This Sporting Life



Still Walking

Yasujiro Ozu was the master of utilizing the simplicity of familial life in rural Japan with the inner turmoil the close (even if normally separated by geographical distances) relationships between the generations inherently entail. Though set in modern day Japan (the very recent past), Hirokazu Koreeda has largely transported us back to the feel of post WWII Japan through the yearly visit to the elderly parents house to honor their son Junpei, who drowned while saving another boy. In many ways, the times a very similar because Japan’s economic woes have left everyone underemployed and wondering what the future holds for them. The major difference between Ozu & Koreeda is, while Koreeda can match Ozu’s depiction of generational conflict through leisurely paced everyday routine such as preparing meals, he ultimately lacks his warmth and good humor.

It’s hardly fair to compare anyone to the great master, and Koreeda has done a lot more than merely rehash and mimic. What elevates his family drama well above the plethora of mediocrities released by his contemporaries is he makes us believe he isn’t outwardly seeking conflict. In other words, while most directors are building their film around a series of snide remarks, arguments, and even fights, mixing a series of scenes that are either sentimental, showy, or (emotionally if not physically) violent, Koreeda’s characters seem to genuinely try to, or at least wish they could, pass the day in as pleasantly and non confrontational a manner as possible. Of course, they all have their disappointments that have left them bitter and petty, but because the film evolves organically through a series of ordinary “holiday” events we still believe they are there to try to enjoy a good meal and a nice nature stroll, even if only to avoid the truth and the seriousness of their differences and simply survive another 24 hours of remembering the dear departed.

The striking characteristics of Still Walking are it’s delicacy and complexity. It is not particularly confrontational, yet we understand all the problems through a strong emotional undercurrent. There is a great deal of anger, resentment, and mostly disappointment bubbling just beneath the surface, but the children are oblivious to it, and the adults can’t change it so they simply have to tolerate it.

The story is not exactly original, but the characters are complex, multi dimensional, and true to life. At the heart of Still Walking lies the age old problem of the remaining children never being able to live up to the perpetually unfulfilled potential of the lost child. The withdrawn father Kyohei Yokoyama (Yoshio Harada) largely resents his surviving younger son Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) for not following in his footsteps as a doctor, which of course the firstborn Junpei would have done. We get the sense that Ryota could not satisfy Kyohei if he became Prime Minister, so the fact that the 40-year-old is failing to find work restoring paintings is hardly in his favor. The Ryota character is particularly interesting not because he seems to have lived his life with the weight of these expectations upon his shoulders, but because he cannot free himself from them despite never having any personal interest in fulfilling them and generally keeping his distance from those who weigh him down.

Acceptance is one of the key themes, though particularly expressed through the story of Ryoto’s new wife Yukari (Yui Natsukawa). Her and her son Atsushi (Shoehi Tanaka) are that much more outsiders because Yukari’s first husband died, so now the family is to put the hopes for their future in a grandson who isn’t a blood relative.

I truly appreciate the unhurried nature and long lost sense of the simplicity Koreeda restores to the what is and what could have been family drama. While it’s true Still Walking lacks the mysterious and haunting qualities of his previous work and is not as unique or original as Maboroshi or Nobody Knows, it’s not so much a departure as one might think. I mean, in the end, they are sort of companion pieces dealing with the effects of a key relationship with Maboroshi and Nobody Knows both dealing with the absense, while in Still Walking he’s forcing the characters to survive their rare presence. The fact that he’s not only been able to tell his story in a different manner, but to do something that at least warrants comparison to Ozu is actually quite an accomplishment.

Phantom Carriage

“Lord, please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped” – New Year’s Prayer

Though most memorable for a series of startling double exposure effects including the ghostly silhouette of Death’s rickety carriage driving through the streets and gliding over the sea, the clock face looming in the night sky as if it were an ominous moon, and the main character’s soul rising from his corpse but not before his spirit pauses on his knees as if to beg for redemption, the startling aspect of The Phantom Carriage is the acting. Most people are familiar with Victor Sjostrom’s wonderful performance in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, but while he was a revelation for many, he was within the acting style that had been seen in the 1950’s.

I was floored by how far ahead of their time the performances in The Phantom Carriage were. Normally, dramatic performances in silent movies are tolerated by more modern audiences because the visual style is so interesting and effective. While The Phantom Carriage would be good enough in that regard to achieve cult status even with the usual hammy gesticulations, the fact that it’s never marred by the usual excessive gesturing elevates it to the level of classic.

The acting style is very restrained with a lot less mugging than current Hollywood, much less that of the 1920’s. Rather than trying to mime everything, Sjostrom, who sets the tone playing the lead, simply has the performers be as they are. In essence, he has cinematographer Julius Jaenzon film a talkie (though obviously such a thing didn’t exist at that time), refusing to make any concessions to our inability to hear the characters dialogue (though of course putting the most important lines in intertitles). Despite the underplaying, everything is, more or less, as easily understandable as the traditional over the top silent acting, though far more naturalistic due to the lack of histrionics.

The acting style isn’t merely a positive by virtue of not being a negative, it allows The Phantom Carriage to work on multiple levels. Though billed as a horror film, this early supernatural tale is perhaps not the sort of movie modern audiences would associate with horror, as it doesn’t rely on violence or cheap shocks. The Phantom Carriage could be categorized as a dark fantasy or even a social drama, though I’ve never been that interested in genre because anything really good will transcend such limitations. What’s more important to note is Sjostrom does such a wonderful job of balancing the dramatic elements with the fantastic ones, allowing the movie to be alternately, if not simultaneously, serious and eerie rather than boxing it into having to try too hard to consistently succeed at one or the other.

The legend that the last person to die on New Year's Eve must drive the chariot of death for the next year provides a nice backdrop for a Dickensonian investigation of sin, betrayal, guilt, death, forgiveness, redemption, and atonement. Though more somber and downbeat than Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, both Dickens’ famous tale and the Selma Lagerlof novel Sjostrom adapts focus on the one-night, holiday inspired redemption of a heinous individual. The Phantom Carriage certainly utilizes a more complex narrative structure than your ordinary Dickens rendering, as rather than simply alternating between present and past or future, the retelling of the main character’s life is achieved through a less linear narrative of flashbacks within flashbacks.

The Phanton Carriage is an unnerving atmospheric film to be certain, but despite a scene where David breaks the door his wife locked down with an axe, an obvious inspiration to the “Here’s Johnny” scene in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Sjostrom’s horror is more of the Cyclops and Scrooge variety. The dread of being forced to confront your own mortality, much less relive all your sins and misdeeds is palpable. Add in the terror of being trapped for a year collecting the souls of the newly deceased for Death as the scary commuppance, and you have your basic, be good, or else!

The David Hale character is one of my favorites from early cinema because he is so shockingly vile and wretched, yet we are never really asked to hate or even feel sorry for him. David was a good upstanding individual and family man before his friend Georges (Tore Svennberg) converted him to the bottle, resulting in him winding up in the clink, and, far worse, converting his brother into such a reckless drunk he winds up murdering a man. Though a conventional narrative would blame all societies ill’s on the bottle, Sjostrom, while showing all the harm drinking can cause, is subtly far more sophisticated than that. Rather than the traditional cause and effect, he asserts a never ceasing action/reaction relationship where societies’ ills lead people to the bottle, and, in turn, the bottle leads people to more ills, so in the end, they are both consequences of each other.

The shock of the revelation about his brother’s grim future leads to the key hokey plot contrivance where David vows to turn over a new leaf upon being released from prison only to have his wife (Hilda Borgstrom) slink away like a thief in the night just before he’s set to return from the clink (a theme recalled from Sjostrom’s 1917 A Man There Was). Even David says he has no problem with the physical act of his wife leaving him - she’s justified based on his actions - he’d just prefer she had the guts to tell him they were through instead of breaking his heart on what could have been his first happy day in quite a while.

Forsaking almost all hope of an acceptable existence, David succumbs to a wretched life of humiliation, degradation, violence, disease, and despair. It’s suicide for those who won’t let themselves off the hook with an instantaneous death. Only the memory of David’s wife and kids keeps him going, but sometimes it’s hard to tell if he lives for the chance to regain her or torture her as she’s tormented him. His wife’s reaction to David’s misdeeds leaves David a block of ice, consumed by feelings of hatred and revenge which are so unquenchable he’s “happy” to pass his tuberculosis on to anyone, even his children.

Even though David spends the rest of his days lashing out in the most petty and vindictive ways, he isn’t a character one can simply hate. He’s sinister, but he’s not so much a villain as simply pathetic. From the first, Sister Edit (Astrid Holm) believes David is good and goes way out of her way to help him, only to be rewarded for her enthusiastic kindness with heartless cruelty. She fixes his tattered coat while he’s sleeping the booze off, only to have him call her in and, instead of thanking her, rip off every new button and tear off every patch right before her eyes! Though this scene is classic, it becomes puzzling when David continues to show Edit that sort of kindness, yet she claims to be in love with him.

Though technically an excellent film, this is one of the best examples in early cinema of the bag of tricks really bringing forth the theme of the film. The chariot Death’s driver rides is a translucent superimposition, which allows it to traverse both land and sea (those who drown won’t be spared!), but more importantly, the iris effect elucidates the fact that the world of the living and the world of the dead are interconnected. Conventional effects would suggest that they are two separate worlds, but here the double exposure makes it impossible to see them as anything but overlapping. We don’t pass from one world to the next, but rather we are split into our tangible and intangible parts, so the body may be seen by the living while the soul may be seen by the dead. Sjostrom’s take is that things need not be this way, but rather unity is attainable through purgation.

Ingmar Bergman was such a fan of The Phantom Carriage he claimed to view it at least once per year. It inspired some of his best work and most famous work, from playing Chess with Death in The Seventh Seal to the casting of Sjostrom as alienated old man forced to confront his meaningless of his existence as he’s about to pass to the next world in his tribute to The Phantom Carriage, Wild Strawberries.

Sleepy Time Gal

The best films tend to be the hardest to pin down. Much of what makes them so good is they want to say something but know simple all encompassing truths don’t exist and even if they did, preaching rarely converts and certainly squashes individuality and nuance. As they say in the film, "We are very, very different; we value different things." Christopher Munch’s movie understands that people are filled with contradiction and hypocrisy, and simply can't be fully explained because all their traits and desires don’t add up to form a consistent person, but rather one who balances a like against a dislike, or simply allows one to trump the other. The main character, for instance, is big on leftist protests but might date one of the fascist cops that uses force to break them up because he’s only the evil enforcer of the status quo when he’s working.

The main thing I take from The Sleepy Time Gal is that while your accomplishments are most important, they will be measured by others and neither you nor anyone else will truly know the result. Furthermore, if you are concerned with your legacy you’ll probably tend to be haunted by what you failed to do rather than be proud of all you succeeded in accomplishing. That is largely the case with Jacqueline Bisset's character Frances, who was a DJ when that was something more than the person who gives the weather and cancellations in between plugging the sponsors. She made a profound effect on everyone who crossed her path and many who found her voice, but it's an unfathomable influence that certainly didn't make her rich if you measure wealth monetarily.

Frances’ life is about to reach a premature end due to cancer, with her one major regret being that she was counseled into putting her born out of wedlock daughter Rebecca (Martha Plimpton) up for adoption. Munch depicts the longing of the mother and the daughter for each other in parallel segments, with each searching for the other in some form, but never actually meeting. Munch having the guts to leave the reunion unfulfilled adds greatly to the emotional weight of the film, keeping it from being the usual get what you seek bit, and instead taking it to a far deeper and more contemplative realm. Though it sounds like it would be a downer of a film (which is fine by me), Munch is a poet of the cinema and ultimately quality poetry makes you feel alive.

Munch does such an excellent job with his characterization that we feel we fully know not only the mother and daughter, but even characters that have two minute roles (and that's not because they are types or cliches). Part of this credit goes to the performers, who also include Nick Stahl, Seymour Cassel, and Amy Madigan, all in top form.

I believe that The Sleepy Time Gal being a speculative account on Munch's own mother says a lot. The film shows the influence parents have on their children, but mostly in ways that are so far from obvious you only see them when reflecting later on, and even then they may be debatable. Even in the case of her sons, the mother can't really comprehend what she's given them. The obvious similarity is the kids who stayed with Frances are penniless but content, while Rebecca is unfulfilled by taking the money. However, it’s much deeper than that because the similarity of the sons to the mother arguably makes them more perplexing to her. They have her intellect and love for the arts, but she doesn't understand how they apply it or really what they are doing any more than they probably understand her choices. What makes the storytelling an impressive feat on Munch’s part is he’s able to show what the mother was able to give to her two sons that she kept despite the role of the one who is off in London being a brief phone conversation where he’s never even shown.

What's notable in the mother/son relationship is not how they applied her love of culture, but rather that they made it their own. Munch’s own mother provided something that Munch was able to use, which after some degrees of separation resulted in this haunting and moving film that, even if it lost money because no one was willing to show it and thus will never turn up on any list that measures the so called worth of movies, a certain number of people will somehow keep something positive due to it's presence.

In a sense, the Frances character represents the personal film Munch did make and the Rebecca character represents the commercial one he could have made. While the Rebecca’s of the world do their best to profit off making the entire world into the exact same generic homogenized cultureless bore, despite their best efforts they can't rob us of our past experiences. Munch uses Frances’ near death reflections not so much to tell a story, but rather to kindle yearnings for the meaningful and touching aspects that have been lost, and urge the younger generations to fight to keep personal art from being a thing of the past. That said, he also finds improvement in the present, the most obvious point being that the same troublesome mother/daughter separation probably wouldn’t happen today since we’ve by and large gotten past the point of caring about the legitimacy of the child.

Sleepy Time Gal is one of those films that carves a niche in your gut. When I first saw it three years ago I wasn't even sure I liked it, but a year later, without having seen it again, I was sure it was good and it needed to be revisited. Now I think it's a masterpiece, probably for a lot of the reasons I initially wasn't sure if I liked it.

My Father & I

Jean-Luc (Charles Berling) gets a notice that his father, who he hasn't seen since he abandoned the family before his kids were old enough for Elementary School, is dead. Soon after Maurice (Michel Bouquet) shows up claiming to be said papa. Maurice would be the bad guy in almost any other film because his neglect marked his family forever, the few hours he spent with his younger son Patrick include the day he deserted him at a supermarket. He actually has the guts to tell Jean-Luc, "I am not required to love you." But this is a film that examines the world with a detached eye, challenging even the most accepted notions in an effort to get the audience to reexamine their views. Another reason the film works so well is it doesn't hinge on whether the letter was a mistake, Maurice is an imposter, or Jean-Luc is imagining it at all. The point is Jean-Luc was affected by the absence of his father, and his death or return provides the opportunity for a transformation, a chance to break free.

The film examines the difference in the two generations, showing the negative direction the world has gone in. Though father and son are both ostensibly doctors, Maurice is from the generation that thought their purpose was to save humanity. His character is one of the most eager and self sacrificing in the lot, and thus he tended to wind up where he's needed the most, in Africa trying to help people who won't exactly be subsidizing his mansion and sports cars. Jean-Luc is from the younger generation of certified con men, out to make a buck no matter the toll on humanity. He preys on frailty, vanity, and lack of self confidence with "anti-aging" processes that turn people into inflexible freaks, who wind up needing more and more surgeries to correct the leaks, imbalances, and misalignments the supposed “improvements” create. Unfortunately, director Anne Fontaine’s seeming anti plastic message cannot be seen as anything but hypocritical in light of her subsequent film I have no plans of enduring, Nathalie..., staring Emmanuelle the Duck.

Maurice has lived through a lot of squalor, but his quests make his life unpredictable and adventurous. Meanwhile, Jean-Luc has what's described as an idyllic life with his opulent mansion, pool, expensive car, and trophy wife, but typically it only brings boredom and dissatisfaction. Everything in his life is so calculated, achieved only through his careful construction and enormous willpower that there's no surprise, no spontaneity, no adventure, nothing beyond the predictable, routine, and mundane.

Jean-Luc's dominance leaves him with no peers. His younger brother Patrick (Stephane Guillon) is a failed comedian who now works as his chauffeur. His lovely wife Isa is played by Natacha Regnier, one of the best examples against plastic surgery I can think of, who has graduated from playing lively working class characters such as Marie in Erick Zonca’s wonderful Dreamlife of Angels to a remarkably inanimate wealthy one. Much of Isa’s dullness is due to the pills he pushes on her, which zombify her and give her hot flashes years before her time. Her raison d'ete as far as Jean-Luc is concerned is hosting his fancy parties, otherwise she’s just sort of there. They only have sex once in a while when he decides it's time, which is not nearly as often as he decides it's time with other women, primarily his only coworker we see Myriem (Amira Casar), who apparently strips on command.

Maurice possesses all the characteristics Jean-Luc does not, all that he'd like to have but is to "rational" to risk anything for. He's a playful globetrotter who is willing to go through hard times in order to maintain his freedom. He may not have money or be loved, but he has confidence in himself, knows that somewhere sometime he'll land on his feet. It's no surprise that Jean-Luc’s circle quickly prefers him to Jean-Luc. He spends time with Isa, who puts on the bourgeois façade but is suffering for the obvious reasons and also because she believes she can't have children. Maurice listens to her, tries to help her with her health problems, tells her how impressive she looks unmasked. He’s is by no means heroic; he is simply alive. ***1/2

Tomorrow

A simple Mississippi farmer who has recently left home to oversee a saw mill for the winter excepts a lonely season of the typical perseverance and toil, but stumbles across a 3 month pregnant runaway who probably turns out to be the only love of his life. Tomorrow is one of the few romance movies that thrives on a mundane atmosphere and snail pace, the spare, sparse, and understated nature of the work rendering every simple action far more significant and substantial than it normally would be. This isn’t the typical love equals sex fantasy, but rather an attempt to show that true devotion is being glad to sign yourself up for a life of sacrifice and servitude, and not reconsidering while you are going through with it.

Jackson Fentry (Robert Duvall) seems semi-retarded at first, partially because Billy Bob Thornton adopted Robert Duvall’s single syllable monotone for in Sling Blade, but just because Jackson is a quiet and inexpressive man that doesn’t mean he isn’t perceptive and understanding. Jackson possesses no aural eloquence, but his actions speak much louder than words, and we soon realize he offers Sarah Eubanks (Olga Bellin) care, kindness, generosity, and attentiveness, in other words all she needs and has been without.

The lame point of the lawyer narrator that he never imagined Jackson would have such a capacity to love is upper class condescension. The fact that there’s no one and nothing in Jackson’s life beyond the daily toil should logically expand his capacity to love rather than wither it away because he’s really had nothing to live for. To give him an actual reason to exist beyond pure survival is to open up exciting new worlds to him. His neverending tasks don’t get any easy to complete, but there are suddenly reasons to endure them.

The contrast between Jackson & Sarah’s characters is what makes the story so compelling. Jackson skips all the small talk, speaking occasionally of important matters in a very straightforward to the point manner, for instance asking “Will you be my wife?” out of the blue, though we surmise he’s been contemplating it from the moment he met her. Sarah is a sort of chatty burned out dreamer. She’s not a pie in the sky type, but rather she’s used up from her previous bad relations, so hope and imagination are all that keep her going while she’s laid up in the final months of her pregnancy. She’s also incredibly insecure from being abandoned by her family for her choice of husband, and abandoned by her husband for getting pregnant, so it’s almost as if she yammers on so Fentry won’t have the chance to do the same.

Sarah’s background is a bit sketchy. I think the difference between the two lies in the fact she’s from a less isolated part of the country, if not from the city, which would explain why her speech is far more intelligent and poetic. Not that she’s anywhere near the second coming of Shakespeare, but she’s a whimsical gabber who has clearly been exposed to more than the planting, picking, and peeling that makes up life in Jackson’s neck of the woods.

Based on a William Faulkner’s short story Tomorrow, published in the Saturday Evening Post in November 1940, the understated film goes to great lengths to evoke Faulkner’s unglamorous provincial South. Robert Duvall is dressed in tattered safety pinned clothes, but since he’s good, he doesn’t simply come across as the usual Hollywood pretty boy pretending it’s hick night at the costume ball. Meanwhile, the underlit grainy black and white cinematography evokes the feel of subsisting in the unfinished no electricity wood shack the vast majority of the film takes place in.

Though director Joseph Anthony, in a final artistic footnote to an otherwise undistinguished career, has added some cinematic touches to better convey the simplicity and squalor of the backwoods South, the film is essentially still the chamber play Horton Foote adapted for Duvall to bring to the stage. Foote & Duvall have had an excellent working relationship on stage and screen throughout the decades, including Duvall giving his first cinematic performance as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, but it’s this film rather than the grossly overrated Tender Mercies where the individual work of both seems to really elevate the duo. Duvall has named Tomorrow as his favorite screen role, and though one would think the top role of an actor as respected as Robert Duvall would be one any film fans must see list, Tomorrow is hardly known, much less seen. It’s the sort of austere work that might appeal to the great Carl Theodor Dreyer, striving for honesty and integrity rather than making endless concessions for the masses. Though Tomorrow might not always be spot on, there’s nothing overdone or overblown.

The problem with Tomorrow is only the portion with Jackson & Sarah works. If the movie began when he met her and ended with the funeral, it would be far more successful as everything else seems tacked on rather than explored. Told in a long flashback, a typical Faulkner framing device, we don’t learn enough from the opening to know what the trial is all about or really grasp the significance of the narrator. While the ending makes a statement about the simpleton’s unyielding ability to love, it never really touches upon the real question of how the little angel transformed into the big devil, though I suppose we are to surmise it’s from being deprived of the one who loved him. Granted, my gripe is with about maybe 10 minutes out of 103, but considering these brief moments make up the opening and closing, their muddled nature or unrealized potential, depending upon how you see them, have a far more lasting effect than the usual couple of random scenes that don’t exactly work.

Empties

"For a little love, I would go to the edge of the world bareheaded and barefooted" - Josef Tkaloun quoting Jaroslav Vrchlicky

The final chapter in the Sverak’s trilogy about maturation in the midst of unwanted societal changes, following The Elementary School and Kolya, has aging father/star/writer Zdenak Sverak acting as youthful as ever in his pursuit to regain not only his smile, but that of everyone around him. Ever adjusting to the dehumanizing changes capitalism has brought to the Czech Republic, the older characters display the usual mix of longing (they miss the public library, which was replaced by one of the patented useless western superficiality businesses) and regret (over being dated and less revelant).

Josef Tkaloun (Zdenak) begins as a miserable 65-year-old elementary school teacher who, unlike his wife and former colleague Eliska (Daniela Kolarova), has refused to be put out to pasture (seemingly only to carry one with one of the other teachers). Josef doesn’t simply long for good times and conduct the cliched elderly life of living for, and vicariously through, his child and grandchild, he refuses to surrender his imagination (in all it’s sexually obsessed glory), and that gives him the guts to take the chances and make the changes necessary to still have a good life despite being past his physical prime.

Josef wants the same things as everyone else: love, fulfillment, and understanding. His one advantage is he actually realizes he isn’t in the right spot, so he keeps experimenting with new jobs and pastimes until he, and everyone around him, are happy (or at least where he wants them to be). Quickly determining his old body isn’t cut out for speedy message delivery via bicycle, but also that he maintains enough mental agility, as well as cleverness, imagination, charm, and manipulative powers to maneuver the pieces in his life, Josef treats his new job in the bottle return department as not merely the occasion for some of the human interaction technology is replacing, but as an opportunity for human betterment. Rather than being the usual mind numbing dead end job (the title comes from his task of stacking the empty bottles, though the coming of the bottle recycling machine soon renders him unnecessary, but metaphorically means the old and used up can easily be refilled and renewed), in between fantasies over women he knew and meets, Josef finds his real calling as a goodhearted but meddlesome supermarket cupid who tries to fulfill the lives of his family, friends, and acquaintances.

I normally despise this sort of film, but Empties isn’t drowning in Splenda or ripe with the usual overbearing cuteness. It also isn’t one of those malicious comedies, there’s a sort of tragedy to every character that isn’t forgotten, and thus when we laugh at the comic situations they get themselves into, we are essentially laughing at their humanity, at that which we find familiar to us all.

Jan Sverak doesn’t force anything on us in this largely small-scale gentle comedy. He frames the scenes effectively (doing a wonderful job of presenting woman and the Czech countryside as fantastically beautiful), but outside of the (slightly out of place) climactic balloon ride where Josef & Eliska finally do something together, most of his effort lies in eliciting natural lively performances from the characters, who are very human, and more than a bit selfish but never overly likeable or dislikable.

The acting is top notch with Zdenak giving a highly potent performance as the petulant yet gentle benevolent old man. Kolarova is also commendable for keeping her dissatisfaction and disapproval for her husbands inattentive, wandering, juvenile, and non religious ways just beneath the surface.

Redbelt

The accepted strong suit of David Mamet’s work is obviously his dialogue. The backbone of so many great successes on stage, his prose is what had people clamoring to see his talent put to use on the big screen. However, as great as his writing is, I’d suggest the greatest strength of his directorial efforts is his ability to instill the air of mystery and befuddlement that makes well worn genre tales seem fresh and unpredictable.

Mamet doesn’t explain his characters or his plot, the mystery rendering additional intrigue which is sustained by his masterful ability to make each reveal add questions, put at least a layer back in the mystery rather than simply bringing us closer to the core. The primary reason Mamet’s films don’t seem formulaic is, even though you basically know the destination, there’s enough possibilities and duplicities to make each step in the journey surprising.

One certainly can’t go wrong with Things Change, Homicide, Oleanna, or The Spanish Prisoner, but Redbelt is my favorite Mamet since his brilliant 1987 debut House of Games. Though in essence a simply hero myth action film, it’s also, among other things, a classic Mamet con artist movie where no one and nothing can be guaranteed to be what they seem. Part of the brilliance of Redbelt, which follows in the tradition of his movies that feel much different than they are, is key aspects such as the con are a means to the end rather than the whole story.

Mamet’s work breeds and feeds a certain paranoia that all the characters might be secretly setting up the mark. It’s certainly stoked by the noirish tinges, but Mamet’s choice to mix magicians with his con artists yields a different tone. Generally, we’d consider the grifters to be devious individuals (if they weren’t the heroes), but it can be as much about getting what you want as monetary gain; it’s more a game where proving your superiority is the ultimate, and, of course, the prize can be a nice reward.

Redbelt is the first Brazilian jiu-jitsu based MMA film, but at it’s heart lies the classic lonely but noble samurai who does what he believes is right regardless of his own needs or best interest. He’s not in it to gain any sort of tangible prize, but rather to maintain his integrity. Mike Terry (Chiwitel Ejiofor) is a very consistent character, a simple and straightforward man who does what he believes is logical and just. However, in the 21st century, such a code of conduct puts the honorable martial artist at odds with the rest of humanity, a group of shaded and potentially shady characters who generally allow money to dictate their life.

Terry is an old time hero, which is refreshing in 2008 in part because Mamet isn’t cynical about him. Even though the art is celebrated, MMA is the chosen spectacle, controlled by one of Mamet’s favorite objects of derision, the producer who chooses money at the price of virtuosity and honor. This spiritual and soulful character is a genuine individual. Chiwetel Ejiofor does an excellent job of portraying him through restraint; his stillness and quiet solitude allow his humanity to show through. He won’t get any bogus awards because the performance lies solely in what he doesn’t do, but this is one of the best acting turns of 2008.

As in such films as House of Games and Homicide, Mamet’s hero is driven by the need to uphold his integrity. Terry has found purity in the controlled environment of his jiu-jitsu academy, but it’s difficult to extend that to the vast and unpredictable real world. His wife Sondra (Alice Braga, niece of the legendary Sonia) is certainly no help in this regard. She comes from a family of successful businessmen, and runs a profitable business herself in between funneling her money into Mike’s business to try to keep it afloat. It’s obvious she’ll never understand Mike, but his quest is about understanding himself, realizing purity can’t be sought out but rather must be unearthed from deep in your soul.

I generally dislike modern fighting movies as they are nothing but post-production chicanery. The fight choreography and stunt team has been replaced by cutting enough detached and meaningless tight shots together at warp speed to create an incoherent mess where even a bogus martial artist such as Keanu Reeves may seem an excellent one. I also tend to dislike the sports scenes in movies because they look like a bored child’s idea of how to make a sport they hate interesting. Rather than resembling the real game, it’s a concoction of illegal, impossible, at best once in a lifetime plays with football having more lariats and back body drops than pro wrestling. I’m happy to report the fighting in Redbelt is fairly credible. A high school wrestler who has trained in boxing, kung fu, and is currently a BJJ purple belt under Pan-Am champ Renato Magno, Mamet has not only brought his own knowledge of the arts, but also recruited members of the two legendary BJJ families – the Gracies and the Machados – to help, with the Gracies training Ejiofor and the Machados choreographing the fights.

Though Olympic wrestling alternate Randy Couture announces and 1987 NCAA national wrestling champion Rico Chiapparelli choreographs his fight with John Machado, there’s little evidence of the wrestling side of MMA on display, instead opting for rarer but far more exciting judo throws to get the fight to the canvas. The technique of all the fights is rock solid, but it’s more a demonstration of the flashy maneuvers you could use on an untrained opponent than the sort of moves you’d have a lot of success trying on a fellow blackbelt. With this in mind, the bar fight is by far the most credible, while the John Machado vs. Chiapparelli tournament bout is condensed into the sort of rapid fire barrage of throws and submissions that only Karo Parisyan’s career highlight film could compete with. Still, everything looks great and I’d rate these as the best fight scenes of the year, with a nice mixture of well choreographed strikes and essentially real throws and submissions that blow away the usual hocus pocus. Maintaining the realist bend, Mamet once again eschews the usual brand of cinematic cheesiness where a dissolve miraculously makes someone disappear and instead employs a real life magician who simply does the magic act he’d do at a live show for the camera.

The basic problem with Redbelt is it seems to exist in a time warp. There’s only one MMA league promoting shows under a no guaranteed money tournament format. It’s essentially the early UFC, taking the Bob Meyorwitz style freak show to a new level of gimmickry. The events contrive to rehash the tired great master is forced to fight plot, but if Terry was so respected he’s deemed worthy of the redbelt, - the holy grail of all honors, a 10th degree blackbelt awarded to the one super grand master - his reputation would be making him hundreds of thousands of dollars simply training others. To show you how hard it is to earn the redbelt, it’s still Helio Gracie, who along with his brother Carlos modified the Japanese art into what’s now known as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and Helio was born in 1913!

Even before there was money in martial arts fights, big names with bigger bank accounts would gravitate to the masters. For instance, Bruce Lee trained Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Chuck Norris (after he’d already won the World Middleweight Karate Championship), Roman Polanski, & James Garner. Even if Terry was the worst businessman in history, the idea he’d have an empty gym and be looking to train whatever disturbed trigger happy chick that happened to shoot a hole through his window is ludicrous. Terry wouldn’t need to fight because he’d be turning away pro fighters with good credentials.

If Mike did have the desire to prove himself by challenging the other top fighters like the Gracie’s did (before there were sanctioned fights, after they tended to hide, make excuses about refs time limits and decisions, and name an asking price that was more ridiculous than a Scott Boras fever dream) rather than believing competition is weakening because it’s not a fight, it’s unimaginable that he couldn’t at least get a six figure deal that didn’t hinge on him actually winning, similar to what the winner and sometimes even runner up of UFC’s The Ultimate Fighter gets. A better comparison is to the legendary Rickson Gracie, who won a couple of remedial Vale Tudo Japan tournaments in the mid 1990’s, but essentially got 7 figure range paydays in 1997 and 1998 against Nobuhiko Takada and in 2000 against Masakatsu Funaki on reputation and mystique.

Once we get into the arena, we are treated to more of Mamet’s 1993 disconnect through the gimmick of one fighter contesting an MMA match with a handicap. It’s true there are a few handicapped fighters currently in MMA – Matt Hamill is deaf, Tra Telligman has 1 bicep, and Kevin Burns has broken his hand so many times he eye gouges more than Moe Howard because he can no longer throw a closed fist. I suppose the inspiration could be Redbelt’s fight choreographer Jean Jacques Machado, the most famous member of the clan, who has won countless top level BJJ and Abu Dhabi submission wrestling championships despite being born with only a thumb and finger on his left hand. That being said, Redbelt is more deeply immersed in the sort of myth that tells us Jean-Claude Van Damme can beat Tong Po even if he’s temporarily blinded.

In the original no weight class jiu jitsu is better than kickboxing and kung fu is better than boxing concept of MMA, the boxer might still lose to a one-armed man, but with constant cross training ruling the sport in the 2000s, even the worst fighters are more or less passable in a handful of disciplines. Thus, the stricter gimmicks of fighting blindfolded or with both arms bound would give that fighter no chance of winning, and a one-armed man would basically need an egregious error or one lucky shut. Granted, a good portion of Mamet’s point here is the gimmick is a way of fixing the fight without asking someone to take a dive. I thought the pitiful opposition ridiculously pushed one-dimensional newbies such as Kimbo Slice and Brian Stann got was essentially the equivalent without the gimmick to lessen their “big victories”, but obviously I’m not always right.

There’s plenty of loose cannon blackbelts, but in Redbelt I feel Mamet straying from the typical martial arts movie plot where the top protege has all the skill but doesn’t get over the top until he gains the discipline clashes with Mike’s character. The crux of Terry’s teachings seems to be “you control yourself, you control him”, but he gives a blackbelt to a hothead cop (Max Martini) who can’t control his emotions during the blackbelt test to the point he’s ready to take his friend and training partner out. In the end, what’s here is quite good, but Mamet definitely contrives a lot to move the story in the directions he chooses. I feel he could have made an ever better movie if I didn’t have to write several things off to being just a movie, but it’s a huge step up, or should I say back, after the rather feeble kidnapping caper known as Spartan.

The Strangers

American horror in the 2000’s shows that drawing “inspiration” from the classics doesn’t equate to actually maintaining any of their positive qualities. Virtually every 1970’s horror movie has been both ripped off and remade this decade, but in the end all that’s occurred is the old staples have been replaced by their obnoxious artificial replicants, which beyond raking in dough for more of the unoriginal and uninspired was, of course, the only point to begin with. Bryan Bertino’s debut feature The Strangers is far from a perfect horror film, but it at least succeeds at retaining many of the qualities that made earlier frightfests good, including accomplishing the basic premise of the genre - being scary - rather than simply adding poor effects, buckets of blood, and the almighty modern technology like most of its counterparts.

Relying on eerie mood and insidious atmosphere, Bertino builds the entire film around the anticipation of violence, replaces the actual depiction of carnage with the threat of such sadistic actions. The only real plot point, Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) turning down James Hoyt’s (Scott Speedman) marriage proposal outside their friends wedding reception establishes the downbeat, hopelessly somber mood that only grows bleaker as the night progresses.

The lack of a plot, really anything beyond the premise of masked tormentors terrorizing a young couple in a secluded house, actually makes Bertino’s patient mix of suspense and dread far creepier. At heart, The Strangers is hardly more original than the usual horror film that draws inspiration from Last House on the Left, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Scream, and the like, yet the reason it sells much fresher is everything seems more random and unpredictable. Instead of being so obviously dictated by the typical tic-tac-toe for slow 3rd graders plot, everything appears to quickly materialize out of the basic cat and mouse game between the couple and the intruders.

The movie reminds me of a cat “playing with” a chipmunk; the cat’s goal isn’t to kill the rodent, at least not in any hurry, but rather to engage in a sort of twisted recreation that’s obviously only fun for the cat. The cat knows it can dictate all the terms as long as it can prevent the chipmunk from escaping. One error Bertino makes is giving James a big powerful shotgun, as though it’s 2 on 3, it’s a deadly weapon against 3 knives, two of which are wielded by unimposing women. In any case, what’s most interesting about The Strangers is they go a step further than the cat, striking the fear of God into their prey to the point they don’t need to injure them because they can instead terrify them into hurting themselves. We spend the entire film await an attack, increasingly wondering whether the strangers will disfigure Liv Tyler more than the surgeon who predictably destroyed her once beautiful lips.

Containing minimal and not particularly definitive dialogue and taking place in a couple hundred square foot area in and around the Hoyt’s family cabin, the film’s technique is by far the most enduring aspect. Peter Sova’s camerawork yields a claustrophobic and voyeuristic feel. His use of handheld camera is particularly effective in providing a purposeful amateurishness that calls just enough attention to itself to be disconcerting, creating a nice balance between the distraction of Dogma ’95 and the safety of Hollywood’s overly calculated precision. Despite the modern overreliance on editing, the slow slightly off-kilter pans, wide angle POV shots of nothing but open space and trees, morbid midshots with eye glance tilts, and acute movements are affecting due to the tension and mystery.

Though the feel is excellent, The Strangers flags in the second half due to the usual questionable logic. One of the problems with horror movies is the victims wind up falling into one of two categories: they are either craftier and more resourceful than military survival trainers or such blithering idiots it’s amazing they can figure out how to wipe their arse. In The Strangers, we get the later – like I said we are stuck rooting for the sort of lame-os who are on the defensive despite weilding the deadly weapon - so while the first half is extremely tense, once the strangers style is established the heroes spend a lot of time tripping over their own feet, or in other words falling prey to the usual genre cliches.

I like that The Strangers are pure nihilists, evil to the point of completely disregarding morality, consequences, and their victims emotional pleas, but their seeming ability to appear and disappear like ghosts is a lame tension killer. Even worse is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre style teaser that alerts you to the movie being inspired by a real life violent crime resulting in blood everywhere, as it makes it obvious that the strangers will eventually become more than mere pranksters. The hide, investigate, flee, and do the wrong thing subgenre is rather limited, but overall The Stranger is successful at what it tries to accomplish.

Frozen River

Courtney Hunt’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner is the sort of modest little film that’s seems to overachieve, yet is not nearly as good as it could have been. The strength of the film is the career performance of Melissa Leo, certainly one of the couple best actress performances of 2008. In a film that never penetrates the surface of its various hot button issues, Leo somehow manages to bare her soul without actually doing anything particular. Leo’s just abandoned Ray Eddy quietly weeps alone, but focuses on her character’s pride and fierce dignity, underplaying her fear and desperation in the presence of others not only to deny it to them, but also herself to provide some sort of unrealistic hope that might give her a reason to keep plowing forward.

Ray’s gambling addict husband is unseen, but he casts a specter over every frame due to her fierce struggle to keep the family afloat and their older son T.J’s (Charlie McDermott) rebellious drive to work in the father’s place directly being linked to his absence, neglect, and irresponsibility. Ray’s dream is to get the family into a double-wide trailer home, but with her husband making off with their meager savings just before Christmas, she’s once again unable to make the payment necessary for them to leave the mobile home with her, not to mention ready to the flatscreen TV her husband whimsically bought on an installment plan repossessed. Forced to subsist on an extremely nutritional Married with Children diet of Tang and popcorn, the film is not about a very humble version of the American Dream - that fantasy slipped away long ago - but rather the dilemma faced by those who work but still lack the resources to provide sustenance for their families. Outside of the world of Hollywood movies where even the high schoolers who don’t work drive shiny new sports cars, even people with desire, courage, guile, and a stubborn refusal to surrender are not always able to get by.

Lila (Misty Upham), an even poorer and more outcast Mohawk girl who steals Ray’s car after she pursues her husband onto the local gambling grounds, is very much Ray’s younger counterpart. Also without husband (he died) and any viable means of supporting her child (who the elders decided was better off without her) in part due to being nearly blind (she can’t tell a $50 from a $20 but can see tracks on the ice in the dark), she has turned to taking advantage of the fact Mohawk territory is on both sides of the NY/Canada border, smuggling immigrants across. It’s too painfully clear that while this may work in the short term, for a number of reasons - including the river potentially not being frozen enough - it’s a very desperate and dangerous course of action.

One of the main points Frozen River makes is that economic crisis can unite anyone, but unfortunately the movie depicts this solidarity in a typically cliched manner, with the women at each other’s throats at the beginning due to the obvious differences (mostly native/white resentment), but bonding over the course of time until they adapt each into their support system because they simply can’t get by being islands. I suppose the sort of person that shoots their husband in the foot for blowing the grocery money on legal gambling isn’t likely to win a lot of popularity contests, but for the convenience of the plot it seems as though Ray and her two boys have about one (also unseen) friend between them. In any case, the one difference between the social realism of Frozen River and your typical buddy film is they don’t form a friendship in any traditional sense. There is no basis of similar tastes or enjoyment of one another’s company, in fact they barely utter a word that isn’t related to completing the task at hand.

Shot in a white-gray pallet utilizing the vast, icy, dead of winter landscapes as the backdrop for the unsentimental tale of hoping in the absence of hope, Reed Morano’s cinematography is quite impressive. That being said, one of the major problems with Frozen River is it lacks any real regional flavor or character development. Whereas a film like Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, also dealing with a poor no hoper and depicting a culture we don’t normally see truly felt unique and original through accentuating those aspects in favor of the plot, Courtney Hunt doesn’t get any real mileage out of the relationship between the Caucasian and Native American smugglers because she doesn’t allow them to develop as real people occupying a rarely filmed barren region. Hunt instead relies upon the shopworn plot of fighting then working together, getting easy money, enduring a few ridiculously predictable scares, and ultimately getting caught during the one last score they need in order to be able to get out. We don’t really know much about the characters beyond they are poor and the locale beyond it’s miserably cold, so where Barnett’s film seemed intensely personal, Hunt’s seems narrowly focused to the point of being impersonal.

The decision to keep inserting time limits has a negative effect. Though it increases the importance and intensity of the next run, the film winds up dealing solely in tension, eliminating anything that would give the characters any real character. Implied hostility and unsentimental minimalism are positives, but we don’t need everything in the film to be functionary. The result of that mistake is a shallow thriller keeps popping up and threatening to replace the intended meaningful drama, undermining the subtlety of the performances (Upham and McDermott also acquit themselves quite admirably) and cinematography through the blatant obviousness of the plot devices.

Boogie

Intense, understated drama taking place over the course of a spring vacation day at a Black Seaside resort when a chance reunion with two childhood friends brings about the midlife crisis of Bogdan “Boogie” Ciocazanu. Bogdan (Dragos Bucur) is a 1992 high school graduate who still looks 25, but working his tail off at his furniture manufacturing business to provide for his 3-year-old son and their forthcoming child leaves him feeling much older.

Bogdan’s wire Smaranda (Anamaria Marinca) has made great strikes turning him into a responsible and productive adult, even getting him to give up smoking, and for the most part drinking, without simply forcing him to conform to her will. She is the pragmatic member of the family, doing everything practical and necessary, if only because someone has to and she’s had little success getting Bogdan to help her out.

The strength of Boogie is that even though she’s not the focus, Smaranda is a character of depth rather than the typical horror to flee from or rebel against. It’s hard to disagree with much that Smaranda does or says, but on the other hand her perspective is no less unfair to Bogdan than his is to her. We understand Smaranda doesn’t recognize the work Bogdan does to provide for the family and Bogdan’s need for a break, some relaxation, but also that Smaranda needs a chance to do something other than mind the child.

Smaranda is finally getting to do something other than care for their son, in theory, but their vacation quickly devolves into the usual perpetual babysitting since Boogie ditches her to hang out with lordache (Adrian Vancica) & Penescu (Mimi Branescu). Smaranda is cordial to these two while she’s forced to be around them, but the story would be more interesting it wasn’t so easy to agree that they are undesirable losers whose influence threatens to immediately devolve Bogdan.

Though the dialogue is believable hanging out with the boys material, the weakness of Boogie is lordache & Penescu are rather one-dimensional rascals, the typical soulless juveniles. The film moves along as a mix of low key nostalgia and calm resentment for the actions and limitations of your other half without stooping to the usual overblown tirades.

Most Romanian exports deal with the country’s social issues and freedoms, but Boogie is a universal story of midlife crisis. Marital roles play a big part, but it’s more a single character study with Smaranda and lordache/Penescu representing the two poles that pull at Bogdan.

Each scene has a strong undercurrent, desire and duty boiling just beneath the surface. Bogdan’s decisions of whether to join the boys at all, and then participate in the old events of smoking, drinking, and taking a whore all have great significance for Bogdan, but aren’t played up in the usual angel vs. devil manner.

Director Radu Muntean aims for balance rather than to set up conflicts, trying to believably depict the tug between what’s enjoyable, what’s ideal, what you really have the time and energy to pull off. In the end, the movie isn’t naive enough to set the responsibility, security, and relative good fortune of Bogdan’s current life vs. the idle humble freedom of lordache & Penescu. The characters are who they are, and can’t suddenly just swap. They can search for some sort of compromise, but ultimately Boogie is more about moving forward by accepting who you are.

Mutual Appreciation

Andrew Bujalski maintains Funny Ha Ha’s themes of directionless post-grads in a pre-adult limbo waiting for something to happen but fearing commitment and responsibility. Shifting from his Boston hometown to an artistic and preppy quarter hub in New York City and going for the even more retro look of 16mm black and white, Bujalski moves even further from anything remotely resembling a plot or character arc.

What story this anti-drama contains involves a love triangle between upstart musician Alan (Justin Rice) who moves to NY after his band breaks up, reuniting with a “close” old friend Lawrence (Andrew Bujalski) and awkwardly considering a relationship with Lawrence’s girlfriend Ellie (Rachel Clift) while resisting the advances of radio DJ Sara (Seung-Min Lee), whose brother Dennis (Kevin Micka) becomes his drummer. All of this is rather meaningless beyond the grand scheme of things, as Bujalski’s point is these people don’t know how to succeed because they can’t interact on anything even reminiscent to the emotional level. They are bound by the mundane when they are sober, but even with drugs they are too emotionally inarticulate to connect. The movie is all about wanting to communicate but having no clue how to do so, with the babbling mumblecore dialogue being an expression of their inner confusion.

Bujalski refuses to elevate the scenes to a level beyond what they are, a series of fairly common occurrences in the lives of people who are solitary due to a disconnection. Avoiding the usual Oscar mongering outbursts, Bujalski instead conveys the characters shyness in subtly pitiful and humorous ways where confusion breads tentativeness, and vice versa. Mutual Appreciation is perhaps best enjoyed by those who find beauty in the mundane, as it resides completely in the slice of socially angst ridden mode. The pleasures are subtle and minor, for instance Cinematographer Matthias Grunsky casually utilizing the shabby interiors to stage awkward little ironies such as a bed as the only place for a man and a woman who aren’t having sex to sit.

Music plays an important role in the story because it presents an alternative means of expression, but even though it’s toned down to rhythms so simplistic it’s hard to find a drummer who is willing to resist the temptation to instead play something remotely challenging and dynamic, it fails to bring others closer to your soul. That may be a good thing for people so adept in the coded speech of willful evasion, but Alan finds he must essentially be a solo artist because he can’t relate with others well enough to make a band work.

There will be no resolution and the characters will not particularly change, which probably makes Mutual Appreciation slightly more honest than even Funny Ha Ha. These twentysomethings will remain the well book educated but socially inept slacker children of parents who have sheltered them and kept them afloat until the pieces manage to fall into place or they simply outgrow the role in their 30’s or 40’s. Bujalski’s isn’t going to pat us on the back with the promise of moving on to something bigger and better, his value lies in incorporating his keen but understated perceptions about human relations interpersonal relations into the most ordinary scenes of interaction.

I felt Mutual Appreciation was a few steps in reverse from Bujalski’s masterful debut Funny Ha Ha, predominantly because while I recognize and relate to a lot of it, none of it is positive. This is not to say I want films that provide a false sense of security and hope, but Funny Ha Ha was built around a great character Marnie, and I miss her stubborn willfulness. Marnie & Alan’s worldview isn’t so different, but Marnie was far more interesting because she was determined to do and learn something, even if it was wrong and ultimately might not make her “successful”, so you felt as though she might grow, the world might get a little clearer for her even thought it would always be a jumped incoherent mess.

Shuttered Room

The Shuttered Room was a horror ahead of it’s time, and though it doesn’t really work as a whole, it’s nonetheless one of creepiest movies out there. Bob Clark’s Black Christmas from 1974 & John Carpenter’s Halloween from 1978 are generally credited with starting the killer’s POV shot, but we get a mysterious and chilling attack right off the bat in David Greene’s unheralded 1967 chiller! Marked by a series of fluid POV shots, alternately ripe with lust and menace, this early effort is still one of the most psychologically effecting mixes of voyeurism and violence.

The filmmaking technique is way ahead of the material, and despite Ken Hodges expert cinematography, the actual highlight may be Basil Kirchin’s equally groundbreaking eclectic and experimental jazz score that dominates the quiet film. Kirchin’s life work has been creating a new musical language, a sort of sound within sound that essentially breaks down and recombines every sort of instrument and sound effect until their blend creates a very personal and emotional sound never heard before. Unfortunately, his Worlds Within Worlds releases are so unique the record companies that promise him complete artistic freedom soon turn into Weinstein like geniuses; they know what works for “their” released version better than Kirchin, who winds up starting over again since the record company owns his master recordings. In Worlds Within Worlds, Kirchin combines the instruments of jazz, rock, and a classical orchestra with everything from animal shrieks to insect chirps to autistic children, altering the speed to suit the feelings he’s portraying. Kirchin’s Shuttered Room score obviously isn’t on that level, but the moody soprano sax solo is priceless, and his harpsichord work isn’t far behind, which says a lot considering he’s first and foremost a drummer! The emotional intensity of the film, which is extremely personal despite the characters being ciphers, is almost solely derived from Kirchin’s soundscape.

Though filmed in Cornwall, England, this H.P. Lovecraft adaptation is typically set in New England. Shuttered Room is a backwoods gothic that takes place on an obscure and desolate island still lacking electricity despite having power lines on the main roads and many of their workers helping funnel the juice to the big city. 21-year-old native Susannah (Carol Lynley) returns with her new, much older magazine editor husband Mike Kelton (Gig Young), purportedly to turn the childhood home she just inherited, a creepy mill that essentially hasn’t been touched since Susannah left 17-years-ago, into their summer house. However, vulnerable innocent Susannah has been haunted by her past since being sent away at age 4, and Mike hopes by confronting it they’ll find the key to unlock her childhood mysteries that result in frequent panic attacks

With a pretty young blonde lusted after by all the crude and rowdy local men who are tired of the less appealing neighborhood tart and thus resentful of the new babe’s out of place intellectual husband, the film reeks of Straw Dogs right from the outset except it predates the Sam Peckinpah masterpiece by four years. Sordid unruly roughneck Ethan (Oliver Reed more or less reprising his role in Joseph Losey’s These Are The Damned) leads the band of grinning brainless yokels, practically trying to rape his cousin Susannah from the moment he lays eyes on her. One of the greatest examples of Ken Hodges peering camera has lecher Ethan peering at an undressing Susannah through her dollhouse window. Reed’s unsettling depraved glare is certainly the most effective aspect of his manic and maniacal scenery chewing performance.

There are several presences watching both the Kelton’s and the locals. They include strange and secretive Aunt Agatha (Flora Robson). Often perched on her watchtower and sporting a pet eagle, she’s overseer and controller of the mysterious evil locked in the eponymous room.

Mike is a wise city boy who thumbs his nose at the local hicks superstitions and bludgeons them into place with his karate chops. It’s one thing for the educated metropolitans to ignore the warnings of every single dumb superstitious bumpkin - including a welder who was lucky to only lose an eye - that you will die if you spend even one night in the accursed mill. However, rational human beings don’t make a habit of remaining in a place where they are menaced from the first second. The oblivious Kelton’s not only don’t seem to mind, they apparently have amnesia, as they are even friendly and helpful to their tormentors the next time they see them. For instance, Mike gives a rowdy uncouth thug a lift in his swanky ’67 T-Bird only to be led to a roadblock ambush.

The Shuttered Room was actually written by Lovecraft’s publisher August Derleth based on his late friend’s concept and notes. Though Lovecraft is notoriously difficult to render on film (especially since he contends that entities which cannot be perceived by the five senses becomes impossible to quantify and accurately describe), Shuttered Room at least deals with his classic themes of hereditary disorder and deteriorating mental health. Unfortunately, it does so in a pretty retarded manner.

In a sense, all the menace in Shuttered Room is provided by aimless youth lashing out because that’s the only way they know to act. Unfortunately, the story lacks a single legitimate character with any semblance of logic, depth, or motivation. It’s almost surreal in this sense, like watching one of those bizarre giallos where the killer seems to draw all sorts of attractive women into his path as if through some unspoken gravitational force. The dialogue is pretty worthless, and to make things worse since they refused to relocate the film to Norfolk, England where they shot it, a bunch of Brits (the entire cast other than Young & Lynley) are forced to make failed attempts at faking a New England accent.

Though Lovecraft’s stories are at least good in their intended medium, I’m only concerned that a horror film holds my interest. A good horror film is generally one that’s consistently intriguing despite probably being a shallow genre exercise, which still disqualifies 98% of the genre. Though The Shuttered Room’s story is thin and the big revelation is about what you figured all along, the filmmaking is consistently exciting. It’s almost amazing how much mileage they get out of acoustic string plucking and ominous spying POV shots considering the entire film is shot in broad daylight with no lighting or post production effects. Greene’s creepy foreboding work makes expert use of the eerie dilapidated locale, nosy camera angles, and expressive soundtrack, resulting in an effecting work where every frame spills over with tension.

Haunted Palace

Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace may not be the most Poe-esque of his Edgar Allen Poe series, but it’s certainly one of his most poetic. Corman intended to make something of a break from his Poe films, bringing Charles Beaumont’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s posthumous novella “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” to the screen. AIP’s shortsighted insistence on pidgeonholing Corman into Poe adaptations, playing up the fact the film takes its title from a Poe poem rather than recognizing the first big screen work of the deceased then cult horror writer whose theme of guilt built around the black magic of the Necromicon was in full display merely led to a contested authorship that tainted the reputation of an otherwise fine film. Though obviously far more toward Lovecraft, in the end the gothic macabre is a successful amalgamation of the two author’s that actually fits well into the Poe cycle both visually and thematically.

What sets The Haunted Palace apart is Corman eschews most of the shocks and exploitive tricks he’s associated with, largely keeping the film on a subdued psychological level. By far the most restrained film of the Poe cycle, Vincent Price gives probably his best performance in a dual role as the sinister, devious, and spiteful satanist Joseph Curwen and his good-hearted innocent great-great grandson Charles Dexter Ward, who inherits the palace over a century later.

Warlock Curwen is burned at the steak in the first reel for experimenting on the local women, but not before he curses the village and vows to return to enact a fiery revenge. The bulk of the film takes place in the late 1800’s, with the superstitious and fearful townsfolk giving Ward and his lovely wife Ann (Debra Paget) the chilliest welcome possible, still blaming Curwen for every child that’s born a halfwit or a mutant.

Bedazzled by the portrait of his near doppleganger ancestor who slowly claims his will, the unsettling mood piece is largely a tale of Charles’ possession. Price never hams it up in this riveting performance that holds our attention for 85 minutes despite few of the usual highspots. Unfortunately, though they are willing to keep it serious and somber, Corman, Beaumont, and a young but no less anti-intellectual Francis Ford Coppola refuse to challenge the audience in even the slightest way. They pretty well rape away the depth of Lovecraft & Poe’s collective work, content to present Price’s character as the usual cliched cautionary tale. Rather than allowing Price to craft some middle ground and surprise us, he simply plays two roles that are as disparate as possible. He’s either crude, demeaning, and vengeful or gentle, kind, and compassionate ala Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. To further remove any gray area, Corman allows the makeup morons to load Price with their mucky grease to clearly delineate when he’s the sinister Curwen. This crucial fault prevents Price’s struggle from truly materializing, and as a result the film is serious but not exactly adult. Not that I worry about such things, but since we get far more of Hyde, the only truly likeable characters wind up being stand by your man wife Ann and good even keeled Dr. Willet (Frank Maxwell), who literally try to save Price from himself.

While Price is usually a good one, the main reason to watch Corman’s Poe films is for the visuals. Not only does the Haunted Palace excel, it’s as consistently stunning as anything Corman had done up to that point, and he only bettered it once, in 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death due to Nicolas Roeg’s stellar cinematography. The Haunted Palace is undistilled atmosphere with Corman standby Floyd Crosby illuminating and shading everything for mood. Each lengthy corridor and hidden passageway is a revelation, featuring lush colors shrouded in fog, covered by cobwebs and every sort of decay. Forget about the budget, while there’s a lame effect here and there, this is a truly beautiful film where even the painted backgrounds look superb.

This Sporting Life

Lindsay Anderson’s feature debut takes an uncompromising look at human misery, depicting the unattainability of happiness due to gaps in communication and social class. It’s a relentlessly bleak piece of social realism, hopeless but never wallowing in its negativity.

Richard Harris gives his breakthrough and probably best performance as an angry young lower class man hell bent on doing two things, breaking though the barriers to make something of himself and capturing the heart of the widow (Rachel Roberts) he rents from. There are really only two jobs in his small industrial northern England town – miner and footballer – and, surprise surprise, the same rich men control both. Harris’s Frank Machin character successfully makes the transition from faceless driller to face in the sporting world due to heart, willpower, and determination rather than skill. Unfortunately, the aggressive hard-nose full steam ahead style that brings rugby stardom yields the opposite results in his love life.

Mrs. Margaret Hammond’s (Roberts) husband worked in the mines, and apparently hated his life so much he killed himself. Hammond only rents to Machin because she isn’t being taken care of by the mining company. Her heart went to the grave with her husband, rendering her unable to give any affection to another man as she’s trapped in a perpetual state of grieving. As unfortunate as the situation is, the finality of his action leaves her no choice but to move on, yet Hammond is arguably more devoted to her husband than ever, clinging to reminders that can only bring profound misery.

It’s amazing how alone Machin & Hammond can be together. She refuses to accept him, and he refuses to give up trying or settle on one of the many alternatives that come out of the woodwork with his football stardom. Perhaps a sensitive man could ease open the door to Hammond’s heart, but Machin’s usual tactics are closer to prying. In his defense, he can be very tender and tries everything he can think of and then some. Some things should be in his favor, for instance he’s great with her children. They have fun together as he can be a big kid, but he also has strong and consistent paternal instincts. He tries to raise Hammond up with him, buying her an assortment of items ranging from practical to fanciful. The more he gives her, the more she starts perceiving herself as a kept woman. When she sees herself as his whore, she’s too ashamed to face the small town.

Mrs. Hammond plays the part a few times, but sex is no help to Machin, who needs her heart rather than her body. She denies him even a sliver of her love. Machin continues rebelling against the ways of the world, failing to see the only person it’s effecting is Hammond. To the upper class his actions only prove their stereotype - he’s unrefined - correct, while to Hammond it causes further embarrassment because she’s sometimes with him and always associated with him. She eventually started to melt a little bit, but suddenly she associates him with various forms of shame, costing Machin the slight chance he may have had with her. Ultimately, Machin’s money makes him classless. He’s too coarse, brutish, and rough-hewn to be accepted by the upper class and has too many luxuries to remain amongst the working class people he grew up with.

Denys N. Coop’s cinematography provides the film with a drab black and white look that represents the empty lives that lack both opportunity and happiness. The rugby scenes are the exception, lively and vibrant as the sport represents Machin’s only release. The football field is the one place a man like Machin can be in charge, the tough guy rolling over the opposition. But when your goals are to conquer the kingdom and seize the (un)fair lady, it’s not enough. The constant rejection from the one woman who’s unimpressed by his stardom and athletic prowess combined with a class system that seemingly allows for as much upward mobility as India’s caste system fuels the rage burning inside Machin even when he’s on top of the rugby world. And in any brutal sport, it’s only so long before even the best are on the receiving end. For that matter, the film is told in flashback, the novocaine induced recollections of Machin as he recalls the events that led up to him getting his teeth knocked out.

Richard Harris was a very talented rugby player in real life. If he hadn’t contracted career-ending tuberculosis, he may never have pursued the theater. Novelist David Story played as well, and Anderson includes all his precise detail, the rich and the banal. Despite the abnormally long length for a “kitchen sink” film, it feels much shorter than say Tony Richardson’s revered The Loneliness of the Long Distant Runner. Runner is half an hour longer, but is too didactic and simply lacks the dimension of This Sporting Life. Both films are about the star athlete’s issues with the authority figure and class system, but there’s a big picture in Anderson’s film that’s lacking in Richardson’s. In This Sporting Life the injustice is more the background to the love (or lack thereof) story, with several factors and issues ultimately shaping the man.

Anderson had his doubts about the score by avant-garde musician Roberto Gerhard, but it’s one of the main elements that separates This Sporting Life from the kitchen sink films of Richardson and Karel Reisz (who had the opportunity to direct, but opted to give Anderson the chance and act as producer due to similarities with his previous work). Gerhard’s eerie sound effect laden score is more along the lines of the brilliant work Toru Takemitsu was doing at the same time in the social realist works of Masaki Kobayashi.

Harris’ performance seems inspired by Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront and an inspiration for Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. Harris’ character has more sides to him than De Niro’s does, but both ultimately fails outside the sport for the same reasons they succeed in it. Machin’s aggression is particularly ill matched for the woman he chooses, who is fragile and totally bound up. Despite the overall bleakness, Anderson shows the goodness in Machin a lot more than Martin Scorsese does in Jake La Motta. Machin is a brash impatient hothead who lashes out in rage, but we imagine he’d be capable of an exceptional amount of love, at least within his own terms. Whatever good it would do, it’s hard to say, since you couldn’t trust him to handle any situation that didn’t go his way in a civilized manner. What’s so captivating about the film is we see how they could really help each other. Hammond needs to let her husband’s memory go, and Machin needs her to love him. Anderson and Story leave enough gray area to get you thinking. We hope, we imagine, and then another violent outburst...

Be With Me

There are many films that are too wordy, and then there’s Be With Me, which literally seems two wordy. If Ki-duk Kim were a humanist rather than a masochist, he might make a film like Be With Men, which instead is more toward the work of Hsiao-hsien Hou and Ming-liang Tsai. The reason the film is virtually silent is it deals with modern day communication problems. The characters are looking to escape the loneliness of the urban world, a situation director Eric Khoo surprisingly avoids cynicism towards. He claims to be a pessimist in real life, but here he’s crafted a film about hope.

The centerpiece of this mix of fiction and documentary is Theresa Chan, whose autobiography was the primary inspiration for the film. Meningitis robbed her hearing and vision just into her teens, but she’s a determined optimist who chooses to succeed. She still learned things like foreign languages, dancing, ice skating, horseback riding, and wound up heading a school for similarly “disabled”.

The three fictional stories, one somewhat involving Chan, deal with loneliness brought on by separation from the one you love at the three stages of adult life. Young Internet lovers Sam (Samantha Tan) & Jackie (Ezann Lee) both turn out to be women. One day their relationship is great and nothing can keep them from happiness everlasting, the next Jackie flees back to the straight world like a thief in the night. Security guard Fatty Koh (Seet Keng Yew) is a shy, clumsy, and overweight middle-aged man who admires from afar a younger successful career woman who works in the building. He knows he’s not smart, attractive, or well off enough for Ann (Lynn Poh), so it’s hard for him to even figure out how to try to sell her on him. Even he can’t believe in the possibility of her reciprocating, but when he realizes he has nothing to lose he musters up the courage to try in the form of a letter. An old shopkeeper (Chiew Sung Ching) prepares meals for his longtime love, his sick wife, while she’s in the hospital. When she passes away the nearly mute man is left with nothing, but he recovers when his son starts him cooking for Chan.

The first two stories are regularly exploited dope opera material, while the third is thin though touching. What makes the film is the way the stories are told, and the fact Khoo is tender and understanding where the cruel networks only see another freak show for some cheap creeps and chuckles. This is a film of thoughts, feelings, and emotions rather than dialogue, events, and melodramatics. The details are provided through the typewriter, SMS, and e-mail. Theresa writes her book in her head as well as on paper, and since she can’t hear there’s no sound, just a stream of consciousness that’s subtitled. The other characters are silent from the despair of love that respectively isn’t, never was, and no longer can be requited. Khoo’s sensitive cinema puts the characters thoughts and feelings on the screen nonetheless, with a tender and subtle passion that makes you understand and care for the characters a lot more than if Robert Redford contrived a headshrinker to pull their feelings out. The cast of largely non-professional actors deals in movement and expression, saying so much with their body language there’s no need for words.

One thing I liked about the film was how free of contrivance it felt. Usually ensemble pieces with multiple concurrent stories become overloaded with silly connections, intertwining stories that might just as well have nothing to do with each other for no reason beyond the gimmick of it. Be With Me has one ridiculous twist of fate, but generally it has faith in its premise. Chan is the heart of the film, urging the audience not to give up, to find strength to go on because she did and you can’t possibly be worse off than her. If her health problems weren’t enough, she even lost the one love of her life to cancer on the Christmas before they could be married.

One reason Khoo’s minimalism works so well is his settings are vacant. Most directors make the mistake of replicating reality, cluttering urban dramas to show the characters are more ants clogging the road. By eliminating all but the essential, we see the quiet despair of those we should be focusing on. Be with me isn’t just silent, it’s also still. But once again, less is more.

Fists in the Pocket

Marco Bellocchio’s debut feature tears the pillars of Italian society – family and Catholicism – to shreds. It’s the kind of first feature you make if you aren’t overly concerned whether you’ll get a second chance. Ironically, this shocking and mocking work of familial discord and resentment was not only made with money Bellocchio borrowed from guess whom, it was even shot in his mother’s country house.

Condemned by both the Catholic Church and Luis Bunuel, an influence and someone who Bellocchio admires, the film focuses on a grotesque family riddled with handicaps. Torn apart by complacency and lack of mobility, the siblings play dangerous games in an attempt to ease their boredom. Epileptic Alessandro (Lou Castel) represents the youth of the 1960’s, filled with pent up rage over the world their predecessors have created and on the verge of trying to do something about it. Fists in the Pocket is something of a seriously demented precursor to uprisings of 1968.

Due to severe psychological repression, arguably creating a mental imbalance, Ale’s big problem seems to be that mounting frustration causes him to fixate on the negative in himself. He’s handicapped without any prospects for marriage or work, a general flunky who repeatedly fails his driver’s test. His own inadequacy makes him despise the inadequacy in everyone else, leading him to the conclusion he should kill his blind mother (Liliana Gerace) and other epileptic brother. By doing so his suave older brother Augusto (Marino Mase) will be freed from his duties of running the family, and thus able to marry his girlfriend.

Their selfish and manipulative sister Guilia (Paola Pitagora) has her own agenda, sending the girlfriend a Corbeau special accusing her brother of cheating on her figuring breaking them up will preserve their family. Ale wants Guilia to work with him to eliminate the rejects in their family, but he can never please her until she goes insane after he pushes their mother off a cliff, about the worst thing one could do in a country that worships motherhood.

Like Bellocchio’s own family, they lack a father. That absence is repeatedly felt in Bellocchio’s body of work, both positively and negatively, but in this case it’s a major problem because the mother doesn’t provide any moral fiber. The character’s physical illnesses are often manifestations of their negative traits, the mother is literally too blind to see. The film of disturbed psychology and morals is actually a black comedy, but it’s film and acted with deadly seriousness. Ennio Morricone’s satirical funereal score is the only hint of the films true intentions.

Ale brings to light everything the family would like to hide through a memorable insane performance by the very normal and unimposing Colombian Castel. A shy, passive and laid back type who looks so harmless, Castel is brilliant at depicting the surprisingly monstrous inner violence of Ale. His searing stare shows the ever-building intensity and madness that is often close to boiling over. His restlessness is depicted through novelle vague style handheld camera, providing an in your face realism which does give way to equally simple classic composition during calmer moments.

Bellocchio brought Castel (playing a burnt out actor) back in a similar role 17 years later in his underrated The Eyes, The Mouth. That film deals with the aftermath of a family member killing himself (suicide of a brother like Bellocchio’s own) and has Castel romantically linked to the new widow (the lovely Angela Molina) rather than the suggested incest of his relationship with his sister in Fists. Perhaps the major similarity of the films is that both deal with the issue of life being too long, thus the need to forcibly bring it to an end because the failures lead to a pain that is simply too great.

Bellocchio is one of those rare directors where you often can’t say whether you really liked or disliked his film even when it’s over. Perhaps what makes him interesting is the way he can deal with the same themes repeatedly without ever repeating himself because his films so much of the time period they depict and so influenced by the passing of time.

While Fists in the Pocket is a good film memorable for Castel’s seething performance, it’s arguably a negative in the grand scheme of cinematic history because of the course it made a big contribution toward setting Italian art film on. The startling effect of Fists ushered in the end of humanist neorealist films and replaced them with darker cynical works. These may have been more complex and nudged you politically, but they didn’t exactly make you feel much compassion for others, and without that it’s hard to make any political change for the better. It’s certainly not fair to blame the originator for the horror inflicted by the imposters, but on the other hand Martin Scorsese’s ten best utilizations of popular music still don’t make up for the million times everyone had to suffer through that wretched Celine Dion Titanic crap.

“Somebody's gotta be doing something bad somewhere!” – “Big” John Wintergreen

In between a horse riding John Wayne and an arms hoarding President Ronald Reagan, motorcycle cop Robert Blake was the Modern Day Cowboy. Deceptively the fascist answer to Easy Rider, Electra Glide in Blue has Blake as an ex-marine who joins the police force after returning from Vietnam. He’s the straightest of the straight arrows, sporting a crew cut and taking immense pride in his gun, badge, and uniform. He feels he belongs with the police because of his look and his idea of what they stand for, but he soon learns it’s all mythology.

Blake’s partner Zipper (Billy Green Bush) loafs around reading comic books all day then, for a change of pace, spends a few hours harassing whatever hippies happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Blake’s “Big” John Wintergreen is used to Zipper’s laziness and unjust actions, but he figures that’s why Zipper is made for motorcycle cop while he’s destined for bigger and better things. Wintergreen figures detectives will be more akin to judges, thinkers who are in it for the law rather than a paycheck and some kicks.

The wild west of the early 1970’s isn’t exactly inhabited by lawmen with the integrity of Gary Cooper in High Noon, so Wintergreen is antiquated for trying to do the right thing. The film is about the crumbling of the American dream. It’s very much a film of its time, a time when various political factors had aged the country, crushing the American dream. Wintergreen is different largely because he still has his dreams and illusions. He thinks the law is enforced exactly by the book no matter whom the perpetrator and his coworkers will be honest men that actually care. When Wintergreen proves he’s enough of a thinker to see through a rigged suicide, his dreams of a promotion to detective are suddenly within his grasp.

Wintergreen is so lonely he makes himself believe in something. He tags along with Detective Herve Pool (Mitch Ryan) on the investigation, figuring he’s a more experienced and successful like thinker (he also saw through the “suicide” and demanded an autopsy). Herve is hardly the great guy Wintergreen imagines, instead he’s angry, domineering, prejudice, and abrasive. He makes decisions on innocent and guilty by knocking “the truth” out of someone until he gets the answer he’s looking for. Wintergreen is willing to be Herve’s sheep to get the promotion, but his pure heart eventually takes precedent over his laid back and easy going demeanor.

The film wasn’t embraced at the time of its release, but perhaps it’s easier to see its brilliance now that the particular culture battle is over. Wintergreen is actually an outcast with a heart of gold. He’s not a “Go ahead, make my day” kind of cop, in fact he’s as passive as the hippies. Wintergreen finds the courage and integrity to stand up for what is just when he needs to even though he’s scared and frail. Whatever you think of Blake as a person, there’s no arguing he could be a very sincere and human actor. He does things real people do in times of turmoil; he thinks, hesitates, and then takes some action knowing it won’t be well received but doing so anyway because the option of looking on in silence isn’t acceptable. He’s an ideal in a sense, but he’s also the most vulnerable of heroes.

Though Electra Glide is the cop’s side of the hippies vs. fuzz battle, it’s about the horrors of getting old more than anything else. The “suicide” isn’t in the movie, leaving his crazy friend as the only sad and lonely old man (Elisha Cook), but the characters in the 35-50 age group already have weary minds and we imagine only increased despair and loneliness in their future. In the process of trying to attain his dreams, Wintergreen’s idealism turns to cynicism. The film shows that answers come internally, but since dreams are illusions you are probably better off without the answers, it keeps you younger.

Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears producer James William Guercio made his first and unfortunately only film, an atmospheric vignette laden play on famous films and homage to John Ford. Guercio uses too many plays on famous movies. In moderation they would have been strikingly effective reference points, for instance Wintergreen using a picture from Easy Rider for target practice, but at some point it becomes a gimmicky distraction.

The murder mystery plot is fairly thin, but the character study is very effective. What’s interesting is the way Guercio constantly uses asides to paint a picture of the culture that shapes the characters identity, only to reveal their attire and demeanor is another illusion, one of the ones they try to pass off largely to quell the loneliness. Those who still have the dream like Wintergreen do believe hooking up with the right group of people will get them where they want to go, but those whose dreams have been crushed by inabilities and failures spend their life hiding behind facades. Though it doesn’t take long to see who is who, it does take long enough that you’ve made something of a commitment.

Feeling he needed an experienced lens to attain his vision as well as guide him, but working with a $1 million budget, Guercio decided to surrender his salary in order to afford ace cinematographer Conrad Hall. Hall still wasn’t thrilled with Guercio because he made him shoot the Monument Valley exteriors in John Ford fashion, but Hall settled for being allowed free reign on the exteriors. It was a wise decision as Electra Glide is one of Hall’s crowning achievements. The expansive wide-angle exteriors often surpass Ford because Guercio gave Hall all the time and focus that was necessary, sometimes to the detriment of the film. The interiors feature all kinds of wild camera placement, and as a whole it’s like watching Gregg Toland and John Alton at their 1940’s peak, except Hall has figured a way to do it in color without losing too much of the contrast and mist effects.

One effective establishing sequence has closeups of various parts of the police uniform, eventually showing the pieces don't add up to the man. There’s a lot of humor about the diminutive size of “Big” John. At one point we wonder why the camera pans too far across the heads of the motor officers, only to find out Blake is so short the top of his head doesn’t even show up at the bottom of the frame. Another time Hall frames the shot so Blake is unintentionally starring at the breasts of a woman he’s talking up.

The film might not always show maturity in message or direction, and some of the acting is bad, but so many individual scenes make an impression. It may not come together perfectly as a whole, but the whole does have an exceeding power of resonance, which is probably more important.

*Spoilers*

You can survive on your own in some walks of life, but cop isn’t one of them. Wintergreen’s only choice appears to be conformity, but in its own way Electra Glide makes as strong a statement against the notion as anyone possibly can. The film is laced with irony, particularly the ending where Wintergreen dies the first time he goes against his personal code. Death comes from giving up on what he believes in. He managed to believe these things for 40 years despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Perhaps delusion is preferable to disillusion?

A Thousand Clowns

If the subject is cinema’s most misunderstood characters, Murray Burns is likely to quickly come to the mind of anyone who has been lucky enough to see A Thousand Clowns. Murray is a 40-year-old nonconformist who drops out of the working world because it robs him of his dignity, spirit, and ability to have fun. Unfortunately, you can’t be guardian of your nephew unless you’re a slave to the grind. Faced with this dilemma, Murray must reaffirm the purpose of his life. Perhaps this clash between the principle of freedom and the responsibility of providing for your loved ones is an easy question for most people, but anyone who ever had “complete control” of his own life isn’t likely to want to go back to negotiating the usual tradeoffs between individual and establishment.

The entire film is shown from Murray’s point of view, but none of the characters can read him, perhaps because it takes too long but more likely because they try to plug him into their own formula. Our perception of him changes over the two days. At first, like the social worker Sandra Markowitz (Barbara Harris), we see the hilarious, fun loving, highly intelligent man. Later, like her stuffed shirt coworker Albert Amundson (William Daniels), we see him as a selfish child. The film probably leans too much in the direction of conformity, but we do see that getting a job will turn Murray into a combination of the joyless and unfeeling Albert and Murray’s successful brother Arnold (Martin Balsam), a master of accomplishing what needs to be done by kissing ass. Murray knows how to play everyone to get the result that amuses him, but since he can’t tolerate people and doesn’t really want to work, rather than influencing people into his corner his antics burn bridges and dig himself a deeper whole.

Murray’s nephew (Barry Gordon) is really important to him; he’s Murray’s only friend and equal. A middle-aged 12-year-old, the nephew is the more responsible of the two, but he also winds up screwing things up for himself because he’s so used to Murray’s highly individualistic ways he can’t bring himself to give in to these people too much either.

The concerns from Murray are at first entirely selfish, but as time goes on we realize the importance to him of not losing the love and respect of his nephew by going against his principles. When a decision is forced on you, it’s not likely to be one that doesn’t have serious consequences. The tragedy here is there doesn’t seem to be a way to continue the life they want together.

The principles of the 1962-63 Tony award winning Broadway play brought it to the screen. In order to make it look like cinema, Fred Coe utilizes several new wave handheld shots of the Manhattan streets, with Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders seeming to be a particular influence. This works, but the tactic of breaking into interludes of Murray’s activities and dreams that look like music videos grows tiresome and seems amateurish after the fifth time, even if the editing is superb. All in all, you can see that Coe wasn’t really a film director, yet the film still looks better than most and he does succeed in leading the acting in the right direction for the medium.

The acting is great with the lively due of Robards and Gordon doing great jobs of putting over the juvenile and mature aspects of their characters. Balsam is the perfect opposite of Robards doing the straight arrow master of compromise who succumbs to the idea business is supposed to rob you of your self-esteem. Gene Saks is purposely the least funny clown in history, and he knows it. Still, he tries to convince others who refuse to laugh with him that he really is funny based on audience test reactions. If the acting, particularly from Robards and Balsam, weren’t so good it would be obvious how scripted and calculated it all is. Many aspects of the film aren’t particularly realistic, such as a 12-year-old with no legal name, but like most comedies you just have to try to enjoy for what it is. It may not be a masterpiece, but it’s certainly different.

Gabrielle

Wealthy aristocrat Jean (Pascale Greggory) fashions himself an important member of high society due to hosting a weekly party. Everything in his life is in order, and he has all the possessions he desires, his favorite being his wife Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert). When Gabrielle leaves him for another man only to return to Jean for good 3 hours later, it sets off a descent into hell of Bergmanesque proportions. Jean assumes his trophy wife returned for love, then for something good about him or their life together. This is a tale of disintegration - Jean’s - the marriage simply goes along with that.

Jean always had all the power, but once Gabrielle sees he truly cares for her, even if in his own somewhat twisted way, he’s done for. If she was right about him not caring she could have came and went as she pleased, lived in his house but been free to cavort with whomever she pleased. Since he does care Gabrielle can hurt him in a million ways; his heart, pride, self-esteem, and dignity are there for the crushing.

Huppert is at her perverse best. Joseph Conrad’s short story was told entirely from the male point of view, so it had to be altered to warrant casting an actress of Huppert’s standing. Even in a case like The Cement Garden where Andrew Birkin didn’t tinker with Ian McEwen’s novel all that much, the film experience is significantly different. The mere physical embodiment of all the characters takes some of the focus away from Jack, the be all and end all in the novel since everything is seen through his eyes, filtered through him. I greatly admire both versions even though the way I perceive the same story is totally different. In that case, Charlotte Gainsbourg is so good she steals a lot of the focus, causing the audience to guess at and examine her intentions, which adds a dimension that isn’t in the book (perhaps for the better). Greggory isn’t world famous like Huppert, but he more than holds his own with her, allowing her to blend in with the woodwork like his other objects until it’s time for her to once again bring him down to earth.

Huppert is largely cast against type. Rather than being the enigmatic mystery woman she’s as transparent as can be. Jean gives monologues and soliloquies while Gabrielle just sits there. You feel this pompous, possessive, selfish, chauvinistic fool Jean is an awful husband, yet you can feel sorry for him because he has feelings too, and is less twisted than his wife. Of course, part of what I’m saying is due to the portion of their lives we are seeing. Gabrielle has been scorned for ten years, a decade of being his object may warrant a certain amount of revenge, and that’s what the film is depicting. We side with Jean because we are privy to the night when she gets even, if we saw much more of his objectification, demeaning, and neglect we’d obviously feel differently. Also, it becomes clear that Gabrielle’s plan is to punish him for the rest of his life, to live this lie where they are together but a million miles apart.

Gabrielle is one of the most inert characters in cinematic history. She’s so still and quiet throughout the ordeal that it’s a shock when she actually speaks, but she gets more out of a handful of words than Jean gets out of a million. Since Jean can’t hurt her anymore she simply refuses to react to anything he says. Gabrielle can hurt Jean, and each time she bothers to open her mouth she does so to tighten the vice.

Though Chereau keeps Conrad’s 1912 setting and the costumes and servants that go with it, it’s easy to forget this chamber piece is taking place at any specific time because any relationship will be disastrous if one member refuses the other. Chereau focuses on the timeless aspects of the story rather than the difficulty of a woman breaking away from her husband 100 years ago.

Gabrielle is fragile and weak, but by withholding her heart she appears strong. It often seems like a man can’t win with a woman because, if they aren’t simply indifferent, they either try to help you or try to hurt you. . I’m sure women have an entirely opposite perspective, so maybe we can agree if both people are working for a relationship, something will be there even if it’s not what either hopes for, but once one starts working against it than it’s a losing battle for both. Sometimes I’m not sure there’s any more to compatibility than that.

Chereau tries to keep the film from resembling a play by switching from color to black and white, using freeze frames, intertitles, and filming a chamber piece in CinemaScope. Unfortunately, his effort does at least as much to detract from the film, amounting to little more than distilling the pain. I might rather watch Bergman’s artistic pictures, give me his unjustly neglected surrealist nightmare Hour of the Wolf, but Saraband is superior to Gabrielle. The reason is Bergman employs a no frills style; it is what is it is, an expression of pain. It’s not about being interesting to look it; it’s about not glamorizing something there’s nothing glamorous about. Hell is not supposed to be gorgeous.

The acting totally makes the film. Gabrielle has one servant Yvonne (Claudi Coli) she confides in because she has no one else, though she can’t totally trust her because Jean is, after all, the boss. As far as speaking roles go, it’s predominantly just Greggory and Huppert. Actually, it’s really Greggory. His performance is so impressive because he gets us to feel for him even though we don’t particularly like or admire his character. Greggory also does a great job of portraying the downward spiral, showing the weight on him as each illusion is crushed until there’s not only nothing left of their marriage, there’s nothing left of him. And Huppert, is well, Huppert. There’s no match in the history of cinema for her ability to convey so much without words.

Desert of the Tartars

Perhaps the best manner to approach a film about everything is to deceptively make it be about nothing? Desert of the Tartars’ subject is no less than the purpose of life, depicting the seeming lack thereof through the removal of events and resolutions. What we are left with is a monotonous repetitive cycle that may or may not bring us closer to attaining recognition.

You can put everything you have to into your work, but it may not give you much more chance of getting promoted than getting fired. When a job above you finally opens up you may get it because you are the best person for the job, you come cheaper, or there’s no one else to give it to. When a job closes you may lose yours because you are the worst worker, you cost too much, or there’s no one else they can get rid of. You spend your life seeking validation from others, but for the most part you never truly know why you do or don’t get it, and you probably believe whatever makes it easiest to sleep at night. Ultimately you can control your own effort and try to control your outlook on the results.

The poster boys for futility, the military, are the focus of Desert of the Tartars, though it could be about any daily grind. In fact, though novelist Dino Buzzatti had the misfortune of spending over a year in the service, his inspiration was the constant toil of his current journalist job. In any case, life is wasted waiting for something to happen that will give it some meaning.

Desert of the Tartars is a work against genre if there ever was one. When the subject is a bunch of troops the audience expects them to fight, to use their guns and horses to provide some adventure. Desert denies us the expected battles, which no matter what come off as pro war to the certain percentage of the population that chooses to view them as such. This refusal to deliver “what’s advertised” may make Desert the first truly anti-war film I’ve seen. Previously Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp came the closest due to its message of make music not war. However, Ichikawa’s gem still features the slaughter of many when harpist Mizushima is unable to convince another Japanese troop to take his unit’s lead and surrender to the British rather than be gunned down.

The comparisons to Michelangelo Antonioni are the most obvious due to the focus on alienation and emptiness, the sparse dialogue, and the setting being a primary character. Cinematographer Luciano Tovoli had already filmed two of Antonioni’s films, his rarely seen documentary China and his more well known but until recently also neglected masterpiece The Passenger. That said, an equally good comparison might be Budd Boetticher minus the climactic gunfight. Boetticher crafted his westerns so there was no real action, yet we are made to believe there would be because the characters were always prepared for the inevitable. In Boetticher’s work there’s a certain dread of the action. Hero Randolph Scott always manages to have everyone against him, unless he’s got someone in tow to bog him down, and we figure there’s no way he should be able to make it out alive. Desert of the Tartars is designed to make you almost as impatient as the soldiers. Though we grow to fear it because we see the men gradually slipping, we are inclined to hope for some action because in the long run a little skirmish might save more lives than it takes. Maybe that makes it less anti-war than I’m saying, but I think not because we first and foremost wish they’d do the logical thing and abandon the post.

The soldiers have surrendered everything in their lives to protect their country, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. These aren’t a bunch of poor kids that struck a bargain because it’s the only way they can better themselves through further education. These guys had money, family, and a woman waiting for them. They want there to be some reason to give it up, but they wind up stationed at an outpost on the outskirts of the empire, spending their lives guarding a border that’s really guarded by a huge desert. The feared Tartars are an enemy that perhaps no one has ever seen. Luckily there’s been peace for so long that the only one (now crippled up) man at the fort, Nathanson (legendary Fernando Rey who was almost 60 at the time of filming), has been active long enough to have been in combat. The question is whether there’s any accomplishment in doing something if it’s never recognized. There won’t be any medals unless they fight, but that’s out of their hands. Just as you can’t blame soldiers for obeying orders and fighting in a bad war, you can’t blame them for obeying orders and not fighting in any war. These guys could take satisfaction in knowing they guarded their country for however many years, but it has to be a personal decision.

The film begins with the main character Drogo (Jacques Perrin) making the journey to Fort Bastiano. He’s a young man full of anticipation, certain this is the first step toward inevitable prestige and glory. He’s as perceptive as he is ambitious, so he immediately wants to be reassigned. He sees there’s something wrong with his senior soldiers, they’re filled with hopelessness and riddled by self-doubt. They are not old men if you go by their birth certificate, but they seem 30 years older than they really are.

This is a violent film in a sense, but the violence is all internal, mental. All the men can do is be prepared and on the look out. Day in and day out they drill and watch, wait for something that may never come. Few people really want to go head on with the enemy, but futbol would become the world’s least popular sport if the teams practiced every day but never played a game. These guys get to the point where they just need a result one way or another, they need to know how they match up, if they are good enough or not. But they’ve been forced to wait so long any action would almost certainly be a letdown.

We create a battle in the absence of one. The fight is waiting for the enemy, which is much more difficult because it goes on for all eternity. Monotony and repetition takes its toll. Boredom increases and depression sets in, you lose your will, mind, and/or healthy. You long so badly for something to materialize your mind eventually obliges, but the shame of Hortiz (Max Von Sydow) sounding the alarm for phantom troops not only haunts him, it keeps a perpetual black cloud over the fort. One wonders is someone would have the guts to sound the alarm if the Tartars actually showed up or if they’d be upon the fort by the time the soldiers could agree it wasn’t another mirage.

Time has a way of quelling ambition. You aim for the sky when you are young, but as you age you become willing to settle for less and less until you’ll settle for something, perhaps anything. Valerio Zurlini’s films often deal with politics shaping the destiny of individuals, which is the case early on as the transfers Drogo is promised by various higher ups never materialize. Later he has his chance, but the one thing he cares about is being there when they Tartars finally come. He couldn’t live with himself if he missed it, and by now he’s already given his health as well as his will to live.

The other important character is Major Mattis (Giuliano Gemma), a sadistic fascist. He theoretically clings to regulations because it’s all these isolated men have to go by, in 1907 you can’t exactly ring the Secretary of Defense for a judgement call. But really the regulations provide his symbolic recognition. It’s his Holy Bible. He can prove to himself he did good by knowing he followed The Word to a T. Mattis is something of a comical character; he’s a nightmare but you laugh at his misplaced earnestness. He’s constantly shown to lack even a shred of common sense, judgement being outside the realm of his black and white universe.

The most memorable segment comes when a white horse materializes. The sentries can only do what they always do, watch and wait. Finally that night one of the soldiers sneaks out of the outpost, crosses the Tartar border, and retrieves the horse. He identifies himself at the gate, admitting his “crime”, and asking for reentry, but rather than open the gate the sentry shoots him right between the eyes. Finally a chance to use his training! Everyone is horrified except Mattis, who claims the man was a traitor for leaving the outpost, and they’ll be lucky if the Tartars don’t cite them for a border violation. In the case the cake needed icing, he brags about the perfect shot, noting he trained the sentry as self validation of his own teaching skills.

The cast is an international all-star team that delivers as you’d expect. In addition to the 2 ½ hour running time allowing Zurlini to put over the existential despair and stultifying ennui, it allows him to develop several characters on an emotional level. Once again this is deceptive because the characters start out as types, and come to similar ends. The skill of Zurlini’s filmmaking lies in depicting slight change amidst overwhelming similarity. It’s a highly sensitive work where we piece together a portrait through minute details. His careful shading shows us their individuality, and have an idea what they once were and could have been if they hadn’t succumbed to the lack of approval.

Zurlini was a painting expert and critic, making Tovoli a good cinematographer for him because he uses paintings as his basis as well. Tovoli tries to give every scene additional meaning(s) through the framing and lighting, and cites his use of monochromatic light as the primary source of the films metaphysical feeling. Tovoli is one of the unsung great cinematographers. This is the man who shot Dario Argento’s Suspiria, no less than the most beautiful horror film ever, and unfortunately one that will probably never be topped because it was the final usage of the original 3-strip Technicolor process. His work with Argento (also the brilliant Tenebrae) emphasizes beauty where you wouldn’t expect to find it, and frankly given the grizzly subject matter perhaps shouldn’t. Here Tovoli’s work stays with the subject matter, increasingly limiting the possibilities. Every frame is worthy of viewing, but in following the life of Drogo the film starts out colorful and winds up a muted monotone brown. It starts off expansive as Drogo makes his first step toward greatness and winds up claustrophobic as Drogo remains trapped in Fort Bastiano.

The ancient fortress is really the Bam Citadel in Iraq, which was the world’s largest adobe building until an earthquake decimated it in 2003. Built before 500 B.C., the 180,000 square meter structure boasts walls 1815 meters long. Tovoli films it as a labyrinth that functions as a kind of prison. The soldiers aren’t technically captives, but for different reasons neither them nor us can comprehend how to escape.

Ennio Morricone adds to the anti-genre bend, providing a score that probably has none of the characteristics you would associate with his work. The popularity of his flamboyant Spaghetti Western scores was such that in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s if a film even had a horse you’d expect to hear something that sounded like his work on the Man With No Name trilogy. They’d throw in a harmonica and you’d start thinking it was Morricone even when it wasn’t. Morricone is supposedly more comfortable with spare scores, and working with Zurlini gave him a perfect opportunity to create one. He brings out the melancholy and repetition, limiting the number of instruments used in each song as well as the range. It’s a simplistic score with a steady tempo. Two contrasting instruments are used to build anticipation, and time delayed repeated chords to create fear. The OST that’s included with the No Shame DVD isn’t likely to be anyone’s favorite Morricone as a standalone, but it’s a very effective score that proves he can do different things when asked and is willing to stay in the background even though he’s a star.

One interesting aspect of the film is that the soldiers rank becomes increasingly meaningless as the disparity between the men withers. Time has a way of making everyone equal, unfortunately the equality is loneliness and poor physical and mental health.

To Have and Have Not

In an effort to convince his buddy to test his hand at screenwriting, Howard Hawks bet Ernest Hemingway he could turn his worst novel into a good movie. That should be about as difficult as a decent writer turning Eric Rohmer’s worst film into a good book. It’s true Hemingway doesn’t translate because his style is based on economy of works, spareness, understatement, and directness, all of which are lost on Hollywood screenwriters, who transform this into a bunch of characters talking about the plot. Hawks won the bet, because he didn’t try to be faithful.

Hawks only used the first fifth of the novel, scrapping the framing device of two disconnected characters in favor of focusing on Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart). The Office of Inter-American Affairs objected to screenwriter Jules Furthman maintaining the original setting and background. Morgan ran booze from Cuba to Florida, the negative light such corruption shined on Cuba was not in keeping with FDR’s “Good Neighbor Policy.” William Faulkner took over the screenplay, and while you might not agree that he isn’t 1/10th the writer Hemingway is, certainly they are polar opposites. By the time Faulkner was done we had Casablanca 2. Similarities include the exotic (Martinique) World War II bar setting where a jaded seemingly amoral political neutral winds up helping the good guys against the Nazis while falling in love with a younger woman. The politics are never really explained and the whole thing is not the least bit believable or realistic, but it’s good entertainment thanks to the sharp witty dialogue and erupting sexuality.

Bogart was transforming from tough guy to romantic lead - his rough exterior shelters his tender interior - so aside from being in the midst of his third marriage he couldn’t have picked a better time to fall in love on the set. When people talk about the leads having chemistry, they are talking about Bogie and Bacall.

Lauren Bacall was a 19-year-old model making her screen debut. She wasn’t much of an actress in most senses, but she must have been a very good model because she exuded sexuality, knew how to carry herself, and looked at a man in a way that made him more likely to fall for her. If they had more time they would have worked on her trademark husky voice until it was as generic as everything else in Hollywood. What makes her performance legendary is its authenticity. Her roles with Bogart are by far her most memorable because here she’s falling in love with him, and later they are married and still in love, so you are getting the real deal. To Have and Have Not is not the best movie they did together, but it’s their most unforgettable collaboration not because it’s their first, but because in many respects they were in the same spot as the characters they were portraying.

Bogart is a perfect Hawks actor because he’s the reluctant hero amidst the corrupt.

Morgan is the typical Hawks male lead, operating on his own strict moral code that he talks against, if anything, because the measure of a man lies in his actions. In the end, a Hawks lead will always act responsibly. I always find his male leads contradictory because they are individualists, yet they value their friends (and lovers) above all else.

Walter Brennan is Harry’s sidekick Eddie, a kindly well-intentioned clueless drunk. He’s the kind of character that gives you a lot of laughs in a film, but would drive anyone crazy if they had to put up with him day in and day out. Morgan’s value of friendship forces him into the war. He wants to protect Eddie and gain Slim (Bacall) by giving her the opportunity to leave so she’ll choose not to. Once he knows you he’ll help you if you are a good person (apparently he can see your heart since he trusts Slim even though she’s a petty thief), even if he’ll say he’s just a mercenary.

Hawks was originally set to direct Casablanca, and this film shows he could have done it more or less as well as Michael Curtiz. Both films are collective films anyway. I’d rather see the worst film by a good personal filmmaker, but Casablanca and To Have and Have Not should at least keep you from flipping around to discover there’s nothing good on the other 200 channels.

Three Times

Human behavior - choices, opportunities, and desires - is greatly affected by the time period they live in. It’s largely the determining factor in the success or failure of the three short love stories dealing with longing and memory Hou presents. All are set in Taiwan, but take place distinctly in 1966, 1911, and 2005 respectively. Each story features Qi Shu and Chang Chen as lovers, almost as if they were reincarnated. The stories have two main themes, the plight of females - logical since their freedoms have changed greatly in the last 100 years - and how these freedoms and the various technological changes effect the age old romantic and communicative disconnect.

The lightest and most popular of the stories is the first, set in 1966 when Hou was in his 20’s. It’s the most personal with Hou warmly remembering his skirt chasing days. Chen tries to visit a girl he’s written who works in a pool hall before he goes away with the military. She’s no longer works there, so he gets interested in Qi instead. The initial expressive moments of love when you are fascinated with the possibilities of the other are depicted. Little movements and slight glimpses have profound meaning, while the actual discussion about their game of snooker is all throw away. As there’s little time for anything to come of the attraction, the person being glanced at is always off screen, ever so slightly out of grasp. The romantic tension is very high because they have so little time to decide whether they are willing to risk their hearts.

The second segment is also well suited to Hou’s minimalist strengths. All three reference and add to previous Hou films - The Taiwan trilogy, Flowers of Shanghai, & Millennium Mambo respectively - but 1911 is the most radical and daring advance because Hou chooses to do it as a silent film complete with intertitles and piano score (but still in color???). The restrictive style matches the freedom of the times. In any romance both members must choose it, but here the female courtesan would like to but lacks the power and standing to get the already accounted for political activist to go any farther than employing her. The moody atmosphere with feelings expressed though unstated seems most suited to this story, though it works in all three in different ways. This solemn story reflects a dark restrictive period of Taiwanese history where they were subject to oppressive Japanese control.

Jumping ahead to 2005, females finally have equal freedom. Unfortunately, things don’t work out with any greater regularity, which is that much harder to deal with because now there’s no one else to blame. That leaves Technology, which provides people with the most possibilities to connect, but helps leave everyone too busy or distracted. When people do see each other there’s so much noise, chaos, and of course technology there’s no intimacy; you merely occupy similar space. Celebrity is now king, with Chen playing a photographer who is more interested in singer Qi as subject for his camera. He fetishizes over ways to photograph her, but we sense she could be any star. She abruptly dumps her girlfriend for him, but it’s more that she’s impatient and selfish and he’s new and theoretically different. All the beauty has been drained from this raw and desperate story, with harsh blues and overpowering white lights replacing the sensuous and luminous green and yellow of the first segment and reds of the second. 1966 shows the American influence through pop songs, 1911 the Japanese through formal stoicism, but 2005 really doesn’t show us anything we aren’t numb from seeing or tell us anything we shouldn’t already know. That’s partially by design, but it’s kind of like if I wanted to see this I would just subject myself to the torture of going to a night club.

Great Silence

The other Sergio didn’t direct with the flair or precision of Leone, but Corbucci may well have made the grimmest, least romanticized, and most relentlessly pessimistic film ever. There are many standard aspects to this sleazy and gory spaghetti western, but it’s also one of the more original westerns. Everything stems from Corbucci’s decision to shoot the film in the Italian Alps (supposedly Utah), the key to the films distinct look and feel. Icy settings yield icy characters, and there are only cold hearts here.

Silence is a mute killer of bounty hunters, excellent portrayed by Jean-Louis Trintignant. Trintignant was best known as the romantic lead from Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, but here he’s emotionally silent, a blank purposely unsympathetic character. Trintignant’s performance lies mostly in his eyes, alternately steely eyed when his enemies are around and mournful for his solitary existence where his throat was slit to prevent him from ratting on the bounty hunters who killed his father.

Klaus Kinski plays Loco, head of a group of bounty hunters who have taken over the town, killing whomever the banker and justice tell them to. It’s a lower key performance than usual from the famed madman, smirking and grinning with fiendish intensity. Kinski has a lot more charm than Silence, and he relies on his amoral smarts. To Corbucci any moral code is a handicap, so Loco holds the advantage because he lies to his victims so he can kill them in the manner that’s easiest and safest for him. Loco blows them away when they are helpless and even unarmed, while Silence only kills evil men who draw on him first.

The line between hero and villain is presented classically in that it’s always apparent Silence is supposed to be the “good guy”, yet the line between the two may never be less clearly defined with Corbucci subtly favoring Loco. Ultimately, Silence & Loco kill for money and “justice”. Loco is, of course, worse than Silence because he knows the people the law pays him to kill are mostly innocents, Mormons who have been run out of town and forced to live in the hills as bandits or men with attractive wives who wish to remain monogamous. He’s basically a sadistic money grubbing fascist, but both mutilate those they leave alive. Though Silence is a better person and kills people you could argue the world is better off without, he also kills for vengeance.

One thing I found annoying was how quickly and easily Loco decides to fight Silence after vowing to keep his cool. If Loco kept letting Silence bully him, Silence would really look like a bad guy, exposing his hypocritical they have to draw first brand of “honor”. Instead, Loco takes his gun belt off, but quickly starts a fistfight, making Silence look honorable for taking his licks rather than blowing him away as we know Loco would.

I guess if the film took that direction it really would have had distribution problems, as it’s already probably the least commercial spaghetti western, but I don’t think anyone who has seen the alternate happy ending on the DVD would choose it. Despite the success of Corbucci’s earlier western Django, the “US” setting, some interesting known actors, and the quality of the film, it took nearly 30 years to get a US release. It was probably considered too depressing and nihilistic, though a black heroine (Vonetta McGee) and interracial love scene with a bit of nudity wasn’t exactly helping its cause initially.

Corbucci was willing to break new ground and wasn’t just a Leone clown. One big difference is the cinematography. Silvanno Ippoliti utilizes narrow framing to create an oppressive cramped atmosphere. Though Ennio Morricone is the requisite composer, his work is also lower key. There are no stirring notes here; it’s a spare haunting melancholic work that’s more a collection of sound effects and brief themes.

Certainly Corbucci’s film features no heroes or larger than life archetypes. Everyone has their courageous and cowardly moments, usually depending on who is pointing the gun. This is most true of the honest new sheriff Burnett (Frank Wolff), who values the law but not above his own life.

The Great Silence is a patient film that tries its best to tell a story. The details are often sketchy, and the dubbing is disconcerting as even Kinski sounds like he’s supposed to be a Southerner. It’s not a perfect film and won’t provide you with an uplifting evening. However, if you’ve worn out your copy of The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly or are tired of the American westerns with their unrealistically saintly heroes having a showdown with the incarnation of evil in Monument Valley, The Great Silence will broaden your horizons.

Though blind Selina (Elizabeth Hartman) has no one and nothing, 1960’s America is so racist Gordon (Sidney Poitier) feels he has something to hide from her, his black skin. Racism may be the reason the film was made, but arguably we’ve progressed enough in this area it’s not quite as valuable today. That said, A Patch of Blue’s prominent subject is disability, and in some ways we are even worse today because we’ve lost our sense of community, the idea we should help a person because they are one of us, our neighbor. These days anyone unknown is looked at in a far more suspect light, and when fear is the starting point what you don’t understand, what’s different, will more quickly drive you away.

The film is good in the little details of people’s misunderstanding of the handicapped. People aren’t sympathetic to Selina not being able to do things they take for granted. It’s hard for them to even talk to her because they automatically answer in a manner that assumes vision. There’s a scene where a lady helps Selina cross the street. The lady surely thinks she’s done a good deed, and in fact that’s the help Selina asked for, but Selina is still lost and now the lady is nowhere to be found.

It may be years between finding someone who is truly helpful to you, and when you do it’s hard to hold on to them because you need them a lot more than they need you. It’s also hard to trust them because no matter how much you hate yourself, you are still inclined to believe the person is helping you because they like you and want to be your friend. Another person’s charity will always run out, often when you need them the most, and then they’ve done more damage than good. By being a good person they helped you a lot, but by only seeing you as a charity case they’ve destroyed you mentally and emotionally.

Gordon has his own cross to bear, being a minority he knows what its like to be looked down upon and ignored. He helps Selina get a caterpillar out of her shirt because he’s a nice guy, taking an interest in her because it’s readily apparent no one else has. While she’s different in negative ways, many are from simple neglect and thus could be improved upon, giving Gordon a purpose. He’s willing to give her a chance to be different in a positive way, not judge him by the color of his skin. By not telling her it gives him an out, but sets her up for an even more devastating fall if she is a racist or he decides to use color as his reason for bailing. The point of the film is everyone has problems and differences, but we should judge by what is inside. Selina is the best judge of character because she’s the only one who is forced to do so. Beyond that, to be a friend is to be tolerant because everyone is a pain in the butt at times.

There are 1000 places A Patch of Blue could have gone wrong, and while there’s a blot here and there the film has enough subtlety and restraint to be touching without being a melodramatic tearjerker or a preachy message film. The difficulties of the relationship aren’t ignored, but rather acutely depicted. The underplaying handles them with more grace, sophistication, and maturity than the usual Stanley Kramer brand of stamping the mismatching all over every frame.

The most annoying problem is that Guy Green always gives away whether Selina is about to succeed or fail. Considering he was Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematographer, he ought to have learned more about suspense. Jerry Goldsmith’s score makes the film seem more simplistic than it is. In many cases less is more, but here simple is just simple. The tenderness works, but he overdoes the melancholy with the woodwinds.

A Patch of Blue is an innocent film in some senses, but that shouldn’t be mixed with naivety. It’s true the audience wouldn’t have taken them having sex, MGM even cut their mere kissing out for the South, and when you consider the changes to the screen adaptations that keep Morgan Freeman’s Alex Cross character loverless maybe this hasn’t changed as much as we’d like to think. But in any case it’s rare to find any film about a friendship between a man and a woman, and almost all of the few simply depict the impossibility of it.

Everything involving Gordon is fun for Selina because her life consists of being a slave for her mother Rose-Ann (Shelly Winters) and tending to the needs of her drunken grandfather Ole Pa (Wallace Ford) as well. Things that are drudgery for most humans, for example grocery shopping, are fun for Selina because they are new and different, but mostly because Gordon is nice to her. Kindness has the power to make anything fun. Selina is giddy anytime Gordon shows up at the park or looks for her because he is rescuing her from her own private hell, and showing her that there’s one person in the world who cares about her.

Selina is eager to expand her parameters in every way, and Gordon has the patience and tolerance to overlook things that make him uncomfortable, such as her growing love for him. Gordon does grow fonder of her as time progresses, but wants her to learn and experience things on her own rather than take advantage of being the only one she’s ever felt anything for. And he’s not sure himself, as he doesn’t know what she can become and how needy she’ll be. Even if she was the greatest woman in history, the fact that everyone will be against the relationship might not make it worth it. The small minded are always looking to rain on your parade, and no one in either family is even remotely sympathetic to their spending any time together.

Shelly Winters won a bogus award for her typical selfish abrasive overbearing role. She’s great at it, but it’s no stretch for her. This white trash racist whore who preys on her daughter, keeping her a trapped and helpless slave by denying her all forms of freedom and education is her most unsympathetic role. Wallace Ford doesn’t give as strong a performance, but his character is more believable than Winter’s Cinderella’s stepmother. He isn’t wholly unsympathetic, but he’s so disgusted by his own failures he’s become a useless drunk.

Poitier is an excellent actor who values dignity above all else. Unfortunately, his characters tend to be supermen of a different sort. We don’t want them to fail because they are in the right, and since it’s a movie they can just be so sure of themselves and we know they’ll always succeed. As always, he delivers within the limitations of the script, but he’s a bit too noble. Though he shows caution and restraint, there’s no way Gordon could be so sure of how to help her; he just couldn’t understand her needs so clearly. Gordon does have some weakness though. He’s afraid of the consequences of even being Selina’s friend, and so used to everyone drawing the wrong conclusions that he gives in to the pressure to some extent and denounces her to his disapproving brother.

Elizabeth Hartman gives the standout performance. Audrey Hepburn was praised for her work in Wait Until Dark, but blindness is just a plot device, and the gimmick performance is merely a prop to propel the mediocrity. Not only is it totally believable Hartman is blind, her work goes well beyond blank stares. Her body language is excellent, and she depicts the ups and downs of being a lonely person dependent on someone else so well. The film doesn’t make the mistake of being about her transformation like almost every other. She gains skills, but remains very fragile and vulnerable to the end. Her capabilities increase, but she’s hardly an overnight master and she’s more emotionally vulnerable because she can no longer imagine life without Gordon. Perhaps the best part of her performance is the way she conveys her need to get over two things, isolation and fear, which rather than going hand in hand actually are in fierce opposition.

Gordon realizes showing Selina a new world isn’t enough unless he has some involvement in it, at least until she no longer needs him. Now that he’s made Selina feel she’s worth something, he doesn’t want to take that away by bailing. Selina has her faults, but she gives Gordon all the kindness she has. She is the only person he’s ever met who isn’t judgmental, and that’s worth a lot.

He Walked By Night

Certain filmmaker’s styles seem to only work if strictly adhered to. Robert Bresson was in his infancy in 1948 having made Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne; full refinery of his style wouldn’t come until 1956’s A Man Escaped. This tight little Poverty Row film actually contains many characteristics that would become associated with the work of Bresson (and Jean-Pierre Melville), even though they are largely used for different ends.

Part of the documentary style on-location police procedural movement started in the mid 1940’s, He Walked By Night employs the “Just the facts, ma’am” style that prompted co-star Jack Webb to create the Dragnet TV series. Like Bresson’s true story unadorned, most of the “action” consists of the characters performing their routines and rituals with fetishistic precision. A dry colorless narration tells you little more than you can already see. The main character is an introverted loner who says very little. To make up for the lack of dialogue, all the characters are posed in a distinct manner that conveys as much of what the scene needs to say as possible. Natural sounds are amplified and no music score is used.

Despite all these Bressonian elements, the film is largely done in an expressionist style that regularly evokes Fritz Lang. John Alton’s brilliant geometric cinematography uses square and rectangle sets, but turns them diagonal through his angular camera placement. Alton uses deep focus photography, but our attention is somewhat directed because circular objects offset the square architecture. Continuing his experiments with high contrast black and white, floods of light are often all that illuminates the extremely dark screen. In most cases, the foreground is dark with the light residing in the outer edges of the frame to create an effect that’s arguably as close as a two dimensional film can come to looking three dimensional.

I wouldn’t think the combination of Bresson & Lang could possibly work, but Bresson takes care of the meticulous everyday scenes of the individuals while Lang makes the cat and mouse game exciting. The problem with procedural films is they tend to be rather dull and propagandistic. Good and bad are clearly defined and the outcome is a given since so much time is devoted to agency aggrandizement. There is no deeper message than crime doesn’t pay as long as the force has a few good men and the citizens support their local sheriff! Instead of only following the good guys, He Walked splits the time between cop and robber, allowing the audience to be impassive observers of the facts.

The main problem with Walked is the characters are paper-thin. Though he has no redeeming personal qualities we can’t help but respect the bad guy’s skills and smarts. After all, he stays one or two steps ahead of the entire police force without anyone’s help. The cop killer Roy Martin (Richard Basehart) is based on Erwin “Machine Gun” Walker, but essentially all we learn about him is he’s a detached, paranoid, alienated, disenchanted WWII veteran whose only relationship is with a dog. He’s an electronics wizard and someone that certainly doesn’t have to rob and kill, but like the cops all we see him doing is his job.

Alfred L. Werker was replaced a few weeks into production. Though he still receives directorial credit, it’s clear from watching Railroaded!, T-Men, and Raw Deal that the film belongs to Mann’s series of crime noirs. Though John C. Higgins contributed the script to all four, it’s first and foremost the composition and chiaroscuro camerawork of John Alton, who lensed the final three, that indicate Mann’s direction.

The best example of Mann’s implied violence comes when Roy performs surgery on himself to remove a bullet from his side. The whole series is composed of two frontal camera angles, neither allowing the audience to view the effected area. Before and after Roy removes the bullet we see a mid shot from chest up, while during we get a closeup of his face. The contorted manner in which Basehart, who gives his standout performance, is posed conveys the difficulty of the procedure. The anguish on Basehart’s face as well as the heavy labored breathing bring home the pain in a far more excruciating and gruesome manner than any level of blood splurting prosthetic gouging gore could hope to approach.

The final scene where Roy tries once again to utilize the miles of storm drain tunnels under Los Angeles to escape the police is one of the all time greats. The fact that it’s not only superior to the tunnel chase in The Third Man, but filmed a year prior to Carol Reed’s masterpiece should tell you something about the visuals the Mann and Alton combo deliver. The scene emphasizes the many fine qualities of Mann’s crime noirs, it’s tense, suspenseful, claustrophobic, mazelike, and brilliantly lit (largely by the flashlights the cops are carrying). He Walked by Night isn’t Mann’s deepest film, that would be The Naked Spur. You could easily argue that T-Men or Raw Deal were visually better; I think the composition is more carefully constructed in Walked but there aren’t as many scenes that lend themselves to flashiness. Perhaps the film looks better when compared to everything else rather than Mann’s own work, as I’d gladly stack this up against any police procedural America ever produced.

Honeymoon Killers

Occasionally some good comes from an overrated bad movie; someone is so disgusted by the unwarranted heaps of praise bestowed on a turkey they riposte with an actual quality alternative. Opera composer Leonard Kastle took issue with historically inaccurate Bonnie & Clyde for casting pinup idols and romanticizing their violent crime spree as the non-conformist rebellion of young lovers. The violence was stylized to add to the aesthetically pleasing fantasy where the killers were glamorized to the point they came off as martyrs. Kastle removed all the gloss and glitz, basing his true crime film on Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler) and Ray Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco). The “Lonely Hearts Killers” were a plumper and an oily charmer who used personal ads to prey on lonely old ladies with money, none of which where honored to have been robbed by the duo.

Oliver Wood’s stark realistic photography purposely avoids dramatic angles and close-ups. Using mostly natural light, this grainy black and white with some instances of poor sound looks like a documentary. The film is never gratuitous, yet despite being largely bloodless and employing no special effects the two depicted murders were so disturbing they were cut from the UK release until Kastle won an appeal. If the film seems sleazy it’s because Kastle shows the murders to be wicked and grotesque, like his killers, rather than some kind of glorious thrill ride worthy of adulation. Since the murders were unplanned, sloppiness derives from their spontaneity. As in Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, the killing goes on for an excruciating length of time because humans rarely cooperate and die in a brisk and tidy manner. The cinema verite style makes it that much more unsettling than even Hitchcock’s version, imagine Albert Maysles doing a snuff film.

Violence is only a very minor part of this tale of desperate lonely people. Honeymoon Killers is actually about love, a desperate kind bred from being shunned for so long.

Martha’s problem isn’t lack of attention; it’s that Ray is the only one whose attention does anything for her. Everyone else just annoys her. Now that Martha has finally found someone she clings to him to the point of regularly threatening/attempting suicide. Ray doesn’t love Martha nearly as much, but he doesn’t want her life on his conscience. The lovers may be incompatible, if nothing else their timing is always off so one’s attempts to seduce the other goes unidentified. Sex may follower murder, but one is not the stimulus for the other.

The duo get no kicks out of their work, but Ray isn’t willing to get the money they need to live together in an honest way or let Martha try to support them. Martha’s desperate need for Ray’s attentions leads to their murders because she’s unwilling to share Ray long enough to complete their schemes, even though they are designed to take a day or two. Ray’s scam is essentially being a bought husband, except he takes the money and runs. If Martha could have dealt with Ray’s desperate victims for a little while they probably would never have had to kill. She is an anchor in the schemes because can’t bear any sign of affection between Ray and his intended, who obviously has been without a man for a while or she wouldn’t resort to trying to purchase a permanent one.

The ordinary gross losers do have a genuine contempt for their pitiable victims, perhaps because they aren’t so different from themselves. They are vulnerable and so lonely they’ll believe or do anything. Outside of Ray, who plays the pleaser getting you to let your guard down so he can do whatever he wants behind your back, all the characters are incredibly annoying.

Everyone’s desperation surfaces as some form of infantilism. They are so pitiable the film often plays as a black comedy. It’s hard not to laugh at how naive the marks are. I mean, Martha and Ray very obviously aren’t even the same nationality, yet the victims are so desperate for company they are hardly even put off by Martha’s unmasked contempt for them much less her incestual looking relationship with her “brother”, who she’s always cloying at and trying to control. The victims seem like blithering idiots, but it’s mostly that they are so overjoyed someone is actually paying attention they blind themselves to some very obvious red flags.

Kastle chooses irony over violence, with scenes like the bride to be singing “America the Beautiful” in the tub while her new family is in the next room robbing her. It’s never good to be a lonely aging lady with money looking for love in the movies, but Kastle shows them to be hypocritical. They trap themselves, for instance, because they believe in puritanical values enough to need a husband to claim as their upcoming baby’s father, but obviously not enough to go along with no sex out of wedlock. Kastle tries so hard not to judge Martha & Ray, but by focusing on them and simply giving their point of view it sometimes seems like their victims deserve to die. Kastle is completely unsentimental, and the audience can see similar flaws and neediness in Martha & Ray even if they can’t see it themselves.

The acting may not always be good, but everyone is believable in their parts. Kastle doesn’t cast one female with any sex appeal; everyone other than the obese star is an ordinary old housewife (before they got so desperate they became indistinguishable from washed up whores). Shirley Stoler is big in every regard, giving Martha a dominant overbearing personality. She steals the show with her abrasive character that does nothing but complain and confront. Lo Bianco is good looking, but he regularly plays older since Martha has Ray going after women she hopes are too old to be interested in sex. His slippery as a snake personality is a turn off though he can be a real charmer and makes a genuine effort to get along with everyone and give the widows something for the money he’s about to lift, even if not what they want.

Kastle wanted to call the film Dear Martha to focus on the love aspect as well as their method of securing their marks, but gave in to the lurid title when no one wanted to distribute the film. Despite being the anti Bonnie & Clyde, the more obvious comparison is to a purposely lurid titled work In Cold Blood. Not only are both black and white documentary style true crimes, but they feature characters with no violent intent whose personalities create a deadly dynamic that winds up resulting in slaughter. As much as we’d like to write off their aberrant behavior as psychosis, their main problem is they don’t have enough money to be together. Ray is a schemer and Martha is a caretaker turned jealous girlfriend. The film shows how easy it is to sink deeper and deeper without realizing it, until suddenly you’ve passed the point of no return. And then you continue because what else can you do?

Martin Scorsese was the original director, and a few of his scenes are in the finished product, but his perfectionism wasn’t doable for the $150,000 budget. Kastle claims Scorsese wasted most of a day trying to light a beer can in a bush. A distraught Scorsese thought he’d never direct again after he got canned 10 days in. Donald Volkman took over, but wasn’t ambitious enough, and really didn’t direct again. Producer Kastle finally gook over himself. He surprisingly doesn’t compose his own music, but makes eerie use of Mahler to add to the dark mood. Like Electra Glide in Blue director James William Guercio, Kastle returned to the music business after directing one 1970’s cult favorite. Unlike Arthur Penn, at least both hit their Target.

Fat Girl

Catherine Breillat’s stronger films (A Real Young Girl, 36 Fillette) are variations on the sexual awakening of pubescent girls. They experiment with their newly functioning parts, but actually having sex is something of a tragedy. Of course, their curiosity will probably get the best of them. The difference between Fat Girl and the other two is, rather than make the newfound interest a schizophrenic inner battle, Breillat splits her heroine into two characters pursuing the sibling bond and rivalry through their budding fascination with boys.

15-year-old Elina (Roxanne Mesquida) and 12-year-old Anais (Anais Reboux) feel they are old enough to be loved. Their bodies tell them this, but classic beauty Elina has all the looks. The world always looks bright when everyone takes an interest in you, and since Elina is a naive romantic who hasn’t figured out she’s only lusted after it’s easy for her to be optimistic about her present and future. Due to Anais being more obviously a girl, and an extremely overweight one at that, the same boys ignore her to the point they barely remember she’s right there beside her sister. Elina is also jailbait, but plenty of boys think she’s worth the risk.

Comparison dooms Anais to a slow painful death. Elina is also her best friend, but even though Anais is superior in many important ways, she’s only seen as something of her sisters equal when they are alone, which doesn’t happen nearly as often as it used to now that the boys are fawning over Elina. Their clueless parents (Arsinee Khanjian & Romain Goupil) force the sisters to stick together so Elina can take care of Anais, making Anais the third wheel in Elina’s romantic excursions. Anais’ rejection, loneliness, and isolation actually mature her, as they force her to observe her sister from afar (technically only a few feet). She sees Elina’s mistakes, that men wind up running from her after a few days because she tries to own them for life. Because she loves her sister, Anais tries to help her by pointing these things out, but mostly this feeds their love-hate relationship and leads to an exchange of barbs. The sisters are simultaneously friends and enemies, joined at the hip they are equally confidant and intruder in this comedy of suffering.

The characterization of the sisters is superb. The basis of Anais having the interior beauty and Elina having the exterior beauty is nothing new, but rarely has it been done with so much depth, and probably never when the context was so strictly rather than theoretically sexual. Unfortunately, Breillat’s male characters never fare that well. They tend to be variations of the Latin Lover, somewhat stereotypical seducers. Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), the college student who aims to have his way with Elina, is only interesting for his honesty or lack thereof. His version of love is exactly the opposite of Elina’s; it isn’t lasting. Fernando just wants sex, probably only a night of it. He’s looking for impermanence, and misrepresents his feelings and allows Elina to misinterpret their meaning since it’s to his advantage. Elina wants to sleep with Fernando, so what she doesn’t believe she pretends or tries to convince herself to because she wants his words to be true. She wants what he wants, but also expects or at least wants it to last.

Anais is horrified as she looks on from her bed during the lengthy single take deflowering scene because she has no illusions. She doesn’t value virginity like Elina does. In fact, she knows she’ll lose her virginity to a virtual stranger with no love on either part, and can’t wait for that creep to show up to make it happen. But she sees that Elina is not getting what she wants, she’s getting tricked and she’ll be hurt in a few days when she discovers what Anais already knows. Breillat’s subsequent Sex is Comedy, a kind of farcical making of Fat Girl, lacks the presence of the third person in the room during this scene, putting the audience in the even more uncomfortable position of voyeur to “intimacy”. You can argue over the reasons behind the character’s emotions, that Anais is jealous because Elina is losing her virginity and she’s not. But she cries during the scene because something has been stolen from her sister. It’s not her virginity, at least not to Anais, but her idealism. Anais’ description of loveless sex will soon prove to be true.

Reboux gives an excellent performance. It’s a shame she hasn’t been pursuing acting, though she probably wouldn’t get any worthy roles since heaven forbid we ever see anyone that looks like a real person. While Mesquida holds the attention of the men in the film, it’s Reboux that holds the viewer’s attention because there’s a depth to her being. She conveys uncommon maturity and a refreshing blend of hope and cynicism.

The character Anais is very imaginative, and uses it as a defense mechanism. In absence of any real relationships, she sings to herself and has a romance with her imaginary boyfriend even if it means using the pool ladder. She eats as a defense mechanism too, but that’s more of a catch-22 as it allows her to deny herself but leads others to deny her as well. Anais’ fantasies and thoughts on the future lead to the fantastic climax, one that’s so absurd it feels like it could only be another dream even though Breillat clearly intends it to be taken as fact. It’s one thing to have a character that turns negatives into positives and finds a way everything can help her, but Breillat takes that to a dubious extreme. Many of Anais’ thoughts, fantasies, and desires lead here, but you really can’t take the film too seriously with this conclusion. Breillat has a certain masochism where her characters get the cruelty they desire. She’s not going for realism, she’s more proposing an alternate reality to punctuate her startling point. I think it tends to be counterproductive.

Mondovino

Etienne de Montille: “The enemy is the same as always, ignorance. It used to be illiteracy. Today it’s standardization. Horrible oversimplifications. So that’s the first one, ignorance. The second enemy is money, as always. The wealth of the wine world is its diversity. The day there’ll only be a few kinds of wine this job will no longer interest me. Maybe I’ll make films.”

Jonathan Nossiter: “But film and wine are the same!”

In the late 1990’s I started renting pretty much all the foreign films I could find. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the most beloved classics weren’t available in my area. Terry Zwigoff wasn’t kidding about the video stores having 9 ½ Weeks rather than 8 ½, but I saw a respectable amount of films from the mid 1980’s on because there was a store that was at least stocking one copy of some of the (then) current releases. They included The Stilts, Where the Green Ants Dream, Erendira, The Sacrifice, Vagabond, Kaos, Betty Blue, Jean de Florette, Manon des Sources, Summer, Half of Heaven, The Dolphin, Sorceress, Yeelen, Camille Claudel, Pelle the Conqueror, The Little Thief, Black Rain, My Twentieth Century, Van Gogh, Santa Sangre, Europe Europa, Anna 6-18, Madame Bovary, Raise the Red Lantern, Farewell My Concubine, The Story of Qui Ju, Scent of Green Papaya, Red Firecracker Green Firecracker, The Wooden Man’s Bride, The Mystery of Rampo, Bandit Queen, & Queen Margot. Probably only a few of these might be among your first picks from Netflix, but they meant a lot to me because all these contemporary films took me to a world that bared little resemblance to my own.

When people’s idea of music was a model singing someone else’s meaningless words over a technician’s loop I could take solace in films like All the Mornings of the World and A Heart in Winter that appreciated composition and musicianship. When someone in the neighborhood was finding some ludicrous reason to chop a tree down every week it was refreshing to see movies like Children of Nature and Castaway where people had a desire to coexist with nature. When everyone was chomping down greaseburgers there was Babette’s Feast to show the gift of a real meal. When the closest people I came in contact with got to a book was the latest adaptation of John Grisham or Danielle Steele it was comforting to see a film like La Lectrice that showed some of the pleasures of imaginative interaction they were missing.

You might be wondering why the foreign films ended in 1994. The local owner sold to a chain, whose idea of the world was Hollywood or Hollywood. One week they decided VHS were useless, so they started the process of selling off the history of cinema, or at least the version they’d acquired of the last 20+ years of it, by putting the entire unwanted foreign films collection on sale. I mean, they didn’t even bother to keep Seven Samurai, a movie pretty much everyone with any real interest in film comes to at some point. But alas history is almost as unwanted as anything decidedly foreign is. They’ll wait until there’s another remake, and consider that the definitive version. In the meantime they needed the room for the 103rd copy of Glitter or Crossroads, they’re interchangeable to me. Today, beyond the AFI’s 100 films that are sure to make no one want to watch classic films, the store’s catalog is basically movies from the 2000’s.

It was a big deal that they actually got the hot foreign title of the year, Y Tu Mama Tambien. I was excited to see any foreign film without having to stay up all night or get up too early to see its one showing on a movie channel, even one from a guy who did one of the most embarrassing hatchet jobs of a literary classic ever. This was particularly stimulating because it had Maribel Verdu, that natural beauty I so adored from Golden Balls. But now her chest had been deformed into something that was more reminiscent of a fork in the road. Maybe there was some value in the asides about Mexico, but all I saw was the same old revolting American porn that litters Skinemax during the hours I’d be looking for something to watch so I could stay awake until one of the few potentially interesting movies they’d show all month would come on around five.

Wine importer Neal Rosenthal claims what’s being done to wine is even worse than plastic surgery since that only destroys the exterior. Nossiter focuses on three individuals who play a huge part in making wine bland, innocuous, and characterless, and, of course, virtually identical. Big business is named Mondavi, the marketing guru is named Michel Rolland, and the media is named Robert Parker (not surprisingly he’s virtually interchangeable with the group of “critics” from the separate magazine Wine Spectator), but what’s really important is he could be talking about pretty much any business in these globalized days. And that’s really what the film is about, globalization breeding interchangeability. It’s convenient that once American Mondavi bought Italian Ornellaia it suddenly became #1 in American Wine Spectator, but even if Rolland weren’t a Frenchman pursuing conspiracy theories would be missing the point. It doesn’t matter if the chicken preceded the egg or is married to the hen, only that the end result of their work if uniformity.

The Old World dominated wine because the effects the environment the grapes were grown in has on the taste of the finished product, called terroir, was important. If you’ve been selling wine for 300 years obviously you must have some favorable sunlight and soil, and in any case people have become accustomed to the taste of your specific wine. You can’t just buy some land, plant some grapes, and suddenly have great wine. And if you have multiple vineyards, all your wine won’t have the same taste. Obviously some guys with money would benefit from the elimination of terroir because they could theoretically succeed in wine right away. Even if right now they could only get a hold of a few acres here and there, they could always put the same name on it all and spend a ton of money brainwashing the public into believing it’s the wine they need to drink.

When there’s money to be had, someone figures out a way to take it. But it’s very difficult to make everyone a success. I mean, if it were easy the people who were able to amass millions and billions would figure it out on their own. The quick and easy way is to have one formula that “works for everyone”. It doesn’t require any thought, from anyone, which is part of the reason it can work. Rolland knows what the critics like, and conveniently it’s something artificial that can be reproduced over and over. He seems to tell everyone to use microoxygenation and new oak. Microoxygenization is a phony aging process that smoothes out the texture of the molecules. Since the critics seem to mostly be tasting new wine rather than the properly aged finished product, a wine that has been processed to seem 2-5 years old will theoretically feel better in your mouth than the wine that tastes it’s age, 0. New oak overpowers the terroir with its vanilla taste, eliminating the possibility for great wine but allowing wine grown anywhere to taste the same, which is always going to be more important to a businessman.

The difficult part should be eliminating what’s different, but the media always seems willing to please, judging everything on what benefits the big company, availability (usually disguised as some form of sales). Even in a case like this when they actually aren’t a sister company, the biggest companies have the most money to spend on all-important advertising. The media decides certain things are unimportant and/or unacceptable from the get go, in this case anyone who doesn’t store their wine in oak doesn’t exist. Then they set a standard that accomplishes the goal, in this case everyone storing in 100% new oak, and find as many ways as they can to shower praise upon all the conformists. They may also constantly create opportunities to ridicule and berate everything that’s different, conveniently ignoring even obvious facts such as certain differences are inherent, until what’s different is no longer a threat. Then they can choose to lump the different with the things that were unimportant/unacceptable from the get go or use them to fill out the bottom of their rankings just to “prove” their inferiority to the big boys. It may not be as sinister and calculated as I’m making it sound. Sometimes there’s actually a critic, and they really believe in something small, but in the final product the great small thing always winds up taking a back seat to the mediocre mass marketed thing because value and importance are judged by accessibility.

Like all mainstream “culture” these changes emphasize quick “satisfaction” at the expense of lingering effect. The end result is it’s just about dollars. It’s not the quality of your hectares because you’ve agreed to the processes that trades originality for standardization, only how many you can acquire to churn out your endless replications. That is unless you are willing to be the independent battling the multinational conglomerate.

People can trust winemaker Hubert de Montille over critic Robert Parker and consultant Michel Rolland because he’s not trying to seduce you. He doesn’t care if you hate his wine, just that you respect his right to make it for his taste. If every producer did that, there would be a wine for you, if it were his rivals so be it.

You couldn’t find a more perfect man to make this documentary than Jonathan Nossiter. He’s also a sommelier who has made his own wine lists and trained restaurant staffs. As the son of a Washington Post and New York Times foreign correspondent, he grew up all over the world. He fluently speaks five languages in the film, allowing him to converse with everyone he visits in their native tongue.

Nossiter obviously isn’t happy that right now there are hundreds of wines for Rolland and Parker, among them the exact same stuff given two or three different labels before being shipped out. Why would he be? He’s part of the everyone else who either accepts their taste with or without knowing it or is forced to actively seek out his own taste, which as film fans know is increasingly costly and time consuming since unless you live in a giant multicultural city the best stuff isn’t coming to a place near you. I’m sure Nossiter already knows what he likes quite well, but if he’s the only one that’s buying it the next bottle he has may be his last. There are far worse things than that though; there’s the fear that your favorite will be converted to vanilla and the horror of the moment and aftermath of that sellout. Maybe that sounds corny, but when you really like something it becomes a part of you. Since it exists apart from you, you’re are helpless to control it and unless you are in the business of deluding yourself into believing loss of uniqueness is always “an improvement” that part of you can only die.

Nossiter follows the dialogue wherever it may take him like Marcel Ophuls. He is a character in his film because he shot much of it himself, which sometimes yields unsettling Dogma '95 jitters, but he never tries to make himself important. Overall the editing of the film could still use some work, but he does edit himself out as much as possible. In the 10-hour television version his presence appears to be much greater because he includes the entire portion of the conversation rather than certain answers.

Nossiter lets everyone make the points for him. You never feel like he’s putting a yes man on the screen or hiding behind someone else’s words. He spends most of his time with the guys he’s against, never arguing with them, being obstinate, or making a scene. There are no sinister techniques here. Nossiter doesn’t exclude key figures because it’s convenient for his own agenda or he’s afraid their words would hurt his argument. He even lets the interviewees decide how and where they’ll be shot. Nossiter simply gets all the players from all aspects of the wine business on camera and lets them acquit or hang themselves through their descriptions of what they’re all about. He trusts his audience to see who benefits from their techniques. If their dogs tell you something about their owner’s personality so be it, but there’s no narration or gags. Maybe it’ll comfort you that when character and identity are a thing of the past someone a million miles away will have the same tastes as you... at least until you remember taste is individual.

Summer

The fifth installment in the comedies and proverbs series is a look at modern day loneliness, the dissatisfaction brought on by isolation. As usual, Rohmer is conducting a psychological study on a certain moral choice, remaining alone or going against your principles and settling for a fleeting affair. Delphine is trying to avoid the displeasing until she stumbles across someone fulfilling, but is also living by her own moral code that prohibits easy transitory satisfactions.

Reviews seem to go right for the "difficulty" of the heroine Delphine, wonderfully played by Rohmer favorite Marie Riviere, but I found her completely refreshing and far truer than the easy to like heroines we get a steady diet of. What people desire usually remains elusive; mass marketing campaigns try to convince you otherwise, but their standardization only adds to the problem. I know a lot of people who are far pickier than Delphine, but we simply are not used to seeing a character who won’t settle for whatever is in front of them, regardless of potential happiness. What makes her even rarer is she doesn’t announce her principles; defiance in and of itself isn’t a point of pride. Despite her intelligence she fumbles for the words to express herself, and in the end winds up clumsily abstaining.

Delphine always sees through things very quickly and knows what’s not for her, but finds it terribly difficult to find what she does enjoy. She can tell what the new men she meets are after, but she doesn’t want any superficial one-night stand type of relationships. Some of them would at least yield more happiness than sitting alone in her room crying, but the falseness of it all negates whatever temporary satisfaction she might garner.

Delphine can't make up her mind how to amuse herself in the absence of the people she wants to be with, which in the case of her "boyfriend" is now going to be permanent. Her vicious cycle begins when her friend bails on their planned vacation, resulting in Delphine spending the summer bouncing from one uncomfortable situation to another. As the film transports us from one empty consumerist paradise to another, we see the various ways their vacuousness weighs on the forlorn heroine. Though she rejects what the surroundings have to offer, her defiance distracts her from what life has to offer, and she becomes fixated on the various facades.

As in real life, no one understands her and rather than being helpful their advice just places unwanted pressure on her. Delphine exists in a perpetual limbo between a theoretic permanence that would make her happy and the world of casual relationships and quick and easy amusements she finds wherever she travels. Her inability to find what would please her keeps her passively searching, but in the meantime her unwillingness to participate constantly puts her at odds with those around her.

Delphine not only refuses to go along, but is pouty and weepy. People who don’t like the film tend to want Delphine to be like them, having no sympathy for her because she’s not lacking in opportunity. But it’s not quantity, it’s quality. Someone else can be happy by floating from one thing to another, but happiness can only come to Delphine by being true to herself. For her it’s about personal integrity and dignity. Her choice is to seek the greatest reward, but that entails suffering alone through many miseries.

Delphine has a strong desire for companionship, but the harder she tries the more she sees the shallowness of those around her. Rejecting the impermanence of the bond, she consistently prefers solitude. However, this seclusion breeds an insufferable loneliness, increasing her frustrations, emptiness, and sense of loss.

The original title Le Rayon vert is taken from Jules Verne's novel named after the optical phenomenon. Delphine is depressed, but she’s also an incredibly hopeful character who expects to find a bit of magic any day. She believes the green ray that will be the sign when she finds the right man, the true love of her life. But Delphine is so determined to find him she’s sacrificing everything else, letting the present pass her by while she places all her hopes on a man she hasn’t found yet.

This is the only film Riviere has written, and the urgency of her gloomy despair feels remarkably personal. Much of the dialogue was improvised, a major departure for Rohmer. His characters normally express themselves with a poetic grace and elegance unmatched in cinema. Maybe you prefer Ernest Hemingway, but the world is much richer for also having the elaborate writings of Henry James, who believed quality was found in recreating the conversations of an intelligent man, but was so smart he seemingly spoke at a level thousands of times above anyone else. Summer shows Rohmer can excel in a sloppy style as well, a style that happens to perfectly fit Delphine’s character. She stumbles over her words because if she’s figured out her true desires she certainly hasn’t figured out how to find others that possess these traits, and ultimately attain a longtime bond with them. Most of Rohmer’s films are introspective, but usually his characters play elegant philosophical games. Delphine lacks their desire to simply fake her way through, and is too concerned with her own unsolved quest to clearly elucidate her thoughts. Indecision becomes a bit of a disability as she elevates the importance of finding a boyfriend to the point it becomes the crucial one for the rest of her life, thus rendering her unable to make it because she’s so afraid she’ll be wrong.

The innate human fear of taking the leap allows Rohmer to constantly elevate stories others feel are too slight to film, to make a consequential study of life on the planet through something seemingly as inconsequential as how a fictional character will pass their summer. Rohmer's brilliance is perhaps in showing the agonizing difficulty of what generally comes easy in entertainment, and doing it in such a subtle way that it never seems a predefined explanation or a convenient cop out.

Masculin-Feminin

“Give us a TV set and a car, but deliver us from liberty”

My Life to Live showed Jean-Luc Godard’s interest in creating episodic faux documentary, but despite constant experimentation in every aspect it’s ultimately more a traditional film than Masculin-Feminin. Influenced by the ethnographical films of Jean Roach and the essay films of Chris Marker, Godard aimed to paint a picture of the French youth of 1965.

It’s easy to say the film is in Godard’s head since he scrapped the idea of writing a script, but for the most part only the questions and situations are. Godard knows the general ideas he’s trying to put across, but the specifics come from his actors. He has them answer questions truthfully rather than as their character might. He can be faulted for using stars rather than people off the street, but a major point is there’s no normal, no average, and no regular. Everyone believes they’re a star anyway.

Jean-Paul Belmondo never struck me as any kind of an intellectual, but you pretty much know what you’ll get from him in a given role. Leaud may not be as Godardian as Belmondo because he’s so unpredictable. Give Godard something that strikes him as real on take one and he’s happy to move on, even if it’s not the reality he’d choose. Godard makes Leaud incredibly uncomfortable. The fate of the Godard character is to understand everything and nothing, to hate what you see but want certain things (a woman) only to find them boring, inadequate, and intolerable. This is a restless character who is always looking, but rarely finding.

Jean-Pierre Leaud plays a pollster named Paul, asking Godard’s questions. He doesn’t like what he sees; it makes him sad, nervous, and scared. He’s Godard in that he’s alone in the world and trying to understand why. Of course, Paul is never actually alone, he’s always with people and talking to them, he just doesn’t relate. He’s a bad pollster because he doesn’t know what he’s looking for, and his awkwardness and inability to interact effect the integrity of the answers he receives.

Since this is Godard, rather than finding some answers perhaps the main thing Paul learns is his approach was entirely wrong. Polls are designed to manufacture false consensus by restricting choice and in most cases virtually eliminating thought. The questions limit freedom by predicating certain answers, ultimately bringing out what the pollster either wants or doesn’t want to hear rather than the ideas and opinions, the information the person being polled has to offer. Since Paul knows there’s a problem but can’t identify it much less see if his potential solutions would be accepted, he can't learn anything from the polls.

Polling is a form of consumerism, so Godard denies Leaud personality and opinion while acting as pollster. All the info he’s ingested has inundated him, making him a blank. Like a picture in a magazine you can project anything onto him and never be wrong because, in theory he’s whatever you want him to be.

Paul is quite dodgy in his own right. He knows the answers to Madeline’s questions about his romantic intentions toward her, but doesn’t think it’s in his best interest to answer. This should show another fault in his poll, when you go in a certain direction people are leery because they either wonder what you are after or know and see how you could use it against them. Leaud is getting a judgment, at best, but you look at things differently when someone is asking you about them for some unknown reason. The truth is much more easily attained through observation.

The greatness in Leaud’s performance lies in his subtle ability to shift between pollster and romantic lead. Chantal Goya is the main subject of his polls, a real life ye-ye pop singer who plays herself other than going by the name Madeleine. She’s Paul’s girlfriend of a sort, though they have nothing in common and she’s more comfortable with her girlfriend Elisabeth (Marlene Jobert), potential lesbianism implied. Catherine-Isabelle (Duport) is the one who shows actual interest in Paul. Add Paul’s political activist friend Robert (Michel Debord), whose love for Catherine-Isabelle is unrequited like all the others, and you have the primary subjects of Paul’s polls.

The men are the children of Marx, while the women are the children of Coca-Cola. Godard seems to be as objective and non-judgmental as he can be, but that’s his trick. Masculin-Feminin is a Marxist criticism of consumerism attained by showing the scary reality. The French youth has been given the most basic knowledge about what is going on in the world, but no one has interested them in it, made it tangible and meaningful to them. Paul is horrified by the killing in Vietnam, but others either don’t know it’s happening at all or give the most emotionless yes to the fact the entire country is being burnt down with napalm.

Though the ads no doubt sell you on how unique and special spending your money on conforming to the latest corporate manufactured fashions, trends, and ideas will make you, Godard shows the purpose is to hide by blending in. Anytime someone is singled out they become very uncomfortable. Paul interviews the current “Miss 19” (Elsa Leroy), typically smug and full of herself. She throws out some words like great and fascinating, but they have no meaning when she uses them. They don’t explain anything, like the culture they are empty. There’s no qualifying, and no in between. She can’t or misanswers every question, showing she knows nothing about the world, yet she’s the chosen representative for her generation, as she knows what those who choose her want her to. She’s a cute airhead, a perfect consumerist role model who won’t question anything important and wouldn’t care to take the time to comprehend even if you did try to explain it to her.

Coming off his breakup with Anna Karina, Godard was that much more misogynistic than usual. Women are basically pea brains that play with their hair, shop, get pettycures, and look at pictures. Consumerism works because guys get horny, so they find a woman and since she’s clueless about politics and literature they get sucked into some frivolous endeavor or conversation.

Godard shows the selfishness of these kids, the idea they are the only one that matters in many ways, but most effectively through the violence. When you only care about yourself nothing makes you bat an eye, and those in power can do whatever they want. Gunshots that sound like they are out of a spaghetti western are regularly heard and sometimes seen, but violence is merely an interruption. Death may be remembered in passing, but doesn’t generate any emotional response.

Submission should obviously be seen as the motif of a soldier’s life. R. Lee Ermey is going to be in your face screaming at you until you give in or he has to take more drastic measures. What Godard shows is pop culture is simply a more subtle way of getting everyone to tap out. It emphasizes a purchased uniformity, while ignoring any meaningful topic. Pertinent information is just present enough that you can’t say it’s entirely absent, but people aren’t informed enough to have a solid basis for their opinion, and even the faux discussions do at least as much to distract as to inform. Pop culture ignores the supposed subject through diversions such as what someone is or isn’t wearing, all the better if it’s a celebrity. Even most people who associate themselves with politics do little more than the one thing they are encouraged to do, vote once a year. Fashion is allowed to share the news with politics as if it has some importance outside of making the sponsors rich. It’s politics that’s rarely allowed to branch out while almost everyone you see in any form of media conveniently sports many of the purchased characteristics currently being pushed, and that’s just one of endless examples of how TV makes every day into a subtle fashion day.

The film was far ahead of its time in its willingness to deal with taboo subjects such as birth control, abortion, homosexuality, and lesbianism. Godard puts out these issues as if to say why are we always viewing false images rather than having a legitimate discourse on issues that actually effect people’s lives?

Godard talks a lot about freedom, but what separates him is he’s willing to make movies that are free to go anywhere, anytime. There’s more to life than just his few characters, so in the midst of their activities a husband and wife might have a fight, a man might ask directions, a celebrity might enter the cafe. It doesn’t have a bearing on the non-existent plot, but when someone asks you about your day don’t you often find yourself saying something about someone who exited your life almost as quickly as they entered it? You’ll never know their name, but they’ll forever be remembered as that guy who did this to help you, hurt you, or make you laugh.

Godard often seems to have a second film going on in the periphery. This greatly adds to the realism. The intrusions seem random and haphazard, but eventually have a purpose, even if in a few cases it’s clear only to Godard. Part of the general point is to show how much we ignore. There’s always other people and various noises in real life, but they are eliminated from 99.9% of the other movies due to being an unnecessary distraction (or rather for adding to the cost and taking more time).

Masculin-Feminin is a film about the banality of modern life. That’s how everyone hooks you, any change from the monotony seems like it might be a good idea until you try it and see it doesn’t make any difference toward fulfilling your life. The changes are almost always in the direction of conformity and uniformity, even if they are usually sold as the opposite. The trick with a film on boredom is to make it interesting, and that’s what all the jokes and random actions and asides accomplish. The jokes sometimes seem flagrantly awful, but they are Godard sending up some of the mass consumption cliches. He does it in such an absurd way it may seem stupid, but then you see it’s a demonstration on how stupid the saying is. Sure, the people who say “put yourself in someone else’s shoes” don’t technically mean mimic another person, but Godard’s point is it’s foolish to suppose these cliches are less ridiculous when they are taken the way they are supposed to.

Sheer Madness

Margarethe von Trotta likes to show two seemingly opposite women turning out to be halves, at least for a while as friendship has an amazing power to heal as well as destroy. Olga (Hanna Schygulla) is a beacon of strength, a secure successful outgoing romantic literature professor. Ruth (Angela Winkler) is a shy vulnerable outsider who was traumatized by her artist brother’s suicide, giving up her teaching job and withdrawing almost completely into his world of painting and (attempted) suicide.

There’s immediately something between the two women, which is rare for Ruth who has become scared of human contact, so her husband Franz (Peter Striebeck), a colleague of Olga’s, encourages Olga to befriend her. As usual, people come to resent what they wished for or “created”. Franz, a character reportedly based on von Trotta’s then husband Tin Drum director Volker Schlondorff, turns out to only want Ruth’s improvement if he’s the primary source of it. He fears her success because he’ll lose his superior standing and she won’t need him anymore.

Olga is separated from her husband, and that seems to be the source of her self-confidence. Though a new world is opened to Ruth that, with Olga’s support, brings her out of her shell, Olga’s independence gives way to a mutual psychological and emotional dependence. The women get along better with each other than with men because they don’t complain about everything the other does, but ultimately their relationship is something like a (sexless) marriage. Their demands don’t need to be stated because they understand each other’s needs better, and the needs are mutual and more similar. But they are there just the same.

No one tries to understand Olga & Ruth’s bond. Rather than be happy for what their loved ones have gained they are blinded by their fear of losing possession of them, and thus try to destroy the friendship. The focus is more on the female bond - portrayed intensely and lovingly - than the usual they won’t let us be happy stuff. It’s a serious restrained psychological study, a sensitive subtly emotional film.

I prefer this to the other Von Trotta I’ve seen because she focuses her energies on the women’s stories, which she does very well, rather than trying to overtly meld them with political activism. Sheer Madness still has some politics, but it’s more on a private vs. public level, and thus doesn’t create more of a parallel story like in The Second Awakening of Christa Klages where the characters happen to be modern day Robin Hoods.

Von Trotta elicits excellent performances from the women by focusing on scenes that show their special chemistry, which is so powerful it’s polarizing. Winkler is superb in showing that Olga is like another life form to her. There’s human beings, a hurtful species she hides from as best as she can, and then there’s Olga who is always the best and thus Ruth ignores everyone else to be with her constantly.

I find Sheer Madness to be very refreshing in its ordinariness. Everyone has had beneficial friendships jealous “left out” friends or relatives fought, but it’s rarely depicted on the screen, especially with this kind of nuance toward the primary characters (though little is offered for the thin supporting players) and keen observation of behavioral details. It seems like the few movies that features women these days are either a zany soap operas by Almodovar or yet another film where friends can only wind up being “special”. In the former the “issues” tend to be meaningless because they just throw tragedies at the wall rather than delving into one or two of them. The latter tend to be too predictable to be of interest.

Several people hate von Trotta’s film because the women are dynamic while the men are clinging nuisances. Von Trotta’s women aren’t exceptional, at best they have talent and the capability to do something with it if given the opportunity and support anyone deserves. Make ten million movies where the women are little more than sex objects and hardly a man protests, it’s just more accepted misogynistic sexism, but make one where they are selfish one dimensional creatures, and even though there are women such as Ruth’s mom (Agnes Fink) who also protests the friendship, out come the feminist haters. Von Trotta is one of the best at portraying what it’s like to be a woman, even if that sometimes comes at the expense of understanding what it’s like to be a man. If 98% of the directors were female I’m sure I’d value her less and the few that gave me an idea of what it was like to be a man more, but I don’t think we have to worry about that. ***1/2

Wavelength

Michael Snow’s best known experimental film uses the camera to investigate reality vs. illusion. The truth of cinema is largely in our heads, to the point people believe this is a continuous 45-minute zoom. Snow sets the camera on a tripod at the widest angle and proceeds to ever so slightly narrow the field of view for the duration of the film. The camera is on one side of an 80-foot loft, with the other side containing four large windows with 3 photos tacked up in between the middle two.

A tracking shot could be used to creep closer to the destination, but it would not explore human vision vs. camera vision. Moving the camera toward its ultimate destination, a photo, would constantly mimic our field of vision. Zooming eliminates the illusion of “3D space”. In actuality, we are of course looking at something flat and thus everything is the same distance from us. Dimension is the camera’s trick, as our eyes see depth that isn’t actually there, perceiving objects to be closer or further because we know that’s the way they are in real life. A picture can’t technically duplicate that, not even when projected rapidly, but our eyes and minds respond to the illusion.

The initial setting shows the camera’s ability to seemingly duplicate human vision. As Snow’s zoom progresses, we begin to realize we are seeing the object not as we would in real life, but in a way only a camera can see it. The narrowing and flattening effect the zoom lens produces makes the photo appear to come to us. Ultimately, we remember that film is nothing more than rapidly projected light, a form of magic trick. So the film starts as fiction and ends as fact, yet the audience fights that all the way. Something in us, our eyes or our brains, tells us that what we are used to - the duplication of human vision - is the truth and the all too narrowed field of view and flattened depth is the lie.

Some people will find Wavelength to be among the most boring and tedious films ever made. It’s meant to be a sensuous aesthetic experience, but probably also to infuriate the viewer. The film challenges your viewing habits by tricking you into thinking it’s going to be something that it isn’t. The film appears to start out traditionally with the “action” coming from humans, who inhabit the apartment listening to The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever”. But they disappear and the zoom continues. We start looking out the windows, as the street has cars and people going by. Why are we doing this? Perhaps because we are bored, but certainly because we are programmed to think humans are the only reason for watching (since it’s not animated or wildlife).

Just as we’ve begun to learn what the film is, a tramp (future experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton who directed Zorn’s Lemma) collapses on the floor, apparently murdered, causing us to revert right back to our old habits. We want to know if he’s unconscious or dead, but Snow tells us plot is a meaningless gimmick by ignoring it. Wavelength is something like Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup if David Hemmings stared at his pictures without caring about the subjects that occupied them enough to pursue the murder theory. Snow refuses to veer from his course. It’s like Manifest Destiny; the end is all that matters and thus it justifies everything. Progress doesn’t halt for the deceased.

But this progress is all cinematic deception. Though Snow makes some of his edits with various flares, color flashes, and superimpositions, he doesn’t really try to hide the fact that his zoom is a series of edited segments. Jump cuts and time lapse photography are huge hints toward the manipulated time frame, but the most obvious clue is day changes to night, and back. The tramp may have been lying on the floor for quite a while before someone noticed him, not that we are supposed to care.

Stripped to its essence, cinema is a set duration where light is altered. Snow makes all kinds of slight as well as glaring changes to keep us actively viewing, but he does them within a rigid context that can lull the viewer to sleep. You can’t experience the film through passive viewing or understand it through fast forwarding, but you might have the urge because it doesn’t meet your expectations of what a movie is.

Cinematic techniques are utilized to transform the world. Our perception is dramatically altered by shifting light (color) and film stock (texture). Filters, layering, flickers, gel reflections, and colored frames all point out the lie of the zoom being continuous, but more importantly alter our viewing experience. Combined with the thwarting of our movie expectations, they encourage us to turn the structuralist experiment into a meditation on the artistic process, and life, by making it about the interaction with our own consciousness.

Repeats mixed with jump cuts and superimpositions create the cinematic equivalent of the waves we are soon to enter through the photo Snow is zooming in on. The soundtrack is equally tricky, and by far the most grating aspect. Snow theoretically does the opposite with the sine wave, starting at the smallest (50 cycles per minute) and increasing to the greatest (12,000 cycles per minute), which is scratch your nails on the chalkboard territory. In actuality, Snow takes it back from time to time to create a similar dramatic effect. The real purpose of the zoom and the sine wave is the same, to increase the intensity of the viewing experience. If something happens in this film, it’s through the experience becoming so acute our mind reacts to it irrationally.

The film ends by completely breaking the illusion of human vision, but in doing so it has actually created a transcendent moment where our imagination takes an even greater leap. Once all background details are eliminated through the smallest range of f-stops, the entire screen is engulfed by the photograph of a wavy ocean. We know it’s only a picture, and yet we feel like we are in the ocean because we know when we are in the ocean all we see is endless ocean. The depths are suddenly endless again because we’ve hit an angle where the camera once again matches what we are used to seeing. There’s a kind of freedom in this image that makes us feel like we better start kicking our legs. We understand it’s not real, but our imagination takes over, our mind works to give us what we’d like to believe. But this fiction is quickly broken when Snow zooms in a little further. Suddenly, he’s in so tight we can only see a blue blur. The film ends with camera vision restored.

Mouchette

Robert Bresson progressively pared his stories down to the bare minimum, eliminating the voice over narration of his 1950’s classics A Man Escaped and Pickpocket, which purposely didn’t really tell us any more than we could already see anyway. Probably nowhere in his amazing body of work lies a film where what isn’t included is more important than in Mouchette. Its closest cousin is his previous film Au Hassard Balthazar, but that takes place over the lifetime of the donkey. It starts out good, but goes very sour when he’s turned into a beast of burden and sold from one miserable excuse for a human being to another before his accidental demise. Mouchette is the culmination of 14-years of suffering with no refuge. The titled character (Nadine Nortier) should have a lot left to experience; she’s barely even reached the point where her hormones are raging. Her end is so much more pronounced than Balthazar’s not only because she somewhat spontaneously decides to seize control in a whimsical manner that’s the only way she can figure to, but because we see less than one day of her life of being a target whose fate is in the hands of callous villagers.

Even though Mouchette is raped then loses her sick mother, part of us rebels against her suicide solution. We feel Bresson hasn’t earned the finish: Mouchette shouldn’t give up ever, certainly not yet. While that may well be true, it’s largely due to what we’ve been conditioned to as well as our own vanity. We’ve been given a series of generally minor abuses, but Bresson’s cinema is one of condensation and linkage. He gives us all the pieces of the puzzle, but he asks us to put them together.

Mouchette’s life is one of abject pain brought on by being entirely alone. Bresson refuses to state explanations for his star having no one and nothing, for not being able to trust even one human being. But we can certainly infer them from the bits we pick up here and there, which makes for a far more interesting viewing experience. I’d much rather figure out the meaning of a scene 5, 10, 50 minutes later, than be told things like Mouchette’s father is a bootlegger who is still poor. In an illegal business you’re only respected if you are able to get away with flaunting your money, so that combined with being a useless rotten alcoholic doesn’t put him on the top of everyone’s Christmas list.

Bresson understands and understates little details so well they can go unnoticed. His depiction of the effects of solitude is as good as any I’ve seen. I can’t think of another film where it subtly took the main character a while to warm up and be able to respond “normally”, to simply have a real dialogue. People who aren’t open to Bresson complain the film has “no dialogue”, but that’s entirely the point. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Mouchette has absolutely no one to converse with. She talks sometimes, but mostly gives brief programmed responses to someone else’s orders or complaints.

Arsene (Jean-Claude Gilbert) is the only person who recognizes Mouchette as a fellow human being. He’s different because he’s a poor poacher, and thus disrespected himself. In a drunken stupor, he thinks he’s killed his rival, the gamekeeper Mathieu (Jean Vimenet). He decides to use Mouchette for an alibi because he stumbles across her in the vicinity.

Mouchette is often viewed as some kind of angel, but I think she’s mainly a product of a corrupt society, the kind of place where everyone goes to the bar before church and that’s where the education takes place. She may be the only one who seems to strive for love, even if in her naive ways, but she’s also a horrible reactionary who’ll try to make sure you know she hates you for not reciprocating.

Hardly as silly as she often looks, and not a moralist, Mouchette realizes if she goes along with Arsene they’ll have something of a pact. One friend means the world to you when you have none. The reason, the cost, that it’s really more of a sinister bond, all that stuff can easily be overlooked when you are as desperate as she is. Arsene quickly turns out to be something she’s used to, an abusive drunk like her father, but ultimately she still doesn’t care. Even after he rapes her she’s willing to call him her lover because he was the first to see her as a woman.

Hope is about all Mouchette has had to cling to. It’s often misplaced and confused, but she’s a kid who hasn’t exactly had anyone to guide her. Mouchette mixes love and respect with a willingness to use her, but then again she’s so low even being used seems like a huge step up. At least it involves human contact and allows her to believe she’s doing something good for others, even if they don’t actually appreciate it or her.

What she believes is what matters to her.

When her mother took ill, Mouchette began taking over her tasks. She doesn’t mind the work because she likes being able to do something for somebody, but she thinks she’ll gain standing from it. Her perpetually absent family members probably don’t even respect her mother, but as anyone is a gain for Mouchette, so is anything.

This is a coming of age film, though not in the traditional sense of rites of passage. It’s not so much about having her first experiences with sex and death; they are simply the events that cause her to reflect inward. The newly introspective Mouchette realizes she won’t gain her family with her mother’s passing; they’ll never lover her. She’s also not going to gain a man because Arsene has just been railroaded, which finishes them since her word can’t help him. The real traumatic experience is the revelation that this lonely old lady who has nothing but her cats is going to be her one of these days.

By eliminating the aspects that ground or pander to the viewer, that make movies little more than staged theatre, Bresson tells stories that are truly cinematic. Bresson’s films rely on three aspects - the manner in which his “models” are framed, the editing of the footage, and the amplified natural sound effects - and scrap just about all the others. No one could even attempt to do his stories in any other medium; they would be threadbare and incomprehensible.

Bresson’s frames seem incredibly detailed because they are so specific. There’s less in the background than almost any other filmmaker - nothing there to distract the viewer - so what is there is that much more pronounced. He edits fairly often, but always to precise shots that are not traditionally set up (no establishing shots). These often require total interpretation because we see a tight shot of a body part, which means nothing in and of itself, but these shots are all linked so their meaning comes in the overall context of the series, and the film as a whole.

One of his most brilliant scenes comes right after the opening credits. A partridge finds itself stuck in the rivalry between Mathieu and Arsense. We don’t know who the men are yet because he’s eliminated the set up. Bresson cuts between Mathieu’s face focusing on the eye since he’s spying on Arsene, Arsene’s lower body focusing on the hand since he’s setting the trap, the trap itself once it’s set, a sort of path that’s currently vacant but leads to the trap, and the hapless bird. Arsene disappears after he’s completed his task, so when we see the legs of a man cautiously approaching the tangled partridge we aren’t positive which one it is, though we assume it’s Mathieu since there was a cut to him leaving his hiding spot. We know for sure when he frees the bird, but to depict the kind of cat and mouse game these two always play the scene doesn’t end there. We see a shot of Arsene’s face focusing on his eye, which obviously relates to the shots we’d recently seen of Mathieu, showing their rivalry consists of playing the same games. Later Bresson follows up duplicating his shots of each coming into the bar and making a play for the same barmaid (Marine Trichet). This partridge scene goes on almost 4 minutes before its primary purpose is revealed when Mathieu simply walks past Mouchette, who is on her way to school. It’s our introduction to her, but more importantly a metaphor, Bresson’s first way of linking her to helpless prey. Though the association is subliminal, we notice it because of the way the segment was edited, and it begins to make sense to us with a certain kind of highly varied repetition.

The scene is far more dramatic in its condensed form. We still get the complete story, it just has less of the positioning we are used to, which adds an element of intrigue and even surprise as the decrease in continuity makes us less sure what we’ll see. The partridge scene is probably more toward what Sam Peckinpah would explore than typical Bresson. Peckinpah was more interested in the dynamics of editing, and used the tool to make the most intriguing sequence he could put together out of the countless hours of film he shot. Peckinpah looked to expand the story, and thus his montage was a way to fit more varied aspects into the film without it being 10 hours long. Bresson knows what he wants a lot more specifically - he has to since he doesn’t shoot coverage - economy. Still, it seems Bresson could have influenced the way Peckinpah put certain scenes together, shooting with a specific focus and combined multiple perspectives. The link between Mouchette and Straw Dogs seems the most plausible when you look at the way Peckinpah does the hunting scene, even the idea of a rape that isn’t nearly as unwelcome as it should be due to the desperation of the woman is similar.

Bresson’s interest in filming humans lay in seeing how they’d react to adversity. As he states in Theodor Kotulla’s useful documentary Au Hassard Bresson that’s included on the Criterion Collection DVD, he wanted to discover “unlimited surprises, but within a limited context.” A professional actor probably wouldn’t behave naturally; the truth would be lost because they’d act the way they felt a person would in that situation. Though Guilbert is actually a carry over from Au Hassard Balthazar, Bresson didn’t reuse actors because people tend to react to adversity in the same basic ways, so unpredictability would be lost. Thus Bresson cast different non-professionals, the authenticity and originality of their performance “born from the novelty of an unfamiliar character set loose in an unfamiliar context.”

Bresson particularly liked working with younger actresses. They were more unpredictable due to having less time to adopt the standard behaviors. Nadine Nortier’s work is certainly an example of acting at it’s finest, yet she never acted again. What’s so special about her, perhaps precisely that nothing is. She looks like a real girl. She acts like a real girl who isn’t posing or playing for the camera since Bresson is particular about things like the way her chin is tilted and eyes are looking. Her performance as the troubled pariah is so moving simply because we believe her. Who wouldn’t feel for a helpless girl who is treated so awfully by everyone? Bresson particularly hated the usual children’s performance “it’s all either sweetness or silliness”, so he gives her scenes that elicit varying reactions and give us a more complete portrait of her. The film is heartfelt but not sentimental. Mouchette doesn’t deserve what she’s gotten, but she isn’t a nice person either and does bring some of it on herself.

Bresson realizes you may reject his conclusion; it’s a chance he has to take to try to enact a change. He’s trying to tear down the foundation, and that can only be done by rejecting the accepted. He’s not going to make you happy by having a pretty boy show up to love Mouchette forever just because everyone else does. And he’s not going to spend his entire movie trying to convince you to accept his finish because to do that would be engaging in the opposite (less popular) form of the accepted (suicide story). When you constantly stroke the audience’s sensibility you add to the myths, which are created and fueled through repetition. I don’t think Bresson is suggesting we all commit suicide to be different or attain grace, but rather that we should strive to make the world worthy of us. One way to do that is to live less selfishly and reach out to a Mouchette.

Muriel

Helene: “You’ve changed, and I know who’s changed you.

Bernard: “Whereas you don’t change.”

Exploring the longstanding effects of memory has been the primary concern of Alain Resnais’ remarkable career. The lingering effects of war were the centerpiece of three of his early masterpieces. His holocaust documentary Night & Fog, probably the greatest documentary ever produced despite it being a short, mixes the past (liberation) with the present to, among other things, depict how atrocities are deliberately obscured and willfully suppressed due to the refusal to accept personal responsibility, and thus lost due to the unreliability of memory and the passage of time. His first feature film Hiroshima Mom Amour switched from a wide scale to an intimate more personal one, dealing with the emotional consequences on would be lovers, a French actress and Japanese architect. The atomic bomb creates an unbridgeable gap centered on the fact that she cannot possibly know what Hiroshima being bombed was like.

Though returning to Night and Fog script writer Jean Cayrol, a concentration camp survivor, Muriel more closely resembles Hiroshima Mon Amour due to the impossibility of connection. The unnamed man and woman actually found a temporary bond in Hiroshima Mon Amour, that the events of World War II made it impossible for them to return home, thus at least allowing for a fleeting relationship on some sad shameful level. In Muriel, Resnais deals with two wars, making it impossible for the characters to grasp one others suffering, and thus they cannot find even the mutual ground that allows any form of connection much less companionship. While many aspects of Night and Fog and Hiroshima Mon Amour are incorporated into Muriel, which in the hands of a lesser director might make it something of a rehash, this is Resnais, a man who even if hardly anyone in America realizes it may have done more to add to the cinematic language than any director. He approaches the issues in different highly distinctive ways, both thematically and cinematically, in the end arguably surpassing either previous landmark (though I still find Hiroshima to be the most affecting and moving of the three).

Unperturbed by the banning of colleague Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat, Resnais went ahead with also incorporating the shameful taboo subject of torture during the most recent black spot on France, the Algerian War. Aside from perhaps condescending and confrontational Bernard, his characters are apolitical. That excludes a dialogue, but their lives have been immeasurably effected by the decisions of their and other leaders. Resnais’ refusal to collude in sweeping the atrocities under the rug cost him at the box office and stirred the usual blind hatred, but in every way the film is on par with any late 1950’s early 1960’s masterpiece, especially when it comes to exploring the capabilities of the medium. Nearly 45 years later it’s still more modern than just about anything being produced, and certainly more daring and advanced.

The film consists of the brief time where Helene (Delphine Seyrig), Bernard (Jean-Baptiste Thierree), & Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Kerien) occupy similar space. The severely traumatized characters actually inhabit their own world with their own sense of time and space. While that intersects the lives of others, they are always missing pieces and facts, some because the world goes on whether they are present or not, most because their past overwhelms the present. Their memories distract and disturb them to the point of making them absent minded, their loss and in some cases guilt walls them off from humanity, resulting in permanent detachment. As Alphonse says, “It’s amazing, you think you know someone you love, but you’re wrong. Every person is a private world.” But stating and explaining the plot is rare in Muriel, which instead chooses to purposely shroud the truth amidst many unreliable statements, some purposely so and others accidental due to the effects of memory on perception.

Films generally use dialogue to state the points in a fairly blunt manner. Resnais expresses it all through his choice of technique, camera shots and edits. He finds a way to relate the whole of human experience, which combines the physical with the mental. Normally we only get the physical, the characters are present and they talk about the plot. Usually you get the point of view, and sometimes the thoughts of the main character, but Resnais shows what’s going on inside and outside all of them, to the extent they know or comprehend it themselves.

Resnais explores memory from so many facets. It’s vague and virused, always fading and morphing. Fear and pain make you forget, or remember the basis but not the details because a snippet colored by how you feel about it now comes back to you rather than the entire account. His editing not only represents multiple points of view, but also aims to match the characters confused train of thought.

Memory is based on association, so Resnais brings this forth by replacing traditional continuity with fragments. Bologne was destroyed during WWII and is now like it’s inhabitants, at once living in the past and present. Parts are preexisting, summoning memories of the good old days while parts are rebuilt, erasing the past yet at the same time conjuring up memories of what used to be there for those old enough to remember. Parts attempt to honor the past but mean nothing to those who lived it beyond bringing their mind to a place where something really did happen. We are made to feel like the truth, or part of it, is trapped in the architecture. Unfortunately, it can’t talk, not that they'd be any more reliable than humans for the same reasons.

Consistency comes from time, but at a given moment many things are taking place in the world, so Resnais breaks the audio and visual synchronization, implicitly linking characters and events at the same time it shows the distance between them. The scenes playing over each other make us aware of many aspects including perception vs. reality and memory vs. truth, as well as the concurrence of life. The story is never limited, at most turns Resnais subtly expands it from the main characters to all of Bologne if not France. They are dealing with the same issues; we just aren’t spending enough time with them to unearth them.

The scenes where the characters are together are actually more startling because they act like they are still apart. Resnais depicts this by denying traditional point/counterpoint cutting methods, thus showing the “wrong” person or point of view during a discussion, implying none of them really know what’s going on as they are lost in their minds. Scenes are purposely shattered, giving us no sense of whole even in Helene’s tiny apartment. This gives the illusion of discontinuity, but that’s rarely actually the case. Time moves forwards, but thoughts interrupt and Resnais chooses concurrence over the traditional method of sticking to one character.

After two features Resnais was already known as “King of dolly shots”, but he’s never been one to rest on his laurels and sit still. Here he refuses to roll the camera, instead using the far more noticeable tactic of panoramics, even regularly violating the vaunted 180 degree rule, to avoid adopting a single point of view. They show the characters relation as well as detachment, both the literal and figurative distance between them. Resnais tactics grow increasingly more conscious throughout his body of work. Unlike Hollywood whose idea of a good edit is one you don’t notice, Resnais purposely draws your attention to the changes in image, thus making you consider their implications.

The characters are so remote they seem apart even while they are attempting to interact. They are too preoccupied to answer each other’s questions. Their trauma manifests in a sort of autism where they just say whatever comes to mind, completely disregarding what the other just asked or stated because it simply didn’t register. Bernard, a soldier who recently returned from Algeria, is the most traumatized. He never makes eye contact with anyone, and Helene tends to stare blankly as well. Alphonse appears more normal, but is dealing with his losses by attempting to deny their existence, and thus his responsibility and accountability the way France denies their collaboration with the Nazis during the occupation and their imperialism in Algeria. Alphonse regularly tells fantasy versions of his past that will make you believe he’s a big shot and thus keep him at the forefront of everyone’s mind.

Helene is lost in the past. Her life ended when Alphonse left her on the eve of World War II. It’s more the lack of explanation, and to a lesser extent the suddenness, than the act itself. Her mind needs to fill in those missing pieces, to have a more complete version of the truth so she might be able to accept the past, but 22 years later so much has changed Alphonse probably couldn’t tell her his exact reasons if his life depended on it. Helene ironically has a gambling addiction, waging her present on hope for the future, neither of which are meaningful to her. She makes a living selling antiques from the apartment so she can be surrounded by them at all times. Alphonse says she invited him back after all these years because, “She needs to have her world around her.”

Bernard is using Marie-Do (Martine Vatel) to conduct a fantasy relationship with an Algerian girl named Muriel. It masks his guilt for torturing and killing Muriel by replacing that past. At the same time he’s gathering proof on the Muriel tragedy, though his facts seem to conveniently bypass his culpability and focus on instigator and partner in crime Robert (Philippe Laudenbach) and France as a whole for being mixed up in their affairs.

Resnais has the guts to name the film after a character we never see or hear. His aim, as with the holocaust in Night and Fog and the atomic bomb in Hiroshima Mon Amour is to represent the Algerian War in a morally honest manner. Honesty can come from showing real footage like he did in Night and Fog, but Muriel is a representative character. Mostly honesty it’s derived from your attitude toward the events. He’s not going to build stoke us up about whether Muriel will live or die, he’s going to ting every frame with his anger and disgust. He’s not going to give us a replication, which only serves to replace the truth in our minds, almost always with a much glossier and more superficial version that we are comfortable with rather than truly disgusted by. These replications evoke an acceptance, complacency, and especially dismissal. We decide we've learned from it so we won’t do it again, until we do.

As the Val Lewton horror films showed us, the imagined is far more terrifying than whatever you could put on screen. Resnais however uses irony and focuses more on fact vs. fiction. While Bernard is heard providing the blow by blow of one of the many hidden truths, Muriel’s torture and murder, Resnais shows a newsreel of French soldiers having fun in Algeria and helping the Algerian children. It’s the kind used to convince citizens of the noble intentions behind their countries compassionate and benign occupation. The scene shows how fact and fiction are so often and easily reversed. The newsreel is a form of truth, the one the oppressor keeps as the official version in our minds as long as they can get away with it. Of course, it really did happen and some good may have even come from those moments, but obviously the lie is it’s meant to represent all that went on there in our minds. The narration is much less believable in the sense it’s an unverified account provided by a person who has reason to hide from what he did. And Resnais has focused on ways the truth is deliberately concealed and suppressed behind lies, facades, and the passage of time to avoid responsibility and repercussions. However, we believe his version is at least a perspective of what happened because we’ve seen how the event has traumatized him.

If you don’t pay good attention Muriel won’t overwhelm you because Resnais approaches extraordinary war horror and trauma through mundane day to day postwar life. It looks amazingly simple, but is deceptively complex. We recognize the ritualistic and banal immediately, the surface, but it may take 10 viewings to unearth all that’s hidden beneath. Resnais is so subtle you don’t necessarily even notice major details like the object Bernard is putting in his desk while not registering Helene’s questions about Muriel at the outset is a disassembled handgun. Resnais doesn’t cue you to the fact his characters are lying. In fact, some of his point is that they aren’t always doing it on purpose. He gives you some things that are not too surprising such as Alphonse introducing his young lover, Francoise (Nita Klein), he brought to his old lover Helene’s as his niece and Helene giving a man the no more explanation needed excuse that they are relatives. But watch what they are eating at dinner compared to their comments on the food and you’ll start doubting everything that comes out of anyone’s mouth. Each time you watch Muriel it grows much deeper because you pick up more of the details, sort out the truth from the various remembrances.

The closing scene comes off as startling and devastating simply from the power of alternating technique. Alphonse’s past comes calling, but the three main characters have all left the area, thus bringing our end to the continuing story of their isolation. Helene’s apartment had constantly been denied time and space as a way of depicting the effects of the wars on the characters that inhabited it. Now that they may forever be truly separated, the all time great cinematographer Sacha Vierny dollies for the first time, going through all the rooms. We finally see the apartment without any edits to fragment it or panaramics to deny our sense of whole. We remember many objects, but our perception of them is entirely altered. We realize once and for all it’s not the architecture that can’t exist as a whole, but the people who inhabit it. Freed from the various obsessions and distractions that keep everyone engaged in their own hopeless solitary trajectories, a unity has finally been reached, one of profound melancholy that like Hiroshima Mon Amour excludes even the possibility of love. As Muriel was physically absent from her story even though ever present in the mind, so too are Helene, Bernard, & Alphonse from our ultimate, probably lasting memory of their story.

Twilight of a Woman’s Soul

In an effort to pretend Soviet cinema began with Vladimir Lenin, the couple thousand films made under Tsar Nicholas II were vaulted. In order to be considered a pioneer, people have to actually have access to your work, which excluded the innovative and brilliant career of Yevgeni Bauer out of the cinematic history books. Far funnier than the Reds denying their country who knows how much credit is that Bauer was reportedly sympathetic to the communist cause. And even if he wasn’t, since he died prematurely they certainly could have claimed him.

About a quarter century before the widely praised use of deep focus in William Wyler’s films, Bauer was not only utilizing the technique in his films, but even doing so to better effect. Bauer’s background as an artistic photographer and production designer led him to juxtapose decor laden dark foreground and alternately well lit background. His careful placement of objects added dimensionality, while under exposing the foreground called

our attention to the existence of the further more illuminated areas our eye naturally tends to ignore. By moving the actors through the sets rather than keeping them largely stationary, cutting, or moving the camera with them (extremely difficult at the time), the actors walking through the lights and past the props gives the film a seeming three dimensional depth. But the shadows and precisely cast lights did a lot more than simply eliminating the flatness of the screen, they spoke of the characters mood and mental state. This allows the acting to be restrained. As Bauer almost never comes closer than a mid shot, the actors are never enticed to mug and thus must do much of their work through poses.

Twilight is about the plight of a wealthy girl Vera (Vera Chernova) who is shunned by high society, though the feeling is mutual as she knows nothing fruitful comes from aristocratic charades. Hoping to give her life some purpose, she decides to help the poor. I found it quite lame that the first person the naive woman helps gives her a rude introduction to life outside the protection of money, raping her. It’s less than a 50 minute film, and exploring the effects the rape and her subsequent killing of the sleeping man have on her life as well as others is the purpose. Prince Dolskij (A. Agrujumov) is told the shocking truth after their marriage, but in typical Bauer fashion, displeased with the man (he’s horrified) the heroine leaves him and becomes successful in show business. The result is the weak man once again suffers for mistreating the stronger modern woman.

Perhaps Bauer’s first surviving film pales in comparison to some of his films from a few years later (due to an unfortunate accident his career only lasted from 1913-1917), but it’s hard to not be amazed by the technique. In addition to the deep focus photography there’s a brief tracking shot and even an early dream sequence - the idea so fresh it’s actually labeled “a dream” - utilizing superimposition and shot through a veil. It’s easy to see After Death is quite a step forward since it follows Twilight on the Milestone DVD, but Twilight is technically and thematically far more advanced than almost anything from its era. Perhaps more importantly, it’s compulsively watchable. Even at the end of the silent era drama tends to be hard to watch unless delivered by a real master, but Bauer predates most of the directors that are remembered today. Cecile B. DeMille’s corny hokem is impossible for me to sit through without forcing myself, and even if they have more artistic merit the over the top lavishness and extravagance of Bauer’s peers Giovanni Pastrone and D.W. Griffith have me balking almost as often.

I appreciate Bauer because he shows everything, usually rather than stating it. Sometimes he practically refuses to do either, but I’d always rather be unsure of details like whether Vera was deflowered for several minutes, hell even forever, than have everything confirmed and reconfirmed for those who were dozing the first three times.

After Death

A highly psychological Edgar Allen Poe themed exploration of death’s grasp on the living, this morbid and macabre tale of obsession with death that breeds madness originated as a short story by Ivan Turgenev. While it could easily have been made into a bad five minute short, Bauer gets over 45 minutes out of it without it seeming the least bit stretched or padded. After Death is actually far more artistic than his earlier masterpiece Twilight of a Woman’s Soul, but even though every frame is overloaded with artistry, as Bauer progresses the techniques become less apparent because they blend so well with the story. Bauer is remarkably subtle, especially for his time, and considering how much emphasis he put into using all means possibly to render the story.

The main character Andrei Bagrov (Vitold Polonsky) has become reclusive since the death of his mother, but a friend persuades him to attend a social gathering. Bauer depicts the party through a three minute tracking shot, placing the camera on a board rigged between two bicycles. However, we notice the scene not for it’s possibly groundbreaking technique, but rather for the surprised reaction of the many attendees in seeing the reclusive loner and the discomfort and clumsiness of the hero attempting to navigate in society. The initial pans reveal the surprise of the gossipy attendants, who in their own subtle way gape and gawk at the presence of the perpetual mourner. The pauses, hesitations, jerks, and later pans reveal Andrei’s discomfort in being amongst these people who will undoubtedly judge him harshly.

Andrei briefly encounters Zoya (Vera Karalli), a very modern and forward actress, who writes a letter to him requesting his presence and jumps right to declaring her love for the isolated scientist. Andrei is not surprisingly shocked, as Zoya is a virtual stranger to him who has uttered a few words to him, at most. As in Twilight of a Woman’s Soul, the woman leaves the man forever due to not liking his reaction, but this time she does so by killing herself three months later, over Andrei’s unrequited love.

Too deeply immersed in his obsession with his dead mother to reciprocate while she was living, Andrei’s fixation now shifts from one dead woman to another. Both women seem to have made a far greater impression on him post mortem, as they’ve lodged themselves in the forefront of his mind. Andrei is not only a scientist, but also a photographer who is susceptible to dreaming, and it’s those dreams show us why. Bauer’s men tend to be weak, intimidated creatures who want to control and possess women. The Zoya of Andrei’s dreams has none of the independent and forthright qualities of the one we saw in “real life”. Instead she’s an outdated model who would be subservient.

As Andrei increasingly approaches insanity, Bauer mixes flashbacks, dreams, and apparitions, the audience let to determine whether the ghost of the rejected actress is actually pulling him to toward the grave or if her appearances are merely manifestations of his own guilt. The techniques – silhouette, superimposition, tinting, artistic lighting, deep focus photography – and the characterization – a lost lonely man obsessing over the unattainable - work hand in had with the themes and moods to blur life on earth with the after life, reality with dream. Andrei can have Zoya in his hand through her picture or in his mind, but he wants to inhabit the same world as she does, making it a clash between the visible and invisible world. Bauer does use a close-up here, which has a profound effect because it’s so unlike any frame he composes elsewhere in the film.

Bauer is one of cinema’s first great artists, constantly experimenting. What’s important though is he never settled for mere spectacle, his techniques always worked to the advantage of the story he was telling. His spacing and framing were years ahead of his peers, combined with brilliant lighting and well placed decor, he achieved deep focus to get past the flatness of the screen while Gregg Toland was still in elementary school. Certainly more emphasis on the development of cinematic technique needs to be shifted from D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Racist Nation to this rather recently “discovered” Russian master.

Atalante

“Things are gonna change!” – Juliette

Directing from a stretcher in the cold of winter before dying of tuberculosis at a mere 29 years of age, Jean Vigo’s free-spirited fever dream mixes his documentary and surrealist tendencies to create rhythmic poetry. Atalante is one of the most beloved first features, having finished among the 10 greatest films, period, in the 1992 Sight & Sound poll of directors and critics.

Beneath, and often because of, its lack of plot, throwaway dialogue, and pranksterish tendencies lies an extraordinarily honest and perceptive look at the difficulties of being bound to another human being for life. Vigo’s film starts with newlyweds Jean (Jean Daste), a responsible ship captain, and Juliette (Dita Parlo), who has never left her tight nit pastoral village, marching to begin their “honeymoon”, and the rest of their lives, on the eponymous ship and ends around the time for the ship to begin the journey back. Dziga Vertov’s brother with a movie camera Boris Kaufman films what seems to be one aside after another, but something comes from many of them, other than laughs and fun for the audience. Vigo isn’t one of the slew of bad directors who thinks everything must have a plot payoff, which allows the film to have rich, lively characters and seem so wonderfully alive.

The characters simply being themselves leads to marital problems in a more organic manner than the throwaway plot driven fare. They do, and don’t do, what they are used to, and you either tolerate the other person’s tendencies, habits, and priorities or try to change them. In Vigo you can be intolerable one moment for some annoying thing you say or do, but appealing the next. The newlyweds alternate between bickering and kissing in this highly sensual film that’s a testimony to the tension easing power of sex. They don’t mean to fight, but Juliette isn’t used to a closet overfull with dirty clothes or cats on the table and Jean isn’t used to ever putting duty second.

The other two crew members are obviously effected by the new member as well. La pere Jules (Michel Simon) might be second in command, but is always trying to be the center of attention. He gives demonstrations of his knowledge and skill, and even if he’s not particularly knowledgeable or skillful the older man can convey his experiences and is entertaining in a foolish sort of way. Jules tries a seduction of a sort, probably only different than the ones he uses with men in that he realizes men tend to become more interesting to women by showing their feminine side (and vice versa) because its easier to relate to what you are more used to. While Jules charming Juliette has the typical result of making the husband jealous, it just doesn’t come off as deliberate and contrived as usual because it’s derived from a brief series of interactions that are unimportant in and of themselves rather than ones where they might as well put a sign up that says deliberate lustful intent. What Vigo removes is the psychology. His film is freer because it’s based on human nature.

Miguel Almareyda, Vigo’s father, was a noted anarchist newspaper operator who died in prison when his son was 12. Vigo brings that spirit to his film, particularly in the Jules character. Michel Simon, in particular, does a lot of ad libbing. He believed a scene was only real the first time, as repetition inherently made it a lie by eliminating the originality, spontaneity, and inspiration. He became one of the legendary character actors, but his memorable work is for the directors who didn’t force him into retakes, particularly Jean Renoir.

What makes Atalante so memorable is the events of marriage and sailing take a back seat to thoughts, feelings, and dreams the experiences evoke. It’s not that the newlyweds don’t love each other or aren’t right for one another, just that the adjustment to married life is difficult for everyone. Obviously it’s harder for Juliette who has left everyone she ever knew behind, and quickly finds the grand adventure of the sea is a monotonous and dull trek past the same dull river banks. Jean & Juliette’s love is stronger when they’re apart, which makes for some stunning crosscut sequences. One takes place with the lovers in separate beds touching themselves while fantasizing about the other. The editing matches their movements to make it appear they are together and action is causing reaction.

Though an early sound film, its heart is very much in the silent era. Maurice Jaubert’s typically superb score is the only sound that goes a long way toward telling the story. Vigo was a pioneer of underwater photography, and once again crafts a memorable submerged sequence with Jean searching for the image of his true love in the water, which is eventually delivered through superimposition.

As a whole, the film plays like the Nouvelle vague 25 years before it happened. A young Francois Truffaut was particularly influenced by L’Atalante despite seeing the old Gaumont hatchet work version that removes over 20 minutes from a film that’s not even 90 to start with. Vigo’s location filmmaking became one of the staples of the entire French new wave. I personally can’t see how anyone could have a reaction other than laughing John Huston’s Rear Projection Queen off the screen, even if you even hadn’t seen what Vigo was able to accomplish 17 years earlier in his debut feature with scant resources coming off his short Zero For Conduct making no money back due to being banned. Aside from Humphrey Bogart, who of course nabs the bogus award when he’s hardly at his best, there’s hardly anything believable about that film. They may have filmed in the Congo, Uganda, Zaire, & Turkey, but they could have filmed at the creek by my house for all the influence the locale had on the stars. None of the feeling or adventure of those places comes across in the finished product due to the way they chose to make it. I could go on about the influence the clouds have on L’Atalante, the imagination and shaded cinematography that captures the feelings and moods, but ultimately what separates the two films is Vigo’s vibrant work is alive in every way.

The End

“In this great human perversion he had learned that to live on earth it was required he hate and murder, and he would neither hate nor murder, but he wanted to live, as all men did. There was no room for an innocent child trying to walk as quietly and peacefully as possible through all the noise produced by stronger men fighting for their favorite toys” – Christopher Maclaine as narrator

The threat of nuclear warfare brought about many cinematic takes on world obliteration in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s before people went back to doing what they do best, ignoring problems. Jack Arnold’s The Mouse That Roared handled it comically, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb pushed absurdity to the max, Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe depicted the same crisis with deadly seriousness. Prior to all these, experimental filmmaker Christopher Maclaine chose the tactic of implicating the entire human race in the suicidal insanity.

Maclaine asks the audience to put themselves in the story, to see themselves in one of his six characters who are living the last day of their life. His gamble is we’ll do exactly the opposite with the first three. Their lives are bleak and their loneliness and desperation has led them to measures that cause this to be the end of the line for them.

In some form everyone can identify with them. I mean, we’ve all been misunderstood and rejected at some time or other. Maclaine’s editing technique works overtime to deny our empathy and sympathy. No matter how tragic their stories we are constantly distracted by cuts to images that have nothing to do with the sad sack. They aren’t in these images or viewing them, which keeps us from developing any emotional identification with them. Maclaine’s poetic narrative is potent and from the heart, but he forces us to identify with the film most when he speaks to us over a black screen. In other words, when it’s least a film.

I was taken right away by the audacity of Maclaine’s editing decisions. The narrator says, “Let us visit our first friend on his last day” then the video comes up from black to a rapid montage of men, women, foliage, dancing puppets, an expired parking met that’s a metaphor for man’s remaining time on earth. Repetition of images adds meaning and importance to them. Eventually we realize all the main characters were in this opening, and some of the images we don’t understand initially turn out to be flash forwards so to speak as we’ll reach a point when they come in contact with the character. But this is not a puzzle; it’s a kind of rhythmic mosaic of life on earth if there’s an earth to have life on.

Disorienting techniques shouldn’t be confused with randomness. By quickly cutting to images of disparate color and texture that often don’t match the narrative our entire state of being becomes tumultuous. Restless editing can have the effect of making it difficult to not want to do something. Maybe it’s simply giving up on the film, Maclaine hopes it’ll be changing the world so it can continue. Certainly The End is not a work you can watch passively. Maclaine practically makes you jump out of your seat when he says, “the person next to you is a leper.” This isn’t a horror film, but the surprise and shock of those words coming from the narrator provides a legitimate scare.

“You have not seen yourself you say. These people are all violent and suicidal! You are none of these. And yet you sit there quietly awaiting the grand suicide of the human race just as if you were not part of humanity at all. Just as if you had not asked for oblivion just as openly as these poor frightened souls you see dissolving before your eyes.”

The people in the second half search for love and happiness and try to choose peace. They may question the possibility, but they haven’t given up. They still have restraint and willpower. But it’s not enough. It’s meaningless if others don’t as well. They can’t force even a leper to reciprocate, much less another country or the entire planet.

The world is torn apart by the impossibility of happiness when things are inflicted upon everyone. The images Maclaine shows when he cuts away from the character the current story is about are taking place more or less at the same time. We see people, places, plants, animals, and mannequins. But there’s disunity in this world. The birds, plants, and oceans look like they always do, but the zombiefied humans are different from the mannequins largely in the fear and insanity they display. Technological advances and mass marketing techniques have eliminated human dignity and peaceful coexistence.

A running motif is just that, a man running. The End could alternately be called The Futility of the Long Distance Runner. He never stops because there is no refuge, and he knows it. In the brilliant opening the atomic bomb goes off, we see a man racing downhill until he passes the camera and disappears off screen, The End (the title screen though we are meant to take it literally) comes up, then all is black for a while.

The audience can see themselves, to a certain extent, in the characters of the second half because they theoretically choose to live. These characters may be are less desperate. Their attitude may be better, and they may be at peace. But in a few hours what will it matter? Maclaine’s entire point is they are no different from the people in the first half except that they don’t realize they’ve chosen death. So in the end, we don’t want to identify with any of these people.

Maclaine eventually gives us Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, a man, a building, a mannequin, geese, knives being thrown at a board, and asks us to write the story ourselves. Of course, Maclaine kind of tells it anyway, just in a less structured way. In this story the man has a chance to kill, but chooses not to. Still, all the characters are desperate solitary individuals until the sixth story where a man meets a woman. The music is upbeat, they seem playful and happy. Everything is joyful, then the world is nuked! The End!

Beat poet Christopher Maclaine may have the smallest body of work of anyone who directed a masterpiece. He only directed four films as far as anyone seems to know. Starting from The End’s 35 minutes, his works grew progressively shorter until his 7 minute Scotch Hop. His entire body of work is shorter than Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante. Like the characters and world he depicts in The End, his existence seems to have been inharmonious and Methedrine took his mind long before his life.

Maclaine experiments with time, memory, narrative, and audience reaction through the editing primarily. The soundtrack which includes bagpipes and other traditional music for the people who try to resist or ignore the changes of the 20th century and narrative play their parts as well. The End is one of the rare films that seems personally addressed to everyone who watches it, which one appreciates more and more in a time when sitting in a theater seems more like a passive acceptance of the incoming assault.

His aesthetic may be that of a home video complete with microphone imperfections on the soundtrack. If The End wasn’t made over thirty years before its existence one would say the creator must have watched too much no Music Televison. But who cares? It’s the kind of film Guy Maddin could get a few ideas from. It’s extremely creative and full of character.

Second Breath

Jean-Pierre Melville weaves an intricate web of shaky alliances that can only lead to deception and double crossing. Melville doesn’t condense Second Breath as much as some of his others because the focus isn’t as specifically on his main character, making it less in line with Robert Bresson, but at nearly 2 ½ hours it’s one of the most complex and intricately plotted film noirs in every possible good way.

Fated fading criminal Gustave Minda (Lino Ventura) escapes from prison 16 years after being framed by Jo Ricci (Marcel Bozzuffi), but lacks the resources to make a clean break from Paris. Visiting his lover Manouche (Christine Fabrega), he kills two of Jo’s men who are attempting to blackmail her. On the recommendation of his friend Orloff (Pierre Zimmer), who opts out of the armored car robbery because it involves killing the escorting guards, Gu winds up being the fourth man in the gang of Jo’s more accomplished brother Paul Ricci (Raymond Peelegrin).

Commissaire Blot (Paul Meurisse), an equally ruthless taskmaster who is different from Gu largely due to the side of the law he represents, pursues the escaped criminal with atypical diligence. He doesn’t question witnesses and suspects, he tells them his theories to see how they react. Understanding how to use the distrust of gangsters against them and sometimes matching violence with violence (though the censors quelled this theme by forcing Melville to cut a scene of police torture), Blot is portrayed as being worse than cold killer Gu because he’s deceptive and thus can’t be trusted.

The main change Gu sees from the old days is cops and robbers have become co-dependent, a major violation of his strict moral code. Not that he wasn’t guilty of many things, but Gu rotted in jail rather than rat out the actual perpetrator of the crime he was imprisoned for, and he’d rather die than even be thought a stoolie.

Melville isn’t interested in a specific morality, but rather suiting the actions to his characters, so whether anyone agrees or identifies with them is largely irrelevant. His heroes live by their ethics until their destined death, and Gu is one of Melville’s classic idealized tragi-criminals trapped in a hopeless web of betrayal. Though not as solitary as Le Samourai’s Jef, and despite valuing loyalty above all else, there’s an impossibility stemming from your environment (line of work) that prevents you from being with those who care about him.

Unlike Jules Dassin’s Rififi, Melville’s focus isn’t so much on the caper, but rather how the rituals it entails define the thought process and mindset of the characters. Still, the film isn’t exactly psychological. What’s interesting about Melville is while the minute observations of the entire step by step process link him to Bresson, his aesthetic is self conscious and dreamy. The mix of location shooting realism with film noir expressionism combined with his detached shooting style makes his characters sometimes seem to be willing participants in their own demise. They do what they are allowed with ritual precision even though they know it’s a dead end.

As always, Melville’s tales of honor and loyalty are expertly photographed and extremely intense. This is one of his most violent films. Even when the action is largely left to the imagination, there’s a savagery to it stemming from the cold calculated efficiency. The shielding and mysterious qualities of stairways are one of the many examples of the tension Melville creates from very well utilized architecture. The action scenes are riveting because Melville creates suspense through showing the entire lead in using only amplified natural sounds. By refusing to rush the scenes and impose the obvious emotional manipulation on the audience, the anxiety becomes excruciating. The combination of good actors and Melville’s specific posing of their every move leads to memorable turns. Though not quite as good as Le Samourai, the film certainly deserves to be seen.

Story of Women

The influence of Otto Preminger on Claude Chabrol has always been downplayed in favor of Alfred Hitchcock, but once again Chabrol acts as non judgmental judge presiding over the facts by showing as many sides and aspects of the accused as possible. Even though we know the outcome beforehand due to Story of Women being based on the true story of Marie-Louise Girand, Chabrol still renders his film as an insidious mystery.

Une Affair De Femmes deals with the issues of abortion, prostitution, and the death penalty, showing the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of the Vichy regime that’s controlling fallen France, but secondarily that of the French themselves. Some form of compromise comes with any time period, and man’s weakness and selfishness leads to misdeeds. Nazis are worse because they aren’t so much even punishing for legality or opposition, but simply for making your own decisions, for trying to be free. As always, morality is the last refuge of the immoral as national security is of the insecure. But whatever evils may pervade due to Puppet Petain, Chabrol shows the French to be more at odds with themselves; the fascists simply bring certain deficiencies to the fore.

Family is the center of the film, and every action from either adult has important understated effects on the entire unit. Marie (Isabelle Huppert) has suffered, struggling to feed the kids while Paul (Francois Cluzet) was fighting the Nazis. She blames him for everything, as marriage promised her a better life but hasn’t come close to delivering it, causing her to refuse to give him an inch out of spite.

Paul returns from a stay in detainment camp wounded and broken. He needs Marie for all types of support, but she rejects him because he can’t provide what he needs himself. Life went on without him, and he’s not been missed. His return means even less food to go around, less motherly attention, and the revocation of certain privileges such as the son sleeping in the good bed with his mom. Paul’s existence is solitary, full of longing, want, and horniness for his wife who perpetually refuses her “duties”. He can’t get any part of his life back, and Marie feels he’s merely too lazy. Of course, being a drunk with a violent streak doesn’t help his cause. Like his country, Paul doesn’t put up much of a fight, but he wanted to then and eventually will regain his strength and make his stand against the current enemy.

Marie doesn’t have any diabolical plot. She stumbles upon a neighbor trying to abort a child and quickly sees she can do it better. More importantly to her, the compensation she’ll receive will make her life more tolerable. Marie becomes a capitalist, allowing her to provide a more comfortable life and have some fun. Her childlike exuberance grows as her illegal activities - she also lets her new friend Lulu (Marie Trintignant) use her home for a flophouse – improve her means, thus giving the uneducated woman freedom to pursue singing lessons.

Chabrol shows every side of Huppert’s character, with her husband, kids, nazi aiding lover Lucien (Nils Tavernier son of screenwriter Colo and director Bertrand) who has some of the prestige and influence she believed her husband would, clients, prostitute friend, and accusers. We see her ups and downs, strengths and weaknesses. As always, ever brilliant Huppert denies us access to her mind and resists our empathy at every turn. She’s not a saint like Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake. She’s just an ordinary woman who wants more from life than she’s had, and winds up paying far more dearly than she deserves.

Huppert is one of the most intelligent actresses, but is probably even better at playing dumb. She has a childish obliviousness to the weight of her actions, to the fact they have any weight. Few performers could pull off a line (about her best friend who was suddenly interned) like “Rachel can’t be Jewish, she would have told me so” without being laughed off the screen. Chabrol rides her for all she’s worth, with Trintignant and especially the vastly underrated Cluzet making more out of their characters than they should be.

As always, Chabrol doesn’t take sides. This isn’t a unilateral plea riddled with sentiment and emotion and overloaded with moralization. We see the good and bad in every character, and we come to our own conclusions because the film isn’t a manipulative polemic. In the end, we question whether the wartime setting should change our expectations for the characters or if a very similar story couldn’t be made of the present.

Betty Blue

“Life’s got it in for me. As soon as I want something, I realize I can’t have it.” – Betty

Perhaps the key to Jean-Jacques Beineix’s work lies in the fact he’s also a painter. Beineix shapes reality to his liking, making it grander, more bizarre and symbolic. His feature films tend to be purposely overblown, melding thriller, comedy, eroticism, farce, irony, surrealism, and meditation all artistically stylized into a series of wacky, and in this case tragic, episodes that are highly accessible.

Beineix isn’t too interested in logic or reality. He’s original for reshaping things in an entertaining way. He inserts Godardian asides, Woody Allen sketches, whatever his imagination cooks up for the fun of it. In the case of Diva and Betty Blue, many people around the world enthusiastically joined in.

Everything is left open for interpretation. Betty may be nothing more than a figment of Zorg’s imaginative mind, a character in the novel he’s writing. This isn’t really a film to ponder though. You get swept away by the mood, Gabriel Yared’s catchy carnival theme, the palpable heat, and the painterly framing and use of color to illuminate and contrast. Love it or hate it, it’s an experience, and that alone puts it above the predictable standardized assaults that fill the screens at the box office near you, and those near everyone else.

Zorg (Jean Hugues Anglade) is an easy-going ennui ridden handyman who probably wrote a novel to attain or regain some sense of being alive. We suspect the publishers may well be right about him being a lousy writer because he shows no great intelligence or gift for language and description, but to naive Betty he’s surely the greatest living author, and she loves him that much more for it. High-strung fiercely independent Betty (Beatrice Dalle) completes Zorg in every way, but as is always the case some of what Zorg was missing he was better off without.

Anything or anyone who tries to reign in freedom loving Betty in any way is liable to set her off. The 20-year-old is passionate about everything, which makes her a great lover, but she’s still in child in many ways, throwing tantrums when things don’t go her way. When Betty’s intense, often violent rage against those who offend her doesn’t achieve the desired results, she increasingly battles herself with self-destruction graduating to self-mutilation.

From the outset, their personalities almost dictate that Zorg cannot win. But when you in love, or perhaps in need, you are willing to lose because at least you are still playing the game. Betty is a dominant unstable force who won’t be changed, so Zorg doesn’t even try. He initially sits by and watches, but eventually winds up coddling her deficiencies and taking on some of her traits unstable traits. Zorg constantly struggles to keep things afloat, as Betty is such a high maintenance bridge burner they can rarely stay in any area long enough for him to settle into a job, much less establish himself.

The 2-hour version with all the dreamy artistic scenes focuses more on Betty’s descent into madness, while the 3-hour version adds scenes of day to day life and shifts the focus to Zorg’s desperate attempts to protect his fragile love. He loves her unconditionally, and as such will do anything to keep them together. It’s through the dull monotony of daily rituals that we understand why he doesn’t dump the nutcase and return to his empty solitary life. Not only is she the only one that believes in him, her presence brightens and enlivens his life in so many ways. They have really good times together, but unfortunately they too often go remarkably bad.

Few films match the passion of Betty Blue in any regard. 37°2 le matin is actually a love story, and that’s a key to it being so hot. I think one reason few erotic films are respected is they are rarely about people who are together for any length of time. Sex and nudity are more or less eliminated from cinematic depictions of those relationships; it’s like taking a dump, you hopefully do it regularly enough there’s no point in showing it. And there’s certainly a puritanical faction that doesn’t want to promote what keeps partners as partners (unless it’s all about the beloved children). A war movie and an action movie can both be about violence, but it’s like a romance must be about love and thus can’t have too much sex and erotica must be about sex and thus can’t have too much sex. I realize this sounds stupid, but how many nudity filled movies have you seen that weren’t either the Last Tango in Paris anonymous screwing until it gets old or the Basic Instinct sex equals violence and death? Yet if you think about it, a lot of the sexiest movies don’t have any nudity (for reasons other than the performers wouldn’t do any or the producers knew it needed to be a PG-13) and there’s nothing less erotic than porn. The point is whether you express something through it, which Beineix does through his color coding and the actors do in every way. The fiery romantic passion is the highlight for their slow days, and we sense Zorg knows he couldn’t get that from a woman as laid back as himself, but in a sense Betty’s problem is she cannot choose where to channel her passion. The slowness and dullness of the long hot days leads to it being directed elsewhere, against others and ultimately herself.

The chemistry between the leads is superb. They are so comfortable with themselves and each other, we believe this is a truly deep bond. No matter how private the moment, they are so relaxed (maybe not the best description of Dalle, but she displays no tension beyond that which her character is supposed to). It never seems like Anglade and Dalle are being filmed; they are not the least bit self-conscious. Natural beauty Dalle goes around half-naked like someone who, having grown up on a tropical deserted island, had no reason to dress, and isn’t in a Hollywood movie where no frame of nipple can be left uncovered by the hair extensions. Considering her passionate protests and run ins with the law, perhaps this is Dalle’s best performance because it isn’t as far from the truth as we’d hope. In any case, it’s one of the great debut performances. Anglade is sensitive and caring enough to keep fighting for the woman who fights for him and his novel whether he wants her to or not. It’s through his mix of confidence and desire that we don’t laugh him off the screen when we know he’s acting as crazy as Betty to try to save her, and them.

An insanely independent spirit losing her mind and eventually leading to a mercy killing when she’ll never be Betty again, never be free, is far more credible than exhausting every sports movie and sexist overcoming cliche for the vast majority of the film then, with a sudden highly contrived turn, allowing Clint Eastwood to make his calculated highly manipulative and incredibly cheap political points. I don’t have any issue with assisted suicide, I balk at the shadiness of the incorporation. I can make this review have as much to do with mercy killing as Million Dollar Baby simply by ending with the statement that my coach is going to put me out of my misery now.

Days of Eclipse

Point of view shots of someone inside looking out suggest a spaceship landing in an arid rubble filled Central Asian landscape inhabited by displaced refugees of all USSR nations. The camera zooms in and out, pans across objects near and far, utilizes heavenly and wandering eye POV shots that cannot be coming from any of the humans, regularly denying the audience perspective and identification.

Though very much a science fiction, this otherworldly presence never manifests, at least not into a tangible form. Perhaps it could best be described as a mystical form of Big Brother. Like Victor Erice’s masterpiece Spirit of the Beehive, the actual tyrant is unseen and unmentioned, but the effects of his damage permeate every frame. The state’s statues persist, as relics whose meaning is long forgotten, lifeless as the ideals they were built on. However, the Russian citizens have been lost to the crumbling state system, somewhere between relocation and reprogramming. The older Asians sit and pray all day, while the younger Europeans attempt to work, though only for themselves as their dreams have been crushed through the realization the mission statement was held up for motivation, self protection, and to keep the able from rebelling.

Everyone seems conscious they’re letting life pass them by, but lack an outlet to reverse the trend. They suffer from three unders – employment, equipment, and entertainment. Whatever the inhabitants do to pass the time is repeated endlessly, yet no more meaning is found. If anything, it’s repeated because there is no meaning. Those who still believe its worth exerting the effort find an empty pointless ritual they know they can get away with to channel it into. The police and military rule the roost, but even they just stand around, making a random gesture once in a while to justify their presence.

There’s one man who is different, a young idealistic doctor Malyanov (Aleksei Ananishnov, who also starred in Sokurov’s somewhat linked Mother & Son) who accepts that the state knows best, takes their posting, and tries for them. He attempts to convince himself this is as good a place as any. He’s a successful high-spirited go getter, determined to accomplish something in spite of the adverse conditions.

Everyone is haggard except Malyanov, who looks like a refugee from the underwear ads, and his Fassbinder looking friend Alexander (Eskender Umarov). The locals have little use for the doctor’s remedies. He doesn’t speak the Asian’s language, and the few patients he has wind up ignoring his advice. He’s unable to assimilate himself to what’s left of the various groups cultures, always an outsider looking in. Even when he tries to break up a fight, he gets bet up by both men, who walk away as friends leaving him on the ground.

Worse than his unfulfilling work, Malyanov claims his only friend is a parrot, now deceased. Alexsandr Sokurov allows all the mysterious and mystical details to seep into the tale of endless empty days. The lone workaholic falls prey to solitude and isolation due to being underutilized like the rest of the inhabitants, and begins to have bizarre thoughts, nightmares, and hallucinations. We often can’t be sure if his visitors are real or imagined.

The suicide of his neighbor Andrej Pavlovich really bothers Malyanov, even though he barely knew him. He winds up with Pavlovich’s writings, bringing him to life in death. Writing seems the only point of life in this dune filled wasteland. It demands thought and attention, thus keeping your mind active. It will eventually find an audience, even if only of one. But in a sense even this freedom of thought is meaningless, as your words are liable to end up in the hands of a representative of the crushing system, the policeman who finds your corpse. Nonetheless, it’s a chance to bare witness, a last dying protest.

Writing kept the doctor alive even before he knew Pavlovich did the same. He chooses his own research project, spending sweaty days typing with one finger on each hand. He doesn’t really believe he’ll ever submit his work to the medical community, but if he’s lucky he’ll pass it on to a friend, communicating more to them when he’s gone than he ever could in person.

The discovery of meaning through human relationship temporarily renews Malyanov’s faith in the system. He finds an underfed sickly child (Seryozha Krylov), and knows that unlike the man who eats needles which mysteriously don’t show up in Malyanov’s X-rays, he could actually help this kid. What’s more, his research could be passed on to him. It’s his hope for salvation, until the child is ripped from his side. This event prompts a reversal of the stunning opening sequences, exiting earth in heavenly closeup that reveals more and more as the aliens back away from the planet. Perhaps the only alien is Malyanov himself, and now his spirit has departed? Malyanov now knows for sure he should leave Turkmenistan, but unlike Alexander he can’t bring himself to abandon his post because to do so would be to forsake all he’s been taught.

Sokurov is at his artistic peak in Days of the Eclipse. He regularly mixes post-processed images, moving form black and white to color to sepia tones to alter our perception of the world. Elongation of time is achieved through the inactivity of the lengthy takes, the patience of the camera failing to match that of those stuck in the wasteland, as it chooses to focus on something else in the midst of several scenes. These techniques along with the palpable heat, fear, paranoia, imposing landscapes, and general confusion create the specter of more powerful forces.

If you were baffled by the comparisons to the great master Sokurov studied under, Andrei Tarkovsky, because you started with Sokurov’s recent films such as the interminable Moloch, you’ll be pleasantly that Tarkovsky lives in The Days of Eclipse. Even if much of the mysticism and meditation are replaced by what, like Father and Son appears to most people other than Sokurov to be homoeroticism, The sepia tones, lengthy takes, influence of the settings, and sense of mystery are present. The Days of Eclipse is even based on a story by the Strugatsky brothers, who turned their novel "The Roadside Picnic" into Tarkovsky’s second sci-fi masterpiece Stalker. This is easily the most beautiful, challenging, and technically dazzling Sokurov film I’ve seen.

Half Nelson

“One thing does not make a man” – Dan Dunne

Complex, nuanced, and resonant, Half Nelson asks no simple questions and provides no easy solutions. The multiple facets of the far from black & white characters seep into the film through little details, which allows for a rare sense of discovery. The characters are three dimensional, sometimes noble but more often hypocritical, sometimes strong but more often weak. In other words, human to a fault.

Despite the best of intentions, Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) would be judged poorly by almost anyone who really knew him. They certainly wouldn’t want him around their child. Luckily for him, at school most people see his charming likable side. One of the two stretch premises Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden ask us to accept is a crack addict can be reliable enough day in and day out to hold a long hours job of teaching history and coaching girls basketball. Even in good realistically intentioned independent films, screenwriting is often about fitting your situations to the characters and world you wish to depict. We are not told how to judge any of the studied characters, in fact much of the point is we are urged not to because life is a lot more complicated than good guys and bad guys. Thus Fleck and Boden avoid highlighting, though their reliance on closeup sometimes undermines this, and refuse to stack the deck for or against anyone.

Dan has greatly reduced his goals. He was going to change the world through the truth, but he’s outraged by the fact people must not give a damn since most of the information is well known. Three decades after the U.S. undermined democracy in Chile, U.S. citizens still believe spreading democracy is the primary goal of the various U.S. foreign interventions. Proving there’s no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq didn’t change anything, if Rick Moranis kept combing the desert one of these days they’d turn up in his bristle. Showing there was no link between then enemies Sadaam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and that Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 didn’t matter because Sadaam’s a bad guy and we’re always the good guys.

In a sense, Dan’s nihilism matches that of the world he can’t reach or change. He’s a representative of the new left, succumbing to the helplessness of an ever right shifting world. The disillusioned but still principled character uses drugs to make it through life, which riddles his personal life in the expected ways, making the micro almost as impossible as he cannot form lasting relationships. When you believe in peace and nations solving problems through discourse, that you can’t do the same with another person weighs heavily as a violation of principle and mentality. It makes you blame yourself because you couldn’t get the job done, and repeated failures can transform the feeling to self-loathing.

Dan’s ability to interest and inspire his students is largely derived from his insistence on straying from the curriculum as much as he can get away with. He teaches the principles then asks the kids to plug facts into these models. They learn things like one person alone is weak, and how to identify those who are with and against you. Most importantly, he teaches them to think critically. Still, Fleck & Boden don’t act as if many of the kids even bother to listen. Arguably Dan’s only certain accomplishment is paving the way for a former student to become a history major at Georgetown, but he was too intoxicated to comprehend her father’s appreciative informing.

The second shaky premise is Drey (Shareeka Epps) is used to the fallibility of adults due to her parents broken marriage, so she understands their games, tricks, and downfalls. She doesn’t fully commit herself, keeping herself somewhat distant and aloof, but she certainly paid attention to Dan’s critical thinking lessons, keeping her from buying into what others are selling.

Rather than the usual paranoia riddled, community destroying nonsense where an adult who takes an interest in a child must be a pedophile, Half Nelson shows some reasons adults need Drey. First and foremost, they have to hope she’s trustworthy because she knows Dan’s a basehead due to catching him using in the locker room and Frank (Anthony Mackie) is a drug dealer because her brother is in prison for helping him out. A person you can trust at any age is valuable, but helps two problems considering much of their isolation is self-imposed due to having something to hide.

Drey’s father forgets she even exists, and her mother does her best but is always working double shifts, so Drey could use an adult or two in her life. Mutual need is the basis for a potentially lasting friendship; if it’s one sided the giver’s charity tends to run out. Drey considers Dan her friend because he does her favors like driving her home from basketball, and spends some time with her. His personality captivates her, and he’s able to hold her interest, which along with his secret contradiction peaks her curiosity.

Anything but the typical inspirational tale of good teacher saving the motivated student from violent and dangerous slum life, Half Nelson is more about the impotence of adults to figure out the means to do so. Dan understands what he’s trying to accomplish, at least when he isn’t drugged out of his mind, but Fleck & Boden aren’t about having superheroes, which allows them to acknowledge the goal is the easy part. The difficult part is the interaction with others that gives you the potential to achieve it.

Dan’s goal is to keep Drey away from Frank so she doesn’t end up a delivery girl, at best, but Frank’s a friend of the family who has known her for years. Confronting him and convincing him to cease and desist are two different beasts, especially when Dan is as questionable a role model. If anything, Frank has the moral high ground since his relationship with drugs is simply profiteering. We see the selfishness in Dan & Frank’s little battles over Drey, keeping self-interest in the equation adds a dimension of honesty that’s sorely lacking in most films. Half Nelson isn’t about providing trumped up victories, but simply continuing to find the strength to fight even if in an uncertain stumbling and bumbling manner. That strength doesn’t always lie within yourself, it sometimes needs to come from another.

Half Nelson fails when Fleck & Boden get too cute. The juxtaposition is often contrived. The oral reports of historical political changes are clumsily and abruptly inserted, but, in addition to the obvious, help show we know very little of what went on in the past on a large scale, just as we know little of the small scale, the truth of another person. The picture we imagine is, at best, a slice of the whole.

Gosling plays a highly contradictory character as in The Believer, this time doing an even more extraordinary job. He attempts to balance what’s important with what will get him by, to deal with failure and underachieving, with knowing he’s a terrible role model but trying to play a good one anyway because it’s expected of him.

Epps, who was kept on when Fleck & Boden expanded their award winning short Gowanus, Brooklyn into this feature stands toe to toe with the adults. Her Independent Spirit win was one of the only things they did right in 2007. Drey’s knowledge keeps Dan & Frank in line, so she can keeps her mouth shut. What she doesn’t say conveys the restraint the adults lack though looks and glances. Gosling & Epps performances are exceptional in part because they compliment perfectly. He tries to sway her with every type of expression, but she just stares at him as if to say “I’m not buying.” Drey observes that all the adults are both good and bad, and manages largely to stay above the fray so the difficult film can provide some hope for the future.

Humanite

Did it take 100 years for a film to force the audience to think, or does it just seem that way after viewing Bruno Dumont’s masterpiece? Dumont was a philosophy teacher, which obviously is much different than being a philosopher, but the distinction is nonetheless crucial to his goal. He’s not trying to sell the audience on a way of life, but rather to force them to contemplate and reflect.

The viewer tends to have an opposite relationship with every film. It’s like a dialogue, when they talk you (hopefully) listen quietly. When they are quite, you talk in a sense (your words probably aren’t technically verbalized, but they are floating around in your mind). The brainwashing power of the medium lies in overloading the viewer, the constant barrage overwhelms them, forcing them to simply accept. The result is a perpetual denial of audience analysis, forcing every response to be on cue, every reaction of the knee jerk variety. There are many differences between Dumont and the legenardy director he’s often linked to, Robert Bresson, but the key is Dumont’s reliance on the long take. It’s crucial to his philosophy because it allows the audience time to explore their thoughts, provide their input.

Dumont encourages active viewing by leaving everything open to interpretation. The viewer is given an incredible amount of freedom because almost everything imposed upon them, particularly shorthand and solutions, is removed resulting in the natural replacement of audience imagination. Humanite is a rare film where no two reviews will be all that similar. A Hollywood film answers every question, so anything personal comes from agreeing or disagreeing with the movies open and shut case. Humanite is as interactive as film can be, giving a little and asking you to fill in the gaps.

Intense tedium observed with clinical precision, Humanite thrives on depicting mechanical and ritualistic events, which would be meaningless if every detail didn’t open up a series of questions the viewer will be allowed to answer. Dumont crosses a barrier even Bresson didn’t exactly break; he removes facts. His characters are very unrefined and primitive. Man sweats, eats, chokes, drools, and screws. When done right, a person staring blankly is interesting because we wonder why they are in their own world and what’s really going on inside. Is Pharaon a wide-eyed innocent, someone with a mental disability, a wounded or tramatized beast? The purposeful broad sketches force the audience to work to complete them. Dumont not only mines for the profound within the banal; he forces you to join him.

Purportedly an investigation of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, we follower the superintendent Phaoan de Winter (Emmanuel Schotte). He lives with his mother now that his wife and kid were killed. In his spare time, he tags along with his neighbor Domino (Severine Caneele), who he pines for in his own way, and her school bus driver boyfriend Joseph (Phillipp Tullier), who not surprisingly isn’t thrilled with his constant presence.

The film makes me wonder even more than I already do if it’s possible to understand another person. We don’t comprehend the essence of any of these characters; we hoist our own interpretations upon them based upon what we are shown. That may not sound like anything out of the ordinary or much of an observation, but we only see Pharaon do the most ordinary activities. He eats, exercises, watches TV, and works in the garden. We can’t find the great characteristic or achievement that makes him worthy of a film. And that’s much of the point; he is simply a member of the human race. Many people find Pharoan pathetic, but how different is he from them? If man is judged by what he does, he’s truly an everyman. There’s nothing unique about Pharoan, only about the film Humanite for consisting of the mundane rather than the exciting or profound.

Perhaps Dumont’s closest cinematic cousin is Michelangelo Antonioni. Certainly after the Zabriski Point nature of his followup Twentynine Palms, it’s obvious that his distanced wide angle landscapes provide ironic counterpoint between the lovely expansive landscapes and the inward reflecting, lonely, miserable, and alienated humans that inhabit them. Though Antonioni dealt primarily with the emptiness felt by the rich, and Dumont’s rural humans function on a more primal and primitive level, Domino is a working class version of an Antonioni character in that her entire existence seems a desperate stab at feeling something. Her attempts are almost always of a sexual nature, but her constant sex with Joseph, while animalistic, is still mechanical. She tries playing with herself in front of Pharaon, but that’s displeasing because he recoils. Perhaps her only satisfaction comes from going in the ocean without her panties, the vagina stimulating sensation worthy of Charlotte Alexandra’s character in Catherine Breillat’s vastly underrated debut A Real Young Girl. However, as Pharaon is present it could be part of her attempts to get him to take what she’ll give, in which case, it’s success is debatable.

Pharaon is one of the great enigmas of the cinema. We feel the weight of the world on the quite, passive, and extremely sensitive star. He investigates with the kind of diligence where he contemplates the guilt of even himself. By ruling out nothing he’s in a constant state of pondering, which means he proceeds at a snails pace, lacking any urgency. Dumont lulls you into the sleepy small town atmosphere of his hometown of Bailleul, a place where man is weak and no one seems to care. Pharaon tries to love this unlovable world, but it refuses to reciprocate. We don’t know if he’s shell shocked from the loss of his family or the general malaise. He only seems able to express himself through empathy, but his brand is so awkward its most likely result will be more rejection. If soulful but inept Pharaon was a Bresson character he’d be the Priest of Ambricourt in Diary of a Country Priest. But Bresson’s priest wasn’t a monster; we’re not so sure with Pharaon. Did he kill his family and/or rape and murder the schoolgirl? I’ve never before encountered a character who could so easily be considered an angel or a devil. Innocence and guilt are irrelevant to Dumant, you suffer over an event or you don’t. Maybe Pharaon suffers because he couldn’t stop the deaths, but he watches a fight in the street through a window and merely tells a co-worker, who also chooses to look on rather than go out and break it up.

The links to Bresson come from all the artifice being removed. The only sounds are natural, albeit amplified. There’s no paint, no establishing shots, no point/counterpoint cutting scheme. The dialogue is sparse, and much of it consists of meaningless exchanges of pleasantries. The stillness is exceptional. The non professional actors not only refuse to express, but are often statuesque with their gaze never directed into the camera. Dumont’s mise-en-scene is as if the characters don’t know they are in a movie. Dumont’s goal isn’t to condense, unlike Bresson he has editor Guy Lecorne cut so infrequently we sometimes forget the film isn’t taking place in real time. The elongated takes express a collision between man and nature, desire and reality. Things are, but how to control and express them. Without that there’s only longing and misunderstanding.

The depiction of the police investigation is so lacking in every respect you are disgusted when someone is simply declared guilty. Lacking any fact or shred of evidence, our only option is to decide if we believe the person is really guilty or not based upon what we know of their personalities. Dumont’s film is disturbing and convention defying; you either embrace or reject it.

*Spoilers*

Pharaon seemed a more likely candidate to kill than Joseph because we suppose his needs are unfulfilled. Domino strings Pharaon along out of a mix of pity and need. She refuses to give him what he wants, or at least what she believes he wants, but she’s always with him. It’s a no win situation for Pharaon because she can’t/won’t satisfy him and that hurts him tremendously, leaving him alternating between semifilled and unfulfilled need.

Joseph being declared guilty is ironic because we’ve seen through the eyes of Pharaon. Joseph has been in the enviable position the entire film; he has the one person that interests Pharaon, and by seeing through his eyes (which never even cast their gaze on any other option) ours. If we believe he’s guilty it’s not for an unfulfilled need, at least not the need we suppose he has considering his dick might be ready to fall off. Joseph seems to try to feel through anger, perhaps an unwilling participant brings the violence and disgust out of him that much more, or he just hoped it would? Dumont is certainly a pessimist portraying man as a weak creature who gives in to bosses demands, sex, rape, and violence. He certainly doesn’t seem to believe that people are just and moral. His opinion is more along the lines of men are brutal, selfish animals whose desires and shortcomings leave them in a fragile and desperate emotional state where they are vulnerable to others and prone to doing whatever comes to mind in an often desperate attempt to fill their void.

Big Carnival

Coming off the remarkable success of Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder ended his longtime partnership with writer/producer Charles Brackett, opting to handle those responsibilities himself. The result was Wilder’s most ambitious film, though also his biggest box office flop. Such an irony is central to the nature of his subject matter itself, as Wilder implies media success lies in manufacturing news to “give the public what they want” rather than calling it like you see it as Wilder does in Ace in the Hole.

The major films dealing with the media, Frank Capra’s preceeding Meet John Doe and Elia Kazan’s subsequent A Face in the Crowd, were populist films. They believed that while the press was bent, the audience was noble. John Q. Public wasn’t privy to the intentions of the puppets, much less the puppetmasters, so you could fool them for a while, but eventually they learned enough of the truth that, if nothing else, it was time for the masters to usher in a new puppet. Wilder doesn’t believe the truth would matter because man believes himself entitled to entertainment at any cost or anyone’s expense.

Today a journalist prolonging the time a man was trapped in a mine so he could extend his story’s shelf life wouldn’t surprise anyone too much. Our trash collections have greatly expanded to include all forms of so called reality, but in 1951 the audience supposedly didn’t believe a journalist could possibly be as heartless as Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas). Be that as it may, I suspect the failure of the film lay far more in the public refusing to accept their own appetite for tragedy, choosing instead to reject the film for scolding them about it. Wilder brings his biting film noir style snappy wit to elucidate the shallow and selfishness nature of his characters, entertaining us with classics such as Lorraine’s “I don't pray. Kneeling bags my nylons” but there’s no sustained comical escape to dilute and sugar coat his message like in the subsequent far more popular Stallag 17. Though his methods are perhaps less obvious, Wilder is harsher than Alfred Hitchcock ever was in indicting the spectators for their own voyeuristic tendencies. The audience gathered outside the mine Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) is trapped in is a metaphor for the viewers at the drive in.

Visually, the film works so well because we simply witness the machinations of capitalism at work. Our dollar is begging to be taken, and once someone sees that they erect something to state how much and what for, and the lines form. The signs of willingness to do what’s good for them, and if it does good for anyone else so be it, if it causes a man has to suffer a little more, no matter are in front of us to simply read. Unfortunately, Wilder’s characters are way too open and up front about their shady tactics to make what we can already see clearly embarrassingly obvious. People certainly justify their behavior with lines like “I’m not wishing for anything. I don’t make things happen, all I do is write about them.” But Tatum actually tells his straight arrow boss Jacob Q. Boot (Porter Hall), "I'm on my way back to the top, and if it takes a deal with a crooked sheriff, that's all right with me! And if I have to fancy it up with an Indian curse and a brokenhearted wife for Leo, then that's all right too!"

Charles Lang’s cinematography really excels at making us feel the weight of Leo’s “help” on him. The poor miner is trapped in an expressionistically rendered dark cramped extremely fragile space where the slightest movement could cause a rock wall to collapse, and in the mean time he’s merely forced to lay there breathing debris. By constrast, Leo’s wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) has turned the expansive sun beat desert surrounding the cave into an amusement park and camping ground where everyone has a merry time while the rescuers quake the entire mountain with their grating drill, the infernal reverberation driving Leo insane from fear.

Lorraine charges an entrance fee with a sign claiming all the proceeds benefit Leo in order to allow the mob to believe they’re gawking for a good cause. Of course, since Lorraine agreed to stay on and play the grieving wife for Tatum’s stories when he pointed out she wouldn’t get very far on $11, we suspect it’s funding her imminent escape. Whether she stays or goes isn’t so relevant, the big point is it doesn’t matter what anyone does as long as they can spin it so people believe it’s the right thing.

Billy Wilder was a newspaper writer before getting into the movies as a screenwriter, and some of his best films deal with the down and out writer. In The Lost Weekend, writer’s block feeds the alcoholism of prodigy turned 33-year-old washout Don Birnam (Ray Milland), while that of has been reporter Chuck in Ace in the Hole is propelled by his recent inability to cover a substantial story that would allow him to regain prestige, notoriety, and most importantly money. Fear of being a small town failure links Chuck to Dayton newspaperman turned unsuccessful self loathing Hollywood screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) in Sunset Boulevard. Still in Sunset Boulevard’s acidic mode, Wilder further explores aspects innate to exploiting a bad situation one stumbles into for personal gain under the guise of helping another. The bond that’s the basis of both films isn’t with the like characters; Joe has no interest in similarly kept man Max von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim) in Sunset, as Chuck could care less about his hard boiled counterpart Lorraine (beyond her staying in line and playing her role). The capable one is drawn to the pitiable for their own selfish reasons; they are better off but aren’t doing well enough to satisfy themselves. Try as they might, they wind up feeling for the person they are using. The difference is Chuck is in control of everyone, giving them their marching orders, while Joe cedes his power in order to satisfy the ageless starlet delusions of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson).

The major problem with Ace in the Hole is while it must be commended for blaming all the profiteering accomplices, for lack of anyone else to root for Wilder winds up forcing us to feel for his tainted star Chuck, as he’s the only one who actually wrestles with his immorality. He becomes a tragic hero almost by virtue of actually suffering pangs of conscience. We wonder what Chuck would have been like if he could have made big bucks off something other than human suffering, if the first thing he found out wasn’t “Bad news sells best because good news is no news.” Everyone who isn’t a naive and square dinosaur is an enabler, so placing all the blame on the dispensable villain like Hollywood always does in their calls to inaction wouldn’t do, but making him rebel against the system when he’s back on top simply isn’t a credible alternative.

Wilder has no illusions about the sell copy first nature of the media, and Chuck has been a star, so why should we think he’s done things so different in the past? His self hating drunk suggests his callousness is derived directly from having to numb himself to these kind of actions, and everything that comes out of his mouth suggests he’s determined to be back where he feels he belongs. He still has his cockiness and swagger even though he’s incredibly tired of being disposable, of wasting away writing one bit stories in two bit towns. He knows how to make himself indispensable, at least for a little while.

Chuck is an egomaniac who loves being ringleader of his own three-ring circus. He enjoys being treated like a rock star with a legion of adoring fans, but lives for sticking it to the small group of now begging peers and higher ups who he can punish for their past hardships and indifference now that he’s easily seduced the reelection seeking sheriff (Ray Teal) into his back pocket, securing the exclusive for himself. His free fall from New York big shot to begging for work in Albuquerque, only to wait a year for anything to happen, has changed him so much for the worse I don’t buy that anything could move him back toward a brand of ethics so fast.

The idea is Chuck has never crossed a certain boundary before, that of potentially killing his meal ticket, which is a double failure because the public demands a happy ending. But once the damage is done giving away the scoop and hanging the big paper he just resigned with out to dry by failing to write the story at all hurts no one but himself. That’s part of his character, he can charm everyone but himself, but if someone is going to go against man’s innate nature to make a buck, I can’t swallow it coming from Chuck right after he’s become king of the mountain. I’ve seen people who were bored with a goal the second the finally attained it, but they tend not to work toward undoing their accomplishment the next second.

The Big Carnival is loosely based on a 1925 incident in Sand Cave, Kentucky where "The Greatest Cave Explorer Ever Known." W. Floyd Collins was trapped trying to find an entrance to his cave that would garner him more business and died about 13 days later, 4 days before the rescuers reached him. William Burke “Skeets” Miller still won a Pulitzer Prize for creating the media circus that resulted in tens of thousands of tourists coming to the site, buying food and souvenirs from various vendors. I find the real story to be a far more unsettling indictment of humanity. Miller probably didn’t specifically do anything to harm Collins like Tatum did, but obviously he wasn’t able to contribute to the only important thing, saving Collins’ life, either. Isn’t the fact that we subsequently heap praise and awards on those whose only contributions are to commerce that much sicker?

Last Frontier

Anthony Mann’s first work of the post James Stewart era features a less talented though more suitably cast Victor Mature as a freedom loving ruffian trapper raised in the Oregon woods that, until recently, were Native American territory. Raised by the “older” Gus (quite Mature for the role at 42, James Whitmore is actually 8 years Victor’s junior), who imparted all his wisdom on him over the years, and utilizing Native American pal Mongo (Pat Hogan) as their translator, the three trappers have lived neither as white men nor Native Americans. They are simply mountain men existing in harmony with each other, and who and whatever they come across. That is until the cavalry arrives to eventually steal the land, ending the era of freedom as manifest destiny driven white man tries to spread the era of “civilization”.

Chief Red Cloud (Manuel Donde) suddenly claiming all the trappers booty makes it pointless to keep working the area, so the wise Captain Riordan (Guy Madison) convinces them to sign up as civilian scouts when they petition for reparations. Childish Mature falls in love with the soldiers uniform, and strives to earn it to the point he’s blinded to the fact it’s not worthy of him. The military will not only use them, but also force civilized ways upon the trio.

Less than thrilled with boundaries and divisions, Mann has cinematographer William C. Mellor focus on the confining aspects of the fort. This strategy extends to the unbroken crane and tracking shots utilized in the wilderness scenes, imposing barriers that divide the sharp dressed interlopers from the untamed surroundings.

Jed Cooper (Mature) is brilliantly effective in the free exteriors, but inept in the constricted interiors. Unfortunately, repressed, kept woman Corinna Marston (a ridiculous looking Anne Bancroft, who apparently manages to get regular shipments of peroxide despite living miles from even reinforcements in an uninhabited 1860’s military outpost) never leaves the fort. Jed is crude and extremely awkward with his new (first?) love since, beyond everything else, he’s seen so few women. Their romance is the last hope for the rustic and refined to coexist.

Corinna is married to glory hunting Colonel Frank Marston (Robert Preston), a kind of General Custer who never accomplished anything. A representative of the new order, Marston doesn’t respect the enemy enough to feel them worthy of the effort required to attempt to understand them. They are different, so they are animals, and animals are made for the slaughter.

Marston is most obviously linked to Henry Fonda’s Lt. Col. Owen Thursday in John Ford’s classic Fort Apache, but he’s really the James Stewart character. A driven antisocial, borderline psychopathic loner who is incapable of any form of compromise, if not for the uniform he could be Stewart’s Howard Kemp in Mann’s amazing The Naked Spur. Hell bent on killing Indians, not due to anything they’ve done, but rather the West Point grad feels snubbed and disrespected having been given this meaningless bastion while the Civil War is raging. Valuing courage and daring while disregarding logic and reason, Marston refuses to wait for reinforcements, advantageous weather, or his untrained band of misfit rookies to figure out which direction to point their rifles.

Despite his overreliance on his unsuitable crazed eye glances, Mature gives one of his finest performances as the sociable but defiantly independent rascal. However, it’s Guy Madison who tends to steal the show, constantly walking the tight rope of following the orders of his superior officer Marston, who seizes control, while hoping to usurp them since he realizes Colonel Charging Bull is a loon. Riordan tries to discipline Jed, the man who goes his own way, while maintaining the friendship.

There are at least a few problems with The Last Frontier, the most glaring of which is the dialogue is so obviously scripted. There are too many scenes where the actors are forced to state character and plot points, which is bad enough in a movie where few are even supposed to be educated, but particularly awful when combined with Robert Preston’s line reading. The subplots are muddled, but there are enough of them that they don’t worry about resolving every one, causing the direction to become less obvious and the payoffs we do get less by the numbers. The studio imposed ending somewhat betrays the dark tone of the piece, but doesn’t completely destroy the film like the executives have been known to.

Thematically Mann tries to do too much and visually he could be said to purposely do too little (by his standards), but Mann succeeded at everything he ever tried except perhaps epics. The Last Frontier is not only a rather unique entry in his filmography, but how many films have you seen starring a mountain man, much less production code films where the mountain man gets away with having an affair with a married civilized woman?

Cemetary Man

“Go away! I haven’t got time for the living” – Francesco Dellamorte

Cemetary Man tends to be loved by those who allow it to try on every hat in the store, and hated by those who want it to settle on one of them. Michele Soavi learned from several different directors as an actor and assistant director. Perhaps from Lucio Fulci he got the distinctly made up zombies; from Joe D’Amato the mix of genres to freshen: from Dario Argento the colorful set design, progressive rock soundtrack, and mix of horror with dreams; from Terry Gilliam the combination of fantasy and reality to create a zone that’s teetering on both but often existing apart from either. I could categorize Cemetary Man with the over the top comic gorefests of the pre sellout versions of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, but it’s funnier and certainly far headier than the Evil Dead series and Dead Alive. It’s in the vein of George A. Romero for its social commentary where the living are the monsters while the dead are merely a nuisance, but Soavi’s dead function at or above the level of the living. However, it’s too picturesque to be Romero, while too philosophical to be Fulci, so as you can see once you begin to look past the surface these comparisons quickly become an exercise in futility. Soavi’s revisionist zombie film could be categorized as progressive horror, but I suppose what’s really important is Cemetary Man is arguably the last top notch Italian horror film.

Soavi describes the writings of his friend Tiziano Sclavi, famous for the Dylan Dog comics, as traditional horror combined with black comedy and English black humor. What makes this adaptation of Sclavi’s work so effective is the ease in which Soavi navigates so many styles, ideas, genres, and states of being. Cemetary Man is an energetic film about ennui, a nonchalant exercise in over the top stylization.

Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett), literally St. Francis of Death, has completely withdrawn from society. Living human beings are too self serving, conceited, deceitful, and/or malicious. Hardly ever seeing his one friend Franco (Anton Alexander), his only companion is a big round mass of a man-child, Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro), who is not right in the head and thus more like a loyal pet. Francesco may be able to understand his language - basically consisting of the word “nyah” – but he probably just interprets it however he pleases.

Francesco has an easier time dealing with zombies than humans: he knows exactly how to dispatch of them. Unlike the living, they are understandable. They seem to appreciate life more than the living, and as everyone always wants what they can’t have, they mostly want to live.

The living are spiritually dead, at least in Francisco’s case from the repetitive grind. Francisco spends his days crossing out the names of the recently departed in the phone book, leading to a hilarious scene where he gets pissed at Gnaghi for throwing the old book away when the new one arrives, stating “These books are classics!” His nights are spent killing them again, as in the cemetery he watches over those who just died all return within seven days.

Wearing a mask of disaffection and hiding behind a very cynical brand of gallows humor, Francesco would like to live if for no other reason than life in isolation is so unfulfilling, but can’t get beyond spending his free time thinking about it. He’s no great thinker, more funny than profound, a pocket philosopher who pontificates the meaning of love and death (hence the Italian title Dellamorte Dellamore, which incorporates both) in a darkly sarcastic manner. The more he thinks about this life, the more he dwells on what he lacks and all his failings. The more disenchanted he becomes, the more he escapes into dream, fantasy, alternate reality, and/or psychosis: the film is ambiguous, so you are allowed to take your pick.

Like an exterminator dispatching of the vermin in the most matter of fact manner, Francesco thinks nothing of killing zombies. Unfortunately, disaffection no longer works after he accidentally kills his ideal woman (Anna Falchi) when graveyard sex goes awry and he fails to realize the zombie only injured her. She awakened his desire to escape his life, this dead little world he inhabits, and those feelings don’t vanish and can’t simply be shut off.

Falchi continually returns in different incarnations, but Francesco is a constant failure. In isolation, he tries to exchange nihilism for existentialism and meditation, but he needs acceptance. Love will get him that, but it doesn’t work even with a version of Falchi who isn’t deterred by the false rumor of impotence he spread to keep the women away.

Francesco’s downward spiral grows more turbulent, and he begins taking orders from a statue in the cemetery he believes to really be the grim reaper. The reaper convinces him it makes more sense to just kill the living, and Francesco’s dreams proceed to a murder spree. When he wakes up, he finds the people were really murdered. We determine whether this is real or if Francesco has gone insane. Is he coping through dreams or lashing out at the cruel world? In any case, Francesco is so irrelevant he doesn’t get credit for his own murders even when he makes a conscious effort to implicate himself.

Francesco has fallen so low even Gnaghi has better luck than he does. The mayor’s daughter Valentina (Fabiana Formica) reciprocates Gnaghi’s affections, though this doesn’t occur until she’s just a scarred up head. She even fights, or more accurately bites, for their love in a typically inspired scene from the great special effects artist Sergio Stivaletti. Of course, since the living want the dead and the dead want the living everyone is out of luck. How do you deal with it? You come up with lines like “I’d give my life to be dead” and, as always, you play the hand you are dealt however unlikely and absurd it may be.

Soavi is very much a picture painter mixing the beautiful and macabre until either are both. He filmed overnight in a real cemetery in the dead of winter, of course considerably dressing the set up. What separates Stivaletti from the other great special effects men is he delves more into set design. You need good backgrounds for Soavi’s films because he likes to use camera angles between 11-1 o’clock and 5-7 o’clock. Stivaletti may not have an obvious effect in a given scene, but he created the background wall of skulls.

Soavi is generally cleverer at utilizing the scenes designed simply to throw you off than his giallo counterparts, blurring the line between reality, fantasy, and dementia. Cemetery Man is better looking and demands more thought than the vast majority of films, but it also has several fun scenes that are completely preposterous. For instance, it’s nice to have unique zombies like the Gremlins, but are we to believe they buried a biker in his motorcycle helmet? I doubt the film’s fans care, and the nah-sayers were lost long before that anyway.

Land of Plenty

A sad disillusioned tragicomedy of angst and alienation in post 9/11 America directed in a laid back manner that accepts the citizens while bemoaning the sad state of affairs and almost sentimentally seeking a return to innocence. Lana (Michelle Williams), a loving pacifist associating with the lowly and unwanted of all races and creeds like her savior Jesus Christ, returns from the West Bank to deliver the letter her just deceased mother wrote to her brother Paul, who has shut everyone out. To this outsider missionary whose new purpose is her own country’s homeless, Los Angeles looks no less slummy than the Middle East or Africa. Like Wim Wenders, she tries to love the Land of Plenty amidst the inexplicable turmoil, poverty, and hatred.

Her uncle Paul (John Diehl) is a blindly raging fear-riddled patriot. Picking the neverending conflict up in Vietnam, his war continues because while the enemy has technically changed, it remains little more than evil incarnate. Confused and bewildered by his country’s increasing lack of identity, not to mention exposure to too many chemicals designed to instead destroy that threat to capitalist maximization known as foliage, the retraumatized vet transforms himself into a lone operative cruising the California wasteland to save the clueless humanoids from terrorist sleeper cells. Paranoia rendering every Muslim a terrorist, this wannabe superhero spends day and night in his own private war zone, secretly probing the actions of even Muslims who have been beleaguered to the point they’re no longer willing to associate themselves with a country.

It’s tempting to see Paul as an amalgamation of crazy politicians who let the country go to seed while squandering all the resources tormenting those who America could by and large coexist with for the benefit of their funders in the “defense” and rebuilding industries. Lana would then be the religious type they leave the fate of the country to: even in the best case scenario they lack the resources to make a difference in the lives of even a percentage of the local needy. But Wenders isn’t after larger political points, he’s simply crafting a small family drama, not surprisingly a bit of a road movie, where a citizen of the world tries to show a product of the endless wars a way out of his own private hell.

When Paul and Lana witness a Muslim is killed in a drive by, they launch their own inquiries. Though no method is foolproof, the point is Lana discovers his hospitable brother isn’t a terrorist without even trying.

Diehl’s portrayal is just about perfect because he’s completely serious about the importance and urgency of everything he does, and totally oblivious to how hilariously deluded he comes off. He matches Nick Nolte for assured manic conviction, with Williams perfectly cast as a calming influence. Unfortunately, Wenders typically decides to bath the film in obnoxious American pop music. At times it’s ironic enough to yield a corny video game superhero tone that’s only suitable only if your vision of Paul is an impotent screwball it's impossible not to laugh at.

Hastily shot in digital grain, Land of Plenty won’t go down as Wim Wenders greatest directorial effort, but it’s important for at least having the guts to grapple reasonably with subjects everyone else would either rather avoid or can’t get funding to tackle.

Heading South

Though considered a huge thematic break for the pair of director/co-writer Laurent Cantet and editor/co-writer Robin Campillo, all the focus remains on the workday with labor relationships in a globalized economic world remaining key and prompting everyone to wear oft contradictory masks. The management son in Human Resources supported his striking father even though his father didn’t support the strike, while the fired worker in Time Out pretended to not only still be working, but have attained new international travel responsibilities. Heading South is less overtly political and more well balanced than Cantet & Campillo’s preceding films. The primary difference is everyone is a victim of some combination of age, society, finance, circumstance, and opportunity, rendering the exploitation of sex tourism far closer to mutual. The atmosphere is far less formal, but the story remains about the damage the bosses do to the workers. The startling shift is the focus is on these “bosses” rather than their “employees”, perhaps because they have disparate and divergent stories while the marginally educated gigolo in 1970’s Haiti is so unbelievably poor and devoid of opportunity he practically lacks an ethical means of earning decent money in an honest fashion.

The over 40 women were all hurt in various ways by societies where their peers have ceased to be interested in them, prompting them to venture to a place so impoverished their far from extraordinary funds can purchase anyone they desire. But while financially attractive, despite their illusions they can’t purchase what they desire. They couldn’t win or earn love at home, and in Haiti they can only rent the veneer of it. In different ways both the women and the youthful escorts are unguarded, desperate, and needy.

The first portion of the film focuses on both sides fawning over each other in a manner that makes us feel eerily voyeuristic, largely because we realize all whites are implicit in enslaving the third world. As the film progresses the women become increasingly repellent and revolting, yet that doesn’t stop their story from being told in a classy and heartfelt manner. We can’t hate them because they have needs that aren’t being met elsewhere and are trying to be good for everyone, even if their selfishness blinds them to certain truths as in a sense they hope something, anything will. We can only hope they realize their goal is unattainable; prostitution doesn’t morph into love, but if they adjusted their expectations at least everyone would at be better protected emotionally.

Depicting the women’s perspective allows us to comprehend how little foreigners understand the natives without having to complain or come right out and say it. Queen bee Ellen (Charlotte Rampling) and depressed drama queen Brenda (Karen Young) both believe themselves to be compassionate and benevolent buddies of their favorite stud Legba (Menothy Cesar), white saviors who will guide and protect him as a good mother should. Passive-aggressive Ellen convinces herself she’s allowing Legba to have his freedom, but regularly unleashes her bitter words and asserts her dominant will upon everyone. Meanwhile, naive well-meaning Brenda deludes herself into believing her desires are acceptable if not admirable since it took her 45 years to achieve her first and only orgasm.

Much of their point in venturing to Haiti is to be left to their illusions. Chubby Sue (Louise Portal) is good at it, she didn’t want to get married at home, and her non-committal nature serves her well abroad. As far as the women are concerned all is good in the Garden of Eden, except an entire island full of young hunks manages to only result in petty and jealous Ellen and Brenda battling over the same one. Unfortunately, as much as they blunder we are still left with the typical white fantasy where the threat to the natives comes from the natives themselves rather than the meddling interlopers. It’s thus somewhat surprising that this otherwise certainly honest and thought provoking work was written by Haitian Dany Lafferiere, who being born in 1953 probably came of age around the height of Haiti’s sex tourism. This aspect does allows for some well deserved criticism of Baby Doc Duvalier’s brutal rule, notable for the misappropriation of funds, but nonetheless is somewhat frustrating because an undeveloped backstory contrives to take precedent over the actual sex tourism theme.

The film’s primary quality is the audience is allowed to read between the lines and imagine. The characters prove to be different from what they say they are, want others to believe, probably even believe themselves. Sex, race, politics, colonialism, imperialism, consumerism, escape, need, money, aging, exploitation and the exploiters blindness to it are among the topics, but most are indirectly incorporated to avoid the usual pitfall of announcing everything to the stooges in the theater. It’s subtle enough to be disconcerting rather than moralizing, salacious, or dope opera-esque.

Charlotte Rampling is typically tremendous. She’s burning inside yet so outwardly relaxed we believe she has no idea how controlling she is and simply believes someone (always) has to step up and do what needs to be done. Underrated Karen Young holds her own with the screen legend, impressing as a childish emotionally insecure woman who has enough ups and downs to get written off as batty by those who tire of her moods. The women all have their faults, many of which are no doubt brought upon them by neglect. The film thankfully doesn’t ask us to like or dislike them, but rather shows us their humanity: they need attention, tenderness, love, sex, and a sense of worth. The thing is it doesn’t show us these things at the expense of the Haitians. We see what Legba and proud and disapproving maitre d’ Albert (Lys Ambroise) need, they simply have even less chance of getting it than the aging North American women because they’re trapped by the destitute nature of their country.

A Fond Kiss

Forbidden love stories have been told endlessly throughout the ages with Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet enduring not for originality or probably even the high quality of the prose, but because Sir William found the proper balance between his willingness to tell the truth, ability to appeal to our individual sense of justice, and the audience’s innate desire for all possibilities to be open to them (even if in real life, often them alone). Everyone has some deep seeded prejudice - A Fond Kiss depicting the troubles caused by a relationship between Pakistani Muslim disk jockey Casim (Atta Yaqub) and Irish Catholic school teacher Roisin (Eva Birthistle) in present day Glasgow - but usually are willing to make at least one exception if they have a strong enough reason to. Even if indirectly motivated, such an impetus usually means themselves. Casim’s younger sister Tahara (Shabana Bakhsh) is in many ways the best character. She’s unwilling to shun her brother over any decision he’s made for his own happiness, partly because he’ll always be her brother, but also because she too plans to break from her family’s conservative tradition, in her case by pursuing a career in journalism.

Humans excelling at making trouble for themselves by refusing to accept the “ways of the world” is one of Ken Loach’s overriding themes. They are bent on liberating themselves from oppression or so poor and/or put upon they have no choice but to try, often a combination of both. A Fond Kiss’ characters are more financially stable than the exploited day laborers of films like Riff-Raff, The Navigators, and Bread and Roses, so there’s arguably far less urgency and more selfishness than even a film like Raining Stones where the poor but still proud man’s methods to just do one nice thing for his daughter - attain a new dress for her first communion - are inadvisable but certainly understandable. It’s not life and death like the perilous conditions the workers face in Riff-Raff; it’s a choice they believe they can afford to make but that doesn’t necessarily make it any less important to them. Roisin doesn’t want anyone to tell her how to live her life, while Casim has always been told; he wound up going along with his family’s (father’s) wishes in the end, even though he often (silently) objected.

The lover’s aren’t particularly well-matched and are largely in lust. Love is painful, frustrating, infuriating, as much anguish as ecstasy. Roisin probably will leave Casim when he’s outlived his usefulness like his father Tariq (Ahmad Riaz) asserts, but whether their relationship works or not, Casim realizes going ahead with the arranged marriage to his (far more attractive) cousin Jasmine (Sunna Mirza) means he’s ceded his ability to choose for himself. His options are not so much Roisin or Jasmine, but making his own decisions or accepting the security of the safe clearly mapped out path

Ken Loach doesn’t make willfully naive movies like Disney; his characters can only change their own world. Casim & Roisin know a wide variety of people don’t accept their races and religions mixing, but they’ll find out the extent of other people’s hateful intolerance after they think they’ve made their own decision. Then they get to make the real decision, which is to sacrifice most of what your life was to remain with your lover or return to what’s left of your old life and hope everyone will write off your “mistake” as youthful indiscretion, and you’ll find some way to forget.

Paul Laverty, who has written most of Loach’s films since1996’s Carla’s Song, isn’t out to milk the controversial topic for mock gags or prove how evolved western culture has become, as those who leave the philistines and assimilate with modern values invariably succeed in such pandering works. Loach & Laverty prefer exposing the complexities than condescending to their characters or patting their audience on the back. With the possible exception of the parish priest (Gerald Kelly), who only makes a new hole ripping cameo, they respect everyone’s viewpoint enough to give us their quagmire. They certainly don’t like everyone’s moral code, but allow them all to function by it, showing we’re all guided by sets of values that have at least as many weaknesses as strengths. The characters - including the “heroes” - are all very human, which includes being self-centered, narrow-minded, manipulative pricks. Many of the characters initially come off as stereotypes, but we come to understand the legitimacy of their dilemma, that whether what will be lost exceeds what is gained, there are both real and perceived costs to everyone’s actions that reach far beyond themselves. A Fond Kiss works where the typical barrier story fails due to expanding the tail to include the social (cultural, religious, etc.) impact on their entire circle rather than pretending the characters exist in a vacuum that various haters enter from time to time. Even if far more realistically portrayed and sexually charged than we’re used to, some of the story is obviously rather predictable. But rarely has it been told in a manner that rips through the skin to expose the oft rotten core.

After The Wedding

Melancholic earnest idealist Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen) leaves the orphanage he runs in India, and in a sense hides out in, to return to his native Denmark and be toyed with by fat wealthy money dangling Jorgen (Rolf Lassgard), though in a far different manner than expects. After the disintegration of his relationship with the love of his life Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen) 20-years-ago, Jacob eventually put his life back together in some sense by melding his charitable work with his personal life, making the needy orphans everything. Suddenly he surmises he’s been summoned back because Helene is the wife of the orphanage’s would be benefactor, and Anna (Stine Fischer Christensen), the fragile 20-year-old daughter he never knew he had with her is getting married the next day.

When the subject is lovers reuniting in any sense, the narrative has to honestly deal with what kept them apart and/or what’s bringing them back together, the pain and/or the forgiveness. Unfortunately, Suzanne Bier and Denmark’s most well known screenwriter abroad Anders Thomas Jensen would rather divert our attention to whom is playing puppet master and why, as if they were up late one night watching David Fincher’s The Game and decided to suddenly turn their drama into a mystery thriller. They sidestep issues to the point the character the entire story revolves around, Helene, remains on the sidelines as some kind of unremorseful, manipulative, and assuming mystery while everyone attempts to determine the proper way to finally deal with decisions she made two decades ago.

After the Wedding is thought provoking because it makes us consider how the information one conceals is capable of altering the course of many lives, for better and worse. It’s good largely because it leaves out so many details, building scenes not around obvious plot points but allowing the audience to flush out what it’s really about because, as in real life, it’s rarely stated. This isn’t a lightweight film, but even though there are several impressively awkward moments it lacks the intensity that made Ingmar Bergman’s family dramas work so well. We never get the idea that at any moment a character could choose to shred another with a bitter and biting remark, they are often too perplexed by the course of events set in motion to know whether they want things to work or end.

Though on paper the situations may often be comparable to those found in dope operas, Bier’s film is largely worthwhile for constantly frustrating our expectations and failing to deliver the convenient payoffs. Jensen denies his characters the requisite dialogue, giving them strained interactions that are more like unstated negotiations, where at least one character remains confused anyway. Often someone will try to make the situation work their way, but the other will end up refusing. This is particularly true when jolly but extremely stubborn Jorgen tries to force everyone to do things his way because he’s dead certain it’s the best, and cold unaccommodating Jacob either recoils or releases some of his pent up frustration and innate distrust for affluent people’s will and whims.

Relatively speaking, the characters are equally admirable and pathetic. Jacob is doing a great thing for the children, whom he’s very good with, but a part of his being has been shut down to the point he’s otherwise almost unable to give adults any reason to like him. Jorgen is something of his opposite, honorable with Jacob’s daughter and able to make everyone (but Jacob) take to him but so skillful in leveraging his money to achieve his ends it’s hard to trust him given his capability of (and sometimes propensity for) forcing you to make the “choice” he desires for you.

After the Wedding is a highly compelling film that doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny. When delicate Anna’s husband cheats on her you’d think she’d finally understand why her mom left Jacob, but instead she runs to him. It’s nice for Anna to know her real father, as you can never have enough good family members (if you find out they aren’t, don’t hesitate to avoid), but the idea a rich married woman needs a father more than a poor orphan child (Jacob has raised the now 8-year-old Pramod since birth) is nauseating. Several aspects of this story wouldn’t exactly make my manifesto of how to live your life, but when a film isn’t preaching morality it can still be interesting and worthwhile even though half the time you personally disagree with the decisions the characters are making.

History of Violence

Paul Verhoeven is a director who understands you can criticize the subject matter you are portraying by making it less than convincing. His most successful film in this regard, Starship Troopers, saw him cast bad actors, and coax even worse performances out of them than usual to send up the ideology the film was supposed to be promoting, and the buffoons perpetrating it. You walk a fine line when employing this technique because it’s basis creating an ironic distance that allows it to work against everything you seemingly support. Those who don’t understand that it’s awful by design will certainly get that it’s awful, and probably try to laugh it off the screen, creating a schism where the film is either considered a cult classic or one of the worst films of all time.

The key to A History of Violence is the fairly unique tone David Cronenberg has set for the film. Cronenberg hired very talented actors, who show many sides of their being, so his film isn’t nearly as likely to be seen as camp as Starship Troopers was in some quarters. However, in most of the memorable moments the performances purposely fail to be fully persuasive because the actors are portraying conflicted characters who behave as programmed, which usually means as they do in other action movies, which of course is simply a popular form of mass mimic inspiring manipulation. The characters repress their actual being, falling back on their role playing ability as a way to hide their true selves, or be more exciting by perpetuating a fantasy. This results in the actors playing key scenes as a mix of drama, satire, and theater, showing the audience they are less than satisfied with the authenticity of their own actions. The characters are torn between their mechanical response and they way they’d actually like to respond to the point they often no longer know what they believe. In the end, they either respond instinctually or in the manner they know will be deemed acceptable, which can be one in the same but tends not to be unless aggression is a possibility.

Much of the brilliance of A History of Violence stems from the fact Cronenberg makes the audience complicit in the violence by attaching us to it. He evokes every genre cliche in the book, but manages to create an unsettling tone that sometimes provokes disgust rather than the usual glee, but more often disgust at the usual glee. He’s removed all the black and white, all the knee jerk reactions, replacing them with the consequences. It’s not that Cronenberg is simply saying all you are used to is bad, that wouldn’t effect us in the least, but rather that he manages to walk the thin line between providing and dissuading to the point we are forced to make our own decisions because we can’t clearly say he’s for or against anything.

It’s easy to see how he fooled the studio heads into thinking he was simply serving up another action film, which it is, but it’s also an examination on the characters’ and more importantly audiences’ reactions to the material. Cronenberg proceeds with a skepticism that’s so rarely successful because it requires keeping the audience out, denying them their wishes. In absence of the real person, the audience is forced to project. We see the person we decide they are based largely on the person they want us to see, which is the primary reason it’s possible for Joey Cusack to become Tom Stall or Tom Stall to become Joey Cusack.

The characters in A History of Violence disturb Cronenberg’s morals, but are only tools for his true purpose, which is to instill that uneasiness in the viewers by forcing them to question their own reactions to the scenes. Cronenberg has long understood the more important relationship is not between him and his characters, but rather him and his audience. We can see from a film like M. Butterfly that where most directors would spend their time concerning themselves with perpetuating the mystery of whether Song Liling is a man or a woman, he knows later - more likely sooner - the audience will react based on the fact John Lone is playing the part. The film lies in our eventual knowledge that Jeremy Irons has fallen in love with a man, is kissing a man, and so on. Thus, while not neglecting to present Lone at his most feminine, his real concern isn’t costume design but rather that we see Lone as Irons does so we’ll react properly.

I don’t want to make it sound like David Cronenberg is the only director who knows what the audience will react to. Most high paid hacks know that; Brett Ratner might even figure it out soon if he ever gets beyond gazing at Jackie Chan struggle to make something out of nothing. The difference is the hacks set out to ensure the entire audience shares the same very specific emotional response, laughing, crying, or jeering on cue at the intended moment. By presenting cliche material in an awkward manner Cronenberg makes us reflect inward and provide a personal response, we interact rather than simply accept. Laughing, cheering, recoiling, or vomiting are appropriate responses to any number of scenes. The point is Cronenberg bucks the consensus response in favor of reflection. The film may move to fast to be a Meditation on Violence of the Maya Deren sort. It’s palette is the action film rather than the art film, even though it fairs quite well as both, but it’s one of the very few recent Hollywood films that warrants any afterthought and is capable of eliciting an enlightening group discussion.

Cronenberg has made a popular film as a way of dealing with what makes violence popular on screen, and more importantly prevalent in our culture. The fact A History of Violence is more mainstream than Cronenberg’s back to back masterpieces eXistenZ and Spider keeps the highly original personal director from making it a three-peat, but this isn’t a return to the genre works he made before leaving Hollywood, The Dead Zone and The Fly, as it continues his more recent preoccupation with the psychology of his main character(s). The master director once again reworks his classic theme of mind battling body, this time turning it into an internal struggle for identity.

*Spoilers regarding the identity of the main character*

Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) tries to obliterate his past to free himself from his history of violence. However, as successful as he’s been at destroying his being through repression, he still looks similar enough that he’s tracked down by mobster Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), who outs him as former hit man Joey Cusack. Ironically, this occurs right after the mild mannered family man has been declared the greatest American hero of the day by the media, celebrating the very thing Tom has spent all these years attempting to subdue by lauding the “heroics” of his skillful double homicide because the victims happened to be robbing his restaurant. Tom doesn’t see anything extraordinary or praiseworthy about the events, but no one seems to care because they are too busy enjoying a rare bit of attention, and trying to figure out how to capitalize on it.

Tom learned violence from his older brother, it’s a celebrated way of life in the USA passed down from generation to generation, but Tom tries to escape this way of life, not realizing all the ways it’s sewn into the fabric of our comfortable existence. Learning from the personality and temperament his father has chosen to display, Tom’s son Jack Stall (Ashton Holmes) uses psychology and intellect to talk his way out of a fight, convincing the bullies an inferior person such as himself is completely unworthy of their effort.

Though the dichotomy lies specifically in Tom, many of the men in the film could just as easily be aggressive or passive. Cronenberg gives us interchangeable characters, showing how one can so easily become or be replaced by another. Tom can be an assassin one minute and scold his son for standing up for himself the next. Jack can be bullied or bully. The restaurant robbers are eliminated, but immediately replaced by tougher and more deadly gangsters led by Carl Fogarty.

The film isn’t so much about our need for a change in the peaceful direction or the fact everyone is effected by the violence because whether or not there’s a justification there’s always a cost. It’s about a character we never see portrayed as a hero, an unglamorous pacifist, unraveling before our eyes until he becomes the same character we’ve seen a million times, which is another cliche as we only see a character similar to Tom Stall in a film such as Straw Dogs where the wimp is eventually forced to fight. But Tom’s largely irrelevant, the question is whether this is what we want, and what that says about us.

Blind Beast

“If it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t satisfy me” – Aki

Blind Beast is an extremely disturbing cinematic experience due to Japan’s constrictive gender and societal structure and the voyeuristic participation of the filmmakers that, in turn, points out the audience’s commiseration. The main character Michio (Eiji Funakoshi) was born blind and has never had anyone but his mother (Noriko Sengoku), so three decades later he remains an undeveloped child. His mother is devoted and dutiful, but women are manipulative in a sexist society because they aren’t supposed to have any power, thus forcing them to wield whatever influence they can, usually while pretending not to be doing so. Sexuality is about all a single young woman like Aki (Mako Midori) is able to exploit to get her way with Michio, while the mother can use age, experience, and devotion, but ultimately she’ll lose out to her nubile counterpart, which should be fine as that’s part of her sibling’s maturation process. But the larger point director Yasuzo Masumura & writer Edogawa Rampo are making is man is handed everything in either relationship, thus stunting their growth in that regard. Man simply says what he wants and the woman is expected to serve it up, so how could a mature give and take relationship possibly develop?

The creepy plot has Michio and his mother kidnapping nude model Aki so Michio can use her as his muse. Sculpture always filled the void of companionship for Michio, enabling his enabler mom to have Michio for herself. The primary conflict is between the mother and Aki, who quickly sees Michio is an incomplete child functioning and “working” from that perspective, hence the gargantuan size of the female body parts sculpted onto each wall of his pitch black lair. Forced into the role of babysitter, Aki decides she might as well give him some private lessons and make a man of Michio. His mother wants him to remain helpless and dependent because, lacking a husband or any other relatives or friends, he’s all she has.

When Aki refuses to play the allowed role – plaything – the mother decides not to allow Michio to play with her anymore, helping Aki to escape rather than preventing her as in the past. But it goes horribly wrong as, hormones awakened, Michio finally makes the decision to try to grow up, choosing adult sex to motherly reliance.

Aki and Michio’s mother understand each other all too well. The mom was probably much like Aki 30 or 35 years ago, how else could she have been? Aki understands Michio because his life is so narrowly defined he behaves in an awkward selfish manner that doesn’t even qualify as interaction. His existence has been insular; never having a relationship with someone who wasn’t stuck with him makes him come off as something of a retard even though in his own ways he’s quite intelligent. Michio understands nothing, his disability manifesting into a blindness to what’s available to him. Since Aki doesn’t shelter Michio like his mother does, he suddenly realizes new things not only exist, but might even be worth trying. And since he’s a Japanese man, he simply orders and the woman submits.

Michio swiftly moves from being under a woman, his dutifully dominant mom, to over a woman, his new slave Aki. The sharp transition the film undergoes, which perhaps doesn’t fully work but is also designed to be a gap to big for anyone to properly bridge, is that Michio morphing from naive dependent into a dictator forces Aki from a self sufficient willful seductress to a gleefully submissive slave. Though Michio would normally by a tyrannical heel, it’s near impossible to hate such a pitiable handicapped mama’s boy outcast. Humans can become accustomed to anything, and he’s had a life of it, while an hour suddenly seems like a lifetime to Aki. The human mind as precariously balanced as it is, she brings herself to not only accept but seem to like most things in order to maintain some semblance of sanity.

The situation was far less dangerous when Aki was a cunning, conniving trickster hell bent on escape. Once she cedes her will to Michio to allow him to become a man perverse art vs. mental and emotional manipulation merges into a dangerous addiction. Aki remains nothing more than an objectified plaything, the games simply become less innocent as Michio “matures”. Her only role becomes the submissive sex toy the real artist she willingly posed for more subtly portrayed her as. Aki constantly encourages her clueless despot to render “his” desires upon her. He gladly agrees to her ideas: screwing, biting, beating, and ultimately dismembering her. It’s all new to him, and once again there’s no one around to suggest an alternative. Trapped in a dark, dank cell they must come up with something to pass the time, so they essentially succumb to whatever she can think of. Their exploration of the senses other than the impossible one, vision, becomes so acute it can only go so far before pain is the only enduring stimulant.

Yasuzo Masumura’s dark fetishistic artfully grotesque film is clearly among the greatest pieces of psychosexual cinema. The camera participates in the debauchery rather than simply recording it. Similar to Michael Powell’s landmark Peeping Tom, though in a more surreal and hyperstylized manner, Masumura has Setsuo Kobayashi use the camera to present the characters intense, primal perspective. The unapologetic nature of the presentation, free of distancing and moralizing, makes it utterly unsettling. The overwrought nature of the performances and visual style comes dangerously close to counteracting that. However, rather than make us laugh it off for being as ridiculous as it largely is, it succeeds in depicting the heightened awareness of the senses other than sight as well as the intense focus the unrelenting captivity in a claustrophobic warehouse entails. Masumura’s artful chamber piece is ripe with saturated colors and carefully orchestrated shadows, the bulging female anatomy making the cavernous sets so memorable.

It’s always hard to imagine films like this being made in the 60’s given how far the American films are always behind the curve when it comes to sexual openness. Certainly it’s exploration of sexual roles, identity, and obsession is light years ahead of the Mike Nichols stir creating Carnal Knowledge, made two years later (1971), which due to it’s quaintness is far more successful at looking like a foreign (European) art film than matching their insight into human nature.

Mining the depths of the mind rather than the crevasses of the body, the Japanese pink films were arguably more conducive to art because censorship forbade shots of pubic hair or genitalia. Putting the ridiculousness of the decreed censorship of Blind Beast’s day, or the even more pathetic self censorship of today’s perpetually tepid mainstream cinema, the fact they couldn’t fall back on the money shot, or essentially deliver nothing beyond like all the unwatchable porn the other California factories churn out today, forced a certain brand of creativity. Masumura’s movie isn’t particularly lurid or physically violent, though part of what makes it a high quality film is it’s eerily erotic and brutally psychologically violent. Edogawa Rampo was known for his tales of obsessive-compulsive behavior, and Masumura brings this corrosive gender role satire to the screen as an honest, highly artistic depiction of adult subjects, delving deeper into our latent fears than he probably would have been able to in a traditional studio film.

The Lover

A poor, delicate 15-year-old French schoolgirl (Jane March) living in French Indochina (Vietnam) in 1929 has a doomed sex relationship with rich 32-year-old Chinaman (Tony Leung Ka Fai). The Lover is a story of class and racial intolerance from both sides separating two lovers to the extent any future is impossible. Their only relationship can be with the girl as a prostitute, a role she is willing to play largely for escapism, though with her rotten older brother’s (Arnaud Giovaninetti) drug debts and their failing rice farm the money certainly doesn’t hurt. The fact they are from different races and cultures peaks both of their interests. The Chinaman enjoyed many French women (prostitutes) in France, but it’s impossible to find one to have sex with you in Indochina, as all Asians are too looked down upon by their imperialist counterparts and deflowered French girls can’t find a husband. The Young Girl is looking to explore her sexuality, and a wealthy and sophisticated older man offers the potential for new adventures. Neither are considering much less particularly interested in triumphing over the racial prejudice of their upbringing, they are respectively reliving and discovering their fantasies.

The Chinaman is obliged to follow the traditions of his race and marry the selected Chinese girl of equal fortunes. For this loyalty he’ll be rewarded with enough money to keep him from ever having to work. In a sense his wisdom has boxed him in, as he didn’t take his studies in France seriously, choosing the life of a playboy instead, and now it’s too late to go back. He doesn’t know how to do anything beyond smoke, spend money and have sex, a trio he enjoys mixing, but more importantly has no desire to learn. One could argue the fact that his future has been mapped out for him has drained him of his life force. He’s incredibly lazy and lacking any initiative, though he’s always known he could afford to be. Realistically, he’ll have enough that any level of success wouldn’t really improve his life beyond the ability to have a contribution to show.

The Chinaman has always been able to keep things in perspective, while all these experiences are new to the young confused girl, who isn’t as strong as she’d like to be or as cold as she’d like him to believe. His experience has taught him to take what’s available to him, but no more. Even though he’s entered into a forbidden relationship, he knows he’s safe as long as he breaks it off when he’s told it’s time to get married. What he didn’t know is in this case he’d prefer not to, but that doesn’t mean he’s willing or capable of change.

Jean Jacques Annaud’s film is always looked down upon because there is a lot of sex, the girl is supposed to be underage, and it's not hopeful in the least. The point is that the relationship they have, shallow as you may view it, is all their relationship can ever be. The characters are depressed because there is no future together, so they keep trying to deny and/or avoid the obvious, but it is what it is. I find this film to be far more honest than the typical love story. It doesn't pander to the audience with a lot of fairytale mythmaking than the rich man is going to give up all his dough, suddenly slave all day instead of screw, and they'll live together happily ever after. The relationship is taboo on both sides from race and class. Unfortunately they aren't going to be able to change the world by themselves, and realistically the rich man is going to stay rich.

The crux of the film is their insistent denial there’s anything to their relationship. They expend so much time and effort convincing themselves and each other at least The Young Girl is unable to see otherwise. The best way not to be hurt by what you can’t have is not to want it in the first place, so they insist it’s only a business interaction for pleasure as a defense mechanism to keep from dwelling on the fact they’ll soon have to part. And that’s really why the film is so moving, because the naive girl’s moment of discovery is beyond the point where anything could have been done to try to change what they knew from the outset to be unchangeable. Of course, there’s obvious tragedy in not being able to be with your true love, but in a sense the tragedy of L’Amant is they squandered the time they had together trying to spare their hearts from what they ultimately couldn’t deny.

Marguerite Duras wasn’t happy with the casting of the all too attractive leads, which not only distracts from the seriousness of the story, but more importantly make the audience understand an obvious physical attraction that didn’t actually exist. Anyone who wants to only see the sex will, that’s the way things go with certain subjects, but in this case it’s clearly their loss as they’ll deny themselves comprehension of what a wonderful love story this is. They don’t allow each other to have warm passionate sex, the girl asks The Chinaman to treat her the same as all his other lovers (whores), but this sex is still the only love they allow themselves to show toward one another. If it doesn’t seem like love, perhaps that’s because without saying it the film asks whether such a relationship can be love or is just a distraction they try to justify with emotions.

On reason Marguerite Duras’s novel is superior to Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film is it does a far better job at conveying the mixed nature of The Young Girl’s contradictions. In the movie, they move from sincere to false, while in the book we understand she’s so confused she feels them at once. She has a love/hate relationship not only with him, but also interrelating it to herself, not only simultaneously feeling the most passionate emotions on both ends of the spectrum for one or the other, but rather for both parties. It’s easy to point the finger at Jane March’s performance, but the only filmmaker that’s really successful at portraying the way females can be at odds with their sexuality is Catherine Breillat.

Though the time shifts that make the memories more haunting are lost in adaptation, Annaud does succeed in making a highly literate adaptation. The high quality of the prose, which comes in regularly through a wonderful narration by Jeanne Moreau, who has long been linked to Marguerite Duras from starring in the Peter Brook (Seven Days... Seven Nights ) and Tony Richardson (Mademoiselle, The Sailor from Gibraltar) movies of Duras’ novels to Duras’ own Nathalie Granger to finally playing her in the good Cet-amour-la, combined with the detached and restrained technically proficient cinematography of Robert Fraisse and somber and melancholic score of Gabriel Yared maintain a sense of elegance that counteracts our innate deficiency to view anything sexual as tawdry the moment it’s put on the screen.

As always, Annaud beautifully renders the scenery, even beyond the nearly unparalleled beauty of Jane March there's so much beauty here, but it's overwhelmed by the oppressiveness of people and the monotony of their ways. The main problem with every Annaud film is he has a problem making his characters human. The Bear alone proves him a master of filming animals, and for better and worse he more or less shows humans as the same specimens, recording their repetition but never delving very deep into it. That said, he’s once again able to get away with it here because he's chosen a subject where humans are at their most animalistic. Most of the background information that could have been provided would have been completely bogus padding, the typical hypocritical apology for making a sex film, and frankly the film is more moving without it.

Girl on a Motorcycle

Color photography master Jack Cardiff filmed the Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger classics of the late 1940’s, with this directorial outing being a kind of psychedelic version of The Red Shoes, subbing Moira Shearer’s rapturous passion for ballet with Marianne Faithfull’s for the freedom riding her motorcycle gives her to have passionate trysts with lover Daniel (Alain Delon). Everything is an expression of Rebecca’s (Faithfull) interior, allowing Cardiff to get away with including almost no conventional dialogue. Rebecca’s internal monologue conveys generally confused struggle to overcome the constrictions of her predetermined shallow and conventional existence.

Rebecca’s imagination and desires are more exciting than the life she’s chosen, her interior narrative superior to her conversations with others. We experience Rebecca’s life through her fragmented thoughts and recollections, ultimately realizing her lack of knowledge about those she spends time with is not because she’s not curious, but rather because fantasy and mystery will be better than reality.

Though a veiled critique of free love that’s typically sold on said hedonism, it’s more a moral on the inability to expect someone to become something they’re not than a moralist condemnation on the illusory nature of freedom and ultimate failure of such love. Like most young girls Rebecca chooses the respectability of marriage to a nice stable family man. She’s too scared to try otherwise, proposing to Raymond (Roger Mutton) soon after meeting a man that actually stimulates and excites her for fear of what might happen if she doesn’t. After teaching her how to ride, Daniel gives her the motorcycle as a wedding present, so the girl can’t help it anyway.

Raymond is too much like her bookstore owner father, and doesn’t stoke the adventurous young woman in any manner. Daniel and Raymond are both teachers, but while Raymond is timid and meek to the point the young children walk all over him, Daniel is completely in control of his college students. His failing seems to be that he can make everyone submit to his whims except the one woman he’s stuck on. The memory of this failed relationship has transformed him into a cold, callous, indifferent individual who is unable to express any emotion. Rebecca tries to have both worlds, but ultimately the wistful daydreamer is only alive when her motorcycle rides permit her vivid imagination to picture the thrilling, risky, dangerous excitement she gets from Daniel combined with the interest and commitment she gets but rejects from her clueless husband who she practically cuckolded upon saying “I do.” Short of her redefining her desires, the potential for either to satisfy her lies squarely in her cranium.

Serving as some inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, Cardiff’s artistic yet sometimes campy exploration of free love is more toward a lesser take on the territory Richard Lester navigated so brilliantly in his landmark Petulia, released the same month, than something Russ Meyer might have concocted if he was the artist his supporters seem to envision him being. Like Lester, Cardiff’s layered flashback style is highly symbolic, utilizing short tightly framed shots that are linked through the evocative editing style. The Girl on a Motorcycle doesn’t exactly succeed as an existential intellectual work, but the steam of consciousness narration at least represents a legitimate attempt to convey Rebecca’s hopes, dreams, desires, and aspirations. Today they’d just skirt all the issues, falling back on the obviousness of Rebecca wanting Daniel for his studliness that undoubtedly was attained by whatever products and service they are pushing at the moment.

Jack Cardiff doubles as cinematographer, making The Girl on a Motorcycle a showpiece for his haunting and sensual photography. The kinetic depictions of the ecstasy the sexy freckle face who is wearing nothing beneath her skin tight black leather jumpsuit experiences double as the formerly virginal teen’s sexual awakening. Powell & Pressburger usually got away with being studio bound, but the contrast between the beautiful European location photography and the prop motorcycle in front of rear projection is so startling you sometimes wonder if you haven’t been momentarily ejected from the hip piece of swinging cinema and instead thrust into a driver’s education movie. The use of solarization is likely experimental given The Girl on a Motorcycle is an early psychedelic film, but serves more as a censorship technique than a representation of an alternate state of mind. The evocative precision cinematography, shattered narrative, and kinky subject matter causes The Girl on a Motorcycle to remind me of a Nicolas Roeg film (granted that’s not surprising considering he lensed Petulia), so perhaps I’m willing to cut it more slack than most. It’s rarely as good as any film it evokes, but certainly interesting if not always convincing filmmaking.

School of Flesh

One reason current mainstream films are unwatchable is the director and screenwriter have become more akin to lawyers. At their most honest, their job is convincing the audience of the basic concepts they’ve contrived for their fictitious characters; they are really in love or in danger, are justified in seeking vengeance, and so on. At their most dishonest, their job is to convince you to buy into the lifestyle they are selling, to grease the pockets of the corporations who are using the product to advertise their services. You don’t learn anything about yourself, or life in general, from these sales pitches, as there’s no gray area to consider. Benoit Jacquot isn’t out to sell you on his story, but rather to act as your eyes. Through the observant eye of his camera the audience is allowed to draw their own conclusions. If you are ultimately unconvinced the characters are in love, ruling them shallow and selfish, so be it. No one will be put to death as a result of your verdict.

At least for me, the primary quality of Jacquot’s work from The Disenchanted to A Single Girl to A tout de suite is his conscious decision to stick to observing the characters, particularly the female lead, in a restrained manner rather than giving in to the commercial notion the audience needs to be told what they could just as easily guess. In fact, Jacquot rarely tells us anything we could assume. The characters in The School of Flesh don’t talk about the past because it’s painful and failure ridden. We get a detail here and there, enough to allow us to draw the reasonable conclusion, but in any case it’s largely irrelevant. I believe it’s left them emotionally guarded to the point they’re unwilling if not incapable of intimacy, but the reasons aren’t the important part, the result is.

The major mistake an American audience is prone to make with The School of Flesh is assuming age is the primary schism in the relationship between Dominique (Isabelle Huppert) and Quentin (Vincent Martinez). The fact that the cross-generational nature of the romance isn’t emphasized could be a hint, but especially when the woman is the one that’s 15 or 20 years older we are expecting her to struggle through a lot of phony obstacles to magically recapture her groove. Even though we know these relationships are more acceptable in the less sexually repressed countries of Europe, seeing a film such as Heading South can make us assume the older woman knows she’ll have to pay for tender young flesh. In this case, we could suppose she simply doesn’t have to travel to the third world to find someone poor enough. But money - more specifically social class – is the real issue.

Dominique isn’t satisfied by men who are her equals; the sex isn’t the issue but rather the idea that they have a career and thus a life of their own. Dominique thinks she wants someone to spend every minute with, a man she can possess. Being a poor, fatherless, hustler with a shady past and a questionable future, the bisexual hooker seems as good a candidate as any. We could argue whether it’s this initial miscalculation of what Quentin would be willing to accept, or the one-sided nature of confused Dominique’s faulty premise, but in any case Quentin has no interest in being permanently bought and more importantly is at least attracted to Dominique. She does a good thing rescuing him from his debts, but its difficult for a relationship that starts out based on money to transcend those boundaries.

Quentin is a young man who is used to being manhandled. He says he’ll decide everything about their first date beyond the specifics of dinner, but that’s his defense mechanism. He hopes if he exerts himself right off the bat he’ll keep from getting pushed around, but the battle of wills almost immediately ensues as Quentin bores Dominique playing video games, refusing to leave and do something else. As Quentin is prone to eventually do, despite his protests he gives in to taking her money, wounding his own pride by making him something she’s purchased.

Though The School of Flesh seems a very French story, it was actually written by Yukio Mishima. Mishima seems to believe a certain amount of sadism and especially masochism is an intrinsic part of human nature. Dominique’s passion is equally hatred, not only for Quentin, but more so for her own inability to get what she wants from a relationship. In their tireless quest for power, humans are prone to acting against their own long-term best interest. In Dominique’s case, she wears everyone out. Unable to express love beyond sex, they engage in an oft-hurtful chess match for control, always striving to stretch the outer limits of the relationship. Dominique isn’t as much a victim as she comes off as, nor is Quentin as unfeeling, it’s the roles they’ve set each other, or themselves, up in. It’s the trying manner in which they express their love.

Dominique and Quentin are unable to communicate because they are too alike in one crucial area; they’ve been wounded, and can’t see the good in reopening the scar tissue. Dominique is curious about Quentin, but his refusal to provide any information not only bores her, but peaks her interest to the point she follows him around as if she’s hired herself to be a private detective. Part of the reason she’s so free with her money is she believes she learns something about another person by giving it to them.

Quentin puts up a macho front, in part because he’s not good at small talk and figures if he doesn’t ask any questions he won’t have to answer any either. More importantly, his boxing and bad boy tactics are attempts to mask his vulnerability. Whether it’s a conventional battle or one of wills, he knows he won’t come out on top. He’s petrified of being dumped, so he’ll always give in and if it comes to that try to make up. However, as they’ve become entrenched in their war, the more Dominique refuses to dump him, the farther Quentin pushes for freedom within the relationship, which in his defense doesn’t work in her version of being together constantly because they don’t have anything in common beyond needs and urges.

Dominique still desires Quentin, but in a more melancholic manner as time passes because she realizes he’ll never fully satisfy her, yet she can’t replace what she gets from him sexually, not to mention the fact that other than “Dominique's Friend” (Daniele Dubroux) she doesn’t have anyone else that’ll tag along. As a fashion executive she’s decisive, her primary skill being her ability to work a crowd, mingle with everyone for a few minutes. But work is impersonal to her, the clients generally uninteresting. Deciding whether a dress is worth someone else’s money can be done with cold, calculating precision because it’s of no real consequence, and more importantly doesn’t entail a loss for her. Long after failure is imminent, Dominique continues to grapple with herself, and Quentin, if for no other reason than ending the battle won’t bring happiness.

Quentin is more capable of change, perhaps because he’s younger or because he’s never had anything. All of his acts, including continuing to service male clients, are part of his game to maintain freedom by avoiding commitment to Dominique. He doesn’t expect or really even want any of these fancies or flings to last, it’s all to show his lover what he’s capable of, that he’ll find fleeting entertainment elsewhere because he can. He even agrees to marry Marine (Roxane Mesquida), the beautiful but even more immature rich teenage daughter of Dominique’s coworker Madame Thorpe (Marthe Keller), figuring it’s the ultimate way to keep Dominique, who he’ll of course continue to see, from holding him captive and smothering him.

Isabelle Huppert’s performance is even more marvelous than usual. It’s hard to imagine the film working in the same form with another actress, as no one can match her ability to shift feelings and emotions while not only withholding all verbal explanations, but practically even displays. Her subtlety is such that she can seem to think out loud while in actuality not only barely even uttering a word, but even twitching a muscle. Though he might come off as poorly as his pretty boy older brother Olivier if he was working for a commercial director who forced him to state or display everything, Vincent Martinez holds up pretty well to Jacquot’s style of eventual revelation through distanced observation.

Trust

Following in the footsteps of his debut The Unbelievable Truth, Hal Hartley further explores the empty lives of disillusioned young adults amidst the banal sprawl-ridden landscape of his Long Island hometown. Adrienne Shelly returns as the bratty alienated teen who gets involved with an earnest but volatile man. The worst day of Maria Coughlin’s (Shelly) life, which among other shocks and traumas includes her pregnancy provoking her father’s heart attack and jock boyfriend Anthony’s (Gary Sauer) prompt dismissal, simply opens her up to Matthew Slaughter (Martin Donovan), a principled electronics expert who can fix everything but his own life.

The reform school grad with a history of violence walks the streets at night with a live grenade by his side, fighting the world because he can’t find the strength to stand up to his father Jim Slaughter (John MacKay). Matthew is largely dangerous because he’s so sincere. He’s unable to compromise his principles to and kowtow to idiots because when he tries he winds up so miserable he feels the need to grimly loaf around numbing himself through more alcohol than usual in addition to what Marshall McLuhan described as “the opium for the masses”.

Lacking any safe haven beyond solitude, the youths are loners because everyone they’ve tried to lean on invariable falls over one way or another, leaving them broken when their trust proves unearned. Though neither are the greatest catch, it’s partially some better luck, stumbling across each other at the peak of their misery, that makes them consider things they otherwise wouldn’t. Suddenly, they share the common bond of having one parent who is not only impossible but abusive.

Hartley uses absurdity and satire to show situation, dynamics, and purpose change people for better or worse. His film combines a thoughtful examination of the pros and cons of family and marriage with a farce of bourgeois respectability and a melancholy for the ennui brought upon by crushed hopes and shattered dreams. He pokes fun at the extreme behavior of parents for kidnapping or exterminating babies while abusing older children for failure to meet the expectations they had upon attaining them. He’s more serious when it comes to showing the effect of poor parents on children, as in his subsequent Simple Men, also featuring Donovan, they reach the age of adulthood without ever growing up. Similar to Jean-Luc Godard, Hartley derives much of his satirical comedy from aside and coincidence, not to mention human’s innate worship of money.

In a classic Godard-esque exploration of the medium, Hartley has two characters sit next to each other have a conversation where both essentially talk to themselves without realizing it, the “companionship” merely providing the illusion of interaction. This scene is the most memorable of several ways the film points out the difficulty of finding someone who sees or hears the true you. Though the film is obviously called and largely about the necessity of trust in any close relationship, Hartley equally emphasizes the necessity of looking beyond the surface (which Maria later realizes Anthony never did), as relationships evaporate along with the mythical vision of the person you are with.

Hartley’s films exist on a bizarre plain somewhat detached from reality. He’s not comparable to David Lynch, but his satires of America do evoke a similar distancing method that makes you unsure of how seriously you are supposed to take the characters and proceedings. Hartley’s style is deadpan rather than hysterical, utilizing dry and wry humor. His films are somewhat fitful, nonsensical, and frustrating, but never in a gimmicky way. Where other stories would come off as ridiculous, Hartley’s begin to seem more believable because he uses these aspects as exposition rather than as the crux of his story. He hasn’t made a film about child abuse, an action may be prompted, but it’s only supplying a need to change not the reason Slaughter eventually tries to, after much deliberation and soul seeking. There’s certainly no attempt to replicate reality, but you might be able to relate to the ebb and flow of life, recalling times when the tide turned for or against you for reasons so silly or ridiculous they are virtually inexplicable to others.

The performances of the leads are very successful. Adrienne Shelly is the eccentric, inept but determined to be independent woman subverting her shallowness for a newfound responsibility that yields the confidence to proudly don her “librarian” glasses. Martin Donovan excels at portraying characters that smolder beneath the surface, moving from detached analysis to searing anger, his vulnerability leading to extreme behavior. The film isn’t always successful, but it tends to be interesting even when it isn’t working.

Tomb of Ligeia

The final entry in Roger Corman & Vincent Price’s series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations has Price as a mix between his hypersensitive Roderick Usher from House of Usher and malicious Prince Prospero from Masque of the Red Death. The potentially deluded, perpetually bereaving widower Verden Fell (Price) is haunted by his deceased wife Lady Ligeia (Elizabeth Shepherd), whom he still believes to be alive due to her espousal of the philosophy that one can will themselves to eternal life. Aiding neighbor Lady Rowena (also played by Shepherd) when she’s thrown from her horse, they quickly fall in love with Fell marrying the rich Victorian who looks eerily similar to his cherished first wife.

Though arguably equally tortured, Price trades Usher’s certitude of impending doom for the fragility of an unmendable heart. His marriage is unable to accomplish anything beyond extending the misery, and perhaps opening up a means for Ligeia to return from the grave. Robert “China” Towne’s ambiguous script shows some understanding of Val Lewton, keeping the horror on the suggestive level. He plays up various mysteries including whether Fell’s unaccounted for disappearances and bizarre vapor locks, Rowena’s nightmares and stretches where she appears to become Ligeia, and the menancing black cat that Ligeia seems to control if not be are due to possession, Ligeia’s grasp from beyond, insanity, fears, and/or doubts.

Despite the typically commendable performance of Price, who manages to be sympathetic while remaining ominous and threatening, there’s little reason to believe Rowena would fall for this reclusive loner who spends all his time pining over a corpse. They don’t even bother with the idea she can change him. Even though she wastes away in the terrifying decayed house, she somehow remains uninterested in the younger, handsomer, all around more suitable aristocrat Christopher (John Westbrook).

The startling change from Corman’s previous renderings of Poe is the decision to film on location, morbidly dressing up a ruined abby in Norfold, England. The film is initially atmospheric with the distanced wide-angle shots evoking the thought that the characters are being watched. Fell is dead even in the sunny countryside, though his love for Rowena can seemingly only exist there as in the dark, dank, dreary confines of their cobweb laden home, Ligeia memory overwhelms Rowena’s love.

Coming on the heels of the strongest of the Poe films, Masque of the Red Death, the color photography of Hammer cinematographer Arthur Grant disappointingly lacks any of Nicolas Roeg’s lushly symbolic verve. Bright sunlight has no particular artistic value, and once we get past the watching cemetery, Corman scraps the doable idea of using the camera to represent or at least evoke Ligeia. In between stagy scenes of lifted prose, Corman then reverts to his usual stock of dressed up interiors, dream sequences, and, of course, the requisite fiery conclusion. Tomb of Ligeia is as perverse, delirious, and atmospheric as it should be, but less so than Corman’s best work as the interior scenes wind up conflicting in tone at least as much as they provide symbolic contrast.

Cul-de-sac

In the dark, cruel world of Roman Polanski there’s no refuge for the atypical, the unwanted, or the non-conformists. You can hoist up the veneer of normality, pretend to be unafraid or of the “proper” ethnicity, but you’ll soon be discovered. Whether it be the men with their wooden travelling companion in his short Two Men and a Wardrobe, Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion, Polanski himself in The Tenant, Sigourney Weaver in Death and the Maiden, or Adrien Brody in The Pianist, Polanski’s characters attempt to shelter themselves from the punishing world, living in a terror that often manifests itself through claustrophobic isolation.

Up until recently, George (Donald Pleasence) was a very successful businessman, but he’s given up his “normal” life, retreating from mankind to Holy Island in Northern England with his much younger new wife. Even a place cut off by the tide is prone to the inevitable outsider invasion that can only lead to pain, humiliation, and perhaps death. In this case, the intruders are two bumbling hoodlums wounded, one soon to be mortally, during a robbery gone awry. Dickie (Lionel Stander) plees for his boss to come get them, but as they’ve let him down we figure Godot is as likely to show up.

Cul-de-sac is Roman Polanski’s most existential film. Its bored alienated characters dread the impending doom they seem to bring onto themselves. Polanski’s previous film Repulsion was more or less as bleak and hopeless, but it was received far more positively by audiences and critics, probably because they knew what to make of it. Repulsion greatly transcended the horror tale Polanski was paid to deliver while still being recognizable enough as a genre entry to be accepted by a wide audience. Cul-de-sac is arguably Polanski’s most challenging movie because it’s such an odd mix of comedy, drama, thriller, suspense, and horror. Its primary tactic seems to be draining the signature elements of each genre, and thus the film is generally inert as everything slowly boils beneath the surface. It’s closest to black comedy, but most of the potential the laughs, come from the characters refusing to address the situation and generally hoping it will simply correct itself even though they obviously know it’ll never happen. The audience is not only never instructed whether to join the fun or recoil, chuckle or be repulsed, but Polanski seems to dare us to laugh at shootings, a burial, and all sorts of humiliations so we’ll see ourselves for the self-satisfying hypocrites we are. Regardless of the style of film he’s making, to Roman Polanski life is always a cruel comedy.

As in Polanski’s debut masterpiece Knife in the Water, the couple’s seemingly idyllic relationship is, in fact, incredibly precarious. Their isolation forms the bulk of the thread that’s holding them together, with the presence of the male interloper creating a dynamic that threatens the husband and sets off a series of power games.

Effete George isn’t man enough to please his free spirited, bohemian, control-obsessed wife Teresa (Francoise Dorleac). As power theoretically lies in masculinity, Teresa deprives George of his bit by bit so she’ll be in full control. Their marriage is such that Teresa orders George to go fly a kite so she can have sex on the beach with their studly neighbor Christopher (Iain Quarrier).

George is a desperate man who believes he can only attain what he seeks through pleasing others, satisfying them through compliance. He’s mad about his wife, and wants her love in the worst way, delusionally trying to convince himself their love is still strong despite her unfaithfulness. George is only capable of coming back for more; it’s the only way he knows to win people over, employing this hopeless tactic even on Dickie, who despises his easy lifestyle and is glad to have a whipping boy to take out the frustrations of his boss indifference on.

George is often described as a cross-dresser, but similar to Emmanuelle Seigner & Peter Coyote in Bitter Moon, the marriage’s remaining bond lies in the willingness of victimhood. There’s no alternating here, George simply allows his dominant wife to humiliate him through emasculation, which can include wearing her nightie and mask. Dickie’s arrival disrupts their tired pattern, as Teresa suddenly wishes George were man enough to rid the island of the burly gravel-voiced brute, thus her taunts shift from further feminizing him to pointing out what a wimp he is.

Hardly as simplistic as bored bourgeois vs. blundering icy savage, George & Teresa are too badly matched and already too far gone to bond against the intruding gangster. Teresa excels at playing the condescending tough wild child, but she knows she can’t get rid of Dickie as long as her willless cuckold continues to cower in the face of the heavy. One aspect that makes Polanski exciting is he’s willing to go against the traditional plot point of the woman always sticking up for her man whether he deserves it or not and make films like Cul-de-sac and Knife in the Water where the wife is so indifferent to the man she’s stuck with she doesn’t much care which man winds up taking the other out. Obviously we’d rather feel as though we could count on our spouse, but it makes for a tenser more unpredictable film when we have serious questions as to how they’ll react. Teresa has no qualms about putting George in harms way, pulling stunts such as giving sleeping Dickie a hot foot.

Polanski identifies with self-loathing George, but this isn’t the usual tale of him hulking up, reasserting his masculinity, and overcome the odds by defeating the big bully. Some of that may be involved, but the focus is on the world colluding to drive George insane. He seems to act more like a normal man once his ulcer-ridden stomach is forced to allow some moonshine to eat away at it. But that only exemplifies the bizarre humor of Cul-de-sac, a film where the main character is so far gone a drug has the reverse effect, bringing him back “inside the box”.

Heart is Deceiptful Above All Things

Born to a 15-year-old who’s undoubtedly immature well beyond her years, Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett/Dylan Sprouse/Cole Sprouse) was only ever loved by his foster parents, who he’s torn from at age 7 when his mother Sarah (Asia Argento) reclaims him for the novelty of raising a child. Asia Argento depicts horrifically brutal child abuse, alternating with unimaginable neglect, with no sugar coating. Draining every ounce of glamour, hope, and redemption, this harrowing feature is as revolting as it should be.

Contempt is served up for idiotic social workers, religious zealots, and horny cops, but the primary reason The Heart is Deceiptful Above All Things is effective is no one is willfully malicious. The people (or countries) who do the most damage are the ones who believe they are helping you by acting righteously. One of Sarah’s many boyfriends whips Jeremiah assuming reoccurence will be prevented by associating the unwanted behavior, pissing his pants, with an undesirable experience, considerable pain. The children thank Jeremiah’s grandfather (Peter Fonda) for his beatings because he’s thrashing the evil out of them.

No one is more clueless than infantile Sarah, who believes she’s rescuing Jeremiah and they’ll have fun together. Again, she isn’t mean spirited, it’s just that her idea of being a mother is waving a stuffed animal in Jeremiah’s face and serving him Spaghetti O’s straight from the can. She drinks and does drugs, so her son should join the party as well. Hopelessly impatient, Sarah expects to win Jeremiah’s love in the first five seconds even though she has no idea how to behave, much less how to earn it. Once she sees his foster parents have his heart, she aims to eradicate all impediments to his love for her through a series of lies that vilify everyone else, thus setting her up as the lone hero.

The Heart is Deceiptful Above All Things is close to as draining as film gets, largely due to the victim being so naive, helpless, and impossibly innocent he becomes almost as intolerable as his abusers. The film is a series of vignettes illustrating the various forms of abuse, relying too heavily on the physical. There isn’t really an arch, a destruction of Jeremiah, he simply keeps coming back for more because there’s not one trustworthy or reliable person in his life. There’s no one for him to turn to, and he can’t simply support himself. Jeremiah is stuck with his vulgar, white trash, truck stop whore of a mom because when she flakes out he lacks even the means to eat.

One can’t argue with autobiographical details, and it’s perhaps important to note that Asia Argento thought she was adapting a true story. Now that literary Milli Vanilli JT LeRoy has been outed, it’s fair to question why Jeremiah doesn’t become more guarded if not outright petrified of other human beings? Even the dumbest animals learn faster than this kid, who winds up being hurt by virtually everyone he has any association with. Jeremiah’s only option is finding a way to get used to every misery. Most directors would use surrealist visions as an escape, but the recurring motif of the (animated) red crows merely serves to prepare Jeremiah for the latest atrocity. Jeremiah’s great triumph is learning to protect his mother, which in most cases would be a noble and worthy feat, but in his case learning to protect himself is the only thing that can really help him.

Argento puts too much focus on her own train wreck of a southern punk rock mom that’s a cross between Nancy Spungen and one of those poor souls desperate enough to humiliate themselves by appearing on the Jerry Springer Show. The stylistic result is similar to a refuge from an Alex Cox punk film being trapped in the world of Harmony Korine. The direction is successful in evoking the attitudes and innate slumminess, but the nature of elucidating a childhood in 90 plus minutes through a collection of short stories results in an a work that seems overly condensed. Yet the problem isn’t so much that there’s too little, but rather that Argento chooses to emphasize the whirlwind of traumas over character dimensionality or development to the point the film seems lengthy from the repetition. I don’t require characters to always change, nor do I expect anything good from this tragic a situation, but the better aspects of the film begin to be negated because it starts to seem like the primary aim is simply to shock the audience. I commend Argento for seeing the bleak subject matter through to the end without sanitizing it for our entertainment, but I hoped to be able to draw some conclusions beyond the obvious, some people should be kept as far away from children as possible.

Morvern Callar

Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar is an existential film featuring ambivalent characters that ultimately asks why the withdrawn and detached star is alive? Similar to Albert Camus’ legendary existential novel The Stranger, the author denies the audience a privileged point of view into the main character’s psyche while depicting the world in a very lucid manner that simply isn’t the terms a “normal” person would use to describe things. It’s a bit trickier with a film than a novel, as rather than coming from the description of the narrator Ramsay’s camera is forced to be a highly observational instrument whose detachment doesn’t undermine the abyss of her characters by being critical of the liabilities that make them voids.

Lynne Ramsay emphasizes mood over plot. Though non-professional Kathleen McDermott is impressive as the libertine and has sisterly chemistry with typically excellent Samantha Morton, Ramsay’s journey primarily relies upon the visuals and soundtrack. Sterile settings with harshly bright whites and drab grays are used to depict the dull days, while shaded, tinged, and saturated filters are used for the psychedelic nights. The film is highly fragmented, both in cutting style and meaningless dialogue that seemingly leads nowhere beyond creating a portrait of an empty soulless existence. The electronica and techno soundtrack conveys more about what’s going on inside Morvern Callar (Morton) than whatever she actually tells us.

Morvern Callar is a difficult film precisely because its characters are so remarkably simplistic. Morvern instinctively moves through the world without a thought process that would make sense to anyone else. Again, she’s the kind of character that under the “right” circumstances might shoot someone in response to the glare of the sun. She not only fails to understand others, but more importantly herself. This detachment results in her simply occupying space most of the time, and Ramsay maintaining that distance emphasizes the existential qualities of the work. It’s not about Morvern judging herself or the audience judging her. She’s neither an admirable character nor one to be punished, though in a different story the latter would certainly be a possibility. She’s simply runs with a tragic situation, gaining independence and freedom, except from the realization of what allowed her newfound fortune. She could kill her boyfriend for his cowardly abandoning, but in a way she has him to thank because it prompted her to choose something beyond sex, drugs, and loops of lull.

Rejecting a system of meaning in regards to the boyfriend’s suicide, the event has no greater meaning beyond shocking Morvern into a state of inward reflection. This is a world without guilt or redemption, without anything to give meaning to one’s actions. Life is absurd rather than a series of signs to be interpreted that will then act as guideposts for the enlightened. Given everything is ridiculous and meaningless, we ultimately must decide whether to embrace life and love it or reject it and call a halt to it. Perhaps Morvern searches for a manner to affirm her own reason to live simply to prevent her from accepting her boyfriend’s conclusion, thus prompting her to join him?

Morvern Callar is similar to the fiction of Franz Kafka in that it constantly elicits but readily crushes each and every grasp at a conclusive explanation. Certainly the purpose of the film is not to guide one in the mechanisms of handling suicide, as Morvern simply lets the corpse rot on the floor, eventually utilizing her boyfriend’s finances and taking his book as her own to attain more. To judge Morvern’s actions literally or use them as some kind of guide would be to miss the point entirely. This isn’t a world of motivation, a world where we know precisely why we do certain things much less can determine whether they are morally right before doing them. If anything, the purpose is for the audience to adopt a certain philosophy that allows them to attain a lust for life despite, or probably more precisely because of all that’s hopeless and illogical in the world.

One must also consider Morvern Callar within the context of Lynne Ramsay’s small but high quality body of work. Perhaps the best way to view the eponymous character is to see her as a continuation of the traumatized children Ramsay has dealt with in her previous works, particularly her first short Small Deaths where the effects are much greater in actuality than the incidents would lead you to believe. At 21, Morvern is theoretically an adult, but her mental growth was stunted by her perpetual displacement. As a foster child whose foster mother passed away, Morvern doesn’t fit in anywhere. The lack of ever having anyone she could count on to stick with her may have kept her from maturing properly.

Trauma that isn’t surmounted, and the ability to truly do so is debatable, recurs. Perhaps Callar’s boyfriend committing suicide this Christmas triggered the previous trauma such as everyone that should be reliable checks out or possibly the new trauma put Morvern over the edge. It’s not really important beyond its result of rendering her incapable of dealing with anything through a rational thought process. Perhaps that’s not as difficult to deal with for Morvern as for most, as her pastimes are ones where you just act. Her unsatisfying life is a series of thoughtless repetitions as a low wage slave at a grocery story by day and a party girl by night, the drugs and alcohol she tries to escape though only serving to further retard her decision making and grieving process.

Ramsay creates her own dreamy landscape, using the fact that her character cannot act rationally to explore other ideas. It’s hard to think of many similar films, though I’d cite Peter Del Monte’s Invitiation au voyage where the brother takes his dead twin sister on a wild road trip as he tries to figure out how to bring about her rebirth. To a certain extent both are investigations into whether interior similarity can trump exterior. Ultimately, the death serves as a catalyst to seeking the identity they’ve always lacked.

The suicide is both an enable and disabler for Morvern. By using her boyfriend’s remaining money, Morvern can temporarily lead a different life. By replacing his name on his finished manuscript with her own, she can perhaps make those changes permanent. It’s sometimes easier to change your identity than the purpose of your life, not that Morvern ever had any. She doesn’t know what she wants or likes, just that the market she works at is far from super.

Keeping her friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott) is of primary importance to Morvern because it’s her only real relationship, about the only good thing in her life at this point. She takes her on vacation with her, paying her way. Seeking family, they visit their grandmothers, but the more Morvern grasps at changing the bigger the rift between her and her close friend becomes, and given the circumstance the more alienated Morvern becomes from everyone.

Lanna has family and is accepted, so she is complete in an area where Morvern can never be whole. She’s a happy hedonist, and as any sense of local culture has been removed from clubbing, travel isn’t satisfying to her. Party life is ultimately as shallow and manufactured an experience in Scotland as anywhere they could travel to. However, Lanna does notice one major difference, she’s not as comfortable in Spain, which is understandable given she doesn’t speak their language. But ultimately the gap between her and Morvern grows because she lacks any desire or motivation to change.

As Morvern increasingly moves toward freedom, we see the price is a series of isolating decisions. She can’t party every night because she was as much a slave to that half of her life as she was to the grocery store. She can no longer be around those who knew her before because seeing her mysteriously with money and without boyfriend they’ll know something is up. She can’t be herself because she’s supposed to be a brilliant author, but she can’t be a brilliant author because she’s an uneducated dimwit. Right now she can only be, and hope that it’s enough for Chance the Gardener to be mistaken for Chauncey Gardner.

Considering Samantha Morton is one of the best actresses currently working and already did excellent jobs playing a mute in Woody Allen’s half decent Sweet & Lowdown (an “accomplishment” for post Radio Days Woody) and someone coping with traumatization caused by the death of a loved one through casual sex in Under The Skin, she was probably an easy choice for the lead role. Her performance, like the film as a whole, will either be captivating or infuriating due to a certain impenetrability. She mopes, whines, and sits around doing nothing. She’s generally very childish, hoping that a spark will catch fire, but we doubt anyone ever took the time to try to teach her survival 101.

One of the aspects I appreciate most is novelist Alan Warner doesn’t hoist events onto the story to serve as catalysts for Morvern’s improvement. It doesn’t take a conscious effort to temporarily bring Morvern out of her depression. Her routine escapism initially helps her cope with her boyfriend’s death; acting for others distracts her from the reality of her situation. Throughout the movie, depression and escapism are constant warring forces. One minute Morvern suffers in silence, the next she’s in a giggling stuper. She comes to life then dies again right before our eyes, sometimes due to the surroundings but often for no more reason than what’s going on inside of her. Ultimately, this is a life affirming work because she finds independence in escaping both forces, as well as the need for what others can never give her, but since Ramsay avoids the cliches people may misread the movie as gloomy.

Walk in the Sun

An infantry platoon during World War II lands on the beach in Salerno, Italy with orders to blow up a bridge six miles inland. When their lieutenant is quickly taken out, the sergeants are left to fend for themselves. A Walk in the Sun is generally praised and criticized based on its “realism”, but the various perspectives on the term and expectations they entail undoubtedly create more of a controversy than the quality of the film itself. Though a far superior contemporary of William A. Wellman’s pretty good Story of G.I. Joe, which more prominently features Walk in the Sun’s narrator Burgess Merideth, the realism is more in line with the French poetic realism movement of the 1930’s and early 1940’s, which in it’s quest to depict interior reality tended to be far more poetic than realistic. Despite director Lewis Milestone having fought in France (for Russia) during World War 1 and novelist Harry Brown enlisting in the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1941, the attention to exterior detail isn’t a strong suit of A Walk in the Sun. The soldiers lack dirt, sweat, and grime, are improperly equipped, and practice a grenade engaging technique that would be better suited as dollar store dentistry. Milestone concentrates on how everyday Joe’s contemplate and ultimately react to the trying situations they’re stuck in. The story lies in the travel that leads the platoon to battle rather than the battle itself, with the focus being on the effect of the unknown aspects on the known mission.

A Walk in the Sun is a tense film because at anytime the Germans might come from the sky or pop out from behind a bush; a grenade or land mine could rear its head at any moment. The soldier’s have a map, but know nothing of the area; the number of enemy troops that may be stationed, their patterns and movements are the X factor. We see no more than the US soldiers do, so combat is nothing beyond booms, rat-a-tat-tats, and clouds of smoke. A bomb dropped in the distance could just as easily have been from your own side as theirs.

Milestone, of course, finds ways to incorporate his trademark pans that were so distinguishing in his early sound masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front, but far more notable is the manner in which he has Russell Harlan utilize the camera to isolate the audience in a manner similar to the soldier. Most films find the man with the best view, but Milestone would rather depict the fear of the unknown. It’s much more terrifying to see a crawling soldier find a mate’s dead body as he inches toward his destination, the reality that the next squirm could render a similar fate becoming ever-present despite the mystery remaining intact because he (and we) still can’t locate the enemy. You never see the enemy until the final 2 minutes, but for the other 117 their mysterious proximity is never out of mind. Reality is, whether the soldier likes it or not, he must find a way to get from point A to point B knowing not what lies between but only that until the top of the incline or the next sight line it appears safe.

Lewis Milestone’s goal isn’t to make a military style version of Henri-Georges Clouzet’s The Wages of Fear. Tension, nerves, and fear are driving forces that are at the forefront of every soldiers mind, playing on their fragile psyche at every moment. These inescapable thoughts bring them to, and sometimes beyond, the brink of cracking. The focus however is on the simple but well observed banter that’s designed to bring relief through distraction. The soldier’s mind presents their only means of escapism. Thus, the movie is a combination of the aimless repetitive chatter that sometimes gets on the nerves of their comrades more than it relieves them and the thoughts, feelings, and emotions they hide from everyone but the audience, who is privy to them through an internal monologue. All this dialogue leans far more toward the poetic than the realistic, possessing lyric and rhythmic qualities that made for a fine novel, from which screenwriter Robert Rossen lifted many of Harry Brown’s passages verbatim.

There’s plenty of time to flesh out all the characters in the ensemble cast, none of which are particularly more important than the other. Sadly, none are particularly original either, instead we get the typical archetypes such as the yammering Italian GI from Brooklyn and the earthy mid American farmer. This is a rare film that’s unafraid to present war as mostly downtime. Though not nearly as commercial, it’s often more trying for the soldiers to deal with because they are thinking rather than reacting. In a battle many aspects are known. You are ordered to cross a strip of land and fire at a certain point, the directions and maneuvers are predetermined. The outcome probably means your life, but either way the result comes so quickly there’s not a lot of time to be a hypochondriac. It’s before the battle that you wait and wonder. You are bored to death for hours, days, or weeks, your impending doom front and center in your mind then you are scared to death for a few seconds, minutes, or hours. The real battle can be protecting your mind so you aren’t so worn down and petrified before that you don’t make it to the battlefield or freeze when you do. Since it’s Hollywood, when the action finally comes the heroes magically run through machine gun fire with only a few getting dropped. Although not without flaws, A Walk in the Sun is one of the most personal and introspective war films, and as good as any ever made at dealing with prefight ennui.

The basic arch with a struggle to land followed by a lengthy period of searching then culminating in a climactic battle is much like what Steven Spielberg employed for Saving Ryan’s Privates or: How I Learned to Stoop to Creating a Simplistic Hodgepodge of Every War Film and Love the Oscars. If your idea of a war film is a gory, action glorifying, effect laden phantasmagoria complete with a bombastic heart tugging score that blares every manipulative emotional dictate at full volume you’ll probably hate A Walk in the Sun. Milestone’s film is as slow as the soldiers in it walk, with the two battle scenes being purposely unrewarding; the opening shrouded in black and smoke and the closing being remarkably short. The dialogue of soon to be a screenwriter Harry Brown, who went on to work for Milestone on Arch of Triumph and that rat shit, is obviously a strength with the ordinary grunts reduced to wishing they’d get a minor wound so they’d get sent home and joking the enemy plane was shooting jelly beans when they don’t. Beyond that, many of the best aspects lie in what’s absent. The platoon’s missions has no greater meaning, if any meaning at all. We are spared the grand and heroic notions, all the patriotism. The enemy isn’t demeaned, as undoubtedly they also largely consist of regular guys who are doing their duty. There’s no why we fight speeches, in fact no speeches at all. There’s no melodrama, no honor or glory, no ideology. In the infantry you walk, but it’s no walk in the park. Even though in many ways you need to, you can never relax. War is waiting helplessly, intermittently interrupted by the sights and sounds of weaponry.

Bucket of Blood

"The artist is, all others are not. Let them die, and by their miserable deaths become the clay in his hands that he might mold them into an ashtray or an ark” – Maxwell H. Brock

Roger Corman turns The House of Wax into a wickedly cynical though none too sophisticated satire of beatnik elitism and art world pretension. Awestruck, childishly impressionable, inept busboy Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) has been ignored all his life. Understanding nothing about human interaction, as no one has ever had any desire to pay attention to him, at least not after they spent a minute with this clueless putz, the lone outsider in the coffee shop of hipsters desperately wants to be an artist similar to them. Unfortunately, he lacks a single unique thought, much less the ability to transform his desires into art. His capabilities don’t exceed regurgitation. However, when he accidentally stabs his landlady’s cat trying to cut it out of the wall to shut it up so he can concentrate on the masterpiece he wishes he could mold the clay into, he remembers art is more important than life, and decides to cover the cat with clay, passing it off as his first sculpture, aptly (especially considering Walter’s creativity) titled “Dead Cat”.

A Bucket of Blood is incredibly obvious and telegraphed, but to some extent that’s part of the ironic black comedy. To the club denizens, you are either “aware” or you aren’t, with creating any type of “art” being the defining factor. The Greenwich Village crew readily accept the artistic value of anything, ready to hail its greatness rather than question its quality or integrity. Paisley makes only the feeblest attempts to pass his work off as sculptures, but his words aren’t lent much credence as all the sheep follow the gospel of guru Maxwell H. Brock (Julian Barton), an enthusiastic word spinner who is an obvious caricature of beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Once Brock puts Paisley over, Walter is adored and a new art movement, a “return to realism” is launched.

Writer Charles B. Griffith contests that Corman didn’t even get the jokes to the point he had to have them explained to him. Corman tells an entirely different tale where he’s the father of black comedy, but when you consider Griffith’s script for The Undead was meant to be comical but Corman insisted on shooting it straight, Griffith’s version, which Corman alumni Joe Dante stands by, seems more likely.

Perhaps Corman once again lends a straightness to the comedy in A Bucket of Blood, but if that’s the case, in this instance it’s for the best. Though the beats are parodied, the film plays credibly enough because they aren’t made sitcom ridiculous. Brock actually says a number of interesting (even if they don’t always make sense) things that Barton does a tremendous job of putting over earnestly. They were right about Walter to begin with, becoming more a victim of their own ideology and follower tendencies in accepting the perpetual reject. And Walter’s art actually is good, if you don’t examine it closely enough to realize what lies beneath.

A Bucket of Blood is a metaphor for the movie world, a place where art takes a back seat to profit and is only, suddenly, respected by the suits when they realize people are willing to pay for it. Coffee house owner Leonard de Santis (Antony Carbone) is ready to inform the authorities when he discovers Walter’s methods, but despite realizing Walter has graduated to human subjects, a $500 offer to buy “Dead Cat” sends his morals right out the window.

Producers Samuel Z. Arkoff and James Nicholson didn’t care whether A Bucket of Blood was particularly good. Roger Corman took the assignment as a challenge to break his own record of shooting in 6 days, succeeding by 1. Bringing the picture in for $35,000, the cheapness assuring profitability, Corman used the remaining budget and 2 days of shooting time to film The Little Shop of Horrors on a previously used Chaplin Studios set that was about to be torn down.

Best known today as Murray Futterman, the town drunk who stands by American machinery in Joe Dante’s Gremlins, legendary character actor Dick Miller has about the only starring role of his career. Ironically, while Miller steals virtually every scene he’s in his smaller roles, particularly when he works for hilarious satirist Dante, he’s not entirely convincing here and is clearly overshadowed by Barton, who even sells lines such as “life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art.” Nonetheless, all of Corman’s acolytes were highly impressed by Miller’s performance, not only casting him in their films, but in Joe Dante & Allan Arkush’s Hollywood Boulevard, Dante’s The Howling and segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, and Jim Wynorski’s Chopping Mall his character is named Walter Paisley. In Arkush’s Shake, Rattle, & Rock! Dick is deprived of his unofficial first name, simply billed as Officer Paisley.

Miller certainly succeeds as Paisley, imbuing his character with a sense despair from being beaten down for so long. His obliviousness makes is situation seemingly hopeless, making you feel so bad for his pitiable character. Lonely Walter is mostly concerned with impressing coffee house hostess Carla (Barboura Morris, an acting school classmate of Corman’s who married Monte Hellman), the only person who (ever?) treated him decently before the budding artist in him was released. As the only uncool person in the coffee shot who lives alone in a tiny little cube ruled by a landlady who allows him as much freedom as an inmate, Paisley begins the film as a tragic innocent. His method of finally attaining his needs not only has a huge human cost he’s too clueless to see, but also corrupts him. As the capper, despite his newfound popularity this maladroit character remains too clueless to leverage it into satisfying himself.

Minnie & Moskowitz

“I think about you so much, I forget to go to the bathroom!” – Seymour Moskowitz

Pioneering independent maverick John Cassavetes is one of the last directors you’d expect to make a screwball romantic comedy of mismatched lovers for a Hollywood studio. The very idea seems a contradiction to the master of depicting pain and posturing, who never allows a character to be sympathetic for long, always counteracting with patheticness to balance his examination off and draw closer to the truth. Cassavetes films provide an experience similar to no other because he pushes his raw, unflinchingly honest portraits of human fear, frailty, insecurity, and selfishness beyond the brink of explosion. They feel dangerous because they put you in the moment. Everything seems so real and cuts so close to the bone there’s an emotional and sometimes physical brutality where mere mortal films seem pat and contrived. The success of Easy Rider opened the door to smaller, less conventional films, and Cassavetes was one of the directors given less than $1 million by Universal in hopes of another cult hit. Cassavetes might have played by the rules more than usual in Minnie & Moskowitz, but despite some laughs the film is always true to his own investigative drama interests.

Minnie & Moskowitz is a movie about Seymour Moskowitz’s (Seymour Cassel) battle to win Minnie Moore’s (Gena Rowlands) love by any means necessary. Minnie is a classy, cultured, and (theoretically) attractive museum curator who men always throw themselves at. Unfortunately for her, they never sparkle like the classic Hollywood leading men she dreams of. She’s a characters that should be successful in relationships, but is such a sucker for Hollywood’s fantasy world she winds up never being satisfied with real tangible man; their face is wrong or they aren’t strong, interesting, romantic, whatever, enough. She’s become so disillusioned with the men, love, the whole process, that it’s rendered her world weary. Finally giving up on Jim (John Cassavetes), an uncaring man who gives her hope through the promises she tries to believe, but ultimately will never leave his wife, hasn’t prevented her from suffering the loss.

Minnie’s blind date Zelmo (Val Avery) has many attributes, including money, intellect, and the romance language of the poetry he’s well versed in, but lacks the will to succeed. He functions based on knowledge, so the mystery of the other quickly trips him up if his inability to read their signs doesn’t get him first. He’s so petrified he’ll lose once again he rambles on endlessly and obliviously, laying the praise for her on way too thick and in the wrong places and revealing more about his own failings than she needs to know at this point. He knows he can’t interact successfully with others, dreading his impending failure to the point he blows his chance then surrenders.

Though rescuing Minnie from Zelmo is a plus, parking lot attendant Moskowitz has nothing going for him in conventional Hollywood terms. Not only isn’t he rich, important, young, or gay looking, he’s uncouth, uninteresting, and something of a low-life bum. Moskowitz may only have two things going for him, he knows exactly what he wants and he’s the definition of persistent. Seymour may be an obsessive, stalking, brawler, but Cassavetes admires him for having the daring to risk it all by revealing his feelings and the willingness to fall flat on his face.

Minnie & Moskowitz both view different Humphrey Bogart pictures that are directly related to their own characters. Moskowitz sees Bogart as the hard-boiled tough guy in The Maltese Falcon who operates under his own code, indifferent to the feelings of others. Meanwhile, Minnie sees Bogie as the self-sacrificing romantic in Casablanca who hoists up a mask of indifference to protect his heart before eventually surrendering to love.

Moskowitz pushes himself to the limit because by satisfying himself he’s capable of moving on, win or lose. Feeling is the be all and end all of his existence. He needs to feel something, so he pushes hard with blunt force. It might result in him getting pounded, but Moskowitz starts fights willing to withstand the beating, sometimes seemingly just to make sure he still can. In the end, pain still satisfies his need to feel. Minnie has fought her feelings to the point she’s forgotten how to feel, her ice queen status intimidating if not scaring some (though not enough for her taste) would be suitors off. Moskowitz may be her match if only because he’s the only one determined enough to break down the wall Minnie has put up to shield herself.

John Cassavetes films normally consist of endless questioning with no answers provided. Here Cassavetes inverts his quest to get at the truth, providing unending possibilities in the shape of answers only to have the characters they are proposed to reject their validity. Minnie doesn’t find because she doesn’t know what she’s seeking. At one point she says to a friend, "You know, the world is full of silly asses who crave your body. I mean, not just your body, but your heart, your soul, your mind, everything! They can't live until they get it. And you know, once they get it, they don't really want it." One wonders if she wouldn’t feel the same way if her movie star actually showed up, but we realize she’ll never be satisfied until she realizes it’s irrelevant.

Cassavetes, who was known for his distaste for definitive endings, gives one to Minnie & Moskowitz, reducing the masterpiece in the eyes of some of his hardcore fans. In a sense, he had to because as much as Moskowitz believes he knows what he wants, Minnie remains uncertain. She finally has to make a decision so live can being, or end, or whatever it does when the crowds are gone.

The lead performances are among the best ever with Seymour Cassel and Gena Rowlands lighting up and exploding from the screen. Cassel is a sometimes laid back hippie who aggressively pursues whatever he thinks he wants with a great deal of fire and energy. He not only wears his feelings on his shoulder, but verbalizes them in a very straightforward manner with a dangerous intensity that’s sometimes so passionate it spurs violence. Meanwhile, Rowlands buries her emotions so deeply we sometimes wonder if there isn’t a robot hiding behind those sunglasses, only to have her pull out an incisive dagger.

The improvization in John Cassavetes movies is always wildly misunderstood. Everything is very deliberately scripted, though Cassavetes works with his wife Rowlands and closest friends and confidants, so he trusts them to experiment with adding to or subtracting from the material where they see fit. The film puts you in the moment, having the feeling of being off the cuff because the performances seem so fresh and alive. There’s not a second that seems rehearsed, and it never looks like they are going through the motions as usual. Unlike the bogus boxing promos we believe they have enough welled up emotion and frustration to lose it and beat the hell out of if not kill one another. There’s an aura is that of the uncontrollable. In a way, we are the opposite of Minnie. She believes anything too good must be an illusion, we believe it somehow must not have been an illusion because it’s so good.

From an artistic perspective, Pit and the Pendulum is Roger Corman’s second best film behind the Nicolas Roeg lensed Masque of the Red Death. Bringing back the same production team that had successfully rendered Corman’s first Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, House of Usher, the previous year was likely the primary reason the Poe adaptations wound up becoming a cycle for American International Pictures. Their work in creating a lush, atmospheric, sensual horror provided most of the quality in this exceedingly successful (by AIP standards) box office hit, which grossed 10 times the miniscule $200,000 budget, and influenced the Italian horror scene, including such luminaries as Mario Bava (The Whip and the Body) and Dario Argento (Deep Red).

Roger Corman believed Edgar Allan Poe’s stories were created out of the unconscious mind, so he avoided all realistic settings until the final entry in the cycle, the partially naturally lit and location ship Tomb of Ligeia. Essentially eliminating outdoor scenes (Francis arrival at the potentially haunted mansion is done with a matte background), Corman relies upon the roomy, cavernous multi-level sets of gleaner Daniel Haller and the lushly colored, hazily distorted cinematography of Floyd Crosby to convey Nicholas Medina’s (Vincent Price) twisted and skewed subconscious. Nicholas’ blue toned, red shadowed nightmarish flashbacks are particularly artistic, with Crosby’s tilted angles, thrashing camera movements, and veiled borders representing the hysterical relationship the haunted man has with the world.

Les Baxter’s soundtrack is the standout of the Corman catalogue. His compositions are spare but jarring during the bulk of the film, though atmospheric and moody to carry the otherwise silent flashback scenes. Similar to the story itself, Baxter’s work builds in a manner that creeps up on the audience. When the infamous pendulum is finally unleashed, the music throbs to match Francis’ beating heart.

If the importance of sound was maintained from Poe’s short story The Pit and the Pendulum, unfortunately little else seems to have been. Screenwriter Richard Matheson maintains the Spanish Inquisition and innocent victims tortured, but essentially Corman and co. Just use the primary torture apparatus as the basis for the stomach churning closing. The rest of the film plays like Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest hits, borrowing bits from Morella, Premature Burial, Fall of the House of Usher, and so on. Poe delved into similar themes often enough that, while hardly matching the quality of his prose of the morbid tension it evoked, it’s at least believable that Poe could have written such a tale if he decided to expand his ideas beyond the short story.

Matheson’s version of Pit and the Pendulum can be seen as something of a companion to Robert Towne’s Tomb of Ligeia. Price’s guilt stricken character is unable to get over the death of his young wife, who may have been buried alive. Wishing, fearing, believing she may still be present, in spirit if not in body, Price might be so disturbed by the situation he’s unaware he’s creating evidence of his wife’s return. Pit and the Pendulum deals with the mourning period directly following her shocking loss, while Tomb of Ligeia tackles his eventual attempt at rebuilding his life through a relationship with another woman.

Remaining in the vain of House of Usher where the past is doomed to repeat itself, causing the environment to weight heavily over the proceedings worked well enough since they greatly improved upon the environment with experience. Unfortunately, the acting went in reverse. Though John Kerr was a once promising young actor, scoring as the outsider student star of Vincent Minnelli’s underrated Tea and Sympathy, he proved to be a flash in the pan with Pit and the Pendulum turning out to be his final major roll. He’s no less wooden than Mark Damon in House of Usher. I’m not one for grand emotions, but if you’ve bothered to make the long journey to find out how your sister died you ought to at least seem as if the loss has altered your personality in some fashion. Kerr doesn’t exactly enhance the film’s somber tone, seeming to persist in his quest for the truth only because the script contains more lines for him to read.

Coming off her signature movie Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, dark beauty Barbara Steele gets third billing despite the fact that as Francis’ dead sister she’s afforded a miniscule amount of screen time. Further reducing her role, she was dubbed because her British accent sounded too much different from the not so Spanish sounding accents the American actors put little effort into. Corman stock player Antony Carbone is solid as he was in A Bucket of Blood and Luana Anders is fine too, but Vincent Price is at his worst.

Vincent Price is the only actor in the Poe cycle who can speak Poe’s verse in a manner that does it justice. He’s wonderful doing the audiobooks of Poe, but he simply puts too much into his performance in Pit and the Pendulum. Making sweeping transitions from eye-rolling frenzy to sinister sadism, Price veers well into the realm of camp. Richard Matheson stands by his quickie Poe scripts, but I didn’t get into this story as much as House of Usher. I expect it’s more due to the acting failing to put it over, and secondarily the fact that Usher was the first of several I watched in short period of time so the themes were familiar only from Poe. Corman and co. use similar elements in most of the cycle to fill out the running time to feature length, so even though this was only the second, it didn’t seem as fresh because I saw Tales of Terror, The Raven, and Tomb of Ligeia first.

Tout Va Bien

“To change everything, where do you start?”

With Week End denoting the end of cinema and Le Gai Savoir calling for a return to zero, Jean-Luc Godard formed The Dziga Vertov Group with Le Monde newspaper editor Jean-Pierre Gorin and other young apprentices such as Jean-Henri Roger. Their goal was not to make political films, but rather to make films politically with the neglected Soviet master being chosen as their moniker due to his combination of radical politics with a deconstructive style that impaled all illusions of cinematic realism by consistently calling attention to his own filmmaking techniques. After touring with a series of small experimental films that generally weren’t funded, displayed, or even welcome by traditional distributors, Dziga Vertov Group were ready to make certain commercial concessions (stars, narrative, constructed set) in exchange for a chance to remobilize the many who had lost the revolutionary spirit of May 1968.

The key to enacting political change through a movement is always getting people who aren’t directly effected to take a stand on moral grounds. The few owners backed by the politicians whose pockets they overflow will always conspire to screw the workers, customers, and environment, maximizing their profit any way they can get away with. The workers only win when they make a compelling case to the public that manages to overshadow the requisite ownership propaganda that anything done for the workers will come directly out of your pocket (if true, it’s only due to the big shots refusal to share the tens if not hundreds of millions they are making or cut costs by sometimes accepting something less than the best for themselves).

Godard & Gorin’s premise is examining the differences between May 1968 and the present, which was May 1972. Workers and owners are still at odds because they have vested interests, but in 1968 there was legitimate chance for sweeping changes due to people from all walks of life getting involved. Students played a huge role in backing the striking workers, and filmmakers such as Godard and Francois Truffaut were among the many intellectuals and luminaries who did their part to rally the masses. Now, most people aren’t directly involved in the battles have become frustrated and ennui ridden; falling beneath the fray they are content to go about making money as usual, often through the unsatisfying path of least resistance.

Many of the once motivated intellectuals still believe they’re important and earnest to the cause, though they’ve become very detached. Godard & Gorin’s leftist stars Yves Montand and Jane Fonda, named Jacques and Suzanne but often referred to as Him & Her as one of the deemphasizing methods, represent two such self-important people. As one of the commercial concessions, they happen to be a couple, but this is anything but a love story. Their relationship is only allowed to exist within the context of their work, a commercial exchange that’s inherently as filthy and hypocritical as the employers they represent.

Jacques is a former nouvelle vague filmmaker who has forgotten his principles, now a selling out who makes TV commercials. He accompanies Suzanne, the French correspondent for the America Broadcasting System who is totally out of her element and a complete outsider, on a routine interview with the boss of a sausage factory. Disgruntled with their union, the workers take matters into their own hands, staging their own strike, which results in Jacques & Suzanne getting sequestered along with the Factory Manager (Vittorio Caprioli).

Godard obviously relates to and is more in touch with the intellectuals, but that doesn’t stop him from reproaching his stars, who are guilty by association. Though Tout va bien may be too generalized and “serious” (Godard puts too much faith in Marx and Mao, but the film is actually quite funny if you tune in to its humor) to fully succeed when it comes to politics, it at least avoids the primary aspects where political films fail as it’s anything but a one-sided treatise from the saintly do-gooders. If audiences hate political films it’s largely because they assume we’re supposed to entirely agree with one side whether we like it or not, but Godard and Gorin allow every side to speechify, delivering everything in a manner that sets the audience in opposition to it. One goal of the Dziga Vertov Group was to "combat the tyranny of image over sound". Their primary method to achieve this aim was to set the soundtrack and visuals at odds, distancing the audience from the material and the creating an ironic detachment.

Godard & Gorin attempt to reveal and question everyone’s ideologies, ultimately condemning the faults that lie within them or the laziness and disorganization that keeps them from succeeding. Suzanne believes she does her best, but business as usual entails reporting the incident by talking to management and ignoring the perspective of the workers. The various leftist factions can’t develop a cohesive rhetoric, much less speak to their entire side, so they instead engage in self-centered, petty bickering and squabbles. In particular, the communist party and union heads waste their energy on each other rather than their powerful enemies. Once energetic protestors have grown lonelier and become marginalized, an unwanted disturbance no one is outraged when the modern day Gestapo have their way with.

Jean-Luc Godard has always enjoyed frustrating his audience. Many who dislike Tout va bien are put off by the ennui. There’s no one to like, much less root for and believe in. Perhaps Godard & Gorin believe people aren’t as well off as they were in 5/68 or should have been, but aren’t as bad off as they believe they are either. But the constant repetition of title, which means everything’s fine or all’s well, is probably another ironic joke, a half-hearted assertion that’s akin to those who follow their hell in a handbasket declarations with, “but America is still the best country in the world.” Godard and Gorin repeatedly show their doubts that anyone has the leadership, initiative, and energy to find a way to breakthrough the stifling atmosphere they’ve used their set to create, but their method is provocation. They hope if they challenge everyone to prove them wrong, maybe they’ll get lucky and someone actually will.

The self-conscious and referential A Woman is a Woman showed Godard’s interest in Brechtian distancing devices, but they really come to the forefront in the Dziga Vertov films. Godard & Gorin film the strike in the most anti-documentary of manners, tracking back and forth across a compartmentalized set that’s a homage to Jerry Lewis’ The Ladies Man. Every group is confined to their very clearly delineated box, not only accentuating the power structure but also using the flimsy walls to keep them very much apart from both foe and potential, theoretical friend. Trapped in their own little cages, their issues increasingly blend into the woodwork and become their own solitary frustrations.

Godard & Gorin would undoubtedly like someone to tear down a wall and free themselves, but they aren’t about making films where the fictitious characters work everything out in the end, freeing the audience from the burden. Everyone in Tout va bien seems lost. The workers can’t even decide what to do with the manager. They have a little fun at his expense, forcing him to comprehend how inhuman his rules are by refusing to allow him a bathroom break. Though they threaten, “You’re gonna get it, Mr. Bossman,” he winds up shaving and exercising in his office while they pace around and worry.

While Dziga Vertov Group filmed real groups such as Al Fatah in Jordan, as a way to counteract the star presence of Montand & Fonda they not only hired unemployed actors to portray the workers, they put them front and center, forcing the stars into the background to the point they sometimes seem like the extras. Nonetheless, Jacques and Suzanne seem the best hope to change things because they are the way Godard & Gorin seem to envision the audience, capable of learning and reinvigorating themselves toward the issues, but lacking something to prompt them to do so. The surprise confrontation with reality causes the fictitious characters to temporarily reexamine what’s important to them, their work and their relationship. That’s all Godard & Gorin can realistically hope for from them, and more importantly their audience. Jacques returns to whoring himself to the enemy, but Suzanne realizes she hasn’t been accomplishing anything as a journalist because there’s so much more to the issues than she’s previously considered, and regardless it can’t be simplified into the few seconds of airtime she gets anyway (sound bites being the death of depth and debate).

Godard & Gorin are not only critical of their characters, but also themselves. Their deconstruction of the owner/worker relationship and capitalism also includes a hilarious dissemination of the process of getting a film made. The blunt manner in which the narration depicts the financing process to a series of checks being signed (“If you use stars, people will give you money”) makes it all seem so cold, calculated, and especially shameless. Godard & Gorin, of course, attempt to subvert the financiers and audience’s expectations through vagueness and gray areas, their story including such elements as “bourgeois who bourgeois”. They make the concession to a set, but defeat the purpose of it, never allowing anyone to think it could possibly be the real thing. They make the concession to stars, but never allow treat them as anything beyond fairly undefined tools who serve to thrust the equally wayward audience into the chaos more than lead them through it.

Jean-Luc Godard was actually going to make Tout va bien for Paramount, but suffered a near fatal motorcycle accident in New York on 6/9/71, the very day he was to sign the contract. Gaumont wound up financing the film instead, but with Godard hospitalized on and off for the next two years it was Gorin who was most likely primarily responsible for the finished movie. Though Gorin is thought to have shared authorship equally with Godard from Lotte in Italia onward, his knowledge and appreciation of Godard’s back catalogue, combined with the disheartening obscurity of the essay films he’s made on his own make it difficult to distinguish his contributions. It’s been suggested that the referential aspects are Gorin doing Godard. In any case, the showstopping finale that’s a tribute to the endless traffic jam in Week End is a tour de force.

Godard has always been a director who not only attempted to depict the world as it was at the moment, but also saw the direction the world was going in. This duality has allowed his films to function as time capsules while maintaining a freshness like few others of his era, especially the ones with political ideas which always seem to date quickly despite the absence of dramatic change. In 1972, 5 food industry giants controlled 25% of the French food industry, but Godard understands the goal of capitalism, regardless of industry, is that every business strives to be the monopoly that controls the entire world market. France was “ahead” of the USA in moving to the one stop for everything store, so Dziga Vertov Group imagines suitably empty and unethical political ideology being sold in the supermarket as well. Linking shopping to the factory, the unbroken back and forth tracking shot depicts shopping as the end of the factory assembly line. Once again, no one talks and the dehumanized place the products on the conveyor belt. But unlike in Week End where diversion is the order of the day, suddenly the people wake up and begin enacting change. Refusing to end on a positive note, something just seems to be missing. Their actions seem rather juvenile, lacking the spirit, purity, and hope of May 1968.

Pit and the Pendulum

From an artistic perspective, Pit and the Pendulum is Roger Corman’s second best film behind the Nicolas Roeg lensed Masque of the Red Death. Bringing back the same production team that had successfully rendered Corman’s first Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, House of Usher, the previous year was likely the primary reason the Poe adaptations wound up becoming a cycle for American International Pictures. Their work in creating a lush, atmospheric, sensual horror provided most of the quality in this exceedingly successful (by AIP standards) box office hit, which grossed 10 times the miniscule $200,000 budget, and influenced the Italian horror scene, including such luminaries as Mario Bava (The Whip and the Body) and Dario Argento (Deep Red).

Roger Corman believed Edgar Allan Poe’s stories were created out of the unconscious mind, so he avoided all realistic settings until the final entry in the cycle, the partially naturally lit and location ship Tomb of Ligeia. Essentially eliminating outdoor scenes (Francis arrival at the potentially haunted mansion is done with a matte background), Corman relies upon the roomy, cavernous multi-level sets of gleaner Daniel Haller and the lushly colored, hazily distorted cinematography of Floyd Crosby to convey Nicholas Medina’s (Vincent Price) twisted and skewed subconscious. Nicholas’ blue toned, red shadowed nightmarish flashbacks are particularly artistic, with Crosby’s tilted angles, thrashing camera movements, and veiled borders representing the hysterical relationship the haunted man has with the world.

Les Baxter’s soundtrack is the standout of the Corman catalogue. His compositions are spare but jarring during the bulk of the film, though atmospheric and moody to carry the otherwise silent flashback scenes. Similar to the story itself, Baxter’s work builds in a manner that creeps up on the audience. When the infamous pendulum is finally unleashed, the music throbs to match Francis’ beating heart.

If the importance of sound was maintained from Poe’s short story The Pit and the Pendulum, unfortunately little else seems to have been. Screenwriter Richard Matheson maintains the Spanish Inquisition and innocent victims tortured, but essentially Corman and co. Just use the primary torture apparatus as the basis for the stomach churning closing. The rest of the film plays like Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest hits, borrowing bits from Morella, Premature Burial, Fall of the House of Usher, and so on. Poe delved into similar themes often enough that, while hardly matching the quality of his prose of the morbid tension it evoked, it’s at least believable that Poe could have written such a tale if he decided to expand his ideas beyond the short story.

Matheson’s version of Pit and the Pendulum can be seen as something of a companion to Robert Towne’s Tomb of Ligeia. Price’s guilt stricken character is unable to get over the death of his young wife, who may have been buried alive. Wishing, fearing, believing she may still be present, in spirit if not in body, Price might be so disturbed by the situation he’s unaware he’s creating evidence of his wife’s return. Pit and the Pendulum deals with the mourning period directly following her shocking loss, while Tomb of Ligeia tackles his eventual attempt at rebuilding his life through a relationship with another woman.

Remaining in the vain of House of Usher where the past is doomed to repeat itself, causing the environment to weight heavily over the proceedings worked well enough since they greatly improved upon the environment with experience. Unfortunately, the acting went in reverse. Though John Kerr was a once promising young actor, scoring as the outsider student star of Vincent Minnelli’s underrated Tea and Sympathy, he proved to be a flash in the pan with Pit and the Pendulum turning out to be his final major roll. He’s no less wooden than Mark Damon in House of Usher. I’m not one for grand emotions, but if you’ve bothered to make the long journey to find out how your sister died you ought to at least seem as if the loss has altered your personality in some fashion. Kerr doesn’t exactly enhance the film’s somber tone, seeming to persist in his quest for the truth only because the script contains more lines for him to read.

Coming off her signature movie Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, dark beauty Barbara Steele gets third billing despite the fact that as Francis’ dead sister she’s afforded a miniscule amount of screen time. Further reducing her role, she was dubbed because her British accent sounded too much different from the not so Spanish sounding accents the American actors put little effort into. Corman stock player Antony Carbone is solid as he was in A Bucket of Blood and Luana Anders is fine too, but Vincent Price is at his worst.

Vincent Price is the only actor in the Poe cycle who can speak Poe’s verse in a manner that does it justice. He’s wonderful doing the audiobooks of Poe, but he simply puts too much into his performance in Pit and the Pendulum. Making sweeping transitions from eye-rolling frenzy to sinister sadism, Price veers well into the realm of camp. Richard Matheson stands by his quickie Poe scripts, but I didn’t get into this story as much as House of Usher. I expect it’s more due to the acting failing to put it over, and secondarily the fact that Usher was the first of several I watched in short period of time so the themes were familiar only from Poe. Corman and co. use similar elements in most of the cycle to fill out the running time to feature length, so even though this was only the second, it didn’t seem as fresh because I saw Tales of Terror, The Raven, and Tomb of Ligeia first.

Eastern Promises

Inner turmoil may have a physical manifestation depending upon the genre David Cronenberg chooses to work in, but the director consistently mines the depths of the very complicated and contradictory beings known as humans. Cronenberg’s films of the 2000’s have been more grounded than in the past, realism stripping the metaphoric ambiguity that made films such as The Brood, Scanners, The Fly, Videodrome, Naked Lunch, and eXistenZ so interesting. Moving toward minimalism, interior conflict is maddening in Spider and pre-programmed role playing in A History of Violence. Eastern Promises maintains the role playing aspect, but away from down home small town America the stakes are much graver, leading to the gangsters taking cryptically suppressing the real them ultra seriously.

One advantage of the sci-fi genre is it lends the author a great deal of creative license. I didn’t have to believe that as I’m writing this my neighbors could be channeling their mental power to blow each other’s heads up to believe in the conclusion of Scanners because Cronenberg had created his own world and made the material take on a life of its own. Exceptional cinematography Peter Suschitzky uses the blue-gray palette of rainy London to evoke a hazy, subdued, and depressed atmosphere for Eastern Promises, but while the muted style certainly helps render the deceptive simplicity of the duplicitous characters, it also clearly grounds the film in the real of the very real. That could easily be an improvement, as the King of Venereal Horror’s most realistic tale of terror, Dead Ringers, was also his greatest. Lending further credence to the great potential for a realistic classic is the fact that screenwriter Steven Knight already proved to possess a great understanding of London’s crime and immigrant subcultures where tender flesh is a valuable but replaceable commodity in Stephen Frears last worthwhile film Dirty Pretty Things.

There are many excellent aspects to Eastern Promises, starting with the fact it rescues gangsters films from the land of cool and charismatic men who would be fun to have a drink with, at least if they didn’t decide to bash your skull in. Cronenberg has removed all glamour and sentiment. Everything is very precise and matter of fact with the “driver” Nikokai (Viggo Mortensen) being so used to his routine of cleaning up dead bodies he can chop fingers off a man with no more discomfort than if he were preparing a salad. Far more believable than A History of Violence, Eastern Promises was carefully prepared to exist in the real world rather than the somewhat condescending movie world of A History of Violence. With the exception of insecure, hot-headed godfather’s son Kirill (Vincent Cassel), who is always grasping for a way to live up to his father Semyon’s (Armin Mueller-Stahl) expectations, it’s a very toned down, poker- faced look at the ethics and code of the secret Russian Mafia society.

Loyalty is the key to mob life, so the material is very conducive to the theme of removing expectations. There’s seemingly no message to the film, which shows the skill that went into making it, as it doesn’t feel as if Cronenberg is out to show “monsters” have morals and values. Rather than relying on sentiment and pre-programmed reactions as the usual Hostess Twinkie movies do, there’s a sense of discovery to all we learn about the characters because the filmmakers seem to simply be conveying their own knowledge and discovery rather than out to force the audience to accept it. Eastern Promises is an emotional film, but it’s a world where emotion is subdued and humanity is hidden, all taking a back seat to a unique set of preimposed rules of conduct. The culture of stealthful maneuvering may render Nikolai externally cold and as expressive as a block, but that’s what makes him interesting, as internally he must still consider actions and results at some point.

Cronenberg presents the material as accurately and objectively as possible, but unfortunately Eastern Promises winds up being among his least believable films due to the eventual realization the film is nothing more than a mystery with the narrative being little more than a gimmick that serves the needs and functions of the moralist creators. You never feel as if you are being manipulated while watching Eastern Promises, but upon a certain revelation of one of Nikolai’s secrets, the ending largely became a given. It may take another 25 minutes for it to come, but when it does not only is the result no surprise, but far more disturbingly everything is wrapped up so quickly and easily. It doesn’t feel similar to the typical movie, that they wanted to get it over with so they could and provide the audience with a happy and redemptive enough ending (to what in this case is an the otherwise suitably grim tale), but rather as though they had to surprise you with the abruptness of the ending to distract you from considering the specifics and what the film lacked.

That surprise is a goal at all makes it a lesser Cronenberg, as everything he’s done since The Brood grows through reflection. Films such as Videodrome, Naked Lunch, and eXistenZ could be discussed and debated endlessly, but M. Butterfly is the most relevant because it was very nearly a masterpiece despite, or more accurately because of the fact everyone knew Song Liling was a man.

The mystery of Spider was not only more difficult to solve than in Eastern Promises, but far more importantly there were far reaching implications to the results. Eastern Promises seems to me a film about discovery, and thus mystery that ends upon solving. It’s not a movie where the mystery is the be and end all like some M. Night Schlockmalan dreck, but even being one that satisfactorily wraps things up and sends your mind off to the next movie is a disappointment. In many senses, I do appreciate the abruptness of the finale. Certainly, I’m glad they didn’t tack on a lot of needless exposition about the future, but if there’s one thing mob leaders are good at it’s maintaining their power as long as they are alive, yet the final maneuvers, which Cronenberg makes a statement with through the avoidance of violence despite a history of it, seem as effortless as it would be for grand master Garry Kasparov to dispose of me in chess.

Similar to David Cronenberg’s best work, Eastern Promises is a clever and efficient film that sneaks up on the audience as it pulls back the layers of a character. Unfortunately, it often fails to take on meaning in doing so. In masterpieces such as eXistenZ and Spider, the audience is left to comprehend the complicated nuances, but with philosophy yielding Eastern Promises is just another genre entry that only leaves you wondering if that’s really all there was because Cronenberg hasn’t made a film you could simply write off since the 1970’s. Right now I’m still thinking I should rewatch Eastern Promises, my mind must have been elsewhere or I must have been in a bad mood or something. Certainly the problem every great director faces is their fans hold them to the standard of their best film(s), and try to box them in. Almost every Orson Welles film was panned because it wasn’t Citizen Kane even though very few plays have been more startlingly and effectively brought to the screen than Othello, Touch of Evil can at least hold it’s own with any film noir ever made, and F for Fake is among the best essay films.

I can easily live without the special effects, but it’s very difficult not to hold Cronenberg to his past glory considering he’s dealt with similar themes throughout his entire body of work. For instance, from the start of his career, Cronenberg has been interested in human’s annihilative tendencies, mutation and mutilation going hand in hand in his depictions of a culture of violence and sexual repression. The difference from Cronenberg’s past achievements can be summed up by his handling of the destruction of the flesh. In Crash, Cronenberg explored the reasons beyond the self-mutilation for the majority of the film, but in Eastern Promises Steven Knight simply explains them away, reducing it from theme to meaningless asides. Ritual scarification serves to establish and chronicle identity. With tribalism being co-opted by corporations as part of their packaged rebellion that serves as a soulless diversion from any cause to rebel, the intended or at least potential theme of living with the ceremonial brandings is reduced to little more than the usual costume design. There’s a good scene where a frozen corpse is thawed with a blow drying then the fingers are cut off, but it’s simply mutilation to remove identity. The much praised fight scene in the Turkish bath is one of the only legitimate movie fights of recent times, done by the real actors without requiring wires to make them magically fly, 3 million edits to mask their inability to do even the most basic sequence, and fast forward vision to ensure you’ll miss how phony it all is. The fight fits perfectly within the context of the film, generally restrained but with occasional brief bursts of brutal violence. The Chechan gangsters using a blade to slice and dice Nikolai shows the frailty of human flesh, its feebleness compared to what lies beneath, which provides the means for Nikolai to adapt and will himself to survival. Still, as good as the scene is, it simply comes and goes.

Most of Eastern Promises could hardly be better, yet Cronenberg’s body of work has been so exceptional that one major problem is enough to result in me ranking it as his worst since Fast Company. To a lesser extent, the success of A History of Violence hurts the film in that it prompted Cronenberg to return to similar material with the same star. The tone of Eastern Promises is entirely different, but when Viggo Mortensen starts out as the heartless gangster we imagine Joey Cusack to have been, as soon as we realize the characters are once again trying to suppress their true nature by acting opposite the warning bells go off. Perhaps Viggo won’t morph into Tom Stall, but no matter how good the film is minute for minute, it’s going to be hard to get away with trying to surprise anyone with twists.

Similar to Martin Scorsese’s films, Eastern Promises is often brilliant when it sticks to the gangsters, but suffers from the involvement of the token woman. Gangs would have been much better if Diaz’s Jenny Everdeane was Camarooned on Ellis Island. Naomi Watts is normally worlds better than Diaz is, but she was obviously miscast because for whatever reason she once again gives her Mulholland Drive performance. Part of the role calls for her to be tough but fragile as Maria Bello was in A History of Violence, but Bello was not only much better at it, that was also a far more Lynchian environment, poking fun at the yokels and poseurs. As the ordinary woman mixing with the hardened criminals, her work certainly provides quite a contrast, but we are smart enough to realize the naive good Samaritan is out of place without the constant reminders of her overly actorly performance that makes her feel out of place rather than her character. To make things worse, she seems about as half Russian as I do. That point is only made more painfully obvious by the fact all her scenes are either with Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (Deep End, Moonlighting) as her ex-KGB uncle or Mortensen, who at least by movie standards are both exceptionally credible as Russians.

Eastern Promises is a better film than Gangs of New York, but what keeps it from being one of the best films of the year is not the actresses role or performance but rather the ridiculous idea of mixing saving a baby into the story of the gangster’s world. Everytime Anna (Naomi Watts) interjects herself into their sphere to try to get a contact address for the dead mother’s family that will prevent the orphan from being left to the mercy of the system, the story feels imposed and forced. I can believe that, needing a translator and not knowing a sharp dressed mobster from a businessman Anna could get the gangsters (more) involved, but continually forcing interaction with them defies all possibility, logic, and reason. I’m not a defender of the competence of perpetually underfunded social services, but when a mother who comes in drugged out and hemorrhaging kicks the bucket during childbirth the police normally notice and agencies usually get involved. If you start a crusade to unearth the baby’s relatives, even if you want to prevent the baby from being turned over as it should be, doesn’t it make more sense to not deal exclusively with people who might put a bullet in your head for looking at them in the wrong manner?

A History of Violence showed environment dictating human behavior with violence existing in all worlds because it was innate to American culture. Eastern Promises examines things from a more individual perspective, with good and evil more often being biproducts rather than goals. Anna tries so hard to do right by the current baby to assuage her guilt over what became of her own. Nikolai may help her at his own risk because he thinks there may be something in it for him that may make it worth it. It’s a world of retribution where sexuality is awkward and uncomfortable as in Dead Ringers and Crash and decisions are quickly made regardless of potential consequences. Anyone’s actions can be destructive or redemptive, often a combination of both though are primary values will choose which we decide to focus upon. If Uncle Stephan (Skolimowski) gets hurt it’s bad because he’s an ordinary person, a “good guy”, while if godfather Semyon or Kirill get hurt it’s no big deal because they’re bad guys. In the end, as long as it turns out well for the baby, any of those casualties would be chalked up to collateral damage and forgotten.

Viggo Mortensen’s performance can’t be expected to be as good a Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers and M. Butterfly or Ralph Fiennes in Spider, but he greatly improves upon his work in A History of Violence. Using his physical presence in new and more evolved ways, Mortensen not only postures and conceals his way to a career best performance, but also brings an introspective quality the film would fail without. Armin Mueller-Stahl steals most of the scenes he’s involved in as the seemingly tender and soft godfather who constantly pits people against each other for no good reason and privately conducts veiled conversations about killing ordinary people who could prove to be a nuisance. It’s not what Mueller-Stahl says, but rather that a mere glimmer in his eye carries endless weight.

Inland Empire

“There was this man I once knew. I’m trying to tell you so’s you’ll understand how it went. The thing is, I don’t know what was before or after. I don’t know what happened first, and it’s kinda layed a mindfuck on me.” - Laura Dern as whore

The best way to approach David Lynch’s recent work is to view it as what it is, art. Lynch isn’t simply a movie director, he presents and exhibits of his paintings, photography, drawings, music, and stage designs. He used to draw a weekly comic, and still builds furniture. To understand what he’s trying to accomplish in his films, it helps to know he also does installation art, which incorporates all forms of media to alter our perception of a particular space.

I certainly believe there is an explanation to all of Lynch’s films. Furthermore, I guarantee he could tell you why he made a certain decision, why puts something in a film or shades it in a certain way, but he never will because his understanding isn’t important as you coming to your own. Lynch isn’t looking at any of his art as something that should have a single or precise meaning, it’s all subjective. Some people will dislike his films because they don’t fit into their narrow idea of what a movie is, but we should allow the artist to expand our parameters rather than trying to fit him into what we know about art. If we fail to do so, we miss the quality, originality, uniqueness, and/or beauty of the work because we are too busy trying to see it as a square peg so we can confidently slide it into the square whole.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of a bad director is someone who tries to discourage the audience from participating in their work. The signs include pounding home their intended meaning through repetitive speechy/preachy dialogue, blantantly obvious visual cues/symbolism, and a blaring emotion dictating score. Granted it’s not always the director, often the studio insists on making everything (and everyone) generic because it’s easiest to sell. Good filmmakers such as David Lynch instead encourage the audience to interact with their work by allowing you to consider, contemplate, and interpret the material. Lynch engages the audience on a number of levels, most notably emotional and instinctual, as a way to incite the audience to react in their own manner.

Lynch has no idea what you’ll bring to the film, how could he know your history, experiences, hopes, dreams, wishes, and desires? Most segments in his recent films will bring something to mind that’s unique to you. At once point the whores in Inland Empire do a song and dance to Little Eva’s "The Loco-Motion". The song reminds my father of his record collection. He had the 45 single, which he recalls had a blue label and the last half inch or so of plastic before the center hole was thinner than the typical 45, so he could pick it out with his eyes closed from the feel of it. The most tolerable version by Grand Funk Railroad is getting closer to my birth year, but I didn’t start seriously listening to music until 1988, so the version I’m most used to be tortured by is certainly Kylie Minogue’s. Hearing the song made me think of my friend Ramon, who normally had good taste in entertainment, but for whatever reason loved watching Australian dope operas, particularly reruns of the ones with Kylie and Dannii Minogue. At a different time, in a different mood, the song might bring something else to the mind of one or both of us. Memory is tricky beast. If a simple song can bring such disparate nonsense to one’s head, imagine a free association film where nothing is spelled out, thus leaving the audience to decide what information to take as literal, representative, and symbolic.

Aside from The Straight Story, the recent David Lynch films are great viewing experiences because rather than simply recount the details as the hacks do, he circles around the key events, advancing and recoiling, darting in and pulling out. They are a series of sensual, disorientating abstractions that attempt to provide each individual in the audience with a contemplative experience, to make the audience undergo the same feelings, emotions, and sensations as the characters instead of just passively observing them. A normal film would show a stabbing in real time either focusing on the excessive gore or the “realistic” shock and anger type of reactions, with some generic scary music and a scream from the victim, who follows with their theatrical death scene. It conveys the fact well enough, but the emotion is hollow. I’m not terrified, disturbed, or depressed. It just sits on the screen, failing to move me in any manner. David Lynch cuts the sound from the actors, slowing everything down and using his disturbing frequency noise manipulation. He does show the actors faces, but rather than a “realistic” performance it’s the kind of tortured grimacing you might see in a silent film because he wants to instill a disturbed feeling the audience.

Although expressionist techniques are part of Lynch’s vast bag of tricks, which includes vibrant colors, whirling strobe lights, awkward camera angles, all kinds of lighting and filter effects, jolting transitions, associative montage, and disorientating surrealist flourishes, their purpose is very different from actual expressionism. Lynch uses techniques as stimulus, attempting to evoke something in the audience rather bringing to some feeling inside the character to the surface. He does do that, but he goes much farther, transferring it by instilling it in the audience.

While Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive are all murder mysteries, what makes them so notable is not the solution, but rather the manner in which he conveys his information to the audience. His narrative style allows every scene to be a discovery. It may not bring you closer to the truth, whatever that is, on the first or even 10th viewing, but the film seems somehow channeled to your brain. You are excited because something new has entered, but frustrated because Lynch has tunneled deeper, twisting and contorting your gray matter as much as he frees it.

Inland Empire is better than Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive because it’s more about the experience than the mystery. It’s by far Lynch’s most experimental work since Eraserhead. More than the techniques, what makes Inland Empire so successful is Lynch is in no hurry. Lynch decided to self distribute because he didn’t want any clueless distributors sicking Cropsy on his masterpiece. Although the DVD includes a film worth of extras, there is certainly material that could still be cut. However, doing so would force the focus onto the mystery aspects, making it more commercial but reducing it to a (not so) simple puzzle. The fact Lynch isn’t that tight in Inland Empire not only allows him to have more fun, including scenes that amuse him but aren’t crucial to anyone’s understanding of the film such as a comical one where Hollywood movie director Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons) gives the simplest light adjusting orders to a clueless assistant who doesn’t know down from up. One of Lynch’s goals is to make films difficult, and by including such impertinent scenes, mixed with his contradictions and red herrings, it’s not as easy to distinguish the essential details as it has been in the past.

“There is a vast network, right? An ocean of possibilities. I like dogs. I used to raise rabbits. I've always loved animals. Their nature. How they think. I have seen dogs reason their way out of problems. Watched them think through the trickiest situations.” -

Freddie Howard (Harry Dean Stanton)

One great think about David Lynch is everyone sees a different film. Lynch himself once admitted he had to quit watching Eraserhead after the 17th viewing because it was really getting to him that he saw a different film each time. That said, as Laura Dern’s whore says (in her case about men), “They don’t change, they reveal. In time, they reveal what they really are.”

The best way to approach Inland Empire might be best to simply absorb the film on the first viewing. You aren’t likely to fully grasp the meaning even with the most concerted effort, but regardless the intense, meditative, compelling, and highly provocative journey is more important than the destination. Let the film wash over you like a cool wave on a warm summer day. Allow the undertow to pull you into the vast abyss. Don’t wait for David Hasselhoff to rescue you, as he might be loaded with the wrong type of spirit.

The first words are Lost Highway are, “Dick Laurent is dead.” In Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, Lynch tells tales of jealousy that have led to the murder of a key character before the film actually starts. However, as at least one character plays multiple roles, this dead character is played by one of the stars of the film, with the film eventually finding it’s way back to the point when they were alive. These are subconscious films that exist somewhere in the deepest darkest depths of the memory.

For me, Inland Empire is the companion piece of Lost Highway, this time dealing with jealousy leading to murder from the female perspective, hence Lynch’s tagline “A Woman in Trouble.” The tricky part of Inland Empire is Lynch denies the initial information that would ground the viewer, whether the film takes place in the real world, dream world, afterlife, or some combination. I don’t believe any of Laura Dern’s characters are real or have ever existed, they are simply Lost Girl’s (Karolina Gruszka) mental incarnations. Lost Girl, a young Polish woman who is stuck in a room crying as she views a movie within a movie starring Laura Dern and a sitmock featuring humans in rabbit suits with the world’s most ridiculous and inappropriate laugh track, is the real character. Perhaps she’s stuck in a nightmare, but considering Lynch’s aforementioned propensity for telling the story of dead characters I believe she’s already dead and the room represents purgatory, hence the motif of the debt that needs to be paid. Lost Girl is a short time hooker, so it’s possible the film is her seeing the future by going through all the possibilities in order to make a decision to embrace or reject whoring, but if that were the case the majority of the film shouldn’t be set well in the past. In either case, she seems stuck at the point where she could have changed her life if she could have seen the future as the mysterious Visitor #1 (Grace Zabriskie) hints when she visits Laura Dern in her mansion at the outset.

I don’t feel Inland Empire is all that non-linear, but rather it unfolds as Lost Girl burrows through the depths of her mind to uncover the truth. She seems to suffer from a shock induced amnesia, which is certainly possible given the traumas that will be revealed. The TV is simply a prop, a way for Lynch to examine not only the viewers interaction with the material, but also to criticize Hollywood by linking it to prostitution of all kinds. Continuing the actress theme of Mulholland Drive, Lost Girl dreamed of being a movie star, but only managed to imitate the bad aspects of Hollywood.

The first hour can be thought of as the Hollywood dream, the good part of Lost Girl’s affair, or as the way things could have been if her rich man had dumped his wife for her. Set in the world of the rich and famous, Dern is Nikki Grace, a famous actress who is married to a jealous, possessive, remarkably rich Polish man. While making a period piece about a tragic affair that’s a remake based on a Polish folk tale – thus a combination of fact, fiction, and imagination – Nikki and notorious womanizer costar Devon Berk (Justin Theroux) falling in love is inevitable. Everyone else sees it before they do, and Devon is warned there will be serious repercussions, but that’s life in Hollywood where everyone betrays one another and it’s front gossip rag news.

Inland Empire turns nightmare in the second hour. Set in the middle class, Dern lives in Blue Velvet style suburbs. Now portraying Susan Blue, her character in the movie Nikki Grace is starring in, she’s married to an extremely ordinary and unremarkable man who manages to squirt half the bottle of ketchup onto his shirt. However, she works for a rich man Billy Side (Theroux’s movie character), who is married to Doris (Julia Ormond). Theroux once again seduces Dern, but this time Lost Girl remembers more. They are discovered by both spouses with Sue spilling the beans when she’s shocked to still see Doris at Billy’s home, presumably because Sue believes she killed Doris (the guilt of murder contributing to Lost Girl’s block).

The Sue and Billy story interweaves with a separate but magically equal story recast in Lost Girl’s home country Poland. The Polish girl’s jealous husband knows she must be having an affair when she gets pregnant despite the fact that he’s infertile. The jealous husband kills her lover, and she believes she kills the jealous wife with a screwdriver. Her husband abandons her after roughing her up, which resulted in a miscarriage.

The Polish segment is shot on location with soft focus yielding to the usual dingy, grainy look of the digital equipment Lynch is now working with, lending a sense of realism that helps hint at the Hollywood scenes being the dressed up fantasy version of the story. Following the anti-Hollywood theme and seeing it as a darker take on the actress theme in Mulholland Drive, my friend thinks the Polish Girl may have journeyed to Hollywood to pursue her acting dreams only to wind up a whore. However, though Lynch shot the non Poland scenes in and about Hollywood, they are all rendered in the kind of illusory manner a person who has only seen Hollywood through their movies would envision.

In the third hour, Dern is an unnamed battered whore who talks to man she was told could help her. He’s either a prop to allow Dern to give voice to her way of seeing certain events or a kind of gatekeeper. In any case, one reason Inland Empire is so good is Dern gives a tour de force performance that blows away anything in Lynch’s filmography. Dern is particularly mesmerizing in these talking scenes, giving a clinic on how to swear for jolting emphasis. Even though Dern inserts an F bomb into every thought, it never loses its effect. If that cocksucker Ian McShane was half as good, Deadwood would still be on the air.

Lynch has always loved Madonna vs. whore scenarios, but it’s more fun to explore the complex within one woman who suffers more mental damage from it than physical. The third hour also has lowly vulgar whore Dern on the streets of Hollywood, rejecting her actions that brought her to this point and believing she deserves to be killed by the woman she wronged. By discovering her misdeeds and regretting them, Lost Girl is able to accept her own death (and Lynch will undoubtedly once again be criticized for being hypocritical for trafficking in the material he condemns).

The movie within a movie ends with Sue’s death, which likely represents the worldly end of Lost Girl but also brings new life to the sunnier Nikki character. Nikki proceeds to kill The Phantom (Krzysztof Majchrzak), who is probably more a representation of who or whatever has a hold on Lost Girl than a “real character” (such as her pimp), thus letting the sitmock rabbits out of the box so to speak. Lost Girl is also released from her room, transferred to the TV where Dern, now representing her salvation, seals it with a tender kiss that breaths life back into Lost Girl. Dern vanishes, as having removed the block and cleared the way for Lost Girl’s escape she’s no longer needed. Lost Girl is reunited with her husband and would be child, now middle school age, which means she’s in heaven unless it’s just her dream. Dern does resurface, no longer scared or befuddled by Visitor #1 as she now understands the meaning behind the guests opening words. I may be wrong about some of this, but what’s important is Lynch has succeeded in stimulating my imagination and providing me with a good time.

2 Days in Paris

“Love is everything we have. See, the world around us has gone to shit, and all we have left is each other” – Lukas

Attempting to reinvigorate their two-year-old relationship, New York couple Marion (Julie Delpy) and Jack (Adam Goldberg) try a European vacation. With both getting sick during the first leg, only two sunsets with Marion’s parents (played by Delpy’s real parents Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet, who are longtime actors) in her hometown of Paris remain in this somewhat fatalistic look at what could be the end for the dysfunctional couple.

Despite being a romantic comedy, Julie Delpy delivers a very unromanticized version of Paris, location once again failing to bring the disgruntled characters peace or any sense of something worth belonging to. What you are used to and where you are not only conflict, but determine behavioral patterns. Location certainly yields a sense of discovery, but with every environment bring out something they didn’t know about each other, Jack soon concedes he knows nothing at all about Marion.

The basic problem is Jack is jealous and Marion isn’t good at being honest with him. Marion can’t trust Jack to accept the truth, and Jack can’t respect a person he can’t trust. Both are anxious and more ignorant than they realize, not really considering the effects of their own actions on others. The culture clash brings out the difference in their personalities stemming from the norms of their society, but Delpy draws more on the past history and experience of the 35-year-olds than blanket statements and the usual cliches.

Marion is a bohemian photographer who grew up in an artistic family (her father did the art that’s displayed in the film) with hippie parents. Despite showing the family her latest picture of her boyfriend wearing only a balloon around his cock, it’s not so much that the French are more comfortable with their sexuality as she doesn’t like acting as if she’s never been with a former boyfriend. She prefers some middle ground, not the mad love then mad hate or complete indifference that leads to pretending the other no longer exists.

Jack is a Woody Allen type character, a very insecure, neurotic hypochondriac who sees sex everywhere. To an extent 2 Days in Paris is similar to the good Woody Allen and Diane Keaton comedies such as Annie Hall and Manhattan, but bespecled Marion’s personality also bares more resemblance to Woody than Diane, the primary difference between Marion and Jack being she’s open and free about sex where Jack is very inhibited. Jack has spent their vacation obsessing over some psychobabble about people being drawn to each other to the point you meet your neighbors on the other side of the earth, but with Marion meeting so many of her former boyfriends (most of whom still have the hots for her) he decrees, “I’m starting to believe there is a small world theory, but it just applies to your sex life.” Jack’s inability to speak French combined with Marion’s insistence on pausing an argument in French to clue him in that everything’s fine only to escalate the altercation the next second makes him skeptical of everything. That being said, Jack’s main problem is he can’t express himself in any language beyond seeming put upon (Goldberg’s specialty).

Delpy delivers a good character study, regularly inserting jokes that seem organic due to being brought about through the context of flushing out their differences and their inability to comprehend the levity of their misunderstanding or the effect of their self-centeredness. Though Jack is somewhat sarcastic, what’s funny to Delpy is the comedy within a heated situation. The more passionate a person is about something, the better chance they have of hitting on something that really gets to the heart of the matter or incisively points out the other’s ridiculousness. Usually there’s no one to see the humor, as the only audience is someone who is far more likely to be hurt by your remark, but in a film the comedy actually helps the audience to deal with the trials and tribulations that are being depicted.

Having spent much of the last two decades in the United States - including studying directing at NYU - after growing up in France, Delpy has a firm grasp of the satirical material to use against both countries. 2 Days in Paris isn’t similar to Sofia Coppola’s dreadful Lost in Translation, which comes across as if Sofia spent a week in Japan and pieced a lame May-December romance around snickering about everything she found amusing about a country and people she has no understanding of. Forget people who have actually been to Japan, just about everyone I know who simply follows an aspect of their culture, in my case this largely means their movies, wrestling and/or mixed martial arts TV shows, wasn’t surprised by anything they saw in Lost in Translation. Perhaps they thought it was funny the first time, but it wasn’t funny in the film because they’ve grown immune, and more importantly it was presented in the movie “as is” rather than incorporated into a legitimate sketch or dialogue. A lot of people think those holiday lawn decorations you have to pump air into all day are absurd, but simply turning a camera on them wouldn’t get a jolt out of any American because, even if they think they are tacky, they’ve seen enough of them around that they are no longer notable.

Julie Delpy’s script is soulful and reflective, bring a depth to her comedy that’s entirely absent from Sofia Coppola’s juvenile drivel. Delpy makes fun of France and USA, French, Americans, and whoever else happens to turn up, but she does so by melding an understanding of people’s true nature and characteristics with situations where all parties are wrong. Unlike Coppola, who pandered to uninitiated ethnocentrics, Delpy’s material is funny because we are familiar with it from real life. We can watch 2 Days in Paris and think of so many people we know, laugh at them as well as ourselves.

Atypical for movies, Delpy manages to capture the awkward tension between lovers that eventually drives people both to hysteria and to repeating the same hopeless disagreements. Both characters need reassurance, but in seeking it wind up enhancing the rift by falling back on their divisive platform. A key point of the film is whether you love or hate the world around you, you’ll never succeed with another person unless you can bring yourself to accept them for what they are. And in order to do that, you have to get past the truth rather than conceal it or attempt to ignore it by not speaking about it.

As in her contributions to the wonderful Before Sunset, Delpy works intelligent conversations on issues she’s concerned with into the script in a manner that doesn’t feel forced or digressive. 2 Days in Paris isn’t nearly as good as Before Sunrise or Before Sunset, lacking the charm, spontaneity, liveliness, and resonance of Richard Linklater’s masterpieces. For me, there was too much plot in 2 Days in Paris, as what I enjoy most about the Before films is their semi-random pontification. Given the same brief time frame basis, I would have preferred a broader focus for entertainment value, but Jack’s tight focus is entirely believable. In her defense, while remaining dialogue driven, Delpy is trying to do something much different, trading idealism and profundity for naturalistic comic realism.

Much of the difference between the Before films and 2 Days in Paris comes from her co-star. Ethan Hawke can bullshit like no other, and brings a well developed view of life to all Linklater’s films. Adam Goldberg brings the annoyance factor of being someone who is at odds with himself because the world is at odds with him. Unlike Hawke, his character would be uninteresting to converse with because he seems unable to identify why he likes or dislikes anything. He’s semi-cultured, watching Fritz Lang’s legendary M (which succeeds in scaring the outsider), selecting sunglasses based on their resemblance to Jean-Luc Godard’s, and knowing Rimbaud from Rambo. However, he purposely lacks the thoughtfulness and perspective that make Hawke’s characters so interesting. Jack is unimaginative, spending his life running from new experience. Despite his left leanings, he’s extremely conservative in that he’s so boxed into repetition of the norm he can’t do anything beyond gawk at anyone who lives differently. He’d surely get a kick out of those dance pads on the Japanese video games, at least until they became a staple in American arcades.

House by the River

Reeling from the unfortunate collapse of Diana Productions, the independent company Fritz Lang co-founded with Joan Bennett and her producer husband Walter Wanger, Lang was down to creating a Southern gothic thriller for low budget Republic Pictures. Though hampered by Mel Dinelli’s banal screenplay that concludes in a rushed and patently ridiculous manner, Lang managed to turn in a solid effort that, while not upper level Lang, certainly adds to his body of work. Fox subsequently “rescued” Lang for the cheesily titled bigger budget but more constricted and greatly inferior American Guerrilla in the Philippines (am I the only one picturing two American tourists attacked by a guerrilla?).

Fritz Lang plays the good bother/bad brother story as another of his explorations of conscience. Lang loves to delve into the way humans react to pressure, with films such as M and You Only Live Once showing the bad guy while Fury the wrongly accused. Thus, House by the River was a good opportunity for him to further his themes, as John Byrne (Lee Bowman) is eventually blamed for Stephen Byrne’s (Louis Hayward) crime. With his wife Marjorie (Jane Wyatt) gone for the day, lustful Stephen tries to steal a kiss from maid Emily (Dorothy Patrick), only to meet bawling rejection. Whoever concocted the tagline “Enticing blonde beauty lures a lover's straying eyes ...” was the real hack writer of the proceedings. In any case, this shrieking is particularly troublesome because, as fate would have it, busybody neighbor Mrs. Ambrose (Ann Shoemaker) approaches the house while Emily is still at a high note. Stephen succeeds in shutting her up, but by the time it’s safe to allow her to resume her ruckus, all the life has been choked out of her.

Protective John stumbles into Stephen’s mess, again being coerced into bailing his brother out of a jam by helping him toss the body into the nearby river. Lang foreshadows impermanence early on by showing a deer carcass flowing down the regularly flooded river. John isn’t so much naive and trusting as girlfriend Sylvia Sidney is in You Only Live Once, but is too good and too much of a sucker to put a stop to his scheming brother. John values family above all else. He could likely take Marjorie away from Stephen if he wanted, but he’d rather do the right thing, preferring to living alone suffering in silence than to deal with the guilt. As in Scarlet Street, everyone is tortured by loving someone they can’t have.

House by the River focuses on the post-crime effects. Stephen initially handles the situation perfectly, acting as if nothing has happened and being his usual self with the exception of the obvious tip off of being ridiculously protective of what he’s writing. He hones in on the comments about a writer dealing with their own experiences rather than any malicious insinuations about why Emily might no longer be around. He had penned a few uneventful works a few years earlier, but until Emily’s death gave him a topic for his latest “fiction” he’d been sitting around pretending to write to hide his block from Marjorie. Suddenly “growing up”, at least as a writer, Stephen in some ways is happier than ever due to his newfound - and predicted future - success with his first “real” literary work due to shamelessly milking Emily’s “disappearance” to drum up publicity for his books.

Stephen immediately lives it up at a dance the night of Emily’s death, something lonely John would have a hard time doing even if he was equally without conscience due to his bum leg. While Stephen’s newfound celebrity makes him the toast of the town, petty vindictive neighbors such as Miss Bantam (Jody Gilbert), jilted former maid who loved employer John unbeknownst to him, are quick to try to get John convicted despite almost no evidence in another of Lang’s takes on the insanity of the mob.

Most of House by the River’s quality comes from the manner in which cinematographer Edward Cronjager utilizes the house and river for tense and haunting effect. They exert a silent but disquieting presence over the proceedings. Lang combines the set bound expressionism of his early career with moody evocative riverside location shooting to cloak the film in an eerie supernatural atmosphere. Though the screenplay is pedestrian, the film is hardly pedantic because Lang inserts as many symbolic and creepy details as he can figure a way to incorporate.

Twentynine Palms

“There’s nothing to understand” – Katia

The genesis of Twentynine Palms came during Bruno Dumont’s trip to the California desert. It’s not so much that the locations are more dangerous, and thus scarier, than his Northern France hometown of Bailleul, but the dry, dusty, and mountainous surroundings are a startling change from the vegetative farmlands he’s used to. Dumont has crafted Twentynine Palms around the horror of dislocation, thus the landscape is arguably the main character.

The two humans, David (David Wissak) and Katia (Katia Golubeva) are outsiders scouting locations for his photoshoot, but very decidedly treating the trip as a vacation. David is presumably from somewhere in America, but has been working abroad, undoubtedly meeting Katia in France not too long ago. The duo tend to be irrationally comfortable when they are alone in any environment, whether it be the mountains where they climb and sprawl out naked or the hotel pool where they have sex. Dumont’s cinema is not a religious one where Adam & Eve change through the wisdom they’re naked, there’s no discovery in Twentynine Palms, only varying moods and feelings. Serenity or terror are merely illusions based on something that’s seeped into your head from the way you see things around you. If there’s a consistent, it’s Katia’s fear of everyone they come across. She leaves the pool as soon as others show up, fears David is going to be run over by a car even though he’s well off the shoulder and the car doesn’t appear to be a swerving drunk or cell phone kamikaze.

The manner in which the audience interacts with the landscape shots is altered by what we’ve recently seen from the humans. Although Dumont’s trademark alternating of close-up with wide angle shots creates a conflict between human beings and the landscape, our movie watching tendency is to ignore abstractions and intangibles opting to focus on traditional conflicts between characters. There’s certainly plenty of quarrels due to David & Katia spending so much time together, as the couple is in the midst of discovering just how incompatible they are. Katia says, “I love you” and David replies, I want you.” David wants to be allowed to watch Katia pee on the side of the road, while Katia wants to get to know David, although he’s essentially unknowable. The fact that English is David’s first language and Katia doesn’t speak it at all makes things more difficult; they have to stumble through Jean Claude Van Damme conversations where David throws in English words for lack of the proper French. However, Katia is even more difficult to understand, saying the polar opposite back to back and telling refusing to explain herself. Unwilling to answer each other’s questions, they act on urge and impulse, repeating the bare essentials of survival and relationship, eating, screwing, defecating, and driving around (for his work).

Bruno Dumont not only removes all the cliches of the road and horror genres, any semblance of a plot and anything self-evident are out the window in an attempt to force the audience to meditate. In an interview with New Statesman Dumont stated, “My films are completely philosophical. It’s a metaphysical cinema: good, evil, love, hate.” His characters aren’t well developed humans to adore or abhor, as philosophy eschews unique and specific individuals in favor of broad generalizations on how people think and act. In Dumont’s case, they can’t find meaning or purpose, so they respond with animalistic instincts and sensibilities. There’s very little dialogue in Twentynine Palms, and what is said is mundane and meaningless because Dumont isn’t interested in explaining his film to the audience (hence Katia’s refusal to try to make David understand). Dumont avoids answering questions, allowing his spectators to spectate. He won’t even come right out and tell you the particular topics for analysis, which makes the viewing process all the more interesting.

Twentynine Palms shows a bleak progression in Dumont’s work. Pharaon in L’Humanite was weighed down by the miserable world, but having reverted back to their most primitive state, the human race in Twentynine Palms is now entirely lacking in compassion. These people have no conscience, feel no remorse, and experience no guilt, which makes everyone a potential threat. This is more the world we see in certain period pieces, whether it be cavemen, sword and sandal, or wild wild west where anyone you encounter may try to rob, rape, or murder you. The big difference is the hero and any sense of glamour or nostalgia has been removed.

David is no less violent than anyone else simply because he’s the leading man. Love gives him a channel for his animalistic nature, but as they are discordant any attempt at fusion is doomed to result in fission. David’s violence isn’t even latent, its simply finds an outlet in the tempestuous sex he has with Katia. As David works, speaks English, and drives safely, his role is caretaker to Katia’s helpless victim. A random act of senseless violence prompts a brief role reversal, but this way if life is not only foreign to David, it’s in conflict with his nature. Perhaps his final action is simply an extreme rejection of this new role to reassert himself as the alpha male?

I used to think Twentynine Palms was more similar to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, as both European masters were relying heavily on landscapes to make their first film in the USA. The later portion where Mark and Daria are naked and alone in Death Valley has obvious similarities, but the conflict in Zabriskie Point is counterculture vs. establishment, with Antonioni clearly siding with the former. In Twentynine Palms, no one seems to have anything in common, lacking anything to live for or believe in, which makes it a film of our solitary, pessimistic, and cynical times. Their void causes polarized feelings to become indiscriminate actions that theoretically fill the hole but actually have no meaning. As in Yasuzo Masumura’s Blind Beast, the relationships only bond is sensation - pleasure or pain, agony or ecstasy - that is notable only for its intensity. Positive or negative no longer exists, as feeling something is anything and everything.

This viewing I’m more reminded of Antonioni’s beautiful but terrifying L’Avventura. The milieu of the island, evoked through the spacial photography and quiet nature initially breeds a form of happiness and excitement, as it’s a relief from their perpetual boredom. But in this isolated area that seems so tranquil, a sort of oppression begins to seep into their psyche. The mountains become ominous, and everything slowly becomes a threat in one way or another. Both directors linger on the topography with their photographic compositions emphasizing the space that eventually calls attention to the emptiness, a serenity that becomes eerie, the illusion of tranquility, and the passage of time. Their work is haunting and moody, with severe lingering after effects.

These minimalist depictions of relationships and values require patience and never shine a bright light on the goodness of humanity, but Dumont seems to be far more off-putting to audiences. Perhaps the difference is Antonioni targets a specific privileged few they could be expected to resent (Antonioni’s day was before the wealthy conglomerates figured out how to consolidate the media then use it to glorify themselves and act almost solely only in their interests) whereas Dumant’s characters represent the human race in general, so they could just as easily be you or I. I think its largely the raw directness of his sex and violence, though Antonioni’s later films were unfairly criticized for simply having a lot of nudity as if, especially since the actresses could have been his granddaughters, that made the film somehow automatically bad (Identification of a Woman is certainly one of his top works). Dumont doesn’t do things in an operatic or representational manner that renders it enjoyable for mass consumption. Everything is meant to be factual rather than choreographed so he films a real sex scene, or in Flanders he elicits a genuine reaction, surprising one of his soldiers by having a bomb go off next to him rather than having him do some rehearsed mugging.

Both directors demand your interactions and interpretations, though where Antonioni is clearly modern Dumont seems to make an effort to be symbolic and metaphoric. He uses modern attire to keep from making period pieces, but he’d prefer his audience considered the general concepts than the latest social or political event. This is a difficult point because human nature is to relate to what you are currently going through, hence people wind up thinking Flanders is somehow about the latest Iraq war. In L’Avventura, Antonioni pursues the mystery aspect of the human interaction with the landscape as a way to show their emotional vacuum that renders them numb and indifferent to their “quest” to find the missing woman. Dumont pursues the horror of the vacuum in Twentynine Palms, the devastating effects of utter irrelevance to everything resulting in a life of whimsically satisfying cravings. What really scares us is the absence of familiarity, and the possibility of the highly unlikely, not so much for the potential devastation but because we might have to get used to the changes it entails. This is the cinema of absence, whether it be humans or the foundations of humanity such as the capability to feel love and compassion.

No End in Sight

Eschewing the usual rhetoric laden emotional appeals, Charles Ferguson presents a calm, clearheaded thesis on the initial mismanagement of the 3/03 invasion of Iraq that lost us the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people thus creating the ensuing problems such as the insurgence. A leftist though a millionaire who initially supported the war, Ferguson refuses to make whether we should have gone to war the issue, instead holding the administration accountable to at least doing what they decided to properly. Taking a journalistic approach, Ferguson conducted 200 hours of interviews with people who were directly involved and pieced them together into an organized, well thought out indictment of an inexperienced, arrogant, stubborn, and incredibly exclusive think tank that ignored, and often mocked, the expertise of their own military, reconstruction, and humanitarian leaders on the ground, opting instead to rush to a series of shortsighted and practically baseless decisions that rendered the region uncontrollable.

No End in Sight is very squarely an informative work, no more artistic than a PBS show, and in fact repeating many of the facts found in the Frontline episode The Lost Year in Iraq. It’s primary value lies in getting longtime diplomats and military officers who aren’t predisposed to Bush hating as they were largely their own appointees and advisors. The majority of those who aren’t consist of those who would be thought to be rightist (i.e. military). I derive distinct pleasure from seeing the Republicans criticize their own leadership because it can’t simply be written off to the usual partisanship. Of course, the fact that most are disillusioned by our failure to bring about a better, safer, and freer Iraq, and thus have an axe to grind with the administration as most resigned, were replaced, or were wounded in battle will certainly result in the right attempting to discount everything they say on those grounds. Nonetheless, the experiences of interviewees such as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson, and former ORHA (Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance) head Jay Garner not only hold weight and bring new insight to the ongoing debate, but seem very reasonable. Their appeals are too common sense, calling for planning and equipment, asking for no less than to put the USA in a position to succeed. Barbara Bodine, for example, was appointed ORHA coordinator, but given a home base in Iraq that was devoid of such operating essentials as telephones, computers, even chairs! Regardless of party affiliation, everyone should be able to agree the USA should do better than that.

Halfway though the documentary the combination of the ineptness of the administration and their cool, casual, and pompous disregard for the well being of even their own people on the ground (examples include 1/8 of the hummers being equipped with the necessary armor) make it hard not to laugh as a defense mechanism. It’s almost unbelievable to the point of being surreal. You keep waiting for Peter Sellers to return from the grave, if only to prove we are trying to lose similar to The Duchy of Grand Fenwick in The Mouse That Roared. How could the world’s only remaining superpower be run by people who think it’s a good idea to put the Iraqi entire military and most of the professional class out of work? Getting rid of the enemy cabinet when you occupy a country is one thing, but we apparently even fired the librarians despite the fact that in order to reach a high position in Sadaam Hussein’s government you were forced to join his Ba’th party.

The primary fault of No End in Sight lies in confining itself to conducting an investigation based upon the premise that the goal was to conduct the war in the proper manner, you know, to win and secure Iraq in the quickest and most efficient manner. It’s practically akin to criticizing the Warren Commission investigation for doing a terrible job, cutting between people who tell you it wasn’t lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald in the book depository with three bullets, one of which was magic and clips of the politicians jesting off any legitimate questions about the omissions and refusing to comment on the destruction of evidence by intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities. Ferguson seems to start out with President George W. Bush as the uninformed, indifferent, and clueless figurehead who doesn’t even bother to read a 1 page summary, much less the detailed report, resulting in Ventriloquist Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld getting away with running amok. This if fine, but while I’d use a lot of words to describe Cheney & Rumsfeld, I’d never accuse them of being less than calculating, much less essentially conclude they are more or less equally out of touch and without plan. Ferguson tries to avoid anything that could be construed as a conspiracy theory, but it’s more important to uncover what exactly it is that they are trying to accomplish, and to do that you have to examine who benefits from the war.

Robert Greenwald’s Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is obviously far more partisan, coming from the non-profit liberal public advocacy group , but in attempting to address the motives it likely comes far closer to the truth because unlike No End in Sight, it goes a lot further by examining the people we put in place of the disenfranchised Iraqi’s. Rather than helping Iraqi citizens by facilitating work for them, security and reconstruction were privatized with our tax dollars going to overpriced no bid contracts for US corporations such as Halliburton, KBR, and Blackwater. The overwhelming number of US citizens now in Iraq are civilian employees rather than US military. Ferguson only touches upon such aspects, comparing a cheaper quickly finished construction project utilizing Iraqi citizens and a slow costly never finished one by a private contractor. Political payoffs are breached through a recent college grad whose father made a large campaign contribution being put in charge of the Baghdad traffic plan despite seemingly having no background or experience in the subject. But in general, he’d rather avoid the argument that privitization of war makes money for cronies while increasing cost, decreasing efficiency, and resulting in lesser trained mercenaries who are essentially beholden to no one becoming the face of the US in the minds of the people we are theoretically supposed to be helping. Perhaps that’s not entirely true, but for me something relating to the military industrial complex is a far more plausible reason to be there perpetually flooding tax dollars into Iraq than Bush, Cheney, Rummy, and co. all being boneheads.

We Are the Strange

If you can imagine working showstopping Jan Svankmaker and Brothers Quay stop-motion shorts into an anime that takes place inside a Nintento Entertainment System video game fantasy world and originates from the twisted mind of a David Lynch fan, you can perhaps begin to grasp the unique viewing pleasure offered by M. dot Strange’s debut feature We Are the Strange. The epitome of do it yourself animation, Strange created and rendered his fusion of stop-motion, 2 dimensional digital artwork (CG) and blue screen effects in his own cramped apartment with lots of encouragement from fans who saw the bits, pieces, and ultimately the trailer he posted on You Tube, but little actual outside help.

Strange arguably explains less to his audience than David Lynch, simply thrusting you inside a video game where two outcasts meet in the forest and embark upon a perilous journey to the evil city to buy ice cream. Apparently it’s just that tasty, as they precede despite attacks from monsters and giant robots. eMMM is a small broken up doll with an M spray painted on his forehead whose basis is Kabuki, while Blue is a young woman whose basis is manga. Blue has a disease that renders skin scaly upon opening her mouth, and is particularly conscious of the affliction due to it just causing her to be fired from her stripping job.

Blue’s disability provides an excuse for Strange to focus on the sensual visual experience, lights and colors providing the bulk of the ambient experience. In a sense, the storytelling is similar to silent films, though the characters have a more posed feel due to either being dolls or animations that don’t have a great deal of facial movement or detail. There is a modicum of dialogue, but it’s much too true to the clunky banal simplicity of video games for the good of the movie.

The film is largely traversing though wonderful backgrounds until friend or usually f foe appears. This may sound as terrible as watching someone else play a video game, but Strange not only deeply immerses his audience in his visionary world, he manages to mix narrative incoherence with emotional resonance. Following a basic calm before the storm pattern, Strange attempts to bring out the emotions of his sad dejected characters in the quiet scenes, relying on the atmosphere, particularly a more classical sounding score featuring somber strings, to convey the mood of the lonely isolated characters. Themes of individuality, freedom, and alienation vs. conformity surface, but probably still take a back seat to the shape shifting landscapes.

Strange delivers startling, wildly disorienting montages of max plus stimulus when a monster appears. Though a battle between good and evil, the superhero Rain, who regularly saves eMMM and Blue, derives gleeful pleasure in mopping the floor with his enemies during these frenzied, hectic sequences. During the action and adventure sequences, the soundtrack switches to chiptone music (electronic music created on old video game systems such as Game Boy or NES).

Despite the reliance on computers over hand drawing, We Are the Strange maintains a handmade feel due to the constant mixing and blending of all types and tech levels of animation. Many of the backgrounds were created on the old 8-bit Mario Paint program, but the film is so active - constantly morphing shapes, beings, and backgrounds - it never feels decidedly low tech either. It can burn you out at times, and feels long because it doesn’t develop the story beyond the basic video game parameters, but it certainly possesses a strange beauty.

No Country for Old Men

Hunter and hunted are largely concurrent roles in this excellent cat and mouse game, crosscutting between an ordinary man who stumbles upon a $2 million drug deal turned fatal and those who rise from the ashes to regain the lost loot. Sticking to the Blood Simple & Fargo themes of money never being free, No Country for Old Men may mark the first genuine improvement for the Coen brothers since Miller’s Crossing rather than simply a return to some of their strengths from the days before they figured the typical George Clooney or Tom Hanks fan wouldn’t notice their total lack of interest in their material and inspiration for their rendering of it. Creating a taut, riveting visually oriented narrative rather than falling into the predictable trap of relying on dialogue to advance the story, the Coen’s ability to connect the threads through editing maintains the brisk pace while regularly surprising the audience. The attention to mechanics of the character’s actions obviously doesn’t approach the level attained by Robert Bresson or Jean-Pierre Melville, but greatly exceeds the typical wide release that figures if they skip all the “boring details” and blare the music at ear drum damaging levels they’ll at least succeed in keeping the audience awake long enough to make a trip to the concession stand. No Country for Old Men is a tactical genre entry that instead skips almost all the predictable lead-ins, keeping the audience on the edge of their seat by denying them knowledge of when the stark and brutal violence will suddenly erupt amidst the vacant, seemingly tranquil western landscapes.

The crucial decision was essentially eliminating the musical score. Jaws isn’t the least bit scary because the music alerts the audience to the presence of the sharks; it’s about as subtle as a monstrous billboard that says DANGER in giant bold red letters. Hitman Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is so terrifying because he’s unbelievably calm, postured rigidly and striking suddenly similar to a snake. He says little, and half of what he utters only truly makes sense to his twisted mind. He’s controlled evil, refusing negotiation but often offering his potential victims a 50/50 chance to live through a coin toss so long as they are willing to call heads or tails. These scenes were murder seems probable are tense due to the disquieting silence, which stretches the apparent duration, making brief scenes seem lengthy. Far more effective though are the scenes where Chigurh denies us any ability to brace ourselves, popping out of nowhere and dispatching of some poor sap who is in the wrong place at the wrong time with his captive bolt pistol.

Quiet does far more to add to the grim dread-laden atmosphere the film goes out of its way to breed. That a simple action such as a light bulb being unscrewed can make the audience feel something is certainly the sign of talented filmmakers. Ability has never been lacking from the Coen’s, but lack of conviction for their material has kept them from reaching their potential. The point of a Coen film often seems to be seeing how much disdain they can get away with having for their characters and how clever they can prove themselves to be through contriving a series of often ridiculous twists and coincidences. They’ve basically made a career out of poking fun at their glib caricatures of local yokels, generally getting a pass due to selecting one or two of their clowns to be the lovable jesters. I prefer the films of Ken Loach because he actually likes human beings, and obviously cares a great deal for his characters however weak or imperfect they may be. The Coen’s not only seem to hate their characters, which granted can be okay, but they don’t seem to have any genuine interest in them, which breeds a similar indifference in the audience, sometimes resulting in the type of pointless nihilism we get in No Country for Old Men.

No Country for Old Men doesn’t really contain a single character, it’s simply inhabited by pawns that are skillfully maneuvered. We have little idea what has shaped these dimensionless and lifeless cutouts; there’s no psychology and they don’t change or grow. We are lucky to know any more about them than they want money. Well, who doesn’t? This lack of development allows half the inconsistent characters to suit the plot by being smart one minute and stupid the next. The sketches involved include in way over his head poor greedy trailer park denizen are Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who is resourceful but naive, superhuman hitman Chigurh, out of his depth aging small town sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), good-hearted well meaning wife Carla Jean Moss (Kelly Macdonald), and Woody Harrelson playing Woody Harrelson as a hitman.

Joel & Ethan Coen’s smug and condescending nature toward their characters is greatly decreased in No Country for Old Men. Unlike the retarded O Brain, Where Art Thou?, the brothers have clearly read the source material this time, and have reportedly made a legitimate attempt to stay as true to Cormac McCarthy’s novel. Perhaps a bigger reason than McCarthy’s influence is there’s simply a fraction of the dialogue a typical Coen film contains. Half the players are simply lined up to be dispatched of by The Bardemator. Still, the film is quite funny, as most of the Coen’s work is. There’s a keen sense of irony, for instance Moss getting warned of the dangers of hitchhiking when he’s just started fleeing after stealing the king’s ransom. Rather than being the usual Coen mockfest, they’ve purposely created an uneasy mix of poker faced comedy and abrupt pitiless violence that seems designed to make the audience question not only whether it’s safe to laugh, but whether they should be enjoying this movie. When the people are clueless, it’s not so much in the usual mentally challenged manner, but rather it stems from the inability to handle the way the world changes around them. That’s the state America has been in for a long time, everyone wishing it was better, what the founding father’s envisioned the country to be, but feeling an overwhelming helplessness to enact any positive change that extends beyond the personal level. No Country for Old Men perhaps aspires to some kind of grand statement, but is generally only successful at showing the dire consequences of personal incompetence, for someone else if not yourself.

I’ve yet to read any Cormac McCarthy, and what I’ve seen on screen in All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men isn’t increasing my urgency to remedy the matter. In all fairness, if I only knew Jane Austen and Ian McEwan from Joe Wrong’s muddled lifeless CliffsNotes I wouldn’t want to read them either, and obviously I’d be missing a great deal. Given McCarthy is a highly regarded Pulitzer Prize winning novelist I expect there must be more to his novel than the seeds of this pulp B movie script, but if so the Coen’s certainly fail to convey it.

Llewelyn Moss may seem to be the star, but Bell is actually the crucial character. Bewildered by the way the world has changed and worn down by the sort of hard earned wisdom only a lawman attains, or perhaps burying Melquiades Estrada one too many times, Bell spends the film sitting around pontificating the decline of the western civilization. I’d likely find this appealing if it weren’t done in the most unenlightening and downright uninteresting manner. I’d say metaphor and symbolism were the robes the emperor hides behind, but that would be giving the dialogue a lot more credit than it deserves. There’s a good deal of pretend profundity through dime store philosophy, but the themes are too undeveloped and the thoughts too cryptic and coded to even bother trying to develop a theory on the films philosophy. Anyone could attach one of 1000 meanings, and some of them might even be profound, but they’d largely be their own concoctions. I don’t believe the film is making any legitimate attempt to make the audience understand the themes on their own level, so it just winds up coming across as a folksy version of the kind of pretension associated with the brothers who are probably busy developing their throw away philosophy for Matrix 86. But ya know, sadly that’s still a huge improvement, ya, over the interminable dialogue that plagued No Country for Old Men’s closest predecessor Fargo, ya.

Moss and Chigurh simply serve to prove Bell’s point that manners and civility have given way to selfishness, ruthlessness, coldness, and hardness. Life is war; war is life. Moss does have moments of conscience, regret, and remorse, for instance when he decides to return to the scene of the crime with water for the dying Mexican criminal who requested it, only to nearly be gunned down by other mobsters who’ve materialized in the interim. However, he’s generally almost as bad as those on his trail. If we root for him its largely due to the absence of a legitimate alternative.

Chigurh represents both the existentialism and the biblical undertones of the work, obviously at odds considering existentialism practically begins with if there’s no god... He’s kind of the angel of death searching for the meaning of life. So far he’s only found a touch of solace in the consistency of seeing through the random result of the life or death “decisions” he forces upon others who beg to be spared. Fate has brought them together, so the result of their encounter is also inevitable, thus meaningless as life is arbitrary,

chance rather than free will.

The Coen’s don’t care enough about the story to bother providing a foundation for the characters or any explanation of how many of the events are possible. Hollywood normally fulfills their technology pimping agenda by using gadgets to cover their ridiculous plot contrivances, but since this is Texas in 1980 the Coen’s usually don’t even inconvenience themselves with that amount of explanation. Chigurh thus becomes The Terminator minus the futuristic methods of hunting victims down, but since he’s a serial killer in addition to being a hitman (the distinction being he regularly kills those he isn’t paid for) we are predisposed to assuming he has supernatural powers. These are perhaps enhanced by the cinematography of Roger Deakins, which typically steals the show rendering the picturesque backdrops so they yield contradictory comment on the proceedings. Deakins lights Chigurh in deep colors, bathing the madman in blue in the exteriors and orange in the interiors. Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of No Country for Old Men is a multinational drug deal that leaves a trail of bodies far and wide seems to only be investigated by a local sheriff and a couple of his none too bright greenhorn deputies.

For me, most of the interest lies in the stylish and efficient manner the Coen’s tell their none too deep or believable story. No Country for Old Men is a genre bucking work that defies all expectations and “audience desires” at all turns, a true breath of fresh air after pandering blockbusters Intolerable Movie and The Ealing Killers.

*Spoilers*

The main character is killed offscreen, but it’s not that easy to be certain he’s dead or who is responsible (I believe the Mexican Mafia). The only really telegraphed violence comes when a car crashes into Chigurh. I was able to throw something at the screen if Moss was resurrected to extract his revenge, but the key points are everything is entirely random and America has lost it’s conduct and innocence so trouble lurks at every corner, leaving sad eyed and disconcerted citizens feeling desperate and helpless. What I really enjoyed was, despite Moss being killed with half an hour left, we are still denied a true confrontation between justice and evil. Of course, the conclusion could have been far better of Bell’s words actually meant something. We’re always left to scratch our heads then conjecture on what may have happened. You’ll either love the complete and total lack of resolution to all the threads the puppet masters have intertwined or you’ll want to burn their reels.

Secret Life of Words

A listless hearing impaired factory worker with no life winds up spending the vacation the union forces her to take caring for a burned and temporarily blinded accident victim on a secluded oil rig damaged souls have a way of gravitating toward. The aftermath of great traumas has rendered the characters dead inside long before we meet them, but even this crew of introverts expects new worker Hanna (Sarah Polley) to associate with them a bit, particularly the nurse’s sole patient Josef (Tim Robbins), who suddenly has a great desire for chatter now that he can’t do anything beyond lie around day and night.

Most of our interest lies in figuring out what’s wrong with mysterious Hanna, who is withdrawn to the point of being socially oblivious. The involvement of Pedro Almodovar (producer) hints toward a woman’s tragedy, but Isabel Coixet is very clever in revealing only enough to escalate our interest while allowing ambiguity to carry the film. Coixet (My Life Without Me) is smart enough to stick with a good thing, once again casting Sarah Polley as her lead actress. Expanding upon her breakout role in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, Polley gives another great understated performance, subtly conveying her unstated wounds. She has a way of carrying herself that always makes her characters more interesting than they have a right to be, in this case passive and reserved, which makes for a nice counter balance to Tim Robbins crude and curious patient.

The relaxed atmosphere stranded on the soon to be abandoned ship allows for the intimate and delicate chamber piece to grow in our imagination. The minor verbal tussles between Hanna & Josef slowly break down each others defenses with the acting conveying enough about the characters, who are scarred more by their past than their not always believable physical disabilities, that we shouldn’t need it all spelled out.

A story of the inexpressible works much better when conveyed to our other senses, but after carefully edging back the skin layer by layer, Hanna suddenly bears all and the film may as well end there for all Coixet manages to muster in the final quarter. The Secret Life of Words wasn’t the most believable character study to begin with, as Josef seemed stuck on the rig for the sake of the plot, but more importantly it was well observed and emotionally honest. Suddenly, The Secret Life of Words interesting becomes a conventional melodrama.

The final portion is an entirely predictable and contrived feel good story of dual redemption. Growing increasingly cliched, we are treated to speeches, a therapist openly discussing her former patient with a love sick puppy she’s just met, a touch of romance, and the requisite happy ending. Succumbing to possibly the lamest line any female character has ever been won over by, “I'll learn how to swim, Hanna. I swear, I'll learn how to swim,” things grow really frustrating though Adolph Hitler should be evoked by successors human rights violations, I’m instead reminded of Menno Meyjes’ turkey Max where John Cusack got him to give in to the legendary line, “Come on Hitler, I'll buy you a glass of lemonade.” It’s good that things can still work out for the lowly and damaged, and it shouldn’t be a bad thing for a filmmaker to be hopeful, but a better, more realistic and demanding work would have had Hanna & Josef learn something from each other in the time they had together which would allow them to move on apart.

Hottest State

I appreciate artists who have the guts to put their own pain on screen in a truthful manner that not only shows others at less than their finest moment, but also themselves. Confessionals have a way of rendering artists human, which is important considering the mindset of only caring about someone if they are among the best and brightest makes it difficult to truly relate to the people we see on the big screen. This problem is exacerbated by the fact most films are considerably dishonest to begin with, and when they aren’t totally the situations are more true for the characters who have all the assets and advantages than for John Q. Moviegoer.

Everyone probably has some film about the loss of a friend, lover, child – some personal tragedy you may get over but certainly will never forget – that’s very dear to them largely due to how closely it reflects their own experiences. It’s comforting to know someone else has largely shared your nightmare. The Hottest State may or may not be that film for you, and that’ll probably reflect very directly upon how you judge it. In these cases the filmmaking takes a back seat to the sincerity and integrity of the actions, feelings, and emotions, to whether you experienced the same things or believe should have tried them. Of course, the filmmaking really does go hand in hand with your opinion in these cases, as if it’s too showy, contrived, scripted, cliched, or melodramatic it will put up a barrier between the audience and their acceptance of the material. Ethan Hawke’s second film may have its limitations, but the unobtrusiveness of his style allows for the audience to focus on the dialogue, which never feels false.

One perceived shortcoming is Sarah (Catalino Sandino Moreno) never becomes a full-fledged character the way Julie Delpy did in the balanced Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. This semi-autobiographical work is Hawke’s side of the relationship, so he logically chooses to only show the male perspective. While assuming to know all the reasons beyond another person’s actions probably makes for better fiction, it’s incredibly pretentious. I give Hawke points for not having the pomposity to pretend to be an omniscient presence.

Sarah is alternately a real flesh and blood character and an aggrandized figment of William’s (Mark Webber) yearnful imagination. She’s the first true love of an immature college age kid who finds women ineffable and unknowable to begin with, so to an extent she’s a larger than life, almost mythical character William arguably never really sees. Hawke doesn’t tell us anymore than we need to know, limiting Sarah to only a few key points. Sarah dropped out of college after falling so deeply in love, or at least becoming so dependent upon her boyfriend’s presence, she still wanted him long after he stopped reciprocating and started cheating in their own residence, while she was downstairs! She then moved to New York City to be independent and make it as a singer.

Hawke is the kind of person whose stories can hold your attention, it’s just a manner of finding a venue for them. As with Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris, The Hottest State is similar to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset as talking is the backbone of the mix of perceptive, intelligent, and interesting dialogue, though Hawke’s characters are less dynamic than Richard Linklater’s. Both Hawke and Delpy had a great deal of input into the Before films, particularly before Sunset which they cowrote, so it’s only natural their films would be reminiscent of Linklater’s. Linklater makes a cameo appearance in The Hottest State, while Sandino Moreno delivers her lines with the same intonation and paused style as Delpy, and obviously Webber does his best imitation of Hawke.

The first hour is very romantic, showing the gestation period of the relationship. Though the negatives are present, we join the new couple in focusing on the positive. Both have relocated to New York to become artists, and they are nervous and insecure. Neither love themselves, with William being a chameleon who acts to escape his life and probably has felt alone and empty since his father Vince (Ethan Hawke) abandoned him at the age of 8. Sarah closes herself off, putting up walls and becoming increasingly self-absorbed.

The second half is more reminiscent of Joan Micklin Silver’s best film Chilly Scenes of Winter, depicting the fallout of a relationship between a man who becomes increasingly obsessive through rejection and a cowardly woman who miserably underrates herself. Sarah is a borderline personality who is always pushing forward back. The more one wants to succeed, the greater the temptation to fall back on what’s supposed to work. William sees his distant and detached girlfriend has low self-esteem, so he figures he can help her and himself by showing she’s valuable. But it only makes things worse for him, allowing Sarah to transfer her problem to the person who suddenly represents it through indirectly calling attention to it. This isn’t the root of their problem, it exists in Sarah long before William enters the picture, but she’s not only unable to deal with her low self-opinion, she can’t show William the levity of the matter. She’ll say she’s not as interesting as he thinks she is, and he’ll complement her further rather than getting that he’d probably be better off never telling her anything good about herself because it’s just too absurd.

What kills William is their relationship dissipates as soon as it peaks. William falls in love during their week in Mexico. He’s convinced they are good together and thrilled by the joy she’s brought him. He thinks she feels the same, and they almost marry. The transformatory effects of absence never cease to amaze me. People realize how much they miss you and are thrilled to have you back or move on to someone or something else and would just assume you didn’t bother to return. Sometimes you come back, but they seem to have left, or rather been replaced by a heartless replicant.

William knows he’s not perfect, and has in fact been prone to making himself ridiculous and committing self destructive mistakes through his quick temper, but he hasn’t done anything wrong at the moment. He rushes back from the month it took him to complete his first movie bearing gifts to show her his appreciation, but she dumps him coldly and flatly. The timing makes it impossible to take, as he can’t even precisely pin his loss on any one blunder. It’s forever a riddle locked inside an enigma.

With someone as fickle as Sarah you either choose to play by their rules and focus on the good or bail. William isn’t good at giving up; he’s one of those people who are far too persistent for their own good. He’s placed all his hopes in her, and refuses to relinquish the one good thing in his life, his void filler. He gets great advice from his mother (Laura Linney) and estranged father (Ethan Hawke), both excellent in small roles, but he doesn’t hear them because he isn’t listening for anything beyond an angle to get her back.

Fear is a huge factor for both. It takes a lot for Babbling Bill to be comfortable enough to lose his posturing and pretending, relax, and be himself. William has someone to move on, or rather back to, as Samantha (Michelle Williams) still has a crush on him. However, he can’t just be that person with her; he’d be back to square one, back to rambling and stumbling. Attaining the comfort level he has with Sarah in a short time is thrilling, so to immediately be back to nothing is unfathomable. Making a fool of himself seems more worthwhile in the film as who cares about bad hair year Michelle Williams if there’s even the possibility Catalina Sandino Moreno might love you. In the novel, Sarah is a “funny looking” chubby girl, and as Hawke largely films the text he wrote a decade ago, some of the dialogue seems awkward due to William grappling with the idea he’s fallen for someone that doesn’t physically stoke him.

Even though William is needy and prone to being annoying, what keeps Sarah from loving him, it seems, is Sarah’s defense mechanisms kicking in. Her heart is locked up and she’d rather flee than surrender herself and risk the negatives. The film eventually comes to a halt through a mix of turmoil and stasis that matches William’s life. If only Sarah gave in to grandstanding the way Ione Skye did in Say Anything... William would have temporarily spared himself a ton of heartache. Instead William’s freefall is unforgettable in a cringe inducing manner, particularly his series of answering machine messages which are that much more horrific due to the fact he’s verbally impotent once he finally succeeds in prompting her to stop ignoring him at least long enough to tell him to leave her alone. Love sucks, and then you fall in love again.

Stranger on the Third Floor

The unreliability of the criminal justice system due to indifferent and lazy, if not outright malicious participants breeds paranoia, fear, irrationality, and madness in what’s considered the original film noir. Struggling upstart reporter Mike Ward (John McGuire), looking for his first break so he can move out of his unconfidential apartment and marry his tenacious girlfriend Jane (William Wyler’s wife Margaret Tallichet), makes his first journalistic breakthrough testifying his true but incredibly circumstantial evidence. To his indifference and Jane’s dismay, merely seeing a man at the scene of the crime is enough evidence to get supposedly rehabilitated con turned cab driver Joe Briggs (Elisha Cook, Jr.) the chair, as everyone would rather pin the crime on whoever is handy than put forward a legitimate effort. Briggs, who swears innocence, had no reason to murder the man who was kind enough to loan him some money, as he made $5 that day and was about to repay him.

Jane’s disapproval engages Mike’s long idle conscience, causing his imagination to seize control of haunted mind. It begins to run wild upon seeing a mysterious prowler (Peter Lorre) in the apartment complex, as his prig busybody neighbor Mr. Meng (Charles Halton) is remarkably unaware of the disturbance, seemingly impossible given he isn’t providing his obnoxious snoring. Mike’s nervous interior monologue subsides only through a remarkable surrealist nightmare that condenses the entire judicial witch hunt into a series of brief, terrifying sequences where the innocent man is helpless to save himself.

Regular scoldings from his uptight straight-laced neighbor including the classic scene where he barges in at the unseemly hour of 10 P.M. to inform a steadily typing Mike “People who don’t loaf in the daytime don’t have to work at night” lead to an equally hilarious scene where Mike threatens to kill Meng the Merciless for breaking up his subtle Hays Code seduction of Jane just as he’s finally gotten her to take her socks off. Realizing this provides motive and he’s the convenient fall guy for discovering both corpses, Mike begins to see the reality of the nightmare, as he may only be a few steps away from being the innocent man convicted through a cruel twist of what comes around goes around fate.

Always memorable Peter Lorre ostensibly stars as a homeless man running from past torments, essentially reprising his role in Fritz Lang’s M in his brief, largely wordless screen time. Lorre isn’t given enough to work with to be at his greatest, but stands out as the other performances are merely adequate with McGuire’s work reminding me of a low rent version of the performance Ray Milland would go on to give in The Lost Weekend, subbing paranoia for booze.

Stranger on the Third Floor is certainly memorable as a stylish and evocative production. Boris Ingster was predominantly a screenwriter, directing his first of a mere three features. However, he’s backed by a tremendous technical team including soon to be Val Lewton regulars Nicholas Murasaca providing the dark, shadowy, and angular cinematography and Roy Webb composing. No less than Citizen Kane art director Van Nest Polglase does wonders with the sets. With the possible exception of the courthouse, the entire film takes place in and around one little street scene, but it doesn’t matter because it’s so skillfully melded to not only create mood and atmosphere, but also render mental state. They craft a world of temporary insanity where everyone perceives themselves as being put upon then lashes out and/or flees. The expressionist style does a wonderful job of melding the reality of the world they conjure with a nightmare, resulting in a final product that’s far closer to being trapped in a bad dream than most of its successors.

Stranger on the Third Floor has all the style to be considered a classic. Unfortunately, the script is rather mediocre. It’s successful up to a point, but suddenly everything falls right into place for the rushed, incredibly convenient ending. Part of the problem, perhaps, is Peter Lorre was only scheduled for two days of shooting. His character lacks not only detail and shading, but characterization, which ultimately renders the finish unsatisfying.

Wind That Shakes the Barley

Ken Loach’s universal tale of oppressed vs. oppressors where sustained foreign occupation inevitably tears the subjugated country apart at the seams takes place in 1920 Ireland with the British Black and Tans battling the Irish Republican Army. The reality of life in a small village such as the one Loach depicts is many citizens are neutral or indifferent. County Cork isn’t a hotbed of political activism, but occupation makes it easy to identify the enemy if they are acting as such. The arrogant British take an in your face approach, cocky enough to believe they can get away with anything because they have technology and resources on their side.

The Republican Party’s declaration of Ireland as an independent Republic sounds nice, but as the British didn’t build their empire on the will of the people they took over, an insurgence to actually try to bring independence will, as usual, require the occupying force to piss the locals off. The impetus to resist the interlopers tends to come from a particularly unacceptable, if not unbearable personal experience, causing the conflict to hit home. The British soldiers, who are the same guys who just finished fighting World War 1 and know at least some of the men they menace at the outset comprise the opposing force, are portrayed as brutes, which aggravates certain audience members but seems perfectly logical given the film is from the perspective of those who resent them most.

The British are no more relevant than history forces them to be, the real story is war turning brother against brother, making everyone a brute. The Wind That Shakes the Barley focuses on two Irish brothers. Older brother Teddy Donovan (Padraic Delaney) is more politically active and has established himself as a local leader in the Republican Army, while younger brother Damien (Cillian Murphy) would avoid politics altogether and leave to begin work as a doctor if the British weren’t running amok. Once Damien crosses the line, he can’t go back to his innocent days of uninvolvement. There is only winning or dying, which is why he’s ultimately capable of killing anyone even though his longstanding goal was to save lives.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a three part tale depicting the growth of the local faction of the Irish Republic Army, their conflict against Britain, and the post-treaty split that results in the Irish Civil War. The latter seems the most important, yet isn’t given a significant amount of screen time. Once the locals join the guerrilla war it’s a perpetual exchange of misery and savagery between the two sides. The chilling point the film makes is the Irish become as bad as the British, the pro-treaty faction essentially replaces the Black and Tans, forcing the anti-treaty faction to use the same murderous insurrection tactics on friends and relatives if they are to continue the struggle. The film is a series of ethical dilemmas where moral ambiguity increases with the freedom fighters terrorizing, killing their own traitors, murdering for revenge, accepting money from objectionable donors who they then have to appease, robbing and killing fellow Irish.

Barry Ackroyd, Loach’s regular cinematographer since 1990’s Riff-Raff, really shines in this natural setting based work. Loach has always preferred an unobtrusive camera that stays back and observes his friendly lit characters, but in this green, hilly region the distanced narrow-lensed widescreen photography truly allows the landscapes to interact with the characters. They protect the ragtag unit that knows them well, though the bloodbath seems more tragic in this tranquil pastoral setting.

The action sequences look good, but unlike most war films no one seems to be enjoying themselves. No pleasure or exhilaration is derived from the violence of either side. No one gets any rush; there’s only disbelief as cut down bodies are stared at that slowly switches to desensitization through it becoming part of the routine of life. Loach refuses to make terrorism heroic just because its done by his characters, the people he believes are on the right, or at least less wrong side. Passions careen out of control, and killing seems progressively pointless. Whatever joy the peasants once had becomes but a memory. They may be motivated to win, but they also long to escape. The choices these characters make may not ultimately surprise us, but rarely seem to be reached in an easy or obvious manner. Life is doing what must be done, even if it were inconceivable a month ago and probably won’t be particularly beneficial today. The film’s best scene takes place at the silent movie where the locals learn the details of the treaty Michael Collins has helped negotiate with the British, so excited and more importantly relieved that it’s over only to find out they haven’t really won; they’re still a part of the imperial empire.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a history of the life and times. Rather than focusing on a “lone” hero or even worse on a megalomaniac as so much dull history does, making them even more of a larger than life character than they envisioned themselves as, Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty show what Ireland’s war for independence was like through the eyes of the common people. Though all the characters are fictitious, they seem more real than Michael Collins because all the romanticism and heroism is removed. Ken Loach’s film is good as drama and as faux history, neither of which can be said of that Neil Jordan movie where Julia Roberts was out to prove she was a serious actress by verifying her “Irish” accent that couldn’t fool the deaf in Mary Reilly was no fluke. Loach does cast some known actors, including Murphy, who had just appeared in Jordan’s latest sorry award monger Breakfast on Pluto, but no one acts as if they were bigger or more important than anyone else. Rather than mugging to be identified, they seem to be ordinary people struggling for identity in troubling times.

Loach is more interested in portraying a group than individuals, which is not to day they are the masses of Sergei Eisenstein, but rather their characteristics come out when they are disagreeing on the course of action. Laverty and Loach understand the idea of union, but are also smart enough to realize that just because a bunch of people committed to each other against a common adversary doesn’t mean they’ll be on the same most of the time. A good union, or team for that matter, isn’t about blind agreement, but rather executing what’s been decided to the best of your ability when the time comes.

As with all Ken Loach films, ordinary people are the center and heart. They are modest and hard working, funny when someone can find the opportunity. The characters are generally more richly detailed than in The Wind That Shakes the Barley, where providing sharp contrast takes precedent. What makes Paul Laverty so effective is he’s clever enough to construct the characters so they can provide the historical backdrop. Their stance not only helps define them, but also the times they live in.

Loach’s films show the everyday struggle of life from the perspective of a small group of working stiffs. Life is always a struggle for power in some sense, but that power may be the ability to simply pay your bills on time so you can stand on your own two feet knowing no one owns you. One way or another Loach’s films come down to haves vs. have nots, but some of the political points in The Wind That Shakes the Barley really need expansion, most notably the point of the peasants fighting. As the UK horribly exploits their own work force, unless the Irish get total freedom they’ll never be able to set up a system that might improve the day to day life of any of the characters depicted beyond Damien, who obviously could earn a pretty penny in medicine if he chooses to. All the carnage would essentially be for the right to knock a ball around once a week without being held at gunpoint for holding a “public meeting.” It may be more acceptable to be kept poor by Irishmen, but no one fights a war to come out equally oppressed.

As in A Fond Kiss, Loach and Laverty briefly identify the Catholic Church as a formidable enemy of the rights and freedoms of the ordinary person through an arrogant dictator of a priest. While the church may pay lip service to Jesus Christ valuing the poor and oppressed more than the rich and greedy, whether it be in America today, Nazi Germany, or 1920’s Ireland the men who supposedly represent Christ’s values have an uncanny knack for only putting into practice the least benevolent parts of the Old Testament, and certainly always choose to appease the wealthy and powerful to maintain or increase their own influence.

The Walker

My anticipation for The Walker wasn’t nearly as high as for the typical Paul Schrader film, as I’d read on IMDb it was a remake of American Gigolo. Though remakes are certainly a few steps above the history rewriting rereleases of Schrader’s sellout peers where considering terrorists to be hippies and having secret servicemen point deadly walkie-talkies is considered a major improvement, maybe 1% of them serve any purpose beyond cashing in on another attempt to erase history. Though Schrader ostensibly remade one of the all-time greatest horror films, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People, unlike Martin Scorsese’s version of Cape Fear, Schrader reworked it to the point it was his own inferior but still very good film. For my money, Schrader remains the only notable member of the “movie brats” to have never sold out. Scorsese and Brian De Palma may beat him out for overall body of work, but they also gave us The Aviator and Mission to Mars. Paul Schrader’s previous film Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist was inarguably a failure, but at least he failed being Paul Schrader rather than caving into the silly demands of Morgan Creek Productions.

Luckily, The Walker isn’t a remake at all, but rather another of Schrader’s variations on a moral dilemma brought to a head by outside stimulus. It could be from your daughter running away and becoming a porn star as in Hardcore. Maybe you run into your former lover you still pine for who is now off drugs and realize even though you are too, the facts she won’t believe you and you’re too old to be involved in the increasingly dangerous and crazy dealing business makes you reconsider your course as in Light Sleeper. Perhaps it’s from pulling off a heist because you can’t earn enough honestly to pay your bills as in Blue Collar. Schrader is proving the possibilities are endless.

Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, & The Walker are the most closely linked of Schrader’s films. Each are reworkings of the Michael character in Robert Bresson’s brilliant Pickpocket, telling tales of the ill-advised efforts of alienated loners to connect with a woman through somehow saving them. These characters have a brush with some form of acceptance, but realize it’s impossible for them and ultimately seek redemption. The Walker’s Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson) may come the closest of the bunch, as though he’s the disreputable black sheep of his “honorable” family, it’s a family that’s been rich and on the inside for their three previous generations. He knows everyone who is anyone in Washington D.C., but he’s merely part of the woodwork, present but with no say similar to the court jester.

American Gigolo is closest to The Walker, as Schrader revisits an escort of rich females later in life, examining how he’s been changed by the current political climate. He’s grown increasingly superficial and come out of the closet, but he masks his true self more than ever. No one knows anything about his private life, where he has a German-Turkish photographer/artist lover (Moritz Bleibtreu), as the gossip master refuses to speak of anything remotely personal, knowing it’ll only be frowned upon and used against him. Carter’s homosexuality leaves him hated by most of the males in Washington, including his father, who he’s still trying to please ten years after his death. The only bright side of being out is it allows him to chaperon the neglected old biddies to the cultural events their husbands have no interest in without them fearing he’ll create a scandal by having an affair with them.

Richard Gere’s typically unconvincing performance is the primary reason I don’t consider American Gigolo to be one of the 11 good films Paul Schrader has directed thusfar. It’s as if they decided we need a narcissist, who could be better than Richard Gere? But Gere never immerses himself deeply enough into a character that you can forget he’s Richard Gere. Woody Harrelson may be a hit and miss performer, but is much better casting because just as he couldn’t be over the top in Natural Born Killers, he can’t be self conscious in The Walker. Harrelson makes narcissism crucial to his mannered performance, emphasizing the inessential, but he also intrigues us about what lies beneath. His richly layered and textured performance that’s showy for the other characters more than for the camera and subtly witty through the restrained wit of a wordsmith surpasses his work in Milos Forman’s The People vs. Larry Flynt as the best of his career.

Carter is effete, meticulous, charming, elegant, intelligent, gracious, complimentary, and most of all incredibly polite. Some of his characteristics may be due to being a well-bred descendant of wealth (accrued through slave trade, tobacco, and political office), others to his homosexuality, but mostly his entire life consists of playing his role of pleasing and amusing through whatever means possible. Carter never gets excited or riled up, and we learn he hopes to avoid conflict by remaining on the outskirts, smiling and letting the storm pass. However, we wonder if anything is truly meaningful to him. His father was truly a crook, but is only remembered as a legend who helped take Tricky Dick down in the Watergate Trials. In Light Sleeper Willem Dafoe’s character says, "You drift from day to day... Years pass." Carter seems to have followed the same path.

Schrader lulls the audience into the decadent world of expensive clothes and plush decor where there’s a certain detachment from reality that allows anything to go as long as you smile and pretend you have everyone’s best interest at heart. We quickly realize everyone is two faced. They are glad to use you if they can, but don’t count on anyone putting anything above self interest.

Only Lynn Lockner (Kristin Scott Thomas) seems to believe Carter is different. Lynn fashions him as a leftist of similar conviction, but does Page really believe in anything or is Lynn simply projecting onto the blank slate Carter so skillfully presents? Lynn might be the one to know, as she’s the one woman Page escorts who may be a real friend. She’s more fragile and less happy then the other grand dames of the weekly canasta game such as Natalie (Lauren Bacall) and Abigail Delorean (Lily Tomlin). She’s also emotionally detached and probably just another actor.

Schrader plays with whether Carter & Lynn are real friends or simply more friendly pretenders. It makes a difference because when Page drives Lynn to her usual tryst with Robbie Kononsberg (Steven Hartley), a lobbyist Lynn’s Democratic Senator husband Larry (Willem Dafoe) is investigating for illegalities that made the higher ups even richer, she discovers Robbie’s been stabbed to death. Lynn can’t inform the authorities without causing a scandal that may undermine her husband, and can’t just pretend she was never there because her fingerprints are on the door knob, so knight in shining armor Carter drives her home and cleans her tracks before calling the police from Robbie’s.

“They go with what they have, and I’m what they have,” says Page on why he’s seemingly the only suspect. Schrader regularly takes pot shots at the nastiness of the current regime. Corruption, hypocrisy, looting, subversion of the truth, homophobia, Abu Ghraib torture, shady reductions of freedom, discarding checks and balances, and blending church and state all get a nod. Schrader realizes Ventriloquist Cheney is the power and muscle of the outfit, who likely remain unnamed because the film is not only about killing for politics rather than sex or money, but at one point Page suggests the Vice President is the one who had Robbie murdered.

With the possible exception of Patty Hearst, which involves the Symbionese Liberation Army but is made from the perspective of a victim who acts far more due to peer pressure than out of conviction, Schrader has largely avoided politics since his debut feature Blue Collar. Blue Collar seemed to lean more toward the right, based on widespread corruption but coming off anti union due to the characters wrongheaded decision to steal back the money they got no actual representation for paying. Maintaining the widespread corruption take, The Walker leans left for reasons beyond the character being part of the no quarter system rather than the buddy system. That being said, the political points aren’t merely agenda, they serve as the basis for the dire threat to Carter’s freedom, creating the paranoid self-preservational atmosphere of fear the characters live with. This is a world where people not only know guilt and innocence take a back seat to persecution of those whose values and lifestyle doesn’t match the administration’s, they tend to act accordingly.

*Possible spoilers*

Schrader doesn’t have any particular interest in the genre elements, which simply allow him to show the indifference the Washington players have toward justice and present Page with the potential to redeem himself though refusing to rat Lynn out. It’s fairly obvious the outcome of the mystery and thriller aspects will never be a match for the intrigue, but I don’t really get what some people expect from the film. While it’s true that after hinting high, Schrader ultimately reduces the stakes of the murder mystery to virtually inconsequential, only a few other fictions such as Joe Dante’s Homecoming and Brian De Palma‘s Redacted have had the guts to make any sort of a legitimate challenge to the Bush administration. Schrader can’t come out with some sensationalism where Cheney’s stand-in is actually held accountable for crimes Schrader himself concocted. In order to get away with that result it would have to very obviously not be about the Bush presidency, which would then set the film in a vacuum and eliminate much of his purpose of reexamining the walker character. The result has little to do with his reason for making the film, so he remains in the realm of realism. A few pawns disappear, the traces of their existence are quickly whisked away, and king and queen remain firmly entrenched on their throne.

The Walker isn’t about changing the grand scheme of things, it’s a well-observed character study about changing yourself. Carter has spent his life hiding behind his own superficiality. His walker job prevents him from expressing anything close to his true feelings, except in jest. If he’s to be any different than the other Washington insiders he can’t quickly save himself, even in a case such as this where he’s admittedly trapped between disloyalty and dishonesty, which in some senses are one in the same. He can no longer attain more power through hiding behind the mask of morality, civility, and decency. His moral code must kick in and prevent him from taking the easy way out, from acting the way the supposedly better people do.

Redacted

Rebounding from the commercial doldrums that have plagued his work since the brilliant Carlito’s Way with Femme Fatale, among the best of his sexy voyeuristic thrillers, Brian De Palma seemed as though he might be back on course with the promising Toyer forthcoming. Stranded in production hell unable to find a time when he and acting heavyweights Juliette Binoche and Colin Firth were all available to film, he settled on a vehicle where stilted flyweight Josh Hartnett plays a boxer turned detective. His next project was (and once again is) set to be Capone Rising, a prequel to his biggest commercial success The Untouchables, which is also doubtful to approach the peak of his art. Though it almost has to be better than The Black Dahlia, Untouchables is more the favorite of his non fans than the hardcores, who prefer Scarface and Carlito’s Way when he’s in gangster mode and the visual oriented thrillers such as Dressed to Kill and Blow Out when he’s not.

Those wondering when De Palma would return to classic form may be pleased by Redacted, certainly if by classic form they mean the parodic spirit of his early New York independents Greetings and Hi, Mom! and his later film within a film indy Home Moves combined with a reworking of Casualties of War. Ever the cinephile, De Palma found inspiration viewing the latest work of one of the new masters, Bruno Dumont’s Flanders at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, and proceeded to combine modern technology with bits and pieces of his filmography to create a work that’s timely, original, and the most experimental of his career.

Disenchanted by the way the mainstream media’s quest to make news profitable misrepresents the Iraq war to favor American ideals, values, reasoning, excuses, and lies, whatever ruffles the least feathers, upsets the fewest stomachs, and most importantly keeps the sponsorship $ pouring in, Redacted is in good part De Palma retracing his steps toward discovering the truth. With the decrease in the size and price of video cameras and people carrying still cameras like never before due to being included in the latest gadgets, this war has been documented more than any other, but where can you find the footage?

Redacted isn’t about the difference between Fox “News” and CNN, Brian De Palma instead came to his conclusions through all types of alternative media: reading websites and blogs, watching everything from documentaries in the theater to videos on You Tube. His movie is primarily about the complicity of the mainstream media in suppressing the information that would horrify the American public to the point they’d take to the streets and demand an end to the war, as they increasingly did during Vietnam. It’s not about disgusting you with a blitzkrieg of carnage though, but rather opening the audience’s eyes by combining material from all these sources to create a different and more complete picture of U.S. occupation. Relying more heavily on a fictitious video diary by soldier Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz) and a faux documentary De Palma also made but credits to fictitious French filmmakers than facsimile web sites and web videos, Redacted may not be a pleasant viewing experience but is far more lively and intriguing one than it may sound.

The movie plays a bit awkwardly due to there being so many layers to what De Palma is trying to accomplish that they sometimes seem at war. Redacted is kind of an odd mix of cinema verite documentary, reality show, and scattershot comedy. There’s a layer of truth, the lack thereof from the mainstream media prompting De Palma to make the film. However, there are several layers of deception, the most obvious of which is the true story of the Mahmudiyah killings has been edited to make it suitable for release by expunging sensitive info, hence the film’s title. Though it’s based on a true story, Redacted isn’t a documentary, as everything was fictionalized to avoid rights hangups and potential lawsuits. De Palma was told by lawyers from HDNet, the TV station launched by Redacted’s producer Mark Cuban, he wasn’t allowed to refer to the real event in any way. He succeeded well enough in that regard, but production company Magnolia Pictures redacted his closing photographic montage of real war photos De Palma found on the internet, removing some (which in some cases were then replaced by staged versions) and forcing ridiculous black bars over the identifying facial features of the rest. Though De Palma was none too happy about his only real footage being disemboweled, it actually furthers his point that all the war coverage has been censored, sanitized, whitewashed, and/or misrepresented.

Fact and fiction aren’t so much the point of Redacted as questioning notions of objective and subjective reportage. De Palma makes it plain that his film isn’t the truth either, that lies in scattered bits and pieces, it’s something you come to on your own through culling various sources rather than blindly trusting any specific one. The whole fact vs. fiction argument is played ironically, so the movie becomes something of a parody. For instance, De Palma goes beyond ironic counterpoint, pairing carnage with classical orchestrations to show the pretentiousness and pomposity of the “French documentary”. De Palma depicts the human condition, but he does so in the wise guy mode of Greetings and Hi, Mom!, finding twisted humor that makes it bearable through the absurdity of the times. Scenes such as choosing the documents to seize when they are written in a language you can’t understand illustrate the folly of the occupation in a nutshell.

Voyeurism is a key to almost every De Palma film, implicating the audience as well as himself for their fascination with watching sex and violence. We get both here, though De Palma is at his most restrained during the rape of the teenage girl, which takes place off screen with the audience essentially seeing nothing beyond flickering lights. This point is, in itself, ironic as on one hand the media is condemned for refusing to provide the necessary footage, but on the other we are indicted for desiring to view it.

Role playing provides yet another layer. The acting from the unknown actors that provides some legitimacy to the illusion what we are seeing is real will be criticized as unprofessional. However, the self-consciousness of the performances mirrors the deception of reality shows and more importantly the interviews of the troops we see on TV. Once a person knows they’re being filmed they start putting on a performance. Sometimes they suppress the truth by hiding behind the cliches, regurgitating talking points without conviction. Other times they try to live up to the myth of what a soldier is, which is largely derived from the Hollywood movies they’ve seen. De Palma isn’t trying to elicit bogus award winning performances, he’s illustrating that when the characters strive to live up to their ideal conception of a soldier, whether ideal or fictional, the result, whether intentional or unintentional, is a deceptive portrait of reality that clouds the picture.

The idea Brian De Palma hates the soldiers is patently ridiculous. People who are pro soldier want to get them home to their families, or at least stationed in a friendly area, while those who don’t care about them want to keep them indefinitely embedded, having chances to die for their country 24/7/365. What’s more realistic, US soldiers getting killed due to being marooned in hostile territory or dying because Bin Ladin and co. are converting those who previously chose peaceful coexistence into Johnny Jihads by renting theaters and handing out free tickets to Redacted?

Politics aside, Redacted isn’t populated by a bunch of filthy pigs who aren’t worth dignifying by cleaning their stalls. They are more toward the soldier cliches that have been around for ages, with everyone from Lewis Milestone to Steven Spielberg to John Milius contributing. Lawyer McCoy (Rob Devaney) is the soldier with a conscience. He can’t believe his fellow GIs would consider doing awful things he never would such as rape an innocent teen. He figures they are just letting off steam with some sick jokes, it’s their way of dealing with yet another death of one of their own. When he realizes they are considering it he figures if he goes along he can pounce on an opportune moment of fear to talk them out of it. Gabe Blix (Kel O’Neill) is the intelligent soldier, spending all his free time reading. He doesn’t bother anyone and also strongly believes in doing the right thing, but he’s passive and unimposing. He’s smart enough to not take on an offensive lineman type who’d be glad to eat him for a midnight snack. He may be a disappointment for predictably failing to be dynamic and commanding enough to prevent the tragedy, but even though he never rises to the top he’s the only one who consistently keeps his head above water, and there’s something to be said for that. The love of voluble Master Sergeant James Sweet (Ty Jones) may be tough, but he keeps everyone alive and out of trouble. The problems start in his absence, as lacking an authority figure to keep the grunts in line the group dynamic changes to a situation where the meanest, toughest, and craziest get their way because no one above them is paying attention and the other members of Alfa Company aren’t going to duke it out with them.

Angel Salazar, who enlisted because he was denied entry into film school, but believes his video combined with the G1 Bill will open up the door to cinematic education upon his return, acts as De Palma’s eyes. This characters recalls Keith Gordon’s character in Home Movies, another De Palma film within a film where the main character spent all his time recording the actions of those around him. No one accused De Palma of hating Gordon’s character, and it’s not because De Palma more affinity for him than Salazar, actually Gordon’s character is more comical and ridiculous. It’s not because they haven’t seen Home Movies, as while that’s certainly the case they haven’t bothered to watch Redacted either. There’s simply no point in concocting the anti Home Movies story since there’s no political gain in attempting to discredit Home Movies.

There are more soldiers you wouldn’t rush to condemn to the fires of hell. The two bad ones just stand out more. Rush (Daniel Stewart Sherman) is fittingly a Big Fat Idiot. Similar to his partner in crime, Reno Flake (Patrick Carroll) is a sexually repressed racist redneck. These thugs are in part a comment upon the futility of the US government’s policy of expunging crime if you’ll instead serve your time in the military. What’s good for getting some much needed volunteers doesn’t necessarily help win the hearts and minds of the occupied country, if that was ever a desire in the first place.

Redacted is far closer to a remake of De Palma’s own Vietnam War tragedy Casualties of War than Paul Schrader’s latest The Walker is of his own American Gigolo. Redacted has more immediacy and urgency for being released in the midst of the war rather than a decade and a half after it’s conclusion. Casualties of War is easier to watch, largely due to Michael J. Fox presenting a strong heart to the film for the audience to root for. Redacted is far angrier, fueled by disgust and outrage.

Depicting the futility of occupation as a culture clash that will only bring tragedy is far more a theme in Redacted than Casualties of War. Citizens resent having to be stopped every day and searched. Some people with power invariably abuse it. A tremendous amount of misunderstanding occurs due to neither side being able to understand the other’s language, much less knowing their customs and respecting their way of life. An adversarial relationship quickly develops with some factions on both sides continually escalating the conflict by avenging incidents. Thematically, Redacted could just as easily be about the British, French, Russian, Persian, Roman, or Mongol empires, but to its credit it doesn’t hide from controversy by comfortably couching its criticism in a period piece.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Sidney Lumet may never have been the most consistent of the great directors, but during his peak period from 1973-81 he delivered five of his six greatest movies: Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Equus, & Prince of the City. Subsequently he’s fallen into the pattern of making a series of mediocre to good movies before delivering a significant addition to his oeuvre dealing with some take on his favorite theme of corruption. These high points began with 1988’s Running On Empty, an intimate look at a loving tightly knit family that struggles to achieve a level of honesty, decency, and integrity they can never attain due to the parents being on the run from the FBI for a 1970 war protest gone awry. Their past that regularly almost catches up to them implicates their two boys, forcing them to regularly concoct new identities as they bounce from state to state and thus school to school. 1997’s Night Falls on Manhattan may not surpass Serpico or Prince of the City (though it’s better than Q & A) as tales of police corruption, but comes as close to obliterating the correlation between right and good, wrong and bad as one can without building the film around an amoral core.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is another one of Lumet’s returns to form, not quite as good as Running On Empty or Night Falls on Manhattan, but very interesting for finally focusing on the motivations that necessitate the corruption in the perpetrators minds. It’s probably closest to Dog Day Afternoon due to the theme of Al Pacino robbing the bank in attempt to please his male lover, the money bringing them closer together by allowing the lover to finally afford his sex change. There’s more of a necessity and urgency to attain money in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, as an IRS audit leaves head of payroll Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) about to be caught paying himself two extra paychecks (by continuing to draw money for terminated employees). His brother Hank (Ethan Hawke), who is already several months behind on child support, has just hit rock bottom, unable to produce $130 to pay for his daughters overnight school trip to see a performance of the Lion King a day or two after promising her she could go.

As in Dog Day Afternoon, the point is not so much the money itself, but rather the love the main characters decide it will bring. Above all else, divorced Hank cares about his daughter he now has minority custody of. However, despite busting his hump to try to give her the best, he’s lucky to be able to provide for her at all, and she resents him for that. Keeping her in private school seemingly eats up his entire paycheck, and she gives him no credit for what he’s better able to do, provide all the love and support in him (which at times can be embarrassing and suffocating). He’s just a gawking loser who overrates her successes and can’t pay for the things her friend’s parents can.

Andy’s relationship with Gina (Marisa Tomei) was great when they were in Rio, but similar to Michael Caine and Michelle Johnson it doesn’t quite work back in the States. Andy worked his way up from nothing to a six figure income, but all he’s been able to provide hasn’t kept them from growing distant and detached for reasons neither can quite put a finger on. It’s left him riddled with inadequacy and their marriage empty. If only he could afford to live in Rio fulltime, perhaps he could recapture the magic?

Gina has a once a week affair with Hank, who makes her feel sexy through his desire and gives her all the attention Andy doesn’t. Hank loves her, but her stated reason for not going with him is he can’t afford the dependants he has now. Money wouldn’t nab the ideal relationship with Gina for either, but they are unhappy with their current situation and she’s still much of what they desire (even if Andy has grown impotent), so they are tempted to do everything they can. Lumet’s characters want things to be right in the world (either justice or their own stability), but the imperfection of both the world and themselves tends to lead them down a path that actually has the reverse effect, making everything more complex and difficult for them.

The major difference from Dog Day Afternoon, or anything Lumet has done in the past, is the crime is a brief scene almost at the very beginning of the film. Lumet then utilizes a non-linear narrative, jumping between the handful of days before and after the bungled heist, though thankfully this isn’t one of those heartless Alain Resnais bastardizations where solving the puzzle is the be all and end all. Time stamps are utilized, not for the purpose of keeping the film from being confusing, but rather because the whole purpose is to flesh out the men through alternating points of view. Lumet sometimes shows the same scene at different times through different eyes, creating a layered effect that further elucidates the meaning as well as fleshing out new information by alternating the viewing angle and adding what one character did directly before or after. Cinematographer Ron Fortunato’s camera angles and movements are quite effective in putting us inside a character then utilizing the architecture to set this increasingly alienated being apart from everyone else.

A major change for Lumet is the bleakness of the endeavor. His police corruption films always have a good cop or district attorney at the center, while his previous crooks such as Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon or Vin Weasle in Find Me Guilty have their loveable side. Lumet is one of the few Hollywood directors known for his grittiness, but his street realism was never so relentlessly and unsparingly. Financial desperation creates a series of troubling situations where the stakes are raised with shocking swiftness, and the reactions exceed that which we imagine the characters capable of. Carter Burwell will probably have scored the best despairing American movie of the year, as he also did Joel & Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men.

Sidney Lumet has long been legendary for eliciting tremendous performances from his actors, whether it be a great actor at the top of their game such as Pacino in Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon or an undistinguished actor such as Treat Williams giving a performance in Prince of the City he’s never again approached. Philip Seymour Hoffman takes it to another level as calm, calculating, cunning, and controlling angler Andy. He’s been successful in business because he’s been able to internalize the negative, hiding beneath a friendly salesman veneer. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is really a dysfunctional family film with resentment and hatred simmering in Andy, particularly toward his father Charles (Albert Finney) for loving weak younger brother Hank more.

Lumet loves animated performances, and usually they’re also memorable, for instance Peter Finch as the crazy yet prophetic newsman in Network, but Ethan Hawke and Albert Finney, who can both be exceptional, could have benefited from toning things down a bit. Hoffman brings a great deal of nuance to his role as commanding schemer turned cold killer through sheer desperation. However, Hawke, who is the only character that could have been likeable, only comes off as pitiable due to overemphasizing his nervous ticks. Hawke is much better as a talker, memorable anytime he’s playing a philosophizing bullshitter - someone who has lived and is glad to convey his experiences - even if it’s a small part such as Richard Linklater’s underrated Fast Food Nation. Here he doesn’t have much meaningful dialogue, so he overdoes his grimaces and anxious postures. Hawke still has excellent moments, but Finney is overly mannered, and grows increasingly over the top in the final portion.

A few points hurt the film in my estimation. The primary fault is while I realize Andy wants to keep himself clean, providing the idea and setting up the fence are the kind of things he’d do well, nothing about him or Hank gives us any inkling as to why on earth he’d possibly think Hank could pull the caper off on his own. I suppose nothing could be easier than robbing a mom and pop store when you know the place like the back of your hand since it’s your own mom and pop’s, but Hank is the epitome of an inept, pathetic, chickenshit. He’s the kind of person that might hide from his own shadow, so just tossing him in right away with hastily thought out directions doesn’t seem something Andy would consider. Andy might be a drug addict who has boxed himself into a losing situation, but he’s the kind of guy who loses once in a while because he’s so cocky, thinking he’s so smart and everyone else isn’t. Hank, who he usually addresses as faggot, certainly heads his list of the not smart ones.

The heist goes as awry as everything involving Hank seems destined to, leaving their mother Nanette (Rosemary Harris) a vegetable on life support, but it doesn’t make sense for Charles to be hell bent on solving the crime given Nanette shot the robber dead. I’m not a fan of the Death Wish plot, but I understand the bad obsession that leads to the man stopping at nothing to avenge his loved ones. The problem here is there’s no information or evidence pointing to the fact that Bobby (Brian F. O’Byrne), who Hank hired to help him out, wasn’t simply a lone gunman.

The plot of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead might not always be the most believable, but more importantly few aspects are telegraphed. Rather than hint that Bobby’s girlfriend knows he had dealings with Hank, she’s just in the background of one scene where Hank goes to Bobby’s house. On the other hand, it’s suggested Hank probably leaves fingerprints at the homosexual drug dealer’s house, but he again assures Andy it’s all good, and this time that’s the end of it. Overall, it’s quite a good film, though I’d likely think more of it if any time was put into developing the female characters.

My Blueberry Nights

I’ve yet to see a Kar Wai Wong film that wasn’t overrated, but early indications are that My Blueberry Nights will reverse that trend. Wong’s first English language feature may be far from a masterpiece, but even though Wong isn’t at his best when he’s pressed for time and thus sticking to a script, it’s by no means a mess. It’s Kar Wai Wong through and through, both exquisite and flawed. The imperfections are apparently noticeable now that the language and environment are more familiar, but Wong’s true character becoming more obvious doesn’t change the fact he’s a talented and intriguing filmmaker.

Wong’s films are successful because they sweep the audience away in the romantic mood. They are films taking place in the mind’s eye where everything is filtered through a longing, aching, or broken heart. Memory, especially the passionate feelings Wong’s romances deal with, tends to push emotion to the ends of the spectrum, causing characters to either be wholly idealized visions or the devil’s spawn. Wong’s cinematic manipulation such as richly saturating color, applying filters, and altering frame rate and film stock simply visualizes these conceptions.

Though Christopher Doyle isn’t behind the camera, what Doyle has said about filming the style of the director rather than bringing his own style proves to be accurate. No one would rate Darius Khondji as highly as Doyle, yet Khondji gives Wong the precise and beautiful compositions everyone has come to expect from a Wong film. It’s dreamily atmospheric with neon lights, utilizing shallow focus to elaborate interior shots through glass or whatever can possibly come between the actors and the camera. Khondji isn’t as restless as Doyle, but if anything that’s a positive.

The stylization of Wong’s dialogue may not be as apparent as his visuals, but it’s always been a projection of the character’s point view, particularly their memories and desires. It has never been naturalistic, though this isn’t as obvious when you are largely processing it through subtitles. Even in Cantonese, dialogue was never a strongpoint of Wong’s films. His narratives are rather aimless, as he’s better at circling around what he’s trying to say, and that makes for more interesting cinema than condescending preaching anyway. My Blueberry Nights is obviously going to be less successful since Wong isn’t working in his first language. That being said, I feel it’s more that it strikes us as inferior because we excuse awkward dialogue to translation problems and liabilities. Similarly, while there’s an exactness to Wong’s set design, he’s never strived for it to be in the department of realism. If this is suddenly an issue, it’s because having lived or spent time in these places the film isn’t meeting our perceptions of them. We see New York City in a different light than Hong Kong, startled by it being so calm and empty it’s disquieting, but this alteration has no particular impact on the film.

My Blueberry Nights is disappointing in that Wong continues to repeat himself. One might hope he could be more than a director of melancholic romances of unrequited love creating broken hearts who eventually start over, but Wong’s themes don’t change, which is perhaps as it should be given his excellence in the subject. Wong adds to his body of work largely by altering time and place. His last film set in contemporary Hong Kong was 1995’s Fallen Angels. In the Mood for Love and The Hand took place in the 1960’s, 2046 in said futuristic year, while Happy Together was set in Argentina and now My Blueberry Nights in the USA.

Wong’s preoccupation is what makes the human heart tick, and his films are capable of succeeding at any time or in any place because that’s fairly universal, especially in the fairy tale manner he deals with it. Where My Blueberry Nights clearly fails to reach the heights of Wong’s best Hong Kong films is in the acting department. The dialogue of those films was also diversionary and insignificant, but he had Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung, who are among the best at expressing the unexpressed. Certainly a large part of the emotion in any Wong film is created by the visual style, which remains the same, but the best actors took it to another level through their ability to subtly express emotions such as desire, longing, and regret. My Blueberry Nights still doesn’t play events as being of increased significance, but it’s much talkier than Wong’s Hong Kong movies, sometimes bogged down to the point we wonder if Lawrence Block intended the script to be a play. The real problem though is while the feelings are thankfully still expressed through interest rather than declaration, the Hollywood actors are typically too focused on dialogue, and thus don’t do as good a job at surfacing the interior.

Wong had more success pairing an actor (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) with a well known singer (Faye Wong) in Chungking Express (partially because he also had Brigitte Lin to rely upon), but Norah Jones does fine in her acting debut. She’ll never be a great thespian, but keep in mind her role is simply to be a passive witness to the unfulfilled dreams and unrequited love of desperate hardened addicts. Her two encounters with Jeremy (Jude Law) bookend three short stories of rocky relationships, with Elizabeth (Jones) learning from the failure of others. There’s never much doubt she’ll start a relationship with fellow hopeful innocent Jeremy, the diner owner she meets at the outset when she’s trying to reconnect with her longtime boyfriend who recently left her for another woman. The slight wistful film is her 300 day road trip to purge the pain and heartbreak of the failed relationship before beginning anew with Jeremy, who she writes to from her various stops but never provides with a return address.

By far the best segment has Arnie (David Strathairn) and Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz) as a couple who rip each other to shreds. Arnie is an alcoholic cop obsessed with wife Sue to the point he shows no interest in any other person despite the fact Sue has left him long ago for survival rather than indifference. He drags her back in every time he sees her, which is something she doesn’t try to hard to avoid given she frequents the same bar (Elizabeth funds her trip through short lived waitress jobs).

The only advancement for Wong is the story of Leslie (Natalie Portman looking about bad as she’s capable of as a bleach bland with short curls), as her problems are with her father rather than a lover. Further differentiation comes from the fact Leslie’s father never actually makes an appearance. Unfortunately, cast against type, normally naturalistic Portman fails to pull off her jaded all knowing gambling addict role, always seeming very much in a movie.

If Wong remakes The Lady From Shanghai, a near masterpiece from a better director that’s at least arguably better than any film on Wong’s resume, especially doing so with Nikoru Kidoman, that’ll be his first sellout. In the meantime, while this English language debut veers closer to an introduction for those with subtitlephobia than the bold faced entry in his filmography we always hope for, it does add a little to his resume, is interesting and pleasurable enough, and most importantly is clearly still a film by Kar Wai Wong.

Comedy of Power

"I am not interested in the image of justice, I am interested in justice" - Jeanne Charmant-Killman

Once again in Otto Preminger mode, Claude Chabrol delivers a distanced judicial inspection of a culture of corruption. Eschewing the usual theatric-laden staples of good triumphing over evil, Chabrol’s clinical observation seems to strive to make the proceedings as humdrum as possible, increasing the banality to suit the larger subjects, as he’s given his favorite whipping boys the bourgeoisie a break in favor of the more insidious and hazardous corporate and political criminals.

Chabrol can only laugh at the corruptibility of man, though his humor is very dry. The Comedy of Power isn’t a roasting, but rather a decision to laugh a little rather than cry. Based on France’s most notorious Enron style scandal, the state owned oil company Elf Aquitaine spent 200 million francs of public money on such essentials as mistresses, jewelry, fine art, villas, and apartments for the fat cats and their chums, and of course political favors to keep the gravy train rolling. Chabrol moves down the alphabet one letter, calling the corporation FMG then jokingly starting with a disclaimer that states any resemblance is coincidental.

Chabrol doesn’t bother with plot, it’s all a game - in this case cat and mouse on the intellectual level - and how you play is all that matters. There’s little action and few scenes are played for drama, with calm and underplayed verbal confrontations between dogged magistrate Jeanne Jeanne Charmant-Killman (Isabelle Huppert) and the arrogant good old boys who think nothing of raping and pillaging as it’s the only way they’ve ever lived, defending themselves through the subtle intimidation of smug questions such as “Do you know who I am?” These scenes are more toward detective parody than dramatizations, but played straight as no one is moved by going about business.

A no-nonsense go-getter, Jeanne is far more competitive than moralistic. Her investigation is very thorough, though we see little of it, but she displays a cool apathy toward the crimes. Simply determined to win, she’s a kind of serial prosecutor who calculatingly exploits her advantages and uses, if not abuses, her power to put her victims behind bars.

Removing all the saintly do-gooding, the characters aren’t clearly delineated cartoonish heroes and villains. Chabrol remains detached from Jeanne, showing her weaknesses as well as the strengths of the crooks to maintain some balance and give us some idea of how they usually get away with it. Jeanne hasn’t made a career out of sticking it to the wealthy, but for whatever reason, perhaps the sheer arrogance of her adversaries, the small towner decides to give the legal system a chance to supersede class privilege for once. Chabrol and semi regular screenwriter Odile Barski suggest it takes a justice drunk on power to risk it all to stop a sect of state sponsored robbers.

Jeanne is an aloof character. She battles misogyny with a lack of empathy for any male beyond her nephew Felix (Thomas Chabrol), and it’s turned her into a poker player who who shows little emotion and barely strays from her judicial mission long enough to get the proper amount of rest and nourishment. Her doctor husband Philippe (Robin Renucci) rightfully feels abandoned, but she’s given up on the idea of having a legitimate marriage long ago, so she simply moves out at first protest.

Huppert is less restrained than usual, starting out seeming somewhat idealistic but growing happier and more challenging as the film progresses despite threats, vandalism, an accident, and what personal life she has generally evaporating. Though in actually challenging the fascist state, Chabrol displays an amount of guts that’s all too rare among today’s co-opted filmmakers, The Comedy of Power is another minor Chabrol. It’s nowhere near as good as his previous film The Bridesmaid, but about the equal of The Flower of Evil. The acting is universally good, but certainly the primary quality of the movie is watching Huppert power tripping. Comedy of Power may be somewhat slight, but it takes a real jester, the kind of guy who would willingly serve in Ice Cube’s court, to fail to make a worthwhile movie with Huppert.

Broken English

Being held to the standard of your famous parents will always be the bane of the sibling’s existence (unless they manage to surpass them), and while it’s somewhat unfair I feel it impossible to view Zoe R. Cassavetes debut outside the giant shadow of her father John. In many senses that is a good thing, as since making his one good film She’s So Lovely from one of his father’s old scripts her brother Nick Cassavetes seems content to produce a series of Dogs that merely evoke John Q. Hack.

One the positive end of the comparison to John, Zoe also portrays human emotions truthfully. Her characters are believable human beings who seem to have actually lived, and thus have a history beyond what they’ll reveal to us for the benefit of the narrative. Their character is brought out through painful interactions, and they are fragile human beings who lose largely because they can’t help but defeat themselves. Genre never gets in the way of a soulful character study. Zoe exposes her star, occasionally hitting a nerve.

Broken English threatens to turn into Before Sunset in the final segment where Nora Wilder (Parker Posey) finally takes a chance and puts love above all else, pursuing the Frenchmen Julien (Melvil Poupaud) she fell in love with when he was vacationing in her New York City hometown, even repeating Richard Linklater’s ending though never mustering any truly memorable dialogue. However, where Zoe comes up as short as you’d expect is in allowing the movie to come off as a kind of modern politically correct version of John Cassavetes romantic comedy masterpiece Minnie & Moskowitz. Zoe very obviously brings a female perspective, but while heartfelt, like just about every other romance, her film is incredibly lightweight in comparison, lacking John’s charge and emotional violence. Whatever John’s liabilities were, the few times he didn’t fully succeed after he broke free from meddlesome studios, in Gloria & Big Trouble, were due to failing to go for broke. Broken English is heavier than those two, but it’s more of a foot in the door film than the kind of headfirst charging John did when he was at his best.

Minnie & Moskowitz featured a successful career woman (Zoe’s mom Gena Rowlands) who was incredibly unsuccessful in love. Though to a lesser extent than Broken English since Seymour Cassel had an equally large role while everyone in Broken English is very secondary to Parker Posey, both films were internal journeys of the woman to allow herself to accept and be loved by a man. Comedy is derived from the inability to find a man that is indeed acceptable, but the biggest problem with Broken English is Nora eventually does. The point of Minnie & Moskowitz is it wouldn’t matter who Rowlands found, she needed to change herself before the act of looking had any real point. Cassel’s parking valet was no catch, he’d be considered too far beneath the classy and dignified woman to even warrant considering. He was simply aggressive and assertive enough to break down the impenetrable wall Rowlands put up every time she met a man. Nora has every sort of depressed, delusional neurosis, but ultimately she just needs a man who will accept that. To a point everything is meaningless unless the other person will accept you, but there’s no real emotional gamble in Broken English. True, Nora needs to drop her profitable but dead end job as Miss Fix It in a swanky hotel, but as far as her real problem goes it’s so obvious she’s doing the right thing in pursuing the relationship with Julien because he’s far too suitable.

Parker Posey may never quite be Best in Show, but her work in later films such as Personal Velocity, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration, Fay Grim, and especially Broken English show she only gets better with age. Her vulnerable and anxious performance is by far the biggest asset of Cassavetes wandering, episodic movie. Drinking to give herself enough confidence, or more accurately uninhibit herself enough to make yet another attempt at a relationship, she loses due to a combination of the pressing urgency of still not having a husband in her mid 30’s, at least half of which is in her head, with defeatism. She always dives in too quickly, not only setting herself up for yet another failure but also increasing the disappointment of it. Posey underplays more than in her earlier roles, making her anguish and insecurities more believable. She’s able to convey points such as her vaunted independence just being the fear of breaking her unsatisfying routine. Posey gives a very real, award worthy performance but Broken English plays too safe and thus isn’t always up to her standard, or even that of Rowlands who has a small role as her pressuring judgmental mother. Still, it’s a good start.

Into the Wild

Sean Penn has been criticized for not outwardly condemning his self-destructive main character Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), but to me that’s a big reason Into the Wild is even better than Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man. Herzog either can’t resist the temptation to skewer his corny and kooky subject Timothy Treadwell or doesn’t trust the audience to come to their own conclusions, which among many conflicting ideas would likely include that he’s naive and crazy but also honorable and passionate. Herzog’s condescending narration is valueless at least as often as it is valuable due to devoting too much time to stating things any reasonable human being could come to on their own.

Sean Penn may be less certain about his material than in The Pledge, which could be expected when you consider the increased difficulty of dealing with a real life character, much less one who spent much of the time the narrative details alone and not corresponding with anyone. In any case, Penn refuses the easy conclusions of Herzog, instead leaving the story of the moralist youthful romantic who finds civilization alienating and raucous and searches for a better life that gives back rather than stifles open for interpretation.

Into the Wild does contain voice over narration, but Penn assumes his audience is bright enough to realize Chris could starve or freeze to death, might run into a bear, or even The Porcupine Giant. Chris’ sister Carine McCandless (Jena Malone) provides a heartfelt narration that not only adds a layer to the film, but provides a counterpoint to the picture we get of Chris from seeing the way he treats others. Penn directs the film with sensitivity, but that doesn’t mean Carine’s narration doesn’t show Chris to be a bastard figuratively as well as literally. Chris is the most heartbreaking type of person to have for a friend or relative. He’s an affable energetic smiling character others naturally gravitate toward who makes everyone believe he likes them, and in fact this isn’t any deception. However, Chris not only refuses any type of attachment because he believes the joy of life comes from new experiences rather than human interaction, he’s practically oblivious to these feelings in others. Carine’s narration shows how painful it is to be made to feel the other person never thinks of you when you aren’t together.

Chris is a seeker, but his awful parents are much of his reason for dropping out of society and living a completely self-sufficient life without any long-term companionship and practically without any of civilization’s comforts. Chris’ relationship with his family harks back to Penn’s directorial debut The Indian Runner. In that film, family members world view also put them constantly at odds. While Chris shares Frank Roberts’ (Viggo Mortensen) repugnance toward contentment, he is very positive about the possibilities life has to offer while Frank has a distaste for just about everything.

The battles between Chris’ uptight mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and his never wrong dictator of a father (William Hurt), who makes himself out to be the only good guy, place a constant weight on the entire family. Chris rejects their clutches, not only getting rid of everything they’ve given him, but dismissing consumerism and all the other foundations our society is built upon. He destroys all forms of identification, renaming himself Alexander Supertramp, burns his money, and enters the woods with a few items, certainly less than are necessary for survival.

Carine may rarely be seen, but she’s the crucial character in many senses. We could debate whether Chris’ cancerous parents deserve to have all ties cut and never have an inkling of where he is, or even if he’s still alive. However, Chris had a good relationship with Carine, and you’d have to be clueless or uncaring not to realize she cares for him very deeply and his well being is important to her. Chris is as self-indulgent as his parents, just in different ways.

Sean Penn certainly respects Chris’ quest to unearth his own truth and is sympathetic to the idea you shouldn’t sit back and complacently accept the world as defined by others. Regardless of your take on his politics, Penn was one of the only people who actually went to Iraq for reasons other than work, journeying to the war zone to gain first hand knowledge of the good and/or bad our presence in the region was resulting in. I might not agree with some of Chris’ methods, but in and of itself his quest to find a meaningful and fulfilling existence is certainly worthy of respect.

Penn’s last three films are about a man’s mission becoming a dangerous obsession. In The Crossing Guard, Freddy Gale (Jack Nicholson) ceased living during the six years he waited for the man who killed his daughter in a hit and run, John Booth (David Morse), to be released from prison so he can exact his own justice by killing him. By the time this occurs, Freddy is so consumed with anger and self-hatred he’s verging on insanity, but in the week he gives Booth to tie up his loose ends, Freddy also confronts the demons of his past. Part of the weakness of Chris is he simply runs from it.

The Pledge is also about a man so unyielding in his quest for satisfaction he brings about his own self destruction. It’s closer to Into the Wild because where Jack Nicholson’s character in The Crossing Guard has fallen into a self created hell, his character in The Pledge, a freshly retired detective who has vowed to the mother of a child who was brutally raped and murdered that he’ll find the real killer, accidentally stumbles upon a new should be satisfying life with Lori (Robin Wright Penn) and her young petite blonde daughter who fits the killer’s twisted taste. Both Nicholson’s Jerry Black and Chris are selfish, but not in a way that ever puts them at ease. They surrender the good parts of their life in order to spend it restlessly pursuing a goal of questionable attainability (Black is the only one who doesn’t believe the arrested man played by Benicio Del Toro is the culprit).

Chris’ journey reminds me of the tale of the man who waits for God to save him from the flood, dying because he expects God himself to show up, thus failing to recognize any of the saviors he sent in his place. Chris starts out by rejecting all that’s good in his life along with his parents. Given he’s highly intelligent and has just completed college, he could easily land a good job and live on his own, continuing his relationship with his younger sister while largely closing the door on his angry and violent parents. During his journey he encounters several people who bestow a different way of life upon him, one that’s loving and caring and places emphasis on looking out for others, in other words offering all his parents didn’t provide. The farmer (Vince Vaughn) who gives him a job, the hippies (Brian Dierker & Catherine Keener) who not only live in the wild (though are smart enough to sleep in a trailer) but know a hell of a lot more about it than Chris does, and the lonely old leather worker (Hal Holbrook) who offers to adopt Chris. None of these people are perfect, but Chris seeks the genuine and authentic and all these people who give him advice and help without trying to change him could be said to fit the bill. Later on, the hippies even have an artistically inclined teenager (Kristen Stewart) with them (granted she’s a bit young) who, of course, likes Chris and Chris finds interesting, but it doesn’t deter Chris from his mission.

We may appreciate Chris’ principles and commitment, his desire to live in the moment free of everything and everyone, but we also realize he’s often incredibly arrogant and short-sighted. Chris is as fanatical as he is clever. For such a bright individual, some of the things he does are impossible to justify, for instance trying to live in undeveloped Alaska without a map and compass.

As in The Pledge, Penn builds the film around one individual utilizing a number of small roles if not cameos to bring out different aspects of the main character. Largely due to the acting being of such high quality, these underdeveloped characters never come off as functionaries of the plot. Emile Hirsch delivers a major performance embodying all the characteristics of the intelligent but pigheaded, giving yet self-centered man who has everyone in the palm of his hands but prefers roaming the wilderness as a joyful exuberant hobo. He even looks eerily similar to the real picture we see of an emaciated Chris at the end. Jena Malone, who should have been starring in good films ages ago, is wonderful as always, finds the proper mix of wisdom, emotion, and strength for her narration. Hal Holbrook delivers one of his periodic reminders he’s capable of a lot more than “The Hal Holbrook role”. Catherine Keener treads familiar territory, but she gets these kind of roles because she does them so well. Vince Vaughn even manages to muster moments when he borders on convincing me he’s actually an actor. In other words, this is the kind of film ensemble acting awards were concocted for.

Into the Wild isn’t one of those films that narrowly defines the surroundings, allowing a small strip of trees to stand in for all of nature from the east coast to Alaska. A big reason Anthony Mann’s The Naked Spur is more beautiful than any John Ford film is he opened the west up - showing the mountains, forests, canyons, and rivers - rather than confining it to the sand and dust of Monument Valley. Before we turned it into the endless mall Jem Cohen so excellently depicted in his criminally underseen Chain, America was arguably the most beautiful country due to its disparate topography. Eric Gauthier’s cinematography not only shows as many aspects of the nations remaining beauty as he can, he does so with an elation that rightfully matches Chris’ discovery and the feeling of freedom this ability instills in him. Chris’ epic personal journey is brought to life through this lyrical rendering of real settings, filmed in a manner that brings out both the beauty and unsparingness of nature.

The biggest problem with Into the Wild is the obnoxious soundtrack. Eddie Vedder’s music never gets any better, but he continues to do what he does best, take the place of musicians with actual talent and skill. Granted Jack Nitzsche, who scored Penn’s first two features passed away, but at least talented studio whore Hans Zimmer composed an actual film score for The Pledge. Vedder should look at the difference between Bob Dylan the singer and Bob Dylan the composer for Sam Peckinpah’s finally resurrected masterpiece Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. Though Pat & Billy does contain the classic Knockin' On Heaven's Door, which works through proper placement and incorporation, the score is primarily comprised of moody instrumentals that actually suit and enhance the images. Dylan’s isn’t just throwing out some lame thematic ballads; his soundtrack is perfectly in tune with Peckinpah, alternating between mythic romance and funerial lament. As much as I enjoy pouring dirt on the grungy, Penn is as much to blame for the failure of the OST, as regardless of the quality of music, it’ll never work when the director fails to amalgamate it.

Last Winter

Larry Fessenden’s fourth feature is his most ambitious to date, blending all he’s done before but greatly expanding the scope. The Last Winter incorporates No Telling’s themes of man’s obsession to utilize science and technology to defy the boundaries of nature as well as the love triangle involving a man on both sides of the political spectrum and a woman whose kind of a neutral peacekeeper, man’s proclivity to breed fear and doubt into mania and insanity from Habit, and the eponymous vengeful dark spirit from Wendigo. These previous features succeeded in part due to their tighter focus when it came to the supernatural and horror elements, but in the wide open icy setting of the Alaskan wildlife preserve Fessenden is able to do a juggling act that keeps every possibility in play.

Man is about to spoil the final frontier for a thimbleful of oil, but nature isn’t cooperating. Even in the dead of the arctic winter it’s too warm to transport the heavy drilling equipment across the mushy ice, and that’s before it begins raining! Most good horror is a combination of intrigue and mindfuck, and if nothing else few films have more possibilities for their problems than The Last Winter. Cramped in an outpost amidst miles of bleak frozen flatlands, isolation, paranoia, and loneliness are a given. There’s an adjustment period, which is hardest on the new kid Maxwell McKinder (Zach Gilford), but even after that everything is perceived and handled differently from person to person. Ditto the effects of global warming. Strange weather and bizarre occurrences abound, but the thawing of the permafrost may be causing more than atmospheric abnormalities. Perhaps it’s also releasing something insipid, sour gas or even something we might not know about because it’s been lost in the ice for 1000 years. The plants and animals that turned to oil may now be rebelling against human grave robbing, or possibly it’s just the native Wendigo spirit striking back against the greedy white man? The environmental overseer James Hoffman (James LeGros) at least admits he has no idea what’s going on.

In many cases, the mysterious and unexplainable is the scariest. I prefer the Jacques Tourneur style horror films that refuse to show what’s behind the deaths. However, most of the new horrors that aren’t of the phony effects and blaring hokey music variety are all gimmick in a different way. Unlike the vast majority of supernatural movies, Larry Fessenden’s films are good because rather than being about who, if, and/or why ghosts he tells engrossing human stories. Fessenden develops the characters while giving brief reminders of the creeping dread, rather than making the later essentially the be all and end all. All Fessenden’s films are the stories of the people, and thus could work to some extent even if they weren’t periodically interrupted by a bit of mythological terror that may simply be in the character’s head.

The Last Winter could just as easily be a psychodrama. When you have a corporate loyalist in charge who believes progress is the be all and end all, and it’s never attained without risk and daring so the job simply must be done in the same fort as an environmentalist who believes one should always error on the side of safety, tension is bound to abound. Add in the fact that the boss still pines for Abby (Connie Britton), who is now with the environmentalist, and you have the makings of an all out brawl.

To Fessenden’s credit, even though he personally believed we urgently needed to start doing something about global warming 17-years-ago, he hasn’t made a preachy film where the environmentalist is the saint. In fact, no one is particularly good or bad; we sympathize with them all realizing everyone has their frailties. Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman) is a taskmaster and ramrod because he believes force and urgency are necessary to keep the project moving toward completion, but the fearless won’t take no for an answer leader is charming and playful outside of work. Without his macho mask he’s juvenile in both good and bad ways. Hoffman is a letdown to his assistant Elliot Jenkins (Jamie Harrold) for lacking Pollack’s conviction, content to simply be replaced for not signing off on the dangerous mission even though he knows he’ll be replaced by someone who will, and to Abby for thus leaving for good.

The main point of the film is the world won’t wait for us. Nature doesn’t pause for arguments, partisan or otherwise, it wreaks whatever havoc it has in mind while we are dragging our feet deciding whether there’s a real problem and if so how to solve it. The film avoids grand statements, sticking to a personal level where people realize they aren’t in control, opening the door to dread and feelings of helplessness, which turn to paranoia and fear, then suddenly end in some form of insanity.

The characters all seem increasingly eccentric in the face of adversity. Maxwell goes into the cold in the buff with his video camera to capture proof of what’s amiss, freezing to death. This sets off a chain reaction, illogical actions such as Motor (Kevin Corrigan) dismantling the snow cat they might need to escape. Hoffman has nightmarish visions, interrupting the slow evolving tale with a jolting hyper montage of flashbacks and possible causes of their demise.

A major reason Habit is Fessenden’s best work is fact and fiction are muddled to the most intriguing extent. Nonetheless, everything in The Last Winter can be written off to your choice of chance, coincidence, fluke, bad luck, or hallucination. If there is something real out there, it’s an incomprehensible force. The Last Winter is better than No Telling and would clearly be better than Wendigo if not for the appearance of Donnie Dino. I’d have the remaining characters, who are stuck walking to a distant fort die a natural death trying to evade the unseen forced. While one could claim the laughable video game monster - a sad looking thing with goofy ears that is like a dinosaur version of the costume from Donnie Darko - is the concoction of men who have been exposed to the cold for far too long, this ridiculous abortion takes the audience so far out of the previously engrossing tale it hardly matters. The CGI stampeding cattle type of blurs at the outset were fine because they were created so we couldn’t make out what, if anything, they were, but this lame thing at the end turned the movie into pure corn. It’s not like the people who won’t enjoy a patient adult horror are going to be suddenly won over in the final 10 minutes by having their “need” for CGI briefly filled. It’s a lose lose situation, as those who feel that totally unbelievable effects have destroyed the pleasure of horror films will be suitably disgusted by the Ring of Fire invasion. What’s actually scary about The Last Winter is its minimalism. In many scenes, humans and either their skidoos or the outside of their base are the only things that aren’t a completely uninterrupted sheet of white for as far as the eye can see. The spare score that consists of natural sound (effects) greatly adds to this isolation, going from an ominous blustery wind to an eerie dead quiet.

Henry Fool

Hal Hartley combines the themes of is previous features The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Simple Men, & Amateur into an epic portrait of the hopes and dreams, desires and ambitions, strengths and weaknesses, pitfalls and betrayals of a disenfranchised lower class community. Hartley’s movies are about everything and nothing, as he’s more interested in painting a portrait of human existence than plot. The worth of a person’s life is measured by all aspects, so Hartley incorporates big and small, good and bad. Though Michael Spiller’s evocation of the Queens community has many virtues, Hartley’s films are more toward musing theatrical works, his characters speaking in little life philosophies, their actions and history a result of their outlook and world view.

Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) is in many ways the typical intellectual, principled, antisocial Hartley hero with integrity but also a history of destruction and/or debauchery. Hartley’s leading man was previously bogged down by an anchor of a parent, but shifting that liability to Simon Grim (James Urbaniak), along with giving Henry the best dialogue he’s ever written and getting a superb performance out of Thomas Jay Ryan, who switches effortlessly between intense and comic dialogue, serious and ironic tone, sets Henry up to not only be Hartley’s most memorable characters, but one of cinema’s greats. Henry bares some resemblance to David Thewlis’ Johnny in Mike Leigh’s greatest film Naked, a vagabond genius who should be successful but has no real desire to be and can’t get out of his own way. Fool is more a romantic variety tragic hero than Thewlis’ misanthrope, an ex-con so dangerous he’s feared by the powers that be, for his writing though he’s yet to be published. Hartley doesn’t create one-dimensional heroes, with Henry being his most complex, a man who is impossible to love or hate, but who will frustrates at every corner. This social and sexual deviant is a kind of sensitive and compassionate Marquis de Sade without the sadistic streak.

Hartley avoids action, preferring to get his points across through varying a point in dialogue then allowing us to imagine the rest when he puts the characters in an applicable situation. We initially expect more of Henry Fool, as he seems such an experienced and knowing character, but he regularly alludes to having lived in the soup with lines such as “An honest man is always in trouble”, I've been bad. Repeatedly”, “We know we have fallen, for we know who we are”, and “She was an ugly and mean-spirited kid, but she knew how to play upon my weaknesses, which, I admit, are deep and many.”

When you are down on your luck in Hartley’s world, a chance meeting can begin to change your life, especially if based on a mutual problem. In Trust, Adrienne Shelly and Martin Donovan meet and bond due to reeling from their parent’s latest abuse with Donovan moving in with Shelly’s family. In Henry Fool, both Henry and Simon are characters who feel the world is out to get them. Simon is the neighborhood whipping boy, a repressed and introverted garbage man. Henry soon moves into his basement, but Hartley is a rare director who never has friendships existing in a vacuum. Your friends not only influence all the members of your family in different ways, they alter the dynamic. Simon lives with his hussy sister Fay Grim (Parker Posey), who utilizes her asset while it’s still tight and his mysteriously ill mother Mary (Marcia Porter), who Fay purportedly baby sits while Simon does his garbage job.

In between bedding the rest of the household, Henry Fool alleviates some of the despair of ridiculed and tortured Simon’s life, introducing him to the concept of writing, which quickly results in them forming a mentor/student relationship. Henry is at his best helping Simon because it motivates him and keeps him from his devices, while Simon becomes more confident and secure through believing in himself, but this isn’t really the point.

Hartley uses the character who has no idea how to write to mount a critique on the relationship between art and commerce. Simon’s work may be good or bad, but it’s definitely different if for no other rather than until he met Henry it hadn’t occurred to him to read, much less write, so he hasn’t been influenced by other writers in general, much less the latest trends. Practically all Simon knows about literature comes from Fool, who he’s never actually been allowed to read. Through the internet and a local school paper, Simon garners a cult following due to the extreme nature of his work. Predictably, this quickly spawns a counter reaction of condemnation from the moral guardians. Controversy not only trumps but renders irrelevant whatever quality the work may or may not contain, so the public eagerly awaits the release of Simon’s book, a book which would not even have been published if not for the controversy making it marketable. As an offshoot, appreciation groups form (in this case poetry reading becomes the in thing at the corner store) completing the mainstream acceptance. The artist is left notorious, if nothing else, but is notoriety the goal or the work itself? Does it matter if your art moves people in a certain way, a positive way, or simply any way? Is it better to be unknown than known for the wrong things, as the guy whose work prompted rioting, arson, and a suicide?

We are denied access to Henry and Simon’s writing, all we know is Simon was violently rejected until there was money in publishing him due to the hullabaloo. Simon promised to not allow his poetry to be published unless the publisher Angus James (Chuck Montgomery) would also publish Henry’s confession, but this was before he read it, when he’d only been intrigued through such classic teasers from Fool as, “It's a philosophy. A poetics. A politics, if you will. A literature of protest. A novel of ideas. A pornographic magazine of truly comic book proportions. It is, in the end, whatever the hell I want it to be. And when I'm through with it it's going to blow a hole this wide straight through the world's own idea of itself.” Simon offers to take much less in exchange for this concession, but when neither he nor Angus believe it’s anything but trash, Simon betrays his guru.

Everyone takes for granted that Simon’s writing is good and Henry’s is bad, but perhaps that’s simply Hartley’s point on the manipulative power of the media hype machine? Certainly the publisher’s opinion isn’t valid, as he condemned Simon’s work almost as harshly before he saw $. You don’t have to be a literary professor to know good literature, but Simon doesn’t exactly have much to compare it to beyond his own spontaneous menstruation inducing prose. Although there’s not always a correlation, everything about the way they talk and the stories they tell suggests Henry would be the far more interesting scribe. Henry tells one compelling anecdote after another, while Simon, whose never had a life, is lucky to get three words of his thought out, resulting in everything coming off as noncommittal or questioning.

Henry is easier to relate to if he’s actually the hack everyone says he is. As Hartley has a bizarre fascination with porn, which ex-nun Isabelle Huppert wrote to make a living while waiting for her mission from God in Amateur, Henry is inspired by the best and worst of literature, from the great authors to merely gazing at the pictures in skin mags. Fool is more human, more like us if he lives in denial, able to recognize quality art but as much as he tries and believes he can, never able to break though and create it himself. What’s available to him then is the life he’s always ran from. Henry has lived the artistic life, but failing to attain the success his friend now has, which allows Simon to make a living off art, he’s eventually forced to be responsible. As Hartley is more about irony than realism, the crumbling of Henry’s greatest role as Simon’s mentor coincides with Henry being forced to marry Fay and support a family due to knocking her up.

The crushing of illusions is a key theme in Henry Fool. Simon nearly gives up writing when he’s viciously rejected by 25 publishers. Street thug Warren (Kevin Corrigan) stops selling drugs because a woman he’s attracted to influences him to support a nazi politician, but he not only reverts back when the immigrant hating platform fails, he moves on to wife beating and child molestation. Family is poison in Hartley’s world, with father’s abusing their children mentally and physically in Trust or through complete and total neglect in Simple Men. Meanwhile, mothers enslave their children.

Henry Fool is the one Hartley movie where someone really succeeds, yet his opinion of success obviously isn’t much as it’s the grimmest in tone. Hartley normally has hopeful characters who are failing but find their way to a decision that grants them a life they may be able to stand. Life is discovering who you can be, reverted back to what you are, and ultimately creating a situation, usually through pregnancy, where you fall into the most acceptable of your few options.

So far Henry Fool is the best of all the Hal Hartley films I’ve seen. It’s a little better than the others in most areas, the exception being the portrayal of women, which was much better in Trust. Fay Grim essentially plays a younger version of the white trash character Edie Falco portrayed in Trust, but Hartley shows no empathy toward her this time. Though there’s no misogynist like Robert John Burke played in Simple Men, with the focus once again mainly being on the men, the women once again lack their nobility.

Fay Grim

Hal Hartley may have a sequel to his most popular film Henry Fool after a series of largely unnoticed features, but he can’t be accused of trying to recapture his former glory through the usual rehashing and repackaging. For better or worse, despite maintaining all the characters who could logically have played a role, Fay Grim arguably bares less resemblance to Henry Fool than his non-related early features such as The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, and Simple Men do to each other.

Hartley’s films were always of their time, but his initial work were intimate tales of a few characters making a crucial but ordinary change in their lives. His recent films have satirized wider contemporary subjects: mass media in No Such Thing, religion in Book of Life, and now terrorism in Fay Grim. Fay Grim actually continues Hartley’s comment on the relationship between art and commerce that was central to Henry Fool, but in filtering the important topics of the day through the Fool family he’s created something less specific to them.

Hartley deals with post 9/11 fear, paranoia, misunderstanding, and every shifting political alliances through a satire of espionage films. The details are essentially bizarre and ridiculous, lampooning the genre, but beyond that much of the point is no one really knows what’s going on anymore. Intelligence reports define Henry as a treasonous government agent, a Muslim terrorist ally, and simply an idiot. Similarly, his infamous confessions are now believed to have been a gibberish-laden rant because it was all in code. Attaining his books is thus important to all governments, as they may reveal satellite coordinates or provide nuclear bomb assembly instruction, that is if they aren’t simply semi-incoherent smut from a talentless self-centered egomaniac.

Fay Grim, who has coped with Henry’s disappearance at the end of the original by trying to forget him, but hasn’t really moved on, grows up quickly when CIA Agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum in his best performance in years) sends her to Paris to recover ¼ of Henry’s now prized confession. Fay is in way over her head and can’t afford to be wrong, but everything has become so muddled, a hodgepodge of whimsical wish fulfillment translated and encoded back and forth, that the plethora of secret agents and professional spies are just as lost. This is a world where a stewardess (Elina Lowensohn), sometimes a topless dancer, is mistaken for a spy and a former janitor who killed a daughter molester is sought not for fleeing justice but for valuable secrets that may decide the fate of the world.

Harley forces us to take Henry seriously in Fay Grim, in largely the same fashion he forced us to reckon with Simon Grim in Henry Fool. Granted, nothing in this absurdist delight of a charming disaster has tongue too far removed from cheek, but in any case Henry becomes mainstream. His notoriety as the on the lamb brother-in-law of Pulitzer Prize winning poet Simon, now serving a decade long sentence for aiding and abetting Fool’s escape, which of course was major media fodder, and now as a terrorist has made him publishable. Again, the quality of the work is irrelevant as long as there’s controversy surrounding it. People will pay for it to see if it’s really just filth, or to try to solve the code. Again, we are denied any of Henry and Simon’s actual prose (okay, we do learn that the opening line of Henry’s confession is his famous line “an honest man is always in trouble”), because whether it’s of any quality is meaningless. In Fay Grim, Henry’s confession also serves as the MacGuffin.

It’s probably a mistake that Henry’s family is able to decode the orgy-in-a-box Henry sends his 14-year-old son Ned Grim (Liam Aiken), which as you’d expect Hartley regularly references, milking for innumerable jokes, but we never actually see. Their learning something from it gives us proof of Henry’s intentions and importance we’d be better off without, especially so early, as the whole film seems stronger when we are allowed to believe that since 9/11 a world traveler in exile is automatically suspected of various nefarious activities. In any case, Hartley’s fixation on porn has never provided anything funnier.

Fay Grim is a more visually oriented film than Hartley has made in the past. Almost the entire movie is shot in Dutch angle, which looks as though the cameraman survived the war but had to have his foot amputated to prevent the spread of gangrene. I guess Hartley’s point in having Sarah Cawley utilize the technique is to point out that were aren’t seeing things straight, though he includes a purposely hokey score so it may also be his way of sending up the visual manipulation of spy films. Hartley keeps most of the action discussed rather than shown, but the film gets bogged down with too much exposition. His imitating of Jean-Luc Godard has him regularly putting text on the screen, but while Godard often benefited from using it conceptually, Hartley just uses it to explain his largely pointless plot, and in that form it seems intrusive. Though Fay Grim isn’t an action film despite IMDb’s claim, Hartley isn’t at his best because he strays from his character development strengths so he can maneuver the endless pawns who, even when inhabited by familiar faces such as Saffron Burrows and Lowensohn, never serve as more than functionaries.

Henry Fool was Hartley’s best film due to the infinitely quotable dialogue, mostly from Henry, who unfortunately only plays a minor role in Fay Grim, withheld until the final quarter of the movie. As the title suggests, this is Fay’s film. She should have been better developed in the original, but even though she’s the entire focus of the movie, Hartley devotes too much time to the machinations to develop her into one of his memorable characters. We see Fay grow from the party girl of the early portion of Henry Fool to someone wandering through life without a husband or money through the usual Hartley right of passage of taking a chance and accepting change, but once she’s displaced the spy games take precedent. Parker Posey isn’t as excellent as in Broken English, but does quite a good job, regularly eliciting chuckles by responding to her world drastically restructuring if not crumbling by noting she’s single, sort of. Fay Grim is a worthy film, though more likely to please fans of Hartley in general than fans of Henry Fool specifically. The end result could have been better, but at least it isn’t simply more of the same.

Rofuto

In a sense, a horror audience is easy to fool because they define the genre film by the nemesis. It’s a ghost, zombie, werewolf, slasher, whatever film. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s daring Loft tricks the viewer into believing it’s a mummy film, only to seemingly abandon this idea halfway through and turn into a murder mystery romance. The actual subject is real vs. imagined, and it’s present from the outset, though it doesn’t register the programmed response a mummy does. That being said, Loft is one of those films that makes sense as soon as you stop fighting it, allowing the film to not make sense. This isn’t to say that it’s some illogical, convoluted mess, but that the film only reveals itself, that is as far as it’s willing to, in retrospect.

Reiko Hatuna (Miki Nakatani) is a respected prize winning author of intelligent novels who is asked to quickly churn out a commercial romance, which, according to her shady editor Koichi Kijima (Hidetoshi Nishijima), won’t damage her sterling reputation. Typical of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the main character has no reason for being at the outset of the film. She’s not into writing sleazy mush, so her mind quickly wanders, leaving her sidetracked far more often than on track. She doesn’t have a purpose in every scene the way a star in a Hollyplastic movie does, she’s alive and allowed just to be rather than forced to take the next step in the latest connect the dots rehash. As Kurosawa’s films progress, his blank slate takes a shape that isn’t meant to be unique to them but rather comment upon the effect they have on society, and vice versa.

As Reiko isn’t being as productive as Kijima would like at her home, she asks him to set her up somewhere else. He suggests a country house he knows, which we soon discover happens to be next to a creepy, locked up, seemingly vacant building inquiry shows to be owned by Sagami University. University archeologist Makoto Yoshioka (Etsushi Toyokawa) brings what appears to spying Reiko to be a corpse, but upon further investigation turns out to be a mummy the archeologists discovered in nearby Midori Swamp. Makoto is also having trouble with work, trying to keep the mummy from being displayed for reasons clear only to him, though the fact they are unable to verify whether it’s the same mummy the university discovered in the swamp 80 years ago has at least something to do with it. While there’s no logical reason to put the mummy back where they found it, it’s peculiar that the mummy and the paperwork are missing. Seemingly the only remaining record of the find is a bizarre time lapse silent film we briefly stare at, looking to detect something that may or may not be there as in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up. Also mysteriously missing is the last author Kijima sent to the house, who appears to Reiko in hallucinations if not actuality, making it possible that either man killed her though we’d prefer to believe it was creepy Kijima.

Loft is the story of delusion, making fact and fiction impossible to discern. Both Reiko and Makoto have a questionable grasp upon reality, as the former is prone to figments of her imagination while the later has nightmares that seem very real to him (and more so to us). Kurosawa’s best known films Cure and Pulse deal with the isolation of modern Tokyo, but perhaps a bigger theme is everyone other than yourself is ultimately the other, and thus incomprehensible. Reiko & Makoto don’t particularly have anything beyond what’s brother them to rural Ibaragi in common, and don’t talk much, but almost as soon as he decides to trust her with an afternoon of mummy sitting to keep some grad students he’s stuck putting to work from seeing it, they fall in love. About this time, Reiko is curious as to whether the mummy committed suicide or was just particularly vain. The reason the bodies of these ancient women have held up for a thousand years is eating mud was a primitive method of preserving your youthful beauty, but the most superficial keeled over, as eating too much proved fatal. Makoto decides to cut the mummy’s stomach open to check, but after he’s plunged the knife in she suggests he doesn’t make an incision, as it may provoke the mummy.

Fueled by the possibility of mysticism, Makoto, who was certainly troubled but up seemed a rational human being, becomes as troubled by his mind as Reiko, sending the film into a fantastical second half. The main point of the first half is to set up the instability of their fragile minds, but after an hour of easing us in, Kurosawa lets loose, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish reality. Though scenes in the second half add information, they also often reverse their predecessor.

The environment plays on the characters, and the minimalist filmmaking enhances their solitude and detachment. Kurosawa allows his characters to scare themselves. His films always utilize the surroundings to creepy effect, and part of what’s disturbing is we are used to them exerting themselves in some kind of aggressive human fashion that’s of course impossible in real life. Instead, they are just there, an ominous presence that, aside from the occasional strong wind, is entirely still. Kurosawa doesn’t really use a soundtrack for this natural gothic horror. While Reiko & Makoto believe they can get over their difficulties together, and she supports him even if he killed the missing author, their lack of conversation is much more noticeable due to their time together consisting of inactivity and near dead silence when the crickets aren’t chirping.

Makoto may be the murderer because if we’ve learned anything from Cure we know that in Kurosawa people don’t kill for a particularly strong or precise reason. Riddled by detachment and indifference from the inability to connect, they are taken over by a malaise. They are still mostly normal, whatever that is, but there are moments when something seems to possess them, to cloud their judgement and render them unable to act in a rational controlled manner.

Loft is filmed similar to a surveillance video. The camera rarely moves and is usually positioned so it looks down or up at the humans. If there’s any action, it’s the human’s moving around within the confines of the frame. Kurosawa shoots with 2 cameras that are adjacent to each other, but one is slightly farther back. Though only a minor alteration, the subtlety of the small shifts create a certain tension. It’s almost as if there’s a frame inside a frame except it doesn’t call attention to itself the way anything with a border does.

Kurosawa is one of those directors who seems to evoke one of two reactions. Either he bores you to death or produces a feeling of transfixion that grows increasingly eerie, macabre, and unsettling as the film progresses. Though Kurosawa is an unhurried filmmaker who doesn’t go for action or shock tactics, Loft actually seems fast because you are always trying to catch up to the elusive points and truths.

Nowhere in Africa

Caroline Link’s sensitive, multi-layered look at a German Jewish family fleeing the “civilized” world at the dawn of the holocaust for more compassionate, even if by default, treatment in rural Kenya. Though based on the autobiography of Stephanie Zweig, the tale actually alternates point of view to depict each family member from their perspective rather than seeing everything through the eyes of narrator and Zweig stand-in Regina. Link allows the characters to exist and the audience to imagine a great deal about their lives, much less the goings on in their native land which are conveyed only through letters from family members who weren’t lucky enough to get out in time and bits of news and gossip Walter picks up. By believing in Zweig’s story and characters Link has the confidence to allow it to calmly unfold, never resorting to the usual hamfisted highlighting.

Caroline Link isn’t a great artist, but essentially every film made a film in Africa looks gorgeous, and this isn’t one of those postcard films. What makes Link good is she not only tells stories of people you don’t usually see, for instance Beyond Silence where the daughter becoming a skilled clarinet player is actually alienating to her parents as they are deaf-mutes, she does so with depth and dimension. She’s more concerned that we understand why a person acts a certain way than what we think of their action, creating gray areas and moral dilemmas rather than the usual Hollywood cartoons. The people are very human, and thus have their good and bad moments, but are always developing, ever so slightly, rather than being narrowly defined in black and white terms by one or two things they do.

Link’s films always deal with family, showing whatever their intentions the members often simultaneously lift you up and tear you down. Contending with their desires and demands is incredibly difficult, and every member can learn from one another, regardless of their age. Regina (Lea Kurka & Karoline Eckertz) is the cliched smart child who is more mature than the adults. Only 5 when she left her homeland, she’s immediately intrigued by the natives, curious to understand if not participate in their culture, especially since there are no other white kids. The cook Owuor (Sidede Onyulo), the very picture of benevolence, immediately befriends her, thus providing the smooth transition her accustomed to the easy life parents could never be expected to make.

Walter (Merab Ninidze) was a lawyer in Germany who never did any manual labor, but now lording over the natives as bwana is what’s available. He doesn’t become a good farmer because he’s not interested, he’s an idealist who is always searching for something better, but he sucks it up. Jettel (Juliane Kohler) is a snooty condescending bourgeois who spends the money Walter sent to import a refrigerator on a useless evening gown, complaining endlessly once she gets to Africa including expecting the natives to learn German if they want to talk to her. She looks down on the Africans in a somewhat similar fashion to the way the Germans look down on the Jews at home, but slowly grows accustomed to her new life, becoming determined and resolved to making the farm work. In the end, the fact Walter was in Kenya first causes much of the strife in their marriage, as the spouse’s go through similar views, but rarely during the same time frame.

Though one would expect Regina to be the focus, Nowhere in Africa seems to mostly be Jettel’s film. She’s the character who changes the most, realizing the country she once loved is ruled by narrow minded simpletons who longing for everyone to look similar to and believe in what they do, and thus learning to cherish difference. Though not as talented as Link’s other favorite actress Sylvie Testud, Jettel also stands out due to Juliane Kohler giving the most intriguing and dimensioned performance.

In a sense, Nowhere in Africa is a typical tale of resilience, though there are no goals or destinations and resolution isn’t of the utmost importance. There are hundreds of reasons life isn’t ideal, but ultimately how you adapt and what you make of it is the real story. The film is more effective for instead dealing broadly with countless themes and concepts including identity, belonging, acceptance, displacement, alienation, betrayal, and maturation.

Though I often envision the bogus Academy ballot listing the names for foreign film and documentary with an asterisk next to the requisite holocaust entry, if you award enough of these films some are bound to even be good. Nowhere in Africa is a bit different from their typical awarded fare, as Walter & Jettel don’t practice or associate themselves by religion, they always considered themselves to be Germans, and only wished to be treated as such by others.

Twilight Samurai

Humanist director Yoji Yamada’s return to the samurai genre couldn’t have come at a better time, as recent warrior period pieces have degenerated into pointless stylistic exercises where modern filmmaking technology has become the be all and end all of the action oriented popcorn picture. Yamada’s traditional genre entry feels as though it were made at the peak of the samurai genre half a century ago in every positive way. It’s a calm, serene, intelligent, and patient work that values character and is unafraid of silence. This isn’t one of those pastiches of brief violent movements cobbled together then run at quadruple speed that passes for a movie these days. Story, character, and believability are the strengths of this novelistic work that’s rendered with cinematic grace and lyricism but without the chaotic battles, special effects, and gimmickry that have destroyed genre films.

The first entry in a brilliant trilogy (followed by The Hidden Blade and Love & Honor) emphasizing life, love, and family over swordplay, Yamada evokes genuine emotion through his credible tales of petty samurai struggling to support their family and maintain their dignity. With mass murderers who “heroicly” fly around killing countless undefined baddies being in vogue, its easy to forget the term samurai means servant of the lord rather than violence glorifying killing machine. Samurai were actually influenced by the philosophies of Buddhism, Zen, Confucianism, and Shinto, with some discovering the futility of violence and becoming Buddhist monks. Twilight Samurai’s hero Seibei Iguchi (Hiroyuki Sanada) doesn’t go quite that far, but realizing his family is more important than the “great” leader he has become detached from the way of the warrior and moved to pacifism. The low ranking samurai has gone deeply in debt paying for the funeral of his wife, and is now left with a senile mother and two young daughters to care for. He can’t afford much these days, particularly to be killed as his dependents would likely join the peasants in starving to death.

Though Seibei’s current duties are bureaucratic, he’s a scribe, his ethical dilemma stems from the fact he only has so much time. He must not only complete the full days work that earns him his 50 koku pittance, but also run the farm and sell insect cages to supplement that income to the point he doesn’t see the bottom of his rice bowl, and do all the duties the women of the house used to. He’ll either be a poor samurai or caretaker, and he chooses the later, resulting in him rarely bathing and coming to work in torn clothes.

To his peers, who give him the derisive nickname Twilight because he always rushes home rather than going out drinking with them, Seibei is a loser. Iguchi doesn’t desire to be revered or consider fighting acumen to be the measure of a samurai, much less a man. He also doesn’t seek glory, attention, or increased rank like the others. Seibei’s answer to the system he’s trapped in and cannot influence is always to withdraw. He’s not doing anything shady, but his values are not in fashion and his ideas are looked down upon, so the best he can do is attempt to avoid torment by keeping a low profile. Everything Seibei does is for his family, and that shows his honor and integrity even though it brings societal dishonor. Essentially no one outside his house (only Tomoe & Michinojo Iinuma

Seem to like or respect him) sees any good in a simple man who would rather farm than fight.

Seibei is a wounded man who would like to meet certain expectations, but he’s forced to choose what’s most important. He’s content with his way of life, and that’s the best he can hope for, so he doesn’t plan to change for anyone. He never wanted much, retaining his honor and self-respect through the realization they are personal matters, a mindset, which allows him to ignore the snide remarks. He believes his life is dignified, and that’s all that matters.

Many of his problems could be solved by simply taking a new wife, but Seibei’s not only stubbornly independent, his primary characteristic is selflessness. He’s down on marriage because it was his constant cause of regret, as his wife was never able to adjust to the fact his salary was just 1/3 of the family she came from. Unable to accept this was all there was to life now, she made her decline in class a constant source of misery for all. Seibei now assumes marriage can only be a temporary solution that invariably creates a problem, overall doing more harm than good. He refuses to bring such poverty to another woman, as it will not only ruin her life, but bring strife and discord to all those around him.

Yamada takes great care in evoking the period for this elegiac film on the end of the samurai era, not only through the costumes by Akira Kurosawa’s daughter Kazuko, but going so far as to teaching his actors to walk as they did in the mid 1800’s. That being said, Twilight Samurai isn’t the least bit reverential, showing the honor and codes of the period to be bunk, the hierarchical system to be a hypocritical deliverer of misery. The english title Twilight Samurai is actually a better name than the original Japanese title Tasogare Seibei, which means Twilight Seibei, as it also functions as a comment upon the end of the Edo period and samurai era. For a samurai, witnessing rifle practice is viewing your own irrelevance, and likely foreshadowing your death in the not too distant future. Samurai were quickly losing their luster before technology did them in. A key aspect in the decline of their respectability was bushido, an addition to the samurai code of conduct made by the Tokugawa Shogunate for the purpose of controlling the samurai. Bushido made it more difficult for samurai to use their own judgement, as even righteous disloyalty was now grounds for seppuku, hence the famous 47 Ronin incident. Yamada makes subtle comparisons between Seibei and the lord, slyly showing Seibei to be the righteous one despite the ridicule he’s subjected to and wretchedness for the lesser to be the backbone of the feudal system.

Twilight Samurai is irreverent for incorporating more modern attitudes, depicting free spirits bound by a rigid system. Seibei’s childhood friend Tomoe Iinuma (Rie Miyazawa), who played with the boys until her mom forbid it, is an early feminist. A highly unconventional woman for a samurai film, she isn’t docile or subservient. While Seibei disrespects his elders and higher ups by speaking freely and attempting to get them to see his side (and leave him alone), he’s a thoughtful character who can be his own worst enemy for vocalizing his constant internal struggle. Tomoe is more defiant, questioning elders, breaking rules of etiquette, and not knowing her place. She hangs out at Seibei’s every day doing the chores and teaching his daughters as if she were his wife, and doesn’t mind going to a peasant festival even though they are expressly only for peasants. Having been abused by a drunken lout her brother set her up with, the recent divorcee is concerned with what will bring her happiness this time, having a better idea of what she wants for her future. Tomoe is anything but a selfish character though; she’s very kind, dedicated, and giving to those who deserve it.

Yamada’s visual scheme shows Tomoe to complete Seibei. She is light, bringing happiness to him and his family. Tomoe is generally shown in bright natural settings, while Twilight, who always works well into the wee hours, is shown in interiors with dark hues.

Twilight Samurai is a very subtle film where the technique is symbolic, metaphoric, and reflects the mood, just never in an obvious fashion. Unlike Zhang Yimou, who puts all his effort into overloading the screen with supposed beauty, not only tossing aside story and plausibility in the process but overdoing the lone would be strength to the point it’s suffocating, Yamada’s rendering is very detailed but doesn’t wreak of stylization like someone who just left the hair salon. Twilight Samurai’s style matches the main character: laid back, unobtrusive, and unassuming.

Instead of creating a highlight reel, Yamada conveys the rhythm of daily existence. The pleasure of this burdensome toil may be catching a glimpse of your daughters scurrying off to school or having the older one engage you on what she’s learned, realizing she’s growing up through her newfound semi-grasp of some of Confucious’ teachings. Though most of the characters are less than satisfied with societal customs, expectations, and obligations, it’s all in what you focus on, and Seibei is content as long as he can spend his time taking care of his family. That being said, Twilight Samurai is a rare entry in the genre that’s more romance than action, and a beautiful one at that. In Japanese can’t utter your true feelings fashion, Seibei and Tomoe’s love, like everything else that’s on their mind, is completely unstated so the audience is forced to read between the lines.

As in the follow-up The Hidden Blade, the hero is involved in rescuing his love from an abusive marriage. When Michinojo Iinuma (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) jokingly suggests marrying Seibei, Tomoe finally takes the initiative. Iinuma invites Seibei fishing in one of the symbolic but convenient scenes in the film, literally trying to bait him, but when Seibei realizes Michinojo isn’t teasing him he refuses due to his poverty. As was the custom, it was Tomoe’s family, in this case her brother since their father is dead, who got her divorced. Bombed as usual, ex-husband Toyotarou Kouda (Ren Osugi) demands a duel with Michinojo to regain the face he’s lost. Seibei’s there when Kouda is acting up, and though he could easily stay hidden away, being anti-violence doesn’t mean you’re a complete coward who allows your friends to be slain. He takes Iinuma’s place in the duel because he’s a far superior fighter, but as dueling is forbidden he knows he’ll get the shaft if the contest is discovered, as it obviously would be if one is killed. More importantly, he wants no attention called to his combat skill, so he uses wood. In Seven Samurai, Kyuzo tells his opponent he’ll kill them if he uses a real sword, and proceeds to do just that. Seibei actually does spend the duel trying to avoid hurting the man who would certainly deserve it and is trying to slice him in half. He wouldn’t even hit Kouda if he’d quit while he was ahead, but Seibei has to knock him out to end the duel.

Even though the world is collapsing around him, Seibei is left out of fray for the most part due to choosing to remain inconsequential. Though Seibei tries his best to keep his victory a secret, word gets out that he embarrassed his superior, bringing undesired attention and respect as a short sword master. When the lord dies, a rogue samurai Zenemon Yogo (Min Tanaka) refuses to commit seppuku, holing himself up in his house and slaying the warriors who come to take his life. Seibei’s newfound notoriety, which as he expected hasn’t improved his life in any way, gets him elected to risk his life. Yamada shows heroism is doing right by your family, being selfless and caring, but Seibei is forced to have one legitimate fight as though he risks being asked to kill himself trying, he predictably fails to talk his way out of the order. One could argue a true pacifist would have resigned his post, which always bears the potential for death even though his day to day job is clerical, but even with his job he’s in debt. It would be irresponsible to his family to drop to the rank of starving peasants.

In movie from the western world, Tomoe rejecting Seibei’s marriage proposal prior to going into battle would be a certain death sentence, as he’d have nothing to live for. However, by eastern logic she does it to give him a better chance to come out alive. A warrior must have animal ferocity and calm disregard for their life, and a man whose mind is on a woman lacks both. Seibei trusts the man who says his family will be provided for if he dies, and freed of that obligation he can overcome death by embracing it. Normally Tomoe would be safe as she has a home with her brother who makes 8 times what Seibei does, but with the leader dead he’s been summoned and may lose his life in the power struggle. If Seibei is suddenly responsible for Tomoe he may fight too cautiously or hesitate for a split second. Her telling him she’s found a suitable high salary suitor, which may even be true but we’re allowed to wonder, sets Seibei free.

Yamada mostly uses natural light, scenery, and weather to paint his portrait of the everyday toil in an unobtrusive manner. The only obvious visual stylization in Twilight Samurai comes during the climactic battle, as floods of color illuminate portions of the dark interior of Yogo’s home. The colors are very muted compared to the lush colors Mario Bava used for atmosphere, but more importantly the point is the conversation Yogo has with Seibei prior to the battle rather than the fight itself.

Top long swordsman Yogo is in no hurry to duel, wanting to learn what type of man Seibei is to see if it’s acceptable to be slain by him. Yogo reveals his life has actually been harder than Seibei’s, his wife and daughter didn’t survive the 7 years he spent as a masterless samurai farming and begging. Seibei is no cool cocky hero, he’s tense, jumpy, and scared and would prefer to let Yogo run away though I’m not sure how seriously he considers it. We never see Yogo clearly through the shadows, but Yogo is entirely calm and seems to have the more heroic demeanor. It’s silly that Seibei remains such a good fighter considering he hasn’t practiced in ages, but Yogo might actually have allowed Seibei to kill him. He makes a terrible mistake swinging his long sword into the rafters, but this is another example of the mystery that makes Twilight Samurai much more compelling than the typical film that hoists answers upon us. In any case, Yogo can rest easy once he discovers he can relate to and respect Seibei, a fellow pawn who has suffered from a system that renders existence a struggle.

Yamada elicits tremendous understated performances from his entire case. The acting is critical because the plot doesn’t define the characters in a movie of any quality and in a nation where the truth is unspoken, their actions and inactions, gestures and restraints must say it all. Hiroyuki Sanada’s performance exemplifies the same qualities as the film itself: nuanced, sensitive, calm, and content to never call attention to itself. It’s repression, suppression, and silence, yet it conveys what’s not there rather than simply removing it. He’s humble and modest, but if you take the time to notice you’ll realize he’s always much more and better than he lets on. Sanada’s performance is very honest, and Rie Miyazawa just glows as Tomoe, but even though their values are ahead of his time, we never question the plausibility of their characters. Yamada’s mistake in that regard comes through occasionally takes you out of period by using a modern instrument or vocal style.

Reiko Kusamura does an excellent job with Seibei’s mom, who’s actually a legitimately portrayed Alzheimer’s victim. The disease is about not being cognizant of your minute to minute reality, you’re alive but dead, just kind of are because you have no idea if you’re happy or sad, hungry or just ate. She is not reliable for anything, and needs assistance to perform even the most basic functions, just like a baby. She’s a tragic character whose cluelessness we must find humorous, as to take her childishness and forgetfulness any other way is to have your heart town out and be driven crazy by them. Her character shows more about Alzheimer’s in 30 seconds than Sarah Polley’s lamentable fantasy Away From Her does in the entire joke of a film that’s seeks dignity in a disease that robs it and is more about seeing Julie Creepy light up and test the seams of her stretchface. Creepy’s typical superficial performance is all about her glowing and shining, nothing beyond the brand of look at me I’m overacting stuff that calls so much attention to itself some lame awards voters are likely to notice. Based on what’s shown, her character would be “lucky” to be diagnosed as having the earliest stages of dimentia. Even still, taking care of a fellow patient? You’re lucky if you aren’t going to the bathroom in your pants because someone took too long to prod you to go sit on the toilet.

Walker

Refusing to hide comfortably in the past, freewheeling maverick cult director Alex Cox makes his biting political satire about mid 1800’s filibuster William Walker into a critique on the United States’ neverending meddling in Central America. Made during Ronald Reagan’s support of the Contras, Cox’s historic western biopic is such an unveiled indictment of the U.S.’s God given right to spread sham democracies that are actually exploitational dictatorships only benefiting American businesses that Reagan is actually shown on TV. As usual, it’s a far more impressive turn than he gave in King’s Row.

The rich and famous are relentlessly mocked as vulgar and crude morons whose privilege allows them to get away with anything. That said, one interesting aspect is Walker is at once the “hero” and a contemptible representative of all that’s dangerous, nihilistic, and shady about the powerful. Ed Harris is brilliant as the subdued eponymous madman, believing the heroic p.r. his own newspaper trumps up for him, for instance calling him a man of destiny, and hiding behind the veneer of being the people’s champion. Walker speaks in cliches that are meaningless to him, and ultimately betrays every person and principle he’s ever been associated with.

Cox starts the movie off seriously then breaks down every aspect of the film’s structure as Walker loses his grip on reality, including several purposeful anachronisms. The anarchic tone is far better suited to faux liberation and democracy than Cox’s punk rock based favorites Repo Man and Sid & Nancy, but where Cox and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer see absurdity as the only way to present such horrific arrogant psychotic racist lunacy, the movie can come across as little more than a series of pot shots. The biggest problem is too many actors, particularly Rene Auberjonois, just ham it up, undermining the politics by making it too cartoonish to take any of the message seriously. In the end, for better and worse, it’s very much a Monty Python movie.

Walker is a hilarious film, and one can’t help but think of even more recent invasions when we hear Walker utter such gems in the midst of battle as “Now that we have a plan I feel sure that there will be a successful outcome”. Walker is Alex Cox’s most ambitious film, and in a way the most amazing thing is that it got made at all. Not only was it funded by a Hollywood studio (Universal), but as it was shot on location, U.S. money was pumped into the economy of a country we were at war with (as opposed to the usual war profiteers who set up shop abroad).

Walker also has its merits as a western, something of a companion piece to Cox’s spaghetti western homage Straight to Hell. Here the model is Sam Peckinpah, which makes sense as Wurlitzer also scripted Peckinpah’s vastly underrated Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. Former Clash frontman Joe Strummer bases his soundtrack on Bob Dylan’s work in the aforementioned Peckinpah classic, but also blends several styles into the now Latino base. It’s not as good as Dylan’s, but quite effective.

Golden Door

A visualization of Emanuele Crialese’s research on the immigration process from the Old World to the New World, Golden Door seems a documentary captured by an impressionist whose surrealist friend intrudes now and then to spice things up. The result is a similar experience to Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark in that it’s interesting because you feel as though a piece of history is unfolding before your eyes, yet it’s also an obtuse art work that remains aloof.

Much of the pleasure of Golden Door is that of discovery. Crialese gives you the turn of the 20th century journey from Italy to America, the voyage and passage. While this plotless movie is mostly about the Mancuso family where the wife has passed away leaving the father Salvatore (Vincenzo Amato) to raise two boys, one a deaf mute, and an English woman Lucy Reed (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who needs a male escort to be allowed on the boat and a fiance who will marry her soon after arrival to be allowed into America, Crialese essentially denies the audience the past and future in order to make it a universal tale of immigration rather than something specific to these characters. Additionally, Crialese practically refuses to resort to telling the story with dialogue - there’s certainly some talking but you can’t speak a plot that’s nonexistent – instead relying upon the evocative imagery captured, if not conjured, by Agnes Godard’s lens. The film is essentially fragments of the excursion. As the current scene doesn’t really set up the next, every scene provides the feeling of revelation, beginning with mystery and ambiguity. The audience is always one step behind, left to determine what the scene is depicting. We are treated as voyeurs rather than privileged participants, learning enough to comprehend but not a whole lot more. It’s very much a film of the present, not providing much backstory and refusing to continue after arrival so as to not shatter the would be immigrants fantastic notions on what the United States is really like.

Ace cinematographer Agnes Godard seems the real author of the film. Godard not only makes largely silent scenes on a cramped boat interesting, she does so for about an hour! The settings are as much a character as the humans, but while there are over 700 people in the film, it’s essentially divided into three distinct full fledged segments – the end of poverty stricken primitive peasant life in Sicily, the week long passage to the U.S.A., and the demeaning indignation of the entrance tests and interrogations at Ellis Island – with only one set for each. The main set is obviously the dreary cramped boat where hundreds of people travelling in steerage are stuffed into the hull. It’s exceptionally dim as only enough artificial light is added to shoot with a reddish orange candlelight style hue.

Godard is constantly tracking and craning to not only show the multitude of little stories taking place at once, but also the various types of interactions; humans with humans, humans with the environment, the characters hopes, dreams, fantasies, and superstitions. As the dialogue is largely irrelevant, most of the story is conveyed through the camera capturing looks, glances, smiles in the face of suffering and despair. The highlight is a great bird’s eye view of a mob where the earth suddenly splits, revealing half are on the ship departing for the new world while the others are being left behind, a visualization of societal and soon cultural divide.

The movie is a mixture of the magical and the simplistic as Crialese is trying to give it the epic mythology and folklore feel of being told by uneducated yet imaginative and dreamy people. It’s a marriage of hope and ignorance. The first half hour evokes the second period featuring the peasant films of the Taviani brother’s and Ermanno Olmi, and Godard’s later visuals often don’t match the initial neo-realist bend. However, this is a work that allows for, in fact probably demands reflection, and in retrospect we realize the film compares and contrasts the harsh reality of trying to farm arid land with escapist fantasies of arrival in the magic kingdom where you can take a nap under the money tree or bath in a milk river using a human size carrot for a float.

For the most part, Golden Door truly seems as if it’s from another lifetime. The peasants lives are influenced by superstition to the point one uses garlic to prevent her from crashing over the side of the ship. One of the big strengths of the movie is the quiet atmosphere, as Crialese generally limits himself to direct sound. With the constant camera movement and little dialogue, Golden Door might seem like an overlong music video if it were scored, and would certainly lose some of the discovery through the music setting the mood.

Golden Door may be much more realistic without background music, but the use of two Nina Simone songs destroys period credibility even more in this context. Her songs take you out of the time frame, as they are at least 50 years too modern, and feel every bit of it. This jarring intrusion kills the mood, as we’ve long been immersed in a world that consists of the wind blowing and the constant droning of the engine. Crialese’s decision to give Charlotte Gainsbourg lousy red hair that only serves to render her less hot than usual doesn’t help matter’s either. Though Vincenzo Amato had a primary role in Crialese’s previous feature Respiro and Vincent Schiavelli is a name you might not know with a face you’ll certainly remember, Gainsbourg already stands out amidst the cast of mostly unknowns and extras without looking so much different than normal in a manner that’s contradictory to the period. Still, Golden Door is a definite improvement upon Respiro. It’s a heavyweight work that avoids all the cliched scenes, no shot of the Statue of Liberty and all that jazz, even if it may fail to replace some in a satisfactory manner.

Pauline at the Beach

Things come easy for some people, but people rarely make things easy for themselves. 14-year-old Pauline (Amanda Langlet) and her older, recently divorced cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle) plan to close out the summer with a few relaxing weeks at a seaside cottage. Pauline is just looking for some people her age to hang around with; boys, girls, it doesn’t matter as she’ll have some fun, but probably never see them again. Arriving so late in the vacation season, most of the teens have returned home. Lacking alternatives, Pauline winds up hanging around with Marion, Marion’s old boyfriend Pierre (Pascal Greggory) who is still in love with her though she married 5-years-ago, and Pierre’s acquaintance Henri (Feodor Atkine) who never denies himself a looker.

The three main adults are classic Eric Rohmer types. Marion is the indecisive woman, Henri the unreliable man, and Pierre is blinded by the certainty of his desires, though each share these characteristics to a certain extent. Marion says love can’t be forced and claims to be waiting for reciprocal love at first sight. However, she hops into bed with Henri the first night she knows him and spends the rest of her vacation expending much energy trying to will him to love her and convince herself and others he does. Henri is a charming, confident, opportunistic womanizer who lives in the minute, rejecting commitment. There’s no passion or intensity to his lifestyle, but he makes sure he has fun today while scouting a woman for tomorrow.

Pierre is earnest, but humorless and moody, caring too much for his own good, while others care too little. Pierre seems more jealous, possessive, and controlling than he actually is. He’s a good hearted friend who cares enough to try to talk you out of setting yourself up for a big fall, but he does so in an off putting confrontational manner, lacking the finesse to put across to Marion that Henri will screw her and move on. The third entry in the Comedy & Proverbs series, the second best next to Summer, is based on the proverb “he who talks too much will hurt himself”, which is most true of Pierre whose words have the opposite effect on Marion. She tells him, “Listen Pierre, the more you knock him, the more interesting he gets” and with each protest Marion only works harder to delude herself that she not only loves Henri, but also that Henri loves her. Pierre’s misreading that leads him to declare his love the first evening they’ve seen each other in years is probably much of what drives Marion to spend the night with Henri.

Rohmer’s characters are always self-centered and absorbed, so the more people that become involved, the more impossible the situation becomes as each individuals desires are just that. They rarely match someone else’s, and in failing to live with that, often in striving to control others, his characters constantly bang their head against the wall. The interactions between them grow increasingly tense, as everyone knows how to enlighten one another, and thus solve their problems. They believe they are detached and of pure motive, but whether directly or in a covert manner they are always talking about themselves, and really are trying to convince the listener how they should act toward them, usually that they should love them.

The stories Eric Rohmer writes are designed to say something about humanity by exploring the morality of his characters without making any judgments on them. Each character has philosophical and moral concepts, principles, they attempt to live by, but they don’t have the unrealistic strength and willpower of most movie heroes. Thus, in uttering their longings and beliefs they wind up seeming even more hypocritical than they are, as even your own ideals are difficult to live up to.

Pauline barely speaks to the adults initially, but becomes the centerpiece of the group by not joining in their angling, posturing, and lying, which she finds disdainful. A normal film would simply be her coming of age story, but while she quickly loses her virginity to her first boyfriend Sylvain (Simon de La Brosse), a teenager who pursues her, Rohmer is disinterested in the defining moments that are the backbone of commercial movies. It’s difficult to make a Rohmer film sound exciting, as they are almost random segments of a life that has existed and will continue to rather than the usual movies that pretend to provide the be all and end all of someone’s existence. Solution is never the goal of a Rohmer film, as the characters are likely to have similar problems throughout their lives. His films are about those difficulties, of which love is first and foremost due to being so personal yet revolving completely around someone else whether or not they choose it to.

Rohmer doesn’t believe people can drastically change who they are. His films are often based upon a decision that seems obvious to the audience, in this case Marion and Pierre reuniting because they are fairly similar and looking for the same kind of love, but Rohmer will deny these choices because his characters are who they are. Marion won’t choose Pierre for the very reasons she should, she can’t love or be happy with someone who reciprocates to an equal or especially greater extent; she found that out from her husband who was enough like Pierre. Things would be simple if she could find a way to reconcile her principles with her actions, but instead she’s stuck in a holding pattern of claiming she needs equality but actually losing interest once she finds it and instead chasing after someone she has to manipulate into love.

Rohmer’s films are an unextraordinary experience that gains the character(s) a bit of wisdom about themselves that leads them to a choice. It may even be the one they planned from the start. In My Life at Maud’s, Jean-Louis simply learns his heart is with Francoise, who he only knows from watching her in church, so he’s not interested in a one-night stand with Maud even though he discovers she’s interesting and appealing. He may have made Francoise’s acquaintance at some point, but it takes Maud to prompt his decision to force the meeting.

Pauline at the Beach is a test for Pauline. She is interested in the deeper aspects rather than the superficial ones, and believes “you must know people to love them.” She seems steadfast and resolute, but can she maintain her principles and clear-eyed vision as she matures, be open and honest in love, or does lust rob us of this? Her vacation makes her realize it’s time to mature, but the question is how to go about it. Her would be guides, the adults, are narcissistic, selfish, hypocritical, wavering liars whose dialogue tends to be making usually veiled excuses for themselves. They aren’t too discrete about their conquests yet still try to hide them from others.

The centerpiece of the film is a mistaken identity scene where both Marion and Pierre see the candy peddler Louisette (Rosette) at Henri’s, but rather than fess up that he had sex with her he sets Sylvain up. Though Rohmer often shows a character crushed by their love for another going awry, being betrayed or jilted, they aren’t being ridiculed by him or hurt for the sake of it. People invariably make quick decisions whose consequences are unknown. Sylvain can’t guess helping Henri will cost him Pauline, as it shows her he lacks her resolve. He’s willingly involved himself in the deception of Marion, who shows up unannounced, but he’s trying to be a friend to Henri, and perhaps protect Marion in a way as well. This same impulsiveness will do everyone in sooner or later, for Sylvain it just happens to be the former as what Pauline liked was his straightforwardness and honesty; he was forthright and thus understandable to her. Now she realizes he’s not different from the cowardly adults who play their conniving games, just less polished due to being young and inexperienced.

Eric Rohmer’s dialogue is never plot oriented, it’s not “factual” but rather reveals the interiors of the characters, their heart and mind, what they seek and value. Though Rohmer is first and foremost known for the intelligence and poetry of his discourse, he actually isn’t a director that says; he instead shows. He first wrote the Six Moral Tales (The Bakery Girl of Monceau, Suzanne's Career, My Night at Maud's, The Collector, Claire's Knee, & Chloe in the Afternoon) as a book, but found them to be incomplete, as we need the camera to see how their exterior exposes, and thus contradicts, their interior, how they are at war with themselves and betray their own ideals. The audience comes to an understanding through matching the alternately deceitful and soul revealing dialogue with their body language and actions. The other characters see bits and pieces, never enough to know the full truth. For them it often comes down to self-preservation. In order to retain their pride they force themselves to believe what suits them, in Marion’s case that Henri wasn’t cheating on her with Louisette. She has the greatest misconception of reality, but it puts her mind at ease and in the end it maintaining a positive image of herself that makes her personality more appealing than perpetually moping Delphine in Summer.

Rohmer shows your own perception is more important than whatever the reality is, as even though hope tends to prove false and pain real, we are still resilient, delusional, and dishonest enough to define a certain reality in our favor. Others may not buy into it, but in Rohmer everything is individual. The characters are self absorbed to the point they are oblivious to everyone else, and could often just as easily be talking about themselves to themselves. Their desires and predicaments are personal, leaving everyone else on the outside even when they are involved. This is why every person brings and increased complication, as there’s more and more overlapping strands, more yearnings to deal with and expectations to be shattered, most of which are unbeknownst to the characters as they’re too lost inside themselves to realize.

Rarely do we come across a movie that doesn’t simply alternate between it’s polar opposite tones, in this case including as light and heavy, pleasant and brutal, but more startlingly manages to be both at once. Jean Renoir doesn’t even set friendship and betrayal in opposition, but rather uses the combination of both to create an uneasy tension that demonstrates how the inability to find happiness and quell loneliness creates the temporary desire for illusory alliances. Renoir shows the bourgeoisie to be so detached and impersonal that all treaties are inherently temporary. The most obvious example is Christine de la Cheyniest (Nora Gregor), who declares her love for no less than four men in one night, but Renoir utilizes it more for the male relations. As everything is an object to be attained, collected, affairs don’t render any lasting hatred. There’s jealousy, but it never transcends the covet thy neighbors property level, so it’s quickly gotten over when you need a little companionship or understanding. The characters are too lonely and bored to hold grudges, so if they find themselves alone with each other they find some common ground and get along, even if they attempted to shoot the person in cold blood a minute ago.

Perhaps no one would expect their film to be as poorly received as The Rules of the Game was. The premier was so reviled that fistfights erupted and someone even tried to burn the theater down, and the film was banned as “demoralizing” after closing in just three weeks. Obviously when you hold a mirror to a society you find to be morally bankrupt they probably aren’t going to send you roses, but I think one of the main reasons Renoir’s portrait of upper class mischief and misdeeds was deemed so offensive is it’s told so casually and seemingly without focus or obvious hatred. Often something that’s completely one-sided and obvious is beyond contempt due to being too predictable and politicized to be taken seriously; you write it off as the usual unenlightened dribble from the Neanderthals. Renoir said, “I just wanted to make a movie, even a pleasant movie, but a pleasant movie that would at the same time function as a critique of a society I considered rotten to the core.” Rules of the Game is often light, and indeed pleasant, which is disarming. Even though they know full well they are viewing a hunting scene, the audience doesn’t expect a brutal slaughter as previously the film was largely a polite satire. The shifting tones keeps the movie unpredictable, as well as the characters from being the usual cardboard cutouts we see in these types of films.

Even if we look past the fact Jean Renoir is one of the greatest filmmakers, it seems difficult to truly loath one of his works as he’s such a humanist. Renoir seems incapable of hating anyone even though he knows they are up to no good. His movies never have any black and white characters, as he doesn’t believe in heroes and villains, but rather that there’s some good and bad in everyone. His films, and thus his camera, are always objective. It may seem that Renoir often shows the characters in Rules of the Game in the worst possible light, but that’s because humans are deeply flawed. On the other hand, it may seem that Renoir is too sensitive and sympathetic, but that’s because everyone has their virtues. Renoir plays the game as well, and does so with finesse. He’s much less civil than he comes across due to the casualness and detachment of the script and cinematography. The most dangerous people are the ones who often come across as affable and amiable. Though we probably come out of the film thinking the characters are foolish and absurd childish buffoons, there’s too much pathos to truly dislike any of them.

The seeming good nature and light touch of Renoir makes the emotional wallop certain scenes are able to pack that much more surprising. Renoir lulls us into this world of indifference, which seems to set us up to react in kind. Yet we somehow wind up reacting to needless slaughter of animals and finally a man, the latter of which symbolically dying in the same fashion as the rabbits did during the hunt - complete with the little side roll -

more passionately and intensely than normal. There are abrupt shifts of tone that get us, but again as Renoir manages to have things both ways simultaneously, it’s more that the brutality is so intrinsic to this society it’s generally as unnoticeable to the characters as their heart beating. This fundamental indecency imbues the audience with an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. We are disgusted by what we cannot control, and that much more so by the fact we can’t make anyone acknowledge there was a loss, even a mere sacrifice. In a sense, this futility allows us to understand how the complacency of the upper class is bred.

The feeling of powerlessness is bred by the manner in which the film is shot. It sometimes feels as though it’s a tease, as there’s often multiple characters doing their own thing in different portions of the screen. At times there are two fairly distinct stories going on simultaneously, but usually they comment upon or add to one another in some manner that is more important in serving the portrait Renoir is painting than individually. The characters are arranged horizontally rather than vertically to not only maintain the depth of field, but also have the secondary action in the background be at least as compelling as what’s in the foreground so as to create a disturbance.

Not only refusing to use traditional method of editing, which tend to establish the audience’s place in the proceedings and provide the perspective of a characters involved, rather than cut at all the camera often just glides off to another group of people, seemingly whenever the operator gets bored (a technique that clearly influenced Jacques Tati). The lengthy unbroken takes are made possible by a number of strategies including deep focus photography, tracking shots, and the well timed choreography of the characters moving in and out of the wide open rooms and long narrow corridors. They provide multiple viewpoints, allowing Renoir to not associate too closely with anyone, which can be disconcerting as the viewer isn’t allowed to forge any alliances (a motif of the upper class world itself) and is denied the idea the film is simply serving their interests and needs. Even though we learn as much from the surrounding action as from the characters who are center stage, we may reject the denial of our “free will”, as we are so used to convention we don’t like the delusion we are in control to be shattered, and thus rebel on principle.

It’s often difficult to pinpoint precisely why a Renoir film is so good, as his art works by blending aspects of every type of art form into a whole without putting any of the disparate elements at the forefront. I’m skeptical Rules of the Game is Renoir’s best work, but if that is the case, it’s likely due to Renoir not limiting his composite preference to the telling of the story. Renoir refuses to choose a main character to the point one could argue any one of seven characters is the most important. This rejection of the typical grounding method allows Renoir’s film to be societal rather than personal; Rules of the Game provides an overall impression of the upper class, which is all the more infuriating to those who wish to be enraged.

The rules and the game are never stated, and in fact largely self determined, though the basis is to keep up appearances by keeping private affairs from becoming public. This is a cruel, corrupt, and dehumanizing upper class society that has set up unspoken rules in order to hide behind them. There’s no morality in them, no desire to be honest, just, or forthright. No one considers the consequences of their actions, except in relation to the rules. As Octave says, "The government, radio, newspapers, advertising, everyone lies, so why shouldn't simple people tell lies as well?"

It’s tempting to say the game is forbidden passion, as just about everyone in the film is at least trying to have illicit affairs, but I’d say it’s survival. You are allowed to play a game that allows anything and everything as long as you conceal all that’s distasteful - your debauchery and your hatred - behind the facade of politeness and civility. It’s about trying to have it both ways, which makes it universal.

The upper class may be lazy and not particularly intelligent, for instance even after her explanation Jackie’s (Anne Mayen) study of Pre-Columbian art is determined by Madame de la Bruyere (Claire Gerard) to be “Buffalo Bill”, but the servants have no moral high ground on their masters. One could make the case that they are worse, as while the upper class will compliment you then stab you in the back, at least they don’t go around shooting anyone, much less the wrong man. The primary difference between the wealthy and the indigent is quite simply the rich make the rules and thus succeed, while the poor are subject to their whims, consistent only in their desire to exclude them, and thus crushed.

In addition to class, the concept of honor is at the heart of the film. In the 1930’s nobility

still took precedent over love. The irony is these rich men who value honor above all else, merely pretend to be the epitome of it, while actually having none. Hence, the rules allow you to choose as many lovers as you’d like, you simply have to due it without publicly staining everyone’s character. Of course, cuckold status is quickly well known, it’s simply never broadcast.

The seeming star of The Rules of the Game is Andre Jurieu (Roland Toutain), a middle-class aviator who skyrockets to success mimicking Charles Lindberg’s nonstop transatlantic flight. I think one reason Renoir’s films tend to be underrated is they have an ironic nature that can fly right by, as he allows the audience to find the ridiculousness of the situation. The fact that his “hero” Jurieu is making the journey 12 years later when aviation has improved to the point it’s no big deal - he’s actually able to make the trip in just 23 hours compared to Lindberg’s 33 ½ - shows the absurdity of the media’s desire to trump up any sort of celebrity to sell copies. Renoir even gets Lise Elina, a famous radio reporter of the time, to do the documentary style scene.

Initially honest, too much so for his own good, a heartbroken Jurieu eschews the usual cliches, instead using his post flight interview time to declare his disappointment over the meaninglessness of his journey due to the woman he made it for not even bothering to be present for his triumphant arrival. The fact that Christine’s married doesn’t seem to occur to him, but this is the prime example of sincerity in the film, as Jurieu begins to attempt to conform to the rules once he’s amongst the upper class players. It also sets up the motif of the outsider constantly making the wrong decision due to failing to comprehend the laws of the land.

It’s no secret to the audience that Marquis Robert de la Cheyniest (Marcel Dalio) doesn’t want Jurieu at his hunting party, but a motif of the film is the official story is always an aggrandizing and celebratory whitewashing. After having an affair with Genevieve (Mila Parely) for the duration of his marriage, the threat of Jurieu brings Robert to the realization he actually loves his Austrian wife Christine and would like to dump Genevieve. Bumbling jester of a peacemaker and go between Octave (Jean Renoir in a showstealing performance), who is best friends with Andre but also very close with the de la Cheyniest’s, agrees to help break off the relationship with Genevieve in exchange for Andre’s invitation. Though suddenly a bitter rival of Andre’s, Robert of course plays by the rules in public, maintaining the heroic tone of the media, and thus setting it for his complaint guests.

Andre believes you can’t run off with another man’s wife without an explanation, but if that’s a rule, it’s merely his own. It goes against the way the society is set up, as everything is secretive, impersonal, and non-confrontational. One of the best lines in the film is Christine’s response to Octave asking her what Andre did to her to make her already not know if she loves him. She says, “He kept talking... about propriety”, which is that much funnier because even though she’s an outsider, unlike Andre she’s been amongst them long enough to realize there’s nothing moral, or in fact proper, about the rules of this society.

The film is built around a pair of two men and one woman love triangles, which run fairly parallel. Both feature a fickle woman (Christine de la Cheyniest/Lisette) who loves everyone, her husband (Robert de la Cheyniest/Edouard Schumacher), and a lower class male (Andre Jurieux/ Marceau) who vies for the woman’s fancies from the first moment in her presence. Status is the important piece of the equation, as association with the upper class leads to “respectability” and thus the immediate corruption of Andre & Marceau (Julien Carette), who will never be accepted and thus will soon be crushed for trying. Robert & Schumacher (Gaston Modot) will be the ones to maintain (class) order, which requires vanquishing the interlopers. As Robert is a Marquis he can simply supply the air of pleasantness and respectability to all the proceedings through his clever manipulation of the language, for instance recasting premeditated murder as a “horrible accident”. Gamekeeper Schumacher doesn’t command the respect of the upper class, so he must at least threaten force to keep people in line. Of course, the gamekeeper is always dealing with not only a lower class than his boss, but also than himself as those who live in a chateau aren’t going to risk being caught poaching. As ex-poacher Marceau’s transformation shows, once you are in the grand house, even if only as a lowly servant, your basic needs are met so you shift to desires, move from rustling animals for survival to appropriating woman for amusement.

The Rules of the Game is a very humorous film, though again it’s comedy is largely unconventional. There are a few great lines, for instance after Schumacher chases Marceau around the house trying to gun him down, Robert tells him, “I have no choice but to dismiss you. It breaks my heart, but I can’t expose my guests to firearms. It may be wrong of them, but they value their lives.” For the most part, the entertainment is derived from the interruption of one form of communication by another (their lives and their entertainment are often at odds). It lies in the way the multitude of characters results in a constant intrusion, their actions and movements altering or distracting from the main scene in the foreground. Usually the performers, secondary players, and technology (such as the radio) remain in the background, but at times they are so boisterous as to steal the foreground. It’s funnier when the visuals are at odds with the audio, for instance Octave sneaks in to steal his new love Christine from her other lovers Robert & Andre at the very moment they are celebrating his friendship. The movie is built upon such ironies, the most prominent of which is Christine discovering Genevieve and Robert’s affair, which everyone has known about for years, by viewing their hug through her field glasses during the hunt, an embrace that marks the end of the affair which Christine assumes is instead the beginning of the fling. Of course, Renoir transcends mere comedy, utilizing these setups to subtly comment on the society, whose number one value is to go unnoticed unless you are supposed to be the center of attention.

Separated from his pickpocket mother upon her arrest when he was just a wee lad, the now teenage thief Alex (Juan Jose Ballesta) is on his own after being released from a foster home. Immediately suspected of stealing due to being a kid off the streets working for a respectable hair salon, even though it’s true Alex gives up on the idea of ever transcending his low class and heritage, his mother was a Romanian gypsy, and returns to fending for himself the only way he ever truly learned how. He’s a character without a present or a future, hinging all his hopes on reconnecting with his mother Ana (María Ballesteros) if for no other reason than she’s not only the best, but in fact the only suitable partner he’s ever had.

All other partnerships are attractive young women selected with an aim to recreate the glory of his lost youth, and Alex can always find someone capable of stealing as he asserts it’s more about courage than skill. However, class is always a barrier as just about anyone else his age, for instance his new partner Sara (Maria Valverde), attends school and has a family. Thus, rather than acting out of necessity they are invariably rebellious middle-class dabblers who are temporarily fascinated with the dangerous life, until it becomes too risky.

Owing a good deal to the crown jewel of the subgenre, Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, even if thematically more than stylistically, Jaime Marques melancholic mood piece on is a poetic work that thrives on melding the stylish with the minimalist. David Azcano’s cinematography and Ivan Aledo’s editing can be flashing with handheld, tracking shots, and slow motion, generally a choreographed mix of lengthy motion shots and montage of brief close-ups. However, it’s also a quiet film with incidental dialogue. Unlike most movies, scenes aren’t scored simply because there’s no dialogue. Marques is confident enough in his visual storytelling to allow the film to not only exist with very little dialogue, but also to have Federico Jusid’s score fade in an out rather than dictate the tone of these scenes.

Alex is a quite onlooker, lurking in the background with his vulture eyes honing in on what he’s after. We pick up bits and pieces of his life through observing his daily routine, perhaps initially making an inaccurate guess on his interest in Sara, the teenage girl he saves from getting caught shoplifting then stalks, but mystery and enigma remain a strength of the film. Thieves is a patient love story with Alex being persistent but also having far more guts in their professional capacity as a mentor who throws Sara right into action than in their relationship. The pallid blue gray color palette is suitable to the film noir bend of this tale that focuses on a character destined to never have anything. Getting back to Bresson, this is really a story of redemption, and Alex can only achieve it through relinquishing his love while she still has a chance for the life he can never have.

Thieves may not be the most original or fully realized movie, but Jaime Marques directorial debut is certainly a showcase for promising young talent. In addition to Marques, who has accomplished something simply in giving me a reason to watch something from the Spanish film industry, which anymore seems to only produce soap operas, idiotic comedies, and lame derivative thrillers, the film features two promising young performers. Improving from earlier roles in films such as El Bola & Carol’s Journey, Juan Jose Ballesta displays a discreet intensity in carrying the film with his detached and nonchalant performance. Maria Valverde makes an excellent counterpart, as together they easily succeed in the dubious accomplishment of making the audience forget all the shady aspects of their pilfering. Of course, it always helps to have some experienced talent, such as veteran Patrick Bauchau who easily pulls off the role of the evil controlling fence who endangers Alex in exchange for information on the whereabouts of his mother.

If you can imagine a work that fuses the collective memory of an area with that of the authors’, and then renders it on film in all it’s wandering yet richly detailed glory, you can conceive of the accomplishment that is known as Heimat. Drawing not only from his memories growing up in the region, but also from interviewing and conversing with hundreds of people from the Hunsruck region, Edgar Reitz created this cinematic version of oral history. Though the 52 ½ hour Heimat trilogy is fictional, Reitz’s cinenovel is far more true to life than at least 99% of the stuff that passes as docudramas or “based on a true story”. A dense multilayered text covering all facets of life from many angles, Reitz’s aim is to tell compelling stories that realistically observe mankind without judging them. Thus his study of life, which is never sentimental or ideological, helps free us from the stereotypical misconceptions about German citizens while providing an alternative to the tired accounts that dominate our perception of the past.

Dismayed by a typically oversimplified good vs. evil American holocaust film becoming an event when broadcast on West German television, Reitz created Heimat as his riposte. His television series breaks down the limiting depictions of history that revolve around the megalomaniacs and focus on black and white issues, persecutors and persecuted, aggressors and defenders. The history of Hitler’s Germany is perhaps accurate of Hitler and his closest minions, but even the most notorious madman doesn’t define the whole of his country, much less his era. Most people are more concerned with their own family, work, love life, things they have more direct influence and control over. These stories may be less important, but they are far from meaningless. Ruthless heartless dictators are a dime a dozen, but how people lived is somewhat different in every decade.

What we normally consider as history - the ruling party, the not so great dictator, the pointless wars - are always on the periphery in Heimat. Reitz avoids the usual cliches, refusing to depict the big names and notable events. He instead allows their respective presence and occurrence to seep into if not shape the narrative as much as it could be expected to, which in peacetime isn’t very much. However, if you’ve already returned from war you are forever changed, even if only through a certain alienation that’s inherent in trying to feel comfortable in a place that’s gone on without you for a number of years.

Though critics so used to old hat they miss it criticized Edgar Reitz for downplaying certain aspects that are thought to define 20th century German history, whether it be the depression or the concentration camps, I find Reitz’s film refreshing as it’s neither political nor apolitical. Reitz and cowriter Peter F. Steinbach show that while politics effect the lives of ordinary citizens to a certain extent, it’s rarely in the kind of direct, easy to pin down ways we typically see in the few movies that actually want to be political. In fact, the silly fads of the day hoisted upon the public by mass marketers and their enabling subordinates have far more obvious and widespread effects, if for no other reason then everyone encounters them everyday until they are replaced by the next craze. One example Reitz & Steinbach use is having Ernst get into the home “improvement” business, replacing traditional quality with phony stonewall facings. In all cases though, Reitz shows positive and negative aspects of change, and just as his characters do, the audience interprets the events through their own perspective.

It’s not only the bigwigs and historical landmarks that are put on the backburner, Reitz similarly refuses to allow Heimat be defined by big moments in the personal lives of his characters. Births, marriages, graduations, even deaths are noticed more than observed. In fact, we learn of the passing of key characters by seeing a year of death on the family tree, or their headstone at the graveyard. The exception is the death of the matriarch of the house, Katharina (Gertrud Bredel) and Maria (Marita Breuer), as they are the consistent presence, the incarnation of home.

While sometimes tense and suspense, payoffs and climaxes aren’t what Reitz is after. He prefers the petty to the grand, little anecdotes and incidents adding up to something profound. He may focus intensely on a particular year then skip several. We come to sense that everything and nothing is of the utmost significance. A work of such texture, depth, and complexity could never be accomplished in the usual two hours. This near 16 hour masterwork ignores even cinematic convention, maintaining the rhythm of daily life. It’s the accumulation of minute details that eventually add up to a story of great significance.

Reitz’s masterpiece simply can’t be compared to traditional television, as there’s not necessarily a specific reason people do what they do, treat someone in the manner they treat do, especially one that’s specifically related to that character. One thing Reitz has done is eliminate the simplistic cause and effect that dope opera is based on, the actions of the characters are never so obvious we come to them ages before they do. Heimat isn’t the usual judgmental television crap that’s based on action and reaction, for instance someone has an affair so their spouse or lover breaks up with them and then everyone close to both of them is forced to take sides. There’s none of the typical situations that pit saint against sinner, everything exists in gray areas. Reitz isn’t about the decision or the damage done, so much as root of the problem. We see a person with an ambition, a discomfort, some subtle disquiet that nags at their soul until they follow it. He won’t explain it, and in fact it’s difficult to really put into words, but the central conflict of Heimat is between man and his homeland. His decisions aren’t based on loving his family or not, but rather whether he can be comfortable spending his life in the region. Everything else is secondary, and thus there’s a tremendous amount of collateral damage.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything where the characters have so many varying aspects. Reitz & Steinbach quite simply obliterate the concept of likeable and dislikable, allowing life to shape the characters and situation to shape life rather than consistently imposing a set of morals, values, ideals, which they either live up to or contradict. We are allowed to feel so many positive and negative emotions toward each character, many times at once, but also to so often be neutral. The characters are always complex, sometimes troubling, but at the same time both ordinary and impressive. We rarely focus too much or too long on their strengths or weaknesses. It’s not about flip flopping the characters, they change credibly but the goal isn’t to show them evolve or devolve as individuals, this is of course part of most great movies or novels, but greatness is never attained by narrow definition. Heimat is more about pitting the specificness of your roots against the universality of human experience to show lives so unique yet so familiar, a mix of the unfathomable (unless you’ve actually lived it) and the incredibly familiar (from your own experience). Reitz once commented that, “The work itself gives no answers whatsoever, but the observer gives himself answers. The work gives him time, and again the key to unlocking those secret rooms (of your own soul)”

Brothers Anton & Ernst provide a good example of the impossibility of consistently rooting for or against anyone, of thinking they are simply amiable or abominable individuals. Anton is quiet and sensitive in his youth and early adulthood, but loud and judgmental once his business succeeds, playing the boss of his brothers as well as his coworkers. Still, Anton is the proper son who does what he’s expected of him, for better and worse, while Ernst is something of an unsuccessful version of his deserting father Paul, doing his own thing irrespective of anyone else. Anton stands for building a tradition of quality, not simply practicing traditional methods but rather doing things in the proper manner so business is beneficial to someone beyond the owner. On the other hand, Ernst stands for fashionable change, perfuming new wood to smell as if it were antique, an authentic relic of 100 years ago. Still, at least in the short term, this also makes people happy.

Anton is the heel of episode 9, a tyrannical bully who persecutes adult Klarchen (Gudrun Landgrebe) for loving his teenage brother Hermann (Peter Harting), even getting her fired from a job she takes in another town after she’s no longer welcome in his office. In episode 10 he’s the hero, ignoring his father’s advice to sell as he did and keeping his business as a symbol of quality and the primary source of local employment, thus preserving his Heimat from the interloping multi national corporation that invariably strives to eliminate competition and standards.

Ernst is at his most likeable in episode 9, standing up to his older brother who has always bullied him, treating him as if he were instead his father, when he tries pulling the same thing on Hermann. He helps Hermann by secretly delivering letters to and from his lover Klarchen after Anton has made it impossible for them to communicate. However, he soon reminds us of his selfishness, even stooping to getting his lackies to strip his childhood home of it’s history, of any antiques or anything he might get a few marks for, while he’s at his mother’s funeral.

Eduard’s wife Lucie (Karin Rasenack) is the type of character that’s easy to detest. She’s a complete self aggrandizing phony who always has to be the center of attention, a chameleon who constantly adapts to the fashionable principles, sucking up to everyone who has more money or power in hopes of exploiting their resources to her advantage. Even if the drama queen is soiled by her unyielding desire for advancement, she is intelligent and resourceful, rising from whorehouse matron to dignified mayor’s wife. Though as everything else it’s more to her benefit than his, Lucie getting Eduard (Rudiger Weigang) elected to high office is akin to single-handedly getting Dubya into office if Dubya had no money, family heritage, or powerful enablers to rig the election in his favor.

Both generations of Simon mothers, Katharina then Maria, are honest and truthful if simplistic. They aren’t particularly educated, but are sensible characters who possess conventional and practical wisdom. Katharina isn’t blinded by change of any form, which always puts her at odds with Maria’s brother Wilfried Wiegand (Han-Jurgen Schatz), who like Lucie allies himself with whatever party is presently fashionable. Katharina’s son Eduard is also a follower, though generally not dangerous like Wilfried, as he’s a good natured simpleton rather than a fanatic who has no qualms about going along with whatever would seem to benefit him.

Once Katharina’s son Paul Simon disappears the end of episode 1, we realize it’s Maria that will be the hero of the coming episodes. Despite being deserted, left to raise two young boys on her own, Maria is a glowing, loving woman until Paul returns to Germany after WWII. His first attempt to come back in 1939, in fact the first contact he’d made with any of them since his unceremonious departure, ruined the only love she ever experienced in her life with Otto (Jorg Hube), an engineer who became a boarder in the Simon home while building the first highway through the area. Though Paul wasn’t let off the boat because they couldn’t prove his pure German blood in time, Maria casts Otto off, with the broken hearted man signing up for the suicide occupation of landmine defuser.

Until stealing some moments with Otto, discovering new activities such as dancing and auto racing which open her eyes up to possibilities and aspects of life most people take for granted, Maria never had a chance to have or enjoy her own life. She went from working at her father’s to taking care of the Simon family, soon without another adult to share the joy and burden with, leaving her with little time for friends or outside pursuits. Between Otto’s death, Paul’s return, the arrival of her son Ernst’s supposed girlfriend Klarchen as yet another tenant in the cramped little house that still doesn’t have him as he hasn’t returned from the war, and generally everyone and everything slowly leaving her behind, Maria loses her smile and enthusiasm for life. She still never gets riled up, but she becomes a rigid and dull character, a kind of walking corpse, reliable and well functioning only because she’s reprising her daily routine. Maria was a young mother raising Anton & Ernst and she was able to share their hobbies, photography and model airplanes respectively. Now all she has is Hermann, who she had with Otto when she was 40, but he grows increasingly distant as his schoolwork (trigonometry) is above her and as she isn’t cultured she’s unable to appreciate if not comprehend the literature he loves and the music he creates, which eventually includes prerecorded sound effects.

Little Hermann seems the most personal episode as a young Edgar Reitz had a relationship with a woman 11 years older and left his Heimat after high school to pursue a career in the arts. Though Reitz isn’t nearly as big a name abroad as contemporaries of the New German Cinema such as Werner Herzog & Wim Wenders, after filming Yesterday Girl for Alexander Kluge, a cinema colleague at the Ulm School of Design, he won best first feature at Venice for Mahlzeiten and had a series of successes for the next decade before the colossal commercial failure of by far his most expensive feature, The Tailor of Ulm, seemingly sent him into retirement from feature film making. As it turns it, it reconnected him with his roots, prompting him to combine the personal and professional into the documentary on the Hunsruck region Geschichten aus den Hunsruckdorfern, now considered a prequel to the Heimat trilogy. The self discovery continued, ultimately propelling him to the fictional works that have become his signature pieces. By the late 1990’s, when Stanley Kubrick decided his best chance at passable dubbing for Eyes Wide Shut would be to have his favorite European directors act as overseer for their respective country’s version, it was Reitz who was asked to handle the German version.

Heimat, which means homeland, is very specific to a way of life in a certain area during the 20th century, but has been received very well abroad as the story is ultimately universal, as in the end life at any time and in any era is built around the same few primary characteristics. The greatest conflict in Heimat is the struggle to belong in and to your homeland. Those who leave perpetually long for their roots even if they attain success they never could have at home, as your homeland represents security, innocence, perhaps even your very essence. It’s a place of nostalgia, but also of pain and rejection, a personal warfront. Reitz finds many ways to show this struggle is between progress and tradition, as men invariable alter their homeland then long for the previous comforting state.

Reitz doesn’t bow at the alter of progress. Selling your cow is a loss because you’ve been milking the animal all your life. Even if it’s no longer worth the hassle to do so, it’s been a consistent daily form of sustenance for as long as anyone alive can remember. Maria only agrees to sells her cow because her sister-in-law Pauline (Eva Maria Bayerwaltes) convinces go with her to visit Paul in America, where he’s made his fortune as the owner of Simon Electric, which would leave no one to care for the beast. We never find out if they make the trip, which would be a major event in Maria’s life though the men venture to all corners of the earth she never leaves the region even for a day trip. But the point is it’s the end of an era, no more animals for nourishment at the Simon home. That said, Reitz isn’t simply against progress, as that would be equally narrow-minded and simplistic. The irony of the dual meaning is part of the reason he chose the title Heimat, as Heimatfilm was originally a genre of Nazi propaganda films that glorified the rustic past for ideological purposes. In the 1950’s, the genre’s aims shifted toward capitalism, exploiting the tourist potential of the traditional less developed areas.

People come and go, but Reitz largely sticks to the Shabbach region, as home is the center of everyone’s world. More specifically, men leave to pursue their careers while women provide a sense of home by holding down the fort. Home is not so much a place to Reitz, but rather your mother’s house with her in at, the location of all your memories since childhood. The center of Reitz’s film is the historical old Simon house, as it outlives any and all tenants. It’s stable even as all else shifts, but sometimes this stability is alienating, for instance when Paul return home from World War 1. It’s not so much that his homeland has changed, but rather that he’s transformed into another person to the point he no longer feels he belongs.

Though Shabbach is the center of the universe for pretty much all the characters we encounter, we see the difficulty of living in a small town as invariably everything of real importance takes place elsewhere and all ideas, changes, and developments are ultimately imported. This breeds a feeling of helplessness, a sense that one has to leave to truly accomplish anything, though as always this is countered. Utilizing the clean air of his heimat to set up Simon Optical Factory, Anton’s company becomes the clear leader in the field.

Heimat is a moving piece of cinema in part due to Reitz’s ability to profoundly express multiple conflicting feelings at once. For instance, the scene when Anton is reunited with his wife Martha (Sabine Wagner) after his 5000k walk back from WWII is a mix of loss and hope. After all the bloodshed and death he’s withstood, he immediately announces he’s going to make it in opticals, he even doubled back to figure out all the necessary steps to make the business succeed.

Many locals, often amateur theater actors, are cast in prominent roles. They not also lend a regional authenticity, but more importantly serve as co-collaborators, contributing their recollections and remembrances. The most successful of the amateurs is Kurt Wagner, who plays the film’s narrator Glasisch, an outsider who comments upon the lives of his relatives but rarely has much direct participation in them. Born in 1900 like Maria, he’s in many ways her opposite as she’s always accepted and respected while he’s always been the outsider looking in. Returning from WW1 with a skin disease that doesn’t make him a favorite of the ladies – he looks like Pascale Greggory playing Cyrano de Bergerac - he’s now often dirty and treated as dirt. Though town drunk is dealt with akin to a retard, if this idiot savant is a fool, he’s Henry Fool. Glasisch is arguably the most perceptive character, shown in minor examples such as being the only one to see through Hermann’s masking devices and detect his sound effects are nightingales.

Each episode opens with Glasich organizing a series of photos, always shown to be mere poses, to piece together a narrative. Reitz never allows us to feel we are getting anything but a perspective. History, official or otherwise, is simply an author’s interpretation of what’s worth remembering, which changes from episode to episode, or book to book.

Reitz allows the talented cinematographer and sometimes director Gernot Roll, probably best known abroad for lensing Caroline Link’s Nowhere in Africa and Beyond Silence, to convey the concepts, ideas, and themes through the imagery. The conversation interweaves important aspects, but doesn’t spell everything out for the usual series of didactic dissertations. The controversial aspect of the presentation is their decision to alternate between black and white and color. In general, the memories are shot in black and white when color is irrelevant to the memory and color when it’s pertinent, for instance when scenery, landscapes, decorations, or fruit make an impression. A red hot iron can only be shown in color, but this aspect is rather inconsistent as it seems Reitz & Roll more or less decided on the fly, going by feel.

Heimat is filmed as a memory, imbued with echoes of the past, both obviously (flashbacks) and symbolically (repetition of objects, events, with similar light and framing). Scenes of walking down a long straight road or even making a phone call are staged to evoke occurrences of the same event in the past. Life is a series of repetitions, differentiation coming from the ever changing if not evolving manner in which we experience it. The act may be the same, but each incident is slightly different, the aspects that are noticed, that come to the forefront or are disregarded yielding variance.

“Each viewer is left to his own devices as to just what is being portrayed, and in what context” – Superior Court Judge Harry Kalas

Working against the didacticism documentaries are known for, cinema verite legend Frederick Wiseman wouldn’t bother to make a movie if what he had to say about his subject could be quickly surmised. Showing there’s more to the documentary experience than being quickly comforted in knowing the creators agree with us or getting riled up because they’ve allowed this fool to spew his bile before shutting it off, Wiseman never start out with a hypothesis or sets out to prove his preordained views. Unlike fictional movies where most aspects are worked out in advance, for Wiseman much of the thrill of non-fiction filmmaking comes from dealing with the people and themes after the fact, shaping and structuring the narrative in the editing room. Armed with his handheld camera and tape recorder for sync sound, Wiseman shoots countless hours of film, allowing himself enough material to develop the pertinent in a manner that’s both artistic and enlightening.

Wiseman obviously does have and express a point of view, art is at best soulless when the creator doesn’t have one, but it’s expressed in a far more oblique manner than most documentary filmmakers would dream of, much less dare to try. An observational filmmaker who doesn’t force us to take his perspective as gospel, Wiseman simply thrusts the audience into the center of a series of interactions, which may be routine to his subjects, but are in many ways new to us. Offering no narration to provide background information and no musical score to instruct the audience how to feel about a scene, Wiseman forces the audience to think through the various relationships, determining the reasons behind the subject’s actions, rather than simply taking a rooting interest. More importantly, he also creates a multifaceted viewing experience, as by limiting his interaction with the audience to the footage selection and editing decisions we are not only asked to work out the relationship between the people on film, but also contemplate the director’s methods of communicating with his audience, considering what these two methods tell us about the director as well as the films characters.

The staff at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts initially enjoyed and approved of Wiseman’s look at their institute, but turned on the movie when the reviews were glowing toward Wiseman’s work but highly critical of the staff’s behavior and actions. Soon the Massachusetts Government was so shamed by what was considered an expose, even compared to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, they trumped up a charge to ban it, ruling Titicul Follies violated patients rights. This dubious ruling was particularly shady as beyond the obvious fact Wiseman had permission from the inmates legal guardian - the superintendent of the institute – if not the patients themselves, according to Wiseman the right of privacy in Massachusetts was created for the Titicut case, conveniently usurping the public’s right to know that would take precedent in almost any other case. Though an appeal made the movie available for educational purposes to field students and workers who could prove their credentials, the ruling made Titicut Follies the only film banned in the USA for a reason other than obscenity or national security.

Titicut Follies was Wiseman’s first film. What we can see from examining his oeuvre three dozen films later is time and time again Wiseman shows the public how their tax funded institutions are functioning, allowing the audience to decide whether they are living up to their stated goal. Is the claimed ideology put into practice at all, and if so how efficiently and effectively? Through his looks at bureaucracies and heirarchical institutions including High School, Hospital, military (Basic Training, Missile), the monastery (Essene), welfare (Public Housing), the intensive care unit (Near Death) Wiseman shows the dangers of total institutions, all metaphors applicable. We see power used to the ill of the dehumanized subjects. The more helpless they are to begin with, the more they are forced to cede their self- respect, the more they are taken advantage of. Still, these works aren’t particularly slanted.

Wiseman’s could have chosen to simply show an endless series of maltreatment toward the inmates, but he’s above such black and white tactics. He instead shows the conditions all the various members of the little society exist under. We see how intolerable the patients, who also include men who have been deemed “sexually dangerous” are, the fact some ramble on endlessly and/or incoherently, creating an endless stream of obnoxious noise. We see that others don’t comprehend or simply ignore most instructions, and many are prone to fits. Well meaning volunteers try to get them to play the simplest of games, yet even that is too much for most of the inmates. That said, there’s few possible pleasures as the institute is run by the Department of Corrections as a prison without the perks.

The treatment of the patients is inconsistent, alternating between indifference, experimentation, and neglect. Sometimes the patients are purposely demeaned, while others the staff is honestly doing their best to help them. We must remember they are limited by their own abilities, the knowledge available, and the accepted methods. What seems ridiculous to an outsider briefly looking in might actually make sense if you tried to deal with the unbalanced for any length to time.

The staff are both gentle and harsh, but the latter stands out because the stated goal is supposed to be helping and rehabilitating, which requires far more of the former. We don’t expect our tax dollars to go to an institute that considers a hose down a bath and then leaves the man naked for hours to stalk around a room that’s empty expect for a pail to poop in. We don’t expect to see Jim roughly shaved by ridiculing guards, who whether purposely or not, still manage to cut him. We are horrified to see a patient force fed by shoving a tube up his nose, the doctor telling the man to chew his food as he pours water down the funnel, his cigarette ashes ready to drop in at any moment.

The most memorable patient is Vladimir, who was sent to the institution for observation a year and a half ago and deemed a paranoid schizophrenic based on a test that included such pertinent questions as: How often do you go to the bathroom? How often do your friends go to the bathroom? Do you believe in God? Do your love your parents? A foreigner who took the time to learn good English, perhaps in jail, Vladimir regularly intellectually spars with the staff trying to prove the premise that the treatment he’s received has only made him worse, begging them to send him back to prison where he can at least work out and go to school. Though he seems saner than most of the doctors, particularly the Hungarian Freud wannabe who comes up with the aforementioned wacky questions and pulls stunts such as ordering certain patients not to be fed for the next three days, his efforts wind up having the reverse effect. The more he complains about his medication “for the mind”, the more they say it’s proof of his paranoia and increase his tranquilizers. In the end, though their methods and results are different, Vladimir and Wiseman do the same thing, fight for dignity.

Violated Angels

A melancholic montage of stills reveals a young man’s (Juro Kara) apathy toward images of naked women, and he remains as unmoved amidst the peaceful shores he brings turmoil to by dispassionately firing his gun. A tracking shot of a night at the White Lily Nurse Dormitory begins typically enough with the angelic students reading in bed or sleeping, but quickly reveals the seedy underbelly as two lesbians are going at it and a nurse looking forward to this possibility alerts all her friends to join in gawking at the scandalous spectacle through a peep hole. A nurse who didn’t jump out of bed to gape notices the detached loner of the previous scenes wandering the premises and invites him to the spectacle, we guess as some sort of twisted remedy for a deviation thought to be brought on through isolation from the opposite sex, but the film is based upon Richard Speck’s murder of eight nursing students, so the frustrated delusional man who envisions images of women’s cruel taunts instead begins his spree of rapes and murders.

These initial scenes set the tone with man greeting sex and violence with seeming indifference while women are at best helpless submissive bystanders unable to pull themselves away and at worst aggressive enablers who cooperate to the point of throwing themselves at him. Koji Wakamatsu drives at something beyond the sexism inherent to the pinku, the whimsically inexplicable nature of violence as well as love. But perhaps it’s a bit more obvious than we realize, as when violence is a biproduct of a goal, however ridiculous it may be, for instance killing to unearth who is worth saving, we can force ourselves to shut off all the aspects that might summon our humanity by concealing our goal from the world and distancing ourselves from the pleasure or horror of any aspect of life.

Wakamatsu’s symbolism and metaphors that point to capitalism as the root of evil often misfire, but his somber doom laden film is startling and disturbing for many reasons. The women don’t fight back and generally make little effort to save themselves, instead watching intently with an utter stillness that’s unbearable for the viewer, which is increasingly interrupted by weeps and groans of terror that, as seen through the eyes of the killer, come off as pathetic. And these are nurses, women who represent the best and most devoted humans. While we can see them as selfless to the point of being willing to die for the slight hope someone else will be spared, I think the point lies with man’s ability to undetectably alternate between being an innocent among them and a cold force of destruction. Though the man is known only as Boy, a sure sign of his stunted mental growth and immaturity, when the women identify his deadly intentions they can only cluelessly project every reason and meaning that could possibly be half “logical” onto his heartless actions. Unable to dissuade him, for lack of a better reason they are killed for their failure to understanding him.

Cinematographer Hideo Ito, best known for lensing the Wakamatsu produced Nagisha Oshima classic In the Realm of the Senses, utilizes murky black and white to highlight the nurses confusion and seeming inclarity of the murderers actions punctuated by still very posed color shots that seem meant to evoke paintings. Sex scenes were normally interspersed in color in the Japanese exploitations of the time period so they’d be more aesthetically pleasing, but Wakamatsu uses Eastmancolor to highlight the disturbing nihilism, despite actually shooting what little violence is depicted at all from a distance. Violated Angels isn’t particularly sleazy considering, as Wakamatsu was one of the many Japanese directors who used genre to smuggle art. That doesn’t mean it isn’t off-putting, but when your take on human nature is as dark as Wakamatsu’s is here, that’s at least partially by design.

Violette

Introducing the audience to Violette Noziere (Isabelle Huppert) the cool, detached, disinterested nighttime seductress at a nightclub in the Latin Quarter of Paris, we never doubt she’s an adult as she searches for a suitable man. Nearly apprehended sneaking back into her house sometime after 7 A.M., she scurries back downstairs to wipe off her red lipstick and change into her modest household attire. Still caught with a gold ring she borrowed from her friend, Violette claims she found it only to have her mother Germaine Noziere (Stephane Audran) scold the 18-year-old “young girls don’t need rings” and confiscate it until she has a chance to drop it off at lost and found.

Utilizing the most complex narrative structure I’ve seen from him, Claude Chabrol constructs Violette Noziere schizophrenically, showing the distinct sides of Violette - the innocent young girl whose parents don’t allow her to grow up and the oversexed adult secretly playing out her fantasies – before overlapping them enough to bring about a tragedy. Both of Violette’s identities are role playing, which comes easy to this woman who is always concocting some story, identity, alibi, or future endeavor on the spot for those who are generally all too willing to believe her. She discovered early on that others are happy with her as long as she’s what they believe her to be, but of course since she isn’t trouble is sure to ensue.

Violette is a dreamer, and one of her dreams is to find a really decent man who will take her to the seaside town of Sable d’Olonne. She literally envisions a man she’s never seen before in her dreams, so when he appears in real life she takes it as destiny and immediately falls in love. This man, Jean Dabin (Jean-Francois Garreaud), not to be confused with the legendary actor unless it’s too his benefit, turns out to be a sponger who will go on her dream vacation, if she pays his way.

Violette’s desire to experiment with other men is all but eliminated once Dabin is part of her life, as all her fantasies now center on him, her first real love. The previously indifferent Violette quickly turns into the clinging girlfriend who tries to buy the love of her gigolo. It’s not all due to Dabin, as Violette’s past indiscretions have already caught up to her, the revelation that she has syphilis creating a schism in her relationship with her mom, who was previously the parent she considered her ally. Germaine’s rejection has the effect of increasing Violette’s reliance on and blindness toward Dabin, which creates a need for money she doesn’t have, as the usual 100-150 francs a day doesn’t excite him, and it takes a lot more money to go on holiday.

Depicting the events through a fractured narrative, the film seems to exist in Violette’s memory, which considering she’s a serial liar can’t wholly be relied upon. Technically, the movie is a series of flashbacks intercut into a linear present, but recollection

dictates the sequencing. Chabrol may skip a crucial scene when the time comes, and doesn’t necessarily show all the pertinent details at once, breaking some scenes into portions that aren’t revealed until something triggers the memory later on.

Violette Noziere thrives on mystery, the intrigue of the unknown, with Chabrol’s presentation piquing our interest in the truth. Some of the flashbacks function in a very clear series of largely visual filmmaking, for instance Violette telling Dabin a man like him needs a ring so Yves Langlois cuts to a scene of her stealing money from her parents while they’re sleeping and follows with her putting the ring on his finger. Chabrol is rarely so obvious though, almost never announcing what a scene is about and generally slipping revelations into a scene that appears to be about something else rather than building the scene around the critical information. We know Violette is up to something as she’s attempting to write a letter left handed. We have heard the respectable friend she “always goes out with”, Janine Deron, who we aren’t sure if even exists as we don’t know the name of the friend that lent her the ring but we suspect she’s not the sister of Violette’s doctor Deron, is finally going to meet the parents. However, Janine’s pending appearance, and later notice of her inability to attend, is a minor aspect of a crucial scene where Violette’s nosy parents confront her after discovering her night club attire and letters from Dabin, who they determine must declare his intentions toward her. Again, this casts Violette in a victims light, as although she’s actually delusional enough to want to marry Jean, parents trying to force their child to marry the first boyfriend as soon as they learn of him, without even meeting the man, are you kidding me?

There are all sorts of revelations, verifications, and confirmations of suspicions after the fact. It’s practically the only way you can learn what might be true, as Violette can’t even keep track of her own lies after a while, telling the hotel maid she’s studying history one day and medicine the next. We might think Germaine has been driven crazy by the fact her “innocent” daughter has a venereal disease, or due to the whole preposterous cover-up where Violette gets Dr. Deron (Jean-Pierre Coffe) to insist she’s still a virgin, and thus syphilis is hereditary so her parents should also take medicine for it as they obviously passed it on to her. However, during a dinner conversation with some guests we learn Germaine’s actual problem was food poisoning, which doubtlessly came from the “medicine” that was “sent” by Dr. Deron.

As this is a film by Claude Chabrol, it’s inherently a criticism of his bourgeois class. The Noziere’s are low level members, who pin most of their hopes on Violette finding a husband with a better job than a railroad mechanic like her father Baptiste (Jean Carmet), at least an engineer. Always struggling for their standing, they tend to not only ignore all signs of trouble though a kind of willful blindness, but also put their efforts into hiding them from the public. Violette has long been convinced there’s some deep dark secret her parents are hiding from her. There’s certainly a secret Germaine and Violette are hiding from the world, an important rich old man named Emile (Jean Dalmain) who had relations with Germaine and whom Violette calls father. He functions as Violette’s secret benefactor, a kind of implicit blackmail where they have a friendly relationship, he even writers her letters she hides from Baptiste, despite the backbone being Emile buying her silence.

We aren’t sure if Violette and Emile’s relationship is platonic or sexual, but certainly Baptiste at least lusts after his daughter, watching her while she’s undressing. One of the many unanswered questions is whether Baptiste goes along with the idea of hereditary syphilis for fear his incestuous relationship will be revealed. Not to downplay the severity of his actions and desires, but many of the families problems stem from not being bourgeois enough to afford a home with some space. The claustrophobia of the cramped quarters practically eliminates the possibility of privacy, rendering everyone both more nosy and more secretive.

Violette was the first of seven features Claude Chabrol has made so far starring Isabelle Huppert. He particularly likes casting the brilliant actress in films based on true stories, as in addition to Violette Noziere, Story of Women, La Ceremonie, and Comedy of Power all have her portraying real life people. Violette is certainly closest to Story of Women, playing an adventurous female who takes matters into her own hands and is ultimately condemned to death. Both films were even well received “comebacks” after brief down periods. Violette, which Huppert won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival for, is her best performance for Chabrol, if for no other reason than a dreamy, disenchanted, rebellious bourgeois student trying to break free from the expectations of her controlling parents but forced to live a double life in the meantime gives her the most to work with. Violette is memorable because no matter what she does she seems to be both victim and victimizer. She can’t find anyone who doesn’t try to somehow box her in, her overbearing parents only accepting a proper little girl, the men at the night clubs mistaking her for a whore and treating her as such, and Dabin at best selling his affections. She’s always in conflict with her true self, taking advantage of others through her misrepresentation.

My favorite scene takes place early on when she’s looking to pick up a man who is reading a book in a bar. He hands it to her when she asks him what it’s about, but she tosses it back at him and makes her intentions clear by immediately placing her leg on the table (since Violette Noziere is set in 1933, her sexy attire opens down the middle so her legs are reveled upon certain movements). It’s vintage Huppert, saying nothing yet really saying everything.

An early 19th century period piece written by a man and told from the male perspective might be the last thing one would expect from an auteur who specializes in bringing self penned examinations of sexually from the female perspective. However, while not sexually explicit or taboo breaking like most of Catherine Breillat’s past work, The Last Mistress is far less of a departure than it may sound. In fact, perhaps with the lack of so called shock and controversy to sidetrack the discussion, more people will come to a better understanding of what Breillat has been about.

For me, the crucial Catherine Breillat film is her debut A Real Young Girl. Perhaps that’s partially due to the fact that having missed her next several released during the two plus decades it was banned, it wound up being the first one I saw after all. More likely, it’s because 8 years later it remains in my memory clearer than most of what I’ve seen in the last month. Though many of Breillat’s films, including The Last Mistress, are about male-female relationships, in A Real Young Girl, and subsequently such films as 36 Filette and Romance, the fact that they are primarily portraits of the female lead makes it clearer that her struggle is first and foremost with herself, and more precisely her own sexuality. This factor certainly extends to most of Breillat’s other films, which are different more due to the dynamic of dealing more specifically with the relationship itself and thus less specifically with the main character.

Catherine Breillat has noted David Cronenberg as a director whose approach to depicting sexuality is similar. I’m not sure I agree with this, as although both are clinically realistic as a rule, Breillat tackles the subject head on while outside of Crash Cronenberg tends to avoid it as the specific topic, dealing with the issue through the genre aspects. For example, he’ll turn an object that theoretically isn’t sexual such as a video game controller in eXistenZ into something that is. The similarity I see is not so much in their portrayal, but rather that both intuit that sex is first and foremost a battle between the mind and the body. There's a defect in the human wiring that sets the flesh, or more specifically the genitals, in opposition to the brain, and this conflict is central to the work of both directors even if Cronenberg depicts it through the bulging heads of Scanners.

A normal movie would focus on the torrid aspects of the relationship, either to titillate or if it’s a more recent movie probably to give the puritanical hypocrits something to sell the film on even though they won’t really showing that couldn’t be included in the trailer to avoid a rating that would prevent the film from achieving the only aspiration its producers ever had. In any case, Breillat is more concerned with the idea that the characters incense themselves as much if not more than each other. If you boil The Last Mistress down to its essence, forgetting about the customs and rules, the accepted and expected of life in 1835 Paris, ultimately the people are the same as in Breillat’s contemporary classics. With mind and body as opposing forces, the characters become disgusted with themselves for actions that are inherently in opposition to one or the other.

Ryno de Marigny (Breillat discovery Fu'ad Ait Aattou) criticizes the looks of Vellini (Asia Argento) the first time he sees her, making an enemy of the Spanish courtesan who happens to overhear his indiscreet words. Indiscretion is a point of pride for this young libertine, who sets out to win her affections from her wimpy dullard of a husband as well as his friend who was just bragging about her as the woman he’s chosen to try to have an affair with. In fact, his “courtship” includes kissing her the first time his stalking results in a meeting despite being warned her husband is around, actually whipping Sir Reginald (Nicholas Hawtrey) with a riding crop when he interrupts with his protest. But the crucial point is Ryno is at odds with his feelings about and desires for Vellini from the first moment he sees her.

Unwilling to fully commit to anything, Ryno essentially sacrifices nothing for Vellini. Meanwhile, Vellini gives up everything for him once she becomes interested. A bastard who was made respectable by marrying a rich old codger, Vellini is still never really accepted into society, largely because she’s totally incongruous with the fashions and customs of her time (far more modern). Vellini quickly leaves a whimpering Reginald, and she and Ryno attempt to escape the scandal by settling in a shack in the Algerian desert. All is well until their young daughter dies from a scorpion bite, at which point their love transforms into a painful bond rooted in this failure, with Vellini perpetually grieving through sex that now seems barbarous rape to Ryno, who supposedly goes along with it despite his disgust.

What I find frustrating about most tales is their entire basis lies in comforting fantasy. They have a way of making it seem so easy to cut ties to someone you’ve cared about. You might be miserable for a little while, but of course you’ll be no more miserable than you already were, and soon someone better will come along to bring the true happiness you always deserved. I find real life to be far closer to what we see in The Last Mistress where some event partially fractures the relationship, but you hang on in some form if for no other reason than you have no other choice. What you essentially hope, wish, and/or pray for is to turn back time, to forget that impediment that’s sprung up. Maybe you maintain the relationship because you still get something from it, even if it’s only the hope that things will somehow get better, beyond the pain and dissatisfaction that come along due to remembering the way it was. And that’s what I mean when I say you have no other choice, as even if someone chooses to end it because the gap between what it was and what it is has become too horrifying, you never forget. You may be distracted, but there’s always that part of you that comes back to longing for old joy. Though you might argue and fight with each other, the more pertinent conflict is once again internal. It’s either too much for the mind and too little for the body, or vice versa. If not, you would at least have the option of escaping with a clean slate, of moving on and never looking, or more precisely thinking, back.

According to Breillat, The Last Mistress is a more suitable title for Jules-Amedee Barbey d’Aurevilly’s novel than the actual French title Une vieille maitresse, which implies old where it means eternal. Though their affair seems to have petered out long ago, and they stop having sex with each other and find other partners, they can’t free themselves of its clutches. It becomes perpetual, as though they are theoretically only friends, they actually spend more time together than they did in the aftermath of their daughter’s death as they’ve gotten over the past enough to once again do other activities together. Vellini knows she’s only living when Ryno is around, so she won’t let him escape her, while Ryno is unaware of how the liaison has transformed him. From the start Ryno was obsessed with Vellini. It’s only her overwhelming grief that managed to put him off temporarily, as her own one-dimensional obsession for fighting the pain consumed her and thus overwhelmed their time together.

The tale centers on Ryno’s attempt to reform his libertine ways a make a commitment, not to 36-year-old Vellini who can’t move him that far despite the power she obviously maintains over him, but rather to pure virginal Hermangarde (Breillat regular Roxane Mesquida cast against type). Ryno vows to give up everything his life has been about to marry her, as true love is more powerful than Vellini’s sway or his own desire for freedom.

The better part of the film in more ways than one is the lengthy flashback where Ryno sells Hermangarde’s grandmother La marquise de Flers (Claude Sarraute) on his willingness to be true to her granddaughter by confessing his entire history with Vellini. Despite his professed intentions, we realize Ryno is at odds with his yearnings for Vellini, hoping they’ll go away through denial, thus sensing he’s trying to convince himself more than de Flers.

Le vicomte de Prony (Michael Lonsdale) and La comtesse d'Artelles (Yolande Moreau) wish to prevent the marriage, not really to protect Hermangarde, who is completely in love with Ryno. They’re simply a spiteful pair who endure each other largely due to gossip and the intrigue of playing games with the lives and reputations of others. Luckily for Ryno, de Flers is one of the veterans of the more licentious bygone era of Choderlos de Laclos who still opposes the closemindedness and puritanism brought on by the aristocracy giving way to the bourgeois. She prefers a penniless womanizer for her granddaughter than a rich dullard such as Vellini had.

Barbey d’Aurevilly’s 1851 novel, branded immoral, came at the end of this classic era of aristocratic literature, discussing complex desires and emotions, dealing with feelings that are difficult to pin down and put into words such as the way you can detest someone at the same time you love and need them. Male-female relationships are always power struggles in Breillat, and as a classic Breillat character Vellini loves to torment others, but first and foremost to bring agony on herself. A new aspect to Breillat that probably comes from adapting the novel is that the traditional gender characteristics are often subverted in The Last Mistress. Vellini is the dominant one, a violent and aggressive character who cuts her lovers face with a knife, and that’s when she’s not even angry with him. She smokes a cigarette with style, blowing big smoke rings. Meanwhile, Ryno is a dandy, the sensitive one who is dominated to the point of submitting to all but the crucial details that would keep them together forever.

Asia Argento is always a force of nature, but Breillat reigns her in and gives her enough legitimate high quality material to make her work to put over the movie rather than in spite of it. She still displays her out of control self-destructive behavior bred from boredom and contempt, but it’s the backbone of her character rather than disgust at the schlock that passes for a script. In The Last Mistress, she shows what an excellent actress she can be, conveying sadness, desperation, longing, regret, desire, and need without words.

Catherine Breillat has succeeded in credibly rendering an expensive looking 19th century costume drama for $10 million, or about what Hollywood would spend on dressing and doctoring the performers up so they were at their most gaudy and ridiculous. Her high quality literary adaptation actually lives and breathes once it’s been extracted from the page, which is rarely the case with adaptations of great literature from this era as they are either too theatrical, too modern, or are cast so ridiculously one wonders how the performers could not seem fishes out of water. Considering Breillat’s previous films were mostly intimate chamber pieces shot in small rooms, the fact The Last Mistress never seems an obvious literary adaptation like so many stilted and theatrical Masterpiece Theater productions, or even such poser art as the Merchant Ivory films is quite impressive. Though there are several anachronisms as usual, Breillat’s nuanced film features performances that feel natural despite the period garb and keenly heeds the subtleties of public behavior. This novel from the romantic period has translated into Breillat’s most passionate film, even though the main character Ryno, whose behavior winds up destroying all his women, isn’t the least bit romantic.

Succeeding in breaking out of her niche is a commendable accomplishment for Breillat. That said, she’s arguably the most unique voice in cinema and now she’s making the kind of movie Stephen Frears can make. I find this type of film far less intriguing than Breillat’s explorations of sexuality, as her feminine perspective and willingness to show raw, fiery realistic sex that’s beyond integral to the set her work apart from both the fantasy sex exploiters and the pornographers posing as artists. Still, even though it’s not an essential work like A Real Young Girl or Fat Girl, it’s better than the well-known films of its type such as Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons and Milos Forman’s Valmont. I still suspect it will be one of my favorite films of the year, and that’s quite an accomplishment considering not long ago we feared Breillat had made her final film.

The real hero of The Last Mistress is producer Jean-Francois Lepetit, also a supportive friend, who breathed life back into Breillat after her near-fatal cerebral hemorrhage left half her body paralyzed by promising to make the film she’s been wanting to make for so many years. The fact he was able to get a movie of this magnitude off the ground says a lot about his faith in her, as the cost was more than four times that of her previous feature Anatomy of Hell. Breillat fans may have to count on him if there’s to be a follow up to The Last Mistress, as her latest attempt Barbe bleue has been halted due to a tragic second stroke.

The combination of the easing of censorship regulations and horror films returning to vogue in the early 1970’s led to most everyone trying to cash in by simply sexing up old genre staples such as vampires and werewolves. One of the most original works of the period came from Spanish writer-director Amando de Ossorio, who reenvisioned the Templar Knights - a debunked western Christian military order pivotal to the Crusades who fell out of favor after the loss of the Holy Land and were tortured until they were burned at the stake due to their forced confession - as succeeding in their quest for eternal life to the point their new master Satan reincarnated them. They move at a snail’s pace as they are muertos sin ojos, literally dead without eyes, the mythological reason changing in each of the four Blind Dead entries, in this case they were left on the stake so long the crows picked their eyes out. The loss of one sense renders their others keener, the undead hunting by sound to the point they can hone in on a beating heart if it’s quiet enough. They would be easy to outrun if not for their ability to summon their ghostly steeds at will.

Though the first sequel Return of the Blind Dead owes much to George A. Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead with a small group of villagers holed up in a church bickering amongst themselves and conspiring to abandon and betray everyone else who isn’t in the room to save their own skin, it’s important to note the Templar Knights aren’t simply mindless zombies. In fact, de Ossorio protested this narrow and confining definition, insisting their withered and decayed physical appearance was more similar to mummies, but more importantly they were intelligent predators.

Due to de Ossorio actually doing something original, the clueless U.S. distributors had no idea how to market the movie. Their solution was to add a riotous prologue positioning the Blind Dead as apes returning not simply from the dead, but more importantly from the Planet of the Apes to wreak havoc on the humanoids. It apparently wasn’t enough that Franklin J. Schaffner’s quality film had already been soiled by three real shitty sequels - Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes with an even more anemic trifecta quickly forthcoming – we also need to poorly reedit good zombie mummy films to ape the popular trend of the time.

Though I doubt anyone would dare market it as such, the success of Tombs of the Blind Dead actually owes less to its original cool killers and far more to de Ossorio’s ability to channel Michelangelo Antonioni’s knack for spending enough time showing nature and desolate architecture our mind renders it abstractly. Roger Corman understood the horror potential of a decaying shabby Abbey in Tombs of Ligeia, but still failed to really capitalize on it. While a good film, certainly one of Corman’s better ones, he continued to primarily rely upon his traditional colorful studio atmospherics. Tombs of the Blind Dead has a dash of Mario Bava’s lush chamber bravura, but more importantly the film is among the best horrors at profiting from stillness and quiet, seeming tranquility. Combining the lack of human presence in recent times with de Ossorio’s painterly pacing and the absence of a plot to distract us from the terror of the unknown, de Ossorio allows our own mind to scare us. It’s the horror of the mysteriously abandoned rendered through lengthy takes mixed with the creepiness of the lurking crane shots that slowly consume us, filling our heads with a palpable sense of dread. Though not in the class with Bruno Dumont’s later masterpiece Twentynine Palms, the films are similar in that the horror largely lies in the anticipation of something bad happening.

The influence of Antonioni’s L’Avventura is obvious in what little plot exists, as a disappearance in a seemingly abandoned area sets the movie in motion. As is the case with many genre films, the material doesn’t live up to the artistry. The story revolves around the accidental reacquaintance of Virginia White (Maria Elena Arpon) with her old school confidant, best friend, and lesbian lover Betty Turner (Lone Fleming). Though Virginia is on vacation with Roger Whelan (Cesar Burner), he quickly invites Betty to join them on tomorrow’s camping trip, the duo flirting openly in between Roger’s assertions he and Virginia are just friends.

Quickly tired of their triffling, Virginia abandons the train and walks through a wide open field until she stumbles upon the dilapidated graveyard. This lengthy nearly silent sequence shows de Ossorio at his finest, teasing trouble through the words of the venerable train conductor but depicting a very able Virginia setting up her own campsite amidst the ruins. Few filmmakers have the confidence to try to sustain the audience’s interest during lengthy segments of a lone human, but they are innately intense as whether the outlet is horror or adventure we always expect something bad to happen since they have no safety net.

Anton Garcia Abril’s dense progressive score is crucial to the success of Tombs of the Blind Dead. It’s among the quietest scores in all of horror, done without any rhythm section and with very little repetition. Mixing religious chants, natural sounds such as the wind stirring and birds chirping, and various string and percussion instruments that appear for 1 to 5 notes then disappear, the score is so subtle you don’t discern most of the elements and are hardly aware of the feelings of insecurity it imbues.

Beyond the atmosphere, anticipation sets Tombs of the Blind Dead apart. Most films with stalking killers are deadly boring. I mean, one deserves a medal for sitting through the testament of endurance known as a Friday the 13th sequel, though such levels of masochism greatly exceed the recommended daily requirement. Amando de Ossorio pulls slow off by making the Knights exist apart from time. They creep along at turtles pace, but slow and steady wins the race. Their horseback pursuits are rendered in slow motion, so instead of catching up to the running woman in seconds we dreadfully await the inevitable. Even when a human should temporarily escape, for instance Roger makes it to the Abbey door after a mad dash with minutes to spare only to have the women battle it out over whether to grant him safe passage as the Templar Knights creep ever closer.

De Ossorio rarely allows us to see the whole of his creatures, initially filming shots of hands to withhold the revelation of the monster. In this case, we see skeletal hands opening the ancient tombs from the inside. Later, the groping bones grasp through architecture that’s less protective than the silly humans realize.

De Ossorio’s later films are gorier, though not better for it. Despite being positioned within exploitation genres, their tendency is to deeroticize. Delving into the torture genre that had recently become fashionable, de Ossorio’s mix of sex and violence tends to reveal the breasts of attractive women only to instantly mutilate them (the rubbery prosthetics are about as exciting as what passes for breasts in today’s porn). While his movies are erotic for their textures and moods, even a film such as The Loreley’s Grasp, a kind of variation on the mermaid myth where an eternally youthful sexpot alternately transforms into a reptilian chick shredder who preys on nubile young woman in heat over their new protector, a hunter played by Tony Kendall, is at best minimally stimulating. De Ossorio’s creatures tend to be in the vein of vampires in that they murder solely for their own renewal, for eternal immortality, but rather than being a metaphor for sex they seem to instead demythologize it by making us recoil from what we desire.

An abortion film which avoids outward statements about the topic sounds as if it would be a Hollyplastic “entertainment” primarily designed not to keep the 50% who would fall on the side they came out against from passing through the turnstiles rather than a Cannes Film Festival winner. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days wasn’t made to scare people from making the same mistakes the two young women it features did in 1987, nor to change the law, both points became irrelevant anyway when the law was repealed in his Cristian Mingiu’s home country of Romania. Mingiu is simply attempting to paint a realistic picture of life under an oppressive and repressive regime. Though then ruler Nicolae Ceasescu is never mentioned, the sterile gray atmosphere with dreary rooms that seem a prison without bars and the tidbits of the bleak and desperate lives of ordinary Romanians that creep into the back of the frames doesn’t paint a rosy picture of his reign.

The subject of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days could have been different, and in fact will be if Mingiu gets to make the other stories he’s written about Romanian life under Ceausescu, but the important point is the abortion tale contains the primary aspects – fear, anxiety, paranoia, and guilt – of life in a country where everyone but the rich are forced to hustle. Everyday life shifts you into survival mode, with scared animals tending to behave desperately and brutally.

A great example of getting past the distraction of providing information conventionally considered crucial to the plot by simply ignoring it, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days shows you can imply far more when you state very little. Taking place over the course of an afternoon and night, the film feels as if it unfolds in real time through the single setup lengthy handheld takes. All the major decisions have been made before the film begins, allowing it to be told in a manner of fact manner that excludes aspects that are no longer relevant, such as the identity of the father who has been excised from the picture.

If 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days makes an important statement on abortion it lies in getting past the nonsensical partisanship and looking at examples of how the lives of actual human beings are effected. The removal of all the background information has a very specific purpose, to allow Mingiu to depict the characters without judgment or applying corollaries. With artificial birth control banned in addition to abortion, Gabita’s (Laura Vasiliu) case was hardly unique, but Mingiu chooses not to even mention that Ceausescu law, as it could be seen as an excuse. Countless women who don’t really want or can’t really afford a baby wind up pregnant, so why should an important issue come down to feeling sorry for one girl or saying she deserved it simply because someone decided to make a movie about her?

Just as the law doesn’t care of or consider your circumstances, Mingiu refuses to allow his film to become a specific case. Obviously such a law prevents some people from having the procedure, but also puts the business in the hands of black marketeers, theoretically creating a more dangerous service due to it being performed without qualification, regulation, or to a certain extent even recourse. The abortionist Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) tends to be considered a bad guy as he’s an insensitive and scolding arrogant hothead, but he’s just one of the many people who live their life going about doing what they deem necessary.

Gabita jeopardizes Bebe’s operation by failing to follow any of the few simply directions he’s requested of her. She may be a much nicer character, but while he makes no attempt to hide his identity, she's dishonest with him about everything, even irrelevant details such as claiming her college roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) is her sister. Starting with the fourth month, terminating a pregnancy shifts from abortion to homicide, now carrying a sentence of 5-10 years in the clink. Though Gabita tries to play Bebe for a fool claiming she’s just 2 months gone, the title obviously refers to the length of her pregnancy even though no such specifics are ever uttered during the course of Mingiu’s film. With all the confidence Gabita inspires, it’s a wonder why Bebe doesn’t leave her high and dry.

Once you’ve eliminated the idea the film is going to be about good and evil or one of those we’re right and you’re wrong sermons, we can consider what it’s like to be one of these characters. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is an unsentimental observation of its characters from their perspective. The film is mostly about friendship, as the primary focus is Otilia rather than Gabita. She’s there because she believes she has the kind of bond where either party does what’s necessary to help the other. Her simpleton friend would probably bungle the aid, but she trusts that Gabita would understand she needed help and at least make an effort. The whole ordeal makes Otilia realize her boyfriend Adi (Alexandru Potocean) might not be the right man for her because even though he’s a more competent assistant, he’s not thoughtful and perceptive enough to know when he should lend a hand.

Otilia has no personal stake beyond the wellbeing of a friend who can’t do this alone. With even the major events that take place during the movies tight time frame are largely kept offscreen, blocked by distance if not a specific impediment such as a wall, much is left to the imagination. Mingiu’s skill lies in provoking us on the mental, emotional, and even physical level. Much of the film relies upon your wonderment over what Otilia is thinking. But as the acting is superb you believe you can tell more accurately than if Mingiu resorted to stating all his points. The key scene takes place when she begrudgingly leaves Gabita, probe in vagina, to attend the birthday party of her boyfriend’s mother. You see she’s about when she’s with her boyfriend because she’s worried about Gabita. Though Mingiu seemingly does nothing beyond allow cinematographer Oleg Mutu to roll a reel of film, shoot her from the other side of the table as the bourgeois adults ramble on. To an extent, Otilia is made to feel wanted even though they look down upon her for being a lower social class, but the conversation doesn’t involve her in any way, and she increasingly tunes it out. Otilia is at the center of the frame, yet even though she’s to the side of most others, she never seems more on an island. Otilia never says a word, but we imagine she’s having visions of Gabita dying or getting arrested because there’s no one there to help her. It’s hard to remember a scene so isolating.

Mingiu’s unadorned cinema verite style handheld realism makes the obvious comparison to the cinema of the Dardenne Brothers such as The Son or L’Enfant. However, the unease the film generates makes it a bit closer to Lodge Kerrigan’s Keane. Kerrigan always utilizes the tension of the unknown. Even when there’s an obvious threat in his movies, just as often some other form of danger seems to lurk at every corner. Whether tangible or imagined, it feels very real. The lack of polish, slickness, and musical score only serve to amplify our apprehension. Mingiu seems the most understated of this group of directors, slowly escalating and intensifying the panic and dread. Doom seems as preordained as the multitude of decisions made without or participation, yet the brilliance of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is you get so caught up in worrying something awful is going to happen to at least one of the women it doesn’t matter if it actually does. It’s almost a win win situation for Mingiu, as a positive result will be greeted with great relief while you’d have to be oblivious to the tone of inevitability to be unprepared for a negative one.

The acting is great all around, as everyone not only holds your attention, but has you hanging on the most minute expression or gesture that might reveal their mind.

Anamaria Marinca, who despite her silence often seems an open book, dominates the film as the character who always has to take charge and be resourceful because no one else can or will. She’s submissive to men to a point, and would like to be able to trust and rely on someone, but being less vulnerable than Gabita doesn’t keep her out of trouble. Actually, her self sufficiency and responsibility seems to force her into more situations and conflicts. Laura Vasiliu does a great job of balancing her role. She’s out of her depth without being an idiot, helpless without being a clown. Vlad Ivanov’s performance is also very notable, as he’s a forceful and volatile presence who adds much to the dangerous dynamic without seeming inherently evil.

Fear of Fear

Mining for the societal causes of mental illness was one of the primary dedications of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cinema. Fassbinder’s search turned the camera on his audience, showing his characters left discontented by bourgeois ideals and soulless societal comforts. They unhappiness wouldn’t be cured by others, as their allies are too oblivious to help them, hostel judgmental foes do more damage with their condescending looks than they can imagine, and doctors simply cash in by creating addictions with their pills.

Turning the accepted back upon his audience, Fassbinder depicted previously well adjusted males being transformed into murdering madmen in such sympathetic films as Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?, I Only Want You to Love Me, and Despair. One of the great directors of females, Fassbinder examines the another possibility in Fear of Fear, violence against yourself. The most painful aspect of Margot’s (Margit Carstensen) life is thinking about the emotions she’s unable to convey; slitting her wrist is actually a relief as pain at least distracts Margot from her fearful thoughts. Margot, who takes FDR too literally as she actually fears fear itself, is neither able to solve her own problems nor convey them to others. The inability to communicate has deadly and debilitating results in Fassbinder’s filmography, for instance Fox and His Friends, with Margot becoming self-destructive due to her inability to change or escape her isolating environment.

The film is entirely told from Margot’s point of view, which is good in so far as Margit Carstensen is more than up to the task of being at the center of every scene. She portrays insanity with subtlety and restraint, only expressing enough for the audience to comprehend the effects of her anxiety. Though not exactly what Americans would think of as a Telefilm, Fear of Fear does fit the bill when it comes to being a bit too polemic. The characters and scenarios are black and white, with Margot being the only real person, trapped in a world inhabited by shallow lifeless order protectors. The fact her sister-in-law Lore (Irm Hermann) has to assert “We’re the normal ones” only serves to prove the point far too bluntly for my tastes.

Margot’s husband Kurt (Ulrich Faulhaber) goes to grad school after his engineering job, so he’s eternally weary to the point he doesn’t even want to budge when her water breaks. The young couple live in a comfortably, but until Kurt gets his credential they’re stuck in a complex with Kurt’s family living above them. Postpartum depression may play a small role in Margot’s difficulties, but Margot is a warm lively figure with no outlet for her personality, constricted by her perpetually spying busybody in-laws who scoff at her every move.

Kurt’s family not only fails to respond to Margot’s positive emotions, they never show any affection even to those they actually do like. Kurt’s mother (Brigitte Mira) even complains that Margot has her hands on her children too much, doing such awful things as hugging and kissing them. Karli (Fassbinder’s then lover Armin Meier), who is married to Lore, is nice to his sister-in-law when his wife isn’t around, but she bitches if she catches him treating Margot decently, putting him in the same would be sympathetic but unable to identify and satisfy Margot’s needs and desires class as Kurt.

In addition to being a German variation on Douglas Sirk’s melodramas on American middle class life, Fassbinder borrows thriller elements from Alfred Hitchcock. After watching Margot swim a pool for 10 minutes Karli comments she looked mad swimming back and forth, leading to a motif where Fassbinder employs a rippling effect every time Margot has an attack. She’s been able to keep her head above water through her strong will and ability to sway Kurt from listening to his mother and sister, but that’s robbed upon entry into the meek follower factory known as the psychiatric ward.

Kurt Rabb, who played the eponymous reliable man who is numbed into homicidal insanity in Why Did Herr R. Run Amok?, returns to essentially play a later version of Herr R. Now that his lunacy is accepted, everyone is afraid of him, and thus does their best to avoid the catatonic man who wonders the streets aimlessly. If there’s something tangible Margot has to fear, it’s that this is likely to be what the future holds.

Amongst the least pretentious non-linear ensemble pieces, Karen Moncrieff’s

The Dead Girl isn’t about intertwining the characters or establishing any connections beyond the obvious, but rather illuminating the consequences loss has had on a group of disparate women. Instead of manufacturing coincidental encounters of the third rate kind, Moncrieff allows her film to simply be a series of thematically linked short stories.

The insightful self-contained portraits center on a specific topic, dealing with the absence of an important person. Starting with people who are coming into contact with the dead girl for the first time, the movie slowly edges closer to the heart of the story. In the end, the first three segments are the most interesting and original, as though these periphery stories normally wouldn’t be deemed essential enough to even warrant inclusion, they greatly expand upon our understanding of the far reaching effects of someone’s departure.

Life has been a perpetual haunting for these women even when the dead girl was alive, but the knowledge of her passing or their post death involvement with her has brought the unbearable nature of being without someone to the surface. Even in the case of Ruth (Mary Beth Hurt), the bitter woman who refuses to divorce her neglectful philandering husband Carl (Nick Searcy), the fact that he will soon return from his latest escapade doesn’t make him any less absent than the missing child or runaway teen. In a way, it makes his emotional abandonment all the more painful. Certainly the damage is enough to put Ruth in the same hole as the others, trapped in her own prison.

Defining their lives in reaction to their loss, each segment features a woman who is dead internally. With the exception of the final segment, which shows the last day of the eponymous character Krista (Brittany Murphy) the others are in various ways affected by, since they aren’t technically dead they can find the strength and courage to come back to life by trying to begin again. Awkward, isolated, and repressed Arden (Toni Collette) seizes her 15 minutes of fame for discovering the body to break free from her ungrateful, controlling and demeaning invalid mother (Piper Laurie), even if only to go out on what seems with as though it could be her first ever date with Rudy (Giovanni Ribisi), a creepy grocery store employee who recognizes her from the news and mostly talks about serial killers. Leah (Rose Byrne), a medical school student who interns prepping bodies for the coroner, discovers a birthmark on the dead girl which bares eerie resemblance to that of her 15-years lost sister. Her mother Beverley’s (Mary Steenburgen) relentless quest to find her missing sister, devoting most of her time to tending to tasks such as the perpetual dissemination of age-enhanced photos, has led her to be inattentive to the daughter she still has. The idea of closure, even if not of the ideal sort, allows depressed Leah to temporarily break from spending all her waking hours trying to distract herself from the grief by burying herself in work and study and embark upon a social life.

Though guys aren’t depicted favorably with abuse, repression, desperation, domination, and neglect being major themes, The Dead Girl isn’t the typical Lifetime or uplifting women’s movie. It’s dark and unsettling, and though some characters wind up better off, it’s hardly a showcase for girl power. It’s more a question of having the courage to take a step in another direction, which rather than being typically portrayed as a brilliant solution is still closer to filling their void with something arguably as problematic, or deciding to stay the course.

Though each story adds details to the previous, The Dead Girl is not about solving the mystery of who murdered Krista. Plot, solution, preaching, and moralizing are foreign to the narrative. The stories are mysterious and open ended, but hardly opaque as the point is to show the effects of loss from several angles. The movie is quite intense, in part due to there only being enough surface development to pique our curiosity about the unknown. It makes us want to plunge into the unknowable secret lives of others to discover if our guesses are accurate. Moncrieff does pierce through the surface, but carefully enough to allow only drops of the character’s pain and desperation to seep out.

Some viewers will be annoyed by t he lack of closure, but I prefer something that doesn’t consistently provide more explanation than is necessary and allows me to fill in the blanks and imagine. I’d rather be left wanting more than with the usual feeling that the characters lives essentially end as all the questions about their future are answered and it’s clear sailing from here on out.

A former actress, Karen Moncrieff scribes the movie to allow the actors to make it and deliver a memorable performance or fail. The lack of the dreadful and unnatural we’re explaining the plot dialogue combined with leaving their futures unsettled forces the performers to evoke years of miserable alive but dead status and hint at what’s in store through a brief sample of the present. Their emotions, or lack thereof, combined with the manner in which they are currently living provide us with most of the backstory we get.

The primary aspect that makes the roles so difficult is the actors have 15-20 minutes to create dissimilar characters, the longstanding lifeless single-minded griever that has been existing since whatever tragedy stunted them and the new person that either attempts to break free of their jail or at least willingly chooses it. Brittany Murphy plays her typical cliche-ridden trailer trash skank, but Mary Beth Hurt, Toni Collette (even if outshined by Giovanni Ribisi), & Rose Byrne among others are more than up to the task. In the end, The Dead Girl is the type of film ensemble acting awards were created to honor.

Killer of Sheep

During the years Charles Burnett was working on his masters degree at UCLA, he became a teacher’s assistant to Elyseo Taylor, who founded the Ethno-Communications department at the university to urge minorities to tell stories about their own communities. Burnett’s masters thesis Killer of Sheep is testament to how startling it is to see a film which isn’t boxed into the detached and delusional notions of what the rich white men who determine what films are made and distributed believe is a realistic depiction of a black community. In other words, Burnett has actually made a movie about the hood that isn’t sold on crime, gang violence, drugs, pimps, ho’s, cussing, and sex. The results are quite simply stunning; are unfamiliarity with these characters, scenes, and experiences shocks us, marking Killer of Sheep as an original work that seems to truly share the black ghetto communal experience for the first time.

There’s nothing flashy or sensational about ghetto life in Charles Burnett’s Blaxsploitation riposte; even if the community itself is vibrant enough to have a certain charm, impoverished life is a grind that’s horrifying. Rescuing black films from the unrealistic commercial cliches and didactic and stereotypical polemics on “black issues”, Burnett has produced an actual alternative to the cinema of false empowerment or of an action that ultimately breeds complacency when it fails to solve the problems. Charles Burnett not only created a time capsule of 1970’s ghetto life with Killer of Sheep, he transformed the viewer’s perceptions of inner city black culture by presenting a humane and poetic evocation of his community. Rather than perpetuate the myths, Burnett’s camera is a peaceful, objective observer of everyday life, sensitively and respectfully presenting the minutia at its most undramatic.

The main character Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) is a family man who has no energy for them. No suave Superfly hero, Stan is more similar to flatfly; he’s such a ladies man he’s not even capable of satisfying his (unnamed) wife (Kaycee Moore) despite his desire to do so if he wasn’t so sluggish. People who don’t have the responsibility of working are much better at making the best of things and maintaining a sunny disposition than Stan, though their liveliness and boredom still often results in petty squabbles.

Stan seems to be about the only person who actually does work, so it’s his responsibility, perhaps duty, to maintain his mind numbing job at the slaughterhouse, if only for the benefit of those who rely upon him. Burnett refuses to take the easy rode and present the abattoir as the root of all evil, as that would play into the foolish notion all his problems could be solved by either correcting the current job (union power) or finding a different one. Though lack of money is everyone’s biggest problem, Stan’s job is typically both a positive and negative, and never the centerpiece. Stan knows he’s lucky to have a job at all even though it’s deadened him, but the focus of the movie is instead on his unsatisfying idle time. We see a breezy whimsical montage of Stan at work, but are still smart enough to sense his dissatisfaction through the subtle ways his distaste for the slaughterhouse bleeds into, if not dominates, his family life.

Stan loves his family and would go down trying to support them, but he’s not going to suddenly become a lawyer. What’s he has the ability to do is maintain the standard, which as low as it may be is working for a living. The slave wages necessitate a life of poverty, but his lot in life is to do what’s in his power, preserve the subsistence living he’s allowed to eke out. The path to maintain the value is paved with acceptance and endurance. Though Stan is steadfast, if anything his willpower makes things more difficult, as he has to continually struggle to find reasons to maintain the consistent stance the rest of the screw ups find perplexing.

Stan rebukes the hoods who offer him money to take a non-violent part in a hit because it goes against his code. Even though he’d rather be poor than a crook, he refuses to accept the fact he already is indigent. At one point he tries to prove he’s middle class by pointing out that he gives things to the Salvation Army, including the disclaimer “We may not have a damn thing sometimes”. What Barnett is showing is everyone believes they are middle class as long as they can point to someone worse off, and Stan knows Walter, a man who eats “nothing but wild greens picked out of a vacant lot”. In order to prove he’s not destitute, Stan works up the nerve to spend most of his paycheck on a used (stolen?) engine in an attempt to get his car on the road. It winds up falling out of the back of the truck they are attempting to hall it in, an example of how hope is so easily dashed, forcing you to shift to an alternate way to rescue your spirits.

The lack of means to attain goods renders violence alluring, but there’s no heroism in Stan fighting the urge to pillage and plunder. The temptation of crime is always there because the institutionalized racism doesn’t allow working class life in the slums to provide a standard of living above subsistence and survival. Mean spiritedness seems innate to depravation, whether it be kids tossing dirt on freshly hung clothes or adults responding to the need for money with a “go rob a liquor store like everyone else” sort of scoffing retort.

Stan is not so much alienated by his attempted acceptance of deprivation as an alien, struggling to articulate his feelings to those who avoid such subjects. Among the many humorous scenes, Stan uses a steaming hot cup of coffee to evoke the metaphor of the feeling of his wife’s forehead during sex. Finding these sort of positives give him a reason to go on, but verbalizing them simply elicits the mocking rebuff from Bracy (Charles Bracy), “I don’t go for women with malaria!”

A mix of sweet and rueful humor, Killer of Sheep could be described as the folly of being forced to muddle through an insurmountable cesspool. Life is a constant battle between desire and denial in their many forms, with Stan perhaps learning a lesson of acceptance through a series of scenes where we can see his foolishness but can’t really blame him for it because he’s striving to maintain his pride and dignity.

Though regularly compared to Italian neorealism due to aspects such as the low budget black and white documentary aesthetic with location shooting amidst the ruins, the use of non-professional actors, and the desire to compassionately tell human stories, it’s perhaps more important to consider the astounding differences. Charles Burnett’s first feature lacks the usual noble and sentimental underpinnings associated with neorealism, particularly the Vittorio De Sica variety. He also isn’t one of those privileged white men who bring the plight of the disenfranchised to the masses because he pities them; he is these people and they are him. Moving to Los Angeles from the South, in his case Mississippi as a very young boy, was a common occurrence for African Americans of his generation, and Burnett has cast Killer of Sheep with his friends and relatives, admittedly typecast. In addition to Killer of Sheep, Burnett’s next two films My Brother’s Wedding and To Sleep With Anger were also set in the Watts ghetto he was so familiar with, and his subsequent good albeit far more commercial police thriller The Glass Shield is still set in Los Angeles. If there’s a primary reason Killer of Sheep isn’t one of those grim, relentlessly downbeat films it’s perhaps that even amidst the worst circumstances people such as Barnett can rise above their surroundings and earn a chance to do something with their lives.

The commercially released songs used without authorization may have landed the film in distribution purgatory for 30 years, ranking it alongside Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising as two of the most difficult highly regarded US made cult classics to actually see in North America, but the blues and Negro Spirituals are so crucial to the films theme and tone of coping with what one must deal with the film couldn’t be released without them. Thankfully Milestone Video forked over $150,000 in rights fees, an astronomical number considering Burnett made the entire film for less than $10,000.

The songs are sometimes used for ironic counterpoint, for instance the lyrics of “The House I Live In”, a Paul Robeson standard say “The children on the playground, the faces that I see, all races and religions, that’s America to me” but we only see black kids, and they are sitting on the park wall throwing stones because there’s little else one can do in such a dirt patch. Making the best of things, going on in spite of your lot in life is the best one can do. That’s why Stan is the man, even if one of the least heroic stars in all of film. Burnett shows us filmmaking is not about distracting the audience from the suckiness of life with the usual sugar coating or simply hammering home how much it sucks to placate the cynical audience through finding someone who is willing to tell their truth, but rather dealing with the fact in order to keep it from grinding you into the dirt. Life is a kind of spiritual quest to keep your chin up in spite of your knowledge things may well be as good as they’ll ever get. Rather than struggling to ignore the truth, the challenge of life isn’t happiness through willful ignorance but rather unsparing reality. It’s only when you accept the worst you can begin to discover the beauty that is actually present in your life.

Bereft of plot or any sort of conventional narrative, Burnett presents a mosaic of ghetto life. His episodic movie alternates between the difficulties his lethargic and glum main character experiences and scenes of neighborhood. The vitality of the neighborhood is stunningly captured, and even if the non-professionals very obviously read a line now and then, their demeanor and body language adds a considerable amount of texture.

The ramshackle neighborhood is a lively badlands. Lacking anything new or even kept up, the hood is reminiscent of a battlefield even though no bombs have been dropped. Most of the neighborhood scenes involve children. Growing up in this quarter they are forced to playing wherever than can with whatever they can find, so to an extent the kids are violent because their toys are rocks and dirt. We see how their innocent games mirror their potential downfall, imagining in 15 years their bounding across rooftops will be a method of escape. But through the choice of activities depicted we subliminally understand how the adults teach the children their ways without trying. Desperation breeds cruelty and violence, but on the other hand generosity, as when you can’t simply pay someone for whatever you need you are forced to rely on the good will of others.

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