the chutry experiment

June 13, 2007

Transitions

Hey, the Wordherders are in the process of moving over to WordPress. URLs may change slightly, but I'll keep you posted. Please pardon the dust. But hopefully this will mean that I'll have functioning comments again soon.

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May 28, 2007

Monday Links

Spent last night watching movies with friends until late into the night, so I'm getting a slow start this morning. Worth mentioning: we caught Adrienne Shelly's Waitress at the local art house. Like Film Snob, I enjoyed the film's primary framing device, Jenna's (Keri Russell) habit of inventing new pies to reflect her current mood (I Don't Want Earl's Baby Pie), and while Film Snob is probably right to point to some narrative gaps, Waitress, which I found to be far less self-consciously quirky than last year's Little Miss Sunshine, generally hit the right marks for me. More than anything, I enjoyed the camaraderie among the three waitresses (Russell, Shelly, and Cheryl Hines). It's a nice antidote to the blockbusters that tend to dominate the summer schedule.

I also wanted to mention, at least in passing, the fan uprising to save the CBS series Jericho, one of my favorite new shows in 2006. Virginia Heffernan is reporting on a campaign to send thousands of pounds of peanuts to CBS headquarters to protest the series' cancellation (the use of "nuts" refers to a specific line from the show during a confrontation with a neighboring town). So far over 14,000 pounds have been received, according to Nancy Baym, who has also written extensively on the fight to save Jericho. Baym also discusses the anti-fan backlash when the fight to save Jericho got Slashdotted. I may return to this topic in the next few days in my next column for Flow, which will come out in just over a week.

Baym also has a post about the very cool project, Pop Songs 07, in which Matthew Perpetua is posting mini-reviews of every R.E.M. song. Growing up near Athens, GA, in the 1980s, I "discovered" R.E.M. relatively early, so this project not only taps into my mini-music geek but also into my memories of listening to the band. As Baym points out, the reviews have inspired some interesting conversations about those kinds of memories, about politics, and even the songs themselves.

Comments may be working soon. I was able to leave a comment by signing into TypeKey, so if you feel so inclined, you should be able to comment that way. But we should have comments working correctly soon.

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May 27, 2007

638 Ways to Kill Castro

I received a review copy of Dollan Cannell's 638 Ways to Kill Castro (IMDB) a few weeks ago but haven't had time to review it because of a variety of circumstances--including some technical difficulties with the blog. It's also one of those documentaries that confounds any kind of immediate response, in part because of the twisted political relationship between the US and Cuba, one that has been in the news quite a bit lately because of Castro's health problems (old age may finally do what the CIA could not) and because of Michael Moore's depiction of the Cuban health system in Sicko (or more precisely Fred Thompson's depiction of Sicko).

638 Ways takes its title from the extensive catalog of assassination attempts compiled by Fabian Escalante, who has written a book by the same title. But instead of offering a somber, overly serious treatment of these attempts, Cannell's film borrows from B-movies and detective films in depicting the often bumbling attempts to take out Cuba's longtime leader. Many of these attempts--which included a CIA plot to put a beard-removal substance on Castro's shoes, an exploding cigar, a poisoned wetsuit--are the stuff of bad spy movies, or at least bad James Bond villains, which makes this B-movie approach seem rather fitting (in fact, according to the Guardian article on the film, John Kennedy actually consulted Bond author Ian Fleming). This B-movie technique has the approach of satirizing Castro's would-be assassins, many of whom were willing to appear in the film, but it also has the effect of trivializing Cuba's human rights record, which is far from perfect. In fact, the film offers only minimal insight into Castro or the specifics of the Cuban government, which likely means that the film will do little to change perceptions of Castro, socialism, or Cuba itself as a country.

That being said, I think it's worth emphasizing and criticizing US policy towards Cuba, specifically the widely documented assassination tries and the other attempts at regime change (including, of course, the Bay of Pigs fiasco). And while the accounting system that identifies 638 different assassination attempts might exaggerate things slightly, the film raises important questions about the US role in Cuba, with Escalante asserting that there have been multiple attempts on Castro's life under every US president since Eisenhower. And as Cannell points out in the Guardian article, the film addresses important questions about how the US government defines terrorism: "what shrieks at you is the double standard."

The film's website has a number of articles about Cuba and Castro and features a number of clips from the film itself. I continue to be fascinated by the access Cannell received to people who might, under other circumstances, be labeled as terrorists and continue to think about the film's resonances with contemporary events, including Moore's depiction of Cuba in Sicko. Comments are currently down, so if you have anything you'd like to add, feel free to email me (chutry[at]msn[dot]com) and I'll include reactions in updated versions of this entry.

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May 12, 2007

Year of the Dog

For well over four years, I've written blog reviews--more precisely responses--to virtually every film I've seen in a movie theater. A 4/4 teaching load and some other priorities have made such a task impossible to sustain. More crucially, I'm not enjoying writing the responses as much as I used to. This change of heart coincides with, but isn't really related to, last week's dust-up about blogging film critics or cloggers or whatever we're calling ourselves these days.

I'm still planning to blog about most of the films that I watch but in a less formal way. It's probably no accident that my decision to change my blogging practices occurred after seeing Mike White's Year of the Dog, a self-consciously quirky indie film that seemed to be about being a Self-Consciously Quirky Indie Film more than anything else. And I'm not sure if what follows counts as a review as much as a mini-rant about a certain mode of indie filmmaking.

I wanted to like the film quite a bit more than I did. Molly Shannon's Peggy, an unmarried thirty-something woman who has her comfortable life shattered when her pet beagle dies suddenly, isn't a character who normally appears a lead character in a Hollywood film. And I could easily get behind a film that affirmed Peggy's freedom to be single, quirky, and weird. But I could never quite grasp what the film's attitude was towards Peggy. White seems to be aligned with other misanthropic indie filmmakers such as Alexander Payne and Todd Solondz, and while a film shouldn't feel obligated to like its lead character, the coldness of Year of the Dog, especially towards its female characters is what stuck with me, and Dog is absolutely icy towards Peggy's over-protective sister-in-law, Bret (played by Laura Dern).

If I were writing a regular review, I'd probably also complain about the third-act disappearance of Newt (Peter Saarsgard), an animal rescue worker who seems like a potential suitor for Peggy, but whose sexuality is so ambiguous that reviewers have read him as straight but celibate, gay, and just plain celibate. White has assembled some interesting characters (again, with the exception of Bret, who isn't remotely funny as satire), but the film stopped well short of doing anything interesting with them.

Posted by chuck at 7:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 5, 2007

Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3 (IMDB) opens with Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire, who's getting too old to play a college kid) quietly relishing his celebrity status. Crime in New York is down--even without Rudy Giuliani running things--and images of Spider-Man are broadcast from giant screens in Times Square. Even his girlfriend, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), is on her way to stardom as a Broadway actress in a lavish musical. But Parker's contentment is subtly undercut. The kids are bored with Spider-Man's heroics, and MJ's acting and singing career isn't quite panning out, thanks to some bad reviews. Not that Peter notices. After all, he's become too preoccupied with his own press.

Peter's selfish turn, caused by some nasty space goop and visually represented through the black Spider-Man costume, seemed like an interesting idea conceptually. After the second film departed from most of the Marvel storylines, I had hoped that the third film would expand on Peter and MJ's emotionally complex relationship, but as both Manohla Dargis and Marjorie Baumgarten observe, Peter's turn to the dark side (or at least dark suit) isn't all that interesting or even that dark. There are a couple of funny moments when Peter struts down a New York sidewalk Tony Manero-style, but Parker's id is only one or two clicks over from my super-ego, so these scenes were never terribly convincing to me.

While most reviews have complained about the script's reliance on melodramatic sequences involving Peter, MJ, and Harry (James Franco), I found myself wanting more scenes with MJ. Where the second film seemed to give MJ some independence--see Cassie's comments in my review--the third film seemed to be much more about Peter's personal midlife crisis. Harry, who conveniently develops a case of temporary amnesia after a fight with Spider-Man, does briefly disrupt Peter and MJ's relationship, but it's difficult to see him as an interesting and attractive alternative to MJ (other than his personal wealth). The other villains were more or less workmanlike--Thomas Haden Church as Sandman worked well, and the subtle touches, such as the braodly-striped shirt and the tenement apartment--associating him with a fugitive from a 1930s chain gang were entertaining. Topher Grace's Venom was about as sleazy as a PG-13 movie would allow.

In terms of the fight scenes, I suppose they were dramatic and exciting enough. I still find it difficult not to forget that I'm basically watching computer animation sequences, not "real" fight (or flight) scenes. They're pretty enough but seem to lack solidity, even when Spider-Man is being crushed into a building or leaping off of falling pieces of rubble. But there were at least two gaping plot holes that pretty much ruined the film for me, all other things considered. I'll hide them below the fold for those readers who don't want those plot holes "spoiled" for them.

The main plot hole that was borderline embarrassing: Harry's butler revealing to Harry after something like five years that Peter/Spider-Man didn't kill his father. Couldn't he have mentioned this before, you know while he was preparing one of the many hundreds of meals he made for Harry over those five years? Or maybe while he watched Harry build the equipment and costume he would wear when taking revenge on Peter. Did the butler have amnesia, too?

Amnesia subplots in general are usually a sign that the writers are running out of ideas, but for the Peter, MJ, Harry, triangle, it worked relatively well, especially in playing with the degree of knowledge each of the three central characters had at various points. Still, when Harry regains his memory and "forces" MJ to break up with Peter, I wasn't convinced. The second film went out of its way to paint her as a much more assertive character. I wouldn't have blamed her for breaking things off with Peter because he was a jerk but because she was intimidated by Harry? Whatever. Next time, Mr. Raimi, don't hire your brother as a screenwriter. That being said, pretty much everyone seemed bored this time around. There's so much money involved that it's hard to imagine there won't be a Spider-Man 4, but to me, the series really felt like it was running out of energy.

Posted by chuck at 11:19 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

April 15, 2007

Full Frame 2K7 Friday

In addition to the Jem Cohen films, I caught four other films on Friday at Full Frame (two features and two shorts). The first short, Alice Sees the Light, focused on light pollution using female narration and statistical information, underlining that information with visuals that depict our attachment to bright lights in the night sky. The other short, Liza Johnson's South of Ten depicts a group of Mississippians recovering from the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina. Johnson uses a poetic, elegiac tone to show a number of haunting scenes, including most memorably, an elderly man who finds a trombone amidst the rubble left behind by the storm.

One of the features I caught on Friday was the environmental documentary, Everything's Cool, which focused primarily on the efforts of people such as writer Bill McKibben, White House whistle-blower Rick Piltz, and and journalist Ross Gelbspan, as well as Weather Channel global warming expert, Dr. Heidi Cullen. Rather than merely making the argument that global warming is happening, the film explores the frustration these men feel about the slowness of the response to the global warming crisis. While the film clearly takes an activist stance, I found it more interesting as an illustration of the long battles that many of these activists faced in getting their story heard and accepted by resistant and often hostile members of the government and news media.

Finally, I caught Radiant City an anti-urban sprawl documentary that is likely to provoke some controversy if and when it receives a slightly wider audience (the title comes from a phrase used by French architect Le Corbusier). The film offers many of the usual anti-sprawl suspects, including James Howard Kunstler, who also appeared in The End of Suburbia, but Radiant City appears to be attempting something different, first by openly acknowledging that most suburbanites know the anti-suburb arguments but may find themselves with few options when inner-city housing is too expensive and too far from good schools.

At the same time, the film introduces us to a couple of typical suburban families, best represented by the Moss family where many of the tensions about suburban life play out. The father, Evan, decides to put on Suburb the Musical, a clearly satirical take on suburban life, while his wife, Ann, complains about Evan's negative attitude towards suburban life. Notably, the family's life is neatly planned out on a dry erase calendar color-coded for all the members of the family, but as we see at one point, the son quietly sabotages his mom's best laid plans by erasing certain events and re-arranging others. The focus on a typical family recalls a number of reality TV shows (Wife Swap and Trading Spouses come to mind), but the references to Evan's musical suggested something slightly different, as I'll explain below the fold to avoid spoiling a key component of the film (but if you've seen the film I'd love to hear your interpretation of this element of the film).

It becomes increasingly clear that the Wood family is fictional, a detail that becomes explicit when the son accidentally shoots his sister from his bedroom window. The film drops a few hints along the way--Ann's angry glance at the camera, Evan's open speculation about whether he should have married--to suggest that the film may be fictional. Once the fiction is clearly revealed, the film's true precedent, the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest and friends, becomes clear. Of course, we are led to believe throughout the film that the Wood family is "real," and several audience members complained about being duped, especially at a festival dedicated to documentary. But the directors, Gary Burns and Jim Brown, sought to use the "fakeness" of the film's subjects to comment n some way on the fakeness of suburban life itself.

It's an interesting point, and I have no real complaints about faking out the audience in this manner (some of the best "documentaries" in recent memory have done something similar), but I'm not quite sure that their point makes sense or even functions as a critique of suburbia. While it's easy to fault suburban developers for using names such as "Copper Valley" or "Heather Ridge," to use the name of my own heather-free apartment complex, I'd imagine that most home buyers attach little specific significance to the name of the subdivision itself and even though shopping malls may evoke lost images of town squares, I'm guessing that most shoppers are not attarcted to the mall in search of a lost public sphere. In short, I don't think the "fakeness" (or ideological) critique the film offers works as well as the film itself would like to believe. Still, the families involved are entertaining and make a subject that could easily have become tedious a little more enjoyable.

Posted by chuck at 2:42 PM | TrackBack

Full Frame 2K7 Jem Cohen

Friday at Full Frame I had the chance to catch several great films, including three films by Jem Cohen, whose work often focuses on musicians, including Benjamin Smoke and the Fugazi doc, Instrument. Because the Cohen films were a major highlight of the festival, I want to cover them in some detail. One of Cohen's films this year, Building a Broken Mousetrap focused on the Dutch punk band, The Ex, who played a show in New York City on September 11, 2004, just days after the Republican Convention. Cohen crosscut between some of the more compelling and intimate concert footage I've seen, much of it filmed on a 16mm Bolex in black-and-white, and footage filmed on the streets of New York, including shots of several of the anti-war protests at the Republican Convention. One of the highlights is a brief interlude in which Cohen was filming in front of an electronic store and a destitute, probably homeless, man remarks on the expensive prices of radios, noting that he would never pay $200 for a radio. The brief scene only adds to some of the marked contrasts between rich and poor (among other polarities) in a city such as New York.

Cohen's other films were two shorts, Blessed are the Dreams of Men and NYC Weights and Measures. The former is a contemplative short feature filmed from the window of a bus traveling across Europe at 5 AM, its windows blurred by morning dew and its passengers sleeping awkwardly as rural and industrial landscapes rapidly replace each other. Dreams, like much of Cohen's work, reminded me a bit of the opening sequence of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil in its contemplative, almost meditative, tone. NYC is a "short elegiac comment" on prohibitions against street photography in New York after 9/11. Cohen has an eye for interesting, unexpected images, and NYC beautifully illustrates that. The film concludes with a brief note telling us that at some point after 9/11, Cohen was stopped on the street while was filming and had the footage he had taken confiscated. Now, over a year later, that footage has yet to be returned.

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Full Frame 2K7 Saturday

After driving through a torrential downpour, I'm back in Fayetteville after two very cool days after seeing about a dozen documentaries--several of them shorts--at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham. I can recommend pretty much all of the films I saw with some degree of enthusiasm and will try to write short reviews for at least most of them, but the Fest was an opportunity to catch up with or meet several bloggers and filmmakers I've been reading, including the cinetrix, AJ Schnack, and Paul Harrill of Self-Reliant Filmmaking. Here are some quick mini-reviews from Saturday's lineup, which I'll follow up with the movies I caught on Friday.

My Saturday began with two films focusing on the war in Iraq and its aftermath. The feature, Meeting Resistance, is one of the most compelling documents to come out of the war in Iraq. The directors, Steve Connors and Molly Bingham, managed to gain access to several members of the Iraqi "insurgency" over the course of several months providing us with a compelling portrait of the resistance that challenges both media and official accounts. Meeting Resistance was preceded by James Longley's short, Sari's Mother, a portrait of an Iraqi woman caring for her son who contracted the AIDS virus through a blood transfusion. Longley originally planned to include Sari's Mother in his Academy Award-nominated documentary feature, Iraq in Fragments, and the short, at least in my experience, felt like a continuation of that project.

Later on Saturday I watched The Devil Came on Horseback, an emotionally powerful and provocative documentary about the genocide in Darfur, as told through the eyes of former US Marine Captain Brian Steidle. After his military service was complete in 2003, Steidle takes a job as a monitor for the African Union where he becomes one of the few witnesses to gain photographic evidence of genocide in the Darfur region. Steidle is clearly troubled by the fact that he was unable to do more than watch helplessly as these actions were taking place and similarly troubled by the lack of a clear government response. The film itself is a profound meditation on what it means to be a witness.

I finished Saturday with AJ's Kurt Cobain About a Son (IMDB), which uses audio recordings of journalist Michael Azerrad's interview with Cobain to allow the famous singer to tell his own story. AJ used images of Cobain's hometown of Aberdeen, including the lumber yard where Cobain's father worked and the high school he attended, as well as Olympia and Seattle to tell Cobain's story. While the film provides valuable access into Cobain's personality, challenging many of the myths about the singer, it also works as a portrait of a specific place, of the Pacific northwest where Cobain lived. Kurt Cobain was paired with the humorous short, Talk to Me (see also), in which the filmmaker Mark Craig compiled twenty years of answering machine messages to narrate his life story over those two decades. I don't think the movie would have worked as a feature, but as a short, it was a lot of fun and used the audio from answering machine messages very effectively.

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April 7, 2007

Grindhouse

In one of Grindhouse's (IMDB) ubiquitous chase scenes, we get a fleeting glimpse of the Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse, the movie theater that represents a kind of mecca for film geeks. The shot is clearly no accident, of course, and I think it provides the best illustration for the kinds of shared cinematic pleasures that the film seeks to evoke.

Grindhouse allows Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino get their film geek on, paying tribute not only to the trashy high-concept horror films of the 1960s and 70s but the grindhouse theatrical experience itself. As A.O. Scott observes, Grindhouse is less interested in a certain style or genre than in a "lost ambience of moviegoing." The film, as many critics have noted, is a double-feature, with Rodriguez's zombies-in-Texas flick, "Planet Terror" opening for Tarantino's car chase thriller, "Death Proof," in which Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) has created a car that is, well, death-proof. In between the features, we get a brief intermission featuring parody trailers for horror films made by Rob Zombie and Eli Roth (among others), and the film itself seems to be plagued by technological glitches--reels are missing, the weathered film appears to pop and crackle. In short, Grindhouse is meant to evoke the decaying multiplexes described by David Denby in a recent New Yorker article.

As a bit of a film geek fascinated by the moviegoing experience, I enjoyed the film's unabashed nostalgia for the tawdry pleasures watching these movies offered. Of course, as Scott points out, the joke is that most of these gags--the snapping and popping of the film, the missing reels (during the sex scene, of course)--were produced digitally, but again, that's part of the fun. And, of course, the playfully "bad" filmmaking--the awkward cuts, the random close-ups--are part of the fun, too. Still, there was something strange about watching a movie meant to evoke those tawdry 1970s movie houses in the local art house, and sometimes, watching Grindhouse felt more like an academic exercise than anything else.

The individual features themselves went on a little too long, I think. Like Drew, I felt that Rodriguez's zombies-deep-in-the-heart-of-Texas feature was pretty much on assignment. The bravura elements--Rose Macgowan's go-go dancer Cherry Darling being outfitted with a machine gun as a prosthetic leg--were just goofy enough to be funny, but I'm not sure that Rodriguez did anything terribly new.

My initial reaction to Tarantino's segment was that the pop-culture heavy dialogue felt like a lazier version of the conversations in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction where characters deconstruct everything from Madonna to kung fu movies. But a comment to Drew's post has me convinced that there's a little more happening than I initially noticed. As usual, Tarantino mixes a number of genres (slasher, car chase, blaxploitation), and the car chase scene offers one of the giddiest illustrations of the sexualization of cars imaginable. Still, I think, perhaps unlike Drew, I wanted more of the crackling Tarantino quips and self-referential humor. Given that Reservoir Dogs is now fifteen (!) years old, I'm starting to find myself becoming nostalgic for the moviegoing pleasures of the early 1990s and the excitement that Tarantino's earliest films offered.

Update: The Guardian film blog has a nice round-up of the critical take on Grindhouse across the blogosphere. And I'd say that even if they didn't mention me.

Posted by chuck at 1:09 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

April 4, 2007

Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience

In "The Storyteller," Walter Benjamin observed that soldiers returning from the First World War returned from the war "not richer, but poorer in communicable experience." In the essay, Benjamin illustrates the challenges of putting the experiences of mechanical warfare into narrative form. This difficulty of communicating the experience of war has provided a challenge for writers and filmmakers who have attempted to describe soldiers' experiences, as we saw in a number of Iraq War documentaries, including Gunner Palace and Occupation: Dreamland, as well as the fictional adaptation of Anthony Swofford's Gulf War memoir, Jarhead, but as the Iraq War continues to unfold, we are again faced with the challenges of putting the events of the war into narrative form.

In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts created the "Operation Homecoming" program to help soldiers write about their experiences during the war. The program, which featured a range of writers including Tom Clancy, Mark Bowden, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Tobias Wolff, inspired an anthology of journal entries, short stories, poems, and other writings, and now some of these writings have been compiled in the documentary film, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience (IMDB), which is set to air on PBS stations on April 16, as part of their "America at a Crossroads" series.

Operation Homecoming, directed by Richard E. Robbins, takes on the challenge of putting the soldiers' stories into visual form. The film mixes dramatic readings of the soldiers' writings by actors including Aaron Eckhart, Blair Underwood, and Beau Bridges with interviews with the soldiers and other writers, including Tim O'Brien, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Tobias Wolff. In all cases, the soldiers' stories return to the question of using narrative to make sense of their experiences, and the value of this documentary is, in part, its illustration of the varied approaches the soldiers take in trying to represent their wartime experiences. These stories are represented visually through a variety of techniques, including a memorable animated sequence recalling the blocky images seen in graphic novels to illustrate Colby Buzzell's story, "Men in Black," as well as a variety of visual styles designed to distinguish each individual story.

The segments touch on a variety of aspects of the war experience. In "Medevac Missions," Ed Hrivnak describes the experience of attending to wounded soldiers and speculates about how the soldiers will cope after they return home from the war in language that recalled, probably unintentionally, the Walter Reed scandal and the very problems with the medical treatment soldiers have received. Edward Gyokeres' "Camp Muckamungus" uses dark humor to capture some aspects of the absurdity of war, creating what he calls "a primer for desert life." And Jack Lewis's "Roadwork" describes the experience of identifying with an Iraqi man who had lost his son.

The film typically avoids taking an explicit political position on the war, and as a critic of the decision to go to war in Iraq, I sometimes wanted a documentary that took a more explicit anti-war position. And as someone who has written quite a bit about grunts' eye documentaries, I also wonder whether these documentaries romanticize the war, but I think that Homecoming underplays that impulse to some extent. As Robbins observes in an interview, "we wanted to talk about the human side, the personal, the experiential." Of course, it's impossible to completely avoid "politics" when it comes to representations of war, but my sense is that the film's relationship to the war is an ambivalent one. As Buzzell observes in "Men in Black," one of the goals of such a project is not to take a position on the war but to continue writing and, therefore, continue living.

Update: Just came across a blog promoting Buzzell's book, My War, which I'd love to read at some point in the future.

Update 2: Also worth checking out: this Janice Page Boston Globe review of Operation Homecoming. I think she's right to emphasize the fact that the film is about the writer's ability to be a "witness."

Posted by chuck at 7:23 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 2, 2007

Same Name Game

Odd coincidence: just minutes after watching Alan Berliner's 2001 documentary, The Sweetest Sound, in which Berliner explores his ambivalence about sharing his name with dozens of other people, I came across Chris's blog post about sharing a name with an NBC news personality. Berliner's documentary is a pretty cool meditation on the relationship between names and identity, a topic that becomes even more interesting when Berliner explores the uncertain origins of his last name.

But the documentary raised a number of interesting questions for me. The relationship between naming and identity is always complicated for me, especially since I'm a "junior" and share my name with my father. Berliner also mentions using the Internet as both a research tool ("egosurfing" to find other Alan Berliners) and a means of establishing a legacy, but I wonder to what extent the web has made people more conscious of all the other people out there who share their name. I know that when I've been on the job market, I've done my share of vanity Google searches just to find out what other Chuck Tryons are out there. Turns out there's a management expert, a computer programmer and fantasy writer, an expert on fly fishing in Missouri, and a police officer in Texas. It also turns out that I'm avoiding linking to them because I don't want them to get page rank over me.

In order to sound a little less threatened by the fact that I share my name with a few dozen complete strangers, I'll add that what I liked best about The Sweetest Sound was Berliner's use of home movie footage as means of thinking through these identity issues. And I'll add that I'm doing a course on autobiographical film and video in the fall and Berliner's films and videos might work well in that course.

Posted by chuck at 1:01 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 1, 2007

The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others (IMDB) opens with a classroom lecture in a East German classroom in the early 1980s. A Stasi (secret police) instructor, Gerd Wiesler, teaches his students about the best methods for conducting interrogations of suspected political subversives. Playing an audio recording of one interrogation, Wiesler expresses complete confidence in the surveillance methods, even when a student asks whether it's appropriate to keep a suspect awake for over 24 hours, adding that "it's inhuman." It was tempting at this point to identify resonances between these interrogation techniques and the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists in Guantanamo, but The Lives of Others, writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's feature film debut, turned out to be far more interesting as an account of the paranoia and absurdity at the heart of East Germany's totalitarian state just as it is on the verge of collapse (in this sense, Lives of Others reminded me of Kieslowski's mid-career Polish films, including Blind Chance and Camera Buff).

After the classroom scene, Wiesler, along with other members of the Stasi, attends the performance of a play by Georg Dreyman, described as one of East Germany's few "non-subversive" writers. Still, the Stasi suspect that Dreyman may be becoming increasingly political, and Wiesler is assigned to spy on the writer, listening in on his apartment in alternating twelve-hour shifts with another member of the secret police. During these scenes, Wiesler is initially the perferct example of bureaucratic competence, carefully detailing Georg's daily activities and writing them up in reports that he types up white listening to the apartment on clunky headphones. On Dreyman's birthday, for example, Wiesler describes the birthday party and noting that Dreyman's girlfriend, Christa-Maria stayed after, speculates "presumably they have intercourse." Of course, as J. Hoberman observes, Wiesler's initial attraction to Dreyman is no doubt the opportunity to live vicariously through the charismatic writer having an affair with one of East Germany's most talented actresses (Hoberman is more critical than I am of the film's "squishy humanism").

Eventually, Wiesler begins to develop some sympathy for Dreyman, recognizing his humanity and he begins working subtly to protect the writer from further persecution, making him kind of a Stasi version of Harry Caul, a comparison that comes up in this very good Cinematical review by Martha Fischer from the Toronto International Film Festival. This sympathy works through the doubled identification that is produced through the surveillance subplot. Through cinematic identification we see the world through the perspective of Wiesler, but within the film, similar processes of identification allow (or require) Wiesler to see the world through Dreyman's more romantic and humanistic perspective. At the same time, Dreyman's actions are not unambiguous. He has been favored by the state because of his "political neutrality," but several of his colleagues, including the director who interpreted several of his plays for the stage, have been far less lucky.

The Lives of Others is one of the more compelling films I've seen in some time. Stephanie Zacharek's Salon review conveys much of what I like about the film. While von Donnersmarck's movie never shies away from "the repressiveness of the GDR," it also shows compassion for the characters who inhabit that world.

Update: While I was waiting for this entry to publish, I was skimming Alison Willmore's IFC Blog review of Lives, and I think she may be right to point out that the GDR is painted in relative absolutes, noting that the film fails to acknowledge that the GDR had its supporters. She also adds that von Donnersmarck states that he made the film in response to his "disgust" at the ostalgie, the popular nostalgia for the GDR. I still think the film is a bit more complicated than Willmore suggests. Even the petty tyrants within the Stasi are seen as products of an overarching system, one that seems fully aware that it is on the verge of collapse.

Posted by chuck at 12:42 PM | TrackBack

March 24, 2007

The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair

During Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker's 2005 documentary Gunner Palace, soldiers from the 2/3 Field Artillery conduct a midnight raid on an Iraqi home where a group of brothers are rumored to be manufacturing weapons. One of the brothers, Yunis Khatayer Abbas, is a journalist who is fluent in English. He denies that he is manufacturing weapons, mouthing off to the soldiers for repeatedly telling him to "shut up," but the soldiers detain him anyway, and Tucker reports in voice-over that Abbas was sent to Abu Ghraib prison. We learn little else about Abbas at that point, and because the film was released soon after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke, I was left wanting to learn more about his story. This lost thread also points to one of the weaknesses of Gunner Palace, its "myopic" focus only on the experiences of the soldiers preventing us from seeing the horrors of the war from an Iraqi point of view (see Manohla Dargis on this point).

Tucker and Epperlein have answered those questions (and raised a few others) with their intriguing new documentary, The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair (IMDB). For the most part, The Prisoner is a straight first-person documentary, focusing on Abbas's story--his career as a journalist during Saddam Hussein, his experiences covering the war in Iraq, and finally, his experiences as a prisoner in Abu Ghraib, where he learned that he was suspected of plotting to kill British prime minister Tony Blair. Abbas also describes the torture he experienced under Saddam Hussein's regime as well as the torture he experienced at Abu Ghraib (an American soldier confirms that Abbas was mistreated and clearly remembers him fondly). Abbas's story is carried along in part with Petra Epperlein's bold, pop art illustrations and by footage recorded by Abbas of the war that damaged his country. Abbas himself is an engaging storyteller, his impulses as a journalist clearly coming through as he narrates his experiences.

As Dargis also notes, the story is depressing and frightening, in part because Abbas is only one of many Iraqis to endure similar treatment during the course of the war. Because the war in Iraq has now lasted well over four years, I'm not terribly confident that it will receive nearly the audience or attention that Gunner Palace did, but I think it deserves a wider audience, if only because it's telling a somewhat more difficult story about the war and its effects on Iraqi civilians.

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March 19, 2007

Four

Somehow I lost track of the fact that this week marks four years of blogging for me. But instead of writing yet another long post about how my blogging practices have changed over the last [insert number] years, I'd rather link to a few of my morning coffee reads:

• Chris at Category D has a reminder about what sounds like a pretty cool conference, "Media History: What are the Issues?" Added bonus: the conference is in Austin, one of the coolest cities in the country.
• That Little Round-Headed Boy mentions that it's Spike Lee's 50th birthday, using that as an opportunity to revisit Lee's masterful Do the Right Thing. I'm tempted to agree with TLRHB that Lee is one of the "most interesting" (and prolific) contemporary directors. Everybody has been complaining for years that Marty had never won an Oscar. What about Spike?
• Twittervision, a Google Maps/Twitter mashup, shows you what the whole world is thinking, one Twitter post at a time
• I watched Inland Empire (IMDB) Saturday night. For a variety of reasons (mostly grading), I don't have time to write a full review, but it's one of the more compelling films I've seen in a long time, all the more so because of Lynch's experimental approach (which included writing the screenplay as he was filming). Manohla Dargis of The New York Times liked it for similar reasons: "Like the surrealist practice of automatic writing, the film feels as if it could have been made in a trance, dredged up from within." Like her, I found the film somewhat less approachable than Lynch's earlier Mulholland Drive, but Inland Empire is definitely a film I'd like to revisit in the future.

Update: By the way, I haven't mentioned MediaCommons in a while, but because I'll be flying up to New Jersey for an editorial board meeting next week, I just wanted to point out that in addition to the In Media Res columns, there are a number of interesting project proposals that are starting to appear. More later.

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March 16, 2007

Little Children

During a key moment in Todd Field's Little Children (IMDB), Sarah (Kate Winslet), a graduate student-turned-stay-at-home mom, finds herself discussing Madame Bovary at a book club. Most of the women in the book club, with one exception, are significantly older than Sarah, and as she is drawn into discussion, Sarah increasingly finds herself identifying with Flaubert's famous adulterous heroine. Like Madame Bovary, Sarah finds herself stifled by her suburban life and bored by the other moms who typically serve as her companions at the local park where she takes her daughter, particularly one mom who insists on keeping her kids' lives perfectly scheduled and who chides Sarah for her absent-mindedness.

Sarah's boredom is interrupted by the arrival of the town's one stay-at-home dad, the likable but blank Brad, a former college athlete who is seemingly emasculated by fatherhood and multiple failed attempts at the bar exam. Sarah and Brad bond almost by accident, hugging and then briefly kissing to shock the other moms who watch nearby before marching off in a huff of disapproval. But as they continue to talk, both Brad and Sarah become intoxicated as much by the thrill of escape as anything else.

Their story is countered by the better known but more marginal subplot about Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley), a convicted sex offender, who is released into the custody of his mother who lives in the same suburb. A former police officer Larry harasses Ronnie by putting up posters about him and yelling insults through a megaphone on his lawn late at night). And while I found Earle's performance powerfully sympathetic, I never found the coupling of these two plots fully convincing. AO Scott offers a more affirmative reading of the film, noting that Ronnie and Larry are as "deeply connected as Brad and Sarah: they are symbols of failure, frustration and the ineradicable consequences of what earlier Massachusetts townspeople would not have hesitated to call sin."

Scott's reading makes sense but, like Ella Taylor, I never quite got what made Sarah and Brad's life all that tedious. Both have comfortable lives, but more crucially, I never quite get the sense that Sarah and Brad consider themselves failures as much as they're simply bored with their lives. This boredom relies almost entirely on the film's utter disdain for suburbia, for the apparently bland upper-middle class lives in which the mere mention of adultery will send shock waves through the neighborhood. I'm certainly no fan of suburbia, but I found the film's shorthand use of suburbia to stand in for Sarah and Brad's tedium to be one floating paper bag away from American Beauty (and that's not a compliment). Although, to be fair, I don't think I found the suburban parents to be quite as shrill as Taylor implies, especially given the parental impulse to protect children from dangers real and perceived.

Taylor also reminded me that like Field's previous film, In the Bedroom, Little Children relies on a relatively absurd plot twist, in this case involving Ronnie's self-punishment for his own pedophilia. Field does bring out some interesting performances, which almost made the film work for me until the film's ending, which, as I've tried to imply, left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied.

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March 13, 2007

Notes on Marie Menken

Martina Kudlacek's Notes on Marie Menken offers a much-needed portrait of one of the American avant-garde's forgotten filmmakers. Kudlacek's film serves less as a straight biography of Menken and more as a diffuse portrait of a virtually forgotten figure. Menken, whose poetic, observant films, influenced artists including Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas, later became known as one of Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls and was also the model for Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Kudlacek's documentary will frustrate viewers looking for a straight biographical approach to Menken. As Manohla Dargis observes, the documentary omits several important details about Menken's life, including the fact that she studied art at the Art Students League, and while the documentary mentions the death of a child, filmmaker Kenneth Anger has mentioned in other interviews being visited by a child of Menken's. Given the lack of knowledge about Menken (I knew little about her before watching this documentary), that may be a bit of a disservice, but Notes does emphasize the need to revisit an artist whose works are in danger of being lost to the ravages of time and fading memory, as well as the fragile materiality of the film medium. In addition, Notes effectively captures Menken's sense of wonder, her ability to see the beauty in everyday life.

Kudlacek depicts the fragility of cinematic memory through an early sequence in which we are led into a small storage closet in which many of Menken's films and collectibles are stored. Menken's nephew leads us into what seems like an abandoned space holding up rusting cans of film for our inspection. Many of the films have clearly been damaged, yet another reminder along the lines of Bill Morrison's Decasia, that too much of America's film history is in danger of being lost or becoming damaged beyond repair.

Of course, one of the strengths of Kudlacek's film is its compilation of many of Menken's most powerful films, providing viewers with an overview of Menken's eye for everyday life. While watching Menken's Glimpse of the Garden and Arabesque for Kenneth Anger, I found myself thinking about Benjamin's concept of unconscious optics, which he defined in "The Work of Art" as film's ability to reveal "entirely new structural formations of the subject." Menken's camera often focused on everyday details, seeing them in new ways while filming in a playful, often improvisational style, and as Anger observes in the documentary, Menken seemed especially interested in the play of light with the camera, which is evident during several of Menken's films. But one of the more compelling film clips is a playful "duel" with Andy Warhol using Bolex cameras on the top of a New York City building.

Finally, the film offers a number of valuable interviews with the avant-garde filmmakers and artists who ran with Menken, including Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, and Gerard Malanga, who all provide background into Menken's life story. Mekas, in particular, reminisces about their shared Lithuanian heritage and praises Menken for her engagement with the everyday, an influence that is no doubt visible in Mekas's "home movie" approach to avant-garde filmmaking. Even though the film is short on biographical detail, these moments make Notes on Marie Menken well worth further attention, and the Menken footage left me wanting to learn more about Menken's work and her influence on other American avant-garde filmmakers.

Notes on Marie Menken is available from First Run/Icarus Films.

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March 3, 2007

Venus

I celebrated the beginning of my spring break by seeing Roger Michell and Hanif Kureishi's Venus (IMDB). Because the preview suggested a pop-styled Pygmalion story, I considered skipping the film, but Kureishi's earlier work (My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid) piqued my interest, and the chance to watch Peter O'Toole on the big screen proved too much to resist. Plus, after seeing ten other movies at the Cameo, I had earned a free ticket. I'm still not convinced that Venus escapes the Pygmalion problem, but O'Toole's self-deprecating performance at least manages to complicate it to some extent.

O'Toole plays Maurice, a seventy-something actor who is part of a generation of British actors now fading away, their virility and masculinity undercut by old age. This point is underscored by the opening scene in which Maurice and fellow actor, Ian, divide up their pills in a local coffeehouse. Ian somewhat reluctantly hires his grand-niece, Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), as a live-in nurse, and Maurice quickly takes an interest in the teenage Jessie, who has vague wishes to become a model, though she does little, at first, to pursue this career, preferring instead to sit idly in front of a loud television set, snacking on crisps.

The scenes in which Maurice goes about introducing Jessie to the theater are sufficiently breezy and slyly subverted when Maurice gently chides her for not knowing the author of Hamlet. Jessie counters by pointing out that Maurice doesn't know who wrote a pop music lyric she likes, and Jessie never fully relinquishes her tastes, saving the film, at least to some extent from becoming just another Pygmalion story. At the same time, Maurice seems fully aware of the absurdity of his crush on a woman fifty years younger than him, but I'm not quite sure the film fully escapes from this criticism, in part because the desires that might be motivating Jessie's actions are not addressed as explicitly as Maurice's. Instead, for much of the film, she comes across as slightly sullen until Maurice begins to see something interesting in her. In some ways, I thought Venus worked best in its depiction of a class of aging British actors and actresses, including Maurice's ex-wife (played by Vanessa Redgrave, who should have received far more screen time), and the long friendships they had shared.

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February 24, 2007

Notes on a Scandal

I finally caught Notes on a Scandal (IMDB) tonight (we're a little behind in Fayetteville), and while I wanted to like it, something about the film fell flat for me. I think that Patrick Marber's (Closer, which I also found to be a bit overrated) screenplay and Richard Eyre's direction seemed a bit forced, as if the film had to telegraph too much information about Barbara (Judi Dench), the prim, matronly, but creepy schoolteacher who develops a fondness for young, vulnerable, female teachers. This information is given to us through Barbara's voice-over narration of her diaries, which we are immediately led to understand are unreliable, suggesting her character's psychological instability and her lack of awareness of her own motives.

When Bathsheba (Cate Blanchett), the art teacher with a thrift-store chic, takes a job teaching at Barbara's working-class high school and begins an affair with a 15-year old student, it becomes clear a little too quickly where their relationship is going (it could be that I saw the trailer a few too many times). The student-teacher affair is an interesting subplot, especially when it becomes clear that the student is, in many ways, the aggressor in the relationship, lying to Sheba and playing to her interest in art to win her sympathies, but I couldn't help but think that if the filmmakers had trusted the audience a bit more, Notes could have been a more interesting, darker film. Add the somewhat undeveloped subplot of Sheba's boredom with her marriage--she comments at one point that "marriage and kids, it's wonderful, but it doesn't give you meaning"--and the film felt mildly dated (which might explain all of the Fatal Attraction comparisons).

There was a strain of dark comedy that seemed to emerge on occasion, such as when Barbara disdainfully describes Sheba's family as "bourgeois bohemians" or when she sharply dismisses the school principal's kinder and gentler methods of educating children, but those moments were displaced by the film's need to explain Barbara's actions too simply as sexual repression. I don't really have time for a longer review right now, but it's hard for me to resist the idea that Notes on a Scandal could have done more with the material that was available.

Update: Edited for corrections. I originally listed the screenwriter as Stephen Mamber. It was Patrick Marber. Perhaps I should stop blogging so late at night.

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February 21, 2007

Looking for an Icon

As I watched Hans Pool and Maaik Krijgsman's documentary, Looking for a Icon, I found myself thinking about Susan Sontag's 2004 essay on the Abu Ghraib photographs, "What Have We Done." Pool and Krijgsman's film explores the iconic power of four of the photographs that won "World Press Photo of the Year" and have since become photographic icons: Eddie Adams' 1968 photo of the execution of a Viet Cong prisoner, an anonymous photo of Salvador Allende taken soon before he was killed during the 1973 coup, Charlie Cole's 1989 photograph of a solitary student standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, and David Turnley's 1991 Gulf War photograph of a grieving U.S. soldier. As Sontag predicted, the Abu Ghraib photographs have become of the primary means by which the war in Iraq is understood: "Photographs have an insuperable power to determine what people recall of events, and it now seems likely that the defining association of people everywhere with the rotten war that the Americans launched preemptively in Iraq last year will be photographs of the torture of Iraqi prisoners in the most infamous of Saddam Hussein's prisons, Abu Ghraib."

The iconic photograph of the Iraqi prisoner standing on the box, his arms outstretched with fake electrical wires attached to his fingers, loomed large over Looking for an Icon, appearing at first in the background on the computer monitor of Geoffrey Batchen before later becoming one of the key images by which the documentary sought to understand how photographs assume significant places in our image archive. The Abu Ghraib images remind us that the role of photographs in documenting history, specifically the hsitory of conflict, remain pertinent, while at the same time complicating the question not only of how photographs acquire their meaning, and by extension, their iconic status.

Looking for an Icon opens with a meditation on Eddie Adams' 1968 photograph of the execution of a Viet Cong prisoner, a photo that is now regarded as helping to turn public opinion against the Vietnam War. In an audio interview, Adams reports that he was "surprised" that the photograph led to widespread protests and, in fact, his photo actually had a mixed reception, with many letters to the editor arguing that the execution was justified. Of course, because Adams photograph did have tremendous power, Batchen argues that there has been a greater effort to control the images of war that we see, turning press photography into what he calls a "propaganda machine," a pronouncement that seems somewhat reductive in my view, in part because the "press" has been redefined since the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War.

These questions of representation frame David Turnley's memory of taking his famous 1991 photograph of an American soldier grieving for a fallen comrade. During the interview, Turnley comments that as he look at the photograph, he recognizes that he is sitting approximately where he was seated when the photo was taken, describing beautifully the identification between camera and viewer. While Turnley's photograph has been described as iconic, Adriaan Manshouwer, one of the committee members for the World Press Photo Award, challenges such claims, arguing that the photo fails to capture the Iraqi experiences of the war. In this sense, the film is willing to challenge some of its central claims about how photographs become icons.

Perhaps the most powerful moment for me was the interview with Charlie Cole, who photographed the lone student confronting the tanks in Tiananmen Square. In the interview, Cole reports his desire to give the student's action meaning, recalling that "If this kid is going to sacrifice his life, I owe it to him to tell his story, to make his life mean something." The narratives of the photographers themselves were often quite powerful, suggesting the complicated role of the photographer in documenting history, questions that continue to confront us as the war in Iraq continues to haunt us with no end in sight.

Looking for an Icon is available via First Run/Icarus Films.

Posted by chuck at 10:19 PM | TrackBack

February 17, 2007

Blogumentary

I've been menaing to watch Chuck Olsen's Blogumentary for a while now and finally took some time this afternoon to watch it on Google Video. I had been following Olsen's project for some time via his personal blog and knew that Olsen was an avid blogger who had a lot to say about this new medium. I think Blogumentary works best as a short video history of blogging, in providing an overview of how blogging fits within a rapidly changing media ecosystem. A few highlights for me:

• A segment featuring an interview with film blogger Matthew Clayfield, whose blog I've been reading regularly for a couple of years.
• Blogumentary is really good on the role of blogging in connecting people who might not otherwise meet. During one segment, Olsen describes meeting people andmaking freinds through links on his blogroll, concluding that "finding a blog you like is like making a friend."
• Olsen spends much of the documentary discussing whether blogs are a form of citizen journalism and how many bloggers define themselves against what often gets described as the mainstream media. Noting the role of bloggers in challenging racist comments by Trent Lott and in questioning the authenticity of the 60 Minutes report on Bush's Air National Guard documents, Olsen explores this complicated relationship between print and television journalism and blog commentary. And the documentary is careful (and correct) to differentiate blogging from genuine journalism.
• One of the more compelling segments of the documentary featured an interview with Stuart Hughes, a BBC journalist and blogger who was wounded during the first few months of the invasion of Iraq. Hughes eventually had part of his right leg amputated and credits his blog audience with suporting him through the recovery process, Olsen also describes a similar story of being able to counsel a friend who was going through an emotional crisis, again emphasizing the role of blogs in creating and sustaining communities.
• An interesting discussion of the role of blogging in the Howard Dean campaign. I'm still relatively ambivalent about the contributions of blogging to the public sphere, and while I certainly embraced Howard Dean and Joe Trippi's message of "people-powered politics," I'm still skeptical about the degree to which political power has been decentralized, and the merciless attacks on the Edwards campaign bloggers, both of whom were eventually forced to resign, leaves me wondering to what extent blogs have shaped political discourse for the better (Olsen's discussion of this controversy is quite good).
• Olsen also addresses the blogging "gender gap," the observation that while over half of all bloggers are female, most of the so-called A-List bloggers are male. I think this is an important question, but I'm also sure that I can't do it justice in the space of a single bullet point.

I'm usually relatively resistant to anything that seeks to define blogging primarily as a tool for grassroots politics and citizen journalism, but Blogumentary does a good job of balancing those definitions with the role of blogs in keeping people connected and in fostering community. I think it's a valuable contribution to our on-going discussions and definitions of blogging.

Posted by chuck at 3:12 PM | TrackBack

February 4, 2007

Taking a Break/The Departed

Chris's post congratulating Scorsese for (finally) winning the Directors Guild of America award for The Departed (IMDB) reminded me that I wanted to at least mention that I finally caught that film last night. I wont pretend to say anything new about The Departed, at this point (and I'm way too tired from a long day of writing, anyway), but I did enjoy the film as much as anything Scorsese has done since Goodfellas. As lots of folks who saw the film three or four months ago pointed out, The Departed has been seen as a kind of return to form for Scorsese, revisiting the urban street life, the conflict between cops and criminals, where he built his reputation in the 1970s and '80s (not to mention a liberal dash of Catholic guilt).

But I was most fascinated by the status of the film as a remake of the Hong Kong action film, Infernal Affairs, which is now rapidly skyrocketing up my Netflix queue and is itself heavily influenced by the work of Scorsese and other New Hollywood directors of the 1970s. Oddly, there were several key moments during a chase scene set in the streets of Boston, shots filled with glittering neon signs and derelict buildings, that I felt could have been lifted from Blade Runner. And in other key moments, I couldn't help but appreciate Thelma Schoonmaker's fast, sharp editing.

The Departed wasn't a perfect film. In several places, I felt as if there were two or three films competing with each other, a feeling that was particularly acute whenever Jack Nicholson, with his oversized persona, appeared on screen. While Jack's character, Frank Costello, is a larger-than-life villain, Nicholson's leering and preening were a bit distracting. And I never could get a sense of the role of Madolyn (played by Vera Farmiga), other than as a mediating figure between the Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio characters. That being said, The Departed might be my favorite film among the Best Picture nominees.

Big Writing Project is almost done (maybe one more day), and hopefully then I'll be able to make a more permanent return to blogland. I haven't felt this far removed from blogging in a couple of years.

Posted by chuck at 11:51 PM | TrackBack

January 6, 2007

Lazy Saturday Night Reads

One or two other notes about the Bordwell blog entry I mentioned earlier. Like Jim Thompson, I was intrigued by Bordwell's discussion of the connections between storytelling techniques in film and in other media such as television and graphic novels. Both Thompson and Bordwell point to Jason Mittell's recent Velvet Light Trap article "Narrative Complexity in Comntemporary American Television", which addresses many of these concerns (more on the Mittell article later, hopefully).

Jim Thompson's pointer also reminded me to revisit Kristin Thompson's discussion of the various DVD versions of The DaVinci Code, where she explains that an extended version of the film is available pretty much everywhere except the US. But I was more intrigued to learn that Bordwell and Thompson are planning to include "recommended DVD extras" at the end of every chapter of the forthcoming edition of Film Art. I've been using Corrigan and White's The Film Experience recently, with some success, but I'll be very interested to see how these revisions play out. Like Chris, I've been thinking about film textbooks quite a bit lately, and I think that DVD extras can be used in the classroom in some very effective ways.

Completely unrelated to the above: I drove up to Durham last night to catch Old Joy (IMDB) at the Carolina Theater, based laregly on the recommendations of a few film bloggers whose taste I appreciate, and I'm really glad I made the trip, even if that meant driving over an hour back to F'ville in a monsoon. Kelly Reichardt's quiet, minimalist film follows two old friends, Mark (Daniel London) and Kurt (Will Oldham) as they travel to hot springs in the mountains. There is a gap between the two old friends who have drifted apart after Mark married and settled down while Kurt continues to drift from job to job and place to place. I shouldn't keep promising to write longer reviews, but I really liked this film and would like to encourage others to see it by giving it the attention it deserves. I'm just not sure I'll have time to do that with all of the syllabus prep and other writing I need to be doing this weekend.

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December 22, 2006

Top Ten Movies 2006

Because I happened to see Karina Longworth's contribution to the 2006 indieWIRE Blog Poll, I've decided to put together this year's top ten list a few days early. The indieWIRE blog poll invites everyone to contribute their top ten lists and selections in several other major categories. Once again, I can't help but notice that geography dictates much of what I see, so I'm well aware that my choices have several key omissions, including The Departed (which I have no excuse for missing), Old Joy, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, The Good German, The Good Shepherd, and Mutual Appreciation, among many others. My list is, once again, dominated by documentaries, but living in DC for much of the year and attending Silverdocs focused my attention much more heavily on docs than other categories. But here are my favorites from the last year:

Best Film: Black Sun, dir. Gary Tarn. I've never been comfortable identifying a single film as the "best" of the year, but Tarn's experimental documentary, based on painter Hugues de Montalembert's memoirs about going blind, was certainly the most engaging film I saw, exploring questions about vision and subjectiivty in complicated ways.

Nine Runners Up, in no particular order:
Iraq in Fragments, dir. James Longley.
Science of Sleep, dir. Michel Gondry.
The Inside Man, dir. Spike Lee.
The Road to Guantanamo, dir. Michael Winterbottom.
Unknown White Male, dir. Rupert Murray.
A Scanner Darkly, dir. Richard Linklater.
Three Times, dir. Hsiao-hsien Hou.
Our Brand is Crisis, dir. Rachel Boynton.
The Puffy Chair, dir. Mark and Jay Duplass.

Best Undistributed Film: The Hole Story, dir Alex Karpovsky.

Best First Film: The Puffy Chair.

Best Performance: I'll go with Helen Mirren's impressive perforamcne in The Queen, but Gael Garcia Bernal in The Science of Sleep (Karina's choice) deserves consideration as well.

Best Supporting Performance: Nick Nolte in Clean. I believe the film is a couple of years old, but since it just now found its way into US theaters, I'll go with that.

Best Director: tie, Spike Lee and Richard Linklater. Lee made two very different, but equally compelling films in The Inside Man and When the Levees Broke. Because Levees more or less debuted on HBO, it probably won't get the critical acclaim in year-end lists that it deserves, but it is one of the most important documents of the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, while Inside Man, like Lee's 25th Hour, provides one of the best portraits I've seen of a post-9/11 New York City.

Linklater also made two very different films: the trippy, intellectual, rotoscope animation adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly (by far the best adaptation of a Dick novel since Blade Runner) and Fast Food Nation, an activist film that self-critically interrogates the role of activist films.

Best Screenplay: Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, dir Michael Winterbottom. Screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce. One of the funniest films I've seen in years and a fantastic adaptation to boot.

Best Documentary: Iraq in Fragments. I've already mentioned plenty of docs, but Jesus Camp, Shut Up and Sing, and Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore all came very close to cracking my top ten list.

Posted by chuck at 11:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 21, 2006

The Last King of Scotland

It was difficult for me to watch Kevin Macdonald's feature debut, The Last King of Scotland (IMDB) without thinking of (and wishing to rewatch) Barbet Schroeder's disturbing documentary about the brutal Ugandan dictator, General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait. In Schroeder's documentary, we see Amin as a strangely innocent and charming figure while also being forced to reconcile these images with the brutal dictator who was responsible for the deaths of at least 300,000 Ugandans. While most audience members will be unaware of the documentary, Last King depends almost entirely on Forest Whitaker's "chameleonic" performance as the mercurial despot, it was never entirely clear to me what story the film was trying to tell about Uganda or Amin.

The film views Amin through the eyes of a young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), who briefly takes work as a doctor helping Uganda's rural poor before being taken in as Amin's personal physician, in part because of Amin's admiration for all things Scottish (he even names his children Mackenzie and Campbell). Garrigan, as the Voice review notes, is a composite of a number of white advisors who helped Amin retain power, although in the film, Garrigan gradually becomes repulsed by Amin's actions and his own complicity in them (he even lies at one point to cover for Amin's assassination of a Ugandan bureaucrat).

I'm still sorting out what I didn't like about Last King, and I'm wondering if it isn't related to my response to Blood Diamond a few days ago. While I recognize there can be value in using the conventions of the Hollywood thriller to depict stories such as Amin's, I found that both films relied too heavily on stock characters that seemed to have the effect of leaving the politics of postcolonialism in the abstract. Instead of the idealistic reporter and the mercenary, Last King offers a naive doctor who is lured in by Amin's charms and by the pleasures of wealth and power. And, yet again, a story about Africa is told through the eyes of a white outsider, although, to be fair, it is interesting that Africa has become the subject fo so many Hollywood films.

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December 16, 2006

Fast Food Nation

Adapted from Eric Schlosser's investigation of the fast food industry, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation (IMDB) weaves together three discrete narratives that reveal the dark underbelly beneath the shiny veneer of the fast food indsutry. Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear) is a Mickey's marketing executive sent to Cody, Colorado, to investigate high fecal content in Mickey's signature Big One burger (or as another marketing exec succinctly puts it, "there's shit in the meat"). In Cody, Don converses briefly with Mickey's counter-girl, Amber (Ashley Johnson), who dreams of going to college, in part because it will get her out of her stifling hometown. Even her ambition to become an astronaut seems more about a desire to escape than any specific interest in science. Finally, we are introduced to Raul (Wilmer Valderrama) and Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno), a married couple who immigrate from Mexico to take work in Cody, where they inevitably wind up working for the town's giant slaughterhouse.

When the three plots intersect, they do so casually and conversationally, allowing characters to discuss the implications of the fast food industry, rather than lecturing us about the evils of fast food, which, deep down, many of us already know. In doing so, the film manages to be self-critical, questioning its own premise as an activist movie, a gesture often absent from overtly political films such as Crash (my reading here is not entirely original: Stuart Klawans, MaryAnn Johanson, and AO Scott both make this point in similar ways).

This self-criticism emerges in two pivotal scenes, the first of which features Bruce Willis as a cynical Mickey's executive working in Cody who openly acknowledges to Don that, yes, there is shit in the meat, but that "everybody needs to eat a little shit from time to time." [Note: the next few sentences reveal a major plot point.] Later, Amber, charmed and inspired by her free-spirited uncle (Ethan Hawke), chooses to take her own form of political resistance against the fast food industry. After becoming involved with a group of environmental activists at a nearby college, Amber picks up on the cynicism of Paco, who dismisses the group's plan for a letter writing campaign against Mickey's, instead suggesting that the group liberate the cows waiting to be slaughtered by opening the pens where they are confined. Of course, Amber's plans don't go as expected, and the students are confounded when the cows don't particualry want to be liberated, preferring the feed and comfort provided by the slaughterhouse.

While I have suggested that Linklater's film offers these moments of self-critique, his film, like Schlosser's notorious work of investigative journalism, does not shy away from depicting some of the more gruesome elements of the production of meat. Opening in a relentlessly cheerful Mickey's, the camera tracks into a hamburger patty, leading us, as it were, into the dark side of the industry. Several scenes were filmed in an actual slaughterhose, including one particularly graphic scene filmed on a kill floor, while Sylvia and Raul endure any number of hardships on the line, with several scenes in particular noting the degree to which illegal immigrant workers can be exploited by what one long-time rancher (Kris Kristofferson) aptly describes as the fast food "machine."

Linklater's "machine" metaphor complicates any simple notion of agency. Can Don risk sacrificing his career over his moral objections to the slaughterhouse? What effect can Amber and her fellow environmental activists have when "the bad guys" always seem t win every election? What are the alternatives available to Raul and Sylvia? While Scott and Klawans' reviews convey this political complexity, I get the impression that FFN was dismissed in other quarters as a political screed, condemning the supposedly intoxicating pleasures of fast food. However, instead, Linklater has offered something far more complicated than that, questioing the efficacy of political films while at the same time reminding us of their absolute necessity.

Posted by chuck at 10:26 PM | TrackBack

Shut Up and Sing

With the current opposition to the Bush administration's approach to the war in Iraq reaching 70% of the American public, it's easy to forget that in the days just before the invasion began, expressing opposition to the war, as Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks did during a concert in London, could provoke hostile responses ranging from accusations of a lack of patriotism to death threats. Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's subtle, underrated documentary, Shut Up and Sing (IMDB), serves as a bracing reminder of how the Dixie Chicks became embroiled in the propaganda war that accompanied the US invasion of Iraq. Maines' offhand remark that she was ashamed the President was from Texas, of course, provoked outrage among the country music audiences that had made Maines and her bandmates, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, the target not only of massive boycotts but also of astonishing levels of verbal abuse, with protestors holding up signs calling the group "traitors" while others gather to destroy copies of the bands CDs, and one mother eggs her small child to say "screw 'em." Kopple and Peck's film follows the band over the course of their 2003 tour and returns two years later to witness the band writing songs that will become Taking the Long Way.

While Kopple and Peck take some effort to show how the Bush administration built its case for war through key soundbites from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell, Shut Up and Sing is less a political statement than an analysis of the music industry itself through the experiences of Maines, Maguire, and Robison over the course of the last three years. The film opens with the Dixie Chicks performing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl and quickly moves from there to footage of Maines' now famous London concert, where her comment was picked up by The Guardian (I think this is the original concert review) and eventually repeated in the right-wing blog, Free Republic. Kopple and Peck show Maines and the rest of the band fascinated and perplexed by the hostility her comment provoked, and just as quickly, the band's manager, Simon Renshaw, begins to ask the group how they want to "spin" the controversy, which as Stephen Holden notes, makes the band appear as if they are being "marketed like politicians to targeted constituencies."

Eventually, of course, the controversy snowballed to such a degree that two of the massive country radio conglomerates refuse to play the Dixie Chicks because of fears that they will be subject to similar boycotts. As one astute DJ observes, most of his listeners would likely rather listen to hard rocker Marylin Manson than the former queens of country radio. This indictment of the music industry is underscored through footage of Renshaw testifying to Congress during some of the hearings on media consolidation, with Renshaw vividly depicting the silencing effect that media consolidation can have.

The film also depicts some of the more absurd responses the band faced, including an ongoing feud with conservative country singer Toby Keith, which included Maines wearing an "FUTK" t-shirt during one of her concerts and culminating, to some extent, in the notorious Entertainment Weekly cover and story where the band faced many of their critics head-on. And perhaps most dramatically, we see the band bravely playing a Dallas show soone after receiving a death threat.

These responses cannot be separated from the knowledge that the Dixie Chicks probably would not have been as widely criticized if they weren't women, a point made in the Village Voice review of the film. Many of the harshest comments have a distinctly gendered tone, with Bill O'Reilly insisting that Maines and her bandmates ought to be "slapped around," and Kopple and Peck are careful to depict the double standard that exists when it comes to musicians expressing their political views (Stephen Holden also touches on this in his Times review).

But I think that what made the film most compelling for me was how the band's music grew so explicitly out of their experiences as artists and public figures but also as wives and mothers. In this sense, the film reminded me quite a bit of the Metallica documentary, Some Kind of Monster in depicting a band at a kind of crossroads and, perhaps, working to redefine themselves in the face of negative publicity (Metallica, of course, alienated fans due to their testimony on music piracy). To the credit of the band members, the Dixie Chicks remained true to their country roots, producing a deeply personal record that took on the public outcry rather than avoiding it, a sentiment best expressed in the song, "Not Ready to Make Nice." While I've always been aware of the band's talent, these scenes deepend my appreciation of a group of talented musuicans.

Posted by chuck at 11:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 15, 2006

Blood Diamond

In one of the climactic moments of Blood Diamond (IMDB), Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), an American journalist righteously insists that if American consumers knew how our diamonds were obtained, we'd stop buying them. As Bowen lectures the ruthless mercenary Danny Archer (Leo DiCaprio, complete with Zimbabwean accent), I couldn't help but think about the ubiquitous jewely advertisements that have been airing on TV throughout the holiday season. Yes, those commercials do a fantastic job of masking the means of production (or perhaps, more precisely, procurement) that placed that diamond in the glass case at the local mall, and perhaps Blood Diamond does something to make that process more visible, but like Nathan Lee of The Village Voice, I was uninspired by the film's "facile politics and bad storytelling," Perhaps this disappointment is due to the fact that I watched this movie in a mall within walking distance of several jewelers whose commodities exist comfortably alongside the very film I was consuming. Perhpas it's mere holiday grumpiness. Or maybe I was just bored by half a dozen action sequences in search of a story.

To be fair, Blood Diamond makes some effort to dramatize the degree to which Western jewelers exploit, and sometimes even exacerbate, civil unrest in Africa in order to obtain diamonds (and, the film even implies, to ensure that diamond prices remain sufficiently high to ensure greater profit). And through the eyes of Maddy, we see American consumers caught up in the Monica-gate drama while the civil war raging in Sierra Leone received little attention. The film also dramatically depicts the rebel army's horrific practice of conscripting child soldiers. But the story itself is told with what seemed like a paint-by-numbers script featuring what Lee describes as the "holy trinity of African-adventure film" characters, the serious journlaist, the ruthless mercenary, and the righteous native, Solomon (played by Djimon Hounsou, who deserves better work).

The plot, such as it is, involves Solomon becoming forced into hard labor panning for diamonds, after being separated from his wife and children, including his son who dreams of becoming a doctor. When Solomon discovers a giant pink diamond, he manages to bury it but not before rumors of the diamond spread throughout the diamond trade, where they inevitably reach the ears of Danny. Maddy just happens to be in Sierra Leone to write a story about the "conflict diamond" trade when she meets Danny who clearly sees the "blood diamond" as a final big score before he "retires."

I think that what bothered me the most about the film was its depiction of the civil war in Sierra Leone. If Blood Diamond intended to be critical of the exploitation of Africans, it certainly seems to relish the bloody action sequences in which entire villages of anonymous Africans are slaughtered in a hail of bullets. There's little, if any, exploration of the politics that produced the civil war, which gives the violence a strange inevitability that I don't think the film intends. I'm probably being more critical than I ought to be of what appears to be a well-intentioned film, but because there's very little exploration of how the diamond industry operates outside of Africa (other than Maddy's long-shot photographs of Solomon selling the eponymous bood diamond to a European dealer), the critique ultimately felt a little thin.

Posted by chuck at 9:30 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 24, 2006

The Fountain

Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain (IMDB) depicts a love story between Tom (Hugh Jackman) and Izzy (Rachel Weisz) that spans centuries, leaping, often in the span of a single cut, from 16th century Spain to the present and, ultimately, hundreds of years into the future. In the 16th century, Izzy is Queen Isabel, beseiged by the Inquisition, and Tom is Tomas, a conquistador commissioned to find the Tree of Life, which is believed to be hidden in the midst of a Mayan jungle, or as Isabel casually describes it, "New Spain." In the early twenty-first century, Tom desperately seeks a cure for a brain tumor that threatens Izzy's life, while in the distant future (I believe in the 27th century, but who's counting?), Tom waits sadly beside a tree, which may or may not hold the spirit of his beloved Izzy.

The film itself is rather ambitious, seeking to meld these mystical ideas with cinematic narrative (or as AO Scott suggests, to "subvert the essentially sequential nature of film"). And, in fact, I was reminded in places of filmmakers such as Alain Resnais or Chris Marker; however, The Fountain never quite works through the questions of time, space, memory, and mortality that it introduces. In different hands, The Fountain might have pulled off what J. Hoberman aptly describes as its "pulpy mysticism." Instead, The Fountain came across as utterly tedious, its primary idaes established within the first few minutes of the film.

There are several sequences in the film that are visually stunning, and the music, performed primarily by the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai aptly conveys the film's ethereal tone, but for the most part, the attention to atmosphere simply served as a reminder that there really wasn't much going on in the film to begin with. I think this emptiness may have been due to the fact that Tom and Izzy seemed like little more than types, and I never had any sense that these two characters had endured hundreds of years together as a couple. As Scott points out, "It’s hard to sympathize with their hunger to overcome death, since neither one is credibly alive to begin with." Of course, given that the film felt like an eternity when I was watching it, perhaps it was doing something interesting with time after all.

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November 23, 2006

The Queen

In the opening sequence of The Queen (IMDB), Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) and her husband Prince Philip (James Cromwell) watch on television as broadcaster announce that Tony Blair has been elected prime minister, ending over a decade of Tory rule. The youthful, energetic Blair (Michael Sheen) embodies a spirit of modernization that becomes one of the major concerns of the film, with Blair's populist rhetoric completely at odds with Elizabeth's adherence to tradition. The scene also sets up one of the film's most persistent motifs, Elizabeth's complete isolation from the British people, as we see the queen and her family consistently watching television as their only real window into the British public (and like AO Scott, I'm fascinated by the number of films--Marie Antoinette and The Last King of Scotland are the others--that seem fixated on the question of monarchy). .

This opening sequences sets up the major narrative of the film, Elizabeth's struggles to maintain the relevance of the British monarchy after the death of Princess Diana in a car accident on the streets of Paris, and after showing Blair's assumption of the role of prime minister, the bulk of the film focuses on the week between Diana's death and her funeral a week later, providing us with an insider look at two very different families, the youthful and vibrant Blairs and the out-of-touch monarchy, who consistently who their lack of understanding of the national and international grief over Diana's death, often to the bemusement of Blair's staffers and speechwriters who happily show him newspaper headlines depicting public disappointment in the queen's behavior (in fact, this isolation even extends to members of Elizabeth's own family and her inability to even allow her own grandchildren to mourn their mother's death, instead sending them off hunting at their Balmoral estate).

The role of television serves the film in other ways as well. Diana's celebrity and the mourning over her death is conveyed almost entirely through television footage of Diana herself, and director Stephen Frears wisely chooses not to cast anyone to play the exiled former princess, perhaps reminding us that it was less Diana herself and more her image that was so beloved and so deeply mourned.

This opposition between modernization and tradition is also played out during Blair's first meeting with Elizabeth, when he meets her for the ceremony that will officially give him the title of prime minister. Blair and his wife, Cherie (Helen McCrory), are carefully coached by Buckingham Palace staffers on the ceremony while Elizabeth herself carefully puts on the cool facade of monarchy. Cherie Blair, whose subversive attitude towards the monarchy is probably closest to my own, scoffs at the expected deference, while her husband merely endures the ceremony with mild discomfort. Significantly, Cherie's position becomes increasingly marginalized over the course of the film in ways that I sometimes found unconvincing or frustrating (Filmbrain even refers to her as a "borderline Lady Macbeth").

But the identification between Blair, who sees Elizabeth as a kind of mother figure, and the queen becomes interesting, especially as we are now witnessing the end of Blair's leadership, in part due to his support of the unpopulr war in Iraq. At one point in the film, Prince Philip (I believe) reminds Blair that his current popularity will eventually wane, possibly quite suddenly, a line that certainly resonates with Blair's imminent departure as prime minister, brilliantly satirized in the "Should I Stay" mash-up.

As this review suggests, there's quite a bit going on in The Queen, especially in its treatment of a quickly transofrming political culture and its exploration of the vicissitudes of celebrity. It's one of the smartest and most emotionally compelling films I've seen this year.

Update: Wort checking out: Kristin Thompson's reading of The Queen. Like her, I'm often hesitant to see films that are promoted as actors' vehicles (such as Monster's Ball, Boys Don't Cry, and Monster), and for that reason I was also hesitant to see The Queen, but the film's treatment of (relatively) current politics drew me in. I think she's right to note the ways in which the film is stylistically compelling, especially in the way that Frears establishes a contrast between Queen Elizabeth and Tony Blair's very different worlds. I think she's absolutely right that "the royal-family scenes in The Queen look very 1950s." During the scenes set in Balmoral and Buckingham, I found myself thinking about some of Douglas Sirk's films, while the Blair scenes were often filmed using a handheld camera, establishing the prime minister's energetic and casual style.

Posted by chuck at 1:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 13, 2006

Quick Update/Marie Antoinette

On a post that has since dissapered, I mentioned that the Wordhereders were moving to a new server, so I kust wanted to throw up a quick post here to see how things are working. I'll hopefully have some new posts up soon, but I've been re-tagged with whatever nasty cold or flu is circulating around here. I'm cuddling up with antibiotics, a big bottle of water, and a movie or two tonight, so hopefully I'll be back to normal soon.

I did catch Marie Antoinette (IMDB) this weekend and I think AO Scott's review pretty much gets it right. It would be a little too easy to sneer at the film's depiction of a "story of the silly teenager who embodied a corrupt, absolutist state in its terminal decadence." And, certainly, to condemn the film for its historical innacuracies would be to miss the film's point entirely. That being said, I found myself becoming impatient with the film in places, often finding what could have been decadent fun just a bit tedious (which may also be part of the point). Worth noting: director Sofia Coppola wisely underplays the story's ending, resisting the urge to depict Antoinette's viloent death.

Hoping to have more to say about the film later. I've missed writing movie here, but to be honest, I haven't seen that many movies in the last month or so. Hoping to get back in that habit as well.

Update: Michael's review of Marie Antoinette over at CultureSpace also describes much of what I like about the film and Sofia Coppola's films in general.

Update 2: Cynthia has a much more critical reading of the film, noting the problematic representation of Madame du Barry, King Louis XV’s mistress.

Posted by chuck at 7:31 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 17, 2006

Anytown, USA

Kristian Fraga and Juan Dominguez's Anytown, USA (IMDB) is a compelling campaign documentary following the 2003 race for mayor in the small town of Bogota, New Jersey, a small New York City suburb in Bergen County. The race takes place against the backdrop of unpopular budget cuts that threaten the local high school football team, with many locals resolving to see the current mayor booted from office. The race features the unpopular, fiscally conservative Republican, Steve Lonegan, a reluctant Democratic candidate, Fred Pesce, and a last-minute write-in candidate, David Musikant, a former captain of the football team who, like the mayor, is legally blind. The quirky characters and the depiction of smalltown life have compelled many critics to compare Anytown, USA to Christopher Guest's mockumentaries (perhaps most notably Waiting for Guffman), but I found myself keying on the film's relevance to the upcoming midterm elections and the ongoing debates about how elections are conducted, with the film reminding me of Frank Popper's must-see doc, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?, and, to a much lesser extent, the insider doc, The War Room.

The film opens just a few weeks before the 2003 election during a city council meeting in which Bogota residents criticize Mayor Lonegan's budget cuts, with Lonegan responding in typically pompous fashion, showing the degree to which the community is politically polarized. Entering the fray is Frank Pesce, a longtime local politician who reluctantly enters the race at the request of the local Democratic Party. While Lonegan runs a tight, organized campaign, Pesce's campaign is inept and lazy by comparison. Compared with Lonegan's colorful fliers and mock newspaper featuring thinly-veiled campaign propaganda ("The Bogotian"), Pesce's campaign material appears cheap and lazy. Sensing an opportunity to make a difference in the race, Musikant enters the race as an independent, hoping to ride the wave of anti-Lonegan sentiment into office.

Initially, Musikant's campaign struggles to get off the ground. At first, Musikant is running his entire campaign by himself, making calls from the basement of his sister's home (where he lives) and struggling to read messages off of a giant computer monitor. When he contacts Doug Friedline, the campaign manager who helped Jesse Ventura get elected governor of Minnesota, he reluctantly admits that he doesn't have a webmaster and hasn't printed campaign t-shirts (among campaign basics). Friedline, excited to take on the challenge of helping elect an independent candidate, offers to help Musikant, and his campaign begins to take off, and gradually, Musikant becomes a more viable candidate with a more professional polish. In a creative and humorous touch, Musikant even employs a "pencil" mascot to remind voters that he is a write-in candidate.

While it would have been easy to play this smalltown mayor's race for cheap laughs, however, Fraga and Dominguez instead demonstrate remarkable generosity towards their subjects. As a result, they gain remarkable access to the political candidates. Lonegan, who has become a major player in statewide New Jersey politics, is refreshingly blunt about his campaign tactics and his condescending attitude towards his political opponents, while Musikant comes across as a gentle, almost naive, figure, a local football hero who can still charm many of the locals. While Pesce is less developed, he is often surprisingly honest about his motivations (or lack of motivation) during the election.

Ultimately, the filmmakers use Bogota as a microcosm of current electoral politics, allowing the small, politically-divided New Jersey suburb to stand in for the nation as a whole. But while it's tempting to see Musikant's third-party candidacy as an allegory for Ralph Nader's ill-advised 2000 election run, I think the more interesting reading is one that focuses on the actual work involved in political campaigns (and I think that Matt Zoller Seitz is correct o point out that Anytown, thankfully, is not merely a facile condemnation of a broken system”). The film uses as an epigraph Tip O'Neill's famous maxim that "all politics is local." And I think the film conveys that very effectively. Musikant begins gaining ground when he goes door-to-door, shaking hands with the voters and talking with them about the issues. At the same time, we see the dark side of many campaigns (candidates spread rumors about the health of their political rivals; candidates' yard signs are ferquently torn down; and Lonegan uses his newspaper to report the "facts," at least as his party interprets them). In short, Anytown, USA offers an important, refreshing, and sometimes humorous glimpse into local political campaigns and their implications for the communities where they take place.

Posted by chuck at 5:33 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 19, 2006

Jesus Camp Revisited

Because I had the good luck of being one of the first people to see and review Jesus Camp, I've been getting quite a bit of traffic from people curious about the film. I think my initial review pretty much represents my current take on the film (although I'd like to see it again). I also think that Grady and Ewing have crafted a fascinating film about how children are educated in this Pentecostal subculture, one that is only a small part of the larger and more diverse evangelical movement. And I'll assume it's relatively clear from my initial review that I disagree with the political beliefs of pretty much everyone depicted in the film, and as an educator, I'm equally troubled by the homeschooling techniques, including the debunking of "science," depicted in the film.

But the intentionally provocative ABC report on the documentary has sparked a number of misreadings of a film few people have seen. Most notably, the ABC article describes the scene in which the campers pray for a cardboard cutout of Bush as worshipping him. While the camp is clearly politically-charged in ways that my church youth camps never were, I think it would be a mistake to read the scene in this way, in part because there's a mild jokiness to the presentation of the cardboard figure, even if the prayers themselves are sincere. And it's also worth noting that the members of the Pentecostal cultures I knew were not completely blinded by their political leaders, often expressing ambivalence about the conservative credentials of someone like Bush's father (especially when he invoked the ominous concept of a "new world order"). Many of the comments about the film have been decontextualized, and I think that has led to a number of unnecessary misinterpretations.

Posted by chuck at 11:56 AM | TrackBack

September 18, 2006

The Last Kiss

In one of the key dramatic scenes in The Last Kiss (IMDB), the 30ish Michael (Zach Braff) confides that "I've been thinking about my life lately, and everything feels pretty planned out. There's no more surprises." This knowledge leaves Michael feeling as if his life--one that features a lovely pregnant girlfriend, Jenna (Jacinda Barrett), a job as an architect, and an income that would allow him to purchase a home--is "in crisis." At another point in the film, another character reflects that today's accelerated culture requires us to grow up too quickly. But as A.O. Scott suggests in his review, Michael "behaves less like a man for whom adulthood is already a burden than like a child for whom maturity is a scary and seductive abstraction." I'm not sure I'm faulting the film for exploring these questions of "arrested development," but Michael's plaintive remarks about his impending (?) adulthood left me feeling a bit perplexed and disappointed.

To be fair to the film, it is at least somewhat honest about the fallibility of romatic love. Michael acts on his pre-midlife crisis by pursuing a flirtation with Kim (Rachel Bilson), a college student he meets at a wedding. At the same time, Michael's friends are confronting similar crises, with Chris (Casey Affleck) finding himself a new father in a loveless marriage and Izzy dealing with an unpleasant break-up and Kenny refusing to grow up by engaging in as much non-monogomous sex as possible. But the stories never seemed quite as profound as the script seemed to believe they were, as this Village Voice review suggests, and I found it difficult to bring myself to care very much about any of the characters.

Much of my disappointment in the film likely derives from what felt like a relatively thin screenplay by Paul Haggis (of Crash fame or infamy), one that didn't seem to take much interest at all in its female characters. Jenna, Michael's longtime girlfriend, seems little more than a foil for allowing Michael to work through his angst about growing up, with her life outside their relationship left virtually unexplored. In fact, despite several mentions of her dissertation, we never learn what her dissertation is about. There are far worse ways to spend a night at the multiplex than seeing The Last Kiss, but I don't think this film offers much to explain Michael's malaise and offers even less to explain why someone like Jenna should put up with him in the first place.

Posted by chuck at 10:05 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

September 7, 2006

More LG15 Links

Still fascinated by the speculation about the LonelyGirl15 videos on YouTube and whether they are the real confessions of a precocious, homschooled teen, a viral marketing scheme of some kind, or something else altogether. In some sense, for me at least, the speculation is at least as interesting as whether the videos are "real" or not (although I'll admit that I'm taken by the narrative of growing up in a strict religious family), and because I'm in the mood to procrastinate today, I figured I'd point to a few LG15 links rather than doing some real work.

Via thedayislikewidewater, Adam Sternbergh's New York Magazine article on LG15, which describes the series as a kind of David Lynchian narrative. Stenbergh points to gohepcat's YouTube videos that question the authenticity of Bree's videos, noting that gohepcat has become a character in the LG saga. Sternbergh concludes that "maybe this, and not some NBC shows for sale on iTunes, is the future of television--or the promised land of a new narrative form." I'm not ready to make such grand pronouncements yet, although I think it's clear that there is a fairly refined narrative sensibility at work here (and that sensibility wouldn't preclude the possibility that LG15's story is "real").

Alexander at GayGamer.net, operating under the assumption that Bree's story is fictional, has a good read on the ways in which participants in alternate-reality games (ARGs) become enmeshed in the game. And Tanner at The Means' Blog also has an interesting read, praising the LonelyGirl15 narrative as "a great example of how New Media and Internet technologies can be used to create unique and dynamic new forms of media," while commenting on the ways in which viewers become "co-conspirators" in perpetuating the fiction.

Friday AM Update: Via milowent, an LA Times scoop that emails sent from an LG15 account were sent from the offices of the Creative Artists Agency. In the same post, milowent quotes a "letter" posted on one of the prominent LG15 forums from "the writers" of Bree's story. I'm not convinced that the forum post is genuine, and if it is, the writers tipped their hands way too quickly. As usual, Virginia Heffernan continues to provide a good play-by-play of the ongoing saga. More later, but I have to teach in a few minutes.

Update (Sat AM): New LG15 video is up. Mostly plot filler, so it's not that interesting, and now that the scripters have pulled back the curtain, it seems like some of the recent enthusiasm has faded.

Update 9/12/06: NYT reports on Jessica Rose, the actress commissioned to play Bree in the LonelyGirl15 storyline. Sounds like LG15 is fading gently into YouTube obscurity (via Risky Biz; also see Virginia Heffernan's Screens).

Posted by chuck at 1:59 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

September 3, 2006

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

Just wanted to mention that I caught Kevin Willmott's compelling mockumentary, C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (IMDB), which imagines a world in which the Confederacy won the "war of northern aggression," with General Grant surrendering to General Lee, and setting in motion an alternate history of North America in which slavery remains legal even a century after the Civil War. I mention this news in part because I had the strange surprise of seeing a friend and former colleague from Georgia Tech with a bit part in the film, but I also found it to be a remarkably interetsing, smart, and disturbing take on the history of race in the United States.

The documentary is ostensibly made by a BBC-style network offering an overview of the history of the CSA, and we are told at the film's beginning that it is airing "by popular demand" on a local television station, and the parody of documentary form, a staple of independent film, is put to effective use here, reminding us not only of the ways in which authority is established in the kinds of expository documentaries that confer institutional authority on official versions of the truth, with the assumptions of historical victors rarely called into question.

After establishing its context with two or three mock advertisements, CSA then proceeds to tell an alternative version of history that resembles and diverges from our own, recalling P.K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, as several reviewers have pointed out. Using this alternate-reality approach, Willmott is able to imagine the worst excesses of the fantasies of Confederate leaders brought to life. In Willmott's alternative history, Confederate leaders after the war embark on an aggressive campaign to colonize much of South America, leaving only Canada as a significant rival (and an alternative Cold War foe, complete with a wall dividing the two countries) in the Americas. The CSA leadership also provides "tax incentives" for northern factories to return to the practice of slavery even against the country's economic interests, with one contemporary historian reflecting that the country's identity was "too important" in comparison with the financial gain. The CSA even joins in an alliance with Hitler during World War II although they regard his "final solution" as wasteful of human labor. While CSA's history imagines a bleak alternative, many of the policies reflect real goals of some Confederate leaders who imagined an entire continent (or two) under American control "from Maine to Santiago" as one mock children's song would have it.

Willmott, a professor of film studies at the University of Kansas, is at his best when critiquing the hsitory of racist representations in popular culture, especially during mock advertisements and public service announcements that interrupt the documentary narrative. These commercials include ads for a fuel additive along the lines of STP that parodies The Dukes of Hazzard, a show about capturing runaway slaves that recalls the racial dynamic of COPS, and a restaurant modeled on the now-defunct chain, Sambo's. Similarly, the mockumentary features a mock-D.W. Griffith film in which a discredited Abraham Lincoln is arrested while trying to escape to Canada via the "underground railroad," while wearing blackface (sequences that reminded most reviewers, including myself of Spike Lee's Bamboozled). As these mock advertisements and films illustrate, racist images have continued to be used to sell everything from rice to maple syrup, a point that Wilmott hammers home in an epilogue that reminds us that manyof his "mock" ads were based on real products.

To convey many of his arguments about the relationship between history and image, Willmott makes use of quite a bit of archival footage, both manufactured and real, with much of the real footage digitally manipulated in a manner that recalls the techniques used in Forrest Gump, with the film's hero--coincidentally named after a Confederate general--obliviously drifting through the history of twentieth-century America. In fact, CSA might be regarded as the anti-Gump, depicting the ways in which these historical images continue to haunt us rather than Gump's utopian journey through time in which Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, and the women's rights movement are magically resolved through Forrest's experiences.

I didn't intend to write such a long review of the film, but as I began writing, I became taken by Willmott's attentive critique of the role of images and icons in constructing national identity and wanted to highlight this remarkable little film.

Posted by chuck at 11:12 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

August 26, 2006

Little Miss Sunshine

As I watched Little Miss Sunshine (IMDB), this year's Sundance-endorsed dysfunctional-family road-trip indie (and, yes, I think that's officially a genre now), I felt as if I'd seen something so carefully calculated to appeal to its indie audience that I couldn't really buy into the genuinely interesting, humorous, and sometimes genuinely tender moments offered by the film. Even the film's impliict "messages," that all families are dysfunctional and that it's okay not to be perfect seemed ripped from the pages of previous Sundance-ready scripts. The road-trip in question is a 700-mile journey from Albequerque to Redondo Beach so that seven-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin) can compete in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. Olive's family includes Richard (Greg Kinnear), a wanna-be motivational speaker waiting for his big break, Sheryl (Toni Collette), his wife who works to supprt the family, Dwayne (Paul Dano), the sullen Nitzsche reading son, Frank (Steve Carrell), Sheryl's sucidal brother who also happens to be America's "foremost Proust scholar," and of course the foul-mouthed, heroin-snorting Grandpa (Alan Arkin).

Even with their quirks (and across-the-board solid performances), the characters seemed more like types than clearly-defined personalities, particularly Arkin's grandpa gone wild. And the obstacles on their 700-mile journey, taken in a quirky VW van naturally, were utterly predictable (including at least two that reminded me of a Chevy Chase movie). The VW van's broken clutch does provide an excuse for one of the film's funnier motifs, the image of the family pushing and running alongside the van to get it started, with each family member running and leaping mock heroically into the open door. And once the family arrives at the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, the satire of child beauty pageants seemed a bit thin (although the arrest of a suspect in the Jon Benet Ramsey case gave these scenes a strange timeliness). Of course, as the pageant unfolds and the family worries that Olive will be humiliated when she performs in the talent competition, the film's best, and most sentimental, surprise comes into play. But even as I watched this scene, I couldn't help but feel that LMS was being cloying, as if disliking the film is tantamount to rejecting Olive's pluckiness and spirit, and in several of these scenes, I could have easily been pulled closer to a more affirmative reading along the lines of Stephanie Zacharek's.

Again, I feel as if I'm being unnecessarily harsh on LMS, but the film seems to illustrate much of what I find distressing (or at least remarkably uninteresting) about Indie Film today, which I want to distinguish from truly independent film, but as Jim Ridley's Village Voice review implies, the film seems to embrace some of the worst excesses of recent indie film (although I disagree with him completely about Me and You and Everyone We Know falling into this category). At least the filmmakers had the good taste to include two Sufjan Stevens songs on the soundtrack.

Posted by chuck at 10:11 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

August 23, 2006

Lazy Wednesday Night Links

Coming down from a long first day of teaching (three sections of freshman comp, one of intro to film), but didn't want to lose these links. First, by happenstance, I came across Emanuel Levy's review of Jesus Camp, the documentary about the evangelical "Kids on Fire" youth camp. His take on the film is similar to my own, but it's worth highlighting his observation that the documentary "is directed in such a way that I won't be surprised if Becky Fischer and her cohorts are delighted with the results."

Also worth noting: two Pop Matters articles by two of my regular film blog reads, including one by Shaun Huston (blog) on the perception that digital technologies will lead to the death of cinema. Huston argues, correctly in my opinion, that "rather than see the rise of digital as the death of film, it makes more sense to view the newer media as expanding options for movie making." Also check out Andrew Horbal's review (blog) of The Syrian Bride.

In other news, I'm watching Sundance Channel's The Hill for the first time tonight, and given my obsession with documentary and politics, I could become addicted very quickly. And, if you get a chance, I can't recommend enough Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke. I probably won't have time to write a longer review, but Lee's film brought home FEMA's incompetent handling of the hurricane and the outrage that many New Orleans natives feel a year later.

Update: I forgot to mention that the trailer to Chris Hansen's brilliantly funny mockumentary, The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah has been climbing the "comedy trailer" charts on iFilm. In just a couple of days, Messiah has vaulted into the top 15, passing the trailers for My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Little Man, and other recent theatrical releases. The trailer provides a nice glance at Messiah and reminded me of just how much I enjoyed the film.

Posted by chuck at 11:56 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 20, 2006

Snakes on a Plane

I happened to be reading Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture this weekend as I was thinking about the blog hype for Snakes on a Plane (IMDB). The film has been anticipated for its potential B-movie schlockiness and for the role of fans in pushing New Line to retain its original title and to revise the film from a PG-13 yawner into an R-rated film with added violence, nudity, and profanity. As Stephanie Zacharek points out, the fan involvement has transformed SoaP from a film into an event, perhaps the most enthusiastically anticpiated film event of the summer, at least among its hardcore fans who have what Zacharek describes as an "ownership stake" in the film. And I think that Jenkins' discussion of the "collective intelligence" of online forums and discussion boards devoted to popular culture texts offers a useful way of thinking about the appeal of what might have been a quickly forgotten action thriller. Instead of dismissing Snakes as a form of "prefab populism" as Chuck Klosterman has, I would read SoaP as licensing some valuable conversations about popular culture, specifically about the processes by which films are manufactured and marketed.

Before I go too far with this analysis, I should say that I genuinely enjoyed the film. The ultra-thin plot is hardly worth recounting. Super-competent FBI agent Nelville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson, playing his star persona to the point of parody) is commissioned to guard surfer dude Sean on a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles, where he will testify against a ruthless crime boss, Eddie Kim. To prevent Sean from testifying, Kim's thugs smuggle snakes into cargo. At a timely moment, a pheremone is released that will make the snakes go wild. They attack in pretty much every imaginable way, biting into a woman's breast as she seeks to join the mile-high club, crawling up muumuus, crawling up through the plane's control panels, you get the idea, until Flynn, Sean, and a soon-to-reire flight attendant, Claire (Julianna Margulies) fight back. Several of these scenes are filmed in green snake-vision, mocking the sinister POV shots of more serious action thrillers.

But, as you might imagine, it was far more fun to watch the audience response. At the Saturday night screening here in F'ville, audience members gleefully mocked the pseudo-sincerity of the newlyweds who honeymooned in Hawaii, but obviously the most exciting moments were the nods to the internet culture (Sam Jackson's f-bombs, the gratuitous nudity, etc), and these moments, at lest for me, represented one of the few times in recent memory that audiences seemed to view themselves as a collective entity, and that's what I enjoyed most about the film. Here, I think New Line's decision not to screen the film for critics was an effective one, not because bad critical reviews could have hurt the box office (SoaP was and is pretty much critic-proof) but because it required critics to take the audience's response to SoaP into account as they were writing their reviews (perhaps most evident in Zacharek's review, but also see Manohla Dargis and James Berardinelli).

And here is where I think Jenkins' discussions of fan culture are pertinent. The involvement of fans in shaping the film, at lest in my reading, allows fans to feel at least some stake in a popular culture that seems disconnected from them and their interests and desires. And even if New Line's decision to change the film was calculated to maximize profits, conversations about SoaP have become, by extension, conversations about popular culture in general. In discussing the five days of re-shoots edited back into the film to acheive an R-rating, James Berardinelli observes, "All of this stuff is clumsily edited in. It doesn't take much imagination to re-construct the PG-13 cut. The film probably would have worked better if it had been envisioned as a hard R from the beginning." But in my reading that's part of the point for me. By calling attention to the clumsiness and gratuitousness of the edits, we can, by extension, discuss the ratings system itself. By not screening the film for critics, we can provoke conversations about how we watch movies and why audiences matter, about the limits of evaluative film criticism. Even the schlockiness of the visuals (the CG-animated snakes are clearly fake) can provoke conversations about how special effects shape our expereince of watching a film.

Whether SoaP replaces Rocky Horror as "the greatest audience participation movie of all time," as Pete Vonder Haar of Film Threat imagines, remains an open question. But I think SoaP has helped to revive some questions about our investments in popular culture and that's pretty cool.

Posted by chuck at 10:10 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

August 19, 2006

Who Killed the Electric Car?

As you might imagine, the answer to the question in the title to Chris Paine's Who Killed the Electric Car? (IMDB) is relatively predictable. Viewers probably won't be suprised to learn that corporate profits outweighed envoironmental interests or that politicians were in the pockets of many of those oil companies. Electric Car is smart enough to spread some of the blame to consumers as well, but in my reading, the documentary is less interesting as a detective story about who is to blame for the electric car's untimely death and more significant as an illustration of just how quickly and completely the history of the electric car disappeared down the memory hole.

The documentary opens with a playful bit of political activism, a staged funeral for the EV1, GM's prototype electric car, which briefly appeared in the mid-1990s. A number of celebrities participated in this bit of political spectacle including Ed Begley, Jr, Peter Horton, and Alexandra Paull (who went as far as being arrested in support of her convictions). The funeral also introduces us to the "star" of the documentary, Chelsea Sexton, a young Saturn executive charged with marketing the EV1 who eventually became one of the biggest champions of the highly efficient electric cars. As Christopher Campbell observes, Sexton might even be described as the "EV1's widow," especially if we read the film as a sort of mystery story. Later we see Tom Hanks, interviewed by David Letterman, describing his enthusiasm for the electric car (not to mention their practicality for daily commutes). But these scenes underline the degree to which the buzz about the EV1 was silenced and quickly forgotten.

If Paine places too much emphasis on the celebrities who endorsed the electric car (including Phyllis Diller who remembers the popular electric cars from the 1920s), as Manhola Dargis implies, part of the blame here might be attributed to the limited number of EV1s that were produced and leased (no EV1s were ever sold, a point that becomes significant over the course of the doc) and to the initial attempt to popularize the car using celebrity endorsements. And, of course, their enthusiasm for the cars is contagious. The EV1s are described as fast and quiet, with zero emissions, offering a means specifically of cutting down on California's notorious problems with smog and more generally of cutting down on the emissions that contribute to global warming.

Who Killed the Electric Car? serves as a useful companion doc to Al Gore's global warming doc, An Inconvenient Truth (it might also usefully be compared to The Corporation. While Electric Car only briefly discusses global warming, both films underline the ways in which corporate profits often outweigh prudent environmental policy. While Electric Car covered this material in a slightly breezy fashion, it is relatively informative, clarifying some of the misconceptions I had about this particularly episode in automotive history. Also worth noting: the film mentions Sexton's continued work in promoting the use of electric cars through her involvement with Plug In America, an organization that promotes "the use of plug-in cars, trucks and SUVs powered by cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity to reduce our nation’s dependence on petroleum and improve the global environment."

Posted by chuck at 10:53 AM | TrackBack

August 14, 2006

The War Tapes

I've just returned from a special screening of Debrah Scranton's The War Tapes (IMBD), and like many reviewers, including Mick LaSalle, I find myself with a lot to process. As I've mentioned here before, The War Tapes takes a novel approach to documenting the soldiers' experiences of the war in Iraq, with the director Scranton equipping members of Charlie Company, 3rd of the 172nd Mountain Infantry with cameras, allowing them to film their experiences of the war while Scranton remained in communication with the soldiers via IM and email. Ultimately, five soldiers filmed for an entire year, with the stories of three soldiers, Sergeant Steve Pink, Sergeant Zack Bazzi, and Specialist Mike Moriarty featured prominently in the film. The result is a remarkably candid and unsettling portrait of the soldiers' experiences in Iraq and their struggles to cope with those experiences after the war.

Many of the events depicted in the documentary are remarkably familiar. Much like Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace, The War Tapes opens in the middle of a battle scene, the first-person camera recording the soldier's POV, his gun extended into the bottom of the frame, and like Garrett Scott and Ian Olds' Occupation: Dreamland, the soldiers in The War Tapes witness the mounting insurgency as it builds momentum in Fallujah. But perhaps because the soldiers themselves were involved in the film's production, Scranton's film offers, as LaSalle notes, "an exploration of the soldier mentality," not to mention an exploration of how that mentality affects those left behind by the soldiers--the wives, mothers, and girlfriends who watch the war from home.

The three soldiers whose stories are depicted in the film, Moriarty, Pink, and Bazzi, also offer three very different perspectives on the war, with Moriarty, who originally joined the Army in 1988 deciding to reenlist and volunteer to deploy to Iraq after September 11, starting out as perhaps the most enthusiastic supporter of the war. During his self-introduction, Moriarty describes taking time off of work to help out with rescue efforts on Septmebr 11th. Pink describes the "rough decision" he made to join the Guard in order to pay for his education, while Bazzi, who immigrated with his family from Lebanon when he was ten, explains his desire to become a soldier while also acknowledging that he regrets not being able to choose the war in which he serves, gesturing at one point towards a copy of The Nation, which he sardonically notes "is not a pro-Bush magazine." Gradually, over the course of the film, Moriarty and Pink in particular become increasingly disillusioned with the war, with both Moriarty and Pink becoming acutely aware of their role in protecting and furthering American financial interests, namely those of Halliburton-KBR. Several of the scenes feature the soldiers escorting Halliburton trucks filled with cheese along perilous roads, protecting drivers who receive salaries that far exceed those of the typical soldier. This ambivalence becomes most explicit when we see the soldiers emptying a sewage truck and noting that the light shining through the sewage is creating a rainbow. One soldier sarcastically wonders whether there's a "pot of gold at the end of that rainbow." Perhaps for stockholders in KBR. And while the film cuts from the truck dumping raw sewage to a speech by President Bush, I'll assume that's just a coincidence. These scenes also emphasize the plight of "third country nationals," workers who are hired from outside the US or Iraq to complete dangerous work, often at low wages.

While I appreciated the honesty of all three soldiers, I found Bazzi's story and perspective most compelling. Because Bazzi was born in Lebanon and relatively fluent in Arabic, he offers a sort of double consciousness, recognizing his role as a soldier but also conscious, at least to some extent, of the perspectives of Iraqis who are seeing their homes and communities destroyed. He also recognizes the process of "othering" that makes the destruction possible, hearing this in the sodliers' derogatory references to Iraqis as "hajis," while speculating that Iraqis have similar dehumanizing terms to describe the US soldiers. As a result, Bazzi admits that he often finds himself in the middle, to the point that he eventually declines requests to act as an impromptu translator.

Despite this remarkable candor, I couldn't help but watch the film with some degree of skepticism. During one early sequence, a soldier recites the Bush administration spin on the war, with Sgt. Pink teasing him to tell us his "honest" opinion about the war. When the soldier demures, Pink responds, saying, "I'm not the media dammit!" In another sequence, a soldier complains that he wasn't permitted to show footage he had taken of Iraqis killed by an IED. But by including these scenes, Scranton, Moriarty, Pink, and Bazzi are at least acknowledging the potential limits of a soldiers-eye documentary. And the soldiers often demonstrate a powerful literary touch in describing their conditions, with Pink's journal often working to tructure the film while Moriarty takes us on a tour of the "equipment graveyard," a junktyard filled with trucks, humvees, and other vehicles destroyed by IEDs and RPGs, noting that each of these destroyed vehicles recalls, for him at least, the people who were injured or killed in those vehicles.

The War Tapes concludes with interviews of all three soldiers and their families after they have returned stateside. In all three cases, the soldiers have been changed by the war, with Moriarty's wife noting that her husband now loses his temper more frequently and Pink noting that many people ask him "ignorant questions" about his expeiences. And I think these stateside interviews are the major strength of Scranton's film, allowing it to provide something unavailable with other embedded documentaries by providing thexperiences of soldiers after they've returned from the war, and for that reason, The War Tapes is an important contribution to our on-going attempts to understand how wars affect the lives of the soldiers as well as the people around them.

Posted by chuck at 10:46 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

World Trade Center

Reviews of movies about the events of September 11 inevitably invoke questions of representation and timeliness. As A.O. Scott notes, these questions emerged almost immediately after the September 11 attacks, perhaps in part because of the massive scale of the events themselves, which "represented a movie scenario made grotesquely literal." These questions have returned with the release of two major Hollywood films that attempt to represent the immediate experience of 9/11, often in excruciatingly narrow detail. Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (IMDB), which focuses on two Port Authority police officers, John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), who were trapped beneath the rubble of one of the towers until they were discovered by an ex-Marine, Dave Karnes (who eventually re-enlisted). Stone's film follows their saga over the next twenty four hours, more or less, cross-cutting between the two police officers and their families who watch and wait helplessly.

A.O. Scott argues in his review that Stone's film is "uncharacteristically" devoid of politics, focusing almost exclusively on the emotions of the two police officers and their families, but while the public figures most associated with the tragedy--George Bush and Rudy Giuliani--appear only briefly and often in the background, marginalized by the personal experiences of the family members who serve as the focus of the film, the reactions to the attacks seem to follow the narrative conventions most associated with the Bush administration narrative of the war on terror. As J. Hoberman observes, the responses to teh attacks feature a Sheboygan police officer calling the attackers, "bastards," with another declaring that "we're at war," downplaying to some extent the immediate sense of grief and loss in comparison to the more militaristic response. This immediate response is ultimately channeled into a strangely uplifting narrative focusing on the rescue of two of teh twenty people pulled out alive from the rubble in which 2,700 people lost their lives. Hoberman describes this as the "Schindler's List" approach to representing September 11, complete with the welling musical score and the edits that cut between the police officers and their wives, often mixing in flashbacks to tranquil domestic scenes before the attacks.

In this sense, Stone's film stands in relative contrast to Paul Greengrass' clinical, obsessive real-time re-enactment of the hijacking of United Flight 93, with as Stephanie Zacahrek points out, "is the kind of harrowing moviegoing experience that's supposed to make us feel like better people for having suffered through it." Like her, I found United 93 to be one of the most painful, punishing experiences I've ever had in a movie theater, making Stone's film perhaps the more compassionate of the two films, even if both conform, as Hoberman notes, "the narrative put forth by George W. Bush."

But the point I want to address regarding World Trade Center and United 93 has less to dow ith reviewing the two films, and that is whether we actually need or want films that so obsessively reproduce the immediate experience of Septmebr 11. Zacharek addresses this question in her review, asking why we "need or want" these films, and after seeing both World Trade Center and United 93, I'm not sure that anyone has adequately answered this question. I've seen both films simply because, as someone who writes about and studies popular culture for a living, I felt obligated to weigh in on the films that attempt to tackle the important issues of the times, but the obsessive focus on 9/11 itself, as something outside of time, simply seems to concretize the power of that particular day over America's definition of itself and its understanding of the events of the last five years. With the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks quickly approaching and the recent folied plot to blow up as many as ten trans-Atlantic flights, reception of Stone's film has been framed by the renewed attention to terrorism. (and the degree to which this discussion centers around how the terror plot might affect the film's box office seems just a bit trivial).

In this sense, I remain convinced that the best films "about" September 11 are those films such as Spike Lee's 25th Hour and John Touhey's September 12th that deal with its aftermath, with our attempts to live in the world after the attacks instead of obsessively revisiting and reliving the events of that horrible day.

Update: I wish I'd read Anthony Kaufamn's AlterNet review before writing my own. I think he's pretty much right about the entire film, particularly when it comes to the vapid depictions of New York City, complete with happy homeless people and Pena's Latino police offcier singing along to Brooks and Dunn's "Only in America" while driving in to work. I do think that Kaufman is right that Hollywood representations of history reduce it, particulalry when it comes to such complex events as 9/11, but I wonder if these films consistently fail to connect with audeiences for precisely the reason that 9/11 resists such easy simplifications and reductions.

Posted by chuck at 11:29 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 31, 2006

Mystery at Mansfield Manor

When I was given the opportunity to check out Mystery at Mansfield Manor, an online interactive murder mystery movie, I couldn't resist. While I have somewhat limited experience with role-playing games, I've long been intrigued by the possibilities for interactive cinema, and Mystery, released online by a Canadian company, S.R. Entertainment, offered an intriguing narrative, a murder mystery involving the ancient patriarch of a massive family-owned oil business, making the game "a combination of Clue and a choose your own adventure," as the interactive movie's writer, Rory Scherer describes it. There's quite a bit to like about Mystery, which is an ambitious, entertaining experience, but after viewing the movie (if that's the right phrase), I still have questions about what constitutes interactivity and a truly interactive cinema.

The "mystery" of the film is established in a ten-minute introduction, in which we are introduced to Detective Frank Mitchell who is soon to retire from the police force when he gets a call instructing him to investigate the murder of Colin Mansfield, Sr, the elderly oil baron who has invited several guests for dinner to explain alterations to his will. Among the guests, Colin Sr's alcoholic son (Colin Jr), his leftist daughter, his mistress, his lawyer, a Senator seeking his financial support, Colin Jr's wife, and 2-3 employees who work in the mansion. Most of the guests seem to have some incentive to murder Colin Sr, and the object of the game is to play detective, sift through the clues, and (of course) solve the case. While the plot clearly recalls classic murder mysteries, the father's oil profits, the daughter's environmentalism, and the Senator's soliciting campaign contributions give Mystery at least some degree of timeliness.

Mystery is worth checking out for a number of reasons. The decision to distribute the film online is itself intriguing. Rather than release the film on CD, Scherer chose to make the film available online at a cost of $4.95 for unlimited viewing for 72 hours. This is one of many possible avenues for self-distribution, of course, and I hope that Mystery can inspire similar relatively low-cost DIY projects. As Scott Colbourne, a Globe and Mail reviewer points out, the production values are quite impressive for what is essentially a micro-budget film. The use lighting and shadows in the mansion evokes classic detective films (of course the film takes place during a storm that cuts off the electricity, allowing the cinematographer to play with candlelight in several shots), and given that most of the action takes place inside the mansion, the film uses space relatively well. Mystery is also a relatively extended viewing experience, keeping me engrossed for the three or so hours it took to solve the mystery and to watch some of the alternative paths I didn't chose. The game loads relatively quickly and requires nothing more than a Flash Player, making it accessible on most computers or game systems. The game also has a relatively simple and intuitive interface, although like Andrew Ogier, I found the "Evaluation Stage," where you determine which of the suspects is lying to be somewhat confusing at first, in part because I wasn't prepared for what was expected of me as a detective.

This is where some of my questions about interactive cinema begin to form. I recognize that by the most basic definition, I am interacting with the film's narrative. I could choose to interview each of the suspects in any order I chose and could repeat the interviews and made other decisions about the order in which I watched many of the segments. But as I participated in solving the mystery, I still felt like a passive subject who was merely involved in bringing the narrative to a foregone conclusion and not actively creating something new in relationship with the previously recorded material. Perhaps this is a fine point, but as I made my evaluations of the characters, of the misunderstood environmentalist; the spoiled, alcoholic son; the corrupt Senator; and other characters, I couldn't help but become conscious of my own biases and assumptions and how they might be feeding my interpretation of the film and of my role as a detective. An interactive cinema that is more attentive to why we make these decisions would, I believe, be a useful tool for thining about how we as viewers interpret the world, how we "read" films and other information.

No matter what, Mystery and Mansfield Manor is worth checking out, I hope that it can be used as a reference point for some of the ongoing conversations we've been having this summer about movie and videogame criticism.

Posted by chuck at 2:41 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Scanner, Scoop, and Sketches

Somewhat unintentionally, I caught three movies this weekend, Richard Linklater's stylishly trippy take on PK Dick, A Scanner Darkly, Sidney Pollock's interesting if too deferential doc, Sketches of Frank Gehry, and Woody Allen's dull "Thin Man" update, Scoop. I'll try to write longer entries about them later (especially Scanner and Sketches, which both deserve further discussion), but for now a few quick comments.

A Scanner Darkly: I'd been looking forward to Linklater's film for a long time, and the discussion of the film at CultureSpace describes much of what I liked about it, although my experience of the film was much different than Michael's for reasons I can't describe without giving away a major plot point. Linklater's use of rotoscope animation works well for the subject matter: the highly addictive Substance D used by Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), James (Robert Downey, Jr), and Ernie (Woody Harrelson). Some of the best scenes feature Officer Fred (also Reeves) and Hank wearing scramble suits designed to conceal their identities by "scrambling" thousands of different identities that continuously morph and shift. As a commentary on surveillance and corporate power, Linklater's film may not be adding anything new, but the disorienting effect of the animation makes for a powerful cinematic experience.

Sketches of Frank Gehry: While watching Sidney Pollock's documentary about Gehry (essentially a series of recorded conversations), I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the film, in part because Pollock and Gehry rarely venture into any sort of interpretation of Gehry's architecture. While I can admire the creativity of structures such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao or the postmodern playfulness of the Gehry House in Santa Monica, I most appreciated the skeptical take on Gehry's work raised by Hal Foster (an art historian whose work I admire), in part because Foster raised some specific questions about how people inhabit and use buildings, with Foster specifically raising the point that the Guggenheim building might overwhelm the art it holds. Much of the rest of the film seemed dominated by Pollock's preoccupations with artistic success and creativity

Scoop: I probably wouldn't have seen Woody Allen's latest yarn under normal circumstances, but because I was with a larger group, I hoped for something like a playful, contemporary take on the Thin Man films described in AO Scott's review, but Allen's one-liners have lost their sharpness, and Scarlet Johansson's bubble-headed college journalist simply wasn't that interesting although Allen's camera clearly relished lingering over Johansson in her wet bathing suit. I deeply enjoyed many of Allen's low-key detective comedies (I'm rather fond of Manhattan Murder Mystery in particular), but Scoop simply seemed lazy and sloppy to me.

Posted by chuck at 11:04 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 25, 2006

David Lowery's Some Analog Lines

Because I learned about David Lowery's Some Analog Lines soon after I arrived in F'ville (and before I had internet service at home), I almost forgot to mention it here. Lowery's Some Analog Lines is a playful but philosophical meditation on the materiality of cinema and the ways in which digital video remediates film. In thinking about these issues, Lowery not only theorizes the production process but also offers a theory of spectatorship that explores how the processes of production shape our reception of a film. Lowery explores this process in part through an observation that a number of Cineaste reviewers have expressed a "preference" for claymation over digital animation, with Lowery speculating that this preference derives in part from the materiality of claymation and the awareness that an animator such as Lowery might have moved the clay object hundreds, if not thousands, of times in order to render the illusion (?) of motion. The film explores this concept of handmade films even further, describing the construction of a wooden bookshelf next to his computer, a shelf that seems to morph into a strip of film, in part through the magic of animation.

While I can't provide a full description of Some Analog Lines, I think it's a profoundly insightful short film and well worth checking out. It's also in competition in the SXSWclick "Popularity Contest," so once you've seen the film, please consider voting for it as well.

Posted by chuck at 1:47 PM | TrackBack

July 21, 2006

Manhattan, Kansas

During one of the final scenes of Tara Wray's observant autobiographical documentary, Manhattan, Kansas (IMDB), Tara's mother, Evie, seeking forgiveness for being an irresponsible parent or simply trying to understand herself, tells her daughter, "The past is over." Of course, as William Faulkner reminds us and as Wray's film illustrates, "The past isn't dead, it isn't even past." The scene, for me, underscores the ways in which Manhattan, Kansas offers a fresh and understated consideration of the concepts of family and home through its unblinking look at the strained relationship between Wray and her mother.

Manhattan, Kansas focuses on Tara's attempts to reconcile with her mother after rarely speaking to or seeing her for over six years. Raised exclusively by her mother (Tara reports that she never met her father until she was 21), Tara accepts her mother's eccentricities as normal, but gradually becomes estranged when her mother's eccentric behavior crosses a line and becomes increasingly erratic and potentially dangerous, with Evie threatening at one point to drive their car into a river, killing them both. Because Evie is never diagnosed with a psychological disorder, Tara notes that it remains difficult to describe or even understand their relationship. Is her mother an eccentric rebel whose behavior constitutes her best response to a confining status quo that included a strict Mormon upbringing? Or is she bi-polar or manic depressive and in need of medication? While these questions are never clearly answered by the film, they do underline the ways in which having a language for talking about a relationship (or a psychological ailment) can help us to understand it. And when Tara confesses from under the covers of her bed on her first night in Kansas, a kitten crawling on her shoulders, that she and her mother "had a semi-normal conversation," it illustrates that self-doubt one might have when dealing with a mentally ill parent.

As we learn early in the film, Tara and her mother have been estranged for several years, ever since Tara left her home in Manhattan, Kansas, to attend a study abroad program in Finland and eventually to settle in New York City, where she works at NYU. During an early monologue, Tara speculates that she often feels as if she should have been raised in Manhattan, New York, instead of the Kansas city of the same name (which often refers to itself as "The Little Apple" in a self-aware nod to the more famous city of the same name), that her small studio apartment in New York feels more like home than where she actually grew up, living in twenty or so apartments and houses over the first twenty years of her life. Tara's appraisal of the stability offered by her life in New York touches upon some questions I've been rethinking lately, both professionaly and personally, about the ways in which we define home (and perhaps, how our homes define us).

Central to this question of defining home is Evie's desire to locate the Geodetic Center of the United States, the point form which all measurements of the United States are taken, a virtually invisible site situated on a ranch near Hunter, Kansas. For Evie, the Geodetic Center represents an opportunity at reconciliation for herself and perhaps even a broader reconciliation with the US itself. While this reconciliation takes an unexpected turn I won't reveal here, I think it touches on the mother's eccentricties but also, potentially, her far less direct search for home. And while some of the scenes featuring Evie emphasize how her eccentricities and mental illness might negatively affect her daughter (Tara comments severl times that she felt like the parent in their relationship), scenes such as the visit to the Geodetic Center also illustrate Evie's often wry humor and her awareness of their complicated relationship, and it's important to note that during several key scenes, Tara and her mother are able to share laughs at the warped world around them.

Because of my interest in autobiographical documentary and the use of home video in documentary, I've been curious to see Manhattan, Kansas ever since I first heard about it over a year ago when it was still in production, and while Wray's film makes extensive use of brief home video clips and family photographs, it's Wray's ability to show how those images of family haunt the present that I found most compelling. While watching home movies with Evie's sisters, Tara remarks at the footage of her dressed in boy's clothing, her hair often cut like a boy's as well. Fascinated by this forgotten image of herself, Tara expresses wonder that she would have wanted to dress that way. Other photographs and home movie footage depict an apparently happy mother-daughter relationship, one that may or may not have reflected Tara and Evie's actual experience. There's even a nice self-conscious touch here when Tara's aunt comments in passing that watching home movies is "boring," allowing the aunt to admit for the film that perhaps that looking into the quotidian experiences of others isn't always exciting.

Like Scott Weinberg, I admired Wray's low-key, introspective approach to this material. Unlike many autobiographical documentaries, Wray is careful to question her own motives for turning her mother into a public figure, admitting at one point her guilt at potentially expoliting her mother for the sake of a documentary. But I also think that what Weinberg calls the "smallness" of Wray's story is quite deceptive in that Manhattan, Kansas is dealing with some big ideas, taking the "home movie" documentary genre and asking us to rethink our concepts of home and family in some fairly profound ways.

Manhattan, Kansas received an Audience Award at South by Southwest and will be playing here in the Carolinas in the Southern Circuit film series. It will be playing in New York as part of the Independents Night film series sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center on August 10.

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July 8, 2006

The Devil Wears Prada

For whatever reasons, David Frankel's adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's novel, The Devil Wears Prada (IMDB), left me feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Like Mel, I found the casting of Anne Hathaway to be a creative choice, especially given Prada's ambivalent take on the Cinderella story, but my final reaction is probably closer to Stephanie Zacharek's review in Salon: it felt as if the film was teetering between fashion fantasy and fashion satire without ever satisfying either impulse.

Prada features Hathaway as Andy--a shortened version of Andrea--a wannabe journalist just graduated from Northwestern University who takes a position as an assistant to Miranda, the editor of Runway, an influencial magazine based on Vogue. Miranda, of course, is the devil named in the title, and she bosses her employees with a degree of self-absored ice-queenism reserved only for the very powerful. As we see in the opening scenes, in which Miranda ritually drops her coat on Andy's desk and repeatedly refers to Andy as "Emily," it's not that Miranda particularly dislikes her employees; she's simply oblivious to their existence unless they don't fulfill her expectations. As a satire of the cut-throat aspects of the fashion industry, the scenes with Streep work relatively well, but I think the film is far too cautious in satirizing the power relationships in place at Runway, a blindspot that, as A.O. Scott observes, probably has much to do with the power structures and reliance on underpaid assistants almost equally in place in Hollywod as in the world of fashion.

I think the film also falters in failing to give Andy much of a personality beyond her initial disdain for high fashion. We learn that Andy was an award-winning college journalist, but her passion for journalism wilts against Miranda's deconstruction of her during one of their initial meetings. Appraising Andy's appearance--including a blue cable-knit sweater and plaid skirt--Miranda explains with some disdain that the sweater's color (actually "cerulean") is in fact already chosen for Andy well in advance of her purchase of it. While I think the film does need to challenge Andy's somewhat self-congratulatory ideals, it offers her little authority or ground in fighting back against Miranda (perhaps, again, Hollywod can't take someone like Andy terribly seriously?). Once Andy takes on the role of Miranda's assistant, she adjusts relatively quickly, assuming the costume and manner of her colleagues, namely her co-assistant, Emily (Emily Blunt), whose deferential treatment of Miranda reflects that she has accepted the fact that "a million girls would kill for this job." But this Cinderella-style transformation was never fully convincing, in part because Andy was already so attractive before she stepped into the offices of Runway and in part, for me, because I liked the blue sweater that Miranda so maliciously deconstructs.

I haven't read Weisberger's novel, and several of the critics I read (Zachareck, Scott) have hinted that the film adaptation softens Miranda slightly, particularly in the scene described by Mel, in which Andy encounters Miranda in her bathrobe, without makeup, in the one moment in the film in which Miranda is not fully in control of the shiny surfaces that surround her. Scott mentions that Andy's alma mater is changed from Brown University to Northwestern, and I have to wonder how much her personality was changed as well. This lack of personality might also be attributed to the fact that her long-time friends existed not such much as characters but as types (her boyfriend the chef, the gay fashion consumer friend, etc). Perhaps, more than anything, I kept finding myself aware of the constraints of a mainstream Hollywood production as I watched Prada, particularly when it came to the film's inability to depict convincingly Andy, the intelligent, idealistic woman as anything more than a type.

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July 3, 2006

Click

In "Ideology, Genre, Auteur," Robin Wood identifies one of the most prominent aspects of "American capitalist ideology" as it is realized in Hollywood cinema, which he calls the "Rosebud Syndrome." According to Wood, films such as Citizen Kane suggest via narrative that "Money isn't everything; money corrupts; the poor are happier. A very convenient assumption for capitalist ideology: the more oppressed you are, the happier you are." Wood describes the Rosebud Syndrome and other aspects of American Capitalist Ideology as they are pushed to their absolute limit in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, with Jimmy Stewart rescued from despair only through the timely arrival of his guardian angel, Clarence. The recent Adam Sandler vehicle, Click (IMDB), directed by Frank Coraci and written by Bruce Almighty screenwriters Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, is the Rosebud Syndrome writ large. And read aloud by James Earl Jones. In Dolby. But that's probably relatively obvious, even from the trailers for Click, which most readers will know features Sandler as Michael Newman (New-Man), a workaholic architect who manages to gain control of his life with a universal remote control that allows him to skip fast-forward, or pause his universe. But the magical remote comes with a high price: like a TiVo, as the remote control "learns" Michael's preferences, it begins to take control, fast forwarding through significant moments in Michael's life, with the remote interpreting Michael's ambitions at work as a preference for his career over his family.

Of course, if this rehashing of the classic opposition between work and family was all that Click had to offer, it wouldn't be an interesting or even terribly entertaining film, but I believe that Click is somewhat unexpectedly interesting and generally entertaining, if only because it depicts the further maturation of Sandler's slightly angry goofball screen persona. In particular, Click tapped into my interest in time-travel films, notably through its use of TiVo as a kind of time travel, allowing Michael to revisit past chapters of his life or to skip ahead through the stressful and boring moments of his life (and I'll be the first to admit that fast-forwarding through traffic would be awfully tempting). By turning Michael's life into something like a film, Click is able to unpack the logic of our media-saturated lives in surprisingly interesting ways. While being introduced to the remote by a mysterious Bed, Bath, and Beyond employee, Morty (Christopher Walken in full mad scientist gear), Michael learns that his life has a commentary track (provided by James Earl Jones, of course), and in a scene that recalled Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich, Michael is even given the opportunity to experience both his conception and his birth. Even the casting, especially of Michael's parents (Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner) and boss (David Hasselhoff), seems to suggest that Michael's life is deeply televisual.

At the same time, because of its adherence to this opposition between work and family Click also comes across as a film with a remarkably narrow imagination. Because the film really only offers two choices between the domestic and the workplace, it presents a relatively limited range of choices for Michael's life. If Michael truly has a universal remote, shouldn't he be able to change channels? It doesn't imagine other career paths that Michael might have followed, other than architecture, and it doesn't really address whether Michael's wife, Donna (Kate Beckinsale, whose major contribution to the film seemed to be wearing tight tanktops), ever had any career ambitions of her own. Even within the logic of Michael's world, the implication that Michael will only be successful and wealthy once he makes partner seems somewhat dubious, especially when he worries that the purchase of two bicycles will prove to be too expensive if he doesn't make partner. The film was also overwhelming laden with product plcements. Perhaps I've been spending too much time in the art house, but I've rarely encountered such extreme use of product placements, especially for Bed, Bath, and Beyond, where Michael first receives the remote (though to be fair, the joke on the "beyond" in the store's name was a nice touch).

I'll admit that I'm somewhat ambivalent about Click. Like Bruce Almighty, the film has some remarkably reigious overtones, with Sandler turning to the skies at one point for divine guidance. And the film's failure to imagine anything beyond the conflict between home and office left a little to be desired. But as a commentary on TiVo and time, Click is surprisingly compelling.

Update: While you're in the neighborhood, check out Caryn James' review, which depicts the underlying cyncism of a film such as Click. She explains that while the film's message is that Sandler's Micheal should slow down, but that "Nothing could be more bogus; as if anyone in Hollywood really wants to slow down. The true message -- wouldn't it be great to have that remote? -- shines through anyway. And it's not just the filmmakers who are in on the sham." Thanks to GreenCine for the link.

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June 25, 2006

Jesus Camp

My previous entry on Ava Lowery's "What Would Jesus Do?" reminded me that I haven't written a longer review of Jesus Camp (IMDB), which I caught at Silverdocs a few days ago. As I mentioned in my initial review, I found myself watching Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's documentary about an evangelical children's camp through the lens of my own childhood experiences of attending similar evangelical churches and church youth camps, something that makes writing about this film somewhat more difficult. I do think that Ewing and Grady have crafted an insightful documentary that will provide its audience with a compelling depiction of evangelical culture, especially as it lays out in terms of educating children into that culture, but I would have liked to see a little more consideration of how children process--often in vastly different ways--what they learn from their pastors, their parents, and their Sunday School teachers.

Jesus Camp opens with a car driving down an interstate highway somehwere in "flyover country," the sides of the road littered with fast food restaurants and chain stores while on the radio, we tune in to various AM radio talk shows where the hosts are conversing about national politics, notably the announcement that Sandra Day O'Connor had retired from the Supreme Court, with the radio hosts enthusiatsically hoping that an anti-choice candidate will be nominated in her place. The radio broadcasts establish the idea that these evangelical children's camps cannot be separated from the larger "culture wars" that, for better or worse, have remained a major theme ever since the 2004 elections. Eventually we are introduced to the documentary's central subjects, Pastor Becky Fischer, a children's pastor who creatively teaches children Bible lessons using toys and other props, and three children, Levi, Rachael, and Tory, who plan to attend Fischer's Kids on Fire summer camp in Devil's Lake, North Dakota. Fischer has a charmismatic stage presence, and the children who attend her services are clearly spellbound as she narrates Bible stories and tells the children about her camp. During these scenes, Levi, especially emerges as a central figure. Articulate and pleasant, Levi--shown in the middle photo on the film's official website--responds to many of Fischer's questions, expressing enthusiasm for attending the camp so that he can become a more dedicated member of "God's army."

Fischer's summer camp provides the backbone of the film, but we also encounter Levi, Rachael, and Tory in a variety of learning contexts. In several scenes, we see the children being home-schooled by parents who want to shield their children from public schools, with one mother teaching the creation story and dismissing evolution as "just a theory," adding that "science doesn't prove anything." Elsewhere, we see another pastor instructing the children to reach their hands towards a life-sized cardboard cutout of George W. Bush so that they can pray for him in ways that are clearly politically inflected (though to be fair, it was not uncommon for the churches I attended to pray for political leaders regardless of party, although this was well before the emergence of the Christian Coalition as a political force). This pastor is especially interested in recruiting "warriors," metaphorically speaking, in the fight against abortion, and in fact, later in the film, we see many of these children on the steps of the Supreme Court handing out fliers calling for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Children also emulate their leaders by "witnessing" to others--Rachael somewhat nervously walks up to a stranger in a bowling alley to share her faith--or by learning to preach, with Levi delivering a short sermon at the camp. We also see Tory who enjoys dancing to Christian rock but worries about the sin of "dancing for the flesh." All of these scenes suggest that the children are absorbing their lessons without really questioning them, and many of the children seem very eager to please the adults in their world, but to a degree they also seemed to suggest the children were trying on a role, figuring out something about themselves while participating in the camp and its related activities.

The only opposing voice to the conservative evangelical subjects of Jesus Camp belongs to (liberal) Air America host and Christian Mike Papantonio, who is shown taking phone calls and commenting broadly on evangelical Christianity. The scenes with Papantonio are beautifully filmed, showing him in a darkened Air America studio, the camera panning across to show him in the room broadcasting alone, while an on-air exchange between Papantonio and Fischer effectively tied the two worlds of the documentary together. While Papantonio's comments about the sometimes troubling mix of religion and politics are helpful, the scenes also had the effect of implying that Papantonio was himself alone in his more progressive version of Christianity, which is, of course, hardly the case, but I'm also unsure what would have worked better here. During a Q&A at Silverdocs, one of the filmmakers addressed a similar question and explained that they conisdered showing a progressive church but felt that it would have provided a distraction from the specifics of the Kids on Fire camp, and I think they're right about that. But at the same time, I did find myself wondering exactly how the children were processing their experiences at "Jesus Camp," because in my experience what you see at the camp is probably significantly different than what you would see at soccer practice, say, or in some other context. Like Andrew LaFollette, commenting on IMDB, the most compelling scenes for me were the ones when we see the children alone. We see glimpses of that when a group of children are talking about Harry Potter (before they are reminded that Harry Potter "would have been stoned to death" if he'd lived in Old Testament times), and I wanted to see more of these moments where children were making sense of their world outside the "Jesus Camp" context because I think we'd see a much different picture of evangelical culture, one that is far more complicated and far less homogenous than what we see in the film. I would have also liked to have seen Jesus Camp depict other aspects of the Kids on Fire camp. Like most evangelical summer camps, Bible lessons only entail one (significant) part of the camps, and some of my strongest memories of the camps are playing softball and participating in other outdoor activities. On the whole, however, despite some reservations, I think that Jesus Camp raises some important questions in its depiction of these evangelical children's camps and their relationship to political activism.

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June 24, 2006

The Road to Guantanamo

Most reviews of Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross's innovative documentary, The Road to Guantanamo (IMDB) have focused on the film's use of re-enactments and its use of news footage about Guantanamo to depict the stories of the Tipton Three, the three young men of Pakistani descent who had traveled to Pakistan for a wedding but were detained for two years in Guantanamo when they were released without charge. The film raises important questions about the role of dramatizations in getting at the truth of what is happening in Guantanamo when we have so few visual images and even relatively limited testimony as journalists have been provided with little to no access to the detainees.

According to their accounts, the three men, Asif, Rhuhel, and Shafiq (a fourth friend, Monir, went missing in Afghanistan and is believed to be dead), were basically apolitical before their experiences in Guantanamo. They were, as Nick Pinkerton of IndieWIRE puts it, an "innocuously laddish bunch of young dudes," who were essentially tourists in Pakistan when they visited there in September 2001 for Asif's wedding. In fact, several days after the group had journeyed into Afghanistan, one of the men still wears a sweatshirt from the Gap. While their reasons for traveling into Afghanistan are never made completely clear by the film (to provide humanitrian aid in Afghanistan? to see the country for themselves? to find some "really big naan?"), it is clear that they are not the hardened criminals, the "bad people," described by Donald Rumsfled, George W. Bush, and others. Instead, when the bombing starts, they are rightfully frightened and attempt to find their way back across the border, instead finding themselves in Kunduz, a Taliban stronghold, where they are picked up by the Northern Alliance.

While housed in Guantanamo, the three men are kept without legal process, repeatedly interrogated, and frequently tortured under the assumption that they are members of Al Qaeda. The interrogators deploy a variety of techniques, often falsely claiming that one member of the group had turned against the others or feigning offense that a British citizen could turn against his country (several of the interrogators seem almost offended by the fact that the Tipton Three speak English). The detainees in Guantanamo are initially locked in outdoor cages at Camp X-Ray, where they are physically assaulted and prohibited from speaking to each other, and later in Camp Delta, they are forced to endure screeching heavy metal music and brightly flashing strobe lights among other forms of abuse. Of course, the Tipton Three have been released, without any charges, after being held for two years, in part because at least one member of the Tipton Three had been visiting his probation officer in Tipton when he was supposedly in an Al Qaueda training camp. The film culminates in Asif's long-delayed wedding, but even with this ending, it's impossible not to feel a little unsettled about the allegations raised by the film (via Altercation, you can read their version (lPDF) of these events).

It would have been easy for someone to create a talking-heads documentary about the experiences of the Tipton Three, but I think Winterbottom and Whitecross have accomplished something far more innovative with their approach to this material. Interviews with Asif, Rhuhel, and Shafiq are mixed with re-enactments of the events they describe, as well as news reports showing George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Tony Blair describing the detainees at Guantanamo as hardered criminals. It's tempting to compare these sequences to Paul Greengrass's obsessively authentic re-creation of the 9/11 hijacking in United 93, as Nick Pinkerton does, but I found these scenes to be a little too stylized, and as Kristi Mitsuda notes in the same indieWIRE article, the actors who play the members of the Tipton Three don't precisely resmble the persons they represent, producing a "distancing effect" that I think is important to the film. To some extent, these re-enactments stand in contrast to the lack of reporting on the conditions in Guantanamo, which Donald Rumsfeld, provoking uncomfortable laughter, described as being "consistent with the Geneva Convention...for the most part." In this sense, I think the hybrid of documentary and dramatization raises some important questions about representation, and while suspicious viewers may be able to "nibble at the factual edges of this film," as Andrew O'Hehir of Salon puts it, I believe it's almost impossible to shake the larger argument of the film that--in Guantanamo at the very least--the United States is not living up to the values of human rights and justice that it claims to be promoting in the Middle East.

The film's depiction of Guantanamo was made all the more poignant as news became public that three detainees had committed suicide in what the camp commander cynically described as an act of "asymmetric warfare," and what others have described as a "good PR move" by the detainees. As my review also implies, it's impossible to write about Winterbottom and Whitecross's film without also writing about Guantanamo, about the conditions of the prison, and about the fact that many of the detainees still haven't been charged with a crime.

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June 22, 2006

The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress

Mark Binbaum and Jim Scherbeck's The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stoen Congress (IMDB) plays like an agitprop border-state film noir, with witnesses often shrouded in heavy shadow describing in detail how a once unknown Congressman in Texas conspired to transform the Republican Party into what DeLay himself described as a "permanent majority." Many viewers of the documentary will be familiar with the basics of DeLay's tactics having seen them played out in the nightly news, but Birnbaum and Scherbenk's documentary places this information ina coherent narrative that gave me a much more precise understanding of how the former House Majority Leader sought to undermine democratic process in his efforts to reshape government. As DeLay himself put it in a remarkably candid 1994 speech, "By the time we finish this poker game, there may not be a federal government left! Which would suit me just fine."

Birnbaum and Scherbenk make their case carefully, avoiding many of the easy laugh lines that might make The Big Buy seem too partisan. In fact, the film opens with a conversation between two Texas Republican activists in their car, discussing the contempt that DeLay showed Repbicans who didn't completely adhere to the party line. Intercut with this conversation, we see snippets of a 1994 interview with DeLay in which he stated his goal to eliminate the Department of Education, the NEH and NEA and to dramatically reduce the scope of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, OSHA, and HUD.

The documentary only stops briefly here, however, focusing instead on how DeLay sought to achieve this very limited vision of government, and this is where the crime drama elements really pick up steam, as local Texas politicians and political observers describe DeLay's tactics, including his use of the Texas state house to redraw the state's Congessional districts in order to create a larger Republican majority, in part by using illegal corporate money to fund Republican candidates for the Texas state house of representatives. In particular, Travis County DA Ronnie Earle offers a clear explanation of how DeLay's scheme violated the law, bringing indictments not just against the former Congressman but also dozens of corporations (including Cracker Barrell, Bacardi, and others) who stood to benefit from DeLay's scheme. We also hear from Jim Hightower who vividly illustrates how the redrawn districts have little to do with democracy. Standing at one busy intersection where three Congressional districts meet, Hightower explains that these districts stretch for hundreds of miles out from this point, illustrating the ways in which the redrawn districts had little to do with the values of represnting a specific community of voters.

It would be impossible to detail all of the relevant information Mark Binbaum and Jim Scherbeck have complied in this 90-minute documentary, but the film is rather sobering in its depiction of how DeLay used a variety of illegal tactics to reshape Congress and government in the image he wanted. With his redrawn districts, DeLay managed to add five reliably Republican seats and as we learn from the film, those five votes have made the difference in a number of close decisions (see teh discussion at the Big Buy website). The Big Buy is a sobering account of how easily democracy can be hijacked by a small, but powerful, group, raising important questions about our political process. As I watched it, I couldn't help but think about Frank Popper's Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?, in part because both films raise so many important questions about the process by whcih our representatives are elected.

Update: I forgot to mention that The Big Buy is being distributed by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films. I saw the film last night at the Wednesday night DC Drinking Liberally event at Mark & Orlando's (sadly, my last Drinking Liberally in DC before The Big Move), but you can order the film from its official website.

Update 2: About a week after the "premiere" of The Big Buy, the Supreme Court ruled that some of the new boundaries drawn by DeLay's redistricting efforts violated the Voting Rights Act but upheld the state's right to reshape Congressional distrcits, not just once a decade as the Texas Democrats claimed. Full story via the Washington Post.

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June 21, 2006

Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?

I originally wrote a short review of Frank Popper's exciting new documentary, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? (official site), a few days ago immediately after seeing it at Silverdocs, but the review has been generating so much traffic--thank you, Arch City Chronicle--that I thought I'd expand my original review into something longer. Mr. Smith also won the Audience Award at Silverdocs, and after thinking about it the last few days, I think the film can offer a significant contribution to our ongoing conversations about politics and civic participation.

Mr. Smith focuses on Jeff Smith's campaign in the 2004 Democratic primary for the House of Representatives seat being vacated by the retiring Dick Gephardt. When Smith, a 29-year old adjunct professor at a local university with no political experience and few (if any) political connections, decides to run, even his parents discourage him, in part to shield him from the disappointment of losing. Running in a crowded field of eight candidates, including Russ Carnahan, the son of Mel and Jean Carnahan (a former governor and Senator respectively), Jeff would seem to have little chance of winning. Others dismissed Smith's chances because he looked too young or didn't look the part of a political candidate, but Smith, whose progressive politics and youthful enthusiasm are utterly infectious, leaps into this improbable campaign, and Frank Popper's film takes us on the journey of Smith's campaign, capturing the energy of a political campaign that seems to be capturing lightning in a bottle.

When thinking about this film, it's the energy of Smith and his campaign staffers that I'll remember most. Riding the revitalized grassroots energy born out of the Howard Dean campaign, Jeff and his staff emphasize connecting personally with the voters of his district, going door-to-door to actually talk with the voters, and throughout the film we see Jeff with a cell phone on each ear, somehow managing to hold two conversations at once as he works to solicit campaign contributions or even a few more votes. In addition to going door-to-door, Smith's capaign emphasized yard signs (giving his name further visibility) and informal coffees hosted by suporters to give him a chance to talk about his politics in a more conversational situation. Jeff's strategies clearly work as polls show him going from being "an asterick," getting around 2-3% of the vote, to being a major contender for the nomination.

Of course, these strategies wouldn't work if Smith didn't have the support of a tireless campaign staff of volunteers subsisting for weeks on cold pizza and little sleep, and while Mr. Smith bears a strong resemblance to the behind-the-scenes campaign film, The War Room, it also offers a glimpse of a much more accessible campaign on a much smaller level, unlike the highly polished Clinton campaign led Carville and other Beltway professionals. These strategies also wouldn't work if Jeff didn't know how to connect with the voters, but Jeff proves to be an eloquent and thoughtful candidate, shining in the debates between the Democratic candidates, but also connecting on a personal level with individual voters, particularly in the African-American community which constitutes a major part of the district. And this is where Mr. Smith raises some important questions about our political process. Several voters seem to acknowledge to Jeff that they prefer his positions on the issues but worry that he won't be able to beat the more powerful candidates. The major newspapers, including the most prominent African-American newspaper in the community, choose to line up behind Carnahan, laregly because they have an eye only on fielding what they believe will be the most likely candidate to win. As Skinner's Democratic Underground review points out, "it was extremely frustrating to watch as almost all the jaded establishment types in our party and in the media threw their support behind the safe choice, rather than take a chance on the talented newcomer."

Possible spolier: As many readers will know, Carnahan won the primary by the narrowest of margins (Jeff Smith has now set his sights on getting elected to the Missouri state senate), and yet, as Skinner notes, it's hard not to walk away from Mr. Smith without feeling at least a little hopeful. While candidates like Smith face major obstacles, his campaign clearly electrified members of his district, and even though he received few endorsements from local newspapers, his grassroots techniques captured the imagination of many members of the local media. At the same time, the film depicts many of the problems with a system that strongly favors powerful insider candidates. As I mentioned in my original review, I don't think Mr. Smith offers any easy answers to the question implied in its title, and I think that's what makes Popper's film such a vital, important document for conversations about our political process.

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June 20, 2006

Wordplay

I have to admit that I'm not a fan of crossword puzzles, which probably makes me less than an ideal audience member for Wordplay (IMDB), the new documentary about Will Shortz, editor of The New York Times crossword, and the crossword enthusiasts who tackle the puzzle on a daily basis. I'm not patient enough to learn the lingo of crossword clues, and while at least one crossword enthusiast makes reference to an innate human need to solve problems, to "fill in all the empty boxes," I can rarely remain interested long enough to solve a puzzle, even on a Monday when they're supposed to be easier. But Wordplay manages to convey to some extent why so many people are addicted to the Times crossword and regard puzzle editor Will Shortz as a mini-celebrity, as well as the sense of community that has developed among puzzle enthusiasts. In fact, the larger community of crossword fans appealed to such an extent that I found myself wishing that I could become interested in crossword puzzles.

No doubt, much of the appeal comes from the charming folks who talk about doing and making crossword puzzles. Celebrities such as Jon Stewart and the Indigo Girls illustrate how engaging with a crossword puzzle can spark the creative process, with Emily Saliers in partciular noting how a crossword puzzle can even help her to overcome writer's block. Daniel Okrent, the former NYT public editor, admits that he has kept track of how quickly he solves the Times puzzle for years, competing against himself and in many ways, against time itself. Other celebrities, such as New York Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns also offer intriguing explanations for their crossword addictions. Meanwhile Bill Clinton and Bob Dole recall a particulalry noteworthy Times puzzle that punned on both candidates' names during the 1996 election (Clinton, in particular attests to the therapeutic aspects of a good crossword).

Clinton and Dole's discussion of this puzzle sets up a compelling discussion of how crossword puzzles are produced, with Merl Reagle letting us in on his creative process for a puzzle based on the film's title. Watching Reagle shape the puzzle gave some insight into the appeal of crosswords and the fact that crossword puzzles are, in fact, authored (something I didn't really think about as an outsider). But I was somewhat surprised to learn that in most cases the letters are arranged first and the clues are often written afterwards (Reagle even looks in the dictionary to ensure that "redtop" is a word and to come up with the clue for that word).

Along with this narrative, Wordplay builds towards the national crossword championships, held annually in the same Marriott hotel in Stamford, Connecticut. We are introduced to the major contestants, Al Sanders, who manages to finish third every year, Trip Payne, who is the younget past champion (at age 24), and Tyler Hinman, a 20-year old college student. Unlike most competitive documentaries, Wordplay depicts all of the finalists generously, and while the film managed to keep the viewer in suspense about who would win, it does so without creating villains. Instead, the crossword players seem to have a genuine sense of community, as many of the players have returned annually since the tournament began in the 1970s. I'm still not likely to pick up the Times crossword anytime soon, but the subjects of Wordplay consistently charm and entertain, and based on the reactions of the DC audience, I'm guessing that crossword fans will likely enjoy this film.

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June 18, 2006

Sunday at Silverdocs, or Screened Out

After four long days of film screenings, I was only able to attend two films today on the last day of Silverdocs. I managed an early afternoon screening of Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos, a documentary about the notorious 1970s soccer team led by colorful stars Pele and Giorgio Chinaglia. The film describes the team's brief flash of popularity in the 1970s, their appearances at Studio 54, their famous fans, including Mick Jagger and Henry Kissinger (the film implies that one of the motivations behind Pele's career with the Cosmos is that it would improve relations between the US and Brazil), and the packed stadiums where the Cosmos played, complete with cheerleaders and Bugs Bunny mascots (the Cosmos were owned by Warner chief Steven Ross).

In general, Lifetime was a fun film about the meteroic rise and fall of US soccer enthusiasm in the 1970s, one that could have been even more playful and fun had the directors played up the team's nightlife activities even further. That being said, it's impossible to deny the impressive amount of work that went into compiling the interviews and archival materials, not to mention all of the music clearances, that went into making the film. Lifetime also seems to show virtually every goal Pele scored on US soil, which I think will make the film especially enjoyable for longtime soccer (football) fans. It also shows the long-term impact of the New York Cosmos and the North American Soccer League on today's US soccer fans, noting that many of the fans who attended Cosmos games are now among the biggest stars on the U.S. World Cup teams (Mia Hamm in particular), while the Cosmos and other soccer ambassadors also helped promote the idea of youth soccer in the late 1970s. Lifetime wasn't spectacular, but US soccer fans and people curious about the 1970s will likely find it relatively interesting.

I followed Lifetime with Linas Phillips' Walking to Werner (IMDB; official site), a film very much in the spirit of the director who inspired it, Werner Herzog. Learning that Herzog once walked from Munich to Pris to visit a dying friend, Linas decides to journey on foot from his home in Seattle to the director's residence in Los Angeles, a distance of over 2,100 miles. Phillips exchanges emails and plays phone tag with Herzog, eventually learning that Herzog will be in Thailand to shoot a film, but Linas decides to continue his journey, confronting all manner of obstacles (speeding cars, narrow bridges, physical exhaustion) and friendly eccentrics along the way. While I enjoyed Walking and found Linas charming, his story was perhaps a little too earnest and sentimental in places. In fact, Herzog's attempts to direct the film from afar come across as far more intereting, with Herzog at first refusing to meet Linas at the end of his journey because the film should be about Linas and not Herzog and later (as Phillips mentioned during the Q&A) giving Linas his blessing to use audio from an interview Herzog recorded for the DVD version of Fitzcarraldo, telling Phillips that good filmmakers "have to steal."

Because Walking ran longer than I anticipated, I decided to skip Road to Guantanamo for now (it's playing at the E Street starting this weekend), but by that point I was pretty much exhausted, screened out, after something like ten movies and three shorts in four days. But before I wrap coverage on Silverdocs 2006, I just wanted to congratulate the Sterling Feature Award Winner, Jesus Camp, which I liked quite a bit (and hope to discuss further in the next few days) and the Audience Award Winner, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?, which I also liked quite a bit. Now, with Silverdocs coming to a close, I'm going to have to return to my normal life, or at least some version of a normal life before I leave for Fayetteville at the end of the month.

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Saturday at Silverdocs

I was able to see only two movies at Silverdocs on Saturday, and both films, by coincidence, put faces on subcultures that have typically been forgotten or ignored. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, in particular, provides a valuable window into a history that most people have forgotten, recalling the tragic end of the story when over 900 people were killed rather than the culture that led up to it. B.I.K.E. offers a glimpse of the Black Label Bicycle Club, a group of artists and activists who form a community around the pro-bicycle movement. It's an interesting mix of politics and playfulness as the Black Label group competes in "bicycle jousts" atop six-foot tall bicycles.

The first film, Stanley Nelson's Jonestown: The LIfe and Death of Peoples Temple (IMDB) relates the history of Peoples Temple and its charismatic leader, Jim Jones, starting with his humble youth in Lynn, Indiana, and running through the 1960s and '70s, when Jones developed an enthusiatsic following with his message of social justice, to the very end in Jonestown, Guyana, when Jones directed over 900 followers to commit mass suicide. Nelson, who also directed The Murder of Emmett Till, presents an amazing wealth of archival material, including footage and audio of the meeting that culminated in the mass suicides, as well as interviews with several of the survivors and former members of Jones' church (including Jones' adopted son, Jim, Jr). While Nelson quickly establishes that Jones' psychological problems likely stem form childhood, he also demonstrates, through interviews and archival materials, how appealing Jones' message of social equality and community might have been for people shaken by the Vietnam War and racial inequality. Jones' churches are a picture of diversity, with young white college students standing next to older black families, suggesting a sense of community that might otherwise have been unavailable (see Christina Talcott's Washington Post article for more information on Nelson's research).

To some extent, Jones himself remains unknowable, and I'm not sure that any amount of reporting could ever determine how the church leader saw himself or his congregation, but Nelson manages to unearth footage of a healing service in which a woman confined to a wheelchair miraculously begins to walk again. The woman was later recognized to be one of Jones' secretaries wearing heavy makeup. The film features unforgettable footage from Jones' church in San Francisco and eventually from Guyana itself where Jones fled with members of his congregation after an article in a San Francisco newspaper began to unravel problems within Peoples Temple. Jonestown is an important story, one that needed to be told, and Nelson's film provides valuable insight into Jones' charismatic appeal and the church's eventual demise in what Jones described as "revolutionary suicide." It's clear, of course, as one of the survivors put it that "there was nothing revolutionary about it."

Jacob Septimus and Anthony Howard's B.I.K.E. focuses on the tight-knit subculture of pro-bicycle activists known as the Black Label Bicycle Club. The film focuses on the New York branch of the club, which consists priamrily of artists and punks, many of whom had known each other in the graffiti culture in the city (in fact other branches in the midwest tend to be much more blue-collar). The film focuses primarily on co-director Anthony (Tony) Howard's attempts to join Black Label and the group's repeated decisions to reject him, in part because of Tony's "rock star" or individualistic style (which often came across as a bizarre art-school hybrid of Tony Manero and Insane Clown Posse. In this sense, B.I.K.E. pits indvidulism against the collective ethos of the bike club, in a storyline that probably should have been a little more explicit.

While Tony is trying to get into Black Label, a long-time girlfriend enetr rehab and eventually leaves him for another guy, he develops an admiring friendship with the leader of Black Label, an artist and champion bike jouster, and ultimately he starts a rival bike group to compete with Black Label. I'll admit to being somewhat disappointed by B.I.K.E., but that's probably due to the fact that I was more interested in the politics of Black Label and the pro-bicicyle culture in general, and the film underplayed that element. To be fair, B.I.K.E. does explore these questions to some extent, particularly the scene in which the New York chapter of Black Label travels to the national Black Label convention in the midwest, which depictis the limits of the group's politics, as they load their bikes into their parents' (?) Range Rovers and Mercedes in order to travel to the competition. This scene does not suggest that their politics are insincere, I think, but that the group isn't completely removed from the bourgeois world that they seem to reject. I'm planning to see Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos, Walking to Werner, and Road to Guantanamo today.

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June 17, 2006

Friday at Silverdocs

It looks like I'm going to take most of Saturday off from Silverdocs. A colleague is hosting a cookout this afternoon, so while I'm planning to catch a couple of films tonight, the extra time will give me a few minutes to catch my breath and blog about the films and panels I caught yesterday. I never would have guessed that going to three films in one day could be so exhausting. After a late start on Friday, I met up with Sarah Jo Marks of Documentary Insider and we were able to catch the end of John Pierson's "Doc Talk" panel, during which Pierson discussed his experiences in helping Michael Moore and Errol Morris find wider audiences for Roger and Me and The Thin Blue Line. But Pierson was even more compelling when he discussed the experience of being the subject of a documentary, in his case Reel Paradise, which focuses on Pierson's family going to Fiji to screen films in an old theater on the island. He also described the responses of the Fijians themselves to the films that Pierson programmed, but I'll save that discussion for later when I've had a chance to see the documentary (which I'm now curious to see). Side note: while attending th Pierson panel, I met another press person who tipped me off to the University of South Carolina's "Orphan Film Symposium," which focuses on lost, unseen, or otherwise obscure films. Columbia is a short drive from my future home in Fayetteville, so it might be worth checking out in the future.

From there, I found my way to Air Guitar Nation (Silverdocs), easily the most entertaining and crowd-pleasing documentary of the festival and a fascinating addition to the "competitive doc" sub-genre, recalling films such as Hoop Dreams and Spellbound but with a heavy metal twist. Directed by Alexandra Lipsitz, Air Guitar Nation follows the story of two New York City air guitar competitors, C. Diddy and Bjorn Turoque, as they pursue their dream of competing in the International Air Guitar Champiuonship in Oulu, Finland (learn more about the US Championships here). Both C. Diddy and Bjorn are compelling characters who candidly discuss the air guitar phenomenon and their motivations for participating. In many cases, the competitors discuss the ways in which identity is a perforamnce and explain that by assuming their air guitar persona, they can escape their normal lives (as software engineers or whatever). At the same time, for C. Diddy, air guitar provides an opportunity to convey to his parents, who immigrated from Korea with the hopes that he'd become a doctor or lawyer, that his chosen career as an actor-comedian is the best choice. Air Guitar Nation manages to provide some goofy fun while also offering insight into its subject.

I had the good luck of watching Air Guitar Nation with Danielson: A Family Movie [Or Make a Joyful Noise Here] filmmaker JL Aronson, and while I can't attend the film, I'm incredibly curious to see it. Danielson focuses on the quirky faith-based, art-rock band, Danielson, and their struggles to make it in the music industry. I happened to catch Daniel Smith's solo act by accident in Atlanta, and his quirky, whiny, almost "unnatural" voice was unforgettable. Even more striking, he performed the entire concert wearing a 7-foot tree costume, and I gradually recognized the religious content of the lyrics. But because Danielson comes from an evangelical background similr to my own, I'm curious to learn more about this fascinating band and hope that I'll get a chance to see the film soon.

After Air Guitar Nation, I caught the world premiere of Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?, which follows the experiences of the aptly named Jeff Smith as he runs for Congress in Missouri in Dick Gephardt's former district. Smith, an adjunct professor who studies African-American studies, enrolls a group of college kids and twentysomethings, none of whom have significant political experience, and runs a total (and seemingly tireless) grassroots campaign, knocking on doors, calling voters personally, encouraging supporters to host informal coffees, and posting yard signs wherever possible. Mr. Smith benefits from the screen presence of the candidate who is certainly an engaging and expressive public speaker. Smith runs against one of Missouri's big name families, represented by Russ Carnahan, the son of a former governor and Senator. Offering the most candid glimpse of a political campaign since The War Room, Frank Popper's Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? simply asks its title question: can a regular guy with no political experience but tremendous energy, charismatic appeal, and great ideas still get elected against the more powerful members of the party system? And I think it's a credit to the film that the answers it offers aren't always simple. Hoping to write more about both of these exciting new documentaries a little later.

Update: While surfing Technorati, I came across a good discussion of Mr. Smith. As Jake points out in teh comments over there, the film not only offers a critique of campaign politics but also asks some interesting questions about the relationship between white candidates and black voters. More on that topic and others in my longer review.

Update 2: I've written a longer review of Mr. Smith, which is available here.

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June 15, 2006

Thursday at Silverdocs

For the second day in a row, I watched three documentaries, and once again, all three come highly recommended. I'll try to write longer reviews later because all three films are deserving of further discussion, but like yesterday, I feel like I've been staring at screens big, small, and tiny for a really long time. I started my afternoon with a screening of film composer Gary Tarn's Black Sun (IMDB), an experimental documentary based on the writings of painter Hugues de Montalembert, who went blind in the late 1970s when a mugger threw paint thinner in his eyes. De Montalembert narrates from his own descriptions of blindness, recalling the attack and conveying how it changes his experience of the world. After going blind, de Montalembert, rather than confining himself to his apartment, chose to travel, exploring countries ranging from Indonesia and India to Iceland, and Tarn's camera visits all of these locations, capturing images using images that can only be described as kaleidoscopic. Black Sun, with its philosophical explorations of vision and its depictions of travel recalled Chris Marker's Sans Soleil.

I followed up Black Sun with a late afternoon screening of Leila Khaled, Hijacker, a documentary by Swedish-Palestinian director Lina Makboul about Khaled, a Palestinian woman who hijacked two planes in the 1970s, with the hopes of calling attention to the Palestinian struggle. Makboul is explicit about her own ambivalence towards Khaled. While Makboul certainly regarded Khaled as a hero of sorts, she is also critical of her methods, with the documentary becoming an intriguing reflection on the line between "freedom fighter" and "terrorist." Unlike films such as One Day in September that look at the Palestinian struggles with distance, Makboul depicts her personal investment and her struggle to ask Makboul whether or not she feels she has harmed the reputation of Palestinians through her actions. Makboul also wisely underplays the emphasis on Kahled's appearance, noting in passing that Khaled's fame derived in part from her physical beauty, as members of the press repeatedly asked her questions about her romantic life. While her appearance certainly added to her initial notoreity, Makboul's film seems more interested in questions of the consequences of this violence for the Palestinian national narrative.

Next I caught the compelling "homemade" documentary, A Certain Kind of Beauty, co-directed by Liz Witham and Nancy Slonim Aronie. Beauty focuses on the struggles of Dan Aronie (Nancy's son) with multiple sclerosis, which he develops at the age of 22, just as he was beginnig to pursue a career in acting. Handsome and charming, Dan imagines that the whole world opening up before him, but after contracting MS, his motor skills quickly deteriorate despite a number of experimental medical procedures. Soon after Dan is diagnosed, his mother comes across the idea to document the family's experiences, and Dan readily agrees, in part to help others understand the disease but also--I'd imagine--as a way to help the family make sense of this difficult experience. The film is often brutally honest, depicting Dan struggling to dress himself and even to get out of bed as well as reflecting on how MS has changed him and how he experiences the world. But at the same time, Dan's story also depicts the importance of freinds and family in providing a sense of community. I'm still working through my response to this compelling film, but the honesty and openness of the Aronie family in telling their story was incredibly powerful.

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Wednesday at Silverdocs

Longer reviews later, but I've just returned from day one of Silverdocs (technically day two, I suppose, but I skipped opening night), where I took in a triple feature. I started with What Remains, which I saw based on Cynthia's recommendation, and I ended up finding the film, which focused on the work of photographer Sally Mann, to be utterly fascinating, a meditation on death and decay in the spirit of her recent photography series, but also on the processes of photography itself. The film was directed by Steven Cantor, who had documented Mann's work in the past in Blood Ties: The Life and Work of Sally Mann, which I now very much want to see.

From there, I went to Jesus Camp (official site), Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's documentary about a camp for evangelical Christian youth, "Kids on Fire," led by children's pastor Becky Fischer, who rallies children to become more active as Christians in spreading their faith. While it would be tempting to treat this subculture with ironic distance, Ewing and Grady are careful to treat their subjects fairly, and they spend significant energy in the film depicting the links between evangelical Christianity and the Republican right (the kids pray for a life-size cardboard cut-out of President Bush and travel to DC to march against abortion). As someone who was raised as an evangelical, I'm always curious to see evangelical culture represented, and the film certainly brought back a lot of (sometimes painful) memories, and I have to admit that I'm still processing the film. But what I found most fascinating about it was the depiction of how these children "learn" evangelical culture, and within Fischer's camp, we see the children picking up the lingo and finding ways to minister to others. During the Q&A, several of the questioners depicted this as a process of brainwashing, and I think that gets what happens within evangelical culture wrong in ways that are rather significant. While we see the kids primarily within the context of the church services, their behavior elsewhere in the camp shows that the kids who attend make sense of their world in a variety of complicated ways.

Finally, I caught most of Punk's Not Dead before I had to dash out to catch the last train to Hyattsville (which I managed with less than five minutes to spare). Punk's Not Dead was a relatively solid treatment of many of the big definitional questions associated with punk. What is punk? Can commercially successful bands such as Sum 41 or Good Charlotte still be classified as punk if they've signed with a major label? Or if their lyrics lack any political content? Because I left before the film ended, I don't know what kind of conclusions the film reached, but at the very least, the filmmakers have assembled a wealth of concert footage and interviews with punk musicians that will provide useful for anyone who is interested in the history of punk.

Again, I'm hoping to write longer reviews later, especially for Jesus Camp, but after six hours staring at a giant screen, another hour staring at a smaller one seems a bit tedious. Tomorrow afternoon, I'll see Black Sun, and we'll see how things go from there.

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June 14, 2006

Clean

I'm not going to have time to write a full review of Olivier Assayas' Clean, which focuses on Emily Wang (Maggie Cheung), a heroin-addicted rock musician whose husband, Lee Hauser (James Johnston), also a rock musican, dies of a drug overdose in a Candaian industrial town (Hamilton, Ontario, if I remember correctly). Sentenced to jail for possession, Emily loses custody of their son to Lee's parents (played by Nick Nolte and Martha Henry). Cheung, who won the best actress award for this performance at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, is impressive as a recovering junkie struggling to regain control over her life, but as Filmbrain notes--in an insightful review of the film--Cheung is far too pretty to be fully convincing as an addict. But the film is well worth watching for Cheung's performance and for her interaction with Nolte. Clean manages to avoid some of the cliches of the drug recovery picture (see the recent New York Times review on this topic), but for whatever reason, I didn't find the film that memorable (although this may be attributed to my being somewhat distracted right now by The Big Move that continues to occupy much of my energy).

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June 5, 2006

The Puffy Chair

The Puffy Chair (IMDB), written and directed by Mark and Jay Duplass, opens with the two leads, Josh and Emily, sitting at a kitchen table as Josh prepares for a road trip to collect the vintage La-Z-Boy of the film's title. Josh (played by co-writer Mark Duplass) and Emily (Kathryn Aselton) speak in the familiar tones that suggest they have been a couple for a long time, but a phone call that interrupts their late-night conversation suggests that some uncertainty within their relationship. Filmed naturalistically with handheld camera, the scene quietly establishes the tone of the film, both in terms of the tension in the couple's relationship and their ability to talk around that tension. The film's "homemade" style, suggested in large part by the naturalistic cinematography and dialogue, allows the Duplass brothers to achieve something quite effective: a funny and thoughtful indie film that earns the emotional impact of its final scene.

After the kitchen table argument, Josh semi-apologizes the following morning by waking up Emily by standing at her window and holding a juke box over his head while playing a song they like. Under normal circumstances, the nod to the classic scene in Say Anything might seem obvious, but it's just the sort of slacker-romantic move that someone like Josh might use to get himself back in the graces of his girl-friend. Josh invites Emily to join him on their road trip,a nd along the way, they pick up Josh's neo-hippie brother, Rhett (Rhett Wilkins), who eventually serves as a foil for Josh's interactions with Emily. And in true road-trip style, the plans to pick up the recliner don't go as planned, and Josh, Emily, and Rhett find themselves stuck in North Carolina (of all places) for several days.

As Kimberly Jones of The Austin Chronicle notes, the film works so well because the Duplass Brothers have an ear for dialogue, with Josh and Emily "mired in the universal ways of dysfunctional couples--the doublespeak and hidden agendas," making the couple at once highly specific but also very familiar. There are suggestions, for example, that Emily may have pressured Josh to quit his rock band so that he could spend more time with her. The tension in their relationship culminates in a remarkable scene in which Rhett meets Amber (Julie Fisher) in an art house theater in North Carolina. They disappear, and eventually when Josh and Emily find them, Rhett declares that he wants to marry Amber, whom he met just hours earlier. Josh "marries" them in a series of improvised, mock-romantic vows that Rhett and his new "bride" recite whle Emily watches, comparing her relationship with Josh to Rhett's eagerly romantic gesture (as Mick LaSalle notes, Aselton is very good in this scene). Still, even while the film is remarkably perceptive about these dysfunctional relationships, it is also a remarkably funny film. The soundtrack is also impressive featuring songs by indie faves Matt Pond PA, Of Montreal, and Death Cab for Cutie. I really liked The Puffy Chair and hope the film finds the wider audience that it deserves.

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June 3, 2006

An Inconvenient Truth

For whatever reason, I've found it incredibly difficult to write a review of Davis Guggenheim's documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth (IMDB), in part because I find myself wanting to say too much about it. As almost everybody who watches the news knows by now, the documentary features for VP and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore giving a "slide show" presentation on global warming, arguing not only that global warming is taking place and that it will have devastating consequences if we don't take immediate action, but Gore also makes clear that humans are primarily responsible for global warming and that we can take action to reverse current ternds. The film has been widely debated, and while I have few illusions that my review will do anything other than add to the noise already out there, I would encourage anyone who cares about this planet to see this film. But while An Inconvenient Truth offers a lucid, eloquent explanation for the potentially devastating effects of global warming, it's also a surpisngly human film, in large part due to the presence of Gore, and an unexpectdly hopeful film, with Gore outlining the ways in which we can combat global warming. The film also subtly argues that corporate greed is priamrily to blame for perpetuating the myth that global warming isn't happening (or that it can be attributed to "natural cycles" or whatever), but to Gore's credit--and the film's credit--An Inconvenient Truth avoids coming across as overtly partisan or political.

In writing this review, I am conscious of the fact that I will likely come across as an "advocate" of sorts, but for once, I find myself agreeing with Roger Ebert, who argues that "to be 'impartial' and 'balanced' on global warming means one must take a position like Gore's." The evidence that Gore offers has become the consensus position of the scientific community, with Gore pointing at one point that in academic journals dedicated to science, not one article disputes global warming while 57 percent of all newspaper and magazine articles dispute it. At the same time, the film outlines the ways in which Bush's current "environmental policy" is geared primarily towards benefitting oil and energy companies. As David Remnick points out, both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush have worked to discredit Gore. The older Bush referred to Gore as "ozone man" and implied that Gore cared more for owls than he did humans, employing the incredibly disingenuous argument that protecting the environment would destroy the economy. The younger Bush "has scorned the Kyoto agreement on global warming (a pact that Gore helped broker as Vice-President); he has neutered the Environmental Protection Agency; he has failed to act decisively on America’s fuel-efficiency standards even as the European Union, Japan, and China have tightened theirs." In addition, the film reminds us that Philip A. Cooney, Bush's former chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, left the chief oil industry lobby, American Petroleum Institute, to take the White House job. When Cooney left that job, he went to work for Exxon-Mobile.

While the film is no doubt critical of the Bush enviromnetal policy, it is far more devastating and utterly convincing in its depiction of the effects of global warming, which are powerfully illustrated by Gore's power point presentation, which he estimates he has now given over a thousand times to pretty much anyone who's interested. Much of this information has appeared in advertisements and trailers for the film: ten of the hottest years in recorded history have taken place in the last fourteen years. Hurricanes have grown more frequent and more powerful than ever before, while typhoons have also increased in frequency. The polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, which will cause coastlines to dramatically recede, eventually putting Calcutta, Shanghai, Manhattan, and huge portions of Florida under water. With Katrina's devastating effects on the Gulf Coast fresh in our memories, Gore notes that we've seen the effects of 200,000 refugees and to then imagine the effects of a hundred million. Gore's numbers are powerfully supplemented by footage of melting glaciers, before-and-after photographs of Mount Kilimanjaro and Patagonia, and animations that depict the radically changed coastlines that are expected if global warming continues unabated.

While this all sounds potentially wonky, I can assure you that it is not. As MaryAnn Johanson notes, Gore's presentation of this material is utterly compelling, his rapport with his audiences undeniable. And the film's use of charts and graphs dramatize the effects of global warming in ways that surprised me. And while I am strongly convinced that Gore's argument is correct, I found it meaningful to see these arguments delivered in such a vivid, lucid manner. Reviewers including Peter Travers of Rolling Stone have aligned the film generically with "edge of your seat" thrillers (as seen in the film's trailer), and that's a rather apt comparison for the most part, though I think it might underplay the degree to which Gore generosity, reflectiveness, and his sense of humor carry his presentation. While Gore was often faulted during the election for appearing stiff, dispassionate, or dry, his passion for the topic of global warming is absolutely clear, and he also displays a sense of humor that was often overlooked during the election. These moments include Gore's self-depricating introduction of himself as the man who "used to be the next president of the United States," but as Johanson notes, his humor is also pedagogical in places, as he uses the anecdote of the frog who will comfortably rest in water that gradually warms until he "...is rescued." And with that analogy, Gore introduces ways that people can begin to combat global warming.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I've found myself struggling to write about An Inconvenient Truth. And one reason I've struggled is that I found it difficult not to think about what might have been had Gore become president rather than Bush, how much different the last six years could have been. It's also difficult to reconcile the image of Gore from the often hostile coverage he received in the 2000 election and the image of him in this film as a releaxed and humorous but passionate individual fighting for an issue that isn't just political but moral. While the film rarely comments directly on the topic of the election, it was never far from my mind, and implicitly at least, An Inconvenient Truth seems to underscore the ways in which eletions should be less about image and polish and more focused on policy and substance. Even as I say that, I realize I'm creating a false binary, but when you see this film and see the man who ostensibly lost the 2000 election, you see what we as a nation really lost.

Posted by chuck at 11:33 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 27, 2006

Giuliani Time

Kevin Keating's Giuliani Time (IMDB) seeks to deconstruct the popular post-September 11 depiction of Rudolph Giuliani as "America's Mayor," the compassionate public figure that became a symbol of resiliance in the face of tragedy. Keating pursues this goal by looking at Giuliani's early career as a federal prosecutor appointed by Ronald Reagan (Giuliani helped support the decision to turn away boatloads of Haitain immigrants who were escaping Baby Doc Duvalier's oppressive regime) and, more crucially, Giuliani's divisive record as mayor, in which he is credited with making the city safer in part through his "borken windows" policy, which argued that by focusing on petty crimes (graffiti, squeegee guys, panhandling), more harmful crimes would also decrease. At the same time, Keating reminds us that Giuliani's police force also had a reputaion for racial profiling and for using unecessary force in subduing suspected criminals, symbolized most powerfully in the Amadou Diallo case. This behavior by the police became associated with the slogan, "Giuliani time," which was shorthand for the mayor's often draconian, and often hugely unpopular methods for running the city.

The documentary traces Giuliani's emergence as a public figure, starting with his Brooklyn childhood and focusing specifically on allegations that members of his family may have been connected to organized crime. I have to admit that I didn't find this evidence terribly convincing, and the documentary doesn't really work through the significance of these connections. The film picks up steam when it traces Giuliani's history as a federal prosecutor under Reagan, particularly his participation in preventing the Haitian immigrants from entering the United States, and from there Keating focuses primarily on Giuliani's record as mayor and his implementation of the "broken windows" philosophy espoused by the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank.

Keating offers a number of counter-arguments to the "broken windows" thesis. While proponents of Giuliani are correct to state that crime rates decreased dramatically while Giuliani was mayor, Keating points out that violent crime rates were lower throughout the US, whether due to improved economic conditions nationally or other factors. He also notes that crime rates were already decreasing significantly under the previous mayor, David Dinkins, but that Giuliani managed to depict Dinkins as unfriendly to the police and weak on crime (in one segment we see Giuliani arguing that Dinkins cannot be tough on crime if he's against the death penalty). Keating also documents the ways in which Giuliani's "workfare" programs paid low wages and failed to offer the necessary job training that would allow workfare recipients to move on to more productive and satisfying work. The film also traces Giuliani's attempts to defund the Brooklyn Museum of Art for displaying art that didn't conform to his tastes before finally moving into the high-profile cases of police brutality and racial profiling symbolized by the Amadou Diallo case.

While Keating spends much energy deconstructing Giuliani's reputation as "America's mayor" and as an all-around nice guy, the film works best as an exploration of urban life, and I wish the film had taken that focus rather than seeking to discredit Giuliani as an individual. It seems likely that Giuliani Time serves as a pre-emptive strike against a potential run for the Presidency by America's Mayor, but I found myself most intrigued when Keating interviewed the homeless and poor people whose lives were most deeply effected by Giuliani's principles of workfare or the sidewalk artists whose work was destroyed under the auspices of the "broken windows" philosophy.

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May 20, 2006

Sir! No Sir!

It is impossible to watch David Zeiger's documentary about the GI antiwar movement during Vietnam, Sir! No Sir! (IMDB), in 2006 without thinking about the war in Iraq, and the producers of the film have worked with groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War to campaign against the war in Iraq by providing free DVDs of Sir! No Sir! to active duty and deployed soliders. More crucially, the activist, agit-prop spirit of the film inspires action through its focus on the Vietnam soldiers' acts of resistance. But what I found most compelling about the film, and what will make Sir! No Sir! an important document long after the Iraq War, was its use of archival materials to remind audiences of a history of protest that has been lost, if not entirely, rewritten in the years since the Vietnam War.

Specifically the film features extensive TV coverage of the acts of rebellion of thousands of American soldiers against the war, as well as lesser known documents such as Newreel films about the soldiers' acts of resistance. The film also featured an extended discussion of the underground newspapers produced by the soldiers, primarily using typewriters and mimeograph machines as their "press" (the film's website provides links to several libraries with extensive holdings of these GI newspapers), and as a media historian, I'm fascinated by this do-it-yourself use of media.

In addition, the film documents the coffeehouse culture that grew up around many of the military bases where soldiers were preparing to go to war, giving some sense of the culture of resistance as well as the documents associated with it, and what fascinated me about the courage of soldiers who saw what was happening in Vietnam and joined the anti-war movement. In Bruce Patterson's review of the film, he describes in some detail his experiences in the anti-war movement. Among other activities, he contributed to the Bragg Briefs, a GI paper distributed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Sir! No Sir! also explores how the protests against Vietnam have been rewritten, particularly the urban myth that soldiers were routinely spat upon in airports by hippies. The film features Jerry Lembcke, who has challenged the credibility of this myth in his book, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam. The film demonstrates in some detail how films such as Rambo have managed to rewrite these protest narratives. While the film spends less time thinking about how andwhy history gets rewritten, its true value is in offering compelling images of the very significant GI anti-war movement during the Vietnam War.

Sir! No Sir! is currently touring the US, playing in a few theaters a week before being released in July on DVD. It's scheduled to play in DC through Thursday at the E Street Theater.

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May 14, 2006

Date Number One

I caught the world premiere of Sujewa Ekanayake's latest film, Date Number One, aptly described as a comedy about several first dates. Ekanayake's lo-fi directorial style and the film's conversational tone combine to depict the dating scene around a prominent Kensington Row bookshop where many of the key scenes were filmed. The twentysomethings and occasional thirtysomethings looking for romance recall Richard Linklater's philosopher slackers and Jim Jarmusch's minimalist attention to conversation, particularly in Jarmusch's underrated Night on Earth. Date Number One focuses on five different first dates, including a ninja (played with deadpan relish by Government Issue bandmember John Stabb Schroeder) rather unsuccessfully looking for love, a woman who punctuates everything she says with air quotes, and a woman hoping to arrange a "first date" matching herself, her ex-girlfriend, and her current boyfriend.

While some of the film's dating scenarios might appear cliched, Date Number One's strength is its attention to the local lingo of Washington, DC, not the lingo of the Hill, but the locals who live and work around the city, many of them--at least in Date's slightly off-kilter world--in the arts and culture fields. When characters first meet, the first question is invariably "What do you do?" followed by an apologetic "Not that you have to do anything." It's a quiet commentary on the ambition that shapes DC culture and the characters' uneasy relationship to it. Other characters refer to local bands and bars, the kinds of places that give the District a character that is often overlooked on the Hill and in the city's other tourist haunts.

Like the characters in Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes who reflect on concepts of celebrity and fame, Date Number One's twentysomethings find themselves returning to certain questions, in Date's case the potential relationship between quantum mechanics and Buddhism, with varying degrees of seriousness and authority. The conversations provide some degree of unity between the various episodes, but more importantly, the conversations seem to suggest the way in which ideas or concepts can weave their way through a community of artists and readers who spend a lot of time in bookstores and coffeehouses. An overheard snippet of conversation might be picked up by someone else, and the questions about Buddhism and quantum mechanics take an unexpected direction.

Finally, I think Sujewa Ekanayake's Date Number One offers an image of urban culture that might be understood as the anti-Crash depiction of life in the city. Instead of a city or community marked by distrust and hostility between racial and ethnic groups, Sujewa's film depicts a comfortably multi-ethnic community, recalling for me the "sidewalk ballet" described by Jane Jacobs in her wonderful book, The Death and LIfe of Great American Cities, rather than the sidewalk mosh pit imagined by Haggis. I don't mean to suggest that there aren't hostile encounters like the ones imagined in Crash, but Date Number One offers a notion of "contact" that is far more subtle, at least in my experience on the sidewalks and in the bookshops and coffeehouses of the cities where I've lived.

If I have made Ekanayake's film sound overly serious, it's unintentional. In fact, Date Number One is quite funny and treats the dating life of DC twentysomethings with a light touch, and many of the actors show good comic timing (particularly the ninja-playing Schroder, Jennifer Blakemore from "A Romantic Dinner for 3" and Jewel Greenberg from "The Superdelicious French Lesson"). But it's also a subtle, thoughtful film, which is what I will take away from it. Ekanayake is currently scheduling tour dates for the film, and if the film reaches your city, I'd happily recommend it.

Update: Here's Sujewa's report on the opening night screenings.

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May 13, 2006

Art School Confidential

Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes' Art School Confidential (IMDB) attempts to satirize the shallow trendiness of the art world by viewing it through the ultra-sincere eyes of the virginal wanna-be artistic genius, Jerome (Max Minghella). Bullied as a kid in his suburban neighborhood--in fact the film opens with him being punched repeatedly by a classmate--Jerome develops the dream of becoming a world's famous artist like Pablo Picasso. Upon graduating high school, he heads for Strathmore, an ostensibly prestigious art school that turns out to be far shabbier than Jerome's treasured school brochure suggests, although Jerome's interest in the school seems almost entirely based on his infatuation with the live-drawing model, Audrey (Sophia Myles), who poses inside the brochure. Jerome is joined by what might be regarded as the usual art school stereotypes (the wanna-be Tarantino filmmaker, the closeted fashion student, the professor living vicariously through his students, the jaded older student who knows all of the stereotypes, including his own). To some extent, the satire succeeds, especially when the film focuses on the seemingly shallow criteria by which art is judged, but for the most part, the humor was relatively obvious, and I never felt as if the film was trying to think about the art world in a new or even interesting way.

When Jerome arrives at the run-down Strathmore campus, which is set in a dangerous New York City neighborhood, the campus is abuzz with fear, but also a certain amount of excitement, about the presence of the Strathmore Strangler, a neighborhood serial killer who stalks the campus. While there seems to be concern about the danger the Strangler presents, many of the students seem equally concerned with how they can incorporate the crimes into their art. The serial killer plot ultimately provides the primary thread by which the romance plot and the critiques of art school are resolved, but in general, I found the plotline relatively artificial and ultimately distracting from the more interesting reflections on art school culture.

At the same time, Jerome encounters the often petty and invariably shallow competitiveness of the art school classroom. Despite the fact that Jerome seems most dedicated to his craft--he continues to draw during class breaks--and the most talented student when it comes to figure drawing (or because of it), he becomes the target of his classmates' harshest evaluations while an enigmatic fellow classmate, Jonah (Matt Keeslar), who wears polo shirts and khakhis--prompting one student to regard his dress as "strange"--and paints poorly-porportioned sports cars and tanks against monochomatic backgrounds receives praise for his vision. Jonah also becomes the primary competitor for the affections of Jerome's crush, Audrey. But like Jerome, Audrey seems to have little personality, other than being the art schol equivalent of the prom queen.

The film disappoints in part because Jerome is a relatively uninteresting character, a generic suburban kid who naively stumbles into the weird world of art school. Perhaps I'm too close to the jaded older student, Bardo (Joel Moore), wanting to make wisecracks from the back of the classroom--and yes, I'm a teacher--than I am to the ultra-sincere Jerome. In this context, I think A.O. Scott's read on Jerome makes sense:

In their previous collaboration, the near-perfect "Ghost World," Mr. Clowes and Mr. Zwigoff used adolescent misanthropy as both a method of analysis and an object of satire. Enid, their heroine, was mean-spirited but also clear-sighted, and she served as a sympathetic foil for the audience and the filmmakers alike. Jerome is a murkier, mopier character, and the movie grinds its gears, much as he does, between defiant romanticism and nasty cynicism.

Like Scott, I never quite got the sense that Clowes and Zwigoff knew what kind of film they were trying to make. In places, the film played like the prototypical PG-13 teen comedy, while in others, the film's cynicism--especially its cynicism towards the art world--was abundantly clear.

Posted by chuck at 12:53 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 30, 2006

United 93

In reviews of Paul Greengrass' United 93 (IMDB), there is a tendency to begin the review by invoking the politics of representing 9/11. Writing in the Village Voice, Dennis Lim explains that the film has been discussed "almost as if it were itself some kind of terror attack." Meanwhile Manhola Dargis comments in The New York Times that United 93 is "persuasively narrated [and] scrupulously tasteful," implicitly seeking to assure audiences that the film is not exploiting the tragedy. As Dana Stevens points out, these reviews and others like them illustrate "the discomfort that we still feel about representations of that dreadful day." And United 93 and its reception clearly points to the degree to which these questions are unresolved and will likely remain unresolved for some time. When I've discussed United 93, I've argued that these questions have less to do with "readiness" and more to do with "appropriateness," about how the story gets told.

Greengrass approaches the material with what can best be described as a docu-thriller style. Using handheld cameras and other verite techniques, United 93 positions itself as presently history as it really happened. While Greengrass is careful to emphasize that we don't know with any certainty exactly what happened on the plane, the film positions itself as offering an authentic historical narrative, one that in Greengrass' terms depicts "the DNA of our times." But as Paul Farhi of The Washington Post points out, United 93 does go far beyond what we know about the attacks, and it's worth asking how the film's "plausible truth" will contribute to the national narrative of September 11, a debate that is most explicitly felt around the decision to change the title card at the conclusion of the film. As Lim points out, the title card originally read "America's war on terror had begun," suggesting a Bush-style memorialization of the war, but the new title card ("Dedicated to the memory of all those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.") recasts the story slightly, suggesting a more somber memorialization.

At the same time, the film deploys many of the techniques of an action thriller, cutting quickly between the various scenes of action: the cockpit and the passenger area, but also the air traffic control centers in New York and Boston, as well as the NORAD defense center. The establishing sequences, designed to suggest that September 11 began as "just another day," set up the passengers as everyday people with normal lives who are just trying to get home to their families (that the passengers are always characterized in terms of family and not other forms of identity also seems significant). However, the film underplays the action elements. Todd Beamer's famous line, "Let's roll," was underplayed, spoken almost as an aside rather than the "rally the troops" moment it became in subsequent representations of 9/11. In addition, unlike most thrillers, we already know what happens, which for me only increased the tension of watching as I anticipated the inevitable events that were about to unfold. My response to this mixture was one of cognitive and emotional dissonance, which may be part of the point. The experience of watching the film was utterly grueling, the tension provoked by the film still palpable the following morning. This tension was reinforced by the use of the shaky camera and the use of an approximately real-time narrative.

It's worth noting that discussions of the film have provoked conversations about the social and political "role" of the cinema in representing history. The question asking whether audiences are "ready" for a film about 9/11 is a complicated one, and given that I saw the film in a half-empty theater, it may be the case that many people are still resistant to revisiting these tragic events, and if the Box Office Mojo numbers are any indication ($3.8 million on Friday), it appears that the film isn't finding a terribly wide audience. United 93 is a difficult film to watch, as my review indicates. Last night, I would have emphatically recommended not seeing it, but this morning, my response is a little more tempered. I think the film should be commended for avoiding easy answers, but I remain uncertain about what, if anything, the film has added to our national conversation about September 11.

Posted by chuck at 11:13 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

April 29, 2006

The Notorious Bettie Page

In a Washington Post interview, Mary Harron, director of The Notorious Bettie Page (IMDB), comments in passing that female directors are more likely to be interested in "demystifying sex" than their male counterparts, and it is this impulse that seemed to guide Harron's approach to the Bettie Page story, showing the pin-up queen less as a sexual icon than as a fully human character. At the same time, Gretchel Mol's playful performance calls attention to the performance aspects of Page's sexual posing, both in terms of her classic pin-ups and her bondage films and photographs.

The Notorious Bettie Page, filmed primarily in nostalgic black-and-white, is framed by the 1950s morality scandals, opening with an undercover police officer setting up a raid on a store selling pornographic magazines and Super-8 "stag" films. The raid sets up a sequence featuring the hearings on juvenille delinquency headed by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver (played by David Strathairn), with Bettie waiting nervously outside the Senate chamber where she is scheduled to testify. While these scenes emphasize the cultural conservatism associated with the 1950s, especially the taboos related to sex, Harron wisely underplays the Kefauver hearings, focusing instead on Page's relatively brief career as a pin-up queen.

After a brief sequence depicting Page's strict religious youth and her first marriage, the film then focuses on Page's unsuccessful attempts to become an actress and her gradual transition into the world of modeling. The film suggests that Page takes quickly to her new career, happily posing in a bikini for a group of amateur photographers before eventually removing the bikini and posing nude, rationalizing that "it's just a little piece of fabric." Throughout these scenes, Bettie seems to remain relatively naive, accepting the assurances that the customers for her photographs are "respectable" men with slightly unusual tastes. In this regard, I found the "posing" sequences to be utterly fascinating, with Bettie "acting" to the directions of the photographers much like she attempts to emulate the directions from her "legitimate" acting teachers. In both cases, performance is central, and the apparently natural or realistic performances of method acting are no more natural than Bettie's playful winking to the camera as a model. When Bunny Yeager comments about Page that "When she's nude, she doesn't seem naked," I read the comment as highlighting Page's ability to perform to the camera. Page's performances are not without consequences of course. Her relationship with a young actor sours, in part because of her status as a pin-up queen, and more dramatically, Harron sympathetically depicts the testimony of a father whose son hung himself, likely while engaged in an act of auto erotica. Still, the film is able to dodge many of the questions about the effects of pornography by focusing almost excusively on the producers and not on the consumers of this material.

As Page's career evolves, Harron introduces more and more color into the film, particularly during some of Page's bondage films, but also during the later stages of Page's career when she posed for Yeager (including the famous Playboy cover). As most poular culture junkies will know, Page eventually returned to Christianity and left behind her modelling career. The film seems to imply that Page left her past behind with few regrets, but Harron wisely emphasizes the fact that after her career, Page was able to return to a relatively "normal," if necessarily private, life after she ended her career as a model, rather than taking what Harron describes as a "punitive attitude" towards Page or suggesting that women who do sex work will necessarily meet some horrible fate. It's a complicated film politically, and I haven't quite resolved my reaction to it. I think Harron manages to "demystify" Bettie Page in this film but does so without resorting to the puritanical denials of visual pleasure identified with the Kefauver hearings, which were in many ways a media panic rather than a moral panic.

By the way, while you're in the neighborhood, check out Bettie Page's MySpace page.

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April 25, 2006

Iraq in Fragments

James Longley's Iraq in Fragments (IMDB) is one of the more compelling documentaries to focus on post-invasion Iraq that I've seen. Beautifully shot over the course of two years, Longley's documentary focuses on three stories coveringwhat might be regarded as the three major perspectives that could be divided into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish points of view, a structure that seems to suggest the country's ongoing fragmentation, but the most remarkable quality of Iraq in Fragments is its attention to the intimate details of everyday life, its ability to capture the fears and frustrations of post-invasion Iraq.

The first and strongest section of the film focuses on Mohammed, an eleven-year old living in Baghdad and working for an auto mechanic who alternately dotes on and abuses the young boy whose father is absent. Muhammed's voice-over narration has a kind of lyrical quality that is reinforced visually by Longley's "almost poetic" (to use David Ansen's phrase) footage of Baghdad. The boy speaks wistfully about the material effects of the bombings ("Baghdad used to be beautiful") and the developing insurgency ("the world is so scary now"). At the same time, Muhammed finds himself in and out of school, with his boss hounding him to return to school and then berating the boy when he is unable to write his father's name before demanding that he leave school again or risk losing his job.

As Chris Knipp points out in his review (scroll down), Muhammed's boss becomes a kind of mini-tyrant, while we begin to see the tension and frustration mounting in Baghdad through Muhammed's eyes and ears, with Mohammed listening while the men in the repair shop complain that conditions were better under Saddam. Muhammed tells us that he dreams of becoming a pilot so that he can see someplace better than Baghdad, but his section offers little hope of escape.

The second section offers the least focused story, in part because it does not focus on a personal story but on the political movement being led by Muqtada al-Sadr to empowermembers of the Shiite population. This section features a far more frenetic camera with jump cuts and rapid camera movement that suggest mounting tension. In one scene, Sadr's men harrass and beat a group of merchants who are accused of selling alcohol (Longley reported in the Q&A that the men were soon released). At the same time, we see wounded men directly addressing the camera and asking "Is this democracy?" Because of the frenetic camera work and quick cutting, we never get a coherent sense of al-Sadr's followers or the politics associated with his movement, but that seems to be Longley's point. All we are left with is what Knipp calls a "chaos of images" that reflect the mounting danger and tension of that time.

From there, Longley takes us to Koretan, a town in the Kurdish section of Iraq, introducing us to Suleiman, a serious young boy who tells us he wishes to become a doctor, although because he is forced to work to support his aging father, we are left with little room for optimism. The smaller story represents a major departure from the broader picture of al-Sadr's movement, but it also prvides us with a glimpse of another boy with little hope for the future.

Put together, the three stories offer a compelling account of a fragmented nation in a state of turmoil immediately after the invasion. However, because the three-part structure typically remains on the level of the personal (and because the stories are isoalted from each other) we don't get a clear picture of the past and present relationship between these three groups or any real synthesis of their perspectives, although it can certainly be argued that the film's structure represents the difficulties of achieving any kind of synthesis. It's also notable that the film features very few images of US soldiers (although the Sadr section does feature a brief conflict between members of his group and some Spanish soldiers) and almost no images of women. The latter can be attributed to the suspicion that many male documentarians face when attempting to document the lives of Iraqi women, but I think it's a testament to Longley's patience as a filmmaker that he was able to capture much of the footage he presented in the film (he reports that he has 2-300 hours worth of footage, some of which will hopefully find its way to the DVD), and his presentation of the everyday experiences of a small number of Iraqi people is a valuable contribution to our collection of documentary images of Iraq.

Posted by chuck at 1:16 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

April 23, 2006

Letter to the President

I caught Thomas Gibson's Letter to the President (Amazon) last night at Filmfest DC as part of their Hip Hop 4 Reel series. Letter offers an overview of the political and social history of hip hop from its formation in the Reagan era through the 2004 election (the film was completed before Hurricane Katrina), specifically focusing on the socially conscious hip hop artists and their response to various forms of social injustice, including police brutality, the Iran-Contra affair (and its relationship to the crack epidemic), censorship, racial profiling (driving while black), and the prison-for-profit programs that essentially use prisoners as free labor. The film also explores a Miami Herald article that exposed the practice of several police forces of monitoring hip hop artists. At the same time, the film doesn't shy away from some of hip hop's excesses, including the misogyny of some aspects of hip hop culture. Gibson and his producer, Trinh Banh, have also assembled a welth of interviews with prominent hip hop artists, politicians, and academics, including KRS-One, Common, 50 Cent, Chuck D, Maxine Waters, Amiri Baraka, and Michael Eric Dyson (among many others). But the film and the discussion afterwards with the producer Banh raised a number of interesting--and sometimes unresolved--questions.

In particular, I found that the film didn't have a clear narrative voice. While Snoop Dogg's voice-over gave the documentary flavor and the filmmaker clearly seemed invested in the project, the film itself seemed a little unfocused, with the film moving too quickly across this 25-30 year history. In particular, further exploration of the socially-conscious rap of the late 1980s-early 1990s would have been valuable, especially in its connection to police brutality, as would some connections between rap and other forms of popular culture. Further exploration of P. Diddy's Vote or Die campaign might also have been helpful. There was an interesting montage in which many of his fans discuss their plans to vote, almost exclusively for John Kerry, and while the film does address the disillusionment of many voters when the Democratic candidate lost, even more exploration of the difficulties of sustaining political activism would have been valuable. As always, documentaries such as Letter are valuable simply because they assemble archival materials that might otherwise be lost or forgotten (in that sense, I'm looking forward to seeing the Smithsonian hip hop collection)

That being said, the film does an effective job of exploring many of these questions. Wyclef Jean, in particuar, was attentive to the fact that a heavy work burden often makes it difficult to sustain the energy to work for a candidate or a specific political cause. Add to that long voting lines, often far longer than in predominantly white, suburban precincts. But the strength of the film is its collaborative tone, the contributions of the interviewers who not only describe the history of hip hop but also theorize its social significance and attempt to imagine where it will go in the future. Here, Snop Dogg's narration seems most fitting as he speaks personally about hip hop and the contributions it can make without the professional veneer of a voice-of-god narration. At the same time, the film subtly theorized the economics of hip hop, the question of whether hip hop artists can be politically transgressive when they are signed to major labels and do not own the means of production. While this issue could have been explored further, it provoked an interesting discussion after the film. In that sense, perhaps Letter's greatest strength is that it raised a number of valuable questions, even if many of them emerged afterwards in discussion and dialogue afterwards.

Posted by chuck at 11:11 AM | TrackBack

April 2, 2006

Thank You for Smoking

On one of the Sunday morning gabfests, Linda Chavez observed that one of the reasons that interest in lobbying reform had faded is that a cynical public "already" thinks that everyone in Washington is corrupt and that the recent scandals involving Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed confirm that. Of course, the idea that everyone is corrupt implies that any real reform is due to fail. This cynicism seems to be general spirit of Jason Reitman's entertaining but hollow Thank You for Smoking (IMDB), an adaptation of Christopher Buckley's satirical novel (which I haven't read). Reitman's film focuses on uber-charmer, Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), a spokesperson for Big Tobbaco.

Smoking opens with Naylor appearing on an episode of Joan Lunden's TV show alongside of a 15-year old who developed lung cancer from cigarette smoking and various anti-smoking lobbyists. But Naylor manages to charm the audience, pledging money to "research" the effects of tobacco and even manages to turn anti-smoking lobbyists into villains: "It's in our best interests to keep Robin alive and smoking. The anti-smoking people want Robin to die." Nick's audacity, his ability to BS the audience without appearing to condescend to them, makes him an engaging figure, and he uses these skills to charm his son's class on career day, turning the students' suspicions around by playing to their antiauthoritarian impulses. In short, for Nick, everything is an argument, and nobody can argue or persuade quite like Nick. As Nick himself puts it, "Michael Jordan plays ball. Charlie Manson kills people. I talk."

Nick's success on TV wins the interest of "The Captain" (Robert Duvall), a North Carolina tobacco executive who pushes Nick to work on a pet project: getting cigarettes back into Hollywood movies (recalling, for me, Richard Klein's Cigarettes are Sublime). Knowing that audiences will not accept cigarettes in contemporary films, Nick and a slimy Hollywood superagent (Rob Lowe) imagine a futuristic space adventure in which cigarette smoking is no longer harmful and Brad Pitt blows smoke rings around Catherine Zeta-Jones' nude body.And again, we find ourselves enjoying Nick's skill in marketing cigarettes. Ultimately Nick's career falters halfway through the film. First he gives an ill-advised interview to a seductive journalist (Katie Holmes), where he admits to things that would be best left off the record. Second he also finds himself confronted by a grandstanding Vermont Senator (William H. Macy) who wants to put a "poison" label, complete with skull and crossbones (becuse some people can't read), on all cigarettes. He also endangers the reputation of his fellow "MOD Squad" ("Mercahnts of Death") lobbyists from the tobacco and alcohol industries.

I won't reveal any more about the plot, but Reitman's film seems to take for granted that we already know these guys are corrupt and that it would be too easy to simply condemn them for their actions. Instead, Nick especially, is treated gently and we see him mots often struggling to be a father and dealing with his ex-wife's disapproval over his work (The Austin Chronicle addresses Reitman's interest in the father-son relationship, which draws from Jason's relationship with his father, Ivan Reitman, director of Ghostbusters). I'll admit that I enjoyed Nick's ability to convince even the most skeptical audience of the benefits of Big Tobacco (it might even be fun to teach this film in a freshman composition course focused on argument), but the film's cynicism about lobbying actually seems to disable critique rather than making one. And after spending some time in a smoky bar in the Charlotte airport (where smoking is apparently still legal), I'm not entirely sure that "everybody knows" the harmful effects of smoking. Nick also espouses a rhetoric of "personal responsibility" that could have come from Christopher Buckley's father, William F. Buckley, which is all well and good, but calling for "personal responsibility" is often a means for allowing corporations and other institutions to avoid their responsibilities.

Posted by chuck at 11:27 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 1, 2006

V for Vendetta

While most film critics, shaped by auteurist impulses, have compared V for Vendetta (IMDB) to the Wachowski Brothers' cyberthriller, The Matrix, I found myself reminded more of David Fincher's politically ambivalent treatment of anti-globaliztion in Fight Club. Like Fight Club's Tyler Durden, V becomes a charismatic, if ambiguous, figure who attempts to overturn a repressive (or totalitarian) society. But while Durden's tactics fuse Naomi Klein-style anti-corporate critiques and an Adbusters aesthetic with a 1990s-style masculinity crisis and a subversive violence, V for Vendetta depicts V as a freedom fighter railing against a post-9/11 totalitarian state who is equally inspired by British anti-hero Guy Fawkes and Shakespeare, though his motives for attacking the British government are also more deeply personal. In my article on Fight Club, I ultimately argue that Tyler's anarchist impulses are contained by the narrative twist and romantic subplot, and V for Vendetta seems to reach similar limits in its dramatic conclusion. In fact, as J. Hoberman suggests, if The Matrix recalls Baudrillard's concepts of simulation, V for Venetta might be read alongside Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's Empire.

V for Vendetta opens with a brief pre-credits sequence featuring the famous British anti-hero Guy Fawkes who sought to blow up Parliament in 1605. Fawkes' actions allowed the British government an excuse to crack down on Catholicism, and V (played by Hugo Weaving) takes Fawkes' heroism as an inverted badge of honor when on the anniversary of Fawkes' arrest, he blows up the Old Bailey, promising to destroy Parliament the follow year. V, who is always seen wearing a creepy Fawkes mask, with its rosy cheeks, strking mustache, and ambiguous smile, ultimately befriends and wins the grudging support of Evie (Natalie Portman), an employee of the national British television station that broadcasts government propaganda and misinformation, first when he rescues her from a group of police thugs who corner her in an alley, and later when he "educates" her regarding the more intrusive effects of the police state.

Like Stephanie Zacharek, I'm ambivalent about Alan Moore and David Lloyd's 1982 anti-Thatcherite, anti-Big Brother comic series, in part becuase V's status as an "ambiguous" hero seems to forgive the monstrous mind games he plays with Evey, and the Wachowski Brothers' screenplay (directed by James McTeigue, an assitant director for The Matrix) did little to complicate the problematic gender politics, with Evey becoming a kind of British Joan of Arc-style ingenue and protege for V's anarchist tendencies. V's mindgames are oddly set against a flashback narrative, in which a confined Evey discovers a story scribbled on toilet paper by "Valerie," a lesbian who had been imprisoned in the same jail cell, with Valerie's story serving as an explicit critique of attempts to use the power of the state to discriminate against homosexuals, but for me, the gender politics undercut the film's good intentions in celebrating tolerance.

But the real target of the Wachowskis' V for Vendetta is fascism, specifically of the post-9/11 variety. While Newsbusters' Tim Graham seeks to distance V for Vendetta by emphasizing its British setting, it's clear that the film's critique is directed at the use of fear-mongering and intimidation to garner support for the war on terror. As V eventually reveals, he was radicalized against the state because of his treatment in a concentartion camp-like prison that recalls Guantanamo and other secret prisons (information about the prison conveniently disappers inside bureacrtic black holes). The state-run TV stations consistently pump out misinformation, even stating that the explosion at the Old Bailey was "intentional" in order to avoid admitting that there might be opposition to the state's policies, and a TV talk-show personality who might fit in on Fox News uses rage and fear-mongering to cultivate suport for the country's Chancellor (John Hurt).

[Major spoiler follows] V ultimately succeeds in blowing up Parliament in the visually audacious final scene in which thousands of people congregate in the streets of London, all wearing the Fawkes masks in an act of defiance against the state. Just as Tyler Durden's explosion of the glass-and-steel credit card company skyscrapers represent a symbolic act against global capital, V's anti-fascist act is framed by its staging. While Tyler and Marla watch the symblic collapse of the credit card industry from the safety of a nearby building as if they are watching a movie, the explosion of Parliament plays similarly to the massive audience on the streets. But while I enjoyed the scene's audacity, I still found the film's politics to be somewhat constrained, and its inability to imagine an alternative to the futuristic police state was striking.

I'm still sorting through my response to V for Vendetta's politics. To suggest that the film is an "ode to Al Zarqawi," as this Townhall.com review does, misses the point of V's symbolic act and the film's suggestion that torture only reproduces the violence it seeks to prevent. But I tend to agree with Cynthia Fuchs' observation that the film 's lack of faith in its audience and its lack of reflectiveness on its own use of violence undercut its politics. As she points out, "Yes, imperialism is really bad, and yes, Nazi-ish iconography is a sure sign of a regime's need for change. What's less clear, and could use some reflection, is how V's own violence will or will not produce more victims and vigilantes." Ultimately, I think it's this lack of self-consciousness that left me disappointed in, or at least indifferent, to the film.

Posted by chuck at 11:25 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

March 26, 2006

The Inside Man

Bank heist films are often about narrative, about the ability of the authors of the heist, the bank robbers, telling one story while working to convince the detective, security guards, the police, and often the audience that they are telling another story. The best heists take place when the bank robbers use the conventions of past heists (or heist films) but depart from the normal script in one or two key ways. It's as if the author of the heist is directing his or her own heist film, complete with smoke and mirrors, just as a film director might use special effects. Spike Lee's latest film, the taut, witty thriller, The Inside Man (IMDB) gleefully plays with this notion of the heist as story while simultaneously telling a genuine New York story, something that Lee has done better than anyone in the years after September 11. What I also appreciated about Lee's film was its ability to encourage identification with both the perpetrators of the heist and with the detectives commissioned to bring the hostage situation to a safe and peaceful resolution, particualrly with Denzel Washington's Detective Keith Frazier.

The film opens with Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) directly addressing the camera, telling the audience, "I choose my words carefully," and then proceeding to give the audience (almost) everything they need to know to figure out the basics of Russell's plan, and while Stephanie Zacharek argues that "no matter how closely you watch, or how clever you think you're being, you'll never pick it up," I had a pretty good guess about where the heist and the story itself would go. But even with that knowledge--and perhaps because of it, in my case--I still very much enjoyed The Inside Man and Lee's playful tweaking of past heist films and the classic New York films, such as Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico, to which his movie pays homage. We also know that most, if not all, of the hostages survive, as we watch Frazier and his partner, Det. Mitchell interrogate people in flash-forwards that anticpate what will happen.

The basics of the heist: four people, dressed as painters, come into the bank at the same time. They use the equipment they carry to barricade the doors while another uses spotlights to blind the security cameras making it all but impossible to see what is happening. The robbers then force their hostages to give up their cell phones and to strip down to their underwear. They make one other request, which like Zacharek, I won't reveal. At this point, the robbers and the police and detectives, led by Frazier, Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and Captain John Darius (Willem Dafoe), set up communications, with the robbers setting their plot in motion (and here, I think Roger Ebert's review seriously underestimates Lee's film, with Ebert asking at one point, "Did they want to be trapped inside the bank?" Yes, they did. The success of their heist depends on it. In fact, Dalton has accounted for every step the police will take. He knows that accepting the offer of food (pizza) from the police will come with a specific price and anticipates that well in advance. He knows that releasing a Sikh hostage with a message wrapped around his neck will provoke a specific, gut response from the police, one based on mistaking the hostage for an Arab and a potential terrorist. In fact, several sequences in the film--including a rash decision by Captain Darius--might be seen as an implicit critique of the increase in police surveillance in New York, discussed here by James Wolcott, with the heist itself relying on and therefore foiling the surveillance apparatus.

But Lee's film, based on a script by Russell Gewirtz, layers on a third plot, one that complicates Frazier's ability to capture the bank robbers. The owner of the bank, Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), seems far more concerned about protecting certain valuable items in the bank than in the money in the bank's vaults. To that end, he hires the mysterious and aptly named Ms. White (played with relish by Jodie Foster), a "fixer" to the wealthy and influencial, to protect his interests, which may or may not correspond to those of the police. And as with most heist films, much of the suspense derives from the knowledge that each character has at a given point in the film. I won't reveal the specifics of what valuable objects Case wishes to protect, other than to say that the objects deeply indict his character and the means by which he is able to obtain his wealth. Case's bank itself--with its opulent, art deco interiors, and the majestic friezes and facades oustide--also seems to function as a character in the film, setting in contrast the street itself, often identified with rapid pans, crwods, and movement, with the vast interiors where we encounter Case and White.

While many observers have noted that The Inside Man appears to be the "least personal" film that Lee has made, I'm not sure that's the case. It's certainly a departure in that Lee seems to be working with a bigger budget, but the post 9/11 New York setting is crucial to the film's narrative and provides a basis for the interactions between characters, with Det. Frazier gently chiding a police officer for using racial epithets while the police themselves are on guard against another terrorist attack, as suggested when they mistake a Sikh man for a potential terrorist. Perhaps his most compelling critique, however, features Dalton, the author of the heist, registering horror at a nine-year-old boy playing a Grand Theft Auto style video game on a Gameboy featuring disturbing depictions of black-on-black violence. Ironically juxtaposed against the bank vault full of money--the two are even sitting on bales of cash--Dalton tells the boy, "I'll have to talk to your father about this."

I think Zacharek is right to fault critics who will fail to regard The Inside Man as one of Lee's "great" films. In part because of herreview, I couldn't help but think about the vastly overrated Crash, with its muddled message about racial tolerance, and while Lee's most recent film takes a much lighter, less preachy touch, it offers a far more observant portrait of New York's melting pot of ethnicities and cultures and the conflicts they face in a post-9/11, post-Giuliani New York City.

Posted by chuck at 9:20 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

March 24, 2006

Democracy on Deadline: The Global Struggle for an Independent Press

As part of American University's "Reel Journalism: Screenings and Symposia," I had the chance to see Cal Skaggs' fascinating and ambitious documentary, Democracy on Deadline: The Global Struggle for an Independent Press, which is due to air on PBS later this summer. The documentary traces the battles that news reporters face in the United States, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Mexico, Russia, and Israel, as they seek to fulfill the media's role in guarding against government abuses. During a Q&A after the screening, Skaggs commented that the documentary was intended as a series that would focus on news reporting in various countries, and that ambitious aim is reflected in the final product, a 2-hour documentary that addresses various complications news reporters face, whether Putin's crackdown on the media or the Bush administration's misnformation on WMD, as they seek to keep their readers informed.

While I think audiences could have easily benefited from an entire series on the topic, I found Skaggs' method of juxtaposing these countries to be highly effective. Most notably, Deadline depicts the ongoing attempts at democratization in Sierra Leone and their relationship to the radio broadcasters who attempt to keep voters informed about the candidates' policies, as well as information on polling places and other important information, while in Afghanistan, another reporter investigates the steep rise in cases of Afghani women committing suicide through self-immolation (this article is not by the reprorter featured in the film, but provides an overview of the issue). Skaggs builds from these stories to a discussion of the reporting on WMD during the build-up to the war in Iraq, and while he acknowledges the faulty reporting that failed to question the Bush administration's threats of WMD, he instead interviews Knight-Ridder reporters Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, who were among the few major reporters to challenge the WMD claims. The film culminates with an extended segment on Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper that has been criticized by both Palestinians and Israelis for its depiction of the conflict between those two groups. Reportes from that newspaper discuss the challenges they face in reporting on the consequences of violence committed by both groups.

But while all of these segments offer valuable insight into the need for effective news reporting, I felt that the film was a bit inconclusive in explaining how to preserve a truly independent press, an issue that came up during the Q&A session. These questions have been at the forefront of the recent conflicts in the US over news reporting. As one observer pointed out, Haaretz benefits from an owner who is committed to more objective reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict. But having privately-owned news media, rather than corporation-managed media, is clearly no guarantee of effectivel media coverage, as the Judith Miller fiasco illustrates. In that sense, I think it's worth making the case, as Molly Ivins does, for non-profit newspapers. As Ivins points out, newspapers showed operating profit margins of 19.2 percent in 2005, which isn't too shabby, even if it is down from the 21% from 2004. But her column more readily points to the problems that emerge when profit is placed ahead of the service that newspapers provide, and as Skaggs' film beautifully illustrates, that service is a vital one if we want democracy to thrive both in the United States and abroad.

Posted by chuck at 1:36 PM | TrackBack

March 23, 2006

The End of Suburbia

Gregory Greene's important and timely documentary, The End of Suburbia (IMDB), which played last night at the DC Environmental Film Festival, opens with an epigraph from James Howard Kuntsler, author of The Long Emergency and Geography of Nowhere: "We're literally stuck up a cul-de-sac in a cement SUV without a fill-up." Kuntsler has been documenting for some time the long-term effects of suburbanization in contributing to what President Bush has belatedly described as our "addiction to oil." Greene's documentary compiles the research of Kunstler and other researchers, many of whom participated in a "Peak Oil" conference in 2003, where these researchers began discussing strategies for dealing with the imminent crisis in oil production. While Greene's documentary is unsettling, it also offers strategies for alleviating the worst consequences of the end of an economy and culture based on oil, one best represented by the uniquely American version of suburbia.

To Greene's credit, The End of Suburbia, if anything, underplays the stereotypical loathing of suburbia, noting instead the degree to which suburbia has been entangled with contemporary versions of the American Dream. Instead, Greene uses clips from In the Suburbs, a 1957 promotional piece commissioned by Redbook and available from the Prelinger Archives to gently mock suburbia while showing the link between suburbia and the American Dream to be an ideological one (the clips from In the Suburbs in fact provide some much needed kitschy humor). In the Q&A afterwards, Greene cautioned the audience against seeing "suburbia" as a universal concept, noting that in Canada, and more particularly in France, the suburbs have a much different cultural resonance than they do in the United States, where they are associated primarily with white flight and white picket fences.

More crucially, The End of Suburbia offers a wealth of evidence that the we are nearing the World Oil Peak, the moment when global demand for oil begins to outstrip supply, which will happen in the very near future, if it hasn't already happened (especially given increased demand in India and China). As Suburbia painstakingly illustrates, the consequences of inaction--or worse, deepening our dependency--are tremendous. Consumers have already faced significant increases in energy prices and, in Maryland at least, a gallon of unleaded gasoline continues to hover around $2.60, which may soon seem like a bargain, and from there, the film asks some pointed questions. Notably, how will the end of oil affect our ability to ship products inexpensively from overseas (or even across the US, for that matter)? To what extent will the end of reliance on fossil fuels demand that we forsake McMansions for a return to city centers? One policy maker even speculates that multiple families may be forced to share these mansions in the distant future, while others predict that American subdivisions may become the slums of the future. It's a relatively bleak portrait, and Greene wisely accompanies these dour predictions with a touch of humor that prevents things from seeming entirely too bleak.

The End of Suburbia also offers some alternatives that might not prevent what Kunstler has called "the long emergency," but might make it a bit more manageable. Among other alternatives, the film espouses "the new urbanism," which focuses on producing more sustainable communities and a greater emphasis on localism, the subject of Greene's follow-up documentary. I had a chance to chat for a few minutes with Greene after the screening about the upcoming film, and it sounds as if the new documentary will complement The End of Suburbia quite nicely.

Update: I had problems publishing this entry earlier. Checking to see if those problems have been resolved. If you feel compelled to comment on this review, just leave the comments in another entry until I figure out what's happening.

Posted by chuck at 2:26 PM

March 21, 2006

Our Brand is Crisis

I caught Rachel Boynton's Our Brand is Crisis (IMDB), a fascinating and frustrating documentary about US political consultants hired to assist Bolivian presidential candidate Gonzalo "Goni" Sanchez de Lozada in his bid to return the office during the 2002 election (Goni previously had been president from 1993-1997). Boynton's documentary takes on added interest with the election of one of Goni's political rivals, Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, who campaigned as a socialist on the MAS (Movement to Socialism) platform, but the film itself is an incredibly rich portrait of what it means to export US election strategies to other countries. This portait becomes even richer and more fascinating given that the consulting film hired by Goni is none other than James Carville's GCS, with Carville's down-home screen style prominently featured. While other viewers might reach different conclusions, I was left feeling somewhat troubled by these consulting strategies, and I'm not quite sure Crisis pushes this critique far enough.

In one of the film's opening scenes, Jeremy Rosner describes the role of GCS in somewhat startling terms: "We listen very aggressively." While Rosner seems to intend to say that GCS works hard to listen to and understand the opinions of the voters, "listening aggressively" took on a different connotation for me. Instead of properly hearing the discontent of the Bolivian people, "listening aggressively" became an aggressive act, in which an image of Goni was foisted upon the various focus groups assembled to watch the latest advertisements about Goni or news reports about his rival candidates. Given that Goni himself is often dismissive of the various voters that GCS is trying to court, their task becomes a rather difficult one. The title itself also has an interesting resonance as Carville and other GCS staffers author a narrative for the election, in which they point to Bolivia's unemployment and economic insecurity and conclude that "our brand is crisis" and that Goni will be the solution to that crisis, the means by which that crisis narrative is resolved.

Boynton's greatest strength as a filmmaker was her attention to the ways in which Goni's candidacy--and I would argue GCS itself--seemed out of touch with the rising tide of opposition to Goni's neoliberal economic policies and support for the socialist policies of Morales, who is constantly marginalzied as a candidate during the 2002 election. This disconnect is conveyed strkly through visuals of "focus groups" in which Bolivian voters are shown advertismenets for Goni while GCS consultants, especially Rosner and Carville, watch from behind a two-way mirror while a Goni employee translates. The two-way mirror visually suggested a divide between the Goni campaign and the voters. But more starkly, Goni's sterile campaign office stood in stark contrast to the protests that took place outside, in the city streets. Such distinctions are also highlighted by the fact that in Goni's office, English is the primary language (Goni studied at US universities and spent much of his life in the US), while in the streets, Spanish dominates.

There were several aspects of Bolivian politics that went unexplored. We rarely hear from Bolivians "on the street" about their perceptions of the political situation there, other than through the highly mediated context of focus groups, in which many of the questions already come "pre-answered," packaged by Goni's advertisements and by the framing of the question itself. While Boynton suggests that she found it difficult to include such interviews "organically" with relationship to the narrative, the absence of such interviews only served to reinforce the looking-glass effect with which Goni's campaign seemed to view the Bolivians, especially the indiginous people. I also would have liked a slightly more explicit meditation on what it means to brand "crisis" as Goni's campaign did. There is little question that Bolivia was in economic turmoil, but the film didn't fully explore the intersections between campaign narratives and other attempts to understand Bolivia's economic situation.

Crisis culminates with the 2002 election and its aftermath. While Goni won the election, the vote was deeply divided, with the top three candidates (Goni, Morales, and Manfred Reyes Villa) each receiving between 20-22% of the vote. As these numbers suggest, Goni's position as president was weakened by the lack of popular support (that a president can get elected to office with such a small percentage of the vote is, of course, surprising), and because he offered no quick fix for the Bolivian crisis, what little support he had quickly dissipated, leading to the massive riots that eventually led to Morales being elected with 54% of the popular vote, an incredibly high percentage by Bolivian standards (and, as Boynton herself noted in a Q&A, Morales' support came from across the political spectrum), but through the course of the film, we are offered little to explain Morales' appeal other than soundbites from several of his speeches, though significantly Morales is almost always seen among the people, rather than above them in the glass-and-steel skyscrapers or expensive mansions where we see Goni.

As Stuart Klawans points out, Carville's presence in the film will recall Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker's documentary The War Room, and like the earlier documentary, I found myself troubled by the image of deomcracy that I was witnessing, one that, as Klawans notes, "ought to be about something more than steaming up people's emotions, venting the pressure and then hoping the populace will simmer down again, so the work of capital markets may go on undisturbed." As always, though, Carville is a bluntly honest and darkly funny screen presence. Rosner, who has the most screen time, is also quite engaging, though his dismissal of Morales as an "irresponsible populist" only reinforced, for me, his distance from the situation on the ground in Bolivia.

Thanks to The Washington Note for sponsoring the screening.

Posted by chuck at 10:36 AM | TrackBack

March 19, 2006

They Shoot Movies, Don't They

They Shoot Movies, Don't They (IMDB) relates the story of Tom Paulson, a former hotshot baseball player who decided to make movies when his baseball career was derailed by a knee injury. Paulson scrapes together his savings for a relatively low budget feature (around $200,000), Mirage, but finds himself just a few thousand dollars short of completing the film and getting it distributed. Because we've never heard of Mirage or Tom Paulson, it's clear from the beginning of the film that Paulson's, we know that Paulson's film never succeeded, making They Shoot Movies a kind of cautionary VH1 "Behind the Music" episode ("Behind the Movies" maybe?) about the wanna-be star director who never managed to overcome the "second-act" complications thrown at him over the course of his brief career in entertainment. But like a "Behind the Music" episode, I felt They Shoot Movies never went deep enough in its exploration of the star system, choosing instead to stay on the unreflective surface without unpacking how stardom or indie, to name two examples, get constructed in our media-saturated society.

Like a "Behind the Music" episode, we see interviews with Tom, along with his friends and colleagues that describe his ongoing struggles to finance and finish Mirage, and a documentary crew follows Tom as he seeks to finance his film, including a scene in which Tom screens a rough cut in the hopes of building interest in the film. While Tom is hardly the most adept negotiator of the Hollywood scene, his attempts to seek financing for his film, whcih is clearly a labor of love for him, may be familiar to other indie filmmakers. The style of the film, with its heavy emphasis on talking-heads interviews and scenes in which the crew follows Tom to various meetings, allows us a glimpse of Tom's struggles to jumpstart his career. The film is an interesting, if somewhat cynical, glimpse inside a low-budget film production, and in that regard it fits in with other "inside Hollywood" films such as The Player, Sweet Liberty, and State and Main.

Mild spoliers follow: If you've seen They Shoot Movies, you will likely know that the film is, in fact, a mockumentary, with Tom Paul Wilson playing the role of "Tom Paulson," and other actors playing the role of Tom's friends and colleagues. In a sense, I felt that They Shoot Movies tries too hard to play with this boundary between reality and fiction without really capturing a full understanding of independent film production. This may be due to some weaker performances or the limited focus of the film on the several weeks in which Tom seeks the money to finish his film (we never actually see a single frame of Mirage, which is ostensibly nearly complete). I think They Shot Movies is of some interest for fans of mockumentaries, but the film itself seemed too cautious to achive a full critique of the studio mode of production, and the parody of the incompetent filmmaker also fell a little flat.

Posted by chuck at 2:44 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Unknown White Male

On July 2, 2003, at around 8 PM, Doug Bruce left his Manhattan apartment. Severeal hours later, Bruce found himself exiting the New York subway at the Coney Island station wearing shorts, a t-shirt a flip flops. He had no idea who he was and had no memory of his past. He wasn't carrying ID but happened to have a backpack with a book inside, where he found a woman's phone number stuffed inside. Turning himself in to the police, Doug spent several days in a Brooklyn mental hospital while he waited to contact the woman. While the set-up of Unknown White Male (IMDB) sounds like something straight out of film noir, Doug Bruce's story is actually true, and Unknown White Male documents Bruce's experiences as he comes to terms with his amnesia and tries to make a new life for himself.

The phone number in Doug's backpack belongs to a friend, and she is the first person to reintroduce Doug to his old life--he was a stockbroker who "retired" at age 30--and his luxurious Manhattan apartment, and from there, Doug begins meeting old friends and family, including Rupert Murray, a drinking buddy from Doug's days in London who decides that Doug's story would make an interesting documentary. Several critics have speculated that Doug's amnesia may be faked or that the documentary itself is an elaborate hoax (if it is a hoax, Doug is a fantastic actor), in part because very little medical evidence is offered on-screen to explain Doug's condition (director Rupert Murray seeks to defuse the "controversy" in this City Paper interview). But no matter what, Doug's story offers a profound meditation on what counts as human, what constitutes as identity, and even on the capactity of personal reinvention embedded in the American dream (Hoberman's good on many of these issues), and to Murray's credit, he features interviews with psychiatrists and philosophers who recognize the complications Doug's experiences raise.

Many of the film's early scenes feature Doug in a mental hospital The scenes featuring Doug's encounters with his family and friends are as unsettling as they are fascinating. While Doug's father and sister have decades of memories of him, he is, in some sense, meeting them for the first time. Because Doug has lost memory of his mother's death, he re-experiences that loss a second time. At the same time, Doug develops a fascinating sense of wonder about the world around him. When he swims in the ocean for the first time, he describes a child's sense of amazement mixed with an adult sensibility that allows him to process what he is experiencing. Memories of place also shift dramatically. When driving through London for the first time since his amnesia began, Doug seeing Westminster Abbey comments, "This is like that movie, 28 Days Later."

But for me, the most compelling scenes involved Doug watching old home movies of himself hanging out with his friends at the pub or goofing for the camera just a few years earlier. As he watches the films, Doug notes that not only does he have no memory of these events, but he also barely recognizes himself. Towards the end of the film, Doug makes an anlogy between watching these films and time travel, noting the degree to which they take him back to past he doesn't remember. This lost past does allow Doug to "reinvent" himself, or perhaps to "invent" himself, since he has no memory of who he was before the amnesia took hold. Doug's sister describes him as more gentle, while Doug's photography teacher believes that Doug's amnesia may have provided him with new insight into the human psyche, admiring portraits that seem to offer a deeper and unexpected understanding of the people he photographs.

Murray identifies Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (my article) and Andrei Tarkovsky as major influences, and that seems like a pretty good read to me. Doug's story offers a profound meditation on cinema, memory, and identity, even as Doug himself searches for--and seems to find--a new identity for himself.

Posted by chuck at 10:53 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

March 12, 2006

[DCIFF] The Hole Story

I caught Alex Karpovsky's The Hole Story (IMDB) at the DC Independent Film Festival on Friday night, and like Matt, I deeply enjoyed the film. The Hole Story has been on the festival circuit for a few months now, and like Matt, I believe the film deserves a much wider audience, and after seeing this film, I can't help but anticiapte what Karpovsky will be doing in the future.

The Hole Story playfully mixes reality and fiction, using documentary and mockumentary tropes that recall the best work of Albert Brooks (Matt mentions the underrated Real Life) and Ross McElwee (I was especially reminded of Sherman's March), with the Boston Globe coining the term ficumentary to describe what Karpovsky is doing. The film opens with Karpovsky traveling up to Brainerd, Minnesota, with a small film crew to explore the mysterious "Black Hole" in the middle of North Long Lake for a pilot episode of a planned reality TV show on small-town mysteries. When Karpovsky arrives in Brainerd, however, he discovers that the mysterious hole has closed for equally mysterious reasons (explanations for the hole range from thermal vents to aliens).

So Karpovsky does what every enterprising filmmaker would do: he improvises. He interviews locals, including the mayor and a local hair stylist among others, to see if they can explain the black hole, reminding them to speak about it in the present tense, as if it hasn't closed. He investigates Brainerd's other local legends, Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox, even breaking into a local amusement park at night with the hopes of filming a 40-foot statue of the legendary figure. But each attempt only serves to remind Karpovsky and the audience of the "hole" in the documentary, the absence of any footage of the (un)natural phenomenon he has come to film.

Eventually the pressure of making the film takes its toll on Alex. His long-distance fights, via cell phone, with his girlfriend intensify. Most of his film crew abandons him. Alex worries that his investors will be disappointed in the documentary he has made. And he fears that he will be forced to return to his day job, editing karaoke videos. These problems produce an existential crisis that leads Karpovsky to check into a pyschiatric clinic. The result of all this is an intriguing film that playfully mixes documentary and fiction while managing to take Alex's existential questions seriously.

As Matt points out, Alex has been somewhat coy about the boundaries between truth and fiction in the film, and that's fitting for this kind of project. But the most enjoyable aspect of the film is watching Alex evolve over the course of the film and to watch a filmmaker create something fresh and exciting, even with odds stacked against him.

Posted by chuck at 7:50 PM | TrackBack

March 10, 2006

[DCIFF] Desire

Nearly a decade in the making, Julie Gustafson's Desire follows the experiences of five women over the course of five years from their late high school years to their early twenties. Although the film was completed well before Hurricane Katrina destroyed many of the communities depicted in the film, Desire is impossible to watch without thinking about what has been lost due to the hurricane. But while New Orleans, and the class and race distinctions that shape the city, is certainly present in the film, it's the stories of the five women's lives that remain central.

Gustafson opens the film by introducing us to each of the five women, most of whome were 16 years old when filming began. Cassandra, who lives in the Desire projects, which were actually demolished before Katrina hit, promises that she will avoid her mother's mistake of becoming pregnant as a teenager and dreams of joining the military--this was well before the war in Iraq--to finance her college degree. Tracy is seen fighting with her mother about breaking curfew and expresses discomfort with her parents' pressures to go to college for a professional career. Other young women have stories, too, and while Gustafson wants to explore the girls' decisions about sex and dating, and how those decisions are shaped by race and class, Gustfson avoids exploiting the women's choices and behaviors for prurient purposes.

The film then follows the choices the women make over the course of these five years. Cassandra does become pregnant and decides, seemingly with good reason, that the father is unfit to raise their child. Tracy feels enough college pressure from her parents that she actually decides not to go to college straight out of high school. Another woman acknowledges halfway through the film that she is bisexual and discusses the difficulties of coming to term with that realization. Finally, in a scene that now has significant political resonance, Gustafson accompanies Peggy, who is not actually pregnant, to an abortion clinic where she counsels with doctors and confronts anti-abortion protestors outside the clinic.

One of the strengths of the film is that Gustafson generously and wisely steps back, allowing her subjects to contribute to the making of the film. Each woman contributes a video journal every year over the course of five years of filming, and in at least one key instance, Cassandra, an African-American woman from New Orleans' Desire community, turns the camera on Gustafson, confronting her to articulate her psychic and personal investments in the film. I won't explain Gustafson's story in detail, but she frankly discusses some of the decisions she made as a young adult, and those issues clearly shape her approach to the women's stories.

Gustafson also includes several scenes in which she shows willingness to criticize the potential problems with a project like hers. She meets with a group of concerned women from Desire who want to ensure that Gustafson's film will not send the wrong messages about teen pregnancy, and to the film's and the group's credit, there is some debate about what that message might be. There were also some scenes where all five of the film's subjects meet together with Gustafson and discuss their perceptions of the project (more of this material also would have been welcome).

Gustafson's film is surprisingly compact, given that it seeks to cover five years of the women's lives, and I felt the film could have actually benefitted from being longer and humanizing the women even further. Many of the women involved with the project ended up puruing careers in media arts, and I would have enjoyed seeing the young women in their "work" lives, whether at school or at work, more often. i would have also enjoyed having answers to other questions. Why these women and not others? How were their lives and decisions affected by the presence of the documentary camera (a similar question might be asked of the subjects of Hoop Dreams)? While these questions might be difficult, if not impossible, to answer, I did find myself contemplating the making of the film throughout. That being said, Gustafson has crafted a compelling and thoughtful film about the lives of these young women and the difficult questions they face on a daily basis.

Update: Here's some more information about Desire from the Women Make Movies website.

Update 2: Here's a review of Desire by the cinetrix.

Posted by chuck at 11:47 AM | TrackBack

[DCIFF] Three Short Films

Last night at the DC Independent Film Festival, I had the chance to catch three short films, all of which deserve a much wider audience. I can't write full reviews for all of these films (I also want to write a longer review of last night's documentary feature, Desire), but all three are worth checking out.

Escape Velocity
Escape Velocity, made by visual artist and musician Scott Ligon,* was a subtly humorous animated autobiographical film about Ligon's experiences with ADD. The film's narrative and animation reproduce the stream-of-consciousness associative experience of having ADD, with Ligon postulating that ADD thinking may enable new connections to be made when ideas or thoughts collide in unexpected ways. Ligon's film is visually compelling, and while it is an autobiographical film, it is also quite modest about Ligon's accomplishements as an artist and musician. The film also features Ligon singing "Jackson Pollock was an Alcoholic" over the closing credits, which was pretty cool, too.

Somebody Loves Me
Stephen Valentine's Somebody Loves Me follows the story of an itinerant DC blues musician, Prentis Richardson. The DV short follows Richardson to guitar shops, choir practices, tiny apartments, and lonely bars, where Richardson relates stories about playing with Barry White and James Brown. Whether the stories are true isn't clear and doesn't really matter, but the film offers a picture of a talented, self-taught musician who manages to charm and connect with others, while also charming the camera itself. Richardson, who ofetn played at Adam's Morgan bar, Madam's Organ, was recognizable enough in DC to even appear as a cover story for DC's City Paper (presumably well before I moved to DC).

Smitten
Nancy Kelly's Smitten relates the story of Rene di Rosa, an independent art collector living in northern California's wine country. Di Rosa is an intriguing figure, in that he once operated a winery but sold it to support his art collection habit, which grows out of the pure enjoyment of collecting and finding the new and undknown artist, and less out of a desire for status. But what I found fascinating was di Rosa's aversion to using the labels that typically frame musuem pieces, and in his personal collection, which is open to the public, he tends to shun labels so that people will focus on the "art itself." The film culminates in the curation of a national tour featuring some of di Rosa's art.

* Corrected to remove link to photograph of a different Scott Ligon.

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February 28, 2006

After Innocence

"Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?

Because of all these reasons, today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates."--Former Illinois Governor George Ryan

When I was living in Illinois a few years ago, the state's death penalty came under intense scrutiny. It turned out that several death row inmates had been wrongully convicted, many of them spending decades on death row for crimes they did not commit. As he was leaving office, Governor George Ryan commuted all Illinois death row sentences to life in prison until the state's legal system could resolve the problems that were producing false convictions. As a strong opponent of the death penalty and an observer of the legal system's inequities, I couldn't help but appreciate Ryan's gesture. But legal exoneration is often only the beginning of the story, and Jessica Sanders' compelling documentary, After Innocence (IMDB) asks an easily forgotten question: what happens after these innocent people are released from prison? How do they renew lives that were disrupted by the false conviction?

Innocence features seven cases of men who were wrongfully convicted of crimes, and in all cases the men discuss the powerful whirl of emotions and the overwhelming sensory overload that greets them when they emerge from prison. In almost every case, the men find themselves stepping back into the world at a tremendous financial disadvantage because they spent the years they would have been attending college, learning a trade, or serving in the armed forces trapped in prison. Many of them spent every dime of savings and their parents' savings paying legal bills to fight their conviction. As Vincent Moto notes at one point, his parents should be retired and living in the Poconos. Instead, they're forced to work far past the age of retirement. Others describe the difficulty of finding work when the conviction hasn't been fully erased from their record, while Dennis Maher discusses the difficulties of explaining his situation to women he'd like to date.

One subtext of the documentary is the promotion of the Innocence Project, a campaign started by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld in 1992 to support te use of DNA evidence to oveturn false convictions. Of course this is only the beginning of securing justice, and more recently there has been an effort to seek financial restitution for those who are wrongfully convicted. In fact, in some cases, when these men were released, they were given little more than a bus ticket home, with many of them moving back into their parents' homes years after adulthood.

In all cases, their stories are devastating, but Sanders' subjects show surprisingly little anger about what happened to them. In fact, Maher somehow manages to forgive the original prosecutor of his case immediately after he walks out of prison a free man. Perhaps this is a conscious strategy on Sanders' part to underplay their anger, which sometimes bubbles just beneath the surface, but I'll admit that I couldn't have shrugged off losing years of my life so easily.

At the same time, several reactions seemed fairly consistent. In many cases, the men would describe what might be described as feelings of emasculation. Soto, in particular, explains that he feels like he hasn't lived up to his obligations as a father, who should provide for his children. Others describe the uncanny experience of returning to the community they called home and feeling like an outsider. Scott Hornoff, while driving through the town he had called home, reflects that "I feel like a foreigner." Others describe the sensory overload that they confront when leaving prison, with Nick Yarris, who was prohibited from speaking during his first two years on death row, commenting that he "couldn't believe how loud the world was."

I do think that the film could have benefitted from more legal argument or explanation of how the justice system often fails. Instead of getting a clear understanding of these problems, the seven stories are somewhat isoalted from each other, and some tighter connections might have resolved this concern. But when one of the featured exonerees, Wilton Dedge, is finally released from prison several years after his innocence has become indisputable, it's not hard to recognize some of the reasons for corruption. After all, if Dedge is released, it sets a precedent for other criminal convictions in Florida where DNA evidence was not used. Drawing these connections more explicitly, where possible, could have made the film an even stronger argument.

I caught After Innocence at DC's Provisions Library, where Taryn Simon's amazing photography series, The Innocents, is currently featured. If you can't make it for the film screening, I'd certainly recommend spending a few minutes viewing Simon's work.

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February 19, 2006

Manderlay

I went to see Lars von Trier's provoactive new film, Manderlay (IMDB), last night because of this negative review in the Washington Post (found via Risky Business). You see, the Post's reviewer, Philip Kennicott, implies that because von Trier has never stepped foot in the United States, he is not in a position to diagnose its social problems, specifically the history of slavery and racism in the United States. James Berardinelli is more explicit on this topic (although I didn't read his review until after seeing the film), arguing that "in order to be able to criticize something, you have to have first-hand familiarity with it. Von Trier has never lived in the United States.... But that doesn't stop him from attacking the fabric of the United States' society." Such ad hominem attacks say little about the content of the film and miss a larger point about the hegemonic power of the United States and its popular culture worldwide. Von Trier, as most reviewers will observe, seems to relish the role of provocateur, as his Dogme 95 Manifesto

While I'd agree that Manderlay stumbles in places, both of these reviews miss the degree to which von Trier is trading in representations in this film, intentionally pushing the limits of cultural caricatures through exaggeration and embellishment. My best approximation for describing this method would be to suggest that the film works as if German playwright Bertholt Brecht remade D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation. If Griffith was "writing history with lightning" to use President Woodrow Wilson's notorious phrase, von Trier is unwriting it, or rewriting it perhaps, with artificial lighting.

The first point to make about the film is its deliberate staginess (one reviewer compares it to a Thornton Wilder play, which isn't unfair, but Brecht is clearly an influence). The film opens in 1933, as we see Grace Mulligan (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her gangster father (Willem Dafoe), trekking across the country in a convoy of cars. That the cars move across a map of the sketched on a barren stage, with a giant Statue of Liberty drawn onto New York City, sets us up for the film's allegorical commentary.

Grace and her father arrive in Manderlay, a plantation in Alabama that continues to practice slavery seventy years after it was ostensibly abolished by the Civil War. When Grace witnesses a black man, Timothy (Isaach De Bankolé of Ghost Dog fame), her charitable instincts are tapped, and she insists on staying at Manderlay until she can ensure that the "slaves" have achieved liberation. While such a premise allows von Trier to attack southern institutionalized racism, Grace is not portrayed as entirely innocent either. When she tells the slaves that they should have been freed 70 years ago, Flora retorts, "Only seventy years ago?"

The plantation itself retains the staginess of the opening sequence, with its deliberately bare stage set including walls and spaces that are drawn on the stage floor, suggesting actor's marks. At the same time, the film is narrated in voice-over by John Hurt in a cheerful tone that stands in counterpoint to the sometimes brutal events that take place over the course of the film. This staginess is reflected in the acting, which follows Brecht's dictum that actors should not impersonate, but narrate (acting "in quotation marks"), with von Trier using such a method to call attention to representations as they pertain to race relations in the United States (and to a lesser extent as they comment on US forign policy in Iraq).

One of the major motifs of the film is a book, Mam's Rules that are used to govern the plantation and meant never to be sen by the slaves who work there. When the plantation's matriarch (Lauren Bacall) exhorts Grace to burn the book, she refuses, thereby unintentionally extending their influence over Manderlay. Among these rules we see a classification of all the slaves into seven categories, which would allow the plantation overseer to control his charges more effectively, and by calling attention to these representations, von Trier works to challenge them. Most notably, he works to deconstruct the sexual fantasies about white women and black men that animate a project like Griffith's Birth of a Nation (in this sense, von Trier has a strange affinity with DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation).

I won't explain the plot in further detail other than to say that von Trier's film offers a complicated commentary on the history of race in the United States. The film famously closes with a montage of photographs documenting the legacy of slavery and the history of poverty and Civil Rights in the United States. The images, shown while David Bowie's "Young Americans" plays, are designed to provoke, bringing a more explicit sense of history on the narrative we have just witnessed. While I do think von Trier's film polemic is flawed (I'll grant the point that it's condescending in places and I don't think he makes his commentary on the present explicit enough), I was quite compelled by the questions Manderlay seemed to be asking.

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February 18, 2006

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (IMDB) is one of the best literary adaptations I've seen in some time [Edited to add: It's also one of the funniest]. But before I review Winterbottom's film adaptation of Laurence Sterne's wildly inventive metafictional novel, I should probably explain that because I majored in literature in college and have an MA in English, I'm usually ambivalent about literary adaptations. Then again, I should probably mention that before I was born, both of my parents were strongly discouraged if not explicitly prohibited from watching movies, which may explain my own enthusiasm for film. I could perhaps go back further in time or obsessively return to the moment of my birth, but then this review would never get written, and I would be unable to explain that, like Dana Stevens, I regard Winterbottom's Shandy as one of the most "faithful" adaptations I've seen in some time, to the spirit if not the letter of its literary source, especially when the film, like Sterne's novel, pursues its uneccesary digressions and its own narration.

In general expectations for literary adaptations set viewers up for disappointment, especially if you're a fan of the novel. Key scenes are deleted. Characters disappear completely. And costumes or settings are inauthentic. Winterbottom's Shandy nicely satirizes this culture of adaptation, in part by turning Steve Coogan, the lead actor in a film adaptation of Shandy, into the main character of the film. Coogan, the character, is narcissistic and competes with fellow actor Rob Brydon, who plays Tristram's Unce Toby. Coogan obsesses over his costumes, specifically worrying about how his fake nose will alter his appearance, and more importantly, that his heels don't provide him with an appropriate height advantage over his co-star, Rob, while Coogan's character also worries about who will receive top billing for the film (of course, this is familiar territory for Coogan who also plays himself in a sketch in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes).

Winterbottom weaves between these "backstage scenes" and the attempts to make a film version of Shandy quite nicely, and what Winterbottom achieves with his film is nothing less than a meditation not simply on the possibilities of adapting the impossible but on the filmmaking process itself. Unlike Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation, which never really goes beyond the production of the screenplay itself, Shandy traces the entire moviemaking process, perhaps making it more comparable to French Lieutenant's Woman, Truffaut's Day for Night, or maybe The Player. We see the enthusiastic assistant, Jennie (Naomie Harris), gushing about Fassbinder and other German directors the "talent" pretend to know (of course,as Klawans implies, the Fassbinder allusions might run a little deeper). Later the director learns that he can film a key battle scene when Gillian Anderson agrees to appear in the film, therefore assuring more financing for the film, setting up a subtle economic commentary on how films get made (these scenes reminded me of Fellini's comment, "And the film will be finished when there is no more money left").

While I'm thinking about it, I should probably go back and mention Uncle Toby's mysterious battle injury and young Tristram's unintentional circumcision. But that might interrupt my review, so I should return to that topic later. Of course Winterbottom milks the "cock and bull" jokes as much as possible and to nice effect. Although James Berardinelli worries that Winterbottom seems "obsessed with cock," the film's obsessive returns to Uncle Toby's unspeakable war injury work quite well.

Some of the film's best scenes trade on Coogan's willingness to parody his image as a narcisstic actor, with Coogan constantly getting into petty squabbles with his co-stars and dealing with members of the tabloid press that want to report an unsavory story about this one night with a stripper. Coogan's character also bickers with his agent, dismissing a preposterous script that might tarnish his image. It's a nice commentary on the ways in which celebrity is constructed (J. Hoberman has a similar read, as does the Washington Post's Desson Thomas).

Of course, unlike Fellini's film, the movie isn't finished when the director runs out of money. Instead, like Altman's The Player, the movie is done when the cast and crew watch their first test screening. And even after the credits roll, Coogan has to demonstrate that he can do a better Pacino than his co-star, Brydon.

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February 13, 2006

Why We Fight

In Why We Fight (IMDB), director Eugene Jarecki offers a compelling and provocative analysis of why the United States is fighting a war in Iraq. In fact, Jarecki's documentary illustrates that the war in Iraq is nothing more than the extension of a logic that has been developing over the last half-century, ever since departing President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" that was quickly forming in the aftermath of World War II and in the rise of the Cold War. While the Iraq War, backed by neo-conservatives represented in the film by Richard Perle and William Kristol, is perhaps the best illustration of the expansion of this logic, Jarecki's film is careful to demonstrate that the expansion of the military-industrial complex cannot be blamed on a single political party or group. In this sense, Jarecki's film displays an intellectual honesty that I found quite impressive even if I struggled to put all of the disparate pieces together by the end of the film.

As many critics have noted (including Stuart Klawans, in his insightful review in The Nation), Why We Fight opens with a segment from Eisenhower's famous 1961 farewell speech, in which the outgoing President warned of the dangers of the massive military build-up. In a GreenCine interview, Jarecki commented that he came across this speech while doing research for his previous documentary, The Trials of Henry Kissinger and finding himself impressed by Eisenhower's candor, " knew that it would be the stuff of the next film I would make, the starting point." In fact, Eisenhower's speech becomes something of a motif, commenting on and reinterpreting the alliances between the military, industry, and more recently, Congress and neoconservative think tanks, with the film patiently building its case that when wars are profitable, we will continue to see wars, to paraphrase Chalmers Johnson.

This kind of critique might easily lend itself to glib partisan potshots at the Cheney-Bush-Halliburton alliance, and while those potshots might be fun (and deserved), I think Jarecki has created something far more intellectually honest and far more difficult to dismiss (a point that Salon reviewer Andrew O'Hehir also raises). Why We Fight offers conservative critics of US foreign policy, such as John McCain, who generally comes across as a serious proponent of reform (although McCain's office has been highly critical of the film). Jarecki is also careful to note that members of both parties in Congress and in the Oval Office have interests in sustaining the "collusion" between the military and industry. More significantly, Why We Fight is careful to avoid reducing this historical narrative to the work of a few single indiviuals, avoiding the conspiracy stories that weaken many documentaries (including, I would argue, Jarecki's previous film).

Instead, we see that the motivations for "why we fight" cannot be reduced to a single explanation or source, and this is where Jarecki's film manages to grasp the full weight of the complex emotional and psychological reasons that might motivate people to go to war. I have noted that the military-industrial complex is almost certainly motivated by greed, but Jarecki also introduces us to Wilton Sekzer, a Vietnam veteran and retired New York police officer whose son was killed on September 11. Sekzer's grief is incredibly profound, and beliving that Saddam Hussein is partially responsible for his son's untimely death, he contacts someone within the military and asks them to write his son's name on one of the bombs to be dropped on Iraq. When Sekzer later learns that the Bush administration has misled the public, admitting that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, his disbelief and disillusionment is quite powerful (although, like Manohla Dargis, I was disappointed that Jarecki never sought to explain why so many people like Sekzer bought these lies). Jarecki also introduces us to William Solomon, a young man who seeing no other options in life after his mother passes away, joins the military. When I first saw the film, I found it difficult to connect these stories to Jarecki's lrger thesis, but I think Klawans is right to emphasize the ways in which Sekzer, Solomon, and, in a different way, retired Lieut. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, all offer three very powerful, very different explanations for why we go to war. Of course, explaining why we fight and explaining how to stop it from happening are two very different questions.

One note on the title: Many people have commented on Jarecki's borrowing (or stealing, as he freely admits) Frank Capra's title for a series of documentaries he made to rally support for American involvement in World War II, but I found Jarecki's explanation for his use of the title somewhat surprising: rather than seeing Capra's films as mere propaganda, which again is too easy, Jarecki instead aligns himself with Capra's support of the "little guy" (Mr. Smith, George Bailey) against a corporate power that threatens true democracy. It's an interesting argument, and given the film's sympathy with its "little guys," especially Sekzer, Solomon, and Kwiatkowski, his explanation makes a great deal of sense.

Update: This is about a month old, but here's a blog entry from the Huffington Post by director Eugene Jarecki.

Update: I finally found Darren's comments about Why We Fight in an old entry of mine.

Technorati tags: jarecki|documentary|whywefight|halliburton

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February 9, 2006

September 12th

With Hollywood studios preparing to release films depicting the September 11 tragedy, I've been thinking for some time about the ethics involved in revisiting these traumatic events, and there are legitimate concerns that some filmmakers may exploit the attacks, as this recent comment on my blog illustrates. But several films, including Spike Lee's 25th Hour (my review), have addressed the powerful grief and psychic disorientation that resulted from 9/11. Another film that belongs alonsgide Lee's film is the new independent film, September 12th (IMDB), directed by John Touhey from a screenplay he co-wrote with Mark Lickona. September 12th offers a quiet and subtle reflection on the ongoing process of mourning after 9/11.

The film opens with the Riga family in a cemetary where they are conducting a memorial service for Lori, who died in the World Trade Center, on the third anniversary of her death. Tuohy wisely chooses not to reveal much of what is being said about Lori, allowing her character to develop gradually in the reflections and conversations that take place after the service. This memorial service establishes the two primary characters, Rick (James Garrett), Lori's finace, and her brother, Frank (Joe Iacovino, in the film's strongest and most difficult performance), and the emotional complexity of memorialization. In a personal interview, Touhey, who was working in New York on 9/11, mentions that September 12th was shaped by the little memorials that appeared immediately after the tragedy, "The one thing that impressed me most in the days that followed were all the little memorials and shrines that sprang up all over the city." These questions about memorialization give September 12th are a dominant--and important--part of Touhey's film.

The film depicts this grief in other ways, as well. Immediately after the service, Eddie (Ernest Mingione) walks up and introduces himself to the family, offering his business card and asking the family to contact him. Because Eddie is a lawyer, Rick and Frank immediately assumes that Eddie wishes to represent the family in an effort to profit off of their loss. While audience members will likely guess that Eddie's motivations are somewhat more honorable, Rick and Frank's responses are perfectly natural.

Rick remains deeply devoted to Lori, seeing her in the most positive light possible and attending to the needs of Lori's mother. Frank, by contrast, appears belligerent, playing an unnecessarily rough game of basketball with his nephews. His memories of Lori are far less generous a he recalls a childhood primarily characterized by competition with his older sibling. In both cases, the central characters are still in the process of mourning, a process that is clearly informed by their relationship to Lori, as this Film Threat review points out. As the film evolves, this comparison becomes more central to the film, with Rick and Frank forced to confront their conflicting memories of Lori when Rick invites Frank, who has been evicted temporarily, to crash at his apartment.

I won't talk in much detail about the substance of their conversation, but I felt the film captured the substance of these conversations rather effectively, although in places, the screenplay felt a little too unpolished, as if the actors were quoting the lines rather than immersing themselves in a character. Unlike the Film Threat reviewer who faults the acting, I'm less inclined to attribute my reaction to performance than I am to the difficulty of finding language that will communicate this type of post-9/11 mourning. But even with that minor reservation (and perhaps even because of that difficulty), I think that September 12th deserves a much wider audience and represents an important attempt to remember 9/11 in an honest and fully human fashion.

Cross-posted at Agoravox.

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February 4, 2006

Bubble

Steven Soderbergh's Bubble (IMDB) has received more attention because of its experimental distribution schedule than because of the film itself, but the film itself is deceptively experimental focusing intimately on the lives of three workers in a small doll factory in a small industrial town on the border of West Virginia and Ohio.

Bubble first introduces us to Martha and Kyle who work together in the doll factory and have cultivated a quiet but grounded friendship, based in part on the daily rituals of driving to work together and sharing a fast food lunch in the factory's breakroom. Both Martha and Kyle work outside the factory in second jobs to make ends meet, and they sometimes discuss what they would do if they managed to save just a little money. Their routine is subtly but inevitably interrupted when the factory hires a new employee, Rose, a single mother in her early twenties. When Rose is introduced to the small group of workers (maybe 5 ot 6 people) in the doll factory, her brief smile at Kyle indicates her attraction to him. As Ebert points out, it's unclear whether Kyle returns Rose's acknowledgement, but Martha sees the smile and begins to see her relationship to Kyle change. Martha's "loss" of Kyle (they remain friends but their friendship, and Kyle's reliance on Martha, is what changes) is also measured by the lunch breaks in which Rose and Kyle share a cigarette at the end of the meal in a spearate section of the breakroom. Soderbergh's camera emphasizes how this subtle act not only changes Martha and Kyle's daily routine but also how it begins to create some distance between them, physiaclly and emotionally.

Rose also becomes representative of an independence unavailable to Martha and Kyle. Her second job entails cleaning wealthy people's houses, where she takes bubble baths in their tubs, reasoning that she doesn't have that luxury in her apartment, with Rose's free-spiritedness prompting Martha to comment, "I don't know about her." Eventually Kyle asks Rose on a date, with Rose, in turn, asking Martha to babysit her daughter, setting up a scene of profound awkwardness when the three of them are forced to interact in Rose's apartment, building towards an act of violence that is somewhat shocking although it is certainly consistent with the emotions of the film's central characters.

Soderbergh, along with screenwriter Coleman Hough (who also worked with Soderbergh on Full Frontal), sets the tone for this kind of story very effectively. The doll factory itself allows for some slightly uncanny imagery, with Kyle pouring pastic into the leg and head molds, while Rose and Martha airbrush identical faces on rows of these cheap plastic dolls (Filmbrain describes the creepiness of the doll factory rather well). The featureless breakroom, which looks like it could have been decorated anytime in the last thirty years, the fast food restaurants that provide daily nourishment, and the mobile homes and apartments all suggest a sense of routine or monotony.

Using these characters, Soderbergh has created a quiet, intimate portrait of small-town, southern life, a world that Soderbergh knows well, as Michael Atkinson points out. Because the film is simultaneously available on DVD and in theaters, it will be interesting to see what kind of reception it receives (and whether the site of reception matters in terms of audience response), but the film does offer one of the more interesting character studies I've seen in some time.

Posted by chuck at 5:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 1, 2006

Cache

Michael Haneke's Cache (US website/IMDB) opens with a static image of suburban house, with a steady, unblinking gaze not unlike that of a surveillance camera. The camera doesn't move as scenes of daily life are displayed leaving the viewer to contemplate why this house is the object of such intense scrutiny. Suddenly our gaze is disrupted when the image begins to fast-forward and we realize that we are watching a videotape along with the owners of the house, Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche). Throughout the film, Georges and Anne continue to receive videotapes from the unidentified source, though as the film's tension escalates, the images become increasingly personal, with one videotape depicting Georges childhood home.

In many ways, the opening scene recalls a similar moment in Haneke's earlier, underrated film, Funny Games, which I won't spoil for people who haven't seen the film, but in both films, video seems to disrupt the temporal "present" of the films in complicated ways. In both films, the status of the viewer is implicated as we become conscious of the camera's gaze. In both films, the camera--or videotape--also serves to intensify tension within an upper-middle class family.

In the case of Cache, this tension maps allegorically onto both the US war on terrorism and, more explicitly, onto the French treatment of Algerians during the 1960s, but given the recent riots, these scnes have a very contemporary feel. It has been a few days since I've seen the film (I've had no time and little energy to write for the blog recently), so my memory on details about the film is a bit thin, but I found it to be a successful, chilling psychological thriller, one that used the genre conventions in order to comment on contemporary issues in a thoughtful way.

But if others have seen Cache, I'd enjoy knowing what you thought of it.

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January 16, 2006

Bridges to Baghdad

I just came across this fascinating media project, Bridges to Baghdad, produced by Link TV, a non-profit television channel.

Bridges is a two-part series that places students from New York and Baghdad in conversation via live satellite feed in order to foster dialogue between youth in the two countries. The first part was filmed in March 2003, just days before the invasion. The second part, which I haven't had an opportunity to watch yet, was filmed after the invasion began. This entry will consist primarily of unorganized notes on what I've seen so far. It's worth noting that the first episode places emphasis on the technologies and labor required to produce the event. In addition, the show's producers are shown talking to various Iraqi ministers, specifically arranging for permission to produce the show (notably, the ministers offer little resistance).

I've been watching the first episode off-and-on as I write this entry (available on streaming video from the website), and it's intriguing to watch both the connections and the limits of conversation. At one point, one of the Iraqi women interrupts a conversation on whether dissent is permitted in Iraq, asking to change the subject to something safe, such as sports or music. The conversation is punctuated by videos made by both the Iraqi and American students portraying some aspect of their daily lives, with one Iraqi teenager showing his heavy metal band while an Iraqi woman takes us on a tour of her family's bomb shelter. Part of what is compelling about this material, of course, is how their relationships are mediated by popular culture. Iraqi students describe their enthusiasm for Eminem or the Backstreet Boys and mention that their understanding of American culture derives primarily from the films they consume (one of the American students quickly describes these films as unrealistic, romanticized portrayals).

I think this material has been available for some time, but I just happened to come across it by accident while doing some digging for documentary materials on the war for a paper I'm writing.

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January 12, 2006

This Divided State

I caught a review copy of Steven Greenstreet's 2005 documentary, This Divided State (IMDB) last night, and I'm still sorting out what to write about the film. This Divided State focuses on the heated conflict at Utah Valley State College when the student government invites filmmaker Michael Moore to campus just a few weeks before the 2004 presidential election. Moore's planned visit to USVC, a campus of over 25,000 students in Orem (a predominantly Mormon and conservative town just outside of Provo), is greeted with alarm by many of USCV's conservative students. The resulting film is a sometimes humorous and often unsettling meditation on political discourse, especially in a community in which religious beliefs (95% of Orem's residents are Mormon) is so important.

Eric Snider's review of TDS offers a glimpse of the political atmosphere in Orem, drawing from his own first-hand observations of the controversy that spilled into local newspapers, radio and television stations, and even the courts, as one local businessman, Kay Anderson, eventually brought a lawsuit against the USVC student government. In addition, one group of students attempts to organize a recall of the student government president and vice-president, in more than a faint echo of the California recall. Early on, there are some debates about the $40,000 fee paid for Moore's visit, but when his appearance sells out, concerns about money turn out to be less significant. Eventually, in a last-minute attempt at achieving "balance," USVC invites the ubiquitous conservative radio and TV host Sean Hannity to speak a few days before Moore's scheduled visit. These narrative threads make for compelling viewing, but the film's most powerful and troubling scenes include student government presidnet Jim Bassi fileding phone calls asking him if USVC will follow up Moore's talk with a speech by Hitler or Saddam Hussein.

Of course, the film isn't entirely bleak. Many of the students, professors, and locals welcome Moore to campus, many because of their experiences as Mormons. One college student, pointing out that Mormons fled Chicago because of persecution, explains that he thinks it would be inappropriate to prevent others from speaking freely. Others point out that colleges and universities have the responsibility to present students with viewpoints they might not encounter under normal circumstances. Greenstreet also introduces us to some of Orem's quirky characters including a local who strongly resembles Michael Moore and even plays up that resemblance by wearing jeans and baseball caps and shaving his beard to look like Moore's (oddly enough, even with this physical imitation of Moore, he identifies as Republican).

TDS builds to Hannity and Moore's visits, and Greenstreet gives a significant portion of the film to both speakers. In both cases, Moore and Hannity play to sold-out, cheering audiences. In his review, Jesus' General argues that these scenes depict Moore (and liebrals) as more inclusive than Hannity (and conesrvatives). There's a case to be made to support this claim, especially when Hannity belittles a liberal heckler by putting him on the spot in front of thousands of people, while Moore is shown emphasizing a position of tolerance. This opposition needs to be complicated to some extent, however, to ask why or how Moore becomes such a divisive figure (and I think this goes far beyond mere conservative dislike of his ideas).

While Greenstreet's film is clearly sympathetic with the groups who support the decision to bring Moore to campus, the film is generally respectful of all participants in the controversy and seems to recognize why the community became so divided by Moore's visit. And the film offers some reasons for optimism. Student protests and rallies challenge arguments that suggest that young people are disengaged from politics. While many of the arguments are heated, Moore's visit provokes a conversation about political discourse that might not have taken place otherwise, challenging the members of the college community to reflect on what kinds of political language should be permissible in the public sphere.

This Divided State (blog) is available on Netflix and deserves to be a part of the ongoing conversation about politics, popular culture, and polarization.

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January 7, 2006

Munich

For reasons I'm not sure I can articulate, I was reluctant to see Steven Spielberg's most recent film, Munich (IMDB). I know that I've been let down by many of Spielberg's "historical" films (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, and, in a different way, The Color Purple). But Munich has challenged me in ways that I did not expect. I'm still not quite sure what I think about the film, so if you've seen Munich I'd appreciate knowing what you think.

Munich opens with the 1972 kidnapping and murder of eleven athletes and coaches from the Israeli Olympic team by a group of Palestinians. Much of this material has already been portrayed in the 1999 documentary, One Day in September, but like the documentary, Spielberg focuses on ABC's live coverage of the crisis, culminating in ABC broadcaster Jim McKay's bleak comment, "They're all gone." This sequence sets up the recruitment of Avner (Eric Bana), a Mossad agent and former bodyguard for prime minister Golda Meir, to a clandestine assassination squad. Meir's chilling observation that the assassination of the Israeli athletes "changes everything" clearly echoes post-9/11 rhetoric, as David Walsh points out, and throughout Munich, we encounter echoes between the past and present.

Avner is tapped to lead a squad of four others, including most prominently, the cold-blooded Steve (Daniel Craig) and the reluctant "worried," Carl (Ciarán Hinds), allowing Spielberg to explore a relatively broad range of responses to the morality of revenge. Eventually, Avner enlists the help of the mysterious Louis (Mathieu Amalric), who provides the squad with information about the location of their targets, as well as safe houses where they can stay while plotting each assassination. And this is one aspect of the film I'm still trying to interpret. While Louis and “Papa” (Michael Lonsdale), the even more secretive source of information, suggest some sort of larger conspiracy, that conspiracy is never fully articulated. Are they representatives of the CIA? Mossad? Or are they merely profiting from this desire for revenge?

This question is complicated when Avner's squad is sheltered in the same safe house as a group of Palestinian bodyguards, presumably by mistake (the Israeli team pretends to be European left-wing terrorists in order to avoid conflict). Avner ultimately discusses the history of the conflict with one of the Palestinians, Ali (Omar Metwally), raising anothre important question that was unresolved for me at the end of the film.

Clearly, any history of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East will be informed by the chronological starting point of the narrative. By beginning the story with Munich, Spielberg's film places less emphasis on what might have provoked the events in Munich. Still, Spielberg's version of this history does challenge prior narratives of this history. Munich also portrays all of the murders as tragic--including the deaths of the Israeli Olympic team, which are conveyed in one of the more troubling flashbacks I've seen in some time.

Again, I'm still not quite sure how to respond to this film. The echoes with the present are clearly important. As Stephanie Zacharek points out, the film's final shot, which takes place in 1973 after Avner has resettled in Brooklyn, shows the World Trade Center deep in the background. But the film's moral and political positions are somewhat ambiguous. Whether, as Zacharek suggests, that's due to the competing visions of screenwriters Tony Kushner and Eric Roth or due to Spielberg's own ambivalence is another question.

Again, I'm curious to hear what others thought about Munich. I'm still sorting through my reading of the film, but I am glad to see filmmakrs such as Speilberg tackle such a complicated topic in what appears to be a very serious way.

Posted by chuck at 12:36 PM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

January 5, 2006

Walk the Line

On Christmas Day, my mom, sister, and I completed our annual pilgrimage to a lcoal metroplex to see Walk the Line (IMDB), the Johnny Cash biopic that has just about run its box office course. Because I'm a fan of Cash's music, I'd resisted seeing the movie, and while Walk the Line worked well enough as safe family entertainment, I left the theater feeling vaguely disappointed.

I knew going into the theater that the film would focus primarily on Cash's career from the 1940s to his 1968 concert at Folsom Prison, which would mean emphasizing his relationship with June Carter and his recovery from amphetamine addiction. There weren't any major surprises here: the film deals extensively with the romance elements, and Reese Witherspoon never quite captured June Carter's playful, sensual side (as the World Socialist Website reviewer points out).

I'd hoped, however, that the film would focus on Cash's rather complicated political background, his interest in prisoner and Native American rights and his opposition to the Vietnam War. For a moment, such a film seemed possible. It opens with Cash's band playing the Folsom prison audience into a frenzy while backstage Cash (adequately played by Joaquin Phoenix), leaning on a table saw, seems to be agonizing over some past moment. Of course, the saw blade is a memory-image recalling the death of Cash's older brother and setting in motion an abuse narrative (Cash's father never forgave Johnny for outliving his older brother, who by coincidence was played by the son of a family friend) that dimiinishes the story considerably.

As the WSWS review points out, another film about Cash could have focused more extensively on his youth in an experimental New Deal community, the fact that he grew up dirt poor among sharecroppers. The film underplays his rejection of the country music establishment and even his interest in prisoner rights (Phoenix's snarling response to a prison warden, seen in pretty much every preview of the film, is pretty much all we get). In short, pretty much everything interesting about Cash was stripped away from the film in favor of a love story that seemed far less interesting than its real-life counterpart.

Perhaps the most positive aspect of the film was that it made me want to go back and dig through my CDs and rediscover the Johnny Cash that I'd admired. I'm perhaps being a bit too hard by calling out the paint-by-numbers biopic narrative (abusive parent, dead brother, outsider recording artist, sound familiar yet?) , and perhaps I should instead be asking why the biopic about the outsider musical genius is suddenly so popular, but I'm not sure I have an interesting answer to that question.

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December 31, 2005

Top Ten Movies of 2005

Inspired by the lists put together by Girish, Sujewa, and Darren and unimpressed by the lists put together by the Washington Post's film reviewers (Hustle & Flow?!?), I've put together a hastily assembled Top Ten list. Like Darren, I chose to select films I saw in the 2005 calendar year, in part because many prominent films aren't widely released to theaters until well after their original release date. And, more to the point, several of the films on my list have not received major distribution.

Here's my modest contribution to the now ubiquitous Ten Best discussion in semi-chronological order, with links to my reviews of the films if available:

• Gunner Palace: Michael Tucker's grunts-eye doc can be frustrating for someone looking for a clear political critique of the Iraq War, but Tucker's documentary, which used interviews and freestyle raps by the soldiers he documented tapped into some crucial questions about the representability of the Iraq War (a theme that will come up a lot in this list).
• Sunset Story: When I was drafting this list, I passed over this amazing documentary about the friendship between two women living in a retirement home for political progressives, but as I began thinking about how Sunset Story deals so frankly with aging and death, I realized how much the film meant to me.
• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the RoomI'd forgotten my initial enthusiasm for this film and its contribution (as a topic of conversation at the very least) to the ongoing investigation of Enron. The film had a tendency to vilify Enron rather than seeing it as a symptom of larger flaws in global capitalism, but the film captured Enron's glitz and shiny surfaces rather well, as the cinetrix pointed out at the time.
• Me and You and Everyone We Know: Like Crash, Miranda July's debut feature emphasized the degree to which we are all connected. Unlike Crash, Me and You avoided cliches in proposing its delicate and complicated concept of community. It's also one of the few films to feature children who are fully fledged human beings and not foils for washed up comedians or harbingers of some kind of lurking horror.
• The Edukators: This might be a personal obsession, as I haven't seen it on other people's lists, but I found the film's suspenseful and engaging treatment of the conflict between the wealthy businessman an dthe young political radicals to be utterly compelling.
• Funny Ha Ha: I was too tired to write a full review when I caught Funny Ha Ha at the AFI, but like Girish, I was impressed by Andrew Bujalski's "neo-realist slacker comdey."
• Occupation: Dreamland: Mines terriroty similar to Gunner Palace, but Occupation features soldiers who are in Fallujah and watching as the insurgency unfolds before their very eyes.
• Chain: A compelling and philosophical meditation on the commodification of public space, Jem Cohen's Chain enthralled me completely, inheriting and extending the legacy of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil. If I had to choose a favorite film of 2005, this would be it.
• The War Within: A compelling indie film about a Pakistani man who is deemed suspicious and wrongfully imprisoned. His imprisonment radicalizes him, leading him to participate in a planned suicide bombing of Grand Central Station. The film uses the conventions of the thriller and the indie film in a compelling, thoughtful way.
• Syriana: This is easily the "biggest" film I saw in 2005, and it's one that makes some powerful connections regrding the relationship between big oil and the war on terror. The final sequence of the film, in particular, is a scathing critique that effectively comments on all of the disparate threads of the vast, if loosely organized, conspiracy that animates the film's plot.

Some of the films I wish I'd seen include Barbara Kopple's Bearing Witness, Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, Cache and Tristam Shandy, both of which were in Darren's Top Ten, Capote, and After Innocence.

Some of the films that almost made the cut: A History of Violence, The Jacket (I'm too close to the film to think about it in terms of a top ten list), 2046, Good Night and Good Luck, and The Squid and the Whale.

Some other important and entertaining movies that more people should see: The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till,, Guerilla News Network's BatleGround, Hayder Mousa Daffar's The Dreams of Sparrows, the underrated The Education of Shelby Knox, which I saw on PBS, Chris Hansen's The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah, Robert Greenwald's Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Caveh Zahedi's I am a Sex Addict, and Hany Ab-Assad's Paradise Now.

Comments? Observations? Omissions? Feel free to mention your top ten lists in the comments.

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December 14, 2005

Winter Soldier

In George Butler's Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, we get a brief glimpse of the Winter Soldier press conferences that took place over three days in Detroit in February and March of 1972. Now, the 1972 documentary of these press conferences, Winter Soldier, is receiving a limited re-release here in DC and in a few other major cities (Kerry appears briefly in the 1972 documentary). During these press conferences, several panels of young soldiers reported on unimaginable atrocities committed by US soldiers in all branches of the military. The film opens with a brief voice-over explaining the source of the title, before immediately moving into pilot Rusty Sachs' testimony, in which he describes watching as blindfolded Vietnamese prisoners are pushed out of airplanes, a practice he describes as routine. Other soldiers add to this picture, describing atrocities that were relatively common practice.

Visually, the film is stunning in its immediacy, using a cinema verite style to capture the sense of urgency these soldiers clearly feel. In many sequences, the filmmakers favor close-ups, with soldiers such as Scott Camil speaking directly into the camera about the atrocities they witnessed. The documentary is entirely in black-and-white except for fleeting color photgraphs (and perhaps some color Super 8 footage) of the fresh-faced soldiers in Vietnam, creating a stark visual contrast.

Winter Soldier was so controversial that it did not play widely on television or in theaters in the 1970s, playing primarily in smaller venues such as the Whitney Museum, and it's worth noting that the film's re-release was held back until after the 2004 Presidential election out of concern that it might negatively effect Kerry's chances in the election.

This decision speaks to the film's relevance even today. During one sequence, in which a soldier describes their (lck of) training in the Geneva Conventions, it's impossible not to think about the actions of teh soldiers in Abu Ghraib, as Amy Heller points out in this interview with Anthony Kaufman. But aside from the press conference itself, I found many of the "backstage" moments utterly compelling, in particular one sequence in which an African-American soldier comments on the degree to which a history racism informs the treatment of Vietnamese people as less than human (Anne Hornaday, in an incredibly insightful review, also found this scene to be pivotal).

Hornaday also notes the degree to which several of the soldiers, particularly Camil, are struggling in front of the camera "not only with their experiences overseas but also with the very definition of manhood, whether as constructed by cultural mores or one's own inner code." Winter Solider is a powerful experience, not simply as an anti-war document (although that is certainly important), but also as a document of a certain moment in American history when the soldiers' experiences in the war were forcing them to grapple with questions of race and masculinity.

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December 11, 2005

Syriana

I'm still sorting through my response to Syriana (IMDB), so this review may seem a little scattered and unfocused. Perhaps instead of viewing this entry as anything remotely resembling a final take on the film, this entry will serve as a starting point towards something else (further discussion? an article?). Syriana, written and directed by Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, presents a multi-threaded narrative focusing on several different individuals and organizations who are involved in protecting U.S. oil interests, including oil executives, Gulf emirs, CIA agents, and corporate lawyers, as well as the displaced workers employed at the refineries. The film cuts between the power centers of Washington, Geneva, Tehran, and other unnamed locations in the Persian Gulf. While many critics have suggested that the multiple threads confounding, I think Digby's right to suggest that these plotlines can lead to what he calls a "bracing clarity:" it's about oil. More specifically, it's about the increasing scarcity of that "natural" resource. The film is also, as David Lowery notes, a "contagiously angry" movie in its portrayal of conspiracy, without, at least in my opinion, coming across as overly sanctimonious. But here are a few reasons why I found this film so compelling:

First, Syriana is one of the highest-profile projects by the new indie, Participant Productions (they also produced Murderball, North Country, and Good Night and Good Luck among others). I'll admit to being intrigued by Participant's attempts to use entertainment for social change. According to their website, "Participant believes in the power of media to create great social change. Our goal is to deliver compelling entertainment that will inspire audiences to get involved in the issues that affect us all." It's clear that many of Participant's films are intended to increase political awareness. It's less clear how that will translate into people getting involved, although the website does offer a "take action" resource page (check out the LA Times article on Participant). More on that question in a moment.

Syriana, of course, recalls the 1970s conspiracy movies, such as All the President's Men, The Parallax View, and Three Days of the Condor, that Fredric Jameson analyzed so thoughtfully in The Geopolitical Aesthetic. But, as J. Hoberman points out, in a line worthy of Jameson himself, "Gaghan is less fixated on superstar heroism and more interested in representing a system—if, indeed, that system can be represented." The "system," of course, is global capitalism, but what happens with Syriana seems to offer a subtle shift away from the '70s films that posit the lone indvidual (or indviduals in President's) to a model in which even the ostensible outsiders are implicated or involved on some level. While George Clooney and Matt Damon, among others, add star power to Syriana, they are far less attached to the model of heroism or idealism that we encounter in the conspiracy films of the Watergate era. Without giving too much away, Clooney's CIA agent and Damon's economic advisor are clearly implicated in the loose oil conspiracy that dominates the film. We also see a group of displaced Pakistani teenagers who find themselves suddenly unemployed after one corporate merger and subtly, but surprisingly quickly, tranformed into suicide bombers.

Some spoilers here: The multi-threaded (or hypertext as one critic described it) narrative is elegantly handled (much better than the somewhat manipulative use of multiple film stocks in Soderbergh's Traffic, and the difficulty of sorting through the relationships is part of the point (the LA Times review is good on this point, as is David Lowery's, which I cited earlier). What makes the film so troubling is that, as David implies, the film is so critical of the complicity between a Big Oil merger and the CIA that "it makes a triumph out of the terrorist attack." I'm not quite sure I walked away with that reading, but it's clear that we are meant to compare the suicide attack on the oil tanker with the cold-blooded assassination of the pro-democratization Prince Nasir by the CIA.

This final sequence actually left me feeling somewhat powerless and resigned (David has a slightly different read), and I think that's an unintended consequence of the film's presentation of conspiracy. I need to do some other work this afternoon, but I'm fairly certain that I'll be returning to Syriana in the near-future. It's an incredibly rich film that certainly demands that viewers confront this situation, but I'm not sure if the film offers any potential response to the conspiracy.

Update (11:21 PM): I forgot to mention this before, but one of the sensations that stuck with me the most in my experience of Syriana was the film's overarching masculinity. The only review I've seen that explicitly addresses this topic is Cynthia Fuchs' Pop Matters review. Fuchs notes that "In Syriana, Bob [George Clooney] is only one of several figures -- specifically, fathers -- trying to keep up." Father-son relationships consistently inform the film's dynamics. Bob's son complains about the inability to live a normal teenage life. Bryan's (Matt Damon) status as a father is crucial to his character's opportunism. Prince Nasir's relationship to his father motivates several major plot points. These father-son relationships may very well comment on issues of generational legacy (Jeffrey Wright's Bennett Holiday pointedly refuses to drink in one crucial scene, for example), but it also seems significant that this generation gap is strictly paternalistic. Bob's CIA agent wife goes unseen. The oil executives are resolutely men, Texas Oil Men in the most classic sense. The only female character with any significant screen time is Bryan's wife (played by Amanda Peet), and she is seen only in the world of family and home, often at the breakfast table. Given all of the recent discussion of Valerie Plame, the absence of any female players in this saga seems rather significant, doesn't it?

Technorati tags: syriana, movies, oil

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December 7, 2005

Local Call

Tonight I had the good luck of catching Arthur Joffé's Local Call (IMDB) at the Washington Jewish Film Festival and found the film both charmingly funny and surprisingly touching. The film's premise is a relatively simple one: Félix Mandel, a well-known astrophysicist with a wife and son receives a phone call from his father one evening, telling him to recover a black cashmere coat he's just given to a homeless person. But what makes the phone call unusual is that Félix's father has been dead for over two years. The coat's significance, established in an earlier scene when a local tailor refuses to complete a requested alteration, becomes clear only at the end of the film for reasons I won't reveal, at least above the fold. Suffice it to say that the film's final turn addresses the divide between father and son in a very specific way.

It would have been easy for Local Call to fall into the trap of overplaying the comedic or melodramatic aspects of this kind of plot, and to Joffé's credit, the film avoids becoming too maudlin or too shallow. The film's humor erives primaily from the complicated interactions between Félix and his dead father, as is turns out that it costs a lot of money to talk to someone in the afterlife (plus his dad always calls collect). Eventually, because his phone bills are so exorbitant, Félix's wife leaves him, taking their son, for the banker who called attention to Félix's debts. Félix is later evicted from his apartment, banned from hotels, and evebtually fired because of his expensive phone calls (there's a strong echo of The Book of Job here). Gradually the generation gap between father and son is resolved, especially after Félix's material existence continues to decline. This reconciliation is connected in a fairly specific way to Félix finally recovering the lost coat (and from here I'll be revealing details that might qualify as "spoilers").

The alteration that Félix's father wanted (and that the tailor, Cohen, refused to complete) was to sew a Star of David on the lapel. This alteration is revealed very effectively late in the film when Cohen's daughter, Yael, completes the alteration her father was unable to do. The scene is well done, with the viewer recognizing, along with Félix, what the father has requested.

I'm still absorbing this film, but as I've begun to write about it, I'm increasingly convinced that it's a far more subtle and emotionally effective film than I initially realized as I was leaving the theater.

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December 4, 2005

Ten Days in Gaza

Energized by the Work in Progress panel, I stuck around for the US premiere of Ten Days in Gaza, a documentary produced by Israel's Channel 2 news about Israel's recent disengagement from the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. The event is clearly a watershed moment in the history of Israel, and the documentary culls together about an hour of live footage from Channel 2's live broadcasts of the evacuations. The result is a powerful film not only about the trauma faced by Israeli soldiers and civilians alike but also about the role of the news cameras in producing these events. The film was introduced by an Israeli journalist, Aharon Barnea, who discussed the coverage of these events and the ongoing peace process.

Even though I believe that the relocation of the settlers is a positive step in the peace process, it's impossible to watch this film and not acknowledge the powerful emotions felt by soldiers and settlers alike, and several scenes feature soldiers, many of whom were no more than 18-20 years old, crying and hugging the people they were evicting. In other scenes, we see settlers (and people sympathetic with the settlers) engaging in various forms of protest, ranging from scrawled messages on the walls of the homes they were leaving to more violent and manipulative behaviors, including one father who dangles his son out of a window, implying that the Israeli government is responsible for placing his family in peril. The intensity of this compilation of live footage adds to the emotional intensity of many of these scenes.

Gradually, it becomes clear that the documentary is engaging in a form of self-critique. The anchors and reporters who narrate what is happeneing are often guilty of emphasizing conflict, whether due to political beliefs or a desire to sustain a captiavted audience. It also becomes clear that the settlers are engaging in their own staged performances, often inciting their children to complain to the soldiers in order to produce a more powerful emotional effect on the audience. Because the documentary consists entirely of Channel 2 news footage, it's impossible, of course, to see what happened off-camera, but it's clear that the settlers are often consciously stage-managing their own evacuation, at least to some degree.

The discussion afterwards served to highlight the degree to which these events are still highly contested, especially with upcoming elections both in Israel and among the Palestinians. Aharon Barnea explained afterwards, for example, that the leaders in the settlements had failed to adequately prepare the settlers for the fact that they would be evacuated and noted that many of the settlers have not come to term with their relocation. He also argued that the fact that the military finished the evacuations in only ten days showed that the majority of citizens supported it. But more than anything Barnea urged determination and sensitivity as guiding forces in moving towards peace and pointed with some optimism towards the upcoming elections, noting that "once you start talking, you can reach understandings."

In a sense, Ten Days in Gaza felt a little rushed, and for viewers without a sense of the history of Israel, the film might have been somewhat confusing and disorienting, but the film itself is utterly compelling viewing, both in terms of portraying the experiences of the settlers and in terms of illustrating the degree to which the media participated in sensationalizing these events.

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December 3, 2005

La Petite Jerusaelm

La Petite Jerusalem (IMDB) focuses on Laura (Fanny Valette), an eighteen-year old student living in Sarcelles, a low-income suburb of Paris known as Little Jerusalem. Laura lives with her mother, who moved to France from Tunisia, and her sister, Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein) and her husband, Ariel, and their three children. Laura, a serious student of the Torah and of philosophy, specifically the work of Immanuel Kant, whose emphasis on the rational and knowable dominates Laura's thinking. Laura even takes evening walks every evening at 7 PM, in imitation of the legendary stories about Kant's embrace of routine. Of course, Laura's investment in the rational and her faith in the Torah comes into question later in the film when she cautiously, haltingly embarks on an affair with an unreligious Algerian Muslim, Djamel. The cinematography captures the loneliness of these suburbs rather well, particularly in the repeated shots of the empty courtyard next to Laura's building and the overhead shots of these low-income neighborhoods.

It's difficult to watch this film, with its shots of gritty streets and concrete-block housing in suburban Paris and not think about the recent riots that have dominated the news, but the film only briefly tackles what Doug Ireland calls France's lack of any "serious effort to integrate its Muslim and black populations into the French economy and culture." It's clear, of course, that Laura and Djamel's families are struggling financially. Laura's family, for example, decides aginst her renting an apartment in the city in part because it wouldn't be affordable, but also because they worry that she will depart from the family traditions. Later in the film, Ariel is beaten in a brutal attack simply because he is Jewish, prompting Mathilde to worry that Laura should not be taking her evening walks.

As this Variety review notes, Petite also deals frankly with sexual desire as well. Mathilde, in particular, struggles with her obligations to the Torah and a satisfying sexual relationship with her husband. First-time writer-director Karin Albou handles Mathilde and Ariel's cautious exploration nicely, as the two nervously and clumsily demonstrate their passion for each other in new ways. Unlike the City Paper review, which reads the bedroom scenes as implying the director's awkwardness with this material, I think she's simply capturing the caution that these characters might feel in breaking with the only practices they've known.

While I liked La Petite Jerusalem quite a bit and would certainly recommend it, it was somewhat difficult to determine what was particularly new about the film, which sometimes seemed caught up in some of the more familiar tropes of French cinema, particuarly Laura's apparent sexual awakening. In particular, I would have welcomed a more explicit exploration of the tensions that Laura and Djamel's families face as they seek to feel fully integrated in French society. These struggles--conveyed most vividly in the stark images of the separation between the bleak suburban cités and the Parisian city center--seemed crucial to the impossibility of a relationship between Laura and Djamel, but I left wishing for a more explicit exploration of that situation.

Note: La Petite Jerusalem is playing in DC as part of the Washington Jewish Film Festival and will be playing again tomorrow evening at the Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater. If you're in DC, I'd certainly recommend catching the film. Oh, and tomorrow morning, I'll be attending Work in Progress: Scapegoat on Trial, which also looks quite interesting.

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December 2, 2005

Voices of Iraq

I've been involved in some other writing projects this week and, thus, have not had time to feed the blog. One of those writing projects involves revisiting my work on documentaries about the war in Iraq, and with that in mind I watched the 2004 documentary, Voices of Iraq (IMDB), in which a group of American producers distributed 150 digital video cameras to Iraqi citizens who then passed them throughout the country. By the time the footage was compiled, over 1,500 Iraqis had filmed aspects of their daily lives, which was then compiled into a two-hour documentary. In fact, in the end credits the director's creidt goes to the "People of Iraq."

The film was made in the summer of 2004, around the time that the first round of elections were taking place, but also at the same time that the Abu Ghraib scandal had begun to break. Despite, the negative effects of the war, we are presented with euphoric images of family dinners, jubilant (male and female) students, and and happily employed workers. All of the people who address the cameras talk readily about their newly acquired freedom to speak against the government. These stories are told in a video verite style that often places emphasis on the amateur filmmaking techniques (clumsy zooms, out of focus shots, poorly framed shots) in order to emphasize their "authenticity."

Of course things aren't so simple, as we all know by now. Documentaries such as Gunner Palace and Occupation: Dreamland, which were filmed at around the same historical moment tell a much different story, one that conveyed many of the divisions within the country that have complicated the Bush war plan. The film itself is a relatively transparent attempt to counteract many of these criticisms, with gloomy American newspaper headlines contratsed with the cheerful images that have been presented in the film, which raises some important questions about how much control the "people of Iraq" really had over the degree to which their stories were organized in the final film, as this Village Voice review points out. Because the Iraqis in the film seem to have been prompted to address a U.S. audience, it's difficult to determine whether some of the interviews might be fabricated and even more difficult to determine what footage was left on the (purely metaphorical) cutting room floor.

For these reasons alone, the film should be treated with more than a little skepticism, but it's difficult not to appreciate the upbeat images. And I'd agree with the Village Voice's Joshua Land that "It's certainly important for American leftists to consider that many Iraqis have benefited from the war that we oppose." At the same time, the film offers little historical context or explanation for the conditions in Iraq both before and after Saddam Hussein's fall. In this sense, to suggest, as Jonathan Curiel does, that Voices of Iraq conveys the situation in Iraq "in all its complexity" and "conflicting viewpoints" is misguided at best. I'll admit that it's relatively easy now to look back at something like Voices of Iraq and to fault the film for its euphoric presentation of the war (and I've done a little of that), but I'm intrigued by the effectiveness of the film's appeal, particularly through its carefully crafted ideology of authenticity.

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November 23, 2005

The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah

Chris Hansen's The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah (official website) is a mock documentary that follows Brian (Dustin Olson), a balding thirtysomething who believes that he is a messiah. Not the messiah, Brian persistently reminds the unseen documentary filmmaker (played by the director), but a regionally-selected messiah for a "100-mile radius," Brian estimates. Brian's delusions of grandeur are supported by his younger brother, Aaron, who admires his older brother, and his sister, Miriam, who recognizes Brian's problems but seeks to prevent him from harming himself. The film is structured around a brief interlude in Brian's "career" as he arranges to announce himself and his "higher purpose" to the public at his town's civic center.

The mockumentary follows Brian first as he explains why he's a messiah and later as he seeks to raise money to rent the civic center and to pay for t-shirts with a humorously garbled message designed to promote his appearance. Brian's attempts to raise money include a baptism service that he sets up at a nearby swimming hole/beach, with Brian debating with his younger brother about how much he should charge for a baptism. Later, when Brian and his siblings go door-to-door to raise money, they find themselves in the home of someone (played by Arrested Development's Tony Hale) who needs a messiah's services to drive out unwanted--and apparently invisible--guests, producing a remarkably comedic scene in which Brian is forced to confrot someone else with similar delusions.

The mockumentary format allows Brian to talk at some length about why he believes that he's a messiah (he describes "miracles" that he performs; he introduces us to his collection of Jesus figurines) and also allows Hansen to play with the conventions of the documentary (and now the mockumentary) genre, with the film recalling the Michael McKean/Christopher Guest collaborations (Best in Show, This is Spinal Tap), Tim Robbins' Bob Roberts, and most explicitly, for me at least, Chris Smith's American Movie. The film plays with documentary tropes (including the use of vocal distortion and shadows to protect a character's "anonymity," and the documentarian's occasional abuse of his poisition of knowledge with regards to his subjects. In Hansen's film, the mockumentary approach works best when staging the drama between the three siblings, particularly when Brian's sister, Miriam glances at the camera, indicting the filmmaker for his complicity in sustaining Brian's delusions. In this regard, the film's title seems especially resonant: what role are these characters serving in encouraging Brian in his delusions?

The film also reminds me, to some extent, of religious satires such as Saved, although Hansen's film is significantly less inhospitable towards people who are religious (in an interview, Hansen compares it more readily to Life of Brian). But the comedy--and the film's critique--derives primarily from Brian's capacity for believing himself to be a messiah without delivering any of the good works or displaying any of the generosity that one might expect out of him. This is best illustrated in a scene in which Brian is so caught up in his own attempts to locate his "higher purpose" that he is oblivious for several days to the fact that his sister has left home (update: these family dynamics might also recall Napoleon Dynamite, with which Hansen's film has some afinity).

The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah was only recently completed and does not yet have distribution (in fact seeing the film this early in the game seems to be one of the perks of having a film blog). The film is currently making the rounds at film festivals, and I hope it receives the much wider audience that it deserves.

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November 17, 2005

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

I caught Robert Greenwald's latest documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price last night at the DC Drinking Liberally screening in a bar near Dupont Circle, and while I praised the film's tireless promoters earlier simply for shifting the conversation about Wal-Mart, the documentary itself was surprisingly powerful. Many of the documentary's arguments may be familiar regarding Wal-Mart's harmful effects on locally-owned businesses, its poor hourly wages and benefits packages, its intense anti-union efforts, and its use of overseas labor. I'll admit that I was surprised about a few things, including the company's surprising stinginess when it comes to supporting charities. But what I found most valuable about the film was its ability to put a human face on all of Wal-Mart's harmful business practices.

The film is framed by video footage of a shareholders meeting in which Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott repeats talking points about the beneficial effects of Wal-Mart, which would include obscene profits at the expense of their underpaid employees. Scott's cheerleading is then undercut by various examples of the harmful effects of Wal-Mart. Some of the more vivid examples include a local business owner in Ohio forced to close his store after 41 years in business. In another instance, we are introduced to a Chinese woman who works in one of the factories where Wal-Mart goods are manufactured. The woman explains that even if she and her boyfriend choose not to live in the factory's dorm, they still have rent deducted from their tiny wages. Other images include an African-American woman who suspects that she was passed over for management because of her gender and race. The attention to these last two personal experiences alone makes Wal-Mart a remarkably feminist film.

But this awareness of Wal-Mart's effect on the everyday lives of its employees and members of the community doesn't stop there. To my mind, one of the major strengths of this film was its ability to capture people in their everyday lives. When we meet the family whose business has been forced to close (I forget their names), the grandmother is portrayed working in the home, ironing clothes. Another female anti-Wal-Mart activist is shown preparing dinner while she talks to the camera. A union organizer working for a Wal-Mart auto repair center is shown making calls and trying to convince others to join. The effect--to my mind--is powerful. We glimpse these employees in their homes and get a very clear sense of who they are. The fact that the women, in particular, are engaged in domestic labor when they get home form work conveys some sense of how hard they are working (note: Ty Burr liked the film for similar reasons).

But, like Andrew O'Hehir, I felt the most powerful moments are the ones in which Greenwald's camera enters the dreary factory in which we meet several workers who earn roughly 30-40 cents an hour to produce the cheap goods sold at Wal-Mart. O'Hehir compares these images to the righteous anger of Chapter 4 in Marx's Capital, and I think that's an apt comparison. As O'Hehir's comments imply, scenes like these can have the effect of shaking one's complacency as a consumer. But O'Hehir's review blurs some of Greenwald's most important critiques, particularly when he asks, "Am I really willing to buy a shirt at a price that would pay the person who made it a decent wage?" Prices matter here, of course, but Greenwald's villain is not the consumer but the concentration of wealth at the top of the corporation. And, in fact, we already pay higher prices for these goods through hidden costs such as tax breaks used to lure Wal-Marts into communities.

While the film raises some serious charges against Wal-Mart, often using some powerful emotional images, it manages to balance that with some playful humor, whether the satirical commercials used to promote the film or in one well-timed break in tension, a clip from The Daily Show. The fim itself ends on an optomistic note, featuring two local communities that fought Wal-Mart and won, often through word-of-mouth campaigns that grew from a few people in a small room in the back of a church to several hundred people marching on the streets. Although O'Hehir faults the film for making Wal-Mart the bad guy in the current stage of global capitalism, I think he underestimates the film and its audience, and his critique, in fact, produces a sense of resignation. Instead of concluding that Wal-Mart is the only villain, the film offers a recipe for thinking about power imbalance in other situations as well. Part of the power of taking on Wal-Mart, however, is that they are the most potent symbol of these abuses. And while the not-in-my-backyard politics can only achieve so much, if enough people keep Wal-Mart out of their backyards, then Wal-Mart and even its competitors will be forced to do better.

Plus, anything that makes Bill O'Reilly this upset has to be good, right?

Technorati tags: walmart, walmartmovie, greenwald, movies, documentary.

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November 16, 2005

I Am a Sex Addict (2005)

I had the good luck of seeing Caveh Zahedi's poignant autobiographical documentary, I Am a Sex Addict, (Zahedi's official site, but also check out the caveh experiment) last night at the AFI Silver Theater. Darren has already written an incredible review-essay of the film, which describes many of the aspects of the film--including the play between documentary and fiction--that I found most rewarding. It's wroth noting, of course, that Zahedi's film was screened as a part of an AFI-sponsored film series on recovery from addiction, and that Zahedi frankly treats his own recovery from sexual addiction through autobiographical narrative.

As Darren points out, I Am a Sex Addict opens with Zahedi intrioducing himself to us as Caveh, on his wedding day (note: Thomas Didymus's comment on the re-shooting of that scene complicates the play between fiction and documentary even further). Throughout the film, Caveh directly addresses the camera, often breaking from character, to make a witty aside or to comment on what we're watching. As a result, Caveh disarms the viewer, creating sympathy for him as his sexual addiction deepens over the course of the film. This addiction primarily manifests itself in a desire to have sex with prostitutes, and as Darren's review notes, Zahedi's film portrays his increasingly ineffective strategies in dealing with this addiction (these straegies are scrawled one-by-one on a chalkboard, which I thought was a nice touch). Ultimately, Zahedi's two previous marraiges and other sexual relationships are harmed by his addiction . I'm finding myself wanting to repeat many of Darren's observations, but I think he's also right that Zahedi's care in establishing the right tone for this film was essential. It would have been easy for Zahedi to make his on-screen persona unlikable, particularly during one or two scenes where Caveh describes some specific fantasies to Greg Watkins (playing himself of course), his cinematographer and close fiend. But the gradual deepening of Caveh's addiction generally makes the film work.

As Darren notes, Zahedi constantly reminds the viewer that we are watching a film. He calls attention to the fact that one scene is filmed in San Francisco rather than Paris because Paris is too expensive and later films in Paris anyway. He points out the use of hair coloring to make himself look younger during certain scenes, and most importantly, we are introduced to several "behind-the-scenes" moments including one in which an actresses playing one of his girfriends expresses discomfort with doing a sex scene. I personally found myself drawn into these behind-the-scenes moments and initially wanted more of that. But after the film, when I joined Caveh and Sujewa while Sujewa interviewed Caveh, Caveh pointed out that many audience members felt they were being taken out of the film by those scenes, that our emotional identification with Caveh's story was disrupted, and I think he's right about that. But the scene with the actress is clearly necessary in that it complicates Caveh's necessarily graphic but often comical depictions of sex. This blurring takes place in other ways, too. When describing his earlier relationships, Caveh introduces his ex-girlfriend and ex-wives using home movie footage.

It's worth noting that the post-film conversation complicates my review of the film in other ways in that I feel as if I'm participating in the blurring of the lines between the real Caveh Zahedi and his on-screen persona in I Am a Sex Addict, and I'm not quite sure how that might affect my response to his film. I'm still processing what I've seen, but the film's deeply confessional nature is compelling, and in this case, it clearly serves a valuable instructive purpose in dealing so explicitly with a topic such as sexual addiction.

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November 13, 2005

Paradise Now

In the opening scene of Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now (IMDB), Said and Khaled attempt to repair a broken-down car. Said is quieter and more serious while Khaled is more playful, but the close friends struggle to get the car running. After working on the car, Said meets Suha, the daughter of a prominent Palestinian martyr. She has come to have her car repaired, and it's clear that there is an instant attraction between Said and Suha. But soon after this initial meeting, Said and Khaled are given a much different task. They are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, and it's a testament to Abu-Assad's thoughtful approach to this material that Said and Khaled are treated not as mosnters but as conflicted individuals who struggle with the task set before them (in this regard, Paradise Now provides a nice companion piece to The War Within).

The film focuses primarily on the 24 hours before Said and Khaled are slated to go into Tel Aviv. The film shows them recording their good-byes to the families on video, and we see later a video store in Nablus that does a brisk business selling these goodbyes. We also see Said agonizing over this act, asking his best friend whether they are really going to be martyrs who will be rewarded in paradise (and, here, I think Ebert terribly underestimates the doubts that both characters have). We also see Said discuss his doubts with Suha, who is Palestinian but was born in Paris and lives in Morocco, and whose politics seem most aligned with the filmmakers. Suha condemns the suicide bombings and instead condones a response to the Occupation that emphasizes human rights.

While Desson Thomas's review places emphasis on this individual struggle and on the film's innovative use of genre, I found the film's "documentary" feel to be more compelling. As J. Hoberman notes, Paradise was filmed on location in Nablus and in Abu-Assad's hometown of Nazareth, and the traces of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians are everywhere. We see the rubble bombed out buildings, derelict spaces used to train and equip suicide bombers, and more importantly, the wall that divides the two worlds. This division is made even more apparent when Said rides through the streets of Tel Aviv, with its vacationers walking along the beach.

I wish I'd written sooner about this film, or had more time to write about it, because I think it deserves a much wider audience (to be fair it did play to a packed crowd at the Dupont Circle theater where I saw it, so hoopefully it will play for a few more days). For now, I'll point to Cynthia Fuchs' Pop Matters review.

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Jarhead

I'm behind on my movie reviews, so this week's reviews may be a bit rushed, but here goes. After finishing Anthony Swofford's thoughtful Gulf War I memoir, Jarhead, I was curious to see Sam Mendes' big screen adaptation (IMDB), starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Jamie Foxx. The film, which does convey the nervousness and frustration Swofford describes of waiting for the first Gulf War, ended up disappointing me, but I'm not quite sure I can figure out why that's the case.

I think I would have liked the film to further convey the disconnect between the Marines at war (or waiting for war) and their lives at home, both during and after the war. The section of Swofford's book that I found most compelling were those that described his conversations after the war with the men from his sniper unit. As it stands, the film only offers fleeting glimpses: the wall of shame for soldiers' cheating wives and girlfriends, a brief, awkward bar conversation with a fellow soldier desperate to be remembered as heroic. Swofford conveys the degree to which his identity is bound up with his stint in the Marines, and I'm not sure the film captures that.

More than anything here, I'm interested in challenging Stephanie Zacahrek's thesis that Jarhead is both anti-war and anti-soldier, a position that she seems to base primarily on one early scene in which we see a boot-camp instructor slam Swofford's head against a chalkboard, implying that the scene underlines the abusive treatment of soldiers (what Zacharek calls Mendes' "Miliary Bad!" approach). Such a reading ignores the more sensitive characterizations of Staff Sgt. Sykes (Foxx) who seems genuinely invested in his military career as well as in Swofford himself. In a final scene, in which many of the members of the STA unit are temporarily reuinted, it's also easy to see the comraderie and alternate family structures that the military can offer.

Jarhead is far from being anti-soldier, and Zacharek's assertion that the film contains no likable characters (or that Mendes doesn't like or care about his characters) misreads the film considerably. Whether the film is antiwar or not is another matter. I'd argue that like most post-Vietnam films, Jarhead is ambivalent. One of the final lines of the film, spoken during a stateside victory parade, "We are still in the desert," has been read as commenting on the fact that the US has been forced to return to Iraq, the line answering one soldier's earlier celebratory comment that "we will never have to come back here again." But while that comment can be read as anti-war, it can equally be read as suggesting that the government didn't let the military take out Saddam Hussein the first time.

There were a few things I liked about Jarhead: Roger Deakins' cinematography, especially during the scenes in which the sky is blackened by the oil well fires, are very effective, almost hauntingly beautiful, like a bizarre solar eclipse. Some of the musical choices, particularly the use of Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," were quite good. And the film conveys the fragmented, frustrating, desultory waiting-for-something -to-happen quite well. But in general, the film was far less interesting than I'd hoped and certainly far less interesting than Swofford's book deserved. In fact, I'm gradually becoming convinced that Sam Mendes is perhaps the most overrated Oscar-bait director working today.

Note: J. Hoberman's Village Voice review is a little more generous than mine, but unlike Hoberman, I found Jarhead far too cautious when it came to commenting on the current war. But I'm curious to get other reads on Jarhead. I still don't feel like I have a god grasp on my response to it.

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October 23, 2005

The War Within

I caught Joseph Castelo's fascinating DV feature, The War Within (IMDB), on Friday night but haven't been able to develop a satisfying interpretation of it. At the very least, the film is compelling because of its "sympathetic" treatment of someone who would normally be dismissed as a terrorist. Through this sympathetic treatment, Castelo attempts to understand how someone could be driven to this kind of violence (note that I'm treading carefully here in my use of terminology because I cannot write this review without thinking about the thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq who have been killed due to the war on terror).

War focuses on Hassan (played by co-screenwriter Ayad Akhtar), a mild-mannered engineering student wrongfully arrested in Paris under suspicion of terrorism. He is hauled off to Pakistan, where he is imprisoned, tortured, and interrogated. Notably, these shots are filmed in almost total darkness, somewhat underplaying the violence by making it difficult to see. But after one particlarly violent beating, a fellow priosner gives Hassan a weathered copy of the Qur'an, and by the time that he leaves prison, Hassan is radicalized. Some reviewers have commented that we are offered insufficent motivation for Hassan's radicalization, but these elliptical images generally worked, although they also have the effect of making Hassan's motivation purely, or at least primarily, subjective, which works against his outrage at the broader effects of the war on terror.

After his release, Hassan enters the US with plans to meet up with a terrorist cell based in suburban New York. Specifically, Hassan plans to blow up Grand Central Terminal as a suicide bomber. His plans are complicated by his decision to live with childhood friend, Sayeed (Firdous Bamji), now a successful middle-class doctor, and Sayeed's family. In particular, Hassan becomes drawn to Sayeed's sister (Nandana Sen), who has become almost completely Westernized, to the point that she dates American men, at least at the beginning of the film. Sayeed's middle-class complacency is simultaneously attractive and repulsive to Hassan, thus setting off "the war within" of the film's title (Teresa Wiltz's Washington Post review gets at these complications nicely).

I won't go into specifics about how Hassan resolves his personal dilemma, but I will say that the film uses the conventions of the thriller in an effective, thoughtful way. The film did have a tendency to rely on cliched characterizations of various positions on terrorism, and Hassan's relationship with Duri had the potential to simplify Hassan's crisis of conscience a bit too much. Worth noting: Lisa Rinzler's DV cinematography generally served the narrative well. Hassan's flashbacks to the Pakistani prison contrasted effectively with the brightly-lit suburban streets of Sayeed's affluent New Jersey neighborhood. More importantly, the footage of Hassan as he walks through Times Square, with its brightly lit symbols of global capitalism and shallow entertainment, seemed to capture his subjectivity very effectively. During many of these scenes, in which a solitary Hassan quietly wanders the streets of New York City--and later Grand Central Station itself--the faces of other pedestrians went out of focus. During these sequences, I was reminded of Don DeLillo's fascinating essay, "In the Ruins of the Future," in which DeLillo argues that the advantage of the terrorist is his ability not to see these faces ("this is his edge, that he does not see her"). I'm not sure that I agree with DeLillo anymore, and for reasons I can't describe precisely without giving away the film, I believe The War Within complicates DeLillo's arguments. The film is certainly worth seeing. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not quite sure how to respond to the film, so if anyone else has seen it, I'd love to know your response to it.

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Domino

I went to see Domino (IMDB) last night primarily out of curiosity to see what Donnie Darko writer-director Richard Kelly had done with the screenplay. And Tony Scott's hyperkinetic direction can sometimes be fun. But as I was watching, I felt like I'd seen this film at least twice before, first when it was called Natural Born Killers and later when it was called True Romance.

Kelly's script, very loosely based on the story of Domino Harvey, the daughter of actor Laurence Harvey who became a bounty hunter, had some potential, especially as a satire of the culture industry's production of celebrity. This notion of celebrity and fantasy is perhaps best explored through the COPS-style reality TV series that follows the three lead bounty hunters on their quests. The reality series is hosted by former Beverly Hills 90210 stars Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green, both playing themselves, and Tom Waits' cameo late in the film also contributes to this notion of celebrity (the real Domino Harvey, who died of a drug overdose while the film was in production also cameos). The muddled, Tarantinoesque timelines actually fit the character's somewhat addled mental state. So there are some interesting elements here, and I'll be interested to see how it fits within Kelly's future work.

However, I found Scott's direction a bit too heavy-handed, especially in the choppy editing. I barely remember a single shot lasting more than 3 seconds, and the fact that I was bored enough to start counting shot lengths gives you some indication of how exciting I found this film (I wasn't the only audience member who was bored--at least 4-5 other people actually left before the film was over).

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October 22, 2005

The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till

The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (IMDB) revisits the murder of African-American Chicago teenager Emmett Till and the travesty of a trial that acquitted Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam, who later confessed to the murder in Look magazine, of all charges. While director Keith Beauchamp relies primarily on talking-heads interviews with family members and friends of Till, inlucing his mother who passed away just before the film was completed, he also makes extensive use of news footage and photographs from the weeks immediately after the murder. At the same time, Beauchamp uses Till's story, including some powerful interview footage with Al Sharpton, to reflect on the terrible effects of the Jim Crow laws.

Certainly the most effective interveiws were those conducted with Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who graphically describes her experience of first seeing her son's body and describing the degree to which his face had been mutilated. Roger Ebert explains the power of this scene rather well. Till-Mobley also explains her decision to display her son's body in an open casket during the funeral, forcing the public to confront the racism that contributed to her son's murder. As many reviewers have noted, her decision, which must not have been an easy one, clearly contributed to a growing civil rights movement here in the United States.

While Untold Story may seem like a relatively standard historical documentary, its most important purpose is that it serves as a reminder about this part of America's past. The preservation of important voices like Mamie Till-Mobley's is an important task, especially as many of the important contributors to the Civil Rights movement and many of the poeple who remember the Jim Crow era begin to age and pass away. The film has also contributed to a renewed effort to see several of those involved in the murder and cover-up prosecuted for their crimes (the Voice review has some more information on this case and offers a useful explanation for the "choppiness" in the final third of the film).

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October 16, 2005

Good Night, and Good Luck

Good Night, and Good Luck (IMDB), George Clooney's film about the conflict between CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joeseph McCarthy opens with Murrow accepting an award from the Radio Television News Directors Association on October 25, 1958, just a few short years after the McCarthy's HUAC hearings. Gorgeously shot in black-and-white, with Murrow's figure set starkly against a black background, Murrow (David Strathairn) warns against the dangers of television becoming a tool for entertainment at the expense of its potential use for disseminating news and contributing to a vibrant public sphere (the actual text of Murrow's speech is available here. Murrow warns,

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.

It's hardly necessary to point out that Murrow's comments are meant to resonate with the current moment, but Murrow's warning is a powerful one. As Alex notes, at the very least, the film is an excellent piece of "propaganda." It's gorgeously shot and powerfully acted as well. In fact the use of stark, sometimes expressionistic black-and-white cinematography reminded me of another film about a newsman. The use of black-and-white is motivated in part by the decision to use actual footage of McCarthy rather than casting an actor to play him. We see McCarthy in his own words, his own gestures, and because he is always isolated on the screen, McCarthy seems to be part of another world, almost an alien figure. While Clooney's film is far more modest, both filmmakers are interested in the role of the media (TV, newsreels, newspapers) in constructing national identity.

The film has been criticized in some circles for not telling the full story. Stephen Hunter, of the Washington Post (I almost missed this film because of Hunter's sledgehammer review), faults Good Night for failing to acknowledge that there were Commie infiltrators in our midst, but Clooney's film never claims that there were no Communist spies in the U.S. It is, as Murrow's introductory comments imply, a film about the "watchdog" role of TV news. Oddly, Hunter also faults the film for making Murrow seem too one-dimensional, that he takes himself too seriously, rhetorically asking, "Did the guy drink, joke, pinch bottoms, get angry, root for a ball team, love his kids, read the funnies?" Hunter must have missed the bottles of scotch readily available in the office and the ever-present cigarettes that allowed Murrow to keep his cool when he realizes that his career might be in jeopardy due to his tangles with the Wisconsin Senator. Here, Alex's questions about the role of the history film are quite relevant, as are his critiques of "objective" reporting: "Reporting cannot be unbiased, and as Murrow argues in the film, not all stories can or should be balanced. The balance, instead, is in how much you are able to use the facts to tell your story."

Michael Atkinson's Village Voice review offers a much more nuanced take on the film than Hunter's, particularly when it comes to the film's media critique (see also J. Hoberman's interview with Clooney). But while Atkinson finds the scenes in the newsrrom too claustrophobic, I found these scenes to be fascinating, especially in the multiplication of screens that refract and multiply Murrow's and McCarthy's faces, with the use of rack focus often directing our attention.

It seems clear that Good Night is a powerfully relevant film, not only because of its critique of TV news journalism in the build-up to the Iraq War but also because of the attempt to recuperate McCarthy, most visibly in Ann Coulter's Treason.

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October 15, 2005

A History of Violence

I didn't intend to see David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (IMDB) until I read Girish's favorable comments about the film (I think the film was poorly marketed, but that's a rant for another day), and like him, I think it's a smart film that uses genre conventions in innovative ways to reflect on concepts such as America's myth of self-renewal and on the American Dream in general, as well as complicated questions about human identity (k-punk's treatment of genre is good here).

The film opens with a couple of criminals travelling through the heartland to avoid criminal prosecution. The more sympathetic of the two criminals, younger and more handsome commits a cold-blooded act of violence, and the film cuts to a young girl screaming in bed after a nightmare about monsters. Her father, Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), comes in to comfort her, and soon, her brother and mother (Maria Bello) join them. It could be a scene out of any domestic sitcom, down to the cliched words of comfort the family provides if not for the violent opening sequence In this regard, I think Jonathan Rosenbaum's favorable comment that almost any shot in the film could be regarded as a "cliche" is absolutely right). Later, the same criminals enter Tom's smalltown, midwestern diner, seeking to rob him and threatening the life of the diner's waitress. Tom responds with a shocking brutality, made all the more shocking by Cronenberg's paradoxically close-up but clinical treatment of his violent repsonse (note: Girish's comments on the portrayal of violence are worth reading). Because of his swift response in rescuing his employees, Tom quickly becomes a "hero," with the waitress and his chef both emphatically stating, "he saved us." Here Cronenberg subtly treats the media's role in promoting this form of heroism without overdoing it. Rather than the mobs of reporters typical of many Hollywood films, only one enterprising reporter awaits him at home to cover the story. As Girish notes, to some extent, the film's positioning of Tom as a hero makes us complicit. After all, he's the good guy.

[Note: There are probably some serious spoilers in the next few paragraphs] Tom's passive acceptance of his newfound status as hero only deepens the viewer's sense that something isn't quite right (k-punk's use of the descriptive term "uncanny" seems to fit here, and Andrew O'Hehir's description of Cronenberg's "dislocation effect" also works). Juxtaposed against Tom's newfound popularity in the community, we see images of his family life. His son is an outsider, bullied by other students. Tom and his wife work to keep their marriage exciting. During an early sex scene, Edie dresses up in a cheerleader's costume to re-create the teen years they never had together, aperformance that, as k-punk reminds us, calls attention to the fact that cheerleading itself is already a "performance." But this concept of domestic tranquility is gradually challenged. A local police officer is mystified at Tom's quick response. A mysterious car stalks the family home. Soon a tough guy named Fogerty (Ed Harris) shows up at Tom's restaurant, identifying him as a gangster from Philadelphia. Tom denies that he's the guy, but it becomes increasingly clear that he has a past life that he's trying to bury.

Primarily in Tom's attempts to bury this past, I regarded A History of Violence as critiquing the American Dream narrative of self-reinvention. As cronenberg himself notes in teh Salon interview, "It really is about America's mythology of itself rather than attempting to be a slice of life as it's lived in America now, which is quite a different thing." Once "Tom" admits that he's "Joey," the Philly gangster, Tom consistently reiterates that he "buried" Joey or that Joey is dead, but it's clear that he's unable to entirely shake this part of his past. At the same time, the film can be read, as Cronenberg ofers, as a meditation on America's ambivalence with violence (the cowboy myth that animates a certain version of foreign policy), and the film consistently places the viewer in a position of complicity with that violence, especially as Tom works to return to his wife and restore the "normal life" that has been shattered by the return of his (repressed) past.

I've already written far more about this film than I intended, which is testament to how deeply Cronenberg (and Mortesen, whom Cronenberg cites as a close collaborator) has engaged with some prominent myths about vioelnce and national identity. I think Violence is a film that will reward multiple viewings.

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October 9, 2005

War Feels Like War

The POV documentary War Feels Like War (IMDB) follows a group of independent journalists during the first few weeks of the Iraq War, with the film concluding soon after the coalition forces had taken Baghdad. Even at these very early stages, the journalists and US military have some vague premonitions of a developing resistance, powerfully illustrated by what appeared to be an anti-occupation rally in the streets of Baghdad. Like many POV docs, the film relies primarily on a verite-lite style (POV-verite?), with a fly-on-the-wall camera, no voice-over, and little explicit editorial comment, and while the film isn't overtly pedantic about the role of independent journalists, it does demonstrate the risks and challenges these journalists are willing to face in order to get a good story. At the same time, War complicates this narrative by noting the degree to which journalists (embedded or independent) can invade the privacy of Iraqi citizens, many of whom are in mourning, who never asked to be filmed.

Perhaps teh most compelling figure in the documentary was Stephanie Sinclair, an award-winning photojournalist based out of Chicago when the film was made (her affiliation has changed several times since, and according to this POV follow-up, she is now living in Beirut). Sinclair's photographs from the war are rather powerful, and the film itself is among the more powerful when it comes to showing the incredible violence of war. Several scenes depict civilian casualties, and one sequence depicts US soldiers treating a group of Iraqis rather roughly. In any case, the film is also highly effective in its portrayal of the seductiveness of covering war, the degree to which it provides many of the jouranlists with a sense of purpose, reminding me in many ways of Chris Hedges' amazing book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.

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Midnight Madness

I've been thinking about the concept of independent cinema at some length this weekend (more on that later), and with those questions in mind, I went to a midnight screening of Russ Meyer's wonderfully trashy cult classic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (BVD from now on), at the Landmark last night. I'd forgotten that 20th Century Fox produced the film, but Russ Meyer's status as an "independent" director shaped my curiosity about the film (plus I thought it'd be fun to see it on the big screen).

I'm not sure I'd be able to say anything about BVD that hasn't already been said, but as Roger Ebert, who co-wrote the film, notes, BVD is certainly a product of its era, one in which the studios were struggling financially and in which an X-rating was not necessarily seen as box office poison (as the NC-17 is often characterized today). It's fascinating also as a satire of the late '60s culture and the Hollywood conventions that had grown stale. Ebert's comments also reminded me that the film appeared relatively soon after the Sharon Tate murders. But there's also a degree to which Ebert's comments (he describes it at one point as "an essay on our generic expectations") seem motivated to clean up the film, to deny its trashy fun.

The midnight screening at the Landmark was a pretty groovy event, though, and I'd say that even if I didn't win a free copy of Oldboy (now I can finally see it). In addition to a few freebies, the guys behind Heavy Metal Parking Lot (which will soon be released on DVD) introduced the film and screened one of their short films. I also learned that the E Street Cinema (Landmark) is applying for a liquor license, which will make the art house experience that much more enjoyable.

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October 6, 2005

The Constant Gardener

Based on a John Le Carré thriller, The Constant Gardener (IMDB) begins with the murder in Kenya of Tessa Quayle, wife of a mild-mannered British bureaucrat, Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes, who always seems incapable of romance, unless it's in flashback). Like many Le Carré novels, Gardener traces the outlines of a vast conspiracy, this one involving the globalized pharmaceutical industry, with the British government presumably complicit. It's an interesting Hollywood debut for the director of City of God, and while I liked City better, both films engage with power and economic inequality in interesting ways without being overwhelmingly pedantic.

After we learn of Tessa's death, the film flashes back to Justin and Tessa's first meeting, when the reticent Justin delivers a lecture for one of his colleagues. The passionate Tessa disrupts the question and answer session, criticizing the British government for its participation in the war in Iraq. Defeated and mildly embarassed by her passion, Tessa collpases in tears, with Justin staying to console her. Without giving too much of the film away, much of the film--and our perception of Tessa--hinges on this scene. Is Tessa simply a passionate woman who falls for the gentle Justin? Or does she have ulterior motives in marrying him? Justin's faith in their relationship wavers when it's implied that she may be having an affair with an African doctor, Arnold, with whom she seems to be spending a lot of time.

I won't reveal the specifics of the conspiracy, other than to say that in places I found the conspiracy perhaps a little too narrow and too contained by the end of the film, although Le Carre's novel (and the film itself) are certainly critical of the practice of big pharmaceuticals in testing drugs they know to be dangerous, usually on the poor. While I'm not quite ready to follow Ebert's lead and say that it's one of the best films I've seen this year, it's certainly critical, almost to the point of cynicism, of the pharmaceutical industry's exploitation of poverty in Africa.

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October 2, 2005

Chain

Empty parking lots, hotel lobbies lit by skylights, shopping mall food courts, rundown and sometimes abandoned strip malls. These are the spaces inhabited and navigated by the two protagonists of Jem Cohen's sublime new film, Chain. As this Cinema Scope interview notes, Chain is dominated by establishing shots of malls, shopping centers, hotel, airports, and other homogeneous public spaces we encounter on a daily basis:

Chain is a movie in establishing shots. Except that these shots serve the opposite purpose: obscuring and disorienting— dis-establishing, if you will.

In fact, at the end of the film, we learn that Chain was filmed in eleven states and five countries, making the film a commentary on the effect of globalization on human experience. However, like the Benjamin of the Arcades Project, Cohen avoids "looking down" on the stripmalling of the planet and instead remains content to observe, to witness how people inhabit this world, how they make their way through these spaces. These two protagonists, Tamiko (Miho Nikaido), a Japanese businesswoman representing her corporation in the US, and Amanda (Mira Billotte), a runaway drifting between endless, often under-the-table McJobs. Their stories interweave and often comment on each other in surprising ways.

I mention Benjamin here in part because Cohen cites The Arcades Project in the closing credits. He also mentions Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, and more pertinent to my interests, he dedicates the film to Chris Marker (yeah, I mentioned this detail a few months ago). And the film very much reminded me of Marker's Sans Soleil (perhaps my all-time favorite film if I was ever asked such a question), both in its narrative style and its treatment of the commodifcation of public space.

Like Sans Soleil, Chain proceeds largely through voice-over narration as the two solitary characters, Tamiko and Amanda, live in these spaces. Tamiko hs come to the US to propose converting an old steel mill into an amusement park (something oddly similar has recently happened in Atlanta), and she now awaits further guidance from the corporation. Meanwhile, the runaway Amanda drifts from job to job, living in derelict spaces and eating the remainders of lunches people carelessly leave behind in a mall food court. Later in the film, she finds a video camera, which she uses to create video letters to her half-sister. Of course, Amanda knows that she probably won't send these "letters," but she continues making them. Amanda's video letters are just one of the nods to Marker's film, which is entirely constructed of letters from a filmmaker read by an unseen narrator.

I found the filming of the video letters to be one of the film's most beautiful and memorable motifs. Cast in the camera's night-vision lighting (Amanda worries about being spotted and forced to move from her hiding place), Amanda develops a ghostly presence, one that is echoed by her lack of interaction with other people she watches in the mall. Amanda's struggles to get by also recall Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed" experiment in working-class living.

I'm not sure that I'm ready to make any larger claims about the film at this point, other than to say that I know many of the film's images will haunt me for some time. Chain is an amazing achievement and deserves a much wider audience (for my DC readers, this means you should attend the screening of Chain which will take place on November 10 at the Hirshhorn Musuem).

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Zombie Business

In the same DCUFF program that featured Burn to Shine, I also caught Zombie Business, one of the funnier and smarter short films I've seen in a long time. Zombie Business, as its plot summary suggests, "is unleashed as the "invisible hand" of "voodoo economics" produces disposible people. Shot in Super 8, the film evokes the silent era, while also mixing B-movie horror, experimental cinema and political satire."

The film opens with a nod to one of Karl Marx's best lines: "The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living." From there we are introduced to a teenager reading headlines about Reagan's "voodoo economics," but the teen grows up to become a businessman who rides a train between his McMansion and a skyscraper in the city. The fleeting camera shots of advertisements for Dawn of the Dead and other 1980s zombie movies were probably unnecessary, but they do set the tone for Zombie Business's playful satire.

Of course, beyond this political satire I also enjoyed the film's wonderful use of silent film and B-movie horror conventions, including the silent film organ and the "gestural" camerawork often used in silent film, often used to communicate ideas when recording dialogue was impossible. These conventions are turned on their head late in the film when we get color footage of an anti-globalization protest (the specific protest is mentioned, but I forgot to write this information down).

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Burn to Shine

Burn to Shine is a film series produced by Fugazi's Brendan Canty and directed by film maker Christoph Green. The films feature a group of local rock bands performing one song each in a house facing imminent destruction. The second film in the series, filmed in Chicago, which happened to be playing last night at the DC Underground Film Festival, features bands including Wilco, Shellac, Tortoise, The Ponys, and many others. During the Q&A afterwards, one of the filmmakers mentioned future Burn to Shine films set for Portland, Iceland, and Louisville, so it looks like the series should thrive for some time.

Aside from the pleasure of watching several great bands perform, I really enjoyed the atmosphere set up by the film of a slice of time, conveyed in part by the changing amounts of sunlight coming through the windows, in this old, soon to be destroyed house. In voice-over at the beginning of the film, we learn a little about the history of the house and the reasons it will soon be torn down. The filmmakers made effective use of the house's colors and textures and how those spaces might tell us something about the history of that space. The Chicago film culminates in the actual destruction of the house during a gray, wet midwestern day, the yellow of the bulldozer sharply contrasting with the rest of the scene.

The Burn to Shine concept is a cool one, and I'm hoping to go back and see the first film in the series, set in DC and featuring personal faves, Ted Leo and Bob Mould (blog).

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October 1, 2005

BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire's Edge

Like Occupation: Dreamland, Stephen Marshall's BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire's Edge (IMDB) seeks to present the war in Iraq from a perspective that goes beyond what we see in the nightly news. BattleGround, which played last night at the DC Underground Film Festival and will soon be available on DVD, attempts something a bit different (I won't say "more ambitious" because all of these films are ambitious) in that it presents multiple competing narratives about the effects of the war in Iraq, particularly on the lives of Iraqi citizens.

On the one hand, we are introduced to a young man who joined the 1991 resistance and was forced to flee Iraq. As the film opens, he is returning to Iraq, where he will see his family for the first time in over a decade. In one of the most emotionally powerful scenes I can recall seeing this year, the man is reuinted with a beloved uncle, their speeding heartbeats captured by the microphone attached to the youner man's shirt. The son later reunites with his mother in a similar scene, and it becomes difficult to question their optomism about a new Iraq.

On the other hand, other interviewees tell a different story. Former Al Jazeera worker May Ying Welsh describes the toll taken on Baghdad by the bombs that hit the city during the "Shock and Awe" phase of the war. Later, Raed Jarrar, of the blog Raed in the Middle, describes the dangers of scavenging for scrap in a local "tank graveyard" due to the depleted uranium that was used to coat many of the tank-busting weapons used by the US during the war. We also hear from a well-read US soldier who explains that the war is a product of globalization and US economic interests.

Marshall's film carefully avoids consulting "experts," at least in the traditional sense of the term, and I think that's an advantage of the film. We are provided with several thoughtful, intelligent people who are trying ot make sense of the war, as the filmmakers seek to "highlight the humanity of all sides of the conflict." As the indieWire reviewer (cited on the BattleGround homepage) notes, one of teh strengths of the film is the lack of awareness of the Iraqi perspective, especially as Iraq people faced the lack of electricty and water immediately after the first phase of the war (and rationing for a long time afterwards).

Because I watched the film almost immediately after Occupation: Dreamland, I feel like I need to see BattleGround a second time before I fully understand it, but it's another example of great documentary work coming out of the war in Iraq. BattleGround 's director, Stephen Marshall, is part of the Gureilla News Network, which looks like a fantastic alternative news source for thinking about the war and other issues.

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Occupation: Dreamland

During one memorable sequence in Ian Olds and Garrett Scott's grunt's-eye documentary, Occupation: Dreamland (IMDB), one of the soldiers glances at the camera and asks if the camera crew will be going with them on the mission. The moment reminds us that the lightweight documentary camera has become a crucial participant in the ongoing production of the war in Iraq, and throughout the film, Olds and Scott's camera not only captures the soldiers in conflict but it also becomes a magnet for both soldiers and Iraqi citizens to reflect, to complain, and to air grievances. These candid comments--from both American soldiers and Iraqi civilians--gave Occupation: Dreamland a startling, raw power that I felt even more deeply as I reflected that over a year later, conditions in Iraq seem to have changed very little.

Occupation: Dreamland followed the sodliers of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division over the course of several weeks early in 2004 in Falluja, just as the city was beginning to destabilize (the New York Times review offers a helpful chronology), and we can see the relationship between soldiers and civilians deteriorating over the course of the film. In particular, the Iraqis complain bitterly about the soldiers having taken a local woman into custody. In other sequences a soldier candidly admits that he doesn't blame the locals for their response to the soldiers, noting that "I'm sure it scares the shit out of these people." Such comments are intercut with shots of street patrols and night raids, many of which were shot with infrared lighting to add to the "surreal" effect. At the same time, we get a sense of thetedium that the soldiers often confront, with one soldier confiding, "I kind of enjoy getting shot at." At least, he notes, it gets the blood pumping. Washington Post reviewer Stephen Hunter views this sense of tedium (or "boredom," as he puts it) as a weakness, but as with Gunner Palace, I find that the tedium, the lack of any clear narrative progression, actually reflects and implicitly comments on the "lousy narrative" of the war itself, to use Thomas Doherty's descriptive phrase about Vietnam films (Village Voice reviewer Joshua Land also notes that bordeom is "primary mode" of the film).

The film has inevitably drawn comparison to Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's Gunner Palace (my review), which came out several months earlier but documents a similar moment in the war. As The Nation film critic, Stuart Klawans notes, Gunner Palace comes across as the "more entertaining" film, at least to the degree that soldiers are willing to play to the camera using freestyle raps. The surreal experience of living in Uday Hussein's pleasure palace also gives the film an absurd edge. Occupation: Dreamland's soldiers tend to be more somber and subdued, and the differences in the style of the interviews make the films nice companion pieces. More crucially, Tucker's voice-over in Gunner Palace codes the film as a subjective experience, a journey of sorts, while Occupation: Dreamland eschews voice-over and a clear framing narrative. Instead, we get six weeks in the life of one squad. This lack of context frustrated Klawans, who faulted the film for being too stingy with these details. I tentatively agree with Klawans (the wartime cliche about truth being the first casualty of war faintly echoes), but the film's effectiveness, in my reading, grows out of the fact that it isn't overly pedantic.

Instead, the film allows the soldiers to offer their own critiques. Few of the soldiers defend the Bush or Rumsfeld line on the war, while others explicitly question their mission in Falluja (one soldier notes drily at one point that "we're not securing Falluja; we're securing ourselves"). In more subtle ways, the film also investigates questions of masculinity and social class as they inform the military. Many soldiers mention that they joined because they had "nothing better to do" or because they needed the money for college. In several sequences, one soldier flexes his Rambo-esque muscles in front of a mirror (and of course the camera itself), while Playboy-style pinups appear in the background in other shots in the barracks. The film doesn't work through these questions in quite enough detail, but Dreamland was even more strikingly masculine than Gunner Palace. It would be easy here to fall into Stephen Hunter's condescending "anthropological" reading of the film (he digresses for an entire paragraph on the soldiers' use of dip), and I think the film carefully avoids that kind of treatment of the soldiers.

But what makes Occupation: Dreamland an indispensible wartime doc, in my reading, is the fact that it allows the Iraqi people to speak. These scenes never cease to fascinate me, as the people who do speak clearly appeal to the camera and believe in its ability to transmit their complaints against unjust actions (whether by Saddam or by the soldiers). I didn't mean to write at such great length on this film, but it clearly affected me more deeply than I realized, and while I sometimes found the lack of context a little frustrating, Ocupation: Dreamland demonstrates why documentary filmmaking remains such an important, vibrant practice.

Note: If you're in the DC area, Occupation: dreamland is playing this week at the Warehouse Theater, not too far from the Gallery Place Metro station.

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September 30, 2005

Hamburger America

Movies about food preparation and consuption also tend to be films about enjoyment, and George Motz's Hamburger America (no IMDB listing) is no exception. That these films also often tend to be about place also seems far from coincidental. While I have in mind films such as Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman, Alfonso Arau's Like Water for Chocolate, and Juzo Itami's Tampopo, all of which celebrate the sensual pleasures of preparing and consuming good food, a certain type of enjoyment even creeps into several scenes in Morgan Spurlock's scathing critique of the fast food industry, Super Size Me. (my review), even though Spurlock seeks to deny or disable that pleasure by showing the harmful consequences of a fastfood diet on his body.

It's this pleasure in preparing and consuming food, namely hamburgers, that Hamburger America seeks to celebrate. I had a chance to watch the film last night at a screening, wisely served with a burger and a beer, here at Catholic University last night (the film's director George Motz attended CUA). In the film, Motz travels to eight burger joints scattered across the US, sampling the burgers at each location and allowing the restaurant's owners to talk about the work that goes into the preparation of their specialty and about the history of the restaurant itself, which more often than not, also represents something of a fmaily history. Motz wisely stays off camera, allowing the locals to speak for themselves rather than making himself the "star" of the documentary. In a sense, the film is "about" a certain mode of production, nostalgic for the local cuisines that sometimes disappear beneath the weight of so many franchise restaurants. This enjoyment of the local became most vivid for me during Motz's visit to the Bobcat Bite, a Santa Fe, New Meixco diner, where the specialty is a green chile burger. Because I had several friends in graduate school who were from New Mexico, I came to some understanding of just how important the green chile is to the local cuisine, and each restauarant offered some kind of similar localized pleasure (even writing this review is making me hungry).

There were a few places where the film seemed to want to defend itself "in advance" against the anti-fastfood treatises such as Super Size Me and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, with several characters reporting that they eat one of the local hamburgers every day, and those comments about the healthiness of eating hamburgers struck me as somewhat unnecessary, as I don't read either of those texts as criticizing the local burger stand at all (both Spurlock and Schlosser. Instead, they seem more critical of the fast food industry as such (in which food preparation is completely mechanized) or in the monopolization of choice (fast food restaurants that eclipse the local that we se in Motz's film).

On the whole, however, Hamburger America is an enjoyable little film (it should be playing soon on the Sundance Channel, I believe), although you probably should not watch it while you're hungry.

Posted by chuck at 1:41 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

September 27, 2005

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Just a few quick impressions of the second half of No Direction Home: First, the second half seemed to have a clearer narrative than the film's first half, focusing more explicitly on what Scorsese called "the journey of the artist." Not surprisingly, given the film's limited historical scope, No Direction Home climaxes with the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan "went electric." As I've suggested, that reflection on the individual artist as genius isn't terribly interesting to me, and I think Direction underplays the contributions of other artists to Dylan's success in order to conform to this image of the solitary artist Following His Own Path.

And yet, the images themselves were arresting. In the post-film interview with Charlie Rose (cited above), Scorsese remarks on the amazing collection of footage available to him, including the D.A. Pennebaker footage from Don't Look Back, some startling footage taken by Jonas Mekas, as well as all the concert clips. And the scenes of Dylan singing with Johnny Cash were just plain cool. More than anything else, I think that's what I enjoyed about the film.

This treatment of the artist as genius ultimately obscured some of the more interesting political aspects of the 1960s, but there were several powerful moments that seemed to resonate with the current political moment. Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" opens the film's second half and sets the tone for Scorsese's whirlwind tour of the political conflicts of the early half of the decade. Shots of Mario Savio's December 1964 speech before the Free Speech Movement Sit-In mix with shots of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and shots of Joan Baez, whose interviews I found compelling, singing at an anti-war rally. This final image couldn't help but remind me of Baez's recent performance at the Operation: Ceasefire concert, and that's how I'm seeking to link No Direction Home to the present moment.

It's tempting to read Scorsese's use of these historical images (he includes fragmentary clips from the Zapruder film as well) as a "flattening" of history, but I'm not sure that's quite fair or even the most interesting reading of the film. For now (because I should really be doing some teaching prep), I'll just say that the decision to focus on Dylan's early career now seems wise, not because it's Dylan's creative peak. It was certainly a period in which Dylan was incredibly prolific. But these "historical" images certainly haunted the narrative and gave the film a power I'm still trying to articulate (and now I really need to do some work).

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September 26, 2005

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

I want to watch the second half of Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home: Bob Dylan before making a full interpretation of it, but the documentary material Scorsese has compiled here, collecting interviews and culling from concert footage and amateur film, is pretty impressive. And until I watched this film, I'd forgotten how haunting and how powerful many of his songs actually are. Scorsese has long had a great ear for music, and that enthusiasm certainly shows in this film, which I certainly enjoyed watching, although I will acknowledge that some aspects of the film (the somewhat uncritical Dylan worship, in particular, left me feeling cold).

With that in mind, I want to reflect on some of the reviews I linked to earlier in the day. As I mentioned, David Greenberg, writing for Slate, criticizes the film for focusing almost entirely on Dylan's early career, with the effect that Dylan's later career, which features some fantastic music ("Hurricane" is a personal fave), is almost ignored. Greenberg acknowledges, of course, that what Scorsese offers is not a conventional biographical documentary, but wonders whether the film's '60s nostalgia inhibits critical thinking. It's an interesting argument, and while I share some of Greenberg's suspicions regarding nostalgia, even for the 1960s, I wonder if there isn't a way to use the film's nostalgia critically to think about the politics of cultural production.

Like Greenberg, I found myself somewhat frustrated by some of the '60s clichés used as "background" for the film. As Dylan "arrives" in Greenwich Village, we hear the eloquent John F. Kennedy calling the youth of America to national service ("Ask not what your country can do for you..."). I've heard or seen that image thousands of times, and I'm no longer sure that it can be made "new" again, but the sights and sounds that were memorable for me were the street scenes and poetry readings in Greenwich Village, as Scorsese painted a portrait of a youthful artist who was busy absorbing everything he could from Beat poetry to folk, country, and Gospel music, to James Dean and Marlon Brando movies.

In portraying Dylan as the one person capable of Putting It All Together, the film does fall into the somewhat less interesting narrative of Dylan as Genius (which isn't really news for most of us). In fact, my reading of the film should be seen as virtually antithetical to Roger Ebert's account of learning to empathize with Dylan, a reading that derives, in part, from a serious misreading of D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back, in which Ebert keys on Dylan's verbal harangue against a young journalist, ignoring the film's commentary on media and the production of celebrity. But in celebrating the artistic scene out of which Dylan emerged, No Direction Home, implicitly at the very least, does reflect on the conditions of possibility that allowed Dylan to emerge as an artist, whether a maturing teen culture, the collectivity of the Greenwich Village bohemian culture, or the institutional status of the music industry. The film also shows the role the budding Civil Rights movement had on Dylan's music when he performs "Only a Pawn in the Game," a scathing critique of institutional racism (although Dylan does resist the characterization of himself as political throughout the first half of the documentary).

I realize that by placing emphasis on Scorsese's portrayal of the 1960s that I am reading the film somewhat against its intentions (or "against the grain" to use an old phrase), but I think there is some value in rethinking Dylan's reputation as someone who absorbed the disparate pieces of a fragmented culture and translated them into something else. It's a tempting reading, though a somewhat uncomfortable one, especially given David Yaffe's more critical take, which takes the film to task for a variety of sins (no mention of the sex and drugs that went along with rock and roll; the implication that Dylan's "people" carefully sanitized Dylan's image). But, following from Yaffe's criticism of the film and other forms of recent Dylan-worship, I think it's worth asking why Dylan (again) now? What cultural need (beyond profit) is the return to Dylan answering? I'm not sure I have the answer to that question--check back with me after Part 2--but I think it's a far more interesting question than merely dismissing the film for its whitewashed take on Dylan and far more satisfying than mere empathy with the genius.

Finally, welcome to all the readers who found their way here from Michael Bérubé's blog. Judging by my statistics, a lot of you are dropping by, so I'd love to know what other people are thinking about No Direction Home.

Posted by chuck at 11:20 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

September 10, 2005

Three Movies: Funny Ha Ha, Murderball, and Lila Says

I'm way behind on my movie reviews, and it doesn't look like I'll have time to catch up anytime soon, so here are some quick comments on a few movies I've seen recently (all links to IMDB pages):

Funny Ha Ha: I had a chance to see Andrew Bujalski's thoughtful, observant film at the AFI Silver last weekend (Bujalski attended the screening and fielded questions afterwards), and this film has ceratinly stuck with me (and really deserves its own review). Funny Ha Ha focuses on the experiences of Marnie, a twenty-something recent college graduate who is doing boring temp work. She also has an unrequited crush on Alex, and the film captures Marnie's awkwardness very effectively, especially through the halting dialogue. The cinetrix's review conveys much of what I like about this film and, more importantly, makes the point that it deserves wider distribution. If you get a chance to see Funny Ha Ha, it's well worth it.

Murderball: One of the hit documentaries of 2005 has been Murderball, the story of the United States Quadreplegic Rugby team. I didn't realize until the opening credits that MTV had produced the film, and that aesthetic--for both good and ill--informs the film. U.S. Quad rugby star Mark Zupan is certainly an MTV figure, with his musical tastes and his tattoos and goatee, and the heavy music underscored the hard-hitting matches quite well, and the chair-level camerawork serves the film's subject nicely. But MTV's documentaries have always struck me as pretty shallow, usually offering imaginary solutions of emotional reconciliation to real problems, and I think that Murderball does fall into that category. Like Rachael, I'd expected a documentary that didn't conform to past feel-good sports narratives, but on that level, it felt like more of the same, especially when we see Zupan, at the end of the film, introudicng soldiers who were wounded in Iraq to the sport (that being said, to show wounded soldiers in an American documentary is still somewhat rare given our mainstream media's sanitized coverage of the war).

Rachael's aside ("Is there a women's quad rugby team?") raises another observation I had about this film: its exploration of crises in masculinity. The men on the quad rugby team brag about their ability to have sex and meet women, and the quad rugby groupies are certainly an important part of the film, just as the sport seems to be a way of re-asserting one's toughness. Perhaps more interesting was the Canadian coach, Joe Soares, a former U.S. quad rugby star who was dropped from the team. His attempts to regain a clearer sense of his own masculinity play out in his treatment of his able-bodied son, who shows no interest in sports but a talent for playing music (the viola, I believe). At the beginning of the movie, especially, Joe is clearly conflicted about his son's more stereotypically feminine interests in music. And, following the question of masculinity a little further, as Rachael's commnt implies, we don't see any female quad rugby players, although the film is careful to show (several times) a wounded female soldier showing interest in the sport.

Lila Says: French teen romance that is probably most interesting for its exploration of a relationhip between a shy Arab male and a French teenage girl. Hearing Lila repeat her inreasingly elaborate sexual narratives is also entertaining, but the film overall seemed trapped in the "I-was-never-the-same-again-after-that-summer" genre without doing anything terribly new with it.

I saw Wong Kar Wei's 2046 last night and loved it. I'll try to write a short review later, but given that the film may only be in town for a few days, I'm going to make a quick plug for seeing this beautifully shot film on a big screen.

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August 27, 2005

Junebug

Phil Morrison's contemplative Junebug (IMDB) opens with shots of Appalachian men "catapulting their voices in shivery hill country hollers." The shots have a grainy, documentary feel, and while Voice critic Laura Sinagra notes that the images set up the film's treatment of "outsider art," they also establish Junebug's reflective tone. The film's story focuses on Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz), a Chicago art dealer who specializes in "outsider art," and through her scouts, she learns of an unknown outsider artist, David Wark, whose images depict surreal slave rebellions (all the slaves have white faces) mixed with computers and other contemporary objects. Madeleine's husband George happens to be from that same postage stamp of North Carolina soil, setting up the film's homecoming narrative. Although Madeleine and George have been maried for six months, George has never introduced her to his family.

The homecoming narrative is a staple of southern literature and fim (You Can't Go Home Again is the classic reference here), and it would have been easy for the film to trade in simplified red-state-blue-state gags, but Morrison's quiet camerawork and Angus MacLachlan's script are a little too subtle for that. George's family is certainly suspcious of Madeleine, with the mom worrying that a woman as smart and pretty as Madeleine cannot be trusted. George's return is greeted by his North Carolina community as something of a hero's return. While his family regards te return with caution, the church welcomes him home eagerly, even coercing him into singing a hymn about returning home before the congregation.

Part of what I liked about the film was the way that it sets teh atmosphere. Rather than the gaudy, kitschy images of the south you sometimes see, camera shots quietly reflect on the spaces George's family inhabits. One sequence simply and silently shows static shots from every room in his parents' house. Later, George and his father meet for breakfast at a Waffle House, very much a southern staple, but rather than playing up the restaurant's bright yellow signs, a menu in the bottom of the screen suffices to establish the shot's location. These visuals support the understated dialogue between characters who are often uncomfortable with their emotions, particularly George's younger brother, Johnny, who is clearly less loved by his parents than his older sibling.

The film is quietly critical of Madeleine's enthusiasm for outsider art, which sometimes views these objects as quaint. More specifically, she is criticized for playing outsider artist David Wark's anti-Semitism against a rival bidder for his art. Wark's name, as some film buffs might note, recalls the name of David Wark Griffith, the director of the pro-Klan film, Birth of a Nation, and Madeleine's willingness to exploit Wark's art offers an interesting, if under-explored critique. In general, Junebug is careful to treat all of its characters with dignity and to recognize that basically, all of the cahacters have good intentions, but I sometimes felt that it also stayed a little too narrowly inside the Sundance/indie film formula to offer anything completely new. Of course, it does offer a brief appearance by indie rock star, Will Oldham, so that's a point in Junebug's favor.

Update: So far, the Cinetrix is the only other reviewer I've seen who has caught the reference to that infamous southern filmmaker.

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August 14, 2005

Last Days

I caught Gus Van Sant's Last Days (IMDB), Van Sant's most recent film, following after Elephant, which I liked quite a bit, and Gerry to portray characters who suffer an early death (Dennis Lim explains this comparison nicely). Last Days was "inspired" by the often banal final days of Kurt Cobain, but the film itself claims that it is not "biographical" in the narrowest sense of the term.

The film is beautifully photographed, and Michael Pitt's performance as Blake, the dying rock singer, effectively captures the mental and emotional haze of someone completely addled by drugs and by perosnal isolation. Blake's face is often hidden behind his blond hair, and he speaks in mumbles and grunts while stumbling through the commune-like house where he is crashing. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that the pople who share the house seem almost oblivious to Blake's needs. As Salon's Andrew O'Hehir notes, the film captures the self-absorption of Blake's hangers-on beautifully, especially the guy, Scott, who listens incessantly to Lou Reed's "Venus in Furs." The film also captures the tedium of those final days (several shots are virtually repeated, suggesting a lack of progression) and carefully refuses to impose a significance to certain events (Blake watches an entire "Boys II Men" video; he takes out an ad in the Yellow Pages; Mormon missionaries stop by). This decision not to seek out larger explanations, to avoid digging into Blake's psyche, gives the film its strength.

For some reason, I don't have much to say about the film. Perhaps the tight focus on Blake and his death prevents any real commentary or critical response, and I'll admit that I find that a little frustrating. It's not that I don't value the deliberate pacing or the apparent lack of focus (one critic wrongly compared watching the film unfavorably to watching paint dry--I won't reward him with a link), but I'm not sure what to do with the film's treatment of Blake's tragedy. Of course the "last days" title also has vaguely apocalyptic imagery, further emphasized by the Mormon missionaries who discuss their eschatology with Scott, but even there,I'm not sure I have a larger claim about the film. This review is a very tentative one, so I'd like to hear other reactions to Last Days, so that I can better understand my own conflicted response to what I regarded as a very well made film.

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Grizzly Man

Like Matthew Ross of Filmmaker Magazine, I really liked Werner Herzog's fascinating documentary, Grizzly Man (IMDB). Herzog's doc focuses on grizzly bear activist Timothy Treadwell, who spent 12 summers living with and "protecting" grizzly bears from poachers. Treadwell was a mini-celebrity of sorts. He once appeared on David Letterman's show and spent hours speaking to children about animal rights. The film opens with the revelation that Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were attacked and killed by a grizzly, leaving behind hours of footage of Treadwell and his relationship to the grizzlis he admired (significantly Amie rarely appeared on screen, and Treadwell often spent days alone with the bears).

Herzog is a sensitive interpreter of Treadwell's footage, mixing Treadwell's fascinating, often deeply confessional, images with interviews with Treadwell's family and friends. And Herzog wisely allows Treadwell's footage to carry the story, sometimes showing us Treadwell's own professional ambitions (he'd often do several "takes" of a shot he was preparing for his documentary) but also showing us those unexpected images that would emerge when Treadwell simply allowed the camera to run.

As Herzog notes, Treadwell's charming persona (laid-back, childlike Californian) masked a deeply haunted psyche, and we get several segments where Treadwell curse repeatedly in front of the camera, his paranoia about the threats to the bears magnified by his isolation. Herzog's interpretations of Treadwell's story--conveyed largely through voice-over--are often quite insightful, especially when it comes to Treadwell's inner demons, but Cynthia's point that Herzog may have romanticized Treadwell, seeing in him another version of the "holy fool," may be right. When Herzog compares Treadwell's relationship to the grizzlies to his own highly-conflicted relationship to actor Klaus Kinski, it seemed as if Herzog was appropriating Treadwell's story.

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August 8, 2005

The Edukators

Hans Weingartner's The Edukators (IMDB) focuses on three young activists who engage in various forms of resistance against global capitalism. The film opens during a protest at a sporting goods store, with the activists alerting customers to the sweatshop labor that went into producing the shoes. The handheld camera during this opening sequence effectively captures the urgency of their quest, but given the power of the police, media, and corporations, their actions seem offer only a temporary disruption in the flow of corporate profits. But after this opening sequence, the film narrows its focus to the three activists, Jule (Julia Jentsch), Jan (Daniel Brühl, of Godbye, Lenin), and Peter (Stipe Erceg), developing what I found to be an intellectually compelling and emotionally moving reflection on political commitments.

After this opening sequence, we learn that Jan and Peter engage in various Situationist activities, "educating" Berlin's wealthy elite by breaking into their homes and rearranging their furniture (a stereo in the refrigerator, piling chairs in the living room floor), but never stealing anything. They leave cryptic notes in the homes, stating, "Your Days of Plenty are Numbered." Jule, evicted from her apartment due to her debts incurred when she crashed into the Mercedes of a wealthy businessman, Hardenburg, moves in with Peter (her boyfriend at the time). Jule then becomes initiated into these activities with Jan while Peter is away in Barcelona (merely a convenient plot point), and Jule and Jan eventually break into Hardenburg's home to "educate" him; however, Hardenburg returns to the house while they are still there, recognizes Jule, and the three activists suddenly find themselves with no alternative but to take the businessman hostage. This set-up reminded me, as it did The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, of Michael Haneke's more chilling, Funny Games.

The "hostage" segments of the film build nicely from this earlier material. Hardenburg is patient and charming with his captors and reveals--at a strategic moment--that he had once been an activist, a leader in the German Students for a Democratic Society. This revelation sets up a dialogue between the film's four central characters, as Hardenbug warns that the young activists will eventually tire and seek the security that might even lead them to vote conservative. He even cites the classic cliche about politics and youth: "Under 30 and not liberal, no heart; over 30 and still liberal, no brain." Meanwhile, he also seeks to exploit the developing love triangle, as Jule and Jan gradually fall in love, despite their loyalty to Peter.

But unlike Jesica Winter, the Village Voice reviewer, I don't think The Edukators endorses Hardenburg's conventional, bourgeois position. Given Hardenburg's exploitation of Jule (he could have forgiven her debt after the accident), and given the film's identification with Jule, Jan, and Peter, it seems unlikely that the film would endorse his position. Winter is right to connect The Edukators to the spirit (and plot) of Truffaut's Jules and Jim, but I was also reminded of Bonnie and Clyde, Bertolucci's The Dreamers, a film I've gradually come to appreciate after some initial misgivings (A.O. Scott also emphasizes the film's '60s cinephilia, although I disagree with him sharply about the film's final shot).

The Edukators is, by no means, blind about the possibilities for political revolution. In fact, unlike Ekkehard Knörer, the Jump Cut reviewer, I read the film's narrative uncertainty as a sign of today's complicated political moment. The film is also well aware of the limits of nostalgia for the revolutions of the 1960s, and yet the film still managed to make me feel energized by the political passion of its central characters, particulalry during the final sequence in what Knörer calls the film's "Utopian moment."

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August 7, 2005

Broken Flowers

Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers (IMDB) is, on one level, a road movie. The film opens with Don Johnston sitting on the sofa as his current girl friend, Sherry (Julie Delpy), breaks up with him. Don, who has made a fortune in home computers but doesn't own one, barely seems to respond. After Sherry leaves, Don receives an unsigned letter from an ex-girl friend telling him that he has a 19-year-old son who may be looking for him. Don's first impulse is to ignore the letter, but his Ethiopian neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), who is fascinated by the letter, tracks down all five of Don's lovers from that year and plans an itinerary for him. The film's plot consists primarily of Don visting unannounced the four women who may be the mother of his son.

Even when he is traveling, Don seems utterly passive and unresponsive. We see him sitting in an airport waiting for a flight or sitting quietly in an airplane between two other sleeping passengers. This idleness wouldn't work without Bill Murray's quiet charm, which surfaces several times during the film, particularly when he chats with a young woman florist. Don's idleness is set in contrast with the highly active Winston, who works three jobs to support five children, and still manages to play amateur detective by Googling Don's old lovers and planning his journey. Winston even plans the detective work. Bring pink flowers to all four women and see how they respond. Look out for a typewriter.

As Filmbrain notes, this type of set-up could easily lead to a fairly shallow "man-in-midlife-crisis" film, but Jarmusch records conversation, the awkward pauses and uncomfortable moments of human interaction, as well as any contemporary American filmmaker. And Jarmusch also provides the four women Don visits with distinct personalities, a feature that is only magnified by the four solid performances of the actresses (Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, and Tilda Swinton).

Significantly, each of the four women have distinctly different lives. Stone plays the widow of a NASCAR driver who died in a crash, and we see her personality reflected, to some extent, in her teenage daughter, Lolita. Conroy plays a former hippie turned real estate agent who, with her husband, sells pre-fab homes. The couple lives in a model home, and their perfectly arranged dinner table looks as if it could have been removed from the set of American Beauty. Lange plays an "animal communicator," someone who mediates between pets and their owners, claiming to hear what the pets are saying. Finally, Swinton plays a backwoods motorcycle enthusiast. It's tempting to read into these scenes images of the possible lives that Don could have led, but I don't think that's quite what the film is doing (although I think the class affiliations of all four women are significant).

Instead, I think the film taps into some profound uestions about identity and about one's relationship to the past. During these brief reunions, we do see some sense of conection with each of the four women, but the scenes convey that Don's personal journey deeply disrupts the lives of the four women, and particularly in the scenes with Swinton, Lange, and Conroy, the film seems explicitly critical of Don's behavior.

It's also significant that Broken Flowers leaves many things unresolved. There is a scene near the end of the film in which Don believes that he is meeting his son, and he gradually attempts to connect with the young man who is on a road trip of his own. Broken Flowers is a gem of a film, one that explores aging and regret in a fairly powerful way.

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August 5, 2005

Screen Door Jesus

I had a chance to watch a preview copy of Kirk Davis's ambitious indie film, Screen Door Jesus (IMDB), last night. Screen Door Jesus, based on the short stories by Christopher Cook (which I have not had a chance to read), elegantly weaves together several narratives set in the small east Texas town of Bethlehem, reflecting on race, class, and politics, particularly as they are inflected by religious belief and practice.

Screen Door Jesus's central plot focuses on Mother Harper's startling discovery that she can see the image of Jesus in her screen door. News of Mother Harper's door immediately spreads across the small town and everyone, from drifters with a get-rich-quick oil scheme to the new kid in town, gather to see what the fuss is about. Several locals even find a way to profit off of the fascination with the door, with one character justifying his actions by claiming that he's selling pictures of a screen door, not of Jesus. But even if I haven't read Cook's stories, I knew similar stories, and not only because I was in Atlanta when the "Spaghetti Jesus" appeared on a Pizza Hut billboard in 1991. When I was an undergrad at a small religious college, a videotape of the Campus Choir's trip to Eastern Europe, in the years immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, apparently depicted an image of Jesus in the background during a healing service. Needless to say, the tape created quite a buzz on campus, which was, of course, far more interesting than anything in the tape itself.

It would be easy to view these locals who want, or in some cases need, to see Jesus through the lens of satire (that's not to say the film isn't funny, but to say I rarely found the humor to be mean-spirited). Instead Davis's film (and I'd assume Cook's stories) complicate that need to witness a small miracle in thir littlke community, in part through its satire of the media frenzy that converges upon Mother Harper's lawn, trampling her gladiolas and mocking the gullible locals. And one of the major strengths of the film is the degree to which it conveys the reasons that many of the characters in the film are invested in their religious beliefs, while also conveying the reasons that others have reason to doubt or dismiss this apparition. These plots include a teenage boy who questions his faith because his mother is dying of a potentially treatable bacterial infection, but his grandmother refuses to allow the mom to be taken to the hospital. A bank officer feels remorse after refusing a loan request from an African-American who had attended his church. Two security guards are pressed into the duty of guarding a splinter church convention with some beliefs that go against standard Baptist teaching. Meanwhile, a couple of locals plot to blackmail the corrupt mayor by snapping photos of him with the town party girl in a local hotel.

These stories often coment on each other, particularly when it comes to the sometimes uneasy mixture of race, religion, and politics in the south. Screen Door frequently crosscuts between the town's two most prominent churches, a predominantly African-American Pentecostal church and the primarily white Baptist church. In the Pentecostal church, parishoners fan themselves because of a lcak of air conditioning while the Baptists clearly have financial and political power in Bethlehem. The rhythms of these services are conveyed very effectively, especially the cinematography during the baptism scenes and the rapid-fire delivery of the Pentecostal preacher.

Screen Door Jesus is Kirk Davis's first feature as a director, and while I was occasionally frustrated with the film's pacing (the shifts between narratives were sometimes unnecessarily jarring), Davis, who is from Memphis and "preached his first sermon at 10, read Nietzsche and drank his first bottle of Jack Daniels at 18, and studied Faulkner at 20," demonstrated an impressive eye and ear for religious life in the south.

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August 3, 2005

Shijie (The World)

I caught Jia Zhangke's 2004 film, Shijie (IMDB) over the weekend, but haven't been able to find a satisfying way to approach my review of the film. Shijie (English title, The World) takes place in a Beijing amusement park called "The World," where replicas of the Eiffel Tower stand next to a miniature Leaning Tower of Pisa. A short monorail ride will deliver you to the Pyramids of Egypt and a small-scale version of Manhattan, with one park employee sardonically commenting that "we still have our twin towers" (the World Socialist Website has a good read of this "façade of cosmopolitanism").

Employees of the park perform dances from some of the countries represented in the park's attractions, inviting readings that interpret the film as a commentry on China's engagement with globalization. Roger Ebert offers one variation of this reading, noting that "The World has been made in China by Jia Zhangke, a director who has been in much trouble with the authorities -- not because he embraces the West, but because he mocks modern China for trying to become Western in such haste. He doesn't yearn for the days of Chairman Mao, but he doesn't find the emerging China much of an improvement; the nation seems trapped between two sterilities." Ebert's read is a compelling one. The film clearly finds some humor in the park's shabby simulacra, partciularly when it shows tourists posing for photographs in front of the Leaning Tower as if they are holding it up, but it's not nostalgic for an idealized past before globalization.

The film focuses primarily on Tao, a dancer, and Taisheng, who also works at the park, but opens broadly on their network of co-workers who have come to Beijing to improve their lives. The shiny surfaces and elaborate costumes of the park are visually contrasted with the rundown apartments where the employees live (a point also raised by Ebert and the World Socialist Website). We also see Russian workers who are imported to work in the park, with their "manager" demanding to hold their passports. These "labor issues" are also explored through Tao's younger brother, called "Little Sister," who takes a job as a construction worker.

But my most vivid memory of the film is its "slowness." The World is dominated by long takes and often portrays characters in the act of thinking or reflecting. And while I'll admit that I found this slowness frustrating, it's the kind of film that I'm convinced would reward repeat viewings.

Update: Here's an interview with The World director, Jia Zhang-ke, who discusses, among other topics, some of the institutional and industrial pressures of making a film in China.

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August 1, 2005

Wedding Crashers

Stephanie Zacharek owes me $9.75 plus $2.70 Metrofare. I went to see Wedding Crashers (IMDB) for two reasons. First, I've really been worried about the big Hollywood studios lately. I figured that maybe I should buy a pity ticket, just to keep things going. I'm always happy to help. Second, reviews like Zacharek's led me to believe that the latest Owen Wilson-Vince Vaughan collaboration would be at least a slight departure from Hollywood's formula comedy factory.

Zacharek praises Wedding Crashers as "that rare contemporary mainstream comedy that seems to have been made without parental supervision." In other words, I was prepared for a film that didn't moralize about its characters' rock-and-roll wedding-crashing lifestyle. But after a relatively brief, and mildly funny, wedding-crash montage, the film quickly shifts into the narrative expectation that these guys need to grow up.

To be fair, it's not entirely Zacharek's fault. Debra Dickerson, also of Salon (did they get a kickback from New Line?) celebrated the film for its willingness to be a litte raunchy: "'Crashers,' at least in the beginning, wasn't about love. It was about making multi-orgasmic lemonade on love's fringes until it was your turn to star in a wedding." She later criticized the film because the entire opening montage, set to the Isley Brothers' "Shout" (which I thought was a weak touch, anyway), showed Wilson and Vaughan at dozens of weddings, none of which featured African-American characters, though other ethnicities were represented (a fair criticism, Dickerson's argument is well worth a read). Dickerson's reading of this montage as "a celebration of sex, carnality and the feminine ideal" and "the lion-tamer aspect of being a straight chick" wsn't teribly apparent, either, although I'll acknowldege that Isla Fisher's performance as Claire (the clingy woman from the ubiquitous previews and commercials) was entertaining.

Ultimately, what bothers me about the hype for Wedding Crashers is that the film has been described as risky or edgy simply because it received an R rating and shows Vaughan and Wilson shagging lots of women at weddings where they weren't invited. Now, to be fair, I didn't really expect the film to endorse their behavior, nor would I want that, but Wedding Crashers seemed to feel somewhat guilty about its premise, jumping way too quickly into its efforts to redeem Wilson and Vaughan. This is particularly evident when Will Ferrell, who continues to strke me as remarkably unfunny, cameos as Vaughan's mentor, a legendary wedding crasher who is now in his 40s, living at home with his mom, and has now taken to crashing funerals. Basically, Ferrell serves to remind us that when wedding crashers reach a certain age, their behavior is no longer charming, but grating and embarrassing instead.

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July 25, 2005

White Noise (2005)

"Nobody knows whether our personalities pass on to another existence or sphere, but if we can evolve an instrument so delicate to be manipulated by our personality as it survives in the next life such an instrument ought to record something." Thomas Edison 1928

White Noise (IMDB), a January 2005 horror film that has no connection to Don DeLillo's novel of the same name, was almost universally reviled when it was released to theaters, and yes, the film is poorly executed, particularly when it comes to the ease with which the main character, Jonathan (Michael Keaton), accepts the film's supernatural premise that we can communicate with the dead through contemporary information technologies (as Cynthia Fuchs notes, the film fails to offer any characters who really question the supposedly scientific premise). Or when it comes to a mildly incoherent final act in which much of the film's violence is grounded in a rather trivial source. It's basically Ghost meets The Ring, but without the pathos of the former and the professional sheen and even the limited pop philosophy of the latter.

But White Noise is interesting, at least in its treatment of haunted media technologies. White Noise opens with a Thomas Edison quotation, fantasizing about the potential for communicating with the dead intercut with television static. In the film's opening scenes, we learn that Jonathan's wife, Anna, is pregnant, which pretty much seals her fate as a character. Jonathan, distraught at his wife's death, eventually meets Raymond, an expert in Electronic Voice Phenomenon, in which the dead communicate with us via our TVs, computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices (Jeffery Sconce's discussion of Haunted Media seems relevant here). Eventually, Jonathan meets others who share his belief in EVP, and there are some potentially interesting time shifts when Jonathan gets messages from characters who won't die for several hours or days (recalling Rene Clair's whimsical newspaper yarn, It Happened Tommorow), but the film shows little self-awareness in unpacking the high concept it introduces.

Still, it's worth asking why this film appears at this particular historical moment. There is an implied post-9/11 subtext: Jonathan's inability to prevent the deaths foreseen by Anna seems to be trying to communicate the impossibility of preventing all meaningless death, a point hammered home by Jonathan who notes that Anna only warns him of deaths that he could potentially prevent ("she didn't warn me about some explosion overseas"). But I'm also intrigued by the film's idea that our communications technologies provide us with some sort of link to the dead. The film's fascination with alienating urban spaces and the flat screens of TVs and computer monitors conveys this desire for spiritual (or emotional) connection rather effectively. These shots, which often show Johnathan simply staring at staic, his face reflected in the dead screen, are the most effective moments in the film, with Fuchs noting that these scenes potentially implicate the viewer of the film:

To indicate John's simultaneous loss of self and slide into self, the film has him literally scritch off the screen, transformed into the very static he can't not watch. It's a striking effect, and gestures toward critiquing the culture that invests in such reflective abstraction and emptiness. Indeed, it almost indicts your desire to see something in nothing.

And, of course, as in many recent horror films, the family subtext (the dead, pregnant wife; Jonathn's rescue of a small child; a daughter's ability to hear from her mother who died in childbirth) virtually overwhelms the film. Unfortunately, White Noise never really follows any of these leads with any degree of interest, which makes it a mediocre horror film, if mildly intriguing in its treatment of our fears about communications technologies.

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July 23, 2005

Hustle & Flow

Craig Brewer's Hustle & Flow (IMDB) tells the story of DJay (played by Crash's Terrence Howard, who will likely score a few acting awards), a small-time Memphis pimp and drug dealer who dreams of becoming a successful hip-hop artist. He's learned from a local bar (Isaac Hayes) owner that local hip-hop legend, Skinny Black (Ludacris), will be in town to hang with his old friends and that DJay's drug connections might come in handy. DJay sees this as his ticket to the top. Slide Skinny Black a demo tape after sharing some weed, and he'll have his ticket out of the ghetto. Add in the mandatory recording sessions, and you've got a Showgirls for crunk. A Rocky for the Dirty South. A. O. Scott sees in this use of genre conventions elements that are "both naïve and cynical," and that mixture might be what colors my own ambivalent response to ths film.

I still haven't decided whether or not I like Brewer's film, which won the Audience Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Amy Vincent's washed out cinematography gives Hustle & Flow's Memphis a shabby, run-down quality that beautifully captures the lost souls who inhabit the film. The film also complicates many of cliches of the "star is born" genre. It's no surprise, of course, that the hiphop star Skinny Black turns out to be a shallow party animal who has Forgotten His Roots, the hardscrabble Memphis streets that gave his music soul. But the film does make DJay a more complicated character. While he waxes poetic about our human awareness of our mortality in a potentially powerful opening scene with one of his prostitutes, Nola (Taryn Manning), he is occasionaly abusive towards the prostitutes who work for him and seems oblivious about the difficulty of their work.

The film also does little to contest the misogyny of some aspects of hiphop culture (Laura Sinagra of the Village Voice also notes the demeaning portraits of all of the film's female characters, including the shrill church-going wife of DJay's demo producer, though, to be fair Armond White offers an alternative, class-inflected reading of DJay's relationships with the women who work for him). DJay's first recording is "Whoop that Trick," with all of DJay's friends chanting the catchy hook. While some of DJay's friends gently push him for something more "radio-friendly," the humor of characters such as the white church musician, Shelby (DJ Qualls), singing the hook undermines any real critique. In addition, because these lyrics come from the heart, the pain of the south, as Shelby attests, they are "authentic" and presumably beyond critique.

But Hustle & Flow did hook me with some aspects of its rags to riches fantasy narrative. Terrence Howard's performance was riveting, and the film's implied criticsm of the power politics of the music industry was fairly effective, especially when Skinny Black shows complete disregard for his musical roots. This critique is also evident in the film's final shot, which features DJay walking directly towards the camera repeating his mantra, "Everyone's gotta have a dream." Even with these solid moments, unlike Roger Ebert (an intelligent pimp with a heart of gold--haven't seen that in a Hollywood film before), I don't think the film quite moved beyond the limitations of its genre.

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July 18, 2005

Derrida

I finally caught Derrida (IMDB) on DVD and found the film to be a compelling take on one of the 20th century's most important philosophers. As one might expect, Derrida proves to be a recalcitrant subject, unwilling to disclose too much personal information and more interested in reflecting on the documentary process itself, at one point noting that the situation is "completely artificial," in its attempt to achieve some new understanding about the subject.

Because Derrida has frequently been mischaracterized as too obscure or even "meaningless," the filmmakers are careful to portray him as accessible and personable, and teh film works against Derrida's resistance to revealing the personal by cross-cutting between Derrida in public as a "star" and Derrida at home (an early sequence shows him searching for his house keys). Interspersed with interviews with Derrida, his wife, and other family members, who can offer no familial explanation for Derrida's intellect, are quotations from some of Derrida's key texts.

Not surprisingly, the film places emphasis on Derrida's discussion of the temporality of the archive in Archive Fever. At the same time, the filmmakers themselves, in collaboration with Derrida, raise some valuable questions about the documentary process itself, an aim that becomes clearer in the directors' commentary track (I've only listened to about twenty minutes, but so far it's among the strongest commentary tracks I've heard).

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July 17, 2005

Urban Ensembles, or How to Cultivate Community in the Age of Terror

2005 is starting to look the year of the Urban Ensemble movie. The two most prominent films in this cycle are Paul Haggis's Crash and Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know. Haggis's Los Angeles film was, in my opinion, terribly reductive in its treatment of race relations, to the point that some unexpected weather was the only means of resolving the city's tensions. July's film, set in another, less-polarized corner of Los Angeles, offered what I regarded as a more convincing treatment of individuals desperately longing for community. More recently, two other Urban Ensemble films have been released, and both films seem caught up in the genre's more significant pitfalls, specifically the overly contrived or schematic plots that rely too heavily on coincidence.

Don Roos's Happy Endings (IMDB) focuses on a group of loosely-connected Angelinos who are confronting a variety of sexual problems. Lisa Kudrow's Mamie plays an abortion counselor in her early 40s. As a teen she became pregnant after having sex with her step-brother, Charley (Steve Coogan), who is now gay and partnered with Gil. Charley and Gil become suspicious that their best friends, a lesbian couple, may have been artificially inseminated with Gil's sperm. We learn early in the film that Mamie, who claims to have had an abortion, actually gave birth, putting the child up for adoption. All of these stories interweave with Maggie Gyllenhaal's Jude seducing the gay drummer of a rock band (Jason Ritter), in order to meet and seduce his father (played by Tom Arnold, in the film's most explicit stunt casting), presumably to cash in on the family's wealth.

While I enjoyed Roos's playful storytelling style in The Opposite of Sex, the film's constant attempts to wink to the audience, uisng split-screen images accompanied by white titles on a black background, were ultimately grating. Unlike Manohla Dargis, whose review is almost entirely to blame for my spending $9.50 (plus Metro fare) to see this film, I was somewhat unsatisfied with the film's navigation of the question of community these films often address. Dargis argues that "Mr. Roos doesn't pretend that a collection of spiky, selfish, self-serving individuals, even a group as white and comfortably situated as the one he has concocted, necessarily makes a community. In a lot of ensemble films, the moral of the story is that everyone is lonely, but at the end of the day and those empty nights, no one is alone. Mr. Roos doesn't peddle such off-the-rack comfort." However, the film's final scene, at a wedding between two characters I won't identify and even with the ironic use of a Billy Joel song, retains this deep-seated desire for community. Roos has made a well-crafted film, one that does navigate sexual politics in a thoughtful way, but Happy Endings retains many of the qualities of the Urban Ensemble.

Another recent urban ensemble, Heights (IMDB), focuses on the experiences of five New Yorkers over the course of 24 hours. Like Happy Endings, the film focuses on characters whose stories are related in various ways, their interactions often produced via chance or coincidence, though by the end of the film, a kind of tentative community is produced. I found Heights to be generally unmemorable, outside of Elizabeth Banks' performance, and the film never strays far from the opening sequence monologue by Diana (Glen Close), a stage performer who is directing Macbeth, in which she urges her actors to get in touch with their passions. But the coincidence of watching these films on the same weekend has left me contemplating the recent emergence of this cycle of films. It certainly seems connected to the desire for safety and community after September 11, but there also seems to be something else going on. The films are, of course, set in global cities, centers of culture and commerce most explicitly associated with urban isolation, an experience that is explicitly underlined in Heights. I'm inclined to think there's something significant about the form of the films, about the narrative complexity of juggling multiple characters and storylines (perhaps Steven Johnson's comments about audience sophistication are relevant here), something that Happy Endings sends up in its playful use of titles (some reviewers felt these titles were condescending, but I read them as parody). I don't have any final interpretations here, but I am curious about the cultural work that these Urban Ensemble films are supposed to be doing.

Update: This is several months after the fact, but I came across an interesting blog post by Amy H. Konig on ensemble films and didn't want to lose the link.

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July 15, 2005

Soldiers Pay

Tricia Regan, David O. Russell and Juan Carlos Zaldivar's Soldiers Pay (IMDB) was originally scheduled to be included as an extra on a DVD re-release of Russell's Three Kings; however, because Russell had been critical of the Bush administration, Warner Brothers chose not to release the film, citing "production issues." The documentray has since found its way to the public via an election-eve screening on IFC and is now available on DVD. The documentary itself, filmed on an extremely low budget, consists almost entirely of talking-heads interviews with Gulf War veterans, psychologists specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder, and some Iraqi civilians (including participants in Russell's Three Kings).

After watching the doc, I'm not sure that it adds anything particularly new to the dicussion of the war. As the Philadelphia City Paper critic notes, Russell makes a "crude" attempt at balance by including Iraqi civilians who dealt with Saddam Hussein's brutal leadership. The documentary also spends too much time following a story that closely parallels the narrative of Three Kings, about a group of soldiers who found several million dollars in a house. Had this narrative been folded more effectively into a critique of the treatment of the soldiers, the documentary might have been stronger.

Despite these flaws, the documentary raises some interesting questions about representations of the war in Iraq and its aftermath. As I was watching this doc, I couldn't help but think about Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace, and the degree to which both films are careful to cultivate a rhetoric of authenticity in representing the experiences of the soldiers. It's probably nothing new that both war films and documentaries return to the question about the impossibility of true representation, but the degree to which these documentaries insist on that impossibility seems significant. In fact, I'm inclined to think that the war film and the documentary are two of the cinematic genres most concerned with authentic representations, and that it's worth asking how these genres seek to establish their authenticity (and how that authenticity is defined).

I'm in the process of writing a paper on Gunner Palace, so I'll likely be talking about these issues frequently over the next few days, and one of the questions I'd like to consider is the degree to which both Gunner Palace and Soldiers Pay are indebted to or informed by previous generations of war films (Vietnam, World War II), but also by other media. Specifically, I've been thinking about Thomas Doherty's discussion of Vietnam as the first "living-room war" in Projections of War, the ways in which TV (or at least represenations of TV) so heavily informed representations of Vietnam and the first Gulf War. In this context, I'd also like to think about the ways in which films about the current war in Iraq might be framed by discourse associated with the Web, including (discussions of) blogs maintained by Iraqi citizens as well as by American soldiers. This idea is still developing, but I think the language of authenticity, usually rooted in personal experience or first-person narrative, is remarkably similar in both the documentaries and the blog narratives about the war and its aftermath.

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July 10, 2005

Mysterious Skin

I've never really been a big fan of the work of filmmaker Greg Araki. Like A. O. Scott, I felt that many of his films sought to shock viewers without offering anything larger. In retrospect, part of my distatse for Araki's films may have derived from viewing them on poor quality VHS, but that's another story, but in part because of Christopher Sharrett's discussion of Araki, I believe in the essay, "The Horror Film in Neoconservative Culture," I'd been wanting re-evaluate my take on Araki's films, and Mysterious Skin (IMDB), speifically with its celebration of community and alternatives to the nuclear family, ultimately deeply impressed me.

The film is based on Scott Heim's novel and couses on the experiences of two 8-year-old boys on a Kansas Little League baseball team. The film's opening shot, of the 8-year old Neil, brightly lit, with Froot Loops raining down on him appears to be a playful image of childhood innocence, is re-interpreted when we realize that the cereal shower is the means by which Neil's "All-American" coach seduces his "star player," before molesting him sexually throughout the summer (titles mark the date as 1981). Because Neil's father has left, he relishes the attention from this father figure. As many critics have noted, Araki's staging of these scenes is very effective, often isolating the young boy to emphasize his emotional response to what's happening.

Neil's teammate, Brian, has a much different trajectory, as he relates in voice-over that several hours of that summer were erased from his memory, and that he'd been working to figure out what happened during those lost hours, when he woke up in his parents' cellar with his nose bleeding, ever since. Araki's film elegantly cross-cuts between the two characters as they grow into adults, with Neil growing to become a male hustler, first in his Kansas hometown and later in New York, where he lives with a childhood friend. Neil's cool exterior clearly masks the pain associated with the molestation. Brian, meanwhile appears nerdy, and as one character describes him, "oddly asexual." Desperate to learn what happened, Brian logs his dreams in a journal and eventually becomes obsessed with the idea that he may have been abducted by aliens after watching a TV show called World of Mystery, featuring a disabled girl from a nearby town. Although it's clear to the audience that Brian was also molested by the coach, Araki reveals this information visually on gradually, allowing Brian's memories to unfold slowly, as he remembers the presence of one of his Little League teammates, who turns out to be Neil, and then later as the alien hands that caressed his face become human. The film culminates in a Christmas Eve reunion between Brian and Neil, when they are around 19 years old, and without being too specific they acheieve a sense of community through their shared need for discovery and understanding about this traumatic moment from their past.

What I liked most about the film was its celebration of community. Neil is supported by fellow teenagers, Wendy and Eric, who care about Neil despite his emotional distance. Eric later "adopts" the lonely Brian when he begins looking for Neil to find answers to his questions about his lost past. The film also has several amazing sequences, including the Froot Loops scene, but also a compelling sequence in which Neil encounters a dying AIDS victim who asks him only to rub his back, making explicit Wendy's reminders of the dangers of hustling. Mysterious Skin, in general, handles these emotional complexities very well, explicitly criticizing child abuse and some of the dehumanizing ways in which lost souls like Neil are treated, while clearly relishing the ways in which new communities can be created.

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July 7, 2005

The Dreams of Sparrows

First-time Iraqi director Hayder Mousa Daffar's documentary, The Dreams of Sparrows (IMDB),purports to "tell the truth about Iraq." Daffar collaborates with other members of the Iraqi artistic community, including filmmakers and cinematographers who were unable to make films under the regime of Saddam Hussein. At first, I worried that the film was going to be an uncritical look at the coalition's removal of Hussein from power. One of Daffar's collaborators proudly displays a newspaper photograph of George Bush that he keeps in his wallet. But Daffar, shooting primarily in low-budget digital video, quickly complicates this narrative. In addition, because Daffar generally speaks in English when addressing the viewer, it seems clear that his primary audience is outside Iraq, another point of interest for the film.

Travelling with a small film crew, Daffar visits several sections of Iraq, including Fallujah, during the eraly moments of the insurgency, and it quickly becomes clear that there are no easy answers in Iraq. This claim in itself, of course, isn't terribly surprising or new (although I'll admit that I find these politically ambivalent documentaries to be rather compelling). Many Iraqis quickly acknowledge that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous and cruel leader, but others miss the relative stability that his regime provided, including consistent access to electricity and gasoline (Daffar places emphasis on the gas shortages that severely affected Baghdad). Others are suspicious about the reasons behind the US-led invasion. And Daffar generally avoids any explicit claims about Iraq. But what makes the film (available on DVD) more interesting is its position as one of the first Iraqi productions after the fall of Hussein. And the low-budget aesthetic adds to the film's sense of crisis in Iraq.

It has been a few days since I watched Sparrows so this review is a little short on specifics, but it is an interesting take on the US invasion of Iraq that seems specifically aimed at US audiences.

Update: Via Green Cine, the news that the film's producers are calling for people to organize house parties to gain a wider audience for the film.

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June 22, 2005

The Education of Shelby Knox

The Education of Shelby Knox (IMDB) functions in part as a coming-of-age story, relating the experiences of a Lubbock, Texas, high school student and Southern Baptist who follows her conscience in advocating comprehensive sex education in the city's public high schools despite widespread opposition from her community. And while the documentary sometimes veered into tourist mode, gawking at the locals, the film powerfully conveyed Knox's attempts to reconcile her Christian beliefs with her growing political commitments.

The film begins with a brief overview of life in Lubbock, including the jarring information that 1 in 14 Lubbock teen girls become pregnant every year. The official policy of the city's schools is to promote abstinence-only sex education. We are then introduced the Shelby, who at fifteen, takes a pledge to remain a virgin until marriage at a ceremony in her church. But gradually, Shebly begins to recognize the need for a more thorough sex eductaion program. She becomes involved in a city-supported youth organization where she uses the platform to promote her point of view. She goes to Planned Parenthood and participates in their sex ed program. Through the course of the film, Shelby speaks before the city council, debates her pastor, and eventually, we learn in the epilogue, chooses to pursue a career in politics.

Watching Shelby become a more powerful advocate for sex ed was pretty impressive. Given her community's social and political conservatism (her mom comments at one point that if there any Democrats in Lubbock, she doesn't know any of them), it would have been easy to accept the status quo or to write off any possibility of changing people's minds. I did find myself frustrated by the film's sometimes uncomplicated representation of the pro-abstinence position because the representative for that position, a local pastor who teaches that "true love waits," often spoke in cliches ("God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve") or in condemnation (at one point he proudly proclaims that "Christianity is an intolerant religion"), but Shelby's conversations with the pastor illustrate the degree to which she eventually distances herself from him.

However, I was also completely fascinated by the film's representation of Shelby's family, especially to the degree that it complicated stereotypical images of a Baptist family. It's made clear from the beginning of the film that her father is a conservative Republican, and Shelby's mom generally shares those beliefs. But, even when Shelby's campaigns are met with community disapproval, her parents are remarkably supportive, with her father acknowledging by the end of the film that comprehensive sex ed is important and her mother (somewhat ambivalently) marching in solidarity with a gay-straight alliance group that is trying to become an official, school-sanctioned club.

The storytelling in this documentary is first-rate, but what really made the film work for me was the character of Shelby Knox. I mentioned before that I was interested in the subject matter because I attended a fundamentalist church when I was a teenager, and like Shelby, I found myself struggling with many of these issues, and the film captures that experience very well (speaking of teenage fundamentalism, I'm still planning to write about Brian Flemming's doc, The God Who Wasn't There, at some point in the next few days, but I'm still sorting through that one).

Update: Here's the live chat Natalie mentioned.

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June 19, 2005

[AFF 2005] Me and You and Everyone We Know

The closing night film at the Atlanta Film Festival was Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know. Like the cinetrix, I was quite impressed by this film and its ability to capture the loneliness and isolation of its central characters. The film is set primarily in rundown neighborhoods in Los Angeles and features a shoe salesman father with two kids going through a divorce, a performance artist who runs a taxi service for senior citizens (played by July who has a blog!), and a contemporary art museum director, among several characters, but what I found so rewarding about the film was its treatment of inter-generational relationships and the isolation and confusion that many children and teenagers feel.

The meticulous narrative, which carefully weaves together several distinct plotlines and characters, emphasizes a notion of community that I found wonderful, a welcome contrast to Crash's portrayal of a Los Angeles characterized only misunderstanding and (often unconscious) racism. In Me and You, characters proceed cautiously, reaching out carefully to others in an attempt to make a connection with someone. July's Christine, hoping to connect with the shoe salesman, Richard, keeps finding excuses to show up at the shoestore. Richard's youngest son finds himself in an Internet romance chat, where his naive comments come across as playfulness. When Richard can't reach his sons at home (they're on the Internet), he panics, reasoning that neighbors should be more prepared to watch after each other, echoing the sentiment that it takes a neighborhood to raise a child. As A.O. Scott notes, "True to her movie's title, Ms. July proposes a delicate, beguiling idea of community and advances it in full awareness of the peculiar obstacles that modern life presents."

As the Internet romance subplot suggests, many of these tentative gestures take on a sexual edge, and there are moments where you feel that the film could have taken a much different, unnecessarily dark direction, but July avoids the heavy-handedness of most Hollywood films that handle similar topics. I very much enjoyed this film. It introduced me to a world of characters that seemed believable and genuine, beautifully capturing that desire for connection.

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June 13, 2005

[AFF 2005] Pretty Persuasion

The other film I've seen at this year's festival was the disappointing Pretty Persuasion (IMDB), a Heathers-Saved-Mean Girls clone but without even the critical edge found in those films. The film focuses on Kimberly Joyce (Thirteen's talented Evan Rachel Wood), a 15-year-old Catholic school student who dreams of being an actress and, after getting the lead in her school play, eventually charges the drama teacher (Ron Livingston, who deserves better) with sexual harrassment. Kimberly encourages her two friends, Brittany and Randa, to file charges as well, while an enterprising reporter happens to be on campus to cover another story. Naturally, the charges become a major media event, and Kimberly, who seduces the reporter, becomes a media darling. I think the film is supposed to be a satire of our scandal-hungry media and of high schools and parents that will do anything to protect their reputations, but it comes across as mean-spirited, particularly towards high school girls who are either utterly manipulative (Kimberly) or completely naive (Brittany). If the film was doing anything particularly interesting with its media critique or its satire of high school life, I'd be less critical. If it were less predictable, I could have enjoyed the film as a low-rent version of Wild Things, but for some reason, the film left me completely cold. In addition, the film's portrayal of Randa, a Hindu teenage girl unaware of the potential coldness of the American teenager, seemed particualrly mean-spirited.

Scott Weinberg, at eFilmCritic.com, liked the film a lot more than I did, calling it "one of the most brave and adept satires of American teen-dom that I've ever seen." I'm willing to grant the point about the film's discomfort level. As in Thirteen, Evan Rachel Wood plays up teen sexuality to levels rarely seen in Hollywood films, but the film frames her sexuality in such a moralizing fashion that I don't see this portrayal as ultimately thinking about sexuality in any kind of complicated way.

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[AFF 2005] Lady from Sockholm

Over the weekend I had a chance to catch two of the films that were playing at the Atlanta Film Festival. The first was Lady from Sockholm (IMDB). Despite my lazy editing around these parts, that's no typo. Writer Lynn Lamousin and co-directors Eddy Von Mueller and Evan Lieberman's highly entertaining movie is a film noir performed entirely by sock puppets. The film features a classic noir plot: gumshoe Terrence M. Cotton is hired by Heelda Brum to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her (wealthy, older) husband, Darnell. Heelda suspects notorious bootlegger, Big Toeny of getting rid of her husband, and Cotton is, of course, charmed by the young widow.

The co-directors, who teach film at Georgia State University and Emory University, are, of course well-heeled (sorry) in film noir, and Sockholm riffs off of Double Indemnity, Lady from Shanghai (of course), The Maltese Falcon, as well as several of Hitchock's key films (especially Strangers on a Train). As my review implies, the film's heavy use of puns was enjoyable, and for fans of classical Hollywood and noir, it's a lot of fun.

Afterwards, several members of the crew talked about their experience making the film, reminding viewers about the scale of their sets (a cowbell on a door could be no more than one-quarter inch tall to remain in scale with the bodies of the sock puppets). The visuals capture the noir vibe very well. While the film was made in color (the production staff was warned against filming in black-and-white), the cast shadows evoke the atmosphere commonly associated with the genre, and the sets add to the film's playful humor. Lady of Sockholm is a genuinely fun film, one that deserves a much wider audience.

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June 9, 2005

September Tapes

September Tapes (IMDB), directed by Christian Johnston, is one of the most fascinating and bizarre films I've seen in some time, even if I also regard it as severely flawed. If the film were to be pitched in a Player-style meeting, it could be described as The Blair Witch Project meets Apocalypse Now set in Afghanistan. But as fascinating as I find the film, the making of the film is even more compelling.

The film itself is a mockumentary, opening Blair Witch style, with titles that indicate that we're watching some film footage found by the Northern Allince near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We then see footage of New York-based documentary filmmaker, Don "Lars" Larson (if I were the Yankee ballplayer, I'd sue), who travels to Afghanistan to find out the "real" story about Osama bin Laden. He arrives in Kabul with his translator, Wali, and his camera operator, Sonny, and proceeds to explore the city in search of the famed terrorist. Lars gradually finds himself drawn into the hunt for bin Laden (hence the Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness connection), buying guns from arms dealers and breaking curfew to get interviews that might lead him to bin Laden. Eventually, Lars, disappointed with the slow pace of the search, gets himself arrested and thrown into a Kabul prison in order to find contacts that might lead him to bounty hunters searching for bin Laden. He eventually meets Babak, who leads him and his crew deep into the Afghani contryside right to the border with Pakistan.

What makes this narrative interesting, in part, is the fact that September Tapes was filmed almost entirely on location in Afghanistan, in and around Kabul in late 2002, during a moment when there was still a rumored bounty on the heads of American citizens. Fleeting shots of women show them still wearing burqas out of fear that the Taliban will regain power. Footage of bomb-damaged buildings suggest the destruction of a country that has been at war for most of the last 25 years. Many of the participants in the film were, in fact, members of the Kabul police force and men who had fought against the Taliban.

This material, in itself, is fascinating. The mockumentary genre is clearly an implicit critique of the "embedded reporters" who covered the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lars, who often comes across as a stereotypical cowboy-Rambo American, is sometimes criticized by the film, particulalry when he is dismissive of Wali's assertion that the World Trade Center attacks are in part the response to US foreign policy. These fleeting political references, however, are never really developed, and the film becomes a quest narrative, in which Lars is "inexplicably" drwan deeper into the hunt for Osama bin Laden, to the point that he carries an AK-47, which he shoots into the night sky (the night vision footage adds a surreal quality to Lars' behavior). I use scare quotes here because I felt that Lars' purpose for going into Kabul was telegraphed from the opening scene of the film, in which Lars mentions his wife, Sarah, who is revealed to have died in one of the planes that was hijacked by the terrorists. Including a recorded phone message from her, essentially her dying words, at the end of the film cheapened everything that came before, making the filmmaker's behavior a bit too obvious in motivation.

September Tapes has been widely criticized by film critics, including Jonathan Curiel of the San Francisco Chronicle, who apparently didn't recognize the cues identifying the film as a mockumentary before criticizing the film for exploiting the conditions in Afghanistan for the sake of provocation:

Though the movie contains some sensitive images of Afghan kids and others, and though the film was apparently made with the consent of some Afghans, "September Tapes" never edifies, never humanizes, never entertains and never says anything new or interesting. Afghanistan shouldn't be used as a backdrop for some director's selfish attempt at provocation. Real Americans and real Afghans are still dying in Afghanistan. We don't need to see a fake version of that on the big screen.

While I had similar thoughts about September Tapes, I felt that the film's attempts to deconstruct the sobriety of the documentary and news media forms were much needed, even though Lars' behavior often seemed inexplicable or unmotivated (he spoke absolutely no Farsi and assumed that the people of Afghanistan speak "Afghani," to name one example). In addition, the use of non-professional actors and unscripted scenes often led to many important perceptions about the situation in Afghanistan to emerge over the course of the film. The film is most certainly flawed, and can be seen as "trivializing" its subject, but as a representation of the "war on terror," it's certainly a fascinating document.

Posted by chuck at 9:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Agronomist

I caught Jonathan Demme's labor-of-love doc, The Agronomist (IMDB) the other night on DVD. Demme's film offers a sweeping overview of the life and assassination of Jean Dominique, owner of Radio Haiti, a journalist, and human rights activist. The film celebrates the significance of Dominique's independent radio station in combatting the Duvalier dictatorships, primaily through talking heads interviews with Dominique and his family.

The interviews with Dominique are certainly the most enjoyable scenes in Demme's film (as Ebert notes, Demme recorded several hundred hours of footage over nearly a decade), and the film offers a veiled, but welcome, critique of Reagan's foreign policy, which essentially propped up the Duvalier regime. But in general, I found myself vaguely dissatisfied with the film for reasons I can't quite articulate. To some extent, I felt the film seemed to hold back when it came to critiquing US foreign policy (I certainly wanted more specifics on this history).

It may be that I found the storytelling itself a little frustrating. During one interview, Dominique reveals his passion for avant-garde and French New Wave cinema, celebrating Alain Resnais' Night and Fog and Fellini's La Strada among others. Domnique comments that its not merely the content of these films that is revolutionary, but the "grammar" of the films, the way they tell their stories. Perhaps the chronological approach, with stock footage supported by interviews, didn't adequately represent one of Haiti's most important political activists.

But after reading so many favorable reviews, I'm starting to change my opinion to some degree. In fact, as Cynthia Fuchs' Pop Matters review implies, even doing a documentary about Haiti, one of the poorest nations in Western Hemisphere, is itself a political act.

Posted by chuck at 9:13 PM | TrackBack

June 6, 2005

Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine

I caught Vikram Jayanti's 2003 documentary, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine tonight on video. The film documents Kasparov's notorious 1997 chess rematch against the IBM-designed Deep Blue. Previously, Kasparov had defeated an earlier version of the Deep Blue computer, but during the second game of the 1997 match, Kasparov became flustered when the computer began "playing like a human." After the second match, the normally charming Kasparov begins making accusations that there was "human involvement" that allowed IBM to win. The result is, of course, a profundly ambivalent victory for the computer's designers: they'd managed to design a computer that could defeat the world's greatest living chess player, quite an accomplishment but also a potential sign of human limitations against a powerful machine.

Vikram Jayanti's film seems to embrace Kasparov's accusations of conspiracy. Voice-over whispers imply that IBM stood to gain considerably from a victory of the golden boy of chess (their stock apparently increased by 15% the day after Deep Blue's victory). They remind us that Kasparov's request to see Deep Blue's game logs initially was accepted, but the logs were never provided. Kasparov also speculates about "corporate responsibility." Would we be as willing to trust corporations now, after the fall of Enron? I think the whispers of conspiracy are relevant to the narrative, to our perception of the relationship between increasingly powerful computers and the increasingly powerful corporations who build them, but because of the lack of compelling evidence of wrongdoing, the conspiracy narrative remains inelegant and unconvincing.

The film relates Kasparov's match to the legendary Baron von Kempelen's 18th-century chess player automaton, "The Turk," that mysteriously beat all competition, including Napoleon (it was later revealed that a man squatting behind the figure was directing it), both through staged scenes of an automaton playing and, through clips from Raymond Bernard's 1927 silent film, The Chess Player (as Dennis Lim notes). Both Lim and New York Times critic Ned Martel comment that these "hokey" paranoid trappings undermine the conspiarcy argument, which seems about right to me, though the film clips could have been designed to undermine subtly Kasparov's credibility.

That being said, for me, the inclusion of Baron von Kempelen's story only emphasized the film's lack of attnetion to the larger implications of the Kasparov-Deep Blue competition. During an early sequence, philosopher John Searle illustrates the mathematical difficulty of programming a computer to play chess under tournament conditions against a grandmaster (though processing speeds have changed this fact to some extent). Because a player can make one of eight moves, with each of those moves potentially countered by eight moves, and so on, you're talking millions of possible moves very quickly. But the film only briefly explores these philosophical questions, considering only tangentially how Deep Blue's victory raised questions about definitions of humanity. Further playing up the emotional aspect of chess (computers don't get psyched out by their opponents; they're not distratced by the smell of cigar smoke) might also have helped.

The film also seemed to struggle with how to make filming chess visually interesting, especially chess against an inert box. Many of the matches themselves were compelling, if only because of Kasparov's animated reactions, which stand in stark contrast both to the machine itself and the human interpreter (I can't think of a better term) who physically moved the pieces. Game Over had all of the material for a compelling documentary, but the conspiracy narrative seemed to work against what I found most interesting about this story.

Posted by chuck at 12:08 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 19, 2005

Baadasssss Cinema

Last night I watched Isaac Julien's Baadasssss Cinema, a 2002 IFC doc about 1970s blaxploitation films. Julien, best known for the amazing experimental documentary Looking for Langston, used talking heads interviews and footage from several blaxploitation films to convey what I read as an ambivalent nostalgia for this cycle of 1970s films. While several interviewees, including actress Gloria Hendry, emphasize the creative control and opportunity to work given to African Americans, others, including Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, observe that the highly profitable films helped support a struggling Hollywood studio system with little money actually reaching the creative people who worked on the films.

It's clear that Julien appreciates the music (Isaac Hayes' Shaft theme; Curtis Mayfield's Superfly) and recognizes the cultural shift represented in the early films (including Melvin van Peebles' independently-produced Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song.

Fascinating tidbits: cultural theorist bell hooks singing the praises of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown and archival footage of Jesse Jackson criticizing blaxploitation films. Pam Grier's clear-eyed commentary on the political legacy of blaxploitation is also worth watching.

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May 17, 2005

Tarnation

Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation (IMDB) challenges expectations and confounds genre expectations in a fascinating mix of documentary, autobiography, and art film. Made for $218 and edited on Apple's iMovie, Tarnation tells the story of Caoette's emotionally turbulent Texas childhood using Super-8 and video clips taken by Caouette starting when he was a small child. But beyond the home movie clips, Tarnation is a story of someone putting together the fragments of personal experience, mixing not only home movie clips but also the movies, music, and TV shows that consistently shape how we view the world.

We learn, for example, that his mother, Renee, was subjected to twice-weekly shock treatments for over two years when her parents believed that she was faking paralysis after falling off the roof of their house. The shock treatments naturally changed Renee's personality considerably, and Renee spent much of Jonathan's childhood living in institutions while her son lived in various foster homes, where he was often abused, before moving in with his maternal grandparents.

But what fascinated me about the film was the degree to which Jonathan, even as a teenager, began mediating his experiences, in part by using the camera as a way to provide himself with some perspective. But it's also visible in the ways in which Caouette, as an eleven-year old, performs roles for the camera. In one amazing scene, he plays an abused wife testifying on the witness stand about why she had to kill her husband. Jonathan plays the role perfectly, nervously twirling his bleach-damaged hair while explaining how "dope" made her husband crazy. In teh audio commentary, we learn that the perormance is a mix of Jonathan's own experience and an episode of Bionic Woman he'd liked. Later, he and his first boyfriend directed a play for their high school, a msucial version of David Lynch's Blue Velvet featuring songs by Marianne Faithful. Later, Tarnation emphasizes Jonathan's cinematic education, his introduction to the films of Paul Morrissey, Andy Warhol, John Waters, as well as low-budget horror by friends he met as club kid at a gay bar in Houston.

The film is careful to avoid easy answers about how Jonathan's family fell apart. The shock treatments are clearly a major factor, but Caouette resists blaming Renee's parents completely for what happened. Caouette also avoids a position of complete mastery over his experiences, skipping voice-over for titles that often convey uncertainty about what has happened. The use of iMovie not only creates a DIY aesthetic but also suggests the sense of fragmentation, of someone sorting through the fragments to put together a complete narrative. Ebert's discussion of the editing in Tarnation pretty much gets it right: Caouette uses the clunky iMovie technology not simply as a cheap way to get his film made but as an integral part of the story itself.

Posted by chuck at 10:45 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 7, 2005

Crash (2005)

In his review of Paul Haggis's directorial debut, Crash (IMDB), A.O. Scott compares the film to other films where "Americans from radically different backgrounds are brought together by a grim serendipity that forces them, or at least the audience, to acknowledge their essential connectedness," mentioning examples such as 21 Grams and Monster's Ball. I saw the film as another in a series of Los Angeles films, such as Short Cuts and Magnolia, but Scott's point is essentially right. And while Crash has been touted by many critics as a sharp commentary on race relations, I'd have to agree with Scott that Crash is often overwrought, and because it proceeds through character types (the racist LAPD officer, the isolated suburban housewife, among others), the film only reinforces what it is trying to challenge.

As if the title weren't clear enough, the opening scene features a minor fender bender next to a crime scene. As they prepare to deal with the investigation, Graham (Don Cheadle), a detective, comments to his partner and lover, Ria (Jennifer Esposito), that he thinks people in LA crash into each other because they are so isolated, "It’s the sense of touch. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something." Ria dismisses Graham's comments--accidents happen--but Graham's remarks serve as a metaphor that's supposed to guide our experience of the rest of the film. Characters from different race and class backgrounds keep crashing into each other (get it?) and are forced to confront (or not) the humanity of the people they encounter.

I think that what I found most frustrating about this film was the "shallowness" of its characters. By that, I mean that virtually every character seems to have two sides, one side heroic and tolerant and the other side fearful and, quite often, racist. Matt Dillon's LAPD officer pulls over a wealthy, educated black couple for "driving while black," sexually assaulting the wife (Thandie Newton) in a mock search for weapons. Later, he heroically rescues the same woman from a car accident. The wife of a white district attorney (Sandra Bullock) goes from liberal-minded to racist the minute her SUV is carjacked by a couple of black teenagers. She later proclaims that a Latino locksmith is going to pass along the new locks to their house to his gangbanger friends well within earshot of the locksmith who quietly goes about his job. By the end of the film she takes another chracater turn that felt equally implausible. Characters would leap from cardboard villains spouting racist epithets (or worse) to gentle souls at a single cut, something that seemed even more explicit with the female characters played by Bullock, Newton, and Jennifer Esposito. I don't want to make any larger claims about the screenplay, but I did find the female characters far less developed than their male counterparts.

The film also used an endangered child subplot in a manipulative, transparent way. In one early scene, the locksmith finds his daughter hiding under her bed, deeply afraid that she'll get hit by a stray bullet. Her father offers her an "invisible cloak" that will protect her from any violence. It's not hard to guess that the scene serves as foreshadowing for a potentially violent scene later in the film. At any rate, throughout the film, I found myself frustrated by the magnitude of the interactions. There were no "everyday" scenes, and all interactions seemed far too charged for the film to seem completely plausible. For this reason, P.T. Anderson's self-awareness in Magnolia, his acknowledgement of the implausibility of certain interactions, seemed far more convincing to me.

I don't want to seem entirely dismissive of the film. The performances were generally quite solid (especially Don Cheadle, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, and Matt Dillon), and I liked the gritty cinematography (taken from the Michael Mann school of filming L.A.). And critics I like, such as the New Yorker's David Denby really admired the film. In fact, Denby comments that "it’s easily the strongest American film since Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River." On a formal level, Denby may be right. Haggis's film is "intricately worked," with plot elements and characters tightly woven, often to productive effect. As Denby notes, in Haggis's Los Angeles, "no one is entirely innocent or entirely guilty." That's probably fair to say, but I don't think this observation is quite enough to sustain such an ambitious film.

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May 6, 2005

Code 46

I finally had the chance to see Michael Winterbottom's Code 46 (IMDB) last night, and while I don't have time for a full review, I'll quickly note that I found the film's subtle meditations on genetics to be rather rewarding. Unlike Gattaca, in which bad genes become just another means for replaying the "triumph over great odds" narrative, Code 46 doesn't reduce genetic engineering to two classes of "valids" and "invalids," instead focusing on narrower restrictions. A genetic predisposition to certain diseases prevents you from traveling to certain countries, for example. And, as the opening credits explain, you are prevented from having procreative sex with someone who has a too similar genetic makeup, a "Code 46" violation.

The film's plot centers around Tim Robbins' William and Samantha Morton's Maria, two people who meet for the first time in Shanghai, while William is investigating a passport forgery crime, and ultimately the two have a passionate affair, not realizing that they are genetically too similar (their mothers are genetic clones). Visually and aurally, the film is pretty cool, too. The dystopian future is clearly made to resemble our own world--the clothes are similar, and the visuals emphasize futuristic structures, but without the visual effects that might make the space seem too detatched from the contemporary.

In his review of the film, Steven Shaviro notes that "What distinguishes Code 46 from these other films is that it shows how the 'society of control' is inextricably interwoven with the sense of possibility that comes from decentered flows," and I think that the issues of "control," as they have been articualted by Gilles Deleuze, are central to this film, specifically in terms of "access." In fact, if I had seen this film earlier, I almost certainly would have taught it alongside Deleuze's essay in my freshman composition class this past semester.

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April 30, 2005

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

I finally got the chance to watch Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (IMDB) last night, and like the cinetrix, I found the documentary to be "as dazzling as the Houston skyline." She's absolutely right to read Alex Gibney's documentary as a heist film. In fact, as I left the theater last night, I found myself thinking that the Enron debacle made Danny Ocean and his crew look like a couple of high schools kids shoplifting from a convenience store.

Turning Enron's motto, "Ask Why," on its head, Gibney's documentary mixes interviews, re-enactments, stock footage, and, most powerfully, a few videotaped sketches and stockholders meetings to address how the seventh largest corporation in America could go bankrupt in less than a month, leaving thousands of people unemployed with worthless retirement accounts. The film also uses music very effectively, using popular songs by artists from Tom Waits to Dusty Springfield to comment on events and propel the narrative. Primary interviewees include the authors Bethany McClean and Peter Elkind, whose book provided the basis for the film. As Ted notes, "There’s an admirable depth and scope; I had the feeling that the filmmakers knew a lot more than they could fit in. It does an especially good job at explaining some of the big issues: how the institutions which should have blown the whistle (banks, lawyers, accountants, and analysts) had perverse incentives to keep Enron going, and how the pressure to beat expectations led to escalating fraud every quarter."

But what amazed me about the documentary was the sheer audacity and hubris of the Enron executives from Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay's embrace of deregulation and his close ties to the Bush administration (in Texas and in the Oval Office) to Jeff Skilling's hypermasculine compensation for his nerdy past through Baja motocross vacations. From Lou Pai's insatiable stripper habit (he was rumored to bring dancers back to Enron HQ to prove that he really was a wealthy executive and later divorced his wife to marry a stripper girl-friend) to Andy Fastow's creatively named (Jedi, Death Star, M. Yass) shell companies designed to hide Enron's losses, these guys plyaed the "greed is good" game as hard as they could. Skilling's life-or-limb rugged masculinity sets the tone for the film's portrayal of these Enron executives, though to the film's creidt, it doesn't overplay this interpretation of what happened.

Also disturbing: recordings of Enron's traders on the sales floor knowingly creating a false enery crisis in California in order to inflate the cost of electricity by nine times over its original cost. The traders cackle over the phone about bilking "grandma Millie" out of her retirement money while ordering California electrical workers to close down plants for "repairs," thus increasing the cost of electricity. Footage of car accidents caused by broken traffic lights due to electrical outages are chilling, with one remorseful trader later admitting that not only would he step on someone's throat for higher profits, he'd "stomp on it."

The film also explains how Enron was able to maintain such high stock prices even when real profits weren't forthcoming. Specifically we learn about Enron's practice, tacitly accepted by disgraced accounting film Arthur Andersen called "mark to market" accounting where "projected" earnings could be added to company profits to create the sembalnce of financial security. Other techniques included Fastow's shell corporations (meanwhile Fastow was skimming off the top to a tune of $40 million). But by the end of the film, Enron's twin glass towers jutting into the Houston skyline seem more like halls of smoke and mirrors, magic tricks designed to keep financial anaylysts at bay until finally Bethany Maclean gently asked how the company actually made its money. And even then, Skilling treats her mildly tepid article merely as an attempt to compete with a rival publication. In addition, Lay reads a question submitted to him by an employee soon after the wheels start coming off, "Are you on crack?" This question is one of the few times that we get a clear sense of just how disillusioned and downright pissed off many of Enron's employess must have been. I would've liked to hear more from the employees who saw their retirement savings stolen by Enron executives.

Other beefs and arguments: A few readers have suggested that because of Lay's ties to the Bush dynasty, the film might be read as anti-Republican. I don't think that's entirely the case, because the primary target here seems to be the effects of deregulation, a practice that received broad bipartisan support in the go-go 1990s. Ted criticized the film's stripper scenes for being potentially gratuitous. I disagree, especially given the way those scenes shore up the degree to which the Enron executives were caught up in this extreme form of masculinity (but I'll admit that's a mild disagreement at most). These scenes, as well as some of the voice-over interviews, do have the effect of turning Lou Pai into an "exotic Other," an inscrutable man of mystery who cannot be fully explained.

Finally, while the film does avoid the "bad apple" argument by implying that Enron wasn't an entirely isolated incident, I'm not sure that it goes far enough in offering an alternative to Enron's insatiability. In many of the shots of Enron's glass skyscrapers, we see a giant church steeple (and in fact one of the film's first shots shows a church sign reading, "Jesus Saves"), and Enron concludes with a local Houston minister explaining that he's still counseling many of the Enron employees over three years after the company's collapse. During this scene, the minister, quoting the Gospel of Mark, asks, "What does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?" The comment elliptically refers to the suicide of an Enron executive, but the metaphorical resonance is clear as well. However, I'm not sure that an injunction against greed is really a satisfactory response to the abuses committed by Lay, Skilling, Fastow, and others. But these comments shouldn't outweigh my high regard for this film. Like many viewers, I was chilled by the utter contempt and disregard the "smartest guys in the room" had for their employees, for their California customers, for their stockholders, for just about anyone other than themselves.

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April 23, 2005

Rebirth of a Nation

In Rebirth of a Nation, DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid (Paul D. Miller) remixes DW Griffth's classic propaganda film, Birth of a Nation. Against an electronic soundtrack and using a Mac laptop and two monitors, Miller re-edits Griffith's film in real time, projecting these images on three screens triptych. In typical DJ fashion, Miller loops back, emphasizing some of Griffith's more volatile compositions through juxtaposition so that a shot of Lillian Gish's "innocent" white womanhood is contrasted with threatening images of domineering black men (mostly white actors in blackface). Miller's remix condenses Griffith's 3-hour epic considerably but generally follows the narrative order of the 1915 film, culminating with shots, now presented ironically of course, of the Klan riding to the rescue of southern culture from the African Americans who have placed it in disarray.

In an NPR interview, Miller refers to the ongoing war in Iraq, which he describes as "the most televised war in history," adding that more televised access does not provide clarity about what's happening in the war. Miller making a case that his remastering of Griffith's film might produce a greater awareness of media's potential for manipulation and propaganda, states that "I want people to be uncertain about their entire media environment." But I'm not sure that remixing Birth of a Nation produces that kind of awareness, especially given the film's remoteness in US cultural consciousness. While many film history courses may show Griffith's film (as Miller asserted in an interview on Album 88), I felt as if many of the images were so clearly manipulative on a surface level that the montage didn't do enough to reinterpret them. I also found that while I found the ambient and electronic music engrossing in places, that I also often disengaged from the music, focusing only on the images on three screens. In this sense, my experience of this media event might be read as a compliment: Miller's arrangement of images required a high level of concentration. But like the Boston Globe reviewer, I found myself wondering what might have happened if Miller had decided to "dig in the crates and spin a wide range of music rather than just his own electronic composition." But unlike the Boston Globe critic, I'm not threatened by an artist like Miller using "academic verbiage" to convey what he's trying to accomplish.

Miller also manipulates many of the film's images visually, adding grids and geometric shapes to focus our attention on certain characters or on the power dynamics of a specific shot. In the NPR interview, Miller notes his interest in "social circuitry," commenting on the DJ's ability to quickly read a crowd and the individual dynamics within it. This issue of social circuitry seems connected to DJ Spooky's emphasis on the "democratizing" aspects of digital technologies, the fact that anyone can potentially remix and remaster films such as Birth of a Nation (in the NPR interview, he refers to hackers who edited Jar Jar Binks out of the fouth installment of the Star Wars films), but I find that notion of democratization somewhat unsatisfying, especially given some ongoing questions about technological access.

Despite these reservations, I found Rebirth of a Nation to be a challenging experience in the best possible sense. I liked the experimentation and the use of the principles of DJing to remix a prior film, but given Miller's invocation of the principles of a cinematic counter-narrative, a term that has a relatively long history, I'm not sure that Rebirth does anything new with the formula of remixing and montage other than to feed Griffith's film into the machine and give it an electronic flavor.

Posted by chuck at 10:40 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

April 17, 2005

Sunset Story

In a Q&A session after the premire of her 2003 PBS documentary, Sunset Story (PBS discussion site), Laura Gabbart reports that she originally wanted to make a film about Sunset House, a Los Angeles retirement home for free-thinking elders. Gabbart hoped to elicit stories from these veterans of various progressive causes, but instead found another story, the friendship of two of Sunset Hall's residents, Irja Lloyd and Lucille Alpert. Within the details of their friendship, Gabbart was able to tell a powerful, moving story that touches on some difficult questions, perhaps most importantly, the challenges of aging, espcially in a culture that often seems dominated by a fear of aging. At the same time, the film conveys Lloyd and Alpert's continued political commitments and their struggle to remain politically active despite their health problems.

The residents' political commitments are still very clear and very much a part of their daily lives. Lenin's collected writings are on the bookshelves. Residents such as Irja put up posters with messages such as "Free Mumia," with Irja and Lucille worrying at one point that the staff at Sunset Hall should receive better pay. There are several shots of Irja and Lucille attending political rallies in support of women's rights or labor unions, in scenes that are both inspiring--their continued commitment to political struggle--and disheartening--Irja's comment that after fifty years, they're still fighting many of the same battles (she jokes at one point that she should have saved all of her old signs because many of the slogans haven't changed). The two also wander the halls of the retirement home together, Irja in her wheelchair, with Lucille using the chair as a kind of modified walker, with Irja checking with her friend before starting off, "Are we connected?"

Gabbart's documentary isn't cautious when it comes to showing the struggles that many eldery people face, particularly their virtual invisibility within contemporary culture. A high-angle shot of the home's residents, gathered outside on the sidewalk during a fire drill, conveys the Sunset Hall residents' outsider status, as Manohla Dargis points out. Other shots convey the physical struggles the residents face on a daily basis, with the 95-year old Lucille, in declining health, complaining about how exhausting it is to receive so many phone calls from family members checking on her (though she's also aware enough to note that she'd complain if they didn't call). Like Dargis, I sometimes wondered if shots of residents lost in dementia were needed and occasionally found those shots to be potentially exploitative. The documentary mixed talking-heads interviews, generally with Lucille and Irja, and observational footage of the home, but because most documentaries are really documenting an encounter between filmmaker and subject (not simply the subject itself), I would have liked a greater sense of the people behind the camera and their motivations for representing things as they did. It's clear the filmmakers are sympathetic with the men and women in the home and that they engedered a great deal of trust with their subjects, but a clearer sense of that collaboration might have resolved some of my qualms.

Dargis also notes that because of the filmmakers' decision to focus on the personal story of the two friends, the documentary only discusses the history of Sunset Hall, which was founded in the 1920s by the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, in passing. The retirement home has often struggled financially, and according to an LA Alternative Press article, the home currently faces an uncertain future, and while I think Gabbart's film has told an important story, I would have liked a little more emphasis on the challenges Sunset Hall has faced in keeping its mission alive. But, in general, Sunset Story is at its best when celebrating the strength of these two women and the importance of their friendship, emphasized by the newly poignant repetition of Irja's question: "Are we connected?"

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April 8, 2005

In the Realms of the Unreal

Jessica Yu's In the Realms of the Unreal (IMDB) tells the story of the prolific outsider artist Henry Darger, a reclusive Chicago janitor, who produced a 15,000 page novel (with heavy illustrations) and over 300 paintings, virtually all of which portrayed what Darger called "the realms of the unreal." Darger's reclusiveness is established early in the film when the few interviewees who remember him each pronounce his last name differently, and the film goes to great lengths to convey why Darger might have withdrawn from the world, noting his parents' untimely deaths, his separation from his sister, and most importantly, the decision to place the young Darger in an institution for "feeble-minded" children. However, Realms wisely underplays any attempt to offer a clear-cut psychological explanation for Darger's self-imposed isolation and his escape into this fantasy world, which makes for a far richer film.

Instead, the film mixes fleeting aspects of Darger's biography (what we know of it), with animated re-tellings of Darger's massive story, an epic tale of the seven "Vivian Sisters," which mixes William Blake style-Christianity, war imagery, and children's book illustration techniques. In the story, the Vivian sisters become identified with some form of childhood innocence mixed with eccentric supernatural powers that might be associated with Christianity. Darger casts "himself" as a general in the Christian army fighting against fierce child-enslaving rivals, and it's clear that, to some extent, Darger's elaborate fantasy narrative is likely a response to his own childhood experiences when he was virtually enslaved.

Darger's portrayal of the Vivian sisters is also striking: he often draws them nude, but often with male genitalia. Here, I think the film's will to avoid interpretation is a limitation, with one of Darger's friends attributing the drawings to a lack of sexual awareness (which simplifies things considerably). Here, I think Ed Park is right to criticize the film for downplaying some of the more disturbing aspects of Darger's work and his clear struggles with his faith.

The film does use Darger's work beautifully, conveying the extent to which he experimented with collage effects, photographic blow-ups, and other techniques for conveying this alternate reality. Realms ends essentially with the end of Darger's novel, at a fascinating moment of indecision, with Darger's "Vivian Sisters" story pursuing one of two possible, but very different, endings, clearly suggesting that even after 15,000 pages and hundreds of drawings and paintings, Darger still struggled, was unsure of any final answers. This uncertainty is balanced nicely by the use of Tom Waits' amazing "You're Innocent When You Dream" (also used to great effect in Wayne Wang's Smoke) over the closing scenes of the film. Like Yu's film, I'm not sure that I have any conclusions about Darger's life or work, nor am I entirely sure that I should, but the film's unwillingness to interpret beyond the biographical connections left me feeling a little frustrated, especially when elements of the real world, such as the occasional "Chicago montages" that characterized the changes in the city over the course of Darger's life, creeped into the film.

Posted by chuck at 11:38 PM | TrackBack

March 30, 2005

Sin City

Thanks to friends with connections, I caught a preview screening of Sin City (IMDB) tonight at the local ultra-plex, and quite enjoyed the film's brutal, high-adrenaline, sensory-overload take on forties noir. Co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller (whose graphic novels were the film's source) have crafted a pulpy, excessive film that is among the most gratifying comic book adaptations I can remember seeing. The film is a loosely connected set of vignettes that present three of Miller's Sin City novellas, a la Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Formally, this works pretty well, as each of the stories comment on the brutality of Basin City and the characters who inhabit it, but as an adaptation, it serves the material well, as I'm not sure that any of the stories could have carried a feature film very well by itself.

What I enjoyed most about this particular adaptation was the adptation of graphic novel to the big screen, with the panels from Frank Miller's graphic novels serving as storyboards for the films. The result is a film that looks like a comic book, completely with shots featuring black-on-white silhouettes and Miller's characteristic extreme close-ups. The heavy rainstorms in Basin City, the setting for all of the film's narratives, were well done, with rain taking on a weightiness that seems to come straight from Miller's pages. I haven't read any of the Sin City volumes in several years, but Rodriguez and Miller's visuals vividly brought back those images to me as I watched the film.

The narratives are the stuff of forties pulp fiction (and, yeah, QT directed at least one segment in the film). Some reviewers make reference to Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler, but Miller's books and the film they've inspired remind me of the more brutal noir associated with films like Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly and Joseph Lewis's The Big Combo. The voice-over narration, supplied by the vignette's three main protagonists, played by Bruce Willis, Mickey Roarke, and Clive Owen, wittily plays with the cliches of those detective novels and films.

I realize the film might be read as affirming certain gender stereotypes. Many of the storylines wouldn't be entirely out of place in the noir world I've mentioned, but the stylized images constantly remind us that we're being taken for a ride. The black-and-white shots, with occasional bursts of color--red blood, an evil baddie's yellow skin--convey the film's self-awareness about the world we're watching. I'm probably being a little generous to the film, but tonight I needed a popcorn flick badly, and Sin City served me well.

Posted by chuck at 12:20 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

March 24, 2005

Inside Deep Throat

For any number of reasons, documentary filmmakers have been turning their lenses on the 1970s with increasing frequency lately. It might be more accurate to say that these seventies documentaries have found wider audiences than most other docs, but in the last two years, seventies docs include Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, The Weather Underground, and Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, with Eugne Jarecki's The Trials of Henry Kissinger also touching on '70s politics, specifically Kissinger's support of Pinochet and his role in Vietnam. Add the Robb Moss doc, The Same River Twice, and it's clear that the 70s are hot--at least for documentary filmmakers.

I'm tempted to read that popularity as a retreat to a moment whose political conflicts now appear to be resolved, a reading that the predictable, if mildly prurient, documentary Inside Deep Throat (IMDB) seems to invite, but I'm trying to resist that reading to some extent in order to think about how all of these films seem to comment, on one level or another, on the contemporary political moment (Jarekci's Kissinger doc is the most important and effective by far in this regard).

In his review, Roger Ebert--constant crusader against the silliness of the ratings system--notes the oddity of the fact that a studio such as Universal would produce a documentary about an NC-17 film but would be unlikely to make such a film, and that's something that struck me as I watched was the degree to which representations of the sex scenes in Deep Throat were framed by precisely that "eductaional" rhetoric that the film was trying to subvert. Instead of men in white lab coats, you have Camille Paglia and Dr. Ruth, but the same discourse of edification returns with a vengeance. You also get an oddly distracting voice-over narration from Dennis Hopper. I get the fact that he's identified with 1970s excess, but it seemed like a use of celebrity just for the sake of having a celebrity.

In addition, the support of Universal and HBO (the new Miramax in its support of low-budget sexy flicks) turned the film's educative impulse into a flashy, high-gloss trip through seventies culture. As Manohla Dargis's review implies, it's the closest you'll get to a "blockbuster" documentary, and quite frankly, I found that the graphics and the huge music budget tamed any subversiveness this doc might have had. I'm trying to avoid any surface-depth metaphors because that's not quite what I'm concerned about here (though the film was remarkably shallow given the incredible cast of interviewees--more on that in a minute). Instead, the documentary seemed to want to make Deep Throat into a "safe" form of titilation for average Americans. Take a walk on the wild side but stay where I can see you.

The discourse of "healthy" rebellion permeates the entire film, with the dcoumentary apparently assuming that all viewersnow regard the uproar over Deep Throat to be an overreation, implying with a wink and a nudge that viewers of the film would have been among the sophisticates like Erica Jong, Gore Vidal, and Stormin' Norman Mailer, who would have attended screenings of the film, police be damned.

Inside Deep Throat also simplifies the political conflicts over the film, reducing the battles to a cynical "fisrt shot" by Tricky Dick Nixon in the family values battles that continue to dominate political discourse. While the connection certainly exists, it reduces both conflicts to relatively simple two-sided positions. Free expression or censorship. It's a lot more complicated than that. The essential conflict centers on the prosecutors' decision to go after male lead, Harry Reems, who faced a five-year jail term for his involvement in the film. Instead of focusing on the exploitative aspects of the industry that exposed Reems and co-star Linda Lovelace (who received immunity for reasons that weren't explained) to the greatest amount of risk while securing only minimal profits, the film concentrates solely on the "free expression" question.

Perhaps more troubling was the bashing of 1970s era feminism the film engages in after disclosing that Reems was eventually cleared of all charges. While I do find the extreme anti-pornography positions of some 1970s feminists somewhat unsupportable, Inside Deep Throat seems to blame people like Susan Brownmiller for exploiting impressionistic kids like Linda Lovelace for their own purposes without really thinking about their arguments in any real detail. When Susan Brownmiller becomes a villain of equal stature with district attorney Larry Parrish, that's not a very nuanced reading.

Inside Deep Throat concludes by reminding us that a modest little film made for $25,000 ended up grossing $600 million (according to some seriously unreliable estimates), but then laments the fact that pornography has become so heavily commodified (this in a film that cites Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt as references--no commodification there). Ironic shots of the Adult Video Awards in Vegas show hotties with implants suggest the dgree to which the industry has become artificial since the golden age of porn (didn't Mark Walhberg already cover this in Boogie Nights?) before we get the mandatory reminder about freedom of speech with an American flag isolated against a night sky no less.

I think I would have enjoyed this film more if it weren't so transparent, if I had been surprised at least once over the course of watching it. About the only real enjoyment I got was playing "spot the film theorist," with appearances by two pretty cool academic film theorists, Linda Williams (Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible") and Jon Lewis (Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Created the Modern Film Industry). Williams does make the good point that Deep Throat is one of the first films to make women's sexual fulfillment an issue onscreen (as David Edelstein's review points out), and while I did enjoy many of the interviews, I felt this doc stopped short of doing anything interesting with some really fascnating material, most importantly because it never really questioned its own assumptions about the material it was analyzing.

Posted by chuck at 12:05 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 17, 2005

Recent Rentals

We're counting down the hours to Spring Break here at the North Avenue Trade School, and I just wanted to mention a few of the films I've been renting recently. I don't have time to write full reviews but recommend all three with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Over the weekend, I had a chance to watch Ming-liang Tsai's Goodbye Dragon Inn, a haunting movie about moviegoing. The film is set in a giant downtown Taipei theater, and the theater is almost entirely empty excpet for a few patrons who wander the corridors or sit silently watching the film. Goodbye Dragon Inn has almost no dialogue except what you hear on screen from the film they are watching, Dragon Inn. For more about Goodbye Dragon Inn, check out A.O. Scott's review, but it's a compelling film visually, very atmospheric and haunting.

I also watched Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, the 2004 documentary about the making of the band's most recent album. I was mildly disappointed with Monster, finding it a little tedious, and after a while, I didn't think the film went any further with its attempt to deconstruct the image of the heavy metal band, and the doc certainly had the subtext of seeking to humanize the man who killed Napster. Maybe I missed something about the doc because I didn't find it nearly as compelling as some viewers, but it was mildly interesting.

I've been wanting to see Tongues Untied for a long time, and finally decided to watch it last night. The 1985 short film about black gay life, which originally aired on the PBS show P.O.V., is pretty moving, and it certainly illustrates the political power of autobiographical documentary. Riggs, who died in 1994, commented on the film and its reception in this 1991 article in Current.

Posted by chuck at 9:06 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 12, 2005

Born Into Brothels

I should start this review by mentioning that I had some reservations about seeing Born Into Brothels (IMDB), not because I didn't want to confront the somber images of children living in Calcutta's notorious red light district but because I recognize and am deeply concerned about the ethical problems of documentary, especially those non-fiction films that seek to represent other cultures. In his New York Times review, A. O. Scott comments:

The impulse to document the lives of poor, neglected and oppressed people, which motivates countless filmmakers and photojournalists, is unquestionably noble, but it is not without certain ethical difficulties. Vital as it may be to bring news of human suffering to audiences who might otherwise remain comfortably ignorant, such exposure does not always help the suffering.

Unlike Scott, I'd have to question the motivation of some of these filmmakers (though not necessarily Briski and Kauffman) and note that besides failing to alleviate their subjects' suffering, such documentaries are inevitably partial, incomplete pictures of the lives they attempt to capture. Seema Sirohi also notes other ethical implications, observing that many of the film's subjects may not have consented to having their photographs taken and now find their images projected in theaters throughout the world. Such observations might seem obvious, but in a film such as Born into Brothels, the material that gets left on the cutting room floor (or never gets filmed in the first place) may have profound political implications.

Brothels began as an attempt to document life in Calcutta's red light district, but the prostitutes and johns were naturally suspicious of a white journaliust carrying a camera, and Briski quickly fell into the idea of teaching the children how to photograph. And her students quickly develop an enthusiasm for taking pictures as a means of gaining some semblance of control over their lives. One of the most talented photographers, Avijit, even receives an invitation to partcipate in a photography conference in Amsterdam, and his awareness of the power of the camera as a tool for documentation is rather compelling. The other children clearly bring their personalities into what they photograph. Their pictures are clearly marked by how they see the world, a perspective reinforced by the handheld shots in the city's sidewalks filmed at the height of a child.

Briski also resists the temptation to deliver this material in a classical narrative style. While Briski's immense efforts to help the children find places in boarding schools inform the film's story, they don't dominate the film. Born into Brothels isn't a film about triumphing over difficult circumstances, even if some of the kids fulfill their goals of leaving life on the street. The film also avoids introducing "experts" who might stand in for providing us with "the truth" of life in Calcutta. Instead, we are more or less immersed into this particular world, and any wisdom about it comes from the people who experience it on a daily basis, especially the children, many of whom know very well that they may soon be forced to work on the line themselves. We even see some of the girls telling us their mothers have been asking them when they'll start working as prostitutes.

Like Jeffrey Anderson, I think that Brothels would have been a stronger film if Briski had been more self-conscious about her role in shaping the narrative and in shaping the lives of the Calcutta children. While I don't think that the film should have been "about" Briski or about her "journey," a little more attention to her role as a filmmaker, teacher, and activist might have complicated the film in productive ways. The film is filled with poignant moments and powerful images captured by these young photographers, and while Briski avoids the temptation of offering a complete portrait of life in the red light district, the film still seemed to stop short of fully acknowledging these problems of representation.

Update: For some reason, I couldn't find Amardeep's review of Born into Brothels last night, but his comments clarify my interpretation of the film. I think he's right that Briski's involvement with the children has done more good than harm. In terms of the film's tone, Amardeep also notes that Briski works hard to avoid making the film appear "voyeuristic" or "about herself," and I think he's right that this is actually a strength of the film, that this uncertainty may indicate a conflicted (in the best possible way) attempt to think about representation in new ways.

Amardeep also has tons of links, including one to an NPR interview with Zana Briski the day after she won the Oscar for best documentary.

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March 5, 2005

The Jacket

I'm writing my review of The Jacket (IMDB) with some degree of caution because I don't want to sound like I'm endorsing the film, but because critics have been bashing the film, I feel compelled to emphasize some of the film's merits. Director John Maybury, apparently an associate of Derek Jarman's, has commented in an interview that the film should be read as a romance with a "subtext of being about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay." And while many critics, including the Times' A.O. Scott (see below) felt that the Gulf War subtext disappeared, I found it crucial to the film's overall significance.

The film opens with night-vision shots of a 1991 Gulf War ground battle in which Jack (Adrien Brody) is shot in the head but miraculously survives and returns to the U.S., though he suffers from a form of amnesia that causes him to black out at terribly inopportune moments, sometimes forgetting his own identity. For this reason, he carries his military dog tags with him everywhere he goes (an allusion, I'd imagine to a similar moment in Chris Marker's La jetee when the Parisian woman sees the Time Traveler's dog tags), eventually giving them to a young girl, Jackie, whom he meets while repairing her mother's car. The night vision shots, mixed with shock cuts, that open the film replicate the CNN Gulf War footage and convey the crucial relationship between technologies of war and technologies of perception, a topic disussed by Paul Virilio and many others. More crucially, the film sets up clear link between war trauma and memory loss (and Jack's eventual ability to travel into the future).

Jack's memory loss eventually places him in the inopportune situation where he is wrongfully convicted of murdering a police officer, and he is sentenced to a gothic mental institution in the Colorado mountains. Peter Deming's cinematography in capturing these snow-swept mountains was one of the film's major strengths (although the film's overuse of extreme close-ups of Brody's eyes and Kristofferson's teeth was distracting). One of the doctors in the mental institution, Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson), takes an interest in the new patient and begins a series of apparently sadistic experiements on Jack, reasoning that "You can't break something that's already broken." Not exactly the kind of logic I'd want to hear from a psychiatrist, but Bekcer's experiments serve the narrative (and, I'd imagine, are intended to allude to the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, although they also vaguely reminded me of Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor). There's an Expressionist quality to this footage, something that would be readily accepted in a Tim Burton film, but generally (and wrongfully) seems to come under criticism here. Like Roger Ebert, I kept thinking about Adrian Lyne's 1990 film, Jacob's Ladder, as I watched this film, and both movies are interesting in their attempts to associate the traumas of war with time travel.

Dr. Becker's most sadistic experiements include locking his patients in a metal morgue cabinet for hours at a time, which reminded me of both La jetee and Alain Resnais's Je t'aime je t'aime. While locked in this cabinet, Jack begins seeing shock-cut images from the past and future, eventually developing the ability to send himself into the year 2007 (or at least he imagines that he has traveled in time--it's never fully clear that he does), where he meets and adult Jackie (Keira Knightley), who has also endured a difficult life. And, in case you weren't aware of this fact, Jackie wears too much eyeliner and dark lipstick and presses glasses of alcohol tightly onto her lips. Initially frightened by Jack, who mentions their meeting fourteen years earlier, Jackie eventually trusts Jack's time-travel story and helps him learn more about the hosptial where he is incarcerated. I won't go through all of the details here, other than to say that the "detective" section of the film does have many logical implausibilities, especially the revelation of the "blunt head trauma" that eventually kills Jack, which could have been easily prevented. But the film is far less interested in the logic of time travel and far more interested in using time travel to convey its critique of war (it's obviously no accident that Jack is wounded during the first Gulf War by a young Iraqi boy he is trying to help).

Despite these logical implausibilities, I do think there is an interetsing film here, but I'm still sorting through where to go with it. I'll certainly write about The Jacket in my book, but I'm not ready to talk about how. Like Chris Marker's film, The Jacket certainly offers a meditation on war and trauma, and both films clearly reflect on the nature of cinematic perception. If you're looking for a taut psychological thriller, I don't think you'll find it in this particular film. And I'm not sure that the film quite succeeds as an art house genre film, although that's a better description of what the film is doing (or trying to do). It's worth noting that Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney, who were both involved in the remake of Tarkovsky's Solaris, received producer credits for this film. While I doubt they were creatively involved in the film, their support of the film seems significant in that the two projects seem remarkably similar as attempts to remake, or reintroduce, art house classics to more commercial audiences. Whether they have succeeded in this experiment is another question altogether.

Because I've written on time-travel films, I've been intrigued by the critics' treatment of genre, especially A.O. Scott's dismissal of the film. Cynthia Fuchs' review does capture the film's rather complicated political take on the effects of war. And I can only imagine that Peter Travers must have slept through most of the film, missing the more-than-transparent references to Chris Marker's La jetee. Both films involve a military-vet prisoner on whom an apparently sadistic doctor conducts psychological experiments through forms of sensory deprivation (and that's just one similarity). But part of what made this film interesting for me was its place in a recent cycle of "time-travel art films" (and I use the term "art" very loosely) that includes Donnie Darko, The Butterfly Effect, and Happy Accidents.

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Prediction

The Jacket (IMDB) will be this year's Donnie Darko. That's not an evaluation of either film's quality, but a statement about their relative structural positions within the cinematic universe. Like everyone's favorite creepy '80s time traveler, Adrien Brody's traumatized Gulf War vet will disappear quickly from theaters after failing to earn back the film's budget.

Then, in about a year, an enterprising marketing executive will repackage The Jacket as an underappreciated art film, complete with mandatory commentary track by a well-known film critic. The college freshmen, whose older brothers wrote critical analyses of water imagery in Donnie Darko, will discuss the metaphoric resonances of snow in The Jacket.

Then, late in 2006 or early 2007 (my crystal ball is a little hazy), with the film's cult status assured, a director's cut of The Jacket will have a brief run in art house theaters before the DVD finds its way to the bookshelves of college freshmen and other assorted hipsters all around the country. Again, I'm not saying that The Jacket is a good or bad movie, just describing the future reception this film will undoubtedly receive.

PS: I'll write a more serious review later. I do have a lot to say about this film, although I don't particularly recommend it.

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March 3, 2005

Decasia: The State of Decay

I watched Bill Morrison's amazing 2001 cinematic symphony, Decasia (IMDB), last night. I normally review only contemporary films, but I really enjoyed this film and wanted to encourage others to see it, if possible (or to find out if anyone else has seen it). Decasia is a montage of decaying silver nitrate footage set to the symphonic music of Michael Gordon (I have to be honest, I didn't really pay a lot of attention the role that music played), but the film itself is an incredible meditation on decay and loss, especially when it comes to the incredibly fragility of film itself. Although Morrison comments in an interview on the DVD that Decasia is about (human) mortality, it's impossible for me not to read the film as an allegory for the death of cinema itself or to think about the relationship between cinema or photography and death (yes, I've been reading my Roland Barthes and Andre Bazin).

The film opens with a Sufi dancer spinning wildly, setting up a spiral motif that dominates the film. As J. Hoberman notes, many of these early images recalls the actualités of pioneer filmmakers who captured scenes of everyday life, revelling in film's status as a novelty, and perhaps hinting that Decasia might offer a way of thinking about cinema's history. But before the credits roll, we get a tracking shot of a film development lab, with strips of film laying in the development fluid before being taken up on the reels (another spiral metaphor). These images of film labs reminded me of Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera, and his modernist celebration of the Kino-eye, now transformed into a decaying object. As Anita Gates notes, cinephiles will likely watch Decasia's images knowing that "a big chunk of America's film history is already lost or is in danger of rotting away."

Even with this knowledge, I found the decaying images themselves to be utterly beautiful and completely fascinating. Shots of a boxer punching against a strip of white mold suggest the impossibility of fighting against this decay. Other shots portray workers crawling out of the mouth of a cave that is about to collapse under the weight of a slightly melted film frame. Other images flip from positive to negative and back again, transforming a simple love scene into something sinister and more ominous. as a result, Morrison's presentation of decay seems more ambivalent than might initially appear. The film seems to warn against the decaying film stock and the images that risk being lost without greater efforts at preservation, but at the same time, decay has never been presented so beautifully.

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February 26, 2005

"The Stuff that they had Discarded"

The third installment of the Film Love series, "NOW! Short Films on African American Experience in the 1960s," gave a fantastic overview of documentary and experimental film being done in that era. Andy Ditzler, of Frequent Small Meals, presented a great selection of rarely seen footage in a variety of formats (DVD, VHS, and even 16mm).

The night opened with a 1966 CBS-TV interview between Mike Wallace (weird to see him so young) and the rising star of the Black Power movement, Stokeley Carmichael, who was portrayed in this broadcast as a potential threat to Martin Luther King's leadership in the Civil Rights movement. This interview was interesting to me on several levels. First the sequence opened with the presentation of Carmichael speaking at a rally using low-angle shots to portray him as looming over camera. But, more than anything, as Ditzler noted, it's interesting to watch how the major networks "presented" these conflicts within the Civil Rights movement.

The CBS broadcast was followed by a screening, in 16mm, of experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs' Perfect Film. Jacobs, who frequently made use of found footage, reports that in the case of Perfect Film, he essentially left this footage alone because it was already "perfect." The footage, discarded outtakes from a TV studio, primarily consists of an interview with a black radio reporter giving his eyewitness account of Malcolm X's assassination. Mixed with the interview footage, we see other interviewees on the street, and a detective giving his account, but what makes this film more intriguing are the gaps of black leader and the "silent" exterior shots of Harlem buildings, to which the director would have presumably added voice-over or music later. The effect of the footage as it stands is to produce contemplation about Malcolm's life and that era of American life.

There were two major highlights for me. First, Santiago Alvarez's energetic agit-prop film, NOW!, powerfully uses Lena Horne's civil rights anthem over still photographs of lynchings and police brutality mixed with shots of protest and revolt. Despite the heavy use of stills, Alvarez's restless camera pans and zooms, giving the film a very energetic feel. Worth noting: Extreme Low Frequency Films has re-relased some of Alvarez's work, including NOW!, on a 2-DVD compilation, He Who Hits First Hits Twice: The Films of Santiago Alvarez (here's an Austin Chronicle review).

The other major highlight was a 1964 cinema verite-syle documentary by Eugene Marner and Carole Satrina, Phyllis and Terry, which focuses on two black teenage girls. The two girls have an incredible sense of comic chemistry, playing off each other, finishing the other's stories, with an ease in front of the camera that is utterly compelling.

Another item on the program was "Malcolm X: Nationalist or Humanist," an episode of the NET public TV series, Black Journal, a newsmagazine-style show about black culture, politics, and arts. The episode was made several months after Malcolm's death and emphasizes his attempts to internationalize the Civil Rights movement. Some great footage of Malcolm giving a speech in Mississippi. This Malcolm X material fit nicely with Third World Newsreel's presentation of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. In both cases, the emphasis seems to be on the role of alternative media in addressing African-American experience in the 1960s.

In that sense, the program fit very neatly together in providing an overview, or introduction, to this material. I would have loved to have seen more of the innovative film work by Jacobs and Alvarez, but this particular Film Love screening has certainly provided me with many other avenues for exploration. In fact, if I can get my hands on the DVD at some point, some of Alvarez's work might fit neatly into future Introduction to Film or Experimental Film classes. I'd certainly encourage others to attend future Film Love screenings. Ditzler put together a great program of rarely seen films, and this material certainly deserves a wider audience. My only gripe: I would have enjoyed a brief moderated group discussion after the screenings to hear reactions from other members of the audience.

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February 13, 2005

Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst

I caught Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (IMDB, the title must have been changed in order to avoid confusion with a recent Oscar contender) on Friday night, but haven't really had the opportunity to write a review until now (and even now I should be working). Guerilla tells the story of the brief history of the Symbionese Liberation Army, focusing to some degree on the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and Stone's film effectively captures the media frenzy inspired by the "Bonnie and Clyde" antics of the SLA, a fantasy he gently (though somewhat obviously) mocks with his inserts of clips from various Robin Hood films, including an animated Disney version from 1973.

In telling this story, Robert Stone chose not to interview with Patty Hearst, focusing instead on other members of the SLA and San Francisco journalists who covered them. The result is fairly haphazard, with Stone ultimately portraying Hearst as a shallow Stepford wife-meets-spoiled heiress, which seems more than a little unfair (the film's final shot, presenting footage of her on a morning talk show, portrays her as completely shallow). But what struck me as interesting about Stone's film is its connection to the recent doc, The Weather Underground, which focused on another late-60s/early 70s terrorist group. It seems significant that documentary filmmakers are revisiting these topics at this point in American history and that both documentaries seem to treat their subjects as charismatic media figures rather than as political figures. Guerilla is also far less nostalgic and less ambiguous in its portrayal of these radical political groups. Whether that's due to the specific actions of the SLA or some other factor is a little unclear.

Steven Holden's New York Times review is a little more generous than mine, with Holden noting that the film does trace the source of the SLA's political commitments via footage of Kent State and Vietnam. And it may also be that the group's political commitments were shallow. As one of the interviewees notes, not in apology as much as explanation, the members of the SLA were all very young, mostly in their early- or mid-20s when they kidnapped Hearst, who was herself only 19.

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Million Dollar Baby

Quick reviews tonight as I'm still in the midst of my first grading marathon of the new year. Like Chris, I was mildly underwhelmed by Million Dollar Baby (IMDB). I certainly understand the film's appeal to the critics, many of whom have compared Eastwood's recent work to either the auteurist films of the 1970s or classical Hollywood. The film's cinematography (by Tom Stern) is impressive, his use of shadows adding to the grittiness of the story, and Dunn's gym effectively conveys his own sense of resignation as he reaches the end of his career. And the final shot (which I won't reveal) almost rescued the film for me.

Like Chris, I also found myself annoyed by the film's "dodgy class-regional politics," especially when it came to the portrayal of Danger, the mentally challenged Texan who hangs out at Frankie Dunn's (Clint Eastwood) gym. I tend to have problems with using mentally challenged characters for comic relief and/or easy emotional payoffs, and although his character is relatively minor (the film could have done just fine without him), I think Danger serves precisely that function. Hillary Swank's Maggie, the female boxer Frankie trains after losing his best male fighter, also seemed rooted in class stereotytpes (scrappy hillbilly with a heart of gold). The film also left the issue of race somewhat unexplored, other than a brief anecdote Eddie (Morgan Freeman) relates about his first meeting with Frankie in Mississippi. Perhaps Million Dollar Baby just wasn't going to live up to the Oscar-fueled hype that I've been hearing for the last few weeks, but I simply found Maggie too undeveloped and many of the film's explorations of class, gender, and race (and how these categories relate) to be insufficiently explored (Cynthia offers an insightful reading of Eastwood's exploration of gender). Million Dollar Baby is still a solid film, well worth seeing in the theaters, but not quite as good as the hype. I'd like to write a longer, more reflective review later, but things are kind of crazy right now.

By the way, did anyone else out there find Morgan Freeman's voice-over to be unnecessary and overdone? I know there's a clear motivation for it at the end of the film, but in a few places, the voice-over seemed to be trying too hard or to be explaining too much.

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February 10, 2005

Gunner Palace

During a brief statement before tonight's screening of Gunner Palace (IMDB), filmmaker Michael Tucker claimed that one of his goals in making the film was to avoid being overtly political, to "leave politics out of the film." While I am inevitably suspicious of such claims of political neutrality, I found watching Gunner Palace to be an incredibly valuable experience, but watching it with an audience that included the filmmaker was utterly compelling and sometimes quite troubling (I'll try to explain why in a few minutes). Tucker has also been promoting the film by conducting screenings near military bases in such cities as Columbus, Georgia, indirectly communicating that he believes soldiers and veterans to be one of his most important audiences, and that audience captured for me in vivid detail some major questions about the politics of representation.

The film itself is an incredible achievement, immersing the spectator in the everyday life of a group of soldiers stationed in one of Uday Hussein's palaces. Tucker vividly portrays the absurdity of the soldiers living in the palace as soldiers relax by the palace swimming pool, oblivious to the sounds of war in the distance. The artificial grandeur, augmented by Uday's garish tatses, also provides some bitter humor. Other moments in the film do convey that Tucker is far from politically neutral. During one scene a soldier sarcastically displays the Humvee armor his unit bought off an Iraqi junk dealer, his comrades actually rolling on the ground laughing at the dark humor. A follow-up voice-over of Donald Rumsfeld pledging to increase the military budget doesn't hide Tucker's disdain for people who support the military in their words but not necessarily in their actions.

But Gunner Palace is at its best during two distinct, but recrrent, elements. First, Tucker carries his handheld camera during several of the soldiers' missions into Baghdad. The jostling camera, the sudden movements in the streets, and the long takes without a cut suggest that anything could happen. Bags of garbage in the street suddenly appear threateneing because they might hide an improvised explosive device (or IED). Men and women who seemed helpful yesterday are now conspiring against the soldiers. The film's lack of a clear narrative--the plot is chronological, but presents no specific mission or goal--only adds to the sense that it's not entirely clear why the soldiers are there or what they can do to make things better.

Second, Tucker allows the soldiers to speak for themselves, and for the most part we hear from low-level soldiers, not the officers who have been trained in military PR-speak to provide the answers we want to hear. These are regular folks who just want to go home and want to try to portray something about their everyday lives, as impossible as that goal might be. The soldiers who speak are poets, free-style rappers, and class clowns. Although they constantly try to describe their experiences, they are all acutely aware of the fact that we're not getting their stories on the six-o'clock news. While I can talk about the politics of representation, the difficulty of conveying one's experience, these soldiers are living it. As one soldier notes, "After the movie's over, you'll get your popcorn out of the microwave, and you'll forget about me." And, of course, to some extent he's right. Another adds, "For y’all this is just a show, but we live in this movie."

As Tucker himself notes, the film inevitably focused on these issues of representation and mediation. He notes

The longer I stayed, the more it became their movie—one laced with cinematic déjà vu. At times, it didn’t feel like I was shooting a documentary, rather a war movie that we have all seen a dozen times. For the older officers and NCOs it was M*A*S*H. They brought aloha shirts for poolside BBQs. For others it was Platoon and Full Metal Jacket—you could see it in the way they rode in their HUMVEES. One foot hanging out the door—helicopters with wheels. For the teenagers, it was Jackass Goes to War.

Of course the clearest referent was Apocalypse, Now, especially during one scene in which the soldiers play "Flight of the Valkyres" while on a mission. This comparison is also echoed through the director's voice-over, which I found unnecessarily dramatic.

And this comparison to Apocalypse Now is where I struggled most with my reaction to the film. I couldn't quite shake the idea that Tucker's film--far from being politically neutral--was actually politically ambivalent in Frank Tomasulo's useful phrase. I don't have Tomasulo's essay handy, but in my vague recollection, I'm taking Tomasulo's description of Apocalypse to mean that the film yields a multitude of political readings, both pro and anti-war, a description that might apply to Gunner Palace as well. One audience member commented that he couldn't imagine the Pentagon being offended by anything in the film, perhaps wilfully ignoring the critique of Rumsfeld, but noticing the film's sympathy with the grunt soldiers. An Iraq War veteran in the audience read the film as anti-war because it failed to show the "positive effects" of the war, a position challenged by an officer who had been stationed in Gunner Palace and joined Tucker at tonight's screening. Another audience member had the rather troubling response that the number of dead and wounded in Iraq didn't compare to the numbers in previous wars, prompting an immediate emotional response from several veterans in the audience. Such reactions, in my reading, suggest that the film is far from neutral in its content. It's difficult not to identify with the soldiers, especially given the use of continuity and POV editing that aligns our gaze with that of the soldier. And while Tucker is careful to present the confusion and disorientation any war will create, we don't ever see things from the perspective of Iraqi citizens even though many of the soldiers clearly sympathize with them. After writing this review, I'm more convinced than before that I've just seen an incredibly complex, nuanced, challenging film. I'm not entirely sure I've come to any conclusion about it, but I also can't recommend this film enough. It may be the most thoughtful and thought-provoking film I've seen to come out of the Iraq War so far.

Update: Blackfive's review seems to support my claim that Gunner Palace is "politically ambivalent." It's also worth noting that the MPAA has seen fit to give Gunner Palace an R rating, a ruling which Palm Pictures is currently appealing. I'd imgine this appeal will likely fail, in part because of the film's complicated politics, which is a shame because GP should be required viewing for teenage boys and girls who may soon face a decision about whether or not to serve in the military.

Update II (2/24): David Ansen offers a similar reading of Gunner Palace, arguing that the film presents material that "will confirm and confound both right and left" (thanks to GreenCine for the link).

Update III (3/5): Also check out Cynthia Fuchs' review of Gunner Palace, which makes the connection to Michael Herr's Dispatches, which seems crucial to my reading of the film via the mediated lens of Apocalypse Now.

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February 6, 2005

Moolaadé

I caught Moolaadé (IMDB), the most recent film by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene, Friday night and found it to be a very impressive film. Moolaadé focuses on the practice of female circumcision in a remote village in Burkina Faso. The film opens with four girls who flee the purification ritual, turning to Collé, a woman in their village known to oppose the practice. Collé offres the girls "moolaadé," a kind of sanctuary that will ensure their protection. Like Roger Ebert, I fear that a rough sketch of the film's plot might discourage viewers from actually seeing Moolaadé, but the film is well worth watching if it happens to make it to your community.

In many ways, Moolaadé is about issues of modernization, with battery-powered radios intersecting with the ancient rituals of the village. The women clearly treasure the radios, seeing it as a lifeline to the world outside their village, but when Collé and several of the other women begin to resist the traditional practices, the men in the community collect the radios, piling them in front of the village's mosque and setting fire to them in a beautifully composed juxtaposition. Collé, one of the more compelling characters I've seen in some time, brings a great deal of pleasure to her resistance (see the Bright Lights Film Jornal review), dancing and singing with the girls she is protecting, though later in the film she is forced to pay dearly for her actions, taking a beating from her husband, who has been coerced by elders in the viallage into enforcing his power over her. Her ability to endure this punishment prevents the film from falling into the trap of pitying the characters.

I think that part of what made the film work for me was Sembene's ability to generate genuine suspense, and until the end of the film, I was uncertain how things would play out (a quality also noted by James Berardinelli). Few of the characters were purely villainous. Even the most traditional characters act primarily out of a fear of change.

I've been having a difficult time reviewing this film, in part, I think, because of my own awareness of my status as a viewer consuming these images of another culture. I'm not sure how to respond to the film's presentation of the crisis between modernization and globalism against the village's traditions, many of which are quite clearly harmful, especially to young girls and women. These contradictions are played out in the character of Mercenaire, a traveling merchant who provides the women with their precious radio batteries, but who also quietly sells condoms and displays posters promoting AIDS awareness. But at the same time, I'm not sure the film delves deeply enough into the harmful consequences of globalization and modernization on these villages.

If any of my other readers have seen the film, I'd love to hear your take. While I really liked the film, I haven't entirely resolved my interpretation of it.

Posted by chuck at 12:46 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 4, 2005

Benjamin Smoke

Intrigued by a discussion of Lost Book Found (still haven't been able to track down the film here in Atlanta), I rented Jem Cohen's documentary, Benjamin Smoke. The documentary focuses on Benjamin, an openly gay, HIV-positive, speed freak rock performer from Atlanta who died in his 30s. Benjamin's music channels the gravelly vocals of Tom Waits but mixes in the influences of punk (Patti Smith is a major influence), jazz, and even country. Given Benjamin's rock-and-roll lifestyle, it would have been easy to turn his story into a VH1-style Behind the Music morality play (as this unsigned review points out), but Cohen handles this story much more effectively, allowing Benjamin to speak for himself, and Benjamin is a natural in front of the camera, a great storyteller, speaking to us as if he is conversing over coffee with an old friend. Cohen provides little narration, and doesn't pretend to offer a total picture of Benjamin. While the film is certainly biographical, it resists offering anything that would resemble the final word on this fascinating performer.

But what I found more interesting about the film is it's treatment of Benjamin's place within an Atlanta culture that itself seems to be on the verge of being lost. Benjamin lived much of his adult life in the eccentric community of Cabbagetown, where most of the town's residents worked for a cotton mill until it closed in 1970, and the Cabbagetown community became populated by local legends such as Benjamin and Kelly Hogan, lead singer of the Jody Grind. This local culture is now fading away as the neighborhood is gradually being transformed by gentrification. The film captures much of this local culture incidentally, with archival footage of local performer, Deacon Lunchbox, as well as footage taken inside Atlanta's notorious alterna-hip strip club, the Clermont Lounge. But Cohen also has a wonderful eye for everyday objects, for allowing the camera to linger a few extra seconds on some beads hanging in a window or a piece of furniture or a run-down store front or some kids playing in their homemade go-carts. Benjamin leads us through a Cabbagetown tunnel heavily decorated in graffiti (unfortunately the film can't do this particular space justice). These images all present a weird Atlanta that I found absolutely fascinating and suggest that the familiar images of the city--the Peachtree Plaza, the Bell South building--are part of another city altogether, with the Atlanta skyline appears as a mere distant backdrop.

The film itself is visually rich, as A.O. Scott points out, combining photographs, archival footage, and black and white and color film. The DVD includes several nice extras, including more footage of Benjamin's band, Smoke, performing in the Clermont Lounge and other local venues, and Jem Cohen and co-director Peter Sillen use these images to preserve a weird Atlanta that could have easily been lost.

By the way, G Zombie also mentioned the film a few weeks ago when he was recommending music by two of Benjamin's bands, Smoke and the Opal Foxx Quartet (and if you haven't heard their music, you absolutely should).

Posted by chuck at 3:58 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 3, 2005

General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait

I finally took the sage advice of Jonathan (scroll down to the comments) and the cinetrix and rented General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait last night, and as they both note, Idi Amin is a fascinating subject. General, directed by Barbet Schroeder, portrays Idi Amin as utterly sociopathic but also as oddly innocent and charming (see David Ehrenstein's Critereon essay). Schroeder made the film with General Idi Amin's complete co-operation, and although Amin clearly seems to think that the documentary will be sympathetic, Schroeder's camera constantly reminds us that the audiences that seem to adore him are clearly fabricated.

There is a frighteningly humorous scene in which Amin sends a telegram to the leader of Tanzania, telling him, "I want to assure you that I love you very much and if you had been a woman I would have considered marrying you although your head is full of gray hairs. But as you are a man that possibility does not arise." According to the cinetrix, Amin demanded that the scene be cut from the film, and Schroeder complied at the time, restoring the footage after he was deposed. There are scenes showing Idi Amin gleefully playing the accordion (Schroeder even gives Amin a credit for composing the film's music). There are scenes showing General Amin dissing other world leaders, including Henry Kissinger. And yet the film constantly reminds us that Amin was one of the most brutal dictators in recent history. Fascinating, disturbing stuff. A really amazing documentary.

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January 30, 2005

Another Documentary Bookmark

For future reference: Jem Cohen's Lost Book Found looks like a really fascinating film, and while I was digging, I found this interview with Cohen in Senses of Cinema.

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January 9, 2005

Hotel Rwanda

In many ways, Hotel Rwanda (IMDB) is a difficult film to review. Terry George's powerful film asks its viewers to confront the Rwanda genocide in 1994 when the Hutu militia slaughtered more than 800,000 Tutsis over the course of just 100 days. More importantly, the film reminds its viewers that the West essentially turned a blind eye towards these atrocities. During one crucial scene, Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) listens to a radio broadcast as a US State Department official insists on defining what's happenening as "acts of genocide" rather than "genocide," as if such a distinction justifies inaction. This critique of inaction by Western powers is also embodied in two relatively minor characters, a photojournalist played by Joaquin Phoenix and a Canadian UN Colonel (Nick Nolte), both of whom know that the media images of the brutality will not shake European and American audiences from their complacency or shame them into action. This abandonment is best illustrated in ascene in which Paul calls the Belgian hotel owner (Jean Reno), who sits comfortably in his brightly lit, calm office, while Paul, on the other end of the line, begs him for help. In that regard, the film seems to offer what amounts to a mild self-critique, acknowledging that audiences may be deeply moved by a film like Hotel Rwanda, but will likely do little to change the causes that might have contributed to genocide.

Hotel Rwanda focuses on the story of Paul, a Hutu hotel manager at the Mille Collines, a Belgian-owned luxury hotel. We also learn early in the film that his wife and her family is Tutsi. In the film's early scenes, Paul is shown as a stylish, competent hotel manager, someone who knows that the gift of a good cigar or the best whiskey will curry more favor than a monetary bribe. He's always impeccably dressed and manages to work between all of Rwanda's conflicted communities. When the genocide begins suddenly, in response to a code phrase repeated on the radio by a jingoistic radio broadcaster, Paul's diplomatic skills--and his storehouse of bribes--allow him to work a minor miracle, housing over 1,000 Tutsi people in the hotel for the duration of the genocide. Paul's actions prompted many reviewers to read Paul as an African Oskar Schindler, a description that seems, as Cynthia Fuchs notes, "partly right," but Hotel Rwanda, in my reading, is far less sentimental than Spielberg's film, using Paul's story to criticize Western inaction rather than to celebrate the triumph of the individual over great odds.

The film's approach to the Rwanda genocide is not without controversy: George chooses to show the brutality only at a distance, and instead we often see only the effects of the brutality, as in one crucial scene in which Paul leaves his hotel compound for supplies. But I'm not sure it would be possible to convey the sheer brutality of what happened in a feature film. Any attempt to show the violence would fall short. Others have criticized the film for its "happy ending," the film's reliance on the codes of a Hollywood thriller. Cynthia Fuchs notes that the technique of focusing on a single character's story "makes the story comprehensible and tragic, but also barely references the broad structures that create such atrocity." But in many scenes, these techniques amplify the horror, particularly in a sequence early in the film when Paul instructs his wife to throw herself and their children from the roof of the hotel rather than face death by machete.

There's no question that Hotel Rwanda is an important film, one of the first to call attention to the humanitarian crises in Africa (many discussions of the film have made reference to the genocide in Sudan). While the decision to focus on a single character, a survivor like Paul Rusesabagina, may make the story more palatable to western viewers, the film clearly illustrates how the Tutsis were abandoned by the West.

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January 3, 2005

My Top Ten for 2004

Inspired by several other "best of 2004" lists (Rashomon and Green Cine among others), I've decided to list some of my favorite films of the year. Unlike George of A Girl and a Gun (who has a great list of films), I'm a closet fan of ten-best lists. Even though I know that such lists are usually arbitrary, I read them voraciously, usually with the hope that I'll discover a film that I've missed or that I'll find a popular or critcially panned film worth giving a second chance. Like George, I'm not a professional critic (and in my case I don't live in a film center), so I don't get to see everything. But I have been thinking about this list over the last few days, so here's my list, in semi-chronological order, of some of the films I liked in 2004:

1. Everyday People: I caught Jim McKay's film at the Atlanta Film Festival and really liked McKay's deft treatment of an ensemble cast. The film weaves between more than a dozen characters, all of whom are conflicted about the closing of a family restaurant in Brooklyn. Limiting the story to the restaurant's final 24 hours gives the film a narrative force it might otherwise lose.
2. Reconstruction: Another favorite from the Atlanta Film Festival, Christoffer Boe's meditation on time and memory was one of the most intellectually compelling films I saw all year.
3. Control Room: One of the best in a great year of documentaries. Lieutenant John Rushing and Al-Jazeera reporter Hassan Ibrahim and producer Samir Khader provide one of the more compelling takes on news reporting I saw all year.
4. Before Sunset: I'm joining the bandwagon on this one, I know, but Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy have managed to create some of the most unforgettable characters of the year.
5. The Corporation: I never had a chance to revisit my initial review of Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar's powerful and sometimes wickedly humorous take on American capitalism.
6. Bright Leaves: Ross McElwee's latest autobiographical documentary, a reflection on cinema, photography, memory, and (to a lesser extent) tobacco, captivated me. This might be a personal fascination: I connect pretty deeply with McElwee's ambivalence about the south and his fascination with cinema and memory. The scenes featuring his film buff distant cousin also captivated the cinephile in me.
7. Primer: Another great film about time. I'm a sucker for time travel films, and Shane Carruth's $7000 debut provided one of the best mindfucks of the year.
8. Undertow: I haven't seen David Gordon Green's film on many other lists, so I'm guessing this is a personal obsession. Loved the moody cinematgraphy and the narrative pacing. Deel (Josh Lucas) is one of the creepiest villains I saw in 2004.
9. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: I never did review the latest Gondry-Kauffman collaboration, but the film's treatment of memory and lost love was funny and smart. I also really dug Kate Winslet's hair.
10. The Saddest Music in the World: Again, no full review, and I only caught it on DVD, but one of most visually inventive films I've seen in the last five years.

Honorable mention: The Dreamers, Collateral, Spider-Man 2, Super Size Me, Fahrenheit 9/11, I ♥ Huckabees, Sideways, The Incredibles, Kill Bill Vol. 2, and Closer.

Films I wish I'd seen: Tarnation, Hotel Rwanda, Moolaadé, Los Angeles Plays Itself, Bad Education, Good Bye Lenin and The Five Obstructions. Many of these films never made it to Atlanta (or left town before I could see them). Many others I simply have no excuse for not seeing. I might come up with some other "awards" later this week if the mood strikes.

Update: I completely forgot Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, another great film I never properly reviewed, which should probably be in or close to my top ten.

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December 31, 2004

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Wes Anderson and his films have been variously described as "quirky," "idiosyncratic," "precious," and as filled with "terminal whimsy." In his earlier films, especially The Royal Tennenbaums, I've enjoyed Anderson's playful style, his meticuolous attention to set design. Many critics have noted that Anderson's films function more as giant "doll houses" more than carefully plotted narratives, an observation that is perhaps most evident in the arrested development of the Tennenbaum mansion and the Max's set models in Rushmore. Further, as David Edelstein points out, in many of Anderson's films, "there's a tension between the person and the persona," whether the flawed "family of geniuses" in the Tennenbaums or the aspiring crime geniuses in Bottle Rocket.

His latest film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (IMDB), indulges many of these tendencies. In fact, Zissou, in my reading, seems even more whimsical and less carefully paced than many of Anderson's earlier films. Zissou focuses on the ocean explorer Steve Zissou (Murray), a Jacques Cousteau figure whose films are receiving less attention (and popularity) as their narratives lose any suspense and romance. The film opens at an Italian debut of one of his latest films (in a familar Anderson trope of showing a film or play audience), and it's clear that the audience is bored by the film, their questions polite rather than curious. But when Zissou's closest friend and assistant is killed by a "jaguar shark," he vows revenge, plotting to pursue the shark and kill it a la Captain Ahab. At the screening, Zissou meets Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), a Kentucky pilot who claims to be his son. This claim is never confirmed, but the two lonely people attempt to connect, with Zissou inviting Ned to join his crew.

Like other Anderson films, the tension between person and persona is played out narratively and through set design. Zissou's pretensions as an undersea explorer are conveyed as much by his red sea cap, his ship's flag, and his blue uniform. In one of the film's best shots, the camera glides from room to room in the ship, revealing much about how Zissou (and the rest of the film's characters) wish to see themselves. But once the film established this tension, I was never quite sure how it wanted to address it. There are several moments in which the film seems to want to parody the documentary form, to convey the ways in which "reality" in a documentary is constructed, but Anderson seems to abandon that question towards the end of the film.

Visually, Anderson's films continue to fascinate, and the "undersea adventure" parody gives Anderson's vivid visual imagination room to play. He still offers characters who confront the difficult realization that they may not be able to live up to their celebrity image. Like The Royal Tennenbaums, especially, Zissou seems to exist in a temporally muddled alternate reality, with characters appearing slightly out of place. In Tennenbuams, this approach is clear. Anderson explicitly masked all references to contemporary New York City, using actors' bodies to block out shots that would normally include the Statue of Liberty (for example).

In Zissou, the bright reds and garish yellows of Zissou's uniform and the fan club insignia ring that Ned dutifully wears make the film appear to take place in a slightly different present than our own. This sense of an "alternate present" is conveyed in part musically, with the crew member (Seu George) who sings David Bowie songs in Portguese. I'm not quite sure how to bring these observations together into a fully coherent reading. Like Roger Ebert, I'm finding it difficult to "recommend" the film, but I'm not sure that's the point of writing about a film, anyway. I do think that Anderson's narrative becomes muddled towards the end, but the film seems more interesting to me this morning than it did last night.

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December 25, 2004

Ocean's Twelve

About ten years ago my family started an annual tradition in which we go to see a movie on Chritsmas afternoon. I'm not really sure why my sister was so eager to start this tradition, but, then again, I'm not going to complain about going to see a movie. The only difficulty is finding a movie that will keep me interested without offending my mother and sister, who are both very religious (my father prefers to sleep off his turkey buzz at home). This year, for the first time in several years, I genuinely enjoyed our Christmas selection.

Ocean's Twelve (IMDB) is a genuinely entertaining film, a nice follow-up to the Vegas caper film, Ocean's Eleven. Most (if not all) of Danny Ocean's crew is back for the sequel, living on their earnings from the first film's casino heist (about $19 million per person). Danny (George Clooney) and Tess (Julia Roberts) have settled into something resembling a domestic routine. They've bought a suburban home, and Tess is squabbling with painters over paint colors when she sees Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), victim of the first heist, approaching the door. He wants the money back. With interest.

Danny and Tess get the crew back together in Europe, reasoning that their crew wouldn't be able to pull any more jobs in the States. But that's just an excuse, I think, for director Steven Soderbergh to spend several months in Europe with some of his favorite actors. I won't say anything about the capers themselves because that's part of the fun of watching the film (as Roger Ebert notes in a solid review of the film).

What I enjoyed most about the film, however, was what seemed like Soderbergh's sheer joy in making this kind of film. More than most directors, Soderbergh has a terrific pop sensibility, and he uses it well in this film. Ebert's review cryptically mentions two "cameos," but there's a third one featuring Topher Grace (of That 70s Show) playing himself as an out-of-control actor who has destroyed a hotel room while partying. The camera is playful throughout the film with one long pan shot revealing the massive amount of alcohol consumed by Grace and his friends. This scene, relatively early in the film, clues us in that the film is very much about celebrity, and more broadly about performance.

Later in the film, Linus (Matt Damon in "sincere and intense" mode) has a conversation with Rusty (Brad Pitt), telling him that he's "ready for a bigger role." He's talking about their upcoming heists, but he might as well be talking about the film itself, about the role that stardom plays in dictating who gets the most screen time. There's also the question of celebrity among thieves, with Danny and his crew competing with European rivals regarding who is more famous. I won't reveal the film's other cameos, other than to say that they fit the film's treatment of celebrity perfectly.

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December 19, 2004

Closer

Mel has been scooping me big-time when it comes to film reviews, but I finally got a chance to see Mike Nichols' Closer (IMDB) tonight. Like Mel, I thought the film was beautifully photographed, with the London settings very effectively capturing the mood of the film, and Damien Rice's melancholic music, which plays during both the opening and closing credits, fits the film's mature treatment of love perfectly. And, like Mel, I found the casting choices interesting and effective, especially Julia Roberts playing against type as a relatively unglamorous photographer who is usually wearing, as Mel puts it, "some great men's trousers."

Closer focuses on four characters, Dan (Jude Law), an obituarist and sometimes novelist, and Alice (Natalie Portman), a stripper; and Anna (Roberts), a photographer, and Larry (Clive Owen), a dermatologist. The film opens with Dan meeting Alice for the first time, in a near fantasy sequence, with the two of them gradually approaching each other on the sidewalk, Alice's "Lola Red" hair shining in the sun. Lola, an American, forgets London's traffic rules, steps in foront of a car, and sustains a minor injury. Dan takes her to the hospital. Later, Dan inadvertently plays Cupid for Anna and Larry by posing in a sex chatroom as "Anna" and seducing Larry, arranging a meeting in an aquarium. When Anna happens to be there, she figures out the joke, but begins to date (and eventually marries) Larry.

The film is based on a play (Patrick Marber adapted his own play), and there are only six speaking parts in the entire film. While the characters are fascinating, articulate, and complicated, I experienced this tight focus as claustrophobic. The film's narrative is also fairly elliptical, often skipping several years to move to the next pertinent moment. I realize this is part of the point of the film, but for whatever reason, I found these temporal ellipses a bit frustrating, especially when Dan reveals to Alice that he's been having an affair with Anna for over a year. I think the problem for me is that the film doesn't convey that duration very effectively. I didn't sense (from my experience of the film) that Dan and Alice had even been together for a year, so the betrayal didn't really register like it could have (A.O. Scott has a much more generous reading of the temporal gaps than I do).

Even with that (minor) gripe, I relished the articulate screenplay. All of the characters are clearly articulate, using their dialogue in a variety of ways: to deceive, to wound, to challenge. Dan, posing as Anna, tricks Larry in a sex chatroom. Alice questions whether or not Anna's photographs of working class pain are truly "honest" or whether they are simply comfort narratives for bourgeois art consumers. Alice is stripper, someone who might seem to reveal everything, but when she sees Larry at the club, Larry has what seems to be a profound moment of emotional self-revelation. And, of course, we learn at the end of the film that perhaps the most surprising deception has been comitted by Alice herself.

I'm not quite sure what to do with the film's treatment of authenticity, or perhaps, more precisely, honesty. But I think that's one of the great strengths of the film. It doesn't offer easy answers about romance, sex, or love. It's far from a predictable film, which is very much in its favor. In ways, Closer seems to fit nicely alongside the more critically-acclaimed Sideways and Before Sunset as a film that treats adult relationships in a serious, thought-provoking way.

Update (2:09 AM): Two things. First, I'm not sure what this says about me, but everyone has been talking about the film's heavy use of profanity. To be honest, I didn't really notice. I just thought that's how people speak. Second, some of those same people have been comparing Closer to Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, but I don't think that's really representative of what Nichols and Marber are doing in this film. Where the characters in LaBute's films seem downright immoral, sinners who will eventually find themselves in the hands of an angry G-d, the characters in Closer seem a bit more complicated, less doomed to hell and instead merely deluded.

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December 11, 2004

Undertow

David Gordon Green's magnificent new film, Undertow (IMDB), opens with a high school boy and girl quietly and awkwardly communicating their passion for each other. The scene reminded me a lot of the opening sequence of Green's previous film, All the Real Girls, which also was set in a rural southern landscape of abandoned factories and warehouses, verdant forests, mom-and-pop restaurants, and collections of broken down things. Roger Ebert describes Green's approach well: "We see not the thriving parts of cities, but the desolate places they have forgotten. His central characters are usually adolescents, vibrating with sexual feelings but unsure how to express them."

But, unlike his previous film, Green's Undertow takes a surprisingly violent turn when the boy, Chris Munn (played by Jamie Bell who previously starred in Billy Elliot), throws a rock through his girlfriend's window, arousing the attention of her father who runs out the front door, shotguns firing into the air. Chris sprints away, running through the woods, through neighbors' yards, culminating in one of the more painful imges I've seen in some time, with Chris leaping barefoot onto a nail sticking up through a board (the stigmata allusion is there, but fairly understated). Even with the nail in his foot, Chris continues to try to run. It's the only response he seems to know.

After the chase, we see Chris in the police station, waiting for his father to pick him up. Chris has been in trouble before, but it's clear that the film sympathizes with him. His father, John (Dermot Mulroney), has become a hermit after his wife died, isolating himself and his two sons from the rest of the community. John also burdens Chris with most of the farm's chores, deeming the younger son, Tim (Devon Alan), too weak and fragile to work. Tim's fragility is somewhat self-imposed. For reasons that are never explained (other than reference to an "anxiety disorder"), Tim constantly eats objects that are harmful or poisonous--green paint, mud, small metal objects--leaving his stomach tied up in knots. The film's main plot opens when John's ex-con brother, Deel (Josh Lucas), enters this fragile family situation seeking a collection of gold coins that John and Deel's father managed to steal from a museum. The coins are valuable, and it becomes clear that Deel is angling to find the collection, first by preying on the psychologies of the sons, then by actual violence.

Because Chris has a history of petty crime, he feels he cannot turn to the police, and so he and Tim run, attempting to escape from the increasingly violent Deel, and it's worth noting here that Lucas's performance keeps Deel from becoming a one-dimensional monster. Chris and Tim spend most of the rest of the film running and hiding, living temporarily in abandoned piles of junk or among a group of teen runaways in the ruins of a brick warehouse along a river. But while the film has all of the genre characteristics of a thriller, Green's characteristic style, which I previously described as "red clay realism," still comes through. Throughout the chase, we still witness moments of contemplation and reflection, with characters who speak awkwardly, but poetically, about their circumstances (Philp Glass's low-key score adds to this sense of contemplation).

Tim Orr, who was also the cinematographer for All the Real Girls and George Washington, again lovingly captures the junk, dirt, and detritus, but also the light, of the rural south. In my review of Girls, I read this sense of atmosphere and Green's contemplative narrative style as "nostalgic" for an earlier mode of cinematic production, but rather than seeing the films as nostalgic, I now see Green (along with Orr) developing a distinct cinematic aesthetic, one that I can now only vaguely describe as "contemplative," although that terms seems imprecise (Cynthia Fuchs' description of the narrative as a "series of impressions" might come closer). The characters in the film are, in many different ways, contemplative, but the film itself is also contemplative, at least in my reading. As many people (including Mel) have noted, Green tends to shy away from conventional narrative, though Undertow comes closer to the narrative expectations than his other films (Ebert's comparison with Terrence Malick makes a lot of sense in this regard), and it's within these unconventional moments that I see Green's films allowing space for thought, for contemplation.

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December 1, 2004

Back to the Future

Now that I've completed my fall tour, I'm in grading mode. I find that I grade best in relatively short bursts of 10-12 papers at a time, which means that I've had a little more time than usual to rent (and even watch!) a few videos and DVDs. For some reason, I've been primarily in the mood for films from the 1950s, specifically the films of Douglas Sirk, whose Written on the Wind and All that Heaven Allows have recently received the Criteron treatment, likely on the strength of Todd Haynes' loving re-interpretation of Sirkean melodrama in Far From Heaven. I've been wanting to revisit Sirk's films ever since watching Imitation of Life in a feminist film theory course I took at Purdue, but often found myself distracted by other things. Side note: a 1979 interview with Sirk on the All that Heaven Allows DVD, in which Sirk discusses his decision to leave Germany in the 1930s, is well worth watching.

But last night, I watched (and deeply enjoyed) Sirk's 1958 film, Tarnished Angels. an adaptation of William Faulkner's novel about barnstorming pilots, Pylon. I'm not sure quite why I enjoyed the film so much, but the airplane races (featuring Robert Stack as a daredevil pilot and Troy Donahue as one of his biggest rivals) were lots of fun, but the film really belongs to Rock Hudson's Burke Devlin, a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune who becomes drawn into the story of the World War I flying ace, Roger Burnham (Stack), and his "gypsy family," including a wife, a son, and a loyal mechanic, Jiggs. The film clearly struggles between the nomadic life that Burnham and his "family" lead and the imperative towards a "normal" life.

I also caught Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World on DVD the other night, and found it to be one of the most inventive, exciting films I've seen in a long time. In fact, I really regret missing it when it was in theaters here in Atlanta a few months ago. I'll try to write a longer review later (no promises), but Maddin's inventive mixture of styles (German Expressionism, Surrealism, with occasional bursts of bright color) was simply breathtaking.

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November 28, 2004

Kinsey

Went to see Kinsey (IMDB), the biopic about Indiana University biology professor Alfred Kinsey, last night. Kinsey was a pioneer researcher in human sexual behavior, traveling across the country and interviewing thousands of people about their sexual practices. Not surprisingly, Kinsey's research led to tremendous controversy, with the film emphasizing that the biologist eventually lost his funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. I'd been looking forward to this film for some time, in part because of my relatively recent interest in Kinsey, whose files are still housed in the Indiana University library where I sometimes did research, but also because I really liked Bill Condon's previous film, Gods and Monsters, which offered an unusal take on the biopic in its treatment of filmmaker James Whale.

But for some reason, Kinsey disappointed me. As David Edelstein (who liked Kinsey a lot more than I did) points out, biography films are often very difficult to do well, especially when trying to impose a three-act structure onto a human life. Edelstein does identify the film's (and the researcher's) important contribution to discussions of sexuality, in which Kinsey challenged the practice of promoting "morality disguised as fact." While Kinsey's research initially challenged the sex education courses and books of the 1930s and '40s (including the puritanical myths that oral sex could cause sterility), Condon reminds us of the relevance of Kinsey's phrase for the contemporary cultural moment, as J. Hoberman points out in his review of the film (Hoberman's review has the added bonus of quoting French philosopher George Bataille).

Perhaps the reason I found Kinsey unsatisfying was the clinical distance with which it treated the subject matter of human sexuality. I realize that this distance is meant to reproduce Kinsey's own scientific detachment, the extent to whcih he sought to remove all emotional attachments from sexual behavior (the film emphasizes and implictly criticizes the fact that he encouraged his assistants to participate in spouse-swapping). I also felt that the film abandoned Kinsey's relationship with his children just when it became interesting. An outdoor dinner sequence in which Kinsey talks frankly with his children about their sex lives, embarrassing his son, suggests that his scientific frankness might have caused problems in his family, but we never really see his children on-screen again. Nor do we get a clear sense of Kinsey's personality. There are some flashbacks to his childhood, in which his father was a Methodist minister who preaches ahgainst all manner of sexual activity, including brothels, and even (gasp!) zippers, but as Stephanie Zacharek of Salon notes, this Kinsey seems "more palatable and less interesting than the real thing."

I was also a little disappointed in the presentation of the interview sequences. Rather than offering some interesting interviews with some of Kinsey's subjects, Condon opts for a travel montage approach, showing a chorus of interviews against a map of the United States with lines criss-crossing the country suggesting Kinsey and his assistants' extensive travels. The shot recalls classical Hollywood representations of train travel, but the chorus of voices ultimately made these experiences appear to be all the same, turning Kinsey's highly specific research into a series of generalities and abstractions. In fact, this chorus, to my mind, works against the notion that "everyone is different" that Kinsey sought to convey through his research. I'd certainly still recommend Kinsey, but I can't shake the perception that a far more interesting film could have been made, especially given the wealth of archival material Kinsey left behind.

By the way: Like David Edelstein, I also quite liked the casting of Tim Curry (of Rocky Horror fame) as a rival biologist who seeks to promote abstinence and traditional sexual morality. Also note that the film's official website also has a link to the Kinsey Institute website.

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November 27, 2004

Sideways

For reasons that I couldn't quite put together at first, Sideways (IMDB) reminded me of About Schmidt, the Jack Nicholson RV movie. I'd forgotten, until I got home and read David Edelstein's review, that both films were made by Alexander Payne (who also made the films Election and Citizen Ruth). Both Schmidt and Sideways are somewhat atypical "road movies," and both films also focus on charaters who struggle with disappointment about the direction their lives have taken (see Manohla Dargis's New York Times review). But, as Edelstein points out, Sideways lacks the smugness of Payne's earlier films, treating the main characters, Miles (Paul Giamatti, who should find some shelf space for the acting awards he will inevitably receive) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church), with sympathy, even when we laugh at the situations in which they find themselves.

Miles is a wannbe novelist whose latest book is in the process of being rejected by every publisher out there. He's also divorced from his wife and living in a small apartment while teaching middle school English classes. Jack is a washed-up actor who is getting married in less than a week. Miles is treating Jack, his college roommate, to one last week of excitement before the wedding. They travel from LA to wine country in northern California, mostly because Miles is an oenophile, though his love for wines seems to be a cover for his alcoholism, though te film elegantly avoids judging his addiction. Jack leaves for the week's vacation seeking a final fling (or two), and we get the feeling that his sexual adventures are also a kind of addiction.

Once they reach wine country, Miles and Jack meet two women, a waitress Miles knows, Maya (Virginia Madsen), and a wine pourer, Stephanie (Sandra Oh). Jack and Stephanie quickly hook up while Miles and Maya begin to develop a much more cautious relationship. As Miles begins to open up to Maya, he describes his love of pinot noir wines, and it's clear that when he describes the wine that he identifies with it, perhaps to an unhealthy extreme. Meanwhile, Jack keeps his planned marriage a secret from Stephanie, telling her that he loves her and acting like a father figure towards her child. The film treats these complications carefully (and at times humorously), avoiding simply judging their actions. In this regard, Haden Church does a great job of portraying the smarmy, but essentially disappointed, actor without making Jack seem like a cliche.

I don't want to say too much more about the film, other than to encourage others to see it (and hopefully get their comments on the film). I was a little disappointed in the film's treatment of the female characters. Maya is a fairly well-rounded character, but she's so attractive, it's a little difficult to determine why she'd become involved with someone like Miles. More disappointing was that Stephanie virtually dsiappears from the film once she learns that Jack is getting married. Her character intrigued me, and I felt her story got lost at the expense of Jack and Miles. It's not that I wanted resolution to her story (her final segment is a fairly apt critique of Jack's behavior), I wanted to know more about her character, what motivated her, or whatever. Part of that was Sandra Oh's performance (she's also great in the underrated Last Night), but like Maya's character, Stephanie sometimes seemed more like a plot device to allow the male characters to have their middle-age existential crises. Having more of their stories would have made Sideways, already very satisfying, a much fuller film, but like Dargis, the film reminded me of the "smaller" films of the 1970s before the fall into "the spell of the blockbuster imperative."

Update I missed Chris's review last night, but I'd agree with him that the split-screens and slow pans without payoff were a bit annoying, and, yes, the film's jokes at the expense of the minor characters (especially the overweight waitress) weren't deserved. And for one of the few negative reviews of the film, check out Charles (Chuck?) Taylor's Salon review.

Posted by chuck at 1:37 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

October 29, 2004

Primer

[Revised slightly for clarity, new observations] Shane Carruth's Primer (IMDB, see also Primer Ventures--thanks Rachael!) is the most exciting, difficult, and puzzling time travel film I think I've ever seen. I feel like I'll need to see the film again tomorrow night, and that's about the highest compliment I can give any film. I can't be sure that I entirely understand all of the film's narrative turns, and to be honest, I'm struggling to find a way to wrap my head around the film's take on the nature of time, identity, and scientific inquiry. It's the kind of film that will provoke endless conversations and repeated viewings, with many critics comparing it to films such as Memento, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Mulholland Drive, a category to which Primer certainly belongs. Reading back over this review, it's very clear that I'm still grappling with this film, so please bear with this review--it's all over the place.

I'm not sure where to start, so I'll begin by noting that the story of the film's production is itself pretty amazing. Primer was made on a $7,000 budget and filmed in Super 16. Carruth, a sofware engineer-turned filmmaker wrote, directed, and starred in the film, and he also composed the film's score. Members of the cast also served on the crew. Carruth's parents provided craft services. The film itself is a testament to the DIY ethos associated with independent cinema. Stylistically, the film powerfully conveys a bland corporate culture, with washed out colors and sparse, modern buildings. I'll have to see the film again before I can talk fully about the cinematography and mise-en-scene, but many of the film's shots were beautifully composed, regardless of the film's budget.

The film opens with a group of researchers who are working nights in a garage on a device that is only vaguely described, but the four men, all wearing what one reviewer called "white collar drag" (whie dress shirts, striped ties) assemble this technology out of spare parts such as a catalytic converter and copper coil (note: one reviewer on this forum notes that the garage is a refernce to HP, the ties, of course recall IBM). The four guys are trying to find someone to invest in their idea so that they no longer have to work for a large company and so they can profit from their own labor. The house, a typical middle-class home in a Dallas suburb, recalls other films that deal with white-collar alienation. As I was watching I was reminded of Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men, in part due to the white collar culture, but also due to the relationship between Aaron and Abe (a point that I'll try to explain later). One of the men, Abe, discovers that time passes at a different pace inside the box, that they have assembled a time machine. Then he shows Aaron (played by Carruth) that he built a larger version of the time machine inside a U-Haul storage space [some spoilers may follow].

The two of them eventually face all of the ethical questions that time travel offers: given the incredible power associated with time travel, what would you do? Naturally, they go back and collect lottery winnings, but as one of them points out, that's only $200,000 a year for the rest of our lives, not the kind of payoff you'd want for inventing a time machine, so they discuss other ways in which they could exploit their invention ("we could publish it," one suggests), hoping to capitalize on the power it offers. The two men go back in time often, creating some confusion about what is happening, as causality and agency itself become confused, with at least three Aarons and two Abes existing simultaneously at one point, though "Aaron 2" speculates in the audiotape that there could be "at least twenty" Aarons out there trying to repeat the party scene that serves as the film's narrative crux.

Eventually, one of the film's chief concerns becomes clear. Aaron wishes at one point that he could beat up his boss without any consequences. His wife jokingly teases him saying, "my husband, the hero." And at this point it becomes clear that Aaron wishes to "reverse-engineer" the moment at the party in which he can be the hero, repeatedly returning back to this same moment again and again until he can "get it right." In my experience, this is one of the most effective treatments of this desire I've ever seen in a time travel film (and I've seen a lot of time travel films), in part because it's one of the few time-travel films to directly criticize this impulse (La Jetee might be the other example). These questions of power begin to complicate the relationship between Aaron and Abe, with the two of them becoming increasingly paranoid as their travels in time begin to take their toll, physically, emotionally, and mentally. It's this competition between the two men that reminded me so much of LaBute's film, with the power available through time travel leading to the demise of their relationship, a reading that Carruth himself emphasizes in this interview and in this Village Voice interview.

I'm still wrapping my head around this film, but I can say it's one film that really "gets" time travel. I'll be thinking about this film for a long time.

Posted by chuck at 11:27 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

October 23, 2004

Bright Leaves

Ross McElwee's Bright Leaves (IMDB) focuses on his ambivalent relationship to North Carolina's tobacco industry and his family's relationship to that history, but it also frequently reminded me of my own family's connections to the western North Carolina communities where McElwee filmed. The old warehouse where his great-grandfather stored tobacco now converted into a cosmetology academy. The red brick church rising up out of the tobacco fields. These are the images I remember seeing when I attended family reunions in Maiden, a small town just north of Charlotte. It's probably no surprise that I'm reflecting on my personal and family histories after seeing a McElwee film. After all, he's one of the masters of personal documentary. But McElwee's ambivalent relationship to the south and his fascination with cinema as a kind of memory machine resonated with my own experiences.

The film opens with McElwee meeting a second cousin who is a samll town lawyer and a serious cinephile. The cousin shows us his collection of film stills that fill a wall full of file cabinets, his collection of trailers, and finally a letter he had received from a small-time movie star. Finally, we learn the main reason for the visit. McElwee's cousin has determined that a 1950 Gary Cooper-Patricia Neal-Lauren Bacall film, Bright Leaf, may have been loosely based on their great-grandfather, a tobacco entrepeneur who was run out of business through some shady dealings by the Duke family. This encounter becomes a cinematic palimpsest for thinking about family and cultural history, as well as on documentary cinema itself, on what it means to film something.

The discovery of this connection to a forgotten Hollywood classic inspires McElwee to research his great-grandfather's story. He briefly imagines his great-grandfather defeating the Duke family, entertaining the idea of inheriting a great tobacco fortune, but also inheriting the guilt of knowing that he would have made a profit on other people's health. For the most part, the film avoids appearing didactic about tobacco smoking, or even about the people who make a living growing and selling tobacco. When he asks a small-time tobacco farmer how his church's pastor feels about the tobacco industry, it's clear that the farmer shares that sense of guilt. When he talks to friends who are trying to quit smoking, we see the visceral appeal of cigarette smoking. It would have been very easy to make a film that focused only on these questions, and I'm glad that McElwee didn't make that film.

The moments that I loved, the scenes that captured my interest, were the "home movie" scenes, the moments in which McElwee reflects on the nature of documentary film. At one point, he reflects on a scene in Bright Leaf in which Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal kiss. He reminds us that Cooper and Neal had an affair that lasted several years, and while watching the scene, he notices Neal make a tentative, tender gesture with her left arm, briefly touching Cooper's shoulder while they kiss, before quickly pulling her had away. McElwee speculates that this is a "documentary moment," a scene in a fictional film in which real life briefly intervenes. In typical McElweean serendipity, Patricia Neal happens to be appearing at a nearby film conference. When he gets a chance to ask her about the scene, she denies his interpretation, but it's an interesting theory.

These questions constantly inform the film, as McElwee reflects on the role of film and photography in "remembering" the past. He shows us footage of his son as a young boy struggling to tie his shoes. He notes that he doesn't remember why he filmed this moment, doesn't remember what happened immediately before or after. Of course, these questions about memory and "home movies" are close to me right now while I finish my Capturing the Friedmans paper (almost done!), and now I have another film where I can revisit the questions I've been considering. And while I'm thinking about memory, photography, nd family, I've just realized that this building may be the place where my mother's family held their annual reunions for many years. I'm not entirely sure I'm right, but it looks about right. If I'm not mistaken, there's a playground with a basketball court just down the street where I would sneak away to play while my parents and grandparents would talk (I also remember watching Villanova beat UNC on a cheap black-and-white TV, cheering the underdog Villanova while all of my cousins rooted for their beloved Tar Heels).

In short, I really enjoyed Bright Leaves. I haven't said everything I could have about this film because I don't want to spoil all of surprises the film offers, but I imagine that I will write more about this film at some point. McElwee talks about filming things becoming a narcotic as powerful as tobacco itself, and I'm beginning to think that the addiction to going to the darkened theater and watching the flickering images on the silver screen is a pretty powerful narcotic itself.

Posted by chuck at 12:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 11, 2004

The Butterfly Effect

I had a brief moment of job market panic last night, so I decided to take a brief break and watch the Ashton Kutcher vehicle, The Butterfly Effect. (IMDB). Note: possible spoilers ahead, but I figure that if you're interested in this film at all, you've probably seen it by now. I'm not quite ready to work through the film's time-travel logic, which it associates with chaos theory, but I will note that the film may be loosely relevant to my project, especially in its use of the main character's diaries, and eventually home movies, as the mode of conveyance through time.

I'm also intrigued by the film's fear of unpredictablility, especially when it comes to the safety of children. Butterfly constantly puts small children, including the Ashton Kutcher character, Evan Treborn, in physically or psychologically dangerous situations that have a profound effect on Evan's adult life (as well as the lives of three of his friends). It's a strange, somewhat troubling film, one that seems desperate to protect innocence in the face of a dangerous, hostile world. Also interesting that Evan is essentially raised by a single mother (his father has been institutionalized due to his similar claims about time travel). Although Evan's mom is portrayed as caring and protective, she is rarely around when Evan places himself in dangerous situations. Finally, the film, like many other time travel films, has a fairly explicit religious subtext, which becomes more explicit when you listen to the directors' commentary, in which they note that the time traveler's name was originally supposed to be Chris Treborn.

The question of unpredictability raised in this film (and it comes up in other films as well) was sparked when I was reading a colleague's work this afternoon, and she mentioned Anthony Giddens' Reith Lectures, where Giddens discusses the relationship between globalization and uncertainty or unpredictability, using the phrase "runaway world." PDFs of several of the lectures are available at the Lectures on Key Topics website linked above, but his discussion of globalization seems particularly relevant.

Posted by chuck at 3:59 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

October 3, 2004

Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry

George Butler's sympathetic biographical documentary, Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (IMDB), initially appears to be the perfect antidote to the cynical smear politics practiced by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth (SBVT). If you accept Butler's representation of Kerry's Veitnam service, then the SBVT charges are clearly false, or at least beside the point. We learn, among other things, that swiftboat duty was incredibly dangerous, with a 75 percent casualty rate. The swiftboats faced firefights on a daily basis, making it nearly impossible to claim that John Kerry's service was anything but courageous.

We also learn that Richard Nixon, clearly threatened by the charismatic young veteran, sought to sabatoge Kerry's young career, first by trying to find some "dirt" on him. Nixon aide Charles Colson, recognizing Kerry's appeal, comments on one of the infamous White House audio tapes that "We have to destroy the young demagogue before he becomes another Nader" (best laugh line of the night). When they cannot find any dirt, Nixon recruits John O'Neill, now the leader of the SBVT, to question Kerry's reputation. To punctuate this point, Butler includes a segment from an episode of the Dick Cavett Show, in which Kerry and O'Neill debate. But Going Upriver is not interesting only as a campaign document. Most viewers of the film will already have made up their minds about Kerry before ever seing the film.

What I found most compelling about the film was the use of archival footage, including Super-8 film taken by Kerry and his crewmates on their swiftboat. These shots give Kerry's Vietnam experience a surprising immediacy, not only conveying what Max Cleland calls Vietnam's "beauty and terror," but also showing John Kerry to be a charismatic youth, capable of taking a principled stand at an early age. The Super-8 film footage, and other archival footage when Kerry returns to the United States, fascinated me throughout, and Butler carefully selects this footage to convey Kerry's heroics, both in Vietnam and later as a protestor. We see Kerry as engaged, thoughtful, and reflective, holding back the anger that seems to overwhelm many of his comrades, with Kerry's clean-cut demeanor contrasting their shaggy-haired appearance.

The film is also carefully structured to convey John Kerry's transformation from a Kennedy-inspired idealist who willingly fights for his country to a disillusioned veteran who returns to the United States to protest a war he sees as unjust, but while Kerry's political shift is contextualized in his participation in the Winter Soldier conference on wartime atrocities, as J. Hoberman observes, Going Upriver fails to emphasize that Kerry represented the view of thousands of soldiers returning from the war, turning a major cultural shift into a personal journey.

Throughout the film, we see very few contemporary images of Kerry, other than a brief montage of photographs at the film's end, including a shot of Kerry at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. In a sense, the film conveys the extent to which we still have yet to resolve the ghosts of the Vietnam War, and how those ghosts haunt our present war in Iraq. Following in the footsteps of Errol Morris's Fog of War, Going Upriver carefully chronicles Kerry's personal transformation during the Vietnam era, adding "a small, valuable contribution" to the continued efforts to make sense of the Vietnam War's effects on American life.

Posted by chuck at 5:40 PM | TrackBack

September 27, 2004

Bus 174

Bus 174 (IMDB) is a powerful documentary which depicts a hostage crisis in Rio de Janeiro when 21-year old street person, Sandro do Nascimento, holds several bus passengers hostage for several hours after a botched robbery attempt. The underequipped and untrained police force were unable to secure the area around the bus, and the media quickly picked up the story, broadcasting the story live for several hours on Brazilian TV. Director José Padilha uses the raw footage of the event, creating a sense of liveness and intensity unparalleled in recent film.

Because he generally avoids using the media coverage itself, he avoids turning his documentary into yet another film about media spectacle, instead choosing to focus on the class and race antagonisms that played out during this frightening afternoon. Mixing raw footage with talking heads interviews with police officers, hostages, social workers, and sociologists, as well as Sandro's family and friends , Padilha produces a haunting account of life in Brazil for an "invisible" person like Sandro. Early in the film, we learn that Sandro watched as his mother, who ran a small business, was mugged and killed when he was six years old. Because he never knew his father, Sandro turns to the streets, living among the street gangs that roam the city, robbing people for food, clothes, and in Sandro's case, drugs.

We later learn that, as a teenager, Sandro survived a notorious police massacre of several street kids, and Sandro's case worker and his aunt explain that Sandro spent some time in prison for his crimes. Late in the film, the conditions in Brazil's prisons are brought vividly to life in a short sequence in which Padiho goes into a prison. People are stacked on top of each other in crowded cells, with forty people in a space meant for ten or so. The prisoners scream about abusive guards. Others tell us that their food is rotten, that they cannot get medical help, or that they cannot contact legal counsel. This entire sequence, filmed in the negative mode that switches black with white, making the jail seem utterly horrific. As Roger Ebert describes it:

nothing in the work of Bosch or the most abysmal horror films prepares us for these images.

The film builds to a bleak and horrifying conclusion, one that is clearly anticiapted by the interviews, but one that still left me feeling completely hollow. I don't think I've been this deeply unsettled by a film in a long time. Most reviewers have compared Bus 174 to City of God, but while City portrays a similar milieu, this documentary, with its raw footage, often unfolding in real time, had a far more powerful effect on me.

As J. Hoberman notes, Bus 174 does have an important subtext in Sandro's awareness of the emdia coverage. His constant insistence that what we're seeing is "not a movie," that it's not a Hollywood action film, seems crucial. Sandro seems aware of his media image, even to the point of asking his hostages to participate in the performance. I'm not quite sure yet how to reconcile Sandros' performance with the film's clear attempts to address Rio's problems with unemployment and poverty, but it's an important element of the film. Bus 174, with its troubling images of poverty and violence, is going to stick with me for a long time.

Posted by chuck at 12:34 AM | TrackBack

September 19, 2004

Silver City

John Sayles' Silver City (IMDB) has been describd as the latest entry in the Bush-bashing film cycle, and while that sentiment is certainly there, the film operates more effectively as an Altmanesque satire of politics through the detective genre. The film also ends with one of the most interesting final shots I've seen all year (I'm finding it hard to describe without giving anything away, but that shot alone was worth the price of admission for me).

Chris Cooper, playing the Bush-like Dickie Pilager, a canddiate for governor in Colorado, appears more as a cipher, almost devoid of personality. You get the usual jokes ("he's a big picture guy;" "he doesn't read much"), and Dickie Pilager, like George W. Bush, comes from a prominent political family and has ties to mysterious wealthy businessmen (including the CEO of "Bentel," rather than Bechtel). Dickie is shepherded by a controlling campaign chief, Chuck Raven, who might remind you of a certain Bush administration official. But if the film had remained firmly within this level of satire, I'm not sure that I would have enjoyed it, and it would have had little to say about American politics. Instead, Silver City focuses on a murder mystery plot, allowing Sayles to unearth many of the contradictions--race, social class, citizenship, etc--that cannot be reconciled very easily.

During the film's opening sequence, we see Pilager filming a campaign advertisement meant to convey his commitment to the environment. He's supposed to be fishing in a shimmering lake, perfectly framed by the mountains behind him, while wearing the LL Bean clothes that make him look like an everyday guy. While filming the commercial, Dickie's fishing line accidentally hooks a corpse, and the nervous Chuck Raven quickly leaps into action, getting Pilager away from the scene to avoid the appearance of scandal. He then hires Danny O'Brien (Danny Huston in his first leading role), a typically down-on-his-luck detective, to conspicuously follow three people who might try to fabricate a scandal for the candidate just a few weeks before the election.

Danny is a former reporter, someone who was committed to the kind of investigative reporting that now seems lost. He refers back to the Big Story he'd uncovered, but then when the newspaper went public, his anonymous sources backed down or disappeared, the newspaper got sued, and he was fired. There's an interesting sequence early in the film when Danny goes to the darkly-lit office of his former editor, who now runs an underground internet newspaper, with several post-hippie employees working as reporters. This news source contrasts with the commercial newspaper where Nora, Danny's ex, works. Nora struggles to be critical of Pilager's campaign, but because she is dispatched out to watch Pilager repeat the same stump speech over and over again, she has no real opportunity for true reporting. Perhpas making things more troubling, she's engaged to a prominent state lobbyist for a real estate group. While it's not the major concern of the film, these sequences offer an important critique of much of the media coverage of American politics.

Danny visits each of the three people he's supposed to "investigate," first meeting with a conservative shock radio host who thinks that Pilager is too liberal. He then talks to a mining engineer who knows that Silver City, a planned community, is being built on an abandoned mine filed with toxic chemicals. Finally, he talks to Dickie's sister (well played by Daryl Hannah), the family's black sheep daughter who smokes pot and trains for the Olympic archery team. In trying to put all of the pieces together, Danny begins mapping the story out, literally drawing the connections between the major players on his living room wall, allowing Danny to "map" the relationships between the media, politics, law enforcement, water rights, and real estate, creating the image of an informal conspiracy (some of these connections also reminded me of Polanski's Chinatown, another film that uses the detective plot in a similar way). By "informal," I mean that many of these connections are only loosely articulated and that there is no official puppet master pulling the strings.

This is where Silver City reminds me of Altman's "big" films with dozens of characters and multiple subplots, but as with Sayles' City of Hope and Lone Star (two of the most underrated films of the 1990s in my opinion), these connections serve to underscore some of the contradictions of social class, race, and citizenship in the United States. These contradictions become most evident when Danny discovers that the person found in the lake was an illegal immigrant from Mexico, exploited as cheap labor, and that all of the witnesses who could talk about the crime would not be protected if they spoke out against the criminals.

Like many of Sayles' films, especially Lone Star and Limbo, Silver City's ending is one of the film's major strengths. I won't say anything else about it above the fold, but to me it presents one of the major interpretive challenges of the film. Some possible spoilers below the fold.

The film ends, as it begins, with a photo opportunity, Pilager giving a speech on the same bucolic lake where he hooked the corpse at the beginning of the film. In this photo shoot, Pilager is giving a speech in front of some hastily built bleachers with police officers in one section and a high school sports team and cheerleading squad in the other. The shot conveys just how carefully managed these campaign appearances actually are, and then, as the camera glides out over the lake, we see the corpse of a fish slowly rise to the surface of the lake, killed by the toxic chemicals that are seeping into it from the nearby abandoned mine. Gradually, another fish surfaces, and then as the camera tracks back further from the lake, we see dozens of fish floating on the surface. It's an amazingly cynical shot, a satire of the American political system that allows such inequalities to persist. If I had one criticism of the film, however, it might be that the film offers few, if any, alternatives to this cynicism and resignation. Danny and Nora end up together, but their reunion seems almost completely wrapped up in their shared resignation, their exhaustion in combatting the corruption they have witnessed.

Posted by chuck at 11:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 11, 2004

The Hunting of the President

Harry Thomason and Nickolas Perry's The Hunting of the President (IMDB), a documentary about "the ten-year campaign to destroy Bill Clinton," has been lost in the shuffle of the many other fine documentaries that have appeared in theaters this year. In fact, compared to the packed houses in Atlanta for F9/11 and Control Room, I was a little disappointed to see such a small crowd present last night for Thomason and Parry's film. I was even more disappointed because Hunting is an engrossing, entertaining film, equal parts conspiracy thriller and political documentary (and, yes, like J. Hoberman, I'm aware that Clinton's story is yesterday's news).

Very quickly, The Hunting of the President introduces us to shady Arkansas locals, including a private detective and other local characters looking either to shut down Clinton's rise to power or at least make a profit from it. These characters are introduced rapidly, using titles that appear to be typed onto the screen (echoing the effect used in All the President's Men). At the same time, the film uses archival footage from kitschy 1950s detective films to humorous mock the artificial seriousness with which the investigations of Clinton were conducted. This use of footage reminded me more of The Corporation than of Michael Moore's use of similar footage, but the effect of the inserted footage is to tweak the tone of Hunting and prevent it from feeling too heavy-handed.

We watch as reporters discuss overhearing conversations on houseboats involving shadowy figures from the Arkansas Project, while Bill Clinton's ascent to the Presidency begins to appear inevitable, although we rarely glimpse Clinton himself, an aspect of the film that I found lacking (I'm no Clinton apologist, but conveying his charisma, especially during the 1992 campaign would have made the film more interesting, I believe). Further, because Thomason is a famous FOB (Friend of Bill), it seems to gloss Clinton's complicated sexual history.

The film builds chronologically (the official website has a nice timeline and list of key figures), with local Arkansas "scandals," including the Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers stories, giving way to Ken Starr's unabashedly partisan $80 million investigation of Whitewater. These stories move primarily through talking heads inteviews, with David Brock emerging as a credible figure in discussing the smear tactics used by conservative Clinton haters. He also illustrates how the "liberal media" were complicit in bringing down Clinton, with everyone seeking to be the next Woodward and Bernstein in a new Watergate, a process that seems to be playing itself out yet again in the ridiculous Memogate controversy, in which we now see dozens of bloggers suddenly proclaiming themselves document experts. Meanwhile, reporters who questioned the validity of Starr's investigation were immediately tarred as Clinton apologists

Susan McDougall and Claudia Riley emerge as key figures for talking about the Independent Counsel's Whitewater investigation (McDougall eventually was sentenced to two years in prison, basically for refusing to testify against the Clintons). McDougall's tales of being forced to wear the "red dress" in prison, typically a signifier of especially violent crimes such as chld killing, is rather upsetting and, of course, recalls another famous dress. Riley, a longtime Democrat and classic southern matriarch, provides plenty of color, echoing the film's assertions about the Starr crowd's fascination with Bill Clinton's sex life. Asked if she ever had sex with Clinton, the 74-year old replies, "He never asked me."

Some viewers of the film will fault it for not giving voice to "the other side," and Thomason and Perry show only a couple of interviews with people who fought for Clinton's impeachment (although the closing credits list several of the people who refused to be interviewed), but like David Edelstein, I don't think this is a major fault in the film. It still makes the clear case that American taxpayers spent $80 million on an investigation that "turned up nothing but evidence of consensual oral sex." And, to be honest, the film does downplay the Monica Lewinsky affair (I don't think Linda Tripp was mentioned at all in the film), but their absence from the film doesn't diminish its main point.

As Edelstein points out, Hunting effectively conveys the ability of the right in "transforming baseless innuendo into the stuff of $80-million taxpayer-funded investigations—and impeachments." But, unlike Bush's Brain, which seemed focused only on identifying Karl Rove as a masterful manipulator, Hunting doesn't pretend to identify an organized conspiarcy. Intsead, several figures, from Ken Starr to Jerry Falwell to billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, emerge as working against the President for a variety of reasons. The film's ability to avoid the image of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" is one of its greatest strengths. Intsead, it focuses on this loose alliance of figures who fought to weaken one of the most popular presidents in recent memory.

Posted by chuck at 10:56 AM | TrackBack

September 4, 2004

Shock Corridor

Now that I'm getting settled into fall semester (three weeks down), I'm trying to watch more "escapist" movies. Last night, it was indie movie guru Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor. Shock Corridor is the 1963 film that the cinephiles are watching during the opening sequence of Bertolucci's The Dreamers, and after seeing Fuller's film, I can see why the French New Wave filmmakers admired it so much.

Shock Corridor is about Johnny Barrett, an ambitious newspaper reporter who hopes to win a Pulitzer by going undercover as a mental patient in order to solve a mysterious murder. In the opening scene, Johnny trains with a psychiatrist friend, learning to perform the symptoms of mental illness in much the same way that a college student might cram for a final exam. His girlfriend, a stripper with an intense affinity to her feather boa, worries that Johnny will get caught--or worse, that he will become insane because of his exposure to the patients in the asylum. The film is shot in gritty black-and-white, with several long shots of "the street," the long hallway where the patients congregate to socialize. In addition, there are several surrealistic shots of dreams and fantasies that disrupt this grittiness in fairly complicated ways, but I don't want to describe them in too much detail because the pleasure in being surprised by these shots was so much fun.

Once inside, Johnny begins having nightmares involving his girlfriend and her career as a stripper. At the same time, he slowly makes progress on solving the murder by talking to the three principle witnesses, all of whom are trauamtized by both the murder and their own pasts. These witnesses include: a southern Korean War veteran who claims to have been brainwashed by the Communists and now believes himself to be a Civil War soldier; a black man who as a child crossed picket lines to attend a formerly white college and now believes himself to be a white supremacist, and a nuclear scientist who has regressed to the mental capacity of a two-year-old. All three patients offer some version of satire on late '50s America, including the paranoia that produced McCarthyism, segregationism, and the Cold War. In an odd way, the film reminded me of the more recent--and less overtly political--spoof film, Bubba Ho-Tep (my review).

Many of the reviews I've seen downgrade the film for its tabloid style, but that's what makes it so enjoyable in my opinion. The pseudo-Freudian language and the false seriousness make the film a great B-movie experience. Another reader of the film faults the film for showing the world outside the asylum as being equally "grim, painful and downright weird as that inside." In a sense, that seems to be the point of the film; the "outside" world is just as crazy as the asylum, if not moreso. I'd also disagree with the claim that the film satirizes "America’s demand for over-achievement." It's not the desire for over-achievement that dooms the black patient to madness; it's the fear and paranoia of the community around him. But no matter what, for the next few days, I'll be walking straight to the Samuel Fuller shelf at my local videostore.

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August 29, 2004

Bertolucci and Mann

I managed to see two movies by fairly acclaimed directors this week but didn't have the time to write reviews until now. I caught Michael Mann's Collateral (IMDB) last weekend (at the infamous midnight screening) and watched Bernardo Bertolucci The Dreamers (IMDB) on video earlier this week. Both films are certainly flawed but well worth seeing, and I'd be interested to hear the opinions of others on both films, especially The Dreamers, which has received mixed reviews. Oh, by the way, because I'm blogging while tired, there are some spoilers in this entry, but more than anything, I'm curious about other people's reactions, especially to The Dreamers.

Collateral

Collateral opens with a shot of Tom Cruise's Vincent, a sharply dressed professional hitman, walking through an airport, his normally youthful, dark hair colored platinum gray to make him appear older and slightly run-down. Another man hands him a briefcase in the airport, saying one line, "Welcome to L.A." With that introduction, Mann introduces Los Angeles itself as a character in the film. Against Vincent, Mann casts Jamie Foxx as Max, a slightly rumpled cab driver with a dream (another interesting casting choice). Max has the bad luck of picking up Vincent, who hires the cabbie to driv him around LA for the night while he makes several hits. Throughout the film, Vincent talks about his hatred for LA, characterizing the city as unfriendly and uncaring, an effect reinforced by the use of high-definition digital video. We also get several helicopter shots looking down on the city and Max's taxi from above while Max seeks to find a way to stop Vincent to reinforce the city's sense of anonymity. As usual, Mann includes several wonderful scenes, including a scene in which Vincent goes into a jazz club to murder the club's owner, a nostalgic moment that recalls some earlier version of LA. Note: for a great review, see phyrephox's review on Milk Plus. Like phyrephox, I liked the references to Lady from Shanghai during the climactic chase sequence.

The Dreamers

I have to admit I haven't been a big fan of Bertolucci's recent films, especially Besieged, which seemed to conform to the idea or fantasy of an older, white, liberal man rescuing the younger, African woman, without really criticizing that story at all. And, although I don't remember it well, I recall being dissapointed by Stealing Beauty as well, but my interest in May 1968 trumped my ambivalence about Bertolucci. And while I don't think The Dreamers was a bad film, it didn't seem like a terribly deep take on the insularity of the two French siblings and the American friend they seduce.

Yeah, I get that the brother and sister are naive, oblivious to the revolution that's happening around them, but like Cynthia Fuchs, I found the film to be little more than glossy nostalgia for the revolutionary excitement of May 1968 without really interrogating that history in any nuanced way. After reading Roger Ebert's praise of the film, though, I feel like I'm missing something. To be fair, I'm a huge cinephile and loved the references to French New Wave films and the history of the Cinémathèque Française, and other than Matthew's voice-over narration, really enjoyed the opening sequence. I may try to write a more focused review later, but after a late night last night (out until 3 AM, up until almost 4 AM) and a long day of writing, I'm feeling kind of lazy.

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August 14, 2004

Open Water

Perhaps my single biggest phobia is death by water. In fact, one of my earliest childhood memories is of nearly downing in a Boulder, Colorado, swimming pool. So, naturally, I decided to see the low-budget ($130,000 according to IMDB) thriller, Open Water, last night. Open Water tells the story of a married couple, Susan and Daniel, who are abandoned in the ocean by a scuba boat that caters to tourists. The film's low budget, its lack of special effects, and its genre connections, have inspired comparisons to The Blair Witch Project, but such comparisons don't really do justice to either film. While BWP uses horror film motifs to reflect on visual technologies, Open Water's use of suspense conventions to create a much more philosophical, almost existential, series of reflections (see Roger Ebert's review on this point).

The film opens with Susan and Daniel preparing to leave for their vacation. There is some mild tension in their marriage, in part because both of them are so focused on their careers. The film opens with both of them on cell phones, talking to colleagues, before Daniel, waiting in the car, uses his phone to call his wife inside their house. But the film wisely de-emphasizes their marital tension for the most part, focusing instead on the lack of control they seem to have over their work lives. As David Edelstein points out (he also makes the Blair Witch comparison), these sequences are very effectively mundane, capturing the ordinariness of their lives in a fairly subtle way.

The couple arrives at an unspecified Caribbean island, and they begin to unwind, to relax just a little, and to separate themselves from the demands of their work obligations (Susan even declines the offer to check her email). The scuba scenes that follow are nicely done, with the couple playfully swimming underwater, admiring the harmless ocean creatures they encounter. Then, as Susan and Daniel resurface to climb back on the boat, they discover that the boat is gone, their isolation beautifully conveyed with a high-angle, extreme-long shot showing them completely surrounded by water, floating helplessly in a vast expanse of water.

For the last hour of film time, we are more or less left floating in the ocaen with Susan and Daniel. They know they are in danger, but, as Ebert notes, the ocean is relatively calm, and there's nothing much to do but talk and wait. Gradually, the sense of danger begins to build. A jellyfish stings Susan. Sharks approach. They begin to feel thirsty. Daniel remembers information he learned watching the Discovery Channel and warns Susan against drinking the salt water of the ocean, and the couple talks to pass the time and ignore the growing threat they face. Their conversation is relatively banal as they try to pass the time, and while they fight briefly over who is to blame, that question quickly becomes irrelevant.

Wisely, the film rarely cuts away to the shore, choosing instead to maintain our identification with Susan and Daniel, leaving us uncertain of what's happening on the shore, where one of the crew members gradually realizes that the two divers are missing. I found the ocean sequences completely fascinating (unlike James Berardinelli, who inexpicably found the dialogue "pretty pedantic," and dsecribed the film's last hour as occasionally "dull"). The "POV" shots, where the camera floats just a few inches above the ocean's surface help create the powerful effect of isolation and helplessness. If anything, I felt these sequences should have been of even longer duration, to build the sense of dread even more effectively (one gripe here: the acapella music was a distraction and seemed to take away from the sense of isolation that the film was so careful to create, but then again, I'm not a big fan of most non-diegetic music).

There are two great moments in the film that are worth mention that I'd rather not reveal to people who haven't seen the film, so click below the fold at your own risk, but for those readers who haven't yet seen the film, I'd certainly recommend it.

First, the thunderstorm sequence was beautiflly done, one of the most effective moments in the film. For several seconds at a time, the screen was almost completely dark until the sky would be briefly illuminated by the lightning of a passing storm. This willingness to show a completely dark screen is a risky move, but it adds to the feeling of dread inspired by the film.

Second, Susan's decision, after she realizes that Daniel has died, was very simply and starkly conveyed. Susan's decision (and the way in which it was conveyed) completely floored me. Of course, we know that rescue efforts are in motion, that the helicopters may soon find Susan, but her decision to essentially commit suicide, is a powerful one. In that final moment, Susan does manage to take some control over her life, over the conditions that surround her. This ending is, by no means, comforting, and it's impressive to find a genre-style film that is willing to take the risk of not comforting us at the end of the story.

Posted by chuck at 12:36 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

August 8, 2004

Spiderman 2

Okay, I know I'm a little late on this one, but I wanted to make sure Spiderman 2 made $350 million or so before going to see it myself. To be honest, there were so many other movies playing here in Atlanta, it just got lost in the shuffle. I'm not going to write up a full review of the film (I'm probably one of the last people in the US to actually see it, but for anyone who hasn't, spoilers follow), but it was quite interesting for a superhero film. I do have a few questions for readers who have seen the film and/or have read the comic book series.

I'd always found Spiderman/Peter Parker's seclusion to be a bit selfish in a way, and the decision to have Peter reveal himself (intentionally or not) to Mary Jane was an interesting plot move. There is something chauvenistic about Peter not allowing MJ to decide what level of risk she's willing to take to be involved with him, altough the basic superhero rescues damsel in distress model seemed to persist. I'm not a regular reader of the Spiderman comic books (my parents quietly steered me away from superhero comics when I was young, so I never picked up the habit), but the plot move allowing MJ to choose Peter strikes me as a fairly serious departure from the comic book storylines. To what extent is that true? What did other people think of that particular plot choice or of the film in general?

BTW, it was very cool to see one of my favorite character actors, Bill Nunn (Radio Raheem from Do the Right Thing), in a minor role as a newspaper reporter.

Update: I forgot to mention two or three shots from the film that I found particularly interesting. The first shot I mention below (in the comments) was a freeze frame during the sequence in which Peter Parker briefly gives up his "responsibility" as a superhero. The freeze didn't seem to fit the context, but for some reason I just found it an interesting disruptive moment.

The other shot sequence I liked: the "POV" shots from Doc Ock's tentacles, where the screen is divided into four "simultaneous" quadrants a la Mike Figgis's Time Code. The fragmented, almost crystalline, vision simply struck me as very cool, a nice disruption of "normal" cinematic vision.

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August 2, 2004

The Corporation: First Impressions

I'll write a longer review later, but because The Corporation (IMDB) may only have a limited run here in Atlanta, I just wanted to mention the movie briefly here tonight. This first review will primarily consist of most immediate impressions, and I'll be cheerleading a bit simply because I think that others should see this film.

Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar's film is almost certainly the most intelligent documentary I've seen all year. More than any other oppositional or broadly political documentary I've seen, this documentary treats the corporation as a systemic problem rather than seeing corporate abuses as the bad behavior of a few "bad apples" who took their greed a little too far. The Corporation is a very demanding film, but one that will reward interested viewers. In fact, the film dismisses this "bad apple" metaphor in the very opening sequence, noting that the public indignation at Tyco, WorldCom, and Enron (among others) actually fails to grasp the systemic problems of capitalism.

Like This Land is Your Land (review) The Corporation essentially begins with the problem that corporations have been given legal personhood through a misreading of the 14th Amendment and discusses the impact of that decision before treating corporations as a psychological case study to be evaluated and diagnosed for mental disorders (using the DSM), coming to the conclusion that corporations are essentially psychopathic in nature.

The filmmakers' observations are supported by talking heads interviews with theorists including Naomi Klein, Jeremy Rifkin, and Noam Chomsky, as well as investment bankers and current and former CEOs who discuss the destructive nature of corporations. The amount of material presented in the film can be overwhelming especially in a single screening, but I think that's inevitable when a film is going to set up and support such a complex argument. The Corporation is based on a book, and the sheer abundance of information reflects that depth of research. I'm still sifting through the ideas developed in this film and my experience of watching it, and I'm certain that I'll have more to say about it in the next few days.

Posted by chuck at 11:11 PM | TrackBack

The Village

Unlike Roger Ebert (note: Ebert's indignant negative review is a thing of beauty) and Stephanie Zacharek, I never promised Disney, Touchstone, or M. Night Shyamalan that I wouldn't reveal the plot twists in Shyamalan's most recent film, The Village (IMDB). I will try to put most of these revelations below the fold to protect readers who haven't seen the film, but hopefully my review of the film will protect readers from ever seeing the film in the first place. In my initial conversations with Jim about the film, we did work out a fairly interesting "symptomatic" reading of the film, noting that The Village has a fairly engaging treatment of "isolationism," of the need to withdraw from a dangerous and threatening world. Such an allegorical reading works pretty well, but in retrospect, I'm a little less impressed with the way in which the film works out that concept.

The basics of the plot: we begin with a small, isolated 19th century village where the villagers are threatened by a group of creatures who live in the woods beyond the edge of the village. These creatures (who have a pseudo-ominous name I'm too lazy to re-type) have, according to the elders, killed villagers who fail to observe the rules of the truce (don't wear red, don't go beyond the edge of the woods, etc). The elders succeed in frightening the children of the village from ever stepping foot into the woods to find "the towns" that apparently exist nearby. Despite these dangers, the villagers lead a happy, if unexciting, life, in which teenage girls are preoccupied with marriage, and schoolteachers recite lessons to attentive students (that part I liked). However, because of an "accident," it becomes necessary to go to the towns to obtain "medicines" that will save one of the villagers. I'm probably revealing too much above the fold and do so at the risk of incurring the wrath of M. Night.

Visually, the film is relatively interesting. Roger Deakins' cinematography fits the film's narrative nicely. While Zacharek faults the film for having "an Old Sturbridge Village vibe" (I compared it to an Abercrombie and Fitch, or better, L.L. Bean, catalog photograph), the artificiality of the village seemed apprpriate to the film's overall meaning. This artificiality translates into our perceptions of the characters who inhabit the unnamed village: we have the the kindly teacher (William Hurt), the spunky blind girl (Bryce Dallas Howard), the village idiot (Adrien Brody in a rather disappointing performance and an even more disappointing make-up job), and the heroic and kind young man (Joaquin Phoenix), all recognizable stereotypes from similar fictions, and while I appreciated Dark City's use of film noir stereotypes in conveying the artificial reality in that film, the treatment of the artificial in The Village falters considerably.

Spoilers ahead.

The plot twist that Shyamalan has taken great pains to hide seemed rather predictable to me. About ten or fifteen minutes into the film, I recognized that the village was going to turn out to somehow or another be "fake" or artificial. I didn't predict the precise nature of that reality, although I did guess that the film was supposed to be taking place "now."

As viewers of the film will know, we learn that the village was built by a billionaire (the William Hurt character) in collaboration with a group of others who had suffered traumatic experiences due to their lives in the city (Sigourney Weaver's younger sister was raped and murdered in "the towns," etc). This is revealed when William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver open a black box that contains souvenirs (newspaper clippings, photographs) of their lives before entering the village. This reveal was fairly interesting, and the artificiality of the village does offer an interesting take on virtuality (although I think that Dark City and The Thirteenth Floor are more accomplished in this regard). Like Blade Runner and Dark City, which allow photographs to be a crucial clue into the virtuality of the exisiting world (or at least the people who inhabit it), The Village uses photographs to introduce us to the "real" time of the film, the contemporary moment of crime-ridden cities, home computers, and Patriot Acts (to be more precise, it may be significant that the villagers choose to withdraw from the world in the 1970s, as implied by the haircuts and fashions revealed in the pictures).

The reveal also provides a useful way of thinking about the film's critique of the "elders" who have chosen to withdraw from the world and to force that decision onto the rest of the villagers even if it means cuasing them physical or psychological harm (the film implies that the village idiot could be cured with the right medication). The effects of their emotional and physical violence on the people in the village, even if this violence is merely passively accepting preventable deaths, is pretty powerful, but I'm not sure the allegory can be complicated much further than that.

It's also very, shall we say, convenient that one of the villagers just so happens to be blind. Bryce Dallas Howard's character, Ivy, also happens to be a "tomboy," capable of navigating the woods "as well as any boy" (I'll leave the gender issues alone). This plot device allows us to see that the village is actually a giant "gated community" patrolled by rangers who have been paid by the billionaire and believe the area to be a wildlife refuge.

In general, I'm becoming less patient with Shyamalan's films. I skipped Signs altogether, in part because I've had my quota of Mel Gibson for this lifetime. But the "plot twist" approach is becoming increasingly less convincing with each permutation of it. The use of the plot twist often acts as a substitute for "real" profundity, and upon reflection, I think that's what is happening here. The film still offers a potentially interesting symptomatic reading, but on the whole I was a little disappointed.

Posted by chuck at 1:01 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

July 25, 2004

Orwell Rolls in His Grave

In the wake of the controversial Federal Communications Commission decision to allow further media consolidation, several documentary films have emerged to explicitly or implicitly challenge media deregulation. Perhaps the most prominent (and problematic) recent example is Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed, which sought to uncover Fox's distortions of the news. However, I left my screening of Outfoxed somewhat unsatisfied (despite my original positive review). By focusing solely on FoxNews and Rupert Murdoch's media empire, I felt the other Big Media companies (Time-Warner, Viacom, etc) essentially were handed a "get out of jail free" card. I'm well aware that Fox wears its Republican agenda on its sleeve, and it's necessary to crticize Fox for its distortions, but criticizing FoxNews actually plays the game they want to play, allowing them to spin CNN and network news as "liberal." In a sense, it gives FoxNews a permanent home field advantage.

In that sense, I found Robert Kane Pappas's documentary film, Orwell Rolls In His Grave (IMDB) to offer a far more important and powerful critique of media consolidation. Grave is a much more somber, serious film than Outfoxed, and instead of targetting a single media organization, Pappas's film takes on the media system in general.

Pappas underlines his arguments using concepts taken from George Orwell's 1984, which I'm embarrassed to note I haven't read (although I can talk about it in vague terms). Using the Orwellian concept of double-speak, Pappas takes on the language used by many mainstream media outlets to re-frame how audiences will perceive certain news events. Perhaps the best example of this is the sequence in which Pappas traces the coverage of Bush's repeal of the so-called Death Tax, which was portrayed as effecting middle class families when only the wealthiest 1-2% of all estates pay any tax. However, Bush portrayed the estate tax as the state ransacking small business owners and middle class families of their small savings.

More importantly, he discusses the ability of mainstream news media to bury news events that might be harmful to the interests of the corporation that owns the news network. Grave illustrates this ability using the example of the 1980 version of the "October Surprise," in which people working for Ronald Reagan's election team secretly met with the Iranian government to negotiate a delay in the release of American hostages until after Reagan's election was secured. Pappas also uses Greg Palast's (blog) important research on the nightmarish election controveries during the 2000 election in Florida (including, but not limited to, the conflict of interest represented by Katherine Harris's positions as Bush's campaign manager and Florida's Secretary of State).

Perhaps the major weakness of the film is that it is a little too soft on Democrats, as this excellent review by Ron Kaufman points out. After all, the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which gutted media regulation, was passed on Bill Clinton's watch, and many Democrats have helped pass legislation that was supported by lobbyists from the National Association of Broadcasters.

The film's argument that the problem is systemic is effectively supported by interviews with media scholars Mark Crispin Miller and Robert McChesney, as well as Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders and Center for Public Integrity founder Charles Lewis. Orwell Rolls in His Grave is an important film and desreves to be seen more widely. Unfortunately, this film will not likely receive the publicity given to a star vehicle such as Fahrenheit 9/11 or an anti-Fox screed (and I mean that in the best possible way) such as Outfoxed. Orwell is playing right now in a few major cities (including Washington DC's AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center). I had the good luck of seeing the film at a special screening here in Atlanta organized by Georgia for Democracy, and it was great to connect with others after the movie over coffee, ice cream, and other goodies at Ashtons, where the screening was held.

Update: It's also worth noting that the Big Networks will only be showing just a few hours of coverage of this year's political conventions. Talk all you want about cable broadcasts or lower ratings for the conventions, but this is important stuff. Lots of people can't afford cable or choose not to subscribe. I refuse to pay for cable or satellite TV, and getting access to news about the conventions is going to be more difficult for me as a result. We're about to elect the leader of the most powerful country on the planet, and a large perceentage of the U.S. population is only going to have access to just 3 or so hours of made-for-TV coverage from each convention. [End rant.]

Posted by chuck at 11:59 PM | TrackBack

July 19, 2004

Outfoxed Review

In Jehane Noujaim's Control Room, at least two of the film's major participants, Lt. John Rushing and Al Jazeera senior producer Sameer Khader, use FOX News as an example of conservative media, unwilling to criticize the US war effort in Iraq. In Noujaim's film, FOXNews becomes a kind of shorthand for the opposite of what Al Jazeera is doing. I bring up Control Room because it introduces a concept that is picked up, in a much different way, by the recent Robert Greenwald documentary, Outfoxed: both films call into question, in much different ways, the objectivity of the news media images we encounter on a daily basis.

I just returned from one of the Outfoxed house parties in Midtown, where there were over one hundred people in attendance, and as usual, the experience has given me a lot to think about. MoveOn's ability to orchestrate a media event is still rather impressive. According to MoveOn, approximately 30,000 people around the US attended screenings of Outfoxed. Like other MoveOn events, the screening was in part a tool to persuade people to become more politically active. In this case, people were encouraged to volunteer for one of several media watchdog organizations, including FAIR, Media Matters, Citizens for Media Literacy, and Common Cause. And as I watched the film and the post-film "teleconference," I tried to read the event as an argument, or series of arguments, and I'm still trying to determine the effectiveness of both the film and the subsequent call to action.

Before I begin my analysis of the film, it's absolutely crucial to recognize the hard work that Greenwald and his crew, many of whom were volunteers, invested in this project. Putting together a documentary of this scope requires a tremendous amount of labor, and in a seamless final product, that labor can often go unacknowledged and unrecognized. I wish there was a "more visible" way in which that kind of labor could be recognized.

Aesthetically, the film still conforms to the relatively standard documentary tropes of talking heads, illustrative graphics, and evidentiary footage, in this case clips from FOX News shows (with the amount of documentary footage clearly challenging fair use doctrines, which could be one of the most important effects, positively or negatively, of the film). In a conversation after the film, Chris suggested (in conversation) that Outfoxed had a televisual style, and I think he's right, especially given Greenwald's "guerilla" approach, which is based on producing a film quickly about what is happening right now. I do think the traces of televisual time and televisual editing remain visible on the film's style.

The film itself didn't really show me anything I didn't know. I was aware of the many studies that showed that FOX News viewers perceive the war in Iraq differently than people who get their news from more reliable news sources (pretty much everyone else). I knew that FOX News uses talking points to hammer home perceptions of public figures (y'know, come to think of it, John Kerry does look French--I'll bet his real name is Jean). And of course I knew that Bill O'Reilly is a blowhard who shuts down people who articulate liberal or left points of view (although the O'Reilly "shut-up montage" was very funny).

Perhaps the most powerful segment in the film, in my experience, was the section that told the story of Jeremy M. Glick, a signer of the "Not in Our Name" petition, whose father died in the 9/11 attacks. When Glick appeared on O'Reilly's show, he knew that the Hard Blowing One would treat his views with hostility, and Glick prepared by timing out short soundbites in order to get his message across, which he was able to do with some success. On a subsequent program, O'Reilly suggested that Glick had been "out of control and spewing hatred" and that Glick had claimed that the Bush family "orchestrated" the WTC attacks, both of which were false. The specific example is pretty effective in showing how O'Reilly stifles dissent while also providing some room for optimism (Glick's ability to put O'Reilly in his place). But, even with this specific example, I still felt that most of the material in the film was relatively familiar to me, at least.

Then again, I'm not sure that the documentary's specific goal is merely to inform us that FOXNews is bad news, even if it might have that effect on some viewers. I think there's a larger argument at stake, and I think Outfoxed is aware of that. Greenwald's larger argument, that FOXNews has changed the discourse throughout the mainstream commercial media, was more significant, but may have been lost in the noise of the "gotcha" sequences. This is where media critiques often seem to run into problems. It's crucial to establish that FOXNews purposefully uses the mask of objectivity ("fair and balanced") to promote a conservative agenda, and the film marshals ample evidence to support such a claim. But at the same time, to attack FOX News as partisan, as offering only a partial truth isn't enough. The second level argument, calling for more public control over the airwaves is more crucial. The gestures towards the debates about media deregulation were helpful here, but I would have liked to see more analysis of the workings of the media (and I realzie that the term "media" in this context is impossibly broad) by people like Bob McChesney. I would have liked a clearer discussion of how to create something closer to a true public sphere, or even whether or not it's possible to create an "objective" media outlet. In this context, I would have liked a clearer sense of how FOX News is received. I don't believe that we are all mere ideological dupes who are simply and easily fooled by the messages we receive. I don't believe the film is suggesting that FOX News viewers are dupes, but media critiques of this sort often fail to acknowledge the possibility for "resistant" or even "negotiated" readings of FOX News.

Finally, I had a difficult time gauging how a regular FOX News watcher might interpret this film. Or someone who didn't already have a strong opposition to Hannity's histrionics and O'Reilly's obtuseness. Many people who have criticized Outfoxed have done so on the level of "objectivity," commenting that Greenwald did not provide FOX with an adequate time to respond to the charges in the film. All of the employees who discuss FOX's policies are former employees, and it would be easy to argue that their complaints are mere "sour grapes." People who believe that FOX News is "fair and balanced" are noticeably absent from the film (a comparison to Control Room which I watched again last night, might be relevant here), and in that sense, I think the film could appear to be painted with the same brush as FOX, albeit with different colors (blue instead of red, I suppose). I do think that these arguments can be effectively countered, especially if we were to empahisize the film's real argument about the need for more democratic media, but such charges are probably inevitable.

The next question is probably tougher to answer. Will Outfoxed encourage more people to become involved in grassroots media criticism? As I've discussed with my rhetoric students, it's much easier to convince people of the validity of your position than it is to convince them to take action. I do plan on volunteering for at least one of the media organizations. I've been thinking about this for some time, and it's something that comes more naturally to me than most other forms of activism, in part because it overlaps so readily with what I do for a living, which is to study film and media and to help students develop the critical tools to do the same. That being said, I couldn't get a good read on whether or not others at my house party had the same reaction.

No matter what, the film event has provoked me to think, to consider the role of documentary film, to reflect on my own position as a media and film studies scholar, and to seek out forums for discussing these issues. In that regard, I think Outfoxed has been a major success.

Posted by chuck at 12:20 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 11, 2004

Before Sunset

I really enjoyed Before Sunset (IMDB). I'll admit that I'm very much a sucker for Richard Linklater's talky, meandering, philosophy-lite films, and I've always had a special fondness for the romance in Before Sunrise. I watched the original in my tiny, drafty attic apartment while I was in graduate school deep in the heart of Indiana, and Sunrise gave me a wonderful escape. Of course, as a graduate student/wanna-be novelist, I identified pretty deeply with Jesse, the Ethan Hawke character, but the film itself felt "timeless," like Jesse and Celine (Julie Delpy) had somehow stepped outside the world for just one night, and of course, I'd appreciated the original film's ambiguous ending (I'll try not to be too specific).

Because I had such fond memories of the original, I worried that the sequel would dissapoint me, but Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke have managed to update Celine and Jesse's story in a powerfully effective way, and like the cinetrix, I'd love to have an Antoine Doinel-style series. The sequel begins with Jesse giving a talk at a bookshop in Paris on his novel, a thinly fictionalized account of his night with Celine. Celine, who has spotted an advertisement for the book signing shows up and the two immediately begin talking, reconnecting after nine years apart, and like the original film, Celine and Jesse have a limited amount of time, in this case about an hour and a half, before Jesse has to catch a plane. The film uses the Paris setting nicely (I even remembered a spot along the Seine where I ate a sandwich one afternoon), and the use of real-time adds to the intensity of their reunion. In fact, I think it would have been a mistake not to tell this particular chapter of their lives in real time.

I won't say much more about the film, or its plot, other than to note that it presented characters who had clearly endured the last nine years developing, growing, and struggling. Stuart Klawans' review in AlterNet conveys the spirit of the film nicely. It's a movie about lost opportunities and alternate selves, about the desire to regain the open possibilities they had when they were 23. It's also a movie about the worlds or lives they're escaping. Although their lives and jobs are generally satisfying (he's a novelist, she's an environmentalist), there's a clear sense that something is missing for both of them. As Stuart Klawans points out:

The trick here – an excellent one – is that the lovers know they're in a time bubble. When it pops and life's mess pours in, Celine and Jesse won't seem so admirable.

But will the bubble pop? A movie builds suspense; and as the minutes tick by in Before Sunset, the people on screen and in the audience alike wonder more and more intently if Jesse will catch that airplane.

I will say no more, except that time has rarely passed in a film with such apparent ease and spontaneity, yet with such rightness in every moment. Working with the very rudiments of movies, Linklater, Delpy and Hawke have sustained a flawless performance – one that's warm, thoughtful, funny, sexy, charming and in all ways alive.

Posted by chuck at 1:02 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 26, 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11

Here are some initial observations about Fahrenheit 9/11 (IMDB). This review will probably ramble quite a bit. It may seem a little impressionistic. I'm still recovering from the intensity of the sounds and images I've just witnessed ("spoilers" ahead).

First, the theater where I saw the film was sold out for every screening tonight (and also incredibly hot--couldn't they have cranked the A/C?), with most people arriving at least half an hour early to line up for seats. I saw at least two news trucks (did anyone happen to watch Atlanta's Channel 2 news tonight?). Lots of cheering and enthusiasm throughout the film (and, yes, a long ovation at the film's end). And while F9/11 had far fewer "gotcha" moments than most Michael Moore films, I'm not sure I'd call the film "restrained" as some critics have. It might be better described as far more somber than anything Moore has done.

The film employs a relatively straight chronological approach, starting with election night coverage (with Ben Affleck and Bobby D, of all people, standing behind Gore celebrating) and moves quickly through many of the election controversies, including an upsetting montage sequence in which several members of the Congressional Black Caucus (including Cynthia McKinney) try to contest the results (there's also one Asian woman), but because no Senator signed the petition, Gore (who was still President of the Senate) was forced to uphoild parliamentary procedure and decline their petition. We see the massive protests of Bush's inauguration (which I'd forgotten). What follows is a montage of Bush vacation sequences, with the Go-Go's "Vacation" playing on the soundtrack, and the news that Bush was on vacation approximately 40% of the time between inauguration and 9/11, a statistic that has been relatively widely reported. All of this happens before the opening credits (which show various Bushies preparing for photo-ops, including a slimy image of Paul Wolfowitz using spit to set his hair in place), when the film shifts in tone considerably.

Immediately after the opening credits, the film fades to black for nearly a minute while we hear the familiar sounds of the towers hit. Finally, after nearly a minute, the image fades in and we see the immediate aftermath of people running, people crying and hugging, and paper floating in the air. We see very little of the actual violence of 9/11, a decision I think could be read in various ways. It might be seen as an attempt to respect the memory of the dead. It might be an acknowledgement that this violence is unrepresentable, but given Moore's eventual treatment of the Bush-Bin Laden family connections, it does show some restraint.

This sequence is followed by the now-famous video of Bush reading the children's book for seven minutes after the second tower was hit. The voice-over felt a little pushy here as Moore attempted to introduce some of his theses about Bush's connections with the Bin Laden family and the negligent treatment of intelligence regarding terrorism. Instead of Moore trying to score cheap points here, I have to wonder how this sequence could have played without Moore's voice-over, just seven minutes of real-time footage of Bush sitting there during the terrorist attacks. I'm not sure that it would have played better, but it would have been devastating.

The section of the film that treats the Bush-Bin Laden connection is mercifully fairly brief, and I don't think Moore ever directly states that Bush is culpable for the 9/11 attacks as some critics have implied--the film is more subtle than that. That always struck me as being a fairly thin thread to support a 90-minute feature film, but the sequence does convey the extent to which the Bush family (and many of his cronies) stand to profit from war, an ongoing theme throughout the film. It also allows Moore to re-frame some of the allegations that have often been levied against the Bush administration about their failure to pursue Bin Laden. Nothing new here, really, but it's done in an entertaining way, and it helps to frame some of the arguments about social class that Moore makes later in the film.

Moore carefully avoids showing any footage of the war on terror as it has been pursued in Afghanistan, which allows the tragic footage from Iraq to have a more powerful effect on the film's viewers (but, as A.O. Scott observes, it also brings Moore's stance on Afghanistan into question). These images are almost impossible to watch, with some of them as visceral as any war footage I've ever seen. Shots of a wounded Iraqi child recalled the famous image from Vietnam of the naked girl running from her village after it has been attacked. Intercut with these images are soldiers playing the Bloodhound Gang song "Burn, Motherf*cker, Burn" on CD players as their tanks drive through Iraqi villages. I recognize that this sequence could be regarded as the most brazenly manipulative sequence in the film, but after watching Control Room, I share the sentiment that American TV viewers rarely get a sense of the human cost of the war.

Moore then focuses on other costs associated with the war, and I think this is one of the film's strengths. He builds a relatively strong case that the war in Iraq is unnecessary before moving on to a critique of the social class issues that have been swept aside in much of the coverage of the war. He uses a multi-ethnic working-class mother from Flint to stand in for many of these critiques. Before the war, Lila Lipscomb speaks proudly of her family's contribution to the US military, but later in the film, after her son has been killed, we see her grief and anger and frustration at her son's death in what she now sees as an unnecessary war. Intercut with these images, we see Moore attempting to goad Congressmen into getting their children to enlist for the war in Iraq. It's one of the few sequences where Moore deploys his usual shtick, but after the mounting tension, it's a welcome release, a break from the sobriety of what we've seen.

The film ends with a call to patriotism, noting that because many working class and poor people are willing to serve in the military, we should ask them to fight only when necessary. It's a fairly effective (and low-key) ending, and although the attempt to redefine patriotism and support of the military is far from subtle, it fairly effectively brings together all of the threads that Moore has been weaving throughout the film.

I'm not yet sure how I feel about the film. I don't think that the film changed my perception of the war or challenged me in any specific way. Like James Berardinelli, I was disappointed by the superficiality of some of the film's critiques of Bush, but I'm wondering if other viewers will feel the same way. I've developed strong opinions about Bush and Iraq, and Moore's film didn't shift those convictions in any specific way.

The film also felt a little scattershot, a little too short attention span, for my tastes (hence my suggestion about the "My Pet Goat" footage). Now, there is a generous reading here: there's so much to cover about the war that you can barely show everything in a two-hour film. In fact, the film (intentionally or not) conveys that effect, and in a sense F9/11 is about the impossibility of really sorting out all of our mixed emotions, our anger, frustration, our sadness, about the war, and I think that may be the strength of Moore's narrative in this film.

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June 23, 2004

The Weather Underground

Because I was born in 1970, images from the 1960s have the aura of history for me. I don’t remember the Civil Rights Movement or Vietnam, so I find representations of that era to be fascinating. When I taught freshman composition at the University of Illinois, I often showed Mark Kitchell’s 1990 documentary, Berkeley in the ‘60s, in order to introduce the research project, in which the class would write research papers on specific historical events from a specific decade. When I watched this film, I found myself unself-consciously drawn to charismatic leaders of the Free Speech Movement, such as Mario Savio, who spoke so passionately about his opposition to the war in Vietnam.

With that in mind, I watched Sam Green and Bill Siegel's documentary, The Weather Underground (IMDB), tonight. The film focuses on the radical left-wing political group that bombed several government buildings, including the US Capital, in the late 1960s and ‘70s. It’s a film that is impossible to watch without acknowledging one’s political investments, and in fact Roger Ebert’s review of the film verges on being only a reflection on his politics (he mentions that he still has his SDS card signed by Tom Hayden).

I knew a little about the Weathermen, but I didn’t have a clear sense of their long history. The documentary certainly provides that, although I’d imagine that one aspect of their experience is probably unrepresentable: after watching this film, I’m not sure that I have any sense of what it must have been like to be separated from family and friends for years, unable to communicate except perhaps in elliptical ways. One member of the group comments that after the early 70s they became “invisible,” unrecognized by old friends, and unable for the most part to return to familiar haunts. I’m not sure how anyone represents that, though.

The documentary uses interviews with former members of the Weather Underground, undercover FBI officers, and former SDS president and Weathermen opponent, Todd Gitlin, to trace the history of the Weathermen, from their formation at the 1969 Students for a Democratic Society conference through the late seventies when the group essentially disbanded (after Jimmy Carter’s amnesty for draft dodgers), with many members turning themselves in. Like the leaders of the Free Speech Movement (such as Savio), many of the Weathermen were incredibly charismatic, their press appearances carefully constructed to convey their passionate beliefs, and archived footage of Bernadette Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, Naomi Jaffe and Mr. Flanagan effectively conveys the idea that they were “sexy criminals” as Elvis Mitchell puts it (by the way, what must it be like to be surfing the Internet and find yourself described as a sexy criminal?). Several times during the course of the documentary, Dohrn and Ayers (who are still a couple), particularly, are described as a real-life Bonnie and Clyde, and the footage certainly captures that spirit of rebellion that I find so enticing, and the film shows to some extent how carefully the group managed their image.

The interview format, mixed with news footage and home movie footage (often in Super-8), allows for a reflective format, in which many of the Weather Underground find themselves looking back at their actions with mixed emotions. In one of the more compelling interview sequences, Brian Flanagan, who now owns a bar, reflects that “When you feel you have right on your side, you can do some pretty horrific things.” Others, including Mark Rudd, now a community college teacher, also express mixed emotions about their actions, but some members of the group show less remorse. Still, there’s a great deal of nostalgia among many of the group’s members, a nostalgia for the moment of possibility represented by the volatility of the late 1960s.

As the indieWIRE reviewer suggests, the film’s format, at least on a formal level, is relatively orthodox. However, this approach masks the extent to which members of the Weather Underground are presented sympathetically. I would have liked to see interviews with other liberal or left opponents of the Weathermen besides Todd Gitlin. It’s not that I’m necessarily suspicious of Gitlin, but because of his involvement in SDS, it’s hard to shake his personal investment in that history (and I’m not suggesting that anyone could be objective, but another point-of-view from the outside could have been helpful). The roughness of the footage does add to the intensity of the film as well.

Of course the film cannot be separated from its contemporary context, and I think that’s what makes this documentary so successful. Brian Flanagan, in particular, clearly feels some degree of remorse for his actions, comparing them to the Oklahoma City bombing. And, implicitly at least, the film raises questions about the current opposition to the war in Iraq and (to some extent) the resistance to globalization, about what can be said, about what form that opposition takes.

Posted by chuck at 1:05 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

June 19, 2004

[AFF] This Land is Your Land

I attended my last Atlanta Film Festival screening yesterday evening, watching Lori Cheatle and Daisy Wright's This Land is Your Land (IMDB), a film that sought to document the powerful impact of corporations on everyday life, using both humorous images of corporate branding, and later, interviews from Natchez, Mississippi, a town that has been devastated by factory closings. The film draws from the stories of many other people as well. Cheatle and Wright generally take a talking-heads approach, focusing primarily on interviews, and allowing people time to tell their own stories, an approach that I think works well with the material they're addressing in the film.

The opening segment of This Land focuses primarily on the ubiquity of advertising and features interviews with Naomi Klein of No Logo fame. Most of the material here will be relatively familiar to the people who watch this film, but it's still rather humorous to watch one woman, who is wearing Adidas products from head-to-toe, comment on how "tacky" it would be to mix-and-match corporate brands. More crucially, we are introduced to two running subplots in the film: a small independent coffee company sued by Starbucks for using its trademarked name "Christmas Blend" and a lawsuit against Nike for using misleading advertising. The latter case allows Cheatle and Wright to introduce one of the film's more powerful arguments and consistent themes. In short, they are challenging the interpretation of the 14th Amendment that allows corporations to be treated as people.

Also enjoyable: an interview with Granny D, the 89-year-old New Hampshire woman who decided in 1998 to walk across America to raise awareness for campaign finance reform and is currently running for the US Senate in New Hampshire.

The film builds nicely towards a concluding section in which we see the different ways in which people have responded to the negative effects of these corporations. In general, the film does a great job of landing many of its critiques with a relatively soft touch (that is, without appearing mean-spirited), which I think is a useful approach. In its spirit and politics, the film seems to take its cues from Jim Hightower (blog), who is prominently featured in the film. In general, it's both a fun and thoughtful film, and even with the critique of corporate power, This Land is Your Land never leaves the viewer feeling powerless.

Update 7/5: Here's a quick link to the Austin Chronicle review of Land. I've been thinking about this film a lot over the last few days because of my "teaching globalization" paper. Also, because of the July 4 holiday, I've been thinking about definitions of citizenship, and this film addresses that question in a very effective way.

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June 18, 2004

[AFF] Control Room

Jehane Noujaim's Control Room (IMDB) continues the trend of excellent documentary filmmaking that we've been witnessing over the last few years. I had a chance to watch the film last night at its Atlanta Film Festival screening with a packed and enthusiastic audience (for those Atlantans who missed it, Control Room will be opening Friday at the Midtown Art Theater). Noujaim's film is very compelling, and I've been struggling the last few days to find a way to review it, so I'll admit that this review is probably more impressionistic than most.

The film, which deploys a classic cinema verite style, opens with several Arabs watching one of Bush's pre-war speeches on Al Jazeera and essentially introduces one of the basic, but significant, arguments made by the film, which is to illustrate how the US and Arab narratives of the war lead to vastly different perspectives on it. In his Village Voice review, J. Hoberman notes that "every conflict is a contest of competing narratives." In a later sequence, one of the Al Jazeera employees echoes Walter Benjamin when he observes that "history is written by the victors."

The scenes in CentCom are also fascinating, specifically the interactions between Lietenant John Rushing, a young American information officer, and Sudanese journalist Hassan Ibrahim, whom Hoberman describes as "a former bin Laden classmate, onetime Deadhead, and ex-BBC man." Initially, Rushing maintains the classic justification for the war in Iraq based on humanitarian grounds. Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator, and the US has an opportunity to bring democracy to Iraq. Gradually, Rushing begins to question some of these beliefs, or at the very least, he's willing to discuss them, and one of the film's most powerful scenes shows Rushing and Ibrahim planning to get together for dinner to further discuss their perceptions of the war.

One aspect of the film that I found fascinating was the clear efforts that Al Jazeera confronted simply to define itself. It's interesting to watch the debates in teh newsroom about what news should be covered, and from what perspective. Other scenes portray the absurdity of the military efforts to manage the media in the war. One sequence that got a lot of laughs involved the infamous deck of cards, which the military revealed at a CentCom press conference. The army announced the existence of the deck, but then failed to provide the press with any copies of the deck or even to display the deck in a public space. Throughout the film we witness the ways in which information is managed, and in a sense, it may not be a terribly new story, but with violence in Iraq continuing, it's a story that needs to be told with great urgency.

There are several humorous moments in the film in which Donald Rumsfeld is accusing Al Jazeera faking evidence in order to drum up opposition to the war. In fact, Rumsfeld's comment, "the truth will come out" probably got the biggest laugh of the night. I'm still thinking about this movie, two days after seeing it initially, and I think it may be the kind of film that I'll want to write about in an exteneded essay.

Update: Check out Amardeep Singh's review of the film.

Update 2: I'd planned to mention the cinetrix's review of Control Room before, but other things intervened. She also links to this Village Voice article on the film (which includes an extended interview with Lt. John Rushing). Kelly at Shiny Blue Grasshopper also has a good review of the film.

Posted by chuck at 12:56 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

June 13, 2004

[AFF] Reconstruction

Reconstruction is a meticulously directed film by young Danish filmmaker, Christoffer Boe, who won the 2003 Camera d'or at the Cannes Film Festival for this film. The film's plot defies description. The film opens with Fred Astaire's version of "Night and Day" playing non-diegetically while grainy shots of Copenhagen at night, some in time-lapse, establish the film's meditation on uncertainty. We cut to a magician who defies gravity by seeming to suspend a lit cigarette in midair while a voice-over reminds us that, even though we may respond emotionally to the stories of the characters, the film is merely a "construction." The film itself reflects philosophically on the nature of identity and memory, reminding me of Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad and to a different extent, Kieslowski's Blind Chance.

I'm going to explain the plot in some detail here, in part to simply better sort through my interpretation of the film. After the opening sequence, we are then introduced to the film's four central characters, Alex (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), a young man in his early thirties; his girlfriend, Simone (Maria Bonnevie); an older novelist, August (Krister Henriksson); and his wife, Aimee (also played by Bonnevie). Alex, in one of teh film's first scenes, approaches Aimee in a bar, immediately striking up a conversation, immediately asking her to go to Rome with him. She smiles and says she can't; she doesn't know him, it's too soon. Alex insists that there is a spark of recognition, that they do know each other, and the familiarity between them is emphasized by close-ups that include both of them in a single shot.

Later, Alex goes to meet Simone; they've clearly been together a long time, but the relationship seems to be lacking intensity. He only tells Simone he loves her when prodded, and the camera seems more distant here, reducing the intimacy between them. Later, the two of them catch a train when Alex spots Aimee from a distance. He ditches Simone and eventually has a one-night stand with Aimee and makes plans to meet her the following day. The next day, however, something has changed. When he returns to the apartment he shares with Aimee, the entrance to the apartment is gone, and his landlady doesn't recognize him. Later in the park, his father says he doesn't know him. Finally, Simone herself fails to recognize Alex, though she does seem drawn to him. The decision to cast the same actress for both roles becomes significant here, as it adds to the films meditation on identity. In part, the film seems to suggest that falling in love changes one's world completely, but I think the film complicates that notion considerably.

In addition to Alex's story, we also learn a little about August, the famous novelist. He is writing a novel that seems remarkably similar to some of teh events taking place in the film. In addition, it is his voice-over that introduced the film's constructedness. Are these characters simply ideas from his novel, with August experimenting with the emotional effect of certain events? The film never answers this question, but it certainly raises the possibility. I won't reveal how the film concludes the plot, but the final shot of Reconstruction reprises the image of the magician, still in black-and-white, the cigarette still floating in air, when the cigarette suddenly flashes creating a giant puff of smoke, the magician disappearing behind it. In this closing sequence, Boe also reprises Astaire's "Night and Day," completing the circle of this fascinating film.

Posted by chuck at 12:38 PM | TrackBack

June 12, 2004

[AFF] Everyday People

I attended last night's screening of Jim McKay's latest film, Everyday People, at the opening night of the Atlanta Film Festival. The film itself focuses on a Brooklyn family restaurant, Raskin's, that will soon be closing after being sold to developers who plan to replace it with condos and chain stores, and the action basically takes place over the course of a single day, primarily within the walls of the diner itself.

We learned after the film (during a Q&A session) that executive producer Nelson George originally developed the idea for the film by soliciting stories about racial tension on the web. George commented that they received hundreds of stories and found that most of them (around 70%) dealt with racial tensions in the workplace. George then recruited McKay, and they began the process of building a set of stories around the larger narrative of the restaurant. Many of these stories actually grew out of the workshops with the actors before the script had been written. Sydnee Stewart, for example, is a Brooklyn poet and spoken word artist, and the filmmakers were able to incorporate her story into the film's script, with her character Erin determined to become a professional poet while her mom, a beleaguered employee of the company that plans to buy Raskin's, is desperate for her to go to college.

The film itself was pretty compelling. McKay deftly weaves between several plotlines, effectively using an ensemble cast of primarily unknown actors (McKay himself commented on this decision, noting that he felt using familiar actors would disrupt the world he was trying to create), allowing the different plotlines to comment on each other without being too obvious. The dialogue-heavy film allows McKay to introduce several of the major debates around the "gentrification" process that many neighborhoods face, and while the film deosn't resolve these questions (the lack of narrative closure is almost overdone), it's pretty effective in raising them. In this sense, I think Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times gets it right: "Mr. McKay's integrity is sometimes a weakness; he's determined to maintain a balance, strike a theatrical democracy." Like Mitchell, I would have liked to see more of the street vendor, Akbar, who tended to challenge some of the easier narratives about race and social class, but despite these absences, Everyday People is a worthy film, one that could only be made with the indie sensibility that McKay brings to it.

Update: Eugene Hernandez of indieWIRE, previews the AFF and includes a link to Bob Longino's AJC article, where Longino ranks the top 25 films of the festival.

Posted by chuck at 12:28 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 2, 2004

The Last Broadcast

Last night I watched The Last Broadcast (IMDB), the 1998 film that many people have identified as an inspiration for The Blair Witch Project. There are some startling similarites, especially the use of the mock-documentary style to track a ghost figure (in this case, the "Jersey Devil," suggesting that the filmmakers must have been watching hockey when they came up with idea for this film). In both films, camera crews go into the woods and never return, leaving behind film and/or video footage as one of the few clues to their deaths. Both films also were made with incredibly low budgets (The Last Broadcast for around $900), but with "Broadcast," it's interesting to note that it has been called "the first 'desktop feature film'" because it was filmed, edited, and screened entirely digitally.

There are some other important differences between the two films. Unlike Blair Witch, which exploits video and 16mm to create a cinema (or video) verite style, Broadcast uses more of a talking-heads approach, with interviews, archival footage, and voice-over narration supporting the director's investigation of the story after the fact. As many critics, including James Berardinelli, point out, the film's final act ultimately undermines the faux-documentary style that the film had been carefully building.

For now, I'll likely mention Broadcast briefly in my media horror film paper. It doesn't play like a typical horror film (by the way, I'm getting sick of horror films, can'ty wait to finish this article), but instead seems closer to a satire of investigative documentary (with some element of mystery).

Posted by chuck at 2:11 PM | TrackBack

May 31, 2004

Coffee and Cigarettes

I went to see Jim Jarmusch's latest, Coffee and Cigarettes (IMDB), Saturday night but haven't really had time to blog about it. The premise of the film is in keeping with Jarmusch's minimalist style: essentially Coffee is composed of eleven conversations over coffee and cigarettes, usually with musicians and actors playing some version of themselves. One of the difficulties of such a premise is that it's easy to see the scenes as unconnected, a series of slight fragments, without any real connection. In addition, the segments in teh film were shot over a seventeen year period, adding to the perception of the film as a slight distraction, but Jarmusch carefully weaves a meditation on celebrity and fame, as Jonathan Rosenbaum's review illustrates.

Perhaps the most powerful example would be the Cate Blanchett segment, in which "Cate," a famous Hollywood actress doing publicity for one of her films, meets her punk rock cousin (also played by Blanchett) at a fancy hotel bar. Here the high-key lighting accentuates "Cate's" celebrity as the two struggle through a conversation with Cate's fame preventing them from any mutual understanding. A similar segment starring Tom Waits and Iggy Pop also works well. Two of the coolest musicians on the planet meet for coffee, and again, they fail to connect because of perceived slights (Iggy points out that the juke box doesn't have any Tom Waits songs, for example). Because of the "naturalistic" style of these scenes, it's easy to see them as unplanned or acidental, but given the careful plotting, I do think there are some clear resonances at work.

The segments are also linked visually through the setting, usually "dive" coffeehouses (the Cate Blanchett segment, "Cousins," is one exception) where customers can still smoke, rather than trendy Starbucks-style coffeehouses. The overhead shots of checkerboard-pattern tablecloths covered with coffeecups and ashtrays accentuate these connections, and the black-and-white cinematography (by several cinematographers including Tom DiCillo and Robby Müller) beautifully captures the film's mood (I'm now convinced that the decline in black-and-white cinematography can be directly linked to the decline in tolerance for cigarette smoking in public).

I'll refrain from describing other segments in detail, but it's a fun film, on course with Jarmusch's Night on Earth in structure and style.

Posted by chuck at 12:38 PM | TrackBack

May 28, 2004

Lost Boys of Sudan

Last night, I went to see Megan Mylan and John Shenk's 2003 documentary film, Lost Boys of Sudan (IMDB), a dcoumentary about Sudanese refugees who have moved to the US to escape the growing humanitarian crisis in their home country (thanks to Jason for the link). The film explains that in 2001, when the documentary begins, most of the refugees are Dinka tribespeople who crossed the border into Kenya. The documentary focuses on two of the "lost boys of Sudan" who move to the US, Peter and Santino, and their struggles in the US once they arrive. The film itself is important viewing, especially given the utter lack of attention given to human rights violations in Africa in the US media, but I would have liked a deeper exploration of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan than the film offered.

The film opens with a brief voice-over explanation of the civil war in Sudan, illustrated with paintings and told from the perspective of one of the two "lost boys." This is the only major use of voice-over in the film, and the filmmakers wisely avoid the god-like omniscient narrator that continues to dominate much documentary fimmaking. However, despite this attempt to situate Santino and Peter as the "storytellers" of the film early on, there were still several moments in which I was conscious of the filmmaker's gaze (or perhpas, more precisely, the editor's scissors) when watching certain scenes.

From there, we get a few images from a refugee camp in Kenya and an explanation of the program that brings several hundred young Sudanese men to the US for education and employment. The scene in which the men learn who has been accepted and who hasn't is pretty powerful, especially given the extent to which they view the US as a ticket to freedom, something the film will eventually and repeatedly undercut. This sequence also highlights the sense of family and community that the boys will be leaving behind and the hopes that are being placed on their shoulders (one tribal elder wrns the boys not to get caught up in the "baggy pants" crowd).

The rest of the film then traces Santino and Peter's struggles to make their way in the US, especially after many of the promises of opportunity and support fail to materialize. Both Santino and Peter originally settle in Houston, Texas, and both immediately notice that their appearance intimidates many of the locals. Eventually, both take factory work, but Peter begins to seek out opportunities to further his education. After receiving little support from his contacts in Houston, he eventually decides to move to Kansas City, where he enrolls in a public high school, managing to perform well in school almost in spite of a well-meaning, but oblivious, guidance counselor.

Santino's story conveys many of the problems that immigrants might face. He fails a driver's test, drives without insurance, and is eventually in a small car accident, and as a result faces several traffic tickets. The documentary doesn't explicitly offer any blame for Santino's poor decisions, but the absence of a local support network seems to be partially at fault.

In both stories, I found myself struggling to understand the agency of certain actions/events in the film. Santino, in particular, confronts a fairly bewildering (if not entirely unsympathetic) bureaucratic system, and in those scenes, I rarely noticed anyone with whom Santino could talk about navigating these complexities. Peter, on the other hand, is portrayed as completely independent, eventually choosing to take an apartment on his own. Throughout his life in Kansas City, he is often seen attending a local church and attempting to integrate with the teen group there. These scenes are a little more difficult to read. Peter clearly remains on the outside, but it's only partially clear why that's true (he sits passively while others sing worship songs that stand in stark contrast to the emotions in the songs that were perormed in Sudan, for example). In both stories, the film complicates the narrative that immigration to the US will solve all of their problems, something that becomes particualrly clear when Peter calls his sister who cannot understand why Peter isn't sending more money home.

Overall, it's a compelling film, and it generally avoids the documentary trap of objectifying Peter and Santino, although I think the film could have been a little more self-conscious of its status as a story. In typical verite style, the filmmakers seem to avoid any kind of artistic signature and do not explicitly acknowledge their role in shaping the story. I think there's a way of calling attention to one's status as an author without going to the extremes of a Michael Moore.

To its credit, the film also avoids easy answers. I didn't walk away from the film thinking that I now understand the Sudanese refugee crisis or even that I understand what it's like to assimilate from a Sudanese refugee camp into American culture. In that sense, I think the film works very well as a documentary. While avoiding many of the simple truth claims often associated with documentary filmmaking, the film still conveyed a profound sense of injustice about the situation in Sudan.

Update: One other question that the film doesn't really address: what about the lost women of Sudan? The film focuses primarily on the young men who come to the US to earn money and get an education (an eventually help their families). One of the questions that seemed unanswered and that I left implied earlier: how are the Dinka women dealing with this crisis?

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May 22, 2004

Super Size Me

Last night, I went to see Super Size Me (IMDB) at a packed 9:30 screening at the Midtown Art Theater (and according to the ticket guy, the earlier screening nearly sold out). The reception of the film was very enthusiastic, with lots of applause and laughter, and I really enjoyed it. I had been in a bad mood all day, and the film's humor (as well as Spurlock's success as an independent filmmaker) really cheered me. I'm not sure I have anything new to add to the discussion, but here are some quick hit observations:

Like Jenny, I appreciated director Morgan Spurlock's affable approach to the topic. He managed to criticze the fast food industry without coming across as shrill or grating. Also, as Jenny notes, part of what makes the film powerful is the degree to which Spurlock's health declines, but perhaps more powerful are the changes in mood, his depression and the buzz he gets when he finally eats a McDonalds meal. The intersperesd interviews demonstrate the extent to which fast food chains have created a "fast food culture," through advertising and misleading information (the sequence in which Spurlock tries to find nutritional information at several McD's is informative and funny). They also illustrate the extent to which alternatives (often a little additional financial cost) are available.

Not sure I have much more to add here, but the film is a lot of fun. I'm hoping the buzz will allow the film to be seen outside the art house context because I think the film offers a wry, but thoughtful, take on a serious problem.

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April 27, 2004

The Grapes of Wrath

I watched John Ford's 1940 film version of The Grapes of Wrath tonight. It's a fascinating film, what Roger Ebert calls a "a left-wing parable, directed by a right-wing American director," in a review written before the DVD release. I'd never seen the film before, but the famous shot of the Joad family riding their battered, decrepit car into the destitute Okie transient camp in California has haunted me ever since I saw that scene in a clip tape we used in film courses at the University of Illinois. It's a great shot (by Citizen Kane cinematographer Gregg Toland), and while I probably won't be able to teach the whole film in my summer class, I'm trying to catalog a few film clips that I'd like students to see, and this shot beautifully captures Toland and Ford's near-documentary style in Grapes.

I take Ebert's point that the dialogue can seem a little preachy. Specifically, he mentions the scene in which Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) says good-bye to his mother near the end of the film ("Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there"), and I certainly recognized the speech as self-conscious (echoing similar lines by Eugene Debs), but I'm not sure that it's entirely disproportionate to the scene or to Joad's charismatic character.

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April 26, 2004

Journeys with George

After commenting about my interest in documentaries about the President, I came across Alexandra Pelosi's Journeys with George. Pelosi, the daughter of California Democratic Congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, offers a breezy take on the press corps feeding frenzy that accompanies any presidential campaign, and while Pelosi discloses her politics (in one scene, she votes for Bradley in the Democratic primary behind Bush's back), the film appearss remarkably apolitical, at least in terms of addressing specific Bush policies, but that "apolitical" stance actually enables her much more complicated critique of presidential politics. Pelosi, who cheerfully narrates the film, playfully banters with Bush about her love life, jokes about his taste in turkey sandwiches, and generally captures the camaraderie of the press corps.

Tobias Peterson's Pop Matters review reads the film's representations of American politics very effectively, noting that even the impromptu scenes in which Bush playfully jokes with Pelosi and the rest of the press corps are "highly crafted," with both filmmaker and politician engaged in a complicated game of give-and-take, the fact that the press corps cannot ask difficult questions because the risk being snubbed, as Pelosi herself was when she pressed Bush on his death penalty record. Perhaps this is the significance of all of the food images in the film: the press gaggle has to be careful not to bite the hand that feeds them. [Towards the end of the film, there's a really fascinating shot of a squirrel nervously eating peanuts out of a friendly press person's hand, and I think this is where I'm getting this metaphor.]

Pelosi confirms this reading in an indieWire interview (by the way this is a fantastic interview--great questions, interesting answers), noting that people criticized her for letting Bush off the hook when he couldn't explain why his policies benefit "the little people and the unemployed:"

I wasn't there as Alexandra Pelosi, the independent filmmaker. I was there as an NBC News producer. Anyone can say, "Well, if I was there, I would have said this or that," but that's all bullshit because nobody could even get there, number one, and if they got there, they could NOT say those things because he'd walk away and then you'd have no more access and I think that's counterproductive. Now if I was there as somebody else, it would be a different conversation. I had a role and I had to play my role. In the name of my own little home movie, I'm going to offend him and lose my job and get kicked off the plane? I don't think so. I'm not willing to jeopardize it all. And that is the dirty little secret of American political reporting and I say that in the movie. The truth is that all of our careers were tied to George Bush during the election campaign.

I'd say the scene speaks for itself, however, as then-governor Bush tries to sell himself as the little guy, teasingly asking Pelosi if she's ever seen him next to his brother.

As I've researched to write this review, I've become more impressed by it. I'm charmed by Alexandra Pelosi's narration, her "home movie" presentation of the campaign, and the film benefits from foregrounding her presence as the filmmaker. Meanwhile, Bush remains a mere image, a relatively shallow man who carefully crafts his image, as suggested by the number of shots of cameras filming Bush (who in several shots takes a camera himself). In a post-9/11 world, it's a strange document, though, a reminder of a much different moment in American politics.

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April 25, 2004

Kill Bill Vol. 2

I finally made it back to the movie theater this weekend, catching both Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Hellboy. I found both films to be rather entertaining work from a couple of the better pop auteurs working in the Hollywood genre scene today, Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo del Toro (speaking of Tarantino, the Dateline interview with him this evening was far too short). I'll save Hellboy for a later review.

In some ways, Tarantino's reputation has been constrained by his status as a "database filmmaker," mixing and matching references to a range of influences, including samurai, kung fu, TV shows, and blacksploitation films (thanks to scribblingwoman for the link). As a proud film geek, I love the cinematic references and Tarantino's ability to have fun with them, but I also find him to be a terrific storyteller who taps into some important cultural fantasies (spoilers galore). I don't think that Tarantino's stylized references to the cinematic past are purely trivial, as this Salon reviewer suggests, but instead refer to the cinematic past in order to rewrite it.

Kill Bill Vol. 2 (IMDB) picks up where Vol 1 leaves off, following the story of The Bride (Uma Thurman) as she seeks revenge on Bill (David Carradine) after he attempted to murder her in a wedding chapel in El Paso, Texas. Unlike Vol. 1, the violence in the second film is more subdued, and there's more character development, more conversation, with characters occasionally using popular culture to make points a la the deconstruction of "Papa Don't Preach" in Resevoir Dogs (I'm thinking here especially of Bill's monologue on superheroes). The relationship between the Bride (her "real" name is Beatrix Kiddo) and Bill is fleshed out. It turns out they were lovers, and she left him and their lives as jet-setting assassins, hoping to pursue a normal life as the wife of a second-hand record-store owner (a subtle reference to QT's own past as a video-store geek?). We also know from the first film that the Bride's daughter is still alive, a detail that Vol. 2 carefully suppresses for most of the film.

A flashback to Beatrix's training with martial arts master, Pai Mei (Gordon Liu, voice dubbed by Tarantino), who Bill reports hates Americans, blondes, and women, allows QT to work out some of the critiques of his representations of East and West. Other scenes, such as Bud's fight with his boss at a rundown topless bar and his retreat into an isolated mobile home, evoking through the use of heavy close-ups, the westerns of Sergio Leone, address the difficulties of aging and decline (equally communicated by Michael Madsen's sagging jowls).

In this sense, the film seems to be negotiating the boundaries between the fantasy life embodied in Tarantino's "trash films" and the real world of domesticity and family. It doesn't seem accidental that many of the fight scenes take place in everyday settings, and here I'm thinking about the fight scene between The Bride and Elle Driver (Darryl Hannah) in the tiny kitchen of Bud's mobile home, echoing the fight scene between the Bride and Vernita in Vol. 1. These preoccupations with parenting and family come across throughout the film, when Beatrix worries about Vernita's daughter or when she reads her own daughter (whom she has never seen) a bedtime story. The scene is surprisingly poignant for a film about betrayal and revenge. Still, even without the emotional payoff, I found Vol. 2 to be a fun movie-geek ride and one of the better films I've seen this year.

I don't think I've quite captured what I liked about this film, but for now, my main observation is that QT's references, while often seen as connoting a pure surface or celebratory play, actually convey a much more complicated reflection on regret, betrayal, and loss, often using and reworking these earlier films in surprising ways.

Note: I just came across the Metaphilm review, and I find Mark T. Conrad's assertion that the Kill Bill films are "therapy sessions" for QT, in which he is "recreating his past in order to grasp it more realistically, with the father absent and the women powerful."

Posted by chuck at 7:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 3, 2004

Dawn of the Dead 2004

I finally got a chance to see a movie tonight, and decided to watch the Dawn of the Dead remake (IMDB). To be honest, I don't remember the original that well, but I remember liking the earlier film's satire of mall culture, with the zombies unconsciously lurching across the mall. There are a few Muzak jokes (Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy" and a cover of "You Light up My Life"), but the remake dispenses with that version of satire pretty quickly, with Ving Rhames' police officer, Kenneth, delivering one of the mall joke lines from the original quickly. But the mall serves primarily as a useful setting for the action of the film, which I think is a very smart move.

Instead, the film (like many remakes) becomes much more about media and communications technologies. The tour de force opening sequence shows nurse Ana (Sarah Polley, a personal fave) returning from a long shift at work. She talks to a neighbor girl and joins her boyfriend in their modest home. Soon after, the girl bursts into the apartment, bites the boyfriend, and the film explodes into action. Quick cuts, simulating channel surfing, show a social order on the verge of collapse, with cities, including the nation's capital besieged by zombies while Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around" blares over the soundtrack. The film very quickly sets up the apocalyptic tone of the film and visually and aurally links that apocalypse to the television coverage of the zombie attack. This "haunted media" (Jeffrey Sconce's term--I need to come up with my own) theme persists later in the film as characters in the mall watch TV in several key sequences. The film also used the mall's security cameras in an interesting, though problematic, way (I'm not sure it complicates one security guard's voyeurism effectively enough). There's one other key use of "haunted media" which I'll explain below the fold to avoid spoiling the film for anyone who hasn't seen it.

I also liked the move of making the zombies faster, able to make decisions more quickly. I don't regard their unflinching slowness in the original as a flaw--it fit perfectly with the film's mallrat satire. But the speed of the new generation of zombies beautifully fit the speed of digital video, and the flicker effect worked nicely with what I regard to be the film's updated satire.

A few other observations: the film generally ignores the Romero film's self-conscious treatment of race although there is one interesting subplot (perhaps the film's creepiest) involving Mekhi Phifer and his very pregnant Russian girlfriend/wife. The film also makes the mistake of adding a few too many characters--I actually had a difficult time keeping track of some of them, but perhaps this, too, was intentional, a way of de-individuating the human characters. There were several great uses of humor, including Rhames communicating with a gun store owner across the parking lot using dry erase boards. The film did feel a little flat in a few places, and I don't think the satire was quite as compelling as in the original. But I do think that some critics have underestimated the new Dawn. I really liked the way in which the film was able to riff off of other recent horror films that have commented, in some way, on media and communications technologies. And it was pretty damn fun, too. Brief spoiler below.

I really liked the film's ending. The flicker effect at the end beautifully adds to the sense of chaos, and as the boat departs from the dock, we get a closure signal as we hear the completely innocuous white guy (is this a new horror film trope--save money by hiring an unknown for the male lead?) fire his gun off-screen, signalling that he has committed suicide rather than become a zombie. The cut to the videotape as the credits flash onscreen initially cues a joke at the expense of the sleazy rich guy, but then we realize that one of the survivors is filming, the handheld camera almost immediately recalling The Blair Witch Project. Then, as the boat reaches the island and the dog runs ashore, the violent movement of the camera signals the deaths of teh last remaining survivors in the film. Only the camera is left to record and remember what happened.

Side note: Walter Chaw's Film Freak Central review is quite good. The comparison between the zombie birth scene and Cronenberg's The Fly seems really apt. Elvis Mitchell gets the film almost completely wrong. I like the comparison to Troma's B-Movie films (Tromeo and Juliet, The Toxic Avenger), but Mitchell makes the comparison seem like a bad thing.

Now thinking it might be worthwhile to extend my project on The Ring into something a little broader.

Update: Mick LaSalle's SF Gate review adds the interesting reminder that the credits sequence also very clearly invokes the September 11 attacks, something I'd neglected to mention in my review, in part because I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to read these shots. I'm still not sure, but since I'd like to write about this film, I'm collecting all the useful links I can find.

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March 30, 2004

Campus MovieFest 2004

For the second year in a row, I attended Georgia Tech's Campus Movie Fest (sponsored by a popular local airline--click the link if you really want to know). The event organizers provide any interested Georgia Tech students with digital video cameras, editing equipment, some training, and then students have one week to make a short film (5 minutes or less), with the winners receiving valubale prizes (dinners, round-trip plane tickets, etc). So far, the event takes place on eight different Georgia campuses, including Emory, UGA, Georgia State, and the Atlanta University center.

Several of the movies, especially the night's winning team, showed some outstanding talent and creativity. I'll update later when I find the name of the winning film, but the work, in spirit and style, reminded me of Godfrey Reggio's "Qatsi Trilogy." Also nice to see several of my students participating in some of the films that were screened.

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March 14, 2004

Pieces of April

Pieces of April (IMDB) is an entertaining Thanksgiving family comedy, a film I really enjoyed watching. Patricia Clarkson's performance as Joy, a fortysomething mother dying of cancer, is wonderful, playing the role with just the right degree of bitterness, and Katie Holmes is impressive as her frenetic (and estranged) daughter, April.

The plot is relatively simple: it may be Joy's last Thanksgiving, and Joy's husband (played by Oliver Platt) seeks to help reconnect April and Joy by allowing April (who lives in a tiny NYC apartment) to cook the dinner, and the film builds tension effectively as the family approaches NYC while April struggles to make the meal, creating some nice physical comedy. The film's use of photography (including photographs that become freeze-frames, or freeze-frames that are revealed to be photos) was very effectively done--too tired to discuss it in much detail.

One warning: Do not watch this film while you are hungry.

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March 13, 2004

My Architect: A Son's Journey

Nathaniel Kahn's Oscar-nominated documentary, My Architect (IMDB), focuses on Nathaniel's attempts to understand the legacy of his father, Louis Kahn. Louis is considered to be one of the great architects of the twentieth century, but he also had an unusual private life in that he fathered children with three different women, a fact that many of his professional contacts did not know.

Throughout the film, Nathaniel, who was 11 years old when his father died in 1974, attempts to reconcile the many lives that his father led through interviews with his father's colleagues, other prominent architects, and several family members, all of whom remember Louis in vastly different ways. Some of the people Nathaniel interviews (including a Philadelphia city planner, Ed Bacon) remember him as stubborn, completely impractical and ill-equipped to deal with the pragmatic concerns of city life. Others, including I.M. Pei and Frank Gehry, remember him as a genius, although Pei gleefully acknowldeges Louis's stubbornness.

Other images of Louis capture a more spiritual side, including interviews with a former mayor of Jerusalem, with whom Louis had planned to build a synagogue. A recorded lecture captures Louis emphasizing the need to connect with the natural world when designing buildings. I was most fascinated by Louis's experiences in Rome, when he developed his vision as an architect (check out especially the breathtaking Bangladesh capital building), an intriguing mixture of modern and classical images, synthesizing the pure modernist forms with the ruins of classical architecture.

The build-up to the film's climax, Nathaniel's journey to Bangladesh, is actually quite effectively done. During one earlier sequence, Nathaniel shows some of Kahn's buildings while Beethoven's Ninth plays in the background. You begin to sense Louis's gifts, his sense of vision, and Nathaniel cuts to another architect who says "Let's not glorify the man." This sense of self-awareness is important. Nathaniel celebrates his father's work, but also manages to remain critical of him, to recognize the ways in which he failed to respect the women in his life. Architecture still comes across as primarily a boy's club, but I think the film is critical of that.

As Nathaniel approaches the Bangladeshi capital by boat, we begin to see the building as an amazing achievement, especially given the country's poverty in the years immediately after their war of liberation against Pakistan. Later, Nathaniel interviews Shamsul Wares, and when Nathaniel acknowledges that he'll only be able to devote ten minutes of the film to this building, Wares shakes his head and says, "That's not enough." And, at that point, I felt he was absolutely right. I wanted to spend more time in that building, experiencing that space. As an aside: I'm not sure that the film acknowledges in enough detail the ongoing poverty in Bangladesh, but of course that's not the point of the film.

Like many recent documentaries, My Architect addresses the knowability of the past, the extent to which we can know someone through images and interviews. The film manages to foreground this focus without pushing it. The film opens witha shot of microfiche copies of newspapers reporting Louis's death (in a train station). Later in the film, we get several shots of Nathaniel watching archived footage on videotape, including one shot in which we can see Nathaniel's face reflected in a screen. I think that may be the moment when the film completely won me over, drawing me in to Nathaniel's search.

Roger Ebert fleshes out some of the details about Louis's family life that I failed to mention in my review. Many of them (including the fact that Kahn's body went unidentified for two days after his death) add to his sense of mystery. Interesting to see how Ebert focused on such different details from the film (the Pop Matters review is also quite good).

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March 8, 2004

Final Destination

Just a quick note or two about Final Destination, a mediocre horror movie about a high school kid who has premonitions in which he is able to see that someone is about to die. The premonitions start when he has a vision that the airplane he's taking to Paris will explode soon after take-off. Because of his vision, he and five other passengers survive, but according to the logic of the film, they have "cheated death," essentially creating an aberrant timeline that must be corrected. Soon afteer the crash, the survivors begin to die with the kid, Alex, identifying a "pattern" that explains the order in which each survivor is destined to die.

I don't find the film interesting other than the model of time that it constructs and its strange emphasis on deaths by electrocution (perhaps an issue I could revisist), but the DVD itself includes some interesting special features. Most significantly, the DVD has a documentary on test screenings in which New Line employees discuss their methods for testing a film, explaining that they had originally produced a much different ending but that the original ending didn't appeal to "postmodern Scream audiences" (their words, not mine). Might be a useful way of talking about how high-concept movies are made or for thinking about horror film audiences more broadly.

One strange inclusion: a card prediction game, based on the Zener card test, in which the viewer tries to guess which of five symbols will randomly appear on a card.

Posted by chuck at 1:06 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 29, 2004

The Triplets of Belleville

After reading Tanya's review, I finally went to see Sylvain Chomet's animated feature, The Triplets of Belleville (IMDB), last night, and like Tanya, I completely enjoyed the film's visual and musical artistry. The opening sequence, featured in theatrical previews, riffs on the early-'30s Fleischer Brothers Talkertoons, with parodies of Josephine Baker, Fred Astaire, and Django Reinhardt. The stars of the show are, of course, the eponymous triplets, who perform a scat-style song (one I'd like to see win the Oscar). The "scratches" on the film add to the nostalgic feel, leaving me feeling completely immersed in this world, but as the camera pans back, we see the scan lines of a television set and are quickly transplanted into a 1960s-era France, in the lonely, dilapidated house of Madame Souza and her orphaned grandson, Champion.

The film's ability to convey the characters' personalities and emotions with minimal dialogue is impressive, but to try to convey much information about the plot would, I believe, ruin the experiences for others. J. Hoberman's Village Voice review generally captures the spirit of the film without giving away too much. In short, I completely enjoyed the film's nostalgic tone (which I read as nostalgia not for the past itself as much as for a certain style of animation), its use of rich earth tones to convey this world, and the visual shorthand used to comment on characters and situations, including the waiter with no backbone (he literally bends over backwards), the square-shouldered mob guys who always walk in pairs, and Champion's skinny-legged, chubby dog, Bruno. The film is an absolute treat. See it on the big screen if you can.

Note: Also check out Elbert Ventura's Pop Matters review.

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February 26, 2004

The Stone Reader

After reading George's entry on Mark Moskowitz's fascinating literary quest documentary, The Stone Reader, I've been waiting for some time to actually see the film for myself. The doucmentary focuses on Moskowitz's appreciation for Dow Mossman's 1972 novel, The Stones of Summer, and his desire to track down Mossman who never published another novel.

The film opens, interestingly, with a scene in which Moskowitz self-consciously calls attention to the contrived nature of documentary truth. We see him "selling himself" to the director or photography, while Moskowitz's own son holds the boom mic. Later, we see Moskowitz, who also directs and produces campaign commercials, working at his editing machine, putting the film together. Throughout the film, he carefully crafts an image of himself as an avid consumer of books, with bookshelves prominently displayed in nearly every interior shot and Amazon.com boxes arriving frequently at his house.

The quest narrative provides an interesting framework for telling the story of literary admiration, even if it seemed a little artificial to me (the Salon critic had the same impression I did, calling it a "shaggy dog" story). In a sense, it allows Moskowitz to indulge his appreciation for the novel. It also allows him to implicitly criticize the ways in which the publishing industry can devour the labor of even the most talented and promising writers (such as Mossman, whose original publisher, Bobbs Merrill, stopped publishing fiction).

More than anything, the film seems to convey how deeply authors such as Mossman and his mentor at Iowa, William Cotter Murray, needed to have their labor affirmed by a reader. In this regard, Mossman's reaction to Moskowitz's quest is fascinating: "You're more than the ideal reader. You're in another dimension." The build-up to meeting Mossman was nicely developed, and I found these sequences to be utterly fascinating, in part because I do find that image of short-lived fame to be such an intriguing concept.

At the same time, the film subtly emphasizes what it describes as a declining literary culture. We hear a Norman Mailer interview on Moskowitz's radio, in which Mailer suggests thatthe novel will soon disappear. We see greybeards such as literary critic Leslie Fieldler, former Iowa creative writing professor Murray, and John Seelye, the NY Times critic whose review prompted Moskowitz to buy the book, all lamenting what the Salon writer, Laura Miller, decribes as their "tenuous hold on a culture that is ebbing away."

I did notice, like George, that the film had a somewhat masculinist tone, with few, if any, women having prominent roles (the only woman he interviews is his mom), a fact the film seems to gloss. In fact, I wondered if Moskowitz's decision to emphasize his wife's request not to appear in the film might have been an attempt to acknowledge that criticism to some extent. I also found the decision not to clearly identify the subject matter of the book (or Moskowitz's reasons for enjoying it so much) to be a compelling omission. You get veiled references to the beauty of the language, to the Vietnam War, but very little in the way of specifics, and so I found the film to be less about the novel itself, and more about Moskowitz's nostalgia for a literate culture that he fears is fading away (Harry Potter notwithstanding).

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February 22, 2004

Capturing the Friedmans

During interviews promoting his compelling documentary, Capturing the Friedmans (IMDB), Andrew Jarecki invariably reports that he initially planned to make a film about clowns who performed at birthday parties for wealthy children living in Manhattan. However, as he talked to David Friedman, the city's most popular clown, small details about his haunted private life began to emerge. Gradually, David revealed that his family had been torn apart by a notorious child molestation scandal in the late 1980s in Great Neck, New York, on Long Island; his father, Arnold, and his brother, Jesse, had been convicted of dozens of child molestation charges, with David insisting on their innocence. Other footage, filmed privately during the 1988 trial, shows David angrily denouncing the charges against Arold and Jesse on a video camera in something close to a videotape confessional to "his future self." Soon we see videotape and super-8 film footage from family collections, the father and his three sons hamming in front of the camera, playfully performing music and skits before an imagined audience.

This mixture of contemporary interviews (with several of the family members, law enforcement officials, and alleged victims) and the Friedman's video library creates a compelling documentary that takes its subject and its audience seriously. While Jarecki has been careful to avoid explicitly commenting on the guilt or innocnece of Arnold and Jesse, he skillfully questions the methods that police detectives used to gather information and subtly reminds veiwers that no forensic evidence was offered to support the molestation charges. In other interviews with both family members and alledged victims, Jarecki demonstrates the ureliable nature of memory itself, specifically in the case of one witness whose description of the after-school computer classes when Jesse and Arnold allegedly committed their crimes is often laced with contradictions. As Michael Atkinson suggests, Jarecki simply allows investigators to talk until they've "buried themselves in righteous dung." Jarecki also draws from the observations of Debbie Nathan, an investigative reporter, who reminds viewers that the Friedman case emerged in the late 1980s, just as hysteria about child abuse at day-care facilities had reached its peak. The use of family film footage adds a quality of cinema-verite to the film, especially the use of handheld camera during one sequence where parents of the alleged victims chase the Friedman family across the courthouse parking lot (which reminded me of a similar shot sequence in Barbara Kopple's amazing documentary, Harlan County, USA).

At the same time, Jarecki's film calls into question the reliability of David and other members of the Friedman family, as Roger Ebert points out. David's protests about his father and brother are a little too strong, and we gradually learn more about Arnold's pedophilia (it's clear that he owned a large collection of child pornography, and he later confessed privately to molesting the son of a family friend), leaving us with some ambiguity about exactly what Arnold might have done. In this sense, the film follows the logic of trial films as described by Carol Clover, positioning the audience as a "jury" re-trying the case, but without offering a clear verdict for either Arnold or Jesse (although Jesse's innocence is strongly implied).

But to say that the film is merely about the "elusiveness of the facts" seems entirely too reductive. Instead, the film should be understood, in part, as a commentary on the Freidman family's desire to record and remember their experiences, even the bitter conflicts that sometimes erupted between family members. It also addresses the complicated dynamics of the Friedman family itself. I found myself inhabiting a range of reactions to all of the members of the Friedman family from sympathy to suspicion. The film haunted me long after I finished watching it, and the DVD offers ample supplemental material to address many of the questions that were left unanswered in the film itself.

I'd really appreciate knowing what other readers thought about this film. I'm still not entirely resolved about my feelings towards some of the characters or about the stance the film takes towards them.

Posted by chuck at 3:53 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

February 18, 2004

Spellbound

Or, "Orthography Dreams." Spellbound (IMDB) is a thrilling documentary that follows eight middle-school age students as they prepare for the national spelling bee held yearly in Washington, DC (please note: while writing this entry, I'm feeling entirely too self-conscious about my spelling skills).

The film opens by interviewing eight candidates from diverse backgrounds, and like Jenny, I found myself identifying with several of the kids' neuroses and habits. As the film's suspense mounted, I also found myself choosing a "favorite" kid, while rooting against others. The film clearly positions you to root for an African-American girl from Washington, DC, but reactions to other kids seem to be based more on individual tastes. Like Jenny's brothers (scroll down to her comments), I found the "spastic kid from Jersey" really annoying, but beyond that, I thought the kids were generally charming and quirky in the best possible ways.

I think that what I found most interesting was how the film actually created a "villain," a kid who had finished second the year before and was competing again. Even though several of the kids whose stories we followed were repeat competitors, the fact that this kid came in near the end of the film led me to perceive him as the "bad guy," threatening to spoil my happy ending. I also found the reaction shots of the parents (who were generally portrayed as supportive) to be interesting, especially given the ways in which the film plays on the viewer's emotions.

I don't want to spoil the suspense for people who haven't yet seen the film. That's certainly part of the fun. I did, however, appreciate that one competitor managed to advance to a later round after successfully spelling the word, "Palimpsest."

Mild spoiler below:

I did find it strange when the director chose to cut away from the spelling champion just before she spelled the winning word. Instead of watching her win first-hand, we see her commenting in retrospect about winning before the film cuts back to her successfully spelling the winning word. I almost threw the remote. Did other people have this reaction?

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February 13, 2004

Uncovered Review

Several months ago, I commented briefly on the MoveOn.org sponsored house parties for screening Robert Greenwald's documentary, Uncovered. At the time, I was simply intrigued by how the film had been distributed. Now that I've had an opportunity to watch the film, I'll throw in my two cents about it.

I'll first point out that I find Greenwald's film to be an impressive and important documentary, one that offers a powerful argument against the war in Iraq. Uncovered used editing very effectively in several key sequences, cutting between Bush's famous State of the Union speech and CIA intelligence experts who take apart his major justifications for the war. The number of experts Greenwald assembles, including John Dean, Scott Ritter, and Joseph Wilson, is quite impressive, and I found their arguments to be very convincing. If more undecided voters were to see this documentary, I think that would be a very good thing.

That being said, I know well that my impression of the film is certainly inflected by any number of biases. As I watched the film, I tried to imagine how undecided voters might respond to it. Would they notice that the film failed to offer any interviews or comments by people who supported the war? Would those viewers object to a documentary that took such a clear argumentative approach? I'm not sure I have an answer to those questions. One minor quibble: the film used borrowed footage from C-Span broadcasts to build some of its arguments without displaying the date of the speech we were watching, which could occasionally be confusing, but that's probably me being picky.

I'd also imagine that because many of the documentary's claims (yellowcake, mobile weapons factories, terrorist connections) have been so thoroughly confirmed (annoying WaPost registration now required) by now that Uncovered might have a much different imapct on viewers than it did when it was first released. I'd be curious to hear from others who have seen this film. What were your reactions to it?

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February 7, 2004

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

Throughout Errol Morris's fascinating documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (IMDB), former Secretary of Defense McNamara, one of the most volatile figures of the Vietnam era, proves to be an incredibly compelling figure, someone who can be remarkably self-critical and reflective about the decisions he made to deepen our involvement in the Vietnam War. Or someone who can speak frankly about calculating how to make US fire bombing missions in Japan during World War II more efficient, even acknowledging that had the US lost the war, he would likely have been tried as a war criminal. But then, just as quickly, McNamara closes down, refusing to address Morris's prompt to further reflect on US culpability in Vietnam. As I watched the film, I became increasingly fascinated by these gaps, by those moments when McNamara refused to comment further about a subject.

The film itself is an incredible achievement, the kind of film that Errol Morris was put on this planet to make. It primarily features talking-head footage of interviews Morris recently conducted with the 85-year-old McNamara using a technology called the "Interrotron" (see Ebert's explanation), a video device that allows Morris and his subject to look into each other eyes while the subject also looks directly into the camera, creating a sense of intimacy between the spectator and the interviewee. Morris mixes in actuality footage of World War II and the Vietnam War with shots of tape recorders playing audiotapes of McNamara's meetings with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He also includes charts and graphs, time-lapse photography, and shots of newspaper articles, often cutting so quickly that it becomes impossible to absorb everything we've seen. The film is driven by Philip Glass' melancholic, mysterious score. The result is a challenging film that bears multiple viewings.

Framed around McNamara's eleven "lessons," the documentary traces his life and career, starting with what McNamara describes as his earliest memory, the celebrations of the end of the First World War when he was two years old, with McNamara acknowledging the unlikelihood of such a vivid, early memory. This sequence sets the tone for the film's consistent practice of undermining our ability to know or understand the world with complete certainty. This sense of uncertainty about the ways in which history is written seems to guide Morris's approach in The Fog of War, as he recently acknowledged in his notes on the film:

"At first I thought McNamara's failure to apologize was a weakness of the book [1995's "In Retrospect," which inspired "Fog of War"]; now I think that it is one of his strengths," writes Morris in his director's statement. "It is much more difficult to analyze the causes of error than apologize for it."

Rather than an apology, which is essentially designed to erase the past, McNamara provides us with at least a small window into the Vietnam era, albeit one obscured by the very "fog of war' that he describes.

The film challenges McNamara's credibility in several places, sometimes through the audio recordings of past conversations, sometimes by the questions we hear Morris ask off-screen, but as Slate writer Fred Kaplan points out, McNamara's (usually self-serving) narratives of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and Vietnam War clearly misrepresent what actually happened, but like Kaplan, I don't see these misrepresentations as flaws in Morris's film, which is less a history of US foreign policy than it is a reflection on the production of historical truth. As McNamara himself acknowledges, he would have been viewed much differently historically had the US lost World War II, leading one observer to recall Benjamin's observation that history is written by the victors.

Fog of War also offers a profound critique of what McNamara refers to as "rationality," which might be understood in terms of the relentless and calculated efficiency that was a part of his celebrated image as a World War II planner and as an executive at Ford (he helped in the development of seat belts), an observation that challenges some of McNamara's earlier assertions. Again, this willingness to engage in self-reflection, if not self-criticism, was compelling, even with McNamara's refusal to pursue some of these points, and perhaps because of the refusal, the things he couldn't--or wouldn't--say.

The film offers several moments that may tempt viewers to draw comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. Several of McNamara's lessons acknowledge this perception, including his first lesson, "Empathize with your enemy." McNamara comments only about his role in the Vietnam War, never mentioning Iraq or the current war, but it's relatively clear from the coded language that he feels that some of his lessons still apply. In his case, the failure to understand that Vietnam perceived the war as a war of decolonization was partially to blame for the failure of the US military. To be sure, McNamara is quick to dismiss these connections while Morris more openly encourages making these comparisons.

Overall, this is a compelling film, one that demands multiple viewings.

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January 25, 2004

Mystic River Monster

I saw two new movies over the weekend that have been receiving major critical acclaim, Clint Eastwood's new drama, Mystic River (IMDB), and Patty Jenkins' first major film, Monster (IMDB).

Both films have been praised for the performances of the lead and supporting actors. Just minutes ago, in fact, Tim Robbins won a Golden Globe Award for supporting actor for his performance as a child molestation survivor in Mystic River, while Roger Ebert proclaims Charlize Theron's performance as Aileen Carol Wuornos, imprecisely described as the world's first female serial killer, to be "one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema," which probably overstates things just a little. However, Eastwood's crime drama left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied, while Monster's treatment of the Wuornos story shook me pretty deeply, and I was impressed by the film's unwillingness to offer any simple explanations for Wuornos's behavior.

Both films open with flashback images of childhood memories: In Mystic River, we see three boys playing street hockey in a working-class Boston neighborhood when one of the boys, Dave, is picked up by a child molester posing as a police officer. Years later, the boys have grown up and gone their separate ways, but the opening scene is played as a traumatic event that determines every choice they make for the rest of their lives. Jimmy (Sean Penn), the brashest of the three, grows into a life of small-time crime and has a teenage daughter who is mysteriously killed. Jimmy immediately suspects Dave, and some circumstantial evidence uncovered by police officer and third boyhood friend, Sean (Kevin Bacon), points towards Dave's guilt. By focusing on the single childhood event (I've heard that Dennis Lehane's book offers more detail from their pasts), Mystic River puts entirely too much weight on it.

The film's treatment of gender also left me feeling somewhat cold, with the wives of all three characters left pretty much unexamined. Marcia Gay Harden, playing Dave's wife Celeste, is given little else to do other than frown and simper when she begins to think her husband may be a murderer, with no real explanation given for her sudden betrayal. Laura Linney, playing Jimmy's (Penn) wife, does little in the film until the final scene when she attempts to comfort her husband in a scene that felt like something out of a different movie.

Monster, on the other hand, seems to use the flashback in a slightly different way. Aileen (Theron) narrates in voice-over that she "always wanted to be in the movies," but we see and learn quickly that her life didn't go as planned. By the age of 13, Aileen was already a street prostitute, and we soon see her under a highway overpass, contemplating suicide. She goes into a local bar (apparently not realizing at first that it was a lesbian bar) where she meets Selby (a good but thankless performance by Christina Ricci), another lonely individual searching for friendship. In fact, one of the best sequences of the film shows them dancing together in a roller skating rink while Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" plays in the background, suggesting for a brief moment the tenderness the two women briefly shared.

But Monster doesn't reduce Aileen's actions to a single moment or decision. Instead, her violence (which sometimes even seems to surprise her) seems to grow out of bad luck, bad decisions, and a series of abusive relationships. This is where Theron's performance, filled with awkward gestures and false bravado, really seemed to define a character. The first murder, in fact, is portrayed as self-defense against a "john" who has raped and beaten her. The low-angle camera shot captures Aileen's vulnerability and the violence enacted upon her. Wisely, however, the film avoids reducing her murders to this single event; in fact, it seems to avoid identifying a singular cause altogether, which I found to be one of Monster's greatest strengths.

The final shot also supports this reading: it shows Aileen being led away from the courtroom with the knowledge that Selby has identified her to the police in order to avoid prosecution on other charges. She quotes various cliches that people have repeated to her in the past: "Faith can move mountains, everything happens for a reason." Then after a pause, she laughs and says, "Well, they gotta tell you something." This sequence is, as Cynthia Fuchs suggests, "testament to the combined horror and banality of Wuornos' story."

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January 20, 2004

The Trials of Henry Kissinger

Watching The Trials of Henry Kissinger (IMDB), Eugene Jarecki's documentary film based on Christopher Hitchens' controversial book, I found myself increasingly troubled by the accusations against the former secretary of state. I was already aware of many of these accusations such as claims that Kissinger prolonged the Vietnam War and that he supported the Chilean coup that replaced the democratically-elected Allende with war criminal Pinochet, so I wanted a better understanding of how the film produced the response that it did.

As Roger Ebert's review suggests, the film's partisan take on Kissinger is a little too transparent. Kissinger's opponents, including Hitchens, are given ample time to state their case, to lay out their arguments in some detail. His supporters, however, including Alexander Haig, often appear to have their comments taken out of context. This technique is not unfamiliar in documentary media, of course, and I was certainly aware of the careful framing of Kissinger's story, the fact that the film had already essentially framed things through a loaded question, presuming his guilt in advance. Such an approach does not imply anything about Kissinger's guilt or innocence (I think there are sound reasons to question Kissinger's "diplomacy"), but this approach may actually be detrimental to understanding his role in American and world politics in the 1960s and 70s.

What I found interesting about the film is its loose reliance on the genre of the trial movie (for an excellent analysis, see Carol J. Clover's discussion of this genre) to make its case. As Clover points out, courtroom dramas position viewers "not as passive spectators but as active ones, viewers with a job to do."* While Trials is not properly a courtroom drama, it does clearly position the viewers as "jurors," presenting evidence that we are then asked to negotiate. Unlike many trial movies, however, the viewer-juror is left somewhat powerless. We've seen the evidence (stacked as it might be), but we are prevented from seeing any form of justice served, essentially short-circuiting what had been until the end of the film our active role in sifting through the evidence, leaving me feeling a pretty intense feeling of passivity. I haven't completely worked through these ideas, but I think Clover's discussion of the courtroom drama may explain in part why this film left me feeling so uncomfortable.

* Clover, "Judging Audiences," in Reinventing Film Studies, 246.

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January 18, 2004

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (IMDB) documents the failed April 2002 coup in Venezuela againt populist president Hugo Chávez. Although he is portrayed throughout the film as a "man of the people," someone who listens to the poor (he even does a weekly call-in show and assitants compile hand-written notes submitted to the palace), Chavez has been portrayed as anti-democratic by Venezuela's wealthy population and by current US leaders.

Filmmakers Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain had come to Venezuela with the intentions of making a much different documentary, one that focused on Chávez's rise to power and his promotion of literacy and economic programs among the nation's large poor population (several poor Venezuelan proudly display copies of their constitution), but the filmmakers happened to be present in the presidential palace when the coup, led by a small cabal of millionaires who oppoesd Chávez's plans to redistribute the nation's oil wealth, began happening around them. Two days later, the filmmakers are still in the palace when the palace guard, still loyal to Chávez, retake the palace, capturing many of the coup's leaders while others, including the newly installed president, manage to escape. What is perhaps most amazing about the entire event is the civility with which the coups took place: many of the opposition leaders who attempted to oust Chávez remain active in the opposition to this day.

The documentary raises several questions about globalization, and I'm intrigued by the different readings the film seems to have inspired. Roger Ebert--in a highly sympathetic review--focuses on the film's subtle implication that the CIA, or the Bush White House, may have supported the coup. To be honest, this is not a reading that I really gleaned from the film. Certainly Chávez's resistance to globalization and his attempts to restructure the Venezuelan oil industry have not won him many popularity points with the current US regime, but the film offers no real evidence to support such a thesis (as the less sympathetic New York Times review points out).

One of the film's more significant points seems to focus on the media coverage of the coup. The filmmakers are careful to emphasize the fact that Venezuela's private media are accountable to the oil companies and the wealthiest 20% of the population. They then proceed to show the stark distinctions between the news coverage and the events themselves, which the filmmakers capture with their camera. In general, it's a very successful tactic. The private media appear slick and over-produced, and the news commentators are called into question by their absurd critiques of Chávez, including one commentator who suggests that the president has a "Freudian sexual attraction" to Fidel Castro.

They also interview a fired news director who comments on the editorial decision to implicate Chávez's supporters in the deaths of ten Venezuelans using careful editing to distort what actually happened: the supporters were merely defending themselves against snipers, not firing into the crowd, as the television broadcast suggests. Meanwhile, the coup's supporters shut down the one public television station, which had provided Chavez with a primary outlet for communicating with the people. Like Walter Addiego of the San Francisco Chronicle, what struck me most about the film was that "political invective and media manipulation have real victims," and the uncertainty about what was really happening both inside and outside the palace walls. The film makes clear the ways in which economic interests determined how the events of the coup were covered in the privately-owned media.

Revolution is definitely well worth seeing, its critique of the "unreality" of televised images an important one. As the film suggests, media coverage can have profound consequences on people's lives. Chávez's status as leader of Venezuela continues to be contested, especially given the United States' significant economic interests in the region.

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January 13, 2004

The Kid Stays in the Picture

Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen's documentary, The Kid Stays in the Picture, about legendary film producer Robert Evans, has been out on video and DVD for several months now, but I've been waiting for the right moment to see it. The documentary is based on Evans' autobiography and makes beautiful use of Evans' gruff storytelling style, with Evans himself narrating his story in voice-over (although Morgen takes a screenwriting credit).

The documentary itself is fascinating, primarily for the narratives about the Hollywood studio system that it invokes, especially the nostalgia for the turbulent "New Hollywood" of the late 1960s and 1970s--also seen in Peter Biskind's Easy Riders Raging Bulls and the Ted Demme/Independent Film Channel documentary A Decade Under the Influence (my review).

As Salon.com reviewer Stephanie Zacharek points out, the Evans documentary clearly plays fast and loose with the facts from the very beginning:

There are times when baloney tells a better story than fact ever could, and "The Kid Stays in the Picture," narrated by Evans himself, is one of them. Evans sells himself to us in exactly the same way you imagine he might have sold one of his hit pictures to the bigwigs at Paramount during his golden years.

Unlike Zacharek, who suggests that "getting the absolute, undecorated truth would be too crushing," I don't read this technique of emphasizing Evans' breezy style psychologically. Instead, the approach seems to celebrate the very superficiality of the Hollywood studio system, taking pleasure in Evans' image as a charming, brash golden boy. In this sense, the film seems less about Evans, although his cult of personality dominates the film, and more about a nostalgia for what is increasingly considered to be the golden age of American cinema.

The film builds from the story of Evans' early career as a mediocre actor (Evans describes his acting as "half-assed") who was discovered poolside by Norma Shearer, who cast him in Man of a Thousand Faces and then starred in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises despite the objections of Hemingway and several of the film's stars, who all co-signed a telegram sent to Darryl Zanuck demanding that Evans be fired. According to Evans, the diminutive Zanuck stood up and decreed that "the kid stays in the picture." Evans reflects that he realized after Zanuck made the declaration that he no longer wanted to be an actor but wished to have the power to say "the kid stays in the picture." In short, the power of a studio chief.

The film then relates Evans' rise to power at Paramount, where he essentially saved the studio, in part by supporting some of the best and most profitable films of the 1960s and 70s, including Love Story, Chinatown, The Odd Couple, Rosemary's Baby, and The Godfather. In fact, in one the documentary's key sequences, we see clips of a film (directed by Mike Nichols) in which Evans is pleading with Paramount--then in the midst of a major financial crisis--to keep its studios open long enough to make Love Story and The Godfather (the complete sales film is an extra on the DVD).

Evans' rise to power is punctuated by his purchase of a Bevery Hills mansion he had admired when he was younger, but his classic success story becomes marred by greed and self-destructive behavior, including his divorce from Ali McGraw (after her affair with Steve McQueen), a drug bust in the 1980s and a scandalous trial in which an investor in one of Evans' films was murdered. The decline associated with Evans' personal life seems connected--at least loosely--to a decline in the New Hollywood itself, which became associated with excess in the early 1980s. His final act (and the film's final act, leading to what might be called a "Hollywood ending") is his re-emergence as a player in the 1990s. He recently produced the financially successful film, The Saint, among others, and the film emphasizes his recent marriage (his fifth), while neatly ignoring several of his earlier marriages. The documentary suggests someone bigger than life, a Hollywood hero manufactured in part from his press clippings, from Hollywood gossip, and from his own stories. In a sense, The Kid Stays in the Picture is a film about surface, about the artifice itself. As Evans himself says in the film's epigraph:

There are three sides to every story: My side, your side and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently.

Posted by chuck at 4:05 PM | TrackBack

January 10, 2004

House of Sand and Fog

House of Sand and Fog (IMDB), based on a novel by Andre Dubus III, is a formally exquisite and morally compelling film. The film opens with a shot of Behrani (Ben Kingsley, jumping into the ethnic chameleon machine one more time), an Iranian military officer looking from his balcony as several giant pine trees are chopped down to provide him with a view of the Caspian Sea. The shot suggests a certain amount of hubris, and his actions displease his wife.

The film then crosscuts between Behrani, now living and forced to work two jobs (on a cosntruction crew and in a convenience store) in the United States, and Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), living alone in a modest split-level house with a meager ocean view. Kathy's life seems to be careening out of control. An early sequence shows Kathy on the phone with her mother, who lives across the country, lying about her broken marriage and financial stability, and her only form of stability is the cabin left to her by her father. Kathy's life is then disrupted when the county siezes her house claiming that she has failed to pay business taxes on the house. One of the officers, Lester (Ron Eldard), seems sympathetic and directs Kathy to a lawyer to fight back for her house. However, Lester, who is married with children, is also clearly attracted to her. Behrani, seeing an oppurtunity to get rich quickly, buys the house at a bargain rate with plans to sell it for a large profit so that he can support his family and send his son to college. Kathy, unable to find anywhere else to go, begins sleeping in front of her old house in her Pontiac (one of her few remaining possessions).

The film, directed by first-timer Vadim Perelman, thus establishes a complicated set of moral questions. Both Kathy and Berhani are essentially entitled to the house; they have also both made mistakes. Kathy should have opened her mail and paid her bills sooner; Berhani, perhaps, should have been more understanding of Kathy's dilemma, but it's easy to understand why he would want to preserve his family's comfort level, especially after the luxurious life they were forced to leave in Iran (it's implied that he was in the Shah's army). In this sense, the film evokes a complicated take on the Amerian Dream. Berhani, the immigrant, is working hard to make a better life for his family in the United States while Kathy sees the home that her father worked thirty years to buy dissapearing from her grasp.

Perhaps the only character with whom I had no sympathy was Lester, the police officer who leaves his wife and family for Kathy, and not simply because he leaves his wife, but more likely because the film doesn't show us much about his family life. We only get one or two scenes of Carol (Kim Dickens) confronting Lester, and his desire to leave her seems more motivated by a night of steamy sex with Kathy than anything else. When I was discussing this film afterwards, I read this decision as a directorial mistake, one that simplified the story a little, but on reflection, I'm trying to recuperate it because the decision to not show us that part of Lester's life now seems rather deliberate (and may also be influenced by the tone of the novel). My reading now is that Lester is simply drawn to Kathy's self-destructive tendencies (she's a recovering alcoholic and smoker), and in fact, he begins to encourage her self-destructive behavior, buying cigarettes and alcohol for her.

I don't want to give away any other details about the plot, other than to say that once the conflict is set, it has a certain inevitability. The characters all make choices that we understand, but given our knowledge of their world, we also know the devastating consequences of their choices. House of Sand and Fog is beautifully filmed by Roger Deakins (Man Who Wasn't There, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Shawshank Redemption, among others) in a style that is generally naturalistic without being showy. One powerful shot, however, clearly evokes film noir, with Lester walking away from Kathy in a point-of-view shot. Lester is back-lit by a street lamp and is transformed into silhouette in the dark night. It's a beautiful shot for evoking the film's complicated moral questions, setting in motion a series of devastating choices.

House does have one sequence that I found improbable, and I won't mention it in too much detail, but I think that Behrani's son's action near the end of the film seemed fairly implausible and perhaps a little manipulative. Overall, though, the film sustains its complicated moral dilmemas, produced in part by the very effective use of crosscutting between Berhani and Kathy.

Posted by chuck at 9:28 PM | TrackBack

January 3, 2004

False Memories in the Movies

Doing some last minute surfing before classes start on Monday (yikes!) when I came across the Guardian article on false memories. In the article, Laura Spinney reports that Elizabeth Loftus, a UC-Irvine psychologist, has "implanted" false memories in experimental subjects, including Hawkeye Pierce, umm... I mean, Alan Alda, who developed an aversion to hard-boiled eggs based on a childhood memory of an event that never happened [Brief aside: maybe this explains my fear of wearing turtleneck sweaters?].

What Loftus describes is much more about the suggestibility of human beings, the ability of a speaker to use loaded questions and images to convince people they had seen something they really hadn't, such as seeing Bugs Bunny (a Warner Bros. character) at Disney World.

But what I find interesting are the number of films that have come out recently that are dealing with the concept of implanted memories that have appeared in theaters in the last few months and years. In theaters now (or very soon) are two major Hollywood films, neither of which I've seen: Paycheck (IMDB) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (IMDB).

In the last couple of years, we've also seen Vanilla Sky, which is a remake of Abre Los Ojos, a much superior film, and while Being John Malkovich isn't exactly about implanted memories, it's doing something remarkably similar with John Cusack and Cameron Diaz's characters assuming control over Malkovich's body at various points in the film. Strange Days uses VR to similar effect although the characters never abandon "themselves" entirely like the characters in some of these other films do. Any other films that people can remember off-hand?

I think there's a really enticing paper somewhere in this mix, but I'm still sifting through the ideas, and I'd actually like to devote myself primarily to my book project this spring, so perhaps this is just a signpost pointing towards a possible direction for future thought, but I would suggest taking a visit to the Eternal Sunshine official website for a nice parody of some of those quack-medicine websites.

Posted by chuck at 7:48 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 2, 2004

21 Grams

21 Grams (IMDB) uses disjunctive editing to reflect not only on the nature of cinematic time but on the nature of existence itself. Guillermo Arriaga's scrrenplay, Alejandro González Iñárritu's careful direction, and Rodrigo Prieto's gritty cinematography (the three also collaborated on Amores Perros) combine with solid performances from Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro to create a challenging, thoughtful film.

21 Grams opens with a grainy shot of Paul (Penn) and Cristina (Watts) reclining nude on a bed, each lost in his or her thoughts before a series of disconnected shots takes us on a whirlwind tour of their lives: Cristina at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, Paul in various doctors offices learning that he has only a few months to live, and Jack (Del Toro) in a Pentecostal church after reforming from a life of crime. As the Village Voice review points out, their lives--their connections to family--seem to contain a seed of fragility within them (in this sense, the parallels between Cristina's family and Jack's family, reproduced by the associative editing technique, seem crucial). This fragility--the sense of contingency--becomes the primary subject of the film as the characters' stories gradually come together as a result of a car accident that kills Cristina's husband and two daughters.

As the film unfolds, we gradually learn that Paul is a professor of mathematics, and he reflects at one point that "there are so many things that have to happen for two people to meet." Of course, viewers know that Paul has manipulated the situation; seeking to repay his debt to his heart donor, Paul has paid a private detective to find Cristina, but I don't think that negates the film's philosophical premise about time and contingency. Instead, I read that moment as a genuine attempt to understand why Paul's life was spared while another life ended so suddenly.

Prieto's cinematography (he also did the camerawork in 25th Hour and Frida, among other films), utilizing grainy, handheld, close-up shots beautifully reinforces this sense of uncertainty; many of the images, including the shots of Cristina and Paul in bed together, appear washed out, creating an effect of a new form of realism that I'm still at a loss to describe (although I witnessed something similar in 25th Hour as well as All the Real Girls).

As Cindy of making contact notes, the film isn't perfect: Penn's voice-over narration (where we learn the title of the film) was unnecessary and overly-sentimental. 21 Grams also privileges the traditional family as the site of happiness (implicit in the fragile nature of both Cristina and Jack's families, and to a lesser extent in Paul's wife's desire to bear Paul's child). Overall, the film mediates the relationship between time, cinema, and death in a fascinating way. The use of associative, non-linear editing serves a clear purpose here, unlike the gimmicky and shallow film, Irreversible (scroll down for my review). Instead of a simple fall from grace, the very possibility of grace (embodied in Jack's struggles to hang on to his very tenuous faith) becomes contingent upon a bewildering set of accidents, although the film does not at all negate Jack, Paul, and Cristina's struggles.

(Once again, I've found a film that challenges me deeply--I'm not sure my review can come close to capturing the complexity of 21 Grams.)

Recommended Reviews: Steven Shaviro, making contact, Village Voice.

Posted by chuck at 5:53 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 17, 2003

Blue Car

I just watched the compelling coming-of-age film, Blue Car(IMDB), written and directed by Karen Moncreiff.

Blue Car focuses on Meg (Agnes Bruckner), a reflective high school student facing a difficult family life of divorced parents, a mother who has a lousy job and leaves Meg to care for her younger sister. Meg finds some release from these difficulties while taking a creative writing course with Mr. Auster (David Strathairn), a charismatic teacher who begins to show an interest in her work, siezing upon her memories of her father leaving her mother which she associates with the image of a blue car in her writing. He offers Meg encouraging feedback, telling her to "dig deeper."

Viewers see quickly that Auster is drawn to Meg's vulnerability, and he begins creating situations in which the two can be alone together, building an intimacy between them. Auster pushes Meg to enter a national poetry contest, creating a situation in which they can share lunch alone in his classroom in order for her to work on her poetry. He gives her a ride home from school when she misses the bus. He leaves chocolate wrapped to look like a blue car. He reads a section of his novel that we later learn he cribbed from Rilke (I didn't recognize the lines), but for most of the film, Auster avoids acting on his sexual impulses (in this sense, the film uses Strathairn's restrained persona very effectively).

But the film is more than a cautionary story about predatory teachers who take advantage of emotionally vulnerable students. Instead, the film seems to address the complexities of growing up under difficult circumstances, and her teacher's behavior is just one of many crises Meg faces over the course of the film. In general, this is a solid, serious film that deserves a much wider audience, and it left me wanting to discuss it, and the questions it raised, with others who have seen it.

By the way, Miramax's marketing of this film was rather disappointing. Rather than portray the film's themes effectively, Miramax chose to use a lurid cover showing a teen girl from the neck down wearing a Lolita-type outfit (unlike anything Meg ever wore in the film) with a soundbite comparing the film to American Beauty. Instead of marketing the film on its many strengths, they go for cheap thrills. I actually resisted the film for several weeks because of this cheap packaging.

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December 16, 2003

Mysterious Object at Noon

I just watched the fascinating experimental Thai film, Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Weerasethakul, who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, based the film's structure on the Surrealist concept of "the exquisite corpse," which weez described a few weeks ago.

In the film version, Weerasethakul asked Thai townspeople (usually people living in the country with little knowledge of film) to tell part of a story during three years in the late 1990s. The basic situation involves a disabled boy and a teacher who visits him daily in his house because he is unable to travel to school. She leaves the room for a moment and then doesn't return, worrying the young boy. The narrators often struggle to add to the story. Sometimes they backtrack, filling in missing details and making connections with Thailand's past. Others enthusiastically plunge the story forward, adding magical or unexpected details, many of which the director re-creates with amateur actors.

Because Mysterious focuses on these stories, the film is essentially about the filmmaking process itself. Mysterious is a low- (more like no-) budget film, using an amateur crew and cheap film stock and cameras, and in fact, the camera actually broke irreparably during the film's final shot (which, for some reason reminded me of Wim Wenders' The State of Things). The film also takes a subtle shift towards the end as the director's own interests and tastes change, making the film, at least in part, a documentary about the filmmaker himself.

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December 12, 2003

Cinemania

I just rented the documentary film, Cinemania (IMDB), which is about a group of intense New York cinephiles who spend their entire days watching countless films in various theaters around the city.

Their interest in film borders on pathology, with the cinephiles refusing careers or what might be called a "normal life" (on character even cultivates a high-fiber diet in order to avoid worrying about having to miss scenes from films because of an untimely visit to the bathroom), but the cinephiles are not treated with condescension. As the filmmakers themselves comment:

What interested us about these people was the degree to which their love of film has seemed to eclipse all other concerns in their lives.

What makes the film work is the filmmakers' generosity towards their subjects and the unabashed honesty of the subjects themselves.

All of the cinephiles have their idiosyncracies: one cinephile, who graduated with honors from Berkeley, identifies himself as a philosopher and loves European art cinema (the filmmakers now have a blog that prominently features his reviews). Others are obsessed with the running time of films or with obscure stars. Several of them are unable to watch films on video, while one viewer wants to get a cell phone so that he can call the projectionist's booth to ensure that the films he watches are projected properly.

Many of these cinephiles are also collectors. Roberta, the one female cinephile, collects programs, cups, and all sorts of promotional memorabilia, worrying that her collection will be lost if/when she is evicted from her apartment. Another collects soundtracks on vinyl even though he doesn't have a stereo. Others spend their inheritance or their unemployment checks buying books. Another keeps journals listing every film he has seen. The sense of the cinephile as collector is what struck me the most about the film. Even attending films so frequently (at minimum 3-4 films per day) is essentially a version of collecting experiences. In this sense, I'm thinking about collecting as a means of controlling one's experiences, of providing them with a sense of meaning or order, specifically within a world that is chaotic and disorienting (there are sevral shots of the spectacular space of Times Square that might reinforce this reading).

Hmmm...I lost the end of this review and I'm too tired to re-create it, but I found the film's treatment of the obsessive practies of these cinephiles to be really quite interesting....

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December 11, 2003

The Station Agent

The Station Agent (IMDB) focuses on the emotional struggles of Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage), a midget dwarf (he chooses that term over the more PC "little person") who works in a model train shop in Hoboken. Fin is completely fascinated by trains and immerses himself in a train-hobbyist community with his boss and friend, Henry. Whe Henry dies, Fin inherits an old rail depot in the small town of Newfoundland, New Jersey, and with the shop due to close, chooses to move out to the depot.

Fin moves out to Newfoundland in part to isolate himself as much as possible from the world and from the uncomfortable stares he receives when he walks down city streets. He knows that every time he goes out, he'll face some kind of snide remark or the stares of others, but he reluctantly becomes involved in the lives of several of his neighbors, including a friendly and gregarious hot dog salesman, Joe (Bobby Cannavale), and an artist struggling with the end of her marriage, Olivia (Patricia Clarkson). Eventually Joe's charms begin to draw Fin out into the world and the three people begin to connect and break through their feelings of isolation. They begin to share meals, and the subtle use of banjo music by Stephen Trask and the understated cinematography (which makes good use of the long-derelict depot and other abandoned spaces) combine to create a contemplative tone in which the characters can talk and, sometimes, sit together without having to make conversation.

It would be easy to trivialize this kind of plot, to make the film merely about Fin's height, and while it's a major issue in the film, Station generally avoids taking the simple way out, other than in a scene in which Joe has finally persuaded Fin to meet him in a local bar. When Joe doesn't arrive, Fin begins drinking heavily and becomes conscious of a couple of townies staring at him and whispering under their breath. Fin's reaction seemed out of character and inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the film (the following sequence seemed equally implausible). But for the most part, I think the film manages its emotional resonance without descending into something falsely sentimental.

Patricia Clarkson (who co-starred in David Gordon Green's All the Real Girls, which George and I both liked) gave an outstanding performance as Olivia, but Peter Dinklage carries the film, giving Fin just the right amount of aloofness throughout, while gradually warming to the new community that builds around him. The film is generally paced nicely, allowing the characters to develop gradually, but without offering any form of artificl resolution. In fact, when the final scene of the film comes, I felt vaguely disappointed, as if I'd become attached to the characters, wanting to know more about where their stories would lead.

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Kal Ho Naa Ho

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I had my first ever Bollywood experience tonight. I went with one of my colleagues to see Kal Ho Naa Ho (IMDB).

After a delicious dinner at Queen of Sheba Ethiopian restaurant, we headed out to the 'burbs for the movie. I knew that Bollywood films tended towards melodrama and that they usually (always?) have several musical sequences, but I'm not quite sure I was prepared for the emotional roller coaster ride this film provided. The story is narrated by Naina, a twenty-something Indian woman living in New York. She and her best friend, Rohit (in full metrosexual mode), banter back and forth, but Naina, still emotionally scarred by her father's suicide, is closed off to love. Soon, the charming Aman (played by Bollywood star Shahrukh Kahn) arrives and Naina relaxes, losing her bookish eyeglasses and letting her hair down. Naina slowly begins to fall for Aman, who is dying of an unexplained heart disease, and the film then traces the romantic comedy and the family melodrama.

What I found fascinating about this film was the treatment of sexuality. There are several scenes in which the fashion conscious Rahit and the playful Aman are caught (by someone who appears to be his maid) in scenes of homosocial bonding. These scenes cause the maid to faint in shock. These "homosocial" moments are generally contained by the end of the film, but the ways in which the film plays with this tension really struck me. Of course, because of the way in which the "competition" between the two men over Naina is framed, Naina essentially loses her agency in choosing which man she'll marry.

In general, the film's ambivalence about New York also stuck with me. Early in the film, Aman performs a Hindi version of "Pretty Woman" on a New York taxi in front of an American flag, and the opening shot of the film incorporates the Statue of Liberty, but this celebration of New York becomes a little more muted as the film progresses. There is certainly an American Dream subtext to the film (both Rohit and Naina are seeking MBAs at the "University of New York").

I'm also somewhat surprised by my own investment in the narrative. For whatever reason my emotional defenses weren't quite as strong as they might have been had I been watching an American film. Still trying to think through that aspect of my experience, but maybe I need to see a few more Bollywood films to see if my experience of them changes.

Kal Ho Naa Ho (roughly "There May be No Tomorrow") was playing at Galaxy Cinema, a suburban Atlanta movie theater that specializes in international cinema, especially Bollywood films. Galaxy Theater, was reviewed a couple of years ago in a Creative Loafing article, which presents many of the difficulties of sustaining a cinema showing mainstream international films, including the problem of competing with pirated copies of even the newest films. It also notes the fascinating population shifts in the Atlanta suburb, Norcross, that have created a market for mainstream films from Third World countries.

I'm way behind on my film reviews, but hopefully in a few days, I'll catch up....I actually really miss writing about movies here, so I'm going to try and get back to it soon.

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November 24, 2003

Shattered Glass

Just wanted to mention that I happened to watch Shattered Glass (IMDB) the other night when I was taking a break from working. Shattered stars Hayden Christensen as Stephen Glass, the New Republic writer who fabricated details in 27 of his 41 published stories. The low-budget feature (partially financed by Canadian grant money) uses a verite style to convey the Glass story, giving the film a sense of immediacy that seems crucial to the story and leading to comparisons with other investigative journalism features such as All the President's Men.

There is some logic to the comparison. After all, for a significant section of the film, we follow web journalists Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn) and Anide Fox (Rosario Dawson) as they begin to break the story, tearing apart a Glass article on hackers fact-by-fact. But Glass, written and directed by Billy Ray, lacks the earlier film's self-righteousness.

The film is certainly critical of Glass' actions and celebrates the ethical stance taken by NR editor Charles Lane when the charges against Glass were revealed to be true. However, instead of taking the obvious route and pushing for greater ethical scrutiny, Ray's film seems to focus instead on office politics, especially the cult of personality associated with a charming figure such as Glass. During early sequences of the film, Glass is careful to compliment members of the office staff, including receptionists and assistants, and accepts praise for his work with what Roger Ebert calls "bashful narcissism."

Gradually, after beloved editor Michael Kelly (who was later killed while covering the war in Iraq) leaves NR, the mood and focus of the film begins to shift, focusing in part on the Internet journalists who are bringing down the star writer for the major magazine and on the ethical dilemmas faced by the reticent new editor "Chuck" Lane. As the truth begins to emerge, a darker picture of Glass develops. He first plays the office against Lane, using his charm to breifly sustain himself against any kind of punishment; Glass' colleagues speak on his behalf, telling Lane that Glass had been "working too hard," that it was a misunderstanding. In this sense, the film seems to be more about office politics than about journalistic ethics, at least in my reading. At the same time, the film belongs to a very specific cultural moment when web journalism was finally being recognized as a legitimate news source.

The performances were all solid, especially Christensen as Glass, Peter Sarsgaard as Lane, and Hank Azaria as Michael Kelly. The only real "false" moment for me was when Lane walks into the staff meeting the morning after firing Glass to a round of applause (the scene is crosscut with Glass imagining--or maybe remembering--the applause of a high school journalism class), completely vindicated in his moral stance.

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November 10, 2003

Bubba Ho-Tep

Bubba Ho-Tep (IMDB) is one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen in a long time. It stars Bruce Campbell, the B-movie king, as Elvis Presley, in his seventies and living in an east Texas retirement home. It turns out that Elvis, bored with life as a celebrity, switched lives and careers with one of his more adept impersonators, and the impersonator died before the "real" Elvis had a chance to get his life (and his substantial fortune) back.

Now, strange things are happening in his retirement home, with several people dying mysteriously, and after Elvis is attacked by a giant cockroach, he learns that the home is being preyed upon by an ancient Egyptian mummy who is cursed to feed off the souls of the living in order to survive. He learns this from John F. Kennedy (played by Ossie Davis). When "Elvis" reminds "Jack" that Kennedy was black, Jack tells him that "they" dyed his skin and reminds him that it is, after all, the perfect disguise.

I could talk about the ways that the film is about the derealized images produced by the cult of celebrity, and that's certainly there, but more enjoyable for me was the sheer fun of the B-movie experience: the playfulness, the sight gags (Jack's bedroom has posters with photos of Oswald), the cheap special effects. I don't want to give away any more of the film's gags, so hopefully, Bubba Ho-Tep will soon be playing at a theater near you...

This is my first visit to the newly renovated Landmark Midtown Theater, which is an eight screen art house theater under new management here in Atlanta. The ATL has suddenly transformed itself into a film mecca (lucky for me!). I was impressed by my first experience there. At the early shows they had an Elvis impersonator in the lobby, and for the midnight screenings (one of which I attended), they had a raffle featuring all kinds of cool stuff (none of which I won--unlucky for me).

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November 2, 2003

Milk Plus

Just a quick "link and comment" to point out an interesting collectively-authored film review blog, Milk Plus. I came across it while doing a quick Google search on Chris Marker (I'm now polishing off my article on Sans Soleil, more details might be forthcoming), and I'm impressed by the range of interests and the depth of analysis. I'll definitely be going back when I have more time.

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Prey for Rock & Roll

Prey for Rock & Roll (IMDB) opens with a series of close-ups of Jacki (Gina Gershon), the lead singer of an all-girl rock band, as she gets ready for a concert in a dirty dressing room backstage at an LA music venue. She snaps on the requisite black bra and puts on way too much eyeliner, and the cheap lighting makes Jacki appear old and exhausted. We soon learn that Jacki is about to have her fortieth birthday, and she's about to give up on her dreams of rock-and-roll stardom. Of course, playing in a rock band is the only life she knows, and after one of her concerts, she gets a phone call from a promoter who might offer a recording concert and some good gigs.

I really enjoyed the film a lot, and I'm struggling with finding why I responded to it. In part, I think I simply needed a movie, particularly one that celebrated the escape from daily routine that rock music can offer. The shots of Jacki, wearing her rock-n-roll clothes in her mother's middle-class home convey her distance from that world.

The plot itself felt forced in a few places, especially the melodramatic elements, especially Tracy's self-destructive use of drugs and alcohol and a sequence dealing with the rape of one of the band members, but in general the performances carry the material pretty effectively (band members Gershon, Drea De Matteo, Lori Petty, and Shelly Cole were all very good), and the film wisely de-emphasizes the romance between Jacki and "Animal," the ex-con brother of one of the band members, focusing instead on the women practicing and playing together, on rock-n-roll itself.

The film was based on a play by Cheri Lovedog, a musician based in LA, who also wrote the music performed by the band, and her enthusiasm for rock-n-roll provides the film with its power.

Update (11/2, 10:15 PM): I think that one of the things I enjoyed most about Prey was the ability of the film to engage with the politics of rock, least on a superficial level. The critique of the exploitative music industry wanna-be is pretty effective, and the band's music consistently reinforces a critical edge. I think, more than anything, I enjoyed seeing interesting actresses (Gershon and Petty are among my favorites) in interesting roles. I liked the energy of the film, plus it gave me an excuse to go back to my favorite movie theater.

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October 29, 2003

The Magnificent Ambersons

After rewatching The Royal Tenenbaums the other night, I decided to take a break tonight and watch Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, which I hadn't seen in several years.

Anderson's film riffs nicely off Ambersons, but I really enjoyed going back to Welles' film. I'd forgotten how effectively Welles uses space in the old mansion, with that fantastic curved staircase, and the low-key lighting in the mansion captured the family's decline very effectively (of course I'm a sucker for low-key lighting). I also enjoyed Welles' ability to map the Amberson family's decline against the developing technologies of modern life, most notably the automobile that appears as a novelty at the film's beginning when Eugene, Isabel's longtime suitor (Joseph Cotten, a favorite actor of mine), takes several of the Ambersons for a drive in the snow. By the end of the film, the quaint town has been transformed into an industrial center, with tracking shots of smokestacks reinforcing the family's decline.

Of course Ambersons is a very flawed film (the studio slapped on a happy ending and trimmed nearly 50 minutes (now lost) of the director's cut while Welles was out of the country), but there are certainly some cool moments.

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October 19, 2003

Ringu

I watched Ringu, the Japanese horror film on which The Ring is based. Like Steven Shaviro, I found the film to be "an effectively creepy horror film." In fact, after finishing it last night around 2 AM, I double-checked my doors and saw movement behind every shadow. Having watched the American remake a few times recently, I was struck by a few of the differences between the two films (although I genuinely like and recommend both).

The Japanese film is rather minimalist (as Shaviro observes), and I enjoyed the use of black-and-white flashback to explain the cursed video. I was also surprised at how "faithful" the American film was to the plot of Ringu, while still being a much different, much "cooler," film in the sense that it felt more self-conscious (I don't necessarily mean that as a critique or compliment, but in the more neutral sense of "hipness" or "stylishness"). Both films also negotiate narrative closure in remarkably similar ways (although that may be due to the constraints of the horror film genre).

The Ring also attempted a more explicit commentary on a media system that preys on other people's emotional pain, especially through the implicit critique of the Naomi Watts character, who initially sees the mysterious deaths as nothing but a headline story. The American remake mines the European-American avant-garde for most of the images in the murderous videotape, and of course it more explicitly plays out the supposed attenuation of the traditional American family.

There are a few things I'm still trying to sort out: I'm struck by the fact that the American film is made in 2002, after the DVD revolution, while Ringu was made in 1998 before DVD players were nearly as commonplace. In the American film, when the hotel clerk mentions that his cabins have VCRs, it almost sounds quaint or obsolete, and the old, discarded videotapes in the hotel clerk's collection reinforce that observation. There's something specific about the materiality of the videotape that appears to be significant here in the American film, while in Ringu, the videotape seems closer to a "return of the repressed," emphasizing the revival of a forgotten past (the emphasis on specific haunted locations might reinforce this thesis).

The other significant moment, to my mind, would be the use of photography. In both films, photographs play a key evidentiary role in showing which people have seen the videotape. After a person sees the tape, her face is blurred in all future photographs (it also seems crucial that in the Japanese film, the main characters test this hypothesis with a Polaroid). I'm still thinking through the precise problem that The Ring opens up, and I do think that electronic media create the conditions of possibility for the videotape, although the matreial tape itself (the hard plastic casing, the fragile tape inside) seems important, especially in the American film (in which Naomi Watts tosses the tape into a fireplace and burns it).

Posted by chuck at 8:37 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

October 18, 2003

A Decade Under the Influence

I just rented the very cool Independent Film Channel documentary, A Decade Under the Influence, which examines the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s. The film, directed by Richard LaGravenese and the late Ted Demme, mixes talking-head interviews with prominent '70s filmmakers and footage from some of the decade's most influencial films.

The three-part documentary offers an effective overview of the decade starting with the decline of the studio system in the late 1960s, which allowed young Hollywood filmmakers, such as Scorsese, Coppola, Ashby, and Rafelson, to enter the scene. I also deeply enjoyed the archival footage of John Cassavetes directing several scenes in his classically improvisational style. In general, the narrative of the films follows a relatively standard account of the 1970s focuisng on a decline of the studio system followed by a re-entrenchment due to the success of Jaws (which also marked the success of that newly dominant genre, the high-concept film). I think it's a pretty accurate narrative, and I was pleased that, for the most part, the filmmakers tried to counteract the "Heaven's Gate myth" of overly excessive filmmakers.

The documentary does uphold the "Rocky myth," the argument that mainstream audiences had simply tired of moral ambiguity after all of the scandals and crises of the decade (Watergate, Vietnam, Three Mile Island). I'd point, instead, to the studio practice of larger budgets tailored toward huge opening weekend gross profits, which tends to obscure smaller films (with a few notable exceptions).

Still, the documentary had several great moments, including William Friedkin's explanation that an exterior shot of the family home in The Exorcist was inspired by a Magritte painting (I think it might be The Empire of Light, but I'm not certain). Also enjoyable were the interviews with Julie Christie and Ellen Burstyn who challenged the gender politics of New Hollywood. More than anything, the documentary made me wish I subscribed to IFC.

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October 16, 2003

Confidence

I'm still working through my interest in heist movies, and with that in mind I watched James Foley's Confidence (IMDB), which stars Edward Burns as the lead con man, Jake, who begins the film acknowledging (a la Sunset Boulevard) that he is a "dead man." He then begins telling the story of his latest scam, which he is pulling on behalf of a local mob boss (played by Dustin Hoffman) who proudly embraces his hyperactivity. As the film develops, Jake draws story illustrates the connections between a successful scam and an effective narrative. Both requires figures within the "story" to play their roles properly, to work according to the script. Both require a set of moves to reach a desired end (later in the film, Jake uses (surprise!) a chess metaphor).

This self-awareness is perhaps the film's greatest strength, but as Roger Ebert points out, it also makes the film feel a little like a hollow exercise. Unlike Ebert, I don't think a successful film has to make us care about the characters, and in fact, Jake's cool distance fits effectively within our expectations for the genre, and because I do enjoy several of the character actors (Paul Giamatti, Luis Guzman, Andy Garcia, Donal Logue) who are involved in the scam, I enjoyed the game to a limited extent. This cool distance is reflected in the film's cinematography, which uses deep blues, greens, and reds to create (as Ebert observes) a postmodern noir city filled with lonely streets and back room deals in dirty strip clubs. However, even the cinematography felt unnecessarily ostentatious in places. During one sequences, Jake converses with Lily (Rachel Weisz) in medium-close-up, with her face lit blue and his face lit green, but these visual pyrotechnics felt unnecessarily flashy, as if the film were constantly reminding us of its goal of reinterpreting film noir.

The New York Times review also recognizes the film's slavish dependence on David Mamet films and Elmore Leonard novels for its narrative twists and criminal milieu. I've been pretty critical of this film, but I did enjoy watching it in general. I'm just not sure it's breaking any new ground. In terms of the heist film genre, I found that several of the key twists were telegraphed, which may also have made the experience less than satisfying. I'm still trying to think about the significance of "narrative mapping" in heist films, about what desires are being enacted and fulfilled.

Stay tuned. I might have more to say about these issues later (then again, maybe not).

Posted by chuck at 11:41 PM | TrackBack

October 12, 2003

Soderbergh's Solaris

I've delayed watching Steven Soderbergh's Solaris (IMDB) for a few months because I had originally planned to revisit both Stanislaw Lem's novel and Andrei Tarkovsky's haunting film, but I decided to watch it tonight. Like Steven Shaviro, I enjoyed the film's ability to create a contemplative, claustrophobic atmosphere, with its dark lightling and use of blues and grays and its slow pacing. I'm not familiar enough with the earlier versions of Solaris, but I think Shaviro's description seems about right. I was also disappointed by Soderbergh's ultimate affirmation that "love conquers all," reflected in both the film's conclusion and the repeated reference to Kelvin's (George Clooney) favorite line of poetry.

The film opens with an interesting sequence focusing on Kelvin at work on earth as a pstchiatrist. Despite the prominent use of earth tones (brown and yellows), there is a certain sense of decay or decline, partially reflected by the rundown spaces where we sometimes see Kelvin. Kelvin is running a group counseling session involving a married couple, and their responses to the various artifacts or souvenirs of their relationship diverge completely, suggesting an inability to relate to or know the other person. These scenes initially seem detached from the rest of the film, but they ultimately reflect on Kelvin's relationship to his dead wife Rheya.

After staying out a bit late last night, I'm not sure that I can really develop a clear reading of the film. I liked the use of the flat, almost immaterial "screens" used for communication in several key scenes--they helped to reinforce the overall coldness of the film. I do think Sodebergh was picking up on some of the interesting strands from the original text regarding the limitations of human memory, especially in the sequence in which Kelvin is confronted with the flaws in his memory of his dead wife, Rheya. Significantly, this memory "problem" is situated around a single photgraph of Rheya that Kelvin has prominently displayed on his refrigerator door, calling attention to the ways in which photographs capture partial, fleeting images, rather than providing us with complete experiences, but the weight of the "love conquers all" ending overshadows this particular focus on memory.

The more I think about this film, the more it has grown on me. It's certainly impressive that Soderbergh managed to get such a reflective, cerebral film produced within the Hollywood system, and I am disappointed that it will likely be forgotten or neglected because it doesn't conform to the expectations of either an art house or a high-gloss science-fiction sensibility.

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October 5, 2003

Swimming

Still in the mood for low-budget, independent films, I rented Swimming last night. Swimming focuses on Frankie (played by Lauren Ambrose), a teenage girl who works in and co-owns a restaurant on the main drag of Myrtle Beach. The plot itself risks appearing to be a cliche coming-of-age story about the summer when everything changed (she meets an awkward stoner who sells tie-dyed t-shirts; she befriends a sexually confident woman who comes to work in her restaurant; and her old friendships are tested by these new relationships). But like Roger Ebert, I think the film is saved by Ambrose's subtle performance in the lead role, and the script avoids simple moral platitudes about "growing up."

Perhaps the most interesting detail about the film is that it was directed by film professor, Robert Siegel, from a script by one of his students, Lisa Bazadona.

Posted by chuck at 11:18 AM | TrackBack

September 21, 2003

Hell House

Hell House (IMDB) is a documentary about an annual haunted house sponsored by Trinity Assembly of God Church near Dallas, Texas, designed quite literally "to scare the hell out of you." At the time of filming, the church was working on its tenth annual Hell House and an estimated 75,000 people had passed through the gates. As someone who grew up in a Pentecostal church (and attended an evangelical college), I've been curious to see this film for some time.

The film documents, in verite style, the entire process of conducting a Hell House, from the initial planning stages to the main event. Also included are brief interviews, against a pure white backdrop, with several of the actors or participants in Hell House who reflect on what they imagine hell to be like or relate their observations that we are living in the end times (another set of interviews on the existence of demons was deleted). These scenes are particularly jarring, especially when middle-class teenagers describe hell as a place of "everlasting torment" or point to symptoms such as abortion as a sign that the world is in the worst state it has ever been.

The hell houses themselves are divided into various rooms that portray various crises such as an abortion that goes wrong, a homosexual man dying of AIDS, a teenager who commits suicide after being date-raped at a rave (apparently the contemporary equivalent of a den of iniquity), and an abusive husband who assaults his wife after discovering her Internet affair. These segments play more like stereotypical self-help concepts than actual life horrors. As J. Hoberman reminded me, one volunteer cautions that he wishes we "didn't have to see" what he's about to show us. And yet the people who are participating seem to enjoy it so much--the teenage girls compete for the opportunity to play "suicide girl" and others look forward to playing in the rave scene because they like to dance. The characters seem to enjoy the roleplaying deeply. Hoberman's comparison to a Judy Garland musical captures the mood in these scenes quite nicely, and it struck me that their performance, rather than identifying the fundamental rift between God and Satan, seemed to more powerfully underline their complicity, the conspiarcy bewteen good and evil in which good needs evil in order to exist in the first place.

There is a significant moment of criticism when a few locals criticize Hell House for perpetuating "Christian faggot shit," contentiously asking on what authority the Hell House crew determines what's a sin, but the filmmaker treats his subjects with some compassion and avoids overtly making fun of them, although their lack of awareness comes through on a couple of occasions, especially when they can't remember the name of "the date rape drug."

I have to admit it was strange to revisit that part of my past, but there was also a strange distance, like hearing a language I once knew and sopke fluently but have long forgotten, and while the film has its nuances, I'm not sure that it completely captures all of the tensions and contradictions that I encountered during that time of my lfe (or if that's even possible). The film's comic detachment seems to preclude that kind of analysis, but on second thought, the filmmaker's coyness may be just the right touch. And now it's time for me to get some sleep: grading marathon tomorrow.

Posted by chuck at 1:42 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

September 17, 2003

Identity

I just watched James Mangold's Identity (IMDB), a psychological thriller starring John Cusack in full "dark and stormy night" mode (has there ever been a film where he hasn't gotten caught in the rain?).

The film starts quickly: After a shot of a tape recording of a psychological session between a psychiatrist and a mass murderer, we get a shot of a man carrying his badly injured wife into a lonely flea-bag motel. The clerk, mysterious and slightly effeminate (channeling his inner Norman Bates) tries to call an ambulance, but the phone lines are down. The film freezes briefly, and we get a brief flashback. A prostitute (with mandatory heart of gold) on the run from her past life has knocked out the line when she backs her car into a telephone pole. The film freezes again, and we get another flashback, and I'm hooked--the use of freeze frames to play with chronological time (and psychological time) is intriguing; the atmosphere is set beautifully.

Eventually ten people are trapped at the hotel. All the roads are closed; the one cell phone can't get a signal; a police radio belonging to an officer transporting a criminal is also out. Very quickly, several of the guests begin dying sometimes mysteriously, sometimes quite violently. The enclosed space inspires paranoia among the group, and we are led to suspect several people: The creepy hotel clerk? The diligent cop? The benevolent limo driver (who happens to be reading Sartre)? Spirits from a Native American burial ground (thankfully the film doesn't really go there)? We also discover, through a series of coincidences, that the guests have a few things in common. Meanwhile, the film occasionally crosscuts to a last minute appeal of the death sentence of the mass murderer.

I won't give away what happens (although unlike the Salon reviewer, I had a pretty good guess), but for readers who have seen the film, I found the final turn rather dissatisfying, especially given the stylized visuals and the paranoid atmosphere that Mangold works so hard to create. It is sufficient to say that the resolution explains this paranoia and the intentionally cliched characters that meet in this desolate space, but once this violence was contained (metaphorically if not physically), the film ceased to be nearly as interesting. And unlike Roger Ebert, I felt cheated by the third act rather than impressed by its explanation. It felt cheap, like the screenplay was trying to trump other meta-thrillers such as Memento and Usual Suspects. Still, I enjoyed the film even though it felt more like an exercise in style: smooth and flawless, but relatively empty.

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September 14, 2003

American Splendor

I had a lovely brunch with S at The Flying Biscuit, one of the coolest restaurants in town, this morning, and tonight we went to see American Splendor (IMDB), the film based on Harvey Pekar's autobiographical comic. Pekar, who also co-authored Our Cancer Year, with his wife, Joyce Brabner, appears to be an interesting figure, but I have to admit I knew little about him before watching this film (I'll definitely read his stuff now).

What struck me as most interesting about the film was the way it treated the conversion from his comic books to the film. The film effectively mixed interviews and voice-over narratives (by Pekar himself) with performances by Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, and James Urbaniak (as friend and frequent illustrator, Robert Crumb). Because much of Pekar's work is autobiographical, this narrative technique called attention to how Pekar himself used narrative to frame his experiences (in part in order to sell comic books). Many shot sequences used a static camera and framing that recalled the artwork typically associated with comic books. I also very much enjoyed the film's treatment of Pekar's appearances on David Letterman (during his NBC days), mixing actual footage of the show with Paul Giamatti's performance as Pekar and shots of Giamatti watching himself on Letterman's show, which has always been self-conscious about its own staginess. Pekar was a regular on the show until he eventually broke down, angrily airing his resentments about having to sell himself on Letterman's show. I'll also say that the sequence in which Pekar has a nervous breakdown on the show (just before he is diagnosed with cancer, according to the film's narrative) is smartly filmed, using stage lights and cameras to block our access to Pekar's face during this emotional scene, with Letterman confiding quietly to Pekar that he's blown a good thing.

The film deals with Pekar's tensions about his celebrity very carefully (Pekar continued to hold his job as a file clerk years after achieving commercial success as a comic book writer), and Pekar's ability to capture the subtleties of his friends and colleagues is effectively captured by the graphic matches between the comic books and the film itself. Good stuff. The Village Voice review, which references Marshall Berman's appreciation of Pekar's comics is worth checking out.

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September 2, 2003

Tully

Tully (IMDB) is a rambling, lyrical independent film in the tradition of All the Real Girls, which I reviewed in a previous incarnation of this blog. Like Girls, Tully is a reflective film that carefully traces out its characters, allowing them the time to have real conversations.

Tully focuses on the Coates family, specifically on Tully Jr, the local heartthrob who has dated and rejected most of his small town's women. Tully's father is a taciturn, slightly morose man, who seems to have faced more than his share of tragedy (he provides locals with a broken narrative about his wife dying fifteen years earlier), and we get a sense of Tully Jr's anger when he acts rough toward his younger brother Earl. Tully eventually develops a friendship with Ella, a local girl who has returned from college where she is studying to become a veterinarian.

Like Girls, which made extensive use of its North Carolina setting, Tully drwas heavily from Nebraska's small independent farms, tiny general stores, noisy bars, and placid creeks. The rundown spaces--a junkyard, a bar restroom, all beautifully filmed by John Foster--offer a subtle suggestion of nostalgia, which I read as an attempt to sustain a sense of regionalism that is in danger of being lost.

But while one of the film's key plot points centers on a threat to foreclose the family farm, Tully avoids simple moralizing about the plight of the independent farmer. Instead, Tully focuses on the emotional distance between various members of the Coates family, which is visually conveyed through the spatial distances of the farm itself; the brothers have to drive--Tully's car, a pick-up truck, a four-wheeler--just to have a conversation. At the same time, the use of cars and pick-up trucks suggets a certain kind of restlessness. Tully never expresses a desire to leave his small town, but he is frequently in motion--going to stores, running errands, often just for the sake of movement.

I think Tully has much to recommend it: a terrific screenplay nicely directed by Hilary Birmingham; solid performances especially by lead actor Anson Mount (although his Tennesee accent crept in occasionally); and a terrific understanding of the farmland that gives the film its "atmosphere."

The DVD release has the additional bonus of the short film, The Third Date, directed by Amy Barrett (who is based in Atlanta, if I'm not mistaken).

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August 31, 2003

Swimming Pool

I haven't written about a movie in a while, so I thought I'd try to get back in the habit. S. and I finally made it out to Sandy Springs' terrific new Madstone Theater, a renovated multiplex that devotes several screens to art house and revival films (it also has a nice, if overpriced, wine and beer selection). On a second visit, I'm still very impressed.

After enjoying a tasty pizza at Fellini's Pizza (George apparently likes their pizza, too), S. and I went to Madstone to see François Ozon's Swimming Pool, starring Charlotte Rampling as Sarah Morton, a British mystery writer who faces writers' block and burn-out, while seeing her status declining when her publisher introduces her to "The Next Big Writer." Sarah's casual dismissal of a fan's recognition on the tube indicates that she is bored with writing formulaic mystery novels.

In order to regain her momentum as a writer, Sarah borrows her publisher's French villa, which takes on an aura of tranquility through the use of a primarily yellow and brown pallette, and through the empty cafes and stores Sarah visits, casually passing her afternoons. Soon after Sarah's arrival, her privacy is disrupted when Julie, the publisher's enigmatic daughter, shows up unexpected. Julie is loud, boisterous, messy, and sexually active; her presence disrupts Sarah's writing, emphasized visually through the swimming pool where Julie spends her days, swimming topless or nude, often directly in Sarah's line of vision. Sarah gradually becomes fascinated by the mysterious younger woman, exploring her diary and picking up a discarded piece of Julie's clothing. She even starts a file named "Julie," indicating that her writing has taken a new turn. There is a hint of sexual desire between the two women, especially when they compete for the interests of Frank, a local waiter, but this tension is complicated by a secret the two women ultimately share.

Swimming Pool then takes a turn (which I will not explain) that most reviewers have aptly described as Hitchcockian. For several reasons, I found this narrative twist somewhat clunky and gratuitous, especially given the pay-off at the very end of the film, when we learn a little more about Julie.

In interviews, Ozon has commented that in Swimming Pool, "I'm actually talking about myself, my own creative method. I wanted to show how I work," and the film is very much about the creative process as we watch Sarah carefully observing Julie, often from long-distances, with Julie in the foreground, and Sarah in the distance, often in the safety of her balcony. The film itself is quite slippery; it's beautifully stylish and uses the French countryside to illustrate Sarah's early tranquility before transforming to accomodate Julie's disruptive presence. I'm not sure I have a clear take on the film--I certainly enjoy stylish post-Hitchcockian thrillers, particularly when they play with constructions of identity in somewhat complicated ways. But Swimming Pool also felt a little sloppy in places, especially in the film's conclusion, which resolved things a little too neatly for my tastes.

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August 12, 2003

Upcoming Time-Bending Films

Reading Cinescape, I was happy to disocver that it looks like I'll have plenty of material to write about in the next few months:

• The Butterfly Effect: A young man haunted by childhood memories discovers a technique for traveling in time, creating huge changes in the future. It's supposed to be pretty dark, along the lines of Twelve Monkeys.
• Paycheck: Based on a Philip K. Dick story about a man who has his memory routinely erased. The good news: John Woo is directing. The bad news: Ben Affleck is starring.
• I, Robot: Not time-travel, but still looks promising. Alex Proays, one of my favorites, is directing. Also sounds like they'll use CGI in an interesting way: Alan Tudyk, playing Sonny, will have his features enhanced to make his mannerisms appear more mechanical.

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July 28, 2003

Y tu mamá también

I finally saw Y tu mamá también this weekend, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. También focuses on two teenage boys--one middle class, the other upper class--who convince an older woman to travel with them to the legendary Heaven's Mouth beach. The film is bracketed by a past tense voice-over narration that provides the film with a reflective, slightly nostalgic tone. The class distinctions--and the generic conventions of the road movie--allow director Alfonso Cuarón to address not only the sexual coming of age of the two boys but also the political landscape of Mexico.

I liked the film's honest treatment of sex, and like Roger Ebert, I think the film underlines the impossible constraints placed on American filmmaking by the MPAA's rating system (Kevin Sandler's discussion of "The Incontestable 'R'" seems relevant here--I'd also warn against renting this film from Blockbuster). Their interactions with the older Luisa allow Cuarón to explore the tensions between the two boys, and an important detail we learn near the end of the film also helps us to reinterpret many of Luisa's decisions as she playfully teases Julio and Tenoch. I'm still torn about this discovery about Luisa. In my original viewing of the film, it felt a little forced, but I think it does motivate her actions more plausibly than the discovery of her husband's infidelity.

The film also foregrounds class distinctions in complicated ways. We learn that Tenoch is the son of a conservative Mexican president, and one of the opening sequences of the film shows Julio and Tenoch weaving through a protest in order to borrow a car from Julio's sister, who is protesting Tenoch's father's government. Later, Julio and Tenoch drive through police roadblocks and encounter the poverty of rural Mexico--illustrated in part through the run-down hotels where the group stays. When they finally arrive at the legendary Heaven's Mouth beach--more or less by accident--we learn that it will soon be transformed into a resort, with a local fisherman and guide forced to take a job as a janitor ("He never fished again," the narrator tells us).

In his Salon review (subscription required), Charles Taylor reports that Cuarón has commented that También is

"about two teenage boys finding their identity as adults and ... also about the search for identity of a country going through its teenage years and trying to find itself as an adult nation."

Cuarón addresses both of these concerns gracefully, especially through the background landscape that Tenoch and Julio can barely see--their energies so focused on reaching the legendary Heaven's Mouth.

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July 12, 2003

Winged Migration

Went to see Jacques Perrin's stunning new film, Winged Migration, last night at Garden Hills (S referred to it as "riveting"). Migration uses exquisite camera work to follow several species of birds during their spring and fall migrations.

The narration and subtitles add little to our knowledge about birds, but that doesn't seem to be the purpose of Migration. The film is structured around these annual trips, opening and closing with a young boy watching birds play in a small pond, and an older woman feeds cranes that stop in her backyard every year, but the circular organization of the film isn't the major point. Instead, the "star" of the film is the amazing camera work, with the birds' flight captured by cameras mounted on hot-air balloons and ultra-light aircraft. Amazing tracking shots capture not only the extreme difficulty of the birds' flight, but also the film technologies that record it. Several other birds were "trained" to make friends with the camera crew (check out Ebert's review for some of these details), and we quickly identify with many of the birds through close-ups that show the birds eating, playing, and feeding their young on the ground. Oddly, these sequences, perhaps more than others, led me to anthropomorphize the birds, projecting my own human desires and perceptions onto them.

There are some more overtly "political" images in the film. We see images of birds caught in industrial sludge as they rest while flying over Eastern Eurpoe, but any political commentary about human intervention in the animal world is relatively muted. An image of duck hunters is disturbing because we know the difficulty of the ducks' flights, the hundreds of miles they have covered in their journeys; the film has, by this point, so clearly established our identification with the birds that the gunfire, and the falling birds, come as a painful shock, disrupting the gracefully flowing camera. But we earn a moment of triumph near the end of the film as a blue parrot, captured to be sold as an exotic pet, manages to figure out the latch on its cage door and flies to freedom. All in all, I'm finding it difficult to explain how powerfully Winged Migration moved me, how much it captured my attention.

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July 11, 2003

Auto Focus

Just caught Paul Schrader's Auto Foucs on DVD last night, and like many of Schrader's other films and screenplays, Auto Focus left me feeling a little like I'd been beaten up in a fight because of what feels to me like a somewhat heavyhanded moral tone, possibly due to Schader's strict Calvinist upbringing, as Stephanie Zacharek mentions (Salon article--subscription only). J. Hoberman's review in the Village Voice affirms my Calvinist interpretation.

[Some possible spoilers ahead] In the film, Greg Kinnear plays Bob Crane, the star of TV's Hogan's Heroes, focusing on his "offscreen" participation in the sexual revolutions of the 1960s and 70s. Foucs emphasizes Crane's friendship with early video technician to the stars, John Carpenter, and their habit of videotaping their sexual exploits. The story culminates in Crane's unsolved murder in a Scottsdale, Arizona, hotel room, strongly implying that Carpenter may have been the murderer.

The observation that a beloved TV star had a secret life wears off pretty quickly (in fact his penchant for documentation suggests a desire to get caught, and presumably punished for his sins), even though the film takes great pains to emphasize Crane's innocent side early in the film (he attends church with his first wife, "confesses" to his preist, and orders grapefruit juice "straight" when he goes to the bars). The effect is that Crane's sexual explorations end up playing like some form of moral decline, one that is precipitated by the emergence of videotape as a consumer product (which gives Auto Foucs a strange resonance with Boogie Nights). The late 1960s, early 70s atmosphere (after the Pill and Playboy; before AIDS and "Just Say No") is well-captured, with some degree of nostalgia for the era of swinging and hedonism, but strangely tinged with clinical distance, a point I'll address momentarily.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is Greg Kinnear's performance. As Roger Ebert points out, Kinnear gives Crane a slightly creepy likability and a complete absence of depth or reflection. The sex scenes are treated with clinical distance and eventually have a numbing effect rather than any kind of erotic charge. This lack of eroticism has the result of making Crane's behavior seem more the product of sexual compulsion rather than anything resembling desire and contributes to my experience of the film as overly moralistic. In fact, the only real chemistry in the film takes place between the depthless Crane and the slickly seductive Carpenter (played by Willem Dafoe); Foucs briefly addresses the homoerotics of their relationship, but fails to do much with it, other than potentially suggest that Crane's rejection of Carpenter might have motivated him to murder the TV star (rehashing the jilted homosexual stereotype).

We are also left on the outside of any female characters' perceptions of sex; Crane's second wife is initially open to his sexual experimentation with multiple partners, but we don't get any sense of how she feels about sex. Part of this is due to Crane's own sexual obsessions, but I think these details should be addressed by the film (even if Crane himself doesn't see or understand them).

The emphasis on Crane's sexual obsessive behavior--and his desire to record his sexual encounters--reads moralistically from my point of view. Schrader's biography complicates this interpretation, but Auto Focus seems concerned to deny pleasure; sexual activity is engaged in comuplsively, habitually, and auto-matically. Ultimately, the film seems engaged in what J. Hoberman calls "relentless sermonizing," and it left me feeling very cold, like I'd been sitting on a hard wooden pew for two hours.

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July 8, 2003

Secretary

While fighting my cold, I finally had the chance to see the recent cult fave, Secretary, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. Gyllenhaal plays Lee, a young woman who has just been released from a mental hospital because she mutilates herself. She takes a job as a secretary, working for E. Edward Grey, a lawyer played by Spader and begins to date an old high school classmate (played by Jeremy Davies). Their relationship quickly takes a sadomasochistic turn, with Lee relishing in the attention given to her by her boss. I'm still sorting through my interpretation of the film, but a few things stand out.

1. The cast is well-suited for the material. Maggie Gyllenhaal, as Ebert points out, makes Lee appear "plucky" rather than pathetic or weak, and James Spader, famous for this type of sexual obsessive, plays Grey with just the right amount of self-loathing. Even though he plays the dominant role and Gyllenhaal the submissive, both actors convey their characters' neediness rather effectively. Jeremy Davies adds the right touch as a tender, but somewhat ineffectual boyfriend.
2. Amy Danger's beautiful set design, especially Grey's office, establishes the eccentricity of their relationship, and along with Angelo Badalamenti's score, recalls images of "David Lynch's suburban underworlds," as Cynthia Fuchs points out, but rather than distancing us from this world either through Jeffrey's voyeurism in Blue Velvet, or through the road trip tropes in Wild at Heart, the office, provides a certain entrance point into the relationship between Lee and Grey.
3. Secretary seems conscious of its treatment of power relationships and the potential for critique. The title "Secretary," now replaced by the terms, "administrative assistant" or "executive assistant" already hints at this awareness, and as Bradshaw's review points out, Secretary avoids the trap associated with many "sexual and office politics" films, such as Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men, in which the sexual politics are basically "pure evil."

I found the film fascinating, especially in terms of the smart visuals (both set design and cinematography), especially given the low budget, and the intelligent performances. Gyllenhaal's performance is certainly key here. It would have been easy to play Lee as weak or pathetic, but the story allows her to gradually develop strength, especially in the final scene in the office.

I do share some of the concerns addressed by MaryAnn Johanson: the film risks affirming violence against women and abuse of power relationships, but I do think one of the key examples Johanson uses to support her interpretation, the scene in which Lee's father hits her mother is not meant to be seen as a role model for Lee at all. We watch the scene from Lee's POV and view it with some distance and see it as the painful image that it is and see the father's actions as abusive. Now that I've reflected on the film for a couple of days, I think it works, but I still have mixed feelings about it. Has anyone else seen this film and come to a more confident interpretation?

Update: I've been thinking a little further about the political baggage associated with sadomasochism, and that is certainly upsetting my more affirmative review of the film, especially given characterizations of Grey that describe him as a "martinet" and the degree to which the director, in an interview on the DVD comments that he sees Secretary as a My Beautiful Laundrette for S&M culture.

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July 4, 2003

Matrix Reloaded

Much later than everyone else, I finally saw The Matrix Reloaded, and like Steven Shaviro, I thought the second film was somewhat more nuanced philosophically than the original. Shaviro offers a nice reading of the film, and I'd like to think through some of his ideas and hopefully add to the discussion.

To my mind, one of the second film's major strengths is that it complicates Morpheus's faith in the salvation narrative that provides the structure of the first film. In the second film, Morpheus is frequently doubted by his superiors in Zion who don't share his vision or his faith (specifically with Commander Lock whose name may be a pun on the English empiricist philosopher), and more importantly, the narrative of the film itself bears out this critique quite nicely with the choice that Neo is required to make at the end of the film during his conversation with the Architect of the Matrix and during another conversation with a Counselor in Zion.

This shift allows the filmmakers to move from questions about simulation to an interesting comparison between the Matrix and Zion, a comparison that is figured nicely in the dialogue between Neo and the Counselor. In this sequence the Counselor gestures toward the industrial substructure which keeps the city functioning. The human reliance on machines in Zion is immediately made visible (and, yes, that was Cornel West sitting on the council in a brief cameo).

Along the same lines, our new knowledge about the Architect and the Oracle also imply that Neo's rebellion, indeed the entire battle with Zion, has already been written into the system, leading Shaviro to suggest that "a Foucaultian analytics of power seems more relevant" in reading this film.

This opposition between Zion and the Matrix is also pertinent to the film's treatment of bodies. In his analysis of the action sequences, Shaviro comments that

There's not enough funk and grit in any of these sequences; they are simply too perfect. It's a well known fact that digitally generated sequences have to be "dirtied" up a bit in order to be convincing -- you have to add some "noise," degrade the quality of the images a bit, or otherwise they will be too smooth, too seamlessly rendered, to seem alive. While I'm sure the Wachowski Brothers did this on a technical level, conceptually and in terms of sheer flow the sequences still strike me as too precisely calibrated, or something, to be really gripping. It's in the special effects of the action sequences that we really get simulation and hyperreality -- rather than in the plot and premises of the film.

I had a similar reaction to the action sequences; they felt too crisp, too perfect, too clean, but I think that might contribute to the film's celebration of bodies. The dance sequence in Zion -- while somewhat contrived -- feels much "grittier" than anything that happens inside the Matrix, and I think that is a product of certain perceptions about bodies in relationship to cyberspace. Perhaps it's the technological limitations of digital effects, but I think the grit and dirt and bodies in Zion are meant to affirm the physical world in opposition to the harsh lines and the faces hidden behind sunglasses of the Matrix.

I did enjoy Reloaded, even though my visceral experience of the original was probably stronger since I saw it on opening night in a crowded theater, with no expectations beyond my appreciation of the Wachowskis' low-budget hit, Bound. What were other reactions to Reloaded? How did your experience of the second film compare to your reaction to the first one?

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July 1, 2003

25th Hour

Last night, I watched Spike Lee's latest film, 25th Hour, starring Edward Norton as a New York City drug dealer, Monty, who has just been convicted and faces seven years in prison. The film focuses on his last day of freedom, and I found it to be a very thoughtful, introspective film. I think what I found to be most powerful was the "elegiac tone" of the film (Ebert's review is quite good), especially given the post-9/11 context. Monty spends his last day in the city making peace with his friends and family. He returns to his old school to reflect on some of his bad decisions. He makes several attempts to determine who informed on him to the police, but his movements lack focus and direction (Ebert even suggests the film is "plotless," which I read as a compliment--more on that later).

The film briefly uses Ground Zero during one scene in which Monty's longtime friends, Francis, a hotshot Wall Street investor, and Barry, a liberal school teacher, are talking in Francis's apartment, which overlooks the scarred space where the World Trade Center towers once stood, the sense of loss permeating the scene. Constant reminders of September 11 (American flags draped from fire escapes, shrines to firefighters in local bars) also fill the mise en scene, and Monty's story provides Lee with a way of understanding this sense of loss. Francis's attempts to bury himself in his work are seen as hollow gestures; despite his success as an investor, he is unsatisfied. Similarly Barry's faith in education and his rejection of his parents' wealth fails to provide any sort of fulfillment as his students don't respect him. Through these characters, Lee asks some powerful questions about the current situation in New York and the U.S.

One of the most powerful sequences, to my mind is a monologue Monty delivers in front of a restroom mirror, expressing hatred for many of New York's ethnic and economic groups. After seeing the words "Fuck You" scribbled on a mirror, Monte tries to rub the words out (a la Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye). He then launches into a diatribe against many of New York's ethnic groups. The scene recalls, as Ebert points out, similar sequences in Lee's 1989 film, Do the Right Thing. Through these monologues, both films capture some of the tremendous conflicts associated with life in New York (DTRT was Lee's intervention into several cases of police brutality in the late 1980s).

The mirror sequence is answered later in the film when Monty's father (played by the great character actor, Brian Cox) is driving him to prison and we see Monty imagining representatives of these ethnic groups waving goodbye, implying a wish for redemption for himself and for the city that is so visibly scarred. The father, who is also mourning his wife's death) later imagines turning West, crossing Pennsylvania and dropping his son off in Middle America (with a capital M.A.) where Monty makes a new life for himself, creating a whole new identity, getting by on his intelligence and charm, and eventually marrying his Puerto Rian girlfriend. They have a family, and as an old man, Monty tells his children his tale of redemption and renewal (this scene is beautifully filmed with Monty and his family all wearing white/off-white clothing). But, both men know this is a fantasy; the American dream doesn't hold anymore, not for Monty. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian is critical of "the final gooey sequence," calling the film "turgid" and "bombastic," but given the context of the scene, I read it as profoundly sad, mourning a New York City (and a country) that has been forever altered by the terrorist attacks (and I think that Lee is very careful to avoid taking any simple position on these events).

I don't think the film simply equates the destruction in Monty's life with the destruction of New York, as the Salon reviewer suggests, and I think the film is wise to avoid the trap of being "about" 9/11. Instead, it seems to be using Monty's story to tackle the complicated questions about how to proceed after such an emotionally scarring event. In this sense, the film reminds me of Deleuze's discussion of the crisis in the action-image, when any action a character might take appears incapable of changing his or her circumstances (the hopeless search for the stolen bicycle in The Bicycle Thief; the characters' meaningless journeys in Breathless), and I think Lee's film captures this particular crisis in a powerful way. Thus, Monty's lack of purpose, his restlessness, and his unfocused journeys through the city, all gesture toward this inability to respond to all of the crises that faced New York after September 11.

I've really struggled with this review (more so than most of my posts), but this film has challenged me. It's certainly not a perfect film, but I think it is pretty compliated in some interesting ways.

Posted by chuck at 11:29 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 29, 2003

Shackleton (Reflections on IMAX)

Had my first ever IMAX experience the other night, seeing Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure (narrated by Kevin Spacey) at Fernbank as part of their Friday night Martinis and IMAX series. Afterwards, while sipping a classic gin martini underneath massive dinosaur skeletons with S, I reflected that Shackleton was more interesting in its treatment of "ways of seeing," as this Cincinatti Enquirer reviewer suggests. 70mm IMAX shots are interspersed with photographs and film footage taken by photographer Frank Hurley during their expedition, which began in 1914 (Hurley's footage was itself edited into a popular 1919 film, according to the review).

The film takes the standard narrative, men surviving great odds to prevail over impossible conditions (okay--I admit, I'm trying to highlight my implicit masculinity critique), but the real story in my experience is the photography itself, and the rugged icebergs and barren islands provide the cameras with compelling material although the attempts at re-enacting the survival efforts fell flat, for me at least. IMAX films require epic scope, and Shackleton's story is certainly epic, but the contemporary performances felt a little contrived. I think I would have preferred a much more careful montage between Hurley's photography, which for me was the emotional center of the film, and contemporary images. I also found the use of different people reading crew members' diary entries in voice-over somewhat distracting. Keeping a consistent v/o (Spacey's) might have made Shackleton feel less "artificial."

The IMAX shots that captured the shape and scope of the icebergs and landscapes were quite effective. Given their visual power, I can see why IMAX films are so attracted to these images of the "natural world." Nope, I can't avoid the scare quotes; I'm far too aware that these IMAX images are carefully constructing an image of the natural. Manovich's distinction between realism and photorealism is probably in the back of my mind here (as well as pretty much anything Derrida wrote in the 1970s).

Looking back at my own review, I realize the film seemed to reinforce a specific narrative about nature (that it is epic, that men compete against it) rather than any other number of potential narratives. I'm still struggling with my language here, with wrapping my thoughts around the technology. This is my first IMAX experience, and I want to get a better sense of what the technology does. I'd like to know what experiences my readers have with IMAX and whether they also find it somewhat contrived in its construction of the natural world?

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