That was pure wild-animal craziness: Fantastic Mr. Fox

We can use that!

Finally, disciples of Wes Anderson can feel vindicated – not that they ever cared – for their faith in a filmmaker whose efforts seem to hit and miss with the masses (particularly the critics) but which never stop providing constant joys to those blessed with the sight and souls to recognize and to feel the powerful beauties that he is so gifted at producing. (Let the record show that only one sentence was filled with over-the-top praise and swoonery for our friend Wes.)

The Crew

I will try to refrain (note: “try”) from delving into the “metascopic” ramifications of Wes’ films and the fascinating phenomenon of their diverse but predictable receptions into the general public. It’s the film that deserves attention: Fantastic Mr. Fox. Following the release of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, there was word of Wes’ next project: an adaptation of a Roald Dahl book, the sort of thing one expects Tim Burton to do, not Wes Anderson. The news was that Henry Selick – Burton’s collaborator on The Nightmare Before Christmas – would work with Wes to produce a stop motion animation film geared toward children and featuring a cast composed largely of actors Wes fans have seen and heard before. Some of us were, we confess, worried that good Wes was beginning his move toward selling out. This is the sort of thing directors and actors are good at doing, after all: finding some success with challenging movie work, then producing general-audience crowd-pleasers. At heart, we knew Wes wouldn’t do that sort of thing. The only other person trying was Spike Jonze, whose Where The Wild Things Are back in those days was looking like it would never be made. How does Hollywood successfully wed serious “independent” talent (someone with a unique artistic vision – nay, an “auteur”) with a bankable story intended for audiences young and old alike? We may appreciate Brad Bird and Andrew Hanson, but they’re really not “independent” talent.

His ears were cold.

While we were wondering this, Wes pulled a fast one on us, announcing a film called The Darjeeling Limited. More in the vein of his previous work, this one would be filmed mostly in India, bring Jason Schwartzman back into the fold, and feature real people with no puppets. This was more like it. Let the children grow old waiting for their “Mr. Fox” and let us have our vintage Wes Anderson grub. What we got was something great but something fairly vintage in Darjeeling; not that it didn’t have some great and interesting nuances from the other films. Years later (or longer), the trailer for Fantastic Mr. Fox was released, and immediately after (during, even), some of us confessed our sin of momentary doubt, realizing that this was something remarkable, something wonderful. Blast all those short films the studio subsequently released showing how they set up the puppets, etc., etc. Haven’t watched them, probably won’t for awhile. That would be like reading a book on the techniques of a magician (sorry, an “illusionist”) before, or soon after, going to a magic show. Sometimes it’s better to let beauty be beauty than to understand its inner workings.

I modified this tube sock.

Mr. Fox starts out like a silent film. Of course, it starts out as a book, quite like Rushmore and Tenenbaums, with an intertitle on the first page: “Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. One short, one fat, one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, were nonetheless equally mean.” Unlike those films, though, this one starts without a soundtrack. The cut to Mr. Fox on his hill, then the trademark reverse-shot perpendicular cut to Mrs. Fox about to ascend it, happen without any real sound. The character movements are fast and jagged; it looks a little like Buster Keaton at a distance. This changes, of course, and music figures prominently throughout the film, to our great joy. British Invasion tunes are in sync with Mr. Fox’s invasion of the chicken coop, and the Beach Boys (a new one for Wes) set the new tone when Mr. Fox and the crew prepare to retaliate against “the man” in the disheveled but strangely organized manner of a bunch of West-Coast surfers, each knowing his part. This offsets the opening silence of the film, which stands out even more on the second viewing. Everything about the production of this film has been based on old standards; no computer imagery was allowed, and the stop-motion style itself hearkens back to a dated look. The early nod to silent cinema points to a source for all of Wes’ films that makes sense. He’s always loved staging his scenes as if they were in a play – at times very overtly indeed. This very theater-like mode of filmmaking defined early films, before directors and cinematographers learned new ways of moving cameras around to create something uniquely cinematic. Wes loves cinema enough to wallow in his film-history ruts, from silent cinema to the French New Wave.

The meanest, nastiest, ugliest farmers in this valley

The detail(s) of Mr. Fox is being mentioned a lot, and for good reason. Certainly Wes’ films have been getting progressively more detailed, going along with the “staged” aspect to his filmmaking style. (A personal favorite is the closet scene in Tenenbaums; all those board games…) There is enough detail in this film not to have any idea where to begin. For example, my eyes were somewhere else on the screen during the first viewing when, after which it was mentioned to me, the word “CUSS” appeared in graffiti on a building in the town. (The “cuss” gag, by the way, has to be the most creative way for a film to sidestep profanity and maintain a PG rating that has ever been.) Wes’ protagonists have always enjoyed their style: Dignan (yellow jumpsuits), Max (the hat), Royal (the suits), Steve (the beanie, etc.), and the Whitman boys (custom Louis Vuitton). Mr. Fox is no different in kind but rather in degree: he dresses more like Wes Anderson himself than any other W.A. character. The careful symmetry of the film and the Fox home within the film display all the tell-tale signs of a certain familiar look. However, at the precise moment when the viewer is becoming accustomed to this hyper-perfect surrealism, Mr. Fox sits down for breakfast and shocks the viewer by eating the way a wild animal eats. This and the cussfest between Mr. Fox and Badger (Bill Murray, thank you for returning), along with other scenes, are delightful indications that this film and its characters are really wild at heart.

How'd you get platinum?

Ironic about this film’s reception (and, we’re back into it) is that it’s been embraced as something fresh and different from a director who apparently could only make one kind of film. With no intention of selling short the special beauty of Mr. Fox, it’s worth noting that thematically it is uncannily similar to all of Wes’ previous films. A fearless leader, unhappy with a status-quo life, bands together a small community of outcasts all connected somehow for a particular goal, a goal that serves merely as a façade concealing the desire for togetherness that unites them. I know of no simpler way of boiling down Wes’ main theme than this, and even now the number of little exceptions and nuances in all the films clamor for attention. Mr. Fox is the quintessential Wes Anderson character, this time given a nice touch by George Clooney, whose efforts with the Coen brothers in particular give him all the right stuff for this role. (Think O Brother, Where Art Thou? especially.)

Tail grab

With the exception of Bottle Rocket, each of Wes’ films has included death at some layer. In Rushmore, the memories of Max’s mom and Miss Cross’ husband surface many times. In Tenenbaums, the family visits the gravesite of Chas’ wife and Royal’s mother; the dog Buckley’s death and Royal’s own at the film’s finale make death particularly integral to that film. The Life Aquatic practically opens with a death scene, seen through a filmstrip showing Steve’s friend Esteban get eaten by a jaguar shark. The death of Steve’s son Ned later in the film is shocking for its rawness; it’s the kind of scene no one expects in an Anderson film. Obviously The Darjeeling Limited has everything to do with death. Some form or another of the word “die” is mentioned many times in Mr. Fox, perhaps surprising some parents who took their children to see it. As animals who steal from humans for a living, their lives are in danger from the first scene, and Mrs. Fox is typically the one to suggest that they may die. The only death that does occur (other than a few silly beagles – they really do love blueberries) is that of Rat. Rat is an interesting character, one easy to take for granted. He functions as a sort of counterpoint to Wolf. Wolf is talked about a few times, usually scaring Mr. Fox by the power of suggestion. Wolf is something transcendent, beautiful, and fearsome. His only appearance gives rise to a wow-sensation, standing there with authority, dignity, and – most importantly in Wes Anderson’s world – independence. He is his own creature, and his ability to survive and thrive on his own means that the characters in the film, just like the audience watching it, will never see him close-up. He is an enigma that Wes himself doesn’t seem to understand, and so how can his characters?

Symmetry

Rat is similar but located on the other end of the spectrum. Instead of beauty and dignity, he’s defined by ugliness and unseemliness. He runs his own show, too, but without the beauty and poise of Wolf, Rat is destined to die, which he does. Mr. Fox and the others pity him as much as they fear him, whether they’re locking him into a chest while they steal cider or are giving him his last sip before his pupils turn into little X’s. When Ash sorrows for Rat and suggests his redemption, Mr. Fox says something to the effect of, “But in the end he’s just another dead rat in a garbage dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant.” Isn’t this like Ari and Uzi giving a BB-gun salute at Royal’s funeral or Max deciding not to fell a tree on Mr. Blume while visiting Max’s mother’s grave? These death scenes in Wes’ films are often punctuated or offset with humor. The effect doesn’t seem to be to dampen the gravity of the scenes, but to lend something human to them. Wes only took the big, humorless risk with two death scenes – in Life Aquatic and Darjeeling, and the latter worked better than the former. Rat’s death in Mr. Fox gives the ugly character some final beauty, as he confesses how all he really wanted was some nice cider.

She's always doom 'n gloom

All of Wes’ protagonists – all of his characters, really – live on the edge. Or, if they’re not, they will be soon. Without the risk of death in some form, there is no life, even in a children’s movie. Just as clear as that, the risk is always taken collectively, never as individuals. At one point in the film, Mr. Fox sets out to sacrifice himself for the cause. He leaves everyone and heads toward the danger, but he’s back in a flash, proclaiming, “Suicide mission canceled,” and proclaiming a new and better plan that maximizes the strengths of everyone (demolitions expert!). The only way an individual succeeds by himself (yes, usually “himself”) is when others are nearby also desperately trying to succeed for the sake of the group. Often the victories are accidental, such as Ash breaking Kristofferson out of his cage, but they’re still victories. There’s no way to put a bottom line to one of Wes’ films, in my book. So, I’ll finish here by shouting out to Jason Schwartzman and  Wally Wolodarsky, whose voices in Mr. Fox provided more delight and laughs than I’ve experienced in a cinema in awhile. Also, these images are great:

Double-Doubles: In The Cut

A movie about (shooting at) garbage

The second, and later film from Jane Campion, In The Cut is not quite as “critically acclaimed,” as they say, but it should be. At least, it should be given more credit cinematically, since Campion perfects her already solid technique and creates a really impressive narrative, rich and cohesive, with elements swirling around in remarkable unity despite the appearance of chaos. Not wholly unlike The Piano, In The Cut delights – perhaps even finds its chief meaning – in turning conventionally accepted notions/expectations/commonplaces/pleasures on their heads. The first shot of the film from within Frannie’s (Meg Ryan) apartment shows the ambiguous image of small, lightweight, white objects falling from the sky. The immediate instinct is to assume it’s snow, although they seem too big to be snow. Soon thereafter we come to understand that it couldn’t be snow, considering the time of year and the weather. Later still, Frannie’s sister reveals to Frannie that they’re petal-like leaves falling from trees. Do not believe your eyes; this is largely the message of In The Cut. Appearances are deceiving, things aren’t what they seem, and so on.

Seeing ain't knowing

The strong identification, or character engagement, with Frannie attaches the viewer to her at the outset and almost never strays from her. Exceptions are momentary and wrought by narrative necessity. The suturing is stronger here with Frannie than it was with Ada in The Piano. Since this film adds the component of a whodunit? to its narrative, the film progresses better with the audience basically knowing only what Frannie knows. The dark aura that pervades the film affects the feel significantly, contributing to a post-idealistic urban setting, a dystopic microcosm, bound to highlight the sinister in society. The cops add to this vibe at least as much as anyone else, and rightly so, considering the course of the story. They’re fundamentally no different from any other members of society, as much potential suspects as anyone else, as much scumbags, as much sleep-buddies.

No Blade Runner, but still dark

Frannie and her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) stand as possible opposites, the independent woman and the dependent woman, respectively. Pauline’s pathetic stalking of a married man, her shameless fatal attraction to him leading to a restraining order, contrasts extremely with Frannie, who rarely ever dates and is constituted by a lack of desire for another. Her regular meetings with a handsome and hungry student lead to him punishing her for being a “bitch” – that is, being a woman who will not let herself be desired, will not return the gaze that caters to the desiring man. When Frannie finally does couple with a man, that coupling is defined by a reversal of traditional roles. Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) tells Frannie that he will be “anything you want me to be,” and so on. The relationship exists on her terms, for her pleasure. He willingly submits to her control, and her desire is not a desire for him, but rather for naked fulfillment. In a word, she uses him, and he knows it. All the while, she suspects him of committing the crime that is the catalyst for the film’s central mystery.

Sadistic

Having firsthand knowledge of the key piece of evidence needed to solve the crime, she withholds it. She seems to do this in order (1) to draw out the satisfaction she can experience through Malloy and (2) to solve the crime herself. Regarding the second, her day job as a high school teacher makes her an authority figure, a woman with knowledge and power. The meetings with her student are for the purpose of learning street vernacular from him so that she can give a more accurate portrait of urban life in the book she is writing. This is another instance in which Frannie uses a male for her own ends rather than letting herself be used, rebelling against gender norms. Regarding (1), it is important to note that the pleasure she experiences from Malloy is directly related to her suspicion that he is the murderer. Their romance is marked by sadism. After being mugged in an alley, Malloy has Frannnie re-stage the mugging in her apartment,  with him posing as the mugger. They do not get very far into the reenactment before arousing one another through the suggestion of violence. Toward the film’s finale, Frannie handcuffs Malloy to the wall in her apartment and proceeds to discover what appears to be incriminating evidence in his jacket pocket. The ensuing events leave Malloy stranded, cuffed to the wall like an animal as he becomes angrier and angrier. Once again, there is no question here concerning with whom the power lies. The climax in the following sequence has Frannie seizing the instrument of violence and overcoming the male villain.

Imprisoned

That climax is the second scene in which Frannie interacts with blood to a rather heavy degree. In the first, she enters a space that is extremely bloody, a space that happens to be the most intimate space of her sister’s, the bathroom where she has been murdered. This room is a sort of primal cave, penetrated through a violation of the worst kind, perhaps even on par with a violation into the womb. The bathroom already figures as the most personal, intimate space in a domicile. When Frannie enters it, not only is the evidence of the murder spread everywhere for her to see, but her sister is literally spread everywhere for her to see. This is an intrusion of the most violent sort, and Frannie walks straight into it, voluntarily surrounding herself with the bloody evidence. She is distraught, but also fearless and angry. In this way, the scene is somewhat reminiscent of the “castration” scene in The Piano.

Violated

It’s also reminiscent of that scene in another way, however. Right off, perhaps the main difference between the two scenes is that in The Piano, the act of violence is being done to Ada herself, whereas in In The Cut the act of violence has been done to Frannie’s sister. Returning, however, to the earlier point about Frannie and Pauline acting as opposites on the feminine spectrum (in terms of established archetypes or stereotypes), could they not essentially “be” the same person? There is, after all, a blurry line separating an opposite from a double. Consider not only the idea of two warring sides of a person embodies in two separate persons (something that wouldn’t be original to this film), but also the otherwise strange plot element of Pauline’s murder. Why, exactly, is she murdered? She and the murderer have never met and have no reason to meet. Their encounter only takes place as a direct result of Frannie getting a lift to her sister’s apartment. Pauline’s murder is an act supremely premeditated not only in terms of the murder itself but also in terms of the murdered person’s identity. Unless Frannie and Pauline essentially constitute two sides of the same person (from a thematic point of view), Pauline’s murder is a hole in the plot; it makes little or no sense.

Faker

If she – Frannie/Pauline – is the same person, however, then Malloy and Rodriguez (his partner) are also the same person. The two cops are partners. They work together and even hang out at the bar together. Frannie and Pauline are sisters – stepsisters, to be exact. They share the same father and spend a good deal of time together. Within the film, they’re defined in terms of one another; their identities are only clear in relation to one another. The same applies to the two cops. It’s in the bar that the difference between the two cops becomes most apparent. It’s there in the bar where Malloy tells Frannie how he’s willing to be whatever she wants him to be. Moments later Rodriguez makes some shockingly misogynistic comments (to say the least) about women that stand in polar opposition to Malloy’s words. Perhaps most importantly, it is their shared tattoo that creates the main misunderstanding fueling the film’s mystery.

Incriminated

Further still, recount the sadistic relationship that Frannie and Malloy share, and how that sadism plays out in their desires. Perhaps in this case, seeing Frannie-Malloy as “polar opposites” of Pauline-Rodriguez isn’t appropriate. Rather, significant overlap between the different couples makes them in some ways more similar than different. Another one of these overlaps concerns the guns of the two officers. We learn earlier in the film that Rodriguez carries a bright yellow squirt gun on his belt in place of a real firearm on account of losing his gun privilege due to – NB! – his wife taking the gun and using it. After cuffing Malloy to the wall, Frannie takes his gun with her (a second theft of a police gun by a woman) and rides off in Rodriguez’s car, though he is unaware that she is carrying. Her victory over him by means of a gun not only concludes the cycle for Rodriguez’s character of losing his gun to a woman (yes, folks, that’s castration), but Frannie’s theft of the gun from Malloy solidifies his status, already strongly hinted at, of being a male without an instrument of power.

Coming out bloody & on top

This is the kind of frustrating yet gratifying film that feeds on its own interpretation. The more that one sees in it, exponentially more will spring up before one’s eyes. Precious few films can submit to – what a terrible word; how about, “permit” – this kind of a reading without having violence done to them. In The Cut is a deceptively simple film, one that appears disturbing and complex but that is in fact very tight and coherent. It’s as much a Western as anything else, except in reverse. There are a hero and a villain, but instead of knowing who they are at the beginning, we aren’t fully sure until the end. Someone saves the day, but instead of fortifying established norms, the film challenges them and turns them over. At this point I’m struck with the realization that I’ve said nothing here about Frannie’s very interesting and imagined “flashbacks” to her father’s proposal to her mother and how violence fits into those. We could point to the identification between the primal, blood, and the woman that was already explored in the bathroom scene. Certainly issues of parenthood are of importance to this film, not only via the proposal flashbacks and constant talking about their father but also through the bracelet Pauline gives Frannie, suggesting Frannie as a mother. That the baby carriage breaks off of her bracelet while Frannie overcomes her mugger seems to solidify the possibility that Frannie is abandoning the maternal notion of Woman for something more powerful and independent. While there’s plenty more to discuss about this, time and space presently forbid it.

Castrated mother?

She came, she saw, she conquered

The Other “Twilight”

The second, and decidedly superior product, from Robert Benton last weekend. In the recent Feast of Love, Benton traded in the solid, veteran cast from his previous film Twilight for a set of young and sexy pawns to cater to navel-gazing empty-headed philosophes. This film, however, takes major advantage of its L.A. setting, incorporating the right sites and sights of those sites (and corresponding implications about L.A. and its inhabitants) to construct a solid “neo-noir” (as they’re calling it) that would make the old boys proud. If Hollywood movies have taught us anything, it’s that there is nothing good, moral, or hopeful to be found in Los Angeles. It’s a doomed city, as it was from its earliest days when a bunch of capitalist idealists decided to settle in an area when a soon-to-be-depleted water supply, no harbor, and virtually no chance of survival at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The area had no life in it, but they forced life into it, anyway.

L.A. hills

The newspapers were infamously responsible for a good chunk of this forced growth, acknowledged by Jack Ames (Gene Hackman), who says that what the L.A. Times says is good enough for him, truth-wise. This acknowledgment commits that famous error of noir characters, conflating or confusing truth with fact. (Ames is referring to a supposed murder that the Times claimed was a suicide.) Ames’ poor health fits the bill of the castrated patriarchal figure who finances and initiates the investigation, which of course turns out to implicate him and those close to him.

He has the cancer

Speaking of castration, the opening scene almost castrates Harry Ross (Paul Newman), as 17-year old Mel Ames (Reese Witherspoon) accidentally puts a bullet into his inner thigh. As a result, the police force mistakenly believes this P.I. has lost his manhood when in fact he’s quite virile, especially for a senior citizen. The diegetic “audience” (basically the police force and James Garner’s character Raymond Hope) assume him to be no threat, having lost his instrument of power. Hope even asks Ross point blank if he’s still got it. The same point correlates to Ross’ ability to invade the intimate spaces of women without them feeling threatened. At their first encounters in the film, both of the Ames women (daughter and mother) are fully undressed when Ross penetrates their hotel room and swimming area, respectively. Though Mel is disappointed to see him and Catherine (Susan Sarandon, the chief femme fatale) delighted, neither is phased in the slightest at encountering this particular male figure while bodily exposed.

Unphased

That Harry has no space of his own – forced to live with his client and client’s attractive wife – fits with the down-and-out nature of his character and the nature of noir’s glory days: always in the past (or always the stuff of dreams). The sinister characters – whether directly implicated in the crimes or guilty by association – dwell without exception in those notorious Modernist style cliff homes overlooking the L.A. Basin. These are the homes of the successful, and to be successful in L.A. involves a lack of scruples (at least in the movies). The P.I. character may not have many scruples, but he does have some. He’s interested not in ascending but in surviving. He may temporarily disregard conventional morals (such as destroying evidence, breaking and entering), but only for the pragmatic greater good. Harry’s days are bygone days or attempts to re-enter bygone days. The same can be said of his clients and his nemesis. At the same time, there’s a “I can’t go back to that” element that is undeniable, but only in moments of intense duress. Noir’s defeatist fatalism must admit in moments of clarity that even the past was no more glorious than the present. Harry’s past includes a divorce and alcoholism. Raymond’s past returns him to the flat Basin from the jagged cliffs. Raymond’s last name, “Hope,” and his eventual death capture the inevitability of the dark world of L.A. success and the crime that must accompany it. The ironically hopeful ending for Harry returns him to a liminal past – not the distant past but further back than the present. He returns to a vacation spot, a dream, a temporary escape from all that is unavoidable in his life. As is often the case with noir protagonists, however, Harry is an amnesiac, forgetting this film’s opening setting and his almost-castration, which took place at a vacation spot in Mexico.

Living in a crime scene

Tampering

Echoes of Sunset Boulevard

Power overlooking

I’m Stuffed: Feast of Love

Wasn’t planning on posting this now, but an historic moment has arrived: my first blog post while airborne, thanks the the good people at Google and Virgin America. Too bad the movie sucks.

Two from Robert Benton, two days in a row, starting with the more recent of the two: Feast of Love. A weird film; one would expect something quite a bit more substantial and not so stacked with sophistry from an experienced director and pretty solid cast. Morgan Freeman is basically “God” again, offering the hollow voiceover about the Greek gods and how they invented love, what a mess it turned out to be, etc., etc. Could be argued that the camera work is trying to mimic the way in which Greek gods might observe us silly human lovers: constantly moving in and out, side to side, giving that transient quality to everything it sees. Life occurs, then rinses itself off, then repeats. The movement isn’t as fluid as an Altman or as jagged as a Cuarón; seems overall noncommittal, confused. The film professes to profess wisdom, and thanks to Freeman it might well get away with it for gullible audiences. The actors, the clichés, and the nudity factor are likely to keep plenty interested in this truly uninteresting film. Hard to value something for pointing out facts that a day in the real world with an ounce of common sense makes quite obvious. Sounds like the definition of “pretentious”.

The Sting

Not “a” childhood favorite, but “the” childhood favorite: The Sting. Taught me everything I needed to know about the blurry area between “right” and “wrong.” Is it really unethical to steal from someone who steals for a living? Is it immoral to lie to a guy who had your best friend killed? Yeah, they’re all perpetuating criminal activity in a world overrun with it, but it’s every man for himself when the cops are as dirty as the big-con bosses. This is the type of film that appeals to the crook in all of us – not unlike the previous Newman-Redford film from George Roy Hill, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They are designed to elicit enormous pleasure from their audience, and they deliver. As good as the poker scenes are in the recent Casino Royale, they have none of the charm of Paul Newman or the joy of seeing Robert Shaw’s face when someone cheats him better than he cheats. With a face and an accent and a posture like Shaw’s who needs the villain’s eye to weep blood? This is one of those films that doesn’t encourage its viewers to think as much as to feel. On the other hand, something is being said about class. Luther’s retirement offers him the occasion to push Hooker toward the big con, insisting that he has what it takes – including the skin tone – to succeed at a higher level. Henry Gondorf is reduced to operating a merry-go-round, lying low until an opportunity like this arises to hit one of the big guys where it hurts. The film is shot completely from the shabby point of view of the lower class. Attention is even given to the little guys who want in on the big heist. The film revels in leveling class structures by transgressing hypocritical moral boundaries. Characters do what they do because they have to and because society doesn’t really expect them to do differently. These are not the Ocean’s Eleven guys, pretty boys who wear Versace, frost their hair, wax their chests, and blow their dough on attempts to climb the capitalist ladder. They’re beautiful enough that they’re content to couple with sub-par dames and wear suspenders over their wife-beaters.

Woman Troubles: Red-Headed Woman and Baby Face

The pre-code should’ve-been classics Red-Headed Woman (1932) and Baby Face (1933) share the same basic narrative, revolving around a bad-girl woman who decides, hey screw it, I can make use of my goods and services to move up in the world. A novel idea in the 30s – at least novel-ish to feature it in a film – each of these stories ends with the woman getting punished and put back in her “rightful” place. This is to say nothing of the fact that the only way the women could ascend the social ladder at all was by means of men allowing it, one way or another. Ironic perhaps that these films gave birth to the Hays Code, in order to prevent undesirable ideologies from sprouting up in otherwise good American viewers. Films like His Girl Friday more subtly allow women a foot in the door of the business world without exploiting her body in the process. The reasons for suppression and censorship seem to be that the films put ideas in the viewers’ heads that were best kept swept under the rug (even if the ideas were punished), and that they created a basic world in which women could quite easily make men do whatever they wanted by means of sex. Interestingly, in this world it’s the men who have no power at all (at least none they can manage to hang on to) and become forced to stifle woman-power by appealing to their maternal instincts. In Baby Face, Barbara Stanwyck’s character only stands by her man rather than running off with her new-found wealth because he’s terribly injured and needs her help. Ironies infest these stories like maggots in garbage: while the filmmaker’s patriarchal intent seems to be to put the woman back in her place, after creating a narrative exposing the powerlessness of men, he can only reduce Woman back to her previous status by essentially re-castrating the man. This conveniently concludes the stories with both Man and Woman stripped of power; or, the man only has power by virtue of the woman’s unavoidable return to her self as maternal.

Red-Headed Woman should perhaps be distinguished from Baby Face. Red-Headed Woman lets its female protagonist escape from her suitors, taking their wealth with her. Not before being reduced to a hysterical, pathetic, and infantile brat, the woman gets away not in Thelma and Louise style but rather as a child on the lam. The only ingredient lending believability to her new independence is the dual presence of men with her in the car – one of them driving, of course – as the film ends. One man is a young, attractive plaything and the other an old, rich father figure. It may take two men to keep this unruly woman under control, but she is back in her place. And more than ever, she is still well-off only through feeding off of male power and capital. With no possibility of finding and submitting to her maternal nature, she instead is babysat – two men and a little lady. The unjust depictions of women in these films would be outdone only by the unjust depictions of men, except that the focus happens to be on women. (And also, aside from gender, people can be pretty wretched in reality.) If the women are just vixens, temptresses, and seductresses, the men are animals, puerile at best and like ravenous dogs at worst. Their complete and shameless inability to resist the slightest bit of attention or, as it were, legs, boils them down to something worse than biology. It’s really an insult to animals to call these guys “animals.”

Despite a less subtle ending, Baby Face is a better film than Red-Headed Woman. Not only does Stanwyck hold up better than Jean Harlow (she’s more coy, more premeditated), but cinematically Alfred Green directs Baby Face with an eye for cinema. It feels less like an exploitation film, even if the dialogue within it literally discusses the exploitation of women. Settings are staged prior to scenes, giving a context to them and giving the screen a more centrifugal nature, at least when Stanwyck isn’t at its center. Then there’s the racial element, apparently another reason why the film was suppressed by the Code. Lily’s African-American maid Chico is her best friend. They talk like peers, even if their social statuses aren’t allowed equality. As Lily moves up in the world, so does Chico. No drama is injected into their relationship (it would now be obligatory, though more realistic, to insert jealousy into it). The more cash Lily has on hand and spends on nice clothes and accessories, same with Chico. How all of this fits together – sexual liberation, willing female exploitation, racial equality (on a certain level) – is intriguing. These films may not have “intended” to break boundaries of class, race, and society, but as one boundary starts disintegrating, so do others. This happens not only within the film’s diegesis but to the film itself, through the Code. Now these films seem tame by movie standards, but at least some of them couldn’t be shown on broadcast television. The extra-diegetic element has been removed, but the intentional or unintentional – conscious or subconscious – gender dynamics and the assumptions that underlie them are still alive, well, and only sometimes challenged.

First, Red-Headed Woman:

Come and get me!

Look what I found!

I SAID kiss me!

Whaddayathink?

Come and get it!

"I've got 'im where I want 'im!"

Just me and my boys

Now, Baby Face:

Industrial context

Man's world

Getting bored

Violated

Nietzsche doth teach us...

Lowering the lights

Male innuendo

We can do it...together

Don't mind me

Whatcha doooin?

Know your enemy

For all you who missed it

Wealth destroyed

Order restored

Waitress

The Men Who Stare At Goats

As has been well documented, The Men Who Stare At Goats is no Dr. Strangelove, but then it isn’t trying to be. A satire in the vein of Kubrick’s masterpiece, it differs in part by having a more-or-less straight man (Ewan McGregor) at its center who narrates the film through voiceover and serves at first to allow characters like George Clooney and Jeff Bridges seem even more bizarre. Part of the point of the film is how a slow, gullible, but otherwise normal guy can get sucked into new age hysteria when he’s cornered on every side by the insanity of warfare. The film sets its mood early, showing us television footage of (1) an early speech by George W. Bush attempting to inspire his audience in a time of crisis and (2) Bush’s infamous victory speech on board that big boat following a fighter jet escort. The ridiculousness that follows keeps in line with the foolish optimism that defined the early Bush era and that a surprisingly high percentage of the population at some point put their hope in. Coincidence follows coincidence and is proclaimed proof after proof of the idiotic but well meaning delusions that are only actually given any visual credence when Clooney is narrating his own flashbacks. Dubious. Upon the film’s conclusion, the general vibe of the small audience was summed up by one man, who asked, apparently rhetorically, “So who else is going to be asking for their money back?” We, however, laughed throughout this film, enjoying everything from Clooney’s silliest and perfectly timed vocal inflection to the overarching meta-absurdity of this pretty wise but unassuming film. (It’s also great that Clooney’s character and Bridges’ character derive somewhat from their roles in the Coen brothers’ films O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski, respectively.)

Who’s Cheating? Mystic River, The Sixth Sense, and North By Northwest

It’s been suggested over here that Mystic River employs a sort of narrative “cheat” not unlike the oft-repeated one in The Sixth Sense. It’s often true that movie watchers don’t like being fooled, but it should be acknowledged that some of the greats (e.g. Hitchcock) were masters at doing this in just the right way – a way that didn’t seem as offensive. Most of Hitchcock’s films work so well because the viewer is so well sutured to a particular character or characters that the narrative feels like one’s own. This effects an attachment to not only the narrative but to the film itself; the spectator feels part and parcel of the movie, something Hitchcock well knew and so exploited it through humor and adventure, making the audience feel like they were along for the ride and not simply watching someone else’s ride.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be said that the narrative twist in The Sixth Sense is a “cheat,” at least not like it is in Mystic River. The main problem with the shock in The Sixth Sense is that it’s all the film is standing on. Whatever other notions might be suggested in the film are given the back seat (as in, the very back seat of a twelve-passenger van) to the not-so-little detail that changes everything in the film. However, it is not a cheat because the viewer is usually connected with Bruce Willis’ character Malcolm and is only privy to what he knows. Alternately, it can be said that the spectator’s point of view is Cole’s view of how Malcolm sees himself. We see what Cole sees, and what he sees Malcolm see. The viewer is only let in on the film’s big secret at the moment Willis realizes it. Shallow? Empty? A shameless conceit? It may be all of those things, but it’s probably not really a cheat.

Enter Mystic River. In what is ironically an actor’s movie (it was even directed by one), it’s slightly trickier to determine just which character the viewer is supposed to identify with most. Maybe it’s not ironic; maybe the thespian ensemble functions precisely to confuse the viewer as to which character the film itself wants to see come out in front. This is doubtful. The characters are all types, caricatures, and oddities, personalities overly determined by their pasts or inconsistent in attitude and motivation. In fact, the film does choose its “main” character, the one whose point of view is given priority to the viewing audience: Dave. The opening scene functions as a flashback, giving the three main male characters a background that connects them and one that sets Dave apart from Jimmy and Sean in a certain, horrible way. Following the opening scene and periodically throughout the film we see flashbacks from Dave, a Rashomon-like forest view as he escapes his captors after four days of abusive captivity.

What is the point of all of these flashbacks? It seems fair to assume that they are for either one or both of the following reasons: to give narrative background to the main story that will fill in important information, or, to paint a fuller picture of the character of Dave in order to create viewer attachment and all the accompanying emotions, etc. As with most either-ors, this one turns out to be both. And herein lies the real cheat of Mystic River. More than any other technical element, Dave’s forest flashbacks suture the viewer to the character of Dave. No other character has POV shots like these. Over the course of the main story, exceedingly important information about Dave, of which he is fully aware, is withheld not only from the other characters, but also from the viewing audience. The only reason to withhold this information is to create suspense, but unfortunately it’s at the expense of a consistent connection between viewer and “main” character. This makes the suspense artificial, a “cheat.”

This is something that, again, The Sixth Sense did not do and something that Hitchcock didn’t do. These two counter-examples were chosen – one a film and one a corpus of films – because they represent the other two options: either let the audience in on what’s happening à la Hitchcock, or withhold information to the same degree that the main character is ignorant of it. One of the great twists in North By Northwest occurs after Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) escapes narrowly from the United Nations building after being framed for a murder. The camera makes a transition from the U.N. building (a bird’s-eye or God’s-eye view of the reflective façade) to the exterior of the Central Intelligence Agency (a man’s eye view), the sign of which mirrors the Washington, D.C. Capitol building across the street from it. Hitchcock makes it clear to his audience that they have a privileged outlook by removing them from the restricted and confusing point of view of Roger Thornhill to the much more omniscient CIA. This move doesn’t so much cater to the audience as respect it, understanding that Thornhill’s situation is too intense for the audience to experience it with him past a certain point.

Interestingly, there is a later point in North By Northwest when Hitchcock does trick the audience. At Mount Rushmore, Eva Marie Saint’s character Even Kendall appears to shoot Thornhill point blank in front of a large crowd. The audience is briefly left reeling as much as the crowd within the scene, which believes that the two characters are on opposite sides, if one wants to murder the other. A few moments later, the viewer meets the characters in a secluded forest where Thornhill emerges unscathed from a car, along with Kendall, showing that the scene was a hoax. The main reason why this conceit is not exactly a deceit is that Thornhill is not in on the hoax until shortly after the shot is fired, when he realizes that it was a blank. The amount of screen time that elapses between the firing of the shot and the revelation to the audience that Thornhill is alive is no doubt not much longer than how long it took Thornhill to realize he wasn’t hurt. Sutured to Thornhill, Hitchcock plays the same trick on the audience that SHE plays on him, briefly (and only briefly!) letting the audience/Thornhill think that something dreadful has happened when it hasn’t. The event was not the crux of the plot and was not drawn out as an artificial suspense element.

The point may be done to death, but it amply illustrates how a film like Mystic River relies on an artificial and inconsistent plot device to distract the audience from some truly uninteresting characters and get the audience to focus on the only thing the film has going for it: the narrative. The aforementioned blog did well to note this point, as well. Granted, a film like North By Northwest loves and needs its plot. The plot, like in many of Hitchcock’s films, is larger than life, so the great director does what needs to be done to ground the film: give it a main character (or main characters) who appeal completely to the viewing audience. If the film isn’t “realistic,” at least let its characters appeal to those watching. The lack of realism in Mystic River’s story (Dave’s wife’s knee-jerk assumption that he killed the girl??) is piled on top of larger than life characters, rendered so by a kind of acting that draws more attention to the performances than to the characters. The characters in Mystic River repel the audience. The acting may appeal to viewers, but the characters themselves are generally unappealing, evoking sympathy at points but rarely if ever empathy rooted in a real connection with lived experience and a personable disposition. Some may say this is the nature of tragedy, but a quick look at Shakespeare disproves that idea. An effective tragedy does the same fundamental thing Hitchcock does, connecting the audience with the character for whatever effect best suits the genre or the work itself.

Good thing it's a closeup

PS: Having not seen many films directed by Clint Eastwood, what’s with the finger-gun motif here and in Gran Torino?

Young Mr. Lincoln

Well, gee, vote for me

Most film protagonists, especially of the sort with which viewers are supposed to sympathize, are neither morally perfect nor totally evil. Exceptions tend to fit into the former category, however, as is the case with John Ford’s film Young Mr. Lincoln. It’s the sort of film that a stranger to the planet Earth might watch and wonder just what its point is. Anyone else, especially a born and bred American, knows intuitively all too well what a film like this is doing. If it were a simple fiction, Young Mr. Lincoln would seemingly have little appeal in terms of its creating a character who challenges the viewer to think critically and evaluate Abe Lincoln’s ideas, passions, words, and deeds. A black-and-white good guy, the alien viewer would likely see this film as a moral propaganda piece, something to show classrooms of youths in order to put a friendly face on justice, goodness, and determination.  Since the days of Superman: The Movie, even the comic book superhero genre has stuck to the convention of a protagonist who is flawed, who sometimes acts in her, but usually in his, best interests at the expense of the people he is supposed to protect.

Man of the earth

Henry Fonda plays Lincoln with a moral aloofness and John Ford shoots the film keeping the hero at an untouchable distance. Sometimes Lincoln’s attitude is sort of well-golly-I-don’t-know, and other times he preaches his convictions like a Baptist minister. He’s presented as unassuming and gentle, a man of nature with limited learning but an unlimited capacity for pure knowledge, the kind that can only be used for good. He is tall, of course, and his opponents tend to be short. Intellectually he towers above everyone else even more than he does physically. Though education is illustrated through Lincoln as something that builds moral character, he makes some interesting statements about a little old woman (not that old, really) whose lack of education makes her all the more pure, innocent, and, of course, womanly.

Two-fistin'

Technically speaking, this film is in the neighborhood of perfect. Even in 1939, John Ford knew well what he was doing, how to point a camera, and, even in a sometimes-unsubtle film, how to say a lot with a little. The idea of depicting the early life of one of the great American legends must have been fairly novel at the time, the sort of thing that filmmakers nowadays love doing. For example, see Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. (Most of the time now, however, filmmakers give into the pressure to film the rest of the person’s life. Examples abound.) Depicting only the early life can be an easy way to make a biopic, since the filmmaker is under much less pressure to take a position about the individual. This way, the film can wax Freudian about what made an otherwise questionable character do what s/he did. Ford is at an advantage here, having chosen as his subject the image of a man universally loved at least in the 1930s northern US, if not universally in the South. Ford hones in a little closer than, say D.W. Griffith did in Birth of a Nation, although a similar respect keeps both directors from even remotely or suggestively tainting Lincoln’s image. In the era of the Depression and on the even of the US entrance into WWII, it makes sense that Ford’s Lincoln would be exactly the image to encourage and inspire Americans to see their own humble existence as only the beginning of something that would later be remarkable.

Point blank

Man of the people?

The man. The myth. The hat.

Ending on a pedestal

Back to the Future

There may be not be much to the Back to the Future movies (there is decidedly more to the Indiana Jones films), but anyone who doesn’t at least kind of love them doesn’t love cinema. Further, anyone for whom the 80s were anything like formative years hopefully remembers these films as integral to their education as to what constitutes quality entertainment. Huey Lewis, the flux capacitor, jigawatts, “McFly,” Michael J. Fox, a bad guy named Biff, skateboards, hoverboards, nobody-calls-me-chicken, Delorians, and Libyan terrorists: these are the ingredients to something special. Marty’s dream above all dreams is really to play the guitar in his school gym. In the first scene of the first film he is punished by his own desire to rock. Shortly thereafter, he’s rejected by Mr. Lewis himself, whose hit song Marty is covering. Marty knows the best he can offer is to head a cover band, so at the end he gets to live his fantasy of introducing rock and roll in his school gym not only to high school students but to Chuck Berry himself. There is an immense thrill to be had when a viewer is so completely engaged with a main character who enjoys himself even through his crises. Marty is an 80s boy all the way: no cynicism whatsoever, or short-lived cynicism at worst. Is it MJF who’s constantly winking at us or Marty McFly who’s always winking at his circumstances, no matter how dire they may seem? Seems that he was cast for the part because he was Marty McFly. Artificial suspense scenes abound in these films (especially Part II), but it’s somehow forgivable. Despite the conviction to take all films seriously no matter how comedic or popular they may be, this one is a toughie.

Rocked

Slacker

Anyone home?

Mom Mack-Fly

"Get your d-damn hands off h-her."

Chuck/Jimi/Pete/Eddie foreseen

"What, do we become assholes or somethin'?"

Gosford Park: So Classy

Unbalanced

For some reason past viewings of Gosford Park made it difficult to say much about it. Theories abound as to why, but undoubtedly two reign supreme: the slow mental digestion of this viewer, and a wedding – truly a becoming one flesh – of form and content on the part of the filmmaker(s). At this stage in his career, it must be admitted that Robert Altman had primary and probably sole creative control over his projects. So once again, bonjour auteur theory. Despite lame efforts to ignore you, you have again reared your pretty head.

Intrusion

If a viewer struggles to grasp the basic idea overarching and undergirding Gosford Park, look only at the division of actors in the end credits: “Above stairs,” “Visitors,” and “Below stairs.” The class separation within this film, which may seem only as strong as it is in Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, is more fluid, traversed, and transgressed. By virtue of these boundary-crossings, the class differences are highlighted all the more. So overt are the examples of these instances that some characters, usually those below the stairs, discuss them openly. A rule prohibits servants to respond to their own names when downstairs. Instead, they are identified by the names of their masters and mistresses. The servants wonder at what it must be like to be wealthy. When one of them turns out to have been posing and is in fact a wealthy actor, he is shunned and spurned by the servants thereafter. The head servants proclaims the highest dignity to be the one who “knows what they (the elite) want before they themselves do.”

Watching

How this factors into the murder-mystery aspect of the film is more provocative. Whereas Agatha Christie’s novel-films use the class distinction as a tool to suspend the mystery and postpone the answer to the whodunit? question, Altman here switches things, using the murder-mystery to bring us back to his higher concern. That the murder, it turns out, was carried out twice (sort of), makes the crime as ambiguous as the class distinction seems to be upon close inspection. From a distance, we see clearly. Up close, it’s quite clear. But from that arm’s length distance at which most of life is lived, things are quite difficult to make out. The murder has its roots in an early transgression of the boundary: the master sleeps with his servant. The child is given up, the servant remains faithful but grows older, the master finds new and younger playthings, and the child and mother grow bitter as they gain perspective.

Being watched

Fitting that this film was made in the new century, as it represents a quintessentially postmodern twist on a classic genre of film and literature. The twist is only slight, but it is indisputably present. In the end, two people think themselves the murderer, and only one is right, but both are also right. A familial relation is uncovered between them, but seems to be known by only one. The justification for the murder is rather strong, and no one is “punished” for it in the traditional sense; at least, no one is found out by the authorities. The police enter but have no powers over the world of the upper-class. (This is evident quite literally in the inspector’s inability ever to finish pronouncing his own name, despite numerous attempts.) The spat-upon token American guests (above the stairs) commit the transgression as Americans are best at doing: grabbing and running. The Hollywood producer (perfectly cast: Bob Balaban performs here flawlessly and is a producer of Gosford Park) snags the shamed servant and drives away with her to offer her an acting career. As the crony of the murdered man, she is rewarded for her faux pas while her master remains quite punished. Renoir’s film was something like a moral tale, a social critique. Altman’s is a social critique but a rather amoral tale, more akin to the new world in which it was made than to Renoir’s. Altman’s floating camera remains detached from all the goings-on but constantly interested. The viewer feels like an invisible spy wandering around freely, neither judging the lives it watches nor celebrating them. If the film comes down on anyone, it comes down on everyone. The sins are of omission and commission, ranging from innocent naivete to backstabbing treachery. The biggest problem that the film itself points to, however, isn’t of individuals but of the society that so trains them.

Messy mixture

Oops

A Sentence on Father Goose

Grumpy, stubborn, half-drunk, sarcastic, and unshaven did nothing to diminish Cary Grant’s charm and unsurpassed presence in his second-to-last film Father Goose, begrudgingly filling the pater familias role to Leslie Caron and a bunch of girly-girls while periodically yelling at and being yelled at by the well-cast Trevor Howard in a light and goofy homage to The African Queen.

Where The Wild Things Are

The source material to the film Where The Wild Things Are either makes it fairly easy or fairly difficult to adapt it to the cinematic medium. Everyone who has been interested in this project (except for the studio producers) has agreed up until its release that Spike Jonze was the right director for this job. What Jonze filmed, however, is bound to change the opinion of many. It’s pointed out here, fittingly, that this is a “children’s art film,” something that will disappoint many critics by its non-mainstream form and style but that perfectly captures the mood and heart of Maurice Sendak’s book. Perhaps the truest point here is how Jonze uses Antonioni-esque imagery – echoes of Zabriskie Point and others – to contribute toward the conflicted feelings prevalent throughout the film. While it is in a sense ironic that the least child-like of filmmakers is being appealed to for a proper understanding of a children’s film, in fairness the point holds true. Though it may be true that many children will find this film less than compelling, many children nowadays will find the book even less so, but at least with the ever-shortening attention spans of youth these days, the book will be over with faster. Fitting again, then, that the book is based in the same time period as some of Jonze’s cinema sources.

Where The Wild Things Are in some ways either stands or falls depending on one’s need for those quintessentially “cinematic” moments, those narrative halts that take place at varying points in a film that appeal directly to the emotive and/or intellectual intuition of the viewer that raises both the viewer and the film’s concerns above the form of the film itself. These moment are becoming more common now that conventional narrative film has “been done.” For example, most people don’t find M. Night Shyamalan’s films very interesting anymore, since The Sixth Sense gave spectators a good idea of what to expect narratively from his films. People want something different, and Shyamalan’s subsequent films haven’t been different enough to match the popularity of his first hit. In a similar way, narrative film in the vein of “golden age Hollywood” is bound to work not as well now as it did then. A basic structure with basic devices were used, and then changes started to take place in cinema to keep viewers coming. Antonioni didn’t happen in a vacuum; he followed and changed and built upon a form that was more standard. European art cinema tried to make radical changes in form, which it did, but most of these changes were not necessarily bound to attract lots of viewers, especially in the U.S., and especially not these days. As a result, the last fifteen-to-twenty years have seen major shifts in narrative style and art-film formal techniques being employed within neo-conventional narratives to heighten the viewer’s awareness through form when the narrative is reaching a moment of peaking thematic or aesthetic importance. These moments do not occur in Where The Wild Things Are in the way most viewers are presently accustomed to seeing them.

So again the comparison to Antonioni is fitting. Antonioni’s films, especially post-L’avventura, were defined by form over narrative. Since form ran consistently above the story, there were no moments when form could transcend it; it was already doing that. Those little spine-tingling moments, sometimes employing melodramatic motifs and sometimes appealing to an ideal-informed aesthetic sensibility, are very subtle at the few moments when they are present. It is more difficult to see form transcending form than to see form transcending narrative. All this being said, Where The Wild Things Are certainly features a narrative, but the narrative operates much like it does in the book: as something that the form can break out of, followed by a quiet, almost whispered moral lesson. Perhaps this is quite fitting, since childhood doesn’t really feel like a narrative to a child. It feels like a lot of disconnected moments, often punctuated by feelings of melancholy and sublime happiness. “What” happens is less important than what happens to “me”, or how I feel about what happens.

Though the book has a moral, it is anything but preachy. The film increases the presence of moral content in the film, probably because there was little way around it. With more time to fill, there is more of Max being a very naughty boy. Say what you will about the notion of a “children’s art film”; children are rarely smart or moral enough to watch a film in such a detached way not to mimic the actions – moral or immoral – of its main subject. Why do children’s books (and, theoretically, films) so often have a moral message to them? For this reason. A subtle moral for children is a preachy one to adults; a subtle message for adults is non-existent for children. So, when the book ends and Max is still confined to his room – notwithstanding having a warm dinner from a loving but disciplining parent – a certain message is clear that there are still consequences to one’s actions, even if one is a child and is learning these things for the first time. The absence of discipline (and dialogue) in the film’s final minutes is the biggest departure from the book. A children’s book or film should not be required to end with a strong moral message. When moral content is at the heart of a narrative, however, it does seem odd when the story finishes with a sort of disregard for morals.

This may be the big irony about Where The Wild Things Are being a children’s art film. There are three kinds of people in the world: children, adults, and parents. Not being a parent, I feel I’m doing a service to this third, excluded group with more of a right to define the children’s art film than the other two groups. Since no one has more reason to care about the books and the art that children encounter more than parents do, it might be best to evaluate these things from a more parental point-of-view. Where The Wild Things Are is beautiful, meaningful, powerful, and moving. It is a great creation by a group of talented people. In terms of its target audience – admitted to be children by Spike Jonze himself – it doesn’t so much mix its message as dismiss the very important one that it suggests. It values relationship, connection, friendship, and family. These things are of course to be valued, but as Max does well to demonstrate in the film, they cannot be valued without some kind of (gulp) boundaries. Unfortunately, this is where the wild things are not.

Dumb and Dumber (or, Gay and Gayer)

And, there you go

In an excellent recent conference paper, it was remarked how a particular “buddy” movie (specifically, Superbad) tends to portray an anxious masculinity, or anxious masculinities. This masculinity shows forth a homoerotic longing for the “buddy,” and many of the films that fit into this grouping (genre?) are in fact nothing less than romantic comedies masked by masculine friendship. Displaced desires and “multiple masculinities” result, with strong anxieties reinforcing the same gender stereotypes that produced them in the first place. It strikes one how the Farrelly brothers’ classic Dumb and Dumber fits into this categorization quite perfectly.

Homophobic? Return of the repressed?

As is formulaic in many of these buddy movies, the two main characters begin in the story separated from one another, and cross-cutting gives the viewer simultaneous views of the two in their respective routines. The “routine” nature of these introductory sequences gives clear context as to the normative settings and activities of the characters. It also seems typical to illustrate in these opening scenes how “incomplete” the characters are when on their own. They either show a longing for one another – explicitly – or their failures as individuals indicates their inability to “go it alone.” The rest of the film (usually with the conventional conflict interlude 2/3 of the way in) keeps the two men/boys together in what promises to be ultimately a successful misadventure.

"Austria?! Well then, g'day, mate!"

In Dumb and Dumber, the film opens with Harry (Jeff Daniels) driving the van for his dog grooming business (the “Shaggin’ Wagon”) on his way to a dog show for which he has the canines (“‘dogs’ for the layperson”) prepped. Lloyd (Jim Carrey) is also driving. The first shot in which the viewer sees Lloyd features him rolling down the window to his limo – pretending to be a passenger rather than the driver – and hitting on a woman standing on the sidewalk. His complete ineptitude to utter even one line to her that isn’t seasoned with idiocy demonstrates immediately his incompetence with women. At the same time, the fact that both men begin the film driving automobiles establishes that we are not just about to watch a “buddy” movie, but a road-trip movie – genres that tend to overlap with each other pretty consistently. Once Lloyd picks up Mary to take her to the airport, his speech once again reveals his failure to connect with a woman. As Harry arrives at his destination, the woman who meets him is not romantically attractive to him, but his failure to deliver the dogs in a presentable state confirms that each man in this duo fails to impress women and is, therefore, “castrated,” in the common psychoanalytic parlance.

"They always freak out when you leave the scene of an accident."

They arrive home after another day of failures (“…fell off the jetway again.”) like a married couple (“How was your day?”), plopping into chairs neatly separated by an end table as if to keep one another at a comfortable, yet intimate distance. No sooner do they settle in but Lloyd brings up his encounter with “the most beautiful woman alive.” This is not the last time in the film when physical proximity and alone time between the two men is counteracted by a discussion about the sexual attractiveness of a woman. (Interestingly, the women they discuss vary, but the two men remain loyal to one another.)

She's confined to the background

A few scenes later, Harry agrees to Lloyd’s begging to go to Aspen (“California…beautiful.”) in order to return Mary’s “lost” briefcase to her. Harry’s agreement comes only after Lloyd’s emotional speech (surprisingly articulate for once): “I’m sick and tired of having to eek my way through life. I’m sick and tired of being a nobody. But most of all, I’m sick and tired of having nobody.” Lloyd’s statement, which would seem to be offensive to his friend and roommate Harry, end up serving a pragmatic purpose that empties them of their apparent discursive purpose and fills them with rhetorical intent: an excuse not only to embrace Harry by gaining his sympathy but to embark on a lengthy honeymoon-like trip, just the two of them. Harry’s deeply sympathetic reaction is to agree to the trip, extend his arms to Lloyd, and then engage in a lengthy mutual hug as Lloyd loudly wails into Harry’s bosom. Patting, squeezing, and caressing, Harry says, “Just let it out, have a good cry,” then after another moment, “Okay, that’s enough,” and pushes Lloyd away.

Hold me.

So often in this sort of film, every moment of male-on-male intimacy is abruptly cut short by one or both of the characters realizing the homoerotic (or as they would probably simply put it, “gay”) appearance of their words and/or actions. This insecurity highlights something, but it’s not necessarily clear as to what. It could be argued to be a “return of the repressed,” a homosexual desire that was supposed to be stifled early on in the child-rearing process that comes out every so often. Or, in a simpler, less Freudian way, it could simply be explained as a couple lonely guys who can’t get girls who commiserate together and end up getting a little cozier than the “typical” homophobic (literally) guy. As another option, maybe the comedic nature of the buddy/road-trip movie is directly related to these apparently homoerotic plot elements. Maybe it’s just a twist on a rom-com cliché, applying to two men what audiences are accustomed to expecting from a man and a woman. By replacing the woman with a man, comedy ensues (when viewed by a “typical,” “homophobic” audience). The possibility must also be admitted that these kinds of hermeneutical readings could simply be reading into textual elements and applying unfair interpretations.

"Some little filly break your heart?" "No, it was a girl."

These paragraphs would be incomplete if they didn’t point out the hot tub scene in the hotel room. It’s in this scene that Harry and Lloyd discuss “Freda Felcher,” a female acquaintance of theirs in high school who was the object of their mutual desire. This is the first of two times when the guys end up in love with the same woman. Why the same woman? Why not different women? Is it simply that only one woman crosses their path (note the singular) at a time, giving them each only one option from which to choose? Or is the film playing with the underlying notion that Harry and Lloyd are actually kind of in love with each other? By allowing only one interest at a time for the men to share, the men are always in the simple position of having to choose between their friendship or the woman they desire; they’re never able to have both (unless we introduce the taboo element that the characters themselves want to avoid – here, see Y Tú Mamá Tambien, where a very similar story takes place, a three-way ensues, and – fittingly – the film is a non-comedy).

No quarters necessary

Interestingly, in the “unrated” cut of Dumb and Dumber, Lloyd says to Harry in the tub, “Only one thing could make this moment better…if you had a nice set of knockers.” Harry replies, “That’s two things, Lloyd.” Lloyd goes on to say, “I’d show you what a real man could do…and you’d probably like it, you big homo.” Harry replies with, “Shutup, Lloyd,” and an uncomfortable look as Lloyd crosses the line that even their idiocy generally knows shouldn’t be crossed, uttering the previously unspoken reality of their relationship, or at least what it looks like.

"Farver beans and a nice bottle of chianti"

The name of the woman they are both pursuing (theoretically, at least) – “Mary” – is the proverbial woman’s name that can hardly connote the idea of “woman” any stronger. It seems probable that she is a stand-in for the broader notion of “woman.” Do Harry and Lloyd desire “woman” or each other?, is the bigger question. That Mary, it turns out, is already married, is not only the simplest way to make sure that Lloyd and Harry can’t have her and must stick to each other, but also the most cliché. It’s perhaps just as cliché to point out how it’s cliché, but here we are, anyway: the commodification of the woman forces her into the role as to-be-desired, a role from which she cannot escape. The only way she can escape the desire(s) of Lloyd and Harry is by being desired by another, stronger man. Harry’s brief fantasy of shooting Mary’s husband multiple times shows that his “fantasy” is, truly, not homoerotic but heteroerotic. It’s in his fantasy life where he defeats the other male figure and gets his girl. In real life, he remains in a stable relationship with another man where he can only fantasize (along with his other man) about the distant and impossible idea of connection with a woman.

Pink and blue

When Harry tricks Lloyd and is able to spend a day with Mary on the slopes, Harry ends up treating Mary like he treats Lloyd. Not only does Harry add the male organ to the snowman they built, committing a faux pas that Mary has to correct, using the carrot and stones to make eyes and a nose, but while playing in the snow Harry roughs up Mary like two guys affectionately beating on each other. Once Lloyd tricks Harry in return (turbo lax) and gets Mary back to the hotel to make his confession to her, what comes out of his mouth instead of his practiced soliloquy proclaiming his undying love for Mary? “I desperately want to make love to a schoolboy.” While trying to correct himself, he lets loose another slip: “I want you to tell me the chances of a guy like you and a girl like me…ending up together” Lloyd’s perpetual inability to identify himself and his own sexual preference with any kind of conventional accuracy drives home his frustrated/confused/repressed/anxious state of mind. Once Harry arrives at the hotel room, the threesome is handcuffed to the bed (with Mary in between, of course) by the bad guy. Interestingly, Harry and Lloyd make very little acknowledgment of Mary’s presence, though they are finally situated – the three of them – in bed together. Rather, the two men bicker like an old married couple, even with the obligatory sexual innuendo, each one demanding that the other kiss his ass (“Both cheeks! Both lips!…”)

Who doesn't belong?

The comical end scene, with Lloyd and Harry being offered to tour with the bikini girls on the “National Bikini Tour,” could not possibly cement all of these ideas any more. Both men are utterly oblivious to the ramifications of the offer presented to them. Finally, a free handout is before them embodying the ultimate heterosexual male fantasy: without having to do any of the hard work – in which they have so obviously failed in the preceding narrative – they can have exactly what they claimed to have wanted: women. Their refusal may indicate less an “oblivious” attitude than an apathetic one. Was it all for Mary that they went to Aspen, left everything they had, and endured all kinds of misery? Or was it “for love of the game,” as it were? Not for the hunted, but for the hunt itself. The same idea inheres when men go off fishing or hunting for a weekend “with the boys” and come back with no fish or game. As the aforementioned conference speaker noted, many of these “bromance” films allow a chord-cutting by the end: the two male characters are able to sever their ties to one another (to some degree) and walk away with their respective female interests. Not so in Dumb and Dumber. The overt rejection not just of cutting the chord but even of diving into their supposed non-gay fantasy implies a final acceptance of their relationship. Sure, they’re “dumb,” and therefore prone to miss the appearance of their greatest fantasies come to life. However, the film seems to encode many tropes of repressed homoeroticism under the guise of simple stupidity. Perhaps the truly ignorant thing would be to read all of this as just a couple morons trying to find a girl.

Fantasy or intrusion?

Touchy-feely

Sunset Boulevard

In the gutter

How refreshing to experience a film so critical of the system that undergirds film itself. And how fitting that Hollywood is located on the West Coast of the US, the land of the setting sun. Norma Desmond, the embodiment of the silent film star – really the aging film starlet – pathetically races the sunset, attempting to undo the death of her career. The allusion to Great Expectations at the film’s beginning is utterly appropriate, especially when one recalls the mansion set in David Lean’s film of that name, which must have been an influence on the set design of the house in Sunset Boulevard. There are so many perfect aspects to this film, it’s difficult to know where to begin. There is the pulpy nature of the narrative, wed to a noirish atmosphere. The voiceover by the dead man lends a grave fatalism to the film; it’s over before it’s started. That the protagonist is a writer (a screenwriter, no less) in a sense validates the film and also creates a conflict of interests. The almost cliché style of voiceover not only serves (1) to confirm Joe’s status as a screenwriter, narrating his own story, but (2) attempts to ground the narrative of this film in something verbal, something concrete. The very fluid and non-concrete nature of the film, however, corresponds to the place of Joe’s demise: the water of a swimming pool. In this era of America, where but in L.A. could a man be shot, then fall into and float in a swimming pool until finally being fished out? Joe’s inability to wield any power of his story through narration is a failure fundamentally similar to his screenwriting career. He has ideas but he can’t pen them, or he pens something void of worthwhile ideas.

Over and under

The term “self-reflexive” only begins to describe Sunset Boulevard’s own extreme awareness of what it is and how it fits into the broader history of cinema. The death of the stars is as certain as the daily death of solar light; if it survives through the night, it’s only via a pale reflection from another, lesser cosmic body. This film refers so unceasingly to film itself that it almost feels like too much. Parables are not to be concerned with their own semiotic reference points. Cameos from Buster Keaton and Cecil B. DeMille, and numerous mentions of Alan Ladd, Greta Garbo, and Gone with the Wind make Sunset Boulevard simultaneously as insecure with itself as Norma is with herself, and confident in its critique of the blind embrace of fleeting and ultimately empty Hollywood values. At the risk of overkill, does Norma’s obsession with the notion of the “star” connect, as its name implies, with her home address? While the times change in this world, the people who fill it do not; new films and new types of stars will become popular while others are phased out, but whether it’s Norma’s self-obsession or Buster Keaton’s victim complex, they are doomed to live as they are. The impossibility of Joe’s successful shift from the no-good screenwriter he is to a live-in companion to a lonely and rich ex-star illustrates his own inability to become something different.

Relics

Then there is the gender issue. It would at first seem like Sunset Boulevard would not – could not – have worked had it been about a dimming male Hollywood star. Something about the cinematic male gaze and the nature of the woman as objectified (either through idealization or punishment) makes the starlet ripe for the portrayal of Norma. Norma traverses the fine-line boundary between idealization and punishment, moving through her career from the former to the latter without realizing it. One kind of exploitation is fine; she’s been trained for it. The other is a less subtle kind of objectification and one that forfeits her previous image as the actress ideal. Further, it would seem that DeMille’s presence in this film as a still-active member of Hollywood’s elite implies that men are immune to the inevitability of women in Hollywood. DeMille’s success in the film blurs the distinction between fiction and non-fiction, since the set used within Sunset Boulevard for DeMille’s film was the actual set where he was directing a film at the time. However, Buster Keaton’s cameo is more than a cameo. He and the other actor present at the bridge game signify a sad egalitarianism. They may not be on the verge of madness like Norma, but they are washed-up, wrinkled, and gray. Keaton’s only two words spoken in the film are: “Pass. Pass.” His pitiful expression, so familiar from his earlier features, confirm that his career, too, has passed, perhaps like his card hand, despite attempts to succeed again. Perhaps the male gender is no more immune to the Hollywood actor/actress career death than the female. If we want to get all Mulvey here, though, all we need to point out is this: despite Norma’s apparently successful power grab at the end, killing Joe and returning to her castle, Joe’s verbal power dominates the film through narration despite his death. Norma is deprived of a voice in the end, and her madness in the presence of the Hollywood press is perhaps the most humiliating (read: punishing) fate she could have met.

Replacing

Grave

Image-ining

Passed

Darling

Chaps

DeMan

Distracted

Descent

Fading

THX-1138

A Sentence on Barbarella

If only this could play the music...

Zany, cooky, and campy to the extreme, with some dialogue to be cherished (“What’s that screaming? A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.”) and extra-special effects (see above), Jane Fonda’s uncanny facial (and facial only) resemblance to her father makes Barbarella even stranger than it already would have been, missing only cameo appearances from Adam West and Burt Ward to make this slightly erotic and completely fantastic space oddity a celebratory tour-de-force (as they say) of Euro-American genre-bending deconstructive ingenuity.

A Sentence on You Only Live Twice

How diverse, Mr. Bond

Arguably the “best” of the Bond movies, You Only Live Twice is remarkably bad by normal film standards—which frown upon flawed shot-reverse shot sequences; ragingly out of control plot elements; and a hero who slouches, squints, and mats down his hair in order to look more Japanese—and yet its charm, wonderfully ridiculous scope (never outdone in Bond lore), and perfect villain (inspiration for the bad guy in Inspector Gadget?) somehow work together to make this cheesefest lovable.

Broad tastes. As it were.

And Then There Were None & Ten Little Indians

Island setting: "And Then There Were None"

Alpine setting: "Ten Little Indians"

In 1945 Rene Clair directed And Then There Were None, and in 1965 (a perfect twenty years) George Pollock directed Ten Little Indians. Ironically, the earlier title is the more politically correct, and Clair’s excellent abilities overall outdo Pollock’s freedom to insert sexier elements in the decidedly 60s later film. Two very similar yet very different films, both adapted from the same source material (Agatha Christie’s own stage adaptation of her mystery novel), certain moments are shot-for-shot the same, while the mood of the later film differs in kind from its predecessor. Clair’s soundtrack features dramatic orchestral music that heightens the suspense and intensity (suspensity?), and its relatively slow pace draws out the serial murders in a careful and rhythmic fashion. Pollock’s soundtrack is jazzy, and the style of the film reflects a freewheeling, carefree attitude. The murders are anything but rhythmic, rather happening at the whim of the director/murderer (yes, the identification here is strong). Somehow, though, Ten Little Indians, which is only seven minutes shorter, feels only half as long as And Then There Were None, not that that film seems “long” in any negative sense.

Across (ATTWN)

Up (TLI)

These films aim for different auras, each faithful in their own way to Christie’s thrilling drama and morbid humor. Apparently Ten Little Indians originally featured a one-minute “Whodunit Break” just before the film’s end to allow the audience to guess the perpetrating mastermind. Though this break is only included as a special feature on the DVD, it gives a big clue as to the intention behind this film; nay, to the murder mystery genre itself. It was both inevitable and ingenious that the board game “Clue” should eventually be turned into a film. The game has such a cinematic element to it, just as the films are games for the audience. This reveals the pulpy nature of these books and films, usually serial in nature: they are above all concerned with audience reaction rather than any kind of meaning. A master like Hitchcock could dodge this status in his films due to his deeply Freudian mindset, but Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming (quite different though their creations may be) were in the business of gaining followers and they wrote stories geared toward those followers. Learning Fleming’s world makes anything James Bond does believable, and learning Christie’s gives the reader/viewer a chance to make sense of the mystery before it’s solved.

We few...

...we temporarily happy few

Poisoned prince...

...poisoned popstar

A game of the mind...

...and the mindless

Wanna form an alliance?

Allied and alligned

The 40s...

...and the 60s

Hedunit?

Time for a break