Keeping My Brain Alive

Lawrence of Arabia, the way it was meant to be seen

2009-11-18T21:43:00.005-05:00

It's been, years, since I last posted, and the desire to post has lessened with each of those passing days and months and yet, sadly, my desire to make flawless and well-thought out posts has not; a mean combination. As such, I promised myself I would do this one quick and dirty.

My return to posting has been motivated by none other than my re-watching of Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen at Bytowne! When I was first getting into classic cinema I always lamented about not getting the opportunity to watch three films on the big screen: Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Lawrence of Arabia.

The funny thing was that at the time I wasn't even a big fan of the film and yet still recognized that this was the type of film that could only be experienced in a darkened cinema. I first watched the film around 1999, the beginnings of my cinephilia, and at the time I found it boring and tedious. A few years later and the DVD-era had arrived and it was only a matter of time before a newly-restored fully uncut 222-minute version of the film was released on DVD. I decided to use this occasion to give the film another whirl. This time around, things began to crystallize, I started to realize that this wasn't simply a beautifully shot film with some boring obligatory biography/plot chunks spliced in, but an incredibly intimate character portrait, the complexity of which was beyond my comprehension during my first viewing. I happily purchased the DVD and devoured some of my favourite scenes over and over the only way I could, on my 27-inch television.

And then, last week when I realized that it would be playing again at Bytowne (for 3 days only!) I made sure that I was going to be there. And you wouldn't believe how disappointed I was when I thought that I was going to have miss it for one of my best friend's bachelorette party! I have to admit that some excuses briefly went through my head. Thankfully, I got the date's mixed up and I didn't have to make that decision in the end.

And so, as for this third and latest viewing: wow! I suppose its effect is evident enough in that it got me posting again after almost two years! Far and away my most satisfying viewing, visually and mentally. As for 4 hours being a long time? It wasn't long enough for me!

Even as I write this post days later, I'm still trying to figure out how Lean managed to make a film that was both supremely epic in its grandeur and scope and yet so psychologically complex. Before watching it I would have honestly thought that to mix such - seemingly - opposing elements in a single film wouldn't work well and to do either one well would be downright impossible. And yet, Lawrence performs both beyond just about any other film in history that has concentrated on just one. No wonder it had to be four hours long!

Epic, in every conceivable way.

Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess, 2004)

2009-01-03T22:08:00.005-05:00

THE WHERE:
Following dinner for our church's young adults group.

THE WHY:
Whoever was organizing had picked out the movie. I wasn't too disappointed as it was a movie I had been curious to see for awhile.

THE UGLY:
By the time I finally got around to watching Napoleon Dynamite – or was more accurately, forced to – I had already long been subjected to an endless string of context-lacking and seemingly banal ND quotes from various peers, most of whom’s cinematic tastes I found, suspect, to say the least. This cult-classic-mania fallout had admittedly conditioned me to expect yet another cookie-cut-juvenile-teenage film. And while its backers might still describe it as a juvenile-teenage flick, I can’t imagine even its sharpest detractors ever accusing it of being archetypal.

I was amazed not only by the film’s most noticeably unique brand of humour – a sharp contrast to the extremist gross-out comedies of today – but more strikingly by writer/director Jared Hess’s visionary direction of the film itself.

Napoleon is certainly a unique as far as comedic protagonists go. While he can be firmly categorized as a loser, unlike his other genre counterparts he never expresses any real longing to be part of the crowd and appears perfectly content being who he is. Neither does Hess shows any interest in dissecting or psychoanalyzing Napoleon’s behaviour to show it isn’t all a ploy.

The film’s unconventional narrative resembles a series of good ol’ high school “hey, remember back when…” anecdotes replete with such esoteric details as Tater Tots and reverse leg sweeps which don’t amount to an overall thesis, but certainly constitute or perhaps more importantly, evoke, what one might deem to be an experience.

Hess’s vision combined with the subtlety and restraint he displays in his direction are rare enough for any director in any genre, miraculous and unheard of in the world of teen comedies. You get the feeling that if this were a more “ambitious” (read: serious) film, critics would be falling over themselves dissecting the symbolism or metaphor of Pedro’s hair shaving, Napoleon’s dance moves or his love of ligers.

Unfortunately, ND’s strength ultimately proves to be its downfall. The film rests solely upon its unique vision and brand of humour, this uniqueness gives the film a fresh feeling, but with little else to sustain it, the shtick eventually gets old. We can only watch the characters stare blankly off into space so many times before it ceases to become effective – comedically or dramatically.

300 (Zack Snyder, 2007)

2007-04-27T05:01:00.002-04:00

THE WHERE:
At Silver City with Steph, Chan, Andrew and Krystle. We had originally planned to see the IMAX version but it was sold-out so we had to "settle" for good ol' 35mm.

THE WHY:
Trailers looked fantastic and I loved what Robert Rodriguez had done with Frank Miller's 300 spiritual predecessor, Sin City. Needless to say, I had high hopes.

THE UGLY:
Every scene in 300 is a beautiful mesh of – first and foremost – composition (thanks mostly to Frank Miller) and production design. Zack Snyder does an admirable job of infusing Miller’s stills with a beautiful sense of motion – most often of the slow variety. For a film that’s all style and no substance, you could certainly do worse than 300. That’s the good news. The bad news? It’s still all style and no substance.

Even in the realm of exciting and action-filled battles, 300 disappoints. I’d love to be able to say that it simply gets old, but truth be told, it’s never very exciting to start with. I was puzzled by how the battles which seemed most exciting (e.g. rhino attack, elephants, bombs) were only briefly shown, as if the budget for these scenes was cut halfway through post-production. All the fight scenes seem to blend together in a mish-mash of generic-looking enemies and Spartans with few identifying tactics or landmarks to make each battle distinct. The cinematography for the most part is also guilty of the same offense committed by many an action film cinematographer in our post Saving Private Ryan era: artificially creating a sense of chaos using a handheld shaky camera and shooting in close-ups. While Ryan popularized it by making good discerning usage of it, too many filmmakers since (Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring comes to mind) have tried and failed miserably to emulate it. All 300’s cinematography does is serve to replace a genuinely created sense of action created through exciting choreography and camera movements with an artificial and less satisfying (not to mention headache inducing and comprehension retarding) freneticism.

That said, 300’s most notable flaw seems to be that it lacks any sort of narrative drive, and not simply because we already know our valiant heroes are doomed to fail (if that’s all there was, we wouldn’t be able to watch our favourite films over and over). There is simply nothing here, to use my blog title, to keep our brains alive: no plot-driving action, no suspense, no three-dimensional character, and what little dialogue exists is either completely expositional or naively clichéd. A common grievance with action films is that they mash together a convoluted plot as a sorry excuse to string together a few highlight-reel scenes. I wish that could be said about 300, which makes no such token effort as it mercilessly cranks out one action sequence after another. Apart from their final heroic death, the order of any of the battles could be rearranged without taking away from the story because they all completely exist outside of it (which is to say that 70% of the movie exists outside of any narrative).

If the old adage is true, that conflict is the essence of narratives, then it’s pretty clear why 300 fails. The plot offers slim pickings as the majority of the film is taken up by random battles. And the only possible point of suspense: whether or not the Queen will be able to convince the council becomes a moot emotional point relative to the Spartans since the council’s decision will only affect the larger (more objective) mobilization of all of Greece and will not save the 300.

The Spartans themselves also pose a problem to the advancement of any sort of narrative. They are the most dedicated of soldiers, unwavering in their courage, loyalty to Leonidas, and cause. All this I can only assume was true, in which case, its undeniably admirable… and incredibly boring from a narrative and artistic point of view. Despite all its visual movement, the characters are faced with no moral/emotional conflicts and as such they might appear to be good or heroic, but from a storytelling perspective also causes them to seem inevtiably bland and undynamic.

Like a true Spartan warrior, Snyder’s film focuses on little else besides action, bodies, and battles, without time for moral/emotional conflicts or even self-gratifying revelling. I imagine Snyder himself tried to "immerse" himself in the time, place and mindset of the warriors. Unfortunately, it’s a role he should have left to his actors and focused more on his own role: making a compelling film.

Resources:

Why Jeffrey Overstreet won't see 300: Obviously not a review. Overstreet brings up an interesting point though which doesn't get aired very often. And I can certainly confirm his suspicions about the film lacking any real edifying meaning while flaunting sex and violence.
Trailer & Teaser: I suppose it makes sense. Seeing as how the film is simply a pastiche of iconic images, it might not make a great narrative film but it sure does make for amazing trailers and teasers! I prefer the teaser to the trailer personally...

2001: A Space Odyssey! In theaters! Again!

2007-04-20T14:25:00.000-04:00

Had to document it before I forget. Last Saturday, got to see Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey for the second time in my life on 35mm at the Bytowne (how lucky am I?!).

Krystle came with me and was - luckily - the catalyst for going again. She still had yet to see a Kubrick film and I told her, well, if you're going to see 2001 at all, this is the way it was meant to be seen: on a huge screen, in a darkened theater, Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra blaring at you!

Had to drop off the road bike for maintenance at Pecco's beforehand and ended up running late. We parked and ran to buy our tickets and fortunately made it inside just as the overture was finishing up. Since it's played over a completely black screen, we couldn't see a thing. Knowing that perhaps the greatest film opening in history was about to come on, I tried to hurry us into some seats in the front once we could see. Well, we made it to the front but couldn't find seats in time so we ended up crouching in the aisles for the intro. Ah, even those circumstances weren't able to ruin my love of that opening!

Dawn of Man: Wow, so many more details you can see on 35mm as compared to a 27-inch television screen. Beautiful. Without even trying to be pretentious, I can 100% honestly say that I don't remember the still shots in this section passing by so quickly. What a difference a few years make I guess. When I first watched it I think I started getting antsy after about the third "nature" shot which seemed to last an eternity. This time around, there was never enough time to appreciate each one. I think I've now seen this movie 6 times.

Sure you watch movies without speaking to other people, but there's something incredibly special about watching a trance-like film such as 2001 with a group of other people in the dark. In my mind, that is part of the magic of watching these types of films, that a couple hundred people can be completely silent while the also silent images of Frank hurtling through space or HAL terminating the life support systems are projected.

I love this film. What a trip indeed.

Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

2007-04-09T04:45:00.003-04:00

THE WHERE:
Watched it at home with Krystle as part of our weekly movie watching.

THE WHY:
I had never seen anything by Jean-Pierre Melville and of his films, Le Samouraï had always been at the top of the to-watch list. Even before becoming a serious cinephile I had been intrigued by the film, having heard its name cited along with Melville’s as major sources of inspiration by directors like John Woo and Quentin Tarantino.

THE UGLY:
Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï tanatalizes with the promise of cinematic greatness right from its opening shot: hitman Jef Costello (Alain Delon) lies in bed passively while a pensive quotation fades in overtop of the beautifully composed image, infusing us with the promise of a handsome-looking film with an equally handsome star (or is it vice versa?). Melville’s use of the long, still, single-take and “Book of Bushido” quote immediately lends the film an air of intellectual and artistic gravity.

John Woo has described the film as “nearly perfect”, and if Woo is referring to its directorial execution he is nearly right, it is perfect. Most of the fun in watching Le Samouraï lies in the novelty of having to interpret just about everything for yourself without the aid of clumsy expositionary dialogue, including and most notably, Costello’s state of mind thanks to Delon’s constantly impassive face which brings with it more than a hint of Robert Bresson. This decidedly cool, quiet and somber vision which Melville imposes on the film from its outset never wavers, period. The professionalism of Costello is perfectly reflected in that of his own directorial style. As Roger Ebert points out in his review, “there is nothing absolutely original in Le Samouraï except for the handling of the material”, but this in itself is so miraculous, so unique to the genre, that it definitively sets the film apart from any of its peers within the film noir/gangster genre.

The danger however with any novelty is that eventually, it grows old. And unfortunately for directors, the lifespan of their tricks are invariably and considerably shorter than the runtime of the feature films they choose to implement them in.

Le Samouraï‘s style belies that of an “art” film whose sole purpose is to plumb the depths of Jef Costello`s soul. To his credit, Melville is able to maintain this jig for a considerable length of time. But as the film wears on (specifically, past the extended police station scene) it becomes clearer by-the-scene that its controlled style is no more than a veneer. Style without substance. But whereas this bromide has traditionally been associated with kineticism (of the “hip” MVT music video kind), Melville’s appropriations are of the opposite sort.

The trouble appears to be a conflict of storytelling elements. It’s as if the director and cinematographer were told they were making an art film while the writers and editor believed they were making just another genre piece. Alain Delon’s Costello acts and is treated by the camera like a character directly lifted from a Bresson (i.e. art) film. And at a glance, the two directors’ usage of actors with impassive faces appear similar in look, their effects are dramatically different. Whereas Bresson would often hold shots for many seconds beyond what was required by the plot, Melville's hurriedly cut away as soon as the point is established. They are never held for that extra second or two that is paramount in allowing a shot to pass from being strictly functional into the realm of “art”.

The script compounds this sense of functionality by rooting all of Costello’s scenes firmly within the context of the overall plot and orienting them around the actions of his character. We are subjected to many stationary shots of Delon’s emotionless face: in the car as he tries the different keys, in the police lineup, the interrogation room etc. But none of these lend themselves to any psychological introspection given the easily inferred practicality associated with each of them: not wanting to draw attention to himself. And unfortunately for Melville’s artistic ambitions, Occam's razor applies even in the realm of film-watching. Is this not why Antonioni’s most psychologically probing works only came once he had “removed the bicycle from neo-realism” by re-casting his characters as rich socialites, removed from any practical considerations? Melville too has learned to remove any hints of sentimentality, but he has forgotten to replace it with anything else of substance. How appropriate is it that a little research reveals the film’s opening passage from the “Book of Bushido” as a fabricated quote and novel by Melville himself? Le Samouraï emulates all the style of the art film but little of its substance.

The lone moment in the film where it breaks free of its superficialities – if only for a brief moment – occurs as Costello flees his apartment after finding it bugged. The brief glance he gives to his bird (which alerted him to the bug) before leaving lasts but a second or two, but goes further towards humanizing his character than any of the more prolonged interactions he has with either his girlfriend or the lounge pianist (as Rosenbaum so brilliantly states: “Neither character can be said to interact with Costello in any way except iconographically; Melville can only cut away sheepishly from intimate moments between both couples, asking us to fill in the ill-defined blanks.”) That he only hesitates ever so slightly before leaving without it further underlines his character’s cold and calculated professionalism. It is a magnificently effective and efficient moment that is unfortunately neither preceded nor proceeded by any similar ones.

Resources:

Jonathan Rosenbaum's review: Refreshing to find a serious critic who isn't completely ga-ga over this film. Fantastic and succinct insights.
Roger Ebert's review

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)

2007-04-02T16:58:00.001-04:00

THE WHERE:
At home with Krystle as part of our weekly movie watching.

THE WHY:
Despite my general dislike for Altman - Gosford Park is a masterpiece, Nashville bored me and The Player was ok but nothing to get excited about - it was the one and only Pauline Kael who made this film a must see for me. An interviewer once joked that given Kael's strong opinions on film, who in their right mind would ever dare disagree with her? Kael laughed and replied that in reality she wasn't all that bad, but then in her typical fashion went on to say that she wasn't sure if she could ever be friends with anyone who didn't love McCabe & Mrs. Miller. And that was that.

THE UGLY:
A lot of love and devotion has gone into every aspect of the production of Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller: the costumes, the cinematography with its beautiful soft filters, the construction of the Presbyterian Church town etc. All too often accolades for production value of period pieces are mistaken for refinement or simple beauty when they should be given for the degree to which they allow the viewer to truly inhabit the time and place being depicted.

The look of M&M versus traditional Westerns is about as close as that of Blade Runner and traditional slick science fiction, which is to say, not at all. It certainly isn’t beautiful by any traditional standards: the picture is too dark and soft, and the characters themselves seem to always be bundled up in strictly functional – and as such, unflattering – clothing. The men are greasy and unkempt while even the harlots in the whorehouse are, well, nothing special to look at. But M&M does not merely look different, but brilliantly – if not “beautifully” – so. It’s hard to describe how effectively this is all done. Hollywood is certainly full of many able craftsmen whom are able to reproduce depressingly blue overcast skies or muddy streets, but these intangibles are captured to such a degree here that we not only see but experience these unrefined elements weighing on and trying us as they do the characters in the film.

It's a shame that none of this devotion is translated to the treatment of the actual storytelling elements of the film.

At a tribute for the recently deceased Altman, his son Rick described him as “not so much a lover of truth as a hater of lies.” A more succinct summary of his approach in telling M&M there never was. Its ending and numerous threads within the film seem devoted to countering the conventions of the traditional western, and even Altman himself described it as an “anti-western”. That’s all great and original, but the next question is, to what effect?

The film seems to exist for no other reason than to be iconoclastic. It may be called “McCabe & Mrs. Miller”, but Altman isn’t able to resist his auteur-ish callings and ends up dividing his time equally between the eponymous couple and his typical menagerie of characters. The difference here is that unlike say Gosford Park or Nashville, M&M is not your typical ensemble piece. The pros of the ensemble film are by definition mutually exclusive to those of the protagonist-driven film, and yet Altman tries to have his cake and eat it too. This results in an overall weakening effect on both. The relationship between McCabe & Mrs. Miller seems, well, non-existent to tell you the truth. Some critics may choose to use the word ‘subtle’, but I certainly don’t see it. The quantum leap transition in the dynamics of their relationship from screwball to repressed longing is so sudden and seemingly forced that it's almost laughable.

No filmmaker in history from past to present has yet come up with a technique to quickly yet subtly depict a blossoming relationship, and thank goodness for that. This is of course why masters like Ozu and Hou are still relevant to this day. Altman knows these rules (having learnt that from the master himself, Renoir). And having said that, one has to wonder what he was thinking in trying to tell such a subtle love story – of sorts – while splitting equal screen time with scenes that are so emotionally and tonally different in their utter nihilism: Shelly Duvall stabbing her client, her husband being killed, the entire thread involving the young cowboy, the hitman etc. And it’s the inclusion of all these nihilistic elements that is troubling to me, not simply because they disrupt any sort of continuity that might have existed in the McCabe & Mrs. Miller thread, but because of their seeming existence for no other reason than to cynically oppose the traditional image of the Western.

The interesting thing about this stance is how “unfair” it is. Altman isn’t attempting to “say” anything morally reprehensible in the film by making an anti-western. One might even make the argument that he’s doing a service by setting the record straight about the “real” west. But this is film and art, not a historical document, and M&M is certainly not a documentary.

This brings up an interesting issue regarding morality and art. Moral arguments are not “fair” insofar as they say that there is really nothing wrong with a film whose only purpose is to entertain and bring joy (trite and excessive manipulation aside) but a film whose only intent is mean-spirited nihilism is bad. Despite its relative lack of any excessive profanity, sex, or violence, M&M seems to fit the latter. A few moments aside, it seems to not simply document but revel in Altman’s immorally revised West. Unlike some of his other ensemble pieces where his technique of the floating camera allows him to subtly get away with tangentially showing immoral things without any subconscious moral retribution on that part of the viewer – and thus giving the impression of documenting rather than propagandizing – M&M is completely unmasked because of its aforementioned split focus on Beatty and Christie’s characters. There is no logical preceding action to things like Shelley Duvall’s stabbing of the patron, her old husband being killed and most reprehensibly, the young cowboy being shot in cold blood etc. They feel expressly invented and we cut to them for the explicit reason of seeing their actions so that we might be left with a revisionist idea of the west. In reality, I found them to be more masochistic than informative, more mind-numbing than thought-provoking.

This nihilism is made ever more clear by the ending which is only redeemed by Altman’s fantastic visual storytelling. The unconventionality of the film up to that point adds to the suspense of every sequence. Unlike a regular Western where – deep down inside – we know that good will triumph over evil, in M&M our expectations are circumvented at every bend that it seems anything really could be possible.

M&M may still look and feel like a maverick film by one of the most well-known maverick filmmakers, but it seems to me that when one finds themselves as the lone dissenter for the sake of being different rather than for the love of truth, “curmudgeon” becomes the more appropriate word.

And You Call Yourself a Cinephile?!

2007-02-26T00:26:00.001-05:00

There's definitely a direct correlation between how deep you get into the study of film as an art and the overbearing pride and pretentiousness of the critics involved. Everyone loves to believe that they know it all. I'm no different.

Therefore I found it extremely interesting when I happened upon cinephile Andy Horbal's interesting little exercise over at his blog. Using the list of the 1000 Greatest Films Ever Made (from They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?) he compiled a list of the top 50 films he had not yet seen. Not a bad idea at all. This subculture could sure use a reality check with a bit of humility on the side.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had at least seen the top 15 films on the list. This spurred me to compile my own list. Only upon doing this did I realize how exponentially worse things got as I progressed past the 50's or 60's. Long streaks of unseen films. Oh well. This is the whole point of the exercise isn't it?

Final count was somewhat disappointing: 39 unseen films out of the top 100. That said, lists are lists and the attempt to mathematically compile them to produce any sort of master is always bound to fail. But enough of my own disclaimers, here it is in all of its anti-glory (preceding number indicates its ranking):

16) L'Atlante
24) ~~Les Enfants du Paradis~~
28) Sunset Blvd.
34) Persona
38) Andrei Rublev
41) Ordet
47) Ugetsu Monogotari
48) ~~400 Blows~~
49) Contempt
52) Night of the Hunter
55) The Wild Bunch
58) The Conformist
59) La Strada
61) The Mirror
62) Fanny and Alexander
64) Greed
67) Rio Bravo
69) Sherlock, Jr.
71) Playtime
72) L'Age d'Or
73) Ikiru
74) All About Eve
75) Voyage in Italy
76) The Apartment
77) Viridiana
78) ~~Aguirre: The Wrath of God~~
81) ~~Pierrot le Fou~~
82) Man with a Movie Camera
83) Blue Velvet
84) Nosferatu
85) The Leopard
87) Once Upon a Time in the West
89) Sansho Dayu
91) Last Year at Marienbad
95) Letter from an Unknown Woman
96) King Kong
97) Amarcord
99) Stagecoach
100) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)

2007-02-19T22:28:00.001-05:00

THE WHERE:
At home with Krystle and Jason as part of weekly movie watching (Jason's last one with us before heading back to Australia for school).

THE WHY:
Recently bought a three-disc set of Alfred Hitchcock's early films and hadn't yet touched it. We were having trouble deciding films so we did the logical thing: RPS! It was a showdown between The 39 Steps, Peeping Tom, and Springtime in a Small Town. You can guess which film won.

THE UGLY:
Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps starts off with a bang, both figuratively and literally. From the opening scene's mysterious gunshot we are quickly plunged into a classic thriller world: the introduction of the quasi-femme fatale shortly followed by the innocent (but more importantly, handsome and charming) accused leading man. There is more than a touch of classic Hitchcock here: the lady's scream which cuts to the train whistle as she discovers the dead body, the linking of sex and violence most notably in the brassiere talk on the train, and most noticeably, the MacGuffin, which Hitchcock hilariously - in retrospect - manages to squeeze not only into the film, but into the very title of the film itself!

I was immediately impressed with how compelling and expeditious (a good thing for a thriller!) the majority of the early scenes feel thanks in large part to the dynamism they're infused with via the inclusion of additional elements independent of the primary action: In the scene where Annabella (Lucie Mannheim) attempts to explain her situation to Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), rather than simply shooting a simple shot-reverse shot dialogue scene Hitchcock adds a sprightly element to it all by having Annabella deliver her monologue while Hannay runs back and forth from the fridge. Hannay's otherwise simply suspenseful eluding of his pursuers gets an added comedic kick from the pro-infidelity banter that goes on between him and the milkman - which comes back much later with the innkeeper's wife. Similarly, while on the train, his suspenseful reading of the paper is intercut with the aforementioned brassiere talk (not to mention a brilliant Hitchcock-ian POV shot of one of the caboose mates staring at Hanny over his paper). The list goes on and on: At the cottage, the suspense of hiding is mixed with his and the country man's wife's hiding of their attraction to each other and Hannay's later attempt to get her to come with him. His city hall speech is also a major highlight as a lighter sort of mistaken identity requires him to improvise a speech he doesn't know the subject to all while the authorities close in on him. And lastly, the comparatively and decidedly more auteur-ish Hitchcock scene where the man with the missing finger delivers a very calm and deliberate death sentence for Hannay juxtaposed with his increasingly frantic glances at the door. And like the old joker he is, Hitchcock subverts these expectations by having Hannay shot before he even makes what should have been a much-anticipated run-for-it.

If it seems that I'm simply mentioning every single scene chronologically, it's because I am. All of these early scenes are expertly crafted, entertainingly written and as suspenseful as many other of Hitchcock's more well-known scenes. All the pieces appear to be in place for the makings of a classic. How ironically appropriate that the film's downfall proves to coincide with the appearance of a woman.

At approximately, OK, exactly at the point where Hannay and Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) become chained together in the car and as a result are given the chance to speak to each other, the film loses all sense of urgency. It is precisely at this point where the focus becomes less on escaping, on the tension, suspense and impending doom than with Hannay's desire to tell Pamela "I told you so". At this point, the film takes a dramatic - or comedic to be exact - paradigm shift from thriller to screwball comedy. The characters shed all apprehension of being caught and their primary objective shifts from escaping their pursuers to simply trading witty barbs.

The entire (very) extended sequence lacks any sort of urgency that all the preceding scenes have conditioned us to come to expect. Everything comes grinding to a halt and even Pamela's half-hearted threats to reveal Hannay's true identity are never taken seriously by him, much less the audience. They add nothing to the rest of the film. No information is revealed and when one considers it, the film could have easily cut this entire sequence right up until Pamela's eavesdropping without losing a thing, plot-wise. And because nothing ever comes of Hannay's and Pam's relationship - as the film shortly ends after they come to an understanding anyways - even the establishment of their relationship is ultimately meaningless.

The comedy of these scenes is entertaining enough on their own but appear to exist outside of the 45 minutes that preceded them. This complete turnabout is interesting in retrospect looking at Hitchcock's pictures because it wouldn't be the one and only time he would attempt such a shift.

In Psycho, he pulled off perhaps the most famous of these stunts by shockingly killing off Janet Leigh right near the beginning of the film. In Vertigo , what starts off as a suspenseful detective story mystery takes just as sudden and jarring a dramatic and psychological turn to seriousness. Explaining why these latter shifts (which come from two of his most famous and acclaimed films) succeeded where 39 Steps fails has to do with our natural expectations of a story arc. In order to maintain interest, a story must not only be non-stagnant, but continue to supplement itself with evermore dramatic or compelling elements.

Even the best of films which don't follow traditional story arcs follow this universal structure. No great suspense film in history - that I can think of - was ever made where the tension is continually lessened as the movie progresses and yet this is precisely what occurs in The 39 Steps. It would - from a cognitive standpoint at least - have made more sense for the elements to have been switched around but instead Hitchcock throws in the screwball comedy bit last, and for an unbearably long period despite the film's short running time. Even classic screwball comedies like It Happened One Night, Bringing up Baby, and His Girl Friday only up the ante as the plots chug along. Meanwhile The 39 Steps comes brilliantly sprinting out of the gates: a femme fatale, a murder, a wrongly accused man on the trail of an international conspiracy etc. before hitting the proverbial wall and dragging its feet for the remainder of the film.

The 39 Steps is more than historically fascinating Hitchcock. It can easily stand on its own without any condescending support from retrospective auteur-focused critics. The string of early sequences are as good as any he ever directed. It is only the screwball comedy scenes, which in themselves may be entertaining, but when contrasted with the first half are so comparatively mediocre that they tarnish the overall brilliance of the film, so much so that by the time the mystery is solved, it has lost most if not all of its suspense-induced joy, along with a fantastic shot at being a true classic.

All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)

2007-02-01T17:40:00.001-05:00

THE WHERE:
At home on DVD with Krystle and Jason as part of our little weekly movie watching club.

THE WHY:
After having been blown away with Pedro Almodóvar's Volver two weeks before, I was anxious to see more his work. All About My Mother seemed like a natural choice given that it was one of his most highly acclaimed films and it also starred Penélope Cruz - albeit in a supporting role. The film also appeared to be a decent gauge for me to judge how enthusiastically I would pursue watching the rest of Almodóvar's works. I was aware that as much as I adored Volver - and saw it as sufficient evidence alone to merit calling Almodovar a great filmmaker - it was not as characteristic of his earlier and "edgier" films to say the least.

THE UGLY:
Read enough movie reviews and you'll inevitably encounter someone using Howard Hawks' classic definition of a great film: 3 great scenes, no bad ones. They do this not only because it's succinct and catchy, but because - despite the complexity of any art form - it usually works! I myself rarely go more than a few films without Hawks' old bromide popping into my head during reflection. And while no one would be foolish enough to uphold any "theory" as any absolute, the effectiveness of Hawks' "rule" is so logical and seemingly foolproof that when you find a rare exception it warrants a bit of investigating. Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother is such an exception.

The film certainly has no shortage of great scenes and not a single one that I can honestly discount as "bad". Just as in Volver (the only other film of his I've seen), every scene is a model of intelligent and/or compassionate writing on the part of Almodóvarwho continues to amaze me with his uncanny ability to write effective yet natural-sounding dialogue. And once again his all-female cast delivers an altogether flawless ensemble performance, no doubt thanks in part to his delicate and loving direction. Each scene is infused with such warmth - and I'm not simply talking about his characteristic palette of cinematographic colours - that is derived from a palpable sense of director who truly cares for his characters and is able to extend that sentiment beyond the screen.

Manuela (a fantastic performance by Cecilia Roth) may be the protagonist and surrogate mother to all the characters of the film but the title might just as well be applied to Almodóvar himself as the ultimate mother hen, proudly showing off his surrogate daughters in the characters of Manuela, Rosa and Agrado. As great as their performances are, one gets the sense that the real star of this film is Almodóvar. He sympathizes with them in their weakness (Rosa) and exalts with them in their triumphs (Agrado's theater monologue). Certainly no one could accuse or mistake him for a cynical director or Mother as a remotely cynical film. And yet he is sure to balance the drama within each scene so that it doesn't spillover into anemic melodrama. Where tears are shed by characters - and there are plenty of occasions - the tears are validated by their earnest portrayals and by Almodóvar's discrete direction.

Even scenes involving minor characters such as Huma or Nina whom lack this emotionally compelling component are redeemed by their thematic links to the film's overall theme of motherhood. One would be remiss in not mentioning this decidedly more "intellectual" component to Almodóvar's artistic contribution to the film. He is not simply content here to tell a nice story about some nice women, but to make a clear statement that extends beyond the diegetic world of the film and addresses the various roles of women and motherhood that he engineers into the plot: Manuela-Agrado, Agrado-Huma, Huma-Nina etc. And just to make sure the simpletons don't miss out on these "finer points", Almodóvar makes his thematic intentions unmistakably clear via the film's very title: All About My Mother.

I seem to be moving backwards. Not only have I established the film's scenes as being all emotionally compelling but on top of that, noted their "greater" intellectual and societal value. Entertaining and with something to say? Most films dare only try to achieve one of these goals and even they usually struggle and fail. What could possibly be wrong?

Three great scenes and no bad ones.

The problem with Hawks' definition has nothing to do with any loopholes, but its scope. Its very outlook implies that a feature film is nothing more than a collection of individual scenes with no proprietary attributes of its own as a whole. To put a twist on a another old saying, the whole is the sum of its parts. Of course we know this to not be true. And in fact, the act of editing together various stories and scenes is not only the one artistic element of filmmaking belonging exclusively to the medium (as opposed to being borrowed from literature, music, or photography), but ever since the earliest days of narrative cinema and D.W. Griffith, we've seen that this act can add immeasurable value to a film, or take away from it.

Watching All About My Mother one gets the tangible impression that Almodóvar is trying too hard to give his film added resonance and relevance via the aforementioned metaphors and allegories. Before we are five minutes into the film we're met with two garish allusions: Manuela and Esteban watching All About Eve on the television, and the play A Streetcar Named Desire which they attend. The problem of course with such an approach to artistry is that in order to be effective, elements such as symbolism or metaphors must appear to blossom naturally from the story and the characters themselves, not created for the expressed purpose of. If this were not the case then there would be no need for words such as "allegory", we could simply recount the underlying meanings themselves which would be indisputably more precise and it wouldn't take an hour and forty minutes to do either. We would have no need for art, only social scientists and essays. Instead, when we say that we desire art that deals with issues such as motherhood or transvestitism, we do not mean that we would like the world's foremost scholars on the subject to attempt to make a film, but for filmmakers who have a natural inclination and passion for the subject to tell stories that may relate to it. Mother feels more like the former, like a child who jams the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to fit his/her own picture rather than placing them where they naturally fit.

Certainly history has seen a plethora of films that have failed because they set their artistic sights too high (or set any artistic sights at all for that matter!), but Mother is unique among these in that the majority of them usually don't even pass Hawks' test. They usually contain a multitude of bad scenes, bad not so much because the writer and/or director are trying to "make a point" but because in being so intensely focused on that, the characters, writing and direction suffer. Ironically, despite Almodóvar being the writer and director of the film, these blunders he makes in the plotting of the film do not spillover at all into his dialogue or direction. The result is more disjointing than anything. For example, the characters of Huma and Nina are exceedingly shallow and exist for no other reason then to enhance the mother-daughter theme of the film, and yet all their individual scenes are directed, written and acted with such care that in retrospect it's hard to believe that the man wrote these archetypal characters into the script is the same one showing them such love and compassion in his direction.

This effect is only further enhanced by Manuela's presence, or lack thereof at some points. By doing such a fine job of creating as complex a character as Manuela and emotionally investing us in her plight, tangential scenes involving Agrado or Huma and Nina seem exceedingly shallow and irrelevant in direct comparison.

Agrado in particular is a wonderfully developed and entertaining character, but amounts to little more than a goofy sidekick and Almodóvar's tribute to transvestitism. The scene at the theater where she wins over the audience is certainly a "great" scene: concisely written, entertaining, well-delivered and incredibly uplifting. But it seems to exist more as social propaganda (where the word 'propaganda' is not even inherently bad) than blossom naturally. In fact, one could even view her entire character as a microcosm of the film's seemingly contradictory problems.

Almodóvar's manipulation of time is equally puzzling and disjointing. At multiple points in the film, weeks and months are skipped at a time. We are shown something only long enough to logically understand what is going on but not nearly long enough to feel what is going on. Satisfying one of Almodóvar's goals while simultaneously diluting the other. It all seems rather backwards for a film that falls firmly into the genre of melodrama which emphasizes emotion over all else. These jumps only serve to call attention to how contrived the plot of the film is, particularly as it pertains to the relationship between Manuela and Rosa and most incredulously to the film's ending where Manuela leaves and returns to Barcelona in literally a single shot at which point we're told that her little Esteban has neutralized the AIDs virus completely. How convenient.

Given all the preceding convoluted mechanism, it's a real testament to the actors and to Almodóvar's direction that they're able to sell any of the later scenes at all. But as compelling, empathetic and sympathetic as Cecilia Roth's heartfelt portrayal of Manuela is, even her virtuoso performance eventually becomes overwhelmed by the machinations of the plot that elevate her above and beyond the cinematic angelic status of even George Bailey. Oh Almodóvar does his best to justify it all with the loss of her son - which leaves her a natural inclination to act as a surrogate mother - and by having his film take place in a decidedly more "gritty" and unconventional world than a typical Hollywood film, but in the end it's all a little too convenient. Once you peel away these misdirective layers, Manuela is really about as saintly and idealized a character as Hollywood has ever thrown at us and the plot of Mother as similarly and simply optimistic. Perhaps a more appropriate title for the film would have been "It's a Wonderful Mother".

The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988)

2007-01-31T02:59:00.004-05:00

THE WHERE:
At home, as part of the weekly movie watching club with Jason and Krystle.

THE WHY:
Beyond the obvious amalgamated appeal in being a Christian who appreciates movies as an artform I cover my reasons pretty well in...

THE UGLY:
Beyond the immediate religious and moral introspection that inevitably accompanies the viewing of a film like The Last Temptation of Christ, came to me the realization of how artistically underused the sub-genre of the epic is. This is not to say that films which merely borrow epic stories but are really no more than visual spectacles are bad (who doesn't love a good show?), only that these deeply saturated stories are maybe not being as psychologically wrung out as they could be.

Perhaps the problem is an inherent one. Epic stories after all are defined by their highly significant events and achievements that take place on such a grand scale that intricate details such as emotion and psychology can't help but be overwhelmed. This is true of even our everyday lives: will my penalty shot go in? Will the girl I'm asking out say yes? These are questions that concern themselves with only the pragmatic outcome of a situation, and yet more fascinating than the often uncontrollable consequences of these actions is the mental, emotional and in many cases spiritual struggles we experience leading up to these decisive moments. The addition of an epic background to a character or story serves to elevate not only the stakes and physical scale of a story but also the resulting psychological burden weighing on its characters.

This might suggest why the war sub-genre - which naturally shares many qualities with the epic - has remained such a fascinating topic for serious filmmakers. Directors such as Stanley Kubrick (Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket), Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now), and Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line) have all used war as a backdrop to examine the inscrutable psychosomatic pressures it places on human beings. Everyone is faced with pressures and temptations everyday, but in war, the consequences of our reactions are amplified exponentially. How does a human being psychologically deal with being suddenly placed in a position where his actions could directly influence whether or not a person, a squad, or even an entire platoon lives or dies? How much more unfathomable and interesting then is the life of Jesus Christ, being subjected to the pressure of knowing that he held upon his both Godly and human shoulders the salvation of not only one or two people, but of all mankind, and not merely their lives, but their eternal souls? Do we now see why the truly epic story of Jesus can be considered a valuable work of art and perhaps "the greatest story ever told" even by some non-Christians?

Like so many other epic stories, the actions and consequences of Christ's story most often take precedence over psychology. Most filmic depictions of Jesus treat him as if he were solely a Godly creature, incapable of sin. Even in films that graphically depict Jesus’ all-too-human physical suffering such as The Passion of the Christ, one still comes away with the impression that he was psychologically impervious to not only sin but the very notion of temptation itself.

This is where The Last Temptation of Christ steps in and obtains its raison d'être, speculating on this seldom addressed aspect of Christianity: the struggles, trials and tribulations Jesus must have faced as a man with the same desires and temptations as everyone else without the luxury of slipping up, even once. A psychological epic which, by exposing Jesus’ doubts and fears to us, allows us to empathize and thus admire his eventual sacrifice even more than if he were simply God and was not subject to any of these human follies.

It’s ironic then that given the film and novel’s purported purpose, its greatest fault is that the character of Jesus is completely un-relatable, and palpably manipulated from high above, not by God but by Scorsese and the screenplay. Right from its outset, the film is about as subtle as a sledgehammer in presenting Jesus as a pathetic young man, making crosses for the Romans to crucify his own people in the hopes that by doing so God will hate him and leave him alone. There is no mistaking that this ain’t your momma’s Jesus.

This criticism has less to do with the authenticity of Jesus’ portrayal than with the simple filmic plausibility of the character and his motivations. When reviewers criticize Hollywood endings for being overly “sentimental”, they are not arguing that happy endings are inherently bad, but that these films have not earned their desired sentiment and have only achieved it through callous emotional manipulation. Even if one of these Hollywood endings were actually based on a true story, it would not make the film anymore artistically defensible as it is not so much a matter of absolute but emotional truth.

In Temptation, Jesus is not only completely indifferent to God but also to his fellow man. He acts only out of fear and has no compassion for humanity, only “pity”. Again, this is not so much morally reprehensible as it is empathetically unidentifiable. There is no artistic value in portraying a man who willingly sacrifices himself for the sake of parties he is scornful towards. And again, I am not speaking of pragmatic but emotional logic. We can all admire and understand a soldier who is afraid to be on the frontline and yet remains there because he believes in the cause. We can even empathize and learn from the soldier who believes in the cause and yet runs away out of fear. The artistry lies in the conflict and its reconciliation. But what are we to make of a soldier who is afraid to fight, is indifferent to the cause, but martyrs himself on its behalf regardless? Even with fear as a motivating factor, the Jesus of this film still resembles a sympathetic automaton at best. An ox may plough a field by instilling in it a fear of being whipped and we may feel sympathy for it, but if that is all there is to the story than it remains shallow at best, irresponsible and merely masochistic at worst (accusations that The Passion of the Christ has been charged with).

In a narrative film, character and plot should be inextricably linked and yet in Temptation they are hopelessly compartmentalized. That the plot still adheres to the established overarching progression of Jesus’ life only serves to further compound this problem of identification. The depiction of his miracles come across as more of an pre-requisite for "a Jesus film" and to history than it does as proof of his filmic growth as a character, much less his character’s spiritual growth. Jesus’ miracles such as the driving out of demons, the curing of the blind man, the raising of Lazarus etc. are haphazardly thrown in with no psychological or emotional connection to the character we are faced with in the scenes preceding and/or succeeding them. And while in and of itself, the penultimate scene where Jesus begs God the Father to place him back on the cross is quite moving, it is also manipulative and inconsistent with the – already unbelievable – character we have been subjected to throughout the film. Appropriately, the worst offence comes in the final scene where the film invokes what must be the most outrageous case of deus ex machina ever to successfully dupe the critics when Jesus begs God for forgiveness, instantly finds himself back on the cross, dies, and the film ends, all within the span of about one minute. Is there any question as to the extent to which such an ending would have been savaged by these same critics had it occurred in a commercial Hollywood film of less lofty ambitions?

The Last Temptation of Christ stands not as a more complete or superior telling of Jesus’ life as compared to the “kiddy” versions, but as an inferior counterpoint that is even less complex spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. The film may provide a balance of sorts to the entire oeuvre of Jesus films, but in itself its nihilism places it further from the center - and in the opposite direction - than the most conservative of these other works. While it is unquestionably an “original” and “daring” work, these catchwords should not be confused or made synonymous with the attributes of quality or worth – despite society’s tendency to do so.

It's ironic that spectacular failures such as Temptation are most often the films that expose the seemingly contradictory nature of any system critics utilize in attempting to rate art empirically: Temptation is certainly not a great movie – nor a good movie for that matter – and yet I would not trade the experience of having watched it for a number of other “better made” films such as The Passion of the Christ. It is a thought-provoking film in that it provides a new perspective on the life of Jesus, but only in an inevitable tangential manner due solely to the plot – and I am not in the business of reviewing treatments or scripts nor of awarding bonus points for ambition, but of analyzing films as a whole. Let us not mistake thought-provoking ideas with thought-provoking movies. Temptation's worth is completely reliant upon its uniqueness. First place means very little when there is no one to compete with.

Perhaps the only saving grace that is solely inherent to the film - as opposed to being indebted to the novel and its ideas - is Peter Gabriel’s powerfully moving ethnic-themed score which repeatedly gives the film its best chance to transcend its otherwise cynical and pedestrian scale and achieve a befitting near-epic atmosphere, most notably during Christ’s crucifixion where Scorsese wisely allows it to dominate the scene.

Apart from the score, the few positive scenes or qualities of the film worth mentioning are all - unsurprisingly - of a more subtle and plain nature. The most significant event of the wedding scene as it pertains to the theme of the film is not the miracle of Jesus turning the water into wine, but rather the brief scene following it where he is seen dancing among the crowd. Scorsese is sure to focus his camera in on Jesus' joyous face, lost in the moment and momentarily free of all worries. It is a brief and subtle shot, but it does more to humanize him than any of the melodramatic doubting scenes that precede it. More significantly, it allows the film to display not only the follies of humanity Jesus was subject to, but its many innocent pleasures as well, dispelling any intellectual notions one might have had of him as being a monk-like figure who simply ate, slept, prayed and preached all day. Even otherwise normally subconscious touches such as having Jesus being disgusted by the smell emanating from Lazarus' tomb take on significance when viewed against the prevailing unshakably serene depictions of him. Is this not a more realistic portrayal of how Jesus might have reacted versus one in which he is completely unfazed by the stench of a rotting corpse? Is having a sense of smell not also a characteristic of the flesh?

It is fitting that the only scene which effectively captures the metaphysical struggles of Christ is his final one on the cross as he is tempted by the devil to escape his own martyrdom. It is only here at the film's climax that we come to finally and fully realize both the appropriateness and irony of the concept of temptation as it pertained to Christ's life. The devil does not attempt to deceive Jesus by tempting him with sex, drugs and rock & roll, but the simple promise of a normal life: to marry, settle down, have children, and grow old - the sort of "boring" life which the average person takes for granted and becomes accustomed to. The epiphany that comes with the realization that Jesus not only faced the same temptations as any other human, but was required to abstain absolutely from all of them, even those as innocent as a longing for a sedentary life, is deeply moving emotionally and spiritually. Appropriately, the eponymous last temptation of Christ serves not only as the film's most powerful and effective moment but also as an indication of the point at which the film begins to finally payoff on its potential. Unfortunately, by this point there are only a few minutes left in the film and unlike Jesus in the film, no manner of divine begging is capable of making us forget that the two hours preceding these scenes were not a dream, but a spectacularly disappointing reality of failed promise.

Resources:

Review - Decent Films (Steven Greydanus): While I disagree with Greydanus' opinion of the film being a complete washout, his is the best of the few pieces I was able to find that actually address its content rather than its controversy.

Rules of the Game!! Rules of the Game!! 35mm Restoration!!!

2007-01-13T02:30:00.000-05:00

At long last, I'll get to see one of the greatest films ever made in history on the big screen and in the best theater in all of Ottawa! A newly restored 35mm print of Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir's 1939 masterpiece is coming to the Bytowne in February. Religiously found on every respectable best-of-all-time film list. It's the only film to have made it on every single edition of Sight & Sound's critics poll taken once a decade, coming in 10th, 3rd, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd. Wow! Can you say timeless indeed?

Just seeing the few snippets of the film shown during the trailer (before Volver) had me jumping up and down in my chair, giddy with anticipation. Perhaps the most efficient way to describe my excitement would be to say that I gave Volver a full four stars, and yet the highlight of my night was still simply being able to watch that trailer in a darkened theater, and having its memorable images overwhelm me all over again. If that's an indication of anything, I can't imagine how excited I'll be come opening night, watching this masterpiece along with all the other hardcore Rules/Renoir fans. (Official re-release site with higher quality trailer)

Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, 2006)

2007-01-09T23:28:00.002-05:00

THE WHERE:
At the Bytowne to a surprisingly packed house (the first I'd experienced in awhile) with Krystle as part of our weekly movie-watching.

THE WHY:
I had never seen an Almodóvar film and Krystle was a huge fan. Volver had seemingly gotten unanimously great reviews. And to be honest, I'm sure the biggest reason why I agreed to see this film was because of how gorgeous Penélope Cruz looked in the trailer.

THE UGLY:
"Dames. Sometimes all they gotta do is let it out and a few buckets later there's no way you'd know." -Marv, Sin City

History has not treated the melodrama well. These days the very word evokes negative connotations of bad soap operas (a redundant term?). While the definition of the melodrama - "a virtuous character who finds himself or herself in distress due to circumstances not his or her fault. It is not the events in themselves that are emphasized, but the feelings that characters undergo. Their analysis of intricate and perplexing situations and resulting moral discriminations is highlighted, rather than the doing of good deeds" (1) - does not imply anything intrinsically maudlin, it offers a hint as to how it came to be looked as such. Melodramas essentially share the same inherent audience problems as most "art films" in that they eschew narrative and plot, the one element people have come to expect of a film. Is it any surprise that somewhere along the line directors, perhaps due to their own insecurities or lack of faith in the audience, began "punching-up" their films with the various cinematic devices that we've perversely become conditioned to derisively recognize as staples of the genre: over-the-top performances, histrionic fits of crying and self-pity, swelling music, Gone with the Wind-like "I'll never go hungry again!" speeches, kitschy affairs and murders up the wazoo.

On the surface, Pedro Almodóvar's Volver appears to be just another one of these bad melodramas. One of the first things that struck me about the film was the sheer number of scenes in which a character could be found crying. I can't recall another film with even half as many comparable occasions. But the very next thing I noticed was the manner in which Almodóvar was constructing these scenes. They lacked any of the aforementioned emotional punch-up or cinematic devices. He plays every single one as innocently as you could possibly imagine, foregoing not only an attempt to elicit tears from the audience but any sympathy at all! For these two event to coincide in any movie would be a significant occurrence, for it to occur within a melodrama is unheard of, and for it to occur repeatedly within a single melodrama is well, miraculous, and Volver is truly a miraculous touching and poignant work of as assured a director as I've ever seen.

The brilliance of Volver begins and ends with its beautifully etched all-female cast of characters. Take the character of Raimunda played by the radiant Penélope Cruz - who seems much more at home speaking her native tongue - in a film already full of weepers, she weeps the most, and yet comes off as one of the strongest most complex female characters I can recall in recent times. If this statement seems at all contradictory then that right there is a testament to how closed our cinematic minds have become, where women must be soft-hearted sentimentalists or cold-hearted bitches. The exclusive depiction of Malibu Stacy-like characters may be an inaccurate portrayal of women, but equally so are the un-sexed figures of a G.I. Jane. Almodóvar depicts Raimunda's tears not as a sign of weakness but as tribute to her encompassing empathy and feminine bond that she shares with her family and close friends. When she first finds Paco dead in the kitchen, she weeps and takes a moment to comfort Paula but "a few buckets later" she "goes to work" cleaning up the pools of blood around his body in the same determined manner she does at her job which is brilliantly illustrated in the two montages which compliment each other wonderfully. Raimunda's figurative wearing of different hats as a woman are further entrenched by the recurring symbol of the knife which we first see her clean as a dutiful wife washing the dishes, then again as she cleans the blood from it as a protective mother, and lastly as she chops vegetables with it as a restaurateur and provider. Just as the courageous man in battle is not simply the "hero" who lacks fear but performs his duty in spite of it, Almodóvar has no qualms with showing Raimunda or any of his lovingly-developed characters crying one moment and going to work in the next, which is to say that, he has no problem making them utterly and empathetically human.

Almodóvar's adherence to this emotional realism not only aids the believability of the characters themselves but also offers a convincing counterbalance to the sentimentality that inevitably arises from most melodramas. Any danger of overt and excessive sympathy being generated is held in check both by his aforementioned confidence in playing the scenes straight, but also in his sensitively written script. Unlike the usual upper-class settings of a typical melodrama, which as such lends itself more naturally to pretentious introspection and self-pity ("rich people with nothing to do"), Almodóvar's script about these lower class rural women has them so beset with pragmatic troubles alone that they possess neither the time nor the pseudo-intellectual/philosophical disposition to perform any self-psychoanalysis (the "crass" Sin City quote no longer appears to seem be so out of place does it?). It's significant that the only instance in the film where Raimunda is given a moment's rest is at the wrap party where she sings the song which gives the film its very title, and even then she is only coerced into doing it for the sake of her daughter who has never heard her sing before. Magnificent.

Even Cruz's natural beauty is treated as realistically as possible. Aside from an artificially enhanced butt, Almodóvar wisely and bravely foregos the - nowadays - common route of "uglifying" his actress ala Charlize Theron and Monster to amplify the supposed realism of the film. The only time Raimunda is seen dolling herself up is for the wrap party (i.e. her job) to make ends meet for the sake of her and her daughter. Her "business before pleasure" attitude is asserted when she tenderly admits to Paula that she herself is in no mood to party despite the airs she puts on.

One of the most beautiful and subtle of threads which I was surprised to have not seen mentioned in any reviews is that of the film crew member whom Raimunda briefly encounters in a few short scenes. There is that wonderful moment during one of the luncheons where the guy informs Raimunda that the crew will be taking the next day off, it appears he's going to ask her for a date, but before he's able to say anything else, an exhausted Raimunda sincerely replies that she's glad because she could sure use the day off. It's never clear whether or not Raimunda is even aware of the pass he is making. Even their later encounter at the wrap party where she she remarks that his looking at her makes her nervous is left nervously open and ambiguous. This, along with the murder plot reminded me so much of Max Ophüls' masterpiece, The Reckless Moment.

Even minor characters such as Raimunda's sister Solédad are so well acted and written that despite their limited screen-time in comparison to Cruz's Raimunda, they manage to appear just as three-dimensional. The one scene where Solé first takes in her mother and talks for the first and only time about her separation from her husband and then later on, crawls into bed watching her mother sleep imbues her character with a sense of emotional depth that transcends those of many main characters of other lesser films.

The women and story of Volver seem to truly evolve and flow naturally, void of any signs of manipulation. Almodóvar has managed to create a prototypical melodrama which returns the genre to its roots. The emotional responses on the part of the viewer are provoked not by typical self-manufactured sympathetic mechanisms of the film but by the realistic depictions of its characters. Their actions and story engender a sense of empathy which allows a much clearer and purifying sense of sympathy to organically blossom right through to the end of the film. Seeing a film like Volver reminds me of what a difficult feat that is and how lucky we the viewer should feel when it happens.

Bibiliography:

Melodrama definition from: Tan, Ed S.-H., Nico H. Frijda (1999). "Sentiment in Film Viewing." In: Passionate Views. Film, Cognition, and Emotion, Plantinga, Carl, and Greg M. Smith, eds. Baltimore: John Hopkins

Resources:

A.O. Scott's NY Times Review
North American Trailer - Not a single decent trailer exists for this film among the ones I watched (North American, UK, Spanish, German). Apart from keeping the language itself, there is nothing nice to say about any of them. They should have just copied the trailer for The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. It would have at least captured the film's captivating spirit of sorority better.

The Year in Review (2006)

2007-01-03T16:52:00.000-05:00

Well, now that I've made this effort to try and write more regarding my film-viewing experiences, it seemed to make sense that I join the masses and make some sort of year-end review. Of course it won't be any sort of conventional press top 10 seeing as how: a) I don't want to just restrict myself to just 2006 films, b) I didn't even see that many 2006 films, and c) there definitely aren't ten 2006-release films that I saw that deserve to be on any sort of best-list. All the following lists are in no particular order. And on a sidenote, while two of my three 2006 films were officially released in 2005, they were for all intents and purposes 2006 films, and since they both showed up in many other critics' 2006 lists, I figured I was justified in leaving them there.

THE NUMBERS

I watched 64 films this year, my most since 2003 when I was still at Carleton taking film studies classes. This certainly came as a pleasant surprise. About 1/3 of these were 2006 films, which I'm pretty happy about, seems like a good number for balancing staying in touch with the present state of cinema while still focusing on catching up with 100 years of past cinema!

THE GENIUS OF MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI

My highlight of the year has to be my voracious watching of the films of Michelangelo Antonioni. So many of these films would have been on my year end list that I figured I really should just make a separate section for them. In January, I had the opportunity to see the theatrical re-release of The Passenger. What an indescribable experience it was to be able to take in that last breathtaking shot in a darkened theater! This would inspire me to immediately watch La Notte (which had been sitting at home unwatched for weeks). The framing in this film is just about the best I've ever seen. I was on a roll now, and was definitely getting that same giddy sense of anticipation that I had experienced while blitzing through and discovering the works of Stanley Kubrick and Jean Renoir. Next up was Blow-Up, yet another bona-fide masterpiece. And perhaps most surprising of all though was Le Amiche which may not bear his characteristic auteur-ish qualities but which doesn't change the fact that it's a beautifully complex melodrama, one of the best films I saw all year long and one that I would proudly put up alongside the rest of his best. Without a doubt, right up alongside Kubrick as one of my favourite filmmakers of all-time.

THE BEST OF THE PAST (watched in 2006)
(not including any of the aforementioned Antonioni films, all of which would have made this list)

George Méliès Shorts (Landmarks of Early Film #2)
I admittedly got this DVD more out of historical obligation. But I can honestly say that I treasure it now just as much for its entertainment value. Méliès stuff has withstood the test of time. You would think that short films shot 100 years ago from a single angle on a single set would be pretty boring, but ironically in Méliès' case it's just the opposite! His shorts are a feast for the eyes, and not just because of his famous camera tricks. His films are like meticulously choreographed dances with layers upon layers of action happening all at once in the same scene! I literally watched The Hilarious Posters 3 or 4 times consecutively in order to observe all the characters separately. Because the camera never cuts or moves, there is no principal action and you're eyes aren't forcibly locked onto any particular thing which allows them to be wonderfully overwhelmed when the mayhem ensues! There's no need for any patronizing contextual disclaimers ("it's great... for its time), Méliès stuff might be historically significant but it's also a real joy to watch!

The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
Wily old Bunuel and his inimitable irreverent humour. Overall I didn't find the actual satire of this film as effective as That Obscure Object of Desire or Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, (except of course for the classic dinner scene on the toilets!) but it's still undeniably funny and unmistakably Bunuel!

Back to the Future Trilogy (1985, 1989, 1990)
OK I'm cheating. I'd seen these before this year but never appreciated them the way I do now. The trilogy as a whole works together so wonderfully with the recurring characters and situations. The first one though is definitely a head above the rest in terms of its entertainment value and the clever writing, not to mention the fun Oedipal bits. 1.21 Jigowatts!!!

Mission to Mars (2002) (original review)
Thank goodness for a select few dissident film critics otherwise I would never have even considered seeing this film. It has changed the way I view the separation between pop and art in cinema. I truly believe that 10-20 years from now, once people have been removed from the moment this film will be re-assessed as a masterpiece and hopefully De Palma gets his well-deserved due.

THE BEST OF 2006

The New World (2005)
Exactly how Malick managed to squeeze this unapologetically arthouse film into so many mainstream theaters across North America continues to pleasantly baffle me. By the time I got around to watching it, there were probably only about 20 people in the theater, and by the end of it only about half remained. This film is more poetry than it is prose, both in terms of its dialogue and its visuals. There's really only 3 characters to speak of: Smith and Pocahontas, and the land itself. Just as important to Malick as the characters themselves is capturing a sense of the time and the place which they inhabited.

United 93 (2006)
Haven't had such a harrowing film experience since In the Bedroom. The suspense is there right from the beginning since we all know exactly how everything is going to end. To paraphrase Hitchcock, if you surprise the audience, you have them for 5 seconds, if you let them in on the secret and maintain suspense, you have them for an hour. Greengrass miraculously manages to make a very slick fast paced film without having to resort to anything fancy formalistic devices beyond a shaky camera. His confidence in the material selling itself (which it does in spades) is admirable. On the flipside, he also manages to straddle that line between empathy and sympathy for the passengers themselves just as well.

Three Times (2005)
Starting with that first beautifully choreographed billiard scene with Smoke Gets in Your Eyes playing I knew I was going to love this film. With the majority of films which employ this silent and languid-paced style that Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films do, there always seems to be an air of pretension and the characters slightly wooden, even in some of the great ones. What continues to impress me about Hou is how he's able to employ this style and yet his characters are able to come off as completely human. Hsu Chi is both fantastic and gorgeous to boot!

THE BEST OF THE REST

OK, so Bon Cop, Bad Cop wasn't absolutely one of the best films of 2006 but it deserves to get a very special mention because it's probably the most entertaining Canadian film I've ever seen. Anyone who knows anything about the state of Canadian cinema knows that it's a miracle that we even made a mainstream film that managed to claw its way into theaters, and even more of a miracle that it was actually entertaining! And while box office receipts usually mean nothing to me, having it finally kick out Porky's as the highest grossing Canadian film in Canada meant the world because it actually meant that Canadians were watching a Canadian film! Incroyable! Let's hope that we can keep the ball rolling and have this just be the beginning of a new era for our film industry! Won't say much more since I already put all my patriotic thoughts to a journal entry awhile back.

And here's the best of the rest: fantastic films I saw this year which didn't quite make any of the lists, but all deserve a special mention nonetheless

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Flowers of Shanghai (1998) (review)
Marie Antoinette (2006) (review)
Stranger Than Fiction (2006) (review)
Little Children (2006) (review)

To Have and Have Not: They Really Don't Make Em Like They Used To

2006-12-19T12:24:00.000-05:00

The two of you are going to take a beating until someone uses that phone. That means one of you is going to take a beating for nothing, and I don’t care which of you it is!

I was on the mag trainer the other day and had run out of TV DVDs to watch so I decided to pop in To Have and Have Not which I hadn't watched in ages. Everytime I do this with an old beloved classic there's always a small part of me that's afraid it won't be nearly as good as it was before. Well, you never have to worry about that too much with a Howard Hawks film, much less a Howard Hawks film with Bogey and Bacall! Man, I love this film.

Even forgetting all the usual and obvious stuff about how Bogart and Bacall are amazing together, I'm always blown away by how much more sophisticated Hawks' mis-en-scene was compared to just about anyone, past or present. That man sure knew his craft!

Little Children (Todd Field, 2006)

2006-12-12T15:00:00.002-05:00

THE WHERE:
At the good ol' Bytowne with Krystle as part of our weekly movie watching. It was nice going back to a real movie theater. I hadn't been in ages simply because nothing playing there had interested me in a long time

THE WHY:
Two words: Todd Field. From the day I first watched it in 2002, I've considered his In the Bedroom to be one of the greatest films ever made. Watching this film was and still remains the most sickening and visceral film experience I have ever had. Now this would normally be a pretty sad reason to declare any film a masterpiece, since these sorts of labels are usually attached to so-called "edgy" or "controversial" pieces of crap that resort to excessive violence and/or abhorrent imagery simply to shock. But In the Bedroom does not, far from it. The miracle of the film is that it features next to no violence, nudity, or swearing. Field's direction is so quiet, so subtle, and so confident, you'd be forgiven for thinking that he had been making films for decades. The relentless and overwhelming sense of sadness and grief that consumes this film is completely reliant on good old-fashioned directorial choices (and two stellar performances by Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson). The film is painful and depressing as hell to watch but never for the mere sake of being masochistic. Each scene manages to provides a profound empathetic insight into the souls of these characters and their plight even while it breaks your heart. Having said all that, is it any surprise that I have anxiously been waiting 4 years now (has it really been that long?) to watch anything with a "Directed by Todd Field" title card attached to it?

THE UGLY:
Little Children for me was a film about conflict, a conflict of mediums that is. It's a film that is clearly a slave to its original novel and to literary devices for that matter. Fortunately, every once in awhile and for the better part of the second half, it transcends all that and displays Field at his best, which is to say that it is the power of cinema at both its most powerful and most subtle. It was quite a maddening experience watching it as you don't often see a film bounce all over the place like this, attempting to be so literary and yet so cinematic at the same time.

Now I'm no literary expert by far, but it seems to me that such blatant "lit 101" devices such as the Madame Bovary allusions to Sarah, Brad's attempt to recapture his youthful "prom king" days through football and skateboarding (a much better depiction of a similar situation would be Matt Dillon's character in Beautiful Girls) , the Stepford wives-like behaviour of the three young mothers etc. are things that can be both clever and heartfelt in a novel, but unfortunately, comes across as merely clever and cynical when translated directly to film. It's one thing to read on the page that Brad would watch the skateboarders for sometimes hours, attempting to recapture his youth. It's quite another thing to actually watch Brad do it even for a few seconds without thinking that this seems utterly unrealistic and manipulative. The same goes for all the above.

These things in themselves would not be a problem if that was the type of film that Field set out to make, but clearly it's not. His direction betrays the fact that he does in fact care deeply about all of his characters, flaws and all. But he keeps these devices throughout the film and to the bitter end. For all his revolutionary cinematic devices in Breathless, not even Godard tried to make us feel for his characters. Had Belmondo's character broken down and cried like a baby as he died at the end, would any of us care? It seems to me that you can toy with the form, but it's a much harder and precarious thing to toy with people's emotions.

It doesn't feel like it was a matter of indecision. Clearly Field set out to do both purposefully, the subtle heartfelt character studies as well as the lifted literary devices, and in truth he does both rather well on their own, but in this case, the whole is truly less than the sum of its parts.

The crux of the movie is the character's of Sarah and Brad and their feelings of desperation and being trapped in an unfulfilling life. Heavy stuff. But while we learn a great deal about their hidden desires and needs from the exorbitant amount of time we spend with them along with additional insights being provided by Mr. Narrator, we are given very little emotional understanding of their situations. From their very first scene together in the park, if we were to mute the sound, I'm sure the audiences would be fooled into thinking that they were watching a flirtatious couple rather than reluctant lovers. The narrator talks of their supposed agonizing restraint, but the film itself never shows it (contrast this to the beautiful restraint showcased in say In the Mood for Love, and without a pesky narrator at that!). Take the bookclub scene where Sarah expresses her newfound empathy with Madame Bovary. Field directs it very sympathetically, as if we too should be empathizing with both her and Madame Bovary, but how as an audience can we? We're never given a chance to feel her (or Brad's) isolation, we're only told about it. As such, the scene just comes off as pretentious and self-gratifying.

In fact, all the film's melodramatic tales of redemption reminded me very much of Paul Thomas Anderson's classic Magnolia. And while Magnolia's melodrama was infinitely grander than Little Children's, it works much better, why is that? I think it has to do with Anderson's sincerity through and through, whereas Field oscillates between being sincere and relying on either cinematic parlour tricks (such as the little vignette showcasing Jennifer Connelly's perfection) or clever literary devices. Is it any surprise than that I found the more "one-dimensional" characters of Larry and Ronny to be the most memorable and insightful characters of the entire film?

Where the film really shines for me is where Todd Field displays his penchant for minimalist filmmaking, allowing the characters to speak for themselves. One of the best scenes I've seen all year has to be where Ronny is out on a date, and finds his eyes instinctively drawn to the children across from his table. He tries to ignore them and the camera captures this without resorting to blunt close-ups or grand histrionics on Ronny's part. His face hardly changes as he slightly leans into the table, but that's enough to powerfully convey his internal desperation to master his urges. The most wonderful moment of the film in fact is when he asks his date about about her medical condition, at first to just distract himself from the children, but in doing so finds himself engrossed in her story and they end up sharing a touching empathetic moment. Even Larry's less poetic thread of trying to find redemption in a misguided way is at least saved from being explained to death by the narrator allowing the viewer the freedom to discover who he is and decide for themselves.

Another fantastic scene is one where Jennifer Connelly's character finds herself moved after watching footage from her documentary on the children of soldiers sent to Iraq and decides to call home. It's a beautiful little vignette that single-handedly adds so much depth to her character. The fact that Field decides to throw it in despite having no direct relation to the plot is a sign in itself of Field's understanding of the importance of emotional thematic tangents in the medium of film.

I can't remember ever wanting to give a film 4 stars that had so many things wrong with it. That's a real tribute to how highly I think of Todd Field's work here as a director and his dedication and recognition of when the camera should play the "wait and see" game. He even uses the same plain title cards and font as he used for In the Bedroom! And despite its flaws, after this film there's no doubt in my mind that Field is already and will continue to be one of our generations greatest filmmakers. A man with a fantastic understanding of how to use the medium to capture the human experience at its best, and worst.

Resources:

Trailer (Fantastic trailer! Very dramatic)

The New, The Old, and The Ugly (aka Lynch, PTA, and TV)

2006-12-07T00:02:00.001-05:00

Man oh man, for a guy who reads film stuff all the time I sure am surprised that I didn't even know about David Lynch's new film Inland Empire coming out apparently soon until I read about it in the New York Times (click the pic) from good old Manohla Dargis. Anyways, I'm really excited to see it, which is something I haven't been able to say as often as I would like to these days. Actually I took a few seconds to look over the list of new films that came out this year which I saw in theaters and, with the exception of Little Children, I didn't really make much of an effort to see any of them. They were all mostly just going to see movies with friends (which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy any of them, The New World and Three Times were both great works of art) I should really remember to get in more Lynch films. Despite the fact that I was blown away with Mulholland Drive and Lynch's indisputable unique point-of-view as a filmmaker, I haven't yet seen anything else by him since (rented Blue Velvet a few times but never got around to watching it).

While waiting to use the computer, decided to check out a few scenes from Magnolia, as it had been on my mind lately since watching Little Children and mentally comparing the melodramatic qualities of the two films. What started as just watching a scene here and there turned into going through the entire movie and stopping at great and memorable scenes - which comprise about half the frickin movie! Man, I remembered Magnolia being superb but not this good! How I wish I could have experienced this film in the theaters!

People who complain about how American cinema is dead need to shut up, sit down, and pay attention to one Paul Thomas Anderson. He could single-handedly carry American cinema on his back. What a beautiful, moving, daring, spiritual film this is. This man has not only yet to make a bad film, but yet to make a film that wasn't an absolute jewel. People - including myself - need to stop our prideful and snobbish habits of looking elsewhere for great filmmakers, we've got one right here and he's one of the very best not just of our time, but ever! And that's a statement I'm not too worried about making: Even if PTA were to stop making films today, I can count on one hand the number of other filmmakers oeuvres that I would trade for Sydney, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love.

Anderson for me also scores huge points for perhaps being one of the few art filmmakers out there who appears utterly human and without pretensions in real-life. Looking and listening to this skinny young dude joke about his love of Adam Sandler or Terminator 2, you'd never believe him capable of crafting films of such emotional and humanistic profoundity. I think I have a crush on Paul Thomas Anderson.

Last, and certainly not least, I caught a bit of the show Day Break tonight and got drawn in. I've resolved to download some episodes and check them out. What a great premise! I haven't made an effort to follow any non-poker TV shows since probably high school so this is a big deal for me. We'll see how this one goes, hopefully it's good.

Stranger Than Fiction (Marc Forster, 2006)

2006-11-30T22:47:00.001-05:00

THE WHERE:
At the Empire World Exchange with Krystle and Sarah. Spur of the moment thing for me, they were originally going to see Happy Feet then I got invited and ended up ruining everyone's plans by saying that I didn't want to see it :) Fortunately they both agreed to watch Stranger than Fiction.

THE WHY:
I hadn't planned on seeing this film at all. While I was a fan of Will Ferrell, the trailer didn't peek my interest. I felt pretty fed up with "quirky" films that didn't seem to offer very much else, which is what the trailer made the film out to look like. Then the reviews started pouring in. All of them seemed to not simply be positive but pretty glowing in describing the film as smart, philosophical, existentialist etc. So I figured let's give it a shot.

THE UGLY:
Despite what its title might imply, Stranger Than Fiction is, at heart, traditional fiction. A feel-good narrative film in which our sympathetic protagonist - to paraphrase Kelly Clarkson - takes a chance, makes a change, and breaks away (while improbably getting the girl and learning to play a little guitar along the way). Despite all the marketing efforts, not to mention the script itself, all this intellectual and philosophical narrative justification never manages to fully succeed in making us forget this, and thank goodness for that, because Stranger Than Fiction is one of the better uplifting stories with one of the best sweet-natured romances (both figuratively and literally!) to hit mainstream screens in quite awhile.

The film wastes no time in trying to fool us into thinking that its intellectual roots runs deeper than they actually do: quickly introducing us to our hero, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) and his wrist watch, the symbol of his mechanical day-to-day life, replete with some clever graphical overlays just to make sure that we don't miss this point. Later on we're introduced to Katherine Eiffel (Emma Thompson) and Dr. Hilburt (Dustin Hoffman) who round out the film's highbrow branches to philosophy and literature, respectively.

The film's admittedly clever and original premise - an author writing the story of a real person - never ends up being much more than that, a mere premise. Sure the wrist-watch is thrown in from time-to-time and made out to be a quirky (there's that word again) character in itself, but its appearances have more to do with the film reminding us that it's being clever and thought-provoking without actually being either. Likewise, there is very little meat to extract from Eiffel or Hilburt's scenes. Despite her numerous scenes, we learn nothing from Eiffel's character except that she is trying to find an ending. But this is no 8 1/2; we constantly hear Eiffel whining about her struggles but there are no insights into her struggle (and I don't even like 8 1/2!)

The good news is that these failed attempts don't hurt the film at all. The filmmakers haven't put all their eggs in one basket and relied on the original premise to get us through. Even when you strip away the philosophical mumbo-jumbo from the Eiffel and/or Hilburt scenes, the dialogue and the actors are enough to keep us entertained and occupied. And to be fair, I'm sure that much of the freshness of these scenes can be attributed to the film's original premise - although I wonder how well they would hold up under repated viewings. I say all this because I want to emphasize how good the rest of the film is, good enough to make us forget these other pedestrian scenes.

Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal are the heart & soul of this movie and their scenes alone could justify the film's existence. Credit needs to be given to director Marc Forster for at least recognizing when to be quirky and when to play it simple which is pretty how much how he plays all of Harold and Ana's scenes. Forster knows the value of silence. The milk & cookies scene is without a doubt the best in the entire movie. It brings a level of naive sincerity and is played so quietly, honestly and intimately that you'd have a hard time finding this sort of scene in any sort of film these days, mainstream or art. Forster directs the later "I want you" scenes the exact same way, at night, without any sound or distractions, completely relying on the actors and their words and the result pays off in spades. Despite all the self-consciousness of the film, Forster really buckles down when it comes to these romantic scenes, never once breaking with Harold's sincerity, even as he utters "I want you" over and over. The first time he says it, we laugh and so too does Ana, when he says it again we start thinking he might be serious, when he says it the third or fourth time we've been won over by his (and Forster's) utter sincerity.

I have to say too that I was completely bowled over by Maggie Gyllenhaal. I suppose I'm open to the possibility that it's simply because I found her adorable (which I never had before) but I'd like to think that a lot of it had to do with the little things her character did that serve to make her seem less static: Conscious decisions like giving the "anarchist's have a group?" speech with that sweet yet condescending smile. She doesn't just play it straight ("ok, I despise this guy, so everything I say or do must express this!). And when she finds herself on the bus with Harold and gets thrown into the seat beside him, she can't help but crack a smile about the situation, like finding yourself in an elevator alone with someone you hate, which certainly elicits less laughs than the typical evil-eye glare some other directors might have insisted their actresses perform, but builds a better sense of a complex character as a result. The script lets a lot of characters down but hers is not one of them.

It's a real testament to the good parts of the film that they manage to make us forget about the more numerous pedestrian or useless scenes. And even when we realize that a woman like Ana would likely never fall for a guy like Harold, we don't care anymore. Stranger Than Fiction's unbelievable romance works not simply because it doesn't try to justify it but precisely because of that. Hopefully the success of this film with audiences so far can be seen a reminder to Hollywood screenwriters (Stranger Than Fiction's own Zach Helm included) that they don't necessarily need to learn new tricks to make a very good movie, maybe they just need to learn the old ones better.

Resources:

Review - Stephanie Zacharek (Salon.com) (i.e. my sentiments exactly, [sigh], why do I bother writing at all?)
Trailer Mashup: Stranger Than Fiction / Harry Potter (good times)

Mission to Mars (Brian De Palma, 2000)

2006-11-26T22:25:00.001-05:00

THE WHERE:
At home all by myself, kicking back and relaxing on a Saturday night.

THE WHY:
"It can be said with certainty that any reviewer who pans ["Mission to Mars"] does not understand movies, let alone like them". -Armond White, NY Press

"A critic who can't recognize the visual rhapsody of this movie (and I'm not talking about the special effects) is about as trustworthy as a blind dance critic." -Charles Taylor, Salon.com

Anytime two well-respected professional film critics -- who don't have the luxury of shooting from the hip or hyperbole that we amateurs do -- are willing to make such published condescending statements towards their fellow colleagues based on their opinion of a single film, one has to take notice. Moreso when those critics are two of my favourites and self-admitted "Paulettes". Moreso when it's Brian De Palma, who might just be the source of more inspired disagreement than any other filmmaker in history (and that is not hyperbole!)

How could I afford not to see this film?

THE UGLY:
"One of the great things about movies is they can combine the energy of a popular art with the possibilities of a high art. [...] That's part of the excitement in a movie [...] you get a sense of the different forces at work on the director." -Pauline Kael, A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael

Having read just about everything related to Kael, this was a concept that I was not merely aware of but was well-versed in. I could quote certain passages on the subject verbatim and indeed it was one of the main points-of-view that endeared Kael to me as a critic. But in film, like in any other art, the difference between knowledge and understanding can be vast. And while I had certainly had many great experiences with films that would qualify for this category, it's something I feel that I understand much better after having watched Mission to Mars.

With this film, De Palma reminds us that film is primarily a visual art form. An obvious fact, right? You would think so. Even many critics seem to not get it. They talk about a film's visual beauty in terms of other mediums. When they say that Marie Antoinette is beautifully shot, what they really mean quite often is that the objects being shot are beautiful: castles, interiors, clothes etc. Certainly a lot of things in the film look nice, but few of those have to do with anything Sofia Coppola is doing as a director. If this is our criteria for judging a film then we might as well just make movie slideshows of the 10 most beautiful paintings and photographs of all-time.

This is the perfect film to illustrate the value of the Auteur theory. If you were to just look at the script, you might say that it's an interesting concept, but it's certainly a genre piece through and through, even the dialogue is pretty corny. But what ends up on the screen is anything but. Usually when a great director takes on a genre piece, quite often you can tell that he's given up some parts as being dead-on-arrival in exchange for the chance to do something signature and fantastic with a scene or two. That's not the impression you get from Mission to Mars. De Palma manages to squeeze something wondrous or beautiful or hypnotic into just about every scene.

Watching the scene with the killer vortex again, a sequence where any director would be justified in throwing in a bit of action for the sake of entertainment, De Palma instead plays it about as serene as one could play a scene like that. Even as it's sucking up the astronauts, the overall tone of the scene is less about kinetic energy or suspense, and more about a sense of wonderment. It's as if De Palma himself is oblivious to what is happening plot-wise and is just as curious as the astronauts are as to what this strangely beautiful thing is. Even in the midst of the suspenseful scene where the astronauts are desperately trying to fix the oxygen leak, De Palma is willing to spend just as much time on the "visual rhapsody" of the film that he's able to find in the graceful manner in which the astronauts move about in zero-g or even the soda spiralling out of the hole in the spaceship.

The funny thing is that observations about these sorts of visual tangents are usually brought up for castigating a director because a critic believes that they have ceased to serve the film and instead are looking to impress the audience (perhaps because they really have nothing to say or don't know what else to do). I think this is what so many critics misinterpreted in Mission to Mars, they are right that De Palma is not serving the plot with these tangents, but that's because the plot is not the focus of the film, but rather the tone. The best proof of De Palma's intentions with his visual sequences can probably be found in the scene where the shuttle blows up as the crew prepares to enter Mars' atmosphere. Surely if there were a scene were you would want to give the audience a thrill would be a spaceship being blown apart right? Well, De Palma passes up that opportunity definitively: there is no real build-up to the scene and the actual explosion is shown in only one shot that lasts for less time than that of the soda spiralling out of the ship.

In the film Before Sunrise, Ethan Hawke's character asks the question of why is it that a dog sleeping in the sun is beautiful, but a guy trying to get money from a bank machine looks like an idiot? Take a director like Ingmar Bergman, there is no mistaking his films for anything else except Art, or mistaking him for anything but an Artiste, both with a capital A. His films look artsy, they sound artsy, and center around artsy themes. He, like just about every other Artiste, is starting with the sleeping dog in the sun, Mission to Mars is the guy getting money from the bank machine. From this point of view, who is really taking the bigger artistic risk? Who's film is the more ambitious? De Palma is willing to stick his neck out and be artistic, be sincere without the support of the artistic pretensions that we've come to expect to accompany artistic films. Just like the aliens of the movie codify a message within the radio static from Cydonia, De Palma has codified an artistic masterpiece within the constructs of seemingly pedestrian mainstream film. And this for me constitutes a greater, more beautiful and meaningful filmic accomplishment than any sort of interpretive symbolism you'll find in a Bergman or Fellini film. If their films fail they at least have the justifications of importance, meaning, and above all, Art! De Palma however is all-in, not only has he made his art harder to decode by giving none of the classical external clues, but his film has no back-up if you don't get it as the characters, plot or dialogue really hold little value in and of themselves.

I think of the space dancing sequence preceded by Connie Nielsen's character walking along the rotating portion of the ship. It plays like a direct homage to some of the most famous scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey, except that instead of the Blue Danube Waltz, De Palma gives us Van Halen's "Dance the Night Away". Even as I was enraptured by this scene I couldn't help but chuckle as I imagined De Palma deliberately changing the music in order to separate the viewers who, as Armond White bluntly put it, "understood movies" from those who didn't (especially when you consider two other points: i) the entire score by Ennio Morricone is decidedly classical and ii) this is the one and only time a pop tune is played throughout the film).

De Palma hides his art underneath a very thin veneer of pop. Actually even that isn’t fair, he fully embraces it, he sees no contradiction. It’s funny how the elitists have managed to even get those who don't care about cinema as an art-form to buy into this idea that art can't also be fun it must be serious, or that it must be cynical rather than sincere. As Kael famously said, if movies aren’t entertainment, what are they? Work?

Fantastic reviews and insights on Mission to Mars:

The Corrs: All the Way Home (Rob O'Connor & Ciarán Tanham, 2005)

2006-11-26T22:24:00.001-05:00

THE WHERE:
At home, mostly while on the mag trainer and the rest afterwards.

THE WHY:
I've been a huge Corrs fan for a long time now and was excited by the idea that someone was finally making a full-length documentary on them.

THE UGLY:
Well, reviewing this doc seems a little odd but I figure I ought to since it was after all a full-length documentary. If I were to automatically treat it any differently right off-the-bat then that right there would go against everything I railed against in my Mission to Mars review about making judgments without giving each film a fair shake.

Having said that, their really isn't anything at all to say about this piece. Apart from showing a bit of rare and unseen footage from when The Corrs were young kids there really isn't all that much meat to this doc despite its length. The film has no real angle to speak of, it's essentially just a surface scratching biography pieced together with various music videos and performances by The Corrs intercut with what seems to be a single new interview with all the various members. If it was made for fans (like me) then I think it fails to really expose anything new or compelling, and if it was meant for the general public well then, I can't imagine they'd be anymore interested since there's really nothing sensational about The Corrs rise to fame, relative to any other performer that is.

Well, that's all folks.

Robert Altman (1925-2006)

2006-11-21T23:24:00.000-05:00

Today, Robert Altman died at the ripe old age of 81.

Up to this point, I've only ever seen three of his films: Nashville, which I found utterly boring. The Player, which I thought was very good, but could have been better. And finally, Gosford Park, which is a masterpiece! So it's quite a mixed bag in terms of my opinion of his work. But today none of that really matters.

This should be a sad day for anyone who truly loves cinema. I still can't believe that he made Gosford Park when he was 76! Talk about mourning not just for a man who was once great, but was great right till the end. No doubt, had he lived a few years more he would of kept on making films because he loved it so much.

Whether or not you loved Altman's films or the man himself (as he always made sure to speak his mind), it's impossible to overstate what he contributed. As long as he was around everyone could be sure that there would be at least one true maverick filmmaker around in America. For anyone who loves interweaving storylines, ensemble pieces, overlapping dialogue, you can thank Altman. For anyone who loves the works of Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson --whom by no coincidence of course are considered two of America's best and brightest filmmakers -- you can thank Altman.

Being a huge follower of the late Pauline Kael, who was an early champion of Altman before all the other critics hopped on the bandwagon, I had to take notice of him. Statements such as not being able to be friends with anyone who didn't like his McCabe & Mrs. Miller were incredibly bold even for someone who made as many bold statements as she did. She talked about Altman being a filmmaker who could seamlessly blend pop & art into his films. I'm not sure I ever quite understood what that meant until I recently saw Mission to Mars by Brian De Palma -- whom of course was another favourite of Kael's whom she described as being able to accomplish that same mix -- and finally my understanding caught up to my knowledge. And now that I get it, I realize how incredibly difficult it is to pull this off and how incredibly brave one has to be to try it.

I guess if anything good can come of this, it's that when word of Altman's death starts spreading to people, that maybe a few of them might be persuaded to check out one of his films. Speaking of which, I'll have to be finding me a copy of McCabe & Mrs. Miller soon :)

Essays & Reviews

2006-11-11T01:28:00.000-05:00

ESSAYS

REVIEWS

8 ½ : Confessions of a Movie Director

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Larry Charles, 2006)

2006-11-06T01:48:00.001-05:00

THE WHERE:
Late night show at Silver City to a completely packed house. This is of course after trying to see it on Thursday and not being able to because it was literally sold out all across the entire city.

THE WHY:
Looked hilarious. Been a huge fan of Sacha Baron Cohen since first year university when Greg introduced me to the wonderful world of Ali G. I never really got into his Borat character but the trailer looked hilarious and it's the same kind of deal either way.

THE UGLY:
After watching the film and finding it to be an almost complete letdown despite quite a few vintage Sacha Baron Cohen sketches (no, not Sasha Cohen) the thing that puzzled me most wasn't why the audiences loved it, that makes sense, but how this film managed to fool seemingly every single film critic out there who labelled it as a brilliant satire.

Borat (and Ali G) were both brilliant comedic ideas. I think they worked so well because there were 2 levels of comedy at work, on the one common level is of course that Sacha Baron Cohen's characters are extremely funny, but on the second level, his premise is based on reality. The ingenuity of his sketches was that second level, it was funny because we the audience were "in on the joke", we knew that Cohen was just playing a character but his unsuspecting - and most often, upper class erudite - guests did not and the joke was in watching them tread carefully and often carelessly with their words.

A major problem I had with the film that I never saw mentioned anywhere else strangely was Cohen's attempt to seemlessly mix in sketches that were clearly staged and pawn them off as reality. The comedy of his sketches as previously mentioned relies so much on the fact that these are real unsuspecting people. The second it becomes clear that the scenes have been staged, such as the Pamela Anderson "wedding" scene, the RV, the hooker, it loses all of its potency. It's a sort of reverse fourth wall rule. In fiction if you break that fourth wall in the middle it disrupts the viewer. Borat begins with a virtual pact that Cohen makes with the audience, that we will be "in the know", beyond the fourth wall. Does he think he can just shove us out of that at his convenience? (Incidentally this is the reason why I think reality TV sucks, because it tries to pawn off the fact that it is unstaged and raw when neither is truly the case)

The good part about the film is that it's essentially his more often than not brilliant sketches. The bad part about the film is the same thing. The film is really no more than a series of Cohen's sketches loosely thrown together with a plot that feels like it was created in about 5 minutes (the Pamela Anderson thread? Come on, you can do better than that). The film feels twice as long as its 84 minutes because of all the downtime we have to tolerate in-between the sketches. I'm sure even devoted fans of the film can't help but notice these bits as nothing but filler. I would have rather (and have in the past) sat through 2 hours of unrelated Ali G sketches.

The really crude stuff (i.e. the naked wrestling) I definitely could have done without and was surprised to see how much of it there was considering how smart the original shows were. I wonder if this was something Cohen always wanted to do or if he just threw in because he thought it would go down easy with the kiddies. What was more alarming was how easy the critics went on this stuff, many even praising it as hilarious. But I suppose there's nothing concrete to really say about that. As Siskel used to say, what is funny and what is sexy are two things that are not debatable.

If the aforementioned criticisms were the only problems then no doubt I would have still loved it, unfortunately though, the sketches themselves are even problematic. Not all the sketches I suppose, the ones with the driving instructor, the humour coach, the formal dinner, and the Jewish bed & breakfast are all vintage Borat, but it's those where he ventures into politics that bring the film down, and not so ironically, these are the scenes that have the critics raving.

Fortunately there is good old Armond White's review which I feel perfectly explains this otherwise unexplainable phenomenon of good reviews for such a crude comedy (which isn't to say crude comedy's are always bad, but that critics almost always rate them badly). Essentially what White says is happening is a sort of reverse "Fantasies of the Art-House Audience" except in this case it would be fantasies of the ultra-liberal audience.

Cohen's original TV sketches worked so well because first of all because he mocked his own ignorance and juxtaposed it with his refined guests. It was not at their expense. And this latter point is paramount because we are never meant to forget that these are real people. That is what makes it all the funnier. But what he doesn't realize is that when he decides to cross into the "serious" side of filmmaking, the rules are different.

Fictional comedy has very few boundaries, but satire is more than just comedy at something's expense, it is part documentary. As White says, the film can't be political in the same way as a fictional satire. Its satire must be of a documentary kind that relies on real responses, unfortunately these responses are completely manipulated. Kenneth Turan (another great reviewer) puts it more succinctly than I ever could: "...he ends up baiting the harmless and playing ordinary people for fools just because they are gullible and had the bad luck to run into him, and it's here that the laughter especially sticks in your throat. The car dealer who doesn't object when Borat makes anti-Gypsy remarks may not be a secret racist but simply someone who decided it was a mug's game to get further involved with an obvious lunatic. And the Southern dining society that gets mercilessly humiliated seems to have committed no sin worse than earnestness, credulity and hospitality."

The film is simply scoring cheap & easy points by making us feel good about how much better we are than these ignoramuses. The only thing political about this film as White says, is Cohen's calculated manipulation of our social confusion. His allusions to a Michael Moore-like approach seems appropriate. I've never even seen any of his works but most real critics would tell you that as a strict documentary filmmaker, he stinks. He is extremely narrow-minded, but is able to be popular because his thinking falls in line with majority of the media left-wingers and so they declare his films "insightful" when really they are expressing joy in finding a film that confirms something they have already made up their minds about. Regardless of whether or not this is really true of Moore, it certainly is true of Borat.

How else do you explain how some of these same critics thought too highly of themselves to "fall for" the satire of a much better and sentimental film like Forrest Gump? We laugh at Forrest because he knows nothing about shrimp fishing and yet goes ahead and does it anyways because he promised Bubba. We laugh but then we realize he's right, what else was the purpose of making a promise? To deceive and to pander? His lack of self-consciousness and social awareness is what allows him to treat black people the same as white people and not understand what the difference is, and in doing so it is both funny and insightful. But these supposedly highbrow critics don't go for that kind of "sentimental" thing, they resist it with every cynical bone in their body because these are "simple" messages for kids that they are above, and yet they lap up the dumb and dumberer moral relativism of Borat and wrap it up as a "satire".

The fact that Borat essentially plays its so-called satirical parts as documentary allows it to theoretically be more incisive (which is probably what is happening with many critics) but what Cohen forgets is that the second you venture into documentary territory, it comes with its own rules of propriety which Borat flaunts. In this sense it reminds me of what C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity regarding people who marry with the "death do us part" vows and yet feel free to divorce the second they are no longer feel in love or are simply tired of their marriage. Why get married in the first place with the vows? These people want all perks and respectability of marriage, with none of the responsibility. Similarly, Borat wants all the respectability of a biting satire and documentary without any of the filmmaking responsibility.

Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006)

2006-11-05T00:45:00.001-05:00

THE WHERE:
Empire World Exchange cinema with Krystle. Spur of the moment decision after rock climbing didn't work out.

THE WHY:
Krystle suggested it. I wanted to see the film but it certainly wasn't a must-see in my books given how I wasn't a big fan of Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides and was even less impressed with Lost in Translation. That said, the concept of the film was definitely intriguing and the fact that Marie Antoinette's being played by Kirsten Dunst didn't hurt.

THE UGLY:
This Film = Kirsten Dunst. I can't imagine anyone else playing this role. Something that Dunst does so well is emoting a sincere and convincing sense of naive childish giddiness. When I think about it, I think that's what allowed Bring It On to be great, since it required her to both be an archetypal cheerleader (i.e. irritatingly enthusiastic) while also being the sympathetic main character (i.e. not be irritatingly enthusiastic). Not an easy thing to do.

The many scenes which make use of this quality of Dunst's are the film's finest. Take the film's most memorable scene, the opera, at which Antoinette begins applauding all by herself. And even after being told that clapping breaches protocol, she simply replies, "but it was so wonderful!" Her giddiness works to remind us of how young and naive Antoinette truly was at the time in being so joyously overwhelmed that she barely acknowledges the breach, but it's Dunst's sincerity that wins us over and makes it so easy to empathize with her fellow audience members who become equally won over. They begin to clap slowly until it crescendoes into a loud standing ovation, to the point where we realize they are not merely clapping out of obedience, nor are they simply clapping for the performance, but for their newfound admiration for Antoinette. Mag-nificent!

Another fantastic bit was right off the beginning. Reading some critiques it seems that people had problems with the contemporary music or lack of accents or language that fits the period. Well they would have an argument if Coppola just threw that in somewhere in the middle, but as it is she prepares you for it right off the bat with the fantastic opening shot of Antoinette getting her toes done and turning to look directly into the camera as she licks some cake off her fingers, raises her eyebrow in a "what are you looking at?" manner and goes back to reclining, cut to black and cue the indie rock music.

The odd thing is, usually I'm pretty good with remembering plenty of details from any movie I see, even if it was crappy or forgettable. But immediately after watching the film I found that, besides the two scenes I mentioned, I really couldn't remember any scenes at all. I'm not sure if this is something that Coppola is doing (or not doing for that matter) since I realize that I remember next-to-nothing of what happens in The Virgin Suicides (in fact, I didn't even remember that Kirsten Dunst was in that movie until after writing this whole thing!) and little of Lost in Translation as well.

Maybe it falls into that category of "shallow masterpieces" that Kael talked about in explaining Citizen Kane ("It is difficult to explain what makes any great work, and particularly difficult with movies, and maybe more so with Citizen Kane than with other great movies, because it isn't a work of special depth or a work of subtle beauty.") The film is not built upon any sort of conventional plot, it's really built upon the shoulders of Kirsten Dunst and what Coppola can do with her. It's a character study that's pieced together with scenes that each hope to illuminate some aspect of Antoinette's contradictory life. And while many are beautiful, few of them stand out and they don't seem to progress.

A subtle and insightful scene can only be played out so many times before it too becomes as bland. And the film never does seem to build upon or progress beyond what Dunst can do (which is a lot). The plot doesn't present her with any new problems. It is beautiful and subtle, but it is static. Antoinette has her circumstances change but her character never really changes. Instead of clothes and hair, her interests change to her private getaway and her new boyfriend. And maybe that's the point, but even if it is that's still a flaw, you can make something seem boring without making the presentation in itself boring.

I'm sure Dunst will win a lot of accolades for this movie and I'm glad for her because they're all well-deserved. I'm especially glad that she was able to pull off such a feat without having to resort to the crappy external factor of simply playing a role that is atypical of her Hollywood persona (are you reading this Halle Berry?!) but that instead, builds upon her strengths as an actress. No one would argue that Marilyn Monroe was the most versatile actress ever, but can you imagine anyone else who could have played her in Some Like it Hot or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes? No! Come to think of it, Dunst has made some pretty good decisions for herself as well, she's been fantastic and well-fitting for most roles I've seen her in (Bring it On, Spider-Man, The Cat's Meow, Dick).

I doubt this will be a film that burns itself into my mind, whose various scenes might linger and blossom. That said, I don't think it's a paradox to say that it's also an extremely - not just superficially - beautiful film with a great deal of subtlety, all of which is owed to Ms. Dunst and Ms. Coppola. I'll certainly enjoy watching various scenes from the movie over and over again.

Höllentour (Pepe Danquart & Werner Schweizer, 2004)

2006-11-02T11:59:00.001-05:00

THE WHERE:
At home, watched half while - surprise, surprise - biking on the trainer and the other half afterwards like regular human beings watch movies.

THE WHY:
Obsessed with cycling. Was looking for cycling & Tour de France DVDs on Zip.ca when I came across it and it looked fantastic, particularly given that I already knew a lot about the 2003 Tour and that it followed some of the riders I knew and was interested in (Kloeden and Vinokourov).

THE UGLY:
This documentary is made for people who already know and appreciate both professional cycling and the Tour de France. There is pretty much no exposition in this movie about the Tour itself or even any of the riders which we otherwise get to know intimately. I found this more surprising than anything else about the film and a quality that would make it perfect for the die-hard cycling fan (such as myself) looking for an in-depth look into the Tour and its riders... or so you would think.

For a documentary that focuses on such a niche event and doesn't feel the need to burden itself with the need to explain any of the basics or logistics of it or professional cycling, the film comes across as very unfocused and lacking any real objective. That's not to say there aren't some fantastic moments the camera captures that normally go unseen: the riders on their team bus away from the spotlight of the media, the unheralded roles of domestiques etc. In fact, it's the inclusion of these very moments which causes me to be confused as to why the directors decided to water down such strong content with an overwhelming number of other superficialities like time trial montages, landscape shots and most curious of all, multiple scenes of the Tour crew taking down and putting up barriers. It doesn't make any sense from both a logical or artistic point of view.

What little historical insight that does exist is brought to us via a single source, a french cycling historian, not exactly solid academic footing. What makes it even worse is how fanatical the man is in his love of the Tour, so any bits of insight that I found he made (e.g. compared to the World Cup or the Olympics, the uniqueness of the Tour in that it's free and the proximity of the fans to the stars etc.) felt less convincing coming from this "extremist".

The directors should have borrowed from the producers of the Ironman World Championships broadcast. There's a reason why these guys literally win an Emmy every single year for their coverage of the event, and that's because they realize that what makes these monumental endurance events so compelling are the people and their stories. They showcase the physically disabled athletes with iron wills that inspire and even manage to humanize the otherwise superhuman pro athletes in the race, all while including the obligatory vista shots (it is Hawaii after all) and plenty of narration and exposition.

It's a real shame because in many ways, I think the Tour is an equally compelling event despite the fact that it's only populated with professional cyclists. The examples may not be as immediately obvious to the casual viewer: after all, there are no amateurs in the Tour, none of them are missing any arms or legs like in the Ironman, but the stories are there.

The Tour presents so many situations that don't exist in any other sport in the world. 100m track specialists don't enter marathons and vice versa, and yet this is exactly what happens in the Tour. All athletes have a great degree of pride, and the world's best even moreso. And yet the Tour humbles everyone at one point or another. There's something so powerful seeing a man like Erik Zabel, a man who can out-sprint literally any given cyclist in the world, being left behind by the rest of the peloton in the mountains as he struggles up them all alone.

Another thoughtful bit was the behind-the-scenes bit on the tough life of the domestiques on a cycling team. In no other sport is there so much sacrifice by a team for the glory of a single man. It's so much more revealing to hear it from the lips of the domestiques, talking about how, for example, they could be struggling all day just to keep up with the peloton, but if the team leader suddenly needs water or nutrition, they have to drop all the way back to the team car, stuff 6 water bottles into their jerseys, claw their way back to the front in order to deliver them, and then still find the strength within themselves to finish the race.

This doc could have definitely been better as either as a truly "advanced" in-depth look into the lives of pro cyclists at the Tour or as an introductory documentary to the Tour de France. It's a shame that in the end it seems like it just straddles the line between the two.

Flowers of Shanghai (Hou-Hsiao Hsien, 1998)

2006-10-24T13:45:00.001-04:00

THE WHERE:
At home with Krystle as part of our ongoing weekly movie watching groove.

THE WHY:
First sought out Hou Hsia-Hsien's works after reading so much about him from critics I respect. I first saw Millenium Mambo which which was not very good but nevertheless left me very eager to see more of his work. I then saw Three Times which was a sublime masterpiece. After that it just became a matter of what movies of his I could get my hands on. The library had Flowers of Shanghai and so here we are...

AND THE UGLY:
Before deciding to sit down and write some scattered thoughts, I decided to read what literature I could find on the web regarding the film (the ulterior motive being I had no idea where to start talking about this movie). Thankfully trusty old Senses of Cinema had this article comparing Flowers' visual style to that of another master filmmaker, Robert Bresson. The article came through on both accounts and using it as a basis for talking about Flowers worked out perfectly...

It's an interesting comparison that reminds me of how clever (or maybe just fortunate) Hou is in deciding to set this film in the 1800's. The advantage of this place and time is that there's no need to suspend our disbelief in how reserved these characters are in their displays of emotion, or lack thereof. It's fitting given the situations and the society. In contrast, it's much harder to believe the same from Bresson movies set during modern times, it's an anachronism. Maybe that's why Au Hasard Balthazar is so beloved. An animal is the most logical star for a Bresson/Hou vehicle since they can't talk or really emote in the first place!

It's a great credit to Hou that I can say midway through the film I stopped noting the long takes, or more accurately, single shot scenes! Like great special effects artists, that's probably the best complement you can give him. And like all great artists, the style supports the substance perfectly. The camera literally appears to just randomly float around the room, never actively drawing our attention.

Contrast this approach to any other film, even any other great film such as a Bresson or Antonioni film. For example, take that acclaimed silent scene from Balthazar where he eyes all the other caged animals in the circus. It's a brilliant scene by Bresson that forces the viewer to draw meaning from it rather than hand it to them. But the keyword here is still "forced". Each cut acts as a big alarm to the viewer - even if it is implicit, subtle, and using the "filmic" language - that NOW is the time when you should be asking yourself questions about what THIS shot means. As for Hou? He leaves us not only to infer the "what" of the scene, but by eliminating close-ups and cuts altogether, the "when" of the "what" as well! Crappy movies spoonfeed you the hand-picked information, great movies hand you the spoon at the given time and let you pick and choose. Hou seems to just give us the spoon and say "eat what you want, when you want". Obviously this is a gamble: bad if you don't "get it", but incomparably beautiful if you do.

I was reminded of a quote by Orson Welles. “I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won’t contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That’s what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.” Only after re-reading it did I realize how serendipitously appropriate it was given the "theatrical" nature of this film. That said, Flowers goes beyond simple theater because you could never get away with the silence that Hou accomplishes in this film in theater, people would start snickering thinking that an actor had forgotten their lines!

I love how the camera floats without any care for foreground objects or whether or not the characters are being obscured by a candle or bowl in front of the camera (reminds me of that wonderful shot in the first segment of Three Times when the guy tracks down Shu Qi to the bar and they talk, the camera is placed behind the pool table where a game is going on and people get in the way. I found myself actually straining my head as if I could peek around this guy to catch what they were talking about. Any filmmaker who can get me doing that gets my immediate respect).

Most films try to avoid repeating sets/scenes altogether, and when they don't have a choice, the directors ask themselves "how can we shoot it differently so it's not boring?" But there is something wonderful to be said about the organic way in which Hou re-uses the same sets, characters, and shots over and over in a manner which allows us to familiarize ourselves with both the rooms and the characters' routines (like the characters smoking, or poking at the coals of a fire). Unlike many Egoyan movies where (as much as I love him) there is a clear sense of directorial manipulation in the use of repetition (like in Calendar or Exotica where it's so precisely calculated the characters seem robotic) the feeling I got watching this film is that the characters repeat these gestures not because the director told them to or because it gives the film "meaning" but simply because, it's their natural routine! Kael used to say that to make a film feel like its plot and/or characters are evolving naturally is one of the hardest things to do in cinema. This is something she said that Renoir excelled at and that Hou has definitely nailed on the head in this movie.

Unfortunately, that beauty and mastery descends into melodrama in the second half. I was disappointed in how the film pared itself down to two main storylines (Emerald and Crimson-Wang). I blame this on Hou for setting us up to expect a Renoir-esque tale with his beautiful opening that gives equal time and weight to each character's story. To make matters ironically worse, we miss the other characters even more because he's such a master of infusing each scene with so much depth - despite the lack of any real plot - that one couldn't help but miss them and their storylines that he decides to drop in the second half.

The beauty of the first half was that Crimson and Wang's characters have feelings but can't necessarily act out on them. They have to find that delicate balance between expressing their true selves while maintaining their respectability which is what makes the make-up scene where Wang and Crimson eat dinner such a revelation. In another film their slight smirks wouldn't even warrant mentioning, but here it becomes the single greatest moment of joy in the entire movie thanks to the way in which the rest of the film conditions us to suppress our emotional expectations (perfectly example being the ending of Diary of a Country Priest with the Priest's smirk on the motorcycle).

The second half has too much drama/plot, too much emoting, and all that feeling is allowed to come gushing out like a bad melodrama. Wang goes from ambiguously mopey and pouty to just obviously mopey and pouty, there is no longer that sense of restraint (until that wonderful last scene), no longer a sense of mystery, everything is laid out. Come to think of it, Im surprised I wasn't more annoyed at the drop off in the second half. I suppose it's a credit to Hou and his actors that they're even able to hang on for as long as they do.

And even if Hou was trying to make a point by creating a more direct and harshly lit second half of the film, I missed the romantic soft lighting of the first half. As Manohla Dargis said, this may be shallow and crude, but it's also true.

Everytime now I see a movie that I need to split into first/last half I'm reminded of Kill Bill. I love the first movie, I think it's brililant in so many ways. I don't like the second movie one bit. A friend said to me, "you can't say that, they were meant to be one movie." True, but nevertheless I'm glad that the final decision was made to split it up in two because otherwise I wouldn't hold it up nearly in as high regard. I think back to that now as I reflect on Flowers, if only Hou had found a way to do something like that I would definitely be screaming "masterpiece" for the first half.

That said, this film is amazing and the second half is still very good. I would watch it again in a heartbeat along with just about anything else Hou has ever made. I suppose it's analogous to the cycling critics who, even when it became clear that Lance Armstrong was going to a win a mind-boggling and record breaking 7th consecutive Tour de France, still criticized him for not winning an individual stage (although he eventually did win the penultimate stage). In one sense, it's ridiculous, the man's accomplishment is so great that it's hard to criticize anything about it. On the other hand, the response is understandable given that it is he himself that has set his standards so monstrously high.

The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006)

2006-10-18T11:36:00.001-04:00

THE WHERE:
In the theatres at Silver City with Krystle as part of the ongoing effort to maintain our little weekly movie viewing.

THE WHY:
I loved Infernal Affairs, but as great as it was, I could never shake the feeling that the film never did as much as it could have with its premise. Look at Heat, it's a fairly "standard' cops & robbers plot but Michael Mann puts the psychology of the characters to the forefront and in doing so elevates the film to art. In IA, the filmmakers had the perfect setup to make an even better film! It could have been the film Francis Ford Coppola always talked about making: a film that shows how a good man becomes bad and a bad man becomes good. If ever there was a film that begged for a remake, this was it! And then I hear that Scorsese is remaking it?! Sign me up!

AND THE UGLY:
What a mess. You figured with the combination of IA's fantastic plot, Scorsese, and the cast that this movie would manage to get at least something right. Wrong! They added a bunch of bad things and took out all the good things. If only it were a mere crappy by-the-numbers imitation, it probably would have been better.

Props to Jack Nicholson for managing to fool Scorsese and his editor into thinking that this movie is about him. Even if he doesn't technically appear in more scenes than the two REAL leads, it sure feels like it. There's no justification for the lengthy screen time he manages to get. He's the same freakin guy throughout the entire film, unchanged from the first to last scene. Each scene feels compartmentalized; they exist only to allow him to showcase his Shining-esque crazy personality but do nothing for the overall film (assuming you don't count interrupting, dragging and lengthening).

Lucky for him the other guys have him covered. Martin Sheen plays his character well I guess but he gets screwed by the script. His character only exists as a touchstone for DiCaprio's, but all their scenes together are plot-oriented so there's no chance for any sort of organic relationship. You can't expect audiences to empathize just because a man says "do this for me son", you've got to earn it (reminds me of the typical Hollywood ploy to make the audience feel two characters falling in love by combining a catchy contemporary pop song with a montage of the characters doing various couple-friendly activities). When his character died, I didn't care one bit, I never knew ye. Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg's characters are compartmenatlized caricatures as well (same for their scenes). In fact, it's precisely Wahlberg's comedic presence in all the DiCaprio-Sheen scenes that ruins any possibility of the audience feeling any sort of relationship develop between the two.

So many elements of the film as well felt like Scorsese trying to imitate Scorsese: the token Catholic references, as if he's throwing a bone to his auteurist fans so they have something to tie it back into the rest of his oeuvre. The swearing was also surprisingly excessive for such a light film. These characters are way too funny and the film way too easygoing to have this much profanity and have it feel organic. Even his choice of music seemed completely off.

As for Vera Farmiga, well, I suppose there's nothing bad to say about her, not just because she has beautiful eyes :) but because she's really just functional. That's a shame because I think about the only potentially good change that they made in this movie was having her caught between Damon and DiCaprio. Unfortunately that whole thread was barely touched upon before promptly getting lost in the mix - the story of all the other threads in this movie.

As for the juxtaposition of the two main leads and/or their struggle with their deception, it's even less present than in the original. Here they don't even know each other and Damon's character really gives no hint of switching teams until it actually happens at the very end. There is nothing going on beneath the surface of this film, which completely invalidates the need for such a lengthy prologue. It's rather ironic given that Goodfellas and Casino are two textbook examples of prologues that are efficient, entertaining and informative all at once.

And the whole production value of this movie stunk - usually the one thing you CAN count on from a Hollywood production, and particularly with a Scorsese one. There was really nothing interesting to speak of in terms of framing or shot selection. It all seemed pretty standard to me. The editing was abrupt for no good reason (in the beginning I actually half-believed it was caused by the projectionist cutting too much when splicing reels together), most notably that crappy Wahlberg addition to the ending which conveniently ties up all the loose ends. Nicholson is supposed to be the kingpin of Boston but it's only something that we're told and never really see or feel. I honestly wonder if it was an intentional joke to have the Baldwin-Damon scene at a crappy driving range compared to the scene in IA where they're hitting the balls into the ocean off the rooftop of a skyscraper.

Like usual, the vitriol doesn't match the isolated feeling about the movie. It's just another case of being so angry at a film with so much potential that was a complete letdown in every category.

(EDIT - 10/24/06 - Psychological complexity & the Face/Off connection)
Elaine's comment reminded me of another connection/point I wanted to make sure I remember about this movie. All the reviews/reviewers will certainly talk about the IA/Departed connection, but another film that deserves to be thrown into the mix - and which might even be better than IA - is Face/Off (John Woo, 1997).

Take the scene in both IA and Departed where the dying bad guy suspects the Leung/DiCaprio character of being the rat. In the Departed, DiCaprio really has no friends in this gang, he's portrayed as an outsider, and so appropriately he has no issue with immediately pulling his gun on the baddie. There's some good tension during this scene as we wonder if he's going to be ratted out but that's about it.

Juxtapose that with IA, Leung's character is the bosses most trusted right-hand man and he's the "cool kid" among all the other gang members, the "fat kid" (as Elaine calls him) in particular seems to aspire to be him. As he dies, they're alone in a car, so the immediate tension of being found out is not present, but this instead allows it to be replaced with a psychological dilemma within Leung's character. As the fat kid recounts how he knows Leung wasn't there, we sense the thoughts racing through his mind: "oh crap, I've been exposed! What should I do? I need to kill him! But how can I? This guy is one of my best friends, he looks up to me. What do I do?!" The twist here is that the kid legitimately believes that Leung is not the rat, but knows that others will suspect he is if they found out what he knows, so being a good friend, he tells him he'll take his secret literally to the grave. He then tells him to just leave him there and save himself. The scene leaves the viewer to reconsider how black & white our liberal labels of "good" and "evil" really are in light of this very noble (if naive) gesture by an "evil" gang member with no supposed morals or loyalties.

Unfortunately for the Departed, it had no such scenes, and unfortunately for IA, I think this was really the only such scene. And this is something that Face/Off does extremely well. In this film, the cop (John Travolta) is by all external accounts a good man in that he's a highly decorated and hard-working cop who wants to bring down a wanted criminal (Nicholas Cage). But it is this very same single-minded focus that completly alienates him from not only all his staff, but his wife and child as well. The real artistic meat of this film comes in when the characters trade places. Travolta gets to know the criminals he's hated his whole life in a new light, he sees their camraderie, their loyalty to "him" and to each other. And in his enemy's abandoned girlfriend and child (whom he previously intimdated and threatened) he sees his own family that he's neglected and he begins to empathize with her.

Meanwhile, Cage's character, despite being the "bad" guy is the one who ironically, or not (and that's the point!), manages to patch things up at the office, re-connect with Travolta's daughter and re-invigorate his marriage. Not only that, but there's even the fantastic scene when he's forced to goto the cemetary with Travolta's wife to visit the grave of their son whom HE murdered. Cage (as Travolta's character) is forced to finally confront the atrocity he committed. Geez, what a great movie! What a combination of pop and art! What vintage John Woo action ! How did I ever forget about this movie? Thank goodness for film journals!

Bon Cop, Bad Cop: Most Popular Homegrown movie in Canadian History!

2006-10-11T17:20:00.000-04:00

Well, last week it became official. Bon Cop, Bad Cop became the all-time Canadian box office leader among films made in Canada (finally overtaking freakin' Porky's). It should be a proud moment for all Canadians. We finally made a truly entertaining movie! It's a shame that most people outside of Ontario/Quebec won't get to - or just won't - watch it. It really is their loss, because it's every bit as fun as any of the better mindless Hollywood blockbusters out there.

I'm gonna get a kick out of all the cultural analyzation that goes into how this film became popular by the Nationalists because I think for the most part it's not true. I definitely enjoyed it more being a proud Canadian cinephile who's always been rooting for Canadian cinema and who also "got" the cultural references in the film, but this film was great mostly because it was just a well-executed summer movie. I mean in reality it's not like it was all that different from say Rush Hour, just replace the black-chinese guys with the anglo-franco guys. The great scenes anyways (the autospy guy, the initial finding of the body and quibbling over who takes it, the bar fight, the house of weed fire & subsequent boss yelling scene, etc.) all have nothing intrinsically Canadian about them.

That's not to take anything away from it, personally to me, none of that stuff matters and it really shouldn't to a film that's main purpose is to be entertaining. We already have a long tradition of art films as it is, that isn't our problem, our problem has always been making films that ALL Canadians want to see. This film isn't the saviour of both art and mainstream Canadian cinema, but it is the saviour of the one that needs it the most: the mainstream side. I hope that it makes even bigger stars out of Colm Feore and Patrick Huard, who both deserve it. And I hope that this film marks the beginning of a whole new era of Canadians being able to see their own homegrown films in their local cineplexes instead of at tiny little arthouses. I look forward to the next time I can walk out of Silver City after watching another entertaining Canadian movie and be able to say "it was great, but it sure was no Bon Cop, Bad Cop."

Plots explained: Mulholland Drive & The Big Sleep

2006-10-06T12:37:00.000-04:00

For some reason, just thought of these links again. The Big Sleep one is just a good refresher, while the Mulholland Drive one is superbly written and demonstrates some real in-depth analysis. Just reading it again has me itching to re-watch the movie:

Understanding "The Big Sleep"
Everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask about "Mulholland Drive"

Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987)

2006-10-05T14:42:00.001-04:00

THE WHERE:
At home with Krystle as part of our attempt to get into a weekly movie watching groove.

THE WHY:
It was a movie we both wanted to see. I had been wanting to see this film for a long time for a few reason: 1) Fascinated by the story in general, 2) It being Wenders' most famous and revered film, 3) Wanting to see something by Wenders knowing how he has a great respect for and has been influenced by quality directors such as Ozu.

AND THE UGLY:
What a mixed bag of a film. The first 3/4 of the movie were - for the most part - brilliant, when the film plays out like a documentary, merely following the angels around. It was strangely beautiful how their "job" is to help comfort those around them who need it the most, and yet they manage to remain emotionally detached from it all, which made the cry of the angel when the guy jumps off the building that much more powerful and unexpected. Great scene. Even better was the library scene as a whole, because it was the only truly uninterrupted scene that felt like it was allowed room to breathe before being rudely interrupted by some other clever scene. What an odd movie.

Having seen the film, given its content, the general critical spiritual reverance for it, and not to mention Wender's huge respect for Ozu, I refuse to believe that the mix of styles in the film is some Godard-ian cynicism or cleverness thrown in by Wenders to make some post-modern point. It seems to me that he takes all this rather seriously. So why dilute a film that starts off so beautifully with that whole Colombo thing? Sure it's clever, but it doesn't belong in this movie. It's too small to make a difference but it's big enough to be annoying and make you question why it's there.

Even if you forget all those bad scenes, I still wonder if the critical community mistakes a beautiful film for a deep film or if they're all just copying a press release. While the premise of the film: an angel wanting to become human to finally experience what only humans can, is a "big" idea, there's actually very very little that's done with it. And ideas alone shouldn't elevate a film, otherwise it's just falling prey to Kael's "Fantasies of the Art House Audience". There is no internal struggle from the Angel's POV, right off the bat he talks about wanting to be human and never really puts up much of a fight for the Angel's "side". And once the Angel becomes human - and forgetting that he's only shown as being human for about 20 minutes - all he does is go straight for the girl whom mysteriously recognizes him instantly, they kiss, the end. There's a long philosophical monologue by the girl before the kiss of course, but rather ironic isn't it that a film that's supposed to expound on the joys/sorrows of the human experience decides to climax with a ridiculously long monologue the likes of which would never be seen in real life? Neither the Angel or the girl ever encounter any real obstacles or decisions in the entire film. Everything just kinda falls into their lap. Isn't this kinda just a typical Hollywood romance hidden beneath an art-film veneer?

Of course having said all that, I did really like the film. I guess the ones I always write the most negative things about are the ones I'm angry at because I feel they had the potential to be even better than they were.

Newly Watched Films (2008)

2006-10-03T23:20:00.006-04:00

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

TOTAL FILMS = 25
(* = watched in theatre)

DECEMBER

Marle y & Me (2008)*
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)*

NOVEMBER

(none)

OCTOBER

SEPTEMBER

Iron Man (2008)
The Fall (2006)
Mamma Mia! (2008)*

AUGUST

Helvetica (2007)*

JULY

The Dark Knight (2008)*
Hancock (2008)*

JUNE

MAY

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)*

APRIL

Young @ Heart (2007)*
Junebug (2005)

MARCH

Stealth (2005)
Wired to Win (IMAX) (2005) *

FEBRUARY

JANUARY

(none)

Newly Watched Films (2002)

2006-10-03T16:29:00.004-04:00

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

TOTAL FILMS = 89 (Partial List)
(* = watched in theatre)

MAY (PARTIAL)

JUNE (PARTIAL)

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

CFI Short Film Presentation

I Shout Love (short) (2001)*
The Green (short) (2001)*
1:1 (short) (2001)*

8. In the Realm of the Sense (1976)
9. The Big Shave (short) (1967)
10. Throne of Blood (1957)

DECEMBER

Femme Fatale (2002)
Kagemusha (1980)
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Yojimbo (1961)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)
Three Colours: Red (1994)
Lilo & Stitch (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)*
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Chicago (2002)*
Pleasantville (1998)
Eight Legged Freaks (2002)
Far From Heaven (2002)*
Olsen Twins: Getting There (2002)

Newly Watched Films (2003)

2006-10-03T16:01:00.005-04:00

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

TOTAL FILMS = 100
(* = watched in theatre)

JANUARY

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)*
Jackie Brown (1997)
A Better Tomorrow (1986)
Catch Me If You Can (2002)*
Happy Together (1997)
Jules et Jim (1962)
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
Sanjuro (1962)
New Women (1934)

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

The Blue Kite (1993)
Beijing Bicycle (2001)
Sunrise (1927)
Stray Dog (1949)

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

Project Grizzly (1996)
Gangs of New York (2002)
Solaris (2002)
La Bete Humaine (1938)
Backfire (short) (2002)

SEPTEMBER

The Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Toronto International Film Festival

Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine (2003)*
Elephant (2003)*
Bright Future (2003)*
Dogville (2003)*
Lost in Translation (2003)*
The Saddest Music in the World (2003)*

Irma Vep (1996)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Edison Kinetoscope Shorts: Serpentine Dance , Sandow , Comic Boxing , Feeding the Doves , Seminary Girls

Early Cinema Shorts: The Kiss , Stop Thief! , Life of an American Fireman , Policeman’s Little Run
Lumiere Actualite Shorts: Promenade of Ostriches , Transformation by Hats , Poultry Yard

The Girl and Her Trust (short) (1912)
Les Vampires: The Red Codebook (serial) (1915-1916)
Gilda (1946)
The Son of the Sheik (1922)

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

Honey (2003)*
The General (1927)
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)*

Newly Watched Films (2004)

2006-10-03T15:57:00.005-04:00

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

TOTAL FILMS = 54
(* = watched in theatre)

JANUARY

Pather Panchali (1955)
M (1931)
Big Fish (2003)*
The English Patient (1995)
The Big Heat (1953)

FEBRUARY

MARCH

The Heart of the World (short) (2000)
The Passion of the Christ (2004)*

APRIL

Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004)*

MAY

Rounders (1998)
Mean Girls (2004)*
Troy (2004)*
Van Helsing (2004)*
Avalon (2001)

JUNE

The Terminal (2004)*
Spider-Man 2 (2004)*

JULY

Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)
The Bourne Identity (2002)
Shadow Maker: Gwendolyn MacEwen, Poet (1998)
Mystic River (2003)

AUGUST

Before Sunset (2004)* (twice in two days)

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMEBER

DECEMBER

Newly Watched Films (2005)

2006-10-03T15:51:00.005-04:00

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

TOTAL FILMS = 43
(* = watched in theatre)

JANUARY

Kingdom of Shadows (1998)
Low Visibility (1984)
Springtime in Greenland (short) (1981)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The Decline of the American Empire (1986)
Paris Qui Dort / The Crazy Ray (1925)
Dagon (2001)
I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987)
Evil Dead Trap (1988)
The Brood (1979)

FEBRUARY

Living Hell (2000)
Ryan (short) (2004)
Very Nice Very Nice (short) (1961)
Sur le Seuil (2003)
La Florida (1993)
Sally’s Beauty Spot (short) (1990)
Save My Lost Nigga Soul (short) (1993)

MARCH

The Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind (1989)
Masala (1991)
The Eye (2002)
The Stepfather (1987)

APRIL

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) *
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Million Dollar Baby (2004) *
Plague City: SARS in Toronto (2005) (TV)
Sin City (2005)*

JUNE

JULY (none)

AUGUST

Who’s Your Daddy? (2003)
The Island (2005) *
The Flying Padre (short) (1951)
Norman McLaren: Select Short Films: Boogie-Doodle (1940), Lines: Horizontal (1962), Le Merle (1958), A Phantasy (1952)

SEPTEMBER

Red Eye (2005) *
Batman Begins (2005) *
2046 (2004) *

OCTOBER

We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004)

NOVEMBER

Millennium Mambo (2001)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) *

DECEMBER

Infernal Affairs (2002)
Infernal Affairs II (2003)
Infernal Affairs III (2003)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)*
Munich (2005)*

Newly Watched Films (2009)

2006-10-03T12:37:00.035-04:00

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

TOTAL FILMS = 38
(* = watched in theatre)

JANUARY

Revolutionary Road (2008)*
Australia (2008)*

FEBRUARY

Hot Rod (2007)

MARCH

APRIL

The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Be Kind Rewind (2008)

MAY

Fireproof (2008)

JUNE

JULY

Drag Me to Hell (2009)*
Partly Cloudy (short) (2009)*
Up (2009)*
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)*
Tropic Thunder (2008)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
Moon (2009)*

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

OCTOBER

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs [3-D] (2009)*

NOVEMBER

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
The Terminator (1984)
Where the Wild Things Are (2009)*
Star Trek (2009)
Badlands (1973)
The Asphalt Jungle (1959)
Spirited Away (2002)

DECEMBER

Newly Watched Films (2011)

2006-10-03T09:51:00.025-04:00

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

(* = watched in theatre)

JANUARY - JUNE
(stopped keeping track for a little while, life got in the way)

JULY

The Tree of Life (2011)*
Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)*
All About Eve (1950)

OCTOBER

War of the Worlds (2005)
The Ides of March (2011)*
Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film (2009)
Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)
Beyond the Mat (1999)

NOVEMBER

In Time (2011)*
Obsession (1976)
Tirez sur le Pianiste (1960)
Margin Call (2011)*
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2009)

DECEMBER

The Artist (2011)*

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) 2.5

Newly Watched Films (2006)

2006-10-03T02:51:00.005-04:00

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

The Year in Review (2006)

TOTAL FILMS = 64
(* = watched in theatre)

JANUARY

The Deep End (2001)
Mulberry Red, No. 17 (short) (1999)
Devouring Buddha (short) (2002)
Lord of War (2005)
Post-Partum (short) (2004)
Terminal Bar (short) (2003)
The New World (2005)*
The Passenger (1975)*

FEBRUARY

La Notte (1961)
Michelangelo Antonioni: The Eye That Changed Cinema (2001)
Antonioni: Documents & Testimonials (1966)
Day of the Fight (short) (1951)
Blow-Up (1966)
Eight Below (2006)*
Brokeback Mountain (2005)*

MARCH

George Méliès Shorts (Landmarks of Early Film #2):Long Distance Wireless Photography (1908), Good Glue Sticks, The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and the Moon (1907), The Mysterious Retort (1906),The Enchanted Sedan Chair, The Black Imp, The Scheming Gambler’s Paradise (1905), The Hilarious Posters, The Living Playing Cards, The Wonderful Living Fan, The Mermaid, The Untamable Whiskers, The Cook in Trouble, Tchin-Chao: The Chinese Conjurer (1904)

APRIL

Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)*
China Rises (2006)
Eros (2004)
Michelangelo Eye to Eye (2004)
First Descent (2005)
Inside Man (2006)*
The Phantom of Liberty (1974)

MAY

JUNE

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2005)
Three Times (2005)*
What Women Want (2000)
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)*
Click (2006)*

JULY

Visions of Light (1992)

AUGUST

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)*
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)*
The Descent (2005)*
Snakes on a Plane (2006)*

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

Wings of Desire (1987) (review)
The Departed (2006)* (review)
Flowers of Shanghai (1998) (review)
Norman McLaren Shorts: Blinkity Blank (1955), New York Lightboard Record (1961), Mosaic (1965), Pas De Deux (1968)
Höllentour (2004) (review)

NOVEMBER

Marie Antoinette (2006)* (review)
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)* (review)
Red Desert (1964)
Mission to Mars (2002) (review)
The Corrs: All The Way Home (2005) (review)
Stranger Than Fiction (2006)* (review)
Little Children (2006)* (review)

DECEMBER

Newly Watched Films (2007)

2006-10-03T02:50:00.006-04:00

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

TOTAL FILMS = 31
(* = watched in theatre)

DECEMBER

L'Argent (1983)
I Am Legend (IMAX) (2007)*
Enchanted (2007)*

NOVEMBER

The Fury (1978)
Beowulf (IMAX-3D) (2007)*

OCTOBER

SEPTEMBER

2 Days in Paris (2007)*
Sunset Boulevard (1950)

AUGUST

The Queen (2006)
The Alps (OMNIMAX) (2007)*

JULY

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (IMAX) (2007)*
Paris Je T'Aime (2006)*
Springtime in a Small Town (2002)
Cinderella Story (2004)
Transformers (2007)*
Dead Silence (2007)

JUNE

Amazing Grace (2006)*

MAY

Inland Empire (2006)*
Away From Her (2007)*
The Fountain (2006)*

APRIL

The Big Hit (1998)

MARCH

FEBRUARY

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) (review)

JANUARY

The 39 Steps (1935) (review)
All About My Mother (1999) (review)
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) (review)
Volver (2006)* (review)

Newly Watched Films (2010)

2006-10-03T00:12:00.030-04:00

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

TOTAL FILMS = 41
(* = watched in theatre)

JANUARY

Nine (2009)*
Broken Embraces (2009)*
Avatar (2009) [IMAX 3D] *
Dick Tracy (1990)
Up in the Air (2009)*
The Proposal (2009)
Yi Yi (2000)
A Single Man (2009)*
Donkey (2010)*

FEBRUARY

Red Cliff (2008)*
New York, I Love You (2009)*

MARCH

APRIL

(None)

MAY

Iron Man 2 (2010) *
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

JUNE

(None)

JULY

AUGUST

Clash of the Titans (2010)

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

The Shadow (1994)
12 Monkeys (1995)
The Notebook (2004)
Tangled [3D] (2010)
Miller's Crossing (1990)

DECEMBER

Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)*
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)*
Black Swan (2010)*
How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael (excerpts)

2006-09-25T01:06:00.000-04:00

by Francis Davis
(excerpts organized by page number)

"The educated audience often uses ‘art’ films in much the same self-indulgent way as the mass audience uses the Hollywood ‘product,’ finding wish fulfillment in the form of cheap and easy congratulations on their sensitivities and their liberalism." (24)

"Pauline’s insistence that art happens in the real world and that it should be an instrument of pleasure has become a governing principle in writing about rock and pop. Her importance as a movie critic cannot be overestimated, but it pales before her influence as a critic, period – and as a writer." (26)

The following is all Kael:

"I was often accused of writing about everything but the movie." (31)

"I think half of the reason that people become interested in movies in the first place is sex and dating and everything connected with eroticism on the screen." (33)

"One of the great things about movies is they can combine the energy of a popular art with the possibilities of a high art. What’s wonderful about someone like Altman is that mixture of pop and high art. He’s an artist who uses pop as his vehicle. That’s part of the excitement in a movie like Nashville; you get a sense of the different forces at work on the director." (34-35)

Davis: You once said that you wanted to write about movies the way that people actually talked about them on leaving the theater.
Kael: Yes, the language we really spoke – and the language of movies. I didn’t want to write academic English in an attempt to elevate movies, because I think that actually lowers them. It denies them what makes them distinctive.

"And I think that one of the reasons we love movies so much is that they have the pop element. It’s why so many plays seem deadly to audiences today. They have such a refined texture to them, and they put you to sleep with all that refinement." (91)

"It’s difficult to be a critic of mass culture. You write about so much crap that you begin to be contemptuous of what you’re writing about – at least, a lot of critics are, and they hope for something more interesting to do. You can’t fault them for that. But they don’t do justice to what they’re seeing. They don’t seem to be sensitive to what’s on the screen." (106)

"I don’t like movies that work on dread, and yet they’re often taken very seriously because of that dread factor. You sit there knowing that this poor guy is going to be beaten to a pulp, and it’s an awful feeling." (In talking about Boys Don’t Cry) (114)

"It’s not fun writing about bad movies. I used to think it was bad for my skin. It’s painful writing about the bad things in an art form, particularly when young kids are going to be enthusiastic about those things, because they haven’t seen anything better or anything different. I mean if you were writing about The Perfect Storm, you would have to consider that for many kids it’s the first time they’ve ever seen something like that, and they’re all excited about it... But if you write critically, you have to do something besides get excited. You have to examine what’s in front of you. What you see is a movie industry in decay, and the decay gets worse and worse." (126)

First Da Capo Press edition 2002

Celluloid Saints

2006-09-24T16:34:00.000-04:00

by Ron Reed

It's become a truism that Christians get the short end of the cultural stick on our multiplex screens. Future archaeologists, looking back at our culture through the lens of our movies, would conclude that Christianity was some sort of judgemental, repressive religious sect whose adherents (and leadership) consisted primarily of liars, thieves, megalomaniacs, sex abusers and violent, deranged killers.

This galls me. I've been a Christian for going on thirty years, and in that time I've met a whole lot of other Christians. Granted, I've come across a reasonable share of hypocritical or emotionally troubled believers – no surprise there, since this is one club that'll take anybody as a member. (Indeed, our founder kind of preferred sinners, so we come by this honestly.) Still, for all that, the vast majority of Christians I've gotten to know are pretty darn decent – nary an axe-murderer among them. By and large, they're just plain folks, most of whom are pretty sure they're not perfect, and by and large are committed to at least trying to do right by other people. It's like it's part of their religion, or something.

Even so, at the movies you can pretty much count on any character who's identified as being a Christian to be either seriously messed up or someone you're not meant to take seriously.

Or can you? A decade and a half ago, I would have said that without hesitation. But the fact is, I can't be quite so glib about that now. See, I've started to notice something.

I go to a lot of movies. And as the years go by, it seems to me there are less and less occasions when I leave the theatre feeling slandered. And more and more, I come up with movies that include Christian characters who are recognizable to me: relatively positive, often pretty nuanced portrayals of, well, real human beings.

The first on my list is a character who, oddly enough, others don't even seem to consider a Christian – Billy Kwan, brilliantly portrayed by Linda Hunt in The Year Of Living Dangerously, a marginal character whose preoccupation with the crowd's question to John The Baptist ("What then must we do?") leads to his quiet sacrificial support of an impoverished woman and her child, his efforts to awaken the Mel Gibson character to the spiritual realities which cast their shadows on the material world like characters in a Javanese wayang puppet play, and his final choice to take action in the face of political turmoil during the Suharto coup. Excluded from privilege because of his dwarfism and mixed race, he lives an examined life, treasuring friendships to the point of obsession – or are the files he keeps an act of oblation, something closer to divine love? A man of obedience, of conscience, spiritually quickened - one of "the least" who, in the upside-down Kingdom of God, is counted greatest.

My mind also turns to another character whose faith is often overlooked, brought to the fore by Brooke Smith's stunning performance of Sonya in Vanya On 42nd Street. It seems every other director of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" treats this character's Christianity with anything from irony to contempt, dismissing it (and the character) as sadly naive and ineffectual. But director Andre Gregory, whose work is preoccupied with spiritual exploration (My Dinner With Andre), gives full weight to this young woman's beliefs and the integrity of her life, in clear contrast to the lives of indulgence and ennui around her – and in so doing, finds a fresh power and emotional centre in the play that lifts it above the oppressive pessimism which usually permeates. There is a simple quality of goodness, a directness and lack of jadedness or artifice which rings through in this actress's embodiment of the character and makes her final scene about the value of work and the hope of heaven deeply moving and memorable.

When Flashdance appeared in theatres in the mid-Eighties, it was condescended to by critics as a shallow wish-fulfillment story in a way that didn't account for the film's power, not only at the box office but also in my own experience as an oh-so-sophisticated theatre student. But an NPR commentator put the film in perspective for me: he commented that if he'd seen this film as a teenager, it would undoubtedly been The Film of his life – a defining, inspiring, art-affirming, body-affirming story that would provide a compelling myth for his emergence into adulthood. I mention this not to claim that Jennifer Beals's character was somehow a believer (though I do seem to remember a visit to a church, and a Catholic grandmother, that seemed to suggest certain themes of vocation?), but rather to suggest that we can discover the virtues of a film we might otherwise dismiss by looking at it through the right set of eyes – more exactly, through eyes of the right age. I was blessed to sit with my sixteen-year-old daughter to watch what was then her favourite film – one which I probably never would have seen otherwise, knowing in advance it must be nothing but a sentimental romance, A Walk To Remember. But sharing in my teenager's exhilaration about this story, seeing it through her eyes, I got to see the movie from the right vantage point. Mandy Moore plays a bright, self-possessed high school girl completely unconcerned with the preoccupations of other girls her age, appearance and popularity. Instead, she is living life on her own terms, working through a checklist of experiences she is determined to have before she dies. She is unapologetic about her life, about herself, and indeed about her Christian faith: and the constrained, anxious lives of those around her are weighed and found wanting when contrasted to hers. The judgement is not hers – as no-nonsense as this character is about character, consequence and betrayal of trust, she is not judgemental. She's got her life to live, and nothing keeps her from it. Roger Ebert shared my unabashed enthusiasm for this movie, and this character; "She's a smart, nice girl, a reminder that one of the pleasures of the movies is to meet good people." While it's easy to dismiss this movie as sentimental, this character as "too good to be true," I have to wonder – didn't you know anybody like this in high school? Preternaturally self-possessed, full of grace and optimism, and quite probably a Christian? I did. They inspired me. And it was a gift to see such a person on the big screen, thirty years later, and to be inspired all over again.

This film, interestingly, also included "the other kind" of Christian character – the young woman's father, a standard-issue pastor/dad, harshly controlling and mistrustful. Fair enough, the guy has his reasons for being that way, and there are basic dramaturgical reasons why he was probably drawn that way, but Peter Coyote's performance played as one- or two-note caricature to me, pulled from the same bag of cliches as so many other ministerial monster parents – my mind turns immediately to the dance-o-phobic Reverend Shaw Moore in that other mid-Eighties teen flick, Footloose.

There are a lot of reasons why Magnolia has a particular appeal to Christians, but one of the most significant for me was John C. Reilly's cliché-defying embodiment of an almost comically idealistic, inexperienced, unsure, naive, compassionate cop – this guy is part of the same police force as that dude in Training Day? The first time we see him, he is at the wheel of his squad car carrying on an animated conversation with someone we don't see – who turns out in fact to be Someone Unseen, God Himself. The attraction-of-opposites romance that plays out between this naive, praying policeman and the strung out junky-in-need-of-redemption he meets on a routine noise disturbance call is not only hilarious but touching, and never does the film condescend to this endearing man or his faith.

For many Christians, Babette's Feast is the quintessential "Christian-positive" film, a celebration of the via positiva over a soul-destroying, relationship-withering strain of asensual pietism. I find it ironic (and significant) that non-Christians read this film very differently, seeing in it the triumph of good old hedonism over life-denying Christianity. The former view Babette, with her artist's affirmation of the senses and communal celebration, as inherently Christian, making much of the subtle suggestions that the character is a Catholic believer: the latter simply assume that nothing this luxurious and tasty could ever come out of our rule-bound, heavenly-minded religion, and identify Babette as One Of Their Own. Are the strict, ascetic townspeople caricatures of pietistic Christians? I don't think so – there's something about the climate, the landscape, and the history of these Northern believers that can too readily shrink and harden a soul, and to my eyes this is a pretty apt picture. Is Babette the embodiment of God's response to His own creation, the ringing great "Behold, it is good!" of the Genesis creation account? I think so – but I don't know if Isak Dinesen would see it that way or not.

There are other remarkable, truthful portrayals of Christians in film that come to mind. One of my absolute Meryl Streep roles, a wonderful just-plain-folks contrast to her many thoroughbred aristocrats, the grieving Seventh Day Adventist mother in the heart-rending Australian story A Cry In The Dark. Then there's Mac Sledge, Robert Duvall's masterpiece of understatement, the country singer in Tender Mercies who fights to recover his life and dignity after hitting an ugly, alcoholic bottom in an anything-but-God-forsaken motel in the flat heart of Texas – and indeed the woman of quiet faith who plays the central role in his potential redemption, a gorgeous exercise in simplicity by Tess Harper. Is Carrie Watts, the central character in screenwriter Horton Foote's other mid-Eighties masterpiece Trip To Bountiful, a Christian? Is her journey home, sloughing off the scales of petty bickering and bitterness, also a journey back to a clean and pure childhood faith, as we sense not only from the movie's title but also by the glorious rendition of "Softly And Tenderly" which plays over the closing credits? And then there's the O'Connor-esque "Sonny" Dewey, another Duvall creation, that deeply flawed southern preacher whose God-haunted story illustrates another Apostle's assertion that "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" – and that grace abounds, even to the chief of sinners.

Which puts me in mind of several other professional Christians whose movie representations are something other than caricature. It seems to me that the early Eighties saw a cultural shift which meant that there began to be authentic Christians showing up here and there in films, after decades of believers who were either avuncular priests and well-intentioned nuns or else lying, thieving, fornicating, violent, abusive Believers (of both True and false varieties) – many of them pastors or evangelists, none of them recognizable among the thousands of Christians I have known in a lifetime of knowing Christians. But recent years have given us any number of sympathetic characters with real humanity who are also people of faith – even ministers of one kind or another! Wonders never cease. The lonely, grieving Lutheran pastor in Italian For Beginners; the compassionate, somewhat unpredictable, doing-the-best-he-can clergyman in You Can Count On Me; the extraordinary Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking; Ed Harris's broken-faithed priest in The Third Miracle; both Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro in The Mission, men of faith who must agonize over the question whether or not to live by the sword. Rather less successful (but still not condescending) were Mel Gibson's faith-frozen Episcopal (or was he Catholic? or did the director even know?) priest in Signs, who seemed more a cluster of screenwriterly character traits than a fully-realized human soul, or Edward Norton's "I'll take the love of Jenna Elfman over the love of God any day" hip and trendy priest in Keeping The Faith. (Actually, I'm being glib in this last case: the movie did a pretty good job of portraying the struggles of a man whose vow of celibacy is called into question when he finds himself falling in love with an undeniably adorable no-longer-childhood friend. And it was particularly strong in the scenes with Milos Forman playing the older counsellor-priest: these sections wrestled through these very real questions with an authenticity that was astonishing in the very same movie that turned an utterly tone-deaf ear to the inappropriateness of a certain rabbi's sexual escapades.)

There's been a batch of European films, lately, that give immense respect to the Christians at the heart of their story, including the droll Finnish comedy The Man Without A Past and a touchingly beautiful, quirkily comic Italian film Not Of This World, which deals searchingly with questions of faith, vocation and love. Even blockbustery comic-derived fare like X2: X-Men United and Daredevil seems willing to include Christian faith as a legitimate character attribute.

If there was a movie that heralded the change from stereotype and condescension to at least occasional respect and recognizeability, it was the 1981 hit Chariots Of Fire, where audiences rooted for an unabashedly evangelical Christian, even cheering him on as he took a moral stand they would never themselves consider – somehow, by some cinematic alchemy, Your Average Theatregoer perceived Eric Lidell to be a hero for refusing to run an Olympic race on the Lord's Day, and believing Christians sitting in those crowded movie houses, braced for the usual mockery of conservative Christian practices, experienced an intoxicating thrill as their values and standards were celebrated instead. Though it must be said that historical figures had long been allowed to be both Christian and honourable – it was acceptable for Richard Burton to defend the honour of God in the 1964 filmization of Jean Anouilh's Becket, or for Paul Scofield to take a similar stand two years later when Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons hit the silver screen, for example. Still, when the Chariots rolled it had been a decade and a half since Christians had been allowed to be Good Guys, and we were only protected from the Sprinting Scotsman and his gospel faith by decades rather than centuries – it was electric to hear this man tell his missionary sister (in what must surely be the line of dialogue most-quoted among Christian artists of a certain generation), "God made me for China. But He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure." The runner's pleasure in the God who made him? Yes. The Creator's pleasure in His child, and in the gift being expressed? Yes.

Other historical stories have been graced by masterful screen interpretations. Hard on the heels of definitive performances as Hannibal Lecter and the butler Stevens (in Remains Of The Day), Antony Hopkins gave us a memorable Jack Lewis in Shadowlands. Opposite Hopkins' Dr Treves in The Elephant Man, John Hurt was astonishing as John Merrick – can you believe he did that WITHOUT MAKE-UP?! – and while the character's Christianity wasn't the main theme of David Lynch's powerful black and white evocation of industrial 19th century London, it played out in pivotal events and metaphors, as Merrick's humanity and artistic soul is revealed through his private, prayerful recitation of the 23rd Psalm or his painstaking construction of a model of Saint Paul's cathedral. Other notable portrayals of historical Christians include Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon (a Saint-Francis-as-proto-hippy 1972 flick which gives the lie to my Chariots Of Fire theory – oh well...), and a curiously restrained portrayal of soon-to-be-sainted Father Damien in Paul Cox's 1999 Molokai – David Wenham's gentle, patient, stolid characterization seems at odds with the historical accounts of the fiery Belgian priest whose passion and pig-headedness put him in constant conflict with pretty much everyone he came in contact with, but it does embody a wonderful stubborn undeterability, and a compassion which was certainly at the core of this remarkable man of faith.

This survey wouldn't be complete without mention of three other significant (but less-than-ideal) Christian characters. George C. Scott's portrayal of a "Hardcore" Dutch Calvinist evokes memories of John Ford's archetypal "searcher," probing the darkest recesses of hell (which is to say, the wild west coast pornography industry) for his daughter in a performance that is as unsympathetic as it is indelibly memorable: when a spiritually lost young hooker, aiding him in his search, expresses curiousity about his religious beliefs, Jake Van Dorn trots out his catechismal "TULIP" formula (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement...), and she responds "You're more fucked up than I am." And we can only agree – particularly as we sit numbly and watch the unfolding of the film's final scenes, and see a man gain his daughter but lose his soul. This character study is not unrealistic – writer/director Paul Schrader knows the worlds he describes, as evidenced by the deadly accurate (and funny, and sadly oppressive) opening sequence in the Van Dorn home in Grand Rapids at Christmas – but it is harsh and unsympathetic, fulfilling our culture's stereotypical expectations about the inhumanity of the fundamentalist conservative believer.

Another clearly Christian character portrayed in a less-than-flattering light is the young and untested Bob in the Kevin Spacey – Danny Devito vehicle, The Big Kahuna. Peter Facinelli admirably holds his own in this heavy-weight cast, playing the thankless role of a naive young fundamentalist whose decision to place his calling to preach the gospel above his assignment to sell industrial lubricants earns him the contempt not only of the other two characters but also the playwright, and thence the audience. For many viewers, whether Christian or not, this character embodies all that is wrong-headed and offensive about Christian efforts at "witnessing." But I found this portrayal one-sided and misleading. We are set up to perceive DeVito's character as the wise, caring and truly spiritual one, seasoned by the mundane and all-but-inescapable suffering, shame and quiet desperation that seem almost inevitable by-products of so many ordinary lives: divorce and alienation, disillusionment and just plain tiredness. And this character, given moral weight and authority not only by the fact of his experience of suffering and relative compassion, but also by a magnificently centred DeVito performance, prounounces Bob's evangelistic efforts meaningless, his face and soul "characterless," his burgeoning friendship with Dick Fuller (the "big kahuna" himself) manipulative and empty simply because the young man talked with him about Jesus, and then found himself reluctant to push his company's product for fear it would cheapen a personal and spiritual conversation. Clearly, we are expected to "buy" the older salesman's perception of the situation: we nod in knowing agreement when Phil corrects Bob for his hypocrisy; "If you really cared about the guy, you'd ask him about his family, about his life: but as soon as you lay your hands on the conversation to steer it, you're nothing but a salesman." We conveniently forget – as does Phil, and apparently the playwright – that Bob's first (lengthy) conversation with Fuller came about because the younger man was curious about the details of his life, such as the man's feelings about the death of any number of family pets! If Fuller was put off by the young man's ham-fisted and inappropriate evangelistic zeal, we get no evidence of that: at the end of that inital conversation, the older man invites Bob to join him later at a private party to continue their heart to heart talk. We're expected to accept Phil's judgement of the young Christian as being shallow, manipulative and insincere, and we walk right down that garden path: but I wonder what The Big Kahuna himself would have to say about DeVito's judgement if the playwright had the integrity to give him some stage time. I think he would have found he had nothing to say to Phil and Larry, whose only interest was to use him to benefit their company: and I think the judgement he would render of his spiritually-minded, listening young friend might be very different from that of the playwight, the other characters and, ultimately, the all-too-manipulable audience.

Another gruelling "mean streets" film with spiritual concerns is Abel Ferrera's almost unwatchable (but I think profound) 1992 film featuring Harvey Keitel in a quintessential performance as a Bad Lieutenant on the NYPD. A vice cop utterly addicted to cocaine and violence and power, this lapsed-as-can-be-imagined Catholic is "snatched as a brand from the burning" when supernatural visions (or are they the drug-induced manifestations of a not-quite-seared guilty soul?) follow his investigation of a nun's vicious rape. Keitel is unflinching in his embodiment of a man utterly given over to carnality – who is nonetheless pursued by the hound of heaven, snapping relentlessly at his heels.

So. Christians abound, at long last. Bad Christians, accurately portrayed. Good Christians, badly portrayed. No surprise there. But what is truly surprising, as well as deeply gratifying, are all those good Christians, well portrayed. For every cliched film rendition of an axe-wielding, Bible-quoting psychopath or a standard issue missionary monster, there's another that features – can you believe! – a recognizable human being, whose flaws are nothing more or less than part of their palpable humanity. Who also happens to follow Jesus.

Kind of like the Christians I know. Kind of like me.

Original Source - LookingCloser.org

Is This Film Criticism's Greatest Generation?

2006-09-22T22:28:00.000-04:00

by Robert Koehler

While many still produce at a level that would put younger colleagues to shame, an elder generation of film critics that has held a powerful influence in the field is gradually, very gradually, passing from the international film scene.

Certainly, as evidenced by such sturdy and vibrant voices as Shigehiko Hasumi, Joe Morgenstern and Donald Richie, age seems to provide no barrier for critics with intellectual energy to burn. (On the heels of a 2005 Pulitzer Prize, Morgenstern continues his work for the Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio unabated, while Hasumi is in the midst of three books, including studies of Gustave Flaubert and John Ford.)

But rather than wait for the last frame of their careers, we salute a sampling of this generation now. By the time retirement comes, these critics will have left it all on the field.

Jose Carlos Avellar

Few can claim to have discovered an artistic movement, but Avellar -- the dean of Brazilian film critics -- carries that distinction quite firmly.

In the early '60s, when Brazilian screens were awash in Hollywood exports, Avellar announced the emergence of Cinema Novo (with such films as "Barren Lives"). Its concern for reality and cinema's radical possibilities set a course for a revived Latin American scene, with Avellar as a key articulator of this alternative to the Americans.

Raymond Bellour

As the key developer of what is now known as "film analysis," Bellour holds a crucial place in the landscape of seminal critical voices.

With his astoundingly detailed studies of (especially) Hitchcock's classical Hollywood films -- including "North by Northwest" and "The Birds" -- as well as Howard Hawks and D.W. Griffith, Bellour's shot-by-shot breakdowns liberated film study to observe pics visually, as do his recent studies that stress subtleties beyond the shot itself.

Michel Ciment

At a time when Cahiers du Cinema was seemingly the dominant voice of French criticism, Ciment led the charge in the '60s and onward with rival film journal Positif.

Although he has tended to avoid the trappings of auteur theory hatched by the gang at Cahiers, Ciment is nevertheless renowned as the author of studies of Stanley Kubrick (still the best in print) and John Boorman and a photo book collaboration with Jerry Schatzberg, and as the master of the longform interview in his book-length conversations with directors Joseph Losey, Elia Kazan and Francesco Rosi.

Roger Ebert

By far the most popular and widely known American film critic, Ebert is the rare case of a populist film critic who's also a world-class cinephile.

Noted for writing in an unfussy, direct style that gets right to the point, he has long championed little-seen films (even creating his own annual festival in Champagne, Ill., to highlight them) and was one of the first U.S. critics to make his readers aware of the international film festival scene.

Molly Haskell

In the 1970s, when the critics circle was predominantly male, Haskell fostered a sophisticated feminist perspective. Few books captured the era's zeitgeist quite like Haskell's "From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies," which convincingly argued how women have been frequently stereotyped onscreen.

Ever the independent intellectual, Haskell could also surprise and anger her erstwhile feminist allies with some of her reviews in the Village Voice.

Stanley Kauffmann

Nearing 50 years at the New Republic, Kauffmann's position as one of the English language's most elegant and observant critics (of both film and theater) is undisputed.

He was one of the first American critics to write in depth on the wave of groundbreaking foreign films arriving in the country in the late '50s and early '60s, and has remained keenly aware of innovative developments in the world of film. Though overshadowed for a time by other, showier New York critics, Kauffmann's exquisite prose style and perceptions (collected in several books) have had a long and enduring influence.

Tullio Kezich

Kezich is not only Italy's leading film critic -- an extraordinary feat in a country teeming with them -- but still a major voice in European film culture.

As longtime critic for Corriere della Sera, Kezich has used his powerful platform to argue for independent and authentic artistic visions. He has made his case based on a lifetime's worth of writing and observing Italian neorealism and what came after, and has shrewdly used his close associations with directors and writers to buttress his criticism. Supreme evidence of his work is now on display in the just-published English translation of his critical biography "Federico Fellini: His Life and Work."

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Going against the grain of most conventional American film writing, Rosenbaum has become synonymous with exploratory criticism that focuses on the overlooked. As chief critic at the Chicago Reader, he places a premium on research and investigation -- as well as the values of cultural politics and autobiographical insight -- making him uniquely useful to both the everyday reader and serious student.

A frequent visitor to international film festivals, Rosenbaum has amassed a library of volumes -- from his "Essential Cinema" and polemical "Movie Wars" to his collaboration on "Movie Mutations" -- that are required reading for the film-savvy.

Andrew Sarris

The man who imported the auteur theory from France to America, Sarris was instrumental in changing the complexion of domestic film writing by promoting the primacy of the director.

Sarris' classic "The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968" fundamentally affected conventional views. His decades-long run as lead critic at the Village Voice raised the profile of alternative weeklies, with his current work in the New York Observer losing none of that Voice energy.

Robin Wood

Often viewed as an academic first and film critic second, Wood has provided a model for film scholars to follow in communicating beyond the groves of academe. He remains Canada's most respected film critic, famed for his Hitchcock studies as well as how his own coming out as a gay man marked a shift in his critical perspective. This is perhaps best summed up in "Hitchcock's Films Revisited," in which he looks at Hitch anew through the prisms of queer, gender and feminist studies.

Original Source - Variety.com

Is There a Cure for Film Criticism? (or, Some Unhappy Thoughts on Siegfried Kracauer's Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality) (excerpts)

2006-09-21T01:16:00.000-04:00

by Pauline Kael

There is, in any art, a tendency to turn one's own preferences into a monomaniac theory; in film criticism, the more confused and single-minded and dedicated (to untenable propositions) the theorist is, the more likely he is to be regarded as serious and important and "deep" - in contrast to relaxed men of good sense whose pluralistic approaches can be disregarded as not fundamental enough.

Often the worst and most embarrassing part of a film is the accidental, the uncontrolled, the amateurish failure which exhibits its unachieved intentions; and the finest moment may be a twitch of the actress's cheek achieved on the fiftieth take. There are accidents which look like art and there is art that looks accidental; but how can you build an aesthetic on accident - on the ripple of the leaves?... How can you say 'accidents were the very soul of slapstick'? In comedy what looks accidental is generally the result of brilliant timing and deliberate anarchy and wild invention and endless practice.

The look of so many good movies during the period [Kracauer] was gestating this book becomes his definition of cinema itself.

"Film," he tells us, "gravitates towards unstaged reality" and "the artificiality of stagy settings or compositions runs counter to the medium's declared preference for nature in the raw." How and when did the medium declare its preference, I wonder? The trouble with this kind of Hegelian [philosophy of Hegel in which the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is used as an analytic tool in order to approach a higher unity or a new thesis] prose is that the reader is at first amused by what seem to be harmless metaphors, and soon the metaphors are being used as if they were observable historical tendencies and aesthetic phenomena, and next the metaphor becomes a stick to castigate those who have other tastes, and other metaphors.

The cruiser Potemkin and the oil derrick in Louisiana Story, are less feasible on stage, but how does that make them more cinematic than something which is easy to put in a theater? Both are, incidentally, much less interesting objects on the screen than they are generally asserted to be: the exciting action in Potemkin has little reference tot he cruiser itself (extras can run around on a stage, too) . . . Who started this divide and conquer game of aesthetics in which the different media are assigned their special domains like salesmen staking out their territories - you stick to the Midwest and I'll take Florida?

Film aestheticians are forever telling us that when they have discovered what the motion picture can do that the other arts can't do, they have discovered the "essence," the "true nature" of motion picture art. It is like the old nonsense that man is what differentiates him from the other animals . . . And what motion picture art shares with other arts is perhaps even more important than what it may, or may not, have exclusively. . . Except for the physical presence of the actors in a theater, there is almost no "difference" between stage and screen that isn't open to question; there is almost no effect possible in one that can't be simulated, and sometimes remarkably well achieved, in the other.

Perhaps the most lovable side of Kracauer is his desperate attempt to make musicals, which he obviously adores, fit his notion of cinema as nature in the raw. . . As if our delight in the performance of a song or dance depended on the degree to which it grew out of the surrounding material - as if our pleasure had to be justified! This is a variant of the pedagogical Puritan notion that you mustn't enjoy a poem or a story unless it teaches you a lesson: you mustn't enjoy a movie unless it grows out of "nature." . . . Phew! Our pleasure in song and dance, as in motion picture itself, is in the ingenuity with which man uses the raw material of his existence - not in the raw material itself, or in a visible link with it. . . It is this clumsy effort to make things look "natural" instead of accepting the stylization of song and dance which helps to make so many musicals seem simpering and infantile.

In the fall of 1961 New Politics, Ernest Callenbach writes "a letter to a young film maker" and says "Get thee to Cuba, and after that to Latin America elsewhere, and then Africa." Would the same advice be given to a young writer or painter? Why are moviemakers obliged to make history? . . . But suppose the young film maker doesn't know Spanish, can't stand the sight of blood, was drawn to the elliptical scenario on the uneventful life of Emily Dickinson? He'll probably make a terrible movie, but surely the first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.

Films are not made by cameras, though many of them look as if they were, just as a lot of dialogue sounds as if it were written by typewriters.

Art is the greatest game, the supreme entertainment, because you discover the game as you play it. There is only one rules, as we learned in Orphee: Astonish us! In all art we look and listen for what we have not experienced quite that way before. We want to see, to feel, to understand, to respond a new way. Why should pedants be allowed to spoil the game?

8 ½ : Confessions of a Movie Director

2006-09-21T01:08:00.000-04:00

by Pauline Kael

Some years ago a handsome, narcissistic actor who was entertaining me with stories about his love affairs with various ladies and gentlemen, concluded by smiling seductively as he announced, “Sometimes I have so many ideas I don’t know which one to choose.” I recall thinking – as I edged him to the door – that he had a strange notion of what an idea was.

The director-hero of 8 ½ is the center of the film universe, the creator on whose word everything waits, the man sought after by everyone, the on for whom all possibilities are open. Guido can do anything, and so much possibility confuses him. He’s like the movies’ famous couturier who can’t decide what he’s going to do for the spring collection. (“I’ve simply got to get an idea. I’ll go mad if I don’t. Everybody’s depending on me.”) I’m afraid that Guido’s notion of an “idea” isn’t much more highly developed than my silly actor friend’s, and it’s rather shockingly like the notion of those god-awful boobs who know they could be great writers because they have a great story – they just need someone to put it into words. Indeed the director conforms to the popular notions of a successful genius, and our ladies-magazine fiction has always been fond of the “sophisticated” writer or director looking for a story and finding it in romance, or in his own backyard. “Accept me as I am” is Guido’s final, and successful, plea to the wife-figure (although that is what she has been rejecting for over two hours).

Just as La Dolce vita confirmed popular suspicions about the depravity of the rich and gifted, 8 ½ confirms the popular view of a “big” film director’s life – the world is his once he finds that important “idea” (it’s so important that the boobs will never tell theirs for fear of “giving it away,” i.e., having it stolen – the fewer their “ideas,” the greater their fear of plagiarism). Perhaps the irrelevance of what we see (principally his conflicts between his love for his wife, the pleasures of his mistress, his ideal of innocence, and his dreams of a harem) to the composition of a work of art may be indicated by a comparison: can one imagine that Dostoyevsky, say, or Goya or Berlioz or D.W. Griffith or whoever, resolved his personal life before producing a work, or that his personal problems of the moment were even necessarily relevant to the work at hand? This notion of an artist “facing himself” or “coming to grips with himself” as a precondition to “creation” is, however, familiar to us from the popular Freudianized lives of artists (and of everyone else).

It is perhaps easy for educated audiences to see an “advance” in film when a film makers deals with a “creative crisis” or “artist’s block,” a subject so often dealt with in modern writing; but is it applicable to film? What movie in the half-century history of movies has been held up by the director’s having a creative block? No movie with a budget and crew, writers and sets. The irrelevance of what we see to the process of making a movie can, of course, be explained away with, “He’s having a breakdown and all this is his fantasy life.” Someone’s fantasy life is perfectly good material for a movie if it is imaginative and fascinating in itself, or if it illuminates his non-fantasy life in some interesting way. But 8 ½ is neither; it’s surprisingly like the confectionary dreams of Hollywood heroines, transported by a hack’s notions of Freudian anxiety and wish fulfillment, 8 ½ is an incredibly externalized version of an artist’s “inner” life – a gorgeous multi-ringed circus that has very little connection with what, even for a movie director, is most likely to be solitary, concentrated hard work. It’s more like the fantasy life of someone who wishes he were a movie director, someone who has soaked up those movie versions of an artist’s life, in which in the midst of a carnival or ball the hero receives inspiration and dashes away to transmute life into art. “What’s the film about? What’s on your mind this time?” asks Guido’s wife. In 8 ½ the two questions are one.

Creativity is the new cant – parents are advised not to hit it with a stick, schoolteachers are primed to watch for it, foundations encourage it, colleges and subsidized health farms nourish it in a regulated atmosphere; the government is advised to honor it. We’re all supposed to be so in awe of it that when it’s in crisis, the screen should be torn asunder by the conflicts. But the creativity con-game, a great subject for comedy, is rather embarrassing when it’s treated only semi-satirically. When a satire on big, expensive movies is itself a big, expensive movie, how can we distinguish it from its target? When a man makes himself the butt of his own joke, we may feel too uncomfortable to laugh. Exhibitionism is its own reward.

8 ½ suggests some of Fellini’s problems as a director, but they are not so fantastic nor so psychoanalytic as the ones he parades. A major one is the grubby, disheartening economic problem that probably affects Fellini in an intensified form precisely because of the commercial success of La Dolce Vita and the business hopes it raised. A movie director has two “worst” enemies: commercial failure and commercial success. After a failure, he has a difficult time raising money for his next film; after a success, his next must be bigger and “better.” In recent years no major Hollywood director with a string of “big” successes has been able to finance a small, inexpensive production – and this is not for want of trying. From the point of view of studios and banks, an expenditure of half a million dollars is a much bigger risk than an investment of several million on a “name” property with big stars, a huge advertising campaign and almost guaranteed bookings. Commenting on the cost of 8 ½ (and Visconti’s The Leopard), Show reported that “In terms of lire spent, they have nearly been Italian Cleopatras. But what Hollywood bought dearly in Cleopatra was a big empty box . . . What the Italians got in 8 ½ was a work of immense visual beauty and impressive philosophy, a sort of spectacle of the spirit that was more than they had paid for. A masterpiece is always a bargain.” Show’s “philosophy” is the kind you look for, like Fellini’s “ideas.” 8 ½ does indeed make a spectacle of spirit: what else can you do with spirit when you’re expected to turn out masterpieces?

According to Fellini, we “need new criteria of judgement to appreciate this film.” Yeah. “In my picture everything happens,” says Guido, which is intended to mean that he is an artist-magician; but the man who trusts to alchemy is like the man who hopes to create masterpieces in his sleep and find it miraculously there upon awakening. Fellini throws in his disorganized ideas, and lets the audiences sort out the meanings for themselves. 8 ½ is big, it’s “beautiful”: but what is it? Is it really a magical work of art? There is an optimum size for a house: if it becomes too big it becomes a mansion or a showplace and we no longer feel the vital connections of family life, or the way the rooms reflect personalities and habits and tastes. When a movie becomes a spectacle, we lose close involvement in the story; we may admire the action and the pageantry or, as in 8 ½, the decor, the witty phantasmagoria, the superb “professionalism” (“That Fellini sure can make movies”), but it has become too big and impressive to relate to lives and feelings. Fellini’s last home movie was Nights of Cabiria; 8 ½ is a madhouse for a movie director who celebrates La Dolce Vita, i.e., a funhouse. “What marvelous casting,” his admirers exclaim, responding not to the people in his films, but to his cleverness in finding them. That is all one can respond to, because the first appearance of his “characters” tells us all that is to be known about them. They are “set” – embalmed. No acting is necessary: he uses them for a kind of instant caricature. His “magic” is that his casting couch is the world. He uses “real” aristocrats and “real” celebrities as themselves, he turns businessmen into stars, and then he confesses that he’s confused about life and art – the confusion which gives his films that special, “professional” chic.

Like those professors of English who boast that they’re not interested in what’s going on in the world, they’re interested only in literature, or critics who say they’re not interested in content but structure, or young poets who tell us they’re not interested in anything except their own creativity, Guido announces, “I have nothing to say but I want to say it.” The less self, the more need to express it? Or, as the wife said to her drunken husband, “If you had any brains, you’d take them out and play with them.”

And the “spa” is just the place to do it, as Marienbad demonstrated. Those who honed their wits interpreting what transpired Last Year at Marienbad now go to work on 8 ½, separating out “memories” and fantasies from “reality.” A professor who teaches film told me he had gone to see 8 ½ several times to test out various theories on how the shifts between the three categories were accomplished, and still hadn’t discovered the answer. When I suggested that he had set himself an insoluble problem, because 8 ½ is all fantasy, he became very angry at what he called my perversity and cited as a clear example of “reality” the sequence of the screen tests for the mistress and wife (one of the most nightmarish episodes in the film_ and as an example of “memory” the Saraghina dancing on the beach (which compares as a “memory” with, say, the monster washed up at the end of La Dolce Vita).

This is the first (and, predictably, not the last) movie in which the director seems to be primarily interested in glorifying his self-imprisonment. And this failure to reach out imaginatively – which traditionally has been considered artistic suicide – is acclaimed as a milestone in film art by those who accept self-absorption as “creativity.”

8 ½ began as a “sequel” to La Dolce Vita – taking up the story of the “Umbrian angel.” Now Fellini turns her into Claudia Cardinale, a rather full-bosomed angel with an ambiguous smile. Fluttering about diaphanously, she’s not so different from Cyd Charisse or Rita Hayworth in gauze on the ramps of an MGM or Columbia production number. She becomes a showman’s ideal of innocence – pulchritudinous purity, the angel-muse as “star” (of the movie and the movie within the move) – a stalemate endlessly reflected, an infinite regression.

Kael, Pauline. “I Lost It At The Movies”. Little, Brown and Company, first edition, 1965. (261-268)

Circles and Squares (excerpts)

2006-09-21T00:53:00.000-04:00

by Pauline Kael

Joys and Sarris

...It takes extraordinary intelligence and discrimination and taste to use any theory in the arts, and that without those qualitites, a theory becomes a rigid formula (which is indeed what is happening among auteur critics). The greatness of critics like Bazin in France and Agee in America may have something to do with their using their full range of intelligence and intuition, rather than relying on formulas. Criticism is an art, not a science, and a critic who follows rules will fail in one of his most important functions: perceiving what is original and important in new work and helping others to see.

The Outer Circle
...the first premise of the auteur theory is the technical competence of a director as a criterion of value.

‘A great director has to be at least a good director.’ But this commonplace, though it sounds reasonable and basic, is a shaky premise: sometimes the greatest artists in a medium bypass or violate the simple technical competence that is so necessary for hacks. For example, it is doubtful if Antonioni could handle a routine directorial assignment of the type at which John Sturges is so proficient (Escape from Fort Bravo or Bad Day at Black Rock), but surely Antonioni’s L’Avventura is the work of a great director. And the greatness of a director like Cocteau has nothing to do with mere technical competence: his greatness is in being able to achieve his own personal expression and style.

An artist who is not a good technician can indeed create new standards, because standards of technical competence are based on comparisons with work already done.

[from Cocteau] ‘The only technique worth having is the technique you invent for yourself.’

I would amend Sarris’s premise to, ‘In works of a lesser rank, technical competence can help to redeem the weaknesses of the material.’

The Middle Circle
...the second premise of the auteur theory is the distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value.

The smell of a skunk is more distinguishable than the perfume of a rose; does that make it better? Hitchcock’s personality is certainly more distinguishable in Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Vertigo than Carol Reed’s in The Stars Look Down, Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, An Outcast of the Islands, if for no other reason than because Hitchcock repeats while Reed tackles new subject matter. But how does this distinguishable personality function as a criterion for judging the works?

Often the works in which we are most aware of the personality of the director are his worst films - when he falls back on the devices he has already done to death. When a famous director makes a good movie, we look at the movie, we don’t think about the director’s personality; when he makes a stinker we notice his familiar touches because there’s not much else to watch.

It is an insult to an artist to praise his bad work along with his good; it indicates that you are incapable of judging either... It’s like buying clothes by the label: this is Dior, so it’s good. (This is not so far from the way the auteur critics work, either.)

[Sarris] wants to see artists in a pristine state - their essences, perhaps? - separated from all the life that has formed them and to which they try to give expression.

The Inner Circle
The third and ultimate premise of the auteur theory is concerned with interior meaning, the ultimate glory of the cinema as an art. Interior meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a director’s personality and his material.

These critics work embarrassingly hard trying to give some semblance of intellectual respectability to a preoccupation with mindless, repetitious commercial products.

‘Interior meaning’ seems to be what those in the know know. It’s a mystique - and a mistake. . . They’re not critics; they’re inside dopesters. There must be another circle that Sarris forget to get to - the one where the secrets are kept.

Outside the Circles, or What Is a Film Critic?

The role of the critic is to help people see what is in the work, what is in it that shouldn’t be, what is not in it that could be. He is a good critic if he helps people understand more about the work than they could see for themselves; he is a great critic, if by his understanding and feeling for the work, by his passion, he can excite people so that they want to experience more of the art that is there, waiting to be seized. He is not necessarily a bad critic if he makes errors in judgment. (Infallible taste is inconceivable; what could it be measured against?) He is a bad critic if he does not awaken the curiosity, enlarge the interests and understanding of his audience. The art of the critic is to transmit his knowledge of and enthusiasm for art to others.

I daresay... the new breed of specialists know more about movies than some people and could serve at least a modest critical function if they could remember that art is an expression of human experience. If they are men of feeling and intelligence, isn’t it time for them to be a little ashamed of their “detailed criticism” of movies like River of No Return?

Those, like Sarris, who ask for objective standards seem to want a theory of criticism which makes the critic unnecessary. And he is expendable if categories replace experience; a critic with a single theory is like a gardener who uses a lawn mower on everything that grows. Their desire for a theory that will solve all the riddles of creativity is in itself perhaps an indication of their narrowness and confusion; they’re like those puzzled lost people who inevitably approach one after a lecture and ask, “But what is your basis for judging a movie?” . . . They want a simple answer, a formula; if they approached a chef they would probably ask for the one magic recipe that could be followed in all cooking.

And it is very difficult to explain to such people that criticism is exciting just because there is no formula to apply, just because you must use everything you are and everything you know that is relevant, and that film criticism is particularly exciting just because of the multiplicity of elements in film art . . . they seem to view movies, not merely in isolation from the other arts, but in isolation even from their own experience . . . And if they don’t have interests outside films, how can they evaluate what goes on in films? Film aesthetics as a distinct, specialized field is a bad joke.

Some Speculations on the Appeal of the Auteur Theory

Vulgar melodrama with a fast pace can be much more exciting - and more honest, too - than feeble pretentious attempts at drama - which usually meant just putting ‘ideas’ into melodrama, anyway.

Raising Kane (excerpts)

2006-09-21T00:13:00.000-04:00

by Pauline Kael
(click image for a link to the full essay, excerpts organized by page number)

(4)
The mechanics of movies are rarely as entertaining as they are in Citizen Kane, as cleverly designed to be the kind of fun that keeps one alert and conscious of the enjoyment of the artifices themselves.

Citizen Kane is made up of an astonishing number of such bits of technique, and of sequences built to make their points and get their laughs and hit climax just before a fast cut takes us to the next. It is practically a collection of blackout sketches, but blackout sketches arranged to comment on each other, and it was planned that way right in the shooting script.

It is difficult to explain what makes any great work, and particularly difficult with movies, and maybe more so with Citizen Kane than with other great movies, because it isn’t a work of special depth or a work of subtle beauty. It is a shallow work, a shallow masterpiece. Those who try to account for its stature as a film by claiming it to be profound are simply dodging the problem - or maybe they don’t recognize that there is one.

(15)
One couldn’t really call a colloquial, skeptical comedy a “masterpiece,” as one could sometimes call a silent comedy a masterpiece, especially if the talkie looked quite banal and was so topical it felt transient. But I think that many of us enjoyed these comedies more, even though we may not have felt very secure about the aesthetic ground for our enjoyment. The talking comedies weren’t as aesthetically pure as the silents, yet they felt liberating in a way that even great silents didn’t. The elements to which we could respond were multiplied; now there were vocal nuances, new kinds of timing, and wonderful new tricks, like the infectious way Claudette Colbert used to break up while listening to someone. It’s easy to see why Europeans, who couldn’t follow the slang and the jokes and didn’t understand the whole satirical frame of reference, should prefer our actions films and Westerns. But it’s a bad joke on our good jokes that film enthusiasts here often take their cues on the American movie past from Europe, and so they ignore the tradition of comic irreverences and become connoisseurs of the “visuals” and “mises en scene” of action pictures, which are usually too silly even to be called reactionary. They’re sub-reactionary - the antique melodramas of silent days with noise added - a mass art better suited, one might think, to Fascism, or even feudalism, than to democracy.

(16)
There is another reason the American talking comedies, despite their popularity, are so seldom valued highly by film aestheticians. The dream-art kind of film, which lends itself to beautiful visual imagery, is generally the creation of the “artist” director, while the astringent film is more often directed by a competent, unpretentious craftsman who can be made to look very good by a good script and can be turned into a bum by a bad script. And this competent craftsman may be too worldly and too practical to do the “imaginative” bits that sometimes helped make the reputations of “artist” directors.

(17)
The thirties, though they had their own load of sentimentality, were the hardest-headed period of American movies, and their plainness of style, with its absence of false “cultural” overtones, has never got its due aesthetically. Film students - and their teachers - often become interested in movies just because they are the kind of people who are emotionally affected by the blind-beggar bits, and they are indifferent by temperament to the emancipation of American movies in the thirties and the role that writers played in it.

It may be that for new ideas to be successful in movies, the way must be prepared by success in other media, and the audience must have grown tired of what it’s been getting be ready for something new. There are always a few people in Hollywood who are considered mad dreamers for trying to do in movies things that have already been done in other arts. But once one of them breaks through and has a hit, he’s called a genius and everybody starts copying him.

(19)
In the silents, the heroes were often simpletons. In the talkies, the heroes were to be the men who weren’t fooled, who were smart and learned their way around. The new heroes of the screen were created in the image of their authors: they were fast-talking newspaper reporters.

(25)
The thirties writers were ambivalently nostalgic about their youths as reporters, journalists, critics, or playwrights, and they glorified the hard-drinking, cynical newspaperman. They were ambivalent about Hollywood, which they savaged and satirized whenever possible.

(61)
I think that what makes Welles’ directorial style so satisfying in this movie is that we are constantly aware of the mechanics - that the pleasure Kane gives doesn’t come from illusion but comes from our enjoyment of the dexterity of the illusionists and the working of the machinery.

(62)
It is Welles’ distinctive quality as a movie director - I think it is his genius - that he never hides his cleverness, that he makes it possible for us not only to enjoy what he does but to share his enjoyment in doing it. Welles’ showmanship is right there on the surface... There is something childlike - and great, too - about his pleasure in the magic of theatre and movies. No other director in the history of movies has been so open in his delight, so eager to share with us the game of pretending, and Welles’ silly pretense of having done everything himself is just another part of the game.

Welles’ magic as a director (at this time) was that he could put his finger right on the dramatic fun of each scene... Welles also had a special magic beyond this: he could give elan to scenes that were confused in intention, so that the movie seems to go from dramatic highlight to highlight without lagging in between. There doesn’t appear to be any waste material in Kane, because he charges right through the weak spots as if they were bright, and he almost convinces you (or does convince you) that they’re shining jewels.

As a director, Welles is so ebullient that we go along with the way he wants us to feel; we’re happy to let him “put it over on us.”

Until Kane’s later years, Welles, in the role, has an almost total empathy with the audience. It’s the same kind of empathy we’re likely to feel for smart kids who grin at us when they’re showing off in the school play. It’s a beautiful kind of emotional nakedness - ingenuously exposing the sheer love of playacting - that most actors lose long before they become “professional.”

(63)
Some people used to say that Welles might be a great director but he was a bad actor, and his performances wrecked his pictures. I think just the opposite - that his directing style is such an emanation of his adolescent love of theatre that his films lack a vital unifying element when he’s not in them or when he plays only a small part in them. He needs to be at the center.

(74)
The director should be in control not because he is the sole creative intelligence but because only if he is in control can he liberate and utilize the talents of his co-workers, who languish (as directors do) in studio-factory productions. The best interpretation to put on it when a director says that a movie is totally his is not that he did it all himself but that he wasn’t interfered with, that he made the choices and the ultimate decisions, that the whole thing isn’t an unhappy compromise for which no one is responsible; not that he was the sole creator but almost the reverse - that he was free to use all the best ideas offered him.

Welles had a vitalizing, spellbinding talent; he was the man who brought out the best in others and knew how to use it. What keeps Citizen Kane alive is that Welles wasn’t prevented (as so many directors are) from trying things out. He was young and open, and, as the members of that crew tell it - and they remember it very well, because it was the only time it ever happened for many of them - they could always talk to him and make suggestions, as long as they didn’t make the suggestions publicly... Working on Kane, in an atmosphere of freedom, the designers and technicians came forth with ideas they’d been bottling up for years; they were all in on the creative process. Welles was so eager to try out new ideas that even the tough hardened studio craftsmen were caught up by his spirit, just as his co-workers in the theatre and in radio had been. Citizen Kane is not a great work that suddenly burst out of a young prodigy’s head. There are such works in the arts (though few, if any, in movies), but this is not one of them. It is a superb example of collaboration; everyone connected with it seems to have had the time of his life because he was able to contribute something.

(Little, Brown and Company - Boston - Toronto, 1971)