Toy Story 3: To Hell and Back

Ominous

An alternate version of this can be read at Riverside Examiner.

Perhaps because it’s quite a bit more substantial than Despicable Me, Toy Story 3 is harder to play with analytically. It’s obviously attempting something more meaningful than just comical. And while Despicable Me may have fallen into the trap of the cultural-subliminal (intentionally or unintentionally relying on current events for its own narrative and thematic import), at least that gives the viewer something to chew on (as in, mash up, grind up, destroy). Toy Story 3 is not just another Pixar invention, but Pixar’s natural-born child. It’s like Pixar gave birth to Toy Story, adopted some kids, gave birth again to Toy Story 2, adopted more, then finished (supposedly) with this one. The idea here is NOT to imply that adopted children are less important, no way, but that these Toy Story movies are probably the most rich with all things ideologically and aesthetically “Pixar.”

Grotesque

That being said, I am no expert at all on the Toy Story franchise. Wish I’d had time to look at the first two before watching this one; have only viewed the others once each, probably. These are like the vanilla flavor of your favorite brand of ice cream. You forget that it’s so good because you’re distracted by the flashier flavors like mint chip and cookie dough. There’s something good and beautiful about the simplicity of vanilla – Toy Story – however. This film delves into the realm of the horrific, something that might seem to be increasingly common in children’s/animated films these days. But, this is probably not the case. Go look at Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with a six-year-old and see if s/he can sit still when Snow White’s heart is supposedly removed and contained in a small box. Or, when the evil queen transforms into the haggard old witch woman. This is more horrific than any children’s film these days. Still, though, when the toys in Toy Story 3 move along the conveyor belt toward a blazing inferno, the narrative thus far allows for the very distinct possibility that they will in fact be incinerated. Hell is a reality in the Toy Story films. The toys are constantly in danger of being discarded, whether into the trash or to a freakish collector or into the valley-of-the-dry-bones realm of that crazy kid next door. So when they appear in (what has been marketed as) the final film of the series on the road to the netherworld, this film – along with the other two – wants you believe that this could be the end.

Mind the gap

But Steve Miller once said, “You know you’ve got to go through hell before you get to heaven,” and he was right. A conventional narrative arc this may be, but the end result of the toys relocation not only into a different space but into the hands of a different owner only works as a feasibly happy-ending because they almost ended up in the non-space of non-existence. And, perhaps inadvertently, the film ends up embracing the realm of heaven. This isn’t simply because the toys have been rescued from hell; that would only delay the inevitable. Rather, the worst that can ever happen to these “good” toys (the bad ones do have another fate) is separation from one another. Even still, this is rare, and a little arbitrary; perhaps we have here a purgatory. But by perpetuating their own “lives” even as humans age and no longer need them, these toys never really get a scratch on them. There is the endearing little lost tooth here and there, but only as Pixar can so carefully and lovingly allow. Mrs. Potato Head loses one of her eyes at the beginning – a fate oh-so-common to toys in the non-animated world – but she recovers it, and during their separation her eye saves the day. There is perhaps nothing too interesting in all of this, especially since the films aren’t really aiming at any kind of reality. But since they flirt with the inevitability of death and ultimately reject it for good, community-minded toys in a state of immortality in a heavenly realm, the film seems quite concerned with the very real inevitability of transience, both within the world and beyond it.

A taste of heaven

Despicable Me: Bankable

After seeing Toy Story 3 (more to come, dv), Despicable Me seemed not as different as one would have expected. Certainly sillier, both films – along with all children’s animated features these days – concern themselves with big but real themes. They’re from pretty different studios (Disney/Pixar & Universal), but the similarities between the two highlight the demand that exists these days as much as ever before for these movies to ground themselves in the real world. Up was no less interested with issues of paternity, which is exactly what Despicable Me has to do with, along almost the exact same lines. Both Up and Despicable Me involve unhappy male characters who reminisce over their respective pasts (they trace their unhappiness to either good days gone by or scars received in earlier days) and are thrust into adoptive situations with children they can’t handle but eventually come to love and receive. There are lots of children out their who need homes, lots of parents who think they couldn’t love them properly, and plenty of strained family relationships that might theoretically be encouraged (really?) by a movie that shows how easy it actually is to achieve familial harmony. Dubious as this might be, it’s enough of a possibility (apparently) that repeated films with these themes are being released and being pretty well received.

The subtext of Despicable Me was more cynical that all of that, though. Receiving more attention these days than family issues are economic issues. Banks have failed, are failing, or are being rescued from failing. Same goes with lots of corporations, in part because of their misguided relationships with said banks. Refer to Despicable Me, a movie not only about paternity but also about an evil, self-interested so-called mastermind (who’s really quite the fool) trying to borrow enormous amounts of money from an evil bank(er) for his own glorious collection of stolen items who is nearly outwitted by – gasp! – the evil banker’s son who is pursuing the exact same thing. If this doesn’t correlate perfectly with what’s happening (allegedly or no) on Wall Street, nothing does. We have under-the-table dealings, banks financing private/corporate greed, and, perhaps most interestingly, the film’s own refusal to position the viewer anywhere other than with the bad guy. It’s just like our present crisis: we don’t want the bad corporations to succeed, but for the economy to get better, we’re forced to root for them. No doubt the filmmakers developed this idea simply to mix it up a little – we always root for the good guy in children’s films, but here they’ll let us accompany the bad guy through his conversion to goodness. Except, of course, his conversion is pretty restricted to the familial sphere. What is impossible to doubt is that the filmmakers had these ideas explicitly in mind – not they would be any less valid were they subconscious.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Genre Over Text

When in doubt as to where to begin, defer to your local online academic database; in this case, William McClain’s essay, “Western, Go Home! Sergio Leone and the ‘Death of the Western’ in American Film Criticism” (Journal of Film and Video, 62:1, Spring 2010). It’s an interesting look at Leone’s Dollars Trilogy through the lens of genre criticism – meta-genre criticism, really. Briefly exposing the Foucault power element behind it all, McClain points out that when critics rejected Leone’s westerns as being bona fide “Westerns,” they were appealing to a standard put in place by powerful forces like studios and their producers. These figures, more than audiences or the film texts themselves, are a priori responsible for the creation of distinct genres for capitalistic purposes. Up until new forms of deconstructed/reconstructed cinema, critics got to define what constituted a “genre,” a process referred to as “genrification.” This contrasts with the “de-genrification” that took place when American critics rejected an Italian director with a production team made up of Italians, Germans, and Spaniards creating a trilogy of films that were to be explicitly “Western” and featuring an American star. The Western, previously thought to be a quintessentially American genre, was at a low point, as many have noted, and was in need of a reboot. One of the great ironies about the “Spaghetti Western” subgenre, of course, is that it was largely inspired by the Far East, most notably Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which formed the narrative backdrop and overall source material for A Fistful of Dollars. At least one critic has noted the further irony that Kurosawa’s film was very well-received by Western (geographically speaking) audiences whereas Leone’s was not. Both were heavy on violence considering the period, but the theory goes that Kurosawa’s film has a subtler and arguably more perfected technique than Leone’s.

As part and parcel of the (de)genrification taking place in the critical reception of these films, the films’ marketing highlighted the similarities between the Dollars Trilogy with the James Bond films that were quite popular at the time through the same studio. In each of these series, you have a very manly (according to popular cinematic stereotypes) male protagonist who’s light on dialogue but heavy on clever physicality. Music figures prominently, with narrative twists built on the ingenuity of the main character. Etc., etc. The critical rejection of Leone’s films, however, becomes odd when considered in light of its conservative prejudices. While one might think of cinema as a necessarily progressive medium, born as it was out of technological novelties, some of its biggest fans seem to hate change. Even the “professionals” in the field seem to lament changes within genre even more than they simply observe them; usually the laments feel arbitrary, based simply on a preference for the way things have always been. On the other hand, while it was popular in the 60s to love so-called art films like those from Antonioni, Bergman, and Kurosawa, anything that pierced into an established genre (like the American western) was often deemed revisionist and therefore inauthentic.

Looking more specifically at the films themselves, there’s yet another irony present in this conservative degenrification. Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which brought about Leone’s Fistful, features a universe devoid of the strict black-and-white morality of earlier, textbook Westerns. Your John Wayne-hero doesn’t inhabit this universe. Instead, it’s a figure whose namelessness reflects the impossibility of labeling him with simple goodness or badness, notwithstanding the tongue-in-cheek title of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. In Kurosawa’s case, Mifune’s character in Yojimbo arguably represents precisely the filmmaker in all of his questionable yet unquestioned authoritativeness. He has absolute power, much like the way Sanjuro sits high atop to two warring clans after pitting them against one another for his own entertainment. This slightly sadistic power-wielding without much purpose aside from selfish introspection is in some ways exactly what filmmakers are doing when they, from a broader perspective, mess with a genre. (It’s certainly what they’re doing when they make a film.) So perhaps what lies behind this attempt at critical degenrification is really critical jealousy; it’s the job of filmmakers to make films and let the critics identify genres, not for filmmakers to take the initiative by doing both. In other words, critics may resent it when those in construction enter into the realm of demolition, previously a field they held in monopoly. While Leone attempts to regenrify, critics respond by degenrifying; Leone tries to move the genre forward and critics turn the tables by rejecting his product.

Of course, as McClain observes, Leone’s films are so chock full of Western cliches that they may be just as much reversionist as revisionist. But by referring so constantly to all that is textbook Western, films like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly become so self-consciously Western that they revise the genre by referring back to it so heavily. (It’s hard not to think of someone like Tarantino when considering this.) Here is where the critical argument and degenrification of the Leone Western gains some validity. Leone’s brand of the Western appears – at first at least – to be more concerned with form than with content. By featuring a cynical protagonist and positioning the viewing on his side, and not only elevating but apparently glorifying new depictions of violence, the themes that were previously deemed essential to the Western are subjugated to its form. Even still, the argument goes, the new violence masks the traditional Western aesthetic behind a screen of blood. It’s at least possible that Leone belongs to a breed of filmmakers that are grown-up, boyish cinephiles. Many of the great filmmakers cared more about ideas than they did about cinema, so they used the latter to portray the former. This may or may not be true of Leone, but his films and others in his vein at least suggest the possibility.

Or, another possibility: Leone’s films are the logical outcome of the traditional American Western. By always elevating the importance of the individual (usually, more specifically, individual responsibility) and inhabiting a world in which capital (gold, money, what-have-you) is prime, it could be argued that Leone’s nameless, wandering protagonist is the eventual destiny of the gun-wielding Western hero. After saving enough towns from bandits and Indians, he becomes chapped and leathered, finally giving into the pressure and following his own desires instead of giving them up for others. McClain observes that the narratives within the Dollars Trilogy are essentially meaningless; it’s all about the character. In earlier Westerns, the main character existed for the narrative, in order to be a figure of salvation and sometimes redemption. The Man With No Name probably had a name at one point; he was probably known for something heroic. Now he disassociates himself from his past (and the Western from cinema’s past) and uses his skill and prowess to save his own hide and get himself the gold. McClain identifies this (although not as explicitly, perhaps) as the unraveling of the Western myth. Rooted as the Western is in American mythology, Leone dares to follow a moral mythology to its nihilistic ends.

It should be noted here that this is distinctly not what Kurosawa was doing with Yojimbo. Functioning not only as a metaphor for cinema, Yojimbo was directed toward a modernized (1961) Japan. The American occupation was fully over at this point and the Japanese economy’s upward progress now demanded the (re)formation of a national identity, one that struggled to find a moral foundation, just like Kurosawa’s character Sanjuro. Sanjuro’s disdain for his past and playful, amoral exploration of new territories is condemned by Kurosawa as ultimately immature and childish. Whether Leone’s adaptation of Kurosawa’s source material and reappropriation of it to the American Old West similarly condemns such childish violence is questionable. True, Kurosawa’s film also emphasized violence in new ways – Kurosawa himself deeply regretted the effects Yojimbo‘s violence had on subsequent films. Audiences may have largely missed Kurosawa’s point, however, which exposed violence as ineffective and gratuitous, especially when it exists merely for entertainment. One does get the impression watching Leone’s films that the violence is more celebrated than carefully used to undermine itself.

Images from here and here.

’10′: Homoerotiphobia

Out of affinity for Blake Edwards, Julie Andrews, and Dumb & Dumber, finally saw ’10′. The earlier post of D&D attempted to make the case that that film relies heavily on homoerotic elements for its comedy and narrative flow. A great many of the jokes assume a punchline that unwitting homosexual desire is inherently humorous. This includes the jokes that take place within Harry & Lloyd’s apartment toward the film’s beginning. In their apartment, there happens to be a poster on the wall of Bo Derek running on the beach in a swimsuit. This fact remained forgotten until well into the viewing of ’10′, as it was becoming more and more evident how this film does something very similar to D&D. Instead of latent homoerotic tendencies in its main character, however, ’10′ features a character that is confused with both homoerotic and homophobic feelings. The homosexual element may never explicitly come up in D&D, but it does come up in ’10′, particularly in the best friend of Dudley Moore’s character George, an openly gay man with a boytoy. George makes derogatory remarks about his friend, particularly his homosexuality, as George wrestles with his own supposed “mid-life crisis.”

The main symptoms of his crisis are boredom with his girlfriend and inexplicable lust after a “virginal” bride he follows to her wedding ceremony and honeymoon. Interestingly, George’s girlfriend’s name is “Sam” (played by Julie Andrews), rather a male name, and she carries herself in a more “masculine” way than most of the women in the film. Her hair is short, she is confident, and she’s taller than George. That George makes fun of his long-time friend’s homosexuality at the same time when he becomes disenchanted with Sam and longs for a woman defined by femininity indicates that things weren’t always this way. At one point he was content with Sam and stable in his friendship with a gay man. The narrative cycle brings us back full circle in traditional comedic form, with George returning to Sam after inexplicably declining his dream woman’s offer to fulfill said dreams. While this could certainly be taken as a moralistic lesson, and that may be present, the gay element is a little too present to be ignored. Even George’s collision with the cops outside of the chapel contains homosexual imagery, crashing headfirst into a cop car with two dudes inside. It isn’t the first time he has a run-in with two male police officers, and in the later scene they physically frisk him when it seems quite unnecessary.

George and his hedonistic neighbor have a peeping tom deal worked out, in which they penetrate one another’s yards and homes with long, narrow (yep) telescopes. Sure, there are scantily clad women in the yards, but the two men are explicitly obsessed with one another much more than with the gals. George’s conversation with the psychiatrist reveals without a doubt that George’s crisis reflects a preoccupation with men more than with women. In fact, George’s entire pursuit of the dream woman is punctuated by intimate encounters with men. His first step is to track down her father, a dentist. This results in a close examination of George’s teeth; the shots of this scene are close-ups, framing George in uncomfortable proximity with Jenny’s father. When he checks into his hotel in Mexico, a man guides him into his room and tries chatting with him near the bed. George’s closest acquaintance after settling in is the bartender (Brian Dennehy). They lean in close and talk about life and all their demons. George even commits the odd deed of risking his life in a sailboat in order to save the life of Jenny’s new husband, a strapping lad wearing only some small swim trunks while asleep on a surf board as George jumps in and embraces him, bringing him to safety. This all seems less a case of reading into convenient coincidences and more a case of a film that exposes a phobia behind a prejudice. If a mid-life crisis is an impulsive pursuit of something that one does not need and cannot fully pinpoint born out of sheer boredom in one’s 50s, then George’s crisis illustrates that the heterosexual fantasy is unnecessary and ultimately will only bring him back to a place of comfort and contentment in which he surrounds himself with masculinity and varying degrees of homoeroticism.

Revanche

Revanche is one of those foreign art-house films of last year (or was it the year before?) that lots of people have written about, no doubt in large part because of (1) the Oscar nomination it got and (2) its DVD release from The Criterion Collection, bless their hearts. It’s not hard to see how this film appeals to cinephiles, festival-goers, and “Academy” members, filled as it is with lengthy, ambivalent camera shots from a dispassionate distance and with content somewhere between a dead swamp and a toilet bowl mid-flush. It was described somewhere as a kind of “Greek tragedy,” although that could be overly generous, since its own “moral” (or lack thereof) appears apathetic at best, demanding that the viewer some hard work of figuring out just what it’s saying. Further, it’s bent on narrative shocks and twists, clearly attempting to surprise the viewer with certain inevitabilities that in some cases never happen. If so much attention weren’t drawn to these – such as the apparently imminent death of the main character’s grandfather – then they might seem truer to life and helpful.

But the film complicates itself by offering Michael Haneke-like cinematography while simultaneously focusing on things for their own sake. This is to say, it blurs the distinction between a voyeur and a surveillance camera. The former is interested, seeking, peering; the latter is static, disinterested, and has no prejudice for its focus. The camera in Revanche hardly moves, until it does, at which point it goes from bored to downright vivacious. Typically the most narrative-filled moments are those in which the camera does the least. Then when the action quits, the camera decides to look around. The sound has been lauded in this, too, and rightly so. It’s abrupt, harsh, and primal. In this way, along with the surveillance feature, one recalls The Conversation, that classic from Coppola concerned with similar themes. The themes of Revanche are in the title (“revenge”) and pretty clearly marked throughout its plot. It makes no secret of these, but it does try to hide its direction and conclusion. Narrative elements like foreshadow are all over the place, which offers a sense of direction in retrospect, the only kind the film is willing to offer.

When compared to a director like Haneke, though, one can see how Revanche sort of is a Greek tragedy. It pulls its final punch from the viewer’s almost-broken nose, mercifully (perhaps) implying that something remotely reminiscent of redemption is possible even with an ex-con wrapped up in the seediest of business in a distinctly post-sacred age. This last point is crucial to the film. Crosses appear at multiple points. Just before his girlfriend is killed, she is seen quietly praying to herself. Ironically, she prays for her bank-robbing boyfriend and their getaway. Later, the housewife with whom he has an affair, and whom he impregnates, is defined by her faithful churchgoing and moral boundaries. She says that murder is a sin. She cuts off the affair once pregnant because it’s just “right” or “better.” Her hypocrisy is not the point here at all. The film would rather sympathize with her sorrow, excuse her sin, and even praise her righteousness for getting her hands dirty enough to become pregnant for her husband, even if it means sleeping with another man. Perhaps another reason for the film’s refusal to condemn her comes in the revelation of just who she’s been sleeping with. Traditional moral dichotomies are either rejected here or, perhaps according to the film’s point of view, exposed for what they always were.

Still, something sacred is embraced. The protagonist’s grandfather, when asked if he misses his dead wife, responds confidently that he will see her again. Is this the foolishness of a naive old man? Does the same apply to the woman who drives him to church every Sunday? The film never implies a “yes” to these questions. The cop whose soul is shredded over the reality of what he has accidentally done is in quiet distress, but the film never gives us close access to him. Here is where Götz Spielmann is fundamentally hopeful as opposed to Haneke. We have here narrative progress that doesn’t leave us, as viewers, hopeless. The questions aren’t all answered, but go back to the beginning and compare where the characters were then versus where they are finally. An earlier period of optimistic naivete contrasts with a later time of sober, blood-stained possibility. His girlfriend is dead, but really what a kind death the film gives her: painless, unaware that it’s coming, quick. It’s brutal for him but easy for her. The roadblock they were up against together stands starkly different to the image of the wide open lake at the end. The cop and the robber stare out over it together, solemnly identified as creatures staring over something beautiful and wondering over something ugly.

Casablanca: A Case of Do or Die

Where is ze falcon?

Another Stanford Theatre viewing, doubled up with Singin’ in the Rain. Unfortunately this was a little while ago and there was already too much there to deal with in one sitting. Striking what a gray film this is, in every respect. Bogey worked so well as the quintessential war/postwar American hero, difficult as it is to pin him down as simply “good” or “bad.” This is certainly why he and noir fit together like peas in a pod, but of course Casablanca can’t be so pinned down, either. That opening shot of the spinning globe, camera slowly zooming in on northern Africa, gives that sense of history and geography that is all too real considering the events of those times. It’s the other side of the world; we don’t even see the Western Hemisphere in this shot, but the story is about an American and how he participates in events of global magnitude so far from home. There’s hardly another American character (or even actor) in this film, other than Sam, of course. Maybe no other American film so beautifully and movingly captures the patriotism of another nationality – French in this case. The singing of the French anthem in the bar means to give you goosebumps, and it succeeds if you have a soul. All these are just a sample of the things that stand out over a week after the viewing. Gonna have to do this one again, and soon.

Quickies, Vol. XVIII

An Education (2008, dir. Lone Scherfig) – Everyone seemed to love this one when it came out, and not without good reason. The positioning is what’s interesting about this one: the film offers the viewer a rather unique vantage point. The narrative doesn’t so much unfold as play out, more or less exactly the way you think it will. But this is part of the “education” of it all. The film is less concerned with surprising its audience with plot twists or wowing them with impressive cinematic elements than it is with putting its story forward in an unpretentious way. It’s an anti-fairly tale, one that everyone has heard, but one that many keep falling for. Remarkably didactic for a contemporary film, it’s as much directed at the protagonist’s parents and her fiancée as it is at the protagonist herself; maybe more.

Tampopo (1985, dir. Juzo Itami) – Just so good. But man, so very sexual; you realize it more and more. Sexuality and food are collapsed together along with cinephilia, as perhaps the most licentious, gratuitous loves of humanity. The film may not be wrong about this. The three work together quite well in the film, which is structured as a tongue-in-cheek French New Wave work (Godard meets Melville?). Film assumes you’re a man watching, who loves to eat and loves to watch movies…but then what movie doesn’t, at some level.

What About Bob? (1991, Frank Oz) – It’s one of those that can’t be objectively considered here, along with The Sandlot and others that accompanied the formative years of youth. It’s just funny, that’s all. It is what it is and doesn’t pretend to be more; this is very much okay, since it does what it does so well. Richard Dreyfuss always seemed on the verge of losing it, and the curveball of Bill Murray, usually a sarcastic know-it-all, finally pushing him over the edge, is wonderful. What makes this one so enjoyable and Bringing Up Baby so difficult? Will have to look into it. “Is this corn hand-shucked?”

The Sandlot: Don’t Be A Goofus

Ghostly

THE boy’s movie. Girls have no place in this world, except to exist as material to insult other boys: “You play ball like a GIRL!!!!” “What’d you say?” “You heard me.” Even Wendy Peffercorn only is there for obligatory ogling. The boys pretend to drool over girls only as an aside from baseball, and only for the opportunity to wow their fellow buds. (See Squint’s fantabulous stunt at the pool: “Little pervert!”) You must appreciate the perspective, if nothing else. It’s pure nostalgia, narrated from the perspective of a kid who never grew up. The memories are palpable and better-than-real. The Beast is a real beast, not a dog. The montage of events leading up to their eventual confrontation with The Beast is exactly how it happened in their heads, no matter what “actually” happened. There is something deeply mythic about childhood, and those who lose the perspective later are the real losers. If you can’t tell stories from those early years that could never be equaled or outdone, that’s a pity. The space of a baseball diamond where boys play is mythic, as not only the title here suggests but the sequence toward the finale when each of the boys disappears into thin air as the narration tells us where they went. Their place will always be that space, and even the one of them who made it to the big leagues can’t really enjoy it without the presence of his childhood (viz. Benny & Smalls); Small isn’t only a presence at the stadium, but the voice of the action. Even the details here, from Scotty Smalls’ fish hat to those little gestures like throwing the bats and gloves down angrily when their foes arrive on their field, are perfect. Even the chewing tobacco sequence works just right and includes a nice little moral. If you were ever a boy and ever loved baseball, and don’t love this movie, we can never be friends.

The Great Bambi?

For-e-ver

The other

This magic moment