HopkinsCinemAddicts

Multiple Cities and Multiple Films: Guy Maddin's MY WINNIPEG

Let’s start off with the title, what it contains and what it elides: My Winnipeg.

Winnipeg. This is indeed, and without a doubt, a film about Winnipeg, a large-ish town in central Canada situated at the fork of the Red and the Assiniboine rivers. This wintry Manitoban capital -- ensconced in stratified layers of snow and time, rocked to sleep by its own nostalgia, simultaneously the scheming writer and captive audience of boundless lore -- is the psychic prison Guy Maddin seeks to escape and the locus of his archaeological project. (That this “archaeological” project is just one of many -- alongside disparate “psychoanalytic” and more purely cinematic ventures -- is something that I shall return to later.) Insofar as the film tries to teach us unknown facts about an unknown place (I imagine that most viewers are, like me, ignorant of the real Winnipeg), it can claim to be a documentary -- and it is, indeed, presented by something called The Documentary Channel (a CBC outlet of sorts.) And at times the film hews too closely to its straight-documentary vision, providing us with quirky customs, eccentric faces, decrepit buildings: a whole cosmos of urban truth and myth that we have seen a thousand times before, in a thousand other places, from a thousand other creators, in a thousand tourist manuals, on the lips of a thousand other good-old-days-ers championing the moribund glory of the past. It is objectively fascinating stuff, but so soaked in sentimentality that it risks lulling you just as much as it has lulled multitudes of Winnipeggers. (And lulling is not so far from boring.) But at other times, My Winnipeg strays so far from what we could call documentary realism that it risks raising another sort of ire. None of Maddin’s Winnipeg stories are presented with even the slightest bit of historiographical clarity: no sources, no provenance, no interviews, not the slightest objective slant of verifiability or falsifiability. We are essentially being made privy to nifty nostalgia for an urban spirit-world that might never have existed. While there is undoubtedly something commendable and hyper-cinematic about this -- isn’t the dream-world always a more fertile subject than the real world? -- it becomes claustrophobic as the film progresses, rattling along episodically from one set piece to another. If this is indeed a documentary, what documents can we cling to? What information can we use as a reputable foundation for our own mental schema of Winnipeg? How can we -- or Maddin, for that matter -- ever escape from the Platonic cave of shadows and illusions? Without any third-party interviewees or voices, all we have is Maddin’s poetic stream of consciousness laced to spectral half-facts -- and that can begin to feel very solipsistic after a while. And this brings us to the next word of the title.

My. In addition to functioning as an archaeological excavation of the multiple cities contained in Winnipeg’s interstices -- parallel cities dislocated geographically, historically, socially, financially, erotically from the banal consensus reality of Wikipedia’s Winnipeg -- Maddin’s film paints itself as a psychoanalytic project in which the filmmaker seeks to “film his way out” of his hometown, escaping once and for all from “the heinous power of family and city.” That this heinous power -- the sickly grip of despair that lurks within the rigidity of childhood -- is never adequately shown is one of the film’s major problems, one of the things that sabotages its psychoanalytic aspirations and reduces it, ultimately, to the inoffensive folklorism described above. Not that Maddin doesn’t make a game effort. He hires actors to play his family members in reenactments of crucial formative moments and brings his domineering mother into the mix (played in an excellent turn -- not as one of the reenactors but as Maddin’s “real” mother, confusingly enough -- by ‘40s femme fatale Ann Savage.) Wending his way through memory on a highly-literalized “dream-train,” Maddin hardly shies from erotically-charged, even shameful remembrances, revealing the way that local history (a sexualized labor movement of tongue-in-cheek “Bolsehevik rapists” stalking a Catholic girls’ school), boyhood development (much affection is lavished on old arenas and the stately, nude athletes that showered there) and maternal influence (his mother’s naked lap is presented as a geological force comparable with the forking Red and Assiniboine) fuse to build a psychosexual tapestry all the more consumptive for being half-remembered (and half-memorable.) And yet, the dark latent strata of love and hate are never quite unearthed. I craved the bedrock of malaise that would not only show why Winnipeg seduced Maddin in the first place but also share a glimpse of what it is that now drives him to escape. This Winnipeg is his, but he never shares enough to make it ours…

What my breakdown of the title leaves out is just that thing that any Maddin-lover would most expect: style. And My Winnipeg isn’t lacking. All the Soviet-style montage, wry intertitles and silent melodrama we know so well from “The Heart of the World” and Brand Upon the Brain are brought to bear on little unassuming Winnipeg. There are sequences of unabashed visual splendor that might stand beautifully as self-contained episodes, but are only with great awkwardness shepherded into the documentary and psychoanalytic narratives that ostensibly make up the meat of the film. At one point, various Winnipeg elders gather for a sinister séance, in which a lovely ballet dancer dances out messages from the spirit world. It is a sparkling, romantic dialogue of images – a telegram from 1915 edited up with all the alacrity of a music video – and while it work tremendously as a three-minute short film, it leaves you wondering what it reveals about Guy Maddin’s Winnipeg, or any Winnipeg for that matter. At another point, a montage of the whirring beauty salon of Maddin’s mother is dynamically, discontinuously edited, with sprays, purses, gossiping mouths, dusty powders flying in every direction – a whole panoply of womanly signifiers that Maddin credits with building the feminine side of his psyche. And later, a mystical hockey arena in the process of demolition – and filled while a century’s worth of ghostly players playing one final match – presents the male side of Maddin’s upbringing. All of these scenes share the same dialectical montage style, the same back-and-forth volley of faces, fetishized objects, even intertitles. But those high-melodramatic interludes seem to exist on utterly a different plane from  the somewhat banal documentary paces or the fascinating – yet weirdly unfulfilled family reenactments. Like the city of its title, My Winnipeg seems to have uncountable maps for uncountable alleys. How do these alleys cohere into a single city, or a single film? This is a question that Guy Maddin doesn’t quite know how to answer.

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Photo courtesy of Martin Rankin, and copied in accordance with this Creative Commons license.

Urban Indian as Exile and West Baltimore's The Wire

“It reflects a life that is not true for all Indians, but typical of many.”

So begins the narrative voice-over in The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie, 1961), which presents a refreshingly original portrait of American Indians, situating them in a Californian urban milieu, away from their parents and grandparents on the reservations. Over the course of this semester, I’ve looked at a variety of movies concerning peoples historically underrepresented in film art. Constructions of ethnic minorities consistently have as much to do with previous media portrayals and stereotypes as they do the real people. In that sense, films with minority characters share certain conventions of the genre picture (and indeed, many genres incorporate ethnic tropes, including the Italian of the Gangster, or the African-American servant or performer in classic Hollywood or melodrama).

It is interesting to note that 50 years after the release of The Exiles, its particular image of the urban Indian  remains radical. The level of realism is startling: I appreciate its authenticity, and its dedication to a particular subculture rarely explored by the camera lens. According to the 1990 census, 63 percent of Native Americans lived in urban regions.[1] Yet, the construct of Indian as “noble savage” or frontier warrior persists in the nation’s cultural mindset, reinforced by the canon of Western films and America’s collective foundation myth. For most of white America, the Indian is of the continent — and yet, crucially, only particular parts of the continent are recognized as his domain.

The reservation is understood as the Indian’s arena. Even if it is somewhat marred by the history of forced migration and prejudice, there is a resurgence of pride in the reservation as emanation of the Indian self. The magazine section of the Times frequently runs ads for Native American Universities: “If I stay on the Res, I’m more likely to graduate.” The reservation provides a convenient domain for historians and anthropologists to think about the Indian, for there, he is identifiable by tribe, costume, language and rituals.  The “res” simplifies Native culture, segmenting it from the mainstream, in a sense controlling for interference and cultural mingling. But once the American Indian enters the city, abandons “authentic” costume, and internalizes Euro-American constructions of private ownership and anonymity, he becomes indistinguishable, almost invisible to the untrained eye.

The transition into the dominant culture is probably partial (no one can disavow an entire life experience), and certainly gradual. Ultimately, though, urban life presents a dilemma for the American Indian, who experiences ethnic misclassification, and a sense of disconnect from his heritage. The Exiles is extraordinarily compelling in its ability to communicate the ambivalence of the urban Indian experience. Such is the sentiment expressed by Homer in The Exiles: “My people roamed all over the place…I would rather be in that time than now.” It is important that Homer distinguishes between the two systems of Indian life in terms of time and not space. 

Over a decade after the making of The Exiles, the American West Center at the University of Utah asserted the dilemma faced by the urban Indian in these terms: “The city is an alien place…[It] demands of the individual to disavow his heritage to become a truly urban citizen.”[2]

Donald Fixico frames the problem as an issue of insufficient information: “People who know very little about American Indians…have very little to base a viewpoint on about urban Indians. They have to rely on stereotypes,” which have been overwhelmingly negative. I am cognizant of the fact that there is a level to Yvonne’s attitudes and desires that I will never fully grasp. For instance, what future does she envision for her unborn child in Los Angeles? Why does she subject herself to Homer, a husband who rarely acknowledges her presence, or leaves her to live vicariously through solitary excursions to the movies? What are her motivations and aspirations as she watches her husband and Tommy walk through the alleyway after a night on Hill X with the women they picked up in a bar? There is no way to read the expression on her face with the system of equivalencies exploited by Hollywood.

 

In trying to qualify my response to the film, I repeatedly came back to The Wire. As I watched Season 1 this week, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of fondness for the characters from West Baltimore. True, I don’t belong to this particular subculture, enmeshed in urban warfare, drug addiction and drug trafficking, bombed-out low-rises, imposing high-rises, poverty and slick Roc-A-Wear and Baby Phat wardrobes, but these characters speak a dialect that’s ubiquitous in the Baltimore's schools. It’s fascinating to hear it spoken on the screen: the show’s creators captured the spontaneity, the diction, the wisdom hidden beneath the layers of archaic-sounding syntax. These actors speak the cadence I heard from the moment I entered Baltimore’s school system in August 2001. Coming from New York, I remember thinking this the strangest place. What language were these people speaking? Baltimore seemed like an island, severed from the realities I had taken for granted on 207^th Street in Manhattan: the subway, Dominicans, Asians, the populated playground, and people in general.

The general absence of human bodies in the street and the alien nature of the speech I did hear presented a weird environment for an outsider. But I guess I became accustomed to it eventually, because watching The Wire today, I felt solidarity with the West Baltimore speakers captured on film and projected on screen — however violent their language, however amoral and degenerate their behaviors. I think this supports the universally validating power of cinema: the recording of real Indians, their accents uncensored and uncorrected, lends an authentic quality and asserts the urban Indian’s realness. It recognizes a distinctive presence in the world.

 

 

 “It’s cool up there, you sing your own tribal songs….you know… anything you want to do… you know”

One of the most interesting scenes in The Exiles follows Homer and Tommy to Hill X, the spot overlooking the LA skyline where the city’s Indians gather and reenact their cultural rites and rituals, modified to fit the urban environment, the particular demographic shift of the Indian populace, and the physical remoteness of the reservation. The modified powwows serve a younger generation of reservation "exiles," integrated into the metropolis. While not particularly young in years, these men and women resemble adolescents. They enter the semi-spiritual peak of Hill X as rambunctious American teens, blasting horns and revving engines. They convalesce, chant, dance, beat the drum as Indians by night, and in the morning, abandon the Hill, returning to the mainstream. The scene they leave behind is once more ambivalent: the land is dusty and beaten flat by tires; empty bottles and refuse clutter the clearing. It becomes clear from the image of the Hill that the urban Indian presents a unique and challenging blend of identities. His values with respect to ownership, environment, and family are an ambiguous mix of two cultures that our media has, for so long, presented as irreconcilable.

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[1] Fixico, D. Lee. (2000). The Urban Indian Experience in America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

[2] “Seattle Indian Center Plan,” February 3, 1972, in Mary Ellen Sloan, “Indians in an Urban Setting, Salt Lake County, Utah (1972),” Occupational Paper No. 2, American West Center, University of Utah, 1973, 6.

Internal Landscapes in John Cassavetes' Shadows

America was in a state of disequilibrium and flux in 1959. Over the preceding decade, an uncontested post-war order had come to dominate, epitomized by suburban sprawl, escalating homeownership, conspicuous consumption and the primacy of the nuclear family. Yet, those values represented unrealistic, vacuous ideals for certain segments of the youth generation. At the close of the decade, new foci of social and cultural power began to coalesce: the nation’s discontents began to assert themselves.

Culturally, 1959 was a tremendous year. Miles Davis released Kind of Blue, Malcolm X articulated a radical racial politics of black “militant separatism,” and Lenny Bruce tackled lewd and taboo topics on primetime television.[1] Artists and independent thinkers were addressing the nation’s neuroses directly and unapologetically.

Allen Ginsberg observed in the summer of ’59 that “America [was] having a nervous breakdown…” but he also asserted that this was no cause for alarm, at least among artists and outsiders: “[T]here has been great exaltation, despair, prophecy, strain, suicide, secrecy, and public gaiety among the poets of the city.”[2] If anything, this was a cathartic moment for artists. The cultural shift threatened the immaculate, formulaic narrative of the 1950s —a narrative that pervaded television, Hollywood and, allegedly, mainstream daily life. But it also marked a renaissance for the culturally estranged, whether Bohemian, beatnik, or black male.

Amidst this turbulent culture, John Cassavetes offered Shadows (1959), a film shot on-location in New York’s Time Square, MoMA’s sculpture garden and Central Park, with improvisational elements infused into the script and the actors’ performances. Although the film was not improvised per se, it evokes the spirit of a neorealist picture or documentary. Whereas Hollywood narratives are structured around a masculine “coherent ego” whose equilibrium is temporarily disturbed, and subsequently “restored,” Cassavetes rejects such plot-driven devices [3]. Instead, he elaborates the worlds of characters whose names are shared by the actors who play them.

Internal dramas and peripheral conflicts converge on three siblings: Benny, a light-skinned deviant juvenile and musician; Hugh, his much darker older brother, who is unable to secure serious musical gigs due to his race; and their sister Leila, a coquettish girl who ultimately reveals her naiveté and vulnerability. Much of the conflict stems from Benny and Leila’s lighter complexions, which allow them to navigate the mainstream space of white America, internalize racial hatreds, and turn against people darker than themselves — even while they remain emotionally close to Hugh. But what is crucial about the film is its level of nuance, achieved through silent dialogues via close-ups, and idiosyncratic speech patterns. Cassavetes is “not afraid to create an inarticulate character,” and this lack of anxiety about conforming a character to an ideal persona is what sets his work apart as strikingly realist and distinct from mainstream Hollywood.

 

 

John Cassavetes’ film Shadows explores issues of race relations, familism, and gender equality through the intimate space of characters’ minds. Internal conflict and mental perturbation dominate the film, so that subtle indicators of psychic tension often take priority over blatant displays of conflict and violence. Indeed, aggression and passion, whether in the form of masculine roughhousing in an alleyway or Leila’s precocious advances toward Tony at the literary party, provide insights into each character's emotional instability.

On the narrative level, Ben accompanies Tom and Dennis in their perpetual and vacant pursuit of women in diners and clubs. The three men seek out ladies who are apparently equally disinterested in relationships. Tom implies that the females' behavior encourages superficial, short-lived romantic encounters: “You want to get picked up, don’t you?” But If Benny is portrayed as a transient cool cat, maneuvering the neon urban jungle and seeming to transcend racial identities (in different contexts he appears more or less African-American), Cassavetes suggests an overlooked level of depth to his persona. This complexity is especially evident on the level of form, as in the iconic composition in the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. The shot evokes Ben's introjective mind or spirit, eliciting our empathy for a character who habitually seeks physical intimacy with women prior to emotional discourse. Whereas Ben silently contemplates a single work, Tom dismisses the whole collection as a series of artifacts testifying to the hypocrisy of academia. For Tom, the artworks merely serve to reinforce inflated intellectual egos: the garden signifies a place “for a lot of creeps trying to show off what they know.” Yet, Tom morphs into a similarly detestable intellectual bigot when he accuses Dennis of knowing “nothing” and asserts his own mental superiority (“I went to college, Dennis”). Tom’s relentless belittling is visually accentuated by his dominant height. Though Dennis wears the trench coat, his small stature and strong New York accent endow him with a juvenile quality, as do his vague appraisals of the works (“He’s a statue”). Dennis at least comes to terms with his lack of insights, whereas Tom persists in his blind self-righteousness. The animosity persists until their moods spontaneously shift and harsh language is replaced with frenzied laughter and seemingly authentic bonding over the voluptuous "Standing Woman" by Gaston Lachaise.

A similarly sudden reconciliation is later enacted by Hugh and Benny, and ultimately by Hugh and Rupert; all three resolutions testify to the transient nature of conflict and moods in the film. Prior to the resolution between Tom and Dennis, tight compositions and the telephoto lens collapse the space of the sculpture garden, heightening the sense of antagonism. Two bronze sculptures (a nude and an abstract piece) in the mid-ground divide the frame roughly in two, momentarily allocating "territory" to each man. The nude leans forward slightly, as though enraptured with their conversation, and the diagonal slant of the abstract form mimics her curvature. Long shots in the sculpture garden inter-cut with the tight, low-angle shots of the men, optically diminish Dennis. He seems comically small when Tom scales the bridge, elevated just a few feet off the ground. Even in the least constrained shots (camera pans that punctuate the garden scene), looming trees and flat concrete building facades heighten the impression of enclosure.

During the altercation, Ben withdraws from the dynamic. He is subsequently shot in profile, in front of a carved stone face whose eye sockets, defined brows, and slightly frowning lips seem to represent rounded caricatures of his own features. Cassavetes provides a confrontation of graphic visages. A strange indigenous quality pervades the image of man and his nonliving alternate. It is made all the more bizarre by its modern environmental context — the apartment buildings, just behind the brick walls of the tranquil garden space. Tom’s berating voice (“You’re nothing but an ignorant slob”) further undercuts the sense of epiphany etched on Ben’s expressive features. The juxtaposition of the visually serene, introspective, daringly primordial image with Tom's antagonistic language, imparts an unsettling atmosphere. It's as though we've ventured into the intimate space between dialogues, a realm largely ignored by conventional Hollywood.

 

Conflict between people has traditionally served to forward the plot in narrative cinema. Yet, Cassavetes adopts a decidedly different goal in conveying the transient moods, clashes, and ritual battles between friends, relatives, and acquaintances in Shadows. Rather than exposing power dynamics, social structures, or discrimination, interpersonal conflict primarily functions to reveal what is inconsistent or inauthentic about the individual. Moreover, these clashes —even when they play out against the vivid, magnetic, and external landscapes of New York City— are fundamentally about intimate encounters. They range from vacuous, superficial, and fleeting (like the dates with countless women in restaurant booths) to genuine and nourishing (as in Hugh and Rupert’s conversation in Penn Station at the end of the film).

Whenever Ben and his crew meander through the city space, flattened anonymous figures, graphic signs, reflective windows, and vehicles constitute a dynamic background. The impression is wholly impersonal. For instance, the masher assault on Lelia occurs under a multiplicity of bright lights, movie posters, and shop windows. That is, it plays out in full view and elicits little response from the crowds. Aside from Cassavetes' chivalrous cameo, the assault goes largely unnoticed and unpunished. Though this urban landscape is neither overtly hostile nor strictly bifurcated along race, gender or generational lines, there is evidence of increasing atomization and loneliness amidst the crowds.

Taking this external landscape as the basis for his cinematic “improvisation,” Cassavetes might have encountered problems while addressing social inequality, hostility, housing discrimination, or miscegenation law. But Shadows never devolves into a didactic montage about victimized groups. Cassavetes refuses to demean his characters with pity. Instead, he explores universal problems of authenticity, agency, and identity, allowing Ben, his sister Lelia, and his brother Hugh to possess personalities neither completely wholesome nor wholly flawed. No single figure explicitly emerges as the dominant or "lead" role.

Ray Carney has observed that “[w]hile Hollywood melodramatically externalizes characters’ emotional states, writing them in ten-foot-high letters…to maximize their visibility, the drama in Cassavetes’ work is internalized to the point of being almost subliminal.”[4] The director’s capacity to evoke conflicted personas, ambiguous relationships, and dynamic psychological landscapes culminate in a brilliantly arresting visual spectacle. Cassavetes does not resort to the grotesque or the abnormal, yet there is something profoundly distinctive about the world he constructs. He manages to incorporate conventional spaces, conflicts, relationships, and roles in a completely unconventional, almost surreal manner. Temporal transitions and connections between characters seem smooth and convincing; yet, critics have widely acknowledged the episodic nature of film. It occurs almost as a series of vignettes, each extraordinarily pleasurable to watch and an exceedingly truthful portrayal of what it is like to be human. That is, to experience and to deny prejudices; to project an ingenuously constructed self-image (Leila); to feel isolated, undervalued, or exploited (Hugh and Ben); to share in the common renewal of laughter; to make oneself vulnerable to another.

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[1] Fred Kaplan, “1959: Sex, Drugs and Datsuns,” New York, Vol. 42, No. 20 (8 June 2009), pp. 38-43.

[2] Ibid.

[3]  Maria Viera, "The Work of John Cassavetes: Script, Performance Style, and Improvisation." Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 42, No. 3, Problems in Screenwriting (Fall 1990), pp. 34-40.

[4] Carney, Raymond. The Films of John Cassavetes : Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Neckface, Sweet Toof, Cyclops and Swoon: The Banksy Phenomenon

Aside from providing a wealth of beautiful imagery documenting a transient art form subject to weathering, urban renewal, vandalism, and natural decay, Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) provokes a number of questions relevant to the production and consumption of art. Exit unsettles deeply rooted ideas about ownership, authenticity, the creative process and the derivative, as well the aesthetic and monetary value inherent in a piece of work. There is also an undercurrent of anxiety related to whether the film qualifies as documentary. The alien footage, urban landscapes, and candid humanity of the street artists are enthralling and cinematic. But the film retains a level of realism despite its hyperbole. The formal attention to process is quite vivid. Perhaps a narrative framework was imposed on the footage, but the footage itself could not have been contrived.

Art by Swoon. Creative Commons. Photo credit: guero:

 

Perhaps because the universe of the graffiti artist is so foreign to most viewers, we assume Thierry (who later adopts the pseudonym Mr. Brainwash) is sincere, in his words, expressions and affectations. To use his adoring quote of Banksy, we believe that he is “what he represents.” Transparency is indeed critical to Thierry, or so we are told, and we resist the idea that he might be complicit in a falsified documentary. We accept the street art universe as Thierry presents it — through footage of works by Swoon, Sweet Toof, Cyclops, Buffmonster, Neckface, Invader, Fairey and, of course, the iconic Banksy. Yet, there is more than footage to convince us; Thierry’s narrative perpetually asserts and validates his involvement in the scaling of buildings and plastering of billboards, all in an effort to record artists augmenting their landscapes.

If the environments and characters portrayed in Exit are slightly bizarre, that’s acceptable within the film’s logic. For one, the credibility of the street artist depends on his occasional ludicrous display of passion. Secondly, the graffiti artist, working invisibly and at night, symbolizes the unnerving, distorted quality of the urban night landscape. In a moment evocative of Philippe Petit’s climatic walk in Man On Wire (2008), Thierry films himself scaling a Parisian rooftop with Fairey. In that sequence, the total focus of the film is on procedural execution, not of a heist, bank robbery, or murder, but of a subversive act that claims the cityscape for the artist and for the viewer, and repudiates the concept of private ownership. The art contests authority and the status quo, even if its content are not overtly political. For however long it is preserved, the work extends a message to everyone, including the disenfranchised “other.” It upsets the uniformity and organization of the public space.

   Art by Swoon. New North Place, London. Creative Commons. Photo credit: AdversMedia.

  Art by Swoon. New Orleans. Creative Commons. Photo credit: Dingler1109.

If Thierry seems slightly “crazy” with his ever-present camera and obsessive need to film everything (“it was unimportant how it was made — it was important what it was”), his apparent authenticity is reinforced by his naiveté, expertly and inadvertently communicated whenever he comes into contact with law enforcement officials. Juxtaposed against Bansky’s cutting wit, these run-ins make Thierry seem all the more credulous. Banksy’s description cuts to the core of Thierry’s weirdness: “So this guy shows up looking like something out of the 1860s, with these, like, huge sideburns sweatin’, telling me he could do anything, he could take me anywhere, he could get me whatever I wanted. He could fix it all up.” In any other context, Thierry’s strong French accent and frequent inversion of idiomatic phrases might push the character too far, into the realm of cliché. But, in the particular world of Swoon, Invader and Neckface, where individuals regularly risk arrest to make a visual statement through installations, stencils, spray paint and drawing, Thierry is convincing.

His distinctiveness infuses potentially banal sequences with a vivid and verbose theatricality. His flamboyant affectations, expressive language, and over-the-top art (all commissioned, mostly “meaningless”) complement Banksy’s reserve, sparse and scathing dialogue, and high quality, purposeful art.

 

Art by Sweet Toof. Regent's Canal, London. Creative Commons. Photo credit: bobaliciouslondon.

 

 

 
Art by Neckface. Creative Commons. Photo credit: urbandata.

Of course, the film challenges us when Thierry violates the “conservative” code practiced by street and studio artists. He bypasses the labor, the training, the education (independent or institutional), and the formation of an identity. Instead, he adopts a vacuous persona (MBW) and transforms himself into a corporate managerial type, delivering orders in lieu of creating work. It’s all the more horrifying because we are led to believe that Thierry wants to emulate and honor Banksy. Thierry becomes totally enamored with material excess, quantity, size and scale. He refinances his home multiple times to rent a large gallery space, which ends up resembling some kind of psychedelic mall. Viewed as a collection, the work is rather grotesque, and viewed individually, the pieces are sophomoric. Banksy’s intermittent commentary provides an analytical critique that is sufficiently cynical without completely undercutting the genuine hilarity of Thierry’s performance and dialogue.

  Art by Banksy. Chalk Farm, London. Creative Commons. Photo credit: Dan Brady.

Thierry qualifies as an odd bird, even by Banksy’s standards. This is remarkable, given some of Banksky’s stunts documented in the film. One iconic sequence reveals Banksy and his accomplices (all rather wary of Thierry) slicing through a London telephone booth and subsequently welding it back together in a newly contorted form. The altered icon communicates a sense of violent assault on the urban space. Yet, the booth is made more beautiful through its reinvention. Though static, it retains the memory of movement and dynamism, visually implying the manipulations that transfigured it. Banksy and his men, wearing official-looking neon work suits and driving a tarp-covered construction vehicle, return the surreal sculpture in a ritualistic procession and then rapidly depart the alley.

The booth provides a grim ambiance, as though the urban alley had just witnessed a violent assault. Yet, strangely, it lacks the broken glass, the jagged edges, and the generally ugly chaos that follows an attack. One Brit in his thirties snaps an image on his camera phone and declares it an effective Banksy “installation.” An older woman smiles, observing, “Someone must be annoyed with BT Telephone!” Their disparate responses suggest the artist’s hesitance to ascribe unequivocal “symbolic” meanings to his work. Banksy would rather provoke discussion than train observers to read the syntax of his visual texts.

Art by Banksy. Park Row, Bristol. Creative Commons. Photo credit: daz smith.

Whether documentary or not, the film is admirable in its subtle complexity. It frames a documentary within a documentary, and refuses to assign moral supremacy to either Thierry or Banksy. Finally, there is the question of whether any of it actually transpired. If Mr. Brainwash had succeeded in promoting his work, his persona, and his legacy prior to creating a single piece of art or selecting any of the works for his show, it leaves us feeling a bit uneasy about individuals’ capacities to judge good work. Towards the end of the film, Bansky laments, “I used to encourage everyone to make art. I don’t do that so much anymore.”

 

Art by Banksy. Brighton. Creative Commons. Photo credit: simonbooth.

 

Art by Banksy. Bristol Council Sexual Health Clinic. Creative Commons. Photo credit: nicesenzatesta.

Killer of Sheep

In his commentary on Killer of Sheep (1977), Charles Burnett habitually downplays his own role. He seems to construe his sublime compositions and vignettes merely as true-to-life portrayals, or fictitious constructions derived from real people and real spaces. He sees himself in terms of documentation, though the film is not a documentary in the formal sense. Deft attention to environment, dialect, “invisible” characters, and the integration of improvised moments and staged scenes, illuminate Burnett’s tendency to incorporate documentary-style realism into his film texts. He speaks of lighting, framing, and collaboration with actors in terms that are pared down and frank. Perhaps the cinematic and narrative elements had always existed, and Burnett merely had the audacity to cull and splice the pieces together. There is nothing exploitative about the picture. And there is no pompous pretense to his language. Unencumbered by a monolithic artistic vision, Killer strives towards honest portraits that elicit a spectrum of potent emotions: jarring, rousing, titillating, and tragic.

Unique framing, candid blocking, and precise dialogue reflect Burnett’s discerning eye — and his ability to distill from fragmented, contradictory, disordered moments of a day or year, a coherent and lasting impression of the local world and its inhabitants. That Burnett’s work substantiates and gives voice to a group that has been historically ostracized, undermined, oversexed, or undersexed by Hollywood, represents an accomplishment independent of its artistry. Yet, even if we view Killer in a social-cultural vacuum, divested from the disparities, segregation, and inherently unequal parameters of life in the United States, the result is a stunning aesthetic achievement. Killer of Sheep plays out an urban space, interspersed with great expanses, massive trains, open lots, and construction sites resembling war zones. It incorporates elements of the Western, and of the metropolis, yet Killer transcends both of these locales, establishing a potent temporal and spatial coherence. The circumstances of this particular universe in Watts, Los Angeles, vacillate between melancholy and dark comedy. Nuclear families, neighbors, and floaters proceed through life, seemingly unencumbered by the objective eye of the camera. And it is this ambiguous balance between the despondent and the droll, which resonates with the human psyche.

The flexible, agile bodies of the children in Killer navigate their neighborhoods, forming a dynamic pattern against steeply inclined streets, construction lots, and freight trains. Their figures elicit in the viewer a sense of exuberance and compassion, interest and astonishment. We are transfixed.

Nor can the audience help but to indulge in watching the incoherent freeloader rub his face, tug at his bandage, and lick his lips. There is something fascinating about his impenetrable torpor, and the slow dolly back that reveals the car motor beside him. A woman in the same room massages lotion into her decidedly un-Hollywood legs and thighs, rippling, yet oddly enticing, nonetheless. The two figures, each surpassing the bounds of the frame, are united by an ephemeral and disconcerting jump cut that is visual shorthand for her physical blow to his bandaged head, following her comment, “You ‘bout tasteless as a carrot.” It is the odd balance between pleasure and pain that imparts such gravity to the scene. First, there is the electric thrill of her verbal quip (which, incidentally, seems both a trite cliché and a unique turn of poetry). Then, there is the visceral recoil as she delivers the blow, which is abstracted by the violent cut and Stan’s appearance at the side of the groaning, damaged, contorted body that twitches like a squashed insect. All the while, the flamboyantly dressed “uncle,” tugging at a jerrycurl and fawning over his reflection, lends ambivalent comic relief.

Bishetta Merritt has emphasized the juxtaposition of imagery from the slaughterhouse and shots of the children, who are “oblivious to the squalor and poverty around them” (2008: 113). Neither the sheep nor the children, she asserts, are cognizant of their impending demise. But such an assertion fails to convey the full richness of Burnett's visual metaphor. Moreover, the film seems to challenge such didactic principles.

Indeed, children constitute the only truly resilient force in the film's universe. Although they are not immune to suffering, they surely are not doomed. In contrast, the living sheep are inseparable from their limp, shaved counterparts hanging on prongs, or the gelatinous ovine bodies moving weirdly with the spray of the hose. The sheep connote monotony, angst, and suffering. Such qualities are evocative of the lives of adults in the film, but rarely those of children. While Stan's crisis seems uniquely “existential," most adults execute day-to-day rituals of work and family with alternatively dark and humorous perspectives.

Stylistically, the film exemplifies Burnett’s interest in capturing and conveying life in an unadulterated, unspoiled form. These lives transpire in a tactile, emotional, and architectural environment irrefutably linked to his own childhood.

Parallels between the open environments of the Italian neorealists and Burnett’s Watts emerge early in the film and constitute a sustained motif. Burnett, like the neorealists, delights in gritty, naturalistic landscapes. Indeed, part of what makes Killer of Sheep so intriguing is the constant interchange of locations. Although there is a degree of continuity (the camera never ventures beyond a particular cultural and social universe), there is a surprising multiplicity of spaces. Burnett acknowledges that his familiarity with the neighborhoods afforded him a variety of locations for shooting. Although he is ostensibly the master of this realm, he never overtly directs us in how we should judge the space and the individuals who inhabit it. We empathize with Stan, yet never fully understand the social or clinical origins of his depression. Likewise, we identify with the old man who witnesses a burglary across the alley, yet his departure from the yard to contact law enforcement does not seem exactly heroic.

We are complicit in the crime insofar as we recognize it would be a shame to disrupt what Burnett has orchestrated: the balanced composition, with the thieves running down the street, heavy T.V. in tow. Why sacrifice this robbery-dance to bureaucracy and justice? Anyway, the police would likely spawn new problems for the neighborhood.

 

 

Just Like Me

Katia Lund and Fernando Meirelles, the directors of City of God, produced a spin off television series called City of Men. The show follows the lives of two teenagers and best friends Acerola and Laranjinha; every episode deals with the various challenges the kids face while growing up in the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro. 

The episode, called Uolace & Joao Victor, follows a day in the life of two seemingly different kids divided by their place in the city. Uolace, better known as Laranjinha, is a black kid who resides in a favela. He lives life day to day, spending most of his time on the streets trying to find food to eat. His mother works two jobs to support him and only comes home on the weekends leaving Laranjinha to fend for himself. Joao Victor is a white kid who lives in an apartment complex right outside of Laranjinha's favela. He's not rich but lives comfortably (all though he would complain about his old and out of style nike sneakers). His mother is the opposite of Uolace's, she's overbearing and constantly nagging Joao Victor. It seems as if their lives couldn't be any different. This is established by Meirelles editing style at the beginning of the episode. 

Rio de Janeiro, Asphalt City (www.creativecommons.com)

In one scene, Meirelles presents the contrasting lives of the two characters. In one shot we see Joao Victor making dinner for his mother and himself. His food is healthy and natural and he takes great care while preparing his meal. Laranjinha's life is paralleled with Joao Victor's through hard cuts. One second we see Joao Victor in the quiet and comfort of his own home, the next shot wee see Laranjinha and his friend wandering the chaotic and frenzied streets trying to make money to buy food. When he finally makes enough money, him and his friend order a slice of pizza. By establishing these characters in such dissimilar settings, Meirelles is emphasizing how different their experiences are within the city. The interesting thing he does here is while establishing their differences, he creates a connection between the two using sound. The song Tempo Perdido, by popular Brazilian rock band Legiao Urbana, surrounds both characters. Joao Victor sings the song as he cooks, while at the same time, the song plays on the street that Laranjinha begs on. One can't help but question the motives of the director here; on one hand he can't make it any more clear how different the two kids are, but on the other hand he establishes a alliance between the two with the music.

 

Rio de Janeiro, dirt city. (www.creativecommons.com)

As the episode progresses, we begin to see the lives of these seemingly opposite boys come together through plot and editing. The boys symbolize the two faces of the city; the asphalt city and the dirt city. Both boys wake up everyday to the sound of police sirens, but from different perspectives. Laranjinha experiences it first hand, he's in the thick of it while Joao experiences it from his window. The episode presents this very interesting relationship between the two boys; though they come from opposite sides of the city, they are more alike than they know. The last scene of the episode is the one that brings the whole story together. We see Joao Vitor at night, staring out of the window at the favela. In voice over, he expresses his fear about his uncertain future. Under his window passes Laranjinha walking home late at night who in his own voice over expresses the same concern. Here, Meirelles does another very interesting thing with sound. As the kids come to the realization that they are alike, their voice overs beging to overlap eachother. They eventually end up saying the same thing, "What he doing awake alone at this time of night? He looks sort of lost. Just like me." This is the episodes payoff. In the end we see that they're both just kids. Despite all the hardships they deal with living in Rio de Janeiro, they face the same troubles. Growing up is hard to do no matter who you are.

 

Black Sheep in the Modern World: Modern Times

Over the face of a clock, the foreword reads, “'Modern Times.'  A story of industry, of individual enterprise - humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.”  In the opening shot a herd of sheep, a single black one caught in the middle, dissolves into a mass of workers rushing forward out of a subway station entrance; Chaplin’s comparison is obvious.  We then see these men walking towards a large factory.  It is a place devoid of the natural world; smoke stacks and large concrete and glass buildings dominate the frame, showing only a small sliver of sky at the top of the screen.  The factory is a world of order and repetition. The sets are large and overwhelming, constructed with steel bars, pipes, and levers, and glass windowpanes that all work to create strong horizontal and vertical lines. These lines form an array of ninety degree angles throughout the frame (thus helping to establish the sense of order and balance) that are broken up only by the expressionless, uniformed factory workers and various rotating wheels throughout the frame.  The camera is static in these opening shots, with the large and excessively complex machines taking up most of the frame.  The workers, small in comparison, are robotic in their movement and manner, appearing more as parts of the factory setting than as people.  What these machines and workers are making, what their end product is, is never made clear; their significance instead lies more in their spectacle and in the repetitive nature of their work.

It is not until the film’s thirteenth shot (2:51) that we are introduced to the Tramp.  The camera here moves forward into the factory’s main room, following an assembly line on the right slowly and deliberately, before panning left, pausing on two workers repetitively hammering a line of metal plates.  They illustrate for us how the factory automation is to look and act; large, strong, and expressionless, monotonously working with nothing to distinguish them from one another, and thus nothing to distinguish them as individuals.  The camera does not stay on them for long though, pausing only for a few seconds before panning to the Tramp on their left.  He is an outsider, an individual inside this ordered and repetitive world.  Like the black sheep he is noticeably different than those around him; he looks different (shorter with large clown-style shoes and his trademark mustache), he walks differently (shuffling penguin-like with his arms swinging to his sides or in front of him), he even moves differently (chaotically and clumsily).  But Chaplin establishes him here not only as an individual within the factory, but as an invasion onto it.  He disrupts this sense of order and balance around him, continually crossing the different vertical and horizontal lines created by the architecture and machines (such as when he climbs over the conveyor belt), his every action throwing the assembly line into chaos

One of Chaplin’s most interesting characteristics as a filmmaker is how little he uses close-ups.  The close-up is generally used to focus on an individual character, establish a connection between him or her and the viewer, illustrate their personality, or express their emotional or psychological state.  Chaplin instead chooses to shift between long and medium shots, using the mise-en-scene (specifically the blocking, acting, and the set) to establish the Tramp as an individual.  But he not only uses the long and medium shot to establish his character’s individuality, but also to express his sense of suffocation and suppression inside the factory world. When the factory manager chooses him to test a machine that will allow workers to eat on the assembly line (8:45), Chaplin uses a long shot in which the figure of the Tramp occupies only a small part of the frame (making up roughly half the height of the screen and only 1/7 of the horizontal length).  Yet despite the small amount of space he takes up, he appears cramped, suffocated, and suppressed within the frame.  Chaplin is able to create this feeling in a few different ways.  The long shot emphasizes the large, overwhelming, and repetitive world around him, and although it’s a wide angle depicting a number of figures and machines throughout the frame, it is heavily weighted to the left towards the figure of Tramp.  He is framed vertically by four pipes that stretch to the ceiling and by three workers on his sides.  The three eating machine salesmen and the factory manager are lined up in a row to the Tramp’s right, staring at him.  The conveyor belt intersects this, creating a barrier between the Tramp and the four men, pushing him further back towards the wall and limiting the amount of room he has to move.  Seated along the wall is a line of factory workers, also staring at the Tramp again, drawing the viewer’s focus to him.  The last factory worker on the bench is positioned to the Tramp’s left, forcing him into an area which he seems unable to escape. 

Here, in the world of the factory, the Tramp’s individuality is suppressed.  Even those small moments of independence (such as when he tries to take a smoking break in the bathroom) and little indications or markers of individuality (such as his packed lunch) are stripped away from him.  But Chaplin takes this further; it is not only the Tramp’s individuality that’s restrained, but his very humanity, those basic human needs, as he is constantly forced to adjust himself and his instincts to the factory.  Even if he tries to scratch an itch or swat a bee away from his face, he is kicked and scolded for throwing the assembly line into disorder.  This is a world where the human body becomes mechanized, where the only voices heard are those through radios or monitors, and where workers are fed by (and, at one point, into) machines.

But this suppression, this question of how the individual survives (or doesn’t survive), of how humanity is restrained on the assembly line, is only the starting point for Chaplin in his film.  It is from this point that the Tramp begins his journey, moving from place to place, job to job, in a continual search for somewhere to call home, a space which he can fashion himself and express his individuality.  Chaplin will thus raise a deeper philosophical question of the role of the individual in the modern world.  Ironically enough, it will only be in the small confines of a prison cell that he ever truly finds this sense of home, although even this is short-lived.  In the end, he is left homeless, walking away with the Gamine (his female counterpart) into the landscape.  Although this ending seems to suggest that the individual has no place in the modern world and is seemingly exiled from it, the Tramp’s last words, “…never say die- we’ll get along” suggest that his search (and thus the individual’s search) for his place in the modern world continues.

We ♥ L.A. (Clare)

[As with my last post, I’m writing under the assumption that you’ve seen both Chinatown and Crash. Again, same rules apply: see them immediately for your personal well being or check the links.  There’s no way I can even begin to summarize Crash, let alone Chinatown, in any sort of all encompassing sentence. But seriously. Watch them.]

 Hollywood sign? Check. Smog? Check. Palm trees? Check. Welcome to L.A.¹

Los Angeles. It’s the City of Angels, the land of palm trees, opulence, beautiful beaches, sunny days, smoggy days, and the cultural advantage of being able to make a right turn on a red light (thanks Alvy Singer).  Of course, Hollywood has become synonymous with the city itself, and it’s not just the white letters nestled in the Hollywood Hills. The film industry’s headquarters are based in Los Angeles, a town overflowing with celebrities and “industry figures” alike.  As the city has grown so has the American film industry, and their simultaneous expansion has made the two essentially interchangeable in many ways. While the streets and hills of Los Angeles are the backdrop to more films than Hollywood wants you to believe, there are a few films where LA plays an integral part to the storyline. Chinatown and Crash are two films where Los Angeles is more than a backdrop, and it is interesting to see a sort of “then and now” view on Los Angeles in comparison. While it seems both films should depict two very different versions of the city, they both show Los Angeles as a surprising similar place:  a city beyond its glossy stereotype, full of its own complicated problems. 

 

The Los Angeles director Roman Polanski creates in Chinatown is a place where not everything is as it seems. Set in the late 30s, the film follows private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) as he attempts to find the answers to a case that is, well, not what it seems to be. In the process, Gittes travels all over L.A., from the recognizable glamour of Beverly Hills to the desolate farmlands in the Valley to the impoverished area of Chinatown.  The city we see is not the shallow façade of glitz and extravagance: Polanski delves deep beyond this shiny exterior to expose a more realistic depiction of the city.  Correlating with the theme of the discrepancies between the haves and have-nots, two very distinct sides of Los Angeles are depicted in the film. There’s Evelyn Mulwray’s (Faye Dunaway) home, the quintessential wealthy stereotype of Los Angeles living.  Set back from the street, the enormous mansion is exquisitely furnished, impeccably kept, with lavish grounds complete with its own stable.  This idea is sharply contrasted against many of the other locations, including the Valley and Chinatown. Even though it’s just over the hill from the city, the Valley is an entirely different world, an expanse of barren land populated by some orange groves and poor farmers the water company is attempting to force out.  Back in the city, Chinatown is a place we experience even before we visit it.  Nicholson’s famous line of “as little as possible” to describe his time in Chinatown sets the scene as a place of corruption and problems, and when we finally arrive there in the final scenes it fulfills these expectations as a dark place with bad neon lights and crowded streets (the ominous music doesn’t make the place seem any more auspicious, either). By painting Los Angeles as a city comprised as more than just wealth and sunshine, Polanski creates a place that reflects the corruption and problems he addresses.

 

 

"Forget it, Jake.  It's...." ²

^{Within the film, the locations around Los Angeles serve to additionally underscore certain aspects of the film. In the beginning of the film Gittes follows Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) around the city, from Echo Park to the ocean to dry riverbeds north of the city.  These locations not only provide a sense of what a physically diverse city Los Angeles is, but also integrally tie Mulwray to the idea of water from the start. Our villain, Noah Cross (a wonderfully evil John Huston), is also depicted in a similar way when Gittes visits him out on his estate on Catalina Island.  Yes, Catalina isn’t technically on the mainland, but it still represents a certain facet of the city. The choice to show Cross on the island depicts both his extreme wealth (Catalina used to be a place for the wealthy to get away from the city) as well as his relation to water:  Catalina is an ideal location to show Cross’ obsession with water by literally surrounding him by it.  While there are many other locations throughout the city with double meanings, one of the most apparent is Mar Vista, where Gittes and Mrs. Mulwray go to visit the “owners” of essentially the entire San Fernando Valley. Mar Vista is a neighbor of Los Angeles on the south end of the west side, and its name reflects its view of the Pacific Ocean.  Here though, Mar Vista takes on an additional meaning: phonetically, Mar Vista sounds like “marred vista,” or damaged sight. Of course, this ties into the idea that the residents of the retirement home have no idea they’re now some of the biggest land owners in the city.  While the locations throughout the city are important, their deeper meaning helps enhance the film as well.} 

^{While corruption doesn’t tie in to the physical locations of L.A., it is one of the major characteristics that drives how the city functions and survives. Again, breaking away from the sunny disposition of the City of Angels, Polanski chooses to depict a city where not just the people are corrupt:  the city is too.  Cross may be the man behind the idea to create a dam to irrigate the Valley, but the Department of Water is well aware and endorsing what’s happening too.  The corruption even runs into the police force:  in the final scene in Chinatown, when Gittes tells Evelyn to let the police take care of Cross, her response is “he owns the police!” a definite statement validating the depth of corruption.  The idea of corruption ties integrally to the theme of how everything isn’t as it seems, building Los Angeles into a city not as perfect as it visually appears.}

 

 

"I think we miss that sense of touch so much, that we crash together, just so we can feel something" ³

Set almost seventy years later, Crash portrays Los Angeles in a surprisingly similar way as Chinatown. A film depicting how people different in very divergent ways can all be interconnected, Los Angeles’ broad diversity of neighborhoods sets the scene for these interactions and reactions.  But the Los Angeles that writer/director Paul Haggis creates is a more “silent” version than found in Chinatown.  There are no instantly recognizable locations, save for the opening and closing shots of the film (of Hollywood from the Hills and downtown, respectively).  3^rd Street Promenade is just another street; Carney’s is just a diner. Even Chinatown (which, coincidentally, is where Crash’s final scene takes place) is understated, only recognizable by those bad neon lights. This L.A. is one based on insider knowledge of the city-the places aren’t explicitly described or laid out, but if you look close enough, you can figure out where you are.

 But that’s not to say Los Angeles doesn’t play a major role in Crash; instead, much like Chinatown, L.A. enhances the social differences that are at the core of this film.  Here again Los Angeles’ diversity characterizes it as city of privilege and disadvantage, each in sharp contrast to one another.  Jean and Ricks’ well-appointed house is a far cry from Daniel’s family’s tiny and grim home (which is even a step up from where they used to live), Shereen and Farhead’s convenience store is nothing like the studio set Cameron Thayer works on as a director. These places create a focus around the idea of extravagant wealth versus a blue collar lifestyle that defines the Los Angeles of Crash, and the locations are used to further emphasize these differences.

Haggis also depicts a side to L.A. that doesn’t first come to mind: corruption, but this time with a racial spin. In Crash, it’s more of a focus on individual corruption within the government, but this still makes the system corrupt.  Within LAPD, officer John Ryan is an angry, jaded cop who shows blatant racism on the job.  There’s Lieutenant Dixon too, who lets racism slide within the system in order to keep his status. And of course, there is the exchange between detective Graham and the district attorney  (who is, surprise! Rick) and his staff.  Here, we see corruption run both ways, and it’s hard to know if they are good people doing bad things, or bad people acting accordingly. These people and their actions define how we may view Los Angeles, and creates the layers of just how deep the problems run. 

 

 

^{There are mountains behind L.A.? Downtown on a (very) rare clear day.4}

^{Even though Los Angeles has changed so much physically and demographically over the years, in Chinatown and Crash things are essentially the same.  There is still a big stratification between social and economic classes.  There are still distinct neighborhoods.  There is still corruption.  Of course, it’s too early to know if Crash will hold up to the a classic as Chinatown has proven to be. Time will tell, but either way these films pay homage to the hometown of the film industry: a dark homage, but an homage nonetheless.}

Photos: (all found through Creative Commons)

¹ Photo from Wikimedia commons

² Photo from Sir George Martinn (Flickr)

³ Photo from Fermi Zhang (Flickr)

⁴ Photo from Todd Jones Photography (Flickr)

Havana, Lisbon and Wim Wenders (Shauna)

It is in an incredible risk to create a film about the struggle of making a film.  A movie partly devoted to the study of sound, not only the production of music by trained vocalists and musicians, but the accumulation of everyday noises by a man with a boom mic seems equally ambitious.  For anyone else, the results might be forced and superficial, but Wim Wenders' products are at once astounding and spontaneous.  Both in Lisbon Story and Buena Vista Social Club, Wenders seamlessly integrates the passionate, fatal and trivial aspects of cinema and musical performance.  Whether staged or improvised his narratives never veer into the dreadful realm of predictability.  It is through his profound sensitivity to place, reflected in the local musical and chromatic vibrancy of Cuba in Buena Vista, and the hybrid medieval-industrialized Lisbon basking in Mediterranean light, that the questions of art, music and cinema are raised.  He grounds the two films so authentically in their locales that we eagerly embrace the topics of music and movie-making.

Wenders is not interested in strictly replicating the structure, lighting, energy and mood of the two respective cities, though he masterfully captures the form and atmosphere of each urban place.  He goes beyond simply conveying the essence of a city as an entity: he suggests the emotional sentiments a city might elicit and characterizes the bond between his characters and their environments.  The crosscut is used particularly effectively in Buena Vista to create a coherent portrait of an intimate cast of characters who retain their mannerisms, humor, technical skill, wit and dignity whether at home or on the stage, whether in Cuba, Amsterdam, or New York.  A specific building, street, figure or piece of debris might trigger the memory of another place or time, but Wenders plays visually with nostalgia in such a way that he avoids overt sentimentalism. 

 

Guitarist Ochoa Bustamante (left) and vocalist/guitarist Compay Segundo. Creative Commons, by Hiabba (2008). http://search.creativecommons.org/

Most of the emotional responses and dynamics between character and place are sufficiently subtle to require full attention and multiple viewings.  In Buena Vista, a group of elderly Cuban male musicians and one female vocalist come together to record and perform the nation's provincial and popular music.  They are musicians who have been forgotten or fazed out -- some had abandoned their instruments for a decade or more -- but performers endowed with a striking vitality, humanity and appreciation for their Caribbean culture.  Working with Ry Cooder, Wenders captures the centrality of music to their lives: in the studio, on the streets, in ornate pre-Revolution gambling houses and in abandoned bars.  Rhythm is inescapable, permeating all aspects of life.  Wenders recognizes that the discovery of a culture and locale so inherently bound to music constitutes something refreshing and unique.  Particularly from the European or American perspective, he acknowledged in the commentary, we tend to think of music as a separate entity, something we listen to for a duration and then set aside.  We occasionally go to concerts, listen to the radio or improvise, but these are less integral elements in the fabric of life than they are exceptional circumstances.  In contrast, Cubans constantly discover, produce and collaborate in formal and informal musical exchanges. 

 

Extreme Right: Trumpet player Manuel Mirabal Vázquez. Creative Commons, by Moyo Taxiguerrilla (2006).

One of the film's most revealing sequences occurs when singer Omara Portuondo, clad in a bold print dress, strolls down the street of her old neighborhood amid residents standing on the curbs and in front of dilapidated buildings.  As she wanders through the street, Portuondo sings, partly to herself and partly offering an impromptu performance to the audience that has gathered for her.  One woman of African descent joins her in song, invoking their common career experience and suggesting Cuba's ethnoracial heterogeneity.  During the commentary, Wenders emphasized that the neighborhood promenade scene unfolded spontaneously, a fact that is at first difficult to believe.  The individuals who gather to hear Portuondo balance reverence with anonymity.  They convey interest and desire to hear her voice, yet maintain relative nonchalance and refrain from pressuring or bombarding their locale celebrity.  Their expressions also appear unaffected by the presence of the camera.  The audience embodies civility and appreciation, without the self-consciousness or egotism that often accompanies the presence of a camera.  Indeed, as Wenders asserted, there is nothing "fake" about the people of Cuba. 

Interestingly, the concept of cinematic authenticity is a motif that recurs in Lisbon Story.  Towards the conclusion of the film, the mysterious German filmmaker Frederick challenges the very act of movie-making.  In his diatribe with his sound recorder he equates "Pointing a camera" with "pointing a weapon" and reflects, "...Every time I pointed at something, I had the feeling of depriving things of their life."  The very presence of the camera changes the subject, and the very eye of the cinematographer distorts it even further.  That is Frederick's unhappy conclusion, anyway.  The only way to escape these limitations is to capture figures without their knowledge or consent and without the corrupting influence of the filmmaker's own eye.  Frederick fashions plastic shopping bags, small backpacks and garbage cans into vessels for hidden cameras.  The flimsy blue plastic shopping bag seems appropriated directly from Buena Vista, where it also functioned as a vehicle, but one holding sacred visual elements from the past, rather than illicitly capturing unknown moments in the present. Cuban pianist Rubén González's uses a blue plastic bag to transport photographs of himself and other musicians at the height of their careers.  Against his characteristic orange zigzag button down, Rubén's insubstantial bag of treasured images intimates the pervasiveness of Cuban poverty, but also visually encapsulates Cuban values of relationships, authenticity and meaning in images and lyrics.  Armed only with a minimal plastic shopping bag, Rubén manages to protect the photographs from any blemish, indentation or tear.

 

Bassist Orland Lopez "Cachaito." Creative Commons, by Volume12 (2008).

Visual parallels between the two films run far more deeply than mere recurrent props.  In fact, Wenders captures environmental structures and geographies with suggestive doubles in Havana and Lisbon.  Train tracks function as one structural motif and symbol of transport, change, interconnectedness and, paradoxically, divisiveness.  In Buena Vista Social Club, Ochoa Bustamante sings and plays his guitar with a provincial folksiness as he walks towards the steady cam, following the tracks.  In Lisbon, the pace of life around the tracks is slightly more frantic and mechanized.  Trolley tracks in Lisbon Story help propel the protagonist Winter towards the mysterious child employed by Frederick.  Other analogues to the Lisbon trolleys are the putrid green and pink buses imported from the Soviet Union, seeming anachronisms that are actually critical to Havana's contemporary transport infrastructure.   

Wenders grapples with the environmental opposition between old and new in both films, and plays extensively with boundaries.  Boundaries may be physical thresholds, such as the coastal waters crashing against Havana's highways, or may exist in space and time, as with the cross cuts between the group's performance in Amsterdam and their work in the Cuban recording studio weeks earlier.  Diegetic sound bridges across these cuts (Silencio, sung by Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo) lend a sense of continuity to an editing technique that might otherwise create temporal confusion. 

In both films, cinematography works to suggest navigation and exploration.  It evokes another breed of tension, this time between familiarity and newness.  The mobile camera ventures through the streets of Havana and Lisbon in a series of long takes that capture not only the neighborhood architecture and lighting, but the residents' attitudes and body language.  Wenders relied fully on the mobile cam and two heavier cameras with tripods (no tracking or dolleying), and the subtle irregularities in camera stability humanize the framing.  We are somewhat conscious of the street venturer recording the sights.  He is not a blatant tourist, but rather a selective observer, an outsider who also experiences a sense of connection with the new city.  In Lisbon Story, Winter embodies that "outsider."  En route to Lisbon, he listens to a Portuguese language cassette and struggles to replicate comical phrases.  Yet, although certain cultural and linguistic aspects of life in Lisbon are quite foreign, other elements -- like the exotic voice of Madredeus (Teresa Salgueiro) -- exist independent of national bounds and deeply resound with Winter.  A similar tension arises in Buena Vista Social Club, when the members of the band arrive in New York City for the first time.  In souvenir shops, the musicians recognize certain bobble-heads (Charlie Chaplin, for instance), but struggle and fail to name others (Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy).  By including such sequences detailing cultural connections and deviations, the director reveals something about himself.  Wenders has thoroughly established himself as an international figure in cinema.  Yet, he too must experience the strange, exciting imbalance that comes from traveling: the alien and unsettling juxtaposed with the familiar and universal.  And this opposition is what makes his local environments so vivid, so authentic and so approachable, regardless of a viewer's experiences or background.

M: Where do we fit in? (Chris M)

As I mentioned last week, film has the phenomenal ability to entangle the fates of its characters with the fates of its viewers.  These intimate connections can last beyond the length of the film, burrowing themselves deep in our subconscious only to sporadically reappear in our world despite our expectance.  Our connections to the characters can make or break a film; when we feel genuinely connected to a character, it’s a good film.  If we can’t connect to any of the characters; it’s a bad film.  (I use the word ‘connected’ in the since that when we are connected to a character, if they suffer a bad fate, we emotionally suffer, when they succeed, we are emotionally uplifted… at least a little.)
However, this is not always the case. 

“M” (Lang, 31) is a psychological thriller set in Germany in the 1920’s or 30’s.   In this film, a child-abducting serial killer, played by Peter Lorre, is on the loose and has the entire city in a frenzy.  Both the police force and criminal underworld work separately to track him down, the latter being ultimately successful.  Overall, the film is powerful, suspenseful, and cinematically beautiful. 

The first time I saw “M," I kept trying to pinpoint a protagonist, someone to attach to, someone to intertwine myself with.  Who was going to be the hero to emerge out of this dark thriller?  In a murder mystery, my first instinct for a protagonist is the detective.  Yet, the detectives in this film are far from brilliant, clever, or interesting.  The criminals that track down Hans Beckert (the murderer) aren’t exactly the heroic type either.  In fact, the closest thing to a protagonist in this film is the unyielding criminally appointed defense lawyer of Beckert, and he isn’t introduced until the final ten minutes of the film.

With no protagonist to attach to, I consider my other option.  Hans Beckert.  The poor defenseless child murder.  But something about that doesn’t sound right… While Beckert does make a very noble and powerful, though slightly pitiful, plea for his life at the end of “M,” I find it really difficult to truly attach myself to a child murderer.

Unattached as I may have felt after watching “M,” I still loved it.  Maybe it was the wonderfully cinematic quality of the entire film.  There were some beautifully twisted shots; Fritz Lang found an incredible way to draw us uncomfortably close to many of the characters while still keeping us separated.  There is a fantastic shot of Beckert as he takes two shots of hard liquor before preying on another young girl.  The camera is brought slowly towards the crossing wooden planks of the thin fence separating us from Beckert.  We peer through the holes of the fence and right into Beckert’s conflicted head.  The film is full of other cinematically tense moments.  This is certainly part of the reason the movie is so great.

Aside from how well shot and put together the film is, I still think there is something that keeps me emotionally connected, especially during the second half of the film.  I believe the emotional connection stems from a sense of justice.  Though I’m not attached to a character, I am attached to some moral obligation.  By the end of the movie, I wasn’t rooting for a particular character, I was rooting for the right thing to be done.  I wanted Beckert to get his fair trial.  I think it is why his defense lawyer comes off as such a hero.  At the end of the film, I think what the viewer hangs on to, is what monsters the citizens of the city had become.  The ‘innocent’ people of the city become an angry, dangerous mob completely opposed to the idea of giving Hans Beckert a fair trial.  In fact, throughout the film, we see many instances of injustices, and not just among criminals.  The police force wants to break into homes, invade the privacy of their citizens, in order to find the murderer.  The citizens want a killer, more correctly, a man who is severely ill, to suffer the treatment of a dog.  We see corruption among criminals, police, and citizens.  Thus, when justice ultimately wins out, barely, it is a sigh of relief. 

Connections happen all the time in film… not necessarily to characters.  Inevitably, we find something to cheer for.  In the case of “M,” we end up putting our fate in the hands of truth and fairness, and by the end, we are moderately satisfied.

“M” is wonderful film and offers much more to discuss.  Unfortunately, I’m out of room.

“M” was released in 1931. 117 minutes, 1.20:1 Aspect. Written by Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang and directed by Fritz Lang.