Quickies, Vol. XXXI

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

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

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

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

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

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

The New World: Descending Light, Transcending Boundaries

Stuck On You: Dumb and Dumber, Take 2

Anxious masculinities

 

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

All rhythm, no blues

 

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

Meaningless diversion

 

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

Split intimacy

 

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

The threatening heterosexual male

Pretending?

As gay as dance music

Hand check

Hanging on

Contagious homoeroticism

Longing

It's raining men

Livin' the dream

Phallic salute

 

Wall-E: Re-viewed

In the beginning man destroyed the heavens and the earth.

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

Where's the Other?

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

Not good for the "man" to be alone

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

Tree of Life

Eve or Evil?

The heavens declare

Evil lefty, or, sinister technology

Leading the dance

Tough broad

Ark landing on Ararat

Covenant renewal

Evolutionary creationism

A new order

My Big Fat Greek Wedding: Xenophobes & Xenophiles

WindeXeno

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

"Excluded" comes from the Greek word...

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

Isolated

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

The woman is the neck

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

Enlightened luncheon

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

As she sees herself

How she sees him

On top

Hands-on baptism

Familial desire

White people are boring

Horrified at a feminine monstrosity

Lambs in the kitchen, tigers in the bedroom

Snow beast

Xenophilia

"Happily" ever after?

Quickies, Vol. XXIX: Fantasies

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977) – At this point, Spielberg hadn’t quite mastered his balance between grand scope and human interest; it’s overly big with not enough emphasis on the small. It’s good and well to offer a regular joe as your main protagonist, but don’t dwarf him too much. E.T., Indiana Jones, etc. do a better job with this. Still, lots of nice images of children, with the juvenile elements of humanity most likely to connect with the extra-terrestrial.

Ghostbusters 2 (dir. Ivan Reitman, 1985) – An old, guilty pleasure. Not as classic as the original, but still with its moments. It’s all Murray’s show as far as comedy goes, and all Aykroyd’s show as far as the occult stuff goes. There’s a lot of postcolonialism going on here, a la The Exorcist. All that is paranormal and weird seems to originate in the third world, reflecting all of our “Western” anxieties about the other/Other/mother. Whereas in the first film we have a symbol of Western capitalism terrorizing Manhattan – in a fundamental departure from the Godzilla rampage in Tokyo – this one flips to the “other” side: what we have most to fear is no longer ourselves, positioned here as we are halfway through the Reagan era, but the other, more netherworldy hemispheres.

Everything You’ve Always Wanted To Know About Sex…But Were Afraid To Ask (dir. Woody Allen, 1971) – Didn’t finish this one…didn’t make it halfway through, to be truthful. The idea of a series of vignettes about sex is worthwhile enough, and one would think that if anyone had something interesting and humorous to say about the subject, it would be Woody. It suffers from lengthy periods of either complete silence (intended as humorous awkwardness) or painful attempts at jokes. So many setups, so few coherent witticisms.

Femme Fatale (dir. Brian De Palma, 200?) – A pleasant surprise from the very techie, very senses-minded De Palma. He likes his cinema, too, as Blow-Out and this one clearly demonstrate. He’s playing with cinema’s tools, almost theorizing with them, and it comes off as exploratory and experimental rather than flashy and pretentious. By using such a classical form and narrative (noir) and toying with it and injecting it with modern thriller tropes, he whips up an interesting and bold mash-up that is, in its way, a very cool novelty. (Each of these films was screened via Netflix Instant, so screenshots suffer.)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Images of Anxiety, or, Paranoia Pics

Ice Spiders: Ineffable, Sublime

"And I was like, 'Whooooaa!'"

Received two films this Christmas. One was a Criterion Collection Blu-ray: The Darjeeling Limited. The other was a DVD that has not yet received the Criterion Blu-ray treatment: Ice Spiders. It was already known that the former would be worthwhile. And based on the price of the latter and the impressive tagline on its cover (“Hell has just frozen over”), it was clear that it would be just as impressive, albeit in a different respect. In what is destined to become a classic of the sub-genre of arachnid-horror-films-set-in-the-mountains-of-Utah, Ice Spiders is noteworthy for its almost Godard-esque disregard for cinematic subtlety. The hackneyed, (not-so-)special effects are contextualized in a premise that somehow balances out the film’s overall tone of mediocrity: a top-secret government outpost for biological experimentation on spiders gets out of hand when said spiders grow to huge sizes and escape. The initial idea to situate the lab in very cold environs because of the spiders’ inability to survive in the cold ultimately backfires when (spoiler alert) they adapt. Oh yes, and this sinister alpine laboratory also doubles as a popular ski lodge in the great Mormon state. It only makes sense to couple something highly dangerous with clean family fun.

Evil (glasses)

So, being sutured to a bunch of would-be dude-awesome Olympian skiers heading up to the lodge to do some hardcore-bro training, the viewer is as surprised as they are (insofar as the actors convince the viewers that they’re surprised) to discover that a military-associated and government-funded “professor” cares much more about taking the escaped giant spiders alive than he does about saving lives in the short-term. (Side note: just love how many films out there feature the head of a science team who’s known as “the professor” in an utterly non-pedagogical context. In this case, there’s certainly no classroom anywhere near this mountain lab, but anyway…) As for this “professor,” you just know that with glasses like those, he has to be a bad guy from the first moment. It turns out, to everyone’s surprise, that in order to ensure the victory of the humans over the spiders, a previously washed-up skier (whose career was ruined not by a broken leg, mind you, but a shattered one) will need to out-ski a bunch of spiders down the slopes. This is the obligatory penultimate scene that wants so badly to be the end of the original Star Wars: Luke & company outmaneuvering the bad guys and exploding the Death Star (read: giant mama spider).

Dumber

The chemistry between the characters is unsurpassed…extraordinary…amazing…profoundly mesmerizing. On a noetic level, each of them has just the right knowledge on a given subject (be it skiing, spiders, weather, or survival skills) to get them through each harrowing episode of the film. We get to see the consequences of ignorance from the film’s opening scene. There, a couple of rough ‘n tough hunters do the stupid: try to outrun a big spider after unloading a few hunter’s arrows on it. That only gets it angrier. As a result, Dumb and Dumber end up wearing body-length, home-spun stockings as the spider sips their life-juice like a fat kid with a Kool-Aid juicebox. While we could continue with these pensées, it seems better to halt and acknowledge the ineffability that such films as Ice Spiders produces. Are we tiptoeing the line between the immanent and the transcendent? Are we in a realm of the truly “other”? Is this the sort of film that “really makes you think,” or is it the kind of film that stops thinking dead in its tracks? Whatever one’s unique response to this artifact, it remains indubitable that Ice Spiders bleeds, as it were, a surplus of remarkable and possibly unprecedented material to the engaged viewer. Consider yourselves invited.

Clashing colors

Spiders wear shades when it's sunny.

All washed up...OR IS HE???

Silly string

We paid for the guys with muscles, we're gonna SHOW the guys with muscles.

On top of spagheeeeettiiiii...

Token gets eaten

The chase is on

We won, bro!

Epilogue: evil doc gets it in the face

We did it, though, didn't we?

Splice: The Monstrous-Feminine-Other-Uncanny-Liminal-Abject

Formula-fed

Splice exposes contemporary humanity’s deep-seated fears about the prospects of genetic engineering and ultimately attempts to ridicule them. It’s an exercise in campy horror in one sense, containing scene after scene of silly characters doing impossible (for now?) things resulting in overblown consequences with those characters reacting to events in some of the dumbest ways imaginable. While all of this could be interpreted in a variety of ways, foremost among them a simple excuse to make a bloody creature movie, it rather coherently ends up mocking its own premise and any who would begin to believe it possible.

Water breaking

Notwithstanding the foregoing, Splice is as valid an artifact of the monstrous feminine, the O/other, the uncanny, the liminal, and the abject as probably anything David Cronenberg or even David Lynch has directed. This is like Cronenberg’s The Brood meets Lynch’s Eraserhead meets (some other guy’s film) Species. Regardless of the level of cinematic competence of the crew behind the camera, the film’s content speaks enough for itself to earn a position among films like those. If Cronenberg’s characters are often not to be taken seriously, why would anyone think that Adrien Brody and company in this film should be? Plus, Splice has Guillermo del Toro in the credits as executive producer. By this point, we all know how much del Toro both has a sense a humor and enjoys poking at flesh wounds.

Puttin' on the ritz

The husband-and-wife scientist team who splice DNA from various animal breeds with one another, creating freakish (and hilariously phallus-shaped) freaks, pretty quickly start displaying serious problems of their own. The fact that their names are “Clive” and “Elsa” (actor names from the original Frankenstein film) attests to their morally dubious nature. Clive starts displaying pretty classic signs of male impotence not far into the film. This is impotence not of a sexual nature but a social one. He caves to Elsa’s every demand and nags her like the stereotypical wife. Elsa is also a living stereotype, but of a maternal sort. She turns down Clive’s initial suggestion that they have a child together. (They have an interesting exchange at this point. Elsa harasses him, “Why don’t you have a baby?” “What,” he says playfully,” and ruin this perfect figure?” Already at this early point Clive shows a strongly feminine side.)

Cockfight

Despite her objections to having a child, Elsa ends up using her own DNA to create a hybrid animal-human embryo. No sooner does the creature emerge from its post-delivery womb-sack when Elsa begins treating it/her like a human baby. At this point, the creation looks almost nothing like a human, but Elsa swaddles it. Since the creature ages very quickly (conveniently for cinematic purposes) we see Elsa only a few cuts later dressing the creature up in a stereotypical dress. It’s light blue in color and somewhat reminiscent of Dorothy’s dress in The Wizard of Oz. While this could be ultra-analyzed, it seems centrally indicative of Elsa’s desire to raise this offspring in a relatively traditional environment that submits to gender norms. Later in the film, Elsa shows “Dren” how to apply makeup: mascara, blush, and lipstick. Dren’s freakish appearance, barely shrouded behind a dress or makeup, only serves to render her more alien and bizarre.

Image-baring (sic)

Dren’s status as neither human nor animal, but both, may have more to do with hybridity than liminality. She is not so much excluded from both species as she is a combination of each. This places her in a socially liminal space, however, excluded from the animal and from the human. The film only begins to explore these ramifications, however, preferring to illustrate the uneasy territory of the initial idea of inter-species genetic modification. Further still, Splice hopes to reveal the irrational fears behind genetic hysteria and paranoia. By couching something so real-world in the context of a creature horror film, the narrative reveals how absurd is the notion that something so bad could actually occur. Such fears are identified with the equally absurd characters Elsa and Clive within the film. Though it isn’t explored, it’s acknowledged that Elsa had a very strange and unhealthy childhood. How fitting, then, that she insists on bringing Dren to the dilapidated, vacant home out in the woods where she grew up. Clive’s issues have been mentioned, but it’s also worth pointing out how unscientific he is, for being a supposed scientist. He carries himself more like a college student in an alt-rock band, wearing trendy t-shirts under his lab coat and listening to hard rock music.

How embarrassing

All of this combined seems to be Splice‘s way of saying, “Quit worrying about genetics. It’s not like there are incompetent imbeciles in the laboratories creating monsters.” Such a dismissively didactic approach to a major contemporary issue is disturbing. Film’s confronting the potential dangers of, for example, technology have generally taken the subject seriously (as least the good ones), and very often their worries were retrospectively validated. (Consider films like Modern Times, Alphaville, Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Children of Men.) Splice takes genetics as seriously as Dr. Strangelove took the bomb. The two films differ in an important way, however. Whereas the bomb, i.e. the threat of nuclear annihilation, existed outside any remote realm of individual control, genetics has been brought to the level of the voter. Dr. Strangelove was not intended as, and could not have functioned as, a propaganda piece. Splice is something closer to that, taking an issue with enormous ramifications and potential repercussions to human beings on both side of an increasingly blurry fence, and turning it into a joke. In so doing, it argues that those on one side of the fence can’t be taken very seriously.

Opening creature shot

The horror beneath it all

Pollyanna?

Teen angst

Mirror phase

Failed castration

Post-puberty

Revenge of the (S)Dren

Fruit of the Loons

Wait, what??

Quickies, Vol. XXVIII

Topper (dir. Norman Z. MacLeod, 1937) – As with all of these, it was awhile ago, invoking the question, why bother? That’s fair. To answer, probably just as a record, in order to lessen the already-high odds of forgetting about them completely. So, this is just a silly little something that was hugely popular back in the day. It is both refreshing and disturbing to see characters in the 30s treating the issue of death with such levity, actually. In the years soon to follow (WWII and aftermath), this would change. This is in the vein of Arsenic and Old Lace, but not quite as well written. Produced by Hal Roach, you can see his Little Rascals fingerprints all over it.

Lady Chatterley (dir. Pascale Ferran, 2007) – Oh, dear. You can call it a literary adaptation of a great novelist, or something much closer to sex-kitsch. The most fascinating thing about this one is getting to see a reverent and painstaking adaptation of a book that probably didn’t deserve the praise it received, D.H. Lawrence’s novel of the same (or a similar) name. As far as cinematics go, this is adeptly done. As far as the content goes, it feels like a Dead Poet’s Society-type embrace of Romanticism even in the face of its glaring pitfalls. It’s fitting that this is in French, filmed by a French guy, despite taking place in England.

You Can’t Take It With You (dir. Frank Capra, 1938) – Dear, dear Frank Capra. This is, in practically every way, the pre-WWII part-one to It’s A Wonderful Life. The “problems” they encounter here are utterly trivial (other than token allusions to the Depression), and the comedy is textbook screwball. Great to have Jean Arthur and Jimmy Stewart share the screen – is it possible that she and Jimmy click better than she and Cary? Provocative. Lionel Barrymore is the polar opposite of his Mr. Potter in the later film. This may also be a kind of precursor to the family comedies that made My Big Fat Greek Wedding such a formulaic success.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 – Pod People (1983/1991)- Excepting the incomparable Mitchell with Joe Don Baker (and with Hobgoblins close behind), this is the best MST3K episode. We’re watching an ultra-cheap ripoff of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. fused with a seventies teen flick. They combine to form ideal material for riffing: just enough structure and bad special effects to keep it interesting, and more than enough filmic incompetence that it deserves all that it has coming to it.

Apollo 13 (dir. Ron Howard, 1995) – Golden material for someone like Ron Howard, that great cinematic manipulator of emotions. It’s tailored to those who remember the historic event, and intended to function precisely as the historic event to those of us unborn at the time. As if Howard thought, this was such a big deal that we should relive it up-close, and recreate it for our children. Archival news footage is spliced into the film with reckless abandon, as the film insists that its content is real despite its form being quite unreal.

The Dreamers: 3-Way Cinephilia

Les cousins dangereux

Previous advisor had this one on the syllabus of an undergrad film theory course, and for good reason (although many of us would never put it on any syllabus). It doesn’t take a critic or a scholar to see that Bertolucci’s obsessions with politics, sex, and cinema all collide here. This film is worthy of consideration from numerous vantage points. A study of its spaces would be worthwhile, for example. The apartment functions in a new way from that of the apartment in Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. Here, it’s loaded with Freudian imagery and phenomenological implications. This apartment is a nest, as Gaston Bachelard would probably have it. It’s a safe haven for idealists who pretend to be political while being ignorant of real politics. They are on a backwards journey, returning to a womb-like state at the phase in life when they should be growing up. The two French siblings, Theo and Isabelle, are twins, so their need to be together in a shared fetal state makes some sense. Only an outsider like Matthew could offer an alternate point of view and insist that they need to “grow.” Isabelle’s fractured psyche, split into multiple selves, comes out most overtly when we see her for the first time in her bedroom. She first appears as Venus di Milo, presenting herself as a sex object with no arms (i.e., no agency). This hearkens back to a subtle early scene in which her father displays frank affection to Isabelle with his hands. Once Isabelle approaches Matthew in her bedroom, she is captured by three mirrors, illustrating her different selves precisely at the moment when one Isabelle (the carefree hedonist) is interrupted by another (the little child incapable of maturing), as she hears music from the room next door where she knows her brother is being intimate with another woman.

Fake chains; poser

It’s also a study in France during the late, politically revolutionary days of the 60s. Unlike other, more mythological 60s films, The Dreamers doesn’t take a simple, nostalgic route. Something tragic is present from the beginning, largely due to the obvious idealism of the young characters and the background political dissension. The characters love cinema, so the film uses cinematic tricks to connect those issues in the 60s with the film before us. The twins’ failure to recognize their own political idealism (read: ineptitude) is part of the film’s tragedy, and Matthew’s failure to recognize his unique brand of American idealism is another part. Bertolucci examines modern film theory with a reverse lens. Rather than a study of spectators in a theater imbued with life experiences and sometimes mistakenly seeing reality in the screen, these youths see the screen everywhere in the real world. They talk and move as if they are in films, and Bertolucci intercuts the film with other, older films. They inhabit a fantasy world inside an apartment and escaping mostly just to visit the cinematheque. They get just as riled up over whether Keaton or Chaplin is greater as they do regarding the Vietnam War. It’s not that they don’t care about the war to some extent, it’s that they care about movies just as much.

Darkroom, or, the id-side

Then there’s the poetry vs. politics element. Theo and Isabelle decry their father’s political ambivalence on account of his status as a poet. He prefers to write what he writes and let his poems do the rest of the work. His children, on the other hand, love filmmakers like Godard who infuses all of his films with political ideals (incidentally, political ideals of the sort that did not ultimately cling to the cultural fabric in a lasting way). The film seems to present the youngsters as something like naive hypocrites discovering their own way in life and failing; it is called The Dreamers, after all. Their existence is an affluent one in an apartment removed from the political goings-on of the real world. Their own misguided voyage of self-discovery brings them into a little tent, a fascinating picture of three adolescents desperately trying to rebuild a womb to reenter. Once they’re back in, who else discovers them but their parents, confused and saddened. Once Isabelle realizes they were caught, she attempts a murder-suicide, one of the more dramatic attempts at creating an identity and legacy that history has known. Even a gesture such as this, however, fails. A part of the political demonstration outside the apartment literally invades their intimate and doomed space via a broken window. They wake up and Isabelle quickly covers up her attempt to kill herself, her brother, and Matthew. Now that the political realm is right outside their window, Theo and Isabelle take up arms in the futile cause. Matthew is at least consistent enough to know he shouldn’t take part in a violent demonstration. The twins, however torn from the womb they are, participate in an outside cause based on convenience and ease. Their attachment to each other becomes a mobile womb, since the womb in the apartment has been compromised, violated. Matthew’s previous inclusion is perhaps to blame, so when they’re given the chance to part ways with him, they seize it.

Art or politics

The originals...

...the copycats

...and Freaks.

Injecting cinema into life

 

Culinary idealism

Cracked & broken

Screen goes fuzzy

Politics stuck in the background

Repression depression

Death in the womb

Rebirth?

Quickies, Vol. XXVI

The Red Shoes (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948) – This was awhile ago, but it begs mentioning. A beautiful, nearly sublime film that only early Technicolor could produce. Films about art that still maintain a concern for the inner political machinations and ramifications of art demand attention. They don’t pretend to transcend, and in so doing they wind up utterly transcendent. The portrayal of theater nearly suggests that theater existed for centuries – millennia – simply to preface what it would look like cinematically. Put them both together and they give birth to something that neither on its own could approach.

Breathless (dir. Jim McBride, 1983) – Although it’s been just long enough to warrant a revisit to Godard’s “original” (something about calling Godard “original” is always slightly ironic), took in the American remake instead. Expectations were low, so when this one offered some really remarkable bits, pieces, and overall product, apologies were in order. This belongs with the “best” of the L.A. films. Los Angeles dominates everything about it and is used adeptly as a catalyst that drives the narrative. Also, cinema. They make love behind the giant screen, with Gun Crazy‘s own love scene in the background. They aren’t cinephiles, exactly, but this is meta. At one point she stands identified with a contemporary Venus de Milo mural. It, like the film, is a scribbling over something classic and established. This is permissible, since that’s all Godard was doing in the first place. The films plays with the gaze, attempting to offer a more balanced take on the typical assumed male spectator. Richard Gere is objectified sexually, although so is Valerie Kaprisky. Still, shots of her are complex, offering subjective access rather than just candy for the male viewer’s enjoyment.

Blow Out (dir. Brian DePalma, 1981) – Like the above Breathless, here’s another free-standing gem that rips heavily but shamelessly off European art house cinema from the sixties. Blow-Up was Antonioni’s look at surveillance and all its implications regarding reality, or the lack thereof. DePalma’s version works off of Antonioni’s, along with Coppola’s The Conversation, but with a more realist narrative conclusion. It may not be feel-good, but it’s geared more toward audience expectations and pleasure. That’s to say, Travolta doesn’t disappear on a green in the last shot as Hemmings does in Blow-Up, and he doesn’t return to a primal, womb-like stage like Hackman does in the last shot of The Conversation.

Revolver (dir. Guy Ritchie, 2005) – This was marketed as Ritchie’s return to form, following his dabbling in the remake business and featuring his wife Madonna as the main star (Swept Away). In Revolver, he’s trying to have his cake and eat it too. Going for maximum entertainment value, the film also wallows in its refusal to give any clear-cut answers. Reminds one of the description of Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development: “She gets off on being withholding.” Once the film wraps up, Ritchie enlists various psychologists and university profs to explain the mental phenomenon underlying the film’s narrative uncertainty during the closing credits. Whatever. Using this sort of thing as an instrument to a greater end is one thing, but it comes off as highly pretentious. Hitchcock had a way of giving the audience enough to work with while maintaining suspense, but films like Revolver put off the distinct vibe of being better than their audience. Ritchie confirms this in an interview, acknowledging that they cut out a lot of material that would have shed more light on the nature of the plot.

The Great Dictator (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1940) – Embarrassed not to have seen it earlier, but at least it’s now happened. Quite a fascinating Prince and the Pauper story set in WWII, mostly because of Chaplin’s suggestion of Hitler’s humanity. Of course, he later said he wouldn’t have made the film if he’d known about the nature of the Holocaust. The most interesting scene has to be when Hinkel plays with the balloon-globe privately in his nest of an office. There’s something wickedly beautiful, almost transcendent, about the image. Chaplin is a self-described fool, so when he portrays a Hitler-esque dictator, he comes across as a naughty child who is so self-obsessed (as children tend to be) as not to consider the realities going on based on his ruthless orders.

Morning Glory (dir. Roger Michell, 2010) – Wow, just awful. This one sticks to the formula like it’s got nothing else to offer, which it doesn’t. Harrison Ford seems just as scotch-drunk here as he did on Conan a couple weeks ago. Rachel McAdams’ character, to which the viewer is sutured, is a workaholic whose outlook on life is completely superficial, and that is applauded at least or assumed normal at best. The obligatory unemployed montage is an insensitive insertion in an era of massive unemployment. It’s another movie that tells us: you can be the very best, if you only work hard enough, and once you get to the top, you realize how only then can you take a breather and enjoy life a little.