Special Features Archives 1

2-27-08

In the year 2000

As I went through IMDb searching for upcoming films with the tremendous burden of anxiety that 2007 was a fluke, I came upon the realization that 2009, if all goes according to schedule (as it never does) may be an even richer year for film, and this is just based on studio projects that are already on the docket.  Of course there will be all kinds of indie darlings that sprout up between now and then, or even studio projects that are outside my scope right now, not to mention movies that haven't even been thought of yet.  But as it stands, let me give you a sneak peak at next year:

First, we get three titans of American cinema, a title I wouldn't even bestow on the likes of Ridley Scott or The Coens (well...maybe the Coens, but I wanted to emphasize the longevity of these three).  We're talking oldies.  Francis Ford F-ing Coppola gives us Tetro, a semi-autobiographical story of an artistic Italian immigrant family in New York.  The debacle of Youth Without Youth aside--the New York Times liked it, for one, and I am extremely excited about it--this seems like a more traditional story Coppola might tell, and the fact that it's something he lived makes it even alluring.  Martin Scorsese is joining the ranks of rival Clint Eastwood and Ben Affleck in filming a movie of a Dennis Lehane novel, this one Shutter Island.  It's about two US Marshals searching for an escaped asylum inmate and learning about surprising practices at the asylum, all while a massive hurricane approaches the island, and even better, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Max von Sydow, Emily Mortimer, and Jackie Earle Haley.  Supposedly, he's also doing The Rise and Fall of Theodore Roosevelt starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and I seriously hope he gets both done in the same year!  And lastly, Steven Spielberg brings us his space movie Interstellar, which little is known about, and he follows up (as he did with Jurassic Park/Schindler's List or War of the Worlds/Munich) with Lincoln, starring Liam Neeson.

Speaking of sci-fi, Doug Liman brings us a currently untitled movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal about a lunar expedition, the kicker for me being that it's set in a time of frenzied lunar colonization.  James Cameron returns at long last with Avatar, about people projecting their consciousnesses into robots that explore a harsh planet.  And David Fincher delivers Rendezvous with Rama, based on an Arthur C. Clarke story about a crew sent to explore a spaceship hurtling at the sun, which I'm even more excited about.  Next, John Carter of Mars, based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, sees a Civil War soldier transported to Mars where he finds a thriving civilization.  The best for last:  Star Trek XI arrives in May with a solid cast and some A-level pre-production.  So the main genre that was excluded from 2007's glory will make its grand return in 2009. 

Relatedly, Watchmen, the god of graphic novels, will finally be hitting theaters, with a brilliant cast including my favorite, Billy Crudup.  And Y--The Last Man, with director DJ Caruso and writer Brian K Vaughn, should be arriving as well, even though it's only supposed to take us to about issue #14 of 60.  Other comicon-ish movies I can't wait for:  Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards, his oft-delayed WWII epic is supposedly slated for 2009, and Guillermo Del Toro's 3993, an excellent-sounding story of a link between Franco Spain in '39 and a kid in '93.  Alfonso Cuaron probably won't get all four of his projects scheduled for 2009 done by then, but I'll take any one of them.

If Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, Cameron, Tarantino and Fincher don't take up all the Best Director slots, then maybe Peter Jackson, the Coen Brothers, Terry Gilliam, Michael Mann, or Terrence Malick have a shot.  Peter Jackson's doing The Lovely Bones, starring Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Michael Imperioli, and more, and I really can't wait for this one.  The Coens are delivering Hail Caesar, about a 1920s theatre troupe performing Julius Caesar, while Gilliam gives us (finally) The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, about a travelling theater that cryptically gives the audience more than they expect.  Michael Mann also takes us back in time, to the '30s, with Public Enemies, which sees Christian Bale playing a federal agent trying to take down the famous gangsters of the era.  And lastly, Malick's Tree of Life is the least likely to actually come out in 2009, but the one I am most excited about (apart from Interstellar). 

See what I mean?  2009 already looks incredible, and writers strike-willing, it'll all go according to plan.  And like I said, more great, but smaller projects will probably show up further livening the field.  For instance, PTA, Sofia Coppola, or David Lynch may have a movie going by then.  I can't believe we're finally at a year where all these huge-name directors are going to have movies competing against one another.  If it all works out--and most of these movies are already in pre-production, so most ought to actually hit theaters as scheduled--2009 may actually be able to give 2007 a run for its money. 

2-25-08

My baloney has a first name

I love the Oscars!  I don't think an industry award (ideally) for excellence is excessively self-congratulatory, nor do I think a 3-hour-plus ceremony is too much.  I do think they should stop expecting huge ratings if they continue to have 4-hour ceremonies whose nominees are all small movies nobody but real movie-lovers have seen (or in some cases, even heard of).  I'm not complaining about anything other than the expectation of massive ratings.  The time of events has come and gone, my friend.  There's no MASH finale, no Roots, and certainly no Titanic.  Frankly, I'm thrilled we're progressing.  And I'm equally thrilled that the Academy, for the past few years now, has consistently nominated mostly small, independent movies.  Only one movie from the Best Picture nominees in 2006 and 2007 (The Departed and Juno) made over $100 million domestically, and none did in 2005, and it's nice to see the Academy supporting quality over quantity (or trying to anyway).  Anyway, this year was probably the best Oscars I can remember, awards-wise anyway.  The ceremony was good, and Jon Stewart was even better than last time, but the writers strike lowered the bar a bit.  I've seen 53 of the past 80 Best Picture winners, and I loved that montage, but there were a few too many flashbacks to previous Academy Awards when I'd have preferred to find out more about this one.

A liveblog of the show called it "Zzzz Country for Boring Montages," which I thought was pretty funny.  So the final four awards had no surprises.  I much prefer that to a crappy Michael Clayton upset.  And come on, No Country for Old Men is unequivocally (when I say something's unequivocally something, it's because I'm precluding argument.  It is literally impossible to argue with me when I state opinions as fact) one of the best Best Pictures in history.  I only think the Oscars have awarded the right movie as best picture 10 times, which means if they just picked C every year, they'd probably have a better score.  But No Country for Old Men belongs up there with the Godfathers, Casablanca, Schindler's List, and Return of the King.  I mean, I liked The Departed, and I don't think Crash is quite as bad as I make it out to be, but this, as I have said, is a brilliant movie.  I'm very happy to have loved both No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood (and Atonement, and Juno, and Once, and...), and how can you argue with bestowing multiple Oscars on the team that deserved them for Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother Where Art Thou?  PTA will have his day, and I just can't wait to see what he does next.  Javier Bardem too was a worthy recipient, although he's obviously a lead, and what a speech.  My only complaint:  Roderick Jaynes lost out for editing!  Someone please give Roderick Jaynes an Oscar!

Daniel Day-Lewis is the only right choice for Best Actor, whenever he's up for the award, so the Academy earned back some good will there.  At least until Kevin Costner wins it next year.  And There Will Be Blood also scored Robert Elswit an Oscar for Cinematography, very well-deserved.  To me, Cinematography and Supporting Actor were the strongest categories of the night.  Roger Deakins can join the ranks of Scorsese and others who deserved an Oscar long before they got one.  Actually, it's weird that my second choices won a lot of the Oscars, and yet I wasn't disappointed at all.  Okay, Tilda Swinton was a disappointing win--have they even seen I'm Not There?--but she was genuinely nonplussed, gave a personable speech, and apparently (according to the world) is a deserving actress.  Marion Cotillard was not disappointing, on the other hand, despite my not even having seen La Vie en Rose.  Frankly, I don't think Julie Christie's performance was that great, however blasphemous that statement is.  I thought she was fine, but I can name five performances I prefer to hers from this year. 

The highlight of the night was the performance of "Falling Slowly" and the inevitable Oscar win by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.  Their speeches were incredible, and they are officially now everyone's favorite Oscar-winners.  And seriously, Bill Conti is a tool.  The whole point of televising the Oscars is to shine a light on the people who make movies happen.  Not letting them speak is counterproductive.  And Best Score went to the only right choice (the only score nominated that I even remember), Atonement.  The typewriter as an instrument is beautiful, and I regularly rewatch the opening of Atonement just to here that score.  Apart from the Big 8 Awards (Picture, Director, Acting, and Writing), I really only care about Score, Cinematography, and Art Direction (which speaking of, Sweeney Todd, for all it's visual panache does not match up to the two-and-a-half hour period apocalypse There will be Blood)--and occasionally Song, but not really that often.  If they're so intent on garnering ratings, I say cut the rest from the televised ceremony and stick to the more interesting between-awards asides.  Things like the sound mixing choir, or excerpts from the nominated scripts, well-done montages even (but not too many).  And cut out Gil Cates speech every year.  You're old!  God, I love being in my 20s.  Oh, and if you're going to diminish work by foreign-language, animated, and documentary directors by grouping them in separate categories with less competition, then go ahead and relegate them to the untelevised ceremony too.  Just remember that Life is Beautiful and Beauty and the Beast competed against their live-action English-language counterparts with dignity. 

At the end of the day, with the Oscars representing the grand finale of 2007, my enjoyment of the ceremony helps me appreciate 2007 even more.  The greatest year for movies in a while wasn't even tainted by poor Oscar choices.  If, say, George Clooney--who is a fine actor who gave a great, understated performance in Michael Clayton, and who would make a terrific Oscar host, btw--won Best Actor, it would diminish my memories of 2007.  Instead, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood were two of the four movies that walked away with multiple awards.  And now I can walk away from 2007 without bludgeoning any Oscar voters with a bowling pin.  "I'm finished."

2-21-08

The Brandon method

I am quite clearly an egomaniac, and it's getting difficult to find more things to attach my name to.  Fortunately, Ryan inspired me to discuss my approach to criticism (specifically film, but it pretty much applies to everything).  We talked mostly about the differences between traditional narratives and surrealist works, and eventually got into art and philosophy.  At the end of the day, I support Socrates in that we don't really know anything.  For instance, I can write till the cows come home about how great I'm Not There is, but as semiotics major Todd Haynes knows, my meaning can never be exactly conveyed.  It's the same with movies.  A director can write, shoot, and edit his movie so that it has the exact meaning he wants, but that doesn't mean that's what I'm going to experience.  So the idea that something like even Citizen Kane can be universally adored is ridiculous.  Some people are just going to flat-out dislike it, which is perfectly valid. 

At the end of my entry on There will be Blood, I wrote that while all of the prior analysis adds to my appreciation, it became my favorite movie of the year because of how entertained I was during the movie and how badly I wanted to rewatch it many more times.  While I think any assertion as to my film criticism can be written off as generalization--for instance, to say I admire this over that can always be disproven--I'd say it almost always comes down to my experience.  Right now there's a fairly large debate regarding There will be Blood at the Scanners blog, and as much as I think a lot of it is intellectual masturbation--people on both sides saying things with little substance and big words--it comes down to this:  I loved watching it.  I can try and defend my position by saying how well it flowed, how the composition reflects Plainview's state of mind, how it acts as a telling of American history, but all that is noise.  It certainly contributes to my appreciation of the movie, and I do think understanding why we like certain movies is an integral part of film criticism, but the fact is, I'm not going to convince anyone to like a movie by discussing how well it does what it does--I can only explore why I liked it and what I think works well.  Because nothing is absolutely universal.  About the most we can hope for is consistence, but even that escapes me far more often than I'd like. 

Now, if nothing has any meaning, why do I write so much?  One, because I like to be as clear as possible.  But more importantly, because I am so passionate about things like movies, television, etc., that I have a lot to say.  When I say nothing has any meaning, it just means that nothing has an intrinsic, absolute, universal meaning.  Garden State means a hell of a lot to me, but that's not entirely based on Zach Braff's execution.  It's also true that lately, I've had a tendency to write more about the meaning of a movie (the movies on my 2007 list, every movie in this section) than the acting, writing, directing, etc.  I would not be writing about them if the writing, directing, etc. hadn't been so competent as to inspire analysis. 

Of course, there are many values on which to judge a film, and if it gets most of them right then I'll end up loving it.  Some, like light, acting, symbolism, and mood, the filmmakers can control.  Others, like my interest in a subject, my anticipation, my mood that day, and my prior knowledge, they can't.  Film, as much as any other medium, is an experience; it is possible to like Once Upon a Time in the West without having seen the westerns it pays homage to simply because it's a really fun story, but if you have that extra knowledge, you may love West even more.  Moreover, I tend to divide my appreciation for film into two categories:  entertaining and enlightening.  A movie doesn't have to be "intellectual" to be enlightening; there's at least as much to be learned about humanity from Superbad (one of the truest, most authentic movies of the year) as Truffaut's The 400 Blows.  Conversely, a movie doesn't have to forfeit an intelligent thesis in order to be entertaining; No Country for Old Men has brilliant things to say about inevitability (and more).  I think the best movies balance the two, which is why the '70s are often considered one of the best times for movies.  American auteurs had learned from the New Wave to buck the studios, incorporate crowd-pleasing nudity and violence (the entertainment factor) and mix it with genuine humanity (the enlightenment factor--Five Easy Pieces and Last Tango in Paris provoke such intellectual discussion because of how well Nicholson and Brando tapped into the truth of their characters).  It's like Shakespeare:  groundling humor plus insightful story. 

At the same time, I think every movie must be judged  on its own terms.  It's unfair to expect Citizen Kane of every film.  Mean Girls would fail terribly.  But as a teen comedy in the era of American Pie, Mean Girls has a hilarious, insightful script and some great comic performances.  In fact, this is a great example of what I mean when I say my reaction to a film always comes down to my experience.  No film critic would include Mean Girls on their favorite 250 films of all time, and that's valid.  It has some faults like plot clichés and perhaps unrealistic characterization.  But not only does it succeed for me from an entertainment standpoint, but also artistically (as I mentioned the script, performances, and serious insight into the social structures of teenage girls) and experientially (I had a great time, everyone I know loves it and quotes it, it has semantic meaning for us all).  I think professional critics often have to try and cut out the experiential aspect of film when crafting their Best Of lists, because their audiences certainly won't relate on that front (noted exceptions range from the great Roger Ebert to the annoying Harry Knowles).  But to me, that excises a large percentage of why we enjoy movies (or music, or paintings).  It ends up becoming a list of the best-made films, which brings me to noted populist critic Pauline Kael:  "Great movies are rarely perfect movies." 

I've said I'm not looking for a perfect film.  I'm looking for a movie that enraptures me, as many did this past year, and many old films have done this past month.  Before getting into the dreamy, surreal movies of Lynch and others, let me briefly discuss dreamlike movies.  David Gordon Green's George Washington is the story of a group of kids in a working-class neighborhood who deal with an accidental tragedy.  That sounds a whole lot like the lesser Mean Creek, but rest assured, George Washington is no tragedy.  It's almost powerfully uplifting, if we didn't know from our own experience that four poor black kids are not going to have an extremely bright future.  Yes, it deals with a tragedy, but it also deals with history, and dreams, and inspiration, all summed up beautifully in that powerful title.  It is a movie that I would describe as visual poetry.  It has a narrative, yes, but it feels like a dream, and I have referred to movies in this style as dreamlike (not to be confused with dreamy, whose meaning I've assigned as surreal).  This is the style of film I meant that I've been falling in love with ever since seeing 3 Women, not the Lynchian surreal movies, and I also meant that I am coming to adore these movies whereas I would not have before.  It's not that I favor them to traditional movies, just that I am starting to appreciate them too now.  Other movies in the style of visual poetry (that I don't think I'd have been able to appreciate a few years ago):  The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Proposition, El Topo, Sunrise:  A Song of Two Humans, the Tarkovsky I've seen (Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris), all Malick, and a lot of Bergman (Cries and Whispers, Hour of the Wolf, Winter Light, The Silence). 

On the extreme end of visual poetry (in my experience anyway) lies David Lynch, the grand bastard of dreams.  I have long been fascinated by Lynch.  I find his absolute rejection of traditional structures challenging and refreshing.  I appreciate this breath of fresh air, I am surprised by how engaging his movies can be even when I am completely out of my element, and I appreciate how he challenges what I think I know about story-telling.  I think his surreal works are designed to engage you and then completely disorient you; you're not watching just any old story.  You're watching this story, and it must be judged on its own terms.  That said, when you look at my top 250, yes, it includes four Lynch movies, but little else in the realm of surrealism.  There's a fine line, and not all Lynch works for me either (Wild at Heart, and though I desperately want to love Lost Highway I don't yet).  Being John Malkovich is fascinating, but because it sits too far on the traditional side of the line, it leaves itself open to nit-picking like how the people inside John Malkovich eat, drink, etc.  I admire things about it, but I don't love it, as I do Inland Empire or Mulholland Dr.  I also think Forbidden Zone and The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz, to cite two recently seen examples, try too hard to be weird and forfeit my interest.  They're quite content to do what they do, and I just don't care; it helps that neither has anything really interesting to say, unlike the best Lynch.

So I hope that makes it clearer.  Essentially, I don't think you can do anything other than explain what you liked about a movie, and that's what I try to do; but as I said, no matter how much I analyze, it comes down to whether or not I'm enjoying a movie, which is something that can't really be defined. 

To be continued?

2-20-08

Give the anarchist a cigarette

Just finished D.A. Pennebaker's Dylan doc Dont Look Back, and I just wanted to say that I appreciate Todd Haynes' I'm Not There even more now: 

2-20-08

What it all means isn't exactly clear, but you won't forget it

I want to make it clear how much I love Robert Altman.  McCabe and Mrs. Miller opened my eyes to the possibilities of the western genre (it's true--it sounds like hyperbole, but I was literally awakened to the anti-western idea by Altman).  A Prairie Home Companion is rising on my list of 2006 movies and will likely soon make it onto my Top 250.  And 3 Women kind of launched me into a phase where I favor the visual and the dreamlike films over traditional narratives, a phase that continues today.  It's partially due to 3 Women that I am forced to remove MASH as my Best Picture of 1970 and replace it with a stunning, visual, nearly silent, bizarre and allegorical western called El Topo by Alejandro Jodorowsky.  I used to think Peckinpah was violent--my puritanical American sensibilities, no doubt--but Jodorowsky drenches his film in blood.  Masked gunslinger El Topo comes across a massacred town with pools of blood sitting atop the dirt in the town square surrounded by bodies of people and animals alike.  The movie is told in a few parts with titles like "Psalms," "Apocalypse" or "Prophets," merely hinting at the layers of Christian allegory, which cover two separate missions by the title hero.  First El Topo is hired by a woman from a massacred town to track down and kill the Four Masters of the Gun that control an entire desert.  This section takes the first hour and fifteen minutes, it's gorgeously picaresque, and this alone would have been a phenomenal movie.  But the second part, a forty-five minute mission, sees El Topo digging a tunnel to give freedom to a deformed clan living underground.  This section is less picaresque, more traditionally structured, and perhaps because the film transitions from nomadic quest to stationary mission, I enjoyed this part less.  It's still a beautiful coda to the events of the first half, and the movie kind of has to be structured like this, with so many opposing forces featured in the two missions, but when the film settled down, I fell slightly out of love.  It remains great, and the movie is certainly going to make my top 200, if not 100, it's just that I found the first half far more fascinating (intellectually and visually) than the second half.  And now, I leave you with a series of images from the film without spoilers, and yes, that's a lion. 

2-18-08

Trois films de Todd Haynes--spoilery

Todd Haynes has blown me away twice now, and reading the descriptions of his prior work, despite the lower ratings, made me really eager to see it all.  I was surprised to find not a single mediocre movie, but let's start at the beginning:  I am so glad to have seen Todd Haynes' Oscar nominee Far from Heaven in the same week as one of its sources, Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind.  Sirk was a master of melodrama, crafting social stories among families in the 1950s with a distinct style, and all so he could subvert it.  In much the same way, Haynes mimics Sirk's style right down to the Elmer Bernstein score in order to subvert it.  As in I'm Not There and Superstar, Haynes is using the Sirk melodramas (of which I've only seen one) to tell the story of a grander subject, in this case 1950s America, which is even the perfect time period, not just because Sirk's melodramas peaked then but because the '50s looked like the innocent flower but were really the serpent under't.  In Far from Heaven, Julianne Moore plays a liberal housewife who strikes up a friendship with a black man (the son of their former gardener) after discovering her husband making out with another man in his office.  Like I said, though, this is much more than a simple family melodrama in that lush Sirk style.  It's about racism and homophobia on the surface, the relationship between minority groups only looking out for themselves instead of universal social equality, how children (and by thematic extension, the children of the 1950s or the baby boomers) are taught their parent's racism even though it makes no sense (and for that matter, cycles of poverty and violence too), how the 1950s was the beginning of the era (thanks, probably, to the TV, though I don't think Haynes makes that assertion) where everyone became entitled to the affairs of one's private life, how isolated everyone is despite all appearances, and generally how people don't think for themselves because it's much easier not to.  Even though homophobia wasn't openly explored until the '70s (and really until the very late '80s), incorporating homosexuality in the character that would have been played by Rock Hudson is genius.  I particularly liked the denial aspect, as if Rock Hudson himself were on screen claiming to "beat this thing" and go on with normal life.  An early reference to Joe McCarthy overshadowed the entire film for me, as I'd say the red scare of the '50s is responsible for a lot of these themes, a time where you could be guilty and socially punished for things that were not crimes, even if you hadn't even done them (like Moore's simple friendship with a black man).  Haynes says his movies are essays, and this one is a perfect example.  Like Written on the Wind, I first admired the style, and how right down to the camera angles Haynes was able to evoke Sirk, but later gorged on the thesis.  In sum, Far from Heaven is brilliant and has a lot of great things to say about the 1950s, if not quite as entertaining as Superstar or I'm Not There. 

Safe, meanwhile, takes us back too, but only because it was made in, and indicts the culture of, 1995.  The beginning, right down to the Lifetime-movie feel, is like a time warp to the early '90s.  We get the fashion, perms, environmentalism, New Age, suburban distress, smog, gangs, and an eerie Cronenberg buzz accompanying an otherwise harmless scene that moves it into otherworldly territory.  Safe features Julianne Moore as a '90s housew--homemaker, that is, who becomes afflicted with 20th Century Disease, a non-scientific diagnosis of a condition where the body loses its immunity to various chemicals (it should be noted that water is a chemical, if that sheds any light on the director's view of the disease).  She's a self-described milkaholic, she's rich enough to have more than one maid, she does aerobics (like any good woman of the '90s), and she's on a fruit diet.  It should come as no surprise that her doctor finds nothing medically wrong with her, but tells her to stop the fruit diet and hold off on milk for a while; she's poisoning herself.  Well, he just says the problem's probably in her head, but later, when she learns of 20th Century Disease and goes to a retreat to recover, the cult master--I mean head tells her she's responsible for her own problems.  "Even the disease," he says, "is your fault for letting your immunity down."  I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist.  And here's where the movie goes in two directions at the same time:  Direction 1:  The disease is invented.  In this story, Moore is a hypochondriac, and I think there's a lot to be said for the idea of this movie being an examination of hypochondria (though I think that is only a symbol for something greater).  It pushes her away from everything she loves, but at the same time, she's probably forced to grow for the first time in her life.  She's a spoiled suburban princess who ends the movie staring in a mirror.  In fact, the self-reflection almost settles the issue that the disease is made-up and entirely in her own head.  Also, this track focuses on the cult that she joins.  If the disease is invented, then her group is a cult whose leader lives in a mansion overlooking the premises while Moore ends up in a cement igloo, the epitome of claustrophobia.  In this way, it not only indicts hypochondria but also mob mentality, how those people who complain about everything like to feed off each other and convince each other that they're right.  Direction 2:  The disease is real.  In this direction, Haynes is putting the culture of the '90s on trial, as he did with the '50s in Far From Heaven and the '70s with Superstar.  If Moore's character really is affected by various toxins, then globalization, capitalism, industrialization, and generally unchecked technological progress are to blame.  I doubt Haynes takes the view that the disease is real, but he does let you make up your mind.  Either way, really, that feel-good New Age culture of the '90s is the villain, whether the enabler or the cause.  There are also shades of gay metaphor, which I think work especially well since Haynes is the leader of the New Queer Cinema movement.  In this view, those afflicted with the disease represent gays and/or AIDS victims, and they go places to "get better," people say it's in their heads, they feel isolated and venture into self-destructive territory, etc.  This is the early '90s still, about the time Philadelphia began to mainstream homosexuality and AIDS.  In essence, I think with Safe, Haynes is saying that America in the '90s became a whiny bitch, vapid and shallow and dangerously self-absorbed, and we needed to look long and hard in that mirror.  Overall, Safe is a fascinating showcase for Haynes and Moore, but not quite as entertaining as Far From Heaven, and I'd certainly recommend watching it for the brilliance underneath it. 

While I know plenty about the '90s, I know next to nothing about glam rock, the subject of Haynes' Velvet Goldmine.  I do know plenty about Citizen Kane, being gay, and Todd Haynes, though, and that was basically my in, though I'd bet you can just sit back and enjoy the ride anyway.  Like Kane, the movie is about a journalist (Christian Bale) doing a story on the mysterious life of Brian Slade, a Bowie character played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers.  You don't have to know much to pick up on the fact that Ewan MacGregor is playing a version of Iggy Pop; his very first concert scene makes that clear enough.  All three leads have intertwining romances, with a fourth prong being Slade's wife played by Toni Colette.  Velvet Goldmine is incredibly stylish, much like glam rock, perhaps more obviously focused on the style than the substance.  I just wish I understood the substance.  Maybe it's because I don't know much about glam rock, or maybe it's because I was having trouble with playing the movie, or maybe it's because I'm too focused on Todd Haynes telling some grand thematic story underneath it all, but I am lost when it comes to this movie.  I get the surface story, the passing down of Oscar Wilde's brooch (speaking of which, there is a glorious Oscar Wilde motif in the movie, as if the poet were the first gay glam rocker) and it is dazzling, fabulous, and other glittery descriptors.  But because I'm not as into glam rock, or Bowie, I kept feeling as though I'm missing out.  But don't take that as a non-endorsement.  It's a good movie that I definitely recommend seeing once.  I intend to do some research before re-watching, which I am definitely going to do.  And now that my three films by Todd Haynes are over, and I only have one Haynes film left, I'd rank them like this:  1) I'm Not There (he took what he learned with the rest and made his best yet), 2) Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (its sheer inventiveness is astounding, but the brilliance behind it knocks it out of the park), 3) Far from Heaven, 4) Safe, 5) Velvet Goldmine (these last two are about the same level for me, but one's more entertaining and less enlightening, whereas the other's more enlightening and less entertaining).  I realize that I didn't really discuss the performances apart from their meanings, but rest assured I'm not going to write about movies that suck--Julianne Moore and company were great in these movies.  The more I read about Safe, the more I realize how deep the film goes--I'm gonna have to give this one another shot and maybe even take notes.  Another disparate thought:  from someone who thinks there should be more sex, nudity, and violence in movies (like the '70s, or European films), I'm pleased that Haynes is championing nudity, and in particular, male nudity.  This isn't a pornography thing, it's a realism thing, and a double-standard thing, and, of course, a fighting the puritans thing.  Anyway, I'm convinced that Todd Haynes is a genius, and am really curious about what he does next.  One request though:  More Barbie dolls please!

2-09-08

The best years of our lives

I, along with many others, have rattled on and on about how 2007 is the best film year of the decade so far (I say "so far" as if 2008 or 2009, writers strike-impaired though they may be, could possibly top it).   This past year saw established masters like the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, and David Cronenberg score big with critics, and rising stars like Judd Apatow, James Mangold, Joe Wright, Jason Reitman, Andrew Dominik assert their worth.  That's not to mention the new wave of musicals or the rise of the smart, emotionally authentic comedies either.  So I'll take it for granted from now on that the world at large looks at 2007 as the best year in film of the decade. 

But what about past decades?  I took it upon myself to give you the best year in film from each decade, with a rundown of some highlights, some critical hits I haven't yet seen, and a decade overview, starting with the 1920s, since I've only seen one movie prior to that, and only know of two from the entire 1910s. 

1927:  The Roaring Twenties were notable for two major film movements:  German expressionism, wherein an external world reflects the internal psychology, emphasized in high contrast, unusual angles, and imposing frames (think The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), and the Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin-style slapstick comedies.  In fact, 1927 saw Buster Keaton's The General, generally considered the high point of Keaton's career and an exciting adventure film in its own right.  Most importantly, 1927 saw Al Jolson in blackface saying, "You ain't heard nothin' yet!"  The creation of talkies alone would be enough to raise 1927 to the top of its class, and I still haven't seen that original one, The Jazz Singer.  I also haven't seen acclaimed early director Cecil B. DeMille's religious epic King of Kings or Wings, the first Best Picture winner.  That's right, 1927 is further notable for being the first year from which films were eligible for the Academy Awards, and they gave two best picture-level awards.  While "Best Picture, Production" went to the aforementioned Wings, a story about two romantic rivals flying in WWI, "Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production" (an award invented because the film was so good) went to F.W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, a surprisingly rapturous tale of a man persuaded by his mistress to kill his wife.  I recently caught this film on TCM, and afterward I quite enjoyed the film.  In the days since, it has grown on me even more.  It's innovative in its double-exposure shots, harrowing in the attempted murder scene, dreamily surreal (it is, after all, a direct result of German expressionism--this is the same Murnau who shot Nosferatu and Faust), and ultimately affirming.  Sunrise eventually beat out my prior favorite film from 1927, Fritz Lang's Metropolis.  Metropolis may be the best-loved silent film (at least according to IMDb), and again, director Fritz Lang is one of the eminent expressionists of the time.  It's is a classic sci-fi premise played out quite beautifully against an Orwellian dystopia exemplified in Lang's gorgeous skyscraper shots, and even today it feels ahead of its time. 

1939:  Maybe it's my own limited film education, but it seems to me the '30s occurred at a lull between major movements.  Accordingly, the decade represents a period of tight studio control, from the Hays Code in the early half of the decade to the multi-picture deals for actors, writers, and directors.  The pinnacle of this studio-dominant Hollywood came in 1939, anticipating the one-two punch in the early '40s of Citizen Kane and Casablanca.  It also serves as a Greatest Hits for the AFI.  Let me rattle off some names:  landmark color films Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, as well as Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Young Mr. Lincoln, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Gunga Din, the list goes on.  John Ford, Frank Capra, and William Wyler are some of the notable directors, and stars ranged from Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh to rising stars John Wayne and James Stewart.  Laurence Olivier would play Heathcliff before winning accolades as Hamlet or Rebecca's widower.  Henry Fonda predates his epic career playing an honest lawyer named Abraham Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln, one of the two films from 1939 that would put America's eminent western director John Ford on the map.  The other, of course, is Stagecoach, a rollicking action-adventure that I believe still holds up (and features my favorite John Wayne role...if John Wayne can be said to act).  Indeed, the Hollywood studio system really made a name for the Golden Age in 1939, giving old-timers a reason to constantly complain that pictures aren't as good as they used to be. 

1946:  The '40s, marred by global war as they notably were, saw the rise of the film noir in America, inescapably cynical stories exploring the darkness of human relationships.  The film noir era traditionally is said to have begun in 1941 with The Maltese Falcon, and the era proper is said to have ended in 1958 with Touch of Evil.  So let's kick off with the film noirs of 1946:  Orson Welles, who dominated cinema starting in the '40s with Citizen Kane, entered a glorious and overlooked film called The Stranger into the noir pantheon, about a former Nazi inventing a new life for himself.  It's deeply American in its tale of this land of opportunity, but then it's marred by war, as his new identity is eventually unraveled, putting a twist on the idea of America and launching the era of the postwar film.  Speaking of WWII, The Best Years of Our Lives won Best Picture that year, a movie about three returning war vets trying to reintegrate, one a double amputee, and finding that you can't go home again.  Again, it seems to be another of those patriotic war films, but instead shows the seedy side of the American dream.  Of course, there's always room for that cinematic patriot Frank Capra, who shot the uplifting It's a Wonderful Life, and as much as it stands out from the major themes of film in 1946, it deserves mention.  Back to the noir, Hitchcock shot spy thriller Notorious, one of my personal favorites of his, and Howard Hawks directed The Big Sleep, probably the quintessential film noir, a detective story replete with femme fatale and incomprehensible plot twists.  Two other noirs from '46 were worthy of being later remade, The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Killers, both moderately significant.  Across the pond, Sidney Gilliat made Green for Danger, a murder mystery with noir influences and an ever-looming threat of destruction thanks to the bombs of WWII.  1946 represents, more than anything else, the world reacting to the atomic bomb as movies went overwhelmingly dark.  Meanwhile, Cocteau and Lean adapted classics with The Beauty and the Beast and Great Expectations, respectively, both great films with stunning camerawork.  And of course, I have often been keen to point out that two of the only American artforms are the film noir and the western, and 1946 saw another John Ford classic about another classic western tale, My Darling Clementine about Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Corral.  I do want to point out the viability of 1948 as a candidate though, with The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Naked City, Welles' Macbeth, and Rope showing the wide range of noir influence, and Bicycle Thieves and La Terra Trema launching Italian neorealism. 

1957:  Okay, so I picked this one mostly as my favorite year from the '50s, but it is pretty big, and I didn't want to go with '59 right before picking '60.  As the Cahiers du Cinema critics were on the precipice of presenting their New Wave (combining film noir, their own critical auteur theory, pop culture, and explosive liberalism), cinema had become a truly global affair.  Sidney Lumet teamed with Henry Fonda and Old Hollywood to create 12 Angry Men, a brilliant example of the kinds of major works America had to offer, the '50s representing something of a tightening of studio control (the studios in their death throes), and accordingly offering up big-budget musicals, patriotic westerns, and adventurous sci-fi.  Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, starring a pre-Spartacus Kirk Douglass, is among the best anti-war films still today, combining elements of The Grand Illusion and All Quiet on the Western Front with the post-atomic bomb angst and Kubrick's just off-kilter sensibilities.  David Lean, meanwhile, was transitioning to color films with his epic adventure Bridge on the River Kwai, featuring stars Alec Guinness and William Holden.  Federico Fellini was on the verge of La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 with his funny, warm, and bittersweet Night of Cabiria.  And Ingmar Bergman hit his first peak with The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, philosophical explorations of life, God, and meaning, both of which are among his best-loved films.  Indeed, Hollywood was doing what it was good at, and European directors who would become hall of famers were making great films.  1950 saw at least as much innovation as 1957, but it was also predominantly focused on the '40s.  1957 was looking forward, anticipating the next great movement. 

1960:  In the 1950s, a bunch of young, smart French film critics wrote for influential film mag Cahiers du Cinema, in which one of the critics, Francois Truffaut, developed auteur theory in 1954.  It was a way for them to criticize film, and the theory said that the director was the primary author of a film, not the writer or producers, and a director should develop a style that brands each of his films.  Hitchcock for instance, apart from directing movies primarily in the suspense/thriller genre, has a few tricks he applies to most of his movies that separates his directorial style from, say, Clouzot.  In 1959, however, the Cahiers du Cinema critics, Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer, transitioned to directing, and along with Agnès Varda, Claude Chabrol, Alain Resnais and others began La Nouvelle Vague, a style characterized by its cost-cutting measures (jump cuts, location shooting), wide-reaching knowledge of film history (film noir influences, pop culture references--these were, after all, former critics), and liberal politics unseen under Hays Code Hollywood (particularly the emphasis, as in life, on sex).  1960 saw two of the best New Wave films and profoundly influenced directors since.  In the same year Wilder came out with standard (though solid) Hollywood fare The Apartment and Hitchcock released Psycho, one of his wittiest and creepiest thrillers (while still, firmly, a '50s film), Godard shot Breathless and Truffaut released Shoot the Piano Player, each of which opens with walking down a city street and features jump cuts out the wazoo.  Elsewhere in Europe, Antonioni came out with L'Avventura and Bergman with The Virgin Spring, each deeply interested in understanding meaning.  I still haven't even seen Fellini's La Dolce Vita, though it is critically adored.  The politics of the New Wave had already influenced others, primarily British directors, as Stanley Kubrick spun Paths of Glory into Spartacus, Georges Franju released his influential horror Eyes Without a Face, and Powell/Pressburger indicted their audience with Peeping Tom.  Just as film noirs grew out of German expressionism and the French New Wave grew out of film noir, New Hollywood and the American independent directors were profoundly influenced by the French New Wave, which really came into its own in 1960.

I wanted to point out that 1967 is at least as important a year in film as any of the others, but I already chose 1960 as the best of the decade (and good luck debating that one).  That said, New Hollywood came out of 1967, and here are some of the American film offerings of that year:  Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Cool Hand Luke, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Jungle Book.  '68 and '69 continued the trend, but 1967 will always be the start of Hollywood fulfilling its potential. 

1971:  Let's face it, the 1970s are full of classics, and almost any year would be an acceptable choice.  I originally picked 1975, solely because of Jaws splitting New Hollywood into the blockbuster movement or the underground American independent cinema movement that beautifully continues my theory that the '80s were a period of excesses, opposites, and black-or-white polarity.  But I changed my mind, and as much as 1971 was, for all intents and purposes, a year from the '60s, it is an incredibly rich year for film and is home to the second coming of Citizen Kane, Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show.  Furthermore, '71 saw the early showings of blockbuster heavyweights Spielberg and Lucas with Duel and THX-1138 respectively.  Friedkin continued the New Hollywood trend with '71's (undeserving) Best Picture The French Connection, with a star turn by '70s staple Gene Hackman.  More New Hollywood came with Altman's anti-western McCabe and Mrs. Miller, systematically taking western types and spinning them, much like the films of 1946 did with the American dream.  Sam Peckinpah also made a bit of an anti-western with Straw Dogs, but that's more of a displaced western.  Of course, Leone made an actual, if comedic, western with Duck, You Sucker, the middle film of his own thesis on America, and Alejandro Jodorowsky made a violent '70s western as well with El Topo.  Kubrick continued his trend of making movies in landmark years, this time with cult favorite A Clockwork Orange, explicitly exploring violence in a year where gritty New Hollywood was just getting started.  Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood 10 who were not only blacklisted but refused to testify, released his treatise on war with the acclaimed Johnny Got His Gun.  Of course, the rest of the world was following their own trends, namely developing great art films.  Dusan Makavejev gave Yugoslavia's film industry a name with WR: Mysteries of the Organism, a subversive, sexual socio-political film, and Andrei Tarkovsky finally got to release his own epic masterwork of Russian cinema, Andrei Rublev.  And Louis Malle began his triptych with Murmur of the Heart, while Nicholas Roeg made another coming-of-age film, Walkabout.  1971 saw New Hollywood in its prime while foreign masters were making their own controversial art films. 

1987:  Like I said, Hollywood split with the arrival of the blockbuster, and accordingly, the '80s mostly sucked--in the '70s, there was so much greatness it was hard to choose a year, but in the '80s, there was so much suck, it was hard to pick a good year.  New Hollywood influenced the independent auteurs, some of whom started out in the '80s but really rose to prominence later, while the blockbuster splintered into various mass-audience targeting genres exemplified by the 80s action flick (First Blood, Terminator, Die Hard), of which 1987 offered Predator and Lethal Weapon.  In fact, 1987 offered several of the iconic, insubstantial '80s movies, including Dirty Dancing, Fatal Attractions, and The Untouchables, each exemplifying the shallow, inconsequential 1980s.  Of course, the '80s were also the breeding ground for American independent cinema, and even before Sex, Lies, and Videotape launched the new American auteurs, 1987 saw some early rumblings.  The Coen Brothers made Raising Arizona, Bruce Robinson made Withnail and I, and Todd Haynes made the lo-fi freakshow Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.  I'd gladly take these independents over any of the aforementioned hits of 1987.  But of course, let's not forget Stanley Kubrick (has he made a movie from each of the years I've written about?) and his Full Metal Jacket, nor Oliver Stone and the middle hit of his most acclaimed trifecta, Wall Street.  These established directors, despite the weight of their reputations, fall in more with the independent auteurs thematically (particularly in their way of branding movies in their distinct styles), and this is especially true while Stone was just starting out. 

1999:  '99 was like '07 in that it saw the pinnacles of American independent cinema, but Ryan should really be the one writing about this year.  I haven't seen a lot of the '99 biggies, but I'll do what I can.  Sam Mendes won Best Picture with his first dark film about our country American Beauty (I just realized that his trilogy about America features a suburban melodrama, a noirish gangster flick, and a philosophical war film, the perfect genres for examining America--he's an anti-western away from being blacklisted).  Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman teamed up to deliver the philosophical tragicomedy Being John Malkovich.  Three kids and their video-camera (okay, not really) mainstreamed the shaky-cam with The Blair Witch Project.  David Fincher made Fight Club, Paul Thomas Anderson made Magnolia, and Alexander Payne made Election, three titans that I think speak for themselves, made by three men who have consistently proven their talent.  David O. Russell came out with Three Kings, a beautiful, heavily stylistic treasure hunt during the Persian Gulf War.  Doug Liman made Go, a gem that is funnier and inexplicably less popular than American Pie from the same year, and Troy Duffy made cult sleeper The Boondock Saints, never to work again.  If these American independent masters were not enough, I think The Matrix alone would assert '99's worth over the rest of its decade.  It revolutionized the industry, and revitalized the action blockbuster.  Similarly, Lucas began his Star Wars prequels in '99, with Episode 1, the closest thing to an event picture since Titanic.  We also had Frank Darabont's return, The Green Mile, which I didn't much take to, but others appreciate, Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley, Michael Mann's The Insider, and Lasse Hallström's The Cider House Rules.  I mean, for as many name directors made great movies in 2007, at least as many made worthy movies in '99.  Even better, my recurring director Stanley Kubrick made his final movie in 1999, Eyes Wide Shut.  I shouldn't have had to examine the decades; I should have just picked the year that contained Kubrick's film. 

2007:  Which brings us to today.  Not only is 2007 the most consistently rich year of the decade for movies, but you can see hints of movements.  About the closest thing to a mainstream hit is No Country for Old Men, and the Coen Brothers are certainly not Hollywood insiders.  The studio-trouncing continues in favor of great independent movies, and the indie directors from Paul Thomas to Wes are winning.  Also, we're seeing a resurgence of smart comedies, musicals and westerns (now if only we can get some decent sci-fis, we'll really be living in a rich time for film), even if epics and period pieces are mostly declining in quality.  And while Return of the King made the world safe for fantasy again, none has really come close to matching Peter Jackson's trilogy in terms of quality outside of Pan's Labyrinth.  Brokeback Mountain, for all its accolades and box office returns, has failed to spark an interest in mainstream gay films, but Crash has done wonders fighting racism (true story:  racism no longer exists in the United States).  But I'll be damned if we don't see an increase in movies that can be both smart and violent, as either possible Best Picture contender from 2007 is, and as the '70s sustained after the watershed year of 1967. 

'27, '39, '46, '57, '60, '71, '87, '99, '07.  So my tour of film history was less of a "best years of our lives" and more of an "important years of our lives."  Perhaps once I've seen more of the established classics I can give my opinion as to my favorite years in each decade.  Regardless, now that I've completed my major tour through the French New Wave, it's interesting to note how direct the influences are from German expressionism to film noir to French New Wave to New Hollywood to the American independent directors of today.  Tarantino would be nowhere without la Nouvelle Vague, which is to say he is just as indebted to Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau.  Of course there are whole genres excluded by this line of cinematic influence (just as the Romanticism to Realism to Naturalism to Modernism to Postmodernism art theory is certain to exclude outsiders that don't fit neatly into the major movements), so this is by no means the only defensible list of significant years in film history.  If anything, this is a Mainstream History, and like Orson Welles in F for Fake, in a sense I've just finished lying to you.  I don't really buy into the causal history that we are taught, but hopefully I cited enough examples outside the stream to hint at that.  While there are clear influences of expressionism in film noir, for instance, summing up thirty years of film like that oversimplifies it to the point that more is lost than learned.  Maybe next time I'll do an underground history, or margin notes to the mainline history.  As always, this is just the beginning of our discussion. 

1-29-08

A poet with no poems, Part 1

My Ingmar Bergman Memorial Marathon has come to a close, and I have much to say on the man's filmography.  I have yet to see Scenes from a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, or Sarabande, miniseries marathons in themselves, so I still have even more greatness ahead of me.  But after finishing most of Bergman's "major" works through the '70s, I feel it's an appropriate time to gather my thoughts.  I also realize that this lengthy entry will probably be for my eyes only, until anyone ever sees any more Bergman films, but if you do forge ahead, be aware that in discussing the themes, I touch on major plot points.  That said, you can probably watch any of these films knowing the entire plot and still fall in love.  What struck me most toward the latter end of my Bergman spree is how well his films reflect the style of other major filmmakers.  Smiles of a Summer Night is Bergman's The Rules of the Game, Renoir's influence soaking every scene, and Cries and Whispers reeks of Altman (probably because Altman was inspired by Bergman when he made 3 Women).  If you're looking for Kurosawa, check out The Virgin Spring.  You want Fellini?  Try Wild Strawberries.  Hour of the Wolf echoes Cocteau, Winter Light Bresson and The Silence Antonioni.  I'd say Bergman's work on the whole feels most like Fellini than anyone else, including some works I haven't yet mentioned like Sawdust and Tinsel.  I don't know that this means anything other than, given my adoration of Fellini's films, I was predisposed to love Bergman as well.  I recently spoke of David Lynch's magnum opus Inland Empire incorporating elements from the rest of his filmography.  Bergman followed a similar path, and all of his films are so connected it's near impossible to explore a film on its own.  That said, I'd like to try and take each film separately before drawing all of the major connections yet. 

According to Bergman himself, his first great film came in 1953, Sawdust and Tinsel.  It's the story of a circus troupe who are performing next in the town where the wife of their leader, Albert, lives.  This does not sit well with Albert's mistress Anne, and the main story is theirs.  We also are treated to Bergman at his most artistically unsure when a couple of the circus performers try to borrow costumes from a local theatre troupe, and the troupe's leader berates the circus men because they let him, and he knows it.  A fitting debut (even if it is his thirteenth film), it displays Bergman's first exploration of art and artistic principles while conveying his own beautiful compositions and sparse dialogue, my favorite section of which is a bizarre flashback featuring a clown and his wife.  It's an incredibly visual tale, and clearly influences Wild Strawberries and Hour of the Wolf. 

1955 saw Smiles of a Summer Night, the story of three prominent couplings and one lesser coupling.  What begins as a light, Much Ado About Nothing, romantic comedy becomes a tragicomedy of deep soul-searching, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn Bergman studied Renoir's The Rules of the Game for this movie.  It's the most blatantly funny of Bergman's movies, and accordingly, the downward spiral is even heavier.  But his most famous works would show up in 1957.  The Seventh Seal, an existential, medieval quest that culminates in the Dance of Death, earned Bergman the good will to get backing for Wild Strawberries, about an old professor looking back on his life, and the two are often cited as his greatest films.  I don't remember too much about The Seventh Seal apart from the plot and the insistent feeling that its outright agnosticism was way ahead of its time--turns out, Bergman's questioning of God is a recurring theme in his filmography.  The next year came a more minor work, The Magician, but it's a fun little anticipation for Hour of the Wolf.  I said The Virgin Spring was the most Kurosawa-like of Bergman's films, partially due to its medieval setting.  It was also one of the only films directed by Bergman but not written by him.  Perhaps these are reasons why it is my least favorite of his films so far, although it still represents classic Bergman composition and use of black/white cinematography.  As much as I enjoy his color chamber dramas, I am blown away by his black and white, as I am with David Lean.  Also, The Virgin Spring is a fantastically insightful companion piece to Beowulf, set in the same time during the transition to Christianity, opening with mothers at home and ending with a father building a church. 

And then Bergman began his Silence of God trilogy, a thematically-linked series of movies that grow from agnosticism to atheism.  The first, Through a Glass Darkly, is the movie that started my Bergman-athon.  I was simply blown away by this drama of a family coming together on an island to help a young woman's descent into madness.  The movie eventually comes to a climax in the attic, where the woman hallucinates that God has come to her while the others look on--God is a spider, she says, and he is raping her.  It's terrifying, and a big hint as to the direction of Bergman's philosophy and accordingly his art.  The second film, Winter Light, occurs in near real-time from the Communion of one mass to the beginning of the following one.  In the mean time, the priest has a crisis of faith when he is unable to comfort a parishioner (who himself has been driven to existential angst by the ever-looming threat of the atomic bomb) who then commits suicide.  Finally, The Silence features two sisters and one of their kids in a hotel room on vacation, and God isn't mentioned once.  It's a beautiful effect--Bergman has come to the conclusion that if God is silent--that is, if he allows these horrors to happen and lets crises of faith go unanswered--then he must not exist.  The Silence is his final film about the question of God, and therefore represents Bergman's conclusion on the subject:  God may or may not exist, but if he doesn't affect us, then he doesn't matter anyway.  This trilogy, each film astonishingly engaging, proves that Bergman can consistently crank out genius. 

Persona, my personal favorite Bergman, represents the beginning of a more experimental phase, the director trying out new ways to use film like magic, an effect elaborated upon in Hour of the Wolf.  Bergman's post-Silence work is his psychology era.  He's always been interested in why people do what they do--Through a Glass Darkly, Wild Strawberries--but here, as he abandons God, he is free to focus solely on man.  Persona features an actress becoming her role, and it's a confusing, rewarding work of genius.  Hour of the Wolf is an underrated classic, a brilliant work of horror stemming from an artist's guilt.  His first major color film, Cries and Whispers, is also one of his best, although I'm having a hard time ranking them because I love so many of them.  In the transition from black and white, he's sort of moved into a red and white palette here, and it works beautifully.  Red is the color of passion, and this movie is about three sisters and a nurse revealing their deepest feelings.  Finally, the latest Bergman I've seen is Autumn Sonata, featuring Ingrid Bergman as a concert pianist who abandoned her family, and now she visits her adult daughter on a night where they finally unload on each other, confessing, apologizing, maturing, and growing closer, if not wiser.  Notable works I haven't yet seen are Scenes from a Marriage, which would fit in between Cries and Whispers and Autumn Sonata, Fanny and Alexander in '82, a few years after Autumn Sonata, and Saraband, his final television miniseries in 2003. 

Before getting really into the nitty-gritty of Bergman, I want to point out some interesting little connections to show how his filmography work as one collective piece of art.  In Hour of the Wolf, the cultists put on a performance of The Magic Flute, which is a play that Bergman would adapt into a film a few years later.  In Through a Glass Darkly, the first thing we hear is the fourth movement of Bach's cello suite No. 2 in D-minor, the saraband movement.  Saraband, of course, is Bergman's final major work.  Only looking at his major work, one discovers a connection between Autumn Sonata, Winter Light, The Virgin Spring, and Smiles of a Summer Night, which were made in the reverse order of the presented chronology (Summer in '56 up to Autumn in '78).  The Virgin Spring refers to a creek, of course, but it is also set during Spring, and considering the Christian overtones, the season is rather important as well.  Almost exactly the same event involving bystanders occurs in Wild Strawberries and The Virgin Spring.  Cries and Whispers is best described as a combination of Persona, Through a Glass Darkly, and The Silence.  And Bergman's exploration of the role of the artist manifests itself by a circus troupe and theater performers in Sawdust and Tinsel, an opera singer in Smiles of a Summer Night, a minstrel in The Seventh Seal, the list goes on and on.  Bergman's characters were angst-ridden artists, and one realizes his declarations on art are even more self-conscious than those reflecting his own agnosticism.  It's all the more fitting then to realize that this genius of film said through his writer in Through a Glass Darkly, "I'm an artist...a poet with no poems, a painter with no pictures, a musician with no music.  I despise ready-made art, the banal result of vulgar effort.  My life is my art, and dedicated to my love for you." 

To be continued.

1-22-08

Everybody's doing a brand new dance now

Inland Empire is a masterpiece.  I have no idea what it means (well, little idea, anyway--let's just say I understand it less than I did Mulholland Dr. upon first viewing), but I do know that I was mesmerized by a master storyteller who knew precisely how to manipulate me.  I laughed a lot (not even sure if it was meant to be funny), I got nervous fairly often, and I was frightened plenty.  I defy you not to sit through the entire end credit sequence, which plays in front of the characters saying their goodbyes, even after the previous three hours of nightmarish mind games.  Inland Empire captivated me on a purely visceral level, and like the last films I gave top marks to (David Gordon Green's George Washington and Paul Thomas Anderson's There will be Blood), I arrived with no preconceived notions and went along for the ride.  And boy, what an adventure it turned out to be. 

The film purports to be about an actress who gets a part in a remake of an unfinished Polish film, the original having been cursed by its own tragic ending.  Laura Dern is the star, and she is incredible.  Probably my favorite performance of 2006 (I'm realizing lately that not every so-called brilliant performance is really up to par with the best ones, like Daniel Day-Lewis in There will be Blood.  Helen Mirren and Forrest Whitaker were great, but Dern was transcendent, at least for me).  Like the characters in Mulholland Dr., also about a starlet making a film, the actors play themselves as actors, their characters, some intermingling of the two, and in this case, still another version of themselves. 

In trying to unravel the film's mysteries, I've quickly discovered that I don't care for other people's interpretations.  I'll rely on fanatical viewers for the details I overlooked, but I don't need their commentary.  I much prefer enjoying the film on my own terms, and I think Lynch would agree.  He hasn't said a single word about the meaning of the film because it'll set it in stone and immediately inhibit the imaginations of the audience.  So from where I sit, this is Lynch's magnum opus, incorporating much of his previous filmography as well as--and here I credit Roger Ebert's editor Jim Emerson for the idea, and completely concur--probably stuff from his future work.  Honestly, the film's temporal confusion has me so enchanted with the idea that Lynch probably included ideas that will be used in stuff he creates next.  I'd say understanding the film requires a working knowledge of at least Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Dr., if not also The Elephant Man, Dune, Twin Peaks, and Wild at Heart.  After all, we get actors from much of his previous work, including the stars of Mulholland Dr. in rabbit costumes spouting existential one-liners to canned laughter.  And of course, Lynch's magnum opus is heavily concerned with the craft of movie-making. 

Here there be minor spoilers!  I promise it won't ruin anything for you other than who's in it, but if you want to go in and let Lynch be your guide, which I'd probs suggest, stop reading with the knowledge that I highly recommend Inland Empire. 

As for the "story," let's start at the beginning.  The film opens in grayscale as a sudden camera and light appear on the right and gradually illuminate the title Inland Empire, albeit backwards from the source of the light.  All of that is important, particularly the use of light and darkness which is prominent throughout the film.  Then we get a closeup of a record, a Polish man and prostitute in a hotel room with blurred out faces, a woman crying while watching a sitcom, which appears to be about philosophical (or nonsensical) rabbits, then a Polish crime lord (I think...I lost track of the Polish characters while focusing so heavily on Hollywood), and finally, ten minutes in, some crazy Polish lady visits our star Laura Dern (and I can't help but think it's not a coincidence that Laura Dern, Laura Palmer, and Laura Harring are connected so heavily via Lynch, and the name Laura itself connotes Otto Preminger's film noir masterwork about a dead girl).  She tells Dern's character Nikki Grace that she will definitely get the part she is up for, and we flash forward to Nikki getting the part.  The production commences, Nikki meeting her costar Devon (Justin Theroux, who doesn't get nearly enough screentime), director Kingsley (Jeremy Irons), and what I assume to be the AD (Harry Dean Stanton), who I suspect of participating in the Polish version of the film and therefore being culpable in its tragedy.  From there the film spins out of control into various environs, but the characters reappear and make various connections.  There's the crime lord (The Phantom), the crying girl watching the rabbits (The Lost Girl), Nikki, her husband, Devon, the Rabbits, a troupe of whores/dancers/previous conquests of Devon (?) who act as a bit of a Greek chorus, and a few others. 

I need to watch this film several more times (like I did for Mulholland Dr.) in short succession in order to achieve some sort of understanding of the story.  Lynch's style is at his highest here, his first film shot digitally.  It's grainy and low-budget, but it's supposed to be that way, like Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.  Sometimes it's so dark you can't see anything, but when it's like that, as in life, you start to think you're seeing something, and it's frightening as Lynch can achieve.  I love the usual Lynchian tricks, like sudden environment changes, as when Nikki goes into the house set and finds herself actually in a house, or when she's wandering the dark corridors of the Axxon building, or when she appears at those people's backyards.  Dern is astonishing in every situation, so believable and realistic (yet still a little off, as Lynch would have it) in that first scene with her and her Polish "neighbor," and then she becomes cool as the actress falling for her co-star, and then she descends into madness.  Laura Dern screaming while racing down the Walk of Fame at night, leaving a trail of blood drips from her screwdriver stab-wound is amongst my favorite scenes in film from at least this decade if not all time.  I also was unbelievably taken with the "Locomotion" sequence, among the best music scenes in a non-musical film.  David Lynch is a master of cinema, and in his magnum opus, Inland Empire, he expertly drew me in, spun me around, and pushed me down a hole.  I can't wait to see what he does next. 

1-22-08

A for Academy

While this entire site is, to be fair, a movie blog, I have decided I needed a specific place for entries on movies.  Hopefully this will turn into a place for mini-reviews and other film analysis.  Also, I intend to revamp the main Movies page of the site, and accordingly alter this page to fit with it, so expect this entire format and stuff to change.  That said, I wanted to publish this stuff before waiting to do all the renovating, so without further ado, I bring you the 2008 Oscar nominations!

Generally, I'm quite pleased with the Oscar nominees this year.  As I've stated elsewhere, I've loved so many of the big movies that it would be difficult for the Academy to pick nominees that make me want to impale myself with an Emmy (Boston Legal, my ass!).  As an overview, No Country for Old Men and There will be Blood led the pack with 8 nominations each, followed by Atonement and Michael Clayton with 7.  I'm obviously thrilled with the Blood lust, but now a breakdown of the nominees (aside from the ones nobody cares about).