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Points from a Screening

    John Huston's 1948 epic of avarice Treasure of the Sierra Madre felt like the fastest 2 hours and 6 minutes I've spent before a screen.  The film blew by in a sandstorm from one hopeless desert vista to the next, leaving me with only cursory first impressions and a total sense of wonder.  The film may have inspired too much awe for me to comprehend it after only one viewing, so for now here's what remained when the sand settled:

I.    Humphrey Bogart's Fred C. Dobbs follows a sordid trajectory unlike that of most morally compromised Bogart characters.  Dobbs is so far from heroic he barely passes for antihero before the gold quest, and once he starts mining he begins to tread a villainous path hitherto unknown to Bogey:  He goes insane and suffers an unavenged murder alone in the desert.  It is thrilling to see what Humphrey can do when he swaps his tux for filthy rags.  This is Bogart at his cruelest and most evil, his wildest and most deranged, and it is outstanding.  When he finally reveals his most hidden talent, that maniacal chuckle, it's hard to understand why this man was not simply typecast as a crazed villain--his mad cackle is the absolute archetype of evil laughs.

II.    The endlessly wise, affable Howard, played by the director's father Walter Huston, is a hugely successful instance of cinematic nepotism.  Whether the flashes of paternal nature in the old prospector stem from his thespian talents or the director's own experience, Howard emerges as the only truly grounded figure in the film, surviving the unfortunate Dobbs through vast knowledge of the terrain and man's psyche and a rare capacity for altruism.

III.    The shootout between the Americans on the train and the bandits by the tracks immediately recalls a similar general arrangement in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, released ten years earlier.  Though here the heroic marksman wears a sharp necktie instead of a soiled neckerchief, Michael Redgrave's Gilbert bears a striking resemblance to Dobbs in the wild-eyed delight he takes in picking off his enemies.  The train is no stranger to cinema, but here the traincar plays the unusual role of battlefield trench in both films, separating besieged passengers from very hostile environments while still immobilizing them on the tracks in an exceedingly easy target.

 IV.    Another influential desert saga, Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles from 1974 pays homage to Treasure during the recruitment of Mexican bandits for the enemy's forces.  "Badges?  We don't need no stinking badges!" the first bandit exclaims as Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) offers him an initiation pin, similar to El Jefe's (Manuel Donde) angry retort to Dobbs before their magnificent mountainside shootout. The villains in this desert are scarcely more comical than those galloping over the Sierra Madre, whose grotesque cartoonish faces grow even more perverse in sweaty, toothy low-angle close-ups; but the senseless acts of the cackling desert assassins who lay Dobbs and his treasure to waste elicit a different kind of laughter, less riotous guffaw than defeated, baffled chuckle.

    What a film!

The Night Porter: eroticism and sadomasochism

The Night Porter (dir. Liliana Cavani) is doubtlessly controversial. When it came out in 1974 it had a very positive reception in Europe, but in the US it was hailed as a piece of junk. For example, the great Roger Ebert started his essay in the Chicago Sun-Times on February 10^th, 1975 by writing

"The Night Porter" is as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering. It is (I know how obscene this sounds) Nazi chic. It's been taken seriously in some circles, mostly by critics agile enough to stand on their heads while describing 180-degree turns, in order to interpret trash as "really" meaningful.

Ebert thought the film did not approach its subject matter in a very fruitful way. It was alarmingly reveling in sadomasochistic impulses and sadomasochistic scenes. According to Ebert, The Night Porter offered a dangerously romanticized view of doom and death. It was disturbing but with style—"Nazi chic" as Ebert puts it. I find The Night Porter confusing if nothing else. One aspect of the film that I find particularly confusing is the connection that the film draws between doom, death, suffering and eroticism.

            The Night Porter is a story about Max a previous S.S. concentration camp officer and Lucia a former prisoner at the camp where Max was stationed. When they were in this unidentified concentration camp, Max used to film Lucia often in extremely humiliating situations. Since it was prohibited that an officer would have any sympathy toward, let alone love, one of the inmates, Max repressed or tormenting denied his feelings toward Lucia. In one scene, Max wounds Lucia's arm using a surgical instrument. He does not sew up the cut, instead he licks it. It becomes the site of erotic bliss.  

        Thirteen years after the end of the war, Max and Lucia run into each other in a hotel in Vienna. Max works in the hotel as a night porter. Lucia is now married to an American orchestra conductor, but she stays behind after her husband leaves. She moves into Max's apartment. One scene that is often cited in this part of the film is the one in which Lucia locks herself in the bathroom. She breaks a bottle of perfume and then invites Max in. He at first accidentally steps on the broken glass, but when Lucia puts her hands under his heel, he steps sharply on the glass. The camera shows Max taking pleasure in the pain and so does Lucia. In the apartment, Max and Lucia live the past. Eventually Max puts on his Nazi officer suite and Lucia puts on a pink dress so similar to the one Max had given her to wear in the camp, they go out of the apartment and are shot to death.  

            A scene which particularly brings up the relation between eroticism, suffering and sadomasochism is the cabaret scene from which the film's most popular poster image is taken. In this scene Lucia seems to enjoy her humiliation. She voluntarily exhibits herself and furthers her pain and victimization. She is half naked in the scene and moves around a room full of Nazi officers, including Max. After the dance is over, Max gives Lucia the head of another officer who bothered her earlier. Max has decapitated him for her sake. Eroticism, suffering, and violence all intersect in this scene.

            If you ever saw Gerhard Richter's Atlas and particularly panels 16-23, you know that he too, as did Liliana Cavani in this film, saw a relation between the horrors of Auschwitz and prostitution. In these panels, Richter combines dreadful photographs of people in concentration camps, starved and on the verge of death, with photographs of prostitutes (or at least women photographed as if they were). For me, the relation between the two is hard to figure out. Beside feeling stunned as my eyes scan the panels, it is hard to see the reason why Gerhard Richter chose to relate the two. Some say that in doing so he has feminized death and doom. 

        Maybe death is related to the feminine because of the trauma of birth. Famously, Otto Rank (1924) argued that the moment of birth is a separation from the perfect union with the mother and that the violent circumstances of the moment of birth make it traumatic. Death too represents a separation. I think, Richter's juxtaposition of images of death and prostitution might be a way of referencing the past state of harmony with the mother and the traumatic separation which is the basis of the human experience. Human life is truncated by two severely traumatic experiences of separation—birth and death. The view of life which this outlook creates makes it more understandable, perhaps, that people are sadomasochistic.

            Although Cavani creates an intentionally unrealistic space for the film, The Night Porter inhabits a space so similar to that of actual life. The film ends with death, and starts with a state which is comparable to the traumatic separation of birth. Lucia and Max were separated from each other for thirteen years after they had lived together in relative harmony with most basic needs gratified. Max and Lucia's nostalgic desire to return to the past motivates the whole film. Yet, this past might be in fact the moment before birth, before the original trauma. It might be a wish to live again in perfect harmonious unity with a protective mother (or whatever can stand for "mother"—for example a nation can be "mother"). 

The Limits of History

    I love Al Capone.  Let me rephrase:  I love Stephen Graham’s portrayal of a young Al Capone on Boardwalk Empire.  He shone particularly bright on Sunday, in the fourth episode of the third season.  Al’s five-year-old deaf son is staying home from school one morning and Al discovers the boy has a big purple bruise on his sweet little face.  He learns his son was picked on at school and is outraged that a bully would target a deaf child.  But, as his wife reminds him, all the children at their son’s school are deaf and “boys will be boys, whether they can hear each other or not.”  Al’s initial plan of action is to toughen up his kid, so that night he kneels before the child and tries to teach him how to fight.  This could easily have become a Tree of Life-type scene between a hardened father with all the wrong ideas and a boy too young and uncomfortable to spar with his dad, a scene that illustrates how completely a man can fail to understand the needs of his child; instead, it evolves into Al’s tearful realization that he has frightened rather than fortified his child.  Shocked, profoundly disappointed in himself, Al apologizes over and over in a heartbreaking tone his son cannot hear.  In an increasingly desperate embrace, he tightens the boy’s grip on him and strokes his head, utterly devastated by his misstep.  If you’re not crying just a little by now, you are much tougher than I.

    The next night, Al beats a man to death in a speakeasy for inexplicably attacking his obese, slovenly colleague the day before--the same day he learned his son was bullied.  His seemingly endless performance of intense, barehanded violence should not be easy to forgive, but when the fight is over and Al breathlessly asks the corpse, “You want to pick on people who can’t defend themselves?” he makes it impossible to forget the noble motivation behind this brutal endeavor. Regular viewers would agree this violent culmination of the storyline actually sets matters aright--after all, no one tunes in to Boardwalk to see some good, civil conflict resolution.  This show disentangles the concept of justice from its association with the legal system, which is nothing but negatively portrayed in the Prohibition-era series.  The continual, mindless murder of many characters we grow attached to is punctuated by brief but essential instances of an unlawful kind of justice that only villainous giants of history can carry out.  Given the choice to kill an enemy or merely beat him senseless, Boardwalk characters always choose "kill" and the show always gives a satisfactory explanation why.  How could we possibly forgive Al for such a horrifying act of rage?  Besides the fact that we have had to do so countless times before (he has fought his way through two whole seasons already), we understand where his rage erupted from:  The incessant pain of his son's bullying--an affront he could not rectify by any means, violent or otherwise--and his unmanageable fury at himself for scaring his son the way the bully did.

    Boardwalk's Al Capone is not the one-dimensional bootlegging titan from The Untouchables, delivering fatal blows to unsuspecting dinner guests with a baseball bat.  Rather, he is a richly illustrated, sympathetic low-life whose sole response to the world’s injustices is unconscionable yet justifiable violence.  No matter what we know of Al Capone or how keenly Robert De Niro may have rendered the barbarity of the real man, Stephen Graham suspended my disbelief for a full 56 minutes this week and depicted (perhaps invented) a veritable sweetness in the storied figure. Therein lies the key aspect of the show:  Though history greatly informs the plot, its contribution to character is very limited.  It is up to the cast to show us who these people "really" were--even if, really, it's who they weren't.

Credit for Al Capone's 1930 Miami mughsots goes to Creative Commons.

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.

A Well Deserved Tribute to One of Cinema's Unsung Heroes

            For my article this week, I would like to pay a belated tribute to a man who was lost to us early this year. This man is responsible for many classic moments in cinema, and it can be said without exaggeration, that he changed the face of movies in a significant way. I speak, of course, of the late great Bob Anderson. “Who is this Bob Anderson?” you ask, “Why have I never heard of him?” Bob Anderson was the sword master for many of cinema’s classic fights. Beginning in 1953, he choreographed everything from Moonraker to The Lord of the Rings to the Princess Bride duel that I mentioned in my last article. His most famous moment, however came when he stepped into the shoes of one of the great classic villains, Darth Vader.

            Bob Anderson was the choreographer for all of the original Star Wars fights. Every single lightsaber swing bore his signature. While David Prowse played the body of Vader through most of the series, Anderson stepped in for the lightsaber duels in both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Both of these fights were extremely grueling, especially in the Vader costume, so it made more sense to put Anderson in the suit because he was more skilled with the weapon.

            If you watch the fight from A New Hope and compare it to the fights in either of the two later films, you can see the difference in body language between the two actors. The original fight is quite blocky with both performers slightly unsure of their body movements. While it works in the scene as Obi-Wan Kenobi is quite old at this point and Darth Vader is, for all intensive purposes, a robot, when compared with later scenes it stands out as being stocky and uncoordinated.

            In comparison, the lightsaber fight in The Empire Strikes Back benefits from Bob Anderson’s technique. Instead of the blocky and stiff style that Vader was using in A New Hope, he switches to a much more fluid one handed style. He keeps the blade inside of his body line for the most part and allows Luke Skywalker to expend his energy in wild attacks. Only after seeing that Luke has tired himself out does Vader go on the attack. Many of his successful techniques come from small wrist movements which allow him to control the other blade, disarming Skywalker in the beginning of the fight and ultimately performing a literal disarm at the end. All of these moves are executed with an ease of movement that lets the viewer know that Vader is the superior swordsman. Without Anderson’s expertise with the weapon or his ease of movement, the story could have easily become muddied, and the fight would not have stood the test of time nearly as well.

            Bob Anderson was one of the many unsung heroes in Hollywood. Without these men and women, the movies that we know and love would never get made, and yet they don’t receive even half of the publicity that the actors and the directors receive. They do it for the love of their craft and nothing else. So here’s to you Bob Anderson! May the force be with you!

 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.

Killing in the Name of Boyle

Recently I came across a thought-provoking quote taken from an old interview given by director Danny Boyle (a particular favorite of mine).  In this quote Boyle mentions that he, along with fellow directors Martin Scorsese and John Woo, initially intended to become a priest (a Protestant minister in Woo's case) before directing his career path towards film-making.  Boyle goes on to relate the two seemingly disparate professions by claiming that they both involve heavy drama and the duty of lecturing to an audience.  Honestly, Boyle's comfortable comparison of film-making to preaching didn't immediately resonate with me as a viewer who typically likes to let sleeping dogs lie when it comes to religious symbolism in film.  However, the more familiar I've become with the works of the (almost) priests-cum-directors (having only just seen John Woo's The Killer and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver this year), the more willing I am to explore the remarkably dark violence in their films under the cast of a new, "divine" light.

My experimental attempt to find religion leads me to a reexamination of the first movie from Danny Boyle that I expressly remember falling in love with: 28 Days Later (2002).  Although marketed to the mass public as another gory, zombie apocalypse flick, 28 Days Later instantly impressed me as a film that transcends its narrow genre.  Revisiting this film now allows me to apply my new-found knowledge of director Boyle's strong Irish Catholic background and devotion, and as a result, give a credible explanation of how this zombie film touches upon quality subject matter.  For example, an important distinction can easily be made between 28 Days Later and all other zombie apocalypses filmed to date by explaining that 28 Days Later focuses almost exclusively on the "apocalypse" angle of the genre.  In other words, while most zombie movies prominently feature the mindless flesh-eaters as they munch their way through the remainder of the human population, Boyle's 28 Days Later is a marked departure in its unique emphasis of a post-apocalyptic absence of life, whether it be human, animal, or the animated undead.

 Pushing the suspicious lack of abundant zombie predators and human fodder in 28 Days Later further into the realm of religious allegory, one can even speculate that this movie serves as an updated representation of the Old Testament flood, which supposedly cleansed the world of nearly all its inhabitants.  In the film, a "flood" of disease wipes our modern world clean of civilization, leaving death (constituted by the occasional appearances of the roaming undead) and an all-consuming emptiness, as conveyed to the viewer in the striking opening scenes.  From a high-angle/heavenly standpoint, the viewer experiences a series of extreme long shots that altogether show the progression of a lone survivor (played by Irish actor Cillian Murphy) as he slowly makes his way through the abandoned streets of London.  Instead of being submerged in floodwater, the city is smothered by a blanket of deafening silence that is maintained throughout the duration of these poignant long shots/takes.

Meanwhile, Murphy's lone survivor doesn't amble aimlessly around town for too long before eventually assuming a greater responsibility outside of his own survival.  This responsibility is comparable to that which was bestowed upon Noah by his Holy Father.  Just as Noah was charged with choosing who would survive with him in the Ark, so too does Murphy's character decide who will live alongside him and who will fall prey to the zombie's lethal bite.  More specifically, Murphy's character unleashes a hungry zombie within the bowels of a military compound (functions as the Ark, or the last standing refuge of humanity during the scourge) in order to kill the corrupt men hiding there.  Fast-paced cuts and dim lighting make it practically impossible to distinguish between the wild zombie and Murphy's rampaging young man as they jointly indulge in an unchecked killing spree throughout the compound.  Both the zombie and the young man appear to equally represent executing agents of the cleansing "flood"/disease through their gratuitously bloody slaying of the wicked soldiers.

Interestingly enough, the gruesome crusade of Boyle's blood-splattered Noah is closely matched in terms of its violent display of righteous fury by the actions of Robert DeNiro's Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.  Underneath the surface view of Bickle being nothing more significant than a paranoid vigilante, exists the possibility of Bickle being another divine crusader charged with carrying out tough justice against the "scum" of New York City.  One can potentially suggest that Bickle embodies a New Testament Christ-like figure in his attempted life sacrifice to free the prostitute Iris from her pimp and from her sins.  Evil and sin are once again fought with grotesque violence implemented by a lone purveyor of "divine" justice.  Of course, this "divinity" is ultimately administered by the omnipotent director--especially often by fire and brimstone-minded Catholics like Boyle and Scorsese--as he channels it through the dramatic scenarios he imagines and directs.

Punches vs. Plot: Storytelling styles of Ong Bak and Ip Man

    In 2003 the film, Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior, was released to great acclaim. At first glance, the film should be resigned to the discount DVD bin. The plot is full of holes and borders on the ridiculous, the dialogue is contrived, and the acting is terrible. However, through the star of the film, Tony Jaa, it rises from being a laughably bad film to being a testament to the perfection of physical capability.

                Tony Jaa’s acting through the film can be described as bad at best.  This is only compounded by the script giving him little to work with and the plot of the film itself being ridiculous. However, the film succeeds on the choreography and execution of its action scenes. Tony Jaa is an exception physical performer, and all of the terrible acting that he does while not punching something goes away once the martial arts scenes begin. Instead, his body is able to tell a compelling story as he fights. For example, in his first real fight scene in the film, he is put up against increasingly difficult opponents in an underground arena. During the first fight, Ting, Jaa’s character, is able to defeat his opponent effortlessly. The only time that his opponent is able to touch him is through cheating.  However, the second fighter presents Ting with slight difficulty. Ting has difficulty hitting the opponent at first because his opponent is so quick. However, the viewer is able to follow Ting as he learns the man’s patterns of movement and is then able to counter them, leading to his victory. The last fighter proves to be an even more difficult match for Ting, as he subverts everything that Ting knows about fighting. Having been trained in a small village, Ting is unaccustomed to dirty fighting as was evidenced earlier in his fight against the first opponent. However, the last fighter does nothing but fight dirty, and thus the viewer watches Ting get hit with chairs, tables, plates, and even a refrigerator. It is only through struggling through the brutal assault that Ting is able to finally win. These series of fights shows Ting as a resilient character that is able to struggle through hardship in order to achieve victory. He learns from his previous mistakes and through this knowledge is able to defeat his opponent. This character building and storytelling is all done without dialogue, leaving the viewer to watch Jaa’s body language. While the script of the film leaves much to be desired, the story of a man persisting through adversity grabs the viewer’s attention.

                The 2008 film, Ip Man, takes a diametrically opposite approach to Ong Bak. In comparison to Ong Bak’s thin plot which only serves to support the martial arts, Ip Man, uses the martial arts to support the plot of the film. The fights still tell a story, but their story only serves to support the characterization and plot that has been established through the dialogue and interactions between characters.

                The titular character of Ip Man never seems terribly challenged in any of the fights through the film. He is established early on as the best martial artist in his village, and nothing in the film seeks to change that. At no point does the viewer feel any threat to Ip Man from any of the opponents he fights. Every blow that an enemy throws is either blocked or dodged. The ease that he wins his battles could easily become boring for the viewer as, without a struggle, there is nothing to invest in. However, the story that accompanies the fights causes the viewer to care about Ip Man as a person and thus care about what winning the fight means. In addition, while Ip Man starts off wealthy and happy, the invasion of the Japanese causes his life to spiral downward. He has to struggle in his daily life to feed his family. Thus the viewer’s thirst for struggle is satiated by the plot itself. Once Ip Man gets into a fight, the viewer has grown so attached to him and watched him struggle so much that when he succeeds with little effort the viewer is thrilled to see him succeed.

                Each fight in Ip Man has a different energy to it according to where it falls in the plot. The first fight in the film is a simple sparring match and thus the fight seems more playful and honorable. This is a very different energy than the final fight against the Japanese general. After watching the Japanese brutalize his friends and family, Ip Man savagely overwhelms his opponent with little mercy. The film uses fight scenes in a very similar way that musicals use songs. When the characters reach an emotional level that cannot be expressed in words, they fight. In this way, the fight scenes serve to reinforce the plot instead of the plot serving as a vehicle for fight scenes.

                The differences between the way fights are used in Ong Bak and the way they are used in Ip Man is reinforced by the fighting styles of the two main characters. Ting uses a very flashy version of Muay Thai which is full of flying elbows and knees. It seems that every other move he is launching himself through the air in order to brutally attack his opponent. This is reinforced by Tony Jaa’s amazing physical condition which allows him to perform stunts that most people require wires to do. This style of martial arts creates large flashy action sequences full of over the top movements.  Ip Man, on the other hand, uses a very reserved form of Wing Chun. He makes small moves and only expends the minimum required energy to block and strike his opponent. The action sequences created by this style are sharper, and serve to fulfill their purpose just like the movements of the hero.

                These two films showcase the two different sides of the martial arts genre. Ong Bak is a film that exists solely for the purpose of celebrating physical achievement. The film allows Tony Jaa to demonstrate his physical capabilities. The viewer is less concerned with the plot, but instead simply wants to see what ridiculous stunt Jaa will be able to pull off next. Ip Man instead creates a world in which fighting is normal, but makes it secondary to the film. Instead, it is the points in between the fight scenes that draw the viewer in with the fights scenes inserted in order to drive home a point. However, with all their differences, the two films still come down to the same basic concept. They focus on a man who must struggle against adversity in order to eventually overcome it. The protagonists are both skilled and flawed in their own ways. In the end, both films celebrate the physical prowess of the human body in a way that only the martial arts film can.

 

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. 

 

All I Wanted was a break from midterms (Inhye)

(Spoilers ahead)

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

  

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

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

 

 

Image Credits:

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

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

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

How to Save a Slow Thriller? Have Clive Owen Trash the Guggenheim (Josefine)

I won’t disagree with the critics – The International is not the stuff of great cinema. But I won’t dismiss it at that.

I’ll admit that a good deal of my interest in the movie stemmed from having the opportunity to stare at Clive Owen – though his character is stressed, sleep-deprived and progressively more haggard in each scene of the movie, let’s face it: the man is hot.

What piqued my interest most about this movie, however, was one particular scene. I knew the Guggenheim was in for it when Clive and his police posse followed the movie’s enemy number one – an unassuming assassin – into the museum after discovering him on the streets of Manhattan…but I didn’t know how much.

Clive begins by walking slowly around the museum’s ramp, his eyes (oh, those eyes) stalking his prey as he circles about the unsuspecting paintings and museum-goers. Clive and one of his partners are quickly thwarted by the slick slaughterer, who readily realizes their intent, and the silent, orderly museum quickly ruptures into chaos and superfluous bloodshed.

The scene, like the museum’s structure, undergoes many developments – there appear more “bad guys” than expected, Clive’s police partner bleeds to death in his arms, leaving Clive and the assassin to join forces against the other shooters in an unlikely bond as the violence presses on.

Now, to the good stuff. As the formerly peaceful art lovers scamper to safety (some even make it out of the building), the museum, the silent hero of the movie, if you ask me, endures a myriad of bullets in a scene that literally doesn’t quit until the ceiling shatters.

Blood streams down the bullet-holed ramps, Clive throws a man off the top floor, and, to break up the near monotony of this incessant Guggenheim bullying, a museum-goer’s amusing ringtone goes off in what apparently has become the designated comedic break in Clive Owen action thrillers (check out Spike Lee’s Inside Man if you haven’t yet). And the shooting continues.

Then, as Frank Lloyd Wright must have been turning in his grave, the Guggenheim takes its final bow when its glass ceiling – curtain, if you will – finally falls.

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.

Taboo: Sex & Violence (Josh)

Sex and violence are two things that have come to pervade our society, especially through film.

During the Pre-Hays Code (a code regulating "decency" in film) and Studio Eras of Hollywood, directors were dissuaded from using sexual or violent images and themes.  However, as time wore on, people grew more open and restless.  Writers started pushing the limits with dialogue including things like the famous double entendres of Mae West (Mae West Quotes) and emerging gore and violence of B movies.

After the mid-50s, a “moral decline” ensued around the globe.  The Code faded away.  Overseas, filmmaking started to pick up.  Auteurs of the French New Wave began using nudity, violence, and sexuality, among other things, as elements in their films.  A film like Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) was controversial at the time for its intimate love scene.  Jean-Luc Godard is famous for gratuitous sex and violence.  In Pierrot le fou (1965) he uses nudity in the opening scene for no significant reason to the plot.  One of his most famous films, Weekend (1967), features a scene in which the leading lady talks about a very strange ménage a trois in great detail, a camp of cannibals, and an off screen killing complete with, literally, buckets of fake blood splashing into frame.

The 60s “free love” generation would, of course, bring about much more sex in films.  Those like Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966) feature beautiful women parading around on screen and a sex scene with multiple partners.  A Swedish film, I Am Curious (Yellow), was banned in the US upon its release in 1967 for its depiction of full frontal nudity of both sexes and scenes of simulated intercourse.  Americans must have been privately coming to terms with the taboo of sex by this time because it soon became the highest grossing foreign film for decades.  American filmmakers began to get more adventurous.  An early film that tested the waters (and was later remade in 1997) was Stanley Kubrick’s version of the Vladimir Nabokov tale Lolita (1962).  The film gained a great deal of negative press for the way it portrayed the relationship between a young girl and an older man.  Kubrick was actually forced to re-edit the film a number of times to prevent it from receiving an X-rating.  Midnight Cowboy (1969) was a film that garnered controversy as well for its representation of male prostitution, sex, and homosexuality, but it was the first X-rated film (later downgraded to R) to be voted Best Picture.

Peter Bogdanovich made waves with his The Last Picture Show (1971) that many considered obscene (a nude teen pool party among the reasons), although it was nominated for 8 Oscars (won 2).  And films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and John Waters’ Pink Flamingos (1972) took fetishism, decency, and sexuality to a whole new frontier.

Violence came to the forefront as well during the 60s and 70s.  Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was controversial for its romanticism of violence and crime.  Kubrick again made a splash in 1971 with his famous A Clockwork Orange based on the Anthony Burgess novel.  It clearly portrayed a dystopia devoid of morals and openly displayed phallic images, nudity, extreme acts violence, and rape (famously performed while crooning “Singin’ in the Rain”).  The emergence of horror films, grindhouse flicks, and slasher movies started like 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre glorified violence and presented an immense amount of gore.  Many other popular films of the time explored sexuality and violence, for example, Taxi Driver, Scarface, and Dirty Harry. 

The 80s brought on films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Risky Business (1983), and Fatal Attraction (1987).  Nudity became less taboo – and worked its way much more into the teen comedy, an emerging genre - and a film like sex, lies, and videotape (1989) (which contained no nudity) talked about sex explicitly. (Won the Palme d’Or at Cannes) 

David Lynch’s memorable Blue Velvet (1986) showed that times had changed by the late 80s.  The story starts with a severed ear.  From there it delves into heightened sexuality and extreme depictions of violence clashing against a “typical middle American town”.  Kyle McLachlan (now of Sex and the City fame) is forced to undress at knifepoint.  He is then instructed to hit Isabella Rossellini for sadomasochistic pleasure.  Dennis Hopper’s disturbing character (although many think he is just playing himself) physically and sexually abuses Rossellini, as well.  She shows up naked on his front lawn towards the end of the film covered in black and blues. 

Tarantino came on the scene in the early 90s with Reservoir Dogs (1992) which showed criminals at work.  One scene included the detaching of an ear (apparently a common theme during this period – see also The Big Lebowski) to the tune of Stealers Wheel’s hit “Stuck in the Middle With You”.   Tarantino also gave us Pulp Fiction (1994) with extreme violence, sex, and the rape of Ving Rhames.  The 1995 film Kids drew heat for showing simulated sex scenes between underage actors, but this new generation of filmmakers was determined to portray blossoming sexuality.  Boogie Nights (1997) touched on the porn industry of a few decades prior with simulated sex/masturbation scenes.  1998 brought the world Happiness, which was considered repulsive by critics for its depiction of perversion, pedophilia, and masturbation.  Kubrick’s last film (yes, he loves taboos), Eyes Wide Shut (1999) showed a group of masked elite who participate in many different sexual encounters with each other including orgys, various sexual positions, and an off screen gang rape.

The 2001 film L.I.E. (Paul Dano’s debut) touched on the topics of homosexuality and pedophilia.  That same year Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) contained several sexual scenes, many explicit.  A threesome with 2 heterosexual males is presented delving into the realm of sexual identity.  The Brown Bunny (2003) has been one of the most controversial films regarding sex in recent years.  It tests the boundary between art film and pornography with its unsimulated sexual scenes.  Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) looked at sexuality in teens and pre-teens.  2 boys (12 and 14) and 2 girls (mid-late teens) learn about the world of sex through different means.  It also explored love and sexuality in the internet age (for a different take on this - see also Hard Candy)

And (this film deserves a separate category) John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus (2006) covered just about every sexual topic you could think of in this film.  It tells the tale of emotionally-challenged post 9/11 New Yorkers looking for a connection.  The use of extended unsimulated sex scenes, among other elements, led to it being described as the “most explicit” film ever screened in the history of the Cannes film festival.

The taboos of the past century have been exploited and exhibited by film.  Many say this has desensitized our culture to them, but they educate (and sometimes over-educate) the world to things that are really out there.  Maybe not as extreme as presented in films, but it opens the public's eyes to the world around them.