HopkinsCinemAddicts

What Does the Helper Need? Park Chan-Wook’s Lady Vengeance

Why do we help others?

To feel happy? To feel needed? To fulfill a certain responsibility? To ease guilt? Or out of self-interest?

These are questions explored in Park Chan-Wook’s 2005 Lady Vengeance.

The main character, Geum-ja has been imprisoned for 13 years after a wrongful conviction for the murder of a 6 year-old-boy. In fact, she was manipulated into a confession by the villainous Mr. Baek, who kidnapped and threatened her infant daughter. Baek has kidnapped many children from many families for ransom, and Geum-ja helped him kidnapping the boy so that Baek would help her and her daughter without knowing that Baek will ultimately murder the boy.

The direct translation of the title is actually “The Kind-hearted Geum-ja,” and indeed Geum-ja acts like an angel in prison and helps almost everyone selflessly. But Geum-ja kindness is not without reason. Everyone she helps is essential to her revenge, and her kindness in prison is what convinced other prisoners to help her.

In fact, Geum-ja doesn’t hide her dark side. Once she is released, she even purposefully reveals herself as evil. Korean has a tradition of giving the released prisoner a piece of tofu as a symbol of starting a new life that is pure and innocent as the color of the tofu. However, Geum-ja throws away the tofu in front of a group of people when she is released, ignoring, and even confronting this suggestion of guiltlessness. She also starts putting on blood-red eye shadow and wearing all-black outfits. Most importantly, the angel who used to smile at all criminals never smiles again once she gets out of prison. She is desperate to show everyone, and herself, that all her kindness is out of purpose, and now it is her time to achieve that only goal. Geum-ja completely wipes away her innocence and even loathes her past kindness. Because only doing so can this young and attractive woman be determined to fight a murderer. Geum-ja must hide any compassion she has to convince herself that she is stronger and more brutal than Baek to conduct her revenge. As human beings are conflicting figures, the best way to disguise our intentions is to present the opposite side, just as the revenge-motivated angel in prison and the desperate evil outside that Geum-ja shows.

Her conflicting mentality is also shown by how she separates herself from the rest of the people involved in her plan. She makes her revenge like a ritual event where she is the goddess who controls everything without being an actual part of it. Geum-ja gathers all the families of Baek’s victims and asks them to kill Baek together. In contrast, she doesn’t even touch Baek during the entire murder process. More dramatically, Geum-ja provides identical raincoats for all the victims’ families to prevent getting blood on their bodies. With all the families sitting together in the raincoats, it looks like a uniform that unifies them and creates the bond of their shared crime. She then takes a group picture with all the families in the raincoat, with blood on their bodies, and brings everyone to a celebration with her hand-made black cake to keep enforcing the bond between the families. Again, she doesn’t eat that cake, but makes herself a white one in the same shape of the tofu and throws her face into the cake at the end. As if immersing herself in that cake can wash her soul and cleans her guilt, and she can cover her darkness displaying outside. It is Geum-ja’s revenge, but she makes it seem like she is helping the families to avenge instead of for her personal hatred. Through this, Geum-ja can get herself out of the cycle of revenge and eliminate her guilt.

Geum-ja is not the only one who “fakes” kindness. The priest, who encourages Geum-ja the entire time she is in prison and gives the tofu to Geum-ja, is indeed following Baek’s order to keep an eye on Geum-ja in case she avenges. Typically, we judge the priest’s betrayal behavior immediately as he pretends to be a “good person.” But here, the priest is doing the same thing as Geum-ja, the protagonist whom we are directed to support, and it becomes a moral dilemma that we can’t tell who is doing the “right thing” or if there really is anyone who is doing the right thing.

To me, the film is definitely not portraying Geum-ja as an innocent figure, nor making anyone in her an absolute demon. Geum-ja conducted the kidnap in exchange of receiving help from Baek when she was pregnant, and she also murdered someone to help a prisoner whom she knows that she will need her help to revenge. She selfishly helps people but kills Baek morally. The conflicting behaviors we see from her are just an unspoken consensus that people all act for self-benefits, whether we are being conscious about it or not. This invisible cost-benefit analysis leads to whether we display ourselves as a kind-hearted evil or a brutal victim.

If there is no pure angel nor ultimate devil, what does the helper actually want?

To feel the kindness in their heart, or plan to receive help in the future?

 

Anatomy of a Hustler: Capitalist Madness in Uncut Gems and American Psycho

“You wanna win by one point or fuckin’ 30 points, KG?” asks Adam Sandler as Howard, jeweler and gambling addict. The line cues in a feverish marimba on top of an ominous synth.

KG is Celtics star Kevin Garnett, playing himself. This moment comes after KG pays Howard $165,000 in cash for an uncut opal. With this cash, Howard is finally in a position to pay off his extensive debts — but there’s still 30 minutes left in the two-hour film.

Josh and Benny Safdie’s 2019 crime thriller Uncut Gems is a grueling experience for its characters and viewers alike. The film barrels forward, accumulating tension without stopping to catch its breath — akin to a roller coaster with a perpetual, rapid incline. The disorienting tone and pacing help immerse us in Howard’s world, and his singular obsession with money, as it drives him to ruin.

Howard, like many tragic figures, has his fair share of hubris. Rather than a prophecy deciding his fate, however, Uncut Gems demonstrates how American capitalism creates the ideal conditions for Howard’s particular brand of go-getter. A similar societal critique is advanced in Mary Harron’s turn-of-the-century cult classic American Psycho, though in the context of corporate finance. Taking distinct stylistic and tonal approaches, the two films portray capitalist logic as a narrative force of compulsive escalation.

Both Uncut Gems and American Psycho omit the starting and turning points of their protagonists’ unraveling, resulting in an unsettling narrative inertia. This choice allows the films to level their critiques beyond their protagonists at the environments that shape them.

Uncut Gems is set into motion with the delivery of an Ethiopian opal that Howard, deep in debt, plans to sell. KG, however, insists on borrowing the opal for good luck at his NBA game. From there, the film follows Howard, growing increasingly desperate, as he scrambles to get the opal back while evading loan sharks.

After Howard finally does sell the opal, our relief quickly evaporates when he decides to gamble the money. “This is how I win,” he explains, delivering a kind of manifesto as the marimba track intensifies. Both lucidity and madness might be read into his gaze, which is partly shielded behind black shades.

Howard does win, in a sense: His bet wins him over $1 million. And then a loan shark shoots him in the head. The final shot zooms into his serene, lifeless face; Howard is finally at rest. His death curbs the inertia of his gambling addiction, which incidentally ends on a high.

So ends a nuanced depiction of gambling addiction — not as a failure of personal responsibility, but as a powerful capitalist impetus. The incentive to “win” cannot be chalked up to pure greed: Howard’s obsession with chasing wealth far surpasses any desire for its rewards, and the camera takes no aesthetic pleasure in material glamor. As misguided as Howard may be, his glorification of wealth for wealth’s sake is a condemnation of the system that incentivizes it.

American Psycho’s serial murdering protagonist, meanwhile, is indisputably evil, but this characterization similarly serves a critique of his milieu. It owes its success to a stark tonal difference from Uncut Gems’ grittiness; eschewing subtlety, American Psycho hyperbolizes the archetypal Wall Street investor with the self-serious, image-conscious Patrick Bateman, who finds an outlet for his neuroses in brutal homicide.

In the iconic opening scene, Bateman briefly introduces himself before diving into a catalog of his morning routine. This voiceover accompanies a visual representation of his systematic inventory-taking, featuring close-ups on sculpted body parts and luxurious toiletries and long shots of his apartment in the vein of an interior design magazine. Bateman presents himself as a commodity, a sum of desirable objects. This eerie scene establishes Bateman’s storefront-esque sense of self, deliberately constructed so he may relate to coworkers at a reasonable distance.

Much as we meet Howard already in debt, American Psycho foregrounds Bateman’s psychopathy, later revealing that he’s killed before. In contrast with Howard’s nosedive into mania, however, is Bateman’s increasing detachment from the world around him. Diametrically opposed to Uncut Gems’ frenzy, the corporate environment serves as a backdrop for mundane conversations between coworkers. Petty status competitions have higher stakes than the work itself, which is essentially absent from the narrative. Physical violence is at least generative for Bateman, a reprieve from the stifling nothingness of corporate existence.

The escalating tension between Bateman’s personal and professional selves drives the film toward an uncertain climax; as his body count grows, so does the challenge of compartmentalizing his two lives. After a very public murder spree, Bateman calls his lawyer with a tearful confession, presumably ending his double life — but when Bateman confronts the lawyer at a company event, he’s met with a blank stare.

The lawyer’s unresponsiveness marks a striking role reversal for Bateman, whose uncharacteristically sincere expression fills the frame. Faced with this dead end, Bateman joins a table with the same coworkers as usual, though he sits tentatively. Their conversation is aimless; they talk at each other without really listening.

As one makes a passing comment — some guys are just born cool, I guess — a wide shot captures the table’s response: While the others stare off into various distances, Bateman looks at him and snorts, then points and laughs. It’s a bizarre shot with a slightly high angle, a stylistic break that goes out of its way to show the coworkers as an egalitarian group. The interaction also departs from the norm: Bateman, attentive to his surroundings, disrupts their aloof dynamic with a genuine reaction.

For the first time, Bateman seems to comprehend the people around him and his position among them. Their usual pretentiousness, something he’s always participated in, now strikes him as ridiculous. The others point this out; when they finally recognize something “off” about Bateman, it’s when he’s at his most human. In the end, nothing fundamentally changes, save for Bateman having a realization: He and his coworkers are unknowable to each other.

Bateman’s “true self” is made irrelevant, supplanted by his corporate self. Like Howard, Bateman “wins” in that he constructs a persuasive corporate identity, but he finds himself trapped in it.

Uncut Gems and American Psycho ask us to consider the nature of such wins. Both protagonists remain unsatisfied despite capitalist success; the thrilling momentum of these narratives, as it turns out, precludes real change and growth. We might start to wonder if madness, given its economic incentives, should come as any surprise.

Resolutions for the Unresolvable Girl in "Promising Young Woman" and "Little Women"

While the recent PG-rated adaptation of Little Women and the provocative social thriller Promising Young Woman couldn’t differ more in tone and aesthetic, they are products of the same moment in a post-#MeToo Hollywood. The two films reflect a tentative optimism about the state of women in film, as well as an interest in reevaluating past portrayals of women.

Shaped by this climate, Little Women and Promising Young Woman tread familiar ground with fresh perspectives. Though they might hope to celebrate women’s victories, both retain some level of skepticism about the future. For one, they acknowledge that having a voice is not enough; these films not only star women but grapple with the extent they can control their own narratives.

Director Emerald Fennell answered the call for subversive female protagonists with Promising Young Woman, which deals with a familiar narrative — the rape-revenge plot — but only partially delivers on the revenge element.

The film stars Carey Mulligan as Cassie, a med-school dropout who spends her weekends entrapping predatory men. Her main target is Al Monroe, who assaulted her late best friend, Nina. In the final 20 minutes, Cassie tracks down Al at his bachelor party and corners him with a scalpel — but in a prolonged, stomach-turning twist, the groom suffocates Cassie to death with a pillow. For those who hoped for a victory over the patriarchy, this scene is a punch to the gut.

On top of thwarting expectations, this moment is captured with brutal honesty. No visual euphemisms shield us from the horror of Cassie’s death, and the pace slows to a near stop as the camera pulls back to document the event. We witness her struggle in real-time as the camera steadily pushes back in, only to take up Al as its subject. Cassie’s limbs are still twitching as she’s edged out of frame.

Then, the tone shifts drastically: a college buddy discovers the scene the next morning and, moments later, reassures Al of his innocence. Cassie is an afterthought as Al’s buddy pulls him into a hug and kisses his head. The exchange is light, verging on comical. The tonal dissonance reaches a climax as the two men burn her body in the woods, set to “Something Wonderful” from The King and I. Al’s friend comforts him as they stare into the fire. “This is a man who tries,” the song promises us.

The tragedy of this sequence of events isn’t just that Cassie fails; it’s also that Cassie is literally and figuratively silenced, and that the film then moves on. She spends the film trying to get justice for another dead woman, only to meet the same fate. The absent Nina lost control of the narrative a long time ago; following Cassie’s abrupt removal from her own story, the ease with which Al assumes center stage rubs salt in the wound. He progresses toward his own happy ending — his wedding day — and gets yet another second chance.

At this point, we viewers might feel that the karmic laws that govern storytelling have been violated; though this injustice is realistic, it’s still narratively unsatisfying. The film seems to sense our disappointment in its final moments and says, “Fine, my treat.”

At the outdoor wedding reception, Cassie’s scheduled texts come through, and they seem to address us directly:

You didn’t think this was the end, did you?

It is now.

Enjoy the wedding!

We — along with the texts’ recipient, Cassie’s ex-boyfriend — realize Cassie has planned for this outcome, having dispersed the necessary evidence ahead of her death. Cue upbeat ‘80s ballad “Angel in the Morning.” Sirens announce the arrival of the ultimate Deus ex Machina; the police escort the bad guy out of frame. Then, the final texts:

Love,

Cassie & Nina

;)

Fennell shared in an interview that she planned to end the film with Cassie’s body burning, but financiers pushed her in another direction. Without this final scene, we could say with certainty that Cassie’s revenge is a futile exercise. But as it stands, Promising Young Woman ends on her last text — a winky-face emoticon! Did she win after all? Is this catharsis?

I’d argue no: The film withholds catharsis. No one mourns Cassie; the final scenes don’t allow space for it. Cassie must posthumously force herself back into the spotlight. If this is victory, it’s the Pyrrhic kind. Yet Cassie engineers this scenario with precision. When forced to compromise, she ultimately decides that regaining control of her and Nina’s narrative is worth it.

I recognized a similar kind of compromise in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s text reckons with her choice to marry off Jo March; without diverting from this ending, the film plants seeds of doubt that undermine its legitimacy.

After Jo says a final goodbye to Professor Bhaer, she turns around to find her family and friends smiling at her expectantly. “You love him,” Amy tells her — not a question, but a statement. “No, I don’t,” Jo replies. It doesn’t matter; no one believes her. Her sisters plan a carriage ride to intercept Bhaer. The music swells gleefully, and the following scenes in the carriage and at the train station are bathed in warm yellow light, preparing us for romance. If we detect artifice here, we might be able to ignore it.

Then the music abruptly dies as the film cuts to the coolly lit publishing office. Jo and the publisher are discussing the ending of her novel, “Little Women”; Jo’s current ending is unacceptable because the main character does not marry. The prior scenes hint at artifice, but this one confirms it by revealing a divergence between Gerwig’s Jo March and Jo’s fictional counterpart. Jo points out that her protagonist voices her refusal to marry throughout the book — as she does in the film — and defends her choice.

“The right ending is the one that sells,” the publisher says. Jo ultimately concedes, but she wants the copyright.

La Fiancée Hésitante, Auguste Toulmouche

When the soaring music starts up again and Jo and Bhaer kiss passionately in the rain, the image of Gerwig’s Jo begrudgingly accommodating her publisher is still fresh. These two versions of Jo become difficult to reconcile. The excessive romance of this reunion seems less substantial when compared to Jo’s mercenary pragmatism. In this light, Jo’s family’s insistence that she marry Bhaer is less endearing. The film still adapts its source material’s ending, but it understands Jo March’s marriage as a compromise — both on Jo’s part and Alcott’s.

In the final scene, Jo watches the printing and assembling of her book with a nebulous expression. Her smile is slight, fading before returning. A disembodied arm hands her a completed copy. She’s proud, but that emotion is complicated by uncertainty. While the copyright might belong to her, this story is not purely her own.

Despite its effusive joy, Gerwig’s Little Women cannot give its protagonist a true happy ending. Jo’s womanhood precludes her from an uncompromised triumph. Beholden to patriarchy, Jo has limited control over her own narrative, but she can control which sacrifice she makes.

Keeping Jo March in mind helped me disentangle the messiness of Promising Young Woman — like Jo, Cassie struggles against the confines of her circumstances, evading a neat resolution. The reunion with Bhaer evoked a similar sense of unreality to Al’s arrest, which strikes me as too good to be true. The romantic happy ending is so convenient and cinematic that it casts doubt on itself, and I couldn’t help but feel the same way about the last-minute karma of Al leaving his wedding in cuffs.

Cassie’s posthumous texts are certain of this scene’s finality, definitely claiming that the end “is now,” though Al’s fate will be left up to the justice system. It seems that Cassie declares an ending to her own narrative, regardless of Al’s fate.

My first reaction to the film closing on Cassie’s winky-face was disbelief. I felt it was unearned. What is there to wink about? Upon reflection, the wink seems cued into the sick joke of the situation. As minor characters discover the trail of evidence leading back to her corpse to the tune of an 80’s power ballad, Cassie makes herself heard the only way it seems to work. “I told you so,” the wink says. “I told you I would.”

Duplicity and Darkness: Human Nature, According to Fargo

Spoilers for season 1 of Fargo.

“This is a true story.” The first episode of Fargo begins with these words, superimposed over a sweeping landscape whose few signs of civilization — a thin road, a telephone line — are overwhelmed by the wintry wilderness and shrouded by the night. The lights of some unknown city glimmer just over the horizon, barely visible. As the words fade — “true” the last one to disappear — and the haunting orchestration swells, a single car appears, dwarfed by the nature around it but inexorably driving towards its goal. Its headlights might seem like the light at the end of the tunnel, but its driver is far from a civilized presence here to illuminate the night.

This is our villain, Lorne Malvo, a coldblooded contract killer who leaves chaos in his wake wherever he goes. Malvo is no man, but an apex predator, a wolf, a comparison he himself enjoys making. He’s skilled at putting on a charming face when he wants to, whether playing a harmless pastor, a caddish dentist, or a quippy wanderer. Yet, the wolf lingers beneath, unsettling all who glimpse his true nature. Like the series itself, which is in fact completely fictional, this dissonance between exterior presentation and interior reality creates a sense of narrative distrust and suspense. Fargo itself is predatory in the way it preys on audiences’ fascination with truth. Nothing is what it seems, which makes Malvo and the show alike all the more dangerous and unpredictable.

Malvo’s duplicity and underlying malevolence are mirrored by the setting of Fargo. Most of the season takes place in the Minnesota cities of Bemidji and Duluth, whose wholesome, friendly Midwestern façade and pristine, snow–covered landscapes are undermined by the dysfunction which lies beneath. Fargo’s “antihero,” hapless insurance salesman Lester Nygaard, is similarly deceptive. A broken washing machine’s brutal thumping is our first sight and sound of the Nygaard household, before the camera tilts up from the basement to Lester and his wife Pearl in the kitchen, and it immediately foregrounds the dysfunction of their marriage and Lester’s capacity for malevolence — hidden underneath the floorboards, but violently pulsing, ready to explode.

Fargo presents a rather bleak outlook on human nature and fate. Frequent establishing shots of the Minnesotan wilderness signal that this is the animal kingdom, for all that its characters live in towns and work 9–to–5s. The camera often crouches animalistically behind objects, whether they be snowdrifts or steering wheels, giving the impression of a stalking predator or cowering prey. In the world of the show, doing good is often a pointless quest in futility and one chance encounter can loose the raw, animal savagery lurking beneath a veneer of civilized humanity. Lester and Malvo meet entirely by chance in the hospital and by the end of the pilot, Malvo’s sinister encouragement has driven Lester to kill his nagging, domineering wife, bashing her head in with a hammer after a fight. And so begins Lester’s move up the food chain. He is now both predator and prey, and struggles with this dual existence for the rest of the season.

At times, Lester is cold and calculating, tampering with crime scenes, evading the police, and eventually pinning Pearl’s murder on his brother. But he sometimes reverts to a bumbling coward who can never quite shake off the suspicions of Deputy Molly Solverson, the hero to Lester’s antihero and Malvo’s villain. Throughout the season, Lester wears a bright orange puffy coat, the lurid color resembling that worn by hunters to avoid shooting each other. It simultaneously marks him as both hunter and hunted, a predator and a sitting duck, with no hope of blending in with the stark, muted color palette.

By the season finale, Lester has seemingly transformed from failed salesman to successful alpha male. Following a one–year time skip in episode 8, he’s remarried to the adoring Linda, started his own insurance shop with a slick, masculine façade, and wears sharp blazers and dark–colored turtlenecks. But his past is inescapable and Malvo soon returns to Bemidji to murder Lester, setting in motion a sequence of events that ends in both their deaths. After Lester injures him with a bear trap, Malvo crawls away to his rented cabin to recover and is shot dead by a former police officer, Gus Grimly, who has been lying in wait there. Gus had previously tried to have Malvo arrested, only to have Malvo threaten his daughter Greta. His triumph over Malvo is a triumph of family man over callous killer, of law and order over a vicious predator. Yet Malvo dies as he lived, sowing mistrust and suspense. Neither his severely injured leg nor Gus’s initial hail of bullets are enough to do him in and it takes two bullets to the face to exterminate his threat once and for all.

Malvo’s death also unearths the truth of Pearl’s murder, sending Lester on the run. He dies two weeks later, after running onto the thin ice of a lake in Glacier National Park. In contrast to Minnesota’s flat open landscapes, Montana’s mountainous wilderness is claustrophobic, closing in on him. In truth, he has been on thin ice this whole season and his fall — shortsighted, self–inflicted, and accidental — is a thematically appropriate conclusion to his story. The natural swallows the human, in a trope oft–employed by the Coen brothers (creators of the 1996 movie the series is based on), warning the audience that compromising morality is a slippery slope.

Fargo’s ruthless message about the fragility of humanity is strengthened rather than softened by its seemingly paradoxical happy ending. In a nod to the original film, the show’s last shot frames a pregnant police chief, this time Molly Solverson, her husband Gus (the officer who defeated Malvo), and Gus’s daughter Greta. The only family to survive the season with every member alive, the camera lingers on them curled up together on the couch, watching TV — a happy family, a slice of Americana, a reassurance that at least some good guys have a happily ever after.

Groovy

The Evil Dead doesn’t have much of a plot. Compared to something really plot-heavy like Moneyball or The Avengers (the latter being absolutely stuffed wall-to-wall with twists and betrayals and drama), The Evil Dead doesn’t really seem like it has much going on.

What happens during the movie’s hour-and-a-half runtime?

Five college students travel to a cabin out in the woods. They intend to stay there while on vacation. They discover a cursed book, accidentally recite an incantation, and summon a few demonic spirits. These spirits attack them, posses them. They fight back. Most of them die. The End.

That’s really it. Of course, there’s some other stuff scattered around the film. At one point, they try to start a car so that they can drive back to town, but that doesn’t work out. A few of the characters are dating, so there’s a little drama there. But the vast majority of the movie is just violence and gore and tension as these twenty-somethings fight a losing battle against a number of hateful demons. If you don’t believe me, here’s a chunk of the movie’s plot summary from Wikipedia: “Shelly becomes a Deadite (possessed) and scratches Scott's face. Scott throws her into the fireplace, briefly burning Shelly's face. As she attacks him again, Scott bisects part of her wrist with a knife and then she bites off her own mangled hand. Scott stabs her in the back with a Sumerian dagger, apparently killing her. When she reanimates, Scott dismembers her with an axe and buries the remains. […] When Ash checks on Linda, he is horrified to find that she has become possessed. She attacks him, but he stabs her with a Sumerian dagger. Unwilling to dismember her, he buries her instead. She revives and attacks him, forcing him to decapitate her with a shovel.” I think you get the point.

So if this movie isn’t plot-drive… What is it? It certainly isn’t character-driven. While the protagonist Ash Williams is an icon of the horror genre, that has less to do with his portrayal in this movie and more to do with the subsequent films. Besides Ash, most of the characters are shallow and built on clichés. They also all want the same basic thing: they just want to survive. There aren’t any tangled motivations, alliances, or crisscrossing desires. Everything about the characters points outward. So, again, what is this movie doing?

The Evil Dead is often categorized into the genre ‘splatter’, which hints to one of the movie’s main draws: it constantly tries to shock and horrify you with outrageous amounts of blood and gore. Limbs are torn off, skin melts away, and faces decompose into leather. The visual spectacle of it all is likely why you and most Evil Dead fans paid for a ticket (or pulled it up on Netflix). The over-the-top, macabre, visceral explorations of the human anatomy ignite a simultaneous guttural revulsion and fascination within the viewer. And it’s all done with practical effects, so the ungodly sights occurring in that isolated cabin are strangely mesmerizing (although I did a fair amount of looking away).

It’s also just cool. Similar to the cult classic The Thing, the special effects used in The Evil Dead are both impressive and hokey. They bring out your inner sci-fi/horror film nerd.

The Evil Dead’s lack of plot makes it a good example of a movie that wasn’t really anything until it was committed to film. While the ‘book of the dead’ is a cool aspect of the fiction and some of the more memorable scares were certainly conceived with the script, this movie is memorable for what director Sam Raimi was able to with his camera and some fake body parts.

None of this is an insult to The Evil Dead, which I think is a great movie. I just want to use it to point out how far interesting, creative visuals can take a movie. In the case of Sam Raimi’s breakout hit, direction took it from 0 to 100.

A Story Retold: Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars

    The classic Akira Kurosawa 1961 film Yojimbo, and its spaghetti western remake, Sergio Leone’s 1964 A Fistful of Dollars, tell an almost Shakespearean story of a wandering stranger who comes into a town riddled with violence. The stranger uses wit and martial skill to trick the town’s competing gangs into destroying each other. The two films follow the same basic plot structure but use different tones and filmic techniques to tell the story. Yojimbo has many comedic elements, with witty dialogue and interesting characters in the town, which make up for the relatively few and simple sets. A Fistful of Dollars retells the story, but makes the film more about the action, with more violence, vivid color, complicated sets, and fewer character development scenes.

    Yojimbo was made in black and white, set in a simple Japanese town while samurai were still powerful, but guns were being introduced. A Fistful of Dollars is set in a Mexican town just south of the US border; the gangs in the town have more developed compounds and attempt to operate without the knowledge of the army. The sets of the films are very different, much of the dialogue in Yojimbo, following the ronin Sanjuro, takes place in the bar or on the street, while A Fistful of Dollars has more scenes outside of town and in the vast compound the Rojo gang has. The Rojo gang is made up of three brothers and their followers, they have a walled compound, with large storage rooms, and a courtyard for feasts. The story follows the Rojo’s more than their counterpart in Yojimbo, Ushitora’s gang. Yojimbo’s sets are very simple, with a few small houses and the large open street having most of the action. The Rojo’s rival gang, the Baxters, did not receive much development, while Ushitora’s rival Sebei is made to seem like more of a player in the game. Of the two films, Yojimbo gives off the sense that the town is full of real characters, from the merchants to the low-lives. A Fistful of Dollars has fewer character outside of the gangs, and almost no extras, making the town seem dead, but this strategy allows for the filmmakers to focus on developing the Rojo’s and the Man With No Name’s relationship with them.

    In both films, a rivalry is set up between the protagonist and the other most competent man in town. Unosuke in Yojimbo, and Ramon Rojo in A Fistful of Dollars. Both Unosuke and Ramon are distinguished from their brothers and the rest of the town by their skills as marksman. Unosuke is in possession of a handgun, a rare and deadly weapon that often spells death for samurai. The pistol defines Unosuke as a killer, he goes on to prove his vicious nature throughout the film, before dying to Sanjuro’s sword. Unosuke’s need for violence, even in his dying moments as he says: “without my pistol… I feel sort of naked. I can’t go to the other world without it.” Somehow, when Sanjuro hands him the pistol, Unosuke is unable to shoot, perhaps revealing that violence is not really the answer. Ramon Rojo, from A Fistful of Dollars, is also out for blood, murdering a Mexican Army squad for gold and framing the Americans. This scene was surprising because there was no basis for it in Yojimbo, showing that the western uses action to drive the plot.

    Ramon is given more external motivation than Unosuke, by trimming down some of the content in Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars has fully removed the Sake brewer and the Silk merchant’s characters. The Sake brewer, siding with Ushitora, was given the woman Nui (Marisol in A Fistful of Dollars) to secure his loyalty. Without an intermediate character like the Sake brewer, Ramon himself covets Marisol and stole her from her family. When the Man With No Name rescues Marisol, there is a personal vendetta between them, and makes their showdown much more emotionally charged. Ramon is a master marksman, and the only character shown using a rifle. The sword versus pistol in Yojimbo hits much harder than the pistol versus rifle concept in Fistful of Dollars, but the final fight scene is executed extremely well, with the Man With No Name goading Ramon into using up all his ammo before proving himself to be the better gunslinger.

    The two bartender characters contrast well considering the different approach both films take to violence. Gonji, the elderly bartender is sick of seeing violence in the town, he is distrustful of Sanjuro, who he fears will incite further killing. His temperament reflects the moral stance the film takes: violence and gambling are wrong, and evil men will be punished. A Fistful of Dollars does not talk about morality much at all, the Man With No Name simply finds a situation to take advantage of, without a clear motive. The bartender her befriends, Silvanito, is against his involvement with he town affairs but celebrates as the gang members are killed and tricked. He is not as averse to violence, and watches as Ramon kill the Mexican soldiers. Silvanito does not serve as a moral compass like his counterpart Gonji; both help the protagonists, but take different views to their actions.  

    In conclusion, the plot of Yojimbo is trimmed down slightly in A Fistful of Dollars, but the two films approach the story differently, with Yojimbo functioning like a play, with snappy dialogue and reduced fight scenes, while A Fistful of Dollars capitalized on action, and only developed the most important characters. The focus on action is engaging and visually pleasing, as well as effective at creating tension during the shootout scenes, which any good western should strive for. In Yojimbo, the focus on writing and dialogue gives both a levity and intelligence to the film, while limiting the exploration of the set. Both films follow the plotline well and have excellent final fights.

Bringing Back The Cat

Stuart Gordon’s Reanimator and Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary—two horror films from the 1980’s with similar premises and wildly diverging tones. In both films, the protagonist is caught up with a method for resurrecting the dead. In both films, this method comes with a cost: the dead come back ‘different’, which is just the horror movie way of saying ‘evil’. But most the important similarity between these two films is that the protagonists are introduced to the realm of beyond-death in a very specific way… through the resurrection of a cat.

Yeah, I’m not sure if it was intellectual cross pollination, purposeful hat tipping, or just coincidence, but both movies contain the following ordered plot beats: Character A knows how to bring things back from the dead; Character B does not; Character B’s cat dies; Character A brings it back to life; Character B has an encounter with their newly reanimated cat and thus learns about the resurrection process.

I think it’s worth comparing the undead cat scenes in Reanimator and Pet Sematary because they both use the same ideas to accomplish the same goal (terrorizing the audience), but they do it in very different ways and therefore hit the audience in very different ways.

In Pet Sematary, it’s all about truth and realization. Louis, the main character, has to bury his cat after it was hit by a car. His neighbor Jud tells him that there’s a special place to bury it—a cursed and forgotten Indian burial ground out in the woods. Jud says anything buried there will return from the dead, and of course Louis doesn’t believe him, but they bury the cat there anyways. A few scenes later, Louis is working in his garage when who should show up to greet him…? The cat! But now the cat is acting different. Louis picks it up to see if he’s imagining things and immediately receives a nasty scratch across his face.

Compare this to Reanimator. Protagonist Dan’s cat just died (under mysterious circumstances), and his new roommate Herbert takes it down to the basement. Not long after, Dan hears strange cat-like sounds coming up through the floor boards. Dan goes down to investigate and finds Herbert frantically running around in circles with an angry zombie cat clinging to his back like one of the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Herbert rips off the cat and chucks it at a nearby cabinet, and just when you think it might be finished… It lunges out of the darkness at Dan! Dan frantically fights it back with a baseball bat and finally throws the cat so hard at a wall that its impact leaves a red stain. The cat is dead once again.

What do these two scenes want to accomplish? Well, they’re both trying to scare you, but the same general concept is being played for two completely different reactions. In Pet Sematary, horror is drawn from what is considered to be real in the universe of the movie. Like Louis, the audience (I’m assuming) doesn’t believe in revivification. It’s a myth, it’s fantasy. When Jud tells us about it, we shrug him off as some crazy old man. Maybe we know something spooky is going to happen because we’re watching a horror movie, but we remain skeptical because the main character is still skeptical and because we haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary yet… But then the dead cat actually comes home. The horror there is in the discovery. The realm of possibility in the movie has expanded into uncharted and unpleasant territories, and we don’t like being faced with something so unsettling being presented as now possible. It’s not that the cat is mean, per se, but really that the cat is there. Disbelief being disproven is scary. Being shown the impossible is scary. That’s how Pet Sematary tackles the cat scene: the movie isn’t trying to scare you with the imagery it presents on screen (it is, after all, just a cat), but with the implications it creates beyond the screen. Fear comes from the questions we start to ask about the film’s universe and from our own curiosity about this mysterious burial ground. The movie also wants to tap into our fears about death and what lies beyond death. It’s you, the audience member, that’s doing all the work here because you have to create terror through your own immediate thoughts about what’s presented on screen.

Reanimator is less interested in thoughts, more interested in what’s right in front of you. First of all, the movie has already established that the dead can be brought back to life. The process is shown to us before we even get the opening title sequence (followed by Jeffrey Comb’s awesome and cheesy delivery of the line “I gave him life!”). It’s not shocking when we see the cat brought back because, unlike the protagonist, we already know that reanimation is possible in the world of the film (it’s also in the title). The film is instead trying to shock us with absurdity and humor. Most of us know and love household cats, and now here’s one viciously leaping around in a dark basement and being relentlessly beaten with a baseball bat. It’s effective because it’s so unpleasant to look at. We don’t like watching a blood-covered cat being pitched at a wall, so the footage of it happening is outrageous, scary, and sadistically sort of funny. Reanimator isn’t all that interested in having you emotionally engage with the implications of what exists beyond the limits of our mortal existence. It would much rather gross you out with lots of blood and guts and uncomfortable nudity. The movie is well aware of the absurdity of its off-zombie premise, and it doesn’t want to convince you that this is reality. It’s perfectly comfortable with you remaining at a distance and cringing in your seat at the sight of a surgical saw ripping through a chest cavity.

So the difference between the two cat scenes is the difference between the implied and the explicit. Pet Sematary wants to suggest that the supernatural horror is possible and maybe just lurking right around the corner (‘curiosity killed the cat’), while Reanimator wants to take the goriest and most over-the-top manifestation of that horror and shove it right in your face (‘who let the cat out of the bag?’).

Marvel's Daredevil and the Long Take Fight Scene (Cristina)

There's been a lot of debate recently about the artistic validity of the widely popular Marvel superhero movies. While I view the Marvel franchise as a subgenre of film, whose entries hold a wide variety of quality, one thing that can't be denied is the cinematic quality of Marvel's first Netflix series, Daredevil, whose third and final season was released on just over a year ago. While there's much to be analyzed in the show's mise en scene, character development, and overall pacing, nothing displays its dedication to visual storytelling more than its use of the continuous long take action sequence, a visual choice that impacts the emotional effectiveness of the scene to varying degrees of success. These extended takes celebrate the main character's special limitations and skills. The "Daredevil" of the series, Matt Murdock, has been blind since childhood and developed compensatory strengths in his other senses. In each season's long take he navigates both challenging physical environments and numerous adversaries. 

The least successful of these long takes is in Season 2 at the end of Episode 3. Matt must fight his way down the floors of an apartment building through the ranks of an Irish gang. While a technically impressive, with perfectly timed fight choreography and camera movement, the fight provides little challenge for Matt physically, and is unattached to the emotions of his previous scenes in which he confronts both his antagonists and his own morality. The gang members continue to arrive in the fight at staggered intervals like pre-programmed video game enemies triggered into action as Matt moves within a certain range. The long take stops before the fight is even fully over, and Matt's fight with the last few opponents unfolds over several shots.

Season 3 offers a more successful long take, spanning 10 minutes and 43 seconds. Here Matt fights his way out of a prison where both prisoners and corrupt guards have been tasked by antagonist Wilson Fisk to kill him. As the take continues to drag on, the shot's length communicates the exhaustion of the situation. The prison itself is a sprawling maze of hallways and at any turn another fight awaits Matt. Distinguishing this scene from the Season 2 scene are its many moments without action, where the shot continues unrelentingly, focusing on Matt as he drags himself back to his feet and keeps moving. In the middle of the scene, Matt has a conversation with one prisoner who divulges critical information about Fisk. Even in this exchange of dialogue, the shot pans between characters without cutting, reminding the audience that even in this moment of reprieve the chaos of the prison continues and Matt is still a long way from escape. The motions of the camera place us fully in Matt's perspective, staggering with him as he pushes through the last few hallways, and panning wildly as he takes in the chaos. The shot only ends once he climbs back into the cab he arrived in so long ago and slowly fades to black with Matt and the viewer, slumped and exhausted.

However, it's hard to say if the show would have attempted these scenes if it hadn't been for the wild success of its first extended take in Season 1 Episode 2. In the episode, Matt has relentlessly pursued a group of human traffickers who have kidnapped a young boy. He has lost many fights, is still recovering from injuries, and has been pushed to several physical and moral limits in his attempt to rescue the child. The shot begins before Matt arrives, tracking up and down the single hallway once, establishing the two rooms of traffickers and the boy locked in a room at the back of the hall. It's only when the camera returns to the entrance of the hallway that Matt appears. The shot remains moving up and down the hall even as Matt falls in and out of the rooms in his fight. Like in season 3, the length of the take communicates Matt's exhaustion. Every moment without action sees Matt leaning up against any flat surface to catch his breath. Unlike the other two fight scenes, this one is the final scene of the episode. It's a culmination of Matt's emotional journey throughout the entire episode and communicates to the audience the length he is willing to go to save this one child. The scene doesn't end when the action does but continues to Matt finally reaching the back room of the hall and the boy inside, tracking back to start of the hallway as he carries the boy out, exhausted and breathing heavy, but triumphant. 

Red and Revenge in Oldboy and Lady Vengeance (Nita)

Park Chan-wook is one of the leading voices of the Korean New Wave of Cinema, a movement that began in 1997 and gave rise to a variety of daring and creative masterpieces. Park is best known for directing a series of three films known as The Vengeance Trilogy. The trio of films are narratively unconnected; however, as the name suggests, the three films are linked by the common theme of violent revenge.

My personal favorites of the trilogy are the second and third installments, Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005), respectively. Oldboy, one of the most influential Asian films of the 2000s, focuses on male protagonist Oh Dae-su’s quest to find out why his unknown captor imprisoned him for 15 years. Similarly, Lady Vengeance follows Lee Geum-ja, a woman who is blackmailed into serving 13 years in prison for a murder she did not commit. Upon her release from prison, Geum-ja embarks on a journey for revenge against the true murderer. The two films are visually and psychologically dreadful, yet Park skillfully explores beautiful complexities about human nature by showcasing violence on the mind and body. One of the ways in which Park achieves these layered films is by his distinct usage of color palette, in particular the color red.

Oldboy features frequent pops of red that contrast the general dark and muted color palette of the film. These moments of red often appear in the form of blood, highlighting the physical violence within the film. At the start of Oldboy, this violence is self-inflicted: while imprisoned in the bleak hotel room, Dae-su repeatedly shatters glass and tries to kill himself (he is revived by his captor every time against his will). A shot of Dae-su being dragged out of the hotel, bloodied and unconscious, is shown multiple times. A large trail of blood is left behind on each occasion, and the red-stained carpet is visible in following scenes. Dae-su’s violence against himself reveals his desire to escape the dark and cyclical life he is imprisoned in, while his inability to “succeed” in his attempts furthers the film’s concept of inescapable fate – the lingering dark red blood stains serving as a reminder of this hopeless condition. This is violence on the mind, too.

As the film continues, this violence is projected outwards when Dae-su’s desire for revenge ensues. For instance, in the scene where Dae-su finds and captures one of his captor’s accomplices, Dae-su is graphically seen ripping out the man’s teeth and causing profuse bleeding. The mutilation of another human’s body and the consequent explosions of red – a common occurrence in the movie – reveal mankind’s capacity for depravity.

In Lady Vengeance, a similar usage of the color red can be observed. Like Oldboy, Lady Vengeance features the protagonist causing self-harm in the beginning of the film. Sporting red eyeshadow and overwhelmed with guilt, Geum-ja visits the parents of the boy she falsely confessed to murdering. In an attempt to earn their forgiveness, she threatens to cut off all her fingers. Before she is stopped by the terrified parents, she manages to chop off her little finger. In the visually brutal scene, blood is spewed out all over a coffee table and the floor. Park’s signature overhead shot reveals the red pools of blood surrounding the three crazed characters, highlighting the internal and external violence of the scene.

One of the most notable scenes in Lady Vengeance occurs towards the end of the film, after Geum-ja captures the real murderer and finds out that he has killed other children. Geum-ja gathers all the parents of the murdered children and they decide to seek revenge and take turns torturing the murderer, rather than simply turning him into the police. The scenes of violence that follow this decision are incredibly eerie and graphic, with blood being a pervasive element in most shots. The scenes are purposefully outrageous, as Park explores the concept of ordinary people being able to commit such heinous acts. While the parents display their capacity for savagery in the name of revenge, the sequence prompts us to consider the complex themes of justice and equality. Furthermore, we wonder about the inherent darkness that Park suggests humanity possesses.

After repeatedly emphasizing the extreme violence on characters’ bodies and minds resulting from revenge seeking, Park ultimately conveys that the violence culminates into nothing substantially beneficial. In Oldboy, the end reveals that the revenge was two-way, as Dae-su finds out that his captor only freed him to seek revenge and manipulate Dae-su into unknowingly falling in love with his own daughter. The last scene is Dae-su and his daughter/lover, dressed in all red, embracing in a field of white snow. Here, the red serves as an aggressive reminder of the moral dilemma that Dae-su is left with. In Lady Vengeance, the end depicts the drive for revenge spreading from one woman to many individuals. Though the final act of revenge is successfully carried out and celebrated by the characters at the end of the film, Geum-ja’s guilt still remains as she must live with the repercussions of her actions. Interestingly, there is an absence of red in the final shot of Lady Vengeance, hinting at the film’s departure from violence and revenge. Instead, a feeling of emptiness permeates the scene as an incredibly pained Geum-ja stands in a narrow alley of white snow, with her face pathetically stuffed in a white cake. Thus, Park seems to end on a similar sentiment at the conclusion of both Oldboy and Lady Vengeance: revenge is unsatisfying.

Fury Road: The Car Is a Penis (Eric)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), directed by George Miller, is structured as one giant car chase. The movie begins with Max’s capture and enslavement in the Citadel, a fortress with much needed water and resources in the movie’s wasteland Earth. He’s seen being branded with the skull logo that represents Immortan Joe, the dictator who maintains power by hoarding water in the Citadel. The Imperator Furiosa and a group of War Boys are sent into the dessert to collect gas and bullets when Furiosa suddenly deviates from the path. Furiosa is off to escape to the Green Place, the idyllic town from which she was kidnapped as a child, with Immortan Joe’s many “wives” in tow. Joe and his army immediately go after them, and chase after chase ensues in the hunt for Furiosa and the stolen wives.

When it comes to a car chase’s potential to induce an adrenaline rush, bigger always means better. With more cars comes a higher probability of crashes, and the typical large-scale car chase come in the form of police cars. Fury Road uses the basic idea of multiple cars chasing a single “prey” car and takes it to an extreme. The monstrous cars in Immortan Joe’s army serve specific functions in the hunt, and they are outfitted as such. There are cars fitted with machine guns, cars with people swinging through the air on poles, and there’s a single drummer boy car with a man swinging from wires while playing an electric guitar. Max himself gets dragged into the initial chase as a “blood bag”, and he’s seen chained and muzzled to the front of a car. Mastery of these specialized vehicles is critical to survival in this post apocalyptic environment. Importantly, the titular Max evidences less mastery over these vehicles throughout the film than does Furiosa, and though Max is by no means incompetent, Furiosa is set up as the leader of the pack, which creates some interesting implications.

Furiosa, with her shaved head and the ease with which she fends for herself in this violent setting, is a very masculine character. Indeed, the cylindrical vehicle which she controls for much of the film is the most phallic car out of the whole fleet. It’s also the largest vehicle in the movie. Furiosa stands in stark contrast to the more traditionally feminine “wives” that she’s leading to the Green Place, though even they are tougher than they appear. Despite being clothed in white dresses and shirts, (as opposed to Furiosa’s dirty pants and boots and metal arm), the wives have no choice but to match the fierceness of the men around them in order to survive.

Furiosa’s truck is large enough to fit several protagonists inside, thus giving it the ability to serve as a setting all on its own. The majority of the characters in the film are men, and Furiosa’s truck is an outlier in terms of its personnel. The heroes, many of them female, must work together within the vehicle to fight off the attackers in this dangerous, desert landscape. Furthermore, the creation of bonds and realization of emotions occurring mid-chase works to form character arcs as the action occurs. Ultimately, Furiosa is able to achieve success with the help of her crew, and the display of her dominance and mastery over her environment comes with the orgasmic release of the water that’s been hoarded by Immortan Joe.

   

 

LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS: What is Female Agency When the Female Body is Gone? (Katie)

I cannot lie: I love a good sci-fi story. When LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS released on Netflix, I made quick work of binging the animated anthology. The first episode I saw (although Netflix has apparently randomized episode orders for this series) was “Sonnie’s Edge,” which had me thrilled and shocked in multiple ways throughout its 17-minute duration. One of the questions the episode asks, at least in my opinion, is what female agency, victimization, or empowerment means when the female body no longer exists.

There are spoilers ahead in my discussion of the short’s plot and implications, and I’m also including a trigger warning for rape due to the episode’s nature. (Seriously, there will unfortunately be a lot of talk about rape in this post.)

Now, onto the plot of “Sonnie’s Edge.” In a futuristic and dystopian society where prize fighters compete in death matches for money, we follow a day in the life of one female “pilot” who is exceptionally skilled at controlling her “beastie.” The beasties are the gladiators in the arena; they are bioengineered monsters made for killing.

As the opening sequence cuts to introduce our main characters, a few things immediately stand out. A notably female-presenting companion, Ivrina, and a noticeably male-presenting companion, Wes, walk in with Sonnie—who looks androgynous, if not far more ambiguous in terms of gender presentation. Her name, “Sonnie,” also evokes a more masculine aura to her character, even though her slimmer and curvier frame denotes some presence of conventional femininity.

The first conflict Sonnie faces is with a rich and corrupt man, Dicko (great naming right there), who wants to rig the next prize fight. He will pay her hundreds of thousands for her to voluntarily lose the next round. When Sonnie tells him to screw off, Ivrina steps in to further defend her from the old man. It is in the exchange between Ivrina and Dicko that we learn of Sonnie’s backstory—and this is a noticeably exposition-y bit of dialogue. When I say noticeably exposition-y, I mean that anyone versed in a little bit of writing will realize just how shoehorned the dialogue feels.

Here’s my transcription of the bit of dialogue, taken from Netflix subtitles, plus screen directions.

IVRINA

[Exhales angrily] Fucking men. It’s cunts like you that fucked her up to begin with.

Bodyguards approach Ivrina threateningly.

IVRINA

[Sighs] Fuck. A year ago, Sonnie got snatched by an estate gang, and when they was done using her, they started cutting, slicing their marks into her flesh. Can you imagine that kind of pain, that kind of humiliation carved into her skin? A lifelong reminder of that day. So when Sonnie steps into the pit, she’s not fighting for pride or status and certainly not for your fucking money. She’s carving up the men who did this to her. [3:30 - 4:11]

See what I mean? At least to me, the dialogue felt like someone writing a background inspired by some erotic fantasy. It was put in purely for the benefit of the watcher, and it was done in a quick and dirty way that seemed to want to titillate or horrify rather than offer meaningful explanation. The exposition appears much like other incidents of rapes of female characters in media nowadays, many of which seem to be written in for no other reason than the shock factor.

I was unimpressed with this bit of writing, but the ending of “Sonnie’s Edge” actually did an impressive thematic reversal on this blatant—and even almost disrespectful—telling of Sonnie’s past.

Later, when Sonnie is having a discreet conversation with Dicko’s female consort, they flirt and talk about Sonnie’s past. (Their conversation is more like foreplay than anything else, with kisses and soft touches included.) Here’s the relevant excerpt:

DICKO’S CONSORT

But that night, the gang, the…

SONNIE

Rape. Yeah. It’s not that. They can’t see past it. No one can. But it ain’t what gives me my edge. Angry little girl, out for revenge. Dicko believes that shit…

Dicko’s consort lightly tugs one strap of Sonnie’s shirt off a shoulder.

SONNIE

… ‘cause he wants to. They all do.

Dicko’s consort slides her dress straps off her shoulders.

DICKO’S CONSORT

[Slowly raising her skirt] Everyone sees what they want to see.  [12:50 - 13:33]

I felt like “Sonnie’s Edge” was calling many of the audience members out, myself included. Once we heard Sonnie’s shocking backstory within the first five minutes of the episode, all we could think about was her history.

Not to mention the fight scene between Sonnie’s beastie, Khanivore, and her male opponent’s beastie, Turboraptor. There’s plenty of forced, penetrative imagery between the beasties that’s rendered a lot more noticeable once you remember Sonnie’s apparent origins—definitely an intended effect.

We only saw Sonnie in light of her rape. We all saw what we wanted to see, even if the episode does reinforce seeing Sonnie in this specific light.

But there’s more to discuss. The twist ending to “Sonnie’s Edge” includes more violence to the female body. It turns out that Dicko’s consort is a bioengineered servant made to execute Dicko’s commands, and she penetrates Sonnie’s skull with Wolverine-like claws from her knuckles right after a kiss. Dicko comes out of the shadows to gloat.

Sonnie is dropped to the floor, and her skull is bashed in by Dicko’s foot. When Sonnie’s voice does not falter, and she does not die, it’s revealed that Sonnie was Khanivore the entire time. Khanivore then kills both Dicko and his consort.

While the explicit logistics aren’t made clear, the gist of the reveal is as follows: Sonnie’s original body was lost after the gang attack; Ivrina and Wes linked her consciousness with Khanivore’s, and Sonnie lives solely in Khanivore. Her human body is just a bioengineered puppet from her uploaded brain, and when she is fighting in the pit as a beastie, she is fighting for her life. That is her “edge.”

There is a lot of complexity to this short episode’s plot. The episode seems to take on a feminist role at the surface, with Sonnie being a character like Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The episode also makes a big deal out of Sonnie being the only female pilot in the beastie ring.

But what about the writing itself? The writers wanted everyone in the audience to think about Sonnie’s rape origin story in every minute of the episode, up till the very end. Much like Sonnie says, we can’t see past it. References to the rape in imagery and small plot points keep the origin story fresh in our minds; clearly, writers want us to be thinking about Sonnie’s rape, even if only as a blind to the real twist.

I found myself asking this question by the end of the episode: if Sonnie survived the rape not as a human woman, but an uploaded consciousness linked to a beastie who literally fights to live, which is better?

As a beastie, Sonnie has unlimited power at her hands. Physically, she is superior to all the beasties in the ring so far; she is mentioned to being on a 17-count win streak. She is obviously superior to every human; she’s a bioengineered monster made for killing. But she has limited autonomy and limited friendship with even her closest apparent friends, Ivrina and Wes. Khanivore, or Sonnie, has to keep fighting in the pit to make a living, and she has an added stake of needing to stay alive while in the pit—unlike every other pilot, her consciousness is directly tied to her beastie’s. Additionally, the implication of Ivrina and Wes finding Sonnie’s broken body and uploading her consciousness into Khanivore means that, at worst, they only saved her as a means of profit, or, at best, out of a desperate lack of other measures.

The picture that “Sonnie’s Edge” paints of female power and agency, then, is bleak. Sonnie, even in her most powerful form as Khanivore, is still subjugated to other forces—whether or not the female body is still intact. These other forces can include the violence of men, or the oppressive difficulty of surviving in a dystopian society. This message is also reinforced in the character of Dicko’s consort. She is completely without autonomy: every one of her acts is in service to Dicko, regardless of her physical superiority to him. (She is a more subtle and organic-looking, but she can be a killing machine, too, as evidenced by her Wolverine-like claws.) There seems to be no hope: Sonnie was raped and apparently nearly killed by men as a human, and when she became Khanivore, her new physical powers were restricted only to the pit, where she faces a greater loss than her opponent if she loses.

Might we be able to say, then, that “Sonnie’s Edge” at least views female endurance and survivability with optimism? Even if there’s no autonomy for characters like Sonnie or Dicko’s consort, even if the only source of happiness for many characters is achieving violence against an opponent, can we at least say that the women in Sonnie’s world can stick through anything to see another day?

Yes, although the optimism is laced with grit. Sonnie’s “edge” is the real, omnipresent fear of losing her life in the ring. She claims she’s always afraid in her conversation with Dicko’s consort, and by the end of the episode, she openly cites her fear as the thing that keeps her alive. It’s admirable, how indomitable Sonnie’s will to live is, even if it may be depressing that she needs the fear to begin with.

Then the question becomes why the framing of Sonnie's backstory needed such a specific blind. Do women in the world of "Sonnie's Edge" require a digestible, plausible backstory in order to go unnoticed by men and the rest of society? Perhaps; Sonnie states that she keeps her story so that men like Dicko can believe it. But it doesn't keep her safe; what keeps her safe is the secret that she no longer has a human body. And that argument is even more bleak: the only way to stay safe as a woman in Sonnie's world is to not be a woman.

All in all, “Sonnie’s Edge” is a visually stunning science fiction piece that falls comfortably into the grim and cynical subgenre of cyberpunk. Besides the thrilling colors, fight sequences, and beautiful animation, I think it plays with storytelling expectations in interesting ways... even if the rape as a red herring may not have been totally necessary or respectful. That’s a question I’ll have to tackle another time.

Works cited in this text:

“SONNIE’S EDGE.” LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. Netflix. March 15, 2019. Netflix.

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. 

Almost Like It Never Happened: Violence Contained By Film (Jin)

The moment we capture an event or person on film, they become unreal to us. They’ve become possessable objects, something to be replayed and thus controlled. Through this ownership, the spectator retains the power to watch without being held accountable for what is taking place on the screen. When the film is that of a real act of violence, the power dynamic becomes particularly apparent: though the spectator may sympathize with the people on the screen, he or she typically feels no sense of direct responsibility. What is happening on the screen remains on the screen. The film is a separate world altogether, one which can be turned off and forgotten, or even replayed again and again until it has lost its ability to shock. How many times have we watched bleeding victims and decimated cities on the news? It may be an evocative sight but not a lasting one.

Benny, the fourteen year old protagonist in Michael Haneke’s Benny’s Video, is the archetype of someone lost in an illusionary, dream-world of the seen and the controlled. Born into a wealthy family obsessed with career and social reputation, he himself is lost in delusion, albeit one composed of television screens. Just as his parents’ are trapped in their fear of losing face to their coworkers and friends, Benny is trapped in a self-imposed, psychological landscape of his bedroom which feeds his obsession with videos. There is a video constantly playing in the background while he quietly works at his desk, along with a second television screen showing a live feed of his apartment building’s exterior and his own bedroom’s interior. It is a life of relentless observation, one in which Benny plays the role of stoic, cold spectator.

 

The extent of his psychotic containment reaches its peak when Benny invites a girl over to his home to watch a video he’d recorded of a pig being slaughtered at a relative’s farm. Their sparse dialogue alone reveals a sort of naivety and a disconnect between violence in reality and on film. When asked by the girl, “have you ever seen a dead person – a real one, I mean,” Benny replies, “No. I once saw a TV program about the tricks they use in action films. It’s all ketchup and plastic.” He remains unaware that actions in reality, unlike on video, have real consequences, and when he eventually discharges a slaughtering gun, the same one used in the pig video, on the girl’s chest, he is taken aback by the girl’s agonizing screams.

Proceeding the girl’s death, the greatest moment of horror is when we realize that, despite having murdered a human being, Benny still remains locked in his internal world. The real physical action of violence fail to raise any real emotional response from Benny, and like how the murder scene is shown solely on his television screen rather than being shown in real time, Benny has internalized the incident as an “unreal” event isolated within the video tape. Even when Benny’s parents discover his son’s crime, they show a similar lack of emotive response and immediately begin strategizing how to save their reputation. It becomes increasingly apparent that the absence of consequence is more noticeable than the absence of a life itself. The dead girl remains a stranger, and though she mentioned having a large family, nothing is to be known about the impact of her death. In fact, it is as though Benny’s murder tape carries a higher value than the girl herself and is almost more “real” due to its ability to prove the murder had occurred. Later on, the video tape is the only object capable of bearing any real consequence, by acting as legal evidence and resulting in the family’s arrest. Preceding this, however, the family remain in a strange limbo, spending a whole week vacationing in Egypt.

The loss of a human life could hardly be felt as “real,” when there are absolutely no repercussions against the murderer: how is it possible to dictate one’s actions as being real, if they hold no visible effect? The emotionless psychological vacuum of Benny’s mind is therefore all the more terrifying than any real physical damage he can cause. Ultimately, it is this lack of emotional and social consequence that is felt as being “more violent” than the actual murder itself.

Bresson's L'argent: A New Form of Passion (Jin)

When watching films, we are so often told exactly how to feel through the orchestral score and close-ups of waving hands and facial expressions, that we scarcely have space to perceive the characters’ emotions for ourselves. Bresson, in L’argent, creates this space for his audience in the form of distancing; we are no longer relayed the characters’ exact internal dialogue, nor are we obliged to witness any form of direct emotional outburst. Instead, there is a palpable distance between us and the film, bestowing us with the responsibility of interpreting the characters’ feelings through their actions. It is a retreat into the action of observation, a retreat away from theatricality and clichéd emotional symbols, and it is this retreat that allows L’argent to become an even keener portrayal of human passion.

On the surface, L’argent poses a relatively simple story. Yvon, a working-class man with a wife and young daughter, is wrongfully accused of producing counterfeit cash when he unknowingly uses counterfeit cash to pay his restaurant tab. He is exempt from jail time but loses his job, prompting him to agree in assisting a bank heist. When he is again caught, he is sentenced to prison, leading to a chain of increasingly tragic events. Yvon’s suffering is particularly tragic, because all his grievances can be traced back to the foolishness of two teenage boys, who decided to pay at a photo shop using a forged 500-franc note.

 

Because of the narrative simplicity and Bresson’s use of impassive dialogue and faces, it is easy to mistake the film for being emotionally detached. The actors themselves show incredible restraint, and Bresson’s use of perfect framing and very precise composition give a calculative impression. Both are particularly evident during the scene in which Elise discovers her husband, Yvon, is in jail. Given their scant living conditions and dependent child, we expect Yvon’s wife to feel a great degree of loss and display a look of shock or, at the least, a few sobs of grief. Instead, we are shown her sitting on a plain wooden bench, with her hands demurely folded on her lap and her face quietly bowed. Even when Yvon is sentenced to three years in prison, the only reaction shot that we see of Elise is of her similarly sitting on a bench at court, framed by the stark empty benches around her.

Within this short sequence, Elise’s emotional turmoil, deprived of any dialogue and accompanied only by diegetic sound, is thereby bound within her actions. It is this passive, silent action of sitting, followed only by the simple action of rising to leave the court room, that speaks louder than any verbalized language of grief. This is perhaps because we are invited to discover her emotion through her actions, much like the way we are obliged to do so in real life. Our intimate experiences of others’ intense traumas are never wholly spelt out for us via explanatory narration nor melancholy strings playing in the background. Rather, we are left to piece together their internal despair by quietly observing their actions and interpreting them as emotional symbols. Similarly, when watching Elise sitting down, we experience her grief the same way we experience others’ grievances in reality, constrained to using our imagination to fill in for absent information. Bresson gives us the space to discover her despair for ourselves, and her despair, then, becomes real to us.  

This personalized discovery of emotion is used throughout the entire film, creating an even stronger connection between the audience and the story. When Yvon murders the entire household towards the end of the film, we are informed of the murder through the actions of the dog, as the camera pans along his frenzied movement, up and down, past the corpses. By using the dog as an agent of information, we are given the chance to “discover” the murder, rather than being forthright informed of it, further allowing us to actively participate in the film’s emotional environment.

This discovery-type experience is also paired with an omission of the actual moment of violence. Bresson purposefully cuts straight from the building of tension to the consequences of the act of violence that the preceding shots had been building towards. For example, when Yvon attempts suicide, we see him hiding a mound of pills behind his prison bed before the film cuts immediately to an ambulance pulling away. Later, when Yvon murders the hotel keepers, we are again spared the details of the actual murder and see, instead, blood swirling down a bathroom sink. By sparing us these moments of climax, Bresson also spares us the risk of finding such moments unbelievable. Furthermore, the omissions isolate human action so that we become aware of their limitations: one simple scene of an ambulance driving away is forced to contain the full emotional significance of Yvon’s attempted suicide, just as the Elise’s mute sitting must contain her whole despair. Instead of limiting our emotional experience of the film, these tightly contained expressions heighten the film’s emotional impact. After all, the most difficult form of grief is one in which we are left to our imagination, forced to re-create scenes of death which we’ve never witnessed nor were fully informed of, compelled to guess the exact details as to how a loved one may have perished.

Finding a New God in Film (Jin)

 

 

The vampire movie genre has become so hopelessly imbued with the increasily cheesy image of Count Dracula and the overtly romanticized Twilight vampires, that it’d be a waste of time to argue that the film Let the Right One In could redeem the genre as a whole. When watching this film, it is best to forget the vampire context entirely and instead judge it with fresh expectations: not as a horror or romance movie, but as a film reframing human loneliness.

Oskar, the protagonist, with his elvish white hair and equally pale skin, is the perfect picture of adolescent frailty. Nothing conveys loneliness better than the spindly twelve-year old kid being viciously assaulted by school bullies. He is entirely defenseless against his tormentors, and when set against the stark landscape of Swedish winter, his despair is painfully palpable.

By the time his unlikely savior appears in the shape of a small scruffy girl, Eli, we’ve already grown a strong attachment to Oskar. Despite showing hints of nascent homicidal tendencies, such as collecting newspaper clippings of murder cases and habitually play-acting stabbing his bullies, Oskar and his alienation in his divorced home background and complete friendlessness stirs our own childhood memories of loneliness. He carries a deep-rooted longing for understanding that is seeded in each and every one of us, and watching Eli finally fulfilling Oskar’s aching need of a friend is nearly cathartic. The fact that she happens to be a centuries-old vampire and that she possesses a pedophilic, middle-aged caretaker, Håkan, fades away into the background when watching her and Oskar experience emotional intimacy for the first time. As they are lying in bed together, Eli playfully tapping her fingers along Oskar’s back, she is no longer a brutal murderer and he is no longer the troubled child. They are simply two children, bound by a keen longing for companionship.   

The film’s poignancy rises, not just from its ability to draw out our empathy, but on its contextual dissection of the human condition: isolation. Each character, such as the bullies, Håkan, and Oskar’s neighbors, are all marked by traces of loneliness, whether it be helplessly tormenting Oskar in fear of being bullied himself or living alone in a dim apartment broiling with cats. More importantly, each one has found themselves an object of worship: the schoolkid worships the bully leader, the isolated neighbor worships his cats, Håkan worships Eli, and more. Though the film does not rely heavily on religious references, Eli serves in clearly establishing the film’s existential worldview. Oskar, in his suffering, has created himself a religion. First, by poring over the murder-case newspaper clippings and recreating himself as a brutal avenger in his imagination, then by selecting Eli as his physical deity. Eli becomes his messiah, in a fitting reflection of her namesake, the Biblical prophet Eli.

Oskar’s obsessive reliance on this self-imposed religion, however, is not portrayed as a perversion, but rather, an innately human experience. It is a clear portrayal of carnal longing, the desire to fill an inner loneliness, that we, by nature, can fully identify with. Here, the real enemy is not violence nor the loss of morality, as many gore-ridden films are prone to depicting, but isolation. Isolation is the ultimate enemy that everyone fights individually, regardless of situation or social position. In other words, in the film (and perhaps in reality), isolation is humanity’s universal condition. Regardless of how much love one may receive or pour into another, the inner void can only be partially filled, and one is thereby forced to constantly seek objects of worship as temporary alleviation. Isolation is the greatest problem that remains unsolvable, and therefore, any attempt to solve it, no matter how destructive or morally ambiguous, is fully justifiable.

This worldview is further heightened by the film’s use of realism. Violence itself is presented as a natural act; it is an examination of human nature running its course, or rather, human nature given its chance to reveal itself. Stylistic choices, such as showing most of Eli’s attacks as long shots, having the massacre to take place off-screen, and avoiding the use of visual clichés such as jump-cuts and rapid cutting, allow for an objective consideration. Such assaults seem like a matter of survival: Eli finds no joy in killing her human victims, and when Håkan, her helper, murders for her sake, there’s an emphasis on his human clumsiness and horrifying matter-of-factness. Håkan is forced to drag a corpse on a red, plastic sleigh, comically grunting and slipping through the dense snow, and even shoos away a passerby’s poodle that starts lapping at a pool of blood. The violence becomes all the more understandable and relatable, because the film purposefully includes the messy, physical details that precedes or preludes the real killing of people.

The film surpasses most standard depictions of deity worship by redefining what is the ideal god. Eli has spent centuries in alienation, receiving one-sided love from a series of human servants. This indicates that Eli, despite possessing the incredible strength that Oskar needs in defeating his bullies, has equal need of Oskar and his love. This is the exact god we want for ourselves: a god who, despite possessing the greater power we desire, loves us because it needs us. It is not a god that only demands worship, but rather, returns our worship. Perhaps this is why this film so effectively draws us in– it is the depiction of an equivalent exchange, like an ideal human relationship, and of a god figure stunningly made sympathetic. 

Behind the Trigger: Gus Van Sant’s Depiction of Adolescent Violence in Elephant (Mireille)

Over and over we read, hear, and talk about yet another school shooting. In less than one month, two different high school students slaughtered their peers. A handful of films have been made to bring to light the horror of living through such an event often focusing on the psychological disturbance of the assassin. Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) chronicles the events surrounding the massacre of students at a high school by two other students to capture the atrocity of the act and the trauma of the victims and shooters themselves. Though Van Sant provides a backstory for the motivation of the disturbed individuals responsible for the shootings, the film is not devoted to the psychological profile of the murderers. Rather, Van Sant uses cinematography, sound design, and editing to make horrifically real the experiences of the individuals victimized in such a tragedy.

Van Sant loosely based Elephant on the events that occurred during the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Elephant recounts the story of how two high school students plan the massacre of members of their school due to the fact that they have been bullied by other students and disenfranchised by the school administration. The film chronicles the events in a linear fashion by glimpsing at the perspectives of several students as they struggle within the school system. Throughout the film, Van Sant uses repetition not only to emphasize the different manner in which each character in the film interacts with his/her surroundings, but also to create suspense and a sense of chaos. One particular scene that Van Sant repeats again and again shows individual characters walking down a hallway. At first glance these individual hall scenes appear unconnected and do not seem to have any particular point. However, towards the end of the film Van Sant makes clear his intent for the repetition. The audience realizes that all of the characters filmed in the hallway are interconnected and have something in common, namely, they are all victimized by the shooters the film. Van Sant also uses unsettling long takes of the shots that are part of this sequence to accentuate the awkward insecurities of high school and to create an ominous feeling.

Elephant also utilizes an intriguing sound design. The majority of the film is mostly minimalistic diegetic sound that is eerily quiet. This state of “low sound” creates an unsettling mood, but also sets the tone for the banal and muted lifestyle of high school students trying to finish up their day. A few times throughout the film, Van Sant does use music, but not necessarily in a context one would expect. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, which is a morose almost funereal lamentation, is heard during the introduction of one of the less prominent characters; however, the piece is muddied with traditional school setting sounds. The sonata lingers as Van Sant draws out an exceptionally long behind-the-shoulder take of this character until he begins interacting with other students. This same sonata makes a re-appearance, but this time one of the shooters is actually playing the piece on a piano.  The music is not competing with any other sound; however, the shooter makes frequent mistakes while playing. Van Sant’s choice of music creates conflict within the audience as the sonata does not remind us of high school, nor does it seem coherent that a student who is planning the assassination of his peers should be delicately playing the piano. Furthermore, the mistakes that the shooter makes while playing are not random errors from misplaced fingers. Instead, the errors themselves end up creating new chords that result in the piece being played in a completely different key, adding now auditory unease to the already visual tension that builds up in the film.

Van Sant ends Elephant in a particularly hair raising manner. The main shooter discovers two students hiding in a meat freezer in the cafeteria. One of the students is none other than the student was first associated with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. At that moment it becomes clear that Van Sant’s musical choice served as a premonitory tool.  In this final sequence, the frame is almost entirely filled by the placid face of the shooter, who is taunting his victims with a game to determine who he will shoot and is surrounded by hanging meats and carcasses. The audience does not see the two students cornered in this nightmare scenario, but solely hears their voices. The framing of the elements in the freezer creates a very claustrophobic feel that is, however, at once intimate and almost unrealistic. Elephant is brought to a close with Van Sant cutting from this last scene of the shooter in the freezer to the same shot that was utilized in the opening of the film: a neutral sky and benign power lines, a metaphor perhaps for the fact that the horror of gun violence has become almost ordinary in today’s society. Van Sant also does not show us who the shooter chose to kill. He prefers to leave the audience with the horror faced by the victim rather than to glorify the final act of the assassin. 

Violence In To Kill A Mocking Bird: Mythologies Subverted & Perpetuated (Gabe)

To Kill a Mockingbird handles and presents violence in ways I had not previously noted in other works of cinema. During the film’s dramatic climax, in which Gem and Scout are attacked by Bob Ewell and subsequently rescued by Boo Radley, the film limits the horror of the attack while simultaneously subverting the society’s racist, ruling stereotype of black male sexual violence towards white women.

The specific sequence under examination begins at 1:52:10 when Gem and Scout are walking home through the woods from the Halloween pageant.  A detail of the staging that demands attention is that during medium-close shots, both children are isolated in their respective frames with one notable exception. While Gem is shot wholly on his own during coverage, Scout’s close-ups are instead formally dominated by her brother’s hand, which rests on the top of her costumed head. This kindly touch serves as a reassuring point of contact to Scout, whose vision is sorely impaired by her ham-shaped suit, and is juxtaposed by the ensuing violence, whose presence is first visually announced by a pair of hands flying at Gem into the tight frame. Here we see a direct thematic contrast between the gently innocent hands of a protector, and the raging hands of brutality. The reason for the hands’ disembodiment here is that the camera is mirroring Scout’s view of the events. This continues as the second man enters the scuffle. Instead of using a camera masking effect to attain the same cinematographic goal, the director chooses to stage the fight within the unimpeded shot so that it occupies the entirety of the frame while still limiting our, and thereby Scout’s view of the events. This choice unsurprisingly results in furthering our suspense because the viewer cannot tell who this assailant is due to our limited vantage point, but more importantly, by staging the blocking in this way without masking, the hands become a dominant feature of the mise-en-scene. Additionally, there are many quick shots in this sequence that are constructed with at least one adult male hand in the foreground, and thereby while enacting violence on the characters in the story, the hands also present a visual violence by disrupting and overpowering multiple shots. Often the hands enter the shot before any other part of the body, which we see both in the first attack on Gem, and later at 1:55:15. This helps create an effect of fetishization, while additionally endowing the hands with a sense of autonomy, for according to our view, they are literally leading the charge on these two children.

Through the hands of two mystery men dominating the shots in the fight scene, a new and subtle effect is achieved. Here the hands are presented as the perpetrators of violence, in place of the men themselves. Their hands are fetished and become stand-ins for male violence in general. This may seem like a bold claim when taken without contextualization from the rest of the film, so allow me briefly to refer to prior events in the story. In the courtroom, when a black man, Tom Robinson is tried for the alleged rape and assault of a white woman, Mayella Ewell, a great point of focus for the legal arguments is whose hands could have possibly hurt her. Therefore, that scene too presents hands as being intrinsically tied to violence, but instead the narrative at play here is the supposed violence of a black man towards a white woman. This ideology of hatred towards black men as being predisposed to evil lust for white women is subverted by the structure of the later fight sequence, because while the hands are almost all we can see of the two adults fighting, we can clearly tell that both pairs are Caucasian, not black.

This set up an interesting contradiction for me in the film’s content. The crime Atticus is charged with defending is based upon societal racism which mythologizes the lusty black man as a dangerous animalistic figure who must be confined in order to protect the white woman’s honor. However, the only violence the film actually shows is perpetrated by white men, most notably in this fight scene, but also when Atticus shoots a rabid dog and when the lynch mob attempts to enact vigilante “justice” upon Tom. Black male violence doesn’t even exist within the film itself, while white male violence is pervasive. However, the film’s refutation of the mythology of violent black men comes at the cost of perpetuating the idealization of white female purity. In the fight scene, Scout is sheltered from the sight of violence and its physical perils by her brother’s heroic efforts, and then by Boo Radley’s intervention. She is never hurt at all, despite a few tumbles, and escapes entirely safely. The struggle centers around the attempts by white two white males (both an adult and a child) to protect a white female from harm. I thought this was an interesting thematic decision by the narrative’s author, which only slightly undercut the otherwise incisive dismantling of racist mythologies.

The Silent Horror of War in Film (Mireille)

It is probably fair to say that the theme of war is one of the most pervasive in film. Whether for propaganda, critique or shock value, cinema relishes in the recreation of the marching footsteps, the gun blasts, the frenetic flight of those in distress, and the reenactment of violence. I have probably had my fill of these, particularly the mainstream variety that tend to have a similar feel and construct. Specifically, the type of film that is loaded with sounds so intense that it becomes uncomfortable and has a vivid language that is as subtle as a bludgeoning instrument. These films also often follow a rigid plot line with a predictable outcome. It is almost as if humans want the full visceral horror of war, but then need to absolve themselves of the evil, by giving the film a conciliatory ending. The newest Hollywood war film, Dunkirk (2017) by Christopher Nolan in my opinion is no exception. This film once again reverts to the formulaic audiovisual assault, this time almost without respite, and perhaps that was the point. Any chance of uncovering the psychological struggle of characters or the subtle insinuations of humanity questioning its actions is muddied by the inability of your nervous system to recover from the stimulatory onslaught.

Don’t get me wrong, not every mainstream war drama fits this description. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) twists the cacophony of light, sound and carnage together with a captivating psychoanalysis of the characters that leaves viewers captivated and not just exhausted. Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002) focuses on the human spirit not with respect to war, but with respect to art as the battle rages around the central character. However, there are other ways in which to convey the horror of war that may also leave us with enough strength to take away a message that is long lasting and meaningful. Fortunately I have discovered two very different films that do just that: Hungarian film Son of Saul (2015) directed by László Nemes and Zaza Urushadze’s Estonian-Georgian film Tangerines (2013).

In the Son of Saul, Nemes uses the camera to study the psychological makeup of the characters as they live the war rather than depicting the obstreperous elements of the war itself. This approach conveys a type of horror that, in my opinion, is more impactful than the buckets of blood and the gratuitous violence typically shown in war movies. Nemes creates a persistent haunting feeling by shooting on traditional 35mm film in a square aspect ratio. This tight aspect ratio creates claustrophobia and inescapability. The audience feels suffocated by the palpable anguish experienced by the principle characters. Nemes masterfully uses on the point-of-view and handheld shots to thrust viewers into the midst of the concentration camp and allows them to participate in the sadistic labor the prisoners are forced to carry out. The camera movement is slow and the depth of field is quite shallow, allowing the audience to linger in a confused and anxious reality. Nemes has no qualms about showing naked corpses being dragged to incinerators by prisoners or the unceremonious scattering of the ashes from the crematorium into a river to hide the evidence of the crimes committed. Nemes leaves out no detail and punctuates it against a backdrop of a mixture of muted diegetic and non-diegetic sound. The horror has both explicit and implicit components, but requires no brassy elements to bring it to the forefront. The edginess comes from the growing awareness of what is happening rather than a physical response to an exaggerated stimulus. In my opinion Son of Saul is the first film to capture realistically the relentless brutality of World War II.

Tangerines is almost the diametric pole of Son of Saul. Urushadze sets the film during the war in Abkhazia in the 90s. The film is shot in a single location in the Georgian countryside where two friends stay behind as the war erupts in order to harvest their crop of tangerines. In this way Urushadze is able to separate the audience from the war both physically and psychologically. This is in stark contrast to Son of Saul where the single location kept the audience locked into the inescapable horrors that the war creates. In Tangerines there is a utopic feel because there is never any explicit evidence of the war raging around the principal characters. As in Son of Saul, there is no need for the din of war paraphernalia. Rather, Urushadz, like Nemes, chooses muted sounds and background noise in order to bring the audience into the scene. The war becomes part of the narrative when the friends take in two wounded soldiers from opposite sides. The war thus becomes a question of tolerance and resistance of primal urges. Urushadze draws attention to compassion and the moral best that humanity can achieve during war time, a diametrically opposite message from that in Son of Saul. What truly stands out in Tangerines in comparison to Nemes’ film is the occasional punctum of color that occurs when the audience sees the main character picking the actual tangerine fruits from his orchard. This intense coloration enhances the peaceful surroundings in which the whole film takes place and lends it an aura of hope without the need for cliché happy endings. It is in fact the simple fruit, the tangerine, which serves as the symbol of unification allowing the wounded soldiers from different factions to transcend their cultural differences. In this way Urushadze concentrates on educating the audience about the other face of war: the possibility of peace and compromise and resistance to violence.

In the end, the approach to war as film genre could be bifurcated into two factions. One that barrages us with stimuli in the hopes of shocking, but in the end desensitizes, and another that leaves us with a lasting memory of evil or peace. In my opinion, the former may be more exciting, but the latter is more enlightening.

Dunkirk and the Evolution of the Modern War Film (Gabe)

I love to go to the movies, but my seemingly boundless physical inertia keeps me screening films from the comfort of my couch unless a true outlier comes into my life. However, over my summer in Los Angeles, my cousin, with whom I was staying, worked at the local movie theater, a five-minute drive away. After a full week of the latest releases like Baby Driver and the latest Planet of the Apes we rushed in to see Dunkirk, which led to our fiercest, but not our longest, cinematic debate of July.

My cousin was underwhelmed by the film because in his opinion the film’s structure prohibited emotional attachment to the individuals we saw portrayed because we never got a chance to know them individually. Rather, it was almost entirely nonstop action after the film’s initial commencement, and the dialogue was minimal to say the least. He additionally thought that these decisions by Nolan reduced his ability to empathize with the characters in a meaningful way because they were overwhelmed by the spectacle of the piece. This meant that in the balance of the story, individuals were given less attention. I however, while agreeing with his analysis of the film’s focus, disagreed as to its effect on the viewer and what Nolan’s directorial intention may have been.

It seemed to me that the fact individual humans were dwarfed by the combat was in many regards the point of the film. This movie didn’t read like his previous works in which he focused on specific characters and their evolution over time in the face of superhumanly long odds. This was no Memento or The Prestige in which the audience was being actively bonded with the protagonists and shown depths of their interiority that only film as a medium can capture and display. Here instead, Nolan seemed to be doing the opposite, and intentionally. By making a conscious decision to rework the war movie formula he presented battle in a new way that struck me as a departure from much of its genre. For example, the classic war film Saving Private Ryan, consciously and intentionally draws the viewers’ attention to the horrors of war in direct relation to the individual. Humans are horribly and bloodily butchered in all manner of traumatizing ways, and the camera forces you to look at it in excruciating detail. The camera swings around grotesque scenes where young soldiers hold their now detached limbs in anguish while still others are mowed down by machine gun fire all across a red misty canvas. I pointed out to my cousin that in avoiding these tropes, Dunkirk opted instead to present the events of this battle with a sense of historical reenactment that was not simple entertainment. I said that the film isn’t interested in forcing you to grapple with the brutal realities of war for individuals, it is instead showing you something so massive in scale that it cannot be fully appreciated by the casual viewer. I demarcated this difference in form and content, and suggested that perhaps his perspective might be informed by his preconceived expectations about the structure and focus of war films. This film relies more heavily on the viewer being able to separate out and individually note different elements of each shot, which neither of us had been expecting, so I saw how perhaps a perceived bait and switch had alienated him.

A scene I suggested as evidence of my theory was when the young British soldiers are trapped in the hull of a grounded civilian boat when they begin taking on machine gun fire. The bullets pierce the hull, water starts pouring in, and because the soldiers have no way to escape without being shot down they must plug up the holes with their fingers to avoid drowning, all the while as more shots whistle through the boat. This scene was perfectly emblematic of my perspective because the camera made no attempt to focus the viewer on the specific men being injured and killed by the firing. The attention was instead on the situation as a whole and the onus of actively participating in the that portrayal is squarely on the viewer. Additionally, it served to disguise the scope of the violence on screen by showing it as it occurs and not providing additional commentary. The lack of gore and extreme close ups of wounded men belies the film’s brutality and creates a separation between the audience and the film that only the viewer can close.

I articulated these points less succinctly and significantly more loudly than I have here, and despite my exquisite communication skills I think my cousin and I were simply on different pages. For me, this film has found room for innovation while operating in a genre that has a great propensity for stagnation. That alone held my attention.

Violent Expectations in No Country for Old Men (Gabe)

[SPOILER ALERT]

No Country for Old Men is a unique and bizarrely effective way to battle a bad mood. Early morning contemplation of extreme violence is not how I usually begin my days, but in the course of watching the film I was thoroughly struck by the way it handled and commented upon patterns of human brutality. The film alternates between a stark and unflinching display of the scope of human violence while also rebelling against the viewers’ expectations for what we will and will not see. For example, when one of the main characters, Llewelyn, is gunned down the viewer isn’t shown his final fight or how he is slain. Instead, our last view of him alive, is when he chats with the women tanning by the pool. Decades of action films have conditioned viewers to expect a proverbial blaze of glory as the hero attempts to shoot his way out against impossible odds. Instead, we are shown the surviving gunmen escaping as the lawman Ed arrives. Llewelyn is just dead. There is no attempt to glorify his demise, he has just been erased. This flies in the face of the cannon of American westerns and crime films which generally fully depicting the final moments of a hero’s journey. An additional effect this created is that Llewelyn is utterly removed from his pedestal as a protagonist and is instead left among the ranks of all the other dead characters. He becomes just another nearly anonymous body, despite the fact that we’ve spent most of the film following his story. Through this choice, the film makes a statement about the real consequences of violence for everyone involved.

Often when watching a film, I get so swept up in what’s taking place that I never consider how a character got to where they are now or how the events depicted fit into their lives as a whole, but the film’s touch on father-son relationships was a gently grounding companion theme to the rest of the film’s brutality. Beginning and ending the film with these quiet stories gave the plot a tangible sense of humanity even while exploring the crushing violence the characters each encounter. Of course, a character’s entire life is too much to convey within a film (Boyhood excluded), but this film achieved a similar effect simply through these opening and closing monologues. I then found myself considering why all these characters, pushed to their absolute extremes by the forces around them, were behaving the ways that they were. Perhaps, as an aspiring actor, analyzing and imagining a character’s childhood and adolescence is more interesting to me than for most other viewers, but considering that each of these characters had a father and family brought me further into the world of the film. I found myself yearning to understand them and what drove them to behave the ways they were. I wanted to thumb through their photo albums and peruse their childhood homes. I don’t remember the last time I felt that way about any character in a film. Imagining the characters’ childhoods while watching their shocking exploits was a surprisingly harmonious and contemplative experience and not what I had expected.

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.  

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. 

Audience's Thirst for Retribution (Jaeyoung)

   

 SPOILER ALERT: Middle part of Moonlight discussed.

    When it comes to watching movies in the theaters, audience participation is strongly encouraged in movies such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (“WHY THE F*CK IS THERE A BILLBOARD IN THE MIDDLE OF A CEMETERY!?”). It’s funny, it’s bawdy, and everyone’s having a good time.

   And then there are films like Oscar Best Picture Winner Moonlight, where audience participation should exist solely within the silent, emotional dimension of one’s soul. In other words, no one should be talking at any point in time.

   Of course, human beings are imperfect, so at least some verbal litter is inevitable. However, when I watched Moonlight a couple weeks ago, one person’s comment irked me so much that I wanted to scream.

   It happened in the middle of the movie, when Chiron becomes lost in a fit of fury and approaches his bully during class. This bully has turned his lover and friend against him and forced him to lose the one glimmer of hope in his sad, oppressive life. Thus, he betrays his gentler character and becomes the monster he’s been running from. He picks up a chair and strikes his adversary on the head, dolefully indulging in the violence that characterizes his society.

   And then from behind me, a stupid, gleeful “yes!” is uttered from someone’s mouth.

   My (elitist) blood boiled. Whoever it was that said this obviously missed the emotional significance of this scene and mistook it for a cheap revenge sequence. This is not that kind of movie! It annoys me to this day, how one person’s knee-jerk reaction pulled me out of the exceedingly tragic denouement of the second act.

   However, I should be fair. After all, aren’t the audience conditioned to respond in this way? Whether violent justice is an innate human desire is a matter for philosophers. But with movies like Kill Bill and Gladiator (both awesome films, don’t get me wrong) making their mark on the public conscious, aren’t audience members wired to desire the violent end of a villain?

   The answer is yes, at least in the eyes of film production studios. Take, for example, Taken. In order to exploit this animalistic response, they pit child sex traffickers as the bad guys, which basically sets up a premise close to the Nazi-killing genre: aggressive violence that is unquestioned and justified. Consumers are able to completely indulge in ass-kicking and throat-slitting without having to weigh any sort of moral repercussions. We crave Liam Neeson’s murderous rampage, and the more pain the child sex traffickers feel, the more endorphin pulse through our veins.

   I suppose Taken would be the one revenge film I could think of right now that is unforgivable with regards to violence (I think I became a truly worse individual coming out of it). Smarter films utilize revenge to achieve something beyond just base pleasures. For example, John Wick utilizes revenge to drive forward its ultra-stylistic action sequences. Inglorious Basterds utilizes revenge to develop a plot that ultimately criticizes the audience for their blood lust. Gladiator utilizes revenge to explore not only Maximus’ character, but also that of Commodus, who is undeniably evil yet heart-wrenchingly pitiful.

   But even when revenge is given intelligent treatment, it cannot mask the prevalence of audience blood thirst. Even in Netflix’s Daredevil, where the main villains are given incredibly sensible characterization, there are countless scenes where shady henchmen are beat up gratuitously and mercilessly. In this case, it is impossible not to pander to the audience’s thirst for violence; logistically, the show can’t go through each henchman and assign deep human characterizations.

   Therefore, is it possible to reverse this trend? I don’t think so. Even smart revenge films will continue to be misconstrued by many as being “awesomely violent” (as opposed to “violently awesome”), and studios will continue milking that cow because of capitalism, etc. For many movies, violence will continue to be their main selling point.

   Moonlight, of course, is nowhere close to being a revenge film. Yet, I am pushed to believe that the conditioned responses perpetuated by these types of movies made its way to the theater those weeks ago. Perhaps I should be more forgiving and try to understand why that person said, “Yes!” Maybe she said this because, mistaking aggression for assertion, she believed that Chiron was finally standing up for himself. Maybe if I had asked her why she responded in this manner, she could explain exactly what was going on in her head. Maybe, if I pressed on, she might apologize for caving in to the wide-spread audience blood-thirst that the film industry has hooked society on. Who knows.

   Or how about this: maybe, we should all remind ourselves that some movies are not Rocky Picture Horror Show and that people should keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves when they are at the movie theater.

When Tragedy Becomes Entertainment (Tori)

   

    When I first heard about the movie Patriots Day, I was shocked.  As a proud Bostonian, the horrific events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon have a personal effect on me, and I was appalled when I heard that a film recounting the attack and its aftermath was going to be made.  There were people who wanted to use those terrifying few days as entertainment?  Less than four years after the event took place?  Spectators re-living a real attack that took and changed lives forever?  I remember that day so clearly.  I remember thinking how unreal it seemed; how it was as if real life had become a film as my family watched the news and listened to sirens blazing and stayed locked down in our home as a manhunt took place.  I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't a movie.  It was real.  It was frightening and disturbing and actually happening.

    Now, it is important to note that I have not actually seen Patriots Day, nor do I know anybody who has seen it, and though I find the link between tragedy and entertainment interesting and thought-provoking, I will not watch this film.  That this painfully real event was turned into a movie so quickly doesn’t seem right to me.  It’s as if the creation of a film could diminish the actual event, as real people are made into characters, and horrifying actions are accompanied by background music and artistic cinematography.  But this is certainly not the first film to depict a tragedy.  In fact, this sort of thing happens all the time, and it is not something I always find so disturbing.  Why is this?  Is it just because of my more personal connection to the marathon bombing?  Is it ever okay to link tragic events with entertainment? 

    Over winter break, I saw a musical called The Scottsboro Boys at the SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston that raised many of these same questions.  The 2010 musical, written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, composers and lyricsts of other renowned shows such as Chicago and Cabaret, tells the true story of nine black teenagers in Alabama who were sentenced to death in 1931 for the rape of two white women—a crime they did not commit.  I was actually unfamiliar with this particular story, something I now find appalling, as it is such an important one to know and is thought to have been a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.  At the same time, the story is horrifically familiar, as it is reminiscent of modern day injustice for black men in the court of law.  I found it particularly evocative of the infamous Central Park Five/Central Park Jogger case of 1989.  I received tickets to this show as a Christmas present, and honestly, upon entering the theater, I was very unsure what I was about to see. 

    Musical theater does so many things.  It can provide a means of escape from everyday life.  It can capture you in nostalgia.  It can transport you to faraway places and it can be uplifting and poignant.  But I had never before seen a musical based entirely upon a horrific, disturbing, and, most importantly, true tragedy.  The musical is told through the medium of a minstrel show, a choice that is controversial and provocative given the long history of terrible racism against African-Americans in that particular genre of performance.  The show features big dance and song numbers and on paper sounds as though it could be extremely offensive and destined to be a massive failure.  But, in my opinion, it somehow works.  This musical punches you right in the stomach in the way that it confronts this tragedy in an extremely creative, thoughtful, and heartbreaking way.  It is consistently demands self-reflection.  It asks a plethora of questions—questions about the truth in regard to race (one chilling line that has stuck with me ever since I saw the show was when a lawyer states: “you’re guilty because of the way that you look”).  It asks questions about what it means to be free in the world and in your own mind.  It asks questions about ingrained prejudice and bias in each and every one of us.  This show is truly impossible to accurately convey in words because of the constantly conflicting emotions it incites in you.  The Scottsboro Boys  is so much more than a retelling of a tragic event.  It starts crucial conversations about the long history of racism present in our country.  The music is fantastic, and the choreography is stellar, but you are simultaneously loving it and hating it. 

    Those who know me are familiar with my adoration of musical theater.  Throughout my 19 years, I have managed to see and listen to a multitude of different musicals, and each one has affected me in its own, unique way.  But I can easily say that The Scottsboro Boys provided me with the most profound musical theater experience I have ever had.  However, it is true that what the Scottsboro boys went through is not something I ever have to or ever will have to worry about happening to me.  As a white woman, can I even decide that this musical is justified?  I’m not sure I can.  But I do think that condemning a show like The Scottsboro Boys would prevent crucial conversations from being held.  It would stop people from gaining a better understanding of the tragedy of racial injustice in America.

    So maybe I have misjudged Patriots Day.  It is certainly important to keep these types of stories alive through film and performance and to use these stories to better the world in which we live.  Often people forget what entertainment is capable of doing and how powerful it can really be.  It’s great to go see a film or a musical and forget about your life for a while, as you focus only on the characters and the fictionalized world you see in front of you.  But these types of art forms are capable of so much more.  They can make you think profoundly and painfully.  They can hold up a mirror to reveal the injustices in our world.  They can pose questions so poignant and powerful that you can’t stop thinking about them.  The Scottsboro Boys does all of this.  I’m not sure about Patriots Day, but perhaps it does, too.  The connection between tragedy and entertainment is always going to make me a bit uneasy, but if done right, it can provide a means of improving ourselves and our world.   

The Rise, Fall, and Re-Emergence of Gangster Films (Nick R.)

Power drives all of us. We desire, and we desire to control how we interact with those desires, and therefore, we want power. For some, this concept only serves as an accessory to their life. For others, the acquisition of power is all that there is, a lifestyle in and of itself. Gangsters are these types of people, and for this reason, they have been explored in film for decades.

In the 1930s, social and economic instability in America was at an all-time high due to the Great Depression. Honest hard work and careful investment of money was not being rewarded, leading to a distrust and disdain for the government that galvanized the organized crime subculture that existed in America. The most popular gangster films from this era were Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932). All of these films followed the main characters through a fast rise to the top, with an equally fast descent to their deaths. The abrupt and violent deaths served as a reminder of the consequences of crime, but viewers, suffering economically from the Great Depression and thirsty from Prohibition, were also able to identify with these charismatic anti-heroes. The gangster worked hard to earn his place in the world, only for it to be taken away in the blink of an eye.

                                                      

The appeal of gangster films grew over several years, but at such a critical time for regaining the nation’s stability, there were a great deal of efforts to combat the public’s infatuation with organized crime. This brought into play the Motion Picture Production Code, a set of moral guidelines in the film industry, established in 1930 and strictly enforced by 1934, that severely hindered the creative spirit of gangster films in their purest form. 1932 was the worst year of the Great Depression, and naturally, profits slid for Hollywood movies. Hollywood combatted this by increasing the sex and violence in gangster movies, which reached its peak with Scarface (1932). US capitalism was failing immensely, and Prohibition was being revealed as a failed social experiment on the already downtrodden common American, and the themes and depictions of violence that glorified crime in Scarface showed this. The film ended up being delayed over a year while director Howard Hawks toned down the incestuous overtones of the main character and his sister’s relationship. This film represented a new low for the public’s view of the conventional, law-abiding American dream, and how deep people would go into the psyche in order to analyze the desire for power which Americans now hungered for on so many levels. Now this exploration of power had proven to be about more than money, it was about love, it was about pride, it was about the exertion of anger. That was the core that gave gangster films life, but the powers that be saw how threatening an overarching acceptance of these themes and characters could be. The Production Code became increasingly more influential until the crime film in its original form was all but gone from theaters. Gangster films shifted towards the perspective of the law officers or criminals attempting to redeem themselves. The Motion Picture Production Code had a large amount of rules, which were particularly stringent on characteristics that were essential to depicting the criminal experience and the necessary themes behind it. Some of the rules you would expect to be included, while others really speak to the nature of the era. Some of the regulations included bans on profanity, suggestive nudity, illegal traffic of drugs, inferences of sexual perversion (i.e. the incestuous overtones of Scarface), as well as bans on white slavery, miscegenation (sexual relations between whites and blacks), and scenes of actual childbirth. Within these parameters, these movies didn’t get any less violent, but the subject matter focused on more clear cut protagonists and cast an inherently unflattering light on criminals.

In the 1950s, movies became threatened by the competition of a new technology, television. People no longer had to leave their house just to watch a moving picture. Television actually had more restrictive rules for censorship, but it’s widespread popularity and convenience forced Hollywood to make changes to offer people something they couldn’t see on TV. Another competitive threat came from foreign films, who were not required to follow the Production Code. Movies became more and more explicit, and by the late 1960s, enforcement was impossible. The Production Code was abandoned entirely and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) created the basis for the film rating system that we know today, allowing artists much more creative license as long as it was advertised appropriately. The door for gangster films had re-opened.

                                                     

It is impossible to talk about gangster films without acknowledging the immense role that The Godfather (1972) played in reinvigorating the genre. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and written by Mario Puzo, The Godfather gave the nation just what it needed, violence with a little class. The film was based on a wealthy Italian-American family that did business outside the law, but who held a great deal of respect and power within their area. There was a slight re-emergence of gangster films preceding The Godfather, but Coppola’s film provided a previously unprecedented look into Italian culture and stereotypes in America, along with the mobsters being presented as characters with psychological depth and complexity. The gangster film was able to return to its thematic roots of power, legacy, and pride, with much more intellectual and cinematic flare. Coppola made a sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974), which was met with even more financial success and critical acclaim, opening the door for many more successful depictions of the Italian-American mobster. The successful gangster films that followed were able to look at a more gritty and realistic depiction of gangsters, such as Goodfellas (1990) which was based on the real life of Henry Hill, a former member of the Lucchese crime family in New York City.

Today, remakes and new adaptions of crime life in the 1930s through the 1970s remain, a glimpse into a unique time in American history, where lawlessness and desire blended together into a genre of depth and historical significance. If you enjoy watching movies, watch one of these incredible productions about the complexity of crime life. It’s an offer you can’t refuse!

Romance and the New Bond Films (Treva)

Happy Valentines Day, everyone! And what says ”romance” like a fight to the death while dance music plays and disco lights flash? No? Maybe classical—a symphony?

I wonder if this is why I don’t have a date.

                                            

Fortunately, I spend my free time well: catching up on movies people have been recommending I watch for the past year or so. In this particular case, Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015).

[SPOILERS AHEAD!]

I am, however, going to maintain that the films are fairly Romantic, in the sense of the nineteenth century movement that supported individualism, passionate emotion, and—though many forget this—nationalism. Of course, it was also a fairly anti-industrialization movement, while spy flicks take almost as much joy in technology as science fiction, but I think it’s the ideals that matter—the dream of a simpler time, when men were good or evil, acted on impulse and emotion rather than cold machine logic or staid formula. Or, as quoted in Kingsmen:

Harry: Give me a far-fetched, theatrical plot any day.

Valentine: The old Bond movies, oh man. Ah, when I was a kid, that was my dream job. Gentleman spy.

Harry: I always felt the old Bond films were only ever as good as the villain. As a child, I rather fancied a future as a colorful megalomaniac.

I love a good double-edged conversation, don’t you? (For those who haven’t seen the film, Harry Hart (Colin Firth) is a gentleman spy, while Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) is both distinctly colorful—right down to the literal costuming—and very much a villainous megalomaniac.)

                                                    

On the other hand, Kingsman does a decent job showing that neither side is entirely black and white, with the Kingsmen Agency’s snobbishness and Valentine’s actually quite reasonable point that we need to do something to curb the global population, because it’s spiraling out of control and nobody is doing anything to stop it. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. handles this as well, with the Russians and Americans working together only long enough to stop the Nazis (leftover from WWII; it’s 1963) from developing advanced nuclear technology. As soon as the mission is done, both the CIA’s Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and the KGB’s Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) are ordered to shoot each other if necessary to get the disc with the new scientific developments. Such complex morality has always been a hallmark of spy thrillers—what are spies, after all, but those who do dirty work in the name of Queen and country? Or whatever office of rule. There’s your Romantic nationalism.

The individualism shines through in the titles of the films themselves. Kingsman, when one of the lessons Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and Roxy (Sophie Cookson) learn is that only through teamwork will they survive. The Man from U.N.C.L.E., when the entire premise of the film is that it’s two men, one Russian one American—and one young woman, Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), who is rather more skilled at undercover work than either of them. But it is the individuals’ choices and actions that matter—Roxy’s bravery, Eggsy’s determination, Napoleon and Illya’s decision to burn the disc rather than share it with either of their employers. And lo, a team is formed.

And the passion, the sheer joy of a good old-fashioned Bond film. Neither Kingsman nor U.N.C.L.E. takes themselves particularly seriously (which, frankly, I’m not sure the Bond films ever did either—killing a man by painting him with gold? Really?) I’m really here for the passion, the tragedy and joy and gut decisions at high-stakes. The adventure and the romance—yes, in the lower-case sense with the accompanying nudge-nudge-wink-wink. “Well this ain’t that kinds of movie,” says Valentine right before he shoots Harry in the head, but his own name, conflating romance and Romance, betrays the truth: this is exactly that kind of movie. Which is why he sighs contentedly when Eggsy quips it back at him after returning the favor with a blade to the chest: “It’s like you said to Harry. This ain’t that kind of movie, bro.” Then Eggsy picks up a bottle of champagne and a couple glasses, and goes to have victory sex with a kidnapped—now saved!—Swedish princess.

Exactly that kind of movie.

But really, the action scenes are the best of it. That’s what I started with and by St. Valentine, that’s what I’m going to end with. Because you haven’t quite lived until you’ve watched the climax of Kingsmen where Eggsy essentially has a lethal hip-hop dance-off with Valentine’s knife-heeled assistant. Seriously, she has blades instead of feet. It’s a big step forward for the disabled community, because she’s really cool-looking when she’s killing people with them. Particularly when she’s all but break-dancing to do it, while disco lights spin and a rocking instrumental of KC and the Sunshine Band’s "Give it Up" blasts from the speakers. The camera moves as well, alternating long circles around the action and rapid-fire cuts between the fighters, speeding with the stress of combat and slowing to show off the particularly impressive moves.

It’s a little bit less cheerily exciting when the music continues but the shot cuts to people killing each other around the world, maddened to uncontrolled bloodlust by Valentine’s “neurological wave.” I admit: that sort of violent contrast is another thing for which I am gloriously present.

But nothing can beat the scene in U.N.C.L.E. in which Napoleon calmly sits in a truck, eats a sandwich, and blasts a lovely Italian ballad while, visible out the windows, Illya engages in a high-speed, high-stakes boat chase. So removed is Napoleon—and the audience—from the action that we don’t even hear it, or see it as more than blurred background movement. It is not, however, true distance, but casualness, as the music continues at full volume when Napoleon eventually concedes to go back and help his comrade-in-arms.

The truly most self-enjoying thing U.N.C.L.E. does, however, is split its camera view into sections like the panels of a comic book, which shift and slide to show multiple characters moving at once. Some are split by striking diagonals, some dissolve into half a dozen smaller screens then converge again on a different scene. There is no dialogue, just music, a heavily beating baseline in time to the movements of the panels, for dramatic suspense. The tension and excitement—as the spies explore a weapons factory, or later team up with the British Royal Marines to storm the villains’ base—is palpable, and, as I said, reminiscent of the clean fun of superhero comics. There is no blood, no gunshots; just music and movement and period-appropriate drama.                        

Far more Romantic than any box of chocolates. 

 

The Horror of 1960s America (Josh)

American Horror Story Asylum plays a master game of deception. While the narrative deceives the audience that they are going to witness a story about aliens and monsters set in an insane asylum, the show runners instead tell a tale where the supernatural elements are not the frightening element. In fact, the supernatural elements often only exist within the story as a savior against the horrors of the natural world.

    During one the first sequences in the story, the creators carefully frame the world as a place where people are more of a threat than any kind of supernatural being. The image the audience sees after Kit Walker, one of the protagonists of the series, pumps up gas into a customer’s car in a 1960’s town is of human evil. The customer complains to Kit about the price of gas while we see a child in the backseat pointing a fake gun at Kit. It is of course, a child at play, but they are explicitly starting with this image to establish man as violent and cruel. The first supernatural element of the series occurs shortly as alien invaders kidnap Kit’s wife. The audience only sees bright, blinding light. At first, one may interpret this as a terrifying image, but the white is far more reminiscent of a heavenly body versus one from traditional views of hell. The aliens later in the series become saviors of major characters, saving them from death, and creating children who have the ability to heal. This image is different than the ones presented when we first see Briarcliff, the church run insane asylum that serves as the setting for the majority of the story. 

    The first shot we see of Briarcliff in the series is a looming low angle from the outside. The old building looks terrifying and consumes the frame. As we are led inside, we hear screams of the patient. The light in Briarcliff is dim with only streaks of light coming from the outside forming harsh, unforgiving shadows. The common room is mostly grey with only a record that repeats a “comforting” song on repeat incessantly. Outside the patient dormitories are hanging fluorescent lights that barely illuminate the space, but flicker incessantly. These are all horrors created by man, not by any supernatural force.

     Lana Winters is an ambitious investigative journalist who originally enters Briarcliff in order to expose the institution and to interview, Kit, convicted of murdering his wife. Soon, in a horrific turn, Sister Jude, the ambitious nun who is the head o the facility, convinces Lana’s life partner to commit Lana into the asylum so she can be treated for her homosexuality. Sister Jude, as she exposes Lana’s fate, is shot from a low angle, exposing her power, while the high angle reverse of Lana shows a powerless victim. She is imprisoned by shackles around her skull and is bruised from the fight that led her to the asylum. The horror in this shot is one of purely human creation.

    In American Horror Story Asylum, the supernatural elements can come to the aid of the humans trapped in the world of the 1960’s. In the second half of the story, Sister Jude, through a turn of events, becomes a prisoner in her own institution. The institution has changed however. No longer run by the Church, Briarcliff is a state run institution featuring the overcrowding and violence associated with state mental health facilities of the time. The show creators use an interesting cinematic trick however to make this transition palatable for Sister Jude. Almost immediately after the audience learns that Briarcliff becomes a state institution, Sister Jude gains an enemy, the angel of death. The angel of death had previously functioned as a frightening dream for Sister Jude. She had large black wings and always offered Sister Jude a way out of her suffering. Now, the angel of death was appearing in the form of a new inmate in Briarcliff who would torture Jude. This distraction though, keeps Jude unaware of the changes happening to her and to the institution. Instead of dwelling on the overcrowding of the institution, the shots of the other inmates only occur in the background of Sister Jude’s conversation with her nemesis. There is no dwelling on the surroundings. Eventually, when Sister Jude attacks the angel of death, now her roommate, we see the reality of her situation. She had actually attacked another innocent women, and in a terrifying scene in the office of the  head of Briarcliff, we learn that years have passed without her knowledge. This scene is shot with wide-angle close-ups that distort reality. The light comes harshly from the side. In addition, the cross carved in the ceiling has begun to fade. Everything has changed and the angel of death was keeping Sister Jude in blissful ignorance of her world. At the end of her life, after she is freed from Briarcliff, Sister Jude gladly welcomes the kiss of the angel of death to bring her sweet relief.

     The most terrifying events within American Horror Story Asylum all base themselves on the realities of the 1960’s. Lana Winters, shot from a bird’s eye view in harsh light, must attempt a coat hanger abortion to save herself from giving birth to a child of rape. Later, newsreels expose the misery of state run institutions using a sepia toned image that creates the impression of being in that time. This same trope is used as the show uses the same color scheme to show the interaction between a husband and his now docile wife who he had lobotomized because of her memories of the Holocaust. As Sister Jude looks into Lana Winter’s eyes and warns her of the dangers of being a strong, independent woman in 1960’s society, and then warns her not to look in the face of evil, the camera moves directly into Lana’s face. The human being is capable of all evil. In the real world, there were no supernatural elements to save characters from the real life horrors presented in American Horror Story. The true horror of the story then is that these characters would never have been saved in the real world.

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.

 

 

Masterworks of D.W. Griffith (Bedram)

D.W. Griffith did not invent every cinematic technique employed in The Birth of a Nation, but he no doubt took and focused them into his film, creating a masterful epic. The film, widely criticized for its outrageously racist views, seems to be slowly losing its place in history to Intolerance, the film that Griffith made in response to such claims. While critics might still argue which film is Griffith’s masterpiece, it was undoubtedly The Birth of a Nation that changed cinema forever. Whether one would like to factor in influence or not, the film’s brilliance should not be ignored due to its racist content. To do so would simply be ignoring American movie history.

The film consists of two parts, the first covering the Civil War. Two families are juxtaposed, the Northern Stonemans and the Southern Camerons. The two families are closely linked, as one of the Stoneman brothers, Phil, falls in love with Margaret Cameron, and Ben Cameron becomes infatuated with Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War breaks out, however, the young men join their respective sides, broken apart by the war. This domestic separation is mirrored in the state of the country itself, the nation divided politically between the North and the South.

The film, rather blatantly, sides with the South, presenting them as courageous underdogs. They lack food, their struggle shown in a close-up shot of parched corn kernels in a pan. Their much needed food train is intercepted by Union forces, and in the battle that proceeds, Ben leads a heroic charge against the Union entrenchment line. The North simply stands behind their own lines, using their greater numbers to their advantage. Ben, despite the loss of his soldiers, carries a Confederate flag during the assault, shoving it inside a Union cannon before collapsing. The South loses the battle, but their honor remains, having given it all against the greater forces of the invaders.

While Griffith definitely tries to establish the theme of Southern honor, he by no means glorifies the war. He includes a shot of numerous dead soldiers, prefaced by a title card that reads, “War’s peace.” War is connected to death, and is viewed as futile – not only for the South, but also for the North. As the numerous extreme long shots of battlefields show, once a battle begins, it simply becomes men fighting for their lives. The tragedies of war, however, go beyond the battlefield. Phil and Ben, good friends before the war, are forced to fight on opposing sides. Promising relationships, such as the burgeoning love between Phil and Margaret, are put on hold.

The second half of the film focuses on Reconstruction, and most of the film’s staunchly racist views are contained in this part. The beginning of the movie depicts the introduction of American slavery, stating that this mixing of races “planted the first seed of disunion.” This theme of racial mixing leading to trouble is further explored in the second half, an example being Gus, a freedman, lusting after Flora, Ben’s sister. He chases her onto a rocky cliff, and to avoid the possibility of being raped, she jumps to her death. This threatened rape, then, symbolizes the emasculation of the whites in the South by the suddenly freed blacks, now threatening the order of society.

The film’s tense climax comes when Ben leads the Klan to the rescue of Elsie from the hands of Lynch, a mulatto, who was planning a forced marriage. This rescue, and the Klan’s rescue of the Cameron family from Lynch’s black militia, goes beyond showing the Klan as saviors of these individual people. The Klan is shown as the protector and savior of white glory and honor. During the next election they intimidate the blacks into not voting, and the aftermath of all this leads to the reunion of the two couples – Phil and Margaret and Ben and Elsie. Order is restored.

Griffith, labeled a racist by his critics after the release of the film, attempted to answer them with his next film, Intolerance. The film tackles four separate stories, all set during different time periods. One recounts the fall of Babylon, another tells the crucifixion of Jesus, a third showcases the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and the fourth is a modern tale focusing on a couple torn apart by a false murder conviction.  Each story is connected through themes of intolerance and hatred, and the film, rather boldly, alternates between the four stories.

By having four parallel stories, the film forces comparisons to be drawn between the characters and events throughout these different time periods. There is less focus on the Christ story, but Griffith spends enough time to establish the devastating results of intolerance. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre story is also a lesser focus, though it establishes the idea of religious intolerance and the abuse of power by authority. The other two stories, the modern tale and the Babylon story, are where the true heart of Intolerance lies.

The modern tale echoes some of the frustrations of early 20^th century, displaying the anxiety surrounding big business and interference by outside, moralist forces. One striking example is the mill owner reducing the wages of his workers by 10%, and crushing the strike that follows. One of his employees turns to crime, but tries to break free after marrying. His ex-boss, however, frames him for theft and he is sent to prison. While he serves his sentence, his wife suffers the taking of their child by reformists, who find her to be an unfit mother. What greater intrusion on a mother than the taking of her child? As for the Babylon story, it tackles the issue of betrayal as well as intolerance. The High Priest of Bel does not worship the same god as King Nabonidus, and sees Babylon’s downfall tied to this wrongful worship. This religious intolerance leads him to betray Babylon, setting up a meeting with Cyrus, the Persian invader. The result is the fall of Babylon.

The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance are perhaps two of Griffith’s finest works, both among the most influential films of all time due to their groundbreaking use of various cinematic techniques, including cross-cutting, moving-camera shot, the close-up, the long shot, and so forth. The Birth of a Nation, however, has often been looked at unfavorably, its racism too much to handle. Nonetheless, its importance was recognized, and it was listed in AFI’s Top 100 movies in 1998. Inexplicably, it was removed in the 10^th anniversary edition of the list, though Intolerance found its way onto the list. By removing the film, the AFI is not dealing with the issues the film raises, and is ignoring a monumental moment in film history. It is frightening how effective and brilliant a film that paints the Ku Klux Klan as heroes is, and that is truly the worst aspect of the film. It is undeniably among the most important films in American history, if not the most important, and deserves to be recognized as such. Intolerance arguably shares that honor, but the legacy of The Birth of a Nation should not be overshadowed by it. Both films deserve the recognition.

Do You Want To Be Like Me, Or Do You Want To Be Me?: Celebrity Status of Violent Men (Bedram)

Andrew Dominik, a New Zealand-born Australian director and screenwriter, introduced himself to the world in 2000 with Chopper, a film which explored the life of Mark “Chopper” Read. The man was a criminal, and a ruthless one at that, involved in robberies, kidnappings, and even murders – all directed toward others in the criminal underworld of Melbourne. Chopper gained notoriety through his brutal acts of violence, especially after writing numerous books about his experiences.  

The film begins with Chopper watching his own interview on a television set in his cell, in which he declares, “The average man in Australia doesn’t worry about Mark “Chopper” Read. The average man in Australia, he likes me, he couldn’t care less about me. What I do, he applauds.” People are watching this very interview because he’s a “bloody freak show,” an attraction of sorts. Yet, the film does not dwell so much on how he gained fame, but rather why such a character would receive it in the first place. This is a man that declares he is a normal person, “a normal bloke who likes a bit of torture.”

Chopper spent most of his adult life in prison, a place the film drapes in a monochrome blue color, from the walls to the very clothes the prisoners wear. The washed out visuals demonstrates the bland atmosphere of the place, creating a stark contrast to his life outside the prison. Most scenes are highly saturated, the strong colors a manifestation of Chopper’s anxiety and his brash lifestyle.

In one particular scene at a bar, Chopper leads Siam Ozerkam (a drug dealer) outside to the parking lot. Chopper proceeds to ask Siam whose side he is on. Paranoid about the death contract on him, Chopper points a gun at the man, who is not quite sure what to make of his questioning. Chopper grows increasingly paranoid and anxious, the dominating red lighting a manifestation of his mental state. He asks Siam why he brought him out to the parking lot, when the opposite is the case. After an argument arises in which Chopper demands Siam speak English, he shoots the man point blank in the face, enquiring afterwards if he’s okay. Does one laugh or feel for a man who is so terribly inept at controlling his actions? A man whose violence comes across as casual? The man is clearly lost, somewhat delusional, bent on living out his tough-guy fantasy. When the police tell him they have arrested the man that killed Siam, Chopper grows furious, pulling out the murder weapon to prove he was the man that did it. The police still do not believe him, leaving him to proclaim that he has never been so insulted in his life.

The last image of Chopper is back in his cell, watching the very interview from the beginning. He soaks in the attention he receives, not only for being on during primetime, but also from the two guards that watch it with him. He has achieved fame through his life of violence, but once the guards leave, he is alone, sitting on his bed trapped within the four walls of his dull cell. A man worthy of fame?

Dominik continued his examination of the celebrity status of violent men with his second film, tackling a more well-known subject in the 2007 Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The film follows the life of Robert Ford, tackling Jesse James’ celebrity status through Ford’s obsession of the man. Jesse James, a celebrity when alive and a legend after death, was an outlaw, a gang leader that robbed banks and trains, and who claimed to have committed seventeen murders.

After joining the James’ gang on a train robbery, Bob gets to spend some time alone with Jesse. Bob, practically like a child, explains his joy of getting to talk to the man, mentioning all the times he spent in a library reading books about him. Jesse tells Bob they are all lies, clearly dampening his spirits. Does he know the man as well as he thinks he does? The celebrity and the man are not quite the same.  

Jesse allows Ford to stick around, much to his elation. The two spend most of their time together, Bob practically studying Jesse, making note of his gestures and inflections. He even sneaks up on Jesse taking a bath, catching him at his most vulnerable. Bob notes how no one used to be able to catch Jesse off-guard, in addition to having never seen him without his guns. If Jesse appeared immortal and perhaps above other men, he is brought down in this scene; he is clearly mortal, and his naked body definitely human. Jesse, well aware of Bob’s fascination with him, utters, “Do you want to be like me, or do you want to be me?”

The film grapples with this question, yet it never provides a definite answer. When discussing the possibility of killing Jesse with his brother, Charley, he is told that he does not understand the severity of what he is proposing, that life is not just “yarns and newspaper stories.” Bob replies that Jesse is only a human being. Nonetheless he continues his obsession up until the very end of his relationship with Jesse. He rests on Jesse’s bed, feeling on his body the places where Jesse had been shot and pretending that his middle finger was missing the top two knuckles. Here is a childlike man who still is enamored with the famous outlaw, or at the very least the idol he is portrayed as.

Bob finds it impossible to escape Jesse’s shadow after he commits the killing, an ugly and unheroic one. Jesse, in death, arguably becomes a mythic figure, with songs written about him, and pictures of his corpse selling for two dollars each. It comes as no surprise, then, that Bob is eventually murdered, a result of the mass hate for bringing down a legend.

Both Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford explore the celebrity life of violent men, drawing questions of why these men achieved fame. Assassination presents a compelling look through one man’s obsession of an idol, effectively humanizing a larger than life figure and presenting a deeply flawed and paranoid man seeing enemies on all sides towards the end of his life, perhaps foreseeing Bob’s betrayal. Chopper, while not examining as large a figure, presents a distrustful man whose violence comes naturally, with little to no thought of the consequences of his actions. Both films are complex works that analyze the men behind the violence in society, presenting an honest look at such figures that gain notoriety through their acts of brutality.

The Male Gaze in Kill Bill (Ingrid)

    More recently, I’ve become increasingly aware of how my filmic interpretations are informed by my gender. As a female viewer, I often perceive the so-called, “male gaze,” in Hollywood films less from feelings of identification (as a male audience member would perhaps experience), but more so from literature I’ve read, films I’ve studied in class, and general societal observations I’ve made on my own. The topic of the “male gaze” in film is a sensitive one; but I think sometimes people are unnecessarily quick to condemn films for female objectification, subordination, and vulnerability. I also believe female objectification is often overemphasized or mischaracterized as being sexually demeaning; I do not think that is always the case. Moreover, the possibility for a “female gaze” is rarely touched upon.

    In re-watching Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003), I found that my understanding of the “male gaze” was complicated. The film follows the vindictive mission of a strong female lead, The Bride (played by Uma Thurman). After waking from a four-year coma caused by a bullet to the head on her wedding day, The Bride vows to find and kill every last member of the assassin squad that betrayed her. Though the cinematic portrayal of the Bride, particularly towards the beginning of the film, suggests male dominance with many tightly framed fetishistic shots, the narrative is one of female empowerment. The Bride also progressively achieves command of the camera.

    The film opens with the most disturbing of diegetic sounds—the uncontrollable panting of a female. Reminiscent of the start of Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955), the heavy, ragged breathing of a petrified female protagonist is one of the most visceral and disarming sounds in cinema. Overlaid with the opening credits on black, the female protagonist, who we later realize is “The Bride,” is first introduced to us by her pained gasping. Faceless and voiceless, her character is diminished at the start of the film. The scene then cuts to a black and white shot of the Bride. The harsh, high contrast lighting in the close up of her agonized expression is unflattering. Her face is glistening with inky blood, beads of sweat, and streaks of tears. Following this is a tracking shot of cowboy boots, striding towards the wounded Bride; the Bride’s whimpering is ever-present in the background. When the shot switches back to the Bride, her close-up is intruded by Bill’s boot in the bottom-right corner. Cower as she may, we presume Bill is hovering over her sadistically, with locked eye contact, observing his violent work. He proceeds to patronizingly wipe the blood from her face while apathetically explaining the motives for what he is about to do—shoot her, point-blank, in the head. Pinned to the ground by her sustained injuries, the Bride is unwillingly but completely subject to Bill’s brutality.  

    However, as the film progresses, we encounter a divergence. Along with the developments in the narrative—the Bride has embarked on her vengeful mission—we also see a distinct change in the shooting style. As exemplified by many of the kung-fu sequences, the formidable Bride demands control of the camera, and engages the audience in an awe-inspiring way. The film, which focuses a great deal on professional violence, in particular that of the martial arts, becomes a celebration of the human body. In these blood-gushing, horrific fights sequences, the Bride is superhuman. Wearing a distinct yellow jumpsuit and armed with a lethal samurai sword, she is transformed into a weapon; her agility and rigor are unparalleled. After slaying O-Ren Ishii’s entire horde of protectors, she stands over them victoriously on the railing of the upper level. In a low-angle full shot, she pronounces, “Those of you lucky enough to still have your lives, take them with you! But leave the limbs you have lost. They belong to me now.” She is empowered by the shot; her stature is overbearing and omnipotent. Here, Tarantino shows us how there are instances where the spectacle of the female body is not sexualized, but revered.

    Kill Bill offers a fascinating take on the male gaze in cinema. While the Bride, especially towards the start of the film when she is injured or in a comatose state, is often confined to the pressuring rectangle of the frame, truncated and expressed as parts of her body, she retains control of the camera and restores her agency in many of the impressive kung-fu sequences. The male gaze is undeniably present in Kill Bill, but can be decoded to either uphold, contest, or qualify its standard interpretation.

Points from a Screening (Natasha)

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

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

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

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

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

    What a film!

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

 

The Night Porter: eroticism and sadomasochism (Nour)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Limits of History (Natasha)

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

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

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

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

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

Let the Dark Knight be Dark: Maturity in Batman: The Animated Series (Chris D)

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

A Well Deserved Tribute to One of Cinema's Unsung Heroes (Chris D)

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

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

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

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

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

 Much thanks to Creative Commons and the public domain images used. Creative Commons in no way endoreses any opinions expressed in this blog. Any opinions, views, or ideas are soley of the poster.

Killing in the Name of Boyle (Shea)

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

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

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

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

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

Punches vs. Plot: Storytelling styles of Ong Bak and Ip Man (Chris D)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

All I Wanted was a break from midterms (Inhye)

(Spoilers ahead)

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

  

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

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

 

 

 

Image Credits:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The New Frontier (Tyler)

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

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

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

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

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

Taboo: Sex & Violence (Josh)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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