Cin City

United 93

2006-07-31T17:28:00.000-04:00

"I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth."
-Tim O'Brien

Last Thursday, after work, I went to see Paul Greengrass's United 93. As can be expected, it's not an easy movie to like, but it's an important movie and a good one and one that needs to be seen. I know this because, like everyone else in the theater, I knew how it would end before the lights went down and yet I was nervous the whole way through. The film never once struck a hollow note and these characters whose names I never learned were painfully, painfully real.

When the film ended, I remembered where I was and realized that I was the only American in the theater. Gradually, as they got up to go, my fellow audience members started to chat in a language I speak fluently, but I honestly couldn't understand a word of it. I felt more American than I had in months and I was quite honestly paralyzed. I sat watching the credits roll past for what felt like fifteen minutes but probably was only five and then I walked to catch the Metro home, hyperventilating all the way.

As I struggled to catch my breath, I realized that this was the reaction to September 11 that I never really had and it struck me as ridiculous that I had to watch a movie on the other side of the ocean five years later before it all really hit me. At the time, the enormity of the event had eclipsed itself. It was too immense to understand and I (thankfully) lacked the kind of personal connection to the historical moment that would draw me into it all.

I remember at the time wondering why I felt so little. Whether I'd been desensitized by violent movies or if just the act of seeing the event filtered through television (I was away at college at the time) made it seem somehow like fiction. Whatever the reason, seeing it as fiction now had made it real.

To those who would argue that making a film such as this one is exploitative and disrespectful, then, I say that, for better or worse, making films like this is essential. Great art always rises from the ashes of immense tragedy, to give voice to the stifled, disenfranchised emotions universally almostfelt by the people who live through catastrophe, because straightforward reporting is never enough.

Perhaps it's bad that to understand something real I need to see it immortalized as fiction, but it's a fact of life I can't change and although I'm not necessarily prepared to call blogging an art, it looks as though I'm not alone.

Stuck in the Middle

2006-07-27T11:20:00.000-04:00

On June 11 (yes, I know I'm behind on this one, but I'm not in America, so give me a break), NPR did a story on the success of Kevin Donohue's book The Stolen Child thanks to amateur reviewers on Amazon.com.

This past Tuesday, Slate's Jack Schafer published a piece about the NYT's capsule movie reviews.

The nature of journalistic criticism (of books, movies, etc.) is changing. The professional critic/reviewer is less relevant and long, thoughtful reviews seem to be the stuff of yesteryear.

To be honest, I'm not sure how to feel about this. Obviously, at this point I'm certainly no more than an amateur reviewer (especially given the increasing rarity with which I post to this blog), so perhaps this is good news, but I aspire to be a professional, in which case it is bad.

Profound. I know.

Gossip

2006-07-10T18:47:00.000-04:00

In a recent post, I said that Paris, je t'aime probably wouldn't make it across the Atlantic to the American market. I still believe that, but I have it on good authority (and the IMDB backs up my source on this) that the producer Emmanuel Benbihy is preparing a New York version that will follow the same format.

Possible titles?

My guess: "From New York to the rest of the World: Surely you must be joking."

Too long? Too wordy?

Ok, New York minute version: "New York to World: Up yours."

Oh, les Bleus, you were a cruel mistress

2006-07-09T18:30:00.000-04:00

Tonight, France lost the World Cup.

I left my friends apartment half-expecting to walk through a field of burning cars on my way to the Metro, but the streets were eerily quiet. When I got on the train, the car was very crowded - especially for so late on a Sunday night - but it might as well have been empty. No one spoke. No one made eye contact.

As I wrote almost a year ago now, I'm not much of a sports fan, but I did get caught up in the wave of France's seemingly unstoppable momentum and, just like with Andre last year, my involvement lead only to disappointment. Mostly, however, I'm just sad that the whole country isn't erupting in a giant party as Italy is undoubtedly doing at this exact moment.

Superman Returns

2006-07-09T06:36:00.000-04:00

And I say he's not welcome.

I haven’t seen Superman Returns yet (not out in France), but there’s something about the idea of the film that has me profoundly worried. I’m not particularly concerned about the quality of its content – although, I admit, I have my reservations – but rather about what the films represents.

I think the superhero genre has a lot of potential. In addition to the fact that comic books are basically movie storyboards, I think that the heroes's superpowers nicely reflect our country's status as a superpower. Their internal moral struggle is therefore ours. Superheroes, like America, have great powers (even Batman, whose endless fountains of money and unstoppable sociopathic insanity make up for his mortality and inability to fly) and they have to wrestle with the idea of those powers and what they should do with them. The temptation to misuse those powers is very real, so it's understandable if they occasionally do; they've had little to prepare them for that wealth of responsibility and, in the end, they really are only human.

In turn, then, it's understandable that America will occasionally go wrong and abuse its powers. I'm not saying it's good; I'm saying it's a reality and that, as Americans, it's important for our national identity to be able to be proud of our country even if we sometimes disagree with what it does. I'm not happy that we've invaded Iraq, but Spiderman originally tried to use his superpowers to be a professional wrestler and the Dark Knight basically killed Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins. If someone who is unarguably a superhero can do that and still be a superhero, then a great country can make the mistake of invading another country and still be a great country and I don't have to be ashamed to be proud of it, even if that pride is tinted by disappointment.

Superman, however, casts aside moral ambiguity and vulnerability. He is too Good (I'm going to use a capital G to emphasize the moral - as opposed to the qualitative - function of the word) to ever succumb to temptation, laziness, or apathy and he's just about invincible. He has an inhuman lack of flaws. Further, his primary enemy is the embodiment of pure evil. There is no identifying with Lex Luthor. He's just Bad. Dr. Octopus, Magneto, and the aforementioned Ra's Al Ghul, however, are more complex and sympathetic; in the end, they are just shadowy reflections of the heroes who fight to stop them.

Superman was "born" at the dawn of World War II - and there were, in fact, a series of cartoons depicting him fighting the Nazis and the Japanese - so it's logical that he would be such a straightforward, black and white character. In terms of foreign policy, those were more or less straightforward, black and white times. The victors' position as authors of history aside, America was the good guy during World War II, and the Axis powers were the bad guys. Superman was a fine image for those times: a new superhero for a new superpower.

Our friend from Krypton, however, is no longer relevant. Deluding ourselves with his image both sets us up for disappointment and misleads us, because our country can never be as good as he is or as strong and impervious to attack as he is, and it would be wrong for us to believe that it could be. Similarly, it's unfair to use Lex Luthor as a representative of our country's chosen enemies. While the members of Al-Qaeda may do horrible, execrable things; they are not pure evil and to represent them as such is reductive and ignorant.

As I understand it, the movie begins with Superman's return after a prolonged absence and Lois Lane has recently written a story about how, in the end, Metropolis doesn't need Superman. Presumably, the movie goes on to show that in fact it does, and the parallel argument would be that real-life Americans need Superman back in their lives, too. Metropolis, however, is a fictional city with supervillains like Lex Luthor lurking about; once upon a time it was an apt symbol of the real America and the real world, but not anymore. Nowadays, the real America and the real world is more complicated, and pure evil, just like Good, is hard to find. America does not need Superman because we no longer are Superman. We are human, just like our enemies, and we are just as flawed, but that doesn't mean we can't be great.

La Fête du Cinéma, Part III

2006-06-27T15:59:00.000-04:00

Called on account of the World Cup!

Halftime score:
France 1
Spain 1

Allez les bleus!

La Fête du Cinéma, Part II

2006-06-26T20:24:00.000-04:00

Theme: The two greatest cities in the world.

I saw two movies tonight. One made me ache for New York and the other made me never want to leave Paris.

Kramer vs. Kramer caught me off-guard. I hadn't read up on it ahead of time and, for some reason, I was expecting a light-hearted comedy. I was quite wrong. It's tragic and sad and difficult to watch at points and entirely worth it. Take Big Daddy, subtract Adam Sandler and all of the stupidity that comes with him, turn the melodrama into sincerity, transform the Hooters references into a hilarious conversation between a 7 year-old boy and a naked lady, and then make it great, and you have Kramer vs. Kramer. There's nothing dynamic or new about the film's style, but its content is so real and vital that, as hard and painful as it looked, part of me wanted to live the life I saw in it.

With Paris, je t'aime, on the other hand, I knew what I was getting into. 19 5-minute shorts, each by a different director, each on a different area of the city.

The list of directors is as follows (alphabetical order):
Olivier Assayas
Frédéric Auburtin
Gurinder Chadha
Sylvain Chomet
The Coen Brothers
Isabel Coixet
Wes Craven
Alfonso Cuarón
Gérard Depardieu
Christopher Doyle
Richard LaGravenese
Vincenzo Natali
Alexander Payne
Bruno Podalydès
Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas
Oliver Schmitz
Nobuhiro Suwa
Tom Tykwer
Gus Van Sant

In most cases, the notable directors just did short versions of what they always do - Tykwer's short is especially very reminiscent of his previous work on Run Lola Run - but they did it well and it turned out to be a charming film with a little bit of everything (it even had vampires).

More than anything else, it made me realize how much I've lived in this city, more here than probably anywhere else. I could see bits of myself and my life in most (not the one with the vampires, sadly) of the brief snapshots, and it felt nice, especially since I was sure that most of the people in the theater probably felt the same way. For that reason, I kind of doubt that this film will make it over to the United States, but if it does, go see it.

Hell, by the time it would come out over there I'd probably be back, so invite me along.

La Fête du Cinéma Part IandThe Myth of the Lost Post of June 2006

2006-06-25T18:37:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day of La Fête du Cinéma, a three-day festival of nearly free film screenings in every movie theater in France. Of course, Paris - where on any given day you can probably find a theater playing any kind of movie you could possibly want to watch - is the glowing epicenter of all this movie-going and on a rainy day like today, nothing seems more natural than going to the movies.

Today, for me, had a theme: Italian neorealism.

I started the day off with De Sica's The Bicycle Thief, until today another entry on my aforementioned list of movies I'm ashamed to say I've never seen. True to neorealist style, the film is barebones bleak and it doesn't end happily. I thought it offered an interesting perspective on son-to-father hero-worship (especially in the wake of the collapse of fascist Italy) and the malleability of morality in dire circumstances, but it wasn't exactly fun and by the end I was in need of a break.

For an intermission, I watched a Franco-American gay couple have an argument rife with tragicomic language barrier misunderstandings in a cafe on Blvd St. Germain and listened to some Dutch people play some very beautiful music in a very pretty church.

Then back into the fray with Fellini's La Strada. Although technically not neorealist, it certainly feels like it, especially when compared with Fellini's well-known records of decadence La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2. Parts of the movie feel like an Italian cross between I Love Lucy and Duck Soup, but for the most part it's painfully tragic, albeit somewhat reductive and misogynistic. Perhaps because some brief but resonating touches of the fantasy of these other films mix with and soften the film's classically neorealistic dim world view, I greatly preferred this film, even though The Bicycle Thief is certainly the critics' favorite of the two.

And that's it for now. Tune in tomorrow for more summary judgements. Up for viewing: Kramer vs. Kramer and Paris, Je t'aime.

And, yes, the myth: in brief, inspired somewhat by Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (one of the pieces the Dutch played in the pretty church), I've decided to let a post recounting some of last week's activities lie stagnant for a bit. I will finish it eventually and then retroactively post it under June 24, the date it was originally slated for. In the meantime, I'll give updates on my progress and offer you this teaser:

"Sunday Double Feature, la Fête de la Musique, and my very first business trip"

In which I encounter a melting Nazi soldier, dance in the rain, and sneak a knife onto a plane.

Yaourt

2006-06-16T03:31:00.000-04:00

Continuing to play at journalism, I found myself standing out in the drizzle at Porte Maillot at 8 a.m. After five minutes of standing very still and blinking into the bleary morning light, I got on a chartered short bus and headed off to the Dannon (which is a French company and is really spelled Danone) factory. Theoretically this was supposed to be about engineered foods (Nestle, for example, is making a breakfast bar designed especially for diabetics, and I thought Danone was maybe doing something similar), but something seemed off. Everything seemed set to go very, very wrong.

First, I was surrounded by blonde French women who wrote for French women's health magazines. They were nice to look at and fun to talk to, but they were clearly there to write about dieting. This wasn't good.

Then we hit traffic. Lots of traffic. That's never good.

Third, we broke free of the traffic and it became clear that our driver had no idea where he was, but refused to admit it and acted like we were crazy for being upset with him about it. We actually drove several laps around one roundabout while we all argued and tried to figure out where we were.

When we did finally get there - almost an hour late - I was never so happy to arrive at a yogurt factory in the middle of the countryside in my entire life. It was a distincly French factory, filled to the brim with unnecessary architectural elements and all the yogurt products I could eat. Then the propaganda began.

There was power point presentation after power point presentation, each delivered by the most attractive person in his/her department. There was a tour delivered by a small man with a tic, where we saw lots of bubbling beakers and microscopes, but no yogurt. And then there were more power point presentations and more free Danone products. I forgot why I was there.

I was there to eat yogurt.

We all need to eat more yogurt. Yogurt is essential for our health. Eat more yogurt. Eat Danone yogurt.

I don't remember how I got home.

Another European Commericial

2006-06-14T02:58:00.000-04:00

After this ad played for the third time over the course of one World Cup match, the New Yorkais wondered aloud why French commercials often lack dialogue and narration, focusing purely on the visual. We waxed philosophical on differences between American and French aesthetics and then got back to the game, certain that this kind of commercial was indicative of a profound cultural gap as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.

Then I found the commercial online. You'll notice that, in this version, there is narration. In English. It was so obvious, I couldn't believe it. The reason so many French commercials lack dialogue is because they aren't actually French and when they're imported from other countries, the narration is taken off.

This is Europe: they don't necessarily have a higher appreciation for the visual potential of a culture; they just all speak different languages and so they need to communicate visually. Like I said, very obvious.

All the same, I really like the wordless commercials. Here's another one from a while back that features my favorite Jose Gonzalez song.

PS

2006-06-10T14:13:00.000-04:00

I found the video I linked to in the previous post on a blog that seems to be dedicated entirely to finding videos that use split screen. Interesting.

Conversations with Other Women

2006-06-10T11:18:00.000-04:00

After a particularly long day at work last Wednesday, I was looking forward to going to the movies. Sitting alone in the dark always relaxes me and I come out refreshed. Little did I realize that Hans Canosa's Conversations with Other Women would depress the fuck out of me.

In brief, the movie is about a man (Aaron Eckhart) and a woman (Helena Bonham Carter) who meet at a wedding. They talk, they flirt, they hint at a shared history, then they confirm it. They were married once, but they haven't seen one another in nine years. They've both moved on with their lives (nominally, at least), but their love hasn't faded, so, although they spend the night together, their reunion is fraught with a tragic nostalgia because there's little hope that things will work out for them; their thirty-something lifestyles and committments won't allow for them to run off together like they could when they were young. Like I said, depressing.

Nonetheless, depressing alone isn't enough and if that were all there was to the film, I'd say that Linklater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset would render it completely redundant. (In fact, when we see flashbacks of the man and woman - we never learn their names - during their marriage, the younger version of the man looks much more like Ethan Hawke than he does like Eckhart.) Although the acting and writing are both quite good, the subject matter feels unoriginal in the context of Linklater's films. Thankfully, however, Canosa's visual presentation of the film is rather new: the whole film is shot in split-screen.

Frequently this means that the left half of the frame simply shows another angle of the same scene depicted on the right, which has the interesting effect of keeping the man and woman apart even when they're right next to one another. Other times, the split-screen compares the present with the past, or reality with what could be. Either way, what sounds like a gimmick when lazily described on a blog saves this movie from anonymous mediocrity and gives a hackneyed subject enough emotional force to, as I said (forgive me for splitting that infinitive), depress the fuck out of me.

It's way too hot out for me to sit in front of my computer and postulate about the significance behind the use of the split-screen (short attention span? a new internet-age ability to absorb more information at once? globalization?!), so I'll just put up a link. For a non-depressing split-screen experience, check out this commercial, which has played in every movie theater I've been to in the last couple months. I quite like it.

Madame de Stael, Hitler, Marie-Antoinette, and a certain Australian

2006-06-06T02:57:00.000-04:00

My second week of work has come and gone in a flash, and I've fallen into a comfortable routine. It's a whole new Paris lifestyle, involving morning and evening commutes, lunch dates, evening drinks, and, oh yes, work. The regularity of it seems to be wiping away all the lazy flânerie and cinephilia (and blogging) that came before it. In a way, it already feels like I've been at this forever. For that and other reasons, this past week and a half has felt enormously long and I can only measure its length by certain punctuating events and people, the first of whom is Madame de Stael.

Madame de Stael was a celebrated and controversial French novelist who lived during the Revolutionary period and famously butted heads with Napoleon. In between periods of exile, she was also the proud owner of a really nice house on rue Royale, just off of what was then Place Louis XIV (but, since the Revolution, is Place de la Concorde). Unlike much of the rest of Paris, her house didn't become a museum. Instead, it became an antiques gallery, which is pretty much the same thing except the guests are allowed to touch all of the really old stuff and then you get pressured with the hard sell on your way out the door.

The gallery is owned by a man named Marcel Gruspan and his family has been in the business of buying and selling masterwork furniture and art in Paris for four generations. I happened to meet his son Pierre, who now manages the gallery, at a dinner party a little over a month ago and he invited me to come around and have a look. Not many people come around anymore, he said; it'd be a pleasure to show me around. As I'm playing at being a journalist nowadays, I gave him a call. It might make for a good story, I thought.

I'll tell you, I don't think there's a story there, but goodness was that a trippy experience. As I walked in, I was met by a man with a lazy eye who explained that Pierre was running late and then led me up a grand staircase past marble statues, suits of armor, and grandfather clocks. At the top of the stairs, two women who were dangerously teetering on the point between "middle-aged" and "elderly" were chatting at a horribly out of place endtable, as if they were sitting at a sidewalk café and not on the landing of a meticulously maintained historical mansion. They did not acknowledge my presence, nor was I introduced.

I walked past them on the way out about an hour later and they hadn't moved.

We entered the grand salon. Only a few blocks from the Louvre, it was easy for me to get disoriented and think that that was actually where I was. The only things missing were the crowds and the velvet ropes. It was just me, the man with the lazy eye, and this chair that was built for Marie-Antoinette (I'll get to her in a minute), and the man with the lazy eye was urging me to sit down. Because I'm slightly afraid of people who bear such glaring physical irregularities, I did as he said. I also held the drawer that he pulled (rather roughly, if you ask me) out of the desk made for Louis XIV, rocked the crib made for baby Louis XVI, and hung my jacket on the coatrack that was made for nobody important.

Out of fear, I did all of this, but eventually Pierre showed up and the lazy-eyed man went away. Unafraid of Pierre, I decided to stop. These things weren't meant to be touched; they were to be looked upon and admired. But I couldn't stop, and so I kept at it - running my fingers along the mantles, testing seat cushions, caressing the ornate carvings on the wooden tables - until it was time to go. In a short time I had become addicted to this decadence and to my intimacy with it, and it hurt a little when I had to go, but the glare of the early evening sunlight shocked me out of it once I'd hit the street and I went on my way.

Having had this experience, I should have been a bit more sympathetic to Marie Antoinette (see how I seamlessly weaved that in there? You like that?), but I just wasn't. In the beginning of the movie, after undergoing just a small portion of the pomp, circumstance, and ritual that is to become part of her everyday routine, Kirsten Dunst's Marie Antoinette declares it all ridiculous, to which Judy Davis responds "This, madame, is Versailles." Listening to them both, I had trouble seeing why they weren't in agreement; they seemed to be saying the same thing.

Of course, that may just be the point. Both a very smart friend of mine and A.O. Scott point out the film's potential to serve as an allegory for the indulgent, yet often short-lived fantasy land existence of many of Hollywood's darlings. Personally, that didn't occur to me, but having listened to and read that argument, I think it makes a lot of sense. Still, like Manohla Dargis, I just think it's all way too overdone and that Sophia Coppola is, like Marie-Antoinette, a little too immersed in this decadent lifestyle to offer any sort of critical perspective.

As always, however, I did enjoy her cinematography and her choice of soundtrack.

There are other people who defined this past week, including Hitler - that sad vegetarian, of whose final days I saw an artful and sensitive depiction in 2004's The Downfall - and also the certain Australian who came to visit and, in addition to watching both of these movies with me, brought a good deal of fairly welcome drama into my life.

Sadly, my day is about to begin and I need to go, so I won't be able to finish. I'll only say that, like the one that (for me) preceded it, this latest German World War II movie was remarkable in its human portrayal of upper echelons of the Nazis. Until he started foaming at the mouth about the global Jewish conspiracy, Bruno Ganz's Hitler actually reminded me a lot of Josiah Bartlett from The West Wing.

We get crazies here in Paris, too

2006-05-31T05:33:00.000-04:00

I was riding the Metro to work today and as we started to pull out of a station early on in my commute, I heard singing. This is nothing new, of course. Panhandlers frequently ask for money in exchange for unsolicited performances, but they rarely sing about...Jesus?

I looked up and, instead of seeing a shabbily dressed woman standing commandingly in front of one of the doors, I saw a shabbily dressed woman sitting unobtrusively on one of the fold-out seats, loudly singing in French about Jesus to no one in particular. In between songs, she'd give a little rap about how neither she nor God were racist and how, together, they loved everyone. To illustrate this she'd occasionally administer God's blessing to innocent bystanders. She clearly wasn't in this for money.

This continued for ten minutes or so until a cell phone rang (cell phones generally work in the Paris Metro). Her cell phone. She stopped mid-high note and answered. Rough translation/transcription of her conversation:

"Hello? Ah! No...no, I'm in the Metro. No, I didn't hear about that! No! No, she didn't! OK, well, I'll be right there. In a few minutes. Calm down. OK. Bye."

She hung up, but the phone back in her bag, rapped a bit about how Jesus also loves the person who just called her on the phone and how she and Jesus both hoped that that person's problems were not as bad as she'd presented them in that conversation, whereupon she began singing again. A few stops later, she got off the train.

As we pulled away, I looked out the window and saw her walking happily down the platform, singing about Jesus all the way.

Da Vinci Code

2006-05-19T20:26:00.000-04:00

The line "You can never trust the French," drew a stony silence from tonight's crowd at the Gaumont Parnasse. A stony, stony silence.

Other than that, I thought it went over quite well. I had a very good time. I'm glad I didn't read the book though.

Forget Ozu

2006-05-18T04:51:00.000-04:00

This short YouTube film makes Japanese cinematic history. The title makes for a great showcase of the language's lack of an L/R distinction.

Credit for the find goes entirely to Jim, who is entirely shameless about using a photo I took without ever once giving me any sort of credit for it. You make a guy look really cool standing next to a bunch of skulls and it goes straight to his head.

Do you still not know what you want to be when you grow up?

2006-05-17T17:38:00.000-04:00

Do you believe in love? Do you want it, yearn for it, but somehow find yourself afraid of it and aren't sure where to go about finding it anyway?

You should see Russian Dolls (Les Poupées Russes), Cedric Klapisch's sequel to L'Auberge Espagnole (Which you should see first, if you haven't already).

The first film tells the light-hearted story of Xavier's (Romain Duris from last year's The Beat That My Heart Skipped) year in Barcelona,* where he shares an apartment with what seems like one representative from each country in the European Union. I watched this movie the summer after I came back from my first stay in Paris and in it I saw myself. It's not a serious movie, but it perfectly captures the crazy, amazing experience that is study abroad and all of the scenes between the multi-cultural roommates were so similar to the kind of interactions I had with my neighbors (who were mostly Italian and Spanish) in Paris as to be uncanny.

Les Poupées Russes, I saw just last month and it had much the same effect. Xavier, like me, has gotten older. Like me, he's no longer a student, but he still doesn't really know what he wants to do with his life. And like me, he wants to live fully and leave nothing out, but he's not sure how.

A perfect representative of the Yeppie generation, Xavier goes through several jobs, girlfriends, and geographic locations (Paris, London, St. Petersburg, Moscow) over the course of the film, never content, never sure whether or not he has worked his way down to the last Russian doll, or whether it will open up to reveal another inside. In one impassioned monologue (which you can see in the French trailer, on the French site), he nicely encapsulates the whole mentality. I'll write it in French and then do my best to translate:

"C’est quoi ce bordel avec l’amour ? Quand t’es seul, tu te plains. Quand est-ce que je vais trouver quelqu’un ? Quand t’as quelqu’un, est-ce que c’est la bonne ? Est-ce que je l’aime vraiment ? Est-ce qu’elle m’aime autant que, moi, je l’aime ?"
"What the fuck is the deal with love? When you're alone, you're lonely. When will I find someone? When you have someone, is she the right one? Do I really love her? Does she love me as much as I love her?"

It's a new age of anxiety, but it has little to do with money or security. The question is happiness. Am I happy? If I am, am I as happy as I could be? Could I be happier if my life were different? Having thought that, have I ruined the happiness that I knew a moment ago because now I will be wracked by curiosity about the happiness I might find if I change?

There's a Samuel Beckett-esque absurdity to this line of self-interrogation and, if you really wanted, you could reduce it to a simple, immature fear of commitment, as David Denby does, but I think it's bigger than that. It speaks to our generation, which - if I'm a good example to go by - is defined by uncertainty, a desire to achieve a real-world happiness to match its college counterpart, and an adamant unwillingness to compromise. Maybe that is just an immature fear of committment, actually, but that's where I'm at and I don't think I'm alone on this one.

I will agree with Mr. Denby that both of these movies are, in content, little more than light comedies, but they are so immersed in this time in history and this time in a person's life, that they can't help but invite viewers of a certain age to identify with them completely. I don't feel like I'd be exaggerating if I said that these two films were cultural touchstones for our generation, just as American Graffiti was for all those old people I can't identify with.

Klapisch romanticizes and idealizes things a bit, as is always the case with light-hearted comedies, but he also taps into something true. Go see these movies.

*Which, as I write this, has just beaten Arsenal in the final round of the League of Champions. Yeah, I don't care much, either.

----------------------------------------------------------

And speaking of cultural touchstones: I don't care what A.O. Scott says. I'm going to see this one.

German World War II movies

2006-05-16T15:19:00.000-04:00

History is written by the winners, or, at least, that's a conclusion you can safely draw from Hollywood's treatment of World War II. As the last of the "good" wars, World War II has seen itself transformed from a tragedy that nearly destroyed all of Europe to a cinematic goldmine, the ideal material for an uncomplicated war movie: a good guy who is without a doubt good, a bad guy who is without a doubt bad, and a battleground that is sufficiently foreign for us not to feel too bad about seeing it reduced to rubble.

It's from these movies more than any history book that I learned to equate the German language and accent with fascist brutality and machine-efficient genocide. I watched Indiana Jones cringe and say "I hate Nazis" and I said "Damn, right," and when he said "Nazis" we both knew it meant "Germans as a whole." Even French World War II movies, which are necessarily more complicated due to the four-year period of occupation and collaboration, paint all of World War II Germany with the red, white, and black of the swastika flag.

I was, of course, aware of the fact that not all Germans were Nazis, that most weren't, but that fact didn't rest in the front of my thoughts as an emotional reality, hiding somewhere in the back as more of an intellectual abstraction. The idea that a non-Nazi could still be pro-German was an even more foreign of an idea. The reason why, I realized, was that, before last night, I had never seen a German World War II movie. I had seen movies about the aftermath - like Germany Year Zero and The Murderers Are Among Us - but nothing that actually took place during the Nazi regime, so Sophie Scholl came as a bit of a surprise for me.

The movie itself is not overwhelming. It's a compelling and competent recounting of the final days in the life of Sophie Scholl, a real-life German university student in Munich, who was caught, tried, and put to death by the Nazis for distributing pamphlets that criticized Hitler and his war. Apart from Julia Jentsch's performance as Scholl, very little about the style and production of the film is revolutionary or remarkable; what's shocking is its content and the perspective that comes with it.

I disagree with Andrew's argument that the message of the film is bleak. While it's true that Sophie and her two partners in so-called crime are processed through the Nazi judicial system so quickly that their trial and execution could not even make enough of a splash for them to become martyrs in their own time (they are now, however, considered national heroes), the film's presentation of their deaths does not dictate that they must be in vain. I think she does get victory, in her own way.

When she's alone in her cell and the reality of her rapidly approaching death sinks in, she lets out a disturbing animal wail that overflows with self-pity and frustration. In public, however, she never drops her mysterious Mona Lisa smile, which seems to infect everyone around her, from her police interrogater Robert Mohr who falters in his Nazi dogma and offers to help her demand clemency from the court (an offer she refuses) to the audience of uniformed Nazi officers who emit a low, disquieted murmur (rather than foaming at the mouth with fascist vitriol, as the judge does) when she argues her case.

The subtitle of the film is "The Final Days," so we know going in that Sophie will die, but the film is full of moments that offer the audience hope: the music that sounds like it belongs in an action thriller, keeping the tension high and the spectator on the edge of his/her seat; the confidence with which Sophie handles herself throughout her interrogation; the side-view depiction of the interrogation room that dwarfs the desk separating Sophie and Mohr and sets them on equal footing with one another. We know, however, that she will die, so this hope that the movie offers is the hope of a silver-lining, and I think the movie delivers.

Not only does it succeed in creating a set of sympathetic Nazi-era German characters in Sophie and those who die with her, but it also offers that not all Nazis were all bad either. Robert Mohr (whose dialogue, like Sophie's, was lifted almost verbatim from the official transcripts of the interrogations) visibly softens and tries to safe Sophie's life. Anthony Lane argues that "a drooping dullness in [Mohr's] eyes confirms what we always suspected - that Mohr was dead long before he met Sophie Scholl." I'm not sure I agree with that characterization, but if he is dead in spirit, Sophie revives him - if only a little - and he finishes as not quite the bad guy that the swastika pin on his lapel would have us believe, and the same goes for the mob of Nazi officers who seem more than a little uncomfortable with the death sentence handed down.

The tragedy of Sophie Scholl's death is undeniable, but the force of her personality as a martyr is valuable, because it reveals that Nazi-era Germany wasn't defined entirely by darkness, violence, and hate, and it complicates the tradition of World War II movies, maybe making for something new.

I was going to write about Psycho

2006-05-14T20:05:00.000-04:00

But I don't have the kind of nimble fingers necessary to blog (articulately) at the speed of thought. I went to see Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho for the very first time last night. It was one on a gradually shortening - but nonetheless painfully long - list of movies that I, as a self-proclaimed movie buff, am ashamed to say I have never seen. A lot of times I come out of these movies thinking that they aren't worth a quarter of the sound and fury surrounding them, but Psycho delivered. I knew every major plot twist and had even seen a few of the key scenes before setting foot in the theater, and it still had me glued to the screen. Rear Window is still my favorite Hitchcock for all-around quality film-making, but Psycho wins best screenplay.

I had more to say, but that's all you're going to get. Why? Because of A.O. Scott.

From a glance at Clay's, and then Jim's, blog, I found out that next week's New York Times Magazine will publish a list of the best American novels of the last 25 years. I won't comment (not here, at least) on the contents of the list, partially because too many of these books I just haven't read (another list I need to get to work on) and partially because Jim and Clay do it just fine, themselves. Mostly, however, I abstain from commentary because A.O. Scott submits an essay to accompany the list and I have a thought about that instead.

The bulk of the essay just explains the premise of the contest and then offers a bit of insight into the top five selected, which is fine, but what interests me here is the end. Scott observes that the top five writers (or, rather, the writers of the top five novels) are all currently over 6o years old. Where are the babyboomers? The GenXers? The GenYers? It was 1965, he notes, the last time there was a contest such as this, and precious few of the selected authors on that list were above the age of 50. So, what has changed since then?

Scott asks: "Is this quantitive evidence for the decline of American letters - yet another casualty of the 60's? Or is the American literary establishment the last redoubt of elder-worship in a culture mad for youth?"

The second question, for me, holds no water, but the first is compelling. It's late and I'm tired so I won't interrogate this idea as fully as it deserves, but I think (I considered using the word "fear" there, but decided against it) the reason for the list's domination by the half-century club is that literature is gradually losing its alluring sheen. You can couch it in both positive and negative terms, but either way, our culture is becoming faster and more visual; several generations of creative and artistic people have begun to think in two-word phrases instead of sentences,* images instead of words, and, dare I say, movies instead of books?

Which is why I think it's interesting and just a little funny that it was the newspaper's senior film critic who wrote this very literary essay.

*Have a look at a four year-old interview with Kurt Vonnegut on McSweeney's.

I just won't be defeated

2006-05-11T19:19:00.000-04:00

Upon returning from a weekend in Rome, I found this e-mail waiting for me:

From: Unemployed Adam
(name subject to change pending news of employment)
To: Me
Date: May 9, 2006 5:08 PM
Subject: go see a concert

if the Go! Team and the Pipettes played a show together in new york, it would change my life. they're playing in paris tomorrow night, at a club called Trabendo. I know you've been traveling, but if you're back, this is not a thing to pass up. you have to trust me.

hope all's well.

-a

Way to send me a last-minute e-mail, jerk.

I almost didn't make it for the following reasons:
1) I was absolutely exhausted
2) My Paris friends are lamer than I am, so no one was there to drag me kicking and screaming to what would undoubtedly be a good time.

Almost didn't make. At the last minute, I pulled myself together, played Ferris Bueller to my own Cameron Frye and talked myself across a dodgy part of town over to the concert venue.

I haven't been to a proper concert in quite some time - it may very well have been the Decemberists show I went to with Quimby the night before my very last college exam, which was just about a year ago - and this is the first time I've ever gone to a concert alone, so I was a little unprepared for what happened.

When I got there, the Pipettes were one-and-a-half songs from the end of their set, but that was enough for me to see that they were the coolest trio of British chicks to ever grace a stage. Neo-sixties matching dress-wearing girl groups are the next big thing, I'm sure of it. But I digress.

After their set the lights came on and I moved down to the mosh pit area in front of the stage, at which point there was gunfire. A shot rang out and the French girl standing next to me screamed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her fly backwards a foot or two. I turned, steeling myself to see a body lying in a steadily expanding pool of blood.

But no, she was fine. It was just the sound technician fiddling with an amp, but it really did sound like a gunshot. We all had a good laugh about that (although I don't think that particular girl ever thought it was very funny.) So, yes, I was lying when I said there was gunfire.

After that, the Go! Team came on. Let me tell you: these people are crazy people, but they know how to put on a show. Equal parts Motown, funk, old school rap, and Schoolhouse Rock, with a dash of Urban Outfitters cheerleader thrown in for taste, they just don't stop. I really mean that, they don't ever stop moving. I've never seen a band run around stage so much, which may be the reason why I didn't take a single picture of their show, but here's a photo I took of the empty stage after the "gunshot incident."

I already said this, but it bears repeating: the Go! Team are crazy. I kind of hope they were on speed during the concert because, if not, they are just the happiest, most energetic non-real estate agents I have ever seen, and that idea kind of creeps me out. They're a little too fond of the call-and-response thing, but other than that I loved them all too well. I would write more about them, but I have no photos to go with it and this post is already rather long, so I'll just skip to the end.

Their show ended just as wildly and suddenly as it began, with the male guitarist jumping into the pit and crowd surfing for a while before being swallowed up by the mob, all of whom wanted a piece of him. At that moment, all the lights went out.

I'm not sure if my life has been changed, but I had a really great time. I was happy when I walked out of the club, and so I took this photo:

On the verge of a nervous breakdown

2006-05-04T19:32:00.000-04:00

Women, that is.

I've just come home from watching that classic Almodovar film at the Cinémathèque Française. All of that drama, color, and gazpacho made me realize that summer's finally here. It's suddenly turned warm in the past few days, and the effect has been paralyzing. For the first time in months you really don't need a jacket anymore, so I end up sitting for hours in the Jardin des Plantes with a book in my hand, turning the pages, pretending to read, unable to move. When I do move, it's slowly and lazily, as if I'd been drinking some of Pepa's sedative-infused tomato soup.

It was cooler this evening as I walked back from the movie - still warm enough for me to be comfortable in a t-shirt, but nowhere near as hot as it had been just a few hours before - so I felt more awake than I had all day and I moved briskly. After a week of unspeakable congestion, my allergies have finally started to calm down and I savored the air I was breathing, filled with the smell of wet sidewalks and newly-grown leaves.

I just have a few months left here, and they're going to be completely different than the ones before them. Tourists are spilling into the city and pretty soon I'm going to start working. I will no longer have the time to leisurely wander and duck into repertory cinemas in the middle of the day. Instead, I'll wade through crowds of summertime Eurorail backpackers every morning and night, the time in between spent behind a desk in an office by the Arc de Triomphe. Certainly not the worst way to take my first step into the working world, but it just won't be the same. I will lose the luxury of believing that Paris is mine and mine alone; I'll have to cede the greater part of the city to summer vacationers who won't know her like I think I do - hell, damn the torpedos and screw accusations of snobbery - like I'm sure I do.

At the same time, I am rather excited to experience a different side of Paris, even if it means regularly waking up in the early a.m. hours. I like the idea of meeting friends for a drink after work, of taking a deep breath and lazily loosening my tie as I call it a day. I'll probably never wear a tie all summer long, but that's beside the point. The point is I see a certain element of romance in everything and I'll believe it until experience tells me otherwise.

And should experience disappoint, I have another idea in the pipeline that, if feasible, will be a perfect capstone to my stereotypical year as a stereotypical American-in-Paris. On that cryptic note, I will loosen my imaginary tie and call it a day.

Film Shoot

2006-05-04T05:11:00.000-04:00

That's me on the right dancing with the dippy redhead.

Photo credit goes to William Charles Baker

My Adventure in the Movies

2006-05-02T17:04:00.000-04:00

After living a movie-drenched existence for the last eight months, I decided it was time to take a look at the other side of things. I needed to move on from just watching movies. I needed to start making them.

Writing, however, seemed a little hard. Directing...moreso. As for all of the other stuff...well, I just don't have the necessary skills. Acting, however, seemed just about right.

And so yesterday I had my big acting debut. I went to the shoot location, where I met the beautiful American producer, who shortly thereafter burst into tears and mysteriously disappeared, but not before she brought me over to the beautiful Polish makeup girl, "to have my face done." After that, I moved to the marginally attractive, but quite stylishly dressed French hair guy, who filled my head with so much gel that my hair actually crackled as I absent-mindedly ran my fingers through it later in the day.

After this brisk morning jog through the cosmetic gauntlet, I was ready to step in front of the camera. Sadly, the camera wasn't ready to be in front of me. The Jordanian director was too busy coaching the Slovenian actress on how to smoke her cigarette to take note of the fact that the Mexican cinematographer, the Scandanavian AD, and the Israeli continuity girl all seemed to think that they were directing the film and were viciously scrapping it out amongst themselves in his absence. In the meantime, the French art director alternated between wandering around smoking cigarettes and wandering around poutily looking for her cigarettes. I, meanwhile, chatted with a beautiful Cameroonian model who complimented my French and told me I should consider a career in modeling. What a delightful woman.

After that, I danced with a dippy American redhead for a while and helped myself to a series of free drinks at the bar. There was also a deaf guy milling around. I'm not sure what he was doing there.

Somewhere during that time period (which accounts for about 5 hours of my day Monday) I was in front of the camera making cinematic history in a 10-minute student film. What I learned from the experience:

1) Making movies isn't quite as glamorous as even my fairly low expectations might have led me to believe.
2) I'm still fascinated, and not just because:
3) You get lots of free food and drinks
4) And meet beautiful Cameroonian models and dance with dippy American redheads.

Moving Day

2006-02-28T19:28:00.000-05:00

For the time being, I'm moving out of Cin City. I'm not saying that I'm not going to come back, but I'm currently of the mind that I should consolidate my blogging to one, well, blog. From now on, you can find me at Two Jews and Microphone where I will write about a little bit of everything, including, of course, movies. Oh, and this other guy Dave will occasionally sometimes maybe write a bit, too.

The Movie is the Message

2006-01-21T16:37:00.000-05:00

Dear Faithful Reader,

In my last post, I lambasted George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck for being way too overt with its message. The film was little more than a string of lectures delivered by David Strathairn's Edward R. Murrow, broken up by the occasional piece of original footage from the McCarthy trials. I felt as though I were watching a very poorly executed powerpoint presentation.

As I wrote at the end of that post, I believe cinema to be a very potent forum for political expression, but, first and foremost, it is a visual medium. As such, a film should express its message visually. While it would be hard to argue that Good Night, and Good Luck did not contain a certain visual element, it consists of little more than talking heads; the most visual element of the film is its presentation in black and white, which is sexy, but signifies nothing. All it does is establish a certain cogency between the content of the film and the historical footage included within.

As a result, the message of the film is more than apparent on an aural level - Murrow repeats it over and over and over - but the movie doesn't actually communicate it. I understood, but I didn't care, because Clooney puts the message before the movie.

Ang Lee, on the other hand, gets it just right. His Brokeback Mountain is not - as many people have called it - a gay cowboy movie (as Clooney's is a news media call-to-arms); it's an unconventional love story that is so compelling and so credible that it communicates a message without ever coming close to putting it into words. The film spreads dialogue so sparingly across the plot that it comes off less as spoken words and more as a part of the musical soundtrack and ambient noise. Lee communicates the meaning and emotion of the film with lyrical, eavesdropping sequences that convey everything without saying a word, drawing the viewer deeper and deeper into the lives of the protagonists. The beautiful backdrop of the Texas and Wyoming landscapes does everything that Clooney's black and white photography doesn't and that Strathairn's Murrow does far, far too much.

Because Brokeback Mountain is distinctly not a film rallying for gay rights or equality, it's far more likely to convince any dissenters. Heath Ledger's Ennis del Mar (which, significantly, means "Island of the Sea" in a creative mix of Irish and Spanish) and Jake Gyllenhall's Jack Twist do not come off as crusaders for gay rights, but rather as a modern day Romeo and Juliet. The verisimilitude of their characters makes them universal, allowing any viewer - if he/she is willing - to identify with them very easily, regardless of his/her lifestyle. As a result, perhaps some of the people who would have quickly closed their ears and minds to the most logical of arguments for gay rights have come to see the humanity in homosexuality and the tragedy in its oppression. It's hard not to identify with a story so sad, so real, and so true.

Cinema is not the radio. It is the partnership of picture and sound, and sound is the junior partner. As such, verbal rhetoric must take a back seat, even - especially - in a movie attempting to communicate a message. Clooney and Lee's movies illustrate this point quite clearly. Maybe, in my case, one of Clooney's problems was that he was preaching to the choir, but the point remains that Good Night, and Good Luck does preach. Brokeback Mountain, on the other hand, never preaches. Ang Lee shows us a story; he shows it sincerely and lovingly and the message finds its way on its own.

The movie is the message.

Love,
Steve

N.B. Many thanks, of course, to Marshall McLuhan.

In which I return from an extended absence to tell you, Faithful Reader, about a movie you've probably already seen.

2006-01-13T11:07:00.000-05:00

Sometimes movies come out later here. So sue me. Ahem...

Good Night, and Good Luck uses the word "good" in its title twice. I dare you to count the number of times I use it in this review.

His first time out as a director, George Clooney pretty much hit the ball out of the park. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, the alleged life story of Chuck Barris, the creator of The Gong Show and The Dating Game who claims to have also been a contract-killer for the CIA, was darkly funny, superbly directed, and distinctly engaging. It was certainly no masterpiece, but it was a solidly enjoyable film and distinctly better than most of its box office contemporaries. His sophomore effort, however, is disappointingly flat and I blame the writing, which, this time around, Clooney chose to do himself.

I get the point. Like Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck is an account of an historical event that also serves as an apt metaphor for contemporary times, ostensibly reminding us that if we choose to forget the past we will be doomed to repeat it in one form or another. The Salem Witch trials rose from the ashes of forgotten history in the form of Senator McCarthy's Communist witch hunt of the 1950s, and McCarthy's demagoguery, gross abuse of governmental power, and manipulation of a culture of fear have - at least to those of us who agree with Clooney's politics, if not his writing style - worked their way back into Washington in the form of George W. Bush, the Patriot Act, and his War on Terror.

The problem is, however, that Arthur Miller was a great writer and Clooney, it seems, is not. The beauty of The Crucible is that it teaches you the history you've ostensibly forgotten without letting you feel like you're being lectured. Good Night, and Good Luck, as one of the CBS executives in the film complains about Edward R. Murrow's broadcasts, feels more like "a civics lesson." There is no tension or excitement in any of the supposedly climactic scenes and, in a distinct touch of irony, this movie about the informative value of broadcast journalism manages to get a lot of important facts wrong.

The most potent part of the film, really, is when Murrow sacrifices his journalistic integrity and does a Barbara Walters-esque interview of Liberace (who, as all of us who have seen Austin Powers know, much later on announced that he was gay), asking mostly about women and the possibility of marriage. Watching Liberace (the actual stock footage from the original broadcast) squirm and avoid the use of gender-specific pronouns as he tries to answer Murrow's disinterested questions is one of the most powerful moments of the film, reminding the viewers of what an insensitive time the 50s were, and how unsafe it was to be different then, in any way, shape, or color. This scene lasts for just a moment and the film presents it as Murrow (played by David Strathairn with a deadpan that makes Bill Murray's performance in Broken Flowers look lively) simply doing penance for sticking the station's neck out by going after McCarthy, but it's the only real success of the movie. Murrow's didactic monologues go untempered by character development (although I suppose the man very well could have been just that one-dimensional) and the other characters (rounded out by a great cast: Robert Downey, Jr., Jeff Bridges, Patricia Clarkson, and Frank Langella) never have enough screen time for us to ever learn to care about them.

It's important to make movies like this, movies that are socially responsible and aim to teach, not brainwash or distract their viewers, but it's equally important to make them well. As Murrow points out in his grandaddy of a lecture that starts and finishes the film, bookending all the other lectures that come in between, television (and, by extension, cinema) is a medium with a lot of potential, capable of informing the masses, hopefully making a more responsible citizenry and thus a better democracy. Murrow, however, also got poor ratings and so does Clooney on this movie. I appreciate the thought, but in a movie it's not just the thought that counts.

(N.B. The title of this post links to Ebert's positive review of this film. Note that even he slides in a characterization of the film as being a little bit claustrophobic.)

Happy (Macy's) Thanksgiving (Day Parade)

2005-11-24T12:01:00.000-05:00

I have come home for Thanksgiving and while peeling potatoes this morning I watched the beginning of the Parade.

Now, I understand that it's a given that the performances in Herald Square are generally lip-synched and that, in their original conceptions, they are not truly designed for this kind of public, outdoor venue. Neither of these facts, however, excuse the opening number "We Give Thanks Today," performed by 470 children all dressed in fall-colored pajamas, which made me want to turn around and go back to France so badly that I sincerely considered making a break for the Jersey Shore.

This song-and-dance number is a sign of everything that's wrong with musical theater today. It looked like something put on by Susie and Ben for the camp talent show in Wet Hot American Summer. The choreography was uninspired, the song lyrics were inane and tasteless (particularly the solo from the kid whose "character's" dad was a soldier in Iraq), and the whole central idea really just didn't make any sense.

The premise for the performance was that these children were all excitedly waking up on Thanksgiving morning and thinking of all of their reasons to be thankful. It's a nice idea, and I think Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday (I flew over 3000 miles so that I could be with my family today), but it really isn't the kind of day that inspires children to do a little jig of excitement when they get up in the morning. That's Christmas. I'm Jewish and I know that. Thanksgiving is a nice day of hanging out with your family, cooking, watching the Parade/football game, and eating way too much turkey. Unless you're performing in the Parade or playing football, it's really a low-energy sort of day, nothing to be overly excited about upon waking up in the morning, particularly if you have two bags of unpeeled potatoes waiting for you.

I don't mean to sound overly critical of a children's performance. The kids themselves were great and, unless they had a hand in the actual conception of the performance piece, I hold them blameless. I'm sure it was a great experience and a lot of fun for them, as the New Jersey Herald article that I link to describe. I just think it was a stupid idea from start to finish and that the song that spawned it never should have been written.

As Americans, whatever our individual politics may be, I'm sure we all have lots to be thankful for, but an under-thought and over-produced song and dance that looks more like a Gap commercial is not going to remind us of that.

Jaws

2005-11-16T05:04:00.000-05:00

I saw Jaws for the first time this summer in Bryant Park. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before; I was certainly familiar with some of the imagery and that unforgettable theme music, but I’d just never actually sat down to watch the movie.

The setting seemed appropriate. I’d never seen the Bryant Park lawn so crowded; I sat among a veritable sea of humanity. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine that the shark might be in our very midst, gliding between the picnic blankets, waiting to time its attacks to coincide with the theme music’s crescendos.

My first surprise came, however, not as a shark attack but rather in the form of the opening credits; I’d forgotten that Steven Spielberg was the director. I didn’t think he could direct a movie like this, something that I’d always understood to be so unsentimental and nihilistic. To me, Spielberg had always represented something moral and family oriented – after all, his favorite swear word, according to his interview on Inside the Actors’ Studio, is “rats!” – and that has its place, but not in a shark movie. I didn’t want to see the shark cast as an embodiment of evil, I didn’t want its hunters to be brave and romantic heroes, and I didn’t want anybody to learn a valuable lesson from the experience. I was sitting under the stars at the bottom of a concrete canyon, illegally and unrepentantly drinking alcohol in a public place; I wanted a fight and I wanted a good one.

Fortunately, the first scene quickly reveals the nature of the film. Jaws – a word that remains thankfully absent from the actual dialogue of the film – is not about good versus evil, but rather about survival and self-interest. The shark is just out for a meal and poor Chrissie Watkins, the shark’s first victim, is just out for a swim at the wrong place at the wrong time.

At first glance, however, it seems that the film, by offering up a young girl of possibly loose morals as first blood, might be operating by the scary movie survival rules offered up by Scream, Wes Craven’s unironic sendup of the horror genre. If you drink, do drugs, have sex, or engage in any other sort of morally dubious behavior, the killer will surely get you before the movie's end.

Thankfully, the shark is not some sort of violent agent of morality punishing those who engage in underage drinking and hint at the possibility of anonymous premarital sex; as smartass Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) later explains, the shark is merely “a perfect engine, an eating machine that is a miracle of evolution: it swims and eats and makes little baby sharks, that’s all.” Just as happy devouring an innocent young boy as it is mauling an ostensibly degenerate teenager, the shark is the perfect embodiment of the dispassion of Nature. Survival is the one and only driving force in this movie.

Even the short-sighted Mayor of Amity is fighting for survival in his own way. At first he is unforgiveable for trying to keep the news of the shark under wraps in order to save the town's tourist season - we seem him as the embodiment of thoughtless greed, needlessly endangering his constituents' lives - but gradually we understand that he's just scared and doesn't know what else to do. When he finally breaks down and concedes to Brody's demands to shut down the beach, it becomes clear that, just like everyone else, all he's trying to do is stay alive.

This bare bones approach to the narrative – embodied by the vast emptiness of the open ocean and the long, slow build-up to the film’s climax – forces the characters to remain just as precisely focused as the character of the shark itself; they are no more than they need to be. The backstories behind Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), Quint (Robert Shaw), and Matt Hooper remain stoically in the past, allowing them to travel without little to no emotional baggage. Each of them is really only a scattered sketch of a character – a walking connection of a few loose traits – and the less human they are, the more effective they are against the emotionless persistence of the shark. As such, Brody, the vaguest of the characters, turns out to be the film’s true hero. Although he is the least nautically capable – and seemingly the most fearful – of the three, he remains the least emotive and is thus the most fitting shark hunter. As Quint and Hooper all-too-humanly compete with one another, Brody pensively recedes into the scenery, only to move into the foreground when true conflict arrives.

This is not to say that Scheider’s characterization of Brody is entirely flat. His behavior speaks volumes, or, rather, hints at volumes, because vocally he reveals next to nothing. Apart from the fact that he’s from New York City, the only clear facts about the man are his roles in society – husband, father, chief of police – and his fear of water. His mannerisms, gestures, and facial expressions, however, belie his reticence and suggest a far more interesting history than he’s willing to admit to.

At no point is this fact more clear than during the dinner scene when Quint and Hooper compare battlescars, trying to outdo one another with their tales of injury on the high seas. Quint and Hooper sit next to each other, facing the camera. During the meal, Brody sits with them, but as this conversation takes its grip on the other two, he rises and moves to the other side of the table, aligning his perspective with that of the camera. By physically removing himself from the conversation, he takes his own past out from under the lens of scrutiny while installing himself in the position of passive inquisitor. At one discrete moment, however, he briefly considers entering the conversation. As the other two joke about their old injuries, the camera cuts to a three-quarter shot of Brody, quietly standing unnoticed before them. He looks down at his body and his hand lingers over his midsection, pensively tugging at his shirt, as if about to reveal a scar on his abdomen and tell a story of his own – perhaps one that would explain his fear of the ocean – but he stops himself, his reticence winning out against his empathetic impulses.

Meanwhile, the competitive edge in the conversation finally takes hold and Quint decides to trump Hooper with an actual war story. Whereas before they merely point out scars and offer a brief description of the time and circumstance of the injury, this time Quint launches into a story – full with descriptive detail – in which he personally receives no physical injury. He recounts his World War II service on the U.S.S. Indianapolis, whose crew, after the ship was sunk by a Japanese torpedo attack, was decimated by sharks. The story, which, purportedly, Robert Shaw wrote himself, details a defining moment in Quint’s life: a moment of horror, trauma, and grief. This short story reveals his greatest fears and hatreds, everything that his façade of a salty old seadog attempts to hide. With his simple and seemingly innocuous oath “I’ll never put on a lifejacket again,” Quint reveals his vulnerable emotional core. Although, with this story, he wins his competition with Hooper, he does so at the price of revealing too much of himself in the process.

We now see that, rather than an apathetic seaman who just makes his living by killing sharks, Quint is a Captain Ahab; his is not a mission of survival or duty, but one of hatred, and the movie punishes him for it. He dies fighting – and admirably so, stabbing the shark until his very last breath – but, in the logic of the movie, he is weak and his death is not an event to be mourned. Hooper similarly reveals his humanity, but his is not a fatal error; the injuries he reveals do not go below the surface and his interest in sharks is purely an academic fascination. His offerings do not condemn him to death, but they do disqualify him from any act of heroism and, as such, during the final battle he hides underwater in his scuba gear. Only Brody, who minimizes his personality and who can’t help but seem small in the film’s widescreen cinematography, is truly capable of defeating the shark because he is just as dispassionate as the shark itself.

Brody represents a watershed moment of transition in the popular American conception of masculinity. 1975, the year of the film’s release, was the dawn of the era of the sensitive male. As such, this period’s collection of popular movies, in terms of the male protagonists they showcased, teetered between the more traditional depiction of the strong, independent male and this newer, more sentimental image. More often than not, a movie from this time period depicted one extreme (Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry) or the other (Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer). Scheider’s Martin Brody, however, represents a middle ground between the two; he does not wear his emotions on his sleeve, but he doesn’t pretend not to have any either. He is the man for the moment who knows how to survive in his time and place and, appropriately enough, in his final showdown with the shark he makes his first serious display of emotion and, in the film’s first stab at anthropomorphism, encourages the shark to do the same: “Smile, you son of a bitch.”

And as the shark exploded, a cheer went up across the lawn. We weren’t glad that the shark was dead; we were glad that our hero – who, for all intents and purposes, was us – survived. The final shot of Hooper and Brady kicking their way slowly towards shore - clearly a quote of the final shot of Casablanca - reveals that, like Hooper, Brody is a person who has emotions and a sense of humor, but, like Humphrey Bogart’s Rick, he is nonetheless aware that survival sometimes requires the suppression of emotion. Here, Spielberg hints at the complexity inherent in the relationship between survival and emotion: a complexity he all but brushes off in this austere survival film, but one that he goes on to confront in later, more sentimental films like Schindler’s List.

Upon the close of the film, I regretted the apprehension I initially felt upon seeing Spielberg’s name in the opening credits. Watching Jaws, his first major work, gave me a clearer impression of the arc of the director’s career, adding a certain cogency to the films of his I’d already seen and enjoyed and allowing me to forgive some of his more recent missteps. When I first began watching movies, Spielberg was already an established influence on the scene and I took his presence for granted. Now, having seen where he began and the immense potential he displayed in a setting that seems so minimalist compared to his later works, I finally understand how he got to where he is today.

Corpse Bride

2005-11-14T17:56:00.000-05:00

In France, this film's name is Les Noces Funèbres which means roughly "The Funereal Wedding." That, however, is neither here nor there, because I saw the movie in London, where it goes by the name Corpse Bride.

Tim Burton is clearly fascinated by all things gothic. Including his latest work, two of his films take place in a sort of vague eighteenth to nineteenth century time period and all of them - regardless of their plots' temporal contexts - bear a certain old-world character defined by grotesque figures, muted (or, in the case of Big Fish or Edward Scissorhands, overly bright) colors, dark crooked angles, and bizarre and marginally frightening antiheroes. In some of his films (Batman, Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands), this passion of his works to his advantage, creating a pervasive sense of danger that is at once disquieting and endearing. It is the balance that Burton strikes between these two polar opposites that makes his films successful. When he strays too far to one extreme (Batman Returns) or the other (Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), the film inevitably suffers.

Corpse Bride, thankfully, strikes this balance and strikes it well, but that doesn't mean that it's particularly good. It's certainly better than the two previous Tim Burton films, but this director can do and has done better. Although visually quite arresting - I especially enjoyed the characters' coloring, which made the living characters look far more dead than the dead ones - I found the narrative elements to be lacking. Most of the musical numbers are ill-advised and the story, being little more than a "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" story with a "boy accidentally gets dead girl" twist thrown in somewhere in the middle, is rather formulaic.

All in all, however, I take Corpse Bride as encouragement that Tim Burton is back on the upswing, raising the nightmares of Christmases past to happily juxtapose the grotesque with the sublime and fashion his very own Gothic Never Neverland.

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

2005-11-05T13:49:00.000-05:00

There's a lot about the production of Manhattan Murder Mystery that was haphazard and slapdash. The plot is something Woody Allen picked up off of the cutting room floor after excising it from a different movie twenty years ago. The title is actually just what he used as the working title during production and then, when it came time to give it a real name, he couldn't think of anything better. Nevertheless, in spite of the seemingly cutcorner approach to the process, there's nothing about the final product that seems second string.

This movie not only marks Diane Keaton's one and only reappearance as a lead character (she had a minor role in 1987's Radio Days) in Woody Allen's film canon after a fifteen-year absence, but also a return to the kind of effortlessly erudite comedy that marked Allen's "Diane Keaton" period. She and Allen play Carol and Larry Lipton, a married couple in New York who, having sent their son (played by a young Zach Braff) off to college, are starting to settle comfortably into middle-age when an elderly neighbor suddenly dies under curious circumstances and Carol begins to suspect the deceased's husband is guilty of murder. Keaton and Allen play their roles perfectly; after about fifteen years apart, their chemistry is still second to none and seeing them play a couple that has been together for over twenty-five years feels like the most natural thing in the world. It's easy to imagine that this is what might have happened if Annie had married Alvy instead of running off to L.A.

In fact, the film from which he poached this movie's plot was Annie Hall, which he originally shot as a murder mystery, but wisely edited into a romantic comedy. As a result, Manhattan Murder Mystery is indelibly linked to its predecessor. The movie sees the reappearance of not only Diane Keaton, but also Allen's former co-writer Marshall Brickman (although he may have received a co-writer credit on this production simply because Allen used the story of a movie they wrote together almost two decades before), and, most potently, several jokes and tropes from Annie Hall that will wash over Allen enthusiasts in a soothing wave of nostalgia. References to Wagner, male incidences of penis envy, and polo mallets, among other things, bob up as clues hinting to the nature of this film's unlikely conception.

In spite of its indelible link to everyone's favorite Woody Allen movie, Manhattan Murder Mystery stands alone as a solid example of Allen's ability to mix comedy with the intellectualism of a self-taught New York literati. It's not one of Allen's more ambitious works, nor is it his simplest; it walks a line between the pitfalls of his two extremes and, as such, it hits every note perfectly.

This will be my last post on Woody Allen for a while, I promise. There was an Allen festival at one of the theaters in town and I just couldn't resist. It's over now, though, so I am free to move onto something new.

It's been a while since I've received a grade on anything, so this is kind of a big deal for me.

2005-11-01T05:37:00.000-05:00

As the more vigilant among you may have noticed, I also publish my movie reviews on a website called Blogcritics. I link to it on the left.

This past week, the powers that be have deemed my review of Match Point (posted in a more unabridged format below) to be:

I hope you are all duly impressed.

Woody Allen: New and Old

2005-10-29T15:19:00.000-04:00

Woody Allen's newest film, Match Point, is quite possibly his most successful "serious" film to date. It bears hints of many of his past works - particularly Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and her Sisters, and Mighty Aphrodite - but this film is far, far more than the kind of antiseptic, backcatalogue poachery exhibited by Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this past summer. Match Point, although distinctly an Allen film, stands entirely on its own, untethered by the canon that came before it. Perhaps because Allen does not act in the film, perhaps because it doesn't take place in New York City, or perhaps because it simply has no trace of the all-too-familiar Woody Allen brand of comedy, but - whatever the case may be - this film defies comparison with its predecessors.

The movie follows the story of Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers of Bend it Like Beckham fame), an Irish tennis player who quits the professional circuit, becomes an instructor at a posh health club in London, quickly befriends one of his pupils, and begins a startling ascent into London high society. The pupil, Tom Hewitt (Matthew Goode), comes from a wealthy family who has a box at the Opera and, as chance would have it, "someone can't make it" for that evening's performance and, since Chris has mentioned an interest in opera over a post-lesson drink, Tom invites him to come along. Once there, Chris makes the acquaintance of the whole Hewitt family, including Tom's sister Chloë (Emily Mortimer). With a few more happy accidents here and there, Chris quickly elevates himself to a much higher rung on the socioeconomic ladder.

The film - and all of the publicity surrounding it - famously asserts that, more than anything, life is a game of chance, that it is more important to be lucky than to be talented and Chris's experience certainly does assert the significance of happenstance. After all, the entirety of his success is reliant on a series of coincidences starting with the open seat in the private box of the wealthy tennis student he meets that day. Nonetheless, there's more to Chris's life than luck, even if he doesn't want to believe it.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is fantastic as Chris, portraying a fish out of water who has willed his fins into the shape of arms and legs and forced his gills to breathe air. His performance - the character's, not the actor's - as an erudite, cultured young man who defies his low birth to rise to the level that his intellect demands somehow doesn't ring true. Like the film's scratchy, unmastered opera soundtrack that sounds more like an old record player than the actual aria it's playing, Chris comes off as not the real thing, but a very well-studied copy. Look for his reading material. Listen for the accent that would seem apparent from all of the times that Tom addresses him as "Irish," but simply isn't there. There is something else at play here other than luck, something over which both Chris and the film itself cast a veil of obscurity: trained and focused ambition, not hard work, but the actual overwhelming desire to achieve success, no matter the obstacles encountered.

Scarlett Johansson also stars as Tom's fiancée Nola Rice, a sexy American actress trying to work her way into the London theatre circle. She, unlike Chris, has bad luck, loses her cool at every audition, and can never seem to earn a role. The way these two characters interact with each other show just how potently both luck and ambition figure as the two dominant factors in a person's path in life. Is it good or bad luck that these two meet one another? In the end, the only thing that matters is how they deal with the outcome.

Allen has written and directed a very interesting and intelligent new movie. It is a film unlike any other that he's ever been involved in before, bearing a dark subtlety and layered complexity that goes almost entirely unsupported by the lightness of humor that Allen has made his name on. There have, of course, been serious and somber Allen films before, most notably his tragic Interiors, but that was more of a transposition of Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata from Sweden to New York than a film of Allen's own making. With Match Point, Woody Allen has found a new and powerful voice, one that might finally convince critics and viewers alike to stop holding every new film up to the thirty year-old gold standard he set with Annie Hall and just appreciate his work in its own contemporary context. He will never again make Annie Hall, but he just might make something better.

..............................................................................................

Shortly before seeing Match Point, I went to a repertory screening of Manhattan. The two films, rivals in quality, are polar opposites when it comes to style and genre. Set in New York, shot in black and white, equally comedic and dramatic, Manhattan bears not the slightest resemblance to its newest younger cousin. Instead of lust, it focuses upon love. In the place of luck, the value it sets atop the highest of pedestals is purity.

Woody Allen plays Isaac Davis, a twice-divorced TV comedy writer dating a 17 year-old high school girl named Tracy (Mariel Hemingway, in a stunning performance she has yet to match in the almost thirty years since). His friends are Yale (Michael Murphy) and Emily (Anne Byrne), who think of Isaac as their child just as much as they think of him as their friend. Diane Keaton plays Mary, a neurotic and brilliant Radcliffe graduate who first has an affair with Yale (making for kind of an odd-match, intercollegiate sports rivalries being as they are) and then with Isaac.

In every one of these relationships - romantic and otherwise - each party is obsessed by the other's potential. Yale thinks Isaac is wasting his life writing TV comedy drivel. Isaac doesn't want Tracy to ruin her bright future by falling in love with him. Isaac and Emily worry that Yale is never going to finish his book. Mary marvels at the genius of everyone surrounding her, falling for men whose intellects stimulate, but also belittle her own. Accordingly, Isaac chides her for wasting her literary talents on writing film novelizations when she's perfectly capable of writing her own novels.

Set against this story is Gordon Willis's stunning black and white view of Manhattan and a sublime George Gershwin soundtrack. The city - a mix of fantastic architecture, pulsing energy, and what Isaac considers to be a declining culture - becomes a metaphor for every relationship in the film. Isaac and Willis's camera see the city for all the potential that it has and are saddened by its failure to live up to that potential.

Manhattan is the story of a quest for purity, carried out by the impure in an impure setting and, whenever they find what they're looking for, their contact with it immediately renders it impure in their eyes. In the end, much like a person's relationship with a city, all of the relationships in this movie turn out to be one-sided; they're more about each person's conception of the other, rather than the person him/herself, as is brilliantly illustrated with Willis's focus on negative space, visually isolating all of the characters from one another, even when they're the only two people in a room.

What separates Manhattan from Match Point is idealism. Isaac and Tracy have it, but Chris does not. Both movies have fairly bleak world views, but Manhattan's is tempered by idealistic, albeit disappointed, characters. Neither film is more or less real than the other - they both present themselves through the eyes of their respective protagonist - but the reality offered by Match Point is much harsher and less romantic than that of Manhattan. Neither won is better than the other; they're too different to compare. Whereas Manhattan represents a past era of Woody Allen's career focused on love and a mature sort of idealism, Match Point represents a watershed moment of transition in which Allen has successfully carved the beginnings of a new path for himself as a writer/director. Ironically, by abandoning his trademark balance of pessimism and romance in favor of sheer pessimism, Allen has made his future as a writer/director look all the more optimistic.

Safety Last!

2005-10-27T19:32:00.000-04:00

Henri Langlois, co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française, liked to say that if cinema hadn't been born mute, there never would have been such a thing as cinematic art. I just learned that little piece of trivia today and, having seen Safety Last! (1923) yesterday, I know that he was right.

The story is simple, the cinematography is for the most part unremarkable, and the intertitled dialogue is almost nonexistant, but somehow the three combine to form a movie far funnier and more compelling than I ever thought a silent movie could be. In a story that is basically just a long set-up for the main gag of having Harold Lloyd climb the façade of a 12-story building, I frequently found myself losing myself in the affairs of the characters, in spite of the fact that I never even heard the sound of their voices.

Although there are intertitles supplying some key dialogue, the story is driven mostly by pantomime. Normally, the physical humor of the brand used by most silent films can seem - by no fault of their own - a little worn. After all, Looney Tunes made a living plundering all of those jokes and selling them to me when I was still wearing short pants; just because these old black and white movies are the real deal doesn't stop the humor from coming off a bit stale. Nonetheless, Lloyd's crazy antics inspired real laughter. He's simply such a superb comic actor that none of his performance seemed anything short of real and his work still feels very fresh and original. Even the ridiculous third act in which he climbs to the roof of his department store was incredibly evocative, inspiring gasps and squirming discomfort with every single brush with death.

It's easy to tell a story with spoken words. The sound takes the focus off the events on-screen; it takes pressure off of the visual aspect of the film, because the spectator can look away and still be fairly sure of what he/she will find when he/she looks back. With only the musical score that accompanied all silent film screenings - thus making the term "silent film" something of a misnomer - the spectator had to keep his/her eyes on the screen, or, rather, the director and the actors had to work much harder to keep the audience's interest. Most contemporary comedic actors could not achieve today in sound cinema the kind of emotional investment and interest in the characters that Harold Lloyd accomplished without a line of single spoken dialogue. Those that can, owe their skills to Lloyd - and contemporaries such as Charlie Chaplin - who fashioned film performance into an art before sound could come along and encourage everyone to give their eyes a rest and let their ears take the wheel.

Senses of Cinema

2005-10-21T05:38:00.000-04:00

The newest issue of my favorite Australian film journal is out and, judging by its table of contents (articles on Network, Taxi Driver, Shampoo, Jacques Tati, The Leopard, and reviews of a bunch of interesting-looking books), it's pretty damn good.

Side Project!

2005-10-16T13:26:00.000-04:00

David Quimby and I have joined forces to create a new blog. One of wider scope, deeper insights, and more back and forth bickering. The only rule is that there are no rules. Except for the rule that he his spiel on politics and media stays on Quimby and my obsession with movies and film criticism stays in Cin City.

So, now for something completely different:
Two Jews and a Microphone

La Cinémathèque Française

2005-10-15T07:44:00.000-04:00

Today, for the first time ever, I am going to the Cinémathèque Française. I'm just going to catch an old Billy Wilder film called Stalag 17, but I'm sure I'll somehow get involved with an attractive, quasi-incestuous brother and sister pair with whom I'll have all sorts of adventures!

Still Chicago, but a little bit more indie.

2005-10-13T11:10:00.000-04:00

I've just recently started reading Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons by Jonathan Rosenbaum and, well, I'm impressed. Mr. Rosenbaum has, with a stroke of his pen, dethroned Roger Ebert and taken his place as my favorite film critic. I don't always agree with him (compare his review of Nashville with mine), but he has an attention to detail that I feel Ebert lacks. Specifically, he confronts not just the narrative elements of film, but the audiovisual aspects, as well.

Like Ebert, Rosenbaum is a Chicago-based critic, but he writes for the the more alternative paper The Chicago Reader, while Ebert writes for the decidedly mainstream Chicago Sun-Times. I'm far from being an indie snob, so I don't hold Ebert's mainstream character against him, but it does say a bit about the audience he writes for. Meanwhile, Rosenbaum has more of an academic bent to his writing; he approaches film as an art, rather than just as a hobby.

I apologize if this post is less than articulate. I haven't eaten anything all day (3 guesses as to my religion!).

Paricinema

2005-10-11T07:57:00.000-04:00

In the past two and a half weeks, in spite of all the complications and headaches one generally encounters when moving to a new city (let alone to a new country) as well as a brief trip to Spain, I’ve managed to go to the movies five times. Since my arrival, I’ve seen The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Roman Holiday, A Streetcar Named Desire, All About Eve, and the previously reviewed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I saw each of them on film, projected onto a big screen in movie theaters unlike most you’d find in America. The seats were large, soft, and comfortable, I didn’t have to watch a half hour of commercials before each feature, and, even with the exchange rate working against me, my tickets cost me far less than they would have in the States.

Although I liked some more than others – I loved Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (as my faithful readers already know) and Roman Holiday, really liked The Beat That My Heart Skipped, but didn’t enjoy Streetcar and Eve as much as I had hoped – I always found the experience incredible. Not only did I find the magic of cinema – all but hacked to pieces by American movie theater giants like Loews, Clearview, and Sony – entirely restored, but, to my delight, I found I wasn’t alone. Back at home, if a movie theater was screening a black and white classic like Roman Holiday, attendance would be dismal; I would find myself with a handful of people at most: a mix of elderly loners nostalgic for the movies of their youth, maybe one young couple on what they thought was a novel idea for a date, and a few cinema nerds such as myself. Here, however, even when I went in the middle of the day – as I did yesterday when I saw All About Eve – there was a line outside and, although the theater was by no means full (people do have to work, after all), there was a very impressive showing.

The question, then, is are there so many great movie theaters in Paris because there are so many interested moviegoers or are there so many moviegoers because there are so many great movie theaters? Movie theaters here receive some financial support from the government, allowing them to keep ticket prices fairly low, so I can’t say that it’s only demand that allows for so many repertory theaters (and there are a lot of them, especially in the Latin Quarter where there’s such a tight concentration that you can often find two or three on the same block), but that certainly factors into it, or else they wouldn’t survive. Maybe growing up in such a cinema-heavy environment just breeds a movie-going urge into the populace, or maybe the whole industry relies upon film nerd transplants like me. Either way – at the risk of sounding schmaltzy – even though I don’t speak the language as well or know as many people as I would like, I can’t help but feel somewhat at home.

This afternoon, before attending the first meeting of my Asian cinema class, I’m going to the movies again. I’ll be watching Luis Buñuel’s Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie, a favorite of mine from film class last year. Unlike the other movies I’ve seen here thus far, I’ve seen Le Charme Discret a number of times, but I’m excited to see it in this new context: the environment that created, encouraged, and ultimately brought it to me across the Atlantic Ocean. In a way, it’s as if an old friend is taking me to his hometown to show me where he grew up.

New York Stories

2005-09-30T12:01:00.000-04:00

At David Quimby's behest, I rented this movie on Netflix and watched it the morning before my evening flight to Paris. I thought it would be a fitting end to my wonderful summer in New York City, a tribute to my time there, a period to put at the end of that particular sentence of my life story. Having watched it, however, I am comfortable in saying that this movie should never have been made.

A collaborative effort by Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen, the movie is overwhelmingly uneven. The film is divided into three segments, each directed by one of the above. It all starts well with "Life Lessons," the Scorcese segment about a successful but neurotic painter (Nick Nolte) living in SoHo, who uses his studio and the offer of "life lessons" as a means to bag young women to serve as his assistants/live-in lovers. It's a neverending exercise in self-torture for both parties, the girl (Rosanna Arquette, in this case) kowtows to the older, wiser painter until she realizes that he's really no more than a little boy with a paintbrush, at which point the tables are turned and he plays the fool for her until she kicks him to the curb, whereupon he washes his hands of her in a shower of tears and goes on to find the next girl. Humorously and touchingly written, fantastically and innovatively shot in a way that only Scorcese could pull off, and set to a great soundtrack, this segment gives high hopes for the rest of the film.

The next segment, Coppola's "Life without Zoe," however, immediately dashes those hopes to the ground. Co-written with his then 18 year-old daughter Sofia, this piece is tantamount to a cinematic Take your Daughter to Work Day. The story is about a prepubescent Upper East Side princess and simply shouldn't have been written. Sofia was only a teenager at the time and she's more than made up for it with Lost in Translation, but Daddy should have known better.

The final piece, Woody Allen's "Oedipus Wrecks" is something of a recovery (anything would look good coming after Coppola's piece), but in comparison to his other work it's disappointingly one-dimensional. A farce about overbearing Jewish mothers, this short film is the kind of self-hating Jew schlock that only encourages modern-day anti-Semitism.

It's an interesting idea to get a few distinctly New York directors together to make a tribute to the city, each focusing on his/her own neighborhood and lifestyle, but the city and these directors are all too big to limit to just one third of a movie. Scorcese did another movie about SoHo in the 1980s called After Hours that, while of an entirely different style (his one and only comedy), does a better job of encapsulating the atmosphere of Lower Manhattan during that time. Coppola isn't really the New York director that the other two are, but if you want to see his take on the city's overpriveleged elite, look no further than the first two Godfather films. As for Woody Allen, you can take your pick, but for a love song to New York, go with Manhattan. For a great New York comedy, watch Manhattan Murder Mystery.

Just, whatever you do, don't watch New York Stories.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2005-09-25T13:54:00.000-04:00

Normally, American movies have a delayed release in Europe. The last time I was in France, I had to wait several anxious, hand-wringing months to see the second installment of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. It was therefore quite a pleasant surprise to find Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang already out in theaters in Paris, when it's not due for release in America until October 21.

Robert Downey, Jr. plays Harry Lockhart, a two-bit New York thief (and our narrator) who accidentally stumbles into an audition for a Hollywood movie and earns a shot at a part as a private eye. The producers fly him out to the Coast and set him up with detective lessons from the rapier-tongued and mean-witted Perry Van Shrike (Val Kilmer). Of course, when Perry takes Harry out on a case that's supposed to be boring and routine, they end up witnessing the disposal of a dead body and, before they know it, they're embroiled in a murder plot (not to mention a romantic subplot with a long lost love from Harry's hometown). Perry being gay - the producers refer to him as Gay Paris (French pronunciation), which went over well with the audience here - adds a fun and interesting spin to the film's take on the buddy genre without being just an excuse to throw in a bunch of gay jokes.

In some ways, the movie is formulaic - it has to be or there would be no story - but it's also incredibly subversive. Black (for whom this is a winning debut directorial effort after a long and mixed career as an action film screenwriter) brings out every trope of film noir genre and then turns it squarely on its head. The real detective is gay and thus doesn't get the girl because he doesn't want the girl, but nonetheless he's far tougher than the straight protagonist. Melodramatic dialogue standard to 40s and 50s detective movies wiggles its way into the film, but the delivery is overwrought and ironic. Like lots of other films noirs, there's a voice-over narration, but Harry doesn't just break the fourth wall orally. He is not only the film's narrator, it seems, but also its editor and his editing style matches his stuttering, nervous storytelling; he frequently stops the film, backtracks, and starts over, introduces admittedly "fictional" elements to his story as a point of self-mockery, and even writes and draws on the screen to better direct the viewer's attention.

What's most subversive, however, is the joke that Black's movie actually plays on itself. A spoof of hardbitten detective movies and pulp fiction, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a black comedy, but the movie even turns on that genre. Robert Downey, Jr.'s Harry is more than just a bumbling loser hero blindly tripping his way through life à la Mr. Bean. Harry's self-deprecating humor - as delivered both verbally and visually - is a defense mechanism and, reminiscent of Black's past work on the original Lethal Weapon, occasionally his façade cracks, revealing that a lot of this stuff isn't really funny and also that Downey is still one hell of an actor.

In a way, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the perfect contemporary American film for a contemporary French audience. It's an up to date film noir: the kind of good old-fashioned L.A. detective movie that fascinated the French so much as to kick start the New Wave forty years ago. Like today's France, the movie is a reinterpretation of an old genre, respectful of its roots but also willing to make light of them. Even out of the context of a Parisian movie theater, however, this film is a winner and well worth a night out at the movies, even in America.

Note: I normally use my posts' title link to point to the appropriate page on the IMDB, but there's not much up there because the movie's not out yet in the U.S., so I've linked to the film's trailer on the Apple site instead. I think it does the film far better justice.

Four Los Angeles county sheriffs and a German shepherd

2005-09-24T15:08:00.000-04:00

Last night, for the first time in a good long while, I watched Reservoir Dogs. Like most movies I really like, I'd begun to take it for granted that it was a great movie and no longer gave any thought to what made it so. Seeing it again (for the first time), I realized that, other than a weirdly sloppy deep-focus shot about three quarters of the way in, the movie is basically perfect. I'm of the opinion that, generally speaking, acting in a movie is not quite as important as most viewers think it is. Above all, film is an artistic medium; it is a marriage of picture and sound in which the actors are little more than another of the director's tools. Whether he was aware of it at the time or not (I can't say for sure), Tarantino made a brilliant move by completely subverting this notion and actually making Reservoir Dogs about performance.

In addition to serving as a showcase for marvelous acting jobs by all involved, the film's story is itself about acting. None of the robbers participating in the heist know each other, so they're all trying to act as tough as possible in order to impress one another. Acting. Additionally, they're all going by fake names in order to preserve the secrecy of their identities. They are each pretending to be Mr. White, Mr. Pink, Mr. Blonde, or whatever color it is they've been assigned. Acting. On top of that, Mr. Orange is an undercover cop, so he's doing twice the acting that everyone else is. He's pretending to be a criminal who's pretending to keep his identity secret. For this role, he rehearses, learns lines, and otherwise works to get into character.

At no point is this element of performance more clear than during the episode surrounding the commode story. Orange's boss makes him memorize "an amusing anecdote" about a drug deal that he can repeat to the criminals he's trying to win over and the manner in which the film illustrates Orange's process of learning and then recounting the story is nothing short of brilliant. Orange's boss, with all his idiosyncracies - his penchant for bandanas, communist iconography, open vests, and oddly colorful meeting places - and his flair for the dramatic, seems much less like a law enforcement officer and much more like a theatre person. Like a true director, he molds Orange into the perfect actor; the story becomes so real to Orange that when he finally tells it to the group of criminals he's trying to infiltrate, he can actually see himself in the story, acting out the words that he's worked so hard to memorize. When he describes his emotions, however - something that takes time in the process of the storytelling but, in the real-time of the story takes less than a second to act out - it's the Mr. Orange in the story who takes over the narration, describing his "character's" emotions to the other fictional characters in the story. In this move, Orange embodies the character of the film; he makes the story more real for himself by actually making it about his performance rather than the events of the story.

There are other cool performative elements to the film, but it would take far too long to describe them all. Tarantino's work is a constant invitation to this type of analysis, which I suppose is what makes him a great writer/director. The viewer continues to enjoy the film long after it's over.

Here Lies Cinema

2005-09-18T21:20:00.000-04:00

It's no secret that movie theater attendance is dwindling in respect to DVD sales. Americans, it seems, would much rather watch movies in the comfort of their own homes while enjoying all of the special features offered by most DVDs, rather than allow Clearview, Loews, and the like to swindle them into paying exorbitant prices to watch a half hour of commercials before watching the feature amidst ringing cell phones and spilled popcorn (also exorbitantly priced). It's hard not to see their point of view.

The above linked article by Christopher Parkes in the Financial Times (of which, sadly, you can only see an excerpt unless you're a subscriber. No worries, it's no great work of journalism; I'm just using it as a jumping off point, really.) also cites the overwhelming glut of uninspired sequels and rehashed comic book movies (he better not be talking about Batman Begins) as a cause for the drop in ticket sales.

While both of these are understandable reasons to not want to go to the movies (I personally still cannot accustom myself to paying more than $7 for a ticket. Call me old fashioned.), there is still something magic about watching a movie on a big screen. The lights go down and, if the movie's any good, you're transported to a different time and place where you live someone else's life for a while. Watching a movie at home, no matter how good your entertainment system may be, just doesn't do that. The simple knowledge that you have the power to pause the movie, freezing the on-screen action for as long as you like, is enough to ruin the illusion.

Perhaps the commercialization of American cinema has robbed us of our innocence - the aforementioned commercials have stolen all the magic from that moment when the film projector kicks into life - and we can no longer summon up the childlike wonder we once felt when spending an evening at the movies. Maybe we've just become members of the cult of convenience and we'd rather not leave our homes during our hard-won free time. Whatever the cause, I don't like it. Cinema may be dead (or at least dying) in America, but it's alive and well elsewhere.

In a few days, I'm moving to Paris, where moviegoing is more than just a weekend diversion; it's a way of life. Whereas arthouse cinematheques like the Film Forum in NYC are dwindling in America, they are alive and well in Paris (often referred to by film scholars as Cin City) and I intend to go to all of them. Check back to read about my observations.

Nashville

2005-09-16T23:24:00.000-04:00

If it's Robert Altman's trademark to direct large, ensemble-cast films, then Nashville is his flagship production. There are twenty-four significant speaking parts in the film, many of them played by high profile actors. The truly amazing thing, however, is that none of them ever really holds center stage for more than a moment or two; the spotlight consistently returns to the constantly churning collective that is the entirety of the production itself.

The story focuses on the goings-on during a long weekend in the title city of Nashville, Tennessee. There are far too many characters to list and describe here. Suffice it to say that there are two parallel themes running throughout the film: music (primarily country, regrettably) and politics. Nashville was and is the nation's country music capital and politically Tennessee is - in the film, at least - something of a modern-day Ohio in that it almost always (only once did it not) goes to the winning presidential candidate. Nashville, Tennessee is the ideal arena in which either a musical or political contender would try to make a name for him/herself, but, as the films shows, when every person is trying to stand out as an individual, they each become imperceptible in the swarm.

There are, of course, a few exceptions to the rule. In spite of all the competition, country stars Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) and Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley) and political spin doctor John Triplette (Michael Murphy) stand out prominently from the crowd, but, like everyone else, they remain resolutely unindividual. Rather than exercising a certain authority due to their prominence, they merely have responsibilities; they are more like slaves than rulers. When Haven introduces Barbara Jean with the preface "Nashville's own" in the beginning, his words bear a more literal meaning than he realizes. As a performer, her celebrity is far more of a duty than a privelege; she is at the whim of her admiring public and, essentially, she is their property.

Similarly, John Triplette is nowhere near as important as an individual as he is for what he represents. As prominent a physical role he plays in the plot of the movie, his significance to the story derives itself entirely from his connection to Hal Phillip Walker, a mysterious third-party presidential candidate who never appears on screen. Through the use of wit and finesse, Triplette charms his way into the people of Nashville's good graces, but he's little more than a salesman; as far as everyone else is concerned, he's not a real person but rather just the embodiment of Walker's interests. Like Haven Hamilton and Barbara Jean with country music, it is not his personality that defines the character of his political party (the fictional Replacement Party), but rather the political party that defines his actions and behavior.

As such, Triplette, Hamilton, and Barbara Jean (it's impossible to separate the one name from the other) are little more than placeholders; they have risen to their prominent positions entirely by chance and are sure to be replaced the moment they step down. Even though both politics and popular music are founded upon a certain cult of individual personality, the collective character of the movements in question far supersedes that of the individuals who stand as their figureheads.

If there is any truly significant individual, it is the man who works behind the scenes. The most important characters in this movie, therefore, they are Hal Philip Walker and Robert Altman himself. Neither of them ever appear on screen, but they are both far more important to the story of the film than any of the on-screen characters. However, while Walker uses his power to draw attention to himself - or at least his name - Altman does not. He simply diffuses the viewer's attention across the entire film, thus preventing any one actor or actress from stealing the show. Distinct from most contemporary films, Nashville - like most of Altman's other works - is not simply a showcase for a celebrity or two; the actors are merely the paint to Altman's paintbrush and his style of direction insists - justifiably and successfully - upon the viewer's recognition that his films are indeed art.

Being no fan of country music, I find it regrettable that Altman had to choose it as the subject matter with which he would strike a blow against the cult of the individual and demonstrate the almost ethereal strength of culture and politics. As the two-and-a-half hour movie began, I steeled myself against the upcoming onslaught of country and I can't say my appreciation for the genre has grown any since watching the film. Nonetheless, Altman's presentation of the subject matter was so subtly pervasive that, upon the movie's end, when the appropriately anonymous character of Albuquerque stands up and sings "It Don't Worry Me" before the largest audience presented in the film, I actually found myself singing along.

"I hope you have a big trunk, because I'm puttin' my bike in it."

2005-09-12T00:41:00.000-04:00

The 40 Year Old Virgin: Not a date movie.

Why I Like Sports Movies Better Than Sports Themselves

2005-09-11T19:22:00.000-04:00

I am not a sports fan. That's not to say that I don't like sports; I do. I just don't have the patience and the zeal to religiously follow a team's standings every single day. I enjoy a good game (especially football) every once in a while, but I'm simply not a fan. I have trouble identifying with a team in order to truly care about how they perform; more often than not they're either a completely anonymous and personality-less group of athletes (most football teams) or they have such a ridiculously over-constructed identity as to rival that of a professional wrestler (the Boston Red Sox).

Sports movies, however, when they're done well, offer up teams with strong personalities without, ironically enough, imbuing the viewer/fan with a sense of having his/her emotions manipulated. We grow to love our team's collection of personalities before they become winners and when they enter competition after a rough training period we have to suffer with them before they win out in the end (as we know they will) and, in so doing, we become their fans.

I've just now watched Andre Agassi lose to Roger Federer in the U.S. Open final round and I'm disappointed because, for the first time since I was a child, I was a fan. Watching the Open this summer, I couldn't help but succumb to the infectious charm and energy of Andre Agassi, who, like the protagonists of a sports movie, overcame all odds to reach the final round at the ripe old age of 35. Uncharacteristically, I found myself pumping my fist in the air at every point earned and slamming my hand against the nearest hard surface with a disappointed "Godammit, Andre!" at every single unforced error.

I suppose it's because he's a single person and not a team that I managed to become one of Agassi's many fans. If he weren't the only one out there, his enthusiasm and boyish smile wouldn't have meant nearly as much. Either way, I don't expect to be as much of a fan again for a good long while. Or at least until the next good sports movie comes out.

The Hunger

2005-09-08T11:10:00.000-04:00

Last night, on the recommendation of my friend Jenna, I rented and watched The Hunger. She sold me on the idea with three basic points: (1) it's a vampire movie, (2) it stars Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, and Susan Sarandon, and (3) there is a lesbian sex scene between Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon.

I love vampire movies. Unlike most other movies of the horror genre, vampire movies tend to have a certain erotic beauty to them. Zombies, mummies, and other monsters are ugly and basically all they want to do is kill you in as grotesque a way as possible. I admit, this style of horror can be fun, but vampires are so much more aesthetically pleasing. They move with grace, they tend to wear very stylish clothes, and their porcelain skin portrays a youthful beauty frozen in time. Basically, they're fashion models who can't go out into the sun and might one day kill you. Basically they're fashion models.

And they kill you by sucking your blood! I can imagine a no more sensuous and erotic way to die. The hunger they feel is a kind of lust, a bloodlust, and, more often than not, they lead up to their final kiss of death with a bit of very intense foreplay. A vampire would be the best and last lover you'd ever have. The "petit mort" that the vampire would give you would in fact be death itself.

Clearly, I was sold mostly on the first point, but the cast - especially Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie - were a major factor, as well. Frankly, I took the lesbian sex scene as a given.

For a vampire movie, the plot is somewhat unique. There's a bit of an Egyptian twist to the mythology and, blasphemously enough, the vampires can go out in daylight, but I still found it fairly boring. While the story is not formulaic, it's certainly not gripping either; it moves rather slowly and doesn't bother to express itself well with all the time that it takes.

What Jenna didn't say when she recommended this movie was who directed it. Therefore, I only understood afterwards - when I discovered that the director was Tony Scott (brother of Ridley) - why it seemed to be so heavily influenced by Blade Runner, which had just come out the previous year. Poor Tony quotes his brother so heavily - diagonal shafts of penetrating light in airless, dusty rooms; excessive cross-cutting between the present and the characters' memories - that one wonders if he has his own vision at all. It's all very beautiful in its own way, but it doesn't really say anything.

The movie is really more of a music video than anything else, which, I suppose, makes it a fairly fitting vampire movie to come from the 1980s: a lot of glitz and visual splendor, but little to no substance. Thankfully, Tony (who must have loved that his name was more "normal" than his brother's when they were growing up, but probably hates it now) has since moved out of his brother's shadow and has a few decent movies of his own (Top Gun, Spy Game) under his belt. Maybe now he can give the vampire genre another try.

Outraged Frustration

2005-09-07T15:42:00.000-04:00

I just finished writing what I considered to be a particularly insightful post about Robert Altman's Nashville, clicked the publish button, and walked away from the computer, and returned only to find that the page had not loaded correctly and I'd lost everything I'd written.

I'm sure I'll come back to the topic sometime in the near future, but in the meantime please believe two things: first, that Nashville is a very good movie and it behooves you to rent it immediately and, second, that I have some very profound thoughts on the topic.

Thank you.

Rome

2005-08-30T01:18:00.000-04:00

"Popular history has given Ancient Rome more than its due. While their society was certainly advanced in terms of its approach to politics, to the arts, and to warfare, this is not to suggest that the Roman people were in any way more sophisticated than the American people are today. Popular literature and film has greatly romanticized - or, perhaps, mythologized - life in Ancient Rome, giving the impression that Romans were cultured and refined to a degree that is almost unheard of today. In actuality, Romans were violent, hedonistic, and crude."

Sadly, I can't attribute that quote to anyone in particular, because I just made it up. Nonetheless, it may as well have been spoken by the minds behind Rome, the new HBO series that is moving to fill Six Feet Under's recently vacated timeslot, because it's inherent in every shot and every line of dialogue. It's a history lesson that keeps our attention by showing us just how provocative and gratuitous history can be.

In her review on slate.com, Dana Stevens proclaims the series to be boring, but I would disagree with her (although I think her reference to Forrest Gump is brilliant). While the first episode did leave a sour taste in my mouth, so to speak, I didn't find it boring; it was far too filled with nudity, sex, and violence to be labeled as boring. It is not, however, a testament to the quality of a show's writing if it only maintains the viewer's attention by outdoing itself with shocking material at every turn.

I do believe that Roman life was just as hedonistic as their portrayal indicates, but I nonetheless came away with the impression that the show's creators were merely capitalizing on this aspect of Roman society to make a soap opera that they could pass off as some sort of costume drama. They've clearly done a great deal of research, but for all their attempts at historical accuracy, it seems from the first episode that they've really just created a show for people who like the gratuity and melodrama of daytime television, but don't like to admit it. Thankfully, Rome allows you to slake your thirst for vice without feeling any guilt because you're supposedly learning ancient history at the same time, and it's on HBO, so it must be classy and avant-garde.

Although the art direction, cinematography, and the overall look of the show are very good - the opening credits sequence, which gives life to ancient Roman graffitti, very well may be the best part - Rome is nowhere near filling the admittedly large shoes of Six Feet Under. HBO can do better.

In Brief

2005-08-28T15:58:00.000-04:00

The Brothers Grimm

I'm disappointed to hear such lukewarm reviews about this movie. I'm even more disappointed that, judging by the trailer, I'm not in the slightest inclined to disagree with them. Terry Gilliam is a rather hit-or-miss director, but when he's on, he's on. In addition to the Monty Python movies, he absolutely excelled with Brazil and Twelve Monkeys, two of my favorite films. I'm sad to see him come up with such a misfire. The only thing that saves this production for me is the inherent humor in its misguided effort to make Heath Ledger like bookish.

The Aristocrats

I've seen this one and all I have to say is: that's some funny shit.

The Constant Gardener

I haven't seen this one yet, but I will. Both Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz are beautiful, talented, and versatile actors and Fernando Meirelles has proven himself to be a director with incredible talent and vision in his breakout film City of God, which depicts life in a major Brazilian slum, and I have a feeling that he hasn't even begun to fully realize his potential.

Pretty Persuasion

This movie has received lukewarm reviews all across the board, but I am nonetheless drawn to it. The indienerd appeal of Ron Livingston (Office Space), the solid B-movie history of James Woods (Vampires, The Getaway, The Way We Were), and the real-life grit and sexuality of Evan Rachel Wood (Thirteen) are just too much for me to turn my back on. My hopes are high, but my expectations are low.

Husbands and Wives

2005-08-27T02:10:00.000-04:00

Everyone loves to say that Woody Allen's work is too autobiographical, that in every movie he just plays himself (a claim that he wittily and artfully countered in 1997 with the under-appreciated Deconstructing Harry), but what he actually does is take his real-life experiences and, instead of presenting them as a thinly-veiled fiction, he uses them to construct a fictional reality that stands in opposition to his closely-read personal life. In his 1977 classic Annie Hall, he casts himself (as Alvy Singer) as a failed lover who cannot keep the woman of his dreams in real life, but only in the fiction he creates, while, in real life, Woody Allen was still very much involved with Diane Keaton and would stay with her for the space of two more movies.

In 1992's Husbands and Wives, Allen depicts the ups and downs of longstanding marriages in a "realistic" documentary style, showing how his character's marriage falls apart because his wife's character (played by his girlfriend of the moment Mia Farrow) leaves him for another man while he resists the temptation to leave her for a younger woman. At this time in real life, however, Woody Allen was engaging in his infamous affair with Soon-Yi Previn, Farrow's adopted daughter, whom he would eventually marry. Like Philip Roth's Zuckerman in The Counterlife, it seems that Allen doesn't use his life as a model for the fictions he creates, but rather something of the inverse; he uses the fictions of his movies as a means of sampling (and, in some cases, rejecting) different life choices.

I suppose this post isn't much in the way of a review so much as a discussion of Allen's style, but by discussing Husbands and Wives in the same breath as Annie Hall and The Counterlife, I'd say I'm giving it a pretty strong recommendation. Maybe I'll say why another time.

Jarmusch, Jarmusch, Jarmusch

2005-08-24T22:32:00.000-04:00

After watching and enjoying Broken Flowers, I decided to familiarize myself with some of Jim Jarmusch's other works. I'd seen Coffee and Cigarettes, but being that it was so disjointed and episodic, I imagined (almost entirely correctly) that it wasn't quite characteristic of this writer-director's oeuvre. I was right in the sense that Jarmusch's other movies are narrative tales that actually have beginnings, middles, and ends that cogently flow from one to the other. I was wrong, however, when it came to style and the choice of subject matter. Jarmusch's much-acclaimed earlier work Down by Law, while having an actual storyline, is much like Coffee and Cigarettes in its avoidance of the dramatic and its focus on the quotidian.

Down by Law tells the story of three men - Zack, Jack, and Roberto (played, respectively, by Tom Waits, John Lurie, and Roberto Benigni) - who break out of a Louisiana prison together. Were it written by any other man, this movie would be a suspense thriller all about the hows and whens of the escape plot, as is the case in The Great Escape and Escape from Alcatraz, but, just as their escape is not featured in the title of the film, it isn't featured in the actual body of the work either. As Jarmusch explains in the extra features of the Criterion Collection DVD, instead of focusing on the action of the story, the plot centers in on the moments that happen between the action and the drama. Even when Zack and Jack fight each other in their cell before Roberto - or Bob, as he asks them to call him - arrives, the camera cuts immediately to the aftermath of the fight, showing them leaning against the bars, bruised and fatigued, yet still bored.

This different approach, in conjunction with the film's crisp and beautiful black and white photography, is very refreshing when viewed in the context of contemporary cinema's overwhelming glut of glitzy action/suspense movies (the oh-so-sexy Ocean's 11, for example) that rely far too strongly on clever plot twists and the clever plotting of clever characters. Down by a Law is a movie driven by and about its characters and, as a result, like in Coffee and Cigarettes, it's a whole lot of talk.

Sadly, when I watched this movie, talk was not entirely what I was in the mood for. I was impressed by the cinematography and I was almost equally impressed by the clever and erudite construction of the film (deconstructed with more enthusiasm than I can muster by Nicholas Rapold in Reverse Shot), but I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd have liked. I want to give this movie another chance, but my lukewarm reaction the first time around just goes to show that, no matter how good it is, sometimes you're in the mood for talk, and sometimes you're not.

Lit City. Yeah, this one's about books.

2005-08-24T12:21:00.000-04:00

Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer are the new posterboys for postmodern literature, but I never thought of them together in that context until, entirely by chance, I read Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity! one right after the other. Although their styles are quite similar - they both regularly employ the visual potential of literature either by manipulating the format of the text or through the inclusion of photographs or illustrations - the atmosphere and tone that their writing evokes are quite different. In both cases it's about emotion, but while Foer's writing creates an atmosphere of love and sadness more than anything else, Eggers' work tends to adopt a tone of anger and almost frenetic energy.

The respective plots of these novels also complement each other quite well. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is about a young boy whose father died in the September 11 attacks, following him as he confronts his father's death by going on a quest to unlock the mystery of his father's life. You Shall Know Our Velocity!, on the other hand, is entirely about flight from pain; in the space of a week, the protagonist travels the globe giving away vast sums of money as he goes, all in an effort to escape his own anger and grief. Each represents a different approach to pain, the first being constructive and the second destructive. Read together, I found myself identifying with them both; they each tapped into different aspects of my personality; Eggers appeals to my sense of frustrated anger while Foer offers up an unchecked sentimentality that affected me more than I'd like to admit.

I heartily recommend both of these books. Independently, they are each perfect examples of the potential of postmodern literature (although in Foer's case I would recommend his first novel Everything is Illuminated - soon to be released as a major motion picture about which I am skeptical but really want to be optimistic - over Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), but together they really and truly provide a shining example of the ongoing vitality of the novel as a literary medium.

Six Feet Under

2005-08-22T09:37:00.000-04:00

It was the end of an era last night. Six Feet Under, one of the best (if not the best) shows on television finally met it's end. And what an end.

Like most - but not all - of the HBO original series, Six Feet Under was different from your average one hour drama. There were of course the obvious differences - nudity, swearing, violence, no commercials - but it was different in far more important ways as well. The show had a very cinematic style; the various directors shot it more like an independent movie than a television show. The actors inhabited their roles in a way that was far more pervasive and convincing than any other television show I've ever seen. Six Feet Under was a show about emotion, pure and simple, and it's rare to see emotion done such justice.

The final episode was almost perfect. In addition to being beautifully shot - there was one particular shot in which we see Ruth reflected in a mirror over George's shoulder that simply took my breath away - the episode perfectly captured the essential message of the series: death is a part of life, perhaps the most important part, and everything we do is in some ways in preparation for that final moment. The pain of the death of our loved ones can be a force that drives us to live and this show - and particularly the character of Ruth, played excellently by the extremely talented Frances Conroy - taught me that in a more powerful way than any event in real life ever has. To me, and to most of Six Feet Under's viewers, I imagine, the Fisher family and their surrounding cast of characters became real, and watching their sadnesses, happinesses, lives, and deaths was as emotional an experience as life (and death) itself.

Anthony Lane could most certainly write his way out of a paper bag and a good number of other things, as well

2005-08-19T14:09:00.000-04:00

The man is skilled with a pen, I must admit. In fact, he's a better writer than film critic. This week's issue of The New Yorker amply illustrates how this trait can work to both his advantage and disadvantage.

In his review of Asylum, which has been roundly panned by critics across the board, he very creatively mocks the film's formulaic romance plot to devastating effect:

I wish I could tell you that what happens next came as a blistering surprise, but if there's one thing that years of moviegoing teach you it is basic algebra, and the rule runs as follows: (Frustrated Wife ÷ Late-Fifties Lingerie) - √(Dull Husband) x (Demonic Yet Strangely Tender Hunk + Glowing Eyes) = Greenhouse Rock.

This happy marriage of prose and mathematics is a fine example of the kind of fun one can have when writing a negative review. Having some personal experience with the matter, I can assure you it's a great feeling and, ironically (considering that bad art is the jumping off point), a perfect opportunity to flex one's writing muscles. Some of the best pieces I've ever written were about really bad movies.

It's important, however, not to become too enamored with one's own writing, because it can lead you astray. Given the opportunity, the writing will push the movie - the ostensible subject of the piece - out of the spotlight and direct all attention to itself; once it picks up some momentum, a review can develop it's own logic and reason that will direct it away from the actual facts about the movie and into the more theoretical realm of what looks best on a piece of paper.

Such is the case, sadly, with his second review: a lukewarm piece about 2046. Now, I'll grant you that I am clearly biased against this review from the start - Wong Kar-wai is one of my favorite directors - but, nonetheless, Lane's review, although very gracefully written, has precious little merit or justification.

His first crime is his attack against the verisimilitude of Chow's success with women:

I am not competent to judge whether Chow is really the type to make the opposite sex go weak at the knees, waist, neck, and other points of seizure, although to my eyes he looked, with his whisker of mustache, like a no-good rat in a George Raft movie. What I will say is that nobody who has the ungallant gall to inform us, in voice-over, that “I became an expert ladies' man” is a ladies' man at all. Ladies of every description will know him better as a creep.

If, as he claims, he's incapable of judging whether or not Chow is attractive to women - a statement reminiscent of the kind of homophobia displayed by George Costanza in Seinfeld, "not that there's anything wrong with that" - how does he have such a priveleged perspective into the female mind as to be so assured of what ladies would think of him?

From this point on, Mr. Lane seems to simply miss the point. His mockery of Wong's "visual dictatorship" and so-called impassive approach to romantic affairs, reveals one of the following: he didn't understand In the Mood for Love, he didn't like it, he doesn't understand the connection between the two movies, or he cannot sympathize with the effect of lost love upon a sincere and emotional man. The impassivity of both Chow and the visual design of the film reflect the character's emotional retreat after the heartbreak he experienced at the end of In the Mood for Love. This emotional defensiveness does make the movie harder to relate to than its predecessor, but it also makes it true. Chow hides his emotions and keeps women at arm's length and, yes, does outwardly act like something of a creep, so, in that sense Mr. Lane is right, but not for the reason that he thinks he is.

For the most part, I like Anthony Lane - he's certainly a better critic than his New Yorker colleague David Denby - but he needs to remember that although his writing is important, it's not quite the point. In this recent piece, it looks like he allowed the negativity of his first review to seep unjustifiably into his second, perhaps because it made the piece flow better as whole. Although it does make for a pleasant read, it's unfaithful to the material. A critic is still a journalist and sometimes you need to sacrifice a little cogency for the sake of honest and thorough reporting.

A Belated Explanation

2005-08-18T12:36:00.000-04:00

In case anyone was wondering:

Plan Américain is a film term that refers to a shot that frames the subject from the top of his/her head down to mid-thigh. It's also called a 3/4 shot. I chose planamericain as the address for my blog because it relates to film (obviously) and it reflects my appreciation of French culture and cinema. Also, cincity was already taken by some girl named CinCin.

A Confession

2005-08-17T23:04:00.000-04:00

As artsy (read: pretentious) and refined (read: snobby) as I'd like to consider my tastes in film to be, I have to admit that there's a part of me that really wants to see The Dukes of Hazzard. A lot.

Ebert was my hero once

2005-08-17T14:25:00.000-04:00

And he still is, for the most part, but he really needs to do a better job of getting his plot points straight. After writing my previous post, I went to his website to check out his review of Broken Flowers (oddly enough, he seems to have chosen not to review 2046 at all) and, although I like the review itself, he's really disappointed me by confusing the names of one of the characters. Call me nitpicky, but a film critic seems less reliable to me when he refers to a character named Ron as Dan. They're always smaller details, but Ebert has been making more and more mistakes like this as of late and I can't help but wonder if this will eventually start to affect his ability to properly judge the quality of a film. If you can't remember what happened, you can't tell how good it is.

Don Juan: East meets West

2005-08-17T01:46:00.000-04:00

In Wong Kar-Wai's 2046, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) is a Don Juan by accident. In Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, Don Johnston (Bill Murray) is a Don Juan by profession. Both, however, are not quite happy or comfortable in their roles and, in their own different ways, that's what these two movies are about.

For Chow, the ladies' man identity is never a good fit; he falls into this role as a defense mechanism in response to the heartbreak he suffers in In the Mood for Love. In that movie, we never see any physical intimacy between Chow and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), but the suggestion of attraction - prevalent in everything from the characters' body language to the cinematography to the cigarettes Chow chainsmokes - hangs heavy in the air and the emotional connection between them becomes palpably real. They never consummate their relationship - at least not in front of the camera - which makes their ultimate separation all the more heartbreaking.

As a result, the Chow of 2046 goes in the exact opposite direction; he eschews emotional intimacy by repeatedly pursuing meaningless physical relationships. He puts on the Don Juan façade - embodied physically by his slightly out of place mustache - and the film matches this personality shift, offering scenes of physical intimacy bathed in sexy hues of yellow and red. Beyond this screen of hedonism offered by both Chow's smarmy, mustachioed seductions and Wong's cinematography, sits a deep well of sadness. With every close-up of Tony Leung's face, we see a flicker of pain behind his ladies' man smile and Wong's shot compositions consistently cast Chow against a vast plane of negative space, illustrating a profound emotional emptiness that belies his flirtatious good humor. It is clear that, in spite of himself, Chow falls in love more than once over the course of the film, but in a feeble stab at self-defense he does his best to deny it.

Broken Flowers, on the other hand, depicts the story of not a sincere lover pretending to be a Don Juan, but something of the reverse order. Bill Murray's Don Johnston has been a promiscuous playboy all his life - when trying to determine which woman could have given birth to his son 19 years ago, he can only narrow it down to five possibilities - and the fatigue has finally caught up with him. The New Yorker's David Denby and numerous other critics (amateur and professional alike) have found a fairly obvious contradiction in the character of Don Johnston; he's supposed to be this great lover, but Bill Murray's deadpan performance makes him seem like he's more likely to attract flies and vultures than the opposite sex. These naysayers forget, however, that the film begins with his most recent lover - a very heavily made up Julie Delpy - leaving him. As a Don Juan, he has lost his touch and the question is whether it's due simply to his age or rather that it is caused by a more profound existential crisis. In other words, is the problem that he can no longer turn on the charm like he used to or can he just no longer bring himself to?

I would argue the latter. Everything from Murray's minimalist characterization to the drab palette Jarmusch employs in his shot composition creates an atmosphere of world-weariness, as if his lifestyle has sapped all the emotion from his face and all the color from his world. Only a man who feels he's already seen it all wouldn't even flinch upon meeting his former lover's daughter - unironically named Lolita - and having her immediately throw herself at him.

Because his backstory is only implied, one could very easily imagine that Murray's Don Johnston is merely an older, American version of Leung's Chow Mo-wan. At the time of 2046, Chow is relatively new to the playboy game and it still takes an effort for him to suppress his emotions. Johnston, however, has been at it for over twenty years and, apparently, has suppressed himself to the point of having almost no feelings whatsoever. Broken Flowers is, in effect, an account of Chow's future; Johnston's struggle is much the same as Chow's, only farther down the line. Both wrestle with their emotions and their fears, the only question - the question that Jarmusch seeks to answer - is who will win.

I'm just throwing this out there...

2005-08-12T02:34:00.000-04:00

I didn't like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I realize that this is something of a delayed reaction - I saw it more than a few weeks ago (with David Quimby, who I think will stand by my opinion on this one) - but I didn't anticipate this mediocre film getting such a landslide of unwarranted approval and, like the straw that broke the camel's back, one too many people has told me just how much they loved it, inciting me to speak.

I like Tim Burton. I like him a lot. I also really like Johnny Depp. I especially like them together. Sleepy Hollow and Edward Scissorhands were both really great and the story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory seemed like the perfect kind of project for Burton and Depp to collaborate on. Nonetheless, the movie was slow, boring, lacked verisimilitude - which Sleepy Hollow and Edward Scissorhands had, in spite of the fantastical nature of their plots - and, most importantly, was odd without being profound or funny. In fact, nearly every attempt at profundity or humor fell flat on its face. The subplot involving Wonka's father was ill-conceived and overdone and the comedic aspects were transparent and clunky.

There are a few saving graces to the film, but not enough. I'll admit, the movie actually does start off fairly strongly, but as soon as they enter the factory, it just simmers down to average.

I really just don't know what everyone else is talking about.

Speaking of which...

2005-08-09T10:52:00.000-04:00

It's appropriate that 2046 and Broken Flowers have the same release date. I haven't seen either film yet (they're only out in limited release at the moment), but they bear the same subject matter - love and loneliness - and they are both directed by important art film auteurs. Oddly enough, however, A.O. Scott chose to write an article comparing Broken Flowers with the questionable movie Wedding Crashers. Maybe he did so because a mainstream audience wouldn't be interested in reading an article comparing two art films - although, as Lynn Hirschberg notes in the article I linked to in my previous post, Flowers is certainly Jarmusch's most mainstream work to date - but, that's hardly an excuse. As snobby and esoteric as such an article may have seemed, it would have been far more interesting (and certainly a far more valid comparison) to discuss the different ways in which two such talented directors - who represent two distinctly different cultures - approach the same topic of lost love.

Wong Kar-Wai and Jim Jarmusch

2005-08-08T20:16:00.000-04:00

Speaking of In the Mood for Love, I am incredibly excited for Wong's sequel 2046, which will be coming out in full release this Friday. I am similarly enthusiastic about the upcoming arrival of Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. Both of these directors are true auteurs in a time where art and cinema do not overlap nearly often enough. I have loaded up my Netflix queue with these directors' back catalogs and you can expect to see posts about them in the near future.

Wong Kar-Wai receives extensive coverage in the current issue of Film Comment, but only one of the articles is online. Sadly, I liked the other one better, but pickers can't be choosers.

There was a great article on Jim Jarmusch in the July 31 issue of the New York Times Magazine. You can view the beginning of the article here, but, alas, you have to pay to see the rest of it.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

2005-08-08T13:39:00.000-04:00

Synesthesia is a physical condition in which one or more of the five senses are somehow overlapped. For certain synesthetics, music can be seen; for others, sounds can be tasted. It's a fascinating concept, and it has certainly enchanted Peter Greenaway, whose work in cinema frequently attempts to make film more than just a visual and auditory experience. In The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989), Greenaway overlays the sense of taste upon the sense of touch. Taking place almost entirely in a fancy French restaurant in London, the film centers itself around food, eating, and the inherent sensuality therein.

In his review, Roger Ebert claims that the film is a political allegory savagely lambasting Margaret Thatcher and a commentary on modern times in general, in which the greedy rich cruelly oppress the poor. While this model certainly applies (Ebert has a nice summary of it in his review), the form in which Greenaway presents the film suggests that there's much more to it than just the metaphor suggested by the plot. The art direction, camerawork, and music in this movie all speak to an exploration of pleasure.

As the title of the film suggests, there are four major characters: a cook, a thief, his wife, and her lover. The cook is a Frenchman named Richard. The thief is a crime boss named Albert and he owns the restaurant where Richard works as head chef. Albert and his wife Georgina - accompanied by Albert's gang of thugs - go to Richard's restaurant for dinner every night, where Albert bullies the other patrons and the staff and where, one night, Georgina meets her lover. Bored with her husband's crude and banal conversation, Georgina scans the room and catches the eye of a lone diner, whom - she notices - has just received the same specially prepared dish as she did. She gets up to go to the bathroom. He follows her and they make passionate love.

What Richard, Georgina, and her lover Michael have in common - and what Albert lacks - is an appreciation for beauty and a love of the finer pleasures in life. In short, they have taste. While Albert pretends to have taste by dabbling in the restaurant business and lecturing his gang of philistines on culture, the other three actually live a life of genuine taste. Richard does so through his artful cuisine, Georgina through her passion and elegance, and Michael through his tenderness and intellect.

Greenaway's camera highlights this character difference through rhythm, sound, and color. Long, lyrical takes accompanied by a subtly pervasive musical theme turn every collective movement into a kind of dance. When Michael and Georgina sneak off together, surrounded by the swirling movements of the restaurant staff, it is a thing of beauty, rather than a dishonest and sneaky expression of illicit passion. Combined with the only somewhat gimmicky effect of having the character's costumes change color as they move from one setting to another (bright red for the main dining room, pure white for the bathroom, and smokey green for the kitchen), the camerawork and scoring serve to make the lovers and Richard become a part of their surroundings and their surroundings become a part of them. Albert, on the other hand, stands in contrast to his environs, moving violently and arhythmically, creating cacophony instead of music.

The affair that Michael and Georgina carry on at dinner every night, the affair that Richard helps them to hide by allowing them to use the extra spaces in his kitchen, and the affair that Albert never notices himself in spite of the fact that it's being carried out directly under his nose, is a testament to this distinction between Albert and the others. Like the pleasures of eating, the pleasures of the flesh require a fine palate. While the others have this, Albert does not. Although his actions may make the others unhappy, he is - entirely independent of them - completely incapable of happiness and enjoyment; he cannot even understand the pleasures in which they partake.

Sadly, what the film accomplishes visually, it does not accomplish narratively. Other than the brilliantly brutish performance by Michael Gambon as Albert, the acting is mediocre. For much of the earlier portions of the movie, the other characters speak very little or not at all and as soon as they start talking one can't help but wish they'd stayed that way. The greatest crime committed by this movie, however, is the complete misuse of the extremely talented Tim Roth, who plays Albert's right-hand man. His character speaks only a few lines and the camera lingers over him hesitantly and confusingly, as if unable to decide whether he's important or not. He constantly lingers on the periphery, as if Greenaway is paying him lip service because he knows that Roth is too good for this role, which is entirely insignificant to the plot.

The beauty and style of the film do make up for the acting and narrative missteps, and for that reason I do like the movie, but there are better options out there. If it's Greenaway and his obsession with synesthesia and pleasure that interests you, see his film The Pillow Book (1996), which replaces food with literature and shows how the pleasures of reading overlap with the pleasures of the flesh. On the other hand, the stunningly beautiful Wong Kar-Wai masterpiece In the Mood for Love (2000) - which very well may have drawn some inspiration from The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover - does a far better job in coordinating and choreographing the movements of the characters and the camera into a breathtaking ballet while also telling a compelling emotional story.

The Seven Year Itch

2005-08-02T14:17:00.000-04:00

When I started this blog not long ago, I made the decision that my posts would be primarily text-based, that my writing could stand alone and I didn't need to include pictures and photos to catch the eye. I stand by this decision, but, as you can clearly see from the photos above, I've found an exception to the rule.

These photos are publicity stills from The Seven Year Itch, in which Marilyn Monroe essentially portrays temptation; she plays a nameless girl (IMDB actually credits her as playing the role of "The Girl") whose sole purpose in the plot is to serve as a physical manifestation of the married man's urge to commit adultery. All three of the photos above similarly reduce her identity to simply that of an object of male sexual desire. This famous image of Monroe holding her dress down against the updraft coming from the subway grate creates an atmosphere of sexuality and hedonism that surrounds and envelops her like a thick fog.

The idea of an attractive actress serving as a sex symbol is hardly foreign to me. Contemporary Hollywood markets nearly everyone - both male and female - who stars on the silver screen as some sort of sex symbol. What was surprising, however, was that, while now there's a certain consistency in between the portrayal of sex in the still and the moving image, in the 50s there was a distinct disconnect. While Angelina Jolie will "act sexy" in both still photos and in her movies, Marilyn Monroe - it seems - could only do so in the former and not the latter. Perhaps this is an obvious observation to make given the more stringent governmental restrictions placed on the film industry in regards to the depiction of sex and sexuality at that time, but nonetheless the gap between the Marilyn Monroe persona promoted by the publicity stills shown above, one of barely contained sexuality, and her characterization in the film as an airhead hick who is blissfully unaware of her more than ample seductive powers was startling to say the least. My familiarity with the Marilyn Monroe legend - her infamous affairs, her frequently referenced birthday performance for JFK, her Playboy centerfold - only served to compound the surprise I felt at her role in this film.

What was more surprising, however, was the protagonist's reaction to her. By today's standards, her character acts totally unenticingly; she is completely unflirtatious and unsuggestive. In fact, her behavior as the girl upstairs reflects not the character of a lusty sexpot, but rather that of the naive sexual innocence of a prepubescent girl. Nonetheless, the protagonist - who, significantly, does have a name - is enticed, aroused, nearly driven mad with passion. Her identity - in terms of both her name (or lack thereof) and her personality - it seems, is entirely unimportant; it is the sight of her body and her body alone that drives him to seriously consider committing adultery.

By privileging the male gaze as the sole expression of sexual attraction, the film reduces Monroe's role in the moving picture to that of the still picture. She is only there to be looked at; anything like a name or a personality would only get in the way. This idea, of course, is none too surprising in the context of 1950s American culture, but it is interesting when compared to some popular reactions to the treatment of sex in the media today. Unlike in The Seven Year Itch, the portrayal of sex and sexual attraction now is far more overt than it once was and, as a result, there is a conservative backlash decrying this indecency. Having seen this movie, however, I am now more sure than ever that contemporary cinema is less indecent now than it ever was. Although today's movies may be more graphic than ever before, by allowing for women to express their sexuality through more than just their physical appearance, their characters have finally come to represent real people and not just living objects to be looked at. The cinema of the 50s may have presented movies that were far less shocking to the eye, but, in so doing, reduced the female characters to a sub-human status. This disrespect shown to Marilyn Monroe - quite possibly one of the most significant screen actresses to have ever lived - and her character in The Seven Year Itch is far more indecent than any sex scene, no matter how graphic.

Triplets of Belleville

2005-07-28T03:18:00.000-04:00

This movie very nearly defies reviewing - not because it's especially good or bad - but simply because it's hard to describe. It's in French, but there are no subtitles because there's no real dialogue. There are both good guys and bad guys, but the conflict between them never truly reaches an emotional climax. It's about a boy and his grandmother and the title refers to a trio of singing sisters whom the grandmother meets halfway through the film, but that doesn't really matter because, when it comes down to it, the most sympathetic character is the dog.

Do you see what I'm getting at? In the end, however, the story is quite simple. Probably because the story's not the point. Not even close.

The Triplets of Belleville is an extended animated ballet. It is an exercise in rhythm, color, and shape. It is dark and grotesque but also bright and beautiful and the whole thing is infused with a cool Francophone jazz score. It's not a masterpiece, but oh boy is it weird and magnificent. You really just need to see it to understand.

Annie Hall

2005-07-27T18:50:00.000-04:00

Before I begin, a warning: if you haven't seen Annie Hall and you don't want to acquaint yourself with the whole plot before seeing it, stop reading right now.

Anyway.

Uncharacteristically, I didn't watch a movie last night. However, sifting through some old e-mails I came across a conversation I had with a friend about a movie I've watched many times: Annie Hall. Although my friend (who, for the sake of protecting her identity, I will refer to as Maggie) and I both love (or lurve, rather) this Woody Allen masterpiece, we had starkly different interpretations of the movie's tone and what it meant. While Maggie thought the end was depressing and sad, I took (and still take) a somewhat opposite position. In my opinion, the movie has a happy ending; although there is certainly more than just a tint of melancholy to Annie and Alvy's breakup, this wispy atmosphere of sadness is entirely eclipsed by the existentialist optimism of the film's conclusion.

For Maggie (and I apologize to her here, because I am sure that I will not be able to do justice to her well thought out and cleverly worded argument), Annie Hall was about the end of an affair and all the pain that this failed relationship brings with it. In the beginning, Annie and Alvy's relationship is filled with playful and adoring banter, but by the movie's end it's replaced with thinly veiled aggression and vicious anger. Even the final scene, in which Annie and Alvy ultimately become friends, added up to sadness for Maggie, who claimed that it was awful to feel something tantamount to emotional indifference for someone in whom you had invested so much of yourself, in terms of time, feeling, and energy. To her, this represents lost time and wasted emotion: an admission of defeat.

As true as this may be for Maggie and many other people, it is not true within the context of the movie. I will agree that the scenes depicting Annie and Alvy's relationship in its death throes are sad and hard to watch, but that is not how the movie ends. After failing to convince Annie to leave her life in L.A. and return to New York with him, the film jumps ahead and we cut to two actors rehearsing a scene. They are a "fictional" Annie and Alvy going through a fictionalized version of their final argument in L.A., which, of course, we have just seen. Except, in this one, "Alvy" convinces "Annie" to go back to New York with him. Alvy has written a play about his life, but he has taken a certain poetic license with the ending and, in so doing, he has come to terms with the end of the relationship.

When Annie and Alvy meet up again, bumping into each other by chance outside of a movie theater - Annie has, at this point, moved back to Manhattan - all of the old vitriol that had been poisoning their relationship is now gone. Admittedly, the love between them is also gone, but what remains is a sincere affection and a deep well of shared fond memories, which we then see as they meet up for lunch, ostensibly for the last time. Like someone's life flashing before their eyes just before dying, the camera takes us back, showing us brief snapshots of Annie and Alvy's relationship - the lobster episode in the Hamptons, driving in Annie's car, the hilarious accident with the cocaine - as a reprise of Annie singing "Just Like Old Times" plays softly on the soundtrack.

There is something unquestionably sad about this montage - every remembered scene, after all, is a reminder that these are events of the past not to be repeated - but there is something optimistic about it as well. Even though I just a moment ago invoked the notion of death, this montage is not so much a eulogy as a tribute. When the camera returns us to the present, we see Annie and Alvy in a long shot, happily eating lunch together. Although they are now permanently broken up, as is represented visually by the distance between them and the camera, they can still come together to enjoy one another's company and the happy sense of nostalgia that comes with it, a point that is only reaffirmed by Alvy's now famous final monologue, which he delivers as they conclude their lunch and say goodbye on a street corner by Lincoln Center:

"After that, it got pretty late and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again and I realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her, and I thought of that old joke, you know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, uh, my
brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken,' and uh, the doctor says, 'Well why don't you turn him in?' And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and - but uh, I guess we keep going through it...because...most of us need the eggs."

Having seen Annie again, Alvy remembers all of the happy moments of their relationship, as the sad moments, while far from forgotten, fade a bit in his mind. The joke he tells as we cut away from his goodbye with Annie to a close-up of him talking to the camera, is essentially an existentialist philosophy of romance and dating. Like Sisyphus endlessly pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back over him, Alvy will continue to engage in these "totally irrational and crazy and absurd" relationships and also like Sisyphus he will take joy in the process. Hopefully, however, unlike Sisyphus, he will one day find a love that will outlast the duration of a feature film and that will be his reward.

New York City Movie

2005-07-26T17:14:00.000-04:00

I've always liked Edward Hopper's paintings; they embrace a certain solitary introspection that I identify with. I recently came across this painting again and thought it would go well on this page, in terms of both tone and color scheme.

The Cutting Edge of Yesteryear=Old News?

2005-07-26T17:09:00.000-04:00

In the past twenty-four hours, I saw two movies: My Dinner with Andre and Suspicion. Normally, when I see two movies (or, really, experience two of any kind of artistic expression) in a short period of time, both necessarily inform the way I experience, remember, and think about the other. I find similarities between them, see similar influences, and come up with ideas relating to one that I never would have thought of had it not been for my recent viewing of the other. It's an amazing process and it's a great way to experience art in general; it unlocks all sorts of possibilities and trains of thought, it can renew your appreciation for something old and familiar, and, most importantly, it reveals the beautiful web of influences and homages connecting everything in the whole world of art. Sadly, this did not happen for me when I watched these two movies.

Which is not to say that I didn't like them. In fact, I really liked both of them, but, let's face it, they're almost exact opposites. Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre is a postmodern masterpiece about the intersection of art and life as is literally discussed by two actors playing themselves over the course of an extended dinner scene, while Suspicion is a Hitchcock film about a woman who thinks her husband might be trying to kill her. The one obvious similarity between these two movies is that - as is the case in any great movie - the joy in watching is not in seeing what happens, but in seeing how it happens.

In My Dinner with Andre, nothing happens, in any real sense of the word; two friends meet for dinner at a New York restaurant and they talk and talk and talk until the restaurant closes. That's the movie. In Suspicion, on the other hand, plenty happens, but, as is the case with most Hitchcock films, there's little in the way of surprise. Many of the tropes of the suspense genre that he pioneered have since become hackneyed and cliché, making his films seem overwhelmingly predictable to a modern audience (in almost every Hitchcock film, the killer turns out to be the first suspicious character to have the bad luck to wander in front of the camera).

As annoying as Andre's apparent inactivity and Suspicion's predictability may seem, they do have the pleasant side effect of allowing for - and, in fact, encouraging - a different kind of appreciation for these films. The viewers of these two movies have the distinct pleasure of focusing on the narrative and visual methods employed by these two great directors to get us from point A to point B. I admire Malle for his use of bare-bones camera work in conjunction with a subtly pervasive production design, both of which draw the viewer deeper and deeper into Wally and Andre's conversation, inviting him/her to participate by pondering the very questions that the two characters are discussing. Hitchcock, on the other hand, has a wonderful hand for omenous foreshadowing that has since been imitated to death, but never quite properly reproduced.

Malle and Hitchcock were both pioneers of cinematic style in their own way. My Dinner with Andre had the daring to break the fourth wall, not by having the fictional characters speak directly to the camera, but by fictionalizing real people - Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory play themselves, wrote their own dialogue, and discuss events from their actual "real life" lives throughout the movie - thereby blurring the line between art and reality and possibly paving the way for the contemporary phenomenon of reality TV. Hitchcock, on the other hand, was a veritable trailblazer for suspense movies; he practically invented the genre.

The question, then, is not whether these two movies (and their auteur directors) were influential, but whether they have aged well and are still relevant to the modern viewer. In the case of My Dinner with Andre, the answer is a triumphant yes. The topics discussed by this movie - specifically the question of whether there is more truth in life or in art - are still pertinent today and the form in which they are presented is still stunning and impressive. Sadly for Hitchcock, the answer is less enthusiastic. The answer is still yes - Hitchcock still has a lot to offer in areas like camerawork (specifically in films like Rear Window) - but my appreciation of his work has taken on a certain element of irony. Perhaps it's because he was working in what is to me a more distant time than Louis Malle was, thus making his latent misogyny and occasionally melodramatic staging seem more campy than anything else. Even when allowing for the passage of time and the shifting of cultural mores, I think Malle and My Dinner with Andre are the clear winners; the style and content of this film really transcend time and space and, barring a major shift in Western culture, will continue to touch the core of what it means to be happy and successful in society.

Perhaps this comparison isn't fair. In fact, I know it isn't. These two movies are from two different times and two different genres and it doesn't seem to me that Hitchcock had anywhere near the same ambitions with Suspicion that Malle did with My Dinner with Andre. All the same, they exist in the same canon and it's only natural for comparisons to be made.

My first post.

2005-07-24T16:12:00.000-04:00

Like a first date, this post will be a little awkward. Until I get comfortable here, I'm going to have to be a little more formal than necessary. Don't worry. I'll loosen up with time.

Here we go, my take (which may or may not be published elsewhere some time soon) on Me and You and Everyone We Know:

Love in the Time of Internet

Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July’s brilliant award-winning new film, tells the interlocking stories of a lonely shoe salesman, his two sons, a quirky video artist, a smitten senior citizen, a seemingly cold-hearted museum director, two sexually curious teenage girls, and a young girl obsessively collecting items for her dowry. Each of these characters is isolated, unable to properly connect with the people around them, guarding themselves from the vulnerability of true emotional connection.

In the opening scene of the movie, Richard the lonely shoe salesman (John Hawkes) douses his hand in lighter fluid and lights it on fire, an act he later describes as trying to save his life. What he’s trying to do is maintain a connection with his sons as he and his wife separate, to mark this transition in their lives with a magic trick that would exhibit his continuing control over his life in spite of adverse circumstances. Unfortunately, as he admits later on, he realizes too late that he needed to use alcohol instead of lighter fluid for the trick to work and, as a result, he communicates only his own incompetence by badly burning his hand.

This scene sets the tone for much of the movie. Ostensibly, Richard goes outside to perform this act of self-immolation so that he won’t accidentally set the house aflame, but the pane of glass separating him from his sons also serves to establish an emotional distance between them; in a way, it makes this gesture – as extreme as it may be – far less real than an actual conversation would be. The glass of the window is much like the glass of a computer screen and accordingly his sons Peter and Robby – played by newcomers Miles Thompson and Brandon Ratcliff, respectively – look upon him with the same detachment and indifference registered on their faces as when they surf the internet. Richard makes an emotionally guarded attempt to connect with his sons and, because of its indirect nature and inscrutability, he fails.

From this point onward, Me and You and Everyone We Know skillfully highlights the ubiquity of this fear of emotional vulnerability. Occasionally, the dialogue that relates most directly to this theme – such as Richard’s explanation of the protocol of helping customers try on shoes – comes off as clunky and heavy-handed, but these brief moments of verbal awkwardness quickly fall to the wayside in the light of the overwhelming cogency and clarity of July’s vision. As writer, director, and actor, she depicts a world of swirling insularity, in which people come in contact with one another, but never touch, not because they can’t, but because they are afraid to. Intimacy is an object of both intense desire and intense fear, and, as a result, social interaction becomes a playful yet guarded dance, in which the characters leave everything up to interpretation.

At no point does the film communicate this notion more beautifully and clearly than in a romantically-charged conversation between Richard and Christine, the quirky video artist played by July, as they walk to their cars. Having determined that their paths will diverge in a little over a block, they flirtatiously measure their remaining time together not as a brief encounter on an anonymous sidewalk, but as a long-term relationship where every one of their steps represents years of their lives together. The camera captures them individually – cutting back and forth – in jumpy, handheld shots that draw the viewer into this romantic metaphor, but also display that Richard and Christine are too wrapped up in the text of the metaphor itself to take note of its actual meaning. Only at the end of their walk do they realize the weight of their words and, accordingly, occupy the same frame. Their response, however, to this prospect of intimacy is not enthusiasm but fear. They recoil from one another as the camera reverts to steady, static shots that once again remove the viewer from the action.

Overlaid upon this romance is a subplot surrounding the character of Nancy (Tracy Wright), the director of the local contemporary art museum where Christine is trying to exhibit her video art. Cool, confident, and seemingly emotionless, Nancy’s character is not a person so much as the spirit of the film itself. While discussing the relative merits of various pieces of art in the context of the digital age, she makes the off-handed comment that “E-mail wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for AIDS,” explaining how fear of disease sparked a pervasive culture of isolation and insularity and created the digital age. There would be no more touching, no more face-to-face interaction; everything would be filtered through another medium, through the internet, through email. Although electronic correspondence only plays a small role in the actual plot of the movie, this culture of separation infuses itself into every interpersonal relationship in the film, crippling them with the semblance of safety offered by distance.

Hawkes and July both deliver outstanding, touching performances as their characters attempt to overcome the self-imposed barriers between them. Hawkes’ Richard is a sensitive, caring, and sentimental character. In an earlier era of cinema, a man like him would stride through a film confident and untroubled; he knows how to connect with people in the context of a bygone era, but not in Nancy’s digital age. Rather than impressing us with a sense of potent masculinity, Hawkes’ weaselish looks imbue Richard with a pathetic charm as his characterizations alternate between wide-eyed wonderment and momentary euphoria to contemplative sadness and overwhelming frustration. July is similarly well-fit for her role (possibly because she may indeed be playing herself). Her body language, her hopeful and desperate smile, and her innocent blue eyes all speak to her unrepentantly idealistic and emotional nature.

Me and You and Everyone We Know is an unflinchingly ambitious film and, as its successes at both Cannes and Sundance indicate, it truly realizes its potential. Although the film is not without the occasional narrative hiccup, its originality and its beauty entirely eclipse its minor flaws. In her first feature film, Miranda July has captured a penetrating snapshot of the quotidian workings of contemporary society; she has revealed just how detached from one another people have become. It is ironic, then, that this film about emotional distance and isolation communicates a greater depth of feeling than any other I’ve seen this year.