HopkinsCinemAddicts

Defiance - An Adventure in Transmedia

Transmedia, specifically transmedia storytelling is the art of telling a single story or exploring a single world across different media. It is closely associated with the idea of a story world, a more abstract concept referring to a single narrative world that exists across different works of narrative art.

 

In the summer of 2011, Syfy announced an upcoming transmedia collaboration with gaming company Trion Worlds. The result is a two-part project that premiered this year in April with a long-form TV science-fiction political action drama and a corresponding multi-platform MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game).

 

    This is the background of the world they share. In the year 2046, arks carrying survivors of a dying alien solar system carrying an entire ecosystem arrive on Earth, causing war and a complete restructuring of the planet’s surface, society, and biosphere. The show takes place after this, in a town called Defiance, following the myriad political and social struggles resulting from the mix of alien and human cultures and agendas. To some degree, the show relies on tried-and-true plot tropes, such as Romeo and Juliet-style love stories, cultural and spiritual tensions, and classic science fiction elements like alien-on-alien battles, spacecrafts, blue glowy things, and futuristic energy weapons which account for most of Syfy’s budget on the show.

 

    The goal of the project was to extensively link the shared world of the game and the show. They take place in the same area at the same time, and the two branches of the project promise future crossovers, ranging from the ability of the player’s character in the game to appear in the show to large scale players’ actions influencing the show’s narrative future. At the moment, however, the crossover is limited to similar storylines and characters and timed missions in the game that must be completed by the next episode’s airing. The two development teams both made concessions for such a project to become a reality. While, for example, the gaming team thought the alien races known as “Voltan” should bring with them flying car technology, Syfy’s television crew told them that was right-out too expensive.

 

    Meanwhile, Syfy’s conceptual team thought horses or similar pack animals would fit the setting. The logistical team for the video game informed them that pack animals interfere with combat in games like the one they were designing. I admit to having not played the game, but I do have exposure to both television and games of this genre – and the mutual influence is clear.

 

    The TV show brings several well-recognized actors, including Grant Bowler, (known for his previous work in Ugly Betty and True Blood,) and Julie Benz, from (Angel and Dexter). Of course, the television actors served as the live models for their digital doubles in the game. The actors, along with the visual decisions for the various races in the world, had to be decided on several years in advance than they would have been for a typical science fiction show for like this without a collaborating video game team. On the other hand, while video games can relatively easily create very non-human aliens, a TV show has more limitations, meaning Defiance’s aliens look remarkably human. The collaboration has a kind of lowest common denominator effect, where both media have to take into account the limitations of the other.

 

However, transmedia collaboration is not without its strengths. Despite several obvious archetypes and standard genre elements, the extensive world-building is obvious from the very first episode. Because the show is free to tell for of its mythology in the setting of the game, the world feels like it has even more depth. There are two complete languages for the show and game, constructed by David J. Peterson, who also worked on Dothraki, the constructed language from Game of Thrones. Though we don’t see much of some of the alien races, as not all are represented in the main cast, each has distinctive cultural characteristics, evident in their speech patterns, dress, and attitudes, even in minor roles.

 

The races are also original in that the cultures seem to have been built from the ground up, rather than borrowed from Earth cultures and pasted onto alien species, a welcome relief to a veteran viewer of the genre (though some play it a little close at times).

    The show promises a world full of conflict and tensions, some which are more television arc-worthy, others of which could easily permeate throughout the show and game worlds (such as racial tension and environmental dangers). The show has recently been renewed for a second season, hopefully bringing the promised crossovers closer to reality.

Murder, Intrigue, Treason and Just a Bit of Young Love

    I hope no network ever sanctions a marathon of Homeland, because the one time I watched more than two episodes in a row I only narrowly avoided a heart attack.  Thrilling, investigative and unique, the Showtime series offers nothing in the way of lighthearted excitement.  An exception to this rule did emerge last week, however, in the gradual onset of romance between Dana (seventeen-year-old Morgan Saylor), daughter to the show's antihero Marine/terrorist/congressman/vice presidential hopeful Brody (Damian Lewis, mastering an American accent that completely eradicates his British appeal), and Finn (Timothée Chalamet, whose name suggests a Frenchness this boy does not exude), the son of Jamey Sheridan's Vice President/presidential hopeful Bill Walden.  Their interactions are a welcome respite from the show's thrilling intensity--mania, depression, danger, fear, secrecy, betrayal, bombs, assassination, aah!--and am I the only one who considers their relationship one of the most compelling in the show?

   Brody's duality is clearly the most important aspect of the series, but the audience is schooled in his history and his true nature episodes and episodes before his enigma is even partially explained to any character in the show.  The trials and hopes of his wife Jessica (Morena Baccarin) and even the professional and psychological revelations to which Claire Danes's poor Carrie Mathison is subjected no longer inspire much of my excitement on the level of character development. The fact that we've been privy to all the secrets they wonder about means we know there will be a point when they are enlightened, and we can anticipate how they will feel once they know what we know; there is little opportunity in the plot for either of these women to be uncertain, excited and happy the way Dana is in her story with Finn, the way that is fun to watch.  I am looking forward to seeing the circumstances under which Brody's secrets will be revealed and what he will do once he can no longer lead a double life, but I am not eagerly awaiting the subsequent fallout between him and Jessica or the ways in which his treason may fortify Carrie's CIA career.  The reactions and behavior of these characters are predictable to a point, and the lack of joy they experience in their lives makes for somber, if interesting and complex, lives for these women.  Conversely, Dana's behavior is engaging because it is unpredictable, and her life need not be broken and byzantine to be very watchable.

    Dana's place in her family is different for each parent:  To her father she a beacon of trust and caring whom he can let in on a select few of his many secrets, a source of advice and unconditional love, but her mother considers her unruly, unsupportive, a dependable enemy in countless arguments.  Her unique position in the family, as well as in her father's estimation, saves Dana from feeling what most of the characters feel--that they don't really know who Brody is--and removes her from the drama of tracking his every lie.  Hers is the only plot line not founded completely on Brody and his life of lies, thus she is the only character who lends herself to scenes of excitement not based on danger, of romance sans incredible psychological baggage.

    Though my four-year devotion to The O.C. may suggest I will be forever entertained by melodramatic high school romance, Dana and Finn's interactions are nothing like those on the erstwhile primetime gem.  Not only are Dana and Finn played by actual teenagers rather than 24-year-old, baby fat-free hotties, but their palpable nervousness around each other and their sincere surprise at the feeling of their growing attraction is apt and relatable.  The real-life quality of this young love provides a calming interlude in a show that otherwise "goes to 11," and I'm only a little embarrassed to admit I'm equally excited for Brody's treason interrogation and whatever scenes Dana and Finn will share this week on Homeland.

Dark City - A Science Fiction Spin on Noir

Dark City is both a science fiction film and a neo-noir. The film, directed and co-written by Alex Proyas, uses its science fictive breaks from reality to create a kind of genre commentary, placing a new spin and plot importance on long standing tropes of the noir tradition. In using a science fiction setting, the film can create a reality in which the metaphorical corruptions and convolutions of the world of the noir become literal. A man waking up with no memory, trying to piece his life together itself becomes a clue in a larger mystery of how this world works. Amnesia is not at all uncommon in noir, but in Dark City, amnesia and confusion of identity become actively malicious, controlled actions of the antagonists, the “Strangers,” who possess godlike powers to stop time and alter reality. Thus, the iconic labyrinthine cities of LA or Chicago give way to a city that is a literal maze that is twisted anew each night and designed purposefully without an exit. One scene, to drive home the metaphor, even depicts such a maze, designed for rats – as the residence of this city serve as subjects of experimentation for these “Strangers.”

The question of fate, of what makes a person who they are, that lurks at the center of many films of the genre is the one that these sinister experimenters are seeking to solve. They seek to understand memory and what drives a person to be the unique agent that they become. To this end, they arrange a classic plot – a betrayed husband, mad with jealousy, turns into a killer of prostitutes. Given the memories of a killer, they wondered, would he continue to kill? But the process fails and the man is left without an identity, framed for crimes he not only did not commit, but most of which never happened in the first place. The detectives who are staged to play their part come onto the scene, walking through dimly lit corridors in an old motel, giving the movie the classic feel – but they too are pawns, and the one detective who has seen the truth is driven mad. By assigning everyone's identities, these puppet masters create a truly noir world of corruption, where there is no secrecy, no innocence, and no place left untouched by a nefarious system. It becomes a world where nothing is as it seems, where no social bond is genuine, and where everything is as tenuous as the will of these unseen powers.

Our protagonist, assuming the assigned name of John Murdoch, is pursued by the Strangers, beings that, they reveal, literally assume the identities of the dead by wearing their skins. John is special – he possesses the same reality warping abilities as the Strangers, and begins to understand the truth – that there is no world beyond the city, that all of their lives are manufactured falsehoods. Much of what he notices fall into the tropes of noir. To convince the detective that the world, rather than he, is insane he says, “Daylight. When was the last time you remember seeing it? I'm not talking about a distant, half-forgotten childhood memory. I mean, like, yesterday. Last week? When? Do you have a single memory? You don't, do you? I don't think the sun even exists in this place.” The Strangers, though they have implanted everyone with the memory of the sun, are hurt by the strong light, and have created a world of perpetual darkness.

The plot is a bit convoluted and at points the artist choices come off as unintentionally comic, but the movie succeeds spectacularly in creating a world and feel with powerful aesthetics and strong philosophical themes.

The Cabin in the Woods: Humans in Horror

If you haven’t seen The Cabin in the Woods, the recent meta-horror movie written and directed by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, you may have heard that it’s crucial to avoid all spoilers, but that you should see it because it is good. Both of these things are true; the experience will be somewhat ruined for you – more than usual – if you learn too much about the film beforehand. This is because, though it begins like every other horror film you’ve seen – five college students go on a weekend trip to a cabin in the woods – nothing is as it seems. The official movie poster shows a rotating house, and says, “You think you know the story” – but you don’t.

So if you haven’t seen the film, I’m going to advise that you not read the rest of this post, because the rest of it will contain spoilers from the film. I think there is a shortage of analysis of the film in favor of vague, positive platitudes. There’s a lot to say about the film, but not if you refuse to spoil anything.

It turns out that there’s a corporation which is manufacturing this stereotypical horror movie plot for a mysterious client, which seems to demand this kind of thing. This is the driving interest in the plot for much of the film – on the one hand it is a horror which succeeds in being genuinely suspenseful despite its embrace of horror movie tropes (precisely because it is so self-conscious about them) – and on the other, it is a truly funny movie, also because of its hyper awareness. This produces an interesting effect on the audience. I often bounced between laughing hysterically and gripping my seat in suspense. Often times both horror and amusement came simultaneously. I don’t know how many films have done that, but I would call The Cabin in the Woods a success.

And the “client” this corporation works for is slowly revealed to be the “Old Ones”: ancient, evil gods who demand ritual sacrifice to continue to sleep. Without a successful one they will rise and kill every human on the planet. This ritual demands the horror movie tropes the film has followed so far. Most importantly, the five friends must die in a specific order. First, the “Whore” (Jules); then the Athlete (Curt), the Scholar (Holden) and the Fool (Marty); and finally the Virgin (Dana), though her death is optional as long as it comes last. And the corporation has a script to follow: when it’s time for the monsters to attack (in this case a “Zombie Redneck Torture Family”), they manipulate Jules and Curt into the woods. Jules is attacked and killed just before they have sex. Curt and Holden die later, but Marty and Dana manage to survive long enough to confront the people manipulating them and wreak their own havoc.

The interesting thing here is that none of the main characters really fit into the molds the ritual demands for them. Jules is not a “whore” in any sense of the word – she’s in a committed, monogamous relationship; Curt and Holden are both shown to be equally athletic and scholarly; Marty, who quickly catches on to the fact that they are being manipulated into acting out of character, is the least foolish of the bunch; and Dana, though a virgin, shows many aspects of her character which are far more interesting or relevant than whether or not she’s had sex before.

Once you finally understand everything going on in The Cabin in the Woods, it becomes clear that it’s a commentary on the genre – which is why I called it meta-horror earlier. The corporation manufacturing the ritual scenario represents the filmmakers and the “Old Ones” represent the audience, who demand a certain pattern. The film wants to reassert the humanity of the characters in its genre. It refuses to treat them as anything less than people, as horror often does and as it implies audiences sometimes demand. Instead it pokes fun at these demands, though the film clearly remains a horror film. And it’s precisely because of its treatment of its characters as human beings with inner lives that makes it so horrifying when the monsters are unleashed on them.

Superhumanity: The Human Characters of The Avengers

WARNING: SPOILERS

 

                After 4 years of setup, The Avengers has finally become a reality. Thankfully, it has lived up to its expectations, as it had the potential to be one of the biggest disappointments in cinema history. However, while it is filled with big explosions and thrilling action, it succeeds not through its thrills, but through the humanity of its characters.

                Superheroes represent the pinnacle of humankind. They are able to do things that people can only dream of doing, and they operate in a world of black and white. We love to go to the theatre or read comic books in order to imagine how awesome it would be to fight off evil invading aliens or a maniacal super villain. The Avengers gives us this escape, but each of the main characters is also a deeply flawed person in addition to an epic superhero.

                The majority of the film focuses on the team having troubles coming together in order to face their common foe. Each of their personalities forces them away from each other. Tony Stark overcompensates for his ego and drives everyone around him away with his pompousness, Bruce Banner struggles with his severe anger problems, and Steve Rogers is dealing with being a man who has lost touch with the modern world. Each of these problems is extended into the fantastical realm, such as Bruce Banner turning into a giant rage monster when he gets angry or Steve Rogers having been frozen in ice for several years, but they all resonate clearly with the audience. We like these people because we can relate to their problems, not because they can jump over buildings.

                The one member of the team that stands outside this pattern, and as such is a less effective character, is Thor. While he has to deal with the fact that the villain is his brother, he speaks in Elizabethan era English and feels less human than the rest. He is a god and as such exists on a different level than the other characters. In the end, he ends up getting less screen time as he is simply less interesting than the other characters.

                The humanity of the characters is truly brought to the forefront when, in classic Joss Whedon fashion, the most human of the characters is killed off. This death does not happen to one of the superheroic members of the team, but instead to Agent Colson, their completely human friend. He dies trying to protect Thor from his brother, but in the end proves mostly ineffective. His death provides a truly emotional moment for the audience. For those who have been watching these films since Iron Man, Colson has been a constant presence who helped to bring these characters together. However, even for those who have only seen The Avengers his earlier scene in which he starts to gush to Captain America about how he has collected all of his trading cards endears him to the audience. He represents us as we get excited about these characters. He looks up to them just as we do. His death allows the Avengers to move past their own personal issue and unite in their common grief.

                All of these human emotions pay off in the very last scene of the film. After the credits are done rolling, we are treated to a two minute long scene of these superheroes, still in costume, eating shawarma in a grungy New York restaurant. This moment is the most human moment in the film. No one does anything fantastic. No one says anything to each other. They simply sit there and eat, allowing themselves to relax after the stressful day they have had. This relaxation is a sentiment that everyone can relate to. Sometimes we just need to sit back and eat some food. It’s a refreshing thought to know that superheroes need to eat too. 

 

Steven Soderbergh's CONTAGION: The Disease Thriller as Genre Movie

Contagion, the latest film from chameleonic director Steven Soderbergh, is many things: a so-called hyperlink movie (in its use of globally-interwoven plotlines and a vast ensemble cast à la Traffic), a post-Katrina indictment of bureaucratic ineptitude in dealing with disasters, a chronicle of Internet-fueled mass hysteria, and a chronicle of various disparate individuals struggling to make sense of their lives in the wake of a calamitous event. The calamitous event is a disturbingly fast-moving pandemic of international proportions -- dubbed the MEV-1 virus -- and the massive cast consists of afflicted patients, public health officials, and medical scientists working on a cure. As such, the film fits neatly into the genre of “medical thrillers” or “disease epics,” and it is this status as a genre movie that I want to explore here.

Though perhaps not as well-recognized as its cousins the mystery thriller or the disaster movie, the disease movie is a genre governed as much as any by conventions and codes. Contagion fuses these generic conventions with a subtler auteurist side, producing a strange little thriller that, all along its way, flirts with formula while suggesting a darker, odder, more human reality buried behind the sad eyes of the actors. I want to go through a few of the thematic elements of the genre, one by one, to reveal the myriad ways in which Soderbergh brings them to cinematic life. Here are a few:

Patient zero. The disease thriller is almost always what I would call a genealogical movie. It is concerned with tracing the origins and lifespan of a character, its morality, its habits. What makes these movies so unique is that the crucial character is the disease itself. We see the symptoms it causes, but what we are most concerned about is where it came from, and -- almost always -- what human flaw led to its devastating spread. This is where the archetype of the “patient zero” comes in --  the first human to get the disease, and -- for better or worse -- the one to blame for the millions of deaths that follow. My first exposure to the concept of “patient zero” was, quite tellingly, through a prime example of disease-movie filmmaking: the AIDS epic And the Band Played On, which, like Contagion, simultaneously traces the devastating effect of the disease on individuals and the ambitious and somewhat self-serving attempts of the medical establishment to identify and cure it. In that film -- which is admittedly imbued with a much more historical, humanistic spirit than Contagion -- the figure who acts as the patient zero for North America is Gaëtan Dugas, an extremely promiscuous French-Canadian flight attendant who travels the world, blithely spreading HIV through sordid sexual encounters. We are meant to judge him, to shake our heads at his unthinking vanity, to reframe AIDS not as the product of indifferent viral mutations, but rather as an extension of human hubris -- something we did to ourselves. That And the Band Played On is also deeply sympathetic to sufferers of AIDS is one of that film’s contradictions. Our sympathy for suffering is unbounded, provided we always have someone, somewhere, to blame. In Contagion, the patient zero figure is incarnated by Gwyneth Paltrow, playing a rich, adulterous wife who comes into contact with some dubious pig blood on a business trip to Hong Kong. Though she is never reduced to Fu Manchu levels of villainy, we in the audience come to resent her for her happy ignorance in spreading the disease. In this respect, Contagion perfectly incarnates the genre trope: it moves along as a detective story, with a morally flawed human being as the single perpetrator.

Panic. In the wake of the early outbreak of the disease, mass panic spreads. As in other disease movies, we witness the agitation of the hoi polloi as they feverishly squirrel away supplies and chase after dubious cures. In Contagion, though, this panic is mediated by, well, the media -- in particular Internet media such as blogs that disseminate (often dubious) information at lightning speeds.

Spread of the disease. The MEV-1 disease is quite nearly personified in this film; mutating to exploit our biological weaknesses, it careens through entire societies, reproducing and spreading like a morally-coded miasma. The spread of the disease is presented as an abstract force, a gravitational momentum quite poorly resisted by the human impulse towards control. In particular, it spreads through social contact -- interpersonal gestures like handshakes or touching of the face that the movie goes to great pains to stigmatize -- and as such the film is a thoroughly modern excavation of social networks. The disease spreads, but only because it is able to colonize the ways in which we are all already connected.

Spread of information. Acting as a foil to the spread of the disease, there is an ethically-righteous spread of accurate information about the disease, running from the very first clinicians on the front lines all the way to the highest levels of the military and the public health establishment. Like the disease, this information-pattern -- this web of medical knowledge that provides the only hope of a cure -- spreads via our social networks, jumping from one person to another. The disease is only controllable once this information is disseminated widely enough to counterbalance the parallel spread of the disease itself. When information fails to spread adequately, as in the case of bureaucratic/homophobic hurdles hindering awareness of AIDS, or in the case of misguided cures transmitted through the blogosphere, the disease spreads faster. In effect, these thrillers thematize the idea of a signal-to-noise ratio. The signal is comprised of medical benevolence, well-reasoned caution, scientific elan, and the will of common people to take care of each other. The noise is comprised of panic, greed, mob mentality, denial, and human miscalculation.

Dignity in death. For disease thrillers to truly instill fear in the viewer, someone important has to die. But there is little pathos in watching a craven wretch, coughing and bleeding and vomiting, keel over in the middle of a street. These films need a martyr, a person to die with dignity and grace, with full lucid awareness of their victimhood, and yet without an embrace of that victimhood. In Contagion (spoiler alert), that role is played by Kate Winslet, a saintly Epidemics Intelligence Agent, who, like a diligent detective, burrows towards the disease until she gets burnt by it. She is one of the few wholly innocent victims in a film that favors moral ambiguity and stigmatizes human social behavior as not just lowly and incompetent, but as an actual physical vector for the spread of the disease. Her last dying gesture -- stranded in a gymnasium with hundreds of other moribund souls, she tries and fails to pass a blanket to another patient -- is the ultimate stroke of pathos that seals our fear of the disease.

Ignorance. Yet another parallel spread is the spread of misinformation. Here, that is incarnated by Jude Law, playing a polemical blogger who claims -- mendaciously -- to have found his own cure for the disease, just so he can raise the price for a cabal of pharmaceutical investors. For a while, his scheme threatens to derail the countervailing efforts of doctors and scientists to control the disease.

The cure. This is the Holy Grail of disaster thrillers, the equivalent of a secret talisman to be found by an action hero, or the final clue to a murder mystery to be solved by a detective. It is the object of risk-taking, sacrifice, compromise, ambition, and holy recklessness. In Contagion, the cure is found by two scientists -- played by Elliott Gould and Jennifer Ehle -- who endanger their own health and the health of others in order to run dangerous experiments towards finding a vaccine. Their rashness is motivated more by personal self-interest -- the hope for a Nobel prize, say -- than by a desire to help the suffering millions, but the fact that their efforts are rewarded shows that the film is on their side. As in many disaster thrillers, doctors have to act like action heroes in order to have any hope of success.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Photo courtesy of Jesus Perez, and copied in accordance with this Creative Commons license.

The Superhero and the Super Hero: The Development and Legacy

*I thought for my last blog I would do something a bit more fun. It’s a little different but I hope you all still enjoy it. *

As a little kid I would always dress up for Halloween. My dad would pick me up and throw me into the air and I could pretend I was flying. I would spend hours in the backyard fighting invisible enemies, kicking and punching the air, pretending like bad guys were at my mercy. I was the protector of justice, the keeper of all that was good. Superheroes, to me, were the combination of all positive qualities people all mushed together and multiplied a hundredfold. Their moral aptitude, courageous spirit, and unbelievable strength kept me entertained under the blankets with a flashlight reading comic books for hours after bedtime.

An artists rendition of many classic superheroes and villans.

Some had superpowers, burdened by the responsibility of being great. For example in the 2004 animated feature film The Incredibles, directed by Brad Bird, each character has a certain superpower. Mr. Incredible has the gift of super strength, lifting cars and bench-pressing trains. His son, on the other hand, has the gift super speed; the ability to run so fast he doesn't break the surface of the water as he jets across. Superpowers aren’t necessary, however. Take, for example, the 2005 live action film, Batman Begins directed by Christopher Nolan. Nolan portrays the superhero as realistically as possible; the character of Bruce Wayne, a billionaire industrialist, having no outstanding powers other than his fervent determination and sharp intelligence. Whether a serious dramatic portrayal or an animated spoof, a Superhero represents the archetypal being; a societal desire to strive for the unreachable: peak physicality and mental prowess, highest regard for values and morals, and immortality in the face of uncertainty and fear, all attributes transcending the limits of human ability.

Adversity, a common theme throughout superhero cinema, is mainly used as a catalyst for greatness; pressure on a character to have them rise to the occasion. In Batman Begins, for example, Bruce Wayne witnesses his parents murder and struggles internally with vengeance against the perpetrator. “My anger outweighs my grief” he states as he plans to kill his parents murderer, clear that he is not fighting against injustice but for retribution. His struggle with this uniquely human characteristic creates him as a distinct mortal character, a trait that causes him to be relatable and dimensional. On the other hand, The Incredibles, an homage to classic superhero cinema, instead shows adversity through the downfall of the great superhero time or "The Golden Days". Like pressure on a coal to make a diamond, adversity on the hero forces them to develop, in this case, by forcing them to settle down and create a family, the greatest strength that one has throughout life.

Strength, for the hero, comes both physically and mentally. Mr. Incredible and his family have certain powers that transcend human capabilities while Bruce Wayne, although having no natural extraordinary ability, continually trains to be in peak physical shape. Mentally, each superhero must be sharp and able to use the surroundings to their advantage. For what Batman, a human and mortal, lacks in superpowers he more than makes up for in intelligence. He knows he can only become so physically adept and must use his brain (and endless money) to design equipment to transform himself into a superhuman.

Being mentally adept is only half the battle, however. Each must also street savvy and resourceful. The downfall for most super villains is their inability to think outside their " Master-plan". Syndrome, the main nemesis in The Incredibles, did not account for the fact that the robot he built could learn so well that he would become unable to control it. The Incredible family, however, uses their combined strength as well as their surroundings (ex. flinging the manhole cover at the root robot to disable it) to their advantage. Bruce Wayne, after learning of his mentor’s plans to destroy Gotham City (his hometown) uses his environment to destroy the training facility and keep the plan from being executed.

 

"No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again.” - Mr. Incredible

This classic superhero code is to protect and aid those in need.  "I seek the means to fight injustice, to turn fear onto those who prey on the fearful", Bruce Wayne states proving that stalwart morals and a powerfully strong code of values is paramount. Even 15 years after society shunned them, Mr. Incredible and his super pal “Fro-Zone” still perform weekly super deeds such as saving innocent civilians from burning buildings. The morals do not only extend superficially as well, the topic of lethal force inherently opposed. Batman's one principle throughout Batman Begins is a strong conviction against lethal violence. The Incredibles show this mercy too when Mr. Incredible refuses to kill Mirage, Syndromes assistant. Heroes cannot only use brute force to defeat their enemies or they themselves would be as problematic as the enemies.

All too often fear equals mortality.  For superheroes, however, they must be impervious to fear and thus invulnerable. "No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again,” Mr. Incredible explains. Every time the hero gets hit, they get right back up, always choosing to face fear head on. Much of what we fear comes from our own mortality. Why does a gun command so much fear? We all fear death. Humans are mortal. Superheroes, on the other hand, and their continued timeless existence, even through the greatest of adversity, teach us that we don't need to be afraid. Bruce's father explains the truth, "You know why they attacked you, don't you? They were afraid of you...All creatures feel fear.” The entire point of superheroes is to instill a passion to do what's right and to support the belief that anything is possible. The ability to overcome fear and do what is right is pivotal. Mr. Incredible feared losing his family, in the end. Batman, himself, creates his entire persona out of his greatest fear, the bat. Without fear, Batman is immortal." As a man, I'm flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol...As a symbol I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting"

Superheroes are ideals, artwork carved from fantasy; an idolization of the unattainable. Their purpose though is not to create faux heroes in real life but instead instill the belief that anything is possible if you always fight for good. They are role models that always have (and always will have), in the face of fear and adversity, conquered their foes. Everyone faces struggles and difficult times. It is how you react to those struggles into that adversity that makes you a hero. "Not every superhero needs powers you know.”

 

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.

Let the Dark Knight be Dark: Maturity in Batman: The Animated Series

When one looks for quality television, one rarely looks as children’s animation. Often times it is derivative, uninspiring, and all around annoying. However, when the truly great shows come around, the realization is made that children are capable of handling more mature subjects without being remarkably traumatized in the slightest. One of the true greats in the aspect was the early 90s cartoon, Batman: The Animated Series. A superhero cartoon seems to be a strange place to be talking about mature content. Superheroes are the bread and butter of Saturday morning entertainment, but Batman decided to step away from the traditional method of children’s cartooning and try something different. Instead of simple “kid-friendly” villains, the show was able to mine its source material and use villains that were willing to kill an entire city just because they wanted to. This dark material should, according to many sensibilities, be extremely offsetting to kids. Instead, the show is able to find a happy medium which isn’t super violent, but at the same time won’t pull its punches when it comes to mature topics. One of the best examples of this phenomenon comes when dealing with the character of Two-Face. He is an established enough villain that the show could have easily had him simply appear and no one would think twice about it. However, the show takes the viewer through the entire emotional journey of his creation. The audience is introduced to the character of Harvey Dent, Gotham’s district attorney and best friend to the protagonist, in the first episode, and he is a recurring character throughout the series. This means that when an explosion goes off, horrifically maiming his face and cracking his personality in two, the audience is deeply invested in his character. This kind of deep emotional connection followed by such a traumatic experience gets the audience involved, but for many, it is too disturbing for children. By including it anyway, Batman proves that kids aren’t stupid when it comes to their entertainment. The show was very popular in its day and many kids watched this episode. There were no widespread reports of kids becoming traumatized by this event. Instead, they were able to take the emotional journey with the main character of losing his best friend and feeling guilty every time they have to cross paths. In short, Batman: The Animated Series didn’t try to create programming for kids. They simply tried to make the best animated show they could, but didn’t try to dumb it down for children. Instead, they expected kids to understand what was going on, and for the most part they were successful. While not every episode is as emotionally charged as the Two-Face origin, the show asks viewers, both child and adult to rise to the occasion so that the show can best the best it can possibly be.

Candyman (1992): A Self-Conscious Slasher Film

Of course, the above title may sound rather redundant. It is difficult to think of a more self-conscious genre than the slasher film: not only have there been a plethora of obvious pastiches, but even the ostensibly serious Friday the 13^th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises often poke fun at their own favorite clichés. Every film begins with a group of sexually active teenagers who must listen to the ravings of the obligatory toothless old man (or some other familiar harbinger of doom) before being promptly dispatched ingeniously (or not, depending on how cheap the SFX are) by Jason, Freddy, or whatever other relentless killer the screenwriter has created. The heavily formulaic nature of the genre has caused it to accrue as many critics as fans; indeed, it became commonplace in the eighties for older horror authors like Robert Bloch to unfavorably compare the new outcrop of slasher films with the traditional ghost stories and psychological thrillers of former eras.

            One could argue, however, that it is within the very predictability of these films that their appeal lies. This familiarity causes them to feel more reassuring than unsettling; it is not only “the final girl” who will make it to the film’s credits – it is ourselves, the audience. The sequels sustain this sense of survival: we are familiar with the entire history of a certain slasher, all his quirks and traits, and no matter how improbable (or often contradictory) his sequel-spawned history may be, this knowledge gives us a further sense of security. Like a hardened explorer wading through familiar territory, we know that no matter how bewildering it might get for the unfortunates onscreen, whatever happens will still remain reassuringly familiar to us. Like fairy tales and urban legends, slasher films seduce their audience into a world in which routine sets of clichés and formulae are not only the commonplace fallbacks of lazy screenwriters but are actually embraced by the audiences themselves: a world in which Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees become modern bogeymen and in which every victim’s death is seen as a memorable milestone, hailed at once for the originality of its execution and the predictable place that it occupies in the film’s overall plot structure.

            Bernard Rose’s Candyman (1992) is a different sort of slasher film, however; one that is self-aware but not comedic; a movie that explores the mythic space that urban legends and slasher tales inhabit, focusing on why these tales absorb our imaginations so deeply and suggesting that there is some mysterious draw even greater than the comfortable familiarity that these gruesome fairy tales have. Based on “The Forbidden,” a novella by British author Clive Barker, its titular supernatural antagonist resembles neither the wise-cracking Freddy Krueger nor the silent, masked killers in Friday the 13^th or John Carpenter’s Halloween. Rather, Tony Todd plays the character of the hook-handed Candyman with an intense, seductive charisma, transforming him into a monster who functions both as a supernatural killer and as an almost allegorical embodiment of all that seduces and terrifies us in the slasher mythos, or even in horror fiction in general. Barker’s work both in literature (The Books of Blood, The Hellbound Heart) and in film (Hellraiser) constantly connects the twin emotions of terror and desire as two related impulses and the dynamic found in Candyman between the film’s heroine Helen (Virginia Madsen) and her terrifying antagonist is no exception. The most compelling moments in the narrative are Helen’s encounters with Candyman – those enigmatic interchanges in which he implores her to “be his victim” and asks “what is blood for if not for shedding?” The point of his appeal is that there is a certain glory in being counted as a legend: if Helen becomes a victim of Candyman, she will become – as he terms it – one of those tales “to frighten children, to make lovers cling closer in their rapture.” She will become immortal like him precisely because she, too, will become a legend of terror. To attain the status of legendry, “the blessed condition” as Candyman terms it, is perceived as a higher spiritual state, the cost of which is, in his eyes, far outweighed by the reward. She will no longer be merely a curious audience; she will, in fact, become a horror tale herself.

            The beauty of Bernard Rose’s film is that it can be enjoyed in the same manner as any other slasher film, for like all the others, it charts the familiar territory of hook-handed killers, flattering us with our knowledge of grisly urban legends while delivering a healthy amount of gore and scares. But for those who choose to contemplate the titular villain’s mysterious seductions more deeply, it holds perhaps the key to what it is that makes many of us not only enjoy Horror but even wish to create our own tales of terror. Candyman is not only an avenging ghost: he is a legend, a horror story himself. Stories are immortal, therefore Candyman himself is immortal – and, moreover, being a legend as well as a ghost, he is an immortal being whom lovers and children both revere, fear, and yet all the same enjoy whispering of. Any lover of Horror can understand how this “blessed condition” could be perceived as quite seductive.

            And, if the opportunity to unravel the philosophy of Horror is not enough to entice the reader to watch this film, then let me also add that the ending of this film gives an entirely new (and rather eerie) meaning to the common slasher film cliché of the “final girl”…

The Role of Character Perspective and Conceptual Continuity In Rob Marshall's Chicago and Nine

 I always wondered why some people find it so hard to enjoy musicals either on the stage or on the screen. Such people would have the film director extract the meaning and plot from a musical in order to turn it into a film devoid of dance and song. I have encountered several individuals whose aversion to musical interludes derives from an inability to reconcile singing and dancing with their fixed views of cinematic reality. I’m more interested in how directors choose to intertwine the show tunes with the narratives. I say that getting hung up on whether the characters in musicals realize they're divulging plot in song is as ridiculous as asking if characters in a film notice that there's a guy following them around with a movie camera. There are film directors who endeavor to accommodate those that would ask such nonsensical questions, using creative concepts to justify sudden outbursts of song. In both of his musical films: Chicago, a film about a wannabe vaudeville star, and Nine a movie about a filmmaker in desperate need of inspiration, Rob Marshall  portrays the musical interludes as figments of the protagonists’ imaginations in order to make sense of the narrative . Despite having similar concepts, song and story are entwined more successfully in Chicago than in Nine. Whereas musical numbers are seamlessly incorporated into the storyline of Chicago, the musical performances in Nine seem somewhat detached from the narrative.

The opening shot of Chicago, a slow zoom into an extreme close up of Roxie Hart’s eyes makes it clear that the her whimsical perspective drives the plot. With the first scene taking place in a jazz club, Roxie wistfully watches Velma Kelly’s sultry stage performance in her medium close up. As the camera cuts back and forth between Roxie’s longing looks and Velma Kelly’s vaudeville act, the camera’s close proximity to Roxie’s face and her transfixed gaze signify Roxie’s single-minded obsession with the glamor of vaudevillian fame. A hard cut from Velma’s captivating performance to the familiar extreme close up of Roxie’s unblinking eyes proceeds the shot in which Roxie begins to sing “All That Jazz,” literally taking Velma Kelly’s place on stage. This brief demonstration of Roxie’s fantasy reveals Roxie’s desire to be on the stage and sets a precedent for scenes that interweave song and plot throughout the film.  

As Guido contemplates how to begin his film, the film studio transforms into a projection of his creative mind. An extreme long shot displays Guido and his cameras facing the silhouette of a set elaborately decorated with stone arches. Symbolizing a moment of inspiration, one of Guido’s favorite actresses (Claudia) appears to him and gives him a kiss, after which the set is no longer dark but gradually filling with color. A warm yellow glow highlights and gives definition to the arches before women adorned in sparkling, seductive costume appear like set pieces in the stage of Guido’s imagination. The majestic traveling shots of the set lit spectacularly with a mesmerizing blue light and the presence of these women juxtaposed with a close up of Guido and his camera signify the evolution of Guido’s creativity. While the image of the camera clearly draws the connection between Guido’s musical fantasies and his filmmaking aspirations, transitions between song and action in later scenes are not as invisible as those in Chicago.

            The musical performances in Chicago do not intruded on the dialogue but tend to blend the concept of the stage with the reality of the narrative.  The scene that best demonstrates the perfect coexistence of musical performance and plot is the one in which Velma desperately pleads with Roxie to perform on stage with her if they both become acquitted. When Velma Kelly begins her appeal to an indifferent Roxie, a light shines in through the window, resembling a spot light as it follows Velma. The appearance of the “spotlight” in such a non-theatrical space (the prison recreation room) indicates that Roxie believes her current surroundings are a stage and that Velma’s attempts to befriend her are one big act. After Velma notices Roxie’s obvious disinterest, all signs of the recreational room fade into darkness; the spotlight hones in on Velma’s face while her dialogue gradually develops into song. The disembodied voice of the figurative Master of Ceremonies gives a title to Velma’s “Act of Desperation” before her prison garb is exchanged for a more vaudevillian costume and the recreation room is filled with theatrical neon lights. Still sitting neutrally at a table in the center of the room, Roxie becomes audience to Velma’s theatrics. Though Velma and the gloomy rec room have transformed, recognizable elements of the prison remain (like the balcony leading to the inmates’ cells). These familiar elements and Roxie’s position at the table remind the viewer that she and Velma have not left the prison, and that the musical performance is Roxie’s own theatrical interpretation of reality.

            Unlike those in Chicago some of the musical performances in Nine appear disjointed from the narrative despite their obvious relation to the plot. Even though “Be Italian” is a powerful, high-energy song that gives insight into Guido’s personality and issues with women, its placement in the scene seems unnatural. Before the number begins Guido recalls when he and a small group of little boys pay the local prostitute, Saraghina to give them a private show on the beach near her hut. The music begins as Saraghina accepts the money, but she neither sings nor speaks at any point and time in Guido’s physical memory; the only time Saraghina speaks is on Guido’s mental “stage.” Whereas Velma Kelly’s words to Roxie led into a song, the lack of dialogue from Saraghina fails to bridge the gap beween the spectacular vocal performance and Guido’s childhood recollection. A shot of Saraghina verbalizing her advice in the memory before the start of the song could have solidified the connection between the two spaces. This would not be necessary if the scene were to merge the location of the main action with Guido’s fictional world instead of maintaining two distinctly separate spaces: the film set and the beach. The contrast between the theatrical space and the realistic memory becomes even more apparent with the noticeable desaturation of Guido’s memory; the vibrant red costumes and dazzling lights seem to clash with the grayscale flashback. The viewer ultimately feels as if the “Be Italian” musical number (like other songs in Nine) is merely inserted but not interwoven with the entire scene. Such scenes in Nine, which lack the seamless combination of action and song, detract from the beauty of the film while also creating an emotional distance between the audience and the characters successfully avoided in Chicago.

 

Love, Obsession, and the Movies in Tampopo and Who's Camus Anyway?

A gangster in a stark white suit and his mistress stride down the aisle of a movie theater, taking their seats right in the front row. A gaggle of thugs follow after them, placing a table in front of them and quickly covering it with a luxurious basket of foods, two champagne flutes, and a bottle of champagne. The champagne is poured into a flute, and as the gangster lifts it to his lips he looks straight into the camera, addressing us, the audience - “Oh? So you're at a movie too. What are you eating?”

Juzo Itami's 1985 film, Tampopo, is a joyful visual feast celebrating the Japanese's love of - and obsession with - food. The film is a series of vignettes surrounding the main story of Tampopo, the owner of a struggling ramen shop, and Goro, a truck driver who accidentally becomes her mentor in the art of preparing and serving ramen.

And what an art it is – an early scene shows Goro's companion Gun (played by a young Ken Watanabe) receiving a lesson from a ramen guru on the proper technique to eating a bowl of ramen. The food itself is lovingly photographed – closeup shots put the bowl in the center of the frame, then pan in to fully revel in the aesthetic composition of the soup. The ramen master gently lifts the slices of pork on the top and tucks them under the noodles – explaining that this is a token of respect for the contribution of the pork. Ramen in Japan is like the cheeseburger in the US – greasy, salty, cheap and satisfying – but in Tampopo it is treated with the respect usually reserved for high cuisine. While the experience of having fresh ramen may be foreign to most American viewers, the act of eating and savoring food is universal. Tampopo takes eating a bowl of ramen and elevates it to a ritual – celebrating the pieces that make up the whole. When done perfectly, even lowly street food like ramen can become high art.

Many of the film's gags rely heavily on Japanese culture and social traditions, yet the film also incorporates elements from traditional Hollywood genres. Amongst the vignettes in the film are parodies of cultural stereotypes - a young business executive upstages his superiors at a restaurant with his extensive knowledge of French cuisine. A mother on her deathbed rises to make dinner for her family, her last act before death. A group of young women are taught how to eat noodles abroad properly, without slurping or making any noise – except once they see a foreigner in the same restaurant noisily slurping down his noodles, they follow suit. While the jokes in these scenes are heavily Japanese, they become universally accessible in their complete reversal of expectations.

As much as the film celebrates the rituals of food, it is also a celebration of Hollywood genres and film itself. The formation of a genre is a sort of ritual in itself, a meaningful repetition of familiar characters and tropes. Tampopo pays homage to traditional genres – especially the western and the gangster film. Goro the truck driver rolls into Tampopo's restaurant like Shane, there to clean up the town, conquer the bad guys, then move on. The final ramen tasting scene is filmed like a shootout, with the five taste-testers approaching the ramen store with steely resolve, ready for one last test.

The gangster figure in the film is the complete embodiment of obsession and lust, for food, cinema, and life. The opening scene immediately combines food and cinema, and the gangster's lust for both – he demands both the most optimal dining and viewing experience, threatening a man behind him for crinkling his potato chip bag too loudly. He requires silence for his movie viewing, and explains how right before death, one is said to see their life before their eyes, like a movie – and he wants no interruptions when he sees his own. Later, the gangster is featured in a version of the typical romantic sex scene – yet the addition of food and its creative uses make the scene hilariously unsexy. Finally, near the end of the film the gangster is stumbling in the gutter, shot and bleeding to death. As his lover cries over him, all he can talk about is – what else – food. Right before he passes, he hushes her, “Be quiet. My last movie is starting.” Food is life, and life is a movie.

 

For the characters in Mitsuo Yanagimachi's film, Who's Camus Anyway? (2005), the boundaries between cinema and real life become blurred as they endeavor to create a film. Who's Camus centers around a group of film students in Tokyo who are about to shoot a film, and their personal and creative trials as obstacles get in the way.

Who's Camus starts off playfully self-reflexive – as a film about film, there are several layers of interpretation and meaning involved. The opening sequence is a smoothly choreographed long take, with a fluid camera that floats around the college campus, introducing the viewer to the different characters of the film. Two of the filmophile students, naturally, are discussing legendary long opening takes of films, name dropping films like Orson Welles's Touch of Evil and Robert Altman's The Player.

These are the first of many references to films, novels, and philosophers – at times the film feels like it is only accessible to viewers who know the material referenced. However, when one of the producers of the student film, Kamimura, enters a cafe and immediately begins re-enacting a scene from Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Féminin, it becomes clear that the name dropping is not just for show. Kamimura remembers and recounts the scene in precise detail, remembering each camera movement, the placement of the extras in the scene, the motions of the film's star. The extras in the film we are watching become the extras in the film in his mind. The lines between reality and cinema are blurred and crossed over for Kamimura, the walking encyclopedia of film.

Who's Camus Anyway? follows the personal drama and conflicts of the student film crew as they struggle to put together their film, called The Bored Murderer, and themselves. The film within the film is about a high school student, Takeda, that invades the home of and then murders an elderly woman, for no apparent reason. As the director and his crew ponder why he would commit this act, they begin to dissect the motivations behind their own – often immoral – behavior. When Hisada, the assistant director of the student film, explains to her boyfriend why she kissed two other men while he was away, she uses similar language to Takeda, the murderer in her own film. To explain their actions both of them make no excuses – they wanted to see what it felt like after they had crossed those boundaries.

The film's most impressive cinematic feat is its last fifteen minutes, which is the actual filming of The Bored Murderer. Here the line between the film, its producers, and its audience is completely erased. The sequence starts out straight forward enough – it is clear when the audience is watching the filming of Takeda's story and when the audience is seeing what the movie looks like – as though it has already been processed and edited together. The viewer changes between the two visual worlds, that of the filming and that of the film. Then things start to get weird. In the film within the film we watch as Takeda washes up after killing the elderly woman. Her husband comes home and starts knocking on the outside of the house, and Takeda begins to panic. The film cuts outside to see the husband knocking on the window – and then Hisada calls cut from off camera, enters the shot, and tells the actor playing the husband that the take was good. Then, within the same shot, the plot of The Bored Murderer continues – Takeda leaps out of the window with a knife, tackling the husband. It is clearly not the actor who plays Takeda committing some prank on set. As the scene continues on, we are back within The Bored Murderer. The next shot is a wide shot – where previously all the crew and equipment had been set up around the house, everything is now gone, consistent with the interior film. The transition between the reality and the fiction within Who's Camus is seamless – the worlds have been united in one shot. The cinematic borders between what happens in front of the camera and what happens behind have been blurred and erased. The filmmakers become part of their own film, and the film is part of them.

 

 

If You Go Far Enough West, You End Up in the East: Westerns From the Eastern Hemisphere

At first glance, John Hillcoat’s The Proposition (2005) and Kim Ji-woon’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008) seek to do the impossible. Both films are Westerns set in a different country. The Western genre is such a quintessentially American genre that taking it out of the West seems foolish. However, both films are able to take the themes and tropes of the Western and craft a new identity for the genre, each one specific to the country of origin.

The Proposition paints an especially bleak portrait of the Australian Outback. At first glance, the Outback seems very similar to the American West. Both are large expanses of desert, inhabited by a violent indigenous native group. However, the prospects that both landscapes offer could not be more different. The American West is often seen as the land of opportunity. The land is ripe for a new start as soon as it can be tamed. Times may be hard, but the benefit far outweighs the hardship. The Outback, however, is characterized as an unforgiving and violent wasteland. Every person that ventures out past the town limits is met with brutal, oftentimes random violence. Possibly the most definitive moment of the wasteland is an attack on Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce). Following a montage of Charlie in the desert, he awakens to find his horse dead before being impaled by a thrown spear. Only after being attacked to we see the Aborigines that have attacked him. As he stares at them, a shot is heard, and the head of one of the Aborigines explodes. By offering almost no lead in to the near death of a main character, as well as not showing the assailants until after the attack, Hillcoat portrays a landscape in which violence comes quickly for no reason. Had Charlie awoken thirty seconds later, he would have been killed in his sleep instead of seeing his attacker.  This concept is reinforced by having the attacker suffer a fatal attack from another unknown party, creating a setting in which even the natives are not safe.

The Outback of The Proposition is not one that can be tamed. Throughout the film, Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone), having moved from England to Australia, is determined to bring order to the lawless wilds. In many ways, he is the quintessential Western hero, trying to bring civilization to the frontier. Unfortunately, he fails as each attempt at civilization is only met with more blood and killing. His struggle against the Outback is embodied in his home, which is set away from the rest of the town. Though it is surrounded by desert, his home is enclosed by a white picket fence. Throughout the film, there are many shots looking out at the Outback from the front porch of the house. The shots are framed so that the garden and fence are diminished against the vast and oppressive wilderness. This home is violated at the end of the film as Arthur Burns (Danny Huston), acting as the embodiment of the Outback, breaks into his very civilized Christmas dinner to beat him nearly to death and rape his wife. Stanley has utterly failed to bring order to the wilderness, instead allowing the wilderness to bring chaos into his home.

Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird sets a strikingly different tone than that of the Proposition. Instead of presenting a frontier that is uncivilizable, it presents a frontier that has almost been fully civilized. While the film has many shots of the expansive deserts of Manchuria, it does not provide any opposing force. Instead, it is the civilized people that create the antagonism in the film.

A large portion of this feeling of civilization comes from the crowded feeling of the setting. Many Western tropes are present through the film such as a train robbery, a gunfight through a frontier town, and a chase through the desert. However, all of these are full of color and people, leaving the impression of a crowded frontier. The train is packed full of people of all shapes and sizes, buildings of the town are tightly packed together as opposed to the spread out buildings of the American frontier town, and the chase through the desert involves two different bandit gangs, two individual parties, and the entire Japanese army. The tightly packed setting adds a frantic energy to the film that has more in common with a Hong-Kong action film than is does with the typical Western.

In addition, the color palate is extremely different than the American or Australian Westerns. In the American Western, the color palate tends to be bland with a lot of browns, blacks, and whites. Color is often reserved for women’s dresses, and even then, it tends to only be during celebrations that bright colors are worn. The Good, The Bad,The Weird, in contrast is full of bright colors. From settings covered in bright red paper lanterns to bandits dressed in purple fur coats, bright colors are plentiful in the film. The colors cause a sense of excitement in the viewer as well as building on the energy created through the crowded frame and exciting action sequences.

Both the feeling of civilization and the bright color palate draw from the traditions of Asian action films. The energy of The Good, The Bad, The Weird has just as much in common with a Hong Kong action film as it does with a Western. The frantic energy created by the crowded frame and the color is built upon using tropes from the action film and the martial arts film such as a character using a crane to soar above the town during a gun fight and being able to shoot a sniper through the scope. By combining elements from both genres, Ji-Woon is able to create a film that is definitively an Asian Western.

The Western has always been an influential genre throughout film history, not only in the United States but around the world. It recalls a wilder time in history, where civilization needed to struggle in order to proceed. While the setting is often uniquely American, the progress of civilization is a global story. While some films, like The Proposition, may view the struggle in a negative light while others, such as The Good, The Bad, The Weird seek to glorify it, the story is universal. 

 

"I always wanted to be a gangster." Perspectives on the Crime Film

“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”  Henry Hill tells us this at the opening of Goodfellas (1990), and it’s easy to understand his draw to the mob life.  Film history is filled with iconic, tragic gangster figures.  From the first gangster cycle in the 1930s to today’s mafia movies, all crime films work on a sort of sliding scale of realism, some pictures choosing to depict gang life with realistic grit, while others take greater creative license over the subject matter. 

The first gangster cycle was born just before its legs were cut out from underneath it by the Hays Code in 1934.  It’s iconic films: Little Caesar (1930), Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932) provided an escape for the struggling workers trying to keep afloat in the Great Depression.  The first half of any of these films follows a character from rags to riches as he claws and kills his way to the top; a fantasy of breaking the rules and getting wealthy.  But just as important as the rise is the fall, the audience’s reaffirmation that crime does not pay.  The films followed a simple formula, but they developed the language that all crime films speak through and defined the genre. 

In the 1970s, after the code broke down, filmmakers began taking these conventions and applying them in new ways. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 film The Godfather is perhaps the prime example of the romanticism of the crime life.  Coppola opens on the Corleone family, a sort of crime monarchy in 1940’s New York; business runs out of cigar parlors and is discussed in easy chairs.  While the film is not without it’s violence, it handles it with more style and less grit.  Coppola focuses on the family instead of the violence, choosing to examine the way the Corleones’ business functions within a family structure.  The film provides a somewhat distorted view of the mafia, trading in realistic grit for lyrical beauty.

In 1973, Martin Scorsese exploded onto the scene with his first major feature film Mean Streets.  The film stripped the romanticism away from the mafia and examined the life of crime in a violently gritty way.  That is not to say that Mean Streets is not a beautiful film, it is simply showcasing an uglier, perhaps more realistic, view of the mafia.  Throughout the film, Scorsese cuts to films like The Searchers and The Big Heat, juxtaposing their scenes of seemingly tame violence with the horrifying, realistic violence of his film, suggesting that what we’ve seen up to his film is fiction and that his film is reality, which is far more frightening. 

Both The Godfather and Mean Streets have contemporaries that run the scale from gritty realism to romantic lyricism.  Some objectify the life of crime, attempting to capture brutal reality; a modern example of this would be Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah from 2008, which tears through the crime-ridden streets of Naples with horrifying violence and realism.  Other filmmakers choose to skew reality and create wholly personal visions employing the conventions of the crime film.  A particularly adept example is Jacques Audiard’s 2009 film A Prophet.

 A Prophet chronicles Malik El Djebena’s six year stint in a French prison.  Malik first appears an illiterate, naïve nineteen year-old Arab, and over the course of the film rises in the ranks of the Corsican mob while slowly becoming a mafia kingpin.  The film is a fascinating look at life behind the walls of prison and is an even more magnificent character study. 

Tonally, Audiard strikes an effective balance between reality and surrealism.  Set almost entirely behind the walls of a penitentiary, the film exists within the drab, claustrophobic corners of prison, pushing these characters together towards unavoidably explosive conflict.  These setting are kept muted and understated to accentuate the innate beauty of the outside world in the few scenes where Malik is allowed to go on leave.  The contrast between life inside and outside of the prison creates a wonderful opportunity for artistry and Audiard absolutely capitalizes on it.

Much of this beauty comes through the playful, surrealist view of reality through Malik’s eyes.  At several points throughout the film, Malik has visions of, and sometimes conversations with, the first character he is forced to kill in prison.  While perhaps undercutting the realism, these scenes call for a richer, more layered study of the film as a whole.  Audiard is, in many ways, more interested on crime’s impact on Malik than on the crime itself.  We see his character change in subtle and overt ways over the course of the film.  In one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking scenes in the film, we see Malik go through airport security and immediately perform the security procedures he learned in prison.  In some ways these small shifts in idiosyncrasies are more haunting than the shootings, stabbings, and other acts of brutal violence displayed in the film.

The crime film is one of the most well established genres in film and as such has one of the most identifiable sets of conventions.  It is the careful, educated play with these conventions that allows for a rich variety of films. There is something that compels us to sit in the dark and experience horror for two hours to emerge from that darkness enlightened somehow.  Whether we are looking the reassurance of society’s moral code or a fantasy of violent empowerment, we will keep searching, keep returning to probe the dark, forbidden corners that these films provide gateways to.

Prince of Potential: Why I’m Excited for the New Robin Hood Movie

 

  

  During Super Bowl XLIV, I got my first glimpse of the upcoming Robin Hood Film. Instead of excitement, the trailer elicited the following reaction from most of the people in the room: “Really? Another one?” After all, it is reasonable to think that this English folk hero, who has spawned at least five movies not to mention countless television series and books, may be suffering from over exposure. However, after reexamining four of the most prominent Robin Hood features, I’ve decided that these prior versions have all been lacking and that this new adaptation has the opportunity to make an important— nay, an essential— contribution to cinema.

The legend of Robin Hood includes some rather heavy themes like oppression, tyranny and a lot of violence; nevertheless, most of the Robin Hood films approach this figure with a surprising amount of levity. In many versions of the legend, Robin is captured in the crusades and, upon his return to England, sees the suffering of the people of Nottingham at the hands of the tyrannical Prince John. In response, he organizes a rogue band to inflict revenge on this despot. As a result of these conflicts, many people die and undergo gory medieval torture. Moreover, the myth brings up complex questions on the relationship of a ruler to his people and the use of rebellion as a tool for the subjugated.

Despite this mature subject matter, the 1938 adaptation, Adventures of Robin Hood, puts the “merry” in Merry Men. While the characters talk a lot about freedom and Saxon peasants are tortured and killed by the Norman nobles, ultimately, they are acting within a world of bloodless (quite literally— there is death but there is no visible blood) duels, comical villains, and inevitable happy endings. Not surprisingly, the 1973 Disney version also does not include violence and gore. This cartoon does incorporate the serious subtext of unjust governments and crippling poverty, but it is mostly a barrage of talking chickens, bears, and foxes singing optimistic tunes. Thus, while both films foster an awareness and distaste of Prince John’s illegitimate and unjust reign, they do so in a lighthearted manner without the drama and action that could easily be included in an adaptation of this loaded tale.  

In contrast, 1991’s Prince of Thieves is a more grim film and certainly has it share of blood and gore; however, the movie itself is not that good. The film opens with Robin of Locksley, played by Kevin Costner, with a wild beard and tattered clothing, trying to escape from an Ottoman prison. He manages to escape but has to leave his friend behind to a terrible fate. Following this trauma, Robin returns to England and is greeted by the site of his destroyed estate and murdered family. While Prince features these grave elements that the other films lack, I believe one reviewer put it well when he said, “it wasn’t exactly the swashbuckling masterpiece it could have been.”[1] Ultimately, the film fails in that the script isn’t that great and Kevin Costner is hard to take seriously in tights.

In fact, the movie’s over-the-top melodrama and mediocrity made it an easy target for Mel Brook’s Robin Hood version two years later. Unlike the other versions discussed, Men in Tights isn’t really about the Robin Hood tale. Instead, it is about how this legend has been depicted in film. The movie parodies the costumes, excessive gaiety, and homosexual undertones of Errol Flynn and his troop and also pokes fun at the obscene violence of Prince and its attempt to incorporate a black character (seen Morgan Freedman as Azeem and Dave Chapelle as Achoo) into an overwhelmingly white story. Ultimately, this spoof demonstrates that Robin Hood films have had their weaknesses and that this legend still has untapped cinematic potential.

The trailer of Robin Hood (2010) suggests that this new film may have remedied these issues. In this version, there is no shortage of violence, seriousness or bloodshed. Moreover, it seems like it deals with the issues that the other films do— every line in the trailer has something to do with an illegitimate ruler and the right of the people to fight against tyranny— but in a more serious, convincing manner. Most importantly, it might actually be good. The film is directed my Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) and stars the impressive pairing of Cate Blanchett and Russell Crowe. In addition, Scott and Crowe have already teamed up to tell the story of a disgruntled warrior who champions the people and fights an illegitimate tyrant while showing a lot of leg. And Gladiator 2: Un-Shackled in Sherwood sounds pretty awesome to me.

 

---

[1] John J. Puccio. Blu-ray review. First Pulished May 22, 2009.
http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/blu-ray-robin-hood-prince-of-thieves/7014

 

The Future Is Now: Pivotal Visions of Tomorrow

Since the beginning of cinema, filmmakers have been fascinated with the future.  The medium has the ability to showcase tomorrow in a way no other art form can.  Directors have utilized the fantastic possibilities of the mise-en-scene as backdrops for what are often abstract or introspective conflicts.  To suit the needs of the story, these visions of what lies ahead often contrast each other starkly, and more often build upon the visions seen in other films. 

Georges Méliès’ Trip to the Moon, the first science fiction film, made in 1902, is impossible to ignore because of its importance to the genre. However, it is not certain whether or not the world that the film exists in is actually the future.  The astronomers who go to the moon are dressed in archaic robes and the rooftops that they launch the bullet-like rocket ship from do not suggest anything exceptionally futuristic.  It is perhaps more acceptable to postulate that the film has no time period in relation to the present and therefore can be considered neither the past nor the future.

This brings us to an important, if somewhat implicit, point about all the futures this article pertains to.  They all potentially exist in relation to the time period in which the films were made; they are projections of reality in years to come.

Now, if Trip to the Moon is the father of the science fiction film, than Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis is the more popular and successful son.  Heavily influenced by German expressionism and Art Deco, Fritz Lang and his team of set designers crafted one of the most influential visions in cinema.  The sprawling, cold, and sterile cityscape of Metropolis became the blueprint upon most directors built their futures. The film is infamous for the fantastic city shots created with miniatures, often aided by the Schüfftan Process with spectacular results.  However, Lang is not so much interested in the city, as much as the man’s relationship to it.  Metropolis is all about dehumanization; blurring the line between man and machine.  Fritz Lang’s future is a place where workers are virtually fed to the machines in order to keep the city moving.  It is the perfect setting for the class struggle that the movie catalogs.

Production photo of the stop motion process used in Metropolis. Creative Commons¹

In the 1950s, science fiction was ruled largely by what would be considered campy, pulp stories set against worlds that seem to be made exclusively of cardboard and Christmas lights.  However, there was an important shift in science fiction: the idea of space became an obsession.  Space and the idea of terrifying, dangerous, new civilizations; a lot of this stemming from paranoia spawned by the cold war.  This period was not, however, devoid of good pictures; the 1950 film Destination Moon dealt with the realistic problems that occur during space travel.  More fantastic, and perhaps more captivating, is the 1956 adaption of Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Fred M. Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet, the film famous for it’s iconic Robby the Robot.  This vision of the future is indicative of the era; it is showy and false looking, ironic since the most fascinating aspect of the film is the exploration of the invisible and terrifying power of the human id.

The beloved Robby the Robot set a new standard for awesome robot buddies. Creative Commons²

This phase of science fiction was wiped away in 1968 when Stanley Kubrick created his science fiction epic about exploration and evolution: 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Kubrick and his director of photography Geoffrey Unsworth created some of the greatest in-camera effects, meaning done practically and without blue screens or mattes, ever attempted.  2001 exists in a sterile, white, delicate future, not completely unlike Metropolis.  However, unlike Fritz Lang, Kubrick is not interested in the workers; man and machine work seamlessly together for the majority of the picture in a visually arresting ballet of technology.  It is not until HAL 9000 begins to terminate the crew of the Jupiter Mission that man must prove his mastery of all this machinery.  2001: A Space Odyssey has one of the most influential visions of the future that has been emulated countless times, but never replicated with the same majesty. 

In 1979, one filmmaker finally rejected the sterility of this future and created an equally captivating, but completely different view of the future.  Ridley Scott’s Alien takes place almost entirely aboard the commercial towing spaceship Nostromo, a dirty, rundown, clunky, and massive piece of industrial metal.  If Scott’s future ever looked like Kubrick’s, it was a hundred years of grime and rust ago.  Everything is heavily used in the world of Alien; Scott liked the idea of truckers in space.  When the alien quite literally bursts into the film, the dark, dripping, steaming, endless corridors contribute the primary source of tension that runs through the rest of the film.  This was an important transition to a more accessible, and arguably more human future.

With Alien, Ridley Scott turned space from the beautiful stage it was in 2001 into a nightmarish sea of dirty blackness.  In 1982, he created his own endless city in Blade Runner.  The film depicts Los Angeles in the year 2019; it’s what the slums of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis might like if you turned the lights out and caked it in endless rain.  With Blade Runner, Scott fused together the science fiction and noir genres, creating a hard-boiled detective story that takes place in a masterfully created tomorrow.  Yet, for all its visual splendor, the film is remarkably introspective, posing questions that call the nature of humanity into doubt.  This helpless, inescapable, and eerily convincing future impacted the science fiction films of the last thirty years to an incalculable degree.

Concept drawing for the city of Los Angeles 2019. Creative Commons³ 

All science fiction films attempt to put their own stamp on the future; no vision is completely the same.  Most make liberties in order to accommodate the plot, because if the films didn’t deal with things unique to their future, what would be the point of creating them?  A film that takes place in a future simply replicated from aspects of other films is an opportunity wasted.  It is, however, almost impossible to watch most sci-fi movies without seeing a stamp of at least one of the four films discussed.

Visions of the future are constantly in flux.  As technology, social interests, trends, and political climates change, so do filmmaker’s movies.  The fascinating thing about science fiction is the films’ source material.  I have attempted to pinpoint four archetypes of the genre, and they were absolutely influential.  However, the true foundation of the genre will always be reality, and as the world we live in continues to change, filmmakers’ dreams of tomorrow will too.  

Photo Credits

1. Photo from Foxtongue (Flikr)

2. Photo from Wikipedia Commons

3. Photo from Topgold (Flikr)

Border Crossing; Magical Realism in Once Upon A Time in Mexico

 

In his many award winning novels and short stories, Gabriel Garcia Marquez invokes magic, or the seemingly supernatural, in otherwise realistic settings. When asked why he chose to write in this genre, appropriately called Magical Realism, Marquez has said, “my most important problem was destroying the line of demarcation that separates what seems real from what seems fantastic.”[1] Marquez explains that he uses Magical Realism to blur the distinction between the real and the fantastic and explores the limits of both these notions. Furthermore, as this genre demonstrates that reality is also comprised of magical elements, Garcia-Marquez seeks to promote hybridity and prove that everything is made up of different factors and that nothing— nations, families, nor even a single human being— is completely homogeneous. [2]

Like Magical Realism, the Western genre is also concerned with boundaries. However, in its case it is specific boundaries— that of the domestic and the wilderness of the frontier. The Western’s hero, the cowboy, is one who straddles the line between these two worlds. One film that borrows heavily from the Western Genre but also invokes this literary genre is Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon A Time in Mexico. Mexico appropriately joins these two together because its project is also concerned with boundaries and hyrbridity as it uses a cinematic genre that exemplifies America to tell a story about its neighbor to the south.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico is the third film in the mariachi trilogy directed by Robert Rodriguez and starring Antonio Banderas. The hero, El Mariachi, is a brooding hit man who carries a guitar. In this film, El Mariachi, also referred to simply as El, seeks to disrupt a coup led by a sinister General and financed by a dangerous drug cartel. The film also includes plots about a rogue CIA agent played by Johnny Depp and a Chihuahua-holding fugitive named Billy Chambers. The movie opened to mixed reviews as the plot was seen to be convoluted and the dialogue a bit immature.

While the plot and dialogue are a far-cry from Citizen Kane, Mexico is thematically rich and interesting. Mexico is an overt homage to the Western genre— specifically the work of Sergio Leone. The movie resembles a Western in that it features a number of shootouts, a set that is reminiscent of the Wild West, and a great emphasis on guns and violence. The title of the film explicitly evokes Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West and Rodriguez references other Leone films, like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, in interviews. Furthermore, like in Leone films, the hero does not have a name and is instead referred to by a nickname. West’s hero, Harmonica, is also named for his musical talents in lieu of a real name and, more famously, Clint Eastwood plays “the man with no name” in a number of Leone films.  

Additionally, I believe this film implicitly owes a lot to the literary genre of Magical Realism and Garcia-Marquez’s work more generally. The hero of this film, El Mariachi, exemplifies the typical heroic cowboy however, as Magical Realism pushes the limits of the real into the fantastic, the talents and accomplishments of this man push the envelope from the heroic to the supernatural. The first scene that shows him is in the form of one character narrating El’s exploits to Depp’s Sands. “He’s a legend, a myth” he claims. In this early sequence, El manages to appear as if from nowhere and defeat a number of men while he remains untouched by a hail of bullets. With this beginning, his character is shrouded in mystery and magic right from the start. In a later scene, he climbs up the wall like a spider and the bullets he uses seem to pack a little more juice than everybody else’s weapons. For instance, on the final scene, he shoots his nemesis, Marquez, and the bullets rip off Marquez’s skin exposing his bone in a rather gory and improbable wound.

Garcia-Marquez is particularly appropriate inspiration in that his work takes place in Spanish-speaking countries and focuses heavily on violence and revolution. Many of the men in Garcia-Marquez’s magnum opus, One Hundred Years of Solitude, fight in wars and get caught up in bloody life-threatening situations. Also, his heroes are often soldiers who are also artists. Like El, Colonel Aureliano Buendía of One Hundred Years of Solitude, excels in the military realm and is also a gifted poet. Furthermore, like the film, works like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera don’t follow a strict chronology. True to this form, El’s tragic memories unfold in flashbacks at various points in the master narrative.

Mexico uses these two genres for two reasons. First, because this allows Rodriguez to advance the Western as he infuses it with fantasy. Furthermore, these genres are thematically about boundaries as the space in which different entities fuse and interact. Therefore, a second, and perhaps more subtle reason these films invoke both genres is because it is a film about mixtures. Where the spaghetti Westerns were made by Italians and shot in Spain, they still took place in America. This film, however, transplants the American Western into Mexico and thus instills this classic genre with both a magical and multicultural twist and an interesting subtext that examines fusion itself.

 

 

 

 

---

[1] Interview with Gabrial Garcia Marquez in Revista Primera Plana - Año V Buenos Aires, 20-26 June 1967 Nº 234, pages 52-55

[2] Bringhurst, Robert. “Coterminous worlds.” Coterminous Worlds: Magical Realism and contemporary post-colinial literature in English. Ed. Elsa LInguati. Atlanta: Rodopi B.V., 1999.

Fairytales of a Darker Nature: Slasher Films as Morality Tales

In the early years of cinema, the horror genre was populated by monsters and mad scientists, and was set in the shadows of gothic castles, tombs, and other innately macabre locals.  It wasn’t until the 1970s when films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Black Christmas (1974) began to bring horror into the modern era.  Suddenly horror wasn’t looming in Eastern European crypts, but right in your backyard.  The protagonists weren’t scientists and explorers, but unsuspecting youths.  Horror films began directly targeting the fears of their target audience.  This culminated in John Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece Halloween.

 

"Death has come to your little town, Sheriff." Creative Commons¹

Halloween was certainly not the first film of its kind; the cinematography borrows from Italian cinema and its plot was not remarkably different from other American horror movies like Black Christmas.  Yet most mark the film as the father of the modern slasher genre. Why?  The universal nature of the story and the mythology behind the film’s iconic killer Michael Myers.  John Carpenter’s Halloween exists in a world where sex and drugs equals death, the virgin can stop the killer, and evil never really dies; in essence, the film is a morality tale.  

These themes struck a chord with audiences and after its release in 1978, Halloween spawned dozens of cheap, forgettable attempts to cash in on the films success.  Films like New Year's Evil, Prom Night, Terror Train and April Fool's Day, were all attempts to do Halloween again.  There were, however, a few successful children of Carpenter's work, the most famous being Friday the 13th, directed by Sean S. Cunningham in 1981.  Friday the 13th functioned under the same moral code as Halloween but was far more overt, both in its message and its gore. While Michael Myers’ reasons for slaughtering teens remained terrifyingly unanswered, Pamela Voorhees, the killer in Cunningham’s picture, has a clear motive and back story to justify her murderous moral code: drunk teens having sex were responsible for the death of her son. 

  "Doomed! You're all doomed!" Creative Commons²

Cunningham insists that the film is not a morality tale, but instead a fairytale.  “As children we get fairytales, and the purpose of fairytales… is to take a child’s fears and put them in the safety of a story.” says Cunningham.¹  While the film was originally intended as a sort of stress release for a teenager’s fear of untimely death, Friday the 13th is insistent on presenting Voorhees’s deranged motives for revenge as we watch her slowly off a group of dissolute teenagers.  Playing the film as a revenge film against immoral teenagers makes the message difficult to miss and more understandable, or justifiable.  However, the film is ultimately less effective than Halloween.

 

John Carpenter’s film is so terrifying and iconic because of the anonymity of the setting, protagonist, and killer.  Halloween takes place in Haddonfield, Illinois, a town that is representative of a thousand just like it.  “It’s every town, it’s every place, it could be your town…”.²  The universality of the location creates a fear that is disturbingly close to home.  Laurie Strode and Michael’s other victims are also strikingly anonymous.  The idea of the babysitter is where the film becomes incredibly identifiable to a young audience.  Everyone has had a babysitting job or is friends with a babysitter, which is what makes the basic premise of the movie scary.  The entire movie was pitched to its executive producer, Moustapha Akkad, as “the babysitter to be killed by the boogeyman”.²  But what makes Halloween so terrifying is the boogeyman: Michael Myers.

 

Michael Myers is what makes Halloween work, and what makes Michael Myers work is his simplicity.  Unlike Pamela Voorhees in Friday the 13th, Michael has no real motive. In Carpenter’s original script he is referred to simply as The Shape, not a man, but a force.  The flatness of his character is incredibly effective in stripping the message down to its essentials.  Sex equals death.  Drugs and alcohol equal death.  Immorality of any kind equals death.  Any motive would dilute that potency. 

 

And, after the original 1978 masterpiece, the Halloween series has lost it’s potency, primarily due to decision Carpenter made while writing the sequel that he blames on “a late night and too much alcohol”: He made Laurie Strode Michael Myers’s sister.²  Laurie is the object of Michael’s obsession and suddenly the rest of humanity is safe.  The original was frightening because of the idea that it could happen to you, there was no reason for Michael choosing these kids and that was scary.  Now, there is a motive: to kill the sister.  The number of people with estranged psychopathic brothers is a lot smaller than the entire teenage population; the universality of the terror is gone.

 

The Friday the 13th sequels, on the other hand, retain some of that potency and build upon it with the character of Jason.  Jason, a deformed child who saw his mother murdered by one of the young camp counselors at the end of the first film, has vowed revenge on every drinking, drug-doing, sex having, teenager he can find.  The child-like simplicity with which Jason views humanity makes him dangerous.  Teenagers killed his mother, so they all should pay for it.  Suddenly, terror is universal again.  The problem with the series is that the terror becomes derivative and laughable over the ten sequels, making them more fun than frightening.

   "A curse on Crystal Lake, a death curse. Jason Voorhees' curse." Creative Commons³

For the past three decades, dozens if not hundreds of killers have stalked the silver screen, tearing a bloody hole into the culture of American youth.  While few are as terrifying as the man who, in 1978, changed the face of horror, all of them have come baring the same message: If you do bad things, I will do something worse to you.  This is what makes them fairytales, they are fun little stories that remind us to be good.  And as long as kids enjoy being bad, they will keep filling the seats.

Works Cited

1. The Friday the 13th Chronicles. Dir. Donald R. Beck. Paramount Pictures, 2004.

2. Halloween: 25 Years of Terror. Dir. Stefan Hutchinson. Paranormal Films, 2006.

Photo Credits

1. Photo from Chris (Picasa)

2. Photo from Double Feature Podcast (Flickr)

3. Photo from Darren (Flickr)

The Modern Superhero (Paul)

  

    The inauguration of Barrack Obama represented the end of an era. He ran on a campaign of change and, for the most part, that's what we are seeing. Change. Gone is notion that the United States can do everything alone. Gone is the notion that the United States is invincible. Gone is the notion that her enemies are entirely evil. Similarity, within the last decade, such has been the evolution of superhero films. 

    People love their heroes. They inspire us by giving us hope that somewhere out there, someone is watching. They make sure that we come home safely. Superman is the ultimate iconic hero saving Lois Lane, and the world at the drop of a hat. But our superheroes today aren't like that. They are brooding, sometimes selfish but most of all alienated. They try to do the right thing but why bother if the general public doesn't want their guardians to be them? Also, our villains have changed. Gone are the maniacal megalomaniacs of yore, replaced with cunning individuals who have their own agenda to save the world. Or they are charismatic sociopaths trying to expose the ugliness in all of us. Either way, both our superheroes and super-villains have evolved from  simple black and white creatures to multilayered studies of the human psyche.

    I think it was Spider-Man (2002) that started it all. While by no means a cinematic masterpiece, it certainly did get its point across: with great power comes great responsibility. Spider-Man learns early on that selfishness, at least when it comes to his powers have terrible consequences as seen with the death of his uncle. Spider-Man 2, released a few years later explored the theme of a hero refusing his quest after accepting it. What does it really mean to be a superhero? Is a "normal life" still worth living? How much should a superhero sacrifice for others. Does he have free will or are his actions bound forever his community?

       One of the great things about Spider-Man is that it does have these questions embedded in a summer blockbuster. It gave life to the notion that maybe it’s not so perfect to be a superhero, that with great power indeed comes responsibility. Later films furthered different aspects the reality of being a superhero.

    Hulk (2003) was director Ang Lee's attempt to as shed new light into the pop culture icon. Instead of having playing up the blockbuster-action appeal of the Hulk, Lee explored how turning really strong and green can affect a person's life. Lee also constructed a complex relationship the Hulk had with his father and attempted to capture that along with the film, too. The result was a slow and confusing film but nonetheless a worthy attempt by a character director piecing together the pieces of a broken individual. 

    The Hulk is unique, in the realm of superhero characters because he is not really a 'hero'. He shows very little true selflessness-he is just a government experiment gone wrong and spends most of his time on the run. Yes, he is ostracized, but not for being a hero, rather for being a freak. 

       Unbreakable (2000), M. Night Shyamalan foray into the genre further develops the identity of a hero. In fact, saying that the movie fits in the "superhero" genre spoils the ending of an otherwise taught thriller. In the film, a man survives a train accident that kills everyone but him. With the encouragement of an eccentric comic book collector, he figures out that he does have traits of a superhero- he has survived calamities that have killed other men, he does have an extra sensory sense that allows him to see what immoral acts people have done and he is really, really strong. Of course, his revelations come extremely slowly and subtly- surviving calamities come in the form of surviving train wrecks. His sense is truly just a feeling that has the happy coincidence of being right. His strength is discovered through lifting heavier and heavier weights.

       There is a particularly moving scene where the man's son, convinced that his father was indeed a superhero, points a gun at him in attempt to prove his father was unbreakable. The man tries his best to talk his son down, that he will die if he is shot. He manages to convince his son to lower the gun and the family sobs together.

       The scene sums up the movie. It depicts the realistic consequences of being a superhero. It even suggests that superheroes themselves aren't aware of their power. Is the only thing separating us from them their power? Even in the scene where the man saves a family, he is painfully human. He falls. He needs help getting up. His superhero suit is a little more than exercise clothes. He barely escapes alive. How can he help people if he can't even help himself? Shyamalan answer is that superheroes aren't necessarily better or different from us. They have the same problems as us: taxes, a failing marriage, a boring job but they are unique in their ability. That's about it.

       What is also remarkable about Unbreakable, is the villain of the story: Mr. Glass played by Samuel L. Jackson. The villain has no superpower and in fact has a disease that confines him to a wheelchair and makes his bones break easily.  He is never outwardly aggressive to the protagonist and is the catalyst that helps him discover and develop his power. But he does bad things. He is the one who caused the train accidents and various other accidents to "discover" the superhero. Sadly, the only thing that the superhero has to do to overcome him is to hand him over to the police.

       Is he really a villain? Yes, he has bad things and yes he is a bit crazy for believing in superheroes but that doesn't mean he's wrong.  If the end justifies the means, is he not justified?  Without the villain's evil could the superhero be capable of doing such good?

    The X-Men films (2000, 2003, 2006) focused on the theme of minority rights. The X-Men essentially are a team focused on combating the terrorist group The Brotherhood of Mutants bent on violently changing the world to suit mutants. Parallels can be drawn to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s with Malcolm X calling for militant action to change the status quo while Martin Luther King Jr. called for a peaceful change progression. Both carry the theme of minority rights and exclusionary tactics by the majority-which happens to be us. In all three films, the people who aren't mutants are hostile. They stare. They are angry. They are just as belligerent as some of the mutants themselves. The scary thing is, they are supposed to be us. The X-Men films are political. The X-Men themselves face challenges on two different fronts, one from the terrorist mutant group they face, and the other from the people they are trying to help.

       The hard part about it too, is that the X-Men are in conflict with people hate them for being who they are but it’s hard to completely antagonize them because those people are us normal bipedal human folk. On the other hand, they are forced to fight those like them to defend us. Those other mutants are in the minority, like them and like them, push for more rights albeit militantly. How can we fight something that we, too believe for? Because it’s right? What if the people we are defending don't want to be defended by us? What should we do then?

       Iron Man (2008) was perhaps the first film to knowingly alienate the protagonist from the audience. Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark is meant to be unlikeable. He womanizes. He is rich and spoilt. He builds his mechanical suit as a means of escaping terrorists rather than to combat evil. However, the fact remain is that he IS liked. Iron Man was a box office success with a sequel on the way. The film rejuvenated Downey's career! What is it about snarky men that we find so appealing?

       To be fair, Iron Man, besides Downey's character is pretty generic. The love interest with his secretary falls flat with little chemistry. The villain 'Obadiah Stane" is underdeveloped and wants...well, we're not really sure what he wants. More power in the form of a suit? Maybe. But what is remarkable about the movie is that we've grown accustomed to a hero who admits, himself, "I'm not the hero type" and someone who is a bit more self-serving than others. Perhaps its because we like people more like us. Perhaps its because his flaws and not despite them we come to accept him and his journey as our defender.

       On the other hand, Watchmen (2009) suggests that the people who guard us have their own specific set of issues that alienate them from the general public. Only one superhero from watchmen is truly superhuman-Dr. Manhattan who is a naked blue sculpture of man able to do, well, practically anything except walk around in clothes all the time. The rest are ordinary people, like you and I, just with masks walking around with weapons. Most of the Watchmen are disturbed individuals. Night Owl, is a old fart looking back at old days only able to get an erection while in his suit. The Silk Spectre is a nymphomaniac unsatisfied in a relationship with a superhuman. Ozymandius has publicly unmasked himself to be a founder of a multinational organization providing every sort of good and service imaginable. He is also responsible for the deaths of millions in order to for "world peace". The Comedian is adrenaline junkie, a hired hit willing to kill whoever, including JFK. Finally, Rorschach, the most like-able character in the movie is also the most violent. Even Dr. Manhattan, the only true superhero is also the most inhuman. The film focuses on his inability to have feel human after being endowed with omnipotent power. In his famous line, he says "A dead human has the same number of particles as a living one" implying that life or death ultimately doesn't matter.

       Thematically, Watchmen is the darkest superhero movie of them all. World peace is only achieved by the killing of millions and millions of innocent lives. Rorschach, the "hero", of the film ultimately has to die because if not we would expose the truth to the world. Ozymandius, with his infinite knowledge, does the long term "right thing" and each of the Watchmen realize that he is right. Dr. Manhattan leaves Earth because he figures that his presence would only detriment the world. Watchmen, if anything, hammers home the fact that the people who dress up in order to protect us are disturbed and perhaps the right thing to do sometimes, is to kill millions to save billions.

       The Dark Knight (2008), perhaps the most realistic of the superhero films, questions the psyche of a man willing to sacrifice to become a hero. Batman is good, but that doesn't mean he is righteous. This is a Batman who beats up criminals, in a way, to avenge his parents who were killed because of criminals. This is Batman who beats up the Joker while interrogating him in order to get more information. This is a Batman who kidnaps a person across borders in order to put him in jail.

       Still, Batman is good. He is the most relatable character in the movie  (despite being really rich in our current recession). He does bad-ass things in order to reduce the escalation of crime in his city by any means necessary. Fair enough.

        However, this is how his arch-nemesis, The Joker is born. The mob becomes desperate and relies on The Joker to hunt Batman. The Joker crosses the line and is a complete sociopath. But, he realizes ( and the audience, too) that he could have never been brought to center stage without Batman. He, in fact, directly tells Batman that "You complete me!" implying that their struggle keeps both of them alive and relevant. One cannot exist without the other.

       At the end of movie, Batman is hunted by the people he promised to protect like the X-Men. He keeps the truth from being told the public, for the greater good, like the Watchmen. His alter-ego is unlikeable to protect his identity, like Iron Man. And finally, perhaps, most of all, he knows that his drive to combat crime comes with a responsibility to protect others. In a way, he is the superhero of our time because his bound with this incorruptible sense of obligation and out of every other superhero, is willing to sacrifice a comfortable life in exchange for a hard one for what he thinks is right. His sacrifice, and not his non-existant powers, make him the superhero and despite his questionable methods, we like him the most because he does the right thing even when its wrong for him, personally.

       Modern day superhero movies have changed. Along with the action and explosions are embedded themes of minority rights, Machiavellian methods and sacrifice. Essentially, what modern superhero movies are trying to tell us is that superheroes are defined despite their superpower and not because of it. They all have problems like the rest of us but what makes them heroic in the end is their sacrifice. We relate to them more because of that. Ask a movie-goer if they like Superman or Batman more and odds are they'd like Batman because, at the end of the day he is one of us normal-folk. He's just a man who made the right decision in a tough time. They all are. Films, today are just trying to capture what happens after they make that decision to save us.

  

The Suburban Film: Booze, Business, and Betrayal (Tyler)

    Revolutionary Road struck me as disturbingly underrated, lost among an exceedingly stellar array of films released in 2008. In the first place, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio reunite for the first time since Titanic. Only this time, they actually made it to New York, the honeymoon is over, and kids are in the picture. Oddly enough car sex transcends both films. Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition), a director quite familiar with films about dysfunctional families living in the suburbs, helms this character study set in 1950s Connecticut. Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) commutes to New York each day to work at an unnervingly standard desk job while his wife, April (Winslet), raises their two children. As with any suburban film, a great deal lies beneath the surface. April failed as an actress and, Frank needs a challenge. Intent on overcoming the mediocrity of their lives, April convinces her husband of the need for a change – the relocation of their family to Paris. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as it would seem.
    This film, though riveting in its own right, is an interesting development in a long line of suburban character studies stemming primarily from American cinema in the 1950s and ‘60s. Following an atrocious war and amidst a revitalized economy, the middle class set it sights on the American dream and, thereby, a suburban lifestyle. Films in this vein focus on the imperfections of this idealized atmosphere, culture, and way of life. Most scenes involve drinking, smoking, going to get drinks, arguing with a spouse (often while drunk), and feigning contentment for the benefit of children and friends. As a suburban film, Revolutionary Road directly examines themes and topics to which similar films at most allude. Contemplating the potential differences between this film and a suburban film actually made in the ‘50s, I came across The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
    Written and directed by Nunnally Johnson, a distinguished screenwriter, producer, and director (to a lesser extent), this film explores the emotional and fiscal strains of sustaining an urban household by working for a large corporation. A businessman, Tom Rath, commutes to Manhattan for work each day while his wife maintains their household. During the commute (between war flashbacks), Tom receives a tip about a job opening with better pay in public relations. He decides to pursue the position in light of recent financial difficulties, coming to find it much more difficult than originally expected.
    Because these two films share several key elements, their differences are astounding. Revolutionary Road examines the struggle of a married couple to break out of the norm, even by unethical means (i.e. an internal struggle). The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit considers the struggle of a married couple to maintain a family and their integrity despite an unethical corporate world and pressing emotional and financial issues (i.e. an external struggle). Specifically, the latter film focuses on the pitfalls of juggling a demanding job and family life as well as postwar society while the former centers entirely around the stifling nature of ‘50s suburban culture. The latter portrays suburban culture in a flattering light. It’s only in the process of obtaining the resources to maintain this lifestyle that problems arise. The former looks back upon a dull and monotonous way of life fostered by the culture and setting of this time period. Perhaps the distinction lies in the sum of the current cultural trends of the United States. Today’s audiences might well have found the settings of Revolutionary Road and even The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (despite its generally upbeat portrayal) dreadful in comparison. 

"Fun and Games:" A Further Look At "The Outer Limits" (Colin)

Note: To Mr. Gorn who kindly commented upon the first part of my introduction to The Outer Limits: here at last is the second part of my behemoth of a blog post. I hope that it was worth the wait.

Comparing The Outer Limits to the vastly more optimistic Star Trek is naturally more difficult – an ironic fact, as the two actually share one thing in common: a story. In June 1944, the science-fiction magazine Astounding Stories published “Arena,” by Frederic Brown, a story about a man and an alien who are forced by another alien of a superiorly-evolved species to fight a duel to the death in order to determine whether the race of humanity or the enemy alien’s race will ultimately be annihilated by this higher species. In 1967, Star Trek featured an episode with the same title based upon this story, an episode that would later become one of the best loved of the show’s first season. However, Gene Roddenberry was not the first to come up with the idea of adapting Brown’s tale. It has long been conjectured that the Outer Limits episode “Fun and Games,” which aired in March 1964, draws upon Brown’s “Arena” as well for inspiration, though this is not explicitly stated.

Like Brown’s story, the Star Trek version of the tale dwells upon the idea of a dispassionate, god-like extra-terrestrial arbiter who, perceiving the foolishness of  warring humanity and its alien enemy, decides to settle the conflict once and for all for the good of one species and the final downfall of the other. In Star Trek, the optimism of Brown’s tale (in which humanity triumphs) is heightened still more when Captain Kirk philanthropically chooses not to dispatch his rival, opting for peace rather than genocide. Their superiorly-evolved arbiter, impressed by this act of mercy, remarks rather sententiously, “You are still savage, but there is hope.” The episode suggests that in order for the human species to survive, peace and the ability to coexist are not only necessary but possible: an optimistic idea for an obvious Cold War allegory.

Yet the interpretation of Brown’s tale could not be more different when in the hands of The Outer Limits’ screenwriters. The highly-evolved alien arbiter in “Fun and Games” is still a superior life-form, but he is no longer the peacemaker: rather, he is the Senator of a race of aliens called the Anderians for whom he collects the denizens of different planets in order to pit them as dueling gladiators against each other, solely for the amusement of the Anderian citizenry. All the qualities of dispassionate justice are thus taken from his character and he is relegated from a coldly god-like status to a gloatingly devil-like force of implacable power. His character is suitably modified as well: whilst the toga-attired arbiter in Star Trek is coolly distant to the point of an almost milquetoast apathy, the Senator is a force of relentless, sardonic energy. Brilliantly voiced by Robert Johnson with a melodrama that positively drips with its genteel English accent and cruel jollity (it is easy to see why the Anderians chose him as their game host), the Senator is not only presented to us as a villain but an arbitrarily-minded one as well, possessing none of the ennobling motivations of his Brown-engendered predecessor or later Trekkian descendant.

In a similar fashion, the personalities of the protagonists are significantly altered as well. The heroic, readily likable Captain Kirk in Star Trek is replaced with two characters who could easily have fit the requirements for a ninety-minute 1940’s noir: Mike Benson (Nick Adams), a small-time hoodlum and ex-boxer, and Laura Hanley (Nancy Malone), a woman suffering from a troubled marriage. Both are deeply flawed and yet deeply sympathetic human beings, tormented as much by their own psychological makeup as by their cruel environment. The spaces that they inhabit on Earth are constrained in the 50-minute episode to dark, cramped apartment rooms, narrow staircases, and gambling rooms lit only by a single light suspended from the ceiling. The nightmarish surrealism of the atmosphere is enhanced by the tortuous wide-angle lenses often employed in the film’s opening sequences, most notably during a gambling game when the camera, positioned close to the center of the card players’ table, slowly pans to focus upon each gambler whilst grotesquely magnifying the size of their card-holding hands to emphasize their grasping, greedy nature. When the game takes a nasty turn and culminates in a shootout and murder, it is almost a relief when Mike – fleeing the scene of the crime in order to escape the police – is ‘electro-ported’ to the Senator’s chamber along with innocent bystander and total stranger Laura.

The Senator delightedly informs his two victims of the “wonderful, terrible game” for which they have been chosen, introduces them to their reptilian gladiatorial rivals, and then explains that the sole reward of winning the game will be the safety of Earth, the home planet of the losing side being obliterated by the Anderians upon conclusion of the game. “Will it be quick?” Mike asks.

“In your reading of time, the entire display will take approximately five years. For us, it will be as a firecracker in a black summer sky,” the Senator replies with his usual grandiose relish. Refusal to play the game would result in the automatic destruction of Earth, since their reptilian opponents would thus win by default.

However, Mike has few qualms about abandoning Earth to its fate. “Five years,” he remarks. “Long enough to enjoy just about all there is to enjoy in the world.” Laura, far more idealistic than the embittered ex-boxer, pleads with him to change his mind but he ignores her, demanding that he be sent back to Earth. “What do you owe the human race?” he counters viciously when Laura again attempts to change his mind. The Senator chooses to compromise, saying that he will send them back and allow them twenty-four hours to decide whether they will participate in the game or not – at the end of which, if Mike still has not changed his mind, Earth’s doom will have been sealed. 

In another departure from Frederic Brown and Star Trek’s “Arena,” Mike does not change his mind due to any sense of responsibility but because of his overwhelming fear of prison – a fear that has followed him ever since childhood when he had been locked in a cage by his rambunctious playmates, resulting in a phobia of enclosed spaces. When a policeman knocks on his door, Mike is instantly jolted out of his callous indifference and the camera’s uncomfortable close-ups of his terrified face forces the viewer to participate fully in his psychological torment. At that moment, perceiving Mike’s desire for any escape, the Senator electro-ports both him and Laura once again to Anderus and, to avoid the prospect of cooling his heels in a cell, Mike accepts the Senator’s offer, choosing to fight alongside Laura against the two reptilian gladiators.

“Your opponents are already on the planet we call the arena,” the Senator genially informs them. “They’re waiting. Good luck, Ms. Hanley, Mr. Benson. May the best team win. As I told you, the unpleasant planet that we call “the Arena” is somewhat similar to the planet Earth – I should amend, of course: Earth as it was a million years ago.” The arena’s identification with an earlier, mythic Earth and the visual nature of the set – a world of shadowy fronds, boiling rivers, and drifting, humid vapors – both create an eerie blend of a prehistoric Eden and a sweltering Hades. It is an appropriate enough environment for two characters who – while confronting their reptilian nemesis – must also confront the more dangerous flaws within their own souls. For Mike, it is his childhood horror that cramps his ability to have courage and faith in himself and the world. For Laura, however, the root of the problem is subtler and thus more difficult to confront. And that is when the character of the Senator re-enters the plot – but in a significantly altered fashion.

When the two protagonists discover that their supply of food will only last for six days, Laura chooses to run away from Mike, hoping to sacrifice herself so that he will survive long enough to kill their alien opponent and save humanity. Unsurprisingly, the alien manages to track her down – but just as he raises his weapon to slay her, the Senator intervenes, saying apologetically, “Oh, I can’t let you kill her just yet. She hasn’t begun to suffer.” Then, speaking to her over some mysterious, invisible transmission, he says, “Miss Hanley, wasn’t it our understanding that you and Mr. Benson were a team? You’ve run away again, haven’t you? Why have you run away from him, Miss Hanley? So that he can eat all the food? So that he can do all the fighting? Your heart is a bottomless box of virtuous motives, isn’t it? Whatever you do, you do for someone else’s good, don’t you? Your husband didn’t want you to mother him, Miss Hanley. He wanted you to help him. It hurts to admit that you’re afraid that you can’t help someone, doesn’t it?”

There is a frightening indictment in the languid mockery of the Senator’s questions: the central flaw in Laura’s idealism is her inability to fight the good fight herself without fleeing at the first sign of possible defeat. This is the subliminal reason she has fled Mike and this is also the cankerworm at the heart of her troubled marriage. But in the process of addressing Laura, the Senator calls our attention to his own role within the narrative, that is, the jarring shift from sadistic demon to sardonic judge. Previously his presence seemed yet another tormenting device to inflict pain upon the tortured principal characters; after this dialogue, however, his character seems far more ambivalent – far more in keeping with the hitherto rejected model of the god-like, moral arbiter in Frederic Brown and Star Trek’s versions.

This ambivalence is further exploited when – as the battle between Laura, Mike, and their opponents progresses – the Senator, in a voice-over, urges his unseen Anderian audience to observe the actions of the gladiators closely. The shock behind this sudden remark stems from the fact that – because we are never shown the Anderian audience – his remark seems directed toward us: we are, at that moment, equated with the Anderians themselves, voyeuristically watching the physical and psychological travails and struggles of the two principals to satisfy our own “passions,” as the Senator earlier put it. This is enhanced by the manner in which the combat is frequently filmed with the camera observing the action through the projection screen that the Senator has set up in his chamber.

But if we are relegated to the status of the Anderian voyeurs, then we are also very close to Laura by the end of the episode when she asks the Senator whether she shall have to remember all that has taken place within the arena. “Only those memories which might be helpful to you and perhaps to your marriage,” he replies, rather tersely summing up the goal of every cautionary tale: to entertain the audience and to leave them with a moral that they shall never forget as long as they live.

At this point in the episode, the Senator’s character seems, in our mind, significantly transformed: if he is indeed cruel and arbitrary, then he is also a redemptive force, offering both Laura and Mike changed perspectives of themselves and their world and allowing them to escape the psychological cages that they have welded for themselves. They return as less flawed beings to their equally flawed world. As such The Outer Limits eschews the sunny Star Trek resolution. The Senator’s show for the Anderians, like Stefano’s show for us mortals, jolts us with its unrelenting darkness and its portrayal of human desperation, but the darkness and the desperation are not without a didactic purpose. And the lesson – once learned – will not easily be forgotten by those fortunate enough to encounter this or any other episode of The Outer Limits. 

Note: Both seasons of The Outer Limits are available on DVD from both Amazon.com and Netflix.  

The Zombie Film: From Allegory to Introspection (Jason)

    Zombies have been active in the minds of humans for centuries. The question of what comes after death is a mysterious one, and zombies, or ghouls, or whatever you would like to refer to them as, provide a terrifying answer. In film, it has hard to locate a definitive starting point for the zombie subculture, but a major influence on the modern zombie filmmaker is The Last Man on Earth, a 1964 release directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow. It is an adaption of the book I Am Legend, a much more faithful version than the two more recent remakes. In it, Dr. Robert Morgan, our films protagonist, is left alone on Earth, presumably the last living human. He spends his days hunting the living dead and attempting to find a cure. Although technically a vampire movie, The Last Man on Earth evoked many of the stylistic tendencies of a zombie movie. Characters lurk in shadows, as hordes of the living dead fill each frame. However, a more important influence was the interpretation derived from the zombie apocalypse scenario. In the film, the end of the world is used as a reflection of Dr. Morgan the character, a flawed and not altogether sane person. In a crucial twist of irony, Morgan discovers that he is the "legend" among some of the infected who can still function, similar to how we view vampires and zombies. In other words, the true "monster" of our culture may have feelings, even live and breathe as we do; we could even be the monster. This can even be interpreted as a commentary on racial prejudice, a universal flaw of humanity.

    Of course, the zombie film would be nothing without the great George A. Romero. In 1968, he directed Night of the Living Dead, a film that was badly received at the time, but has since become a cult classic. In this film, the modern zombie was born. Stylistically, Romero set the rules for his genre. Lighting was just as important before, perhaps even more drastic, but it took a backseat to the props, makeup, and the style of the zombies themselves. Blood was especially important, the spirit of which soon became that there is never too much. After a decade, and some widespread success, Romero decided to make a sequel, Dawn of the Dead. This film takes place just after the first film, but with none of the same characters. In it, a group of misfits find retreat in a shopping mall, where they hold out for several months before being sabotaged by other living human, and ultimately, by the undead.. Beyond just the gore of your typical zombie move, Romero had a message he wished to deliver. Night of the Living Dead provides commentary on Vietnam-era paranoia and mob mentality. The climactic death of Ben, gunned down by fellow humans, demonstrates the destruction of a trigger happy culture. Dawn of the Dead contains a less than subtle allegory to consumerism, as characters indulge in their every pleasure in the months they are in the mall, despite the end of civilization that blazes outside. In both of these films, Romero uses the "zombie apocalypse" as a scenario to build upon. Like The Last Man on Earth, the zombie apocalypse is not the focus, but is instead used as a mirror to reveal the errors of society.

    Recently, the zombie film has picked up steam in popular culture. Starting with 28 Days Later in 2002, and continuing with Shaun of the Dead and Fido, both comedic approaches, the zombie film has found a new purpose. 28 Days Later and the less eclectic Resident Evil, released the same year, mark a turning point for the zombie film. Particularly, they are the first significant films to have an explanation for why the dead are coming back to life. 28 Days Later attributes the cause to a "rage virus" which is spread through bites. Fido takes a similar route, attributing the reanimation to radiation, but is set in an alterante world where zombies are treated like domesticated pets. The standards remain relatively the same. Zombies are reanimated corpses, they hunt for the living, they can only be killed by destroying their brain, etc. But in both of these films, the mechanics behind the terror are revealed to the viewer almost immediately. In fact, in the very first scene of 28 Days Later, animal activists come to release monkeys that are caged up. Little did they know, the monkeys contain the rage virus, and so it is spread to humans. Just as the viewer began to think it might be a movie that addresses animal rights activism, director Danny Boyle spins around the meaning of the film. With this subtle change, all of the allegorical implications of earlier zombie flicks are stripped away. More recent films have found an allure to the zombies themselves. Once the mechanics are revealed, the fear of the zombie scenario is not a reflection out towards society, but inward. The realization of a possible reality of the "zombie apocalypse" is put into the mind of the audience, no matter how far fetched it is. The viewer becomes terrified not by the blood or the shadows, but by this very reality.This forced look inward has become the new standard of the zombie film, and an introspective gaze has never held such terror.

Masculinity in the Modern Mainstream Cinema (Paul)

A few years ago, no one had even heard of Judd Apatow, Meg Ryan chick flicks dominated the mainstream audiences, and Bruce Willis was the definition of the American hero. Today, things are different. Apatow's films are wildly popular: "I Love You, Man," a rated R comedy, opens to critical acclaim and the image of 300 dudes killing people is a pop culture icon. Hollywood's vision of the modern man is confusing to say the least. There are two, near-opposite visions/versions: one is the softer guy seen in the many romantic comedies flooding mainstream cinema. Gone are the cocky, robust, bad boys of the past. Instead, the modern man has become “schlubblier” for lack of a better word: for example, Seth Rogen's character in any movie he's been in or Vince Vaugh's character in Wedding Crashers. The modern male protagonist is emotional, lazy, hedonistic. He is, for lack of a better word, imperfect, one who fights with his mind rather than with his hands. On the other hand, there is still a definite demand for the hyper-masculine. Like the bulging beasts of men in 300. Like the James Bond who spends more time topless than the Bond girls. However, these two polarizing visions do serve a purpose. Comedy is all about relatability and the schlubby man succeeds in getting the audience to empathize with him. On the other hand, action movies are our modern mythology where men are larger than life and their deeds echo throughout eternity. Their viciousness is celebrated because they do things that any normal person wouldn't. 

The opening scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall typifies/shows one aspect of the emotional man: he is schlubby. Here is the set up: The main character, played by Jason Siegel, is getting ready to shower before meeting up with his highly successful actress girlfriend, Sarah Marhsall, played by Kristen Bell, for dinner. As Sarah Marshall enters the room, she promptly breaks up with him, and In his shock, Jason drops his towel, exposing his entire figure in the frame. It becomes painfully apparent to the audience that Jason Siegel does not have the body of a body builder. Not even close. His figure looks more like a potato than Michelangelo's David. His character even cries later during the scene. It's brutally honest and pathetic. But, as pathetic as we may think he is, we empathize with him. Any man in the audience could be Siegel's character, schlubby and emotional. Siegel's physique is a testament to the YouTube generation: he is successful because he looks like one of us. We empathize with him because he does go through everyday tragedies like we do. 

The initial scene can be any one of the stories on fmylife.com or a similar website. Today, men talk about their feelings all the time, and to some extent, have been emasculated. We like him because he is like us. Another aspect of the emotional man is how utterly logical he is. Very few secrets are kept between himself and the film, making it easy for audience members to project themselves upon the character. Take, for example, Owen Wilson's character in Wedding Crashers (even his name, John Beckwith, sounds generic but that may be the point). The reason why the movie is so funny is because he reacts the way any one of us would react. The scene where his love interest’s mother asks him to feel her breasts, he acts like any one of us would act. First his face fills with disbelief and then disgust, not at the breasts, but perhaps at himself for being in the situation and going along with a madwoman's wishes . A neat touch is that the frame is set behind the woman and we actually never see her breasts; we only see John's expression because the breasts are not the point. The point is his reaction because it reflects the audience's reaction to the situation. He is definitely relatable to the modern audiences. A final aspect of the modern man is how he always has a best friend.

 "Bro-mances" as a genre is picking up steam: Wedding Crashers, I Love You, Man, and Superbad are all films about the strange relationships men share…relationships that oddly resemble a romantic relationship. Towards the end of Superbad, for example, both male leads literally proclaim their love for each other after a wild night with of trying (but failing) to have sex with girls. It is an awkward experience to watch, but is perhaps typical in any American setting. Which boy hasn't grown up with a best friend? The scene is emasculating because it implies that men do really care and need each other. Men are not senseless sex-driven beasts, but that they have feelings and hearts that are as fragile as any woman's. It’s pathetic, but an honest expression of friendship that audiences can relate to. 

Take these three factors and contrast them to a '90s romantic comedy like You've Got Mail, and what you get is a clear evolution of male archetypes in romantic comedies. You've Got Mail's Tom Hanks is a successful bookstore magnate. While John Beckwith crashes weddings to find girls, Tom Hanks charms his outspoken competition, played by Meg Ryan, like charming her with his nephews. On the other hand, Jason Siegel's character has lots of empty sex trying to get over Sarah Marshall. All Tom Hanks had to do to win over the love of his life was to be honest with her and show her the side that he shows everyone else. Jason Siegel and Owen Wilson do their best to get rid of their love interests' boyfriend at all costs. Tom Hanks has one black friend that disappears in the third act of the movie. The two best friends in the movie share virtually every frame together. The modern man is slightly more pathetic, no doubt about that, but he is also more relatable, to. No human is perfect and the modern interpretation of the masculine lead reflects that. We laugh harder because we empathize with their situations. Their story is our story and although they may be lazy bums, they are our lazy bums. On the other hand, there has also been a definite rise in hyper-masculinity in action films. 

Our heroes are lean mean, killing machines. It is no secret that set designers in the '60s used to make the doors slightly smaller so when the protagonists make their dramatic entrance, they seem bigger than life. Today, set designers don't need to do that. We have CGI, lighting, and actors willing to push their physical limits. 300 used a variety of CGI, artful lighting and a masochistic training regimen to sell the audience that these 300 men could really go against a million. Their skill at killing people is celebrated: there is a point in the movie where director Zack Snyder slows down an action sequence so the audience’s thirst for every bloody moment can be satiated. The camera pans along slowly as King Leonidas, played by Gerard Butler, mercilessly hacks down a line of soldiers, the shot ending with an image of his abs rippling. Another example would be the gritty fight sequence in Casino Royale in which Bond eventually overpowers a henchman. Instead of just cleanly downing him with a bullet, the film elongates the sequence to the point where the audience squirms with each heavy blow exchanged by the two fighters. The film further celebrates his masculinity with gratuitous shots of him shirtless even mimicking the body out of water shot popularized by the earlier James Bond films Octopussy and Die Another Day, even though both films featured the female lead coming out of the water. Also, in Crank, the male lead, an angry sociopath murderer with a mastery of bloody comic book violence - bashes and thrashes his way through the movie. in fact, not even a few thousand mile drop into the middle of the city can stop him (as seen with the release of Crank 2 in a few days).

 Our heroes, today, are angry, muscular bad-asses. On one hand, the fact that we celebrate badass-ness alienates any sense of empathy the audience has for the heroes. No, there is no way any man can get that big (unless he is part of the LAX team). No, there is absolutely no way any movie going audience can kill a billion guys without feeling a touch of remorse. Our society now is one than condemns violence even in video games and suppresses even the vaguest inklings of anger. The suppression leads us to admire and even glorify acts of violence and hyper masculinity. Maybe that's why there is rise of masculinity in mainstream cinema. Today's action movies are the best way to escape from our everyday malaise we can't laugh about. America is fighting two different wars and faces a serious financial recession rivaling the Great Depression. As a result, today's audience, more than ever, does have a social consciousness. 

Today's society is more aware of global problems than any other society has been in the past. The fact is, we do care about political correctness, we do care about what our enemies think, and everyone, almost from birth, is taught that violence is wrong and diplomacy is the best way. Our heroes don't have any weaknesses. Even Bruce Willis' character in Die Hard, did terrible things but did them so he could be with his wife (Ironically, by Die Hard III, the wife character is entirely written out). That’s why we want to see our larger than life heroes kick ass and take names without a second thought; it is because we can't do it ourselves. We certainly don't sympathize with them, but we celebrate it. They are our heroes because they dare to do something we don't.

 Another theory about the rise of hyper masculinism, is that our society as a whole now celebrates perfection, particularly physical perfection. Where chubbiness was once been celebrated as a sign of wealth in Western cultures, we now celebrate hard bodies. This is the first time in history where members of a poorer social class are fatter than members of the richest. Let's face it; having a good body implies you have the time to attain one, which in turn implies you have enough means to do so. It is now our ideal. That's why our heroes have six packs and biceps rivaling most tree trunks. audience members compares themselves to each other and to the images they see on the screen. We are bombarded everyday by faces and bodies of physical perfection, something that couldn't happen in the days of the radio. Plastic surgery now even services children still in high-school. We try our best to be physically perfect and that's why our heroes have to be.

 Masculinity in today's mainstream cinema is a two faced: on one hand, romantic comedies deflate the male mythos. The romantic leads are a reflection of today's audiences, they are the ones who we empathize with and feel for. If it has happened to us, we are more likely to laugh. On the other hand, our action movies have injected testosterone into our heroes. Our heroes now are strong, violent and Machiavellian. They are who we secretly want to be. They are physical perfection. These two projections of what it means to be a man are a product of society interweaving with each other and I can only wonder what tomorrow's heroes will be like.

The Darker Side of Science Fiction: An Introduction to "The Outer Limits" (Colin)

A pilot episode entitled “The Galaxy Being” premiered on American national television on September 16^th, 1963, heralding a science fiction/noir series that would run for a total of only two seasons but would leave behind an impression that still lingers powerfully in contemporary audiences’ imaginations. “The best program of its type ever to run on network TV,” Stephen King would later say of it. The Outer Limits, though never as popular as Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, was the brainchild of producer and screenwriter Joseph Stefano – and, like Serling, he had a taste for the macabre as well as the fantastic in fiction: a taste that is evident throughout his Serling-esque series. Stefano, who had adapted Robert Bloch’s sensationally chilling novel Psycho for Hitchcock’s eponymous film, was peculiarly suited to cross-mixing genres. In Psycho, he had worked on a noir/horror/ psychological melodrama; for The Outer Limits, a show in which his screenwriting capabilities are evident time and again, he let that peculiarity run rampant, blending the elements of science fiction and horror with expressionist film noir a full two decades before Ridley Scott directed the neo-noir Blade Runner.

But the time of noir had passed; the sixties, no longer quite as preoccupied with the internal corruptions of capitalist government and suburban life, now focused upon the imminent crises of nuclear conflict and Communist expansion. Consequently, the destruction of the world, the misuse of technology, and the loss of individuality in a mechanized, totalitarian society – rather than brutal street life melodramas and police procedurals – occupied much of the darker cinema of the decade. Cinematic style had changed as well: more and more directors were filming their projects in dazzling Technicolor and though the black-and-white film had not yet died, it was certainly on its way out. As a result, the deep chiaroscuro shadowing and German Expressionist sets so prevalent in the noir – and in the art design of The Outer Limits – was on its way out as well.

Yet if The Outer Limits was uncharacteristic of the sixties in style, its thematic obsessions were every bit a product of its time. Cold War paranoia, the quest for an identity and loss of individuality, sci-fi technology’s uses (and, of course, misuses) dominate many of Stefano’s relentlessly dark episodes alongside the more traditionally noir themes of existential alienation and surrealism. As stated before, Stefano’s genius lay in his ability to take the traditional atmosphere and dramatis personae of the noir and update them with the bells and whistles of science fiction and the Cold War concerns of the sixties. The result was a very dark – oftentimes horrific – but nonetheless fascinating television series that, in addition to featuring Stefano’s talents, would often make use of other accomplished writers such as Harlan Ellison, Robert Towne (of Chinatown fame), and Jerry Sohl.

When watching The Outer Limits – or any science fiction show of the period, for that matter – one inevitably compares it to the more well-known Star Trek and Twilight Zone. The latter, as I already mentioned, was very similar thematically to Stefano’s show; yet the mood of Serling’s Twilight Zone in spite of its occasional expressionist and surrealist touches, is warmer by worlds than The Outer Limits. While Serling’s plots, in the main, focus upon an unsympathetic anti-hero and the rightful judgment visited upon him or her, Stefano’s tend to focus more often upon the anguish visited upon flawed but nonetheless sympathetic characters who live out their lives in a cold, harsh, and unjust world. This is not to suggest that while Serling seeks to be more conventionally moral, Stefano means to portray the cold, harsh truth of ‘reality.’ Both shows are at heart morality plays that seek to point out the flaws in mankind and society. However, while Serling enjoys introducing the concept of a just and implacable Fate that awaits each of his unsavoury protagonists and serves them appropriately ironic ends, Stefano prefers to allow his more sympathetic anti-heroes to struggle in a surreal and oftentimes alienating world with a knowledge of what is morally right and morally reprehensible and a power to act upon those principles, even if their fate may be ultimately and undeservedly dark. Or, to put it in more apocalyptic terms, if Serling with his dry wit and sense of poetic justice is the Inferno’s cheerful usher visiting judgment on the odd malefactor in an otherwise decent society then Stefano is Purgatory’s gloomier apologist (or, perhaps more fittingly for both Serling and Stefano, dis-apologist) for a society in need of a systemic overhaul, one overburdened individual at a time. That happy day must await the hereafter, perhaps. Until then, from The Outer Limits perspective, i.e., Stefano's, – whether on Earth or in one of her neighboring galaxies – one is on one’s own. And -- whether utilizing the motifs of horror, science fiction, or horror -- the uniqueness of this perspective is made manifest in each episode, both defining and separating the show within and apart from the mere constraints of genre. 

 

Watch Out for "The Watchmen" - the blue guy gets naked (Tyler)

            With the somewhat recent release of The Watchmen, a film based on the mid-eighties comic book series created by Alan Moore, I got to thinking about the evolution of films adapted from comic books and graphic novels. This film, the latest installment in a long and distinguished line, undoubtedly ranks among the best of its kind (in my opinion, the best so far – no question). Considering the content and the themes of the film, however, Superman would be spinning in his grave if only someone could figure out a way to kill him and make it stick; maybe make the grave out of kryptonite and just to let him spin around a bit - that’s how far this film pushes the envelope. It’s closest predecessor, Sin City, contains more violence and about the same amount of sex, maybe a little more, but, it comes no where near broaching the themes fundamental to Watchmen. The most recent in the extensive collection of Batman movies, The Dark Knight, also raises disturbing questions but, both it and Sin City consist essentially of a morbid look at the dark underbelly of fictionalized urban settings resulting in graphic, violent and, sexual scenarios which inevitably lead to a bleak reflection upon human nature and the state of humanity. Although crime-ridden city streets start out as the problem in Watchmen, things become infinitely more complicated.

With the creator, Moore, and his original illustrator signed on, the screenplay remains as true as possible to the original comics and graphic novels. The plot surrounds several retired superheroes following the unlikely murder of an old crewmember. Although super heroes have fought crime since the 40s, the Cold War and nuclear proliferation pose bigger problems (especially for heroes with limited capacities - the powers of incredible strength and masterful fighting abilities; basically Bruce Lee in a spandex jumpsuit). That is except for Dr. Manhattan, who may be a god. With almighty weapons and entities in the mix, themes of relativistic atheism and post-postmodern dread almost inevitably rise to the surface. What’s more, the all-too-human nature of several heroes shrouds the moral standards of the protagonists in an uneasy, unresolved ambiguity (it goes substantially further than the callous but noble stereotype exemplified by Batman or Hell Boy). Needless to say, it gets complicated.

Director Zack Snyder (300 and the remake of Dawn of the Dead), an apt director in light of the content noted above, continues his legacy of pristine, slow-motion-savvy filmmaking (i.e. 300) with incredibly dynamic shots - most notably, a montage of nearly still frame shots in which the contents move very slightly in slow motion. The effect of these shots is best described as the wet-dream of the Ken Burns effect (slowly zooming into photographs and documents in an attempt to animate an otherwise still frame); like the moving photos in Harry Potter but, much slower, more subtle, and aesthetically pleasing from a cinematic viewpoint. Unsurprisingly, Snyder makes further use of slow motion and airtight effects to impressively heighten important action sequences.

Everyone enjoys a good, solid super hero movie but, Superman, Spiderman, Ironman, Batman, the Punisher, and Daredevil (among many others) represent only the cheesy, goody-goody protagonists of the comic book world (that isn’t to say the Punisher is exactly nice). Even the Hulk, Ghost Rider, Spawn, and Hell Boy, who get into some difficult moral territory due to the nature of their superpowers (technically Spawn and Ghost Rider work for the devil and, to a certain extent, Hell Boy is the devil), still remain innately good characters. The X-Men series makes everything extremely complicated in that mutants change sides, political and military action causes riffs, new mutants foster new agendas, etc. but, for the most part, one side, headed by Professor Xavier, has generally good intentions, and the other side has intentions hinging upon the notion that the ends justify the means (bad intentions). The world in which the Watchmen live has good guys, the super heroes, and bad guys, the villains, but, after a decade of retirement, the lines begin to blur, their relatively sturdy moral foundation falters, and, all the while, the world sits on the brink of nuclear holocaust. The prospect of dynamic characters and compelling themes has only recently broached this sub-genre of films. The Watchmen makes a great deal of progress at raising the bar that much further, which is probably why it’s three hours long.

The New Frontier (Tyler)

About a year ago, the onlookers of the 80^th Academy Awards found themselves stricken with Cohen fever: a dusty, stirrup brandishing, blood soaked tale of moral complexity in the face of greed, woe, and duty (perhaps function serves as a better word) – No Country For Old Men. This film raises daunting questions about the present nature of humanity as the protagonist finds himself facing difficult decisions and inevitably grappling with the consequences. The setting of the “West,” alluding to a simpler way of life in an often rural but requisitely untamed, or unruly, environment, aptly accommodates these studies of human character and emotion.

The protagonist of No Country For Old Men, Llewellyn Moss, stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong during a hunting outing. Overcome by temptation, Moss takes a case full of $2 million dollars left among the bodies. When a mass murderer completely devoid of emotion, Anton Chigurh, begins to pursue him, Moss unsurprisingly regrets his misdeed but, rather than handing the money over to the authorities, he decides to go on the run in order to distance himself from and protect his wife. Amidst the ensuing pursuit, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, a man of resolute convictions, attempts to resolve and make sense of the whole situation.

Although this film presents many unique themes, much of its premise prompts a look back at Sam Peckinpah’s controversial film, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Bennie, a wandering piano player, encounters two bounty hunters in the employ of a rich and powerful Mexican landowner, who has recently given a large reward for the head of Alfred Garcia. Discovering that his girlfriend possesses the rare knowledge of Garcia’s resting place, Bennie decides to collect the head and the reward for himself. His and his girlfriend’s journey to do so leads down a wretched, bloody road.

Both films explore the pursuit of a difficult but rewarding goal, which requires the bending, or even breaking, of certain moral standards. Following a somewhat immoral and certainly greedy decision, the protagonist not only places himself in harms way but also those others who might also have benefitted from the success of his goal – mainly his loved ones. Those that would prevent him from achieving his ends do so under motives similar to his own: greed and ambition. The viewer considers these antagonists as such simply because their moral sense appears much more depraved than that of the protagonist’s though both parties represent complex and corrupted moral perspectives.

While Peckinpah’s legacy will forever remain his many dark and complicated Westerns, the Cohen brothers have only recently broached the genre (already old hands when it comes to the dark and complicated). In light of Peckinpah’s films, No Country for Old Men, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, and John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (the screen play of which Anderson evidently read quite often while writing There Will Be Blood) among several others, a subgenre with a focus differing from the standard, gun blazing, saddle slinging, tobacco spitting Western might be in order; it needs a name along the lines of Noir West or the Moody West – West should probably be in the name, that seems important. Blog on it.

The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of... (Jason)

    The year is 1941. John Huston releases The Maltese Falcon, one of the first examples of a film noir crime story, complete with a chain smoking detective, a femme fatale, and photography that leads the viewer in and out of darkness. And no one can play Sam Spade quite like Humphrey Bogart can. In 1946, The Killers hit the screen. Film noir will never be the same after such an intricate play between good and evil, darkness and light, and the archetypical femme fatale, Ms. Kitty Collins. In 1958, Orson Welles tried his hand at the genre with Touch of Evil, and as is typical of Wells, it is executed with a level of perfection and grace. We are shuffled between the seedy underbelly of a Mexican dystopia and a corrupt American world, with a do-gooder Charlton Heston stuck in the middle. By the way, if you have not seen these films, go out and see them right now. After Welles, film noir loses its steam. It fades away into a familiar reference, even an object of parody. Every one can instantly recognize the detective sitting behind his desk, cloaked in shadows and cigarette smoke, and the sexy "dame," desperate for help. Except for a few exceptions here and there, the big screen saw very little of film noir in its classic context after 1960. Enter Brick: a 2005 release which takes all the elements of the classic noir film and throws it into a high school setting. Think that can't work? It does.

    Brick follows Brendan as he attempts to discover the circumstances surrounding his ex-girlfriends death, and as is typical of crime noir, "break some deserving teeth." The film noir influence on this film is exceptionally clear. The dialogue is quick and reminiscent of the 50s, it has an ever twisting plot, and it has the full cast of characters, including the femme fatale as stunning and as deadly as Kitty, the overambitious muscle and the smart character on the inside appropriately named "The Brain." Though the film is in color, it stylistically remains loyal to its genre. In other words, the composition reflects the world. The colors are, for the most part. In a few scenes, a tunnel looms in the background, and as characters run in and out they fade into oblivion. Because of his limited budget, Johnson was forced to do all his special effects with camera tricks instead of in post. This decorates the film with an older, much more raw tone. Though the effects are well done, the smoothness that results from CGI is altogether lacking, making the effects themselves gritty. But, and this is important, it is not that director Rian Johnson copies film noir. For an example of this, see The Black Dahlia. Instead, Johnson takes the essence of noir and makes it relevant in our time. In the past 50 years, there has never been a better time for a noir comeback then right this instant. 

    In the 40s and 50s film noir just plain worked. After all, the conditions were perfect. Americans were coming out of the worst depression in history, and the economic disparity hadn't quite gone away. They were involved in a tiring and globally devastating war that touched every single citizen's life. There was a turn towards a socialist/communist agenda and an overreaction from certain sections of government. All in all, Americans were feeling hopeless. Directors began to realize this, and they wished to reflect this in their films. They didn't want to throw false hope at their viewer in an attempt to make them feel better, they wanted to give them biting reality. It was the only way to deal with what was at stake. The rest is well known. America bounced back and film noir got left on the back burner. So why is it relevant today? Well, let's check the list. A period of extreme economic strife and recession?...check. A long and tiring war?...double check. A turn towards socialism and a backlash? Read Obama's stimulus plan and listen to some GOP governors comment on it. Americans are feeling hopeless again. The romantic comedy isn't quite going to do it anymore. We need darkness, we need the anti-hero, we need a world where good is rewarded with punishment. The best part is, we already have a working model, just ask Bogart or Mitchum.

     Of course, the film noir of old, copied and cloned, isn't as relevant as it used to be, the world has certainly changed. Let's return to Brick. What sets this apart from any film of its type is that it is set in high school. Admittedly, this is a strange pick for a crime drama. Brendan, our protaganist, paces back and forth on a brick wall, throwing a Rubik's Cube at "The Brain," shooting questions at him about his ex-girlfriend, Emily. "Who's she eating with?" is the one most important to him. Who doesn't remember the intimidating atmosphere of the high school cafeteria. The cheerleaders all sat together, and the nerds had their own table. The jocks sat with the jocks, and I just plain didn't. It had simple rules and a simple structure. Even, however, in this simplistic setting, hopelessness resides. Throughout the film, the characters have to simaltenously deal with raging and unpredictable hormones and a complex drug ring and multiple murders. There is no escape, no innocence. This is the world we currently live in. What is the future of these kids? Many are thinking bleak, at best. The American people are ready to face this kind of gloom on screen. Noir serves as a reflection of its audience, almost a mirror into their own world. And why try to hide the truth, disguise it behind beautiful faces and unattainable standards. That's not life. Films should strive to reach the maturity of the noir of old, much like Brick did. They should try to expose life for what it is, especially in these trying times where Americans in particular can't afford to ignore what the world is like.

Disquieting Truths: Jacques Tourneur’s "Night of the Demon" and the Logic of Evil (Colin)

“Well, the sense of being watched whenever one was alone was the most distressing thing to him. After a time I took to sleeping in his room, and he was the better for that: still, he talked a great deal in his sleep. What about? Is it wise to dwell on that, at least before things are straightened out?”

– “Casting the Runes,” M.R. James

 “There are sacraments of evil as well as good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.”

– “The Red Hand,” Arthur Machen

Dr. John Holden: I see you practice white magic as well as black.

Dr. Julian Karswell: Oh yes, I don't think it would be too amusing for the youngsters if I conjured up a demon from hell for them.

-- Night of the Demon (1957)

 

            The films of Jacques Tourneur are often typified by intricate plots set against shifting, illusionary atmospheres in which much of what seems obvious at first to both the protagonist and his audience is proven to be less straightforward than it first appeared and in which an apparent belief is often proven – often with terrible consequences – to be false. In the realm of the film noir, Tourneur demonstrated this sensibility with powerful effect in Out of the Past, creating the deadly Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) as the archetypal femme fatale who lures the half-willing protagonist (Robert Mitchum) to his death by allowing him to fall in love with what he imagines her character to be and disillusioning him with her true nature only when he is already under her spell. It is little surprise, then, that Tourneur made his name not so much as a director of noirs but as the talented helmsman of a number of subtly directed and imaginatively plotted horror films, many of them produced under the auspices of Val Lewton. Yet though Tourneur’s well-deserved fame lies in such classics as I Walked With a Zombie and Cat People, it is in the more obscure 1957 supernatural horror film Night of the Demon that the auteur not only equals his previous fame in the genre, but in many ways surpasses his own ability to invert established conventions and to surprise out of both his protagonist and his audience a sense of unease both fundamental to the horror experience and, in many ways, particular to the subgenre of supernatural terror.

            Based on a tale by English ghost story author M.R. James (1862-1936), Night of the Demon centers around the death of an eminent professor who, before his untimely death, was in the process of exposing a Satanic cult headed by a Dr. Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis). Fellow psychologist Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), determined to uncover a non-supernatural explanation for his colleague’s seemingly supernatural death, travels to England, interviewing several other colleagues as well as the murdered man’s niece Joanna Harrington (Peggy Cummins) in order to learn more about the details surrounding Harrington’s last days. Rather than uncovering evidence pointing to a “natural” murder, however, he begins to find clues that seem to point to black magic as the only solution. Naturally, he spends a good deal of the film as a stalwart skeptic, attempting to disregard this theory as implausible; it is only when he himself falls under a similar curse that he at last realizes that, if he wishes to survive, he must acknowledge the terrifying existence of the shadowy supernatural world that he had spent all of his life attempting to explain away in scientific terms. The film ends with the successful defeat of the sorcerer Karswell (he is, like every good Faustus, dismembered by the demon that he has been ritually summoning throughout the entire film) and with Holden’s realization that his formerly materialistic perspective is, of course, forever untenable in light of all that he has experienced.  

            The plot’s murder-mystery construction causes one to inevitably draw a comparison between the film’s premise and the school of “rational” supernatural horror emergent in the late eighteenth-century and officiated by the mistress of the Gothic, Anne Radcliffe (authoress of the infamous Mysteries of Udolpho). This comparison, however, would prove misleading. Members of the Radcliffean school crafted lengthy and elaborate plots hinging upon seemingly supernatural events – all of which would be explained away at the novel’s often vaguely bewildering and interminable conclusion as the charlatanry of duplicitous murderers and schemers. A product of Enlightenment thought, the Radcliffean “rationalist” supernatural authors stood in direct opposition to true supernatural horror authors who wrote Gothic novels at the same time: authors such as Matthew Lewis (The Monk), Charles Robert Maturin (Melmoth the Wanderer, Fatal Revenge), and John Polidori (“The Vampyre”). Indeed, this unacknowledged war continued into the age of the Victorians –  Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles and Stoker’s Dracula being the towering, representative legionaries from these two respective literary camps during the late nineteenth-century.

It would be a logical assumption to believe that with the rise of Darwinism and accelerated scientific discovery in the early twentieth-century, that the true supernatural horror tale would fall somewhat out of favor. Curiously enough, the opposite proved to be true; with the rise of materialism, Nietzschean thought, and Freudianism, there also rose some of Western culture's most infamous occultists such as Montague Summers, Aleister Crowley, Madame Blavatsky, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn – all of them standing in direct opposition to the growing tide of skeptical thought that suffused much of Western philosophical thought at the time. Many members of occult orders such as Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood were more famously known as supernatural horror authors and, though he was not himself an occultist, Professor M.R. James himself was a member of this self-same literary (and, in light of the rise of materialism, revolutionary) movement, crafting many fine ghostly tales besides “Casting the Runes,” all of them of the truest non-rational order.

Jacques Tourneur and screenwriter Charles Bennett faithfully follow the mood of James’ subtle masterpiece, deftly blending the gentle, Old World atmosphere of the English countryside with the ever omnipresent, hovering fear of a supernatural underworld existing beneath the surface and threatening to erupt upon the moors, into the mansions, or – and perhaps even more disquieting – into the conference rooms of materialist scientists at any moment. But more importantly, the film successfully maintains the original tale’s ploy of constructing a deceptively Radcliffean, murder-mystery-esque plot only to turn this plot on its head and show that the gruesome, masked figures are – terrifyingly – wearing no masks at all. To a practiced auteur such as Tourneur, such a horrific inversion of convention came all too naturally.

Much of the film’s subtly subversive supernaturalism is derived from the atypical characterizations of the hero Dr. Holden and his sinister opponent Karswell. In many horror films of the period, the psychologist was portrayed as a sort of materialist equivalent of the priestly Van Helsing: a character who understands the minds of men better than they themselves do and who can even use this knowledge for certain maleficent ends himself. Whether good or evil, it was characteristic of all psychologists to be portrayed in serious cinema as learned, wise, and usually the guiding influence or omnipresent antagonist of the hero. Likewise, Dana Andrews, famed for his portrayal of hard-boiled protagonists in films such as Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944), was typically cast in the role of a reliable, intelligent hero whom the audience could trust to make the correct decisions in spite of his wily, witty villains. With these conventions in mind, nothing prepares us for the platitudinous, unimaginative Dr. Holden in Night of the Demon. Most protagonists in horror films must maintain a certain skepticism in order to remain believable; but in Dr. John Holden, skepticism is heightened to a nearly pathological pitch until the audience, rather than experiencing sympathy for his plight, is coerced into feeling a certain impatience instead. Conventionally handsome, well-educated, and American, his character’s presence in a film set in England with a British-heavy cast stands as the mascot of straightforward, scientific, rationalist, modern America – and the portrayal is hardly flattering.

 

Dr. John Holden: Joanna, let me tell you something about myself. When I was a kid, I used to walk down the street with the other kids and when we came to a ladder they'd all walk around it. I'd walk under it, just to see if anything would happen. Nothing ever did. When they'd see a black cat they'd run the other way to keep it from crossing their path. But I didn't. And all this ever did for me is make me wonder why – why people get so panicky about absolutely nothing at all. I've made a career studying it. Maybe just to prove one thing. That I'm not a superstitious sucker like ninety per cent of humanity.

 

Conversely, Karswell is portrayed as the exact antithesis of Holden in almost every way imaginable. Older, British, and (unsurprisingly) more supernaturally inclined, Karswell confesses at one point that he worked at one point as a stage-show magician: a most inauspicious beginning in comparison to Holden’s professorship. He is the living symbol of Old World, old-fashioned, “backward”-thinking. Yet, perversely, the film’s cinematography and screenplay – as well as the plot itself – force the audience to acknowledge Karswell as the wiser of the two: whilst Holden’s face in a number of shots is filmed in shadow, giving a visual emphasis to his doubts and uncertainties regarding his environment, Karswell is nearly always filmed in either broad daylight or in the clear, unbroken light of a parlor or drawing room. Likewise, while Holden merely parrots his tired arguments, Karswell’s dialogue is appropriately ambiguous and yet redolent of a certain secret knowledge:

 

Dr. Julian Karswell: Do I believe in witchcraft? What kind of witchcraft? The legendary witch that rides on the imaginary broom? The hex that tortures the thoughts of the victim? The pin stuck in the image that wastes away the mind and the body?

Dr. John Holden: Also imaginary.

Dr. Julian Karswell: But where does imagination end and reality begin? What is this twilight, this half world of the mind that you profess to know so much about? How can we differentiate between the powers of darkness and the powers of the mind?

 

The casting of Niall MacGinnis as the sinister conjuror was yet another stroke of calculated genius. Four years after playing Martin Luther in the eponymous film, MacGinnis maintains many of the mannerisms of the wise, knowledgeable visionary whilst subtly imbuing them with an added quality of underlying ruthlessness. Karswell is a man who at one moment may be innocuously hosting a Halloween party for the village children and the next moment setting a demon against one of his enemies. One has only to watch the scenes in which he calmly and pleasantly reminds Holden of Holden’s forthcoming curse-induced death, in order to witness Bennett’s fine screenwriting capabilities and the sadly underrated talents of one of England’s finest thespians.

The one scene in which science attempts to take some degree of control occurs towards the end of the film when Holden and his colleagues hypnotize one of Karswell’s cultists with the purpose of gaining some knowledge of the inner-workings of the cult. Ironically, this scientific triumph concludes in a further proof of the existence of the supernatural. When Professor O’Brien asks the man what the true “believer” in Karswell’s teachings must adhere to, the cultist replies that it is those “who blaspheme and desecrate. In the joy of sin will mankind that is lost, find itself again.” To Holden, who has been constantly avowing his disbelief in any sort of supernatural source for evil, this testimony is ridiculous. However, in the context of Tourneur’s cinematic nightmare, it is a terrifying and logical fact.

Indeed, the film’s conclusion magnificently encapsulates the collision of ancient, supernatural evil with modern materialism. As the demon descends to destroy Karswell, a train rushes past in the opposite direction so that the train and the monster seem to head towards each other at opposite ends of the horizon. The effect creates a visual parallel and visual contrast between the smoking train and the fiery demon – one an inhabitant of the so-called primitive shadowland of myth and the other the result of human technology. Unsettlingly, this parallel both asks and answers the question of which one of the two is the more powerful.

Though films such as The Exorcist are given well-deserved credit for portraying the encroachment of the supernatural into the world of ordinary, modern society, it may be argued after this general overview that Tourneur’s Night of the Demon is something of an earlier, drawing-room version of the same concept – a concept that has been propounded and explored by supernatural horror authors since the advent of the Gothic novel. Tourneur, with his brilliant casting decisions and faithfulness to M.R. James’ original concept, created a work of art out of this familiar idea that is certainly worth watching and studying for both its qualities as an excellent film and its achievements as a genuinely unsettling horror movie. 

Le Samourai: The Stuff that Dreams are Made of? (Kelsey)

The first shot of Jean Pierre Melville's 1967 film Le Samourai is of an impossibly sterile apartment room, a cold and impersonal place so drained of color that the film begins to echo the black and white film noirs from which it gets its inspiration.  But Le Samourai is saturated not with color but with an indefinable cool, and the mixture of film noir visuals, samurai ethos, and French existentialism creates a self contained world that is not so much Humphrey Bogart as it is Humphrey Bogart's fever dream.  Welcome to a world where fedoras are perfectly straight and trench coats are perfectly belted, where a hired assassin operates on a strictly regimented code of honor, and where such a code of honor is not only acceptable but, indeed, almost rational.   

The titular "samurai" is Jef Costello, a hired killer who says little and emotes even less. He has no past and no future, and he moves through the film like a ghost lurking in the shadows, surveying his prey with the detached eye of an observer.  He is invariably methodical about his job, but one day he is seen leaving the scene of a crime by a night club singer and his carefully constructed world begins to unravel.  He is questioned by the police, who have no proof of his guilt and to the very last can find no proof of it.  Thus begins the essential dilemma of the film: there is a man, a detective, searching for a concrete answer to a crime when the perpetrator of that very crime is an enigma, a character who has no reply to the question "What sort of man are you?"  If that question was posed to the anti-hero in an American film noir, it would be met with a pithy quip and perhaps a lingering shot on an inscrutable close-up. In Le Samourai, however, the question is answered by silence and an abrupt cut to a new scene, a fact that makes sense in this film, where dialogue is replaced by wordless overtures and where extended sequences are uninterrupted by speech.

In this mostly silent world of unanswered questions, the only way to answer the all-important "what sort of man are you?" conundrum is with a meticulous devotion to order.  The only way out of a world devoid of order and meaning is to impose order upon it, and that is exactly what Jef does.  In his world, this existential problem is solved by the perfectly straight row of mineral water on his bedside table and by his perfectly anachronistic Humphrey Bogart attire.  The problem is, as soon as he dons his genre-defining outfit, his fate is essentially sealed.  Because not only does Jef Costello operate on a code of ethics, the film itself does as well, and in its adherence to the generic precepts of both noir and samurai films, Jef is essentially left with a pre-ordained future.  And this future comes when he inevitably violates his own code of honor: when he establishes a personal connection with an intended victim, and when he steps out of the shadows and into the line of sight, his fate is as sealed as it is self-inflicted. 

At the end of The Maltese Falcon, when Humphrey Bogart is asked by a detective what the falcon is, he replies: "The stuff that dreams are made of."  Jef Costello has no such emblem of wasted effort and unreachable goals, but he too has a bird: a sad, molting thing that sits in the corner of his apartment and chirps.  It is grey, just like the rest of the room, but it is strangely anomalous, this tiny bird living in the midst of Jef's sterile orderliness.  And yet it is details like this that make the film so potent and that come to define the strange world that Melville has so fastidiously created.  And at the end of the film, when no platitudes or definitive answers are offered (in fact, the last spoken word is translated into English as "wrong"), one can't help but wonder what happened to Jef's sad little bird, left alone in his cage in that sad grey room.  But in this minimalist dream world of taut suspense and hired killers with a code, this is perhaps the least of the unanswered questions.

The Killing: A non-linear crime thriller from 1956. (Chris M)

One of the greatest powers of cinema is its ability to distort time.  The story within a 90-minute film can take place over the course of hours or decades.  Single scenes can be sped up or slowed down by manipulating the order in which shots are presented, the duration of single shots, and the juxtaposition of related shots.  This type of distortion of time generally maintains linearity; that is, the viewer assumes that each successive shot is occurring at some point later in time than the preceding shot.  However, linearity can be successfully obliterated from film, and has historically been done so in multiple ways.  The success of this eradication of linearity ultimately depends on the ability of the film to hold the viewer in ultimate suspense, suspense that supersedes time.  Suspense keeps viewers emotionally engaged, and the linearity of time can be manipulated to build horribly terrific anticipation.  The collision of multiple timelines into a single critical moment enables narrative pressures only possible in a realm outside our everyday experience, the realm of film.  “The Killing” (Kubrick, 1956) uses this technique beautifully.

In the “The Killing,” the cunning and fearless Johnny Clay masterminds a perfect robbery and recruits a group of big-dreaming men to execute his plan.  Kubrick introduces us to a number of intriguing characters in the first half of the film.  He builds tension meticulously; back-stories and secondary characters become critical.  In the style of classic film noir, a devilish femme fatale is introduced played by Marie Windsor.  Her greed for money initiates a plan to backstab her husband and, with the help of her boyfriend, rob the robbers.    

In the second half of the film, Kubrick takes us through the day of the robbery.  Instead of presenting the crime linearly, each character’s part is presented one at a time.  All of the suspense is built around one question: will they be successful?  By showing one character at a time, Kubrick emphasizes that success depends on everyone.  We spend the second half of the film just waiting for someone to mess up.  With each successive person, the stakes become higher.  It’s why Kubrick’s nonlinear presentation works so well.  Instead of building suspense once, suspense is built with every character.  The anxiety that a high-stakes robbery creates for the criminals is felt over and over again.  It causes us to constantly question the plan; it’s too perfect to work.  Amazingly though, it doesn’t fall apart.  The robbery goes to plan… except for a small catch.

Underlying the entire scheme, we know there’s a plan to take the money from the criminals.  This plot combines with the already rolling plots of each character at the climax of the film.  Except for a late arriving Johnny Clay, everyone meets in the same room, and some, with guns ready.  The tension is at its highest.  Timelines and plots collide into a single moment.  At the perfect time, the terrified George enters the room and automatically fires his gun.  There’s a round of shots and several fall to the ground.  The suspense is released in a single moment.  The perfection of the crime is lost in an instant.  It’s brilliant.

Ultimately, we are left to witness the fate of Johnny Clay, who, with a bit of luck, escapes with all the money.  By this point however, we can guess that his fate will be the same as the others, we just don’t know how it will happen.  In the end, luggage constraints and a small dog bring him down.

“The Killing” shows us just how successful a story can be told without the constraints of linear time.  Tension around the same subject can be built more than once.  We can become invested in each and every character’s role.  It makes us fully aware that everyone is a piece of an intricate puzzle.  Since 1956, a number of films, mostly in the crime genre, have repeated this style.  Interestingly, “Reservoir Dogs” (Tarantino, 1992) was dedicated to Timothy Carey, an actor who played one of the criminals in “The Killing.”

“The Killing” was released in 1956. 85 minutes, 1.37:1 Aspect. Written and directed by Stanley Kubrick.  Novel by Lionel White.

Anti-Epic - Aguirre: the Wrath of God (Carlos)

Imagine five weeks spent under the weight of heavy leather, steel chest plates and helmets, slogging through sludge and dodging volatile rapids in the dizzying heat and humidity of the Amazonian jungle. Writer-director Werner Herzog’s third feature, Aguirre: the Wrath of God is a well-lauded masterwork, its success due in part to Herzog’s unbridled approach to production. 

The film opens with a master shot of the Andes Mountains, small dots trickle down a lush green mountainside, and the camera zooms in to reveal a line of conquistadors and enslaved Indians struggling with every step as they descend from Quito into dense jungle. The shot overwhelms the viscera because what we observe is a documented event -- the film’s cast and crew relive the sweat and toil of the historical moment, and the result is astounding. 

“The story takes place in the Peruvian jungle – you have to go there, there’s no alternative to that.” 

With a budget of $360,000, a stolen camera, and a crew of no more than eight people at a time, Werner Herzog makes one of the most important and relevant works of recent history, committing images to celluloid that would eventually inspire Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and arguably Mallick’s entire oeuvre. Aguirre: the Wrath of God covers the tale of an ambitious and impossible Spanish expedition led by conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro in search of El Dorado, the lost city of gold. Convinced that they’ve veered off path, Pizarro puts together a small group of men, led by aristocrat Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra, an accomplished Brazilian filmmaker in his own right) with Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) as second in command, to continue traveling along the river before the expedition is terminated for good. The group includes the asinine Fernando de Guzman, Padre Gaspar de Carvajal, and Aguirre’s beautiful daughter Inez, along with a handful of slaves and soldiers. Eventually Aguirre will undermine Ursua’s power and lead the group by force, threatening any dissidents with death. Handheld camera follows at eye level, observing the group as they fumble through thick foliage and muddy swampland. Four of the Indians are forced to carry (and balance) a ridiculous sedan chair housing the beautiful Flores (Helena Rojo), wife of Ursua. There is an immediate sense of disconnect between subject and setting that remains throughout the length of the film. 

Hardly anything is known about Lope de Aguirre. At most fifteen pages worth of material exist on the historical figure, giving Herzog enough room to create moments within which characters are developed filmically. Freed from the constraint of historicity, Herzog creates believable scenarios intended not to advance the storyline necessarily, but to convey an inner mood by testing the limits of physical and mental endurance against all odds. He admits to having done little to no research prior to writing the script (which in prose form was swiftly finished within two days), which is mind-boggling. The filmmaker entrusts location with the task of spurring undeniably authentic moments, the life of the film exists within the individual’s relationship to the surrounding environment. 

Furious nature gains an independent life in the close up. Herzog deviates from the narrative and closes on a raging river; the shot is held for about a minute. By slowly pulling into focus, cinematographer Thomas Mauch calls attention to the entropic movement of the murky, rolling waves. A mesmerizing and haunting soundtrack by long-time collaborators Popol Vuh links the landscape to the mindscape, and we begin to observe the group’s inevitable downward spiral as Aguirre loses his mind in favor of megalomania and delusions of grandeur. 

Camera as participant 

On a turbulent trip down a river, one of the large rafts gets stuck in an eddy. The rest of the group waits on shore for the cornering current to give way. Several shots are fired overnight and the following morning everyone on the raft is dead, while two native oarsmen are missing. This event as observed is never given a proper explanation; it remains as mysterious an occurrence to the viewer as it was for the rest of the group. 

Herzog advances the notion of the Unseen by deliberately keeping the enemy out of view. The Indians are present but never seen, and there is a sense that the spectator is also not safe. A soldier trekking through the forest steps into a trap and is swept up and out of frame. The only indication of murder is a sprinkle of arterial blood against a bright green leaf, as observed by another soldier who runs in a panic to warn the others. 

Pizarro’s men awake to find the river has risen fifteen feet overnight. The rafts they’ve built have drifted away. This was not staged – the river had indeed risen during the shoot and the rafts were lost. Herzog understood it was necessary to make this problem a part of the film. Having conflicts such as this arise organically results in sincere expressions of confusion and frustration as the men scrounge for iron with which to hold new rafts together. 

One of my favorite moments is when Aguirre stands against the edge of the frame opposite a slave playing a panpipe. Beside the music, everything is silent, Aguirre is thinking. This shot serves little purpose in the context of the story, but it is essential to advancing the inner mood. Klaus’ face in this respect is pivotal to the impact of the film. Often the camera stops to observe his expression, which becomes more and more unhinged as we move farther into the jungle.

Aguirre: the Wrath of God follows a doomed mission. When the men march down the steep mountainside they are descending into the depths of hell. Hunger, isolation, exhaustion and fear will soon drive them to death or madness. In the face of impossible odds, to the very end Aguirre’s eyes express an insatiable greed and want of power; he looks toward the horizon with confidence as everything crumbles. 

There will be a screening of Aguirre: the Wrath of God on Thursday, October 30 in Hodson 303. Don't miss it!

Aguirre: the Wrath of God (1972). Written and directed by Werner Herzog. Starring Klaus Kinski, Del Negro, Ruy Guerra, and Helena Rojo. 100 minutes. Available on DVD, presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

The Ultimate Good: Godard’s dystopian crime-noir Alphaville. (Carlos)

It is a daunting task to write anything about the consistently innovative and compulsively prolific auteur Jean-Luc Godard. His early films were determined to bend and shatter cinematic conventions,and the oftentimes cryptic Alphaville (1965) is no exception. I don't claim to be able to fully decipher the film, or any Godard picture for that matter, but I’ll begin to peel back the outermost layers of this dense and multifaceted work.

Silence. Logic. Security. Prudence.

Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) is Secret Agent 003, sent from the Outlands to Alphaville, the capital of the Galaxy, to apprehend its designer Professor Vonbraun (Howard Vernon) and track down missing Agent Henri Dickson. Posing as a journalist he works his way through labyrinthine corridors and systematized networks of officials to  undermine Vonbraun's control and destroy Alphaville itself. Along the way he falls in love with Vonbraun’s purported daughter Natasha (Anna Karina), and opts to save her from the system. Alphaville represents a society where, to paraphrase Natasha, no one has lived in the past or the future. Its inhabitants are caught in an infinite loop that simply ensures a controlled and sustainable society. In Orwellian fashion, the technocratic dictatorship has systematically stripped its people of individualist concepts such as love, conscience, emotion and poetry. Everyone keeps a “Bible,” a periodically edited dictionary of permissible words, and the catalog shrinks on a daily basis.

On the surface Alphaville is an exercise in genre. Godard crafts this story for the screen by synergizing the science fiction and crime-noir genres, calling attention to each by hyperbolizing the essential ingredients of their respective recipes. Within the first ten minutes Godard throws at us the typical elements of crime pulp in rapid procession. The objectification of women, brutality and barbarism, confrontation and gunplay are all displayed within the same electric scene through a single take. Often labeled as the Godard film for those who don’t like Godard, Alphaville is undeniably fun. It constantly engages the viscera, whether or not we’re out to penetrate the profound.

An uncanny, throaty voice gurgles from every wall and ceiling. A sentient cluster of supercomputers that go by the name of Alpha60 governs over Alphaville as judge, jury, and executioner. To Caution and the viewer it represents the inhumane and militantly logical, but to most of Alphaville’s citizens Alpha60 is unquestionably just and in its heuristic calculations utterly infallible.  Alpha60 interrogates Caution during a mandatory examination at Resident Control. A pulsating, incandescent bulb that fills the frame in a close-up is the cinematic ancestor of the iconic HAL 9000 camera-eye -- cold, calculating and unwaveringly logical. (It is duly noted that before Alpha60 there was Big Brother.) When Alpha60 asks Caution what illuminates the night he responds, “la poésie.” Caution replies to administered questions that anticipate laconic responses and “yes,” or “no,” answers with emotively-driven poetic expressions. He manages to puzzle Alpha60, and we are suddenly confronted with a clash between human language and computer language, light and electricity, human intuition and logical calculations.

The female inhabitants of Alphaville have it the worst. A striking young blonde in a loose coat shows Lemmy to his room. Along the way she caters to his every need and offers to join him in the bath. As she strips down to her undergarments we see a serial number tattooed across her shoulder. In Alphaville women have been programmed into domicile objects at the service of men, deprived of individualism and free thought. Godard develops this point to such an absurd degree that later a pack of scientists indifferently stroll past a nude woman displayed in a glass case. It is pure objectification.

Godard sets Alphaville in the late-twentieth century. Lemmy Caution says he’s a Guadalcanal Veteran, which references the naval battle in 1947. Much of the film (primarily due to budgetary reasons I’m sure) was shot on-location in mid-1960s Paris, and the filmmakers do little to conceal it. These decisions are clearly deliberate and intended to suggest that Alphaville’s dystopian future is happening in the present, at least in essence. What it lends visually is unique and unprecedented when you consider for example that  Caution’s "space vessel" is a white Ford Mustang. We’ll get back to set design in a bit.

Brilliantly lensed by Raoul Cotard (Godard’s long-time cinematographer), the use of black-and-white stock in the style of noir informs the viewer’s experience of the film in several ways. The bleak, monochromatic image here reflects the constraint and rigidity of computer language, a binary world comprised of ones and zeroes. I felt at once the sensation of being crammed inside a chassis of humming circuitry; an affect derived also from confining, frame-within-a-frame compositions and tenebrous, low-key lighting.

It is when the Alpha system begins to self-destruct that we become most aware of the film’s claustrophobic frame. Without Alpha60 its citizens lose all sense of cognizance and social construction, tumbling through corridors and pressing up against walls as if attempting to pass through them. Caution drags Natasha out of the crumbling construct and tells her to think of the word love, otherwise she’s as “lost as the dead of Alphaville.” They head for the Outlands on an intersidereal highway, surrounded by the vastness of space, and the film builds to a satisfying close on the stunning Anna Karina as she learns to say for herself: “I love you.” Good stuff, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

 “Ah! The day breaks.”

Flickering cathode tubes above illuminate a clinical corridor. The architectural style of “super modernity” emerges as Alphaville’s visual grammar: the transitional space of instructions, notices, and signs. Godard summons the work of French anthropologist Marc Augé to inform his vision of a bleak and empty existence: a space that is neither relational nor historical, and without any sense of identity is described as an empty zone, or non-place. Corridors, elevators, and lobbies comprise the bulk of Alphaville’s filmed locations, suggesting that the city consists entirely of such non-places. Slaves to logic, the inhabitants of Alphaville have relinquished their culture and ancestry, down to the architecture that surrounds them.

The systematic breakdown of signifier and significance pervades the diegesis and the film’s construction itself. We are frequently faced with graphic close-ups of arrows, always pointing rightward. They are the arrows of direction and momentum, a reflection maybe of a consistent narrative current persistently moving forward. Sometimes we cut to equations and certainties of the physical universe, such as a neon sign flickering E=mc². Several returns to these signifiers incite the deterioration of associative meaning. If this is indeed the case the reasoning is clear. We are as much a part of the world of Alphaville as its deluded citizens.

All these layers of meaning and modes of expression Godard masterfully weaves into a definitive vision of a crumbling dystopian empire. For a first time viewer the result may be jarring, but stay with it. It pays off plenty in the end.

Alphaville (1965). Written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Starring Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, and Howard Vernon. 99 minutes. Available on Criterion Collection DVD, presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

 

Tell No One: A prototypical and tone-perfect American thriller...from France. (Carlos)

The crime novels of Chandler and Hammett laid the foundation for American film noir, with their veritable list of eclectic characters and convoluted narratives, filled with enough edge-of-seat twists and turns to keep viewers attached from the retina. Along the same cinematic vein lies director Guilamme Canet’s gripping new thriller Tell No One, which through economy of imagery and swift, expert direction keeps this sweltering murder mystery at a cool and succinct two hours length.

Alex Beck (François Cluzet) is an amiable pediatrician madly in love with his childhood sweetheart and wife Margot (Marie-Josée Croze, Diving Bell) who in the course of the exposition is violently murdered during one of their many nostalgic visits to a beautiful and private lakeside getaway. The bulk of the film is set eight years after the incident, when pipeline work around Lake Charmaine exhumes two bodies belonging to the purported murderers thought to have fled after the killing. On one of the bodies police find the key to a safety deposit box containing a bloodied hunting rifle and photographs of a domestically abused Margot. The news brings the many holes in the old and dusty criminal case to light and Alex, who hasn’t yet gotten over his wife’s untimely death, thrusts himself into the role of self-prescribed detective. He immediately becomes the primary suspect, believed to have been after Margot’s life insurance policy, making the mission to solve the murders himself even more pressing. All the while he begins receiving cryptic emails containing surveillance footage of Margot alive and well, and messages like “TELL NO ONE,” and “WE ARE BEING WATCHED.” In several interview scenes reminiscent of those in Citizen Kane, he visits friends and family, one by one, asking them to recall the events preceding her death. He soon discovers that many layers of deception and misinformation barricaded him from unveiling the truth.

“Tell No One” is gorgeous. Fluid camerawork becomes a welcomed stylistic conceit, and many scenes set in domestic interiors are shot hand-held and lit only by practicals. The mix of styles never compromises tone, as Canet is clearly aware of what works and when it works. The numerous montages, often enriched by a largely American pop soundtrack including, quite memorably, U2’s “With or Without You,” contain all the necessary elements of a prototypical sequence of the sort, swiftly edited and rife with spotless graphic match cuts. And yes, just the right number of zooms.

At times Canet and cinematographer Christophe Offenstein momentarily depart from the narrative flow to capture moving images of filmic beauty, which so happen to run parallel to the main current of action. When we first meet Alex’s sister Anne (Marina Hands), we watch her gracefully jump over hurdles on horseback, images so captivating that when Alex tells her he loves to watch her ride we're simply inclined to agree. The film is full of such welcomed respites that encourage the viewer for just a moment to reflect on the purely aesthetic.

The picture is so multifaceted that several themes emerge from the get-go. One is the examination of the relations between the different classes in French society, which is an addition to the story absent in the American novel. Another is the potential for lies and secrets -- especially those harbored among the elite, it seems – to birth a snowballing number of violent crimes. The most notable aspect of the film, however, is what it says about the authenticity and credibility of the moving image. More important than what it tells us is what it intentionally leaves out. “Tell No One” succeeds as a mystery because often the information divulged represents either a shade of the truth or downright deception. Canet makes the point, whether he means to or not, that when viewers are presented with captured moving images they are inclined to believe what is seen (given enough reason to suspend disbelief). It is this quality of cinema that allows for writhing suspense and effective plot twists. This idea is explored within the diegesis of the film as well. Margot’s presence on real time surveillance footage gives Alex enough reason to believe she is still alive. When Captain Levkowich (Francois Berléand) presents Alex with photographic evidence of Margot’s bruised body, we begin for the first time to wonder if he can be trusted, despite overwhelming evidence in his favor. The captured moment becomes for us irrefutable.

“Tell No One” is an impeccable study of the American thriller and murder mystery. Canet makes his homage to the American system clear in the opening scene, where a fluid, meandering frame sways as if dancing around a table of good friends, one with child and the others, young and in love. “Lilac Wine” by Jeff Buckley plays over warm, angelic smiles and hearty laughter. What could possibly go wrong? From then on it contains all the necessary tropes and develops them with deftness. Alex’s love for his wife is so strong and pure, and Cuzet is so affable an actor (too many people have mentioned to me that he looks like Dustin Hoffman, so I can’t leave that out), that we have little reason to question his motives. Captain Levkowich is the figure of authority sympathetic to Alex’s hopeless plight, willing to openly oppose confident claims by others of the man’s guilt. An almost skeletal woman with a knack for pressure points plays the role of an eccentric thug seeking out Margot and Alex for reasons that aren’t immediately clear. The list goes on. The film is not entirely clothed in American modus operandi, however. At times the film cuts off its soundtrack in mid-melody to affirm we are watching a carefully crafted and calculated thriller -- a product of the cutting room. Godard has not been abandoned.

In many ways, “Tell No One” is one part Big Sleep and one part The Wrong Man. It contains an insatiable and ever-twisting narrative characteristic of Chandler’s definitive novel (the Hawks film does it justice) and the craftsmanship and surging momentum of a Hitchcock picture. It doesn't strike the chord of a classic but it may be too soon to tell. What is clear however, is the skillfulness and technical proficiency of young actor-director (and co-writer) Canet and the tremendous talent of its all-star French cast.

I’ve left out quite a bit of the good stuff, so be sure to catch this great movie still playing at The Charles Theatre before it leaves the big screen for good.

“Tell No One” (French: “Ne le dis à personne”) was released in 2006 (France) and 2008 (USA). 125 minutes, 2.35:1 Aspect. Based on the 2001 novel by Harlan Cobel. Starring Francois Cluzet, Kristin Scott Thomas, Marina Hands, Marie-Josee Croze, André Dussollier. Co-written and directed by Guillaume Canet. It is his second film, following the comedy “Mon Idole” (2002).