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The Trials and Tribulations of Being a Son on FX's Justified

The father-son relationship is, in some ways, the most important male relationship in existence. While it is ostensibly a nurturing bond, it is also inherently competitive. Fathers want to raise their sons to follow in their footsteps, but in doing so they make themselves obsolete. This past season of Justified mines this relationship in order to take its characters in new directions which are familiar, but also novel.

                This theme seems in retrospect to be an obvious one for the show to tackle, as Raylan Givens, the main character of the show, has had extremely troubled relations with his criminal father in the past. It was obvious that some form of conflict would eventually pop up between them. However, instead of taking the obvious path of bringing them together in a head on conflict, the show ended up taking the theme in a much more subtle route. Raylan and Arlo, his father, are almost never on screen together for the entire season until the very end. Instead, the theme of father and son is explored through the villain before being cast upon the more obvious subjects.

                Robert Quarles, the villain of the season, does not, upon first glance, seem to have anything to do with the theme of fathers and sons. As a fast talking drug lord come down from Detroit to tame the wilds of the Kentucky oxy trade, he seemed to embody the expansionist, a theme which is common in many Westerns. However, as the season goes on, the viewer learns that every action that he performs comes from his relationship with his father figures. He attempts to make his adopted father proud by earning money and influence through the drug trade, while at the same time reenacting the terrible things that his biological father did to him on gay men that he kidnaps and tortures throughout the season. Quarles never outgrows the shadow of either of his fathers, and ends up crashing and burning because of it. Even as he is being chased by the Marshall service through the hills of Kentucky, his first priority is to call the head of the Detroit mob, his adopted father, and say that he wants to come home.

                This theme is greatly enhanced through the performance of Neil McDonough. He plays Quarles as a cheerful smiling villain who is as funny as he is scary. He cracks jokes as he kills people, and is always polite. However, as the season goes on, it becomes more apparent that McDonough plays the character as an overgrown child. He constantly tries to show off his sleeve holster like a child with a new toy, and he struggles to be seen as better than his “father’s” biological son. All of this is done with the emotional openness of a child showing the stunted development of this man.

This issue of father and son drives Raylan as well. Timothy Oliphant plays Raylan as a very emotionally closed character as opposed to Quarles’s childlike openness. He constantly denies that he has any issues with his father, and does everything he can to ignore the issue at hand. However, Raylan’s drive to show his father that they have nothing in common is the baseline for everything that he does.

All of the troubles he has with his father come to a head in the season finale in which we are treated to a scene in which Arlo attempts to tell Raylan that he is proud of him. The scene is touching, especially owing to Timothy Oliphant’s performance as Raylan tries to pretend that he doesn’t care, but cannot stop himself from feeling glad that his father is finally acknowledging him. This only serves to set the viewer up for the crushing final moments of the season in which Raylan realizes that Arlo has killed a friend of his, thinking it was Raylan, in order to protect his adopted “son.” This realization that he has truly lost his father breaks Raylan in a way that the viewer has never seen. He isn’t angry or vengeful. He just seems defeated. His father has a new son, and he has been left with no one.

                Justified has always been about fathers and sons, even from the very beginning, but never before has it been such a central element to the plot. By exploring this tenuous male relationship, the show is able to explore the depths of its characters and bring them to their knees. It can be said that those who know us best can hurt us most, and that statement is never truer than in this past season.

Much thanks to Creative Commons and the public domain images used. Creative Commons in no way endoreses any opinions expressed in this blog. Any opinions, views, or ideas are soley of the poster.

 

 

Elephant Memory: The Effect and the Affected of High School

 

    Time. It’s a concept that we don’t truly understand. Time is fickle. It always seems to drag out when you want it to move faster and speed up when you want to stop and savor moments. Time is always against us. We never have enough time to do everything we want to yet we always have all the time to waste.  Elephant directed by Gus Van Sant uses time and the actions taken in a specific period of time, to outline characters in one of the most important, and possibly detrimental times, in our lives, adolescence and high school. Elephant looks at this “time” (quotations for the multiple definitions previous) from many angles, through differet characters lives revolving around a school shooting tragedy; the victims, bystanders, and shooters. This film though is not about mourning or asking why the tragedy took place. Instead it examines the psyche of the high school student, the challenges they are put through, the effect of high school, and how that affects the adolescent mind. Throughout the film we are forced to see glimpses of ourselves during that time in our lives. It’s easy to say, “Oh, well that never happened to me!” and brush it aside. Sure, the tragedy most likely didn’t happen to you, but Elephant is much more than that. It addresses who we all are, who we all were, and who, we all hope, we can be in the future.

"Lose not yourself in a far off time, seize the moment that is thine." -Friedrich Schiller

 

            The high school seems perfectly stereotypical at first glance. You have the popular jock with a beautiful girlfriend, the artsy and awkward photographer, the kid with the awful parents, the girl with her head in the clouds, etc. With a closer look though you see each character with their certain traits, certain characteristics that we as viewers pick up on and relate to. As the film progresses, the different psyches of each character become dimensional and real emotion is conveyed. We all in high school put on masks, the personas that we believed would fit nicely into the jigsaw of the skewed microcosm of society known as high school. The ones who didn’t, or the ones who couldn’t, were outcast, subjected to the torments of those whose masks were strongest and sometimes whose inner turmoil was greatest, needing the ego boost they received from putting other people down seen through the popular girls and guys and how they treat others as well as one another inside their clique.

What is most interesting about this school shooting film is its relationship to the actual shooters. As the film begins and we are first introduced to the shooters, they are portrayed as any other student, nearly invisible in the film paralleling their invisibility in their high school. As the film progresses, however, we start to see more deeply into their lives and try to better understand the motives and operations that lead to the shooting. Van Sant touches on a few key themes of media and ease of accessibility of guns. Eric, one of the shooters, plays video games that sole purpose is to shoot and kill one virtual man after another while Alex looks at guns online. They also both watch a documentary on Hitler, mesmerized, almost studying, his rise to power. As they watch the documentary, a delivery truck pulls up and brings with it one of the guns used in the massacre. It was as easy as placing an order online with a fake name and a credit card for these boys to receive all that was necessary to bring revenge to their school. The shooters, even though developed as deeper characters (one loving piano, while the other always having witty retorts) are portrayed a vengeful and bloodthirsty. One of the most shocking lines that parallels the actual Columbine school shooting was when Eric goes over the massacre plan with Alex. “Most importantly, Have fun!” was his final line before they suited up for the massacre. These boys had been pushed so far by the other students it had drove their adolescent minds to unthinkable acts of violence directed at all peers, not singling out their previous attackers. Van Sant comments on the instability of adolescents and the effect the twisted society of high school can affect their minds.

The Columbine High School Memorial

Van Sant uses many non-professional actors in Elephant to the best effect. Each character, even though outwardly stereotypical becomes much more dimensional with each actor’s portrayal. Much of the film is based on character interactions and the high school mentality. Each character is pushed from outside forces, whether bullies (Eric and the spit wads tossed at him), family hardships (John and his drunken father), or societal restrictions (the GSA and their discussion), and each character is seen dealing with those problems in the context of the few minutes before the shooting. Van Sant shows that each has their own hardships, even the popular girl and her believed pregnancy, and each have their own way of dealing with it. The film suggests that at such a fragile time in a developing mind, the pressure that cooks students in high school seems to be counter productive in creation of well-adjusted successful adults.

Van Sant and Elephant outline many political and social factors on the institution of high school and the affect it has on adolescents. Much of the time spent for a majority of student’s deals not with academia but with the pressures of social and societal life. At that time we all try to find out who we are. Elephant though comments on the inaction we as a society have taken to look at the physiological torture some students are put through on a daily basis as a result of others in high school. I hope that any readers can take from this blog not only the analysis of this film but a larger lesson that we all need to learn and teach, as best as we can, to the next generation of the golden rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. Only through universal respect can we truly succeed as a society.

 

All images used are licenced free of charge from Creative Commons. Thank you to Flikr users David Friedel and Katerha for thier images. The users do not, however, endorse any opinions in the blog. 

Clever Kids: The Depiction of Precocious Children in David Slade's Hard Candy.

As a child I got a thrill out of watching movies that featured kids outsmarting adults. I could never forget the ingenuity of Macaulay Culkin’s character in Home Alone (1990) or how his spectacularly booby trapped house and quick thinking foiled the plans of two hardened (albeit dimwitted) criminals taking advantage of the Christmas season. I also loved watching Lindsay Lohan take on a dual role as twin sisters swapping lives and sabotaging their parents’ affairs in The Parent Trap to the point where I had to watch the movie almost every weekend.

With the exception of films like Home Alone and The Parent Trap—family friendly movies whose plot focuses on crafty children—most films give children a secondary role. Sometimes children bridge the emotional gap between two prospective lovers in romantic films; other times children are seen but not actually heard, serving no greater purpose than to be part of a family unit. For this reason, even now as an adult, I am still drawn to films that show children asserting their authority or even films that capture the brilliance and a child’s awareness of the world. A film that truly alters the balance of authority between child and adult is David Slade’s Hard Candy (2005).

Hard Candy, a film about a 14-year-old vigilante who confronts and psychologically tortures an unsuspecting man, whom she believes to be a pedophile, demonstrates a non-adult character taking charge and behaving in an atypically mature manner. The film plays on the audience’s preconceived notions about children being helpless without supervision. When I first watched the movie (having been completely clueless about Hard Candy’s premise), I assumed I was going to be sitting through a film about some unfortunate girl enduring a traumatic experience at the disposal of the villainous pedophile Jeff. The opening scene plays up the young girl Hayley’s supposed naiveté in order to make her control and maturity more effective later in the film.

The façade of Hayley Stark’s innocence begins with a close up of an inappropriate chat dialog between a 39-year-old photographer Jeff aka “lensman319” and Hayley. Neither character is seen but the nature of the conversation is cause for concern. Hayley’s suggestively promiscuous yet childish screen name, “thonggrrl14” coupled with her flirtatious comments make her seem like the stereotypical teenage girl who carelessly draws attention to her age while trusting a complete stranger with her inner thoughts and personal information. While reading  lensman319’s texts insisting that he and Hayley “finally hook up” and Hayley’s suggestion that he “film [her] with [his] vidoecamera” before “doing it,” I could not stop myself from wondering if she either had ever seen Primetime or was just plain stupid. Needless to say, after seeing Hayley’s character for the first time, I was thoroughly convinced that she would fall into the trap of

In the subsequent scene, the first meeting of Hayley and Jeff, Hayley is the epitome of puerility, and Jeff the calculating and personable pedophile.  If I wasn’t already disturbed by this little girl so eager to get in a stranger’s car and drive to the man’s house alone, the intimacy established with back-to-back close-ups of Hayley’s and Jeff’s faces made me extremely uncomfortable.  The first shot of Hayley is a close-up in which she turns around; her soft features, round face, round eyes as wide as a baby’s, and slightly confused expression as she asks, “Jeff?” give evidence to her apparent youth and naiveté. A close up of Jeff follows; his smiling face and open demeanor are inviting to Hayley even as he inspires suspicion in the viewer. Even though Jeff is rather attractive –with his stylish hair, chiseled face, and boyish charm— his predatory looks, the way he undresses Hayley with his eyes, and his wolfish grin make him seem like a lecherous old creep.

The cuts between Hayley and Jeff ‘s close-ups reveal the difference in their height since Hayley’s head is almost always tilted up and Jeff’s is always at a downward slant.  A long shot of Jeff’s tall figure is a startling contrast to Hayley’s petite frame and size.  This difference in stature symbolizes Jeff’s authority and draws more attention to Hayley’s childishness. Just as Jeff typically dominates the frame in his non-close-ups, he seems to be entirely in control of the situation. As is typical of his type, he engages Hayley in conversation making sure to only speak about topics that interest her, boy-bands and teen novels—things that would be trivial to any grown man. For a brief moment a flier with the face of a smiling girl and the word MISSING come into focus, standing out on the wall just opposite of where Hayley and Jeff decide to sit. The appearance of the missing girl’s photo led me to believe that a similar fate would befall Hayley. Everything suggested Hayley’s eventual demise, and I had no way of knowing how wrong I was until everything takes a strange turn at Jeff’s home.  

After Hayley manages to get Jeff drunk in his own home, her demeanor becomes sadistic. With Hayley’s childishness sentiment exchanged for a cold mask of indifference and sadism, Jeff becomes the target of the viewer’s sympathy.  While the close-ups are still a factor in this scene, Hayley’s eyes are no longer round and her mouth becomes a thin disapproving line, proof that she was putting on a face the entire time in the café. Having tied Jeff up in a chair she insults him for believing she would be dumb enough to “chase him to the next drink.” When Hayley says, "Just because a girl can pretend to be a woman doesn't mean she's ready to be a woman," she let's both Jeff and the viewer know that her logic is sound and she's aware of how things should be. Her verbiage becomes more complex and less moronic as she explains her true intention to discover what secrets Jeff may be hiding in his home.

 Hayley proves her intelligence as she admits to intentionally behaving like a trusting young girl, who would foolishly believe that “anyone could know so much about her.” The balance of power has clearly changed. The few long shots, show Jeff—his height stolen by the low position of the chair—now appearing shorter than Hayley who stands confidently before him with her hands on her hips.  This reversal of stature is also apparent in the close-ups with  a discombobulated Jeff, staring up at Hayley with a confused expression and Hayley looking down at Jeff.  Jeff’s growing uncertainty and anxiety comes out in his voice as he asks Hayley, “What are you going to do to me?” Overwhelmed by the drastic change in events, I couldn’t help but see the irony in Hayley’s response, “Anything I want!” With Hayley’s dubious nature revealed, and the ambiguity of Jeff’s involvement with the missing girl, Jeff becomes the prey and Hayley the predator. 

 

GINGER SNAPS and Hell in a Handbasket

As the decades keep ratifying the truism, “High school is hell,” filmmakers too continue to find adolescence a rich playground for the supernatural. The cinematic landscape of the new millennium is positively rotting with juvenile gore and romanticized horrors. But perhaps one can extract a modicum of truth out of such teenage populist delights this Halloween. John Fawcett's 2000 film Ginger Snaps, for one, makes a bloody lycanthropic mess out of feminism. The film is equal parts teen comedy and camp horror, exploiting the werewolf metamorphosis as a metaphor for puberty.

Meet Ginger and Brigitte, sisters on the precipice of adulthood. Hobbies include making suicide pacts and slideshows of their gruesomely staged deaths in their dungeon of a bedroom – clearly humor tempered by a thousand paper cuts. Late bloomers, the two dread the thought of menstruation for it would mean yielding to conformity and venerated womanhood. Menstruation disgusts and embarrasses them but also threatens their sense of identity as misanthropic outcasts, which they gladly play up as students. When Ginger finally gets her first period, a werewolf attacks her the same night to make the transformations run parallel. Ginger begins to take on masculine qualities, becoming sexually aggressive and physically abrasive, sprouting a tail in the process. She learns how to wield her newfound sexual confidence to disrupt the the social hierarchy at school and racks up a body count along the way. Consequently Ginger comes to resemble the archetype of the monstrous femme fatale, which in turn is the manifestation of the historically male fear of being overtaken by a woman; she might as well have sprung fifty feet.^[1]

The title of the movie itself is a pun of a binary opposition between femininity and masculinity, wherein the domesticity evoked by baked goods is contrasted with the machismo Ginger develops once she “snaps.” Qualities of feminine power – being nurturing, tender and positively aggressive – are seemingly rejected in this story by Ginger's dubious transformation, but subtly reaffirmed by her mother and younger sister. It is, after all, the gleefully ignorant mother who takes to investigating the girls' behavior and actually discovers the truth. Brigitte, the more introverted sister, also demonstrates power through her unwavering devotion to Ginger. Overcoming her social inertia, she even enlists the help of others to save her sister. Indeed, it is through her triumph that those growing pains of youth finds the most cathartic articulation.

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¹ See 1958 cult classic, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

Image courtesy of the author.

Girl, Interrupted - An Exploration of Mental Illness and its Treatment

Girl, Interrupted is one of those movies from the late ‘90s that stays with you. Based on a memoir by Susanna Kaysen, this film tells the story of a fictional Susanna, played by Winona Ryder, and her stay in Claymore, a psychiatric hospital. It is a film not so much about the process of recovery as it is about what makes a person choose to recover (or not), about all the factors surrounding that process rather than the process itself. Although sensationalized, the film nevertheless provides a worthwhile exploration of mental illness and the effectiveness of the mental health care system.

What is mental illness? What is mental health or normality? In the world of Girl, Interrupted, the answers aren’t as clear-cut as one might expect. For one thing, the film questions idea that mental illness even exists. Set to the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the whole world outside of Claymore seems to have gone crazy. As Susanna’s draft-dodging boyfriend says, “Everything’s changing, man. What the f--k do they know about being normal?” Repeatedly, Susanna questions the validity of her diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, and at the end of the movie, even after she has taken advantage of the services available at Claymore, she reiterates that she still does not know what her diagnosis or even mental illness mean. One possible interpretation of these plot points, however, is that Susanna, like the rest of the world, is simply different from the others at Claymore. At first glance, the film does seem to create a dichotomy between Susanna (‘sane’) and these others (‘crazy’). This is true not only at the start of the film, when she first enters a psychiatric unit of women behaving bizarrely, but is continuously reaffirmed. The head nurse (Whoopi Goldberg), for instance, explicitly differentiates Susanna from those who are actually “crazy.” In contrast to them, Susanna is “driving herself crazy.” Similarly, Susanna’s psychiatrist tells her that, for her, “sane” and crazy” are “courses of action” that she must choose between. Together, these scenes seem to imply that some people are just fundamentally mentally unstable, while others are not (but can choose to be).

To a large extent, these statements are undermined by the events of the film. Susanna is only in Claymore because of a suicide attempt, and she delivers a heartbreaking soliloquy about just how much emotional pain it took to get her to that point. It seems doubtful that she chose to be that way any more than anyone else would choose to experience debilitating suffering. Rather than a black-and-white crazy-or-sane world, what Girl, Interrupted portrays is a spectrum of mental health, with mental illness on one end and mental health on the other. Interpreted differently, Susanna’s psychiatrist’s words sound less like an affirmation that she is not like those others but that she rests somewhere in the middle of this continuum, with more opportunity for recovery but not necessarily as someone fundamentally unlike her peers. The film also attempts to provide hope even for those at the far end of this spectrum. Even Lisa (Angelina Jolie), the diagnosed “sociopath” who feels no sympathy or guilt after Daisy’s suicide, breaks down after being called “dead inside,” and the film implies that she may yet recover. “Crazy,” Susanna says in her final voiceover, “isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified.” In the world of Girl, Interrupted, those who are mentally ill and those who are perfectly sane are fundamentally the same.

Even as it provides a less than straightforward depiction of mental illness, Girl, Interrupted’s portrayal of the mental health care system is even more ambiguous. Not only is Susanna’s diagnosis consistently questioned, but so is the process of psychiatric care. Susanna’s first psychiatrist, for instance, sleeps during one of their therapy sessions; incompetence thus becomes more than just an implication, but a fact. Even the idea of recovery is brought into doubt. While Susanna does ‘get better’ and leave the hospital, the idea that one cannot recover from mental illness, that all that’s required to escape Claymore is to lie, is brought up time and again. When Daisy (Brittany Murphy) is released from Claymore, for instance, she is clearly not recovered or healthy, and she engages in numerous self-destructive behaviors before committing suicide. Overall, the film appears to criticize the mental health care system for its vagueness, inconsistencies, and incompetence, even as it acknowledges that psychiatric care can be beneficial for at least some people.

Girl, Interrupted is a film about mental illness and its treatment, created over a decade ago, set in the late 1960s. While both of these facts date it to some extent—particularly in the treatments portrayed—the movie remains relevant in its exploration of mental illness, mental health, and psychiatric care. Are “crazy” people really all that abnormal or different from the rest of the population? Is psychiatry legitimate? Can treatment work? The questions are still pertinent, and the film’s answers—that those with mentally illnesses aren’t that much different from anyone else, that the system can help but has fundamental problems—continue to resonate.

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.

 

Girls and boys, and the daddy who got away

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved her father very much. One sad day, her father went away never to return, leaving behind a very sad little girl who grew up into a very brave, very smart young woman who never stopped her missing her daddy. One day she stumbles into a strange new world and, in a quest for independence, a quest chasing after her father, she discovers him only to lose him again, and only to discover herself. In the end, she returns home.

This is the story, and it is repeated over and over again. Interestingly, two recent uses of this storyline occur in the Syfy channel’s Alice miniseries and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (AiW) film, both adaptations of Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Although sexuality and Alice’s father barely figure in the original novels (if at all), they become vital components of both modern works, resulting in a female adulthood that revolves around a choice between men.

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Syfy’s Alice can be considered a sequel to and modern reimagining of the original story. Once again run by a tyrannical Red Queen, Wonderland has become a futuristic city of people dependent upon tea made of human emotion, extracted from kidnapped victims from our world. This is a world on the brink of collapse. It is a world in need of saving.

And who better to save it than a young woman named Alice?

In Alice, when Alice was a little girl, her father disappeared, and ever since then, she has been searching: with maps, online, and even in relationships. “Just because Daddy left doesn’t mean they all will,” Alice’s mother tells her, and here we have our first major difference between the two Alices: in the novel, she is a child first, an essentially asexual being driven by curiosity and a sense of adventure. But as a young woman, Alice’s gender and sexuality cannot be ignored; she has breasts, she has a past, and she has boyfriends.

All of a sudden, growing up has taken on a whole new romantic and sexualized meaning, one dependent on her relationships with others. As this quote tells us, a dichotomy exists between Alice’s father, the figure who presides over her childhood, and her (male) romantic partners, those who preside over her current life. This Alice is consistently caught between men, with her choices and motivations dependent on these figures. Consequently, this Alice’s trip to Wonderland is not driven by a strange white rabbit but, rather, a man with suspiciously rabbit-ear-like hair kidnapping her boyfriend, Jack.

After Alice arrives, she finds her way to a tea shop, run by the Hatter, only this Hatter is not particularly mad. He is attractive, charismatic, and a member of the resistance against the Queen. Unresolved sexual tension abounds, until such time as Alice is captured and reunited with Jack.

Jack Hart, that is—the Queen’s son, already engaged to another woman. Another member of the resistance, he came to our world with a purpose, you see: to find the daughter of the brainwashed man who makes tea shops possible. Alice’s father, you see, no longer remembers his old life, and he is now the lead scientist responsible for emotion extraction.

At this point, Alice remains in Wonderland not to rescue Jack but to rescue her father—the parent who left, the parent who drives her forward, the parent who does not keep her safe and comfortable as her dinner-cooking mother does. Although Alice is still reeling from these revelations about Jack, her journey now revolves around becoming daddy’s little girl once more.

Eventually, Alice does meet her father, but no amount of stories about his past can seem to make him remember. Only after Alice begins to cry, infantilizing herself back into that little girl, does he get some inkling of his memory back. Alice’s father comforts her with her old childhood nickname.

The moment quickly fades, however, as the Queen’s guards storm the area. Alice is once again taken prisoner, as is the Hatter. Ultimately they escape and soon find themselves in a room full of prisoners from our world, zombie-like figures with their emotions being drained from them. “Wake up!” Alice yells, and on the other side of a video feed, watching the commotion, her father remembers.

In the end, it is not infantilization but an act of adult agency that brings Alice’s father to her, and after a decade of separation, the two share a poignant reunion.

His death should come as no surprise.

By this point, Alice is no longer a little girl. She no longer trusts Jack, a man clearly wrong for her, but does trust the Hatter. Once daddy’s little girl, Alice has become a leader urging others to save themselves. This Alice, all grown up, has no need for daddy anymore. Having matured, it is now time for her to let go of her father, to let go of childhood, to defeat the Red Queen and leave Wonderland, and move on.

Once Alice is home, though, the story is not yet over. It can’t be, because that would leave her alone. Just as she finishes packing away her map of potential father-locations, Hatter arrives, and the two share a passionate kiss. In this way, an exchange of women reminiscent of Elizabethan-era plays is finalized: Alice moves from a strange limbo between two men, an absent father and a very present boyfriend, to the new “right” significant other. Although seemingly a self-driven character, her motives and storyline remain tied to the men in her life, and most actions are motivated by, or symbolically tied to, these characters.

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Although a very different reinterpretation, AIW shares many thematic similarities with Alice. Set in the 1800’s, the film follows the original Alice’s return to Wonderland, years later. Notably, AIW begins not with Alice, but with her father. He is discussing a business idea when a young Alice, frail and frightened, emerges. She has had another dream about her first trip to Wonderland and needs her father to comfort her. “Do you think I’ve gone round the bend?” she asks him.

Gravely, he answers, “You’re mad, bonkers, off your head. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

Even after his death years later, Alice’s father continues to dominate the narrative of her life. When Alice’s mother reacts badly to one of her daughter’s jokes, Alice’s immediate response is, “Father would have laughed.” When the Mad Hatter asks if he has gone mad, she repeats her father’s words nearly word-for-word: “I’ll tell you a secret,” she says. “All the best people are.” Even during the climax of the film, when Alice must defeat the Jabberwocky, it is her father’s philosophy that leads her to victory; he believed in “six impossible things before breakfast,” and by recounting her own mad adventures, she saves the day.

Alice’s father, in other words, is responsible for the person Alice is and becomes, creating a curious and precocious young woman who cannot conform to the societal standards her mother both stands for and enforces. Similar to Alice, while her mother represents a drab and ensnaring domesticity, Alice’s father represents the adventure and independence of Wonderland. It is this mindset, in combination with a fear of being trapped in domesticity with a truly atrocious suitor, that leads Alice to chase the white rabbit down the rabbit hole one more time.

In the end, having recovered the “muchness” she lost just as she lost her father, Alice returns home, now an adult with a particular life in mind. After turning down her suitor, she decides to follow her father’s business dream and co-founds the East India Trading Company.

As tempting as it is to construe this ending as Alice taking control of her own life, however, her father’s profound influence makes another interpretation necessary: namely, that Alice chooses her father, rather than herself. After all, this business venture was her father’s idea. The movie begins with him proposing it, and it is always discussed in regards to him.

Although the final shot of AIW of Alice sailing into freedom at the head of a new economic empire, she nevertheless does so while chasing her father’s dream.

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In both of these modern interpretations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Alice’s life consists of two domains: a domestic sphere of comfort and even stagnation, represented by a mother, and a public sphere of growth and adventure, represented by a father. Unlike in the original novels, however, these Alices are young women on the cusp of adulthood; they are now women first. For both the Alice of Syfy’s Alice and the Alice of Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, growing up thus becomes about a choice of men: whether to stay with father or to stay with Hatter, whether to marry or remain daddy’s girl. Other options are never even brought up in the script, much less considered by Alice.

Although supposedly self-driven, these Alices are not their own people, not really. They do not even seem aware that they could perhaps choose, as they once did as children, to follow solely themselves.

Glee Season 1: Violence, Rape, and the Problem of Gender

Unless you have been living under a TV rock this past year, you have no doubt heard of Fox’s hit show, Glee. Part musical, part melodrama, part satire, Glee follows the daily lives of a high school glee club and associated adults. Due to its reliance on stereotypes, Glee walks a fine line between progressivism and tired tropes, between reinforcing these stereotypes and pointing out their absurdity. While successful in some arenas (such as homophobia), this balance is particularly shaky when it comes to gender. Despite its seemingly progressive nature, Glee relies on traditional gender expectations to a dangerous extent, as evidenced by its use of romance, pregnancy, and even unacknowledged rape.

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To say much of Glee revolves around romance is a bit like saying the club sings songs sometimes. Rachel is into Finn who is dating Quinn, until Finn and Quinn break up and he and Rachel date for a while until he breaks up with her and she begins dating Jesse, only she and Finn are still in love and then Jesse betrays Rachel and Rachel and Finn become an item. Will is married to Terri but has a thing with Emma who is going to marry Ken until Terri and Will split up and Will and Emma kiss, only then Will kisses another woman and Emma and Will split up and Emma starts dating a dentist and then Will kisses her again. And that’s not even getting into the side-characters’ love lives.

What is telling about these romances, however, is just how dependent they are on traditional gender roles. Take the break-up between Rachel and Finn. The initiator, Finn, is driven by very predictably “male” motivations: lust, and a dislike of actually listening to his girlfriend talk. Granted, some degree of restlessness can be expected due to his recent breakup with Quinn, and Finn does regret his decision and spends a good chunk of the first season pining after Rachel. That said, the basic story is still this: a guy leaves his clingy girl for other hot chicks, a plotline that is not only cliché but also insulting to both men and women.

The story between Will and Emma is nearly identical, only in this case, Emma all but disappears from the show after their quasi-breakup. Now that she and Will are no longer steeped in unresolved sexual tension, she has served her purpose on the show.

Intertwined with these romances are the pregnancy storylines, which range from predictable to borderline offensive. Both are based on one fundamental idea: women lie.

First there is Terri, Will’s shrew of a wife. Terri is the one with the power in their dysfunctional relationship, which of course means that she is both manipulative and emotionally abusive. When Terri believes herself to be pregnant, she is thrilled, as this means she can keep Will with her; when Terri learns this was a “hysterical pregnancy,” a false pregnancy brought upon by her own womanly emotions, she decides upon the most logical course of action: to lie to Will and fake a pregnancy for several months, going so far as to blackmail a doctor into showing her husband another woman’s ultrasound.

When Will learn of this deception, he is understandably upset. Who wouldn’t be? To the show’s credit, his pain and his love for Terri and his would-be unborn child are palpable, and the show does not shy away from allowing Will to tear up. Unfortunately, the show also does not shy away from making the scene in which Will learns of Terri’s betrayal downright offensive.

In theory, the scene of Will’s realization is a tragically honest depiction of pain, hurt, and horror for both Will and Terri. In actuality, it portrays borderline physical abuse, with Will grabbing Terri’s wrist, pushing her against a wall, and violently ripping the pregnancy pad off of her stomach.

This borderline abuse is also portrayed as justified behavior from the show’s seemingly ‘good’ and ‘admirable’ protagonist. After all, Will’s emotional reaction is understandable, is it not? And he’s merely acting out his pain. And it’s not as if he actually hits Terri, just overpowers her and scares her a little.

Considering that one in four women in the United States suffer from domestic abuse at some point in their lifetimes, according to the National Institute of Justice and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, such a message is dangerous, reinforcing the popular idea that there exists an acceptable level of abuse. Unlike Terri’s deception, which happens rarely and, to this extent, probably never, this sort of partner violence happens all the time.

And yet, the behavior condemned is not that of the man grabbing a woman’s wrist and backing her up against a wall.

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Quinn’s pregnancy storyline is not much better. She, too, lies about her pregnancy—not about its existence, but about the father. The father, you see, is Puck, an irresponsible jock who does little more than bully others or sleep around. Despite his low intellect, her boyfriend Finn is at least somewhat responsible and loyal, and he is taken advantage of by Quinn again and again: for example, he takes a job to support her and the baby, and his mother even takes Quinn in after her parents kick her out.

To the show’s credit, Quinn is not simply condemned for her premarital coitus and subsequent deception; rather, she is portrayed sympathetically, shown as struggling with acceptance from her peers and even her parents. Nevertheless, the show places the responsibility for the pregnancy on Quinn, even though she was raped.

When Quinn and Puck sleep together, Quinn is drunk. When Quinn expresses hesitation, Puck’s response is, “Here, have another wine cooler.” What the show does not seem to realize, however, is that a drunk person cannot consent. By purposefully getting Quinn drunk in order to have sex with her, Puck rapes her, yet another instance of violence against women that happens all the time.

So much, in fact, that it seems to have become normalized to the point of invisibility. Glee never acknowledges this rape but plays it up as romance, and the responsibility for this sexual activity and for the pregnancy, Glee tells us, rests primarily with Quinn.

Another particularly egregious example of unacknowledged rape also involves drugging. In particular, when Sue Sylvester, the evil gym teacher, wants to blackmail Principal Figgins, she takes him out to dinner, spikes his drink, brings him back to bed, strips him, and takes incriminating pictures. Sue then blackmails the principal by saying she will show the pictures to his wife, thus making his wife think he is having an affair.

Just imagine this sequence of events with the genders switched, with a man spiking a woman’s drink and taking her to bed—it’s more than a little disgusting, isn’t it? At best, Sue merely pretends to have raped Figgins, all the while relying on the expected public perception that they were having an affair.

Instead of focusing on Sue’s actions, the show emphasizes the humor of framing a man for cheating and then plays this plotline for laughs. After all, it is not as if a man can be raped, and especially not by a woman.

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As should be evident by now, Glee is not exactly the fun progressive show it makes itself out to be. Nor can it even be considered “just” satire or comedy—the scene where Will finds out the truth of Terri’s pregnancy, for instance, is certainly not played for laughs. By hiding behind humor and common tropes, by writing as if the show exists in a vacuum of character interactions even as it draws on common stereotypes, Glee does a disservice to its viewers. Even as it condemns certain behaviors such as using homosexual slurs, it normalizes gender norms and violence against women. In this way, the show reinforces such behaviors even as it makes them invisible by never acknowledging its own usage of them.

A mainstream show holds a responsibility to be aware of the messages it sends out. Unfortunately, Glee does not even seem aware of its own gendered storylines and themes.

 

Stereotypical but not typical

Precious follows Claireece "Precious" Jones, an obese, illiterate 16 year-old in 1987 Harlem. She is kicked out from school for getting pregnant the second time (both times by her father) and at home, is abused by her tyrannical mother, Mary (Mo’nique). Her life starts to turn when Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), her GED instructor, and Mrs. Weiss (Mariah Carey), a social worker, help her transition out of abuse and illiteracy, yet not beyond the entrenched boundaries of poverty and HIV.

“Mariah Carey and Mo’nique are in it? And Tyer Perry’s producing it?” My friend saw a still of Precious and assumed it was a comedy.

When names like Mariah Carey, Tyler Perry and Oprah, who co-produced the film, are being mentioned, it certainly doesn’t evoke impressions of spellbinding acting, seriousness or poverty, respectively. Additionally, because the premise of Precious is already incredibly dramatic, it predisposes the film to be judged and criticized before it’s been seen. But descriptions like “poverty porn,” “stereotypical,” and “Lifetime-y,” are unoriginal presumptions that overlook the film’s idiosyncrasies.²

Watch before you judge: serious and Mariah Carey unite impressively well in Precious. Flickr Creative Commons.1

Viewers will be afraid to blink throughout the film or will cover their eyes completely because director Lee Daniels will engage you by making you feel uncomfortable. The camera in Precious is rarely completely still, even when attending still scenes: this perpetuates the underlying vigilance and instability that characterized 1980’s Harlem. Contrastingly, Precious is stoic and stagnant: she hesitates to speak and readily accepts abuse. Her appearance may suggest otherwise, but she's inhibited and defenseless, handicapped by years of trauma. It is through this presentation, a perspective only film can provide, we can begin to sympathize with Precious, the girl who symbolizes every one of America’s problems.

And abandoning our preconceptions is easy for a film this unique: nothing is unnecessarily sensationalized because nothing needs to be. Precious herself may be a 350-pound cliché (especially as she steals fried chicken and craves McDonald's) but the film’s approach to New York’s social injustice is surprisingly stark and believable. Guns, drugs and male aggression are ignored. The film instead spotlights exclusively on minority women and depicts the most pervasive kinds of violence: domestic, sexual and worst of all, unreported. It’s startling just to see Mary talk: Mo’nique revealed she was portraying her own abuser from childhood, and the camerawork complements her intensity with frequent close-ups, shots from Precious’s colossal yet vulnerable point of view, and cut-ins of hand gestures (which reveal a lot about internal state).³

Consequently, Daniels’ discreet portrayal paints a New York City darker than what we’re used to: he reveals endemic issues that can’t be solved valiantly or temporarily as they can be in Martin Scorsese’s films or Slumdog Millionaire. Precious may be one of the most painful films of the year because it concentrates on familiar social problems resolved by acquiescence, not fairy-tale endings.

"Bittersweet" is a fitting oxymoron to describe general reaction: it's that sad film you love because it makes you cry. And maybe because it’s that time of the year, an incongruous alignment of Holiday cheer and finals stress, I was especially moved by Precious. My problems and pains may all be relative, yes, but how lucky am I? How lucky are you?

 

Image Credits

¹ "Marcel Duchamp and Mariah Carey play chess." Wreck and Salvage. Flickr Creative Commons. 1 Nov. 2008.

Works Cited

² Peterson, Latoya. "Precious Reactions Interesting, Infuriating." Jezebel. 02 Nov. 2009. Web. 08 Dec. 2009. <http://jezebel.com/5395444/precious-reactions-interesting-infuriating>.

³ Hirschberg, Lynn. "The Audacity of Precious." The New York Times Magazine 25 Oct. 2009. The New York Times Magazine Online. 21 Oct. 2009. Web. 8 Dec. 2009. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25precious-t.html?pagewanted=4>.

Apatow: stick to 16-year-old virgins

 

Whereas most movies about high school are satirized, sexualized, sugared pink and varsity blue, Freaks and Geeks colors high school in the explicit shade I remember: gray, bleak and disenchanting aloft the warm glimmer of graduation.

The AV Club membership comes with a D&D package. Freaks and Geeks. Creative Commons.¹

The shouldn't-have-been canceled show takes course in a Detroit suburb high school where biting reality censures individuality and ambition. Immediately I was struck by the mise-en-scene’s muted tonalities and subtle traces of Patti Smith and drug limbo, delicately asserting the show’s 1979-1981 premise. It’s tacit that the characters are preoccupied by sex and drugs but creator Paul Feig and producer Judd Apatow don’t rely on easy devices, making this high school sitcom accessible, nuanced and mature, a coming-of-age that came to age. Freaks and Geeks's tribute to high school doesn’t parody the fourteen year-old id, but rather delegates our experiences through the namesake freak and geek, Lindsay and Sam Weir.

Weir'd out - siblings Lindsay and Sam (front). Freaks and Geeks. Creative Commons.²

Sam Weir (John Francis Daley) is afraid of sex and booze, preferring Stars Wars and Steve Martin on any given Friday. As a geek, he likes girls but can only talk to his mom and older sister, Lindsay (Linda Cardellini), a sixteen year-old goody-goody cum grungy ex-mathlete. She is neither Mean nor Gossip, Interrupted nor Gilmore: normal, really, but mislabeled as freak instead of misunderstood, well-intentioned and just. Asking the retarded boy to Homecoming, helping potheads cheat math class, and defending mortified Sam from bullies: all for story development and simultaneously as the most plausible adaptation of my own four years. 

 

 

"Don't mind us, just realistic..." Freaks and Geeks. Creative Commons.³

"How embarrassing, it's after Labor Day!" Gossip Girl. Creative Commons.⁴

 

The cast is the best I’ve seen but the surprise performance is Apatow’s. Actors have to adapt; producers aren’t expected to. Noticeably absent were his pedestrian pharma-phallocentric humor (“dope n’ dick jokes,” my cousin calls it) and predictably unpredictable narratives. Freaks and Geeks presents, but not boasts, thoughtful composition, livid undertones, motifs, sound manipulation, evocative camera movement and a complex female lead: all the highbrow aesthetics Apatow, a former USC student, is shy to show.

"She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers." A limited palette, low key lighting, spatial overlap, goddess vs. mortal and other vocab I learned from Film 101. Freaks and Geeks. Creative Commons.⁵

In fact, Apatow’s fingerprints emerge mainly from the casting: his frat-pack of Seth Rogan, James Franco, Martin Starr and Jason Siegel play major roles. Cronyism is overlooked, however: the characters stray far from typecast (Rogan plays sad and lovelorn; Franco, heterosexual) and acting styles are painstakingly individualized. With little doubt is Freaks and Geeks Apatow’s best defense to criticisms of monotony, testifying his craftsmanship beyond Pineapple Express-ionism.

But my point: there is no need to hyper-exaggerate the most gawkish interlude of our lives. Easily was I amused and nostalgic from watching Lindsay cram for Academic Decathlon and dancing to the Grateful Dead.  It’s not hard to make high school entertaining but Hollywood rarely gets this right (Hollywood was probably home-schooled) and Apatow consistently does (Superbad is quintessentially his). But then again, maybe sex and drugs aren’t forefront in Freaks and Geeks since AIDS wasn’t invented yet and Nancy Reagan just started that redecorating project. For historical integrity, right, Judd?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image Credits:

1. "AV Club Geeks." Creative Commons. Allen Sepinwall. 26 Aug. 2007.

2. "Freaks and Geeks." Creative Commons. Signore Direttore. 7 Feb. 2009.

3. "Lindsay and Nick." Creative Commons. Allen Sepinwall. 14 July 2007.

4. "Gossip Girl Promo." Creative Commons. Fanpop. 2008. 

5. "Goddess and Mortal." Creative Commons. Allen Sepinwall. 19 July 2007.

 

 

Trapped Between the Walls

I prefer the French title of Laurent Cantet's award-winning film, before its loose translation into English loses the essence of the story. Entre les Murs, or Between the Walls, is certainly a more interesting name than The Class, and it more descriptively denotes a great theme of this story: that of being trapped.

A balding, but still attractive 30-something year-old, Monsieur Marin (played by François Bégaudeau who scripted the film from his own novel) is once again stuck teaching twenty some odd adolescents in a poorly run public school on the outskirts of Paris…and his students are stuck right back.

Marin makes a concerted effort to teach his reluctant students. He battles the universal forces that derail students’ intellectual development, from the stumbling block of their petty in-class disputes to the hurdle of negligent parents. Marin’s fight is familiar to anyone who has been a student or teacher in such a class.

Aside from a few gold star moments – Marin gets Soulayman, the class’ top trouble-maker, to enjoy and excel at an assignment of creating a self-portrait – the teacher’s struggle, even to get through a simple poetry lesson without allowing the restless students literally to drive him up the cinderblock walls that surround him, is futile. Their time-wasting diversions and distrust of his teachings – one student asks why it is necessary for them to learn the pluperfect subjunctive case, making the precocious yet dead-on observation that speaking thus is “bourgeois” – are inexorable and exhausting.

The students’ struggle is just as tiring. Those who care to learn are impeded by the trouble-makers’ disruptions, and those who don’t fit in – such as Wei, the Asian student who has far from mastered spoken French – are ruthlessly ridiculed (we all remember how cruel high school kids are).

Essentially, the story boils down to whether or not Marin can save Soulayman. In spite of the few flickers of hope, such as the self-portrait success as mentioned above, Marin is unable to convince the rest of the faculty, plus the moronic head of school, that Soulayman could amount to something, or that this school could help him. Despite Marin’s sincere efforts, which admittedly flounder a bit in the final moments when his own job may be on the line if he persists in his defense of Soulayman, Marin cannot save his mischievous, misunderstood student from the inevitable – expulsion.

The film ends on a bittersweet note. The last scene shows Marin and other faculty playing soccer in the courtyard as the students cheer them on, seemingly having forgotten about Soulayman’s unfortunate departure. It’s the first and only time the school appears a community rather than an ostracizing jail cell. The last shot, with the children’s happy cheers faintly heard through the closed windows, zeroes in on the empty classroom, and the walls that bind it, reminding us of the all too familiar feeling of high school: entrapment. 

Now showing at The Charles

Truffaut's "The Wild Child"

Recently Truffaut’s L’Enfant sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970) has found its way back into theaters. Over thirty years later it’s fresh and engaging, a testament to its timeless relevance. The film introduces the wild child by distant observation. For several minutes we watch a filthy kid with an apelike posture maneuver through dense forest and adeptly climb tall trees. He puts up a fight against two hunting dogs, disabling one before disappearing into a sea of foliage. Once caught, he’s mocked by the villagers and dragged through town by a leash tethered to his ankle. In these moments it's difficult to tell the civilized apart from the savage.

Doctor Itard, played by writer-actor-director Francois Truffaut, takes the purportedly deaf and mute child in and decides to civilize him. They name him Victor. The wild child sniffs at a mirror - an unknown object. Itard comes from behind with an apple, presenting it to the Victor through the mirror. The child reaches for the reflection until he realizes the stunt. Victor finally grabs the real apple, demonstrating a capacity to learn.

"The Wild Child" doesn't present us with melodramatic close-ups or a swelling musical score. It is directed with the same patience and simple dignity reflected in Truffaut's understated performance. A particularly touching montage involves the doctor's attempts at teaching Victor how to speak. He takes Victor's fore- and middle-fingers and presses them against his own larynx as he goes through the vowels. In another static shot he sits with Victor in front of a mirror. They practice pronunciation by lit candlewick that flickers with every utterance.

Truffaut craftily pulls at our strings by structuring the film with constant ups and downs. Whenever it seems like Doctor Itard's attempts at educating and socializing the boy are mere exercises in futility, the wild child's next move both surprises and impresses us. He develops a fondness for order, and learns how to ask for things he wants. It is particularly poignant that the first word Victor learns is "lait" (milk in French). The savage is suddenly humanized, and we're made to acknowledge a childhood bereft of nurturing and proper sustenance. Even at his most "uncivilized,” however, Victor conveys a connectedness to the natural world that the civilized will never experience or comprehend. Itard frequently observes Victor standing in the rain, rocking back and forth. He performs a similar ritualistic dance under the moonlight. The filmmaker affectionately develops Victor from a barbaric idiot into a dignified being with a reverence for the natural world.

One of my favorite moments is a brief cutaway to a deaf mute child at the institution sitting on a windowsill. He relays to a peer what the wild child is like. Using big, expressive gestures, he describes his teeth, the dirt covering his body, how he bites and claws out of fear; all the ways he differs from them. Scenes like these give the scenario depth and dimensionality. Viewers are permitted to witness multiple perspectives as Truffaut illustrates his fascination with children and their distinct world views.

The most surprising aspect of the film is how convincing Jean-Pierre Cargol is in the title role. Only a few times does his behavior seem contrived or rehearsed. Otherwise he shifts abruptly from quiet, wide-eyed observance to unrestrained animalistic ferocity. Later in the film Doctor Itard enters Victor’s room at night. Victor sits up in bed, taking Itard’s hand and resting it on different sections of his face. Voiceover confirms this is Victor’s way of communicating. It’s arguably a more effective mode than language could ever be. Cargol sustains a blank expression as the camera pulls in for a close-up. His performance is as touching here as it is when tears run down his face.

"The Wild Child" has plenty to say about childhood development. Nothing gives Dr. Itard, and arguably Truffaut, more joy in the process than witnessing Victor's discovery of invention -- he makes himself a chalk holder. Itard regards this as one of the more significant steps in development. Later he teaches Victor how to retrieve objects on command. He points to “marteau” on the board and Victor brings him a hammer. If he achieves the task successfully Itard rewards him with a glass of water. He concludes that if Victor fails, he corrects himself out of fear of punishment and not out of a sense of moral order. Itard decides to test his moral code by punishing him for a successful completion. Victor bites him in rebellion and Itard regards this as the biggest success. Following the act we see Victor more contemplative, and from then on there is weight and reason to his behavior.

In a moment of disenchantment, Doctor Itard concedes that his experiment has failed. The film cuts to Victor, curiously observing the small flame of a lit candle. He tests the heat with the palms of his hands and runs over the quivering flame with fluttering fingers. Victor is fascinated by fire – the cornerstone of civilization. He is learning how to control it. Candlelight serves as a motif in "The Wild Child," as it represents the taming of feral forces. Cinematographer Néstor Almendros (revered for his work in Days of Heaven) takes advantage and paints dark interiors with soft, flickering light. The stunning black and white was more a stylistic choice than a necessity.

Normally I have issues with voice over, but in "The Wild Child," Dr. Itard’s spoken journal entries provide a necessary backbone. The film is comprised of scenes established as vignettes, each opening and closing with a pinhole effect. Presented as series of episodes, the film itself plays like a string of journal entries. It doesn’t end with closure because it’s not about whether or not Victor will be “fixed.” The WIld Child is more I think about what it means to indoctrinate individuals into accepting and obeying societal conventions. It also sheds light on how substantive the early years are in the formation of a human being. Whatever the reason, it’s strongly recommended.

The Wild Child (French: L’enfant sauvage) [1970] 83 minutes. 1.66:1 Aspect. Written and directed by Francois Truffaut. Starring Jean-Pierre Cargol and Francois Truffaut. Available on DVD.