Some quick thoughts

For the first ten months of writing this blog, I've attempted to maintain some amount of consistency regarding the frequency of posts. The content and length tends to vary, but post count is something I've always considered important, especially if I wish for this blog to amount to anything. For the last month and a half, however, this has been hard to do. As alluded to in my previous post, much of my time has been spent on holiday preparation, taking care of my partner (who has been sick for the better part of two months), and the project I've been researching/writing/working on for class. These have all contributed to my lack of posts of late. Under typical circumstances, I would have posted some thoughts here or there, but I've lately lacked the inspiration to write. I've seen very few movies, and I haven't been able to structure my film-related thoughts at all. But things are looking brighter...

Looking ahead, I hope to bring that consistency and (hopefully) improved quality to future blog posts as we move towards the new year. I say this with confidence because many of the things I mentioned above that have taken up so much of my time are beginning to wrap up, and I'm starting to feel that tingle in my fingers again. This is not an official return to regular writing/posting/movie watching just yet, but more of a precursor to what will certainly be an overflow of those things starting next week. As of Monday, my class will be over, and then a few days later I will have a nice, long holiday break to enjoy. I will have plenty of time to catch up on writing, movie watching, and reading as well, now that all the end-of-the-year top ten lists are pouring in.

At that point, I'll begin shifting my writing slightly away from the journal-like entries (which have dominated the past couple months) to more structured and developed articles. In the meantime, here are a few quick updates on cinema-related topics:

.......

Last weekend, I saw Blade Runner: Final Cut on the big screen -- it was playing at the Ritz East in Philadelphia. I always love the opportunity to see classics projected on the big screen. Although I've seen Blade Runner - The Director's Cut a number of times over the years, I don't recall being so intimate with it, in the sense of seeing it in the dark, completely uninterrupted, and on a massive screen. I've since understood that no matter how familiar with a film you are, it takes on a new form when projected in a theater. The moment the Ladd logo appeared on screen and Vangelis' foreboding electronic music introduced the opening titles, I entered into a euphoric state of disbelief. Eventually, that feeling wore off a little bit, but the film's majestic opening sequence was something special: pure intoxication. And seeing it on a massive cinema screen assisted in completely enveloping me in the image. That blaring sythnesizer score coupled with images of endless metropolis cityscapes makes for an experience at the cinema house I'll not soon forget.

I've watched different chunks of the movie at different times and places over the years, but just to see it in that environment helped me to see the movie more purely as a movie. In that sense, it was completely new. But because I was so entranced by the visual/auditory experience of the film in the theater, I think I missed a lot of the details I probably should have picked up on, especially for a film I've seen so many times. When the DVD is released next week, I will be purchasing it and watching it again to experience the detail of the new, cleaned-up cut, which I didn't fully appreciate. (I'm also looking forward to the original 1982 cut, which I have read about, but never seen.)

There were some things I noticed seeing it over the weekend, though. First, the digital enhancements are first-rate. Were it not for the very dated computer technology, the film doesn't look like it was made in 1982. It's unique melding of science fiction and film noir contributes to that timeless feel, but the digital clean-up really elevates the movie into its own temporal realm. Another thing I noticed, more on the level of the narrative, is that Harrison Ford's Deckhard is really quite clumsy. He's reckless with his weapon, and he spends most of his pursuit of the replicants being tossed around and beaten. I think I've implicitly recognized this before, but I was finally able to piece together how the film is disorienting and how that contributes to its purpose. These kind of details require further examination, but I was fascinated by the final action sequences in which Deckhard and Batty battle each other. Because of that long, intense encounter, Batty's searing speech before his death is so powerful. To this day, it remains one of my all time favorite moments in all of cinema. Every time I see it, I realize how banal and inconsequential all the conjecture over whether Deckhard is definitively a replicant or not actually is.

.......

Over Thanksgiving, I saw The Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men and have been thinking about it a great deal over the past few weeks. Although I am convinced of its greatness and would consider it among the Coens' best, I haven't located a direction for my thoughts to actually commit to writing. That's probably because I've read so many intriguing perspectives on the film, that my own seems more like a hodgepodge of all of these. Nevertheless, here's some initial thoughts. I will have more later when I recount my favorite films of 2007 in January or February...

No Country For Old Men represents a formally sound piece of moviemaking, with stunning compositions and stunning performances. But its storytelling is so seemingly and disturbingly straightforward that the contrast between its arresting images and the stark nature of the story makes for a reflexive experience of cinema, one that cues the viewer to both enjoy and revile the experience of the chase, the shootout, and the violent confrontation. Of course, the movie is so much more than its plot execution partly because it refuses to overtly delve into the more metaphorical aspects of its story, whatever they may be. Instead, this film is quiet (with almost no musical score), simple in design, and rich in formal detail. But "simple" is the most deceptive word when talking about cinema, for it is often in simplicity that movies achieve aesthetic heights. To say that a film like No Country For Old Men is "simple" is accurate, and it is misleading. In that apparent simplicity, the Coens manage to tap into human psyche to examine our perceptions of evil, the agency of disparate bodies, and the morality of choice. They do this by inviting viewers to take pleasure in the spatial complexity of their images, the idiosyncrasies of the characters, and the lack of "big" movie drama. We are instead taken into the quietest pockets of life, where a man drinking milk is as compelling as seeing him chased through the desert.

In the film's first act, Llewalyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is twinged with curiosity when he accidentally discovers the site in the middle of the desert of a drug deal gone wrong, where he finds brief case containing two million dollars. When Moss comes home and tells his wife that he found two million dollars, he responds to her questions with annoyance that she asked, but he does so casually and without realizing that his simple choice to take the money has changed and likely shortened his life.

We are never allowed into the minds of Moss, nor his pursuer, Anton Chigruh (Javier Bardem), but the great majority of the movie consists of their continued encounters with one another; Chigruh the predator, Moss the prey. But even though these men speak so little, both to each other and their associates, they are endlessly fascinating in how they act on each other and their surroundings. Even though we may consciously fear Chigurh, he is one of the most compelling figures in contemporary cinema. No matter how grisly things get, it's impossible to take your eyes off of him. He operates without the entanglements of ethics or morals that so often clout one's efficiency for killing. Whether we are repulsed or intrigued, we want him to be on screen and to continue after Moss. Knowing so little about his motivation, thought-process, or feelings, we are drawn to him, even as he commits the most terrible acts of unfettered violence. His character is just one aspect amongst many that the Coens orchestrate to perfection. Their film is an incredibly deep inquiry into human behavior and agency.

.......

Finally, a note on the paper I've been working on...

I am writing it for a feminist theories class, and it represents an effort of mine to bridge feminist theorizing with cinema studies. As it is, this is not a simple task. Film studies are steeped in a long-standing tradition of psychoanalysis, which essentially hold that there are meanings within, or underneath images that the viewer/critic must unlock. This notion was made popular by Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema."

Naturally, I'm very critical of this idea. Nevertheless it's pervasive in film studies. Therefore, from a feminist standpoint, I am examining the level to which oppositional binaries have shaped what we knows as gender, class, and race, which have influenced and structured systems of commerce and economy, and how these manifest in cinema. Since psychoanalytic film theory readily employs these binaries (as the model is built upon them) I question its validity as a feminist model of criticism, even though it is the primary model for feminist approaches to cinema. From there, I analyze the social components of vision, specifically relationships of power forged within visuality, which results in representations supporting dominant ideological assumptions about race, gender, class, and economic relations. These representations are no doubt the result of oppositional binaries, and have very real implications. However, psychoanalytic film theory, I argue, does little more than reproduce these binaries and therefore the same social and institutional norms.

Although cinema is prone to many of these representations and now exists as a dreamscape for a patriarchal society, it does not inherently exist as such. Vision and visuality are more complicated, and a feminist approach entails one examine the image itself, not so much from the approach of how it reflects patriarchal norms of culture, but how it enacts and reproduces them within larger social networks and relations of race, gender, class, and relations global and media economy.