Magnolia: PTA's Masterpiece

Magnolia is my favorite film made during my lifetime. If you look at my top 100 list, you've got Empire Strikes Back and Blade Runner above this film, both obviously great films, but films that are triumphs mainly of world building and plot. Magnolia is a triumph of character development, if I could have made any film that's ever been made, I wish it was this one. I love the way PTA throws everything he's got onto the screen, creating a film that's a symphony of modern existence.

The thing that makes Magnolia so special is the way that it is simultaneously technically astonishing and thoroughly emotionally engaging. You watch this film and you're feeling everything that the characters feel, but if you step back, you can see how PT Anderson has shot the film in such a way as to completely draw you into the emotional lives of these characters.

That's what makes the film different than the work of Altman, who's a widely noted inspiration on Anderson. Altman tells these huge overlapping stories as a way to show the distance between human beings. They may meet and interact, but we stay on the side as observers, essentially getting a God's eye view of what's happening in Nashville, or in Short Cuts, California. Anderson doesn't want us to just be observers, he wants to feel everything that the characters feel, and he wants to show that we're all the same, and we only have to reach to one another, then we're not alone. This causes the film to be radically different, and I would say much better, than the Altman films that inspired it.

I think one of the things that garnered the film a lot of criticism is just how melodramatic it is. The events are massive and the emotions always ramped up to extremes. One of the most notable things about the film is the way that all the events feel like one story, building to a climax, not a bunch of disparate threads. All the characters go through a similar arc, starting out with their depressing mundane lives, then suffering some kind of crisis, reaching a low during the 'Wise Up' sequence.

The 'Wise Up' sequence was my favorite part of the film on the first viewing, the moment when I knew that this movie was something completely unique, a film I would treasure for the rest of my life. The sequence would seem totally ridiculous out of context, but when you get lost in the world of the film, it's exactly what's needed. It's crucial in terms of the narrative because it unites all these characters in a way that they hadn't been united before. They're all feeling the same thing, driving home the point that the film is basically one emotional arc, shared by nine people. The boldness to completely break with what makes sense in favor of presenting something that's emotionally involving is one of the best choices Anderson makes.

At the end of the film, all the characters find a kind of peace. Things may not be perfect, but a lot of the conflict is gone, and nearly all of them have either found someone they can share their emotions with, or at least are able to realize that they are not alone. And after all this darkness, the film's final moment, Claudia's smile tells us that better things are out there. That smile is so good, it inevitably makes me smile myself, it's the perfect emotional catharsis after the dark events of the film. The moment is so good that Joss Whedon 'borrowed' it to use as the final shot of Buffy's last episode. I love the way Anderson lets the music tell the story, we can faintly make out Jim's speech, but the real emotion of it is present in the music, both of them need to save each other, Jim's sealed off, boring life can only be saved by a relationship with the more exciting, but troubled Claudia. Together, they can find a way to help each other open up and become a successful unit. It's all present in the song, and when she smiles, we know she's going to at least give it a try with him.

The film, despite its massive running time, and huge scope, has a rather simple message, explained by two lines at the end of the film. One is when Stanley says, "You should be nicer to me," the other is Jim's question "What can we forgive?"

The two are tied together in the parent/child conflict that drives so much of the narrative. Many of the younger adults in the film, Frank, Donnie and particularly Claudia, have been scarred by parental abandonment or abuse, these old events still casting a huge shadow over the way they live now. For Claudia, it has lead to a life of noncommitment, the abuse cycle continuing in bad relationships with men she meets, and a coke habit. Donnie struggles to keep a job and relate emotionally to people, all the while blaming his problems on the fact that his parents stole his money from him as a child.

Frank is a bit more complex, on the surface he is together, but it seems like he has become a hyper-exaggerated version of his father, a philanderer who left Frank to take care of his mother as she was dying. This abandonment causes him to create a public persona of strength and total control, all built on a lie. He has no true emotional connections in his life, likely because the pain is still too strong.

So, all these characters build their lives out of the trauma they experienced as children. And as adults, they're left with the question of how long can they continue to function this way before they slip further into loneliness. In the course of the film, both Claudia and Frank are given the chance to forgive their parents. Frank receives a call saying that his father wants to speak with him before he dies. Earl never gets to say what he feels, but it is the act of reaching out that makes the difference, and coupled with the interview, forces Frank to confront his feelings. Earl may never know how his son felt, but for Frank, it is an emotional catharsis. His change is most evident in the fact that at the end of the film, he is able to go to the hospital and support Linda, no longer resenting this woman who 'replaced' his mother.

For Claudia, there is no real reachout from her father. Jimmy remains unable to admit what he did to Claudia as a child, claiming to honestly not know whether it happened, something that's clearly a lie when you consider his suicide attempt. Claudia may never be able to forgive her father, the things that he did to her are so painful that he may not deserve forgiveness, but what happens at the end of the film is that Claudia realizes, no matter what her father did to her, she is not a bad person, and she still has people who care about her. At first she runs from Jim, afraid that her bad history will inevitably lead to the destruction of their relationship, even if it also means losing a chance for true love. At the end of the film, it is Jim's kind words, coupled with her mother's support that allows Claudia to break the cycle and take a chance on a relationship that might be more than just a one night stand. When she smiles, the weight of years of pain is lifted and she embraces the change in her life.

Stanely is critical because he shows how a strong person can prevent abuse from happening. He could become Donnie, but rather than allowing his father to control his life, he asserts himself, and claims a unique identity. When he says "Be nicer to me," his father may not listen, but Stanley recognizes that he is not at fault, it's his father who has the problem, and that is a critical distinction. With that self confidence, he can avoid becoming like Donnie, someone who feels utterly defeated by a world 'out to get him.'

Where does Donnie wind up at the end of the film? I think he realizes that he's going down a bad path and is forced to assess his life. His crime is something that we can forgive, and perhaps because of the assistance Jim gives him, he will recognize how close he came to jail, and start to turn his life around. Either way, Donnie has bottomed out, and by now, at least he knows there's a problem, and perhaps more importantly, the kindness that Jim gives him shows him that he is not alone in the world, there are people who will view him as more than 'Quiz Kid Donnie Smith,' and instead see him as a person who has a lot of love to give.

From the point of view of the younger characters, the older generation are monsters, who have unwittingly destroyed their children's lives, with little regard for anything more than their own wants. However, the film also shows the way in which the guilt of their actions has destroyed a number of the characters. They have to question their own behavior and find out what they can forgive themselves for.

The two most explicitly parallel characters in the film are Earl and Jimmy Gator. Earl is the producer of Jimmy's TV show, and the two of them are essentially the same character, just in different stages of development. As Earl is dying of cancer, Jimmy is just finding out that he has it. Both feel incredibly guilty about the lives they led, and the infidelities they've had. Both characters also long to make amends to a child who they've hurt.

At the end of the film, Earl dies without ever being able to resolve things with Frank, however, Frank has found a catharsis. The frog rain stops Jimmy from killing himself, and leaves him the chance to finally admit his wrong and apologize to Claudia. I don't think they can ever have a strong relationship together, but if he actually admits to her he did something wrong, it will leave them both in a better place. So, the frog gives Jimmy the chance to express his remorse, a chance that Earl never got.

The character closest to these two is Linda, who expresses similar regret about her behavior, and longs to come clean with Earl, even though he's too far gone to really understand her. It's difficult to see Earl speaking only of Lily on his death bed, even as Linda is so anguished, because of the pain she felt from screwing around on him. She really loved him, even if he viewed her only as a trophy wife. She, like Jimmy, seeks to kill herself as an escape from the guilt, but is also saved by a random action, namely Dixon stealing her wallet and calling the police for her. This ties into one of the major theses of the film, that small acts of kindness can save lives, this kid is motivated by selfish means, but he isn't going to just let Linda die, and that sacrifice is what ultimately saves Linda, and allows her to resolve her issues with Frank. And by resolving things with Linda, Frank in some ways is able to come to terms with who his father was.

So, forgiveness is a major question. Many of the characters do horrible things, but the film is about the ways in which we can overcome the bad things done to us through acts of kindness, sometimes we have to let things go, and if there's something we can't let go, it's that person's fault, not the victim's.

The importance of human kindness is another critical theme in the film. A major motif is people who are treated like objects, used to further someone's agenda. In Frank's seminar, he approaches relationships as a form of sexual conquest, with no thought about making an actual connection. He reduces women to the status of objects, who can be fooled through his clever strategies.

In this respect, Frank is quite similar to Stanley's father, Rick. Rick views Stanley as an easy cash source, he doesn't take joy from what Stanley is doing, he just wants him to win so he can make more money. This is most likely a result of his frustration with his own failure as an actor. Through his son's media celebrity, he sees the chance to make up for his own lack of success, however that results in him hurting his son and putting the pressure on him that leads to his collapse on the game show set.

Donnie is the result of this sort of pressure, viewed as an object by his parents, he now finds that he has a lot of love to give, but no way to express this love. He has no template for a relationship in which he is viewed as a human being. This is made explicit in the scene where Solomon says that he hired him for his celebrity, not for his skill as a salesman.

So, the primary way to un-objectify someone is to treat them with kindess and understanding. The characters who most notably do this are Jim and Phil. Phil is interesting because he's the one character who doesn't have any personal trauma or desire. His role in the film is solely to help others, and in that capacity, he goes way beyond what is expected of him. As a nurse, his responsibility is solely to care for Earl's medical needs, but in this case, he goes on a strange quest to find Frank. There's the hilarious scene in which he orders porn magazines from a pharmacy, as well as his extended phone conversation with Frank's people. I love the scene where he's talking to the phone operator about his mother's cancer, it's one of the countless scenes in this movie where we see both how much people are connected, and how a small act of kindness can break down the walls that keep us alone.

In the end, Phil is a great example of what Jim is talking about at the end of the film when he describes police work, saying that it's not a job where you take a lunch hour, it's a 24 hour a day endeavor, something that consumes your entire life. Phil stays on, even when his shift is over, because he is emotionally connected to what is going on, what he does matters, and his special commitment to it is what defines him in the film.

But Phil remains rather removed from the action, whereas Jim's life becomes increasingly intertwined with his work, most notably when he asks Claudia out. In Claudia he sees someone who's clearly hurt, but also someone interesting, with the potential for a rich relationship. Even though I love Claudia's character, I'm not sure what Jim sees in her, if I had to guess, I would say that in a world where people wear masks of normalcy, always playing by the rules, she doesn't hide between a calm exterior. She's not the kind of person you're likely to meet from a dating service. The importance of honesty to the relationship is reasserted in the diner scene, when she cites being honest with each other as the best way to avoid the problems that other relationships run into.

However, in this relationship we see the way that an act of kindness really can save someone. Claudia is so committed to avoiding emotional attachment that she pushes away the one person who could actually be good for her. Her whole character is summed up in the quote, "Not that I've met you, would you object to never seeing me again?" She only wants one night stands, not real commitment, because the one man who was a major presence in her life, her father, abused her. She finds comfort in one night stands because it gives her the chance to be loved as an object without giving anything herself. She is so used to being treated like dirt, she can't function any other way. The line she says to Jim that I quoted above is from Aimee Mann's song, Deathly, and another line from that song encapsulates how she feels when she encounters Jim: "Don't pick on me 'cause one act of kindness could be deathly." So, when she encounters someone who actually likes her, she becomes incredibly aware of all her problems and retreats from him so as not to disappoint him down the line.

Jim, while certainly more together than Claudia, still has a lot of his own problems. He was married, but it apparently ended badly and he's remained emotionally isolated for three years. So, he and Claudia are in a similar situation, both of them running from commitment because of a previous emotional trauma. Jim is ultimately the one who reaches out to her and refuses to let her slip away from him, which we see in the brilliant final scene of the film.

So, that sums up the two main thematic issues in the film, what can we forgive and how important a random act of kindness. One of the major questions people have in the film is why are the frogs in it? On one hand, it's an astonishing image and provides for phenomenal moments where the characters observe this bizarre occurrence. The frogs connect them all in the same way that the song and the rain do earlier.

However, the frogs also function as a cathartic event, putting everything in the film in perspective. After seeing the frogs fall from the sky, and the chaos they cause, the problems in the character's lives seem much smaller. It's an example of natural cycles, Earl may die, but it was his time, everyone must die eventually. The frogs take all the characters away from their locked emotional lives and make them more receptive to others.

Even though one of the things I love about the film is the way it elevates individual emotional drama to the level of cosmic importance, for the characters, it's important to step back and see that their problems mean nothing against this bizarre biblical occurrence.

Ultimately, Magnolia works because you can view it simultaneously as a perfectly shot, technically innovative film masterpiece, as well as an emotionally wrenching melodrama. I've always said that I'd love to see a film in the 'epic' genre, but in the modern world, something where an entire world is at stake, like in Lord of the Rings, but set in our modern society. And in a lot of ways that's what this film is. For these characters, the emotional conflicts they face are just as menacing as anything Sauron could throw at us.

Getting back to a critical eye. I need to point out the brilliance of the 'One' sequence, which does an hour of exposition in three minutes, and establishes not only all the characters' personalities and conflicts, but also the film's atmosphere. This is the editing equivalent of the astonishing opening shot that introduces all the character in Boogie Nights. People crack on PT Anderson for making a film that's too big, that says too much, but the thing I love about him is that he makes huge films that are incredibly emotional. You could call it pretentious or overdone, but I don't think there's a false moment in this film.

The cinematography in the film really needs to be mentioned. Just some cool shots: Everyone falling to the side as the ambulance flips over, the silhouette frogs falling behind Claudia, the zoom in to Earl's lungs in the One montage, Jimmy lit in blue in front of a red curtain as he waits to go on stage, the frog falling through the skylight and knocking the gun from Jimmy's hand and of course the final shot tracking in on Claudia and her smile.

Aimee Mann and Jon Brion both deserve to be commended for their musical contributions to the film. 'Save Me' provides a perfect closing for the film, and Brion's driving score keeps all the action connected despite the many plot threads.

Then there's the actors. Everyone is great, but Melora Walters and John C. Reilly deserve special commendation. In Jim, Reilly creates one of the most appealing characters in cinema, someone I completely understood and sympathized with. Walters manages to make Claudia simultaneously totally guarded and completely vulnerable. You really want to help her because you can sense a good person under her bad habits. Philip Baker Hall is also great, showing us what happens when years of bad deeds finally catch up with someone. And it was really cool to see Jason Robards here, after seeing 'Once Upon a Time in the West.' His scenes where even more emotional, because this man who had just been vital and young was now lying in bed, dying. I felt a much deeper connection to the character.

But, everyone in the film really deserves props, it always annoys me to see someone from this film turn up in a bad movie, like Julianne Moore in The Forgotten or Philip Baker Hall in The Amityville Horror, because their work in this film is so good, such formula roles feel like a total waste of time.

If I had to choose one film as an example of what the medium can do in telling stories that no other can, it would be this one. It has the scope of a novel, the incredible dialogue and performances of theater, the visual pleasure of art and the rhythm of music. This is a film that completely changed my ways of constructing narrative. Whenever I would write something before seeing this, it would be limited, focusing on only a couple of characters and one main plot. But, after seeing Magnolia, most of the stories I've written are ensemble pieces, with characters who are connected more by themes than by narrative. Very few works have had such an influence on me, one day I hope to write something that has the narrative scope and emotional precision of this film.

I remember the first time I watched Magnolia, I had sat through three hours and as the camera tracked in on Claudia, I wished the film wouldn't end, not because I wasn't narratively fulfilled, but just because Anderson had built such an incredible world, It's like if you're sitting at a restaurant and you're completely full, but don't want to leave, because the atmosphere there is just so good. It's a three hour film that I wish was longer, I think that says it all about Magnolia.

Richard Linklater Day

Today marks the release of Richard Linklater's new film, The Bad News Bears. Linklater is one of my favorite filmmakers, and one of the few truly unique voices in modern American cinema. Linklater's someone whose career can be pretty easily split into personal films and more general studio stuff. Slacker, Waking Life, the Before duology, these are all more personal/indie stuff, while Newton Boys, School of Rock and Bad News Bears are studio stuff. Not surprisingly, the projects he has written are generally speaking much better. And, coming off perhaps his greatest film, Before Sunset, it's a bit disappointing that he chose to do this remake of the Bad News Bear. But, it is Linklater and I suspect it'll be a fun film. Plus, we've got an awesome film in the future, the animated Philip K. Dick adaptation A Scanner Darkly.

So, a review of Bad News Bears will be on here as soon as I see the film, but in the meantime, peruse some articles from the past that I've written about Linklater.

Finding Meaning in Discussion: On Linklater and the Before Duology
Top Ten Films of 2004
My 2004 Oscar Nominations
Review of The Newton Boys
Review of Suburbia

The first article is essential reading, the others are more peripheral in their discussion of Linklater, but are there for completion sake.

Coming Soon: I rewatched Magnolia Monday and I've been writing up a big piece about that film which should be up soon. When I see Bad News Bears, I'll review that. And perhaps we'll thrown in a personal update on what's up with me. So, look for all that soon.

Once Upon a Time in America

Sergio Leone's filmmaking career concluded with the film, Once Upon a Time in America, a film that's different from everything else I've seen by him, for a number of reasons, most notably the fact that this film isn't a Western. Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West was unquestionably a masterpiece, a film that took full advantage of the medium and featured images that just popped off the screen. It was a completely unique film, like nothing I've ever seen before.

The major problem I had with 'America' was that it felt like I'd seen this film before in a whole bunch of other films. The prohibition era child gangsters struggling to rule a town reminded me a lot of Godfather II, a bit too much. That part of the film, while well made and interesting to watch, just felt too much like something I'd seen before. That's my main problem with the whole film, it feels like a slight variation on stuff that had already been done flawlessly in The Godfather. The style of the two films are very similar, and they're both good, but The Godfather was released first, and I saw it first, so 'America' comes off as a bit of a retread.

But, stepping back a bit, the film is nearly four hours long, one of the longest mainstream movies ever made, and that means that you're forced to approach this movie in a different way than you would a normal length film. Because it's four hours, you get more the sense of going to a world than of watching one story. You see snippets from the life of Noodles, but the narrative is largely episodic, most of the tension comes from trying to figure out what Noodles mission in 1968 is, and seeing what caused the death of Noodles' gang.

The film was never boring, but considering how long it is, I expected a bit more to happen. I admire the creation of a world, that's one of the best things that film can do, but Noodles is a nonentity as a protagonist, and things just happen, there's not much dramatic tension. This is quite different from 'West,' where the tension built up about the Harmonica/Frank confrontation becomes almost unbearable and you're desperate for them to act. Here, you're watching stuff happen, but you don't feel that much stake in the narrative.

So, Leone moves away from a traditional narrative, and instead uses a film to show the life of Noodles as he and Max move from street level child gangsters to prohibition era bootlegging gods. The story of Noodles is a device to show us an overview of the way organized crime and the government have interacted over the course of American history. In the early days, blackmailing a cop can get you the run of the streets, in the 20s, intimidating the police can break up strikes and help gain favors from politications, and by the end of the film, Max has ascended from gangster to politician, not to mention presumed head of the 'legitimate' carting industry. So, as America grows up, its gangsters become its leaders.

But, Noodles never wanted to be anything more than a street level gangster, and that's why he's a powerless old man at the end of the film. He never saw more than the cash in his hands, while Max had vision, his alliances eventually landing him a government position. But, at the end of the film, it's Max who's unhappy, not the powerless Noodles. However, by refusing to kill Max, Noodles for once claims the authority in their relationship.

The film has some very cool visual moments. I loved the scene at the beginning of the film where we start in the 30s with Noodles buying a bus ticket, and then the song 'Yesterday' starts playing and we jump to the 60s in one cut. Really strong use of music. Reading reviews online, a lot has been made of the unique chronological structure. Now maybe at the time it was groundbreaking, but to me, it seemed fairly conventional. We've got a framing device, with the old Noodles, and then he flashes back to different points in his life. It's not particularly confusing, but again, this may be something that's become more popular in recent years, and at the time was very bold. I love multiple time line jumping around, as in a film like The Hours, so I wish the chronologies were a bit more mixed up than they are.

The most interesting relationship in the film was that between the young versions of Noodles and Deborah. There's the beautifully shot ballet scene, and their whole relationship is a sort of hesitant dance, both of them unafraid to express their feelings, something that's not helped by Noodles allegiance to the gang. Jennifer Connelly, of Requiem for a Dream fame, plays young Deborah, and she's great. Elizabeth McGovern, who plays the older version of Deborah is very weak in comparison.

That whole relationship goes awry in the 30s section of the film with a really odd rape scene. I get why it happens, but the reaction of Deborah to the event just feels off. It should be more traumatic than it is, and the lightness with which it's dealt is only magnified by the scene in which Noodles rapes Carol and she ends up liking it, and later dates him. I've never known anyone who's been raped, but if you consider what the act is, this film treats it as something not that bad, and I can't agree with that, especially when you compare it with a film like Irreversible, where the entire plot is about how bad rape is. Deborah seems pretty cool with Noodles in the 60s, and yes, time has passed, but I still think she forgives him too easily. I'm not saying the film has to give the characters legal or moral consequences about the act, but between each other, there should have been something to show that the act does have gravity.

From reading online, I've seen that a lot of people consider the whole film an opium fever dream or vision of the future, citing the 30s cars at Bailey's mansion and the bookending of the film with scenes of Noodles smoking opium. I'm not sure I agree, and even if this is true, does it really matter? When I watched the film, I assumed the 30s cars was just Noodles remembering his past, not as if he's seeing a vision of something from another time. The film could not be just a dream, because of the presence of the song 'Yesterday,' that song means that either he is legitimately seeing the future, or the time periods are just intercut, which is what I assumed after viewing the film. The film isn't shot in such a way that it couldn't all be real.

I think my biggest problem with this film is the same problem I have with The Godfather, Goodfellas and other 'Golden Age' gangster movies. These films all either outright glorify, or at least seem enamored of the ganster lifestyle the characters live, it's all a nostalgic look back. These films, while all masterfully constructed, don't feel particularly relevant to modern life, something that's made all the more apparent by watching the work that was designed as a reaction to these films, The Sopranos.

The Sopranos is all about destroying the gangster mythology and showing us the mob as violence prone extortionists, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. But, more importantly, the show gives us fully realized characters, who aren't just gangsters, they're ordinary people who just happen to make their living in an unordinary way. The best genre fiction is that which uses the genre as a way to make ordinary life seem more exciting, something exemplified by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which turns an ordinary breakup into a world threatening event. The Sopranos gives the conflict between work and family, and the difficulty of dealing with the mythical past of 'the greatest generation' added urgency by making the stakes life or death instead of just happy or unhappy.

Most importantly, The Sopranos creates characters not archetypes. Tony is one of the most complex characters ever created, he's more developed in the first one hour episode than Noodles is over this entire four hour film. But, perhaps Leone never intended to let us understand Noodles, we just observe him. Observation can work, but really caring about a character almost always produces a more interesting work. We want Tony to do good, and are disappointed in him when he doesn't. With Noodles, we don't really care, we're just watching to see the world that Leone created.

So, The Sopranos punctures the gangster mythology and creates real characters with mundane lives instead of mythic figures. This may be symptomatic of the difference between mediums. Film is designed to create icons, heroes who are unequivocably heroic, but with TV, you spend much more time with these people, so you can't have icons, you need to have people, and people are always more interesting than icons.

Seeing The Sopranos shows that you can have fully developed characters in genre fiction, and Leone doesn't pull that off here. That doesn't mean it's a bad film, it just means that you're more an observer than a participant in the film. It's a very interesting four hours, but there's no real tension, and that hurts the film. Still, you have to admire the fact that this guy can make a four hour film that doesn't really examine any characters and still keep an audience entertained throughout. That's a testament to the power of his images and to just how big the film's scope is.

She Hate Me

Yesterday I watched Spike Lee's latest 'joint,' She Hate Me, a film that got some of the worst reviews of any film made by a well respected director. The film was savaged and disappeared from theaters, but, it sounded bad in a really interesting way, so I decided to give it a look and what I'll say about the film is that it's never boring, but I would say it's a long distance from being a good film.

A lot of Lee's stuff sufers when he emphasizes his editorializing over the narrative. The 25th Hour is a great film, its one misfire being a sequence in which the main character complains about the various ethnic groups in the city, something that was already done in Spike's Do The Right Thing. According to the commentary, this sequence was in the book, but considering Spike had already done the exact same thing, it would have been something good to drop. Bamboozled is a film that I liked, but the message of the film is so well integrated into the story itself, there's no need for the montage of clips at the end, which gives you the feeling that the film is more a two hour long editorial than a story. Is there anything wrong with making a film just to prove a point? No, but I think the point was conveyed by the story, you don't need to break the artifice to reenforce it.

The film that's widely considered his masterpiece, Do the Right Thing, works because it doesn't tell you what to think. You're left with a moral conundrum at the end of the film, it's frustrating, but forces you to think about what the events of the film mean. Lee doesn't interrupt the film to tell you what to think about things.

She Hate Me is a film that's filled with so many problematic scenes, you're really left wondering what Spike was thinking. The main plot of the film revolves around Jack Armstrong, a corporate executive who gets fired and begins a scheme to impregnate lesbians for ten thousand dollars a *ahem* pop. So, the film goes into a really bizarre sequence in which we watch Jack in the process of impregnating the women, and despite being lesbians, they all seem to be experiencing this sort of sexual ecstasy. So, it's basically Jack having passionate sex with a parade of beautiful women and being paid ten thousand dollars each to do it. I just couldn't imagine lesbians really paying ten thousand dollars to be impregnated this way, the whole sequence feels like the setup for a porn film. A lot of that is do to the editing, rather than present these encounters as a staid business transaction, the women really seem to be enjoying it, basically implying that lesbians really would like to have sex with men. I'm not saying they should be in pain, but only one woman seemed to have any objections about what they have to do to get pregnant.

Then there's a question I'm really surprised Lee didn't bring to the table, which is the fact that these women are all getting a black man to father their child. Maybe this is a really forward minded bunch, but I'd imagine if you could have your pick of man, many of these women would not choose to have a mixed race child. The only reference to this issuecomes with the mafia subplot, and the don seems very cool with the fact that a black man impregnated his daughter. Now, from what I know of the mafia, it's not a very accepting society, so I'd question whether he would so openly endorse his lesbian daughter, let alone agree with her using a black man to impregnate herself. It's not like you couldn't find someone to have sex with Monica Bellucci if this was the route she wanted to take to get pregnant.

Now, maybe all the characters are fine with it, more power to them in that case, but considering Spike's film in particular deal with issues of race in society, I'm stunned he didn't address it in this case, not to mention the fact that he turns this character into the stereotypical highly sexualized black man. Was this done intentionally? I can't imagine Spike is not aware of what he's doing, but the film is so self serious, you don't get any indication that things should be read on a satirical level.

So, besides this problematic plot, we've got a whole bunch of other things thrown in. The opening of the film is an extended riff about corporate scandals, as Jack finds his company becoming the new Enron. There's definitely an interesting film there, about a whistleblower coming under fire from a corporation, but that plot is abandoned for the middle of the film, and when it returns, it's just an excuse for more editorializing. There's no real dramatic tension in the resolution of this plot because it disappears from the film for so long. Then, Spike breaks the artifice to show us a cover of Time Magazine about real corporate whistleblowers, something that's just unneccesary. We get the point, they'd mentioned Enron before, this just takes you out of the story.

Then the ending of the film presents us with a new vision of family, as Jack becomes the father to the children he fathered with a lesbian couple, and they all live together. This seems like an absurdly fantasy ending, everything works out for Jack, he gets the family he wants, gets his girlfriend back, and throws another girlfriend in there.

So much of the film is so absurd, it's got to be considered satire, Spike can't be expecting us to accept this as it is on the surface. The film works best when you look at it as just a journey that goes from place to place and just accept the absurdity that emerges along the way. A flashback to Watergate, a George Bush campaign commercial, a Time Magazine cover cut in, animated sperm, you can't expect this film to be a coherent narrative, but it's still an entertaining film. I was never bored, and despite the array of problems, the film is quite well shot, with a lot of cool handheld, jump cut stuff.

So, you're left wondering what Spike was thinking. This film really feels like he had a couple of decent story ideas and just threw them together into one film. At 138 minutes, the film was a bit long, if he drops the corporate whistleblower stuff, you could bring the film down to 100 minutes or so, and go a bit more in depth into the implications of what Jack was doing.

Another issue I have with the film is the idea that Jack is neglecting his fatherly duties by impregnating these women and then signing away his custody rights. He's basically a live version of a sperm bank, these women aren't expecting anything, and he doesn't really have to give them anything. I could understand being morally repulsed by what he does, just because he's basically selling his body to these women, and that could be degrading, but these kids aren't his responsibility. It's not the same as impregnating a woman you're in a relationship and then cutting out.

But, if you go over every problematic thing about this film, you'd be here until the end of time. Ultimately, there's some laughs, some good ideas, and a lot of challenging content. Sometimes it's better to watch a flawed film that aims high and leaves you thinking than to watch something that's not flawed, but doesn't do anything new or interesting. So, if nothing else, at least Spike created a film that makes people question things, even if that question is only 'What the hell was he thinking?'

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Other than Revenge of the Sith, this has been a pretty lackluster summer movie season. However, things may be turning around. Last week, I saw a sneak preview of The Island, which was surprisingly good. Michael Bay isn't a director I'm usually a fan of, but this is by far his best film, featuring not only great photography and action sequences, but also some really interesting plot stuff, as well as solid acting from Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. I really respect Bay's visual sense, particularly when shooting Dijmon Honshu's character, I feel like Dijmon must have slipped him some money because he's shot in an unbelievably cool way.

And after seeing that, I knew that over the next two weeks, two of my favorite directors would be bringing out new films. On July 22, Richard Linklater's new Bad News Bears drops and yesterday I saw the new film from Tim Burton, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Now, the one thing these two films have in common is the fact that I really have to question what each of these directors is doing. For two people with such unique artistic voices, it seems like a waste of talent to remake anything, let alone family films from the 70s. But I respect the two of them enough that I'll see anything they put out, and these two films are no exception.

So, after seeing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I'm left with sort of a mixed feeling. I can see why Burton would want to make the film, because it's an incredible visual showcase, but it's also the one film where the criticism frequently leveled against him, that he's merely a visual showman with no storytelling ability, may be true. This is a film that's basically an hour long jaunt through a visual wonderland, bookended by some marginally developed story.

The film is reduced to the level of pure cinema, just music and visual, quite frequently. In a mainstream Hollywood film, this sort of narrative abstraction is quite admirable. Burton succeeds in making a film where the narrative consists solely of a tour of visual spectacle. The whole tour of the factory consists of showing us a room, and then a spectacular act of violence directed towards a child. I love the enjoyment the film lets us take in the suffering of the children. Sure, they're set up as unlikable characters, but you don't frequently see kids eaten by squirrels, without any consequences whatsoever.

The thing I love about the film is the visuals. Burton's two most recent films, Planet of the Apes and Big Fish, did have some interesting visual stuff going on, but they weren't particularly 'Burton.' This film is definitely a return to the visual excess of films like Beetlejuice and Batman Returns, this film is more visually centered than anything else in Burton's career. It reminds me a lot of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, in the way that it's about this wacky guy going through a series of visually spectacular moments.

The environments in the film were incredible looking. I particularly loved the TV room, and those great sunglasses, as well as the cartoon-techno excess of the gum room. Another really cool visual moment was the puppet intro to the factory.

The other person who returned with this film is Danny Elfman. Elfman is one of my favorite film composers, and in Burton's best films, his music is integral to making the film work. His scores for Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns are arguably the two best film scores ever written, fully integrated into the storytelling. The ending sequence of Batman Returns is operatic, relying solely on visuals and music to tell the story. And of course there's his phenomenal work on Nightmare Before Christmas, where he may deserve even more credit than Burton for making it such a great film.

Sadly, Elfman has been, quite frankly, sucking lately. His work on Spider-Man was nonexistent, and Hulk wasn't much better. His score made absolutely no impact on the viewer, and Planet of the Apes and Big Fish weren't much better. When you hire a composer as great as Elfman, his work should be brought front and center, not used as merely background accompaniment.

Luckily, with this film, his music is spotlighted right from the beginning. His opening cue is phenomenal, with great choral bits and the nice integration of some crazy electronic sounds. It's his best work for Burton since Mars Attacks! And once we get into the factory, Elfman really steps into the spotlight, with the crazy songs he writes for the Oompa Loompas. These songs harken back to Elfman's days in the rock band, Oingo Boingo, but move through all sorts of musical styles. My favorite is the folk song style number done when Violet is put down the garbage chute, but all the songs are great. Elfman needs to do another musical, he's a musical genius.

These musical sequences provide Burton with some of the best visual material in the film. He does some cool Busby Berkley allusions, including one really cool shot where the camera is down a chute and people are rotating around above it, creating a reverse Busby. I really liked the use of one actor to portray all the Oompa Loompas, the effects there are seamless, and make everything seem really surreal. These musical sequences were definitely the highlight of the movie.

Sadly, while the oompa loompa effects were seamless, the film was too reliant on CG set pieces. The opening sequence was pretty solid CG, but you could still tell it was CG and that took me out of the movie. If you compare that factory press sequence to the one that opens Pee-Wee's Big Adventure or Edward Scissorhands, I think it's obvious that sometimes is better to create a convincing effect than to have the excess visual spectacle of that sequence. I know 'it's all not not real,' so it's pointless to criticize CG, but that sort of obvious CG takes me out of the reality of the film. Similarly, there's some parts during the factory tour that are obvious CG, such as the boat ride bit, and they're much less visually dazzling than the sets.

I guess the problem here is that the CG is being presented purely as visual spectacle, so you're forced to examine the irreality of it, whereas in something like Revenge of the Sith, the CG is used in service of a narrative, so you're consumed in the narrative and accept the CG as a part of the world. I still feel like even in the best CG, there's something a bit artificial about it. A well designed model is better than the best CG, look at the space battle in Return of the Jedi, or all of Blade Runner, a film that looks so real, a reality that, at least today, could not be matched in CG.

But, on the whole, this is still one of the most exciting visual films I've seen in a long time. It always offers you something new and interesting to look at, and the sets are nicely integrated into the film's thematic development, notably with the Buckets' house. One of the coolest visual moments was when Wonka's father moves his house out of a block and into the middle of nowhere. That's one of those classic moments that makes no sense in real world terms, but somehow works.

The actual plot of this film is Burton going back to his classic theme, the outsider struggling to come to terms with society. Wonka lives on his own in a castle atop a town, much like Edward Scissorhands. The narrative structure here is also drawn from Edward Scissorhands, with Wonka flashing back to his experience with his father over the course of the narrative, in the same way that Edward did.

The difference between this film and his best work is that each of those films did something different with the outsider theme. Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns tell almost identical stories, but with totally different tones and generic signifiers. Factory just presents the classic theme, without going any further or developing it in any new way.

I think it's difficult for artists who have pet themes to create new films, because people have certain expectations of what they should be. I criticized Big Fish and Planet of the Apes because they weren't 'Burton' enough, but here I'm saying that Factory is just Burton on autopilot, so it's nearly impossible for him to find the right balance. I think it's same criticism that Lynch got on Mulholland Dr. or Wong Kar-Wai on 2046, they're just going back to the same themes and visual motifs, without developing them further. Is this film just Burton doing Burton, as MD is Lynch doing Lynch?

The problem with Factory is that it just has no substance. The character conflicts are only marginally developed, and the ending seems a bit trite. That's because so much of the film focuses on the purely visual, and those are by far the best moments. So, the question this film raises is, are great visuals and music enough to make a great film? I would argue in this case, it makes a good film, but not a great one.

Most films have the opposite problem, they have a competent story, but nothing interesting visually. Burton has always been criticized for his lack of storytelling ability, and on his other films, I would stronly dispute that claim. Beetlejuice has phenomenal characters and a really interesting story, and Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns are so thematically rich, you could analyze them for years. If Factory didn't exist within Burton's canon, there'd really be nothing to analyze. Storywise, it's only interesting looking at it from the perspective of auteur criticism.

And, this is a film where nearly everyone going to see it already knows what happens, the joy is purely in seeing how things happen, and since there's not much story, the how is all in the visual. The story itself is designed to be a visual showcase, so from the moment he chose this project, Burton was basically destined to make a film that's solely a visual experience.

The question this film leaves is, can a film be successful solely as a visual creation, with minimal narrative or thematic substance? The answer I would give is yes, but without those things a film can never be truly great. A film needs to have both a story, or at least thematic issues or character development, and interesting visuals to be a great film. Burton has made a really fun movie that's visually dazzling, but it's not a great film. Burton's problem right now is that he's done so many variations on the same theme, it's tough to come up with a new approach, yet when he branches out, his films don't feel 'Burton' enough. It's definitely a conundrum. The stop motion film, Corpse Bride, definitely has potential, but Burton's only co-directing. However, he didn't direct The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it's still phenomenal, if Corpse Bride is half as good, it'll be Tim's best film since Ed Wood.

If I was to advise Tim, I would say his next live action film should be a musical based on an original story he creates, with music by Danny Elfman. The best moments of Charlie are the songs, both musically and visually, so why not go all out, and create something as visually crazy as Nightmare, but in live action, and fully integrating the songs into the plot. Maybe that would be the best way to keep developing his favorite themes, and still create a very new, fresh film.

Zooropa: At the Crossroads of Rock's Future

I listened to U2's Zooropa today, their second best album, behind only their masterpiece Achtung Baby. Zooropa is interesting because despite its brilliance, it's the only U2 album not to yield a hit single. Your average person would recognize stuff off of almost all their other albums, but Zooropa has no songs that make it big in the cultural mainstream, nothing you'd hear on the radio. However, that doesn't mean it's not great, I would argue Zooropa represents a reach into a new world of music, creating a new type of sound, a sound that could have defined the 1990s, but sadly never made the cultural impact it deserved to make.

Throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s and into the 80s, there were constant innovation and evolution in terms of what rock music could do. The 50s started rock and roll, and it matured in the 60s, with the album rock masterpieces of The Beatles. In the 70s, prog and the heavy, blues rock sound of Led Zeppelin represented steps forward in creating a new rock sound. This excess was countered by the minimalism of the punk scene. In the 80s, hair metal and synthesizers, regardless of your opinions on them, created a unique new sound.

However, there's nothing I would consider the 90s sound. You could call a song very 80s or very 70s, but I'd hesitate to call any rock very 90s. There's some bands who you could definitely identify with the early 90s alternative sound, your Pearl Jam or Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I don't think there was anything that was as culturally pervasive as in previous decades.

As the 90s began, U2 released Achtung Baby, an album which, at the time, was praised for its bold leap into a new type of sound. Listening to the album today, the leap doesn't seem that big, Achtung Baby is an album of fairly conventional songs with the well chosen incorporation of some electronic sounds, along with slight dance influence. I think it's one of the best albums ever made, nearly every song is a work of genius, and could have served as a single. Acrobat and Ultraviolet, my two favorite U2 songs, both hail from this album.

However, I don't think Achtung Baby is that radical. The album that followed it, Zooropa, is the massive leap that Achtung Baby was purported to be. If each decade is to be defined by new leaps in music, I would argue that Zooropa should have been that leap for the 90s. It features songs that are liberated from traditional chrous/verse structure, frequently jumping between different sections that could be considered equally chorus worthy. For example, on 'Lemon,' there are three distinct sections of the song, one in which Bono sings "She wore lemon...," another in which he sings "Midnight, it's where the day begins," and then a third part in which some other guy speak-sings "Man paints a picture, a moving picture..." So, all these pieces are combined with a an amazing electronic loop and some cool guitar stuff.

So, this song is in someways a throw back to prog rock, and Pink Floyd's electronic rambling songs. However, it uses much more repitition than the frequently improvisatory Floyd, and I think that's where the dance music influence comes in. What the song does is take a bunch of cool elements and combine them on rotating loops, just like a dance song would. This is evident on 'Numb,' which is a driving vocal loop by The Edge, with the chorus from Bono coming in over the top.

I'd consider this rock music made with dance rules the lost music of the 90s. This was the new sound, the bold step forward that could have been the reinvention of rock for the 90s. U2's Pop was noted for their embrace of dance music, but I would argue that's actually a step back towards more traditional song structures and anthemtic music. While I love the album, it's got a lot more traditional song structures, and even the song called 'Discotheque' isn't that dance driven.

As time has passed, the 90s alternative movement has basically disbanded, and rock has been totally displaced as the dominant form of mainstream music. Your average person hasn't heard a song by Radiohead, despite the massive critical acclaim for their albums. And each new 'it' band, like The Strokes or The White Stripes, have some hit songs, but generally speaking don't make a huge cultural impact. Part of the reason for this is that nearly every band out now is a throwback to something in the past. A huge number of bands out now draw influence from the 70s New York indie scene, generally speaking, bands seem to be reinventing stuff from the past, rather than creating something new. This is one of the primary reasons for the 'death of rock,' hip hop is actually doing new things, while rock is just reliving its history. Now, this isn't every band, but there's definitely more focus on updating the past than creating something completely new.

Now, there's definitely a place for giving respect to the past. One of my favorite albums ever, Daft Punk's 'Discovery' is an update of music from the 70s and 80s to fit today's style. It works brilliantly, and I would argue is actually a new sort of music, born out of the ashes of 70s and 80s stuff. This is different from The Strokes who are just doing songs in the style of 70s rock, not updating it in any way to reflect the changes in music since.

Even U2 have retreated from their push to create a new type of music. On 'All that You Can't Leave Behind,' they returned to the anthemic rock they were known for during the 80s, and despite the fact that it's a great album, 'How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb' is not a major step forward either. Now, sometimes making a great song is enough, but when a band makes such bold steps forward as U2 did on Achtung and Zooropa, it seems counteractive to go backwards. It's like Richard Linklater directing Bad News Bears, he might make a good movie, but I'd rather see him do something original than do something that's been done before.

So, this brings up back to Zooropa, which offers us a view of a new type of rock, a vision that was never realized. Just listening to it, you can hear how different is from other U2 records. The songs are all centered around these driving instrumental loops, and it's the change in the loops that signal shifts in the song's mood more than changes in the vocal. The vocals are just one part of the musical mix, rather than being the central focus. This is evident in 'Dirty Day,' which ends with a vocal loop that repeats so much as to become abstract. You don't hear the words so much as the music in the vocal.

It's interesting to hear the way U2 integrates their previous trademarks into the new style. The title track opens with a traditional Edge delay guitar riff, but it's placed into a swirling electronic environment, with vocal samples serving as the driving element in the song until it reaches a Bono vocal.

And while it is very innovative, it still pays tribute back to the past. Much like Led Zeppelin takes blues and reinvents it for the times, 'Stay (Faraway, So Close)' takes a ballad and places it into a really interesting musical environment. This is my favorite song on the album, and one of my favorite ever, so much so that I watched the movie Faraway, So Close just for its association with the song. Anyway, the vocals are fairly standard, but on the chorus, there's a guitar line following "If the night won't give you up," that's amazing. I'd argue that guitar line is so crucial to the chorus, the song is essentially a duet. It makes the song unique. So, the music becomes just as important as the vocal here, the two are interchangable, I can't imagine the song without that guitar part. Another reinvention takes place on the final track, as Johnny Cash sings 'The Wanderer,' a song notable for its driving electronic loop, and the repeating rhythmic vocals from Cash.

Zooropa is an album that's sadly unappreciated. I think it's because most people still see U2 as the band from The Joshua Tree era, 'Where the Streets have No Name,' being their archetypal song. So, U2 fans aren't fans of this incarnation of the band, and the general public wouldn't pick up a U2 album expecting something radical like this. But, if you give the album a chance, you'll find something incredibly rewarding. 'Lemon' is great partially because it's so completely unique, you've never heard a song like this. The song gave us a vision of what rock could be, but it never really came to pass, electronic music was a bust here, and rock slowly moves toward obsolesence, at least in terms of the cultural mainstream. There might be hit songs, but I couldn't see rock ever having the exclusive hold over popular music it held in the 50s-80s.

However, there is some good news. Recently, I've heard a couple of albums that seem to follow up on the electronic, dance inspired rock that this album promised. United State of Electronica are a bit more dance than Zooropa, but they definitely follow the same dance inspired rock formula, as does Bob Mould's new album, Body of Song, which is a bit more rock, but sounds fresh and new. Then, there's N.E.R.D, who are a bit more hip hop, but a lot of their songs follow up on the promise of Zooropa, which is to dancify a rock song and mix in a bunch of electronic stuff. Listen to 'Lapdance' and you can hear how a traditional rock song is made new through the combination of driving instrumental parts and interesting vocal loops.

So, perhaps it just took ten years for the promise of Zooropa to be realized, and in the near future, we will see this new form of music finally enter the mainstream.

Films of 2005 (So Far)

Here's something I posted on alt.tv.twin-peaks, but I'll throw on here too because it's pretty relevant. This is a list of all the films I've seen this year, 178 in total, all ranked on a five star scale. Now, one note on this. The scale is comparative among the films here, not film in general. I do like most of the films here, even most of the ones had something decent. So, a two is a good movie, three is really good, four is great, five is transcendent genius. The star indicates it's a film I've seen before this year.

5 stars
In the Mood for Love (Wong)*
Oldboy (Park)*
Chungking Express (Wong)*
School of Rock (Linklater)*
2046 (Wong)
Fallen Angels (Wong)*
House of Flying Daggers (Zhang)
Hero (Zhang)*
Garden State (Braff)*
Irma Vep (Assayas)
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: Extended Edition (Jackson)
Leon: The Professional (Besson)*
Donnie Darko (Kelly)*
Infernal Affairs (Lau/Mak)
Infernal Affairs II (Lau/Mak)
Jackie Brown (Tarantino)*
North by Northwest (Hitchcock)*
Satyricon (Fellini)
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
Far From Heaven (Haynes)
Safe (Haynes)
Irreversible (Noe)*
Gone with the Wind
American Beauty (Mendes)*
Dazed and Confused (Linklater)*
Amelie (Jeunet)*
The 25th Hour (Lee)*
Sin City (Rodriguez)
Batman Returns (Burton)*
Unbreakable (Shyamalan)*
Heat (Mann)*
Edward Scissorhands (Burton)*
Ashes of Time (Wong)*
Aliens (Cameron)*
Days of Being Wild (Wong)*
Happy Together (Wong)*
Run Lola Run (Tykwer)*
Boogie Nights (Anderson)*
Attack of the Clones (Lucas)*
Revenge of the Sith (Lucas)*
The Big Lebowski (Coen)*
Velvet Goldmine (Haynes)
The Virgin Suicides (Coppola)*
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)*
Paris, Texas (Wenders)
Clean (Assayas)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)*
Bonnie and Clyde (Hill)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
The Shining (Kubrick)*

4 stars
Sideways (Payne)
Bad Santa (Zwigoff)
A Very Long Engagement (Jeunet)
The Ice Storm (Lee)
Mean Girls
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (Kim)
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder)
The Aviator (Scorsese)
Captain Blood
8 1/2 (Fellini)
The Isle (Kim)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz)
Delicatessan (Jeunet)
Bullitt
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron)*
Infernal Affairs III (Lau/Mak)
Happiness (Solondz)
Bulworth (Beatty)*
Lolita (Kubrick)*
The Heroic Trio (To)*
The Incredibles (Bird)*
Crash (Haggis)
subUrbia (Linklater)
The Phantom Menace (Lucas)*
Breaking the Waves (Von Trier)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
Three Kings (O'Russell)
The Killing (Kubrick)
Cabaret
Short Cuts (Altman)
12 Angry Men (Lumet)
The Dreamers (Bertolucci)
Midnight Cowboy (Schlessinger)
Being There (Ashby)

3 stars
JSA (Park)
Walkabout (Roeg)
Safety Last
The Black Pirate
Million Dollar Baby (Eastwood)
Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
Pirates of the Caribbean (Verbinski)*
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park)
Audition (Miike)
Casino (Scorsese)
We Don't Live Here Anymore
Maria, Full of Grace
The Road Home (Zhang)
The Jacket
To Live (Zhang)
Coffy (Hill)
Radiance (Perkins)
Goldfinger*
I Stand Alone (Noe)
Mars Attacks! (Burton)*
The Maltese Falcon
The Tracker
A Touch of Zen
Masters of the Flying Guillotine
Spiderman 2 (Raimi)*
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg)*
The Apartment (Wilder)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Man Who Wasn't There (Coen)*
The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese)
Spartacus (Kubrick)
One From the Heart (Coppola)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
Princess Raccoon (Suzuki)
The Doors (Stone)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Forman)
Straw Dogs (Peckinpah)
War of the Worlds (Spielberg)
Breathless (Godard)
Forrest Gump (Zemeckis)

2 stars
Mystic River (Eastwood)
Finding Nemo
Assault on Precinct 13
Identity
Rabbit Proof Fence (Noyce)
The Last Wave (Weir)
The Vikings
Existenz (Cronenberg)
Blanc
Intolerable Cruelty (Coen)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
Beneath Clouds
Die Hard
Kung-Fu Hustle (Chow)
Amarcord (Fellini)
Miller's Crossing (Coen)
La Strada (Fellini)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Liman)
The Quiet American (Noyce)
Mean Streets (Scorsese)
Batman Begins (Nolan)
Grave of the Fireflies
New York, New York (Scorsese)

1 star
Speed
Napoleon Dynamite
The Mark of Zorro
Ong-Bak
Ghostbusters II (Reitman)*
Be Cool
What the Bleep Do You Know
The Newton Boys (Linklater)
Dead Heart
Dirty Harry
Black and White
Yonglu Boys
The Player (Altman)

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.

Once Upon a Time in the West

Yesterday I watched Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Last summer, I watched The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and I liked it, but felt it was a bit too long, not quite engaging enough to justify a two and a half hour running time. Still, a year later, I decided to check out the critically beloved Once Upon a Time in the West and I'm glad I did.

Lately, both online and out in the world, I've been having a lot of discussions about the direction of the film industry, particularly what's happening in blockbuster filmmaking. I'm seeing Batman Begins get a ton of love, when it's an incredibly flawed film. This article on Ninthart covers a lot of my feelings on the film, most notably here:

The direction was lacklustre and utterly bland, cutting to close-up during any fight and rendering it intelligible. The utterly pointless addition of Katie Holmes was far more intrusive than I had expected. The film sagged horribly in what should have been the most exciting part, the 'Becoming Batman' section. The dialogue was appallingly bad and in a year when George Lucas has been getting such bad press for his own dialogue, I'm shocked this film has been given a free pass. And Christian Bale's Batman was just trying too hard.

Anyway, I've probably said enough about Batman Begins, it's not the film's fault, it's the time it was born into. Nolan created a film that's one day going to be noted for just how "00s" the film is, in terms of pacing, action sequences and character roles. But, alas, the 00s is not the best time for action filmmaking, here in the States at least. I think people making films today could learn a lot by looking at what works in Once Upon a Time in the West.

Start this movie up and the first thing you'll notice is just how different the pacing is. The credits roll over people just standing around a train station, waiting for something to happen. The sequence is admittedly a bit long, but it does a good job of building your anticipation about what's to happen. The first real shock in this movie for me was seeing the family get killed. It's a really well done scene, culminating in one of the most incredible shots I've seen in any movie: Frank's men emerging from the bush as the young boy looks on. The music there is phenomenal, creating a really unique visual moment.

This film is all about the combination of the visual and music to create stunning moments. Ennio Morricone's score here is even better than his more iconic work on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The cutting guitars on Harmonica's theme and the female chorus over lush strings for Jill are the most notable cues, rearranged throughout the film to suit the scene.

In TGTB&TU, it was the music that kept me interested in the movie. Here, the visuals are so good that they match or eclipse Morricone's work. The best sequence in the film is the showdown between Harmonica and Frank at the end. Suspense is built up over a very long preamble in which they circle each other, have a flashback and just stare at each other before the single shot that decides the contest is fired. Leone's trademark extreme closeups work wonderfully here, Bronson and Fonda both look aged and worn down, believable warriors. In action sequences, it's usually the build up that's more important than the sequence itself, and that's certainly the case here. The actual action takes a couple of seconds, but the buildup is quite long, and it's the most enjoyable thing in the film. The combination of music and visual is perfect.

The plot here is less important, but it's still interesting. I liked Jill's story, and it was interesting to see such a strong female character in what's traditionally a male-dominated genre. The film is paced in a very strange way, you don't really become aware of the main story until about 45 minutes into the movie. This makes it a bit tough to follow the beginning, because you're sort of drifting. Even after seeing the rest of the movie, I'm a bit unclear on how the opening sequence tied into the rest of the plot. Events are sometimes a bit unnecessarily convoluted, and that can make it difficult to lose yourself in the filmmaking. Though, I think that's a problem that will be lessened on repeat viewings. Much like a Wong Kar-Wai film, on the first viewing, I got more of a feeling, an atmosphere, and on subsequent viewings I'll be able to pick up more of the plot.

One interesting thing in this film was seeing Jason Robards in his prime. The only thing I'd seen him in previously was Magnolia, he's looking a bit more spry here. Bronson's not the best actor, but his face is so good, he does what he needs to to fit the role.

So, what the film's ultimately about is the end of the archetypal gunslinger. Men like Harmonica and Frank have no place in the new world that Jill is building, that's why Frank must die and Harmonica has to leave at the end. They'll keep racing beyond the railroad, eventually running out of room to run, and that's when the archetypal west will be gone. The film's closing shot covers this, starting on Jill bringing water to the workers building her town, then panning over to the still untouched landscape, a landscape that will eventually also be civilized.

From a personal point of view, it was cool to see one of the works that influenced Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It gives you a better picture of the sort of guy he had in mind when he created Roland, a character who shares the values of a Harmonica or Cheyenne, especially in the early books.

On the whole, this was a fabulous film. It might have been a bit too long, but I was never bored despite the 165 minute running time. This film is one of the best marriages of visual to music that I've ever seen. I love the way that the film's style draws you deeper into the diegesis, rather than serving solely as its own attraction. You usually don't see a period film that's so bold with its stylistic innovation, but Leone pulls it off and creates a film that's still riveting to watch today.

Live8

It's been a bit of a slow start today, I've pretty much just been sitting around watching the Live8 conecrt event on AOL streaming media. The coverage of this event is really embelmatic of the changes going on in the way big events are covered by the media. I started watching the London conecert on TV, and they show U2 and Paul McCartney play Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band then cut away to Will Smith just as U2's set wsa about to start. So, I hopped online and got the London stream, where I was able to watch the U2 set. The TV coverage throughout the day is apalling, there's so many commercials and prepackaged segments, you barely see any of the music. But online has been great, I've seen The Who, Jay-Z, Brian Wilson, a-ha and a whole bunch of other acts.

But the whole reason I'm watching is for the reunited Pink Floyd, who are going on in about ten minutes. I'll be back with a report then, I never thought I'd see the real Pink Floyd perform togethere, but it's happened, and hopefully this'll lead to a tour or at least a few NYC gigs I can get to.

UPDATE: Well, I saw the performance and it was quite amazing. They sounded just like the album, but with enough interesting instrumental variations to make it a cool live experience. One thing that surprised me was just how good Gilmour is on the guitar, the solos on the record are unparalleled, so good that I couldn't imagine them being replicated, but he comes out and drops Comfortably Numb. Great stuff, and besides the songs, it was nice to see Roger reach out to Gilmour at the end. I don't know if there ever will be any sort of follow up tour, if there's not, this is an amazing way to go out, and for Floyd fans, this gig is going to be on the level of the rooftop Beatles farewell.

Coming soon on the blog, I'll hopefully get Six Feet Under episodes 3 and 4 soon, so I can review those. Also, I just saw Once Upon a Time in the West which rocked so damn hard, more on that tomorrow.

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.

Clean

Yesterday I watched the film Clean, which reunites the team behind the brilliant Irma Vep, director Olivier Assayas and lead actress Maggie Cheung. This is a film with quite a backstory. Sometime after filming Irma Vep, Assayas and Cheung got married, and he was writing this film as a present to her, but they ended up getting divorced, and while they were in the process of working out that divorce, they made this film together.

So, the film is prescient in its depiction of a woman struggling to make it on her own after her marriage falls apart, in the film, it's the death of her rock star husband that sets things in motion, and as the film goes on, she has to kick her heroin addiction, in the hopes that she will one day regain custody of her son.

What makes the film great is Maggie Cheung's performance as Emily. At the start of the film, she's a Yoko Ono type character, a woman who is blamed for her husband's musical decline. So, she is fiery and defiant, fending off criticism. But once he dies, she goes through a humbling process, we see her in jail, and even when she gets out, she's forced to give her son away and work through a series of menial jobs, all the time struggling with breaking her addiction. It's a totally different role than anything else I've seen Cheung in, that was a major reason why Assayas made the film, to give her a chance to play someone closer to herself in real life.

In most of the Asian films she's in, she plays a sort of chaste, idealized woman, regal and slightly removed from the dirty nastiness of reality. I would compare her to Nicole Kidman over here, someone who may play characters that may suffer, but always seems a bit ethereal, above normalcy. So, here, Assayas gives her a character who is inundated with problems, and unable to make things work. It's a stretch for her, but she completely pulls it off, she's utterly convincing in her role, all the more surprising considering she has to speak in three languages. I said it when I saw Irma Vep, I'll say it again, American directors are missing out on such a talent by not using her. Her English is great, and as an actress, she's one of the best in the world today. And even if you're not talking about the art, her presence would be a huge help in increasing international box office revenue.

In addition to Cheung, Nick Nolte as Albrect puts in a great performance. Most of his scenes are with a kid, but both he and the kid are great, and you really understand what he's feeling. Cinema isn't always dependent on an emotional connection, but the fact that you care about Emily, Albrecht and Jay makes the events much more meaningful. You want Emily to have her son, but at the same time, you want him to stay with Albrecht. The arrangement they work out at the end gives the film a great happy ending while staying within the bounds of realism.

Assayas' films always look good and are interestingly made; this is no exception. He uses a lot of handheld camera, with frequent jump cuts, and that does a good job of conveying Emily's mental instability. I really like the use of music, particularly the last scene.

This is the sort of film that works because it creates fully realized, sympathetic characters and then lets you follow them around as they struggle to find something more in their lives. I think that's a resonant struggle, even if you're not trying to ditch heroin, you can relate to Emily's struggle to make a better life, to improve her station in the world. The film doesn't judge the character, or become moralizing about the drugs, it's something that happened and now she has to move on. So, great performances, interesting filmmaking, emotional engagement with the characters, you've got yourself a great film right there.

Batman Begins

It's been some busy times lately, my sister graduated on Wednesday and I've been doing a bunch of work over at LMC to get ready for the camp. However, before this busy stuff happened, I was still guilty of one major film/comics related sin and that was not seeing Batman Begins until nearly a week after its release. The film was getting amazing reviews and everyone I talked to who saw it seemed to love it, so I was expecting something pretty good. However, I was still wary because I'm such a huge fan of the Tim Burton Batman films, particularly Returns, which is #8 on my top 100 films list. I think I might be the film's biggest fan in the whole world, it's just a transcendent piece of cinema, and I wrote a bit about it here, as well as in a 23 page paper on the film for my action cinema class.

Anyway, in that piece, I also wrote about my thoughts on the upcoming Batman Begins, saying:

And I feel like this film makes the upcoming Batman Begins seem so irrelevant. There's no way Nolan can top this film, and in making a Spider-Man style blockbuster out of Batman, he'll just embrace the commodification of Hollywood that is preventing really personal films from being made. Batman Returns is so unique because it's one of the most personal blockbusters I've ever seen. You can sense Burton's involvement in every level of this project, and maybe that's why the film wasn't successful. To make a film that some people will really love, you're going to alienate others. But, I'd rather have a film that a few people absoultely love than one that everyone likes.

Now that I've seen the film, I think I was a bit off in my assessment of it. It's a film that has actually ended up being pretty much loved en masse. The reviews are not of the grudgingly positive variety, they're raves and people out in the world seem to absolutely love the film. I would not qualify the film as a Spider-Man style accessible blockbuster, it's darker and less pop than that film. However, what it is not is a personal film, or a good film.

Watching Batman Begins, I admittedly went in with a bit of resistance, due to my love of Burton's films, but I was open enough to the film to love it if the quality was there. Then I watched the film, waiting for it to get good, to see what made people love it so much, and it just wasn't there. The whole movie went by and I was unmoved and unimpressed by a fairly generic post-Se7en neo-noir, that features a guy who dresses up in a bat suit instead of a newbie young detective.

This film really falls prey to the problems that mar so many contemporary action movies. The most important is in the pacing. I hate the idea that Hollywood executives like to lock a story into a three act structure with set emotional beats and character arcs, but this misguided rigidity is drawn from the basic storytelling principles that have worked for centuries. In order to keep the audience's emotional involvement, you have to put your hero through trials and have them changed 'by the fire.' The events of a movie should make an impact on the characters. In this film, Bruce Wayne has a pretty solid character arc for the first hour or so, he goes through changes and eventually decides to become Batman. This is a big step, but there, his journey basically ends. Once he is Batman, his problems basically stop, and other than a few minor injuries, everything goes extremely well for him at the end. There's no struggle, no sense that he earns the victory, and while this may have been intentional, it means that the entire second half of the movie is devoid of emotional stakes.

Even though it's not technically based off a comic, the definitive superhero narrative of recent years is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The key here is that she has all these powers, so fighting people isn't that tough, but when you bring emotions into the battle, it becomes much more complex. So, beating the Master in year one, very easy, beating Angelus in year two, agonizing, and the leap in quality is enormous. You need to have your hero in danger, and emotional consequences are actually better than physical danger, because the movie is called Batman Begins, we know he won't die. Admittedly, it's a bit unfair to compare a TV series, with so many more hours to build up the characters, to a film, but the basic storytelling principles are the same.

The entire movie is paced at roughly the same speed and emotional level. We get none of the ups and downs, there's no moment where we think Batman might lose. Cheesy and cliche though it may be, you really need your hero to have some problems and between his money and physical prowess, Batman can do whatever he wants. We never doubt him and that makes for bad storytelling. This movie really needed the moment where Batman is beaten, almost dead, then a swell of music starts and we see him pulling himself up, somehow mustering the strength to finish the job. Those scenes are in movies because they work on an emotional level, it may be cliche, but it's better than nothing. It reminds me of Terminator 3 in the way that a lot of events happen in the movie, but at the end you don't get the feeling that you actually watched anything of substance, it all just sort of passed in front of you in one block of footage.

The last battle between Batman and Ra's Al Ghul is completely devoid of tension, because Batman has no real conflict with the villain. Yes, they had the mentor relationship in the beginning, but he has no reason not to kill Ra's. So, without any emotional tension, we'd need Batman to be in some physical danger, and we don't get that either, or more accurately, we can't tell if he is because of the way the fight is edited. You have no clue what's going on because cuts are used to convey action rather than the actors actually fighting. The best action scenes rely on us knowing exactly what's going and being able to easily follow things. Look at the lightsaber duel in The Phantom Menace, wide shots make it easy to follow the action. Here, it's all quick cuts and then somehow Batman has won, we don't know how. But, that's not just this movie, it's a problem with many action movies today.

The other major issue I had with the film was the score. Most movies, you notice a good score and if it's a bad score, you don't even think about it. However, with the memory of Elfman's two phenomenal Batman scores, the absence of anything musically interesting here is glaring. This is another problem with action movies today, what happened to the theme song? Recently, the idea of having one piece of music that recurs throughout a film has gone out of style and it has hurt movies so much. Look at Revenge of the Sith, the score is so thematically developed, you could watch just the music and visuals and understand the emotional beats of the film. Williams has so many developed themes, he just has to choose the right moment for each one and he's got a brilliant score. Or for a more simple example, look at any James Bond film, the best moment is always at the height of an action sequence when the Bond theme starts playing, everything seems so much cooler. The theme is such an easy shortcut to make events seem important and this film's music is so generic, I was actually playing Elfman's Batman theme in my head, just to try to improve things a bit.

Why would a filmmaker not use a big theme song? Perhaps it makes things too easy, too emotionally manipulative, but when something works, it's never too easy. Music in film is like smell in real life, it's tied into emotional memory, and just playing the music can bring up a feeling. To not use the music in aid of the film is like deciding to speak without any adjectives, you might be able to communicate, but people aren't really going to care about what you say. It's so easy to make a theme song, why not just use it? If Terminator 3 had only used the Terminator theme it would have went up in quality by at least 25 percent.

Also, the film had a really generic post Se7en look. It's dark, seedy, rather ugly, and while that may have been appropriate for the story, from an aesthetic point of view, it's uninspiring. I did really like the look of Golden Age Gotham, with that elevated train, but both Burton films show that you can do dark and seedy and still have a little zest in the look of your movie.

So, I've been pretty harsh on the film, and I think a large part of that is due to my love of the Tim Burton films. Brian Singer is making a Superman movie that's pure homage to the 1979 Superman movie and he gets respected and applauded for that, when the Burton Batman films are so much better than the decent Reeve Superman film, and they get no notice from this work. Instead Nolan creates a pretty generic, impersonal film that has for some reason been embraced widely by nearly everyone. Batman Returns was the perfect take on the character and his sort, it came out thirteen years ago, there was no need for this movie to be made, and watching the film, I don't think it did anything that Burton's Batman films didn't.

I'm not claiming to be unbiased, but watching this film, I was waiting for it come alive and it never did. I really feel like I saw a completely different film than other people did, I just don't get how people could like it so much when this is a rather boring story and totally uninteresting filmmaking. Nolan may be getting the reputation as a golden boy now, but his films all fall into this sort of dirty, dark, yet uninteresting neo-noir genre. Memento had a solid gimmick, but watching it again, it's a standard story wrapped in a cool structure. Insomnia was uninspiring and Batman falls into that same sort of not bad, but not good limbo. I think people's expectations have been so lowered by the awful crop of films released this summer (and the lingering memory of Batman and Robin) that anything that doesn't talk down the audience gets kudos. It's what makes Clint Eastwood's competent, but uninspiring films, best picture winners and Batman Begins the hit of the summer.

People crack on Revenge of the Sith for having bad dialogue, but the pure emotion of the lava duel or the intercut birth/death sequence does more both emotionally and technically than Batman does in its entire run. I guess what I'm saying is that not having anything explicitly bad doesn't make a film good, and having flaws doesn't mean that a film can't still be a masterpiece. Batman Begins is competent, but that's not enough, particularly when the shadow of one of the greatest blockbusters ever made, Batman Returns, lingers. Just compare the emotional impact of the final half hour of Returns to the dull action sequence that closes Begins and tell me which does more with film, and which gets closer to the dual nature of the Batman himself.