Is democracy bad for cinema? (Late at night and long-winded again)

Several recent LA Times articles, one a front-page news story, one opinion piece, and a feature suggest that Hollywood is out of touch with its audience -- not because of a lack of "family values," but because the Oscars bestow awards on overhyped, pretentious, underseen prestige pictures and not on the popular/populist films that really matter to most audiences. The news story quotes one Long Beach-area moviegoer who believes that Eddie Murphy has deserved Oscars for his comedic turns in other films, and producer Dean Devlin suggests that the Oscars add a best-of award for more popular films; Neal Gabler argues that cinema is no longer the cultural-soul-revelation medium of choice because younger audiences are more interested in the social lives of celebrities and expect more interactive entertainment; and the badly written feature piece suggests that the best movies are almost always genre films, as evidenced by The Departed (though the writer does try to sneak in Citizen Kane as an example of a now-loved film overshadowed by some other film). The common thread uniting the three articles is the idea that the Oscars represent an outmoded elitism and might be better served by recognizing that the audiences who choose E.T. over Gandhi or Raiders of the Lost Ark over Chariots of Fire might be on to something -- or should at least be heard and have their voices recognized as valid and somehow reflected in the awards.

Call me an outmoded elitist, but fuck a buncha that shit. Just because more people paid to see The Dukes of Hazzard or Saw doesn't make either of those films any more award-worthy than the fact that few(er) people went to see Babel or Half Nelson make them award-worthy. That a film fits within a genre doesn't make it any better than a film that defies easy categorization. The Departed isn't a better film than any of the other five nominees; it was easily my least favorite of the four, but not because it was a genre film. Letters from Iwo Jima is also a genre film (war picture), but it tweaks the formula enough (whether or not you consider the Americans or Japanese the enemy, it portrays said enemy as ambiguous) to make it more than just a generic offering. Departed might have elements to recommend it, but at the end of the day, it's not that much different than the riffs on gangster films Scorsese did in the 1970s or Tarantino tarted up in the 1990s.

Pulp Fiction was a box office hit and a lot of fun, but beyond its semi-novel time structure and snappy dialogue, it ain't about very much. It's like a game of Trivial Pursuit -- a great way to spend two hours and show off how much you know, and you might want to go back to the game again and again because you enjoy playing it so much, but what larger themes does it address? Other than showing that a certain adaptation of postmodernism could draw throngs to a multiplex, what did it do to advance cinema as an art form? I'd wager not much, other than inspire Guy Ritchie an n other wannabes. The film it lost to that year, Forrest Gump, is a similar movie -- once you get past the surface, it ain't all that much, though it at least offers some kind of historical perspective, however convenient. In my mind the best film of that year's five nominees was Quiz Show, Robert Redford's meditation on the American desire to be famous. Measured where PF is frenetic, thoughtful where PF is shallow, it offered much more to me as a viewer and someone who cares about cinema as an art and about American society and culture. (I will say PF is more interesting and probably better than the other two noms that year, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Shawshank Redemption.)

This brings us to the title of the post: All of this talk about popularizing Hollywood, of having it recognize the films that make audiences happiest as the best (rather than honoring those that challenge it, or at least don't settle for rewarding expectations), seems to me to miss the point of democracy. In the U.S., at least, we have a tendency to describe anything that allows for multiple points of view or for the "average person" to speak his/her piece as inherently "democratic." Setting aside the question of whether or not this is a good definition of democracy, should everything be so democratized? Should the standards by which we judge cultural expression (i.e., art in a loose sense) be based in audience-friendliness, either in terms of "giving the consumer what s/he wants" or in terms of allowing greater audience interaction?

Perhaps its an issue of how the audience interacts; I'm all for a certain level of play between the artist and audience, and I certainly don't believe that meaning is fixed in authorial intent (whatever that is) or even in a consensus interpretation of a film's meaning. But I do worry about the notion, gaining some popularity, it seems, that popularity is a better guide to worth than putatively elitist notions of human enrichment, artistic innovation, etc.

In other words, if it came down to Babel vs. The Departed, I'd take the former every time.

What the hell...

Occasionally live blogging the Oscars....

Guaranteed Contender for Best Film of 2007

I'll post more on it later after it opens, as I'm sure everyone who sees it will have something to say about it, but I was able to catch a press screening of Zodiac Thursday. It was fantastic. Fincher's best film to date and easy candidate for best film of 2007. See it when you can.

Bumping it up

I'm starting a new thread about an old subject, to add some comments to the "Inspiration" thread, which is starting to slip off the page.

First, I need to say that everything Eric said regarding 2001 was true -- he did like the monkey parts, and I did tell him it was going to be like Star Wars.

Zac's comments and Paul's response to them have touched something in me as well. I don't know that I think of cinema as providing me a deeper understanding of myself, but when I see a film that I consider a masterpiece, it seems an expression of something I knew I felt or believed, but either didn't know I knew/felt it, or didn't know how to express it. An example of this would be Pasolini's Notes for an African Orestes, which is a documentary about his abandoned attempt to make a film of the Greek cycle, transplanted to post-colonial Africa. Some of Pasolini's ideas of how to visualize the spiritual or abstract -- for example, a dying lioness to represent the defeated Fury, for example -- moved me so much that I hugged a friend who happened to come by as the film was ending; I was that caught up in a moment of vicarious artistic joy. As Maurizio Viano has written in A Certain Realism, Pasolini was ahead of his time in this project, addressing themes that would become important to post-colonialist studies, feminism and even environmentalism in the 1970s.

Lest this become too academic, let me also emphasize that giddy moment of needing to embrace somebody. Great films (masterpieces and near misses) inspire some emotional response in me, even bringing me close to tears. Few shots are more beautiful than the Star Child turning its gaze upon the viewer at the end of 2001; few are as perfectly sad as the door closing at the end of The Searchers; few as quietly hopeful as the crane shot at the end of Simple Men. I just finished watching a movie that has its faults but is, methinks, unfairly maligned -- Peter Jackson's King Kong. Some of the moments at the end -- Kong tapping his chest to communicate "beautiful" to Ann, his recognition that he is about to die, the last of his kind, Ann's anguish as she watches him slip away from her -- hit this movie geek where it hurts/counts.

I don't know what any of this means, but there it is.

Y'know... I kinda have to agree....

According to this article at Salon, some Academy voters have had a hard time deciding on which film to select as Best Picture -- not because the five nominees are all so deserving, but because they're all so mediocre. I've seen only four of the five nominees -- The Queen is the lone miss -- but I actually have to agree with the sentiments expressed in the article. I liked Letters from Iwo Jima and Little Miss Sunshine, but neither will be remembered as a high point in American film even five years from now. Babel is the most complex (or at least complicated) film of the five, but it's thematic reach, though impressive, exceeds its cinematic grasp. And I am of the (currently) minority opinion that The Departed is a turkey, with a distractingly silly performance by Jack Nicholson and plot machinations that rely on all parties behaving like morons (dualistic personalities or otherwise). It's not that I don't find any films worthy of being nominated -- Children of Men will be remembered as a high point in film five years from now, Babel isn't unworthy of nomination -- but this five... it feels like a list of "impressive films" drawn up by the uninspired.

And since we won't be meeting for the yearly party this Sunday, here's where I would have put my $10:

Best Picture: The Departed
Best Actress: Helen Mirren
Best Actor: Forest Whitaker
Best Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin
Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson
Best Director: Martin Scorsese
Best Original Screenplay: Little Miss Sunshine
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Departed
Best Cinematography: Children of Men

Tribute to a Master

IndieWire has a great report on a recent Robert Altman tribute in New York on what would have been his 82nd birthday.

There's some wonderful quotes in the piece but I was particularly struck by this observation by Tim Robbins:

"Bob has gotten the financing together for his new film, called 'The Memorial' and we are making the film as we speak. He is watching the people on stage, yes, but there are other cameras looking around the theater today at the subplots, the subterfuge, the silliness, the whispered comments, the backstage preening." And singling out Altman's wife Kathryn Reed Altman, whom the director called "Trixie," Robbins added, "Kathryn, you have a beautiful close-up with a camera dedicated to you, but everyone else beware. He is gonna find us out, and God will laugh."

It's fascinating to me that Altman's pursuit of spontaneity and realism in his films leads inevitably still to the self-conscious, doubled experience of real life as a constructed event. All these actors who showed up at the memorial were pushed, prodded and pressed by the demanding Altman to break free from artifice in front of the camera and now, with no cameras roling, they find themselves at his memorial, utterly self-conscious about the "Altmanesque" nature of this real event.

Is it the case that even Altman, as demanding and determined as he was in his pursuit of realism, couldn't escape the nature of his medium which is to, ultimately, subvert the direct experience of the reality he sought to capture?

For other reasons I was newly struck by Altman's comments at the Oscars last year:

"I've always said that making a film is like making a sand castle at the beach," Altman said, after receiving a standing ovation from the audience at the Kodak Theater in March of last year. "You invite your friends and you get them down there, and you say you build this beautiful structure, several of you. Then you sit back and watch the tide come in. Have a drink, watch the tide come in, and the ocean just takes it away."

I wonder if it's easier for story tellers to suffer heart break because beginnings and endings are their life's work, because they have attuned themselves to building strong bonds with characters and scenarios understanding always that they will eventually have to let go and fade away. I'm wondering how a critic can get to that place where it's okay to sit back and watch the tide come in and watch the ocean carry his memories out to sea.

It's periods like these when I need stories the most, stories that speak to the reality of my life not only so I can make better sense of it but also so I can begin to reconstruct it, to shape its direction, to move me to start work on the next sand castle.

Yet Another Place to Find/Watch Movies

I read this article on a new movie download site focussed on international cinema and festival films. Who knows if it will take off or ever offer great movies inaccessible otherwise (I don't need to tell anyone that there's a lot of crap out there!) but I signed up to check it out. Looks like they already have a lot of old Hong Kong and Bollywood stuff up. I'm downloading Legend of the Fox, as we "speak."

I imagine anyone doing any research on movie communities and the Internet should check it out.

Children of Men and contemporary religious film (longish)

Lori and I went to see this Saturday afternoon, and I can't think of the last film that left me so moved and so unnerved. The long takes, particularly the climactic shootout in the refugee camp, certainly had a lot to do with being unnerved; I desperately wanted a shot to end, to give me some relief or moment to breathe, but was rarely accommodated. At the end of the film, I felt out of breath, exhausted, shaky -- and I mean that in a good way.

The film's themes of collapse and rebirth, of reclaiming the concept of "pro-life" from its political sense (or at least presenting another political sense of it) are what moved me. I liked the visual jokes (Theo's brother collects artworks ranging from David to a large-scale recreation of the cover to Pink Floyd's Animals), the way Theo and Julian quickly found anew their love (if not their romance) in the car, the way animals responded to Theo. (A softie when it comes to animals, I was also glad that none of the pets in the film are harmed, on-screen at least!)

But what really got to me, and still unsettles me, is the scene where (and this might count as spoilers, so don't read on if you've not seen it) Theo escorts Kee and her baby out of the apartment building in the middle of the firefight between the Fishes and the Army. With the exception of Fishes leader Luke, everyone who sees the baby immediately recognizes it as a miracle and ceases fighting. Once Luke is killed, no one wants the baby for any political purpose -- politics cease once people are in the presence of the baby: No one wants to do anything but protect the baby, to keep this embodiment of hope safe.

Many are comparing Children to Blade Runner, in that both are semi-dystopian science fiction films that were sadly undermarketed by their studios. But I wonder if the comparison is apt beyond those similarities. At least provisionally, I'd posit that perhaps Children belongs with the recent spate of religious films, particularly those that attempt to make the sacred or holy feel in some sense real. At risk of pushing this too far, I'd compare Children to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Though I liked it, that film certainly has its flaws -- the overuse of slomo, God's teardrop -- it attempted to restore the carnality to the story of Jesus's scourging and death. Often, Jesus's wounds are treated as accessories, holes that he has but not wounds that he suffered, robbing the Crucifixion of its sacrifice. Say what you will about it, PotX presents the Passion and Crucifixion as things that Jesus felt. Similarly, in Children, faith is something that can no longer exist in the abstract, but must be a lived experience -- as Jasper's story about Theo's dead son intimates, and as the reverence for the newborn girl makes clear. The world may have given up hope in humanity -- understandably, since humanity's future appears to have been stolen -- but once it is presented with a living symbol of the future, it immediately, reverently (albeit temporarily) reconnects with that hope, and almost everyone selflessly acts to preserve that hope.

Fun fact about the production: Cuaron read Slavoj Zizek to build the "philosophical and social framework" for the film.

Swingers Redux (or Mike C'est Moi)

One other thing I watched over the weekened was Swingers. Yeah, I know.

I hadn't seen it in years, at least not since it first came out when I was still out "making the scene" and going to a lot of the bars shown in the movie. What I didn't see then that I saw now -- it was, indeed, all I focussed on -- was how in touch the script is with what might be called the male variety of heart break. Thinking back on the film all I could remember was Vince Vaughn's posturing but the film spends a lot of time with John Favreau's sad sack lonely heart.

Can anyone think of any other movies that assay similar terrain (comedies preferable!)?

Seen: Breach

Caught Breach over the weekend. More than it's themes of duty and betrayal, Chris Cooper's memerizing performance as FBI agent Robert Hanssen, the most damaging double agent in the history of US espionage, drives the film. I haven't seen an actor so completely disappear into a character in a long while. Cooper pulls himself up into the human cypher that was Hanssen with absolute control.

As seems to be happen more and more these days (see Mystic River), Laura Linney, as the FBI agent in charge of exposing Hanssen's crimes, is totally wasted in favor of Ryan Phillippe's young up-and-coming agent trainee and the tortuous paternal relationship he develops with the older agent he's supposed to be investigating.

There are hints of stronger parallels between Linney's character and Hanssen, both of whom have sacrificed personal dreams and ambitions to serve their country, and I would liked to see them developed more, although I suspect from screenwriter's point-of-view, the focus needs to be on the character who still has a choice, in this case, Phillippe's.

I haven't seen director Billy Ray's first film Shattered Glass and I can't say that his direction here was all that impressive. All the expected claustophobia and tension.

Worth it for Cooper's performance though.

What's Your Inspiration?

One of the issues I've noticed with being a film historian focused on the machinations of the film industry is that it has gotten me away from the very thing that drove me to re-enter academia in 1996: that is to say, film itself. So lately I've begun to rekindle this passion, by watching as much as I can, going out to the theatre as much as I can, but also thinking about the films that inspired me when I was younger.

The first film that I thought of as more than just a fun two hours was 2001: A Space Odyssey. When I was about 12 or so, the film was re-released and played in Indianapolis. Despite a snowstorm, I made my mother take me, my brother and grandmother to see it. I was completely enthralled. It might have been the first film I saw that attempted to communicate something about humanity -- our past, our future, our potential, our faults -- to suggest, even in a suitably subtle, cynical, Kubrickian way, the possibility of a spiritual facet to the vast expanses of space and to scientific progress. The monolith made perfect sense, the demythologizing of space in order to reinvest it with a sense of wonder moved me. My family hated it, much preferring the Mad magazine parody, "201 Min. of a Space Idiocy." Now I watch it at least once a year (probably the only film I own that gets that much play), and venture out to the theatre if I ever see a revival.

What are the films that similarly moved you? The film or films that first opened up cinema as an art form instead of simple entertainment, that you couldn't stop thinking about, talking about, even if -- especially if -- it drove your friends mad?

Netflix wants Zac and I to Fight!

I logged into Netflix to add you good people to my friends list and I got this message in relation to American Beauty:

"You hated this movie, but Stillman Fink loved it! You two are generally very similar in your opinions. Feel like discussing it?"

Feel like discussing it? I wanna throw down, man! Zac, you are so totally off my friends list.

Who's with me? American Beauty sucked like Crash sucked, both being obvious sops to the arm chair liberal bent of film critics and Academy voters. Bah.

A Question from the Teaching Trenches, Part One

Does anyone have an explanation for why characters that arrive alone at the Bates Motel get out of their cars on the passenger side?

A good place for movie news

In case some of y'all aren't aware of it, this is a cool site for finding all kinds of film news around the web. It's sort of an aggregator blog that links to tons of other blog posts. It's associated with Greencine, a Netflix-style rental site that focusses on indie and foreign films. I haven't found that their selection differs all that much from Netflix but they have definitely done a lot more to foster an online cinema community, outside of friends lists and the like.

Speaking of which, whoever's on Netflix, we should all get on each others friends list. Let me know who's on Netflix in the comments and I'll send you all invites.

Anti-Valentine’s Day Movies

Rather than celebrate films that perpetuate the over-commercialized and much too ubiquitous fantasies of flowers, Cole Porter songs, and just-under-the-wire admissons of true love that are associated with today's holiday, why don't we call attention to the movies that present love as dark, sordid, unsatisfying, unsuccessful, and/or doomed? Examples?

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Notes on a Scandal -- See Michele's post below for why! (PM)
Vertigo -- Nothing says "I love you" like murder, fetishism and vouyeristic obsession. (PM)
The Locket -- "Check" (PM)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover -- nothing says "love" like gluttony, cannibalism and arch political allegory! (DO)
The War of the Roses -- with the far too underquoted line, "Now I'm going to go piss on the fish." (DO)
Closer --"What's so great about the truth? The truth hurts people--try lying for a change." Nobody wins in this dark look at relationships. (LW)
Match Point -- "I'd rather be lucky than good." Love is either obsession or means to social status in this nod to Dreiser and Dostoevsky. (LW)
The Bridges of Madison County-- just open the car door, Meryl! (MS)
Splendor in the Grass -- sexual frustration = nervous breakdown (MS)
The Night Porter -- Charlotte Rampling, S&M, and Nazis…need I say more? (MS)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? -- Oh ya, now here's a movie that says "It's snuggle up on the sofa time" ... (PM)
Audition -- Because May-September romances are never truly fulfilling until she cuts your feet off.
Now Voyager -- The stars?...um, not quite as satisfying as the moon. (MS)
Rebecca -- Unrequited workplace romances will inevitably result in the burning of cavernous English estates. (MS)

Empathy Machines

So I'm reading this, one of Discover magazine's "Top 6 Mind & Brain Stories of 2006," and I find myself thinking of this:

The article mentions a pair studies about how we empathize with others. Apparently, the same mirror neurons in our brain fire when we eat an apple, say, as when we see someone eat an apple, or even if we read the sentence, "She eats an apple." Says neuroscientist Christian Keysers of the University of Groningen, Netherlands:

Mirror neurons "transform what you see or hear other people do into what you would do yourself," Keysers says. "You start to really feel what it feels like to do a similar action."

I hate to think that a process so seemingly rote or automatic could explain the fullness of why, when I was watching The Sopranos every night, I sometimes found myself, the next morning in my robe, swaggering thickly through my living room like Tony, cereal bowl in hand. Or why, on occassion, I can drop my hip to strike a contraposto pose and, despite the fact of my own soft physique, feel the lean power of Brad Pitt in Fight Club.

I'd like such connections and sensations to remain more mysterious than snapping synapses would allow which is probably why I'm a film critic and not a neuroscientist. I want to understand how the movies effect me and why, but I never really want to be able to put too fine a point on it.

Which is to say that if Godard had written "If direction is a look, montage is a mirror neuron," I'm sure that Breathless would have sucked.

Inaugural post- Notes on a Scandal

So, who has seen Notes on a Scandal? The performances by Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, and Bill Nighy are stunning but was anyone else offended by its representation of a lesbian as an off-kilter stalker in the tradition of The Children's Hour and Single White Female? Given that it is the year after Brokeback Mountain, isn't it time that we start granting all people who identify as homosexual sympathetic portrayals or do we resign ourselves to either lipstick lesbians who are eager to "go both ways" (appealing to the visual pleasure of heterosexual men) or misguided "crazies" who are outside of mainstream society?