HopkinsCinemAddicts

Lost In America Embalms the New Hollywood Road Movie with 80s Cynicism

Lost In America (dir. Albert Brooks, 1985) tells the story of a married professional couple who “drop out” of society to roam the United States in an RV à la Easy Rider. The irony is inherent to the concept, but the narrative unfolds it to its full potential by prodding its characters incrementally toward their inevitable failure. Unlike its self serious predecessor’s approach of tragic irony, Lost In America handles the futility of the American dream with the deranged comedic detachment of resignation to the (admittedly comfortable, albeit monotonous) status quo in an arch eulogy for the New Hollywood road movie.

David and Linda Howard are quintessential yuppies. Their identity is defined by this era-specific term that denotes upward social and financial mobility. David quits his advertising job not on principle, but out of frustration after being denied a promotion. They liquefy all of their assets into a comfortable “nest egg” to live on for their remaining years: not exactly “free-spirited.” And their first stop is Las Vegas, the American mecca of consumerist debauchery. Again, every additional element heightens the film’s satirical premise.

In Vegas, soft-spoken Linda reveals herself to be a compulsive gambler and loses the entire nest egg in the middle of the night. David’s comically disgraceful attempt to convince the casino owner to refund the Howards their money, complete with a desperate advertising pitch featuring Santa Claus, establishes that his professional skills are unhelpful outside of an office and cannot help him in the “real world.” Linda, too, proves unadaptable to these non-yuppie environs through her inability to control herself at the blackjack table, thereby threatening a marriage built on stasis and responsibility and financial comfort.

Beside the Hoover Dam, the couple argue over the plot of Easy Rider. We never see the national landmark in all its glory; instead, we linger on the side of the road as the Howards bicker about whether Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper “dropped out with nothing” or “sold a ton of cocaine” at the beginning of the movie (they did the latter, a point which further tarnishes the ideological purity of both pairs’ endeavors).

Both David and Linda view the lifestyle depicted in that movie as exemplary in some way, even though the film itself is arguably about the disappointing “reality” of such a lifestyle. David and Linda bond with a police officer over their love of the film and he tears up their ticket as a result. That an officer of the law could adore a film with staunchly anti-establishment leanings indicates a misunderstanding and re-appropriation of an American cultural touchstone made possible by the superficial concerns of the “yuppie” era.

Linda and David’s decision to go to New York and “eat shit” for David to retain his old job, followed by a montage of the increasingly exhausted travelers driving across the country set to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” satirizes the couple’s renewed faith in the stifling yuppie lifestyle as euphorically positive, highlighting the romanticized nature of that vision with the use of the iconic song over less-optimistic footage of the RV merging with choked-up city traffic - a less visceral but more insidious final image than the explosion at the end of Easy Rider.

As Above, So Below: Us and Parasite

(Spoilers Ahead!) 

   Two recent films, Jordan Peele’s Us and Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite delve into exciting portrayals of oppression and classism.  The films have many overlapping concepts: class war, death, subterfuge, living underground, and the fact that both films center around two pairs of perfect nuclear families. The Wilsons and their doppelgangers (Us) and the Kims and the Parks (Parasite), all consist of four people: a mother, a father, a daughter, and a son. Of these paired families, one lives underground and is trying to claim a life above, while the other is explicitly privileged and defends their way of life. Each film could be considered a story about the entire family, but heavily leans on one character, especially toward the ending.  Peele’s Adelaide Wilson, and JoonHo’s Kim Ki-Taek are the principal characters at the center of the films' conflicts. They have very different roles, and end up in opposite scenarios, with Adelaide free and Ki-Taek trapped underground. In Us there is less subtlety in the motivation of the oppressed family, they are coming up from underground to kill the people they are tethered to so they can live in the sun.  In Parasite, as the title suggests, the Kim family becomes a parasitic force, siphoning wealth from the inattentive Park family. 

    Adelaide, played by Lupita Nyong’o is established as the main character of Us at the beginning, when she gets lost as a small girl. The rest of the film serves as a character study about her, even though her family gets a lot of screen-time. She is part of the privileged household (with a nasty secret) and fears the disruption of her way of life.  Us establishes a world where families like the Wilsons have everything they want, while doppelgangers called the Tethered live underground and eat raw rabbit.   In the world of Parasite, the Kim family lives in a sub-basement, which is small and dirty, while their employers, the Park family live in a mansion with a large yard.  The father of the Kim family, Ki-Taek, played by Kang-Ho Song, is not the first of his family to infiltrate the household of the Parks, but he becomes the main character over the course of the film as he is degraded  repeatedly by the Park family. The two characters make for an interesting comparison, because Ki-Taek struggles with his poverty and hatred for the rich, while Adelaide has already fought for her privileged life and now must fight to keep it. 

    Neither character entirely fits in with their family or the privileged lifestyle they try to adopt. Ki-Taek starts off Parasite as a strong head of family, the shot of him stoically folding pizza boxes while the rest of the family is coughing on insecticide establishes his character as someone with drive, even though he is unemployed and lower-class, he will do what needs to be done. But his drive is met with failure, and a foreshadowing comment that “One out of four” are rejects. As one of the early lines in the film it is immediately striking, considering there are four members of the Kim family, the reject is implied to be Ki-Taek. The line could easily have been in Us rather than Parasite, it applies to the Wilsons because Adelaide is not like the rest of her family. As an adult, Adelaide is never at ease, her family is relaxed and unafraid while on vacation, but there is not a moment in the movie, until the last shot of her, where Adelaide looks unafraid. As a child, Adelaide’s mother says “I just want my daughter back” when Adelaide stops talking after the incident with the Tethered, a reminder that she is not like other people on the surface (because she is the fake).

    Both of the characters’ oddness take the form of senses; Ki-Taek has a noticeable ‘smell’ that Mr. Park cannot stand. Ki-Jeong, his daughter, insists is from living in a sub-basement. The smell makes its first appearance when Da-Song smells both Ki-Taek and Choong-Sook, and comments that they are the same. Later, Mr. Park heavily insults the smell while Ki-Taek listens secretly. The insults begin to push him over the edge, the idea that the wealthy can mock the poor for how they cannot help smelling. When Mr. Park does not acknowledge Ki-Jeong’s mortal wound but does take time to acknowledge the stink of Moon-Gwang’s husband, Ki-Taek finds that it is the last straw. He fatally stabs Mr. Park and runs off. Adelaide’s give-away is sound, at the beginning of the movie she snaps her fingers off-beat, confusing her son. Sound is important throughout Us because none of the Tethered can speak, except for Red (the original Adelaide). Their ululating sounds are grippingly inhuman. The audience, and Jason, her son, are shocked to find that when Adelaide finally kills Red, she releases loud ululating sobs, like the Tethered do. Jason is left to wonder who the real monster was.

    Adelaide and Ki-Taek end their stories as dramatic opposites. After killing Red, Adelaide keeps her life above-ground, with her family intact. Her success is because of her desperation, and the brutality she displays in the final fight, and the ending flashback of the film. She has gotten away with climbing the social ladder, and she is happy about it, daring to smile at her suspicious son. Ki-Taek’s story ends in tragedy. Long-suffering and at the end of his rope, without a plan, he kills the cruel and indifferent Mr. Park, and takes the place of Moon-Gwang’s husband in the secret basement beneath the Parks’ house. He has descended even further, rather than finding a place in the sun. Ki-Taek must continue to live as a parasite, underground and with no hope of leaving. It is a tragic ending for the Kim family, showing the dire situation of the impoverished and what little chance there is to move up in the world.

Web Therapy: Surprisingly Deep (Nita)

A friend recently recommended that I watch Web Therapy, an improvised comedy web series starring Lisa Kudrow. Kudrow plays Dr. Fiona Wallice, a narcissistic therapist who has created a new form of online therapy (web therapy) that consists of 3-minute online sessions. Her philosophy is that the traditional 50-minute sessions are unnecessary, since they allow people to explore too many irrelevant experiences and feelings. She believes 3 minutes is sufficient for breakthroughs. Fiona also strives to build her own franchise and tapes the sessions in hopes of attracting investors.

After my friend explained the premise of the series to me, I knew I had to watch it. So far I’ve seen three episodes, and I have not been disappointed. Though the episodes are lighthearted and ridiculous, they are also surprisingly insightful. Through dark comedy, the satirical web series touches on a variety of topics such as self-absorbed culture, the negative ramifications of technology, and marital/family issues. Essentially, the series is about failed human interaction and comically explores how technology contributes to this.

In the very first scene of the series, Fiona is showing her husband Kip what a typical web therapy session would entail by giving him a session. Kip is clearly unhappy with Fiona, as she moved some of his personal belongings to decorate the room she conducts sessions in. The entire series is shot from the perspective of Fiona’s computer screen, so all we see are Fiona and Kip in individual video chat boxes. They are visually separated from each other and contained within the virtual bounds of the iChat boxes. As the scene progresses and Fiona starts to roleplay a therapy session with Kip, Kip tries to look over at Fiona when answering her questions (since they are sitting in the same room). However, Fiona scolds Kip when he tries to do so and forces him to look at her through the webcam. The rest of the scene consists of Kip and Fiona bringing up issues they have with each other, revealing how bad their marriage is. This illustrates the lack of intimacy between Fiona and Kip, while conveying that technology may be acting as a barrier and fostering this decrease in human connection.

In episode 3, a similar failure in human connection is demonstrated by Fiona’s poor relationship with her mother. Fiona talks to her mother via video chat – a technological barrier once again – and it is clear that they have not talked to each other for a while. Fiona’s mother is cold, and the two’s interaction reveals that the mother wants Fiona to pay her back tuition money (even though she is clearly very wealthy and is just greedy). The mother is self-absorbed, a common theme within the series as Fiona is also a narcissist. This raises the question of how modern culture fosters narcissism. The series addresses how self-promotion is becoming more prominent within today’s society, given the Internet and social media. Through Fiona’s relationship with her mother, the series also shows how this self-absorption hinders human relationships and ultimately leads to isolation.

Episode 2 explores the extent of Fiona’s narcissism. From looking at herself in the video chat instead of her clients, to using her clients for the purpose of furthering her own business, Fiona is the epitome of how self-promotion and self-obsession leads to loss of humanity. For instance, in episode 2 Fiona holds a session with a couple who are having relationship issues. During the session, the couple get into a heated argument and start talking about their feelings towards each other. Fiona, clearly annoyed that the two are getting “bogged down” by discussing feelings, stops the conversation. She then asks whether the man received the release to record the sessions so that she can show investors. It’s a hilarious scene, but also has serious implications. Fiona exemplifies how self-interest prevents effective communication with others and hinders human connection. Since all of Fiona’s energy is going towards ensuring her personal success, she is unable to listen to others and be empathetic.

Web Therapy is a very ironic series. Therapy is essentially about human connection; however, the series repeatedly portrays failed human relationships. This is because Fiona strips the most essential part of therapy sessions (time) in hopes of increasing efficiency. This addresses a growing issue in our industrialized society: choosing quantity over quality. Though cutting down duration of therapy sessions from 50 minutes to 3 minutes may be efficient in terms of saving time, the quality of the sessions is clearly lost. The series does a great job of comically highlighting how our technological society encourages self-interest and discourages intimate human connection, which ultimately leads to the loss of quality relationships.

Post-Grad Purgatory in The Graduate (Eric)

The Graduate (1967) begins with an opening credit scene in which Ben, played by Dustin Hoffman, floats through an airport terminal on a moving walkway with only a white wall behind him. He doesn’t take any physical action to move towards his destination; he simply drifts by. The film takes place during the summer after Ben’s college graduation, and it explores the sense of confusion that the protagonist faces. Many elements of the mise-en-scene help to inform the notion of Ben’s existential anxiety while also commenting on the rigid social forces with which he is made to contend with.

As he is forced by his parents to greet guests in his home immediately after coming back from college, Ben explains to his father that he’s worried about his future. Ben doesn’t know where he’s going. When he comes down to greet the guests, he is framed in a handheld closeup to illustrate his sense of discomfort and aimlessness as various friends of his parents approach him with questions and conversations that he clearly doesn’t want to engage with. Ben appears completely lost throughout this whole sequence, and like the opening credits, there is a heavy presence of the color white in both the set and costume design. Ben seems to be drifting through a sort of post-graduation purgatory.

When Ben escorts the predatory Mrs. Robinson to her home, he is greeted with the massive white façade of her suburban mansion. At the end of the film, he again journeys into a massive white building, a church, to disrupt his love interest’s wedding. In this way, the color white comes to symbolize both the institutions Ben must contend with as well as the sense of nothingness that currently pervades his life. The white is often in contrast with more vivid colors, specifically green and blue. Right before Ben has sex with Mrs. Robinson for the first time, (which takes place in a white hotel room on a white bed), a blinding white light shines out from the bathroom behind him. This is immediately juxtaposed with a sequence representing Ben’s post-coital bliss, in which he literally floats in a blue pool surrounded by green bushes. At the end of this sequence, he is rudely awakened from his daydream by his father, who stands directly in front of the blinding white sunlight. The dialogue here again supports Ben’s current meandering. When asked what he’s doing by his father, Ben replies, “Well, I would say that I’m just drifting.”

The drifting past a white wall from the opening credit sequence stands in contrast to Ben’s hectic action near the end of the film, in which he drives through the night in order to find Elaine, his love interest. He drives through the night, and past mountains and trees to get to Elaine, who is trapped inside the massive white church. In context with the Robinson’s large white house from the beginning of the film, the white buildings can be seen as seen as hostile arenas. In the Robinson mansion, Ben is cornered by Mrs. Robinson. In the Church, he is attacked by the wedding party. Ben must contend with the powerful forces of tradition and institution in order to achieve his freedom, to escape from his blank white rooms. Ultimately, Ben and Elaine escape the church and go out on the road, but the film ends in uncertainty as the two find themselves in a bus surrounded by the eyes of middle-aged bus-goers; Ben sits on the bus with the same lost face from the start of the film as he is confronted with an unknown future and the judgement of social convention and respectability.

 

My first time with "The Bachelor" (Madison)

April is the month for trickery; national poetry month; and, according to Eliot, the cruelest month. It has always seemed a mistake, then, that Valentine’s Day doesn’t fall during these first few weeks of spring; April feels designed for love and love’s vicissitudes. Sudden storms thunder in the morning, then peter out in time for the birds to chitter at the receding sun by dinnertime. Heavy coats are tucked into storage, then brought back out again as a wintry afternoon inserts itself in a week of 60-degree weather. Cherry trees blossom so suddenly that, in a blink, whole streets are covered in a flowery snow.  

And now that I’m in my twenties, I’m even more aware of spring’s potential for romance. My happily-coupled friends spend evenings discussing their post-graduation plans to buy houses and host engagement parties. Even the advertisers on my podcasts seem in the mood for love; a chipper woman from Match.com implores me to try the site that “leads to the most second dates!”

For the terminally single, the season of the birds and the bees can start to lose its luster quickly. A truly cynical girl might, on a warm, weekday evening, even find herself turning to the truly absurd for comfort: the latest season of The Bachelor. This show is bafflingly popular among my female friends, especially the younger ones, but I myself had never seen it until I began writing this blog post.

It is hard to escape the cultural zeitgeist that is The Bachelor, it’s true; I’ve watched a close cousin of the show, I Wanna Marry Harry, which saw twenty-odd American women competing for the heart of a Prince Harry look-alike (the fact that their suitor was not actual royalty was hidden from them until the final episode), and have partaken in the parody series Burning Love. Lately, as a salvo to the show itself, I started watching Unreal, a Lifetime series (I know, but stay with me) about the dramatic lives of the producers of a Bachelor-type program.  

It feels difficult to write anything truly novel about this sort of show; everyone knows that the world of reality TV is highly contrived, oversexed, and nakedly misogynistic (or, at the very least, post-feminist, relying as it does on a divorce of individual narrative from social context). There are hundreds of blogs poking fun at the poor suckers who really think they can find true love on cable. But as I watched my first episode of The Bachelor (Nick flew one of his darlings to Finland, first class), I didn’t want to laugh. Scoff, sure—the bachelor’s self-assured smile, his stilted conversations (one romantic dinner was filled with chatter about whether or not an iron or a steamer is better for getting wrinkles out of clothes), and the very fact of his having dated up to 29 women at a single time, made the whole premise difficult to take seriously.

But I didn’t find the episode hilarious. The women all seemed so sincere, so ready to love a near stranger; an invisible hand behind the camera was clearly prompting them to confess deep feelings to their suitor, and several tearfully admitted to having fallen in love with the scruffy-but-personable Nick. Watching them I felt, uncomfortably, that I understood where they were coming from. After all, I’m trying to date, and have an intimate knowledge of how truly terrible it is (a memorable one-liner from the Tinder-sphere: “You want to be my cardio this evening? It’s cutting season.”) If you’re going to couple-up in the modern age, why not get a few months’ vacation in a mansion as well?

And, though the environment is obviously staged for the screen, the fairy-tale effect is never quite punctured; despite myself, the sweeping orchestral score and the lights of cabin windows glittering on a fjord made me quickly invested in the (thin) narrative (the Southern belle has never had an orgasm, and can’t figure out how to tell her beau). It is easy to believe that the pair are sharing an intimate exchange over dinner when one is distracted by candlelight, by the stylish fair-isle sweaters, and impeccable makeup.

This is partly what drove me to watch Unreal; one always suspects that the contestants’ every move is choreographed to maximize interest, that the editing is, at best, misleading and at worst malicious, and that the results are predetermined, and watching these suspicions unfold in a Lifetime drama is undoubtedly satisfying. One gets to feel not only that they were too clever to have been duped by reality TV, but also that they are no longer complicit in reality TV’s bullying and, therefore, can indulge in the drama without doing harm to any real people.

And it’s true, Unreal is as dramatic as any afternoon soap; 6 episodes in and the main character has already been blackmailed, her boss has nearly died of a heart attack, a contestant was outed on national TV, and a girl has jumped off of the roof. Watching the self-serving behind-the-scenes world of reality TV production is entertaining, if slightly nausea-inducing. But, still, it can’t quite compare to what I felt watching the real deal.  

Even with the glitz and the glamour attendant to The Bachelor, there is something searingly genuine about it. If the impulse to display one’s love life to an audience of millions is foreign to me, if the contestants seem chillingly like American standards of beauty personified, if the much-discussed “Fantasy Suite” smacks a bit of coercive sex, the overwhelming desire to be close to another person (any person, even a person who wears too many turtlenecks and makes you wait in the cold while he sips whiskey with the host) is so… normal. It is so much like the April afternoons I spend here, in Baltimore, downloading a dating app for the fourth time (even though I swore after I deleted it last time that I was done for good), that I couldn’t bring myself to laugh at the people on my screen. In this season of love, I’m not that unlike them. The Bachelor might have won itself another fan.

The Horror of Romantic Reality (Jaeyoung)

Spoiler warning: plots of The Graduate and Anomalisa discussed.

Unless I am with other people, or if I’m feeling unnaturally brave, I will never watch a horror movie. The suspense, stress, cringe, and anticipation of jump-scares are all too strenuous for me to handle on my own. Therefore, during this Halloween season, I have watched no horror movies to recount on this blog.

Yet the feeling I’ve had watching those movies, the squeamishness, the dread, the “No, don’t make me watch this,” came up unexpectedly in a movie of a totally different genre--The Graduate.

And it wasn’t the part where Mrs. Robinson tries to seduce him, or when Benjamin asks for his hotel room, or when Benjamin brings Elaine to the strip club. No, it was the very last scene, after Benjamin crashes Elaine’s wedding and escapes with her, when their excited, smiling faces fade into regret and disappointment. It was uncomfortable to watch, and I was tempted to stop the movie before it got to the end credit.

Of course, I had questions. What happens next? Where are they going, and what is their future? Benjamin has even less idea of his future than he did in the graduation party, and the life to come will probably be worse than the life he just escaped. In the topic of horror, perhaps this fear can be categorized in the Terror vs. Horror paradigm; Benjamin’s impending fate is terrifying, while his unseen, painfully awkward future would be horrifying.

But one could say that the scene itself is horrific-- (the idea of) Elaine was the closest thing he could get to happiness and normalcy, but he loses her. After ripping through California on car and by foot, he realizes that he became bored of her more quickly than he did with her mother.We see in Benjamin’s face that he truly loses everything.

In Benjamin's defense, who hasn’t daydreamed about their ideal romance, imagining every perfect scene with the person they love? Everyone is their own private filmmaker. The Graduate simply does the dirty deed of realizing these romantic fantasies, only to muddy it up with hopeless reality.

The same romantic idealization is seen in the R-rated stop-motion picture Anomalisa, directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson. In a world where everyone is voiced by Tom Noonan, Customer Service expert Michael Stone finally meets Lisa Hesselman, a woman with a unique voice. In his hotel room, he appears completely infatuated with her, relieved that the many years of grim mundanity are finally coming to an end. In fact, after Lisa sings an unimpressive rendition of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” she exclaims, “Oh my God, are those tears?”

And to no surprise, Michael falls into the same trap Benjamin did--he shoves his hopes and dreams into a stranger he’d only recently met. And he faces great disappointment, as Lisa starts to displease him and sound more like Tom Noonan (aka everyone else). Unlike Benjamin, however, Michael attempts to shape her back into his idealized woman, chiding her for letting food hang out of her mouth and telling her she’s “too controlling.” But Lisa’s charm is irreparably broken, and Michael’s only hope in life is lost. The sunlight in the room becomes obnoxiously bright, suggesting that (the idea of) Lisa has just been a meaningless dream. Just when life was looking up for Michael, that one breakfast scene thrusts Michael back to misery.

But Anomalisa actually has obvious elements of horror. Not only are the puppets somewhat unnerving (unlike normal puppets, their faces appear pasted onto their heads), but also there is a nightmare sequence in which everyone, from the hotel manager to the staff members to Lisa’s friend, are “all one person" and are after Michael. The hotel grows ominously dark as Michael (who at one point drops his animatronic face) frantically plans his escape. But even in his nightmare, Michael has (the idea of) Lisa to hold on to, a last hope.

And then he wakes up, and (the idea of) Lisa is lost. Reality becomes worse than nightmare.

Women have no responsibility to conform to a man’s idealization. But we (as in mainstream audience) still expect romantically-satisfying endings. We are primed with movies and shows that have protagonists “winning the girl” or rekindling a waning relationship. Hollywood constantly peddles these opiates, and when movies like The Graduate or Anomalisa come around, we're kicked in the gut.

So who needs ghosts or zombies for a cinematic scare? With the right dose of wishful thinking and a swift counter-punch of reality, anything could be a horrifying thriller.

Short, Sad, and to the Point (Madison)

With February fast approaching, it seems appropriate to write a post about that problematic behemoth of the film industry, the Oscars. I admit to being fairly new to the scene: typically, my interactions with the Academy begin and end with me Googling red carpet looks the day after the awards ceremony. This year, though, I wanted to be a little more in touch. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to dive in to all the complicated (and frankly upsetting) politics of the bigger categories like Best Film or Best Actor. I decided to start small; or rather, short. For this post I watched the 2016 nominees for Best Live Action Short Film, an emotionally taxing set of five films with casts and crews from all over the world.

 

 

The list includes Ave Maria (Palestine, France, and Germany), directed by Basil Khalil, Shok (Friend) (UK and Kosovo), directed by Jamie Donoughue, Alles Wird Gut (Everything Will Be Okay) (Germany and Austria), directed by Patrick Vollrath, Stutterer (UK), directed by Benjamin Cleary, and Day One (USA), directed by Henry Hughes. Although these films offer much-needed international perspectives, you will notice that all of the directors are men; even in less popular categories like the Short Film, the tendency of the film industry (and particularly the Academy) to prioritize primarily male voices, stories, and perspectives is readily apparent, and should be considered critically. Still, putting aside questions of identity politics (however necessary they may be), I will begin by heartily recommending that you watch these films, difficult as they are to sit through without shedding a few tears.

 

 

I have never been one to watch short films; they often don’t play in most theaters, and they can feel somehow inaccessible, made solely for the film fanatic who is particularly literate in the finer points of film technique. After all, these short movies just don’t have the space to tell long stories; out of a sort of necessity, their strength often comes from careful attention to design and cinematography. These films, though, proved me wrong. It’s true that I thought each was well shot (Shok giving its viewers a careful contrast between the beauty of the Kosovar countryside and the ugliness of state-perpetrated violence and poverty; Alles Wird Gut moving the audience skillfully from the bright lights of a fair to the cool, colorless space of an airport), each also told an essential human story with impressive precision.

Because of the brevity of these films—the longest clocked in at half an hour—every line of dialogue, every shot, had to be meaningful. There could be no wasted action. Thus, these films packed every minute with an emotional force that I don’t often see in feature length movies.

 

 

Each of the nominated films open on a scene that gives us a sense that something important is at stake, at risk, or in danger of being lost: within the first few minutes of Ave Maria we hear (but do not see) the sounds of a car crash; the camera moves outside, where we get a close-up of the head of the Virgin Marie statue, knocked off in the crash, oozing what looks like blood onto the sandy earth. Stutterer opens on the main character, Greenwood, trying to overcome his debilitating speech impediment to call the telephone company; the woman on the other end repeats, “Hello? Is anyone there?” as we watch his mouth working frantically to produce sound. The use of close-up in both cases feels particularly powerful; the emotional crux of the piece literally fills the screen (in the former, the darkly silly and accidental meeting between people of differing faiths is pictorialized in the wounded statue; in the latter, a man’s struggle to connect despite his stutter is made visual with a prolonged gaze at Greenwood’s lips.)

 

The other three films also open on a weighted scene: a speeding car almost runs over a child’s bicycle lying in the road (Shok), a man paces in front of a gated house, buzzing the doorbell over and over (Alles Wird Gut), a woman tries to operate a makeshift showerhead and a man barges in on her (Day One.) The viewer is thrown immediately into the action, waiting for what will happen next and knowing that it must happen soon. Each film becomes something of a masterpiece in tension; even those without scores, like Alles Wird Gut, evoke mood very effectively through the use of diegetic sound (especially those sounds of modernity: the whine of a motorcycle, the whoosh of a highway, the ding of a cellphone, all of which create a feeling of manic speed or stress.)

 

 

Though the films vary in lightness (ranging from an unflinching reflection on the Kosovo War to a sweet piece about a young man’s first date with his online girlfriend), none of them lack for emotional honesty. Above all, they are believable: in Stutterer, Greenwood sends flirtatious messages over Facebook (“6 months? Have I really been enduring you for that long?”); in Ave Maria, Moshe’s wife and her mother-in-law bicker constantly throughout their fifteen minute ordeal. These conversations feel like the ones we have with our own friends and families every day; thus, even as the characters’ worlds are different from our own, they never venture into the realm of film set. Because we are allowed to see these quotidian, or even goofy moments—Lea, in Alles Wird Gut, sticks her tongue out in her passport photo; in Shok, Petrit begs his mom to let his friend sleep over—we are willing to follow these characters into whatever dark places the filmmakers take them. And, almost without exception, we are taken somewhere dark.

 

 

Even in Ave Maria, a comedy set in the West Bank, there is the sense of a lingering threat despite the light, humorous tone; the Israeli family, when presented with a vehicle by the silent nuns, worries about passing the checkpoint in a car that looks “too Arab,” saying that the guards “would shoot [us] on sight.” In the end, the family transforms the “Arab” car into a Christian one, roping a neon cross on top and blaring hymns from the windows, and the threat of violence disappears in the sheer silliness of the image.

The other films, for the most part, offer no such relief. More often than not, things seem to go from bad to worse; children get shot, mothers die in childbirth, a father clings, sobbing, to his young daughter as the police try to rip his hands away. As a fellow theatergoer said, “My takeaway is that everything is definitely not going to be okay.”

Still, this level of emotional drama may be somewhat par for the course for short films like these. Shorts require far less funding than feature length films (although most of the budgets were not yet available online, Stutterer’s listed budget is a meager $7,200; a small sum, compared to movies like Brooklyn, which has a budget of roughly $10 million); this means that the filmmaker has a bit more creative freedom to do as he (or she, in other cases) pleases. With longer films, it’s hard to sustain the intense misery present in these shorter pieces: for one thing, two hours is a long time for a filmmaker to stay on one painful note; for another, the audience simply wouldn’t stand for it. With films as short as these, however, there is enough stamina to maintain a somber attitude, and less of a need for a film to be friendly to a broad audience.

Because each of these films is truly the vision of its director, they are quite different from one another. Still, if there is anything that ties these many films together, it is their searing humanity. If the material is at times familiar (the two boys in Stok make perhaps an overly likely pair, with the one being too big for his britches, and the other playing the innocent who dies in the end to teach the former a lesson; in Day One, divorcee Feda begins by proclaiming that she never wanted children, but emerges from the movie singing to a stranger’s baby with a rapturous look on her face), it is never unconvincing. Because of the elevated stakes, the fast pacing, and frankly wonderful performances (I found the child actors particularly impressive), I could forgive the things I could not understand about each film. Even those pieces that left us with an unresolved ending, as Alles Wird Gut did, felt persuasive; in fact, the fractured, brief nature of these stories mimicked life almost more effectively than a longer movie could. The form felt true to the disordered pace of life in the ‘real world’, where stories don’t always arc perfectly, and there often isn’t a discrete ending.

 

 

As I have learned from the above films, sometimes it is better to be brief, so I’ll leave you with this: the short film, though it may seem intimidating at first, is a medium well worth exploring, and the nominated films this year are especially impactful. To quote the Bard, “though [they] be but little, [they are] fierce.” You can watch the 2016 Live Action Oscar Shorts in theaters now (if you’re in Baltimore, the Charles has been showing them nightly!), or wait until February 23^rd, when they will be available online. Be sure to bring some tissues with you when you go.

Digging Out (Abby)

The end of classes and graduation are approaching, and the familiar anxiety of a big event also draws near, one that connects family, drama, and discomfort. As the title of a previous post suggests, though, there are happy things too. It’s a time for celebration.

Yet that stone of anticipation sitting in one’s stomach is far from easy to digest. Much like before winter break, when I chose to take on this film project, my brain continues to run through potential bad scenarios like an over-stylized melodrama on repeat. Who’s going to be where and what if they see them? How will I split my time evenly? Jesus, even writing this makes me want to slap myself; at some point you just have to throw your hands up and say, “who gives a shit?”

The mood of this anticipation is what brings me here, to this post. The very real anxieties and the very real disavowal of said anxieties are exactly why I suddenly rushed to put the logistics of the project together in the midst of finals last semester, and why I needed to do so.

In fact, as much as the film is about family, and about place – home and geography, and how such factors inform who we are – it’s about the individual’s experiences with these shaping forces. The hooded figure above is one of my sisters, who kindly agreed to help me by appearing in a few shots. Bringing a human into visual representations is vital to the felt experience of the film. The final product may fall into abstraction at points, in addition to being too personal and micro in scope for the audience to connect with (if it even ends up being shared with an audience), but at some level my sister may provide that small hint of universality through the personal, someone through whom an outsider might feel a connection.

And though her face isn’t visible in any of the shots, in the end, her persona has agency.  Though the shaping forces are important, they are not defining; the film is not about things being done to someone while that someone exists a passive blob of human matter, and that’s not what life is about.

It’s about digging out. It’s about saying “F you” to the things you can’t control, and doing your own thing. It’s about understanding where you came from and how that has shaped your view, picking out the things you like about it, and taking a shovel to the rest when you can. It’s about taking the time to say, “who gives a shit” while you try to enjoy something that’s supposed to be good. So, as much as I know I will seesaw back and forth from this claim, I say bring it on, graduation drama. Who gives a shit. 

The Collision of Coincidence and Fate (Mina)

        Romantic films generally depict relationships and love in an unrealistic way. The male and female protagonists coincidentally meet each other at the right place at the right time and then they fall in love as if it is their destiny. The couple overcome obstacles and declare their love, and the film ultimately ends with a typical “they lived happily ever after” scene. Isshin Inudo’s 2003 film Josee, The Tiger and The Fish and Marc Webb’s 2009 film (500) Days of Summer also combine themes of coincidence and fate; however they refuse to conform to the convention of romantic genre. They point out how people easily fool themselves to misunderstand coincidence as fate. Mainly through the male protagonist’s perspective, these two films display how romance can fail and how love is reevaluated after the end of a relationship.

        In the opening scenes of (500) Days of Summer an omniscient narrator warns us, “this is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know upfront, this is not a love story”. We are then introduced to the male protagonist, Tom, who looks miserable and devastated due to the breakup with his girlfriend. As a twist on stereotypical gender roles, Tom Hansen is the one who falls in love with Summer Finn at first sight. Tom confesses that he believes in soul mates, yet Summer tells him upfront, that she does not believe in such fantastical concepts. Tom is nonetheless convinced that she is his destiny, and this intense feeling propel him forward and makes him harder to understand why Summer, the girl of his dreams, broke up with him.

        Like most failed relationships, Tom holds onto only the good memories. He recalls, for example, the morning after he spent the night with Summer. The film effectively reflects his happiness through a musical scene. Tom joyfully emerges from his apartment building with the soundtrack “You Make My Dreams” playing in the background. Water jets from the fountain (mirrors his bursting emotions), strangers smile at Tom and shakes hand with him. Tom even dances with the whole crowd of people dressed in blue, a color usually associated with purity and sincerity. For Tom, who grew up believing that he’d never truly be happy until the day he meets the “one”, it seems like the whole universe is encouraging his relationship with Summer.

        Tom gradually learns that he can’t hold onto this fantasy. The complete realization comes when he shows up for a party that Summer is hosting. The plot unfolds in split-screen, contrasting the screen projecting Tom’s hopeful expectations with that of the heartbreaking reality. The gap between the two gradually widens, to the point where Tom hastily leaves the party. He becomes aware of the fact that he and Summer will not reunite. Afterwards, Tom becomes mature and rebuilds himself. Tom stops himself from indulging in self-pity, blaming Summer for failing to be his soul mate and meets another woman. This doesn't necessarily imply that he has given up on true love, he still believes in it. He now knows that any romance can end, no matter how much passionate it was. However, Tom doesn’t hesitate to start a new relationship.

        Josee, The Tiger and The Fish opens with a series of snapshots with a voice-over of the male protagonist Tsuneo. In his retrospective moods, he talks about a trip he went with a girl named Josee. The film then goes back to the time when the two first meet by chance and become close friends. Josee, has been crippled most of her life. She lives with her overprotective grandmother who looks after her but regards her as “damaged goods”. Josee seems to also believe that nothing, not even love, can be done to make her life better. The camera often shows her spending time in a closed closet in close-up shots. A small lamp throws a warm light on her face, emphasizing her content in retreating to her own little world. Yet, confined by the closet walls, and surrounded by stacks of books, she looks lonely at the same time. Tsuneo, a college student in his early twenties, is more like Tom from (500) Days of Summer in terms of inmaturity. Tsuneo is more interested in girls than in his studies. Although Tsuneo has feelings for another girl–Kanae–he met from school, he frequently visits Josee. Tsuneo doesn’t make the final step in starting a romantic relationship with her until Josee’s grandmother passes away. Tsuneo promises to stay with her forever. At least at that time, Tsuneo thinks it’s his responsibility, or fate, to “fix” Josee.

        Although Josee and Tsuneo grow closer, Tsuneo notices that Josee is starting to feel like a burden with the passing of time. He recollects, “There were many reasons why we broke up. But, actually, there was only one. I ran away.” Tsuneo, who has thoughtlessly believed that he can be with Josee forever, runs away and returns to his old girlfriend, Kanae. Despite the sadness, the breakup scene is shot flatly. We see Tsuneo in a long shot, brought to his knees, crying. Cars rapidly pass by him, as if the world doesn’t care about his feeling of loss. Tsuneo faces the harsh reality, his life without Josee and the possibility of never seeing her again. Only after he leaves Jossee behind, Tsuneo fully realizes that his feelings weren’t based on charity, but on true love. Tsuneo has changed; he is is able to differentiate love from lust or charity. He understands true love, and the responsibility that follows it.

      Most of our relationships in the real world do not end up in happy endings such as in Pretty Woman (1990) or Serendipity (2001). We rather find ourselves in (500) Days of Summer and Josee and Josee, The Tiger and The Fish, making the wrong choices or following our instincts and emotions that often results in something we didn't expect.

Unbearable Conflicts in A Separation (Sam)

The first Iranian film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film was 2011's A Separation, and for good reason. In focusing on the separation of a middle class couple in Tehran – and the effect that separation has on their eleven year-old daughter, Termeh – the film widens its scope in a subtle critique of Iranian society and ultimately achieves universality in its relevance.

The film begins with the couple, Nader and Simin, arguing in front of a court judge. Simin wants to leave the country because she no longer feels comfortable raising Termeh there, but Nader refuses to leave on account of his grandfather, who has Alzheimer's. So Simin decides to divorce him – but the judge refuses their application. 

Of course, the title refers to more than just the separation of Nader and Simin. The majority of the film concerns a dispute Nader has with Razieh, a poor woman whom he hires to look after his grandfather while he's at work. That disagreement is too complex and slow-building to summarize here, but suffice it to say that they end up in court, she accusing him of causing a miscarriage, and he accusing her of neglecting his grandfather and of theft. There is a separation between these families culturally as well – the middle-class Nader and Simin, and the poorer, more devout Razieh (who has to call a religious hotline to be sure that cleaning up after the incontinent grandfather is acceptable) and her husband Hodjat. Both sides are full of righteous rage, but because we see all the events and relevant details as they occur, we understand each side's perspective, the source of their misunderstandings, and more importantly, the inevitability of them.

Throughout this conflict, the issue of what Nader and Simin will do to resolve their own disagreement is always present in the background, always informing the actions of the two and also of Termeh. Just as Termeh is torn between her parents, every character is torn by opposing external forces. This is what the title of the film truly refers to: the forces which pull at characters in opposite directions, and which cause a separation in them, or internal conflict. 

In such a situation, no character can escape unscathed. The two families – Nader, Simin, and Termeh on one side, and Razieh and Hodjat on the other – finally attempt to compromise when Nader agrees to compensate them monetarily. But the plan fails when Nader asks Razieh to swear on the Quran that she is sure he was the cause of her miscarriage. He had previously refused to compensate them at all, because this would be an admission of guilt – and he maintained that he was innocent. Because she is such a devout Muslim, she cannot swear.

It's a cruel maneuver on Nader's part, but it's a telling moment. Razieh cannot swear on the Quran because, though both sides are reluctant to admit it, the issue of who is innocent and who is guilty, who is the victim and who is the criminal, is complicated. The deal breaks down, and Razieh and Hodjat are disgraced. But Nader, by now, has already implicitly admitted to Termeh that he is not as innocent as he has claimed to be. He, too, is disgraced.

At the end of the film, Nader and Simin are finally allowed to divorce. And because nothing escapes the separation intact, Termeh is forced to choose between them – the most devastating moment in a film full of moments that will devastate you.

Kenny's Power (Natasha)

    Eastbound & Down ends in three weeks.  On April 15th at 10:30 pm, the final "chapter"--not episode, chapter--of HBO's antiheroic saga of Kenny Powers will somehow just stop.  I am at once delighted to see how KP will turn failure into triumph one last time, and utterly crushed to see him drop the mic and walk off the stage forever.

    My fondest memory of Kenny dates back to the show's first season.  While employed as a middle school P.E. teacher (from my childhood experience, I cannot imagine a less respectable job) after falling from Major League Baseball grace, Kenny pops a pill of Ecstasy before chaperoning a school dance.  Sporting all black, down to his signature cowboy boots, he pushes his way into a dance circle of preteens and prepares to woo his long-lost high school girlfriend, now the middle school art teacher.  "Work, drugs," he demands.  Then he dances.  Then he throws up. But damn if those drugs didn't work just like he told them to!  I haven't seen a portly man move like that since Bluto floated up the stairs to the Dean's office in Animal House.

    This season, KP managed to sum himself up in one perfect admission when he said to his categorically apathetic college-age girlfriend, "You think I f***in' wanna hang out with my f***in' son?  Hell no, I'd much rather be doin' cocaine and watchin' the Saw DVDs in your dorm room with ya."  He's a ladies' man and a man's man; he's a lover and a fighter; in the words of Kenny Powers, Kenny Powers is "a god damn champion."

    With ambition as unstoppable as the soundtrack that accompanies him, KP has suffered through, run away from and finally returned to face a slew of potentially career- and life-ending struggles since we met him in 2009.  And why have we been with him from the very beginning?  Because he is unbelievably entertaining. He says the most ridiculous things so often and just keeps talking until there are no more boundaries for him to cross; we have no choice but to accept how beautifully hilarious he is and forget--completely--the decorum we use to direct our own speech.  He amuses, yet inspires us with perfectly serious and accidentally revealing monologues.  He endears himself to us with the occasional poignant plea for the simple human necessities of companionship and a sense of belonging. He is at once a martyr for absurd humor and a touching failure of a train wreck we are shocked to care about.  He is a figure unlike any other on television:  Always foul, often wrong but sometimes right, Kenny Powers is the low-class American wannabe who gets by, just barely, because of his heart.

    I will be very sad to say goodbye to KP, to the raucous laughs and the Schadenfreude his misfortune and mess-ups afforded.  Perhaps I'll find a new hero to follow each week, but for now I pledge allegiance to Kenny Powers.  The conclusion of his audiobook autibiography says everything I never could:

"In closing, I'd like to give big ups to God, Buddha, L. Ron, whoever.  Hell, maybe I just need to thank me.  If there's one thing I've learned through all my adventures and conquests, it's that some people are just wired for success.  I had no choice when it came to being great.  I just am great.  I'm not trying to sound cocky or full of myself, but Kenny Powers has a sneaking suspicion that no matter what comes his way, he will always be great.  Because that's just the way s*** works sometimes.  This has been based on a true story.  The motherf***in' end."

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

From a Whisper to a Scream: On the Artaudian Cruelty of LA PIANISTE (Lisa)

Emerging from her “cage” at the Vienna Conservatory, Erika Kohut now enters a prison of a different make: the apartment she owns with her mother. They have a confrontation over what forty-something Erika has done earlier in the night – namely shopping for frivolous clothing – and hair-pulling and ugly histrionics ensue before mother and daughter reconcile to take their nightly place in the bed they share. In this title sequence, director Michael Haneke presents the microcosm of their relationship, bipolar and incestuous in all but deed. Adapted from the novel by Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek, La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher) carries the fragrance of an old novel, but the film's motifs of ritualized sexual violence and voyeurism come across as a contrarian gesture. Marrying the contemporary and classic in an incisive study of brutalized passions, Haneke explores man's urge to direct his own suffering.

Isabelle Huppert inhabits the eponymous part of Erika, a woman whose personal and professional lives are thoroughly dedicated to control and the pursuit of perfection. Huppert has a history of playing self-contained women and here she is in fine form as a Viennese specimen of severity whose transgressive desires seethe underneath a mask of icy poise. Operating on the principles of classical tragedy, Haneke paints two distinct and opposing artistic tendencies within her, worrying the tension between the chic and the abject.^[1]

The film chronicles her suffering, which begins with small acts of rebellion in the form of sexual compulsions. Erika's identity is fractured by disparate roles; At home, she simultaneously plays the infantilized daughter and the surrogate husband for her mother. Outside of her conservatory and home, she is a lurker, a voyeur with latent violence directed towards others and herself. Indeed, Erika is something rarely seen in cinema - a beautiful female pervert. This uncomfortable tension is acknowledged even within the film, at a sex shop on one of Erika's furtive excursions where her very presence disturbs and shames the male customers and breaks them out of the fantasy. Erika is seemingly repulsed by her femaleness, cutting her sex as a hobby. Thankfully Haneke doesn't predicate our empathy on the provision of backstory. One simply reacts to the shocking but plaintive truths of what she's doing and to the questions of why or why not. The character cannot be so easily consumed by the viewer, who must activate his or her fantasy in the detangling of her motivations. It is not clear, for example, whether Erika, the middle aged piano teacher, has fallen below expectations of fame and fortune because she lacks the talent or because she has purposely thwarted her ambitions out of spite for her mother. One does get the sense her artistic drive has curdled when she browbeats her admiring students. Her self-loathing in this respect perhaps manifests most clearly in a subplot where she sabotages the potential career of a female student with an equally domineering mother.

Haneke, in his infinite perversity, sets up the love triangle between Erika, her mother, and the rakish student, Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel). While Walter's eagerness provokes Erika, Freudian principles of transference help explain why Erika cannot feel or respond to the latter's conventional expressions of love.^[2] He even changes a public performance of a Schönberg piece to one of Schubert's just to impress her (and that is quite a difference – jumping from the Modern discordance to Romanticism).^[3] Walter pursues her ardently, initiating a game of seduction meanwhile failing to (or refusing to) recognize her bizarre symptoms of illness. For an instant he is a paragon of mythic muscularity, the white knight to liberate the repressed heroine but, alas, the film is decidedly anti-love.

For Erika has an uncompromising idea of love, in which art is to be confused with real life. Music is the predominant metaphor for love in the film, and the recurring scenes in which Erika gives rigorously precise note-by-note analysis of a piece of music serve as reminders of the fact. Walter, while attractive to her, is not the perfect lover because he does not play music they way she expects, which is to say with complete dedication to the art. Walter uses music to seduce Erika, who does not want to be seduced and possessed in the same way she is possessed by her mother. Her rigid rules for sexuality in turn convey the Romantic paradox of applying Apollonian order to Dionysian emotions. “Feelings won't defeat my intelligence,” Erika states to Walter after an unconsummated sexual encounter. Later she gives Walter explicit “instructions” by letter expressing her desires to be beaten and gagged. Alternatively infuriated and disgusted, Walter is curious enough to keep playing. Subtextually, Erika controls Walter's pleasure in the same way the director controls the emotions of the viewer. Haneke is a formalist and he shoots meticulously, so his presence is felt less in the stationary camerawork and more in the actions of the characters. Haneke identifies with Erika and projects those active, masculine characteristics onto her, but Haneke does not turn her into feminist statement. Erika is not so much aware of her behavior as she is reacting defensively to protect her selfhood.

When Erika's wishes are granted in the traumatic climax, the scene is devoid of sexual gratification. Walter's transformation from the precocious admirer to the abusive savage is shocking. “Not as you imagined?” Walter mercilessly posits, and with this statement Haneke seemingly implicates the viewer seeking vicarious thrills from a movie about sadomasochism.

In the end, life goes on and the contemptuous young man abandons the broken older woman as the viewer similarly walks away from the film. With Huppert's indelible parting look of agony and her final tragic gesture, Haneke draws back the curtain over his theatre of cruelty.

---

[1] Refer to the Apollonian-Dionysian axis. " Fredrich Nietsche, Raymond Guess, Nietsche: The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Cambridge: University Press, 1999.

[2] Freud describes transference as "...re-experiencing emotional relations which had their origin in…earliest object-attachments during the repressed period of…childhood." Sigmund Freud, The Freud Reader. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.

[3] For curious minds, the two pieces in question are Schönberg's Opus 33b and Schubert's Scherzo from the Sonata in A Major.

Image courtesy of the author.

Black Swan and the Hazards of Female Autonomy (Yelena)

In many ways, Aronfsky’s award-winning Black Swan is a film about femininity and repressed womanhood. Following the struggles of Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman, to master the lead role in Swan Lake, Black Swan focuses on the pressure on women not only to reach perfection but to be perfect. In this respect the film’s message is clear. This pressure is destructive, leading to the main character’s breakdown and ostensible suicide.

When it comes to more nuanced notions of gender and repression, however, Black Swan becomes much more thematically murky. For purposes of this post, I will focus on the issues of female adulthood, independence, and sexuality in our protagonist, Nina. Through its depiction of her journey to self-destruction, Black Swan delivers the clear message that a free woman is a dangerous woman, perhaps less miserable than the trapped girl but certainly more devastating.

---

The primary female influence on Nina is her mother, Erica Sayers, played by Barbara Hershey. A failed ballerina who gave up her career for her daughter, Erica lives vicariously through Nina. At the same time, Erica keeps her daughter in a consistently infantile state. Nina’s room is pink and filled with stuffed animals, and her bedroom door is perpetually open. When Nina gets the lead role in Swan Lake, her mother buys her a cake and, after Nina refuses a large piece, almost throws the whole thing out. The proper balance is restored only when Nina relents, if only a little, and Erica feeds Nina some frosting off the tip of her finger as one might to a baby or a pet. Even Nina’s sexuality is strictly corralled. Erica sometimes spends the night in her daughter’s room, explicitly preventing Nina from exploring that part of herself. This mother-daughter relationship, clearly, is not a healthy one, and it is one that explicitly keeps Nina from entering into adulthood, much less taking control of it.

This is the Nina we have at the start of Black Swan, a young woman trapped in a child trapped in a woman’s body, and this is the Nina who is perfect for the innocent White Swan but not so for the dark and sensual Black Swan. This is the woman the head of the ballet company, Vincent Cassel’s Thomas Leroy, casts as the Swan Queen.

When we first meet Thomas, he is stalking through a room of ballerinas, appraising them, touching them as a mark of who gets to audition for the Swan Queen and who does not. This scene oozes male dominance, male ownership, over the female, and this impression is affirmed when Nina visits his office in order to ask for the role. She knows to do her hair and put on lipstick, to put on a sexualized feminine presentation. And Thomas notices, Thomas points it out, and Thomas grabs her and kisses her.

To the film’s credit, this scene is portrayed as the assault it is, and when she bites him and runs away we see his behavior as horrifying, sexist, and unfair. Nina’s talent should win her this role, not Thomas’s decision to take sexual advantage of an employee.

But it is this scene—or, more accurately, her willingness to fight in a sexually aggressive situation—that lands Nina the part.

Repeatedly, what can be described most accurately as sexual harassment or all-out assault from Thomas is depicted as disturbing but overwhelmingly necessary or justified, not only to get ahead in the ballet industry but also for Nina’s personal growth. Intrusive questions about Nina’s sexual habits, an order to masturbate, and even a physical seduction are Thomas’s methods for teaching Nina to become the Black Swan, and this harassment sparks Nina’s sexual awakening. Nina even develops feelings for Thomas. Repeatedly the film tells us that Nina is repressed, infantilized, shut in by herself and her surroundings, and while Thomas is certainly not the good guy for what he does, his role as sexual gatekeeper blurs what should be a morally clear-cut issue. It’s no coincidence that the director states, “That whole scene with Natalie when he tells her to go touch herself, it's really not that out of line” (Source). For the director and for the film it isn’t, because the end product is justified by the means.

The product here being a woman crafted into the perfect Swan Queen, the means an aggressive male authority figure forcing his sexuality on a female employee, something the rest of us might call a crime.

One must be careful, however, to note that Nina’s sexuality is not depicted as a particularly good thing. In keeping with tradition, the dark and even the murderous are sexual in Black Swan. Perhaps because that which is repressed must be released in an equally violent manner, Nina’s sexuality is destructive and a marker of her own moral degradation. Her growing independence is treated in a similar manner, and develops alongside this sexuality.

Take Mila Kunis’s Lily, the embodiment of everything Nina has buried deep inside her. Free in her dance, in her consumption, in her speech, in her manners, in her sex, Lily acts as Nina’s foil, both for the character and for the audience. She is also the one to lead Nina into autonomy, especially sexual autonomy, first by a visit to a club and then through oral sex. Lily literally takes Nina away from the controlled environment of her mother’s apartment, but even then, she spikes Nina’s drink. This free spirit is deceitful and dangerously so, and as Nina becomes more and more confident and sexually aggressive, performing a mind-blowing performance as the Black Swan and kissing Thomas in front of the other dancers, she becomes more violent and morally questionable, killing “Lily”/herself and attempting to cover up the crime.

Also notable is that, during their sex scene, Nina is not actually with Lily but with the dark version of herself, Lily simply a hallucination. (I could go into the theme of female homosexuality as something dark, forbidden, wrong, and tantalizing here, but that’s a topic for another post.) After reaching orgasm, Nina is literally smothered by her own doppelganger, this sexual release leading to a sort of breakdown and death.

By repressing all of these aspects of her adulthood and womanhood, what could be healthy is blown up to unhealthy extremes—one can’t help but wonder, though, just what would healthy extremes be? In Black Swan we only see unhealthy femininity, unhealthy sexuality, unhealthy womanhood. Healthy limits are never defined, and it is in fact left questionable whether these even exist, especially for women.

By the end of the film, Nina can be considered an independent actor. She has broken away from her mother and calmly convinced Thomas to give her the role of the Swan Queen. She has even gained control of her own sexuality, as seen in her kiss of Thomas. At the same time, however, we have actually seen her physical metamorphosis into the Black Swan—a hallucination or delusion, perhaps, but no less a symbol of transformation into something dark and unnatural. After all, escaping her mother involved breaking her mother’s hand. The relationship with Thomas was never a healthy one, and so even this expression of her desires is darkened. Perhaps most importantly, reaching this stage in her adulthood has literally cost Nina her moral and physical life. In order to keep the part of the Swan Queen Nina has committed murder, if only in her mind, and in actuality she has stabbed herself.

---

In Black Swan, we follow what is in many ways a coming of age tale. Nina, a sexually innocent young woman, is infantilized by her mother and surrounded by figures of an aggressive and developed sexuality, and in order to play the role of the Black Swan, she must force herself to grow up, and she must do so quickly. At every stage of this process, however, she is either revictimized or must victimize others, including herself, in order to reach any sort of autonomy. It is tempting to read this negative portrayal as a scathing criticism of a sexist culture, but there is scarce evidence for such a reading; not in a world where even Lily, the closest thing Nina has to a friend and the film to a positive portrayal of female sexual independence, is cruel enough to spike Nina’s drink in a club. If this is how friends help friends, I’d hate to see how they hurt each other.

Black Swan is a fairy tale of broken womanhood. It is a world where mothers are wicked and little girls might be unhappy at home but at least they’re not stabbing themselves with broken glass. Black Swan is a world where women can’t win and not necessarily because of their circumstances, a world where men hurt women and this is bad, yes, but to some extent justified because it seems there is something fundamentally twisted about female sexuality anyway.

It is a world where, the moment you let the women free, they’re more than capable of destroying themselves.

Acting on Impulse vs. Respecting Tradition: Complicated Courtship in Jaffa and Lemon Tree (Glennis)

           The female protagonists in Jaffa (2009) and Lemon Tree (2008) may differ in terms of religion, ethnicity and age, but both women have something in common: major obstacles stand in the way of their desired relationships. In the case of Jaffa, religion and ethnicity prevent Mali, a young Jewish woman, from marrying her Palestinian boyfriend.  In Lemon Tree, age differences and marital standing are significant hurdles separating 40-something widow Salma from her 30-something lawyer, Ziad. While both movies explore the subject of complicated courtship, Jaffa and Lemon Tree employ different filmic techniques to reveal how severe the obstacles are that affect each relationship.  

            Lemon Tree makes use costumes and props to explore the changing nature of the relationship between Salma and Ziad. At the beginning of the film, Salma dresses in a very conservative manner. She wears long, dumpy dresses and a headscarf. After all, Salma seeks Ziad’s legal assistance for a very serious purpose: her neighbor, the Defense Minister of Israeli, has ordered that Salma’s lemon grove be cut down in order to prevent terrorists from attacking his house from Salma’s orchard. The Palestinian woman inherited the grove from her late father and will not allow her trees to be cut down. Needless to say, Salma’s first meeting with Ziad is as unromantic as it gets.

            The lawyer’s desk is covered with stacks of paper; he eats slimy sardines from a can and offers Salma a taste. The woman politely declines. However, the lengthy takes during the shot/reverse/shot sequence between them suggest that the widow and the lawyer are intrigued by one another. As the film progresses, costume choices reveal how the two grow closer. One night after they’ve had a few meetings, Ziad knocks on her door when soldiers won’t let him back into town due to a curfew restriction. The nightgown-clad Salma realizes that Ziad is at the door and purposefully decides not to wear her headscarf.

             Her decision not only defies cultural norms, but also it suggests her growing sense of intimacy with Ziad. The two are repeatedly featured in medium shots during the scene, a technique that displays them as a unit separate from the outside world. The close-up of Ziad stroking Salma’s hand proves that their relationship is at its peak. Later in the film, Salma is shown applying lipstick and adjusting her fashionable and brightly-colored attire. Her stylish appearance signals her desire to have Ziad find her attractive. The young lawyer clearly takes notice of her efforts when he checks out her courtroom attire and says: “You look stunning. Enough to drive a guy crazy.”

            While costumes showcase Salma and Ziad’s growing interest in one another, the use of photographs in the film emphasizes the obstacles standing in their way. A large picture of Salma’s disgruntled-looking late husband stares Ziad down everytime the lawyer enters the widow’s home. Close-ups of photos in Ziad’s office of his wife and daughter from Moscow emphasize where the man’s loyalty should lie. Finally, Salma’s act of burning a newspaper clipping of Ziad’s engagement to another woman is significant. The older woman decides to remain a respected widow rather than engage in a torrid affair with a fickle attorney.

            Though Jaffa also makes use of costumes and props to comment on the nature of a relationship, this film especially takes advantage of editing and cinematography to showcase the obstacles the potential partners face. Whereas Salma and Ziad often appear in the same shots in Lemon Tree, Mali and Toufik are usually positioned in separate shots. Shot/reverse/shot patterns suggest a great divide exists between them. The on-going conflict between Jews and Arabs is so severe that Mali and Toufik have more difficulty escaping into their own universe than Salma and Ziad do in Lemon Tree. Extreme close-ups on the two farewell letters that Mali writes during the film emphasize the controversial nature of the young lovers’ relationship. In order to keep her family, Mali must shatter her relationship with Toufik. In order to be with Toufik, Mali must give up her family. The extreme close-up on the approval letter for Mali’s abortion puts into perspective the intense decisions the young woman must make as she chooses between her soul mate and her parents.  

            Costumes and props also suggest the divisive nature of Mali’s relationship. The two duffel bags initially serve as a symbol of hope for the couple. Mali’s face is glowing as she packs her bag; she smiles as she clutches a white dress that she’ll presumably wear on her wedding day. However, the fact that the only place to hide the packed duffel bags is under the filthy mattress in a side room of the father’s car shop hints that Mali’s elopement won’t be easy or glamorous. Not surprisingly, the duffel bags eventually symbolize lost opportunities. When Mali must hide the evidence that she and Toufik tried to run away, the young woman has no other option but to chuck the bags into a dumpster.

           However, when Toufik contacts Mali again after his prison stint, it becomes clear that the now-thirty year-old woman misses her childhood love. Camerawork reveals Mali’s desire to see Toufik again. The woman is positioned in a medium shot with her back to the camera as she speaks to Toufik on the phone while they plan a meeting place. That Mali is turned away from both her parents and viewers suggests that the single mom is ready to act on her own impulses and finally stand up to her parents.

Framing Disconnection: Half Nelson (Mike)

There’s little breathing room in Ryan Fleck’s Half Nelson.  Daniel Dunne, a drug addicted inner city history teacher, is a character caught in a position he’s unable to break free from (as the title suggests).  The source of this, or what it is specifically, is never entirely clear; does it refer to his inability to change and the sense of stasis his character is perpetually stuck in, his growing disillusionment despite his genuine optimism and passion for teaching, or to how his character seems caught between worlds politically, socially, and economically?  Is it the cause or the result of his addiction?  The film’s visuals help to establish this, primarily framing the figures individually and in close-ups.  It is in this way that Fleck is able to capture his character’s sense of confinement, the feeling that he’s cramped or trapped both internally and within the tight confines of the frame.  Fleck thus establishes boundaries for Dan through the film’s cinematography that only drugs seem able to alleviate.  The strong use of close-ups and individual framing not only serves to establish Dan’s feelings of confinement and restriction, but illustrates the way he (and thus the addict in general) feels cut off, separated from those around him.  It is this feeling, this sense of disconnection that Dan’s character not only seems to struggle most with in the film, but that is ultimately changed through the unlikely bond he forms with one of his students.

           "A Half-Nelson.  One of Its Many Applications", Creative Commons[1]

Unlike other film’s on the subject (such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Blow), Half Nelson’s focus isn’t so much on the exoticism or romanticism of drugs and the addict, the world that surrounds drugs and drug dealing, or the drug experience itself, but instead on how drugs shape Dan’s social interactions and the way he relates (or doesn’t relate) to those around him.  The different drugs he uses throughout the film seem to allow him to momentarily step outside that sense of confinement and suffocation, those isolating boundaries that disconnect him from other people.  Six minutes into the film, Fleck shows us as Dan drops a straw (for snorting cocaine) onto his coffee table, cutting away before we see the drugs or him using.  In the scene that follows, Dan goes to a bar where he meets two women.  They enter the cramped frame with him as they dance.  By keeping the camera close to the characters, focusing on the movement of their bodies, Fleck establishes a certain connection between the three.  He then cuts from the dance floor to the bathroom, as one woman passes cocaine to the other.  They discuss their love for Oprah while Dan, his high presumably subsided, tries to explain how he “fucks things up just to fuck them up.”  Despite the small space of the bathroom and how the three figures are positioned in close proximity to each other, Fleck portrays their conversation almost entirely through close-ups.  The connection between them has been broken.  Unlike before where all three were squeezed into one frame here they are separate, with Dan cutoff from the other two.  Their dialogue reflects this growing sense of disconnection as well.  Similar to his other social interactions in the film (such as with his family, with the other teachers, and with the other girl he meets in the same bar later on) there is a breakdown in communication; the two talk over Dan, they don’t respond to what he’s saying, and they finish his sentences incorrectly.

As the conversation progressively falls apart, Dan leans over and kisses them.  As he does so, the camera follows him, briefly capturing each girl’s face in the frame before settling on Dan again in his original position.  He reaches out here, trying to make a connection, and yet, like his other attempts in the film, it ultimately fails.  His character thus expresses a desire to connect with other people yet the inability to do so sober.  As Dan is speaking the two girls interrupt him, deciding to return to the dance floor.  We don’t see them as they say this; instead, the camera stays focused on Dan as he finishes his cigarette and watches them leave.  For much of the film, the camera will stay on Dan as the action takes place around him, the focus being not so much on what physically happens in the scene, but instead on how he responds to the action and relates to the people he encounters.  We sit and watch as Dan’s figure, alone and smoking what’s left of his cigarette, recognizes the moment as another connection lost.

     Half Nelson Poster, Creative Commons[2]

Drey, a 13-year-old black student in Dan’s class, is the only figure in the film he establishes any sort of connection with; what this connection and what the nature of their relationship are the two themselves have trouble defining.  It is Drey’s character though who seems able to break these boundaries of his character  and in the film’s cinematography.  She is the only figure consistently shot in the frame with Dan and in a wide-angle.  The wide-angle and long shots in the film serve to establish the connection between the two, forcing us to look at them in relation to each other, to think of them as a pair. 

When Dan smokes inside a bathroom stall of the girl’s locker room the camera stays tight on his face (as it does for much of the film), shifting in and out of focus.  The tension, power, and significance of this moment though is not in showing Dan as he gets high (one of the few times we see him in the process) but instead in what follows.  When Drey discovers him inside the stall, crack pipe and lighter still in hand, a certain bond is formed between the two that will act as the driving force behind the film.  The final shot of the scene is a wide-angle (the first wide-angle of the two characters in the film); although the camera has moved back here, Fleck continues to limit his characters’ space, making them appear, similar to the close-ups, trapped inside the frame.  He uses the walls and doorway of the bathroom to frame the two, cutting off two-thirds of the screen.  The bathroom stalls then take up two-thirds of the open doorway, thus cramping their figures into an even smaller area in which they can interact.  The power of the shot, though, lies in what happens in this small space.  Drey’s figure kneels over Dan as he lies on the bathroom floor, his hand holding hers as she presses a wet paper towel to his forehead.  Although the close-up is generally used for the more intimate moments in a film or as a way to convey something emotional to the viewer, Fleck here uses the wide-angle.  It’s after this experience that the camera leaves Dan and shifts to Drey and Drey’s story; their stories intertwining as she becomes the second half of the narrative.  For the remainder of the film, the two characters will be thought of only in relation to each other; even when they aren’t pictured together, or when Fleck crosscuts between them, they still seem present in their absence.  As both characters learn throughout the film, this bond, this connection is complex; it challenges and blurs their roles as student and teacher, child and adult. Drey’s role in the film is never as a tool for Dan to overcome his addiction (that isn’t Fleck’s intention), but instead as a figure that Dan connects with, that pushes him to recognize and understand the direct and indirect effects of his addiction.  Like Dan and Drey, we too are never entirely sure of how to define their relationship, and Fleck doesn’t seem to want us to.  Instead, what’s important to see is how this experience breaks the isolating boundaries of the close-up, forming a bond that brings them together.  Although Dan still appears confined within the screen, trapped in his half nelson, he is no longer alone; Drey has joined him inside the frame. 

 

Photo Credits:

1. Creative Commons, <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Burns_Half-nelson.jpg>

2. Creative Commons, "P373" (Flickr) <flickr.com/photos/ 49503116561@N01/251634787>

 

Currently Watching: Alice (Svankmajer, 1988), Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-wai, 1995), Gonzo (Gibney, 2008), Edvard Munch (Watkins, 1974), Scratch (Pray, 2001), PCU (Bochner, 1994), Vive le Tour (Malle, 1962), Next Friday (Carr, 2000), Frenzy (Hitchcock, 1972), The Secret of the Kells (Moore and Twomey, 2009)

Stereotypical but not typical (Inhye)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Image Credits

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

Works Cited

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

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

The Function of Dysfunction (Clare)

Perfect is boring. Even though this existence is something we seem to strive for as a society, this unreachable ideal really isn’t that interesting. Nobody wants to read a book, hear about, or see a movie about anyone or anything being perfect.  Perfection doesn’t breed conflict and that’s why we’re drawn towards things with discord, with problems, with issues.  That’s why the dysfunctional family has been a trope found in film:  it’s the perfect situation for conflict, and lots of it. There are the serious films dealing with family dysfunction, but a more unique breed is the comedic dysfunctional family. Two modern examples are The Royal Tenenbaums and Little Miss Sunshine, films that make us laugh at things that aren’t supposed to be funny. Though they’re both from the same family (forgive the pun), these two films address dysfunction in different ways, yet still make us laugh.

 

Family isn't a word...it's a sentence.¹

Nothing screams dysfunction more than the Tenenbaum family:  the interactions between Chas, Richie, Margot, Etheline, Royal, and the other cast of characters that make up their extended dysfunctional family can hardly be called average. We’re first introduced to the Tenenbaums as Royal is telling the children (Chas, Riche, Margot) that their mother (Etheline) is kicking him out and keeping the kids and the house. Already a broken family, each child is introduced as the prodigy they are:  Chas the businessman, Margo the playwright, Richie the tennis pro. Even though they’re a fragmented family this is the peak of the family’s success, and as the narrator says, “Virtually all brilliance of the young Tenenbaums had been erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster.” Jumping ahead those two decades the Tenenbaum kids have grown up, but have only gone downhill in the years. And when Henry Sherman (friend and business manager) proposes to Eltheline, Royal isn’t too pleased she’s planning on getting married to someone else. So Royal takes matters into his own hands, and of course doesn’t handle things in a very deft manner. When he ambushes Etheline on the street to ask to spend more time with her and the kids she of course refuses, and instead of taking no for an answer he tells her he has cancer, that he’ll be dead in six weeks. Royal’s “illness” brings the family back together, and reunited under the same roof for the first time in seventeen years. The Tenenbaums’ dysfunction is only amplified as the film continues.

One of the most apparent ways the Tenenbaums are dysfunctional is their interactions together. Speaking on the collective whole, the characters in The Royal Tenenbaums have a skewed sense of right and wrong, and this results in inappropriate behavior-a lot of it. There’s the time Chas asks Richie inappropriate questions about his suicide attempt the first time he sees him after the incident, or how Margot’s cheating on her husband with childhood friend Eli, or any of Eli’s drug-induced actions (especially crashing into the house). Royal is by far the biggest culprit of them all:  from lying about his “illness,” his condemning Margot’s first play on her 11^th birthday, picking up half the flowers he just put on his mother’s grave to Chas so he can put them on his wife’s grave.  The root of the dysfunction comes not from the Tenenbaums behaving badly, but their honest belief that their actions are morally right.

The happy family. ²

Beyond just their actions amongst each other, the clearest way the Tenenbaums’ dysfunction shines through is in their dialogue.  Much like their physical actions, their communication is wrought with inappropriate moments.  Provocative, revealing statements and moments are often followed by lines that have nothing to do with the problem at hand, or speak to such an insignificant part they’re almost non sequiturs.  When Eli and Margot break off their “relationship,” at one point Eli says to Margot “You’re in love with Richie, which is sick and gross.” After a pause, all Margot answers with is, “Do you send my mother your clippings and your grades from college?” When Richie and Margot’s husband, Raleigh St. Clair, go to a private investigator to see if Margot’s having an affair, Margot’s secret past is revealed in a fast paced montage of her life. After discovering his wife smokes and the many, many, many people she has slept with, all Raleigh can say is, “she smokes?” These seemingly off base responses demonstrate how the Tenenbaums are unable to deal with confrontation, further heightening their dysfunction.

"Wait...so most families don't wear matching tracksuits?"³

Overall, the Tenenbaums aren’t an exemplary family: they lie, have affairs, keep secrets, abuse drugs, divorce, and generally behave badly. But despite all this, the reason we can laugh with and at the Tenenbaums is their world isn’t really the one we inhabit. Yes, they’re in New York. Yes, those are streets we could drive down. Yes, we too could own Chas and Co.’s red Adidas tracksuits or Etheline’s Hermés handbag. But the Tenenbaums’ reality is most definitely a surreal one. Their personal successes of epic proportions are improbable, even if they all are the prodigies they are presented as. Their social interactions cross the realm of probability:  yes, a coked out writer could drive his sporty convertible into a brownstone, but its unlikliness coupled with everyone else’s responses crosses the line into unrealistic. Even their home is a funhouse of extremely affluent proportions. Of course, their world is meant to exist in this realm of hyper reality. The Royal Tenenbaums is told as a story, complete with narration (Alec Baldwin, what a voice), chapters, the classic opening of a book (guess the title) as the first shot of the film. We’re meant to view this as a story, as a fable, as fiction.  By lifting our expectations of realism also lifts the societal expectations of appropriate behavior on both the character’s and our behalf. So it’s okay to laugh at the Tenenbaums, because we all know this really isn’t happening.

"Everyone just pretend to be normal." ⁴

Meet the ­­­Hoovers.  There’s Sheryl, mother and head wrangler of the ­­­Hoover clan.  There’s Richard, father and motivational speaker determined that his “Nine Step Program” is revolutionary, something that will raise his family out of the economic realm they’re in. And there’s Dwayne, the teen so dedicated to getting into flight school and Friedrich Nietzsche he doesn’t speak. At all. There’s Frank too, the second highest regarded Proust scholar in the world and the newest addition to the Hoover’s. He’s staying with his sister Sheryl fresh from the hospital after a suicide attempt. Oh, and he’s gay too. Grandpa, Richard’s father, lives with them as well and besides being a heroin addict, he's a very, very perverted old man as grandfathers are often portrayed, right?   And of course there’s seven-year old Olive, youngest daughter and the adorably bespeckled second runner up to in the regional Little Miss Sunshine pageant.  But, when the winner of the regional has to forfeit her crown (something about diet pills), Olive takes the title and with it the chance to compete at the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in sunny California. So the gang all piles in the yellow Volkswagen bus for a southwestern adventure, and with all that dysfunction in one car, comedy ensues.

For the Hoovers their dysfunction lies within each character’s individual personalities. From the above synopsis above it’s easy to say no one character is even remotely like another, and we see a glimpse of how they all function in the early scenes of the movie. Around the dinner table, Dwayne sits mutely as Grandpa loudly curses the entrée. Sheryl bickers with Richard as he goes off on a rant about the Nine-Step-Program, and Olive keeps asking Frank why his wrists are all bandaged up. It’s clear there’s a level of tension between these people, a manifestation of their inability to interact with each other. Their differences and inability to accept these differences creates an incohesive family, a cornerstone of the dysfunctional family.  But Little Miss Sunshine amps up the Hoover’s dysfunction to a whole new level by sticking all six of them in the Volkswagen for an extended period of time. The proximity and length of their journey to California from New Mexico exponentially heightens their incapacity to relate and function together. Each person’s personality and characteristics becomes even more pronounced and apparent, conflicting and contrasting even more so with the others in the confines of the car. Grandpa’s inappropriate statements move to a sexual level when he advises Dwayne to “f*** a lot of women. Not just one woman. A lot of women.” Richard rants for an even more expended period about the “Nine Step Program” to his captive audience, prompting Frank to respond with the “refuge of losers,” aka sarcasm. And when Richard’s program doesn’t sell like it’s supposed to, he and Sheryl get into a full-blown screaming fight.  The Petri dish that is the yellow van intensifies the Hoover’s dysfunction, making their different personalities clash on entirely new levels.

The epitome of a happy family. ⁵

The Hoovers are no Tenenbaums. Their world is painstakingly realistic:  there’s no denying the setting of Little Miss Sunshine functions in our own world. So how come we can still laugh in the end? Little Miss Sunshine relies on situational, physical comedy much more than The Royal Tenenbaums, meaning many of our laughs come from the visual:  watching the Hoovers frantically drive back to the rest stop after they realize they’ve left Olive there, or seeing the policeman go to the back of the bus and uncover porn magazines rather than Grandpa’s dead body. While these laughs aren’t directly dysfunctional, it’s the Hoover’s dysfunction that creates these humorous situations. That’s not to say there aren’t moments that are funny because of their maladjusted nature. Objectively speaking, is sneaking Grandpa’s body out the hospital window and into the back of the car funny? Of course not:  it’s horribly morbid and a little disgusting. But the physical comedy and amplification of hyperrealism from the Hoover’s dysfunction allows some scenes, like this one, to teeter the line of believability, and their comedic aspects keep us laughing and buying the storyline. The root of Little Miss Sunshine’s comedy is in their dysfunction, but instead of us laughing at them, we laugh at the situations and reactions their maladjustment illicits.

Both the Tenenbaums and the Hovers are unquestionably dysfunctional, yet their issues and problems are vastly different so it seems they have little in common. The Tenenbaums are maladjusted in a moral sense, which causes them to act and interact in the ways they do.  The Hoover’s dysfunction comes from personality traits and their inability to connect because of their differences. Dysfunction is no laughing matter, yet both films find humor in this sadness through suspending reality, or using dysfunction as a device to create humorous situations. As Tolstoy said “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and that’s definitely the case with the Tenenbaums and the Hoovers.

 

Photo Credits:

 1. Photo from Vicky (Picasa)

2. Photo from OffOffOff

3. Photo from Photobucket

4. Photo from Beard Papa (Flickr)

5. Photo from Screenwriter's Corner

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. 

The Tempest Confined: Seasons of Change in "Amarcord" (Kelsey)

Puffballs float into a tiny Italian town on a gust of wind, and they usher in spring: so begins Federico Fellini's 1973 film, Amarcord.  We are informed of this seasonal change by screaming children, whose hands are stretched towards the sky, hoping to catch spring as it falls.  We are also told by random passersby, who stop to stare as the puffballs drift to the ground.  And we are told once again by a senile old narrator, who stumbles over words he must have been saying for years, as though the prognosticating puffballs were floating down not from the sky, but from a memory half-forgotten.  The entire film, in fact, has the feel of half-remembered, half-improvised nostalgia: a year long memory of Fellini's, embroidered with his own personal brand of ridiculous.

And the film is quite often ridiculous.  From the uncle who climbs a tree and refuses to come down, to the overly sexualized daydreams of the young boys of the town, the film deals with the ordinary and makes it loud and colorful and strange.  There is Gradisca, who seemingly owns one outfit (red, of course). She features prominently in the fantasies of men and boys alike, and features even more prominently in the town's urban legends.  And yet, despite her role as town temptress, she is content to sit in an empty theater and watch Gary Cooper movies, hoping against hope that she could find a real life facsimile for her film idol.  And then there is Titta, the young boy around whom this episodic film revolves.  He argues with his father, is doted on by his mother, and lifts up the buxom cigarette girl in a display of teenage masculinity.  Titta is an obvious Fellini stand in, a character whose thought on woman and religion and the beauty of the world are only beginning to coalesce.  And these things, the women and the world, are always most beautiful in the spring, when the puffballs all.

But spring, that season of blue skies, hellos, and goodbyes, is not the only important season in the film.  There is also fall, the time when the fog comes.  It's impenetrable, and an old man stands in its midst and asks it: "Where am I?  I don't seem to be anywhere.  If death is like this, I don't think much of it."  And here, for an instant, Amarcord becomes a bit tragic.  But instead of decrying the tempest in his mind, the old man merely responds with an emphatic "Up yours!"  And with that, we are returned to Amarcord, where moments of true emotion are always undercut by the carnival of life.  But the man lost in the fog finds his home, as he was standing in front of it the entire time.  And then the camera follows the leaves blowing through the air, and finds a group of people waltzing without partners to music only they can hear, asking the question "Where are you my love?" to no one in particular. 

After fall comes winter, a time where peacocks perch on great mounds of snow and unveil their feathers.  But in the midst of this image of beauty is sadness, as Titta's mother dies shortly after.  Her funeral dirge acts as the transition between piles of snow to puffballs.  And when spring has returned, we follow the puffballs as they waft towards the wedding of the lovely Gradisca, who may have finally found her Gary Cooper.  Sadly, however, it is not that simple.  Gradisca's new husband is a fascist politician, the type of person who could irrevocably change the town's way of life.  And the threat of fascism is presented as almost a joke in the film.  Dictators take the form of overgrown cardboard clowns in this particular circus, but beneath the facade is real danger.  And the aftereffects of Italian fascism were portrayed through neorealism, a filmic movement that Fellini was a part of at the beginning of his career.  But with Amarcord, he goes back to the beginning; the world that came before the Italian people fell into poverty and tragedy.  Because before that tragedy, the only things falling were puffballs. 

"People Only Die of Love in the Cinema": Searching for the Normal in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Kelsey)

The very first words spoken in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg are "Is it finished?"  This question, a less than auspicious start to a film, is posed by a man to his mechanic.  The mechanic, a young man in a bright blue jumpsuit, replies: "The engine still knocks when it's cold, but that's normal."  So begins Jacques Demy's 1964 film; with this relatively normal, almost colorless exchange between the two men.  Of course, these seemingly mundane lines are sung, because every word of the film is sung.  And the seemingly mundane mechanic shop is infused with every color imaginable, because Jacques Demy turns car repair into a feat requiring Technicolor.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, however, does not deal with these Technicolor trifles with the over the top pageantry of an American musical.  There is no musical number about how much they "gotta dance!" here, and indeed, there is no dancing.  The camera is the thing that follows choreographed patterns, as the film has numerous long takes that move from one character to another without missing a beat.  In fact, the entire film is choreographed, and it is only the characters that remain almost motionless, emotionally stagnant amidst Demy's always mobile, always surprising visual splendor.  The story at the center of the film is as seemingly banal as the dialogue: a girl loves a boy, the boy goes away to war, the girl gets pregnant (of course), and the boy returns home to find that the girl isn't waiting for him.  So goes this bittersweet tale of love and loss.  But the film does not just rise above its uninspired plot: it uses its uninspired plot to explore these uninspired people who are its center.  And while their real life, provincial French counterparts may not be surrounded by pink patterned wall paper that perfectly matches their pink cardigans, their pink headbands, and their pink umbrellas, there is a fundamental melancholy to the film that belies its candy coated exterior.  And those bright colors only serve to heighten the intensity of the emotions: the two main characters, Genevieve and Guy, "je t'aime," "je t'aime," "je t'aime," so often that by any right the words ought to lose all meaning.  And yet, when set to Michel Legrand's lovely score and surrounded by the always colorful set design, their repeated proclamations reach a sort of emotional fever pitch.  So when Genevieve falls to the ground; in a faint at the merest suggestion that Guy has forgotten her, it's almost believable.  Because in this world, where a pretty, pink clad Catherine Deneuve almost fades into the pretty pink background, the visuals and the sound don't just heighten the emotions, they give them an air of verisimilitude that they would otherwise be lacking.

The last scene of the film is set in December, and it is no longer raining but snowing: there's no need for umbrellas in Cherbourg when it's December.  And it is at a gas station that Genevieve and Guy have their last meeting: her in a fur coat and mourning, him in another blue jumpsuit.  The first thing she says to him, after all of their years apart, is that it's cold.  He tells her to come into the office.  There are no declarations of love, only a sad lingering sense of what might have been.  When asked what type of gasoline she wanted to fill her car with, normal or super, Genevieve chooses super instead of normal, just like she chose fur coats over car mechanics once, a long time ago.  So it's cold, and things are fine.  They're normal, perhaps.  And yes, they are finished.  But as she drives away with her child, and his wife returns with his, we realize that maybe, even outside this world of fuchsia wall paper and pseudo operettas, normal might be alright.   

 

Purposefully 'Lost': A study in the introduction and conclusion of "Lost in Translation" (Paul)

     Films have an advantage over stories told in literature, music or theater because the first frame visually sets up the narrative for the audience. There have been iconic beginnings throughout the history of film; who can forget the jarring introduction to "Citizen Kane"- a shot of Kane's castle "Xanadu" in the dark, the camera lingering on a sign saying "No trespassing" and the camera keeps moving until the audience sees a silhouette of a dying man on a bed. A good introduction to any film sets up the initial dramatic situation in a number of minutes, drawing us into the characters we are to follow.
    Likewise, a good ending of the film provides a true conclusion to the film but also has the purpose of leaving the audience with recognition of change or to tie up the story and the characters with an overarching theme. For example, "The Godfather" has one of the most iconic, if not the most iconic movie ending of all time. After lying to Kay, Michael remains in his father's den. Kay looks at Michael at the camera assumes Kate's point of view. Someone closes the door and the last thing Kay, and the audience sees is a man kissing Michael's hand calling him "Don Corlelone" solidifying his role as the head of the crime gang and also leaving more innocent life, symbolized by Kay, shut out. The ending of "The Godfather", is perfect because it gives an ending to the plot but also provides a visual metaphor for Michael's transformation.
    In the film "Lost in Translation", two Americans played by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are in Tokyo: Murray plays an aging actor with a million dollar contract to sponsor a Japanese whiskey while Johansson portrays a young woman fresh out from college (Yale, to be exact) without a purpose yet and stuck in a frustratingly dysfunctional marriage. Both of them meet in a bar in Tokyo and embark on a short but profound friendship which profoundly affects them in their own ways.
    The narrative is divided evenly between Murray's character, Bob, and Johansson's character, Charlotte and, as such, the each character receives their own introduction and result in the audience empathizing with them.
    "Lost In Translation" opens with a soft focus of Scarlett Johansson's presumably, sleeping figure. The shot lasts for about a minute and the frame capture's Johannson's mid section all the way to about her knees with her buttocks in the center of the frame.  The shot is supposed to be voyeuristic-the audience only sees the lower half of Johansson's character. Even more so, a thin piece of tight pink cloth barely covers Johansson's rear end, no doubt drawing the audience to full attention. But, this shot is not meant to be sexual, in fact far from it. Coppola, wisely chooses to put a provocative shot- a lying picture of a semi-nude female, in a total non-sexual context. Charlotte is sleeping or resting and the audience has no choice but to be immediately drawn to this character and share one of her most personal moments with her. Its hard to sexualize the seen- the character is seen wearing comfy clothes, her back is to the audience, and she isn't doing anything arousing-she's in fact sleeping. This vulnerability Charlotte shows makes it hard to  sexualize her character, and instead lets the audience bond with her as it is the natural instinct to care for a delicate girl. This short, also, perhaps, foreshadows the later scene where Murray's character and Johansson's character lie in bed together, and defy every conventional romantic cliche by not becoming physical with one another and simply just talk. The female figure, the bed, the underwear, usually connotations for sex, are flipped upon its head here and the audience, as Coppola intended, is simply left with a connection to a girl. In this way, Coppola opens up her movie on her terms. She makes it clear that "Lost in Translation" is not going to be a conventional tale about romance, rather, its going to be a study on two people and their relationship with one another.
    As the movie focuses, on two people, Coppola also gives Murray's character, Bob, his own introduction. Unlike Charlotte's introduction, Bob introduction appeals more to the average moviegoer and Coppola uses Bob as a lens in which the audience sees his surroundings and empathize with his situation. Before the audience even gets a glimpse of Bob, sounds of an airplane landing sounds softly and female Japanese announcer saying "Welcome to Tokyo" . This sets up Bob's, and the audience's, expectations. The camera then cuts to a shot of Bob sleeping against a taxi window with the glow of the neon lights blurred outside the window with the focus on him. Again, the shot is incredibly voyeuristic because it captures such a vulnerable moment of Bob's life. The camera then cuts to a wide shot of Tokyo as seen from the taxi's perspective and its safe to say that these sights are unlike anything (except, maybe, New York) that can be seen in modern day America. The camera then flips back and forth between being inside the taxi with the focus on Bob and the exterior shots of the Tokyo nightlife from Bob's point of view. A small comedic moment happens when Bob sees his face on a on a poster advertising a whiskey with the text in Japanese and he wipes his own eyes in disbelief. Bob's entrance, unlike Charlotte's, acts as a window for the audience into Japan establishing, more clearly, the dramatic conflict, or at least the setting of the film. Bob's entrance also allows the audience to sympathize more clearly with him that Charlotte, because the audience sees the story unfolding along with Bob making.
    The introductions to both characters portray very different but equally profound thematic insights into the film. Charlotte's introduction shows an attraction without sexual objectification while Bob's introduction allows the audience to empathize with him while exploring the setting of the film.
    The ending of "Lost in Translation" is utterly sublime. It wraps up most thematic concepts and elevates Bob's and Charlotte's relationship into something real and a true sense of loss and change is felt at the end.   "Lost in Translation" introduces many thematic concepts to the audience in a (relatively) short, amount of time: existentialism, aging, love, marriage, philosophy, friendship, xenophobia to name a few. However, the basis of the entire relies on Charlotte's and Bob's relationship and their own personal journey of self actualization while in Japan.
    Coppolla, by this point, has enough faith that the audience cares about these two characters which is why she purposely gives a false ending where the pair quickly say goodbye amidst a crowd of strangers. Like most goodbyes, theirs is rushed, awkward but ultimately sincere and one can almost feel Bob's heart drop to the floor as he watches Charlotte descend in an elevator.
    Luckily, for him ,and the viewer, the show does go on and Bob catches a glimpse of Charlotte walking in a busy street of Japanese people. Her bright red hair stands out from the crowd of black haired Japanese. Bob's calls out Charlotte and this time, her face envelopes the entire screen letting the audience let out a collective sigh of relief. The camera then cuts to a shot of both of them holding each other in the middle the street, lost in the sea of the others. And the camera cuts in between close ups of each of their faces. Then, Bob whispers something to Charlotte, and the dialogue is muted ever so subtly so that the audience cannot hear what he is saying. The camera cuts to a shot o them further out locked in an embrace cuts again where they let go of each other and Bob walks back to his car and drives away, just like he came in.
    The ending of "Lost in Translation" is definitely one of most moving cinematic conclusions of all time. Coppola gives just enough to the audience so that the important themes are reinforced- Bob and Charlotte's relationship, being lost in Tokyo etc but, true to form, leaves out just enough so that the audience believes that the characters are real people and whatever they encountered in Tokyo was their own. It doesn't matter what Bob says to Charlotte at the end of movie. The important thing is that he said it and no one in the world except for Charlotte could hear it. The fact that Copolla muted that line of dialogue completely nullifies the voyeuristic tendencies she introduced in the previous portions of the movie. As the audience, no matter how much we intrude in Bob and Charlotte's life, there are still aspects of them that we don't know and perhaps, we don't need to know in order to fully appreciate their character arch at the end of film. Visually, the ending of the film reinforces the two main characters. The shot of Bob and Charlotte embracing in the middle of the Tokyo street visually summarizes the entire movie. Both characters are in the center of the frame, communicating without words and enjoying each other's company purposefully ignoring the rest of the world passing  them by. What they have is ultimate intimacy and affection for another-it's theirs and as the audience, we are just there for the ride.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Kelsey)

The pivotal scene of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul occurs with the two main characters seated outside, their figures almost lost amidst a sea of bright yellow patio chairs.  Their hands are intertwined, and tears run down the woman's face as she says to the man: "Sometimes I wish I were all alone with you in the world, with nobody around us."  And they are almost alone, isolated by the yellow chairs, but even here they cannot escape the cruel gaze of onlookers, who stare at them contemptuously from across the courtyard.  But despite this onslaught of societal disapproval, they declare their love for each other, and the scene ends with the woman deciding that they need to leave for awhile.  She promises him that when they return, it will be better.  That perhaps people will be nice to them. 

The woman is Emmi, a middle aged German who cleans floors for a living.  The man is her husband, a Moroccan immigrant who works as a mechanic.  He is called Ali, not because it is his name, but because in Germany, all Arabs are called Ali.  They are also called much worse things.  So when Emmi invites Ali home one night after dancing with him at a bar, and they develop an affection for each other that leads to marriage, their world reacts with almost universal scorn.  They try to stay afloat amidst this tide of disapproval, but their love does not go unchallenged.  Fassbinder creates a minimalist microcosm of racial intolerance and societal injustice by mapping it onto fairly standard melodramatic tropes.  The plot itself is taken from the Douglas Sirk film All that Heaven Allows, wherein a widowed Jane Wyman falls in love with a much younger Rock Hudson, only to meet with the disapproval of her friends and family.  Sirk's film is melodrama at its finest, where pretty exteriors and calculated mise en scene mask the deep cut of societal scorn.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul has calculated mise en scene as well: Fassbinder's characters are perfectly groomed, as Emmi wears heels and patterned dresses to clean floors and Ali wears sharp grey suits to go to seedy bars.  Their world is insular, with only a handful of tertiary characters that, despite appearing regularly, seem to blend into a single person with a single expression.  And these bit players are constantly separated from Emmi and Ali: by staircases, by window grates, by an opened door.  This visual scheme serves to isolate the central couple, but it also acts as an indictment of the herd mentality that leads to blatant and unchecked racism.

The title comes from Ali's broken German.  When Emmi expresses her mixed emotions at the very beginning of their relationship, he tells her that "fear eat the soul."  Ali's linguistic difficulties preclude him from making any melodramatic speeches: he expresses how much he loves Emmi with the span of his arms, and his ability to flatter her never moves beyond such trite adjectives as "good," and "nice."  But his sayings have a broken, aphoristic quality that suggest a sort of innocence, and which force the viewer to remember that it is not merely Emmi that is bearing the brunt of societal disapproval.  Though she expresses her fears through tears and he expresses his with taciturn naivety, they are both affected by their situation.  But the titular fear, the gnawing, soul-crushing fear that the film is exploring is not really their fear: it is the fear that they elicit.  It is the fear that every other character in the film has when they catch a glimpse of the Emmi and Ali walking hand in hand; a fear that all too quickly turns to hate.  So while Emmi hopes to find a "little piece of heaven," the rest of the world will never quite let this happen.  Because even if society begins to accept Emmi and Ali, a piece of heaven is more than this world allows.

Annie Hall (Chris M)

I love when a film makes me think.  It’s always fun to come out of the movie theater with a slightly different world view.  Film can manipulate how we see ourselves, how we see each other, and how we see humanity.  Many films accomplish this by revealing a part of the world or society or our history in a new light.  Think Schindler’s List (Spielberg, 1993), Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962), or The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont, 1994).  Other films change the way we see ourselves and the psyche.  Films that come to mind include Memento (Nolan, 2000), A Beautiful Mind (Howard, 2001), and Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986).  Thousands of other films help open our minds to new thoughts and ideas; these are just a few.  One film that offers some insight into how the human mind perceives others of its kind comes from the wonderful perspective of Woody Allen.  Annie Hall (Allen, 1977) is not the first film that comes to mind when I make a list of the films that make me sit down and think, but maybe it should be.

Annie Hall intimately explores the little pieces of life that keep us ticking.  Woody Allen plays a neurotic, pessimistic, fast-talking comedian who meets and begins dating a clumsy but charming up-and-coming singer played by Diane Keaton.  Alvy Singer, played by Allen, is constantly talking or thinking aloud, often directly at the viewing audience, in order to share his never-ending train of nervous thought.  We often get to listen in on the thoughts of Annie Hall, played by Keaton, as well.  One particularly comedic scene occurs when Alvy first meets Annie.  As they speak awkwardly to each other, subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen, capturing exactly what’s on the mind of the two characters.  As both speak, Annie is, in her head, questioning her own intelligence and mannerisms, while Alvy is imagining what Annie looks like naked.  The actual conversation becomes irrelevant.  The scene works on a number of levels and speaks directly about human nature.  At one level we are hit with a wonderful stereotype of gender, that women lack self-confidence and that men think only of sex.  At another level, the truth inherit in the scene brings to light just how little we speak what we are thinking, and at times, we can have entirely external conversations while maintaining an inner monologue of thought.  The scene works great as a comedic tool and as a model of social interaction.

As Alvy and Annie’s relationship continues, we delve further into a study in human nature.  Motivated by Alvy, Annie decides to take a university course and begins spending time with her professor.  Despite the fact that the course was Alvy’s idea, as soon as another man is involved, he completely rejects that he had ever supported such an absurd idea.  Alvy is well aware that he suggested the course, but on some sort of biological principle, he can’t be okay with Annie spending time with another man.  It hinges back on the concept that people often think one way but act a completely different way, almost instinctually.  We see this play out again later in the film when Annie calls Alvy back to her apartment, after they’ve moved apart, because of an apparent emergency.  When Alvy gets there, Annie needs him to kill a spider.  Annie clearly wants Alvy to be back with her, at least for a night, but can not bring herself to tell him that.  The spider becomes an excuse to bring the two back together temporarily.  It isn’t in human nature to be straight forward, and this film shows that time and time again.

Annie and Alvy end the film apart from each other.  While Annie appears at the end to be in a good place, Alvy remains in his own cold world.  His fears, apprehensions, and inner monologues hold him back from truly enjoying the world.  Annie says he’s like New York City, an island unto himself.  He’s too wrapped up in thinking about everything to be a part of the world around him.  That’s the main message I get from this film, and the main thing I find myself thinking about after the film.  It makes me think about how I shouldn’t think so much.  Perfect.

Annie Hall, 1997. 93 minutes, 1.37 : 1 Aspect. Written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman.  Directed by Woody Allen.  Starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton.