Cameraperson

Cameraperson turned out to be a very strange experience for me. When we discuss film, we talk about the fourth wall or refer to "the camera" as an autonomous object. The character that looks directly at us is 'breaking the fourth wall; the camera can be 'uncomfortably close.' but with Cameraperson, there's an odd fifth element - the actual human behind the camera. This isn't a film about cinematography, it's a film about Kirsten Johnson, and the knowledge that there's someone (or multiple people) intending to shoot these things is sometimes very odd.

An image that describes this duplicity comes from a shoot in Afghantistan. Johnson is shooting through a car window, and as she's wiping away dust from her side, the driver is also cleaning the window on the other side, and we see both hands moving across the screen, wiping the same places without touching. It's a profound duplicity that's fascinating, but at some points uneasy; sometimes watching the film it feels uncomfortable to remember that there's someone making a conscious decision to shoot this and not act. From the beginning that intentionality is apparent; in an early segment in Bosnia we see Johnson, shooting a shepherd with his herd from the ground, pluck away some dead grass that;s in the way of the shot.

As a memoir, the knowledge of Johnson behind the camera is essential, and the parts that hit home the most are when she gets personal. Not just the parts with her parents or her children, but when she interacts with the people she's shooting; a woman having an abortion who Johnson asserts, that, despite what she's saying, she is not a bad person, documentarians on the Bosnian war who carry their own demons from covering it, Afghan soldiers who stop to have watermelon with her, only to be called out, a family she stays with in rural Bosnia who affect her so much that she returns to the latter five years later to show them the footage. More detached moments shooting people seem a bit uncomfortably ethnographic; depiction without interaction, associating things that belong to others only as they occurred to her. It's a fuzzy line, since of course she did experience being in these places, but without the emotional element it almost seems disingenuous to include it as a memoir.

Cameraperson is also about the broadness of life and death, both obliquely (a toddler left alone with an axe wedged into a stump) or directly (scenes from a birth clinic in Nigeria). The first segment in the birth clinic is a relatively unremarkable delivery of a baby. As the midwife wipes off the infant, she and Johnson both notice that the baby is looking directly at the camera. "She knows," the midwife says.

Much later in the film, Johnson shoots another delivery, which goes less well. It appears to be breech. There’s blood on the floor. The baby isn’t crying as the midwife whisks him out of the room. In the other room, the baby gasps practically with its entire body, struggling to breathe. The midwife tries suction and other methods, and although the baby gets a few cries out, it’s clear that it can barely breathe.

“He needs oxygen,” the midwife explains, “but we don’t have oxygen here.” She leaves. The baby is still gasping for air, its milky eyes looking towards the camera. This baby is dying, and if the first baby knew it was being viewed, doesn’t this one? We’re not just watching an infant suffocate, we’re watching someone watching an infant suffocate. It’s an intentional choice by a real person, a person who we now know, and I can’t help but dwell on that moment. There's a speech by a Syrian professor earlier that pinpoints why some of these moments are so uneasy. He talks about the images of corpses of refugees, how showing them is a sensationalist and exploitative act that demeans who these people were.

Sometimes, I watch a movie with something that really disturbs me, and I get upset at the actual filmmaker for subjecting me to it. (The unrelenting child abuse and suicides in Farewell My Concubine, for example.) Until now it always seemed irrational, just an outlet to take off some of the emotional burden. But perhaps it’s less silly than I thought; there’s always a person behind the camera who chose to record this. There’s no real way I can rate Cameraperson; I had more of a realization than a reaction, but it’s definitely something unique and notable.

Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World

An ever-growing web of information permeating our lives in ways we never imagined seems like a great match for Herzog to play around in; the title comes from the first segment on the creation of the internet, when we learn that the very first message sent from one computer to another was “lo”, which is compared to the phrase “lo and behold.” The creation of the internet as an Event, something with an unexpected grandiose impact, puts it on the level of the big bang, and starting with that sets expectations for a thoughtful film with Herzog’s odd flair. Instead it’s just a quick moment in the first of many dalliances into facets of the internet, AI, and technological progress as a whole.

The film is broken up into ten parts which cover not just the internet, but technological progress, its effect on us, and our connection to it as a whole. The segments are often brief and only provide a shallow view on their subjects. Many of these topics are worth a feature documentary on their own, including cybersecurity, people who claim to be allergic to wireless radiation, and stories from so called greatest hacker Kevin Mitnick, but Herzog skims over all of them. The shortest is on what Herzog refers to as the “dark side of the web,” and despite the internet having endless sources of nastiness and causing all sorts of moral panics, he chooses to focus on just one family affected by a very straightforward invasion of privacy: an EMT posted images of their daughter’s corpse after a gruesome car accident, which were used to make sick memes and treated as a joke. Not to discount this family’s horrific experience, but with cyberbullying, trolls, and revenge porn all becoming hot button topics, it’s strange not to even touch on any of them. Even worse, their story is undercut by how they’re portrayed; the entire family sits in a rigidly arranged living room (even the rolls on the table are perfectly arranged), all wearing black with thousand yard stares, and the mother mentions that she believes the internet is the spirit of the antichrist. They are the entirety of this segment and it almost seems like Herzog is treating the topic as a joke.

Lo and Behold is disjointed, and completely loses focus by part VII, which brings Elon Musk and his mission to Mars into the mix, but I think the fundamental problem is deeper than the form or the depth of content. The problem is that Herzog likes thinking about the internet, but doesn’t seem to know that much about it, or at least is out of touch with it. He starts with the first internet message, but only mentions the creation of the World Wide Web in passing over an hour later, neglecting to explore how the idea of hyperlinks and websites become essential. It’s not exactly common knowledge that the web and internet aren’t actually interchangeable concepts, but if you’re talking about the history of the internet, isn’t it vital to explain how its structure works? Instead he moves on to a variety of topics, from computational theory on bandwidth to self driving cars and AI capable of learning, as if he thinks any sufficiently advanced technology is all ‘the internet’ like how your mom might think every video game console is ‘Nintendo’.

Except in this instance your mom wrote a book about gaming, spent three chapters the people who get motion captured for fighting games, went on a tangent about the rise of table tennis tournaments while discussing Atari, and wondered if the block building in Tetris is a critique of communism.

Weiner

Weiner (dir. Josh Kreigman & Elizabeth Steinberg) follows former congressman Anthony Weiner through his 2013 campaign for the mayor of New York City, an an attempt at redemption after resigning from congress due to a twitter sex scandal. The the film is just as much a profile of Weiner himself as of his 2013 mayoral campaign, but his wife, Huma Abedin, is just as interesting to watch. She may not be the main focus, but with the former congressman’s reputation marred by a sex scandal, she’s in the spotlight just as much as him. There are really two ways to look at Weiner:

1. The Humiliation of the Saint Huma Abedin by the Campaign of Anthony Weiner

“First Lady” gets a surprising about of scrutiny for a completely non-political position, and while Huma Abedin works in politics as Hilary Clinton’s right hand man, her prescence and image is what’s on trial. Weiner introduces footage of Weiner and Abedin at home, both when on campaign and mundanely, getting their baby ready, comparing tomato sauces. At first it’s a look at the reality of their domestic life as opposed to the idyllic one in Weiner’s early ads, but as the campaign goes on, we’re seeing the stress not just on their marriage, but on Huma as she becomes less of an person and ally and more of a symbol for Weiner’s campaign and the press.

After all, she’s not the one running for mayor, and though she’s involved in the logistics of his campaign, her role is The Wife. She has to be on point even more than him, but her body language shows her real feelings. She’s rarely interviewed in the film, but almost always on screen with him, showing the uncertainty and simmering anger that she’s not allowed to display. There’s regular debate as to whether Weiner’s behavior disqualifies him for public office, but Weiner never lets us forget that his actions are not victimless. And while the campaign uses her to prove that Weiner’s an upstanding dude who’s truly a better person, the press jumps on her as the symbol of Weiner’s sins. “Why does she stay,” a deeply personal question, is asked repeatedly, with answers ranging from “love is blind” to “emotional abuse” from people who have never met her. All she’s actually got to express herself is her body language, and even that is carefully analyzed when she’s in public. She suffers the fallout twice - as a wife, and as a Wife of Politician; doubly objectified. Even with all her political clout she’s still trapped in societal gender expectations.

2. Anthony Weiner - all passion, no impulse control

The film starts off introducing Wiener as a brash, sometimes abrasive congressman who’s powered by a genuine passion for policy that helps people. He makes C-SPAN a spectacle, which draws people to him; his passion for what’s right is the type of fire we want in someone representing our rights. And then he makes himself into the spectacle when his boner shot is accidentally posted on twitter and tries to deny it in the most ineffective way possible. He’s got a fast talking charm that gets him over with the people, obviously a fantastic asset for a politician. But what’s quite obvious is that he’s got no filter for it; he uses that same charm to hit on followers. The passion devolves into picking fights, shouting at pundits, and being defensive. He views himself as a victim, refusing to drop out of the mayoral race because it would feel like letting his “bullies” win.

The film doesn’t delve too far into making Weiner self-ruminate; the filmmakers are willing to let his difficulty with introspection speak for itself. At one point en route to a community meeting, when asked why he has trouble talking about his feelings, he asks the cameraman if there’s a word for the “fly on the wall” style where the fly talks to you. A the end of the film, as Weiner watches the disastrous final moments of his campaign on the news, he’s asked why he’s let all of this be filmed, and all he can do is shrug. The closest he gets to genuine introspection is a moment musing over whether politics can warp expectations and understanding of relationships. If the question for Huma is “Why do you stay,” the one for Weiner is “Why do you do this?” That question could refer to the politics, the yelling, the cheating, or the sexting, or all of the above. Is this pathological, an example of narcissism or sex addiction? Is it a fatal character flaw, a lack of control or inability to understand consequences? And the last question, which goes for all politicians: is there any altruism involved, or is it all about power and influence?

Of course, in both views, the press is a major player in; they’re the ones who document and analyze the couple’s behavior, promoting the endless scrutiny. Would things be radically different without the existence of social media? Did the same technology that made him popular with the general public lead to his downfall? And are the mainstream press reporting news, or just latching on to a salacious story involving a man with an unfortunate last name? Are the actual issues being lost in favor of prying into personal lives of politicians? Do they treat politicians like celebrities to the detriment of actual government?

Weiner brings up a lot of questions about politics, the press, and about people. Why does someone become a politician? Why are non-political scandals important? Why is “first X” an important figure? Why do people sext/cheat? Is sexting really cheating? What is the press meant for? Why do people stay with cheaters? The film has all the content, but it’s up to us to interpret it.

Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man’s been getting buzz since its premiere at Sundance in January; know as the “Daniel Radcliffe farting corpse movie,” it ended up with positive reviews, despite the initial walkouts. It’s almost entirely a two man show; Paul Dano is Hank, who is stuck on a desert island, ready to commit suicide. He’s stopped by the appearance of Manny (Radcliffe), the aforementioned farting corpse, and together they bond while trying to find their way home. The premise would actually make a pretty cool video game: teach your dead friend about life (and its joys) to unlock various abilities which are then used in puzzles to progress toward home. But the film is more than just an epic fart joke; it’s about why we bother to try at all, with a darkly comic lens. Life (and your body) is super gross, but there’s no reason to be ashamed of that, and there really is stuff worth sticking around for. Connections with other (gross) people make life worth it.

Frustratingly, it chooses to represent isolation in the weakest way possible: unrequited love. “Love” isn’t even applicable -- it’s infatuation to a creepy point. The Girl is the symbol of meaningful connection, and romance is apparently the backbone of life. While Hank eventually figures out that friendship is just as meaningful through his journey with Manny, a large majority of time is spent focusing on The Girl as the reason to be. The Girl that Hank’s pretty much stalking, considering he’s only seen her on the bus and yet knows her full name, regularly checks her instagram and has a creepshot of her as his phone home screen. It’s past time we stopped portraying petty male infatuatiomn as love; Paulette and the UPS guy from Legally Blonde had more interaction than Hank and Sarah, and Paulette could barely string two words together around him. Swiss Army Man eventually does acknowledge that Hank is being really creepy, but it’s sort of offhand, more of a funny background event. Hank’s entire view of life is based off of her. Exploring how his upbringing helped make him so insular would have been much more interesting; the snippets we get are heartbreaking and grossly funny. But instead ‘tfw no gf’ is used as shorthand for the most terrible loneliness.

Personally, I think that shorthand contributes to the Nice Guy dynamic; infatuation and making romance The Holy Goal is so normalized that without it, you must be Lonely and Miserable and Incomplete, so why can’t Girls understand that you need to be complete? You don’t have to know her or care about how she feels, because nobody deserves to feel Incomplete, and only a total jerk would actively deny happiness to someone else. Therefore, a Girl who won’t even go out with you once is being a total asshole to you!

It’s also disappointing because the directors (who also wrote the script) do seem to get the crushing isolation that causes (and is caused by) depression. Hank’s detachment from his father shows how a gap can become an impassible crevasse, and even the anecdote about his mother is the sort of small bullshit that somehow makes itself really meaningful in your life. We also assume that he has no friends (although it’s never explicitly stated) and that has a ton of impact on you, both growing up and as an adult. Hank’s issues that have lead him to suicide are about initiating relationships and opening up, and there’s so much more to that than romance. Hank was on a desert island before he ran away, and “deserted” doesn’t just mean The Girl isn’t there.

I suppose I wouldn’t be so sensitive if the suicidal state of mind weren’t portrayed so accurately (and with the appropriate amount of humor.) What stops Hank from hanging himself? Some random guy washes up on shore that he can at least talk to. Except when Hank goes to approach him, he forgets about the noose and almost dies anyway. The realization that the person who stopped him was actually a farting corpse? Back to plan S with a stronger noose. But wait -- the farts are useful! Farts saving his life is lowbrow as hell, but the dumbest things can get you out of that mindset. All the scatological humor fits perfectly with the absurdities of life, presented in a less morbid fashion. Just as the dumbest thing can develop into a hangup years later, the silliest thing may lift you up just enough to keep going on.

Trailers and the political hook: how a horror franchise did it better than a Hollywood thriller

When I saw Green Room a few months back, the trailers attached to it were mostly were generic slasher shit, but two stood out: the trailers for Jodie Foster’s "Money Monster", and "The Purge: Election Year". Both intend to comment on The State of America; Election Year’s main character is a senator running for president who wants to end the titular purge, and Money Monster is about a Jim Cramer analogue who is taken hostage on live television by a man whose life was ruined by faux-Cramer’s faulty stock tips. Watching them back to back, it seemed like The Purge: EY’s trailer did a much better job of selling its film, even though it’s part of a franchise, and Money Monster completely fell flat. Of course, with Money Monster released a month and a half ago and The Purge:EY on its second week, the actual films are available to judge, but let's look at these trailers anyway; whether we want to admit it or not, trailers have their own significance.

Rewatching them, it’s clear that while both trailers intend to use current events as a hook, The Purge: EY’s trailer shows a better understanding of allegory and the current zeitgeist than Money Monster’s. Both trailers are pretty damn heavy handed, with The Purge: EY cross cutting “Keep America Great” with violence while “America the Beautiful” plays, but while The Purge at least uses imagery to get its point across, Money Monster shows its antagonist spouting anti-Wall Street rhetoric (“I might be the one with the gun here, but I’m not the criminal; it’s people like [faux-Cramer]”) or a protagonist giving us exposition about his motivation.

The basic idea behind the Purge is that, for one night, all crime is legal to let off steam and get the base urges of humans out for the rest of the year. The senator’s opposition, besides the barbarism, is that we, as Americans, should be better than that, should be on moral standing with the global community. American exceptionalism runs deep on both political parties, but the senator’s use (“The soul of America is at stake”, “It is a night that is defining our country. The Purge has to come to an end.”) is reminiscent of liberals using more socialist countries (usually in western Europe), to implore for empathy and change. The supporters of the purge are associated with the evangelical religious; a pastor delivers a sermon exalting America and the purge, leading his disciples in a chant to “Purge and Purify!”.

 "Keep America Great" is reminiscent of the slogan for Trump’s campaign, which has focused entirely on hyperbolic vitriol, painting immigrants as rapists and advocating internment camps and jailing women for having abortions. In essence he wants to “make America great” by cleansing it, pointing to minorities, immigrants, and women as scapegoats. The Purge doesn’t target anyone in particular, but the senator argues it targets the poor, her supporters shown are all black, and the name suggests the forceful ejection of dead weight while giving the purgers visceral satisfaction,. That juxtaposes the Purge with the evangelical right, which has become a significant force in the Republican Party (though not necessarily to Trump), and the senator with minorities and the poor, both whom liberals claim to champion (and believe the GOP explicitly excludes.) I doubt The Purge: EY is intending to be Democrat or liberal, but it is clearly associating the Purge with the extremist views within the GOP and especially Trump and his followers; Trump has actively championed violence against protesters. The argument for the Purge are that it’s an American Tradition, and that it mitigates the inherent aggression in humans, which assumes that violence is normal and unavoidable. With Trump clinching the Republican nomination (barring some legal masterstroke from the GOP), it strikes a very current chord in the social and political zeitgeist.

Money Monster’s subject, the financial crisis, while still relevant, is a well tread road; it’s been almost five years since the Occupy movement began with Occupy Wall Street, so there’s an expectation that Money Monster will do something new with the material, especially with films like Margin Call and The Big Short preceding it. Money Monster racks up the stakes with the hostage situation premise, but the dialogue follows very easy beats, material that at this point can be distilled into Advice Dog/Scumbag Steve-type memes.

 That doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to say about the crisis (there’s always a way to put a new spin on something), but the trailer doesn’t hint at anything particularly unconventional. Of course, since these are just trailers, none of this may apply to the actual films. Trailers can be misleading, and a good trailer interests the viewer without giving much away. But they are an integral part of movie marketing, and how people decide what to see, so what a trailer chooses to show sends a message about what the film wants to be.

The Invitation

 

The Invitation (dir. Karyn Kusama) is a smart and expertly crafted psychological thriller that explores the long term effects of grief. After Will and his wife Eden split after the death of their child, Eden disappears for two years and abruptly returns with a new husband, David, and invites Will, his new girlfriend, and several of their friends to their house for a party. The situation is already awkward at best for Will; he and Eden used to live in this house, and she had cheated on him with David, and a collision with a coyote leaves him and his girlfriend Kira shaken, but its Eden and David’s new blissful personalities that truly rattles Will. They credit “The Invitation,” the program they attended for two years in Mexico, for their newfound happiness, and the happiness of their new roommate Sadie. Will’s instincts tell him that this “Invitation” is a cult that’s unhealthy at best, but he’s carrying so much emotional baggage that it’s almost impossible to know for sure.

That uncertainty is the main tension in the film; things do seem very “off” from the beginning, but Will is obviously not starting off in a good state of mind. He’s going to the house he used to share with his ex and his deceased son, seeing her and the man she cheated on him with. Kusama takes advantage of framing, sound design, and focus to unnerve; a simple trip up the stairs becomes ominous in slow motion, the lavish dinner party turns into a barrage of overwhelming voices and grotesque chewing. Although the house is huge, each room feels claustrophobic.

Will obviously has not moved on yet, but has the Invitation program helped Eden and David do so? Or does it just allow them to avoid the pain that Will is still stuck in? Is Sadie’s happy-go-lucky, sexually open approach a sign of inner peace, or of desperation? The situation seems fishy to Will, but the other partygoers are unconcerned; they admit that Sadie’s presence and Eden and David’s newfound bliss is strange, but they feel that weirdness is acceptable as long as they’re happy. When the couple insists on introducing “The Invitation” to them, they encourage Will to be “open-minded.”

Grief and depression are an uphill struggle to overcome, and hard for others to support or understand. Immediately after the loss, people can handle the initial devastation, but there’s a point where you’re supposed to be “over it”, and if you’re not, people will eventually lose sympathy, or just becomes frustrated with you. With the outside world side eyeing you and the sadness overwhelming you, it’s impossible not to wonder if something is wrong with you, and the program provides both an easy answer to that fear and a concrete method to overcoming that sadness. Does everyone else truly believe that Eden and David are happy, or are they just happy that the couple isn’t moping around anymore?

After a bit of lag during second act, the last act veers away from the psychological to a much more violent genre, and though it’s shocking, it’s not out of place. The entire film has been asking how to handle grief, and the last parts, the ending in particular, show the consequences of unprocessed pain.

2015 roundup [aka what I've been watching in these six months]

I'd like to blame the lack of updates on this blog on getting a much steadier job than I had before; it's undeniably a huge factor since I started the job maybe two weeks after my last post and whoops where did those updates go??? But to be honest, I wasn't as enthralled by what I watched as I've felt in previous years. I always hate when someone declares that it's a "bad year" for film (especially since you hear it Every. Single. Year.), but I wasn't quite feeling it the same way.

There were some standouts though, and even ones that I'm genuinely still enthusiastic about.

The best ones [that made me feel feelings]

• The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos): I saw this at the New York Film Festival, and I'm still smiling about it. The best way I can explain it is that it's a dystopian love story written by aliens who have no understanding of 'love' but they've watched some romcoms and dystopia films and they're pretty sure they can fake it. With beautiful cinematography and brilliantly deadpan performances, it's more than a takedown of societal pressures to couple and become married; it pokes fun at the innate needs we have to bond with others and to have our freedom.
• Memorable moment - an early scene where Colin Farrell's character applies for the hotel and finds out that there is no bisexual option; he's forced to pick on the spot whether to be heterosexual or homosexual. It's a small moment, but it perfectly encapsulates the way we treat bisexuality, either just denying it exists, or demanding that they 'choose one already'.
• Spotlight (dir. Tom McCarthy): All the comparisons to All The President's Men are completely accurate; the gradual uncovering of the scope of the church scandal plays as suspense: how far does this go? And the emotional stakes are legitimate, not just for the victims, but for the journalists as well. As much as I love Mark Ruffalo, it's Liev Schrieber who really stood out to me. Maybe that's just because I too, am an atheist New Yorker...
• Ex Machina (dir. Alex Garland): An amazing use of AI and sci-fi tropes to explore gender stereotypes, particulary regarding women; Ex Machina comments on both the nature of sentient life and patriarchy; Oscar Isaac and Domnhall Gleeson play the Gross Bro and Nice Guy to Alicia Vikander's Girl of Interest, and all three of them are fantastic. Vikander in particular stands out though; she looks and moves like she's not quite out of the uncanny valley. Female androids in media are inevitably sexualized, and it's great to see a film that scrutinizes that.
• Chappie (dir. Neill Blomkamp) Speaking of sentient life....Chappie is 200% a mess, but I will maintain that many of its storylines ask interesting questions. Like Ex Machina, it is concerned with the possibility of sentient AI, but also about the responsibility of its creators. There's a ton going on, but the primary story is about how humans will shape new beings and the creation of morality in aritificial intelligence.
• World of Tomorrow (dir. Don Hertzfeldt): The first time I watched World of Tomorrow, a short where a little girl, Emily, is contacted by her future clone, I was devestated. I've watched it twice since then and it's just as beautiful and melancholy as the first time. It's interesting that this is Hertzfeldt's first digitally animated film, since it shows so much future technology that we (or we, as Emily Prime), can only understand in the abstract. Compare its representation of skewed reality with the breakdown of reality in Rejected; the world of tomorrow is not particularly comprehensible, but has its own beauty. Emily Prime is traveling outside of space-time, but not in a void. Instead, she and Emily-3 move through the dimension of memories, which can be exaggerated and vivid (like the saturated colors) or fuzzy and indistinct (like the memories of the dead).

Other standouts

• Mojave (dir. William Monahan): After reading Allison Willmore's piece on the tiredness of "manly malaise" as shown in Malick's Knight of Cups and Scorsese's Vinyl, (among others), I see it as an absurd parody of the troubled artist, mashed up with a western's revenge plot. Weird stuff goes on in both the desert and Hollywood, where the rules might not apply to you, and when a troubled director meets a mysterious desert guy, things get strange and silly. To paraphrase Ron Burgundy, things really get out of hand. There's a bunch of intellectual noodling, but little reason to take it all seriously. Plus, Oscar Isaac in a speedo and Garret Hedlund taking a shower, if that's your kind of thing (it should be.)
• The Assassin: So beautiful it barely mattered that I didn’t understand the plot. There’s an austerity that runs through the entire film; the performances are stolid without being stiff, as if every line, every movement is dictated by a strict tradition. Eye contact during conversations is rare; men stare straight ahead and women glance through a mirror. As someone who’s unfamiliar with the genre (and Chinese cinema in general), it provides a level of obfuscation that makes my lack of comprehension seem intentional (or at least understandable.)  The cinematography is as careful ans the performances; most of the camera movement is slow, relatively short pans, occasionally drifting behind curtains to veil the performers. There’s barely a musical store, mostly just a steady beat of a drum, thickening the air with tension
• Clouds Of Sils Maria: The best moments of Clouds focus on the craft of acting and slipping into a role and relate it to how identity can be defined by the outside world;  how hard it is to acknowledge that your self image might not represent who you are anymore, especially being a woman in an industry that judges on looks and aging. The jabs at Modern Hollywood and millennials, as well as the anxiety about The State Of Our Culture are pretty tired, but Kristen Stewart evens it out in a great performance, becoming the bridge between the two eras, supporting Juliette Binoche's character while understanding the values still present in modern pop culture.
• Mad Max: Fury Road: much more eloquent people than I have written tomes about this, so I'll just mention the highlights. The colors! The excess! Smashing the patriarchy to sweet war music provided by the war party and its flamethrower guitarist! (Also I guess Tom Hardy was there.)
• The Forbidden Room: "What did I just watch?" in the best way; it's the film equivalent of a matryoshka doll. Each story contains another story, clips of "lost" films of varying absurdity. Highlights include submariners who eat pancakes for the air bubbles, a song about an ass-obsessed Udo Kier, and poisonous skeleton women. When watching it I thought it went on just a bit too long, but it did teach me that I can acheive self-actualization by murdering my double (though only after she tells me a story).

The Tribe

Miroslav Slaboshpitsky's The Tribe, about a young man at a boarding school for the deaf who becomes involved in a clandestine crime ring, has been going around the festival circuit for a while, and is coming out in limited release on Wednesday, the 17th. It's gotten a lot of buzz since its premiere at Cannes last year, and I had the chance to see it back in March at the New Directors/New Films.

The premise alone deserves praise; while it has a simple 'climbing the ranks of a criminal organization' story, all the characters speak exculsively in Ukranian sign language, which is left unsubtitled. That combined with the long, often static takes gives it the feel of a modern silent film. Unfortunately, it turns out that wasn't enough to engross me, and it's taken me a while to figure out why. At first I thought it was the lack of information that led my mind to wander; how could I get attached to a character in such a simple and well worn story when I didn't even know his name and he looked like 90% of the other students/gang members? But the real problem is in Slaboshpitsky's formal choices, which end up undermining the attempt to evoke silent film.

All of the cast are non-actors, and it does show; the attempt at naturalism just ends up being unremarkable, which was what made it hard for me to differentiate most of the characters. Without dialogue, or even a confirmed name for out main character (the credits reveal his name is Sergey, but there's no way to know that from the film alone), the actor has to make non-verbal choices that give the character life onscreen. Silent film acting focuses on a different set of skills since the audience can't hear (or in this case, understand) not just what the character says, but how he says it, and these non-actors aren't trained for that. The choice to shoot entirely in wide shots makes this worse; the close up provides the most powerful emotional connection between the actor and the audience, and The Tribe is determined to leave us detached from its characters. So without dialogue, compelling performances, or closeups, most of the film falls flat.

I also feel I should mention that The Tribe occasionally throws in a shocking scene seemingly just for the visceral reaction; there's a gruesome accidental death whose only impact is to put Sergey in a new position that will move the plot forward and a medical procudure one step above back-alley that lingers for way too long. The actual violence is brutal but not gratitious (with the exception of one late scene), and actually fits the feel of the film without forcing a reaction from the viewer, so it's frustrating to have to sit through some scene made specifically to make you uncomfortable.

In short, The Tribe's form ends up more interesting than its content, and that form actually ends up hindering the film as a whole.

[If you want to read my first reaction when I saw it back in March, which was shorter, blunter, and has some very mild spoilers, you can read my letterboxd review here.]

Film Festivals - what you might see soon

It's June! And apparently that means a whole bunch of film festivals, so here's a overview of what's going on and what I might write about in the next few weeks.

I'm developing an extensive collection of festival badges and passes.

Right now: Brooklyn Film Festival (May 29th - June 7th)

I'm still deciding whether to write an overall post or talk about the films individually; I've got a 4 film pass and have already seen one film, a documentary called Placebo about life at the hardest med school to get into in the world (which I recommend, but warn that the narrative structure makes it somewhat uneven). I've already posted a review on Letterboxd, which will probably show up here in some form at some point. The other three films I plan to see are still up in the air, though Placebo is probably the only documentary I'll see there.

Soon: Lower East Side Film Festival (June 11th - 21st)

Right on the heels of BFF is the Lower East Side Film Festival, which I have even less of a plan for since I'm going to be volunteering there. I'm most interested in Jane Wants a Boyfriend, Party Time Party Time, and Pop Meets the Void, so there's a good chance I'll end up writing about some of those.

Later: BAM Cinemafest (June 17th - 25th)

Cinemafest has got a real interesting selection; the sci-fi film Advantageous is a must see for me, but I probably won't be able to see more than that; my theater staff perks don't include the festival, and summer's not a particularly lucrative time for me. There's a chance I may get to see The End of the Tour since it's showing in the Opera House instead of the movie theater, but I'm not getting my hopes up.


Ones I'll be missing out on: Northside Festival (June 8th - 10th), American Black Film Festival (June 11th - 14th)

There's obviously only so much I can do, but I'm still sad I'll be missing these two. Northside is a week long festival encompassing film, music, and technology events, taking place around north Brooklyn. The film part runs the first three days, but between limited funds and the venues being a bit difficult to get to (you'd think getting from southern Brooklyn to northern Brooklyn would be simple...but it's not), it's not something I can do this year. I'm even more disappointed to be missing the American Black Film Festival; I can't deny that my film choices overall are overwhelmingly white and that needs to change. But once again, money, and time, and the fact that their volunteer application period ends at the beginning of March, and I didn't even check until after Tribeca.

The "originality problem", which has nothing to do with originality

After the apparently disappointing box office opening weekend for Tomorrowland, Variety posted an article "'Tomorrowland' exposes Hollywood's Originality Problem",which points to it as a shining example of why studios would rather make franchises than gamble on original movies. Nobody should be surprised to hear it's because franchises continue to make money, and Bret Lang, the article's writer, seems to suggest that viewers are less likely to see films based solely on the actors involved. And while he does mention that films like Inception, Gravity, and Interstellar have all been hits, he claims that today movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, War of the Worlds, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith wouldn't get made, due to waning star power and the risks they carried.

Firstly, to nitpick, I have to point out that two of the three 2005 films he mentioned are only sort of original; with franchises reigning it's easy to call anything that's not a major part of the current cultural climate "original," but Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is based on an extremely well known children's book, and even War of the Worlds is an adaptation. I think we tend to complain too much about adaptations (particularly young adult fiction, but that's a different discussion); it's terrible and annoying until it's your favorite book or tv show. Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise also aren't the best examples of how star power is waning; in the last ten years Depp has become a caricature of himself along with Tim Burton, and Tom Cruise has lost almost all of his goodwill with fans from his erratic behavior (remember the couch jumping? denying all of psychiatry? That hadn't happened quite yet.) and Scientology ties. Both films also had household name directors; Burton's prior film was Big Fish, which at the time I remember hearing nothing but good things about, and Spielberg's last collaboration with Cruise, Minority Report, was also a hit.

But regardless, I still think "originality" isn't the problem; it's marketing. Lang does mention in his article that Tomorrowland's trailers were too vague to give people a reason to see it, and that's definitely something that needs to be examined further. You can't take a step without tripping over some hype for the latest Marvel movie or DC project or the Star Wars still of the day, so of course when people make decisions on what to see this weekend, those will be the first things they go to. On the other hand, there are "original" movies that don't have a fraction of the effort put into their marketing. Trailers are great, but for someone who doesn't see a lot of movies in theaters, commercials are incredibly important. I remember last year I found out about Edge of Tomorrow* from the trailer, but when the commercials started on tv, they told you nothing about the film besides Tom Cruise, desert, guns. When it underperformed, the studio recut the ads, not to show any context or try to sell anything about the story, but to rebeand it as Live, Die Repeat, which was originally the tagline. . Because when you want more people to see your film, the solution is to completely rename it. Personally, I knew people who would have loved Edge of Tomorrow, but never saw it in theaters because they had no idea it existed. John Wick came out later that year, and I only knew about it because of the internet; I never saw a single commercial for it, and "Keanu Reeves fights dudes" should not be particularly hard to sell.

Unfortunately this problem is far wider than summer and action films; remember how Selma got ignored in practically all the industry awards nominations? One of the reasons for that was that they didn't have enough in the marketing budget to send out screeners. It had a great release date, Christmas Day, but that was only in limited release, and it had way less incoming advertisment fanfare compared to what Birdman and Boyhood got. If the marketing can't compete with bigger films, of course the film isn't going to do as well. It seems like the studios expect their "original" films, when they do deign to make them, to sell themselves, and then they're disappointed when the box office revenue won't power the gravy train.



*I'm aware that Edge of Tomorrow is actually based off of a manga named All You Need Is Kill, but for this conversation it's "original" enough.

TriBeCa part 2 - narratives

I went much safer with narratives than I intended to; at this time only one of the films I saw doesn't have a distribution deal, and half of them have familiar actors involved (which probably has something to do with the first point). For the most part I avoided movies I could see pretty soon; Good Kill and Far From Men interested me but both have May release dates. Unfortunately, due to bad timing or just plain exhaustion there were a few I wanted to see and regret not doing so. Cronies and Lucifer came highly recommended; they were both featured on the festival website for cinematography and Latin American films (which Ives seen almost none of.) The Survivalist had its world premiere at TriBeCa, and it's always nice to see some speculative fiction, and I was looking forward to some oddball dark comedy in Applesauce and Mickey Rourke in Ashby. There's only so much one person can do though, so here's what i actually did see:

Further posts coming!

It's been about two weeks since my last post, and since I tend to disappear from this blog I wanted to explain why (because I actually have a reason this time). My laptop is in for repairs, so I've been running off my phone, library computers, and my eight year old dilapidated laptop with a terrible keyboard. Just applying to jobs has been a monumental pain in the ass, so part 2 of the Tribeca report is going slower than I would like.

The good news is that in the meantime I've seen three other films: Clouds of Sils Maria (fascinating, love Kristen Stewart), The D Train (missed opportunity, possibly kinda offensive???), and Ex Machina (I LOVE ROBOTS AND OSCAR ISAAC), and I plan to write a real post about at least one of them. Probably Clouds of Sils Maria, because there's a lot to unpack there both about being a woman in the entertainment industry and the art of acting itself.

I do have a letterboxd account that I update more regularly with small quips if you just have to know what I've been watching; I try to go into more detail here. Please do not judge me for watching John Wick three times in one month; I was going through a rough time and it's the perfect film to get rid of a bad mood.

TriBeCa 2015 roundup: what do we do at festivals anyway?

I’m back, and i’m feeling weirdly reflective after this year's festival. I saw an odd bunch of films this year, but somehow not odd enough for me? For Tribeca I decide pretty haphazardly, influenced by how much I can get into for free while volunteering for the festival (tip: of the three festivals I’ve worked, Tribeca gives you the most chances to see movies by far; if you hang out on the rush lines of venues on the last Sunday in the evening, you might see volunteers giving away screenings vouchers that they’ve accumulated. It’s far from a reliable plan, but if you’ve been working all festival there are only so many films you can see in a weekend!) This year though, I was kind of surprised at how little I ventured out of my comfort zone, or even into independent fare. I didn’t catch anything particularly weird like Der Samurai; three of the films I saw have well known names, and one of them is coming out in a month. I kind of regret delving into smaller and/or foreign fare; Lucifer in particular is one that I’m sad I missed.

It begs the question: what am I looking for in film festivals? Is it to see sneak previews of upcoming films? To broaden my film horizons? To see weird shit that probably won’t get major distribution (or that will run for a week at Lincoln Center where I’d inevitably miss it)? Tribeca so far has given me the most choices in what I end up seeing, and this year I’m not sure I used my choices wisely.

One thing I can definitely say I did was watch more documentaries than I usually do; typically they’re not my cup of tea. I generally chose smaller fare than the most buzzed about docs (In Transit, Thank You For Playing, Transfatty Lives), but I did catch some interesting stuff.

Tribeca Film Festival coverage - The Canal & Der Samurai

Horror has always been a genre that I've been iffy about, and the first two films I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival, Ivan Kavanaugh's The Canal and Til Kleinert's Der Samurai turn out to show exactly what makes the genre so hit and miss for me. One is my least favorite film that I saw at the festival, and the other is my absolute favorite (which includes award winners such as Zero Motivation and Point and Shoot), and by comparing the two it's clear what makes a psychological thriller work, and how Der Samurai lives up to the genre and The Canal doesn't.

The Canal follows David, a film archivist who discovers that the house he lives in with his wife and child was the site of a grisly murder where a man violently murdered his wife after he found out she was cheating on him. The story hits hard for him, as he has suspicions about his own wife, and when she goes missing and he digs up more disturbing crimes committed in the house, he begins to suspect that something paranormal is occuring. Der Samurai follows a young and inexperienced police officer, Wolski, on patrol in a small German town, who is currently appeasing a wolf that has been threatening the area. On one night, he encounters a katana-wielding figure in a dress wreaking havoc on the community who is quite interested in him.

The first difference between the two films is that The Canal doesn’t effectively heighten tension; David grows more and more frantic, but what he’s reacting to doesn’t change very much. There’s a lot of energy directed to him trying to convince others of the danger he perceives, but as the film progresses there’s not enough of an escalation to make me invested in whether the malevolent forces David is afraid of are real. Der Samurai starts strong with the minor but upsetting threat of the wolf who ransacks yards and who can only be appeased by raw, dripping meat, and from there continues to up the ante and stakes all throughout the film. The Samurai at first is simply unnerving, then progresses to increasing levels of violence as well as psychological warfare. Wolski, an officer who is barely taken seriously by the neighborhood malcontents, is suddenly thrust into a rapidly escalating situation involving a figure who seems inexplicably drawn to him

Secondly, in a psychological thriller, the main character should have some sort of connection to the impending threat, something which shakes up the protagonist's self image and puts them on edge. There is initially a specific figure that David is afraid of who could provide for a foil; the man who murdered his wife in the house David now lives in. But while the film briefly flirts with the implication that David has much in common with the killer, the main source of terror is linked to the house itself after he finds a plethora of articles about other murders, suicides, and occult rituals that have taken place inside, weakening the psychological elements in favor of gore and jump scares. While Der Samurai is far from short on the gore, the Samurai is closely linked to Wolski from the beginning; he sees Wolski as an equal and seems to believe his violent and impulsive actions are a favor towards Wolski. The Samurai is a physical threat to the town, but more importantly, he is a threat to Wolski self-image, and that is the real drive behind the film.

Thirdly, The Canal treats David's occupation as a film archivist as a gimmick to be picked up and dropped; there is a very awkward line in the opening of the film that connects people whose images we see in archival film to ghosts. While the film attempts to make a further connections that the ghosts David fears only can be captured on film, it's not explored nearly enough to be relevant to the story. It's an interesting idea that's not really developed enough to be particularly significant. On the other hand, Wolski's position as a cop is crucial to his character and the film; the Samurai uses Wolski's ineffectiveness as an authority figure and reluctance to use deadly force as a weapon to tease and enrapture Wolski throughout the film. The Samurai's recklessness, wanton violence, and transvestism constrast with Wolski's hesitatance and struggle to live up to the masculine ideal of the cop.

I'm not going to say that Der Samurai is a perfect film; the final confrontation is oddly campy, even for a film with mutiple beheadings and a slow dance in front of a funeral pyre. But it has so much more depth than The Canal and it's a shame that it hasn't been picked up for distribution.

The Unknown Known

Anyone expecting Errol Morris' documentary consisting of interviews with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to either condemn or redeem him will be disappointed. The Unknown Known has little interest in judging him, but instead simply asks "Who is this guy?" It seems like an odd question, and possibly an irrelevant one considering his massive impact on our government and the "War on Terror", but it leads to insights that are much more interesting than a more confrontational interview would reveal.

Much of the film is narrated by Rumsfeld himself; reading selections from the thousands of memos he wrote or recorded during his entire career. The most interesting ones focus on language and definitions; showing Rumsfeld's obsession with not necessarily information, but the phrasing of information. He talks us through various parts of his career (though with some omissions) but what Morris is really focusing on is Rumsfeld's version of these events. Occasionally he will refute something Rumsfeld says, to his face or by showing a clip that proves him wrong, but mostly Morris is content to just let Rumsfeld's statements hang in the air, instead focusing on his mostly paradoxical demeanor. The poster of The Unknown Known asks "Why is this man smiling?", and that's a question that the viewer will often be wondering. Rumsfeld's dopey smile appears at the most inappropriate times, as if he considers his checkered career sort of as an inside joke.

When I was a kid and the Monica Lewinsky situation was making headlines, I remember President Clinton was lampooned for dodging a question by asking for the definition of "is." That ridiculousness is Rumsfeld incarnate; he redefines words to suit his agenda, and then retroactively changes those definitions when criticized as if his first definition never existed. His media presence during the Iraq war was all about dodging questions by nitpicking at journalists' word choices; their questions, when interpreted through the "Pentagon dictionary", were nonsensical, and therefore he did not have to answer them. Cue goofy smile.The Unknowwn Known is an attempt to unpack the man behind the buzzwords and philosophy, and see if there's anything there. It turns out that Rumsfeld unwittingly provides an answer himself when asked why he agreed to the film, and while I won't spoil it, I will tell you: it ends with that damn smile.

NYFF - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a fun, uplifting ride with just enough substance to justify its wish fulfillment. Ben Stiller plays the titular character, a quiet everyguy who regularly loses himself in spectacular fantasies. He's into a woman at work but can't figure out how to talk to her, there are massive layoffs at his job at Life Magazine and the man in charge is a giant douchebag, and he has nothing interesting to put on his Eharmony dating profile. When a coveted negative from a famous photographer that only will communicate with him goes missing, he has to bite the bullet and go out on his own to find the photographer and save his job.

Emotionally, Walter's character arc is pretty predictable, but it's an incredibly fun ride, from the ridiculous fantasy sequences (one in which he and the smarmy executive duke it out in a superpowered fistfight across the city is particularly funny), to the characters he meets while traveling the world on his colleague's tail, to his constant correspondence with an Eharmony tech support staff member. The obvious message is that Walter goes from daydreaming about adventures to actually going on them, breaking out from his role as a meek everyman into something special, but I think the addition of the romantic subplot and Walter's waning job security add a little more heft to it. For one thing, although his love interest, Cheryl, isn't much of a fleshed out character (though magnitudes more so than the interest in About Time), she and Walter first bond over a common interest; she's intrigued by the mystery of the missing negative and actually interested in his work. Her son, Rich, also warms up to Walter because they share an enthusiasm for skateboarding. It's nice to see a character that starts off with reasons for the supporting characters to fall for them; even an average person has some sort of interest or unique talent, though they might not realize it.

Of course, an average person getting to travel halfway around the world in search of the most important item for his company is wish fulfillment at its finest, especially when succeeding means showing up a cartoonishly obnoxious boss. But the film is funny and charming enough that for the most part, it doesn't really matter, and the fact that it's both about living up to your full potential through taking risks and recognizing your previous experiences are more unique than you may give them credit for.

The reviews so far have been pretty polarized; and I think it mostly comes down to whether you're okay with a film that is so unabashedly wish fulfillment. It was also apparently hyped up as an Oscar contender, which it's probably not, but it's a sweet, funny movie that's touching without feeling manipulative. The only solid complaint I have is that the executive played by Adam Scott is pretty over the top in his assholishness, and his beard is ridiculously distracting, but that's a really small quibble.

Some thoughts on The Breakfast Club

I watched the Breakfast Club last week for the first time; I've never really been interested in the 80s teen movies, but I was convinced to try it out, and I ended up a bit frustrated. The thing about The Breakfast Club is that it has a really good message that's completely mismanaged. The David Bowie quote at the beginning foreshadows a lot of heavy handed showing instead of telling; most of the dialogue, especially in the first half, is too on the nose, and Vernon is way too cartoonish of a character. There's a lot to be said about teachers who take their shit out on students and have a disgusting amount of disdain for them, and how the bad teachers can really get away with it because god teachers' jobs are hard and teenagers are monsters, but Vernon's confrontation with Bender in the closet is just ridiculous. Nobody actually says stuff like "nobody will ever believe you" or "don't make a fool out of me", they just do or say nasty things because the balance of power is already established.

It's not as if it entirely misfires; seeing how everyone arrives at school and what they have for lunch are great examples of when the film does show instead of telling, and Andrew and Brian's monologues are genuinely moving. Brian's story in particular is something that really hit home because while I've generally accepted that the media's idea of high school has really little to do with what I actually experienced, that was the exact sort of shit that I ran into. I can't say that anybody wanted to kill themselves because of their parents' pressure about their grades, but I knew people who were afraid of what their parents would say if they brought home a 94 instead of a 95. I knew people who wanted to kill themselves because of the atmosphere of my school (you all are little cheating grade grubbing shits who can't think outside of standardized tests and if you don't get it it's because you're not trying hard enough); hell, I wanted to kill myself in high school, and I knew someone who did kill himself. That monologue was something raw and real that resonated pretty deeply with me, and even though the gravity of it dissipates when we learn that the gun was just a flare gun, there's a real connection made between the characters and the viewer.  And then the movie immediately cut to an 80s dance party. Not to say that most of the interludes of the kids fucking around is bad, but there's such a mood whiplash that it's annoying and distracting.

I already knew I was going to hate Allison's makeover, and I'm sure it's been talked about to death so I won't harp too much on it, but I feel like her and Claire's issues were so lazily written compared to the others. I can't even recall if we knew why Claire got in detention. We kind of don't need to know with Bender since we see that Vernon might put him in just for breathing, and the fact that Allison is either so lonely she'd go to detention on purpose, lie, or both says something about her, but Andrew and Brian's confessions really tell us something about them and their status. There's a lot of talk about Claire being the popular girl, but I feel like instead of focusing on that, the film decides to focus on her prude/virgin/tease status. What's really frustrating is that Allison explicitly points out that it's complete bullshit...and yet then everyone still focuses on it. Her virgin/good girl status is focused on while the actual issues, the pressure of popularity and her feeling like a pawn in her friends' and parents' lives, fall to the wayside. Allison and Andrew hooking up after her makeover is frustrating, but I feel at least they had more of a healthy connection than Claire and Bender. It seems like in the end Claire's just sort of the prize for him; the first thing she does for himself is get together with him? Really? In general it really does bother me that most of the characters' arcs seem to be resolved by getting together with someone else.

Even with my problems with the film, I can see why it's become a classic. The idea that teenagers' emotions and problems matter even if they don't have adult responsibilities yet is something that is often mocked in today's media, so I imagine as a teen in the 80s, seeing a mainstream film acknowledge your troubles and fears must have meant a lot. The film also has very believable and sympathetic characters, and the message about breaking away from your cliques and letting go of judgement is definitely important. I just wish that The Breakfast Club delivered consistently on its potential.

Only God Forgives

I went to a Q&A with Nicolas Winding Refn about a week before I saw Only God Forgives, and he told an anecdote about how at Cannes, a woman had come up to him and told him that she thought the film took place inside a vagina. Refn was surprised, but told her "I think you might be right!" At the time it seemed like a funny little story about weird interpretations, but after seeing the movie, I think she was definitely on the right track, because Only God Forgives is, ultimately, about a man who is still attached to his mother, like the umbilical cord was never cut.

Ryan Gosling plays Julian, a underground boxing manager/drug runner living in Bangkok. His cruelly overbearing mother, Crystal (played by Kristin Scott Thomas), comes from the U.S. after Billy, her other son, is killed by a man seeking revenge from the rape and murder of his daughter. Unconcerned with the circumstances of Billy's death, Crystal demands bloody revenge on those responsible, and expects Julian to do it. Her hold on him is absolute; in her first scene her touch is more like a python coiling around its prey than a mother interacting with her child. She lashes out at whatever comes her way, whether it's a mildly unhelpful hotel concierge or Julian's sort-of-girlfriend Mai, and insists that the world's rules bend to her whim.

On the other side of the story is Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), a cop who indirectly allows the murder victim's father to brutally murder Billy. He too, rules his world with an iron fist, punishing criminals through torture, amputation, or death. Despite his gruesome methods of justice, he has more compassion than the tyrannical Crystal; we see him apologize to his wife for coming home late and look after his child after a night of brutality. Crystal believes it's Julian's responsibility as Billy's brother to kill Chang, and Julian is stuck between the obvious danger of going up against Chang and the intense pressure from his mother.

Julian is paralyzed by women and their sexuality; he watches his girlfriend masturbate as his hands are bound, he rarely speaks, especially around his mother. The image of his hands flexing into fists, is a recurring theme; the only way he can assert himself is through violence, and his mother even has control over that. Many of the interiors, particularly in Julian's scenes, are a deep red, as if he is literally still inside his mother, and connecting her to the bloody violence of the film. Instead of dialogue, the soundtrack takes precedent, seamlessly linking a dark, heavy score with Thai karaoke songs that take on an oddly sinister air when sung by Chang.

There have been very mixed reviews for this film, and a lot of it are making the misstep of comparing it to Drive because of Ryan Gosling playing another taciturn character who has violent tendencies. This is not a sequel or spiritual successor to Drive, and the only similarities are purely superficial. (One of them is actually coincidental as well; Luke Evans was originally supposed to play Julian, but he dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with the next two Hobbit films, so Gosling took on the role.) Only God Forgives toes the line between narrative and experimental film; if you go into this film thinking about Drive, you will leave confused and disappointed.

The fallacy of video games vs. the world

I really wish that people who want video games accepted as an art medium think the only way to do it is prove that all other media is inferior. Ranking media is really irrelevant; people get their feathers ruffled by "what is art" and the high/low art concept when really they should be focusing on serious analysis of their medium of choice. Instead of arguing what makes video games better than traditional media, gamers should be discussing what makes video games unique from traditional media. The tactile (or I guess simulated tactile) immersion of the player into a world and character through interactivity is what should be discussed; how do the best of games use this in artful and innovative ways?

Instead I feel like gamers try and prove that video games are the only true medium, and seem intent on dismissing any other medium if it doesn't have interactivity, as the picture below from this cracked article unfortunately illustrates.

There's nothing wrong with having a preferred medium, but I feel like the "reactions" to the novel and film are being willfully obtuse. It's this weird thing where gamers want video games to be taken seriously and analyzed like other media, but seem to refuse to take part in contemplating and analyzing anything else. Critical thinking and analysis skills can and should be applied to every medium, and understanding the complexities in one medium makes you more sensitive to those of another. This is especially important because new media builds off of old ones; painting builds off of illustration, photography builds off of painting, film builds off of photography. An understanding of the earlier medium helps to intelligently discuss the later one as well. The call for games to be taken seriously is completely undermined by the refusal to take any other media seriously. How can you truly have a conversation about art if you refuse to respect any media besides your own? The reasoning behind the demands for respectful analysis show disdain for the very analysis these gamers crave; it is hard to respect a request to be open minded from a close minded person.

I think this happened because the first real discussion regarding games and art wasn't a real discussion, but an angry and defensive rebuttal to Roger Ebert's declaration that video games weren't and could never be art. (He later recanted this statement, by the way.) It was an aggressive debate instead of thoughtful analysis and discussion, and the conversation hasn't evolved much from that. Personally, I think the whole "can X be art" question is sensationalist and irrelevant; of course the video game medium can produce art. The question is how to discover and discuss those games that are truly special and how they use interactivity in an innovative fashion. Really, the first step to convince others to think of video games with the same critical and academic analysis that they do with other media is to critically and academically analyze video games, the medium, and understand critical and academic analysis itself.

I might be a hypocrite - on Silver Linings Playbook and Django

Let's be honest here: all of the "controversy" over Django comes down to one question: is it okay for Tarantino to bypass education about slavery in favor of entertainment? To me, the question is obvious; of fucking course it is. It's not Tarantino's fault that there aren't many high profile films that tackle slavery, and he or anybody else shouldn't be obligated to sit down and hold the viewers hand and give them an in depth history lesson. Tarantino may have set himself up a bit for a lot of this because he was talking about 'exposing' slavery, and that can mean a lot of diffferent things, many of which he never intended to talk about. (A more accurate statement would be that he exposes the extent of the cruelty and dehumanization inflicted on black people in that era.) I mean, not every film has to move cultural perception forward, right?

This seemed really obvious to me until a while after I saw Silver Linings Playbook.

I was really ambivalent about this movie coming into the theater; it's been getting a ton of praise, critical and otherwise, and featured a mentally ill character that wasn't sensantionalized, so it piqued my interest. But it also seemed pretty damn cutesy, and Film Crit Hulk, probably my favorite film writer, accused the second half of making the entire movie insincere and straight up dishonest. But a friend offered to see it with me, and I hadn't spent a whole lot of time with her in forever, so I went.

And somehow I came out just as ambivalent as I went in. There are really great moments in this film; the core cast is outstanding, and there's a lot of truth towards recovering from a mental illness. And even when the film gets formulaic, I can somehow forgive it because I was invested enough in these characters and their struggles that I could watch things get a bit silly as long as it felt good. But for me, something in the film made me deeply uncomfortable in a way that nearly ruined everything. The first half, which just about every reviewer agrees is the better part of the film, hit some emotional button to the point where I was actually considering walking out of the theater, going home, and curling up under a blanket with a teddy bear. Obviously, I didn't, partly because I've never walked out of a film in my life, but also because I saw it with a friend and it would be a dick move to leave. That, and we were up in Kew Gardens; I had traveled way too far to run out on a film. It was strong enough that even though the second half followed the romcom formula to a tee, I was totally okay with it because it made me feel fluffy and good. My friend came out saying that she thought it was a great portrayal of people with mental illness, and for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to agree.

It took me a lot of time to realize why; there are some really mixed messages about Pat's illness. On one hand, we see that he's a regular guy who's had problems, but is attempting to work through them, first by himself, but then realizes he is much better on meds. His parents' worries and reactions towards his every move are sometimes frustrating, but completely understandable and accurate. He's not malicious or scarred from some childhood trauma, he just got dealt some shitty mind cards and has to learn how to get around them.

On the other hand, I feel like some of the humor in the first half undermines that level-headed and sympathetic look at him. Not to say that he needs to be handled with kid gloves; anyone who's been in a mental hospital can tell you that sometimes, in retrospect, some things people do or think because of their illness is kind of hilarious. But sometimes it feels like a line gets crossed. Pat throwing a book out the window and waking up his parents to rant about it? Funny, completely plausible for someone with poor impulse control. (Anyone who has tried to read through A Song of Ice and Fire would understand.) That kid who keeps trying to interview the Solitanos about Pat's illness. Funny, in that ha-ha wait-yeah-there-are-people-who-would-really-do-that way. Having Pat's dad chase him down the block? Cathartic. The actual conflict leading up to that is tense, raw, and upsetting, but then we get this scene of all the neighbors waking up and complaining, and it just felt so...false. It seemed like something out of a sitcom when the main characters are having a loud argument over something stupid, when in fact we just watched a pretty violent scene. The other thing it reminded me of was the nigger on a horse scene in Django, though in Django it's a standalone scene establishing the ridiculousness of racism (one dude on a horse is a pearl-clutching event!), whereas in Silver Linings, it directly follows something very serious. We laugh at the idea of Django on a horse being a spectacle, but in my opinion there's much less laughing matter about being woken up by an actual domestic disturbance. It's a cheap and hollow laugh that turns a serious scene into "Ha, look at these guys! Waking up the neighborhood with family members punching each other!" Both Pat and his father's anger problems are suddenly the butt of a joke.

The scene where Pat runs into his former boss also really bothered me; I just didn't find it funny that she genuinely scared for her safety. It's not even really expanded upon that people are afraid of Pat; I think it's mentioned once, yet that would be very important for someone trying to get their life back together. Instead, it's played for laughs, and not just 'oh hoho, misunderstanding!' laughs; we're supposed to laugh because Pat doesn't even get that he comes off as creepy. In the end, I realized that I don't think the film really cares that much about portraying mental illness as much as having quirkily fucked up people who can somehow fix each other by being together. Note that in the ending, we don't see if Pat has a job? Or possibly even his own place? All we know is that everything's well and good because golly gee, those two kids got together! When I think about it, the end suggests that falling in love with someone is just as important to well-being as medication and therapy. Maybe even more, since I can only infer that Pat is still on meds. And what about Tiffany? Pat is at least in therapy (with, of course, a charmingly foreign therapist because movies); am I really to believe that dancing and a new relationship has solved Tiffany's emotional problems? I guess. The film is iffy about caring about mental illness in the first half, and downright doesn't give a fuck by the second, and I think that's a serious problem.

Or is it? After all, I don't know if David O. Russell (or original novelist Matthew Quick) ever intended to make a film that furthered how mental illness is portrayed in pop culture; maybe they just wanted to tell a love story about some severely fucked up people. If Tarantino is allowed to wrap the horrors of slavery into a spaghetti western, why can't Quick or Russell mix some mental illness into a romcom? Do I expect this film to do too much like some expect Django to do? Is it possible that, being a Tarantino fan and a Russell neophyte, I'm giving Tarantino slack because I already really like him? Or that I'm being unfair because while the lasting social remnants of slavery affect me personally, it's not in the intense way that mental illness does.


You know what? I probably am, at least a little bit. In the end, even if Django deserved to be called out as much as other people have done, Silver Linings deserves to be called out even more because portrayals of mental illness don't get the same discussions that race does. Not to mention that Silver Linings can't help but sugarcoat some of the darkest moments with humorous situations or the Black Best Friend.

Also Django actually has complexity and sticks to doing something new, whereas Silver Linings decides halfway through to ditch originality and go full romcom.

I guess in the end, I really think Tarantino thought a lot more about showing slavery in Django than Russell (or Quick) thought about showing mental illness.