HopkinsCinemAddicts

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>.

Waltz with Bashir: life imitates art, calls for animation

Waltz with Bashir (2008) follows director/producer Ari Folman in his journey to rediscover his past from the 1982 Lebanon War. Initially, his pursuit is to confirm an ambiguous scene he witnessed as a soldier by interviewing veterans and interpreting their memories with a psychologist friend.  The film shifts from a series of personal recollections to a diplomatic appeal when each man’s account reveals the haphazardness of the soldiers, commanders, general public and war in general.

 
Waltz with Bashir is a hand-drawn animated documentary with careful attention to details. Waltz with Bashir. Flickr Creative Commons.¹

The genre is an interesting hybrid of documentary and animation: actual people are represented in cartoon versions of themselves yet dialogue is intact. Visually, it’s bold, stylish and impressively meticulous.  Over 3,000 frames were hand-drawn with tactful consideration to various visual cues (shadows, motion parallax and fine texture details) reminding us of the incredible effort and patience often overlooked in animation. With visual language this captivating, it's not hard to forget this is an educational documentary: Folman learned from previous documentary projects that cartoon-izing interviewees makes them readily familiar and accessible, thus more engaging to the audience. ²

And to portray each man’s shell shock, only the flexibility of animation can cater to human memory’s distortion, an underlying theme in the film. Whereas Folman’s memory is elusive, his friends can explicitly recall every dog that was shot, dismembered body parts floating amidst demolition, or their escapist wet dreams. “War is like a very bad acid trip,” Folman said, and that “animation is the only way to tell this story, with memories, lost memories, dreams and the subconscious.”³ Here, it's clear Waltz with Bashir proves life does indeed imitate art.

What then sustain the integrity of documentary amidst the punchy animation are the real voice recordings. Actual testimonials anchor us in reality so no matter how embellished the stories seem, the weariness and vulnerability in each veteran’s voice remind us that war is impossible to exaggerate. Appropriately, the film ends with real footage of the Sabra and Shatila massacre aftermath that Folman himself witnessed: the camera pans slowly across stacks of dirty corpses yet can barely keep up with the hysterical women that follow. We see it all through Folman’s cartoon eyes, emphasizing the contrast between the fanciful, imaginative world to the real.

Although animation will indefinitely be known for the naïve, childish fables of Saturday mornings, it is perhaps that stigma of novelty and innocence that accounts for Waltz with Bashir’s ingenuity: we are not used to seeing explicit content in cartoon, making the scenes all the more compelling. Funnily enough, lavishly funded war dramas with Hollywood actors can rarely resist glamorized action scenes or romantic conflicts. Waltz with Bashir ultimately does not challenge the seriousness of war and gives animated films the last laugh.

Image Credits

¹"Waltz with Bashir poster." Flickr Creative Commons. Wolf Gang. 11 Nov. 2008.

Works Cited

²"Ari Folman: "Animation, or Not at All"" Interview by David D'Arcy. GreenCine. All Media Guide, 23 June 2009. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. <https://greencine.com/central/arifolman>.

³"Ari Folman Finds Freedom in Animation." Interview by Steve Erickson. Film and Video. Studio Daily, 18 Dec. 2008. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. <http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/10304.html>.

 

Organic, no additives

The storyline of The Celebration (1998) is simple. It centers around a wealthy Danish family celebrating its patriarch’s 60th birthday: Helge is enjoying his dinner party when his son, Christian, accuses him in front of all the guests of raping him and his twin sister, Linda (who recently committed suicide). When Helge later admits to his fault during a family breakfast, his eldest son Michael tells him to leave the table so the rest can finish their meal. The family is clearly is dysfunctional, but contextually The Celebration is subtly complex, leaving more grays than black and white. What we’re shown on screen is so candid we’ve become nuanced to the family’s situation, discouraging us from making hasty judgments.

Why? Because the camera is truly like an eye in The Celebration: sequences are undiluted and coarse, almost encroaching and nosy. The sense of uncomfortable intimacy can be attributed to the hand-held camera movement, the lack of special effects, and the tightness of the shots mimicking eye contact (long shots in The Celebration only serve to provide general scenic framework). The second-hand awkwardness is vicarious and we feel twinges of shock and subtle comedic relief, rather than bursts of them: realistically, the film borders voyeurism, not fabricated entertainment, and there is barely a trace of post-production. But this seemingly rudimentary approach to filmmaking is incredibly calculated.  In the Dogme 95 approach to filmmaking, everything must be painstakingly planned to avoid the need for post-production, cover-ups or cinematic gimmicks.

Its “Vow of Chastity”¹ states:

1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed.
3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the action takes place.
4. The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen.
10. The director must not be credited.

Extracting poignancy from the mundane is Dogme 95's objective, maintaining that art does not have to rely on frills. Thus, not only does the filmmaker have to rely solely on the pedestrian for provocation, the audience is then given an unprocessed version of a story. These films can’t be watched passively: attention must persist or else we “fall behind,” risking appreciation for Dogme 95 entirely. Like in everyday life, in which we can be unsettled by the smallest deviations from the norm, The Celebration demands the same sensitivity: there is no “cheating,” like forewarning music or exaggerated shots to guide our expectations.

And obviously Dogme 95 has its limits. By its definition, it cannot film fantasy, imagination or history, all concepts cinema is characterized by, and in many ways, obliged, to depict. This strict doctrine exiles almost every popular filmmaker but it should not be considered as a backlash at or challenge to Hollywood. All films aim for the same goal of surprise, empathy and escapism: The Celebration goes to show that a narrative, a family affair, a deeper look into the less-dignified life can evoke all three.

 

Works Cited

¹"Dogme 95 -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 19 Nov. 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95>.

Rose-colored glasses, stocking-covered lens

For nearly the first hour, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell Atonement (2007) circumscribes World War II, if watched in mute, that is. The scenes are too lush, blithe and buttered in upper-class ennui to emit the faintest traces of war like gratitude or concern. While the camera voyeurs on English girls in pretty dresses, bitching about the guest list and dozing on the grass, it’s then the sound’s duty to portend doom: menacing piano keys, perforated by the vigilant, almost militant, cadence of a typewriter recur in war and peace. Although music is clearly a motif in Atonement, the cinematography is far too overwhelming to be sharing a blog post. 

Atonement. Creative Commons.¹

Class tension might have been the initial block in Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie’s (James McAvoy) romance. And petty social schisms seem a few years later amidst the war. Robbie serves the army now, no longer Cecilia’s family, and nurse Cecilia serves thousands of other soldiers. Estranged from her family is she for loving Robbie, wrongly accused of rape by her younger sister, Briony, (Saoirse Ronan) who was thirteen at the time. It was Briony’s accusation that sent Robbie to prison, then war, and Atonement is Briony’s appeal for redemption.

To show the contrast between war and pre-war, the mise-en-scene is incredibly indulgent up to the rising action. It’s a rare summer day in 1935 England and the dinner party is going to be so awkward that Cecilia just smokes, swims and sunbathes outside her mansion, wearing a different outfit for each doing. Here, the audience can easily feel summer’s drowsy spell. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey reportedly used Christian Dior stockings behind the lens to filtrate a sensuous haze: effective in simulating the hot weather, basked in pastels, warmth and tension, not unlike a Barbara Walters interview. Romanticism works well here, depicting the fleeting antebellum luxury of boredom and laze.

Pre-war scenes, elegant mise-en-scene. Atonement. Creative Commons.²

Not so much for the next half of the film set in 1941 (a bad year to be in England), which follows the trio in mostly battlefronts and emergency rooms. Explicitness alone would work well but Atonement just had to color-coordinate the outfits with the wallpaper so it’ll bring McAvoy’s eyes out more.  It’s a shame when camerawork upstages casualty because it feels phony and hollow, inconsistent with the contextual intricacies. The audience is consistently fed poetic composition (the teal of Briony’s eyes in sight of crimson gore) but at times unnecessarily from already provoking situations: civilians drowning in the tube station, the disastrous evacuation at Dunkirk, or strategically supine dead school children in a meadow. The camera work then becomes obnoxiously conspicuous when we feel awe instead of horror. Bastardizing humanity’s lowest low for cinematic frill aside, Atonement is definitely one of the prettiest movies I’ve seen.

 

Robbie in combat...in a poppy field. Atonement. Creative Commons.³

For a movie based on one of the greatest books in recent years, it sure has a weak narrative content. Granted, the books will always be better. The attempt to adapt a film accurately to its text has proven so futile that ingenuity no longer dictates filmmakers: to an extent, visual confirmation of what we imagined from reading is enough. Director Joe Wright seems OK with this: for his first feature film, Pride and Prejudice (2005), he unabashedly claimed he had never read Austen. But literary adaptation in Atonement doesn’t nearly get the same precedence as aesthetic. The disparity is so grand that Atonement could might as well be McGarvey’s portfolio.

Image Credits:

¹"Atonement movie poster." Flickr Creative Commons. Wolf Gang. 19 Nov. 2007. 

²"Cecilia and Robbie in the library." Flickr Creative Commons. Lori Tabor-Randall. 7 March 2008.

³ "Private Robbie." Flickr Creative Commons. Alice Dice. 26 July 2008.

All I Wanted was a break from midterms

(Spoilers ahead)

The spokesmodel of carnage: whatever she's selling, we'll buy a million.  Vanity Fair.  Creative Commons.¹  

In Wanted, a secret fraternity of assassins kills whoever’s name an ancient loom encrypts in weaving and their assassinations are entirely prevention: targets are predicted to commit heinous crimes, asserting the Fraternity's “kill one, save a thousand” motto. In turn, these predetermined criminals are nipped in the bud, killed while still innocent: fate is a lingering motif but free will makes the grand finale when Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) cheats own death sentence by destroying the organization (the loom eventually encrypts every assassin’s name since vicious-cyclically, they killed the thousands the loom named before. Get it?). I don’t know why McAvoy decided to be in this movie but Angelina Jolie plays herself, Morgan Freeman has a cool voice and I can't look at peanut butter the same way again.

Essentially it’s a junk movie sprinkled with telltale camera tricks (decreed by The Matrix), but nothing can compensate for its reliance on overplayed heuristics (hot girls, hot cars, hot blood). The movie’s sadism strikes me most although the mise-en-scene is conspicuously outdone (reviews have gushed its bullet-time cinematography and saturated colors. Lipstick on a pig). Too personally I'm offended when films justify recreational murder, so I'm confused why I liked this one.

If Jolie is given a gun, the film is automatically glamorizing violence. That's a rule.   Wanted. Creative Commons.²

 

I was drooling at the Bellagio blood shows, ricochet of Ferrari's and Jolie's mannequin body when I noticed two of my biases surface: my prejudice and cynicism for summer blockbusters versus my generosity to accredit acclaimed films for any twinge, chuckle or sigh they elicit as signs of ingenuity. If erudite, I should probably enjoy The Departed, The Godfather, Part II or Reservoir Dogs and not enjoy Wanted: I didn’t and did, and like McAvoy’s character, Wanted diverted my premature disfavor against all odds. Admitting this is embarrassing at best, shameful at worst.

With that in mind, it’s not always hypocritical to like things we should hate (like carnality and trans-fat), especially if they’re presented in a light that’s reasonable and enticing. The Fraternity’s 99.9% yield is pretty convincing and as a premise, I'll buy it although I know this is a movie,  but that doesn't stop my unconscious from bargaining: “I’m willing surrender my rationale and beliefs if you can entertain me or at least keep my eyes open for two hours.” Furthermore, film and TV can abuse this compromise, returning our perceptions ever so slightly, but increasingly, distorted. Without a doubt media is powerful, spellbinding us to a hum, then leaving us gobsmacked.

  

Too real to be real. April 17, 2007 at Virginia Tech. Flickr. Daniel Lin.³

But I doubt the filmmakers were trying to expose America’s underlying hypocrisy for violence: entertainment, not uncovering social ills, is their aim. Yet double-standards would be a prettier problem to approach since the real problem is unfortunately more persistent: violence has dangerously acquired more pardon and charisma over time. It should never be entertaining to see someone die. Why is wishing someone a painful, slow death great story development but cancer is not? Is it because cancer’s never been paired with glamour, gusto or Angelina Jolie? Why are Scorsese, Coppola and Tarantino considered today's most intuitive directors despite differences in portraying carnage?  I ponder, not preach, of violence because its interpretation requires painstaking-to-philosophical appraisal, sociocultural dissection, deduction over induction, but mainly because there are too many grays. Inciting depth criticism is perhaps why one could argue Wanted is above mind-numbing Hollywood detritus, but I’d hate to admit I was wrong again.

 

 

Image Credits:

¹"Angelina Jolie, Vanity Fair." Flickr Creative Commons. Tammy Manet. 16 Sept. 2008.

²"Wanted screenshot." Flickr Creative Commons. Poakpong. 3 July 2008.  

³ "03 Virginia Tech Vigil." Flickr. Daniel Lin. 18 Apr. 2007.

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.

 

 

Finding balance in disarray in Down by Law

The introductory scenes of Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law (1986) are fairly quotidian: morning traffic, abandoned gentrification projects, couples asleep in beds. These shots are deadpan and commonplace yet evoke unsettling familiarity, the root of which is beyond the fact the film is in black and white. Moreover, B&W cinematography is no straightaway to artisan but rather the opposite, demanding extra heed and creativity to compensate its drab or at least justify its use. It emphasizes contrast, brightness and saturation: facets typically not noticed in color, like the pearliness of skin drenched in dawn, expose our oblivion to everyday beauty. 

Post fight: Zack and his (very, very soon to be ex-)girlfriend. Down by Law. Creative Commons.¹

The film is set in dingy Louisiana where Zack (Tom Waits), an unsuccessful DJ and boyfriend, becomes cellmates with Jack (John Lurie), a successful pimp (and boyfriend. That’s not ironic, I don’t think). Both are innocent, embittered, and hostile until Bob (Roberto Benigni), the bubbly and convivial Italian immigrant, joins their cell and forges a friendship. They ultimately bond over a collective goal to escape and before long, they're on the run, clumsily by way of swamp in which they meet Nicoletta who provides them refuge (and for Bob, love). A happily-ever-after for Bob, who decides to stay with Nicoletta, but a bittersweet one for Zack and Jack. Their farewells are awkward, their hug shows restraint and the movie closes on their diametric paths. 

Jack and Zack bid farewell in fraternal exchange. Down by Law. Creative Commons.²

Although Down by Law depicts stark human behavior, its gritty settings do not rely on human presence to vivify a scene. Despite every scene's no-frills depiction of reality, the compositions feel eerily contrived. Like when first shown the prison, incarcerated men emit reckless fury, but a sense of order sheathes them as the camera pans across the cell bars, like a geometric grid teasing the tumult within. There's a sleazy pimp transaction that takes place in a quaint bedroom, fixed with satin sheets and florid wallpaper, and the tranquility of Zack’s bedroom is tarnished by the lavatory-style graffiti on the walls of an otherwise charming home. It’s in these paradoxical juxtapositions that the audience can discern the handicraft of film-making, the labored manipulations that strive for that just-right feel. 

When the props and sets are not modified, the camera is. As a character moves away, disrupting the perfect composition, the camera repositions and accommodates, rather than forces, the character’s new position within the frame: the Rule of Thirds is naturally eminent when filming the triumvirate. When filming characters in action, or on the run, the importance of composition is transferred from characters to setting, a static focus, and the runaway scene thus serves both as story development and aesthetic opportunity. Incidentally, the aim for balance and symmetry is most showcased in the film’s outdoorsy scenes: the New Orleans bog mirroring its woods, a road slicing its earth in half, and the divergent paths leading Zack and Jack to their respective coasts. When shooting outdoors, the Rule of Halves is consequently most employed just as bilateral symmetry prevails in nature.

Three fugitives on the run. Down by Law. Creative Commons.³

 

But the film’s virtue is beyond aesthetics. The beauty of Down by Law derives precisely from the lack of beauty in the film’s context: set in the dirty South where crime is child’s play, a scruffy movie in which prostitutes and poverty are as Hollywood as it gets. But applied as art form rather than as devices, composure and sentimentality surface, beckoning for attention. “The camera,” Dorothea Lange said, “is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera,” and salvaging grace from clutter is exactly what Down by Law teaches us to do.

Image Credits:

1. "Zack and Girlfriend." Creative Commons. Total Film. 17 Oct. 2005.

2. "Zack and Jack Goodbye." Creative Commons. OrganicMechanic. 31 Jan. 2007.

3. "Fugitives Rowing." Creative Commons. Alec Soth. 10 Oct. 2006.