promises to haunt him ever after.

In the Mood for Love: 10/10

2046

2007-03-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

In 2046 (2004), Wong Kar Wai most illustrates his growth as a filmmaker, as he returns to the main protagonist of In the Mood for Love, Chow Mo Wan, and examines the discursive ways in which Chow is still haunted by both the betrayal of his wife and his inability to disassociate himself from the repercussions of his desired affair with Su Li-Zhen. While Chow works to free himself from the delayed emotion and residue left by the loss of his wife and Su Li-Zhen vis-à-vis fictional reenactments, 2046 explores the recursive nature of Chow’s dysfunction so that the substitution of these traumas lead Chow to his pathological narcissism. Thus, Wong’s 2046 details the hyper-attachment that Chow finds in his memories of Su Li-Zhen, over-investing himself in the fantasies of testimony since he cannot find peace in his acts of testimony. As a writer, Chow tries to write himself out of his over-investment through fiction, but each attempt in fact further delineates his imprisonment into melancholy. Consequently, Chow’s writing exists as an obsessional impulse, one that recursively feeds itself, becoming a narcissistic addiction that centers Chow even as it deprives him of emotion.

By camouflaging the pain, he reveals his pathological mania, in that he internalizes that which is forgotten, and is unable to comprehend the deeper workings of his unconscious memory. Thus, these cannibalistic acts on Su Li-Zhen’s memory merely repeat Chow’s traumatic experience, denying him recovery. His memories are embedded in science fiction narratives, with his alter ego unable to elicit passion from the mechanical and emotionless robots, all of whom—while modeled on various women he has romanced—embody his concept of Su Li-Zhen as unresponsive and indifferent. Yet Chow is not cognizant of the purpose behind this impulse, preferring to situate such fantasies as ways in which his writing can be marketed rather than understanding them as potential outlets of mourning. Because of this misconception, he becomes imprisoned in the deadlocked grip of melancholy.

This narcissistic ease in his own mythomania thus serves as his refuge, for he does not possess the resiliency to move outside his imaginary identification. Rather, he continues to act out his obsessional impulse in fiction, treasuring the fact that he can turn to fantasies to realize his ideal vision. Chow’s fiction, then, becomes his symbolic mirror, without which he has no reference to code his life or gain closure. Yet this act itself denies working through. As psychologist Judith Herman notes, the patient needs “integration, not exorcism.” When Chow returns to his object-loss in fiction, he aims to extricate its pain from his being, rather than integrate himself with it. As such, the release found in his stories never actually becomes a release, but instead merely quells the pain until a future experience calls back the earlier loss. Through this circular interplay, Chow’s fiction becomes its own imprisonment.

In the Mood for Love and 2046 embody Wong Kar Wai’s films about the 1960s, examining the over-investment of memory that clouds and envelops his characters, leaving them with only a residue of their former lives. With 2046, however, Wong’s oeuvre seems to have reached the end of its first stage. Wong has, at least for the time being, turned to fashioning his next several films in America. While his cinematic preoccupations may not face a fundamental change with the turn to filmmaking under the Hollywood system, it is obvious that Wong has reached the logical conclusion of his preoccupation with time and traumatic memory in these Hong Kong films. His characters in these films about the 1960’s are inextricably tied to their obsessional impulses, fabricating reconciliation rather than honestly and truly working to achieve emotional recovery. Chained to their internal captivity, Wong’s characters expose the fatalistic surrender of never working through traumatic experience.

2046: 10/10

Starship Troopers

2007-03-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

In a continuation of viewing all of Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven’s work, however accidental such a plan came about, it must be noted that Starship Troopers (1997) is a fascinating continuation on Verhoeven’s critique of the celebratory and gung-ho response to violence. Crafted as a film about intergalactic crime with insects (i.e. nature) fighting against man, this is a film that is adamantly political and critical of the military response to potential threats. As such, though its surface acts as a soap opera tale about Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) a man trying to prove himself to the woman he loves, Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards), Verhoeven and screenwriter Ed Neumeier appraise the 1940s propaganda pictures by refashioning them here as blindly patriotic and fascist toward any other/Other.

As such, the film becomes a stark critique on the desensitization of individual thought processes which leads to the mobilization of herd mentality and blind submission to a "higher" government authority. Johnny’s patriotism, as well as the other thousand’s patriotism, lead to mindless deaths from bugs that a newscaster notes didn’t even start the war. Yet, as the film shows, Johnny doesn’t care to consider such technicalities, but instead assumes a trigger-happy and heroic stance against the enemy, spouting clichés and empty rhetoric. As such, the film has a resonance in the political climate of many eras (WW2 [remember Verhoeven’s Soldier of Orange], the Korean War, Vietnam), and even allows one to supplement today’s political critique into a film where the critique didn't yet work.

These political issues are bookended by a propaganda piece for the Mobile Infantry campaigning righteously and declaring their point of view against the bugs, wherein the film gains some of its best and easiest critique simultaneously. Verhoeven has never been a subtle director and here the film’s vision embraces its excess concurrently with his mise en scene, exploring richly colorful and materialistic cities on the humans’ planet, and highlighting the alien yet strangely beautiful and austere quality on the aliens’ planet.

While this underscores the political angle, the film also has its eye on gender critique as well, with the alien brain trusts composed of giant vaginas. While this bit isn’t elucidated fully, it doesn’t like too much to suggest that the alien killer bugs are male and that the queens are that which keeps the species in good government.

If all of this is ignoring the mediocre acting on display, then welcome to the typical American Verhoeven release. His critical approach to American consumerism and materialism seems to have translated into a refusal to orient himself with quality actors and allowing their vacant or inappropriate performances to likewise exist as critique. Here it’s largely Denise Richards who suffers, as the supporting cast members are all quite good, including an excellent Michael Ironside.

Though the film works as a statement of how these archetypal characters display a lack of mourning and instead sublimate any internal reaction into obedience to “higher” military ideals, the film simply is a subversively thrill as the creatures storm the men in the final hour. It’s exciting action filmmaking and visually impressive even today, even as it subverts its normative society into a hypocritical war-driven society.

Starship Troopers: 8.5/10

The Third Man

2007-03-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949) is one of the pinnacles of British cinema, and Reed made certain of it. Graham Greene’s script originally conformed to a happy ending which would have circumvented much of the film’s central force and Reed combated this idea, so that the film truly begins and ends at a cemetery. Likewise, Reed fought for this cast, denying then godhead David O. Selznick his vision. Moreover, Reed brought local musician Anyon Karas to provide the soundtrack, introducing the now famous zither into scenes and allowing the film its sole spryness.

Largely, this film is an elegy to the innocence of time gone by and the manner in which people lose their lofty idealism after the war. Western novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) holds no pretensions toward greatness, but when his friend Harry Lime rescues him by flying him over to Vienna, Martins looks forward to the reunion. Alas, Lime and the city are old empires now in ruins. Lime has been struck dead by a car and Vienna itself is in the throes of a black market that can secure medical comfort and wares that are otherwise absent from daily life.

The corrupt city is swollen with paranoia and weariness, and this expressionistic quality is matched seamlessly by the cinematography, which is similarly tilted and askew. As Martins tries to negotiate a life in this barren yet opportunistic city, he also tries to solve who the third man was that pulled Lime off the road. This leads him to Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), Lime’s mistress who habitually confuses Holly for Harry. Though Martins wants to make good, he also has shortcomings and seeks to impress upon Anna his love and moralistic vision, which just pushes her away.

The less mentioned about this film the better the viewing experience is, for its loaded with peerless set-pieces, chases, speeches, and memorable shots all around. This film is a certifiable classic, and among the few post-war films that captured the zeitgeist of a generation, laying claim to the spirit of betrayal that masquerades as loyalty.

The Third Man: 10/10

My Life as a Dog

2007-03-12T13:24:00.000-07:00

Lasse Hallstrom’s My Life as a Dog (1985) is an interesting film in that it is alternately touching and maddening brainless. This latter quality is thankfully only truly embedded in the opening fifteen minutes, as our protagonist young Ingemar, commits every sin imaginable to further destroy his ailing mother’s health. Whether it’s getting his penis stuck in a glass bottle, accidentally setting whole trash heaps on fire, or knocking over dinner preparations after getting in a fight with his older brother, everything is manipulated to garner the deepest trauma to his mother even as young Ingemar looks on in bewilderment. Yet Hallstrom’s staging of it all feels overly designed to ratchet up the sympathy for the uncomprehending Ingemar, which soon becomes ludicrous.

Thankfully, Hallstrom transitions out of these scenes quickly enough and allows a more appreciating sense of childhood and growing maturity to develop. Once Ingemar is shipped over to live with his uncle, most of the cloying material evaporates and a more honest and credible story begins to take shape, documenting Ingemar’s ascent into adulthood and introspection, even as he still grapples with family responsibility and his affection for the young adolescent girl, Saga, who masquerades as a boy because she enjoys it more.

Ingemar’s coping mechanisms for all the loss in his life is through displacement, through a gradual process of introjecting his traumas and matching them against larger traumas known worldwide. Thus, he avoids his issues by finding appeasement that his life isn’t the catastrophe of others. However, when he realizes that his beloved dog Sickan is dead, attacked with this knowledge by an avenging Saga who wishes to injure him with the same dislocation he attacked her with earlier, his resolve in holding life’s traumas at arm’s length disintegrates and he is finally overwhelmed. Here and elsewhere toward the end, the film avoids the cloying sensibilities that permeate the earlier sections, though the film does have a tendency to rely on the sugar more than it needs.

Regardless, Hallstrom’s direction and mise en scene are bathed in a sense of beatific wonder at the beauty of 1950s Sweden, even as it hints subtly at fissures rupturing the commoners in Sweden. While Hallstrom circumvents some of the more traumatic issues by sustaining a comedic tone, the film overall succeeds because the characters eventually are fully drawn and developed. Thus, even at cloying moments the characters are actually consistent, even if they are consistently average. Overall, the film works for me, but not on any superlative level.

My Life as a Dog: 6.5/10

Mouchette

2007-03-11T07:28:00.000-07:00

Robert Bresson is one of the most idiosyncratic directors in cinema, fascinated more by the purity of theme than by embellished or larger-than-life actors, so he always enlisted non-actors and directed with a stoic style, preferring impressionistic, blank expressions to contortions of anger or joy. This rigidity crafted far more than one masterpiece, since A Man Escaped is well worth anyone’s time in its indictment of the prison systems in France, but perhaps Bresson’s most humane work lies in the story of a put upon young girl by the titular name of Mouchette (1967). This is a film that chronicles the degradation inflicted upon the young girl, who is left to either channel that pain out onto others, or to introject and absorb all of the agony into her very person.

Yet despite the seeming fatalism of the end, the film itself is not fatalistic. There are beautiful segments that express vindication and sweet euphoria for young Mouchette. Specifically, the bumper car sequence, long cited as a demonstration of the town taking out its frustration on her, does yield the potential for joy, in that the boy who's expressing his attraction to her through continuous car humping doesn't seem like that bad of a man, all things considered. Rather, it's the systemic denial of autonomy from her family that largely precludes her ability to find an alternate voice to liberate her.

Furthermore, the gentleman who rapes her even seems to almost exist as that harbinger, since his presence initially offers Mouchette a secret and thus private knowledge apart from her familial ways. Of course, the denial of that possibility comes in how he abuses her (though my sole complaint is that she could have run out the door rather than chosen to hide under the wooden table). Regardless, the communal degradation that she feels offsets this mild criticism, since the case could be made that she allows herself to be treated as the inferiority that she's internalized from everyone, which gives her cause to not escape such a fate.

The ending, then, speaks of the power Bresson could utilize when he wanted, as there's still that glimmer, that potential, for reconciliation that gives the film its humanity. Mouchette simply turns the same blind eye to that potential that others have turned toward her, finally introjecting her lack of possibility into a liberation of her spirit.

Mouchette: 10/10

Robocop

2007-03-08T05:44:00.000-08:00

Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop (1987) is a decent action film, and its full of good ol' Verhoeven excess and critique of American capitalism, but any consideration of it being a classic of its genre is predicated largely on its introduction of explicit gore into American households (squib packs, gore galore, et ceterea). In terms of cultural critique, though, Showgirls shows up this film any day of the week. Whereas that film allows several of its characters to rise beyond blatant stereotype, here there's not a single character who seems to exist independently of what they're called to do in the script.

As such, most of the critique on American capitalism is wedged into the outer edges of the narrative. The sections with the newscasters cheerfully reading off the day's news, even with polite repartee despite the wanton chaos and catastrophes going on around them, possess the trademark satire expected from Verhoeven. Moreover, the ads that intercut the news broadcasts exists as even stronger critique, with toys that market global destruction and chaos, extending the old Battleship ideas into a nuclear holocaust scenario and perfectly undercutting the naïve delivery behind corporate attitudes of news as it's presented on newscasts. That said, since it's more tangential and world-building than integral to the plot, one cannot privilege or elevate the material simply because of this point.

It's really the blandness of the two principle characters, Murphy (later the “completely” mechanical robot of police enforcement, Robocop) and the female cop Lewis, that lessens the film's impact. Both Murphy and Lewis are largely uninvolving characters, which damages our core sympathies. While this very detail precisely underscores Verhoeven's intent of offering a human but dehumanized world of the 80’s, it’s just dramatically underwhelming. The corporate climber who creates Robocop exists as a wonderful debasement of 80's excess culture, doing anything and utilizing every little edge he can to get ahead in the corporate world. But then he is killed off, and so ends that satire.

In order to work more fully, the film needs a bit more articulation of the inner drama as Murphy realizes that his return to life means that his personal life is devoid of meaning since his wife has moved on. This doesn't demand a complete shift from machine to human concepts of emotion, but a bit more interplay would have been fascinating. We get a bit of this during Lewis' caring for Murphy at the factory, but the plot and its predications hinder some of the explored characteristics that could have been vital to fleshing the two out more. Perhaps Verhoeven wants to subvert the notion that all action heroes need a woman as love interest and that's why the film underplays these ideas. But given the rest of the film's focus on excess, I find myself a bit unconvinced of the relationships these two hold for one another.

The oily corporate climber and Boddicker were the two most interesting characters, and so I find myself a bit depressed when the former bites it relatively early and the latter isn't involved in the final countdown. That said, the finale is rather clever, articulating an endpoint out of Murphy's former inability to harm the higher-ups at the corporation. I like that, but the last lines felt a bit too comic-booky in their wrap-up, as opposed to the exaggerated realism of the rest of the film. Taking it as a comic-book type of film, one can overlook some of the lack of character dynamics since they do fit comfortably into the archetypes of heroes and the individual's quest. Yet the films asks in the beginning to be read as exaggerated realism and not lightweight fantasy despite the premise, so its final tone feels off and thus dehabilitating...

Robocop: 7/10

Aguirre, The Wrath of God

2007-03-05T12:43:00.000-08:00

In an attempt to free himself from stereotype as perhaps not the most appealing director to work with, Werner Herzog decided to stage an adaptation of man finding peace and harmony within nature. After realizing that such a vision would not earn him legendary status, however, ol’ Herzog scrapped those plans and headed into the Peruvian jungle to piss off a lot of locals, expose his crew to various illnesses and epidemics, and liberate monkeys. And really, what self-respecting blog is complete without a film liberating monkeys?

Which bring us to Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972), Herzog’s epic about Spanish conquistadors hunting down El Dorado. Such a journey antagonizes the local slaves that have been captured en route and endangers the Spanish crew, as the wilderness and those that lie in it, both nature and man, threaten to pick the men off before such a conclusion can be reached. While not initially in charge, Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) manipulates his way into the symbolic head of the expedition, killing those who oppose him while making sure others bear the literal title of leader so that if anything goes awry, they absorb the vengeance and the blame rather than him.

This is a film that examines the singular focus of a narcissistic mind that dreams of an empire. El Dorado forces Aguirre headlong into a grandiose vision as projected liberator, losing himself in ideals even as his men threaten mutiny. Yet Herzog’s overwhelming thesis states that even though man has the power to silence others into obedient submission, man cannot silence the stoic and resolute eye of nature. The greed of Aguirre’s perception only blinds him to the inconsequence of his expedition against the more dominant force of the land itself which denies him comprehension. Thus, his conceited envy can only extract empty pleasure of ownership over a raft that is swiftly losing its membership.

Few images possess the stark humanity of the women slipping off into the jungle and, eventually, into the throes of death, so that Herzog subverts Aguirre’s mission to devalue the project of the expedition itself. As a result, Herzog leaves the viewer with that masterful rotating 360 shot around Aguirre as the raft is overrun with wild monkeys and drifts slowly, inexorably downriver with one last madman standing. But he too will soon fall and nature will consume all of man’s precious wanderings.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God: 10/10

The House of Mirth

2007-02-23T17:29:00.000-08:00

It is my lament that costume dramas fail to receive much discussion around these parts. Both The Wings of the Dove and Sense and Sensibility flirt with greatness in my eyes, but ultimately it comes down to which film most profoundly disturbed me about its themes of possession and the delicacy of social status, and thus Terence Davies’ adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (2000) becomes the obvious pick. Courtly love and procuring a spouse never hinged on such financial stability, and courtly love thus becomes a minefield of manipulation and masochistic desire.

Davies extends Wharton’s critiques on the historical limitations of women, where prodigious women who desire material and financial comforts must marry well by presenting themselves to men as commodities. The Lady in courtly love assumes no inner identity, but always remains a thing whose blank surface internalizes the ideals that the man desires for her. Lily Bart’s refusal to be narcissistically prized generates a subjectivity that is adamantly unlike the projection of the Lady. Because of her independence, Lily (Gillian Anderson) sees herself as separate from this commodification and thus able to comment on women’s submission to their mates.

When she ruins a chance at a spouse, Lily turns to Lawrence Selden (Eric Stoltz), her confidant and close friend for support. That these two feel a kinship for one another is noticeable from the first. He even appeals to her sense of integrity, noting that such wooing is essentially debasement. Still, while he believes that her wooing of men for financial benefit cheapens her, Selden cannot bring himself to consummate their relationship precisely because he knows that he lacks the very commodities that he endeavors to break her of, which, in turn, reveals that Selden orders his life by the same conditions that he teaches her to abhor.

This is a film that is fated to end miserably, but in its critique of the gender and social limitation toward women, it is profoundly liberating. By casting a clear indictment about the inequities presented for women throughout the nineteenth century, The House of Mirth becomes powerfully meaningful, allowing its criticism to extend throughout all social classes, becoming both backward-looking and strangely prescient.

The House of Mirth: 10/10

Memories of Murder

2007-02-19T07:04:00.000-08:00

South Korean director Joon-Ho Bong's Memories of Murder (2003) is an exceptionally well-built machine, using classic tropes of the serial killer thriller and tweaking them enough and making us care about the characters enough that we forgive the rote formal procedure of the film. That is, while this film is nothing especially original, it fashions mood and an atmosphere all its own that lets it rise above simple remakes of earlier films.

Inspired by true events, the film examines the first known incident of a serial killer in 1986 South Korea, where his female victims were found raped, gagged, and mutilated whenever there would be a rainy day. Bong utilizes the basic atmosphere of Se7en, a film that itself felt like the crimes only took place in perpetual rain, but it never feels like lip service. The whole inspired by true events helps gloss over some of these issues, but it's largely that we honestly care for our principle detectives, despite their faults. Our rural detective garners the most sympathy in his mistaken desire to simply receive praise and fashion a confession onto the first suspect he and his partner can torture into confessing. With the arrival of another detective from Seoul, though, the film shifts into a more humane examination of crime investigation. Indeed, the lead characters’ humanity may be what is most helpful to shifting this film away from simple stereotype.

Another way that the film transcends simple genre filmmaking is the atypical political critique, since the film implies that some of the inability of the detectives’ attempts to catch the killer lie in the social and political turmoil in South Korea at that time, since police forces were being used to quell political uprisings in larger cities. Memories of Murder pays enough subtle attention to this aspect that it worked as fascinating subtext and gives the film a sociopolitical context that most films of this genre lack. This quality lends the film a moral critique that likewise lets the film extend beyond bits of comedy and a steady thread of suspense. Love that shot of the kidnapper's appearance in the rainy background as one of his victims realized that the whistling wasn't only her own. Subtly terrifying. A beautifully crafted genre piece, and what a muted, introspective finale.

Memories of Murder: 8/10

Ghost Rider

2007-02-19T06:57:00.000-08:00

Ah, comic book movies. Treat them too seriously and they devolve to mirthless, over-the-top grim spectacles of machismo and vengeance (see Sin City). Treat them with reverence but mistake what can translate into film with what can’t and you get Mark Steven Johnson’s Ghost Rider (2007), a thoroughly appalling piece of cinema that will make oodles because it requires no commitment and simply churns out empty thrills. Films have rarely been so slight as this one.

If one is unfamiliar, hot-shot carnie motorcycle stuntman Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) makes a deal with the devil (Peter Fonda) to save his father from the grips of cancer, a disease that has spread from the ills of cigarettes. Alas, while the father awakens and feels fine the next day, he just gets in a bike wreck the same day, proving that you might as well die from cigarettes as die from bike wrecks. Inane. Anyway, Johnny tries to spare the life of his childhood beloved (now Eva Mendes), a reporter, from the dangers of being too close to him.

Unfortunately, despite my hopeful anticipation that this would be beautifully bad, Ghost Rider instead mostly trails toward pointless mediocrity. All the things that gave the character an edge, the Penance Stare and the flaming skull, just don't translate dramatically to a feature film. Take a pile of melodrama, add horrendous music that cues us along, remove the top three buttons of Eva Mendes' shirts, and add mediocre CG that lacks any of the over-the-top absurdity that Cage has, and you're left with a film that divests itself of its greatest strength--a game Cage and Sam Elliot. The script sucks, though we all knew that, but the film lacks anything close to an interesting villain, with Bentley chewing the scenery and then some in vain, and the film is devoid of the energy and vitality that could make something like this appealing. Largely uninvolving and thoroughly rote filmmaking, I'll instead just forget this vacuous film ever happened and return to the madcap joy of the Wicker Man…

Ghost Rider: 3/10

Toy Story 2

2007-02-17T07:40:00.000-08:00

What is fascinating about 1999 is that the three most fascinating films released that year all contain great pathos regarding the rupture of innocence and the chasm that threatens to tear apart the generations. However, while Julie Taymor’s Titus and Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant both chronicle this thematic with wondrous results, it is ultimately John Lasseter’s Toy Story 2 (1999) that most haunts me. While the film is bereft of nihilism, its exploration of how all children eventually abandon that which made them so as they grow older became a critique that cut right to the bone, and its pathos is never exploited but merely observed, which itself becomes a testimony to the maturity with which Lasseter and Pixar treat their material.

Andy, the boy who owns all the toys, leaves behind the aging Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) as he goes off to camp, and a conniving toy collector, Big Al, snaps him up at the family yard sale. While Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the rest of the toys plot a way to spring the toynapped Woody, Woody himself is confronted with the reality that a boy’s love toward his toys always comes to an end, either mutating into an eye toward capital gain (as we see in Big Al) or simply evaporates with time (as we fear with Andy). Even as Woody is repaired and newly minted for resale by Big Al, he must combat a less than fulfilling reunion with his TV show’s partners in the form of Stinky Pete, all while nurturing along a (relatively) platonic relationship with Jesse the Cowgirl.

The film’s metacommentary on the guilt and abandonment of childhood reaches its nadir when Jesse sings the lilting “When She Loved Me,” a song mourning the loss of her former owner. Likewise, the depression that sinks into Woody’s every fiber as he himself works through his fears of abandonment become the centerpiece to what is ostensibly a celebratory children’s tale, granting the film a complexity of emotion that Pixar has still to top. It is this undercurrent of honesty that allows the film to balance on both ends of the scale as the film ends—perhaps Andy will soon tire of the toys, but the love that he feels for them now is enough, which itself isn’t much different than the ultimate articulations of why should we be that Woody Allen or Ingmar Bergman come to their strongest films.

Beyond the meticulous animation design, the film scores major props for using the angelic voice of Sarah McLachlan. Moreover, while the film never indicts children, it offers a gentle reminder to them to be as loving as careful with their toys as they are with their real-life counterparts, for how we act around our toys seems to be how we act around others. A beautiful, melancholy film, yet still imbued with so much life.

Toy Story 2: 10/10

Dead Ringers

2007-02-16T06:48:00.000-08:00

Few directors maintain a consistent yet chameleon personal stamp on their films more than David Cronenberg. Despite such a diverse filmography, including mini-masterpieces in The Fly and Videodrome, it is ultimately Dead Ringers (1988) that possesses the greatest resonance to these eyes. Externally a psychological horror film detailing the growing disconnect between twin gynecological brothers as a girl comes between them, by film’s end Dead Ringers is far more concerned with issues of familial dependency and reliance on abstract definitions of humanity and mutation.

While the brothers, Elliot and Beverly Mantle (both played magnificently by Jeremy Irons), begin the film as symbiotically joined in thought and deed, with the dominant Elliot securing the submissive Beverly women as the two trade off, that homogeny of order is soon displaced with the appearance of an actress, Claire (Genevieve Bujold), who awakens Beverly to a consciousness of secrecy and dependency entirely apart from Elliot. Thus, while it is earlier understood that, as Elliot tells Beverly, “you haven't done anything until I've done it too,” Beverly finds that he and Elliot are growing estranged by their very different personas and aspirations.

So Cronenberg fashions a film reconciling this sense of separation from two people who always felt themselves to be one. The twins’ anatomy and how they identify with it, best showcased in a fever dream that Beverly has of Claire severing the link between he and Elliot with her teeth, becomes for Beverly a conscious decision to likewise alter and amputate the flesh of their patients, externalizing the submissive twin’s inner fears. Here we see the admittedly cold and sterile surgical tools to be used on the “mutant” women, and the tools’ subliminal horror is channeled into our growing understanding that the brothers are similarly headed toward a symbiotic amputation.

Aided by a Howard Shore title theme that is certainly the most haunting and evocative of his career, Cronenberg’s film ends with a humanist mourning on the inability of the brothers to, like the metaphorical Siamese twins they reference, live without the other. The tenderness displayed in the final shot refutes those who feel Cronenberg is too clinical here, as its composition returns to the images of art at the film’s beginning with their tragic return to a prelapsarian innocence. A tragic yet beautiful encapsulation of Cronenberg’s themes, and certainly his most personal film.

Dead Ringers: 10/10

The Conversation

2007-02-11T19:55:00.000-08:00

Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) is a slow burn, threatening an internal fever pitch yet outwardly letting Coppola explore obscurity and anonymity through the eyes of a surveillance man, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) who denies any secrets. Yet beneath this persona is the bruised ego of a man all too aware of the damage his surveillance who caused, cognizant of the fact that he’s responsible for at least two deaths. This conscious reticence and refusal of liability is counteracted by dreams wherein he suffers and tries to come to terms with his guilt, even trying to prevent death from the traumatic forward momentum he sees.

Having gained access to a couple’s private conversation by centralizing into their meandering discussions with surveillance audio tapes, Caul is masterful at fine-tuning the inarticulate sections. However, when he realizes that these individuals also work at the same business that has contracted him, Caul becomes suspicious of the intentions of his employer, especially when he recollects on the conversational aside, “He’d kill us if he had the chance.” Fearful of the repercussions and unable to suture together his personal responsibility, Harry Caul works to undermine those that threaten this couple’s lives.

In terms of a psychological study, few films are as complex as this one. Caul refuses any person entrance into his personal life, refusing to even tell his long-time girlfriend about his past, and it is telling that the solitary time we see him muster enough trust to try true dialogue with another, that same trust is subverted vis-à-vis a planted pen and, secondarily, theft of the audio tapes. Moreover, multiple viewings of this film reveal the depths to which he himself is being monitored, so that the surveillance man from Detroit now clearly seems to me central to the wire-tapping that lies somewhere in Caul’s room.

As a chronicle of the unnerving historical time period (both socially and psychologically), few films better capture the distrust and alienation of constant surveillance. Moreover, the slow burn mutates into a tense psychological thriller near the climax as blood becomes more than merely a residue, but instead stains everything that Harry Caul thinks about. Whether this film merely exists as testament to those disquieting fears of a by-gone era or exposes that same precondition in contemporary times is unknown; what is known is that The Conversation masterfully cements Coppola as a legend of the psychological drama.

The Conversation: 10/10

Walkabout

2007-02-04T06:48:00.000-08:00

Few films are as hypnotically constructed as Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971), a film that irrevocably details the shattering of childhood innocence, the implacable relationship of man to nature, and the solace that is found in cultural strangers who are nonetheless linked by their will to survive. This is a film that refuses to conform to rigid expectations of genre, often confounding our sensibilities by leaving secondary characters’ motivation anonymous, so that we can only determine scenes by the narrow subjectivity that guides the camera. It is an ingenious move, lending the film a sense of mystery and awe that allows the themes to exist at a more organic level.

The film follows a young 14-year-old girl (Jenny Agutter) and her 6-year-old brother (Luc Roeg) who are abandoned in the Australian outback by their father, a man who appears to have a nervous breakdown, shoots at them, and commits suicide during an afternoon picnic. These scenes unfold with the murky ambivalence of the unknown, leaving the girl to help her brother to fend for themselves in the outback and hope to survive until civilization can find them. They stumble upon a teenage aborigine boy (David Gulpilil) who is transitioning into adulthood by surviving on his own. The three form a kinship based on something beyond language and begin to take pleasure in the autonomy that they possess, fashioning a selfhood out of their predicament.

Yet this isn’t to say that Roeg isn’t critical of the cultural gap that exists between the three. While the White boy and the aborigine are able to express themselves with clarity and understanding, the girl and the aborigine lack this same ability, since the relationship is constricted by her more adamant subconscious demand that language conform to her more rigid definition of it. Here we see traces of sociopolitical and cultural critique from Roeg, in that the girl’s hesitance to bond linguistically with the aborigine harkens back to her upper-middle class upbringing. Likewise, the camera lingers on the girl’s body sensually at times, a move suggestive of the camera’s shift toward the aborigine’s subjectivity, yet the girl adamantly rebukes his attempts at courtship, preferring to remain chaste as opposed to shift toward the irrevocability of mature adulthood.

This is a film filled with long meditative passages unfurling themselves organically, creating contrasts and rhythms that extend the themes of the lead characters. Scenes of everyday nature are often intercut with scenes of mundane survival of the three, and the film is likewise conscious of the inevitability of the events of life, crosscutting between the aborigine’s carving of a kangaroo and the butcher’s carving of meat ready to be sold. When the three discover an abandoned house that is close to civilization, the film begins its push toward externalizing the sadness and mourning that has been internal for much of the film, leading to the aborigine’s suicide. This is the moment that defines the film, yet it too is shrouded in mystery.

The film concludes with the girl, now in adulthood and presumably married, looking back in reflection at this time of childhood as a return to the primal beauty and wonder she once knew, reminiscing when the three could swim naked and delight in their innocent play in lakes, when life was still a reservoir of untapped potential. It is this melancholy that affixes itself to Roeg’s film, and it is this melancholy that grants the film its greatest strength. A masterpiece of meditative cinema.

Walkabout: 10/10

Stranger than Fiction

2007-02-02T06:50:00.000-08:00

Stranger than Fiction (2006) is firstly the best work Marc Forster has done behind the camera (he of Finding Neverland and Monster's Ball fame, both films which adequately though never articulately express their ideas). This here is a film that celebrates verbal intelligence and wit, and loves to take its time understanding character dynamics, freely roaming when it must in order to better facilitate the viewer's investment in the story and everything that it entails. As such, when the film must get cloying, it itself recognizes that it loses much of its emotional power, but acquiesces in order to become something more humane. I like that acknowledgement. But this film lies more in the hands of the writing than the directing.

Writer Zach Helm has fashioned a fascinating conceit to have lead character Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), an IRS auditor, be forced to listen to a narrator (Emma Thompson) give eloquence and meaning to his daily action. However, the narrator is more than an omniscient presence, since Harold soon realizes that he is a creation of some writer, and that she plans to kill him off to arrive at the perfect ironic ending. Meanwhile, the animosity local baker Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal) harbors toward him is slowly unfolding to reveal a possible romance, so clearly Harold doesn't desire death anytime soon.

All the characters have plenty of opportunity to shine and there are no true one-note characters here that matter. And come on, the guitar bit into the kiss is one of the sexiest things that's been in cinema all year. Largely, this is a film that celebrates actual ingenuity in its characters, and while that reduces the level of uproarious laughs, the laughs here come from somewhere more honest and within the characters.

At this point, a second viewing (which it will be given) could bump the film to a 9 as an exemplary model of how to fashion a comedy that exudes charm, tenderness, and an understanding for the human character. Nonetheless, it is powerfully alive and generously humorous, and contains some thought-provoking questions about cynicism versus optimism, and what makes life worth living.

Stranger than Fiction: 8.5/10

Late Spring

2007-01-29T07:28:00.000-08:00

Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring (1949) is one of the most sympathetic portraits of the depths a family will go through in order to secure a life for their children. Yet, more problematically, the film is a portrait of the unwilling family forced into securing a path for the children that neither actually wants. This appeasement of the community, then, underscores the negative power of diplomacy and individual submission.

Widowed professor Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) spends his days devoted to his studies, entrusting his daughter Noriko (Setsuko Hara) with the household duties and cleaning. Unfortunately, his daughter is coming to the end of her mid-20s, a significant fact because she soon won’t be attractive to potential suitors. Yet she herself has seemingly distilled any desire for a spouse from her being, instead finding contentment looking after her father and his work. The constraints of family in this way offer for her a circuitous escape from marriage through non-action but, as Shukichi soon learns from his sister, such non-action will leave her without any chance of livelihood when he expires. As such, he must broach the undesired and push her out from her sheltering sanctuary.

What Ozu achieves in this film is a revealing glimpse into the character of Shukichi and Noriko. Both father and daughter have become complicit in their duplicity, relying on the other at the expense of true internal growth. The father has not been forced to remarry so that a potential spouse will have to look after him, and the daughter has avoided the pains of separation and fears of intimacy. Moreover, Noriko regards remarriages with disdain, as not being honorable to one’s true spouse, so her belief undermines Shukichi’s efforts to find himself a mate.

Where this film excels is its very human conceits of pushing away any prospect of love for the easy safety of family. Ozu understands and fully realizes the fidelity father and daughter show to each other, but lets them realize that such devotion is detrimental to their future success in the community. As such, Ozu fashions a story where maturity and growth are forcibly impressed on his characters, even as they themselves try to deny this imprint. Indeed, it is the outer conflicts of worry and gossip from the community that tries Shukichi’s hand, forcing him into deceit with his daughter by explaining his own impending marriage in order to secure her flight from the household.

Beneath these struggles, though, always lies the unmistakable impression of melancholy. Both father and daughter are losing something essential in this endeavor, and their truly final encounter together, going to see a Noh performance, is rife with misgivings and internal disappointment. Noriko will be sacrificing her domestic happiness and selfhood for a husband she’s not yet seen, one who “looks like Gary Cooper, around the mouth, but not the top part." This submission into ordinariness, while honorable, is not attractive, and Shukichi likewise loses his ability to concentrate fully on his discipline and is instead forced into looking for his own spouse.

As Late Spring builds toward its close, we see how communal and familial expectation lead to the shattering of these two individuals, neither of whom desired such a change. Yet their willingness to please the community gossip forces them into the predicament, and so the film closes on Shukichi peeling an apple until he finally submits to his solitude and grief, unable to suppress it any longer. A quietly devastating film.

Late Spring: 10/10

Martin

2007-01-27T07:51:00.000-08:00

George A Romero's Martin (1977) is a meditative study on the titular character's theory that he is a vampire, aided by a possibly psychotic uncle, Tada Cuda, who can only think of Martin as Nosferatu. As a result, Martin prowls streetcars and neighborhoods, administering knock-out shots with a needle to those who seem to lack human purpose, drugging them so that he can then open a vein and drink their blood. While the film never explicitly answers the question of whether or not Martin is a vampire, Romero is clear in his use of black and white photography to suggest all of those old vampire serials that were big in the '30s and '40s, thereby suggesting the way in which being barraged with such imagery can psychologically influence the individual into truly believing in the "impossible." Filmed on location in Pittsburgh with little financial backing, this is obviously a labor of love for Romero.

Martin Madahas (John Amplas) is taken in by his uncle, a devout believer in the reality that half of the family is plagued with the Nosferatu curse. As such, cloves of garlic, mirrors, and crosses adorn the house, yet have little effect on Martin, as such trappings are merely storybook tales. Likewise, Martin has little effect on the ladies, having to drug them before getting them to reveal their bodies. It's a fascinating contrast, and allows Romero to deconstruct mythology from human fact, yet balance both in the character's mind.

Indeed, aided by a beautifully dirty and subjectively swaying camera that follows the action, Romero sets up a story of pathological fear in the vampire, Martin's unresolved guilt at the murders he commits, and the sociological implications of the media itself preying on the stories of a vampire in their midst. Martin often calls a radio program and confesses his deeds, yet it is clear that the DJ simply keeps Martin on the line because of the humor and ratings such tales bring with them. However, the film does take a decidedly nihilistic turn toward the end, as characters start to abandon their families, surrender to depression, and become caught in the mythology. As such, the last twenty minutes are especially solid, but the entirety of the film works beautifully as a meditation on the power of belief.

Martin: 9.5/10

Avalon

2007-01-25T20:05:00.000-08:00

“You cut the turkey?”

After Casino and Aliens went on the short wait list from Netflix, I received the bailout from my film swap partner because he suggested a generational take on immigration, family deterioration, and the growth of technology. It is clear from that base synopsis that the hordes of Netflix patrons won’t be yammering for this one anytime soon, right? Yet Barry Levinson’s Avalon (1990) completes his Baltimore trilogy (the other two are still sight unseen by me) in fine fashion, relying on a film that emphasizes memory, the mobility of class – as well as the injurious gossip that sweeps headlong through the family as a result of that mobility – and the loyalty to one’s immediate family long after one’s entirely conscious of the loyalty.

If all of this sounds like your typical PG romp through U.S. history, it’s not. Levinson crafts the story so that it becomes localized around a single Russian family, the Krichinskys, rather than serving as a universal outline for the immigrant experience. Most of our narrator Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) tales are even tolerated but not really listened by the family, so dependent are the stories on repetition that the family has largely tired of the same old chronicles at Thanksgiving and the 4th of July. Moreover, memory has become so conflated in Sam’s mind that others are constantly reminding that this or that detail is wrong, superimposing the real memory over the initial flashback. This sort of fallibility deepens the narrative and exposes the narrativization of history as a flawed enterprise.

When the film shifts its focus from Sam onto his son, Jules (Aidan Quinn), the film starts to lose a little steam, becoming a checklist of the typical move toward suburbia with the retrospectively droll statements about why anyone would want to live in suburbia. Yet freshness still exists for the film, as it legitimately tackles issues of naming, immigrant experience, and identification. The sadness Sam feels at seeing Jules take the name Kaye over the Krichinsky family name possesses a power that is unexpected, revealing how much of a quality director Levinson is when he cares about his material (*cough* Sphere *cough*).

As earlier stated, the film starts to conform to the upward mobility story in the second act, detailing how Jules’ financial success threatens to tear apart the family, especially once family traditions are neglected in favor of pleasing the youth, leading to the ultimate laugh in the film as the perpetually late brother of Sam arrives… after they’ve already cut the turkey. The disgrace and humiliation felt at such disregard for waiting until everyone’s there soon splinters the family, but with the effects of technology and TV breaking out, such change is expected.

Where the film loses its momentum a bit is in its focus on Jules’ son, Michael (Elijah Wood). We are asked to believe Michael, or any child, is dumb enough to think lighting model airplanes on fire in the basement warehouses full of wood, cardboard, and hay is a bright idea. Moreover, the conclusion of the warehouse fire scene is a bit too heavy-handed and easy, allowing the mechanisms of the plot to be overtly emphasized.

When the film remains on Jules and Sam, though, the immersion of detail is realized and allows Levinson to chronicle a time-tested story in a visually luscious way, full of wonder and excitement. Actually, I cannot remember the last time a PG film was so affecting in its honest celebration of the human spirit. And while the finale of the film circles back upon itself a bit too carefully, it’s nonetheless a beautiful moment, articulating all the possibility that we hope America offers.

Avalon: 8.5/10

F For Fake

2007-01-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

Author Tim O’Brien once noted that “the truth is insufficient for getting at the truth.” If there is one film that is most emblematic of this point, it is F for Fake. With F For Fake (1974), director/charlatan Orson Welles establishes the central conceit behind forgery, fakery, and implicitly all of cinema. Though this is a film conceived as a documentary of the painter Elmyr de Hory, a man who faked Picassos and sold them to the museums under false pretense, Welles takes the initial footage and begins to interweave fact with fiction, truth with lies, all while compounding which is which. That the film works so wonderfully speaks to the level of artifice and deception that Welles crafts onto his work.

Built around multiple levels of forgery being used to swindle the public into believing (with Elmyr, Irving, Hughes, Picasso, and Welles himself – in the form of Citizen Kane), Welles begins to essay his thesis that the level of craft and love devoted to a swindle may in fact offer up a deeper truth about reality and the desire to believe which a real work may be unable to do. That is, if the faker is willing to believe in the magic of his artifice enough, then his sleight of hand will go unnoticed because we do not actually wish to notice it.

The film offers a pretense to Welles’ central point by stating in the beginning that nothing in the next hour will be a lie. However, the film concludes by stating that a lie has just been told. What Welles intends to do with his audience is reveal the fantastic, to make us believe in it, and then to ask whether what he has just forged is so truly horrible, whether we were at the very least entertained and intrigued even if the feeling of foolishness does not abate. For it must be noted that the cinema involves lies 24 frames a second (with apologies to Haneke), and we are complicit in this lying, exempting the actor for the character, the stage for the location, and the camera as truthsayer, so the fact that Welles seeks to expose the very conceit of cinema is fascinating stuff, especially when contrasted against “everyday” scenes of him eating alongside Irving and Elmyr.

In gaining our trust with a promise but then reneging on it, Welles exposes a deeper issue of whether all of the arts are not fakes that have been granted legitimacy by critics extolling “two noses up” (with apologies to Pinky and the Brain), while sidelining those arts that are not read with the same sophisticated erudition as others. So imitation is not given the same respect as originality, yet these fakes are entirely original. It’s a fascinating endgame that Welles orchestrates, and the last twenty minutes of the film are gold.

While I don’t harbor as much love for this film as others, it’s a breathtaking journey into the heart of creativity, of fake creativity, and of the alliances that bind all of the arts together in conceits.

F for Fake: 9/10

3 Women

2007-01-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

Robert Altman's 3 Women (1977) is a dreamscape that explores the enigmatic hesitancy of assigning meaning to a film that exists outside reason and logic. While the film is certainly rationally and philosophically coherent, its mysteries endanger viewers who are unwilling to forego explanations about why everything happens in the manner in which it does. This is instead a film dictated by its own circular logic, focusing on the reinterpretation of meaning as it complicates itself and collapses inward, yet always foregoing answers.

This is the story of Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a young woman who ventures from the southern Midwest into the California desert to work at a senior care center. Pinky Rose is quiet and an introvert, which leads her to identify with the outgoing and loquacious Millie Lammoreaux (Shelly Duvall). She eventually moves in with Millie at her apartment, becoming dominated by Millie’s verbal belligerence and chronic weariness that soon becomes constantly directed at her. Meanwhile, Pinky Rose watches as Willie Hart (Janice Rule), a silent pregnant middle-aged female painter moves around the outskirts of the plot, always resisting categorization.

The way in which Pinky Rose and Millie interact, acting as opposite ends of a spectrum, eventually collapses halfway through the narrative as Pinky jumps off the second story landing into the outdoor pool below, going into a coma. When she comes out of the coma, her persona evaporates and is instead constituted by Millie’s former governance and authority. In turn, Millie loses her rationality and externalizes Pinky Rose’s former stifled and suppressed interiority. The adoption of identity is one of Altman’s key themes here and the expression of these ideas, dreamily represented by the submersion into water (re: amniotic fluid), leads the film into a murky area where consciousness is not cogently known, but rather understood piecemeal, revealing itself in gradual waves of knowledge.

The film, then, concludes by reprioritizing everything that has transpired into one last dreamily state of cognizance, as we start to understand how the events are “meant” to be read and character formations are “meant” to be understood. Those pesky quote unquote signs remain, though, because Altman and the film refuse to categorize rational thought to everything that has just been viewed. Its lucidity, that is, defies complete representation and leads merely to possibilities that are counterpoints to earlier mysteries and tones. And if that avoids answering why the film is so engaging, one starts to understand that the film gains its meaning precisely because of its avoidance of issues of ontology.

3 Women is a film that rewards any reading as possible, but also rewards the hesitancy that one brings to the film as events refuse to line up with rational meaning. The break halfway through the narrative, then, exists in the same way that Persona and Mulholland Dr. break from conventional narrative, exploring in metaphor the complex vicissitudes of memory, dream, and reality. If not Altman’s best film, this is certainly his most personal film.

3 Women: 10/10

A Zed and Two Noughts

2006-12-24T18:48:00.000-08:00

Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts (1985) is a meticulous study on the effects of loss and trauma filtered through scientific examination. In our twin protagonists’ obsessive effort to maintain control over the uncontrollable effects of life and the natural world, they compartmentalize the trauma they suffer when they lose their respective wives in a freak car accident with a white swan. Inasmuch as they find solace in their work, turning to an obsessive examination on the study of decay in animals, they likewise find a counterpart in the woman who was driving the car which killed their spouses.

Among the many intriguing aspects of Greenaway’s film is the intellectualism inherent to this study, since this is a decidedly cerebral film. The cold and analytical nature of the twins is echoed by Greenaway’s composition process. That’s not to say, however, that there is a lack of humor in the project. The abundant humor comes from the distancing that the twins project onto life and their tragedy, disassociating themselves from their wives’ deaths to such an extent that the lack they feel foregrounds their existence. Even their attempts to adopt the driver’s young daughter are met with cold ambivalence, emphasizing the extreme paradox of the film: the twins seek out life almost mechanically in an effort to distill death of its horror.

Yet Greenaway also holds a mirror to the quiet acceptance that we all have toward death, inquiring whether the scientific repudiation that they’re attempting is not, on some level, a more humane approach to the concept of death. That is, the absurdity of passive acceptance is magnified by the twin’s acute fanaticism to disarm the passivity we hold toward death. The studies on decay and decomposition become a Nietzschean principle of repudiating this acceptance as a way for the weak to submit to the great and awesome power of that which they don’t understand. The brothers, however, seek to comprehend death intimately and so to deny the passiveness held toward it.

This all culminates in the obsessive compulsion of the film’s finale, which Greenaway builds toward with immaculate precision. The force of this effect is undeniable, and grounds the film in a final expression of tragedy. This is an incredible vision of obsession and the obsessive way in which we come to terms with the world.

A Zed and Two Noughts: 10/10

In a Lonely Place

2006-12-24T18:43:00.000-08:00

Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950) is a film that realizes the intersection between emotional passivity and narcissistic aggression is indeed a thin line. While the film initially feels like a noir piece, it truly is not, for Ray has no real interest in exploring hard-boiled and empty characterizations as such; rather, Ray seeks to understand how that emptiness may be misunderstood by a society dependent on the expression of sympathy and pity toward the dead.

Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) is a hard-drinking and down-on-his-luck screenwriter who becomes incriminated by the police when a young woman who helps him understand his next adaptation is murdered on her way home. His next door neighbor, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), provides him with an alibi and the two begin to bond emotionally as they realize that their checkered pasts can be mediated by the love that each nurtures for the other. However, Laurel starts to see glimpses of Dixon’s violent past, and the film examines how a glimpse of violence can lead to potentially more damaging instances of aggression, so that Laurel’s sureness of Dixon’s innocence in the murder now becomes fraught with doubt and insecurity.

This is a film that has been observed as possessing one of cinema’s most upfront portrayals of existentialism, in that our protagonist played by Bogart shows a complete lack of empathy and understanding toward a death that society demands must be publicly mourned. As such, the internal conflicts of personality governed by a past in WW2 and occasional bar fights are now judged by the outward arbitrating eye of the society as law. Yet Ray wishes to question how society can judge the proper affect that is shown toward victims of tragedy, working to elucidate how even those who display an outward disregard are still nonetheless human and not deserving of a public outcry.

When Laurel and Dixon become engaged, Dixon’s past aggressions seem to be repressed for good. Yet even that repression does not altogether eliminate any trace of what has been “forgotten,” in that the dominant aspects of Dixon’s personality surface in emotionally troubled instances. It is here that the film’s mantra, uttered by Dixon in reference to working the line into the screenplay, becomes the primal epitaph of the film: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”

This is a film that richly deserves to be seen more, and it rewards the interest that the audience places in it. Always engaging, always revealing. A masterpiece.

In a Lonely Place: 10/10

Holy Smoke

2006-12-23T18:57:00.000-08:00

Jane Campion’s Holy Smoke (1999) is a film that is flawed, but it also rewards patience and possesses wonders that exist because of the very flawed nature of the film. Too comic to be a full-blown drama and too dramatic to be a comedy, this is a film that dances precariously on the edges of multiple genres, gaining both its greatest strengths and faults from its interplay of genre conventions. Yet the chemistry between the performers and their commitment to the material bring the drama to the fore and keep the comedic flaws from damaging the film.

Ruth (Kate Winslet) is an Australian girl who makes a pilgrimage out of her stay in India, becoming a convert to one of the Indian sects. When her friends begin to fear that Ruth is not gaining religious enlightenment but is instead being converted into a cult, they return to Australia to inform her parents. Ruth’s family intervenes, calling upon the services of a cult exiter, PJ Waters (Harvey Keitel), who works to break down Ruth emotionally and physically. Yet their attraction to one another begins to overrule the spectatorship that is predicated on breaking Ruth, so that once the cultish aspects of her past have been exposed, the deeper trauma of where the two go from here remains.

What’s fascinating about Holy Smoke is that the dangers of the cult are largely held by an emotionally distant family, which is indicative of culture that fears what it cannot understand. They constantly fear that anything Ruth says is a maneuver to brainwash them, rather than a simple desire to spread the word about the kindness and tranquility that Ruth has discovered. While the truth lies somewhere in the middle, these issues begin to find subtle reworkings of a classic collectivistic vs. individualistic fear.

Also successful is the fact that Campion avoids relying on a solipsistic and preachy characterization of PJ. In fact, he is played with such humanity that his initial success stories almost feel fabricated. The fact remains, though, that Campion fine-tunes a classic character construct to give enough flaws and faults to PJ to make him a distinct individual rather than a mechanism for the plot. Ultimately, the brutality through which PJ breaks Ruth leaves her with such an empty void inside that she relies on his attraction to her to give her something emotionally to invest in. While this opens its own complications, the manner in which PJ and Ruth reverse their roles as patient and physician become intricately wound together, allowing nuance and detail to take center stage. Indeed, few acts are as brutal as the gender debasement that Ruth puts PJ through, yet he is fully accepting of it, striving to gain a deeper and more intrinsic understanding of Ruth.

At the end of the day, this is a film where the most genre-comedic moments fail, such as the Fabio-like brother blindly running into a street sign. However, other moments that are more tied to the psychology of the characters, such as Ruth’s sister-in-law Yvonne’s attraction to PJ, give weight to the comedy, like when her absent-minded gaze at PJ leads to tragic consequences as her children attempt to jump from their truck into her expectant arms.

Given my card-carrying membership to the Kate Winslet is the most beautiful woman alive fan club, my loyalty to this film is probably expected. Nonetheless, I hope I’ve been forthcoming enough to allow that it’s still a flawed piece, but I also understand that the material and engagement one receives from watching it are very worthwhile and fascinating. I would have preferred a more open-ended ending with the film ending as the truck drives away, which would have foregone the “One Year Later” bit, but beyond that and Ruth’s abnormal family feeling a tad too tacked on, the central narrative and exploration of PJ and Ruth is incredibly evocative and beguiling.

Holy Smoke: 8.5/10

Shock Corridor

2006-12-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963) is a film that is inextricably tied to melodrama and excess, but rather than submit to these impulses or let them be a hindrance Fuller utilizes them to their full potential, allowing the vitality of the performances and the scenes to elucidate his themes of narcissism, sanity, and internalized guilt. The film acts as a parable warning one against letting dreams of success mire you in conditions of psychological horror.

The film concerns reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck), who goes undercover into a mental institution in order to discover who killed an inmate. By exposing himself to the horrors of the mental institution, he desires to use the story as a springboard for his own personal success to win a Pulitzer, rather than understanding the murder he's investigating as a tragedy unto itself. His own lack of true concern for his brothers surrounding him leads to his inevitable collapse, so that by the time he reveals the killer, the ward within the institution merely believes him to be another person in the asylum. Fuller thus implicates his protagonist in a vision of pride and pathology that slowly consumes him.

Likewise, Cathy (Constance Towers), Johnny's girlfriend, is implicated for disregarding his health in favor of holding onto a relationship that is already tearing apart because of the burdens of Johnny's dream that he places on her. Though we quickly discern her intelligence, she herself doesn't realize how right she is, and so she ignores her integrity so that she may stay close to Johnny, never realizing until it's too late how this act contributes to his madness.

Some of the most effective scenes, such as those with Brent, as African-American who adopts the persona of a self-righteous KKK member, retain their power and potency, in that the racism and belligerence around them have become so deeply entrenched that these individuals have thus internalized it. Meanwhile the riot scenes, though 180 degrees different, have the same odd poeticism of Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies, creating a fascinating glimpse into the nuclear, racist, and communistic fears that were rampant in the 1960s.

This is a film that intelligently and audaciously criticizes those issues that were contemporary to its day, and it's a film that remains vital today. Powerful stuff, and well worth the campiness that exudes from every shot.

Shock Corridor: 10/10

Showgirls

2006-12-17T14:53:00.000-08:00

After fashioning a string of quality Danish films that were vital and always transcending genre limitations (including Turkish Delight and Soldier of Orange), Paul Verhoeven came to America and directed several action films, such as Robocop and Total Recall. However, while neither of these is necessarily a bad film, nor are they as filled with ideas as Verhoeven's Danish work. As a result, when the epic disaster Showgirls (1995) came out with his name attached, people lined up to critique the film before even watching it. This is a mistake, since the film harbors a critique of success, show biz, and dreams even as it also harbors a performance so awesomely bad by Elizabeth Berkley that it becomes the stuff of legends.

The film chronicles Nomi (Berkley) and her attempt to climb the ladder of the Vegas showgirl industry, charting her struggle from sleazy strip clubs into socially accepted artistic success. The oddity, though, is that Nomi lacks sophistication and cannot fashion a self-identity that is not grounded in performance, since she is very much a woman of below average intelligence background, and Berkley (though unintentionally) never allows any actual intelligence to register in her performance. As Nomi works to create her in in the Vegas industry, she insults Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon), the town star and showgirl Idol. What follows is Cristal slowly creating complication and subterfuge for Nomi, and Nomi lashing out to fashion her success by foreclosing any moral fiber from her being.

Berkley's horrendous performance is largely what makes this such marvelous and trashy fun. While Berkley is pretty much godawful in every acting way imaginable, registering only broad emotions of anger and jubilation, so that her performance vacillates between these two extreme emotions and never allows for any interior motivation, the rest of the film is campy but quality. That is, Gershon and the others create real characters from these broad strokes, layering a film that thereby becomes a critique at the mechanizations of entertainment industry. Since Nomi makes it big, Showgirls encapsulate a solid critique at Hollywood, the starmaking process, and how the bitter but talented stars (Gershon) will eventually be overrun by the bitter and shallow stars (Berkley).

Viewers may have a hard time reconciling character motivations for this film, which is simultaneously what allows it to exist as camp masterpiece and mainstream failure. Why, for instance, does Molly, Nomi's roommate, act so caustic toward Nomi after she suspects Nomi of plotting to get rid of Cristal yet then immediately turn back around and show up to Nomi's breakthrough party to bed the singer Andrew Carver. There was a lapse in reason that weakened the connection Verhoeven obviously wanted to create with his crosscuts, but beyond these types of plot and dialogue incongruity the film strangely works.

While not the most sophisticated fare, Verhoeven's film offers a study of successful metaphor through unintentional failures, so that one finally wonders if Berkley's horrific performance is necessary to give the film its importance. Slant certainly seems to think so. Not a classic, but certainly engaging viewing.

Showgirls: 7.5/10

Husbands and Wives

2006-12-08T07:18:00.000-08:00

Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives (1992) is Allen’s masterpiece from the 1990s, critiquing marriage as an institution that works best when couples embrace their passivity as a necessity for the marriage to work. Beneath that passivity, though, many undercurrents of guilt and repressed anger lie ready to be unleashed at the uninitiated. All of these emotions find release within the story of two couples, Gabe Roth (Woody Allen) and his wife Judy (Mia Farrow), and Jack (Sydney Pollack) and Sally (Judy Davis), with the latter couple initially embracing time apart and the former threatened by the possibility of separation.

This film seems most in tune with Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous ending to his play, No Exit, wherein one of the characters trapped in a locked room, which is itself a metaphor for the stasis of hell, suddenly realizes that “Hell is—other people.” In that play, characters once in love turn on one another, spurning each other in sudden flurries of contempt. Like the Sartre play, Allen’s characters are ensnared in a slow burn, where petty deceits suddenly become something much more traumatic and real, and are unleashed in incandescent fits of rage.

For their part, Jack and Sally are in a marriage of emotional paralysis. Jack finds that he cannot be sexual with his emotionally frigid wife, nor can he be free to enjoy the simple life since Sally is constantly critiquing something or other. When the two split, Jack resurfaces with the much younger Sam, an aerobics instructor who is not intellectually stimulating but nonetheless a woman who offers Jack the simple life. For her part, Sally maintains the façade of comfort in her new conditions as a single woman, but is emotionally crippled by Jack’s abandonment. Though each embraces time apart from the other, they eventually find that they are most comfortable around one another, even if much of that time is hounding each other. Moreover, it is only once Jack and Sally are no longer together that they can finally be honest with one another. As a result, on some level the separation leads to better communication, though a deeper reality lies in the realization that they are simply repressing any negative aspects of their marriage from here on out.

Meanwhile, Gabe and Judy soon find the seams of their relationship fraying from insecurity and charges of dishonesty. Each begins to be attracted to another, Gabe with one of his college students Rain (Juliette Lewis) and Judy with her colleague Michael (Liam Neeson). Though neither actively engages in infidelity, Allen suggests that each spouse is still using the interest that the third party shows in them to string them along until they are more sure of their emotions. As such, Gabe lends Rain his novel in progress and Judy lends Michael poems that she’s written, and Allen is quick to imply that Gabe and Judy both profit from their creative art by using it as a conduit to jumpstart their affairs.

Eventually, Gabe and Judy separate even as Jack and Sally reconcile, implying that some marriages can be rectified by repression, whereas others will simply wither and fade as spouses entertain the fantasies of being with another. Throughout this all, we come to understand Gabe’s declaration that he seems preternaturally interested in “kamikaze women,” women who lead Gabe into self-destruction with them. It is in the film’s conclusion that this idea is subverted, since Judy ends up with Michael (even though he settles for her even as he’s most excited by a brief relationship he once had with Sally), while Gabe ends up alone, unable to carry through with an affair with Rain. There is some small epiphany there for Gabe, as he renounces the inevitable flame of Rain, refusing to carry out a relationship that will fail just as his last one did. And while Allen is a pessimist, the idea of marriage is given a redemptive realization vis-à-vis Rain’s parents, who exhibit positive affection for each other. Within those couples unable to generate honest and open communication, though, the concept of marriage is tied to slow and mutual disintegration.

Since this is all framed within the parameters of a documentary, with a camera whipping around trying to capture those moments most paramount to their lives, it initially comes as a mild surprise that the documentary makers do not grasp that they are not just filming these moments of abandonment but are also contributing to it through their invasive techniques. While this may be read simply as a critique on the media’s interest in tearing down those it intends to profit from, there is another level at which the metaphor works, since it also commentates upon the nature of all cinema and how such an invasion upon simple “characters” inevitably brings to the surface their inadequacies and shortcomings.

Husbands and Wives: 10/10

George Washington

2006-12-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

David Gordon Green's George Washington (2000) turned out to be one of the biggest surprises on the indie/film festival circuit that year. Unlike many of its kind, this film was not interested in engaging in pop culture references, witty repartee, or ironic distance; rather, Green’s film is comprised of short impressionistic scenes and voiceover to achieve a powerful but quiet observation of characters living in rural slums.

Superficially, this is a film governed around the love triangle of 12 and 13-year-old Buddy (Curtis Cotton III), George (Donald Holden), and Nasia (Candace Evanofski). However, the film is not simply a distillation of this event, since Green seeks to understand the whole languid Southern community that comprises the film. As such, the film examines teens who desire to be treated with the emotional maturity of adults and adults who desire to return to the carefree responsibilities of youth. It's to Green's credit that these dichotomies are not didactic or sophomoric, but instead are truly integrated into the larger commentary on love, desire, and maturity.

While the film retains its poeticism and much of its power, the internal conflict with George and his reasons why he decides to become a "hero" aren't as fleshed out as the first viewing initially revealed. I'm not looking for an origin story, but the internal conflict that Sonya and Vernon face, secondary characters who hang out with George and Buddy, are actually more established than George himself, though Nasia thus gets her chance to vocalize the "reasons" through her voiceover. Yet the film thus denies a true ontological reading, as all the information is filtered through Nasia's idealistic viewpoint. While that might be Green's intent, it rebukes the emotional investment that George could have offered the audience.

The psychological reason is, of course, the responsibility George felt after pushing Buddy, causing his death. His anguish over this action, which he never vocalizes after the incident is over, leads him to start trying to actively help others, such as the kid drowning in the pool. He is continually haunted by his inability to help Buddy when it mattered, so he forms his identity around every successive act where he can help people. With that, Rico Rice (Paul Schneider) comes to see a way to grow and mature as well.

Though this in fact gives the psychology for George's actions, Green never really brings any of this to the fore, which is the great fault of this film. It needs some reasoning to be a bit more explicit so that it's not all conjecture. The film remains powerful, but lacks any deep-rooted and explicit reasoning. George's eyes tell us some of the answer, but never enough.

Greg's review touches upon some of the same things I noticed in this second viewing. While it's still a quality film even after this viewing, All the Real Girls is actually my favorite of Green's work, though that one's scope is more limited than this one.

George Washington: 8/10

Friday Night

2006-12-02T18:50:00.000-08:00

Claire Denis' Friday Night (2001) is more immediately rewarding than Denis’ recent and cryptic The Intruder, though the latter film ultimately possesses more lasting insights and individual moments. Whereas that film settles into its ambiguity and dreamy, hazelike atmosphere, though, Friday Night remains firm in its reliance on its narrative, existing as a powerful examination of a one night stand and the events leading up to it.

Laure, a French thirtysomething woman, is stuck in traffic visiting friends and slowly realizing that her excursions around town are merely unsettling her, since everyone she visits has a spouse and children, while she is simply going to be moving into another solitary apartment the next day. This drawling realization is given metaphor as Denis emphasizes the utter standstill of traffic and experience on this evening, where everyone is seemingly resigned to their ennui and the weary night. As such, when a stranger knocks on Laure's car door and asks if she can give him a lift, she is first bewildered at the sight of a man, Jean, willing to shatter the ennui, but then welcomes the diversion. Of course, the film wants to question what happens when diversion becomes something more than a simple brief encounter, while also questioning whether this brief encounter needs to be something more than that.

While the first fifteen minutes or so were purposely aimless but nonetheless less than enthralling, since the boredom is given its own character ad nauseam, everything thereafter had a marvelous mood and atmosphere. The romance is surprisingly erotic, and Laure (Valérie Lemercier) and Jean's (Vincent Lindon) affections toward one another have enough questions that the understated verbal dialogue brings everything into a tighter magnetism. While the traffic bits are carried out a bit long, the scenes examining psychology and personality were highly anchored in beautiful poeticism and human nature. This is a film that understands longing and desire, and Denis communicates it visually rather than through dialogue or verbal expression.

What makes this film, then, are the moments of simple yet subjective clarity. Jean asks for change from a waitress to make a phone call, but then, on a brief stop to the ladies room, Laure notices that the phones take cards, not change. The condom rack beside it, however, does take change. The way in which Denis allows Laure to register this awareness allows for a deeper sense of Laure's own complicity and willingness to engage in this affair. Additionally, the last five minutes of this film with Laure running down the French streets in the early morning are bound together in a beautifully transcendent structure of freedom, vivacity, and hope. And that final smile is the stuff of legends.

Friday Night is a very good viewing experience, and it rewards the energy that the viewer invests in it. Additionally, this is a film that would probably be even better after a second viewing...

Friday Night: 8.5/10

The Grand Illusion

2006-12-02T18:37:00.001-08:00

Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion (1937) is a classic that gains its energy and integrity from the manner in which its ideas and ideals about war are relevant—and, moreover, are prescient—about World War II. Renoir suggests that the brotherhood of class, though ever-present throughout earlier wars, is now fading and that commoners will begin to rise. This is, it seems, inevitable, but just as inevitable is the humanity of widowers on both fronts. This glimpse of humanity, ultimately, is what makes survivors struggle through the harshest instances of fascist war.

After French aristocrat Capt. de Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay) is shot down by German pilots, the German prisoner camp commandant Capt. Von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) invites him to eat and drink with him, granting that a bond between class should not be swayed by the tide of war. However, commoner French soldiers Lt. Maréchal (Jean Gabin) and Lt. Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) join the captives’ plan to escape from this prisoner camp. Though plans are scrapped as camps are moved, the commoners eventually escape, though at the price of the mortally wounded de Boieldieu.

Capt. von Rauffenstein is one of the great figures of classic cinema, encouraged that one’s word binds one to another, regardless of sworn duties or changing times. Thus, when the French aristocrat de Boieldieu swears that are no plans are en route to escape, the German commandant accepts these words blindly. It is an aristocratic hope, and a yearning in the German Captain’s mind to return to those times when one’s word as a friend and gentleman was gold.

Renoir’s entire film exists as testimony to a point in time where the old upper-class society meant that camaraderie existed between enemies of war, having cups of tea and reminiscing about family histories. Codes of honor thus existed for these individuals, and their lives were mourned by the other, who recognizes, albeit stoically, the collapse of the old way as another of the old guard passes, as von Rauffenstein’s line notes, “May the earth lie lightly upon our valiant enemy.” However, it is just as much about the love that will unite individuals once the war is formally ended, regardless of nations, as seen in Elsa’s desperate need to know of love after her husband and brothers were sacrificed in the war. This humanity on every facet is rendered just real enough to know of each emotional injury, be it physical or mental.

The film strangely does not crescendo with Lt. Maréchal and Elsa, though, because Renoir aspires to something more truthful. While Lt. Maréchal may return for Elsa, the war’s longevity may just as well take its toll on him. Either way, it is the final line of the film that offers this film its transcendent moment: as Lt. Maréchal and Lt. Rosenthal reach the German/Swiss border, the German soldiers chasing them bless them for crossing into safety.

The Grand Illusion: 10/10

Seance

2006-12-02T18:35:00.000-08:00

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Seance (2000) is a magnificent little picture, encapsulating the best suspense and shocker moments that Japanese horror typically offers with Kurosawa’s customary blend of philosophy and social commentary. This film, much like his contemporary masterpiece Pulse, combines genre elements with literate references to doppelgangers and Freudian analysis, allowing the “godfather of J-horror” to work his magic once more.

Sato (Kôji Yakusho), a sound-effects engineer, and his wife Junko (Jun Fubuki), a psychic, experience a sudden trauma and external shock when they discover that a kidnapped girl and hid away and suffocated inside one of Sato’s equipment cases while he was in the woods recording sounds (the girl was trying to escape from a pedophile). Since the police have sought out Junko for help on this case, Sato’s wife conspires to hide the body away so that her talents might later “find” her. Obviously, given its genre elements, the girl’s ghost starts to plague them, haunting them for consciously refusing to take ownership of their part in the crime.

Throughout all of this, Kurosawa grounds the film in a denunciation of fate, alternately letting his characters believe they can escape fate and other times surrendering to it. Indeed, though the intellectualism offered in the first few minutes initially feels added on, the last act returns to a more introspective and questioning consideration of fate, denial, and acceptance, thus letting the initial intellectualism feel more fluent and integrated than it first did.

Likewise, there are a handful of absolutely incredible images in this film, with one of the strongest being Sato’s hallucination of his doppelganger and his attempt to set it aflame as a repudiation of all that this Other of omnipresent guilt represents. The communication between husband and wife is soon shattered as the secret eats at them, and their misguided belief that they can externalize their agony by switching from their house to a hotel room to avoid their predicament offers Kurosawa’s knowing rebuke that these matters are at all times truly internal. The antagonism that the husband and wife channel at each other midway through, then, breaks through the initial repose they feel at their “escape.”

Everything in this film is fully fleshed out while maintaining the ambiguity of intention that is Kurosawa’s trademark. Ergo, the film is complete even as its ending stops just before answers are externalized. Why?--because like all good psychological drama, the answer has been made explicit internally. This is better than his highly regarded Cure, better than environmentalist and minimalist drama Charisma, and just inches ahead of Bright Future. An excellent film from a contemporary wunderkind.

Seance: 9/10

Soldier of Orange

2006-11-27T12:02:00.000-08:00

Paul Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange (1977) is a prime example of everything that's right about Hollywood filmmaking. So why didn't Hollywood make it? This is a film which examines the degradation and fight for survival during World War II in Holland, alternatively seen from the Jewish, Dutch, German and British angles. While this multiplicity would make for an uneven film in the hands of a lesser director, Verhoeven crafts an balanced and engaging film that is full of solid psychological depth throughout.

Erik Lanshof (Rutger Hauer) is a middleclass Dutch compatriot welcoming the second World War, thinking that it will be a plesant diversion from the customary blaise existence that he and his friends live. However, as he and his college classmates soon realize, this diversion is not going to go quietly into the night. After spending one last contemplative night together, a picture is all that will serve as a reminder of their lives before the separation and trials of warfare. Ergo, they begin fighting the Germans, with Erik and Guus LeJeune (Jeroen Krabbé) spearheading an assault on the enemy within their borders. Their friend Bobby, however, has been blackmailed into carrying out Nazi subterfuge, with his Jewish fiance Esther's life held over his head. As such, he values one life over that of the many, sacrificing his ethics for another. Verhoeven spends much of the film assessing how and why Bobby makes this decision by contrasting this move with Erik's movements, especially since Erik has a sustained affair with Esther behind (presumedly) Bobby's back.

These conflicts problematize simple notions of good and evil, for no character in this film can lay claim to moral superiority. There are several doubles throughout the film, such as Bobby and Erik, Erik and Alex (see below), Esther and Susan (an English military assistant), and Erik and Luus. Verhoeven constantly and poetically underscores the struggles of these men, but never loses sight of the larger context of the film, as seen in the final sustained image from the film.

Alex is the friend who becomes the venomous German soldier due to his mother's treatment in Holland, eventually dances the tango with Erik, and is blown to bits by a rebel youth who he chastised with bread . That last bit seems a bit unnecessary, since the last image before that with Alex has him crawling along the mansion's floor trying to recover the medal that he's been rewarded with, suggesting that petty ornaments matter to him more so than human life. Verhoeven's last scene with Alex thus seems unnecessary, since he's already resigned to his life.

However, the scenes with Esther contrast with Verhoeven's unnecessariness with Alex. Her knowing passivity about her fiance and later husband's nefarious actions seem all the more traumatic and real given her refusal to acquiesce her life for any practicing morality, preferring instead to maintain life at any cost, though she always remains passive rather than directly responsible for any loss of life. As such, her psychology becomes to me the most interesting after Hauer's Eric, with Gus close behind her, since he's obviously willing to sacrifice his freedom for revenge at the end.

This film, along with Turkish Delight, is probably the best case for director Verhoeven and his strengths balancing art and commercialism, in that it has strong personal ties and remains aesthetically and emotionally vital at every moment.

Soldier of Orange: 9/10

Turkish Delight

2006-11-23T10:49:00.000-08:00

Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight (1973) is a very interesting film. It is regarded by many critics as the best film to ever come from the Netherlands, presenting a blend of audacious, exaggerated comedy together with a raw, emotional force when it suddenly switches gears in the final act, revealing its former comedy as the foremost exposed layer of a battered psyche struggling to understand something intimate and personal.

For the first hour, where Eric Volk (Rutger Hauer) is perpetually consumed with sex and sex alone, the film seemingly exists only as a critique of bourgeois ideals and allows Eric to subvert these principles with his vagabond lifestyle. As a result, these scenes are understood as necessary, but seldom seem to be revealing. Eric’s inner torment finally comes about once the film returns to its beginning dream of Eric killing his former wife Olga (Monique van de Ven). It is here that Verhoeven begins to play with more intricate ideas of psychology and pathology since Olga clearly desires Eric, yet she remains faithful to her upper crust parents and so she turns on her former lover and spouse.

For his part, Eric has done much to lead Olga into this decision. His refusal to mature is simultaneously his strongest attribute and his downfall, since he never maintains a steady income and often sells only the artwork that is most inappropriate to her, making what was once a private affair public. Yet there such moments of power when the two are together, most memorably the scene where the two lie in the street amidst a torrential downpour and just relax in each other’s arms, and these moments speak of the physicality that always lingers between them.
Indeed, the latter half of the film, wherein Verhoeven details how most/all of Eric's pathologies deride from the absence of his ex-wife, lead into a tender portrayal of desire as a psychological need. The last fifteen minutes especially turn this from a dark comedy into a tale of haunting introspection, when Olga’s health is threatened and Eric finally becomes the man she has always wanted him to be. Moreover, the ending works as a powerful parallel to her father’s passing, and Verhoeven handles it all delicately and develops it beautifully.

A wonderful score and film, Turkish Delight is always vibrant and alive.

Turkish Delight: 10/10

Hana-Bi

2006-11-02T08:26:00.000-08:00

Takashi Kitano's Hana-Bi (translated as Fireworks, 1997) takes away all the artifice of the genre action film, leaving in its wake the skeletal remains that is this film. Dialogue is never as important as the psychology of the action to Kitano, which explains his preference toward understated and nearly expressionless characters. However, Kitano also infuses his film with a grace and artistry that allows it to transcend its rigid genre status and prevail instead as an intimate character study.

Nishi (Kitano) is a cop consumed by the guilt of leaving an stake-out to see his sick wife at the hospital. His partner, however, was gunned down and paralyzed for life while he was away, an act that first is expressed in cold blooded revenge but later as an internalized disinterest with the types of morality that he was once expected to hold up. Instead, as his wife's health continues to worsen, Nishi turns to crime in an effort to give her a last few weeks of comfort and economic bliss, all while evading the mob and police.

Like his other early minimalist film A Scene at the Sea, this film's best moments occur between Nishi and his wife, when the two share an intimacy, though it is very much unspoken. There is a way in which her reaction to his rage is very much pathological in itself, since she displays no reaction to his outbursts. The juxtaposition in this film, though, is what privileges it above its kind. Whereas Nishi very much surrenders to his guilt vis-a-vis violence, his partner, now in a a wheelchair, utilizes his to new condition to turn away from his former life as a cop and now teaches himself art (all of the paintings in the film were actually painted by Kitano himself in another parallel, since this film is the direct result of Kitano trying to recover from a motorcycle accident that scarred his face and limited his ability to convey emotion through it).

As a result of this confluence between fiction and nonfiction, the commentary between art and violence as those which the two cops depended on becomes nicely woven throughout. One relies on a medium that saves and projects the regret outward, the other internalizes and becomes consumed by his guilt. The finale, which seems to suggest hues of purity and references Fellini's La Dolce Vita, ultimately becomes fatalistic as Kitano forecloses any narrative pathway for revenge to allow liberation in this film.

Hana-Bi was the film that awakened international critics to the full potential Kitano has as a filmmaker, and its power has not lessened in time. Such a good film, ripe with subtext.

Hana-Bi: 10/10

Angels with Dirty Faces

2006-10-31T07:37:00.000-08:00

Michael Curtiz’s Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) is a fascinating glimpse into the nature of violence as a potentially cyclical and unshakeable pathological condition. This film, though marked as a Hollywood production, transcends its classical and genre-specific roots to become a unique experience by virtue of its impeccable script and performances.

Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) and Jerry Connelly (Pat O’Brien) are youths who pride themselves on being petty thieves. While Jerry escapes the police during one particular raid and transforms himself into a virtuous priest, Rocky is caught and thrown into reform school. The conditions within the school, though, actually lead him to further transgressions, since he comes to understand how to mastermind and perfect a criminal’s life. When Rocky is released from prison, he returns to a life of crime by shepherding a bunch of young street thugs while simultaneously renewing his friendship with Jerry and romancing a girl. Rather than belabor the romance angle, however, Curtiz notes it and moves on, for the film is about the idea of living by example, not by leading with money. Though Sullivan is engaging and powerful, his is a persona grounded in the over-investment of male bravado and pathology. Thus, violence cannot be substituted with a more normative reaction, such as forgiving or pardoning the offender, but instead must be returned in kind. While Sullivan shepherds and disciplines the overly-posturing street thugs, his power and pull throughout the town will inevitably train them to identify that respect is gained by being the aggressor. This type of reinforcement, while perhaps true for Sullivan, will undoubtedly carry its negative repercussions far beyond Sullivan’s life. To paraphrase Rilke, he must change his life.

And somehow Curtiz and his screenwriters makes this point work, never letting it become condescending (as it does come from a corporate studio company). When Rocky is finally captured and faces his execution, Jerry comes to him and asks him to sacrifice his bravado and masculine egotism and assume the role of a redemptive, whimpering man about to be executed. The reason, of course, is that this is the only way to secure a positive example for the street thugs and show them that violence and its pathological behaviors are not the answer, and that devotion and fidelity to the law and God are.

The film is brilliant for its refusal to posit why Rocky finally sacrifices his machismo, since such a positing immediately panders to the audience. Instead, Curtiz leaves Rocky’s reasons ambiguous, since it is entirely possible that Rocky was finally overcome by fear over his impending death, just as it is possible that he feels some responsibility to shepherding his disciples to a truer path. This is a marvelous film about the repercussions of human responsibility to others, as well as an around engaging film.

Angels with Dirty Faces: 10/10

Marie Antoinette

2006-10-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006) possesses the grace and elegance of those classically constructed historical films, yet injects just enough contemporary details and anachronistic moments that the film never falls into that staid and monotonous atmosphere. This is not to say that historical films can only be interesting if contemporary details are worked into them; rather, that Coppola and this film utilize those elements wonderfully, letting them add to Marie Antoinette's liberating persona.

In hopes of creating an alliance between Austria and France, Marie (Kirsten Dunst) is married off to Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), a young man more generally concerned with hunting foxes and hanging around with his men than with consummating the marriage. Faced with this ridicule and unable to transgress past it, Marie celebrates her status in material things, rewarding herself and her girlfriends with the most prized and decadent of jewelry and clothes. Yet when Louis XV (Rip Torn) passes away, Louis XVI finally must become the king of the nation and sire a son to the throne. Unfortunately, the citizens eventually rise up and send Marie "packing."

To be sure, this film is most engaging when studying the milieu of Marie's world as she is spurned and cast off by those around the throne for being unable to get Louis XVI to consummate the marriage. Coppola beautifully presents a portrait of a young girl isolated from any comfort to call her own as she constantly worries about being cast off herself if she cannot bear the throne a child. The humiliation and hurt that washes over her as another woman bears a child to the throne first is indeed a powerful moment in the film. Moreover, Coppola has several masterstrokes throughout the film, such as insinuating Antoinette's dead third child by having a portrait of her and her three children removed and replaced by an earlier portrait with just two children.

Still, the last thirty minutes of the film do start dragging as Coppola works to bring her narrative to a close, having to rely on history rather than her characters to advance the plot. Yet this whole film is a visual sumptuous delight, delivering some of the most awe-inspiring cinematography since Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, and barring the last quarter of the film, Marie Antoinette is never less than magical.

Marie Antoinette: 8.5/10

Bully

2006-10-26T08:53:00.000-07:00

Larry Clark's Bully (2001) masquerades as a naturalistic based on a real story revenge narrative about teens who decide to murder a bully who has tormented and abused those closest to him. In terms of documenting the cyclical nature of violence, this is an interesting story. In terms of being a good film, it is not.

Billy (Nick Stahl) constantly derides and ridicules his best friend, Marty (Brad Renfro). When Marty gets a new girlfriend, Lisa (Rachel Miner), however, Billy begins to reveal his level of dominance and possession. Billy physically abuses Marty and rapes Lisa, and weeks later Marty and Lisa concoct a plan to terminate Billy's abuse. Recruiting several of their friends, they plan out the execution of Billy.

Unfortunately, that first hour, with its "naturalistic" take on getting high, screwing, and simple love was cringeworthy and mindnumbing. Characters are so uneducated and thoughtless in their decision-making here that IQs literally drop throughout the film. If the lesson to be learned is that uneducated teens cannot plan, execute, and manage life after murdering a fellow human, then the film succeeds. However, if the film is meant to portray the internalized guilt and repercussions that follow from such an act, then the film clearly fails. Lacking anything that even bears a resemblance of subtlety, Clark and his screenwriters instead pummel the audience with insipid dialogue and attempts at profundity.

As a result, Bully becomes nothing more than a misstep, and an attempt at documenting the fallout from a shared traumatic experience. The inability to achieve anything resembling depth ultimately damns this film to mediocrity, and those few strong moments in the middle of the film as the pace and intelligence of the characters picks up are revealed to be small aberrations.

Bully: 4/10

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

2006-10-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) has all the taste of vanilla ice cream, and leaves the viewer with the same emptiness. It's a terribly bland screwball comedy wherein the deeper implications of marriage and lying are undermined by unfunny and painful revelations masked as plot advancement. This, one of Hitchcock's few times he worked as director for hire, possesses none of the magic of the best of Hitchcock's material.

Ann Smith (Carole Lombard) and David Smith (Robert Montgomery) are a couple who habitually undergo huge fights and temper tantrums, and after one of the longest periods of emotional silence (3 days), David is notified that their marriage is not legally binding, since it was conferred out of state. Unbeknownst to him, Ann is also notified, and so when David suggests a night on the town, she expects the night to end with a new marriage. However, David never propositions her with a new marriage that night, and when Ann exposes his transgression, David denies any wrongdoing. Yet lost within this entire film is David's explanation for why he didn't acknowledge a desire to remarry Ann, which is what dooms the film to mediocrity.

And so a typical bedroom farce scenario is played out, wherein Ann tortures David by tempting his best friend Jeff Custer (Gene Raymond). Yet the immorality of Jeff's decision to romance his best friend's "wife" asks for explanation and development, and this being a screwball "comedy," such exceptations are never received. Given his importance, Jeff's character should possess some morality for his friend's recent loss, rather than his opportunistic attempt at matchmaker. Even the explanation that all of Jeff's moves are done to rekindle Ann and David's love fails to resolve his moral ambiguities. Instead, what remains is a love triangle that is morally and ethically repugnant, when it wishes to be breezy. These types of inappropriate misfires lead to a conclusion that is bland and thoroughly expected, but never really earned.

There are some nice moments in the film, such as when Jeff and Ann get stuck on the ferris wheel during a thunderstorm. And Lombard has a nice screen presence, but the ideas cannot overcome the execution, which is dull and often inappropriate or not developed.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith: 5/10

Series 7: The Contenders

2006-10-22T18:57:00.000-07:00

Daniel Minahan's Series 7: The Contenders (2001) examines how reality shows have desensitized their audience to such a state wherein murder is accepted as entertainment. With such a narrative conceit, it's obvious that Minahan's film wants to question the nature of illusion, artifice, and responsibility vis-a-vis his chief protagonists.

Eight-month pregnant Dawn Lagarto (Brooke Smith) is the worthy victor on The Contenders, Series 7, and she must face five new challengers in order to be free from the obligation of competing. However, this new season takes place in her old hometown and will reunite her with her old flame Jeff Norman (Glenn Fitzgerald), an artist and dying cancer patient who once shared a romance with Dawn in high school. Now, however, they must struggle to articulate their feelings while negotiating those who want them dead, as well as Jeff's loyal wife.

Minahan successfully avoids trangressing outside his chosen genre, maintaining an emotional fidelity to his satire, so the film never adopts a new tonal quality or transitions become reality and satire without conviction. Yet it is the script that disappoints, since characters are sometimes touchingly portrayed, and other times they come across as crass and broad caricatures. The nurse especially suffers this condition, since she goes from one who condemns Dawn's out-of-wedlock pregnancy in one contemptuous instant to one who overlooks those she murdered while taking confession in church. These sorts of ideological critiques feel a little too pat and contrived for this film, and leave the nurse as only a surface character, when her actions suggest that she should be the antagonist with better character arc and development. The same problem occurs in the young girl's comically overbearing parents, which denies the film any emotional investment since the satire is drawn too broadly.

While it is an obvious target to lambaste reality TV as uncaring about real lives, it's an effective film overall. I feel I may be too generous in handing the film my current score, but the effective scenes do overpower the weak ones overall, and the ending works quite well (where the ending is reconstructed due to "lost footage"). And the artifice of the musical cues work incredibly well. There's a great film in here; as it is, it's merely a good one.

Series 7: The Contenders: 7/10

Gilda

2006-10-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

Charles Vidor's Gilda (1946) is a film wherein the depth of the script, performances, and film noir stylistics offset a weak and impotent ending. Yet, to be sure, the nihilism that centers much of this film cannot sustain itself at the hands of 40's Hollywood, so a weak conclusion is to be expected. Up until the final moments, Gilda is a strong example of rapid-fire dialogue and gifted characterization.

Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) is a gambler who has just newly arrived in Buenos Aires, and taken to streetside gambling. When he is saved from misfortune by regal Ballin Mundson (George Macready), Johnny is made Ballin's right-hand man at the illegal bourgeois casino that Ballin runs. However, complications ensue when Ballin vacations and brings back new bride Gilda (Rita Hayworth) with him. Unbeknownst to Ballin, Gilda and Johnny have a checkered past, and so Gilda channels her contemptuous anger at Johnny, becoming one of the first female provocateurs in American cinema.

In terms of subtext in this film, perhaps most noteworthy is how biting cynicism becomes the vehicle for desire. Johnny and Gilda torture each other endlessly with their contempt, yet this same contempt fuels their desire for each other. Consequently, aggression becomes their mode of operation, internalizing their desire even as they send barbs back and forth. Moreover, when Ballin "dies" and Johnny and Gilda finally marry, Johnny's idea of substituting a physical lack for any chance at consummation suggests a fascinating role reversal as perverse punishment for their thoughts of infidelity.

The finale of this film lacks the energy that the rest of the film is wrapped in, which is unfortunate, since the film plays off of gender relations and subverts them beautifully in the beginning. And the songs that Hayworth sings, while strong songs, seem to belong in another film. Yet the rest of Gilda is solid, especially the beautiful performance of Hayworth, and the film is rightly considered a classic of 40's cinema.

Gilda: 8/10

La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc

2006-10-18T13:32:00.000-07:00

Carl Theodor Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928) is perhaps silent film’s masterpiece. Together with W.F. Murnau’s Sunrise, this film exists as the most exemplary example of sophistication, pathos, and spirituality in the face of martyrdom. Utilizing the haunting yet beatific facial expressions of Maria Falconetti, coupled together with contemporary music inspired by the film (full of choirs and orchestras), Dreyer created a singular film that captures the devastation of the hours leading up to Joan of Arc’s ultimate sacrifice.

The camera angles and effects that Dreyer utilizes perfectly encompass the emotions of the film. Unlike his contemporaries in silent film, Dreyer mandated that the actors in this film not use makeup, and this nakedness on the face leads to heartbreaking emotion in Joan of Arc, and often generates a diseased, broken face in those of her condemners. Moreover, the film’s criticism of religious martyrs is still remarkably prescient, allowing for a commentary on the abuse of religious doctrine to spurn others.

There is little to comment upon in this film. Rather, the film washes over one in waves, offering brief respite but always leading to its inevitable crescendo, and the final effect is chilling in its simplicity. This is a film that should be watched by anyone interested in the role of religion in early cinema, or simply by anyone who appreciates cinema. It is probably the most spiritual film to have ever been made.

Ultimately, this is a film where a discussion of the film cannot match the beauty and haunting nature of the film itself. The music is breathtaking, the images exquisite, and Falconetti’s face unmatched in its purity of expression. Utterly amazing.

La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc: 10/10

Three Times

2006-10-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Three Times (2005) is a frequently beautiful and sublimely haunting film, a formalist experiment that examines how the social and political constraints of the time period impact human desire. The three narratives take place in 1911, 1966, and 2005, and underscore the rigidity of early twentieth century, the optimism of mid-century, and the confused and disaffectedness of contemporary life.

Shu Qi plays all three of the female leads, and Chang Chen all the male leads, and their natural attraction to one another shifts concurrently with the narrative. On one hand, the first two narratives worked unbelievably well, with pitch-perfect stylistics and performances. That ending to the "A Time for Love" (1966) story is absolutely enchanting, one-upping Wong Kar Wai in its depiction of 1960's romanticism, while "A Time for Freedom" (1911) is embedded with such a sense of bitterness and melancholy. So those are both great, offering first a sublime story concerning the simplicity of affection and desire, and the second story seeming to explore the deep-seeded regret that comes with an unfilfilled love. So the link between fulfillment in liking someone and the lack of reciprocal love works formally.

But the contemporary story doesn't quite resonate on any of the same levels, as though Hou's narrative construction and formalist pacing doesn't quite translate with the same level of success to modern times. Still, it has its individual moments, it just fails to reach that transcendent moment. Here, rather than the formal piano orchestra of 1911 and the American love songs of the 1966 story, the music and melodies are achieved vis-a-vis droning rock and electronica bands, which certainly conforms to a different ontology concerning the characters than their earlier counterparts. The scenes with Shu singing in the concert venue, where Chang is more concerned with snapping pictures than listening to her words is telling, and a nice touch. It just has that Antonioni-ennui, which, while paralleling the vastness of the contemporary city, seem a little contrived. It just feels too easy to suggest that relationships today lack the intimacy and connectedness of yesteryear.

A great essay concerning Hou's aesthetic and formal choices in Three Times can be found here. It details the structural and operative modes of communication that Hou utilizes throughout the three narratives, and offers the best response to the unorderliness of contemporary life in Hou's film. Regardless of how one feels about the last narrative, though, the first narrative shown cinematically (1966) is absolute magic, and even the formal qualities of the second narrative (1911) are excellent. Judge the last narrative for yourself.

Three Times: 8.5/10

Imitation of Life

2006-10-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life (1959) is a huge improvement over the 1934 version. Character motivations and whole back stories have been expunged entirely, such as Delilah Johnson's degrading career as a pancake cook. She is now Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), a woman who has emotionally bonded with the career-minded Lora Meredith (Lana Turner), looking after Meredith's young daughter and her own daughter, Sarah Jane, who can pass as white at first glance. The scenario, as it did in the original, provides plenty of melodrama, which Sirk utilizes masterfully, but also creates a more fascinating discussion of Meredith's inadequacies as a parent who finally overcomes her self-interest.

Emotions are more developed, Lana Turner's character is revealed to be the insensitive mother that Claudette Colbert's character only hinted at, and most importantly, the central drama of the Johnson family is actually developed out with maturity and sensitivity to the plight of African-Americans. Sarah Jane's character actually has an arc, and the ending covers a span of emotional maturity, rather than a stunted commentary on the nature of passing. Indeed, while the film logically covers more of Meredith's story (given the time period, social expectations and all), it is the commentary on Sarah Jane and her mother that are given the strongest once-over.

When Sarah Jane leaves the household and starts to pass in bars and dance clubs, there is a sensitivity and depth to her contradicting feelings about her heritage and her mother that is entirely absent from the original. Moreover, these scenes demonstrate with genuine sadness the way in which she was forced to utilize her light-skinned beauty, so that her survival is dependent upon her marketing of herself as a sex object. Mostly, though, it is the ending that is redeemed in this version, allowing Sarah Jane a reconciliation and working through her past experiences that gives the character a proper depth and range of emotion.

At the end of the day, stories about racial passing and survival received little attention from classic Hollywood, so any film that tackles these issues sets itself up for critical acclaim. Only Sirk's version of Imitation of Life delivers on the depth, transcending blanket caricatures. So much better of a film.

Imitation of Life: 8/10

Pride and Prejudice

2006-10-13T05:43:00.000-07:00

Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice (2005) captures all that is right about historical literary romances, recreating that sense of verbal sparing between the sexes, documenting the social classes that confined families to marrying off their children out of need rather than desire, but, most of all, this film celebrates the euphoric sense of romance that accompanies intellectual Lizzie Bennett discovering her fellow intellectual Mr. Darcy to be the ideal romance of her life.

Elizabeth Bennett (Keira Knightley) is the sophisticated daughter among her family, entertaining intelligence rather than simplicity. As such, she harbors natural resentment toward those who chastise her sex or demean her family, such as recent arrival Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen), a man who believes Eliabeth's sister's affection for his best friend, Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods), to be out of profit and social rising, and not out of the pure love that it is actually based on. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy spend much of the film dueling and challenging one another, and only later do they realize that each means the best for their respective family and friends. Upon this realization, the two begin to be slowly drawn to each other, but, as with all great literary romance classics, society colludes against them.

While this is a romantic film, Wright includes much of Austen's social commentary, so that the Bennett family mother and two younger sisters are understood to be devotional only to marriage, good looks, and wealth, and larger issues of propriety and economic conditions escape them. Moreover, Wright analyzes the way in which beauty becomes a currency for women, marketing themselves to potential suitors with all the air of perfection itself. Contrasted against this vision, though, is Lizzie's best friend, a thoroughly ordinary woman who must resign herself to the also ordinary Mr. Collins. These issues are not glossed, but instead are handled with the care of one who knows that historical accuracy only adds to the weight of the film.

At the end of the day, there are few films as tenderly beautiful and romantic as this one, where a simple devotional kiss is repressed until the final frame. However, this is a film that is nonetheless deeply romantic, exposing the desires that we all have for another. The last ten minutes are amazing, and every emotional crescendo is earned. Simply delightful.

Pride and Prejudice: 9/10

After Life

2006-10-12T10:14:00.000-07:00

Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life (1998) is an ode to memory and the deceased, offering a sometimes wonderful rumination on what memory one would select if he/she could only take one memory with him/her into the after life. In terms of this singularity, the film links itself up with Zen's idea of contentment pretty well, and the scenes of memory's recreation and recovery are undoubtedly strong. Yet for all of this, After Life is probably Kore-eda's least interesting of his efforts that I've seen thus far (Nobody Knows and Maborosi being the other two, both of which balance on perfection).

Takashi Mochizuki (Arata) is one of four counsellors who strive to help the recently deceased settle on one memory that will stay with them throughout all of eternity. Yet while the successes of the film lie in analyzing the recently deceased and trying to localize a singular image or moment of pure reflection and contentment, the weaknesses lie in the relationships between Mochizuki and the female trainee counsellor, Shiori Satonaka (Erika Oda).

Kore-eda clearly seeks to underscore an ambivalent but desired relationship in Shiori's mind, yet he never really develops the proper dynamics into their relationship for there to be true conflict. Interestingly, the youngest counsellor Mochizuki is probably one of the oldest, since one permanently remains the aged that they were when they died, so that even though Mochizuki died from injuries suffered in World War II, he still looks young and youthful here. But whereas he is forever committed to the fiancee that he left behind, Kore-eda leaves the emotion too far understated, which forces the inevitable loss to simply not be as engaging as it could be.

Still, it's nonetheless a good film, and the stories that the deceased reveal make up for the weaknesses of the counsellor's characters. Kore-eda interviewed hundreds of people, trying to locate what desires and memories people would wish to return to, and this understanding is woven throughout the dead's stories. I just wish Kore-eda had been more emphatic in playing up the dynamics of the counsellor's relationships...

After Life: 7.5/10

The Conformist

2006-10-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist (1970) is perhaps the quintessential espionage film, even though these genre specific qualities take a back seat to political commentary about 1930's Italy and Mussollini, conformity and fascism, and morality contrasted against amorality.

Indeed, this is a very amoral film, and centers on a spineless Italian, Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who rises through the fascist ranks of Italy by betraying his friends and family for his country. In order to further delineate his innocence and maintain a facade, though, he marries and while on his honeymoon in Rome he is ordered to reunite with a former professor who has since fled Italy and assassinate this man in the name of Mussollini. What transpires is a character study of a spineless protagonist who feels conflicted between his past loyalties to the professor and his present loyalties to his country. Moreover, the professor's wife (Dominique Sanda) has also become an impediment to Marcello's ability to murder.

Within this narrative lies a psychological basis for Marcello's actions. He was taught by a soldier in his youth to connect feelings of sex together with violence, and while some might claim that this is just pretentious connecting, the film succinctly argues that enacting violence and sexual abuse upon children leads to an amoral acceptance of violence and aggression in the child's present. As a result, though Marcello begins to question his culpability in procurring the professor's death, these thoughts are often sublimated and compartmentalized, so that blind conformity is, in the end, what he desires. This, also, is what makes the last ten minutes of the film so haunting.

More so than the narrative, this is a film that exists on the strength of its music and images, allowing Bertolucci to posit the moral incertitude of Marcello through cinematic framing and the film’s mise en scene. Thus, although the film might initially feel cold and clinically rooted to ideas of Freudian psychology, the circular editing and subtlety of the images ground the film in the organic nature of cinema. The Conformist is a film that deserves its acclaim, since it balances elements of a sexy thriller together with a more profound questioning of fascism, examining how a nation so willingly became conditioned to accept this sort of fascist rule. A masterpiece.

The Conformist: 10/10

Thank You for Smoking

2006-10-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

Lacking any true psychological depth, Jason Reitman's Thank You for Smoking (2005) is a confident but never truly pentrating character study. While Aaron Eckhart owns the smarmy and despicable character Nick Naylor cold, the film struggles to match the intensity of the lead performance, and ultimately limps to an ending that is contrived even as it's satirically enjoyable. And so goes this film; it's a fun ride that goes nowhere or challenges, but instead merely entertains. On the basis of entertainment, it succeeds but any intellectual sophistication is marginal at best.

And this film possesses the chance for a good political and social commentary on the falseness of politicians and public relations policing a product not for truth, but instead only in order to neutralize truth. The Mod Squad bits are probably the best, where Naylor has dinner with alcohol lobbyist (Maria Bello) and a firearms rep (David Koechner) allowing for a degree of depth and ingenuity that the rest of Reitman's script ignores.

This film, like others before it, channels the ol' kid who's smarter than his parents syndrome, which is nauseating and a trend that should be put down before it can do any more damage. This bit of father-son bonding seems a little too prescripted and devoid of "reality," and so the ability to buy these scenes is a little too slim. The strength of this film, though, lies with Eckhart, who delivers a continuation of the masterful characterization of In the Company of Men. It's a great performance that salvages a script that is too pacifying to be savage.

As a result, though this film never sermonizes, nor does it ever truly become engaging. Instead, despite bravura acting from Eckhart, it's ultimately as slight as the pun of the title.

Thank You for Smoking: 6.5/10

Punch-Drunk Love

2006-10-08T17:56:00.000-07:00

Few films are as infectious and pleasing as Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love (2002), a pathological fairytale that possesses more genuine romance than all of those pre-scripted romantic comedies that plague the film industry. What makes this statement so perplexing is that on one level Anderson is himself parodying the conventions of the romantic fairytale, yet he also always grants his characters an integrity and vision that allows them to exist as fully-realized individuals and not disparate caricatures.

A small- business owner of a plumbing manufacturing company, Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a man whose blankness defines him as much as his pathological anger. His seven sisters continually deride him and verbally abuse him, and he only knows how to internalize that verbal aggression and mimic it physically when he cannot hold it in any longer. One of his sisters tries to set him up with her coworker Lena Leonard (Emily Watson, ever radiant), and the film chronicles their attempt to find happiness together even as complications, such as distance and mattress man/owner of a phone sex operation Dean Trumbell (Philip Seymour Hoffman), work to seperate them.

Despite a voice that can raise in intensity at the first insult, Sandler's face as an actor is preternaturally expressionless, so Anderson often has the camera trail him, allowing that lack of depth to be used sparingly. In its place, Anderson manipulates the film's lens flare, so that these filmic augmentations are personified through Barry Egan's viewpoint. When a flash of hope comes over him, so too does a blue lens flare. When anger colors his emotions, a red lens flare enters the frame. A great essay on these ideas can be found here.

Another aspect that deepens the film's fairytale-ish quality is the treatment of Lena Leonard. While Barry is mocked and verbally assaulted for his past tirades, it soon becomes apparent that Lena possesses these same internalizations, though she handles them in a more adult and less noticeable manner, which can be seen most effectively when Barry and Lena whisper their words of love to one another:

Barry: I'm lookin' at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fuckin' smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You're so pretty.
Lena: I want to chew your face, and I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them and chew them and suck on them.
[pause]
Barry: OK. This is funny. This is nice.

These kinds of dynamics add depth and complexity to what is essentially a fairytale. Yet this reworking of pathology and battered psyches give the film an originality and cinematic harmony, so that Anderson allows his story to rise above conventional romance stories and gain a visual articulation of the themes that transpire rhetorically throughout the film. A magical experience.

Punch-Drunk Love: 9/10

The Departed

2006-10-07T19:44:00.000-07:00

Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006) is an American reimagining of the Hong Kong action classic Infernal Affairs (2002). It is recommended that interested parties in Scorsese's film first seek out the original, since it bears all the same strengths and weaknesses of this version, and has a better account of honor, loyalty, and justice (although these ideals remain far more implicit in IA). In contrast, Scorsese's version articulates these ideals more, but reimagines a central character in ways that differentiate the film from the original.

The idea behind the film is masterful, which is largely why Hollywood was so interested in grabbing the rights up from the HK studio. A police mole Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) has infiltrated Boston crime lord Frank Costello's (Jack Nicholson) gang. Meanwhile, Costello has placed his own mole in the police force, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon). As both crime lord and police chief work to counter the other's mole, Costigan and Sullivan begin to be caught in the crossfire, questioning their loyalties to their initial boss. To discuss more takes much of the suspense away, so mum's the word on the story from here on out.

There's something operatic and grandiose about the way both IA and The Departed deal with the execution of characters. Throughout the film, we understand that Costigan either has to extricate himself from his crime life or that he will be consumed by it. Here, unlike in the original IA, Costigan falls for the psychiatrist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), the same woman that Sullivan has romanced. While it doesn't really damage the film, since this act of desire further substantiates how the two men are doubles of each other, the relationship still feels a little too obligatory and stilted.

The dynamics of the film change toward the end, when one of the assumes a different persona than the original Infernal Affairs. This change actually works quite effectively (the original characterization is probably more in tune with HK ideals of honor and justice than U.S. ideals of honor and justice). As a result, it allows the ending to puncture simpler ideas of justice, showing a man who surrenders to death rather than exhibit any signs of resistence. He has been crushed, mentally and spiritually, for he has betrayed everything true about himself.

This is a film that is certainly worth viewing; the dialogue is amazingly Mametian, the violence is splashy yet moralistic, and Scorsese shows that he can transform a genre film to high art, just as the original Infernal Affairs was high art.

The Departed: 9.5/10

Shame

2006-10-07T19:01:00.000-07:00

Ingmar Bergman's Shame (1968) examines the internal strife that plagues love and the human spirit in times of war. The Rosenbergs are a typical Gotland, Swedish bourgeois couple, desensitized to the war and manipulated by both sides, who ultimately prey on each other when neither can weather the conflict emotionally any more. As a result, Bergman intimates that while families often heroically maintain optimism in war's beginning, eventually ignorance and the herd mentality silence that hope, so that life becomes merely a concept of survival as morality disappears.

Bergman begins by studying the psychological trauma of war in Jan Rosenberg (Max von Sydow), a musician who now lives by selling plants and vegetables. Jan is distanced, sluggish, and prone to breaking down in emotional spells. Jan’s wife, Eva (Liv Ullman), however, works to keep their marriage, and themselves, alive by continually pushing her husband and verbally berating him. She exploits him and manipulates his weakness so that they may both know continued existence. Despite their pathologies, both Jan and Eva display an interminable affection for each other, clinging to the other in their time of need.

However, late in the film, Jan's lack of strength leads Eva to seek a sexual suitor, Col. Jacobi (Gunnar Björnstrand), who pardons them of any political wrongdoing. When this suitor, though, is set to be shot because of conflicting stories about his finances, Jan pockets the money and permanently silences his sexual adversary, despite Eva's pleadings. This newfound vigor to survive tears asunder Jan and Eva's relationship, but they manage to distance themselves from Col. Jacobi, and escape the island.

Late in the film, Eva notes that "I feel like I'm in someone else's dream and they're going to be ashamed when they wake up," which stands as testament to Bergman's critique of war itself. Few films are as psychologically acute in a couple's pathological and immoral struggle to survive, no matter the adversity. A wonderful work.

Shame: 9.5/10

United 93

2006-10-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

Paul Greengrass’ United 93 (2006) recreates the events that occurred in the fourth plane that terrorists hijacked and that crashed into Pennsylvania on September 11th. And this wording is important. Though the film acts as testament to the resistance and heroism that the passengers showed, the actual descent is administered, according to the film, by a terrorist crew that slowly understands they will not make their destination. Working under the confines of a docudrama, Greengrass documents the way in vital information was spread back and forth between passengers, but always haltingly, in spurts, which slows the effectiveness of a counterattack. Indeed, bureaucracy is Greengrass’ biggest target as he implicitly, and through the character of Ben Sliney (playing himself), head of FAA National Center, condemns the lack of response by the political and military administrations.

Past critiques of United 93 involved how the reviewer was upset over Greengrass’ political commentary, or in fact by the lack thereof. But these instances of political and military inadequacy do bear the mark of a critique. Additionally, Greengrass’ critics attack how the film humanizes both passengers and terrorists and so develops out a muddled message, but Greengrass humanizes for two reasons. Firstly, he wants the audience to be disturbed into an epiphany that the terrorists have the same anxieties and apprehension as the passengers. Secondly, he wants to juxtapose how prayer is used for destruction and murder in one context and, alternately, used for comfort and as an agent of salvation.

Moreover, Greengrass does attack the human weakness as flight attendants betray the flight by giving the proper knock to the cockpit and doom pilots and passengers, as well as how the Americans are willing to silence any oppositional voice (the European) in order to gain an advantage on the terrorists. This latter single-mindedness is celebrated in the film, but asks the audience to question whether or not they now celebrate that same narrow-minded focus.

Ultimately, a film like United 93 is judged on how effectively it utilizes the drama of the situation, and the last twenty minutes of the film are among the saddest and most heartrending in contemporary cinema. The passengers have no chance to wrest control of the plane in time, since the terrorists have taken the plane so low to the ground, yet the film effectively exploits the human desire to change reality.

Why does this film exist? Because it can, and that is enough. History and film will eventually offer a fuller portrait of 9/11, but this film has an immediacy that future films will almost certainly lack.

United 93: 8/10

Imitation of Life

2006-10-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

John M. Stahl's Imitation of Life (1934) exists as testament to the fact that Hollywood films could tackle problematic and risque material by focusing on the interracial friendship between Beatrice Pullman (Claudette Colbert) and Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers), both widowed women caring for their young daughters. However, the fact that the film tackles these issues does not release it from the burden that Stahl's film does not handle them articulately or sophisticatedly.

Given that the film is a product of its time, one should not be offended that Beatrice and Delilah strike it rich by appropriating the mammy cook image for a pancake and syrup business. However, the film seldom highlights Delilah as a figure of strength and intelligence, instead, as in one scene when Beatrice and the artist for the business have Delilah pose for the slogan, Delilah remains a figure lacking agency or privilege. Instead, she is confined to the simplistic portrait of a well-meaning but vacuous caretaker for Beatrice, Beatrice's daughter, and her own daughter Peola.

The scenes with the adult Peola (Fredi Washington) belong in a better film, for Washington imbues her character with an intelligence and spark that the film paradoxically deprives her. She does not want to attend a "black college" because her skin is light enough for her to pass, and so she often adheres to implicit ideas of equality vis-a-vis her ability to pass. Unfortunately, these scenes lack sophistication, largely because the film never feels comfortable tackling these weightier issues. Instead, we get overburdening coverage of Beatrice, a budding romance with Steve Archer, and a daughter who has also become smitten with Mr. Archer.

The film returns to the weightier issues of race relations in a final tableaux during Delilah's funereal, where Peola renounces her earlier desire to pass. And so, apparently, this leads to an ending where audiences are reassured that no blacks are going to try to pass in their midst. The film scores nominal points because the ending, despite its annoying manipulation, is effective in eliciting emotion. Not always the desired emotion, but it does garner emotion, regardless.

Imitation of Life: 6/10

Ed Wood

2006-09-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

Despite a slew of gothic horror films that focus on idiosyncratic loners who find love and inspiration in a woman's identification with them, Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994) remains his best and most personal film. Rather than relying on special effects to express a character's emotions, as he has all too unfortunately done in films like Edward Scissorhands and the first two Batman features, here Burton finally spends time on developing out a bond that exists between an aging star and man who will only ironically become a star.

Ed Wood (Johnny Depp), an aspiring filmmaker whose ambition is matched only by his putrid grasp of talent, befriends aging actor Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau). As Wood tries to break into the film industry and get his vision financed, he cares for Lugosi, whose health keeps worsening with age and self-abuse. Burton's film follows Wood through his horrendous early work, culminating in the brilliant fascimile to Plan Nine From Outer Space, Wood's film that lovingly possesses the title of "Worst Film of All Time" for its utter ineptitude.

The nuance of Wood and Lugosi's friendship, really, is what defines this film and allows it to become something more than an homage to one of the worst filmmakers of all time. Even after a friendship proves costly and becomes a hindrance to the advancement of Wood's professional life, Wood remains steadfast in his devotion to the friend. Ultimately, this devotion transcends mockery and becomes touching, since, whatever Wood's faults, he always meant well. Indeed, his gang of freaks and "actors," if that word can be used, are those that the world has cast out, and so the idea that Burton identifies with this character is less than shocking.

This is a bio-pic that revels in Wood's delusional fantasies and attacks on highbrow artistry. As such, it becomes a film that possesses true value to filmmakers like Burton, who clearly understands the desire to direct a piece of cinema that is less than revolutionary simply because it's got a great idea somewhere in it. Yet, for the first time in his career, Burton also succeeds in bringing the humanity of the characters to the screen. This is a wonderful film, though it drags a little toward the end.

Ed Wood: 8.5/10

Suspicion

2006-09-29T19:47:00.000-07:00

The success of Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) lies in one word and one word only, and that is the pet phrase that Johnnie (Cary Grant) calls Lina (Joan Fontaine), his wife: "monkeyface." Never marry your spouse until you can call them "monkeyface" and not end up sleeping on the couch.

In this film, Johnnie Aysgarth woos Lina, much to the dismay of her parents, who understand that Lina is marrying down in class. However, their love is too great for such a problem, at least, that is, until Lina realizes that Johnnie is a perpetual putz who refuses to work or otherwise support the family, so that the income from the family is derived entirely from Lina's parents. When Lina's father dies, Johnnie anticipates an inheritance that never comes, so Lina begins to fear that Johnnie is engineering accidents and brushes with death specifically so that he can inherit the insurance money.

Hitchcock is able to create a nice sense of suspense and doubt in the central conflict between spouses, and Fontaine deserves the acclaim that she has gotten for her role, but the end shift of the film turns into a deflated exercise in empty suspense and drama. Whereas in the book that the film was adapted from Lina knew that Johnnie was a murderer, and so she accepted a poisoned drink that he offered her, thereby killing herself and their unborn child rather than bring the baby into this world with a father as a serial killer, Hitchcock unsatisfactorly posits that these signs that Lina read into Johnnie were all chance and misread events, so that the two drive away, happily ever after, understanding each other anew in their relationship.

What this amounts to, then, is a pointless pandering to the audience, wherein the film manipulates our core emotions but never displays confidence in the ending that it is building toward. As a result, the end of this film is a big copout, and results in little response beyond a sighing "meh." But on the bright side, try out "monkeyface" on your loved one. It's a good experiment.

Suspicion: 5.5/10

Flowers of Shanghai

2006-09-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

Hou Hsiou-hsien's Flowers of Shanghai (1998) is a film that is self-contained, so that it is purposely limited to scenes at a Chinese brothel in the 1880s. Examining the harsh reality of life inside the brothel, where women entertained men yet always played second-fiddle to the flippant desires of men's wandering eye, the camera never leaves the confinement of the interior walls, and, in this way, Hou articulates the isolation that exists alongside the extravagence.

"Aunties" would purchase these girls from their destitute parents at puberty and beautify them, making certain that the girls, later called "flowers," would be able to entertain and please the upper class men who visited the brothel. The women, for their part, received much opulence from their suitors and would frequently keep a suitor for several years, which allowed the woman to secure her place at the brothel but also paid for the family back home. Hou grants that the flower girl for the women in this film was seen as a position of privilege, in that she could guarantee her parents and relatives an income apart from whatever meager offerings that they could manage.

Because of the opulent lifestyle, there is a manner in which the women are actually given agency and a sense of power, though if they are not able to connive themselves into a privileging state, they will languish in despair. One of the suitors, the melancholic Wang (Tony Leung) is shifting loyalties between Emerald (Michelle Reis) and the younger Crimson (Michiko Hada). However, Emerald will have none of it, and the way in which she connives Wang into continuing their five year long relationship testifies to the authority that she wields around the house. There are four concurrent stories at work in Flowers of Shanghai, and Hou balances them all into a narrative that is elegant, elliptical, and deeply understated, though always riveting.

There is a formalism at work in the film, so that emotions and lives are stated with a minimalist touch, repeating scenes where the men play Mah jong while the women look on, drinking, gossiping, but underneath this surface there exists an emotional core to Hou's film that is deeply resonant. Very fascinating, though the style may be challenging at first.

Flowers of Shanghai: 10/10

My Life to Live

2006-09-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

The chief signifier, as well as the key to subjectivity itself in film, lies in the human face. Jean-Luc Godard, being the wilely connoisseur of everything cinema related, has long understood this fact, and so when the opening act of his film My Life to Live (1962) repudiates any shot of identification vis-a-vis close-ups of the human face, and instead focuses on the back of the human head, it becomes clear that Godard is self-consciously distancing the viewer while also expressing the lack of individual will and agency within the heroine of the film.

So much of this film is about inexpressed or inadequately articulated desire. Comprised of 12 self-contained tableauxs, or vignettes, our heroine, Nana Kleinfrankenheim (Anna Karina), observes early on in the film that "The more one talks, the less the words mean," and this observation epitomizes the entirety of Nana's existence, so that whenever she strives to understand an idea or an action, she more often merely confuses the issue. Hidden inside the tale of Nana's descent into prostitution lies a film deeply concerned with the matter of language and reason, and Godard fashions Nana as his accomplice in questioning the nature of language.

The camera often denies Nana angles wherein her facial features are highlighted, and, again, this self-reflexive act allows Godard to critique his heroine's lack of agency for herself. Instead, she is continually dependent on and displayed as the object of others, so that any positive self-worth she might possess is neutralized and made irrelevant. Though her status of prostitute later in the film enforces this position, Godard makes it clear that it is Nana as an individual who lacks self-expression and desire.

Yet because this is still Godard, there are passages of extreme beauty and vitality, such as the dance sequence around a pool table wherein Nana harnesses an innocence and simplicity that become infectious. Additionally, the philosophical debate between Nana and the old man in the restaurant, as well as the reading of Edgar Allan Poe, allow the film a depth and self-reflexive commentary on the nature of cinema as art. When Poe's narrator is confronted with the desire to either save the art or destroy the art in order to save the human being who influenced it, the narrator destroys the art. In this same manner, Godard, who was married to actress Anna Karina for some years, also examines this same scenario, in that she will either live on in the art (cinema) or in life (reality), but not in both. The ending answers which choice Godard made.

Beyond these scenes, there is the marvelous tableaux where Nana goes to the cinema to view Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), which should be a sign to those viewing the film on its commentary on martyrs and martyrdom. In the end, this film is, simply put, a wonderful film, full of the customary asides and self-reflexiveness that Godard is famous for, but My Life to Live is also deeply human. See it.

My Live to Live: 10/10

Hour of the Wolf

2006-09-25T20:25:00.000-07:00

Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf (1968) is a psychological study of an artist who is slowly losing his mind. However, far from settling upon this easy formula of the tortured artist, Bergman expands the idea by incorporating the artist's wife as a central figure to the trauma.

Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) and Alma Borg (Liv Ullman) have retreated to a windy island so that Johan might recover from the tortured and pathological haunting that continually plagues him. Though he seems at first able to stave off the visions and fantasies, Alma actually begins to find herself participating in these nightmarish trauma, which further leads to their traumatic event. As such, both spouses struggle to maintain a semblance of reality, even as they both find themselves being consumed by the terrifying presence of insanity.

The title, of course, refers to that time between night and dawn, and in this manner the film comes closest to acting as a traditional horror film, but here, as with all of Bergman's films, the horror is entirely internal. There may be external forces at work, but the embodiment of horror always comes from the character's subconscious, so that the lingering effects of terror come from inside Johan and Alma. Ultimately, the film is interested in examining when spouses must shed their partner for their own survival, and Bergman gives Ullman many a fantastic monologue.

Hour of the Wolf at times confuses or bewilders the viewer, but a persistent examination of the film reveals a cohesive whole that allows the effects of love and trauma to battle it out. The film works beautifully as a meditation on love, art, the pathology of the artist, and the devoted but not self-destructive spouse. Very haunting stuff.

Hour of the Wolf: 8.5/10

Wings of Desire

2006-09-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987) is a film where the angel Damiel (Bruno Ganz) slowly muses on the nature of our world's humanity, afterlife, and his desire to shed all of his former life in order to glimpse a taste of genuine human love. Because this is essentially a fall from grace story that subverts expectations vis-a-vis its celebration of humanness rather than the transcendent, Wenders generates some fascinating ideas, but overall the ideas never become more than the sum of their parts.

The film is technically superb, but the philosophy that underpins the film is so strong that, once the angel sacrifices his place to be alongside humanity and specifically the female mortal Marion (Solveig Dommartin), the film somehow suffers for me. It's not exactly a loss of those philosophical ideas that denies the film a continued interest, but rather a juxtaposition between hard-edged realism (in terms of grimy living) once Damiel begins to live on earth and a more comical story focusing on Peter Falk (playing a version of himself). This contrast never quite reconciles itself for me, unfortunately.

Instead, those scenes which are most effective take place when Damiel is still an angel and in the library, where angels keep guard on their charges. Other powerful scenes are those where he tries to prevent a man desiring suicide from acting out on this impulse. These aspects are given filmic power with ease, and allow Wenders an ability to offer true commentary on society and religion that blends itself seemlessly with rambling poetics.

As such, it is the execution of Marion's speech at the end that, rather than seeming transcendent (like the closing speeches in Paris, Texas), instead never quite reaches those same heights. This is still a strong, strong film, and gorgeously shot throughout, but certainly not in the same league as Paris, Texas.

Wings of Desire: 7.5/10

All or Nothing

2006-09-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

Mike Leigh's All or Nothing (2002) returns Leigh to his more socioeconomic roots and steps away from the ambivalence of naked emotion that occasionally led Career Girls to flounder in a less than stellar narrative. Here the lower middle class are hindered by a lack of connection, communication, and true intimacy. Instead, they seek methods of escape as various as lying, ditching work, and harboring deep-seeded anger at their spouses.

Indeed, most of the characters self-destruct in fits of apathy and aggression, so that only Penny (Lesley Manville) comes away with a real appeal to honesty; and even she is unable to recognize that in the midst of her son's heart attack her daughter is also slowly deteriorating. Only those who are most clearly deteriorating are cared for emotionally, so that those who do not speak up are left to wither, never understanding that honest communication can bridge so many of the concerns that eat at them.

Leigh does a solid job, Timothy Spall's face as Phil is as expressive as ever, but the film never quite achieves the transcendent heights of Secrets and Lies or Naked. Instead, the film uncovers concerns of the lower class and dwells on them without ever truly positioning their concerns as those of everyone. As such, Leigh creates a distancing effect that is more than he truly desires to create, and this is the film's ultimate lack. It is strong, but never quite exceptional in the way that it aspires to be.

All or Nothing: 8/10

Withnail and I

2006-09-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

Bruce Robinson's Withnail and I (1987) is a film where 1960s British unemployed actors never demonstrate the slightest act of ambition, instead preferring to scam their way into drink and housing and slumming. This is not a film to be observed for its narrative, though. The narrative is really just fodder for bemused observations, glorious quotes (“I demand booze” and “How do we make it die?” among others), creative changes of heart, beautiful imagery, and a road trip that is thoroughly entertaining.

The house where Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and Marwood (Paul McGann) live before their prolonged journey to the countryside is a cankerous clutter, buried under mounds of trash, and the humor of the film largely derives from Withnail’s ability to push headlong into certain disaster with full contentment, no matter the travesties that are just behind him. Withnail’s gay uncle, Monty, who has supplied them the countryside house, has been promised a night with Marwood by Withnail in compensation for the slumming, and the conniving treachery with which Withnail mediates his life is headed a collision with the long-suffering Marwood.

This being the first Bruce Robinson film I’ve seen, though having heard good things about this film for about a year now, I was interested in how the film balanced the decadence of the 60s era together with the obsolescence that faces everything that Withnail and Marwood have always stood for. Interesting, despite the copious humor of the film, the film actually acts as an elegy for past friendships, for the failure of generations to grow with the times. Yet all of Withnail’s treachery and anachronisms are observed with a melancholy eye, so that Marwood understands that these times, despite his having to dodge the enamored gaze of Monty, are rooted in joyousness.

Withnail and I’s balance between tragedy and uproarious laughter, then, becomes a complicated affair, since an over-reliance on either tendency damns the whole film to mediocrity. The writing and performances, especially Grant’s performance, though, are masterful, and the film achieves a peculiar sensibility of mourning when Withnail and Marwood bid farewell. The bitter heart of Withnail seems unlikely to find reconciliation after Marwood’s exit, and Withnail is such an offensive but intriguing pathology that we want to discover new or lost adventures to be lost with him.

Withnail and I: 10/10

Pulse

2006-09-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (2001, initially released as Kairo) bathes the audience in a perpetual blanket of eerie, barely suppressed terror. Though the film begins with a supernatural presence terrorizing citizens from the internet, that presence soon becomes more powerful and ever-present, becoming an incalculable force. As such, Kurosawa blends his traditional themes of isolation, alienation, and psychological recovery into a nightmarish film wherein human connection is the only thing that separates us from dissolving into immateriality.

Ryosuke Kawashima (Haruhiko Katô) is a typical slacker college youth who finally decides to hook up the internet for some sort of connection to the rest of the world. However, he is soon put on edge when the computer mysteriously boots up a haunted image of a cloaked figure. Kawashima finds help in Harue Karasawa (Koyuki), a fellow student who is trying to understand the growing phenomenon of the cloaked figures. Eventually, they come to realize that the spirits of the dead have no more haven in the afterlife and are now coming back to terrorize the living into insanity and suicide so that they can lay claim to earth. Meanwhile, Michi Kudo (Kumiko Aso) is struggling to maintain her sanity in the greenhouse where she works as she witnesses untold sights of horror and shock.

Kurosawa continuously builds the tension by alluding to events, such as the red tape, the forbidden room, the utter seclusion from the world, prior to actually revealing them to be central to the free-flowing narrative, which lets him ratchet up the story in subtle shifts. Rather than the “boo” factor present in American horror films, here Kurosawa relies on our susceptibility to the dark, hiding his most disturbing imagery in the shadows so that they are only revealed once the camera or the character moves, so that it is the character, and not the director, who orchestrates the curdling pressure as the film reaches its peak.

There are some who feel the film lacks a narrative drive, that it repeats itself unnecessarily with the same scares, but the film is more sophisticated than that. Beyond extrapolating out an conscious fear of technology and a desolate sense of abandonment, Kurosawa lets his story become one of intimacy, detailing how those who remain together pose the greatest possibility for survival. While it might be presumptive to suggest that the film wields a certain Darwinian link between human connection and survival, it seems obvious that Kurosawa wants to posit the idea that emotional intimacy can obviate thoughts of suicide or torture.

The last ten minutes of this film contain some of the most apocalyptic and powerful images that I have ever come across, and the whole film succeeds because of this go-for-broke approach. This is one of the most fascinating and horrific films you’ll ever see, so see it.

Pulse: 10/10

To Die For

2006-09-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995) is a study on the nature of celebrity culture, the parasitic control of pride, ambition over talent, envying a life beyond one's reach, and the incalculable mistake of ever screwing over the mafia.

In small-town New Hampshire, Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) romances the Italian and middle-class Larry Maretto (Matt Dillion). Suzanne's ambition, however, is far from being existent as a trophy-wife, despite Larry's promise that he can take care of all her needs. Rather than becoming a bearer of children and not much else, Suzanne desires to become famous and be on television, no matter what the cost. She parlays a local gig as the weatherman into a documentary on what's affecting area high school youth, including Jimmy Emmett (Joaquin Phoenix), and soon concocts a plan wherein Jimmy murders her husband by promising eternity to Jimmy.

If all of this sounds like a normal narrative, screenwriter Buck Henry (noted for his adaptations of The Graduate and Catch-22) and van Sant create a panoramic documentary style to the whole affair, where characters talk to the camera (highlighting the media's omnipresence) and relate how the murder transpired. The film works simultaneously as a character study of Suzanne's unending desire for media acclaim and successs, but also as an ode to the excess and decadent decade of the 90's and its near-singular focus on creating media sensations who would in turn emulate the lifestyle that van Sant is critiquing.

The film ends wonderfully, with a great cameo by director David Cronenberg in another of his smooth but deadly walk-on roles, and the entirety of the film smoothly balances broad comedy with bitter satire. Good stuff.

To Die For: 8/10

Shopgirl

2006-09-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

Based upon his novella, Steve Martin’s Shopgirl (2005), though directed by the talented Anand Tucker, is nonetheless a film that is thoroughly influenced by the artistic sensibilities of Martin. Like Bill Murray before him, Martin has matured from the bland comedic roles (the Cheaper by the Dozen remakes are an exception) of his past into a middle-aged man anchored by melancholy and regret. And those sensibilities allow him to craft a story that plays as part character study and part elegy for the past.

Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes) is a country girl from Vermont who moves out to California to pursue a bigger career with her artwork. Alas, she spends more time trying to make ends meet working at the Glove department in Saks Fifth Avenue than she does with her true passion. While fending off the amorous attention of Jeremy Kraft (Jason Schwartzman, in yet another of a long string of overly quirky but overall effective performances), a slacker who lacks motivation to do anything until Mirabelle imparts words of wisdom, Mirabelle finds herself romanced by Ray Porter (Steve Martin), a wealthy middle-aged businessman who desires passion and company over long-term commitment. Obviously, this will result in heartbreak, but the film does handle the majority of romance tropes subtly.

What makes the film work is that, rather than simply being about love absolute, this film starts to identify characteristics of psychological damage as the true motivations for the characters’ search for love and tenderness. Mirabelle is using anti-depressants to ward off her darker tendencies; Jeremy is using attraction to try to get to a more complete persona, and Ray is using Mirabelle to combat his loneliness, rewarding her with gifts that dance precariously around the issue of her (essentially prostituted) love. Yet the disparate ideas between paternal affection that he shows her, coupled with the distance that he maintains emotionally, forces the point that Martin as writer wants to drive home: that relationships cannot last if one of the partners holds him or herself back in any way. As a result, the stunted emotions that Ray cannot bring himself to verbalize around Mirabelle will ultimately doom their chances.

Shopgirl is sophisticatedly sexy throughout, maintains a gentle pacing throughout that matches its artistic sensibilities (check out the exaggerated lighting in Mirabelle’s room for the film’s artsiness), and is simply a tender character study. Not quite perfect in its balance between drama and humor, but it’s damn good throughout.

Shopgirl: 7.5/10

The Sentinel

2006-09-04T06:52:00.000-07:00

So there's really no reason for a film like The Sentinel (2006) to exist. It lacks dramatic tension, evolving characters, motivated villains, British accents, and emotional investment.

If a film aspires to be more than a standard affair in the political thriller genre, it needs to examine the inner psychology of its protagonists, rather than rely on the threat to their professional career, which, let's be honest, no one cares about. So if the film starts considering more of why every character is divorced or having an affair with another character (i.e. Michael Douglas' main character with Kim Basinger's President's Wife), then we have some sort of internal struggle being played out. Unfortunately, the film stays on the peripheral level with regard to these more fundamental questions, instead thinking that showing Eva Longoria's character slowly putting on more and more clothes as the film progresses is what we want to see.

The film never really provides dramatic twists in the who's-behind-it-all department, when there's easily three or four twists that could be generated from this material. Alas, this film feels more like a first draft of a script than most thriller movies out there.

There's something interesting about Kiefer Sutherland's constant hunting for Douglas' character because Kiefer's blames Douglas for the failure of his marriage, but all this is sketched out rather than really developed. As such, the film relies on the ol- ex-KGB crap, and leads to the middle of nowhere. The only interesting facet of this film is that Longoria does not end up with either Douglas or Sutherland, which is almost a progressive move on the filmmakers' part. But, again, this move is also why no one cares about the film. The Sentinel does offer one possibility which subverts any claims of ironic progressivenes: take a swig of beer every time a minority FBI or military African American is shot/blown up and you'll be mighty drunk by the end of the movie.

The Sentinel: 4/10

Bright Future

2006-09-02T05:10:00.000-07:00

In Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Bright Future (2003), Yuji (Jô Odagiri) and Mamoru (Asano Tadanobu) are wayward twentysomethings who find themselves struggling to maintain jobs and empathy in the world around them. Neither man can articulate the loss of order that he feels, save for a beautiful opening scene that Yuji narrates, and both instead seem bent on self-destruction. When Mamoru intervenes for an action that he knows Yuji will carry out, the murder of a family who were unable to connect with Yuji, we see elements of Albert Camus’ The Stranger find their way into the film’s philosophy. The idea of murder here retains a peculiar absence of meaning, yet Kurosawa is adept at building the film from that foundation and expanding it into an exploration on the nature of abandonment, guilt, and ultimately redemption.

Yet the film never feels forced. Mamoru is clearly pathological, but he’s loving to Yuji while retaining elements of psychopathology at the same time. This dualism fosters most of the fascinating aspects of the film in that director Kiyoshi Kurosawa frames the central struggle around Yuji’s attempt to nurture the red jellyfish that Mamoru bequeathed to him just before Mamoru went on the killing spree. The love and anger that are shown to the jellyfish tell of a displaced love, but such fragmented feelings soon develop into something more profound and concerned.

Perhaps only the film’s ending disappointed me, even as it also felt inevitable. Faced with the guilt over being unable to provide for his family after a divorce, Mamoru’s father befriends Yuji and tries to right him. Yet at the end he steps into a lake where the jellyfish is escaping into and is stung by the poisonous creature as he picks it up in a euphoric connection with his (now dead) son. While this action returns to an earlier idea of a father being stung by the son’s creature (remember the factory’s boss attempt to touch the jellyfish), the film had earned a more hopeful ending in my mind. As a result, though this scene depressed me a little, I was still very pleased with the film and will seek out other Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films in the future. Very enjoyable and touching.

Bright Future: 8/10

Paths of Glory

2006-09-01T17:52:00.000-07:00

Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) is a wonderful illustration of how singular talent and ingenuity can shepard a studio film into a personal and far more fundamental elegy for all those who have sacrificed themselves for pretenses of victory in war. From Humphery Cobb's WWI novel, Kubrick crafts a story that is so precise and powerful that it becomes heartrending in its simplicity.

Gen. Paul Mireau (George Macready) is coerced by his superiors to try to take ground that is nigh-impossible having had national pride and personal reward dangled in front of him. As a result Col. Dax (Kirk Douglas) and his men are ordered to take the Anthill, a heavily-fortified German position. Though the men all understand that this assault is akin to suicide, they nonetheless try. Ultimately, however, Col. Dax and the few survivors are driven back. Gen. Mireau interprets this retreat as pure cowardice, and so he orders that three of Col. Dax's men be made examples of at a military trial. What follows is Col. Dax's attempts to justify his men's actions and prevent their execution under false pretenses.

An obvious criticism for Kubrick is the theme of military dehumanization, where the commanding general Mireau is more concerned with his public image and official record than with his men's lives. Yet, ironically, Mireau is brought to this state by a fellow general, Gen. George Broulard, who will ultimately relieve Mireau of his post, so the chain of needless sacrifice is indeed cyclical and, in the end, utterly human.

What gives this film its emotional power is the humane approach to each of the three men who are forced to be made an example of, as each of the men are distinguishable from the next and belie their own individual traits and fears. The scenes where they beg forgiveness for their sins and receive a final prayer from the priest on hand are well orchestrated, and lead into the final redemptive image, which remains for Kubrick one of the most singular moments of his entire careeer. It is justly memorable, and says more about war, sacrifice, and the human will to understand others than any actual dialogue could.

This is certainly Kubrick's breakthrough in Hollywood, and it remains a powerful example where the director's dedication and fidelity of vision are in concert with his cast. A wonderful film that embodies all that is good about film in the 1950s.

Paths of Glory: 9.5/10

A Hole in My Heart

2006-08-31T15:43:00.000-07:00

Swedish director Lukas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart (2004) is an experimental mess of a film, and Moodysson would have it no other way. After Moodysson's earlier films, Show Me Love, Together, and Lilja 4-Ever, were all largely embraced and celebrated for their warmth, sophistication, and accessibility by international film circles, Moodysson sought to create something so esoteric and unaccessible that he would at last elicit a purely visceral reaction. A Hole in My Heart is that film.

Eric (Björn Almroth) is a desolate teen in Sweden who, in order to cope with his pornographic films that his father Rickard (Thorsten Flinck) shoots in their house, secludes himself in his room and psychologically distances himself from the debauchery that inevitably follows a shoot. This is not necessarily a moralistic claim that Eric is standing up for, but more so apathy and anger that he levels at his father. Also along for the journey are Geko (Goran Marjanovic) and Tess (Sanna Bråding), the porn stars of the film that Rickard is shooting (though Rickard too joins in on occasions).

Despite the continual horrific images that intercut the narrative (images of labia reduction surgery find their way into the film, as does an oh so lovely scene where Geko vomits into Tess' mouth), Eric is the key character in Moodysson's film. Eric watches over the other three and cares for them and their needs, despite their trangressions, and so there is obviously a religious/spiritual dimension to the film. Moreover, Eric's physical deformity (one hand is missing several fingers) adds to his distance from the "normal" pursuit of pleasure that the others seek. Beyond the father-and-son story and the silent caretaking, critisisms of capitalism abound, since Moodysson seems to be questioning why people who churn out empty pornography like Rickard are supported.

A Hole in My Heart is a film that ambitiously bites off for more than it can chew, and while Moodysson orchestrates subtly beautiful reveries with both Geko (in the fields) and Tess (in the store) separate from the daily monotony, there are more moments in the film where Moodysson pursues an idea far longer than he needs to or intercuts needlessly, though, again, some of this may well be intentional. That, however, does not always make for interested viewing.

Moodysson seems to have abandoned the easy period of his filmmaking for more adventurous fare, and this film does have its rewards. You'll have to dig for them, though. And Moodysson would have it no other way.

A Hole in My Heart: 6.5/10

Akira

2006-08-31T07:59:00.000-07:00

Katsuhiro Ôtomo's anime classic Akira (1988) offers a cyberpunk deconstruction of all that animation traditionally offers in its narrative and, formally, it is still very much a masterpiece. Concerned with urban and governmental control in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, the film touches upon issues of nuclear warfare, political activism, psychological trauma and aggression, authority, and the individual. More than these issues, though, the film is just damn cool to watch.

Kaneda is the figurehead of a youth gang that is surprisingly old school about only inflicting justice and not vengeance on the rival gangs that are threatening to spread out over the urban city. When one of the other members of the gang, the victimized Tetsuo, is injured and taken by the government for underground tests, Kaneda sets out to rescue him. However, the tests have given Tetsuo reservoirs of power that were previously untapped, and the struggle to save Tetsuo becomes more spiritual than physical.

At times, the film does not always make narratological sense, as some of the issues of political activism with the Council that tries to shut down the government are too convoluted to make sense when you reconsider elements of the plot. However, Tetsuo's shift from a normative psychology into psychopathology is handled with greater success, as Ôtomo substantiates in the film a past history that psychologically verifies the mental assault that has been ravaged upon Tetsuo. Indeed, Tetsuo's earlier trauma as the threatened gives his character greater weight than traditional villains, since the ramifications in Akira apply to all victims of trauma.

The film concludes with the traditional endfight, but Ôtomo also interweaves a more pacifistic tone into the film, so that the confrontation is less about blowing stuff up than it is about trying to psychologically save Tetsuo. As a result, the film succeeds in its psychological focus and stands as one of the better analyses of trauma in anime. Solid and enjoyable.

Akira: 8.5/10

Poseidon

2006-08-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

So Wolfgang Petersen's Poseidon (2006) is pretty average all the way around. Beautifully technically, but this script feels like a total checklist of every cliche of a disaster epic. Multiethnic cast, check. All the ethnics dying early on, check. Annoying kid actor who can't act, check. Random kid actor disappearing from the group at inopportune times, check. Gay guy dying, no check.

Odd, given everything else.

Anyway, this script hinders what should be an enjoyable disaster movie, since none of the relationships are developed or layered. Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas) and Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell) help stranded passengers of a sinking cruiseship try to escape to the bottom (now top) of the sinking ship. However, while Dylan seems to display growing affection for a woman and her son, and while Robert must cope with a daughter who is slightly estranged and newly engaged, neither relationship really takes off emotionally, but instead just seems placed there, as though the placement alone is meant to generate our sympathies. This error in script judgment really dooms a technically great film.

The film does garner sympathy when Russell sacrifices himself , so it does something right there, but by then it's too little, too late. While I don't profess Petersen's The Perfect Storm (2000) to be great or anything, I'll watch the end whenever it's on TV, and that film possesses an integrity of life that this film unfortunately never captures. I truly wish Petersen could tap into the zeitgeist like he did with Das Boot (1981) again. Sigh.

Poseidon: 5/10

The Piano Teacher

2006-08-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher (2001) is an intimate examination of sexual and masochistic pathology, social perversion, and heartless betrayal. Considering that this is a Haneke film, it should come as no surprise that the film views all of this through the mildly disinterested gaze of a voyeur rather than turning into an uplifting tale of love that overcomes psychopathology.

Indeed, piano teacher Erika Kohut (Isabelle Ruppert) is so entrenched in her masochistic condition that no proposition of normative desire, in this case Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel), can possibly understand and mediate between a normal love and Erika’s preconceived desire for masochistic control. As such, when Erika finally reveals her true sexual leanings to Walter vis-à-vis a note, he cannot comprehend the extent to which her pathology separates them.

Any attempt to normalize their relationship is cannot be, since Erika does not know what a normal relationship consists of, since she instead turns to voyeuristic watching of young couples having sex and porn videos. When Walter finally breaks and commits the culminating crime, something between a forced sex / emotionless rape exists between the two. The fine line that negotiates between forced sex, which is what Erika essentially desires, and rape is so minute that even she is momentarily unsure of which has occurred. Ultimately, though, it is a rape, and this realization confirms to her that she is incapable of experiencing love the same way as others.

Yet, to further complicate our perspective, Erika also channels this masochism into her piano teachings. When a young girl student cannot properly play a piece being readied for performance, Erika sabotages her by placing shards of glass in the girl’s jacket. The inevitable lacerations deny the girl any opportunity to give a mediocre performance, and so Erika’s pathological commitment to the music is guaranteed. This aggression forces us to reconsider how to empathize with Erika, which is what Haneke, of course, wants. How do we empathize with a character that is so far removed from normal negotiations of decency and right and wrong? The answer: we cannot, but we can still appreciate the grim journey.

At the end of The Piano Teacher, there lies the irrevocable suggestion that Erika’s domineering mother fostered this pathological condition in her daughter. Yet the music and Erika’s devotion to it likewise fostered such a desire for control. And while this film is never truly fun viewing, it does explore psychopathology and its myriad repercussions intelligently and articulately. Ruppert gives a bravura performance in a role few would dare to perform, and the journey makes for a grim but engaging film.

The Piano Teacher: 8.5/10