Trailers

Talking about The Shining yesterday I forgot to mention one of the coolest things on the DVD, the theatrical trailer. Kubrick was always involved with the marketing of his films, designing the campaign for A Clockwork Orange as well as selecting the infamous Eyes Wide Shut marketing footage. The trailer for The Shining is just the shot of the elevators opening and blood flowing out of them, with the names of the principles involved with the film scrolling over it. You don't know what the film is about, but it gives you a good idea of the tone and the image of the blood coming out of the elevators is incredibly effective at making you want to see more.

This trailer's brilliance shows how easy it is to pique the audience's interest with a really strong image, as opposed to telling them the entire plot. The best trailer I've seen, and one of the most effective, was the teaser for Garden State. It had no dialogue, just images backed by Frou Frou's 'Let Go,' it doesn't tell you what the film is about, but the images perfectly capture the mood, and in my case made a film I had read a couple of festival reviews of into something I had to see as soon as possible.

I think the main problem with trailers today is that they give away way too much plot. This is not an original observation, but the thing is, trailers now always gave away the setup of the movie. Look at The Sixth Sense, this is a film where it takes a half hour or so to get to the big revelation, that this kid sees dead people, however, if you've seen the trailer, you're just waiting for it to come up in the movie. So, all the subtle buildup is for naught, since you go in knowing so much information.

But, this is something that has to be done. You can't market a movie on the idea that this kid has a mysterious, nondescript power. However, when you say this kid sees dead people, you've got people hooked. My problem is with trailers that give away the second act twist, spoiling an hour, hour and a half of the film for you. One of the worst trailers I've seen recently is for Stealth, a trailer that sets up the first conflict of the movie, a robotic plane that's going to replace real pilots, and then sets up its second conflict, that the plane becomes sentient and goes rogue, attacking people. This would probably take at least an hour of movie to get to, but the trailer shows it all.

After seeing the trailer, I feel like I don't even have to see the movie. I don't think showing more entices you into the movie, instead the best teasers give you a taste and leave you wanting more. The reason Garden State's trailer works is because it shows you all these amazing images, and then leaves you wondering, how do they fit together to form a film. Similarly, The Shining gives you just one image and it's enough to make the audience curious about the film.

There's a whole bunch of other more standard trailers that also work really well. Sin City's trailer owned, a great music choice, cool looking clips, it made me need to see the film, much like the equally brilliant trailer for Kill Bill.

But, complaining about trailers today shouldn't imply that they're necessarily worse than those of years before. On the whole, trailers today are so much more evolved than those old ones which were mostly a collection of random scenes. One exception was Alfred Hitchcock, who did a brilliant trailer for The Birds, which actually might be the best explanation of that film's central mystery, and besides being a film promo, is a really funny short piece on its own.

In fact, today's trailers have become such an art form that in some cases they make the film itself obsolete. In the case of action movies in particular, what you really want is the orgiastic two minute presentation of visual spectacle set to a cool music track. XXX was a movie with an awesome trailer that actually got me to the movie, which turned out to be awful, the moments of coolness punctuated by excessively long, dull action sequences. Still, that two minute trailer is a fine piece of work. It does everything the movie sets out to do, and there's just nowhere left to go from there.

So, what I'm asking for is trailers that give you a hint of the movie, the basic plot setup, but mainly focus on the visual of the film. Always leave the audience wanting more,

The Shining

I've been watching a lot of Kubrick lately and a few days ago, I did a rewatch of The Shining. I've gotten a lot more appreciation for Kubrick's stuff as I've watched more of it. I always loved 2001, and seeing Barry Lyndon a few months ago gave me an appreciation of just how controlled his films are. That was a film where every frame seemed perfect, just totally under control and when you look over his other movies, they're like that too.

The Shining is a bit different because it's not a movie in which Kubrick has to create a whole world. Before this, he had done Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange and 2001, all movies set in either the future or the past, in a wide range of locations, necesitating the creation of alternate worlds, which facilitates his absolute control over the content of each frame. With The Shining, rather than building an entire world, he creates a self contained world within the hotel. The film is a variation on the classic isolated house, things start to go wrong story. What makes this film much more interesting is two things, one is how well developed the characters are, second is the mysterious time fluctuations.

I'm not a fan of most horror films because of the generic requirement of creating scares. Trying to scare the audience frequently means that filmmakers will neglect traditional storytelling and character development in favor of just showing gore or having a bunch of 'jump moments.' If you look at The Grudge, all the scares are meant to come from people suddenly appearing, accompanied by a loud noise. It may startle you, but it's not actually scary. Similarly, gore isn't really scary, it can be disgusting, but watching a Jason movie is more about enjoying the sport of the kill than getting scared.

The Shining isn't a film I would actually consider that scary, but the last hour or so is extremely intense and I think what it does that's most interesting is to show things from both Jack and Wendy's perspective, so we can see him simultaneously as someone who's lost in a haze of visions and uncertainty, and at the same time as a monster, threatening the lives of his wife and son.

Jack Nicholson isn't someone you'd consider the picture of stability, and while I've heard the book is mainly about how spending all this time isolated turns an ordinary guy into a maniac, the film is more about someone who's always this tendency to kill inside him getting it brought to the surface by his time in the Overlook. There's clearly something about the place that does this to people, and the place destroys Jack.

I find Jack very threatening, and a large part of that is because of the vulnerability of the other characters. Danny, even though there's something mysterious about him, is a helpless child when put up against the power of Jack. It's interesting that the two of them almost never interact in the film. They both have to confront the mysterious forces in the Overlook, but their journeys very rarely connect. Then there's Wendy who is an utterly helpless character. Shelley Duvall looks extremely thin, gaunt even, and seems so powerless, especially when put up against the juggernaut that is Jack.

Jack spends most of the movie either alone or hanging out with the characters from his hallucination. This leads to the dual perspective I mentioned earlier, there's the story of Danny and the story of Jack, with Wendy serving as the bridge. One of the things I have a problem with in the film is the fact that Danny's story essentially stops developing about halfway through the movie. His ability to shine never really pays off in any dramatic way. There's definitely a lot more than could be done with it. I suspect a lot of the reason for that is the fact that the film is based on a novel, which makes it more likely than there will be some unresolved loose ends.

If nothing else, I admire the fact that the film leaves you with some questions to ponder. The final shot calls into question everything that's come before and has no clear explanation. I've come up with an explanation for 2001 that works for me, but I'm still struggling to figure out what the end of The Shining means, or at least to work out an explanation that works for me.

I think the most important scene to unwrapping this enigma is the scene with Grady and Jack in the bathroom. Grady says that "You've always been the caretaker" and yet Grady himself, or at least some incarnation of him, was the caretaker in 1970 and he too killed his family. I think the Overlook is 'haunted' in the sense that it brings out things into people and forces them into certain roles. The person taking care of the place will end up going crazy and his family will be killed as a result. When Danny encounters the twins they say "Come play with us, Danny," inviting him to join them in the role of murder victim. Danny resists, but by staying at the Overlook, he is placing himself in this victim role. It's much like the events of 'I Only Have Eyes for You' in Buffy, where a new series of people are possessed by ghosts and re-enact a murder that happened fifty years ago.

We don't know what happened to Grady's wife, other than she died, so it's difficult to see where Wendy fits into this. She's an outsider because she has gotten caught up in Jack's destiny, she doesn't have her own. Jack is the one carrying the burden of being the caretaker, he's always been the caretaker, according to Grady. What does this mean? I think it implies that some version of him is reincarnated as time passes and he is always pushed towards the Overlook. He talks about the weird deja vu he had walking in, fitting because he was there in the 1920s, a different version of him, but he was somehow there nonetheless.

He's essentially a trapped soul, forever destined to enact the same series of events. He talks about how he lost control and pulled Danny's arm in Vermont, that happened because he had to go to the Overlook, all these small events occurred in such a way that they would lead him to the hotel and the role as manager. Once at the Overlook, the destined events begin to occur and because this is a timeless cycle, we see time start to break down. First it's only Jack who goes into these time warps, as in the party scene, but by the end, Wendy is there too. One of the most confusing scenes for me was the scene where she sees some guy in a bear costume and another guy in a hotel room. Apparently, in the book, these two were partygoers from the 1920s. She also sees Grady, post-suicide. All time is breaking down at this point, as the Overlook finally enacts its destiny and claims another victim. So, a series of Jacks will recur over time, as will a series of Gradys. All these people who worked there in the 1920s have become subject to some kind of loop that leads them to be forever stuck in their role, unable to move on. I take it that's what "You've always been the caretaker" means, and the picture supports it. Basically, Jack will be reborn other places, and live other lives, but will always wind up back at the Overlook, and will always try to murder his family, as will Grady.

Now, the question comes up why did this happen? That's what I'm not sure about. I read an essay online stipulating that The Shining was all about the destruction of native Americans, and while I'd hesitate to go that far, I think the fact that it was build on an Indian burial ground implies that something is up with the Overlook. I'll need to rewatch again, but I couldn't find mention of any sort of major event from the 1920s that would lead these people to be trapped in the Overlook forever.

So, in the film the 'Shiners' seem to be set up as a kind of defense force against the Overlook Hotel. Dick Halleran seems to be the first line, I'd suspect the only reason he works at the Hotel is because he knows something is wrong there and he wants to keep an eye out. The only thing that saves Danny and his mother from the fate of the girls is the fact that he is able to shine Halleran and bring him to the hotel. Halleran ended up dead, but it was his snowcat that allowed Danny to survive.

Ultimately, the picture at the end creates an interesting riddle, I presented my suggestion, but I'm sure there's others, and if people have them, please leave them on the comments below. Any film that causes the audience to do this much work is doing something right. That's the genius of Kubrick, his films leave you with so much to consider, it almost makes up for the huge gaps between projects.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Yesterday, I rewatched 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the best movies ever made and #7 on my personal top 100 list. This is a film that's completely unique, an almost completely visual experience that uses the medium like no other movie. What movies are at their core is the fusion of visual and sound, that sound can be dialogue, but the medium is really best suited to moments that reliant more on music or sound effects to support strong visual storytelling. 2001's visual storytelling means that its narrative is more ambiguous than your average movie. Without dialogue to clarify things, it can be difficult to understand what is going on at the end of the movie. I know that the first time I saw the film, eight years ago when I was twelve, I immediately dashed onto the internet seeking some clarification of what I had just seen. After seeing it a bunch more times, I think I have an understanding of the movie that works for me, and more importantly, recognize that there is no definitive explanation for the end of the film, it's more about what you bring to it and finding what works for you.

But, besides the narrative, the most remarkable thing about the film is the visual storytelling. The first twenty-five minutes are dialogue free, and yet we are able to follow the story of these apes. The ape suits are still phenomenal, and this primordial world seems completely realistic. The use of music here is quite legendary, particularly in the sequence where the ape first discovers tools and his reverie is intercut with the animal bodies hitting the ground, the cuts making us aware of how the implications of his discovery.

The visual storytelling continues all through the film, and nearly every sequence in the movie has something amazing about it. I think Kubrick may have been a bit too much in love with the world he created, because the film does move at a very slow pace. I think it works well for most of the film, allowing you to get lost in the world, but the Heywood Floyd sequence could probably be speeded up a bit. Still, that's semantics, it works for me, but I know others who found the pace just too slow.

The whole HAL sequence is great, I love the production design throughout. The stark white environments and the streamlined suits, it's very visually appealing. It's astonishing how Kubrick is able to create a fully realized character out of just a camera and a voice, HAL is the most developed character in the film and even though he's the villain, you can't help but feel a bit sorry for him as he's disconnected, singing 'Daisy.' Basically, everything after the intermission is absolutely brilliant. Dave's slow journey to disconnect HAL, and then that video teasing you about what's to come. That sets up such anticipation, even on later viewings, because it signals the beginning of what I'd consider the best half hour of any film ever, the journey beyond the infinite.

The thing I love about that sequence is the way that it's purely visual storytelling, the only thing I can think of that rivals it is the last half hour of the final episode of Twin Peaks. The film becomes briefly abstract, presenting images soley for their aesthetic value, with questionable connection to the narrative. Rather than serving a specific narrative purpose, the images serve as a rorshach test for the viewer, you can see what you want in them. On this viewing, there were a lot of images that looked to me like the star child in utero, the colors were the same and the loose shape was much like what you see in photos of embryos in the womb. My favorite images in the sequence are in the journey through space sequences, the colors are so vivid and still dazzling. I love the diamonds of light that appear at one point.

Then, the 'hotel room' sequence is the type of sequence I love more than anything else, purely symbolic, drawing off what we know of a narrative, but totally open to interpretation. It's like the Twin Peaks red room, something where every single object has a meaning and it's up to the viewer to discern what that meaning is. I'm a huge fan of the way time passes, Bowman looking over and seeing an older version of himself. The entire sequence is so stately, and you get the strangest feeling watching it. This culminates in the incredible image of the star child, so simple, yet incredibly powerful. The ending of this movie absolutely owns and leaves you so alive with ideas to explore and discuss.

The most I've seen Kubrick say to describe the end of the film is this:

No, I don't mind discussing it, on the lowest level, that is, straightforward explanation of the plot. You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man's first baby steps into the universe -- a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there's a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system.

When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he's placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny.

What's notable for me is that this pretty much jives with my thoughts on the film, and I feel like I was on the right path in my analysis. Still, as Kubrick intended, I came away with my own interpretation of what happened in the film, an interpretation that's largely influenced by reading and analyzing The Invisibles a few years ago. I think 2001 was a huge influence on Grant's work, particuarly in the creation of Barbelith. In the Invisibles, Barbelith was a sattelite on the dark side of the moon that sent messages to select humans to help them evolve to the next stage of consciousness. In 2001, the monolith serves basically the same function. It appears at crucial times to provide guidance for humanity and help them progress forward evolutionarily.

The sequence that seems most periphery at first, but in retrospect is absolutely essential is the ape sequence. This is a microcosm of everything that happens later and is a good guide for understanding later events. Here, we see ape beings on the verge of evolution, but unable to make that leap. They are visited by a mysterious alien force, incarnated in the monolith, and this force gives them the impetus to use tools. This creates a schism in the ape community, the tool users go on the path to evolution, while those who don't use tools head for extinction. The use of tools is such a mind blowing leap for these beings, what seems commonplace for us is compeletely alien to them, but with this little nudge, they find their way to a higher mental plane.

Leaping forward thousands of years, we once again find ourselves with a humanity on the verge of a major evolutionary breakthrough, this time moving out into the stars. The Heywood Floyd sequence doesn't add that much to the thematic development, the most interesting thing is comparing the reaction of humans there with the apes in the past. There's still the same wariness about the monolith, but there's much more angst over what to do here, and when they finally do get there, the technological leap is less clear.

The HAL sequence is the most famous from the film and for good reason. HAL represents the limits of man's current evolutionary paradigm. What began with a bone has turned into a computer whose intellect arguably surpasses man's own. So, now rather than tools aiding man in his progress forward, it is actually limiting him, HAL sabotages the mission and this sabotage is indicative of the fact that man has lost control of what once aided him. This is why man needs to evolve, because the tools have become too powerful. This menace is implied in the cuts to the dying animal during the first sequence where the ape figures out how to use the bone as a destructive tool.

So, Dave uses his ingenuity to defeat HAL and in essence kills man of the present. Man has advanced beyond using tools, where can he go now? The answer lies beyond the infinite. What is it that happens during this sequence? I think Dave is transported to an alien planet, a completely different world, the light show is this journey, as he leaves behind earth and finds himself on another world. According to Kubrick, this is a 'zoo,' I see it more as a holding area, Dave must first leave behind his body before the alien intelligence can transform him into the new version of humanity. He sees his life passing quickly, and by extension, humanity itself grows older, eventually dying and transforming into a new younger version of itself, the starchild, a new type of being. This leap is as great as the intelligence leap between man and ape and the implications for humanity's future potential as great. I think we can only understand this jump by considering the leap from the bone to the spacecraft, that sort of advancement will be replicated. What this entails we can only speculate upon, apes couldn't guess what we'd be doing today, and we can't guess what this new Starchild race will be doing in the future.

Something else that should be addressed in the 'hotel room' is the breakdown of linear time. This is another idea that's quite similar to The Invisibles, the idea that when we evolve we will become 4D beings who are able to view our lives from a detached perspective, taking in the entirety of life all at once. In that room, Dave has that perspective. He finds himself aged by his journey, but then he ages a lot more, not in a linear fashion, rather he sees older versions of himself and then we transfer over to them. A question that lingers is whether the cut to the new version indicates a transfer of the current Dave's consciousness to an older body or if it's a leap through time. Dave himself may live thirty years in that room, but because he, and by extension us, are no longer bound by the conventions of linear time, we can just move through his passing much quicker. We don't get enough information to make a definitive statement, but that's what works best for me, the idea that the thirty years are there, but we don't have to see them because we have moved beyond the need to stay within time, it's just a part of the evolution into a higher form, first we're not bound by time, then we're not bound by a physical body.

The entire film is about this evolution, showing us man's roots, his present status and then his future. It's about our journey as a species towards higher and higher planes, leading to this eventual massive evolutionary jump. It's the same thing as The Invisibles 2012 event or the Promethea 'apocalypse,' they're all describing a move beyond simple physical reality towards a heightened existence.

There are very few films so ripe for analysis as 2001 and that's a large part of the reason that I love it. I think it's the sort of film that is a great reflection what your beliefs are, if you're looking for something in this film, you can probably find it, which isn't to say that it has no intended meaning, it's just that Kubrick created a film that is much about what the viewer brings to it as it is what's contained in the text.

As much as I love Kubrick's other films, I sometimes wish he would have made another film as abstract and cosmically concerned as this. Each of his projects is completely unique, but I think this is such a vital, pure filmmaking, I can't help but want more. Nearly forty years later, 2001 the year has come and gone, but 2001 the movie is more relevant to the world we live in than ever before, providing a vision of a humanity that could be if we finally get our act together and evolve.

Review Revue

Being break, I've been watching a bunch of films.On March break, I watched a string of absoultely phenomenal films. I loved practically everything I watched. On this break, I have not been so lucky, I've seen some good films, but everything I've watched has its flaws.

subUrbia
This is the only Richard Linklater film I had not seen, largely because it has not been released on DVD. However, the library had the VHS, so I broke one of my major rules and watched a pan and scan presentation of the film. Despite those bad viewing conditions, I was pleasantly surprised by this film, and feel like it's a major piece of the Linklater canon. Linklater's films are notoriously talky, so it's appropriate that he should adapt a play.

The film touches on a lot of classic Linklater themes, chronicling the existence of a group of high school friends, who still live in the town where they grew up, even as they long for something better. It's quite similar to Slacker in that everyone talks big, but always ends up just talking, never doing. The film resonated for me because I am in a similar situation as the characters are, and even though I am going to college, that doesn't change the fact that I'm basically just hanging around.



These people are contrasted with their high school friend, Pony, who has made it big with his band, and is touring. They first sort of skirt around the issue of his success, but eventually it comes to the surface and the other characters are forced to confront their own lack of progress when they see how much Pony has done. Linklater is the master of talky films, and he gets great performances from his cast here, and keeps things interesting despite the fact that not that much happens in the film. I think it does a good job of capturing real life dynamics between friends and people who are drifting away. I'd imagine Linklater felt a lot of what Pony did when he returned home as a successful filmmaker. I feel like Linklater has a better handle on what my generation and the people slightly older than me are going through, and his films reflect the reality of our lives.

Miller's Crossing
I also watched the Coens' Miller's Crossing. Now, this is a film that has been quite acclaimed, with some people calling it their best. I don't know, but I just didn't like this film. I didn't feel the inventiveness and energy that is present in the Coens' other films, and it reminded me a lot of Richard Linkler's really weak Newton Boys. Both films seem to use a period setting as an excuse for not doing anything else interesting visually or with the narrative. This film was just a series of extended dialogue scenes as we moved through a whole bunch of double crosses that don't really lead anywhere. I didn't like the lead character, Tom, and tommy guns and fedoras alone cannot save a film. I really feel like I missed something with this film, because I don't understand how it could be so acclaimed. Perhaps in a few years, I'll give it another look, but for now, it goes in the bad column.

The Last Temptation of Christ
This is a film I've been wanting to see for a while, ever since I saw the X-Files episode, Amor Fati. This was an episode written by David Duchovny as an homage to Last Temptation, and it's arguably the best episode of the series, as well as one of the most interesting symbolic narratives I've ever seen. It took me five years , and two library checkouts to finally see the film, and it was a bit of a letdown after all that. The idea behind the film is to show Jesus' human side, his weakness and temptation, but the central piece, a fantasy sequence in which he marries Mary Magdalene is a very small piece of the film.



The vast majority of it is a fairly standard Jesus biography. I know that story so it wasn't too exciting to see all those scenes acted out again. I know about the water into wine, I know about Lazarus, and that stuff takes the focus away the film's core. The movie is too long, at 163 minutes. At least 20 minutes could have been cut out without hurting the story. And, the fantasy sequence is too short, that's the core of the film, but it comes about almost as an afterthought. I guess the X-Files episode might have skewed my expectations, but I feel like that episode used the premise a lot better than the film did.



That said, the film looks great, and really places you in a different world. Scorsese always makes good looking films, and this is no exception. Willam Defoe is great as Christ, but Harvey Keitel just doesn't work in this movie. He seems to be from New York not Jeruselam and his performance punctures the illusion of this world.

Spartacus
I've been going through Stanley Kubrick's film, seeing the ones I've missed, and last night I arrived at Spartacus. This was another long film, at 3 hours, 16 minutes. Watching this film was sort of strange. I was never particularly emotionally engaged with it. Classic Hollywood films were designed to minimize the evidence of the filmmaking, editing and camera movement were not supposed to draw attention to themselves. However, I feel like this also prevents the filmmakers from using these tools to draw you into the story and put you in the headspace of the characters. Now, Kubrick was never someone known for the high emotional content of his films, though I would dispute that in a few cases. However, this film adheres to classical Hollywood norms and as a result you're firmly put in the observer category, and never really engage with the characters.



That said, I was never bored by the film over its really long run time. Watching Miller's Crossing, I found myself checking the watch a number of times, but here I was just going through it, enjoying the film, but not loving it. I find it difficult to analyze most of Kubrick's pre-Strangelove stuff because he seems so tied to classical Hollywood convention, his films lack the personal input that's evident in his later films. Basically everything after Strangelove is either a great film, or a film that aims very high and doesn't quite make it, but is still essential viewing. But his early stuff doesn't particularly stand out from your typical classical Hollywood film. The one scene in this film that seemed different was the really bizarre snails and oyster scene, where an old man propositions Antoninus, asking him if he eats snails, oysters or both, with 'eating snails' a clear reference to gay sex. The scene seems out of place, but is also really entertaining, so I'm glad it's there.



The film remined me a bit of Revenge of the Sith, the Roman political machinations were a clear inspiration on the narrative of Star Wars. Also, the acting style really is quite similar to that of the prequels, which is what Lucas said. As much as I love those movies, this acting style is not the best. The characters are not emotionally engaged with the material here, and the ridiculous love scenes here are such a contrast to the astonishing emotional subtlety of something like Barry Lyndon. There truly was a revolution in 70s Hollywood, and I'm really glad it happened, because movies like this are good, but not great. And, the acting in Sith is so much better than the awful line delivery here. So, even if he is modeling things on the classical Hollywood style, Lucas is doing a much better job than they were. This film did fulfill the classical Hollywood doctrine of making an accessible entertaining film, but unfortunately sometimes the bigger the audience you target, the less personal the film is.

Breaking the Waves
So, today I went from the compromised populism of Spartacus to the extremely personal, challening filmmaking of Lars Von Trier. Von Trier is a filmmaker I had mixed feelings on going in. I loved Dogville, it's one of the most creative and rewarding films I've ever seen. However, I really disliked Dancer in the Dark, which seemed like an exercise in cruelty.

Von Trier's films are all revisionist melodramas, updating the idea of the suffering female hero. That's the one thing all his films, that I've seen at least, have in common, and in this film, there is a lot of suffering. The primary thing that made me like Dogville over Dancer was the fact that in Dancer in the Dark, we just watch a series of awful things happen to the main character and there's no variation, it's just a series of awful events. Dogville uses a similar narrative structure, but at the end, upends the idea of the suffering heroine, and allows her to get revenge for what she's gone through. That revenge is so powerful because we're conflicted. What she's doing is wrong, but after so many awful things happened to her, can we really let this town off the hook? Also, Grace was very smart, while Bjork in Dancer was borderline retarded.



Bess, the lead in this film, also treads on that border, she's mentally unstable. However, I think the characters in this film are much truer than those in Dancer. Bess' actions are motivated, we understand what she's doing, but she's laboring under the false belief that what she's doing can save her husband. It's a pretty harrowing film, and Bess' final fate is not easy to watch.

The style of the film is really intersting. Von Trier uses a constantly roving handheld camera, a style I happen to love, as well as a lot of jump cuts. He's clearly someone who was made for digital filmmaking, though I belive this was shot on film, it's got a grain that makes it look like most digital films. I really like the chapter headings, placid nature scenes with 60s and 70s rock music playing in the background. They're a nice contrast from the handheld, dogme world of the film. Von Trier uses no score, all the music is source.

The last scene has me a bit confused. I think Von Trier intended to show that Bess had made it to heaven, but I guess it's something to ponder. It's a good looking shot whatever the meaning was.

Ultimately the film sort of bothers me because of the level of suffering Bess goes through. The entire narrative is just bad stuff happening to her, and there's not that catharsis that Dogville offers. However, she is more relatable than the Bjork character, so this film falls somewhere in between the other two Von Trier films. Von Trier, like Gaspar Noe, makes films that challenge you, and I'm really glad I watched this movie, even though I do have a lot of issues with it.

Well, there you have it, next on the to watch list are La Dolce Vita, Velvet Goldmine, Three Kings, The Killing and A Fistful of Dollars.

Kubrick's Lolita and The Heroic Trio

As I mentioned on here before, my birthday is shaping up to be pretty ridiculous. I've had the release of Episode III at midnight for a while, then over break I found out the Doves were doing a show in New York on May 19, so between those two things, it seemed there was no room for things to get even better. But wait, I got an e-mail telling me that Aimee Mann was doing an in store performance and signing of her new album on May 19, at 6:30, so I can fit it in before the Doves concert, and I'll be in the city anyway, so it'll be free. So, not only am I getting a new Star Wars movie, I'm also seeing two of my favorite musicians back to back, all on my birthday. It's going to be such a crazy day, really the way to start my 20s.

Besides that, I saw a couple of interesting films recently. Over the weekend, I watched Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film, Lolita. Now, Kubrick is indisputably one of the masters of cinema, and 2001 is one of my top ten films of all time, and now that I've seen Lolita, I've seen all except three of his films. However, while Kubrick has made some absolutely genius films, I would draw a clear line between his pre 1964 output and his post 1964 output. The films he makes post 1964, starting with Dr. Strangelove are all visually dazzling, really challenging films. 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, all these are great films. However, his earlier films seem to be very much the products of the Hollywood studio era, whose strict regulations compromise his vision.

Lolita has the potential to be a great film, but the film that Kubrick makes, while entertaining, is ultimately a failure, largely because restrictions on content prevented him from telling the story. Obviously, even today, Lolita walks in territory that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and I can understand why people would be very wary about how to depict things in this film, but what ultimately happens is Kubrick is able to show so little that the film loses its emotional impact.



The film is about a middle aged guy who falls in love with the teenage daughter of his landlady, and the story goes on to explore the effect that relationship has on him. Considering the primary relationship in the film is between Humbert and Lolita, this is the whole reason the film exists, it's very unfortunate that the content restrictions means we don't ever really see what their relationship entails. The first chunk of the film is pretty solid, as we see Humbert caught in a love triangle with Lolita and her mother.

However, once he and Lolita go out on the road, things get really muddled. Picking up on some clues, you come to realize that he and Lolita have a sexual relationship, but you never get a moment in the film where he makes the choice to actually be with her in that way. How he could do this would seem to be the most interesting question coming out of this material, but the film just skips over that and we have to infer what's going on between them. I have no problem with not telling everything, but playing detective takes you out of the story, and I was too busy trying to figure out exactly what was going on to be emotionally affected by anything. You can't understand Humbert after a certain point in the story, and while the film never is boring, it's not emotionally engaging either.

Peter Sellers' performance is emblematic of this. He's great, and the scene where he is introduced dancing at the school is so 60s, great stuff. But then, as the film goes on, there are lengthy segments that seem to be improvised that are more about Sellers' performance than adding to the story. He is funny, but doesn't add anything to the main story.

Ultimately, this film is a victim of its time. Maybe in the 70s or 80s Kubrick could have made a great film of Lolita, one that really examined the relationship between Lolita and Humbert, but this one can't show anything, so we don't understand the characters, and as a result, it's not a successful film. And it's not just the content restrictions that feel outdated, this film feels very studio era, like it could have been made in the 40s or 50s. If you want to learn about how much movies changed with the end of the studio era compare this film to A Clockwork Orange, made a mere nine years later. There's a big difference.

Then today in action film class, I watched a very different film than Lolita called The Heroic Trio. It's a 90s Hong Kong action film that I wouldn't call a great film, but was incredibly entertaining. It's a really bizarre and over the top sort of superhero film about an evil guy who's kidnapping babies, and the trio of ladies who have to team up to destroy him.

The most notable thing about this film for me was Maggie Cheung. She's one of my favorite actresses, and arguably the best actress in the world today. Her work in 'In the Mood For Love' is astonishing in how little it takes for her to convey huge emotions, and in ten minutes of 'Ashes of Time,' she steals the movie. Other than Wong Kar-Wai, she was also great in 'Irma Vep,' playing a fictionalized version of herself. In that film, we see clips from the film that inspired the director to cast Maggie, and as I soon found out, those clips were from The Heroic Trio.



Her role as Chat the Thief Catcher in The Heroic Trio is very different from everything else I've seen Maggie Cheung in. Other than Irma Vep, I'd only seen her in more serious films, and my image of her is from the suffocating world of In the Mood for Love. So, I was surprised to see how funny she was in this film. She provides the comic relief, and is at such high energy throughout the film you almost feel bad that she has to hold back so much in her recent films. She just looks like she's enjoying making the movie so much, and that sense of fun is contagious.



The film is really bizarre. The main villain is really bizarre looking, and his underworld dungeon is a nasty environment. The changes in tone are quite drastic. One minute Maggie Cheung's motorcycle is spinning across a room, the next imprisoned children are eating the flesh off a dead man. But, throughout it, there's this sense of pop irreverence, that they're all having fun, making this wacky film. There's a lot of interesting angles and off kilter stuff throughout the film. My favorite shot is Chat riding her motorcycle in front of the two other trio members on horses.

It's not a film you watch expecting it to make sense, it's a film you watch for some bizarre, over the top fun.

Kubrick's Barry Lyndon

Spring break rocks on today as I watched Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. Most of Kubrick's later period films are very well known, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut are all commonly known and pretty well thought of films, with the exception of Eyes Wide Shut, which is criminally underrated, and sadly thought of as softporn rather than the great film than it is. I hope in the future, the film will be rediscovered by critics and appreciated because it's a phenomenal film, #32 on my personal top 100 list.

But, regardless of their opinion, people still know the film, and that's something that can't really be said of Barry Lyndon, which seems to be sort of the lost film of Kubrick's late canon. The only thing I really knew about the film before seeing it was that it was directed by Kubrick and he developed new lighting for the film that would let him film scenes using just candlelight. Well, now having seen it, I think it joins Eyes Wide Shut as another very underrated film.

The film is a great companion piece to what I was talking about yesterday with Satyricon, in that it drops you into a completely alien world, with its own practices and rules that we gradually pick up on. For all I know, it's a realistic depiction of 1700s life, but it's a world with very different rules than our own, and over the course of the film, we gradually learn what these rules are. This is a place where emotions are kept extremely guarded, and our only guide to the characters emotion is the subtleties of their tone. This is a world where a sharp "Gentlemen" can be analagous to "Fuck you" as when Barry basicallly tells Lord Lyndon he wants him to die so he can marry his wife, witha simple 'Gentlemen.' It's very subtle, but that shouldn't be mistaken for a lack of character. This is a world where everything is beneath the surface, constrained behind ridiculous costumes and makeup.

It's notable that we never see Barry break down, even at the end of the film when he loses the duel, he doesn't express any sort of remorse, it's just something that happened, the rules of the society dictate what he has to do, and he can't break those rules. The dueling scenes best demonstrate the absurdity of the world. They think that a logical way to resolve disagreements is to stand ten paces away and shoot each other. There's a strong dwelling on the rules of the duel because it's something that seems so dumb, the rules give it a grounding in reality. They're all a prisoner of the restrictions of their society.

The only moment where we see Barry react is when he assaults Bullington after his long series of coded insults. It's satisfying to see Barry punching this guy because Bullington was clearly insulting him, and previously we've never seen someone actually do anything about being insulted. So, seeing Barry lash out here is both shocking and a relief.



I've been reading some reviews of the film, and a lot of them talk about how there's no character development, and I can't agree there. The characters have fully developed emotional lives, but they're all restricted by the rules of their society.

In most movies set in the past, I find the character interaction really unnatural. For all the visual splendor of something like Gladiator or Troy, the way they talk just isn't real. Here, rather than trying to have the people act like modern people, and just talk in the language of the past, Kubrick creates characters who actually come from a different world. That's why they seem so odd, but I completely got the story of Barry and what he went through. I feel like everyone is resigned to the fate they've been given and just drifts along. In the first half, Barry is the exception, with his social climbing and scheming, but in the second half, he is defeated and beaten down like everyone else. Lady Lyndon doesn't seem to do anything or feel anything, but I think it's actually that she's disappointed and trapped in her world, so she has drifted off into an odd haze where she spends her whole life.



If I can find one consistent theme in the film, it's that all the poorer people are alive because they're struggling to reach the level of the nobility, such as Nora's family when they're trying to marry her off to Quinn, or Barry's mother in the second half. However, the people who are actually nobility sort of detach from reality and engage in frivolous pleasures without ever really accomplishing anything.

The film is known primarily for its visuals, and it's an astonishing film. It's sucha rich world, full of atmosphere, and beauty. The costumes are really over the top, and convey the absurdity of the world. Kubrick is a master of framing, and pretty much every image in the film is striking and interesting. His direction isn't as obvious or present as someone like Wong Kar-Wai or Chan-wook Park, but each shot and cut are still very clearly motivated and exacting. The shooting by candlelight works well to enhance the reality of the scenes, and place you in the mindset of these people. At first, I was wondering why there were so many candles around, but I realized their only light was candles, if they didn't have those, it'd be completely dark, no light but the moon.

It is a long film, but I don't think anything should have been cut, it isn't slow paced, it's just there's a lot to cover. It would be possible to lose some of the stuff at the beginning, like his encounter with the German woman, or his fight in army camp, but those things add to the reality of the world, and if you try to streamline the film into what's absolutely essential, you lose the sense of this being a fully realized world, that which is the films greatest virtue.

So, I'd place this film third on my Kubrick ranking. I haven't seen everything he's done, but the ranking of what I've seen is:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Eyes Wide Shut
3. Barry Lyndon
4. The Shining
5. Dr. Strangelove
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Full Metal Jacket
8. Paths of Glory

I haven't seen Spartacus or Lolita, but I get the feeling he didn't become a real master until 2001, a film which besides being one of the greatest films of all time, marks a huge leap in terms of style for Kubrick. His earlier films have pretty coherent narratives, and are more about content than style. 2001 is definitely concerned with themes, but it doesn't have a very solid story. It's much more about using the medium to riff on something, really taking advantage of film itself as a storytelling medium.

I read an interview with Kubrick where he talks about how his later scripts aren't very detailed, and wouldn't be interesting to read, because he wasn't writing scripts, he was making films. The script is just a step, the quality of the film is ultimately decided by the direction and production team. A great script pretty much ensures a good film, but it takes something more than just a great script to make a great film, and in his later films, Kubrick clearly realizes this.

Like Wong Kar-Wai, he doesn't write a script and then film it, he goes in with an idea of the film in his head, and then tries to capture it as he goes along filming. This means he shoots for a long time, and the film evolves as he goes. Barry Lyndon shot for 300 days, which is brutal, and as time went on, Kubrick took even longer to make each film, notably with the twelve year gap between Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut. Similarly, it took five years from the start of filming for Wong Kar-Wai to finish 2046.

I think this way of making a film makes a lot more sense than a traditional script. Shooting Ricky Frost, we first went for the dialogue, and the priority was to capture the dialogue, rather than to use the visuals to tell the story. That's why with the project I'm writing now, I'm going much looser, and plan to do a more detailed list of shots, rather than a traditional script. While this goes against the figure it out on set method of Kubrick and WKW, it's necessary, because I don't have people who are going to wait forever for me to figure out what I want to do. But, it's going to be a type of script more suited to film, rather than the format inherited from theater that most directors use.

Interestingly, Barry Lyndon touches on a lot of the same themes as A Clockwork Orange, but I think it's covered much better here. ACO is very obvious in its message about the way that society changes you. The conditioning stuff is great, but it's clearly allegorical, the average person isn't going to be confronted by something like that. Barry Lyndon takes the same themes, the way that society destroys the individuality of the average person, and does it in a much more subtle way, one that's relevant to everybody. Barry is molded into someone acceptable to high society just through the course of everyday events, in the same way that society molds every person into something they might not want to be today. If you don't assert your individuality, it's very easy to get sucked into a role within society, and after Barry gets what he thinks he wants at the end of Part I, we see the society he's living in destroy him in Part II. So, with A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick plants the idea of societal conditioning, then explores it further here in Barry Lyndon, in a much more everyday situation. While our world may be very different than Barry's, there are similar rules on how to behave, and to violate these rules leads to rejection. While our boundaries have changed, the same basic rules about what we can and can't say in 'polite conversation' persist, and everytime you have the "How are you doing?" "Good, and you" "Pretty good," exchange, you're inhibited by the same rules that inhibited Barry.



We never really meet Barry emotionally, there's no scene where he breaks down, or tells us how he feels because that would undermine Kubrick's point. These people can't be emotionally honest with each other, and the audience feels that same frustration. They have to become numb, because if they didn't, repressing those emotions would be too difficult, and they'd react violently, as Alex from ACO, Jack from The Shining or Gomer Pyle from Full Metal Jacket. When Barry does act out violently, he finds himself rejected from society, and as the film winds on, he becomes increasingly numb, such that losing his leg and being thrown out of his home at the end of the film is almost a relief.

Related Posts
2001: A Space Odyssey (7/1/2005)
The Shining (7/5/2005)