Cinemania

2009-10-05T05:49:00.000-07:00

Tulpan (2009, Kazakhstan, Dvortesoy)

Ben Begins:

I remember you mentioning some time ago that you had seen a film and it featured a Boney M tune that you couldn't get out of your head. When I asked you if it was Rasputin - the only Boney M title I can ever recall - you confirmed that it was not, but were unable to identify the song that was playing in your brain. Now I know, of course, that the track was Rivers of Babylon, which the credits to Tulpan indicate was indeed performed by Boney M. But I want to mention that theirs is a cover version. The original was by one of the pioneer reggae bands (name?) and was the theme song for the early 70s film The Harder They Come. It stars Jimmy Cliff sort of playing himself in a parable about exploitation in the music business. I've never seen it but I've been led to understand that it's a worthwhile critique of neo-colonialism with considerable aesthetic merit as well. I believe The Clash reference it in one of their tunes. Of course, Boney M belt it out for nothing but disco dance-floor fun.

Which makes their version entirely appropriate for the water truck-driving character in Tulpan. His chief desire is a wealthy consumer lifestyle, motivated by the ear candy that is Boney M and candy literally, the man's own teeth are capped with metal. Naive and perfectly likable, this fellow is nevertheless representative of the most incorrect cultural option, everything misguided about abondoning your enthnic heritage in order to emulate Western values and styles. The latter Tulpan equates with pornography, which some Western viewers may take as offensively reductionist but which I consider pretty accurate these days. But even without assessing the character at this contemporary international level, he is the classic hick who dreams of the big city where he may partake in what Hobbes called commodious living. And Jesus, can you blame him? Talk about a simple existence!

This simple existence is portrayed in Tulpan with a respect that borders on reverence. The film comes quite close to nostalgia in its depiction of a nomadic way of life that is very near extinction. I can't recall the last time I saw a film that was so emersed in a wholesome rural ethos, complete with traditional family values and a deep connection with nature by way of a pastoral livelihood. It's Little House on the Prairie in Kazakhstan. The film's near Romantic presentation of these indigenous people in that nation shows that - contra Borat - the county is not some totally underdeveloped, anti-modern, Islamo-barbaric Soviet leftover. It's ironic that the progressive tendencies of the place have to be acknowledged in this manner. Hey folks, Kazakhstan is advanced enough to notice what it is losing in the process of advancing. I suppose it is relevant that the film is a co-production with Germany, Russia, Poland and Switzerland. One thing is for certain, we have the Krauts to blame for the Boney M.

None of what I have just said should suggest that I was not completely captivated by Tulpan and won over by it too. The domestic drama is more akin to the stage than the cinema, yet the dialogue is sparse and the isolation of the characters in the middle of nowhere is the key to both the film's cinemagraphic impact and its emotional charm. How can you resist the love radiating out of that yurt all over the landscape? And what a landscape! Canadian viewers might be reminded of the Inuit topography. It's like the Arctic with all the ice globally warmed away. How they manage to live at all is remarkable. I gather the setting is one of the more hard-scrabble regions of the steppe but it may as well be the surface of the moon as far as I'm concerned. It is a great relief when they are given the bureaucratic permission to relocate at the end, but I reckon they will set up camp in a spot only marginally more hospitable. I interpreted the move as a scientific recognition about that particular area being unhealthy for the herd for whatever reason, perhaps identified by the visiting veterninarian. Be this as it may, clearly their move signifies the closing of the first chapter in the story of the protagonist's coming of age as a genuine herdsman. Insofar as him finding a wife and him obtaining his own herd are inextricably linked, it is fair to feel after his success with the birthing of the lamb that he will eventually get married to a woman and a flock.

This brings me to my favourite aspect of the film. As if the contra-Borat quality was not enough - hey, the hero says wistfully that he wants to improve his standard of living through the use of solar panals, how hip is that? Beyond this, I believe the goodness of womanhood in Tulpan is essential to the film and it really touched me. Front and centre, there is the dignified nurturing of the main female. Then there is the obvious matriarchal authority of Tulpan's mother. And even without being seen, there is the wisdom of Tulpan herself who realizes all too well that her suitor does not suit her because he is not yet able to fend for himself, never mind be the head of a household and a herd. Yet for me the deepest issue in the film is that the skilled substance of animal husbandry ultimately comes down to midwifery. I use these terms with their full etymological implications to make the feminist point. The "husband" holds the house, owns the property, including the chattle that is his cattle and his woman and his kids. The "wife" wears the veil. These are the definitions. But in Tulpan, the wannabe husband only begins to become one when he becomes a wife. Yes, it's a dialectic. But forget about theory. The practical reality is that he must literally pull a baby from a womb and breath life into it before he can even think about bagging pussy and butchering steaks.

Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country in the world. Although it does touch the Caspian and Aral "seas," these are themselves landlocked; i.e., lakes. Mind you, if a sea is a body of water that is designated "salty", the salinity of the Caspain is ancient whereas that of the Aral is increasing due to anthropogenic causes and reflectes ecological degredation. Ya gotta love progress. But I digress down a Wikipedia research session. I am curious to know on what waters the sailor sailed in Tulpan. Perhaps more properly inquired - does Kazakhstan even have a navy? Forgive me but this does sound like something Sacha Baron Cohen should make fun of.

But of course,it doesn't really matter. The presumable point is that our man has returned home after running away to join the circus, the three rings of which he found to be proverbially chaotic. In short (speaking of proverbs) the lad is a prodigal son, (no wait, I've confused the old and the new Testaments, oh well). On how to interpret the parable of The Prodigal Son, the following may be brought to bear on what I regard as feminist in Tulpan. It explicitly addresses the difference between a reactionary reading of the parable and a moral of unconditional love, supposedly a difference between the West and the East:

In The Prodigal Son parable, it is often said that the turning point is when the younger son “comes to his senses,” confesses his sin, and returns home a repentant sinner—BUT THIS IS NOT WHAT JESUS IS SAYING. And the difference between this popular interpretation and what Jesus is saying is the difference between a God who is "just" and a God whose love is as far as the East is from the West... The son is starving and mostly naked. He knows when he reaches his village, he must walk through the narrow village street where he will be mocked and taunted by the villagers. He must make it to his father. Yet even when the son is at a far distance and before the son says a word, the father sees the son and runs to him. He kisses and hugs him. It is at this point—AND ONLY AT THIS POINT—that the son sees his father's love for him. Now the son sees how he had broken his father's heart. He sees how his father ran to him which in the Middle East is a shameful act. He sees how undeservedly he is being restored in love. NOW PLEASE DO NOT MISS THIS POINT: Had the father not been willing to show a costly demonstration of unexpected love, the son would not know the father's heart. And there would be no right-relationship. Interestingly, the early church didn’t use the symbol of the cross for Christianity but instead used, among other things, the image of a joyful shepherd carrying the sheep back to its fold... [because] Jesus talked about the heart of God in the picture of a joyful shepherd carrying his lost and terrified sheep back to the fold. (From: http://www.eprodigals.com/?gclid=CNWvsJfEoZ0CFSNQagodc0YzAA)

According to this website: "Without a Middle Eastern perspective, Jesus' message is missed." About this I know nothing. I only observe that the son's-repentance interpretation of the parable rejected by the website and the father's-benevolence interpretation advanced by the site are both equally patriarchal, as indeed befits the parable however you read it. This does not befit the prodigality in Tulpan, however. Certainly the brother-in-law is a surrogate father figure who is punishing the protagonist for his prior prodigality. Or is he? This minor mistreatment is actually not punishing rejection at all. It is merely impatient frustration with the agricultural inexperience and matrimonial immaturity of his household-invading relative. Even more telling, the protagonist has already forgiven himself and self-forgivenes is the only sure sign that everyone else has long ago fogiven and forgotton our sins. We know our hero has forgiven himself because, shucks, he symbolically wears his heartfelt reattachment to his home almost literally on his sleeve; that is, literally on the collar of his sailor suit. All of this is backstory that he once wore on the back of his neck when dressed in the uniform of a seaman far away from home. That's water under a bridge now. Tulpan is all about his homecoming. And I do insist that his retreat from the navy and return to the fold is a kind of feminist reconsolidation. He tried his hand in an industry geared for murder on water but figured out fast that he's meant to be in the business of giving birth on firm and familiar ground.

And could it be significant that these lines are written in Rivers of Babylon: "For the wicked carry us away. How can we sing King Alpha's song in a strange land?"

And Dan Replied:

As I have reported to you more than once, I adore this film.

As for the Boney M tune, that also could have been in reference to Touching the Void, when the mountaineer is on death's door and all he can hear is an annoying Boney M song rattling around his head. But, yeah, I'm sure i was also referring to Tulpan, where the song's annoyance factor is more than countered by the endearing qualities of the characters who populate this landscape.

And what a landscape this is. For such a quiet and intimate drama, Tulpan features some of the most impressively oppressive landscape this side of Laurence of Arabia. You would think that such epic imagery would be employed to emphasize the minuteness of the characters, a la David Lean. And you'd think that the temptation would be for the filmmaker, first time director Sergei Dvortsevoy (a documentarian by trade) to lean heavily on the naturalistic imagery to drive home his point out the disinctly Hobbesian nature of the lives of these herders. But while the bleak setting does elicit awe and wonder, as it is hard to comprehend exactly how these folks can carve out a living in such a formidable setting, seldom does it elicit despair. The characters are simply too full of affection, fortitude and determination to allow such a response to do much more than flit by. Further, Dvortsevoy allows scenes to linger long after the human drama has played out; this is a world where humans are simply a part of the surroundings, not masters of it. As one scene played, the director keeps the camera rolling for several seconds, which allowed the cameraman to pick up the story of the frisky livestock in the background, whose act of consummation is captured in a deliciously Herzog-ian moment of magical serendipity.

Apparently Dvortsevoy had the actors live as nomadic shephards over the course of shooting, a sort of method directing that always struck me as rather gimmicky when deployed by American directors, but which appears to have produced such a uniformity of thoroughly natural and seamless performances that it is hard to fault the man for his approach.

I love your feminist take on the film, Ben. The wife/sister fights to keep the family together, and to promote the empathetic values that will allow them to endure a life that most of us couldn't imagine in our worst nightmare. And the two birthing scenes seal it, as the men rally behind life-giving over death-pursuit. Not only has he left his naval service, but the hero knows that opportunities await in the city, and even threatens to pursue them from time to time, but his heart isn't in that game. He wants a wife, a flock, a life of his own in the land that he knows. In fact, the birth scene is representative of the film as a whole. The apparently routine tranformed into something extraordinary.

And I hear you when you say that the film veers near nostalgia, because the summary of the protagonists' choices and actions mentioned above could certainly read that way, but the harsh cruelties of this life and the warm honesty of these performances is matched by the calm naturalism of the director's approach to ensure that it does not ever settle there. While not exactly a slice of Italian neo-realism--it dips into sentimentality a bit too easily--but it is nontheless a film of great heart and real soul.

Then Ben:

Wow. I think this is my first: "I love your... take on the film, Ben." Thank you.

And Dan:

You are most welcome. Well deserved.

Then Ben:

I don't care what else happens in your movie. I don't care whether it's a documentary or staged. I might care whether it's actual photography or CGI, but I doubt it. When you show live birth - human, lamb, tree frog, you name it - it's fucking profound. It's just so... well, life-affirming in Tulpan when he is the midwife to that lamb. You know those disclaimers that appear in the closing credits of films (that aren't by Tarkovsky or Herzog) stating that no animals were hurt in the filming of this film? Well, Tulpan deserves to have a byline in the credits which points out that some animals were helped in the filming of this film. That alone makes it a special picture.

The scene when the family is retiring for the day is just so sweet. Especially, the way the father caresses his youngest sleeping child. This is the motherload in the heart of gold of the father. Truly beautiful. The REAL Waltons.

2009-08-28T21:19:00.001-07:00

2009-08-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

My Year in Film Studies (part 7)

If you missed part 6, you can find it here.

Rashomon (1950, Japan, Akira Kurosawa) 400 Blows (1959, France, Francois Truffault)

And but so the question once again arises: Where to go and what to do next? I wanted to look our study of the auteur theory as a way into a more extended look at the ways in which directors distinguish themselves from each other, in both form and content, while also moving students out of their comfort zone by giving them a taste of global cinema. I felt it was time to move students out of their comfort zone, and into a more challenging place, one where they might be encouraged to alter their perceptions of the cinematic world (yes, it is larger than Hollywood), even if only a little bit. Finally, I wanted to examine films that were game changers in their day, movies that were in their own way the thin edge of a cinematic wedge. At the same time, while I was hoping to expose them to artistic challenges, I still wanted the films to remain accessible to a high school audience. So, after evaluating the wealth of criteria, I settled upon two films from wildly different places, and completely diffent contexts. From Japan I chose Akira Kurosawa's medieval era Rashomon, and from France, Francois Truffault's contemporarily set 400 Blows.

Movies, like all art, emerge out of a specific cultural context. Filmmakers build their works upon the efforts of their antecedents, using the language and techniques that they've inherited from them. Often memorable films are not tremendously innovative so much as they integrate their encyclopedic knowledge of the cinematic art form. Citizen Kane is a particularly apt example of such a film, wherein Welles borrowed liberally from the greats who had preceded him, weaving together a tapestry of artistry and innovation that still stands as a pinnacle of the art form. What's the old adage: artists steal, hacks pay homage?

That said, I chose Rashomon and 400 Blows because they also represented significant breaks with their own past, and pointed us towards a future, both cinematic and otherwise, that was both unknown and terribly uncertain. Both films were produced in the 1950s, as we struggled to observe the lessons of a war that left men like Kurowawa and Truffault living in a setting ravaged and in decay, and left all of us hovering under a nuclear shadow. Both men's films deal with this milieux of decadence and fragility, and like most good filmmakers they found a way to meaningfully reflect and comment upon this world. Now I don't want to get off on a prolonged tangent, and would prefer not to go down some lexigraphic rabbit hole the requires me to define terms like "meaningful" (I ain't no David Foster Wallace. Like that needed to be said). I hope that you, dear reader, will cede me this ground by accepting the premise that we probably have a vaguely common enough understanding of the term that we can just take that as a given, and move on.

And while the films were made within and comment upon this common historical setting, they also had a mutually concussive effect upon the film scene. Rashomon and 400 Blows exploded upon their relative scenes, helping to herald in some radical changes in the way we perceived and appreciated film as an artistic medium. These films were game shifters. At the most superficial level, Rashomon's vistory at the 1950 Venice Film Festival almost single-handedly opened up Japanese cinema to Western audiences. At a more profound level, the film challenges much that we think that we know about the nature of truth and reality. Not only should you not believe what you read, but you should be wary of trusting what you see, hear, smell, feel and taste as well. 400 Blows, on the other hand, came on the heels of the Truffault penned, Jean-Luc Godard directed Breathless, the films signalling the emergence of the cinematic tsunami that was to become known as La Nouvelle Vague, the French New Wave. The theories behind the French New Wave were hateched by these same two young filmmakers while they were critics (along with their mentor Andre Bazin) for the influenctial Cahiers du Cinema. In fact, it was Truffualt himself who first coined the Auteur Theory which informed much of my discussion in parts 4 through. The New Wave movement challenged the staid, middlebrow cinema made in the literary tradition that had dominated the French landscape for decades, and urged a return to more energetic, personal filmmaking in the tradition of the neo-realists, while also emphasizing cinematic technique over literary conventions. The New Wave movement proved immensely influential, and sparked the emergence in America of the last golden era of cinema, marked by films of intensely personal nature and brimming with energy, irreverence and anti-authoritarianism. It is a period that most critics believe started with Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and ending around the time of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), when the immense success of Jaws (1975, Spielberg) and Star Wars (1977, Lucas) marked the resurgence of the Hollywood blockbuster popcorn film and spelled the decline of the filmmakers like Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, The Last Detail), Alan Pakula (Klute, The Parallax View) and Robert Altman (MASH, Nashville). For more on this, the definitive resource is probably Easy Riders Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind.

Turning back to Rashomon for a second, the film would also mark the arrival of Akira Kurosawa on the global stage, and from this triumpant position he would produce a series of intelligent, provocative films for the better part of four decades, with the 1950s being a particularly fertile period for the master (Ikiri, 7 Samurai, Throne of Blood among others), but none would have the impact of Rashomon because it dared to challenge conventional beliefs about narrative and cinema (you cannot necessarily believe what you see). The notion of the unreliable narrator is explored with heady sophistication, taking us deep into the realm of cubist thought and surrealist nightmare. If we no longer could believe what is place before us on the screen, can we trust our own thoughts and memories? Are our own perceptions up for grabs as well? For more on Rashomon, you can trip on over to The House Next Door, where you will find a conversation/review by Ben Livant and I on its considerable merits.

What Worked:

The films were certainly revelatory for many students who had rarely if ever seen (a) foreign language films (b) black and white pictures (c) game-changing cinema.
Putting the films in the proper context and examining the effect each had on cinema and audiences at the time was fruitful. 400 Blows was considerably more accessible, as the style of acting and directing was more familiar to the audience. As a means of once again examining the Auteur theory in action, who better to study than Truffault, the auteur of the auteur theory? Truffault's film received a rating a little below 4/5, and ranked in the lower 1/3 of the 20 films we watched. As the film is one of my all time favourites, this was a little disappointing.

What Didn't:

Many students Rashomon particularly challenging, not just because we were transported to a time and place so exotic and unfamiliar, but also because the style of acting that Kurosawa favoured was deeply influenced by both traditional Japanese theatrical styles and silent film, both of which very few students had any experience with. As a result, the film proved a hard nut to crack as a piece of entertainment (which was, after all, one of my criteria). Rashomon was one of the lowest rated and ranked films in the course, placing above only Jerry Maguire on both fronts (3.5/5, 19th out of 20).

What I'd do differently:

Ease students into the viewing of Rashomon by (a) showing 400 Blows first, not second (b) showing clips from some of the aforementioned Kurosawa films, especially 7 Samurai. I did show parts of Morris Engels Little Fugitive while we watched 400 Blows, and it did help to bridge the cultural gap between French and American films. I could also read and discuss the source material for Rashomon (stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa) to give them solid footing before plunging into the film's racing waters.

Overall Grade: B

2009-08-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

District 9 (South Africa/New Zealand, 2009, Neil Bloomkamp)

District 9, an energetic and tantalizing sci-fi action flick, is being given a bit too much credit. Perhaps the films long list of admirers (and, yes, my name appears as a fan of said film. I like it, I really do. I just don't LOVE it, as so many here clearly do) shows us just how hungry audiences are for intelligent as well as exciting action flicks. The film is certainly a cut above your standard summer fare (say, The Transformers, a film to which it bears a passing but thankfully superficial similarity) but it remains several steps below standard bearers of the genre, such Cronenburg's The Fly, to which it is often compared. District 9 is vigourous and energetic film, and clearly has its heart in the right place, but not only does it come up a little lacking in the sense of humour department, but it also comes up a bit short in the depth and rigour departments, elements that are vital to any truly thought-provoking science fiction film.

By this point, I am going to assume that readers of this review are familiar with the film's premise, that an alien spacecraft appears suddenly 20 years ago and settles in over Johannesburg South Africa air space, provoking the curiousity of the entire planet, and that once humans breached the ship's hold to discover that there were thousands of ill and malnourished aliens cowering there, later determined to be "workers" not "leaders" so we decide to put these "worker" aliens into a slum, ever to be known as the District 9 of the title. Conditions in District 9 rapidly deteriorate, as the aliens--because of their tentacular faces soon to be known derisively as "prawns"--are treated as second class citizens, and popular opinion quickly turns against them as people decry their alien behaviour and lifestyles, and soon wonder when the aliens are going to leave, and what can we do with them in the meantime. It is in these passages that the film bristles with energy and intrigue, as first time director Bloomkamp, working from his own script, uses the faux documentary style to convey the pertinent information, moving from news footage to talking heads, from on the street interviews to captured footage of the aliens in action.

Entering into the discussion at this time is MNU, a multinational company who have won the contract to reassign the now 1.8 million aliens to new digs, while using the relocation as an excuse to capture contraband alien weaponry in order to figure out how to make use of it ourselves, which many feel is the real purpose of the relocation. Leading the job is Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a fellow of limited wits who only got the job because he is married to the boss's daughter. When he accidently sprays himself with some alien gunk and begins a Kafka-esque transformation, his allegiance to the mission begins to shift, and the film suddenly alters course as we are taken more deeply into the alien reservation and encouraged to see life from their perspective. At this point the film becomes more clearly a statement about apartheid (though perhaps a statement made 20 years too late), but also is redolent with imagery and ideas that hint at a large purpose, to comment on the plight of the displaced, the refugee, global victims of all sorts who suffer because of all forms of political and economic oppression.

If only the film had really delved deeply into these ideas, District 9 might have really been something to behold. At this point the film shifts from its earlier documentary perspective into a more predictable and conventional action flick mode, and announces this choice by taking us inside the life to human-monickered Christopher Johnson and his loveable progeny, delivering shots of domestic life that the documentary filmmakers would have been unable to capture. This shift fractures the film to some extent, but had the filmmakers used the change to examine how human oppression affects the aliens by delving into how slum life affects their culture, values and beliefs, it would have been excusable. However, Bloomkamp settles for short circuiting a thoughtful approach to the matter by tugging at the heart strings instead. He does this by relying almost entirely upon the endearing qualities of the spunky and doe-eyed child of Christopher to pull us onside. It is certainly commendable that I empathized with the prawns, but it is to the film's discredit that I never really understood them, providing a gaping hole in the middle of this apparently thoughtful film that clearly aspires to meaningfulness. Squaring the circle of my complaints about the film is the problem of its rapid descent into a series of blow-em-up real good sequences that do little more than pander to the lower common denominator while mining familiar sci-fi action cliches.

I want to commend District 9 for being more than typical science fiction fare, but I was left wanting more from this film, wherein the filmmaker's unfortunate and rather lazy choices limit its potential, a film that promises much more than it can ultimately deliver.

2009-08-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

Inglourious Basterds (USA, 2009, Quentin Tarantino)

I am no scholar on war movies, which would seem to counsel my silence on (a) the matter of how well director Quentin Tarantino deploys and/or subverts the conventions of the genre (b) where Inglourious Basterds, his latest cinematic offering, should ultimately reside in the pantheon of the genre. However, I will say this: Inglourious Basterds, despite its flaws, is one helluva lot of fun. Grisly, bloodly, revisionist, revenge fantasy fun.

As anyone who's been paying even the slightest attention knows, Inglourious Basterds is the entirely fictional account of a World War II platoon of Jewish-American soldiers who have been gathered for the sole purpose of terrorizing, torturing and killing Nazis. Led by Tennessean-raised good old bay Lt. Aldo Raine (an apparent tip of the hat to war veteran/movie star Aldo Ray) played with a tongue-in-cheek sassiness by Brad Pitt, his accent jutting out nearly as far as his Brando-esque jaw. And let me get thes matters out of the way up front. Firstly, Brad Pitt should only make comedies. Seriously. He is a really funny cat, with good comic timing, but he has yet to convince me that he has the depth and gravitas to pull off anything approaching a dramatic role (Anyone Seven Years in Tibet? Yikes!) And he's really good here as well, as the part never demands that he do anything more than be a hillbilly philosopher, a wise-cracking cracker with a simple agenda: Kill Nazis. Secondly, can we stop pretending that Pitt is the star of this picture? He's worth, at best, third billing behind the amazing Christopher Walz (more on him below) and wonderful Melanie Laurent, whose character represents the film's heart and soul.

Let's finish off this sketch of the film's plot. While Pitt and his platoon roam around Vichy France capturing, killing and scalping Nazis, a couple of other stories unfold around them. Firstly, we have the "Jew Hunter," Col. Hans Landa, who has a nose for ferreting out Jews, and an oily skill at manipulating those around him into helping him in his cause. As mentioned above, Landa is the real protagonist of the film, a true anti-hero, in that his actions drive the plot, and his character proves most intriguing . And thankfully Christoper Waltz is up to the challenge of the role, which requires us to be peculiarly attracted to this hideous man, whose facility with several European languages matches his talent at reading people.
Waltz captures the sinister nature of Landa's character, but underplays is wonderfully, choosing wisely to play up the Colonel's undeniable charisma and charm. He effortlessly commands the screen in every scene, almost daring us to look at anything else. A revelatory performance.

And secondly, there is the story of Jewess on the run, Shoshanna Dreyfus (Laurent) who is the only survivor of one of Landa's ambushes, and who assumes a new identity as a gentile cinema owner in Nazi-controlled France. She attracts an admirer in the form of Nazi war hero/movie actor Freidrich Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), who uses his clout as the star of a propaganda war film to set his film's debut in Shoshanna's beautiful art deco theatre. Coming to the film will be all the high Nazi brass including Goering, Goebbels, Bohrmann and, it turns out, the Fuhrer himself. When the titular Nazi hunters and the undercover Jew learn of this development, both plot independently of each other to use the opportunity to purge the Nazi war machine of its highest ranking members and, in the case of the Allies, bring the war to an immediate cessation, while in the case of Dreyfus, avenge the murder of her entire family. Laurent is compelling in the role that forms the film's emotional heart. She puts a human face on the Nazi atrocities, and her quest for revenge is one we can feel and empathize with.

But for all the talk of the actors and their thespian skills, the film is a Quentin Tarantino production, and since his fingerprints are all over every frame of every film he makes, any assessment of the film's success must come down to a judgment of Tarantino's writing and directorial skills. And though I have minor reservations about some aspects of the film, Inglourious Basterds is terrific, one of Tarantino's best. As it is a period (and genre) piece, Tarantino was challenged to look at the restrictions presented by such matters, to see if he could work within them, and to determine when he could push beyond them. It is, in fact, in those few moments when Tarantino falls victim to his own hubris that the movie occasionally and momentarily faulters. For example, while the score for the film is pretty effective throughout, there are moments when Tarantino indulges his desire to be seen as a musically hip cat and his inclusion of the anathemic Cat People, a David Bowie tune that has no place in a World War 2war picture, merely serves to remind us that Tarantino has good taste in music. Further, he sometimes indulges a weird desire to break the cardinal rule of filmmaking (Show, Don't Tell) by not only telling us what we are about to see, but then rather redundantly showing us. Why do both? It is a clunky self indulgent exercise that interrups the flow of the narrative.

Fortunately, these moments are few. Overall, Inglourious Basterds shows us Tarantino at the top of his game. The movie is beautifully paced, both as a whole, and within individual passages. Many scenes in the movie, of which there are actually very few considering the 150m running time, are like mini-films, with a dramatic arc, tremendous tension and a catharctic payoff of their very own. The opening scene, which establishes Landa's sinister charm and Shoshanna's horrifying secret, as well as a later scene set in the basement tavern, are particular standouts. And while he tells the story in chapters, as he did in Kill Bill, as if this were a book, the movie never feels literary. It is consistently cinematic, from the subtle editing rhythms to the impressive set design; Tarantino does a solid job of dropping us into the film and (despite the missteps mentioned above) allowing us to stay there. The scenes in Inglourious Basterd are calmly paced, tension is built quietly, then is ratched up as the stakes grow at the same rate as our sense of dread. Rarely does Tarantino fall back on the sort of stylistic flourish that mark some of his self-indulgent inclinations, rarely does he draw attention to himself or his craft in this well-controlled effort; surely this is the sign of a maturing and confident director. So confident, in fact, that his film's audacious final shot is laden with chutzpah, almost daring the critics to attack its claim, made through a cheeky sound bite proclaimed by Pitt, his golden boy proxy.

Ultimately, Tarantino's is a comic world view. Good is rewarded and evil punished. Which presents something of a problem given the historical context, which is Vichy France in 1944, a full year before the end of the war. No matter. Tarantino is not making a historical epic, he's making a revenge fantasy, wherein revisionism is the name of the game. Hell, he even conjures up the spirit of Leni Reifenstahl, the queen of revisionist cinema, as she appears not only on the movie marquee, but her spirit is invoked (and parodied) in the spectral smoke of the burning movie theatre. In fact, by setting the climatic assault in a movie theatre, even using film stock the spark the hadean fire, Tarantino is indulging a bit of wish fulfilment himself. Perhaps movies cannot change history, but in the movies, you can change history. So in the end, when Tarantino has had his say, everyone is in his place, stasis has been returned and all is well in the world. Peace out.

2009-08-14T17:05:00.000-07:00

One Love (Canada, 2009, D.J. Matrundola)

Beautifully shot and uniformly well-acted, One Love is a short film that manages what many full length features cannot: It is a probing, provocative and intelligent treatment of a (quite literally) motherhood issue. Given that One Love tells the tales of four different couples in distinctly different situations as all prepare for the birth of a child, it is indeed one very neat feat of filmmaking that director Daniel-James Matrundola successfully weaves together each story in fifteen short minutes. One couple arrives at the hospital to pick up their adoptive child, another jokes while the father records the birth on video, a third is in the hospital to have the husband's broken nose attended to, while the fourth (and most fascinating) are a pair who meet (and bicker) in the bar when the drunken mother's water breaks.

It is indeed a testament to the film's effectiveness that I was left wanting to know more about each of the characters, as the film's length necessitates that what we will receive is little more than an extended introduction (perhaps if the film is well-received, the filmmakers may choose to use this short as a springboard into a more detailed exploration of these characters.)

Evocative and open-ended, One Love compellingly captures the conflicting and heartrending emotions of this most elemental of mammalian activities. And while some may argue that the stories' lack of resolution is a problem, I would contend that it is another of the film's many strengths, as the uncertainty and ambiguity invites the audience into these situations in a way that more pat endings would not.

One Love is a tiny gem of a film.

2009-08-08T12:06:00.000-07:00

My Year in Film Studies (part 6)

If you missed part 5, you can find it here.

Stanley Kubrick Meets Alfred Hitchcock As We Stay Immersed in the Auteur Theory

And so now came the decision of whether or not the study of the auteur theory could be put to rest solely on the evidence of the ouevre of Kubrick. Much as I love SK, it felt like I would be short changing the students if his feature film work was the only evidence we had to go on. So the next decision had to be: Who's Next? And Why?

For a number of reasons, of which I will state the three most salient, I settled upon Alfred Hitchcock. One, there is a wealth of scholarship to draw on, including a lot of horse's mouth stuff as Hitch never seemed to tire of talking about his work. Two, he's very accessible, and after the challenges presented by some of Kubrick's work, I figured that might be welcome. And three, Psycho had been pretty well received, so his work had already been "broken in." Furthermore, there is something of a natural bridge between these two seemingly very different filmmakers. That is, both Hitch and Kubrick have been described as "cold" directors whose meticulous attention to detail is the stuff of renown. However, while their overlapping cool-ness relates almost entirely to the relative asexuality of each man's work, I will argue that there is much more that separates them than unites them.

While the two men's films share a common attention of detail borne out of type A need for complete control, that hardly distinguishes them from hundreds of other filmmakers. Furthermore, as I will show, there are ways that their approaches differ in this regard as well. For example, Hitchcock considered his work pretty much done by the time he set foot on a film set. He had worked the film out so thoroughly, from script to set and production design, from
storyboarding to casting, that the process of turning the film in his head into actual celluloid was almost tedious--an afterthought, if you will. Kubrick, on the other hand, while equally dedicated to the preparation process, being a notorious researcher who would spend years, if not decades, digging into subject matter that fascinated him, was not so rigid when it came to the making of film. Kubrick believed that the real art of film was in the editing process. Scriptwriting was borrowed from other arts (theatre, fiction writing), acting predated cinema by thousands of years, and even cinematography was a direct descendant of photography, whereas editing was the one are unique to film, and the one realm where filmmakers could exercise their artistic vision in unique and memorable ways. In order to give himself as many options as possible in this phase of the creative process, Kubrick would film scenes many different times, sometimes using multiple camera angles, and other times varying the instructions he gave to the actors.

Likewise, these two director's bloodlessness hints at types and levels of WASP-y repression that would be familiar to students of the work of many directors from this era. And even in this, they are not entirely alike. Hitchcock's coolness reflects his own behaviouralist approach to film, whereas the chill that falls upon Kubrick has much more to do with the sort of intellectual detachment that distinguishes his work. Put bluntly, for Hitchcock film is a Skinnerian box, wherein the audience is to be entertained through sensory manipulation. Rather than challenging us intellectually, Hitch is satisfied with pushing our metaphorical emotional buttons. Kubrick, on the other hand, is a product of an Enlightenment era-style rational curiousity about the universe and man's place in it. To state it perhaps a bit over simplistically, Kubrick ascribed "human" emotions to and applied "human" motivations a computer, whereas Hitchcock treated people like mice. Whereas Kubrick was interested in the social, political and ethical implications of a government employing the the Lodovico treatment in A Clockwork Orange, Hitchcock was simply interested in how the damned thing would work.

Stanley Kubrick aimed for relevance and insight in his films; sometimes his reach exceeded his grasp (Lolita, Eyes Wide Shut), but he would have never been content with merely entertaining his audience. Alfred Hitchcock, on the other hand, rarely strayed outside of his self-made Skinner's box, giving the audience exactly what they wanted on most occassions. This became a prison of sorts, as we will see, for when he did attempt to say something more personal, to challenge his audience's preconceptions, as he did in Vertigo, the films were not box office successes.

Vertigo (1958, USA, Alfred Hitchcock) and Rear Window (1954, USA, Hitchcock)

So, with all that as a weird kind of caveat, the Hitchcock movie I chose to study next as we wandered further down auteur lane was the nearly surreal psychological thriller Vertigo, which was followed immediately on the heels by the taut murder mystery/thriller Rear Window. Vertigo is probably Hitch's most personal and in many ways most psychologically disturbing film, but as we will see, there appear to be early hints of Vertigo's obsessions in Rear Window. Stylistically Vertigo and Rear Window are both very similar to most of Hitch's Hollywood-era films (which makes them a good choice for auteur study), while also continuing many of the themes that those familiar with Hitch's films will immediately recognize.

There is something startling and distinctive about Vertigo (in particular.) It is a film that makes many of Hitch's fans, who are legion, very uncomfortable. The protagonist, police detective John "Scotty" Ferguson, played by Hitch favourite Jimmy Stewart, is not terrible heroic (he fails to catch the bad guy in the opening scene, and his slip up costs the life of a colleague), and in the end not even terribly competent (he is easily duped by a former college buddy into becoming an unwitting accessory to murder, a crime made possible by his deep psychological and physiological defects.) Furthermore, by film's end, he's not even particularly likeable, as his obsession with the entirely fictional and self-made Madeleine (Kim Novak) leads him to slip into near-psychotic behaviour.

No, this man Scotty is certainly not your standard Hitchcockian hero, in either thought or action. So, what is he doing at the centre of this Hitchcock film? The answer must lie somewhere in the notion that this is a deeply personal film for Hitchcock, and that Scotty's neuroses and obsessions are intended to stand in for those of the master of suspense himself. Scotty becomes smitten with the sort of woman who can be seen in so many Hitchcock films. In keeping with the focus of this essay upon Vertigo and Rear Window, look at the similarities between the female leads in both films. The icy blonde. Cool. Distant. Detached. Aloof. Unattainable. Troubled. Sexy without being necessarily sexual. Further, add to this how both films provide evidence of Hitchcock's familiar obsessions with voyeurism (Rear Window, Psycho) and the male gaze (see: Laura Mulvey) as well as the attendant (Catholic) guilt and drive to violence and/or control that attends the resultant arousal. Also jumping to the fore, in the form of the character(s) of Madeleine/Judy are the topics of mistaken identity and the doppelganger effect, previously seen in The Wrong Man. They are also lurking around the edges of Rear Window in the film's casual examination of the dual nature of men and women (can Grace Kelly's Lisa, a bon vivant New York sophisticate, be at home in the rough and tumble world of photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries, again played by Hitch favourite Jimmy Stewart?)

Both films also consider the impossibility of the male-female relationship, though Rear Window is considerably lighter in that regard, ending as it does on an ambiguously optimistic note. People, and women in particular, are not who they seem to be, and all that mask wearing makes permanent happiness between the sexes extremely unlikely. Further, the leads in both films are seen as emasculated in this brave new world. Jeff (broken leg) and Scotty (vertigo) are damaged goods, reliant upon and yet intimidated and confused by women. Here Hitch seems to be tapping into a familiar theme of the day, one which runs throughout most of the best noir of the period, gender confusion surrounding the role of men and women in this post-war era, which helped to create one of noir's most distinctive attributes, the femme fatale. The similarities between the treatment of women in these two films ends there, however, as Rear Window's Lisa finds a way to bridge the gap between genders as the film aims towards happy ending where the status quo in the form of the lead's coupling is affirmed, whereas Vertigo's tragic, open-ended finale refuses to allow the possibility of rapprochement of the sexes, and points to the male lead's desolation, not to mention permanent isolation and alientation. And it precisely in this that Vertigo distinguishes itself (in much the same way as Psycho would two years later) in Hitchcock's canon. In Hitch's estimation, there is no real hope for a happy solution to the gender question in a world where men are losing their masculinity to women.

What worked:

First off, I seem to have argued against myself here a bit, in that it appears that Hitchcock does have something to say about the world, however cynical and despairing it may be. But it is precisely because Vertigo is unique in the Hitchcock canon that I made the original argument. The film is an anomaly in a career primarily dedicated to entertaining the audience, rather than challenging them. There is little doubt that Hitchcock is a master technician, and we spent significant time over the course of the viewing of these two films examining the man's virtuosity with camera. His effortless manipulation of both montage and the extended take alone is worth significant study. And his films have an undeniable familiarity, and similarity of style and substance, that provides a ready entry into the study of the auteur theory. So, reasons aplenty to view the study of Hitchcock's films as a success.

What didn't:

And yet, I am unsatisfied with this choice. As much as I enjoy his films in a theme park ride kind of way, I feel Hitch's work lacks depth and significance. The students liked these films well enough, scoring a little below 4/5, they also sensed a lack of seriousness in the man, and given we had just watched two films by Kubrick this is not terribly surprising. The films rated in the lower quarter of the twenty films we watched over the course of the school year.

What I would do differently:
I will have to look closely at this unit next year to determine who might take the large man's place, for while I want to challenge students, I don't want to baffle them either (so, alas, Tarkovsky is unlikely to rear his head at this point.) Perhaps some crowd pleasing Kurosawa (some of his samurai films?) will do the trick. I'm happy to take suggestions.

Overall Grade: B minus

Next up in Part 7: Kurosawa's Rashomon and Truffault's 400 Blows

2009-08-04T05:27:00.000-07:00

In the Loop (2009, UK, Armando Ianucci)

Shot in guerilla documentary style, with shaky handheld cameras and weird mid-scene jump cuts (that suggest editing that hints of coverup. Is the editor Richard Nixon's secretary?), In the Loop is one of the best written, most vicious, enthusiastically performed films of the year. It is also the best political satire since Bulworth or Wag the Dog, and is more pointed, more relentless and funnier than both of them.

Based on a BBC 4 TV series, The Thick of It, In the Loop details an international crisis that sees Britain and America attempting to manipulate the UN through spurious accusations and made up intelligence into supporting a declaration of war on some unnamed Mideastern country. Ridiculous you say? Couldn't happen?

Of course it couldn't.

On its surface In the Loop is about the sort of Machiavellian behind the scene political machinations that you might imagine in a particularly cut throat British version of West Wing. There are key differences, however. Here you do not witness the Sorkin-ian obsequeousness, that deference to power that suggests that our leaders are supermen (and women) functioning at entirely different level from we mere mortals. Instead, we witness all manner of incompetence, self-serving careerism and corruption at every level of government. Further, we are disturbed by the observation that seemingly everyone in the corridors of power seems afflicted with a particularly slippery set of ethics, which makes any battle for truth and justice an afterthought. Instead, we have people set in a pitched battle, using a war that will kill thousands of people in order to launch, make, or protect their careers. At points this conflict is represented, quiet literally, as a blood sport (someone's teeth quite literally bleed, for God's sake!)

Leading the way in a cast full of great performances is political Iago Peter Capaldi, who plays the Prime Minister's aide Malcolm Turner, and whose tart-tongued assault upon any who dare venture in his path is a terrifying marvel to behold. And in one of the film's best stare downs, James Gandolfini, playing a dove-ish Pentagon general, matches Capaldi slur for inglorious slur. If words are weapons, these men are bearing rocket launchers.

In the Loop is most entertaining when focusing upon the absurdity of the language of politics, where to say something is suicide, and finding new ways to say nothing the key to long term success. The political machinations, back stabbing, and deceipt that mark the action of the story consistently take a back seat to the words, which are almost invariably used to obfuscate and manipulate reality rather than reflect it. "I don't care if you heard him say it, he didn't say it." Somewhere, George Orwell is spinning in his grave and applauding at the same time.

2009-08-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

The Brothers Bloom (2009, USA, Rian Johnson)

The Brothers Bloom is sassy, savvy, sexy, funny and surprisingly affecting. Adriotly written, expertly directed, amusing self-reflective, and filled with a capable and intelligent cast, this is one of the best Hollywood releases of the year.

Writer/director Rian Johnson tips his hand early on in The Brothers Bloom, when elder brother Stephen, played with pinache by the rakish Mark Ruffalo, describes the perfect con as being one where everyone, including the mark himself, gets exactly what he wants. As we shall see, as cinematic metaphors go, this one proves pretty astute. The film's protagonists are two lifelong fraternal scam artists, the aforementioned Stephen, the tandem's criminal and narrative mastermind, and his younger sibling Bloom, the eternal love interest, played expertly by the puppy-eyed Adrien Brody. The third wheel of this conspiratorial crew is the mostly mute Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi) an explosives expert who also happens to be master of the sarcastically cutting glare.

Things really get rolling in the film when we are introduced to the trio's latest mark, a reclusive, gifted, eccentric and beautiful heiress named Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz). Luring the talented and intelligent but socially awkward Stamp into their ruse proves challenging, but to risk a grizzly mixed metaphor, once she's on board, Penelope chomps down hard on the bit between her lips. Which is not to say Weisz is in any way equine, not at all. If fact, Weisz is stunning throughout, and appears to be having the time of her life in this film, her childlike enthusiasm for the life of smuggling that the brothers have in store for her evident in every squeal and joyful leap. And as Weisz is in many ways the audience's proxy for this narrative, it is fitting that her unrelenting excitement mirrors our own. This film is one helluva joyride.

Brody, on the other hand, is a melancholy soul looking for meaning in his all too well-scripted life. His innately doleful expressions are well-matched to the part, which aims to tap into everyman's existential crisis. Bloom has no sense of self because of a life spent acting out parts created in his brother's elaborate narratives, and yearns for the sort of meaning and purpose that can only be found in an unscripted life. Yet, when he is not working on a con, he becomes inert, passively passing time in a hammock on an island off the coast of Montenegro. He only becomes active in his life--quite literally, an actor in his life--when he is inside his brother's narratives. It is through action that the actor has purpose. And it is one of The Brother's Bloom's most impressive achievements that as it darts from one exotic locale to the next, the intricately woven plot never threatens to obliterate the nuances of this fascinating three-way character study.

While I enjoyed Johnson's debut exercise in neo-noir, Brick, he raises his game significantly in The Brothers Bloom. While Brick was fun in a film school assignment sort of way ("Imagine yourself using all the conventions of a film noir, but setting it in a seedy contemporary high school, with all the teenagers copping the requisite 40s era lingo") Johnson's has honed his skills as writer and director considerably in the four years between films. As Brick showed, Johnson is a well-versed student of film, and here he gives a holler out to some of the wittily plotted con man games of yesteryear, like The Sting or, more recently, The Grifters, as well showing off hstylistically and thematically referencing the efforts of contemporary filmmakers such as Wes Anderson. After all, the film is populated by a collection of oddball orphans whose connection allows them to form a wacky alternative to the family unit they missed out on. Further, Johnson's use of montage as humourous character exposition is taken straight out of the Anderson handbook, while his attention to detail in his meticulous set and shot designs recall a similar affinity in the work of Anderson. And while admitting that the comps to Anderson have merit, the filmmaker I am also reminded of here is Christopher Nolan. Like Johnson, he made his breakthrough with his sophomore effort, Memento, but more pertinently, in The Prestige he delved into the world of magic and scam artists in order to make some sly comments about these world's similarities to those of his chosen craft. The Brothers Bloom mines a similar vein, but in its own sassy way, and in Johnson's own distinctive and engaging way. The film is worthy of mention in the company of all these fine films.

In the end, despite a pacing problem in the film's protracted third act, The Brother's Bloom pulls it all together for an affecting and emotionally resonant finale. If it is Johnson's wish that he be seen as having pulled off the perfect con where everyone, from cast to crew, studio executives to critics, filmmaker to audience, gets exactly what they want out of this film, I am happy to report that he has pulled it off. The Brothers Bloom proves one terrific piece of cinematic legerdemain.

2009-08-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

All That Jazz (1979, USA, Bob Fosse)

Bob Fosse's not-so-thinly veiled autobiographical film is a viciously honest portrayal of the central character, Joe Gideon, a brilliant but deeply troubled and self-absorbed director/choreographer who has ongoing problems with drugs, alcohol, and fidelity. All That Jazz is a Fellini-esque (circa 8 1/2) speed freak of a movie, flying by at breakneck pace, then screeching to a halt so the protagonist can indulge in some serious ruminations on death or make some ironic observations, a la The Producers, about the necrophiliacal nature of the business that is show. The film takes regular detours into the surreal, as Jessica Lange's appearance as the stunningly beautiful personification of death hints at Gideon's self-destructive impulses. As his name suggests, Gideon has a bit of a God complex, and he views his work as a struggle to create something as beautiful as one of God's creations. It is difficult to tell if Fosse is apologizing for his boorish behavior or explaining it. Perhaps the film's most revealing line of dialogue is delivered by Gideon as he faces death "If I die, I'm sorry for all the bad things I did to you. And if I live, I'm sorry for all the bad things I'm gonna do to you." The film is a dazzling piece of eye (and ear) candy, full of brilliant dance sequences (the AirRotica sequence stands out), great music, and bizarre flights into the fantasy world in Gideon's head. The fanciful near-death experiences at the climax are an adrenaline-soaked showstopper, and Roy Scheider does the best work of his career. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won four of them.

2009-08-02T22:23:00.000-07:00

12 Angry Men (1957, USA, Sidney Lumet)

12 Angry Men centres on a jury's attempts to come to a verdict in a first degree murder trial, back in the day when guilty verdicts brought a mandatory death sentence. Which is to say, the stakes in this situation are high. In what appears to be a slam dunk case, an unnamed or only briefly glimpsed 18-year-old boy is accused in the stabbing death of his father case. The evidence against the boy gradually emerges as the jury is forced by one belligerent member (juror number 8, played with stoic rectitude by Henry Fonda) to study the facts of the case. The kid has a terrible alibi, the knife he says he lost is at the murder scene, one witness claim to have heard the father and son fighting, another eye witness saw the boy flee the site while another is certain she saw the boy plunge the knife into his father's chest. Eleven of the jurors immediately vote guilty; only Juror No. 8 casts a not guilty vote, moreso he can continue to talk about the case than because he believes the boy is actually innocent. Over the course of the discussion, the film shifts from being an examination of the merits of the case to an exploration of the personalities of the men sequestered in the jury room. As the oppressive heat begins to wear people down, conflicts erupt and the film's true purpose begins to emerge.

Twelve Angry Men is a tightly wound top of a movie. Each scene ratchets up the tension another notch as Henry Fonda's character tries desperately to open the minds of his fellow jurors. The setting -- a claustrophobic jury room in the dog days of summer -- superbly augments the suspense. Operating within the constraints of a small budget, first-time director Sidney Lumet tightens the noose by accentuating the throbbing pulse of the ceiling fan and slowly narrowing his shots on his characters as the film approaches its climax. Based on Reginald Rose's well-known play, which had been adapted to the television screen three years earlier, Twelve Angry Men boasts a series of excellent performances by young actors who would soon become household names, including Jack Klugman, Jack Warden, and Martin Balsam. However, it is the film's established stars -- Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall and most importantly Fonda -- who play the leads, delivering the goods like seasoned pros. The film has instructional value as a study of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the jury system, but its real value is how it allows each member of the cultural mosaic of a jury to develop into distinct, damaged, and interesting characters. In a well-crafted metaphor for the broader outline of society, the jury members must confront their prejudices in order to see that justice prevails. Nominated for three Oscars, Twelve Angry Men ran into the juggernaut of Bridge on the River Kwai and came up empty handed.

2009-07-30T21:53:00.000-07:00

Now here's a fall release I'm anxious to see!

2009-07-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

My Year in Film Studies (Part Five)

For those of you who missed it, you can find part four here.

And so now given that my aim was to use the films of Kubrick to launch into a study of the auteur theory, the task is to pick another film by the ex-pat New York photographer that would show the scope of his genius, while also allowing us to see how the man's films have a unity of style and substance that distinguishes his work from others in his field. Despite the fact that Kubrick only made 13 feature films, and most people only have access to the final eleven (Fear and Dsire and Killer's Kiss are not readily available), his films clearly enjoy many consistencies that make his work ideal for a study of the auteur theory. Kubrick's distinctive cinematic style means that passages in his films, like other masters of the medium, are almost instantly recognizable; even those films that may be unfamiliar are, paradoxically enough, often immediately familiar. Among the elements that make Kubrick's films ideal for such a study include his devotion to a meticulous and detailed mis-en-scene and mis-en-shot, his set ups, framing and unique editing style, which favour expressionistic angles and lighting, including reliance on long takes, deep focus and tracking shots, as well as closeups that are both extreme and extremely effective. In fact, Kubrick viewed editing as the key to filmmaking, as it is the element of the art that is unique to the process. Writing, set design, cinematography all have their progenitors in other art forms (stage and photography), while a director could use editing to create the film long after shooting had finished. In this Kubrick was quite different from the other master of cold, Alfred Hitchcock, who was so meticulous in his preparation that he viewed that actual process of shooting and editing tedious, as he had already completed the film in his imagination. Kubrick was more experimental, shooting scenes from all sorts of angles, and relying on multiple takes, so he could mix and match the material until he got the material he wanted. Wong Kar Wai, who otherwise shares almost nothing in common with Kubrick, is a good example of a contemporary filmmaker who utilizes a similar approach to his filmmaking.

Furthermore, Kubrick's themes likewise contain many overlapping elements, including his distrust of authority and hierarchical organizationsattraction to and fear of our (over)reliance on technology, all of which he felt certainly made our life both more comfortable and more exciting while simultaneously contributing to people's desensitization and dehumanization. Kubrick's film often have a critical and often satirical bent, as well as an ambiguity and open-endedness that encourages the audience to engage with and interpret the material.Finally, as mentioned above, Kubrick's films have a consistent coolness that reflect the artifice that comes from mounting such precise and fastidious productions as well as Kubrick's primarily intellectual concerns.

It was rather satisfying to study Kubrick because his films are so diverse and similar, so rich and enigmatic, and student responses were consequently and delightfully predictably unpredictable.

Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, USA, Stanley Kubrick)

And so on to the film at hand. Back in the day, I wrote a review for this film for Apollo Guide, which you can read here.

Go ahead, I'll wait for you...

All righty, now that we're done with that, let's move on to the evaluation of the film's overall effectiveness.

What worked:

The film's dark humour was the entry point into this film. Kubrick's cynicism about military industrial and political systems found a ready audience of like-minded students. His overt connection of sexuality and violence underlined many of the film's best jokes while placing an exclamation point on many of his most critical assertions. Furthermore, as a method of examing Kubrick the auteur, Strangelove proved an excellent choice, as the film is a pregnant cinematic pinata of stylistic and thematic material that ties this film to those that came before and after, including 2001: A Space Odyssey.

What didn't

The film was well received, and was rated ever so slightly higher than 2001: A Space Odyssey (4.3/5) and was likewise ranked one spot above it. While it didn't provoke the same disparity of opinion as 2001, the film still required analysis and rewarded intellectual investigation.

What I'd do differently

While we did look at some moments from Full Metal Jacket and The Shining, I'd draw more parallels to other works of Kubrick, pulling more scenes out for comparison and contrast. This would help to enrich the discussion, particularly when it comes to examining the auteur theory.

Overall Grade: A

Part Six, wherein we shift gears to take a look at the ouevre of Alfred Hitchcock, can be found here.

2009-07-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

China Celebrates Its Status As World’s Number One Air Polluter

2009-07-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

My Year in Film Studies (Part 4)

For those who missed it, here is part 3

And but so now for my next trick....

My rationale for taking on 2001: A Space Odyssey next:

Up to now, we'd spent a fair bit of time looking at cinematic techniques and film narrative, with a minor devotion to the conventions of genre, so at this point in the course, I felt it was time to get into some serious auteur theorizin'. 2001 also allowed me to continue our study of genre, as this film pretty much sets the standard for sci-fi, while also getting into the kind of meaty intellectual material seldom afforded audiences of conventional Hollywood fare. So, pursuant of the rigourous study of auteur theory, and after surveying the class's ignorance on the topic and employing some book learnin', I reckoned it was time to get down to the dirty job of applying the newfound knowledge. And what better place to start than with the filmmaker who unlocked the magic of movies for me, one Mr. Stanley Kubrick. Specifically, I decided to show the students 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (the folks who climb those tall ladders to place the titles on movie marquees must have HATED Kubrick.) I had little doubt, in this age of irony, that Strangelove's satire would be a good fit, but I was filled with trepidation about starting with 2001.

It was actually a bit of a ballsy move, if I must stay so myself, to kick things off with 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film certainly has a devoted following, but it seems to me a eclectic crew made up of cinephiles and those for whom the film's tag line (The Ultimate Trip) would have been not merely a jumping off point for the movie, but a personal lifestyle, if you get my drift. And while these students had certainly proven themselves keen and capable up to this point, there was nothing we had seen that would challenge them and test their patience and open-mindedness like this film would. In fact, I had shown this film to a class of honours students about a decade ago, and the results were mixed. However, the film had done such a job on me as a ten year old, I couldn't resist the opportunity to see if the film still had that sort of power to shock and awe a group of youngsters.

Onward, outward and upward.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, USA/UK, Stanley Kubrick)

Picture this. I was an impressionable lad of ten when I wandered aimlessly into the movie theatre. My experience of film had been largely restricted by my own interests and the tastes of my disinterested parental units; I watched a lotta Disney. Which is to say, my cinematic aptitude was pretty much completely underdeveloped, and my expectations of what a film should look like, be and do almost entirely trite. I had pretty much no experience with the sci fi genre, and had never even heard the term "art film." I was a rube, in almost everyway imaginable.

Boy was I in for a surprise. Kubrick's film unhinged me. 2001:ASO lifted the skull off the top of my head. It rearranged my pia mater. This film shook me all night long. I mean think about it. What kind of film takes you on a four million year journey through space and time that begins in violence and ends with a birth? What sort of film has no dialogue for the first 25 minutes, and doesn't introduce its protagonist until the 55 minute mark (Keir Dullea's Odysseyian-monickered Dave Bowman)? And what sort of genius makes his computer antagonist (HAL 9000) compellingly human and his human protagonist cool and unaffecting? And how does one teach a film like this without getting bogged down in the interpretations and analysis, nevermind Kubrick's audacious decision to mix in the temporary score of classical music (Bach, Strauss) with the avande garde work of Gyorgy Ligeti, its undeniable technical brilliance (its special fx remain state of the art over four decades later) and crazy narrative courage? What kind of movie dares to bore the audience with the seemingly endless passages of what outer space must really be like, full of silences and inaction? What sort of filmmaker wears his coolness and aloofness like a badge of honour, defying the audience to find an emotional entry point into his work? The sort of film and filmmaker that hopes to blow our minds, apparently.

There were many approaches I could have taken to begin our study of this film, including a more literary study of the story's Odyssey-ian elements, but this was meant to be primarily a look at Kubrick as an exemplar of the auteur theory. I chose to analyze the material that made such an impression upon me as a child, as I figured this might mirror the experiences of students coming to the film for the first time. No easy task, however, given how startlingly unique this film is, not to mention the awesome scope of the story. Starting with a memorable sequence from pre-history featuring contact between some sort of apish homo erectus-like creatures and extra-terrestrial intelligence in the form of a screaming monolith, and finishing with the birth of a Star Baby, the next stage of human evolution, 2001: A Space Odyssey covers four million years of human evolution. Given the vast scope of its narrative, it seems somewhat frivolous to get into an extended discussion of the film's key plot points, but let me note the following. When I saw this film as a ten year old, the film's bookkends are the sequences did me in, and these are the moments that I used as entry points into the film in class. The opening sequence with the apes impressed me because I had just seen (and mightily enjoyed) Planet of the Apes, and Kubrick's creatures were creations of an entirely different order. Not only were there no visible signs that these were human beings dressed up in monkey suits, but also the lives of these early humans were grim in a way I had not seen depicted on screen before. Despite the fact that there exists considerable scholarship that suggests life in early hunter gatherer societies was actually pretty good, as people spent a minimal amount of time and effort foraging for food, with the bulk of their time spent socializing, I will cut Kubrick and Clarke (Arthur C., author of the novel and co-writer of the script) some slack here. While anthropologists may have shown that many of the innovations that resulted in human evolution came about as a result of co-operation, it remains that conflict makes for more compelling drama. Culminating in one of the most famous jump and match cuts in cinematic history, the ape section of 2001 proved a fascinating portal into the labyrinthian chambers of the Kubrick's often probing and inscrutible mind.

And it is to the film's great credit that even after the movie ends, the portal remains open. The film's concluding passages return us to the silences that greated us at the film's start. While man was once pre-verbal, it appears that in our next incarnation we will be post-verbal. And it is here that Kubrick unpacks some of his philosophical baggage. The film's finale attacks us with images that the director refuses to explain and actions he declines to define, leaving us with many questions, but charging us with parsing out the answers as well. In a provocative echo of the way that the film both starts and ends in silence, when Dave passes through the stargate and lands up in the alien zoo, his journey both ends and begins. And likewise, the audience's experience of the film must start as it ends, for the enigmatic imagery that concludes Kubrick's film allows us to either dismiss his work as pretentious drivel or challenges us to embrace the ambiguity, and use it as a springboard into interpretation.

I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but my experience of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came at a time (the fall of 1968) when such a millenial date evoked images either utopian or apocalyptic, was life-altering. Kubrick's film not only changed the way I viewed film, but the way I experienced art and life. It raised the bar, opened me up, challenged my expectations and transported me to a whole new world. It bored me and thrilled me, exasperated and enthralled me. But probably the most important thing that 2001 did for me was to open me up to the idea that movies can be art. More to the point, I saw for the first time that a movie can ask all sorts of questions without providing a single conclusive answers, remaining open to the perceptions and interpretations of the viewer. This was quite a novel concept to me, one that I would come to recognize as the key that would unlock many of the great works of literature, music and painting to me, and to see film elevated to this status made quite an impression. And it has shaped my expectations of film ever since.

What worked:

The film certainly framed the whole issue of the auteur theory nicely, as there are few narrative filmmakers who marry a distinctive style and challenging content like Stanley Kubrick. The open-endedness of the film also allowed personal entry points for individual response and interpretation that proved quite rewarding. Some students found the film's ambitions beyond their grasp, but because I maintained my policy that it was all right not to "get" the film, that experiencing it was enough, it seemed to alleviate concerns about the film's apparent inscrutability. And even more excitingly, some students actually embraced the film's baffling nature, and rather than being turned off by its WTF-ness, revelled in it. 2001 achieved pretty much everything I had hoped it would as a teacher, which is always a very cool thing. Overall, the film was rated 4.25/5 by students, and was in the upper half of the 20 films ranked by the class.

What didn't:

Despite reassurances that "getting it" isn't a necessary precursor to appreciating the film, some students remained unwilling to plumb 2001's cinematic depths, choosing instead to ride along on its occasional surface pleasures. Still, no one dismissed it outright, which is something I guess.

What I'd do differently:

I would put a little more time into establishing context, to clarify exactly how and why this film was so ground-breaking, as well as to explore the ways 2001 affected both genre and art films thereafter.

Would I do it again?

Absotively

Overall Grade: A

2009-07-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

Team America: World Police (2004, USA, Trey Parker)

Meisters of the savage skewer, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, whose South Park TV show has, since 1997, set the standard for balancing hilarity and misanthropy, and whose debut feature film, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut upped that particular ante in rather staggering fashion, have apparently decided that the best way to face up to the dreaded sophomore jinx is to avoid comparison to their first film and skin a cat of an entirely different sort by shooting a film featuring puppets in the lead roles. Well, marionettes might be the more specific and accurate term to use, as the strings are most definitely still attached to these creations, and Stone and Parker are most certainly at the other end, yanking our collective chains in this full frontal assault on American ethnocentrism, overblown action movies, atavistic terrorists, lonely North Korean tyrants, self-righteous Hollywood actors and, most importantly, the mainstream audience’s delicate sensibility and good taste.

Team America: World Police is deadly funny throughout its first two reels, as the titular law enforcement agency roams the world thwarting terrorists and making the world safe for folks, whether they deserve it or not. In what is clearly a spoof of the testosterone-driven Bay/Bruckheimer/Simpson/Scott school of filmmaking, we bear witness to many a fine shoot ‘em up as the TA crew does what it does best, bust things up. Everything from the in your face close-ups to the “blowed up real good” explosions, from the blustery and buffoonish 80s soundtrack to the blatantly xenophobic patriotism and all-around global cluelessness, where nations are described solely according to their distance from America, prove fine fodder for satire. The latter is particularly well-spoofed in the sequences where Team America purports to be protecting people and their cultural landmarks, only to blow them to smithereens as they attempt to catch the film’s various nefarious terrorists. The opening scene in Paris, where Team America manages to simultaneously topple the Eiffel Tower and crush the Arch du Triomphe, then blast the Louvre into tiny little pieces, as well as a later episode in Egypt, where the pyramids and the Sphinx are reduced to rubble in short order, provide inspiring examples of this.

The choice of marionettes for this enterprise is particularly clever, given that their ability to emote is about on par with the sort of one-dimensional performances that such films generally feature, while the constant reminder of how these heroes are merely puppets dangling from the end of strings gives the film added ironic cachet. Also, and as you might expect with a Parker/Stone endeavor, Team America’s musical numbers are first rate, with Kim Jung Il’s “I’m So Lonely” the film’s emotional highlight, if such a qualifier can be used for this irreverent film. Unfortunately, after building up such a fine edifice of deadly-aimed humour, some cracks begin to show in the foundation as Parker and Stone allow puerile humour to dominate the film’s final reel. When Team America stoops to featuring an acronym for the actors it is taunting, it risks redefining juvenile humour. Perhaps it is the dour left-winger in me, but what were supposed to be whoops of laughter during the various decapitations of Hollywood activists failed to elicit much more than a shrug outta me, as they proved too easily and relentlessly targeted.

Still, don’t get me wrong, the press-obsessed self-serving-ness of many armchair Hollywood activists strikes me as a perfectly legitimate target for satire; however, you’ve gotta think that there are more interesting hypocrites to pick on in the holier-than-thou sweepstakes, like certain very powerful political leaders and their evil minions, mayhaps? Just think of the opportunity squandered as Parker and Stone could have used the marionettes to show quite literally just who is the puppet and who the puppet master in the current administration. Also, by reducing much of that attack on the actors—after opening with a very funny spoof of Rent, a Broadway show called Lease, where “everybody has AIDS”-- to an adolescent and homophobic pun is a wasted opportunity, the recurring shot at Matt Damon, which is funny in both concept and realization, notwithstanding. That complaint aside, the fact that the world’s fate is, in the end, determined by an acting competition between the protagonist Gary and his idol Alec Baldwin (“the greatest actor in the world!”) proves funny particularly given how the film has been mocking actor’s sense of self-importance throughout. If only the lads behind South Park had managed to maintain that level of comic performance throughout the entire running time of Team America: World Police, it just might have put the “F” back in Freedom, which, if you’re counting, is a bargain at a mere buck oh five.

2009-07-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

Primer (2004, USA, Carruth)

A little Memento mixed with a smidgen La Jetee, Primer is the first film I’ve seen since David Lynch’s nearly-impenetrable but clearly-brilliant Mulholland Dr. that I have wanted to re-watch IMMEDIATELY. I have restrained myself from doing so, and this review is based upon a single viewing, so forgive me if I get some things wrong; this is just the sorta film that will do that to you.

So for starters we have Aaron (writer/director Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), a pair of ambitious and industrious 20-something engineer-types who work 50 hour weeks in the office, then spend most of their remaining waking hours toiling in Aaron’s garage on their next Great Scheme, a prototype for Who the Hell Knows What. I must confess that with only a smattering of undergraduate experience in the most vaguely of scientific endeavors that I have pretty much zero idea what Aaron, Abe an their two increasingly out-of-the-loop partners Robert (Casey Gooden) and Phillip (Anand Upadhyaya) are talking about for the first ten minutes of this film. But the beauty of Primer is that it matters far less that you get the jargon and much more that you dig the big picture, which in this case is yer standard scientist at odds with questions of personal ethics sort of thing. However, Primer is anything but standard in its approach and execution. The most exciting and promising debut effort of this already pretty decent year for films, Primer is one whacked-out mindfuck (editorial decision for you, if profanity’s not your thing. Feel free to substitute ‘mindbender’), a discombobulating, thrilling, challenging and meticulous filmmaking exercise.

Revealing too much of the plot would run the risk of ruining much of the impact of the first-time viewing impact, so I will limit myself to noting that Aaron and Abe make an unexpected and startling discovery while tinkering in the garage, and it is the manner in which they deal with this discovery that gives the film much of its fascination. Primer takes a Kubrickian interest in the way that technology de-humanizes its "masters" and gives a stark lesson in how we have progressed materially and intellectually, but remain largely children emotionally and ethically. Aaron and Abe may have the ingenuity to make a startling discovery, but lack the integrity or grounding necessary to use it wisely (which is to say, probably not at all.) And once they tinker around with their discovery, the partners find that there’s no going back. Okay, that’s not strictly true, given how they end up messing with the time-space continuum; due to the Faustian deal the pair make with themselves, time becomes a commodity to be bought, traded and sold. Regardless, neither Abe nor Aaron prove capable of harnessing the forces they’ve unleashed both within and without, and their steady downward spiral proves to be dreadfully compelling. Is theirs the fate of all clever and ambitious people who lack the moral compass to properly direct their energies and intelligence?

Filmed on 16mm, Primer manages to find a distinctive and interesting look, somewhere between the graininess of pulp noir and bleached, washed out look of a low budget independent film, which this most certainly is, given its $7,000 budget. Carruth, who also wrote the film’s score among his many duties here, has made a film that relies on ideas and moral conundrums for its impact, rather than snazzy audio-visual, computer-generated effects, which makes sense from a budgetary standpoint, but is also just a little ironic, given the central role of technology in the film’s subject matter. While for many the film’s elliptical narrative, which leaps around like an ion on crack, not to mention Aaron’s from-the-other-side riddling voice-over narration, creates an oft-maddening puzzle, for those up to the challenge this film harbors hidden rewards. Perhaps more importantly, even if its science doesn’t add up, the story itself does somehow (almost magically) manage to cohere.

Then again, I’ve only seen Primer once, so I could be talking through my sleeve here. After all, there is much I have yet to forget. Give me time.

2009-07-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

2046 (2004, Hong Kong, Wong Kar Wai)

Those of us who fell in love with the seductive and luscious In the Mood for Love have been waiting a loooooong time for this one, Wong Kar-Wai’s much-anticipated follow-up to perhaps the most highly-regarded film of this millennium. The famously meticulous director debuted his latest film at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2004, with Wong Kar-Wai reportedly working on the final cut a mere days before the festival’s launch. Ominously, the film did not receive any awards, despite the fact that WKW acolyte Quentin Tarantino chaired the jury. Yet, despite such harbingers of disaster, 2046 proves to be a slippery and trippy tale whose charms may at first seem somewhat elusive, but whose sensuous imagery and melancholy romanticism will eventually win you over.

The wait has most certainly been worth it.

The enigmatically-titled film refers to a hotel room number, but it is also the year in which some of the pulpy tales of our hero, the fiction-writing playboy Cow Mo Wan are set, where the number also doubles as the emotional equivalent of the Holy Grail to his characters, who seek out their very own room 2046 in order to recapture memories of past romantic bliss. This is appropriate enough given that as the film begins is ensconced in room 2047 so he could keep tabs on the goings-on in the room across the hall, the number of which reminds him of his one great love, the very beautiful and very married Si Lu Zhen (Maggie Cheung) with whom he had once shared a room with this very same number.

While most film cycles aim towards some sort of resolution in their final installments, things in 2046 don’t come full circle so much as they move incessantly forward. The cycle of love, betrayal and heartache as initiated in The Days of Being Wild and continued through In the Mood for Love, claims even more victims in 2046, as the trio of 1960s-set Hong Kong films culminates here with Wong’s most worthy successor to those fine films. Just as Maggie Cheung’s Si Lu, whose heart was crushed by Leslie Cheung in Days of Being Wild, is subsequently unable to give herself over to the smitten Mr. Chow in In the Mood for Love, in 2046 it is Leung’s character who, having made but a brief cameo appearance in Days, and perhaps in response to this romantic defeat in the middle film of this troika, retreats from emotional contact with women, preferring instead a series of affairs, thereby carrying the misery forward by inflicting the pain on others that was previously inflicted on himself. In this vital role Tony Leung does little to damage his reputation as my favourite film actor working today, conveying his character’s complexity with characteristic subtlety and grace.

The idea, first posited in Days of Being Wild, that even the most brief (“one minute”) relationships can achieve a level of intensity that will have an effect that will be lasting, lifelong and even potentially disastrous, is moved forward here, and leaves us with a sense that in these days of transience, when we treat people with the disposability of a razor blade, it ought not to surprise us that we will occasionally come away from these sorta relationships with the wounds that never heal. In 2046 the misery is fanned out, as Leung engages in three affairs of the heart, drawing Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and Faye Wong (all of whom are marvelous here, by the way) into his net, resulting in a growth in the web of romantic dissatisfaction that, it is implied, will continue to grow, now at exponential rates. Despite the fact that the relationships are varied and distinct, and include intellectual, emotional and carnal elements, they all share one quality: They are doomed to end badly.

Yet, while I make the film sound incessantly grim, it is anything but, for 2046 is a celebration of a very specific time and place that clearly has deep meaning for WKW, and his affection for it is evident in every frame. With trusty sidekick and director of photography Christopher Doyle at his side, 2046 is filled with the sorta eye candy that we’ve come to expect from the films of Wong Kar-Wai. Doyle’s painterly eye for composition and his wizardry with the camera includes a self-referential shot on the train platform of his famous coffee shop shot in Chungking Express is matched here by Wong’s artful use of a rich and sensual colour palette. Wong’s pitch perfect set design is aided by a delightful merger of music and image that results in a seemingly effortless evocation of the period. And even though some have complained about the sometimes-cheesy futuristic CGI effects, even this fits the film’s overall aesthetic in that they are used only when we are plunged into Leung’s fictional futuristic fantasy world, where the world is filled with people and things of increasing cheapness and superficiality. So while 2046 may be a melancholic and elegiac story of damaged and yearning people unhappy in and out of love, it is also a multi-sensual delight, and I will consider myself greatly blessed if I see a more glorious piece of celluloid art this year.

2009-07-21T13:38:00.001-07:00

Downfall (2004, Germany, Oliver Hirschbiegel)

Hitler’s last days, as told through the eyes of his young and relatively naïve secretary Trudl Junge (Alexandria Maria Lara), is the premise of Downfall. Apparently the first German-made film to attempt to understand these the darkest days of recent history, the film, despite some structural defects and tonal inconsistencies, proves worthy of the accolades heaped upon it.

Downfall’s cinema verite style is occasionally at odds with it’s dramatic structure, as the documentary feel of the majority of scenes in the Fuhrenbunker clash mightily with the socially-conscientious moments in the battle field, particularly when the director gets all Spielberg on us, both visually and melodramatically, by following the fate of a 12 year old Hitler Youth (all that’s missing is to clothe the boy in some computer generated colour-enhanced red garb). The director also borrows visually and thematically from Visconti’s The Damned, particularly when counterpointing the decadence of many who live in the Fuhrer’s bunker with the horrific reality of the soldiers dying so needlessly in above-ground bunkers mere yards away. And while it is certainly an effective technique, there are moments of contrast—children being rent apart by mortar moments after the servants set out the china for an evening meal in the bunker-- that feel a little too convenient and contrived.

Of all those who inhabit the bunker with Hitler, the Goebbel’s family prove the most interesting. They are this film’s von Trapp’s, a clutch of precious children singing nursery rhymes and bedtime tunes for the entertainment of the faithful. Papa Goebbels is a loyal soldier right to the bitter end, while Frau Goebbel’s slavish devotion to Hitler and the ideals of National Socialism builds to the movie’s most potent and memorable moment, when the mother gives way to the ideologue and murders her lovelies in their sleep rather than have them live in a world where all of their Nazi ideals have been crushed. In what could have been both a thankless and one-note role, Corinna Harfouch, an actress with whom I am completely unfamiliar, makes a deep and marked impression here as Frau Goebbels. In the above-mentioned passage, worthy of the best horror story, and which makes much of the rest of the film pale by comparison, she gives a terribly human performance.

All of which is not to say that Downfall is unsuccessful: Far from it. The film is an eerie and effective recreation of Nazi Germany’s final days, due in no small part to the remarkable performance by Bruno Ganz, that great Spencer Tracy-like potato-faced actor, who captures well both the humanity and demagoguery of the man. The queer sense that I got of watching Nero fiddle while Rome burns is keenly observed in a variety of well-paced and darkly perverse scenes in the bunker, particularly when soldiers and secretaries, officers and their consorts drink, dance and cavort while Berlin falls to the Russians. While the film sometimes takes on a bit more than it can chew, with more characters and story lines than time and space to due them all justice, it is nonetheless rarely less than compelling.

2009-07-21T13:32:00.002-07:00

North Country (2005, USA, Niki Caro)

The road to Hell may or may not be paved with good intentions, but it is most certainly littered with the battered corpses of a mediocre movie or two. North Country, unfortunately, is just such a film. Caving into the pressure that so many other films that have likewise been “inspired by” real events, North Country fritters away an engaging set-up by resorting to melodramatic histrionics and clichéd courtroom “surprises” that consistently undercut the inherent drama of the story.

North Country is not the first starring role Charlize Theron has taken since her Oscar-winning performance in Monster, but it does return her to similar territory, playing against type as a downtrodden working class single mother of two named Josey Aimes. “Inspired by” a true story, Theron play a woman who has suffered one indignity and humiliation after another her entire life, but who finally decides that rather than continuing to passively tread water in the pool of oppression and degradation that threatens to drown her, she will rise up against her sea of enemies.

Despite this, the film begins promisingly. Director Niki Caro, whose Whale Rider suffered from some similar narrative dysfunction, but which still managed to rise above it’s limitations because of the sense of authenticity she and the actor’s brought to the mythic tale, uses sound and image effectively in order to immerse us into the grim reality of this mining community. Early scenes that show Josey struggling to get back on her feet after leaving an abusive husband, and trying regain the respect of her family and affection of friends are nicely subdued and effectively acted by the always terrific Francis McDormand, as Josey’s best friend Glory and Richard Jenkins, who plays her father Hank. Indeed, the strained relationship of father and daughter is the meat of most of what is interesting about this film, and it is a shame that this tale is abandoned in order to surrender the film to the tedious conventions of the bio-pic and the predictable twists and turns of the courtroom drama.

However, while Caro builds up cachet with naturalistic imagery and realistic tensions, she fritters it all away when Josey’s story proper begins once she enters the employment in the mines. Suddenly, realism gives way to movie-of-the-week melodramatics, as Josey’s predicament is played out against a vast inert ocean of apathy. The union meeting, where all sorts of abuses are publicly heaped upon Josey, may be the most egregious example of blatant emotional manipulation in this film, but it isn’t the only one. Making matters even worse is the shameless decision to pull out of the closet all the creaky mechanisms of the courtroom trial, the exclamation point of which I will not reveal since it is clearly intended to be the climax of the film. But, it is every bit as shameless as the aforementioned union meeting, and just as hopelessly hokey.

As is often the case with films based, however loosely, upon real events, the hoped-for veracity that such real-life inspirations provide for the filmmakers, these also often create narrative straightjackets from which the story cannot escape. This is particularly true when it involves the stories of people who are still alive, as the storytellers must pay scrupulous attention to not slandering any of the real people whose stories are being told, which unfortunately usually results in banal characterizations and clichéd plotting. North Country is inevitably a victim of both, as Josey rises so far above her adversaries as to undercut the perceived tensions between her goodness and her fellow miner’s (and their corporate and union boss’s) evil. It’s an appropriately stacked deck, as there’s little doubt whom we should be cheering for, but there’s also never really much doubt about the outcome. And do we really need the so-called veracity of reality to make these sorts of tales work? As Polish filmmaker Krystof Kieslowski learned decades ago when he stopped making documentaries and began making feature films, it is much more rewarding and liberating to abandon reality and embrace truth. It is possible to create a thoroughly meaningful and affecting story that touches on all the same themes as the so-called “real” story without having to concern yourself about whose feelings might be getting hurt, or how closely you are following the facts of the actual situation. That said, Raging Bull is a pretty good “inspired by” film, so maybe the real lesson to take away from all of this is that only directors who are relatively fearless should attempt them.

2009-07-21T07:01:00.001-07:00

Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny's

2009-07-18T08:06:00.000-07:00

Code 46 (U.K., 2005, Michael Winterbottom)

Complex and cold, intelligent and aloof, fascinating and off-putting, Code 46 is one of 2004's most interesting films, with images and ideas that will stick with you for days, even if the movie lacks the sort of emotional resonance we might hope for in our masterpieces. Code 46 offers us such a grim glimpse of the future that any sentient audience member will exit shouting: Go Back!

Director Michael Winterbottom, master cineaste whose 24 Hour Party People was such a blast, steps lightly in the footsteps of great dystopians like Orwell and Huxley, and gives us his vision of the future, which he shows us to be insulated, pasteurized and rigidly-controlled. Global economy creates islands of “haves” who live in artificial, grey-lit plenty, while those on the outside lead a colour-saturated but much more materially-meagre existence. Not unlike the current state of things. While various languages have been fluidly absorbed into the lingua franca of daily life, restrictions on travel and access between people and places is strictly enforced, with a monolithic enforcement agency ensuring people do not slip between the cracks. The great paranoia of those within the safe confines on the inside appears to be the infection of the body politic by those on the outside. Further, due to the proliferation of in vitro fertilization, laws—those of the film’s title--have been enacted to prevent people with similar genetic codes from breeding, and punishing with expulsion from said body politic those who knowingly disobey them.

In a move that computer geeks and fans of their annual flu shot will appreciate, people in this world can be infected with viruses in order to strengthen areas of weakness. Want to sing with perfect pitch? Speak Mandarin? Read people’s thoughts? This place has the virus for you. As the movie opens, an inspector searches for a document-forger who is illegally greasing the wheels of travel for her fellow citizens, William (Tim Robbins) has been injected with an empathy virus, which allows him to intuitively clue into people’s most personal information. This, needless to say, makes him a valuable commodity for his employers, The Sphinx Organization, a ubiquitous mega-corp that appears to control most of this world’s industry. However, while William is able to quickly identify Maria (Samantha Morton, who is predictably marvelous) as the guilty party, he finds himself drawn to her (is the empathy virus to blame?) and in an act of complicity that appears to pose a threat to his entire way of life (which includes a wife and son), lies to protect her. When his employers discover William has fingered the wrong person, he is forced to return to the scene of the crime and get it right. This is, as the saying goes, when the games really begin, as William discovers that Maria has disappeared, having transgressed against Code 46, and thus has been forced to have an abortion as well as the requisite memory-wipe that accompanies it, leaving her unable to remember her previous relationship with him.

While the memory-wiping aspect of the story may lead you to expect Code 46 to be the cinematic cousin to Gondry and Kauffman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, those similarities are only surface deep. Rather than an absurdist commentary on the vagaries of memory and the inevitability of pain as the cost of risking love, Code 46’s angst-ridden tone and overall sense of alienation, not to mention its new-wave sense of audio-visual style, is much more reminiscent of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. The karaoke scene in the Asian bar doesn’t hurt the comparisons any either, as The Clash’s Mick Jones has an amusing cameo in a lounge lizard singing Should I Stay or Should I Go? This classic bit of stunt casting actually works, and not just cuz Jones is a quirky-looking dude in an exotic locale, but also cuz the song’s lyrics mirror the us vs. them-ness conflicts inherent in the plot. And so it appears that like Ms. Coppola, Winterbottom’s talents at matching swirling imagery and hypnotic sounds suggest that he’s also fallen under the spell of Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-Wai, particularly his 1990s efforts like Chunking Express and Fallen Angels, yet more evidence that Wong remains a seminal force for art house directors.

Code 46 is a cool film, in every sense of the word. It’s message is timely and politically hip, but it is also at times emotionally distancing, particularly given the sometimes-stilted performance of Tim Robbins in the lead role. Despite this, the film has a clear and profound application to our contemporary world, divided so cleanly between us that has and them that hasn’t. In the end, Code 46 is about the forces that attempt to keep people apart, despite the innate desires that draw us together. We may have absorbed a few words from a handful of languages, but we haven’t absorbed the people who originally spoke them, leaving them on the outside, begging to be let in. It is hardly an accident that the well-to-do upper class white male is able to indulge his desires and emerge from the experience entirely unscathed, while the Hispanic woman is tossed out of the community and left only with her brittle memories of these brief moments of happiness.

2009-07-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

My Year in Film Studies (Part Three)

For those who missed it, here's part two.

Psycho (USA, 1960, Alfred Hitchcock)

My rationale for moving onto Alfred Hitchcock next is multi-fold. First, despite what might be viewed by a modern youthful audience as his decrepitude, Hitch's films are instantly accessible, requiring little or no explanations or apologies for their age. Secondly, at this point in the course I wanted to begin to introduce some of the fundamental elements of filmmaking to the students, stuff like mis-en-scene, editing, deep focus, montage and set design, and there are few filmmakers whose work lends itself to this sort of technical discussion better than Hitch. An entire lesson could easily be built around the shower scene alone, such is the man's technical virtuousity. Furthermore, I wanted to continue to look at narrative films that take on the confines of a genre and then play with them, and Psycho is an excellent choice here, being the father of the modern slasher flick and at the same time often a subverter of said genre. Also, Hitchcock's preoccupation with those twin American obsessions, sex and violence, play themselves out best in Psycho, where sexual desire and violence are inextricably linked in an orgasm of Freudian perversity. This is not to say I don't have problems with Hitchcock's ouevre, and some of those problems would come out later when we studied Vertigo, his most fascinating and personally revealing film, but for now I was willing to stash those reservations on the back burner.

So, on to the work at hand. Psycho is, as mentioned, often referred to (sometimes reductively) as the original slasher film. But it is so much more. Shooting the film at the same time as he was producing his very popular TV series, Hitchcock conceived of the film as a cheap exploitation flick and ispired by the look of these films and the grainy feel of Alfred Hitchcock Presents on his TV set, the director returned to black and white cinematography. Yet, beneath it's b-movie veneer is a masterfully crafted horror film, a movie meticulously conceived and delivered. However, Psycho also exposes some serious cracks in the Hitchcock veneer, early indications of the sort of problems that would afflict much of his work for the next fifteen years that wound down his career. More on that later.

Before I discuss what makes Psycho smarter than your average bear, I need to post the requisite SPOILER ALERT for anyone who has yet to see the film. I cannot examine what distinguishes Psycho without getting into some serious discussion of plot, so caveat emptor, mes amis. I will get to the film's technical accomplishments soon enough, so let us instead look at the narrative genius. First off, what kind of madman kills his leading actress, and the only "name" in the cast, before the film is half over? Well, a madman who is subverting the genre he is exploring, that's who. Also, the film's dual narrative is a cleverly mirror act, with the first act duelling with the second. In the first act we follow a deeply troubled Marion Crane (a dead sexy Janet Leigh), who, caught up in the throes of an illicit relationship with the good looking but very broke Sam Loomis (John Saxon) decides to abscond with $40,000 so the young lovers can have a fresh start free of debt and obligations. Her getaway eventually leads her to The Bates Motel and Norman Bates, played to twitchy perfection by the man whose performance defines much of what is memorable about this film, Anthony Perkins. It is here that her story ends, in the famous shower scene, and Norman's takes over. And the narrative mirroring begins as Norman now is the hunted and haunted figure in distress who must try to hide his tracks. The dualism of the narrative shows most clearly in that both characters are committing illicit acts and attempting to hide the evidence. But once Marion arrives at his hotel and Norman's sexual urges are first triggered, then perverted, by an implied Oedipal relationship with his mother, he is lead to violence. And as Norman becomes the violator and Marion the violated, the story's point of view trips on through the Freudian looking glass.

Interestingly, Hitchock plays with the conventions of the genre by knocking off his beautiful movie star lead, the figure we've invested 45 minutes and lot of our emotionals in, only to replace her with an insectile, tic-ridden, oedipal weirdo. And he expects us to, no questions asked, simply pick up and shift our allegiance? Is he nuts? Thing is, and here is the genius at play, it works. The master manipulator knows how to shape and craft sound and image so that we will do just as we are told. The masterful technician uses all the tricks in his bag, including crafty point of view shots, fascinating camera set ups, detailed set design, and a combination of playful and taut editing, to lure us away from Marion and into the world of Norman. And this despite witnessing Marion's horrific murder at the apparent hands of Norman's diabolical mother in one of the most famous 30 second sequences in cinematic history, a scene of such technical brilliance that audiences are certain that they have seen things--like knives penetrating flesh and bright red rivers of blood--that closer inspection proves that they did not. The first two acts of Psycho show Hitchcock at his manipulative, Skinner-ian best.

But what to make of the flaccid and tedious final act?

Once Norman dispatches Arbogast (Martin Balsam), and focuses on the investigation of Marion's absence by her lover Sam and Marion's sister (Vera Miles), the film loses all energy. Much of the fault lies at Saxon's wooden feet, as he emits a dull and asexual vibe, and for that much fault must lie at the feet of Hitchcock who oversaw the casting of all his films. Could he not see beyond Saxon's chiselled surface appeal to the lack of thespian skills beneath? On top of that, we have the sticks out like a bad smell-ness of the movie's penultimate scene, where a determined Simon Oakland plays a police detective expert on the sort of sexual deviance that marks the character of Norman Bates, and he seems intent on hitting every note of that aspect of the story's denouement on its over-obvious head. This is a scene that seems inserted to speak to the most oblivious in the audience who didn't pick on the half dozen leaden clues to Norman's Oedipal motivations and taxidermian inclinations. Recast Saxon, and dump this scene, and Psycho is a film I would recommend unreservedly, as it works in a number of ways, particularly in the film studies setting.

Evaluating the results

Psycho definitely works as an examination of how to work within and without genre conventions, how to subvert audience expectations and get away with it, and as a lesson (hell, a whole unit) on the many aspects of Hitch's cinematic technique.

Initial post edited to add: The film, as I suspected it would, went over well, up until the 3rd act tailspin anyways. It received an average rating of just under 4/5, and was in the middle of the ratings pack (10th highest of the 20 films rated.) Psycho was the most popular of the three Hitchcock films we watched (Vertigo and Rear Window being the other two).

What didn't

As mentioned numerous time, the film's final act is a near-disaster. But it was instructive in that it pointed out the importance of casting. Further, that poorly written second to last scene is a teachable moment as well, I suppose. But I'd just prefer to excise it if I could.

What would I do differently?

Since I'm planning on using North by Northwest instead of Jerry Maguire to kick off the year, I would prune Psycho back and focus on the film's opening two acts, and skim over most of the final act. Yes, it's instructional to mull over what went wrong, but simply put, I don't need this much Hitchcock in the course.

Overall Grade: B

Up Next: 2001: A Space Odyssey.

2009-07-09T20:53:00.000-07:00

My Year in Film Studies (part two)

For those who missed it, part one is here.

Before continuing on with how I decided what to watch next, I want to quickly review what worked and didn't work about my use of Jerry Maguire for the courses opening act, and look at what I would do differently next time around

Was Jerry Maguire a success?

The film was certainly a solid choice if my sole purpose was to examine the conventional 3 act narrative structure in mainstream film storytelling, as we could observe how Crowe's film observed the requirements of each act in not one but two plotlines that were quite capably interwoven. Beyond that, the film also has plenty to recommend, it is at times funny, romantic mildly subversite and unflaggingly energetic. If they were perhaps a bit less than rapt, Jerry Maguire had little trouble capturing and holding both classes' attention, and was awarded a 3.5/5 rating by the class in a film-ending survey. However, it is interesting to note that by year's end the class had no trouble identifying the film's elemental filmsiness when comparing it to the many far more superior and significant films we enjoyed over the rest of the school year. In the year end survey, Jerry Maguire's rating slipped down to 3/5, and it was ranked at 19th best out of the 20 films we watched in their entirety. And lest you think I prejudiced the class with my feelings about the film, as you will see when we reach this point in the course, no amount of enthusiasm on my part was able to convince students of the remarkable achievement that I and most critics maintain.

What would I do differently?

Simply put, use a different film. Next year I will give Hitchcock's North by Northwest a try for a three reasons. One, it accomplishes the assigned task of portraying the standard narrative structure in mainstream film. Two, it is a better made film that JM, and Hitchcock is clearly a more accomplished technician and storyteller than Cameron Crowe. Three, I can replace many of the Hitchcock films I showed in the Auteur Theory portion of my course with those of another filmmaker (yet to be determined) instead.

Overall grade for Jerry Maguire and the Study of 3 Act Narrative Conventions: B

Next up: A look at how some filmmakers like to push convention's envelop in their storytelilng choices, while still acknowledging the demands of their chosen genre so we could also use this as a jumping off point to study the subject of film genres. The films in question? Christopher Nolan's Memento and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

Memento (USA, 2000, Christopher Nolan)

My rationale for choosing Christopher Nolan's remarkable sophomore effort Memento as my means into examining risk-taking storytelling must be self-evident to fans of the film. I wanted to choose a film that (a) plays with and challenges the narrative conventions we have just been studying (b) demands audience attentiveness (c) works firmly within at least one movie genre. Memento does this and so much more. Among it's many teacher-worthy aspects, Memento also boasts an appealing but extremely unlikeable narrator, a wicked (in the both senses of the word) plot twist and a deliciously indeterminate ending. The film begins with a bang, as our hero Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) dispatches his nemesis with a gun shot to the head. It becomes clear immediately that the situation is FUBAR, as blood starts running up the walls, and Leonard's Polaroid picture begins to un-develop before our eyes. As we adjust to the recognition that we are watching events play out in reverse (is that kid in the projection booth toking up again??) the film jumps into what appears to be some semblance of normalcy. But the feeling is fleeting, as the appearance of the murder victim from the previous scene alerts us to the fact that the story has looped back on itself, and is being told in reverse. Not in a frame-by-frame reverse of the opening scene, but rather in a scene by scene reverse trajectory. What a clever monkey this Nolan is, we think. But what of it? Is this just a clever gimmick to get us to pay more attention?

But wait, before we can answer these questions, what's happening now? The film has switched from colour to black and white. And it appears that these scenes are being in a chronologically "normal" fashion, in contrast to the rest of the film. These scenes seem to serve as back story, filling in the blanks of Lenny's story as he converses with an invisible stranger on the phone who most likely is the man he ends up murdering in the opening scene, police officer (?) Teddy Gammel, the always watchable Joey Pantoliano, aka Joey Pants. Also, before I forget, let me praise Pearce's fine work here. It easy to play a mental disability in a gimmicky way to gain audience sympathy, but Pearce does not of that sort of actorial mugging. His portrayal is nicely nuanced, as Leonard is a driven, distraught, confused and angry man seeking revenge for his wife's murder, and Pearce hits the notes cleanly, without resorting to any sort of heart-tugging tactics. But as we are going to learn later, perhaps we cannot believe everything we are learning here. That Nolan, such a cheeky monkey. Is he just trying to keep us on our toes, or does he have some deeper purpose?

And it seems just about everybody we are forced to reassess our initial impressions of everyone we meet. Leonard, a one-time insurance agent, suffers from short-term memory loss due to a head injury he suffered on the night of his wife's murder, and as a result, cannot retain information for more than 15 minutes. As a result, every time he meets someone it is for the first time, regardless of whether he has never seen them or has met them a dozen times before. So people get repeated chances to make a first impression, and consequently, we discover that those we thought helpful or kind could very well turn out to be devious, conniving, self-serving. And vice versa. Is the film trying to make us wary of our perceptions, and teach us to distrust the story as it plays out before us? If so, what could be the point?

And it is here that the film's cleverness proves to be so much more than that. Nolan uses these techniques not just out of playfulness or to draw attention to his cinematic wittiness, but for several and sundry reasons besides. Most obviously, Nolan forces us to see this world from Leonard's damaged perspective. As he struggles to gather and piece together the facts in pursuit of his wife's murderer from a distinctly disadvantaged perspective, so do we. His disability is ours. His frustrations are ours. It is a very crafty way to gain our empathy for Leonard. But more importantly, these techniques challenge our understanding of truth and reality, while not exactly in a Rashomon-like way, in its own unusual and provocative fashion. In Rashomon (as we will see in subsequent My Year in Film Studies entries) is a groundbreaking study of the subjectivity of our perceptions of reality. It posits that truth may be imperceptible to lowly humans due to the taint of personal biases and rationalizations. Self-interest and self-delusion go hand in hand in Kurosawa's great film, but we are often completely oblivious to this. So, is Nolan merely covering familiar ground, paying homage to the master in a modern American urban setting?

(A scene proving that Memento can be funny too)

I don't thing so. Here I must offer up a SPOILER ALERT for those of you who come to this review not having yet seen the film. In Memento, Nolan is tilling similar soil as Kurosawa, but reaping a slightly different crop. Leonard's difficulty in discovering the truth appears to be based on his inability to hold onto memories, a struggle that he meets by keeping copious notes, tattooing key information on his body and taking Polaroids pictures. As he cannot be certain of what has just happened, it seems that he cannot be accused of misrepresenting facts or twising the truth to suit his purpose, unlike the leads in Rashomon's drama. But like much in this film, things are not as they appear, and Nolan's point becomes clear only at the moment of the film's aforementioned wicked plot twist, where it becomes clear that Leonard's brain injury, while preventing him from holding new memories, does not prevent him from manipulating reality to suit his purposes. In fact, he is willing to pretty much obliterate truth in order to give himself a reason to carry on. While the film boast aspects of many film genres, include thriller, murder mystery and police procedure, in this moment Memento honours its film noir heritage. In a twist that causes us to not only reevaluate everything that has gone before, but also our own willful manipulation of truth in our daily lives, Memento has a desperately cynical conclusion that matches the mood and attitude of great noirs through the ages, from Double Indemnity through to Touch of Evil. The world is a rotten place, these films say, so you do whatever you need to do to keep a leg up on the decay. And since the real world isn't about to give you what you need, you take it. By any means necessary.

So, onto the evaluation. What worked?

Everything! As a study of narrative envelop-pushing, you don't get much more interesting than Memento, and as a study of working within the rigours of specific film genres, the film holds its own with aplomb.

What didn't work?

Nothing! The film was well-received--though I was careful to guide students through some of the film's more serpentine plot developments--and students were engrossed throughout. The film ended up as the 3rd ranked film out of 20 at the end of the year, and was given a rating of 4.5/5

What would I do differently? Nothing significant.

Overall Grade: A

Next up in part three: Hitchcock's Psycho

2009-07-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

Even Dwarves Get a Second Look: An Update

As part of Edward Copeland's week long look at the works of the works of Werner Herzog, he has posted a negative review of Even Dwarves Started Small, which provoked both Ben and I to leap to the film's defense. It has also led Ben to add a few thoughts onto our original review, and you can find these additions at the end of the original review, which is right here.