Boyhood

The awards season and the accolades it's received have brought Boyhood back into the limelight, making that piece I've been putting off for several months finally topical again.

I saw Boyhood back on August 30 at IFC. My immediate impression was that the existence of the film was quite a feat, but the film was not mind-blowing in and of itself. While the passive storytelling wasn't extraordinary per se, it was a demonstration of precisely what I love about Richard Linklater's work. His films explore the passage of time like no other filmmaker, and this project seemed like his ultimate experiment.

A lot of time has passed, obviously, between when I saw the movie and now, as I write about it, so I won't bother to list its many fine attributes or plot points, but one of the aspects of the film that has really stuck with me is Mason's characterization. I've heard that many critics, those both underwhelmed and awestruck, felt that Mason was hollow or completely reflective of his atmosphere, that he was too passive or poorly drawn to carry the film. I disagree. One thing I absolutely loved was that this was a true picture of an introverted character in film.

Though my circles were pretty universally in love with Boyhood, I've been hearing a lot of backlash about the film since the Oscar nominations and the Golden Globe wins. Of the most striking critiques, the one about how Boyhood doesn't capture or represent everyone's boyhood, just that of a Texan WASP, caught me a little off-guard. Of course this isn't supposed to be everyone's boyhood; it's just a boyhood. Was that not clear? Perhaps it's just because I'm a black woman and I'm used to watching and relating to others onscreen despite our most obvious differences, but I never assumed I was watching a stereotypical childhood unfolding onscreen before me. Mason's quiet demeanor was one of the most telltale signs for me that I wasn't just watching any kid grow up. Not to say that he was special, but it does seem like every other movie is pedaling a version of the hot-blooded American male that is assertive, loud, non-discerning, and decisive, not to mention white and mysteriously (financially) carefree.

So when I started making out the portrait of a quiet, thoughtful, hesitant kid, I found the idea of Mason refreshing. I also related to it, as someone who grew up with a similar demeanor, and I realized we don't see much of it in film.

Why is that? What other examples of quiet, thoughtful, observant (non-fantastical) characters do I have to relate to onscreen? It seems that they always have an extra characteristic tacked onto them, almost like a shorthand that makes them seem taciturn despite their necessary dialogue or explain their away their silence: the brooding hottie, a la James Dean, Gilmore Girls' Jess, or Steve McQueen's Bullitt; the depressive, like Paul Dano's Dwayne in Little Miss Sunshine; or the psychotic, from Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men to Norman Bates. (Let's table the fact that I couldn't think of any compelling quiet women characters to mention for another discussion.) None of those characters were quiet, thoughtful people who drank in their surroundings just because. Introverted people rarely have the time and space to fully develop onscreen.

I realize that it's much harder to fully develop a character with a rich inner dialogue than it is to create someone who is self-aware enough to just lay their thoughts bare to anyone who will listen. I recently saw Inherent Vice, and I thought Joanna Newsom's Sortilège was a really nice way to voice the inner essence or perhaps higher consciousness of a character. She serves as narrator as well, but she also allows Doc to be as thoughtful as he needs to be in the moment without him having to piece the puzzle together for the viewer himself. That said, all of those moments she was speaking as his conscience, she was doing just that—speaking. Boyhood was also a triumph in my eyes because there was so much space in which to think, to live, to soak up and experience time, just as Mason was doing.

Most viewers take for granted that onscreen characters are often telling us everything that they're feeling. Yes, it is a visual medium, and yes, we bestow awards on those actors who can best channel unexpected, raw, unfiltered emotion while speaking the words of the script. I totally support and understand that. But even emotions and gestures can be loud and attention-grabbing, especially when they are supposed to register what sometimes amount to sweeping changes over the course of a two-hour film. I really loved that Mason's character was able to be carved out of and through time through small, subtle reactions and events. Because we spent so much time with him over the course of twelve years of moments (and, of course, because of Richard Linklater's deft cinematic and storytelling choices), we are able to observe when he chooses to speak up and when he doesn't, when he chooses to actively take part in something and when he chooses to hang back and watch. And the film ends—appropriately, in my opinion—just as he is beginning to take those lessons and accumulated experiences and exercise some agency, as he goes off to college to explore the wilderness and begin to find the right words to say aloud.

I agree that Boyhood is a feat, and that time is really the essence of all of its grandeur: the very idea of the project, the commitment of the cast and crew to such a long undertaking, the passage of time made visible, and the fact that it was finished at all are all impressive successes in their own rights. But I want to also give credit to the kind of characterization that is uniquely possible with this type of project. I was struck by something Ethan Hawke said in a recent interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, that real formative moments don't often happen in the blink of an eye or at one important turn of events; impressions are absorbed and then harden into thoughts and feelings over time, and those thoughts and feelings grow into the building blocks of what we believe as teens, students, and adults. The temporal space of the film gives Mason's character room to breathe and form as slowly as personality realistically does, especially for a quiet, thoughtful person as he turned out to be.

Breaking Out of the Cycle: Llewyn Davis is Left Behind at the End of the Folk Revival

Last weekend, a few friends and I went to see Inside Llewyn Davis. I don't think I'd been to the theater since seeing The Master back in February (after everyone else had seen it), so it was nice to revisit the big screen. And I must say, it was definitely a good choice for a first flick back. The Coen Brothers have brought out their A Serious Man side again, and it's arguably my favorite side of their repertoire. The dark and muted cinematography—beautifully rendered by French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel in a subtler turn from Amelie and A Very Long Engagement—takes us right back to 1960s Greenwich Village, a tricky but successful feat since the Coens like as much on-location photography as possible. Each character is dispatched so economically, so that every one of their appearances, no matter how many minutes of screen time they are given, evince a deeply believable relationship to the protagonist that is instantaneously recognizable, be it a longtime friend, a fellow traveler, or a tastemaker with the upper hand.

On the surface, the film features the titular folk singer down and out, couch-surfing his way up and down Manhattan, as he fails to jumpstart his career and insensitively steps on the toes of everyone else in his life in the process. Llewyn is lost without the other half of his musical duo: his solo effort hasn't sold any copies, and he is languishing at the darker end of the success gradient than the other musicians in his circle. During the film he strains the relationships he has with his married friends Jim and Jean, also musicians, by not respecting the former and possibly impregnating the latter. He also simultaneously takes advantage of and keeps at arms length the care of his surrogate parents in the film, the Gorfeins, an academic couple on the Upper West Side who treasure their hip "bohemian friend." He even manages to use and disappoint his sister, his only immediate relative in their right mind. In short, in a lot of ways, much his lack of success can be placed squarely on his own shoulders.

Plot-wise, the movie is framed by two stays at the Gorfein's house, two performances at the famous Gaslight Cafe, and one or two (depending on your interpretation of where this lies in the fabula of the film) alleyway beatings. At the beginning of the movie, Llewyn finds himself at the Gorfein's empty house the morning after a rough night, makes himself some breakfast, and takes off with his guitar and bag, accidentally letting the Gorfein's cat loose on his way out. At the end of the movie, he finds refuge back at the Gorfein's house after a bender and wakes up in a similarly empty house, but is sure to leave the cat indoors as he leaves. The film opens with Llewyn's performance at the Gaslight; his performance at the end of the film even features the same closing schtick. And again, Llewyn takes a pretty vicious alleyway* beating both at the beginning and the end of the film. One gets the feeling he has gone through all of this before. Indeed, even borrowing money and couch space is all too familiar to those around him for his behavior to be an occasional occurrence. He is homeless and he is a sponge trying the patience of those around him, and part of his fatigue stems from the fact that even he knows this cycle is not sustainable. After the movie, most of the friends I was with agreed that Llewyn's story was one of self-sabotage.

But I believe that this movie is bigger than just Llewyn. I don't think he's just an asshole stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage. To me, it was clear that the film was chock full of signs that Llewyn was not alone in the muck in which his wheels were spinning. While at fellow singer Al Cody's house, trying to stash his records, he finds a box of Al's own solo effort just as full as his own and sporting eerily similar cover art. Troy Nelson, the perky but perhaps tragically ironic soldier in from Fort Dix, is eager to make it big. His friends Jim and Jean are nominally more successful at drawing a crowd, but near the end of the movie Llewyn learns that Jean sleeps with the owner to earn a spot on the bill. Every wannabe knows where to play, but no one is breaking out of the scene. One of the lessons that stood out to me from these signs is that just because a scene is big or that an artistic revival is in the offing doesn't mean that it will be lucrative in its pure form.

In 1961, the year in which the film takes place, folk music was still, in the true sense of the word, trafficking in known standards and tied to the protest efforts of grassroots movements—from the true folk. To make a famous, 1960s TV-worthy career out of it, the genre would first have to evolve into something more mainstream, something Llewyn's character does not believe in. And it eventually did. But as the style of music evolved and gained popularity during the 1940s-1960s folk revival, the definition of folk music itself widened, from only encompassing traditional music and standards to connoting often original music that used similar instrumental and vocal arrangements and dealt with grassroots subject matter. Being based in 1961, Inside Llewyn Davis is not arbitrarily on the cusp of this push into popular dominance. Many of the big names of the revival (Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez) were big because they were committed to these movements, and while they may not have left the genre after its peak, their fame retreated to the background along with it during the rise of more mainstream work. This is a compromise Llewyn, and many in the pure scene, probably would not have made.

Two developments helped to change folk music into a lucrative art and take it to the next stage of its evolution, and both are present in the film. The first was the willingness of some members of the scene to lend their folk sensibilities to pop music. Jim, Justin Timberlake's character, writes and records the silly pop tune "Please Mr. Kennedy" that strikes all the right notes, name checking the president, outer space, and those rock 'n'roll stutters that are sure to make it a hit. Llewyn is enlisted to help record, but he can't help but scoff at the stupidity of it, and doesn't even bother to think ahead to what royalties he's sure to miss out on as he signs away his rights. While true folk fans might see songs like this as watered down or selling-out, real-life bands like the The Byrds and the Mamas and the Papas took off in the mainstream because of the pop-folk combination. The second development was a willingness to apply folk sensibilities to original music. Instead of sticking to the standards, as beautiful as they still are, artists like Bob Dylan sang their own poetry and simultaneously elevated and blew apart the whole genre.

Thus, it is important that the break to Llewyn's cycle of misery doesn't come from within, as it might in a typically protagonist-centered film, or to even Llewyn personally. As SM so aptly pointed out soon after we left the theater, Bob Dylan's (or more truthfully "Bob Dylan's") appearance at the Gaslight at the end of the film means that the cycle is broken for the whole folk music scene. Bob Dylan's rise to fame killed off the Greenwich folk scene, and whatever hopes the Llewyn Davises, Troy Nelsons, and Al Codys of the world had of making a career out of traditional American songs were effectively dashed. Songwriters and original music dominated the late 1960s and 1970s and the standards receded to cult status. I am not giving any commentary on folk music here; I am a big fan, and I think traditional music is both enjoyable and important. But my point is that I don't think Llewyn Davis was ever going to succeed, and the viewer is there as he finds the end of his rope.

One thing SM and I observed in a discussion about all of this is that the people most likely to make it big were the people less likely to be purists. This is true in the film as it was about the implosion of the folk scene. Llewyn may have put down Jim's ditty, but the audience knows that it might just be Jim and Jean's ticket out of the village and into the family life they want. I think part of what made Bob Dylan so successful was that he wasn't bound to a genre or a style, the music that came out of him went beyond that, reached past folk, and you could hear it. Folk was just a starting point, whereas for Llewyn and many others in the scene like him, it was the goal. There's a line in the film, after Llewyn plays for a club owner in Chicago: "I don't see any money in this." And he's right. The standards are beautiful, but, unfortunately for Llewyn, the scene was right about to come into its own.

Bullitt

The last few 1960s-1970s thrillers I've watched recently have not been what I'd imagined. Marathon Man, The Great Escape, The French Connection all turned out to be much grittier, much less polished than I'd expected from all of the hype. They deserved the praise that preceded them, yes, but it just wasn't what I had prepared myself to see. Each of them was much more present and unpretentious than I'd grown used to movies being. In a way it's great that the accolades accrued over time haven't smoothed their edges or magically updated their contextual charm, but sometimes we (or at least I) forget how impossible it really is for time to do that to a great film.

After experiencing this with countless "timeless" thrillers of yore, thanks to Netflix's ample back catalog, I should have known better than to underestimate Bullitt. It wasn't until a year or two ago that I finally climbed onto the Steve McQueen bandwagon after being introduced through The Great Escape. I'd expected a much more traditional American hero, whatever that means, and I was half pleasantly surprised with McQueen's charm, half wondering what all the fuss was about. The effect was similar as I started watching Bullitt, but it was the film itself that really got me.

The sound was one of the key factors that pulled me in. Music appears out of nowhere as the action ramps up, and then disappears before the climax and the fallout. Much of the film is quiet and dependent on the diegetic sound: breathing, footsteps, live bands, and car engines. I could write a whole thesis on the sound design in this movie, transcribing the notes I couldn't help but jot down throughout, but I'll resist for now. (The fax machine! The car chase! The last sound of the running water!) Needless to say I was little surprised to learn that the film was nominated for an Oscar in sound design.

It successfully won recognition for Best Film Editing, which didn't surprise me either. It wasn't even nominated for cinematography, though, but perhaps the novelty of the camera work is what's most appealing to me — it has aged into recognition, at least in my book. The number of creative angles, especially point of view shots, that punctuate the film (in its silence) were particularly noteworthy. Instead of leaving a scene after the dialogue, the camera often follows important bit players in the drama in its own subtle foreshadowing. What really does it, though, is that the camera is often fixed to one point. Not until eight years later in 1976's Marathon Man would the steadicam change cinematography forever — its fluid movement often taken for granted nowadays — but most films I've seen from before the advent of such equipment skirted around those limitations; they didn't use the fixed camera to the effect I saw in Bullitt. Instead of leaving a cab with our characters, we stay fixed on a bobble-head dog in the back window and accompany it into the car wash, our view of the subject of the scene obstructed by suds, water, and finally hands with buffing towels. At times we stay tight on the rear view mirror during a chase. We ride along inside the car, right beside Bullitt, going up and down the San Francisco hills as the engines hum.

And it was in these moments that I embraced Steve McQueen's character. He doesn't even need Clint Eastwood's steely glare to support his strong, silent maleness. He doesn't yell, he just barely grimaces ( and since he did most of his own stunts, those were probably coming from a very real place). He doesn't tell, he shows in a real way, physically shielding his female companion from harsh realities without a word. Actually, the film itself matches Bullitt's personality closely: a lot of silence, a little bit of a girl, and music only until you need to focus. It's no nonsense just like him. I know it's trite to end an essay with this, but I wish they made movies like this now. The making of this piece of art is so tangible in the result, and it is so well-crafted, yet it's seamless and earnest in its grit like the other movies of its era. Perhaps those palpable feelings can't be recreated today. But we are really missing out.

There is a classic Antonioni dorsal shot at some point in the movie (that also reminds me of On the Waterfront). I couldn't fit it in here, but I got really excited!

One quick thought about HBO's Girls

So, last night I finished Girls' first season. SM and I had started it while in Minneapolis on a quiet night with nothing else to do but peruse my mom's On Demand offerings. Both of us had pretty tepid reactions to the show. Immediately I could tell that it was of high quality, well made in pretty much every respect. And fairly early on I knew that I despised most of the characters. Which is sort of what you're supposed to think, so I hear. We finished one episode, shrugged, and moved onto the next, more out of laziness than a genuine interest in the show. We burned through the first four episodes.

Last night I finished the remaining 6 episodes. I do have to admit I ended up more invested than I thought I would be, but the bar was pretty low. The characters are still incredibly annoying to me, but that's just it. For me, it's not about the lack of diversity or anything — I completely buy that their entire social friend group is white and privileged and living in NYC-normative bubble — it's just that I think I'm at the wrong age to watch the show.

I'm too old to think about these characters as flawed heroes and view the show as a fun but cautionary New York tale, and too young to think back on the mistakes of my youth and view the show from a wiser vantage point. I realize this is totally on me, totally subjective, but I just relatively recently hit a point in my life when I feel comfortable shedding the social burden of obligatory acquaintanceships and hanging around with people I don't like, and I can honestly say I don't like those characters. I think of myself socializing with them, and it kind of makes me vomit in my mouth, or at least concoct exasperated, end-of-my-rope diatribes for each one of them (except maybe Zosia Mamet's Shoshana). It's just too close to home for me (literally and figuratively) to choose to hang out with these people, and I feel like the closest I'll let myself get is to watch their stories unfold with the same interest I have in thirdhand gossip about people I was annoyed with in high school. I'm mildly interested in a sick way, but I have no desire to get more acquainted.

So the writing's great, the direction is good, the craftsmanship is well executed, but it just features too toxic of a group of girls for me to feel completely comfortable.

Movie Diary: Django Unchained

While in Minneapolis for a week, I was sure to take advantage of the cheaper movie prices in my fair city and check out Django Unchained with some friends. I loved it. I'll just give the grade up front and get to my favorite aspects below: A.

So, maybe my opinion of the film carries more weight because I'm black, maybe it doesn't. But I don't think Quentin Tarantino was overly flippant with the subject matter at all. In fact, I this might be the least Tarantino of his films yet, and I think it's better for it. Outside of some western motifs (Tarantino has claimed that this is not a Western, but a Southern), the film is incredibly unique. Unlike some of his other films (I must say of which I am a fan), there is no list of tropes to check off because this is not an homage. Revenge film doesn't even cut it. It's something entirely to itself, and I don't even know if it can be replicated (and if it could be, I don't know if I'd want to see it).

The film is tight where it needs to be. It's really in three parts: 1) Django (Jamie Foxx) and Dr. Schultz (Christophe Waltz) meet and establish their working relationship; 2) Django is good at what he does, and after helping Schultz with his bounty-hunting, they set off to save Django's wife, Broomhilda; 3) Django saves his wife. It's a three hour movie, but Tarantino is succinct when he needs to be, trusting the audience to understand that parts of Django and Schultz's relationship was necessarily built offscreen, and that Django has eagerly picked up on some of Schultz's influence to add to his own strong character.

In fact, one of the strongest parts of the movie to me was the singularity of Django's character. There aren't only white people to whom we can compare his character; there are other types of slaves, too, who see Django with jealousy, hatred, and fear, and rightly so. If I was a slave and saw Django, a free man on a horse with a gun, I'd think he had a death wish, and I'd wonder who he'd sold his soul to to gain that position. I wouldn't trust him with a ten foot pole. And that's just from the field hands' and Mandingos' point of view. One of the really interesting characters is that of Samuel L. Jackson's head house slave, Stephen, who is simpering and sycophantic and blind to the depths to which his owner's disdain of blacks extends. I've read and heard about the peculiar position of the house slave, about how the close relationships between master and slave were perhaps genuine but could only go so deep. We watch Stephen's devotion knowing that if the positions were reversed, the results would most likely be devoid of his effort and emotion.

This brings me to another aspect of the movie I really liked. This was not a self-contained romp, unlike Tarantino's last "revenge film," Inglorious Basterds. There is no vanquishing of a mighty spectre, no cathartic killing of Hitler. Instead, a tension permeates the entire film, the knowledge that Django is stuck, that he is one man in the south, surrounded by people who hate him and a society that systematically degrades him. I was constantly anticipating his capture and his murder knowing that that would be it, all they had to do is kill him and it would be over. The reason I think this film did not treat slavery flippantly is that the scale was just right: large enough for us to cheer for the hero but small enough to remember how far-reaching slavery was (and its legacy is). In the end, Django freed only three slaves outside of himself (the two house slaves and his wife, although I guess there's something to be said for what happens to those on the plantation after the end), and he attacked only one plantation. That there were hundreds of plantations and hundreds of thousands (millions?) of slaves puts a strange twist on the ending of the movie for me and effectively ends the fantasy right where it should. There's no "if only" for me, just some badass triumph for a well-deserved character in a complicated and hateful time period.

I will say, though, that I agree that this movie probably could not have been made by a black person now. After all, how many black filmmakers are there, and of them, who is equipped to take on slavery by the horns, without a maudlin or saccharine lens, with an interest in empowerment and complicated race relations outside of a good vs. evil/black vs. white paradigm? I don't think anyone else out there, maybe even outside of the black community, was ready to give this kind of view to the time period. I've always maintained that Tarantino's movies are love letters to his various interests, and I don't think this entry in his oeuvre is any different. It means he treats his subjects with a care and subjectivity that really shows through in his work. He's less advocating for his subjects than he is showing them a portrait of how he views them, in this case strong, singular, taking one fight at a time to battle something much bigger than oneself. Although this film may be less derivative than his others, I think that's a through-line worth maintaining.

Movie Diary: The Master

SM and I finally went to see The Master on December 22, and the wait paid off because we got to see it in 70mm. Needless to say, it was a gorgeous movie, but I would have to say it was not my favorite P.T. Anderson film.

Don't get me wrong, I thought the film was great, but I found myself a bit less enthusiastic as I left the theater, perhaps just be because it was a less obvious character study than, say There Will Be Blood, and more of a theoretical exploration of leaders and followers. I will say that once I theorized a bit, though, I found the premise really intriguing, if a bit hard to grasp right away.

Let me back up and submit what I think the movie is about. Less focused on religious sects or cults than I'd anticipated, I found the real struggle to be the tension between those who lead and those who refuse to be led. The way SM and I discussed it afterward, believers seem to be set on their own spectrums, on which they have two markers connected by a tether. The first marker is their current position; the second marker is the placed where they want to be spiritually; and their religious life consists of striving to get to that second marker. It seems the stronger the believer, the tighter that tether. This might be true for any religion, but it was certainly so for Amy Adams' character, Laura Dern's character, and the other believers in the group: they saw in the distance a goal they wanted to achieve — whatever The Master wanted it to be — and they believed themselves moving their first marker along their tether to it, picking up slack as they went along.

I posit that Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, group/cult leader Lancaster Dodd, is continually moving not his current marker, but his goal marker (according to his prerogative as leader), and thus the goals of the entire believing congregation. If the controversy surrounding a cult or group of believers is whether or not those set goals are legitimate, attainable, and consistent, as the viewer of the film is given a vantage point outside of the group, it becomes questionable whether Dodd's goals pass this test. But to those following him, if they are invested in their own goal marker, they will be invested in him, and vice versa. Isn't this always so for any religion? You must be sold on the goals and believe you are moving forward (despite struggles to do so; the struggle to stay focused on moving forward is always incorporated into religious doctrine) to keep your faith.

Now, Joaquin Phoenix's character, WWII veteran Freddie Quell, is plagued with all sorts of problems, but the one that is most vexing to Dodd's followers is his lack of a goal marker. If the two markers are tethered, Quell's goal marker trails behind him as he moves along. It makes him directionless in more ways than one, but religiously it makes him unpredictable and worse than a skeptic. A skeptic may have their goal marker set in a different place, perhaps more tied down to this world or perhaps more attainable, but it's still there. Freddie, though, isn't even capable of being convinced of the investment, and thus his current marker can run parallel to the others, but to what end and for how long? For Dodd's followers, Quell inspires fear; for Dodd himself, Quell inspires the utmost interest — he is an enigma. While Dodd has ultimate control over his goal marker and may or may not be yanking it around at will or whim, his faithful followers barely deigning to question, Quell barely even knows he has a goal marker to swing around. Quell may be seen as an challenge to Dodd: he may be the most manipulatable one of the bunch, if only he could tie him down.

The cinematography was beautiful, the performances were impeccable, the story was rich, but a bit hard to pin down. I give this movie an A-.

The Ken Burns Effect

When I was maybe 10 years old, I started watching documentaries for fun. The first ones I watched were those by Ken Burns, shown on PBS. When I started making documentaries of my own, the fact that I could bring stills to life like Ken Burns did was incredibly cool, and I was really proud of myself. Ken Burns talked about his signature "moves" on POV recently. Enjoy.

Movie Diary: Argo, Cloud Atlas, and Flight

This entry would have packed more punch had I not procrastinated writing it for over a week. Alas, the information is the same.

Two weeks ago, SM and I went to three movies in 6 days, after a theater drought lasting a month or two. There are lots of movies out that I actually want to see, which doesn't always happen, so I'm glad to be able to take in at least a few of them.

Friday: Argo We've started somewhat of a tradition or habit with our friend JRF that involves us hanging out for a time at a bar — catching up, watching a game, what have you — and then getting the hankering to see a movie. The past two times we've done it, it was almost like we were daring each other, calling each other's bluff to stop everything and go see it now. The last movie was Looper; a solid and thrilling effort all around that we rushed to at 11:30pm on a Saturday night. I'd give it a B+. This time, we were watching the Bulls game along with JRF and our friend VP and decided on the 10:30 showing of Argo.

Argo was good. I loved the commitment to the time period throughout: even the opening production company credits were from the 1970s. The acting was great by all of those involved. I was especially happy to see Clea DuVall, an actress I've rarely seen outside of Carnivale and that one Buffy episode where she's invisible because no one noticed her. I've also been a Chris Messina fan since Six Feet Under, and, while I think The Mindy Project is too meh for me to actually stick to watching it, I'm glad he's popping up in more places. (Yeah, yeah, the bigger-name actors great too, and I was happy to see John Goodman, Bryan Cranston, etc, etc...) People complain about Ben Affleck, but I thought gave a solid performance, in front of and behind the camera. SM and I had a conversation about his range, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I do really want to see the other projects he's helmed, but I think we've calculated that it takes us 3 years to get completely through our Netflix queue, from bottom to top. Good movie - B+.

Saturday: Cloud Atlas Our friends J&C had asked us to form some sort of book club to read Cloud Atlas before the movie's release at the end of October. SM missed out, but the three of us were all read up by the time we reunited after Hurricane Sandy and celebrated both our power being back on and their recent engagement by going to a movie and dinner.

I have this problem where, if one of these things is not like the other and someone is experiencing something under different circumstances from me, I'm taken out of my experience and spend most of my time fretting about how that someone is handling it. I worry about a parent in a theater full of teens, or a co-worker among my friends, etc. In this case, I spent the entire movie trying to get outside of myself and see the movie how SM must have been seeing it, without the context of the book. As a result, I concluded that it was much too confusing to take in without the background of the novel. Afterward, SM said that he could follow along fine, and he really liked the movie, but that was after I'd given up hope that he'd been enjoying himself. All that said, I really liked what the Wachowskis did to the story. I am always thinking about media being the best whatever it is they are that they can be (the best novel, the best movie, regardless of them being based on the same story), so I appreciated the choices and cuts they made to the stories. I actually thought the film did a much neater job than the book ever did of tying up loose ends and putting fine points on each story as well as on how they all connect. It was this aspect of the movie that SM said came across as heavy-handed, but I guess since I knew what I was missing, I was rather satisfied. I'd like to watch the movie again without all of the pressure of thinking and feeling for my company, but for now, I'd give the movie a B.

Thursday: Flight GC and AW emailed us and VP about going to see Flight, and we saw no reason to say no. The power of the Denzel picture has certainly diminished in my eyes, but not to a point where I'll refuse to see his work. I'm really glad we decided to go, and not just for the bonus of seeing John Goodman in two pictures in 6 days.

First of all, the story was more unique than I'd acknowledged before. True, it's just a good old fashioned redemption story, but the nature of the obstacles the protagonist encounters — beyond alcoholism — aren't your normal movie fodder. Granted, I haven't seen many addiction stories that are purely about addiction, so maybe I'm just ignorant of the genre. The aspect of them film I liked best was that it was first and foremost about a man and his demon. Friendship, love, occupation, etc. are all parts of the film, as they are parts of our lives, but they don't triumph over the man's problems. He is given so many chances, and you see so many points at which you expect him to bottom out, at which another movie would give in for him and sober him up. But then you realize that it's gotten bad for us and bad for his friends on his behalf, but it hasn't gotten bad enough for him. And he's the only one who can really decide that enough is enough. The denouement is perhaps a little too overwrought, but I did like the very end. One last aspect I would be remiss to mention is that he reminded me a lot of my dad. Not that my dad has a problem with addiction or anything, but the relationship Denzel has with his son is reminiscent of what I saw between my dad and my siblings. It actually made me uncomfortable throughout the movie, and seeing middle-aged Denzel in general might cause discomfort for similar reasons. I think that's one reason the very end spoke to me more-so than it did to SM. A-.

Calling out the Bullshit

DS gave me this essay by Jonathan Franzen to read, and I thought it was fabulous. I recommend it. I've never read Franzen's work because I was afraid I'd encounter the post-modern headaches he so aptly rails against in the piece. After this, I think I'm more willing to give him a try.

Here are my favorite parts:

Fiction is the most fundamental human art. Fiction is storytelling, and our reality arguably consists of the stories we tell about ourselves. Fiction is also conservative and conventional, because the structure of its market is relatively democratic (novelists make a living one book at a time, bringing pleasure to large audiences), and because a novel asks for ten or twenty hours of solitary attentiveness from each member of its audience. You can walk past a painting fifty times before you begin to appreciate it. You can drift in and out of a Bartok sonata until its structures dawn on you, but a difficult novel just sits there on your shelf unread — unless you happen to be a student, in which case you're obliged to turn the pages of Woolf and Beckett. This may make you a better reader. But to wrest the novel away from its original owner, the bourgeois reader, requires strenuous effort from theoreticians. And once literature and its criticism become co-dependent the fallacies set in.

For example, the Fallacy of Capture, as in the frequent praise of "Finnegans Wake" for its "capturing" of human consciousness, or in the justification of "J R" 's longueurs by its "capture" of an elusive "postwar American reality"; as if a novel were primarily an ethnographic recording, as if the point of reading fiction were not to go fishing but to admire somebody else's catch. Or the Fallacy of the Symphonic, in which a book's motifs and voices are described as "washing over" the reader in orchestral fashion; as if, when you're reading "J R," its pages just turn themselves, words wafting up into your head like arpeggios. Or the Fallacy of Art Historicism, a pedagogical convenience borrowed from the moneyed world of visual art, where a work's value substantially depends on its novelty; as if fiction were as formally free as painting, as if what makes "The Great Gatsby" and "O Pioneers!" good novels were primarily their technical innovations. Or the epidemic Fallacy of the Stupid Reader, implicit in every modern "aesthetics of difficulty," wherein difficulty is a "strategy" to protect art from cooptation and the purpose of this art is to "upset" or "compel" or "challenge" or "subvert" or "scar" the unsuspecting reader; as if the writer's audience somehow consisted, again and again, of Charlie Browns running to kick Lucy's football; as if it were a virtue in a novelist to be the kind of boor who propagandizes at friendly social gatherings.

And near the end:

I know the pleasures of a book aren't always easy. I expect to work; I want to work. It's also in my Protestant nature, however, to expect some reward for this work. And, although critics can give me pastoral guidance as I seek this reward, ultimately I think each individual is alone with his or her conscience. As a reader, I seek a direct personal relationship with art. The books I love, the books on which my faith in literature rests, are the ones with which I can have this kind of relationship.

Picking the Nolan Bros. Apart Again...But Not Too Much

After we saw The Dark Knight Rises last weekend, the four of us left the theater a bit underwhelmed. Not necessarily disappointed, just underwhelmed, noting the lackluster dialogue in particular. But my reaction was a bit more nuanced: what does it mean to dislike a film, anyway? Didn't it do what it was supposed to do, namely entertain? Should every film aspire to an Oscar in screenwriting and direction? I have mixed feelings about this, but I'm leaning toward no. I don't necessarily like the idea of Hollywood pouring millions of dollars into box office bombs, but I will admit that I enjoy a good thrill ride of a movie, whether it has hokey one liners or not, as long as it does its job well.

So what makes TDKR different? I think what gets people (myself included) particularly fired up about Nolan brothers films is that they pretend to philosophical depth. They make people think, both about the complex plot of th movie and the larger ideas their characters and plots stir up. But think about them too much, and you see just how fragile their complicated setup ends up being. The catch is, I don't think this is a bad thing. How much do you really have to think about a movie? And this is coming from someone who writes about films for fun. Just because they stir up questions, does it mean they owe us answers? I think A.V. Club's Noel Murray puts it best when he brings up the following points:

would answering these questions (and the questions their viewers have about the movie) enrich the movie and experience, or would it just make the film longer?

If a film does take a political or social stance, is "that alone...a reason to dislike the film?"

And lastly, when does a weak story irrevocably diminish the spectacle, craft, or thrill of an enjoyable movie?

I very much enjoy thinking about cinema, and I have zero desire to just experience a movie from a purely passive point of view. However, I do think there's a point where analysis can go too far, and "suck the fun out of discussing" and watching movies. It's an interesting notion to keep in mind.

Deadly Hymns

It took me years after watching Fallen starring Denzel Washington to listen to The Rolling Stones' "Time Is On My Side" without my blood curdling. Last night we watched Night of the Hunter, and it's going to be a long time before I hear "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" the same way again. *shudder* Have you had any songs take on alternative, eerie meanings for you in similar ways?

The Science of Sleep

How many movies do we actually end up rewatching? There are movies I think are utter masterpieces I've seen only once. Movies I truly love, I've probably only seen between two and four times. It's really only the lighter fare (Super Troopers, Dazed and Confused, The Warriors, etc.) that I've given the once every 4-6 week treatment to, and then for finite periods of time. No matter how much you might have changed since your last viewing, sometimes, there just doesn't seem to be a point to spending another two hours immersed in a world you've already visited.

SM hadn't seen Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep before, so when it was playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center last week, we decided to take advantage. I adore Michel Gondry's imagination and visual creations, but it hadn't been one of the movies I'd really put a lot of thought into rewatching. The first and last time I'd seen it, I'd come away both defensive and disappointed. Gondry's music videos and general DIY arts approach to filmmaking has been influential for me ever since I saw the White Stripes' "Fell in Love with a Girl video" in 2001. I was floored when Eternal Sunshine came out in 2004, and bought the Criterion Collection of his short videos as soon as I could. Needless to say, with his body of work in mind combined with my intense crush on star Gael Garcia Bernal, expectations were high when Science of Sleep came out in 2006. Instead of having those expectations met, however, I left the theater unable to explain what I'd just seen. I thought it was muddled and disorganized in spite of its incredible set design and animation techniques, which I'd seen as its only redeeming element. I answered my doubts with a dismissive familiarity with Gondry's work: "what else did I really expect? With such a creative mind as his, it's hard to have so many ideas, such an expansive vision, and keep it cohesive and in check." I went into this second viewing excited to enter his world again, but didn't expect much from the movie itself.

This time, I was truly impressed. Instead of fighting through my own expectations, I was able to watch the film with a much more discerning eye. There was so much reality going on just under the surface that did a lot to support the whole premise, so many details I hadn't caught before that make each choice much more intentional than I had given it credit for.

The film opens with French-Mexican Stephane Miroux (Bernal) moving to Paris to be with his mother after his father dies of cancer in Mexico. He moves into his childhood room in his mother's former apartment in a building she owns, and starts a job she sets up for him. He is a creative type and likes to draw, invent, and make things with his hands, a hobby he has had since he was a child (he turns off the light switch from his bed with an elaborate pulley system attached to a mallet). The job turns out to be much less fulfilling than he'd expected, and he is continually stymied by his inadequate French. Things quickly get a lot more interesting, though, when he meets his neighbor, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), from across the hall as she's moving in. She originally thinks he is part of the moving crew when he ends up helping (and hurting) her moving efforts and getting himself hurt in the process, and invites him in to have her attractive friend, Zoe, tend his wound. While Stephanie is attracted to him, he is initially attracted to Zoe, creating a bit of a triangle. After he gets to know Stephanie a bit more and sees her creative pursuits, though, he begins to change his mind.

The variable that takes the movie on a loop is the surrealistic elements of the film. From the beginning, we are treated to the view from inside Stephane's head. In his mind he has his own television show, complete with cardboard sets, on which he is the host, cooking up the ingredients of his day into dreamy concoctions that lead to DIY-style fantasy sequences about his father and his new surroundings as he sleeps. As the film progresses, though, those fantasies blend with reality to calamitous results. Just as things are getting friendly with Stephanie, he nakedly sleepwalks across the hall and slips a dream-written note under her door, in which he spouts a lot of nonsense but manages to close with asking for Zoe's number. The crux of the ensuing misunderstanding is here, but the viewer doesn't realize it yet: unbeknownst to Stephane, Stephanie read the note before he realized his mistake and retrieved it from under her door. As he falls for Stephanie and tries to spend more time with her, we realize that she saw the note as a sign that he's not interested in her and that they are just friends, so she rebuffs his advances. Stephane's dreamworld continues to unknowingly muddle his reality, and he becomes more and more confused and heartbroken as the movie unfolds, ultimately spoiling the chance he does get with Stephanie because he is so wrapped up in his own head.

What I hadn't realized before is how much goes into muddling the viewer's sense of reality right along with Stephane's. Often in surrealistic films, the viewer is above it all, aware of what is real and what isn't, even if the characters aren't. This is usually done by spending close to equal amount of time in both the real and fantastical world. In The Science of Sleep, we know that Stephane is spending too much time in his dreamworld, but we don't really realize how much time we're not spending in the real world either. Only snatches of the real world are visible, and noticing them the second time around really grounded the movie for me and put Stephane's detachment from reality in perspective. We see Stephanie's setup to getting angry and frustrated in small snatches that only amount to a few minutes of screen time. We see Stephane's coworkers annoyed that he hasn't been reliable at work for another few measly minutes sprinkled throughout. We see Stephane's mother argue with her boyfriend for only a few seconds before she ends up moving back into the apartment she shared with her son long ago. These glimpses are enough reality on second viewing to make Stephane's situation bigger than he is, and it gives the film more depth.

Another layer of complexity I hadn't noticed before was language. The first time I saw the film, I attributed the muddled dialogue to English being Gondry's second language. Now I see that the distinctive ESL flavor to the script underscores Stephane's state of mind, both in his life as a transplant from Mexico who recently lost his father, and from his perch between reality and his dreamworld. Throughout the film he pushes the boundaries of his French with everyone he meets and is forced to settle for their common second language, English. Even with his mother, he can understand her French, but he would much prefer to express himself to her in English. In his conversations with Stephanie, both of them take thought to find the right English words to express the inner monologues that no doubt take place in their own first languages. (It seemed as if the actors improvised a lot of their conversation, which expertly added to this effect.) Stephane's limitations with language make his way into his dreams as well: he speaks to his father in Spanish and English, and his French coworkers' fantastical counterparts speak in a mush-mouthed mockery of French. Stephane is disoriented both literally and figuratively, and his dreams take the concept and run with it.

Overall, I liked this movie much more than I had the first time. Without the constraints of expectations and with the freedom to let go of the plot and notice the details, I was able to really appreciate all of the layers that Michel Gondry was able to employ to support his vision. I was also able to appreciate how impressive it is to write and present a film that is utterly and unforgivingly of the moment and in the head of the narrator, something I've really begun to appreciate after reading Proust. (Some Proustian ideas of love are in here too, but that could be a whole other pretentious blog post.) We are not omniscient in this film; we are tied to Stephane in a way that limits our scope, and we are only given hints of the objective situation. Of course all of the visual aspects, the animation and the characters' tactile sensibilities were still amazing and on par with what I love about Gondry's work. But this time I was able to walk away confident that the movie was impressive beyond my presumptions. It's a film I look forward to rewatching.

The Graduate

One of my friends recently saw The Graduate for the first time, and sent two of us an email about it. DS and I had two separate but perhaps complementary ideas about the aims and ending of the film. I thought y'all might find this interesting. Below I've pasted our emails, spelling/grammar mistakes and all. What do you think?


Subject: The Graduate
------------------------

From: JW
Date: Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 12:25 AM
To: TS, DS

Just watched The Graduate for the first time and I was curious whether
the scenes with Ben pursuing Elaine were meant to be creepy or
romantic or neither? Obviously to modern sensibilities he's quite the
stalker but perhaps in the 60s following a girl around was seen as
romantic? Certainly she does end up reciprocating...

J

----------
From: DS
Date: Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 4:04 PM
To: JW
Cc: TS

The way I read it was as a subltey creepy and perhaps solipsistic pursuit and ending. The very last shot is the most damning one of the film, they're on the bus, grinning, not talking, consigned to spending the rest of each others lives together in relative alienation. I don't remember exactly, but aren't they surrounded by old, decrepit couples on the bus?

To me that's the central concern of Dustin Hoffman's character, the fear of the alienation of being an adult and entering the modern world of wage labor and shallow relationships, (like the oedipal one he has with Mrs. Robinson.) Hello darkness my old friend indeed.

----------
From: TS [Me]
Date: Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 4:55 PM
To: DS
Cc: JW
I haven't seen the movie in a while, but I'd always read the end as a testament to his persistent immaturity and as a damning realistic take on romance. Ben spends most of the movie in over his head without doing much about it: he doesn't know what he's doing with his life after school; he falls into an affair, more out of curiosity and laziness than anything else, while not making any career moves; and then he finally finds something in his life to latch after he connects with Elaine, but he finds he doesn't know how to go about it. His relationship with Elaine is the first thing he has been forced to fight for, and he goes about it with no grace whatsoever. I don't think they were meant to be romantic as much as clumsy and embarrassing. He's lucky Elaine likes him at all, because he played all the wrong cards. By the time they leave the wedding and get on the bus, I think they're both faced with those facts: wow, this tactic worked...what now? He's over his head again, and she's stuck with the guy who acted the way he did, on all counts (banged his mom, took her to a strip club to turn her off of himself, pursued her to Berkeley, etc.). Lots of movies have their characters do these ridiculous things, and they're rewarded for it without stepping back to think, hm, what does it really mean to be the person who does that kind of thing? Though the rom com in its current form didn't exist back then, the grand "romantic" gestures sure did, and I saw this movie as a contrasting reality check to those gestures. We're supposed to feel a bit creeped out, I think. Also, keep in mind that this is Dustin Hoffman here: the original beta male, he became known for playing complicated, yet somehow likeable underdog characters. He wasn't Robert Redford or Warren Beatty, and I think this peculiar star status lends itself to the role.

These are just impressions I remember from my last viewing. I also like [DS]'s reading of the film.

******************************
If you guys have other readings of the film, let me know in the comments below.

Obligatory Tree of Life Post

I'm going to try to make this free of spoilers. I don't think it's possible to spoil this movie, though. Just don't walk out after the first 45 minutes.

Okay, so I saw The Tree of Life this past Tuesday. Right off the bat, I just have to say that the cinemotagraphy is amazing. It looks specacular. The movie itself is the culmination of Mallick's films. Everything was there: religion, man vs. the universe, voiceover, hands running through wheat, good vs. evil, shots of the sun, shots looking up at the trees. And it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

But my thoughts on it haven't yet settled. At first, I thought that the parts about the dawn of the universe didn't mesh well or have a coherent message with the parts centering around Jack's family. But as I've had some distance from it, it is clearly one of the many contrasting pairs Mallick sets up in the film.
The very personal and subjective pain of losing a close family member, contrasted with the expanse of the universe
Father vs. Mother
Grace vs. Nature
Future vs. Present
Past vs. Present
Preparing for and sculpting the future, as opposed to letting things come, letting things happen
Evil vs. Good
The meting out of love (when deemed appropriate) vs. unconditional and ever-present love
Brother vs. brother

These were just a few of the themes that I felt and picked up on while watching the film. There were two specific impressions that have really resonated with me, though.

First, when it came to the Waco, TX scenes, so much reminded me of my own family and my own childhood. I am the eldest child, and I, too, felt a strange relationship to my younger siblings, both a strong love for and a certain jealousy of their presence. We were also physically disciplined (something I have no problem with), but later in my parents' marriage my dad became more abusive (something I have a huge problem with); my mom was also silently indignant about this, as Jack's mother was, but couldn't do much to stop it. Then there were some religious aspects of the film that really hit home. All of those questions were ones I had asked of God myself in some intensely personal, trying, and scary times. There is fear and awe and doubt mixed up in those moments, just as they were expertly portrayed in the movie.

The second thought that I just can't shake about this film is the similarities between it and East of Eden by John Steinbeck, one of my favorite books. East of Eden is just as beautiful, if not more so, and the juxtapositions between the beauty and wide open space of the west with the author's detailed family histories and personal memories recall Mallick's struggle to comprehend humanity and existence. Both works also allude to biblical references throughout. The book also centers around the relationships between brothers (there are at least three sets of siblings in the book, two of which feature brothers competing for love and acceptance), just as The Tree of Life spends time showing differences between the two brothers and the desire to be "good."

The book is a bit more concerned with fate and intertwining stories, as a book is so well-suited to do, but both pieces end (explicitly or implicitly) with what I interpreted as a choice. Both writers asked "why him?" with a certain amount of guilt, and I think Steinbeck provided not an answer but a choice -- an obligation -- to keep going. Although my fellow moviegoers, SM and DS, disagreed with me about the ending of the film, I saw it as a sign of freedom from the burden of grief, permission to keep going: Timshel, "thou mayest." He is the only one left to do something with his life, and he has the permission, he should do so without guilt.

These are just some reactions that have been going through my head in the past 4 days. I think I need to see the film again to really hammer down whether the questions Mallick posed were answered or if they need answers at all. DS was pretty adamant that this was one of the finest films he'd ever seen, and that there was no conclusion to be drawn from the impressionistic portrait. Maybe it's just my desire for outlines and closure, but I think there's more to this than not being able to fully interpret it, and I think we're allowed to judge the piece if it doesn't end up coalescing into anything substantial. I'll let you know if I figure anything else out.

Yes, this is why I love Community

What he said.

Also, kudos to the AV Club for being my gold standard for pop culture criticism. I rarely give them direct shout outs, and, while they aren't necessarily my models, they certainly give validity to a lot of what I think about and how I make connections between things in that sphere.

While we're at it, hat tip to DMP for pushing me to watch Community in the first place.

Reluctant Symbology

Back when I first read Catcher in the Rye, it genuinely irked me that my English teacher harped on and on about symbols. Between the red hunting hat and those ducks, I just didn't buy that a writer would go through and plant all that crud for us to pore over the text and ferret out. As I got older, I started to appreciate that there are some writers out there who would do such a thing. However, throughout all of the films I studied in college, some of my skepticism surely remained. That said, I have to hand it to my high school English teachers: they sure beat that ferreting habit into me.

Just last week I went to a screening of Terrance Mallick's Badlands with a few friends. Last year we'd endured a Kurosawa series at the Gene Siskel Film Center together, and this year we'd contrived to setup our own Mallick series, only to find that the Music Box had already done it for us. Anyway, we saw Badlands and then headed to a barbecue together (first of the season!).

Fresh from the theater, the movie was, of course, on our minds. I prefaced my contribution to the group critique with a caveat: "I hate when people look for meaning and symbolism in works of art, especially film. You can just make up some bullshit, and as long as you run with it, carry it through to the paper's conclusion, you can pass. But..." I hesitated before submitting my question. "Do you think there's any significance in her father being a sign painter?" Before others could fully form their own arguments, I involuntarily began forming the answer to my own question, the clues coalescing into a college paper as I arranged the condiments onto my medium grilled hamburger. Fortunately, I suppose, DS saved me by offering up a tidbit Mallick's biographical history, that he was an aspiring academic, a Rhodes Scholar, before he was a filmmaker, in philosophy no less, so my search for significance beyond the screen and the text was most likely not in vain.

So here's my theory: of course it's significant that Holly's father is a sign painter. Whether he leads her on the right path or not, he serves as sole guider for a character who doesn't show any agency of her own until a brief and minute act of independence and self preservation near the end. the signs he paints are never shown to be direct commands, rather they are tableaus or brand names, passive declarations of what is and what should be in your life. Similarly, while he may have had questionable tactics, he sure had a lot of influence on how Holly lived her life, setting up rules and consequences that were outward manifestations of how he believed life should be, always demonstrative and never really explained by a man of few words.

[Spoiler alert] After Kit kills him, Kit's philosophy takes control over Holly in the place of her father. She comments on his behavior but still fails to act independently from him or even squirm under his guiding hand. But while her father had a demonstrative style of control in the form of figurative signposts (your dog has been shot: wrong way), Kit had a more passive, leash-like hold over her. Her life with Kit surprisingly holds no signs. For somewhat of a road trip movie, there is a noteworthy dearth of signage (not even highway names or exit signs): the only sign I remember seeing is one for Texaco at a gas station after she's already separated from him. For much of the movie they aren't even on roads.

DS made a point of insisting that this is not a film about morality, and I agree. There is a reason Holly's father is not portrayed as saintly or even good. As I said, his methods have something to be desired, but furthermore it's important to note that it's not clear where he was attempting to guide Holly to. My point is more to emphasize the fact that she was being guided at all. I may even go as far as saying there's a bit of a bildungsroman hidden in here, the apex of which is her decision to stop fleeing and submit to being apprehended by the police. It was actually somewhat of a relief for me to see her show some agency for once in the film. It's a small climax, but I think it's there nonetheless.

Part of me very much enjoys watching movies and other media with a critical eye. If you were to ask me, though, it's how it all comes together collaboratively and technically that I find exciting. I would argue that this also extends to the details of how exactly the idea/writing is portrayed onscreen, and so I don't completely ignore the craftsmanship of the writing. But when it comes to all those symbols, imagining someone painstakingly seeding that trail for the viewer to follow, another part of me just doesn't buy it. There are so many other things to worry about than tracing the movements of a red hat throughout a story, right? Luckily for whatever writer or director is out there ahead of me on the trail, though, I find myself seeing the signs, taking the bait again and again, and following them down. When I see Days of Heaven tomorrow as a part of this series, I suppose I'll have to see it with new eyes. I've gushed over the cinematography before, so I guess I'll have my eyes peeled for the next set of symbols Mallick throws my way. I might even write about it here. But I'll have you know, I won't be very happy about it.

ENHANCE

It's interesting that sometimes one viewing of a movie is more than enough, while other movies we strongly desire to see but never do. Still other movies we feel moved to watch multiple times. I recently saw The Conversation (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) again, a movie I thought was great the first time, but didn't expect to give it multiple viewings.

The movie follows a lonely, paranoid freelance eavesdropper (Gene Hackman) who is hired to record the conversation of an anonymous couple as they walk through a public space. He is to hand over the tapes and get his $15,000 without asking questions, but for some reason he decides to grow a conscience, something he's never had in 20 years as a leader in the industry. As he gets more curious, caring, and interested, he also gets way too close and way too paranoid.

What I found really intriguing about the film the second time through was the similarities I saw with Antonioni's Blow Up (Italy, 1966). Both films focus on a craft and a technology that isn't very common (at least not to the degree on display in the film), and concentrates on those who hone that craft. In The Conversation, the medium is audio tape, and Harry Caul has the proper equipment to know just enough to get involved. In Blow-Up, Thomas works with film -- still images -- and his curiosity keeps him manipulating that image just enough to get sucked in. Both protagonists become obsessed with their technologies, and with the ability to enhance their media with the materials they have, they begin to lose focus.

By now, this is a familiar trope. In every television show with any hint of Science or Technology, we get the "enhance" scene. On each of those shows, though, we assume (and take that assumption for granted) that we're focusing on the right thing. The characters "enhance" the image or the audio, they get the results, and, of course, it's the very key to unraveling the case. The first image points out just how ridiculous that notion is, but these films take the concept to the opposite end of the spectrum: if you continue to enhance, you run the risk of losing perspective.

At the risk of completely over-thinking it (as I'm allowed to do here), I've come up with two ways to read these thrillers. First, in addition to focusing on solitary (possibly obsessive) men in solitary, yet well-honed crafts, both films highlight the thriller-like, voyeuristic aspect of their capabilities as well. The folks on CSI use their tools to fight crime, but I suppose if Harry or Thomas are the stand-ins for you and me, they are the protagonists of cautionary tales about the possibility of getting in over one's head. We'd best leave that stuff up to the professionals who work in groups, the mainstream says. The second interpretation I've come up with is reading the films as part of a sub-genre of the "rise of the machines" concept. There's a danger in both films of knowing too much, and the tools Harry and Thomas have at their disposal were clearly what allowed them to gain that much knowledge. There's so much we couldn't possibly know without new technologies at our disposal, and like so many other stories, from Metropolis to 2001: A Space Odyssey, these films convey the dangerous and lesser-known side of human innovations.

Perhaps these messages are combined into one, big, American "let the PROFESSIONALS handle this OR ELSE" theme running through our popular culture. I'm not quite sure where to go with it, but I guess I have to admit that watching someone get a clearer view of something boring or blowing up an image of something that doesn't help your case at all doesn't really make for interesting (read: lucrative) movies or television... Well, now you've got me thinking about "The Wire"...


EDIT (1/29/11): SM was perusing the Wikipedia page for The Conversation, and he confirmed that Blow-Up actually heavily influenced Coppola while he was writing the script. At least I know I'm not just making this stuff up.

The Social Network [Spoiler Alert]

By now I think it's apparent that I view the inability to stop thinking about it as one of the markers of a good movie. The Social Network is, for better or worse, the latest addition to my list of hearty cinematic fare.

One of the things I find most striking about the film is not necessarily the plot, but all of the questions the making of this film brings up: where is the line between fiction and reality? What are the facts on which this story is based, and where do they align with the plot points of the film?

As far as the plot of the film goes, one of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's best moments of construction and a testament to Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall's' editing was the juxtaposition of the two key lawsuits: one from a group who believes Zuckerberg stole their idea, and another from his "only" friend who was shut out of the company. There's the business side of things, and there's the personal side of things. The business side is pretty clean cut, and it's made clear in the film that the group suing him doesn't really have true case, but it's viable enough to question how a jury would react, and so they settle. The personal side of anything is going to be a lot more complicated, and this case is no different. Digging up the details of the case is painful for both friends, and more evidence turns up of their friendship (and Zuckerberg's supposed awkwardness) than of a reason why Zuckerberg did what he did. The question is actually never answered: it remains an inexplicable open wound. Sorkin parallels these two stories to highlight the corresponding sides of Facebook: the money and the business and the facts are cleaner cut (and lame by comparison) than any of the strange new bonds people maintain on the website.

Sorkin's black and white view of the social platform is well-executed, but certainly cause for concern. It's clear that he doesn't know anything about social media, and as you can read in countless places, facts aren't his chief concern either. It was thus that much more interesting to compare and contrast the film with the timely profile of Zuckerberg featured in the New Yorker. My first impression was that, from the author's description, Eisenberg nailed Zuckerberg's personality -- a feat, considering the star of the unauthorized picture has most likely never had the chance to meet his private, introverted, and self-proclaimed awkward non-fictional counterpart. Unlike some dimwits out there likely to take the story as fact and exposé, I think I have the sense to see a film about any origin story as sensationalized at the least, but reading the article brought Facebook's founder into the mix as well. After completing the piece, I had to admit there was more to this than getting a character's quirks down or at least exaggerating them to the perfect degree on screen. I started thinking about how it would feel to have a movie made about me: of course it would frustrate me that a) it existed in the first place, b) any grain of truth in it was most certainly going to be exaggerated, and that c) it would be possibly sensitive parts of my life portrayed onscreen by people who have no idea who I really am. But perhaps most of all, it would bother me that people out there would actually believe it. They wouldn't think twice. I really found myself pulling for Zuckerberg in all this, not necessarily because of the truthfulness of the facts or the level of acting, but because he's a guy who did some great things and some not so great things, just like everybody else, and we should just leave him alone.

One fleeting moment of the film SM and I spent a lot of time talking about was Rashida Jones' lawyerly explanation (if caught, for the benefit of the viewer, moreso than for Zuckerberg) that settling doesn't imply guilt, rather it admits defeat in the face of inescapable perception of guilt. All the prosecution has to do is convince the jury that theft was merely possible. He could have been thinking it, so he could be guilty. That's all it takes. As much as I might think I would react differently to any of the situations Zuckerberg faced, this was what it came down to: sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, people are going to extrapolate what they wish and judge you accordingly. I saw it as kind of concession by Sorkin for Zuckerberg, tucked away among the drama and the sometimes-harsh characterizations.

Is the goal of a film based on reality to tap into that reality for answers, for truth? Or do we watch these films as a mirror into the distant past, just to reaffirm that it happened, like clicking through a Facebook photo album? After watching this film, I would hope that Sorkin and Fincher were going for the latter. The former is just too fraught with incomplete truths and funhouse-reflected moments in history to do any justice to a real investigation. Maybe it's just too soon, or too much altogether. I thought the same of Oliver Stone's W: why am I watching this? What's the point of this exercise? He was a young guy who started a game-changing website, or a president who made some questionable choices...so what?

Overall, I think the movie was well-crafted, but ultimately a hollow experience. I found thinking of Facebook outside of Facebook for a while was the interesting exercise, regardless of the contents of the film. While waxing philosophical about the "power of social networking" is annoying to me, I do know that I joined the website before I was even a first year, in the summer of 2004. I knew that University of Chicago was the second tier of schools added after the Ivy Leagues, but I had never put that timing into perspective: Zuckerberg rolled out Thefacebook.com in February of 2004. When he was 19 years old. 19. The rate of growth of his consumer base was absolutely ridiculous, and he didn't have to advertise. It is word of mouth and desire to be involved that continues to drive the whole beast. That is pretty powerful, whether you like the (portrayal of the) guy or not. And I think what really sells him to me, though, is that he's not in it for the money. He enjoys building things, like so many of the other unknown developers and hackers in Silicon Valley, and he will continue to build it out until he moves on to something else, if ever. I can respect that from afar without having to know the ins and outs of his personal life, Sorkinized or no. I just hope this dramatization of him and the founding doesn't get in the way of other people doing so as well.

Further reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/business/media/04portrayal.html?th&emc=th
http://www.slate.com/id/2269250/

A Better Dreamer [Spoiler Alert]

**NOTE: I've been writing this for 3 weeks, so it's a bit choppy and disjointed. Let me know if you need any clarification of my points, and I'll do my best to shed light on something or other.**

Exploring the three levels “on which our minds live: the past, the present, and the conditional - the realm of fantasy” ~ Federico Fellini

Of course a lot of talk has been going around about Christopher Nolan's Inception. I for one thought it was great, until I thought about it and decided that it was flawed, but still great. Christopher Nolan has great concepts in his head, and he really has a vision for his work, it's quite obvious. But my main answer to anyone who asks is that I don't think he thinks things through in layers, rather he thinks a movie through via it's plot.

Remember that whole story vs. plot thing? The plot is confined to the film or piece of fiction, whereas the story can bleed beyond the pages of the book or screenplay. The key difference is that the plot of a work of art (told in order) can portray a story out of order. Take Nolan's Memento for example: the story portrays Leonard tattooing himself to combat his short-term memory loss as he searches for his wife's killer; the plot presents these events backwards for dramatic and artistic effect. My claim is that Nolan is really good at thinking of a captivating plot, but he is not as good at fleshing out the layers of a good story.

In the case of Inception (and I won't go too in depth because that is not my main point here), the concepts such as totems, architects, and the concept of inception itself, seem intriguing on the surface, but as soon as they're done furthering the plot, they are dropped. We never find out anything more about Ariadne's totem (or much more about dream architecture once its existence as a concept is done explaining her presence); we never find out how long all of this dream stuff has been around (Mal supposedly invented the use of the totem, but if this thing has a long and storied history, you would think someone else would have needed to keep a grasp on reality); and we never find out anything about the other characters beyond their functions on Cobb's team. To those of you who use these facts to support your stupid "it's all a dream" theory, I say BOO. Even if it was a dream (which, I maintain, would be a cop out), I believe that it is important for a movie to have depth beyond what happens on screen -- more story, less plot.

The dream bit actually brings me around to my real point here. Interestingly enough, I had the pleasure of seeing 8 1/2 again last night. Great film. For once Ebert and I agree when he said that it's the best film about filmmaking. Hands down. Anyway, my main thesis here is that I think Fellini did the dreaming Christopher Nolan was aiming for, both achieving more of a dreamlike quality (one popular critique of Inception), and more successfully incorporating all those rules Nolan beats into you during all of that futile exposition. (Again, I think it's flawed, but still great.)

8 1/2 focuses on Guido, a middle-aged film director who is struggling to make the movie he's always wanted. It is a metafilm adventure, as we discover that the project described therein that is supposedly doomed to fail by all of his colleagues in the picture is eerily similar to the very film we are watching. Guido wrestles with his subconscious to figure out what he believes about love, what his life really means, and what those around him mean to him. It is personal in every sense of the word, first and foremost because we automatically assume in the first minutes of the film that the director portrayed must bear some resemblance to the real and famous Italian director, Fellini himself, and secondarily due to the behind-the-scenes look we get at Guido's varied relationships, his director's-block, and how each of them affect his work. But perhaps most personal is the fact that we dream with Guido and not only witness how the film's events affect his work, but also how they affect his subconscious. More accurately, we witness how his subconscious affects his work--even more plainly, his subconscious is the work. Thus, dreaming is a very important element to the film, and the common ground between this and Nolan's latest piece.

Returning to Inception for a bit, Nolan sets out several rules in the beginning his film that are supposed to alert the viewer and the dream invaders that they are in a dream world, and that the subconscious is alive, well, and ready to turn on the intruders. Rules range from keeping tabs on others around you (the more everyone looks at you, the more their subconscious is aware of your presence, a sign that you have tampered with too much), to staying abreast of how you arrived at your current position (a sign that you are probably in a dream), to being aware of the either the "kick" or death as some of the only ways you can forcibly get out of the dream state. Nolan lays out these rules and tips as Cobb introduces Ariadne to the world of extraction.

I would claim that, while one film predates the other by 50 years, Fellini adheres to similar rules of the unconscious/subconscious. Better yet, he teaches these rules of the dream world to the viewer by throwing them into the fray instead of giving googobs of exposition. We follow Guido seamlessly in and out of the dream world, unsure of how we arrived or where we are. Guido's dreams, like the film itself, are ripe subconscious material, ripped straight from the events of his life, past, present, and future, and holding important clues for interpretation, much like the dreams the extractors probe in their work. The eye contact of those who populate Guido's world is also an interesting characteristic of his subconscious. They stare at him (and us) with an unnaturally steady gaze, prying into his motives and desires, and, like Nolan's extractors, trying to discover what his deepest secrets are.

Throughout the movie, Guido tries to interpret his own dreams to answer his questions about making his film while battling his personal life on the side. The two intermingle until he has a realization that. Cobb, too, struggles to find a balance between his work and his personal life, and he also comes to an intermingling conclusion. While the protagonists have many similarities, it's the directors in my mind who differ in their storytelling styles. There is a subtlety that Nolan could learn from Fellini that I think is highlighted in their dreamscapes. The ease with which Fellini glides through 8 1/2 underscores the harmony between story and plot; perhaps this was because the story was so personal to the director. Nolan really told a great plot in Inception, but, for me, the transitions were rocky and drew attention to the incongruity between the story and plot. Inception is an undoubtedly an entertaining film that gets people talking and thinking, but when it comes to the better dreamer, I maintain that Fellini's got him beat.

Talkin' Film and Droppin' Names

First off, RIP Dennis Hopper. Huge fan. Personal favorites, most to least: Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Cool Hand Luke, Blue Velvet.

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I had the great opportunity to meet and learn from Haskell Wexler on both Thursday and Friday of this past week. On Thursday he visited The University of Chicago Film Studies Center's screening of his film, Medium Cool. Friday I was invited to a small Master Class where we screened and critiqued student work.

Medium Cool was fantastic. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical at first, and didn't really know how everything was going to fit together, but by the time I got into the rhythm of it, I was definitely enjoying myself. There are so many questions it asks, so many themes it explores. My favorites were the objective and amoral position of the cameraman (you might watch a terrible scene unfold, but do you do anything to help? no); fiction vs. reality (Wexler had written a fiction film that anticipated serious things happening at the 1968 DNC in Chicago, but he hadn't expected anything close to the violence and tragedy that he actually ended up catching on film); and the parallels setup quite subtly at the beginning and end of the film (car crashes, violence, freedom). After the screening, I found the man himself a lot more rambling and deaf than I'd anticipated, but he was still great.

Interestingly, he didn't seem to enjoy talking about the craft itself. He was more like, it is what it is: someone asked him if he has any certain things he does to achieve such stunning photography, and he replied, "no. It's just cinematography." I was telling DP about this after the fact, and it struck me that there are so many tips and rules that are thrown out there by our teachers, but it doesn't seem that anyone wants to listen. Not to simplify the craft, but stuff like good lighting and composition, the Rule of Thirds, zooming in to focus on the subject, leaving the camera running (capturing as much as possible, as opposed to just trying to get the shot you want, especially in documentary filmmaking), sifting through to find the gem of a shot in the editing room, they're all important, and they can make for some beautiful shots. I think his answer was so apt. There's nothing you can really do but do it well, you know?

The Master Class was awesome, and it really made me miss class. I miss sitting in a room with smart people who think critically, trading thoughts and debating consequences. It was really fun. He was very honest with his criticisms and doled out his accolades subtly. Again, though, he was very matter-of-fact about the whole business, and sometimes it was as if was going between questioning why he even needed to be there and just taking part of the discussion like just another quiet student in one of Judy's classes.

It also made me miss Film in general. One reason I was drawn to the subject was because of its superior balance of theory and practice. I could never be one of those boring schmucks who talks about film in a purely theoretical sense, but it also didn't sit right with me to just go to film school and learn the craft without tapping into the rich history and the more abstract and academic potential of the medium. I've rolled my eyes in the presence of both camps. But the academic aspects mesh really well with the nostalgia I feel sometimes when I think about what drew me into cinema and media studies - film. There's so much there on both sides of the emulsion: a careful and historical practice that takes some serious skill on one side, and the consequences of capturing reality and the history of the ontological image (<3 Bazin) on the other. Nowadays, though, none of that really carries over into the cheaper, more convenient, and DIY video medium. I use it, and I know it, but I don't enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoy everything about base, emulsion, halide crystals, mirrors, lights, and everything captured on it.

So what to do when you're just born at the wrong time? Film's expensive and slowly dying. My American Cinematographer magazines splash the latest digital hotness on its pages. I like to think too much about what I'm putting out there to actually go to film school for the craft. Freelance is all about video, where my heart just isn't. Meanwhile film theory is full of ridiculous people who abhor touching cameras. This transitional period in the world of film and video is like coming of age in the town in The Last Picture Show, where the town is dying just as you're old enough to enjoy it, but you can't bring yourself to ever leave.