4/6/18

Vital words from the always great Kent Jones:

" I think that writing about movies and making movies can go hand in hand. But most of the time, they really don’t. Over many years of writing criticism, I became more and more consumed with the actual question of what it is to actually make a film. Most film criticism doesn’t go near it. As a matter of fact, certain people that call themselves film lovers or “cinephiles” take pride in not paying attention to what filmmakers say, and they get lost in the miasma of beautiful concepts like mise-en-scène. I have no problem with mise-en-scène as an idea, I believe in it, but I do think it should be set aside as a critical term. The cinema is very, very young, but many of the people who write about it treat it as if it were very, very old. André Bazin made that mistake: he wrote that because it began close to the beginning of the twentieth century, the cinema had a rapid development that had already ushered in a classical era by the ’50s. When you really stop to think about it, the idea is ridiculous. Poetry and painting developed over a few thousand years, but the cinema zipped its way up to speed because it developed in the age of air travel and penicillin: absurd. So I think that there are too many vague terms in film criticism, too little attention paid to acting, and almost zero knowledge of how a film set actually works. That includes everything from what a director actually does—not to mention what everyone else from the gaffer, to the costume designer, to the set dresser actually does—to the extraordinary time factor: the clock is always ticking. It’s ticking on the set, it’s still ticking in the editing room, and it keeps ticking in the mix, the color correct, and up to the end of post-production."

Final Shots: House of Pleasures

New to my list of great final shots (and great endings in general): the indelible image of Celine Salette in the mind blowing conclusion of House of Pleasures, as Lee Moses' Bad Girl plays on the soundtrack:

This is from the summer, but Vishnevetsky's writing on George Romero over at the AV Club is perfect, and just in time for Halloween:

Romero’s true genius shone in the way he wrested the conventions of horror away from the drawing-room-and-fireplace set and into the hands of the working and middle classes. He put horror behind the roll-up garage door and in the shopping mall, and made the Rust Belt town and the suburban nowhere as important to the genre as the romantic Carpathian mountainscape and crumbling castle had been to the gothic tradition. Though his zombie films, as well as movies like The Crazies and Martin, Romero tore down the wispy, billowing curtains and put up plastic blinds; blew out the candles and replaced them with dangling bare bulbs; swapped the cobwebbed grand staircase with the creaky basement stairs, the iron portcullis with the plywood door, the horse-drawn carriage with the Amtrak. Everybody owes him some kind of debt.

Movie Posters

When I recently saw Carl Franklin's One False Move, I didn't immediately think of Blue Ruin. However, the former's poster looked strikingly familiar. Upon further research, I found that Franklin's outstanding neo-noir directorial debut was one of Saulnier's major influences. His poster for Blue Ruin is a borderline rip-off, but the film itself is so singular it totally doesn't matter. Now let's hope his career doesn't fizzle after a couple dynamite features the way Franklin's did.

Wiener-Dog (2016)

The new Todd Solondz movie Wiener-Dog is funny, sad, and cruel and a host of other potent adjectives. In other words, it's like all Todd Solondz movies, and your adjectival description of it will largely be based on your perspective on him and the world around you. Can you differentiate mean-spiritedness and comedy? Can you find pathos in cruelty? Above all, can you attempt to understand and appreciate Solondz's stance on life even if it's not your own?

What's that stance? Well, as Wiener-Dog and just about all of Solondz's other works indicate, life is confusing, painful, and above all, ugly: from bodily fluids and physical oddities, to the futility of dreams, mental disease, and old age, what is life other than a grand burden? One thing Solondz does value is the comedy that is inextricable from the drama of existence, and something he certainly does not deny is a human's capacity to feel, to engage emotionally with another person. Wiener-Dog in particular has some of the most emotionally raw material Solondz has ever written. I should also be clear in stating that when I say Solondz is interested in emotion while also overemphasizing the ghastly facets of life, he's all but allowing himself to be labeled a humanist. We're back to perspective, and if you cannot see that Solondz prizes existence, perhaps consider it.

Narrative wise this his version of a dog movie, as we follow an adorable, albeit mostly inexpressive Dachshund around from various owners. The four homes the wiener-dog finds herself in suggest a roadmap of sorts through life's stages: We start with a young boy named Remi (Keaton Nigel Cooke), who gets the dog from his parents (played by Tracy Letts and Julie Delpy, both excellent as always). Remi has the sort of philosophical inquisitiveness typical of the children in Solondz movies, but when it comes to the practical handling of a pet, he's got a few lessons to learn.

Eventually we'll follow Wiener-Dog as she is rescued from euthanasia by Greta Gerwig's Dawn (a resurrection of the character played by Heather Matarazzo in Solondz's first feature, Welcome to the Dollhouse--seen within the context of that film, this segment takes on additional power), who goes on a road-trip with an old high school classmate, played by Kieran Culkin. While this would represent the youth-in-revolt element of the film's "journey-through-life" structure, it's also the kindest and most gentle portion of the story, thanks in large part to Gerwig's awkward vulnerability and sweetness, the polar opposite of when we saw her in last year's Mistress America.

The final two segments of the movie involve Danny DeVito as an aging and emotionally fraught screenwriter and New York film professor, and then finally Ellen Burstyn as an old woman who seems to have had the life sucked out of her and has decided to name Wiener-Dog Cancer. The DeVitto sequence is powerful (one monologue is especially heart-wrenching and is proof that all you need is one dynamite scene to make an unremarkable character a giant) though some of the satire of New York film school seems a bit obvious given the director's eclectic sense of humor. And that's it: The Journey of Life, Todd Solondz-Style.

The dog itself is ultimately less a character than a tool for human investigation. If there is a statement at all about canines here it's the misanthropic notion that the variety of ways humans are rotten renders them incapable of caring for pets. It's a false notion and I doubt one that even Solondz's bleak outlook finds accurate, but it's here because it fits into the director's idea of comedy. Humor is present in everything, intertwined with even the bleakest and toughest of circumstances. Which brings me to the film's ending, which I won't reveal, but nonetheless feel compelled to say something about: It does go too far. I've sat through many a sick joke by Todd Solondz but I always find a way to see where he's coming from and to find virtue in his point of view. Here though I've a hard time looking beyond the sick joke. Ultimately though, I don't mind because I know Solondz doesn't care what anyone thinks about his work as long as they react strongly to it in some way. And I hope he keeps making films. I'll still come back for more.

Dune Revisit

I re-watched David Lynch's Dune last night, a good seven years after I first saw it. My original impression was that it was confusing but impressive, very bad in a very good sort of way. Now I see it as a confounding piece of non-entertainment, an utterly boring slog that left me wondering: should we even try to talk about what's wrong with this film, or should we just ignore it all together?

First off, in terms of plot and ideas, there's very little to say. I recall having difficulty understanding what exactly was going on when I first saw the movie. This time around, the story made more sense mainly because I realized how simple it actually is beneath the muddled means by which its told. It's basically a story about a messianic "chosen one" who saves a planet. The mechanics of the plot involve rival planets, power schemes, trickery, and revenge. The devices for narrative momentum consist of a dangerous drug and giant worms lurking beneath the sand of a desert planet where most the film's action takes place. The rest of the movie consists of inane action sequences, too many non-sensical conversations between under-developed, dull characters to count, failed attempts at exposition, and of course the visuals.

Lynch does provide some striking imagery, such as a unborn baby in a womb that looks like an infant's head sticking out of a pool of blood. But perhaps the biggest disappointment of Dune, once you realize that it's an empty vessel with regards to plot, character, and emotion, is that despite Lynch's flair for style, he's still unable to come up with a coherent or memorable sequence. The action scenes involving the worms could have been thrilling given the money that went into them, but instead Lynch shows no understanding as to how to make them coherent or interesting, let alone exciting (there's also major editing problems, wherein important moments of action seem to just end with no explanation of their resolution). Or take the climactic knife fight between the film's hero, played by Kyle MacLachlan, and one of the baddies, portrayed by Sting (who must have thought he was signing up for a magazine shoot instead of a movie). Like every other action scene in this movie, Lynch is either uninterested in generating suspense, or simply acknowledging that he doesn't know how it's done. The sequence is completely inept and devoid of any intensity, as if Lynch had never seen a single good action scene in his life. You'll find this sort of listlessness all over Dune (another standout is when MacLachlan is supposed to be training his new people with sonic weapons and Lynch recklessly rushes through this rather than attempting to show the process).

That, to me, is Dune's biggest flaw. That the story and the characters and the themes are so trite doesn't bother me too much. There are great movies out there with similar problems. But when I'm also bored by what I am seeing, by this supposedly fantastic world Lynch has conjured, I cannot quite accept it.

One final point: the dialogue is pretty horrendous, but to its credit the film does have one great line. I'm not sure if Lynch wrote it or if he took it from Frank Herbert's novel. I love it either way: "Without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens."

Two Men in Manhattan (1958)

This is the sort of movie that's main value is to satisfy the cinephile's need to find the unknown and unheralded works of a great director. Jean Pierre Melville's 1958 merger of French and American aesthetics and ideologies is ok in and of itself, but for anyone obsessed with his body of work it's a must-see. I suppose you've got to love the way he suggests a juicy pulp noir with a plot involving a French reporter and his sleazy buddy photographer as they attempt to track a missing French diplomat in New York, only to offer a fairly mundane journey into Manhattan nightlife that anticipates the calm coolness of the New Wave crime films that would emerge in full swing a year later with Godard's Breathless.

There's surprisingly little tension in the film, both in terms of characters and plot. There's also not any real sense of danger (the bulk of the movie consists of the main characters questioning various women, such as a singer, an actress, and a dancer, who may have connections with the man in question) and when the French ambassador is finally discovered, you almost laugh at how unremarkable the secret behind his disappearance really is. There's potential for a great examination of media exploitation for personal gain, as the French reporter, played by Melville himself, is at odds with the photographer, who wants to manipulate the events behind the diplomat's disappearance for personal gain. As Jonathan Rosenbaum points out in a great discussion on the DVD's Bonus Features, the movie presents a dichotomy between The French and American attitudes with regards to public scandal. In France, you remain hushed, but in America you muckrake your way to glory. It's not that the film sidesteps these issues, but it also never really commits itself to the issue the way, say, Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole did.

Two Men in Manhattan is a minor film with minor pleasures. It paints Manhattan as a city that seems to stay awake just for these two ambitious scoundrels. There's a certain artificial and sometimes surreal quality to the nightlife painted here, as if Melville created a New York he imagined that in fact does not really exist (most of the interiors were actually just sets made in France). Perhaps the most American-obsessed of all the great French filmmakers, Melville finally got to make a film about America, yet it remains stubbornly French. Watching it, you sense Melville either gave up on the film, or didn't even fully commit himself to begin with. Unlike a lot of great directors, Melville's most popular works are, I think, his best. If you've never seen Le Cercle Rouge, Army of Shadows, Le Samurai, or Bob Le Flambeur, start with those. Then perhaps check out Leon Morin, Priest, and The Silence of the Sea. Seen within the context of his great work, I think there's some real enjoyment to be found with Two Men in Manhattan. Outside of such a framework, it doesn't offer much.

Lauren Wilford on Room

The immense accumulation of praise Room received last year from its debut at Toronto to its awards season push left me a little perplexed when I finally saw it earlier this year. I didn't think it was especially great even though I admired its intentions. People ask why film criticism matters, and while there are a myriad of answers, one is quite simply that a really stellar and thoughtful piece can alter your initial reaction to a work and make you see it an entirely new way. This may sound a tad trite, but it's not when you actually sit down and experience the act of reading and how great writing will alter notions and perspectives. That's not to say that one should not always try to come up with their own ideas about something and let criticism simply support those ideas. That, after all, is a chief academic ideal for anyone who's gone through an upper level English college course or beyond. But sometimes you find the criticism before you find your own ideas, and sometimes you have to simply accept and embrace its power.

Since I saw Room I've barely thought about it at all (not exactly fitting given the idea expressed in the previous paragraph, but hey, you can only think about so many movies!) I recently happened upon this essay by Lauren Wilford (a deeply thoughtful writer whose latest piece on Darren Aronofsky's Noah and the nature of literary adaptations is a must read) on the movie and started to read it and found it to be extremely enlightening, particularly in its analysis of Brie Larson's character. I found the performance to be good, but the character to be underwhelming as in: there's so much that could be done with this character but the film doesn't seem very interested in doing that. In retrospect, perhaps I didn't wrestle with this film enough. Wilford writes: 
Ma is a victim of affliction. Weil stresses that such a condition cannot be shared. It is “specific, irreducible to any other thing, like sounds we cannot explain at all to a deaf-mute.” When Ma decides to tell Jack part of the truth of their situation in Room, she must try to explain the unexplainable — about how there’s a whole real world outside, with room for all the cats and dogs — but for some things, he still has to stay in the wardrobe. Some days inside Room, Ma would have a “gone day.” We see Ma in bed, submerged in sorrow, in a montage of shots showing how Jack passes the time when she is away. There is a shot in the latter half of the film where Jack tries to follow a distraught Ma, but she slams the bathroom door behind her, shutting him out of her suffering. The camera stays outside the bathroom. It is an echo of the wardrobe door that Ma gently shut on Jack the start of the film. There are places that he cannot go. There are places that we cannot go.

Quote of the Day

"You want the photography to be almost caught by surprise by what the characters are doing..." William Friedkin, from the Director's Commentary for To Live and Die in LA.

Hell or High Water (2016)

David Mackenzie, one of the most unique and unsung filmmakers working today, moves from the geometrically precise confines of the prison in his last movie, Starred Up, to the wide, expansive, and unpredictable world of West Texas (though it was actually shot in New Mexico) in Hell or High Water, easily one of the best new movies this year.

The basic structure of the film is nothing new, as two brothers, Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster), start robbing banks (for initially unspecified reasons) and are pursued by a pair of Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham). But it's brand new stuff for Mackenzie, whose energy and commitment to the material makes it feel like something we've never seen before even though we simultaneously know that's not the case. It also helps that he's working from a script from hot-shot actor-turned-writer Taylor Sheridan, who previously penned last year's Sicario. In a film like this in which a great director is not involved with the script and that script happens to sizzle with interesting characters and rich dialogue, it can be harder to discern whose film this really is. But Mackenzie still brings plenty to the table, whether it's in his unobtrusive use of the long take (note the film's opening shot, or another halfway through in which Toby beats a young punk to a pulp), the way his shot-reverse-shots will alter based on who's talking (there's a scene in a diner with the brothers where the camera gets far closer to their faces than you'll normally see), how a two shot accentuates the creak of a windmill in the background, or in the way he gets Chris Pine to mumble his words in certain scenes to such somber effect that you'll think Michael Shannon's talking if you close your eyes.

And speaking of Pine, this is probably his best work as an actor, as he jettisons his Captain Kirk pretty boy sheen and charm in exchange for scruffy facial hair, sad eyes, and a persona altogether more weathered and gruff. While it's no surprise that he plays the more responsible of the two brothers (Foster is essentially a lose-cannon baddie with a boatload of reckless charm and intimidation--his encounter with a bitter Comanche is one of the best cinematic moments all year), Toby's hardly a saint. The bank robbing scheme after all is his plan, and while he seems fairly harmless when sized next to his brother, the fact that he's divorced and has a son for whom setting a good example has all but been forsaken sort of evinces the fact that he's tired of trying to be good in this world.

While this may all sound like fairly serious stuff, Hell or High Water supplies a surprising amount of laughs along the way, mostly from the male banter between Bridges and Birmingham. Bridges' partner is part Indian and part Mexican, and the majority of their interactions consists of racial insults from the former towards the latter. While these are played for laughs, mainly because we sense Bridges-who's in Rooster Cogburn mode here-needs something to entertain himself as they pursue the two brothers (one thing the film does really well is in showing how for the most part these sorts of "chases" are fairly uneventful and at times downright boring), Sheridan's script is too smart to let this humor simply exist for its own sake: underlying the facetious racism is the idea of the frontier and the expelling of native Americans, only to have the white settlers in turn be torn apart by modern day corporations. I won't reveal how this all makes its way into the narrative except to say Sheridan weaves it in with a kind of deft precision such that the film never feels like it's about "social issues" even though they underly the central premise.

Instead, Hell or High Water feels like something a little more raw and rough-hewn. Its pace is often gentle, its mood somber, its humor the result of men searching for ways to communicate with one another. Townes Van Zandt's Dollar Bill Blues plays during the opening credits (I should also note that the end credits include a song from Chris Stapelton's outstanding debut album from last year, Traveller, which I believe is the first time a song of his has been used in film), quite apropos considering that Mackenzie's picture as a whole sort of has the sad, languid feel of those Townes songs where people are fraught with trouble and do strange or bad things to solve their worries.