The Cinematic Art

Win Win

2012-01-27T10:34:00.018-05:00

I resisted seeing Win Win for several months on account of its indie-pastiche marketing design. As a friend of mine pointed out, it was made to look like a Wes Anderson film, evidenced by the poster's bold yellow title text, symmetrical composition, and characters directly facing the camera.* The real tragedy of this is that a Fox Searchlight felt it had to sell the film to a niche audience to secure viewership, when in reality it faintly resembled the poster/DVD cover and should have wide appeal. It is life-affirming without being formulaic, hilarious without resorting to hackneyed stereotypes, and full of sharp observances without lecturing. As we have come to expect from Paul Giamatti, his performance is one of quiet subtlety. Few actors can pull off the challenges Giamatti meets in portraying a man hewing ethical lines in his struggle to make ends meet. Win Win doesn't just belong to Giamatti, but also to Amy Ryan, Jeffrey Tambor, Bobby Cannavale, and Alex Shaffer, each of whose performances contribute in making the dialogue and comedy—and the film as a whole—come alive. However, Win Win isn’t without flaw. David Edelstein sums up my criticisms far more succinctly and elegantly than I, expressing a wish that director Tom McCarthy would open and free up his frames and maybe hold shots longer. But these are minor complaints in the scope of what he achieves with this, his third feature. Perhaps most unique about McCarthy’s budding directorial voice is how skillfully in each of his three films he orchestrates a rich assembly of characters and performances in service of simple, but wholly genuine stories told with nuance. (Tom McCarthy, 2011) ***

* I don't dislike the Wes Anderson aesthetic. Nevertheless, it has become tired and often itself a cliché akin to the very contemporary tropes Anderson ostensibly is out to undermine.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2012-01-23T11:39:00.005-05:00

Like so many blockbuster types from last year, Rise of the Planet of the Apes offers a handful of near-remarkable images. The problem—as with much of its big-budget brethren—is that these images and moments are buried within a heap of bland storytelling and direction. I credit the film with excelling in places where many other contemporary blockbusters fail: It has a sense of stakes, a basic competency with its action sequences, and at its core a brilliant performance courtesy of Andy Serkis and Weta Digital. But for every close-up of pixilated wonderment there are countless contrivances that undermine any possibility of intrigue. Each character is fodder for a brutally mechanical plot. You have the good-willed but idiotic scientist, the sadistic aide at the abusive care center, and, yes, even the intelligent girlfriend who has almost nothing to do except look pretty and kiss the hero in a dramatic moment. These are what remain long after the images of dramatic Golden Gate showdown fade into a collective memory bank already overfull with battle scenes. (Rupert Wyatt, 2011) **

Beginners

2012-01-19T15:06:00.007-05:00

Father-son stories represent a common thread in American cinema. A son either seeks his father’s acceptance or can be the source of his redemption. Beginners grazes these conventions but adds a new wrinkle to the narrative. Ewan McGregor plays a thirty-something artist whose father (Christopher Plummer, in a likely Oscar-winning performance) reveals that that he is gay. Much of the film is told in flashback, cutting between McGregor’s memories of his father's final years and his budding relationship with a French actress (played by the luminous Melanie Laurent). Per the title, this is a movie about learning who you are. But it is even more so about how identity is discovered, molded, and altered by and through relationships. It possesses the right amount of indie charm in telling a story of people longing to connect. Aided by strong performances, Beginners is by turns sorrowful and joyous, and one of more delightful movies released last year. (Mike Mills, 2011) ***½

Moneyball

2012-01-16T13:05:00.003-05:00

Moneyball deserves a lot of praise, and not just because it makes the business of a billion-dollar game so compelling. Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin have received a big chunk of the credit for their efficient writing and crisp dialogue. But we mustn’t forget director Bennett Miller, whose cool command of the players and fluid dissemination of the many moving parts results in a real, visceral movie. My only complaint about such deft handling of complex material is that the film doesn’t quite dig to the heart of why the numbers and statistics are so important. Some of its finest interludes involve mathematics; unfortunately they are short-lived and undercooked as a result. Nevertheless this is smooth filmmaking. And at the center is Brad Pitt, who has never carried a movie on his shoulders as he does here. It’s not just that he owns the film from start to finish, but that he does it with a layered, subtle performance. His character exudes confidence when he’s wheeling and dealing, but in moments of quiet (see the opening and closing moments of the film) his eyes tell you everything. (Bennett Miller, 2011) ***

Cowboys & Aliens

2012-01-15T06:14:00.003-05:00

Jon Favreau’s film caught a lot of flak from critics—in part—for taking itself too seriously. On the contrary, one of the redeeming aspects of this otherwise forgettable genre mash-up is how it dons a straight face as it dishes out ludicrous servings of pulp. When you consider Cowboys & Aliens as both a brilliant title for a movie and as a moniker for the limitless possibilities of colliding sci-fi and western tropes, the movie itself is something of a disappointment. Yet as a modest tribute to these traditions it has enough appeal to get by. The story veers on the brink of oblivion and/or inconsequence at nearly every turn, but Daniel Craig’s portrait of an amnesia-suffering cowboy badass (the best kind of badass, of course) anchors the campy proceedings and keeps the film on course. Harrison Ford contributes his customary scowl, which this time comes packaged along with a Searchers-inspired racist redemption subplot. In whole, Cowboys & Aliens is a complete throwaway, but one I enjoyed as such. As an absurd genre exercise, in some ways this film reminded me of Frank Marshall’s Congo. And that is probably the highest compliment I can pay it. (Jon Favreau, 2011) **½

The Hangover: Part II

2012-01-13T14:03:00.009-05:00

At one time I was content with the notion of a carbon-copy sequel. Take Home Alone, for example. At nine years old, I was perfectly happy to see Kevin McCallister romp through the streets of New York as opposed to suburban Chicago in a film that was otherwise the same as its predecessor. The Hangover: Part II is essentially Todd Phillips’ Home Alone 2; except Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci’s shtick is much more bearable than watching Zach Galifianakis desperately try to rekindle the laughs he elicited from audiences with the original. I tried with this film—I really did—but it was no use. Props go to Phillips for the atmosphere and the look, but everything that seemed to work about the first first go-round falls flat here. This left me to wonder whether Phillips has any inkling as to what made the first movie work so well. Sure, we loved the Wolf Pack, but the individual comedy bits weren’t what set The Hangover apart from other comedies. There was a novelty to its brashness that gave it an enduring quality, and Part II all too well articulates this. (Todd Phillips, 2011) *½

New directions

2012-01-12T06:07:00.002-05:00

In comings days and weeks this blog will undergo some changes regarding its content. Given the difficulty I've had with posting frequency, I am adopting a new approach that should keep my writing and posting more in-line and consistent.

The capsule review.

I have avoided short write-ups for some time, mostly because it isn't a terribly exciting model for film writing. But I have recently concluded that for too long this has been my excuse to simply not write. And given the current state of the site, I'll take any writing to no writing at all. Moreover, while good capsule reviews are something of a rarity, this is less a statement about the form than it is a reflection of the difficulty of penning concise, interesting accounts of a film. Some of the best writing I have read recently has been of this variety, and it is about time I start pressing myself to explore it. Short and concise have not exactly been trademarks of my writing o'er these last five years of The Cinematic Art. So, in truth, I take this as a challenge. All news films I see in the theater or at home will receive a short review—probably no more than 200 to 250 words. I may pepper in some reviews of older films, though these will be less frequent.

It is my hope that I still find the time and energy to write commentary pieces on film criticism or a certain trend in film. These pieces tend to represent my preference for writing in this format. But they also require more time and inspiration than I have had lately. Nonetheless, I hope to still chime in to the larger discussion of this great circuit of film writing on the web, even if my contributions are not regular. In the mean time, for the foreseeable future, the capsule review will become this blog's identity.

From a personal viewpoint, I find that I am happier when I write. It is a daunting, often frustrating act for me. It always seems impossible. I write for my day-job in a very different format, and while the task at hand is different the challenge remains the same. Going from blank page to something useful and maybe even interesting is always a source of stress. However, the process is where real discovery happens. Writing helps me to better understand my response to a given movie, or a particular moment within a movie; a shot, a line of dialogue, an edit, etc. Movies are made up of so many things and criticism is a way not only to try to understand how movies work, but more importantly how movies (and art in general) can provoke our innermost states and burrow into our conscious and unconscious minds. For me, writing offers the ability to understand, hone, and develop those thoughts and feelings; which is why I am making a concerted effort to regain some direction for the site.

As always, thanks for reading and I invite your feedback.

The Adventures of Tintin

2011-12-22T13:31:00.024-05:00

The negative criticisms I have read about The Adventures of Tintin —that it's dramatically shallow and that it's all surface, etc.— don't resonate much with me. While these observations may be true, that doesn't detract from the movie. It's supposed to be dramatically shallow. To borrow Keith Uhlich's phrase, "But what surface!" This a straight-up adventure yarn, cut to the bone. While this kind of fare may not hold the interest of more serious film types, I lament for their sake. Cinema, apart from offering an array of avenues into the deepest of human feeling and experience, also gives us simpler pleasures, such as a childlike exhilaration of motion. Steven Spielberg has long been a purveyor of these base components of movies and here he explores them via digital animation, which is especially conducive to his classical compositional style.

The chief complaint lodged at Tintin that I am more inclined to accept is that it rarely slows down. It moves through its scenes as well as the overall plot at such a high pace that I wish I could have soaked it all in just a bit more. This is what separates it from its elder brother in the Spielberg canon, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which can count pacing and rhythm among its many strokes of genius. Despite these elements being slightly off-kilter in Tintin, there is something to be said for a movie like this that is succinct and direct, as opposed to so much of the bloated spectacle representing today's blockbusters.

Partially making up for the pacing problems is a flurry of wonderful small moments, ranging from Captain Haddock's animated outrages to Snowy's (Tintin's loyal dog) playful interactions both central and aside from the main action. There is nothing about Tintin that will bol you over with its awesome power, other than the shear energy of movement. It's all in the detail, both technically and in content. Jamie Bell holds his own voicing/acting a one-dimensional hero, but the real achievement here is Andy Serkis' performance as the alcoholic Haddock. I was surprised with how well his addiction was portrayed, particularly given that it walks a fine line with the humor. But Serkis and Spielberg poetically capture the sadness of addiction through Haddock's opposing but (sometimes simultaneous) expressions of reckless confidence and intense self-loathing. I was surprisingly moved by Tintin's discovery that Haddock had been drinking again after a short period of soberness and how he handles it. It's the little moments of humanity that —despite being irrelevant to the main plot that rockets along so fast— are most affecting about this film. Yes, it would be nice to see more of these moments take the forefront and the always-moving adventure take a backseat. Nevertheless, we are seeing the evolution of a medium in small doses, each offering a glimpse into the extraordinary visions of which it is capable of realizing. If you're into that shallow kind of thing, of course.

[A note on the 3-D presentation: I was planning to see the film in glorious 2-D, but the listing on the web was incorrect and so I was stuck with 3-D. I am a fairly vocal detractor of 3-D, but I should give Spielberg and co. props for the smoothest 3-D presentation I have seen. Having said that, I still do not feel as though I can take in the images fully with 3-D. It's just such a strain. So while Tintin has some of the best 3-D I have seen, I was still incredibly frustrated that I couldn't fully appreciate the atmosphere and geography of Spielberg's compositions. I look forward to seeing the movie in my preferred 2-D format on DVD.]

War Horse

2011-11-03T13:39:00.038-04:00

Oscar prognosticators lately have been crowing about Steven Spielberg's other December release: War Horse. A quick internet search should reveal why. It is a World War I narrative set on the English countryside that chronicles the story of "a boy and his horse." The premise is dubious and potentially fraught with ideological quandary, but Spielberg's name on a wartime drama all but guarantees it a spot on the list of Best Picture nominees. Feedback has recently begun to emerge on the movie, and, while I won't speculate very much regarding its Oscar chances, I did have the opportunity to see the film recently and can offer some reflections.

The film centers on a horse named Joey, who is auctioned off to a poor farmer who can hardly afford to maintain the farm and support his family. The farmer's son, Albert (Jeremy Irvine), trains Joey to plow the fields and eventually takes the horse under his wing. Structurally, War Horse resembles Spielberg's film of ten years ago, A.I.. The first act presents a focused family drama before drastically changing course for an episodic second act, which follows the horse on a series of encounters with a variety of folks on different sides of the war. Like A.I., this film is most effective in delivering the shorter vignettes in its long middle section rather than with the main story established in the opening 30 to 40 minutes. However, while A.I. gave us a machine who simulated the actions and emotions of a human, Spielberg here asks us to invest in an animal that cannot feel or simulate human emotion. But to my surprise, the "horse perspective" plot device works very well because the story remains fixed on the human characters that weave throughout the horse's narrative. Each of the smaller portraits in the middle of the film are delicate and compelling in depicting how various individuals are affected by and participate in the war. The human characters are mostly all good people who do little things to help each other out. While not especially subtle, these smaller stories are quilted together into a larger anti-war mosaic that I found much more convincing than the director's 1998 anti-(but-also-pro-)war film Saving Private Ryan. This film gives us characters on all sides of the conflict that are fearful, caring, and human.

In Spielberg's vision, the larger context for the war and the strategic interests of the sides are not factors. This is where the plot element of the horse perspective plays a key role. Without projecting too much human feeling onto the horse, Spielberg uses Joey's story to fashion benign observances of the fear and benevolence. The film adopts a serious view of the implications for war while also citing the need to distort its reality (particularly in a wonderful passage involving on older Frenchmen and his granddaughter). One common thread to the human stories is the often dehumanizing social roles we inevitably must inhabit to survive. And as is typical of a Spielberg film, technology also features prominently among the film's thematic undercurrents, particularly the technology of warfare. Another integral element that begs further exploration is how people communicate, whether with animals, the enemy, or through technology.

Considering all that it has going for it, it's a wonder that the film's main plot is its most problematic element. That is not to say the story of Albert and Joey is vapid; it just doesn't connect on the gut-emotional level that Spielberg is known for registering. He handles the early scenes of familial drama with uncharacteristic sluggishness and sentimentalizes Albert and Joey's relationship and Albert's relationship with his father to an extent that will some will find too much to stomach. And the John Ford-inspired ending —in which Spielberg uses every item at his disposal from the sentimentality toolbox— reminds of the ultimate simplicity of the narrative, which after all is about a boy and his horse. Nonetheless, despite baring the director's weaknesses, War Horse also showcases Spielberg's considerable strengths, which include the ability to infuse a tired, maudlin plot with a high level of visual sophistication and narrative dimension.

On the film's Oscar chances I will say this: If War Horse has a shot, it's going to be on audience response. I expect critics are going to be hard on this film. It might have the broad support of the general reviewing community but the more discerning circles will be unsparing, much like response to last year's winner, The King's Speech.

I will have a good deal more to say about Spielberg's new film and it's digital counterpart, The Adventures of Tintin, upon its release in December, so stay tuned.

Almost Still Famous

2011-10-24T12:48:00.006-04:00

Pearl Jam Twenty spans the two-decade-long journey of the other musical act from Seattle. Setting out to author the definitive account of Pearl Jam’s formation and endurance, director and long-time fan Cameron Crowe infuses the project with a breadth of knowledge as well as an appreciation for a band whose influence, he believes, speaks beyond dwindling record sales in recent years. Indeed, few would deny the historical significance of Pearl Jam as a moniker for the rise of grunge (despite the fact that the band would reject the term), but Crowe’s work frames the band at the center of a changing music and cultural scene from the 1990s into the 2000s. Pearl Jam Twenty features extensive interviews with band members and other folks tied to the history of the band. Wrapped within its travelogue of concert footage and behind-the-scenes video are various threads tied to band’s rise and prominence, from its bonds and performances with 1960s music legends such as Neil Young and Pete Townsend, to Andy Rooney’s ignorant rambling about modern teen angst. In Crowe’s vision, these details are integral to how Pearl Jam endures and why their story resonates as one of survival and integrity in the presently grim state of rock.

The film opens in Crowe’s hometown of Seattle with nary a mention of Pearl Jam. Crowe narrates over skyline shots that shift to ground level, humming to the furious guitar chords that would epitomize the underground Seattle rock scene. It is here that, as he sees it, music lovers convened over a mutual thirst for a new sound. Taking his time to establish a context for the formation of Pearl Jam, Crowe gives particular attention to the demise of Mother Love Bone, whose decidedly hair band sound contrasts heavily with the more soulful anthems for which Pearl Jam became famous. Guitarists Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament guide us through a personal journey of their frontman’s tragic death from substance abuse. This set a solemn tone for a band that would eventually conquer music and remain continually wary of the fame that would follow. But it only achieved that status with the entrance of a vocalist named Eddie Vedder, to whom they gave a chance in what became their defining moment.

Whether these early scenes accurately portray these events or their wider significance is practically irrelevant. Pearl Jam Twenty’s assured opening passages establish it as equal parts a profile of the band and a personal journey for the director. Thus, how Crowe sees the band is arguably more revealing than what’s revealed from and about the band. And from the outset, Crowe is unafraid to express his enthusiasm as well as his knowledge of Pearl Jam and rock in general.

The notion of Crowe as a student of rock strikes a familiar chord. His 2000 semi-autobiographical feature Almost Famous depicted the rock and roll scene of the late 1960’s from the perspective of an aspiring music journalist who accompanies a band on the road. The intimate narration in the early-going of Pearl Jam Twenty echoes the quixotic but pained vision of rock culture that Almost Famous cultivated, as expressed through the fictitious band Stillwater’s frontman, Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup). Crowe’s entry point into Pearl Jam as both an enthusiast of rock and a giddy fan of the band bears strong similarities to that of the naïve teenager from Almost Famous. Crowe fawns over Eddie Vedder, painting in enigmatic, poetic tones in effort to put him on the pedestal of rock greats. Crowe elegantly captures the performer’s inner demons and impassioned stage presence, but the film becomes so transfixed with him that both its focus on the personal stories of the band members and its wider plunge into the cultural landscape that Pearl Jam found itself resting on top of somewhat suffers. To be sure, the sight of Vedder dangling some 50 feet above the stage is a brilliant image unto itself, but Crowe lionizes Vedder to such an extent that he renders himself unable to really explore the singer’s inner workings. By extension, the unique brand of observation and personal admiration somewhat morphs into Behind-The-Music territory with its strained rest on Vedder’s reflections.

From Vedder’s introduction onward, Pearl Jam Twenty swiftly navigates the post-mania stage of the band’s popularity, charting its appearance on Capitol Hill to fight Ticketmaster to Vedder’s hot-and-cold relationship with Kurt Cobain. Crowe attempts to balance these points in the band’s history with the performers’ own weighty reflections on fame, success, and (of course) mortality. He also tries to connect all of this to various things outside the band, from a chronicle of Vedder’s on-stage political statements to one inspired shot of David Lynch. And although these components are efficiently deployed, the film frequently feels hurried, as if it must hit every point on a checklist of topics in what ultimately amounts to a “How They Got Together and Stayed Together” narrative. Which is why for all its stylistic and visual flair—which includes some sensational concert footage—Pearl Jam Twenty is more conventional than it aspires and ought to be. The Kids Are Alright or The Last Waltz it is not.

But underneath the stubbornly straightforward presentation of the band’s 20 years together is another far more worthwhile story. As noted previously, Pearl Jam’s impact on and role in the transformation of popular music in the early 1990s is undeniable. But Pearl Jam Twenty eschews this narrative by suggesting that the band’s longevity and integrity have distinguished them in the current, fractured age of culture and music. The implications for this are touched on briefly but in a broader sense capture the overall sentiments of the film. Over 20 years, a band that started as a leading voice in the pulse of music became essentially an independent brand, isolated from the increasingly corporatized face of the music industry. Crowe’s focus on the band’s own feelings and reflections dilutes this story and also prevents him from making a direct case as to the significance of Pearl Jam’s music. But the film’s life comes from how Crowe distills his deep love for and knowledge of rock into a nostalgic tribute to a less tangible idea. For Crowe, Pearl Jam stands for something. Not a political statement or moral cause (though the band has offered plenty of those). Rather, in Crowe’s account, Pearl Jam is one of the last purveyors of rock, which is as much a concept as it is a practice.

If Pearl Jam Twenty suffers from straining to account for various points of view, then it excels as an account of personal idealism. The film’s final moments capture this elegantly, taking a single performance of the song “Alive” and intercutting various clips of the band’s performances over the years into a charged montage of music and motion. Whatever one’s feelings may be on Pearl Jam’s music—an amalgam of styles and periods in American rock—Crowe’s film is a veiled ode to rock and roll and a testament to that euphoric feeling of connecting with music, be it through a single song or a band that endures for two decades.

[Article originally posted at The House Next Door.]

A fallen star of late-night

2011-09-19T06:42:00.012-04:00

Late-night television just isn't what it used to be, at least in terms of its relevance. It doesn’t matter like it did when Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon ruled the late-night airwaves. By contrast, the late-night giants of today more resemble PR mouthpieces, serving up stale celebrity interviews and safe topical humor carefully designed not to offend key demographics. The structures remain unchanged, but the content has been neutered.

But for a short time in early 2010, late night television was relevant again. With NBC’s ratings tanking from the disastrous move to insert Jay Leno in its prime-time lineup, the network decided to move Leno back to 11:35 and push the start of the Tonight Show with new host Conan O’Brien to 12:05. O’Brien rejected NBC’s offer, arguing that The Tonight Show has been a staple at 11:35 and should not be pushed to the next day. The move effectively ended his short stint as Tonight Show host and long stead in network late-night programming. Conan’s hosting duties went on for another two weeks or so, resulting in some of the most unhinged and inspired material in the host’s career. His endless departing shots at soon-to-be ex-employer were seemingly spontaneous and passionate, providing a nice contrast with Conan’s normally facetious brand of comedy. Conan even spun the drama into a kind of sympathy cause with his fans, while being careful not to overplay the “poor me” act. The national media was abuzz over the events, following Conan’s show and others each night to see what was said. Even Jimmy Kimmel got in on the act with scathing criticisms of Jay Leno and NBC. And for the first time in years, late-night television had a pulse. However, after Conan’s last show aired and the dust settled, late night TV would return to business as usual and the nation would again stop watching.

This where the documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop picks up, right after O’Brien’s untimely exit (and subsequent huge payoff) from NBC. The film charts the formation of O’Brien’s nationwide comedy tour and follows the comedian from dim hotel rooms to cramped plane cabins, as he kept busy to avoid dwelling on his anger. This is a real “backstage” film — very close to its subject but at enough of a distance for honest observation. But it is also a piercing look at both the activity and loneliness that epitomize the life of the performer. For a work sanctioned by the man under examination, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is rather frank in its dealings. Director Rodman Flender tries to both study and penetrate O’Brien in an off-the-cuff manner, which lends an initially strained “rock-star rebel” quality to the proceedings. Given Conan’s fierce allegiance to the corporate suits that kept him on a major network for more than a decade, it might at first seem misguided to frame the comedian in an anti-establishment mold. But that is partly what makes this film so worthwhile, because we’re seeing deeper variations of the comedic lunacy that has so long been kept in check within the controlled surroundings of studio audiences and timed commercial breaks. To see how O’Brien spins his frantic energy sometimes in unpleasant ways gives the proceedings an unpredictable and fascinating aura. This coupled with O’Brien’s candid reflections helps Flender foster sharp insights on life on the road and also draw an honest portrait of a fragile comedian.

Immediately O’Brien comes across less guarded than I would have expected, especially given his background in TV, in which nearly every utterance and expression is rehearsed. Early-on Flender interviews Conan one-on-one in his car and home, asking him simply about how he feels and what he is going through. Conan answers directly and honestly. He talks about the good fortune he has had through his life but also acknowledging the intense anger he feels. O’Brien channels this into his interaction with staff, which jibes between mean-spirited and playful. He seemingly cannot resist creating uncomfortable situations at the expense of everyone around him. His reflexivity about the absurdity of his position makes his act even more compelling, particularly when he bosses around members of his staff or shields off crowds when getting off a plane on an empty runway.

As the tour kicks off the film takes us further into the bowels of the show’s production. These scenes of auditions and band prep lend the film a sense of authenticity, especially given that they don’t always cast a positive light on O’Brien and his collaborators. These behind-the-scenes elements aren’t as engaging as the one-on-one’s with O’Brien, but they give a stronger sense of how he harnesses the energy of those around him along with his own. Along the way we are shown bits and pieces of Conan’s family life —playing with his kids, talking with his wife, etc. These moments mostly steer clear of mawkishness, due to O’Brien’s consistent demeanor throughout the proceedings. But there are also moments that are less expected in a film of this nature, such as the tedious processes that accompany road-acts, like pre-show interviews and post-show signings. While O’Brien is appreciative of the fans, he is also tired and frustrated with having to deal with it on a continuous basis. Nothing earth-shattering here, but it’s nice to actually see the a performer's exhaustion and relief once it's over.

For someone who has spent his career in front of a camera, O’Brien does a respectable job of treating the camera like it isn’t in the room. This allows the filmmakers to capture revealing moments in everyday circumstances, which are ultimately what elevate this film from just another tour documentary. Baring the comedian’s flaws plainly, Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop peers into the mind of a vulnerable person in constant conflict between calculating his every move and rides his impulses. It’s the chronicling of a man trying to figure out who he is, which should at least be clear after hearing him say “fuck” —gloriously— that he can do much better than late-night TV.

On chaos and classicism

2011-09-07T00:02:00.008-04:00

I know I'm behind on the ever-growing discussion of chaos cinema, but this is a topic worth expanding, as it has already in so many directions. It started with Matthias Stork's video essay at IndieWire's Press Play. The two videos encase a movement in commercial filmmaking over the past two decades, in which a sense of spatial unity has been displaced by a deliberately less coherent (and sometimes incoherent) aesthetic. Shaky camerawork and quick-cut editing are the base markers of chaos cinema, but lighting, film speed, and zoom are also exploited in the distortion of the "clear" image.

Stork notes that film scholar David Bordwell has already identified this trend and given it a name: intensified continuity. Bordwell has argued that many of these techniques ultimately service a classical agenda but in modified manner. Given that viewers have grown so accustomed to classical techniques of cinematography and editing, the idea is that they can fill in the blanks when a particular sequence removes some of visual clarity. This technique can serve a variety of purposes. In the classic narrative sense, it can mirror a character's disoriented state or it can signal the chaotic environment of war or panic. But Stork looks at this trend as usurping traditional concepts of visual cohesiveness and becoming a new base aesthetic of popular cinema (and action films in particular). He propels Bordwell's notion beyond a matter film aesthetics and addresses the implications of this increasingly prevalent aesthetic.

Stork explains:

"In many post-millennial releases, we're not just seeing an intensification of classical technique, but a perversion. Contemporary blockbusters, particularly action movies, trade visual intelligibility for sensory overload. The result is film style marked by excess, exaggeration, and overindulgence: Chaos cinema."

And Stork doesn't stop there. He adds that chaos cinema is "a never-ending crescendo of flare and spectacle," as well as "an audiovisual war zone." As for the "art" of chaos cinema, Stork notes, "the only art here is the art of confusion." Stork dishes these charges during a montage of film clips from various contemporary action films, including Quantum of Solace, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Dark Knight, Domino, Battle: Los Angeles, and others.

Given the inflammatory nature of the charges, Stork's essay provoked wide-ranging response. Ian Grey, also of Press Play, mounted a bold defense of chaos cinema by going on the offensive. In it, he targets Stork's ostensibly pro-classical tone, which (although Stork never explicitly endorses it) seems to inform his nearly wholesale dismissal of chaos cinema. (Stork briefly addresses the possibility of chaos cinema to achieve something more than empty spectacle with his analysis of The Hurt Locker, but not without noting that the exception proves the rule.)

Says Grey:

"It’s depressing that the ultra-conservative pro-classicists will not even consider that there might be something valuable occurring through these “chaos” films, planting the seeds of a new movement and establishing a new, valid way of seeing things for a new generation."

Grey's impassioned rebuttal highlights the glaring flaw of many accounts of chaos aesthetics, which is to focus almost exclusively on the mechanics of the film image in service of a more rigid ideological agenda. The notion that chaos cinema matters —no matter your opinion of its worth— tends to be glossed over by those launching assaults on it. While Stork briefly mentions music video aesthetics and shortened attention spans in attempt to explain the origins of chaos cinema, he fails to make a convincing connection between chaos cinema and the broader cultural tendencies and transactions on which the broad basis of his argument rests.

For my part, several of Stork's points seemed dead-on. I have always been partial to clarity and geography. Nevertheless I was uncomfortable with the ease of which he dismisses the majority of chaos cinema for not upholding a certain tacit vision of cinema long perpetrated by classical auteurs and formalist critics. Grey hits on this point effectively, but in doing so he makes sweeping generalizations that somewhat diminish the impact of his mostly well-argued response. He observes:

"It’s already a tired remark but it’s no less true: in the pulsing sensorium of multimedia, the sit-down, stand-alone feature film becomes kind of quaint, unless somebody does something to jack it into the world as it is now. And that’s what “chaos cinema” aims to accomplish. The style that many of you hate is probably the only thing (aside from that other thing you probably hate, 3D) persuading people to endure an increasingly god-awful cinematic experience."

Grey goes on to provide an anecdote of sitting through 35 minutes of commercials at a screening in New York to illustrate that viewers today are tired of old models and seek a more strongly visceral response to cinema, which now has to compete with various other modes of aesthetic pleasure in order to stay relevant. This notion warrants more exploration, for sure, but Grey's attempt to connect a movement in film form to something outside the isolation of film analysis is badly needed in film criticism. Too often it is filtered through the same "form/content" lens that it seems to have little relevance. Nevertheless, as part of the pro-chaos/anti-classical argument, Grey's remarks about generation politics leaves his argument vulnerable to criticism, as evidenced by Steven Boone's recent piece over at Big Media Vandalism calling out Grey and other defenders of chaos cinema. Boone concisely streamlines the evolution of our media technologies and senses as a means of explaining how chaos cinema was given to rise. Here's an excerpt (though I encourage you to head over and read the whole piece at least once, if not several times):

"The kids didn't create--or ask for--Chaos Cinema, no more than little Johnny asked for the neighborhood pusher to move onto his block and offer him some new sneakers. Kids just want to escape boredom. They want to feel alive. Chaos Cinema came along at a time when young people and adults alike had learned to expect instant gratification from their DVD players and cable boxes. The kind of spontaneous montage I created as a child couch potato of the '80s, armed only with a cable dial and a slothful VCR, acquired exponentially greater firepower by the late '90s, with thousands of satellite channels and the random-access of DVD chapter stops to draw from.

Concurrently, AVID (and later, Final Cut Pro) non-linear editing systems gave professional film editors the same freedom to make instant selections from their pools of footage.

Meanwhile, the Internet went from a convenient tool for interpersonal and business correspondence to a direct telecommunication and commerce channel. This quickened the pace of everything. Once digital video became widely accessible, it was even easier to feed the beast, 24/7. Finally, cheap portable media devices and Internet screens of varying diminution reduced the amount of information we could be expected to retain in a single image, lending shots the quality of flash cards. Car. Man. Smile. Pile of shit.

In the movie business, this quickening became an opportunity: Storytelling in mainstream movies would get faster and more furious with each year of the last decade, in the style of product upgrades. Let's think of the movies in the aughts as Dell desktops. Each new movie packed more RAM (more footage to draw from, and from a wider variety of camera angles), faster processors (editing that obeys fight-or-flight impulses like a channel surfer) and bigger hard drives (more screen time devoted to densely-packed expository dialogue, like Wikipedia clippings in an undergrad's netbook). Except that, unlike computers, these increasingly tricked-out flicks narrowed our selection of applications (visual styles) to ones with cluttered, user-unfriendly interfaces. This phenomenon was sold as a sign of the times by Ho'wood's de facto publicity outlets and happily/resignedly indulged by consumers who came to think of movies as perishable items. Slurp, burp, next."

Boone's piece is a grand statement against contemporary editing techniques and other staples of chaos cinema. These permeate hyper-masculinized action fare, like Battle: Los Angeles and The Expendables, but also and perhaps more importantly the work of popular cinema's new batch of auteurs, notably Christopher Nolan. Boone's takedown is a good companion piece to Stork's video essays, which were more focused on demonstrating and denouncing chaos cinema. It provides a convincing cultural and ideological context for arguments against chaos cinema. Perhaps most significant about Boone's argument is how it explodes the simple notion of form and content as somehow being internal to filmmaking or film viewing. While Boone stands in support of Stork, the overarching principle I pull from his essay is that how we watch, interpret, and derive enjoyment from cinema is a complex negotiation of innumerable processes both inside and outside of a frame. His narrative of the media state is both beautiful and horrifying to me. No matter how hard we try, we cannot anticipate or even begin to understand the extent to which our minds and brains are being rewired and projected through the increasing number and capacity of transaction in our current media age.

In light of Steven Boone's staggering reflection on the state of affairs in contemporary film standards, I see a number of ways in which the dialogue can continue, grow, and give us more insights into film images and how they continue to hold relevance. With respect to the notion of chaos cinema, I would spin the discussion by first considering that both Stork and Grey have legitimate points to make about the state of the movies. Their opposition may be more the result of ideological and rhetorical posturing than truly repelling concepts. There is more than a kernel of wisdom (as Steven Boone elaborates) to Stork's underlying argument that chaos cinema both reflects and informs a larger cultural movement that is quite honestly concerning. This deserves to be explored as chaos cinema becomes more pervasive in contemporary filmmaking techniques.

While Stork outlines the broad parameters of chaos cinema, we should first try to understand what chaos cinema actually is and how it operates. Stork provides an excellent start (particularly with his analysis of sound), but I am wary of accounts with an established negative outlook of this new aesthetic. While I would not directly refute anything Stork concludes, there are a number of opportunities to explore how and why a destabilized image is significant. Ian Grey broaches this issue with his assault on classical cinema, but this likely stemmed more from Stork's reflexively pro-classical tone. Nevertheless his observations on the beauties of chaos (such as his unashamed love of Resident Evil: Extinction) represent a solid foundation for a pro-chaos approach.

In light of these differing sensibilities toward contemporary visual styles, it might be interesting to look at how classicism and chaos cinema can be melded together. Instead of merely only looking at the work of leading practitioners of chaos cinema such as Paul Greengrass, I might suggest we have a look at films that are more classically influenced but have been inevitably shaped by the increased presence of chaos cinema in film today. Jim Emerson recently did something like this with his response to Stork's video essay (and in countless other pieces over the years, particularly his entries on The Dark Knight). He looks at Philip Noyce's Salt as an example of how the elements of chaos cinema can be assembled in a way that has intelligibility while still conveying the velocity of chaos aesthetics.

Another film that fits this billing is Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. I thought of the film when I read Ian Grey's essay, in which he uses the it as an example of how classicism can bring down an otherwise good film. Grey notes the frustrating extent to which each composition is precisely assembled and positioned. Indeed, Minority Report is largely consistent with Spielberg's self-described geographical aesthetic, but a closer look reveals a strange interplay of classical form and destabilized images typical of chaos cinema. For example, in the film's lone extended action set piece, Spielberg's camera is noticeably more frenetic and busy than in most other action sequences in his catalog. From the jetpack chase in the alley to the car manufacturing plant, the camera is imprecise in its ability to frame the details of the chase and yet there is clarity in how all of the shots and images connect. For example, in the second portion of the chase, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) encounters his pursuer, Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) on the street outside the manufacturing plant and the two race to the building.

The foot chase is executed with a single hand-held shot, but when we cut inside the sterile hallways of the factory, Anderton is shown from a distance in a stable shot down a long, white hallway. He sprints past the camera, which shakes when he runs past it.

While all of the action until this point is discernible, Spielberg keeps the proceedings off balance with gritty camerawork that counterbalances the cleanly mechanical atmosphere of the factory.

A few bursts of light distort some of the images and even in longer shots the camera never stays still.

As the chase continues, Anderton and Witwer find themselves facing one another on a mobile platform maneuvering above the ground.

Here Spielberg incorporates an even stronger chaos sensibility by jumping between extreme shaky closeups and wide angle shots, which seem to compliment and clarify each other.

When the two plummet off of the platform, notice how the shifting camera denies us a feel of gravity, as the two barrel sideways through the air at the camera (but really down into a car under construction). When we cut to another angle, the transition is both seamless (due to the spatial economy) and jarring (due to the pronounced velocity from the shaky camera work and chaos touches).

The set piece is thoroughly Spielbergian in that we can clearly see what's happening from shot to shot but it is also a subtly distinctive sequence for how it incorporates several characteristics of the chaos style. In my view, Minority Report exhibits a hyper-classical aesthetic that is difficult to situate within the chaos/classical mold emerging in critical dialogues. What's interesting to me is how this shaky-cam aesthetic joins with the classical stylings of the film's sleek visual palette. It is classical chaos.

In my next entry, I will demonstrate a few more examples of how the principles of chaos cinema have been incorporated in other recent popular films. Specifically, I hope to examine how these elements can alter and/or enhance the effect of classical style in some cases, or establish a brand new aesthetic and emotional spectrum in one particular case of genre filmmaking.

In the mean time, I open the forum to you: Are there any other movies that blend the line between chaos and classicism?

"Film for film's sake"

2011-08-12T07:01:00.009-04:00

Variations of this phrase have flowed through critical discussions for some time. Though I lack a solid grasp of what it means for something to be "for its own sake," I think of the phrase as essentially another way of putting the cliche, "All style and no substance," albeit with a less negative connotation. But what does it mean to suggest that a film doesn't have substance (whatever that is), or that it is an exercise in "form over content"? Many critics have pondered this over the years. The question seems to express of the most basic curiosities about cinema, specifically how a film works and what the relationship is between story and image.

Recently I watched Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985), and I started to think about this question after reading commentaries about the film. I suppose I shouldn't hold it against critics for not knowing how to situate something like After Hours within the director's filmography (especially during the 1980's, when it hadn't yet emerged fully into focus). Nevertheless, the general narrative that emerged about the film was that it represented Scorsese's attempt to blow off some steam without any clear intent or guiding principle. From what I've read, Scorsese made the film to prove to himself and others that great filmmaking was inert to him, like a language through which he required only its most basic tools. There are a number of recurring motifs and visual cues in the film, but they seem to operate without the goal of offering a statement or even an underlying idea. After Hours is not simply the story of a man who has a bad night, or who has that bad night because of a particular bad choice he made. Nor does the movie seem to be the alternative, i.e. a random chain of unfortunate events for this one gentleman who simply wants to go home but encounters resistance with every step he takes toward doing so. That's why the movie seems to exist for its own sake.

Yet, even though After Hours does not seem to have "substance" in the traditional sense, its "style," or narration, is with clear purpose and meticulous design. This is evident from the opening shot swinging fast through the office of New York high rise, to the frequent juxtapositions of festishized close-ups and long-shots of street alleys or stairwells. There are mysteries to this film that work beautifully in the context of the film's visual palette and equally well as evocative images in their own right. And often the same images are alluded to and re-emphasized in obscure ways over and over again. Paper mache figures, beams of light cutting through empty city streets, long stairwells, keys, huge windows, and a curious Mister Softee truck. It's like Scorsese layered these images with only visual unity in mind, even though the images themselves have no relation to each other.

Scorsese spins this seemingly directionless film into a virtuoso work that begs to be interpreted and given some kind of greater meaning. Each scene presents a new vignette of a person, a place, an interaction, each which is as connected to another vignette as it is disconnected. And although I kept searching for some kind of meaning or idea to which I could attach the feelings I experienced watching the film, After Hours works so well because it eschews broader concepts and themes. Maybe that's the strongest statement to emerge from the film.

It's worth noting that After Hours so often is displaced in the conversation about Martin Scorsese and his films. Within his filmography, it doesn't seem to have a place. Yes, it contains signatures that can be identified as staples in the filmmaker's work, but there is little evidence in this film of the preoccupations that guide so many other of his movies. (Scorsese himself has helped facilitate the narrative of his own legend, frequently noting his connection to mob movies, or, as he calls them, gangster pictures. Thus, it somehow seemed as fitting as it was hollow that his industry validation would arrive with the 2006 Best Director/Picture winner, The Departed.) While Scorsese's historical and cultural interests are bared more clearly through the easily connected narrative similarities across the films he has made, his real talents as a filmmaker have always been capturing subtle eccentricities in performances and creating images of urgent beauty. Nowhere in his long career is this more on open display than in After Hours. More than most other movies that proudly lay claim to providing an "exercise in style," or an experimental assembling of disparate images and sounds, After Hours leaves you to wonder just what it is about cinema that is so affecting and how you are so enamored by it.

The evolution of Woody Allen

2011-08-10T06:54:00.009-04:00

Woody Allen once said something to the effect that if one of his films performed well at the box office, he must have done something wrong. Few of Allen's films have achieved the financial success of which he has been so skeptical. Even Annie Hall, despite it going on to tackle Star Wars at the Academy Awards, fared only modestly in its box office returns. Allen's latest, Midnight in Paris, recently became the director's top-grossing effort and —at roughly $50 million in box office returns— must be considered one of the big surprises of the summer movie season. Some pundits may attribute this to the cast of Hollywood heavyweights, including Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams. But Woody Allen has always managed to attract big name actors, and Midnight in Paris is no different in this regard. So what do high box office number say about a filmmaker who has famously rejected the corporate side of his industry?

This question got me thinking about Woody Allen and his films, particularly his most recent work. Much has been written about the director, from his penchant for psychoanalysis and existential questions, as well as his emulating of Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman. But very little attention has been paid to the filmmaker's recent work and how how it reflects on the his career and sensibilities as a filmmaker. In light of Midnight in Paris's unexpected run this audiences this summer, now is as good a time as any to take a closer look at Allen's directorial sensibilities through the prism of his recent output.

In the late 1970's and 1980's, Woody Allen was on the forefront of American auteurs, along with Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, and Martin Scorsese. His public persona was that of a New York intellectual with a biting sense of humor and a neurotic screen persona. Some would argue that Allen regards the characters in his films with a disdainful eye. This is channeled through the main protagonist (often played by Allen) or in how the filmmaker writes and frames characters. However, despite what appears to be a cynical outlook, many of his films offer a distinct kind of lyricism to which little attention has been paid in writing about Allen. While he has long been preoccupied with existential questions and the illogical nature of life and love, Allen has balanced this outlook of humanity with a sense of hope and wish fulfillment in spite of his own persistent acknowledgement of the absurdity of such things. The Purple Rose of Cairo, for example, melds artifice and romanticism in what is essential a love letter to the magic of movies and to the fleeting innocence into which the movies invite us. Allen also delves headfirst into explicitly romantic and nostalgic imagery in Radio Days and Manhattan. Even in darker films is embedded a benevolence and longing for happiness and meaning. For example, Hannah and Her Sisters, despite offering its share of harsh observations on family dysfunction and communications, delivers an unexpectedly beautiful moment, when Allen's character, after a failed suicide attempt, goes to see the Marx Brothers film, Duck Soup. Upon seeing the elaborate set pieces of dancing and singing, Mickey has a profound realization of why life is worth living. These kinds of moments in Allen's films assert the filmmaker's belief that through all the struggles and illogical components, life offers joys and allows each of us to infuse it with the the meaning we wish for it.

In the past 20 years, Allen's public image changed dramatically and his relevance as a leading voice in American cinema has since waned. Despite his personal scandal involving Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, Allen kept to his rigorous filmmaking schedule, averaging about one movie per year as he had done his whole career. After a few critical darlings in the mid-90's, like Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, and Everyone Says I Love You, and a couple of overwhelmingly dark works, such as Husbands and Wives and Deconstructing Harry, Allen settled into a mold of predictable, harmless comedy that has cemented the general perception toward his recent work. This stretch roughly spanned 1998 to 2004 and included works such as Small Time Crooks, Hollywood Ending, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Anything Else, and Melinda and Melinda. These films seemed like a step back for Woody Allen, as if was tired of making serious or ambitious films. They seemed almost like 90-minute versions of one of the director's comedic short stories or stand-up jokes. Tonally consistent with Allen's established visual and narrative style, these works are largely anemic and absent of the humor and observation that characterized so many of his previous works. I must admit I find a few of these works to be moderately enjoyable, such as Jade Scorpion and Melinda and Melinda, but this period cemented Allen's new image as withered, aged man still pumping out movie after movie just to keep busy.

Allen regained the attention of both his critics and critics at large with Match Point, which was considered something of a departure from his recent lighter fare and a return to old thematic threads in the director's oeuvre. Set in Great Britain and featuring a young cast, the film doesn't look like your typical Allen film. But those familiar with the filmmaker's sensibilities had little trouble identifying traits that were undeniably Allen. Match Point is an examination of class structures, chance, and sexual desire, among other things. Allen's aesthetic and narrative preoccupations have been more akin to those of Alfred Hitchcock in more ways than is typically acknowledged, and Match Point revitalizes these preoccupations with clarity. Woodyphiles often jokingly refer to it as a remake of Crimes and Misdemeanors, in that it tells the story of a man having an affair, who, upon faced with losing his status, arranges for the murder of his mistress. But this assessment is somewhat unfair, particularly in light of how differently the films deal with their similar plots. Where Crimes and Misdemeanors dealt more directly with Judah Rosenthal's (Martin Landau) guilt and his realization that he needed to protect his privileged status, Match Point depicts a young man, Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Myers), inches away from marrying into the protected British upper class who then meets and begins an affair with lower-class American woman, Nola (Scarlett Johansson). Both men are eventually faced with unstable women who threaten reveal their respective affairs.

Despite these similarities, the differences between these two films are more notable. Crimes and Misdemeanors focuses on guilt and allows Judah to maintain distance from the murder of his mistress. In his exchange with Allen's character at the end of the film, Judah goes on to explain how the guilt is eventually lifted when he realizes he has a family and a life of wealth and privalage that make him happy. He moves on from the past, but he never appears to be at peace with it, despite recognizing that the eyes of God may not be watching him. Match Point, however, more explicitly probes the raw sexuality and violence of its proceedings. Social class is important to both films, but Match Point is not only more raw but more cynical, as it weaves this narrative around the basic thematic notion of chance. Chris kills Nola as well as an elderly neighbor in ugly fashion. And he gets away with it because he didn't properly dispose of all of the evidence. Thus, where Crimes and Misdemeanors acknowledges the ugliness of the world and of some people in it, the film is searching for some kind of answer. It asks questions about how a man can live with himself who has committed such heinous acts. And Match Point, with its analogy to tennis early in the film, uses this to serve up a punchline. It's not asking how a man can do this, but instead makes a point about the the absurdity of reason and the silliness of morality.

Examining Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point side by side represents a good starting point for understanding how Woody Allen has changed in both his storytelling and filmmaking interests. Some more signs of both his evolution and repeated tendencies are evident in his latest entry, which also piqued the interests of audiences. Allen makes no such grand statements regarding the absurdity of life or the triviality of rigid morals with Midnight in Paris. Instead, he tells a simple story a struggling writer who retreats into a fantasy world of literary past. Like in Match Point, the central character, Gil (Owen Wilson) is detached from his lover and her family, except rather than being tempted by the sexual prowess of a woman he is entranced by a world populated with famous literary figures and icons of art. The more he slips into this world —Paris circa 1920's— Gil becomes more estranged from the established structures of his life. Eventually, he comes to the realization that romanticism can be a corrupting force and that to focus on the great works of the past blinds one's ability to live in the present. By the end, he breaks off his engagement and takes to the streets of Paris in a move of bold romanticism that never quite feels genuine given how the film fosters suspiciousness for it.

Structurally and thematically, Match Point and Midnight in Paris serve as decent recapitulations of Allen's evolved style, which departs from some of his established tropes. Allen's most significant evolution (most significantly on display in Match Point) is that his films are more about the punchline. If you look at the endings of films Allen has directed in the last 10 to 12 years, most of cut to black after some kind of clever punchline mean to sum up the proceedings. Melinda and Melinda, Match Point, Cassandra's Dream, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger; they all end on a similarly dark humorous edge. In terms of his broader approach, Allen still jumps from serious dramas of murder and betrayal (such as Cassandra's Dream) to farcical absurdist comedies (like Scoop). In these works the subtle differences in Allen's sensibilities become more clear when comparing them to his older films. His sense of structuring remains consistent in that he frequently provides closure or some kind of grand statement. Late Allen, however is less searching and more concise, and arguably more cynical. He is clearly still preoccupied with many of the same questions as he has been his entire career, but the sense of benevolence and romanticism that marked earlier films is largely absent in his recent fare. Allen is much more skeptical of such things now, which is bluntly stated in Midnight in Paris. And Even Whatever Works, which adopts a more positive approach toward the meaninglessness of life, does so rather half-heartedly.

Where Allen's earlier films offered a more probing and longing for meaning (despite their acknowledgement that the universe inherently contains none). His earlier films were more in search of something. The time period drom Annie Hall to Crimes and Misdemeanors, in particular, Allen often told stories with many characters and packaged themes through network narratives. This afforded him much opportunity for the big ending, often through montage of images over dialogue or music that thematically weaves the many threads of a given film together. Allen's observations mostly represented his own sense of searching and desire for meaning and/or happiness.

In recent years, Allen has stayed within the same structural and thematic frameworks, but examination of his recent films shows how he has modified these elements over time. This has resulted in films that are more direct with their messages, less ambitious, and by turn more cynical. Also, Allen attempts to assume less of a role of master narrator and more intimately observes a smaller group of characters. He is most effective when he is in neither a specifically dramatic or comedic mode, but hovering somewhere in the middle. In these works, underneath Allen's predictable stylistic tendencies are intimate portraits of aching souls looking for direction and trying to grasp their own identities. The two recent films most emblematic of this trend are Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Midnight in Paris. The characters in these films gain some kind of clarity through their experiences in eccentrism (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) or fantasy (Midnight in Paris). They are searching for something that they don't quite understand. Yes, many of the same markers are still there (such as a the character trapped in a loveless marriage), but Allen appears more interested in the yearning of these characters, most of whom gain understanding of who they are not rather than who they are. Allen's tendency to wrap things up tidy is still present in his later works, along with a penchant for quick punchlines. But these are counterbalanced by a sense of closure that opens up more pathways and questions that the characters may not be ready to face. Thus, the best of these films achieve a level of subtle reflexivity with the interplay of more complex characters and the typical structural elements that have long defined Allen's films.

In addition, these films indicate Allen's evolution in bridging his aesthetic style with the characters. A good example of this is the heightened sense of sexuality in his newer films. Historically, Allen hadn't dealt with sex very well. Despite being preoccupied with it, Allen's visual senses have always been better suited for framing environments and locations rather than depicting the interaction of individual characters. But films like Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Match Point deftly visualize passionate, forbidden sense of sexuality. Allen shoots the sex scenes in sumptuous colors and lighting and forges an intimacy with the characters that he has never approached in the past. This heightened sense of intimacy is not just between characters but in how the characters are framed and presented to the viewer. This is a development in Allen's career that nary warrants a mention from critics but gives his films the feeling of being less distant and observational.

Allen may always be a slave to his old traditions and sensibilities, but he has played with them and developed them in ways that has allowed him to achieve a more intimacy with his characters. He will likely never put out a film that radically rewrites our knowledge and grasp of his work. The steadfast (and some would say stubborn) consistency in Allen's work leaves the filmmaker open for criticism, but it also has fostered a legacy that few filmmakers will can ever achieve, especially when considering the range of narrative and filmmaking genres with which he was experimented. Some viewers have no doubt tired of his visual approach and talky characters, but a closer consideration of the underlying themes, concerns, and inquiries into life that characterize Allen's work reveal a director who is more interesting for how he tweaked and advanced these elements in various ways. Despite owing much to the writers, artists, and filmmakers he often cites in his work, Woody Allen has nonetheless crafted a style that is uniquely his own and that continues to evolve both in spite of and through the very consistencies that define his work.

Up and running again

2011-08-03T09:04:00.008-04:00

In a conversation about three months ago with a few close friends over the final Harry Potter film, we mutually decided to embark on a long project. We would convene once a week to watch the seven previous entries in the Potter film series in succession until the release of Deathly Hallows Part 2. We are all fans of the books and movies in various capacities, though I am probably in the minority for aligning more with the movies than the books. I've read maybe half of the novels and reasonably enjoyed them, but my interest was more with the movies. In attempting to articulate my positions on the films —like, for instance, why Prisoner of Azkaban, is the most evocative entry and a great film in its own right— I found myself thinking more about them and the surprisingly affecting mosaic they form. Perhaps realizing that very little serious reflection had been committed to these films, I had idea to write a series of essays. I don't know when exactly it came to me. Nor did I give it much thought. I just began penning reflections on the first film a day or two after watching it.

Turns out that a two-year-plus hiatus from writing about movies left me with a good deal of rust. But thanks to Keith Uhlich, who helped me gain clarity of the project and find a confident voice, I authored eight articles over roughly six weeks. They were posted at The House Next Door in the week following the release of Deathly Hallows Part 2. The series represents my first writing on movies in well over two years. I say, "on movies" because I do a fair amount of writing in my day job as an editor for a monthly medical magazine. Between this, completing my graduate school thesis (which took in excess of one year), and various other personal ventures from home projects to fatherhood in that span, I found little time to update this here blog. As the distance widened from my last update, my desire to return to film writing —even in a more limited capacity— was waning. I've attempted to keep up to speed with movies, still seeing roughly 50 to 60 theatrical releases in a given calendar year. (As usual, I've seen some very good ones and a few great ones. As for 2010, put me among the crop of critics who found The Social Network the only real masterpiece from last year.) I have been content to watch, feel, and reflect without the strain and effort of translating those feelings and reflections into text. To keep slightly abreast of the goings on of film criticism, I would rely on Roger Ebert, Manohla Dargis, and a handful of other critics whose work I have made part of my regular weekly reading for years now.

I never expected to return to this blog. But the unforeseen chain of events that has led to my Potter series has reinvigorated my interest in thinking critically about cinema of many stylings and rejoining this online community again. I should note that I have never had any delusions about the greater significance of this site. As I observed in my last published piece, back in March of 2009, my aim for the site was "to explore the interconnections of film, criticism, and cinephilia in an open forum." However flawed, I feel that in some ways The Cinematic Art achieved that despite my readership never achieving great heights. But as much as I've enjoyed lending my own small voice to the critical discussion, the real joy of it was exploring the work of so many others who are passionate about cinema and writing. In the spirit of the late Manny Farber, Andy Horbal once referred to the ever-expanding plane of film commentary on the web as a kind of "termite criticism." And after years of removal from the film blogging circuit and returning to discover it is as vibrant as ever, I feel that Andy's terming for it is spot-on and very relevant. We are a unique collection of voices. The flaws in our writing and logic are often openly on display, but so is the immediacy of our insights and perspectives. With styles ranging from scholarly prose to fanboy cinephilia (sometimes at the same time!), and everything in between, online film writers are slowly molding new pathways in the discussion of cinema; one that straddles the established structures but that also collapses them. Yes, the old pillars of journalistic and academic criticism will remain the authority on film canon and the officially sanctioned discourse about cinema for a long time to come. But I remain of the belief that a digital discussion of cinema is ubiquitous and can potentially guide dialogues that allow us new ways of engaging cinema, criticism, and cinephilia, by melding them all together. It will not usurp other modalities, but rather deepens the scope of criticism to encompass wider perspectives, styles, and reflections.

It seems that many new technologies and social platforms remove much of the spontaneity from life and our interactions with people, films, and various other things we engage regularly. But they also provide critical potential to harness the nuances and peculiarities of our individual experiences and project them into text and images. That is partly why cinema is so special and maybe why so many of us actively take part in this great experiment of termite criticism and cinephilia. For my part, I am happy to have rediscovered the desire for writing and film, which I hope in some capacity to channel into prose here on this site. In the past I've probably engaged in too much reflexivity for my own good. Going forward, I will try less to provide commentaries about the relationships of cinema, criticism, and cinephilia and focus more on doing my part to create it. I don't know where it will take me just yet. I have a few larger ideas in mind (such as a long-gestating Werner Herzog project that will hopefully unfold in coming weeks and months), but my general attitude is to write about things that mean something to me, to not engage in too much reflexive rumination, and to simply write. Whether it amounts to anything useful in the broader critical dialogue is not for me to decide. It will certainly not have the polish of many published forms of criticism. And there is obviously no guarantee that it will have consistency and structure (as evidenced by my long hiatus from writing). However, the broader canvas it affords me to perform the commentaries I wish will hopefully make it worthwhile. And one thing for sure is that mine will just be one voice amongst many that make this platform so enjoyable to participate in, both as a writer and reader.

Week With a Wizard, Day 8: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

2011-07-27T13:58:00.007-04:00

[Re-posted from The House Next Door.]

Amid the apocalyptic overtones of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, a moment of real magic and rare levity occurs when Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith), after summoning an army of knight statues to protect Hogwarts from impending attack, excitedly admits, “I’ve always wanted to do that spell!” Yes, professor, and we’ve always wanted to see you perform it; or, at least those of us who have slogged through seven books and seven movies. To see Maggie Smith deliver these words with the wonderment of a child fittingly captures the sentiments many viewers will have about seeing this long film journey reach its end. Most of the characters shown in the moments to follow—as an orb-like shield slowly forms around the castle—have either played a key role in one entry in the series or have been in the background through many of them. But that hardly matters; because after so many films these faces become embedded in a world we have seen unfold across a decade’s worth of cinema.

The aforementioned scene is a microcosm for Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Director David Yates seems to want this final installment in the series to capture the excitement of the moment but also to strike up nostalgia for all that has gone before. It achieves both of these in various moments throughout, but it doesn’t quite sync with what has building in the previous two or three films, somewhat to my disappointment. To try to make sense of this requires some back-pedaling, if you will indulge me. I have written these commentaries from the perspective of knowing many of the ins and outs of author J.K. Rowling’s opus. I have argued that as the films have grown more confusing to those who have not pored over the novels, they have grown more interesting filmically on a roughly parallel track. Despite the often-clunky writing and plotting, each of the films (perhaps with the exception of Goblet of Fire) dating back to Prisoner of Azkaban has developed its own beat and affective state. I have noted previously that Alfonso Cuarón's Azkaban will likely be recalled as the film that allowed much of this to happen.

When Yates took over the series, he imbued it with a serious, unsentimental approach that at first (in Order of the Phoenix) mimicked Cuarón's style but then developed into something more his own. Yates’ films each have their own personality while still upholding a broadly low-key, expressive visual approach that reached its apex with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. For the most part, these later entries have been light on action, while heavy on drama, mood and characterization, allowing for Yates’ aesthetic to evolve. (Much to the chagrin of a good deal of fans, screenwriter Steve Kloves and Yates opted to jettison the battle Rowling penned for the climax of Half-Blood Prince in favor of giving more prominence to the loss of Dumbledore.) As the stakes have increased with regards to the narrative arc, the films have turned more inward, giving us aching images and forming melancholy states the likes of which few commercial films aspire to. If you cast narrative aside, the later entries in particular are intricate, even beautiful works.

Deathly Hallows: Part 2, although a direct continuation of the story, represents a shift in an approach that seemed carefully constructed in previous efforts. It finally delivers the bloodshed and warfare long foreshadowed, and it doesn’t skimp on either. A great early shot of Voldemort’s (Ralph Fiennes) blood-covered feet as he gingerly walks about the countless goblins he’s just murdered sells this point effectively. Not surprisingly, this final installment of the series contains no less exposition than its predecessors and is equally confusing in story details. In this manner, Deathly Hallows: Part 2 falls in line with previous efforts. (To better understand this phenomenon, see Matt Zoller Seitz’s dialogue with his daughter Hannah over at Edward Copeland On Film.) But in living up to its marketing aphorism of “It All Ends,” and hurling as many familiar images and faces at us that it can muster, Deathly Hallows: Part 2 feels very self-aware as to its role as the conclusion of an eight-film journey. Its overt acknowledgment of this fact interrupts the subtle, somber state the series was moving towards. Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is an orgy of activity and nostalgia, with Fiennes’ gleefully demonic impression of Voldemort at its center. And while Fiennes is great fun to watch in the role, we realize that Voldemort isn’t a terribly interesting character, which is a good analogy for the film. The battles are indeed impressive, but they tend to throw off the narrative and aesthetic shades that have grown over the course of the more recent entries.

Deathly Hallows: Part 2 starts with a brief excursion in the caverns beneath London, but soon directs its focus to Hogwarts, where professors and students prepare for the last stand against Voldemort and his army. The stretched-out action set piece that takes up a majority of the middle section is a work of fine filmmaking craft and design, and it is seen mostly through the eyes of the central characters. Yates generally avoids elongated shots of devastation and instead navigates the activity and carnage from the ground level but without forgetting the scale of the proceedings. Save for its slower start, Deathly Hallows: Part 2 moves with such certitude that one can easily excuse the writing/plotting problems that have marred previous installments and are again on display here. The aura of urgency building with each passing scene is palpable given that Yates guides the action so assuredly. Questions of horcruxes and wand ownership dominate the film, again, as they did the previous two installments, so it is a credit to Yates that he manages to steer these entries away from drowning in their own exposition.

The soul of the film concerns not horcruxes or Harry’s showdown with Voldemort, but a character whose significance to the overall narrative was thought to be secondary. Regrettably, I have made only passing mention of Alan Rickman's portrait of the character of Snape over the course of these articles. Snape has been one of the very few secondary roles to take on a life beyond his short appearances in the films. Rickman’s stunted inflections and cold stares manage to be both menacing and humorous. Deathly Hallows: Part 2 finally provides Rickman the opportunity to stretch his acting muscles and show the vulnerable man beneath the façade. The most affecting moments in the film involve Snape, from his grisly death—which is obscured visually, but powerfully conveyed with sound—to a montage of memories that Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) witnesses showing the deep love Snape had for Harry’s mother. Yates recognizes that Snape’s story is the core of this film, as well as the broader story, which in part explains why the opening shots are devoted to him. However, because these scenes are so moving, the tale of Snape’s tragedy tends to amplify the weaknesses of the main conflict between Voldemort and Harry. When their wands finally connect in the final act, the effect is surprisingly mute. That’s because the recent movies have not been about the eventual showdown between good and evil. They have instead focused on the pain, suffering, and remorse of the people who must fight the war.

For Harry’s part, a few moments before his final confrontation with Voldemort offer a bookend to the interweaving themes of memory and death evident in the later entries. “Does it hurt?” Harry Potter asks his godfather, Sirius (Gary Oldman), who, along with Harry’s parents, has been resurrected to accompany Harry in his last moments of life. Harry has witnessed the deaths of so many loved ones in his young years and has likely felt the pain of death more than anyone else. Now resigned to it, Harry’s matter-of-fact question as to the sensation of life escaping the body is a reflection of Yates' quietly understated approach both aesthetically and affectively over his four films. It is one of the subtle, but shattering moments that permeates the later entries, amounting to a moving rumination on death. Aside from these calmer moments, Deathly Hallows: Part 2 expends much of its energy on battles and spells. Interspersed with these are a handful of nice character moments serving to boost the nostalgia factor, and perhaps deservedly so. While Yates doesn’t do anything shockingly out of turn with the film, I found myself struggling to connect with the epic, symbolic conflict and was more interested in the smaller moments.

While my reservations for Yates’ final chapter stem from its positioning in relation to his previous efforts, Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is a notable achievement in commercial moviemaking and a pretty solid rebuke to the current Hollywood system of assembly-line blockbusters. In her review of Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Manohla Dargis observes that the Harry Potter series has “affirmed that the relationship between mass art and its consumers is at times incredibly rich.” And what makes this series especially interesting and worthwhile is how it has progressed through the hands of several filmmakers and a steady cast of young and veteran actors. Unlike its modern equivalent, The Lord of the Rings, which were assembled by the same creative team over a much shorter time period, the Harry Potter series has evolved on-screen, maintaining several consistencies and curious inconsistencies. I wish that the films were not as beholden to Rowling’s twisting (albeit compelling) novels. Nevertheless, despite the frequent confusion that accompanies the watching of these films, the long view reveals a series that has remained focused on characters, feeling and filmmaking craft, while often telling this classically inspired story with wit and nuance. That the imperfections are on such naked display only adds to the richness of the mosaic.

Week With a Wizard, Day 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

2011-07-27T13:50:00.009-04:00

[Re-posted from The House Next Door.]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) is the first film in the series not to be based on a full novel. It is instead rigorously adapted from roughly the first three-fifths of J.K. Rowling’s final tome. Both the studio and filmmakers took heat when they announced that the book would be split into two movies. To categorize this decision as anything other than a ploy to generate more revenues would be difficult; suffice to say that it was perhaps inevitable for reasons of storytelling, as well. For starters, Rowling’s exposition-heavy approach in the later novels veers on exhausting. This, coupled with the strict established approach of Steve Kloves’ adaptations, dictated that the film follow the novel closely and all but demanded that the adaptation be cut down the middle. Given the circumstances, Deathly Hallows: Part 1 inescapably feels truncated. As such, it lacks concrete structure and is more episodic than other installments. These might be considered flaws if we’re measuring by a certain standard. But as an experiment in stuttering and disrupting the narrative flow established and honored over the six previous entries, the movie is a curiously compelling beast.

Narrative structure is one of the steadiest elements of the Potter films. Each tale picks up at the end of the summer with Harry and company preparing to return to Hogwarts. After some rudimentary setup they arrive at school, where the story generally stays put. Here, Hogwarts has no presence. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) dodge their final year to journey across Britain in pursuit of horcruxes that hold pieces of Voldemort’s soul. The urgency to find the horcruxes is counteracted by the trio's lack of leads as to how to acquire them. Throughout their journey, Harry, Ron and Hermione return to places they have visited in films past—such as the Weasley home and the Ministry of Magic—before ending up in the wilderness, away from most of civilization but not from danger.

One of the more arresting elements here is the manner in which Harry, Ron and Hermione bounce from location to location by apparating (which is a fancy word for simply disappearing in one location and arriving in another). The asperity of these transitions interrupts the rhythm of a scene or a particular section of the film. We are left feeling as though we can never trust the surroundings, no matter how quiet or desolate they may be. Moreover, these apparations made me hyperaware to details of a given locale than I would have been otherwise. Two transitions stand out: The first occurs during the dangerous escape from the Ministry of Magic, where director David Yates cuts to a Malick-esque shot of swaying treetops from the ground up. The second is when Harry and Hermione depart a rocky area on a cliff and arrive in a small village where the snow absorbs all sound.

The abruptness and unpredictability of so many sequences is a running motif in the film. Despite extensive stretches of quiet, Yates rarely allows a single scene or moment to last very long. Some sequences even seem to emulate Peter Jackson’s penultimate "Lord of the Rings" movie, The Return of the King, by cutting across various locations to show different events and characters that will soon clash. This approach starkly contrasts with the last film, Half-Blood Prince, arguably the most deliberate of the episodes. With Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Yates never allows you to feel at ease despite the fleeting comfort afforded by returning faces and occasional nostalgia for a less threatening time.

The mix of comfort, anxiety and urgency is evident in the sprawling opening title sequence, which cuts between the three characters in their respective homes. Ron gazes to the horizon with his family buzzing about in the house behind him while Harry looks from his bedroom as the Dursleys prepare to permanently vacate their home. The portrait of Hermione is significantly more affecting, as she casts a spell on her parents to wipe away their memories of her. The memory-wipe scene moreover establishes Hermione, rather than Harry, as the emotional focus of the film. From the standpoint of narrative Harry is of course still the most visible of the three, but most of the events filter directly through Hermione. This might seem like a risky move if you consider that in the near-decade long history of the series, Emma Watson has been the weakest link among the three actors. Her unremitting brow and jaw movements have likely caused more than a few viewers to cringe at various points during the previous six films. But in Deathly Hallows: Part 1 Watson is luminous as the anchor of the group. She creates a mature portrait of anguish that cuts through Ron and Harry’s brooding states. And in one single instance, Watson propels the film to places no other installment in the series has gone. The moment is awkward at first. Harry’s impromptu invitation to dance takes her by surprise, but she reservedly accepts. As Nick Cave’s “O Children” becomes clearer on the soundtrack, the two share a moment that is joyous yet devastating. Through a range of movements and expressions Watson garners the most emotionally vulnerable sequence in the series. And keeping with the film’s tone of abrupt comings and goings, it halts swiftly. Harry and Hermione simply remain in the room as the space between them is once again blanketed in the sorrow they temporarily escaped.

Another unexpectedly moving sequence is the death of a relatively minor character. In fact, of all of the deaths that have occurred in the films so far, the demise of Dobby the elf has the most weight. This is unusual considering that the deaths of Sirius Black and Dumbledore are more personally meaningful to Harry and more important to the story. But the sight of a cradled Dobby becoming still in Harry’s arms is one of the great images in all the Potter films.

Deathly Hallows: Part 1 tests the mettle of any Potter fan with 147 minutes of dense exposition and disconnected moments. It plainly wears many of the weaker elements of the series, such as its preponderance of explanations and paucity of narrative information. But its lack of structure and abrupt shifts give it a unique quality that is a welcome in the series before it bows to the battle-heavy action of the last film. More importantly, there are some unexpectedly moving moments that speak to the resonance of the broader narrative. Such instances make the film more than the sum of its parts. The story can go from meandering exposition to unbridled emotion with the same speed as its characters can apparate from place to place. Spun at a rapid pace but also slow-brewing, building momentously yet abounding in quiet moments, Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is an amalgam of the various elements and styles, strengths and weaknesses that have characterized the series.

Week With a Wizard, Day 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2011-07-25T12:22:00.014-04:00

[Re-posted from The House Next Door.]

In my previous essay, I noted that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the first work to recognize the limitations that come with functioning as part of a larger mosaic. It provided fewer restatements of common themes and less background for its developments. The irony is that while Phoenix more heavily depended on a keen familiarity with its predecessors, the considerably richer and challenging visual language elevated it to become a distinctive vision unto itself. Its successor, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), furthers this progression in a different fashion. The novel’s central plot device involving Harry’s discovery of an old book belonging to “The Half-Blood Prince,” from which he learns mysterious new spells, is barely a footnote here. However, that the film’s title is rather inconsequential turns out to be a major asset, as director David Yates shirks narrative unity and instead concentrates intensely on the feelings of pain, guilt, and anxiety that underlie the proceedings.

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Dumbledore’s (Michael Gambon) relationship provides the emotional core of the film. Together they seek to understand Voldemort’s power by investigating Dumbledore’s memories of the Dark Lord from when he was a student at Hogwarts. These memories are held in small vials, which, when poured into the Pensieve, enable one to live them out. The visualization of these memories is composed of several conventions of the movie dream sequence, including distorted sound and washed-out colors. Although the memories themselves are not exceptional, the film on the whole has an inimitable dreamlike characteristic. Many scenes and images unfold with little attention toward logical progression. Yates’ assured and sensory aesthetic sets the film apart from previous installments, even his own predecessor. The director revels in the dimensionality of cinematic space, weaving through tighter and more vertical alleyways (such as in Diagon Alley) and around staircases and hallways in Hogwarts. Angles are pronounced, movements are slow, and distances have depth and focus. Bruno Delbonnel’s darker and earthier photography suggests a more human focus and a moody atmosphere, and composer Nicholas Hooper’s score is restrained and (perhaps in a nod to John Williams’ music for the third film) often accentuates a single instrument with a light sound that fills the image.

The opening sequence is a primer for the ethereal ambience of the film and introduces an effective recurring motif. It shows Harry swooned by cameras but numb to their flashing bulbs and screaming operators. He has just lost his godfather and Voldemort’s return now weighs on him considerably. But everything drowns out when Dumbledore—standing next to Harry and perhaps understanding the incredible burden Harry must now bear—extends his arm around Harry to shield him from the scrutiny. The scene is without dialogue and gradually whittles its focus down to Dumbledore’s paternal grasp of Harry’s arm. Throughout the film Yates uses hands to emphasize the transference of emotion, pain, and burdens from person to person. Often there is a tender quality to these instances, such as when the flighty Professor Slughorn, played with ingenious charm by Jim Broadbent, finally submits to Harry’s pressure to give over the memory of a critical encounter of his with a young Tom Riddle (aka Voldemort). For much of the film, Harry has pursued the memory knowing that it contained essential information about Voldemort, but Slughorn has resisted because, as he says, it would ruin him. After quietly recounting his bittersweet memory of Harry’s mother, Slughorn shakily holds out a vial into which to “drop” the memory. Harry’s hand then enters the frame opposite Slughorn’s and clasps his hand, holding the vial steady as the memory is poured in; a simple composition, but potent.

Quiet transactions such the one I’ve just described are a trademark of Half-Blood Prince, which is singularly focused on the difficulties of accepting the pains of both the past and the future. While Slughorn is dogged by past mistakes, Draco Malfoy (Harry’s rival, played by Tom Felton) is burdened by actions he has yet to commit. Malfoy broods for much of the film, isolated from many of his fellow sixth-year students who are more often concerned with love charms. Yates’ observances of Malfoy’s damaged emotional state contrasted with the sexual discoveries of the other students are especially poignant, as suggested by a single composition from outside of the castle glimpsing the various night encounters of the students. We see a party in the Gryffindor house before winding up a stairwell as Ron and his new liaison share an embrace, and then finally we are taken past the school observation tower where, across the way, Malfoy is ominously postured.

Half-Blood Prince is significantly more preoccupied with pain and anxiety than previous outings, but its expressive palate encompasses other feelings as well. These include a passionate encounter Harry enjoys with Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright), in which, again, hands play a crucial role, and a most surprising scene late in the film that teeters on a kind of ecstasy, after Harry drinks the luck potion and enters a joyously intoxicated state. The film also ventures into dark territory when Harry casts a spell on Malfoy during a duel they share in one of the bathrooms. In what can only be described as the most ethereal scene in all of the Potter lore, Harry approaches a twitching and surely dying Malfoy, as blood rushes from his many wounds. When Snape arrives on the scene he stands over Malfoy, enshrouded in haze, and, in a protracted shot, stares at a speechless Harry to haunting effect.

The wide range of emotional states reflected in the various transactions between characters may appear aimless in the specific context of this film. However, Yates is intuitive to know that Half-Blood Prince, situated at the end of a long series, must accomplish things both on its own as well as in relation to established characters and themes. With this film he explores the deep undercurrents of many of the relationships that have developed over the years. Wisely, Yates keeps the focus off of the relationship of Ron, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Harry, aware that the next installment would grant him that opportunity. This film belongs to Dumbledore. While Michael Gambon gave the character a presence previously, here he allows us to peer into his soul. Dumbledore is more softly spoken and contemplative this time around. We are unsure throughout of how strongly the character is resigned to his eventual fate. Nevertheless, his desire to protect and guide Harry is subtly offset by what appears to be his acknowledgement that Harry will need to go on without him.

The closing scenes galvanize the many emotional threads that have been building over the course of the movie, beginning with a chilling scene set within a cave. While the zombie-like creatures that eventually threaten Harry are memorable indeed, Gambon’s portrayal of an increasingly feeble old man is piercing. A few moments later, when Harry and Dumbledore return to Hogwarts, time seems to stop altogether as Harry witnesses the death of a beloved mentor and father figure. The film’s depiction of this crucial moment is worth noting for its departures from the novel, much to the chagrin of many viewers. In Rowling’s version, Harry is immobilized and physically unable to stop the events, but in the movie he watches from below after Dumbledore instructs him to stay there. It’s a wonder that the filmmakers opted for a different path here since there appears to be no convincing reason for it, other than the heightened sense of discomfort of seeing the events occur from Harry’s perspective below Dumbledore. It is a representation of the scene’s generally off-kilter sense of space. Unlike in the book, the observation tower here is a closed and confusing area, adding another tantalizing element to an already tense scene.

After a failed pursuit of Dumbledore’s killer, Harry returns to the courtyard for his final encounter with the headmaster. The hands motif is again restated here, bookending the opening sequence with Harry’s hands clutching Dumbledore’s lifeless body. It is one of the few moments of the film in which emotion is on full display as opposed to simmering beneath the surface.

On the whole, I better understand now why Half-Blood Prince is such a divisive film in the series. Its sacrifice of narrative cohesion in favor of pushing aesthetic and expressive boundaries has rubbed some fans the wrong way. And given that fans constitute a majority of viewers, the film’s reputation has suffered. On a personal note, this represents the only chapter of the series that came across to me as a very different movie upon revisiting it. After my first viewing, I was ambivalent. I did not anticipate the slower rhythms, especially after such a fast-moving and exhilarating fifth film. This may speak to the nature of a serial saga such as the Harry Potter movies, in which expectations likely play a greater role in how we make something of a given film. With my recent viewing, I was more taken with the movie's bared expressiveness and ambition. It somewhat made me mourn the fact that this series is trapped within a serial mold, both commercially and narratively. Within this mold, however, Yates stretches the artful and affective scope to a new threshold with Half-Blood Prince.

Week With a Wizard, Day 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

2011-07-25T12:12:00.008-04:00

[Re-posted from The House Next Door.]

A glimpse at Platform 9¾ in the first Harry Potter film reveals a colorful, lively place where first-year students board the Hogwarts Express on their way to school. Jump ahead a few years, and it is the sight of one the many nightmarish visions of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). In what initially appears to be an ordinary transitional scene, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) walks across the platform and sees a motionless figure in the distance amid the smoke and activity. As he moves closer, the figure emerges from obscurity as an expressionless Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), dressed in dark slacks and shirt as opposed to the cloak he donned in the previous film. The “Is it real or not?” question barely registers before we're already on to the next scene aboard the train. The image is fast, but it lingers long afterwards and it recapitulates the film rather well.

Bereft of the childlike wonderment that marked previous entries, Order of the Phoenix is fixated on fear, power, and corruption. Visually and tonally, it is a close cousin to the third installment, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. But unlike that film, Order of the Phoenix externalizes its thematic and emotional overtones and is less focused on Harry himself. This may seem an odd ploy, considering that of all of J.K. Rowling’s novels, Order of the Phoenix is perhaps most fixated on Harry’s complicated emotional state. His anger and frustration are at times suggested here, but the film is more effective when it is wading deep into the political underpinnings of the magical world. It reveals an ineffectual government whose corruption is increasingly pronounced and exploited in the wake of Lord Voldemort’s return. Stark images inspired by the Third Reich abound, most notably represented by a giant banner of the Minister of Magic holding his chin high and gazing toward the beyond.

Order of the Phoenix is split into two thematic sections. The first of these is a despairing depiction of how a corrupt government willfully denies self-evident truths and manipulates its citizens’ grasp of the world. Director David Yates never quite spells out whether the Ministry of Magic is already under the influence of Voldemort or whether its denials are made out of blind fear, but this uncertainty works to the film’s benefit. The Ministry of Magic uses Harry and Hogwarts School as emblems of unwieldy methods and progressive ideals that represent a threat to its paternalistic institution. Neither Harry nor Dumbledore is to be trusted, according to the Ministry. As a result Harry feels more isolated, as he is still haunted by his encounter with Voldemort (in the last film) and fears another eventual confrontation.

The other major thematic thread represents Harry’s acknowledgment of fellow friends and students who want to assist in the fight against Voldemort. Their resistance is in direct response to the Ministry’s stooge at Hogwarts, Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), whose affinity for the color pink and chirpy laughter conceal torturous methods of discipline and an 'iron fist' approach to school affairs. In portraying the children’s rebellion, Yates manages to lighten the proceedings somewhat to focus on the friendship of children who collectively decide to confront the threatened reality they live in and step into bigger shoes. The newest member of the young cast of characters, Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch), brings a much-needed weirdness to group of friends and quickly becomes one of the memorable additions to the later films. Harry also strengthens his ties with mature wizards away from school. Radcliffe’s scenes with Gary Oldman (as Harry's godfather Sirius Black) treat the dialogue with delicacy and signify a calmer, quieter approach to dramatic energy than that of Mike Newell in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Given the disparate threads to explore, in addition to handling numerous character introductions and re-introductions, Yates attempts to expedite the plot through use of newspaper headlines and extensive montages that supply pertinent story information. Along the way, many of series regulars slip into the background. These include Snape (the always-perfect Alan Rickman), Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), Lupin (David Thewlis), and even Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). This is an unfortunate side effect of a story that must move at a quickened pace to get where it’s going. Nonetheless, despite the fluxes in tone and the screenplay’s long checklist, the film doesn't feel patched together or rushed. That’s because Order of the Phoenix is the first film in the franchise that requires its viewers to have a fairly deep knowledge of the previous films/books. This may account for why the movie seems to be so full of detail and yet unfold with such swiftness. Yet this adds another wrinkle: Despite its deft exploration of fear and companionship, Order of the Phoenix demands more than just its own images and plot developments to attain full effect.

Perhaps Yates recognized that, at this point in the series, addressing the full-scale detail and themes of the story at large would not be feasible, particularly since the screenplay covers so much ground already. He therefore sets a few threads aside—such as sexual discovery and the sad state of many of the characters—and by turn crafts a film that operates nimbly and with a direct, but nuanced thematic center. It doesn’t have the same emotional punch as the climax of Goblet of Fire, but it achieves a more consistent tone that I found more satisfying. Yates employs a more sophisticated visual language that is especially palpable during the final duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore and its immediate aftermath. Blending horror tropes with a quick-cut music video aesthetic, these scenes organize the numerous visual and thematic shades into an evocative collection of sights and sounds. As with most of the other sequences, these moments are transient on screen but the images are lasting. In retrospect, these stylistic flourishes laid atop the political intrigue and an anti-establishment banding together of friends help to fashion a more concise and lucid experience than most other entries in the series.

Week With a Wizard, Day 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2011-07-21T22:31:00.007-04:00

[Re-posted from The House Next Door.]

As the middle entry in the book series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire occupies a curious position. Much of its story is inconsequential, yet it contains sequences of wide-spanning significance that vaunt the tale into new and darker depths. This posed some challenges for the film adaptation, which needed to serve as a gateway to the later installments' more serious storytelling. Additionally, it also had to deal with how to maintain interest in a set of characters who are so established that they may begin to grow stale. Even though the third film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, breathed much-needed life into the series, the dramatic tonal and aesthetic changes it brought about required that each successive film provided a distinct enough vision while remaining consistent with the tropes and styles already established. This struggle is evident in the otherwise ambitious and swift version of Goblet of Fire (2005), which signals a change in storytelling rhythm right at the start.

The movie opens with a long, winding shot of a snake slinking in-between tall grass and tombstones and into a dark mansion to meet a shadowy figure assumed to be a still-weakened Voldemort. This is eventually revealed to be a recurring nightmare for Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), who we rejoin after he's already escaped from the Dursleys. Harry and company set forth to the Quidditch World Cup, a wizard sporting event set among the English countryside where Muggles are ignorant to a towering stadium. These early passages are dense with activity and are frenetically paced, which is a welcome change after three films that take their time to unfold. Perhaps the reason for such rapidity is that the film condenses nearly 150 pages of Rowling’s long text into so little screen time. Working with a novel of roughly 800 pages, screenwriter Steve Kloves can no longer afford to slightly abbreviate the text. This turns out to be an asset to the later films, which are adapted from longer, more intricate novels and tend to find their own beats and rhythms.

These early scenes set the stage for sport and competition to feature prominently. Upon arrival at Hogwarts, the children learn that the school will host the Tri-Wizard tournament, an Olympics-like competition in which students from international schools of wizardry and witchcraft compete for one trophy. As a vehicle to move the plot forward, the tournament provides a steady point of interest. And the notion of an international tournament would seem to allow director Mike Newell to present a vaster world of magic that is only hinted at in the first three films. But this sense quickly evaporates in an early scene portraying the students’ arrival at Hogwarts in glaring and (almost certainly unintended) comedic fashion. The two sets of visiting students embody profound stereotypes of cultural Otherness. There’s the synchronized female group, each of whose perfectly straight blonde hair and uniform movements bewitch the boys with their gracefulness. Then we have the hyper-masculine school of muscle men donning dark colors and parkas while back-flipping through the Great Hall.

The scene plays like an original SyFy Channel film and reflects Goblet of Fire's general tendency to serve up exaggerated characterizations and performances. Save for Harry and Ron, nearly every character in the film is subject to over-expressive speechifying. All of the new characters and a good deal of established ones act and speak with protracted urgency, as if to suggest that everything they say carries weight. Many of the actors do not appear comfortable in their surroundings. Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore is especially notable for his aggressive behaviors, at one point even shoving Harry against a wall during interrogation. Although Gambon offered a more youthful take on Dumbledore in the previous film, his outright fierceness in Goblet of Fire is off-putting. (In later installments, particularly in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Gambon is finally given free reign to make Dumbledore the contemplative, tender wizard he is portrayed as in the novels.) Moreover, these performances are not assisted by Newell’s cartoonishly hackneyed shot framings, e.g. the introductions of tournament entrant Viktor Krum (Stanislav Ianevski) and minor villain Barty Crouch, Jr. (David Tennant), in separate scenes.

In the wake of Prisoner of Azkaban, such elements are conspicuous. Alfonso Cuarón offered a more intimate and practical take on the wizarding world, using the imagery and surroundings expressively. With Goblet of Fire, Newell places more emphasis on character and performance to the extent that many dramatic scenes lose their potency (many of the adult actors seem as though they are performing in a stage production).

The hokey representations on display here tend not to mesh with the scope of the tournament games, which include underwater bouts with mer-people and navigating an ominous maze. These scenes are, for the most part, exciting thanks to Newell’s deft talent for action sequences and creating tension. The director's eye for action becomes quite clear with a sensational dragon chase among the rooftops of the school. Aided with soaring fanfares from composer Patrick Doyle (taking the reigns from John Williams), these scenes are fluid and appropriately epic.

Goblet of Fire's real achievement is its portrayal of the sexual discomfort of its young characters. This is where Mike Newell’s emphasis on performance (or overperformance) actually works as an asset, particularly as compared to the subtler expressions of intimacy and closeness in the third installment. If Cuarón's film represents the understated beginnings of sexual discovery, then Goblet of Fire takes the next step and turns the discovery into bewilderment and frustration. Newell centers on all the small actions and posturings that accompany a teenager’s inevitable acknowledgement not just of sex, but also of the social practices drawn around sex. Newell elicits every uncomfortable moment he can from his actors: Harry and Ron’s (Rupert Grint) struggle to find dates to the Yule Ball are funny, yet sweet. And Harry’s nervous proposal to his crush is a beautifully observed moment of the shame and pride that often follow after finally mustering the courage to say something to someone with whom you’re smitten.

Goblet of Fire is most effective as a look at the fleeting trivialities and growing uncertainties of young adulthood—an age at which you are old enough to experience a complex range of feelings but do not yet possess the tools necessary to understand them. The young characters are burdened with apparently trivial matters, yet Newell seems to understand that these things only appear trifling in retrospect. It is a nice balance of observation and empathy. We are still at a distance, but are slightly more endeared to the characters for witnessing their unhinged and subsequently guarded behaviors.

The innocence of these encounters serves as a nice backdrop for the climax, when Harry faces down the newly risen Lord Voldemort, played with wily delight by Ralph Fiennes. It is not until later in the series that Fiennes gives you a sense of the character’s calm sadism and profound disdain for non-pure-bloods. Here we are exclusively focused on the fleshy embodiment of the arch-villain who until this point has lurked only in shadow and memory. His pale skin and reptile-like nose complement his skeleton-like body structure, which is forceful and domineering, particularly over the feeble Harry. The dead-serious nature of this scene contrasts heavily with much that has gone before. Everything else wipes away in one single moment.

That Newell doesn’t handle the acting or his over-visual approach with much subtlety can be frustrating. I noted at the start of this essay that Newell’s economical aesthetic in some ways resembles Chris Columbus’ style with the first two films. But this assessment is not entirely warranted, in part because the strengths of this film consistently outmeasure Columbus’ efforts. However, there is a more general point that bears mentioning. While Azkaban unraveled the workings of Columbus and offered a fresh take on the tone and feel of the series, Goblet is more significant as a transitional episode in the narrative. It is understandable, then, why this film attempts to take on disparate elements of the three films that preceded it, before culminating with events that shift the course of the story. Given its place in Rowling’s opus, the material perhaps doesn’t lend itself to the kind of brooding vision that Cuarón provided with the third film. That’s not to say that Newell would not have benefitted from fewer goofy close-ups and an overall stronger aesthetic. However, placed in context, Goblet of Fire widens the scale of this fantasy universe and fashions a solemn emotional resonance that—despite needing to still develop—no longer requires the stylings of the previous films going forward.

Week With a Wizard, Day 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

2011-07-21T19:35:00.010-04:00

[Re-posted from The House Next Door.]

Early in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), after an unpleasant encounter with a hooded creature known as a dementor, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) looks through the window of the Hogwarts Express, his reflection projected against the rain-soaked night. The image wipes to the exterior of the familiar castle as a children’s chorus sings a rhythmic, medieval-sounding tune with words taken from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. We then enter the Great Hall, where a choir of students with frogs in hand concludes the song with the forceful and ominous phrase, “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” This is one of the film’s many small departures from author J.K. Rowling’s source material, which had been followed to a tee in the previous two films. Both playful and sinister, the song (titled “Double Trouble”) turns up in various capacities in the score and permeates the proceedings. But its first appearance in the scene described above boldly announces a new direction in the Harry Potter series. What once felt so clean and mechanical under the even hand of Chris Columbus suddenly bleeds with mystery and mood.

Director Alfonso Cuarón shakes up Columbus’ work with changes extending beyond small alterations or additions to Rowling’s text. Some of these changes were inevitable, such as the replacing the late Richard Harris with Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. But even with a new actor in the role, Cuarón essentially re-imagines the character as more jolly and quick-witted. Innumerable franchises have undergone reboots in the years since, so all these changes don't seem as significant now as they did then. But for a series that is partially built on maintaining a strict level of sameness, Cuarón pushes the envelope in challenging ways, and the shift in tone and aesthetic deepens the film’s emotional underpinnings.

A good example of this is how Hogwarts is depicted. I mentioned already that the music has a distinctly medieval flavor, and this carries over to the entire castle. In the first two films, the castle is more gothic with its imposing stone structures and chilly, fire-lit hallways. Here, the spaces within the castle—and more generally among the students—is more intimate. The corridors are smaller, brighter, and less domineering. Rather than feeling like a cold, lifeless locale, Hogwarts has its own personality in Prisoner of Azkaban. This can partly be attributed to the newly designed school grounds, which have rolling hills and boulders, a courtyard with trees and bushes growing outside the windows, and a creaky corridor bridge that look out onto the damp grounds. Even the Whomping Willow seems to be happier in this Hogwarts, as it delights in swallowing birds that cheerfully fly about the school grounds before meeting their doom among the tree’s dancing branches. I could list many details that give the castle and school grounds a personality, but to put it more generally, by making Hogwarts feel like it is a part of some kind of larger environment, it takes on a greater life.

Cuarón's eye for environments serves him well, from the snowy pathways of Hogsmeade village to the tall wooden towers of the Quidditch field where Harry flies through beating rain and lightning in pursuit of the golden snitch. While the changes to certain locales affect how they look, they more importantly alter how they feel. Moreover, the characters are now an integral part of the surroundings, often framed against and defined by them. Cuarón's deft use of foreground and background, in particular, aid in creating fully dimensional, expressive images in which both location and characters are carefully observed with a subtle balance of distance and intimacy.

Cuarón's aesthetic seems perfectly suited to the narrative, which focuses on Harry’s near-despondent state. Unlike most other stories in Rowling’s series, the plot of Azkaban is less driving and more focused on brooding dread. This provides Cuarón good opportunity to amplify Harry’s loneliness and uncertainty. He is no longer a tragic victim of growing up without parents, but is instead actively angry that he cannot have them in his life. The plot deals directly with the looming threat of a man named Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), who is thought to have betrayed Harry’s parents and directly contributed to their murder by Lord Voldemort. Black has escaped from Azkaban prison and now presumably aims to hunt down and kill Harry at Hogwarts. In light of the rising threat, dementors—prison-keepers of Azkaban—are stationed outside the castle to intercept Black and bring him back to the wizard prison. These creatures levitate motionlessly, their shredded hoods caressed by the wind. They have the ability to drain the life out of anything around them. Despite not playing an active role for much of the film, their presence is chilling. Cuarón portrays them as deliberate, methodical, and lifelike but without fully seeming alive. As such, they become manifestations of Harry’s fears as well as his doubts and inadequacies.

Though the film’s focus rests with Harry’s growing state of melancholy, Prisoner of Azkaban aptly counters the despair with a sense of youth and joy. Harry has a blissful personal moment early on where he rides a winged beast above the castle and the lake. Flying high, he is afforded a brief reprieve from the problems that await him below. Gliding along the lake, Harry outstretches his arms and enjoys a momentary ecstasy that further punctuates his sadness. In another instance, Harry fumbles beneath his bed covers and performs spells while pretending to be asleep each time his uncle enters the room. Allusions to masturbation aside, this shows Harry using his wizard fantasy to retreat from the outside world. It is a simple, but delicate moment. The frequent hints of blossoming sexuality elsewhere are a nice touch as well, in particular because they are not made overt. There is an intimacy to the way the trio of young actors (Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson) interacts. They have a comfortable rapport with each other and appear to naturally move and act in ways they don’t even quite fully understand.

As Prisoner of Azkaban moves toward its conclusion, it presents oddities ranging from shape-shifting animals to souls being sucked out of bodies. It's all pointedly absurd, but since an emotional anchor has already been so effectively established, Cuarón maintains course. And surprisingly, while the climactic time travel sequence is depicted with much humor, it also coldly signifies Harry’s inability to change time and rid himself of a memory he does not even have. Despite his ability to manipulate the means by which he experiences time, he cannot alter the memories and feelings left behind by its passage.

Ultimately, Harry’s journey stops short of delving into total gloom. The longing images and emotional undercurrents never coalesce, as we might wish. They instead allude to a darker road to come; indeed, Prisoner of Azkaban ends on a jubilant note with an image suggesting that even Harry’s rare excursions of fun are soon to exit his life. That the film offers little payoff for its brewing feelings of sadness and pain does not reflect negatively on it. While the movie is satisfying on its own, it serves a critical function in the broader scheme of things. Though the arc of the plot is barely progressed, there is an emotional core here that resonates back to the earlier entries and ahead to the future installments. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that the film finds subtlety and rich aesthetic expressions not just within the established world of the series, but also within the aesthetic and narrative frameworks of popular cinema.

Week With a Wizard, Day 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

2011-07-19T11:41:00.009-04:00

[Re-posted from The House Next Door.]

In my commentary on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, I observed that director Chris Columbus seemed to rely heavily on production values to create the sense of wonderment that was inherently absent in his images. How a film moves—from scene to scene, shot to shot—is not entirely dependent on massive sets, panoramic effects work, blaring symphonic music, and moody lighting. As I set out to watch Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), the second and final entry from Columbus, I paid close attention to the director’s visual sensibilities and how they compared to the previous film.

To his credit, Columbus attempts to add deeper visual dimension to this sequel. His camera is more mobile; it hurdles, swipes, and dives every which way. This is clear in the opening shot, which starts high above the clouds, zooming past the title before maneuvering over the rooftops of suburban Britain and down to Harry's (Daniel Radcliffe) window. It's smooth, but moves so quickly that it reeks of artifice. Columbus is in such a hurry to get to Harry’s window, as well as to whip around Hogwarts castle between scenes, that the film feels as though it’s playing on fast forward. Another trick Columbus saves for this go-round is the angled shot to signify mystery or villainy. However, like the camera movements in general, these dramatic tilts are so hasty and exaggerated that the effect is mostly hokey. Despite these flourishes, it quickly becomes evident that when he’s not swiping or tilting the camera around, Columbus’ approach is still the same: Action, Reaction. Repeat.

But let’s get into the story. This is, after all, the second installment in the series, so it shouldn't need to waste time with unending exposition and set-up. Alas, the opening passages of Chamber of Secrets are marred by unending exposition and set-up. We have various comings and goings, a few new characters (notably Kenneth Branagh, whose pompous Gilderoy Lockhart brings much-needed life to the film), and no sense that anything of interest will happen at all. Like Sorcerer's Stone, screenwriter Steve Kloves adapts the novel so faithfully that the film suffers. This, coupled with Columbus’ vapid directorial style, suggests that we'll be getting more of the same. But after taking its time getting the characters back to Hogwarts, Chamber of Secrets eventually displays an edge largely absent from the first film. There is a spirited sense of camp that matches well with the darker themes of racial purification and bigotry. Storytelling-wise it is still a mess, but this film has a sense of authorship that, however hokey, sets it apart from Sorcerer's Stone. Columbus' hand is more assured, particularly with action sequences. The final duel, for example, is surprisingly well-orchestrated: Harry takes on a giant snake that has been terrorizing the castle. When the serpentine beast comes into sight for the first time, it is a classic moment that recalls the joyous images of monster movies past. Unlike many CG effects, the creature has weight and dimension and carries with it a genuine sense of awe.

Another highlight finds Harry and Ron (Rupert Grint) in the Dark Forest surrounded by spiders the size of Buicks. Harry’s desire to know who opened the chamber of secrets bounces off Ron’s fear of the increasingly threatening spiders, which appear larger with each successive glimpse. The scene creates tension and builds to a strong payoff, with an army of spiders storming through the woods in pursuit of the heroes. This sequence, like the snake-dueling scene, shows Columbus’ direction coming alive. It has less dialogue, puts aside plot and seems to exist unto itself—a fluid series of images that blend the frightening and the absurd.

Taken together the pair of Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets serve an explicit function—to provide a sterile visualization of Rowling's text. They don’t resonate beyond the relatively inoffensive entertainment they were designed to provide. As I noted in my commentary on Sorcerer’s Stone, both of the Columbus-directed entries feel insulated from the subsequent movies and are thus difficult to situate in relation to the overall arc. But if I am to adopt a more positive view, Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets competently create a foundation of characters and settings and establish a world that has since been developed into a far more interesting one. Columbus’ baseline aesthetic may have been the right approach for providing such groundwork. I can say with confidence that, if nothing else, both films managed this task. They supplied the first images and impressions that, against all criticisms, have permeated the series and fostered its growth.

Week With a Wizard, Day 1: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

2011-07-18T09:02:00.017-04:00

[Re-posting an article I've written for The House Next Door. It is the first of a series of articles looking at all eight of the Harry Potter films.]

Few film franchises have been more constitutive of the modern movie spectacle (and the digital age of cinema) than Harry Potter. The series is made up of eight movies spread evenly over a ten-year period, each a handsomely mounted production featuring a considerable cast of respected actors. With a collection of record-breaking bestsellers serving as a foundation, the consistently high box-office draw of the films was a foregone conclusion. Yet for non-loyalists of the book series, the adaptations' densely plotted stories and long running times all but demand a general knowledge of the broader story. This, coupled with the critic-proof nature of such a popular series, perhaps suggests that the Harry Potter films are not worthy of serious critical attention.

But with each new movie, my growing feeling is that these films may coalesce into something rare in the lexicon of sequels and franchises. Whereas so many movie series slowly or abruptly abandon ambitious storytelling and/or filmmaking in favor of selling the brand, the Harry Potter series is marked by what seems to be a simple and persistent earnestness, as if all the parties involved—from actors to studio heads—wanted to do good work. Moreover, the films also evolve stylistically and aesthetically, each installment facilitating stronger maturation of storytelling and character. The result is a compelling series that defies traditional stereotypes of blockbuster moviemaking.

In this week-long series of commentaries devoted to the Harry Potter films, I will hone in on notable aspects of each individual movie while maintaining a sense of the larger mosaic. Topics will range from thematic undercurrents and visual styles (I hope to show how the films develop a serious, even challenging visual language that both reflects and informs current traits of the modern blockbuster) and will also touch on more subtle or obscure details that deserve heightened focus. I am not interested in definitively deciding which parts are superior to others. I certainly am partial to certain installments, but the goal here is not simply to document the strengths and weaknesses of each respective film. This is a collection of personal reflections that will articulate why the Harry Potter series warrants more serious consideration.

Now that I’ve established the ground rules, let’s look at the first installment, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001). It's pleasant enough as an introductory episode but is somewhat challenging to view 10 years later. That is to say, I found myself incapable of ignoring the glaring contrast between the film I was watching and the more recent Potter entries. The players and most of the locations are the same, but the look and feel is entirely different. Despite establishing the characters and world that eventually develops over the course of the series, both this installment and its follow-up, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, now seem isolated from what follows (perhaps in part due to the dramatic changes brought by Prisoner of Azkaban). Nevertheless, this film along with its immediate successor is fascinating to see again, perhaps because it is so curiously detached from the wonderment and magic it seeks to conjure.

When I first saw Sorcerer’s Stone, I was lock-step in agreement with Roger Ebert that it was “a red-blooded adventure movie, dripping with atmosphere, filled with the gruesome and the sublime.” For years I defended the film against its detractors and encouraged more serious-minded moviegoers to see it. And though I experienced some of the things in Ebert’s description while watching it again, these sentiments more resembled a kind of channeled nostalgia than something I was actively feeling.

Some of the most interesting passages occur early on. After a short prologue swashed in campy mystery (punctuated by a long-bearded wizard and pointy hat-donning witch rendezvousing on a foggy night), the film settles into a cartoonish mood with the introduction of our 11-year-old hero (Daniel Radcliffe) imprisoned in suburban England. He lives in a cupboard under the stairs in a bright home whose walls are coated with hideous wallpaper. But it isn’t long before an increasing number of owls overrun the neighborhood to deliver young Harry his acceptance letter/s to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The animated tone of these introductory scenes, while bordering on irritating, is weird enough to keep the film from sinking, but afterwards Columbus regrettably tones down the silliness, with only a handful of characters serving to liven up the affair.

The goal is seemingly to create an atmosphere of innocence, discovery, and—as Columbus never allows you to forget—magic. He wants you to know this with every epic shot and every repetition of the now-famous musical theme. But despite these proclamations, the general aesthetic is banal. Every character, every significant action, is framed with staggering exactitude, to the extent of becoming suffocating. It’s worth pointing out that the movies that serve most clearly as narrative and visual influences for Sorcerer's Stone—from The Wizard of Oz to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—have been framed and presented with similar directness. But with those works, the sense of the strange and incredulous saturate the viewer and unfold with less haste. By contrast, Columbus is always in a rush to get to the next point on the schematic: the next line of dialogue; the next shot; the next scene. This is a film charged with immersing the viewer in an entirely new world, and it is presented as if it were a soap opera. And when Columbus pulls back to give us the spectacle, the strain with which he attempts to elicit a big response is glaring. Consider, for example, the first reveal of the castle, accompanied by the requisite “ooh”-ing and “aah”-ing in the musical score. It should be a monumental moment. All of the signifiers are present, but the effect is hollow.

The plot structure is worth looking at as well, because it unfolds in the exact opposite manner to how Columbus executes his visuals. The screenplay is so close to J.K. Rowling’s text as Columbus and his screenwriter, Steve Kloves, have tried to cram in every detail of the book without much regard for the differences between cinema and literature. Thus, while the book reads briskly, the film’s depictions of our protagonists attending classes and walking the school halls prove tiring as the running time ticks up. Sorcerer's Stone is often aimless. The plot eventually comes into focus and deals with the Dark Lord Voldemort’s attempted rise back to power, but Columbus and Kloves are in no real hurry to unveil the narrative. Consequently, the film never quite builds enough momentum for the story to take hold. This nonchalance regarding plot development may account for Columbus’ maddening and problematic visual approach. Perhaps he felt it necessary to frame his compositions in the most straightforward, concise manner possible, given that the screenplay afforded him little time to slow down. This is a shame, because there is so much to relish in the far corners of the compositions, but Columbus often smothers them with framing and editing that are pedantic and a plot that meanders.

Despite these criticisms, there are moments—sights and sounds—that burst through to fleetingly realize the potential so clearly evident beneath the mostly lifeless aesthetic. These range from Harry’s first sight of the busyness of the brilliantly designed Diagon Alley; a quick shot of a goblin using magic to put Christmas ornaments on a tree; and a sublime encounter with a noble, soft-spoken centaur in the Dark Forest late in the film. Taken in the context of the entire series, these brief moments serve to remind how a more ambitious narrative and aesthetic approach would eventually blossom and flourish.

Critical (re-)evaluation

2009-03-24T06:43:00.005-04:00

I started The Cinematic Art with a desire to explore the interconnections of film, criticism, and cinephilia in an open forum. Among my predominant concerns was and still is the question of blogging as a relevant practice in cinephilia and a vehicle for film criticism, but a criticism of a different making. I wanted this site to be an experiment in criticism; a rumination on cinema, grounded in theory, vested cinephilia and personal narrativizing. Its style and content emerged from academic and journalistic tropes of film criticism, but I also sought to subvert and confound them, fold them in to each other, and explore new capabilities for engaging images.

Alas, I was weighed down by the scale of my ambitions.

This post brings an end to my longest drought since I started The Cinematic Art and caps off a disappointing year in the site's development. In my brief sabbatical, I had plenty of time to think about this blog and blogging as a practice. I've come to accept that this site will probably never operate in the capacity that I would like. The offerings here mostly consist of half-formed thoughts, occasional sloppy writing, and a startling lack of focus — all things that don't help to legitimize my cause of giving blogging a good name. My prolonged absence from updating the site with new content does not help my argument either.

Having said all that, I remain stubbornly convinced that there are new paths to forge and that this writing form grants me and so many others the possibility to discover them. The bigger question is if this gradual realization resonates beyond the constraining dialogue about digital technologies and comprehension of their properties.

Sobered with the reality that I cannot realize the ambitious vision I once held for the site, I now recognize the need to re-frame my expectations and goals, and I need to reposition my approach toward understanding what I and so many others are doing here in digital space.

The film blogging circuit is a community of voices from all across the spectrum of cinephilia and criticism. This isn't news to most writers and readers familiar with blogging, but this simple fact is the nonetheless the base of a more complex inquiry into and about critical modalities of film criticism. Digital media seem to allow us an understanding of the process of making and seeing film, but they also allow us to harness critical tools and engage criticism at a different level. The difficulty will be in using and comprehending these media as we gradually learn the tools they provide us to do just that. This form cannot simply assimilate the properties of other media and culminate in a Grand Form of writing or criticism. Many questions remain regarding how these media are used and the implications for their use, among other things.

Some more sophisticated members of the film community would scoff at the notion of blog authors as critics. In public and critical discourse, blogging still largely connotes blind opining and empty commentating. Some have argued that it is relevant only to those who perform it. But how can we dispute who is or is not a critic when we are at a moment in which film criticism has been problematized in so many ways? That criticism lacks a well-defined identity is largely due to a growing digital mediascape wherein the meanings of journalism and filmmaking are constantly in flux. Still more, it's not necessarily a negative thing. Both filmmaking and criticism are at an uneasy place. Their respective practitioners are adjusting to new conditions in which the professional seems to be quickly meeting the non-professional.

For those of the mindset that there is an very specific framework for practicing of criticism, the idea of non-professional individuals practicing the "craft" of something built on expertise and experience is central to the collapse of that very craft. But is it not possible to gain expertise and knowledge outside the annals of professional film criticism? If films (and art in general) are supposed to celebrate the diversity of peoples and cultures through images and narrative, why must film criticism remain such a stagnant practice where homogeneous frameworks empower a particular narrative about what films are, how they function, and which are deemed worthy to be recognized in the canon of film history?

I am not asking these questions to tear down professional film criticism, but to propose a new approach to its position and practice. For years, we've heard some critics sensationally talk about the death of movies or the death of criticism; not a majority, mind you, but a vocal minority. What they were really saying is that their limited idea of what film or criticism should be was diminishing. And when you look around at faltering arts and entertainment sections, it's obvious that professional avenues of film criticism are suffering. To suggest that digital media (e.g., blogging) are to blame for film criticism and print journalism faltering simplifies the issue to pinning blame for an event that is without blame. Digital media are prominent and relevant; this much we know. But we do not quite know how to situate them in commercial terms.

Here on this blog, I come to you unfiltered by the institutional limitations that structure professional criticism. This is an advantage and a disadvantage. All writers bring a part of themselves to their writing, but those of us who do this unprofessionally are on naked display. In other words, we're writing about what we feel is worth writing about. It can be more personal, more probing. The problem for those who do it is often an overall lack the skills, resources, and/or time to launch the kind of inquiry that those in the paid ranks are granted. And yet, in the commercial world, writers are often constrained to such a large extent, so as to remain commercially viable. This is where bloggers come in. The best bloggers are good writers and are informed on their subject matters, but they also have a talent to key into a dialogue, and they do it in a variety of fashions. There is no formula for this. It's almost an intuitive sense that some writers possess for just the right level of articulation (or lack there of) to expand on an existing dialogue or kickstart another. We can do more than just fill the space between, but can create that space — a function that is essentially inherent in the form.

A plurality of voices can and should open new avenues of engaging images and perspectives, and shed light on old ones. Criticism therefore should not be limited to a particular inquiry or based on presupposed means and conditions. Both academic and journalistic criticism explore films in different ways, but they are not opposite ends of a film criticism line. We don't necessarily need to search in between to locate new molds of criticism. Possibilities exist in a number of manifestations, not the least of which is the crucial relationship between criticism and cinephilia.

I would contend that we will never truly have the ability to describe or consciously project the purpose or relevance of moving images, or narrative, for that matter. The anomaly of film criticism is that while it should focus very much on the films themselves — images, sounds, perspectives — it is not about those things at all. A film is made up of cuts, colors, figures, lights, sounds, etc. It is a machine with so many moving parts; parts that function together to form an aesthetic unity beyond the function of these individual elements. While close analysis is required for film criticism to exist at all, the critic ultimately is examining a phenomenon that is not on "film." The film is merely the line through which many other threads pass. The critic should penetrate those depths and swim in them, not unlock meaning or extract value. Criticism helps viewers, filmmakers, and critics to understand the process of seeing images, making sense of them, and grasping their significance.

If I may offer a more positive approach to the issue of "the death of film criticism", I would argue that film criticism is always happening, much in the same vein that film or cinema is happening. It may just a matter of how much we open our eyes to it. Cinema will continue to grow and thrive as an industrial art. Images exist and are produced and reproduced ubiquitously. The same is true of film criticism. It's not only happening in recognized forums, such as newspapers, magazines, and publicized websites. It's in conversations, on personal blogs, comment sections, and elsewhere. In this respect, criticism mirrors the cinema in that it cannot be quantified or set to a definition, as much as we may try. It will always have a professional face, but if that is the only view we allow ourselves to have then it wouldn't be able to grow. More important is to examine how it is harnessed and expressed, and under what conditions.

A quick word

2009-03-04T07:05:00.001-05:00

Many apologies for the unannounced three-month hiatus. I haven't forgotten about this place. The site will be up and running again soon with regular updates and postings. Stay tuned...

Familial lament: Rachel Getting Married

2008-11-25T06:57:00.006-05:00

[Editor's note: Apologies for the late review. This is not the only recent review of Rachel Getting Married on the web, however. Be sure to check out Jason Bellamy's excellent review, as well.]

With his 1975 film, Nashville, director Robert Altman located a connectedness in people's disconnectedness. He created fluidity out of chaos. Seemingly without regard, the film moved from one place in town to another, following characters with no apparent relation or connection to one another. Nashville instead captured the spirit of something much larger. Altman was also obsessed with details and atmospheres; with people filling a space and living in it. He was not after some great message. He didn't "use" narrative as a vehicle for overlying perspectives or ideas. He was after the motion of life, using one geographical destination as a lens through which to observe it. Narrative emerged from movements, actions, and moments.

It's no wonder that Altman is given special thanks in the end credits of Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, a film made very much in the spirit of that intangible Altman sensibility. The plot focuses the affairs of a family as it prepares for a wedding over the course of a couple of days. Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt) is due to marry Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe), and the family gathers to organize final preparations for the ceremony and celebration at their house. Although the event for which crowds gather is altogether different, Demme's naturalistic approach to character and tone enables him to paint an intimate portrait of a real family. Where a lesser film would center itself aesthetically and tonally on the conflicts of the main characters, Rachel Getting Married is all about the "small" details --the exchanges between new acquaintances, former spouses, and everyone else. There is a sense that we're looking through the lens of our own eyes as we wander around this house, listening to conversations, gauging facial expressions, and surveying reactions.

The key role in the film is Rachel's sister Kym (Anne Hathaway), who is greeted with an uneasy sense of enthusiasm and overwhelming trepidation by her family. The small talk is accompanied by the expected smiles, hugs, and kisses, but is painfully and obviously hollow. At the same time, Rachel, a psychiatrist with all the right things to say, appears genuinely happy to see her sister, as do some others. But, as we learn, there are deep-ridden problems sustaining and bolstering the conflicts between family members. Kym's drug addiction is revealed to be the white elephant clouding every exchange and and encounter within the family.

The treasure of this film is not in the gradual unveiling of plot details, but in the intimate and intensely relatable portrayals of familial relationships. Demme is not attempting to represent "the American family." The core of this film is instead its dynamic observations of one particular family and the confluence of both similar and clashing ideals, perspectives, and backgrounds. Rachel Getting Married is not about anything more than the immediate and complex emotions it conjures. It is compelling in the purest sense of medium; connecting the viewer affectively and cerebrally to action on screen.

In many ways, taking part in this movie is as much a pleasure as it is demanding. This is a tricky relationship, but the best of movies involve you in an experience that is both external and internal. All viewers, those of us with and without families, can fundamentally relate to the conflicts of these characters. We see all their shortcomings, but we also feel those inexplicable and transient highs from just being with people and sharing something with them. The only flaws rest in the occasional insistence on significant dramatic moments, e.g. the lost brother plotline, Kym's relationship with her mother. The movie is at its best in moments between the drama, when quiet fills the air.

While a direct comparison to Nashville wouldn't be appropriate, both movies are propelled by keen observations of people in motion around an event. The players are different, all with different tasks, concerns, and wishes, but in both films the event is both lived and not; it becomes idea, or an ideal. The country festival of Nashville embodied deeper ideals and fleeting ideologies, and although the event here is shared among a more intimate group of people, the motions and feelings are nearly the same. That these actions are framed through a wedding, and in "real-time," i.e. without formalistic or narrative thematic threads guiding the viewer's perception and comprehension, every nuance and flaw can be experienced both in the moment and as a broader examination of relationships to which any viewer can relate.

The film ends with a wedding celebration so intoxicating and hopeful in its own right that, ironically, actually expands the distance between Kym, Rachel, and everyone else in the now-larger family. Rachel Getting Married culminates in a moment of sad beauty, lamenting the inherent void in human connection while finding hope in the transient moments when people come together.

On The Dark Knight (again) and other things

2008-11-10T06:55:00.000-05:00

It's been a tough scene for film blogging lately, at least from where I'm sitting. There are so many film and media blogs on the web that I couldn't possibly try to surmise an overall state of blogging. But from my perspective, at least, there has been a minor lull in the past few months likely due to a combination of factors. Outside the Toronto and Telluride Film Festivals, it hasn't been a particularly exciting time for new releases. Moreover, a number of writers have probably been so attached to Presidential politics (myself included) that movies have taken a back seat to other concerns. Even a film as politically inflammatory as Oliver Stone's W. couldn't shake things up in film coverage. Then again, the idea of W. is more inflammatory than the film itself, which rather well sums up the state of movies in the last few months.

It's worth noting that I have done nothing to help the situation, as I have taken my longest hiatus from The Cinematic Art since I started it in January 2007. My reasons for doing this ranged from the aforementioned waning interest in films by film culture at large, strange as that sounds. This coupled with my fervent, almost obsessive interest in the election and the media coverage of it made finding time and inspiration to write about movies difficult.

In all fairness, the election was just one of a couple of things to occupy the majority of my time. The Philadelphia Phillies' unlikely journey to a World Series title was another. As a lifelong fan, hearing those words "And the Phillies are World Series Champions!" was one of those perfect and surreal moments. While elections and baseball championships make for great times (especially since the outcomes of both were as unexpected as they were joyous for me), nothing compares to what I experienced just six weeks ago, when my son was born. I can say without exaggeration that moment was the most humbling and illuminating of my short life, and it now lives in my memory as well as in my everyday experiences.

All of these things have contributed to my absence. I've had some time here and there to watch movies, among which Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure and Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married stands out. I'll have more on these films in coming posts. But I don't want to stress myself out with writing full-out reviews at this juncture. It took me about four weeks without posting to actually feel content with not posting. Ironically, this has enabled me to begin writing again, stress free. I'll have some collected thoughts on movies again (and on blogging) soon, but for now I want to get my feet again, take it easy, and remember why I began doing this in the first place.

As I attempt to regain focus, it's only appropriate that the article I'll be commenting on was written by another blogger who has taken some time off and only recently re-emerged into the film blogosphere. Ali Arikan, whose Indiana Jones blog-a-thon yielded some nice analyses on the Indy pictures, has written his first post in several months, offering his reflections on the film event of the summer: The Dark Knight. His post is refreshing for a number of reasons; first, because after an influx of discussion about the film before, during, and immediately after its release, interest has dropped off. It's as if critics and bloggers collectively decided that we are all on Dark Knight overload for a while and balanced it out by abruptly cutting off major discussion about it.

Given the context, it makes sense that Ali decided to write about this film for his return from blogging hiatus. But it's what he has to say about the film that's most interesting. He acknowledges the power of Christopher Nolan's juggernaut of a movie, but his implicit observation about the homogenized tone of the critical dialogue about the film is especially intriguing. In short, he's not buying the movie one bit, and for very different reasons than those presented by the film's detractors. He says:

"The Dark Knight is not a sequel to Batman Begins. The actors are the same, sure, and, thus, the characters, but they inhabit two completely different universes. A shadowy organisation of ninjas (none of them diminutive, alas) called The League of Shadows, run by a foppish Frenchman, and intent on razing Gotham, would feel completely out of place in the latter film. The Dark Knight doesn't just have a different tone, it plays a totally different instrument.

Gotham, too, looks different between the two films. In the first one, it has a reddish orange hue; it’s claustrophobic, and, even though I don’t want to use the word, gothic. In the second film, it just looks like Chicago. I know the first film was mainly shot on a soundstage, and that a big deal was made of the second film’s use of Chicago, but still, one would expect some sort of consistency.

Batman Begins is a superhero film that pushes its boundaries to the extreme. The Dark Knight is a film that obliterates those limits in the hopes of becoming a crime noir. And that would be a laudable intention, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s still a film about a guy who dresses up as a fucking bat and fights crime. It is because of its very essence that the film is inherently unable to make that leap towards serious crime drama. Batman Begins succeeds by remaining a superhero movie, The Dark Knight flounders by trying to abandon its roots.[5] And it’s not a pleasant sight."

In my original post on the film, I made a similar argument about the atmosphere and overall presentation of The Dark Knight. Where my thesis was buried in a sea of arguments, Ali directly critiques the movie for its almost complete lack of resemblance to the Batman Begins. Where Begins found a balance between the hero myth and a gritty cynicism. The film blended two very different sensibilities into an ambiguous tone that actually achieved both. The Dark Knight is just about the reverse of that. Thematically, its covering some similar territory, but the movie could not be any different from Begins from an aesthetic point of view. Moreover, that it almost completely shuns the cloudy tones of the first film is jarring.

I have only seen the film once, and I look forward to seeing it again. But on first viewing, the movie failed as both a crime saga and a representation of the hero myth. It failed to build upon anything established in the first film. As Ali notes, we're listening to a different instrument altogether. Equally important as that fact is how little it has figured into the greater discussion about the film. Although a number of critics / bloggers have grown tired of talking about The Dark Knight, we've really only just begun to comprehend its relevance as both a cultural artifact and a piece of cinema.

"A fervent and frightened prayer..."

2008-10-06T10:42:00.006-04:00

Over the last week, I've been reading tributes in newspapers and on websites to the enduring career of Paul Newman. I heard reports of his sickness in recent months, almost refusing to accept that the frail man pictured in photos was actually him. When I learned of his death late last Saturday morning, I was as surprised as I was saddened -- not just because cinema has lost one of its greatest actors, but because it lost a true artist and model citizen. He gave the movies a positive face at a time in which American movies were undergoing such great change. He was an honest, sensitive actor whose charisma endured over many decades and defied easy categorization, even though that smile was so recognizable. One might even say that Paul Newman was born to star in the movies, with his classic good looks, commanding voice, and unending charm.

Thinking back on his most memorable roles now immortalized in the pantheon of cinematic images, I came to see that Newman as more than a good actor boasting several significant performances. He had a way of uniquely embodying each character he played while still making it his own. There was an undeniable "Paul Newman" spirit to his characters, despite never playing two characters the same. He didn't "disappear" into roles, but instead made them apart of him. It's not often when being yourself is noted as an actor's strengths, but Newman was one of the few who was both himself and whoever he was portraying; the likely result of the shear honesty he brought to his craft.

That honesty was also revealed through his many humanitarian efforts and political activism. I am not nearly knowledgeable enough to fully honor that work, suffice to say that there were many instances from his life on screen that revealed the many sides of Paul Newman.

Perhaps my favorite performance of his is from Sidney Lumet's brilliant 1982 film, The Verdict. Newman plays a depressed alcoholic whose best prosecuting days are behind him. In the film, he finds himself at a moral crossroad, where doing the right thing stretches far beyond the one single case he is serving on. Here is Newman's final case to the jury:

This speech crystallized the vision I have held of Paul Newman for as long as I can remember; i.e., what he means to the movies, his enduring acting career, his humanitarian efforts. Everything I admire about the man and his work can be seen in this singular moment.

Monologues in movies are so often remembered for their intense dramatic rhythms and strong delivery, yet what makes this one of the very finest is the perfect tone Newman finds between defeat and hope. His summation is more than three minutes, but consisting of only a few hundred words. It is somber, soulful, and especially relevant as Americans head to the polls for one of the most important Presidential elections they'll take part in. (One could say that this election itself is a frightened and fervent prayer.) It's also a great tribute to Paul Newman's career in movies and commitment to justice.

Back to school

2008-09-17T12:03:00.012-04:00

In honor of the annual autumnal return to school and the end of the Big Summer Blockbusters, now is as good a time as any to crack out those pencils and erasers, and put on my thinking cap for Dr. Zachary Smith's End of the Summer Quiz over at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. As always, Dennis has come up with some doozies for questions, with topics ranging from reflections on the summer to the failed promise of movie posters. Below are my answers.

Your favorite musical moment in a movie

There are just too many. But if I may show my true colors as a rank sentimentalist, the final sequence in Edward Scissorhands still stands out as one of the finest marriages of image and sound, narrative and music. It's tough to say what a musical moment is, because I'm inclined to think that some movies are more musically inclined than others and can be like pieces of music themselves. For someone like Tim Burton, the breadth of a moving image only takes shape with music, and the finale from Edward Scissorhands, as well as various other sequences of musical punctuation provide shape and scope to the affective climate he has created.

Ray Milland or Dana Andrews

Wish I knew more about both of these gentlemen, but I'd give the edge to Dana Andrews, if only for his memorable detective in Laura.

Favorite Sidney Lumet movie

Maybe this will answer the question...

"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! You think you've merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars. It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America, and democracy. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today."

Substitute some of those proper nouns with the corporate juggernauts of today, and this speech is downright prophetic... in a really scary way.

Biggest surprise of the just-past summer movie season:

How about Brendan Fraser starring in two (nearly) $100 million movies? I'm sure they're both deliciously bad, and I can't wait to see them! Hats off to him.

Since I haven't seen either film in the Fraser double feature, the biggest surprise among films I have seen is that neither Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or The Dark Knight were tops on my list of favorite blockbusters. (That honor goes to Hellboy II: The Golden Army.) Indiana Jones was more of a personal / childhood nostalgia experience than it was a movie, and while I liked it very much I don't think it was among the cream of the summer's crop. The bigger surprise is that The Dark Knight didn't ring true on any level. Unsurprisingly, I loved Wall-E. Finally, if Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World can be considered among the blockbuster crop for its limited run in July, than that would easily take the prize for best film of the summer.

Gene Tierney or Rita Hayworth

Remember that head swing in Gilda? Enough said. Hayworth.

What’s the last movie you saw on DVD? In theaters?

Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 and Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Stalag 17 is not among my favorite Billy Wilder pictures, but is worth seeing for William Holden's masterful performance alone. I guess I've seen so many prison break movies to really appreciate the film to which so many owe their existence.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona was the perfect movie to see at summer's end: breezy, gorgeous, tinged with feeling. Like it or not, any critic who wishes to assert that Woody Allen's desire or gift for filmmaking is becoming the broken record that Woody himself is so often called. Allen's observations about people and relationships are resonant (as usual), but what makes this movie special is that it is both painfully tragic but light as a feather. This is movie is about wounded souls, and Allen succeeds at straddling the line between tragedy and comedy.

Irwin Allen’s finest hour?

The Towering Inferno, if only for its massive scope and its great (but little-known) John Williams main theme. Though when it comes to skyscraper disaster movies, I much prefer Joe Dante's Gremlins 2.

What were the films where you would rather see the movie promised by the poster than the one that was actually made?

Cutthroat Island. I'll admit I'm a big sucker for Drew Struzan's work, but this one is especially interesting in how it falsely advertises throwback adventure in the vein of The Sea Hawk. I can't blame Struzan for anything other than turning out some of his best work for a movie that simply can't live up to it. That's not to say I disliked Cutthroat Island at all. But it certainly doesn't live up to the promise of the poster, which promises just about the coolest pirate adventure ever. Renny Harlin has said this is his favorite movie poster. It's a shame he didn't live up to his end of the deal and make a movie deserving of such poster greatness.

On a side note: I'll bet that John Debney's magnificent score was inspired more by the poster than the movie.

Most pretentious movie ever

Most pretentious movie I liked: Dances With Wolves.

This movie is still maligned by just about every critic who didn't vote for the Oscars in 1990. Of course, Dances With Wolves not hold up under close ideological scrutiny, but I was staggered by Costner's vision of the American West. Of all the characters, Two Socks the wolf was most endearing. There is something so benevolent about the early sequences in which Costner and Two Socks are familiarized with one another, with John Barry's music echoing over brown plains stretching into the horizon. This may be shallow stuff, but it hits me hard.

Most pretentious movie I didn't like: The Usual Suspects.

I'm with you, Roger Ebert. I still do not understand why this movie is so beloved by many. It's confusing, uninteresting, and painfully overlong. It exists solely for the big twist, making it little more than a parlor trick. And the fact that director Bryan Singer plays it off so suavely (as if to say "Gotcha! Now aren't we cool?") is even more repulsive. Simply put, this movie is carried away with itself.

Name the movie that you feel best reflects yourself, a movie you would recommend to an acquaintance that most accurately says, “This is me.”

From the moment I saw Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation, I don't think I've ever felt more close to a movie. I likely never will again. It's not that I "relate" to the characters so much that the film captures the feelings (and subsequent implications) of human interaction and relationships so painfully, fleetingly, and delicately. I can't even describe how it does it. No amount of discussion about performances or shot lengths can explain this movie or sum up why it's good. For me, Lost In Translation is the perfect expression of humanity, from introspective explorations of loneliness to the benign and transient feeling of connecting with another person.

Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo

Garbo.

Best movie snack? Most vile movie snack?

Nothing beats it a tall, cold Coke. As for the worst, anything I eat too much of and then feel sick while watching the movie.

Fitzcarraldo—yes or no?

Yes! But it's only Herzog's second best jungle movie starring Klaus Kinski. Much like Aguirre: The Wrath of God, this film is a hypnotic fever dream, both a celebration and revulsion of obsession and Man's awkward relationship with technology, nature, and fellow Man.

Your assignment is to book the ultimate triple bill to inaugurate your own revival theater. What three movies will we see on opening night?

Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr., Henri Clouzot's Wages of Fear, and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. These movies fully showcase the wonderment of cinema in very different capacities, exhibiting the range and the perpetually expanding horizon that one can experience in cinema. The series could be called "Movement, narrative, and affect."

Most impressive debut performance by an actor/actress.

Ahmad Razvi in Man Push Cart. Of course, you could say that not much was asked of Ahmad Razvi in portraying an emotionally guarded New York city street vendor, but this performance is among my very favorites in recent memory. The movie reminds me of Lost In Translation in how it so pointedly observes its central characters simply existing in the world around them. The performances may be restrained, but Razvi's in particular is deft and mature.

2008 inductee into the Academy of the Overrated

Iron Man. Conventional wisdom would say The Dark Knight, but at least that film had a small, but vocal crowd of detractors. Very few critics were bold enough to come out against the more harmless and less incisive Iron Man, a film whose politics are curiously irresponsible. Jon Favreau is an excellent craftsman; he lives for this stuff. But he is failed by a pedantic and condescending script. There is very little here.

2008 inductee into the Academy of the Underrated

My Blueberry Nights. Please allow me to quote my favorite piece of criticism this year, Matt Zoller Seitz's review of Wong War-Kai's underrated gem. No words I write could hold a candle to the planes Matt reaches here. Poetic criticism for a poetic film:

"There's no sense pretending that My Blueberry Nights is a towering addition to Wong's filmography. The stakes are quite low throughout, and the movie's pace is as boozy-meandering as the tempo of its soundtrack selections. (Cooder's instrumental tracks recall his work on Wenders' melancholy, Sam Shepard-scripted road movie Paris, Texas.) Jones is a stunning camera subject and never less than likable, but she lacks the technique to suggest a complex interior life. Law is, as usual, gorgeous and charming but not especially exciting. Weisz's performance is a touch shrill, her "southern" accent a botch; she only rallies during Sue Lynn's confession. Portman is livelier here than she's been in some time -- the character's brassiness liberates her -- but the role still doesn't quite seem to fit. (Was it written with an older actress in mind?) Of the major players, only Strathairn makes a deep impression; few actors are better at playing men coming to terms with failure. Yet if you're willing to ease into Wong's mindset -- that of a barfly who's in such a good mood that he doesn't care what he's drinking or what's on the jukebox or how many hours are left till closing time -- none of the aforementioned flaws feel like flaws. My Blueberry Nights seems to be unfolding in a world of perpetual night -- one in which the darkness is illuminating. It's an exploration of interiors, geographical and emotional, and it seems acutely alive -- as if the movie itself is a luminous being that has seen the world and survived heartbreak and resolved to savor each remaining second of its existence, however long or short it may be."

Antonioni once said, “I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.” What filmmaker working today most fruitfully ignores the rules? What does ignoring the rules of cinema mean in 2008?

Stylistically, that's tough to say. There are so many filmmakers stretching the capacity of film, from redefining compositional conventions to re-calibrating the notion of "Film as Narrative." Where we still need to make great strides is in overcoming the commercial censorship of cinematic representations of sexuality. Unfortunately, pornography has staked a claim on visualizations of sexuality, which has certain implications for what it means to visually represent sexuality in cinematic terms. Movies have been pushing the envelope for years, challenging the standards and chipping away at the censorship tower. Recently, John Cameron Mitchell made a bold film called Shortbus, which was essentially an attempt at making an artful movie about sex. It succeeded on many symbolic levels -- Mitchell himself has described the film as a statement of rage and protest for having to endure last seven to eight years of the Bush administration. But the tower still remains and is as powerful now as ever, and my hope is that more filmmakers seize on the opportunities presented by the shifting conditions of digital culture.

What’s the movie coming up in 2008 you’re most looking forward to? Why?

Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. No screenwriter in recent memory is as creative as Kaufman. The Spike Jonze two-punch of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation is arguably the most impressive tandem of screenplays in contemporary American movies. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind isn't too far behind, either. I'm really looking forward to what he'll do with a camera.

What deceased director would you want to resurrect in order that she/he might make one more film?

Alfred Hitchcock. Call me a traditionalist, but I don't think there is a more impressive filmmaking resume than the one he has put together between the 1930's and 1970's. It's now trendy to like Hitch, but there is a dangerous tendency to reduce his films to a matter of flashy style and surface detail. For me, Hitchcock has always represented much more; even a great deal of his throwaway films took us to some kind of void. Seeing his style develop over time is a real treat, with his images become more sublime and subtle as he aged. He gave us a brief glimpse of what he might do without the bounds of censorship in Frenzy, but not my mind is only left to wonder.

What director would you like to see, if not literally entombed, then at least go silent creatively?

Rob Reiner. If he hadn't shown so much promise in the 80's (e,g. The Princess Bride, This is Spinal Tap, etc.), I wouldn't be so offended by the atrocities against filmmaking he has been committing for the better part of 15 years.

Between spaces: Cinema 2007, part II

2008-09-04T11:34:00.004-04:00

Well here we are again. With the Telluride Film Festival winding down and the Toronto International Film Festival now in full swing, a four month period of moviegoing relished by cinephiles has officially kicked off. During the course of these two festivals, attendees will be / have been offered a glimpse to the future of independent and international cinemas. Some of these viewers will write about these movies on blogs and web sites. For impatient movie lovers (like myself), reading about so many interesting films is both a great pleasure and a pain, as most of us know full well that we will never see half the movies we read about. Moreover, the ones we manage to see are often many months later.

Having said that, there is something special about knowing there is so much out there. These desires and pleasures are rolled into a certain nostalgia I find myself experiencing this time of year when I indulge my cinephiliac impulses, if only for a taste of that perpetually out-of-reach horizon of affect that movies produce in us. For me, it's actually comforting to know that there is too much for one person to handle. It's the feeling that cinema cannot be contained, that there is so many different kinds of it and such a plurality of aesthetic and narrative forms.

In the introduction to my previous post on my favorite movies of 2007, I argued that a different approach to retrospective commentaries is likely needed to better grasp what these flickering images mean to us. But when it comes to our relationship with movies themselves, it's also important to keep in mind that we are mired in out own constructions of the world around us, and that we approach all movies from within those fields of perception and comprehension. This, I think, is what makes the discussion of movies so unique and potentially enriching. I don't believe in such a thing as all-encompassing Knowledge, the type that underlies all of experience and can be universally accessed. That doesn't mean that all knowledge is useless. Quite the opposite, actually. There are many knowledges, and our relations to them are dependent on the values and assumptions we hold not just about cinema but about our relationships with people and the world around us. These ideological factors are based on both personal and collective meaning structures, giving each of us a unique perspective.

As I alluded to above, we are all coming at movies from such different places and spaces. And when it comes to movies, film festivals are reminders that we occupy a small, but unique position in the scope of cinema, whether we're watching, discussing, writing about, or making films. As the late Manny Farber intoned, termite art exists in all places, most especially in the spaces between spaces typically designated specifically for art. The multiplicity of cinema -- both in terms of the number of individual films, and the infinite spectrum of cinematic moments within individual films -- is all around us, and we each carve out our own place in that spectrum; stretching, expanding, and re-defining it.

Following is the second part of the list of films from last year that meant something to me, personally as well as critically. Together with the films I mentioned in the previous entry, this collection of cinema represents the year 2007 to me. There are some odd picks on here, for sure, some expected critical hits that moved me, and other movies that stood out at to me as revelatory. As Toronto and Telluride prepare to unleash a new crop of cinematic treasure upon us and the cinema of 2007 becomes an afterthought of the moment, allow me to take this moment, however fleeting, to reflect on films that in my estimation deserve recognition.

The Savages (Tamara Jenkins): With startling simplicity, The Savages subverts two massively cliched sub-genres: elderly people / nursing home movies, and dysfunctional family dramas. The film focuses on a brother (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and sister (Laura Linney) who deal with having to put their abusive father (now with vascular dementia) into a nursing home. While this adequately sums up the plot, the movie is so much more than its narrative design. It's full of subtleties and inexplicable joys, mostly stemming from Tamara Jenkins allowing Hoffman and Linney to create real moments of drama on screen. Her style is all but invisible, and it rests in knowing when to let silence fill the screen. The Savages is in many ways a cookie-cutter pseudo-independent film, combining a less showy aesthetic approach with the strong performances of strong, successful actors. Even though it mostly plays by the rules of its stylistic and generic influences, the film has so many moments of real humanity, simply and beautifully committed on-screen.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (David Yates): Following the now-famous opening of the Warner Bros. logo slowly coming into focus, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix does something very unexpected considering its status as the fifth film in a series. Instead of trudging through more redundant encounters with Harry's cartoon-ish aunt and uncle, this film places its central character (and the audience) in a very different world. On a creaking swing set in a lonely park Harry sits alone in the dreary summer heat, caught between a desire for isolation and a yearning for a connection he will never have. In these opening moments, you know this movie is not just another harmless sequel, or a bland regurgitation of source material like the previous film (enjoyable as it was), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Instead, this Harry Potter pulses with its own dramatic energy; it crawls underneath your skin like a good horror movie. Equally exciting is how the film balances the wonderment of the magic world and the bureaucratic underbelly of its institutions. The opening sequence establish these conflicts right away and create a stirring atmosphere that's eventually expanded by the rest of the film. Director David Yates makes it known immediately that he wishes to re-explore something that began with Alfonso Cuaron's third film in the series (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), and that is an affective state almost completely independent of the books.

Paprika (Satoshi Kon): From my original review:

"Satoshi Kon's Paprika is a film of many things, but above all, it is about dreams. It shatters all distinctions between actual and virtual, analog and digital, in its exploration of cyberlife, avatars, and digital space via the realm of the unconscious... Paprika is thoroughly conventional in its narrative cues and dramatic beats, even its thematic trappings about the actual/virtual binary. But the manner in which it weaves these threads around, through, and within each other is incredibly inventive. Moreover, its marriage of movement and sounds is like being in a dream through the swirling colors and motions of its animation. Kon's film is an intoxicating experience that will linger in the conscious and unconscious mind. On several levels it could be seen as an allegory for cinema; not just cinematic technology (as the plot deals with scientific advances which enables individuals to explore dreams), but about the state of movement and time that cinema can construct, a way of seeing and hearing that manifests in all of us."

Atonement (Joe Wright): Each year, there is at least one film around awards season that the more "sophisticated" critics make their punching bag. In 2007, Atonement took that title, if only because its World War II setting and apparently generic forbidden lovers plotline, all somewhat typical and expected for awards season. But I'm having none of it. Despite the amazing period detail and formal filmmaking prowess, this movie has tones of thematic and visual subtlety that far transcend its traditional surface details. Constructed with such precision, its aesthetic unity is constantly undermined by a narrative that cannot be trusted. Some have said that Atonement is all about perception. I would argue instead that it's about what shapes perception as well as the implications for manipulating the perceptions of others. It is both a wonderful throwback to old-fashioned epic romances as well as a contemporary critique / update, and it is much more sophisticated than many critics believe.

Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul): There are likely hundreds, if not thousands of feature films and shorts each year stretching the aesthetic capacity and narratological structure of images that are unseen by me and millions of others. Syndromes and a Century is a reminder of this. It is a reminder that the quiet simplicity of images often results in the most immediate, even illuminating viewing experiences. The film tells two stories, each with the same characters and dialogue, but in different settings. Rathern than becoming an exercise in shameless narrative manipulation (a la Run Lola Run), Apichatpong Weerasethakul's film is striking rumination on love, memory, and identity. It is neither positive or negative in its portrayal of its ideas and characters, but is instead a reflection on the images, memories, and words that form the basis of our being in relation to each other.

Away From Her (Sarah Polley) Thinking about this movie, I'm tempted to quote Luis Bunuel's statements about memory and self -- featured prominently at Dennis Cozzalio's blog. It goes like this: "You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives." Away From Her is a spiritual companion to Syndromes and a Century, but with an entirely different narrative design. The film is deliberate in its insistence on silence. That silence fills the space between an elderly couple, one of whom whose memory slowly fades away. "I fear I'm beginning to disappear," the woman says. How many times these two people have likely failed to understand one anther, to listen and see each other through the course of their lives. But the silent bonds that often keep people together is a mutual experience in each others' memory; the ability to not just experience life together to make meaning out of that experience together through stories and recollections of experience. Sarah Polley's film is a poignant, yet painful meditation on these things, as well as the more intangible qualities of love.

One final note: while Julie Christie was nominated for an Oscar for performance, the real anchor of the film is Gordon Pinsett, who beautifully portrays a man who comes to grips with losing his wife.

3:10 to Yuma (James Mangold): The first time I saw 3:10 to Yuma, I enjoyed certain aspects of it, such as the performances (by Russell Crowe and Christian Bale) and the writing. I was surprised at how moved I was by the end, because I hadn't thought of it as much more than a slightly above-average movie experience. But it was on second and third viewings that the film really came into focus. Simple scenes such as the classic Western night camp seem effortless and simple but are actually quite amazing in their ability to capture the nostalgia of a genre as well as build its own narrative energy, the threads of which are more than relevant in contemporary times. In the age of the great American westerns, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Fred Zinneman, and others used the genre to spin morality tales of good and evil, right and wrong. The genre has undoubtedly evolved into something different, and James Mangold was able to bridge the past and the current with his film, and he does so with eloquence and nuance.

Persepolis (Vincent Parannaud and Marjane Satrapi): Showing off the limitless creative potential of which animation --and the medium of cinema, as a whole-- is capable, Persepolis is also a deeply personal account of one woman growing up in several countries. It's the kind of story that is only enhanced by the whimsy of its style. With unflinching surrealism, Vincent Parannaud and Marjane Satrapi (whose story this is) invite viewers into young Marjane's mind as she witnesses war and family loss and experiences the physical and psychological aches and pains of growing up without an identity. They take full advantage of the autonomy that animation grants filmmakers and viewers, and they offset their brilliant images with a very real portrait of a woman, a family, and a country at a time of crisis. And yet, the directors never let the movie be defined by its settings and circumstances, but instead locate something much more personal in a girl's growth into womanhood.

No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen): How does one begin to talk about this film? Discussed constantly on blogs and in print, The Coen brothers' film can be described as nothing short of a masterpiece. I'd like to single out one aspect of its greatness here: sound. A number of critics have discussed the noteworthy absence score in the film, which is surprising considering how comfortable Joel and Ethan Coen are with music in their films. Some of their most memorable images --the Ax Man in Fargo, the hat in Miller's Crossing, etc.-- were so memorable because of Carter Burwell's musical accompaniment. No Country For Old Men is equally memorable for its music, which is almost impossible to notice due to how it is so part of the image. For example, watch closely Anton Chigurh's conversation with the gas station clerk early in the film. Burwell augments the mood of the scene and its perfect compositions with just the right chord, so deep it's almost unrecognizable. But it's right. As for the sparing use of music, one could argue that the decision not to put music to images in this film does not take away from the musicality of those images at all. After all, as I have argued before, we don't just see images, but smell, taste, and hear them too.

Once (John Carney): Speaking of music, there have been many filmmakers and critics that have referred to cinema as something of a sibling to music. From a purely technical standpoint, the two art forms don't appear to have much in common. But both as an expression and as an experience, cinema mirrors the transient affective experience that come from listening to music. John Carney's Once is the perfect expression of this union. The whole film is like a song, and the songs contained in the film tell stories that are movies unto themselves. Simply told, Once is a film that follows the relationship of two individuals. They never kiss, or even embrace (to my knowledge), and yet their connection is sensual and impossible, resulting in one of the more bittersweet, deeply felt films in recent years. Small and seemingly mundane as they are, every look between these two, every smile, is a rich expression of feeling.

Zodiac (David Fincher): Jim Emerson said it best: Zodiac is about information -- its production, distribution, and consumption. David Fincher dares to introduce an irresistible plotline about the unsolved mystery of a serial killer in San Francisco and then turns completely away from it, as if uninterested. What starts as a visceral, brutally physical movie ends up following a cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhal) driving 100 miles to a small-town police station to dig up old records. The murder scenes trail off about midway through the film, and we're left with one person's obsession with uncovering his identity, losing his wife and family in the process. But Zodiac is not so much about the serial murders of the real-life zodiac killer as it is about media and technology, and the massive implications for their use in the digital age. The film paints an idea of its killer with a painstakingly constructed vision of something so unimaginable: a pre-digital world, where information is spread over real physical geography, inked onto pages, and traveling through wires. Information was something to be handled and used for specific means. Fincher's film depicts the unique collision of the analog and the digital that now constitutes our current media culture and manifestations of violence, celebrities, and the ongoing necessity of purpose.

The year that was, the year that is: Cinema 2007 (Part I)

2008-08-21T11:30:00.016-04:00

Journalism has become more about the moment in recent years. As news networks and publications rush to be the first rather than the best to report something, mainstream film criticism has been trying to keep pace. In an increasingly crowded market of films. Journalistic criticism is suffering from the many of the same flaws as mainstream media. These drawbacks can best be summed up in the overall poor coverage of the nuanced crop of films currently available. It's become clear that the old model of film reviewing simply isn't condusive with the economic and cultural changes in film, criticism, and media. A consumer model for years, journalistic film criticism has stayed relevant simply by keeping up with the ever-revolving door of films in current release. But now more movies are released each year and the conditions of digital culture have enabled viewers to see a wider variety of films. There will always be blockbusters to help critics (and most others in the movie industry) pay the bills, but the current system of film reviewing is failing economically and critically.

Nowhere is this more evident than in those end-of-the-year Top Ten lists. Apart from the mostly homogeneos structure of these annual reflections, they also only turn up only between December 15 and January 15. While this appropriate for economic purposes, it reproduces a notion of film and criticism as plastic-wrapped products, appropriated and consumed in the moment, forgotten quickly in the desire to consume more. I want to avoid being hypocritical, though. In many ways, movies are commodities. And so often are movie reviews. My main concern here is not so much the commodification of film and film criticism, but when this underlying truth absorbs any and all other potential paths to participate in movies and criticism as readers, writers, and spectators.

There is nothing inherently wrong with following the conventions of the trade, whether we're talking about deadlines, word length, or content. I do, however, fear that with the normalization of these Top Tens and retrospectives, it's become difficult for criticism to really engage cinema outside the boundaries of commercial consumption, because it appears now that even memory has been co-opted. These boundaries condition us to keep on trucking through new films and to appreciate anything not "in the now" in a very controlled way. We should accustom our minds and memories to contain the sounds and images we associate with great films. We need to re-calibrate our critical consciousness, place movies, images, and modes of criticism in such a way that we aren't accepting or rejecting the current system or methods of inquiry / discourse.

One way of beginning this process is for those of us outside the professional laurels of film criticism to take advantage of the autonomy granted by the digital media we work within. Although many critics are forced to move on from discussing films from last year or the year before, all of us have the unique opportunity to continue those dialogues, start new ones, and set new patterns for what films are being talked about and how they are discussed. I'll be doing that here by writing about movies that have mostly dropped off the film critical radar. I've been squirming to keep up with as many '08 releases as possible. But all the while I've been thinking, reflecting, sometimes writing about my favorite films from last year, especially since I've only recently caught up with many of them on DVD. So instead of a Top Ten, I'll look at all of the films that I believe to be important. Moreover, I've seen them all at different times and some more than others. My goal is to try to locate a new way of talking about some of the more popular ones and getting some other movies talked about at all.

Allowing some distance between yourself and a "cinematic year" helps situate certain films or the year as a whole in the context of a changing life. We can see the reflections and the shadows of ourselves in movies, and time. Some movies are still fresh in my memory as if I've seen them yesterday, where others have lurked deep in my consciousness and may appear different than I remember seeing them. Often I will recall a certain time of year or an event in my life that I associate when I return to these films.

The movies I'm going to discuss here stood out to me in some way, sometimes in the moment of seeing them, sometimes after a passage of time. The circumstances are different with each movie. Some films on this list probably are more significant to me personally than to the artistic growth of cinema, and others may illuminate cultural moments in terms of either their impact on audiences or in terms of their narrative / thematic content. It's difficult to say where exactly the lines between these different levels of significance are; which is partly why these kinds of retrospectives are so relevant, especially when they are situated outside the commercial tides of film criticism. Movies are all about time; shrinking it, expanding it, and recreating moments within it. Maybe they mean so much to us because we are constantly caught in the flux of time, narrativizing our lives out of the raw material of experience.

So without further pontification, I now share with you my impressions on a year in cinema that still lives in my mind, even if we're well into a new one. Rather than trying to capture movies themselves into a matter of paragraphs, I have opted to pick out moments and details -- a scene, character, movement, a line of dialogue, or something else -- that locks each respective movie in time, personally and culturally, defining it rather than representing it.

[Note: Because there are many movies I'd like to discuss, this is the first of two posts with my reflections on 2007 movies. Next post to follow in a couple of days.]

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I'm Not There (Todd Haynes): "It's like you got yesterday, today and tomorrow, all in the same room. There's no telling what can happen." This line --the last in the film, I believe-- says it all. Unlike many other supposedly postmodern movies which slice up their narratives and present them out-of-sequence, this film actually achieves a fluidity with its disconnected components. These disparate elements include visual styles and the many lives of Bob Dylan, and they manifest in different aesthetic rhythms and physical incarnations of Dylan himself (with six different actors playing him). Rather than chopping up a linear narrative and presenting it in puzzle form (which is ultimately linear), this movie really follows through in its non-linear aesthetic and narrative style. And the most amazing thing is that it comes together in the oddest, most abstract, and lyrical ways.

Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg): This movie was a standout to me when I first saw it in September of last year, and its images still invade my memory to this day. Having to pick just one scene would be cruel. I'll instead reference the opening paragraph from my original review of the film, which describes the opening scene of the film.

"The opening scenes of David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises depict a man awkwardly severing another's neck. They both quiver in fear; one for losing his life, the other for taking one. Cronenberg draws out this precise feeling to unbearable lengths, with the stable camera refusing to edit to another image as we see the struggle ensue. Where many filmmakers are content to represent brutality via images of slit necks and stabbings often containing just enough detail to keep the viewer at a pleasurable distance, Cronenberg refuses you that pleasure. In doing so, he locates a primal state where you can feel the blood flowing through your veins. His images invite another form of pleasure. The scene consists of a very simple series of shots which evoke the difficulty and the struggle of being on both the perpetrating and receiving ends of the killing of a person. It's almost a sexual encounter, one that's revealed to be nothing more than business once it's over."

Helvetica (Gary Hustwit), Lake of Fire (Tony Kaye), and Manufactured Landscapes (Jennifer Baichwal): I know, I know. Lumping three movies together simply because they are documentaries is pretty inexcusable. Having said that, my choice to run them all under one heading was inspired more by what their differences as well as their similarities. Each of these films is visually inventive, eluding the simplistic conceptions of documentary that many individuals hold. And although they deal in different subject matters and aesthetics, they are bound by an underlying inquiry into culture, social action, and responsibility. These films don't preach about a message or assemble various talking heads to blather on; they are earnest, inquisitive films examining social actions, issues, and phenomena -- from abortion, to language, to biosocial aesthetics -- and they do so in a way that illuminates something about the world. I fail to find a moment in any one of them that defines or represents their worth. They are each a collection of images, thoughts, and representations that engage you in questions of what it means to be a member of culture/s, belief system/s, and the social fields and constellations that we inhabit.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik): Under cover of trees and night, Jesse James (Brad Pitt) rides alongside his next victim, talking casually, slowly, as if the thought that he was not about to take a man's life didn't once cross his mind. James tells the man to "go on ahead," reassuring him that he'll be just behind him. They both know what's happening and yet neither makes a rise. The man obliges and begins walking his horse foreward into the darkness. In one sustained shot, Jesse is slowly obscured into a motionless figure in the background as we lock on to this man's face as fear and dread beckoning in his eyes. Finally, a gunshot cuts through the night silence.

Few movies from last year are as introspective about death as The Assassination of Jesse James. This scene haunted me for days in how much it was unlike typical shooting or death scenes in movies. The feeling I had while watching it hangs over the whole movie, as if the spirits of Clint Eastwood and Terrence Malick were somehow melded together.

Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog): In the opening minutes of Rescue Dawn, you'll feel like you're seeing a Herzog film from the 1970's. Images of scorched earth fly by slowly in one fluid shot (from a helicopter flying over jungle in Southeast Asia) to the ethereal sounds of Klaus Badelt's score. Herzog has always been fascinated by the collision of nature and technology, and this shot sets the mood perfectly for a quietly riveting film about one man's survival from being a POW. The remainder of the film is less like it's opening minutes and more committed to a gritty realism, heavily contrasting with these introductory images. Christian Bale and Jeremy Davies are both brilliant, mostly without ever speaking above a whisper as they conspire to break free from the camp they are imprisoned within. Some have said that Herzog has gone "Hollywood" with this film due to its ending. But its clear that Herzog is not much interested in survival itself, but the intangible drive for it.

Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright): Both a work of comedic brilliance and formally sound filmmaking, Hot Fuzz is one of last year's underrated treasure. Here's an excerpt from my original review:

"Every time a door is opened, every time a change of location takes place, we are treated to a loud, rapidly cut montage of close-ups that are now typical by contemporary murder drama/action movie standards. There are small touches of visual humor peppered throughout the proceedings, but the movie keeps a straight face -- mostly through Pegg's earnest performance -- even as it stoops to the most pendantic of visual gags. Such contrasts are the foundation for a narrative that never overtly establishes itself with any kind of consistency when it comes to genre placement. Rather than haphazardly surveying a patchwork pastiche of movie conventions as many other directors might, Wright instead opts to use this aura of stylistic and narrative inconsistency to his advantage by building the drama, action, and comedy of the film around it."

Ratatouille (Brad Bird):
Django: We look out for our own kind, Remy. When all is said and done, we're all we've got.
Remy: No. Dad, I don't believe it. You're telling me that the future is - can only be - more of this?
Django: This is the way things are; you can't change nature.
Remy: Change is nature, Dad. The part that we can influence. And it starts when we decide.
Django: Where are you going?
Remy: With luck, forward.

Most discussions I've read and been apart of about Ratatouille have focused on the whimsy of the narrative or the wonder of the animation. Sadly, little of said of what the film is really after. The dialogue I've posted above is an exchange between Remy and his father facing one another in the rain, each breaking the other's heart without a voice needing to be raised. Out of context, this chunk of dialogue may appear to be speechifying about a message, but it's actually articulating of a conflict that affects every individual within or a part of a culture, gender, race, sex, religion, etc. This thematic focus is subtly stated through the film, and it's not about party lines or moral balance so much as perception. One could say that Brad Bird is making a statement about digital cinema and animation as they fight for validity amongst the tide of traditional photography-based filmmaking, bu it's about that and so much else. Ratatouille will speak to its viewers in various ways, but for me, this dialogue is the centerpiece of the movie because it painfully evokes the wounds at the heart of all social divides.

Sunshine (Danny Boyle): "What can you see?" So asks the spaceship's crewsperson as his captain stands immobile on the hull awaiting certain death, with the sun's rays moving closer. Sudden waves of light and movement surround the captain, enveloping and filling the composition with sharp, disjointed sensibilities. But as the plane of light passes over his body, all of these currencies of beams and vibrations disappear. What we have is an isolated, even intimate moment of intense senation as time and space fold into one transient moment of illumination -- life and death. One of the memorable motifs throughout the film involves sight or the power of the vision. Sight is often obscured in focus and movement, but in moments of death, it becomes the vantage point through which transcendence and death are intensely experienced. As I observed in a previous post, Sunshine "makes the sight of the sun utterly sublime, whether one is close enough to touch it or millions of miles away..."

Into the Wild (Sean Penn): There is a moment between Hal Holbrook's father figure and Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) so heartbreaking that it captures the whole film. Holbrook clearly doesn't want Chris to leave for Alaska so he offers to adopt him. Through most of this quiet exchange, Penn locks on Holbrook's beaten, worn-down face, tears filling his eyes, as he must come to terms with the fact that Chris simply will not listen. What struck me most about the negative response to Into the Wild is the misguided focus on the central character's arrogance and/or foolishness. I don't see how that equates to the film being arrogant and/or foolish, but that distinction was lost on many. Sean Penn's film may not be one of the very finest from 2007 when it comes to critical or formal analysis; I'm sure I could watch it right now and point out flaws galore. But that is exactly the kind of attitude toward movies and art in general that I find arrogant and foolish. Into the Wild is an empassioned, ambitious, and heartfelt experience centered around the life of a person who saw and lived in a very different world.

Stay tuned for more...

Manny Farber: In Memory

2008-08-19T09:35:00.010-04:00

"The liveliest, smartest, most original film critic this country ever produced."
-- Susan Sontag, on Manny Farber

Considering who those words are coming from, this is the highest compliment one could receive. And Manny Farber deserved it. Having provided us so many indispensable ideas about visuality and criticism, Farber now leaves us --termite critics, as Andy Horbal once wrote in the spirit of Farber-- to realize his vision of engaging the multitude of images in the world. He will always be one of the most unique voices in film criticism and aesthetics.

Some tributes:

-- Jim Emerson at scanners
-- Brendon Bouzard at My Five Year Plan
-- Glenn Kenny at Some Came Running
-- David Schwartz at the Moving Image Resource
-- Ryland Walker Knight at Vinyl is Heavy
-- Zach Campbell at Elusive Lucidity

My favorite Randy Newman score

2008-08-11T15:53:00.004-04:00

Please excuse this brief excursion into cinephilia...

Last weekend I was out of town, and in my endless channel-flipping one morning during my hotel stay, I came across one of my very favorite comedies, The Naked Gun (1988). I'd seen it numerous times since I was a kid and still cherish it immensely, but I never would have thought to gain insight into why this film always made such an impression on me, especially for being such an absurd comedy. Maybe it was the change of scenery, but I was able to enjoy the movie in a way that was both familiar (i.e. anticipating every shot, every joke) but different. It was kind of like being in a room that you're inside frequently, like an office or bedroom or classroom, but standing in a completely different area of it. You know the room, but it feels so strange and new from a different angle. My epiphany with The Naked Gun was the realization that it contains a perfect montage.

Here's the set-up: The scene occurs late in the movie, when Lt. Drebin (Leslie Nielson) is undercover as the home plate umpire at the Angels / Mariners game, where during the 7th inning stretch, one of the players is supposed to kill the visiting Queen of England. Drebin doesn't know which player will commit the crime, so he attempts to frisk each and every player at some point during the game. This isn't terribly interesting stuff, but it makes for some delightful comedic payoffs in the hands of Leslie Nielson, the world's best actor at playing dumb. It also sets up nicely for an expedient montage that shows us the passage of time in the game and provides comedy in rhythmic doses of visual set-ups.

Well, this montage does that and more, combining the perfect musical score with images of sports bloopers and Nielson-esque comedy. Have a look:

If you're seeing this for the first time, the absence of context may make it difficult to distinguish between this and the current (dismal) crop of spoofs. But for me, it's a time capsule to the 80's-- Not just with the Zucker brand of comedy (which began with Airplane!) that seemed so fresh, delightfully offensive, and hilarious at the time, but also the many minor details such as the old-but-not-vintage baseball uniforms, the facial hair and wardrobe of the spectators, etc.

That music you hear is one of Randy Newman's finest scores, even though it's not the film's score (which was written by Ira Newborn). The song is "I Love L.A.", and it it's got that perfect combination of a pleasurable, jumpy melody and a touch of synthesized sound that grounds the scene in the 80's. Although the song first appeared on Newman's 1983 album, Trouble in Paradise, it was beautifully employed here for this montage, representing a likely scenario in which the music for a scene was selected before the images were edited. In other words, it's the music that guides the images. The quick-cut images would have no life without the music; it would be dull and static. But with that song, the images just seem right. Something about the jovial tune, Newman's raspy voice, and the unbelievability of the game melding together in one short sequence is just perfect.

The images make little sense in the context of baseball or in any other way, whether it's the players rounding second base one-by-one to the high electronic notes in the song, or an elongated celebration at the plate after a home run (while Drebin frisks them all), or the frequent cuts to changing electronic numbers on the scoreboard. But they have an inexplicable rhythm and atmosphere that sells us on the comedy, the passage of time, and most importantly, the affective state or atmosphere that is unique to The Naked Gun which seems to exist outside the bounds of space and time.

While surely bearing no significance to those who didn't grow up watching this movie and associating it with childhood memories, montages like this one illustrate perhaps in some small way the intangible accessibility of movies; the way they are both relevant within and outside of our lives, how they reflect and inform our own state or the state of the world. These sensibilities extend far beyond conventionally attractive movies (by the standards of most critics), as I'm sure all of us have those movies that we simply love, no matter how critically taboo. Only when we change and movies do not can we realize that movies -- no matter how serious, dramatic, absurd, etc. -- mean something to us (both immediately and retrospectively) beyond our conscious appreciation.

How ironic that Montage allows us to experience that impermeability that movies have to time -- since, after all, Montage is all about time. As a concept and practice, montage can be thoroughly analyzed and dissected, but even if we are successful at excavating the sensations it can create in us in a comprehensible way --nostalgic or otherwise-- the sensuousness of that experience would likely be drained. Whether they are comprised of one shot or many, maybe movies themselves are larger montages in that, apart from boasting many individual moments, are moments unto themselves, enrapturing us in an affective experience built on associations and linkages having little to do with logic.

Terrorism, Criticism, and Opinionism: Observations on The Dark Knight

2008-08-06T16:32:00.015-04:00

With the influx of discussion about The Dark Knight on the internet these past several weeks, I have deliberately avoided a written reflection on the film. While I normally praise the networked approach to film criticism that blogging enables, the explosion of dialogue over Christopher Nolan's film has left me rather cold about the prospects for critical dialogue via digital media. Of course, it's disconcerting to see such prominent expressions of outright negativity and blind opining, from Rottentomatoes to the comments section of Keith Uhlich's review of the film at The House Next Door. But how ever easy it is to point out extreme examples of this rhetoric, singling out the worst cases often invites (even encourages) one to gloss over the ideological undercurrents of the larger practice, ultimately to validate and re-inscribe those underlying trends while losing sight of them.

My disenchantment with the discussion about The Dark Knight extends well past these often-disgusting negativities to encompass the overall state of critical mud-slinging about the film. On the film's release, the journalistic film critic community nearly unanimously annointed it as one of the finest studio pictures in years, comparable even to sequels like The Godfather Part II and The Empire Strikes Back. Comic-book audiences and general moviegoers echoed those sentiments. (The film has already crossed the coveted $400 million mark in just 18 days.) The massively positive response felt destined, what with the allusions to contemporary American political landscapes and the tragic death of Heath Ledger, who delivers one of the most memorable performances in years. It only seemed appropriate that critics and audiences would stand in solidarity in praise of the film.

Unfortunately, the effect has been devastating. The few dissenters were verbally crucified, with commenters demanding that these reviewers provide explanations and "evidence" for their purported mis-readings of the film. Those with less than positive perspectives provided no more or less evidence than those who liked the film -- they just happened to be singled out and raked over the coals because of those views. As Matt Zoller Seitz noted in the comments thread in Keith's (very good) review of The Dark Knight, what makes this all so scary is not that some commenters were downright vitriolic, but the collective mentality that smothers differing perspectives as if they are not allowed. At times this behavior borders on robotic uniformity, and it's worrisome.

Framing this within the larger discussion about blogging and digital discourse depresses me most. There were some two or three hundred responses to Keith's review, which is almost exponentially more than your typical response to blog posts, even the more controversial ones. We blog writers would like to think there is a silent majority of intelligent individuals reading our posts, but the overwhelming prominence of these naysayers may point to a very say reality that without commercial support, little will come of this experiment. This may signify that blogging or digital communication will eventually become just another corporate commodity with no such ability to influence anyone outside already established camps (e.g. film bloggers).

Equally disappointing was the "serious" discussion that's followed in light of the initial explosion of opinionated sneering on the film's initial release. Almost mirroring the tidal wave of uniform hatred expressed toward those who voiced discontent about The Dark Knight, a small band of determined, well-meaning critics / bloggers launched a counterattack on the film, as if to tear it down from the pedastol on which it has unrightfully been placed. I can't say I've read all of these reactions, but one thing I noticed in many of them was a homogeneous perspective -- ripping the film's formal elements, inept storytelling, and shallow allusions to post-9/11 America. Meanwhile, so few actual inquiries into the film have been attempted and we've instead found ourselves in an ideological and cultural struggle for commercial and/or intellectual superiority. These discussions almost never had anything to do with the film at all. The Dark Knight just happened to be the point through which all these lines of behavior and reaction passed through.

The majority of what I've read about The Dark Knight has not revealed anything worthwhile about the film. Seldom have I encountered pieces in which individuals have reflected on the immediate experience of the movie, its cultural significance, tonal qualities, or thematic relationships. Perhaps the discourse surrounding the film reveals rather than informs the state of culture than.

With the critical and popular responses to the film falling into such a bland pattern, it's now become obvious that a shift away from opinion and towards questions is more relevant. If we rendered ourselves incapable of discussing the film in terms of rateable quality or good-bad judgments, there might be a more varied perspectives. I would never discourage someone from having an opinion, it's basis for which we form those opinions that I would like to see expand. Then our opinions become more nuanced and interesting.

That said, the most interesting pieces about The Dark Knight that I've read were posted relatively recently (notably Rob Humanick's review at The Projection Booth and Ryland Walker Knight's email dialogue with Jennifer Stewart spread over two lengthy posts at Vinyl is Heavy), and I suspect that may be because we've had a little bit more time to digest both the film and the whirlwind of coverage about the film.

I saw the film just once about three weeks ago. So I'm finding it hard to review it in the same capacity as some others. It would also be relatively inconsequential, since thousands have dissected and analyzed the film's significance and plot points over and again. The last thing I would want to do is add my own judgments to the stockpile of opinions about The Dark Knight, suffice to say that it was endlessly intriguing and not at all what I expected. Which is probably why I am so disappointed with the dialogue both in print and online about the film. Nevertheless, there were some things that struck me about the film that are worth exploring in more detail.

I'll start with the "post 9/11" connections. After reading countless posts and articles about the connections of the film's events to Bush-era politics and post-9/11 American life, many of which very interesting, my inclination is to consider these claims in relation to the specific narrative relations in the film. There are countless allusions to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with images of videotaped torture, as well as a scene in which Batman uses cellular surveillance to track down the Joker. The film makes these allusions very explicit indeed, but to what end? I think the film is far too hazy to simply situate these blatant connection within pro-Bush :: anti-Bush or pro-war :: anti-war schemes. Christopher Nolan no doubt wants viewers to think about these issues, but that doesn't necessarily mean he endorses the actions of his protagonist, or, for that matter, that the film should be a 1:1 comparison to current world events.

On that note, why does Batman and Gotham have to represent something, a la Bush or America? We have connections between the fictitious world of the film and the non-fictitious world in which it is set. But that doesn't mean we have anything tangible. Besides, the "real" world we live in is anything but real, come to think of it. We all have our own perceptions of it, and our engagement in it depends on those perceptions. Who's to say what is fictitious and what is not? If we must ground our criticism in Jungian cine-psychoanalytic approaches, then perhaps Batman and Gotham represent the harsh collision of the fiction and the supposed real world. The Dark Knight could therefore be depicting the collapse of social order under the weight of our obsessions with myths, heroes, and villains. Our desire for these things is insatiable, perhaps because they help to narrativize and streamline the chaos and absence of meaning.

Batman Begins (2005) dealt with these relationships head-on. It speechified too strongly about its themes of fear and justice, among other things, but it balanced its construction of myth and reality so effectively that they bled into each other to become each other. The film made known immediately that it was happening in a world like our own, that it would be less cartoony and comic-book-y and more something that could potentially happen. The action was down-and-dirty; Bruce Wayne made a believable arc to becoming Batman; and Gotham City felt like a real city. Interestingly, the film contrasted this move toward realism against the building desire and purported need for a hero. It romanticized the hero myth. Aesthetically, thematically, and structurally, the film was a blurring of gritty realism and mythmaking, both grounded in and taking flight from the everyday.

The Dark Knight all but leaves this world behind. Entrenched in city politics and the corrosion of social orders, it seems to be moving farther away from the romantic vision established in the previous film. I will have to see it once or twice more before I begin to really delve into the possibility that The Dark Knight is a result of the schizophrenic unity of Batman Begins. But I initially perceived the aesthetic discontinuities (from the first film to this one) as a deep flaw; Gotham is more open, glassy, and overall more cool in tone-- nothing like the Gotham from Begins. Moreover, Batman is hokier this time around. He stands out in an otherwise serious story about the injection of paranoia and chaos into a society. Unlike in Begins, this film seems to fully take place in a more "real" world controlled by fear, where it has become nearly impossible to feasibly envision a hero.

The Dark Knight never achieves the sense of aesthetic flow of the first film. Narratively and aesthetically, Nolan is intently focused on something larger than individual moments or scenes. What that larger something is, I don't know. It would be easy to criticize it for too explicitly manipulating the many elements it has in motion, moving so quickly from one moment to the next and rarely fixating on a pure moments. Plot-wise, so much transpires in the course of the film that there appears to be no narrative rhythm at all. Whether this was Nolan's intent is not really what's important, but I will admit that I found the experience of the film very disorienting, while watching it and in retrospect.

At the heart of this estrangement is Heath Ledger's Joker, who just about takes over the film. His presence makes such an impression that all else seems to fade into the background -- whether that's the aesthetic design or character plotlines. Ledger embodies a void as a man who (some have argued) is the antithesis to the symbol that Bruce Wayne set out to create in the first film. Where Begins represented sound structural precision in developing the evolution of that symbol (The Batman) into an inevitable union of man and symbol by the end, Knight is only interested in the effects that Man as Symbol (The Joker) can have on a society. The Joker has no connection to the human life around him beyond that of maneuvering within the corrupt infrastructures of society and government. He passes through legal systems and defies physical possibility simply by being everywhere and anticipating Batman's every move. Many accounts have situated the Joker as the terrorist to Batman's America, but this is overly reductive. He does not represent a terrorist or terrorism, but is instead both a man and an idea, a manifestation of collective fears and a deeply buried desire for any figure that is both a person and a symbol, even if he is an agent of chaos. There is something attractive about him, which is the real focus of the film. The closing narration explains that Batman is the "hero Gotham needs," but not the one it wants. The Joker may be both the villain the city needs and wants, which is why his presence comes to swallow up the film much like he does the city.

Whether you consider The Dark Knight great, a masterpiece, or "flawed" (whatever that means) will more likely depend on your ideological relationship with its narrative form and aesthetic content. Some will inevitably try to isolate variables of the film to support an argument, but the film (like any) is about the movement and interaction of all of its variables. They are constantly in motion. When I initially saw the film I was extremely disappointed, not just because it failed to live up to my expectation based on the first film, but because it felt rhythmically out of kilter. On more reflection, I've been consistently more fascinated with the movie and all of the things that eluded me on that one viewing. But the impassioned of commentary and debate has distanced me from it to the point that I didn't want to write about it, or even to think about it. But I've since come to understand that The Dark Knight cannot stand by itself as other movies might. It is deeply embroiled in a cultural landscape --both internally and externally-- that the film and what it signifies have become so intertwined, like man (Bruce Wayne) and symbol (Batman) it depicts.

Now that may be a worthwhile starting point for a more relevant critique of the film.

Moments that mean: A novelist's perspective on movies, literature

2008-08-02T09:29:00.002-04:00

[Editor's note: This essay was originally published at The House Next Door.]

A few weeks ago I listened to a Diane Rehm interview with Salman Rushdie, whose work is revered in literary circles and regarded among the finest in contemporary fiction. He discussed his novels, religion, and world affairs in typically compelling fashion. My own encounters with Rushdie's work are limited—I have only read The Satanic Verses in my college "Forms of the Novel" class, but that nevertheless represented one of the more memorable experiences I've had with current literature. Reading The Satanic Verses was like watching a film with the shared sensibilities of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick, particularly as regards its reflexive journey through conventions of the narrative form. Unlike other supposedly "deconstructive" works, The Satanic Verses didn't distance me with its nonlinear approach to character and storytelling. I found it utterly mesmerizing, not once wishing it would focus its disparate elements and seemingly random interludes around a coherent narrative or character design.

It may seem problematic to compare the work of a writer such as Rushdie to filmmakers like Lynch and Kubrick. We often hear that books and movies are very different media/cultural artifacts. Although each deal in narrative to some capacity, the means by which films and books are made and consumed are vastly different. The academic dialogue on the topic largely resists the tendency to draw easy comparisons between books and movies, even when it comes to movie adaptations of books that tend to exemplify the respective form's strengths and weaknesses (with film usually on the low end of the spectrum). But the other side of this extreme—the insistence on these media being too different to reduce to the same plane, to even compare in any productive manner—is also problematic. That's because the experiences of reading a book and watching a movie are separated and united by more than mere narrative structures.

How appropriate that Rushdie touched on this idea, albeit briefly, during his interview. A caller asked for his insights on the potential competition between film and the novel as artistic, narrative media. The caller was compelled to ask the question after hearing a statement by Ridley Scott, who said something to the effect that film was the theater of the 20th century and will become the literature of the 21st century. Rushdie's response:

"I'm a great admirer of film, so I don't see this as an either/or question. Ridley Scott is a friend of mine, and I enormously admire his work. I do think film at its best is fully the equal of a great novel. Blade Runner, for example, is a film that would stand up against most contemporary novels. I do think that the great gift literature has is its intimacy. It takes place in a reader's mind, whereas a movie takes place on a screen and you watch it. But a novel is played out in your imagination, and interacts with the imagination. The reason for the durability of the form is that private conversation between the imagination of the writers and the imaginations of the reader. People have always found that attractive, and I suspect always will. The great gift of literature is that it takes you into worlds that are not your world and makes it feel like your world. I read the literature of the United States before I ever came to America, and when I came here I felt like I knew something about the country from reading Faulkner and Steinbeck, up to contemporary writers. So whether it's taking us into the past or into another country, we can gain the world through literature, and I think that is a unique gift of the form."

One thing to keep in mind is that Rushdie is responding off the cuff, so we perhaps shouldn't view his remarks as his definitive take on the subject. Having said that, his rendering of the novel in relation to film illustrates the discourse of dualisms that has shaped how we think about each of these forms. In his opening statement, Rushdie emphasizes that film should not be thought of as a lesser form than the novel. This is rather appropriate since film's status as an industrial art was born as much out of the mechanical technologies of the 19th and 20th centuries as it was from aesthetic and narrative traditions of painting, literature, and theater. Since the beginning of the medium, filmmakers and film theorists have felt as though they've needed to defend it from classicists who scoffed at the simplicity of its images, the lack of nuance in its narrative capacity. Unfortunately, this mentality has been preserved throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, to the extent that every theoretical inquiry into cinema's artistic, commercial, and cultural worth must be precluded by an argument for why movies are "worthy."

Given this background and now-familiar mold for thinking about film, it's nice to see a famed novelist speak so highly of movies. His response even seems to suggest that there is much bad fiction in the world as there is bad filmmaking. However, novels tend to get a pass in this department, mostly because—good or bad—they don't have the public exposure that films do. In the populist sense, movies appear to only be thought of as commodities. The proportion of bad movies to bad books may not be so far off, but as a commercial institution, studio films are immensely scrutinized. Their historical association with melodrama and flamboyance, and more recent connections with demographic-appealing schlock, does not help their image.

Tied to commercial interests is the fact that film is industrial, not just in terms of the end product but in terms of its construction. Auteurism certainly thrives in the annals of film theory and directors get the lion's share of the credit for a film's artistic success or failure, but the simple fact is that film is a collaborative medium. Even if a director has "total control" s/he requires the hands of many others to realize that vision, whether set builders, camera operators, or the lowly production assistants who organize flights and meal schedules. One person or even a few people cannot feasibly make a movie in the vast majority of cases, no matter what the reach or commercial aspiration, which may speak to why so many great visions are not fully realized on film, and why great films can happen seemingly by accident.

All of these discursive, social, and technological components have great implications for how movies are made, watched, and viewed as a medium—why they've always been generally seen as a "lesser" form of narrative, lacking artistic significance. Rushdie's refusal to pick between them or to make sweeping statements about one medium's superiority over the other is refreshing and intelligent. The remainder of his response addresses the other major part of this discussion, one which is more shaky from a cultural, even theoretical perspective. This has to do with the experience of engaging the work as a reader/viewer.

In a general sense, experiencing any form of art—or for that matter, any form of experience—is at once similar and dissimilar. Whether it's everyday life, looking at a photograph, reading a book, watching a movie, all of these activities are mediated by the countless technologies and signifying practices that give rise to them. We separate and categorize them because we need to contain and quantify them, as evidenced by our systems of communication and economics that are based on separation and distinction. As an active construction, engagement, and comprehension of sensual fields, however, experience is infinite in its capacity. In my view, this is the central condition that constitutes all art—reproducing, engaging, and representing experience in intangible ways, in ways that both separate us and immerse us in moments that mean.

When it comes to the specific similarities and differences of reading a book and watching a movie, Rushdie's comments are both right and wrong. Reading a book can be very personal and represent more of an exchange between a writer and a reader. It is certainly a gift of literature. But everything he says in the later portion, about how books can take you "into worlds that are not your world and make it feel like your world," or "into the past or into another country," can similarly be true of a film's sights and sounds. The media, technologies, and biological processes by which the moving image appears on screen and is branded onto the viewer's brain may differ from the kinds of images and sounds that the formations of words may stir from a good book. But the effect of sensual engagement with an image, sound, memory, is as unique to audiovisual media as it is to books.

When it comes to the production and consumption of cinematic images and affections, the circumstances are undoubtedly different and changing all the time. We can create new kinds of images based on new approaches to established styles in framing, composition, performance, and narrative structure, but we can also construct them in digital space, a method that continues to open new doors with regards to how we conceive of and see films. From a viewing standpoint, films are now not only communal experiences we share at a theater, but are also intimate adventures that we can view in our homes with media that enable us to freeze, quicken, or slow down the compositions. These various social and technological developments allow us to experience films differently and enable their images to saturate our memories in new ways.

We're still discovering the kinds of images and sensations that this ubitquitous medium is capable of. Those sensibilities will continue to evolve along with our media landscape and definitions of culture. To see, hear, and feel a moving image is an experience both personal and universal. It is a unique immersion in cerebral and affective processes that will continue to develop according to unique sociocultural and technological conditions. It may exist on celluloid or in digital space, but much like the images we conjure when reading words on a page, it also exists in our minds and memories. The world of a film extends far beyond the four corners of the frame, and is realized in greater detail beyond the onscreen color schemes, effects, and sounds. Movies invite an interaction between the viewer and the image, between our organic bodies and the synthetic world that we have constructed and and maneuver within. The changes seen in film form and narrative likely reflect the evolving ways in which we inhabit physical and digital space, stretch it, and embody it. Movies collapse the divide between self and other, all the while expanding our capacity for perceiving and creating new images and relations to the world around us. We are images, narratives, and agents of artifice, and we can gain the world through movies.

"Minor" Welles

2008-07-27T22:39:00.009-04:00

Whether in front of or behind the camera, Orson Welles was commanding screen presence. He had a voice that carried words softly but authoritatively, and his on-screen portraits have given cinema some of its finest and most memorable images. Anyone who has seen Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) will not ever likely forget his face when he first appears in the film enveloped in shadow. Even his mouth, as the focus of a single short close-up in Citizen Kane (1941), will be long-remembered as that which uttered the impassioned whisper, "Rosebud!" These images and countless others have cemented themselves in the minds of cinephiles and film historians.

As a director, Welles is perhaps even more respected. He famously made several critical darlings in film history and is also remembered as one of the first filmmakers to dare to take on Shakespeare. Aside from his individual film by film achievements, he is rightly considered on of cinema's best craftspersons and artists. Welles brought unparalleled aesthetic quality to "high art" material like Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), but also potboiler pulp such as in the brilliant Touch of Evil (1958). Many of these films I have seen long ago. I often revisit them in my memory as well as occasionally on-screen. However, I should admit that my place in the world of Welles (regrettably) hasn't extended beyond these films. Before the cinephile police come and arrest me, I should note that I have dutifully excavated films like Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil in multiple viewings. And on these occasions, I have discovered and learned more with each subsequent viewing regularly uncover in each of them, relishing Welles' ability to stretch the reach of cinema's aesthetic potential. Welles has a fascination with storytelling, but his occupation in the film canon has more to with how subtly and eruditely he engages narrative and aesthetics with each other.

Having thoroughly dissected just a few of the director's films and altogether not seeing a majority of others, my critical vantage point into Welles and his work is characterized by both expertise and estrangement. I become more aware of this unique position when I step outside the familiar trappings of the "core" Welles films I've seen over and over again. Seeing other films in Welles' filmography is as disorienting as it is familiar, and on the few times I've ventured to do it has resulted in new cinematic discoveries, not just in the films themselves but in gaining new angles on the increasingly problematic yet necessary concept of auteurism and aesthetic reflexivity.

Recently, I watched one of Welles' supposedly "minor" works, The Lady From Shanghai (1948). I was not surprised to find out that it was yet another intriguing exercise in Welles' career-long inquiry into the potential of the moving image. But how the film does this is especially significant, particularly from my Kane / Evil-tilted understanding of Welles. Throughout the film's short running time, I drew a number of comparisons to Touch of Evil in its experimentation with undertones of film noir, even though The Lady From Shanghai is tonally very different. Nevertheless, there are traces of the gritty noir realm he constructed for the former film. As it is, The Lady From Shanghai will likely not be remembered with the same loving embrace as Touch of Evil because it lacks thematic consistency. It is both playful and brooding, and it never locates a balanced stroke of either. A 90-minute tale of ambiguity, murder, and class divides, The Lady From Shanghai converges a variety of narrative and stylistic approaches common to Welles. But these elements are streamlined so smoothly that it's treasures may glide right past you on first viewing.

Welles plays Mike O'Hara, an admittedly naive Irishmen who falls for the Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth, with a rare updo), wife of a rich man, Arthur Bannister. O'Hara is invited on a yachting cruise with the Brittons, where finds himself caught in a web of lies and deceit surrounding a murder plot that goes horribly wrong. Standard murder drama stuff, to be sure. But Welles spins it so deliriously and seemingly effortlessly and still manages to squeeze out so many genuine moments and keen commentaries that one can't single out individual moments to describe the compositional beauty and the perfect fusion of movement and storytelling.

No doubt The Lady From Shanghai initially comes across is a distinctly enjoyable film, but it appears to only achieve greatness in moments, most notably in the hall of mirrors climax, where Welles delights in the deconstruction and reconstruction of images. He multiplies them, overlays them, and runs them through our minds in twisted fashion. The wonder of the scene, however, is that he finds a poetry in the hyper-motion; it's the kind of surrealistic fusion that makes sense only in the motion of the figures on screen.

However, with scenes like the funhouse exuding bold explosions of style, the film's small treasures can be easily overlooked. In the seamless setup and execution of narrative, Welles' visual allusions are aplenty and aided greatly by his uncanny eye for compositional detail and fluidity, i.e. foregrounding and lighting techniques that are both straightforward and densely rich. A fine example of this narrative-stylistic synthesis is the scene in which O'Hara (Welles) and Mr. Grisby (Glenn Anders) walk along the cliffs of the ocean line discussing how they will fake Grisby's murder. While keeping his actors foregrounded in the shots, Welles never allows the ocean to leave the background. He creates such a distance between the actors and the crashing ocean water behind and below them. These shots are spatially uneasiness, as we can never quite make sense of the surroundings as O'Hara and Grisby make their way down to a particular point on one cliff's edge with the conservation becoming more strange is it evolves. The tension is dually heightened, but not for reasons unknown. It's an intangible discomfort, one that doesn't become evident until the last shot of the sequence, when Brisby abruptly "falls out" of the shot, inducing a feeling of vertigo as the scene culminates in a cryptic, sudden abruption. We know Grisby hasn't fallen, but the simple stagings and framings create a strange spatial orientiation.

These are only a few examples of the film's breezy mastery of style. The Lady From Shanghai is fully of these little moments, from a humorous courtroom scene to its yachting travelogue through many luxurious locales. Part of what makes it so special is that it downplays its dramatic aspirations and demonstrates the versatility of visual storytelling. Welles' seems to be indulging in a bit of fun with the film, but in doing so he hones in on the great pleasure of storytelling and simply watching images. For every bit of deliberate formal detail there are so many naturalistic tones breaking through the formalism, giving them a sense of weightless playfulness that only highlights the film's formal strengths, however sporadic or straight-ahead they are. All of these components come together so easily to enliven deceptively simple story about (conveniently enough) the physical and emotional pains of simple deception.

The Lady From Shanghai will likely always be pigeon-holed as nothing more than a pleasurable diversion, and that fact all the more elucidates the intangible simplicity that makes this film such an important one in Welles' oeuvre. It also highlights the strengths and weaknesses of auteurist criticism. Were it made by any other director its many treasures would be reaped by more viewers. I fear that if I had seen the film after watching more of his movies, I would not appreciate its virtues in quite the same way. Where I go with Welles from here I do not know, and that's something I'm happy to admit.

Spirituality through narrative: Hellboy II -- The Golden Army

2008-07-14T10:51:00.009-04:00

With some seven feature films under his belt, Guillermo del Toro's filmmaking resume is beginning to take shape. Whether you mostly love his films (like I do) or are kept at a distance by his strange preoccupations and sometimes sluggish storytelling, del Toro's growing body of work is among the more noteworthy achievements in contemporary studio filmmaking. Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which opened over the weekend, is his latest. It's a worthy sequel, an exceptional comic book movie, and a wonderfully strange funhouse of weird creatures and formal beauty.

Critical responses to the film have been mostly positive, but now that the critics have accepted, even embraced Guillermo del Toro, I have noticed more varied approaches to his films. Hopefully it's the beginning of a dialogue that will only become more interesting and multi-dimensional. For a lively discussion already underway about Guillermo del Toro and his work, check out the comments section Jonathan Pachecho's House review from Friday.

Below are excerpts from my review of the film, which is now up over at The House Next Door:

"While a number of critics are positioning Hellboy II: The Golden Army in relation to director Guillermo del Toro’s forthcoming venture into Middle Earth, the film sits more comfortably as a companion piece to the director’s last film, Pan’s Labyrinth. The 2006 Oscar-winner was not just formally beautiful, but resonated with deeply realized themes of spirituality and the necessity of storytelling. Structurally and aesthetically, del Toro rendered two worlds—fascist Spain and a magical fairy world—that couldn’t thrive, grow, or exist without the other. He carefully denied the viewer the pleasure of escaping into myth or narrative, while also establishing a disjointed “reality,” with persistent intrusions of the fantastic. This was precisely his purpose: to illustrate that these two worlds are mutually constitutive and inseparable from one another.

By contrast, Hellboy II more outwardly revels in its fantasy. It serves up a delicious menu of goblins, trolls, armies, and angels of death, all brought to life with unparalleled vision. But even though del Toro is steadfastly focused on populating his world (which he established in Hellboy II’s 2004 predecessor) with as many odd creatures as his mind can dream up, evident also in the film’s swirling compositions of color and movement is the same commitment to narrative that ran through Pan’s Labyrinth. You may not be overwhelmed by the thinly drawn Shakespearean character dynamics or the predictably action-heavy denouement, but this movie is about the moments in between—the simple, seamless unfolding of narrative energy."

...

"In Guillermo del Toro’s worldview, storytelling is not about structure, cohesion, or resolution, but about the experience of being in a world, a place, a mind, and feeling it from the inside out. It’s essentially about sensation and encountering magic in the everyday world, where such things are often thought to have no place. Del Toro believes that storytelling is worth fighting for simply because it is the defining element of humanity. We may draw distinctions between reality and fantasy, but del Toro wants to shatter that divide and revel in the pure experience and immediacy of narrative.

The elements of his narrative in Hellboy II may not be real, or even deep for that matter, but del Toro allows them to fill the screen and the imagination, reminding that the fantasy can become real as much as the real can become fantasy. They bleed into each other and inform one another."

For the full review, click here.

Whether or not you have seen the film and have thoughts on it, the career trajectory of Guillermo Del Toro, or anything else, comment away!

The cinematic condition

2008-07-09T16:41:00.006-04:00

One of the great projects of criticism and of inquiries into media aesthetics is the philosophical inclination to try to answer the question of what a medium is. But I resist this tendency simply because in defining something, we lose that which we are defining. It becomes just another filled space in a field of language and identification, serving little purpose and holding little meaning outside of that. Having said that, I accept that these practices are inevitable and I engage in them as much as anyone else. Film theorists, for example, are plagued by the question "What is Cinema?" It's a seemingly simple question commonly used as a spring board for philosophical reflection and debate. Yet the problem of thinking this way about media and communication may not be in the discourse to come from asking the question, but in the question itself.

Over at Elusive Lucidity, Zach Campbell asks another question. Instead of focusing on what cinema is, he asks what is cinema for. In other words, what are social, aesthetic, cultural, economic conditions under which images are produced and consumed? I would add that we maybe shouldn't study the act of consumption or production, but of the position of the producer, consumer, and any other individual within this scheme. He problematizes very efficiently the notion of thinking in terms of essences and definitions. For example, he lists off all that cinema is, can be, and in some cases isn't:

"To what all can we equate the cinema? For starters: lost causes, mirror images, failures, dream-food, a drug, a certain form of reality, lèse majesté, toadying, bullying, pleading, pornography, a captured sequence of sounds/images that may give a reasonably identical experience to the viewer over multiple viewings, a substitute for action, a displacement of life, a patriarchal funhouse, today's Grand Guignol, faith, celluloid, maybe pixels, beginnings and ends, a two-lane blacktop."

I do recommend visiting Zach's site to read his reflections, which are far more compact and (dare I say) lucid than my own.

Disney's anti-consumerist message?

2008-07-01T21:43:00.002-04:00

I visit Cinematical almost daily. When it comes to film news and updates, it's one of the more accessible and informative sites. It is not, however, the place I go to be enriched. That's not a knock of the site, but more an observation on the kind of site that it is. Every now and then I've read a few interesting features / articles on a certain film, director, or trend. But when it comes to dialogues and polls, I usually go elsewhere. Having said that, I was surprised to see that a recent "Fan Rant" (written by Eugene Novikov, author of Film Blather, one of the best web sites for intelligent, well-written reviews) dealt with some real ethical and economical heft, regarding Disney's new film, Wall-E, still unseen by me. Eugene looked past the environmental politics of the film and went directly to its depiction of the future of the human race -- as a fat, lazy people who blindly adhere to a singular corporate superstructure. That the movie depicts such things raises a number of issues regarding the potential hypocrisy of Disney, one of the most profitable and influential corporate organizations in the world.

I vividly recall a conversation I had about a year ago over sociocultural affairs (which is not as complex as the term perhaps suggests), in which I was asked why Philip Morris once ran an anti-smoking campaign. In a linear business model, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to form a campaign against your major source of revenue. The answer, of course, is complicated. I'm no expert on matters of commerce and economy, but I would guess it's for the same reason that Wal-Mart plugs its affordable prices when the company does more to deny millions of people the most basic things. This anomaly is constitutive of contemporary western culture, if there is such a thing. Consumerist organizations can say one thing and do another, keeping consumers focused on the content of their message rather than the processes by which that message is produced.

Rarely is this phenomenon forefronted in critical commentaries on movies; only in the cases of overt trends. For example, environmental politics have entered mainstream filmmaking, with documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth (2006), and fiction films posing eco-apocalyptic scenarios such as The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and The Happening (2008). Conservative pundits have used these films as examples to "prove" that Hollywood is a liberal base that routinely forces left-wing propaganda onto the masses. The conversation almost never extends beyond this message-driven discourse. However, when we consider the larger terrain on which these messages are constructed and consumed, it's not so easy to construct these convenient associations. If we're going to look at this issue from the standpoint of political economy, it is on the ground of capitalism that all global, ecological, and cultural politics are decided, and what's better than the commercial institution of movies to examine these sociocultural and economic trends?

Novikov's piece poses some relevant questions about the economic and the political, as they relate to the artistic. For most commentators, the artistic (narrative) is interchangeable with the economic (commerce), so when a film is selling a certain message, the distributor (Disney) endorses that message. For decades, Hollywood has reigned supreme as a symbol of commerce, vanity, and commodification, perhaps less so when studios were owned by families than in the last 40 years, when corporate powers bought out Hollywood. If we're to use this model, than Hollywood has essentially swindled everyone by selling a message of individualism and anti-corporate affairs, all the while stripping viewers of that individuality. Although corporate control is something that's rarely dealt with so outwardly, especially by Disney, it's misleading to think that it's absent from Hollywood filmmaking. Social relations of power have been the focus of a great many novels and works of literature, so of course it has bled into the classically-inspired narratives of Hollywood. Any story prizing uniqueness, standing up to The Man, or bureaucracy, or what have you, is in some way addressing the struggle of power and social control. Considering these are central tenants of most all of Disney's narratives, one could surmise that Disney is and always has been a institution of hypocrisy. Therefore, it's hard not to wonder how earnest the company is in its messages, not just in films overtly depicting corporate control, but all of its films. While we're leveling Disney, we may as well be consistent and extend this scrutiny to all major studio films. Only then will we realize that these methods of inquiry only reproduce the values and assumptions that get us into these conflicts at all.

The real question here is not whether Disney is being hypocritical. Asking this assumes an interchangeable relationship between the narrative and the commercial interests lead to that narrative being constructed and consumed. Mediated discourse is not simply a matter of sender - message - receiver. The issue here has to do with the processes of consumption and the production of representation. In a political economy model, the question of art is almost irrelevant, since art is just another part of the economy. Capitalism absorbs everything, even the anti-capitalistic. In this sense, everything is commodity.

Denying the importance of political economy would be foolish, but having said that I don't embrace political economy as the be-all-end-all when it comes to the relationship of art and capital. Thinking only in its terms will have us running in circles. Whether Disney is luring us into complacency on messages of individuality and autonomy while drilling consumer conformity into its viewers, or it really is trying to bring about change in consumer culture is probably not the point. Worth looking at here is the ideological associations we make regarding art, capital, economy, and politics; and, moreover, the relationship between them.

For some, there is a distinct divide between art and commerce. For these individuals, film can never really be a form of art. But the distinction may be the problem; for art cannot function as such unless it is situated within a consumer economy. That may not have been the case at a certain time, but is now especially so. The question of whether it's a hypocrisy seems to hinge on one's own involvement in --or perspective of-- the spectrum of political economy, which would then influence how one conceives of artistic worth. These are ideologically loaded problems, but examining them in a reflexive manner would go a long way toward understanding various perceptions of these broad terms such as art, economy, and politics, and their interrelations.

I definitely don't have the answers to these questions. I would only stress that film commentators, critics, and lovers ask these questions of art and commerce, however broad or vague these terms may be. We need to clarify these concepts, give weight to what we mean when we employ them, and articulate them more explicitly as we think about their significance in the artistic, political, and economic realm that is movies. Certainly, movies cannot be reduced to or contained by broad concepts such as "art" or "commerce" or any other term meant to quantify them within a cultural sphere of representation and signification. Movies are both commercial and artistic. They are also social, political, and cultural. As a larger practice of production and consumption, movies are an "industrial art," to quote Gilles Deleuze. For that very reason they are relevant, interesting, and significant as a form of cultural practice in an age of mechanical and digital production and reproduction. We may not be able to conceptualize movies beyond the i.e. social, political, artistic, economic properties and relations that constitute their practice. But maybe we can sharpen our understanding of (and engagement in) movies within those very relations. We need only articulate them.

The House away from home

2008-06-17T10:44:00.002-04:00

I am pleased to report that I will now be writing for The House Next Door, a film / media site I have long regarded as one of finest of its kind. I don't have a specific direction or set of goals I'd like to accomplish in my articles for The House, but I anticipate drawing up a number of commentaries on a variety of cinephile subjects, as well as offer some more in-depth film criticism the likes of which is not appropriate on an individual blog like The Cinematic Art. I have every intention of upkeeping this blog at the same pace regarding post numbers and content. I may not write at the same length that I have in the past, but I will continue to keep this site up-to-date in similar capacity as I have over the past year. As always, thanks for reading, and your comments are always welcome!

My first article is an appreciation of Ang Lee's Hulk, a film I believe to be underappreciated and underrecognized. With the release of the new film, Lee's version of the story may likely be driven into even deeper obscurity. I argue that the film is important, both as a work of digital cinema and simply as a melding of experimental and conventional filmmaking styles. At a time of greater nuance and confusion in the film landscape -- with aesthetics and sensibilities shifting to accord to new sociocultural conditions -- Hulk is especially relevant. Hopefully, time will be kinder to it.

Below is an excerpt from the opening portion of the article:

"Midway through Ang Lee's Hulk (2003), Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) and a Hulked-out Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) share an exchange that could easily be confused with a scene from a less commercial film made at one of Universal's smaller subsidiaries. Aside from the impressive CG-effects (somewhat obscured, and assisted greatly by the darkness of night), there is palpable affection between the towering digital creation and Connelly. Bruce shamefully gazes on Betty in self-disgust, the moonlight shining off his bulging arms as he moves to gingerly lift her off the ground. When her arms drape over his giant limbs, we can feel it. No dialogue is uttered; there are only faces.

In that moment, Lee achieves something that so few filmmakers have with digital effects. He literally brings a digital creation to life. The scene can be seen as something of a precursor to the under-appreciated King Kong (2005), wherein director Peter Jackson momentarily mutes out the world so that a flesh-and-blood woman can connect with a pixelated monster. But unlike Jackson's Kong and various other works featuring memorable digital creations, Hulk will not be remembered as a defining moment in the history of CGI. And yet, the film's use of digital technology is more subtle, evocative, and arguably more innovative than a great deal of the so-called greats (e.g. Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Independence Day, The Perfect Storm, etc.).

Lee understands that the quality of effects have little to do with their photorealism. How "real" the Hulk looks is irrelevant—the reality is instead contingent on the conveyance of feeling. This affective connection is not necessarily achieved by top-line effects (a notion that echoes a traditionalist application of digital filmmaking). Instead, Lee illustrates that with the appropriate sensibility and aesthetic unity, such pure moments can be constructed traditionally (analogically), digitally, or with a perfect melding of the two. Hulk essentially embodies a new kind of cinematic connection that is both subtle and profound. The digital components are physically married to the composition and emotionally embedded in the narrative."

For the full article, head on over to The House Next Door.

David Hudson sounds off

2008-06-16T19:02:00.004-04:00

"Movies make you want to see more movies - but, because of the collaborative nature of their making, often in very interesting ways. If I read a book and I like it, or I'm moved or intrigued by it, I'll probably go looking for another book by the same author. Same with a painting and its artist. With movies, it might be more movies by the same director I'll want to seek out, but it might just as well be an actor's work I'll want to see more of, or a cinematographer's. Or maybe it's more the look and feel of that movie's genre or origin - noir, Iran, what have you - I'll want to seek out and sample again.

'The other thing's related: Just as movies arouse a hunger for more movies, they also arouse a hunger for more real living. They make you want to get out and do things - stay out late, eat, drink, fall in love, see new places, meet new people - even the downers. In a way, these last two impulses - see more movies; live more fully - are contradictory. Again, the old anxiety: not enough hours in a day, days in a week, years in a life."

These are the words of GreenCine Daily editor David Hudson, who was recently the focus of Adam Ross's indispensable Friday Screen Test series. Hudson is oft-referred to as the hardest working blogger on the internet. In this piece, Hudson waxes about film, philosophy, and the daily struggles of his work. The interview is a joy to read, especially for those who keep up with his daily work. The quote above does more than highlight the collaborative nature of the cinema. His description of the endless doorways and passages that film can open works as both a concrete metaphor -- i.e. exploring the work of another filmmaker, actor, etc. -- and a more abstract one, which he teases out in the last paragraph. In my view, his final remarks articulate the tensions dormant within cinema and of life so perfectly, evoking the transience of both more effectively than any essay or book that I've read on the subject.

This interview represents a glimpse into the mind of a man whose passion and enthusiasm for movies come through more in his coverage of films rather than his opinions about them. His tireless coverage of the hundreds of films released each year is enough to inspire any cinephile to embrace the larger worlds of international and independent cinema, while still keeping up with the cultural dialogue spurned from discussing studio films. As the subject of discussion here rather than the facilitator of it, Hudson paints a portrait of himself and the art form about which he writes that is reflected in his daily postings on GreenCine.

In some ways, Hudson is film criticism equivalent of that eclectic teacher you had in high school who inspired you to ask new questions, make bold observations, and embrace new forms of thinking; all without ever revealing his own "take" on the material about which s/he teaches.

Do check out the interview if you haven't already.

At world's end with Werner Herzog

2008-06-11T06:14:00.003-04:00

It's been almost eight months since I've seen Encounters at the End of the World, and to this day its images live in my memory. Amazing underwater sequences; pleasantly absurd interactions with Antartica's resident culture of researchers, scientists, and poets; and the haunting sight of a single penguin briskly waddling away from the group to "certain death." All of these moments and more have taken on their own life in my mind, strung together by the occasional voice of Werner Herzog, who lends his perspective to the encounters that he and his camera operater have on the dwindling ice block at the bottom of the world.

The film opens in New York and Los Angeles today, and in honor of its release, I have included excerpts from the piece I wrote when I saw the film late last year. Framed and presented in this form, they constitute a brief review of the film:

"In Encounters at the End of the World, [Herzog] travels to the most remote location of this planet to observe the people who inhabit it. The film is comprised of a series of interviews with various scientisits, divers, and "dreamers", as Herzog calls them. He is not merely attempting to observe and gain insight into the desolate ice world and the planet, but also to understand what motivates the people who have elected to live there and study it. Herzog seems to believe that while human beings and nature cannot connect or live together in harmony, they constantly intersect, inevitably so, even in the the most far-off land, where people require the best of minds and technological access to survive at all. This tense relationship fueled his last documentary, Grizzly Man (2005), and while he isn't exploring life and death and the harsh collision of humans and nature, Herzog is nonetheless searching for something in his probing of the Antartic culture, wildlife, aquatic life, and the glaciers that move about the ice-cold waters.

By observing the idiosyncrasies and odditities of the continent's residents, Herzog captures both the beauty and absurdity of what they do. He uses voiceover to frame his questions and thoughts, some of which are practical and humorous, others more subliminal. Regarding Antartica and its residents, Herzog wants to understand their unique motivations, as he paints them as dreamers (as I mentioned above). But he also uses the voiceover to interject his own very estranged thoughts (i.e., distanced from their thoughts and thought-processes) in the form of hilarious observations such as "Her story goes on forever", which typically cut off the person talking. However, these hilarious moments are often times genuine, whether they're honest feelings of his or simply elongated takes of a given individual after she or he is finished talking; It's esepcially interesting to see how uncomfortable people become when they've said what they wanted to say but the camera keeps rolling, as if its stalking them. But these bits of humorous discomfort are never outwardly mocking of the interviewees. In fact, Herzog often finds real humanity in all of persons with whom he speaks in the most mundane or comedic of times. Whether he's enamored, bored, or "searching for something to talk about", Herzog often finds life in the simplest of ways.

He juxtaposes his encounters with the people of Antartica with some of the most awesome cinematic sequences of underwater footage. Throughout the film's 99 minutes, there are several long sequences underwater in which the camera follows divers down to explore the chilly depths underneath the ice. There is nothing overtly flashy about the images, yet they exude a real sense of discovery, as if the viewer is among the privelaged few to be able to see that which rests underneath the ice, which is a whole other world. We can observe this world, shoot it on film, and try to explain it with science, math, or language, but such attempts ultimately fail. Sometimes sounds and images stand for themselves. As is typical of Herzog's films, Encounters at the End of the World finds sublimity in the most seemingly mundane of ways; in patches of air traveling between the ocean and the ice that sits on top of it, in lone penguins who "walk to certain death", and in the ramblings of its many interviewees. The most outwardly poetic moments are those underwater, where the sea life seems almost alien in that it resembles nothing we have categorized into a species or form of life. Underneath the ice in Antartica, life eludes the human capacity to understand it. And in these sequences, whether underwater or in ice caves, Herzog rarely interjects with his own voice, except when observing peoples' strange ways of trying to connect with it. (Buried in a tunnel of ice is a frozen fish and strings of popcorn!)

With all his wanderings about this world "off the map" with no real understanding it, Herzog finds great clarity in balancing "Profound Moments" with seemingly pointless ones. He is utterly fascinated by everything, prompting him to contribute his own thoughts about it. After seeing the film and reflecting on its rather free-flowing tendencies and sensibilities, think I now understand a bit more why Herzog enjoys making documentaries, even though he keeps the term "documentary" at a distance. There are things so wonderfully strange and strangely wonderful about this film, which is more an exploration of a foreign land and culture. No "narrative" film or talking heads" documentary" could ever broach the eccentricities of the people interviewed and observed in this people, and no amount of creative framing or special effects could yield the kind of strange, almot too gloroius for words images of the lost world underneath the glaciers. With this style of documentary, Herzog can frame his own narrative and present this world as he sees it. He is the true master of this cinematic universe, and I must admit that it's a universe I love to lose myself in. In this universe, Herzog dives into different places of our shared world --or collective unconscious-- to observe how each of us interpret the very same matter and sensory perceptions differently, crafting our own worlds in the process.

Encounters at the End of the World is yet another attempt to explore ecstatic truth in one of the endless amounts of ways one can. It reminds of the true elusiveness that is cinema, which itself is a tool for experiencing ecstatic truth. It is a medium rich with possibility. Only with cinema can a filmmaker foster such a world in such a unique way so as to offer insight into how humans construct their own narratives and fancy their own worlds. It is a medium of many media, itself the true convergence of technologies and artistic perspectives developed and progressed over thousands of years to shape our consciousness, individually and collectively.

If I do happen to miss tonight's conversation with Herzog, I won't feel like I've missed on on something once in a lifetime. I say that because watching his films is itself a sort of personal experience with the filmmaker, like a conversation wherein I am constantly engaged in his thoughts and observations, which in turn provoke my own, which may thus inspire me to approach the film in a different or unique way. I find some version of this pattern occuring each time I watch a Herzog film, whether that's a narrative film or a documentary. But the greatness of his body of work is in the way in which he makes films collapses these broad frameworks that turn the cinematic experience into a process of structuring and categorizing."

Some of the concepts referenced in these passage correspond to thoughts on ecstatic truth, which I discussed earlier in the piece. (Here's the whole article.) Reading this review again, the images and sounds stand out to me even more. I don't want to create any false notions about the dramatic aspirations of this movie, because they are nowhere near those of Herzog's Grizzly Man; He is after something very different here, or so it seems. There is a profound absence of direction in this movie, which, guided by Herzog's thought processes and strange observations on his adventure, makes for an equally compelling, albeit very different kind of experience than than the more somber Grizzly Man, or some of his other documentaries. That said, Encounters at the End of the World is in some ways the movie that Herzog has been making his whole career. Centering on themes of the interrelations of humanity, nature, and technology, the film is full of those Herzogian moments of simple profundity manifesting in its interviews and underwater compositions. We learn that his preoccupations haven't change; only his manner of exploring them.

Patriarchy and criticism

2008-06-06T00:07:00.002-04:00

An increasingly bitter dialogue about Sex and the City has developed in the past several days, on blogs and in publications. Currently, the movie stands at a mediocre 53 percent on the Tomatometer, which seems awfully high for the drumming this movie has received. I don't doubt that's it's true, though, and that critics are more split on the merits of the movie than it appears. For whatever reasons, and I'm sure there are many, Sex and the City represents one of those rare cases in criticism where the detractors are making so much noise, despite not quite representing a majority. It's not so much the "for or against" rhetoric that's especially interesting, but the condescending manner in which the film is approached, even by its supporters. It seems to me that even critics who are fairly indifferent about the movie are going to great lengths to let their readers know that Sex and the City simply isn't their thing.

I don't want to make any grand suppositions, but this phenomenon seems to reflect the hegemony of patriarchy within journalistic film criticism. The irony of this statement is that when it comes to the proliferation of masculinity in cinema, Hollywood usually takes the blame and critics get a free pass. But the level of discourse about Sex and the City reveals a few tendencies in even the most productive sects in American film criticism, about the assumed male spectator.

I have not seen Sex and the City, so I cannot say what is true or untrue. But that's not really the aim of my observations. What really interests me about the SATC discourse is that it features so much self-conscious defensiveness. Critics who are downright vitriolic are targeting Sex and the City for its glorification of hyper-materialism and consumer culture, and its audacity for centering on four female characters more interested in the latest fashion trends anything else. This seems an odd claim to me, since American cinema represents one of the pinnacle commodities in contemporary culture. When critics are routinely pumping out 600-word formulaic pieces in support of "consumer culture," I wonder why films like Sex and the City are singled out, and not some of the massive action blockbusters whose saturation in media and advertising reaches sickening heights.

On the other hand, you have critics who are not outright hateful of the movie, but admit that it's not their thing. This position is much more useful than blind rage, but, again, why do critics speak this way of movies like Sex and the City and not other show-turned movies like The Simpsons, or even just certain genres or styles, like horror films or sword-and-sandal epics?

Not two weeks ago, critics largely raved about Jon Favreau's Iron Man, a comic-book actioner about a war profiteer turned-action hero. The film was competently made, no doubt, but it's hard to account for the overenthusiastic critical reception. Even critics who outright said they were getting sick of comic book movies seemed to like it. Winning over just about everyone, the film is an anomaly to me, and evidence that perhaps critics should be more reflective of their practice and reflexive. I know that it's a critic's job to treat a movie on its own terms, but if there's one thing anyone studying the arts and social sciences should know, it's that nothing stands in isolation. And part of the job of critics is to identify trends, anticipate them, and critique not just formal craft in individual movies, but to situate them amongst a larger inquiry into art, commercialism, and socioeconomic policies.

Now, I didn't read all of the reviews for Iron Man, so I don't want to make a sweeping generalization. But I did read a number of them. The best one I read was by Filmbrain, over at Like Anna Karina's Sweater. He didn't write a review, or talk about plot or character. He offered a simple observation that qualifies as evocative, interesting criticism. The post was entitled, What I learned from Iron Man, and it read:

"A pretty, Ivy League educated, socially (and politically) conscious Vanity Fair reporter will, in a matter of minutes, toss aside her personal ideology (to say nothing of her professional ethics) and jump into bed with an alpha-male war profiteer who first questions her intelligence, and then follows up with a sleazy pickup line."

I don't expect professional critics to muster the courage to write anything like this, but a number of online writers with this potential don't exercise it for that kind of commentary. Moreover, at no point did I read anything in the sea of positive reviews for Iron Man that the film not being the reviewer's cup of tea, so to speak. I would guess not, since so many of the films critics are subjected to in a year are of this variety. I suppose no one goes into professional criticism expecting that they won't see hundreds of movies like this a year. Apparently, male-centric films are ok with most critics, and why not? Hollywood cinema has always been a dreamscape for a patriarchal society, so why should critics be any different? It's the expectation of these trends, the passive acceptance of the imposition of particular values and assumptions about gender, individualism, class, race, etc. that worries me; the fact that critics appear more interested in playing the game, than looking past the surface of film cultures and analyzing trends and practices, revealing new perspectives and enabling other, in hopes of bettering the production and consumption of movies.

As Andy Horbal once noted, there is a scary amount of sameness in professional film criticism, so much that it's hard not to wonder that criticism has become the very commodity about which many of its participants complain movies have become. It's hard to hold individual critics responsible for these larger ideological trends, but at what point do we begin questioning the punditry that criticism seems to represent when viewed in a collective light. There are definitely bright spots in film criticism, but they are shining lights enshrouded in a dominant cultural system that doesn't reward progressive thought; which is, in fact, positioned as "the alternative."

Some argue that other modes of criticism are a way of correcting some of the weaknesses of professional criticism. But this largely depends on the ideological stance of the argument. Framed from a perspective of representations of gender in cinema, and the manifestations of deeply embedded cultural notions of masculinity and femininity, I'd say that all venues of journalistic film criticism are subject to massive interpretive problems stemming from a hegemony of patriarchy that pervades media.

I'm sure this isn't a popular perspecitve, so I'm welcome to counterarguments. Discuss!

Sounds of the Knight

2008-06-03T14:05:00.003-04:00

Of all the Hollywood blockbusters released in recent years --from superhero flicks to fantasy epics-- none stand out to me as more memorable and significant than Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. Although there are other worthwhile, even great studio films in the last decade, Batman Begins is distinct in that it weaves intelligence, craftmanship, and character together with a narrative that is relevant.

At the heart of the film lies a central tension regarding the hero myth, which the film neither embraces nor shuns. The movie poses the question: Can one person rise above sweeping corruption, and make a difference in the lives of those preyed upon most by those with power? Moral fiber is the one attribute that has always separated heroes from villains, and yet the film seriously questions whether a moral center is enough to counter the fear and complacency that mass corruption breeds. Moreover, the film outright questions whether morality and goodness are productive in this struggle at all.

Complementing and enlivening these thematic depths is a dense aesthetic that is noirish in mood, but naturalistic in structure. Gotham city lacks an architectural identity. It is instead defined by labyrinthine streets and contemporary glass skyscrapers rising above the poverty beneath them. Their twinkling lights glimmer in the background of many compositions, obscured by the shear multitude of their numbers.

Part of what enables these images to breathe life to the narrative is the music by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Interestingly, traditional film score fans single out this score as one of the worst in recent years, which is likely due to the fact that it --like the film-- is incongruous with the expectations of a "superhero" film. The score rarely waltzes into the familiar ground of brass-driven heroic ostinatos (such as in Danny Elfman's outstanding theme for Tim Burton's Batman films), as the composers instead opted to auditorily augment the noir-ish visual style and subtle characterization with rhythmic, driving music for a man who seeks to embody a more primitive state of mind than most other heroes. When the camera pans the rooftops of Gotham, we can hear these rhythms building, pulsing, but not necessarily with much direction. Contrasting with these rhythms are frequent swirlings of strings and faint electronic echoes giving voice to a city (and a film) with no clear villain, but a plurality of pain, fear, and corruption underneath the slick, glossy surface.

Although The Dark Knight is still almost two months away, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard have recently given an interview to the LA Times. On The Dark Knight and Nolan's "intellectual" style, they shared their views about the place for music in this film and the 2005 film that preceded it. Excerpts below:

"Why go with a fast-and-simple string pattern rather than give the film a big, easily recognizable theme?

Zimmer: I wanted to take the romance out of it -- the fake fantasy to it. One of the things I kept thinking about was just how iconic the bat symbol is, and at the same time how dark and unadorned it is. I spent forever getting rid of notes to get it down to just two notes in this ostinato pattern.... The bat symbol is so efficient at getting the idea across. I wanted to get really efficient.

Howard: At the same time, when you write a traditional, conventional superhero theme, it gives you so much information that it might be misleading about that character. Our Batman? We're still getting to know him. He's a very complicated guy. To attach a theme to him, a theme you can sort of hum, it defines him emotionally in a way that is false.... It advertises so much about who you are during the film. I think, in a way, a theme like that would have done that. This theme is about implication, and it's about menace.

And there is still a recognizable sound attached to the character.

Zimmer: But I'm letting the character finish the thought. It leaves a lot more space. I don't see Batman as a superhero. I wanted to be very clear about that. I wanted to take out anything that is super about this.

Let’s talk about the "Joker Suite." This almost sounded like an orchestral interpretation of an industrial song.

Zimmer: Look, I'm German, so I come from the German tradition of Kraftwerk.... But I kept thinking I wanted to find a way to bring corrosion into Gotham -- corrosion and recklessness. The funny thing about that piece is that I knew what I wanted to do, but it took me months to actually do it. Nobody could play it.

It's all about acting and attitude, in a way. It's very much of the idea of taking one note and expressing any part of fearlessness and recklessness and surprise.... It is very industrial music. I tried to give it a punk attitude. I used to work with the Damned and bands like that.

Howard: What's great about the Joker theme to me is that it feels totally untethered. It just kind of exists. It lives somewhere in the cracks.

What else is different this time around?

Zimmer: This is what surprised me, and I think this needs a little clarifying. Everyone keeps saying that this film is darker than the last one. I always think that people think that means more violence. It's not that at all. There's much more of a precise intellectual thought that went into Christopher [Nolan] and his brother [Jonathan] while writing. The ideas are somehow more real and more grown-up. We're doing a summer blockbuster that deals with anarchy and old-fashioned values versus the modern man. That's a lot of fun to play with.

You guys split up characters a bit. James, can you talk about what you created for Harvey Dent/Two Face?

Howard: Basically, Harvey Dent is Gotham's great hope. He's going to turn things around. He starts out with the best of intentions. He's a brave, courageous, high-minded man. Over the course of this story, he becomes seduced and corrupted -- really by the Joker. The Joker kind of wins. It's just the arc of his character, which ultimately ends up in a very tragic self-destructive place. That was the musical line.

Zimmer: What makes it interesting is that there are such extremes. The music James wrote for Harvey Dent is really beautiful. On the hand, you have the Joker theme, and on the other hand you have that contrast of something really elegant and beautiful.

What makes this movie -– and this score -– interesting is the extremes. The black is a lot blacker because of the light."

It's first worth noting that Hans Zimmer is nowhere close to the talent level of James Newton Howard when it comes to film score, at least in my view. That said, his perspectives on how he approaches a film or character are always interesting and upfront. He also takes over the interview, as Howard's comments are usually pushed to the side.

At any rate, it's a very interesting interview that's worth the read if you're an admirer of Batman Begins, both the film and the score. There are definitely some hints dropped about the movie, but what's really intriguing is how they explain their approach to the musical texture of the first film, and how that carries over to Knight.

Howard's comments are more appealing on an intellectual level (as I noted in March), especially his reflection on how brashly heroic or dark themes for characters can constrict their ability to develop and morph. He describes the theme they've written for Batman to be more about "implication," which is certainly reflected in the score, I would say. It will be especially interesting how that theme is developed in Knight, and whether Batman will become more of a hero in that film. Something tells me that the film is headed in a new direction, as Zimmer notes in the later passage about the new film being more outwardly cerebral than the last movie.

Although my sensibilities are more aligned with Howard's more quiet, intangible sense of marrying music and images, Zimmer wins the award for the most provocative remark about "letting the character finish the thought," and the music "leaving more space," in being more about implication.

I would be interested to hear how others feel on these matters. So, your thoughts regarding your likes or dislikes in the score to Batman Begins, or the overall approach that Howard and Zimmer advocate about the role of music in the construction of character?

Strained nostalgia: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2008-05-29T23:26:00.008-04:00

[Note: This review contains what some would call "spoilers." While I don't think that reading about a film before seeing it damages the viewing experience, consider yourself warned that this review provides in-depth details regarding the film's plot and visual styles.]

In the opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we are cued on multiple occasions to swell up in nostalgia for a sense of old-time moviemaking that even the filmmakers seem to think is dead. In the very first shot, director Steven Spielberg wastes no time to make a joke out of the established tradition of the Paramount logo dissolving into the film's opening shot. We think we're looking at a mountain, which turns out to be quite different. From there, the opening title sequence begins with the same letter font that was used for Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. After the title sequence, Indiana Jones makes his "grand" return to the screen with the famous Raiders March performed triumphantly in spite of the downbeat circumstances of his situation. Even when the action begins (in the warehouse from the end of Raiders), the filmmakers can't resist allowing us a small look at the lost ark. These pinch-yourself moments remind viewersm and remind them again that they are in for a trip down memory lane. But with the film resolutely and insistently banging the nostalgia drum every moment it can, the feeling that it is a true Indiana Jones film often seems manufactured.

This mood hangs over the fourth installment in the popular action-adventure series. It's as if Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are winking at us, expecting that we will simply play along in their harmless revisiting of an old friend. Lucas has openly stated that the film is "just a movie," which is no doubt true, even if the marketing campaign would convince you otherwise. Lucas has also said that the film is like the previous films; but this statement is only half-true. While Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull embodies the Indy mood and style to a tee, it also strains to imitate the previous films, rather than fully embracing the energetic spirit of this kind of storytelling. The other films --at least the first two-- worked partly because they delved so deeply and unashamedly into absurdity, reveling in seemingly ancient filmmaking and storytelling conventions. They were travelogues through movie sensations that were made with full conviction, whereas Crystal Skull is far too self-conscious to build and sustain its own rhthyms.

That said, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull still boasts a few moments of pure, unfiltered energy. These inspired bits surface in small places and throwaway sequences, such as in scene transitions, stagings of dialogue, and less than big moments during action sequences. An early example of this is during the extended opening sequence, after Indy escapes from the Russians and makes for a small town in the middle of the Nevadan desert. The vision of an aged Jones -- donning his iconic, unchanged getup of brown slacks, a fedora, and a whip-- running frantically through a sunny, colorful suburban town is a stroke of brilliance. The sequence culminates with a silhouette of Jones foregrounded in the corner of a shot pulling up to reveal a massive mushroom cloud in the background. This play against expectations establishes a harsh contrast in setting and mood that pulled me right into the narrative even more than the sound of the whip cracking in the warehouse scene.

Following these scenes, we return to Marshall College, where the Red Scare has invaded campus grounds. With the constant reminders of the Cold War affecting academia, it's oddly welcoming to return to the classroom and see Indy teaching. Although archeology remains dictated by the same principles, it's obvious that in spite of his love of archeology and adventuring, Indiana has changed. During these expository scenes, the film sets up the main plotdilemma in two ways: First, by establishing the Russians as a collective force and threat, as Indy is dismissed from teaching duties due to a suspicion of his national allegiance. This is an interesting plot device that sets up the remainder of the film rather beautifully, especially since it brings together Indy's absence of place in the world. The next plot push, however, is not as successful. Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp bridge the two plot shifts in a beautiful sequence where Indy gets on a train leaving town. In just a few economical shots, we go from feeling Jones' estrangement from the world --with train smoke billowing in the background as a solemn version of the Raiders March going through what seems to be its last, dying statement-- to the introduction of Mutt Williams, a la Marlon Brando in The Wild One, who glides into the film as if to remind that there's a story to tell. Before Indy takes off on the train, Mutt informs him that an old professor of his (and friend of Jones) is missing. This is the basis of the film's real plot hook.

This all sounds like a great set-up, but Koepp sidesteps many of the potential points of drama surrounding Jones' age and his self-realization about never having grown up. Instead, Koepp plunges right into a complicated legend surrounding the crystal skull, the main artifact of interest, mistakenly referred to by George Lucas as the McGuffin. As students of Alfred Hitchcock know, the McGuffin does more then push the plot; it does so for no good reason. The McGuffin actually has no real significance or relevance at all. It's merely the thing everyone is after. Each of the other Indiana Jones films feature a pseudo-religious or supernatural artifact that drives each of their respective stories. Moreover, the first three films concluded with some kind of exposure to the other-worldly power of these artifacts. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull follows a similar path, but the difference is that the artifact actually is a McGuffin. It doesn't have any significance at all, beyond vanquishing the villain and giving the heroes some place to go. This wouldn't be a problem if the film focused more on style than plot, which the others did. Crystal Skull, however, is weighed down by a mid-section that explains everything and features so much talking about the skull. As a result, no amount of style can maintain the level of interest initiated so brilliantly in the opening 30 minutes of the film. That's not to say it becomes a bore, since there are a few nice flashes through the second act, such as a nice dialogue between Indy and Mutt as they walk through a town in Peru. Even some of the skull jibber-jabber is somewhat interesting early on, as in the nicely staged scene in Professor Oxley's (John Hurt) cell in the town asylum, where Indy and Mutt try to decipher the professor's drawings on the walls and floors.

However, once the skull is discovered, the plot becomes much less interesting. For the first time in the Indiana Jones series, the hokeyness of the plot gets in the way of the real storytelling. I don't want to make it a habit of comparing Crystal Skull to Raiders of the Lost Ark, but consider the "Discovery of the Artifact" scenes from the respective films. In Raiders, Indy and Sallah find the ark in the Well of Souls -- where the jokes about Indy's fear of snakes are actually organic to the narrative. The first shot of the ark itself is one of the film's most memorable moments. As the shiny gold object is removed from the stone chamber, you can feel the power of it. Of course, the concept is absurd, but the brilliance of Raiders of the Lost Ark rests in how effectively in balances that cartoonishness with a real sense of wonder. They are derived from each other. From the moment the ark is discovered, the film's narrative moves to a new stage of intensity, where the stakes are raised, the questions around the ark are still looming, and the mysticism pervading the narrative is taken to new heights. When the film then engages in episodic fist-fighting and truck-chasing, we know that the power of the ark will be unleashed by the time it's done. The action is all anchored by the interest in the ark, and Spielberg was able to comfortably go off on wild tangents of action.

In Crystal Skull the narrative actually loses something when the skull is discovered. The plot susbsequently thickens, as we are reintroduced to Marion (who turns out to be Mutt's mom), as well as the same Russian baddies from the opening scenes. And yet, in spite of all of these plot points coming together and setting up for an action-packed third act, muted interest in the artifact and a convoluted plot distort the enjoyment of seeing all these plot threads in action. I have absolutely no problem with the amount of characters and story threads in the movie; the problem arises out of none of them being terribly interesting. Characters like Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), the head villain, and Mac (Ray Winstone), Indy's old friend turned enemy, should be compelling enough to anchor the action, but I found my interest in all of the details and characters fading as the complicated second act unfolded.

Nevertheless, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull manages to pick up steam, starting with the great jungle chase sequence. Beginning as a bickering match between a captive Indy and Marion, this 15-minute action centerpiece of the film is brimming the kind of energy that made the original films so lasting. The action starts with Indy's off-screen punch of a Russian driver. As his body hits the ground on the side of the moving truck --a trademark Indy shot-- John Williams' brass chords essentially announce the onset of an urgent, epic sequence. Once the scene takes flight, we are catapulted into symphony of crashing vehicles, bullets spraying through the jungle greens, and a swashbuckling sword fights on moving cars.

I'll admit that the first time I saw this scene, I had trouble following the action (which is reflective of the overly complicated plot, perhaps). But on second viewing, after realizing that I didn't care about the plot, I opened myself to the sequence as a pure cinematic experience. Interestingly, where the scene doesn't cohere narratively, it does visually. Even if you can't make sense of all the action at a given moment, the flow of the images is masterful. A couple of shots particularly stand out, like when one vehicle flies over an uprooted tree and we see many Russian bodies flailing up into the air just as the vehicle touches down and exits the shot (rather than the shot continuing along with the vehicle). Also, one has to appreciate Spielberg's willingness to hold action shots beyond the norms of contemporary action aesthetics. We've been conditioned to expect edits between shots (usually a string of close-ups) at points of impact, but Spielberg allows the clarity of the action to flow within singular, sustained compositions rather than stringently adhering to traditional montage. When Indy leaps from one truck to the next, the image may not contain the visceral impact of, say, the Bourne films, but we are more entranced by the spectacle of movement. I would have preferred a little less editing on the whole, but Spielberg still manages to orchestrate a wonderful sequence of balletic action that rings very memorable.

On the topic of the visual experience, many critics and audiences have complained that the film is overly reliant on digital effects. There are are certainly sequences that come off as blatantly computer-generated (e.g. certain shots in the duel between Irina and Mutt), but I'm more taken with the successful integrations of digital effects, which are many. Spielberg often employs CGI to lengthen of those sustained shots (mentioned earlier), except he gets more out of them with digital enhancements. He never treats the CG aspects any different from anything else. Perhaps my favorite shot in the whole film occurs during the jungle chase, and features two vehicles emerging from the jungle to approach the cliffs along the river. The composition starts by closely framining Indy and Spalko as the points of focus, but then pulls back to reveal the rocky, jagged cliffs. That it's all accomplished in one shot, with the main characters eventually shrinking out of fucus, is what makes it so simple and perfect. Adding to the visual wonder of the sequence is a shift in musical direction, beginning at the start of the shot, in which John Williams introduces a whole new rhythm on the brass and snares. This all makes for a gorgeous, transient moment of excitement that still dances in my memory. These are the kinds of moments that Spielberg has made a career of conjuring, and yet they are so rarely discussed. Critics would rather seem to discuss the "bigger" moments in Spielberg's library of memorable images.

The remainder of the film is a series of short-stinted action sequences, some of which are rousing and fun, others that are less so. It all leads to a finale that's short on explanation and heavy on supernatural activity. The closing scenes mostly involve the fate of the skull, and work purely as schlocky hocus-pocus fun. Placing them in the context of the building excitement and frustration around a complex plot, the finale represents a weak way to end the movie. Considering the number of potentially interesting characters featured in the climax, it's hard not to see the characters (Mac, Marion, Mutt, Oxley, Irina) as missed opportunities. None of them get the attention they deserve, including Indy. Much of the drama about Indy losing relevance in the world drifts into the background in favor of the standard Spielbergian familial themes that dominate the latter half of the picture. Most of this, even, appears rushed along.

Despite the family dynamics, Crystal Skull is the least involving of all four films, from an emotional standpoint. The glimmers of affection in the opening 30- 40 minutes are all but absent in the second half, when the script has its characters in sand pits, waterfalls, and running through Mayan ruins rather than building anything between them. When the end comes, one's emotional response will likely depend on one's affinity for the previous films, particularly Raiders of the Lost Ark. This strange detachment is reflective of the overall tension of the movie: In trying to be relaxed, Spielberg and co. are at their most boring and ineffective. The real life of the film seems to come where the filmmakers committed less effort to consciously imitating the fun of previous movies. Instead, Crystal Skull introduces a lot of new elements to the series and the character, but never does anything with them. The action moves fast, the plot moves slow, and in the midst of the plot and action, promising thematic ideas are lost in the mix. These include the nation's paranoia that manifests not just in the Russians, but in the increasing prominence nuclear warfare, and suspicions that beings from another world have visited ours. Also tossed aside is Indy's struggle of aging in a changing world, and the implications of his generational divide and its implications for knowledge. These are all hinted at in the film, but it never explores them with enough detail because it's too busy reminiscing.

With Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Steven Spielberg aimed to make a light, non-threatening, throwback picture. And although he unfortunately largely succeeds at this task, he thankfully contradicts himself with occasional bursts of audiovisual bliss. These portions of bold, unhinged energy are inconsistent, for sure, but they appropriately subvert the atmosphere of comfortable familiarity that Spielberg and Lucas were out to produce. Just like there is never a sense of urgency or threat in the film, Spielberg doesn't seem all that concerned with making a film anywhere near the level of visceral energy as Raiders of the Lost Ark or the almost as brilliant Temple of Doom. Even at it's best, Crystal Skull is tame in comparison to the audacious, and absurdly beautiful imagery of the first two films. The wonder of movement achieved by those films requires a filmmaker to operate completely outside a sense of higher purpose and a feeling of distanced affection for a lovable hero. While Spielberg still loves Indy, he is not willing to give him the kind of film that endeared him so greatly with viewers. As Manohla Dargis noted, Spielberg is not so much bored with this material, but he has clearly moved on from it. He will likely always love the storytelling and ideas that these films represent, but it's obvious that he simply doesn't have the burning desire to make old-fashioned adventures with that kind of fiery vigor that is required of them to be truly memorable in an age of action saturation.

But, to return to the initial observations at the start of this article, there is also something else at play regarding the the reception of the film, and the attitude about Indiana Jones that lead to the film being made in the first place. The nonchalant mood of the movie seems to represent the filmmakers' and audience's self-conscious acknowledgment that Indiana Jones is no longer a hero of the moment, but now a pop culture icon. To see him constricted to a flawed, nearly inconsequential narrative may damage the increasingly positive retrospective of the original three films, which now seem to operate within their own universe and logic. But the underlying tension between the self-conscious approach to the narrative and the real sense of storytelling rhythm that the film only sporadically produces, may be attributed to the notion that both the maker (Spielberg) and the audience, are simply not that interested in the kind of things that Indiana Jones --as a film series and as a cultural idea-- represents, no matter how much we're convinced of that we are.

The event of the year, and the movie too

2008-05-21T22:17:00.008-04:00

Now that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is here, we may soon finally catch a break from the film's marketing machine. Seeing Harrison Ford's face plastered over everything from buses to candy bar was cute for a while, but in recent weeks the saturation of Indiana Jones has reached a frightening high.

I expected this with the new Star Wars trilogy, since the 20 years between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace have shown that Star Wars was not about the movies or the storytelling, but instead about the consumer product, as evident in the resulting movies. But with Indiana Jones, the films have always stood on their own, as big budget, old-fashioned Hollywood entertainments. The films weren't advertised to death, wrapped in plastic, or spewing out products in every kids market. They achieved their notoriety in American culture because of their charm and style; you know... things internal to the movies themselves. Now that Indy is everywhere, though, my spirits are somewhat dampened. I am looking forward to the film as much as any die-hard Indy fan, having grown up watching the films, but I am more than a little turned off by the media blitz, to be honest.

The (marginally positive) reviews are piling in now, and soon I will have finally seen the movie. But when I sit down in the theater tomorrow morning, I don't think I'll so easily be able to divorce myself from the assault of advertising images I've seen in the past weeks and months. And it will have a bearing on how I see the movie.

I'll offer my thoughts on the actual movie by Thursday evening or Friday, but for now I'm interested in where the many symbols and images of Indiana Jones converge. The two that most interest me are: Indiana Jones, as both a character and a popular movie franchise, and also, Indiana Jones as a successful business model and marketing tool. This may be hard for me, due to my previously established connection to the original three Indy films. But my allegiance to those movies (and to Raiders of the Lost Ark, especially) may actually make for an interesting exploration of the cultural status of Indiana Jones, and what its popularity indicates and reflects about American culture.

My interest in this discussion began when I read Carrie Rickey's refreshingly negative perspective on Dr. Jones, which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer only a couple of days ago. In her article, she refers to the films as sexist, and their hero a colonialist. These are hefty claims that she couldn't possibly justify in one article; but that's not really the point of the article. With all the sensational media buzz about Jones, it's a breath of fresh air to see a prominent film critic voice her near disdain for the franchise, deeming it an masculinist and nationalist fable. I'm not sure I agree with all of Rickey's claims, but I applaud her willingness to raise them. Her piece represents the best thing I've read about Indiana Jones in the last six months, and it got me to consider these films in a different light. While I have been slowly realizing over the years how many of my beloved movies as a kid tend to represent dominant masculinity and American domination, I've resisted situating the Jones films in this discussion, mostly due to my love of the first film.

I try to avoid being too Jungian with movies, but it's hard to deny the allusions in the Indiana Jones series. Jones himself represents the ultimate masculinist in the tradition of James Bond, with a new girl in each flick, none of whose combined screen time in all three films add up to his time in one film. Moreover, the films are made in the male-centric Hollywood tradition, where the men are always heroes, and the women damsels in distress. But besides the issues of gender in these movies, there are also some trouble nationalistic conflicts as well. One could say that in the movies where Jones battles the Nazis, that he represents America; a sometimes reckless, but ultimately pure hero who comes just at the right moment to save the day, and bringing peace to the world by stopping the Nazis. And then, in the Temple of Doom he arrives (by mistake) in poverty-stricken India, where primitive villagers need the white man to bring prosperity and purpose to their lives again.

As I said before, these connections are by no means definitive, or even substantive. But they are troubling in their bluntness. And now that Indiana Jones is invading all areas of commercial America, it's hard not to consider the implications of these notions for American consumer culture, where, despite a proliferation of media and information, many age-old assumptions and stereotypes about gender, race, and class are intensified.

The other side to Rickey's argument, one for which I hold considerably less optimism, is her assessment of the movies' effect on Hollywood action aesthetics. She cites David Bordwell in a concerted effort to demonstrate Steven Spielberg's ushering in of contemporary visual styles of shortened shot lengths and attention-deficit cinema. There's certainly no denying that Raiders of the Lost Ark boasted a considerably reduced average shot length than Spielberg's previous pictures, it's important to note that in comparison to most other motion-oriented action films, 4.5 seconds per shot (which was that of Raiders) is quite long.

Where we're on shaky ground here is in the potential confusion of forms of content and expression. Spielberg can certainly be credited (along with George Lucas) to invigorating Hollywood cinema with speed and motion, he did not do so with heavier editing and more close-ups. He did it by mastering classical styles, and achieving a maximum effect of impact and movement on screen. Say what you will about what Raiders of the Lost Ark signifies as a narrative or cultural artifact, it employed a thoroughly traditional visual style to create some of the most amazing sequences. Indict Spielberg for a hundred other things, but it would be foolish to argue from a pure formal standpoint that Spielberg ushered in a shorter attention span for cinematic consumption. He may have done so in his synergistic approach to Hollywood moviemaking and marketing, or in building on traditional racial and gender stereotypes, but his aesthetic is grounded firmly in a rich classical tradition. If it appears intensified, it's because he imbued that tradition with greater impact and motion, staging more impossible sequences and only cutting for impact.

Interestingly, Spielberg's Indy films were amazingly influential on Hollywood moviemaking, but in the worst of ways. Because while he stayed true to a traditional aesthetic design, his imitators took his ideological direction and pushed it forward by intensifying those aesthetics. Hence, shot times have diminished, and the average moviegoer's sensibilities are skewed to favor quick flashes of sight and sound rather than formal appreciation of a moving image. Subsequently, movies have been made with this kind of consumption in mind, and fewer filmmakers working on a bigger budget have a sense of the craft of filmmaking anymore. But Spielberg has always honored the rick cinematic tradition of moving images, and it's why his work is significant as not only that of a icon of economic synergy, but also of real cinematic artistry. He may be a slave to American capitalism, but his aesthetics are honest, and therefore he demands attention and consideration.

So as the dialogue continues about the cultural significance of Indiana Jones and the implications of its mass distribution in a globalized (although some would say Americanized) market, there is only one thing left to discuss: the movie. Lucas' Star Wars flicks suffered immensely from being placed on the back burner of the commodity machine. Soon we'll see if Spielberg has followed the same path, and in doing sacrificing the one aspect of his commercial filmmaking that makes him interesting: the filmmaking.

[As I noted earlier, I will be seeing the film early tomorrow morning, and will post a review of the film on its own terms (as much as I can, at least) shortly thereafter. After this discussion of the movie as a piece of pop pulp, I will do everything I can to keep my focuses on the movie itself in the review.]

There's something in The Mist

2008-05-20T18:28:00.005-04:00

Grocery stores are fascinating places. They are among the few social gathering points that attract people of all classes, races, ethnicities, cultural orders, and religious views. With the exception of the wealthiest of wealthy and the poorest of poor, almost everyone frequents the grocery store; for practical purposes, and also in a more elemental sense, for survival. We need sustenance simply to keep living, and to support or social and cultural practices, different as they are.

Throughout movie history, some of the most tense films have transpired in a single, mostly isolated location. Horror films, in particular, have benefited from a focused setting, where an atmosphere of suspense and terror can be amplified from the feeling of isolation. Stephen King used this basic device as a way to frame a seemingly by-numbers monster thriller against the backdrop of a supermarket. Using a traditional setup and narrative structure, King explored the social relations of a staple institution in many of our lives. On an average day in a New England town, the story is populated with townspeople and out-of-towners alike, all who whom agree on the policies that enable a supermarket --as a social institution-- to function. But when a man comes frantically running through the parking lot --blood dripping from his nose and down his face, eyes widened in shock-- bursting through the entrance doors of the store, that order is ruptured. And in a few short moments, those who expected merely to pass through the store and move along with their lives find themselves enshrouded in mist, enveloped by a perpetual void in the form of a foggy realm moving over the town.

Director Frank Darabont recognizes the importance of character, isolation, and perhaps most importantly, our sociocultural policies, in adapting King's work on film. One of the more difficult tasks that Darabont accomplishes is the juxtaposition of the human drama arising from an expected crisis, and the supernatural forces which besiege them. This is not easy to execute on film, but Darabont achieves a fluid aesthetic of elongated shots and smooth closeups, building an atmosphere out of the relationship between the tangible, palpable fears of isolation, and the creatures who invade the world outside with no regard for those who have ordered it. Darabont draws this distinction sharply, giving equal weight to both narrative threads and allowing them to feed off one another for maximum effect, separated only by a thin sheet of glass. From the inside, the racial, social, and cultural tensions embedded deep within the beliefs and values that inform each of our lives are exploited by the looming vision of mist pressing up against the glass exterior of the market, and slowly penetrating that barrier.

At the heart of the human drama is more than just a fight for survival, which, although compelling as a center of clashing individual ideologies, is heightened even moreso by deeply embedded cultural conflicts that largely determine how individuals organize and construct explanations, notions of justice, and divisions of power. While race, class, and occupation loosely form the ground on which individuals base their perspectives on each other and the external world, the film observes that deeper than all of these fabrics of identity is a more constitutive collective order of the organized belief in a supernatural order: religion.

Although the film simplifies this "culture war" of religious inclinations with its broad narrative strokes, Darabont's magnification of this conflict --in the form of one character who preaches to the townspeople about the wrath of god-- allows him to explore the extent to which theism and religiosity motivates individuals to achieve a particular end. Therefore, King's and Darabont's observations are cutting and cynical. As one of the characters observes in a crucial (though perhaps too literal) exchange midway through the film, "As a species, we're fundamentally insane. Put two of us in a room, we pick sides, and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another." The man who says this is one of the store's workers, who bands together with a small group of forward-thinking protagonists who are more concerned with surviving the chaos around them, rather than explaining it and co-opting those dangerous conditions to exploit the collective's fear of death and the unknown.

Yet, although the film appears to embody the struggle between religiosity and pragmatism, its real focal point is the discussion of whether or not people are fundamentally good. There are those who believe that people are born good, which is usually attributable to some kind of grand design. From this perspective, it's all of the "artificial" and "unnatural" things that corrupt individuals. On the other side, there are those who believe that people are not much more than animals, refined by thousands of years of cultural meaning-making and socialization. Although people divide themselves over those very learned conventions and policies of language and rhetoric, these are also organizing principles that enable civilization as we know it. Division is built into the unifying principles of language and culture. But, when stripped of the complex world if discourse and forms that provides our lives with meaning, all slips into chaos, and people engage in a primal struggle not only for survival, but for power. And the key means by which to achieve that power is fear.

This struggle culminates in a deeply cynical ending that will undoubtedly divide viewers. Wherever you stand in interpreting the film's final moments will likely say much about which kind of person you are, with regards to the film's central questions concerning the fundamental nature of humankind. And while this struggle of ideology and theistic enterprise makes for fascinating human drama, the film embodies that experience so effectively because it is more oriented toward probing human behavior and communication rather than titulating the viewer with shocks and gore.

There's no doubt that The Mist is an intense experience in cinematic horror. But the horror arises out of human interaction, and subtle observations on individuals dividing themselves and bounding together when facing extraordinary circumstances. Life is lost to the creatures in the mist and to hellbent people, but how that life is lost is where the film really takes effect. Darabont's deft vision of humans in crisis is staggering, particularly at moments where life is draining away. Almost every "death scene" in the film is shocking in its quietness, and almost unbearable to see in the level of detail Darabont depicts it. Victims' skin quivers, their eyes well up, and after great struggle, each resign themselves to the inevitable reality of death swallowing them whole. Darabont's images are starkly real, even apocalyptic, often in the most subtle manners. Any fan of the horror genre has seen tentacles swallowing human prey, but Darabont can make it brutally real, focusing more on the in-the-moment details that a body in fear experiences. You feel it when a tentacle pierces flesh. And yet, no single image in The Mist is more frightening than the sharp blade grasped on one end by human hands plunging into the stomach of a fellow man. Encircled by a crowd function as a larger body of righteousness, the defenseless man is the unfortunate target of the twisted logic determined solely by his social position (an army officer). He is reduced to nothing more than the means by which members of a dominant majority can carry out their insatiable desire to provide meaning and structure to things that, quite simply, defy explanation.

The curious case of Woody Allen-- Psychoanalysis, auteurism, and film criticism

2008-05-14T12:16:00.012-04:00

Of all the films in Woody Allen's extensive filmography, Annie Hall (1977) is the one we have latched onto. It's the one by which all other Woody movies are measured. Announcing to critics and moviegoers that its star and director was more than a clever stand-up with a flair for making funny movies, Annie Hall is a naked statement of vulnerability, about a man turns everything into a joke as way of covering up his misery. At the time, Annie Hall represented Allen in a nutshell. Like the Alvy Singer-penned play (shown at the end of the film) replicating his life, the film was seen as something of a self-portrait, an image of Allen as he saw himself.

The film also established many of the themes and motifs to which Allen would eventually return in some capacity, from narrative arcs (e.g. the difficulty of relationships, talky and unhappy characters, etc.) to aesthetic styles (e.g., jazz and classic music, voiceover narration, long shots, practical effects, deep points of focus, etc.). But ever since the film unexpectedly nabbed Best Picture from Star Wars in 1978, Allen's career elevated to new heights, if not commercially than artistically. In short, he had the freedom to make the films he wanted. Post-Annie Hall, Allen's films have explored many of the same concepts, as well as a variety of new ones. Running down everything from death, separation, religion (or lack thereof), psychoanalysis, and other obsessions to varying degrees, Allen has philosophized in tragic and existential undercurrents in some of his movies, while in others he has waxed in comedic overtones. And in others, he went for both.

Allen has paced about one film a year for the last thirty-some-odd years, and has made more than a handful of intriguing, sometimes even masterful films. And still, Annie Hall continues to shine as his quintessential film. It may likely always be known as the defining movie in his career. That being said, it did not gain that status alone. In fact, one could argue that another movie (for better or worse) enabled Annie Hall to become the artist-defining, cultural milestone it became. Released two years later, Manhattan was and still is perpetually compared to Annie Hall. Like Allen's Oscar winner, Manhattan stars Allen as a neurotic man who loathes himself too much to let someone else love him. Moreover, it's set in Manhattan and stars Diane Keaton... just like Annie Hall!

It didn't take critics long --clever beasts that they are-- to catch on, almost unanimously deciding that Allen liked to make the same movie over and over again. Unfortunately, that's all it took, because it was critics and moviegoers who constructed such an identity of Allen, and it's one that he himself even believes. Now, many films and personal controversies later, Allen is looked upon as a 70-year-old version of the 40-year-old in Annie Hall, as a neurotic, overanalytic, cynical, dismissive, and emotionally frail little fellow with glasses who is unable to embrace happiness is how the rest of the world sees him. And rather than examining the extent to which the dialogue about Allen has informed critical analyses of his work, critics instead continue to (rather stubbornly) insist that Allen is himself solely responsible for his own image image.

Now that this dialogue has saturated, members of film culture have inevitably accepted the broader image of Allen on some level. These projections and assumptions manifest within the framing devices used to discuss his films, both current and classic. Not unlike the neverending dialogue about Keaton vs. Chaplin, conversations amongst cinephiles tend to be divisive affairs in which an individual's sensibilities are defined almost exclusively according to which film she or he prefers, Annie Hall or Manhattan. As much as it may appear that this dialogue illuminates the nuances that distinguish the films from each other, these divisions amongsts cinephiles likely thrive because of similarities between the two films, not the differences. If they are seen as different, one still has to question the usefulness of the dialogue simply because the films are defined by each other.

Although Annie Hall takes the lion's share of the credit, and it may be the film that resonates more on the cultural front, Manhattan made possible the comparison of Woody's films. It is the first and most famous example of Woody Allen's supposed self-plagiarism. For example, many a critic have argued that Scoop is a re-hash of Manhattan Murder Mystery. and, more prominently, that Match Point and Crimes and Misdemeanors are essentially the same movie. Apart from these plagiaristic duos, there are a number of other stereotypes about Allen's films, like how they have to fit into one extreme of "dark, brooding character studies about murder and deception," or "light, airy comedies with dated dialogue." These are but a few examples of the critical dialogue taking on an established rhetorical design. And now that critics have become so familiar with this pattern, reading a review of a Woody Allen film is every bit as routine as the films many critics label so.

Importantly, many of these trends began not just with Annie Hall, but in its rhetorical pairing with Manhattan. The two are inseparable. The Annie Hall / Manhattan duo is also significant for how critics and moviegoers would build an image of Allen --as an artist, and as a person. But this only holds up when the two are taken as one continuous idea, separated by only a few "minor" differences. Or at least that's how they are positioned. Whether the films are individually distinct from one another is not really the issue in these dialogues. Any differences between them are inconsequential to the fact that the conversation has been framed as one film defining the other. Neither will truly stand on its own beyond commercial worth. Taken together, the two films are equally integral in comprising the vision of "The Woody Allen Film" that still informs critics to this day. And their dichotomous relationship has cemented the prevailing notion that Allen plagiarizes his own work. Some would argue that this is evident in the films themselves, but few can deny that this trend has persisted in critical dialogue for years, which suggests that there may be more to this scheme than Allen's narrative and stylistic repetition. Many published critiques of Allen and his movies --e.g. books, articles, reviews-- focus on recurring fixations, themes, character traits, and narrative tendencies.

While the similarities in Allen's work are as undeniable as they are influential, I sometimes wonder whether his films actually resemble the discursive representations of them that critics have been piling up and recycling for years. The film criticism canon on the cinema of Woody Allen has reduced him to a simplified image, framing his films according to very defined properties emerging from the popularity of Annie Hall, and the subsequent critical discourse placing Manhattan in direct relation to Annie Hall. In spite of the high critical status of both movies, each film's individual merit is based on the other. That they are compared and contrasted so heavily prevents one from seeing each film on any other terms besides the counterpart, or the "other half" of the other. No matter how much Allen grows, that growth is only judged by how it relates to the established Woody Allen Film lexicon.

Having a brand of filmmaking and broad narrative and aesthetic styles assocated with a filmmaker's name is a sign of respect or significance, but the downside is that it also places the filmmaker in a bind, since she or he will likely always be critiqued by it -- e.g., Alfred Hitchcock (suspense master) and Steven Spielberg (king of the blockbuster). But the difference is that Allen doesn't get the credit as a filmmaker that Hitchcock and Spielberg do. Woody Allen didn't define or revolutionize the medium. Instead, critics, moviegoers, and Allen himself see his films as imitations of those from cinema's great directors. He's considered an American wannabe, pining after the European greats like Bergman and Fellini, his filmmaking idols. Taking this discussion into account, one could say that despite the Annie Hall / Manhattan tandem having opened many doors for the filmmaker to grow into fruition as an artist, it now prevents viewers from appreciating the richness of those films. Much like Allen's own obsession with psychoanalysis preventing him from recognizing his own worth, psychoanalysis has also jaded critics --particularly auteurists-- from engaging movies in a productive and open-minded manner.

Woody Allen is an extreme example, but the critical discussion about his films evidences the dominion psychoanalysis holds over film criticism. Guided by the principle that films hold meaning that the viewer must unlock, psychoanalysis has clamped down on film theory and criticism ever since academia took on film studies in the 1970's, allowing no other possible way of engaging movies. Some would say that filmmakers like Hitchcock and Allen invite this criticism by "making the same movie over and over," focusing on similar themes, fixations, and character relations. But just because Allen makes psychoanalysis explicit to many of his narratives does not entitle critics to position his films according to the same theoretical principles. To think in this way plays right into psychoanalysis itself, allowing its universalized logic to fit over movies like a glove, block all other theoretical or critical perspectives to penetrate.

It's no wonder, then, that psychoanalysis and auteurism are so condusive with one another. In each model, the critic runs a similar risk of looking through a film's images, and "arranging" them according to the established knowledge of filmmaker or filmmaking convention. Auteurism groups films and their directors in a way that makes them taken on meaning as part of a larger collection. This approach holds that movies are little more the sites where plot structures, narrative arcs, and character development converge. All formal details --composition, framing techniques, editing, and overall aesthetics-- are understood only in relation to these narrative elements. Because, after all, narrative is the driving force of cinema; at least according to this view. This approach, however, does not constitute a overarching inquiry into cinema, let alone a respectable criticism of it. I would go as far to argue that overreliance on this kind of criticism is reductive and potentially dangerous.

In the case of Allen, it seems as though we cannot evaluate his films with any bit of freshness. A new perspective of his work is bound to be "the alternative" to the dominant perspective, rather than being truly its own perspective. I'm not saying that critics should ignore similarities in plot, theme, and aesthetic design, since to deny these factors would indeed be foolish. Blowing up what's there and starting over will do criticism no good. Of course there are similarities between in Allen's films with respect to the aforementioned elements, especially between Annie Hall and Manhattan. The problem is when you end the discussion at the similarities. Both films are tragedies from purely a narrative standpoint, since each sees its central character as his own worst enemy. But if one's sensibilities are slightly more open it's evident that Allen in pursuit of very different sentiments and aesthetic unities with each of them.

Annie Hall is a reflection on the intoxication of new love and the hardships of commitment. It evokes the tension of refusing to let go, and yet not being able to take the appropriate measures to ensure an enduring relationship. The flashbacks and fantasies are impossible to differentiate from reality, and that's the point; they are intertwined to the extent that neither is an accurate representation of Alvy, Annie, or their relationship. What we have are images, memories, and feelings of "love and loss," essentially. Allen presents this narrative in a series of short scenes, each like a half-formed thought escaping from his consciousness as if interrupted by another.

Manhattan, while certainly boasting similar plot and character threads, motivic elements, and even some visual techniques (present in many of his film), presents more focused tension between romance and cyncism. In terms of pure comparison, Isaac is a much more bitter person than Alvy. He seems singularly focused on the present -- what benefits him right here, right now. He's also slightly more mature than Alvy in the sense that his attention is directed at what is occupying his moment, rather than constantly reflecting on the past. He ultimately makes the same mistake as Alvy, in letting the one person who brought happiness to his life slide through his fingers. But the manner in which we expereince this loss, and thus the loss itself, is entirely different. There are budding moments of romanticism in the film, especially for New York and classic love stories, but ultimately the cynicism prevails in spite of the dream of romanticism. Annie Hall, on the other hand, is not about cyncisim at all; it's a bittersweet proclamation of loneliness and self-loathing.

These reflections are brief, and represent only the beginning point from which one could launch a very different inquiry into the two films, individually and together. One might also say that my descriptions fall under plot details and formal elements, a practice I criticized earlier in this piece. But my descriptions of these components only topically resemble the style in which many critics use them. Again, the acknowledgment that film criticism should shift from its current format of placing formal details in relation to narrative-centric aspects does not mean that matters of narrative should be ignored. In the end, there is no right or wrong way to dissect a movie; a critical analysis requires that the critic discuss tangible elements, definitely, but not to a specific end. Film criticism at its best goes far beyond narrative and aesthetic relations, no matter complex they may be.

However, within the psychoanalytic, broadly auteurist model, further examination is not necessary beyond these elements. Those who approach film from this standpoint find what they are looking for. It has already sealed itself off and justified its own existence, based on the logic it has conveniently employed to do so. As is typical of psychoanalysis and (to an extent) auteurism, the viewer/critic is prompted to sidestep the immediate engagement of the senses that a film provides with its moving images and sounds. The kind of reflection these models seek is one based in symbolism and causality. But these don't engage one in the experience itself; they're more interested in providing meaning to that experience; placing it. Film criticism --in academic journals, newspapers, and independent blogs-- should be more atuned to personal reflections of seeing the film, but it should also be invested in the reflexive exploration of movement, memory, and sensation, and how these notions relate to narrative and character identification. These latter elements are important to film criticism, but they are not themselves the means to the ends of valid critical inquiry.

Movies are about more than a simple matter of plot, characters, and narrative, and they're about more than simply computing aesthetic sensations according to categorized responses or emotions. These tangible details are very relevant, even important toward understanding film spectatorship and and criticism. But sometimes even the best critical minds lose sight of the fact that movies are really about the movement of images and sounds, the very stuff of memory itself, as well as narrative. To paraphrase Jim Emerson, movies are about what happens to you while you're watching them. This seems simple enough, but it's actually a testament to the unending complexity of the film viewing experience. It's become a trend in film criticism for critics to use tangible details --i.e. plot, character, structure, etc.-- as a means for justifying or supporting a simplified response to a movie, their reaction; which is actually much harder to try to understand. But the more we lean on these tangible explanations, the more we're conditioning ourselves to look through the images rather than at them. That's not to say that the more abstractly we speak about cinema, the better. Logic is essential to any critical or theoretical inquiry. But there's a difference between logic and universalized rationale.

This is precisely why film criticism should begin repositioning auteurist theory. An inquiry into movies should address psychologistic components, for sure, but should also unashamedly delve into philosophy and lyricism, along with science and psychology. Ultimately, the perspectives expressed and the way in which they are expressed probably reveal more about the critic than the movie, but sometimes they illuminate aspects of the experience of seeing a images, and the thoughts, memories, and sensations they produce, which are at once permanent and fleeting.

Deleuze and film theory: An excerpt

2008-05-09T18:35:00.004-04:00

Another semester has come to a close, and once again I have completed a paper that probably deserved a great more attention and reflection than I granted it. Although I may continue working on it, it was "officially" complete when I handed it in earlier this week. What once was a clean, unmarked collection of pages will soon become a sea of red, with a single letter at the end, determining the significance of the past four months of reading and study. Already, I see at as an incomplete work that will most probably be abandoned (although hopefully not).

Nevertheless, I see the paper (at the very least) as pregnant with possibilities. Which is why I have included an excerpt from the opening section of the paper. It essentially lays out the questions and thoughts that drove my research, and it suggests the beginnings of a thesis that may or may not have come together by the end of it. It doesn't, however, provide a full angle of the core analysis, which focuses on psychologistic models of film criticism --specifically psychoanalytic film theory and cognitivism-- and the implications of their respective rhetoric and positioning in relation to one another in the spectrum of academic film criticism. Approaching this relationship from a Deleuzian perspective was the point of emphasis of my theoretical exploration.

I honestly don't know if I was able to bring together all those elements and construct unique pathway of theoretical inquiry into cinema. I think I need more time away from this paper to really understand whether it has anything significant to offer. In the meantime, here's the introduction, which, as I said, presents the underlying questions and conflict. For me at least, the introduction nicely sets up a number of potential conflicts and relationships, and although much still needs to be addressed, it leaves me with the thought that Deleuze and film criticism may be more conducive than I previously thought.

I'm eager for feedback, so please feel free to volunteer your thoughts:

"Gilles Deleuze is known as a philosopher by some, a theorist of the cinema by others, and even an artist by his most ardent followers. His writings are ubiquitous, and his concepts unorthodox by the standards of philosophy, cinema and media studies, and art criticism. Despite the rising relevance of his two Cinema volumes in film scholarship, Deleuze’s place in the broader institution of media and cinema studies is oddly situated. Adamantly rejecting the claim that he was a “critic” or even a theorist, Deleuze constructed what he termed a philosophy – or logic – of cinema and movement. Film theorists who consider Deleuze’s concepts significant often draw on this logic, as rendered in Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, and Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Meticulous in its description of spatiotemporal properties of movement and sensation, Deleuze’s philosophy of cinema at first appears to glide along the lines of neoformalist theories. Yet while Deleuze provided dense descriptions of action-images, affection-images, and perception-images, his concepts decidedly subvert the methods of dominant psychologistic models that now constitute a large amount of scholarly film theory.

While Deleuze’s Cinema volumes are gaining prominence, many theorists harness his principles of sensation as means for explaining or defining the cinematic image in a new way. However, this “application” of Deleuze is a fundamental misunderstanding of his concepts. In spite of their systematic detail and intricate design, Deleuze’s writings on cinema are not a critical model for evaluating or critiquing films, but the foundation for a larger inquiry into movement and sensation. For Deleuze, the cinema is not a communicator of messages or medium for delivering sights and sounds (Deleuze, 1983). And it is most certainly not a representational narrative or aesthetic device. Instead, the cinema is the site of pure immanence and sensation (Deleuze, 1985); it is quite literally its own reality. The image is not something projected onto a screen, but is instead the manifestation of pure thought.

Placing Deleuze in relation to existing theories of cinema is a complicated task. It’s not easily accomplished by employing his concepts as an extension or deviation from various established critical models. Deleuze’s logic of sensation lays the foundation for a fundamentally different engagement of cinema. This logic may provide the theorist with a different kind of criticism, or, moreover, a spectrum of theoretical possibility for engaging and seeing cinema. And yet, to grapple with this new vision of cinema as the basis for a new critical inquiry, one cannot simply stand outside the pillars of theory that have attempted to encapsulate and explicate cinematic motion and sensation. Exploring the possibility of a Deleuzian criticism requires that theorists actively engage the established theories, by analyzing the assumptions on which they are built and the values under which they operate, and situatating them in relation to Deleuze’s mapping of cinematic movement."

Closing the door on a career in professional film criticism

2008-04-29T18:44:00.007-04:00

I'm not a strong believer in meanings arising from cycles or circles in life, but it would be impossible to ignore the symmetry of recent activity on the film blogging circuit. About a week after a one of the great professional critics has entered the film blogging cycle (Roger Ebert), another will be departing. Today I heard the news of Matt Zoller Seitz's retirement from the print criticism; a shock to us all. It's not initially a comforting thought knowing that film criticism is losing one of its best practitioners, but after reading the conversation between him and Keith Uhlich, now the lone editor of The House Next Door, I feel only happiness for Matt as he enters a new stage in his life. His criticism won't be in print anymore, but it will be alive in his filmmaking.

Below is the comment I left for Matt over at The House Next Door:

"I guess there isn't too much I can say in the way of gratitude and best wishes that hasn't been said here already. But I would like to wish you the best of luck anyway! As many here have said, you will certainly be missed, and it's to our good fortunate that you'll still be around as a commenter and sometimes poster.

Unfortunately, I haven't participated as much in these forums/discussions as I would have liked. But if there's one thing I've learned from reading your work here and elsewhere, it's that this form of writing requires participation and devotion to accompany the written thoughts of one person. I have learned that this right here -- the community, the discussion, and the real-life critical dialogue -- is criticism. Like filmmaking, criticism is really a collaborative effort in some capacity, and I've learned that in my own writing, and especially in my initial visits to this site several years ago before I even knew what film blogging was.

I am saddened that you will be leaving this "great experiment" [of blogging] that you've had such a strong hand in building. Although, much to my regret, we haven't interacted much over my time in the blogosphere, your comments on my blog and links here at The House mean a great deal to me. Knowing that you drop in over at my place from time to time, I consider it a privilage to keep pushing myself to be a responsible participant in this format of criticism. Who knows where we'll end up taking this thing, but whether you're actively part of it or not, you'll be a great presence in it."

Best of luck to you in your filmmaking endeavors, Matt! I look forward to your future criticism, whether that's in words or images. And don't forget, your comments are always welcome here.