EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Twenty-four years ago today, I was given birth and thus introduced to this world.
Twenty-four years later—well, I could do all the usual the introspective things and reflect on how much I've learned over the years (a lot, obviously), how much I have yet to learn, what lies ahead for me and what I would like to lie ahead. But for now, I will not do that. (If I did, who knows? I may end up feeling more depressed than invigorated.) Instead, I'm going to paaaaaaartyyyyy!!!
In that spirit, I am celebrating my 24th birthday with a two-night, two-city celebration. On the first night, tonight from 8 p.m. - 2 a.m., I plan to have some tapas, drinks and hookah at the Kairo Kafe in New Brunswick, N.J. (an area close to my home turf).
Then, on Saturday night, also from 8 p.m. - 2 a.m., I will trek to New York to hang out for more drinks (but no hookah) at Langan's, a pretty nice bar and restaurant on 47th St. between 6th and 7th Aves., very close to my office, the News Corp. building. (The snow that is forecast for Saturday will not stop me, though I hope that won't stop others from coming out.)
Consider this an open invitation to all of you fine readers of mine to come and wish me a happy birthday on either of those nights, if you can swing it. Maybe I'll meet some of you readers for the first time!
Friday, December 04, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Tsai Ming-liang Plays Himself
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Hope all of you had a relaxing and stomach-filling Thanksgiving weekend! Despite the fact that I worked on Thursday (but eh, no big deal, I'm used to it by now, and at least we got fed something Thanksgiving-like in nature), my holiday weekend was quite fine. On Friday evening, I celebrated a good friend's birthday at a Japanese restaurant in midtown (the damage my dinner did my wallet, though, made my eyes pop out at the end of the evening; I definitely went overbudget, though I suppose it was worth it, in the end). And on Saturday, I saw two good-to-possibly-great films yesterday: An Education at an indie theater about half an hour away from my house, and Afterschool via IFC On Demand. I aim to say a few words about one or both of them soon enough.
For now, however, my film-review catch-up continues with a contrasting pair of films...
The Hole (1998; Dir.: Tsai Ming-liang)
After being puzzled and exhilarated by Tsai's Face six days earlier, I decided last weekend to take in another film by the fanciful Taiwanese auteur shown at the Asia Society (part of a rather incomplete retrospective programmed there): his sci-fi/musical fantasy The Hole. This wondrous film by no means dims my newfound fascination with this director.
Based on the three films of his I've seen—Face, The Hole and his 2006 Malaysia-set I Don't Want to Sleep Alone—it seems to me that Tsai is, at least in part, interested in articulating the wide-open gap between hidden and expressed desires. All three of those films have long stretches with barely any dialogue passing between characters, simply an intense sense of longing that both of them, for one reason or another, are only too careful about expressing too loudly. Tsai utilizes the kind of long-take aesthetic made popular by compatriot Hou Hsiao-hsien, which might suggest that he's aiming for Hou's brand of patient realism. But Tsai alternates stretches of slow-burning realism with surreal, fourth-wall-breaking flights of fancy, boldly pointing up the vast differences between brightly colored fantasy and glum reality, and in the process suggesting, through such juxtapositions, the depths of his characters' wants and needs.
All of this can be seen in The Hole, in which Tsai turns a sci-fi premise—a deadly plague that strikes Taipei in the last days before the year 2000—into a romantic two-character pas de deux between Tsai's usual protagonist, Hsiao-Kang (played by Tsai's usual leading man, Lee Kang-sheng) and a woman downstairs (Yang Kuei-mei). The characters never quite fully articulate their thirst to connect with each other amidst the dreary, apocalyptic madness (it never stops raining in this world); perhaps they are too fearful of getting infected by the "Taiwan fever" to risk forming a human connection. But Tsai intervenes to articulate their desires for them: every once in a while, he throws in elaborately dreamlike song-and-dance numbers, music supplied by 1950s Chinese pop hits sung by Grace Chang, all cleverly connected to a certain physical and emotional moment.
When they do finally connect, after a moment in which they both fear they have lost the opportunity to do so forever, the sense of joy—quietly expressed by a simple image in which one almost literally lifts the other from the depths into the light—is overwhelming; only another song-and-dance number can do it justice. I hope I have come close to doing some justice to just how wonderful a film is The Hole, in which Tsai Ming-liang—as seems to be his directorial métier—is willing to follow his instincts and risk absurdity in pursuit of deep emotional truths and sublime visionary beauty.
Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003; Dir.: Thom Andersen)
The splendors, such as they are, of Los Angeles Plays Itself are, by their very nature, cerebral rather than visceral; nevertheless, it must be said that Thom Andersen's 169-minute video essay on the depiction of the many facets of Los Angeles throughout cinema history does offer the immediate pleasures of epic ambition, a dizzying wealth of information and film clips, and assorted moments of revelatory critical insight. Alas, my interest in this oft-celebrated, rarely screened documentary more or less ends there.
Look, it's not that I find Andersen's aims totally unworthy. Fundamentally, he's trying to dig underneath what he sees as Hollywood cinema's misrepresentations of his beloved city geographically, historically, sociologically, or otherwise—in other words, trying to find the realities behind distortions about the city that we perhaps have accepted as close to the truth because they have been seen in popular and independent American cinema for so many decades. That's certainly the kind of goal I instinctively find valuable as a wannabe film critic—and yet, even so, it's one that I ultimately find myself less than wholly sympathetic with here. I mean, we're dealing with movies here; I would like to think that most of us recognize from the outset that what we see flickering on movie screens, even after all these years, through films like Chinatown, Blade Runner, Short Cuts, and even that trashy 1986 Sylvester Stallone flick Cobra, isn't necessarily true to reality. In seeming to prize more accurate depictions of Los Angeles in films like The Exiles and Killer of Sheep (certainly great films, both) over those of more blatantly fictional constructs like the ones mentioned above, it almost seems to me like he's going rather self-defeatingly against the grain of what is possible in cinema.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'm sympathetic to Andersen's interest in exposing the many truths about Los Angeles behind the cinematic fictions, and one could insightfully apply his methods to other major cities commonly represented in film over the years (Woody Allen's upper-class fantasy conception of New York versus the real New York, for instance). I suppose I just don't get as upset about those fictions as Andersen apparently does—certainly not enough to make, or sit through, a nearly three-hour documentary essay methodically (and rather dryly) subverting them. I'm not against truth; I just take the fictions in stride more than he does.
All that said, Los Angeles Plays Itself is admittedly still worth seeing and arguing over—especially in its third section, titled "The City as Subject," in which Andersen gets makes some fascinating political points about how fictions about Los Angeles class and race relations are created, and who has the power to create them (he suggests that it's the artists with money who create these alternate cinematic representations). Whatever you may think about whether what he's ultimately doing is actually worth doing or not, the film as a whole will offer new ways of looking at individual films and of cinema in general. In that sense, it succeeds as the kind of provocative film criticism that imbues genuine life into the field. And considering the way that the film-criticism field seems to be going these days—with high-profile critics jumping into film-festival programming, for instance—I suppose I shouldn't be too picky about deeply intelligent and well-researched works like this one. Maybe one day I'll be able to fully embrace it.
(Los Angeles Plays Itself was screened on Nov. 21 at 92YTribeca; there's another screening scheduled at New York University on Dec. 2. It's not available on DVD, but it's freely available as a torrent, if you're not a stickler about such things.)
For now, however, my film-review catch-up continues with a contrasting pair of films...
The Hole (1998; Dir.: Tsai Ming-liang)
After being puzzled and exhilarated by Tsai's Face six days earlier, I decided last weekend to take in another film by the fanciful Taiwanese auteur shown at the Asia Society (part of a rather incomplete retrospective programmed there): his sci-fi/musical fantasy The Hole. This wondrous film by no means dims my newfound fascination with this director.
Based on the three films of his I've seen—Face, The Hole and his 2006 Malaysia-set I Don't Want to Sleep Alone—it seems to me that Tsai is, at least in part, interested in articulating the wide-open gap between hidden and expressed desires. All three of those films have long stretches with barely any dialogue passing between characters, simply an intense sense of longing that both of them, for one reason or another, are only too careful about expressing too loudly. Tsai utilizes the kind of long-take aesthetic made popular by compatriot Hou Hsiao-hsien, which might suggest that he's aiming for Hou's brand of patient realism. But Tsai alternates stretches of slow-burning realism with surreal, fourth-wall-breaking flights of fancy, boldly pointing up the vast differences between brightly colored fantasy and glum reality, and in the process suggesting, through such juxtapositions, the depths of his characters' wants and needs.
All of this can be seen in The Hole, in which Tsai turns a sci-fi premise—a deadly plague that strikes Taipei in the last days before the year 2000—into a romantic two-character pas de deux between Tsai's usual protagonist, Hsiao-Kang (played by Tsai's usual leading man, Lee Kang-sheng) and a woman downstairs (Yang Kuei-mei). The characters never quite fully articulate their thirst to connect with each other amidst the dreary, apocalyptic madness (it never stops raining in this world); perhaps they are too fearful of getting infected by the "Taiwan fever" to risk forming a human connection. But Tsai intervenes to articulate their desires for them: every once in a while, he throws in elaborately dreamlike song-and-dance numbers, music supplied by 1950s Chinese pop hits sung by Grace Chang, all cleverly connected to a certain physical and emotional moment.
When they do finally connect, after a moment in which they both fear they have lost the opportunity to do so forever, the sense of joy—quietly expressed by a simple image in which one almost literally lifts the other from the depths into the light—is overwhelming; only another song-and-dance number can do it justice. I hope I have come close to doing some justice to just how wonderful a film is The Hole, in which Tsai Ming-liang—as seems to be his directorial métier—is willing to follow his instincts and risk absurdity in pursuit of deep emotional truths and sublime visionary beauty.
Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003; Dir.: Thom Andersen)
The splendors, such as they are, of Los Angeles Plays Itself are, by their very nature, cerebral rather than visceral; nevertheless, it must be said that Thom Andersen's 169-minute video essay on the depiction of the many facets of Los Angeles throughout cinema history does offer the immediate pleasures of epic ambition, a dizzying wealth of information and film clips, and assorted moments of revelatory critical insight. Alas, my interest in this oft-celebrated, rarely screened documentary more or less ends there.
Look, it's not that I find Andersen's aims totally unworthy. Fundamentally, he's trying to dig underneath what he sees as Hollywood cinema's misrepresentations of his beloved city geographically, historically, sociologically, or otherwise—in other words, trying to find the realities behind distortions about the city that we perhaps have accepted as close to the truth because they have been seen in popular and independent American cinema for so many decades. That's certainly the kind of goal I instinctively find valuable as a wannabe film critic—and yet, even so, it's one that I ultimately find myself less than wholly sympathetic with here. I mean, we're dealing with movies here; I would like to think that most of us recognize from the outset that what we see flickering on movie screens, even after all these years, through films like Chinatown, Blade Runner, Short Cuts, and even that trashy 1986 Sylvester Stallone flick Cobra, isn't necessarily true to reality. In seeming to prize more accurate depictions of Los Angeles in films like The Exiles and Killer of Sheep (certainly great films, both) over those of more blatantly fictional constructs like the ones mentioned above, it almost seems to me like he's going rather self-defeatingly against the grain of what is possible in cinema.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'm sympathetic to Andersen's interest in exposing the many truths about Los Angeles behind the cinematic fictions, and one could insightfully apply his methods to other major cities commonly represented in film over the years (Woody Allen's upper-class fantasy conception of New York versus the real New York, for instance). I suppose I just don't get as upset about those fictions as Andersen apparently does—certainly not enough to make, or sit through, a nearly three-hour documentary essay methodically (and rather dryly) subverting them. I'm not against truth; I just take the fictions in stride more than he does.
All that said, Los Angeles Plays Itself is admittedly still worth seeing and arguing over—especially in its third section, titled "The City as Subject," in which Andersen gets makes some fascinating political points about how fictions about Los Angeles class and race relations are created, and who has the power to create them (he suggests that it's the artists with money who create these alternate cinematic representations). Whatever you may think about whether what he's ultimately doing is actually worth doing or not, the film as a whole will offer new ways of looking at individual films and of cinema in general. In that sense, it succeeds as the kind of provocative film criticism that imbues genuine life into the field. And considering the way that the film-criticism field seems to be going these days—with high-profile critics jumping into film-festival programming, for instance—I suppose I shouldn't be too picky about deeply intelligent and well-researched works like this one. Maybe one day I'll be able to fully embrace it.
(Los Angeles Plays Itself was screened on Nov. 21 at 92YTribeca; there's another screening scheduled at New York University on Dec. 2. It's not available on DVD, but it's freely available as a torrent, if you're not a stickler about such things.)
Thursday, November 26, 2009
A Merci to Art—and Love
NEW YORK - Before I tackle the next film in my film-review queue, I might as well briefly take stock in what exactly I have to be thankful for this year. It's that time of year again!
Everyone surely has something to be thankful for...but sometimes, in the ceaseless rush of daily life and the stresses of everyday living, it can be difficult to realize just how much you actually have. It's sometimes especially difficult for me: I think I'm just kinda psychologically wired to blow up the things that I think are missing in my life into a massive energy-sucking black hole. It is, in short, hardly a constructive way of living—to lament endlessly on the shortcomings in one's life—and I try to fight this ingrained tendency as much as I possibly can (even if I sometimes indulge in it just to get on my mother's bad side).
Thus, Thanksgiving comes at a rather necessary time in my life this year. As much as I may complain about my not-terribly-ideal living situation (living at home, far away from my preferred New York) and my lengthy commute, among other things, all of those drawbacks mean precious little in the face of the many forms of support, intellectual, emotional or otherwise, that I receive every day from both friends—both in person and online—and yes, family. (Friends and family, I do hope you feel the same support from me, in some way or another.) I am especially thankful for the constant indulgences of my parents, who provide so much of value for me these days—not least a roof under my head and a bed to sleep in—that I'm sometimes neurotic enough to feel I don't deserve their support, as if they're just handing privilege to me without a good reason why. (Frankly, the way I act towards them, I sometimes really don't.)
But the thing I'm most ultimately thankful for? Art. Great books, films, music, paintings, and the like. The intellectual and visceral pleasures afforded by art; the conversations great art can inspire. And I'm certainly thankful to have platforms and willing ears to hear me spout off on the works of art that really turn me on. Life is such an emotional rollercoaster, especially for me, that it's a relief to find in art something I can consistently turn to for relief and possibly even enlightenment (even when it's bad art).
In that spirit, here's another instance of me spouting off on something that turned me on recently:
Frontier of Dawn (2008; Dir.: Philippe Garrel)
[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD]
Of the widely celebrated French auteur Philippe Garrel, I am only familiar with this film and his 2005 Regular Lovers. The thing that fascinates me most about Garrel, based on these two works, is the degree to which he manages to infuse them with a sensuous, nostalgic romanticism while maintaining a distinct distance. The characters may be romantic in their natures, but the films surrounding them aren't necessarily embodiments of said romanticism. Even romanticism, Garrel seems to suggest, has its limits in the real world.
Youthful desire versus real-world disappointment was the great theme of Regular Lovers, a three-hour drama that gradually depicted, with unusual and revelatory vividness, the burnout of the fiery idealism that spread among the students who participated in May '68 in France. Frontier of Dawn is considerably less epic in scope, but it marries a similar visual style to an equally nostalgic yet intelligent and multifaceted look at pained romantic relationships among three young lovers: not just the ways they fall in and out of love, but, most poignantly, the ways the wreckage of a romantic relationship that has run its course can still haunt us long after the fact. (Its portentous-sounding title eventually turns out to be prefectly apt, being that it hinges on a character's after-the-fact awakening of romantic consciousness.)
When it comes to evoking the mysteries of romantic love onscreen, Garrel is far more sober in nature than, say, James Gray (whose wonderful Two Lovers traversed similar emotional terrain earlier this year). We don't easily grasp the characters' motivations in their three-way dance. Why does budding photographer François (Louis Garrel, Philippe's son) seem to suddenly lose interest in celebrity-actress Carole (Laura Smet)? Why inspires Carole her heartbreaking self-destruction, even as she ends her relationship with François? What attracts both François and the relatively more stable Ève (Clémentine Poidatz) to each other? Rather than providing simple answers, Garrel allows their actions to speak for themselves; he's more interested in the outward emotional effects of these characters' actions and what those effects reveal about their individual conceptions of love, and how those conceptions are shattered by reality. It's quite possible that not even these characters know what to do with the emotions welling deep inside them. All the while, Garrel bathes his film in deep tenderness of feeling and the rich textures of William Lubtchansky's beautiful black-and-white cinematography, which gives the film a kind of subtly doomy grandeur.
The surface beguiles, and the characters' inner psychologies fascinate—but, by its third act, as Garrel dares to venture into more mystical, ghostly terrain, Frontier of Dawn gradually acquires a weightier, more tragic dimension. Finally, one of the main characters jumps out of a window and a skull appears in a mirror. However the characters approach the volatile emotions of love, Garrel sees it all as a fragile landscape—not without its considerable joys, but one that ultimately leaves scars, psychic and/or literal, in its wake. Fatalistic, sure; but, as Garrel himself suggests by the low-key manner with which he sets out his vision of amour, c'est la vie.
(Frontier of Dawn will be released on DVD on Jan. 26, 2010; I saw this during a three-day revival run at Anthology Film Archives in New York.)
On a far more optimistic note: Happy Thanksgiving!
Everyone surely has something to be thankful for...but sometimes, in the ceaseless rush of daily life and the stresses of everyday living, it can be difficult to realize just how much you actually have. It's sometimes especially difficult for me: I think I'm just kinda psychologically wired to blow up the things that I think are missing in my life into a massive energy-sucking black hole. It is, in short, hardly a constructive way of living—to lament endlessly on the shortcomings in one's life—and I try to fight this ingrained tendency as much as I possibly can (even if I sometimes indulge in it just to get on my mother's bad side).
Thus, Thanksgiving comes at a rather necessary time in my life this year. As much as I may complain about my not-terribly-ideal living situation (living at home, far away from my preferred New York) and my lengthy commute, among other things, all of those drawbacks mean precious little in the face of the many forms of support, intellectual, emotional or otherwise, that I receive every day from both friends—both in person and online—and yes, family. (Friends and family, I do hope you feel the same support from me, in some way or another.) I am especially thankful for the constant indulgences of my parents, who provide so much of value for me these days—not least a roof under my head and a bed to sleep in—that I'm sometimes neurotic enough to feel I don't deserve their support, as if they're just handing privilege to me without a good reason why. (Frankly, the way I act towards them, I sometimes really don't.)
But the thing I'm most ultimately thankful for? Art. Great books, films, music, paintings, and the like. The intellectual and visceral pleasures afforded by art; the conversations great art can inspire. And I'm certainly thankful to have platforms and willing ears to hear me spout off on the works of art that really turn me on. Life is such an emotional rollercoaster, especially for me, that it's a relief to find in art something I can consistently turn to for relief and possibly even enlightenment (even when it's bad art).
In that spirit, here's another instance of me spouting off on something that turned me on recently:
Frontier of Dawn (2008; Dir.: Philippe Garrel)
[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD]
Of the widely celebrated French auteur Philippe Garrel, I am only familiar with this film and his 2005 Regular Lovers. The thing that fascinates me most about Garrel, based on these two works, is the degree to which he manages to infuse them with a sensuous, nostalgic romanticism while maintaining a distinct distance. The characters may be romantic in their natures, but the films surrounding them aren't necessarily embodiments of said romanticism. Even romanticism, Garrel seems to suggest, has its limits in the real world.
Youthful desire versus real-world disappointment was the great theme of Regular Lovers, a three-hour drama that gradually depicted, with unusual and revelatory vividness, the burnout of the fiery idealism that spread among the students who participated in May '68 in France. Frontier of Dawn is considerably less epic in scope, but it marries a similar visual style to an equally nostalgic yet intelligent and multifaceted look at pained romantic relationships among three young lovers: not just the ways they fall in and out of love, but, most poignantly, the ways the wreckage of a romantic relationship that has run its course can still haunt us long after the fact. (Its portentous-sounding title eventually turns out to be prefectly apt, being that it hinges on a character's after-the-fact awakening of romantic consciousness.)
When it comes to evoking the mysteries of romantic love onscreen, Garrel is far more sober in nature than, say, James Gray (whose wonderful Two Lovers traversed similar emotional terrain earlier this year). We don't easily grasp the characters' motivations in their three-way dance. Why does budding photographer François (Louis Garrel, Philippe's son) seem to suddenly lose interest in celebrity-actress Carole (Laura Smet)? Why inspires Carole her heartbreaking self-destruction, even as she ends her relationship with François? What attracts both François and the relatively more stable Ève (Clémentine Poidatz) to each other? Rather than providing simple answers, Garrel allows their actions to speak for themselves; he's more interested in the outward emotional effects of these characters' actions and what those effects reveal about their individual conceptions of love, and how those conceptions are shattered by reality. It's quite possible that not even these characters know what to do with the emotions welling deep inside them. All the while, Garrel bathes his film in deep tenderness of feeling and the rich textures of William Lubtchansky's beautiful black-and-white cinematography, which gives the film a kind of subtly doomy grandeur.
The surface beguiles, and the characters' inner psychologies fascinate—but, by its third act, as Garrel dares to venture into more mystical, ghostly terrain, Frontier of Dawn gradually acquires a weightier, more tragic dimension. Finally, one of the main characters jumps out of a window and a skull appears in a mirror. However the characters approach the volatile emotions of love, Garrel sees it all as a fragile landscape—not without its considerable joys, but one that ultimately leaves scars, psychic and/or literal, in its wake. Fatalistic, sure; but, as Garrel himself suggests by the low-key manner with which he sets out his vision of amour, c'est la vie.
(Frontier of Dawn will be released on DVD on Jan. 26, 2010; I saw this during a three-day revival run at Anthology Film Archives in New York.)
On a far more optimistic note: Happy Thanksgiving!
A Sense of Perspective, Courtesy of the Coen Brothers (On This Thanksgiving Day)
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. -
A Serious Man (2009; Dir.: Joel & Ethan Coen)
[POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD]
It was a minor shock to go from the gloriously skewed cinematic visions of Richard Kelly, Tsai Ming-liang and Werner Herzog (in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, which I saw at a press screening on Friday, and which I'm holding off writing about until its release at New York's IFC Center on Dec. 11) to the relatively more precise style of the Coen Brothers in their latest film, A Serious Man. But whereas The Box and Face, to borrow a phrase from Pauline Kael, "go mad on the potentialities of movies," the Coens in A Serious Man aim for something more subtle yet equally ambitious: their latest work is no less than a consideration of the existence of God and the cosmos.
Actually, it's much more complex and intimately scaled than it sounds, but it's a reasonable starting point in approaching A Serious Man, which, in some ways, feels more like a thematic summation than either The Man Who Wasn't There or No Country for Old Men. While those films steeped moral, spiritual and philosophical inquiry in idiosyncratic genre playfulness, howevee, A Serious Man makes no such outward concessions. The Coens take an unsparing look at the travails of its Job-like protagonist, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a mild-mannered university professor who finds a whole series of unfortunate events seemingly happening to him at the same time, and who reacts to this avalanche of negativity by having a crisis of faith. Where is God in all of this? He had accepted His existence as fact up until this point, and, in his mind, had been living a good, decent life...and yet now, in a time of need, He is apparently nowhere to be found. But it's not just God that seems to have deserted him; it's a sense of purpose in his life. "I haven't done anything," Gopnik frustratedly proclaims on occasion, lamenting both the lack of fairness he feels in all that is happening to him, but also quietly bemoaning his lack of concrete accomplishments in his life (he may be up for tenure at the university, but, as he himself points out, he hasn't even published a paper yet). All he has to show for his hard work these days is a wannabe divorcée, ungrateful children and an overachieving Asian student who tries to bribe him for a better exam grade.
Gopnik, a mathematics professor, is, by nature, a rational-thinking fellow, and so he, a Jew, rations that visiting rabbis at local synagogues will help him find the answers he seeks. As it turns out, no such luck; the three rabbis he visits provide answers that fail to satisfy him. The first rabbi he visits seems to focus inordinately on the parking lot outside his window as supposedly heartening proof of God's existence; the second rabbi tells a compelling parable that merely ends up at one big question mark of a punchline; and the third rabbi won't even see him, being that he's too busy sitting around and "thinking." None of this is played for the kind of smug snark that Coen detractors consistently accuse them of; in fact, the Coens are too smartly aware of the nature of religious belief—indeed, too serious, in spite of their pitch-black comic sensibility—to lodge easy potshots at the rabbis' own ways of affirming their convictions. The lack of obvious answers, instead, deeply unsettles Gopnik—and us in the audience.
"Accept the mystery," one character says randomly in the film. The quote is a throwaway moment in context, but that, in a nutshell, articulates what A Serious Man is all about: being conscious of what we know and don't know, and understanding how people deal with things they aren't aware of. Some, like Larry Gopnik, look for answers until it nearly tears them apart; others may think about those big questions for a little while before eventually getting back to living their everyday lives. Maybe those in the latter group indeed accept that there are just something they may never know. When you think about it, that sounds very much like a universal human response to the unknown.
One thing I know for sure: the Coen Brothers, in A Serious Man, are genuinely committed to exploring the various facets of their protagonist's tortured soul in ways that are arguably more affecting than the thriller mechanics of their Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men. That said, both those films share a pronounced sense of daring about leaving in gaps in plot and character for all to see; this deliberate lack of closure is where No Country derived its tremendous kick. The Poland-set, Yiddish-language prologue of A Serious Man sets the stage: a husband comes home with a man his wife accuses of being a "dybbuk"; when she stabs him to prove her point, he gradually starts to bleed and staggers out of their house to an uncertain doom. We never quite know 100% if she indeed was right about him being a supernatural being; the scene simply ends with the camera observing them from outside their front door, wind and snow creating a positively ghostly, ambivalent halo.
But its most daring gap comes at its very end...or rather, non-end. Those who found the conclusion of No Country for Old Men outrageous in its inconclusiveness will be equally frustrated by the way this film ends, or rather comes to a jarringly sudden stop. Yes, folks, the Coens have done it again...and once again, once the shock of it wore off, I could think of no other honest way conclude to a film that deals so insistently about the unanswered questions that hang over all of us. What the Coens do is literalize those unanswered questions with an impending tornado—coupled with Gopnik committing the ultimate immoral act (for him)—hanging in the balance as the film audaciously cuts to black. The end. What will happen to Gopnik and to his Midwestern community? Maybe, the Coens drive home with a vengeance, we're just not meant to know.
What I find rather profound about A Serious Man—and it is something that has run throughout the Coens' entire body of work, but which finally finds its most direct and affecting realization here—is something I think Paul Thomas Anderson tried, grandiosely, to get at with the plague-of-frogs climax in Magnolia: As much as we may magnify our own personal problems to near-apocalyptic dimensions, there are always forces greater than us that need to be wrestled with. A Serious Man may be explicitly about its inquiry into the knowledge all of us humans have and seek, but on a deeper level, it's a film about maintaining a healthy sense of perspective of one's place in the cosmos. We may feel like we're the centers of our own universes, but when it comes to the real universe...well, who are we, really? That may sound nihilistic, but I prefer to see it a statement of hard truth—and, in light of some of the mixed feelings I've had about my own place in life recently, an uplifting sentiment in its own way.
And on that note: it's Thanksgiving! If nothing else, be thankful for the momentary pleasures in life. For Gopnik, that's seeing his (high on pot, unbeknownst to him) son become a man at his bar mitzvah. For me, it's become blogging. And for those who are actually reading my recent barrage of posts, I'm thankful to you all...among many other things, of course.
(A Serious Man is currently playing in limited release nationwide.)
A Serious Man (2009; Dir.: Joel & Ethan Coen)
[POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD]
It was a minor shock to go from the gloriously skewed cinematic visions of Richard Kelly, Tsai Ming-liang and Werner Herzog (in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, which I saw at a press screening on Friday, and which I'm holding off writing about until its release at New York's IFC Center on Dec. 11) to the relatively more precise style of the Coen Brothers in their latest film, A Serious Man. But whereas The Box and Face, to borrow a phrase from Pauline Kael, "go mad on the potentialities of movies," the Coens in A Serious Man aim for something more subtle yet equally ambitious: their latest work is no less than a consideration of the existence of God and the cosmos.
Actually, it's much more complex and intimately scaled than it sounds, but it's a reasonable starting point in approaching A Serious Man, which, in some ways, feels more like a thematic summation than either The Man Who Wasn't There or No Country for Old Men. While those films steeped moral, spiritual and philosophical inquiry in idiosyncratic genre playfulness, howevee, A Serious Man makes no such outward concessions. The Coens take an unsparing look at the travails of its Job-like protagonist, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a mild-mannered university professor who finds a whole series of unfortunate events seemingly happening to him at the same time, and who reacts to this avalanche of negativity by having a crisis of faith. Where is God in all of this? He had accepted His existence as fact up until this point, and, in his mind, had been living a good, decent life...and yet now, in a time of need, He is apparently nowhere to be found. But it's not just God that seems to have deserted him; it's a sense of purpose in his life. "I haven't done anything," Gopnik frustratedly proclaims on occasion, lamenting both the lack of fairness he feels in all that is happening to him, but also quietly bemoaning his lack of concrete accomplishments in his life (he may be up for tenure at the university, but, as he himself points out, he hasn't even published a paper yet). All he has to show for his hard work these days is a wannabe divorcée, ungrateful children and an overachieving Asian student who tries to bribe him for a better exam grade.
Gopnik, a mathematics professor, is, by nature, a rational-thinking fellow, and so he, a Jew, rations that visiting rabbis at local synagogues will help him find the answers he seeks. As it turns out, no such luck; the three rabbis he visits provide answers that fail to satisfy him. The first rabbi he visits seems to focus inordinately on the parking lot outside his window as supposedly heartening proof of God's existence; the second rabbi tells a compelling parable that merely ends up at one big question mark of a punchline; and the third rabbi won't even see him, being that he's too busy sitting around and "thinking." None of this is played for the kind of smug snark that Coen detractors consistently accuse them of; in fact, the Coens are too smartly aware of the nature of religious belief—indeed, too serious, in spite of their pitch-black comic sensibility—to lodge easy potshots at the rabbis' own ways of affirming their convictions. The lack of obvious answers, instead, deeply unsettles Gopnik—and us in the audience.
"Accept the mystery," one character says randomly in the film. The quote is a throwaway moment in context, but that, in a nutshell, articulates what A Serious Man is all about: being conscious of what we know and don't know, and understanding how people deal with things they aren't aware of. Some, like Larry Gopnik, look for answers until it nearly tears them apart; others may think about those big questions for a little while before eventually getting back to living their everyday lives. Maybe those in the latter group indeed accept that there are just something they may never know. When you think about it, that sounds very much like a universal human response to the unknown.
One thing I know for sure: the Coen Brothers, in A Serious Man, are genuinely committed to exploring the various facets of their protagonist's tortured soul in ways that are arguably more affecting than the thriller mechanics of their Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men. That said, both those films share a pronounced sense of daring about leaving in gaps in plot and character for all to see; this deliberate lack of closure is where No Country derived its tremendous kick. The Poland-set, Yiddish-language prologue of A Serious Man sets the stage: a husband comes home with a man his wife accuses of being a "dybbuk"; when she stabs him to prove her point, he gradually starts to bleed and staggers out of their house to an uncertain doom. We never quite know 100% if she indeed was right about him being a supernatural being; the scene simply ends with the camera observing them from outside their front door, wind and snow creating a positively ghostly, ambivalent halo.
But its most daring gap comes at its very end...or rather, non-end. Those who found the conclusion of No Country for Old Men outrageous in its inconclusiveness will be equally frustrated by the way this film ends, or rather comes to a jarringly sudden stop. Yes, folks, the Coens have done it again...and once again, once the shock of it wore off, I could think of no other honest way conclude to a film that deals so insistently about the unanswered questions that hang over all of us. What the Coens do is literalize those unanswered questions with an impending tornado—coupled with Gopnik committing the ultimate immoral act (for him)—hanging in the balance as the film audaciously cuts to black. The end. What will happen to Gopnik and to his Midwestern community? Maybe, the Coens drive home with a vengeance, we're just not meant to know.
What I find rather profound about A Serious Man—and it is something that has run throughout the Coens' entire body of work, but which finally finds its most direct and affecting realization here—is something I think Paul Thomas Anderson tried, grandiosely, to get at with the plague-of-frogs climax in Magnolia: As much as we may magnify our own personal problems to near-apocalyptic dimensions, there are always forces greater than us that need to be wrestled with. A Serious Man may be explicitly about its inquiry into the knowledge all of us humans have and seek, but on a deeper level, it's a film about maintaining a healthy sense of perspective of one's place in the cosmos. We may feel like we're the centers of our own universes, but when it comes to the real universe...well, who are we, really? That may sound nihilistic, but I prefer to see it a statement of hard truth—and, in light of some of the mixed feelings I've had about my own place in life recently, an uplifting sentiment in its own way.
And on that note: it's Thanksgiving! If nothing else, be thankful for the momentary pleasures in life. For Gopnik, that's seeing his (high on pot, unbeknownst to him) son become a man at his bar mitzvah. For me, it's become blogging. And for those who are actually reading my recent barrage of posts, I'm thankful to you all...among many other things, of course.
(A Serious Man is currently playing in limited release nationwide.)
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Madness! Madness!
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I still have a bunch of films in my personal review queue, but hopefully, with the Thanksgiving holiday upon us, I'll have time to play massive catch-up. For now...
Face (2009; Dir.: Tsai Ming-liang)
The Box (2009; Dir.: Richard Kelly)
In Psycho, Norman Bates famously said, "We all go a little mad sometimes." That certainly didn't help Bates's victims in that film, but in the cinema, creative madness can be quite the tonic. There's nothing like watching a talented filmmaker push the boundaries of the medium in order to put across a boldly original vision on the screen; even when that filmmaker doesn't entirely succeed in realizing his/her ambitions, sometimes the sheer exhilaration of his/her effort can be enough. One example of this type of shoot-the-works filmmaking is currently playing in theaters right now (though not much longer, it looks like): Richard Kelly's third feature, The Box. Another is Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang's recent, Louvre-funded foray into France, Face. Both are deeply flawed and self-indulgent, but both hit on moments of jaw-dropping cinematic ecstasy that will frequently make you say to yourself, in awed admiration, "Where do these artists come up with this stuff?!!" Wherever these mad visions come from, you surely won't find 'em anywhere else.
Of course, over a week removed from the delirious high of seeing both these films, I'm now put in the (self-imposed) position of actually trying to write something substantive about them. Individual images and scenes from each float around in my head, and those memories make me smile—but when it comes to trying to form my varied impressions into a coherent take on what their respective auteurs are possibly up to, I find myself at a bit of a loss. It could be that their visions come out of something so deeply personal—from their subconscious, perhaps—that maybe they can't even explain it themselves. That's hardly a criticism, as far as I'm concerned; it's just that that elusiveness can make writing about them a bear.
This problem is very much pronounced in Face, which premiered at Cannes earlier in the year to mixed reviews, and which I saw at a free preview screening a little over a week ago at the Asia Society in New York. How to penetrate it? How to even describe it? Tsai Ming-liang's film has only the barest outlines of a plot: it has something to do with recurring Tsai character Hsiao-Kang's (Lee Kang-sheng) attempt to film a modern version of Salomé with an actor named Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud, magnificently reprising a world-weary older version of his star-making role in François Truffaut's The 400 Blows), Fanny Ardant and model Laetitia Casta as Salomé. And yet, despite what sounds like a classic film-within-a-film scenario, Tsai consistently blurs the line between the worlds inside and outside the film, never defining which is which. The idea of art-as-life becomes wildly abstracted here. French New Wave references abound: Antoine and Hsiao-Kang playfully exchange the names of famous cinema directors—it's the only language they both know, probably—as they both handle a bird Antoine calls "Titi"; Ardant and Jeanne Moreau sit around a fancy dining table as Nathalie Baye suddenly pops out from under the table looking for some jewelry; later, offscreen, we hear Moreau's famous Jules and Jim song being played on the piano, with Moreau saying something along the lines of "What have I gotten myself into?" And much of Face has a kind of art-exhibit feel, of artworks coming to life and slowly passing us by, providing an endless feast for the mind and senses. And as with most art exhibitions, Face leaves us to ponder the implications of these various moving artworks after the fact.
Tsai calls his film Face, and perhaps there's a key to this film: The film practically swims in images dealing with the human face. Laetitia Casta is seen taping up windows, as if she had gotten tired of her own reflection and decided to cover it up with black masking tape. (This is especially rich considering who she is in real life.) Antoine's first scene is a striking close-up of his face, leaning sideways to his right, with his eyes closed, as snow falls and the wind blows in his direction; much later, he's looking at his reflection and lamenting at just how much he has aged. At one point, Antoine is seen in an extended close-up with a towel covering his face; the image itself makes for an oddly affecting still life. And another close-up: that of Hsiao-Kang's grieving sister after the death of her (and his) mother, trying to suppress tears as she cleans up the mother's refrigerator. If nothing else, images like these, and many others in this vast cinematic fresco, suggest that Tsai was most interested in celebrating the ways human faces can be posed and lighted to achieve beauty in various forms and environments.
I haven't even gotten around to the out-of-nowhere Mathieu Amalric cameo, or Casta's modern-day version of Salomé's dance of the seven veils, sans music (not even Richard Strauss!), but with meat hooks and tomato sauce. And Tsai's shout-outs to his own previous work can't be of merely passing significance: the random musical numbers, his obsession with water (turned into a hilarious extended gag as a faucet in Hsiao-Kang's Taiwan apartment explodes in escalating comic mayhem), his evocation of loneliness and alienation. Face may be an attempt at a career-summarizing work, or it may just be Tsai self-indulgently basking in all of his usual thematic fascinations, in a foreign country and with the financial backing of one of the premier art museums of the world.
As you can see, I think I've spent more time describing scenes and images than coming up with a coherent interpretation of how they all fit together. Do they even fit together? More to the point: do they need to? Face is forbidding and impenetrable...but it has the heat of a visionary filmmaker throwing caution to the wind and spilling out his palpable joy in the medium onto celluloid. Perhaps the whole thing really is just Tsai indulging in his every whim. And yet, its images are so inspired and rapturous, and its seemingly bottomless mysteries so fascinating to think about, that I find it difficult to be too critical. What is the cinematic medium—heck, what is any art—worth if it constrains artists from being able to let it all hang out? All I know is, I'm very much looking forward to getting inside Tsai Ming-liang's head again. (That, of course, will depend on whether there's an independent distributor out there bold enough to give such an enigmatic film a theatrical run. What say you, Anthology Film Archives?)
In its eventual zeal to explain the mysteries it sets up, The Box proves to be much less of an enigmatic folly than Face, and thus ultimately less interesting to think and write about in the long run. Still, like Face, it is a film that is deliriously alive with bold inspiration. What starts out as an intimately-scaled morality play gradually morphs into a creepy horror film before its horrors begin to take on sci-fi, religious and philosophical flavors. As with his previous films, Donnie Darko and Southland Tales, Kelly has no less than the fate of humanity on his mind, wondering whether humanity is indeed worth saving. Such grand ambition could easily have become oppressive in the soulless Dark Knight manner, but unlike Christopher Nolan in that film, Kelly locates a warm human center in his sympathetic central couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden), thus cutting off any easy moral responses to the agonizing dilemmas they face at the beginning of the film and at the end. Meanwhile, Kelly's plot—based on Richard Matheson's short story "Button, Button," which was adapted into a 1980s "Twilight Zone" episode—tosses in alien life forms, water monoliths, a 2001-style trip into the afterlife, and many more insane plot twists and visual coups. Kelly may have more chutzpah than intellect, really, but its visionary audacity is nevertheless blissful.
Besides, any film that is imaginative enough to have a car accident hinge on a hypnotized man in a Santa suit ringing a bell is all right in my book. As far as I'm concerned, such moments of what-the-hell invention constitute the height of cinema.
Face (2009; Dir.: Tsai Ming-liang)
The Box (2009; Dir.: Richard Kelly)
In Psycho, Norman Bates famously said, "We all go a little mad sometimes." That certainly didn't help Bates's victims in that film, but in the cinema, creative madness can be quite the tonic. There's nothing like watching a talented filmmaker push the boundaries of the medium in order to put across a boldly original vision on the screen; even when that filmmaker doesn't entirely succeed in realizing his/her ambitions, sometimes the sheer exhilaration of his/her effort can be enough. One example of this type of shoot-the-works filmmaking is currently playing in theaters right now (though not much longer, it looks like): Richard Kelly's third feature, The Box. Another is Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang's recent, Louvre-funded foray into France, Face. Both are deeply flawed and self-indulgent, but both hit on moments of jaw-dropping cinematic ecstasy that will frequently make you say to yourself, in awed admiration, "Where do these artists come up with this stuff?!!" Wherever these mad visions come from, you surely won't find 'em anywhere else.
Of course, over a week removed from the delirious high of seeing both these films, I'm now put in the (self-imposed) position of actually trying to write something substantive about them. Individual images and scenes from each float around in my head, and those memories make me smile—but when it comes to trying to form my varied impressions into a coherent take on what their respective auteurs are possibly up to, I find myself at a bit of a loss. It could be that their visions come out of something so deeply personal—from their subconscious, perhaps—that maybe they can't even explain it themselves. That's hardly a criticism, as far as I'm concerned; it's just that that elusiveness can make writing about them a bear.
This problem is very much pronounced in Face, which premiered at Cannes earlier in the year to mixed reviews, and which I saw at a free preview screening a little over a week ago at the Asia Society in New York. How to penetrate it? How to even describe it? Tsai Ming-liang's film has only the barest outlines of a plot: it has something to do with recurring Tsai character Hsiao-Kang's (Lee Kang-sheng) attempt to film a modern version of Salomé with an actor named Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud, magnificently reprising a world-weary older version of his star-making role in François Truffaut's The 400 Blows), Fanny Ardant and model Laetitia Casta as Salomé. And yet, despite what sounds like a classic film-within-a-film scenario, Tsai consistently blurs the line between the worlds inside and outside the film, never defining which is which. The idea of art-as-life becomes wildly abstracted here. French New Wave references abound: Antoine and Hsiao-Kang playfully exchange the names of famous cinema directors—it's the only language they both know, probably—as they both handle a bird Antoine calls "Titi"; Ardant and Jeanne Moreau sit around a fancy dining table as Nathalie Baye suddenly pops out from under the table looking for some jewelry; later, offscreen, we hear Moreau's famous Jules and Jim song being played on the piano, with Moreau saying something along the lines of "What have I gotten myself into?" And much of Face has a kind of art-exhibit feel, of artworks coming to life and slowly passing us by, providing an endless feast for the mind and senses. And as with most art exhibitions, Face leaves us to ponder the implications of these various moving artworks after the fact.
Tsai calls his film Face, and perhaps there's a key to this film: The film practically swims in images dealing with the human face. Laetitia Casta is seen taping up windows, as if she had gotten tired of her own reflection and decided to cover it up with black masking tape. (This is especially rich considering who she is in real life.) Antoine's first scene is a striking close-up of his face, leaning sideways to his right, with his eyes closed, as snow falls and the wind blows in his direction; much later, he's looking at his reflection and lamenting at just how much he has aged. At one point, Antoine is seen in an extended close-up with a towel covering his face; the image itself makes for an oddly affecting still life. And another close-up: that of Hsiao-Kang's grieving sister after the death of her (and his) mother, trying to suppress tears as she cleans up the mother's refrigerator. If nothing else, images like these, and many others in this vast cinematic fresco, suggest that Tsai was most interested in celebrating the ways human faces can be posed and lighted to achieve beauty in various forms and environments.
I haven't even gotten around to the out-of-nowhere Mathieu Amalric cameo, or Casta's modern-day version of Salomé's dance of the seven veils, sans music (not even Richard Strauss!), but with meat hooks and tomato sauce. And Tsai's shout-outs to his own previous work can't be of merely passing significance: the random musical numbers, his obsession with water (turned into a hilarious extended gag as a faucet in Hsiao-Kang's Taiwan apartment explodes in escalating comic mayhem), his evocation of loneliness and alienation. Face may be an attempt at a career-summarizing work, or it may just be Tsai self-indulgently basking in all of his usual thematic fascinations, in a foreign country and with the financial backing of one of the premier art museums of the world.
As you can see, I think I've spent more time describing scenes and images than coming up with a coherent interpretation of how they all fit together. Do they even fit together? More to the point: do they need to? Face is forbidding and impenetrable...but it has the heat of a visionary filmmaker throwing caution to the wind and spilling out his palpable joy in the medium onto celluloid. Perhaps the whole thing really is just Tsai indulging in his every whim. And yet, its images are so inspired and rapturous, and its seemingly bottomless mysteries so fascinating to think about, that I find it difficult to be too critical. What is the cinematic medium—heck, what is any art—worth if it constrains artists from being able to let it all hang out? All I know is, I'm very much looking forward to getting inside Tsai Ming-liang's head again. (That, of course, will depend on whether there's an independent distributor out there bold enough to give such an enigmatic film a theatrical run. What say you, Anthology Film Archives?)
In its eventual zeal to explain the mysteries it sets up, The Box proves to be much less of an enigmatic folly than Face, and thus ultimately less interesting to think and write about in the long run. Still, like Face, it is a film that is deliriously alive with bold inspiration. What starts out as an intimately-scaled morality play gradually morphs into a creepy horror film before its horrors begin to take on sci-fi, religious and philosophical flavors. As with his previous films, Donnie Darko and Southland Tales, Kelly has no less than the fate of humanity on his mind, wondering whether humanity is indeed worth saving. Such grand ambition could easily have become oppressive in the soulless Dark Knight manner, but unlike Christopher Nolan in that film, Kelly locates a warm human center in his sympathetic central couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden), thus cutting off any easy moral responses to the agonizing dilemmas they face at the beginning of the film and at the end. Meanwhile, Kelly's plot—based on Richard Matheson's short story "Button, Button," which was adapted into a 1980s "Twilight Zone" episode—tosses in alien life forms, water monoliths, a 2001-style trip into the afterlife, and many more insane plot twists and visual coups. Kelly may have more chutzpah than intellect, really, but its visionary audacity is nevertheless blissful.
Besides, any film that is imaginative enough to have a car accident hinge on a hypnotized man in a Santa suit ringing a bell is all right in my book. As far as I'm concerned, such moments of what-the-hell invention constitute the height of cinema.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Behind the Scenes: The Ordinary Highlighting the Extraordinary
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I've just come off a full weekend of voracious cinephilia, in which I took in six films (all of them of the art-house variety, so no sexy vampires and werewolves for me) in the span of two days in New York. Lots of revelations to share with you all—but I find myself with a fairly healthy backlog of films I've seen in the past couple of weeks that I have yet to write about! As usual with me: so many movies, so little time.
For now, then, here are some brief thoughts on two films that are more thematically connected than you might think:
This Is It (2009; Dir.: Kenny Ortega)
La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009; Dir.: Frederick Wiseman)
One focuses on the backstage rehearsals of a late pop star's never-to-be-seen-in-its-final-form stage show, while the other closely examines the entire backstage environment—the creative and business sides—of a ballet company. Two totally different worlds, yes, but the focus is essentially the same: the sometimes arduous process of artistic creation. I usually find this kind of subject to be inherently fascinating, and these two films are no exception. Your mileage may vary.
For me, the Michael Jackson media freakshow long overtook the brilliant musical artist/showman in my mind before his recent death finally forced me to fully appreciate his considerable talent. The value, then, of Ortega's documentary tribute to Jackson is to brush off the tabloid cobwebs and train its eye almost entirely on Jackson the way he arguably ought to be remembered: as a tremendously hard-working and soulful entertainer first and foremost. In that way, I can't entirely get on board with the claims of "exploitation" that some critics have lodged against This Is It. I understand how some might see this footage as unsuitably morbid, and I suppose inherently it is. To me, though, the passion, imagination and attention to detail he exudes—his life force, in other words—even in this rehearsal footage presents its own argument. Even after all of his grotesque antics of the past two decades or so have been beaten to death by the media, here is Michael Jackson, ever the perfectionist, performing with nary a hint of world-weariness and creative burnout. His essential innocence—a quality that, even at less than 100 percent, still remains in his voice—seemingly remained intact until the end. (He even tries to pass it on to his stage collaborators, most memorably with a female guitarist trying to fill Eddie Van Halen's shoes in "Beat It.")
So yeah, I enjoyed This Is It. The performances, some of them undoubtedly rough around the edges, are generally invigorating as vocal and visual spectacles; and as a portrait of the King of Pop himself, it doesn't so much illuminate Jackson as it crystallizes some of his longstanding mysteries: how, for instance, he manages to be so close with his collaborators and yet remain so aloof and above them at the same time. For others, though, the film, with its worshipful "Chorus Line"-style interviews and lack of interest in touching on his troubled past, would most likely muster up all the cinematic weight of an extended DVD extra. Veteran documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman's La Danse would probably be more up their alley.
As usual with the ever-inquisitive Wiseman, La Danse takes a particular environment and digs deep into its nooks and crannies. His subject this time is the Paris Opera Ballet, but Wiseman's scope is far wider than Ortega's in This Is It. Dancers, choreographers, artistic directors, even down to costume designers and janitors: Wiseman observes them all in in his 158-minute film as they proceed through the processes of putting together an entire season of ballet performances. There are no mysterious and charismatic central figures here, and no direct interviews (both these non-attributes are Wiseman signatures, from his 1967 debut Titicut Follies onward); La Danse keeps a rigorous and immersive distance throughout.
What Wiseman, through his patience and curiosity, unearths is not necessarily groundbreaking. We all probably realize, in the back of our minds, that the process of artistic creation can sometimes be strenuously difficult, and the business of trying to fund a whole season of performances while maintaining a high artistic standard is about as hard. But when Wiseman presents the fruit of their labors on screen, the results—unobtrusively edited and beautifully shot records of seven lengthy dance selections, ranging from Baroque settings to spiky modern choreography—surely justify the immense dedication on all sides. And yet, in this particular cinematic context, the dance performances here feel less like creative climaxes than mere facts of life for these performers: This is what they do, and soon afterward they're back rehearsing something else. Perhaps the major achievement of La Danse is that it creates the feel of daily life being lived even as these dancers pull off wondrous artistic miracles on a regular basis. The extraordinary becomes ordinary, and yet the ordinary highlights the extraordinary.
(This Is It is still playing in theaters nationwide, while La Danse has been held over at New York's Film Forum.)
For now, then, here are some brief thoughts on two films that are more thematically connected than you might think:
This Is It (2009; Dir.: Kenny Ortega)
La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009; Dir.: Frederick Wiseman)
One focuses on the backstage rehearsals of a late pop star's never-to-be-seen-in-its-final-form stage show, while the other closely examines the entire backstage environment—the creative and business sides—of a ballet company. Two totally different worlds, yes, but the focus is essentially the same: the sometimes arduous process of artistic creation. I usually find this kind of subject to be inherently fascinating, and these two films are no exception. Your mileage may vary.
For me, the Michael Jackson media freakshow long overtook the brilliant musical artist/showman in my mind before his recent death finally forced me to fully appreciate his considerable talent. The value, then, of Ortega's documentary tribute to Jackson is to brush off the tabloid cobwebs and train its eye almost entirely on Jackson the way he arguably ought to be remembered: as a tremendously hard-working and soulful entertainer first and foremost. In that way, I can't entirely get on board with the claims of "exploitation" that some critics have lodged against This Is It. I understand how some might see this footage as unsuitably morbid, and I suppose inherently it is. To me, though, the passion, imagination and attention to detail he exudes—his life force, in other words—even in this rehearsal footage presents its own argument. Even after all of his grotesque antics of the past two decades or so have been beaten to death by the media, here is Michael Jackson, ever the perfectionist, performing with nary a hint of world-weariness and creative burnout. His essential innocence—a quality that, even at less than 100 percent, still remains in his voice—seemingly remained intact until the end. (He even tries to pass it on to his stage collaborators, most memorably with a female guitarist trying to fill Eddie Van Halen's shoes in "Beat It.")
So yeah, I enjoyed This Is It. The performances, some of them undoubtedly rough around the edges, are generally invigorating as vocal and visual spectacles; and as a portrait of the King of Pop himself, it doesn't so much illuminate Jackson as it crystallizes some of his longstanding mysteries: how, for instance, he manages to be so close with his collaborators and yet remain so aloof and above them at the same time. For others, though, the film, with its worshipful "Chorus Line"-style interviews and lack of interest in touching on his troubled past, would most likely muster up all the cinematic weight of an extended DVD extra. Veteran documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman's La Danse would probably be more up their alley.
As usual with the ever-inquisitive Wiseman, La Danse takes a particular environment and digs deep into its nooks and crannies. His subject this time is the Paris Opera Ballet, but Wiseman's scope is far wider than Ortega's in This Is It. Dancers, choreographers, artistic directors, even down to costume designers and janitors: Wiseman observes them all in in his 158-minute film as they proceed through the processes of putting together an entire season of ballet performances. There are no mysterious and charismatic central figures here, and no direct interviews (both these non-attributes are Wiseman signatures, from his 1967 debut Titicut Follies onward); La Danse keeps a rigorous and immersive distance throughout.
What Wiseman, through his patience and curiosity, unearths is not necessarily groundbreaking. We all probably realize, in the back of our minds, that the process of artistic creation can sometimes be strenuously difficult, and the business of trying to fund a whole season of performances while maintaining a high artistic standard is about as hard. But when Wiseman presents the fruit of their labors on screen, the results—unobtrusively edited and beautifully shot records of seven lengthy dance selections, ranging from Baroque settings to spiky modern choreography—surely justify the immense dedication on all sides. And yet, in this particular cinematic context, the dance performances here feel less like creative climaxes than mere facts of life for these performers: This is what they do, and soon afterward they're back rehearsing something else. Perhaps the major achievement of La Danse is that it creates the feel of daily life being lived even as these dancers pull off wondrous artistic miracles on a regular basis. The extraordinary becomes ordinary, and yet the ordinary highlights the extraordinary.
(This Is It is still playing in theaters nationwide, while La Danse has been held over at New York's Film Forum.)
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Intellectual Versus the Visceral
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - For once, I'm actually finding myself excited by the prospect of coming home from a long day of work to try to write reviews such as the ones I've been tossing off recently. If nothing else, it makes me feel like I'm, I dunno, making some progress in my attempts to, if not conquer the world of film criticism, at least grab a piece of it.
In that spirit, onwards to...
Antichrist (2009, Dir.: Lars von Trier)
[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD]
Riding into its recent theatrical release on a gust of controversy, Lars von Trier's fever dream of psychotherapy, marital distress, and primeval violence promised, simply from the press it generated at its disastrous Cannes premiere earlier in the year, to be one of those divisive, love-it-or-hate-it propositions. Leave it to me, then, to stake out the middle ground on this one.
For me, Antichrist presents an interesting case of a film that impresses almost entirely on the strength of its images, by turns hauntingly atmospheric and brute-force blunt in the way they explore von Trier's ideas about guilt, sexual power and the nature of evil. I don't really find said ideas particularly interesting. Antichrist more or less adds up to a rather muddled treatise on the nature of feminine evil, not so much universal evil; basically, it's witchcraft through the ages, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, etc. Charlotte Gainsbourg's nameless anguished matriarch, it is revealed, has become dangerously obsessed with the notion, borne out of academic research, that women have been carrying inherent evil inside them throughout history; her obsession tips over into mania in its grand Guignol final act as she, among other things, smashes her husband's testicles; jerks off her husband's dick to a bloody ejaculation; and ultimately mutilates her own clitoris, out of fear of her own woman-ness, I suppose. So basically, all women are vengeful, sex-crazed bitches at heart? Um, riiiiiight. All of this is, presented in a pseudo-Christian light, and nary a hint of humane empathy, suggesting that such behavior is merely hearkening back to primal instinct.
And yet, while others have been able to laugh off Antichrist, dismissing the whole thing as just another one of von Trier's elaborate pranks, I find myself not quite being able to join that crowd. The film, for all its incoherence, affected me, if not emotionally, then purely on a visceral level. Anthony Dod Mantle's digital-video photography successfully captures a sense of Biblical portent amidst the environment the central couple ironically call "Eden," and von Trier eventually piles on the nightmare imagery. The image of the fox eating his own innards and saying, in a deep voice, "Chaos reigns," has by now become as much an object of ridicule as it is the film's calling card, but it actually plays quite unsettlingly in context, suggesting the hell about to befall their home away from home. (Even now, I still feel a chill remembering the image.) And its final act truly is horrific, for better and/or worse; it's been a long time since I've felt the urge to cover my eyes during a film.
None of this adds up to the kind of genuinely disturbing experience that von Trier seems to be aiming for in Antichrist (whether von Trier really did make this film in the midst of a major depression, as he has publicly claimed, it isn't readily apparent in the finished work)...but nevertheless, I can't wholly dismiss it. The sheer expressive power and dreamlike flights of fancy contained here suggest an artist possessed to bare all of his obsessions on the screen, and lay it all out there, leaving the viewer to figure out what to make of it—indeed, whether to take it or leave it. In that sense, I admire Antichrist. Intellectually, I don't find I have much use for it; but if we all agree that film is primarily a visual medium, on that level it's often startlingly vivid and effective. The choice is yours. (Currently playing at the IFC Center in New York)
In that spirit, onwards to...
Antichrist (2009, Dir.: Lars von Trier)
[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD]
Riding into its recent theatrical release on a gust of controversy, Lars von Trier's fever dream of psychotherapy, marital distress, and primeval violence promised, simply from the press it generated at its disastrous Cannes premiere earlier in the year, to be one of those divisive, love-it-or-hate-it propositions. Leave it to me, then, to stake out the middle ground on this one.
For me, Antichrist presents an interesting case of a film that impresses almost entirely on the strength of its images, by turns hauntingly atmospheric and brute-force blunt in the way they explore von Trier's ideas about guilt, sexual power and the nature of evil. I don't really find said ideas particularly interesting. Antichrist more or less adds up to a rather muddled treatise on the nature of feminine evil, not so much universal evil; basically, it's witchcraft through the ages, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, etc. Charlotte Gainsbourg's nameless anguished matriarch, it is revealed, has become dangerously obsessed with the notion, borne out of academic research, that women have been carrying inherent evil inside them throughout history; her obsession tips over into mania in its grand Guignol final act as she, among other things, smashes her husband's testicles; jerks off her husband's dick to a bloody ejaculation; and ultimately mutilates her own clitoris, out of fear of her own woman-ness, I suppose. So basically, all women are vengeful, sex-crazed bitches at heart? Um, riiiiiight. All of this is, presented in a pseudo-Christian light, and nary a hint of humane empathy, suggesting that such behavior is merely hearkening back to primal instinct.
And yet, while others have been able to laugh off Antichrist, dismissing the whole thing as just another one of von Trier's elaborate pranks, I find myself not quite being able to join that crowd. The film, for all its incoherence, affected me, if not emotionally, then purely on a visceral level. Anthony Dod Mantle's digital-video photography successfully captures a sense of Biblical portent amidst the environment the central couple ironically call "Eden," and von Trier eventually piles on the nightmare imagery. The image of the fox eating his own innards and saying, in a deep voice, "Chaos reigns," has by now become as much an object of ridicule as it is the film's calling card, but it actually plays quite unsettlingly in context, suggesting the hell about to befall their home away from home. (Even now, I still feel a chill remembering the image.) And its final act truly is horrific, for better and/or worse; it's been a long time since I've felt the urge to cover my eyes during a film.
None of this adds up to the kind of genuinely disturbing experience that von Trier seems to be aiming for in Antichrist (whether von Trier really did make this film in the midst of a major depression, as he has publicly claimed, it isn't readily apparent in the finished work)...but nevertheless, I can't wholly dismiss it. The sheer expressive power and dreamlike flights of fancy contained here suggest an artist possessed to bare all of his obsessions on the screen, and lay it all out there, leaving the viewer to figure out what to make of it—indeed, whether to take it or leave it. In that sense, I admire Antichrist. Intellectually, I don't find I have much use for it; but if we all agree that film is primarily a visual medium, on that level it's often startlingly vivid and effective. The choice is yours. (Currently playing at the IFC Center in New York)
Friday, November 13, 2009
A Lame Shaggy Dog
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I am sitting right now in a waiting room in Saint Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick, having just received news that a stomach operation my mother had to undergo this morning---the removal of a benign tumor---has gone "better than expected." Not only is she pretty much cured, but she'll actually be able to eat normally! That's something her doctor here had not initially expected.
Music to my ears!
My mother will have to stay in the hospital for a few more days, so I'm waiting to see her for one last time before I head back home. In the meantime, though...I might as well actually fulfill a promise on this blog for once and toss off a few words on...
The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009, Dir.: Grant Heslov)
The title of this film suggests a shaggy-dog story, and that's basically what Heslov delivers, with all the requisite weight of these kinds of fantastical anecdotes, that being very-little-to-none. Heslov can't even be bothered to work up any infectious comic outrage at the general silliness, selfishness and political maneuvering on display; the best he can do is affect the same above-it-all snarky attitude Mike Nichols cruised on in Charlie Wilson's War a couple years ago.
There's nothing actively irritating about The Men Who Stare at Goats; on its own modest terms, it's sufficiently amusing. And there is admittedly something rather cathartic about its climax, in which soldiers at an Iraqi army camp are seen tripping on acid, laughing uncontrollably and freaking out all over the place. But I can't help but shake the feeling that movies like this, the Nichols film, and Steven Soderbergh's exasperating recent "comedy" The Informant! are just taking the easy way out: evincing no particular point-of-view, content instead to score smug laughs at situations that ought to make your blood boil even as it makes you laugh out loud. (See this year's superior, if slightly overpraised, U.K. import In the Loop for an example of a hilarious satire that draws blood and inspires genuine anger.)
Coming soon: Antichrist and whatever else I get around to seeing this coming weekend (I hope the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man will be one of the films I get to finally see).
Music to my ears!
My mother will have to stay in the hospital for a few more days, so I'm waiting to see her for one last time before I head back home. In the meantime, though...I might as well actually fulfill a promise on this blog for once and toss off a few words on...
The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009, Dir.: Grant Heslov)
The title of this film suggests a shaggy-dog story, and that's basically what Heslov delivers, with all the requisite weight of these kinds of fantastical anecdotes, that being very-little-to-none. Heslov can't even be bothered to work up any infectious comic outrage at the general silliness, selfishness and political maneuvering on display; the best he can do is affect the same above-it-all snarky attitude Mike Nichols cruised on in Charlie Wilson's War a couple years ago.
There's nothing actively irritating about The Men Who Stare at Goats; on its own modest terms, it's sufficiently amusing. And there is admittedly something rather cathartic about its climax, in which soldiers at an Iraqi army camp are seen tripping on acid, laughing uncontrollably and freaking out all over the place. But I can't help but shake the feeling that movies like this, the Nichols film, and Steven Soderbergh's exasperating recent "comedy" The Informant! are just taking the easy way out: evincing no particular point-of-view, content instead to score smug laughs at situations that ought to make your blood boil even as it makes you laugh out loud. (See this year's superior, if slightly overpraised, U.K. import In the Loop for an example of a hilarious satire that draws blood and inspires genuine anger.)
Coming soon: Antichrist and whatever else I get around to seeing this coming weekend (I hope the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man will be one of the films I get to finally see).
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Cinema, Meet Theater; Theater, Cinema
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I'm going to try to start a weekly feature on this (as ever poorly maintained) blog in which I basically just collect some thoughts on films I've seen over the course of a given week. I won't promise anything earth-shatteringly revelatory, but at least it will keep my writing muscles somewhat sharp.
So what'd I see this past weekend in the theaters (I'm sticking for now with theatrical experiences)? Let's go in order of viewing, starting with...
Bronson (2008, Dir.: Nicolas Winding Refn)
Well yes, the subject of this film is Michael Peterson, aka "Charles Bronson," a man with a reputation as Britain's most violent and notorious prisoner. But it's not really about "Charlie Bronson" in the sense you might expect from a so-called biopic. Refn isn't really interested in exploring the man behind the notoriety; this isn't really a character study. Instead, Refn focuses more on toying with the gap between Refn's self-created image and the utter emptiness at his core, an emptiness that his sheer, charismatic boldness of gesture can go only so far to camouflage. Perhaps that is the true essence of Bronson, then: It's a ceaselessly kinetic yet shallow movie, but only because, Refn and his very fine lead actor Tom Hardy suggest, the man himself was basically a shallow vessel filled only by his desire for attention at any cost. None of those gestures reveal anything about him, but maybe that's because there ultimately isn't anything to reveal. (Never does the man come off as a reflective fellow in the least.)
Telling, then, that Refn not only imbues Bronson with all sorts of theatrical gestures onscreen---dramatic classical music cues, skewed camera angles, even an animated sequence illustrating Peterson's artwork in his more recent prison years---but also incorporates a theater as an actual setting, with Peterson seen telling his story on a (figurative and surreally lighted) stage to an audience, and telling it with a wide variety of styles (he's seen with mime make-up at a few points). We're always aware of the events in the film as a sort of performance, with Peterson constantly angling for attention. And when he doesn't receive the attention he desires---especially in the scenes during his brief (and apparently apocryphal) release for "good behavior"---the scenes have the slight yet palpable feel of bad theater, noticeable mostly through the haltingly delivered dialogue.
All of this formal play could quite possibly be seen as a feature-length set-up for the film's final, gut-punch shot of our central figure. He's glimpsed, as the camera slowly zooms out, stuck in a very tight cell, nude and bloodied. And for perhaps the first time in the film, you see "Charlie Bronson" without the benefit of dramatic lighting, Peterson's voiceover narration or classical-music cues. The man you saw performing tonight stands before you as he truly is, behind the madness, writhing in some kind of pain. And the view is...well, ugly. And pathetic. And, in its own way, revelatory.
You might say that Bronson is an intriguingly empty movie. I'll leave it up to you, dear readers, to determine whether that's a good or bad thing. (Currently playing at Village East Cinema, though its run looks to be ending tomorrow.)
The Red Shoes (1948, Dir.: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
In a word: glorious. This was my first encounter with this much-celebrated British Technicolor masterwork, in a new 35mm print playing at New York's Film Forum---and boy, am I glad I decided to make my first acquaintance with this grand work of cinema on a big screen! The print is gorgeous, certainly: It's not enough to simply say the colors vividly pop, but also that the vividness allows one to appreciate just how imaginative Powell & Pressburger's deployment of such colors genuinely are regarding moods and settings scene-by-scene. (If it is possible at all for a film to feel both real and fantastic, sometimes in the same scene, Powell, Pressburger and cinematographer Jack Cardiff manage it.) Above all, though, there is the magnificent film itself: not only a wondrous, life-enhancing celebration of artistic creation, in all its joys and agonies, but also a tragedy with a heroine torn between her desire to continue her artistic pursuit and living a life outside of it. (It's a dilemma that I struggle with almost daily, though in far less melodramatic terms.) The way she ends up resolving this dilemma is both devastating and brutally poetic.
If nothing else, I just want to bask again in the film's centerpiece 17-minute ballet sequence, which pushes a ballet performance into the realm of the surreal and dreamlike in a manner that can only be described as sublime. It feels like art soaring into the heavens. You know that high you get after you think you've had a great artistic experience? You know what I'm talking about? Well, the ballet sequence in The Red Shoes comes damn close to visualizing that feeling. Awesome.
There's a couple more---The Men Who Stare at Goats and Lars von Trier's by-now notorious Antichrist---but I'm afraid, at this rather late hour, I will have to leave that for another day. Hopefully not a day too soon!
So what'd I see this past weekend in the theaters (I'm sticking for now with theatrical experiences)? Let's go in order of viewing, starting with...
Bronson (2008, Dir.: Nicolas Winding Refn)
Well yes, the subject of this film is Michael Peterson, aka "Charles Bronson," a man with a reputation as Britain's most violent and notorious prisoner. But it's not really about "Charlie Bronson" in the sense you might expect from a so-called biopic. Refn isn't really interested in exploring the man behind the notoriety; this isn't really a character study. Instead, Refn focuses more on toying with the gap between Refn's self-created image and the utter emptiness at his core, an emptiness that his sheer, charismatic boldness of gesture can go only so far to camouflage. Perhaps that is the true essence of Bronson, then: It's a ceaselessly kinetic yet shallow movie, but only because, Refn and his very fine lead actor Tom Hardy suggest, the man himself was basically a shallow vessel filled only by his desire for attention at any cost. None of those gestures reveal anything about him, but maybe that's because there ultimately isn't anything to reveal. (Never does the man come off as a reflective fellow in the least.)
Telling, then, that Refn not only imbues Bronson with all sorts of theatrical gestures onscreen---dramatic classical music cues, skewed camera angles, even an animated sequence illustrating Peterson's artwork in his more recent prison years---but also incorporates a theater as an actual setting, with Peterson seen telling his story on a (figurative and surreally lighted) stage to an audience, and telling it with a wide variety of styles (he's seen with mime make-up at a few points). We're always aware of the events in the film as a sort of performance, with Peterson constantly angling for attention. And when he doesn't receive the attention he desires---especially in the scenes during his brief (and apparently apocryphal) release for "good behavior"---the scenes have the slight yet palpable feel of bad theater, noticeable mostly through the haltingly delivered dialogue.
All of this formal play could quite possibly be seen as a feature-length set-up for the film's final, gut-punch shot of our central figure. He's glimpsed, as the camera slowly zooms out, stuck in a very tight cell, nude and bloodied. And for perhaps the first time in the film, you see "Charlie Bronson" without the benefit of dramatic lighting, Peterson's voiceover narration or classical-music cues. The man you saw performing tonight stands before you as he truly is, behind the madness, writhing in some kind of pain. And the view is...well, ugly. And pathetic. And, in its own way, revelatory.
You might say that Bronson is an intriguingly empty movie. I'll leave it up to you, dear readers, to determine whether that's a good or bad thing. (Currently playing at Village East Cinema, though its run looks to be ending tomorrow.)
The Red Shoes (1948, Dir.: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
In a word: glorious. This was my first encounter with this much-celebrated British Technicolor masterwork, in a new 35mm print playing at New York's Film Forum---and boy, am I glad I decided to make my first acquaintance with this grand work of cinema on a big screen! The print is gorgeous, certainly: It's not enough to simply say the colors vividly pop, but also that the vividness allows one to appreciate just how imaginative Powell & Pressburger's deployment of such colors genuinely are regarding moods and settings scene-by-scene. (If it is possible at all for a film to feel both real and fantastic, sometimes in the same scene, Powell, Pressburger and cinematographer Jack Cardiff manage it.) Above all, though, there is the magnificent film itself: not only a wondrous, life-enhancing celebration of artistic creation, in all its joys and agonies, but also a tragedy with a heroine torn between her desire to continue her artistic pursuit and living a life outside of it. (It's a dilemma that I struggle with almost daily, though in far less melodramatic terms.) The way she ends up resolving this dilemma is both devastating and brutally poetic.
If nothing else, I just want to bask again in the film's centerpiece 17-minute ballet sequence, which pushes a ballet performance into the realm of the surreal and dreamlike in a manner that can only be described as sublime. It feels like art soaring into the heavens. You know that high you get after you think you've had a great artistic experience? You know what I'm talking about? Well, the ballet sequence in The Red Shoes comes damn close to visualizing that feeling. Awesome.
There's a couple more---The Men Who Stare at Goats and Lars von Trier's by-now notorious Antichrist---but I'm afraid, at this rather late hour, I will have to leave that for another day. Hopefully not a day too soon!
Monday, September 21, 2009
Link for the Day: An Interview With Sally Potter
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - For this post, I just wanted to invite you all to enjoy my latest contribution to The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog: an interview with director Sally Potter, whose latest film, Rage, premiered today not in theaters, but on mobile phones. (The film's minimalistic form more or less dictates the approach.)
I think that's it for now. Oh, yeah: also, Claire Denis's latest film, the generational family drama 35 Shots of Rum, gets my highest recommendation. In its warmth and poetry, it just about rivals Olivier Assayas's equally beautiful and profound Summer Hours (still my favorite film of the year to date, though both Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and maybe Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control---both film as far from the Assayas and Denis as possible---are running it very close). So there's that.
I think that's it for now. Oh, yeah: also, Claire Denis's latest film, the generational family drama 35 Shots of Rum, gets my highest recommendation. In its warmth and poetry, it just about rivals Olivier Assayas's equally beautiful and profound Summer Hours (still my favorite film of the year to date, though both Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and maybe Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control---both film as far from the Assayas and Denis as possible---are running it very close). So there's that.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Why I Love This Business We Call Film Criticism
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - A couple of days ago, someone at work sent an email to a whole bunch of people that featured a picturesque photo of a castle high up in the mountains in Burma. When I saw the photo, I immediately made a connection in mind: this looks like something out of Powell & Pressburger's Black Narcissus! So, to a couple of editors sitting next to me who reacted to the photo with quiet amazement, I sent a still I found on Google from Black Narcissus of the palace in the Himalayas in which the film's gradually crazed drama takes place. One of them turned around to me and started asking me a bit more about the film it came from: what it was about, whether I liked it (I most certainly do), whether that still image really was color or whether it was colorized from black-and-white, whether there were any famous names in it (I mentioned Deborah Kerr, and she immediately recognized the name).
It was immediately after this brief exchange that I realized why I'm really interested in this whole film-criticism business. Really, it's simple: I love movies. I love talking about them to people who are willing to listen (even if I'm probably better than expressing my thoughts on a film in writing than I am in person). I love sharing my enthusiasms, my likes and dislikes. I love being turned on by a really great film.
All of these things give me a great pleasure. And dammit, I want to feel and express that kind of pleasure on a daily basis, full-time, for the rest of my life. Is there anything wrong with that? At this point, I don't care if that makes me sound impossibly naïve or impractical (all adjective my mother has used to characterize my foolish pursuit of the profession---cuz most regular folk don't care about "movie critiques," says she).
That's it. No higher purpose, really. Watching, absorbing, learning and gleaning insights and revelations from films---and from art in general---makes me happy. And writing about them pleases me immensely as well. Do I really need any other reason?
It was immediately after this brief exchange that I realized why I'm really interested in this whole film-criticism business. Really, it's simple: I love movies. I love talking about them to people who are willing to listen (even if I'm probably better than expressing my thoughts on a film in writing than I am in person). I love sharing my enthusiasms, my likes and dislikes. I love being turned on by a really great film.
All of these things give me a great pleasure. And dammit, I want to feel and express that kind of pleasure on a daily basis, full-time, for the rest of my life. Is there anything wrong with that? At this point, I don't care if that makes me sound impossibly naïve or impractical (all adjective my mother has used to characterize my foolish pursuit of the profession---cuz most regular folk don't care about "movie critiques," says she).
That's it. No higher purpose, really. Watching, absorbing, learning and gleaning insights and revelations from films---and from art in general---makes me happy. And writing about them pleases me immensely as well. Do I really need any other reason?
Friday, July 10, 2009
Accidental Byline?
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - For the longest time, I've been intending to get published somehow in the newspaper for which I work. I've been pitching ideas, feeling a sense of triumph maybe two or three times, feeling utterly rejected many others.
But the last thing I expected was that my first-ever byline in the print version of the domestic paper would totally blindside me.
Last night, while hanging out with co-workers at a bar right across from our new office at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, I found out from someone that she saw my byline in the Money & Investing section of the Wednesday, July 8 edition of The Wall Street Journal. My eyes widened immediately; I had no idea. Naturally, I ask, "for what?"
Turns out that a routine minor story about CD yields that I plug in the numbers for every Tuesday---a little thing that usually gets no byline---got a byline this week. There was absolutely no reason for it, as far as I could see. Was it accidental? (Maybe that's just how much my superiors like me...)
In any case...it totally wasn't planned---I was recently working on another story that I was hoping would be my first in the print edtion---but hell, I'll take it!
Funny how things work out like that!
Here's the link to the story; if you hit the subscriber wall for it, just try searching, say, "kenji fujishima yield wsj" on Google.
But the last thing I expected was that my first-ever byline in the print version of the domestic paper would totally blindside me.
Last night, while hanging out with co-workers at a bar right across from our new office at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, I found out from someone that she saw my byline in the Money & Investing section of the Wednesday, July 8 edition of The Wall Street Journal. My eyes widened immediately; I had no idea. Naturally, I ask, "for what?"
Turns out that a routine minor story about CD yields that I plug in the numbers for every Tuesday---a little thing that usually gets no byline---got a byline this week. There was absolutely no reason for it, as far as I could see. Was it accidental? (Maybe that's just how much my superiors like me...)
In any case...it totally wasn't planned---I was recently working on another story that I was hoping would be my first in the print edtion---but hell, I'll take it!
Funny how things work out like that!
Here's the link to the story; if you hit the subscriber wall for it, just try searching, say, "kenji fujishima yield wsj" on Google.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Movies 2009: My Barebones Midyear Round-up
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - On Twitter, quite a few of the cinephiles I follow have been tweeting their mid-year roundups of the best movies they've seen thus far. Being that I'm generally a trend-follower on the microblogging site rather than a trend-starter, I've decided to follow suit...though not on Twitter. I'm using this poorly maintained blog to post my midyear cinematic reckoning.
Here are my 10 favorites so far, in rough order of preference. There were plenty more I could have chosen---in my opinion, this half-year has been fairly rich in intriguing cinematic offerings, at least depending on where you looked---but for now, this will do. (I won't annotate this; I'll leave that for my year-end wrap-up. Seems more "final" to do it then than now. But feel free to comment and engage me on my picks!)
1. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
2. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
3. Birdsong (Albert Serra)
4. 24 City (Jia Zhangke)
5. Up (Pete Docter)
6. Moon (Duncan Jones)
7. Goodbye Solo (Ramin Bahrani)
8. Two Lovers (James Gray)
9. Serbis (Brillante Mendoza)
10. Coraline (Henry Selick)
To future delights and revelations at the movies in the next six months!
Here are my 10 favorites so far, in rough order of preference. There were plenty more I could have chosen---in my opinion, this half-year has been fairly rich in intriguing cinematic offerings, at least depending on where you looked---but for now, this will do. (I won't annotate this; I'll leave that for my year-end wrap-up. Seems more "final" to do it then than now. But feel free to comment and engage me on my picks!)
1. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
2. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
3. Birdsong (Albert Serra)
4. 24 City (Jia Zhangke)
5. Up (Pete Docter)
6. Moon (Duncan Jones)
7. Goodbye Solo (Ramin Bahrani)
8. Two Lovers (James Gray)
9. Serbis (Brillante Mendoza)
10. Coraline (Henry Selick)
To future delights and revelations at the movies in the next six months!
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
What's Going On? Not Much, Really.
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - After a month of dabbling---with, I will freely admit, a certain amount of exhilaration---in the world of Twitter, I've come crawling back to this here blog because...why? I dunno. Just because.
Well, there's a reason, I guess. Much of that reason is emotional. I'm pretty much feeling stuck again in my life (I could explain why, but it would take a whole book chapter to explain, and it might probably bring undue attention from people at work anyway, so I will remain discreet publicly unless prompted privately), and right now I feel like the only thing I can fall back on to feel better about the rut I'm in is, well, writing. The one thing that I feel like I know how to do, and the one thing I would really like to do for the rest of my life, in some form or another.
So I am writing right now. Do I have anything interesting to say? Well...why not talk about Twitter?
Cards on the table, then: I like Twitter. It keeps my mind and senses alert for things that intrigue me enough to share with the rest of the world, or at least the people who follow my feed. No need to worry about forgetting that precious thought that came to your head that you liked so much; just put it down as a tweet and see who bites.
Sure, it's exhibitionism. But you know what? I guess I've come to realize that I like a certain amount of attention, at least the right kind of attention from the right people. I like knowing people actually read and care about what's going on inside my head. ("What's going on inside my head"---a Hüsker Dü lyric, by the way. I actually tweeted that early on.) I like the interaction that Twitter can afford. And sometimes I just like the challenge of boiling thoughts and ideas down to 140 characters or less.
So yes, it's totally self-centered. But I do it for me, not really for anyone else. You're all free to join into entering my scattered mind, if you wish.
So yeah...Twitter. Maybe it's a fad, as some of my more resistant friends insist that it is. Well, okay, maybe. But for now, it's a fad I'm on board with...until, I suppose, I get bored with it. We'll see.
In the meantime, no promises that this update means that I will start blogging more. I really should, though. I don't know how many people actually read this damn thing anymore, anyway...but I really should just write these kinds of longer entries more. If nothing else, it might just take my mind off some of the more depressing things that are happening---or, more precisely, not happening---in my life right now.
Well, there's a reason, I guess. Much of that reason is emotional. I'm pretty much feeling stuck again in my life (I could explain why, but it would take a whole book chapter to explain, and it might probably bring undue attention from people at work anyway, so I will remain discreet publicly unless prompted privately), and right now I feel like the only thing I can fall back on to feel better about the rut I'm in is, well, writing. The one thing that I feel like I know how to do, and the one thing I would really like to do for the rest of my life, in some form or another.
So I am writing right now. Do I have anything interesting to say? Well...why not talk about Twitter?
Cards on the table, then: I like Twitter. It keeps my mind and senses alert for things that intrigue me enough to share with the rest of the world, or at least the people who follow my feed. No need to worry about forgetting that precious thought that came to your head that you liked so much; just put it down as a tweet and see who bites.
Sure, it's exhibitionism. But you know what? I guess I've come to realize that I like a certain amount of attention, at least the right kind of attention from the right people. I like knowing people actually read and care about what's going on inside my head. ("What's going on inside my head"---a Hüsker Dü lyric, by the way. I actually tweeted that early on.) I like the interaction that Twitter can afford. And sometimes I just like the challenge of boiling thoughts and ideas down to 140 characters or less.
So yes, it's totally self-centered. But I do it for me, not really for anyone else. You're all free to join into entering my scattered mind, if you wish.
So yeah...Twitter. Maybe it's a fad, as some of my more resistant friends insist that it is. Well, okay, maybe. But for now, it's a fad I'm on board with...until, I suppose, I get bored with it. We'll see.
In the meantime, no promises that this update means that I will start blogging more. I really should, though. I don't know how many people actually read this damn thing anymore, anyway...but I really should just write these kinds of longer entries more. If nothing else, it might just take my mind off some of the more depressing things that are happening---or, more precisely, not happening---in my life right now.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Tweet Tweet Tweet
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Well, I have finally capitulated to the supposed destruction of privacy in American society by creating my own Twitter feed.
I don't really have a good reason for joining the ranks of Twitterers---just curiosity, I suppose. And maybe a bit of narcissistic attention-seeking.
Mostly, though, I see this as perhaps a constructive way to keep my eyes and my mind alert to things throughout a normal day---to find something Twitter-worthy to share.
We'll see how far I go with this. Feel free to enter into my head with this Twitter thing!
I don't really have a good reason for joining the ranks of Twitterers---just curiosity, I suppose. And maybe a bit of narcissistic attention-seeking.
Mostly, though, I see this as perhaps a constructive way to keep my eyes and my mind alert to things throughout a normal day---to find something Twitter-worthy to share.
We'll see how far I go with this. Feel free to enter into my head with this Twitter thing!
Friday, April 24, 2009
Look, Ma! A New Link At wsj.com!
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - At last! A follow-up to my Wall Street Journal---or, rather, wsj.com---debut a little over a month ago! It is here: an interview with Paolo Sorrentino, the director of the new film Il Divo, a lively postmodernist look at the mystique of longtime Italian politician Giulio Andreotti. Enjoy!
Friday, April 17, 2009
Alive! And With a Question For Y'All!
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Just wanted to let you all---or at least, all of you without Facebook accounts---know that yes, I am still alive, and that hopefully you will be hearing from me soon...if not with an actual substantive post (haven't been in much of a mood for that recently, a lack of motivation perhaps stemming from a David Bordwell-inspired crisis of confidence), then at least with, well, something cool and interesting to share with you all. Heck, maybe even something with ideas.
Here's an idea: Maybe I should just start a damn Twitter account already. Sure, I only get 140 characters to say what's on my mind---but hey, I suppose it's better than nothing, and people who actually bother to check in on this blog can at least be connected to me on certainly a more consistent basis than they're connected to me here. And theoretically, if I really do think something I feel like expanding upon in more depth, I'll have this as a back-up of sorts. But no, I wouldn't be posting about my trips to the bathroom or a whole lot daily routine-related. I may be self-centered, but not that self-centered.
Anyway, what say you, readers? To Twitter or not to Twitter? (The big question plaguing my generation...)
Here's an idea: Maybe I should just start a damn Twitter account already. Sure, I only get 140 characters to say what's on my mind---but hey, I suppose it's better than nothing, and people who actually bother to check in on this blog can at least be connected to me on certainly a more consistent basis than they're connected to me here. And theoretically, if I really do think something I feel like expanding upon in more depth, I'll have this as a back-up of sorts. But no, I wouldn't be posting about my trips to the bathroom or a whole lot daily routine-related. I may be self-centered, but not that self-centered.
Anyway, what say you, readers? To Twitter or not to Twitter? (The big question plaguing my generation...)
Friday, March 27, 2009
One Worth Watching, One Not: Watchmen, Duplicity, and a Brief Life Update
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Aside from seeing my first byline on wsj.com last week, the biggest change in my life in the past couple of weeks has been a change in work hours. I'm working slightly later hours at The Wall Street Journal now, roughly 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. compared to the 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. shift I was working previously. One of my superiors approached me a couple of weeks ago about the shift change, saying that one of the news pods needed some extra help with its news assistant moving to a different floor—and so, trouper that I am, I said, sure, no problem, if you need the help, I will gladly help.
What the shift change does, however, is pretty much take away the one personal perk I found in my more-or-less 9-to-5 schedule: If ever I was so inclined, after work one day I could walk to an MTA subway station, hop onto an A, C or E train and, a few stops or so later, be at one of New York's fine art-house theaters, be it Film Forum, IFC Center, Angelika Film Center, or even the really edgy Anthology Film Archives. Basically, I could catch a movie that may never find its way to my neck of the (New Jersey) woods, and be home at a relatively reasonable time at night—and I wouldn't always have to make a special trek on a Saturday for it.
That convenience is pretty much gone now, barring any further changes down the road. And frankly, as much of a cinephile as I may be, I guess I just am not enough of an obsessive one to make a habit of commuting for about 1¼ hours or so each way just to check out a flick in New York every week.
So you may not be seeing a whole lot of writing from me about the more obscure current releases for a while—not, at least, until I finally do decide to make the break from living at home and finding a place of my own closer to New York, if not in it. (There is hope on that front, actually, but that hope probably won't have a chance of becoming a reality until the middle of the year, I would say—still a few months away.)
Yes, I'm cutting back on my moviegoing habits somewhat. I blame the difficult economic times we're living in. Isn't everybody?
★★★★
So I might as well play some brief catch-up on some of the recent mainstream stuff...though I wish I had something exciting to report on that front.
Regarding Zack Snyder's much-hyped Watchmen adaptation: I was about to say that it was a disappointment...but considering the director at the helm, was anyone really expecting something with the deeply personal, feverish passion of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' celebrated 1986 graphic novel? Forget the ads proclaiming Snyder as a "visionary director"; vision is more or less what the movie lacks—or, more precisely, a vision that could be said to be the director's own, rather than merely a lifelessly faithful rendering of the notes behind Moore/Gibbons' own excoriating deconstruction of heroism and heroic images. Snyder's only real contributions are a few interesting music cues (Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" to illustrate the alternate version of history that highlights its admittedly inventive opening credits; ironic uses of "The Sounds of Silence," Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower," and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries"; and, most hilariously, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" during a sex scene that looks right out of softcore porn) and some exaggerated instances of ultraviolence that, for me, pretty much give the game away. Snyder, like most skilled Hollywood hacks, is more interested in "kewl" action and gory violence than in exploring the moral shadows that lie behind it. And what better way to emphasize all that coolness than with his lame slo-mo-then-fast-mo visual signature dragging out the action scenes?
I suppose enough of the book's emotional and moral complexity comes through that that some of its ideas might resonate, however punily, with both Watchmen newbies and fanatics. Rorshach's black-and-white worldview remains pungent—mostly thanks to a fantastically intense Jackie Earle Haley—as does Dr. Manhattan's icy aloofness and the Comedian's world-weariness. The graphic novel was nothing if not a gripping dialogue between wildly divergent points of view regarding a hero's place in a broken society, and some of that dialogue does make itself felt here and there. But Watchmen was hardly a mere philosophical thesis paper in comic-book form; Moore managed to create vivid characterizations to prop up his intellectual musings. Moore gave his superheroes flesh and blood; the movie basically reverts them back to lofty superheroes again, completely missing the cynical ironies Moore built into his story. Snyder seems to regard his superheroes with awe where Moore saw some rather disturbing and scary things in them.
Putting aside further movie-and-book comparisons, however, the fact remains that much of the movie felt rather rushed and, frankly, dull to me. It was a relief to turn back to the gorgeous hand-drawn panels in my copy of the book; there's infinitely more heat to those drawings than there is in most frames of Snyder's overly reverent film adaptation. His reverence flattens it out. Stick with the book—giant squid and all (and no, fans, I don't think the film's altered ending is necessarily an improvement on the book's).
★★★★
There is, believe it or not, more fun to be had at Tony Gilroy's Duplicity—or basically Michael Clayton, Gilroy's previous film, reimagined as a modern-day Tracy/Hepburn-style romantic/comic romp. Sure, its view of big business as ruthlessly competitive cutthroats is glib and certainly old-hat (whereas Gilroy put across a similar outlook in Michael Clayton more convincingly). But you know what? Call me a Coen-esque wiseass if you must, but Lord knows we might as well try to squeeze a good laugh at this kind of stuff, what with the sheer scale of the kind of fraud perpetrated by the likes of Bernard Madoff causing people like myself to chuckle with angry disbelief as more details came out. Does corporate greed have any limits?
Actually, there is a deeper emotional drama of sorts to be found amidst the jazzy cuteness of James Newton Howard's occasionally oppressive score and Gilroy's clumsy and gratuitous use of splitscreen effects (hey, are you having fun yet?). It turns out that the two main characters, played by Hollywood superstars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, are almost as screwed up as any of the Watchmen folk. Having played spy games for so long, Julia Roberts's Claire has become so immured from romantic feeling that, when love does hit her, she finds herself incapable of giving herself over to those feelings; instead, she keeps her emotional guard up, always trying to make sure she's not being conned—and Clive Owen's Ray find himself increasingly exasperated by her tests of faith, mostly because he's struggling to grow out of that kind of lifestyle. The dictates of Hollywood genre might suggest that their relationship grows out of a deep well of unspoken passion or something like that...but the central relationship of Duplicity is, if anything, more out of necessity than passion—the need for something honest and true.
If you look at the two characters that way, then, I think it makes a certain kind of sense that Roberts and Owen don't exactly burn up the screen with chemistry: burning passion is not what leads them back to each other. Really, they are the only ones who may truly understand each other in this crazy, twisted world of cutthroat corporate competition. And I can't say I agree with all those reviews that suggest that Gilroy somehow overdoes the narrative twists and turns. I say it's not about the plot: it's all about the feelings of disorientation and distrust that all those twists, thrown together, produce in the viewer. The plot is, in other words, an abstraction.
Duplicity is hardly a masterpiece, but it has some interesting undercurrents coursing through it, and Gilroy maintains an admirable focus on his two main characters even as he tries to distract us with his narrative tricks.
It's not bad at all; in fact, I found myself enjoying it more as it went along. Nevertheless, it just made me yearn for the art-house more.
P.S. Maybe this relatively minor lifestyle change will finally give me an opportunity to share more of what I'm watching through my Netflix subscription these days. If I do go down that route in my next entry, perhaps it will concern this:
What the shift change does, however, is pretty much take away the one personal perk I found in my more-or-less 9-to-5 schedule: If ever I was so inclined, after work one day I could walk to an MTA subway station, hop onto an A, C or E train and, a few stops or so later, be at one of New York's fine art-house theaters, be it Film Forum, IFC Center, Angelika Film Center, or even the really edgy Anthology Film Archives. Basically, I could catch a movie that may never find its way to my neck of the (New Jersey) woods, and be home at a relatively reasonable time at night—and I wouldn't always have to make a special trek on a Saturday for it.
That convenience is pretty much gone now, barring any further changes down the road. And frankly, as much of a cinephile as I may be, I guess I just am not enough of an obsessive one to make a habit of commuting for about 1¼ hours or so each way just to check out a flick in New York every week.
So you may not be seeing a whole lot of writing from me about the more obscure current releases for a while—not, at least, until I finally do decide to make the break from living at home and finding a place of my own closer to New York, if not in it. (There is hope on that front, actually, but that hope probably won't have a chance of becoming a reality until the middle of the year, I would say—still a few months away.)
Yes, I'm cutting back on my moviegoing habits somewhat. I blame the difficult economic times we're living in. Isn't everybody?
So I might as well play some brief catch-up on some of the recent mainstream stuff...though I wish I had something exciting to report on that front.
Regarding Zack Snyder's much-hyped Watchmen adaptation: I was about to say that it was a disappointment...but considering the director at the helm, was anyone really expecting something with the deeply personal, feverish passion of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' celebrated 1986 graphic novel? Forget the ads proclaiming Snyder as a "visionary director"; vision is more or less what the movie lacks—or, more precisely, a vision that could be said to be the director's own, rather than merely a lifelessly faithful rendering of the notes behind Moore/Gibbons' own excoriating deconstruction of heroism and heroic images. Snyder's only real contributions are a few interesting music cues (Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" to illustrate the alternate version of history that highlights its admittedly inventive opening credits; ironic uses of "The Sounds of Silence," Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower," and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries"; and, most hilariously, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" during a sex scene that looks right out of softcore porn) and some exaggerated instances of ultraviolence that, for me, pretty much give the game away. Snyder, like most skilled Hollywood hacks, is more interested in "kewl" action and gory violence than in exploring the moral shadows that lie behind it. And what better way to emphasize all that coolness than with his lame slo-mo-then-fast-mo visual signature dragging out the action scenes?
I suppose enough of the book's emotional and moral complexity comes through that that some of its ideas might resonate, however punily, with both Watchmen newbies and fanatics. Rorshach's black-and-white worldview remains pungent—mostly thanks to a fantastically intense Jackie Earle Haley—as does Dr. Manhattan's icy aloofness and the Comedian's world-weariness. The graphic novel was nothing if not a gripping dialogue between wildly divergent points of view regarding a hero's place in a broken society, and some of that dialogue does make itself felt here and there. But Watchmen was hardly a mere philosophical thesis paper in comic-book form; Moore managed to create vivid characterizations to prop up his intellectual musings. Moore gave his superheroes flesh and blood; the movie basically reverts them back to lofty superheroes again, completely missing the cynical ironies Moore built into his story. Snyder seems to regard his superheroes with awe where Moore saw some rather disturbing and scary things in them.
Putting aside further movie-and-book comparisons, however, the fact remains that much of the movie felt rather rushed and, frankly, dull to me. It was a relief to turn back to the gorgeous hand-drawn panels in my copy of the book; there's infinitely more heat to those drawings than there is in most frames of Snyder's overly reverent film adaptation. His reverence flattens it out. Stick with the book—giant squid and all (and no, fans, I don't think the film's altered ending is necessarily an improvement on the book's).
There is, believe it or not, more fun to be had at Tony Gilroy's Duplicity—or basically Michael Clayton, Gilroy's previous film, reimagined as a modern-day Tracy/Hepburn-style romantic/comic romp. Sure, its view of big business as ruthlessly competitive cutthroats is glib and certainly old-hat (whereas Gilroy put across a similar outlook in Michael Clayton more convincingly). But you know what? Call me a Coen-esque wiseass if you must, but Lord knows we might as well try to squeeze a good laugh at this kind of stuff, what with the sheer scale of the kind of fraud perpetrated by the likes of Bernard Madoff causing people like myself to chuckle with angry disbelief as more details came out. Does corporate greed have any limits?
Actually, there is a deeper emotional drama of sorts to be found amidst the jazzy cuteness of James Newton Howard's occasionally oppressive score and Gilroy's clumsy and gratuitous use of splitscreen effects (hey, are you having fun yet?). It turns out that the two main characters, played by Hollywood superstars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, are almost as screwed up as any of the Watchmen folk. Having played spy games for so long, Julia Roberts's Claire has become so immured from romantic feeling that, when love does hit her, she finds herself incapable of giving herself over to those feelings; instead, she keeps her emotional guard up, always trying to make sure she's not being conned—and Clive Owen's Ray find himself increasingly exasperated by her tests of faith, mostly because he's struggling to grow out of that kind of lifestyle. The dictates of Hollywood genre might suggest that their relationship grows out of a deep well of unspoken passion or something like that...but the central relationship of Duplicity is, if anything, more out of necessity than passion—the need for something honest and true.
If you look at the two characters that way, then, I think it makes a certain kind of sense that Roberts and Owen don't exactly burn up the screen with chemistry: burning passion is not what leads them back to each other. Really, they are the only ones who may truly understand each other in this crazy, twisted world of cutthroat corporate competition. And I can't say I agree with all those reviews that suggest that Gilroy somehow overdoes the narrative twists and turns. I say it's not about the plot: it's all about the feelings of disorientation and distrust that all those twists, thrown together, produce in the viewer. The plot is, in other words, an abstraction.
Duplicity is hardly a masterpiece, but it has some interesting undercurrents coursing through it, and Gilroy maintains an admirable focus on his two main characters even as he tries to distract us with his narrative tricks.
It's not bad at all; in fact, I found myself enjoying it more as it went along. Nevertheless, it just made me yearn for the art-house more.
★★★★
P.S. Maybe this relatively minor lifestyle change will finally give me an opportunity to share more of what I'm watching through my Netflix subscription these days. If I do go down that route in my next entry, perhaps it will concern this:
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Guess Who Has a Byline at The Wall Street Journal?
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Readers, this has been a few weeks in the making, but it's finally here: my first byline for The Wall Street Journal---or, at least, wsj.com, where you can find this: an interview feature with Steve McQueen, director of the soon-to-be-released film Hunger.
Hopefully this will be the first of many stories to come.
It is also why I haven't updated this blog in a little over a week: I've been working on this, and dealing with some new challenges at work and at home (situations which I'll probably elaborate on in a future post).
But I just wanted to share this with you all for now.
P.S. And oh yes, to briefly put on my movie-critic hat: the movie itself---beautiful, devastating, thought-provoking, humane and remarkable---is very much worth seeing.
Hopefully this will be the first of many stories to come.
It is also why I haven't updated this blog in a little over a week: I've been working on this, and dealing with some new challenges at work and at home (situations which I'll probably elaborate on in a future post).
But I just wanted to share this with you all for now.
P.S. And oh yes, to briefly put on my movie-critic hat: the movie itself---beautiful, devastating, thought-provoking, humane and remarkable---is very much worth seeing.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
The Mundane and the Spiritual: Two Lovers, Birdsong
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Film director James Gray apparently has developed a divisive reputation over the course of his four films, some marveling at his epic ambition and emotional sincerity, others finding said ambition exceeding his talent. (Many French critics apparently love him, which some people I suppose take as an ominous sign---what happened to those days of Cahiers du cinéma influence?) I haven't yet seen his other films, Little Odessa, The Yards and We Own the Night, but if they are half as affecting as his latest film, Two Lovers, then I may well join the chorus of supporters.
Two Lovers---which is loosely based on Dostoyevsky's short story "White Nights," previously adapted into films by Luchino Visconti (Le Notti bianche) and Robert Bresson (Four Nights of a Dreamer)---is ostensibly a standard romantic love triangle between depressed aspiring photographer Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix), who lives with his parents after he suffers painful heartbreak; the plain-Jane Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) with which his parents try to set him up; and the wild neighbor Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow) who lives across his apartment bought for her by the married man with whom she's having an affair. To these characters, however, Gray's film introduces a treasure trove of complexities, details and grace notes, and gradually draws us into these people's lives, thoughts and feelings without ever resorting to sentimentality and clichés. The range of emotions these people experience---from the heights of ecstatic desire to the depths of bitter disappointment---are almost extravagantly romantic, yet Gray maintains a classical poise and elegance: operatic melodrama rooted in the quotidian. And yet Two Lovers never lapses into the merely dull or tasteful, because Gray is clearly right inside this world and his characters, empathizing with all of them while refusing to soften their darker eccentricities or ambiguities.
By the end, the film may perhaps not amount too anything earth-shatteringly profound---but why should it? The desires aroused by this love triangle surely mean the world to these characters, through thick and thin; we in the audience share in their emotional spheres, and surely that is one of the most appealing aspects of going to the movies. In Two Lovers, the glow of warmth and affection, and the dark clouds of bitterness and resignation, are enough to leave a lasting, moving impression.
**********
Catalan director Albert Serra's Birdsong, which just completed a complimentary week-long run at Anthology Film Archives, doesn't, it must be said straight away, exist on the same emotional plane as Two Lovers. Nevertheless, it contains its own kind of magic, for those who are willing to adjust to the film's lazy, drifting rhythms. If it ever ends up in your neck of the woods somewhere, or maybe even on DVD, I strongly urge you to give it a shot.
Using as a starting point the story of the three Magi who trekked across a long distance to meet the baby Jesus, Serra reimagines the story as a playful meditation on the ways the mundane and the spiritual coexist in the real world. To that end, Serra uses extremely long takes and very wide shots to not only induce a trancelike state in a viewer, but also to visually suggest the insigificance of us mere humans in natural surroundings. The Magi themselves are painted as sometimes comical figures, getting into lengthy, Beckettian absurdist arguments over things like who's in charge and whether they should climb a mountain or rest overnight; but at other times, they are seen sitting and wondering about the unknown forces of the world around them (at one point the three discuss how it might feel to fall from a cloud like a raindrop). Later on, Serra immerses us in the humdrum lives of Mary and Joseph, portrayed as, really, just another married couple, with Mary seen taking a particular interest in a sheep they own.
And yet, after all of Serra's searching for God within the details of His earthly creation, the spiritual finally takes over for an extended, shining moment when the Magi reach their destination, kneel down and pray to Jesus: free of nondiegetic music until then, Pablo Casals's cello-driven arrangement of "El Cant dels ocells" suddenly roars to full volume on the soundtrack, and the visceral effect, in context, is sublime, ecstatic and pure, like an angelic spirit being taken to higher spheres.
The rest of Birdsong regains the same aimlessness that preceded that revelatory encounter; real life once again takes over, as the Three Wise Men decide on an alternate route home to avoid power-hungry King Herod. The absurdist discussions pop up again: the three find themselves lying in a forest discussing wondrous and frightening dreams. And in its concluding shot, Serra finds the three men far in the distance, exchanging their coats and seemingly joking around with each other (we don't hear what they're saying).
Filmed in striking black and white, Birdsong is marked by an eye for painterly images, beautiful landscapes and the human figures that are dwarfed by their surroundings and by everything they perceive and don't perceive. Perhaps most memorable of all, for me, are its night scenes: when it is night, the film's images are truly, inescapably pitch-black---the kind of night most of us suburban and city folk have probably forgotten thanks to neon lights, streetlamps and such. It's that kind of revelatory awareness of natural surroundings that makes Serra's film as breathtaking as it often is. Neither deeply religious nor staunchly secular, it situates itself somewhere in between, constantly seeking both the worldly and the beatific, often in the same setting. It's a search that, once undertaken, never ends, for some.
Two Lovers---which is loosely based on Dostoyevsky's short story "White Nights," previously adapted into films by Luchino Visconti (Le Notti bianche) and Robert Bresson (Four Nights of a Dreamer)---is ostensibly a standard romantic love triangle between depressed aspiring photographer Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix), who lives with his parents after he suffers painful heartbreak; the plain-Jane Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) with which his parents try to set him up; and the wild neighbor Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow) who lives across his apartment bought for her by the married man with whom she's having an affair. To these characters, however, Gray's film introduces a treasure trove of complexities, details and grace notes, and gradually draws us into these people's lives, thoughts and feelings without ever resorting to sentimentality and clichés. The range of emotions these people experience---from the heights of ecstatic desire to the depths of bitter disappointment---are almost extravagantly romantic, yet Gray maintains a classical poise and elegance: operatic melodrama rooted in the quotidian. And yet Two Lovers never lapses into the merely dull or tasteful, because Gray is clearly right inside this world and his characters, empathizing with all of them while refusing to soften their darker eccentricities or ambiguities.
By the end, the film may perhaps not amount too anything earth-shatteringly profound---but why should it? The desires aroused by this love triangle surely mean the world to these characters, through thick and thin; we in the audience share in their emotional spheres, and surely that is one of the most appealing aspects of going to the movies. In Two Lovers, the glow of warmth and affection, and the dark clouds of bitterness and resignation, are enough to leave a lasting, moving impression.
Catalan director Albert Serra's Birdsong, which just completed a complimentary week-long run at Anthology Film Archives, doesn't, it must be said straight away, exist on the same emotional plane as Two Lovers. Nevertheless, it contains its own kind of magic, for those who are willing to adjust to the film's lazy, drifting rhythms. If it ever ends up in your neck of the woods somewhere, or maybe even on DVD, I strongly urge you to give it a shot.
Using as a starting point the story of the three Magi who trekked across a long distance to meet the baby Jesus, Serra reimagines the story as a playful meditation on the ways the mundane and the spiritual coexist in the real world. To that end, Serra uses extremely long takes and very wide shots to not only induce a trancelike state in a viewer, but also to visually suggest the insigificance of us mere humans in natural surroundings. The Magi themselves are painted as sometimes comical figures, getting into lengthy, Beckettian absurdist arguments over things like who's in charge and whether they should climb a mountain or rest overnight; but at other times, they are seen sitting and wondering about the unknown forces of the world around them (at one point the three discuss how it might feel to fall from a cloud like a raindrop). Later on, Serra immerses us in the humdrum lives of Mary and Joseph, portrayed as, really, just another married couple, with Mary seen taking a particular interest in a sheep they own.
And yet, after all of Serra's searching for God within the details of His earthly creation, the spiritual finally takes over for an extended, shining moment when the Magi reach their destination, kneel down and pray to Jesus: free of nondiegetic music until then, Pablo Casals's cello-driven arrangement of "El Cant dels ocells" suddenly roars to full volume on the soundtrack, and the visceral effect, in context, is sublime, ecstatic and pure, like an angelic spirit being taken to higher spheres.
The rest of Birdsong regains the same aimlessness that preceded that revelatory encounter; real life once again takes over, as the Three Wise Men decide on an alternate route home to avoid power-hungry King Herod. The absurdist discussions pop up again: the three find themselves lying in a forest discussing wondrous and frightening dreams. And in its concluding shot, Serra finds the three men far in the distance, exchanging their coats and seemingly joking around with each other (we don't hear what they're saying).
Filmed in striking black and white, Birdsong is marked by an eye for painterly images, beautiful landscapes and the human figures that are dwarfed by their surroundings and by everything they perceive and don't perceive. Perhaps most memorable of all, for me, are its night scenes: when it is night, the film's images are truly, inescapably pitch-black---the kind of night most of us suburban and city folk have probably forgotten thanks to neon lights, streetlamps and such. It's that kind of revelatory awareness of natural surroundings that makes Serra's film as breathtaking as it often is. Neither deeply religious nor staunchly secular, it situates itself somewhere in between, constantly seeking both the worldly and the beatific, often in the same setting. It's a search that, once undertaken, never ends, for some.
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