the lone revue

Friday Screen Test

2007-06-04T11:47:00.000-04:00

Hello, there.

Not much news right now, as I'm scrambling to make a living and sort of between some other projects. But Adam Ross, true to his word, launched my Friday Screen Test last Friday, and if you haven't read it -- and especially if you've never read one ever -- you should hop on over and check it out.

Later.

The Distantial Storytelling of Fellini's Amarcord (1974)

2007-05-23T13:44:00.000-04:00

More distantial from the eye. -- W. Montagu

If editing is the act of storytelling through the careful control of audience attention, then Amarcord might be considered a quixotic example of separating the audience from the story through a "pushing back" of the narrative. Cutting techniques create a staccato sense of interaction in this isolated seaside village in Mussolini's Italy, both through overlapping dialogue and the tumbling of action upon action which the sound augments and enhances. While the story itself takes a long time to build and each frame depends upon the last, the film often feels like the movement hovers indecisively between motionless dreamscape and acceleration threatening to derail the entire train. The disorienting effect of the editing allows the audience to glimpse a village caught somewhere between antiquity and modernity in a naive, highly impressionable state and serves the film's greater purpose. It should be noted that the title means "I remember," but these memories are not those of the audience any more than this country's history can be claimed by many of the film's viewers.

While it might seem an odd choice to paint the people of a country going through a sweep of fascism as naive and vulgar and laughably gullible by turns, the approach has the steely ring of honesty; and so, Fellini does not shy away from depicting an Italy star-struck by Hollywood and crumbling at its core between external political pressures and perplexing internal religious demands. Perhaps in an attempt to uphold the old saying that a country is never greater than the spirit of its people, Fellini uses the editing to allow each character as much realism and depth as possible while capturing the folly and peculiarities such a society would have bred and fostered, like the confusion concerning sexual matters. He does this so well, in fact, that it can become nearly impossible to see the Italian people of this time period in any way differently from these characters whose civilization threatens to topple the last vestiges of their innocence and uniqueness. Like any encroaching kingdom, fascism and Hollywood become villains; or, at the very least, partners in crime as the attraction to the powerful El Duce by the town's most eligible single woman can easily be viewed in tandem to her fascination with the screen -- or, perhaps, with Gary Cooper.

It comes as little surprise that despite the vignettes, Amarcord focuses on one family in general and its elder son in particular. The film needed some glue between its audience and its subjects, not only to convey a theme of universality that nearly anyone could relate to, but to root its distantial perspective within a family not overly given to sentimentality. Although an audience member can sympathize with the members of this family, the events and manner of their presentation doesn't allow for too great an attachment to any one thing, place or event. Their interrelationships so small amid the ruins of a once-great civilization now under Hitler's boring German thumb, they are essentially mere shadows of themselves. Both parents fight and exhibit so many childish qualities that marital harmony seems impossible in such a society, and the only thing certain is the knocking of the undertaker. These quibbles pebble the action without defining it, though; the main focus still remains on the son who is the future of the family and the country and, quite possibly, the equally anonymous "I" in "I Remember."

In light of the connection between the camera's focus and the antics of a young man, it could be further suggested that the film doesn't merely convey spatial realtions to keep the audience at a distance but to convey a sense of futility. Looking at the filmic movement toward separation and away from togetherness, especially in the scene introducing the family's Mad Hatter, what Fellini appears to be saying is that closeness (i.e., happiness) under the circumstances was nearly impossible. Our first knowledge of Uncle Teo begins with a rough cut from the Grand Hotel's silhouette (where the town's peddler and yarn-spinner Biscein supposedly once had intercourse with 28 concubines) and the film's recurring, romantic theme music to a day-lit reality. Before the frame can fade either visually or aurally with grace, the next frame shows Teo standing behind an iron mesh gate, surrounded by other hospital patients who await the arrival of his family with him. The roughness of the cut re-focuses the audience on the family that the film has wandered from tangentially while aiding the contrast between the two specific images. The next frame then shows the elder son jumping into the air to see over a stone wall, along which he must walk to get to the outer gate to greet his uncle.

The use of walls and other dividers in Amarcord is not coincidental. Since Fellini essentially shows the colliding of worlds in Italy at this time, the tendency to try and fence the familiar world in -- as when Miranda locks Lallino in the yard while the fascists demonstrate nearby -- is as natural as the tendency toward voyeurism when looking upon something strange and new. A great sense of division is achieved by these fences and walls and gates, and the editing in the tree scene supports that sense as an extension of those same walls, be they made of stone or strained social barriers too thick to understand let alone overcome. In a way, Fellini has given voice to the frustrations of his more empathetic characters through Teo's madness, so when he climbs a tree in the open, deserted countryside and yells, "I want a woman!" over and over again, the interplay between the characters tells of the real rift between these people even as the act itself echoes the feelings embedded in every male in the film (except the fascists). Soon, La Gradisca's rejections of the young man's advances in favor of daydreaming about Gary Cooper or chasing after royalty, will send him into a feverish and pitiful state, but Teo's approach now makes him laugh. His youth can only see humor in Teo's situation.

As the elder son relays play-by-play to his mother what happens in the tree after several people -- including him -- have tried to get his uncle down only to be met with a rock on the head, his dialogue reinforces the film's concentration upon distance. Amarcord largely lacks close shots, relying heavily on medium shots, many of which are either establishing or re-establishing, and that's no mistake. Even the closer shots are never too close. Teo's ascent registers only as a medium shot that takes in most of the tree and then re-establishes his position in the tree from the side. As his nephew announces the attempts to get him out of the tree, he has been pushed to the background. The young man stands in the foreground and broadcasts the goings-on to his mother, as equidistant from her as from the tree, unable to get closer to anyone or do anything else, like any storyteller dealing in the past. The scene's relief culminates in the arrival of a hospital vehicle and a couple of workers whose number includes a dwarf nun. That she is able to get Teo down by merely snapping at him is an interesting social commentary on the times. The message seems to be that things were so out of whack that only a dwarf nun could cut through the madness; but even that's a quick fix and not a permanent solution. The camera remains at the same angle and distance to watch Teo go.

Later, Fellini uses an unlikely scenario to create a greater sense of displacement and confusion just before arriving at what might be the most poignant moment in the life of an elder son. Beseiged by snow taller than a man, the town square now looks like ice fjords cut in funny, European road-like patterns and into this walks La Gradisca dressed in her signature scarlet. Her admirer spies her and follows her into the maze, calling her name, and Fellini breaks the 180 degree rule so that the young man's disorientation with his surroundings becomes ours. What he finds are the church caretakers who enquire about his mother, introduced in an interesting cut sequence lying outside of the normal parameters of American editing at that time. In the first shot, we gaze upon the front of the church, linked with the boy's disappointment that he did not find the object of his desire. There's a cut away to the boy's face, and then one more cut to a shot of the caretakers who have magically appeared outside the church or have just now caught the boy's attention. Either way, without any time lapse evident in the cut, the emphasis upon the boy's search for something he can not have over the reasoning for why he wouldn't have seen the men in the first place lends an eerie, supernatural quality.

After all, the young man replies that his mother is better because she's been taken off the critical list, too naive to realize that there is simply nothing more that can be done for her; but further, his chasing of an older woman before he's even relinquished of his mother's care takes on greater meaning. So when the son leaves the church and the camera assumes a considerably higher angle re-establishing shot from the opposite corner of the square, the young man and La Gradisca can be seen walking only yards apart from each other in opposing directions. The snow between them is as much fancy and tomfoolery on the director's part as is the impetus for the schoolboy crush; it is enough that he returns to greet his mother one last time before her death. The symbolism thus granted the matriarch washes over all of Italy, then, with this image of a woman dying because of a naivety and helplessness that at the same time serves the country as an identifier -- and an endearing identifier at that. When La Gradisca marries a fascist officer, the fate of the nation lingers on the brink of destruction. A voluptuous woman has decided to settle for something less than ideal, and perhaps Fellini includes more than just Mussolini's Italy in this studied gaze. Perhaps he also speaks of Rome, or of any nation that once had delusions of grandeur enough for an entire world but ended in a shrug and a sigh. That would certainly justify his paralleling of such notions with the ambitions of youth, had that been his thinking.

It is entirely possible, though, that Fellini over-sentimentalized his own youth once and that the loss and transfiguration he felt afterward informed this work and its more conscious decisions in ways not evident on the screen. The romanticization of conflict is apparent in the portrayal of the young man's ardent pursuit of a woman out of his league, in the flagrant juxtaposition of the country and the imposing State. He does not need to point to it. He lets the images do that for him, and the music. Throughout the carefully distant spatial relations, there's a struggle between diegetic and non-diegetic sound. The song Stormy Weather (in English) can be heard throughout the film's diegesis, be it whistling or strange singing that we are left to assume is a phonograph playing somewhere just out of sight. Meanwhile, the non-diegetic repetition of the more Italian theme song treats the film to a bittersweet serenade that can be at times a part of the film's natural score -- e.g., when the blind accordion player is in sight -- but usually is not. During the family dinner scene toward the beginning of the film, as the basic rift between father and son is being set up, Stormy Weather is actually playing from an unseen but presumably natural, muted source as the father re-enters the room after learning of his son's mischief the previous night. He enters whistling an anthem of the State, in direct opposition to the sentimental American song, and misleading of his character. But at that moment, he is the authority figure who must deal with his son's behavior, and he does so with deception, asking the boy cheerfully about his trip to the movies.

And at that moment, the essential conflict of country identity has been set up. The boy chatters on about the American Western and we are left watching the father chase his son around the house, trying to bully him into behaving more responsibly. It is understood that American culture has infiltrated Italy, that it is perhaps even soporific to the Italian people, and that fascism and laziness will prevail in a country not guarded well enough against either. In that sense, the presentation of the townspeople in relation to each other -- distant, yet familiar -- acts as a sort of cinematic optimism. The nuclear family and its privacy may be threatened by the State, and the traditions and customs of Italy may be giving way to other more dominant cultural trends, but as long as the world is still peopled with striking, autonomous individuals there is still some hope and something worth remembering. I'd like to think that Fellini was thinking something a little more like that.

But hey, that's just me.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This is the omega chapter in a look at several films with the aid of Bordwell and Thompson's fine book, Film Art. I can't recommend the volume enough to those unfamiliar and curious.

Other entries include the following articles:

5. Sound & Sympathy in Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973)
4. Low Key Lighting in a Billy Wilder Noir
3.Things Happen: Reversals of Fortune in Ford's Stagecoach (1939) & Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1956)
2. Maternalism & The Female in My Favorite Wife (1940) and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
1. Modern Times & The Post-Industrial Dream

For the whole megillah:

Bordwell & Thompson Series

technical difficulties

2007-05-22T12:05:00.000-04:00

For some reason, I can't see my sidebar on my blog. This has happened before, and I have an inkling as to why and when I have more time to tinker, I'll take a look under the template hood.

Be a pal, huh, and let me know if you can see my sidebar and what browser you're using. I've had this discussion before...

And stay tuned. There's one last entry in the Bordwell-Thompson series coming, an entry on Amarcord. That's right, I'm fearlessly tackling that beautiful mess of a Fellini film. I'll be talking about editing.

Seriously, though, is the sidebar pushed down to the bottom? Lemme know...

haikus in perreniality

2007-05-18T20:40:00.000-04:00

Or so it seems. I like to think of the Haiku as something that evades the senses for a time to re-emerge as a function of the higher mind when it realizes it has been on holiday. That may or may not be an attempt at a justification for the Western usurpment of the haiku as an art form and a conversation piece, though.

At any rate, here are a couple that I let loose recently:

pause with me

tweedy, smiling night
soft thoughts with my rucksack, shh
like i never knew

iffy garage

non-descript twilight
hashes out the eiderdown
box springs on the take

Great News!

2007-05-09T16:28:00.000-04:00

The first cut of gods in disguise is now finished and even available on dvd... The downside is that I can't embed it for you because of its size, which is .10 gig too many. Grrr.

Because I don't write or shoot much fluff, (being a calculating minimalist), there's very little -- nothing, really -- I can do about putting the short online for now. But I may be able to do segments later, a Part I and a Part II.

You know, like the Godfathers...

It won't look the same or feel the same and I certainly don't have time for that sort of thing now, but I may in the Fall.

Let's hope so, anyway...I'll keep you posted.

A Blogathon Index

2007-04-26T10:19:00.000-04:00

If you're curious as to what's going on blogathon-wise, or you want to drop a mention to someone trying to put together a list, you should so stop by Weepingsam's blog The Listening Ear and give a shout out.

-- that is all --

Dory on Kelly Green

2007-04-23T23:52:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I've just done something rather unusual for me: I entered an online photography contest. This post is in part an enticement (of you, the reader) to vote on two upcoming contests (for me, preferably, the writer, filmmaker and photographer). Of course, you don't have to. I'll still continue to write about many a lovely topic. JUST BELOW, in fact, is a look at Terrence Malick's use of sound to support story and characterization in Badlands (1973). Stay tuned for a seriously in-depth look at editing in Fellini's Amarcord (1974).

I may also write something about John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence (1974) but no promises on that one. If you have a thought about whether I should tackle Cassavetes and from what angle, feel free to leave a comment. I'm feeling rather open to suggestion (it's the weather) and would love to take your thoughts.

Cheers.

(...and check out JPG Magazine, all you web-surfing faerie folk!)

Sound & Sympathy in Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973)

2007-04-23T02:00:00.000-04:00

Terrence Malick's haunting, lyrical re-envisionment of the 1950s Starkweather-Fugate killing spree provides an interpretative and non-judgmental perspective of what it might have been like for a fifteen-year-old girl to have absconded with her father's murderer and passively participate with the subsequent domino-like murders that followed. Through a combination of sound techniques, the subtler, more nuanced aspects of the story help to shed light on how a situation like that might have played out in real life. Told in a sparse voice-over with a reflective journal writing-like quality and a series of non-traditional sound choices, Badlands manages to convey the empty, nowhere feel of a small town where boredom might prevail over reason.

Malick shows that ennui like a hairline fracture, separating its two main characters -- Kit and Holly -- from everything but their most natural surroundings. That implicit, diegetic context imbues the film with a great sense of symbolism concerning the loss of innocence, coming of age, and self-realization; and, as the story progresses and Holly simultaneously comes out of shock and withdraws from Kit, the voice-over takes on new strength and self-awareness -- just like any journal would when the writer, secure in solitude, abandons everything but her own voice.

Holly chooses a different path...

Similarly, sounds that are and aren't used in Badlands denote certain moods and reinforce the disconnect between these characters and their environment. Kit cuts out early from collecting trash in the opening scene and stops to crush a can under his boot in the alley, and then kick it away. Meanwhile, Holly practices baton twirling quietly during her voice-over. Later, when the father discovers his daughter has become intimate with Kit, her mouth moves soundlessly and instead we hear her voice over telling us about her father punishing her for it by shooting her dog. We also hear the gunshot. Kit sits up awake in bed during another voice over which tells us, without letting us listen along, that he hears what sounds like the sea in a conch shell when he's away from her. In both of these instances, the film allows its audience to infer by imagination how these scenes may sound and feel; they are contemplative and open to interpretation, inviting and engaging the senses to open up to these two characters and their unusual and normally unsympathetic dilemma.

Certain other omissions in the soundtrack stand out as well. One interesting consideration is that many unpleasant or simply more mundane sounds don't reach the audience's ears, such as the cattle feeding when Kit gets hired on a ranch after losing his position as a trash collector. Instead, we hear Holly's sweet, lilting voice-over and are left to infer that Kit's mind is, as she he claims, elsewhere and more with us as we watch them. That binding effect between audience and characterization works well, and Malick is very careful not to throw in any distractions, rendering the "noise" level of Badlands practically non-existent. Like a good poem, there is no extra line, word, or letter that does not serve some muscular purpose to the film's bare bones. Diegetically, we hear only the sounds that hold importance or significance to its characters, and the absence of diegetic music speaks volumes. Holly tells the audience about her piano lessons, but we do not hear them; likewise, when we are told that her father has switched her lessons to concentrate on the clarinet as a way of making a lady of his wayward daughter, we do not hear the clarinet either, not even when we see her with the reed in her mouth. This not only serves to evoke the truer world of the characters' inner lives but to create a great sense of quiet, lucid emptiness within the frames.

Only a moment after Holly, still and silent clarinet in hand, runs to greet her father coming home, the scene in which Kit shoots him begins. Thus far, the sequence of events has been natural: the couple has met and fallen in love, and Kit has approached his girlfriend's father to attempt have a man-to-man conversation with him. Yet the underlying events upset the balance of things: Kit is twenty-five to Holly's fifteen, and she lied to her father right after meeting the significantly older man. We hear the lie in direct dialogue in an otherwise affectionate scene and then the next time we see Kit and her together, birds are chirping lazily in sunshine and their relationship is obvious and progressing quickly. So when he shows up after failing to get any satisfaction from his girlfriend's father about being left alone to enjoy his time with Holly, and enters the house to start packing her clothes without speaking to her about it, the unnatural act of entering seems more natural than it otherwise might. Had it not been for the gun in his hand, both the real life story and the film would've gone much differently. [1]

But Malick makes as much use of the small-town sounds as possible to house the first and most important shooting scene in a sturdy, almost amicable fashion. Directly after the shot, a neighborhood dog barks. Kneeling by her father, we hear the words, "This is Holly," delivered by a Spacek completely in touch with the fact that her character has little identity to lose. The use of music is minimal and accompanied by rocking, handheld camera movement that conveys almost a slight Dutch angle sense that helps to keep the audience in suspense as to what kind of character Kit might turn out to be after all, now that he has evolved from reticently charming to wieldy. A cut to the basement where Kit drags the dead man gives way to a cut of him emerging from the basement into cricket-laden evening with a toaster in hand, which he then declares that he has found even though no former dialogue supports that it was lost. We are left, again, to our imaginations to decide how much of the relationship we see unfold is real and how much of it falls into a strained, gray area where two people simply co-exist.

An aural and visual treat, Badlands takes care to ensure that the non-diegetic music does not distract from the story, but enhance it instead. Often the score serves to convey emotions too complex to be translatable through any other means, and these are placed most often in transitions. After Kit leaves the house with the father in the basement, the bereft daughter wanders the upstairs with a cigarette that would have been foreign to her only weeks prior, trying to make some sense of everything that has happened but unable to. This is cued not just by the music but by the lack of voice over when we see her move to a window and watch two boys sitting on a curb across the street. Her separation from her youth before her time is obvious and apparent, and the music grows louder and more frenetic later when Kit sets fire to her house in an attempt to make the entire affair look like a murder-suicide that ended in arson.

This includes a brilliant scene in which the newly minted murderer records a suicide note that claims that the reasons for the tragedy "are obvious" onto a record that he then places in a turntable on repeat only yards away from the blazing inferno they leave behind. By this point in the film, everything from Holly's childhood has disappeared: her father, her mother's memory, her dog, and her home. As the setting changes from restless town to daunting wilderness in the titular surroundings, the ease with which these two got so far and the understandability of her absolution of him becomes ever more apparent.

[1] It should be noted that Malick took great creative license with the Starkweather-Fugate story. In reality, Charlie (Kit) Starkweather was nineteen and had already killed a gas station attendent when he showed up at the fourteen year-old Caril's house. He murdered both her parents and then proceeded to choke the babysitter to death while his young girlfriend made him a sandwich. It's difficult to get a read on the real-life events and perceptions fifty year later, but somehow Malick recreates a family structure that allows Spacek's character to mature onscreen and be pitted against the popular views of her involvement with Starkweather, which is an interesting commentary in and of itself. In the film, even the Texas Rangers who hunt him down find the mass-murdering Kit charming and respectable while Holly feels the glaring judgment of their captors.

It seems that in reality, Caril Fugate would've received a kinder reception after having both parents murdered and being kidnapped from her babysitter, but it's hard to say where Malick pulled that aspect from. It does, however, make for excellent, character-driven storytelling.

directions (2007)

2007-04-13T17:04:00.001-04:00

Here's the third entry in a series of shorts inspired by the notion of colliding consciousness. The final cut and score are still in the works...

For those of you not quite in the know, the film stars Penn State-New Kensington's own reclusive, hard to find Danielle Donahue whose career is already being fertilized over at Rotten Tomatoes. Give it up, folks. This was Dani's first film that didn't involve oodles of blood and first work with a director who said more than, "...okay, go!"

Enjoy.

Coming Soon... gods in disguise (2007)

2007-04-07T13:17:00.001-04:00

Moving forward in the world of independent filmmaking, Unclear Pictures will unveil its look at social and environmental conditions in modern Greece on June 1 of this year. The short documentary will deal with the last days of the anarchists' siege of the University system.

Stay tuned...

Low Key Lighting in a Billy Wilder Noir

2007-04-03T13:52:00.000-04:00

The opening sequence of Double Indemnity sets the tone and the pacing of the entire film. In roughly ten shots, a car careens in the middle of the night and runs a stop light before finally parking in front of a locked, dark office building. Within moments, the audience can see that the man in the car is a trusted employee of an insurance firm, that he has been shot, and that he is spending what might be his final moments recording a confession via Dictaphone for his boss and role model to discover after he’s gone.

By the second scene, the audience has been informed of all that has happened; what’s left to ascertain is how it happened. The insurance salesman’s Achilles heel and foreshadowing for the film make themselves known in that next, vital scene. Symmetrical cinematography provides a solid basis to grasp how it is that the hero is taken in and left for dead, but the camerawork also uses gentle subterfuge in the meeting scene between Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson that creates a lopsided sense of space and a power balance between its main characters. Since the plot’s mainstay composition is the power struggle between these two, studying this scene lends insight and even some stability to what is a very steamy and turbulent romance-murder. It is the events of the second scene upon which the protagonist can ruminate and conclude that that’s the point at which he should have walked away; so, it is no mistake that a dying man begins his story here.

The first shot of the second sequence establishes the expensive house set on a nice vista where a simple pan reveals children playing ball in the driveway and an ice cream truck taking a leisurely drive through the neighborhood. The sense of movement in this first shot establishes the flow as the ice cream truck proceeds off screen in the opposite, angled direction that Walter Neff goes as the camera tilts and he ascends the elegant stairs. The camera then renders a medium shot of Neff as the housekeeper answers the door. Their conversation is shot almost completely as an exterior shot, but Mrs. Dietrichson, whose husband’s insurance coverage is up for renewal, appears in nothing but a bath towel on a railed landing at the top of the stairs. The frame quickly cuts from an interior medium shot of Neff with the housekeeper to the lady of the house up above them.

The low angle of the shot at first reveals nothing more spectacular than Phyllis Dietrichson’s scantily-clad appearance, but the return shot on Neff as he takes off his hat is a high angle shot, somewhat closer. It is in this interplay that the first power struggle takes place, but it won’t be the last. Mrs. Dietrichson ventures closer to the railing in the next cut back to her, unafraid to let him see her even as the housekeeper watches. Though prescribed societal roles would suggest that the woman should feel more vulnerable in a situation such as this, it is the insurance salesman who is disarmed in a second high angle shot, perhaps even fooled by a return to the low angle in which Phyllis moves slightly right within the frame, somewhat obscured by a rug hanging over the railing. Upon the third high angle framing of Neff, he continues the tease in a remark about pigeons, but in the last low angle shot of Phyllis, the angle is much steeper. Her seeming timidity is now understood to be just part of the flirtation; she still seems to hold the upper hand.

At the very least, she clearly asserts her position.

To regain symmetry after this power play, the camera returns to the medium shot that normally would have followed Neff’s entrance more substantially. This time, though, the lighting has brighter notes, as if the two had stepped into the light and Neff had all but revealed himself. The camera pans to the living room as Neff walks toward it and then cuts to an establishing shot in which only the entrance of the living room and the mirror can be seen in the foreground, while the staircase from which Phyllis must eventually descend comprises the ominous background. All of the shots thus far have been angled in such a way to keep movement in a uniform position, and the shot of the staircase follows suit; i.e., the direction of the stairs inside the house matches those without the house.

To lend the living room a sense of 360 degree space, the camera then follows Neff around the room in a carefully constructed manner. He walks to the piano in a pan shot, the camera cuts to an over-the-shoulder close-up of pictures of Lola and Mr. Dietrichson, and the audience is greeted with a second establishing shot of the greater part of the living room, in which the two will spend most of their time together in just a few minutes. At the tail end of this series of shots, there’s a slight pan to follow Neff’s movement, but the camera stops and he walks into a spot of light. The next cut reveals a close-up tracking shot of Mrs. Dietrichson’s feet descending the inevitable steps. A quick zoom-out at the bottom of the steps reveals that she’s just now finishing up with buttoning her blouse, and the shot continues tracking until she goes to the mirror to admire herself and exits the shot. Neff follows her out of it, too, as the camera remains more or less on the mirror.

This sort of stop-gap sense of motion continues. Just as Neff paced around the room in a circular manner, now Phyllis will pace, too, as part of her coquettishness. But special attention should be paid to symmetry, also. First, the characters sit down into a still medium shot, she in a chair somewhat lower than him and he on the arm of the couch. Thus the second power play begins. He notices her anklet, and she uncrosses her legs. The camera tilts and pans as Phyllis gets up from the chair and it pans back and forth as she paces. When she pauses to ask Neff two questions, a brief cut reveals a medium shot of Neff still sitting on the arm of the couch, now somewhat lower than her. The camera returns to Phyllis, panning again as she resumes her seat within the same frame the pair originally sat. She re-crosses her legs and Neff’s attention is once more seized by the anklet, made clear by a close-up on his face. It’s also the cue for the third power struggle in the scene.

The camera tilts, pans and slightly zooms in on the two as they stand and move clear of the couch. It’s as close together as they get in this scene while facing each other. A close-up on Phyllis as she tells Neff that there’s “a speed limit in this town” is quickly followed by a close-up on him telling her to give him a ticket. The next and last close-up Phyllis mentions her husband and the flirtation swiftly ends. Or so it seems.

In the final shot of the scene, the camera’s medium tracking shot on Neff traces their path into the living room in the first place. First, it moves to the mirror where he reclaims his hat and then to the door, where the two have one final exchange of words. It is clear from the way the scene ends that whatever happened between these characters has not ended, but rather just begun.

The most tangible words of the opening sequence is probably the bit about how Neff “didn’t get the money, and [he] didn’t get the woman.” There’s an ambling sense to this scene, in the way that the motion is constructed, that sets off the inevitability of the entire affair – romance and murder, to boot. It’s as though just in the course of daily motion (a prerequisite in the insurance business) that a person can never foresee very well in what direction his life might go at any moment, not even an insurance salesman.

Things Happen: Reversals of Fortune in Ford's Stagecoach (1939) & Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1956)

2007-04-02T07:45:00.000-04:00

Since classic Hollywood cinema by Bordwellian definition deals in reversals of fortune ad nauseum, this treatise will examine the specific vehicles of catharsis employed in these next two films. Ford's titular object and Sirk's small 1950s town provide, respectively, compression and the ultimate denouement necessary to off-set its characters' accomplishments, each doing so in a unique way. Where the literal stagecoach brings together a rag-tag ensemble through proximity, the more conceptual town actually eats at the sense of space between two people until it seems like there's simply no room for a relationship. The difference between the uses of mise-en-scene in these films, beyond the obvious adjustment for makeup and costume in black and white, speaks to a meaning deeper than the surface stories. The lighting and setting especially contribute to the psychological parameters of the characters' relationship to each other and to their setting, the cohesive and centrifugal forces of these plots.

Ford was making a Western. A train could have been the natural option of vehicles, but it would have ousted the potential threat of attacking Apaches and allowed its passengers too much leg room. The stagecoach instead redirects the eye to its passengers rather than the setting. The long shot of it moving through the desert establishes and re-establishes the wild surrounding it, both letting the audience know that the gang is on the move and reminding it of what a small capsule careens through this unknown country. Inside, though, space is constructed in such a way to study each character. Since the relationships between certain characters change substantially by the end of Ford's film, special notice should be given to the placement of those characters within the narrative, lighting and the costuming that offers more than standard, Western denotative functions.

Social position feeds the main conflict and resolution of Stagecoach. Although the natives present the variable of a potentially hostile threat, they remain as such; it is the people whose lives intersect on the journey who threaten the peace more intimately. While inside of the vehicle, the shots are largely formal, medium compositions that dance between straight shots and more angled ones. Part of the justification for this lies in keeping the conversation participants and their respective seats in the coach straight, to witness who is looking and speaking to whom and who is avoiding eye contact and discussion. John Wayne, as the black sheep of the pack, sits in the odd seat on the coach's floor, allowing for nearly 360 degrees of camera movement which the cinematographer uses to compress the air between the stuffier inhabitants when appropriate. It also allows for a variety of exterior events to be visible through the coach windows. Partly in keeping with the development of the characters, but also to aid the impact of the eventual surprise of the Indian attack, the camera only leaves the coach interior when the action justifies it wholesale.

The director makes good use of the film's mise-en-scene at the intermittent stops outside of the coach, too. If the coach is his characters' catalyst, the breathers between act as air sacs for expansion upon the theme of social justice. The scene which exposes the society woman to be pregnant provides ample goodies that demonstrate the changes occurring in the group in subtle ways. After she faints at the news of her husband's wounding, the rest of the gang rushes in to see her, and for that brief moment, they are all the closest together that they will ever be. The lighting of that scene has the advantage of existing in one of the larger interior sets used, and it interplays with the suspense not only in terms of shadows against a wall but also in terms of significant costuming highlights.

While much of the costuming in Stagecoach is denotative of societal rank (as with the banker, who wears decidedly authoritative black dress) or ancestral background (like the doctor who wears an Irish-style derby to set off his accent) Ford also personalizes each actor's garb. By doing so, he opens up the floodgates of symbolism through clothing. The gambler, for instance, wears a spotlessly white hat that glows in a spike of light during the suspenseful delivery scene; yet, doubts had been raised during his introduction regarding his status as a gentleman. Whether the glow is meant to be sinister or not, it is intriguing because his character has so many shades of nuance -- and in a way, that is reflected in the hat. An even greater development exists between the society woman and the more coquettish one that we can assume to be either a dancer or a woman of looser morals.

The society woman rejects every offer of help from the woman, often in the form of an item of clothing that would wam her. By the film's end, the new mother not only uses the clothing but accepts it as a gift. In this way, Ford allows the personalization of costuming to permeate the cathartic bonds that the stagecoach helps to create.

Sirk's town in All That Heaven Allows sets the pace of the film from the opening scene of a church's bell house, upon which the clock hands read as noon. The town, like the time, is already in full swing; at least, as much as any sleepy, little American town can be. Yet the town will also share another characterisitic with time: both are products of human invention and, as such, are transient. To support the themes of self-reliance and independence introduced in the film, time is used as a suggestion, perhaps, that its illusory power has as little true consequence as the town that is the psychological obstacle to Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman's romance. Many of the motifs in the film likewise support the natural world of American transcendentalism, but Sirk does not limit the mise-en-scene to the typical perception of all things New England.

The spacing of the characters, like the objects in the setting, is airy and uncluttered. Very little physically separates the actors in Sirk's melodrama besides light and dark. Characters are alternately alone and close together, as they need to be, as if to suggest that all is well and to reinforce the naturalness of independent thought through independent action. In her own home, the film never once shows the mother in her kitchen surrounded by gadgets; it is the children who bring some small sense of clutter to the film, when the son mixes drinks or when the daughter plays with her mother's makeup. Sirk even goes so far as to create a sense of cacaphony visually speaking during the party, by placing people chaotically throughout the frames on the evening that ends in social disaster. Meanwhile, on the hipper side of town, Rock Hudson's friends present a more ordered universe as they sit to eat at a long table that, although arranged at a 45 degree angle to the room's walls (denoting, perhaps, their differences with society), has seats in a uniform pattern for people to dine together charitably.

After the more chaotic party, Sirk reveals the clock again, in the full darkness of midnight. The temporal reality foreshadowed at the film's opening now takes on a deeper meaning and the interior lighting follows suit. When there are misunderstandings between Jane Wyman and her children, for example, they exist more in the shadows of the frame than in the lighted parts. It is interesting to note that that particular phenomenon of people conversing in shadows takes place only in the house that once belonged to her and her now-dead husband. By such extension, his ghost reaches into her life as effectively as the town reaches into the main relationship. Vibrant colors and patterns of light -- especially upstairs in the more familiar, personal rooms -- further emphasizes the haunted feeling without resorting to pointing to it through dialogue or special effects.

The absolute vibrancy of such shots acts as a relief from the story's progress, even if the diversion is one from romantic conflict to mother-daughter tension. Opening up the characters' relationships, these lighting choices add a whole, new dimension to the film that may have been more flat had it not begged the audience's attention to the strangeness of these people's lives. A woman in emotional solitary confinement, a daughter who feels like she knows better than her mother and an overprotective, fickle son would have played much differently -- as if these were people we had already met and there was no real story here -- without the lighting and color choices.

Character development especially benefits in certain areas. Consider the scene in which the busybody best friend attempts a heart-to-heart with Jane Wyman. The friend realizes that the housekeeper can hear them despite the vacuum cleaner and the action moves from this:

to this:

Although Sirk never spells it out, such actions clearly delineate the understood separation between society people and the working class in small-town America and underscores the social conflict resulting from Wyman seeing her gardener. By contrast, Rock Hudson's friends make no such separation and the audience can realize this by comparing the difference between a catered party that is already in full swing at the busybody's house and the more rustic do-it-yourself shindig that happens across town:

where Wyman discovers Walden:

Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of All That Heaven Allows is the museum-like quality of much of the setting. Exteriors reveal a very New England-looking autumn, but interiors often appear very serene, with a sense of almost sterile grace. The cold, damp grey of the old mill -- which Wyman prefers to the dowdier yet cozier house Hudson sleeps in -- would be uninviting were it not for the fireplace and the view. Sirk even uses framing to depict a sense of artistic stasis, exampled by this shot in which Wyman looks more like a bust on display than a woman about to go somewhere:

Such images are beautiful and haunting, with an organic quality between them, including a reference to the dead father's trophy on the mantelpiece that appears in a later visual reference on the patio at the party when a neighbor attempts to kiss Jane Wyman. [1] The reference is book-ended by the son's later protests against Rock Hudson marrying into the family, during which he brings up the trophy again, none the wiser that were Wyman to marry a man more acceptable to him and their society friends that she would be reduced to little more than the trophy that she sees reflected in the TV set the children buy her as a consolation to her widowhood. In that moment, the denouement is complete as Wyman realizes the falsity and emptiness of the life that stretches before her if she continues to care what other people think of her.

Although Sirk's approach is more subtle and perhaps craftier than Ford's, each film still exists within the framework afforded it. The distractions that occur within each film serve purposes in conjunction with -- and not contrary to -- the films' best interests. The singing Apache woman may seem at first like a considerable and even jumpy digression from the film's internal movement toward peaceable relations and certainly from its explicit movement toward the end of the coach ride, but it acts as cover for horse thieves to get away, distracting both the audience and the on-screen characters at once through unexpected entertainment. The early, somewhat shocking medium shot/jump cut of the banker warns the audience that something is not right without giving away an important plot point that would have detracted more from the film than the shot does had it been gleaned early.

These considerations promote the pleasure of viewing, the addition of information occurring only when necessary. Perhaps more important, though, to the filmic world is the sense that each film acknowedges that duration is short and fleeting, that the stagecoach ride can only last as long as a town or a memory's hold upon a person. In that sense, each film takes a greater place within the cinematic world, each aware of its own transience and mortality as surely as anyone who ever lived in the Old West; or anyone who has walked the streets of a small town with her thoughts miles away in Walden's Pond; or anyone who has ever noticed how silly and filmic real life can be.

[1] It is impossible for me to determine whether I would have picked this out on my own, so I must give credit where credit is due: former film blogger Andy Horbal first pointed it out in a post complete with screen grabs. Check it out.

Turning a Negative into a Positive

2007-03-30T20:07:00.000-04:00

Years ago, I had an abusive boyfriend who had very few qualities, but one of those qualities was his ownership of an iMac with a few peripherals. When we broke up, he owed me a bit of money that he "repaid" me by slashing prices on these items and sort of splitting the difference with me. Since then, I've gotten back on my feet and finally got a new computer set-up...which is where you, dear reader, potentially come in to play.

You see, the only good way I can see to dispose of the iMac and its scanner, printer, zip drive and Alpha Smart is to sell all of it in one sitting for a very affordable, reasonable price and to turn the money over to the charity of my choosing. If you would like to help in this endeavor, please email me at: fleet528@hotmail.com.

You'd not only be helping me out; you'd be helping to support the arts in Pittsburgh, and I can't think of a better way to support the arts in Pittsburgh then to take something with negative memories and practically give it to someone who can't relate.

Please, if you can, help make history history.

Update: as of 1 April 2007, this offer has been met.

Local Filmmaker Dishes on Hard Knocks

2007-03-27T11:56:00.001-04:00

Friendly City in the Land of the Free

What's the hardest part of making a documentary film in Pittsburgh? "Getting people to call you back, getting people to trust you," responds Pittsburgh filmmaker Chris Ivey of Hyperboy Media. "Getting people to take you seriously. But mainly trust. And support." The premiere of the first leg of his urban renewal triptych East of Liberty: A Story of Good Intentions come and gone in December 2006 at East Liberty's renovated Kelly-Strayhorn Theatre – and with the second, third and fourth showings also fading notches on his belt – Ivey glows as he talks about the various interviews that are keeping him busy and one panel discussion that really energized and excited him. Then he rolls his eyes.

An altercation broke out shortly after the Hill House screening in Pittsburgh's historic and controversial Hill District, when one member of a group of black, Muslim males made an offensive remark to a group of black lesbians. Although enthused about the sparked Q&A session that the film had elicited, the young filmmaker shakes his head as he recalls the incident. When the group tried to smooth things over by saying that he had meant no offense the lesbians, said Ivey, "weren't having any of it." The Muslim faith provides no leeway for acceptance of sexual orientation, nor does the black community in general, he confirms, shrugging. "It's a sin."

Similar conflicts pepper the ongoing spectrum of Q&A sessions that accompany each showing, and Ivey's enlightening film continues to engage a cross-section of people of various races, most of whom happen to live in an area doomed to be repopulated and possibly even renamed "The East Side" as a consolidated neighborhood, losing its distinctiveness. At the first showing, when he announced the follow-up leg and its focus on black-on-black violence, one audience member fumed, upset that white-on-black or even white-on-white violence was not being addressed. "I told her that I understand where she was coming from, but it was important to me to address that if I knew someone who was a victim of white crime, I would address that – but what I've been seeing is black-on-black violence exploding – and I wanted to address that."

The thirty-four-year-old Hyperboy Media founder has been living in Pittsburgh since 1995, his personal MySpace page sporting an old wound proudly, like a Purple Heart, as it declares his hometown to be "Monroe, NC…Same town as that damn Jesse Helms." His awareness of black history in Pittsburgh is up to snuff, though, as he talks about watching another documentary about East Liberty in contrast to the one on PBS. "That's the nice one," he smiles as he sits back into a chair at the Southside's Gypsy Café. Friends with the owner and nearly everyone employed there, Ivey looks incongruously at home in décor he describes as "old-school romantic," pausing to consider one of the many modern art works that incorporate old world iconic images of the Madonna and Christ.

Somehow, the renovated Greek Orthodox Church setting suits him.

For two years, the high school and Pittsburgh Filmmakers-educated filmmaker has been working on a PBS documentary about the consequences of AIDS in the African-American society at large. It reminds him of a lot of the woes entrenching an entire race, both in reality and in the media. He recalls a TV show that surfaced at the tail end of the Cosby years, Under One Roof, which included appearances by Joe Morton and James Earl Jones. "It was a really good show, and it only lasted a month," Ivey laments. "One thing from the black community is that you never see any positive images portraying black people in a strong way. It's either comedic, music or sports. It's never anything enlightening." After two years of interviews mainly set up by the AIDS documentary's Connecticut producers, Ivey's no stranger to African-Americans' lack of acknowledgment, which he pinpoints in a word: "Shame. If someone dies of AIDS, [the family] is likely to say it's cancer."

The staggering difference between the gay community's early-1980s response to AIDS and HIV awareness and that of the black community weighs on him, too. "Not many people [in the community] care that the African-American community is number one for AIDS. People only choose what affects them. If it doesn't affect them directly, they don't get involved. I think that goes for everybody, but it goes double in the black community." Those words manifested themselves with the culmination of the first part of his film, which witnesses the destruction of the East Mall Tower, an over-the-street apartment building that once signaled the entryway to East Liberty on Penn Avenue as surely as the Gateway Arch heralds the West. Ivey recalls the building's former residents in plaintive tones. "From the mid-90s until 2 years ago, you could turn on almost any news broadcast and if it mentioned East Liberty, either somebody got shot or something."

Because of the media connection of the East Mall Tower with violence and drugs, the city government made a field day of the building's demise, turning the event into a paintball free-for-all as the inhabitants of the building looked on in stupefied horror and fascination and an entire community repressed mixed feelings too diverse to list. Despite that – or, perhaps, because of that kind of trauma – Ivey had difficulties locating support nerves in the community. "If certain [city officials] felt like the direction of certain things weren't going the way that they thought they would, phone calls would slow down and maybe take a month. And they assumed the worst of the project, like the worst was going to happen and make them look bad."

When waiting for calls to inbound ceased to be a virtue, Ivey took action and went after the foundations himself. A pre-established relationship of sorts from a different project with the Multi-Cultural Arts Initiative helped significantly, as did partnering with other organizations like the Pittsburgh Foundation. "It's kind of funny the way that I saw things a certain way, and the foundations got it, but the development companies saw something different," Ivey reminisces. He had an easier time finding people to talk to him who were hacking out a living on their own, pooling a variety of perspectives to concoct the film.

Two of the documentary's featured interviewees, married couple Ebony McKinney and Davu Flint, hold a role integral to the film's evolution, something that Ivey's waiting to unveil in the second leg set to premiere in September. "[Ebony] pointed it out well when she said that people hear what they want to hear." Learning how to grab people by the ears may have been a critical lesson to him during the documentary process, but reaching people beyond the point of hearing what they want to hear interests Ivey more. "I love being able to create things and express my thoughts and, maybe, entertain and enlighten people. Make people talk, make people dance, and occasionally make people talk back to the TV," Ivey laughs. "I like that a lot."

East Liberty has undergone enough changes in the last few years to keep people talking to their TVs indefinitely, if for no other reason than to bide time while awaiting the arrival of more catapulting paint and a wrecking ball just outside their doors. Changes like signs sporting the greeting, "Welcome to the East Side," the rapid growth of corporate stores that have ousted small businesses through skyrocketing rent payments and the arrival of strange architecture make it denizens leery.

One such oddity exists at what is now an architectural firm on the corner of Whitfield and Baum. The renovation of the building included two massive wooden doors that one morning attracted a crowd of spectators. It wasn't the light coloring of the doors that had pulled people from the East Liberty branch of the Carnegie Library, though. It was the doorknob, a steering wheel-size sculpture of a bronze man climbing the doors in a loincloth. In order to open the door, a brave soul has to tug on the sculpture's tummy. One African-American library employee seemed especially alienated and turned off by the hardware seemingly placed to fit in to the urban landscape. Before trudging back to work, she managed to mutter, "Well, they're never building anything for me."

Such complacency is pretty much par for the course in East Liberty. Changes are made and people rubberneck without really getting involved. That's where Ivey comes in, exciting people and waking them up. But he also likes the easy sense of brotherhood that exists among most African-Americans, mentioning the understanding that when you see someone on the street, you greet them. He sees this as a good thing, a positive affirmation among blacks. "That doesn't fly in London, though," he smiles. East of Liberty pond hops to a similar neighborhood for a May 7th screening in Hackney, and Ivey will be riding shotgun because gentrification, like poverty, is universal.

Continuing his work state-side, Ivey plans to hang out with kids in different neighborhoods most of the summer. This stage feels of monumental importance to him because it addresses the key issue of gang violence in the city as well as the growth of the black community. Money is also easier now that the first stage has been completed and the foundations are pleased with the progress, Ivey reports, along with a nagging feeling of irony that the project's bane has now become a source of contention. Everyone wants to be a part of it now that the hard part's over, and that frustrates him. "What does it really take for people to really see?" Ivey asks of the air. "It's like making this documentary into a court case, like you have no proof or disproof that this is really happening. If I hadn't documented it, nobody would really care. Nobody wants to talk about failure. Nobody likes to deal with failure. They want to move on. You can't just forget shit."

Spending time with kids rather than adults this summer may be a refreshing change of pace for Ivey, whose frustrations with the broken lines of communication may take a while to die down. He's tired of subservience, appalled at the absence of authority questioning. "Everybody's afraid. They're either living like a citizen or an evil-doer or just a…poopie-head," he laughs, a director already geared to deal with his new subjects.

The second leg of East of Liberty will air at various venues starting this Fall, including The Kelly-Strayhorn Theatre, The Hill House and The Union Project. Each screening is followed by a Q&A session. To get involved, all you have to do is show up.

For more information, visit eastofliberty.com or email Chris Ivey at hyerboymedia@gmail.com.

The Changing Sphere of Journalism

2007-03-25T12:07:00.000-04:00

The following is the rough draft of a feature article that may or may not be sequeled in the future. It was originally going to be a part of a zine that has turned out to be more speculative than real.

I normally don't publish rough drafts, but I wanted to float this on my page for a couple of reasons. Feel free to add your two cents; as long as its your own two cents, it is welcome. That's why I'm here.

Cyber Journalism in the Age of Media Convergence

Journalism and imprisonment need no more introduction than rice and beans, but lately the relationship between journalists and their captors has put sand on the fires of democracy and given the definition of limited freedom of speech a stretch, particularly outside of the formally recognized coverlet of the press. Media convergence has taken on greater scope and new meaning worldwide, and a couple of factions have arisen to rally the efforts of those engaged in the field officially and those working under their own auspices. The goal is clear: freedom of the press should be unrestricted and universal.

One group inspired by a source more contemporary than the Bill of Rights is the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, founded by its current Secretary General Robert Menard as a non-governmental organization (NGO) and built upon the principles of free information and expression outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As an international media watchdog, the NGO assumes several responsibilities that have ranged from campaigning to free 27 journalists in Castro's Cuba in 2003 to compiling a "worldwide press freedom index" that ranks 168 countries based upon surveys sent out to many sectors of the global media community.

According to the October 2006 index publication, 52 countries reported less press restraints than the U.S., with countries like Finland, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland scaling the top 8 while Russia, Singapore, Iran and Korea sank to the bottom 25. China's ranking at 163 places an especial perspective on the ongoing censorship laws that its citizens face. Shanghai blogger Isaac Mao and others like him have written open letters to businesses in the position to help loosen the flow of information, one notable example asking Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to stop imposing filters that restrict search options, denying the Chinese government the censorship power. Pleas like this have also traditionally been backed up and reiterated by Reporters Without Borders.

After admitting in 2005 that a small percentage of its funding came contractually from the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, though, the NGO's tactics and public statements have elicited magnified scrutiny from questioners of the group's motives who descry a furtherance of U.S. and other Western interests. One such critic has been studying Cuba and the Latin world extensively and published web-accessible articles all over calling out the NGO for its dismissive treatment of existing news organizations and outlets where and when the government is perceived to be a threat to press freedom.

Sorbonne University researcher Salim Lamrani, publishing mainly among counter watchdog groups like his home-based Voltairnet.org – self-promoted as part of the "non-aligned press network" – and Seattle-based Reclaim the Media.org, specifically criticized the NGO's ostensible purpose of aiding independence in journalism as self-contradictory and claimed that it has become "a transmission cable for the State Department." In addition to his suggestion that Reporters Without Borders may be helping the U.S. government plot an overthrow of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (knowingly or not), he pointed out that, "In Cuba, 156 foreign correspondents of 126 press agencies of 37 countries have an accreditation that allows them to do their job. These professionals have all material and relational services to perform their duties completely guaranteed."

What Lamrani refers to, of course, is money and a network. Reporters Without Borders sent out surveys to those corners of the world where money, press networks and accreditation already existed to create its index. What the index doesn't show as a result are the millions operating as the proponents of the NGO's self-proclaimed mantra, Article 19. "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference," the article states, "and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Despite the debatable impetus behind Robert Menard and his outfit, the September 2005 publication of the Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents offered a tone and approach to independent journalism contrary to the NGO's opponents' sticking points. The online guide provides technological advice for setting up a web log and making it as salient and interactive as possible, while attempting to promote and cultivate a new kind of journalism. "Not all bloggers do journalism," notes former columnist Don Gilmor in the Handbook's introduction. "Most do not. But when they do, they should try to be ethical." Not only has the internet opened doors for freelance journalists to have audiences beyond what media outlets willing to pick them up have to offer, it has now given them basic acknowledgment of Article 19 rights and unlimited potential vis-à-vis guidelines such as these.

The Handbook has also helped to shape a new breed of political activism, tossing encouraging tips to those seeking to further or continue their causes online anonymously if they so choose, without fear of any retaliation or censorship from their government. One such dissident is Martyn See, guilty of having filmed a documentary in Singapore, a country noted for its very limited press freedom that likewise includes very stringent laws for film. A response to a public perception of Singapore as a market place without any notable political history, Singapore Rebel featured an interview with the National University of Singapore's Dr. Chee Soon Juan, stock footage of his attempt at a May Day rally and his subsequent arrest. The documentary cost See 15 months of police harassment and the seizure of his film, both of which constitute legal actions under the country's revised 1998 Film Act. See is just one of many political malcontents who continue to document their struggles online, but the virtual revolution only twirls so far.

Even in the U.S., Reporters Without Borders can appeal the lengthy imprisonment of bloggers held for reasons lying outside of national security concerns, but beyond that and some buried criticism the NGO can effect no real change. In July of 2001, freelance journalist Vanessa Leggett was arrested for refusing to give up a source name for a book she was writing about the murder of a Texan millionaire. She was held until January 2002. Prior to that, the only record of a journalist being held in contempt longer than one day was during the Charles Manson scare, when Los Angeles Herald Examiner writer William Farr was jailed for 46 days for not revealing the source of the hairy trial's leaks.

Since then accredited New York Times journalist Judith Miller was held for three and a half months for what was more a case of international administrative embarrassment than national security, but she and Farr and even Leggett were recently surpassed by American blogger and freelance journalist Josh Wolf, whose stay in the Dublin, California federal prison tallied up to over 200 days early this month. Wolf's crime? Refusing to surrender video files of a 2005 riot he observed at a G8 Summit protest in San Francisco, during which a police car was the alleged victim of arson. The police 's reason for the significance of the video files has changed numerous times, however, according to both the 24-year-old prisoner and his worried mother. "When Judith Miller was in jail for 85 days, it was in the paper almost every day. Journalist in jail! Journalist in jail! And my son has been in jail almost twice that long and it's gotten almost no coverage."

Liz Wolf-Spada's feelings concerning her son's unique situation were more sensitive to the media's treatment of him than police procedure. "And, to me, that's a total injustice, that because he's a video blogger in San Francisco who's not connected with corporate media his case is not getting the kind of attention that the Balco case is getting, and those two reporters aren't even in jail."

Despite the apparent push for coverage from various web-based media sources, accredited and otherwise, The Wolf case facts remain only slightly more traceable than dew. His story and the future of internet journalism await this July's expiration of the grand jury's investigation; beyond that, he could be held until a cumulative sentence of 18 months, the maximum allowed for contempt of court. In the intervening time, the sharp contrast between Judith Miller's now-household name and Wolf and Leggett's obscurity speaks for itself, as does the fact that despite its Handbook and its appeals, Reporters Without Borders will probably not be sending Josh Wolf a survey when it prepares to recalibrate its worldwide press freedom index.

Update: since this article posted, Wolf has been released from custody, an event that made the local, evening news.

A Short Documentary in the Making

2007-03-22T12:30:00.000-04:00

Some of you have been following along with my activities in Greece. Here is an overview of what I'll be working on for the next month or so. I think my deadline is April 26, but don't quote me on that.

I plan to title this Gods In Disguise, playing off the ancient Greek belief that any person one might meet should be welcome, as he or she may be a god in disguise. What threatens traditional Greek life more than anything is the influx of immigrants (unfortunately I have no footage for that, although I came upon a couple of pocket populations in Athens' center), the rise in divorce (almost negligible, but of course a real problem when it happens), Gypsies and other vagabonds (of course), and the rise of certain political parties (the Communists hold 7% of the mandatory voting power) and anarchists like those that shut down the university system for four months.

Obviously, I wasn't in Greece long enough* or well connected enough to make this an in-depth project, but I plan to give the overview of the country's current state with an eye toward certain environmental developments. It interests me greatly that the country is able to adapt to the changing global scheme (environmentally speaking) more quickly than it is to the problems of its own people. Perhaps every country is like this. The recurring theme of this documentary, however, should address the bared teeth of the Greeks' smiles as they struggle to maintain the kind of hospitality that their ancient belief prescribes (and which is now mandated by the country's reliance on tourism second only to shipping for its GNP) while they see the people on the other end of those smiles as a threat to their way of life.

A very old story, is it not?

*I also broke my nose on last Wednesday, so my productivity dropped sharply for a day or two, as did my brain...

a lead...

2007-03-11T17:30:00.001-04:00

Revolution has been sweeping Greek universities.

You may read about it here.

Tomorrow, being the good journalist and filmmaker I am, I will be heading toward the university to interview the students who remain at the University holding signs of protest and spray painting the buildings to talk to them about anything and everything. It's only about ten blocks from my hotel.

Preparing to Cross the Atlantic...12:50 East of Detroit

2007-03-09T22:46:00.000-05:00

Last August I took my first adult flight to Montana to begin shooting an environmental documentary. Today I submitted an abstract to a committee for funding so that I can do it again next August, and perhaps even stay longer than ten days.

Saying a short but sweet prayer on the matter would not be inappropriate. Butte, Montana is in serious trouble.

Tomorrow morning, I hop a plane to Greece. Well, not quite. First, you see, we have to back up and get a running start, else we won't make it over the vast, vast ocean. So I'm flying first to Detroit and from there catapulting to Amsterdam, and then on to Athens. I'll be there for ten days and, more for fun and human sharing than serious research, I'll be interviewing a few Greeks here and there to ask them about life and to probe their environmental awareness.

It should be a wonderful time.

There's something you have to understand about Greece and me, though. We have a relationship. A history.

My father traveled there during his Navy days and of all his stories, the ones of Spain and of Greece were by far my favorites. To this day, the novels of Hemingway and Michener stand out not just in my memory but in my nostrils. Dad said the first thing he smelled when he stepped off the plane in Athens was the smell of olives. The man really loves olives.

Of course, that was the sixties and I'm sure things have gotten smoggier. Mostly, I hope I can track down an electrical outlet adapter so that I can recharge my single film camera battery. What can I say? Working conditions are not ideal.

I will also no doubt think of Tom, who was an excellent cook, a very decent poet and a rather good companion for a few months once before I realized what I always seem to realize too late. Perhaps I will even sit at some cafe where he once sat.

But mostly, I will revel in the peninsula's beauty and soak up the atmosphere. I will eat feta without hormones or additives. I will eat like I have never eaten before.

And I will dip my feet in the Mediteranean and feel the surf stir up the ghosts of Atlantis and countless others, lost to sea and wind and time.

the meeting (2006-2007)

2007-03-04T23:15:00.000-05:00

This is the first treatment of my second film.

Debut of spring (2002-2007)

2007-03-02T16:50:00.000-05:00

This is the rough cut of a silent film that still needs music added to it...

Maternalism & the Female in My Favorite Wife (1940) and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

2007-02-25T19:40:00.000-05:00

The following discussion is the second in a series of writings designed to broaden my filmic horizons. The first segment of this particular series looked at Modern Times as one representative of the silent film era. The focus this time around is on "classic Hollywood cinema." As defined by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson in Film Art, classic Hollywood cinema's "conception of narrative depends on the assumption that the action will spring primarily from individual characters as causal agents" and that "the narrative centers on personal psychological causes: decisions, choices, and traits of character." [1] A character has a desire, there's some sort of goal; but, naturally, a counterforce always lies in waits to foible and block the character and make him or her our hero...

In My Favorite Wife and Meet Me in St. Louis the female characters possess what might be considered an unusual amount of strength given the time. Ellen Wagstaff Arden and Esther Smith each exude a strong maternal affection so naturally that it appears to be a given of a desirable woman of the day. Contextual cues also serve to negotiate these gender roles in a way indicative of the call for women, as Lynn Spigel observed, "by popular media to enter traditionally male occupations during the war." [2] Both Mrs. Arden and Ms. Smith were designed to appeal to women of the same class in an adventurousness that still allows room for the boy next door but not without some remediation. The way in each film approaches that design, however, varies considerably as will be seen.

A revisitation of the on-screen charisma exhibited by Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth (1937) presents the audience yet again with two protagonists. When Ellen Arden turns out not to be dead and lost at sea, the recently remarried Nick Arden finds himself flummoxed and unsure what to do. While Ellen desires to have her husband and her family back, Nick's character holds the flaw that must be ground down and polished: wishy-washiness. By disguising Ellen as the antagonist to Nick's desire to have everything turn out well for everybody (without having to make any decisions), the writers (McCarey, Spewack, McClain and Kanin) reinforce the image of an ideal wife and mother who is essentially perfect, capable of the same things as her male counterparts and only awaiting for her man to grow a little backbone. He must find a classy way to annul his second marriage while she must find a way to re-enter the lives of her husband and children. In order to establish a sense of balance another man also gets thrown into the mix, someone with whom Ellen spent her years "lost at sea." By leveling the romantic playing field, the love story becomes more believable as the audience witnesses how much the idea of his wife spending seven years alone on an island with a strange man pains Nick, who subsequently all but forgets about his new bride.

While Meet Me in St. Louis uses a far more traditional context, its approach to conflict renders it unique and even strange perhaps to anyone unfamiliar with the semi-autobiographical novel by Sally Benson, upon which it is based, or the fascinating history of the city of St. Louis itself. Garland's character is the second of three older daughters hoping to marry the literal boy next door and subject ostensibly to the conflict of the Smith family's possible move to New York City for economic reasons. The move could break the tenuous love affair blossoming between Esther and John. Moods and romantic suggestions color the film through song and dance routines and that same ideal image of womanhood shines through as the men slowly but surely realize that they must speak up in order to get the girl. More importantly, Esther Smith shares an uncommon bond with an uncommon little sister whose psychological havoc with traditional gender roles scores darker notes in this otherwise light fare. While Esther dreams of first kisses and Christmas balls, Tootie executes her toy dolls stoically, even grimly, in an expression quite against the characteristic grain of the future mother, housekeeper or matriarch.

Most interestingly, nobody notices these odd quirks of the youngest daughter's nature, not even in a house with little breathing room and close female relationships. In this way, Tootie's actions symbolize a definite, closeted change in gender roles with a cloudy and indefinite future--a threat to the film's ideology as identified by Bordwell and Thompson. "...Meet Me in St. Louis, like most Hollywood films, seeks to uphold what are conceived as characteristically American values of family unity and life." Pointing out that the film's motif is one of static preservation, they further note that that "the home appears to be a self-sufficient place; other social institutions become peripheral, even threatening." It is also interesting to note that these acts on Tootie's part represent a deep unrest and a rift between the women of the family, a direct result of the external forces at play because of males actions--or inaction. While the outside world prepares for the advent of the 1904 World's Fair (i.e., the Louisiana Purchase Exposition) and horse-drawn carriages give the right of way to motorized vehicles, inside the Smith home "...women are portrayed as the agents of stability. The action in the story constantly returns to the kitchen, where Mrs. Smith and the maid, Katie, work calmly in the midst of small crises. The men present the threat to the family's unity."

Each of these films employ a mixture of perceptual and mental subjectivity. After witnessing the physical prowess of the man with which his wife lived on an island, Nick Arden's mental torture manifests itself in a hallucinatory image at once funny and indicative of his state of mind. Many of Minnelli's musical numbers could be construed as mental subjectivity as the audience listens to Esther's thoughts and ruminations through song. It might be said that while Meet Me in St. Louis relies heavily on mental subjectivity and My Favorite Wife upon perceptual subjectivity that each operate differently within their largely omniscient point of view. The audience almost always knows more than the Ardens at any given time, which is just part of the fun, but these two characters catch up on the facts as the story unfolds. The Smith sisters and their family and beaus are considerably more vague; the audience sees into each private life, but the web never quite connects on the screen. If the audience only considers the desires of Esther, though, the narration then becomes more restricted to her character's viewpoint, waiting with her to see if John Truett will make up his mind and things will work out somewhere between St. Louis and New York. In this sense, the omniscient view point reinforces the use of each character in its distinct position within the framework of the film's ideology and ostensible recipe for romance.

"Straight musicals," Bordwell and Thompson write of films like Meet Me in St. Louis, "are often romantic comedies, in which characters typically trace the progress of their courtship by breaking into song to express their fears, longings, and joys." Bordwell and Thomspon also note the connection between musicals and children's fare, a decidedly good point looking at Minnelli's film as a whole. Not only do children appear in the film prominently, but the recurrent idea of resistance to change conjures a romantic perception of childhood innocence and youth in general as something to be preserved and cherished lest it be lost forever. It often feels that musicals and love stories go so hand-in-hand because of the imperfect nature of words when trying to express strong feelings. Actions always speak louder than words, but what satisfaction can an audience derive from a love story in which no words connoting love or intimacy are exchanged? By the same token musicals provide more than a means to that expression; they also allow for intrigue between the characters to build as the audience becomes ever more privy to the character's desires and ever more aware of the growing love interest's ignorance. This romantic plot line insinuates itself naturally into the musical form--even when dealing with supposedly revolutionary characters in Hair (1979) or a platonic historical figure in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) or a desperate and ultimately doomed love affair the likes of Moulin Rouge! (2001).

Bereft of musical numbers, romantic comedies--particularly the "screwball" comedy--employ more plot twists and devices to keep the audience intrigued. In order for a love story to be believable, both parties (according to Hollywood) must hold more than a passing interest in each other; they must each at least try to make the relationship work, even if only the audience can fully appreciate their attempts. Or, to quote the authors yet again, "The screwball comedy traditionally sets up a thematic opposition between a stiff, unyielding social milieu and characters' urges for freedom and innocent zaniness." The judge in the courtroom represents the law and authority and an indifference to the qualities that make this romance work--love, forgiveness and spontaneity--a recurring obstacle in comedies from His Girl Friday (1940) to Some Like it Hot (1959). The use of certain Foley sounds, such as pings that sound when something racy has been implied, also seem to be the sole province of the screwball comedy; and, unlike the musical genre, the story determines the film's general reception as the audience relies more on the character's interaction rather than their ability to emote through song and dance routines.

To return to Spigel's words concerning the changing gender roles in World War II's America for a moment, it seems a good bet that a lot of the dialogue in My Favorite Wife was crafted with that shift in mind. The judge/authority figure frowns upon Ellen Arden's role, but is more confused than condemning. She retains her maiden name (Ellen Wagstaff Arden) perhaps as part of her role as a former Southern belle, but probably also symptomatically of a new way of viewing the woman's role in a marriage. Her role as a mother demonstrates itself as an egalitarian negotiation between her and her husband that keeps what's best for the children in mind but does not usurp the romantic ideal of being a woman first and a mother second--despite the twin beds in the marital chamber. [3] In other words, explicitly a woman has to grapple with her various roles but implicitly a woman's strength of reason and resolve create a home in which a man can either snuggle up or leave to find a new mate. In contrast, the maternal strength in Meet Me in St. Louis manifests itself much differently. If the outside forces of the world--a world run by men--present a threat to that strength, the period piece musical acquires a new dimension non-existent in the screwball comedy, a defiance of a perceived societal shift. Where the screwball comedy interacts with that shift, the musical seeks to trap and distill it--crystallize it--and let the world see what it is that they will be forever missing.

[1] Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. Eighth Ed. McGraw Hill: University of Wisconsin. 2006.

[2] Spigel, Lynn. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. The University of Chicago Press: 1992. (All excerpts Chapter 2: Television in the Family Circle)

[3] This ideal female image would re-prioritize those roles in the post-war era. Spigel discusses the reaction to the undermining of the male's assumed authority in the household and workplace thus: "...women were given a highly constraining solution to the changing roles of gender and sexual identity...Marynia Farnham and Ferdinand Lundberg's The Modern Woman: The Lost Sex (1947) gave professional, psychological status to the housewife image, claiming that the essential function of women was that of caretaker, mother, and sexual partner. Those women who took paid employment in the outside world would defy the natural order of things and become neurotics...The domestic woman needed to save her energy for housekeeping, childrearing, and an active (monagamous) sex life with her husband."

Modern Times & The Post-Industrial American Dream

2007-02-23T20:18:00.000-05:00

The following discussion falls into a series of writings which I will be posting between now and May. It incorporates language that I have used very little of in the past. I am expanding my filmic horizons, a lot of which will be informed by the eighth edition of David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's Film Art. (That's the one with a still from Caché on the cover, for those interested.) I expect that as this educational experience progresses the language will become less foreign and more a fluent part of my writing.

This is the first entry. The second is a look at maternalism in the '40s classic films My Favorite Wife and Meet Me in St. Louis...

If you polled an informed film audience as to which Chaplin film was the best, you'd invariably meet with obstinant answers pointing to Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd as the more talented comedians of the day. Luckily, I'm not interested in anything hued with hissing hyperbole, especially not regarding the bygone days of silent film and its attunement to mass culture. What does interest me, though, are general impressions of this particular take of Chaplin's. Often labeled as prescient or foreshadowing, a note that I barely brushed upon in my initial, synoptic review, this film has summoned me back for a closer look. I invite you to do the same with me, keeping in mind that the film was made by a man who, for better or for worse, outshone his peers and engraved himself indelibly upon mass consciousness as a classic character and filmmaker--a feat a lot of people have wasted good money to learn.

Perhaps right from the get-go, Chaplin aimed to do just that. Modern Times' initial placement of the Tramp in a factory, working hard--a lot of elbow grease--just to keep up with a gargantuan and largely symbolic machine conjures an instant contrast of the film's broader, diegetic look at the world. This is the world of the blue collar worker, the entry-level serf in general, but focused upon the specific events of the Tramp's life in each particular setting. As the scenarios shift, it's important to remember that Chaplin keeps the action and the camera specific. As a result, we care when the Tramp's unable to keep pace with the inhumanly fast machine and loses his job and must find another or face starvation. It's not just his antics that render him sympathetic, even loveable. In this instance, the Tramp could have left his job forlorn and sweetly helpless, but he chooses instead to fight back.

By returning to that essential conflict between the dehumanizing setting of the industrialized labor force and the privations of a costly "freedom" from the workplace, Chaplin eliminates the need to hammer home the lack of a happy medium. Our hero is a hero because no matter what he tries, he will fail, and yet he doesn't give up--an understatement about the inability to be truly happy indeed, and perhaps the strongest evidence of the Tramp's threat to capitalism. The story's carefully chosen boundaries cue the audience; contextually, we understand that whether a pursuant of the American dream works in a steel mill, a shipyard, a department store, a machinist's or a restaurant that the dream he chases operates as a relentless and teasing pahntom--as elusive as the "happily ever after" ideal it connotes.

Upon that rusty spindle winds this comedy and love story between the Tramp and a feisty street urchin. By keeping the Tramp and his girl's predicaments and foibles (and their reactions) in the present, Chaplin also syncopates the audience's emotional responses with the events on screen. Partly through the use of fantastic sequences (such as the Tramp finally succumbing to the machine's pull and being rolled through it, the suspension of disbelief takes on a new dimension that allows the fact of the Tramp's firing to retain some element of surprise.

The balletic execution of the scene inside the machine strikes an iconic chord that renders the metaphor of the workingman's doldrum days from birth to death laughable and poignant at once; and so, even though the Tramp's job loss itself could be construed as perfectly logical, the subsequent disappointment is delicate, manifold. More importantly, none of the co-workers (and certainly not the boss) witness this swan dive into the machine. At this juncture, the relationship between the Tramp and the audience becomes sacrosanct; all other characters within the film are of secondary importance to his plight. The audience wants the Tramp to win the day.

After having taken such pains to elicit audience loyalty through cinematography and story choices, several other factors serve to reinforce some very simple distinctions. The sensitive Tramp has no qualms about giving the street urchin a fur coat in which to snuggle; but he is still a poor man, and he wears the implication even as he roller skates in the department store late at night. The camera employs wide-angle shots to impart a sense of danger, of precariousness, as he skates ever closer to the edge of the unguarded balcony, a sign that the hero is brave and perhaps in need of a little protection from himself. That sense of danger plays throughout the film, though, and it often lies outside of the Tramp's means to tame it: the factory owner's Big Brother-like monitoring and pushing of his machine to full production capacity; the Tramp's nervous breakdown that places him yet again in the care of mental and social workers and inadvertently triggers a jailbreak; and the peril of working in a department store while it's being robbed by men on the verge of starvation themselves. To these scenes Chaplin entrusts the Tramp's relative ignorance of the world against which he is defenseless, cueing the audience yet again not only with plot points (one of the robbers is a former steel mill co-woker) but also with character blinds.

The explicit meaning derivates from the film's surface scouring of the American dream, acting in accordance with its referential meaning--that working hard and saving pennies will earn enough to make such a dream a reality. The implicit meaning, though, speaks of a deep restlessness obscured by society but ever-present and ultimately a real threat to the happiness of anyone who buys into such a dream as truth. In fact, by equating the "happily ever after" scenario with that dream, Chaplin seems to be suggesting that all such idealistic pursuits should be understood to be the stuff of films and storybooks, and not the larger reality of America's working class. If so, he nearly got away with it cleanly.

In tune with the atmosphere of the Industrialized Depression, Modern Times feels symptomatic of the concern about the exponential growth of the middle classes. Only thirteen years after the film's release, George Orwell would publish 1984 and ergonomics would officially become an applied science. While Orwell's text would be considerably darker than Chaplin's fare, both stem from a conflict between individual freedom and the ever-narrowing alternative in a society purporting to be free yet camouflaging what precisely that means. As ever, it is up to the protagonist to define it for himself.

On one last note, while looking for parallels between Modern Times and more contemporary media, several suggestions bubble to the surface. The Norma Raes and Gung Hos of this world aside, perhaps my favorite connection would be Laverne & Shirley. The parody of two working women chasing the Tramp's unattainable dream of freedom through labor and equality seems likely, especially with Lenny and Squiggy as the only love interests in sight. American dream, what?

Mardi Gras Marilyn

2007-02-20T20:41:00.001-05:00

She floats a little higher than the rest...

Happy Mardi Gras, New Orleans.

I hope you fare a little better as time goes by. I don't when I can return, but I will sometime.

Bayou country does wonders for the soul.

If you're looking for some online action, why don't you check out Andy Horbal's neat listing of upcoming blogathans, eh?

Paris, Je t'Aime Poster

2007-02-19T11:47:00.001-05:00

Constantly wallowing in ignorance about the best films, I naturally hadn't heard of this one until someone emailed me the poster.

But this is much comelier than Heraclitus' sour old bust, and there's a much better chance of me seeing something like this now that I've posted it.

If you've seen the film and want to leave a comment, that's fine. Just try not to ruin too much of it if you can help it...

Who Says Textbooks Can't Be Funny?

2007-02-16T09:39:00.002-05:00

As I work frantically on an essay due in an hour and twenty minutes, I take the luxury of pausing to highlight a phrase that caught my attention that seems pertinent to any frustrated bloggers out there in need of a good laugh:

"...but who believed that fire, not water or air, is the chief stuff of the world. In that view, his style was seen as an incidental idiosyncracy, to be explained by a pathological mental condition or (more plausibly) by his contemptuous desire to make it very difficult for stupid humanity to understand him."

-- Merrill Ring on the philosopher Heraclitus

Audience, Meet Screen; Screen, Meet Audience...

2007-02-15T10:15:00.000-05:00

Prologue

The title of this post notwithstanding, the subject I'm about to broach has more to do with real life than cinema. It seems that we are at a crossroads of sorts on the blogosphere. A lot of debate and vacillation has been taking place on the act of film criticism and what it means to people, why we do it and how we can do it better. And if you happen to be Andy Horbal, then the days that film reviews excited you as a cool, new way of getting to know a medium may have been relegated to the past as somewhat flat and ersatz-whether this is temporary or not remains to be seen. In a couple of startlingly similar veins, local filmmaker Lucas McNelly not long ago expressed interest in the audience/screen relationship that turned out to be one of his biggest challenges in life by his own admission in a blogathan that he launched to sort of explore why it is that men and women have such a difficult time understanding each other; and, perhaps almost as importantly, why that seems to be the gist of so many gems from male filmmakers from Truffaut to Linklater. What startled me most about this was that I had been looking at the same thing. After looking at this from several different angles, a very simple but solid fact revealed itself through blogathan discussions: We spend so much time wishing our love lives were like movies that we end up using the art form itself to try and figure out why they are not.

So what? This is news? Please, you say, picking up the tea kettle. I learn more in an average morning from my cat.

The discussion started a long time ago, though, at the Unspoken Cinema blog, where many gathered to discuss what HarryTuttle has dubbed contemplative cinema and lots of subjects effervesced to the surface, among which the relationship between the audience and the screen impressed me the most. Cineboy raised the question first: why is it that we watch contemplative cinema in the first place? But I would like to take this a step further and pose what seems to me to be the larger question and, currently, a slightly more salient one (if for no other reason, then for the sake of all those feeling disenchanted with writing about film) which is: why do we engage in deconstruction of film through criticism in the first place? The act of critique is arguably a contemplative act in and of itself. Yet the undercurrent suggests that this is not enough. When Harry first described our scope he cautioned us that simple capsule reviews would not suffice and that we should reconfigure our minds toward something more comprehensive and engaging, an open forum to make Jurgen Habermas weep for delight. That sort of atmosphere seems to have led to unrest in several quarters; or, at least, that's certainly not impossible.

Qui en sait? Having tasted honey, saccharine often simply will not do.

Why I Watch Films
(Mes Raisons Pour Regardant Le Cinema)

I really don't know. Vraiment. That might sound like a polite or trite refusal to dig deeply into my psyche, but let's face it-if I had procured a fancy but accessible reason, I think we both know that I would be lying. If there's anything I've learned from Socrates, it's that knowing myself is as likely a thing as my own common sense. Sometimes on a specific night, I know that I'm avoiding or resisting something that I should be attending to, and I may tell myself that I'll write about the film afterward, as if that really salves my conscience or improves my self-control...and let's do be clear: It's not like this is work, per se. I've never been paid to write about a film, only asked. I received a complementary copy of a film that I was asked to review in exchange last August. I was thanked as I was contacted-via email-for being "thorough and thoughtful" and haven't heard back since. That may have been my fifteen minutes, and you know what? I'm okay with that.

I know also that I enjoy several things about film that I've identified with over the years-learning about other cultures, grasping insights about complex familial and romantic relationships-but suddenly and without any really clear and relayable indicators as to why, I feel bereft of a lot of the reasons I thought I once had clearly defined and could consider not only a part of who I am as a person, but my ethos as a budding film critic and a partial scholar. Where once I felt safe and secure in the knowledge that I was learning about life from film while also taking notes on the medium itself, I now feel uncertain that I've ever really believed that and, oddly enough, that perhaps the only practical use for film and film critique is as a method of de-bugging. This infatuation, after all, began while I was still a child. I was a two-year-old in a basket at Star Wars and a walking, talking four-year-old who watched the ice skaters in Rockefeller Center after a large screen showing of Cinderella in an old 5th Avenue theatre that probably no longer exists. I was essentially kidnapped by film and held for ransom by my own consciousness, which was too young, nascent and unequipped to deal with all of the many texts that film shares with all of us so freely, so innocently. So heartbreakingly.

That's the culture we live in, breathe in and move in. If you're not tapped into some kind of medium-be it film, video games, music or books-you're probably not interacting with many people. And if, for some reason, you're only sticking to one of those-books, say-then you may be dangerous or rather anti-social. A writer, perhaps; but, just as possibly the next Ted Kazinsky. On the same page, but coming from a different angle, if you are so steeped in technology and the media that it facilitates, you may be considered to be somehow malnourished culturally. That's what local filmmaker and communications preofessor Allen Larson tells me upon return from the Academy of Motion Picture Television Arts & Sciences. They're tired of receiving intern applicants who aren't literate, who don't even know the basics about literature and art history. Youngsters today seem to know a lot about various filmmaking technology without having the faintest grasp of content and theory.

When he tells me this, my ego's momentarily bolstered that I don't suffer from that acute disorder, but after a moment I shrug. I'm not really convinced, although I don't mention it, that knowing about literature and art history and the like has ever done very much for me as a person. Somehow discovering so late in the game that I can profit from it monetarily is anti-climactic. It may take a couple months' lateness on the rent for me to see the true value in that one.

Why I Will Continue to Watch and Learn
(Mes Raisons Pour Continuant avec la Critique du Cinema)

An old writing colleague of mine going back to my freshman year of college used to describe the reasons for incompatibility between the sexes in a very Machiavellian way. "There's a poison that's been handed down to us by our fathers," Jeremy would start, and everybody would look at his hunched shoulders and protruding eyeballs and back away a few steps. He meant well, but he often didn't make it very far into his theory. If I may be so bold, I think that what he was trying desperately to talk about applies more to culture and its artifacts than anything or anyone else-but, specifically to the aritifacts of human communication. Basically, what we have here is a chicken and an egg, but to stay true a moment to a fine writer who is today a father of three, let's think of it as the poison and the apothecary. It's practically impossible for me to define myself outside of my own culture without studying every last moment in my life-most of which can not be recaptured-and yet, I am captive to all of those images and words. Perhaps you can relate. Born without immunity to all of the forces that shape us, we are the products of every interaction that we have ever had. It's a little bit freaky and exciting if you think about it from a backwards gazing perspective on your own character and what has brought you to this precise moment in time. Or, as a girlfriend of mine put it after she had her first child: "I can't believe how much influence I have over this person's life. It's really scary." In a way, it seems that in order to gain any immunity to the poison, we must drink up. The hair of the dog as it were, day by day.

We have all of these images impacting us in ways that we don't understand and won't necessarily ever understand, and we don't even have to go out of our way to consume them. Between ambient sound and light, it's nearly impossible to get away from media. You'd almost have to shut yourself in a log cabin in northern Montana; but, even Ted had to leave the hut to mail things. So as I sit and wonder why it is that life often feels so disappointing, I am led back to my original co-conspirator, Theodor Adorno, who is no longer with the living, but whose thoughts have come back to haunt many over the last twenty to thirty years. Reading the collection of essays bound into The Culture Industry conveys the sense of helplessness in our subjection to media, that we are promised things that are an illusion that can never possibly become reality. And how does the media get away with it? Why, because we let them. Stomp the Yard made the money that it did because people spent money to see it without first deconstructing the publicity campaign or the motives behind neither the film itself nor the rap culture it portrays and co-feeds. Perhaps these consumers thought that they were investing in stock?

That's not to say that the "democratized" sphere of film writers should be held responsible; probably, an education factor and an understanding of basic logic concerning how money flows should be the larger reasoning for divining why it is that people gravitate toward complementary copy, as Gloria Steinem might say. Or, as J.M. Bernstein put it, paraphrasing Adorno, "The culture industry is the societal realization of the defeat of reflection; it is the realization of subsumptive reason, the unification of the many under the one." What an onus Adorno has bequeathed the modern writer! It's easy to see how someone might feel the pressure of the ages bearing down upon his vertebrae, overwhelmed with and confused by the various tugs-of success at the writing profession, whether it pays well or not; of acceptance into some strata of peership; of personal responsibility and its seeming eternal interplay with larger societal obligations. Are we or are we not always seeking to fuse the two, to make our responsibilities those of our community and government and social setting at large?

It seems that we are. It seems that we should. The question remains, though, how much of ourselves do we have to give in order to feel that we're making a difference, and not just passing the time?

This article will continue in a second segment regarding the fun of film and audience expectations. Date TBD.

2007-02-14T23:56:00.001-05:00

Good night, world, I hope your day was better than mine.

Love & Loss, Jane Campion-Style

2007-02-14T13:00:00.000-05:00

While airing the old gray matter, trying to recall good love stories written and directed by women for the Lovesick Blogathan, I came across many that could have made for a post rivaling Yonge Street and the Nile in length. Rather than digress upon all of these terrific films, which included Randa Haines' Children of a Lesser God (1986), Sally Potter's Yes (2005) and even unheard-of Canadian director Holly Dale's little-known Blood & Donuts (1995), it seems the smarter idea to tap the one recurring theme that nearly all of these films had, especially the better ones, and try and talk about that instead. Understanding that conflict is vital to almost all writing involving human interaction, it feels a natural course to discover that some major dynamic hurdle exists in these writings on love. Sacrifice, pain and loss seem to be the staples of the humble pie that often accompanies affairs of the heart. Whether at the beginning or at the end or somewhere along the way, it's almost necessary to the real fulfillment of love to experience a loss of some kind. Sometimes that loss prepares Cupid's pathetic victim for what might be the best thing that ever happened to her or him...and sometimes, it sends us to a quieter stage to lie in wait for the next.

Jane Campion seems to understand a lot about love and its partnership with loss and she has a special talent for really peeling away the layers of familial relations to augment the rawness and scariness, the abject loneliness, that can surround and even overwhelm two people who are trying to make a go of it. She did that jarringly, but wonderfully in Sweetie (1989), about (among other things) a woman afraid of trees who co-plants an alder sapling with her new sweetheart as a metaphor for their relationship, and then promptly steals the tree, hides it and pretends to know nothing about the event whatsoever despite the angst it causes her lover . In 1993's more celebrated work The Piano, she takes the idea of loss and gives it a new path that practically begs for close inspection. The technical challenge alone of writing for a heroine who speaks only through a musical instrument -- and by choice -- comes off at first not like a loss, but a study in stubborness, the brand of which can certainly be found among the women embracing the shores of a former penal colony, if it can be found anywhere. That underlying sense of pioneering background colors this work perhaps most of all, imbuing the main character with real spark, but also perhaps alienating some who simply wish to find the love story between Ada (Hunter) and George Baines (Harvey Keitel) tender, romantic and passionate.

Campion uses the film's New Zealand setting well. By opening and ending on the beach upon which Ada's piano is deposited and left to soak in ocean spray, she hinges the entire story upon a place where change is constant, where give and take simply exist. Within the first few minutes, underscored by surf, we are invited to understand the depth of Ada's inner struggle. Her father has sold her in marriage to the Reverend Alisdair Stewart; her very entrance is a glum and unflattering sacrifice. She raises a daughter from a previous marriage, a constant and lonely reminder of her past. When her new husband won't allow the piano to weigh down their caravan, small notepad and sign language between Ada and Flora aside, she loses her voice. Physically, she could speak, yes, but as she tells us right from the start, she has not since she was six or seven and even she does not know why. In a world of films which seem to lean upon the convention of men figuring women out, the admission that a woman can be a perplexing mystery to herself is more than just a departure from the norm. That tiny detail allows us to explore Ada's love affair with life through her piano as true seers, not knowing any more or less than she does at any given moment. We hear only the piano notes and this very fleeting voice that sounds like writing in a journal.

Perhaps because vocal communication can be such a frustratingly limited means of expressing ourselves and making ourselves understood and known to each other, the centrifugal force of Campion's story does most of the work for her. Her husband and his friend are each curious about her in different ways. The former, wishing his wife to like him, attempts to appease her; but George Baines -- the more relaxed man who spends more time among the Maoris than the whiter folks -- wishes her to love him. In an unlikely trade, Baines becomes the proprietor of the piano in order to receive "lessons" and before long is trading romantic gestures for Ada's increasingly clandestine visits. Love has become a negotiation.

(...a very intense and erotic negotiation performed by textured compositions and a terrific full-nude shot of Harvey Keitel that I've never been convinced didn't help Hunter win the Oscar*, despite her apparent talents.)

Yet despite all of this hardship and loss -- a basic disrespect for a property that means much to Ada, far beyond the value of its ebony and ivory -- Campion also seems to be saying that people who have no way of communicating and who may not even know about love from lack of experience can find true happiness under even the most grotesque or bizarre of circumstances. Witness when the good Reverend cuts off Ada's finger in a fit of jealous rage, an attempt to wound the part of her that makes love to his indifferent neighbor so effortlessly, using only a housing of wood and some string. It feels like he provides the fulfillment of Ada and George's love in many ways by severing her finger. That violent culmination of a life spent in silence doesn't force Ada to shout out like you might expect it to, but to gather herself in a new way with a fresh outlook.

Were I to discover that I had the love of a man like George Baines, I'd be willing to lose a finger to that end, too.

*Probably one of the best examples among Oscar moments regarding the magic of film and the suspension of disbelief. We all love Holly Hunter, even those who could do without most of her films, but when she spoke in that lovely cagey drawl of hers to accept the award, The Piano lost a bit of its charm.

Storyville

2007-02-14T02:01:00.000-05:00

While I ruminate upon my chosen subject for the Lovesick Blogathan, let me leave you with this picture, taken in the old Red Light District of New Orleans, not far from where Louis Armstrong and his ilk played jazz for horny women.

El Laberinto del Fauno (2006)

2007-02-11T16:56:00.001-05:00

Dir/Writ. Guillermo del Toro

w/ Ariadna Gil, Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú

First thing's first with a movie like Pan's Labyrinth (2006): You have to see it to believe it, and if you haven't already seen it, you'll need to remedy that as soon as possible.

It's very hard to go wrong when Alfonso Cuarón is involved with a project, but Guillermo del Toro (who directed this particular project) goes the extra mile to ensure that from beginning to end it is a work of integrity worthy of the passions and innocence of youth, the foibles of tyranny and the eternal struggle to find something pure and safe and lasting.

In short, he has created a classic film.

Those familiar with the fantasy genre will recognize that this film lies somewhere outside of the standard categorization, both in content and in context: set up like a folk tale that could easily have been taken from For Whom the Bell Tolls, our young heroine must brave the tasks set for her by a faun of the underworld despite the brewing storm of Francisco Franco's Spain. Caught between a stepfather whose fanatic loyalty to Franco's dictatorship parallels his indifference to his new wife in everything but to produce a male heir, Ofelia must accomplish what Pan sets her to do or face the consequences of her own mortality. And when the daughter of the king of the underworld has been charged with duties to prove her identity, she must arise to the occasion.

The terrific thing about a film like this is its universal scope. At all levels, it registers with deep and hidden truths about childhood and growing up and the constancy of humanity to maintain a struggle between good and evil, despite ages of evidence arguing that we should give it up. The allegory of the labyrinth operates not in the mists, though, but in the reality of never knowing what's right around the bend. Like any good coming-of-age tale, that's the abiding rule.

Fans of the fantasy genre may need to adjust their expectations a bit. Legend, The Dark Crystal and The Lord of the Rings -- even The Chronicles of Narnia (although the PBS version of that story still carries the brass ring) -- each have their specific places in the movie-going consciousness. Even films with varying production values and themes, such as Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, Red Sonja, Krull and Clash of the Titans can say roughly the same thing. This film, imbued with life by incredible writing prowess and a childlike savvy, leaves the clichés and typicalities to the past, beating a new path for the international scene.

And while one well-made film's not enough to go on -- to get your hopes up that this will start a cultural revolution -- it's still some pretty exciting stuff.

Looking for a new post?

2007-02-09T14:13:00.000-05:00

Yeah? Well, tough.

You wanna see a new post, you gotta scroll back down to Volver and gimme some feedback! That's it! NO more new posts until old questions are answered!

Hey, it's not like I post whatever's on the top of my head, like, every day...

Volver (2006)

2007-01-28T16:01:00.000-05:00

Going to see a Pedro Almodóvar film is a lot like taking a ride on a metal roller-coaster. Unlike the primitive wooden ones, you can relax knowing that you're not going to get jerked around a lot while watching the rush of pretty colors and participating in the squeals of delight. Right from the get-go, the characters are in the middle of their lives and you get to watch them sizzle and spark and diffuse the screen with everyday moments that could easily have been you only an hour ago. One of the best treats of the Spanish director's peculiar gift -- specifically, his restraint in ladling out huge dollops of back story to queue us up to the present -- places the story in the heart, asking only for your rapt attention. He does this so well that I imagine the only better way to watch one of his films would be as a native speaker of the language.

Familiarty with Spanish customs seems an almost negligible dimension, though, so it sounds just as plausible that, other than the slight inconvenience of non-speakers having to read subtitles, his films are seamless and character-based enough that the audience loses very little by virtue of that. And that, to me, is what really makes Almodóvar stand out among his peers and predecsessors. Not many non-English speaking directors -- nor, even non-Hollywood, for that matter -- can claim the kind of fanatic love and loyalty while also reaping the benefits of a very wide audience. Indie directors would be accused of mainstreamism and many foreign film directors would be accused of a cultural watering-down of their vision.

But Almodóvar is Almodóvar, world without end, Amen. Or so it seems...

Anybody disagree or have an insight? I'd like to do something different this time, and open this up to discussion before proceeding with the usual straight-forward review.

Bresson & Akerman, briefly...

2007-01-25T14:46:00.000-05:00

The first hopefully useful note is that if you find yourself shopping a lot at Criterion and eating more Ramen noodles and saltines, etc., as a result of that, you may want to consider seeing what you can grab at DVD Planet where, for example, I just picked up a copy of Robert Bresson's Mouchette for $28.87 (including shipping) as opposed to the 10-20% savings plus tax on the $39.99 I would have paid at Barnes & Noble... I don't like to talk about money, but there it is.

Also, I found a great article over at Rouge on Akerman. You may read it here.

Audience/Screen Relationship ...is life.

2007-01-24T17:23:00.000-05:00

So there's been some talk about the role of the viewer in the filmic experience -- not just the actual watching of the film itself (i.e., just showing up), but the bio-rhythms that each individual brings to the screen, the state of mind accompanying and interplaying with and against those bio-rhythms and the importance of these factors in the filmmaking process in general. Mostly, this sort of discussion has been just hinted at and kicked around, and a couple of oscillating examples can be found over at Tucker Teague's (a.k.a cineboy) and at an early blogathan post by Marina.

I feel like writing something on all of this, but haven't made any concrete decision yet what exactly that will be. I will have something soonish...

Temps en Je, tu, il ...elle (par Chantal Akerman)

2007-01-07T16:28:00.000-05:00

The following entry is for the Unspoken Cinema Blogathon..

Enjoy, folks...

If you've never had the chance to experience an Akerman film, especially this one, then you have missed out on a rare chance to glimpse both a fine madness and a stark honesty about the human experience at once. Without spoiling it for anybody, the film exists in three parts defined by locale and the relationship of the character (who feels often more a subject than a person) with the viewer, the setting and the other two characters in the film -- from whom, remarkably, we derive less of the subtext than we do from the filmmaker herself in the lead role. In the first part, she exists in a room that she empties of its furniture to make larger, writing and writing a letter so rambling and long that it is to the world of love letters what Berlin Alexanderplatz is to the world of fictive film. Living on powdered sugar and clothes that are more often off her than on, we witness her unobstructed expression of the deprivation and self-isolation that love can manifest in us.

Akerman's great pains to occlude our sense of time during this first third acts as one of the great boons of contemplative cinema. In a way, it is more real than "real time" because when faced with any kind of suffering or challenge, we so often seek refuge in some amount of disorientation. At times, she narrates her own actions in the room before she has enacted them; sometimes, after. Either way, the suggestion adds a great layer to this film of feminist deconstruction, this cinematic act of contemplation. By asking us to watch and listen out of sync, the film achieves its intended effect as a piece of contemplative cinema -- or, what the natives are calling CC these days -- because, less important, her actions retain their sense of survival and grubby familiarity without overshadowing the suspension of disbelief.

Within that suspension of disbelief, the filmmaker works her magic. Her state of mind and emotions are not obvious or even alluded to; her purpose (whether for being in the room or on this earth at all) is not mentioned. What Akerman does is invite her audience to participate in the extraordinary everyday-ness of lying in a room and writing a letter. At one point, she even spreads each of the pages around as though they were index cards, using sticky putty to place them firmly on the floor in an order of rows and columns. What a commentary on human activity, on the fluid ordering of our worlds in the attempt to exert control and finiteness to life. When she finally leaves the room to venture into the second act, she hitches a ride with a trucker and makes herself a sounding board for his life's story. She doesn't speak herself. We have heard her voice only through the first-person narration of the first act, and Akerman keeps it that way.

Not until the third act, in which she arrives at the doorstep of the woman to whom she has written the letter, do we see the connection of sound to character. Many reasons pepper this procrastination, all of which could be pondered to death, but I'd like to consider -- above all else at this juncture -- the role of time. Where time was an obstacle to be subdued and imbued with persepective in the first act, it has become an obsolescence of minor detail in the second. No rush characterizes the middle act, her journey to reach her lover and glean her reaction. He talks, she listens and smiles. They stop to eat, and she eats. The journey will take as long as it takes because that is how time works, the filmmaker appears to be saying, but the contemplation has all but receded into a minority of its own. The truck driver contemplates his own life in his own words, rather differently from her.

And it is here that I can't help but observe some irony in that what is meant to serve as an aural and visual relief -- some narrative enters as they travel and reorients the viewer, and some comedy arises from this new character's monologue -- actually signals the ebbing of the contemplative life that Akerman sketched for us with such great care in the first act. His life and personality are different, true; but beyond those definitions, this truck driver lives in the now. He does not suffer, and yet the viewer feels a loss of the intimacy and true-ness his passenger provided before they met. Perhaps one of the more humorous and telling aspects of Je, tu, il ...elle, though, arrives in the third act with specific regard to time. Our character spends all this time arriving at her destination only to have to leave it again so soon. It speaks of the brevity of all such action and motivation, of the unimportance of all time -- except where it is spent in exploration of truth.

Communicative Activism in Eugene V. Debs' Statement to the Court

2006-12-16T19:39:00.000-05:00

A while ago, Debs was brought to my attention, and I fell in love with his speech. As it turns out, I have more socialism in me than even I would have previously suspected. When I was given the option of doing a term paper in my rhetorical theory class -- an option I could forego at meager expense to my grade in the class -- I jumped at the chance to critique Mark Twain. I had just bought a nice volume of his essays.

And then I remembered Eugene V. Debs, to whom I was introduced in this fine essay by local media artist Lucas McNelly. What follows is a first dig at ideological criticism. Please be kind.

Statement to the Court (Par. 1, 5-6)

"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest of the earth...I said then, I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free...

"I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.

"In this country – the most favored beneath the bending skies – we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child -- and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity..."

-- excerpt of Debs’ Statement to the Court for Violating the Sedition Act [1]

Background: A Revelation of Class Struggle

His earliest thoughts shaped by the French and German romanticists of the Enlightenment, due to his father's guidance, the chronology of Debs' life could be encapsulated (by someone more ambitious) as a study in dialectical reasoning. In 1869, the fourteen-year-old Indianan began working in a railroad shop. Within six years, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen elected him secretary and he became editor of the group's magazine, devoting himself to the union's success. After being laid off, he found work as a city clerk, ascended to the Indiana legislature and eventually founded the American Railway Union, bypassing the inflexible unions already in existence. As the Union's President, he headed a strike against the Great Northern Railroad in 1894 and won. The Union disintegrated in 1895 when he was arrested and jailed for failing to obey a federal injunction to cease the Chicago Pullman Palace Car Company strike. He began reading Marx while confronted with the prison conditions and soon concluded that labor and social issues were one and the same.

1898 found Debs organizing the Socialist party of America, running for the U.S. Presidency in 1900 on the party's ticket and winning a weak but encouraging 96,000 votes. He would run again four more times, garnering 800,000 votes for his third campaign in 1912. But it was during his second prison sentence in 1920, while serving ten years for his outspoken criticism of Wilson's handling of both foreign and domestic affairs – specifically, the U.S.'s participation in WWI and the imprisonment of many conscientious objectors to the war for sedition – that Debs gained 915,00 ballots, or 6% of the popular vote. His crime was communication, clearly forbidden by the 1917 Espionage Act that accompanied America dipping its oar into the brewing European firepot. During the trial, Debs gave a speech that compelled world figures – Lenin and Shaw – to argue for his release, but he remained behind bars until 1921 when demonstrators crying for amnesty for "prisoners of conscience" gave Warren G. Harding little choice but to meet their overwhelming demand. [2]

Often described as "magnetic," Debs' character and ethos was a tangible and apparent fact. "Straight from the Indiana heartland of America, lanky and bald, his forehead weighted with worry and his cheeks crinkled with laughter, Debs was the symbol of integrity," John Patrick Diggins wrote of him. "His life history reads almost like a socialist morality tale." The forces surrounding and shaping him in a time of great violence reflect most readily in his study of Marx. Although the union leader would claim later and often that the bloody events of the Pullman strike precipitated his conversion to socialism, democratic reformism remained his political leaning until 1896. His very description of the conversion betrays him. "At this juncture there were delivered," Debs said of the strike, "from wholly unexpected quarters, a quick succession of blows that blinded me for an instant and then my eyes opened – and in the gleam of every bayonet and the flash of every rifle the class struggle revealed itself." Not until having discovered Marx while in prison in 1895, though, would he have been able to draw that connection.

Debs' literary background informed his eloquence, but his time as a common worker gave him greater breadth and credibility with which to wield it. "Debs had the martyr's charisma, but he also possessed tremendous oratorical power." Those who heard him address a crowd recall the way he spoke well. "His tongue...would dwell upon a the or an and with a kind of earnest affection for the humble that threw the whole rhythm of his sentence out of conventional mold, and made each one seem a special creation of the moment." [3]

At New York's Grand Central palace on December 10, 1905, Debs delivered his Industrial Unionism speech to great applause even as he discussed dehumanization: "When the capitalist needs you as a working man to operate his machine, he does not advertise, he does not call for men, but for ‘hands’; and when you see a placard posted ‘Fifty hands wanted,’ you stop on the instant; you know that that means YOU, and you take a bee-line for the bureau of employment to offer yourself in evidence of the fact that you are a ‘hand.’ When the capitalist advertises for hands, that is what he wants. He would be insulted if you were to call him a ‘hand.’ He has his capitalist politician tell you, when your vote is wanted, that you ought to be very proud of your hands because they are horny; and if that is true, he ought to be ashamed of his." [4]

Comparing the tone of his Grand Central palace address with that of the opening statement of his sedition trial leaves little doubt as to Debs' audience consideration within his discursive practices. Oscar Wilde biographer Frank Harris noted the quality in his tribute to Debs in Pearson Magazine in 1919, after having sampled some of his writing on literary giants that Harris later published as the book Master Spirits. "His writings reveal the man: he deals in nothing but praise and yet his praise say of Ingersoll is subtly differentiated from his praise of Wendell Phillips and his admiration of the Hoosier Poet has different roots from his admiration of Eugene Field."

Harris' respect afforded Debs some literary respite from the political persecution he suffered at that time, while also augmenting anti-administration sentiments that arose from or were exacerbated by his imprisonment. "As Bernard Shaw wrote to me the other day his sentence is a disgrace to America and a disgrace to republican institutions," Harris declared. "We are all ashamed by his punishment, disgraced, all of us, save the justices and President Woodrow Wilson who is chiefly and forever responsible for punishing one of the noblest of men." [5]

Considered to be one of the most influential socio-political voices of the twentieth century, Debs' oratorical power has spread far and wide, impacting literature, government policy and the evolution of labor practices. In 1976, after the union leader's death, President Carter reinstated the U.S. citizenship that had been abrogated for the exercise of First Amendment rights. His speech made to the court during his trial for sedition remains his best-known and deserves some scrutiny.

Habermas, Cassirer and Marxist De-evolution

Because Debs invoked mythical and spiritual figures and not strictly socialist themes with his 1918 sedition trial speech, it will prove more rewarding to use two main lenses, one examined by Jürgen Habermas and the other fashioned by him. When the second generation Frankfurt scholar considered Ernst Cassirer's contribution to humanism with The Liberating Power of Symbols, he noted that the German professor's particular "philosophy of symbolic forms" – the means by which humans relate to each other symbolically – rests upon "the four worlds of myth, language, art and science." Habermas believed that this philosophy divested humankind of its subjugation to the discursive practices of those he would deem irrational and less-than-enlightened. "The humanistic legacy which Cassirer bequeaths to us through his philosophy," he wrote, "consists not least in sensitizing us to the fake primordiality of political myths. Cassirer makes us wary of the intellectual celebration of archaic origins, which is widespread today, as in the 1930s."

Habermas' words concerning Cassirer have as much relevance to Debs' situation before the 1930s as they do to the decade. The significance of a mass culture reveling in archaisms manifests itself in an evidential pertinence to the evolution of communication as a social theory, especially as the advent of the Great Depression and the continued heightened prevalence of capitalism over socialism held repercussions for subsequent symbolic interaction and its control in such forms as the rooting out of suspected socialists through blacklisting, McCarthyism and the increasingly ubiquitous operations of the inextricably linked political and economic spheres.

In the context of Debs' speech, it will be essential to give deference to Cassirer's thoughts on the worlds of myth and language – specifically, on his attention to historical allegories. "Cassirer derives philosophical thoughts from allegories – changes in the philosophical concept of freedom, for example, from the transformations of the symbol of Fortuna: 'Fortuna with the wheel which seizes hold of man and spins him around, sometimes raising him high, sometimes plunging him into the depths, becomes Fortuna with the sail – and it is no longer she alone who steers the ship, but rather man himself who (now) sits at the rudder.'" [6]

Habermas’ own ideological contribution can be overviewed in the study of his Theory of Communicative Action by Yugoslavian philosopher Ljubisa Mitrovic, who separated the German philosopher's neo-Marxist tendencies within critical theory from his movement towards a new post-Marxist social theory. "Despite Marx's paradigm of production and social labor as the basic category around which the social Marxist theory was constituted, Habermas founded the paradigm of communicative action, that is, of communication. In his work there is a distinct requirement for convergence and synthesis of the action theory with the system theory; thus, the traditional type of rationality is offered an alternative as communication mind, intersubjective reality." [7]

En route to building his theory of communicative action, Habermas contributed Communication and the Evolution of Society, which provides some useful theoretical genesis. Dubbing culture a "superstructural phenomenon," it calls for a reconstruction of Marxist theory attendant upon renewed historical materialism and examines "linguistically established intersubjectivity."

"The structures of linguistically established intersubjectivity – which can be examined prototypically in connection with elementary speech actions – are conditions of both social and personality systems. Social systems can be viewed as networks of communicative actions; personality systems can be regarded under the ability to speak and act. If one examines social institutions and the action competences of socialized individuals for general characteristics, one encounters the same structures of consciousness. This can be shown in connection with those arrangements and orientations that specialize in maintaining endangered intersubjectivity of understanding in cases of action conflicts – law and morality. When the background consensus of habitual daily routine breaks down, consensual regulation of action conflicts (accomplished under the renunciation of force) provides for the continuation of communicative action with other means. To this extent, law and morality mark the core domain of interaction."

Also of critical import is his discussion of the connection between ego and group identity: "There are also homologies between the structures of ego identity and of group identity. The epistemic ego (as the ego in general) is characterized by those general structures of cognitive, linguistic, and active ability that every individual ego has in common with all other egos; the practical ego, however, forms and maintains itself as individual in performing its actions. It secures the identity of the person within the epistemic structures of the ego in general. It maintains the continuity of life history and the symbolic boundaries of the personality system through repeatedly actualized self-identifications; and it does so in such a way that it can locate itself clearly - that is unmistakably and recognizedly - in the intersubjective relations of its social life world. Indeed the identity of the person is in a certain way the result of identifying achievements of the person himself." [8]

Mitrovic took care to delineate further between Marx and Habermas. Both theorists "believe in good human nature," and both eschew capitalistic means of organization; but Marx grounded his principles in the solidarity of communism, while Habermas roots his theoretical explications in communication processes. Their difference is slight but fundamental. "The normative basis of Marx's theory is formed of the value theory and the theory of exploitation and alienation, discarded by Habermas, while he, at the same time, speaks about alienation in terms of privileges and deprivation. The normative basis of Habermas' theory is related to speech and communicative action."

Marx's influence upon Debs is as undeniable as Debs' impact upon social theory. Thus, it will be necessary to reflect upon both theorists in order to critique Debs in a proper light.

Debs as 'Communicative Activist'

In the opening five paragraphs of his statement, Debs uses the first person singular and sonorous repetitions to advance his belief that "all men are created equal," while simultaneously asserting his maturity, which he then wraps in a tone of humility. He declares the Espionage Law a "despotic enactment of flagrant conflict with democratic principles" and restates his belief in the necessity for change, adding that peaceable change is preferable and leaving the sentence unfinished on purpose. His comparison of the workplace to prison as he recalls his boyhood reminds the court of his conscious choice to remain a working class member and advocate, despite his proven ability to have ascended to political power in Congress. In the fifth paragraph, he introduces the working class – men, women and children – and blasts Christianity for both inviting and condoning modern industrial labor conditions.

In the sixth paragraph, Debs strategically changes the point of view. He sets himself up as representative not of himself but of the working class that he has introduced. As their advocate and using the same humility in which he swathed his earlier words, he addresses the governing officials. He speaks of the material wealth that "we" have, if only the full potential and rights of the "they" – the working class – can be recognized.

Habermas discusses ego identity in terms not mutually exclusive with group identity. "No one can construct an identity independently of the identifications that others make of him. These are, naturally, identifications that others make not in the propositional attitude of observers, but in the performative attitude of participants in interaction." With this in mind, Debs' opening declaration that "while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free" clarifies his understanding of his own identity, especially in light of his later words, "I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison..." By identifying himself as a man of the people, he sets the stage for promoting the ideology of socialism through a series of deceptively simple introductions.

By the sixth paragraph, in which Debs glories in the abundant material and resources America possesses, he switches from the first person singular to the first person plural. Habermas defines these pronouns' relational values in terms of audience. "The expression 'we' is used not only in collective speech actions vis-à-vis an addressee who assumes the communicative role of you, under the reciprocity condition that we in turn are you for them. In individual speech actions, we can also be used in such a way that a corresponding sentence presupposes not only the complementary relation to another group but that to other individuals of one's own group." This "asymmetry" enables two audiences that can be mutually exclusive – but don’t have to be – to be addressed at once.

In this example, Debs accomplishes that task: "In this country – the most favored beneath the bending skies – we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to produce in abundance for every man, woman and child..." By using the first person plural, Debs extends the invitation to his captors to become involved in a labor force that they are not necessarily already a part of, and makes it the responsibility of individual members of his audience to decide to which group he or she wishes to identify.

Because of its open-ended quality, such an invitation acts rather slickly. It does not single anybody out as oppressor, but merely raises the question of responsibility and choice. It might be difficult to notice the effects of the point of view switch at all in so smooth a transition, except that Debs also refers to those for whom he has appointed himself to speak: "they" – the working class whose voice has been denied. Habermas spoke of language and choices in 1965 when he said, “The human interest in autonomy and responsibility is not mere fancy, for it can be apprehended a priori. What raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we can know: language. Through its structure, autonomy and responsibility are posited for us.” Thus Habermas renders language the source of individual responsibility. In this sense, Debs can be seen as not only exercising his responsibility but also providing a framework for others to do the same. That his speech is an exercise of his rights for having previously, similarly exercised those same rights should not be dismissed; if the only thing we can know is language, and that ability is crippled, then the state imposing such regulation falls outside of the knowable. [9]

Debs hinges the rest of his statement not upon his advocacy of the working class or on Socialism itself or even (directly) on the hypocrisy of the State. These words are meant to inspire, encourage and bolster the Socialist movement. His pivotal joint, the focus he uses to separate his representation from the framework of his speech, is an allegorical introduction: “Mammon” and “the Almighty.” The epic, timeless struggle between good and evil serves as an analogous metaphor for the ongoing class struggle that has brought Debs to trial; but, more importantly, it acts as a red herring to pull attention away from his true motive: to prove that all men are created equal and free, and that any government not reflective of this truth shall justly, rightly perish.

The original word Mammon is the Aramaic rendering of "riches," but its Greek counterpart, mamonas, was personified in the parable of the Unjust Steward, in Luke 16:9-13. Its appearance in the gospels laid it open to various scholarly usages, interpretations and translations into other languages. Augustine entitled the Sermon on the Mount "Lucrum Punice Mammon dicitur" and Gregory of Nyssa claimed Mammon to be a pseudonym for Beelzebub. Throughout the Middle Ages, the word would continue to symbolize the connection between avarice and demonization. Later, it would collect a wealth of metaphorical garments, such as the guardian of a "cave of world wealth" in Spenser's Faerie Queen, or the fallen angel with similar duties in Milton's Paradise Lost. "For Thomas Carlyle in Past and Present, the 'Gospel of Mammonism' became simply a metaphoric personification for the materialistic spirit of the nineteenth century." [10]

Cassirer sheds light on the processes by which the acceptance and incorporation of Mammon even into the modern age occurred. "As soon as the spark has leapt across, as soon as the tension and the affect of the moment have been discharged in a word or mythical image, then a reversal can start to occur within the mind...Now a process of objectification can begin which advances ever further. As the activity of human beings extends over an ever wider area, so a progressive subdivision and ever more precise articulation of both the mythical and linguistic world is achieved."

Were Debs' usage of Mammon implicitly secular, a simple line could be drawn to Carlyle's more vernacular treatment of the word; however, Debs' schooling in classical texts and his invocation of "the Almighty" goes beyond the association of capitalistic tendencies with man's nature, a factor he brings to denouement as readily as God's part in man's state: "...it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live." His argument ties the capitalistic forces that have sentenced him to money as the "root of all evil," and not as a merely harmless, secular pursuit. His distinction between modern Christianity – or, more accurately, what passes for it -- and the gap between evil and good is as clear as his connection between money and godlessness, which he equates with "the high noon of Christian civilization."

Debs' avoidance of calling upon God as a Savior or of denouncing man for his inaction strengthens his words as both an appeal to man's better nature and as an epic metaphor for which, Habermas asserted, there is no response. “Mythology permits narrative explanations with the help of exemplary stories; cosmological world views, philosophies, and higher religions already permit deductive explanations from first principles (the originary actions of myth having been transformed into "beginnings" of argumentation, beyond which one cannot go)..." In this way, Debs calls for responsible living and action, both by way of rhetorical prowess and by example. By so doing, he reaches beyond the first three forms of action that Habermas outlined -teleological, norm-regulated and dramaturgical - into the fourth form: communicative action.

As in Cassirer's allegorical presentation of Fortuna, which depicts the surrender of captainship to man in such a way that man's responsibility to free himself from bondage is self-evident, Debs reaffirms his belief in man's similarly conscious role by taking the power of Fate away from not only Mammon but from the Almighty as well. In this sense, the denuding of mythological forces strips man of his dependence upon Divine intervention, his ability to blame his misfortune upon others, and attempts a fulcrum point for catalyzing "the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand, and on the other, the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice," as Debs characterizes the class struggle towards the end of his speech.

This reference to an epic class struggle should not go unnoted. Habermas took exception with the evolution of myth into the political realm. "Only with the transition to societies organized around a state do mythological world views also take on the legitimation of structures of domination (which already presuppose the conventional stage of moralized law)." He argued that the usages of myths were legion, serving as a solid basis upon which rationalization could be achieved through dogmatization. "The further transition from archaic to developed civilizations is marked by a break with mythological thought. There arise cosmological world views, philosophies, and the higher religions, which replace the narrative explanations of mythological accounts with argumentative foundations. The traditions going back to the great founders are an explicitly teachable knowledge that can be dogmatized, that is, professionally rationalized."

It is here that Debs' communicative endeavor and Habermas' more secular ideal speech situation part ideological ways somewhat. Debs returned to the romantic notion of "the Almighty" as a benevolent promise to man that his actions are not in vain when he alluded to Psalm 30:5 in the last paragraph of his speech: "For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." Man's responsibility to action and the betterment of the world through the workforce is clearly as earth-bound, by definition, as the Habermasian struggle towards rationality, but his reward may yet lie beyond the horizon of the rational world.

1. Debs, Eugene V. “1918 Statement to the Court Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act.” AmericanRhetoric.com. Transcribed by John Metz and David Walters, E.V. Debs Internet Archive. Online. Accessed: 4 Oct. 2006. Available: http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/court.htm

2. Young, Marguerite. Harp Song for a Radical. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

3. Diggins, John Patrick. The Rise and Fall of the American Left. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.

4. Debs, Eugene V. Debs Speaks. Ed. Jean Y. Tussey. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970.

5. Debs, Eugene V. “Pastels of Men.” Pearson’s Magazine, Inc. 1919: full article.

6. Habermas, Jürgen. The Liberating Power of Symbols. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2001. Translated: Peter Dews.

7. Habermas, Jürgen. Communication and the Evolution of Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. Translated: Thomas McCarthy.

8. Ljubisa, Mitrovic. “New Social Paradigm: Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action.” Facta Universitatis. Vol.2, No 6/2, 1999, 217-223.

9. Burleson, Brant R. and Susan L. Kline. “Habermas’ Theory of Communication: A Critical Explication.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech. 65, 1979, 412- 28.

10. “Mammon.” Wikipedia. Online. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammon . Accessed: 29 Oct 2006.

Unspoken Cinema: Music & Experience as narrative force...

2006-12-13T10:35:00.000-05:00

Anticipation of a Video Collective's Project

Yesterday evening, as part of my promise to myself to extend my visual foray into foreign lands, I ventured over to Melwood Avenue, that tiny dead-end street that only those familiar with Pittsburgh know to rest within city limits. Come to think of it, rest is a funny word, really. It sort of hunkers in the nether regions of the city, as disconnected from its "suburb" of Oakland as it is from the greater Three Rivers area. You know that alley that doesn't go anywhere in that B horror film with the zombies and the sunglasses and the shopping? Existentially speaking, that's where Filmmakers crouches on the psychic map -- disintegrating curbs, fire hydrants and all.

I parked my car as I used to do routinely only a few years ago and prepared myself for an evening of short videos collected by a hodge-podge of local filmmaking hopefuls who had gathered in the even seamier suburb of Braddock under the banner Film Frenzy. The spearheaders of the grassroots co-op wish to see the thing take off in a not-yet-envisioned way that lends itself to collaboration in a way not-yet-defined; and, you can read more about the specifics of their overall vagueness in Bill O'Driscoll's write-up on it in last week's City Paper. Although somewhat more like an exercise, the idea held enough interest -- at least in terms of what young people are doing with and thinking about video these days -- that I'd decided I could spare the scant dollars and even looked forward to the event despite my disconnection with a school I had once had great hopes for, but with which I so quickly became disenchanted.

[Yes, intrepid, self-sacrificing supporter of the arts...that's me. Plus, I had a ton of work which I decided I wouldn't get to after pacing between my kitchen and living room for half an hour.]

Although I was certain I was right on time, projection had already begun when I found the room. I walked to the nearest easy-on-the-neck seat, well in front of the majority of the sparse audience, and contritely breathed silently and stayed still. Within seconds, the fellow sitting a half a row down in the same row began clicking his pen. The room was quite dark and I could not actually see him, but the way he clicked the pen decidedly made him a man. Don't ask me how I knew this...I just did. The remainder of the evening's proceedings will be an alternating dialogue of my impressions of the film in plain type and my italicized impressions surrounding the man who -- to aid you visually as you read -- looked a hell of a lot like Sideshow Bob, but in dockers and tweed, and sporting more neurotic ticks than just pen-clicking.

Audience as Interaction in Non-Narrative Film

The screen to which I am first introduced is filled with somber but hopeful cityscapes in which buildings shape unique corridors and reflect time-lapsed skies. It reminds me a great deal of the architecture photographs used to advertise Filmmakers at local theatres like the Waterworks in the good old days, before advertising became the mainstay of pre-movie watching and waiting. As someone who considers movie theatres to be her only church, I have often thought of that ten to twenty minutes before a show as meditation time in which to sip coffee and reflect on all the events of a week which conspired together to bring me to that particular moment. Such meditations have a naturally soothing and invigorating effect that put me in the right frame of mind to not only watch the film but to tune out nearly everyone around me. Pleasant stuff.

Seeing something that reminded me of cinematic life before "the Reel thing" put a smile on my face. The smile lingered; the reverie vanished almost instantly. A fairly steady stream of collaged images began to take on uniformity and compression. Rows of brownstone filmed from the back revealed unending lines of windows, fire escapes and framework, all alike, all static.

Click, click. Why is he looking at me? This is fascinating.

Click.

The camera traveled over unidentifiable rubble -- decomposed building materials, presumably -- to expose the parts of urban life most cameras avoid in the U.S. The pictures look like shots from third-world countries, and the sight of the indistinguishable architecture of unidentifiable metropolitan area after metropolitan area turns oppressive.

Dresden. This looks like what the government tried to do in Dresden after the war. It's not a suburb, and these aren't developments, but this is the imposition of uniformity upon a society.

Click.

My society. Not that it matters, but where the hell is this? Click, click.

Buildings start imploding, and it occurs to me for the first time that the "Film Frenzy" folks have really outdone themselves. I begin to wonder, as the implosions become more elaborate -- high rises set in difficult nooks between vulnerable buildings, and even a bridge -- if what I'm actually seeing is stock footage. If it is, I want to know where they got it from because it's not just that this isn't Braddock. It's beautiful -- and not just the capturing of these moments because, by themselves, I wouldn't think much of the shots. The compositions lack judgment, creating a somewhat pretentious neutrality; the juxtaposition of the framing with the score, though, strikes whole sets of emotions in the viewer. Instructive musical composition, if you will, sears these images of destruction with an acute sense of medieval-like exuberance. The oppression, like the Dark Ages, can not go on forever, it sings. These buildings must fall, were meant to fall.

Within moments, people on the sidewalk are incorporated into the collage matrix.

They're all wearing heavy, starched polyester.

Any suspension of disbelief that this could have been shot in the digital age corrects itself, and I look more closely at the blurriness and decide the film was probably shot on 16 mm. It's still quite blurry in places on purpose, but occasionally even the diminished screen gives itself away.

Click, click. Legal pad page turning. Hmmm...I'm guessing that this isn't a Film Frenzy production after all. This must be the opening act. Hell of an opening act. Click. I wonder if he's upset because I got here late or because I haven't paid yet. Hmm...

The filmmaker -- who I find out later is Geoffrey Reggio -- recreates the concept of mass movement over and over again with Ron Fricke's incredible cinematography. Some of the shots are just generally blurry and planeless. People pass by in slow motion impressions of themselves. They fast forward up escalators and through fast food meals in waiting stations, giving away their nervousness and inability to stay still even when talking to each other, eating or simply watching the masses of people around them. The camera plays with both fast and slow motion in such a way that the lives of the people, the character of the people and any other identifiers that mark them as humans who interact in any way besides movement gets stripped away. These aren't people at all, throughout most of the film. They are predictable, unstoppable vectors that have no destinations, no motivations, only kinetic reality.

Fricke soon switches to fixed focal plane shots on the sidewalks, and faces come into sharp relief for a moment before stepping back into anonymity. As the film moves into an area that I realize was once considered to be visually stunning, I recall a lot of the photography work I used to study, as gathered by John Hedgecoe in The Photographer's Handbook. Instead of opening the shutter to allow car lights to blur, though, the film camera uses time-lapse and more sped-up footage to show the traffic patterns at night, the infrastructure coilings. All the while, the music cues and instructs the facial muscles and other various pressure points. I should have realized why at the time, but it has been too long since I listened to Philip Glass, and I must admit that I don't speak a word of the Native American Hopi language.

In case you haven't guessed it by now, the film I am watching turns out to be Koyaanisqatsi (1982), nine years in the making and the first of what Reggio is still finishing: a trilogy of collage films. His subsequent film, Powaqqatsi (1988), was much less well-received, and he is currently working on Naqoyqatsi. To curtail my brief effort to encourage viewership of at least the first film, I'll mention what Reggio's short bio (linked above) does not: he was disrobed in 1968 by the Roman Catholic Church for what Ephraim Katz cites as "ideological insubordination" in The Film Encyclopedia. As should be expected from someone so outcast from the mainstream, each of his films hinges upon a central theme: life out of balance, life in transformation and life as war, in respective chronological order.

Many frames in the film held powerful symbolism.

Some moments were so hard to handle that at one point in the film, I only stayed for the credits. It's not my style to walk out of a movie that I know to be well made, even when I find its study of dehumanization to be overwhelming. I just don't like pain that much. But I was glad that I stayed. At the end, after the oppressive images finally ended, after the last person on the street who obviously didn't want to be filmed and leered at the camera with suspicion and hostility, the camera focused on an ancient Native American sketch and informed the viewer of the word which had been sung repeatedly in Gregorian-style chants a la Glass' cruel conductor's wand:

Koyaanisqatsi, a Hopi word meaning 1. crazy life, 2. life in turmoil, 3. life disintegrating, 4. life out of balance, 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.

The lights come up to reveal this jittery filmmaking instructor and a scant class that I did not turn around to viddy. He looked at me but once or twice as he talked about how he hoped that everyone had gotten something out of the film, and that it should give them a fairly solid idea of what film -- although undeniably containing a point -- without narrative does, letting the story happen in the viewer's mind to a great extent, etc. He points to the dehumanization of mass culture and to the textual shots of the people on the street, noting that these cuts have interfered somehow with these people's lives, and that we see the frays.

He's obviously very disappointed that his class isn't engaging him in conversation about it, and he's nervous about that, too, and my heart goes out to him. And then his cell phone goes off. He's got one of those nature sounds instead of a digital tonal, and one of the class members snickers. It recalls all the reasons I don't miss being a student at Filmmakers. I prefer wide open spaces and quiet repose and, failing that, I'll take my modest apartment and a cup of tea.

...All of which is a polite euphemism for I'm too old for these reindeer games.

When it becomes excruciatingly clear that his students have nothing to say, I stand up and apologize for crashing his class and tell (lie to) him that I had gotten bad directions. This was the mini screening room. I had wanted the other one. I also tell him that this was probably a much better viewing than I could have hoped for that night, and thanked him. He seemed relieved, and told me that he was glad I had gotten something out of it.

Indeed I did, Sideshow Bob. Indeed I did.

Conceptual Conflicts in Non-Narrative:
Music & Expectation

Two major factors arise as I consider the open-ended qualities of a non-narrative film like Koyaanisqatsi. The first is the addition of musical score. Whether the score acts as a driving force to the film's visual composition or as a counterpoint to the visual workings, the score instructs the viewer in ways less open-ended than the visual text. Tensions resulting from internal and external rhythms, reliefs provided by harmonies and dynamics of tone and pitch all provide rich and complex texts of their own. While this may seem like a passé reiteration for a study of "contemplative cinema," the fact remains that films like Koyaanisqatsi have been and still are considered to be non-narrative film despite their heavy reliance upon an inherently narrative-producing medium engulfing an entire realm of scholarship and technique all its own.

The second major factor I see as inherent in the non-narrative experience remains the consistent human expectation of story-telling in art forms. Because it is a natural and fundamental human process to relate through narrative, when we are approached by and engaged with an art form that purports to (or that scholars identify as) being non-judgmental and solely experiential that an audience will inevitably -- as a collective or individually -- try to arrange the film as a narrative to make sense of it. In and of itself, this process feels right, but it also trends toward a deeper aspect of human narrative expectations; i.e., because the director has selected material and arranged it in a certain way, the audience will not be satisfied with a narrative structure that is arrived at solely through experience, but seek to determine the author's intent, the author's point of view and what the author is trying to say.

The very act of experiential non-narrative viewing, in this sense, has the ability to negate the wishes and efforts of the director to create a freely interpreted form as the audience seeks to find the narrative through the film's various elements -- both what's used, and what is not.

Unspoken Cinema

2006-12-11T14:49:00.000-05:00

After weeks of procrastination, I've moved on to considering several films for the upcoming 8 January Unspoken Cinema Blogathon. I'm also currently mired in two term projects, a couple of unpleasant assignments and Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, though, so...

Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

2006-10-26T16:38:00.000-04:00

Dir. Clint Eastwood
Writ. Paul Haggis; James Bradley, novel
w/ Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, Barry Pepper

In a breath-taking reinvention of the war film, Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers depicts the less visible elements behind war through the experiences of three seeming heroes. Ryan Phillipe, Jesse Bradford, and Adam Beach re-enact the masquerade three soldiers are asked to perform after a prematurely victorious claiming of Iwo Jima ends with bloodshed. The snapshot of the event is sent back to the States for mass production where it becomes iconic overnight, spawning a false sense of closure. The shift in public perception as a result of the now-famous image tells the story of a war that bankrupted the treasury, forced the FDR administration to inflate the economy with freshly minted money, and brought three soldiers home to sell war bonds vis-à-vis their new glory.

Half-truths are the stuff of wars and Flags breaks no knuckles to dissemble that fact. The lies revolving around the three soldiers’ tour bear the burden of the story’s larger context, the reflection of war’s presumptive deceit. Emotions brought to heel by the scope of what each soldier has been through acts as the focal point for the film’s inter-cutting between the trenches of Iwo Jima and the anti-climactic stadium tours for the American public. Embodying the more frenetic emotions is Beach as the real-life Native American soldier Ira Hayes, who had wanted to stay on the front but gets shipped home for the war effort instead. Getting drunk night after night, Hayes spills their general reception to the horrors of public ignorance as much as, if not more than, the horrors of war.

And horror, precisely, informs Eastwood’s landscape, not action. By taking the verbal subtext of the standard war film format out, and replacing it with a suspenseful sense of the macabre, he has isolated war as singular acts and experiences with repercussions on a personal level that may not have been visually discussed before Flags. Soldiers crouch in pockets separated from their fellows with darkness, smoke, and distance. Guns emerge from Japanese turrets with painstaking separation from their unseen operators whose aim is uncertain but a sure and calculated defense against an overwhelming invading force.

That Eastwood never stoops to overwhelm with sheer numbers in battle, nor with epic CGI landscapes, credits the director’s intent and casts a quiet, new light on an already impressive and understated filmography. That’s not to say that Flags doesn’t employ effects where needed, nor that they aren’t magnificent when applied; but the focus remains on the inner turmoil and its translation to the audience member as a participant in a war that pulled attention in so many directions, in part to avoid facing the grim truth and the grimmer realities of World War II. America and the world have seen the bloody combat scenes time and time again in war films. Eastwood lays those impulses aside to set the tone and the space to go someplace new, unexplored, and ultimately languageless.

That undiscovered country will emerge of course in his follow-up segment, Letters from Iwo Jima, which will appear early next year from the Japanese viewpoint. A decidedly good and fresh idea, the echoes of the first installment should still be sounding softly by that time, a reminder that a new outlook on an old and still unresolved problem always exists in the eyes of the searching. My gut tells me that Letters should bring that home.

Double Indemnity (1944)

2006-09-24T12:07:00.000-04:00

Dir. Billy Wilder
Writ. Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler; based on James M. Cain's novel
w/ Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, and Jean Heather

Trying to reconcile himself to the person he's closest to, insurance salesman Walter Neff surrendurs the truth of the events leading up to a fraudulent scam in which his lover's husband can produce a golden egg by dying accidentally on a train. The voice over narrative, ever reminiscent of the opening scene of Neff careening recklessly to get to the office, leads a suspensful and introspective domestic nightmare. As he's pulled ever deeper into Phyllis Dietrichson's machinations -- sympathizing with her dread of the abusive, alcoholic terror awaiting her at home -- he learns that all is not as it seems. Their lopsided love affair staggers between the twisted passion that arises at the prospect of ridding the world of one man and the thrill of plotting a scheme that would go all the way, no hiccups, straight down the line.

If ever a writing duo wove an unsung swan song, Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder did when they penned this lush but terse and often powerful landmark film. [1] Although owing a lot to earlier noir-like flourishes, Double Indemnity remains an enigmatic foreshadowing of the subsequent emergence of American crime novel fixation in Europe, and film historians usually diagnose this as the first complete noir expression. [2]

All the elements of classic filmmaking, though, combine to render an intriguing and unparalleled feature that bears, as part of the ironic legacy of its title, the dual blessing and curse of reflexive history. In response to its less than immaculate reception at the Academy, Wilder sank his disappointment into his follow-up, The Lost Weekend (1945), which snagged the same majors as rival Leo McCarey for Going My Way (1944). Wilder's competitive nature probably explains most of the seeming jest of experiencing a sense of personal failure for not having made it big at the Oscars, even in light of the fact that until the 1960s, the Academy Awards were considered by more than just the Hollywood sector of the industry to be the last word in quality. Taking in the film as a whole, however, leaves a question as to what kind of director couldn't simply take pride in his work, award winner or not.

For one thing, Fred MacMurray turns in a to-the-letter performance as the salesman taking the irresistable challenge of the ultimate sale, kindling his obsession with perfection. Barbara Stanwyck, burdened with the necessity of playing off not only her co-star but the voice over, radiates an alternating little girlishness and an older woman's aloof but accessible charm. The combination's heady and alluring and wouldn't be equaled again until Mike Nichols's The Graduate (1967). But Edward G. Robinson's little man, Barton Keyes, brings a character to the screen so rich with nuance and mannerisms that his naturality as the anchor of this small insurance world oftentimes goes completely unnoticed. It's as if the sun may rise and set elsewhere, but in the black and white world of eternal noir night, the bottom line sets the bar.

To counteract that direction and to give the film a bit more breadth, perhaps, we're introduced to a fourth character, Lola, Phyllis's step-daughter. She brings back some of the daylight and a naive quality that leaves her fragile and confused, only the appropriate reaction to the world spinning out of control around her. Descriptions of sensory influences blend with Lola's simple presence in the film as a reminder of everything that the insurance business purports to protect but instead betrays.

It's so easy to be debauched by Phyllis and Walter's seductive relationship that it's even easier to forget their penchant for murder, thanks to the incredible work of cinematographer John Seitz and the chemistry between MacMurray and Stanwyck. Every gesture, every glance, charges the air around them with intrigue and excitement so compelling that even the smallest objects around them transform into conduits for those feelings. The stacks of canned goods on the grocer's rationed shelves become Aztec cities; the phone booth transcends its geography to suggest howling winds that must be hushed into reverence; and honeysuckle smells famously like murder.

The most awing and humbling act arrives when, having been caught up in the dirty business of covering up their crimes, Neff does his best to make things right. He may be a little late, but after all the madcap racing around, his effort speaks quietly of a man who recalls that life offers more than the option between the grind or a heist. Partly due to Lola but mainly because no man likes to be tricked by someone he cares about, the film's finale reverberates with the simple reminder of things that all of us need to be able to count on but can take for granted way too much. Even those not easily succumbing to the thoughtless whispers of a dark and dreary night in nowhere.

[1] Crime novelist Raymond Chandler wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951) in addition to whipping up the dialogue with Wilder from Cain's novel, which was originally entitled Double Indemnity in Three of a Kind. If titles are any indication whatsoever of writing abilities, suffice to say it's a good bet that the film's substantially better.

[2] A year too late to make the grade, Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour (1945) struck a similar note as a classic that would be all but forgotten upon release, only to be dug up by film historians who, presumably, preferred the indie director to Wilder.

Yojimbo (1961)

2006-09-15T15:52:00.000-04:00

Dir. Akira Kurosawa
Writ. Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa
w/ Tohiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai

A samurai was many things in his lifetime: a protector of the realm, a defender of the ruling party, and the iconoclast to whom all other classes gave honor. In Yojimbo, he's also the scruffy wanderer who seeks to find a new place in which to sharpen his skills before they rust, and to do so with as much tact as possible. When Sanjuro walks into a town which has been taken over by a sake dealer named Seibei and a silk dealer named Ushi-Tora, he finds just such the whetting stone for his talents. The merchants, appraising the recent fall of Japan's last dynasty as a time for greed and corruption, have been busy raising their stations by collecting gamblers as cutthroat bodyguards and attacking the farmers who once supplied their trade. Although the samurai has been bereft of food and away from the ruling family he once protected with his life for an unsubstantiated amount of time, he takes his time, sizing up the atmosphere and events carefully. It is a new Japan. One of the merchants has kidnapped a local farmer's attractive wife to negotiate for his son; but, it is a time of social disorder and chaos. It is a time when some parents advise their son to kill to win the respect of men while yet others advise staying on the farm and reaping an honest day's work.

Eh, parental expectations can be heavy, you know?

Samurai as Loner: a Study in Contradiction

Humility comingles with self-sufficience in the lonely, wayward manifestation of Tohiro Mifune's chest-scratching, abrasive Sanjuro. His very name, pulled from the mulberry fields that are the conspicuous focus of his enigmatic stare, elicits a sense of dissipatory elusiveness that supercedes all of his actions. When he lets the stick fall where it will and follows, he acknowledges that his destiny lies outside of his hands. Like the restless, roving, and ultimately crumbling samurai class to which he belongs, though, this unforgettable visual component acts as deft commentary on the unforeseeable -- but just as precarious -- future of Japan.

Keiko I. McDonald's extensive look at the historically-based but aesthetically licensed milieu Kurosawa creates in Yojimbo explains the four-tiered class system as having the samurai at the top, followed by the farmer, with the artisan and the merchant comprising the bottom, respectively. [1] Having been abandoned by the Tokugawa Shogunate's corruption and collapse, the classes have been left in the rapacious lurch of the feudal system, Sanjuro included. "Kurosawa's camera, focusing on the protagonist's back for an unusually long time, evokes a sense of claustrophobia," writes McDonald. "At the same time the white family crest in the center of Sanjuro's black kimono becomes fixed in our minds." Even freed from his masters, this suggests that the samurai was still burdened with the honor expected from one of his ilk though it fails to benefit him in any tangible way. Alone, hungry, and unemployed, he moves on.

The town he arrives in has been overrun by merchant-class opportunists -- a sake dealer and a silk dealer who have each conspired with gamblers in an effort to amass muscle power and outdo the other. Ever aloof to those he claims to despise as weak and defenseless, Sanjuro appears to play heartless games of mischief as he sets the merchants and their men against each other. The open conflict this generates between the two factions acts as representative of the hard realities of that time. Despite his outward enjoyment of the goings-on, though, his alternate side emerges to reveal the inner hero. Tough love is deeply ingrained in his bluff sense of altruism, and deep down he's a role model as well as the protector of an abandoned people he loves.

Samurai as Mediator: the Strategist vs. the Humanitarian

Perhaps the most curious aspect of Yojimbo, Kurosawa's carefully constructed removal of Sanjuro from the story's more criminal elements, deters the audience from seeing the samurai too closely, nor too disjointedly. Effectually, the audience sees much through his eyes while still being allowed the advantage of telling camera work that plays all over Mifune's physique. In a studied scene in which he learns all about the town and its oily operations, Sanjuro and the old man who feeds him pace around the interior of a hut in the foreground while the middle ground remains largely empty of action and seemingly devoid of life. In the back ground, in deep focus and employing a playful Japanese sense of mise-en-scène, the merchants' men grease the official inspector's palms with money and flood his tea cup with sake. "In this town, I'll get paid for killing," Sanjuro ruminates as he watches these subtle announcements of the deterioration of his culture, "and this town is full of men who are better off dead."

Yet, Sanjuro still finds humor in the buying-off of the officials; it's the deeper aspects of cultural erosion that trouble him. The silk merchant's prayer chanting for the death of the sake merchant denotes the perversion of religion. McDonald's observation succinctly grasps the tension of these scenes: "As the coffin maker's hammer and the silk merchant's prayer drum beat together on the sound track, we realize that religion, traditionally the answer to death, is no longer an answer or a solace; that, ironically, death is the 'answer' to 'religion.'" The palpitations of the steady march of time in an era of decline reverberate throughout Yojimbo's stark landscape, signalling a sort of death pall that Roger Ebert summed up well when he wrote, "Shutters, sliding doors and foreground objects bring events into view and then obscure them, and we get a sense of the town as a collection of fearful eyes granted an uncertain view of certain danger." [2] As the audience, perhaps, we are immune to that fear; it has, though, at very least become a tangible and calculable presence among the marginalized and deserted townsfolk.

Further exacerbating the face of death in isolation is the dual irony presented by Sanjuro auctioning off his services as bodyguard to the highest bidder. For one thing, all things monetary are beneath a samurai's dignity; that he must pretend to an ignominy that he doesn't come by honestly holds irony enough. His choice of masters, though, betrays his true ingenuity. Seemingly, by offering these services at all, he validates the self-importance that these bosses draw to themselves while what he's really doing is using it against them to complete the ruse. It is the people who must be protected from the war-mongering merchants who have superceded their place in society and shunned the farmers and artisans whom they once depended upon. It is the emerging middle class that Sanjuro elects to pick out, then, by using their own vanity and opportunism against them however he can in order to save the true people of Japan.

Samurai as Paragon: the Transitional Navigator

No mere sorter of souls, though, Sanjuro's egalitarian view shines through, especially with regard to the decisions all men must make. He never pretends to be more than what he is: unemployed. His fellow samurai, although in a seeming position of disgrace and laziness, prompts his respect as a fellow loner and entrepeneur. The swift reduction of the merchants' houses essentially reduces its leaders to opposing vices. Humor remains the ultimate mediator between murderous intent and natural justice. By not backing down from a pistol clearly aimed at him, Sanjuro cedes the right of way to destiny, even if it means death, and even if it's his own. This singular aspect of the samurai's prescience of mind and honor in times of crisis touts the grand ideal that that sort of warrior has inspired generations since. His tacit gravitation to where he's needed most could be argued as the happenstance of a life spent defending royalty and personifying nobility. That would be a good argument. It would be better, though, were we to see that the farmers and artisans left behind by the collapse of the last Japanese Dynasty made the people, in this time of sorrow and change, his new and implicitly truest royalty.

[1] McDonald, Keiko I. Swordsmanship and Gamesmanship: Historical Kurosawa's Milieu in Yojimbo. Literature Film Quarterly, 1980, Vol. 8 Issue 3, p188, 9p; (AN 6906904)

McDonald interviewed both the famed Kurosawa writer Donald Richie and Yojimbo cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa and drew heavily on Richie's Japanese Cinema: Film Style and National Character and The Films of Akira Kurosawa.

[2] The incomparable Roger Ebert.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

2006-09-05T15:53:00.000-04:00

Dir. Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Faris
Writ. Michael Arndt
w/ Greg Kinnear, Alan Arkin, Steve Carell, and Toni Collette

Co-directors Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Faris's mini-epic family romp acts much like the mirrors set in tiny rooms to gain a sense of space. Like many indie films, Sunshine uses time and plot sparingly, yet it does so in such a way that leaves the viewer with the feel of a full film. Greg Kinnear plays a father and self-help speaker trying to push his spiel national. Nursing home reject and Grandpa Alan Arkin is a bad boy druggie and sexpert who coaches his pageant queen-hopeful granddaughter (Abigail Breslin) Olive's dancing.

Enter Uncle Frank, an irresistibly terse Steve Carell, a disgraced literature professor freshly returned from the hospital on suicide watch to bunk with his morbid, mute fifteen-year-old nephew. When asked why he's stopped speaking, Dwayne (Paul Dano) points to a wall-sized caricature of Friedrich Nietzsche in reply. It's off to the funny farm from there, each character's personality colliding with the next as though this were a stage play in which everybody's a little bit twisted. And then there’s the Mom (Toni Collette) who wants nothing but honesty in her family and what's best for her kids.

The stage-play elements of the opening might normally come off as a bit trite, but this cast makes it work. In a noteworthy moment, the camera kneels along with Dad. Bracing his young daughter's shoulders, he wrings from her the promise that their trip to California to enter her in the “Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant will end triumph. Olive puts on a brave face and the family piles into the reliable old microbus for a cross-country run.

From there, we are plunged into the soups of human trials that smacks a bit of The Grapes of Wrath and films like Home for the Holidays. This family’s emotional challenges and achievements are so earthy and unpretentious, the humor so warm and sweetly lighthearted that big things become small and manageable. Where another viewpoint might have mired their problems in a more depressing model, Michael Arndt’s debut script takes daunting family issues like suicide and drug addiction and provides them with a very human and watchable perspective.

But despite all of their traumas, the connection between family members remains its main attraction. Whether it’s a depressed nephew standing on a pier hearing his uncle proclaim Proust a loser, or at-odds family members heaving-to as a unit to start the family bus, their frailties dissolve within a context few comedies bother to provide. It takes Sunshine to a level that soars.

These aren't people simply motivated by family obligations, though, any more than a random hodge-podge of emotional dysfunction. They're folks who have been tried by fire and have come out on the other side to want what's best for one another. Without even trying, the film tugs at the Little Miss Sunshine in all of us through its characters, asking us to be better people and to start by remembering to enjoy the world and those around us. When you're trying to snag the elusive limelight in a beauty contest, that's precisely the kind of crew you want in your corner.

Water (2005)

2006-08-29T13:43:00.000-04:00

Dir. Deepa Mehta Writ. Deepa Mehta
w/ Sarala, Lisa Ray, Seema Biswas, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, John Abraham, Vinay Pathak, and Waheeda Rehman

Stories take on a life of their own. The truest story is the simplest gesture, capable of betraying the greatest depth of feeling while also conveying the complex of nature of life. This can be as elementary as a mother peeling potatoes for a famished, captive audience or an anxious husband preparing a cold compress for his feverish wife. The moments these tasks take appear profound, monumental. In many ways, Deepa Mehta's Water reflects her intuitive sense of storytelling, but too tragic a history has hamstringed her full potential to tell it well. Her film's riddled with the woes of a culture on the precipice of a change that did not and has not reached all the strata of its society any more than Gandhi made true believers of all of his people. Foregoing for the moment any detailed understanding of Hinduism or Indian culture, the plight of women in a religious austerity that doesn't necessarily hold its men to the same rigidity at very least translates well to the Western grasp of relationships and the presence of imbalance.

Not unlike the songs of Solomon, the Ancient Vedas -- the poetic basis upon which ashrams have become a customary part of Indian society, and the film's focal point -- put women on a pedestal of virtue that most humans would agree is a tough row to hoe. With specific evils befalling women who do not toe that ascetic line, though, the Vedas go beyond the realm of the early Jewish poets. Where Solomon and David after him felt on safe ground praising the idyllic, virtuous woman -- not coincidentally often a frugal one, easily adaptable to the rigors those in nomadic, uncertain times faced -- the Indian poets seem to have instilled a stronger sense of justice into their writings when evoking karma. Perhaps realizing that she would be trying to reach an audience more accustomed to open, interpretable Scriptures, one in which God and not a poet had the final say, Mehta stays close to those things common to both East and West.

Both hemispheres value the happiness of children. Both admire the pursuit of dreams. Possibly as a result of the indelible mark of British Imperialism, India seems to have the same weakness for tragic love stories that many Westerners have likewise inherited from the same sector. And both have an Industrial Machine constantly churning out fodder to compete with The Last Greatest Thing Since You Can't Remember When. Thankfully, Mehta's work doesn't pander to the ranks and files of Hollywood any more than it does to Bollywood; it does, however, hit you over the head at times with its message. I'd hesitate to label it preachiness. What I think's really happening is a sizable mistrust that her audience will understand the most important thrust of her film. As agenda art, if you will, it's very powerful in ways that have not even been broached yet; as the fine, spoonful of sugar that critics so long for when dealing with an epidemic of misogyny, it's disconcerting and a bit hard to take.

The first question that comes to mind is why, if the abject cruelty to widows in India is so important, did the filmmaker choose fictitious film as her medium? Why not a documentary?The answer may be as facile as roving differences in ticket sales between non-fiction and feature films, an evolving thing since Robert Redford launched Sundance Cinemas and instituted the House of Docs as a permanent part of his annual film festival. Although the public response to such ventures has risen, along with the visibility of such filmmakers, the change has been dramatic without being sufficiently encouraging. Westerners still seem to prefer their movies fake, entertaining, and -- more often than not -- a tad schmaltzy. So let's discuss Water for what it is: a piece of timely art that attempts to span an intimidatingly wide cultural and societal gap using little more than the universal truths and echoes found in all stories involving humans, and a medium that nearly every country in the world has now at least begun to test.

At the foreground, Chuyia, the newest acquisition in a house of widows or ashram, presents us with everything one could ask for in a heroine. She possesses spunk in spades and a child's clairvoyant honesty that calmly puts the illusory in its place by asking for a second helping of reality. In the very first scene, her dying husband lays just behind her on a cart as her family treks homeward. All Chuyia can think to do is enjoy the spacious view around her, gnaw on something particularly sweet, and thump the dying man's foot. Such deft characterization is not only Mehta's forté; it's also her wordless argument. The child can not remember being married, but she will spend the rest of her life in an ashram to serve the customs of her people. This ironic metaphor serenades the essential landscape of the film, that remembered sweetness of the wedding feast without the just desserts of a wedding night. As a widow in their midst, despite her youth, Chuyia's accorded the same sympathy and respect sisters grieving would give each other matter of course; but, by way way of human predictability, she also shares their blows.

That's precisely the point Mehta harps on again and again, this monstrous degredation to which women in captivity become subjected and eventually used to, treating each other in a variety of ways less dignified than wouldv'e been witnessed in their former lives. As widows, they are meant to comfort each other in their grief. Not only have they been forsaken by a God they once trusted to bless them with children and a home, but they have been insulted by a husband who chose to leave them behind rather than spend as much of this life with them as possible. It recalls the Native American belief that aborted babes, and not their mothers, choose to dwell on this earth or not. That Western difference in thinking that we are so very in control of all of our choices touches the depths of this film's more intuitive perspective on life.

Since not all women are the same, each copes with her situation as she can. The virtue of each woman expresses itself in the way she views herself, as the victim or survivor of a bad beat. The lines get blurred in places, but that line of distinction remains Mehta's crux as she attempts to appeal to the sentiments of a society so fundamentally different from our own. The attempt even works, as one of the women takes Chuyia under her wing to teach her to cope and to protect her from being used by a widow who has turned sour. An element of alienation also stalks the screen. As the women struggle to survive, we see Mehta's firm belief emerge that Chuyia, although strong and independent, hasn't a woman's sensibilites nor awareness of the ways of the world; and, what's more, she doesn't want her heroine to develop that. The need to remove Chuyia from the widows' house augments the filmmaker's sensitivity to the faults in her society's structure. She appreciates the beauty of the Hindu spirituality and has great faith in its women, trusting in their strength and sense of moral duty; but, being mature herself, she knows that evil resides on the earth, and that change must come when a society fails its brightest.

Water -- the universal solvent, the building block of all life, and the only thing that truly quenches thirst -- plays as vital a translational role to an international audience as the theme of clarity does its message of social change. The holy water of the Ganges in which daily ablutions are made holds as much context as the well water and rain. In 1938 India cholera and other waterborne illnesses must've made conditions worse, but Mehta gently eschews all of that, allowing the river to flow in its dual habitat of transformation and renewal. Making love, when two people come together to act as one, can be much like floating. It is the river that must be crossed to keep the rent money steady; from which brides receive blessings; by which old wounds heal; upon which the dead are laid to rest; because of which, ultimately, two lovers separate. In short, it provides just enough catharsis in and of itself to accelerate real change.

By no accident, Gandhi's traveling orations lend the film the same currents upon which to navigate its seamier intrusions into the psychology of female isolation and abandonment. Gandhi's declaration that "God is not Truth, but that Truth is God" feels right somehow, but without any really deep visual connection being made to what's been going on among the widows prior to his appearance. Like the intrinsically mysterious nature of water, his words get lost in their transparency, suggesting an opacity as fickle and fleeting as smoke. In so doing, Mehta doesn't offer any answers concerning the future of widows in India; but, by the same token, she doesn't let us forget that Truth and God, like the tides, wait on no man. More to the gist, Water tells us that change is sure and painful and inexplicable and often quite hard to comprehend, but that when staying still becomes even more so, that change is inevitable nonetheless.

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Here's some testimony from a film crew worker for those interested in the cause.

I haven't read much in the way of good, comprehensive reviews of Water, but this one isn't bad.

This guy...well, I'm not sure he even watched the film, or maybe he got some bad subtitles...hard to say, but he does make some nice directorial references that could be appreciated by those working on the 100 films.

La Grande Illusion (1937)

2006-06-04T13:10:00.000-04:00

Dir. Jean Renoir
Writ. Jean Renoir and Charles Spaak
w/ Erich von Stroheim, Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, and Dita Parlo

Captain von Rauffenstein guns down Captain de Boldieu and Lieutenant Maréchal's fighter plane over German soil, then receives them at an impromptu lunch to honor the dead. Before the meal can be eaten the French officers, now prisoners of war, must leave for a soldier's camp in Hallbach where the German footsoldiers treat them with civilized military indifference. The French soldiers at the barracks when they arrive have made great use of their time digging a tunnel, and Boeldieu and Maréchal join in, all of them salivating over which appetite of freedom they will whet first. Endless fields of Holland tulips or a quiet glass of wine, each man deprived of such luxuries, spells his sense of beauty aloud, surrounded by the dank gray of isolation. Their common goal having formed them into a tight unit, their disappointment extinguishes their spirits when, on the morning of their planned escape, the news arrives that they will transfer to Wintersborn that afternoon. Any escape attempt by day would mean heavy loss of life, and they care too much about living to try.

At Wintersborn, Rauffenstein adresses the officers -- Boeldieu, Maréchal, and Rosenthal -- concerning the fortress' inescapability and binds them and himself to French regulations in light of their company's less solvent attempts to free themselves at Hallbach. The captains share a bond of the old nobility. They are gentlemen, a dying breed of a revolution based on the basic laws of supply and demand. Left on the shelf to gather dust, Boeldieu acts of his volition when he deems it best, contrary to the wishes of the aging German captain. At the essence of their differences lies the sharp dischord between acceptance of the need for change and rejection of the new sense of humanity. The future rests in the abilities of the commoners for whom Boeldieu lays down his life; for Rauffenstein, however, the only future clear to him are the orders he must give before he, too, can die.

As might be expected from the son of the impressionist, Renoir fills his canvas with the realities of the day-to-day living between members of opposing nations who adhere more naturally to the rules of courtesy than to the pretenses of war. The hypocrisy portrayed by these oppositions does not color the actions of the men who share its burden, for each man has needs and wants of his own. The motivation to live and to return -- to loved ones or to the front -- drives them; and, where no such motivation prevails, as in battle, men sacrifice themselves for those who have more to live for and more to lose. Operating on the belief that time spent with people, looking at and interacting with and appreciating, will always overrule spending time away in a charade as grand or illusory as war, Renoir gives each man a face and a voice and the proper amount of time in which to be seen and heard.

Amid the desires of the men to leave the camp, disparate views emerge from the French officers. Maréchal, a mechanic who deals in how-tos and questions his fellow man no further than to call him brother, believes that mankind can be saved, that it's not too late. War can be stopped, and the warmongers only win if man forgets his humor, his compassion, and his ability to connect. "We've got to end this damn war," he declares, "and make it the last." His companion in escape replies, "Don't delude yourself." To Rosenthal, war reeks of humanity's inability to recognize each other as important and part of a greater plan. Man always fouls the garden, falling further from rather than rushing toward the divine.

For Boeldieu nobility ceases to be a virtue only if he lets it and, though he distances himself from Rosenthal and Maréchal's ranks emotionally and intellectually, he doesn't think twice about paying the greatest price of all to ensure that the free world receives her native prodigal sons. Perhaps the most telling aspect of Renoir's examination of why, in the face of so much capability to get along peacably and still thrive, men still chase after grand illusions, it begs the question, are we truly free? And if so, then why are we so very alone?

Modern Times (1936)

2006-06-03T10:26:00.000-04:00

Dir. Charlie Chaplin
Writ. Charlie Chaplin
w/ Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Tiny Sandford

Breaking five years' silence after City Lights in 1931, the Tramp returns to work at a steel mill, shipyard, department store, machinist's, and restaurant, the American dream tugging at him. He spends his time trying to stay fed, even if it means going to jail. A run-in with a vivacious, but malnourished street urchin leads to him redoubling efforts in the hope that they can build a home together, but to little avail. Circumstances always emerge that preclude realization, ensuring that he constantly circulates through a maze of entry-level jobs, never achieving anything lasting.

Released thirteen years before 1984 hit bookshelves and ergonomics became an applied science, Modern Times relays startling accuracy and insight into man's struggle with technology. Unable to rest at the steel mill, the Tramp works himself into a nervous breakdown; and, when he lands a craftsman's position at a shipyard, accidentally sinks a half-built ship. Later on, while roller skating as a department store night watchman, a job he got when the old watchman broke his leg, he gets held up by a group of hungry men, one of whom he'd worked with at the steel mill.

Chaplin's apropos commentary on the constraints of industrialization on personal freedom, often sharp, factor in the selling of modernity itself. New technological advances surface like waves and society rushes to catch up with them in vain, stumbling. Social responsibility plays an ever smaller role as money and time dominate its very inventors. Referred to as Chaplin's "crystal ball," his clairvoyance credits his brilliance not only as a comedian, but also as a filmmaker with a wider view of the world and a more salient wit than most.

Yet, despite his full awareness of and attention to the the age of the machine -- or because of -- Chaplin elicits some of the heartiest laughter with this material. His movements balletic and his heroine feistier than usual, his common ails play out with spunk and earthiness. Teetering on the threshold of the ribald, his visual antics possess warmth, depicting the poor blue-collar worker as the salt of the earth. His imparted wisdom, of no mean quality, suggests that when times get so rough that success can only be attained at someone's detriment and is so short-lived anyway, it's more recommendable and just as feasible to live happily ever after as a Tramp.

8 1/2 (1963)

2006-05-31T17:32:00.000-04:00

Dir. Frederico Fellini
Writ. Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano (story); Ennio Flaiano , Tullio Pinelli, Federico Fellini, Brunello Rondi
w/ Marcello Mastroianni, Sandra Milo, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée

Besieged by an undiagnosed but cloying malady, reclusive director Guido Anselmi searches for his film as obstacles emerge in every form imaginable. Frederico Fellini's afterimage labors under heavy dreams, sifts through an ocean of actresses, and collides with his inevitable frailty while meandering, trance-like, through his production. All the while, as clips of conversations make up the frenetic background through which he tunnels, he exists in an alternate dimension which demands more and more from him as he traverses toward a resolution of the personal, revealing, and bizarre. Favoring the journey for the ultimate sake of destination, Fellini often submerges his director in collective, diasporic memories, some that hold stigma, and some that soothe.

Anything going on outside of Guido's mind becomes passé the moment it occurs in his rut. The actresses gather to catch his attention, but few do. Direct conversation means as much as crystal tinkling at a cocktail party, and he avoids it with disinterest, even to the point of talking to a hapless man just to get away. Due to a subtle capturing, a mastery on Fellini's part, it's often hard to distinguish between the reality of the people in Guido's world and the appearance of them in his mind. Often, things don't connect, and characters barrage, picking at the senses until he retreats back into another dimension. Even meetings crucial to the film's progress, such as meeting with the Bishop concerning representing Italy with the rectitude of his film's themes, don't prevail upon him to leave off his musings.

His inner life preoccupies and drives him to distraction, enchants and torments him with its vivid imagery and guilt-laden layers that blight the more salient moments of his childhood. An early introduction to Saraghina, a garish woman who lives in a sea shanty, conveys his first curiosity in the vigorous female form. As the social and moral outcast dances the rhumba for a coin, the boys cheer, but Guido responds in earnest to the prostitute's visceral daring. The Church then chases him down, finds his disgraced mother, and shames him for lewdness.

Fellini doesn't work it to death. His understanding of Guido as halcyon as moonlit tidepools, the director allows him the freedom earned by a lifetime of inner turmoil to do as he pleases, and he phones his lover. When Carla seems to have missed the train, he shrugs with apparent indifference; but the camera with relief, so that her sudden appearance as the train departs declares a man torn between two unknowns. Although her presence helps him get at least one good night's rest, his mental detachment increases with her dense witticisms even as his body responds with a will of its own. His wife Luisa arriving only a little later, though, seems to bring him angst, shoving his thoughts to the outer realms where no one can reach him.

The essential play that Fellini prepares effuses a desire for the world to be lovely and reasonable, as evidenced by Guido's delight that his wife and mistress, once having spotted each other, take to each other with comraderie and style and genuine affability. But do they really treat each other right, or by way of magic has the camera tricked into reality a whim of the director? Like I said, it's hard to say sometimes. In his secret heart, Guido clings to and cherishes his wife, seeing her simplicity and her strength, the quiet calm at the far end of his restless fantasies. Aware of his seeming emotional destitution, he finds solace in that place.

Yet Guido's film plays out as a trite send-up to that emotional destitution, and during a viewing of the actresses' screen tests, Luisa watches the sad parodies of herself and Carla mutilate lines over and over. None of them can ever bring the same simpering gibberish or that certain je ne sais quoi. The screenings project relentlessly, and the only abatement is the arrival of Claudia Cardinale as a facet of herself, his last hope and savior. When she, too, undermines his fantasy notion of her, Guido faces the novelty of a lifetime of imperfection reflected all around him. Things grow dark, perturbing, and gauntly out of reach, the images fragmenting as Fellini hoodwinks his audience one last time, because he can.

Fellini claimed that his seventh film was only half a film, giving this title its only real significance; the picture, on the other hand, is worth far more than a thousand words. It defines and redefines filmmaking, unabashed by real-life problems, and starkly honest at its depths, so much so that it led the Time magazine reviewer in June, 1963 to write, "Fellini has a singular personal problem: why is he so preoccupied with making movies that speak of the emptiness of life?" But had the writer the opportunity to watch this several times and reflect, he very well may have sung an altogether different tune; one of surprises, inspiration, and joy.

Closely Watched Trains (1966)

2006-05-27T14:56:00.000-04:00

Dir. Jirí Menzel
Writ. Bohumil Hrabal (also novel), Jirí Menzel
w/ Václav Neckár, Josef Somr

Stepping into the niche his ancestors have carved for him, Milos begins his apprenticeship as a dispatcher at the local train depot in Nazi-controlled Czechoslovokia. His girl, a train conductor, loves him, and all he has to do is "stand on the platform with a signal disc and avoid any hard work, while others have to drudge and toil." Life is good. But when it's time to make love, Milos suffers anxiety, a misunderstanding of his manhood that leads him first to a suicide attempt and then to a more alluring solution, an older woman.

Milos's quiet acknowledgment of the goings-on around him make for thoughtful viewing. Like a well-made cup of tea, Closely Watched Trains progresses, gently provocative and brimming with delightful moments; insightful, humorous, and brazen. An inspector arrives at the station to show the stomping power of the Reich, reminding the workers that they all have to like each other in order to win, and departing in a car on the tracks, running in reverse.

Later, when Milos's philandering co-worker gets nabbed for tatooing a young girl with official rubber stamps, the Inspector returns to declare the dispatcher's guilt of abusing the German national language as engraved on one of the stamps and displayed on the girl's right buttock. It's wonderful irreverence, the sort of material to be expected from a man some have called the Woody Allen of Czechoslovokian cinema, for both physical and humorous resemblances.

Since 1966, of course, the country has split into the Czech Republic and Slovokia, and a similar hint of division surfaces within the forty-year-old film. The town, station, far away cities and countries exist as separate entities, mere matters of geography. The imposition of the Reich holds little sway over Menzel's individual countrymen. Distance and culture clash raise too high a barrier to make much of an impression beyond the idea that the Germans are pigs who don't know how to treat cattle, let alone people. The soldiers that pass through on foot get afforded the same courtesies as the closely watched trains that arrive almost without origination on one side of the tracks and depart to the unknown on the other.

Menzel's style, influenced by the Nouvelle Vague, retains its integrity by not indulging in the experimental or overdoing technique. True to form, the images flow with the logic of a mountain stream, but with an undercurrent of dark humor contextualized by an unending sensitivity to humanity's weaknesses and shortcomings as well as its surprising strengths. Each take supports the previous and jumps into the next, securing the masterpiece as a lasting monument to its director and its country.

A bold and kind treatment of the enduring reality of the human spirit, it won the Grand Prix at the Mannheim Film Festival and The Best Foreign Language Film Award at the 1967 Academy Awards.

Bande à Parte (1964)

2006-05-26T16:50:00.000-04:00

Dir. Jean-Luc Godard
Writ. Jean-Luc Godard, based loosely on Dorothy Hitchins's novel
w/ Anna Karina, Claude Brasseur, and Sami Frey

With little going on in Odile's life besides an English class, she quickly, unwittingly ensnares herself in a heist of money from her aunt and guardian's safe. Coquettish looks and misunderstood conversation between a misfit girl and two young men dabbling with the idea of being gangsters at first results in lackadaisical hanging out, but soon turns mean-spirited.

The story, one of bored youth without direction or guidance, is nothing new. A few notable implementations, though, veer this away from a typical '60s romp à la Annette Funicello. Black and white film, for one. It shimmers with high-key lighting, open skies, and white walls; and, while it may not have a lot of honorable intention or content, resistance to smiling at parts can prove futile. Each scene has urgency, due mainly to the "live reporting" camera techniques.

Godard gives the actors little pith with which to mold their characters, an aspect that would've felt asphyxiating to many actors of that time and of today. Karina, for the most part, contours her features into a pitiable frown meant, presumably, to convey a smorgasbord of emotions ranging from confusion to dislike. She frowns a lot. The scenes where the trio enjoy each other's company -- when they dance the Madison or attempt a minute of silence -- feel the most natural, the most credible.

Could this be too much digging into a film constructed to look fresh and cool, and timbred with Michel Legrand's light-hearted Parisian score? Possibly. Godard piecemealed the script together, day by day, using what sets he could and, more often than not, existing lighting. He didn't overly concern himself with characterization, plot, or story development. What his efforts lack in depth and substance doesn't get made up for with realistic cinematography and fresh, rebellious approach.

Hackneyed writing, stringed fragments of pop culture references, may project cool and crisp, but attention to craft serves the cast, crew, and audience much better, providing the respect and structure needed for actors to apply their medium. To wit, although Anna Karina is an undeniable beauty, placing her in front of the camera and rolling does not a feature film make. She does her best, but often resorts to eye-candy posturing.

The most praisable aspect of Godard's work may be that it never purports to be something that it is not. For a couple of other reasons besides this, Bande à Parte didn't get relegated to the arena of kitsch. Since Godard's style changed dramatically from film to film, his pulpy followings never congealed to the thickness of a John Waters or an Ed Wood fan base. He also creates a whimsical atmosphere that remains consistent throughout, the mark of a good director, if not a great writer. Perhaps the best moment arrives when Karina sings on the subway, a sad song that reflects her state of mind more than it supports the story.

An irony exists that helps to bridge the comprehension gap between contemporary French filmmaking and the old New Wave. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie, despised by many a self-titled film buff who will readily claim any of Godard's pieces as an automatic better film, nods to him while also upstaging the New Wave giant. On the whole, Jeunet creates a more interesting, character-supported, and sweetly rendered peek at French filmmaking. Why? Attention to detail, involvement of the audience in the experience, ideals posessing no substitutes.

What Godard has put down for posterity often looks good, but fails to deliver in any tangible way. The sites of Paris, the offhand innocence of a young girl, and the excitement of being in a "band of outsiders" holds universal appeal to youthful decadence, an audience that bemoans the perception of the grass always being greener on the other side of the pond. In reality, though, Bande à Parte does little else to conjure the imagination or inspire.

It ends, as it began, at nowhere, but at least the journey held some little magic as it went along. Perhaps that, more than an overt reaction to the mainstream filmmaking of the time, held the greatest importance to the writer. I liked the middle parts most.

Yes (2005)

2006-05-25T13:54:00.000-04:00

Dir. Sally Potter
Writ. Walter Donohue, Sally Potter
w/ Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian, Sam Neill, Shirley Henderson

Before the young lovers set eyes on each other, the houses of Montague and Capulet had sealed Romeo and Juliet's fate. That sixteenth century prism of an unobtainable co-existence of peace and love sets the proscenium for Sally Potter's (Orlando) heady exposure of modern conflict as laid between two souls, Yes.

A middle-Eastern man takes daily affronts to his pride in a London kitchen. A scientist from Belfast vis-a-vis America, long fallen out of pleasure with an absent husband, explores the capacity of living cells to discern their destinies. They meet, partaking of a private intimacy just beyond the noses of the surrounding public, and all the tumblers unlock. Amid an interracial argument about to come to blows, the cook loses his job and he breaks off the romance and retreats to Beirut where he reclaims his original profession as a surgeon. Meanwhile, her marriage untenable, the woman who raised her dying, the scientist reaches out to him, unwilling to part ways despite the grief and despair.

The choices Potter's subjects make both visible and audible, she reveals these hidden lives with a piquantly honest social acumen, contrasting them through a variety of means. Whether or not to voice fears, who to confide in, and when to keep secrets secret comprise Yes's core. As the determined heroine, Joan Allen waxes and wanes with more juice than usual. Parisian theatre production company owner and co-star Simon Akbarian presents a persuasive stage charisma with a loyalty to the verse that unfolds the tale. Although his approach translates to film as threadbare at turns, he plays off Allen's feminine sense of creature character with such skill that the decision's overlookable, more so than the stilted lines of the supporting cast, especially the kitchen crew. His mysteriousness and instinctual timing produce an exotic masculinity that emaciates only marginally when confronted with his insecurities.

In keeping with the erotically charged atmosphere, Potter also scribbled in the housekeeper, whose musings both tantalize and give pause for reflection. "Dirt never really goes away," she says, "It just gets pushed around." Like all living cells with a destination, she minimizes her role in the play, making herself very small yet resourceful. Fishing a condom from a toilet and carrying away stained sheets, her observations bring marked heat to an existence rife with infidelities for all the right reasons, not to mention the strains on a man who would like to be rid of the third wheel as much as he would his third-world image. Two people can't hold each other responsible for all the wrongs of the world, but love does tend to leave its targets vulnerable to all.

Raw and vital, Yes shares the soil of human thought in textured transitions that vary from nickelodeon epiphanies to deep sea swells, just like the gamet of human emotion. Totally aware of the horrors constantly impeding the planet, Potter reaffirms the diminishing line between objectivity and individual perspective. Since human understanding will always be subject to interpretation, objectivity can never be isolated and defined. All anyone can ever do is try, whether she be a scientist devoted to quantification or a man obsessed with his identity.

Unlike the bard's ill-fated lovers, the scientist and the cook-cum-doctor choose to live in this uneasy world, not without fear. The tides have shifted since the days of Capulet and Montague. Their ultimate separation gains no peace, bridges no cultural gaps. Their destiny lies bound together, as intertwined as the futures of all nations; such is Potter's vision for peace, one of the most recommendable in years.

Parting may still be such sweet sorrow in the twenty-first century, but it can't be nearly as sweet as togetherness. Yes individually conquers the notion that everything must have a price, exhorting its audience to believe that, for once, this isn't just another movie, or even the stuff that dreams are made of, but that peace can be as free and clear as love.

Saraband (2005)

2006-05-20T14:30:00.000-04:00

Dir. Ingmar Bergman
Writ. Ingmar Bergman
w/ Liv Ullman, Erland Josephson, Börje Ahlstedt, Julia Dufvenius

When Lawrence Kasdan sat to edit the funeral ensemble The Big Chill, he became increasingly aware that the film's impact would be breached if he kept the deceased's living flashbacks in the cut. Upon completion, all shots of Kevin Costner had been removed, leaving only the telltale hairline that more attentive devoteés would recognize in later years. It also hauntingly retained a sense of the unknown, the unforeseeable, and muted and simultaneously strengthened the piece's ghosted legacy.

Bergman attributes the idea to Alf Sjöberg, Sweden's greatest filmmaker until his own career unfolded after writing Hets (Torment/Frenzy) for him. "What is half-hidden," Sjöberg told his young protégé, "is far more suggestive, more seductive, more exciting than what is fully visible." The theory rules the prevailing body of Bergman's work; but, in Saraband, he brandishes it with a tangible relish, relating each character's life to the death of one woman in the past.

Considering the story material, the decision to abandon the rule governing actors eyeing the camera creates a unique relationship between the audience and seasoned veteran Liv Ullman as divorce lawyer Marianne. She confides to the viewer her skepticism comingled with her desire to visit her former husband, even as she's approaching the final steps to his sun-basking side after decades of separation. What follows is the great echo of youth in a grouchy maturity, as the two rediscover each other. In their halcyon reunion scene, Marianne brings up his cranky days at university, which Johan dismisses, admitting that he'd been "gummed up in the standard academic nonsense," but that everything had changed when he received his honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan. Later, she tells him that he's like some "forgotten character in a stupid, old film."

Both jests display Bergman's deft humor at work.

Bereft of the daughters she had with Johan -- one lives in Australia, the other vegetates in a home -- Marianne opens maternally to the last generation, the young cellist, Karin. The fast bond with Johan's motherless granddaughter from his first marriage proves life-changing as, two years prior, the girl's mother died and left an inconsolable and vulnerable widower alone with her. Fogged and disadvantaged, Karin has found herself in a sexual imbroglio with her father. Marianne's simple ear provides the necessary candlepower for the girl to make a cathartic move that offsets the lives of her father and grandfather. Thus the two men have lost the common thread -- the girl's mother -- and in so doing, the stage has been set for what storytellers the world over refer to as "the thing."

Using vignetted narrative, woven together as classical movements, Bergman carefully develops this portrait of some of the most brittle family relations ever to get caught on film. Grudges and death have demanded more tensile strength of these characters than any of them had to give, but for one who died. In the Swede's native tongue, he gave this her name, that of his mother: Anna.

What the world has been given, at the end, is hope. Realism provides the backdrop for Bergman's final adieu to the silver screen, but hope drives it home. Whether you remember this as a parting gift to generations of admirers and enthusiasts or as a simple love sonnet to a wife one filmmaker fears he may never see again, you may rest satisfied that you are in the hands of a very wise man who has lived a full life and knows what it is to love.

Inside Man (2006)

2006-05-16T18:13:00.000-04:00

Dir. Spike Lee
Writ. Russell Gewirtz
w/ Denzel Washington, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jodie Foster, Clive Owen, Christopher Plummer, and Willem Dafoe

Whomever had the job of showing Denzel Washington the script for the first time must've left the actor's side, ears ringing with voluptuously bell-like peals of laughter. Gewirtz's story gives us Frazier, a detective under investigation for a missing sum, enough to buy a Staten Island condo. He then lands the negotiation of a hostage crisis in the middle of the Manhattan financial district, a chance to prove worthy of command that he and his eager partner both jump at with zeal; however, the robber has already told us in all confidence at the beginning of the film that he has planned the most brilliant, perfect robbery, leaving little doubt in the audience's mind that all will go according to plan. Ah, and therein lies the rub. We like Frazier within seconds and want to see him win the day, but Gewirtz has also cleverly circumvented the pitfall of the genre by taking away every question but the "how?" In short, Washington got handed all the elements of a perfect role, where the outcome becomes a minor point at the very start, and the journey to it excites all the more, because it's the only thing that matters.

Politically charged yet witty, the filmworld's angriest auteur may actually have been prescribed this script by his therapist. What it renders for posterity in terms of interracial content it also winks at with the humor necessary for anyone wishing to remain a long-term citizen of America's most stressed-out boilerpot of a city. No stranger these days to suave machismo, Washington steps into this sweet spot of a role designed to supply an African-American actor the same ethos as a Serpico or a Michael Corleone, a Columbo or a Sam Spade -- only black and beautiful. And Washington executes Frazier with gusto, aware of the detective's limitations, but spot-on with the attitude and persona peculiar to a man trying to make pay-grade in a city police force that's suffered in the public eye. He even infuses a mild accent into the role to make things more fun. It might make you want to shout, "Hey, Washington, your Brooklyn's showing, Baby!" in the middle of the theatre.

Lee suitably makes no show of humility when presenting the Big Apple. Loud music, an Indian melody overlaying an invincible rap beat, takes us into the heart of the action and sets the tone fairly aptly. Russell Gerwitz's tight script blends the New York vernacular of "Giuliani Time" with a sense of poor showmanship that must be overcome. The synthesis makes for a heist movie that leaves the audience with a slightly new take on the genre; Matthew Libatique's now-expert photography takes up any slack that may have been leftover. With a license to return to basic student film techniques, he uses effective jump cuts and 360 degree panning, not to mention a great instinct for knowing when to shoot from outside of a room rather than inside. Armed these days with a higher budget and the eternal confidence of carte blanche on a Spike Lee joint, Pi and Requiem for a Dream credits tucked long under his belt, his style works beautifully, and in waves that separate each act distinctly yet elegantly.

One of the more impressive feats of the film, Clive Owen's turn as the mastermind, overcomes the basic challenge of characterization without much interaction through subtle writing and innovations in presenting a robbery. This script offers unusuality in such a way that the actor's work deals mostly in being completely full of himself, as at the opening when Owen stares down the camera to deliver a monologue brimming with detached triumph and worthy of Olivier.

Artistic elements aside for a moment, though, Lee possesses an incredible knack for timeliness. Although the characters portrayed in Inside Man are fictional, they are based on real-life figures. We've seen these people before. They're Madison Avenue Ivy Leaguers who live in the same city with beat cops without ever mixing -- the shaken and changed who walk the streets below the penthouses of the indifferent and uninterested. They're the citizens of a city without a common identity but which struggles to find one in the post-9/11 world.

Although this film remains Washington's chance to swagger and shine, Lee doesn't take the New York out of the New York. Tensions and paradoxes shade Inside Man with nuance and talking points, as if the director were lifting up a bit of the grid, placing it into our palms, and asking, if we were to live here, what the hell would we do? It's a damned good question, Lee. In a world where bank heists of perfect proportions will always be a work of fiction, it's good to be reminded of what's real.

Waking Life (2001)

2006-05-12T18:27:00.000-04:00

Dir. Richard Linklater
Writ. Richard Linklater
w/ Wiley Wiggins, Caveh Zahedi, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, Steven Soderbergh, et al.

In a moment of pure self-actualization around the turn of the millenium, Waking Life entered the troposphere of social consciousness as naturally as though it had been hovering there always, with the implicit promise to stay just as long. Linklater brings us to a place, never more than a thought away from a young man full of questions, each answer bringing him a little more towards consciousness without guaranteeing him absolute reality. He begins with two children playing a fortune game. You remember the carefully folded paper with colors and numbers and, in the innermost folds, your secreted life's story? For this particular boy, "dream is destiny," and -- how true; for, of course, that boy is but a fragment of a larger dream that the main character, the questioner, finds himself waking up in, layer after layer, as his increased appreciation allows him to navigate his dreams more and more freely.

Recurring dream characters ebb and flow throughout the dreamscape, but the thread of questioning remains his constant divining tool, that hint of awareness that breathes of its own accord. One moment, our dreamer may be delving into postmodernism and, the next, into "the new evolution." Using simple voice-over, a classical ensemble, and a visual style that defies categorization (but how about "beautiful") Linklater accomplishes in a short time what many filmmakers can not in several expensive hours of reel: sort of stream-of-consciousness meets "what I wanted to talk about with my friends all my life, but..." By leaving characterization to the elements of argument and reason, the work becomes audience experience, allowing a rare peek into the writing process without muddying the cerebral quality of this fine work.

Yet, of all of Linklater's films, this one endures the most criticism. Ardent fans of other pieces supply the words "pretentious" and "glib" when avoiding eye contact and serious discussion. And while Dazed and Confused catchphrases have become household words, this little prize gets scuffed around and ignored. Could it be that audience resistance to the experience offered here waxes oxymoronic, that not allowing this artform to wrap and lull and awaken you somehow commits the highest pretentiousness of all? In a society obsessed with empty, mind-numbing entertainment, is it possible that we've forgotten that art's primary objective is to imitate life? Truth be told, this filmmaker takes it a step further.

Art interacts with life.

Oh, it's not the life of schedules where characters know the mundane details of each other's lives, like where they work or what kind of car they drive: none of that holds any import. But the body language of the characters conjures up such a sense of the spiritual, an inescapable and indefinable reality that gets portrayed best perhaps in a superb scene of a movie house showing the film Holy Moment. Caveh Zahedi shows that every moment in life, like in a movie, can be holy by staying open and committing to the moment, beginning with just two people. But then, of course, life kind of stops, gets put on pause. You stop talking. You feel. Like the experience of committing yourself to a theatre for a couple of hours or so, that's always time you'll never get back.

Which is why, when Linklater fills this with the aggregate of his experiential thought, what we get doesn't merely justify our participation in Waking Life; it challenges our approach to everything. Every minute detail that you thought was so important the last time you opened your mouth dimishes and your senses are lent to focus and imagination, which is precisely the difference between art, which is meant to supplement and to teach, and static, which is just more resistance. As Speed Levitch tells us, "We are the author of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel starring clowns." Life happens and sometimes, it is very, very funny. But it never really stops. A layer of perception always awaits us, right around the bend.

Pyaasa (1957)

2006-04-12T20:28:00.000-04:00

Dir. Guru Dutt
Writ. Abrar Alvi
w/ Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman

Throughout his contemplative study of a poet out of place among his people, Guru Dutt presents the film community with the state of modern India using the story of one man as a sort of tressel board. Personifying the aforementioned poet, Vijay, Dutt manages to quietly comment upon the effects of British Imperialism while also conveying his great feeling for his culture. Vijay haunts the streets of his village like an apparition until he hears Gulab, a lady of the night, singing one of the poems that his brothers have turned into waste paper for a trifling. Now intent upon publishing the remainder of his work, he gets a job for a man who harbors ill will against him, the man who married his college muse without attaining her love. When Vijay runs into Meena, his lost muse, the heavens open up in a choreographed musical number, the kind which would provide a benchmark for many a future Bollywood production, albeit in color.

To say that despite the black and white medium, Pyaasa engages and maintains the viewer's senses adequately rings true enough, but the cinematographer's use of light and dark sequences that change with the narrative sets terrific tone. In an encounter with a huddled, starving untouchable, in which Vijay gives up his jacket, the frames grow so dark that certain bits look directly influenced by early horror films like Nosferatu. His poems, all of which he sings, set the pace of the film, each more beautiful than the last. They seem to speak of a land of loveliness lost and nearly unreachable largesse of the soul in the wake of the caste system. Of course, as McNelly pointed out, without the subtitles, a lot gets left to the imagination. Somehow, though, Dutt's masterpiece grasps a full range of ideals and absolutes in such a way that Pyaasa still acts as a complete film without them. The melodies help out, yes, but mostly the filmmaker deals in plot and paradise, from the opening shot of the poet enjoying himself by watching a bee buzzing around in the grass one moment, but getting trampled underfoot by a passerby the next.

The rest of the film unfolds the nature of the man himself though the lens of his country. College-educated and middle-class, Vijay should garner the respect of his peers, but he can't even expect that from a restauranteur. A rich weasel getting into his automobile mistakes him for an unskilled laborer when he tries to help him with his parcels, and makes a show of complaining about the educated having to work like that, but still hands him a counterfeit coin as payment. The only people who recognize and hold him dear as a simple human being removed from more desirable economic circumstances walk the streets just as he does. One of the most delightful and unexpected of these provides comic relief, the plight of the common man, and several necessary distractions in the form of Sattar, a man who gives hair oil massages for pennies. These scenes provoke laughter without any wincing at cultural sterotypes. Dutt's simply much too bright, focused, and purposeful to rely on any such blemishes.

Possibly, the spiritual implications of Pyaasa serve its legacy best. Dutt himself had a hard time emotionally while filming, going through a split with his wife that may have been exacerbated by rumors that he was having an affair with leading lady, Rehman, as the exotic Gulab. His solid, consistent presence makes sense in light of such tidings, his mental state adding to the torment that the film demands of him. He uses grating comparisons to further heighten the scope of the drama. As he drunkenly grieves, a young mother is coerced into continuing dancing although her baby cries for her. Dutt and Alvi's sense of the state of man and of India leave little to criticize. If anything, his commentary opens a floodgate of questions that have nothing to do with politics, economics, or any of the affairs of government, but rather of the unknown and how letting go can be good. Whether or not he saw the beauty of his own work clearly enough to carry it with him always can not be known, though; the revered director died of an overdose of sleeping pills in 1964.

Gone With the Wind (1939)

2006-03-25T22:15:00.000-05:00

Dir. Victor Fleming
Writ. Based on Margaret Mitchell's novel, and Sidney Howard's screenplay w/ no credit to Ben Hecht, David O. Selznick, Jo Swerling, John Van Druten
w/ Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, Butterfly McQueen

The mixed reactions this film's very mention usually elicits from folks holds both merit and misconception. Certainly this is a film dealing in most part with the South and the Civil War and all of its various repercussions, but darker elements at play here involve, mainly, the roles of women in an ever-changing and often hostile, unpredictable setting. Southern dramas all the way back to colonial times usually seem to involve sniping women who take potshots at each other hushedly but must maintain a colossally gracious poker face while among polite society. To do anything else could disgrace the family name or, worse, pull their most hidden thoughts into the open, allowing society to dismiss them as the imps that the very system essentially renders them. Adding to this ridiculous and frustrating social paradox, their roles don't get better after they get the men they're trying to, as in order to get what they want from their husbands, they must resort to sexual manipulation as though it were course de nature. In this context, the women never seem to develop any real maturity, strength of character, or lasting independence from the vulgar, tasteless monopoly that tradition and the unchecked power of male dominance has handed to them like a plaything. In this sense, slavery gets expanded to the context of all Southerners, but especially to that of females. It's just social custom that if a woman wants to be thought of as such that she must constantly prove her powers of conquest, whether she does so openly or not.

That being said, while most historians may agree that women and children are the first and foremost victims of war, in the case of Scarlett Katy O'Hara quite the opposite is true. The war is in many ways her freedom and her grace. It provides the distraction required for her to detach from a pre-ordained role and outgrow it in leaps and bounds. That's not always obvious while watching the rash little vixen, of course. Vivien Leigh pursues the less likeable qualities of the often dubious heroine with gusto, a gale force to be reckoned with at every turn of the camera. And my, oh my: the camera guy had his work cut out for him. Watching her sometimes it's not hard to think that she really might be on coke or at least some seriously concentrated ephedrine. Somewhere between her doting father who'd do anything to try and make her life more harmonious and her more rigid mother who'd prefer her daughter just make her proud, though, Scarlett has some hope to turn her life around and stop embarrassing them.

Clark Gable as Rhett Butler -- a role that actually was auditioned for by Reagan (though God only knows why, I guess) -- seems to find her utterly charming while at the same time being fully aware of her stupefying number of flaws. He courts her, wins her, and marries her at last. Unfortunately for him, it's just not all necessarily in that order. His oblivious wife pines for another woman's husband, a longtime family friend that never had any interest in her beyond that of the familial. Olivia de Havilland, possibly one of the old screen's most overlooked and forgotten pearls of wisdom, reigns supreme as the understatedly compassionate woman who knows of Scarlett's covetousness and befriends her genuinely, and stays beside her even as Scarlett tries to coax the woman's husband away from her. All in all, it makes for compelling drama, just in case the War itself isn't enough of an eye-opener, but Rhett's heels cool by and by and, after their daughter dies, he packs up and leaves Scarlett to sort out her own mess while she's still in mourning...a really poignant moment.

A slave to herself, she's left to cope with the atrocities of war as she tries to run a household, stay alive, and keep what's left of the family intact. Thus becomes the grasshopper an ox. Four hours may seem like a long time to watch a movie (222 minutes, to be precise) and there's no denying that it is, but a lot of ground gets covered. After all, we have evil carpetbaggers to reckon with, the effects of the war to absorb, and a lot of the after-effects, too. Butterfly McQueen, playing house servant Prissy so well that most can't tell she's acting, becomes more and more mesmerized by a make-believe world that she slips into to escape the gruesome and demanding realities of a Georgia thrust into chaos and a household driven to ruins.

If there's any relationship that Margaret Mitchell understands, it's one of predator and prey. The carpetbaggers prey on the south's stately beauty, undermining that old, reliable sense of faith in one's neighbors, and essentially what the authoress has done is canonize Southern women as survivors of a sexual Holacaust and a war that General Lee never bothers to show up and apologize for. She leaves the area of slavery practically alone, perhaps thinking that the larger issue was the plight of women. Slyly insinuating the slaves of the day as sexless, mindless beings could prove to be better commentary than any really blunt exploration of the issue may have provided. It is possibly more important that the women who form the focus of the story are so unaware of why the war is even being fought or how important it is to so many people. It speaks to their belittlement, the darkness that they have been kept in by men who felt ignorance would be the best way to run a household. It also stays true to the Southern culture itself, which had little interest in the outside world but wished to establish itself as aristocracy or at least landed gentry. What we're left with as a result of this comparatively small mindset is a sense of real nerve and real backbone. After Lee's and Sherman's troops have decimated the countryside, the women -- and even Scarlett herself -- take to the infirmaries to care for the sick and then, eventually, return to the land, their heritage, and their dignity.

Camille (1936)

2006-03-10T19:38:00.000-05:00

Dir. George Cukor
Writ. Zoe Akins, Frances Merion, James Hilton, from Alexandre Dumas-fils' play & novel
w/ Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Henry Daniell, Rex O'Mally
D.P. William Daniels, A.S.C. and Karl Freund, A.S.C.

Garbo's effortless screen presence, Cukor's somewhat quirky direction, and vibrant cinematography bring this "archaic creaker" to life. [1] In 1847 Paris, young courtesan Marguerite Gauthier spends much of her time at the theatres attracting lovers, and much of the contents of their pocketbooks acquiring new dresses to attract fresh prey. Days and nights sail by while Marguerite frivolously anticipates new parties and dalliances, her only seeming annoyance being fellow courtesan and rival, Olympe. Insistent upon making every new prospect a competitive object, Olympe reminds the disaffected Marguerite that she is from the country and not gay, witty Paris.

"Cows and chickens," Garbo quips, "make better friends than any I have ever met in Paris." [2]

The trouble basically begins when the heroine mistakes distant admirer Armand for a Baron with whom she had had a brief acquaintanceship. Despite the fact that the faithful suitor had cast his eye upon her much earlier, he departs and the real Baron, an unsavory type, shows up. The smile on Marguerite's face soon vanishes to be replaced with hidden bouts with illness and a lot of anguish that neither of her gentleman callers ever witness. She spends the better part of the film torturing and being tortured by the two men, but her heart belongs to Armand. If only that pesky cough would go away...ah, well. In order to regain her strength and enjoy a certain amount of happiness with Armand, the couple absconds to the countryside. But when he returns to Paris to settle his estate for their future security and well-being, his dastardly father seeks out Marguerite as a woman of ill repute who can bode no good for his heir. Alone and with no one to turn to, our poor and wretched heroine spends a day in bitter tears, hardening her heart so that she can have the strength to leave Armand to a better life and a better love.[3]

Whether or not this adaptation reeks of a morality study seems moot; that it is more so than Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge certainly feels correct enough. She's doomed throughout the movie to a fate befitting someone of her station, or so it seems. But while the audience understands what she does for a living, Garbo's Marguerite lets us forget it somehow, emphasizing instead the more interesting intricacies of humor, kindness, and undying love in a cruel, cruel world. There aren't many movies made these days in which lead actresses can take such lattitude. Famed for her droopy-shouldered nonchalance, and incredibly beautiful with that scarless face and skin, she breathes life into this role beyond the returnable capabilities of most of the cast. The male leads just don't seem to be able to do her talents justice, really. The script inconsistency also remains a notable flaw, which would explain some of the longer bits in which, instead of interacting with his camera-mate, Robert Taylor (Armand) delivers monologue after monologue that leaves Garbo little choice but to reposition her body as she can and stay within frame. He did his best, given the circumstances.

A muted strength in the form of Gaston (Rex O'Mally) exists, too. Their faithful friend, he can be counted upon to help as he can, and so he does. This sort of role must have become less popular with the passing years, but in a burdensome drama such as Camille, every little bit of genuine help is greatly, if (more often than not) secretly, appreciated.

[1] The 1998 Video Movie Guide thus suggests that this maybe ain't so great a film.

[2] Bottle-feeding calves and galloping horseback through remote fields for me. Or reading anything by the great American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.

[3] Behold the power of nitwits to make a lover feel inadequate and feeble...what a crock.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)

2006-03-03T23:30:00.000-05:00

Dir. Tommy Lee Jones
Writ. Guillermo Arriaga
w/ Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio Cedillo, Melissa Leo, Dwight Yoakam, January Jones

Tommy Lee Jones's first go in the director’s seat smacks all at once of John Sayles's Lonestar, Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, and Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Like Sayles, Jones distills a classic Western theme and relocates it in a modern setting, reincarnating (and also starring as) the lone cowboy who (like Eastwood's William Munny) makes justice his bedfellow to right the negligent death of his friend, Melquiades. A frustrating border problem looms in the background of small-town Texas. Border patroller Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) exhibits an unexplained rage towards the illegal immigrants he gets paid to simply chase back into Mexico; and, later on, a peccadillo that results in Melquiades’s death. When the Texas Rangers, the local police, and the border patrollers won’t investigate, modern-day cowboy Pete Perkins takes it upon himself to see his personal brand of justice done and his friend’s body home.

More than one reviewer has suggested that Eastwood may have been the only other man who could have pulled this part off, but the film engenders doubts that he would have been the right hombre. Jones's tired visage greets the camera like cold bacon and eggs. The aging Texan plays Pete with an easy gravitas, loose in the saddle and patient to make good on a promise to an exile. The film never spells out why the Mexican could not go home, but rather delivers us into the hands of a man willing to wait for something good. The cowboy mystique revels in solitude, men of few words, and calculated actions. Their bond manifests in a series of quiet, lucid flashbacks that culminate when Melquiades asks his only friend to find his wife and family should he die while still in Texas.

“I don’t want to be buried under a billboard,” he tells Pete.

Pepper plays the emotionally distant border patroller just so, too disaffected to notice his bad marriage, and too out of control to stop beating would-be immigrants at his day job. The officials try to get Mike to stop brutalizing Mexicans, but show serious disinterest in Melquiades’s death. As the tight-lipped sheriff, Dwight Yoakam regurgitates incredible talent for the loathsome (think Slingblade) and faces off with Pete over what he dismisses as "just another wetback." Not willing to compromise as filmmaker or hero, Jones takes his character south of the border, hauling along Norton and one very rancid corpse.

Guillermo Arriaga's dialogue alternately tarnishes and shines. At once, he paints the scenery of the lonestar state with industry and a macabre claustrophobic sense pungent with wit. Norton's estranged wife, Lou-Ann, (Melissa Leo) describes her old home of Cincinatti to the curious waitress (January Jones) who notices her boredom. "Yeah, it's really pretty,” Lou-Ann says, childishly believable. “I love the malls."

A lot could be said of the Amores Perros and 21 Grams writer; he's come a long way, and so has Melquiades. In a raw moment between Pete and corpse, he gives up trying to brush his loosening hair, shakes his head, and says, "You look like hell, son." But it's not all squeaky one-liners and juxtapositions. Both Arriaga and Jones let the landscapes speak volumes. The town they seek, described as having so much beauty one could die for it, may only be a myth, but it takes shape and meaning of its own. In their search for Jiminez, no one can guide them…except for Melquiades maybe. And he isn’t talking.

Supporting the weight of such an allegory, cinematographer Chris Menges and music director Marco Beltrami delicately imbue the film with life. In the search for something as eternal yet fleeting as a wellspring, a tree, and a bit of rock, such delicacy should be admired. One part Greek tragedy to two parts discovery, Three Burials has won Jones Best Actor at Cannes, and Best Screenplay for Arriaga, both honors well deserved. But the greatest aspect of the film remains the wonderfully indie imperfections. The honesty has so much rust that it delights where others fail. Artless manipulation, rising musical scores, and cheap camera tricks can be found elsewhere. Character and setting provide really great movement, true, but had Pete Perkins's aim been that of a man intent upon fulfilling his friend's request simply because he deserves no less than a white man, Three Burials would likely be a different movie altogether.

Not a feel-good morality tale, and not about everything that’s wrong with the world, the story centers on the mystery of a life, which serves the film better than hidden motives. A promise made by one man to another while alone on the range one soft, summer day makes good and to great effect, waking Norton from his trite, unreal sense of life and providing a noteworthy emotional payoff. The film's catharsis rings as replete as that of its travelers, a sweet, forgotten sound. In a medium of formulaic plots, snoring sequels, and just plain bad re-runs, it’s refreshing, and unlikely to be seen again soon.

La Strada (1954*)

2006-02-21T17:07:00.000-05:00

Dir. Frederico Fellini
Writ. Frederico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli
w/ Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart

By artfully sticking to character, Fellini celebrates life through the eyes of a simpleton girl from peasant stock sold to a brutish, callous carnival man. The title personifies a third element at play, the impetus of the road around which these two interact. Just as Zampanó never relents from their schedule to find the next crowd to fill their bellies, Gelsomina's sunny disposition never ceases to enchant and delight. Watching the pair of them is not unlike happening upon a rare and delicate flower blossoming upon a lethal crag. One of Fellini's greatest commendations should be his wife, Giulietta Masina, whose talents he evaluated so well and brought so movingly to life.

Using the always trickier black and white, a great deal of this rendering relies on lighting and costume and set design, all of which are impeccably simple, subtle, and powerful. Especially when working with circus performers, it would seem easy to lose the scenery in the gray shades, the mirth of the crowd in the pale background. Not for one moment, though, does Fellini stray from developing his glowing heroine in her master's darkroom. Gelsomina's purity of devotion to him has a lifeforce of its own, just as strong and unending as the road before them.

Tony Quinn, not necessarily someone to ever be described as gentle, is capable of a rigidity that leaves him depthless and hollow; i.e., the perfect pick for such a role. Which is why, when under great duress of emotion and circumstance, his character is called upon to do a sudden reversal, the results are somewhat spectacular, I suppose.

What La Strada essentially boils down to is tight directing, artful showmanship, and the clear, cool resonance of an eternal story caught in just the right place to give it the appearance of a beginning and an ending. With no good guys and no bad guys, and no hidden motives muddying up the scenes, what we see is what we get. If, of course, we can handle that kind of purity.

*This is another one of those annoying dates that should be noted. La Strada won the Foreign Film Award at the 1956 Academy Awards, but the film itself was released in 1954. Was this because, do you think, of slower shipping in the '50s?

City of God (2002)

2006-02-20T23:30:00.000-05:00

Dir. Fernando Mereilles, Kátia Lund
Writ. Paulo Lins (novel); Bráulio Mantovani (screenplay)
w/ Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino

In this aptly named cinematic phenomenon, the camera explores the fast and bloody rise of L'il Dice to power as he reinvents himself as the drug warlord L'il Zé. Armed with whatever guns he can get his hands on, a severe lack of conscience, and his faithful sidekick Benny, we watch the clever L'il Dice trick his fellow hoods into thinking he's the police and going on a senseless and bloodthirsty rampage inside a hotel that his cohorts have already plundered. The director doesn't shirk from showing the seeming relentless, random, and violent acts that mark each day in the titular ghetto, making each act seem more futile than the last. L'il Dice kills every hood who gets in his way, even Rocket's older brother, Shaggy, who was part of his original posse. The only hood immune to his apathy is Benny. The moment Rocket realizes that the hour in which he could have sought his revenge has passed, it's understood that L'il Zé has become too big.

That's the way stuff goes in the city of God, though, and to help those of us unfamiliar with this maudlin world, Rocket shares his sense of the way things are through his stand-offish sense of things as his interest in photography unfolds. Though the slums are poor and dismal, the beach and the girls he has met in school present a much lovelier view than any he ever cares to acknowledge in the city where it appears he would have to be either a worker or a killer. By the time Little Zé decides he needs a photographer to promote his image, photography is second nature to Rocket. School is just an option to keep him a few steps ahead of the hoods, the slum.

Based on the true story of two hoods, one who got away with everything, and one who took the hits for the public eye (but his is really a different story) City of God exists as a sort of lamppost between the world of the middle class and the survivors. Brought into the encompassing sphere of believability and tempered with the milk of human kindness, the film goes where no other film has gone before, and that isn't just some slum outside of Rio de Janeiro. It syncopates the life of an ordinary boy who could live anywhere with that of a brutal maniac in a land where poverty, hunger, and deprivation rule the humor, personalities, and activities of its citizens. It is a rare glimpse at a world that most Westerners know nothing about and can't relate to one iota.

Howl's Moving Castle (2005*)

2006-02-18T17:30:00.000-05:00

Dir. Hayao Miyakazi
Writ. Hayao Miyakazi, Diana Wynne Jones (novel), Cindy Davis Hewitt, Donald H. Hewitt
w/ Chieko Baisho, Takuya Kimura, Akihiro Miwa, Tatsuya Gashuin, Ryunosuke Kamiki

Gesundheit.

Originally, Digimon movie and TV series director Mamoru Hosoda was slated to direct this fairy tale of true love in a world of wizards, witches, and a very confusing war. The film may have been saved in innumerable ways when Spirited Away helmsman Hayao Miyakazi stepped up to the challenge. His landscapes are unlike any others seen in the world of animation, his sense of the medium intuitive. These scenes hold together at times as precariously as the rusty, old bits of the wizard's mysterious and legendary castle.

The version the Oaks Theatre [1] has graciously extended for another week contains the original Japanese dialogue, but the names are the American translations; so, Hauru becomes Howl, and Sofí becomes Sophie, etc. Thus we are spared certain possibly insulting distractions resulting from, for example, Billy Crystal's voice over on the centrifugal character, Calcifer, a fire demon whose strength keeps the castle hidden from the world of mere humans. With the characterizations thus preserved and still quite funny in an honest and believable way, Castle's plot is simple enough that ever were Disney to suddenly get grabby with the material, they wouldn't be able to malign the film too, too badly. [2]

Sisters Sophie and Lettie are worlds apart: Lettie oozes charm and beauty while Sophie introverts, putting much of herself into her work as a seamstress at her mother's hattery. A chance meeting downtown with a mysterious and beautiful man, however, makes Sophie a target for the spirits of darkness who are hot on his trail. The Witch of the Waste, a woman with whom the man had had a brief dalliance once, then puts a spell on the unsuspecting Sophie in a fit of jealousy. She becomes an old woman before her time, and isn't even afforded the ability to talk about it as her mouth glues shut when she starts to open up. Unable to confront her family with her dilemma, she leaves and wanders the wastes as she tries to adjust to the restrictions that sudden age has put upon her.

As is often the case with such stories, she meets another under a similar circumstance, a scarecrow who has been likewise enchanted and can not speak either. He befriends her immediately and delivers her out of the wastes and to Howl's castle, where Sophie sets up shop as housekeeper. And boy, does the place need her. Practically overnight, she transforms the moveable optical illusion into really homey accomodations, for it turns out that Howl is the mysterious man and she is in love with him, but unable to do anything about it. While he is not precisely unkind to her, he certainly shows no sign of returning her feelings, and she feels ugly. Being something of a prodigy, even for a wizard, he says nothing, but of course can see her true self despite the strength of the witch's curse.

The central conflict of the story manifests itself two-fold. On one hand, a war rages in the world of men and all wizards and witches have not only been asked to fight in it, they are being forced to do so by the King's magician. On the other, Howl has troubles enough of his own. His heart has been stolen by the fire demon and he and Calcifer depend upon each other for survival. When the fire dies, so does Howl. In this light, Sophie acts not only as lovelorn housekeeper but also as the guardian of the fire.

A few minor flaws announce themselves with gusto at certain points. We only see Lettie once, for example, perhaps just to contrast her starry blonde-haired and blue-eyed looks with Sohpie's decidedly plainer Jane features. For those of us who like to mix things up, it's a treat to watch a film with pronounceable names that we can relate to, but still get the colloquial quality of the original dialect. There's something quite satisfying, too, about watching wide-eyed Western-looking cartoon characters speak brilliant Japanese. I liked this juxtaposition a lot, enough to recommend that you watch this version first.[3] I wouldn't want to say much more about it. It's utterly delightful and certainly worthy of its Oscar nomination.

And I am suddenly reminded that I did not get to finish Spirited Away as planned.

*According to IMDB, this came out in 2004, but the Oscars list it as 2005. That may be the Americanized version. I can't really be sure, but it makes sense that the Academy would nominate that version, if for no other reason than because Crystal isn't hosting this year and they do so love to keep him around.

[1] The Oaks is playing it through Thursday, each day at 5:30 and also at 9:15 every day except Monday.

[2] There's considerably more to all of this than I've whisperingly hinted at, but Disney never can get a damn thing right. I do feel better, but I felt a bit better earlier.

[3] That's not to say that Christian Bale, Blythe Danner, Jena Malone, et. al., can't be good. Of course not. But I wouldn't want to watch an Americanized Triplets either, and I feel that they only did so to this because there's a much wider cultural gap between Japan and America than between America and France, which is something that won't get solved by the diluted version or the motives behind it.

City Lights (1931)

2006-02-11T21:50:00.000-05:00

Dir. Charlie Chaplin
Writ. Charlie Chaplin, Harry Clive (uncredited)
w/ Virginia Cherrill, Florence Lee, Harry Myers, Charles Chaplin

Many films from the thirties have a difficult time translating into the minds of the so-called generations X and Y, MTV babies who don't see the point of watching something that isn't run on a loop of just seconds before the next bit of scenery intervenes to ensure that, no matter what, they don't get bored by actually having to think or absorb something fully. Whatever criteria needs to gain popularity to change this in any tangible way the world may never know, but certain films from the dim days of the silent era are gems that need only be noticed, rented, and popped into the DVD player to be fully enjoyed and thereby rediscovered.

Chaplin shot footage for a reported 180 days, but his distilling of City Lights over a three year span remains a beauty of an example of patience winning over hurried production simply for the sake of producing. In light of certain personal aspects of the eccentric artist's life, it may also be of interest to note the heady preoccupation with chance and circumstance inherent in the film. This reflection of the deliberation in the making of City Lights gives the scenes an extra layer of lens depth discernable to anyone not immune to Chaplin's magnificent sense of the world.

It's a world where a blind flower girl and a millionaire who forgets his station simply exist, and he does what he can to enjoy their company by saving her from eviction and him from suicide. His mattter of fact manner perhaps his most charming attribute, his life is beset by trials and joys as he sets about the business of acting as breadwinner by day and dubious friend to his drunken, rich acquaintance at night. That the millionaire only remembers that the Tramp is his long, lost savior when he is drunk is marvelous. But it his simple, undaunted sincerity in his loyalty to these two that lifts the spirit of the film above the sidewalks the Tramp strolls in his daily wanderings, never more than half a frame away from his next adventure.

And adventure it is, in the honest, traditional sense of the word. The Tramp's lonerism is a pure and vital foundation of the story. As the antics end, he continues on his way, disheartened at his seeming failure but still true to himself. When he finally does amble back into the flower girl's life, in a city where even politicians' worst noise can't taint the magical proof of time served in a love rediscovered, it's the most natural thing you ever did see.

Talk to Her (2002)

2006-02-09T19:15:00.000-05:00

Dir. Pedro Almodóvar
Writ. José Salcedo
w/ Javier Cámara, Dario Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores, Geraldine Chaplin

Almodóvar's exploration of the human capacity for solitude confronts the sovereignty of societal norms over human emotion and spiritual ideals. Using the ancient paradigm of two separate couples inextricably linked by fate and circumstance, he delves into forbidden territory with the ease of a schoolboy dipping cookies in milk. Treating taboos with mature rationality seems to be this director's indigenous talent. He's mastered the knack so fluidly that the villain in this scandalous montage is virtually untrackable. The beauracracy might be winkable, but even they won't incite hate. They're just people, just doing their jobs.

Love, loneliness, and calm acceptance of circumstance in a cruel world of accidents and elusive truth form a backdrop in which the artist skillfully uses the winding nuance of theatre and dance to represent the steady advance of time. Benigno and Marco view the opening act, in which two women feel their way across a stage blindly and a man shows up unexpectedly to remove a table and chairs so that they don't hurt themselves. That night, Benigno tells his lady love, a comatose dancer named Alicia, all about the play and the man who sat next to him and wept. Alicia listens intently, with a smile on her face. She's been in a coma for four years, but Benigno knows she hears him. Marco, in the meantime, espies the bullfighter Lydia on a talk show in which the hostess acts as the woman's inner, desperate voice.

Intrigued by this woman in a profession set aside for males, Marco sets out to meet her and interview her for a magazine story; he ends up, however, driving her to Madrid and killing a snake in her kitchen. Before their romance can really ignite, a bull gores Lydia so badly she slips into a coma and joins Alicia at the care facility where Benigno has been looking after exclusively. And so, the two men are drawn back together again, bit by bit, Benigno's secret passion for his beautiful, sleeping ward reveals itself.

In a rare visual treat, Almodóvar uses a silent film motif involving a shrunken man saved from his cruel mother by his true love. Overjoyed, the man climbs back into the womb of his lover and stays there forever. This style is so deft, so clean. When Alicia turns out to be pregnant, Benigno is confined for the rape; but, of course, Benigno loves her, wants to marry her, and would do nothing to hurt her. If only she would wake up.

What a rich tapestry Almodóvar weaves. Especially recognized for his use of shock value, he does not shy away from the rustier workings of the frail human psyche. He portrays his characters with warmth, brandishing his wit through sharp dialogue and a tender but firm application of an astounding visual vocabulary.

[1] Geraldine Chaplin, in a surprise performance for those of us that have been landlocked too long. I wish we'd see more of this, like when Jodie Foster turned up in A Very Long Engagment.

On the Waterfront (1954)

2006-02-09T17:56:00.000-05:00

Dir. Elia Kazan
Writ. Budd Schulberg, based on Mike Johnson's notes
w/ Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint

The nation-wide poster billed Waterfront as "The Story of the Redemption of Terry Malloy", but the story would turn out to be about much more than just one young man rising above a one dimensional role he'd gotten duped into by "family".

Kazan had been looking to make a film specifically about the waterfront monopolies of the day, and had been working with muckraker Arthur Miller on a lead on Red Hook in Brooklyn. They eventually deserted the project. With moral support from tough, real-life Hoboken character and waterfront veteran Tony Mike and a rough screenplay from Schulberg, Kazan gave the revised idea to Darren Zanuck. Although the pioneering producer had worked a waterfront job as a young man and probably had convictions supporting the film's best interests, he passed on it. It's presumable he was trying to avoid the same sort of political pressures that had caused Kazan and the tireless Miller to abandon their original and extensive body of research.

When independent producer - a title practically unhead of then or now - Sam Spiegel stepped up to produce he was, in Kazan's words, "a downer on uppers". He needed a film and fast. Paring down the script with Schulberg night after night resulted in a film that would take away seven major honors at the Academy Awards.

Having co-founded the Actor's Studio [1] in New York City in 1947 for the express purpose of teaching method acting, Kazan knew what sorts of actors he needed for this project. Brando's working-man-trying-to-make-good is a steadfast and reliable sort, a true testament to the wonders of "the Method". Rather than creating a dominating character that the rest of the cast would either have to try to outdo or react to at every turn, he allows for a great tenderness and vulnerability which chisels Terry Malloy in a way that swagger and unyielding masculinity never could.

The film opens using him as bait so that the bad guys can push somebody off of a roof. This doesn't sit well with Malloy, who discovers his own part in the crime ex post facto. To augment this flaw, Schulberg presents us with the dead guy's younger sister - in the luminous form of Eva Marie Saint - as Malloy's love interest, managing in one stroke to connect all of our hero's struggles. The secret that distances him emotionally from his girlfriend creates problems in her life as she and her poor, old dad struggle to make ends meet in a family that has lost its breadwinner. His relationship with his older brother, a dyed-in-the-wool waterfront sycophant, begins to run threadbare as their loyalties divide. Rod Steiger plays this down effortlessly, as a boy following the path of his father, as if being a mob thug were the only role that someone like him could ever aspire to claim. When the more sensitive brother begins revolting against the tyrrany of union racketeer Johnny Friendly - a flawless Lee J. Cobb [2] - it becomes a raw scene of mano y mano in which Terry Malloy rips his dignity back from the hands of the man who would have every other man on the stagnant docks cowering under him. Our hero takes the working class with him, restoring dignity to his girl's family, and saving the day.

This is a triumphant story of more than just the redemption of one man against a mob of indifferent gangsters, it's a story that had blue collar working types from every industry lined up for blocks, their crusty uniforms and worn faces proclaiming the arrival of a film worth spending an hour's wages on. Every once in a while, it's good to know that a box-office smash is really worthwhile. It stands up to that benchmark to this day with cinematography, acting, and writing the quality of which gets harder and harder to find. It is, perhaps, Kazan's finest film. [3]

[1] Native to American cinema, this study of Stanislavski's ideas, directed by Lee Strasberg, was eventually also picked up in Los Angeles, with the opening of the Actor's Studio West in 1966. However, many of the notable actors from the '50s and '60s were the rangey New York types, whose ilk included Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Julie Harris, and Paul Newman, as well as Al Pacino, who became co-artistic director (with Ellen Burstyn) upon Strasberg's 1982 demise.

[2] If you're riveted by Cobb's performance in this, check out the Brothers Karamazov, which earned him a second Academy nomination four years later for the foul, despicable Fyodor. Or even 12 Angry Men, which is just brilliant single-setting writing and acting.

[3] Considering that this is the man who brought us A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Gentleman's Agreement, A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata! and East of Eden, that's saying something. Of course, it's hard to go wrong when you have the Actor's Studio, not to mention the complete works of Tennessee Williams, as your major - and abundant - resource.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

2006-02-07T20:04:00.000-05:00

Dir. Ang Lee
Writ. Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana, from E. Annie Prouxl's novel
w/ Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid

From the opening shot in the greatness of "Big Sky" country, this reeked of poetic grace and Lee's helpless, preternatural love affair with the camera lens. [1] To watch a Lee movie that is exceptional is to behold a finely tuned product of self-effacing wonder, which can be more than just mildly seductive to anyone susceptible to the charm of well-presented fiction. In his latest sonnet to the silver screen, the director coalesces the lone ranger mythos with taboo. The dynamics of such an untenable fusion cast exhilarating shadows and forebodes the seeming doomed aspects of the relationship between two men who meet on a sheep wrangling job on a stretch of mountain touched only by God. [2]

Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist each have a bit of Wister's Virginian in them, the sort of man who can do just fine by himself and often prefers to do just that for reasons known only to himself. Their senses of themselves and of each other is in many ways as pristine as the land they work together, wild and untamed and subject only to the laws of nature. There's a candor and an eagerness in these scenes as they enjoy themselves, beholden to none. That it's a love story that works should be amazing enough, but Lee manages to develop more than just atmosphere. There are bears to be reckoned with, a far away and out of sight wolf, and a leery hiring man somewhere at the base of the mountain. [3] The dangers of being a cowboy living out of the saddle are heightened, and the romance of the setting takes it course. At no time in this drama does the frailty of human nature go unaccounted for, so neither does it lose any joy in its moments of splendor.

Whatever it is about the lonesome demeanor that is universally appealing Lee managed to capture as well. With most directors, actors, and scripts, the relationships between Jack and Ennis and the girls they marry would have been stilted, with no chemistry or believability behind their motives. But Jack Twist is a neighbor nearly anyone can claim to know, working for his wealthy father-in-law and acting almost as a subordinate to, rather than an equal to, his wife, and Ennis fights for his rank as head of the household also. With very little backstory, these two are painted as boys who grew up understanding the nature of relationships as something immutable and routine. That they marry for lackluster bipartisanship and fail even at that underscores the simple theme of the movie. [4] Nothing in their lives goes untouched by their need for each other. Their wives and children simply reap the whirlwind.

On a personal note, I should point out that I'm a tough critic. [5] I haven't absolutely adored everything that Lee has ever done. When he lacks, he lacks. The Ice Storm is a stunning example of a movie that had so many components working for it that when the script failed to deliver any tangible emotional payoff and insted fell flat and sterile, it hurt. On the other hand, the first time I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was rapturous. I made a point of seeing it alone and thank God, too. The fighting sequences were nothing short of exhilarating, the mature love story desirable, and the less mature love story at very least likeable. With Brokeback, all I could do was enjoy and muse as to what on earth this guy's going to do next; and while, for the most part, I couldn't care less about who wins what Oscar, he deserves both Best Picture and Best Director. If he doesn't get at least one of those, the joke's on Hollywood.

Compare this any time with Lasse Hallström's interpretation of a different Prouxl manuscript, The Shipping News. While both productions are the efforts of "all-world auteurs", one of them stands out pretty clearly as an example of craft and a virtuoso style. Even with genius of light Oliver Stapleton by his side, Hallström couldn't reach this level.

[1] Technically south of big sky, but close enough to conjure up similar images and feelings.
[2] And, if you feel the need to differentiate, an awful lot of precipitation.

[3] Whom I didn't even realize was Randy Quaid.

[4] Best delivered on the poster reading Love is a Force of Nature.

[5] Which must seem a little hypocritical, since I haven't even finished my first screenplay and have "settled" for short stories in an effort to live up to this number's original intentions.

King Kong (2005)

2006-02-04T16:40:00.000-05:00

Dir. Peter Jackson
Writ. Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, and Peter Jackson; from the Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace story
w/ Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody, Jack Black, Andy Serkis

After having tackled Tolkien's landmark trilogy with such incredible thoroughness, it should be little surprise even to non-fans of the gnomish Kiwi that King Kong receives no less respect in this treatment. By expanding upon the story and fleshing out the three main characters, new dimensions are added to the original tale of the raging, hopelessly misunderstood beast who gets exported from his natural habitat and reinstalled in the Big Apple. Jackson doesn't flinch from showing New York the way it really is, a place where starving people fend for themselves in Hell's Kitchen and actors and other Vaudevillian types just try to get by from job to job. An old man pulling a half-eaten apple from a city trash can and eating it is precisely the kind of element that is neglected in the movies of the Depression era, and for good reason. It would have struck too close to home for so many that suicides, already at a high rate, may have escalated had people been forced to face their poverty rather than escape into a picture show. At any rate, it would've been hard to profit by such.

This is just the dichotomy that sculpts the trio comprised of Carl Denham, a man in need of money and support to finish his movie; Jack Driscoll, the writer; and Ann Darrow, the actress. Essentially, they're three independent filmmakers struggling to either secure the next meal, the next quiet moment for writing, or the next shooting location, which elevates each of them above the gray depression of the city and makes them heroes, whether they realize it or not. That's the epitome of the human side of Peter Jackson's Kong, which is why the mere fact that the titular star must stop thinking of Ann Darrow as food is so significant. The humans involved are able to dream of loftier things than the next meal, and pursue those goals, but what happens after that? Carl Denham and Jack Driscoll are still movie producer and writer, and they keep existing and working as such. It's Kong who evolves. He either falls in love so deeply with this one connection that he has through Darrow or is in fact so moved by her beauty that to mar it or allow her to be marred in any way is simply not an option. [1]

There are so many genuinely tense and frightening moments, so much suspense, that the story, although completely fantastic and overdramaticized by ounces if not pounds, is completely believeable. If anything tangential came to mind, it was that Jackson had put his "orc look" to good use for some of the more unwholesome-looking natives' makeup. [2] But it's the moments between Kong and Darrow that stand out as the best and the brightest. There's no substitute for quiet companionship, even when there is a huge language barrier, and Jackson makes the most of their simple understanding. It's often more exhilarating when they're just sitting together than when he's swinging from vine to vine and taking on three tyrannosauruses at once, all the while doing what he can to help Darrow stay alive.

Kong's a lonely beast, to be sure, but he has his pride. He doesn't force his beautiful co-star into being his sidekick, but lets her come to him on her own, thus yielding my favorite bit: when he takes off into a run and nonchalantly picks her up and puts her on his shoulder. That big lug.

[1] I think there's a joke in there somewhere about how you can take the ape out of the jungle, but not the jungle out of the ape.

[2] I also checked the clock on my phone a couple of times. If the theatre hadn't had so many kids in it being noisy, though, I have to question whether or not I would have done this.

Tokyo Story (1953)

2006-01-30T22:15:00.000-05:00

Dir. Yasujiro Ozu
Writ. Kôgo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu
w/ Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, Setsuko Hara [1]

Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story punctuates the last in a seven-year run of movies made between 1947 and 1953 at the rate of one per year. [2] Known for his evolved and deliberate style and his devotion to capturing post-war Japanese middle class life and locales, the filmmaker creates a new genre using unique camera work and editing. Using lots of long shots, which are made to seem even longer than they are with slow pacing and an avoidance of intercutting close-ups and medium shots, and shooting more often than not with a shortened tripod, he evokes the postures and attitudes of the working Japanese in routine, social customs. The focus of this particular film is a mostly immediate family that is experiencing a rare visit from its patriarch and matriarch who have trained from the comparatively tiny village of Onamichi to post-war Tokyo, a burgeoning city. In many ways, the hustle and bustle of the city serve as a subtle contrast to the forced deliberation of the scenes and the narrative, which is also a fresh take on storytelling.

While providing a backdrop in which Ozu can use his documentarian style of filming, the city also poses as a catalyst, backing up one of the great central themes of Story, which is change, both the resistance to change, and the acceptance of change. His approach to this idea is complete and resonates on many different levels, the most basic of which can be identified by his near-absolute avoidance of match cuts to create a 360-degree sense of space as opposed to the typical, linear 180-degree format with which most people feel more comfortable. His static sets tend to use something transient such as smoke from a mosquito coil or chimneys to visually reinforce this theme. Within the construct of the family itself, the characters are shaped dramatically by the same idea as older members of a generation try to adapt to the adult lives and personalities of their children and vice versa. The setting of the story encapsulates all of this very neatly as the general climate of Japan in '53 struggled to adjust to the changing times of a new industrialized, democratized post-war entity.

Thanks to this innovative filming, the grating qualities of the conflicts here are both studiable and made more interesting. Because the compression of the shots and the narrative ellipses are designed to make the audience pay attention to what's going on, Ozu has plenty of space and time in which to convey a great deal of implied subtext within the conventions of Japanese society. In other words, while each of the characters involved are both resisting and dealing with the changes that each one faces, they all must also conform to the customary politeness which is the fundamental basis of their culture. The director further invites us to speculation as to whether or not this aspect of tradition will last in the future, in part by presenting three generations of a family, each level of which clearly has different notions of respect and intimacy and relationship in general, both with themselves and the world at large.

Needless to say, it's a huge hunk that Ozu has bitten off, but a task that he undertakes with great care and thoroughness. It can be a bit disorienting at first watching such a departure from traditional filmmaking, but worth a close look. The shots seem longer than they are and parts of the story are omitted, but that's just Ozu deliberately tugging on his audience's attention span. Depending upon your point of view, this will either lean towards the magnetic or make you a bit sleepy.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

[1] You shouldn't need to be a filmmaker to know that this is very prolific. In Ozu's case, he had an in: his uncle got him a job as an assistant cameraman at Shochiku studios, which is a very nice springboard for any aspiring, poor filmmaker, especially the son of a fertilizer merchant. Not that that's necessarily the reason for such a run, but it helps.

[2] The young woman in the photo, Setsuko Hara, has been called the Greta Garbo of Japan.

The Searchers (1956)

2006-01-29T15:20:00.000-05:00

Dir. John Ford
Writ. Frank S.Nugent, based on the novel by Alan LeMay
w/ John Wayne, Vera Miles, Jeffrey S. Hunter, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood

There's something hard enough about raising a family that somehow augments the difficulty of doing so in the pioneer days. Perhaps that's the real reason why Western-settling independent types have often been so glorified and romanticized in these films. Most Americans can claim some amount of ancestry that fits that mold, so especially in the Cold War days of bomb shelders and emergency raid drills there was a public demand for movies that reinforced the strength and spirit of what came to embody "the American way". Since this was before "white guilt", there aren't any apologies made to the Native American peoples who are depicted here more as a source of conflict than as a people with a viable culture, history, or human emotions of their own. It's almost embarrassing to watch a film like this in which so many mistakes are made regarding the Comanche that the lack of research or responsibility on the part of the filmmaker is pretty damned appalling; or, more often, just really gauche. That being said, this movie doesn't exist to enlighten its audience regarding the ways of an all but extinct race, but to provide a venue in which John Wayne can shine. So all political and cultural faux pas aside, for serious Wayne fans, this is a must-see.

In this sweeping vision from John Ford, the Duke is afforded several opportunities to act, and act he does. The script, while it is very racist and pro-pioneer, seems disinclined to completely dismiss the influence of the indigenous tribes on the folks of that time. People who have been taken by raiders are shown in various debilitated states of being, a village idiot type named Mose wanders around the plains imitating and revering the very people who threaten his fellows, and the mixed blood that was fairly common among early settlers is more than acknowledged. His riding buddy for most of the movie, Martin Paulie, one-eighth Cherokee, provides the grit that abraises Wayne's character, Ethan, as his stubborness to accept the Indians as human manifests itself plainly. This also provides occasions for stock Wayne one-liners like, "That'll be the day."

Ford essentially broke this up into two basic stages: the indoors, in which a play-like atmosphere creates somber moods in which the family reacts to eminent, unseeable threats, and the outdoors (most of which are real) where all the action and the chasing of those same unseeable aggressors takes place. When Debbie is taken by a raiding chief, the chase is on. True to form, one thing that Ford should be lauded for is for not failing to depict another predator that the white man faced in those bleak times: other white men. Ethan has his hands full making sure that he and Martin don't end up shot in the back by money-hungry would-be assassins while they're tracking down the ghost war chief, Scar, who seems to have materialized out of the mists of hear-say.

The indoor sets revel in the colors of sunset and dusk, while the outdoor shots alternate between the formidable buttes and plateaus of Texas and simpler, quieter stretches of woods and snow. Since most Westerns bothered very little in the way of cinematography, the efforts are pretty pleasing even if the story suffers from time to time. The encapsulation of Wayne's hero as a man who does not stop until he gets what he wants, however, doesn't suffer in the slightest. From the moment he steps foot onto the set, to the moment he walks away from the porch, he is a lonely and austere figure, the epitome of wild and fierce independence in an uncertain and unpredictable world. And yes, when he scoops up the now-grown Debbie in his arms instead of killing her, there is a huge, undeniable sense of redemptive value.

Perhaps Ethan realizes that blood is blood, and that he has enough on his hands already without resorting to the sort of animal behavior he's always been so hard-set against. He's no hypocrite. He has a beating heart inside that staggering frame. And thanks to years of perseverance, so does Debbie.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

2006-01-26T19:50:00.000-05:00

Dir. Alexander Mackendrick
Writ. Ernest Lehman (novelette); Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman
w/ Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, Susan Harrison

When a script contains the kind of dialogue that Success wields, all else follows, especially when the chemistry is right between players. In this case, background played a heavy role both in the success of the film and its arrival to the Time list. According to the Film Encyclopedia compiled by Ephraim Katz, Tony Curtis "grew up in poverty in a tough section of the Bronx and by age 11 was a member of a notorious street gang. It was in a neighborhood settlement house that he had his first taste of acting, playing a little girl in an adventure drama about King Arthur." When he got out of his service with the Navy, having been wounded in Guam, Curtis soon started down the path that led to a signing with Universal on account of his "pretty boy looks, the pressure of fan mail, and publicity buildup." Critics were shocked when he pulled this performance seemingly out of his vest pocket, after having ridiculed him for playing swashbucklers and Arabian Nights caliphs alike with that inescapable thunder-mouth. From all viewpoints, the role of press agent Sidney Falco belonged to Curtis, born to it, and he played the man with range, style, and finesse.

Not an easy thing to do, either, when your character essentially acts as a demonstrative puppet with a card or two up his sleeve just in case. It might have been much easier for Curtis to play this as a wiseguy or a more menacing (but a lot less interesting) character. Opposite Lancaster, though, is a lot of energy to be combatted and experimented with -- without the actual presence of his co-star for many of the scenes. He's acting against unseen forces and playing the odds, the whole time cognitive of his miniscule abilities and extreme vulnerability, sensitive to that, and taking the blows as they come to a guy on a shoestring budget with very little to lose. Because Lancaster's capabilities with language alone must have been an education in itself, the results are often nothing less than pure cinematic magic. Smooth-talking old school and rough improv. Those are the raw materials, but Mackendrick doesn't let it happen without serious back-up.

With photography that belies the premise and direction that betrays all motives, Success sizzles and Curtis's nervous energy merely underscores naturally the plot twists and turns. Basic plot, if you haven't already read, involves two men grappling each other for something intrinsic to survival. Lancaster, as the voracious gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker looking to protect a sister that he has some very unnatural hold over, would not even give the opportunistic Falco scraps from his table had he not that self-same card to pander that would help Hunsecker keep that hold, and tightly. Taut battle of the wills? That's an understatement.

As for Susan Harrison's role as the confused kid sister liable to throw herself off a balcony rather than be forced to choose between standing up to her brother or simply eloping, it's all but swallowed in the process. A shame, too. She plays an intimidated, spineless nothing well; and, with these two Titans running around loose, it's really remarkable that she can even get a word in edgewise. As for the actress herself, she never really surfaced.

E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982)

2006-01-25T19:50:00.000-05:00

Dir. Steven Spielberg
Writ. Melissa Mathison
w/ Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, Dee Wallace, Peter Coyote

There was a huge debate in my family as to whether or not this was actually a children's movie when I was a little girl. It scared the hell out of my three-year-old brother who, like Henry Thomas's "Elliott" character seemed to have an empathic connection to all of the alien's heart palpitations, but I liked it a lot at the time. About two months after seeing it, however, I had this elaborate nightmare in which a Girl Scout meeting was being hosted in our home and E.T. showed up and started turning unsuspecting Girl Scouts into dry and dusty Girl Scout skeletons, starting with my poor little girlfriend who had just excused herself to use the bathroom. Suffice to say, it was a less than glamorous way to go. He then commenced to dehydrate the rest of the town as I followed along and discovered that he had a sort of dehydrational death ray emanating from his solar plexus. Oh, and he moved like he was on a treadmill, which made it even scarier.

I wasn't the only one.

Spielberg's immortal alien, a friend to neglected flowers and disenchanted boys alike, connected immediately with the psyche of both the young target audience and their parents, who may have pretended that they were just there to lug the kids around but could be found at nearly any given moment of this emotional piece to be stifling a teardrop or silently cheering the events on. The Reagan years were rife with opportunities for the common man to feel like he had a voice of some kind -- the more emotional the better. That seemed to be the theme, and I'm almost shocked that Nancy Reagan didn't send out buttons while I was still in grade school that read: "You can't change the world! Just cry."

Mathison's script doesn't mention apartheid, though. Instead it contains a fragmented family that has been threatened by gray circumstances and is on the verge of disintegrating altogether and maybe causing a few nervous breakdowns along the way. Certainly years of therapy. So when E.T. finds his way into the heart of Elliott, he becomes the bond that links the siblings in a unique and indivisible way. They suddenly care more about each other. They need each other. At the very least they recognize that they need each other and they let the rest just slide away.

Spielberg's unique storytelling style doesn't suffer from any dumbing-down [1] of the script or cheap photography tricks. He's up to the same game as he was in Close Encounters, which isn't hard to imagine as there's something infinitely childlike about Dreyfuss's character in that movie as well, but this time the main character also looks like a child. He plays with cool, new toys and when he gets vicariously drunk -- thanks to E.T. -- he grabs a girl in biology class and kisses her like the guy in the movie, a move that nearly any child would imitate. [2] But the story is still told through layers of sound and intercutting between school and home so that we can grasp early on what Peter Coyote's character has trouble with later when he asks, "Elliott thinks E.T.'s thoughts?"

"Elliott feels his feelings," Michael corrects.

In a movie where one half of the lead would like to just go home while the other finds that nearly impossible, there are certainly a lot of feelings going on.

[1] If anything, the way the older boys talk to each other is kind of dumb, but then, those were pretty dumb times. But there are tidbits here and there that elevate Michael's character from the rest of the gang. He's a cool brother who helps out, imitates Yoda, and sings Elvis Costello.

[2] Suggesting, perhaps, that in order to get any really easy action, it's best if you've a drunk alien on your side.

Citizen Kane (1 May 1941)

2006-01-24T17:45:00.000-05:00

Writ. Herman J. Mankiewicz
Dir. Orson Welles
w/ Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane

It's hard to write a review of a movie of such legendary proportions as this without either in some way talking down to a given audience or perhaps omitting certain vital information that could potentially help bring into focus one of the greatest influences of twentieth century. One of the first things that should be understood is that at the still tender age of twenty-four Welles was hailed by many to be a genius and ahead of his time even in the era in which Kane first appeared. In a Brussels poll of international critics in '58, just seventeen years after the film's meager initial profits led RKO to strip him of his only claim to auteurship, this was voted one of the 12 best films of all time. [1] Despite the critical acclaim, and the pronouncement of Kane as an unparalleled masterpiece, the young filmmaker would never again have total creative control of any of his projects. [2]

Greg Toland's photography, which virtually refuses to have anything less than two or more layers, stands alone as evidence to what makes film the unique, nearly boundless medium that it is. It's understood that a filmmaker really can't fill a screen enough, that the amount of visual "busy-ness" is sort of limitless. The audience understands that it's viewing a compression of images and thoughts, deeds and concepts that have been translated to the two-dimensional realms of "dialogue" and "action" and that, within the framework of the aspect ratio, the actual amount of information doesn't have a cap any higher than the writer's ability to convey the story. [3] But it also helps if you happen to have a really talented director by your side.

In any of the interviews the older, wiser Welles can be found, it isn't likely that you'll see much in the way of humility. The man is, like the enigmatic hero he embodies, a testament to his own inexplicable genius, as though he had pulled his brain out of a Cracker Jack box one day and just hadn't gotten over such good fortune since then. What's amazing is that despite being completely full of himself, he is not in any way a turn-off. Partly, this is because this film is not, oh, say, Crossroads, [4] but also because of his own sort of jovial glee with the world. He would have made a good elf in any case. Unhampered by the all-too-powerful studio, he would have made a spectacular icon; as things are, though, we have to settle for the film itself to be the icon and allow Welles's memory to fade into speculative ignominy. What his body of work could have been without this crippling blow the world will never know, which only adds to the joy of the feat itself. After all, what we have here is a director who made one film, just one film, that changed the way people see movies, the way people think about movies, and that people haven't shut up about ever since.

Why not? Well, the use of the narrative voice-over/"paper-over" to depict in a rather short time a great deal about an intricate life, for one. The layers used by the d.p. and the sound editor to keep the depth of the film at a near-constant, however, are the real pith that earns Kane its marks again and again. Take, for example, the scene in which the reporter wants to talk to the second Mrs. Kane in the hopes of learning about the elusive Rosebud. The scene itself lasts maybe a minute, but several things are made clear without any hustling of the actors. Susan is drunk, but not drunk enough to talk; the reporter needs to get in touch with his editor; the waiter, in the hopes of making a quick buck, wants to get Susan drunker; there's a lead story that's circulating somewhere, but where? The use of sound alone in that scene marked a milestone in filmmaking history. That the images are clear and crisp and the story itself is interesting is just...nice. [5]

You may also want to check out Lucas's Article or Matt's.

[1] Kinda makes ya wonder what the other ones were, doesn't it.

[2] Which, without thumbing my nose at all those who would say that Ambersons is his best work, because I believe in individuality, is something to consider.

[3] There are also examples of movies in which a lot of information is happening, but the story is really very simple. Minority Report is one of them, and a good comparison. Also, from a writer's perspective, this is a very cool thing where the rewards are always worth the creative challenges.

[4] I'm sort of expecting the thought police to break into my terminal for having the audacity to flippantly compare Crossroads and Citizen Kane; but alas, they are both the same medium.

[5] I think I managed not to mention much of the obvious here except the narrative. Good. What do you think?