Estômago: A Gastronomic Story (2008)

I was able to see some recent Brazilian movies at the fourth annual Brazilian Film Week sponsored by the Embassy of Brazil here in DC. Of the movies I was able to see, Estômago (A Gastronomic Story) was certainly the most skillful and provocative.

Estômago, the second film by director Marcos Jorge, is less a film about food than about power struggles, with food more often serving a tactical role and indeed sometimes taking on the strength and position of powerful weaponry. Nonato, the weak and fawning cook at the center of the story, has a natural and overwhelming talent for combining ingredients and a genuine fascination for how food can be used and modified, but his appreciation for the culinary arts never acquires the transcendent zeal depicted in, say, Ratatouille. Though there are two other, more experienced chefs in the film who guide Nonato on his path, neither of them display any virtuoso feats of kitchen wizardry nor any reverent belief in the transformative power of culinary art for culinary art's sake. Mr. Zulmira (Zeca Cenovicz), the owner of the greasy spoon where Nonato first learns to cook, sticks to the same tried and true recipes--unhealthy deep fried classics that will guarantee a steady stream of clients ready to offer up their grubby dollars. Zulmira, who has no skill of his own in the kitchen, uses his restaurant merely as a lifeboat on which to sail through the murky waters of reality. A cynical and controlling man, he teaches Nonato the rule of sink or swim.

He also doesn't pay the poor, young man any wages other than room and board, so when Nonato is offered a chance to work in the kitchen of Mr. Giovanni (Carlo Briani) and receive an actual paycheck, Nonato eagerly moves up. Mr. Giovanni runs Boccaccio, a fancy and expensive restaurant that serves "international cuisine" in a "friendly atmosphere." Giovanni is vastly more talented than Zulmira, but he is hardly a maestro. The most poetry he uses when teaching his art to Nonato is a smattering of trite metaphors comparing meat to women's behinds, but he most often compares food to money. Explaining that a simple switch to sophisticated gorgonzola cheese allows him to charge eight dollars for a traditional dessert that would usually be worth less than one, Giovanni exclaims, "That's art!" An artist spends a few dollars on paints and canvas and sells a painting for a million dollars. To Giovanni, much like Zulmira, this moneymaking motive is the central force behind all creation. We live to survive, and a true artist is able to survive more well off than others.

This conceit reaches its most literal level when Nonato lands in an overcrowded prison cell, where a violent and rigid hierarchy determines everything from when and how much one eats to where one sleeps. When Bujiú (Babu Santana), the psychopathic autocrat who occupies the top bunk and calls all the shots, learns that Nonato can transform their worm-infested prison rations into something not only edible but delicious, Nonato shrewdly uses his modest abilities to climb up the ranks of respect and power. Estômago wisely makes Nonato's ascent teetering and unsteady rather than straightforward, for not all tastes are equal and our stomachs often fall prey to prejudice. When Nonato tries too hard to impress the simpleminded Bujiú--by, say, bringing stinky, moldy, but delicious gorgonzola into the cell--his sophisticated pretentious results in fiery backlash. Food can be as political and controversial as religion.

The story of Nonato's prison sentence is overlapped with the story of his restaurant career, and editing by Luca Alverdi makes the two flow seamlessly, building upon each other and drawing out comparisons between the filthy rat race of life and the pecking order of prison. Whether locked in Zulmira's back room with the boss screaming through the ceiling, working in Giovanni's exquisite basement kitchen as Giovanni slaps the ass of Nonato's prostitute girlfriend, or sleeping on the floor of an ant-infested prison cell, Nonato's surroundings and his delicate position within them are always remarkably similar. Nonato finds solace in the company of Íria (Fabiula Nascimento), the headstrong and likable call girl with an eating obsession who becomes Nonato's girlfriend, but even their relationship is mired in power struggle. Nonato feeds Íria's insatiable belly--the quickest way to her heart-- with his sumptuous cooking, and she in turn feeds his unquenchable jealousy with her scandalous career.

The two stories come to an intriguing head at the same time, simultaneously revealing how Nonato landed in prison and how he eventually gained and asserted his power, but perhaps the film's four writers (Cláudia da Natividade, Fabrizio Donvito, Marcos Jorge, and Lusa Silvestre) are to blame for the ultimately unsatisfying conclusion. Nonato acts and gains power moments before the end credits role, so we never actually see him in a position of power. How would he rule? Would the people beneath him suffer just as much as he has always suffered beneath others? Our general impression of Nonato throughout the film is a positive one, yet his final acts in the climax are shocking and demented and his attitude toward them is sinister. The plot of Estômago is structured well, and yet the denouement leaves too many important questions unanswered, as though the two hour film should continue for another hour. It is disappointing and unappetizing to leave the theater feeling as though two hours have been spent getting to know the mere revenge tale of a shrewd and calculating sociopath.

Nevertheless, the acting of the entire cast is top notch, particularly that of João Miguel as the pathetic but endearing Nonato and Nascimento as his rotund femme fatale, who frequently verges on becoming a stereotype yet always saves herself with just the right flash of her eyes. Jorge's direction hits all the right beats at just the right moments, and the cinematography by Toca Seabra--with its to-be-expected closeups of cutting boards and skillets--is surprisingly fresh and scintillating. His approach manages to make even a concoction of fried ants look delightful.

Though ultimately Estômago suffers from a slight dearth of meaning and heart, its execution is engaging and masterful. Marcos Jorge is a new director to pay attention to.

Estômago (2008)
d: Marcos Jorge w: Cláudia da Natividade, Fabrizio Donvito, Marcos Jorge, Lusa Silvestre
(João Miguel, Fabiula Nascimiento)
8/10

Movie Review: I Stand Alone (1998)

Seul contre tous (I Stand Alone) is a little too big for its britches, a baroque, explosive film heavier on style than substance, though purporting to contain much substance. The style likewise never cast a spell on the viewers, due to the continual jarring of the audience by over-the-top film techniques. Gaspar Noé's first feature film prides itself on its truthfulness and extremity, but it fails to impress much of either on its helpless spectators, leaving instead a distasteful aroma of cynicism.

The film is told almost entirely through voice overs by Philippe Nahon, an unsmiling, hardened older man who plays the film's unnamed main character, the Butcher. His entire life history is rattled off in an opening monologue accompanied by vintage photographs, a life history replete with abandonment, concentration camps, orphanages, fondlings by priests, adulterous lover, retarded children, nagging incestuous thoughts, wrongful indictment, prison time, bankruptcy, manipulation, and unemployment. The Butcher has lived one hell of a horrible life, but on January 3, 1980, he resolves to begin anew. Having moved with his pregnant wife from Paris to northern France, he looks forward to opening his own butcher shop and starting from scratch.

Within moments, however, this dream dissolves. The Butcher's vindictive wife (Frankie Pain), who controls the family finances, lies about putting down the money to buy a shop for him. Unable to afford the shop himself and unable to find suitable employment within his field, he takes on mind-numbing employment as a nursing home's night watchman. The job teaches him the ugliness of old age, the pointlessness of working, and the utter meaninglessness of life and death. He hates his job, he hates his wife, he hates his child in her womb, he hates his mother-in-law whom he lives with (Martine Audrain)--soon his hatred encompasses everything, and we learn about all of it through the vitriol that his internal monologue spouts.

I Stand Alone is a film about bitterness and how it spreads through the body and mind like an all-consuming poison. Bitterness has a way of taking hold of the thoughts and preventing any positive change in direction. How can the Butcher's luck improve when he constantly thinks about the horrible things he has witnessed and the horrible things that he wants to do in response? Unjust things have certainly happened to the Butcher throughout his life--he was thrust into poverty, the Nazis killed his father, a priest molested him, his wife cheated on him--but his inability to forgive or to forget ensures that he will never overcome the bad luck that dogs him. Negativity breeds negativity.

Rather than trudge forward hopefully--a path that seems idiotic and blind at first but that would yield infinite results in the end--the Butcher seeks to blame others for the failures of his life. And since in many cases he cannot directly retaliate against the real perpetrators (the Nazis are gone after all, and his wife is dead, and who can really be blamed for societal poverty or for children being born handicapped?), he instead directs his rage against easier targets: women, ethnic minorities, homosexuals, people with jobs, Germans, his unborn child, himself. He attacks his wife, beating her pregnant belly. He lashes out at strangers, calling them fags. He concocts elaborate, violent revenge fantasies. With nothing to hold onto and the conviction that life is nothing more than a cruel, selfish joke that goes on too long, he decides to end his life in a blaze of destruction.

He does have one small source of love that he still clings to, however. His daughter, a frowning, mute teenager with a mental handicap, is the only goodness he can still see in the world, and not wanting to leave her to fend for herself amongst the wild animals in the ferocious jungle, he decides that he will kill her out of mercy before slaughtering a sacrificial victim to represent all of his frustrations and then taking his own life. His love for her is not without its impurities, though. Obsessed with corruption and sin, he cannot shake the idea that he wants to have sex with his daughter. Would that matter in a meaningless world? Would it even be worth it, or would it ultimately be as joyless as everything else? Why would he really want to destroy the one pure love he possesses on earth by corrupting it in such a way?

The Butcher imagines the horror of shooting his beloved daughter. He imagines the difficulty of embracing his own violent death. And then, after an hour and a half of hateful sneering, accusations, violence, and drinking, he dissolves into tears, embracing his daughter and confessing that he loves her while "Pachelbel's Canon" plays. This moment of loving selflessness and complete surrender within a film mired down by ugliness and cruelty is deeply affecting, but even this final moment is evanescent, as the Butcher's thoughts return once more to rape and revenge.

I Stand Alone is a disquieting film, not just because it depicts murder and the beating of a pregnant woman but more so because it exists entirely within the mind of a pathologically angry man. The Butcher's diatribes are constant, and for the most part they are not nearly as insightful or interesting as the Butcher thinks they are. I know that's probably intentional on Gaspar Noé's part, but that doesn't keep the excessive cynicism from being obnoxious. Even more jarring about the film are the constant directorial intrusions--abrupt, deafening gunshots that accompany almost every rapid camera movement, title cards that emphasize abstract concepts like "morality" and "justice," extreme close-ups, and even a countdown warning that the viewers should leave the theater prior to the violent climax. These "anything goes" stylistic flairs might be fun in a more entertaining, upbeat film, but the bleak nature of I Stand Alone demands more serious handling. I Stand Alone has its moments and is certainly not a stupid film, but it falls far short of its successor, Irreversible.

I Stand Alone (1998)
d/w: Gaspar Noé
(Philippe Nahon, Blandine Lenoir)
6/10

Movie Review: Julia (2009)

When we first see Julia Harris (Tilda Swinton), she's at the top of her game: uncountable drinks in, her bra-covered breast exposed, dancing on toddler's legs at a loud, dark party. She's happy as can be, her arms flying in the air, her eyes gelatinous, her hair and makeup overdone. Somebody asks her what she does for a living and she responds with an unnervingly dismissive cackle, sputtering her lips and fanning her hands out in front of her. "A little bit of this, a little bit of that," she offers enigmatically in a way that is perhaps intended to imply that she invented heart transplant surgery and is modest about it but that actually suggests that she's a hooker and discrete or else unemployed and embarrassed. Her response is an obnoxious bit of vague casualness intended to push the focus off of herself and onto more important matters--namely, partying.

She tries to seduce a married man--a skinny, bald lech who is somebody's boss, though presumably not her own--and she succeeds. A vertiginous camera angle shows her passed out the next morning, a sourpuss frown stretched across her dry, smacking lips. After shoving him away, she stumbles to her own car and drives home, likely still drunk. What we have seen is a chaotic, shameful mess of a night, but we sense that if her soused mind were able and willing to record memories of the event, she would likely consider it a success. And with this wild night as our introduction, we enter the unpredictable, topsy turvy world of Julia, the first American film by French-born director Erick Zonca.

What follows is what can only be described a bender of a film. Zonca's lens is a subjective one; like so many other schmaltzy melodramas, Zonca does not attempt to observe an addict under a microscope, framing the subject with coldness and judgmental distance. Zonca instead involves us in the drunken perception and the alcoholic delusion, and he does so without resorting to cheesy cinematic tricks like unfocused slow motion and droning noises. Abrupt cuts give way to unexpected scene changes like an alcoholic blacking out and then resuming consciousness. Our sense of time disappears as we acclimate to Julia's unique schedule of passing out during daylight, having drinks at sunrise, and getting serious in the middle of the night. Characters we would never trust are revealed to be her closest friends, and decisions we would never make come unthinkingly to her scrambled mind. Morality, safety, responsibility, and appropriateness become alien concepts. This is Julia's world, and we're not here to judge it. We're here to experience it.

When Julia loses her job--whatever it may be--her preachy sponsor (Saul Rubinek) pressures her to resume going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. But snacking on store-bought cookies, drinking black coffee, and confessing about giving birth in a dumpster while unconscious is simply not her scene. She blows off her first meeting as well as the advances of an unhinged, clingy Mexican woman (Kate del Castillo), a nervous bird with wide eyes who reveals herself to be Julia's next door neighbor. When Julia passes out on her front yard after having a vodka tonic at six in the morning, neighbor Elena pulls her into her house for coffee and rest. Before she can regain her senses, however, Julia is asked to involve herself in a convoluted, delusional plan to kidnap Elena's eight-year-old son from his billionaire grandfather for fifty thousand dollars. This is a mere seventeen minutes into the film, and though Elena is clearly insane with nothing to back her far-fetched story except a frantic nod and some newspaper clippings, and though Julia is clearly an undependable, mean, booze-addled stranger who should never be trusted with such a precarious, difficult, and illegal operation, they both decide to make this drastic mistake together.

It's comical. It's absurd. It most certainly can only end in a disaster of massive proportions. Yet their complete inability to realize any of this makes for an involving thriller and also lends an erratic, bizarre film an air of stranger than fiction realism. Because crazy and stupid people do attempt to pull off impossible crimes every single day. Because it has no objective perspective and because its main character lacks both a moral compass and any shred of sensibility or foresight, Julia is a truly unpredictable film. Julia abounds with a rare spontaneity, a sense that anything truly could happen. Julia's survival, the survival of the innocent child she kidnaps, her success in pulling off the heist, and any blossoming of her character arc into sobriety or decency--none of these are guarantees as they are in most films. In a movie where Julia murders, breaks promises, and makes idiotic blunders, the hand of chance plays a significant role. As a result, the thrills are more edge-of-your-seat, the laughs are harder, and the emotional investment is higher.

Tilda Swinton is a joy to watch in one of the most captivating performances of 2009. A train speeding off the tracks, she encompasses all of our gravest shortcomings. Her flaws are embarrassingly transparent, but in her mind she maintains an excess of dignity. Her prospects seem abysmal, but her blind optimism drives her to act, always recklessly but often with results. Julia is not a woman who overthinks things, who worries or doubts. It's a tragic and an admirable trait, in keeping with the ambiguity of her character. We witness her lies, her double crossing, her greed, and her ruthlessness, but we also witness moments of earnestness and clarity that make one wonder if she even realizes that her lies are lies. When the kidnapped boy (Aidan Gould) asks her if she intends to kill him, she is hurt by the question and aghast at the idea, even though she's holding a loaded gun at his face when he asks her. Later, she tells the boy a number of sappy stories about how much he meant to his parents. They are lies--Julia knows nothing about the father and she has contempt for the mother (who she may have even murdered offscreen!)--but why she bothers with the lies is unclear. Is she only trying to keep the boy cool because a calm kidnapped victim is an easy kidnapped victim? Or is she trying to give a lonely, cute child some feeling of affection and importance? When she breaks her promises to him and mistreats him in the most neglectful and irresponsible of ways, she reacts to the consequences with genuine horror and concern. Is she merely upset at the near loss of her investment, or is she really remorseful for her thoughtless actions? When she tickles and caresses the boy in a rare moment of quiet tenderness, is she merely drunk and dazed or has a motherly affection stirred within her? Is she capable of any selfless acts, or is all she does guided by greed, improvised maneuvers to guarantee that she will secure two million dollars for herself?

Julia is a riveting examination of the unlikeliest of redemptions, a searing portrait of a woman who has plunged deeply into the shadowy depths of amorality. Will she sell her last shred of decency for the alluring prospect of two million dollars, or will she risk losing everything in order to prove to herself that she still has some humanity, whatever that might be worth? Erick Zonca succeeds in leaving this important question open until the very last moment of the film.

Julia (2009)
d: Erick Zonca w: Roger Bohbot, Michael Collins
(Tilda Swinton, Aidan Gould, Kate del Castillo)
8/10

Movie Review: Winter's Bone (2010)

Debra Granik's Winter's Bone is in a category of its own. Daniel Woodrell, who wrote the novel from which the film's screenplay is adapted, coined the term "country noir" to describe his genre of crime novels, which take place in isolated regions of the Ozark Mountains in Missouri. But I think Winter's Bone is more suitably seen as a fantasy adventure tale, with the major distinction that the film's landscape is not an imaginary world of vampires and orcish humanoids but a gritty reality unknown to most of us, a rural subculture of meth-addled monsters who live off the radar. Jennifer Lawrence, as the film's heroine Ree Dolly, does not wield a sword or possess telepathic abilities; her superpowers are honesty, determination, and a strong desire to hold onto her humanity as she journeys from a cold, bleak world into a darker, more terrifying underworld and then back to the surface.

Lawrence is convincing as Ree, a seventeen-year-old farm girl who has been forced to care for her younger siblings, nine-year-old Sonny (Isaiah Stone) and five-year-old Ashlee (Ashlee Thompson), after her mother loses her mind and her father Jessup, an infamous methamphetamine manufacturer, disappears. Ree, technically still a child, shows signs of wishing she could be free of the unwanted responsibilities of raising two children (and an incapacitated mother) and running a financially strapped household. But if she ever considers abandoning her life to chase after a better dream, she never shows it. Her commitment to keeping the kids safe, well-fed, and as happy as possible remains strong, even as she passes the point of desperation. When a drug dealing, duplicitous cousin, a small-time criminal ringleader, makes Ree an offer to purchase the boy and "raise him up," she responds with outrage even as she secretly wonders if an immoral life of crime and addiction might be preferable to a freezing death from starvation. Instead of taking easy paths, Ree struggles by with support from her neighbor Sonya (Shelley Waggener), a stern but compassionate mother figure, and her only friend Gail (Lauren Sweetser), a teenage mother and wife. They offer Ree all they can afford, but in a world of far-reaching poverty, that assistance isn't much.

When the local sheriff (Garret Dillahunt), a young man disliked, untrusted, and nearly powerless in an outskirt community that puts more faith in family ties, militias, and the right to bear arms than they do in the local law enforcement, arrives with news that if father Jessup does not show for his court date in one week the house and the land will be taken as forfeited bond, leaving the family homeless, Ree embarks on an epic quest to discover the whereabouts of her derelict father.

This quest takes her to increasingly strange realms as she encounters colorful outlaws with names like Teardrop (John Hawkes), her hardened but helpful rogue uncle, a dilapidated compound of smoking trailers and lean-tos gated by chicken wire and possessing its own primitive surveillance system, the charred ruins of a burned down meth lab, a noisy cattle auction, smoky bars, and a horrifying excursion to uncover the secrets that lie in the middle of nowhere. In the process she is lied to, threatened, beaten, and left in the cold. A few times her life comes dangerously close to ending. She has no weapons and she can hardly fight back, but sincere words, a stony expression, and her determination to care for her siblings keeps her one step above disaster.

I don't know whether to praise Granik, Woodrell, co-screenwriter Anne Rosellini, or maybe even the actors for the dialogue, but what these characters say is fresh, interesting, and always rings true. The film shines with authenticity. I've never been to the grimy world Winter's Bone depicts, but I don't for a moment doubt that it exists precisely as Granik, cinematographer Michael McDonough, and production designer Mark White have presented it. What we see tantalizingly hints at a vast universe of traditions, crimes, rules, and villains. We never see Jessup, but we receive a full, complex portrait of his many roles as a charmer, a talented musician, a disastrous family man, a trusted scientist, and a coward. We barely see Blond Milton (William White), the portly, gray-bearded kingpin of the film's criminal universe, but his brief presence resonates with frightening power.

The actors, some of whom were actual impoverished Missourians, ring true at every turn, with an especially memorable performance from Dale Dickey as Merab, a burned-out matriarch of the clan barely retaining the last shreds of her humanity. Merab abides by the clan's animalistic rules even as her face betrays tiny inklings of compassion. Degradation and filth have pushed her far past the boundaries of normal human thinking and behavior, yet a scene in which she wordlessly puts her coat around a terrified Ree is one of the most touching moments in the film.

Winter's Bone is a unique adventure, a journey into a nightmarish alternate reality. Though bleak, the movie is illuminated by the presence of Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly, a role model who despite innumerable obstacles remains stronger, kinder, and more optimistic than most of us can ever manage. Winter's Bone is a story about never giving up, and so far it is one of the best films to be released this year.

Winter's Bone (2010)
d: Debra Granik w: Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini
(Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Dale Dickey)
8/10

Movie Review: Benny's Video (1992)

Michael Haneke's second feature film is also the second in his so-called "Glaciation Trilogy," a trio of pictures about the emotional coldness and psychological impenetrability of modern society that began with 1989's barren, antarctic Der Siebente Kontinent. (Calling his first three films a "glaciation trilogy" implies that the rest of Haneke's films don't disturbingly delve into much the same themes, which is an obvious misstatement.)

Benny's Video begins with footage shot on a hand-held personal video camcorder. Farmers straddle a disoriented pig, hold a captive bolt pistol to his forehead, and slaughter the squealing, startled animal in close-up. (Those who have seen No Country for Old Men will recognize the extermination device.) The video pauses, rewinds, and replays in slow motion, savoring the zoomed-in final moments of the pig's life. They say animals differ from humans in that they have no foreknowledge of their mortality, that they are simpler and blissfully ignorant because they do not bear the burden of knowing death. But in slow motion, one sees a horrifying realization flooding the pig's eyes as the bolt enters his brain. This look of awful epiphany could just be a spontaneous reaction to the physical stimulus, but in slow motion and in close-up, in repeated viewings, it's easy for us to project our own feelings of doom, meaninglessness, and vanity on the pig's last panicked expression.

In Richard Linklater's meanderingly philosophical comedy Slacker, released one year earlier in 1991, a social experimenter/cultist obsessed with television images recounts a story of having seen--in person--an angry drunk stumble out of a bar and land on his own knife, an event that means almost nothing to him because he saw it in the chaotic, unpredictable, and vast reality and not within the confines of a structured, symbol-driven, propagandistic television screen. He can't rewind to examine the details. He doesn't know the whole plot, what happened before and what followed after, so there's no context. Maybe he was a bad guy and the death was satisfying or funny. Maybe the death was the result of some cruel, fateful twist of dramatic irony. Maybe he didn't even die--the spectator, after all, didn't even get a close-up of the knife entering the body, didn't get to immediately cut with a sound bridge of ambulance sirens to the emergency room. Even the blood, the real blood, didn't look like the blood he was used to seeing in movies, the blood that carried so much meaning and connotation in his mind. The hue was wrong, and he couldn't adjust the hue.

There's no knowing how many times Benny, the fifteen-year-old cameraman who filmed the pig's death, has watched the snuff film. There's no telling what the video may mean to him, if it means anything at all. Benny doesn't talk very much, nor does his family especially value communication. A typical family gathering involves them seated around the home entertainment system, impassively watching the last grisly news footage from the Bosnian war while muttering the occasional bit of half-hearted chatter. Haneke's lens cleverly remains glued to the television screen during these scenes; just as they'd rather watch the tube than each other, so must we.

Benny also doesn't spend much time in thoughtful meditation or quiet introspection. His life has been arranged so that he constantly has several layers of distraction competing for his attention, a thick protective blanket of white noise to shield him from any troublesome thoughts. While doing homework he blasts loud punk music and watches television. Before drifting off to bed he doesn't stare at the ceiling or at the inside of his eyelids, reliving the day and trying to make sense of it; he watches the latest Hollywood action and horror films, checked out three at a time from the local rental store.

His parents facilitate this thoughtless, high-tech lifestyle, buying him the gadgetry he desires and not caring that his bedroom is a sealed-off, inorganic crypt with a television screen substituting an open window. Benny has trained a camcorder to stare out his window and down to the faceless traffic on the street. Maybe that helps him to attach some narrative meaning to an otherwise meaningless world. Maybe it helps him imagine that some director, screenwriter, or editor is in control of the chaos outside his door.

There's no context for much of the imagery Benny is exposed to, no emotional intelligence or mental maturity to support what he's seen in his young life. Nobody's told him much about death or life, love or hate, rape and murder, responsibility and disappointment, dependability and despair. He knows these things exist, but they all exist in distorted measurements alongside aliens, car chases, mutants, and talking rabbits, and he perhaps understands as much about all of these as he would understand watching a film in a language he's never been taught. One need only look to his older sister for proof; her presence in the film is brief, and we know simply that she is a successful pyramid schemer who lies to her parents to use their apartment as a party headquarters for her scam. When confronted with the truth, her father scolds her only for not letting him know sooner so that he could properly execute the party by hiring a caterer. Maybe she'll be in prison in a year, but nobody in the family seems capable of conceiving this or understanding why.

A typical Haneke shot: people close together physically yet miles apart mentally.

When Benny murders a young girl using the captive bolt pistol he has pilfered from the farm, he genuinely seems not to possess any motive or understanding as to why he has committed the horrible crime. It is a random act of senseless violence, like changing the channel from a boring teen drama to a serial killer thriller. Benny meets the girl at the video store. She also seems neglected and alienated, and she willingly follows him to his apartment for microwave pizza and strange conversation. Benny is oddly dysfunctional throughout their encounter--charming and polite yet also impulsive. When he tackles her while acting out an unfunny joke about cops on the Metro, we realize his complete lack of social decorum, heightened only by his decision to show her (and to re-show her in slow-mo instant replay) his slaughterhouse video. She's just as intrigued and perplexed. What is death all about? He tells her about dead bodies in movies ("ketchup and plastic") and about the dead body of his grandmother, the sight of which he was shielded from at her funeral several years ago. He can see the explosive murder of millions on television, but his parents have prevented him from coming to terms with the sight of the deceased woman he once knew and love.

That's when he pulls out the pistol and dares her to shoot him. She refuses and dares him. He refuses. She calls him a coward, and so he shoots. Not once, not twice, but three times. Until her screaming and struggling comes to an abrupt end. Haneke films this scene not in close-up nor with any intensified continuity or emotional editing; we see through the lens of his camcorder, off-center and static. The camera captures all. And where a Hollywood scene would end, or where an intense score would be cued, or where a horrified close-up would occur, life instead just keeps going on. He tries to clean up the mess, but as a fifteen-year-old would and not in any calculated, cinematic way. He listens to music and does his homework. He strips off his clothes, not so that he can be sexual with the body--other bodies don't much concern him, despite his age--but so that he can keep the blood from staining them. He gets blood on his bare torso instead, and it is while filming his blood-stained skin and then watching the video tape that he gets oddly erotic--the image charged with pornographic autoeroticism even though the actual event was sexless. He takes a phone call from his friend. He goes to a concert. He gets a haircut and takes in a movie. He goes to school.

He has effectively changed the channel. The murder is behind him, and he's moved on to different scenes, different episodes, different genres.

Except he hasn't. The body's still stuffed in his closet, and the memory's still buried somewhere in his mind. Plus, most importantly, he still has the videotape.

Arno Frisch handles the role of Benny masterfully--a handsome and superficial exterior with a touch of radiant menace, offering glimpses into an interior that's largely vacant but not entirely so. And it's that occasional, subtle glimpse of a tiny human interior, bursting to breathe and break free, that makes this film a masterpiece. As when Benny nearly confesses to his friend but instead says nothing, or when he shaves off his beautiful locks in an act of nazirite penance, starting anew with a damaged and frail look to match his inner turmoil.

Eventually he decides that the only way to confess is to speak in the only language he understands. With no preamble he plays the videotape to his shocked and silent parents, who immediately switch into film noir mode with talk of alibis, witnesses, and the graphic, meticulous details of body disposal. Their response, so logical, clear-headed, and well-planned, can only have come from having seen so many perfect murders on television and in the movies. For the first time in their lives, they are movie stars, and the event merits an actual conversation rather than listless mumblings.

After establishing that there were no witnesses, they decide to protect their child, not merely because he's their son but also to avoid truthful accusations of child neglect that might be lodged against them. The father plans to discard the body by chopping it into tiny pieces, flushing it into the sewage system, and burning the bones, clothing, and belongings. Benny and his mother, meanwhile, will vacation in Egypt under the guise of attending a wealthy aunt's funeral. And when they are reunited one week later, everything will be back to normal, the murder will be forgotten, and Benny's brief life of crime will never be mentioned again. The tape will be rewound, ejected, and returned to the shelf.

Except Benny is tired of living life as though channel surfing. Benny wants to understand the most important and horrifying thing that's ever happened in his life. He wants to learn what contrition, sacrifice, and punishment are. Benny doesn't want to erase the tape of his memory, not least of all because a mind cannot simply be recorded over. Some remnant of the murder would stay in his subconscious forever, inexplicable, surreal, unaccounted for, resurfacing in untold ways. By protecting him from discovery and punishment, they want to deny him any chance of remorse and redemption. They want to permanently deny him the opportunity to make sense of his life, his mind, and his lethal mistake. They want to prolong his attention deficit and his emotional disconnect. They want to murder his barely living humanity.

They send him to Egypt, birthplace of Moses, of countless gods, and of ancient civilizations, and he spends the eye-opening experience behind his camcorder, trying to make sense of ancient tombs, of parasailers, of vivid sunsets and holy wars from a detached point-of-view. When his mother tries to capture him in the frame, he is sullen and scared. He doesn't want to be a part of this confusing and disordered story. The vacation is one that would change the lives of many people, but Benny only remarks on the heat and his sunburn. Will Benny always be schizoid and antisocial? Will he ever come face to face with beauty and truth?

When he returns to his videos, his entertainment system, and his corpse-less bedroom, he pointedly refuses to tell his father he loves him even as his father insists on saying that Benny is loved by him. Love is not a frightened and selfish attempt to rob a child of moral responsibility by shielding him from consequences. Love is not insuring that an unknown girl remains eternally forgotten. This may be the first thing Benny ever figures out for himself, even if he can't put it into words.

He goes to the police. He shows them incriminating evidence of his parents discussing the disposal of the body. He explains that even though he could have gotten away with it, he felt the need to go to the police, even if he's not sure why. And so he consciously, actively takes the first step in making sense of a senseless act.

Benny's Video, titled in English despite being an Austrian film (a subtle suggestion of how alien pop culture can be), is a phenomenal film, intriguingly acted by Arno Frisch, smartly filmed by cinematographer Christian Berger, and disturbingly written by Michael Haneke. Critiquing and exposing videotape and television culture was an overplayed genre in the late '80s and early '90s. Benny's Video is certainly the best of these films that I have seen, but recall also the Slacker scene, the surreal Videodrome, the bizarre Stay Tuned, the supernatural Ringu, the ghoulish Poltergeist, Stephen King's "The Tommyknockers," and several episodes of "The X Files" and other science fiction/horror anthologies, just to name a few, all of which implied the demonic horror that was lurking somewhere between the screen and the cathode ray. Some of these tales seem quaint and moralistic now, but it's surprising that an equal number of cautionary tales aren't being made about the present age. The Internet, cell phones, satellites, and the instantaneous, easy-access nature of the digital age have changed our expectations and the way our minds work, making us less patient, less focused, less appreciative, and less able to remember specifics from the constant blur of noise and details that bombards us from every direction at all hours of the day. Are today's filmmakers less technophobic? Have we all been indoctrinated by the hegemony of Google?

Where are the horror fantasies about the Internet?

Benny's Video (1992)
d: Michael Haneke w: Michael Haneke
(Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Muhe)
10/10

Movie Review: Some Like it Hot (1959)

At no point in Some Like it Hot does Jack Lemmon look or sound like a woman. Tony Curtis is more convincing in that respect, but then he always looked a little like a woman, even when he wasn't in drag. Maybe in those days people were more easily fooled by crossdressing or maybe his poor impersonation was supposed to be more comical, but it makes the many real women in the film--who never once suspect the truth behind the deception--look rather stupid, especially when some of the men in the film easily realize the obvious. Of course, if the behind-the-scenes stories are to be believed--that Marilyn Monroe took over forty takes to say the line "Where's the bourbon?" because she kept asking for whiskey or for bonbons or forgetting the line altogether--then maybe that stupidity isn't so far off the mark.

Some Like it Hot is the classic story of two jazz musicians in Prohibition-era Chicago who witness a gangland shooting and must flee town in order to avoid getting shot themselves. Penniless and jobless, they don wigs and dresses because the only gig they can find is for an all-girls jazz band in Seminole, Florida. Of course, "Josephine" (Curtis) and "Daphne" (Lemmon) can't help but be titillated by all the women they're keeping close quarters with, and they both fall in love with Sugar Kane (Monroe), a ukulele player, singer, and hopeless romantic who's a sucker for the wrong kind of men.

Being heartless womanizers, the two in cognito gents both take advantage of their inside scoops in hopes of seducing the beautiful, naive musician. Joe uses her private confessions of romance to "Josephine" in order to craft himself into a third identity: the man of her dreams. Donning glasses, a yachtman's cap, and a horrible elitist accent, Joe/Josephine becomes Junior, the extravagantly wealthy heir to the Shell Oil fortune who has everything in life except for true love. Using his inside information, several lucky turns, and a manipulative ploy, he's able to seduce her.

Meanwhile, "Daphne" bags a real millionaire, a goofy, old, persistent gentleman. They dance the tango to a Cuban band, he proposes to her, and she--in the heat of the moment--accepts, so happy for her luck and her fun time that she momentarily forgets that she's not really a she. It's one of the funniest moments in a movie that really isn't very funny.

In the third act, the gangbangers from the beginning--disguising themselves (also not very convincingly) as delegates of "Friends of Italian Opera"--make a surprise appearance. The sleazy don, equipped with an earpiece, has some of the funniest one-liners in the script. Hijinx and chases ensue, Joe's relationship with Sugar and his decency as a human being is put to the test, "Daphne" makes amends with his fiancee, and a happy ending comes not a moment too soon.

Billy Wilder's film is a fun time. It's not as funny or surprising as it probably was half a century ago in 1959. The zingy screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond isn't as witty or sharp as many other scripts of the time, and though Lemmon picks up the slack in the second half, the chemistry shared by Lemmon, Wilder, and Monroe never quite reaches its full steam. Monroe is beautiful--though a fairly weak character--and her songs are memorable. It's passing strange to me, though, that this movie ranks #22 in the TSPDT? list and that it's considered by so many critics and fans to be such an American classic and a masterpiece. I suspect maybe that esteem has a lot to do with nostalgia, that maybe viewers under a certain age can't reap the same pleasure?

A decent film, but not too much more.

Some Like it Hot (1959)
d: Billy Wilder w: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
(Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe)
7/10
TSPDT?: #22

Movie Review: LA Confidential (1997)

I watched LA Confidential the other night, but I'll keep this review short because even though it ranks #471 on TSPDT?, I find the film largely unimportant and as dismissible as I perceived it ten years ago.

A plot-heavy neo-noir set within the innerworkings of the police department of 1950s Hollywood, director Curtis Hanson's 1997 film follows the hunt for a young, clean-cut, unpopular lieutenant detective (Guy Pearce) to uncover the true motive and killer(s) behind a shooting spree at an all-night diner. In his quest for real justice, the by-the-rules detective involves a rouge bully cop (Russell Crowe), a schmoozy cop-for-hire of a popular television show (Kevin Spacey), a corrupt police chief willing to go above the law in order to protect it (James Cromwell), a glamorous prostitute who looks exactly like a famous Hollywood starlet (Kim Basinger), a suave millionaire with criminal and legit dealings (David Strathairn), and a seedy tabloid muckraker and profiteer (Danny DeVito).

Of this all-star cast, only Strathairn and Bassinger come across as halfway believable in a film that's altogether too shiny to be any sort of reality. Pearce, Spacey, and Crowe never seem like people who actually spend their days carrying badges and guns, wearing uniforms, and doing police work. They exist only within the boundaries of the screen, manifesting straightforward psychological make-ups: Pearce's character watched his father be killed by a man who got away, so now he's eternally following the true, virtuous principles of justice and legality, trying to capture all those who think they can get away with it; Spacey's character can be bought and sold for the right price and is more attracted to glamour and money than any ideals, but he still maintains some shred of decency; Crowe's character helplessly watched his father beat his mother to death, so now nothing can stand in the way between his brute force and men who think they can abuse women. Every character has a motivational, psychoanalytical homunculus living inside of him, clearly dictating every action he performs so that his symbolism can be conveyed to the audience in as few quiet scenes of lucid introspective narration as possible. And except for one deviant moment where Crowe's Woman Protector actually slaps the woman he loves, the characters never get deeper than that.

Case in point: James Cromwell's police chief is a blatant ripoff of Orson Welles's Hank Quinlan from Touch of Evil. They are both men willing to break the law in order to uphold it. Quinlan, though, was a mess of realistic contradictions. He did terrible things but also noble things. He was disgusting but courageous. His track record for serving justice was incredible, even though he was a criminal. Quinlan had only a "touch of evil;" Cromwell's character is nothing but, and the results are not nearly as thought-provoking.

LA Confidential has a decent, somewhat intriguing plot full of relatively predictable revelations and twists. The set design is nice, and the soundtrack is enjoyable. There isn't much deeper to the film than a bunch of shiny surface, though, and every theme it tries to convey--the relativism of ethics, the dangers of fame and money, sons living in the shadows of their fathers--has been accomplished with much greater success and mastery in other films. LA Confidential is an ensemble film in which the sum is mediocre and each of the parts adds up to almost nothing, and I'm not sure why it has received all the attention it has from critics, fans, and the Academy.

LA Confidential
d: Curtis Hanson w: Brian Helgeland, Curtis Hanson
(Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kim Basinger, James Cromwell)
6/10
TSPDT? #471

Movie Review: Touch of Evil (1958)

The story behind Touch of Evil, the final film of the film noir genre, is perhaps more interesting than the convoluted plot of marijuana smugglers, dynamite explosives, and illegal immigrants. Slated as a B film, Touch of Evil was to star Orson Welles alongside Charlton Heston, but confused Heston thought that Welles was also attached to direct, and being the superstar that he was, he pulled his weight and the studio made it happen. Thus Welles filmed this so-called masterpiece, which ranks #21 on the TSPDT? list, using extremely long takes (now considered cutting edge) in order to keep the film under its original budget.

Without Welles's touch, this movie most certainly would have been forgotten by now. A sensational plot about lesbians in leather jackets smuggling mary jane across the Mexican border, Charlton Heston in brownface with a mustache, Janet Leigh's hysterics, a cartoonish Dennis Weaver gnawing at the scenery--the first hour, excluding the famous long take of the opening shot, adds up to a bunch of boredom.

Only one thing keeps the film from falling to pieces: Orson Welles as Captain Hank Quinlan, a limping, obese, slurring police detective that you just know is dripping with sleaze and probably behind all the murder and corruption in town. A recovering alcoholic, he's now addicted to candy bars, stuffing them into his huge, hairy face as he grimaces and leers. His town is a filthy one, bordering on lawlessness, and he knows that only he can regulate it, assigning himself full impunity to execute methods, no matter how unorthodox, for bringing justice to his kingdom.

He acts on hunches that he intuits from his crippled leg, which isn't exactly something we'd grant sovereignty to, though we never see it actually make a mistake. The limb is the perfect symbol for showcasing Quinlan. On the one hand, in the vein of wicked witches with crooked noses and leering maniacs with hunchbacks and scars, the broken leg is a sign of his deformity, what separates him from full, normal humanity, the most obvious physical manifestation of his unattractiveness. On the other hand, he received the injury while intercepting a bullet and saving his partner's (Joseph Calleia) life, an heroic act the partner claims is only outshone by his success in climbing on the wagon and freeing himself from alcoholism. The limp is unsightly, but it was caused by valor, just as his obesity is monstrous yet, we realize, only developed when he began replacing drinks with less harmful sweets. Finally, the leg is a sign of his power; it supplies him with clairvoyant knowledge, which is regarded and acted upon as gospel though we can choose to dismiss it as superstition. The impulsive hunches his leg stirs up have more power than the words of any informant.

And so we have a complex, compelling antagonist--racist, deceitful, and egotistical, yet dedicated to justice, capable of heroism, and full of determination.

I hesitate to talk about the end of this film, which is the only part that redeems it and makes it somewhat worth calling a masterpiece. Though my reviews are often full of spoilers, to talk in depth about the beautifully shot, Shakespearean climax seems to cross even my line. So, stop reading now if you want.

A murder occurs as part of an elaborate setup, and the partner whose job has been to plant key, implicating evidence that has always led to convictions finally discovers a real piece of crucial evidence at the crime scene. The evidence, a cane, however, indicts Quinlan, who has always given the orders to plant the suspects his leg fingers. Ironically, the film's first real clue points to the one responsible for all the fake clues.

The partner, despite trusting in Quinlan for all these years, despite having knowingly participated in many illegal activities in pursuit of ending crime, decides that murder is too far. Mexican narcotics agent Mike Vargas (Heston), a no-nonsense, straight laced investigator, offers the partner a means of pursuing true justice unsullied by evil, and so they work together to bring down Quinlan, using official police procedures.

The partner tries to procure a confession while wearing a wire. Quinlan, pissdrunk after reaching the breaking point and falling off the wagon, sneers at him in disgust. "What is that you're wearing?" He shakes his head. "Guilt."

You shouldn't have killed him, the partner says. You're a cop. Cops kill, Quinlan responds. It's a dirty job. "You didn't have to make it dirty," his partner says.

Quinlan discovers the bug and the deception from his best friend, and now aware that his old and proven inquisitional methods are against the new and weak yet honest methods of Vargas, he clumsily shoots the partner whose life he once saved, getting blood on his hands in the process.

He stumbles to the filthy Rio Grande to cleanse his apparent sin. An agent of the new justice kills him, and from the bridge above, the blood of his slain friend drops back onto his hands. Defeated and dead, he collapses into the dreck.

An onlooker--a prostitute he once loved (Marlene Dietrich)--watches his swollen corpse with more disappointment than sadness. Isn't someone going to come and take him away, she asks Vargas. In a few minutes, someone will do it, he responds. The body floats, filthy, sad, and perhaps too undignified. Would you like to say some words, Vargas asks the woman. "He was some kind of a man," she says. "What does it matter what you say about people?"

Which is the point of the movie, what makes it a phenomenal film despite so many things going against it. In a cinematic world of hoo-hahing nemeses with laundry lists of violent sins and neurotic motivations paired against strong, handsome heroes with one or two forgivable flaws that never get in the way of saving the day, Hank Quinlan joins the ranks of more realistic characters like Daniel Plainview of There Will Be Blood, the flawed, complicated, ugly, pathetic, but not flat-out evil humans who inhabit the real world. He has only a touch of evil. Unloved and unloving, disgusting yet sympathetic, driven by virtue but tarnished by the filth all around him, Quinlan is a true and honest portrait of a dishonest man.

Touch of Evil
d/w: Orson Welles
(Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Joseph Calleia)
7/10

Movie Review: Manhattan (1979) and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

Woody Allen considered Manhattan to be a colossal failure when he completed it, offering to do another film free of charge for the studio as an act of penance, and years later, after the film proved to be one of his most successful and enduring films, he still considered the film to be the biggest deception he ever got away with, a disastrously flawed film and his least favorite of all of them.

Manhattan is the highest ranking of eight Allen films on the TSPDT? list, falling quite high at #114. It was a phenomenal box office success, and it was nominated for two Academy Awards. I have to admit, though, I agree with Woody Allen.

What have I taken away from this film? Not very much. A few laughs, maybe. Some gorgeous black and white cinematography shot on location in New York City, and an interesting setup involving pretentious Manhattanites and their overlapping, forever in flux affairs. By the end, I guess, it makes a statement on checking our own egos, our hyperbolic criticisms of ourselves and others, our swollen pretentious, and our certainty in our own maturity and adulthood at the door. As fortysomething Isaac (Allen) frantically makes his way across town to win back the high school girl (Mariel Hemingway) he's recently dismissed as being too young, too naive, and too immature for love, we're supposed to realize that she--unlike other lover Mary (Diane Keaton) with her thousand insecure opinions and neurotic best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) with his mid-life crisis and flighty contradictions--may be the most grown up and least tainted of all of them, with her decent grasp on reality and her calm acceptance of all people and their flaws.

We're supposed to believe that and I guess it's a nice message, but it's more than a little creepy coming from a writer-director with his sexual background, a biased message endorsing the adoration of youth, a naive idea dripping with nostalgia and a bit of sexual perversion. (Personally, I didn't like hearing about what a powerful beast Allen is in bed.)

Not to mention the stilted acting that never quite flows smoothly. Hemingway, who received an Oscar nomination, is perhaps the best at playing the sanest character, but Murphy and Keaton both seem contrived, and Allen seems to be having too much fun reading his own witty script.

And there's also the halting direction and unenthusiastic pacing. And a script that isn't nearly as funny or crisp as it thinks it is, with a distracting subplot involving Meryl Streep as a lesbian ex-lover penning an implausible bestseller.

All in all, I can't see anything that's genuinely amazing about this film. It left a sour aftertaste in my mouth, and it quickly slipped from my memory.

Manhattan Murder Mystery, on the other hand, is hysterical, clever, and rich. Penned by Manhattan writers Allen and Marshall Brickman and again starring Allen and Diane Keaton, Manhattan Murder Mystery is a Hitchcockian satire following the tepid lives of four would-be mystery writers as they attempt to one-up each other in solving the most implausible crime that could ever enter their mundane lives.

When energetic Mrs. House (Lynn Cohen) dies suddenly of a heart attack, Carol Lipton (Diane Keaton) can't bring herself to understand what the paramedic plainly describes. Her chatty, older neighbor, whom she had just met the night before, had never mentioned a heart condition. Though she confesses to loving rich, creamy, French desserts and though the workout routine she does on her new treadmill is perhaps too exhausting for a woman her age, Carol can't fathom that a woman so alive one day can be carried out in a covered stretcher the next. What begins as a denial of life's impermanence escalates into suspicion. Why does fuzzy Mr. House with his soothing baritone and his pedantic stamp collection seem so accepting of his wife's death, so nonchalant about the loss? Does he just have a better understanding of mortality, or could he have murdered the wife he seemed to cherish, have force-fed her cholesterol packed mousse or strapped her wrists to the treadmill in order to induce what doctors would dismiss as natural?

And why is he taking the elevator downstairs at three in the morning?

What's fueling the paranoia is her stir-crazy boredom. She's middle aged and essentially unemployed, surrounded by artists but with no artistic output of her own, dreaming of opening a restaurant but never taking the steps to fulfill that dream. The murder is her chance to get back into the world and to express her imagination.

Larry Lipton (Allen), meanwhile, is a successful book editor, more accustomed to striking out excessive fancies and implausible bouts of wild, melodramatic imagination. He tries to bring his wife back down to earth. The doctor said she had a heart attack. The old woman loved heavy whipping cream. Big, old, harmless Mr. House collects canceled postage, for godsakes.

With her husband the critical voice of boring reason, Carol unites with old friend Ted (Alan Alda), a playwright and theater director who's able to come up with motivations on the spot, and able to constantly twist and change them as needed to fit the ultimate story. The murder mystery is a fun game for him, not nearly as serious as it is for Carol except that it allows him a chance to spend quality time with her, his unrequited, unattainable love of many years.

And so the murder mystery becomes a love triangle, with Larry suddenly realizing that he'll have to play along and become a gumshoe in order to keep up with Ted and save his probably deluded wife as she further embroils herself in breaking into apartments, hiding under beds, and making impostor phone calls to seedy hotels.

One of the funniest scenes (though I won't mention the funniest one, which had me cracking up loudly in an empty room) happens when the three come together with Marcia Fox (Anjelica Huston), one of Larry's controversial, bestselling authors. It's a scene of artistic competitiveness, all of them racing to solve the mystery while veiling hostilities and ulterior motives.

"Well, basically, he got away with the perfect murder. It's as simple as that," newcomer Marcia matter-of-factly reveals with an arrogant amount of boredom to the three stumped sleuths who have struggled so hard to fit together the ridiculous, trivial jigsaw pieces. "And when I get back from the loo, I'll tell you how to catch him."

Ted is mesmerized. The sexy provocateur has pieced together the perfect, surprising plot. Larry is impressed by her cockiness, but overwhelmed by the ridiculous revelation. Carol, meanwhile, is just pissed. Not only has this femme fatale sauntered into the scene in the last act and solved her mystery, but she's also stolen the center stage as well as the two male leads--Ted, who's drooling all over her, and Larry, who seems to have just a little too much history with his client. You're jealous of me liking her, that's untrue but fine, Larry explains to his wife, but why are you jealous of Ted liking her unless you want Ted to like you?

What hangs in the balance of this mystery isn't so much life and death and future crimes as egos, relationships, and escape from the doldrums of middle age. The murder mystery, with its absurd twists and riotously silly climax, is just a red herring.

Manhattan
d: Woody Allen w: Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
(Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway)
5/10
TSPDT? #114

Manhattan Murder Mystery
d: Woody Allen w: Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
(Diane Keaton, Woody Allen, Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston)
9/10

The Man in the Costume: Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Wrestler (2008)

My two favorite films of the past year have a lot in common, though one is a multimillion dollar blockbuster superhero sequel partly shot in IMAX and the other is a grainy, quiet character study that didn't even have enough budget to pay Axl Rose or Bruce Springsteen for song rights. [Numerous spoilers follow.]

Batman Begins established a Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) constantly on the run from the shortcomings of reality. The pampered son of a billionaire philanthropist, he inadvertently causes the shooting death of his parents because of his fear of bats. A corrupt Gotham City judicial system denies him any satisfaction from justice, while a plague of depraved poverty--of which his parents' killer was a victim--makes the simplicity of political misanthropy too complicated. He flees, leaving behind his unscarred, idealistic childhood love and his abundant inheritance, and makes his way to Bhutan, where he brawls with random criminals and thugs for no real reason.

From Ducard (Liam Neeson), a philosophical samurai he meets in the Himalayan mountains, he is granted the devices that will become his superpowers: deception--using smoke, mirrors, and mechanical wizardry to appear magical and superhuman; vigilant, dexterous fighting power; and an image, a persona to embody, a source of primordial fear. He becomes a bat, his own ultimate phobia, a terrifying force beyond his own control. Ducard also gifts him with a philosophy: in a mad world, one must draw a stern line between the good and the evil and act accordingly or risk becoming a part of the chaos.

Bruce accepts the superpowers and combines them with his father's wealth and technological resources to become Batman, complete with protective costume and highly evolved gadgets.

He rejects the philosophy.

In a world of accidental killings, senseless violence, crippling poverty, psychological illness, kangaroo courts, and hotheaded revenge, there is no distinct boundary between good and bad. The righteous-minded often behave horribly. To be ultimately good is to achieve the impossible task of rising above all ill behavior. To stop crime without instigating it. To deliver criminals safely to level-headed authorities who have been officially vested with the steady hand of justice (namely, Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman)). To never kill, even when it would make things easy.

Bruce Wayne achieves this persona--frightening, stern, unstoppable, but pure. Like a Byzantine God with fierce eyes and an all-powerful palm raised both in benediction and admonition. But the task is immensely difficult, resulting in an expenditure of millions of dollars and dozens of bruises and scars. After being attacked by dogs in The Dark Knight, his confidant Alfred (Michael Caine) advises him to know his limits. "Batman has no limits," he steadfastly responds, to which Alfred warns: "But you do."

Bruce Wayne becomes secondary to his costumed crimefighter character. Bruce Wayne--celebrity socialite, billionaire playboy, womanizer, alcoholic, prodigal son--becomes the facade artificially concealing a personality that succumbs more and more each day to the unreality of a Batman superman. Friendships become impossible, his doomed relationship with childhood friend Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal) goes on indefinite hiatus, and the stakes continue to rise.

The cleverer criminals see Batman as a challenge to encourage them, chief among them The Joker (Heath Ledger--in the most captivating, horrifying, hilarious, and memorable roles of recent years, regardless of the fact that he's dead... his performance is no less stunning than Javier Bardem's in No Country for Old Men, though Bardem was spared all the reactive backlash simply because he's still alive), another man hiding behind an image and a costume. It would be mistaken to characterize the Joker as Supreme Evil contrasted to Batman's Ultimate Good; such simplicities would be antithetical to the complexities of goodness established in the first film. More accurately, the Joker is Chaos, opposed to Principle, and for the first time Batman's nemesis has the upper hand. Chaos is the natural order of things, the primeval soup from which all life, even principled ones, sprang. It is Principle that is artificial, forced, dictated, that must be actively fought to be preserved. Everything naturally decays into entropy, and even the plans of our complicated world with its manifold interests can be as destructive and insane as mere coincidence. As the Joker explains, in a moment of insight that proves he's not merely a nutty trickster:

You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan." But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!

While Bruce Wayne runs and distances himself from the complexities of the world, the Joker embraces and emphasizes them.

Like Batman, the Joker is a costumed character. His severe facial scars could come from any meaningless or emotionally resonant event, but though he mocks the concept of villainous motivation--abusive fathers, jealous love, and whatnot--we never know anything about the original man, not even his name. His mismatched custom suit, his green hair, and his sloppy clown makeup all establish the idea of foolish, unstoppable anarchy, as comic as the Bat Man is frightful, yet infinitely deadlier. The conflict and the driving force of the plot becomes an ideological showdown in the strictest sense--which idea will prevail? Will Bruce Wayne discover who the Joker really is? Will the Joker succeed in unmasking the Batman?

Amidst this war is a third costumed character, and though his facade is the least realistic it is the most convincing, managing to win him an admirable lover, a democratically elected public office, and even the esteem of Bruce Wayne: Harvey Dent, who dons the role of the Ultimate Good, even though we've already learned that such cannot exist. An energetic, good-looking, and righteous demagogue, he trusts in his own goodness and heroism. Though some of his underlings vaguely refer to him as Two Face, we initially see little of his impurity. As District Attorney, he fights crime in court, openly putting his own name and life at risk while Bruce Wayne cannot. He has completely succumbed to his politician's charm, his inscrutable public image, convinced that his irresistible tenacity and ability to "make his own luck" will pull him through any tough spot.

Like I said, though, there is no "Evil" and there is no "Good," and any statue built in such an image rests on a crumbling foundation. When the Joker's chaotic momentum prods at him, killing his love, dismantling his trust, and shedding his ideas of goodness and justice, Harvey Dent embodies another chiaroscuro 50-50 split--chance, neither good nor evil, just one or the other. Formerly a control freak, he now becomes a manic livewire, the madman Two Face, reducing all complexities to a mere coin toss. Heads you live, tails you die, regardless of mitigating circumstances.

Chaos is animalistic, natural, and extremely easy. Supreme Goodness is an impossible illusion, blind to circumstance. And the Principled Life, cognizant of chaos yet striving toward an idealistic good, is extremely difficult. In the end no clear winner emerges, as questionable means--burnings of letters, invasions of privacy, rewritings of history--are used to achieve honorable ends. The end of The Dark Knight is as complex, thought-provoking, and bleak as the world it highlights. An upright life in today's world is extremely difficult, but we just know it to be right.

In The Wresler, my favorite film from 2008, two more costumed roles emerge as means of running from and dealing with reality.

Little is known of Robin Ramzinski (Mickey Rourke) before he became Randy "The Ram" Robinson, muscleclad wrestling superstar known for the crippling "Ram Jam" finishing move. The slightly effeminate name evokes a Polish immigrancy, as does his quiet, respectful attitude outside of the ring. All we know is that in the ring, in his neighborhood, and at his Acme discount superstore job, he'd much rather be known as Randy, an All-American, testosterone-fueled, heroic man's man.

Twenty years ago, in the heyday of professional wrestling, The Ram was a headlining act on Pay-Per-View, his showdown with The Ayatollah (a foolish "villain" in the wrestling world, surrounding by "evil" 80s Iranian imagery, yet really a black used car salesman) garnering millions of viewers and attendants. Now he's a scarred, crumbling hunk of meat, addicted to steroids and painkillers, living alone in a trailer home and barely making rent, working at a deli counter on weekdays, and hawking his souvenirs in church basements on weekends amongst other decayed wrestling superstars lugging around their catheter bags and canes. Occasionally he headlines in poorly-attended fights, which have become increasingly bloody as the audiences have grown accustomed to Mortal Kombat and My Bloody Valentine 3D.

These fights are staged. Supposed arch-nemeses respectfully offer up choreography ideas while rehearsing finishing moves. The victor is known beforehand. Each stage of give and take is plotted for maximum audience suspense, and a man who attacks Randy (and himself) with a staple gun addresses him as "sir" minutes later, in the back room.

The world is theatrical and completely artificial, but within it Randy--the All American with the former good looks and the boyish charm--is a superstar for his audience. A force of Supreme Good against the evil Ayatollah. The epitome of masculine strength. "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N Roses accompanies his entrance parade as thousands give him a screaming, enthusiastic standing ovation. Millions fondly remember particular cage matches, certain meaningful speeches. It's soap opera for boys, but it's influential. In the ring, there's no divorce, estranged parenthood, drug addiction, poverty, or minimum wage. There's just strength and weakness, and The Ram possesses only the former.

Given that dichotomy, it's easy to see why Robin Ramzinski would lose himself entirely in the facade of Randy Robinson, yet one thing from the real world holds him back: a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) who happens to be the love of his life.

Cassidy, with her revealing skirt, shiny earrings, abundant makeup, and flirtatious, forgiving voice, is the moneymaking exterior of Pam, a single mother trying to make ends meet. We see only the desensitized, beautiful sex object for the first few scenes, lighthearted even as perverts take advantage of her, always on the prowl for hardearned money. When Randy finally meets her outside of the strip lounge, we see a completely different woman--protective, rational, stand-offish, and--as Randy awkwardly puts it--"clean."

Pam embraces the facade that many women must endure in this man's world: the easygoing hooker. Unlike Randy, however, Pam does not lose herself in Cassidy, nor would she ever dream of it. Cassidy simply pays the bills; Pam is the real person--the mother, the lover, the human.

In the end, the two halves of each character fall in love with the other, though which half loves which is questionable. Pam seems to love both Randy and Robin, and Robin seems to love both Cassidy and Pam. Unfortunately, Randy can't accept Robin and the world he comes from. For him, the only world worth living in died two decades ago, when WrestleMania for the original Nintendo system was the only game worth playing and ACDC and Axl Rose were the only options on the jukebox. The ending is bittersweet and unforgettable.

The Wrestler and The Dark Knight are easily my two favorite films of 2008. The former needles into your heart and brain with phenomenal acting, a touching screenplay, a realistic, precise direction by Darren Aronofsky, and a wonderful closing song by Bruce Springsteen. The latter is a superbly-directed, action-packed thrill ride with a great support cast and a fantastic, timeless story that explores morality, justice, and chaos, all important themes currently. The former has yet to receive a wide release and the latter has been seen by everybody; I recommend you see both immediately.

Batman Begins
d: Christopher Nolan w: Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer
(Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson)
9/10

The Dark Knight
d: Christopher Nolan w: Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer
(Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart)
10/10

The Wrestler
d: Darren Aronofsky w: Robert D. Siegel
(Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood)
10/10
(Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei)

Movie Review: Heat (1995)

Number 354 on the TSPDT? list is, I assume, what self-stylized "thinking men" consider their kind of crime caper: writer/director Michael Mann's Heat, a trite, overlong, dull thriller heavy on quiet scenes of obvious reflection, with a splattering of explosive, implausible weapons extravaganzas blended in, all set to the drippy, foggy synthesizers of an early nineties musical score.

Mann bloats almost three hours of screen time with a heavy-handed, terribly unmeaningful exploration of Good Vs. Evil. Al Pacino is Detective Vincent Hanna, the Good, and Robert DeNiro is Neil McCauley, one amongst the bad, a high stakes bank robber and trigger happy murderer. But, wouldn't you know it, they've got a lot in common! They both have relationship problems with obnoxious, poorly conceived women--on the one hand is a dreadfully stiff Diane Venora, whose character as Vincent's wife spends all of her scenes accusing her husband of having affairs and yelling at him for being too committed to the nonsense of his career. She apparently doesn't watch the news; after a lengthy shootout in the middle of the highway involving hundreds of bullets, millions of dollars, and several police, criminal, and civilian casualties, she decides to confront him about how lonely and pissed she is that he's been working (i.e. dodging rifle bullets in traffic and aiming past hostages) all day, confessing to marijuana use and a meaningless affair.

On the other hand is Eady (Amy Brenneman), a pushy, twangy bookseller-cum-graphic artist who lives in a "rundown" house overlooking LA (aka: in the movie world, an estate much larger and more beautiful than any house you've ever lived in). She's all alone, having migrated from Appalachia to New York to the West Coast, looking for companionship and her big break in the art world. She strikes up an awkward chat with Macauley in a diner, and soon they're having deep, late night conversation about goals and family, and next they're having sex, and eventually they're soul mates. They know each other for all of maybe two weeks (probably less) when Eady, previously convinced that Macauley was a steel salesman, realizes that he has in fact orchestrated the biggest, bloodiest shootout of all time. She contemplates fleeing but is soon convinced that she loves him so much she should run away with him to Brazil with all the loot, making her the stupidest, most implausible female in the history of cinema.

Both Macauley and Hanna are committed to their ambitions. Both are swallowed by their respective callings (as well as each other's conflicting callings). Both are prepared to kill or die when the time is right. Both are horribly boring (though Al Pacino rises slightly above on the interest meter) and surround themselves with lame people.

And on top of their problems (which, in a wiser movie, would've been more interestingly paralleled, with greater juxtaposition between what the characters were doing, feeling, thinking, with sharp editing highlighting their chiaroscuro dance... but instead we get slow pacing, plodding direction, weak acting, a convoluted plot, and that goddamn droopy score), we get the problems of two dozen other pencil-sketched ensemble actors... man with mustache, skinny gangbanger, gambling-addicted explosives expert, infidelitous police officer, black man with loving wife, and hysteric teenage Natalie Portman, who (despite only having four minutes of prior screen time) arbitrarily attempts suicide in the middle of the film's climax, in the strangest of locations, for the vaguest of reasons.

I really don't feel like writing about this obese film anymore. Usually I try to list any film's redemptive qualities, but here the two shining moments are so minor and specific that I won't even bother.

What a disappointment.

Heat
d/w: Michael Mann
(Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro)
4/10
TSPDT? #354

Farewell, My Doppelganger: Vertigo (1958) and Mister Foe (2008)

When Vertigo initially met with critical and financial failure in 1958, Alfred Hitchcock blamed his long collaborator and screen star Jimmy Stewart for looking too old and failing to be romantic, truthfully vowing to never work with him again. The movie fell behind legal obstructions for three decades and in the 1980s was reintroduced with acclaim, many people hailing it Hitchcock's masterpiece. They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, which tabulates the opinions of international critics, currently ranks it as the second greatest film of all time.

I can't say that I agree. When I saw the movie in my seventh grade film studies class, I remember being turned off by the bizarre romance, the sudden ending, and Kim Novak's strange performance. Now that I've finally revisited it, expecting a greater appreciation, I can understand my apprehensions.

Jimmy Stewart as Detective Scottie Ferguson is too old to be romantic--at that point a wiry man of fifty, lamenting his bad back, hobbling with a cane, tossing curmudgeonly remarks to his smitten friend Midge (a giddy, bespectacled Barbara Bel Geddes), and downing highballs of bourbon. When a college friend enlists Scottie to spy on his delusional wife (Kim Novak), Scottie pursues the task too eagerly, gazing transfixed in prolonged, hypnotic sequences as she purchases flower arrangements, visits an art gallery, and drives the hilly streets of San Francisco. When wife Madeleine, convinced she's possessed by the suicidal spirit of her great grandmother Carlotta Valdez, leaps into the frigid San Francisco Bay, Scottie rushes valiantly to the occasion, taking the unconscious woman not to a hospital nor to her husband's home but to his own small apartment, where he disrobes her, dries her body, unpins her hair, and puts her snugly in his own bachelor's bed. When she comes to, his lingering stares far surpass that of a procedural private investigator. He's downright perverted, and when his hand "accidentally" cups hers while he reaches to refill her coffee mug, its an awkward gaffe full of tension but no romance. She rightly grabs her clothes and flees.

Feeling a sense of obligation to her savior, they begin to see more of each other. He's a self-professed career wanderer, and she does so by insane compulsion, commenting that when two people wander together they are always headed somewhere. The somewhere, predictably but very unnaturally, is a state of love, and when they embrace, sloppily, smearily pressing their lips against each other, passionately declaring their love for each other, the moment comes across more disturbing than anything else. He's a freelance stalker whose private and professional lives overlap, and she's a married millionaire in need of either a headshrinker or an exorcist. They barely know each other beyond strange interrogations where he conceals his real identity and she slips between dizzy spells and memory lapses. It's not exactly a match made in heaven.

I'm entering major spoiler territory when I say that he eventually takes her to the source of her crazed hypnosis, a Spanish fortress south of San Francisco. She slips into a bout of hysterical mania, races to the top of a bell tower where he--suffering from a crippling fear of heights--is unable to prevent her from flinging herself to her death.


The abrupt termination of his strange love affair and his guilt over being unable to stop it riddles him with "acute melancholia," a state of mute catatonia that lasts over a year and plagues him with surreal nightmares. Released into the real world, he sees her apparition everywhere, eventually attaching himself to a dark-haired Kansas girl (also Kim Novak) who physically resembles his lost love. He enters her hotel apartment, doggedly imposes himself upon her, and endures no qualms about unwillingly transforming her into the woman he lustfully desires her to be. "The man certainly knows what he wants," a department store clerk muses as he clothes his body double in the original's exact attire. It's sexist, possessive, and completely insane. The new relationship is made all the more deranged by the creepiness of the first.

Which is where my only hesitation about the greatness of Vertigo lies. One isn't accustomed to viewing Jimmy Stewart characters--nor protagonists in general--as off-kilter perverts, but once adjusted it's quite interesting. What fails to make sense, though, is the motivation behind Kim Novak's Judy Barton, who throughout the entire film is in fact one supposedly sane woman from Kansas--an aspiring actress who pretends to be Madeleine/Carlotta in order to aid the husband in offing his wife. She's later discovered by Scottie and attempts to show him her real self, wanting him to love her true personality and forget about the murdered, artificial doppelganger, but she never manages that. It's like a famous character actress falling in love with her biggest fan. Eventually her desire to be loved allows her to subsume herself entirely in the rehearsed role of Madeleine. She dyes her hair; she changes her mannerisms.

But why? There's guilt involved, of course. And maybe some loneliness--the small town girl lost in the big, crazy city. But she repeatedly claims that her one flaw in the operation was falling in love. She loves the sexist, possessive, twenty-five-years-her-senior Scottie. It's a misogynist development from a director who delighted in having Kim Novak repeatedly jump into the cold bay even when he knew he'd gotten the right shot already. It's a weakness in character development only possibly explained by dismissing Judy Barton as insane--a frail womanly creature willingly submitting to an abusive relationship and seeing suicide as the only possible escape.

And that's why this isn't the second greatest film of all time; though it's intriguing and original and the cinematography is meaningful and beautiful, it's just a tad outdated and offensive. Perhaps the screenwriter or the original French novelist is to blame; maybe Hitchcock himself. In any case, the film is visually stunning with its timeless, technicolor-rich sets, its spiraling, dizzying camera angles, its steep, vertiginous San Francisco landscape, and its unnatural use of ever-changing lighting with characters occasionally fading into dark obscurity, their physical presence shadowed by the idea of their presence.

Vertigo
d: Alfred Hitchcock w: Samuel A. Taylor
(Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak)
8/10

***

On the same day I watched Vertigo, I coincidentally watched the largely overlooked Scottish film Mister Foe (aka Hallam Foe), which in many ways is a spin on Vertigo (get it--spin? vertigo?), with even a sly reference to the original thriller at the end.

Like Scottie, seventeen-year-old Hallam (Jamie Bell) is a career voyeur, though his peeping is a way of life more than just a career. A lonely kid, he spends his time huddled in his impressive tree house, spying on his neighbors with binoculars and recording their activities in his journal. He knows a lot of secrets but never attempts to profit off them, and though he does a lot of creepy things Bell manages to convey an unusual charm rather than an off-putting perversion. He's a creep whose company you can enjoy; a watchful guardian angel rather than a shadowed masturbator.

Hallam is haunted by the death--possibly by suicide, possibly by a homicide involving the husband and his lover--of his one true love, who happens to be his mother. When suspicions of his ladder climbing stepmother (Claire Forlani) and his oddly cold father (Cieran Hinds) become too unbearable, he flees with his treasure trove of odd knickknacks (including his mother's passport, earrings, and dress) to a homeless life in London, where he discovers a hotel concierge (Sophia Myles) who looks exactly like his mother. Using his charisma and ample detective skills, he insinuates himself into her life (both secretly and openly), eventually becoming her bedfellow.

Their relationship is just as complicated as the one between Scottie and Judy Barton (even more so when you consider the Oedipal aspect), but here the involvement of Kate, a self-confessed slag and relationship-phobe, is far more convincing. "I like creepy guys," she drunkenly confesses at one point before trying to bed the resistant admirer, who'd rather just sleep with her than sleep with her. Mister Foe is Vertigo with humor and sex appeal, and though Hallam and Kate are just as weird as their predecessors, one can maintain a certain optimism for both of them. Their complexes are kinks to be worked out, not inevitable agents of death.

The exuberant pacing and indie soundtrack are great, as well as the talented ensemble cast, Jamie Bell especially (in his only good role since Billy Elliot) as a generally good-hearted kid riddled with some peculiar affinities and difficult growing pains. When he finally solves the mystery of his mother's death, its a heartfelt realization about the impact of suicide on the survivors, tied up with a sloppy bow.

It's Oscar season and a lot of undeserved attention is being flung on Clint Eastwood and Leonardo DiCaprio as potential Best Actor nominees. It's unfortunate that this eccentric movie, which never even got a wide release, has been completely overlooked. Jamie Bell certainly gives one of the more convincing and complex turns of the year. Maybe even Hitchcock wouldn't have been disappointed.

Hallam Foe
d/w: David Mackenzie
(Jamie Bell, Sophia Myles, Claire Forlani, Cieran Hinds)
8/10