Petrified Fountain of Thought

The Best Movies of the '00s: Part 4

2012-01-28T10:14:00.001-05:00

24. The Bourne Ultimatum (2007, Greengrass)
This movie stands for the whole trilogy, the most consistently thrilling action movies of the decade. I regard this as one of the great purely kinetic action films in history, taking its place alongside The Road Warrior and Aliens as an unrelentingly intense thrill ride. Bourne is the most influential action hero of the new century, and his desperate search for self mirrors America's own.

23. King Kong (2005, Jackson)
Both a faithful work of epic reimagining and a subtle work of film criticism, Peter Jackson fills the film with dozens of homages, references, and expansions on the comparatively bare-bones original, making room for all the different interpretations that have grown up over the years, but most of all giving free reign to all the dreams he's ever had about Kong since he saw it in boyhood and attempting to make those dreams reality.

22. Hot Fuzz (2007, Wright)
Yes, I actually think this is better than Shaun of the Dead. I laugh harder, at least, and I find Nick Frost's character here more endearing. And who doesn't love Simon Pegg's apocalyptic-stranger ride back into town, toothpick in his mouth and crossed shotguns on his back? Or the glee with which the two friends fire two guns whilst jumping through the air? I'm sure I'm not alone in my eager anticipation of the next installment in the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy.

21. Let the Right One In (2008, Alfredson)
A horror movie for people (like me) who aren't really fans of horror movies. A gentle story of first love, twisted and darkened into a disturbing tale of supernatural bloodlust and outsider vengeance that haunts the shadows of an apartment complex on a snowy evening. Perhaps something like an early Grimm's Fairy Tale, before it was made safe for children. Heartbreaking, beautiful, and disturbing.

20. The Royal Tenebaums (2001, Anderson)
Wes Anderson's masterpiece. A hilarious, stylized, ensemble comedy that darkens suddenly into generational tragedy, before offering the possibility of forgiveness and redemption in a final sequence remarkable above all not for its ludicrousness, but for its truly generous spirit. The cast, led by Gene Hackman in his last great role, is one of the best of the decade, the writing by Anderson and Owen Wilson is as clever and witty as it could possibly be, and the soundtrack is, as ever, perfect.

19. The Wrestler (2008, Aronofsky)
Mickey Rourke gives perhaps the decade's greatest male performance as a minor league professional wrestler, past his prime, who can't manage to stop his slow spiral of self-destruction. Sometimes inertia really is too great, even when lifelines are offered. I remain a bit of an Aronosky skeptic, but this heartbreaking neo-realist throwback really is his masterpiece.

18. The Departed (2006, Scorsese)
Is it Scorsese's best work? No, of course not. Does it dissect the foibles of the male impulse to rage and machismo as well as his work in the seventies? Unfortunately, no. But it does do things Scorsese had never done before--it generates tremendous suspense, it twists and turns with astonishing ease, and it has the ferocious bite of Cape Fear and Gangs of New York without losing sight of its central plot. It also has one of Scorsese's best casts ever (even if Nicholson goes over the top), and it finally justifies his devotion to DiCaprio with that uneven actor's first really great grown-up performance.

17. Children of Men (2006, Cuaron)
Probably this decade's most persuasive view of the apocalypse, Alfonso Cuaron's adaptation of P.D. James's novel envisions a humanity incapable of reproducing and living out its final days by tearing itself apart in pointless conflict. Cuaron's long-take aesthetic creates an incredibly immersive and terrifying Britain of constant danger that unfortunately doesn't look much different from present-day war-zones in Africa and the Middle East. Into this world, a child is born, and the weight of it all shall be on his shoulders.

16. Finding Nemo (2003, Stanton)
Pixar had made brilliant films before, but this is the point where the studio cemented its all-time great status. Nemo is beautiful in a way so far only surpassed by Wall-E (and parts of Tangled) among CGI films, and its story is still the most moving to me of all Pixar features. There are moments here I still can't think of without a lump in the my throat (the tragic beginning, the sojourn in the whale's mouth, Marlin's sad swim away from the Sydney harbor). Plus I still laugh at the kiddie humor.

15. Mystic River (2003, Eastwood)
Eastwood's finest film since Unforgiven (narrowly edging A Perfect World), this titanically acted drama is a profound meditation on the ways time can change people and break down relationships. Anchored by the finest performance of Kevin Bacon's career (who underacts while his co-stars overact), there were few more wrenching films this decade.

14. O Brother Where Art Thou (2000, Coen)
The most purely enjoyable of all the Coens' films. A hilariously unique adaptation of The Odyssey that draws from Preston Sturges-style comedies, classic American literature (particularly Huckleberry Finn and The Grapes of Wrath), and early-20th century bluegrass and gospel music, in a wild, allusion-filled journey through a mythological Depression-era South. It also features one of the Coens' finest casts, wittiest scripts, and most hopeful views of human nature.

13. The Prestige (2006, Nolan)
A character study wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, with both Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale turning in stellar double roles. A dissection of obsession and revenge embedded in a richly detailed steampunk-ish world, where nothing is as it seems. For anyone who doesn't think Nolan can tell stories with images. Are you watching closely?

12. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007, Dominik)
This haunting evocation of the last days of the West's most famous outlaw can be seen as a synthesis of the disparate influences of John Ford, Terrence Malick, Henry King, and Robert Altman, with a historical didacticism reminiscent of Ken Burns. It has many ancestors, yet there is still else nothing quite like it. As others have pointed out, the film (aided by the magnificent performances of Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck) maps the moment at which legend fades into mere celebrity. Perhaps a bit too long, it would still be worth a look for its musical score and cinematography alone, both among the best of the decade.

11. The Incredibles (2004, Bird)
My vote for the finest Pixar film (at least before the heartbreaking and elegiac Toy Story 3), this Brad Bird directed epic is a complex satire of the superhero, drawing from The Fantastic Four and Watchmen, paired with an analysis of the modern American family and a critique of the suburbs and middlebrow education system. It wraps all that up in a top-notch action movie that puts just about everything else released this decade to shame with its thrilling fight sequences and hilarious dialogue, and manages to make it all a massive, PG-rated blockbuster. Considering the skill, risks, ambition, and originality on display here next to all but two or three other blockbuster movies of the decade just about boggles the mind.

The Best Movies of the '00s: Part 3

2012-01-23T00:44:00.001-05:00

39. Gangs of New York (2002, Scorsese)
Arguably Scorsese's most ambitious film, it can be wildly uneven and is held back by miscasting, but there's still nothing else like it: A massive epic of violence and squalor, telling a forgotten tale of American history with the conviction of a master blacksmith pounding out a sword. Daniel Day-Lewis is magnificent and terrifying as a Nativist gang leader intent on exterminating the Irish immigrants. Scorsese is often at his best at his most rough around the edges (see Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Last Temptation of Christ), and this is certainly his roughest of the decade. Here Scorsese takes the measure of John Ford and The Searchers, and attempts to top him.

38. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004, Anderson)
Wes Anderson's films are always about control freaks who learn they can't control everything, and Steve Zissou, "a showboat and a little bit of a prick," is no exception. This is Anderson's largest canvas yet, and he paints it with typical obsessive gusto, noticeably leaving brushstrokes on even the tiniest of visible details. The story is ridiculous, as always, and the surprisingly bloody shootouts with pirates are a highlight. But ultimately, as it must, the realization of impotence comes, and the story ends in tears. For it to end otherwise might seem true to the humorous tone and the Boys' Own fantasy world, but it would not be true to the characters, and that devotion to character is what makes Anderson truly special.

37. Kill Bill Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 (2003, 2004, Tarantino)
This two-movie revenge story is probably Tarantino's most undisciplined effort, but it is also the most fun. I'm still not sure the second film's sudden shift in tone actually works emotionally, but it's still fascinating for the way it reflexively re-examines and re-shapes the narrative up to that point, bringing out hidden themes and introducing the elements of doubt and moral ambiguity which have always kept QT ahead of his imitators.

36. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Gondry)
Though it at first seems like one of those mind-blowing modern movies of twisting narrative complictions, this Charlie Kaufman-scripted gem has little interest in actually confusing you. Instead it wants to make you feel, to dissect a failed relationship from the end backwards, and to mess around with the way memories work in a delightfully low-fi unpretentious way. It succeeds admirably at all three.

35. Where the Wild Things Are (2009, Jonze)
Breaking out of the shadow of his brilliant collaborator Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jonze proved he is one of the finest directors working today with this powerful re-envisioning of the classic picture book. Max's imaginary land is extraordinary, big and grand and even beautiful, but it isn't all fun and games. Essentially this is the story of a child's temper tantrum, and if you can't understand the pain and blind rage of such an outburst and appreciate the desperate need to be understood, perhaps you were never a child.

34. Ratatouille (2007, Bird)
A Kunstlerroman that refuses to let the artist get away with bad behavior, as so many others do when making excuses for genius. This one insists on morality as an artistic principle. A treatise on art and the role of the critic disguised as a children's cartoon, weaving in the ideals of high art with the talking animal humor. Have you ever seen another movie that attempts to visualize what taste is like? And actually succeeds?

33. The Proposition (2005, Hillcoat)
As dark as anything ever done in the genre, The Proposition is an Australian western about those quintessential western themes--the taming of wilderness, the suppression of barbarism, and the price paid for the coming of civilization. The brutality here can be sickening, but the powerful moral complexities resemble those of Sam Peckinpah and Cormac McCarthy.

32. The Village (2006, Shyamalan)
This terribly underrated film was mistaken for a supernatural thriller with a dumb twist ending. It's not. It's a portrait of a community, a morality play with political implications that critiques the nature of founding narratives. Christopher Nolan would spend much of the decade investigating the lies individuals tell themselves; here Shyamalan does the same thing with an entire village. It also helps that it's absolutely gorgeous, shot with the eye of a true filmmaker, and features an incredible ensemble cast.

31. Shaun of the Dead (2004, Wright)
Unlike a simple genre parody, this "romantic comedy with zombies" stands on its own as something special. It manages to turn the zombie genre's traditional social critiques into a satire of modern slacker-geek culture, plus smuggle in moments of genuine fear, danger, and pain, while remaining hysterically funny, clever, and unassuming throughout. It announced the arrival of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright, all three of whom would go on to be pillars of modern comedy, and paved the way for a whole string of major British talent to break out of low-budget television comedy, including Joe Cornish, Richard Ayoade, and Chris O'Dowd.

30. Spider-Man 2 (2004, Raimi)
The quintessential superhero movie. It delivers heartbreak with the thrills, genuine danger with genuine humor. Peter Parker is the great everyman superhero--the one any kid can relate to, any kid can grow up to be. He embodies the ideals of the superhero more purely and innocently than any other, and this film is not only an action flick, but genuinely heartwarming for those of us who value those ideals. It is a rare superhero film that works equally well in both its character scenes and its fight sequences. Read my full review here.

29. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003, Weir)
Peter Weir is one of the undersung masters to come out of the '70s, and this is his only film of the decade. Like all his work, it is beautifully lensed, and like much of his work it is a study of a community and the various bonds and rules that give it structure. Unlike nearly all his other work, it is a grand adventure film, filled with thrilling battle sequences on the high seas. What come through strongest are the virtues of the 19th century military man, peculiarly British values of honor, duty, and cool under fire, so unknown to us today. "England is under threat of invasion, and though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home," says Captain Jack. "This ship is England."

28. Hero (2004, Zhang)
A Rashomon-esque tale of conflicting memories of events, larger and more beautfiul than anything I had ever seen before. The color-coordinated fight sequences are as grand as any ever filmed. A pity it ends up being nationalist propaganda at the end.

27. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Lee)
The film that re-started a whole genre and became an international phenomenon. Hero is grander and more beautiful, but this is the more profound film. Love vs. social restrictions, youth vs. age, temper tantrums vs. serenity; it is among the most meditative action epics ever made.

26. A History of Violence (2005, Cronenberg)
Some have praised this film for its subversive critique of small-town Americana, but I actually think that's the film's weakest aspect. Instead, I'm in awe of the visceral psychological portrait of a family under violent attack from within and without, mapping the tensions and fault-lines of a breakdown in trust.

25. A. I. Artificial Intelligence (2000, Spielberg)
Inspired by the story idea and example of Stanley Kubrick, Spielberg was spurred to make his most knotty, difficult, and intellectually complex film. The result is hard science fiction of a scope and depth not seen since Blade Runner, and a vision of the future that seems more ambitious and bleak the more you think about it. As pure and fluid as E.T., but with none of that film's optimism. This one continues to rise in my estimation.

The Best Movies of the '00s: Part 2

2012-01-20T19:09:00.001-05:00

54. Open Range (2003, Costner)
Arguably the first good traditional western in a generation. The plot is classically simple, the archetypes are natural and believable, Robert Duval is superb, Kevin Costner proves he can still direct. This is why I love the genre.

53. Eastern Promises (2007, Cronenburg)
Viggo Mortenson transforms himself into a hulking, tattooed Russian mobster with a noble secret in one of the finest performances of the decade. The inverse Mortenson and Cronenburg’s other crime drama, A History of Violence, where a decent family man has a disturbing secret. As dark and viscerally compelling as mob movies get.

52. Brick (2005, Rian Johnson)
This brilliant first film from writer/director Rian Johnson transforms a SoCal high school into a Chandler-esque mean street, populated by characters speaking the best hardboiled dialogue since the Coens' Miller's Crossing. Made on a tiny budget, this one proved that it's possible to make a foot pursuit as exciting as a Michael Bay car chase, if you have enough talent.

51. Catch Me If You Can (2002, Spielberg)
Spielberg outdoes even Ocean's Eleven in '60s caper film style, and perhaps, anchored by DiCaprio's career-second-best performance, develops his daddy issues themes to their fullest, most realistic extent.

50. Wall-E (2008, Stanton)
I have a feeling this would rank higher if I had seen the film in theaters instead of waiting a year to catch it on Netflix Instant Play. Nevertheless, one of Pixar's most beautiful films-- the weightless fire extinguisher dance is a highlight.

49. Apocalypto (2006, Gibson)
A nightmare vision of a foreign civilization about to be snuffed out forever. Unrelenting and remarkably realized, shot entirely in an ancient language in the middle of the jungle, the ambition alone has to be applauded. After a horrific first half of rape and pillaging, the second half becomes one of the most tense and exhilarating chase thrillers ever made. Perhaps the twisted reverse image to The New World?

48. Letters From Iwo Jima (2006, Eastwood)
Eastwood's account of the Japanese defense of Iwo Jima is gripping and humane, an act of compassion that nevertheless sees clear-eyed the flaws in the Japanese aggression, strategy, and culture that led inexorably to Hiroshima, defeat, and national shame.

47. The Hurt Locker (2009, Bigelow)
When every other Iraq War movie could only offer elephant art liberal bromides, Kathryn Bigelow crafted a tense, termitic action film that focused on the war on the ground and the men who lived it. The movie may strain credulity in its final act, but their are at least three set-pieces here among the most intense and suspenseful ever filmed.

46. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004, McKay)
Probably the most influential American comedy of the decade--Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd and Judd Apatow and Adam McKay all made it big here--but it's mostly on the list because of Baxter.

45. City of God (2002, Meirelles)
The movie Slumdog Millionaire wished it could be. A searing portrait of slum life in Rio de Janeiro, following dozens of characters across a decade in a terrifying, hilarious, endlessly exciting mosaic.

44. Gran Torino (2008, Eastwood)
Eastwood takes a step back from Oscar-bait and crafts his most unassuming and funny movie of the decade. The humor and simplicity enliven the underlying themes, however: The old gunslinger learns his guns are no longer acceptable, but manages to find an even more heroic alternative.

43. Black Hawk Down (2002, Scott)
One of the most adrenaline-pumping, you-are-there war movies ever made, this was the about the only good depiction of American soldiers in the Middle East until The Hurt Locker 8 years later.

42. Stranger Than Fiction (2006, Forster)
Detractors might call it Charlie Kaufman-lite, but this clever high-concept comedy still plays with philosophical problems as diverse as destiny vs. free will, existentialism vs. nihilism, reality vs. fiction, and the very nature of stories, and the lighter touch means you still feel good about yourself in the morning.

41. Gladiator (2000, Scott)
Shallow and inaccurate, but gloriously epic entertainment. Russel Crowe's Maximus is the most heroically heroic protagonist of the decade--no angst, underdog, unlikely, or anti- prefix required.

40. Battle Royale (2000, Fukasaku)

The set-up is nonsense: Apparently Japan has collapsed because unemployment reached 15%, so in response to the violent uncontrollable youth the government decides to send one class of high school students per year to an island where they all have to fight to the death for the country's amusement. The concept is ridiculous, but the resulting movie is spectacular, 2 parts Lord of the Flies, 1 part The Most Dangerous Game, and one part Saved by the Bell. The kids’ characters are sketched in brief, bold strokes, and the film gradually comes into focus as a metaphor for the social violence of high school, writ large by the addition of machine guns and horror gore. There's nothing else like it. I could really put this one a lot higher.

The Best Movies of the '00s: Part 1

2012-01-18T00:08:00.002-05:00

Back at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010, it seemed that every movie critic in the country and every movie blogger in the blogosphere became obsessed with putting out “Best Movies of the Decade” lists. I was fascinated by this fervor, eagerly reading scores of these lists, agreeing and disagreeing with placements, and searching out films listed that I had never heard of before. I immediately started work on my own list, but quickly realized that there were far, far too may gaps in my knowledge of movies of the decade for me to put together anything like a comprehensive list. Also, I had nowhere to put it. Since the time I first started this blog, I’ve been planning on doing this list, it’s just taken me a really long time to get around to it. (So no, if you were wondering, this isn’t some silly attempt to fit my list to the mathematically correct decade of 2001-2010. I only considered non-documentary feature films theatrically released between 2000 and the end of 2009.)

The last decade--the 2000s, the Aughts, whatever you want to call it--encompassed my entire adolescence. Consequently, I was at once extremely limited in what I saw theatrically in the first half of the decade, and entranced in a perhaps outsized way by many films other might consider childish or unsubtle. My movie-watching habits and tastes have changed and matured a great deal, even over the last year, so the order of this list has undergone a great deal of shuffling. In the end, though, I wanted it to reflect my own tastes over the decade accurately. I didn’t want to make it just a record of my opinion over the past two weeks, but over the past several years. So while many of the films up high on the list may be difficult, adult, or obscure films that I have only just begun to appreciate, I resisted the logical urge to knock off too many old favorites. Why deny that I really loved certain movies when they came out, even if I can’t muster quite the same enthusiasm right this minute? But don’t take this the wrong way: I don’t mean I put actually bad movies on this list or anything, just that a few got to stay on there or maintain their positions for sentimental value. I also resisted putting films on the list just for their objectively “worthy” qualities, but tried to keep it to movies that meant something to me personally. For instance, I’m perfectly fine with people proclaiming Polanski’s The Pianist a masterpiece--objectively, I think it’s definitely excellent, and I initially put it on my list. But it didn’t make a strong enough impression on me to keep it on their in the end.

Of course, I keep seeing new movies from the past ten years that I think ought to be on the list. I’ve even seen several recently that are absolutely among the best movies of the decade, and that I really have no justification for not including. But I had to make the cut-off somewhere and I didn’t want to keep rearranging everything, so I disqualified any movie I saw for the first time in the last three months (which also gave me time to start writing up little blurbs in spare moments over that span). That means that I’m Not There, That Evening Sun, Russian Ark, Into the Wild, Hunger, and Lost in Translation, all of which are truly excellent and would have placed, are all disqualified.

Finally, there are, of course, numerous other films I have yet to see that featured on quite a lot of people’s lists. Many of them look very good, and I hope to get to them eventually, but I simply haven’t gotten around to it yet. A small sampling of the most highly-regarded films that I have yet to see are as follows: Mulholland Dr., Inland Empire, Far From Heaven, Talk to Her, Sideways, Before Sunset, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, United 93, American Splendor, Moulin Rouge, 25^th Hour, Waking Life, A Christmas Tale, Amores Perros, Requiem for a Dream, Traffic, Half Nelson, Munich, Capote, Gosford Park, Synecdoche, New York, The Lives of Others, Little Miss Sunshine, Crash, Memories of Murder, Syndromes and a Century, The Squid and the Whale, In Bruges, and Elephant. I haven’t seen any movies by Lars Von Trier or Tsai Ming-Liang made last decade, and I haven't seen any movies by Michael Haneke, the Dardenne brothers, Guy Maddin, Olivier Assayas, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, or Jia Zhang-Ke at all, nor any of the movies from Iran or the Romanian New Wave. Sorry. I’ll get right on that.

So anyway, after all those caveats, how is this even a legitimate list? . . . Let me get back to you on that. But here it is anyway: My list of the 60 best movies of the last decade. (Why 60? Why not?)

60. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005, Admamson)

No films could never live up to the brilliance of the books, and the sequels quickly descended to mediocrity, but this first one managed to capture a feeling of childlike wonder and magic in a way no other film of the decade quite achieved.

59. Casino Royale (2006, Campbell)

Bond was given a new look and a new life. He was no longer cheesy but cool again, and even emotional. The poker game may be ridiculous, but the action sequences had never been better.

58. Zoolander (2001, Stiller)
It's about narcissistic stupid people, but it's not narcissistic or stupid, just funny. Who doesn't remember David Bowie's proclamation, "It's a walk-off!" with a chuckle?

57. Hotel Rwanda (2005, George)
A powerful portrait of the Rwandan genocide, focusing on an African character in an African issue movie, for once, not a blundering Westerner learning Third World facts.

56. Old Joy (2006, Reichardt)
Two old friends, both stuck in ruts. Nothing is really solved, many things are left unsaid. But in the silence between words, we understand their pain and simple melancholy. The catharsis of the end may not last for the characters, but it is an experience they will never forget, and we are better for having lived it with them.

55. Unbreakable (2000, Shyamalan)
M. Night Shyamalan has become hated and mocked, but for a string of films at the beginning of his career he was the unmatched king of the Twilight Zone. This is one of the finest explorations of the superhero yet made, substituting quiet and emotional connection for the chaos and frenetic action of most superhero movies to get at the heart of the archetype.

Just to Note...

2012-01-09T23:06:00.000-05:00

Most bloggers and critics have already done their Best-of-the-Year lists and awards, but there are still far too many acclaimed films I haven't seen for me to make a list now. I plan to publish my list the week of the Academy Awards, when I will hopefully be more on top of things.

I am also back at school now, so my postings may be more limited than they were over the past couple weeks. I do have a couple other things half-written that I would like to get out soon, but that will just depend on classes and events.

Review: Melancholia

2012-01-09T21:11:00.001-05:00

I suppose I should preface this review by saying I was set up to dislike this movie. I have never seen another Lars von Trier film, though I think Europa, Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville all look interesting and hope to see them at some point. Pretty much all of my experience with von Trier up to now has been reading about various controversies he’s caused. Since I enjoy reading things like that and I had little chance of seeing the movie any time soon, I went ahead and read a whole bunch of reviews of Melancholia right off the bat as it premiered at Cannes. As a result, I mostly knew what was coming and not much in the movie surprised me, and this is certainly a negative factor in my assessment. So anyone reading this who has yet to see the film, be aware that the rest of this review has SPOILERS, though only a little more than most other reviews have had.

Melancholia opens with a series of dreamlike tableaux, images in super-slow motion of birds falling from the sky, women running in desperation, and finally the Earth crashing into another planet and exploding. Right there the film lost me. I had been told that these images were astonishingly beautiful, that they were the best part of the film, that I would be in awe. Instead, I found that nearly all the images had already been shown in the trailer or had been pictured in the dozens of publicity stills strewn across the internet. There was nothing new, and in practice the images looked kind of funny--they were so digitally spruced up that they looked completely unreal, almost like a video game. The whole sequence was scored to Wagner, which just seemed to make it more fake, like a video game trailer striving to be “epic.” I wanted to like it, I did, but it was all just too grandiose and overblown. It tried to bludgeon me into submission but I didn’t let it. (I suppose this resistance may seem weird and idiotic to others who immediately fell under its spell--sort of how I see those critics who laughed at The Tree of Life--so let me say I don’t mean to be insulting to those who found it great. I just completely disagree with you.)

Incidentally, I have to say that the decision of all the reviewers to say that the movie depicts the end of the world is definitely a spoiler. The opening and ending sequences of the film are in fact very different from each other, and the beginning, while it is leveling with the audience in a sense (Don’t expect a happy ending here), does not dictate or promise what will happen in the end. Much of the beginning is in fact a dream sequence--every shot of Kirsten Dunst in a wedding dress certainly is--and some of the other images are slowed down shots from near the end but are not part of the real final sequence. Even while watching it, actually, I was wondering how Dunst kept switching outfits between shots. Anyway, the point is: That all could have been a premonition or a vision which was miraculously avoided at the end, but instead all the reviewers assured us the world really did end, thus taking away half the suspense.

Despite all this about having the opening of the movie ruined for me at the beginning, the movie got me back when the real plot kicked in. I was occasionally alienated and skeptical during the rest of the film, but never so much as at the beginning, and the diametrically opposite reactions of many other viewers I’ve heard from suggests that my reaction should not be taken as common or definitive. Up to now, I’ve only been giving my subjective reaction to the experience, but I’d like to leave that mostly behind now to focus on the actual film, which I think is, objectively speaking (or as objectively speaking as it’s possible to be with film), severely lacking in many respects.

After the intro, the first part of the film is labeled "Justine", and concerns the expensive and disastrous wedding reception of Dunst's character at her sister Claire's (Gainsbourg) country club home. This section is by far the most entertaining of the movie, as the reception falls apart from the selfish and ridiculous exploits of the many guests, including and especially the bride. The whole thing is very much played for comedy, with a core of pain and harsh criticism underneath, and to a significant extent it works. The guests are all self-centered jerks engaging in outrageous behavior and generally making fools of themselves, and the proceedings move at a fairly quick pace. It's hard not to enjoy the dozen excellent character actors who embody the various grotesques, but it's also hard to ignore that they all seem to be doing their own shticks in their own separate movies, completely divorced from the other characters around them. This may be most clearly pointed out by the fact that Justine, Claire, and their estranged father and mother all have different accents. As such, the proceedings take on a rather strange, dissonant air that keeps things from ever really gelling together as a compelling piece of cinema, but is wacky enough to keep watching without much effort. If it is intended to be some sort of class criticism though (unclear), it doesn’t succeed. Some have criticized this half for its pacing and packing far too many breakdowns into one night, but I didn't mind--radically compressing time is a dramatic tradition with far too much history for me to start criticizing movies for it now. The first section takes place over the course of one night because it makes good dramatic and thematic sense to do so, and realism be darned.

Throughout all this, Justine is gradually revealing how deeply depressed and genuinely screwed up she is, as she sets about passive-aggressively destroying almost every relationship she has, especially her brand new marriage. While she initially seems a beaming bride, it quickly becomes apparent that this is merely a facade which she can no longer maintain and her desperate lashings out are both cries for help and savage criticisms of the hypocrisy and lies she sees all around her. Dunst's performance is without doubt the best thing she's ever done, and von Trier clearly knows the feelings and symptoms of depression inside and out, as he has repeatedly spoken out about his own depression. The helpless rage, the wildly shifting moods, the crumbling facades and desperate search for something to grab hold of and stop the slide all feel pitch-perfect. Dunst and Gainsbourg are the only performers who seem to be in the same movie together, and the only characters who feel genuine and grounded at all (except for possibly Kiefer Sutherland as Claire's wife, who isn't entirely believable but lots of fun to watch nonetheless). Justine's pain, her heart-wrenching desire for meaning and stability but complete inability to stop herself from ruining it every chance she gets got to me, and there were moments when I really thought the movie was going to go somewhere good. But von Trier is not content to merely map the contours and crevasses of depression--he wants to externalize it, project it metaphorically onto the entire universe, and then attempt to justify it by portraying it as ultimately the correct, proper, and better-adjusted response to the end of the world. This results in a strange situation where the film seems both a metaphor for depression and an assertion of the depressive worldview, an uneasy and highly problematic combination.

The second half is entitled "Claire" and focuses on Gainsbourg's character as she takes Justine in to care for her through her debilitating breakdown after the collapse of the marriage. It is in this half that the strange new planet called “Melancholia” (symbolism alert), only glimpsed ominously during the reception as an especially bright star, becomes central to the plot as it gets closer and closer on an apparent collision course with Earth. It is here that Gainsbourg shines. I think her performance is significantly better than Dunst's, and it is only one in a distinguished career fast becoming legendary. The two play off each other powerfully, the only actors in the film who seem to occupy the same space. Initially, justine is so incapacitated by depression that she cannot leave her bed without help, but as Melancholia approaches, that changes. In fact, Justine and Claire begin to subtly shift places--justine becoming more in control, even serene, while claire becomes increasingly frazzled, fearful, and desperate. At one point, Claire spies Justine lying in the light of the planet at midnight, as if sunning herself, taking in unearthly nutrients. This half of the film is not funny but slow, drawn-out and ominous. The only characters are the two sisters, Claire's husband and son, and the butler. The outside world is blocked out, referenced only by a couple shots of Claire searching the internet for information on Melancholia, unable to believe her husband's overconfident assurances that the planet will pass them by.

Von Trier's aesthetic is a fascinating one here, apparently quite unlike anything he's done before except possibly 2009's Antichrist. He turns the country club and its grounds, which the film never leaves, into an impossibly gorgeous garden of dark greens, murky blues, and sickly shadows, obviously touched up digitally in many shots, but then shoots it with a shaky handheld camera that in the first half threatens to induce nausea at a couple points. There is a tension here, between the European modernist geometrical precision and references to Last Year at Marienbad on the one hand, and the woozy, you-are-there faux-naturalism of Amerindie mumblecore films and (I'm told) Dogme 95 on the other. I'm not entirely sure what this tension is supposed to accomplish, but I suppose it induces a greater sense of dread, and it is not uninteresting on its own. The constant overuse of Wagner becomes tiresome, however--I think it's the only piece played in the whole thing, and the attempts to borrow significance and weight from it grow ponderously obvious.

Von Trier dots the whole thing with references and allusions--for instance, the poster shot of Justine in wedding dress floating on a river recalls both Ophelia and the Lady of Shalott, and the aforementioned Last Year at Marienbad-styled garden. By far the biggest influence, though, is Andrei Tarkovsky. In the opening sequence there is a shot of Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow burning, echoed later when Justine opens a book of paintings to leave that one displayed on a shelf, that seems a clear reference to Tarkovsky's Solaris, where the painting is displayed on a space station lit by candlelight. Bruegel (along with Leonardo) was a major influence on Tarkovsky, and he also re-staged the painting in a real-life tableau in his Mirror, plus making other references elsewhere. Displaying great works of art in the pages of a book was also a favorite device of his. Another shot in Melancholia's prologue shows a horse collapsing in slow motion, probably a reference to Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, where a horse rolls in the dirt in slow motion following the opening sequence. Horses in general were very important to Tarkovsky, as they are here, with Justine's horse Abraham used to communicate the sense of something wrong with creation. The whole apocalyptic scenario itself, in fact, resembles Tarkovsky's final film, The Sacrifice, where a bourgeois group of people gathered at a country mansion for a birthday party are suddenly confronted by news of the outbreak of nuclear war and the coming destruction of all civilization. Tarkovsky, however, puts Von Trier to shame in almost every way, the poetry of his images and depth of his thought making him one of the acknowledged geniuses of the cinema. Of course, the visuals of Melancholia are plenty gorgeous themselves, and the failure to live up to such a master is no shame on its own. But the fact that von Trier's philosophy and theme is so obviously inferior when he is clearly mounting an homage/response merely highlights the weaknesses. Where Tarkovsky presented the apocalypse as the challenge of modern man, and offered his protagonist a chance of saving the world by recovering his spirituality and making a sacrificial bargain with God to give up his family, possessions, and even speech, von Trier mocks modern hypocrisies (unconvincingly) and then destroys everything and suggests we ought to be happy about it. Where Tarkovsky expressed a constant sense of the mystical power of creation and a sense of the Creator which modernity has lost sight of, von Trier's mystical images are reserved for the coming doom: How beautiful death and destruction will be!

This is an adolescent sense of nihilism, one that glories in destruction, despite being glacially paced and couched in the highbrow aesthetic of European arthouse cinema. While watching I was reminded of The Sunset Limited which I had viewed mere days before. Cormac McCarthy is often (rather falsely, in my view) labeled a nihilist. Whether he is or not, the character of White in his play clearly expresses the most extreme position of nihilism, one with which very few outside of the suicidally depressed would agree. Yet he expresses it with great eloquence, in a manner very difficult to dispute. He speaks of the horrific violence of the world, man's inhumanity to man, the pain invading every aspect of existence, the crushing finitude of man's creations, the inability of man's accomplishments to stave off death. Von Trier does none of these things. He does not grapple with the problem of pain but wallows in depression and lazily mocks all attempts at dignity and celebration as hypocritical and meaningless. He capitulates not to true evils like war and poverty, but to the most common form of postmodern alienation. As evidence that the world should be destroyed ("The Earth is evil,” says Justine at one point. "We don’t need to grieve for it.") he offers the pomposity of rich jerks and the mental illness of one girl--not very convincing.

The ultimate problem of the film is its strange solipsism. It is a grandiose vision of an insular worldview. It is a film about depression that attempts to map the actual feelings and sensations of being depressed, but in the process it attempts to justify the depressive worldview in a way that is both irresponsible and intellectually vapid. Justine is depicted as ultimately the correct one, the one who understands what's really going on. Indeed, she claims to be clairvoyant and the film suggests she is. When she explains to Claire that the world is evil and ought to be destroyed, she also claims humanity is completely alone in the universe and no one--neither god nor alien--will ever miss them or remember when we're gone. "I don't think you know that at all," says Claire. "I know things,” replies Justine. “678. The bean lottery [from the reception]. Nobody guessed the amount of beans. But I know.” She's right. (Wait a minute--the movie actually wants us to accept this as proof that she's psychic or something? Not only that she knows the actual number of beans but that Claire remembers what the number was from weeks/months before? What a ridiculous plot development. This must be some kind of joke right?). Nevertheless, Justine is clearly depicted as special, unique, mystical, in a way that "normal" Claire never is. This is problematic because clinical depression is a genuine mental disorder characterized by a disabling low self-esteem and loss of interest in nearly all the elements of life. It requires therapy, treatment, and even medication because it is not a correct or productive view, but a narrow, destructive, self-centered condition that is incapable of experiencing pleasure or beauty or even genuine empathy. One might argue that the whole film is happening inside Claire's head, that we are meant to be merely witnessing the worldview of a depressive. That might distance us from the toxicity of the worldview. But if this is true, why show a whole half of the film from Claire's point of view? To differentiate between the two responses, it seems clear. And when the world is ending, it is clear which response comes out on top. Justine cuts down Claire's suggestion of a dignified glass of wine before the end cruelly and profanely, declaring it “shit.” It appears the director agrees. True, Justine does eventually take pity on Claire and her son and help them build a makeshift lean-to, and it is probable that von Trier has more sympathy for Claire than Justine does, but it is still the pity for the ignorant and the weak from those strong and in-the-know. It is a clinical observation from above on the desperate attempts of ants to escape the burning of a magnifying glass--a magnifying glass wielded by the so-called clinical observer. For even here it is self-centered: “I feel everything is worthless, and my misery deserves company. Anyone who disagrees is a fool.”

Many have compared the film to The Tree of Life. I think it’s pretty clear where my sympathies lie. It does seem almost a response to the hope and faith expressed in Malick’s opus, and the films’ closely following premieres at Cannes last spring. Where The Tree of Life attempted to situate one man’s life in the midst of all creation and all history and invited its audience to do the same with their own lives, Melancholia tells its audience their hope is in vain and no one in the universe cares. Malick manages the difficult trick of extreme humility in the face of eternity paired with a powerful faith in the worth of an individual life, while von Trier mocks professions of faith in anything. Ironically, Malick strikes me as the true realist here, while von Trier projects private feelings onto the universe and calls it clear-eyed fact.

Ultimately, I do not feel the film is insincere, except perhaps in small bits. That von Trier has actually felt this way and is trying to represent it accurately I have no doubt. But there is a reason depression is considered a mental illness: it's understanding of the world is false and debilitating. It does not give one a mystique nor afford one special abilities, and it should not be dignified as a viable viewpoint (much less the correct one). The film is flawed as drama but it is absolutely wretched as philosophy, lacking anything like a defensible position. It is not that it purveys nihilism, but that it is such a low-minded nihilism as this. Some reviewers have written they left the theater feeling strangely uplifted. I left feeling initially stunned by the final images, but gradually becoming more and more disgusted, and that disgust has not left me since.

Two Recent Movies: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol

2012-01-01T23:14:00.003-05:00

Mission: Impossible--Ghost Protocol

The plot is ridiculously impossible, the character development is nonexistent, the attempts at emotional connection are so clunky you can hear the impact, and the way everything is related back to the third film is annoyingly convoluted (if ultimately rather clever and satisfying), and yet, for all that, it’s one of the most purely enjoyable popcorn flicks of the year. Even a nonentity villain and a weaker third-act can’t derail the whole thing. (As for the cast: Renner and Pegg are good, Cruise is Cruise, Paula Patton was lousy, Josh Holloway should have been given a real part.) The biggest reason for this success is the excellently staged action setpieces, which exhibit the gratifying, all-too rare quality of actual bodies being flung about in actual space, meaning that despite their lunacy the sequences retain a remarkable visceral impact, especially (1)Cruise’s leap from the hospital, (2) his scrabbling up the side of the Burj Khalifa, and (3) his Pixar-esque pinballing fight with the villain in a giant mechanical carpark. And of course it’s filled with ridiculously awesome gadgets and that staple of modern action movies, men running/falling/fighting in really, really nice suits. It reminded me of what Bond movies used to be in the ‘60s. Count me in for whatever Brad Bird wants to do next.

Rating: 7/10 stars.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Despite the general awfulness of the trailers and posters, this sequel to 2009’s steampunk-actioner Sherlock Holmes is remarkably entertaining and generally improves on the original in almost every way. It benefits enormously from the addition of Jared Harris as Holmes’ archenemy Professor James Moriarty, a criminal mastermind who probably stands as the first super-villain in fiction, and if I say that the climax of the film takes place at Reichenbach next to a waterfall, then the various Holmes fans out there should be able to figure out where this story is going pretty easily. In other words, despite the fact that the film is filled with massive explosions every two minutes and moves at an absolutely frenetic pace uncharacteristic of the literary Holmes’ careful deductive skills, this film is far more dependent on Doyle’s original stories than the previous one (including allusions to several other stories and a very brief cameo by the Baker Street Irregulars), and all the better for it.

Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law again play Holmes and Watson as the original bromance couple, this time upping the ante with several innuendos that include rolling around in sexual positions on the floor of a train and even waltzing together at a diplomatic ball. Director Guy Ritchie certainly over-does things at times, tossing in random scenes (like a bonfire dance in a gypsy camp) that are completely extraneous to the rest of the plot, and including a couple of overlong action pieces (especially a horrible chase through a snowy forrest peppered by artillery shells) that rely to an ungodly degree on speed-ramping slow-motion as if that would automatically make the sequences cool and exciting. Nevertheless, I was impressed by how much the movie actually trusts the audience to piece clues together, cycling through montages of items that added up into solutions for Holmes’ brilliant mind with little to no voiceover to explain how they all fit together. It’s a surprisingly intelligent device for a movie that seems so in love with spectacle, and this willingness to be smarter than it needs to be extends to Holmes’ scenes with Moriarty, where the conversations are laced with subtle jabs, brilliant insights, and cunning stratagems. The climax, notably, leaves explosions behind and focuses instead on the two geniuses literally playing chess with each other, a life-and-death game that concludes the only way it ever could. I’d say this is a worthy addition to the Sherlock-ian film canon.

Rating: 7/10 stars.

Review: The Sunset Limited

2011-12-31T01:41:00.004-05:00

The setting: A dingy apartment in a not-particularly nice neighborhood in New York City. The characters: Two men--one black, one white--with diametrically opposed views on life, sitting at a dinner table. The plot: They have an argument.

The Sunset Limited is a film made for HBO, directed by Tommy Lee Jones, and starring Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. They are the only two people we ever see. The script is written by Cormac McCarthy, arguably our greatest living writer, adapting his own play. It is about the fundamental questions of life, of religion, of purpose, and despite never leaving the one-room apartment, it is one of the most thrilling films of the year.

Jones plays a professor (referred to in the credits simply as White) who is suicidally depressed, and indeed has just come from attempting to throw himself in front of a train. Jackson plays the Bible-thumping ex-con (called Black) who prevented Jones from jumping and has brought him back to his apartment in an attempt to convince him not to do it again. The two men are as opposite as they can possibly be: pessimist and optimist, atheist and born-again Christian. One wants to die, the other to live. Jones is not only an atheist, but a man who sees the entire world as evil worthless, perceiving no meaning or hope anywhere, and wallowing in his despair. Jackson is not only a believer, but a strongly evangelical one who apparently preaches to just about anyone he meets. Even the small heresies he admits to--a general disbelief in original sin, and a suggestion of the perfectability of man--emphasize his positive philosophy, differentiating him from fundamentalism or dogmatic Calvinism. Jackson aims to prove to Jones that life is worth living, that he is loved by God, that the world is a place of beauty that ought to be valued. You may think the deck is stacked pretty steep in his favor, but in truth the outcome is very much in doubt. This is the battle for two men’s souls, and there’s no telling who will win.

Some argue that a one-location film like this can never be truly cinematic. If by “cinematic” you mean wide vistas and lots of movement, that’s true. But if what you mean is an absorbing film shot with intelligent, elegant use of the camera that maintains interest and avoids visual fatigue, then this film is most certainly cinematic in the best sense. It is certainly more cinematic than the similar (and also brilliant) My Dinner With Andre, where things are most chopped up into shot-reverse shots between two men talking at a restaurant. Here there is more space around the two men, allowing both the camera and the characters more room to move. The shots can shift from intimate back-and-forths to swooping, spinning movements that heighten the drama and excite the eyes. (If I’m being perfectly honest, I’ll admit there were one or two shots which seemed awkwardly/distractingly pointed and noticeable, but that’s probably just me because I think about these things.) The use of color and light is also highly creative, using oranges and shadowed greens to suggest a trashy ghetto but still evoke some beauty and vibrancy. The soundtrack is filled with offscreen voices and sound effects, constantly emphasizing the world outside and serving to both isolate the characters and situate them in an identifiable location from which they will leave at the end of the night. This is not Jones’ first time around the block directing, and he demonstrates ample skill in the staging of the whole production.

Nevertheless, this is still a film of a stage play, and the ultimate author has to be Cormac McCarthy. I have read McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, No Country for Old Men, and about two thirds of Cites of the Plain. I plan to have all of the latter, Outer Dark, The Road, and Blood Meridian read by the end of next year. The Sunset Limited seems to me to be concerned with the ultimate theme of all his work: the problem of evil. How do we deal with a world so irreparably violent and corrupt? Each of his characters attempts to deal with this fact in their own way, crafting their own codes and beliefs to protect themselves, but it’s a dangerous world and their codes might not be enough. I do not know his personal beliefs (he gives few interviews), but it seems like it would be hard to write Sunset Limited if he were not a Christian at some point in his life. Based on his other writings, I would be very surprised if he still was.

The film is thrilling because it does two things movies rarely do: It tells without showing, forcing us to imagine instead of receiving pictures straight through our eyes, and it features a sustained argument about actual issues, allowing us to evaluate each character’s position on its own merits. In most films the rule is show, don’t tell, and that is generally a good idea for movies with plot--but a movie featuring only people talking has its own kind of openness, a scope not limited by a budget but as boundless as thought and conversation can be. Also in most films, arguments are predetermined and short, featuring one character who is absolutely right and another who is stupid for not listening to him. Or else, the characters argue only about themselves, and what they say reveals psychology and motivation, serving the story but offering allowing the actual substance of the argument to dissipate in favor of character beats. Even in something like 12 Angry Men the debate is really all about revealing the various hang-ups of the jury members. Here, the characters’ personalities and back stories are certainly important, but their positions on the issues are even more so, and it’s intellectually stimulating to watch and listen in a way we almost never see.

Jones and Jackson are both among our finest actors, and here they give two of their very best performances, Jackson especially acting with more soul than he has in years. These characters might have seemed overly schematic on the page, the stereotypes of “Black” being an ex-con who speaks in strong Afro-American dialect and is the more talkative, funny, and spiritual of the two, crushing down the debate and preventing the reader from relating. On film, though, the two actors bring their characters to life, and the words pour out of their mouths with an enthusiasm and power not often matched. While they debate, this little room is the center of the world, the only order amidst the chaos. An epic battle is playing out, and it will determine whether or not the chaos is kept at bay for another hour.

Rating: 9/10 stars.

Review: The Mill and the Cross

2011-12-30T00:09:00.005-05:00

Then began I to dream a marvellous dream,
That I was in a wilderness wist I not where.
As I looked to the east right into the sun,
I saw a tower on a toft worthily built;
A deep dale beneath a dungeon therein,
With deep ditches and dark and dreadful of sight
A fair field full of folk found I in between,
Of all manner of men the rich and the poor,
Working and wandering as the world asketh.

--Piers Plowman by William Langland

This is a difficult film to review. It is strange and beautiful and unique, but also a little remote and perhaps too subtle for its own good. It felt, to me, like it could have been a masterpiece and wasn't, but I am not sure that I wouldn't feel different after a second viewing. I have often found second viewings of films that I find challenging but remote to be far more emotionally involving and satisfying than the first viewing.

Written by Michael Francis Gibson and co-written and directed by Lech Majewski, The Mill and the Cross is the story of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his masterpiece, The Way to Calvary. It is important to get a couple facts straight about this going in, or you will find yourself completely lost. Bruegel painted in what is now the Netherlands (and was then Flanders) in the 16th century. At the time of this painting, the Protestant Reformation was still in full swing, and the Low Countries had a reputation for being open. But Philip II, ruler of Spain, the Netherlands, and much more, came to power, and, as defender of the Catholic Church, began harshly cracking down on any reformist preachers and sympathizers. This inquisition is what the painting is really about, placing the Crucifixion amidst the people and politics of the times, and depicting the soldiers dragging Christ to be crucified as Spanish. It is unclear whether Bruegel himself was Protestant or Catholic, but he certainly seems to have opposed the Spanish police measures.

The film is not, however, about the making of the painting. It shows Bruegel (Rutger Hauer) sketching scenes, but it never shows him actually painting. The process is not what interests the film. Nor is it a detailed historical portrait of the times and issues involved. Instead, the film seems to take place inside the painting, telling the stories of ever person pictured over the course of the day the painting depicts. There are only three speaking parts: Bruegel, his patron Nicolaes Jonghelnik (Michael York), and Mary the Mother of Christ (Charlotte Rampling). They first two periodically give speeches about the painting and the political context, while Mary contemplates the approaching death of her son. While Hauer endows his lines with a certain gravity and wisdom, the other lines mostly come off as stilted and awkward, interesting in the abstract but not dramatically compelling. Fortunately, the dialogue is very limited. Outside of the few speaking interludes, it’s practically a silent film.

The film has been rendered in a complex process of live action, green-screening, and CGI backgrounds layered over each other dozens of times to create the texture of the original painting. Colors pop off the screen, and foreground and background shift in strange, surreal ways. It is often astonishingly beautiful, and it looks like no other movie I’ve ever seen. However, one gets used to the look of thing fairly quickly, and if it had nothing else worth recommending it would be little more than a curiosity. What matters is how the film juxtaposes art and life, and what this juxtaposition ultimately reveals. To borrow a term from another internet commenter, there is a diegetic blurriness to the film, meaning it shows both the creation of the painting and the what the canvas depicts at the same time, mirroring and reproducing the way the painting imagines both the death of Christ and the Counter-Reformation crackdown intersecting in the same artistic space.

Over the course of a single day, we see life roll by, as various people arise in the morning, take their wares to market, interact with each other, watch the executions, and eventually go home. At the end they join hands in a dance of death that recalls Bergman’s Seventh Seal, though the image is taken from the upper right corner of the painting. The vertiginous foreshortening of the frame, with an infinite background suddenly made as close as any of the characters, mirrors the radical perspective shifts as the viewer sees first the painting’s creator and then his smallest creations, a shift that also suggests the religious juxtaposition of the mundane and the divine, mortal and immortal. The wandering lives of the dozens of characters can feel shapeless and test the viewer’s patience, but the philosophical ideas behind it all are highly provocative and affirming. At one point, Bruegel says that his painting “must be large enough to hold everything,” and that ability to include both the high and the low in his art is dramatized and analyzed here especially. This quality is a peculiarly medieval trait, despite the fact that Bruegel was a man of the Renaissance/Reformation era. One can see it in medieval literature like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the mingling of the sacred and profane, or in Piers Plowman, where the narrator can telescope from a view of a tower or a single man, zooming into that object with a word and discovering whole valleys, multitudes, and worlds within. The film achieves a similar feat by juxtaposing a young peasant couple making love or a peddler dancing and drunkenly leering with a view from above on a mountain that suggests the perspective of God, “the great miller of heaven, grinding out the bread of life.” This is a rare quality, almost unheard of in today’s art and literature, both hugely ambitious and warmly compassionate to the smallest person and thing. The only recent film I can think of that attempts something similar is The Tree of Life, but that of course has none of the medieval flavor.

However, as I mentioned the film often feels shapeless and meandering. It does not demand your emotional involvement, it observes and offers commentary, inviting analysis only if one is willing to put in the effort. There is complex symbolism bound up in Bruegel’s painting, and if nothing else the film ought to make you appreciate the genius of the artist and his work. The Way to Calvary encompasses a whole world, suggesting all of life and the Biblical drama of salvation inside its 4 foot by 5 foot frame. There is the Tree of Life on the left and the Tree of Death on the right, and in between are the humble multitudes going about their business, living and dying in ignorance of the great drama playing out among them. For in the center of the frame is Christ, one Man among many, but upon whom all else rests. It is the achievement of the painting--and of all the greatest art, the film suggests--to capture the ultimate truths of life in a single image of such surpassing beauty that the audience is transfixed, made to know something which had heretofore been obscured.

In the end, perhaps the film can be taken as an illustration W.H. Auden’s famous poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts,” itself concerned with another Bruegel painting:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Merry Christmas!!

2011-12-25T00:10:00.001-05:00

Yeah, it hasn't been very exciting around here, and I'm not actually even posting this on Christmas, but here's wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday season!

Recent Movies: 50/50, Moneyball, The Ides of March

2011-11-16T00:14:00.000-05:00

50/50
An excellent young cast mines comedy and tragedy beautifully in this film about a 27-year-old who gets cancer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues to be one of my favorite current actors, and Seth Rogen is actually quite warm and believable as his best friend trying to help him through his illness (a role he apparently played in real life with the film's screenwriter, Will Reiser). And I think I'm mildly in love with Anna Kendrick, despite the fact her therapist character does things here that would probably get her fired in the real world. The movie is obviously funny, but it's also very moving--there are so many little things it gets right, from the shock of learning of illness to the resistance to pity from certain sources to the way nobody ever seems to know how to talk about it to the trepidation before surgery. The pain and fear is genuine and deep; there is real humanity here. Basically I just loved this movie.

I will say that looking back on it, it does seem rather limited--apparently such a confrontation with his mortality did not cause the main character to question the purpose of his life that much or wonder about the existence of an afterlife. He hardly has anyone to reach out to either--just 3 or 4 friends and relatives. That makes it very small and intimate, but also strangely closed off. The character's response is depression and apathy, not powerful soul-searching or determined resistance. I guess I understand that, though. The prospect of death does not always lead to exciting, movie-movie action and melodrama, nor does illness often open one up to the wider world. It may accentuate how brief and meaningless your life has really been. It is only after such an experience, perhaps, that the search for meaning can truly begin, and the movie's last line suggests that: "What now?"

Rating: 8/10 stars

Moneyball
"Like The Social Network for baseball." The comparison is trite but apt. Co-written by Aaron Sorkin, the film has a similar sense of insider's knowledge of back room deals, high-speed business decisions, and brilliant insight being put to forceful use to change the way the world works. Both are based on true stories, but drop characters and fictionalize things quite a bit in order to explore themes more closely. The cinematography and color scheme are also similar, with lots of dark greens and deep browns in shadowed rooms (though Wally Pfister's work here lacks the precision and rigor Fincher brought to Network). The most thrilling scene in the film is distinctly Sorkin-esque (whether he wrote it or not): When Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is attempting to acquire a new player who can sew up his new system and ensure his team's success, but must work three deals at once with other team managers, calling back and forth between them at high speed while he debates his assistant Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) on which players to offer in order to make the trade. There is a palpable excitement here, and a fascinating expose on how these kinds of deals work, despite the fact it's all set in a tiny office with two guys talking on the phone and looking at charts; we never see the other managers, only here their voices.

Moneyball is not the masterpiece Social Network was, but it's still pretty darn good. I never follow baseball (I'm more of a football/basketball kind of guy), but I was fascinated here by all the ins and outs of the strategy, and thought about it for days afterward, trying to figure out its implications for professional sports in general. This is a film fascinated by ideas, the way new ones come in, the way they're resisted, the way they eventually cause change. But it's also grounded in some strong emotional territory, with a wonderful movie star performance by Brad Pitt, who creates in Beane a character we feel for and want to root for, despite the fact he's a baseball manager who's making millions of dollars a year and looks like Brad Pitt. The movie knows how to play with the sports movie genre, depicting an underdog team that manages to surprise opponents and bring its fanbase to life, but it is not tied to formula and repeatedly upends expectations. Both this and 50/50 are the kind of films Hollywood should be making: smart, moving, movies for adults.

Rating: 8/10 stars

The Ides of March
I had hoped this would be a third straight film I could add to that list of Hollywood-should-be-making, but unfortunately it was not to be. Ides of March is a well-made film--well-directed by George Clooney, well-acted by a top-notch cast--and it's fairly compelling to watch. But it has several plot holes, or at least plot weaknesses, and it's insights into politics are the same tired things we've heard so many times before. It would have been great if this film could have offered the same behind-the-scenes excitement and insider's knowledge that Moneyball offered for baseball, but alas it cannot. The way political campaigns are run now is a cutthroat, high-stakes game, and while the film knows this, it is disappointingly uninteresting in showing us the ins and outs of how the game is played, instead attempting to teach us the tired lesson that the game is dark and crooked. I had hoped from the way Clooney's presidential candidate is set up as an Obama figure, the film would have something to say about the dangers of putting too much faith in a politician-as-savior. (Clooney spends much of his screen time delivering speeches to the audience, espousing ultra-liberal positions on a diverse range of issues--including declaring that within ten years of taking office, no new cars with internal combustion engines would be made in the US, which made me and a couple other people giggle.) The film does touch on this, but really all it has to say is: don't do it, they're all corrupt.

Evan Rachel Wood's character is the weak link, I think, going from seductress to scared little girl in seconds, and acting illogically the whole time. But the whole film is compromised by its utter cynicism. Not a single person in this film, for all their political ideals, ever acts ethically. There is a complete lack of moral compass among these politicos, and that is all the film has to offer. Fear for your republic, for those who run it are not of the human race. They have left it long behind them, in the pursuit of power.

Rating: 6/10 stars

Review: J. Edgar

2011-11-13T23:45:00.004-05:00

Biopics are strange things. When done correctly, they can illuminate a historical figure's life and character with real insight, increasing the figure's impact and influence in the process. This is rare, though. Most often, biopics end up being long, dry, bloodless affairs, desperately attempting to be sympathetic to their subject while not denying his/her character flaws. They are often handicapped by their wide scope--how many other films ever attempt to cover a character's entire lifespan? The most effective biopics are nearly always those which approach their subject in the most creative manner--whether pinpointing one particular point in the character's life to focus on (Lawrence of Arabia, Patton), tossing factual accuracy out the window (Young Mr. Lincoln, Amadeus), or attempting to capture character or impact through alternative, impressionistic means (I’m Not There).

Unfortunately, J. Edgar attempts none of these things. Instead, it attempts to show every major event in FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover's entire 46 year career, heavily narrating it throughout as an elderly Hoover in the Sixties dictates his self-serving memoirs. As a result, the film is virtually devoid of a dramatic arc, and forced to rely on Hoover's (playedby Leonardo DiCaprio) relationship with right-hand man, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). The film portrays them as devoted romantic partners who nevertheless remain chaste out of Hoover's fear and hatred of homosexuality. This is a potentially controversial move as neither of them ever admitted to such a love, but it is based on fairly strong conjecture by many not all) historians and does not seem unjustified. What's wrong with placing this at the center of the plot is that it attempts to demand our attention based on a lot of sublimated signals within a large historical narrative, then awkwardly shoehorns in emotional confrontations between the two men, including a sort of fistfight-cum-lover's quarrel which becomes downright ridiculous and laugh-inducing. Their relationship is never believable and hardly ever sympathetic--only in old age does their come any real tenderness (though Armie Hammer's make-up is so ridiculous it's hard to take anything he says seriously). Strangely, Clyde becomes something like the voice of reason in the film, telling Hoover when he's wrong and detailing his character flaws. I guess this is somehow supposed to relate to the tension in the film between criticizing Hoover and admiring him, but it comes off as ham-handed talking-to-the-audience moralizing instead of any sort of honest moral inquiry.

This is a shame, because a life of J. Edgar Hoover, one of the two or three most hated and controversial Americans of the 20th century (right after Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, two men the movie quotes Hoover as despising despite certain ideological similarities), and his story is an ideal place to question issues like the extent of federal authority, rights of privacy, police authority and brutality, and the conflict between freedom and security. The movie is at its best when detailing the exploits of Hoover's early career. Hoover forcefully makes his case for the necessity of a highly-trained, well-funded federal police force in the face of threats like anarchist and Bolshevik bombings in the wake of WWI, prohibition-era gangsters, and bank robbers/spree-killers like John Dilinger, Baby Face Nelson and Bonnie and Clyde. If the film had confined itself to this era, simply chronicling the formation and rise of the FBI Hoover's role in that, it might have been much better. The 1919 Red Scare era is an especially poorly remembered historical period, and the film could have done much to illuminate it. I suppose that with Michael Mann's Public Enemies and HBO's Boardwalk Empire so current, though, the filmmakers decided to avoid too much rehashing of Prohibition-era gangsters.

The most interesting episode involves the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, and the role of the FBI in catching the kidnapper (though doubt remains about whether he acted alone and/or was the one really responsible for the death of the child). This is the one place we are given detail about how the FBI worked and Hoover's embrace of new scientific methods of forensics to improve police work. But even here much of the story is glossed over through voiceovers, with only a few of the high points actually filmed. I am fascinated by historical events, processes, and turning points like this, and if the film had become more of a historical essay, attempting to elucidate certain trends and define the historical moment (a la a more factual Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), then the narration would have been justified, even welcome, and the movie as a whole might have become far more thought-provoking. Instead, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black really wants this to be an in-depth character study of an enigmatic and tortured figure, and the narration of past events seems mostly to be meant to let us inside Hoover's worldview. But we never grow close to him, and the reluctance of the film to make too many strict judgments, attempting to leave Hoover somewhat unexplained and enigmatic, instead ends up coming off muddled and uninteresting. Even the sensationalized aspects of the story are unexciting: The very dubious (even scurrilous) accusations that Hoover enjoyed dressing up like a woman are here dramatized as a weird expression of grief at his mother's death, where he pulls on her necklace and dress in an effort to remember her. The moment is weirdly reminiscent of Norman Bates, but it's played low-key and semi-sympathetically, and it's not clear how this is supposed to fit in with the accusations--did this apparent one-time-thing end up becoming a habit? Did someone see him like this--alone in his room--and spread the word? As far as I can tell the scene is pure fantasy, but it's drawn out an agonizingly long time as if it reveals some dark secret or key to Hoover's identity. (And I'm not even mentioning the egregious use of an Eleanor Roosevelt letter as some sort of exemplar of the beauties of Hoover and Tolson's love at the end.)

All this said, Black's script could (with a few tweaks) have been made into a moderately solid movie if it had been directed well. But Clint Eastwood films the thing in his habitual color palette of shadowy blues and grays, a style that worked in Mystic River and Letters From Iwo Jima but has grown remarkably stale and trying over the course of the last 8 movies. Eastwood has never been anyone's idea of a visual stylist, but he has managed to muster a certain warm, pictorial beauty a couple times in the past (Unforgiven, Bridges of Madison County). This washed-out, blue-gray scale thing has become just lazy though, not to mention rather ugly and boring. The plot may have been sluggish but it could still have been interesting if Eastwood had brought a fraction of the flair that, say, Scorsese brought to The Aviator (another, far better, DiCaprio biopic about a major 1920s-1940s figure). Instead, everything looks the same and everything feels the same, and it just drags you down.

With a cast and director and subject like this, this movie should have been a home run. Indeed, the idea seemed to connect strongly with audiences--I saw it on Saturday night with a sold-out crowd. Unfortunately, though, it's an intermittently interesting muddle that's likely to disappoint just about everybody.

Rating: 4/10 Stars

First Thoughts on The Tree of Life

2011-10-18T17:43:00.001-04:00

What follows are my initial notes on The Tree of Life, written down after each of my four theater viewings of the film (a record for me). I’ve edited them a bit to be more coherent to outside readers, since they were initially intended only for myself. They mostly deal with all the little details that I noticed anew each time I saw it, and helped me remember the sequencing for when I finally get around to writing about it. These notes would most likely have been more useful if I had put them while the film was still in theaters--with it out on DVD, it’s much easier for people to check things and get all the details of the film straight--but I’m posting them here anyway. Why? Well, it’s my blog and I want to, so there.

* * * *

First Viewing:

Wow. Well, . . . Huh. Okay. So . . .

I Need To See That Again!

The closest thing I can describe it as is 2001: A Space Odyssey crossed with Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. But that doesn’t really cover it.

And I’m not sure about that ending--not as good as The New World’s, that’s for sure.

But still. Whoah.

* * * *

Second Viewing:

Neon lights and city before flashforward to present

Jack present in memory of parents' grief over RL

Some words in voiceover are to RL, not God, including much of what mother says during creation sequence

Ending filled imagery of death, passing on, new imagery, giving up, forgiveness, angels

What’s with the attic circus?

Brother, mother, addressed at beginning and sent off at end

“The nuns told us”

Mother addresses children in voiceover, gives advice like father, comes out as platitudes but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong

“Unless love” line still too simple

Young Jack seen in desert but not at reunion on beach

Jack’s Wife brings in branches at beginning

Modern scenes definitely set in digital age, tho timeline doesn’t fit

The bad kid speaks in terms of temptation, paraphrases the Serpent

Two phrases in dialogue in trailer that are not in final film--”expect too much of him”, “fall down and weep”

Family clearly seen as microcosm, replays similar story of whole universe, pregnant belly juxtaposed with creation of planets

Birth--all in white, nurses look like the angels at end, bringing into world and ending paralleled, could end be scene of birth again?

Who is girl that leads Jack through door into desert?

Fellini’s 8 1/2 seen as having a cop-out ending at the time, too

Jack goes in and out of elevator before end, muses on fallenness of world he’s in, longs for innocence, sees walls as trapping him, house filled with windows and light that show trees all around, parts from wife in park?, shown wandering thru flat rocky salt-flat terrain right after creation, then asks about when you first touched me and goes to birth sequence, only smiles at very end, sees clouds reflected in glass

Shot of trees from The New World in creation sequence?

Final image of bridge and bird flying away comes right after a shot of what? --possibly a canyon

Only time parents really kiss each other at end on beach

Pitt's hand on Penn’s shoulder on beach is loving and fatherly instead of gripping

Shot of Jesus window in church, no other mention of savior, no depiction of Godly forgiveness, more about challenging God and trying to find happiness within the glory all around

Pitt overreacts at dinner table and is strict with other things, but never beats kids or even spanks them, really a good man struggling to be a good father, not doing as well as he should

Pitt’s only vices are light smoking and scene at poker table, otherwise seen glad-handing people and making friends with those in power, but also being responsible person of authority

Shot of mother in glass coffin comes after asking if she will die some day

Clearly another family seen fighting through windows

Woman next door--or possibly down the street--Jack watches her, takes water from her hose and looks at her legs, sees her doing laundry, sees mother do same things in other shots including rinsing feet in water with underwear visible through dress

Several images from picture-books: drawing of praying mantis, reading Peter Rabbit then shot of real rabbit in garden, drawings of Jungle Book, possibly same book as in Days of Heaven, but no images of television or movies

Also wooden toy blocks of Noah’s Ark

Reading with flashlight when lights are out

Story is of growth of a boy, how everything he saw when young was glorious, at first only good things then some bad and scary things which still held sense of wonder, but gradually turned to familiarity and rules and structure and boring routine, but Jack attempting to find that again

Pitt apparently found more success later, new house is very nice, spacious, with large windows, though not huge place

House and yard seem to change--epileptic guy is down a slight hill, but no hill most of time, sees side houses from different angles which makes it seem like a different yard, or perhaps it is different?

Image in between movements is swirling refracted light, could be God, soul, celestial body, or candle seen through hazy prism

Pitt and Chastain aged by makeup extremely well

Brief shots of mother as child, what do they mean? see her looking out window, parents around her, perhaps riding horse or in car, then never again

Children’s perception of parents is like ours of God--they are alternately wonderful, comforting, changeable, scary, punishing, apparently all-knowing, mustn't make them angry, can’t talk to them when done wrong, --but that doesn’t mean God is like parents and makes mistakes

* * * *

Third Viewing:

Mother as child on farm: stares out thru window w/ light on face, sees cows, then show holding lamb in her arms, might be in Ireland/Scotland?
When parents dwelling on child’s death: mother look in his room at guitar sitting alone and paintbrushes on desk then turns away, father kneels alone at bench praying
Definitely seem to be angels in this film: several points at which girls in white and gray formless dresses are shown leading people places; girl in ‘fairy world’ leading very small children dressed all in white to be born, carrying a candle, a girl leads Penn thru the door, neither of these girls’ faces are shown; shot of girl calling dead person out of tomb, leading people through a hallway towards something, girl on beach leading R.L. (or Steve?) to Jack, two girls with Mother as she gives up son, girl opens the doors to salt flats (I think) young girl in front of Mother in giving-up-son scene looks like her younger self, girl behind her has similar appearance though with darker hair, could they be her other selves?
Nearly every symbolic image in the film is of Christian origin, only thing not is pagan temple entrance, but dead bodies in Middle Eastern place, angels, calling dead out of stone tomb, dead bride who is then alive, light in the darkness
When Jack talks about being led to “You,” shot of river with trees on either side, almost talking to it courtyard of Jack’s building is under construction, tree locked in cement blocks, but light still shines through it and camera still pulled up to sky by it
I’m hit very hard this time by Jack’s fall from innocence, his resentment building into evil deeds and how this attitude consumes him, shows up in everything he does, acts out against and resents mother, hates father, feels need to assert dominance over brothers, feels sexual desire/lust/objectification of women, hates what he’s becoming but can’t help it (“What have I started? How do I get back to where they are?”); but then he manages to reconnect with his brother, comes to know shame and forgiveness, recalls how to offer grace and kindness, “What did you show me then?”
during creation sequence the camera goes into womb or egg or something and finds a (reptilian) fetus opening its eyes

* * * *

Fourth Viewing:

I focused mostly on Job parallels, esp. the Sermon
Pastor/Priest sets up/describes the central conflicts of the parents with God, both of their struggles evident in Book of Job

Job though his righteousness would save him, his friends said he must have done something wrong
“has he not also seen God, who has seen him turn his back?”

Sermon sequence easy to lose in the background, seems like just showing family life and way they attend church, esp. since camera is catching so many things/people that pastor’s voice recedes into background, but really arguably heart of film’s theology
“Is there nothing that does not perish or pass away?”--shot of R.L. looking at window, then shot of Christ with purple robe and crown of thorns on window, “Man of Sorrows”
Jack lingers at back as Father kneels and prays at front of church, crosses himself, then lights candles and walks out (proud?, satisfied?), then Jack steps across pews with no one to stop him
Family outside: Father glad-handing couple of other people, people always walk out of sermon and talk to people happily, joke, chuckle, don’t feel affected by sermon and focus on “real life”

Father boasts to family, “That’s a friend of mine, owns half the town,” Mother says nothing

Later, it seems like an hour or two later on the same day but who knows, pretty definitely on a Sunday, Father is taking boys on tour of rich neighborhoods and explaining his materialist philosophy of life
Struck more this time by Father’s flaws--arrogance, boastfulness, show-off, bluster, covetousness
Jack and Father re-bond over working in the garden, Father pulls dead parts off a plant, still life-giving, positive activity in garden, --yard work seems more harsh and stern and unhappy, trying to force growth and order

* * * *

And finally, just a note on the audiences: At my first viewing, the audience was large and restless. A guy in my row got up and left and came back at least twice (pushing by in front of me in the process), and several other people close by got up and left. The second time I sat closer to the front, but I still heard a not-inconsiderate amount of noise behind me, at least one or two people walking out, and a person right behind me muttering about how boring it was. The third time I saw it, a theater employee came in to introduce the film and explain that it was a difficult, different kind of movie that might not be what we would expect but that we shouldn't complain to the management about it. After that, at least one person got up and went out the door during the film, but I don't know if they ever came back. The audience was significantly smaller that time. These first three times were all at an art theater in Indianapolis, which took me an hour to get to. The film did not play in my local AMC Theaters at all. It was not until August that it was shown at the excellent IU Cinema, and I was able to see it for a fourth time. There they had an introduction, as they do for every movie, and the presenter explained that while there were reports of people walking out all over the country, they had shown it the previous night and no one had walked out at all, which got some applause from the audience. I did not see or hear anyone walk out that night either, but their were two or three people who came in a good twenty minutes late and sat down in front of me, which was a little weird. Nevertheless, while the house was packed, it was a very good, respectful audience overall.

It is strange, perhaps, how this film had elicited so many accounts of mixed audience reactions, but I cannot say it was surprising. Movies are not seen by so many as a realm for serious art and/or non-narrative work, that when a film challenges these assumptions they resist and reject it out of hand. I find this tragic, but it is the way of the world and lamenting it overmuch seems to me a sign of either naive idealism or cynical elitism. It is what it is, we just have to deal with it.

Articles on The Tree of Life

2011-10-17T00:53:00.004-04:00

In the last few years, certain films have captured the attention of writers across the blogosphere and inspired massive amounts of in-depth criticism and analysis. Last year, that film was David Fincher's The Social Network; the year before it was Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. I think the record for number of words spilled on the internet about a film, though, has already been seized by Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, even before the end-of-year lists and awards season, where it will undoubtedly be feted even more. I think this is partly because the film has inspired discussion by many bloggers, journalists, and commentators beyond the usual movie bloggers and critics who can be counted on to review most of the major movies each year. There's so much, in fact that it's rather an embarrassment of riches, making it easy to find reviews, but perhaps more difficult to find really valuable writing that offers new perspectives. I decided to round up the best criticism and analysis I've found about the film and post it all here.

* * * *

Initial reviews from Cannes were divided. Some critics I respect, like J. Hoberman, Drew McWeeney, Richard Schickel, and Stephanie Zacharek all called it a failure, though for slightly different reasons. Fortunately, though, others disagreed, notably Roger Ebert and Xan Brooks. Ebert's blog post is especially worth reading, as one of the most eloquent meditations on the film yet written. Most reviews were more mixed, like Mike D'Angelo, Manohla Dargis, and Todd McCarthy, who all acknowledge it as spectacular but voice certain misgivings about its overall success. The Notebook at MUBI did a stellar round-up of critical reactions, and I'm going to overlap with it a bit, so go there if you haven't to find the first reviews. It seems also worthwhile to mention here Robert Koehler's review, since it lays out a from-the-bottom-up critique of the film and its entire worldview that inspired quite a few rebuttals. I think Koehler starts from false premises about the nature of the film's objective, but it was quite influential in the first few weeks after Cannes.

The most interesting reviews were nearly all those that admitted doubt about the ultimate meaning of the film and offered personal ruminations on it. Glenn Heath, Jr. at The House Next Door is a good example of this. The House Next Door, practically founded to promote Malick's The New World, had several good posts on the film. Nick Schager discusses Malick's fascination with the beginnings of things here. And Dan Callahan offers his first impressions of the film as constant movement here.

But one thing I noticed about the reviews out of Cannes was how rushed and confused they often were. The chaos of the biggest film festival in the world is no place to attempt to analyze and understand a picture of such immensity and ambition, and the difficulty of doing so after only one viewing would arise again and again. Even when the film opened Stateside, regular reviewers often found themselves confused about aspects of plot and detail, suggesting that the only thing really worth trusting from any review based on a single viewing is the general like/dislike impression. Further analysis of the meaning of the film is/was usually hampered by the overwhelming abundance of detail in the film and the challenge of getting it all straight in one's mind before making firm arguments. I can't tell how you many reviews I read where the writers were completely unsure of which of the brothers died, whether the death was in Vietnam, elsewhere, or even World War II, if a brother dies in the pool drowning scene, whether it was Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien that Jack sees arguing through a window, whose slip Jack steals, and most importantly, what in the world the ending means. The later reviews and articles that come after repeat viewings are the most edifying.

* * * *

In the traditional news media:

A.O. Scott sees the film as rooted in the Romantic literary tradition.

Michael Atkinson at Sight & Sound is unimpressed, but assumes--rightly, if condescendingly--that Malick fans will love it.

Andrew O'Hehir says, "If the cosmic astronaut God-baby from the end of “2001″ came back to earth and made a movie, this would be it. (And we wouldn’t understand what it was trying to tell us, either.)"

Matt Zoller Seitz, one of the premier Malick devotees on the web, presents a guide for watching the film here.

Nick Pinkerton at The Village Voice says, "Better than a masterpiece—whatever that is—The Tree of Life is an eruption of a movie."

"Malick daringly tries to capture not just memories but the feelings aroused by the act of memory—indeed, to represent subjectivity itself, by way of the cinema," says Richard Brody at The New Yorker.

David Denby, also writing in The New Yorker, says exactly what I feel, that the film is "a considerable enlargement of the rhetoric of cinema. Years from now, the movie will be remembered as a freshening, even a reinvention, of film language."

Geoffrey O'Brien has a fairly magnificent essay on the film in The New York Review of Books--which, in itself, must be rare: I don't think the Review of Books publishes many movie reviews. The essay covers Malick's whole career, brings in philosophy, and manages to evocatively describe Malick's technique into the bargain.

Michael Tully of Filmmaker Magazine writes that "I assumed that my other concerns would be exacerbated on a subsequent viewing—namely the lack of “three-dimensional characters” and the absence of any “true drama”—yet this time around, those concerns were rendered irrelevant. One can’t understand a language if they aren’t listening to it properly."

Patricia Doucey at LFM writes, "As always, Malick captures his audience with a whisper."

* * * *

In the major film criticism sites:

At MUBI, Daniel Kasman's initial review describes the film as a "sublime rush of consciousness." Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's article here is beautifully written and complex, though not wholly positive, and definitely deserves a read. Joe McCulloch also has an article on MUBI, but his is a bit too mocking, and I'm not as much of a fan.

Reverse Shot, another publication which practically made its name with its astute celebration of The New World, devoted a whole week to publishing articles on The Tree of Life, every one of them excellent. First up was Chris Wisniewski on the Known Unknowns presented in the film. Then Genevieve Yue on how the film contains its own universe, a Garden of the World. Michael Koresky is fascinated by all the small moments of life and growing up in Design for Living. Keith Uhlich loves the dinosaur scene and believes it holds the key to the movie in The Space Between Spaces. And Jeff Reichart relates the film to Darwin and the evolution of the cinema in Children of the Evolution.

In an excellent essay called "Terrence Malick: Moving Beyond the Threshold," Joe McElhaney investigates the way Malick depicts walking, running, and feet in his films.

This roundtable at CinemaScope is probably a must-read for all the different people and perspectives it includes, but it disappointed me that so much of it was negative. Far too many of the "sophisticated" critics seem to dismiss this film as embarrassing and silly. Tom Charity's last remark ("What is it Jan Sterling says in Ace in the Hole (1951)? 'I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.'") struck me as one of the most snide and depressing things I've read in a long time. How tragic to have such a visceral reaction against any hint of the sacred.

Adrian Martin has a terrific essay at Fipresci on the occasion of giving The Tree of Life the organization's Grand Prix 2011.

At Hammer to Nail, Michael Nordine writes of fathers and sons and their place in the grand scheme of the cosmos of Malick. And Noah Buschel thinks the film is unlike any other ever made. Michael Ryan also discusses watching the film in both film and digital prints, and what the differences are.

* * * *

In the traditional movie blogosphere:

"I’ve been spending the past month—literally, the entire month—trying to figure out how to construct a definitive review of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, said Adam Zanzie at Icebox Movies in July, and I know he feels. It's taken me this long to even get lists of other reviews up, much less my own!

Tim at Antagony & Ecstasy writes a couple of wonderful reviews here and here.

David H. Schleicher offers a reverent meditation on the film at The Schleicher Spin.

The ever-enthusiastic Sam Juliano compares the film to The Fountain (which I disagree with) and declares the film a masterpiece (which I agree with) at his wonderful site Wonders in the Dark.

Leo Goldsmith very eloquently explores Malick's flashback structure and the way the film represents memory at Not Coming to a Theater Near You.

Hugo Stiglitz at the Movies has a very personal review of the film here.

Roderick Heath, one of the best writers in the blogosphere, has an excellent review up at Ferdy on Films which is well worth reading (despite the fact he gets Jack's brothers mixed up).

The End of Cinema blog presents a rare, long-form review for this film that is notably personal.

The Cahiers d'Illusion gives a good discussion of Heidegger in relation to the film here.

Jake Cole at Not Just Movies offers a powerfully hyperbolic acclamation of the film here, where he also argues that the film has a completely pantheist view of the world. I disagree, but I am still envious of his ability to craft a review and deep knowledge of cinema and art history to rely on. We're the same age, but his skills in these areas are leagues beyond mine.

Another blogger I'm envious of is Carson Lund at Are the Hills Going to March Off?, also roughly my age, and also a far better writer and more sophisticated thinker than I. His review of the film is typically excellent, though I find his suggestion that the film means whatever you want it to mean rather off-putting.

Kartina Richardson has a beautifully written and evocative post on the film's dealing with memory and personal experience at her blog, Mirror.

Bilge Ebiri has a beautiful, moving account of his first viewing of the film here, at his blog They Live By Night. He also has follow-up posts here, here, here, here, and here. That last is actually a fascinating and informative article on the editing of the film, derived from interviews with several of the editors, and replete with surprising nuggets.

Billy Stevenson at A Film Canon has a typically brief and incredibly dense review of the film here, every sentence, of which there are too few, packed with thought and meaning.

Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard have another one of their epic "Conversations" about the film here. They also discuss the rest of Malick's oeuvre here. Their discussions are always excellent and well worth reading.

And here, Mat Viola at Notes of a Film Fanatic, attempts to completely destroy the entire worldview behind the film (and, in my opinion, fails completely).

This review (at a blog simply entitled "Reviewing Tree of Life") is very long and strange. It seems to be a work in progress, as it has been changed a couple times since I first found it. I don't think the author is a native English speaker, and the article has numerous misspellings and grammatical mistakes. The conclusions he draws about the film's message and Malick's intentions are, I think, pretty loopy, discounting any religious/metaphysical/philosophical interpretation and making it into some sort of solipsistic exercise about itself and other movies. And yet, and yet, it's still worth reading because he finds all sorts of fascinating connections between various shots and scenes within the film itself, with Malick's other films, and with the films of other great directors like Hitchock, Welles, and Bresson. So take everything with a grain of salt, but read for a provocative essay that is capable of letting you see the film from new angles.

Niles Schwartz at The Niles Files here offers up what I think may be the single most ambitious and rewarding analysis of the film in the blogosphere. He also investigates Malick's other films, starting with Badlands, and proceeding through Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and The New World. Actually, these essays are in a series, and you should really start with the first one, but they're all so long and thoughtful that you can be forgiven for skipping to the one most interesting for you. Niles approaches the films from a philosophical perspective but not does not attempt to force them into a particular (i.e., Heideggerian) philosophical framework, instead examining how each of the films asks questions and endeavors to leave its audience with questions about what being-in-the-world really means. He brings in Heidegger, Emerson, Whitman, Proust, and William Blake, and manages to cover just about everything so throughly that on the whole, I almost wonder what I'm doing writing my own thoughts down when they're so inferior.

One thing I noticed about the best reviews here: They nearly all involve a personal account, whether of childhood memory or recent experience, that lets us understand why the film means so much to them. The film almost requires this in order to present an honest review, and incredibly, it appears capable of eliciting strong frissons of memory and recognition in countless people, something of which I don't think any other movie is capable.

* * * *

In the religious press:

The reaction to the film in devout Christian circles has been interestingly diverse. Brett McCracken's review at Christianity Today declares the film a masterpiece. (Though reading the comments can be pretty depressing, with people declaring the evils of Hollywood left and right.) At the magazine's sister publication, Books and Culture, Kristen Scharold rather hyperbolically declared that "America has found its prophet, or at least a director of astonishing rank." On the other hand, Kevin Collins at First Things claimed the film, while beautiful, was lacking in any real Christianity and was therefore rather useless. (Though the brilliant David Bentley Hart pushed back against that judgment in his blog at the same publication.)

Nick Olson at Christ and Pop Culture meditates on the themes of "grace" and "home" in the film here.

The folks at The Other Journal (An Intersection of Theology and Culture) have a series of three reviews on the film up. One on "Nature, Grace, and the Siren Song of Nostalgia," another on "A Son of Tears," and the last on "The Tree of Life and the Lamb of God." The first is critical, but the latter two are excellent thematic explorations ("A Son of Tears" especially), both involving terrific quotes from G.K. Chesterton. Recommended.

The group blog Filmwell has a few different posts about the film, including one comparing it with Biblical theology, one about experiencing the film as a father, and one about what Malick teaches us about cinema.

Jay Michaelson at Religion Dispatches explores the film's theological context here. Also at RD, S. Brent Plate argues that the film is really offering a third, compromise way through life exemplified by Jack's borther R.L.

Jeffrey Overstreet, an influential Christian film critic and a major fan of The New World, offers up his personal and mixed assessment at Image magazine. And the good folks at the Arts & Faith discussion boards have a thread on the film. The real meat of the discussion starts on about Page 9, but it goes on for pages after that; so if that's your thing, there's quite a lot interesting takes on the film there, along with provocative interpretations of some of the symbolism.

Alissa Wilkinson at Q Ideas sees the film as a reenactment of the Fall of Man.

Christopher Page, and Anglican priest from Canada, has an excellent account of his first viewing at his blog In a Spacious Place, here. (Read to the bottom, one of the comments there is very beautiful and moving.) He then followed up that post with no less than twenty (20) posts on The Tree of Life, and several others on Malick's other films. I'm not going to link to each of them, but they should all be indexed at this link.

The Journal of Religion & Film has a typically thorough review of the film here.

Liel Liebovitz at Tablet thinks, quite fascinatingly, that the film is "an important and masterful work of art. It's also the least Jewish film ever made."

And just for good measure, here's The American Muslim with a review that's mostly negative about the over-ambition of the project, but still recommends it as a worthwhile moral experience.

* * * *

Miscellany:

This article, by Jon Baskin at The Point Magazine, is one of the very best articles on Malick that I have read, though it is confined to his first four films. It says almost exactly what I think about Malick's perspective and central theme through his films: The ultimate thing he is trying to exemplify is a new way of looking at the world, one that sees "the glory," "all things shining," and the heroes of most of his films are the ones that display this ability most strongly. I quibble with a few of his details, especially about Badlands, but still: a must-read essay.

Richard Neer has written an in-depth, scholarly, and complex analysis of the opening of The New World at nonsite.org.

James A. Williams at PopMatters analyzes Malick's first four films in the context of "a career-long fascination with the archetypal narrative of a transformation from a state of innocence to one of experience."

Matt Zoller Seitz has a series of video essays at Moving Image Source on Malick's first four films here, here, here, and here. EDIT: And now, he has a terrific final essay on Tree of Life here.

Quotes to Illuminate The Tree of Life

2011-10-12T13:54:00.049-04:00

NOTE: In honor of the release of The Tree of Life on DVD and Blu-Ray this week, I am doing a series of posts on the film and Terrence Malick that will hopefully offer a couple new angles on it. This first post is a collection of quotes that may shed light on the film, whether by offering a philosophical or religious viewpoint, or defending a certain aesthetic, or just by being thought-provoking. Or perhaps they offer something only to me. Read and think about these quotes as you wish.

* * * *

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ---Genesis 2:8-9 [NIV]

The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during former years may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have at all times overmastered other species in the great battle for life. . . As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications. ---Charles Darwin

* * * *

'I was criticized for portraying people who are brave, honest, loving, intelligent. That was called weak and sentimental. People who dismiss all real emotion as sentimentality are cowards. They’re afraid to commit themselves, and so they remain ‘cool’ for the rest of their lives, until they’re dead—then they’re really cool."
— Mark Helprin

When people express what is most important to them, it often comes out in cliches. That doesn't make them laughable; it's something tender about them. As though in struggling to reach what's most personal about them they could only come up with what's most public. --Terrence Malick, Sight and Sound interview, 1973

A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again. ---Jean Renoir

* * * *

My son, carefully observe the impulses of nature and grace, for these are opposed one to another, and work in so subtle a manner that even a spiritual, holy and enlightened man can hardly distinguish them. All men do in fact desire what is good, and in what they say and do pretend to some kind of goodness, so that many are deceived by their appearance of virtue.

Nature is crafty, and seduces many, snaring and deceiving them, and always works for her own ends. But Grace moves in simplicity, avoiding every appearance of evil. She makes no attempt to deceive, and does all things purely for love of God, in whom she rests as her final goal.

Nature is unwilling to be mortified, checked or overcome, obedient or willingly subject. Grace mortifies herself, resists sensuality, submits to control, seeks to be overcome. She does not aim at enjoying her own liberty, but loves to be under discipline ; and does not wish to lord it over anyone. Rather does she desire to live, abide and exist always under God's rule, and for His sake she is ever ready to submit it to all men. ---Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
--Romans 7:15 [NIV]

And He will say, 'This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.' And He will hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down before him... and we shall weep... and we shall understand all things! Then we shall understand all!... and all will understand, Katerina Ivanovna even... she will understand.... Lord, Thy kingdom come!" And he [Marmeladov] sank down on the bench exhausted, and helpless, looking at no one, apparently oblivious of his surroundings and plunged in deep thought. His words had created a certain impression; there was a moment of silence; but soon laughter and oaths were heard again.
---Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

I caught sight of your invisible nature, as it is known through your creatures. But I had no strength to fix my gaze upon them. In my weakness I recoiled and fell back into my old ways, carrying with me nothing but the memory of something that I loved and longed for, as though I had sensed the fragrance of the fare but was not yet able to eat it. ---St. Augustine

* * * *

“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.” --Martin Heidegger

“To dwell is to garden.” --Martin Heidegger

“To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy.”

―Martin Heidegger

* * * *

[A]rt exists despite any logical conception. Look, we often say that certain artist, writer, musician, or director is a philosopher. But this is only a word. An artist, in fact, is not really a philosopher. And if we analyze his philosophical ideas, then it turns out that, in the first place, he is not original, and secondly, he obviously uses various well-known ideas or at least draws upon them. For he is really not a philosopher, but rather a poet. What constitutes a poet? This is a person who has the psychology and imagination of a child. . . So far as the artist and the work of art reveal the world and force us either to accept and believe in it or else reject it, then the only thing we can speak about is the religious impression a true work of art makes on a person. For it affects the soul of a person and a person’s spiritual foundation. --Andrei Tarkovsky

"Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema." - Andrei Tarkovsky

Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.” --Andrei Tarkovsky

"Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects?"

---Sergei Eisenstein

* * * *

Talk to me about the truth of religion, and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me of the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.

Unless, of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions “on the further shore,” pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There’s not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn’t be like that. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. . . The happy past restored.

And that, just that, is what I cry out for, with mad, midnight endearments and entreaties spoken into the empty air. ---C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Because she is in God’s hands.” But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? ---C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

For this is one of the miracles of love; it gives . . .a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

To see, in some measure, like God. His love and His knowledge are not distinct from one another, nor from Him. We could almost say he sees because He loves, and therefore loves although He sees. ---C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

* * * *

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

---St. Augustine

ANDRE: Have you read Martin Buber's book On Hasidism?

WALLY: No.
ANDRE: Oh, well here's a view of life! I mean, he talks about the belief of the Hasidic Jews that there are spirits chained in everything: There are spirits chained in you, there are spirits chained in me. Well! There are spirits chained in this table! And that prayer is the action of liberating these enchained embryo-like spirits, and that every action of ours in life, whether it's doing business or making love, or having dinner together, whatever, that every action of ours should be a prayer, a sacrament in the world.
Now, do you think we're living like that? Why do you think we're not living like that? I think it's because if we allowed ourselves to see what we do every day we might just find it too nauseating.

----My Dinner With Andre

And at last, slowly, afraid he wound find nothing, Douglas opened one eye.
And everything, absolutely everything, was there.

The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.

And he knew what it was that had leaped upon him to stay and would not run away now.

I’m alive, he thought. . . .

The grass whispered under his body. He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and, far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes. The wind sighed over his shelled ears. . . .His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Insects shocked the air with electric clearness. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. . . The million pores on his body opened. . .

“Tom!” Then quieter. “Tom . . . does everyone in the world . . . know he’s alive?”

“Sure. Heck, yes!”. . .

“I hope they do,” whispered Douglas. “Oh, I sure hope they know.”

---Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

* * * *

The Deva then caused himself to appear as a sick man; struggling for life, he stood by the wayside, his body swollen and disfigured, sighing with deep-drawn groans, his hands and knees contracted and sore with disease, his tears flowing as he piteously muttered (his petition).

The prince asked his charioteer, 'What sort of man, again, is this?'

Replying he said, 'This is a sick man. The four elements all confused and disordered, worn and feeble, with no remaining strength, bent down with weakness, looking to his fellow-men for help.'

The prince hearing the words thus spoken, immediately became sad and depressed in heart, and asked, 'Is this the only man afflicted thus, or are others liable to the same (calamity)?' ---The Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, A Life of the Buddha

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ---Genesis 3:1-5 [NIV]

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then. . . .I contradict myself;

I am large. . . .I contain multitudes.

--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

* * * *

1Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:

2“Who is this that darkens my counsel

with words without knowledge?

3Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.

4“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Tell me, if you understand.

5Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

6On what were its footings set,

or who laid its cornerstone—

7while the morning stars sang together

and all the angels [or Hebrew: the sons of God] shouted for joy?

. . .

12“Have you ever given orders to the morning,

or shown the dawn its place,

13that it might take the earth by the edges

and shake the wicked out of it?

14The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;

its features stand out like those of a garment.

15The wicked are denied their light,

and their upraised arm is broken.

16“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea

or walked in the recesses of the deep?

17Have the gates of death been shown to you?

Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?

18Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?

Tell me, if you know all this.

19“What is the way to the abode of light?

And where does darkness reside?

20Can you take them to their places?

Do you know the paths to their dwellings?

---Job 38:1-7, 12-20 [NIV]

Review: Drive

2011-10-11T11:52:00.003-04:00

"There’s a hundred thousand streets in this city. You don’t need to know the route. I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I’m yours. Do you understand? Good. And you won’t be able to reach me on this phone again.”

These are the first words the Driver says. After saying them, he does not speak again until he asks a girl in the elevator “What floor?” and notices they have the same stop. Then he refrains from speaking again until another day when he is in the girl’s apartment and asks where he should put down the groceries. In the meantime, he drives a getaway car for burglars, drives a stunt car for a movie, works on cars, goes to the grocery store, goes home to bed, all without speaking. Evidently he only speaks when there is absolutely no other way of being understood.

The Driver is an existential hero, defined not by what he says but by what he does. What he does is drive. When he drives, he and the car are one. It is not that he drives fast or that his car is cool. He is not defined by such trivialities as that. Instead, it is total control of whatever vehicle he is in, a symbiotic relationship of movement.

He is an archetype, a noirish Man With No Name, first cousin to Le Samourai, The American, and The Killer. And yet he is unlike them as well, for nearly all of his cousins are of the amoral assassin school, where they are perfectly willing to slaughter anyone they will get paid for killing--until, usually, love gets in the way. But the Driver is not a killer, not normally. It is only when his life, and the lives of those he loves are threatened that he reveals himself as deadly efficient with his hands as he is with a car. His murderous rage erupts out of him so forcefully that we suspect it was there all along, buried deep under preternatural calm. Perhaps it had been released before, perhaps this release was what necessitated his coming to LA in the first place, walking up to Shannon (his boss and only friend) off the street and asking for a job.

The Driver is locked into a pattern, a pattern that many have followed before him. He is a man of action and solitude, but he will fall in love with a woman, a woman he will idealize as beautiful and good. This love may feel redemptive to him at first, but it actually reveals his vulnerability for the first time, for if he cares about something that means he can be hurt. He will get involved in a crime that goes wrong, and bad men will come after him, and after the girl. He will kill them, but he knows it is not over yet. He knows that he will have to go to the top, he will have to take out the leader or he and the girl will never have peace. To kill the leader, he himself may have to die, but this is not certain. What is certain is that his relationship with the girl is finished--even if they both live through this, they are from two different worlds, and the violence inherent in the Driver's world cannot be overcome. He is separate at the beginning and he will be separate at the end, whether alive or dead.

This formula is a strong one, but it is a little disappointing. We have seen this before, many times. Could not this movie have some sort of wrinkle to surprise, something to change the formula, shake it up, let us see it in another light? But no. The movie may, from moment to moment, surprise us, but in the larger picture it is all predetermined, predictable to the last. There are also few major action scenes, and what there are, are brutally violent in such a suddenly horrific way that if the shots did not cut away so quickly the violence would be unwatchable.

The director, Nicholas Winding Refn, has been quietly making a name for himself over the past decade, mostly directing movies of crime and violence. His Pusher Trilogy is acclaimed, and Bronson gained quite a following a few years ago when it launched Tom Hardy’s career, while Valhalla Rising was more controversial, inspiring as much hatred as admiration. I have seen none of these films, but based on Drive alone, he is a remarkable stylist (though perhaps a derivative one) with a mastery over his camera and frame, revealing only what he wants us to see, never more.

The film opens with a cat-and-mouse car chase that is one of the finest scenes of its kind I have ever seen. The opening dialogue, the quietly thrilling and intense chase, and the credits rolled over shots of L.A. at night with Kavinsky’s “Nightcall” playing as the opening theme, are among the best beginnings in a film in years. It is a pity that the rest of the film is not quite as brilliant. It is not that the movie goes downhill, just that it ends up so predictable, and ultimately, so thin. The scenes between Ryan Gosling and Carey Milligan are sweet, and thrill with the possibility of romance, but everything is telegraphed through images and music--we never get a full sense of the dimensions of this relationship, and perhaps neither do we. Refn is intent on mythologizing his subjects, taking them down to archetypes and treating them as figures in an epic drama, but he also cuts out all the meat, leaving us with a rather thin stew of high style and surface beauty that ultimately has no real history or emotion to back it up.

The Driver is an enigma. This can make for great drama in movies, but unlike Charles Foster Kane or T.E. Lawrence, the Driver is not the type of enigma with lots of different pieces that are hard to fit together, but the type where almost nothing is known and we never find out more. I think Gosling’s performance is overall excellent: He knows exactly how to look and be cool, he underplays everything beautifully, and he manages to use his entire body in his performance, demonstrating an absolute economy of movement that is a true pleasure to watch. But he is never offered enough from the script to be more than an embodiment of cool. Oh, he breaks down a bit, and its clear there’s more going on under the surface, but this cannot be called a character study. At least not in the sense we usually mean, where we come to an understanding about a character through being privy to his emotions and actions. Instead, it is the physical study of the surface of a movie character: we get to watch him and enjoy watching him, but we never get under his skin. And since we never get under any other characters’ skins either, that leaves the film feeling rather cold. (I should perhaps note here that the whole cast is excellent, except for Ron Perlman, but they all play pulpy characters in a movie which wants to transcend pulp, so they can’t add the element of honest humanity the film so badly needs.) The second theme song of the movie repeatedly sings out “A real human name/And a real hero.” The Driver, though, is not the latter and lacks the former.

Refn is greatly indebted to Michael Mann, as well as Walter Hill, Wong Kar-Wai, Martin Scorsese, and the BMW short films starring Clive Owen as the identically (un)named Driver. (Really, that last one might be the most obvious influence here, but I didn’t think of it until just now and I haven’t seen anyone else mention it either. EDIT: The films are collectively called The Hire.) But the film never quite gives in to pastiche, like Quentin Tarantino or the Coen Brothers might. It also never quite offers more than a few moments of genuine emotion. The artiness of its technique might actually serve it poorly in the end, because it even denies us the pleasure of satisfyingly pulpy climax, instead relying on clever, beautiful style that still only conveys the image of profound emotion without the heart. So the more I think about it, the more the film feels empty: It doesn’t want to be “just about movies” but it doesn’t want to give too much away so it ends up at a bit of a half-way point where it isn’t really “about” anything at all, just style. Admittedly, the style is pretty brilliant--there were a couple moments where I thought to myself, “This is pure cinema”--but the more I’ve lived with the film afterwards, the less of value seems to lie underneath that. The plot is thin and cliched, the characters are archetypes we only see the surface of, and the emotions are barely glimpsed before they’re gone. I still liked it, I just wish I could like it more. Refn has enormous talent. I look forward to what he makes next.

Rating: 7/10 stars.

Attack the Block

2011-10-09T23:08:00.002-04:00

An instant genre classic, Attack the Block is the story of a group of inner-city teenagers in South London who are forced to band together and fight back one night when their council estate is attacked by space aliens. The aliens are small but vicious, less intelligent space travelers and more ravenous monsters--or as the kids refer to them, "big gorilla wolf motherf***ers.". The movie owes a lot to other genre classics like John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 and Walter Hill's The Warriors, and incredibly, it fully lives up to this pedigree.

Writer/director Joe Cornish got his start in cult British TV series The Adam and Joe Show and has since begun to make a name for himself as Edgar Wright’s writing partner on The Adventures of Tintin and the prospective Ant-Man. Like Wright, while he enjoys making humorous and unabashedly entertaining projects, he isn’t, like so many American comic actors, just a guy hanging out with his buddies and messing around until they get a funny skit going. While he likes working with friends, and this film sports Nick Frost in a supporting role, he is a highly talented professional who understands filmmaking at an intuitive level, knowing exactly where to put his camera and how to edit his scenes for maximum impact, excitement, and clarity. This movie, like Wright’s previous three features, really moves, with whip-tight editing and energy to spare. But unlike Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, this is no genre pastiche/parody, but a straight-up, gleeful example of the genre that acknowledges its debt to other genre fare only in the margins, recognizable only to those in the know.

The film is not only cleverly constructed, but terrifically written, with well-drawn characters who make strong impressions without having to have deep, complex inner lives that would only distract from the action. The dialogue is as snappy and hilarious as anything in the last couple years, apparently developed in concert with the young cast, many of whom come from inner London and are therefore experts on the “believe it, bruv” slang they toss back and forth with such verve. One of my favorite lines: When one boy is told to text all their friends and make sure everyone knows what’s going on, he responds that he only has one text left and “This is too much madness to fit into one text!”

There are also several strong threads of subtext in the film that have only grown more relevant, and probably controversial, in the months since its release. The London riots, especially, shown a very poor light on the exact type of characters here depicted, with semi-impoverished youths in hoodies running all over the city, mugging, looting, and setting things on fire. For much of England, these riots became a major crisis in both law enforcement and cultural confidence, bringing out all sorts of problems in the country’s class structure and entitlement establishment. The movie’s employment of such kids as heroes could then be seen as quite an offensive celebration of a group deserving of contempt, but it nicely sidesteps these accusations to become an exploration of the inner-city culture that both condemns and affirms as the situation changes. It starts with the kids who will become it heroes mugging a young woman, and it doesn’t let them get away with this or shove such a moral issue to the side. Instead, it teases out the various resentments and prejudices separating the different social groups in evidence and makes a strong case for greater understanding in place of hatred and blanket condemnation. In fact, I would make a case that the social politics on display here are even more perceptive and nuanced than those of Assault on Precinct 13, and that’s saying something. I think Attack the Block will prove to be one of the year’s best films, and will likely become a cult classic for years to come.

Rating: 9/10 stars

Ring them Bells

2011-09-16T18:34:00.002-04:00

Zel 2 from brent larson on Vimeo.

This is my new favorite song--"Ring Them Bells" by Bob Dylan. Sorry about that first video, it was the only version of the original song in embeddable form that I could find on the internet. And it's gorgeous, I like it, but it feels a little too personal for posting here.

Anyway, I posted this just to offer an interesting study in contrasts. My favorite artist of recent years, Sufjan Stevens, recorded a cover of this song for the soundtrack album to the film I'm Not There, and it's fascinating the differences that can arise between two artistic visions of the same material. Both of these versions are performed by geniuses (I think Sufjan is the only young artist working today who has a comparable genius to the young Dylan, though his effect may never be felt on the same scale), and I can't decide which I like better.

The way I see it: Dylan sings the song as an order from above, a proclamation of light in the darkness. The rest of Oh Mercy, the album the song appears on, is a vision of the world as broken, fallen, defeated, painful. But here, Dylan offers a reason to soldier on, a prophetic voice announcing the coming end of this world, when the tribulation will be over and the revelation will be at hand. His voice is craggy, ancient, powerful, yet not without its tinges of affection. The words are Biblical, but reworked for a rock song. Of indescribable age, but looking ever forward to what is to come. He is Jeremiah on high, declaring the way of the Lord in a time when that way seems lost.

Sufjan, on the other hand, is down below, looking up. Hearing the declaration from above he begins spreading the message to others. The darkness has dropped away; the hour that was prophesied has come. The joy spreads, and with it the song. Before long, the song has spread to multitudes, and all join in what has become a hymn of praise. All remnants of fear and sadness drop away. The song is remaking the world, and it spreads here and there, taken up by birds and insects, grass and trees, continuing without any words because none are needed, until finally the excess of joy subsides into blissful peace.

Others have covered the song as well over the years, yet none quite equal these two in my estimation. Gordon Lightfoot's version, though, is beautiful, pitched about halfway between Dylan's and Sufjan's, with a craggier voice but a more joyful delivery. He is the old man joining the young in their response to Dylan's declaration. But he does not continue the song as Sufjan does, he still sees it as a coming vision, not a prophecy made immanent. Joe Cocker also offers a tremendous cover, spreading Dylan's message with unequaled soul and passion--yet again the song is too short, it feels cut off, not allowed to break free and live on its own. Cocker continues Dylan's mission of proclamation, but that is all he does, he cannot make the song live on his own.

There are many other covers, from legends like Joan Baez and Ron Sexsmith, but they mostly come off too sweet or too clumsy--they do not have the power, the passion, or the joy of the original two. The one other version that does break its bounds, that grows as you listen to it, that manages to equal the passion and power, is by Heart singing with Layne Staley from Alice in Chains. For them, the song comes from a place of great pain. It is an outpouring of mingled grief and joy, a desperate cry for redemption and affirmation that redemption is already here. Their voices rise in harmony, and the song lives on.

P.S. I've been reading Greil Marcus lately. If you've ever read anything by him you can probably tell.

Never Forget

2011-09-11T16:30:00.003-04:00

Thoughts on Kelly Reichardt and Meek's Cutoff

2011-07-31T23:22:00.003-04:00

Kelly Reichardt has gained attention over the last few years as one of the most interesting and accomplished directors in the current American independent movement. As “indie movies” have become brand names with audience-expected styles and “quirk,” her films have remained defiantly independent and original. Each of her films have been shot on miniscule budgets with a minimum of cast and crew, and show no inclination whatsoever toward typical bright colors, witty dialogue, and ironic love stories of the current indie boom. Instead, Reichardt tells naturalistic, intimate stories of characters on the edge of society, with a minimum of dialogue, action, and fuss.

Her style initially reminded me of other micro-budget indies I’ve seen, but the comparison is more revealing in the differences than the similarities. The most common alternate style for these micro-budget projects is “mumblecore,” which is generally shot on cheap digital cameras and filled with lots of shaky close-ups and unmotivated zooms. The stories are often about characters of the same age and lifestyle as the filmmakers, and the stories often become unbearably awkward and navel-gazing, as contemporary relationship soap operas are played out in improv style to humiliatingly sticky effect. While Reichardt follows her (often no-name) actors on small, character-driven plots in a very naturalistic fashion with conversations that can feel improvised, her style is better described as minimalism. She shoots on film and uses a tripod--no shaky-cam here--and she shows an intuitive understanding of where to place the camera. Her shots are filled with interesting compositions and natural beauty. Her level of talent makes makes mumblecore stars like the Duplass Brothers look like amateur hacks, and exposes how artistically bankrupt the mumblecore style usually is.

Her movies have the feel of short stories. They are small, character-focused affairs that reveal themsleves through small details and unobtrusive observations. Like James Joyce’s tales in Dubliners, they often seem to be about the unnoticed epiphanies of everyday life, drawing feelings and emotions out into the open with the greatest subtlety. This can be partly attributed to her co-writer on her last three films, Jon Raymond. Both Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy are adapted from published short stories of his and Meek’s Cutoff is an original screenplay by him. Raymond and Reichart obviously work well together and complement each other nicely, turning insular prose into highly cinematic little movies.

To date, Reichardt has directed only 5 feature films. Her first, entitled River of Grass, played both the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals in 1994, and was nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Award and several Independent Spirit Awards. I have yet to see it, but it is reportedly a tale of lovers on the run in the Florida Everglades, though there is apparently little violence and the lovers have a hard time ever actually getting anywhere. Her second film is 1999’s Ode, which is an adaptation of Herman Raucher’s novel Ode to Billie Joe, based on the song by Bobbie Gentry. I managed to catch a crappy German TV version on YouTube, and I can’t say I recommend it. It’s a small, badly acted little film full of awkward lines. Reichardt’s style in her later films seems to be only beginning to develop here, but she does a nice job catching the atmosphere of the woods, with the light trailing through the leaves. Some of her usual themes are present, as the characters are teenagers who feel outcast and put upon by society, and attempt to work out there problems in the woods outside of town. There’s also a pleasant, jangly little score that foreshadows Yo La Tengo’s excellent work on Old Joy, and there’s no denying the film develops a reasonable amount of pathos at the climax. The actors are just too amateurish, though, to draw one in completely, and the weak scripting doesn’t help.

It was Reichardt’s next film, 2006’s Old Joy, that really put her on the map. A festival hit, the film was taken up by major critics like Manohla Dargis and Jim Emerson, and became a financial success, though a small one. The film follows two old friends, each probably in their early thirties, who reconnect over a long weekend as they go camping and visit some hot springs in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. The two men, played by Daniel London and Will Oldham, seem trapped somewhat on the edge of maturity, reluctant to leave behind their hedonistic/idealistic youths and take on the responsibility of the real world. They are not the stereotypical man-children of Judd Apatow comedies, though, but intelligent real-world men who feel a profound disconnection with their present circumstances, a desire for more without a clear sense of what that more might be. A spiritual malaise pervades the film, in the midst of everyday conversations and low-key arguments about directions. Reichardt subtly develops this from a general restlessness into an aching sadness, as Mark and Kurt gradually reveal bits of themselves, and it becomes evident that their connection here is temporary. After the film is over, they will go there separate ways, and further trips like this are unlikely to happen again. She attempts to connect this ache to a wider political reality, playing a couple long stretches of Air America dialogue which Mark listens to in the car. As a grounding for his character, a liberal at a loss in Bush’s America, this works fine, but as an attempt at further significance, I think it falls short. Mark’s unhappy ennui has much deeper causes than a simple dissatisfaction with who won the election; his marriage is tough, and he has a baby on the way, and who knows what other things are happening in his life that we don’t see? Plus, listening to radio pundits blather on about the evils of Nixon’s southern strategy, fighting and re-fighting old battles, simply isn’t as interesting as engaging with the characters sitting before us. Nevertheless, everything is redeemed at the climax, a wondrously beautiful and powerfully emotional moment of peace, as the two men finally find the hot springs and soak their tired bodies. Reichardt cuts between shots of running water, rain on leaves, moss on a rock, and the faces of Mark and Kurt in a quiet little sequence that shows complete mastery of her art, and the ability to evoke small epiphanies in her audience along with her characters. For this sequence especially, I consider Old Joy her finest work so far. Certainly it is the one that has touched me most.

Wendy and Lucy saw even more acclaim, and featured a brilliant performance by Michelle Williams. The story of a young woman, down to the last of her savings, traveling to Alaska with her dog, the picture has been compared to Bicycle Thieves and modern throwbacks to Italian neo-realism. Unfortunately, I didn’t like Bicylce Thieves (blasphemy, I know), and some of the same weaknesses show up here. Neo-realist films have a delicate aesthetic--they have to be very careful to stay naturalistic and believable, becauseany slip-up breaks the illusion and turns them into manipulative, annoying films attempting to impose a moral on you. Wendy and Lucy has only one major slip--at the point she shoplifts and the way she is caught. The teenage employee is completely unrealistic--strangely vindictive and angry, urging her manager to call the cops to make an example of her. Having worked in similar jobs before, I can say that this boy seems like nothing in my experience and immediately made me suspicious, taking me out of the movie. He also wears a conspicuously large cross around his neck, turning him into a distracting political symbol (of the lack of true compassion among outspoken Christians), instead of a person. Fortunately, the film recovers and eventually earned back my trust with its relentlessly honest portrayal of Wendy herself. Some have attempted to find political meaning in the film as a whole, and it’s true that it advocates compassion for the less fortunate, but it shouldn’t be seen as a political fable, like many of the Italian neo-realist films of the 1940s. Wendy is not typical of the modern American homeless population, and the film acknowledges this in her brief interactions with other outcasts. Making a young, beautiful, female movie star a symbol of homelessness would be a tasteless Hollywood move, and I don’t believe Reichardt is doing that here. Instead, she is telling a small, tender story of one girl who has made some bad choices and fallen on hard times and is struggling to hold onto hope when she has no one else to depend on. That is a story worth telling and hearing, despite its mild flaws.

Meek’s Cutoff is clearly Reichardt’s most ambitious movie to date, with a real ensemble of veteran actors to work with, not just a couple of unknowns. The film looks like it has an actual budget this time, though it clearly didn’t need to be large--just costumes and three wagons to complete period recreation. It was shot in Academy ratio 4:3, not widescreen, very unusual in the western genre, which traditionally emphasizes wide-open prairies. Reichardt still finds ways to emphasize the emptiness of the landscape, but it also creates a sense of claustrophobia amidst a wasteland, furthering the tension. She seems strongly influenced by There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men in the way she shoots landscape and small details.

The story follows a group of eight pioneers attempting to make it to the new settlements in Oregon. Their way is long and difficult, and they seem to be lost. Reichardt carefully maps the relationships between every character and how they can change and evolve from day to day. She focuses on details, like washing clothes, sewing, fixing wooden wheels, sitting on the bench detached from the front of the wagon and set on the ground. The film is mostly seen from the women’s perspective. Michelle Williams’ character is perhaps the strongest and smartest of the crew, though she is also the most circumspect, taking time to develop her opinions, then acting on them when she’s sure she’s right. He husband, played by Will Patton, is also a good man, but he isn’t as quick to take charge, and defers to her when she’s determined. Stephen Meek, their guide, has a beard and hat that are so ridiculous they look fake, giving him an air of untrustworthiness that feeds into the uncertainty and tension of the film. Played by a completely unrecognizable Bruce Greenwood, he talks a lot about bears and Indians he has fought and boasts of his friendship with Jim Bridger, and comes off as completely untruthful. But surely he has no ulterior motives for bringing them this way, for he is now as lost as they are. They cannot trust him, but he is the only one with experience in this sort of situation, and they have no one else to trust.

The film functions to constantly bring up conflicts among the various characters, between both personalities and worldviews. The other men of the party do not trust Meek, but they have no viable alternative to his directions. The tensions in marriages are investigated, as one man harshly orders his wife around while Patton’s character consults carefully with his. Meek’s extremely xenophobic view of Indians seems harsh even to the other characters in the film, but he is the only one speaking from experience. Williams’ character urges that they spare the life of an Indian they meet and follow his lead to find water and civilization. It is common in many westerns for characters of different backgrounds and worldviews to have their views and characters tested against each other in order to decide which was most wanting. John Ford was especially adept at this, as seen such films as Stagecoach and Wagon Master. Reichardt is doing the same thing here, but she refuses to resolve the frictions, instead leaving her characters in a perpetual state of uneasiness and danger. Her ending is already famous for its mysteriousness, and it’s sure to upset audiences all over. Her point seems to be a dramatization of the uncertainty of life, where our various disagreements and contradictions cannot be worked out in an hour and a half, and sometimes both sides seem to have logic on their side. This is a much more difficult and cerebral theme than her previous work, and the film frustrates from its refusal to grant catharsis. I can’t help feeling that the ending is meant to be hopeful, however, for there is a clear sign of going the right way just before that fade to black. Reichardt immediately undercuts it, but I’m not sure I can accept something that bleak.

Jon Raymond’s script is based on a true story of a group that broke off from the main Oregon Trail to find a shortcut and became lost. The original group was much bigger, and several people died. They did eventually find civilization again, though, which bolsters my claim to see hop in the ending. The film is intentionally both specific and ambiguous, leaving it open to numerous interpretations, from feminist and leftist rejections of Manifest Destiny to modern political parables of the choice between Bush and Obama. I don’t like those readings, but they can easily be argued, and perhaps because of that, I can’t call Meek’s Cutoff my favorite of Reichardt’s work. It is a finely crafted work of detail and abstraction that is well worth seeing, but its many uncertainties rest uneasily with me. Whenever I find an interpretation to grab hold of it with, it slips through my fingers and leaves me tetherless again. Nevertheless, her talent has never been less in doubt, and she continues to establish herself as one of the finest independent directors working today.

Happy Independence Day!

2011-07-04T15:46:00.002-04:00

Review: X-Men: First Class and Super 8

2011-07-03T17:07:00.003-04:00

X-Men: First Class is the fifth film in a franchise, but you wouldn’t know it to look at it. True, it has several in-jokes that depend on knowledge of earlier movies, but it has a freshness, fun, and vitality to it that none of its predecessors were able to muster, and that makes it a rare thing in the world of big-budget blockbusters, It is questionable whether it is the best film in the series so far--though it’s a photo finish--but a franchise that can maintain and even improve itself this far into its run without a complete reboot is almost unheard-of in Hollywood (Harry Potter is the only example I can think of off-hand).

Leaving behind “The not too distant future” of the first 3 X-Men films, First Class goes back in the time to the 1960s to tell the origins of the two patriarchs of the original trilogy, Professor Charles Xavier and Erik “Magneto” Lensherr. In the future they were enemies, but they began as friends, and the story of that friendship and how it broke over the irreconcilable differences in their philosophies. In the ‘60s, the existence of mutants is not widely known, but a few of them are soon recruited by the CIA to aid in the Cold War. In fact, it turns out that the Cuban Missile Crisis was almost entirely caused and ended by mutants.

The film gets off to an intriguing but rocky start, setting up the characters of Erik, Charles, and Raven (“Mystique”) with scenes from their childhoods and only gradually bringing them all together. The scenes following Erik are excellent--especially an early sequence showing him hunting down ex-Nazis in Argentina--but the child actors are pretty weak, and they prevent the opening from achieving all it could have. Eventually, though, director Matthew Vaughn pulls all his strands together and proceeds through a remarkable series of plot developments, action scenes, and retro-style montages, all staged and paced with no little precision. I especially liked the recruitment montage and the scene of beast’s transformation. Unfortunately, there are quite a few flaws along the way. The film was rushed into development, with only 10 months from start of shooting to premiere, and it shows. The script, while very well plotted, could use better dialogue and more character development throughout. Nearly every minor character feels under-served, and there are far too many lines that are awkward and/or on-the-nose. While the film never lacks for energy or action, it does suffer from lack of depth and emotion in most of its (numerous) subplots.

This is what ultimately separates it from the first two X-Men films, directed by Bryan Singer. Singer’s films were unusually ambitious for superhero flicks, attempting to engage with complex political and philosophical questions in ways that approached hard science fiction. They didn’t always succeed, but the attempt was admirable, and it is almost totally absent here. World-political power games are obviously dealt with, but the more delicate and personal politics of mutant rights and obligations as a persecuted minority are reduced to a couple sentences and the trite slogan “Mutant and proud.” This is not wholly missed, though, for it frees the films up to be fun again, something that Singer’s films too-rarely were. Vaughn is a much more confident action and effects director than Singer, and his scenes always move, popping with color and never resorting to Michael Bay-style superfast cutting. Singer’s films also had the benefit of brilliant casting, with virtually every role embodied perfectly by its actor (for an action movie, I mean). Singer put the focus on mood and character development, and even his minor characters emerged as genuine people, even though we were often denied a chance to get to know them better by plot and time constraints. He was also able to juggle a remarkable number of characters and plot threads, and this combination is what makes X2: X-Men United one of the finer superhero films of the past decade. But as I mentioned before, those movies suffered from a distinct lack of fun, and while some of their action sequences were excellent (the mini-setpiece of Magneto’s escape from his plastic prison, for instance), others were awkward and boring (such as Nightcrawler’s attack on the White House). Vaughn’s film is never boring.

It comes close a couple times, though, mostly because of some miscasting that one hopes could have been remedied with a longer production time. January Jones is wooden and boring as Emma Frost, one of the most complex and interesting characters in comics, and she drags down the scenes she appears in. The young X-Men other than Mystique and Beast are not necessarily miscast, but they are uninterestingly-cast, with pleasant-looking kids who never emerge as anything other than their powers. The evil mutant henchmen also never receive characterizations beyond that description. I also feel that Sebastian Shaw’s ability to influence world events was greatly exaggerated--unless I missed something, he convinces people to do what he wants just by threatening them with death by mutant powers. Surely he must have been offering/threatening with more leverage than that?

Nevertheless, there are too many things the film does right to get too uptight about these issues. Michael Fassbender is brilliant as Magneto, and James McAvoy holds his own as Xavier. Their relationship is the heart of the film, and these two actors make it compelling and emotional all the way through. Kevin Bacon is surprisingly excellent as the evil Sebastian Shaw--gleefully overacting in half a dozen different languages, but remaining a scarily seductive voice in all of them. Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult are pretty good in their roles, too, though they needed better lines to say. And it all builds up to such wonderfully epic conclusion, juggling multiple characters and lines of action in spectacular fashion, and finishing with tragedy and a well-earned emotional climax. In the end, depending on how you feel about Watchmen, this is probably the best superhero movie since The Dark Knight. Which isn’t saying that much, considering the competition, but is significant nonetheless.

* * *

It had been evident since the Super Bowl TV Spot that Super 8 was attempting to recapture the magical feel of early Steven Spielberg and Amblin Entertainment. What wasn’t clear until watching the full movie was how completely the film lives in those films’ debt. Super 8 is an unabashed homage to Spielberg that attempts to ape his style throughout its entire running time. It is bathed in that familiar otherworldly and focused on young characters who would be at home in E.T. or The Goonies, and individual shots and scenes continuously reference Spielberg movies, from Jaws to Close Encounters of the Third Kind to E.T. to Indiana Jones to Jurassic Park. It is a wonder, therefore, that Super 8 still emerges as an excellent movie in its own right, one of my favorite movies of the year so far and likely to be the best overall blockbuster of the summer.

It is able to do this because its homage is not of the jokey insider type, but completely sincere imitation, an attempt to create another classic Amblin movie like those of old. Director JJ Abrams was age as these kids in 1979, and this film is obviously very personal to him--about as personal as summer blockbusters get. Abrams loved Spielberg and George Romero just like these kids do, and made his own Super 8 mm films at that age. In fact, he owes his career to Spielberg, who gave Abrams and his friend Matt Reeves the job of restoring his own first Super 8 movies when they were 17. In light of that, this film can be seen as Abrams’ love letter to the films of his youth, and an attempt to inspire a new generation of young people just as he was.

The plot centers on Joe Lamb, a (roughly) 13-year-old kid in the small town of Lillian, Ohio, and his group of friends. His mother has died in a mill accident, and neither he nor his father have recovered from their grief. This tragedy, and the pain it caused, hangs over the entire film. Joe and his friends, who are making a zombie movie together, are all very well played by unknown child actors. Abrams clearly has a touch with them, and they interact wonderfully--and hilariously. It is their performances that suck us into the film. The stand-out of the group is the lone girl, Alice Dainard, played by Elle Fanning. She is quickly becoming a wonderful actress, and appears quite a bit older than her 12 years. The relationship between Joe and Alice is the heart of the film, and their awkward/sweet tweenage romance is beautifully observed. This, perhaps surprisingly, is what Abrams does best throughout the film: bring out the best in his actors and make us care about these very human characters.

Of course, all this gets complicated by an absurdly massive train crash the kids observe one night, and the monster that is unleashed on the town. The monster stuff is pretty good, too, but it works best when the creature is just a shadowy threat, dragging people off into the night. The creature’s backstory is underdeveloped, and attempts to give it motivation and audience identification never quite come off. The military shows up to corral the creature--which had been imprisoned on a military base--and commences stonewalling the local authorities, evacuating the town, and arresting anyone who gets in their way. This is the part that annoyed me most about the film--the lazy and insulting villainization of the American military. It seems almost impossible to have a monster or disaster movie these days without blaming it on some sort of secret military experiment, and the trope has become tired beyond belief. Aside from this, the depiction of American servicemen as cruel, murderous, and tyrannical in our popular entertainment when these same men and women are fighting and dying for their country overseas at this moment, is an offensive and all-too-common Hollywood trend. Fortunately, Abrams never has the military turn completely evil or kill civilians--they are just attempting to clean up a potentially dangerous situation as quickly and quietly as possible.

As I said, the monster plot is undernourished, its background glossed over too neatly, and motivations one-dimensional. Nevertheless, it all builds to quite a climax, which unfortunately reaches for an emotional catharsis it doesn’t quite earn. If the third act plotting had been a little stronger, it would have worked. As it is, though, it comes very close, and the emotionality it was reaching for is an audacious enough touch that I’m willing to give it a pass. Would that more films could show characters learning forgiveness rather than ending in violent conflict.

I could see Super 8 becoming a minor classic--its certainly better than The Goonies, and we all know how popular that film remains. Ultimately, though, the film doesn’t reach greatness because Abrams simply isn’t The Master. Spielberg has an instinctive understanding of images, shots, and camera movements that you just can’t teach. With Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., he tapped into something elemental, creating masterpieces that were beautiful and full of wonder as well as thrilling and accessible to all. Time and again, Abrams quotes him, and achieves some reasonable effects. His characters carry the day with heartfelt performances and excellent, naturalistic dialogue. But Spielberg worked in images of iconic power, communicating everything important in those films without using words. Despite his many followers, none since have been able to do that in the same way.

* * *

Both Matthew Vaughn and JJ Abrams reach far with their newest films, and they each deliver their finest achievements yet. They each deliver exemplary popcorn entertainment, filled with well-executed thrills and homages to their influences. Neither, however, can reach the level of their idols. They remain too wedded to silly stylistic tics, like Abrams’ overuse of lens flares, or clumsy camera moves in important scenes, like Vaughn’s awkward cutting in Magneto’s first encounter with an ex-Nazi, which undercuts the tension. They also remain too dependent on the quality of their scripts, which too often have weak dialogue and confused climaxes. Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Christopher Nolan, and Quentin Tarantino remain the gold standard of modern blockbuster entertainment, and no one looks ready to challenge them yet. There remains a second tier of popcorn directors, however, who are sometimes inconsistent, but nevertheless capable and nearly always worth watching. This tier includes Robert Zemeckis, Bryan Singer, Sam Raimi, and just maybe Zack Snyder. I think both Matthew Vaughn and JJ Abrams have now made convincing cases to join it.

X-Men: First Class Rating: 7/10
Super 8 Rating: 8/10

Schedule/Apology

2011-06-22T20:23:00.001-04:00

So I've been trying to post more often, but I haven't been succeeding very well. Procrastination is one of my greatest weaknesses, and it's been showing up here just as it has in other areas of my life. I do have things I want to say that I think are fairly interesting, it's just getting them written and posted that's the hard part. I have about four pages of ideas for posts, reviews, series, musings, and such, as well as fairly extensive notes for reviews of Super 8, X-Men: First Class, Meek's Cutoff, and The Tree of Life, plus extra thoughts on Hanna. I also have notes for posts on a comparison of three Spielberg films, five films of Robert Bresson, an overview of the career of Peter Weir, and the animation of Yuri Norstein, plus a few random reviews of things like Black Swan, Let the Right One In, Miller's Crossing, and Inglourious Basterds. I would also like to do a write-up of my favorite films of the last decade, which I would like to start by mid-July.

So I guess my point is that I'm a pretty slow blogger, but I don't want to be. I have big ambitions, I'm just not too good at meeting them yet. With school out this summer, I would really like to get up to at least one post a week, more if I can manage it. But we'll just have to see. Anyway, I hope to have at least a few reviews up here in the next day or so--all I really have to do is transfer them from a notebook to the blog. So if you're one of my very few readers, thanks for being patient, and watch out for more content in the future--it's coming.

Review: Sucker Punch

2011-06-20T22:43:00.001-04:00

This review is very late to the party on Sucker Punch, though I myself was not. I saw it the week after it opened, and again a few nights later, and I must say it’s gotten a bad rap. People hated this movie. It became a critical punching bag for most of a month. Even regular supporters of director Zack Snyder and this of genre mash-up ran for cover. The film and its director were criticized for being incompetently made, badly scripted and acted, and pretentiously stupid. It was accused--vehemently--of being a juvenile, masturbatory, misogynistic desecration of a movie, symbolic of the worthlessness of modern popular cinema and fanboy fantasies everywhere. Yeah, it wasn’t pretty.

Now, I’m not saying a couple of those criticisms aren’t accurate, and I’m not sure the movie’s actually good (I wouldn’t know who to recommend it to), but I kinda liked it, and I think most of those accusations are pretty overblown. Perhaps it’s just my own impulse to contrariness, but the more criticisms I read, the more defensive and supportive I felt, and my second viewing of the film only confirmed my opinion. So I’m going to attempt a defense of the film here and see if anybody agrees with me.

First off, I’ve never been a particular fan of Zack Snyder. I enjoyed 300, but only because I was laughing most of the time. I was supremely excited for Watchmen, but after enjoying it in the theater I gradually came to the conclusion that it destroyed all the book’s moral complexities in favor of extra-graphic sex and ultra-violence (though my liking for Sucker Punch has convinced me a re-viewing is in order). I haven’t seen Dawn of the Dead or Legend of the Guardians. So I really only went to Sucker Punch to be part of the conversation (that worked out), and I was genuinely surprised by how much I liked it. Granted, I started off skeptical, and there were parts I thought were ridiculous, and I really hated the end credits sequence, but I came out of the theater thinking, “You know, that was actually pretty good,” and my opinion grew stronger over the next couple days.

The story focuses on Baby Doll (Emily Browning), a young woman who is apparently 20 but looks 16, who loses her mother to illness and while attempting to protect her sister from her abusive stepfather, accidentally shoots the girl instead. Her stepfather sends her to a mental institution and bribes the male nurse (Oscar Isaac) to have her lobotomized in a week’s time. Unable to deal with all this, Baby Doll slips into a fantasy world, where she and the other patients/inmates are burlesque dancers/prostitutes who must plot an escape from the evil pimp (the male nurse). They do this by distracting authority figures with Baby Doll’s erotic dancing, then sneaking around and gathering banned objects to use in their escape. When Baby Doll dances, though, she slips into another fantasy/layer of reality, where she and the other girls are super-commandoes fighting their way through various landscapes that mash up anime, steampunk, cyberpunk, fantasy, and video game imagery--this is where most of the footage in the trailers comes from. Unfortunately, their great escape plan goes horribly wrong, and not all the girls get out alive.

Snyder films the whole thing in his distinctive style: cool characters in mostly CGI environments, moving with lots of slow motion and set to operatic rock music. This style has its ups and downs. It’s hard to depict complex themes when everything is so exaggerated, and action scenes don’t really become more exciting they’re slowed down. I certainly understand those who can’t stand it. Nevertheless it has its charms. It allows for the creation of ridiculously gorgeous/awesome/just-plain-ridiculous environments, with the camera lingering on details and moving in and out of the action to give us as many angles as possible. Unlike Michael Bay (who does share a certain immaturity and attempt to make explosions really gorgeous) and other quick-cut and shaky-cam directors, Snyder generally makes his action spatially coherent and physically comprehensible. He’ll slow things down, then speed them up, but where before that seemed like a distracting tick, here it felt to me like a familiar friend. Literal eye-candy that doesn’t offer much suspense but sure is fun to look at. He drapes the whole film in wall-to-wall rock music, mostly remixes of classics, notably the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” the Pixies’ “Where is My Mind?,” and Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” He syncs up his psychedelic imagery and video game action sequences with the songs to create pseudo-music videos which also advance plot. There’s something about this synthesis that grabs me, and occasionally puts a big, goofy grin on my face. It’s ridiculous, as I’ve said, but it still manages to capture a mood and a movement and plunge you into a gloriously surreal world of the imagination. Snyder’s style is heavily influenced by Quentin Tarantino (especially Kill Bill and the way QT picks up and discards genre styles and tropes at will), as well as Baz Luhrmann, and the delirious way colors, effects, and songs can combine to create emotion in Moulin Rouge. The nearest I can come to analogizing my pleasure in the style Snyder creates here is the delight one can get from the purple prose of an old EC horror comic, or a pulp writer like Robert Howard. The writing is over-the-top, overly descriptive and faux-poetic, but the fact that it’s not actually good poetry matters not at all--it achieves its own delight and mesmeric power through its total commitment and blindness to its own verbosity.

The actors are a mixed bag, but several of them give surprisingly good performances. This seems to be a common quality in Snyder’s movies--a few characters extremely well-cast and gripping (off-)balanced by a few really bad, exaggerated performances that make it difficult to judge the ensemble accurately. Here the acting honors go to Oscar Isaac as the deliciously evil Blue. He strides dominates every scene he’s in, moving effortlessly from devilish comedy to genuinely scary anger. Browning as Baby Doll and Abbie Cornish as Sweet Pea are also strong. Though neither lights up the screen like Isaac, they end up carrying most of the plot of the film, and they hold up well. My favorite, though, was Jena Malone as Rocket, who almost singlehandedly imbues all the girls’ interactions with humor, emotion, and sexiness. Her character arc is not especially large, but it is the most personal and dramatic, and I admit to feeling the emotion of her last scene pretty strongly. She was also my favorite thing about Donnie Darko, and I admit to having a bit of a crush on her. She and Isaac really make the film, for me. On the other hand, Carla Gugino is horribly over-the-top as the Polish psychiatrist/madame, a weird, porny stereotype come to life. Jamie Chung and Vanessa Hudgens don’t embarrass themselves, but they’re not given much to do, either. And Jon Hamm shows up for one scene where he seems completely out of place--though that may have been due to time and rating cuts. Scott Glenn is in a strange category by himself as the Wise Man, the only character who is clearly tongue-in-cheek. I say “clearly,” though some reviewers didn’t take him that way and it took me a little while to be sure as well, but the little aphorisms of wisdom he imparts to the girls are so clearly nothing but silly cliches--and the fact that he wears eyeliner in every scene--pushes him well past the line into intentional goofiness. I’m not entirely sure how to feel about him, since he is supposed to signal real growth in the girls, too, but I feel certain that we are supposed to laugh at him as well.

Now for all those accusations I cited above: I do not believe the film is either deeply feminist or deeply misogynist. The film clearly does wants to be a feminist-geek cult object; it wants to take stereotypes and comic book roles for its women and then turn them on their heads, making all men into hulking, threatening rapists, and the girls into superheroes who reject patriarchal tyranny by taking measures into their own hands--it would be a mistake to see it otherwise. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite make it there. The plot sets up the themes, but they never follow through with anything like real profundity, and I readily admit that searching for deep meaning in this film is a fool’s errand. There are morals, and there may be hidden plot complications, but deep meaning is something it doesn’t really have. So I accept that it is a failed feminist anthem.

The accusations of misogyny, on the other hand, are pretty wildly off the mark. They rest on a surface reading that dismisses all the pseudo-feminism as crap and simply looks at the style and outfits of the film to find it sexist. The truth is, the girls do dress in stylized, revealing outfits throughout the film, but the outfits aren’t used as a sexualization. The burlesque costumes the girls wear are treated as prisons--they reflect the dinginess of the brothel around them, and act as oppressive symbols of their subjugation. (Their little-girl names are also symbols of this male domination--but they take of hold of the names and make them their own.) When they enter the third level of reality--the action sequences--they get rid of the burlesque costumes to bedeck themselves in leather uniforms/armor, influenced by everything from The Matrix to Batman to Sailor Moon. Of course, one can see misogyny here, too, if one is so inclined, but I think that would be a mistake. The uniforms are not especially practical, but they are not nearly as revealing as many outfits worn by female superheroes in today’s comic books, and they are never sexualized in these sequences--clearly, they are meant to be as “awesome”-looking as possible, the female equivalent of generations of masculine heroes whose outfits emphasized their musculature and impossible coolness. Whether this represents a desirable style of heroism for women is another matter. I don’t see many girls running around looking for hyper-stylized, violent female action heroes. On the other hand, the actresses starring in the film obviously loved it. They delighted in going to press junkets together and describing the training they went through and the great fun they had, as well as emphasizing the way the film is supposed to be liberating for girls. And in the first (late) showing I attended, of the five people in the audience, three of them were girls. Bottom line on Snyder’s depiction of women: He clearly cares about these characters as people and wants us to care, too. He never once, that I noticed, directs his camera at the girls in a truly titillating or eroticized way, except when depicting the point of view of evil male characters, and then only very briefly. He never shows Baby Doll’s mesmerizing dance, because the dance is not important except as a plot device and showing it would be sexualizing her. I saw more titillating objectification of female bodies in the 2-minute trailer for Fast Five before the film, and that’s a fact.

Ultimately, I can’t claim Sucker Punch as a completely successful or really “good” movie--there’s too many flaws, too many narrative inconsistencies, too much slow motion and scenes that fly wildly over-the-top. But I think it is a genuinely enjoyable movie, one with a unique style and some really breathtaking moments, populated by several honestly compelling characters and a pretty sweet soundtrack. It doesn’t live up to its ambitions, but it deserves a much better reception than it got, and Snyder deserves to be watched in the future. If he can one day succeed in completely marrying his style with a tight, exciting plot, and genuine emotion and complex themes, he will be a force to be reckoned with.

Rating: 6/10 stars, objectively, but I’m leaning toward a 7/10.

This guy is the only other person I can find who makes a strong defense of the film. He goes farther than I do, but he helped clarify my own opinion. Other people who take the film seriously can be found here and here and here. I don’t agree with the first link’s argument that it’s all ironic, and I don’t think I want to, but it’s intriguing nonetheless. The second link is a really excellent article exploring the film’s imagery and symbolism (not always positively). The third says many of the same things I said, differently.

I Hate it When People Are Rude During Movies

2011-06-10T17:32:00.001-04:00

I think most people do. It's nice to know some theaters are taking a stand against it.

Recent Movie: Thor

2011-05-31T23:00:00.001-04:00

Light and frothy, Thor is essentially a kids movie, with shiny costumes and goofy characters. As such, it is harmless summer entertainment, though not very compelling, with little real danger or violence and stakes that are so ridiculously huge that they have relatively little urgency.

The sets and effects are big and overblown, and they achieve a certain kitschy grandeur. Most of the characters are given short shrift, especially the earthly ones, who are entirely one note. The only actors who come out of this looking good are Chris Hemsworth, excellent in his first starring role as Thor, Tom Hiddleston, Machiavellian and (relatively) complex as Loki, and I suppose Idris Elba, as the intimidating Heimdallur. The plot is both convoluted and simplistic, with an akward structure attempting to support universe-spanning events rendered in the most obvious comic book-y way; the type of thing where characters can destroy inter-dimensional pathways with hammers. That might be the best way to think of the movie: as a sixties-era Marvel comic writ large. It has an innocence and cheerfulness that mostly makes up for its general silliness. On the other hand, I can easily see the general cheesiness of many scenes leading it to become a cult classic 20 years down the road, watched only for its camp value. As you can see, I'm of two minds with this one, but I think its good nature wins out. It's dumb, but not stupid, tiresome, or offensive.

Rating: 6/10 Stars.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

2011-05-31T22:59:00.000-04:00

The blogosphere has been alive over the past month or so with raves for this film, directed by acclaimed Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and winner of the 2010 Cannes Palme D'or. Unfortunately, I can't join in the praise. Frankly, I didn't get it, and I'm not sure what I'm missing. I readily admit my judgment is not the "correct" or best one to follow here, so all I can offer is a subjective account of what I liked about the film and what I didn't.

I came to Uncle Boonmee with a lot of excitement and expectation. I had been hearing about it since its premiere at Cannes a year before, and the reaction had been universally positive. Every critic around assured me it was a masterpiece for the ages, one of the few high points of a weak festival, a feast for the mind and the senses. One critic even suggested that when Uncle Boonmee won the Golden Palm, "What happened in 2010 was what would have happened in 1960 had L'avventura won over La dolce vita. The myth that cinema has been in a state of steady regression is crushed once and for all." (Incidentally, I also hated L'avventura, but for completely different reasons. There the characters were so completely empty they drove me to rage and despair, and by the time the film was over I wanted to punch something. That was not the case here.) I understood that the film would be slow, filled with long, lingering shots of trees, grass, and jungle, and a calm, gentle attitude toward plot and character. I knew it might be a challenge to get through and that it wasn't the sort of thing that would play to a multiplex, and these expectations were certainly correct. Where my expectations were off was an overconfidence in my own ability to get through the film and an overestimation of the level of masterpiece I would be watching.

I have watched a fair amount of slow, airy, and/or spiritual cinema over the past year, including but not limited to films by Terrence Malick, Robert Bresson, and Andrei Tarkovsky. I think that I was expecting something of a cross between Edward Yang's Yi Yi and Malick's The New World, both films I fell in love with on first viewing and regard as absolute masterpieces of the highest order. What I got, though, was more mystifying than either of these films, and left me feeling frustrated and irritable rather than awestruck or even mildly confused. Many other films, like some of Bresson's, have left me with mixed and uncertain feelings, which eventually coalesce into admiration, when I have applied thought and time to what I've seen. With Uncle Boonmee, though, I've just grown to dislike the film the more I've thought about it, and I'm not sure why that is.

I saw the film in the newly restored IU Cinema, a beautiful theater with comfortable seats, frequented by art-appreciative crowds. I went with my father, who is not a connoisseur of such films, but took a fancy to see this one with me. Our seats were comfortable, the atmosphere pleasant, the audience quiet, and I settled in ready to immerse myself in the film. I found the opening scene remarkably beautiful--the water buffalo pulling at its rope while incense smoke rises from the grass. It reminded me of the horse that rolls over near the beginning of Andrei Rublev, though I'm not sure why; it had something of the same transfixing, symbolic beauty. At the same time, I was very conscious of what I was watching and thinking--I did not find myself given over to beauty and transcendence as I did with The New World. I hoped that I would feel this way eventually, but it turned out that this was the closest to the feeling I would come.

The next scene showed Jen and Tong riding in a car, and it lasted a long time. I was conscious of this length but not overly bothered by it, because I had expected things like this. Nevertheless, it established the pattern: Individual shots and scenes throughout the film would take my breath away with their mundane-yet-otherworldly beauty, but these would be followed by long scenes that left me cold. There's nothing exactly wrong with these scenes that I know of, they just seemed to lack signifcance to me and I found myself waiting patiently for them to end so more interesting things could come along. I suppose this sounds like I just got bored with the movie because it was slow, but it wasn't really that. I was engaged by certain scenes more than others, but for the first two-thirds of the movie I was still fascinated, if rather mystified. Other scenes which struck me with their beauty were the ghostly dinner scene, the shots where Jen walks through the orchard, and the journey to the cave. One shot I particularly admired was just an "empty" shot looking out at a hammock on the porch, the vast jungle trees swaying with the breeze in the background. That scene did seem to me to achieve a certain beauty and peace.

Unfortunately, I found the meandering narrative further broken up by what appeared to be scenes from Boonmee's past lives, though the is only a guess as they were left completely unexplained. The main scene is the already-infamous catfish scene, which involves a princess apparently receiving oral sex from a large talking catfish in a lagoon. I have no idea what this scene means, or how it connects to the rest of the movie. It seems to be a fragment of a fairy tale, but why it is here is so vague that I'm not sure there's even an answer. Certainly I haven't found any reviewer who's actually tried to answer it. The scene is partially redeemed, though, by its final shot: The camera dives beneath the waves to see a torrent of bubbles, kicked up by the thrashing princess and the nearby waterfall. The bubbles fly everywhere in an incredibly beautiful abstract composition. This is probably the only shot in the film I thought ended too soon.

It is the last twenty minutes, though, that really threw me for a loop. Boonmee and company travel to a cave in the jungle, and then inside it, past crystals that look like stars, to a vast cavern where Boonmee is to die. It is a mesmerizing sequence that is beautifully done and immediately suggests comparison to Plato's Cave, and the discovery of meaning. But here, instead of finally giving answers or more boldly engaging with the questions tangentially raised so far, the film spins off into a still-photo montage of kids with guns and a guy in a monkey suit. What does this have to do with anything? What does it mean? I had no idea then and I have no idea now, despite reading a dozen different reviews of the film by intelligent, appreciative critics. They offered a few possible explanations--another past life, a future life, another story of monkey-ghosts, a reference to one of Apichatpong's other video projects. Most said it was a political comment on that region of modern Thailand, but what sort of comment and to what end no one bothers to explain, if they even know. Whatever its meaning, from this point onward I found myself completely divorced from the events and characters of the film, alienated instead of involved, with no idea what to feel or think about the events onscreen.

After Boonmee's death, the others go back to the city. They hold a funeral with a huge, garish, tower of electric lights and plastic to commemorate him (the contrast with the naturalism of the jungle is obvious here, at least). Then they go sit in a hotel, watch TV, and sort letters. Tong takes a long, real-time shower. Then he and Jen get up and leave other versions of themselves still sitting, go to a karaoke bar, and a pop song plays over the credits. What does all this mean? I don't know, and frankly, at this point, I don't care. I expended quite a lot of energy trying to figure it out, reading other reviews, thinking, and discussing it with my dad, and I'm no closer to finding an answer than when I started. I left the theater feeling confused and uncertain, and now I've come the point of irritation and exasperation. That may seem petty, but it's how I feel. If the last act of the film has any meaning--and I think it does, Apichatpong is nothing if not a serious filmmaker trying to make major statements--then it is known only to him and a chosen few. It is closed to me, and there's nothing I can do but throw up my hands and give up.

I understand that plenty of others disagree with me and found the film truly powerful and brilliant. I am not by any means saying my opinion is correct on this one. I went in with high hopes and wanted to like it. And I did like certain scenes and shots quite a bit. It is clearly a significant aesthetic achievement, but I'll be doggoned if I know what it means. Even the themes that seem clearer to me seem rather underdeveloped. Hardly and reference is made to past lives, and having three sentences about Communism is apparently considered a powerful political statement. Clearly the fear of death and the effort to die peacefully and well is at the forefront of the film's mind, and that, at least, seems well-served and successful. Everything else is so oblique, vague, and mystifying that it doesn't really make any impression on me at all. I find that discouraging. You may have noticed my reference to other cinematic masterpieces in this post, pretty clearly an attempt to bolster my own cinephilic credentials for a negative review. Hopefully I wasn't too whiney about it. I will reserve judgment on Apichatpong's works as a whole until I have seen more. I especially wish to see Syndromes and a Century; if and when I do I will offer my updated opinion.

If you want reviews of Uncle Boonmee that are actually appreciative of the film and try to explain it more thoroughly, I recommend going here, here, here, here, or here.