The Adjustment Bureau: Politically Determined

It’s the political background that takes precedence in The Adjustment Bureau to such an extent that it may provide the key to the film’s rather temporal cosmology. For a story that flirts with suggestions of the divine, angels, free will, and determinism, the real-world referents that the film connects with its content are something much more akin to “big brother,” Orwell stuff, and general paranoia of political fascism. Is this a misreading? Are we violently applying the film’s glossy artifice, a narrative revolving around a pretty boy’s quick rise up the political ladder, as both the source and terminus of the film’s overall meaning? Momentarily sidestepping the popular contemporary suggestions that there is no such thing as a misreading, three chief factors lend support to this hypothesis (at least, three factors immediately evident upon a single viewing of the film). First, certain cameos toward the film’s beginning, including one by former Secretary of State Madelaine Albright and the Rev. Jesse Jackson (to say nothing of two separate appearances by political satirist Jon Stewart), ground the film’s fiction in a concrete reality. Second, the narrative revolves around politics: a politician trying to ascend to the highest rank in the land, a rank deemed by the diegesis itself, it seems, as the highest possible good. The sheer absurdity of such a notion that victory in a presidential election could be so earthshaking is so naïve that the film must be about politics and could not ultimately be about something more metaphysical (viz., free will & determinism, the philosophical concepts that the film touts without doing adequate justice to them). That is to say, only a political mindset could be so myopic as to see the US presidency as the all-in-all. Third, characters in the film – particularly those from the “other” world – have all the signs of Orwellian political voyeurs. The “angels” look something like covert operatives, CIA agents, or the Secret Service. These figures are characterized by all things sinister. The one loose cannon, rogue, AWOL agent is exactly the same character as that played by Jeffrey Wright in the recent James Bond film Quantum of Solace. (In classic Hollywood fashion, each character in each film is black. Such a token offering to give such a small role but one of narrative significance to a black actor.) In The Adjustment Bureau, this character is an anti-Satan. He’s a fallen angel, but that’s precisely what makes him good. However much of a cosmic sadist many may accuse the Almighty of being, all indications point to the powers-that-be in The Adjustment Bureau as paralleling those earthly powers that typically try to wield too much control over the everyman. What this film does to try to throw the viewer off of this fairly conventional path is to hurl big concepts like free will and determinism, as well as to symbolize a political dilemma (however urgent it may be) via theophany.

Tags: cinema, determinism, Emily Blunt, film, free will, Matt Damon, movies, The Adjustment Bureau

A Man Escaped: Manual Labor

Just some notes at the outset. It’s quite easy to see the influence of Dostoyevsky and Robinson Crusoe in this one. The latter has to do with the film’s narrative content, focusing on a the nearly ecstatic joy that a solitary figure takes in the tedious work of survival in a world not originally his own but one that he decidedly makes his own. The late addition in A Man Escaped of the Friday figure (a la Crusoe) offers an opportunity for fellowship and causes the main character, ultimately, to admit that he probably wouldn’t have succeeded in his efforts without a companion. As for Dostoyevsky, the influence is more tonal and thematic. Such influence is seen in Robert Bresson’s other works, particularly in Pickpocket. To call the tone “cerebral” may not be quite right; “pensive” strikes more at the heart of it. Bresson’s characters are full of thoughts, as the internal narration indicates in concert with a remarkably subtle use of acting and deliberate camerawork pointing directly at physical elements in such a way as to reveal the underlying soul in them. (The thief’s hands in Pickpocket have been noted before.) In addition to Dostoyevsky’s character Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, whose sneaking around is evoked by the eventual escape in Bresson’s film, Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Tell-Tale Heart” is also recalled here. In that account, the character’s own thoughts terrify him and nearly paralyze him during a tortuously long tip-toe across some creaky floorboards. Of course, Bresson’s “man escaped” is not the would-be murderer in Dostoyevsky or in Poe – or in Bresson’s own Pickpocket. He’s not a saint, either, as in Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest; the fact that there is a priest locked up also in A Man Escaped sets our protagonist apart as someone more everyman in nature. He’s remarkable, to be sure, as no one else is quite willing to go to such lengths as he in attempting to escape, until “Friday” shows up and tags along for the ride. Paul Schrader’s book on a transcendental style in film focuses on Bresson, Ozu, and Dreyer. While the work isn’t handy at the moment, one wonders to what degree Schrader can argue that a film like A Man Escaped reaches toward a kind of so-called “transcendence.” Bresson’s films are distinctly about humanity and things exceedingly terrestrial. (He is not so different from Kieslowski in this sense, or even Tarkovsky.) A Man Escaped has very little to do directly with any notion of God. It is a humble and, as aforesaid, pensive suturing to a man who is determined to follow through with his quest for freedom. To call it a “quest” implies an epic nature that is wholly absent from the film, however. To call this film “transcendent,” one might need to argue that it “celebrates the human spirit in all its amazing potential,” or something to that effect. Still, it’s doubtful that this is a proper way of describing a film that is more an exercise in pondering rather than celebrating, and as much about the body as it is about spirit. Par exemple:

Tags: A Man Escaped, cinema, Crime and Punishment, Daniel Defoe, Edgar Allan Poe, film, French Film, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, movies, Pickpocket, Robert Bresson, Robinson Crusoe, Tell Tale Heart

Manhattan Murder Mystery: Escapist Comedy

One in a series of rather silly features from Woody Allen from the ’90s into the ’00s, Manhattan Murder Mystery acts as a sort of trivial extension of the earlier Annie Hall. This superficial fact doesn’t warrant its dismissal by critics as a forgettable chapter within Allen’s sizable canon. It has the flavor of a whodunit?, the tone of any of Allen’s best comedies, the aura of Allen’s New York, and the philosophical implications of Allen’s best comedies or tragedies. On this note, it is fascinating how traditional is Allen’s approach to theatrical art, typically falling on one side or the other of this classical distinction. See Melinda and Melinda for his explicit exploration of this dichotomy. Alan Alda’s presence in the case of Manhattan Murder Mystery recalls his character in Crimes and Misdemeanors, who explains with firm conviction, “Comedy equals tragedy plus time.” This tense relationship is something that fascinates Allen, and although his films often can be placed on one or other side of the barrier, he often refuses so simple a distinction. In the film now before us, which can pretty easily be categorized a comedy, the dark subject matter and allusions to perhaps that darkest of film genres (film noir) are indeed ultimately swallowed up in satire and comedic tribute.

And since it’s so difficult to avoid a parallel examination of Woody Allen the man alongside his films, it should be noted that the production of Manhattan Murder Mystery came immediately following Allen’s notorious personal scandal, leading to a divorce with Mia Farrow. If comedy is the (at least temporary) antidote to tragedy, Manhattan Murder Mystery may represent Allen’s cinematic escape from his own troubles. His replacement of Farrow with Diane Keaton not only hearkens back to Keaton’s roles in both Annie Hall and the similarly titled Manhattan, but also to her symbolic status as Allen’s formidable co-star during his earlier, less tragic years. In this way, one might even read into his invitation to Keaton to take over the part originally written for Farrow as Allen’s own personal Midnight In Paris. With a stormy present raining down on him, he can only reach back into the past to recover some piece of his romanticized past. And not  his past, only, but cinema’s past. Scenes shown within the film Double Indemnity along with a conclusion that simultaneously presented and re-presented Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai indicates Allen’s lifelong infatuation with the better, “golden” age of film. It may be true that their appearance in this film reflects Allen’s debt to them, his admission that he can’t equal them without parodying them, etc. However, beneath these surface possibilities is a more subjective truth evincing Allen’s insecurity over personal tragedy pushing him into the realm of comedy. (Images via)

Tags: Alan Alda, Annie Hall, cinema, comedy, Diane Keaton, film, Manhattan Murder Mystery, movies, tragedy, Woody Allen

Midnight in Paris: From One Flâneur To Another

Bored in the monochromatic present

What the ex-advisor said was true and remains true: you haven’t seen a film unless you’ve seen in (at least) twice. So, for as lighthearted in tone as Woody Allen’s latest is, one must revisit it to say much about it that’s worth hearing. That being said, here we are after only one viewing. Midnight in Paris is unashamedly nostalgic, with the theme written into not only the film’s main text but its subtext – Gil’s novel even revolves around the owner of a nostalgia shop. This fact, and Woody Allen’s regular identification with the male protagonists of his films, parallels his own status as the “novelist” behind the film. Like Gil, he too is a sentimentalist at heart (albeit a sharp, educated one) who makes films about what he loves.

Meeting the charming Fitzgeralds

The opening mélange of scenic images of Paris has already been likened to the introduction to Allen’s Manhattan, but without the funny and over-the-top romanticism for the city that Allen’s own voice overlays with those earlier images. Instead, here Allen employs the music of Cole Porter, perhaps as an acknowledgement of his own muteness concerning Paris, his linguistic breakdown with the inhabitants of the city. Indeed, in Gil’s midnight world, he is inundated with not only well-known historical and literary figures from the 1920s, but largely with American ones. Whomever he encounters, they all speak English – even broken English in the case of Salvador Dalí. This linguistic cooperation of the famous figures isn’t to imply that Gil’s experiences are fantasy – that would be missing the film’s point. Rather, Allen treats the narrative content of his film the way Wes Anderson treats his in The Darjeeling Limited. These filmmakers are self-acknowledged flâneurs, traversing a land that is not their own, featuring characters that likewise understand something of their cultural limits even while somewhat obliviously romanticizing places and times that are foreign to them. These films set themselves apart from others, such as the overhyped Slumdog Millionaire, which rather more imperialistically stampeded a foreign culture with the pretense of a Westerner who believed he could know it and say something about it.

Like Groundhog Day, but better

Allen, on the other hand, treats his subject matter for what it is. The opening montage keeps Paris at arm’s length, with almost entirely static shots that may as well be postcard images. The fact that it’s Paris, and not some small town in southern Provence, only serves to strengthen the argument that we are occupying, via cinema, the most hallowed ground of romanticized cities in the world. All the big sites are visited, with the viewer led along by Gil, an American born in Pasadena and working as a writer of sub-par Hollywood screenplays who hardly knows a lick of French. But he doesn’t need to. Indeed, one can read into the narrative beyond the film; the day Gil learns French is the day when Gil loses part of his nostalgia for the city. For in the same way that Adriana inadvertently teaches Gil not to sentimentalize the past (a temporal realm), Gil should eventually learn not to romanticize Paris (a spatial realm). This could be the only significant blind spot in Midnight in Paris. While fully conscious of its own nostalgic nature and the correspondence between its protagonist and its author, the consequences of its nostalgia are only partially acknowledged. It has been noted recently how often Woody Allen has been moving outside of his beloved New York to make films. He has recently made a number of movies in England, Spain, and now France. Has New York lost its charm? Has this most romantic of spaces (for Allen) changed, leaving Allen longing for a temporal period in the past? (Which only begs the real question: what “is” “New York”? Does it have an inherent essence? Can a city “change”?) This notion was already largely evident based on his previous depictions of New York, as seen most markedly in Manhattan. (For instance, his use of black and white pulls the viewer into a different temporal period than the contemporary one.) And if, as seems likely, Allen’s affinity for New York is being replaced, or at least temporarily set aside, for the likes of London, Barcelona, and Paris, why is his main critique of nostalgia in Midnight in Paris merely temporal and not also spatial? The film concludes with Gil and his new Parisian ami walking away at night, in the rain, into the belly of Paris. Gil has learned his lesson about re-envisioning the past as an inherently superior time than the present. Still, he settles into Paris with contempt for his home in southern California, and with all the naïve optimism of Adriana when she and Gil were ushered back to La Belle Époque.

Here or now; choose only one

Tags: cinema, film, Midnight in Paris, movies, nostalgia, Owen Wilson, Paris

That Obscure Object of Desire

No one accused Buñuel of subtlety.

Viewed in three sittings, a screening as fractured as the identity of the titular object. She only serves as a distraction for the viewer in her dual performance. She is the trap successfully sprung by herself onto the obsessive, unsuspecting “subject,” a gracious title that can only be bestowed upon the male character out of logical necessity. She is the “object” in an obvious sense, but her agency gets the best of the subject, the man who, by objectifying another, ultimately objectifies himself by giving into lust so categorically and unreservedly. Buñuel apparently stated at one point that the only profitable film analysis is psychoanalysis, an unsurprising assertion from the co-director of Un Chien Andalou and L’Âge d’Or. That Obscure Object of Desire is similarly surrealist, although couched in a narrative that cooperates fully with both psychoanalytic theory and gender theory (viz. Mulvey). Boring as it is to delve back into that whole circular discussion, we shall not. As for the film, one must appreciate its political background slowly overtaking the foreground: nationalistic and religious extremism to the point of terrorism making an eventual power play on the unsuspecting Subject/Object, too obsessed with “her” to notice his own imminent demise, and the same indeed with her.

Power play

Tags: cinema, film, Luis Buñuel, movies, Surrealism, That Obscure Object of Desire

Quickies, Vol. XXXI

The Double Life of Véronique (1991, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski) – A film that continues to challenge and provoke. Struck this time around by the very immanent nature of Kieslowski’s transcendence. Zizek thinks Kieslowski finds “God” a cosmic sadist (to use C.S. Lewis’ term), a rather mean child who toys with his creation for his own entertainment. Then Zizek goes on to perform neo-Lacanian analysis of Kieslowski’s own life (not his person, mind you; his life history), which renders his film theory very theoretical indeed. To boil down this film to something so dismissively simple seems quite unfair. The filmmaker here certainly toys with the notion that the Divine may not be purely gracious, but Kieslowski seems rather to suggest that it’s humanity’s idols that are vacant of grace and sovereignty, not the Great Other Himself. So the film constructs false gods in order to tear them down. On the other hand, the film also ends on a distinctly terrestrial note. For being so transcendent in nature, Kieslowski is a man of the earth.

12 Monkeys (1995, dir. Terry Gilliam) – A wild ride, and one that deserves more than it typically gets. Having not seen a ton of feature-length adaptations of short films by different filmmakers, it’s probably not worth much to say that this is one of the best of that variety. Here, though, the colors, the lenses, the sets, the shots, and the music create something superbly surreal. What the film says about reality and sanity hearkens back to Gillian’s earlier Brazil, this time tapping into something more quintessentially “Nineties” in all of its end-of-the-millennium paranoia. Just when you think you’ve honed in on who the truly “insane” are, you’re thrown a curve ball. The crazy revolutionaries are too crazy really to be crazy. It may be the scientists, the professors, the intellectuals that are truly mad. Undoubtedly.

Somewhere (2010, dir. Sofia Coppola) – The grand prize at Venice? Unanimously voted? What else was showing at Venice? As Wife observed, this film reminds one of Maeby’s classic line in Arrested Development when it’s inadvertently suggested that she end a film with two characters walking across the ocean: “No, deep is good. People are going to say, ‘What the hell just happened? I better say I like it,’ because nobody wants to seem stupid.” Being one of those who appreciated Lost In Translation and even Marie Antoinette, perhaps we can state with some degree of credit that Somewhere seems to go out of its way to be “arthouse,” begging even lovers of Terrence Malick and Wes Anderson to use the big “P” word (pretentious) in describing Sofia’s latest. Yes, it’s wandering, fluid, elusive, exploratory; and not explanatory, straightforward, or all that structured. The point being made is not a difficult one, but the film presents it as difficult. This is essentially the definition of the “P” word.

Akira (1988, dir. Katsuhiro Otomo) – Animated dystopia at its best, probably, but who watches much of it? Seems like such a time warp into the 80s, not to mention a space warp into Japan. Put those two together and you get something so huge and ideologically influential (not to mention aesthetically) that there are probably countless dissertations out there on the subject. The myth at the narrative’s center is easily the most interesting aspect of the film. After years of waiting for their god to resurrect, they stumble into the definitively postmodern fact that god is dead and guys with money have just been perpetuating the image of his existence for all this time.

Fanboys (2009, dir. Kyle Newman) – By geeks, for geeks, via geeks. A flatly objective satire on Star Wars followers would have equated them, ultimately, with Star Trek nerds. Instead, Fanboys, despite utilizing William Shatner himself, shamelessly betrays its preference for all things Lucas. This makes the project all the more endearing, and is probably exactly what led Shatner to agree to it (recall his infamous SNL rant). Those behind and in front of the camera are perfectly tuned into the confused sexuality of these tools, which not only disarms the films critics but gives the film’s social awkwardness that special ingredient of self-consciousness.

Galaxy Quest (1999, dir. Dean Parisot) – Actually watched this one the night before the aforementioned. As a former Trekker/Trekkie/whatever-they-want-to-be-called-these-days, Galaxy Quest really is the Star Trek equivalent of Fanboys. It is the equivalent in the sense that Trek people really are a more social crowd: gathering at conventions and submerging themselves in team heroism, too busy to flip their noses at Star Wars people. (Arguably, they know that Roddenberry could no more take down Lucas than the Gorn could take down Kirk.) Made for an older crowd than Fanboys, Galaxy Quest is a bit more laid back and takes even its satire less seriously than the former.

Tags: 12 Monkeys, Akira, anime, Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, cinema, Fanboys, film, Galaxy Quest, Irene Jacob, Katsuhiro Otomo, Krzysztof Kieslowski, movies, quickies, Sofia Coppola, Somewhere, Star Trek, Star Wars, Terry Gilliam, The Double Life of Veronique

Quickies, Vol. XXX

The Stranger (1946, dir. Orson Welles) – Deserves more space, obviously. Suffice it to say, Welles’ camera rewards the viewer’s careful attention. Every movement is so deliberate, and the long takes don’t draw attention to themselves as a result of competence in front of and behind the lens. This would be great for a study of spaces and eras. Wartime Germany –> postwar Americana. Small-town rural: the soda joint, the church, the trail through the woods.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011, dir. Rob Marshall) – Yeah, rough. Hadn’t seen the previous one and had only seen the one before that once. Thanks to Twitter, was expecting it to suck, and it came through. Something actually a little interesting was suggested by the vicious, bloodsucking, vampire mermaids, but of course it descended into a Twilight-esque melodrama. Depp: get back to hanging out with Jarmusch, or even Burton, for that matter.

Rango (2011, dir. Gore Verbinski) – It’s been awhile now, but this seemed like one of the better, more unique examples of animated fare of the last few years. Unlike a lot of stuff, which is made both for kids and adults, this one is made for kids and cinephiles. Plenty of allusions to the classics, particularly Westerns. And it sticks pretty well to the man-with-no-name formula, in the sense that Rango doesn’t have much of a past and we only know his self-invented name. Also, a shout out to some of the most impressive animation one’s gonna see these days.

The Outlaw (1943, dir. Howard Hughes & Howard Hawks) – Other than existing to ignore censors and exploit Jane Russell’s assets, The Outlaw has the feel of a B-movie from its acting to its absence of substance to its poor camera work to its striking lack of cleverness. Still, it stands as yet another testament to the mythos of the American West, a kind of revisionist history that puts Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, and Pat Garrett in the same story and imagining a different ending to the generally accepted historical one. The characters don’t have the edge that later Westerns do, instead glorifying the “outlaws” and vilifying the sheriff. Doc and Billy are sweeties; innocents, really. Gay stuff is everywhere, of course, even with a woman like Russell cast aside by comparing her regularly with a horse.

Tags: cinema, film, Gore Verbinski, Howard Hawks, Howard Hughes, Jane Russell, Johnny Depp, movies, Orson Welles, Penélope Cruz, Pirates of the Caribbean, quickies, Rango, Rob Marshall, The Outlaw, The Stranger

The New World: Descending Light, Transcending Boundaries

Tags: cinema, darkness, film, light, movies, Photoessays, Terrence Malick, The New World

Stuck On You: Dumb and Dumber, Take 2

Anxious masculinities

 

This is bound to be little more than a rehashing of the earlier post on Dumb and Dumber, that other Farrelly brothers film that preceded Stuck On You and offered the exact same formula followed in this film. This time, the gimmick of conjoined twins is added, although many of the jokes and the overall plot don’t really depend on this element. In fact, this is simply Dumb and Dumber reloaded, minus some of the toilet humor. And like the earlier film, this one is chock full of images of suppressed male homoeroticism. The added element of fraternity – the fact that the two bros really are brothers – is a rather negligible detail, since the only way to explain two men literally joined at the hip is for them to be brothers. We could psychoanalyze the Farrellys themselves, noting that they are brothers who apparently need each other to make a film. Certainly the parallel there is obvious enough. However, the physically conjoined status of Bob (Matt Damon) and Walt (Greg Kinnear) is, more than anything else, the next logical step in the progression that began in the Farrelly’s oeuvre with Dumb and Dumber. The humor that depends on suppressed male desire for another male can never really be consummated in these films, lest the the ultimate threat of homosexuality be realized in all its imagined horror. Since it can’t be consummated, but since the comedy depends on the continuing threat of consummation, the merely emotional attachment of Harry and Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber needs to move into a physical and spatial realm in Stuck On You.

All rhythm, no blues

 

It’s perhaps most enlightening when looking at Stuck On You to begin at the end and work backwards. By the film’s end, the two brothers have been surgically separated, although they still choose to live much of their life remaining attached by Velcro. They’ve learned the hard way that life without the other is just too empty. The final sequence of the film features Walt getting to live out his lifelong fantasy: singing and dancing in a stage performance of Bonnie and Clyde with none other than Meryl Streep at his side. (If there’s any doubt that Ms. Streep encapsulates everything that the stereotypical homosexual male idolizes, please refer to the character of Cam in Modern Family.) At the end of Walt’s performance, to whom does he point in the front row of the audience? Is it April (Eva Mendes), his supposed love interest? No, it’s his brother Bob, who stands up and points back at him in a phallic salute that gives the infamous last scene of Top Gun a run for its money. As for April, Walt’s sexual disinterest in her is enough to convince the strongest skeptic that a homoerotic current at least runs through Stuck On You if not undergirds it. Sure, they pair up, but not only do we never see the least bit of romance in them toward one another, but their every interaction is indistinguishable from that of simple friendship. In fact, most of their conversations revolve around Bob and Walt rather than Walt and April. The fact that April is played by the buxom Eva Mendes, nearly always clad in a bikini or something equally as supportive, makes Walt’s lack of desire for her all the more emphatic.

Meaningless diversion

 

Taking a step back in time from the final scene, we see Bob alone in the burger joint closing up shop in despondent solitude. The jukebox starts playing a song – unbeknownst to Bob, Walt has returned – and that song is “Baby, I’m-a Want You” by Bread. We hear the first few lines of the song, which are shamelessly romantic. When Bob walks out of the kitchen and sees Walt next to the jukebox, he smiles affectionately and says, “You fag!” Walt, realizing how evident his feelings have become, slams the jukebox, only to have “It’s Raining Men” start playing instead. He then slams it again until some generic classic rock takes over. While most of the examples of suppressed homoeroticism in the film aren’t quite that obvious, they’re still undeniably present throughout. Interestingly, the only physical hint that the Farrellys give the audience of their protagonists’ repression in both Dumb and Dumber and Stuck On You centers on the hairstyles of the characters. Harry & Lloyd and Bob & Walt have strikingly similar haircuts. Lloyd and Bob have brown hair that falls flat and is chopped in the most little-boy manner possible. Harry and Walt, on the other hand, both have blonde hair that is long and kind of shaggy. They hairstyles counter one another in a way that a sexually repressed/frustrated male dyad would, needing to set one another apart. One ends up looking like the (theoretical) source of the repression – a young boy – and the other like a failed attempt to look feminine. On top of that, consider their names: Harry & Lloyd and Bob & Walt. These are not popular names nowadays; at the very least, they aren’t names that you typically find at the center of major studio films. They’re familiar names, to be sure, but at the same time strange and, simply, a little “off”. It’s the “a-little-off” nature of these male couples in the Farrellys’ films that makes them worth focusing on and makes them so entertaining.

Split intimacy

 

And a few incoherent bits in closing. In addition to Meryl Streep’s cameo (and all that it suggests), the other significant extended cameo in the film is from Cher. So, case closed on the the gay-ish cameos. Also, the Farrellys repeat another pattern in this film as well as Dumb and Dumber with the presence of an overly masculine, stereotypical rough ‘n tough guy who bullies the pair of protagonists while, incidentally, in a classic American diner. In Dumb and Dumber, the character is named “Seabass” and later turns out to be repressing some seriously homosexual tendencies when he tries to rape Lloyd in a gas station bathroom stall. In Stuck On You, a similar character tries to bully Bob and Walt, along with a mentally disabled man who works as a waiter in their restaurant. Something about the setting of the diner stands for something quintessentially American, and something about this angry, oversexed male figure embodies something also established and threatening. In both films, the protagonists (who are “freaks” in these settings) outsmart the barbarian. The fact that the characters in Dumb and Dumber outsmart him is particularly interesting. Another point: in an early scene wherein Walt embraces his theatrical gifts and performs a one-man stage play (with the nervous, sweating Bob by his side), he plays none other than Truman Capote. In this case, Walt explicitly identifies himself with a famously gay 20th century figure. One final note worth mentioning is about Walt and Bob’s respective girlfriends: April and May. Coinciding with their close association in name, a scene in a hospital waiting room implies a homoeroticism on their part, too. This takes place when Bob and Walt are in surgery, and there is some question as to whether they will survive. A dissolving montage of the women waiting for them concludes with April asleep with her face comfortably nestled in May’s midriff. Enough for now; the point’s been made.

The threatening heterosexual male

Pretending?

As gay as dance music

Hand check

Hanging on

Contagious homoeroticism

Longing

It's raining men

Livin' the dream

Phallic salute

 

Tags: cinema, comedy, Dumb and Dumber, Eva Mendes, Farrelly brothers, film, Greg Kinnear, homoeroticism, homosexuality, Matt Damon, movies, repression, Stuck On You

Vengeance Is Mine: New Wave of Blood

Between

Shohei Imamura undoubtedly constructed the film Vengeance Is Mine precisely so that many critics would take a variety of readings on it. The Freudian reading is easy enough, and the social commentary, too. One thing that stands out about the film is its consistency between form and content. The film is very much about its main character, Iwao Enokizu, a sociopath based on a real person in Japan’s recent history who goes around murdering people for rather arbitrary reasons. Just as Enokizu is dispassionate in his killings, so is the film, from the camera to the lighting to the narrative structure. (The narrative structure is so choppy, for lack of a better term, that the above use of the term “constructed” really does seem to apply to Imamura’s making of the film. It’s as if he pieced it together.) Shots of Enokizu killing people with a hammer or knife or his bare hands aren’t distinguished from the shots that precede his brutal actions. The film rejects any sense of causality in its own form and, in this way, cooperates with Enokizu’s random acts of violence. Whereas Kurosawa’s earlier Sanjuro climaxed with the infamous spray of blood when Mifune’s character begrudgingly defeats his nemesis, sprays of blood take place at very anticlimactic moments in Vengeance Is Mine. That the film is considered part of the Japanese New Wave is fitting, and reminiscent of the dispassionate acts of violence in the French New Wave (think Shoot the Piano Player or Pierrot Le Fou). Enokizu has only contempt and disdain for his own past, which stands simultaneously for order and hypocrisy. His father’s association with the Catholic church and his tryst with his daughter-in-law have none of the respect for the previous generation one might find in an Ozu film. On the contrary, just as the rules of cinema are ignored here, so is patriarchal order in general.

Disgraced

Vengeance Is Mine sutures the viewer to the loner Enokizu, not to elicit sympathy for him but rather to force the viewer into an uncomfortable realm in which s/he doesn’t care what happens in the film any more than the film’s character cares about what he is doing. The film’s closing shots of Enokizu’s flying bones, hurled by his excommunicated father and dishonored wife over a cliff, do suggest a kind of terrestrial transcendence or Ozu-like return of things from whence they came. While Imamura seems to have done all he could to expose the harshness of the world from one man’s narrow experience, it’s the film’s own form, again, via freeze-frame, that grabs the viewer’s attention but this time from a different point of view. Enokizu is gone but not gone, become part of the landscape and the horizon, both rejected by his family and bid an affectionate adieu by his family. Much of the film had previously been inscribed with subtitles (original to the Japanese film – not English words) contextualizing the Enokizu’s steps from the vantage point of a police dragnet. Thus Enokizu’s life is cheapened as a manhunt (he is described as an animal by other characters) as he cheapens it by his own actions. Rather than verbal inscription, the finale frames a motionless image that suggests something ineffable and almost nirvana-like about Enokizu’s end.

Inscribed

Dispassionate

Modernized Ozu?

Family

Sadistic

Closet problems

Circle of life?

When pigs fly

Tags: cinema, film, Japanese Film, Ken Ogata, Mitsuko Baisho, movies, Shohei Imamura, Vengeance Is Mine

Wall-E: Re-viewed

In the beginning man destroyed the heavens and the earth.

Wall-E is startlingly accessible. It carries a few big themes and holds them right out in front from beginning to end. Its symbolism is so basic that it almost isn’t symbolic. Wall-E stands opposed to the Brad Bird-helmed Pixar films The Incredibles and Ratatouille by virtue of its pretty coherent ideology that doesn’t try to be too complex, and thereby succeeds. Not that the others did not succeed, but based on their political incorrectness, ideological holes pop up (particularly in Ratatouille) that render the ultimate message of the film a little conflicting. Wall-E, on the other hand, is a mash-up of the biblical accounts of Adam & Eve and Noah’s Ark that offers both a biblical as well as a politically correct message. This may account for much of the film’s acceptance by diverse audiences. Tack on to that plenty of allusions to cinema history (Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, E.T., etc.) that gratify the films geeks, and you have a product that’s sure to please everyone that wants to be pleased.

Where's the Other?

One little thing stood out during this re-visitation that could be said to be politically correct but a little opposed to the film’s biblical roots, and that is the re-imagination of the nuclear family. The Adam & Eve story begins consistently enough with the Genesis account, with Wall-E (Adam) alone and working in the (dystopic) garden all by himself. Wall-E is a bit more quirky and clumsy than the original Man, as far as we know, but this helps develop quick sympathy in the viewer for his character. Although it’s been ages and ages for Wall-E, it’s not long for the viewer before a big spaceship (God?) sends Eve (duh) to join him. Once this Eve shows up, however, she outshines Wall-E in a way different from her biblical counterpart. Adam lets out a doxology to the Creator after beholding such a creation. Wall-E, however, is instantly emasculated. His Eve is in no way “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.” She’s a Mac and he’s a clunky old PC. She’s not only sleek and sexy, but a whole different creation that renders everything about Wall-E obsolete other than his heart of gold. Perhaps the only potential conflict in the film’s ideology is the role of technology. While humanity descends into a new and pathetic state, the film does rather glorify the arsenal of computers and robots surrounding the humans. Eve is an excellent example. The choice to make Eve look like an iPod is unsurprising (given that Pixar made the film), but her appearance renders Wall-E an obsolete creation. True, he has more personality and ends up helping to save the day, and this contains a message that transcends the glorification of technology. Still, this flips the film’s biblical source material on its head somewhat.

Not good for the "man" to be alone

Further, throughout the film, Eve carries Wall-E (quite literally) and seems to embody the contemporary feminine: focused professionalism and seamless beauty. Wall-E arguably is the post-biblical male ideal: really nice but ultimately a house-husband. He’s domestic while Eve is hunter-gatherer. Wall-E has good ideas here and there, but (1) he can’t carry most of them out without Eve’s help and (2) Eve is the catalyst for action and source of strength. The former is actually strikingly biblical, much more than many adherents to the Bible are willing to admit. The latter, however, constitutes a shift that appeals to the film’s attempt to score points of political correctness than rather than something more consistent with the Genesis account and overall biblical ideology. In fact, Wall-E rather effectively balances male and female roles, embodied in Wall-E and Eve, respectively. There are times when Wall-E protects Eve and comes up with great ideas to save the day. Overall, Wall-E probably teaches Eve more than she teaches him. The point here is not that the film downplays the masculine presence or efficacy from its biblical source material, but rather that the film exchanges the particulars of the two gender roles. By all appearances, he is a traditional (rather than contemporary) woman. He is sweet, kind, tender, and draws his strength from his partner. Eve is efficient, single-task-oriented, strong, and extends care to her partner. At the least, all of this seems to illustrate the common phenomenon (also evident in the gender roles of the film Up) of utilizing biblical tropes and narratives while leaning toward a consistently post-biblical ideology.

Tree of Life

Eve or Evil?

The heavens declare

Evil lefty, or, sinister technology

Leading the dance

Tough broad

Ark landing on Ararat

Covenant renewal

Evolutionary creationism

A new order

Tags: Adam and Eve, Bible, cinema, film, gender, Genesis, movies, Noah's Ark, Pixar, Wall-E

My Big Fat Greek Wedding: Xenophobes & Xenophiles

WindeXeno

It’s very convenient source material for a successful romantic comedy: the proverbial European immigrants clashing with their second-generation offspring who are much more plugged into US society than any of them ever plan to be. Mississippi Masala takes this type of premise and dramatizes it. My Big Fat Greek Wedding takes it and pokes serious fun at it. To the casual observer, most of the Greek caricatures in this film remind one of those more commonly associated with Italian-Americans, perhaps Hollywood’s favorite immigrant stereotype. And rightly so, since the eccentric, family-obsessed, food-crazed, and (perhaps most importantly) loud subculture of these Greek-Americans hardly looks any different from the general southern European prototype. There are many assumptions in My Big Fat Greek Wedding about ethnicity, culture, and identity that go completely unquestioned and that appeal directly to the viewer’s preconceptions about such issues.

"Excluded" comes from the Greek word...

The film identifies the viewer with Toula, the female protagonist at the narrative’s center. She’s highly self-conscious about her upbringing and heritage. She sets herself apart from the rest of her family, even as she is utterly enveloped in the day-to-day operations of the family business, lives with her parents, and has no outlet into the rest of the world until she gains special permission from the family patriarch (via the matriarch) to take computer classes at a community college. Some of her first words in the film are, “I have no life.” This sets her apart from the rest of the family, for whom family is life. Just to make sure we get the point, Toula wanders into a back alley behind the family restaurant during a moment of chaos, as the camera isolates her from the rest of the world and amplifies her inner sense of solitude. She’s the ugly duckling that, we know from the formula, is bound to find her inner swan once the right guy comes along. She’s okay with her family heritage, in all its weirdness (and certainly, while the film at some level celebrates the Greek-American subculture, it also sets it apart as decidedly “other”), but she’s detached from it and views herself as a more “normal” American woman who wants to live a more “normal” life. That the American-ness of her identity is presented as normal isn’t necessarily unfair, since the film positions itself on her side, and it’s geared toward a predominantly typical “American” audience.

Isolated

Something a little funny is afoot, however, when it comes to assumptions about what connotes Greek-ness. The film takes for granted that what it says is “Greek” really is Greek, whatever that even means. Go to Greece, of course, or any other country, and you’ll have a plethora of notions flying around as to what it really is to be “Greek” or what have you. For that matter, no one in the United States wants to be pinned down as simply “American” or “East Coast” or “West Coast,” etc. In the context of immigration and expatriation, notions of ethnic identity and essentialism are never more subjectively decided nor more objectively confused. By leaving the “homeland,” a nationalist apparently acquires the unique right to dictate what is truly “Greek”-ness, or anything else. Perhaps further still, it’s the second generation, the person who has never visited Greece and (in Toula’s case) does not want to go, who is most to be trusted regarding what it is to be Greek. Presumably, her own liminal identity, half immigrant through her parents and half native by means of her own American birth, gives her the true perspective by existing between worlds and thereby knowing each world and their relationship with one another.

The woman is the neck

It’s also interesting how every aspect of Toula’s family’s life is completely centered around ethnicity. Whether it’s the food, the naming of their children, the family businesses (a Greek restaurant and a travel agency specializing in trips to Greece), the mates their children choose to marry, or even their religion, literally everything in their life bends the knee to the a priori assumption that Greek-ness supersedes the rest. This is done, of course, to comedic effect, and quite effectively indeed. Part of the reason it works, however, is because built into ethnic stereotypes about European immigrants is the caricature that all immigrants care about is their ethnic heritage. This is enough of a commonplace that the film can rely on the audience’s acceptance of the premise and even find it kind of endearing. A potential problem with this kind of premise, however, is that it reduces immigrant subcultures to a single dimension, painting a picture of them as myopic and monolithic. The film makes an effort to avoid this by making Toula’s family ultimately accepting of the non-Greek husband, even to the point of having her father give a speech that embraces not only differences between the two families but also similarities. The epilogue, however, falls back into the films earlier mode of caricature. It’s six years later, and we discover that the house Toula’s parents bought them is next door to theirs. Toula and Ian’s young daughter is compelled (by the grandparents, it would seem) to go to Greek school rather than Brownies. We see that the giant Greek flag that had covered the family’s garage door is now a mural in-progress of a Greek landscape being painted by Toula’s artistic brother, whose abilities had been poo-pooed by his dad earlier in the film. So in the end, the gestures that the family makes to prioritize their children above their ethnic heritage come with strings attached tightly to the ethnic heritage. It may not be that they value ethnicity above family, exactly, but that they are incapable of separating the two. The only way they eventually accept Ian into the family is when he is baptized into the Greek Orthodox church, a gesture that is clearly devoid of religious sincerity on both Ian’s part and the Greek family. But in this way, both Ian and Toula’s family share an understanding that what they do for their family is more important than religion or anything else.

Enlightened luncheon

On a rather unrelated note, perhaps, is the refreshing aspect of the film that not only engages the viewer primarily with Toula, a woman, but positions the viewer in a place of female desire for a man. The man is not feminized, but he is presented as an object of erotic desire. He has long hair, making him (fittingly) Adonis-like. On more than one occasion, Toula’s female relatives swoon over his physical appearance, which is tall and muscular. He’s presented as intelligent (an adept school teacher) but never more intelligent than Toula. It’s a relative rarity for popular Hollywood films (although, granted, this was an “independent” film) to permit primary erotic desire to emanate from the woman for a truly manly man. Typically when this occurs, the man is feminized and almost indistinguishable from a stereotypical woman – see the Twilight books/movies. As a female university prof once said about Jane Campion’s film In The Cut, it’s refreshing when films acknowledge the presence of female viewers who insist on their own autonomy while also having a palpable desire for a real man. While My Big Fat Greek Wedding is probably nowhere near as complex as the themes investigated in Campion’s film, it may stand as a popular exception to the rule.

As she sees herself

How she sees him

On top

Hands-on baptism

Familial desire

White people are boring

Horrified at a feminine monstrosity

Lambs in the kitchen, tigers in the bedroom

Snow beast

Xenophilia

"Happily" ever after?

Tags: cinema, film, movies, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Nia Vardalos, romantic comedy, xenophilia, xenophobia