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Challenging conceptions of human's relationship to nature

The two documentaries, Jane and David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, appear to have differing explicit intentions. The first is a biological documentary about Jane Goodall, the primatologist renowned for her chimpanzee research. It provides a portrait of her work in the Gombe National Park of Tanzania, and how it personally shaped her life. On the other hand, the latter is more of a nature documentary rather than a biological one; it is a plea for humans to correct the devastation we have caused on the environment. Although the extent of the damage is anchored by Attenborough’s memories of his travels, the film doesn’t seek to give us a better understanding of the historian as the prior does for Goodall. What does emerge from both films, though, is the idea that humans have strayed in thinking that we are above nature, rather than a part of it. In particular, notions of a dichotomy between human and animal, as well as of rightful human dominance, are palpably flawed. 

Jane, despite the fact that Goodall’s work was key chimpanzee research, is noticeably detached from the science of it all.  Most of the film is footage of Jane’s explorations, narrated by her present self. What is crucial is how director Brett Morgen creates parallels between the chimpanzees and Jane, highlighting their similarities and her unique, emotional approach to studying them. The film, for example, often juxtaposes the behavior of the chimps with that of Goodall. We see a young Goodall sitting in trees that the chimps occupy, washing her hair in the same river that they traverse. She tends to them like they tend to one another, and treats them like humans, naming them — David Graybeard and Flo are some examples —  rather than numbering them. 

The film also deliberately pairs the developments in Jane’s relationship to the chimps with developments in her personal life. She sets up a feeding system that allows her to observe them more closely and excitedly learn about their habits’, aggressions, and mating styles. In the scenes subsequently afterward, we then learn how she shared this admiration of the chimps with the photographer, Hugo van Lawick, her eventual husband. Close-up shots of Jane’s face — smiling, sticking her tongue out —  contrast from footage of her in the beginning, that is  impersonal. As we achieve a better understanding of the chimps, we also achieve a better understanding of her.

The parallels between Jane and the chimps are especially prominent when Flo gives birth to an infant, whom Jane names Flint. Shortly afterward, Jane has her own child, and directly emphasizes the importance of seeing the relationship between Flo and Flint for her own relationship with her son. Jane mostly guides the narration, but occasionally the direction of the interviewer helps solidify the parallels. When asked what she admires about Flo, Jane says “she was playful, but being supportive.... That was the key, and of course that’s what my mother was”. Jane has such a personal bond with the chimps and learns so much from them. The film pushes us to empathize with both Jane and the chimps, and to consider our role in the world in light of this.

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, addresses the consequences of human behavior on the environment. Attenborough’s life is used mainly to contextualise the rapidity with which humans have had a devastating impact on the environment. 

The film grounds itself in three important statistics: world population, carbon in atmosphere, and the percentage of remaining wilderness. As Attenborough runs through the past 93 years of his life, these numbers evolve and serve as evidence of the perilous state of the planet. At the beginning of the film, we learn that in 1937, the year Attenborough was born, the population was 2.3 billion, the carbon 280 parts per million, and the remaining wilderness 66%. In 2020, the word population has tripled, the carbon has doubled, and the remaining wilderness has been cut in half. This is a warning sign to the viewers. 

The film juxtaposes a past beauty and immensity of the environment with the destructive behavior of humans. Bird’s eye shots of the Borneo rainforest, for example, expose an intense lushness and vibrancy that is now threatened. As viewers, we bear witness to tall, strong trees that are cut down, pulled down to the ground; it is unnatural that humans do so. Similarly, the film presents the ocean, its wonders in the colors and diversity of its organisms, as threatened by the constraining influence of humans. 

The first part of the film is an indictment of human behavior; in the second, Attenborough offers solutions to the crisis, that include a higher standard of living to stabilize population growth, plant-based diets and no fish zones. The last shots of the film, though, are most powerful. Attenborough exits the abandoned building in Chernobyl that the film began with, and enters surroundings full of trees, where nature is regenerating because of the absence of humans. Attenborough says: “The wild has reclaimed the space,” a reassuring statement about what the future can hold.

In Jane, Goodall emphasizes the need for conservation at the very end, and its importance has become clear through seeing her own relationship with her environment. In David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, the beauty of the world is undeniable, as well as a type of human arrogance and neglect. Both compel the reexamination of our place in nature.

Trains, and Where They Take Us (Jaeyoung)

 

  [SPOILERS AHEAD]

 As someone who lives somewhat far from campus, I am no stranger to long hours on public transportation. The trip between Baltimore and Massachusetts takes ten hours by bus, which is quite tedious. But it also gives me a lot of time to reflect (and nap). And every now and again, my brain asks me this question (probably primed by the fact that I’m on a moving bus): “Where am I going in life?”

 And I would respond, “I don’t know, what does that question even mean? Next question.”

 However, in the Korean films, Train to Busan and Snowpiercer, the idea of direction is crucial. Given that these films involve a train and a destination, it is not surprising that they both approach this theme. But Train to Busan is pretty blunt with this, as we already know from the title that the protagonists are trying to reach Busan… by train. Now the question this film poses is how this journey shapes the characters: their emotional direction. And if I could be perfectly honest, I don't think that's very interesting of a question.

 To be fair, I should note that Train to Busan is a zombie film; therefore, it is somewhat confined by and borrows from other movies of that genre. The behavior of the zombies is strikingly similar to that of World War Z (fast and maniacal), and it delves into the same ethical dilemma explored by The Walking Dead (who do we let survive, and who is part of our people?). But to its credit, it does break from other zombie films in that it invokes a lot of class-conflict overtones.

 Perhaps the most pertinent example of this comes from the interactions between Seok-woo, a young hedge fund manager, and Sang-hwa, a gruff but charismatic every-man. Their first encounter isn’t pleasant; as Sang-hwa is being chased by zombies, Seok-woo initially decides to sacrifice him for the safety of everyone else. There is a shot where Seok-woo looks like a heartless corporate monster. And then he has a change of heart and lets him in, only for Sang-hwa to scold, “All of you people are the same.”

 But this is exactly the trap Train to Busan falls into: generic characterization. Seok-woo is the yuppie with the heart of gold. His daughter is the innocent “eyes” through which we see a cruel world. Sang-hwa is the masculine comic relief. The list goes on, with a Romeo and Juliet-esque young couple, an unfeeling, dogmatic middle-aged man who serves as the antagonist, and many more in this cornucopia of archetypes.

 And the development of these characters builds like this; Seok-woo, who is only slightly caring in the beginning of the movie, becomes very caring by the end. The young couple, who were flirting in the beginning, die and become zombies together. The antagonist, who is mean in the beginning, becomes even meaner by the climax. Therefore, the direction of this film follows the same predictable manner the title does (and in the way most blockbuster films do). It has a Newtonian storyline, where the force manifests as zombies while objects manifest as the characters.

 In Snowpiercer, we are also led to believe that the story will follow a unidirectional story. In this film, humanity is contained in a single train that is protecting it from an icy post-apocalyptic world. The train is divided into two main parts: the upper class and the “scum” in the tail cars. The story follows Curtis Everett, who leads the tail-car-people in a revolutionary struggle to the front engine. The plot is simple enough.

 But the plot isn’t everything; as Curtis and his crew advance, each compartment is carefully observed; from the vanity of the garden to the debauchery of the dance club, every aspect of human livelihood is carefully recorded. In addition, every loss of life is significant, as Curtis places the burden on himself. Each step becomes harder and weirder as the crew encounters a crueler and wilder world.

 It is evident, then, that director Bong Joon-ho doesn’t just settle for character development. Instead, he allows their environment to change too, creating a dynamic relationship between the train and the revolutionaries.

 And, it turns out, the Snowpiercer is not unidirectional. When Curtis finally reaches the Front Engine, Minister Wilford, the creator and caretaker of the engine, subverts both Curtis’ and audience’s expectation by ceding power to him. Curtis realizes that even if he were in power, nothing about the violent system would change; order and balance is far stronger than any human emotion. And as the perpetual motion engine continues to revolve, the film reveals that Curtis hasn’t reached the finish line. He has only made a full circle, ending up in essentially the same place.

 However, Snowpiercer presents yet another direction with Namgoong Minsu (a security expert) and his daughter, Yona are presented. Namgoong continually reminds Yona to be aware of the outside world, what lies outside the window. While everyone else is focused on what’s happening inside the train, Namgoong has the acuity to see that the world is becoming habitable. Since the train completely derails by the end, destroying the microcosm everyone has been so obsessed about, Namgoong’s prescience prevails. If anybody “wins” in this movie, it is those who (literally) think outside the box. Perhaps this could be a lesson for other filmmakers.

 Now let me ask myself the question I posed in the beginning of this entry: “Where am I going in life?”

 My current answer: “Forward, and then some.”

To Serve Man (Conor)

    The Servant (1963) is a cold, cruel film. Tony, the young aristocratic protagonist, is established as listless, confused, and prone to alcoholism. His house in the opening reflects this. It is totally bare, a fresh canvass waiting, like Tony, for someone or something to show up and provide it with some kind of direction. Tony choses to let Barret, his recently appointed manservant, model his home and by extension, his life. This threatens Tony’s girlfriend Susan, and Tony’s house becomes a battlefield for control of Tony’s life.

            No one treats Barret worse than Susan. She speaks to him brusquely, callously orders him around and enjoys mocking him and forcing him to demean himself in front of her. While this treatment is somewhat justified considering Barret’s ultimate motives, her treatment of him is still off-putting; she is needlessly cruel. Susan is a good aristocrat, she is aware of her place in society and constantly reminds the servants of theirs. We get a glimpse of the type of life she would lead with Tony during their stay at the Mountset estate. The Mountsets are parodies of the extremes of aristocratic life. They sit in stiff, unnatural positions in a house replete with extravagant and expensive decorations and talk about nothing that matters.  The sound design for their house is quite unlike any other scene in the film. The noise they make is extremely reverberant, suggesting a large and empty house that, like Xanadu in Citizen Kane (1941), sounds more like a tomb than a home.

            His life with Barret however is not seen as a useful alternative. Barret begins taking control over more and more aspects of Tony’s life, and even after Tony fires him he cannot break free from his influence. Barret ends up back in the house but the relationship between master and servant is all wrong. Barret is no longer the quiet and calculating manipulator but the bold and terrible tyrant. In an effort to retain his agency, Tony lashes out at Barret to pick up his tea dregs, but it is too little too late.  The two men play a ball game upon the stairs and Barret remarks “I’m in the inferior position, I’m playing uphill” but by the end of the sequence Barret stands victorious at the top of the stairs while Tony fetches him some brandy. The enormous and ominous shadows they cast on the wall betray the importance of this encounter, Barret has not only won the ball game but also the role of master.

            The film is obsessed with the pettier, crueler side of human nature. The mise-en-scène is covered with mirrors and the scenes themselves are constantly shot in reflection, giving the world of the film a cold, narcissistic quality. Mirrors also reverse the images they reflect, as they do in the bar scene where Barret apologizes. The scene starts in reflection and then switches to a normal point of view, deliberately switching the relative positions of Tony and Barret just as their positions as master and servant are being switched in the drama. One particularly ugly convex mirror constantly appears in the film, and the reflections inside it are twisted and pinched, suggesting that mirrors and reflections themselves have the ability to reveal the psychic state of the world. In this way the narcissism and materialism inherent to the mirrors also becomes the truth about the world.

    In The Servant, some things really are just skin deep. There is no deep revelation as to why Barret treats Tony the way that he does just like there is no deeper reason given for Susan’s treatment of Barret. The characters in the film are cold, stupid, and above all cruel. Their eventual slide into pure decadence–the movie does end in an orgy, after all–reflects only the parts of them that were already there. Tony’s boredom and laziness reduces him into a shadow of his former self while Barret’s cunning ambition turns him into a brute. Only Susan remains untouched by the corruption, but her ready acceptance of her place as an aristocrat suggests that she will end up like the Mountsets. There are no real survivors in the film and no better alternatives are given. The lethargy and apathy of the aristocratic life is taken to its extreme and it is horrifying to behold.

Help! I'm in Love with a Horrible Movie (Rachel)

Over the years, less and less people have been asking me The Question. “Rachel, what’s your favorite movie?” I’m sure it’s because word’s gotten around about how difficult The Question is for film majors to choose just one, but I guess it’s also because I stopped answering with my actual favorite film. It is true that I’ve always found answering The Question difficult, but it’s more so because my favorite film, Sunshine (2007) is not your usual answer. I get strange looks, even from my fellow film-majors, because who doesn’t answer with the expected, Citizen Kane, or War-Kong Wai’s In the Mood for Love? And absolutely no one, not even my closest friends, had seen Sunshine before I made them watch it. So even if I do answer the question truthfully, I get a second question-- Well what is it about? And quite simply, I can never do the movie justice.

I first watched Sunshine my senior year in highschool. I was in the Advanced Creative writing class and for the last unit, my teacher decided to introduce us to writing for Film. He showed us a number of greats, Fargo and No Country for Old Men, just to name a few, but the last film we watched was Sunshine. Though I don’t remember what my final script project was for the class, I remember every moment of watching that movie. It was raining outside, so the room was dark and cozy like a movie theater. Some of my classmates were doing homework, but others, like me, settled in our seats as our professor introduced the film.

“This is a movie,” He said. “Watch it.”

The film begins with a basic premise: In the year 2057, our sun is dying. The earth, due to the lack of heat, has frozen over into a second ice age, and humanity is slowly succumbing to it. A team of scientists embark on a mission, the second of its kind, to place a nuclear bomb in the center of the sun in order to jump start it. Simple right? Basic sci-fi premise, apocalypse scenario. You’ve probably heard a similar story a thousand times. The beginning of the film is likewise standard, with the crewmembers of the Icarus II, their gigantic, sun-reflecting spaceship, discussing the importance of their mission, and how they can succeed when the previous mission, Icarus I, failed. The previous mission had lost contact with earth seven years prior, and the fate of the crew is unknown-- but the sun was still dying, so Earth knew that Icarus I had failed.

Everything goes well for a time in the Icarus II. The crew have a fully functioning bio-center which produces the oxygen needed for their long journey to the sun, they have plenty of food, and for the most part, the crew gets along with one another. When they happen upon the floating corpse of the Icarus I, however, everything goes downhill, fast. I held my breath as they chose to explore the abandoned ship-- partly because of the suspense, and partly because of the immense amount of white, floating dust present on every surface. I wondered what could have caused this dust to aggregate on an empty space ship if all the crew were dead… and then the realization hit me. It was the crew.

A lot of the film is like this. It twists and winds along unknown paths, but you feel led to every development through subtle clues. It shocks you with realizations that you knew deep down, but didn’t want to admit to yourself. A big part of the film is surprisingly focused around religion-- or more specifically the question of humanity's place in the universe. The theme of dust makes this particularly evangelical, as one of the characters states, “At the end of time, a moment will come when just one man remains. Then the moment will pass. Man will be gone. There will be nothing to show that we were ever here... but stardust.” Sounds familiar, right? Along the lines of “For you are dust, And to dust you shall return,” from the Bible. Now I’m not saying that Sunshine is the most original movie, but it’s certainly effective.

One of my favorite parts of the film does appear until nearly the end. The “monster” or “alien” that infects the spaceship in fact, is never clearly seen. Though I won’t spoil exactly what this monster is, he is shown as being a liminal creature, never quite existing in the physical world, but certainly physical enough to start picking off the crew members one by one. The way the camera moves around him is both terrifying and unique, with a lens-baby like wetness that makes it feel as if you are in a nightmare, unable to open your eyes fully. Though much of the film is filled with beautiful, wide-landscaped shots of the Icarus I and space, it is these close, intimate, and disturbing close-calls with this monster that truly make the film different from any other sci-fi flick.

So why is Sunshine my favorite? Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t say it’s one of the reasons I became interested in film in the first place. In the rainy-darkness of that classroom in highschool, I watched a film that incorporated both a mind-blowing story, with incredible visuals, and a monster that you don’t even have to see to be afraid of.

After watching this film a hundred times, of course I saw it flaws-- but every film student finds flaws in film, even their favorite ones, and still loves them all the same. Though Sunshine has a 76% on rotten tomatoes, and all my film friends give me funny looks when I mention it, this movie will always have a special place in my heart. So don’t be afraid to like horrible movies. If you love it, go ahead and love it, and say proudly it’s your favorite. Because loving a horrible movie doesn’t mean you have bad taste in film, it just means you love it’s flaws just as much as you love what is good about it…and you learn from that. So love your film’s flaws. Love it’s cheesy one-liners and predictable plot, and never worry about answering The Question ever again. 

And it might just make you love film more.

The Utility of Government and Military Power: Why World War Z Isn’t Your Average Zombie Film (Yasmine)

People of a nation expect their government and other institutions of the law to honor their rights, protect them and, most importantly, to maintain a structured society. Ideally, should a catastrophic event cost the lives of citizens and threaten to crumble social order; people rely on the solidarity of their communities and expect swift and efficient intervention from government powers. Films and television shows depicting the zombie apocalypse such as Night of the Living Dead (1968), 28 Days Later (2002), and the Walking Dead (2010) challenge the notion that the government and military are capable of maintaining order and that communities are able to thrive in chaos. In fact, the zombie apocalypse symbolizes the devolution of civilization and the destruction of governmental, familial, and educational institutions, ultimately depicting a dismal future for humanity while simultaneously revealing the fragility of society. In Marc Forster’s World War Z (2013), Jerry Lane, a former employee of the UN, cooperates with the United Nations military, and the World Health Organization to investigate a possible solution to the zombie epidemic. Whereas an ineffective government and hopeless isolation are typical elements for many zombie films, World War Z illustrates the utility of government and military on a global scale in times of crisis.

             The opening titles, in which images of nature are intercut with shots of day-to-day human society, demonstrates the dichotomous nature of civilization. Shots of undulating ocean waves, clouds floating lazily in the sky, and the sun rising behind a quiet cityscape invoke a sense of tranquility. The film connects the peaceful picture of the natural world to human society with subsequent images of beautiful suburban homes and people commuting on trains, buses, and busy city streets. The juxtaposition of commuters with shots of an ant community marching in an orderly cluster implies social order within a structured, functioning society. As news and TV talk show segments flash on the screen, the sounds of various radio and TV media dialogues overlap. The trivial, less dire media information overshadows a grim message about a possible viral outbreak. In spite of the troubling information the people portrayed appear undaunted, continuing their commute even as reports of the virus become more frequent and prominently featured in the sequence—denoting a collective ignorance of impending danger. As if in response to the gravity of the message, the rhythm of intercutting increases, simulating a frenzied heartbeat, with each cut lasting no more than a second. The sudden onslaught of images represents the way in which social order can rapidly decay. Images of an aggressive ocean current, ants devouring a carcass, and wolves tearing other animals apart, supersede the serenity of nature. The transition from order and tranquility to violence and chaos represents the deterioration of social order and foreshadows the ensuing chaos of the zombie outbreak. The necessary response to the social turmoil—as suggested by the news broadcast on Jerry’s kitchen television—is martial law, which Jerry explains to his daughter is “like house rules, but for everybody.” Jerry’s “house rules” metaphor indicates his belief that government aid and military action can bring peace and order to an unstable world.

When the zombie outbreak occurs later in the film, local authorities prove to be ineffective—their movement restricted by the general chaos of cars and panicking civilians. In contrast, the UN military demonstrates its mobility by moving freely above the pandemonium in secure helicopters. The UN’s apparent mobility compels Jerry to entrust his family’s protection to the military, whose presence and authority Jerry must rely on throughout the film. In other zombie-related tales, a military helicopter extraction is nothing but a pipedream, ultimately leading to disappointment. However, for Jerry and his family the military helicopter signifies salvation, as it not only rescues them from the tumultuous infection site it brings them to a haven completely removed from the outbreak. The haven, a U.S. Navy vessel is an even more unlikely occurrence in the pessimistic zombie genre. Fully stocked with supplies, military personnel, and experts monitoring the outbreak the ship symbolizes the resilience of the government and its attempt to maintain order and control. Even as an officer reports that Washington D.C., the very center of American government, has been wiped out by the outbreak, other naval officers transport paintings and historical artifacts, symbolically preserving American culture. Jerry’s association with the UN and military affords him the mobility to investigate the apocalypse not only locally, but also internationally, making him one of the most mobile protagonists of the zombie apocalypse genre. The support of the United Nations and military combined with Jerry’s ingenuity and determination exemplify the indomitable fortitude of humanity and imply that society’s hope for deliverance is not lost.

           

 

Until the End of the World (Mina)

        Human beings can never remain indifferent in the face of death. Because we cannot be sure of the existence of afterlife, we always have this vague fear about death. This is why we expect a savior to come save us from this anxiety as we watch films like The Day the Earth Stood Still (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2008) or I Am Legend (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2007). When we see the protagonists fight against the cause of the apocalypse, and eventually save the world from collapsing, we feel peaceful as if we are also saved. However, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) and Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s The Turin Horse (2011), are different from these classic apocalyptic films. The protagonists from both films remain calm as they see their own world slowly come to an end.

       Melancholia and The Turin Horse begin with an ominous introduction, which reflects the central themes of each film. Melancholia opens with a 8-minute sequence with music from Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.” The sequence is mainly comprised of strange dream-like images. We see a bride running through a forest in her wedding dress and a large blue planet Melancholia heading directly towards the Earth. The stillness that comes from the extreme slow-motion images foreshadows an imminent death of the characters. The mournful prelude of “Tristan und Isolde” heightens this sense of crisis, yet at the same time, it also describes death from a different perspective. The music is about a secret love affair between Tristan and Isolde. Realizing that she has to marry a man she doesn’t love, Isolde chooses death over life. Similarly, Melancholia introduces Justine as an unwilling bride. It is soon revealed that the apocalypse, not the extravagant wedding, offers consolation to Justine. Justine becomes more energetic as Melancholia approaches Earth, proving that death is what ultimately offers Justine, as it did to Isolde, a cathartic emotional release.

        The opening scene of The Turin Horse shows a 5-minute long shot of a horse pulling a wagon after a minute of an impermeable black screen. Simultaneously, a voice-over narrates an event which occurred on 1889 in Turin, Italy. We are told that philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche encounters a cabman brutally whipping his motionless horse. Nietzsche stops this scene by throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. When returned to his home, Nietzsche likewise lies still for two days until he lets out his last sane words, “Mother, I am silenced.” He spends his remaining life in a state of mental derangement. The reason why Nietzsche cried, collapsed in front of the horse relates to the core message of The Turin Horse. Nietzsche probably would have witnessed deep despair in the eyes of the horse. From birth till death, horses are used for farm work and transport for human being. Thus, the horse’s refusal to follow his owner’s order extends to his refusal of such a life. From this introduction, the theme of loss of will (reflected by the horse and Nietzsche's refusal to move) is constantly conveyed through the protagonists–the horse, the stableman, and the stableman’s daughter.

        Justine and the stableman respond to the apocalypse in a similar way; they both calmly embrace the apocalypse itself. For Justine, apocalypse has already happened. The catastrophic wedding decisively validates her belief that there is nothing to leave behind. By the end of the wedding reception, she entirely withdraws from the world, from its social norms; for example, she doesn’t feel guilty as she has sex with her coworker on her wedding day. Justine remotely says, “The earth is evil. We don’t need to grieve for it. Nobody will miss it.” Moreover, most of the time, the camera is handheld, floating around the space. The camera readjusts its focus as the screen abruptly changes from a tight close-up shot to a long shot and to another. By this unstable movement of the camera, we become detached from the characters and the plot just as Justine becomes detached from Earth. Hence, we are allowed to merely observe.

        The stableman and the stableman's daughter from The Turin Horse are also isolated from the world. There are several scenes capturing the stableman absent-mindedly looking through the window. Through the window, the stableman sees dirt and leaves rustling by–the external world. But he doesn’t seem to be connected to it. The scene then transitions into a larger shot of the living room, showing where the stableman belongs and remains to stay. This withdrawal from the world is displayed more clearly through repetitive scenes of daily lives of the two.

        It is important to notice that the plot is divided into six days; according to the Genesis, the God creates the world in six days. The first day is when the God creates the world out of nothing. But The Turin Horse reverses Genesis, so that time and existence move not from nothing but toward it. Every day, the stableman wakes up, the daughter boils the potato, the two take care of the horse, have a single boiled potato for dinner, and go to sleep. The black-and-white film accentuates the monotony. As the film slowly walks us to the end, the horse gradually refuses to eat, the stableman and the daughter become more and more indifferent. On the first day, the stableman peels and shovels the potato into his mouth as if it’s an obligation. The daughter eats in a much slower pace, but also without passion. Their bluntness culminates on the sixth day, when the daughter won’t eat. The stableman tells her to eat, but even he himself lacks the will to do so. At the end, they just silently stare at their plates.

        The planet Melancholia and the Turin wind are therefore are not a fearful threat to Justine and the stableman. They do not try to overcome death, but their lack of will doesn’t mean total misery or hopelessness. They accept the apocalypse and simply live until it all comes to an end. The apocalypse portrayed in both of the films is as beautiful as it is plaintive.

Apocalypse Soon: Cuaron's Chilling 2027 in Children of Men (Ingrid)

    It is 2027. A baby has not entered the world in 18 years. For unknown reasons, the human race has become infertile. Devoid of hope, of perpetuation, of any perceivable future, many countries have collapsed. Societal institutions have been dismantled. All that is left is a wasteland—a bank in ruins, an abandoned elementary school, a bombed coffee shop, a burning, polluted countryside, trash-lined city streets. In the crisis of barren wombs, the possibility for the most basic, most comforting form of human organization, the possibility for family, has been eliminated. England stands as one of the only countries left with a relatively stable government. But even England, dealing with severe immigration problems, is plagued with violence and police brutality. A militant revolutionary group, the “Fishes,” who advocate immigrant rights, threaten to unleash an uprising. England is on the brink of anarchy.

    This is the dystopian world that director Alfonso Cuaron shapes in his 2006 film, Children of Men. Theo Faron (played by Clive Owen) is our unlikely hero. Theo, an unshaven, rumpled alcoholic who works a government desk job has a defeatist outlook on life; his philosophy on existence being, “why bother if life’s going to make its own choices?” We later learn this is the result of his son’s death and consequent separation from his wife, Julian Taylor (played by Julianne Moore). Unexpectedly, Theo is reunited with Julian, who, since their separation has become the leader of the Fishes. Julian requests his help in acquiring transit papers for a young “fugee” (illegal immigrant) girl named Kee, in exchange for money. Theo obliges but is soon sucked into the backwards politics of the Fishes. Responsibility is forced upon him, as he is the only person trusted to carry out Julian’s plan.

    Children of Men has a chilling realism. The film’s visual style is distinct; it is handheld and relies heavily on long takes. The most impressive of the single-take scenes lasts 247 seconds and is shot entirely from a swiveling camera mounted in the interior of a moving car. In the scene, a car carrying Theo, Julian, and Kee, is ambushed on a country road. A gang comes running out of the forest, clobbering the car with bludgeons. An armed motorcyclist leaps from out of the trees and begins chasing them down. A shot is fired into the car and blood spurts everywhere. All the while, we are anticipating a cut, anticipating release, but Cuaron does not give it to us. The action is real. The chase is real. The violence is unhindered and the camera rotates to capture the characters’ trepidation and desperation.

    Cuaron, the same director that brought Gravity to the big screens this year, has a knack for building alternative worlds with precise realism. 2027 is not a distant future and the reminders of this a present throughout the film. The characters dress in the same way we do and technology has not made much progress. Children of Men’s apocalyptic landscape is constructed to present a scary possibility. Our deepest fears are realized as England devolve before our eyes. We see it become a place where the playful giggles, high-pitched cries, and cheerful chatter of children are replaced with the moaning of the hungry, the wailing of the injured, and the whimpering of the afraid. Humanity is in utter shambles, in violent, emotional, and irrational confusion. The tragedy, in the form of bombs, brutality, and machine gun fire, is ubiquitous and equalizing. Everyone is subject to it; white flags and innocence lose meaning.

    But in the midst of this chaos, Theo finds stability in unwavering human bonds, in the power of trust. The meaningful relationships he once lost are made up for; he rekindles his romance with Julian temporarily and serves as a surrogate father for Kee. It is in his constant fight for survival, that Theo is jolted out of fatalism. His mission gives him purpose and courage and restores his hope for humanity. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Call Me Crazy (Natasha)

    Since I saw it last June, I have considered and reconsidered Carey Mulligan’s performance in the stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1961 film Through a Glass Darkly (which, I admit, I still have not seen).  I think about this performance on a weekly basis, at least.  She portrayed a woman railing unsuccessfully against family disconnect and symptoms of schizophrenia and manic depression.  She did it so beautifully and completely that I wonder why so many cinematic representations of crumbling sanity leave so much insight and nuance to be desired.  But some, of course, do not.  While I could attribute Mulligan’s superior performance to her ingenuity or to the particular intimacy and immediacy afforded by the stage, having her tear-stained face eight feet in front of mine enhanced the portrayal only so much.  The real force of her performance lay in the dichotomy of terror and secrecy: alone onstage, Mulligan’s Karin revealed sheer horror at the prospect of succumbing to insanity; surrounded by her husband, brother and father, she desperately tried to foster a sense of lighthearted family fun while trying to hide the mounting mental illness that all three men already suspected she had.  She was dealing with one of the most terrifying fates I can imagine, and she was dealing with it in secret while trying to maintain her family.  Along with the prowess of the performance, this particular pickle calls to mind two of my favorite psychologically tortured heroes in film: the somber, suffering Curtis in Take Shelter and the eponymous misfit martyr in Donnie Darko.

    In the best movie of last year, Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter, Michael Shannon proved his inimitable pathos.  (It is such an unbelievable, potent, poignant film and was so inexcusably overlooked by critics and moviegoers alike that I have trouble approaching it objectively, or at least analytically, while maintaining my self-appointed post as the film’s liaison to the world.)  Shannon’s Curtis, a quiet blue-collar man, suffers from vivid nightmares of natural disasters and manmade violence that signal the end of the world.  He becomes obsessed with fear, both of the potential apocalypse and of his genetic predisposition for schizophrenia; but which fear is greater?  Would he rather his visions of the violent end of the world were mad dreams, or his self-diagnosis of mental illness were false? Unwilling to rule out either theory, Curtis tries to keep his visions to himself.  But he soon sacrifices his job and his family's savings to build a storm shelter in the backyard.  After an especially extreme night terror, he is forced to explain his psyche to his wife (Jessica Chastain), who proves to be a more devoted and supportive companion than he or I expected. Once she knows his secret, however, the film takes a turn: Curtis is no longer alone in his fears, no longer hiding his visions and all their implications, no longer protecting his family from himself; and while his fears have not abated much by the time he agrees to seek treatment at a mental hospital, he has a rational, determined partner with whom to share the awful burden of potential insanity.  In the end, there is no clear answer and certainly no happy one.  Do we pray for his sanity, and therefore the end of everything, or do we sacrifice Curtis's mind for the sake of the world?

    Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko hinges on a similar secret terror, but in a considerably different context. Within a financially secure family, a presumably paranoid schizophrenic teenager alternately rejects and obeys Frank, the so-called imaginary man in the rabbit suit who appears to him with projections for "when the world will end."  Donnie escapes death, floods his school, defaces its mascot, finds a girlfriend, burns down the house of the local inspirational speaker/closeted child pornographer, grasps The Philosophy of Time Travel, shoots his girlfriend's accidental killer and dies, all in the span of the 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds Frank said it would take for Donnie's world to end (action-packed, no?).  He mentions Frank and the pending apocalypse to his psychiatrist (Katharine Ross) only when hypnotized, and he merely hints at his visions to his girlfriend (Jena Malone).  His family knows he is on medication, and from his psychiatrist his parents learn he is showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia, but he never tells them anything himself.  Even when his young sister catches him having an acrimonious conversation with the invisible Frank in the bathroom, he offer the meager explanation, "I'm just taking my pills, Sam."  He keeps his secret because he believes he is losing his mind at the same time as he believes he and everyone else has only four weeks to live.  For Donnie, what would be the point of sharing his troubles?  If he is insane, he wants no one to know the extent of it.  If the world must end, why worry everyone? He remains almost entirely isolated from the people he knows and the society they compose, and this emotional solitude leads him to believe there is some credible truth to the apocalyptic visions that seem to spring from madness.  Though his greatest fear is dying alone, it is his desperate choice to live alone that eventually does him in.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

Many thanks to Creative Commons and Flickr member Roger Mommaerts for the above image.

Zombies: Our Greatest Fears Come to Life (Helen)

Zombies. The undead. The walking dead. The living challenged. Whatever you want to call them, they’re everywhere. Zombie films have been around since the beginning of cinema and are now more popular then ever. What is it about the undead that continues to fascinate and terrify audiences? Zombies are the physical representation of what we fear most: Death and the unknown. Not only do they embody the fear of what happens after death, even further than that, zombies reflect the greatest fears of each era.

 

White Zombie (1932) is given credit for being the first feature length zombie flick

 

 

The film centers around a maleficent master of voodoo in Haiti who turns a young woman trapped in a bizarre love triangle, into a member of living dead. America was experiencing an influx in immigration. The idea of strange, new people infiltrating in the country brought animosity and fear to America. White Zombie plays on that fear as an innocent American girl is put into an unbreakable trance by voodoo. The zombie in this film is your typical slow moving, non contagious zombie.

The King of Zombies (1941) is a film about a couple who crash lands at the doorstep of a Nazi Doctor who has harnessed the power of voodoo to raise the dead for his own diabolical purposes.  The America public was well aware of Germany’s cruelty and inhumane treatment of Jews during the Second World War.   Hitler was thought to have a fascination with the occult. Hitler used science in terrifying ways, such as using fertilizer products to make nerve gas.  Zombies could be produced in a terrifying rate using this mad scientist’s formula.

 

 

 

      Night of the Living Dead (1968) is the most famous zombie film ever produced.

This is the first time zombies are seen as hunters that could leave their environment to seek out food sources, albeit slow moving predators.  It was believe the zombies were caused by radiation given off by an exploding space probe. In the heart of the cold war, radiation given off by an atomic bomb was a very real fear for many people.  Even the Congress and Senate had a secret fallout shelter nestled in West Virginia to escape radiation from an atomic device.

 

In 2002, films like 28 Days Later and Resident Evil gave rise to the zombie apocalypse. The faster moving zombies physically represent the quickened spread of the flesh eating undead. In other words, with these guys after you, you’re screwed. These films displayed the public’s fear in gene alteration and the idea of super-viruses that could spread with such speed that escape was virtually impossible.

 

Zombies are the loss of a person’s uniqueness and humanity.  Zombies feed on other humans turning their victims into someone devoid not only of life, but individual essence.  Cannibalism is just one of the frightening elements.  In each period of time, these films capitalized on the fear that was known, but unknown so seemingly plausible.  As knowledge and experience change so evolves the zombie, the embodiment of the new fear.

 

Sources:

Film posters for ''White Zombie'' ''King of the Zombies'' and Night of the Living Dead all used in accordance to Wikimedia Commons

The Zombie Film: From Allegory to Introspection (Jason)

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

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

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

Out of Time: The Passion of Joan of Arc (Kelsey)

Carl Theodor Dreyer directed The Passion of Joan of Arc in 1928.  And yet, despite this unequivocal fact, the film does not belong to the year 1928.  It doesn't seem to concretely belong anywhere; indeed, the film is strangely atemporal.  Instead, the film belongs to a world where a close up can be stretched out over 85 minutes; where an entire world can be built on the physiognomy of a face.  And this world is built upon the face of Maria Falconetti, a face unadorned by make up but imbued with the ability to turn the most subtle of facial ticks into a moment of emotional anagnorisis.  The entire film is like a prolonged flash of revelation, and though Falconetti's eyes get increasingly wider and more desperate, they never stop conjuring up that which remains unspoken.

The film, if the opening titles are to be believed, dutifully follows the written record of the trial, imprisonment, and death of fabled martyr Joan of Arc.  She is not the only character shot almost exclusively in close-up; the men who decide her fate are shot in a similarly close range, though admittedly to very different effect.  If the camerawork acts as an hour an a half long elegy to Joan, it is effectively putting the men who judge her on trial.  They are captured in harsh black and white tones and even harsher facial expressions.  They are the ugly, jeering men whose faces keep no secrets but tell only lies, and the camera pans across their faces as if they were Roman portrait busts riddled with imperfections, at home in a museum but never at home in Joan's psyche. 

And it is in Joan's psyche that the film takes place: these leering men stand in for the Satanic visions they constantly accuse Joan of having, and the look in Joan's eyes as they turn upward towards heaven does in fact seem to emanate the ethereal.  And these awful faces get closer and closer until they seem to close in on Joan entirely, violating her space and the space of the film.  And all of this is filmed with extreme attention to detail: from the warts on the faces of her accusers to the insects that occasionally land on Joan's face.  And it is this strange detail, enlarged and crystal clear, that allows the film to escape any form of realism.  By creating a film based on minutiae, tiny little flaws and facial movements that would be unremarkable in a wider shot become absurd and surreal, and through attention to the mundane, the film is able to portray the ethereal.     

In the last scene of the film, Joan is burned at the stake.  As flames engulf her tiny body and her shorn head, the camera pans across a different sort of people: not the judges who assigned this fate to Joan, but regular people, openly weeping at the sight before them.  And the claustrophobic close-ups all of the sudden seem a bit less claustrophobic, as Joan begins to disappear into the smoke and tears roll down the faces of grown men.  The image of birds soaring across the sky is intercut with the flames of the stake and the mounting anger of the people.  And with this moment of emotional synchronicity, the disparate close-ups are no longer at odds.  It is as though the discordant elements of Joan's tale have come together, and the film, which oftentimes feels like an 85 minute reconstruction of a second, is finally able to end.  And the stake goes up in flames, and Joan is finally set free.     

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Camera as participant 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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