Special Features

9-21-08

My Top 10 Foreign Films

Last year I voted in an online poll to determine the best 100 foreign films from a predetermined list of nominees. Voters sent in ranked lists of 25 movies, and since mine was based on the 28 nominees I'd seen, I only had to cut three. Needless to say, my list was embarrassingly limited.

The resulting list was posted almost exactly a year ago, and I highly recommend perusing it as an example of some of world cinema's greatest hits. Since then, I've seen about 150 foreign-language films, by no means enough, but something like a brief survey. I've seen a Bunuel, a Mizoguchi, a Bresson, a Rossellini, a Rohmer. I've roamed lower class Italy with De Sica, felt the extremes of isolation with Bertolucci, been held captive by the haunting delights of Clouzot.

I've seen three Kurosawas and still fall asleep at the sight of Toshiro Mifune in a samurai costume (perhaps his crime dramas will appeal more to me). I've grown since my Kurosawa experience a few years back, and I appreciated Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff recently, but I remain curious about Eastern cinema. It seems to me Eastern movies are a completely different beast, and I'm not yet accustomed to their languages, acting, or cultural idiosyncrasies.

Of course, I've delved more deeply into filmographies of directors who excited me from my first encounters. I went through a New Wave phase this summer--again, just a brief survey hitting the highlights--and fell in love with a family films I'd previously avoided out of coldness to Godard. On the flip side, Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo woke me from my cinematic slumber--how had I gone this long without even knowing this movie existed?!--but come to find out, it's his only western.

Seeing how much work has gone into publishing not only the list of 100 films, but also the list of contributors, films that almost made the cut, and pages for every step of the process, I refuse to ask if the list will be revised ever like the AFI or Sight/Sound polls.

Instead, as a display of cinematic penance, I will simply post my new list of the top 10 foreign-language movies. Because I am only beginning my relationship with world cinema, I will only pick one movie per director. My western bias (predisposition?) is not only apparent but a rule. It is a list of my favorites, after all. Relatedly, keep in mind that this is just a list. It's fun to determine the foreign movies that have most inspired me, but it's obviously impossible to accurately rank art.

As always, we begin with my 5 honorable mentions in alphabetical order.

8. Army of Shadows by Jean-Pierre Melville. This was my first encounter with Melville who has since become one of my favorites. Also working in its favor, due to my adamant belief that seeing a movie in a theater is always an advantage, I got to see this at a museum prior to its Criterion release, whereas all the rest I either caught on TV or saw on my laptop. As Ebert noted in a recent essay, we can't help but love certain genres or subjects more than others, and I am a sucker for resistance movements, especially the French resistance during WWII. Usually I like the glamour of such an adventurous time, but Melville drains all charm from the proceedings, forcing us to confront the hopeless reality of the noble resistance operatives.

As you can see, my list differs wildly from the poll. It's better than seeing the same old lists with Citizen Kane on top, you know? I never realized before--despite my love of Lynch--but I clearly appreciate a splash (or more) of surrealism in my movies, as my top 7 venture into dreamy or bizarre territory, and yet formal surrealists Bunuel and Cocteau didn't make the cut. Also, I noticed that half of my top 10 are not yet in the Criterion Collection, though I'd love to own them on DVD with tons of features. The best thing about participating in that poll was getting me to realize how much else is out there that I'd been neglecting. I'm still discovering new directors, too, so I hope for this list to change as much in the next year as it has in the past year.

Now, what are your favorite foreign films and directors? If you don't know, I've given you about 115 options to consider, and I've barely scratched the surface.

7-20-08

I believe in Christopher Nolan

I intend to actually review The Dark Knight soon, but not being a professional allows me to indulge my fanboy side and speculate on Batman 3 first.  Obviously, spoilers abound, but if you're reading this far, you clearly aren't too careful about ruining it for yourself anyway. 

Before seeing The Dark Knight, I read a review that mentions the significance of the title, and I immediately assumed we'd be set up for Batman 3 being some play on The Dark Knight Returns.  Little did I know they were really preparing us for Harvey Dent as the White Night.  But that doesn't discount my Dark Knight Returns theory, especially considering the public's view of vigilantism and the fake Batmen from the opening.  But it just doesn't seem likely they'll stick very closely to that graphic novel for two reasons:  Heath Ledger's Joker is (cue Beyonce) irreplaceable, and the graphic novel is set so far in the future.  I imagine Nolan, assuming he's at the helm, will stick to Gotham in the "present."  I do hope they incorporate themes and plot points from The Dark Knight Returns (like Batman Begins borrowing from Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight from The Killing Joke and The Long Halloween), as the situation set up at the end of the The Dark Knight perfectly allows for it. 

And after Joker, it's nigh impossible to imagine a better villain for the threequel.  Two-Face alone would have been a high-water mark for the rogues gallery.  To be completely honest, I don't think any Batman villain can come close to Joker or Two-Face, because they illuminate the dark side of Batman so well.  But I also think villains from Batman Begins (Scarecrow) or The Dark Knight (Joker) should be kept as supporting players in Bats 3, and as much as I'd love to see more of Two-Face, I hope he stays dead.  So what we already know about the story is this:  While Commissioner Gordon (doesn't it just roll of the tongue?) remains Batman's ally, he has to lead the hunt for Gotham's Dark Knight, and the public now believes Batman is responsible for the deaths of Two-Face's victims and Harvey Dent, beloved Gotham hero.  Meanwhile, one imagines, Batman will live on to fight the real criminals.  Also, according to early treatments, the Joker's trial was going to take place in Batman 3 (where presumably he would throw acid on Harvey Dent's face a la The Long Halloween, a stunt replaced by Maroni pulling the gun on him).  So to me, the big question and driving force for Batman 3 is:  Who is Batman? 

What better villain to feed into that theme than the Riddler, who I think either figures out Batman's identity and puts him through an elaborate real-life game, or orchestrates such a scheme in order to determine his identity.  Riddler's scheme likely involves Joker either getting off somehow or getting sprung from Arkham, and of course Scarecrow has to be involved somehow too.  But I'd almost prefer if Joker were confined to Arkham the whole time, and we get scenes of Batman visiting him there for some reason.  For the record, I support recasting the Joker, and I fully expect Christopher Nolan to pick the right man for the job.  And the other hanging chad from The Dark Knight is the death of Bruce's love, Rachel Dawes.  Cue Selina Kyle.  I still love the idea of Batman trying to stop essentially his female counterpart, but being repeatedly beaten by her, while their true identities are actually lovers.  Kinda like Spiderman and Black Cat, only awesome.  And it feeds into the duality theme. 

Admittedly, I mostly want to see the Riddler done right and awesomely (as a brilliant, dangerous madman), as he was always my favorite Batman villain apart from the obvious Joker.  But I also think Riddler and Catwoman with cameos by Scarecrow and Joker would be perfect for Batman 3.  They have to completely drop the hokeyness of the backstories--Selina needs to just be as athletic as Bruce, not some supernaturally cat-bitten dominatrix--and I will leave it to professionals to figure out everyone's motivations and where the story needs to go, since I'm just going on the ending of The Dark Knight.

There's been speculation (denied by Nolan and Bale) about the casting search for Penguin, which could be neat.  Penguin could easily fill the void left by Falcone and Maroni, as well as working as a villain for both Batman and Bruce Wayne, but people will want to see the superfights, which means Penguin will, what, use a series of umbrella-guns and rocket-powered penguins?  Too cartoonish.  Who else is there?  Mr. Freeze, any way you slice him, is too Schuhmacher for this world, and the same goes for Clayface, Man-Bat, and Killer Croc.  I think Poison Ivy, Mad Hatter, and Bane could be worked into Nolan's Batman saga somehow, but I still say the best fits are Riddler and Catwoman.  Let's face it:  nobody's going to live up to Joker or Two-Face.  This way we have the next most prominent baddies (outside of Penguin), both fairly grounded characters that feed into the established themes of Batman 3.  And if it's constructed like an elaborate puzzle where all our favorite characters are pawns in this game to out Bruce Wayne?  Well that's right up Christopher Nolan's alley (see every movie he's ever made, since they all feature "magic" twists). 

Finally, I have to say Joker indirectly killing Rachel Dawes was great/terrible but had not near the impact of crippling Barbara Gordon or killing Jason Todd.  Certainly the fake-out murder of Lt. Gordon had the impact I was looking for, but I want something like that from Batman 3.  I wonder how fans would react to something like Riddler surprise-visiting Wayne Manor and capping Alfred in the gut the way Joker does Barbara?  It doesn't perfectly fit his modus operandi, but if it's a message to Bruce that he knows who Batman is or something, I think it could work, and it would certainly prove that Riddler is a formidable opponent (copyright Stephen Colbert).  And I'll be honest:  I want more Alfred scenes, dammit!  Michael Caine is perfect in these movies. 

Okay, I'll stop writing now, but come on.  It's easy to get caught up speculating on the next Batman.  Ever since seeing The Dark Knight, all I can think about is Batman.   

7-15-08

The (Mostly) Western Canon (of Film)

Yesterday, after futility ended my foolish quest for Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage--a movie so well-liked I didn't think it would be so hard to find--I sat down to flip through the colossal movie tome 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. First off, that's an awfully bossy title for a book whose last slot is given to Million Dollar Baby, a movie that has been successfully pretending it's great for years now.  More importantly, how'd I do? Well, considering I haven't even seen one and a half times as many movies as are in the book, I estimated I'd have seen maybe half. Nope. 375, just over a third. Even worse, it took until 2001 for me to check off more than four in a row. What have I been doing with my life?

After wiping my tears and swearing to get to Ben-Hur some day (can't tonight, I've got a thing), I went to the index to investigate some absent classics. I watched Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror for the first time the other day--which I admired but did not immediately love as I have his other works--so I immediately checked to see which Tarkovsky films made the cut: Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, and Stalker. No Ivan's Childhood?! I rewatched Tarkovsky's first feature a few days ago, again falling in love with his dreamy, occasionally haunting camerawork. But it's not just me.  Ivan's Childhood is praised by masters Bergman and Krzysztof Kieslowski as expanding their cinematic horizons. I was appalled to find it missing.

I also recently delved into Werner Herzog's filmography, and the book did hit most of his highlights. But it conveniently passed over The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, whose philosophical explorations are more representative of Herzog's meditative style and more interesting (and deeply examined) than in, say, Fitzcarraldo, which probably would have made the list by reputation alone. I suppose I should just be happy the book found room for Stroszek and Aguirre: The Wrath of God.

I could go on. No Mr. Arkadin, The Trial, or F for Fake. No Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, or Barton Fink. No The Shooting, no The Lady Vanishes, and no Army of Shadows. They didn't even make room for Sunset Blvd. Okay, I'm lying about one of those.

Obviously the book isn't just a list of 1001 of the best movies, but rather it serves as an intended canon, the essential movies for anyone interested in absorbing it all. So it makes sense that they'd leave some off, especially from well-covered filmmakers like Bergman, Welles, and Herzog. But I am curious about their criteria.

I assume the goal is to cover every major filmmaker, movement, and genre. But that doesn't fully explain their choices. A look at the publishing history is enlightening. The second edition, which expanded to 2003, removed Far from Heaven and Adaptation and threw in The Barbarian Invasions and Kill Bill, Vol. 1. Telling that they just took out two slots from the last year to make room, and a bit foreshadowy. In fact, that each edition only makes changes from recent years makes the earlier exclusions even worse, as if they can admit to being wrong about including Adaptation, but not about excluding some of Welles' best work. Spoiler alert: both of the new additions here will be rotated out for later editions.

The next edition went a bit further back, but only to the '90s with one exception (removing The Accidental Tourist). Someone saw the light of day and took out Coppola's awful Dracula. The other major removals (to me) included Kubrick's final feature Eyes Wide Shut (acceptable), 2002's Best Picture Oscar-winner Chicago (bowing to the snobbery of cinephiles), and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, yet another chance for them to ban the Coen Brothers. Good thing they made room for Hero. They also made room for the final two Lord of the Rings movies, Oldboy, Goodbye, Lenin!, Fahrenheit 9/11 and more. But seeing The Passion of the Christ, which made the list in this edition, implies that maybe the buzz around a movie (Fitzcarraldo, take notes) is enough to make the cut. And much as I loved Michael Mann's Collateral, I'm not sure it's worthy to be placed alongside Mulholland Dr. as the standard-bearers of the 2000s in film.

Meanwhile the most recent edition (which is newer than the book I saw at the store) reversed many of the changes made by other editions, including Million Dollar Baby (whew), The Aviator, Kill Bill, Vol. 1, Gangs of New York, City of God, The Passion of the Christ, Collateral, and, damningly, the first two Lord of the Rings films. Yes, even Fellowship. On the bright side, they found a spot for The Big Lebowski. But apart from that, Brokeback Mountain, and Lost in Translation, many of their newest changes feel like more placeholders that will change with the next edition: Tsotsi, Sideways, A Very Long Engagement, Downfall, and other mainstream European fare.

Let's take a walk.  Now is as good a time as any to reveal that I'd been working on an entry about my favorite directors, one section of which would be dedicated to the best director of each decade. I may still get around to that someday, but for now, it goes something like this:

1930s - Frank Capra - It Happened One Night, You Can't Take it With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
1940s - Orson Welles - Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger, The Lady from Shanghai, Macbeth
1950s - Alfred Hitchcock - Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, To Catch a Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest
1960s - Ingmar Bergman - The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence, Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Shame, The Passion of Anna
1970s - Francis Ford Coppola - The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now
1980s - Woody Allen - Stardust Memories, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors
1990s - the Coen Brothers - Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski

And 2000s? Well that's very difficult, since I surprisingly haven't come across anyone with more than three good movies this decade. We've still got a year and a half left (and this weekend may give us Christopher Nolan's fourth great movie of the decade--I still haven't seen Insomnia), so we'll see. But until then, doesn't it seem weird to put Christopher Nolan's name up next to the rest? His competition so far includes Peter Jackson (especially if The Lovely Bones is as excellent as I'm hoping), Wes Anderson , Sofia Coppola, Alfonso Cuaron (probably my lead contender at this point), and David Lynch (although two movies, great as they were, probably isn't enough for me). Paul Thomas Anderson's done one masterpiece and one passable piece. Martin Scorsese's had a strange eight years, but can't compete with the rest. Spielberg's been inconsistent too, but I suppose he's still in the running. Who am I overlooking?

My point with all this is that I feel the modern selections in the book overlook some of the best works in favor of the usual, lazy choices. To be fair, I'd say at least half of the modern inclusions are good choices, and a few more are at least passable for a list like this. But I'm tired of seeing the usual undeserving favorites like Gladiator, The English Patient, or even Braveheart, perennial entries on Oscar mistakes lists. Cameron Crowe made it for Jerry Maguire but not for the perpetually underrated, semi-autobiographical Almost Famous. Similarly, Satantango but no Werckmeister Harmonies?  I'm thrilled to see The Lion King on the list, but Beauty and the Beast is just as worthy, and remains the only animated film to be a Best Picture Oscar nominee. Maybe Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story wasn't included because it hasn't been officially released, but then again, Killer of Sheep didn't come out until last year and it was in the first edition.

Brokeback Mountain is another special case. Surely it will be one of the most enduring films of the decade, but it rarely topped critics lists in 2005. It scored very highly, of course, and won practically every award leading up to the Oscar, but most critics would say it wasn't the "best" of that year. I'm not arguing against its inclusion, and I don't think there's a single film from that year with more critical approval (maybe A History of Violence...maybe), but it makes you wonder about the efficacy of such catch-all lists.

And I suppose if I were in charge of the canon, and I had to decide on the five films to represent, say, 2007, I wouldn't choose my five favorite films, or the five that I think are the "best." So I understand a bit where they're coming from. But on the other hand, the 1992 Aileen Wuornos documentary made the list, because, I assume, it was compiled around the time everyone was falling for Charlize Theron's performance in the pointless but "edgy" Monster. I'm also not sure why they think Edward Scissorhands, charming though it may be, is an important movie. Pretty Woman I sort of buy, given its throne in the chick flick pantheon, but even that wouldn't garner it a spot on my list. Is Saturday Night Fever really a more valuable inclusion than Robert Altman's 3 Women?

The only reason these lists trouble me is because I'm interested in really exploring the highs of cinema. If the best modern movies are overlooked, what older classics will I never discover because of such conformist lists? I don't mean to imply that all the Greatest Movies lists succumb to groupthink, and certainly the goal of such lists is not to provide me with the films that I will most love. But the story of Harold Bloom rising to prominence by defending an overlooked movement (19th century Romantic poetry) reminds me that even long-approved canonical lists have a margin of error.

The movie canon necessarily leaves off some of the best works. I think the best way to approach a list like 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is to think of it as a primer. Nothing more, nothing less, and I'd wager the writers would agree. In case it wasn't obvious, I'm the kind of person that loves such lists, probably because I view them as merely lists. It's not really helpful or innovative to say that Hitchcock is the best director of the '50s, but it's a fun diversion, and sometimes a list like that can lead to a new perspective. And now, I'm off to continue hunting for Scenes from a Marriage, which incidentally, is not one of the 1001 movies I must see before I die. Oh well.

7-04-08

The beauty of bleakness

The opening shot (after credits) of Jules Dassin's Night and the City, a lush, hazy London exterior, for me evokes James Abbott McNeill Whistler's Nocturne: The Thames at Battersea:

Throughout the film, I was astonished to see just how gloomy Dassin keeps his London underworld.  Not even the stars light the streets, much less the hopeful moon.  And yet, as dark as the shots are, you can still make out plenty of details, as if there's just enough ambient light to reluctantly reveal the sordid goings-on.  As for Whistler, I've always been amazed at how he can convey an entire scene simply with blocks of color and light.  The atmospheric work--the hazy fog, the gas-spewing factory pipes, the reflective river surface--envelops you.  I'm still not sure whose London is bleaker. 

5-25-08

It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage

As usual, I came up with a grand plan to prepare for the arrival of a new movie, this one the new installment of Indiana Jones, a film I referenced in a speech I made junior year of high school.  Then it was a pipe dream.  Now it's a pleasant memory.  But my plan was to watch the entire trilogy during the week before it.  Leahanne had yet to see any of them, and she wanted to catch them all first, too.  Well, by Thursday, we had each only rewatched Raiders, albeit separately, but it was too much for me to wait, so I threw out the possibility of seeing the new one.  That night, I finally saw proof that there would be a fourth Indiana Jones film some day, which is fairly impressive in itself.  I did get to catch up with Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade though, as we were moving that weekend and I turned them on while I unpacked and did various room-related chores.  And here's my unadulterated adult reaction to the series, two of which I haven't seen since junior high, one of which I've seen many times over the years, and one of which was just released. 

Raiders of the Lost Ark remains the pinnacle of the series and one of the high points of cinema period.  This coming from the guy whose first 10 recommendations on this page were all black-and-white, underseen, foreign films.  It's true, Harrison Ford and all the rest give some great performances in the first one.  Of course, the acting isn't make-or-break in a movie like this, but it more than elevates the material that Harrison Ford is so good.  But the crux is the pulp, how well the episode adheres to that '30s adventure serial idea, and Raiders does it all.  We've got a South American temple, planes and pontoons, helicopters, truck chases, a Himalayan bar, Arabian streets, a monkey, Egyptian ruins, an old flame, truly bad baddies, and worldly stakes.  Indiana Jones is firmly a '30s character, and the history between he and Abner and Marcus Brody and Marion Ravenwood grounds us in his occasionally silly, globe-trotting adventure.  The opening is the perfect introduction to the world and the character, and the Hovitos temple sequence remains my favorite part of the entire series.  The action is tempered with comedy, and you can't not walk away with a smile on your face.  And if you're me, an inescapable desire to go to Disneyland and ride the Indiana Jones ride as soon as possible. 

Temple of Doom does a few things extraordinarily well, and a few things go horribly awry.  The goal was obviously to show the range of Indiana Jones, and accordingly do the exact opposite of Raiders and do it well.  So instead of going across the continents, we open in Shanghai, fly across the Himalayas, crash in India, and ride to the Indian village where the rest of the movie is set.  No world travels, just one short trip between neighboring Asian monstrosities.  And for the most part, I'm okay with that--the locations in the movie are fairly awesome.  The opening, as Kate Capshaw sings a Cantonese version of "Anything Goes" and Indiana Jones gets involved in a lounge-destroying mishap, is great.  I love the entire opening up through the airplane crash.  But it does introduce us to the two problems that plague the rest of the film:  Willie Scott and Short Round.  I like the idea of Indiana Jones going off with a pampered singer-type and a street urchin that idolizes him, but I don't think either actor pulls it off very well, and I blame both the writers and Steven Spielberg for that as well.  They all succumbed to this popular '80s type that in retrospect is annoying across the board (see Full House, Family Matters, etc.), and comparing Willie Scott to Marion Ravenwood makes me want to punch Kate Capshaw in the face.  In fact, whereas Raiders is timeless, Temple of Doom feels very '80s.  I also don't like the idea of Indiana Jones getting turned evil.  Part of his appeal to me is that he always wins.  He's not a person; he's a hero.  And I'm not a big fan of the monkey brains, drinking blood, or heart-ripping either, but that's a personal preference (and I love 28 Days Later, so, what can you do?).  That said, the mine cart chase and the rope bridge ending are awesome.  Now that I think about it, there isn't much plot to it, but I didn't really notice during the movie.  It's going to be a while before I feel the need to see Temple of Doom again, and it remains my least favorite of the series due to its cartoonishness.  And I'll say it:  Harrison Ford was hot...24 years ago. 

I held more esteem for The Last Crusade when I was younger, but I don't think it's that phenomenal any more.  The opening, once again, is pretty great, with River Phoenix in an old Boy Scout uniform hiking through Monument Valley and getting caught on a zoo train with robbers.  After that, I think the movie is too much of a throwback to Raiders.  We get another University scene, with Marcus Brody showing up during Indy's class, and Sallah returns too, and we wind up in a Middle Eastern temple.  I want the movies to have certain throughlines--for instance, I'd prefer if every Indiana Jones film had an unrelated opening adventure, a university scene, and if any of the sidekicks are recurring, I want it to be Sallah--just not too many.  And speaking of Sallah, he and Marcus were kind of annoyingly written as movie-dumb in this outing, and I just wanted them to be as fun as they were in Raiders.  Don't get me wrong, I still love The Last Crusade.  I just recognize its shortcomings, a major one being the degree to which it's a retread of Raiders.  Of course, there is so much more to like, the top of the list being Sean Connery as Indy's dad.  Allison Doody is enjoyable too, but there's just no beating Karen Allen as the girl, and Doody's more like a Bond girl where she plays both sides--all of the other Indy girls have been clearly on one side.  The action is very fun of course, and I loved the blimp scene.  And the ending is great, with the hero riding off into the sunset (rather than kissing the annoying girl in a random Indian village, ahem, Temple of Doom). 

Which brings us to Thursday.  Indiana Jones is now a series set in the '50s.  When I first heard that, I was skeptical.  Okay, I hated it.  If there was to be another Indy, I wanted it to be like the others, fun '30s adventures.  The '50s were mired in global war and paranoia.  The '30s were much more fun, and there was plenty left to be discovered then.  But I have to say, in the movie, I loved the setting--plus, it kind of has to be set that late, given the obvious aging of Harrison Ford.  Roswell had just happened in 1947, the world was in the shadow of the atomic bomb, and kids were becoming jocks or greasers, all of which are used in the movie appropriately.  I especially loved the atomic bomb sequence.  But I do have to mention one early quibble:  the opening mini-venture was not an unrelated mini-venture at all, but the introduction of the main plot.  Has David Koepp even seen Raiders?  Moving on, it's clear that Karen Allen has aged and is not as physically competent as she once was, and I'm sad to say the same for Harrison Ford in a few scenes, but for the most part they managed the action well (especially Ford).  I loved Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf and John Hurt unsurprisingly, although it was obvious that Ray Winstone was playing Indy in the middle there.  And I also have to agree that it's a bit frustrating that the climax occurred around Indiana Jones, but he was not very integral to its outcome.  Yet I still loved it.  I loved Shia swinging through the trees, the motorcycle chase into the university library, the family tied up together in the back of the truck, the sinking sand and the snake, the temple Indy explores with Mutt at night, John Hurt's ramblings, the ants, Cate's accent, swordplay and stunts, and of course the golden temple with its beautiful artifacts.  I will be the first to say that this is not the film I thought of when I heard the immortal phrase "Indiana Jones IV," but it's far from a disappointment.  Just think of how bad it could have been.  Anyway, I've only seen five movies this year, but Indy's my favorite so far, which is a pretty decent indication of my enjoyment. 

So, now that I've recently reviewed the entire Indiana Jones series, I'm confident that the peak lies with Raiders and the nadir with Temple.  However, you might be interested to hear that, rather controversially, I think Kingdom of the Crystal Skull might be a better movie than The Last Crusade.  I'm not certain, of course, having just seen these last weekend, but to me, they are of the same quality.  I think perhaps I just really like South American ruins more than I should.  And now I'm curious why there aren't many Indiana Jones copycats.  Sure there were the Romancing the Stone movies back in the day, and both Pirates of the Caribbean and National Treasure draw from the series, but I'm talking more back-in-the-day treasure-hunting in old, mysterious ruins.  Why are there no movies being made of King Solomon's Mines or 1001 Arabian Nights or better yet, a new series set a while back about treasure-hunting, maybe during the British colonial era.  Anyway, I am the market for these movies.  Make more. 

3-05-08

It is what it is

No Country for Old Men is a movie that I hope to continue exploring for a while.  I just rewatched it and have more to say about it now, particularly regarding the main characters' senses of awareness.  First Chigurh says to the Texaco owner, "I don't have some way to put it.  That's the way it is."  In the very next scene, Llewellyn says to Carla Jean, "Things happen.  I can't take 'em back."  In other words, it is what it is, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.  And just a couple shots later, Ed Tom Bell asks Wendell if he thinks the burning car is a '77 Ford, and when he responds that it could be, Ed Tom asserts, "I'd say it is.  Not a doubt in my mind."  In that same conversation, Wendell compliments Ed Tom's knack for linear thinking.  But all three of our leads share this straightforward, simple outlook.  Everything is what it is.  Somehow, these three can see through all the noise.  "It is" is about the weakest sentence in the English language, yet here it's so strong, authoritative, confident.  Wendell, Carla Jean, and Carson Wells (notice that each lead gets a foil for a supporting character--the wizened sheriff and his naive deputy, the clear-headed, decisive protagonist and his worrisome wife, the simplistic, Socratic serial killer and his rococo, flourishy rival) each fail when asked to assert themselves in words, Wendell barely confident of anything without Ed Tom's approval, and the other two begging when faced with Chigurh.  But Carla Jean at least asserts herself as a person, refusing to play Chigurh's game, and standing up where nobody else in the movie does.  Carson even made a point to tell Moss that he couldn't negotiate with Chigurh, yet when it came to it, Carson tried just that.  Another great example contrasts Carson and Moss:  when Carson interrogates Moss about his old job, Moss asserts thrice that he can weld cast iron.  "I didn't say brazed...What did I say?!"  Carson's projecting his own lack of awareness onto Moss, and Moss gets agitated with him because he expects for Carson to understand what he does:  that it is what it is.  Wendell and Carson are characters that are acted upon, whereas Carla Jean, after losing her mother and husband, becomes an active character herself. 

Weirdly enough, or perhaps because of their abilities to see more clearly than the others, Chigurh, Moss, and Bell are the only characters who make jokes, often ones that fly over their companions' heads.  Chigurh's Texaco encounter is hilarious.  "You married into it?"  Carla Jean asks where Llewellyn got the pistol, and he smarts back, "At the gettin' place."  And Ed Tom's "if it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here" is hardly a straight response to Wendell's question.  These three really know how to turn a phrase, in a way that, say, Carson and his bubonic plague joke fail.  Even better, Carson thinks he's hilarious, and he describes Chigurh as lacking a sense of humor.  It's probably true in the sense that I have a hard time seeing Chigurh chuckle, but he certainly knows how to make a joke.  They also each refuse to speculate, and all three of them are asked to do so.  They don't dabble in hypotheticals.  What is matters more than what could be. 

They all agree that it is what it is.  But what makes it it?  That's most definitely a central question of the film, the endowment of objects.  When Carson sits down in his employer's chair, and the guy snaps, "Did I ask you to sit?" Carson says he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd want to waste a chair.  Is a chair a chair if it's not being used?  When fate spares the Texaco owner, Chigurh tells him not to mix his lucky quarter with his other change because "then it becomes just a coin...which it is."  When Chigurh kills the employer for hiring more than just the one, right tool, the accountant in the room claims to be nobody, as if he suddenly became un-endowed, so to speak, with his own essence.  And the other major example I noticed is when Wendell flubs and says of the dead guys in Moss' hotel room that "all three's Mexicans...was Mexicans."  And Ed Tom smartly replies, "There's a question, whether they stopped being.  And when."  Now we already know that the movie is obsessed with when and time and now.  But what sneaks by is that existential exploration of what imbues a thing.  Certainly Chigurh is the ultimate de-imbuer of objects, taking people's lives, changing the purposes of their cars (both the police car and the chicken truck), using money as a physical tool (opening vents with coins, flipping coins to determine people's fates) rather than a symbol of wealth.  Beautifully, the Coens imbue many objects in the film along the way:  off the top of my head, the doorknobs, the TV, various phones, the transponder, the wrapper uncrinkling on the counter at the Texaco, every animal from the deer and the dogs to Ellis' cats to the bird and the chickens, the list goes on. 

I maintain that Ed Tom represents the past, Llewellyn the present, and Chigurh the future, but the chase complicates this.  Because Ed Tom is following Chigurh who's hunting Moss, their baton-passing scenes (how each of them sits in front of the TV in Moss' trailer, for instance, or how they each have a scene at the original drug deal site) follow that order:  First Moss, then Chigurh, then Bell.  Time is clearly one of the major themes of the movie, and I appreciate the camera showing us Moss checking his watch in an early scene.  You might say that scene shows Llewellyn Moss is the character concerned with now, the one in the present.  Ed Tom is what was, and Chigurh is what will be--as he says about the satchel, "I know where it's going to be."  The three leads never share the same frame alive, and that's how it has to be.  When Llewellyn meets Carson, he says, "I'm guessing this isn't the future you had picked out for yourself when you clapped eyes on that money."  First, notice Carson's verb is "guess," as in speculation.  And no, Carson isn't the future for Llewellyn--Chigurh is, and Chigurh would never guess at his intentions.  Carla Jean's mother (who's got the cancer) complains over the phone to Llewellyn:  "Do you know what time it is?" an irrelevant question, but one that reminds us of Moss' metaphorical hourglass.  The last thing we hear after Ed Tom finishes telling us about his dream is the ticking of the clock in the Bell's kitchen.  Our time is running out too, or more accurately, we are rapidly approaching that point where we will have traveled our whole lives to be. 

If the rule you've always lived by brought you to this point, of what use was the rule?  Ed Tom is the only person with a philosophy worth living.  After all, he's the only one who makes it to the end physically unharmed, if emotionally unsettled.  Chigurh lives (if he can be said to live at all) by fatalism, or at least determinism.  And yet, he ends up in a near-fatal car crash completely by chance.  For a determinist, he is forced to accept this as his lot.  And yet, Ed Tom is the one who tries to understand the world and can't.  Chigurh and Moss don't care to--they're preoccupied, one with single-minded devotion to his quarry and the other with his own survival, the survival of his wife, and not losing the money.  Ed Tom thought God would come into his life when he got older, and he didn't.  Without this guidance or understanding, Ed Tom is at a loss for how to cope.  It's the burden of awareness.  Ed Tom undergoes existential angst simply because he comprehends.  He sees more accurately than anyone in the movie, including Moss and Chigurh, immediately naming the make and model of a burning car, picking up on the right evidence and correctly deducing the crime scene, figuring that Carla Jean is the way to Llewellyn long before Chigurh does.

Ed Tom, you see, is probably the main lead, if I had to pick.  After all, he's the old man who can't assimilate in this country.  We open and close with him, and unlike Moss and Chigurh, he undergoes a change.  He's the one with the existential crisis, which starts in his opening voice-over.  "I don't want to push my chips forward, and go out and meet something I don't understand.  A man would have to put his soul at hazard.  He'd have to say, 'Okay, I'll be part of this world.'"  He's already introducing us to the themes of the movie.  Time and generations, betting your soul--"you've been putting it up your whole life"--comprehending violence.  And in the end, he leaves us with two dreams.  In the first, he lost money, which he did in real life losing track of the satchel.  And in the second, his father goes on ahead to light a fire in the dark, as if to signal that there is hope ahead.  But it's the same thing with Ed Tom wanting God to come into his life.  "Then I woke up."  That hope isn't real, and I can't be part of this world I no longer understand.  This movie is asking the same essential questions that Ed Tom is, and they both arrive at a loss. 

And of course, that's the driving story, the failure of the old to comprehend the young, the new, the modern.  Noting how in The Big Lebowski, characters say things and later, others repeat them, I'm not surprised to see the Coens' script using styles of communication to explore the themes.  For instance, notice how Ed Tom always has a handy story to tell as an analogy for what's happening now, which is both a trademark of the elderly and an example of Ed Tom further distancing himself from what's going on in the world.  Ellis' story for him solidifies my argument--the Coens have given the old people in this movie stories to tell.  Chigurh on the other hand, the future, asks questions of everyone, like a kid asking why to the endless frustration of his elders.  Notice too how the kids at the border crossing treat Moss, clearly injured and begging, with suspicion.  Leave it to me to ascribe this to generational differences.  Moss is a baby-boomer, and Ed Tom is a generation older.  Chigurh as a character is not useful here, simply because I don't know that he even qualifies as human, but as a representation of that generation gap, he embodies all that Ed Tom does not understand.  There are other older characters too.  Ellis, for one, who has triumphed for now over his own existential angst by reaching the philosophy that however long you're looking for what's been taken from you is time you won't get back, but this does not satisfy Ed Tom.  Perhaps he finds fault in it.  Loretta doesn't seem to be on that same self-awareness level with Ed Tom and Ellis; she simply looks reassuringly after Ed Tom bares his soul.  And of course the Texaco owner has no idea what planet Chigurh is from, and while he tries to buy time telling his story of moving from Temple, it's no use.  Then there's the old motel owner who simply cannot fathom why Llewellyn would want another room, much less one with two double beds.  Old people and young people are on completely different wavelengths, and my own explanation has more to do with the times they grew up in, their generational differences.  Aside from the kids at the border crossing, we encounter one more group of kids from Generation X, the kids at the end who give Chigurh a shirt.  At first, they're altruistic, but when he forces them to take the money, they immediately squabble over it.  Philosophically, isn't that like saying the Baby Boomers gave Generation X hush money and it distracted them from the problems they created, i.e. the economic boom of the '80s used as hush money for Vietnam and Watergate?  I think so, and I think setting this movie in 1980 is important for these historical reasons.  The post-Vietnam/Nixon era occurring right between generations makes it perfect for this sort of generation gap exploration. 

Similarly, check out how the three leads operate.  Ed Tom, as we've established, tells stories to get what he wants.  He talks up a storm, or he makes a disarming quip, or he eloquently and elegantly explores the crux of his angst.  Chigurh, obviously, uses violence.  Sure he lets some people flip a coin, but more often than not, if someone gets in his way, even slightly, or violates his principles, even slightly, he kills them.  Moss, on the other hand, uses money.  Obviously his love for money got him into this whole mess--of course he'll assume that's what drives others too.  The thing is, he's right.  He successfully bribes a taxi driver, the concierge, and the college kids, he uses the money to get his tools (the tent poles, his new clothes), and he even uses money to get out of his problem at the first motel by renting an extra room.  It's important that the Coens establish these modi operandi because of the end.  When Moss goes on the offensive, the start of his downfall, he resorts to threats instead.  He stops paying people off, instead using his words, and in a way, violence.  And after two such scenes (to be accurate, he does use money to buy his new outfit after the initial threat, but apart from that), he is killed.  Chigurh, too, changes his modus operandi when he encounters an unforeseen obstacle in the car crash.  Actually, just before that, he came across a resistant target for the first time, so he's already been frustrated.  And then, instead of using violence to get what he wants (tell me, why doesn't he just kill the kids?), he resorts to paying them off, a Moss move, and pleading with them to tie the shirt or take the money, both Bell moves.  And he limps away, probably to "die," or some analogous act of evaporation that occurs to ghostface killers.  Notice that Ed Tom never changes his methods, and notice too how he opens the movie with his admiration for sheriffs that refused to even wear guns.  Is this altruism a generational thing, or are the two themes unconnected? 

A couple more uses of money:  Ed Tom tells the story of the criminals who used to kill old people and cash their social security checks, and just like the efficacy of the repeated bribes in the movie and the kids squabbling at the end, it shows that we are in a world where the acquisition of money is our prime motive, and we will use violence to achieve it if necessary.  This is the world Ed Tom refuses to be a part of, and his retiring is not merely symbolic--it also represents him giving up the earning of a paycheck.  And not to continue obliquely referencing greed in, say, There Will Be Blood, but just before the scene where Ed Tom tells how God never came into his life, we see a closeup of Chigurh's dime on the floor of Moss' hotel room.  In God We Trust, it says, and Ed Tom tries but can't.  The religious theme is not focused on as much explicitly, but I think it's always there.  Ed Tom is trying to understand what the purpose of life is the whole time, a semi-religious question.  Instead of receiving divine clarity, he encounters a world of indifference, cruel fate, and collaboration via bribery.  This is far more powerful than repeatedly referencing God's silence. 

Okay, one more There Will Be Blood connection:  Like Daniel Plainview, the first sound that comes out of Chigurh's mouth is a gasp of breath.  Life.  For Chigurh, it occurs at the exact moment of his first victim's death (first victim in the movie, anyway).  You could say death gives him life; it sustains him.  His cattlegun is a brilliant device on Cormac McCarthy's part.  It gets in, kills you, and gets back out without a trace, just like its master.  And actually, it's used more often as a tool than as a weapon; it only kills one person directly.  Similarly, Chigurh describes himself as "the one, right tool."  He has principles, if no conscience.  This is another point of comparison or progression among the leads.  Moss does have a conscience, ultimately forfeiting his own safety for that of his wife, and of course his conscience led him to bring the survivor some agua, which got him in this whole mess.  But Ed Tom, as the oldest, has the heaviest conscience of all, as if he is holding himself accountable for all the deaths along the way.  That line about how the initial murder scene "certainly made an impression" on him always jumped out at me.  A lot of people were there lying dead, yes, but none were particularly graphic, and much worse was to come.  It's interesting that Ed Tom's conscience is going off so early in the story, whereas Moss' begins to act nobly half way through, and Chigurh never quite gets there. 

I have to say, the plot being a complicated series of chases is perfect.  With repeated references to the coin getting here the same way Chigurh did, or travelling 22 years to get here, it makes sense that the movie is like a map of the Southwest and the characters all move around on it, occasionally bumping into one another.  It all goes back to the theme of inevitability too.  "You can't stop what's coming."  "You know how this is going to turn out, don't you?"  When Carson's blood flows toward Chigurh's boots, he knows he can't stop it.  Instead he just moves his feet.  It's funny, beautiful, and a great symbol.  But of course, I've already discussed the inevitability theme.  Hand in hand with this is the idea of sight, as when Llewellyn tells the siren by the pool that he's looking for what's coming, or when Llewellyn looks through binoculars or his telescopic rifle, or Chigurh asks the accountant if he sees him as his life depends on it, or when Carla Jean's mom says she previsioned Llewellyn being "no and good."  And then at the end, Chigurh tells the kids, "You didn't see me.  I was already gone."  A reference to I'm Not There, no doubt.  Or better yet, the Coens' own The Man Who Wasn't There. 

Eleven paragraphs later, as I throw in pictures of my two favorite non-pictured characters for no reason, I arrive at the conclusion that I've known for a while.  The Coen Brothers are brilliant filmmakers, adept at making entertaining fare that is riddled with intellectual backing.  They are so good at weaving various related thematic content together to form an epistemological tapestry on which their stories take place, most apparent here and in Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski.  Who else would address nihilism in an update of The Big Sleep where Bogey becomes a slacker bowler?  No Country for Old Men, like I'm Not There, defines itself by a negative--you know what it is by defining the opposition.  It is not this, so it must be that.  Reminds me of The Deer Hunter where De Niro yells, "This is this!  This ain't somethin' else!"  It really is much easier to cut through the noise and just say it is what it is.

3-01-08

You know it's thriller, thriller night

Michael Haneke is a regular Cannes competitor who won Best Director for Hidden (Caché in French), a thriller I've wanted to see for a few years now.  It turns out he also made the original Funny Games, a movie about a pair of sociopaths who make a family compete in a series of sadistic games one evening, which I first discovered via the remake's movie poster with a close-up of a battered Naomi Watts.  It turns out the remake is shot-for-shot, and Haneke's directing, so I'm not sure what the purpose is apart from spreading exposure of the original.  But nevertheless, I caught up with Funny Games and Hidden, and was rather surprised at what I found.  Haneke directs dramas masquerading as thrillers, and frankly, this worked against both of the movies for me--I was looking for some suspense and some shocking surprises.  I first watched Hidden, which is about an upper middle class French couple (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) who receive surveillance tapes of their apartment wrapped in childlike drawings of stick figures and blood.  The first hour or so is the thriller I wanted, as Auteuil investigates, and Haneke shows us glimpses of frightening scenes of the real representation of the character on the notes, with blood around his mouth.  But as we uncover the mystery, we figure out what the movie really is:  an indictment of classist France.  Not to ruin anything, but the entire movie, both literally and metaphorically, becomes about the tyranny of the upper class.  It's a solid drama, with excellent lead performances, but it's no thriller.  At least, not after the first hour. 

Funny Games on the other hand is way better at giving me the shock I wanted.  As I learned about Hidden, Haneke manifests his social awareness here too, and I'd say it works better.  As I said, a vacationing family become the accidental targets of a pair of sociopaths, who quickly take them hostage and bet that they won't survive the next 12 hours.  Two important points:  1) the family never have any control, so whether they survive is completely out of their hands anyway, and 2) the lead bad guy turns to the audience and bets us as well.  You see, Paul, as he is called, is self-aware to the degree that he regularly breaks the fourth wall, winking and smirking even.  At one point, he even manipulates the footage we see.  This is how Haneke indicts the audience.  He's charging us with wanting to see extreme violence in movies, and interestingly, most of the violence that occurs happens just offscreen.  For instance, the tracking shots of the house from Hidden are used here to focus on a single character as the other four interact just to their left, but all we get are sounds and reaction.  It's one of my favorite directorial choices, as is the 10-minute tracking shot that occurs in the middle of the movie.  To say more would ruin my favorite part.  Funny Games is an adept thriller, but it's also more or less a regular, old drama, and the self-awareness pushes it up a notch in the commentary department.  It's never meant to be realistic, and the family make for great protagonists, especially the mother played by Susanne Lothar.  I'm excited to see Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Michael Pitt in the remake, and I do hope Funny Games US helps Haneke get back to stories that are entertaining first, and commentary second. 

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