Misery Is The River of the World

Dirty Pretty Things (Frears, 2002)

2006-07-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

Though billed as a thriller (and with a DVD cover that suggests an 'erotic thriller'), Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things is actually a sociological 'problem picture' that uses sparse and undeveloped (not to be confused with 'underdeveloped') genre tropes to try to create an immediacy paralleling the desperate situations of its characters. Whether the thriller aspects are even remotely necessary is debatable, but thankfully they don't deflate the film's themes or detract attention away from the other aspects.

Like the people visiting the hotel at which they work, Okwe and Senay are in a state of transition, only on a grander scale. The hotel is a direct but not overstated metaphor for the country the two immigrants live in: they checked in for a while, but they're going to have to leave sometime. Neither are legally entitled to work, but legality doesn't mean much in the underworld the film depicts. Okwe is a kind of benevolent entrepreneur of this London underground, making rounds during the day to various locations, dispensing Amoxicillin for men who refuse to go to the hospital (out of embarrassment, perhaps) and other such gestures. Senay has an apartment, and she rents her couch to him, though he rarely sleeps as a result of some sort of root he chews on. At first she refuses to be there when he is, but eventually allows him. She loves him, but they're too busy surviving to develop a relationship.

At a point, Okwe finds a heart in a toilet. He begins playing detective, but in a muted, believable form. When he finds out that kidneys are being removed by an untrained person in the hospital in exchange for passports, it is just a simple revelation, not some Soylent Green-esque foolishness. Basically, the film has the shape of a thriller but doesn't indulge in it fully, to its benefit. Okwe was a doctor in Africa, but refused to destroy evidence and his house was firebombed, killing his wife. He was charged with the murder and fled, which is how he ended up here. As a physician, he is actually qualified to perform the operations, and is again approached to make a choice of doing the 'wrong' thing, with severe consequences if he doesn't (in this case, continuing living in fear of being deported and therefore arrested, and keeping Senay in the same situation). It is explained to him that Señor Juan gets paid, the donor gets a passport, the kidney's receiver gets a kidney, and everyone wins. But exploitation is still exploitation, and Okwe can't come to terms with being involved in it.

What he ends up doing is exploiting the former exploiter, taking Juan's kidney and selling it. He splits the money between him, Senay, and the prostitute Juliette. The doctor prescribed Juan a taste of his own medicine! (sorry). Anyway, this seems to be a triumph, but in the end Okwe and Senay must part. They whisper 'I love you" as Senay leaves on a plane and all that hokey stuff. Okwe has to go find his daughter in Africa, and at this point the film ends. It's assumed that they will reunite later, and live happily and things.

Dirty Pretty Things is a decent film. Nothing revelatory (immigrants can be exploited!?), and a bit dramatically blasé at times. Solid without being remarkable.

Capsules: Bird (Eastwood, 1988)/High Plains Drifter (Eastwood, 1973)

2006-07-04T02:04:00.000-07:00

Bird (Eastwood, 1988)
Bird is commendable and interesting because it does not follow a standard biopic formula of rise to fame followed by fall to ruin. The film begins and occasionally revisits the fall, and we don't get the whole picture of the rise or plateau. There is a deterministic quality to this approach, as the beginning is not a tidy prologue on a death bed in which Parker says "ahh, I remember when..." and the film goes into flashback mode. We're thrown into the thick of it, and it's potentially disorentating and none of the film is wholly satisfying. Is life? When we see Parker playing sax to a cheering crowd, we don't revel in his fortune because we are painfully aware of the heroine coursing through his veins and of his eventual-made-inevitable demise. Given that Eastwood is an admirer of Parker's, it's strange but, again, commendable that he didn't choose a more hagiographic, or even favorable, approach. He tells it like it is, so to speak, and though this may incur a sense of detachment from Bird's supposed superb craftsmanship and musical ability, that detachment is precisely what is so effective and rich about the piece.

High Plains Drifter (Eastwood, 1973)
High Plains Drifter is Eastwood's early existential-Western masterpiece in which he largely reprises his Man With No Name role, though arguably in a more compelling context. In addition, the behind-the-camera Eastwood seems to be doing Leone (and, probably, by way of Siegel, given his respect and connections to that director) as best he can. And he can do it damn well.

The story is complex morally, to say the least. As Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote are the universal existential pop-culture icons representing the infinite struggle for an unattainable goal, the Man With No Name embodies the spirit of the phrase "the ends justify the means." Some of the things he does are downright brutal, and the viewer must confront the "why" of the matter. The paradox is, if retribution is "right," the Stranger sets everything right. He is a sole man for and against society, and yet still for himself. Sometimes, his actions are complicated simply by his unwillingness to explain himself. Should he explain himself to the world he finds, perhaps justifiably, distasteful? He is an oasis of specific coldness in a world of general, indifferent coldness, but at least his coldness is progressive. In Lagos (Hell), morality and the lives of its inhabitants stagnate as surely as those inhabitants faced with the whipped man's cries for help. And I won't even go into the end, which is damn cool if nothing else.

There is one scene that, in itself, seems undeniably misogynistic. The Stranger rapes a woman after dragging her forcibly into a barn. Again, there's a paradox: she approached him, and obviously wanted to fuck him, but treated him with hostility rather than admit it. Her behavior exhibits the antithesis to the Stranger's quiet forcefulness, directness, and consistency, and oddly they both get what they want even if the woman won't admit it. Again, his method is probably indefensible, but the ends are satisfactory by any reasonable morality. And, in a world that doesn't allow for gentle methods, a world that won't collaborate for a greater good, do the ends justify the means, especially if no other means would work? The question is posed but not answered by the film. As cliché as it is to mention, that's good art.

This film is staggeringly rich (excuse the hyperbole; it sounds good), and there's the whole redemptive-ghost-eye-for-an-eye aspect, and others, that I haven't even touched on.

Unfaithfully Yours (Sturges, 1948)

2006-07-02T05:50:00.000-07:00

In many an American film from the '30s and '40s, the movie begins with a title sequence married with an orchestral swell of sometimes inopportune music. Preston Sturges' 1948 masterpiece begins the same way, except we see the orchestra. The camera slowly pans forward toward the figure at the center of the frame, the conductor, until the frame is enveloped in the darkness of his black tuxedo jacket. Is there a better statement encompassing the major function of the film to follow? Unfaithfully Yours has all the appearances of a, shall we say, "normal" film, but it knows that it isn't, and soon the viewer is hurtled to dizzying heights of darkness, intrigue, pathos, and, yes, hilarity. Sturges molds the Hollywood form by manipulating it from the outside.

The conductor feigns modesty, undermining his own contribution to the orchestra, when in fact he is an extremely egoistic man, banking on British superiority over American, his own intellect and wordplay, and his status as a famous and indeed passionate and talented conductor. He is also, however, insecure; the slightest suspicion sets him off, and is the crux of the picture. He is so aware, though subconsciously, of his unworthiness of his wife that suspicion of cheating becomes certainty, and he can't bear the thought of confronting the matter and so essentially casts himself in three different ways the situation may play out in another, lesser film. These three imaginary conclusions are characterized by the music he is conducting at the moment, and his anguish becomes a stimulus that makes his performance a sensation. He is the true performing artist, pouring his every thought, emotion, and passion into his work.

Linda Darnell as Daphne, his wife, is fantastic. In an early scene when Sir Alfred first suspects her and treats her harshly and totally condescendingly (when she threatens to see a movie rather than her performance, he remarks "culturally, it would suit you better," and other wholly vilifying yet witty phrases), the viewer seeing the film with the knowledge that she is innocent will feel extremely sorry for her. Yet, when she is playing the femme fatale, the secretive seductress, and other roles in Sir Alfred's imaginings, she plays them all to a tee. Daphne is an utterly good wife, faithful, helpful, and sweet. It is perhaps because she never gave Sir Alfred a cause to suspect that he takes so readily to the idea, and that he is so infuriated. That coniving harpy! Only she isn't.

The first time I watched the film, I was taken in by the first daydream sequence, and it was an extremely effective twist of the narrative. Just as I began to believe the perfect murder was committed (I don't remember if I was thrilled or not; I was probably unamused), I found out it was all a joke, and was ecstatic because of it. "All a joke" as in all to be reversed, but this is a thoroughly coherent, insightful, and moving insight into the male psyche as much as it is a riotous dark comedy. This second time, I was able to appreciate the subtle cues that what we are seeing is not, in fact, taking place. Because you don't know what is going to fly in a movie, you think "oh, turning that nob does make his voice sound like his wife's, I guess." But, of course, it doesn't, as we see later in a hilarious sequence of man wrestling technology in slapstick, a good ol' standby from Chaplin through Sturges/Harrison and on to Woody Allen.

When Alfred finally leaves the performance and tries to carry out his plan of murder, everything goes wrong. Everything. It seems inarguable that this slapstick sequence outstays its welcome, but you either revel in its excess or you don't. It and I most certainly do. Rex Harrison is no Chaplin or Keaton, and that is precisely why the scene works. Sir Alfred is a man utterly unprepared for slapstick. There is no grace, no elevating of a quarrelsome chair or a falling lamp to an art resembling ballet. He is a normal guy, stumbling over stuff, throwing a roulette set through the window (thinking it's a phonograph, of course). And to think, this guy has a superiority complex. In his mind, the perfect murder is a piece of cake. Obviously, he was wrong.

His wife comes home, and she is sweet as always to him. As he chastises her for no particular reason, she follows behind him and picks up his trail of clothing and objects. This is not her being subservient because she's a woman, but her being genuinely caring and helpful. Sturges creates in her an independent female that has teeth when she needs them, but she loves Sir Alfred, and there's little question that he loves her, even if he plots her demise or other forms of undoing.

Unfaithfully Yours is at once a wonderful insight into just how stupid the male gender can be, and how despite the fact that the woman is often viewed as the one inclined toward emotional judgements, the man is frail in the light of his own. It is in addition a film that toys with movie conventions and, fittingly, when the couple is inevitably reunited in love, the sentiment (though far more earned and genuine than many films that could end similarly) is overlooked by a group headed by Daphne's wisecracking (and, in ways, polar opposite) sister. With this as a counterpoint, "A thousand poets dreamed a thousand years, then you were born, my love" doesn't seem to be overdoing it. It seems just about right.

The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973)

2006-07-02T02:17:00.000-07:00

Imagine you were held at gunpoint by a seven year old. This seven year old makes you do exactly what he tells you to do, and though you suspect he will not shoot you, you must do as instructed because it is not worth the risk. Later, you learn there were no bullets in the gun.

This would likely make you feel cheaply manipulated. So does the Exorcist. This film approaches scares in the way the chase scene in The French Connection approached speed. When Friedkin makes you want to think a car is going fast, he makes the camera go fast. The mechanism and the effect are one in the same. In the Exorcist, what you see (or hear) is what you get. And we get an utterly vapid subtext to boot!

The soundtrack is not complex, but it is damn loud; the early scene with the plethora of pickaxes made me think "this has Sound Design Oscar written all over it." Sure enough, I was right. The effect of this, er, technique has is that your visual perception is restricted to the image in front of you (Max Von Sydow and the pickaxe workers you see), whereas you hear all the pickaxes off screen as if a mic were attached to each. This creates a certain spatial awareness and a sense of objects residing outside the frame, but in a very brute manner. This is utilized throughout the film.

Similarly, we explicitly see needles penetrating skin, because that's, like, creepy. Everything is exploited to create a hightened sense of fucked-up-itude. A man enters the house, says "a guy died," and leaves. This man's death is an expendable but strong plot point, yet it's delivered in the same brutish (I guess that term is proving useful for me today) manner as everything else. I believe it is shortly after this that the possessed child crabwalks down the stairs. Just because we needed another jump scare. Similarly, the child's head can spin completely around, but this is not mentioned when proof of possession is demanded. A psychiatrist could fix that right up.

The idea seems to be that the possession is an affirmation of faith by negation. The mother and girl both seem indifferent to religion. The doctors and psychiatrists keep suggesting non-supernatural methods of dealing with the situation, those bloody heathens. The poor conflicted psychiapriest even doubts that a possession is in fact taking place. I guess, to William Peter Blatty, it takes an occurence that NEVER HAPPENS to prove the validity of faith, apparently Catholic faith. So, if you are thinking about taking up religion, keep an eye out for little girls with scarred faces projectile vomiting green bile. That's how you know your prayers were heard.

On top of this, all the demon/Satan(?) does is cuss and talk about promiscuity. Both of these activities are evil and should be avoided at the price of your soul. Teh Blatty has spoken.

I guess I should be thankful that the younger priest did not survive to scream "hallelujah!" and realize he was wrong to doubt, but the surrogate isn't much better. He takes the demon into himself and flings himself through a window, echoing the earlier murder and killing the demon's host (himself). Self-sacrifice in a film attempting to vindicate belief in Catholicism, yawn. Even worse, on a human level we feel nothing. This young priest's loss of his mother and death, Von Sydow's character's death, the suffering of Regan and her mother, all provoke no sympathy. The film is so utterly mechanical with its "I punch, you flinch" mentality that all feeling has been drained from it. Despite the fact that Fathersonholyghost comes out on top, there's not even a feeling of adoration toward the supposed God. Even the film's faith is a conceit.

Night And Fog (Resnais, 1955)

2006-06-10T03:27:00.000-07:00

Night and Fog is not a documentary. It is, actually, a film that is utterly convinced of its own inability to document or take any meaningful action. This is a retrospective essay and a dirge all at once.

The film is obsessed with deceptive surfaces. The building plans for the concentration camps being made for their unwitting victims. Crematoria that look like normal buildings. Sick sites of cruel human experiments disguised as clinics. The infamous shower-rooms-as-gas-chambers that fooled the prisoners and the whole world alike. Like the filmmakers, like the viewer, the world stood by, inactive. The Nazi and holocaust machines were built, turned on, and operated all without any one doing a damn thing, for far too long.

The shots of present-day ruins of concentration camps are likewise permeated with an inability to comprehend, recreate, empathize, or do anything. "It is useless to describe," we are told, "what went on in these cells." "If you must know," we are told, the only signs of the gas chamber victims are the marks their fingernails left in the concrete ceiling. The narrator voices our inability to comprehend. No, we are stuck here with a painful memory that, toward the end of the film, we are told is slowly drifting away, being covered up. "It is useless to describe," but the film doesn't believe that. These present-day shots are yet another example of a deceptive surface: while we are horrified by the past, we delegate it to the past. We are convinced that these ruins represent not the end of physical buildings and lives, but of the mentality behind them. We are, in essence, in danger of repeating our mistakes because we don't acknowledge the deceptive surface. Just like before.

Filmmaker, viewer, past, and present are implicated as variably incapable of or unwilling to take action concerning the holocaust. This gives an emphatic quality to what is not documented. As we try to make sense of these past events, and fail, there is only one course: to try to apply them to the present. And that's what Resnais would have us do.

The difference between something like this and Schindler's List is that the latter does not admit its inability to comprehend and recreate. It amounts to, at times, "wow, this sucks, huh?" and smacks of exploitation despite the respect the filmmakers may have and display. It also undermines the horrors by focusing on a drop-in-a-bucket positive event. In the end, it glosses over what Night and Fog implies with the force of large mallet to the face when you're not looking. We cannot (and should not) hope to see the fingers clawing or the head's being shaved, but we have the nail marks and mounds of hair to prove that they did happen. The trick is not letting it happen again, and these deserted camps stand as monuments to the necessary, however painful, memory, so long as we also remember that they could very well be built again if we assume they won't.

Tokyo-Ga (Wenders, 1985)

2006-05-27T01:40:00.000-07:00

Tokyo-Ga is a film with no point; it is a search for something that may be lost. Wenders travels to Japan to discover the world portrayed in the films of Yasujiro Ozu. The result is an experience variably introspective, superficially concerned, philosophical, pessimistic, reverent, ironic, alienating, and inclusive.

Early in the film, Wenders remarks that he wishes one could film as one sees, just to observe without trying to prove anything. Wenders does just that in much of Tokyo-Ga: we watch children play baseball, adults watch baseball or play pinchinko, people swing golf clubs, craftsmen making wax food dishes, and trains come and go. Wenders rarely makes value judgements: he acknowledges that Ozu often portrayed the Japanese fixation on golf ironically, as most Japanese will never play on an actual golf course, but then marvels at how the sport has been boiled down to a perfection of movement, the standard goal of the sport (putting a ball in a hole) entirely forgotten in the act of swinging. The point of the game is gone, much like Wender's idealization of filming as one sees, and much like Tokyo as is portrayed in the film.

People sit in pinchinko parlours, alone in numbers, watching balls fall and hoping to win. The piles of pinchinko balls and the piles of golf balls are very similar, visually. Though these people are sitting next to eachother, they seem willfully isolated. Similarly, Wenders himself is isolated both by language and by the fact that he is holding a camera. At the beginning of the film he remarks that, if he had not made the film, he would probably remember his trip to Japan better, and we can see why: when you hold a camera, it is a wall. You are burdened with not only the need to observe, but the need to observe skillfully, meaningfully, cinematically. There is no assimilation, you are marked as an outsider looking in. The remarkable thing about Ozu's cinema, then, may be that it is so inclusive. One is very consciously on the outside looking in, but in an Ozu film the outside is a beautiful place to be.

The only thing holding Wenders' film together seems to be chronology. He spent an entire day watching men make fake food dishes from wax for display in front of restaurants, and this takes up a good chunk of the film's 91 minute running time. We watch, though, and we are forced to contemplate why. Then, we are forced to contemplate why we are forced to contemplate why. After all, why must everything have a point? Because it is a recorded image. But why must recorded images have a point? The film is very conscious of its actions, what the recording of images does to the images. They are no longer reality, in most cases, and the reason Wenders is in awe of Ozu is that his films, moreso than any other director, do seem real. However, there is only scant evidence of that reality left in Tokyo; it seems all has changed.

We do get a glimpse of that beauty, that simplicity, when Wenders interviews an actor and cameraman for Ozu. These are scenes ripe with nostalgia, as we can only look back to find what the Tokyo-Ga seeks. The only direct signs of Ozu's filmic beauty are anecdotal ones from the sets of Ozu films. The interview with the cameraman has a stunning emotional arc, and the power lies entirely within the words and face of the man speaking, and the camera's unflinching gaze. Wenders speaks the translations himself, and since Japanese seems to be a slower language (that is, it takes longer to say something in it than in English), there is always a pause before each series of statements in which we are watching a face and hearing a language we don't understand, and are forced to contemplate the image, to scour the surface for what lies beneath the surface. The essence of cinema, one could say.

Herzog shows up for a while, and gives a monologue about how finding potent, relevant images is nearly impossible in the modern world. This was in '85, and he's been doing a good job since then, but the proliferation of information and the nullifying of an image's power is a crucial concern for those crucially concerned with art and society. Chris Marker shows up... kind of (interesting side note is that Chris Marker directed an excellent, excellent documentary [titled A.K.] on another great Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa, the same year that Tokyo-Ga was made, on the set of Kurosawa's Ran). He doesn't show his face, though he is a creator of images himself. It's as if he wants to contribute to the zeitgeist by creating, but doesn't want to be a part of the zeitgeist himself. Though Herzog makes a rant about the non-potency of the image, he is seemingly powerless against his compulsion to create them himself. These men are part of the problem, if only in search of a solution. A fascinating dichotomy in a film full of fascinating dichotomies, digressions, observations, and insights.

Tokyo-Ga really is a unique creation. It is a film about Wenders' journey and insights concerning a man, not about the man himself. The man himself, though, was concerned with an entire culture. As such, the palette of the film is limitless, and it certainly takes advantage of its wide open space. The film meanders, and it's all the better for it.

Funny Games (Haneke, 1997)

2006-05-17T05:13:00.000-07:00

Funny Games is a film that is both profoundly disturbing and utterly ridiculous; the audience is caught in the middle of the psychological reality of the violence portrayed and the highly visible construct of the film and its manipulating mechanics of viewer expectation and desire. The title refers to the morbid, sadistic games played by the two men in the film that would be psychopaths if they were people, but they're more like jesters bred from the film itself, commenting upon it, looking out of it, utterly aware of it, and at one point controlling it (as a vicarious means of directorial manipulation and entrance into the narrative). The title also refers to the director's relationship with the audience and the audience's relationship with the film.

The film functions as a provocation, but one with a very definite purpose: Haneke wants the viewer to examine his relationship with media violence that is portrayed as "acceptable," to acknowledge his implicit advocation of that violence, and to experience a different kind of violence, one that he very much should feel terrible about. I don't know if any one could enjoy Funny Games on a visceral level, but if you do, you damn sure better feel guilty about it.

This is a triumph of structure; every piece compliments every other, but there are deft strokes scattered throughout that highlight and define the over all theme. When told they "can't do this," the only response offered by one of the perpetrators of violence is "Why not?" These are two beings that don't abide by the very basic restrictions of society, those immutable assurances that we take for granted in reality. In most fiction, these lines can be crossed without batting an eye, but Haneke's psychological realism doesn't let the audience of the hook here. Later, when asked why they are doing what they're doing, the family (and, of course, the audience) are told various lies, such as that they're drug addicts and need to rob for their fix, that they come from broken homes, and that their lives were too easy and they're struggling under the "weight of existence." These would make three nice plots for other films, and three nice artistic alibies for any filmmaker who wanted to get his rocks off with bloodshed. Of course, there is no justification for Funny Games' violence: the family is being tortured because they happen to be in a film, and the director decided they should be tortured. This is the case with any film, and Haneke's argument is against any artist or audience that wants to wipe their hands clean of the violence they create and enjoy.

At one point, a killer gets food from the refrigerator and we hear a gunshot. At this point, the viewer must make a choice: which family member does he hope has died? Chances are, we hope it isn't the child, so naturally it is. If a parent had been killed, there would be a sense that there is still a chance to move on; after all, parents generally don't outlast a child. But, most devoted parents would probably tell you, the worst thing that can happen is to lose a child, and Haneke manages to make the viewer feel the plethora of emotions consisting of outrage, despair, hopelessness, helplessness, anxiety, and an overall unwillingness to exist. Any one who wants to make an argument for Funny Games being mere violent exploitation with maybe a spattering of voyeuristic "guilty by association" need look no further than here to see there are definite repercussions for the violence, and brilliant examination of media experience aside, these are human beings being confronted with inhumanity, and you'd have to be a jaded individual indeed to be unmoved and unempathetic. Disgust is reasonable, and necessary, but the film is not vulgar in an intellectual sense.

At this point, the film seems as if it can, and should, go no further. But still it goes on. At one point, the mother grabs the rifle and shoots one of the perpetrators. But, Haneke keeps reminding us through the two men, there are rules to abide by. He refers not just to their sadistic ventures, but the rules of the film. In this film, the family loses the bet, and so the killer grabs the remote and rewinds for a do-over. This represents, then, a directorial decision: Haneke thinks "why not let her fight back?," but then realizes he is not being faithful to his concept, and rewinds. But, he lets the audience see this, and its reversal, so there is a glimpse of hope, followed by despair, and laced with sick irony. This is also a direct comment on our media saturated culture, as we all love to rewind, pause, turn off things we don't like. But when someone thoroughly despicable has the same power, and we are powerless, how would we feel? Well, we'd feel like we're watching Funny Games. In the supplemental interview on the DVD, Haneke says that audiences cheered and clapped at the woman's defiance, and then saw the rewind... and realized they had applauded a murder, and that they'd been thoroughly manipulated by the film. Bravo, Haneke.

Haneke has perhaps the most insight into how his audience will react to what happens on screen, on a psychological level, than any other director I've come across. He even bests Antonioni's Blow Up in this regard, or Carpenter's uncanny knack for projecting the camp value in his creations over time. Take, for example, the scene in which the mother is forced to strip: we are only shown from shoulder up. It is unlikely that any one doesn't expect, even secretly want, to see a shot of her body. This is not a sexual impulse, but one born of natural curiosity and our history with the film, as we don't expect any punches to be pulled. Yet we don't get what we expect, and we're left with an unfulfilled impulse that we have to come to terms with: we expected, maybe even wanted, to be spectators to this woman's degradation. We would've been repulsed, surely, but we felt compelled toward the repulsion.

This is a film that, unfortunately, has and will be misunderstood by many. It could probably function on a level as a horror film, for those that like their horror to disgust and frighten and no more. It's a very inappropriate but necessary irony that Funny Games can be used as fodder to feed the same impulses it finds so direly abhorrent. I would love to pull the rug out from under any one who views the film in this way, but I wonder if accepting the film at face value is a sign that it's too late.

Batman Returns (Burton, 1992)

2006-05-15T23:09:00.000-07:00

If Tim Burton has a strength, it is conceiving and crafting an elaborate misé en scene, and Batman Returns is a wholly more garrish production than its predecessor. In some respects, it takes its silliness too far, and doesn't go far enough with its more pertinent themes. As such, it never rises above summer movie territory, albeit with a few smart laughs ("Lay off the constitution, it's Christmas"; "Sickos don't bother me, at least they're committed"), but for a minute there it gives the ol' college try.

Burton's bone to pick with corporate crime and irresponsibility, like Batman, returns, this time embodied by Walken's Max Shreck (a cinephilic nod to the actor who played not-Dracula in Murnau's Nosferatu, a film in the German expressionist tradition from which Burton seeks inspiration for his aesthetic). This remains relatively unexplored though, culminating in a brief but foiled plot to lead the first borns of Gotham's citizens into a pool of toxic waste Pied Piper style. This isn't the only thing overshadowed by the two psychopathic villains, though, as Batman seems peripheral to them as well.

It seems that Burton purported to create a sincere tragic figure in Penguin, but it's only half heartfelt. Penguin was abandoned at birth for his deformity, floated down a sewer, and unbeknownst to his parents found and raised by Gothan's burgeoning intersewer penguin population. Penguin is unique in the narrative as he is the one character in whom you get what you see, and he keeps reminding us by pointing out Batman's mask. A true outsider, unlike the other two cartoony tortured souls in the tale, who are not often taken seriously enough, the result being we spend too much time laughing at the zany psychopaths.

Batman/Bruce Wayne and Catwoman/Selena Kyle are similar in their dual natures. Bruce needs Batman as a practicioner of vigilante justice, in general Batman mythos because his parents were murdered, filling him with a sense of obligation to society (this causality is, as far as I remember, not mentioned directly in Burton's first Batman flick); Selena needs Catwoman as an outlet of sexual aggression and proto-feminist militarism. If there is an aspect that is stimulating in the film, and one that the film would most benefit from developing more and being less afraid of, it's its sexual politics. Instead, the film straddles the line between exploration and family friendly entertainment.

Selena and Bruce play cat and mouse (the sceenwriters would've worked that into the script if they had a chance, I'm sure) in and out of costume, and both modes of interaction are sexually charged. After slapping the head and hat off a bourgeoisie female mannequin in a department store with her dominatrix whip and then reminding two security guards who confuse their pistols with their pricks that they're overpaid, Catwoman bests Batman in combat only to fall off a roof and be saved by the big bad (bat)man. They then embrace under mistletow, and Catwoman goes so far as to grope his batmobile. This parallels Penguin's own fondling earlier in the film, and he is on a tangential though less direct socio-sexual odyssey himself. Selena is reversing the inferiority bestowed upon her by her position as a secretary to The Man, which she self-deceptively referred to as an "executive assistant" career. Penguin eventually comes to terms with gender equality when he plots and indiscriminate massacre, even shouting "the sexes are equal." Not subtle, but that should be expected... this is a film in which Michael Keaton dresses in a bat suit.

The Batmobile (not the one in Bruce's pants) eventually resembles the one in Bruce's pants, though theoretically larger and blacker, when he avoids cops by stripping the sides of the car and fleeing through a damp, moist corridor. Okay, I'm just speculating with the adjectives. Anyway. He speeds through the sewers in his phallicar to stop the yet-asexual Penguin from doing his Passover thing, and the four crazies all congregate here. Bruce points out that him and Selena are similar, acknowledging that they are both hiding behind masks representing ideas, and that they could live together. Selena says she'd like to live in his "castle" just like in fairy tales, but she "couldn't live with herself." This is a strong feminist statement, obviously, seeing through the fairy tale bullshit and shunning it. She then seemingly commits sui/homicide with Shreck.

The Batmobile bursts through a snow formation, and its symbolic nature can't be mistaken (my chronology of the climax may be out of order, by the way) and stops Penguin. The penguins' missiles all go off, possibly signifying male destruction to equal out the male victory that is Batman's triumph. I think it's definitely after this that the above mentioned Selena stuff happens, but I'm not going to backtrack now.

So anyway, in the end Bruce is being driven by Alfred and tinks he tees a puddy tat. He did, he did tee a puddy tat, as Selena survives. Bruce picks up a stray cat, presumably left by Catwoman, and then closes the film with the line "Good will towards men... and women," the pause signifying a glance down at the cat. What is is that spurred this alteration of the phrase to give it a more unbiased effect?

Selena's gift of pussy. Burton, you're an inspiration to feminists everywhere.

Incident On And Off A Mountain Road (Coscarelli, 2005)

2006-05-13T16:17:00.000-07:00

Incident On And Off A Mountain Road is nothing but an excuse for tired slasher film clichés delivered by a villain who is in turn an excuse for mildly diverting make-up effects and ironically meek attempts at coherent thematic development of themes not worth developing.

After crashing her vehicle, a woman is pursued by a man with a knife. She fights back, however, using techniques learned from her husband that the audience comes to know through flashbacks. He is a nihilistic Mr. Miyagi of forest-based guerrilla warfare who forces his wife to train in psuedo militaristic fasion whilst spouting weak lines that rival "wax on, wax off" for faux profundity. This is, of course, after he charms her with verbal misanthropy and amusing tales of child prostitution in Thaiwan. A real Casanova, this one.

These flashbacks actually convolute what would be better off as a lean, meaningless but not intellectually insulting slasher film. This is not unlike the other Masters of Horror episode I've seen, Carpenter's Cigarette Burns, in that rather than recognizing the fact that the series works best as a treat for genre fans rather than an opportunity to reinvent the wheel, the filmmakers choose overly ambitious projects that they simply aren't good enough to pull off. Not that Incident is mired in weighty concepts, but it's readily apparent that Coscarelli can't handle anything beyond stabbing and bleeding. The flashbacks do intrude upon the mediocre slasher portion, lending a tonal diversity, but diversity isn't inherently better than harrowing (if Coscarelli were able to muster such a thing) monotony and in terms of content we'd be better off without them.

The film is stupid to the point of being amoral. It seems to suggest that the totally fucked up husband deserves posthumous "hate to say I told you so" bragging rights for the fact that it's his direct influence that caused his wife's survival. Of course, maybe she was going to dump his body, so his presence got her into this mess in the first place. Regardless, discerning a purose that isn't utterly trite and juvenile is beyond logical expectation. This film is all surface, constructed with the skill and diligence of an amateur, with very confused undercurrents. Near-omnipresent shaky cam doesn't do much to smooth matters over, either.

Though it aimed for profound insanity, Incident On And Off A Mountain Road only attains dazzling heights of inanity. Hey, at least they rhyme.

Capsules: Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)/Rebel Without A Cause (Ray, 1955)/Escape From L.A. (Carpenter, 1996)

2006-05-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
When I first saw Chinatown, I liked-it-not-loved-it. I saw it as a well crafted and executed plot, and not much else. To an extent, I was right: at the end of the day, what happens is sometimes more important than why it happens. However, Polanski's skill is readily apparent. The last scene, for example, is staged as well as any scene I can think of in any film.

"Chinatown" refers to a state in which, by striving to do good, everything goes wrong. Cops in Chinatown, Jake says, were told to do "as little as possible." By the end of the film, we understand why. Along the way, the audience is subjected to an unraveling plot of concealed intentions and motives, and audience involvement is required as each layer is peeled away. Meanwhile, the film's aesthetic subtly mimmicks (though in color) the noir genre from which it is a loving descendent.

At one point, Jake is in his room and he shuts the curtains hastily. Suddenly, the lights coming from inside the room shut off, signifying the lack of imagined light filtering in through the window. This is utterly transparent, and it must've been an intentional recognition of the film's construct, calling attention to it's shoutout to noir films of the past.

I was a bit hesitant to jump on the masterpiece bandwagon with this one, but when I think of all the Polanski films I've seen, this best showcases his skill in the medium, and he's no slouch in my book. An excellent film, 'tis.

Rebel Without A Cause (Ray, 1955)
Rebel Without A Cause is problematic in that much of its meaning can be discerned from its title alone. The film positively wallows in didacticism and melodrama, so that either you buy into the world portrayed or you don't. I buy in about half way.

The film portrays generational conflict and family upheaval within a society with a very conservative value system. The families and their surface surroundings are made clearly to represent picture-perfect, functioning units, yet the discord between parent and child is simulataneously made abundantly obvious. In a way, we have opposing forces of aesthetic and narrative that create a conflicted whole (intentionally and successfully).

There is a clear but overshadowed homoeroticism between one kid's fixation on Jim, and in that respect the film earns "ahead of its time" status. There's nothing terribly wrong with the film, and it's thematically relevent, it just doesn't attain sheer greatness.

Escape From L.A. (Carpenter, 1996)
Escape From L.A. is every bit the perfect blend of satire, kitsch, action, and atmosphere that Escape From New York is. Like its predecessor, it is essentially an extended, campy political cartoon with an overblown power struggle in which a single infamous convict is unbelievably enlisted by the government to save the nation by invading a walled-off criminal complex and obtaining a certain item in exchange for his own life. At the end of both films, there is a last-laugh switcheroo in which Snake maintains badassery and humilates the dystopian United States regime. Somehow, Carpenter and Russell make the "fuck it all" attitude work, and the films positively ooze this ambiguous rebellion, resulting in two movies that earn the title "guilty pleasure" for me not because they are not good films, but because of the extent to which I love them.

Escape From L.A. has terrible, terrible CGI. Who cares? The worst looking film shark ever tries unsuccessfully to bite Snake's submarine in a particularly unnecessary bout of computer generated indulgence. Awesome!

What makes the film work, though, is that it juggles many competing facets simultaneously. It's tongue in cheek, but it also successfully depicts a horrible, yet almost outlandishly believable future. As I've mentioned, it's a cartoon, but scarily reminiscent of deep seated fears that could very well be justified in the current political climate. Just as she begins a monologue about how great the freedom afforded by Los Angeles is, the woman (who we feel Snake may actually care about to some extent) that accompanies Snake briefly is shot down and dies immediately. There is a pang of injustice here, and Carpenter doesn't smooth it over. Unlike so many other films, there are implications and consequences to the actions here.

Though it or anything else in the film won't win any prizes for subtlety, the ending is fantastic. Snake refuses to aid either corrupt force, instead shutting down the entire world, setting human progress back centuries and leveling the playing field. Eventually, the circle will turn again, and ultimate progress leads to ultimate regression. This is, I would argue, very likely true, and though it's possible to gauge such matters, I used to (when I was, oh, fifteen or so) be convinced that the world would end in my lifetime. Now, I'm not so sure. I think the inevitable will just be prolonged for many years more... but I'm digressing.

This duo of films from John Carpenter are a pair of loud, obvious, and charged challenges to establishment. Any establishment, just pick one.

Gladiator (Scott, 2000)

2006-05-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

In Gladiator, there is a conflict between a man who was never loved, and a man who loved and lost. One is a psychosexually confused emperor, the other a general-turned-gladiator. This little slave who could wins the hearts of the people and single handedly saves Rome, ensuring that it would never fall... well, not really.

On a whole, the film is a poorly directed epic with all the epic-ness vacuumed out of it. Scott's direction is remarkable only for its ability to wholly deflate a sequence. This is most painfully apparent in early scenes, especially conversational ones. Scott has not realized that the relationship between character and location, especially in a period piece, is as important as any other aspect of character, and so we get medium-to-close talking heads, boringly composed and intercut to show the speaker, because we love to see lips move. My distaste for this pedestrian style of subjectivity-seeking automaton filmmaking knows no bounds, and unfortunately it's a very common occurrence of which Scott is not the only culprit.

The action sequences (this meaning any passage of visual storytelling, not necessarily battles) are similarly cramped. There is no majesty, no scope, to Ridley's frame; when watching I feel as if the camera is tethered by its limited range of movement, probably because the filmmakers were too busy with overblown and unnoticed details to accomodate for good filmmaking. The editing lacks any remarkable structure. The aesthetic on a whole ranges from mediocre to poor, the latter especially apparent in the "Russell Crowe faints (drops acid?) in the desert and is kidnapped" sequence, and the "heaven is a blue-tinted grassland" sequence near the end of the film.

The battles fail to either repulse (whether at the violence itself or an objectivity-born non reaction to violence) or to be exciting to the point that the audience of the film is charged with the same bloodthirst as the audience of the collosseum. Speaking of which, the collosseum is full of very blatant phallic symbols. Once a reading of this nature takes hold, everything becomes a phallus. In the first battle, women (their femininity accentuated by their breastplates) ride into the circle of penes and fire arrows (phalluses) into men. Then, the emperor (who at any given moment can't seem to decide whether he wants to strangle or fuck the person he's interacting with) comes in and points his little prick of a thumb up in the air, letting Maximus live. The battle apparently is supposed to have some sort of coital connotation, and interestingly Maximus is essentially neutered by the death of his wife. This of course is consistent with his non-compliance, but this sexual reading doesn't really enhance what still remains a slight tale of rising above the odds spattered with paper-thin romantic concepts of life, death, and love. The film never hesitates to make explicit its themes, usually in single lines or exchanges, many of which could be cited. The film is by no means a challenge, which likely explains its popularity and Academy wins.

Gladiator is not a film without any redeeming values, but it's not a film that flirts with greatness either. It's just kind of there, blandly and obviously. Commodus has the makings of an interesting character creation, but he's not developed enough or important enough to be any major saving grace.

Verdict: meh.

Domino (Scott, 2005)

2006-05-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

At first glance, Domino appears to be a hopelessly schizophrenic movie, one that thrives on the atonality of overdramatizing innopportune and seemingly random events with audio cues, over/under exposure/saturation/contrasting, expressionistic/idiotic lighting, and overbearing cameramanship, only to abandon the idea immediately. It soon becomes apparent, however, that this is a schizophrenia born of an intense yet fleeting interest in every detail of an event, for better or worse. Moments like these can be taken either as microcosms of Domino Harvey's existence or experimentation for experimentation's sake.

The strange thing is that, in a film in which indulgence is the core concept, indulgence becomes restraint. Sometimes it's amazing how little of a striking image we may actually see. Scott is quick to flash and discard, which displays a strong conviction in his editing choices. The editing room must had been a very adventurous and stimulating experience for the filmmakers. Some of these images have a certain depth, such as one of Domino sitting on a couch with newspapers blowing all around her (we get barely a glimpse), or one of young Domino with an overlay of a fish swimming in its small allotted space. These aren't overly profound, but in a film that prides itself on momentary surprises, they become part of a larger syntax.

There are, of course, stylistic flourishes that are hard to swallow. Some usages of slow motion, some blur effects (from using hand crank cameras), some stop-frame zooms, and especially the repeating of lines can become tiresome. Similarly, some sequences consist of an awkward succession of close ups that quickly become annoying and disrupt any conventional establishment of mood, which could be intentional but whether that justifies it is arguable. The film is so willfully atypical that one sometimes hopes to find some mooring, some familiar ground aesthetically.

As far as narrative goes, the film refuses to acknowledge any lines separating such things as respectability, absurdity, stupidity, or coherence from their polar counterparts. Domino is an anarchistic, individualistic, arrogant woman who won't take no guff and finds some measure of spiritual ascension in the end. Still, thematically, one again turns to the film's aesthetic, as the film functions well on this and other levels as a satire of contemporary culture. Each character is introduced by voiceover and subtitle, and each location by the latter, mimicking television. Some things are spelled out blatantly in words on screen, like when the "Real First Ladies" and the "Fake First Ladies" are each labeled, juxtaposed, then labeled again. Throughout the film, there is a recurring pinging noise curiously reminiscent of the "yes, that letter is in our puzzle" sound from Wheel of Fortune. This is a film steeped in a world in which mass proliferation of information and culture (pop and otherwise) has permeated all facets of society, i.e. the present. Domino functions as an American zeitgeist on crack, the use of the cliché being very apt in a description of this particular film, right down to the casting of the 90210 guys as themselves and the Afghan driver blowing up the Stratosphere with, you guessed it, a remote control.

Domino opens with the disclaimer "Based on a True Story -- Sort Of." It has a narrator that tells us one thing, then doubles back to contradict, and we see the event in rewind (another stylistic device contributing to the reflection of other electronic media and therefore modern culture). That narrator (Domino, of course) later refuses to tell us what's true and what isn't, defiance being quite characteristic of Ms. Harvey. The film's acknowledgement of its artificiality is absolute to the point that Tom Waits, via song, announces the impending arrival of his cameo as a catalyst for Domino's absolusion with, what else? "Jesus Gonna Be Here Soon."

There's are many things going on in this film, and it succeeds in being a jumbled mess of all of them. It's understandable why this film was panned, but I happen to think it has something to offer. Not a great film, but not a terrible film. Though Domino's quarter deals in absolutes, apparently the film itself landed vertically on its edge. It's not heads or tails, it's something in between.

United 93 (Greengrass, 2006)

2006-04-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

First, a few points:

The film has every right to exist.
It is not "too soon."
The subject has never been taboo for me.
I strongly believe that this film is not an accurate representation of the actual events that day. The reasons why are outside the scope of this review.

That said, United 93 is an extremely successful film.

When I began watching the film, I was immediately troubled by the fact that I could not discover a reason for this film's existence. A labored enactment of speculated events rarely has inherent value in itself. Similarly, the film's aesthetic seemed to be the standard attempt at "documentary realism," which is generally an excuse for not developing a style and promoting your work as "raw" or "realistic." It also seemed that the film was relying solely on bitter ironies for impact: a woman taking her pills, a reminder to fasten a seatbelt, people making plans for after they reach their destination... all these events, with the knowledge that these people will die, are documented emphatically.

As time went on, around the halfway mark, it all fell into place. This film is not a political film. It will be seen as such by many, but a political message is not intrinsically a part of the film's text except tangentially (the film depicts a government's failure to react properly to the events); any political response says exactly zero about the film and only reveals the responder's own personal political leanings, biases, and hang ups. This is a film about humans under a stressful situation, and it earns its "documentary realism" camera style by the fact that its narrative has a primal immediacy that more or less demands the aesthetic.

The film has a minimalist approach that I find intriguing by default, since I'm a minimalist in preference and expression myself. I was thankful that this was not a "Hollywood" movie; there are no heroes here. My stating this is not to undermine the real life people who parallel the characters in the film, though; as they are portrayed in the film, they respond as any man or woman could be expected to respond under the circumstances. To deify people for attempting to stay alive and failing is to say they were in the "right place at the right time," since the heroic status is afforded only by the opportunity, not the action. No, these people were desperately, hopelessly in the wrong place at a very wrong time, and they tried to survive. Similarly, some potentially "harrowing, climactic, pulse-pounding!" events are presented quietly, in the dark confines of air control towers, with planes represented by green squares with lines through them.

In regard to the film as a depiction of actual events: as I've said, I do not think this is how it happened. The fact remains, though, that real people were on the real plane, and I think they did fight back. I think this film is an accurate depiction of what would happen if the plane went down as depicted, and is an accurate estimation of the collective mindset of the people on the plane. Greengrass wisely opts for a lack of differention between the passengers. In film, a human being photographed is instantly recognized by the viewer as a human being. It's only once the character begins to be "characterized" by symbolic gestures and "revealing" dialogue that he begins to seem a synthetic production of a screenwriter's imagination. Characterization can be done well, and it can be a great thing, but there is a power (and, again, a primalcy) in knowing less about the mind behind the face that is represented. Mystery is a human quality, and Greengrass uses it as such.

The film's structure, oddly enough, resembles a film from last year that may seem an odd comparison: Wolf Creek. Much of the first half is muted, building up even as the day's iconic events (the crashing into the towers) take place. However, unlike that film, the climax is not a devolution, but an ascension and a justification of the previous events. This film probably says everything about human nature Wolf Creek purported to say, but successfully and without them being necessitated only as part of a larger genre canvas.

There is only one glaring facet that bothers me, and that is the inconsistency of subtitling the hijackers' dialogue. There is a different psychological association between translated and untranslated foreign dialogue. It is almost as if Greengrass wanted to make their intentions clear to the audience in some scenes while making them seem foreign (not in the country of origin sense) in others. Both instances can be devalued as pandering to the audience's mentality instead of maintaining a clear artistic vision. Imagine watching the quiet conversation in which the hijackers' fears and anxieties are revealed, but the dialogue is untranslated and we only know what they're talking about by the worry on their faces. Or, alternately, the wild screaming in the cock pit elevated to understandable speech rather than hollerings of someone apparently not worth understanding at that particular moment. I would've preferred to have none of it subtitled, but consistency either way would be welcome and would sidestep this minor bias the film presents (whether intentional on the parts of the filmmakers or not).

I've tried to avoid any political discussion in this review of the film outside of saying that I don't think the film is an entirely accurate depiction of the events of that day, because as I've said, the film is remarkable in its depiction of how people may react under a hijacking situation. It's unfair to write the film off as an aid to the "war on terror" or anything else so classifiedly political. I do think that those viewers that accept this film as an absolute truth are reacting improperly, and there's a danger in that, but it is not the film's responsibility to interpret itself for the viewer. That's like hating a band because some people think they're metal, when you know they're thrash. The consensus does not change the film itself, except from a social perspective. Any one viewing the film should view it without considering how others have reacted, but rather how they alone react. Analyzing a film's social impact is academia, not art response.

I will say that the film's ending is the only respectable way to end the film. If I were given the choice, I would surely end it the very same way, which is rare especially for a film this mainstream.

Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960)

2006-04-28T00:22:00.000-07:00

In Peeping Tom, several realities exist simultaneously: that of the characters, that of the filmmakers, that of the audience, and the tiny threads that link each. Every one of these parties and relationships are implicated as voyeuristic. This is, Powell says, the alluring power of the ability to see; indeed, even a blind, alchoholic mother cannot resist the impulse to glimpse the forbidden, or the hidden, using every sense available to her.

Mark Lewis is a psychopathic killer who uses a sharpened leg of his tripod to stab his victims in the throat as he approaches them with a mirror mounted on his camera so that they fear not only death, but the vision of their own death. His victims do not look away; they are somehow powerless against the compulsion to see what they previously could not, though it means the end of sight altogether. Similarly, Mark and Peeping Tom's audience do not look away, even as we see the killer methodically developing and personally screening the footage.

We learn from an old reel he shows the woman who lives downstairs and his eventual, brief love interest that Mark's father was a biologist, though seemingly also a psychologist, who studied the effects of fear in adolescents. He used his son as a subject, inpiring fear and capturing it on film. Mark was never unwatched as a child; there is an entire, terrifying record of his skewed development. Every room in his house is wired, and it remains that way. What Mark cannot see, he hears still.

It is implicit that the compulsion that drives Mark is not unlike that that drives a dramatic filmmaker: the director sees his fantasies, no matter how bizarre, fantastic, or even sadistic, acted out in front of him. Mark at a point remarks "everything I photograph, I lose." Indeed, photography is a kind of death: when a picture is taken, the moment it captured is now gone. You can never photograph the life of a moment, because at that very moment it is also dying. The killing on film that Mark partakes in is an extension of this loss through documentation.

When approached about his carrying a camera around and taking seemingly random shots, Mark states that he is working on a documentary. By the film's end it becomes apparent that the 'documentary' in question is his own life, though his death has been staged: the logical progression of his actions is to turn the camera on himself, implicating his own role in the 'documentary,' and similarly the end of it.

The film was outright banned, forgotten, and the end of Powell's directorial career upon release; it's not hard to imagine why. Though cries of outrage over the mere content and supposed amorality of the film were released, it's likely that the implication of audience-as-voyeur, perhaps audience-as-Mark (indeed, through the use of subjective camera shots and the act of watching Mark watch his films, the audience is forced to empathize with the killer), was too much on a subconscious level for the critical community and public to handle. Like Hitchcock's Psycho released months later, a film concerned more with the surface and visceral action versus Peeping Tom's emphasis on the subliminal, mental, and psychological, the film is terribly modern not only in terms of its portrayal of then-questionable (and eternally disturbing) subject matter, but the treatment of the material as a means of audience inclusion (Psycho doing so by means of suspense and character sympathy, Peeping Tom through outright finger wagging and imparting a feeling that could almost be described as guilt).

Whereas Fellini's 8 1/2 is a fantastic film about the economics, society, and the conceptual stages of filmmaking (and a masterpiece in its own right), Peeping Tom is an insightful masterpiece concerning the in-the-moment instinct that is the actual filming; that is, the recording of temporal death. The blind mother at one point remarks "Instinct's a wonderful thing, isn't it, Mark? A pity it can't be photographed." While the film doesn't photograph instinct itself, it is perhaps the most arresting implication of instinct's immutability in the face of passion, fear, attraction, and filmmaking, all of which are equated in the mind of Mark Lewis.

Dirty Harry (Siegel, 1971)

2006-04-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

If one were to take Harry Callahan's actions as being condoned by the filmmakers, the stance of the film would be more or less one of fascism (as has been well documented in most reviews of the film). Of course, Harry discards his badge at the end of the film, so this would be some sort of vigilante fascist justice... thing. Kind of like Batman, except Dirty Harry is way cooler than Batman.

However, it is more probable and rewarding to see Harry as being presented as a hypothetical. From this perspective, the film begs the question: if criminals like the sadistic fuck in the film exist (and it's not terribly far-fetched that they do, though probably not with much frequency), does it not take an equally sadistic opposing force to successful, well, oppose it? The film's exploration of the question of "How much force should law enforcement have?" is similar to the questions posed by Fritz Lang's M, though M is arguably a more potent and competent disseration on the concept.

Though we may not like the idea of an officer like Harry Callahan walking the streets, we may like it a lot better than the idea of a criminal like Scorpio. And, aye, there's the rub: which is the lesser of two evils (in the long term)? Can a force such as Harry be trusted to not abuse his power, whether legally sanctioned or not? Can a more moderate law enforcement system be counted on to stop a criminal such as Scorpio, in the event that one may appear?

The film was loosely based on real events of the Zodiac killer in San Francisco. The Zodiac killer was never captured. We can not be certain that a real life Harry Callahan would've made any difference, but, again, he's a hypothetical. We cannot condone a Harry Callahan, we cannot condone withholding a force capable of stopping a Scorpio killer. This is the Kobayashi Maru of the legal system: we have checks and balances, but what do we do about off-the-radar extremes? They can throw off the average unexpectedly, and we may suddenly be defenseless. Quite the quandary, indeed.

An American Werewolf In London (Landis, 1981)

2006-04-26T02:28:00.000-07:00

An American Werewolf In London is a terrifically funny movie both because it recognizes the absurdity of the situation it presents, and because of (not in spite of) the fact that it remains an effective horror film in addition to a pop-culture riff on standard horror tropes and American-versus-European excentricities. Two Americans walk in to a pub... sounds like the beginning of a joke, and in many ways it is.

So they walk into this pub, and there's some very foreboding and suspicious behavior. There's also a five-pointed star on the wall. These guys know from movies that it wards off evil. Yet, that only happens in movies, so they don't take it too seriously. Until they are attacked by werewolves, of course. At a point, they look directly into the camera, saying that the beast making the sound they hear is directly in front of them. This does several things, from being inherently funny to recognizing the fact that the only reason they're dying is that they're in a film. This is true of all horror films. Hence, the camera is essentially the cause of death. When one asks "What's the plan?," the other responds incredulously "Plan!?" These aren't heroes in a horror film, they're just guys who have absurd events surrounding them.

The movie is permeated with this sly self-awareness. There is even an extended discussion of the Chaney/Lugosi Wolfman film, as the man attempts to come to terms with his new found malady by comparison to the film. The film functions effectively as an homage to a classic horror film such as the Wolfman, but plays everything halfway for a laugh. Casting wolf transformation as a metaphor for the male libido results in a humorous desire in the American to have sex, not any sort of profound psychosexual release.

It's interesting how comedic timing and horror timing are so similiar. In the pub, when the Americans ask about the star on the wall, a dart misses the board in close up. This is somehow funny and foreboding simultaneously. The inherently funny glance into the camera also inspires terror in the werewolf POV shot during the slaughter of the man on the escalator.

Perhaps the most hilarious scene in the film is the "suggest a method of suicide" scene, in which several corpses in an adult movie theatre cheerfully recommend means of taking one's own life. That the man doesn't may lead some to believe that there is hope, but there isn't. When in the end the nurse futilely tells the werewolf she loves him, he lunges at her and is shot down. Love does not overcome all hardship here, as Landis is strictly faithful to his original concept. When one is transformed into a werewolf, he loses control. He no longer understands the concept "love." In a lesser film, perhaps the werewolf would stagger a bit, look troubled, and ultimately give up fighting in the name of love. Thankfully, that's not the case here.

Capsules: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tsukamoto, 1988)/The Road Home (Yimou, 1999)

2006-04-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tsukamoto, 1988)
Tetsuo is a film that could potentially raise and explore many interesting questions and concepts, but in actuality it's the most overt attempt to disorient the viewer while being graphically subversive I have witnessed. I think a mechanical penis is a great idea (it's also in Tsukamoto's A Snake of June), I just think there are better ways of presenting it, and anything else the film throws at us.

The camera is needlessly shaky, the editing needlessly nervous and frantic. This is in a way that actually detracts from the film; while some level of erratic camera work with perhaps a mechanical flourish would complement the film's subject matter nicely, this is just obtrusive and leads to incoherence. Equally erratic is the films approach to its titular Iron Man: one moment he's exploring his mechanical body as a means of psychosexual release and escape from male paranoia (he's literally fucked by a female's biomechanical penis before turning the tables on her with a rotary phallus of his own), the next he's engaged in some Dragon Ball Z battle in fast forward. This is subversive pop culture for the MTV generation, entirely schizophrenic in every aspect of its construction.

A literal minded approach to the film's title could result in a great film, but this just isn't it. I wish I could like it, and on a certain level the other two Tsukamoto films I've seen (A Snake of June and Vital), but he's too busy living up to the "extreme" in "extreme Asian cinema!" to say anything meaningful.

The Road Home (Yimou, 1999)
The Road Home is a visually arresting, very sweet, somewhat slight, wholly enjoyable melodrama that is a meditation on love, the merit of tradition, the role of education in Chinese culture, and tinged with muted political ideas that are more implicit than thematic certainties.

The film opens with flat black and white cinematography, as the present is a time for mourning. A man has died, and his son returns from the city to see his mother. He learns she desires a highly ceremonial carrying of his body back home by men, and watches as she weaves a likewise ceremonial cloth. In her room are two Titanic posters, which do several things: orient the viewer in the proper present-day time frame, explicate Western culture's advance into Eastern lives, allude to another film with some similar themes (arguably, this film undermines their handling in the Cameron film), and perhaps also alludes to the actual sinking of the Titanic, in that a picture about loss in modernity has certain tangents to that story. While looking at pictures, the flashback that is the body of the picture is initiated.

The past is in vibrant color, very idealized, and seems very pleasant. That is because this is a past of personal mythology: this is the story of the school teacher and his wife's courtship that the entire village knows, and as such it has become ritual in itself. The woman, as a young girl, is weaving a cloth for the construction of a new building (as opposed to the cloth of mourning she weaves in 1999). Their courtship advances largely in glances and silent gestures (special meals cooked by the girl, hoping her would-be suitor will select hers from among those of the other girls). It's difficult not to have a silly grin on your face: this story is cute, plain 'n simple.

The man is taken away for political reasons. He hangs a red flag on the ceiling of his classroom, and I think I recognized a portrait of Mao Zedong. He likes the girl's red jacket most of all. If I knew more about Chinese history, I'm sure I could elucidate the political message here (something to do with communism), but I don't. It doesn't detract from the film, though it probably would be enriched with an understanding of this aspect. Regardless, we know the man will return, and he does.

The words written by the schoolmaster tend to sum up the various themes in the film. One of them is "Know the present, know the past." Rarely is that idea explicated as fully, vibrantly, and passionately as it is here.

Capsules: Blow Out (De Palma, 1981)/Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957)/Hulk (Lee, 2003)

2006-04-25T01:35:00.000-07:00

It is late, I am tired, and the following writings will be quite facile. Deal with it:

Blow Out (De Palma, 1981)
Blow Up meets The Conversation meets Hitchcock. De Palma wears his influences on his sleeve, so much that the film is ultimately an imitation more than anything. However, De Palma gives the film just enough visual flair to make it an enjoyable imitation.

What prevents the film from being as good as its influences is De Palma's sole concern with the surface construction of the film. Blow Out is a movie that does everything an art film does on the surface, but has the core of mainstream entertainment. Yes, it is a well conceived political thriller, yes, it calls attention to the construct of cinema, yes, it shows artistic creation as a search for understanding in a world that would prefer you didn't understand, but it all seems like posturing for the sake of slick aesthetic production.

Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957)
Masina plays Maria, a woman who tells people her name is Cabiria, and who is looking for true love. We watch as her first few loves are lost, how she meets a man all too briefly who could probably be the right man for her (the guy who gives stuff to homeless people), and ultimately we are strung along with her by her final suitor.

What makes the film so great, then, is the milieu that can best be described as Felliniesque. No one else creates scenes so on the brink of being unhinged as the scene of Maria dancing on the street while there's music being played, people screaming, and who knows what else. There's always a sense of realism coupled with surrealism coupled with a sly smirk, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly how this mood is created. It's ordered chaos.

Much of this wonderment can be attributed to Masina, whose comic grace (yet with a simultaneous ability to inspire true pathos) warrants comparisons to Chaplin.

A summary of the film cannot do it justice, because with Fellini it is the moment by moment wonders that accumulate to create a memorable experience. Nights of Cabiria is really just a comedy about a hooker with a heart of gold who can't seem to find a guy who wants more than her money or will give her likewise, but the mixture of comedy with the quirky atmosphere and the subtle and unexpected emotional connection that develops between the viewer and Maria is what elevates it above what it is conceptually.

Hulk (Lee, 2003)
Hulk trades in the heroism of traditional super hero mythology for a portrayal of the subject's 'super' form as undesirable, as a burden in itself (rather than Spiderman's theme of the power begetting responsibility begetting burden). The film goes to lengths to portray the big green outbursts as an effect of pent up aggression and emotion in Banner, but is never wholly convincing in this regard. We are told that Banner has repressed memories, that he is externally stoic, and that he finds human relationships difficult, but there is no experiental evidence of this. Verhoeven's Hollow Man is a more convincing dissertation on supernatural power leading to a lack of inhibition and a release of troublesome desires.

The problem here is not that of the filmmakers, but of the super hero concept in itself. Super heroes were created not because of the kinds of psychological or philosophical problems that their existence may present (i.e., Batman wasn't conceived as the logical progression of being orphaned, Hulk wasn't conceived as a meditation on passive aggression), but because someone once thought "Hey, wouldn't a guy who was kind of like a spider be pretty bad ass?" Any show of profundity a super hero film has exists as an attempt to justify the existence of such hollow concepts. Super heroes are first and foremost juvenile pulp entertainment, and it is very vogue at the moment to present them as tortured souls in film (something that has been going on in the graphic novel and comic book mediums for decades). It works, to an extent, but there's always a disconnect between the seriousness and the absurdity of the very construct. For the record, Spiderman 2 has pulled off this mixture best.

As for the aesthetic construction of the film, in particular the editing, I liked it. It achieves differentiation, even if it is a very literal-minded approach to the "comic book film" concept, without being obtrusive. It amounts only to so much polish on the surface of an engaging film, but it's good polish nonetheless. Some of the split screen and floating comic book frame compositions can be not only visually interesting and unexpected (unlike many big-budget action films, you can't always predict the editing rhythms of Hulk), but effective in creating a sense of immediacy that would otherwise be absent.

Also, am I supposed to know what the fuck is going on with Banner's father?

Gerry (Van Sant, 2002)

2006-04-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

For his past three films, Van Sant has been crafting his own film syntax, one relatively free of dramatic manipulation or overt expressions of thematic and emotional concerns, and one that offers many more questions than answers. It is all of these, particularly the last, that infuriates and alienates many viewers. Some expected him to, for example, know the cause of the shootings in Elephant (i.e. Columbine), yet one gets the feeling that people would be even more infuriated, and more deservedly, if he did claim to know the cause. But, that's a different film and a different topic.

This trio of films concerning death in the modern world (in Gerry, homicide that is potentially a mercy killing, potentially a smothering of embarrassing or unfortunate memories, potentially a Darwinian triumph after a reversion to animalistic needs to survive, in Elephant, a mass killing, and in Last Days, a likely suicide) begins with Gerry. The two characters, both named Gerry, become fixtures of the landscape as they walk endlessly and without direction (despite futile shows of control, as when a map is drawn in the sand or they retrace their steps, their mistakes). A story is told early on about a Wheel of Fortune woman who has to solve the puzzle "BARRE_ING DOWN THE ROAD" and thinks the answer is "Barreying down the road." The answer may as well be Gerrying down the road, for it is a similarly simple mistake that utterly dooms the two Gerrys.

It is important that, when lost in nature that they were until recently commenting upon as great and beautiful, they revert to discussion of their electronic experiences. Perhaps they are unable to see the picturesque landscapes without the aid of an electronic media, such as film. Would the viewer see the desert in the same way if it were not a part of the film?

A second such reversion is during a campfire sequence (a motif in Van Sant's work, second only to time-lapse clouds), when a Gerry announces "I captured Thebes the other day." He is, of course, talking about a video game (Age of Empires or Civilization, or something like that, I presume), and there is a wonderful disharmony in hearing a normal guy lost in the desert cast himself as an emperor in charge of a Thebes-capturing army. This is another comment upon the modern world's dependence upon electronic media. He then gets to a point when he says he needed twelve horses to save his city, but had only eleven. So the other Gerry asks "So you didn't capture Thebes, then?" to which the initial Gerry replies "No, I had already captured Thebes, and then that happened." He had been dwelling on what he lost, on his failure, rather than his triumph. Despite his feeling the need to anounce it, his victory in the video game meant nothing. Electronic experience cannot replace real experience, and it breeds negativity. He brought this anecdote up not out of pride, but out of a need to converse. Indeed, it is after they cease talking about either immediate matters or past modern-world experiences that they cease to have anything to say, and a fissure erupts between them. This scene is a very subtle but very rich one, exploring concepts that are in plain sight every day though few acknowledge them. Gerry is in many ways a film about the price of life in a modern world.

Gerry is an endless bounty of beauty and provocative starting points for discussion and personal thought. Only a fraction of its depth has been touched upon here. Gerry is the film that propelled Van Sant from "good" to "great," and he has since been proving his worthiness of this leap.

Capsules: Marebito (Shimizu, 2004)/The Abyss (Cameron, 1989)

2006-04-23T04:17:00.000-07:00

Marebito (Shimizu, 2004)
How many films can be made about technological disconnect before innovative thinking about the matter becomes necessary? According to Shimizu, less than or equal to Marebito -1.

The film is like a jigsaw puzzle: you put it all together, then you think "what the fuck did I waste my time doing that for?" as you clear off the coffee table so you can use it for something more useful, like harakiri. A videographer (equated to a vampire in the film, as he "sucks" images from life) stops using Prozac, can't cope with modern life (since he lives vicariously through his camera), and so ends up kidnapping his daughter, failing to recognize his wife, and being very, very trite.

It's ironic that I watched the Abyss after this film, because the protagonist in that film's name is Virgil, and in Marebito the voiceover is the Virgil to the viewer's Dante. It holds your hand along the way, commenting upon such things as the scene of a suicide seeming more "realistic" on a television screen to the fact that the protagonist aims to open a door. Such a claim is generally followed by a shot of the protagonist opening the door. Shimizu's a workin' man's director, he always gives the viewer fair warning. Imagine the hysteria that unexpected portal unlatchings would produce and tell me the voiceover wasn't a good idea.

Marebito is a film about technological disconnect, contemporary life in an urban setting, familial disruption, descent into madness, loss of past history and combined mythologies, and the weight of creation. It makes damn sure you know what it's about, too. The only thing it doesn't tell you is that it's good at exploring none of these concepts. A hollow effort by a hollow director.

The Abyss (Cameron, 1989)
Aliens and sea dives and underwater machines! Wetsuits and warheads and sunk submarines! Marriage, divorce, and symbolic rings! These are a few of Cameron's favorite things.

The best thing that could be say about The Abyss is that it looks expensive. Cameron seems to had gotten every dollar's worth from his budget, but to what end? We have a disrupted marriage that is ultimately saved as a result of a psychotic Navy Seal armed with a warhead whose actions lead to the discovery of an alien race that resides in the titular abyss. This was all of course caused by the sinking of a submarine at the hands of said aliens. On top of all that, allow for the possibility that screaming can reverse hypothermia-induced death. Convergence of the Twain this is not. A mess, 'tis.

The final confrontation with the alien race visually alludes to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Um, why? Is the allusion the end in itself? After spending the last half hour watching submarine hot potato played with a nuclear warhead, am I supposed to see some sort of logical progression to an encounter with aliens? If things were my way, not only would I have a cup of expresso sitting next to me at the moment, but all this nuclear-warhead-crazed-Navy-Seal stuff would've been cut out. Or not even conceived of. If the allusion to Kubrick's film could be supported with a fitting sense of an encounter with a higher state of being, or the unperceived future, the Abyss could've been a great film. It would have a chance to play on US paranoia in that the cause of the submarine's sinking is unknown. The entire middle section could be reworked to showcase both the social angle and the philosophical one. The recovered marriage bit could stay, but more realistically portrayed (not "OMG I love you suddenly I realized thank you aliens!").

I'm not generally one to actually say what a film should've shown the viewer, but this is a case in which a provocative setting is crafted but the ol' fauna and machina inhabiting it don't amount to much. All the visuals involving the aliens were, for the record, gorgeous. I wish the film could capitalize on some of this promise.

Now, about that expresso...

Capsules: Superman: The Movie (Donner, 1979)/Aliens (Cameron, 1986)/Young Mr. Lincoln (Ford, 1949)

2006-04-21T01:37:00.000-07:00

Superman: The Movie (Donner, 1979):
I'm going to do a silly thing: I'm going to try to loosely define art as it pertains to storytelling. Artful storytelling does not merely reiterate plot points, it is not just exposition, it does not exist to take a person from point A to point B without something to reflect on in between. If art aspires to higher modes of thought or emotional experience, perhaps even higher modes of existence, Superman: The Movie is not art. It is a poorly conceived action comedy that is haphazardly paced, badly shot and edited, utterly inane, and wholly awful.

It is not only the lack of "food for thought," or lack of aspiration, that cripples this film. It's simply a bad movie, let alone bad art. Money was obviously spent on these setpieces, and it's wasted on cramped talking-head compositions and editing that is at best predictable and at a frequent worst jarringly awkward. What's that whirling thing in the background? Eh, must not be important, since we can't get a good look at it.

Early in the film, Superman is sent to earth on a manger representing the Bible's Jesus' manger. I won't even get into how the film completely misses the mark in following up on this at least borderline provocative idea. I was disenchanted from the start, and by the time Lois recites grade school poetry in voice over during the hackneyed flying romance sequence, the film was dead to me. Yet I still had to live with it for a baffling forty minutes (?) or so longer.

An episodic wasteland of cliché heroics, embarrassing slapstick, and poor filmmaking.

Aliens (Cameron, 1986):
I had seen Aliens once before, and thought it was a poor excuse for explosions and creature effects. Now, a less-jaded me thinks it's a good excuse for explosions and creature effects.

I once mistook filmmakers for being sincere. So, when I first saw Aliens, I took the paper-thin badassery of the infantry to be sincere. It isn't, I now realize. On a thematic level, this is a struggle between corporations, politicians, and decision makers (usually and in this film, all the same entity), and people, especially people under the influence of instinct, whether that be the instinct to stay alive or the instinct to save one's child. Long story short, a corporation screws a bunch of people over, a businessman continues to screw people over, and meanwhile some military people, Ripley, and a girl that comes to be a surrogate for her long-dead daughter try to survive against a hostile, deadly, and very photogenic alien race.

The film is a strong display of the motherhood instinct. When she meets the queen alien, Ripley shields Newt, shows the queen what her flamethrower can do, then points the flamethrower at an egg. This is mother talk for "Let my kid live and I won't kill yours." One thing leads to another, a reprise of the ol' stowaway gag from the first film, and there's a badass showdown between Ripley-as-dock-worker and Queen-sans-eggsac. Cameron isn't the most artful of directors, but he's very good at keeping hold of all the threads that hold a big film like this together and crafting something that warrants respect, if not divine admiration.

Young Mr. Lincoln (Ford, 1949):
Young Mr. Lincoln is a bit simplistically conservative, sometimes faux-sentimental, occasionally bordering on hagiography, but cumulatively is a nice film. A nice film, that is, and not a whole lot more.

If John Ford's style could be summed up in a word, that word could be "simple." I do not mean this in a derogatory way; simplicity is sometimes a thing to be valued. What this simplicity does, though, is coddle the audience into being manipulated by the daintiest of strings. There is scarcely a moment when you are unsure what to feel, thanks, of course, to the score-as-emotional-cue. There's similarly nary a moment when you will question Young Old Abe's judgement; in Ford's world, he even gets away with cheating in a tug o' war contest.

Early in the film, Lincoln announced regarding law: "That's all there is: right and wrong" (paraphrased). For a moment, one may think that this would be a pitfall, and by the end of the film Mr. Lincoln would acknowledge the plethora of grey in the world. But no, the "young" of the title refers merely to Lincoln's age, not his youthful ignorance. For Lincoln as seen here is always right, always pleasant, always the life of the party, always winning, and always admirable. He's the most consistent feller this side of... anyone.

Ford makes likeable pictures. This is a film that any one of any age could watch and have his or her interest maintained. It's easy to digest, and if you don't think about it too long you'll probably want seconds. I'm not saying that the film is offensive intellectually, morally, or in any other way, but just acknowledging the film for what it is. You could do far, far worse than Young Mr. Lincoln, but you could do better as well.

Hollow Man (Verhoeven, 2000)

2006-04-18T03:17:00.000-07:00

There is a point early in Hollow Man in which a character playfully chastises the scientists from a balcony (nicknamed "Heaven"), saying that he is God and that they will be eternally punished for steppin' on his turf. This is, of course, the idea behind all mad scientist films, and so this line is a wink to the audience. It is this self-referentiality and self-conscious humor that I love about Verhoeven's cinema. To this jestful warning, Kevin Bacon's character responds "I'm God."

So the story is this: man overrides military (why would the military want invisible people anyway?) to test invisoserum on himself. He touches some tits. Maybe rapes a woman. Loves his power, has to kill people so he can get away with it. Slasher film, but with presumed college graduates rather than dumb teenagers. Basically, this film manages to be enjoyable, moderately kitschy, and not much else.

The moral premise is intriguing, but indulged all too seldom. "It's amazing what you can do when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror any more" says Sebastian (Kevin Bacon). This is, relatively, a revelation. Relative, that is, to the rest of the movie's implausible action set pieces and genre film tropes. And that's about as 'deep' as the movie gets. The title, Hollow Man, refers both to the invisibility schtick and the fact that man (Sebastian) and Man (Mankind) are hollow, whether that be morally, in the face of power, or in striving for glory (according to this film, all of the above). Rarely is this explicated outside of Sebastian, but one instance calls attention to itself: a man is bleeding horribly from a Bacon-induced wound, and a woman goes to get blood to save his life. However, she discerns that Sebastian is in the room with her, and without hesitation flings the blood over the floor. Of course, she must save herself to save her coworker, but it's unlikely she was being pragmatic. Her fight-or-flight reflex is a counterpoint to the Bacon God. The blood is also a neat visual opportunity, so let's go on to that next.

The special effects are great. Even if the film is a bit silly, it can't be argued that the effects are necessitated by the plot and not the other way around... ok, so a little. There are convenient uses of water and the earlier mentioned blood that probably existed as visual ideas before plot points (it would explain their moderately hackneyed nature). Nonetheless, watching the cardiac map of a gorilla being materialized intravenously is a sight to behold.

Despite the hollowness (tee hee) of the proceedings, I still liked the film. One scene in particular, near the end, pushed me to the fence between "Fresh" and "Rotten": that damn elevator set piece. What a profound waste of computer animator talent that was. Of course, people could react that way to the entire movie, so who am I to judge. This is not to mention Mrs. MacGyver's electromagnet machine.

With more genre subversion, this could've been a nice little post modern statement, maybe doing for the mad scientist genre what Unforgiven did for the western (though the western is a bit more critically prestigious than the mad scientist flicks, and perhaps it should be that way; I'm no aficionado). However, it's just fun, occasionally funny, almost always stupid (though infrequently insultingly so), and forgivable (for Verhoeven fanboys, at least).

One line in the film reflects my own dry sense of humor quite well: when asked if he has any last words before being invisofied, Sebastian says "Yeah. If I die, pretend I said something deep and clever." It's too bad that, if Verhoeven died immediately after making this film, no one could say the same for him.

The Hour of the Wolf (Bergman, 1968)

2006-04-17T22:18:00.000-07:00

In the 1960s, Ingmar Bergman did a crazy little thing: he deconstructed the construct of cinema, called attention to its artificiality, shattered every notion of the third wall, and went altogether insane. Which is to say, this was a brilliant decade for a brilliant man. In Persona before Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf), the camera reverses itself, giving us a shot of the crew and Bergman himself. In the Passion of Anna after it, the actors are interviewed as a means of delving more directly into both the psychologies of the characters and the methods and psychologies of the actors themselves. Narrative and the artifice that creates the narrative becomes intertwined. What more common statement, then, is there than the opening credits of Vargtimmen: we hear sounds of construction, saws, hammers, and voices. The familiar can distinguish Bergman himself, the unfamiliar recognize the authoritativeness of the voice and likely get the message. As we watch the names of those who will craft our evening's illusion flash upon the screen, the reality behind the illusion becomes audible.

In the next scene we meet Alma (Liv Ullman), who tells tangentially of her husband's (Max Von Sydow as Johan) downfall. This is passed off as documentary, with Ullman speaking directly to the camera, and therefore to the audience. This again beats the third wall to the ground, and it lies in rubble for the rest of the picture. Bergman's work has always been reflexive to the director himself, and now the film is reflexive to cinema itself. Vargtimmen manages to be utterly self-aware, yet simultaneously captivating and believable. The relationship between film and audience becomes a statement in itself concerning suspension of disbelief: it is only by will that the audience believes in the construct. There is a duality to the viewing that tantalizes the viewer with neat classification (is the film horror, surrealism, tragedy, comedy?), yet keeps all such labels gloriously out of reach.

In a Bergman film, you can count on any artist present as being a surrogate for the director himself. It is with great audacity, then, that Bergman casts himself as such a despicable creature. The first half of the film recalls Fellini's La Dolce Vita at points, in which the island's bourgeoisie seduces Johan with flattery concerning his paintings and a past fling with one Veronica Vogler, who is mentioned in passing though never fully explicated (of course a smart move, but from Bergman it's to be expected). Johan is disgusted by the people who live in the castle on his island (who can easily stand in for all of society, especially those with a desire and capacity to consume art), but also fascinated. This is the constant struggle of an artist, and a duality present in Bergman's cinema (perhaps most memorably in Through A Glass Darkly, in which Karin's father is both horrified by his daughter's illness and powerless against the impulse to watch and record its progression as fodder for his new novel).

A moment of startling clarity is realized when Johan makes an elaborate monologue concerning his status as an artist, saying he calls himself 'artist' only for lack of a better term, that he merely acts upon a compulsion, that he cannot understand why he has been recognized as a special artist among others, and finally that he is humbled by the simple realization of how utterly useless art is in the pragmatic world. He is applauded for the bravery of his speech by the island dwellers, for he had created a mini-masterpiece in front of their eyes. Johan's sincerity is never determined, though one gets the feeling he believed it as he spoke it even if he never meant it in any absolute sense. A second high point occurs when a woman in the castle shows Johan and Alma a painting she bought, one that Johan painted of his former lover Veronica Vogler, and explains to Alma what a significant piece of her husband she owns. The idea of works being a part of an artist, and the body of work as a whole being such a large portion of the person that there is no room for personal relationships is a recurring theme in both the films and the life of Ingmar Bergman.

I've managed to thus far avoid Alma's role in the film for the most part, but in ways she is the protagonist. We watch as she slowly disintegrates, not in the way that Johan will, but because of Johan's disintegration. Her eyes as black pools as she watches a recreation of a scene from The Magic Flute perhaps sum up her entire function in the film. She is losing Johan, and she blames herself. In the final scene, she will beg of the audience again, looking directly into the camera, to know if she loved Johan too much, and so indulged his flights of fancy (if they are indeed fancy), or too little, and this is why he left her. Poor Alma never considers that maybe she isn't to blame.

Johan's utter embarassment at the end of the film is no less tragic, if more karmically sound. It is on his way to meet Veronica Vogler and annihilating embarrassment, though, that the film unhinges or finally focuses, depending on your perspective. The genre elements at this point border on both the grotesque and the absurd-to-the-point-of-hilarity. They are also extraordinarily self-aware, and the doubt this casts on the audience's illusion mirrors Johan's doubt that what he's seeing exists. Everything in the film is transient, and the vampires and other monsters in the film may or may not exist. The only act of vampirism that occurs for certain is the soul-sucking laughter that is produced by this group as they watch a made-up Johan try to reclaim a lost romance. These people say thay love his art, but they are voyeurs who love scandal more. This is moral grotesquery as opposed to the earlier of a visual nature, but it is again coupled with a subtle thread of irony. In a way, we want to laugh along with these people, and hate them for it, and question their existence, and maybe watch their end. We feel the same way about the film.

The film was written, shot, and released during a time when Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman were dating. Ullman was, in fact, pregnant with Bergman's child, but did not live with him at the time. It is easy to see how this could be a direct message to the young and admittedly naive Ullman, who says she did not understand how a film about the impossibility of coexistence with an unstable male artist could apply to her at the time. In retrospect, it was a fair warning from a man who was likely unstable only because he was so painfully aware of his own inadequacies. He made the film to explicate why making the film necessitates the making of the film. If you understand the preceding statement, you understand the works of Ingmar Bergman.