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Strawberry and Chocolate (1993): More Than a Quest for Sexual Awakening

Into a cramped, poorly lit motel room Communist college student David guides his girlfriend Vivian. So begins Strawberry and Chocolate directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío. “It’s like we’ve come here to do something wrong,” Vivian says as she looks around the room, the walls marred by cracks and peeling paint. David stands by the door, paralyzed. “We already discussed that.” He reminds her, anxious that his plan to lose his virginity might go awry. An innocent boy in search of sexual awakening, David must confront both the sociopolitical climate that prioritizes collective causes over personal desires and his own moral conflict. Whether it is the billboard of CDR (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution) across from the window or the hole on the wall exposing a woman next door having sex with a man, the motel room does not promise privacy for the private quest. And David is morally upright. When Vivian bursts out crying as she complains that David, like other men, wants only sex, he puts on his clothes to prove his love. “I won’t touch you until we’re married. And in a five-star hotel.” Thus, what follows is as much a quest for sexual awakening as it is a chance for David to introspect the world and himself.

Interestingly, this is just one of the film’s three beginnings. Following the title is Vivian’s marriage to an older, wealthier man intercut with the credits. The frustrated David stands with the crowd watching Vivian sign the marriage license; his promise comes to naught. His well-controlled life leads only to a failed quest for sexual awakening. Up to this point, the film strictly follows David's perspective, but a long tracking shot of Diego walking on the street with his friend German breaks the established point of view. German signals Diego to look at the disappointed David walking toward Coppelia, the ice cream parlor. David now becomes the prey, only that he is not so much to be exploited but to be rescued by this stranger.

Chocolate and Strawberry Ice Cream. Flickr, by Sabas Gonzalez (2019).

With the end of the credits comes the real beginning. Diego takes a seat across from David and puts down three items on the table: the strawberry ice cream, a bag of forbidden books, and some sunflowers. Respectively, they indicate that Diego differs from David in three fundamental ways. First, the strawberry flavor (feminine), as opposed to chocolate (masculine), indicates Diego’s homosexuality, a taboo in conservative Cuba. Second, he reads foreign works such as those of Mario Vargas Llosa instead of the books authorized by the government, politically aligning with the liberal values of the West. Moreover, he is religious when the government promotes atheism. The sunflowers are the offerings to the Virgin of Charity in his house. The unauthorized sexuality, coupled with the unapproved political and religious practices, characterizes Diego as a social outcast whom David, the good Communist, disdains. “Fly on the wings of imagination,” Diego suggests, as he invites David to his home to read forbidden works. However, David does not engage in the exchange until Diego mentions that he has some photos of David performing as Torvald in the school production of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House.” In the play, Torvald, a shallow, middle-class husband, represents a social product of late 19th-century Europe. Likewise, David is also a product of the Communist regime blindly following the revolution ideal. To retrieve the pictures, David visits Diego’s home, and the visit made possible only with the photos as a lure foreshadows David's transformation from a mere social product to a man of agency.

Sculpture of Our Lady of Charity. Wikimedia Commons, by Andreas Praefcke (2009).

When Diego unlocks the door, David confronts an entirely different world. From the shelves laden with books to the walls covered by pictures of celebrities, posters of popular culture, indigenous masks, and religious icons, the cluttered room shows a mixed-interest owner open to different ideas. “Welcome to my hideaway,” Diego says, David paralyzed at the door. The apartment offers an exclusive space for intellectual freedom that the restrictive society is no match for, standing in stark contrast to the empty motel room defined by both social and moral constraints. David, eyes widening, though self-conscious, examines the decor when Diego asks him to sit in the armchair where Diego often reads John Donne and Cavafy. David has no idea of the poets, and Diego laments, “How can a country move forward if its youth don’t know John Donne and Cavafy.” Not a revolutionary, Diego, however, cares about the country’s future as much as David does. Born a Cuban, Diego believes that he also has the right to contribute to his country, even though society does not accept him. 

Norvegiana, Henrik Ibsen. Flickr, by Øklands trykksaker - av Bergen Off. Bibliotek (2010).

Not necessarily in line with Diego’s progressive ideas, David gradually understands that different perspectives can co-exist just as the diverse decor in the house. When David’s friend accuses Diego, David defends Diego, asserting that Diego possesses principles. David forms his own judgment, not blindly adhering to the values established by the government and society. As the government blacklists Diego, forcing him to leave the country, Diego encourages his prostitute friend Nancy to develop a relationship with David, telling her that David is still a virgin. Before Diego leaves, he looks at the city landscape with David on a hill. David tells Diego about his first sexual experience. “You’ll never believe this. Nancy was my first woman.” Diego never reveals his plotting. “Impossible. Someone as attractive as you?” The joke conveys only bitterness of the unrequited love. And David and Nancy have sex in Diego’s bed! Diego’s indescribable agony nonetheless completes David’s sexual awakening arc. And it is not just about sex since Diego is now a man of his own thinking.

City of Havana Cuba. Flickr, by Cuatrok77 (2012).

 

 

Mandragora (1997): An Innocent Boy in an Unforgiving World

In the mournful tunes of sustained notes, Wiktor Grodecki’s Mandragora begins with a long tracking shot of an average town before dawn. Under the violet-blue sky and a smattering of streetlights, a handful of run-down houses are barely distinguishable amidst the uneven twigs. A supposedly ordinary setting becomes an estranged view, a long-buried reality contrary to everything positive. Unsettling is not just the landscape, but the characters. Three boys run across an open field, their figures barely discernible from the darkness in the extreme long shot. And the camera does not track their path: as if an omniscient God well acquainted with human sinfulness, it knows its destination, passing the field and the crumbling stone houses, and resting at a shop window, ironically the brightest spot in the town. Through the window, twinkling lights and shimmering ornaments adorn Western clothing and shoes on display, with an image of the Manhattan skyline in the background, reminiscent of the holiday window displays on Fifth Avenue, an American dream that hardly fits into the town. Yet this grandeur is transient: a black shadow appears at the center of the frame, smashing the glass. The other boys quickly join, seizing whatever attracts them.

Manhattan Skyline Colors. Flickr, by Manu H (2008).

One of the boys is the 15-year-old protagonist, Marek, who with a one-way ticket to Prague, runs away from the small town, from the technical school, from his neglectful single father. Passing the barren grasslands, the train approaches the city. Marek, a tag still attached to the jacket he just steals, stares at the leaden sky. A close-up shot shows his attentive gaze at the foreign view—the organized buildings, the steel structures, the Vltava River—his lips slightly parted, reflecting the just realized freedom. Yet the next second, he frowns a bit, unprepared for the upcoming journey. An innocent boy versus a sinful world. His pursuit of freedom is destined to fail. On the first night, he loses all his money at the casinos and goes home with a pimp where he gets drugged and raped. From then on, only tragedy besets him. He becomes a male prostitute, abused by pimps, clients, and other prostitutes.

Perhaps what is miserable is the human inborn ability to swiftly dismantle the most uplifting. Finally saving some money with his prostitute best friend David, Marek dreams of buying a restaurant and traveling to Egypt. However, the more practical David decides to invest their shared money in the business of the exploitative pimp Sacha, who then introduces Marek to an English client. The man leads Marek to a splendid room with high ceilings and golden walls carved with intricate patterns. A collection of silver vessels is on display in a wood cabinet. “Make yourself at home,” the man says. But this is a high-end palace to be admired, not the world Marek is familiar with. Marek looks around the opulent house, plays with the CD rack, and from the table, carefully picks up a cigarette, only to come across an open photo album that shows genitals in tormented poses. Within the refined mask lies the darkness of the soul. The man brings out a candelabra. “We’ll make classic light for your classical body.” The meticulous pursuit of perfection and beauty tracing back to antiquity reduced to mere imitation in form, all those in between—the creativity, the revolutionary spirit, and more importantly, the reverence and love of the people and the world—denied.

Caravaggio Rest During the Flight From Egypt. Flickr, by Carulmare (2008).

“Chiaroscuro,” the man says. “Do you know Caravaggio?” Marek has no idea; the man is elated. “Sweet unconsciousness,” he says. When artists still imitated ancient sculptures, Caravaggio preferred the vulgar, modeling religious figures after street prostitutes, because the divinities were divine only if they understood human emotions. The man imagines himself as the great artist studying this innocent boy, lamenting how impossible it is to copy God’s proudest creation. But the man is not Caravaggio: he does not elevate Marek but reduces him to an object for his own pleasure. In his order, Marek takes off his clothes, stands on a rotating pedestal, and holds a sword, mimicking Donatello’s David. The man sits on the sofa, pours a drink, and expresses his appreciation of this live sculpture in front. The scene cuts between the excited man and the baffled Marek, with the camera moving toward the man as he slowly reaches orgasm while pulling away from Marek. Clearly, the man sees Marek exclusively as an object of sexual interest with no interiority. And Marek bears no resemblance to David who after defeating Goliath becomes a hero well-loved by the people. Disempowered, Marek turns into a mere victim of this consuming gaze which with almost no physical contact, already subverts the sanctity of beauty, courage, art, and the human body created in the image of God.

Donatellos David in the Bargello Museum. Flickr, by Peter Visser (2009).

In the end, Marek overdoses in a stall in the train station where his journey begins, hallucinating worms crawling on his body and slitting his leg with a knife. His father, after searching for his son in vain, also arrives at the station to take the train home. In the toilet, the camera slowly rises up, once again transforming into an all-knowing God. The father walks in, leans against the stall partition, and smokes, not knowing that his son is now free and pure as the blood drains. In this unforgiving world, only the omniscient camera indicates a sense of redemption, uniting the remorseful father and the anguished son. After all, he is just an innocent boy looking for freedom, if only the world could treat him kindly.

Flawed People Searching for the Perfect Answer: Vice in HBO’s True Detective (Season 1) (Katherine P.)

            The current rise of more cinematically produced shows on outlets such as Netflix and HBO, demonstrates that film is not the only medium worth a closer look. Perhaps no show captures the characteristic filmic magic more than HBO’s series True Detective.  The serial nature of the show allows for both plot and character development in a way that traditional film does not.

            True Detective recounts a self-contained saga of a seemingly bizarre series of murders from the perspective of the nominal detectives. Season 1 garnered critical acclaim for its photographically detailed characters and compelling mystery. The setting is Vermillion Parish, Louisiana, and State homicide detectives Martin “Marty” Hart and Rustin “Rust” Cohle have been assigned to investigate the murder of Dora Lange. It is the labyrinthine nature of this case, and the pursuit of the truth that expose Marty and Rust’s inner demons. 

            Marty is first depicted as the quintessential family man. He appears to have the picture-perfect life, a beautiful wife, and two lovely daughters. However, it becomes substantially clear this is not the case.

            Marty is weak to his lustful urges. The first few episodes display his extramarital affair with his coworker, Lisa. His uncontained desire and libido consume him, and the balance of his “ideal” home life is threatened by his own infidelity. The vice of lust is ever-present as a thematic and visual motif. Marty’s lust, and the violence caused by such carnality is paralleled through the nature of the homicides. The homicide victims are women. The sexual deviancy and perverse way in which they are displayed post-mortem speaks to the inherent vehemence and objectification of the female form through the male gaze. Marty, in his lust, concurrently, or perhaps, coincidentally, has fits of intense rage caused by his lack of control. To him, his sexual exploits and the women who he has them with are merely things to reassure his masculinity and domination. He is prideful he can juggle his adultery with his home life. However, when it is clear this feat is too much, he reacts violently. Marty’s flaws are caused by his lack of emotional stability, and this unbalance is reflected in the many women he courts, but it rings most true in his wife, Maggie.

            Of the women in Marty’s life, no one mirrors his vices more than Maggie. She is, like Marty, only superficially the ideal wife. Her role in the marriage is that of the stereotypical caregiver; she appears to manage the housework and the children quite well. But, when it comes to her relationship with Marty, she is justifiably neurotic and abrasive. Marty’s violence spurs on her anger, and the tumult becomes more and more unstable. Upon confirming Marty’s cheating, Maggie responds through wrongfully mirroring Marty’s sin and has a one night stand with Marty’s partner in the case, Rust. The fact that she reacts as such reveals she is just as warped as Marty is. This parallel is one thematic crux of the show, that of the impression of the male vice echoed on the female, and vice versa.

            Unlike Marty, Rust’s pitfalls do not stem from his home life, but rather his work and especially this case. Rust has no family. He once had a wife and daughter, similar to Marty, but an accident that killed his daughter broke up his marriage. If Marty’s story is how he lost it all, Rust’s tells a tale of an already broken man trying to find meaning through dedication to his work.

            Rust is seen as a gifted detective. His keen insights and persistence make him one of the best in the Louisiana State Police. His tenacity eventually leads him to instability at work. He becomes too invested in the case, overstepping boundaries set by his boss and breaking the limitations set by the Louisiana State Police. Endurance and resolution are not normally intrinsically seen as faults, but the authoritative and restrictive head officers paint Rust as an overzealous, borderline insane detective that has crossed the line one too many times. While it is true that in the hunt for an answer, one can be blind to what’s pertinent, the show illustrates through Rust that the wild chase for the truth is the only way to enlightenment and eventual self-realization. In the fervent quest for an answer, Rust is let off from the case, but in his rogue state, he is freed from the authoritative chains that weighed him down. Yet, Rust’s perseverance is still maliciously paralleled through the murders, albeit in a different fashion than Marty’s vice is echoed. The devotion and ardor Rust has for this case is compared to the mindset of the murderers. Both parties are equally dedicated to their craft, and both have an almost contumacious approach to what they do. This connection is used to demonize Rust. Despite the show illustrating Rust in that light, his motivations are resonant, so we are made to root for him even with his apparent officious nature and short-sighted goals.

            Rust is shown to be socially closed off. The interactions such as sexual or platonic relationships that plague his partner, Marty, are minimized and are almost absent. Scarred from the pain of losing his daughter and wife, Rust believes those types of human relations are unnecessary and that most will end in inevitable collapse. His distrust of interpersonal relations and the people involved in them do add to his value as a detective, but it is ultimately not a generally accepted mindset. When Maggie tries to set him up with her friend, Laurie, Rust is initially skeptical. In spite of his initial doubts, he does go into a relationship with Laurie. But, it is short-lived. Once it became clear to Laurie that Rust’s heart wasn’t in the relationship, rather in the ongoing homicide case, she and Rust break up. Rust’s tunnel vision is set solely on the goal of finding the perpetrator, and even if he tries his life has afforded no room for anything or anyone else. His ambitions prove to be too much for other people to handle.

            While Marty and Rust both have vastly different circumstantial flaws, they are a complex and captivating spin on the time-honored detective trope, and their show is considered by some to be a landmark of cinematic television. Hopefully, this new wave of profound and filmic works continues to produce creations as standout as True Detective.  At the end, solving the murder is secondary to the feelings, good or bad, that we develop for Marty and Rust, and at the end of series, we are left genuinely wondering what will become of these characters after the job is done. 

On the Beach at Night Alone: Are We Spectators or Participators? (Jin)

Hong Sang-soo’s On the Beach at Night Alone is strangely aloof and just as strangely piercing. At first glance, it is hard to grasp why the film strikes such an emotional chord; the story is clean and simple, lingering on scene after scene of leisurely smoking, drinking coffee, and clinking soju shot glasses. However, with each alcohol-heavy conversation, a strong poeticism takes shape that encapsulates more than plain loneliness.

The film explores the emotional aftermath of a forgotten love affair between an actress and a film director. The main character, the actress, speaks in a peculiarly straightforward manner, to the extent in which her words waver between poetic and sparse. The film, despite being executed in a similarly straightforward manner, also wavers between dream and reality, a tasteful performance and improvised outbursts. When examining the film background, the lack of clarity is understandable. The film is a metaphor for a real love affair that had occurred between Kim Min-hee, who plays the actress protagonist Young-hee, and the already married director of the film, Hong Sang-soo. The film was released shortly after their infamous scandal, and just as the film’s stylistic choices mingle the narrative and real fact, Young-hee seems to push the boundary between scripted acting and real revelation.

 

Director Hong Sang-soo with actress Kim Min-hee

To the South Korean audience, who violently condemned the adulterous love, the underlying question was glaring: how will Kim Min-hee and Hong Sang-soo justify their relationship? The film, surprisingly, leaves room for interpretation. It is far from being a gimmicky allegory or desperate plea for public sympathy. Instead, it is reminiscent of the primitive driving force behind all cinema: the expression of universal emotions. Cinema, at its core, is both an imitation of the real life and an imposed reduction of reality into something more understandable. By masking unavoidably real people in a metaphysical, semi-fictional setting, the film awakens the audience’s awareness of this intention.

The film invites the audience to become witnesses of an objective documentation of human emotion. Conspicuous zoom shots are a constant reminder that the actors are real human subjects shot on camera, and the blunt dialogue erects a barrier just thick enough to cast a slight emotional distance between the viewer and the film. We are obliged to take a step back and become observers, or perhaps judges, of a quiet cinematic argument. We have the warm satisfaction of having the power to clearly examine the whole situation; we can easily read the emotional context and motives behind the characters’ words and actions, whether it be repeatedly claiming that someone looks older than his age or hurriedly pouring another shot of soju.

Just as we are getting comfortable in this position of power, however, Hong Sang-soo throws in shockingly direct verbal confrontations between the protagonist and other characters. A drunk Young-hee lashes out, violently spitting words across the dining table at her equally drunk accompaniment, declaring, “You can’t love! You are not capable of love and you do not deserve to be loved!” With her outburst, we are abruptly dragged into the heat of the moment and forced to reckon with the full force of unbridled emotion. We are no longer spectators but participants guilty of playing the same messy game of love.

Overall, the film's quiet revelation of human thought suggests a sort of beauty born from conditional ignorance. We are beautiful because we are unaware; despite how the world may seem frightfully simple, we are hopelessly trapped in our inward distresses. It is only when this inner turmoil becomes mute and when one becomes a distant observer, that one is able to then notice a hushed poeticism hiding in daily conversations and actions. Through film, Hong Sang-soo grants us this privilege of lingering on others’ suffering as though we do not suffer from our own. We are, very briefly, gods.

What's Your Favorite Movie? (Tori)

My sophomore year at Hopkins will be tied to a lot of different things.  It’ll be tied to my double in McCoy, meals at Nolan’s, and long rehearsals of Spring Awakening in Swirnow Theater.  It’ll be tied to my friends here, new and old, and the moments we’ve shared together.  It’ll also always be tied to film blogging.  Film blogging has been an integral part of my sophomore year.  I have been constantly on the lookout for films to watch and concepts about which to write.  This post will bring my film blogging to a close, so I knew I had to choose something epic and rich in order to end the year on the perfect, exciting note.  I looked directly to Alfred Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock has completely transformed my relationship with films.  I, like many others, I’m sure, detest being asked what my favorite film is.  My cinematic preferences are constantly changing based on my mood; when I’m frustrated I’ll want to watch something very different than when I’m elated.  But if I were forced to choose—a gun drawn to my head—Rear Window might be the one to slip out due to its emphasis on some of the themes I find most interesting in the world like metacinema, voyeurism, and the male gaze.  It’s one of those films you can watch a million times and still not pick up on all the themes and techniques employed by Hitchcock to tell the gripping story.  Obviously, I am a big Hitchcock fan.  Yet, shockingly, I had never gotten around to watching perhaps his most renowned film, Vertigo.  Until now.  I decided it was fitting, for my exciting final post, to write about what is known as one of the most epic and rich films to ever be created.  I was not disappointed.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

As our protagonist, ex-detective Scottie, is about to enter the church at the end of the film, he states that there is: “One final thing I have to do…and then I’ll be free of the past.”  Throughout the film, I picked up on a preoccupation with time and the contradictory feelings of both nostalgia and disdain for the past.  Characters grapple with the question: is it possible to ever be free of the past?  Near the beginning of the film, Gavin Elster, an old friend of Scottie’s, discusses San Francisco, the setting of the film: “Well, San Francisco’s changed.  The things that spell San Francisco to me are disappearing fast…I should have like to have lived here then.  The color, the excitement, the power, the freedom…”  He is clearly sentimental about the way San Francisco used to be, yet it seems that is a distant memory. 

When researching Carlotta Valdes, the woman it seems has possessed Elster’s wife, the bookstore owner explains: “So [Carlotta’s husband] kept the child and threw [Carlotta] away.  You know, men could do that in those days.  They had the power and the freedom.”  Once again, we are reminded of the power and freedom people had in the past, but this time the sentiment of nostalgia is complicated, as power and freedom are tied to the mistreatment of Carlotta by her husband.  Scottie, throughout the film, is set on doing away with the past; he desperately wants to “stop being haunted.”  But perhaps this is a lost hope.  Scottie puts together the different aspects of his deceit by Elster and his mistress, Judy Barton, who was pretending to be Elster’s wife the entire time.  He realizes that Elster was the mastermind behind everything and now has access to: “all of his wife’s money and all that freedom and power.”  Again, we hear these words “freedom and power,” but now in a very different context.  Elster has succeeded in becoming that free and powerful man of the past.  Additionally, he abandoned his wife just as Carlotta’s husband abandoned her long before.  What is more, Judy’s death transpires in the same way the real Madeleine’s death did; they both fall out of the same church window.  All Scottie wants is to stop being haunted—by the death of the police officer at the beginning of the film, by his vertigo, by Madeleine after her death, but it is no use.  Vertigo suggests that the past is not something one can ever escape.

It is crucial to understand this idea of “freedom and power” in relation to gender in Vertigo.  Do any of the women in this film have any freedom or power?  At the end of the film, Scottie interrogates Judy about Elster’s use of her in his grand scheme: “He made you over just like I made you over…Did he train you?  Did he rehearse you?  Did he tell you exactly what to do—what to say?”  The men of Vertigo are consistently controlling the women.  Like Carlotta’s husband controls Carlotta and Elster controls both Judy and his wife, Scottie similarly controls Judy when he implores her to change her appearance to look more like Madeleine.  The idea of the male gaze is incredibly prevalent in this film.  Just as Jeff becomes interested in Lisa after she has become the subject of his voyeuristic gaze, Scottie becomes interested in Madeleine solely after watching her.  In this way, he is introduced to her less as a person and more as an object to be observed.  It is true that Scottie is manipulated by Elster, but I would argue that the women of Vertigo are the ones truly being controlled.

Upon further reflection, I probably could have written about a different aspect of Vertigo for every single one of my blog posts this year; it’s the kind of film that clouds your mind with thoughts.  However, one thing is absolutely clear to me: I think I have a new favorite movie.  

It's Tough Out There for a Broad (Madison)

Well, folks, this is it. As I am posting this, the final week of classes is winding to a close; exams are being prepped for, parties are being thrown, summer plans solidified. Spring Fair has come and gone; the library is packed with students in the throes of an end-of-semester panic; your timelines are undoubtedly inundated with invitations to oddly-themed a cappella concerts. This spring--the last of my undergraduate career--has been marked by a series of bittersweet benchmarks I can’t help but notice as they pass (far too quickly) by.

 

 

Oh, I found myself thinking the other afternoon, I just skipped the last lecture of the last science course I ever plan on taking (Sorry, Professor Rawlins). And after wrapping up a class on American Women Poets, I was struck by the realization that I might never again have cause to be in room 138 in Gilman hall (and that, drafty as it is, I’ll miss it). I learned, just today, the trick to getting free drinks from the vending machines in Hodson, only to remember that I won’t have time to test out the method.

I am forced, in confronting these Lasts (and the capital L feels proper, here), to turn, also, ahead: if these are the things that I am leaving, what am I heading toward? On the one hand, the answer to this question is simple: I’ll be making my way to grad school in Iowa City (home to an amazing bookstore, plenty of cornfields, and a natural history museum which features a replica of a 10-foot-tall prehistoric sloth). Still, on the other, I have no idea what the next few years will look like.

 

For the first time, I’ll be paying for my own insurance. For the first time, I’ll be more than a two-hour drive away from my mother’s house. For the first time, I’ll be living in a place that is very unlike my hometown (a bit of relevant trivia: the population of Philadelphia is 1.3 million; in Baltimore, it is 623,000; and in Iowa City, the population hovers around a miniscule 73,000).

As I often do when I am forced to forge into unknown territory, I turned to television for answers (answers, of course, that come with a heaping side of escapist fantasy). There are plenty of movies and shows, these days, that explore what it means to be a young woman trying to figure out just what the hell is going on in the world (however you might feel about Lena Dunham, her Girls did pave the way for the moment we find ourselves in now, in which a plethora of lovably-struggling femme millennials fill our screens).

 

I’ve sampled many of them: 2 Broke Girls is a bust for me, feeling somehow stale and forced; New Girl is charming, silly, and consistently entertaining, even if its glory days are somewhat behind it; Jane the Virgin has its appeal, even if it borrows a bit too much from the telenovela to help me navigate my own, admittedly more mundane, life. On the silver screen, Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012), Tiny Furniture (another Dunham offering, this one from 2010), and Adventureland (Mottola, 2009) are worth a watch (Legally Blonde, too, qualifies as a post-college film, in my view!)*

Still, among all these offerings, one show has become my far-and-away favorite, the one I watch over and over again, the one that makes me feel entertained, reassured, and vaguely aroused (a joke), and the one I binged (again) in preparation to leave the Johns Hopkins nest: Broad City.

 

The Comedy Central hit began as a web series in 2009, when Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, the show's creators, stars, and writers, met in New York City while taking classes with the Upright Citizens Brigade; it made its way (with the help of one Amy Poehler) onto television in 2014. It has run for three seasons, with a fourth and fifth upcoming (not soon enough, of course; season 4 isn’t scheduled to run until this August--I am in agony).

In part, my love of the show comes from my identification with Abbi Jacobson. Both she and her character (also named Abbi) grew up on the Philadelphia Main Line, ten minutes away from my childhood home. She went to the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) for her undergraduate degree, which, as most of you know, is only a very short bus ride away from the Homewood campus. She’s not good at public speaking and hopes that her career as an artist will “blow up any day now!” In my preemptively-nostalgic, pre-graduation phase, this is enough to make us soul sisters. Watching her navigate what everyone tells me is the hellscape of your young twenties gives me particular comfort, as if I’d sent a body double ahead of me to test the waters; she seems like she’s doing well--maybe I can, too. 

 

Of course, the appeal of Broad City is much deeper than hometown pride. The show is hilarious; in one episode, Ilana becomes latched onto a garbage truck after trying to wear an industrial chain as a belt; in another, the duo is kicked off of a plane when their MacGyver’d tampon is confused for a bomb. It’s also oddly sweet; it’s clear that Ilana would do anything for her best friend Abbi, including grilling potential one-night-stands about their sexual health, mothering her after the removal of her wisdom teeth, and spending hours tracking down a stolen cell phone.

 

And for all its fluffiness, the show is smart, too, with a feminist sensibility that is always present but never pedantic: the leads are two Jewish women who share a friendship that would make even the best bromance movies jealous, and who talk frankly and frequently about their active sex lives—and not in an I-had-another-steamy-affair way, in an I-just-peed-out-a-condom/I'm-looking-at-my-labia-in-a-Topshop-dressing-room/a-guy-asked-me-to-peg-him kind of way.

It matters to me, too, that Ilana is bisexual, and shows no signs of being killed off. Her liaisons with women are never fetishized, or even addressed as unusual. There is no moment of coming out, no older, predatory lesbian seducing her, and no sense that her friendship with a straight girl is strange or suspect (admittedly, one of the quirks of the pair’s friendship is Ilana’s oft professed love for Abbi—this, though, feels more like a running gag than a comment on the impossibility of friendship between queer and straight women). It is the kind of representation one seldom gets, as a bisexual woman. To see oneself rendered likably and fully on screen, not tokenized or tortured, is an opportunity that is hard to come by; even as Broad City makes me laugh, it gives me the chance to feel real, to take a delight in my queerness that can be otherwise difficult to maintain in the current political climate both at home and abroad. 

Beyond all this, Broad City has a surrealist bent that allows it to stand out amongst other shows of its ilk. The use of non-diegetic sound, fantasy sequences, and absurdist humor make each episode a surprising one: you’re never sure when a giant Bingo Bronson (a stuffed blue cartoon toy) might make an appearance, or when a piece of particularly shocking news will be accompanied by the sounds of a bomb detonating (complete with aftershock and ringing in the ears). It is equally likely that the girls will find themselves at a swanky rooftop cocktail party as in a subway car filled with Hasidic Jewish men or human fecal matter.

 

There is something about this show that defies description; it's difficult to explain why it feels like the suitable topic for my final CinemAddicts post. After all, what can I tell you I’ve learned from watching Broad City? I’m still scared to leave my friends and Baltimore behind; I’m not any closer to understanding how to do my taxes; and it’s true, it isn’t my dream to work as a cleaner in a fitness center or as a temp at a failing startup, so there isn’t much in the way of inspiration to be found in that arena. I suppose, though, I have learned some things: how to sneak an offending BM out of a toilet and into a trash shoot if the power is out and the man I’m crushing on is stopping by for a visit; that “for every ten pounds a man loses, he gains a visual inch”; a recipe for a s’more made with marijuana.

 

I can see, as I’m writing it, how insufficient this list may seem. What I did not include on it, for fear of being sentimental, but what I hope I've made clear throughout this post, is this: Broad City allows me to imagine myself, one, or two, or five years down the line, living a wonderful life. Ok, Abbi and Ilana are messy; ok, they don’t have dream jobs; ok, they live with crummy roommates. But their friendship—the most convincing and compelling female friendship on TV today, in my opinion—is not only enough to sustain the show, but to sustain them through all of the absurd drama of their not-yet-figured-out lives.

So, I’ll finish this Last—my last post on this blog—with a question. Do we have any readers in Iowa City? I’m looking for an Ilana to my Abbi. After all, I hear it’s tough out there for a broad.

 
*I’d like to recognize that this list is hugely incomplete, and (for the most part) only presents a selection of white, straight, middle-to-upper class stories. If you have any recommendations that escape these pitfalls, I’d love to tune in!

All Show Business (Tori)

Recently, there has been a widespread trend of making films into Broadway musicals.  There’s School of Rock, Groundhog Day, Sunset Boulevard, Amelie, Waitress, and countless others.  But what about when it’s the other way around?  How do you take a highly successful stage musical and turn it into a film?  I looked to Chicago, arguably the most famous of this smaller number of film-turned-musicals, to attempt to answer this question. 

“It’s all a circus, kid.  A three-ring circus.  These trials.  The whole world.  All show business.”  Lawyer Billy Flynn says this to Roxie Hart, a young aspiring performer who murders Fred Casely, the man with whom she is having an affair.  A few months ago, I wrote about a musical entitled The Scottsboro Boys, written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, who also wrote the music and lyrics for Chicago.  Kander and Ebb are notorious for the way in which they point out flaws in our society.  They are masterful at holding a mirror up to nature.  Chicago focuses on the problems surrounding crime and the media.  It condemns our entertainment-centered society by depicting a world in which there is virtually no difference between being a murderer and being a performer.  Roxie Hart is able to gain fame and fortune because of this crime she commits.  Thus, the fame of a performer and the infamy of a criminal are depicted as one in the same.   This relationship is shown starting with Roxie’s arrest after committing the murder, as she is trailed by hoards of photographers taking her picture.  When discussing her future as a performer with Matron Mama Morton, Roxie states: “I don’t even have an act yet” to which Morton responds “Killing Fred Casely was your act.”  Roxie’s life post-murder is less the life of a criminal and more the life of a big star. 

Chicago was (and still is) undoubtedly a huge stage success.  It currently holds the title of the longest running American musical on Broadway and the second-longest running musical of all time.  I was lucky enough to see this show on Broadway several years ago, and it is truly one of the most astounding shows I’ve ever seen.  Part of the reason why I loved it was because of its meta-theatrical nature, particularly surrounding its songs, which are incredibly self-aware.  By this I mean that characters know they are performing in front of an audience when they’re singing.  They break the fourth wall and sing right to the crowd.  Each song is introduced by an emcee; it is almost like it’s a cabaret show dispersed throughout the musical.  A plot point will occur, and a corresponding song or act will be announced and then performed.  For example, Roxie is brought to her press conference by Billy Flynn.  The song “They Both Reached For The Gun” is announced, and we watch a song and dance number in which Billy Flynn functions as a ventriloquist and Roxie is his dummy.  He tells her exactly what to say to win the world’s sympathy.  Another example: it is revealed that another woman in the jail was said to be guilty and is sentenced to death.  Then, a sort of circus act is announced: The Hungarian Disappearing Act, which she then performs, symbolizing her hanging.  This structure is invoked seamlessly in the stage musical, but becomes more difficult in a film.  How do you preserve the meta-theatrical nature of Chicago when it is no longer performed in front of you on a stage?

I think Chicago is a successful film because of the way that it actually emphasizes this meta-theatrical nature of the story through the use of techniques unique to cinema.  There are two different “worlds” present within the film.  First there is the world of the plot, which takes place in 1920s Chicago, on the streets, in the jail, in the courtroom, etc.  Then there is the world of the songs and acts, which take place on a stage in a theater.  We see the bright spotlights and dazzling displays behind the performers as they sing and dance.  We literally become a part of the audience, as the camera is often stationed behind other audience-members, putting us right in that crowd.  It emphasizes the fact that these moments are incredibly performative.  Then, it is able to beautifully weave these moments of performance into the narrative through the usage of tactics such as eyeline matches and close-ups.  My favorite of these moments is a number that is only found in the film and not in the musical.  This number occurs during Billy Flynn’s cross-examination; he discredits a piece of evidence in a masterful way, extremely powerful with his words.  As he walks confidently across the courtroom floor, the camera follows his feet.  We then cut to his feet on a stage, and he begins performing an unbelievable tap dance.  We constantly switch between him in the court room and him tap dancing, blurring these two “performances” together in a way that can only be done on film. 

There is really nothing like live theater, sitting in the audience and watching performers right before your eyes.  It’s unpredictable, and there is a thrill of knowing that each and every performance is unique in some way; there will always be small differences between performances of the same show, and this is a truly thrilling feeling.  Yet I got a similar sort of thrill when watching the film of Chicago.  I think Chicago works because it is somehow able to preserve this sense of live performance onscreen. Moreover, through techniques unique to cinema, it is able to even further emphasize the theatrical nature of our justice system, our media, and our world.  The film, maybe even more so than the musical, makes it clear that the world is all show business. 

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.

Whom Do You Trust? (Tori)

(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Whom do you trust?  Do you trust your friends?  Your family?  Classmates?  Professors?  Politicians?  How about the films you watch?  Do you think you can trust them?

The films Rashomon, The Usual Suspects, and Atonement each deal with this question of trust between the audience and the film in their own, unique way.  However, all three coincide in the way they force the realization that the audience is all too willing to trust what it sees.  Why is it that the camera is able to so easily convince us that we are witnessing the truth?

The great Akira Kurosawa's renowned 1950 film Rashomon provides the perfect jumping off point to delve into this question, as the film's impact is truly remarkable.  For example, it coined the term "the rashomon effect," which is a psychological concept used to describe the phenomenon when one occurrence is perceived in distinct ways by different witnesses.  The film follows three men: a woodcutter, a priest, and a commoner, as they discuss the case of a murdered samurai; the two men assert that they have never heard "such a strange story."  The woodcutter claims to have found the body of the murdered man, and the priest claims to have seen the samurai earlier walking with his wife in the woods.  Thus, the two were brought into court to testify.  There, they witness the testimonies of the particulars surrounding the murder, first from a "notorious bandit," Tajomaru, then from the wife of the samurai, and then from the samurai himself, speaking through a medium.  Each character introduces his or her story, and then the camera cuts to what initially seems like a flashback, but actually proves to just be a visual aid to the story they tell, accompanied by a voiceover narration of their testimony.  Eventually, the voiceover stops, and the audience becomes fully immersed in the world of their story.  As each testimony begins and ends, you find yourself believing whichever version of the story you are watching and hearing, yet they cannot all be true.  After the third testimony, the woodcutter reveals that his initial account of the discovery of the body was a lie; he claims that he actually saw the murder take place, as well, but pretended he did not in order to stay out of the situation.  An objective truth is never revealed; the audience remains lost at the end, unsure of which story is true, or if any of the stories are true.  Overall, this film provides the perfect introduction to understanding the power of the narrator, as the film suggests that stories depend wholly on the person telling them.  Thus, it is the narrator who has the ultimate power to determine the truth of the film for the audience.

The 1995 film The Usual Suspects, directed by Bryan Singer, plays brilliantly with this fact—that the narrator has an extraordinary power over the audience.  This film has a non-linear chronology, jumping around in time as the events of a bloody raid on a boat come to light.  This raid was carried out by five criminals, led by a former police officer named Dean Keaton, under the orders of a man named Keyser Söze, a criminal mastermind who is unknown to all.  The facts of the crime, and everything leading up to it, are all revealed to us in the present by one of these five criminals, Verbal Kint, one of the two survivors of the horrific battle.  The story is told to us through flashbacks and voiceover as we once again become fully immersed in the narrative.  It is difficult to describe in words exactly how brilliant the structure of this story is; the audience is constantly thrown back and forth in time, trying to piece together the different parts of the story being told.  After Kint concludes his story, his interrogator shocks him by proposing that Keaton himself was the mysterious Keyser Söze.  Kint is incredulous; he feels betrayed and pleads that Keaton was his friend.  As the story concludes, Kint leaves, and we feel sure it will not be long before he is killed by Söze for the part he played in the story and the information he knows.  Yet, it is moments after he leaves that his interrogator, sitting in his office thinking over the story he just heard, suddenly drops his mug of coffee.  The entire story comes flying across the screen in a matter of seconds through bits and pieces of the facts given by Kint, along with random words written on posters in the interrogation room that popped up in Kint’s story, and finally, a sketch done of Keyser Söze from the last remaining survivor of the boat raid that clearly resembles…Kint himself.  Kint, our narrator, has been lying to us the entire time.  Kint is Keyser Söze.  Singer, in the last couple minutes of the film, completely uproots everything you have come to take for granted throughout the film.  Just like Kurosawa, he asserts the insurmountable power of the narrator.  The entire story, as in almost everything we have seen and heard, has been delivered through Kint.  We somehow forget that Kint is a person with an agenda as we listen to his story.  We believe him to be telling us the objective truth of what happened without a second thought.  In every way, it seems that his story is true.  But each and every narrator has a subjective experience; there is no objective truth, and our forgetting of this crucial fact is catastrophic in the case of this film.

The final film I analyzed was the 2007 film, Atonement, directed by Joe Wright.  This film was based on the 2001 novel of the same name written by Ian McEwan.  This novel is one of the ultimate contemporary novels concerning the use of an unreliable narrator, and I was interested to see how it was dealt with in the film versus in the novel.  The story first follows Briony Tallis, an avid writer, at age 13, as she misinterprets an encounter she witnesses between her sister, Cecilia, and the son of a servant, Robbie Turner.  This misinterpretation spirals out of control as she further and further misconstrues who Robbie is and concludes he must be a sexually crazed criminal, where in reality, he and Cecilia are in love.  When Briony’s cousin Lola is raped, Briony tells the police Robbie committed the crime due to her firm conviction as to who Robbie is.  As she is the only witness, the police arrest Robbie, and he eventually enlists in the war in order to get out of prison.  The story then follows Robbie’s life in the war and finally his reunion with Cecilia.  It is the very end of the story, however, that is truly fascinating.  In the novel, the postscript is entitled “London 1999” and is written in the first person from Briony’s perspective, which is an abrupt change from the third person omniscient narrator to whom we had grown accustomed.  In this postscript, Briony reveals that she is a successful writer and is publishing this story as her final novel, for she is dying.  Thus, this third person omniscient narrator was, in fact, Briony, telling her own story.  But is it the true story?  Briony reveals that, though the characters of Cecilia and Robbie reunite in her story, the two actually both died right before the end of the war.  Thus, the happy ending we received was not true.  It was fiction.  Wright chose to frame this revelation in the film as a TV interview with Briony as she promotes this book.  As we are watching 18-year-old Briony leave Cecilia and Robbie, to whom she attempted to apologize for her wrongdoings, and suddenly the screen goes black.  We hear in a voiceover an older woman’s voice saying: “I’m sorry.  Could we stop for a moment?”  Numerous images of cameras are then shown, showing this woman on them, as we realize that it was this woman who had been telling the story we had been watching, though it seemed like we were watching an objective truth, or a factual telling of past events.  Thus, it is revealed that we were understanding this story through the perspective of an unreliable narrator who is telling a fictionalized version of the events of her past. 

All three of these films intelligently display the immense power of the narrator to truly determine what is real and what is not in a film.  What is more, in my opinion, films are able to even further convince an audience due to the connection between the camera and the story.  We see before our eyes the story that our narrator is telling us.  Thus, that old saying “you have to see it to believe it” comes into full play; we are seeing a story play out right in front of us in a fully believable way.  Yet each of these three films argues that, particularly in the world of film, seeing is not always believing.  Just because we are seeing something doesn’t mean it is the objective truth.  Stories you hear are always coming from somebody else’s subjective perspective.  Thus, it seems that there is no objective truth in the world.

However, these films seem to differ in their ultimate understanding of this fact of the impossibility of objective truth.  The Usual Suspects ends by instilling absolute shock in the viewer; you are left speechless, wondering how you could have possibly been so deceived throughout the film.  You are thus left with a very skeptical outlook on life: absolutely nobody can be trusted, for truly anybody can be deceiving you.  Rashomon seems like it might have a similarly bleak ending, but the final scene takes a surprising optimistic turn.  The priest says, close to the conclusion of the film, “maybe goodness is just make-believe.”  The conflicting stories have him upset and baffled, much like us as viewers, the witnesses are lying and there is no telling what the truth actually is.  He states: “If men don’t trust each other, this earth might as well be hell.”  Yet, upon the discovery of a crying, abandoned infant, the woodcutter decides to take the child and raise him or her with his family.  After seeing this incredible act of humanity and kindness, his bleak outlook on life shifts, and the priest says to the woodcutter: “Thanks to you, I think I can keep my faith in man.”  Thus, Kurosawa’s film suggests that mankind can still be good despite the inescapable culture of lies it has created.  Then, in Atonement, at the very conclusion, Briony Tallis explains why she lied in her novel: “But what sense of hope or satisfaction could the reader derive from an ending like that [in which Robbie and Cecilia both die and are never reunited]?  So in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life.  I’d like to think this isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness.  I gave them their happiness.”  Thus, lies are not all inherently evil, or done in order to confuse or hurt others.  Briony was an unreliable narrator for the sole purpose of achieving this final act of kindness that became impossible to accomplish in reality. 

So, perhaps there is no such thing as objective truth.  Perhaps we are being constantly deceived by unknown subjective experiences pretending to be utterly real.  But this may not mean that “this earth might as well be hell,” as the priest in Rashomon says.  It seems that there is still goodness to be found in mankind despite the untrustworthy nature of storytelling; furthermore, there is even a sort of kindness or beauty in deception itself.

The Power of Observation in Rashomon (Elizabeth)

            Akira Kurosawa’s classic 1950 Rashomon is famous for its revolutionary storytelling technique. Four different people, mostly without any names or backstories, recount a murder four times. Each one’s account differs significantly, from the identity of the killer to the personality and sympathy of each participant. In the end, it is not clear exactly what is true—even the seemingly accurate and impartial account of the woodcutter is hiding his thievery. The film’s format seems to examine the power of the observer and the reliability of what can be seen.

            The first testimonies are all told in a court setting, as the law attempts to find who is guilty of the murder. However, the judge or jury are never seen or heard, even when they ask a question to one of the onscreen characters. Instead, the testifiers speak directly to the audience, with the camera in the position of a court official. It is the viewer of the film who is given the role of authority and power, who is spoken to directly and asked to make a judgment. However, even those scenes where the audience is king are colored by the interpretations of characters. In the court scenes, the other characters can be seen in the background observing from behind, and the audience only gets to experience those scenes from the priest and the woodcutter recounting them to the commoner. As such, the viewer is constantly given third hand accounts of the murder, from known liars, but they are presented just the same as the true events taking place at the temple. The viewer as observer is given the tools to look at each account and make their own conclusions and point out contradictions, as the characters themselves do. However, they are not true observers given a window to the truth, just forced to look through people’s lies.

            The power of observation and sight are present in the accounts themselves. In his own account, the bandit Tajômaru notes that he would not have hurt the samurai or his wife had he not been able to spy her hidden face when the wind blew her veil, but the first glance was enough to fill him with resolve. In the wife’s story, she notes that it was the unforgiving gaze of her husband that made her kill him—she would have accepted violence or death, but having him merely look at her and see her shame was enough to drive her to kill. The woodcutter spied it all from afar, and was the only one to know the whole truth. He was able to use his position of observer to profit, by stealing and selling the wife’s valuable dagger. He would have gotten away freely had he not decided to create his own observer, the commoner, who noticed the contradiction in the tale and called him out on it.

            The viewer is not given a chance to see the murder for themselves—the closest account they get is a first-hand one from the woodcutter, but they go as far as the priest recounting the medium recounting the samurai’s story. Instead, they must make do with the fallible stories of the characters, who all have means and motives to lie. In the same way that we view only what a director shows us, we only get to listen to what the true witnesses choose to tell. The viewer has the power to interpret the stories and find contradictions, but unlike the commoner cannot call the character out on their lies. We cannot see the murder directly, but may observe the film itself and use that for our own judgments. Even then, as we are not true witnesses we cannot change a thing or ever be sure.

Sex, Politics and the Second Act (Taylor)

I’ll begin my final blog post for CinemAddicts with a hopefully not too gratuitous personal update: I have recently committed to a masters program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. As such, I was hoping to review a political show set in Georgetown in order to get my mind right for my educational second act. Unfortunately I couldn’t find one, but the Georgetown connection that I did end up finding is perhaps even better: The Good Wife, which centers on protagonist Alicia Florrick, a tough as nails defense attorney, mother of two teenage children, wife of a corrupt Chicago politician, and a graduate of Georgetown's law school. 

The CBS hour-long drama focuses on the life of Alicia Florrick in the aftermath of a very public sex and corruption scandal that implicates her husband Peter, a former Cook County state’s attorney. In order to provide for her children, Alicia must return to her old job as a litigator after taking 13 years off to be a stay-at-home mom.

The series starts the way that all well written and exciting narratives should start- in medias res. The very first moments of the pilot episode are heart racing. Alicia and her husband Peter stand in front of a mass of flashbulbs. At the podium, Peter admits to sexual misconduct but denies political wrongdoing. Alicia stands behind him, humiliated and ashen faced. From a writing standpoint, it’s a bold and attention grabbing first move, but certainly isn’t one that we haven’t seen before.

In fact, thanks to politicians like Elliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Jonathan Edwards and Bill Clinton, (among many, many others,) there is an extensive Wikipedia page devoted to listing political sex scandals in American federal politics. The list is formatted chronologically, and begins in 1796, going all the way to present day. It seems like as long as humans engage in both sex and politics, the two will periodically mix to produce disastrous results. And lost in the fray of gossip, media chaos and political drama, you can typically find a blindsided spouse who is left to pick up the pieces of a marriage, a family, and most egregiously, the political career of a philandering partner.

And that’s what is so fascinating about The Good Wife. It begins where, for the most part, media attention ends; life after the sheen of tawdry bedroom intrigue fades. The show follows Alicia and her fundamentally corrupt but deeply charismatic husband Peter, as they orchestrate a comeback, a return to normalcy, and ultimately, a second act.

Thematically, I really enjoy the attention that this show is paying to reinvention. In America, you can create a second life and purpose for yourself despite where you have come from or what you have done in the past. Alicia begins the show by evolving out of the necessity of scandal, but by the third season, she’s evolving for internal reasons- she sees the horizon of her potential, and she’s going for it.

The Good Wife has also succeeded in evenhandedly portraying political corruption and moral ambiguities. Typically, shows will idolize or satirize political conduct, but rarely do they portray characters as realistically flawed as Peter, Will (one of the partners of the law firm and another graduate of Georgetown,) and even Alicia. Television has lately been fixated on the antihero, and the main characters on The Good Wife almost seem like less extreme versions of Walter White. Alicia is a defense attorney after all, and the writers do not shy away from conveying the moral ambiguities of that job, or any other for that matter- politician, parent, litigator or spouse.

Watch The Good Wife. Don’t be turned off by its network location. It may not be HBO, but it is on par with any cable show in storytelling, acting and production. On the surface it may be a procedural, but the writers have found a way to blend procedural format with elegant, longstanding plot lines and dynamic, emotionally complex characters. And I’m not just saying that because I have to support my fellow (albeit fictional) Hoyas.

 

Spin-off is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: the Evolution of a Young Norman Bates in the TV series Bates Motel (Helen)

(image licesensed for use in accordance with WikiMedia Commons)

 

    A year ago A&E launched their ambitious television adaptation of film’s most notorious killer, Norman Bates. Fifty-three years after the premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic thriller Psycho (1960), the concept of the television prequel was met with mixed reviews. The beloved film already suffered three sequels and one truly awful shot-for-shot remake, starring none other than Vince Vaughn. When I had first heard about this television adaptation I was reluctant to watch another ham-fisted attempt at tapping into the original thrill of unraveling the mystery of the Bates Motel. What these sequels failed to do was to get at the heart of what made Psycho interesting: Who/or what made Norman Bates kill? The real terror of the film that lingered long after the credits was not the murder, but the maddening question of the interrogation. Why?

 

    The series begins with a seventeen year old Norman Bates and his young attractive mother Norma, leaving their home in Arizona and Norman’s recently deceased father, for the sleepy town of White Pine Bay and the newly branded Bates Motel. The setting remains intentionally ambiguous in time in the beginning of the pilot, toying with our sensibilities opening on a black and white film on Norman’s television and later transitioning to Norma’s vintage Mercedes. Although it becomes a clear that it's a modern adaptation as soon as Norman takes out his IPhone at the bus stop. This was my first pause for concern. A modern adaptation that was also a prequel for Psycho seemed unnecessarily complex, and perhaps a forced attempt to distance this story from the inspiration. The show similarly has a love-hate relationship with references to the Hitchcock classic. From similar shot compositions, hiding the first casualty of the show behind the shower curtain, to an otherwise pointless dialogue about taxidermy, there seems to be a conflict between a transparent appreciation for the original film and the audience expectation for not-so-subtle homage. Although, that is a somewhat forgettable aside given the very uncomfortable and distasteful sexual assault that occurs between Norma and the disgruntled previous owner of the motel in the pilot. Norman is shaped in part by witnessing the event as well as participating in the murder and subsequent cover up. While I understand the intention of this story arc which drives the first season, the scene in question was one of the most horrific things I've seen on cable television.

 

    The storyline takes a very distinct turn from the film in the second episode when Norman’s older estranged brother Dylan is introduced. His abrupt hatred for his mother seems fairly unbelievable at first, but the complexity of his character and the tension between him and Norman builds as the show progresses.  The first episode struggles with its identity but it comes into its own by the third and develops into a Twin Peaks-esque thriller beyond the coupling of the Bates family to a greater mystery of a seemingly white-picket town with very dark secrets. The general idea of the show seems to be that Anthony Hopkins’ “Norman” as we know and love was not just a product of an overbearing mother and a violent sexual perversion, but of an entire community that indulges in a hidden sex trade among other transgressions. Violence towards young women is not an original motif in murder mysteries on television by any means, but it does add a logical stepping-stone to Norman's progression into the madness that is Norman Bates. Although a secret Chinese sex slave trade in a seaside Oregon town seems somewhat unbelievable, the frightening resonance of sex and violence within the walls of the Bates Motel works surprisingly well with Norman's story arc.

 

    The greatest strength of the series is the strange and often Oedipal relationship between Norman and his mother. While this is the main explanation given for Norman’s behavior in the film, the way it plays out in the series is wonderfully surprising at times. She is controlling and alluring, but also very warm and oddly reasonable most of the time. Perhaps, I like Norman, am easily manipulated by her charms, but I found myself never feeling entirely pulled out of the show by her behavior. Also the uncomfortable sexual chemistry between Norman and his mother is very subdued, which makes it almost creepier. Every time Norma dismissingly utters, "Norman, I'm your mother" in response to a mildly tense interaction between the two of them it makes me shudder. The show straddles the line between a closeness between mother and son that have suffered a mutual trauma, and a protective and possessive behavior mixed with a displaced sexual tension that both fascinates and repulses. The lurid town of White Pine Bay and its cast of unsavory characters ultimately pale in comparison to the engrossing Bates family drama in the center of it all.

The Bates Motel is finishing up its second season with the season finale premiering on A&E on May 5th, 2014.

 

 

Dystopian Love Stories: Heartbreak in the Digital Age (Helen)

I usually find romantic film to be a subject that’s all too sugary-sweet, but the sub genre that has been building steam in recent years provides a refreshing, albeit somewhat terrifying, discussion on human intimacy with the ever-evolving technology of convenience. In the same way, generations adapted to telephones, Internet access, and smart phones, these fictional characters must tackle the paradox between having complete access to world from their fingertips and the strange sense of alienation from never having to leave their home to do so. These films ask the question, is such a thing as too much access? Too much information? Is contentment possible when there seem to be infinite options? Is the technology that is made to assist us, perhaps stunting us?

 

Spike Jonze’s most recent film, Her (2013), looks into these questions with a slightly different spin in what I would consider to be a fairly convincing realistic look at artificial intelligence and the moral ambiguity of developing a personal assistance technology that is capable of independent thoughts and feelings.  The story follows a recently divorced introvert named Theodore Twombly in the year 2025. The ethical questions raised in this film revolve mostly around his developing romantic relationship with his OS “Samantha”. Although, it is worth noting that there are a lot of interesting moral quandaries for the viewer to consider within the background of the main storyline. For example, Theodore works at a company that ghostwrites romantic letters to the customer’s significant other under the assumption that it was written by their spouse and of course, not contracted out to a stranger. Although this deceit seems to be with the best intentions, that ethical grey area is the crux of the film. Both his career and the OS provide parallel examples of modern services meant to make life simpler that seem to instead desensitize an over stimulated population. Although this film shows the delight and feverish highs of Theodore’s relationship with “Samantha” through beautiful cinematography, it is clear from the start that his love will end in tragedy.

 

One of the most striking scenes in the film is when Theodore goes on a blind date set up by his coworker Amy. The woman he meets, who is never given a name, is played by the stunning actress Olivia Wilde. Although she is awkward at first, the close camerawork is intimate rather than suffocating. Their interaction is slow to spark, but develops into a romantic chemistry. However, when she asks him about permanence and commitment he hesitates and recedes. After his failed date he speaks at lengths to “Samantha” about it. It is a subtle reminder than Theordore is retreating from life itself, comforted by the convenience of technology. As time passes, it becomes clear that more people have begun dating their OS, including his only close friend, Amy who is also struggling with her “human” relationship. Towards the end of the film, Theodore descends down the stairs to the subway, with his blue tooth in ear speaking to “Samantha”. As the camera follows him, the same blue tooth can be seen on the various strangers passing him by. This film is less of a cautionary tale, and more of a discourse on the complexity of human intimacy and desire being swept away in the changing tides of modern advancements.

 

Michel Gondry’s film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) offers another perspective on the romantic drama with a science fiction twist. This film however, begins with the end of a relationship and shows the lengths to which someone will go to forget and suppress their former flame. While the technology in this film is entirely familiar with the exception of the memory-erasing machine from the fictional company, Lacuna Inc. Gondry mixes aspects of life that are entirely relatable into this science fiction story. The film opens completely unremarkably with Joel Barish waking up and commuting to the Long Island Railroad on a Valentines Day like any other, so he thinks. In reality, most of the film is presumed to be Joel’s memories running through his head as he is having them erased. Much of the film is shot in montage with Joel’s narration over top, similarly to how memory is perceived. The non-linear timeline forces to viewer to recall and reorder the scenes to piece together the story just as Joel does.

 

Although the story mostly works backwards through a relationship retroactively, the flashbacks recall moments of genuine tenderness and pain for Joel and the object of his affections, Clementine. However, just as in Her (2013), the technology meant to soothe proves to be harmful for Joel. The oversimplified solution to a breakup is too permanent for fickle human desire. The film raises other ethical dilemmas through the various relationships in addition to Joel and Clementine’s. For example, Patrick, the Lacuna employee that erases Clementine’s memories falls in love with her and begins dating her. He uses Joel’s journal to relive his experiences with Clementine in order to manipulate her affections, knowing she won’t remember them with Joel. Lacuna’s receptionist Mary, also learns that she had an affair with the married doctor that runs the company, but had all of this memory erased. Even though she had her memories erased, the attraction she had for her boss developed again. Proving, that the system is not only traumatic but also ineffective. Learning of their own pasts, Joel and Clementine decided to try their relationship again, with a somewhat optimistic ending. Although, the greater implication is that their relationship is likely doomed to fail again.

 

Both of these films and the subgenre of science fiction romantic dramas address an anxiety between technology simultaneously simplifying our lives, but also making things much more complicated, especially in how we interact with one another. I'm not sure how things will be in ten or twenty years, or if these fever dream ideas will ever be realized, but it's something to keep you up at night. To put it simply in the immortal words of 1986 one hit wonder, Timbuk3, "the future's so bright, I gotta wear shades".

 

 

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.

Ex-Con Romance: Straight Time and Revanche (Glennis)

     A decade before his role in Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman played a tough-talking ex-con in Straight Time (1978). With a thick head of hair and a walk that means business, Hoffman’s character flirts with women, jokes with men, and ruthlessly attacks anyone who dares to disappoint him. Fresh off a six-year prison stint at the start of the film, Max tries to pick up a woman working at a head hunter agency. Dialogue, editing and costuming chart the rise and fall of the characters’ relationship throughout the film.

     Positioned in center of the frame as he takes a typing test at the head hunter agency, Max wears a beige jacket, crisp, white shirt, black tie and khakis. The protagonists’ attire and placement in the frame highlight the importance of his task. In order to go “straight,” Max must get a job. The woman proctoring his test, Jenny (Theresa Russell), grabs Max’s paper as he tries to keep typing after time has run out. Jenny’s assertive move reveals the woman is no push-over. Dialogue quickly signals a playful twist in their interaction. After Jenny’s boss reprimands her for a phone-related mishap, Max asks Jenny: “Does she really like you as much as she seems to?” Featured in a medium shot, Jenny laughs and says: “I guess so.”

     Though initially placed in separate shots, Max and Jenny are increasingly positioned in two shots as they converse. This change in editing features Max and Jenny as a unit, foreshadowing their eventual romantic relationship. Dialogue reveals Jenny’s acceptance of Max’s troubled past. When the protagonist admits he just got out of prison, Jenny asks: “And how long did you hold that position?” Smiling in a medium shot, Max replies: “Approximately six years – no vacations.” Natural lighting suggests the sincerity of the characters’ interaction. Max seals the deal when he boldly asks Jenny:  “If I get this job, can I celebrate by taking you to dinner?”

     Costuming reveals the effort the characters’ put in to their first date. Max wears brown jeans and a brown dress shirt with a hip pattern; Jenny wears a crisp blouse with tight-fitting bell bottoms. Dialogue also emphasizes the growing connection between Max and Jenny. The protagonist admits he often imagined a “scene just like this” while in prison. “I never thought I’d be sitting here with knots in my stomach,” he confesses. The lengthy take of Max discussing his jail time in a medium close-up showcases the man’s vulnerability as he opens up to Jenny.

     The ex-con proves he can make the most of any awkward situation. When Max doesn’t have enough to cover the tip for dinner, he tells Jenny: “I’ll make you a deal. If you’ll go out with me tomorrow night, I’ll let you help me.” A close-up shows the characters’ hands touching under the table as Jenny slips Max the money. Camerawork reveals that romance is in the air.  

     In a later scene, a following shot captures Max as he enters Jenny’s house and walks to her bedroom. The shot reveals a shift in the couple’s relationship. Casually entering Jenny’s home in the early morning after he has been out all night using her car, the ex-con proves he has all the power in the relationship.  While the close-ups and two shots during the couple’s ensuing sex scene suggest a strong sense of intimacy between the characters, their bond is clearly beginning to deteriorate.

     During their next interaction, the lovers are consistently featured in separate, medium long shots. The characters’ distance to the camera and to one another exposes their feelings of mistrust and detachment. That Max is drenched in sweat following his gun theft is a far cry from the fashionable way he was dressed during the couple’s first date. Max tells Jenny: “I’m doing what I do. If you can’t take it…then I’ll just walk out the door.”

     The long shot of Jenny vomiting by the side of the road after she hears of Max’s bloody bank robbery signals the end of their relationship. Max’s efforts to go “straight” have failed; the ex-con must leave Jenny behind and face the consequences of his latest crime.

     The protagonist (Alex) in Revanche (2008) may not have hair like Dustin Hoffman, but he does have two things in common with Max from Straight Time – he’s a tough-as-nails ex-con engaged in unhealthy relationships with women. At the start of the film, Alex (Johannes Krisch) is in love with a hooker, Tamara (Irina Potapenko). The characters are always framed by vertical lines – a doorway or the walls of a shower – during intimate scenes. These framing devices showcase the couple’s romantic acts as spectacles. This technique also makes viewers highly conscious that they are watching these spectacles.

     Early on in the film, natural lighting streams through the window while the couple eats pizza naked on Alex’s bed. The lighting and the characters’ state of undress emphasize the profound trust Alex and Tamara have in one another. However, Alex’s criminal past does influence the way he treats Tamara. At one point in the film, Alex points a gun at her face. She asks: “What is this?!’ He says: “It’s not loaded.” They repeat the exchange; Alex bursts out laughing the second time he says: “It’s not loaded.” Tamara slaps him. Alex responds by lifting her up and tossing her on the bed, repeating: “You were scared” as he keeps laughing. Dialogue demonstrates the man’s sadistic side.

     Alex’s assertive statements also reveal his arrogance at the start of the film. “Nothing can go wrong,” Alex assures Tamara of his plan to rob a bank. “I go in, they give me the money, and we split,” he says. Unfortunately, a cop accidentally kills Tamara as he fires at the couple’s car when they speed away from the bank. The second half of the film follows the disturbing relationship between Alex and the cop’s wife (Susanne).

     The ex-con repeatedly uses aggressive language with Susanne (Ursula Strauss). However, multiple long shots showcase the woman watching Alex chop wood at his grandfather’s farm. The protagonists warns her to stop coming to the farm and visiting his grandfather. “Cake, music, dance, tra-la-la. I don’t want it,” he says dismissively. The camera slowly zooms in as the characters face each other. Dialogue signals a major shift in their relationship. “Then come to my house,” Susanne counters. “I’ll be alone tonight,” she says softly.

     Their first sexual encounter highly contrasts those between Alex and Tamara. Neither character is completely naked; dim lighting and the dinner table they comingle on make their act devoid of any emotional significance. That their second sexual encounter occurs on the small bed in the woman’s unused nursery (she had a miscarriage) is quite unnerving. The characters’ naked bodies appear unnatural against the powder blue wall paper covered in yellow teddy bears.

     The final interaction between Alex and Susanne is structured in a shot/reverse/shot pattern. That the characters are featured in separate shots as Susanne finally learns of Alex’s involvement in the bank robbery is an ironic touch. Their lives couldn’t possibly be more intertwined, yet editing exposes the complete emotional disconnect between the two. As Susanne breaks off their fling, she asks Alex: “What will you do now?” Alex replies: “Stay here if they don’t catch me.” Their final conversation sets one thing straight. Susanne will keep Alex’s crime a secret, and the ex-con won’t be telling anyone about his affair with the married woman.  

Conflicting Desires: Romance and Revenge in Buffalo ’66 and The Long Memory (Glennis)

Early on in Buffalo ‘66 (1998), protagonist Billy Brown (Vincent Gallo) kidnaps a teenage girl, Leila (Christina Ricci), who has just finished a tap dance class. Billy explains to Leila that he has just been released from prison and needs her to pretend to be his wife once the pair arrives at Billy’s parents’ house. “If you make a fool outta me, I swear to god I’ll kill you right there,” he warns her. “But if you do a good job, well, then you can be my best friend – my best friend that I’ve ever had.”

Though Billy works hard to maintain the lie he has told his parents while in prison – that he went away to work as a top-notch government employee – the protagonist is even more determined to take revenge on Scott Woods, a former football player. Billy’s $10,000 bet on a Buffalo Bills game resulted in his being forced by a bookie to do five years of jail time for a crime he didn’t commit. Fresh out of prison, Billy naturally decides to kill the player whose failed touchdown cost the Bills the game. However, Billy’s bizarre but growing connection with Leila sidetracks the main character as he plans to take down Woods. A variety of filmic techniques demonstrate how Billy ultimately opts for romance over revenge.  

 From the start, camerawork reveals that Billy is far from being the romantic type. The high angle, extreme long shot as Billy exits the prison establishes the main character as a man isolated from the rest of the world. As Billy gives orders to Leila in the teen’s car, the two are featured in separate shots. Camerawork emphasizes the sense of detachment between the characters. Costuming, on the other hand, links pair as eccentrics.

 In the first scene of the film, Billy’s bright red boots stand out against the gray and white tones in the frame. The man’s unusual sense of style foreshadows his unpredictable behavior throughout the film. Leila’s outfit also establishes the girl as a misfit. Her powder blue eye shadow matches her low-cut, powder blue blouse and powder blue tights. Leila’s matchy-matchy outfit makes the teen appear just as attention-seeking as Billy does with his absurdly colorful shoes. On that level, the characters seem meant for one another.

 While dialogue in Buffalo ’66 initially suggests that Billy has all the power, some of Leila’s lines reveal that the teen is more defiant than expected. After the pair leaves Billy’s childhood home, Leila defends her performance as his wife. Billy snaps at her, convinced she overdid the whole routine. Leila stands up for herself, reminding her kidnapper that she didn’t choose to be a part of his games. “You kidnapped me. You pulled my hair, you threatened me,” she tells Billy. Leila’s assertive language ironically brings the two closer to one another.

 Later in the film, Billy discovers he’ll have to wait a few hours before Scott Woods will show up at his business. Billy has just hurt Leila’s feelings, and in a low-angle shot the protagonist apologizes and asks the teen if she wants to get a room somewhere and lie down with him for a while. Leila agrees, but once the two are in the car, Billy says he was just kidding about wanting to lie down with her. Leila boldly responds: “That’s too bad, because I was serious when I said I wanted to.”

 At this point in the film, the characters are increasingly featured in two-shots. The romantic jazz music playing during the hotel room scene emphasizes the growing level of intimacy between the characters. The lengthy take and high angle shot over the bed as Billy and Leila slowly hold hands and kiss does expose the awkwardness of their first sexual encounter. However, the medium shot and close-ups as the characters hug reveals the undeniable sexual chemistry between the two. By the time Billy reaches Scott Woods, quick cuts in the scene and an over-the-top, imaginary killing sequence reveal how illogical and unnecessary Billy’s revenge plan was. As Billy buys Leila a heart cookie before heading back to their motel room, the protagonist has made his decision – a romantic relationship with Leila clearly trumps taking revenge on a middle-aged, former athlete.

 While The Long Memory (1953) differs in many ways from Buffalo ’66, the film also tells the story of a man determined to get revenge on the people responsible for his incarceration. However, just as in Buffalo ’66, the main character’s priorities change once a captivating woman enters his life. At the beginning of The Long Memory, low-angle long shots expose Phillip Davidson (John Mills) as a lone wolf. Phillip has no patience for a newspaperman who enters his makeshift home and tries to ask questions. Phillip snaps at the man: “I don’t want any trouble! Now get out of here.”

 Hell-bent on killing the handful of people who wrongly sent him to prison, Phillip is often featured in separate shots from other characters. Camerawork proves that he has no interest in forging relationships with people in the small, coastal town he resides in. However, once Phillip enters the town pub, he spots a lovely woman mopping the floor. While the two are featured in different planes, they are still featured in the same shots during their encounter. This camerawork suggests that the characters are bound to grow more connected to one another by the end of the film.

 After Phillip protects Ilse (Eva Bergh) from being raped by a hooligan outside of the bar, the woman shows up at the protagonist’s house the next day. Ilse thanks Phillip repeatedly. However, the former prisoner’s harsh language reveals the man's unwillingness to be distracted from his revenge plans. “If I saw someone beating a dog I would try and stop them,” he tells her. Ilse insists that she would like to stay at his home, but Phillip refuses. However, as Ilse stands in the well-lit doorway, looking desperate and alone in a medium long shot, Phillip finally gives in and agrees to let her stay for the night.

 While Phillip repeatedly uses abrupt language with Ilse to try and convince her she cannot stay, the woman eventually wins him over. The neatly-made beds, vase full of flowers and clean table in Phillip’s makeshift home demonstrate how Ilse has converted the man's unorganized room into a comforting, domestic space. In addition to aspects of mise-en-scene, camerawork also exposes the increasing chemistry between Phillip and Ilse. Tightly-framed two-shots of the pair emphasize their close bond. Once positioned in separate shots or in different planes within a shot, the characters eventually are featured as an indestructible unit. By the end of the film, Phillip’s relationship with Ilse convinces the man that killing people from his past is no longer important to him. As Phillip says: “It’s funny. When you come to the point, revenge isn’t worth it.”

Ex-Con Romance: Sur me levres (Read My Lips) and A History of Violence (Glennis)

     Midway through Jacques Audiard’s Read My Lips, ex-con Paul (Vincent Cassel) tries to convince secretary Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) to help him pull off a major theft. When the woman resists the idea, Paul snaps: “Let’s cut the crap – just tell me what you want.” Carla tells Paul she won’t participate in his plan unless he comes back to the office and continues to be her assistant. “Take it or leave it,” she says defiantly.

      An equally aggressive interaction occurs in the second half of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. After discovering that her husband lived a life of crime in Philly and changed his name before marrying her, Edie (Maria Bello) asks him: “What are you?! Like some multiple personality schizoid?!” Her husband, Tom (Viggo Mortensen), says he assumed his dark past and former name (Joey Cusack) were behind him. He replies helplessly: “I never expected to see Joey again.”  

     The tough words Carla and Edie use during these moments reveal critical turning points in both Read My Lips and A History of Violence. Both films feature a significant exchange of values between a former criminal and a woman on the right side of the law. Carla and Edie start out as trusting and kind; exposure to their partners’ threatening ways inspires the women to become assertive, outspoken and even violent. Although Paul and Tom resort to violence frequently throughout the films, the men ultimately become more sensitive and aware of their actions than ever before. A variety of filmic techniques reveal the considerable behavioral shifts that occur between the lovers in both films.

      Dialogue exposes the great divide between Paul and Carla early on in Read My Lips. During their first meeting after Paul has been hired at the office, Carla asks Paul why he hasn’t worked for two years. Paul admits: “I was in Fleury. Doing time.” Natural lighting makes Carla look especially innocent as she asks: “What kind of time?” Baffled by her question, Paul responds contemptuously: “Time Magazine. I was in jail! Are you shitting me?”

      Multiple point-of-view shots from Carla’s perspective as she stares at Paul making copies showcase the nearly-deaf woman’s growing fascination with her co-worker. Tight framing during two-shots of the characters suggests that their lives are becoming more and more intertwined. After Carla provides Paul with living quarters and an advance on his paycheck, the ex-con makes a move that permanently alters their relationship.

      In a medium long shot with natural light streaming through Paul’s apartment, the man gropes and kisses Carla. Startled and scared, Carla tries to defend herself as Paul forces her onto a countertop. Her girlish hair clip and modest clothing convey how inappropriate Paul’s advances are. Carla breaks free before Paul can harm her. She may be attracted to Paul, but her reaction suggests Carla wants their relationship to blossom on her terms.

      Paul’s violent move has surprising consequences. Carla forces Paul to steal files that will ensure her upward mobility at the firm. Paul, in turn, makes Carla read the lips of thugs he intends to steal from. Partners in crime, Paul and Carla are increasingly featured in two shots. A birthday party scene exposes the sexual chemistry between the couple. Soft, Latin music in the background hints that romance is in the air. The camera zooms in to position the pair in a close-up, emphasizing the growing connection between the two. “Can you take my hand?” she asks him. He pulls her to his chest, asking softly: “Do we get to smooch?” That he asks the question instead of simply planting a kiss stresses his emerging respect for and tenderness toward Carla.

      A club scene in the film showcases Carla’s ability to make Paul jealous. A point-of-view shot from Paul’s perspective of Carla wearing a fashionable outfit and flirting with two guys proves that the ex-con wants the woman to himself. “Are you done?” Paul asks her. Carla pretends she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Paul’s protective side is soon revealed as he beats up a guy who has tried to rape Carla in the club’s parking lot. Positioned in a two-shot with his arm around her, Paul says: “It’s okay. It’s over.” The club sequence summarizes the exchange of values that occurs during the film – Carla has become more confident and Paul has become both caring and considerate.

       The behavioral shifts that occur between Edie and Tom in A History of Violence take place under very different circumstances. Frequently positioned in two-shots with romantic, tranquil music playing, the spouses appear to be very much in love. Edie’s high school cheerleader outfit during the couple’s first intimate scene reveals the passionate, surprise-filled nature of the couple’s sex life. “You’re naughty,” Tom says playfully. Long takes during the scene emphasize the couple’s incredibly strong bond.

      However, Edie’s discovery of Tom’s dark past significantly changes the way the couple communicates with one another. Edie’s firsthand view of Tom’s violent behavior makes the woman both frightened and repulsed by her husband. The partners are increasingly positioned in separate shots; morose, slightly haunting music plays during the couple’s heated arguments. As Edie becomes more and more disgusted by her husband, the woman also becomes more verbally assertive with him. The normally composed and respectful Edie uses profanity and raises her voice.

      The couple’s violent sex on their staircase reveals the increasingly disturbing nature of their relationship. Quick cuts exaggerate the pain the partners experience as they shift around on the steps. Close-ups of different parts of their bodies reveal the wild, animalistic nature of their rough sex. The unnerving music that plays during the scene is a far cry from the peaceful score that accompanied the couple’s morning car rides together. However, that Edie pushes her husband off of her at the end of their act suggests that the woman may still have some control in the relationship.

      The rest of Tom’s violent actions in the film are geared toward protecting his family and himself. However, the former criminal still experiences a reawakening that may finally put an end to his violent impulses. Having killed off everyone tied to his former life, Tom washes his face and upper body in the lake by his brother’s mansion. Natural lighting and the high angle shot long shot of Tom kneeling as he washes himself suggest that the man understands he has hit rock bottom. By purifying himself, Tom clearly hopes his family will accept him again.

      During the dinner table scene as Tom returns to his home, the lengthy shots of his family members staring in his direction reveal their genuine desire to be close with him again. The tears running down Tom’s face reveal the man’s shame and vulnerability. The shot/reverse/shot pattern between Edie and her husband suggests that the spouses believe their relationship is worth repairing.

Sex, Sexuality, and the Future of the Body in Film (Leela)

 

Sex sells. Everything. Period. So why should films be any different? Recently, popular films have taken an inventive approach on sex and sexuality.  However, how far is too far?

In the past ten years, several high profile films have explored the border between pornography, sexuality, and art.  Destricted (2006), for example, is a collection of seven short films with each director developing their own views on sex and pornography.

Another popular film directed by Lars Von Trier, AntiChrist (2009), after premiering at Cannes, split critics into two camps.  Some hailed it as a beautiful piece of art exploring fundamental issues of mankind while others called it needlessly graphic, a disgusting piece of work.  Every image of sex in AntiChrist is, however, tainted.  The film opens on the characters He and She having sexual intercourse while their son dies nearby. From there on, the film deals with female sexuality as the female character, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, becomes wild, primal, the unrestrained facet of female sexuality. Von Trier gives us shocking images of female genital mutilation, full on penetration, as well as extreme scenes of sexual violence from the female character to the male.  What makes both the violence as well as sexual scenes work in this film is that they lack the titillation or designer violence often scene in other films. They are simply there, integral to life.   

Perhaps one of the most explicit films, Shortbus (2006) follows the separated yet integrated stories of Sofia, James and Jamie, Severin, and Caleb.   Shortbus looks at human sexuality and its various forms, complexities and problems. Eventually, all of these characters make their way to Shortbus, an adult only playground. Even with copious amounts of sex, director John Cameron Mitchell’s film still holds an almost innocent and a happy idealism.  The characters use sex as a way for communication and healing.  Whether it’s Sofia finally reaching an orgasm or James struggling to let others in emotionally, sex becomes both a frustration and therapeutic.  The sex is imbedded within the narrative and sex is just the vehicle.  While pure might not be the best of words, sweet definitely fits the shoe.

With the popularity of exploring sexuality, it is only inevitable to see more and more films experimenting.  Movies like All About Anna, 9 Songs, Ken Park, and Anatomie de l’enfer pop up more and more every day. At the same time, the past leaves us plenty of films to check out too; Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Une vraie jeune fille, In the Realm of Senses, and The Idiots to name a few.  In the end, these films prove there can be no limits, no barriers to good films.  If the narrative is first and first most, then yes, sex is just another tool in the filmmaker’s toolbox.

 

Taboo: Sex & Violence (Josh)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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