In honor of finishing my dissertation, I went to see 300 earlier this week, and found myself alternately repulsed and fascinated by the film's glorification of fascism and its really quite stunning visuals. The film's washed-out colors help the buff actors pop out from the digitally built backgrounds, and I enjoyed the action sequences themselves, including what Paul not unwisely described as an inclination towards slowing the action down almost to the point of the film being a slide show. I think the film reflects its graphic-novel origins much better than Sin City did, which did little more than make each scene look like a comic book. Snyder did a much better job of conveying the kineticism in well designed sequential art.
That said, this has to be one of the most reactionary films since Chuck Norris stomped around Vietnam in the early 80s, retroactively defeating the Viet Cong and defeatist liberals. 300 doesn't gloss over Sparta's policy of killing newborns it considered unfit to live, or its practice of training young boys to be brutal warriors, it places them as the linchpins on which Sparta and its heroic defense of Thermopylae rested. Indeed, the policy of destroying the unfit is reaffirmed by transforming Ephialtes into a monstrously misshapen hunchback who is seduced into betraying the Spartans with a lapdance. Xerxes looks like he got lost on the way to West Hollywood for Halloween -- a bronzed, megalomaniacal drag queen who likes to sidle up behind men and whisper sweet nothings into their ear about how nice he'll be if they just get on their knees. Several of his agents are African, and one shot fades to black so only the black man's eyes and teeth loom out of the darkness. Xerxes's armies are repeatedly referred to as representing all of Asia, and if the 300 Spartans (and, the film begrudgingly admits, about a hundred other nervous Thespians and Arcadians) don't stop them, these perverted Asians will overrun Greece and take away Our Precious Freedoms.
The only thing stopping this assault is a group of warriors who have been trained to identify themselves with their home of Sparta, who are willing to ignore the laws they are sworn to uphold while cowards and traitors at home try to stab them in the back, while the king's good wife tries to remind them that "freedom isn't free." I was almost surprised not to see the Greek equivalent of arbeit macht frei written over the gates of Sparta at the beginning.
The director and others have tried to defend the film with "it's just a movie," a spectacle to be enjoyed, as though it has no cultural context or that any similarity to fascist iconography and ideology is just a coincidence. Folderol. This film is steeped in fascism, from the emphasis on physical perfection and soldiering as an art form and duty, to the identification of Leonidas as the embodiment of Spartan honor and superiority, to the representation of democracy as weak and corrupt, to the rhetorical sleight of hand that says a group fights for freedom but only for those who are deserving of it (Snyder forgets to mention that Spartans had slaves). Thermopylae is presented as a battle of suspiciously Western European manly men defending Eastern Europe from Asiatic deviants. It would make Goebbels proud.
Back to its aesthetics, though, as a concluding note. In the mid 1960s, Pasolini wrote an essay about the screenplay, analyzing it as a form that wanted to be something else. In other words, a screenplay had to be able to be read as a text in its own right, but as one that would not be fulfilled until it became a different, visual text. Sin City and 300 are the apotheosisi (?) of the recent push for films to be as much like comic books as possible. Are we in effect seeing a reversal of Pasolini's analysis -- that these films must be coherent as films, but are not fulfilled unless the audience recognizes them as non-films, as graphic novels that blend printed word and image?
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Family Values v. Giant Scary Fish
Paul and I went to check out The Host tonight. I've got a soft spot for horror as a genre, and of late have found myself particularly enjoying foreign horror movies. They're far more inventive -- pushing the envelope of acceptability in ways that seem more nightmarish than incoherent (compare Miike's Audition to Roth's Hostel), or bending genres in audacious directions (cf. the prolific Miike's Happiness of the Katakuris).
The Host falls in this latter category. Though the Minneapolis Star Tribune is not widely known as the home of insightful film criticism, its reviewer sums up The Host nicely as a cross between and Jaws and Little Miss Sunshine. Although it does have its share of shocks and ooky monsters jumping out of nowhere, director Bong Joon Ho seems less interested in the creature than in the struggle for redemption of a family that totters between self-destructive and indolent. In fact, the monster is quite clearly seen in its first appearance, and is never hidden from the audience. The film also contains political themes (the US army inadvertently births the creature through petty behavior, then makes the situation worse when they come to solve it) and it doesn't quite come together, but hell, I don't care. It was as much fun as I've had at the movies in a long time -- scary, funny, touching, with enough underbaked subplots to add up to two or three well-baked ones.
But as Paul and I were talking about it later, it occurred to me that I'm quite willing to forgive foreign films for much more than I'm willing to forgive American horror films. With Hostel, Eli Roth allegedly wanted to use the slasher genre to critique American cultural imperialism, but his clear enjoyment in the torture sequences undercut this critique, and I find the film to be dull -- a better overall film than Cabin Fever, but not a success. But Dario Argento clearly loves his gory set pieces, and his films are about as coherent as a bowl of soggy AlphaBits, and I love the hell out of them. Same goes for The Ring and a quite interesting Korean horror film, Phone: quite a few scenes that make no sense internally or within the context of the film, but fascinating all the same.
So, am I anti-American? Do I fetishize foreign horror films -- or perhaps find their foreignness part of the reason why they are creepy; not so much that those foreigners are scary, but the fact that they occur in a culture that I am not familiar with already adds an element of the unusual/alien?
The Host falls in this latter category. Though the Minneapolis Star Tribune is not widely known as the home of insightful film criticism, its reviewer sums up The Host nicely as a cross between and Jaws and Little Miss Sunshine. Although it does have its share of shocks and ooky monsters jumping out of nowhere, director Bong Joon Ho seems less interested in the creature than in the struggle for redemption of a family that totters between self-destructive and indolent. In fact, the monster is quite clearly seen in its first appearance, and is never hidden from the audience. The film also contains political themes (the US army inadvertently births the creature through petty behavior, then makes the situation worse when they come to solve it) and it doesn't quite come together, but hell, I don't care. It was as much fun as I've had at the movies in a long time -- scary, funny, touching, with enough underbaked subplots to add up to two or three well-baked ones.
But as Paul and I were talking about it later, it occurred to me that I'm quite willing to forgive foreign films for much more than I'm willing to forgive American horror films. With Hostel, Eli Roth allegedly wanted to use the slasher genre to critique American cultural imperialism, but his clear enjoyment in the torture sequences undercut this critique, and I find the film to be dull -- a better overall film than Cabin Fever, but not a success. But Dario Argento clearly loves his gory set pieces, and his films are about as coherent as a bowl of soggy AlphaBits, and I love the hell out of them. Same goes for The Ring and a quite interesting Korean horror film, Phone: quite a few scenes that make no sense internally or within the context of the film, but fascinating all the same.
So, am I anti-American? Do I fetishize foreign horror films -- or perhaps find their foreignness part of the reason why they are creepy; not so much that those foreigners are scary, but the fact that they occur in a culture that I am not familiar with already adds an element of the unusual/alien?
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Stars not quite aligned
Lori and I went to see Zodiac this afternoon, and here are my thoughts....
I was a bit underwhelmed. The performances are excellent across the board, particularly Mark Ruffalo and John Carroll Lynch. As a police procedural, it was an enjoyably taut (albeit 170 minutes long) thriller.
That said... I'm not sure what this film is about. Or more to the point, I don't really know what the film has to say about the killings, about San Francisco in the late 1960s/early 1970s, about why Graysmith was so obsessed with identifying the murderer, or why I should care about who Zodiac was nearly 40 years later. At two points in the film, characters ask Graysmith why he needs to solve the case, and he stammers for an answer. Beyond that character's obsession, and the officers' drive to solve these crimes, nothing motivates the continued hunt for the killer after the trail goes cold. But Graysmith is never a compelling enough character to warrant following him in his obsessive pursuits for so long. Even as a character study the film is weak, because no motivation for Graysmith's mania is ever suggested (beyond his being an Eagle Scout).
The film never really establishes that, with the exception of the school-bus scare, San Francisco was all that traumatized or frightened by the Zodiac killings. For that matter, the film never really establishes that the murders and investigations took place in the late 1960s to mid 1970s, with the exception of a keen soundtrack and Ruffalo's fly slacks. Put different clothes on him and different songs on the soundtrack, and the film could take place at any point in history. In this regard, Zodiac doesn't compare well with Son of Sam by Spike Lee. Lee's film isn't better than Fincher's, but it's a lot more interesting, because it addresses the Son of Sam murders as part of the social fabric of New York at that time, of a city that seemed to be spilling over from venality and narcissism into nihilism.
So, while I enjoyed watching Zodiac, after 3 hours, I don't know that I'm any wiser or richer in my understanding of the human condition, of San Francisco of forty years ago, of anything really. I'm going to side with RK on this one, and keep Fight Club at the top of Fincher's oeuvre.
I was a bit underwhelmed. The performances are excellent across the board, particularly Mark Ruffalo and John Carroll Lynch. As a police procedural, it was an enjoyably taut (albeit 170 minutes long) thriller.
That said... I'm not sure what this film is about. Or more to the point, I don't really know what the film has to say about the killings, about San Francisco in the late 1960s/early 1970s, about why Graysmith was so obsessed with identifying the murderer, or why I should care about who Zodiac was nearly 40 years later. At two points in the film, characters ask Graysmith why he needs to solve the case, and he stammers for an answer. Beyond that character's obsession, and the officers' drive to solve these crimes, nothing motivates the continued hunt for the killer after the trail goes cold. But Graysmith is never a compelling enough character to warrant following him in his obsessive pursuits for so long. Even as a character study the film is weak, because no motivation for Graysmith's mania is ever suggested (beyond his being an Eagle Scout).
The film never really establishes that, with the exception of the school-bus scare, San Francisco was all that traumatized or frightened by the Zodiac killings. For that matter, the film never really establishes that the murders and investigations took place in the late 1960s to mid 1970s, with the exception of a keen soundtrack and Ruffalo's fly slacks. Put different clothes on him and different songs on the soundtrack, and the film could take place at any point in history. In this regard, Zodiac doesn't compare well with Son of Sam by Spike Lee. Lee's film isn't better than Fincher's, but it's a lot more interesting, because it addresses the Son of Sam murders as part of the social fabric of New York at that time, of a city that seemed to be spilling over from venality and narcissism into nihilism.
So, while I enjoyed watching Zodiac, after 3 hours, I don't know that I'm any wiser or richer in my understanding of the human condition, of San Francisco of forty years ago, of anything really. I'm going to side with RK on this one, and keep Fight Club at the top of Fincher's oeuvre.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Speaking of Digital Allegories: 300
Anyone seen 300 yet? Has there ever been a movie so obsessed about the physicality of the body even as the performers float through an entirely immaterial digital world? Talk about paranoid overdetermination.
At the same time, almost every other shot was like a tableau filmed in slow motion, as if we were supposed to admire every meticulously burnished and fussed over pixel. I don't think I've ever seen a movie so resistant to actual movement. Every image seemed to slow towards stillness, like the whole thing just wanted to be a series of gorgeous slides.
At the same time, almost every other shot was like a tableau filmed in slow motion, as if we were supposed to admire every meticulously burnished and fussed over pixel. I don't think I've ever seen a movie so resistant to actual movement. Every image seemed to slow towards stillness, like the whole thing just wanted to be a series of gorgeous slides.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The Prestige as Digital Allegory
PRESTIGE SPOILING
I’m no Star Trek fan. Yet I recall an episode in which a malfunction occurs when Captain Kirk is teleported back to ship, creating two Jims: one is the normal Jim (the “real” Jim), one is his “evil other.” Philosophically speaking, this is not an interesting situation: the evil Jim is spawned from a malfunction, his elimination thus justified. But what if – and this was a question I was asked in an undergrad philosophy tutorial – what if the teleporter had created two “normal” Jims? Which one then would be the “real” Jim? The problem here, of course, is that the distinction between the real and the copy has been taken away. In this (imagined) scenario, the “original” Jim has simply been doubled: there is no “real” versus “copy” (or “evil other”) anymore. They are either BOTH originals or BOTH copies, or, rather, they are neither: they are simply TWO JIMS.
What put me in mind of this was some recent reading on new media (old hat for some of you, I’m sure, but exciting and new for a silent film historian). This is Timothy Binkley, in Hayward and Wollen’s “Future Visions: New Technologies of the Screen”: “The vulnerability of analogue media is apparent in their very dissemination where ‘generation loss’ corrupts the quality of an image as it is repeatedly copied. It is difficult to maintain all the details of an image or sound when it is transcribed over and over again from one material object to another. … But there is a sense in which digital media deal only with ‘originals’ and hence neither propagate generation loss nor corrupt the source through repeated copying.” OK, so analogue transcription functions within an ontology of the original and the copy, where the copy is INFERIOR in detail to the original. Digital inscription, by contrast, suspends the ontological distinction between original and copy, such that my version of, say, a file-shared photo is perfectly EQUAL to the image stored in the digital camera that took the photo (it is, numerically, the SAME IMAGE).
All of which is a VERY long way round to a simple comparison of the Star Trek episode with Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, as follows:
• Star Trek is set in the future yet made in the past. The situation of the “evil twin” Captain Kirk presumes a fundamentally analogue imaginary (e.g., the transported Jim is subject to degradation in the process of being “copied” from one place to another: hence the creation of his “evil other”).
• The Prestige is set in the past yet made in the present. The situation of the “perfectly reduplicated” magician (Hugh Jackman) presumes a fundamentally digital imaginary (suspending the distinction between real and copy to a point where one no longer knows whether Hugh Jackman is the “original” himself or not: all of the Hugh Jackmans are THE SAME).
Or, in other words, Star Trek projects analogue ontologies into a future of “final frontiers,” while The Prestige projects digital properties into a nineteenth-century era of magic and mystery.
(As for Multiplicity, isn't this also an analogue universe in which the act of copying Michael Keatons introduces "lossy" variations, to the point at which one of the Keaton "clones" appears to be literally retarded?)
I’m no Star Trek fan. Yet I recall an episode in which a malfunction occurs when Captain Kirk is teleported back to ship, creating two Jims: one is the normal Jim (the “real” Jim), one is his “evil other.” Philosophically speaking, this is not an interesting situation: the evil Jim is spawned from a malfunction, his elimination thus justified. But what if – and this was a question I was asked in an undergrad philosophy tutorial – what if the teleporter had created two “normal” Jims? Which one then would be the “real” Jim? The problem here, of course, is that the distinction between the real and the copy has been taken away. In this (imagined) scenario, the “original” Jim has simply been doubled: there is no “real” versus “copy” (or “evil other”) anymore. They are either BOTH originals or BOTH copies, or, rather, they are neither: they are simply TWO JIMS.
What put me in mind of this was some recent reading on new media (old hat for some of you, I’m sure, but exciting and new for a silent film historian). This is Timothy Binkley, in Hayward and Wollen’s “Future Visions: New Technologies of the Screen”: “The vulnerability of analogue media is apparent in their very dissemination where ‘generation loss’ corrupts the quality of an image as it is repeatedly copied. It is difficult to maintain all the details of an image or sound when it is transcribed over and over again from one material object to another. … But there is a sense in which digital media deal only with ‘originals’ and hence neither propagate generation loss nor corrupt the source through repeated copying.” OK, so analogue transcription functions within an ontology of the original and the copy, where the copy is INFERIOR in detail to the original. Digital inscription, by contrast, suspends the ontological distinction between original and copy, such that my version of, say, a file-shared photo is perfectly EQUAL to the image stored in the digital camera that took the photo (it is, numerically, the SAME IMAGE).
All of which is a VERY long way round to a simple comparison of the Star Trek episode with Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, as follows:
• Star Trek is set in the future yet made in the past. The situation of the “evil twin” Captain Kirk presumes a fundamentally analogue imaginary (e.g., the transported Jim is subject to degradation in the process of being “copied” from one place to another: hence the creation of his “evil other”).
• The Prestige is set in the past yet made in the present. The situation of the “perfectly reduplicated” magician (Hugh Jackman) presumes a fundamentally digital imaginary (suspending the distinction between real and copy to a point where one no longer knows whether Hugh Jackman is the “original” himself or not: all of the Hugh Jackmans are THE SAME).
Or, in other words, Star Trek projects analogue ontologies into a future of “final frontiers,” while The Prestige projects digital properties into a nineteenth-century era of magic and mystery.
(As for Multiplicity, isn't this also an analogue universe in which the act of copying Michael Keatons introduces "lossy" variations, to the point at which one of the Keaton "clones" appears to be literally retarded?)
Monday, March 12, 2007
Inflight penguin movie
Did anybody see this year's Best Animated Feature, Happy Feet? It was the inflight movie on my return trip from SCMS. It's kind of like a cross between Dumbo and Bambi: part self-esteem melodrama, part ecological fantasy. It also adds a healthy dollop of exaggerated multiculturalism: the emperor penguins have to "find their songs" with which to attract mates, and these songs range from Elvis Presley to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (I fairly boggled at the image of a pudgy penguin rapping "Don't push me/'Cuz I'm close to the edge"), the stodgy older emperors all speak with thick Scottish brogues, and the adelie penguins are all Latin American (the leader of whom is portrayed by that well-known Buenos Aires native, Robin Williams). All of the human characters are played by live actors. And has anyone had an odder career path than George Miller, who began his career with the violent apocalyptic revenge Mad Max films, before moving to Hollywood for Witches of Eastwick and Lorenzo's Oil before becoming a children's film director with Babe?
I don't know if I'd say I liked it, but it's definitely worth pointing out.
I don't know if I'd say I liked it, but it's definitely worth pointing out.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Samuel L. Jackson chaining Christina Ricci to a radiator is not as offensive as you'd think
I've already packed for the conference tomorrow, and Lost doesn't begin for another 70 minutes, and I need an excuse to procrastinate from work on the dissertation. So here are some disconnected thoughts about Black Snake Moan.
As the title of this post states, its not as offensive -- at least in terms of half-naked women tied to radiators -- as the lurid promotional material would lead one to believe. Ricci spends maybe 40 minutes of screen time (about 2 days of diegetic time) chained up, and Jackson fairly quickly realizes the error of his ways. And any potential sadomasochism or misogyny is, potentially at least, undercut by the humor with which the scene is presented.
The film is more interesting, though not necessarily laudable, for how it portrays Jackson's character. Lazarus embodies both the minstrelsy that Craig Brewer reactivated in Hustle and Flow, and Chris Rock's "Magical Negro" who through selflessness and common sense helps white people achieve their dreams. Lazarus is, like Djay in Hustle, a means for the white audience to enjoy or perform vicariously an "earthier," more "realistic" (i.e. sexualized) mode of existence, simultaneously enjoying his take-no-prisoners rise to the top (the American story of fighting for one's dream of riches) while also assigning the socially unacceptable aspects of that rise (pimping and prostitution both as actual occupations and as metaphors for the sacrifices one makes to succeed) to the racial Other. The minstrel performance, traditionally a white man in blackface, allowed white performers and audiences to act out, to behave in socially unacceptable manners and "blame" it on black culture. Hence the exaggerated and sexualized characteristics of minstrelsy.
Lazarus is a blues musician, and his younger wife has done him wrong, leaving him in a bad funk. To emphasize how righteous Laz's bitterness is, Brewer occasionally splices in an interview with Son House about how real blues is about not being loved by the one you love. Laz also allows Brewer to fetishize blues and Southern black culture (earthy, real, a little violent, sexual). But Laz himself is not sexualized or otherwise exaggerated; Jackson actually gives a rather restrained performance. Instead of being the repository of white culture's vision of unrestrained black culture, Laz is the guarantor of the moralism that white culture hypocritically champions via minstrelsy. Rae, the chained woman, is the site of unrestrained sexuality and boisterousness that needs to be expressed and then contained by the minstrel's performance.
This probably counts as a spoiler, so be warned if you read further. Rae is cured of her nymphomania and drug abuse by Laz, but not by having been chained by him. It's his steady paternalism and soulful blues guitar playing that does the trick. Brewer does imply she needs to be chained (instead of a wedding ring, she wears a small gold chain around her waist and clutches it in a moment of need).
So anyway, what to make of this film. Like Hustle and Flow, it is rather well made: funny, confidently directed, smartly acted. But, like Hustle and Flow, one leaves the theatre feeling rather unsettled, and not in a good way. Brewer reactivates a lot of old stereotypes and invests them with a great deal of sentiment -- not necessarily a negative investment, either. But he seems unaware of any kind of history in these images; he doesn't seem to want to recuperate the sexuality and violence that he presents as important to Southern black culture, as much as shine it up and present it as that shiny all along. I suppose he's to be lauded for not being judgmental of his characters, but maybe I'd feel better about his films if I got the impression he was a little more discerning.
As the title of this post states, its not as offensive -- at least in terms of half-naked women tied to radiators -- as the lurid promotional material would lead one to believe. Ricci spends maybe 40 minutes of screen time (about 2 days of diegetic time) chained up, and Jackson fairly quickly realizes the error of his ways. And any potential sadomasochism or misogyny is, potentially at least, undercut by the humor with which the scene is presented.
The film is more interesting, though not necessarily laudable, for how it portrays Jackson's character. Lazarus embodies both the minstrelsy that Craig Brewer reactivated in Hustle and Flow, and Chris Rock's "Magical Negro" who through selflessness and common sense helps white people achieve their dreams. Lazarus is, like Djay in Hustle, a means for the white audience to enjoy or perform vicariously an "earthier," more "realistic" (i.e. sexualized) mode of existence, simultaneously enjoying his take-no-prisoners rise to the top (the American story of fighting for one's dream of riches) while also assigning the socially unacceptable aspects of that rise (pimping and prostitution both as actual occupations and as metaphors for the sacrifices one makes to succeed) to the racial Other. The minstrel performance, traditionally a white man in blackface, allowed white performers and audiences to act out, to behave in socially unacceptable manners and "blame" it on black culture. Hence the exaggerated and sexualized characteristics of minstrelsy.
Lazarus is a blues musician, and his younger wife has done him wrong, leaving him in a bad funk. To emphasize how righteous Laz's bitterness is, Brewer occasionally splices in an interview with Son House about how real blues is about not being loved by the one you love. Laz also allows Brewer to fetishize blues and Southern black culture (earthy, real, a little violent, sexual). But Laz himself is not sexualized or otherwise exaggerated; Jackson actually gives a rather restrained performance. Instead of being the repository of white culture's vision of unrestrained black culture, Laz is the guarantor of the moralism that white culture hypocritically champions via minstrelsy. Rae, the chained woman, is the site of unrestrained sexuality and boisterousness that needs to be expressed and then contained by the minstrel's performance.
This probably counts as a spoiler, so be warned if you read further. Rae is cured of her nymphomania and drug abuse by Laz, but not by having been chained by him. It's his steady paternalism and soulful blues guitar playing that does the trick. Brewer does imply she needs to be chained (instead of a wedding ring, she wears a small gold chain around her waist and clutches it in a moment of need).
So anyway, what to make of this film. Like Hustle and Flow, it is rather well made: funny, confidently directed, smartly acted. But, like Hustle and Flow, one leaves the theatre feeling rather unsettled, and not in a good way. Brewer reactivates a lot of old stereotypes and invests them with a great deal of sentiment -- not necessarily a negative investment, either. But he seems unaware of any kind of history in these images; he doesn't seem to want to recuperate the sexuality and violence that he presents as important to Southern black culture, as much as shine it up and present it as that shiny all along. I suppose he's to be lauded for not being judgmental of his characters, but maybe I'd feel better about his films if I got the impression he was a little more discerning.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
The public is an ass
Those great souls who David Thomsen, et al., want to say have better taste in films than do we in the academies, have made Wild Hogs the number one movie in America.
SOMEONE IS SPYING ON ME
SPOILERS
A trilogy of movies about surveillance, as follows:
1. Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997): Somebody is spying on Bill Pulman and Patricia Arquette and leaving videos. We share the perspective of the intruding gaze (we "are" the surveillance camera). We do not know whose gaze it is. We are given no reason for the surveillance. Finally, it is the surveilled that is transformed (quite literally, when Bill Pulman murders his wife, becomes a traumatic kernel of himself, and emerges as somebody else).
2. Cache (Haneke, 2005): Somebody is spying on Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche and leaving videos. We share the perspective of the intruding gaze (we "are" the surveillance camera). We do not know whose gaze it is. (Or do we? The film's final shot provides an ambiguous answer to the question of the first - whose gaze? - by including the two sons WITHIN the field of the concluding frame, an inclusion which "makes no sense," i.e., it functions as a kind of distorting point or disequilibrium within the frame.) We are given a reason for the surveillance (Auteuil's racist guilt). Finally, it is the surveilled that is transformed (by Auteuil's acknowledgment of his racist guilt).
3. The Lives of Others (von Donnersmark, 2006): Somebody is spying on Georg Dreyman. We share the perspective, not of the surveilling gaze, but of the surveilled; in fact, in the film's penultimate scene, we gaze with Dreyman (we share his point of view) on his erstwhile surveiller (now a humble postman). We know whose gaze it is: it is the Stasi's, specifically Hauptmann's. We are given a reason for the surveillance (Stasi suspicion of Dreyman's subversion). Finally, it is the surveiller that is transformed, not the surveilled (Hauptmann, initially a kind of automaton, a machine for drawing out secrets, becomes humanized by the "lives of others," resulting in an act that saves Dreyman's career, if not his lover's life.)
Phrased that way, it becomes quite clear that The Lives of Others is the OPPOSITE MOVIE of Lost Highway. (And the Oscar goes to ...) In fact, I would locate the difference between these three movies precisely in their different handling of a basic cinematic trope: shot/reverse shot. Thus: Lost Highway provides us only with the shot; no countershot (no answer to the question: who looks?). The Lives of Others, meanwhile, is a "classical" text because it cannot conceive of shot without countershot; it obsessively provides answers to our anxious question - who looks? - by showing us the surveiller. More than that, it assures us that our surveillers can be changed and that one shouldn't complain anyway, because our surveillers are also our guardian angels. Cache, meanwhile, is somewhere in the middle: Haneke doesn't give us the countershot we want, but he doesn't NOT give it; in fact, the final shot seems to reassure us that if we "look hard enough, the truth will be revealed."
In the light of all the above, it also becomes clear that a reading of Lost Highway which saw in it an allegory of political surveillance would be topsy-turvy. Rather, political surveillance movies (and I include Cache with Lives of Others on this point) are the ideologically more reassuring allegories of the more disturbing vision (literally) in Lost Highway. The more fundamental anxiety, then, is that the gaze is not mine but somebody else's and that "I can feel myself under the gaze of someone whose eyes I do not see" (Lacan, taken from Zizek) – that the intervention of a traumatic gaze that cannot be located in reality is the real fear, not that our civil liberties are being compromised.
A trilogy of movies about surveillance, as follows:
1. Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997): Somebody is spying on Bill Pulman and Patricia Arquette and leaving videos. We share the perspective of the intruding gaze (we "are" the surveillance camera). We do not know whose gaze it is. We are given no reason for the surveillance. Finally, it is the surveilled that is transformed (quite literally, when Bill Pulman murders his wife, becomes a traumatic kernel of himself, and emerges as somebody else).
2. Cache (Haneke, 2005): Somebody is spying on Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche and leaving videos. We share the perspective of the intruding gaze (we "are" the surveillance camera). We do not know whose gaze it is. (Or do we? The film's final shot provides an ambiguous answer to the question of the first - whose gaze? - by including the two sons WITHIN the field of the concluding frame, an inclusion which "makes no sense," i.e., it functions as a kind of distorting point or disequilibrium within the frame.) We are given a reason for the surveillance (Auteuil's racist guilt). Finally, it is the surveilled that is transformed (by Auteuil's acknowledgment of his racist guilt).
3. The Lives of Others (von Donnersmark, 2006): Somebody is spying on Georg Dreyman. We share the perspective, not of the surveilling gaze, but of the surveilled; in fact, in the film's penultimate scene, we gaze with Dreyman (we share his point of view) on his erstwhile surveiller (now a humble postman). We know whose gaze it is: it is the Stasi's, specifically Hauptmann's. We are given a reason for the surveillance (Stasi suspicion of Dreyman's subversion). Finally, it is the surveiller that is transformed, not the surveilled (Hauptmann, initially a kind of automaton, a machine for drawing out secrets, becomes humanized by the "lives of others," resulting in an act that saves Dreyman's career, if not his lover's life.)
Phrased that way, it becomes quite clear that The Lives of Others is the OPPOSITE MOVIE of Lost Highway. (And the Oscar goes to ...) In fact, I would locate the difference between these three movies precisely in their different handling of a basic cinematic trope: shot/reverse shot. Thus: Lost Highway provides us only with the shot; no countershot (no answer to the question: who looks?). The Lives of Others, meanwhile, is a "classical" text because it cannot conceive of shot without countershot; it obsessively provides answers to our anxious question - who looks? - by showing us the surveiller. More than that, it assures us that our surveillers can be changed and that one shouldn't complain anyway, because our surveillers are also our guardian angels. Cache, meanwhile, is somewhere in the middle: Haneke doesn't give us the countershot we want, but he doesn't NOT give it; in fact, the final shot seems to reassure us that if we "look hard enough, the truth will be revealed."
In the light of all the above, it also becomes clear that a reading of Lost Highway which saw in it an allegory of political surveillance would be topsy-turvy. Rather, political surveillance movies (and I include Cache with Lives of Others on this point) are the ideologically more reassuring allegories of the more disturbing vision (literally) in Lost Highway. The more fundamental anxiety, then, is that the gaze is not mine but somebody else's and that "I can feel myself under the gaze of someone whose eyes I do not see" (Lacan, taken from Zizek) – that the intervention of a traumatic gaze that cannot be located in reality is the real fear, not that our civil liberties are being compromised.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Hey, Oswald was cool with it ...
Riffing on the Astronaut Farmer post below, I've never had a problem going to see movies by myself although I always feel sort of weird walking into a theater full of kids and their parents, all eyes on the lone male with popcorn and coke, especially when neither side seems expects the other to be there.
Some people, on the other hand, seem to have a big problem with going to the movies by themselves. It is like a personal admission of social failure or something but what exactly happens when you go to the movies? You sit quietly in a dark room for two hours. What's so social about that?
I've always thought that movies were great for first dates because you only have to sweat through dinner then it's two hours of quiet time to gather your thoughts and you automatically have something to talk about, the movie, on the ride home. But it's the two hours in the dark that count.
I'll admit that I try to avoid going to the movies by myself at multiplexes and malls during prime date night hours which is when it seems the most obvious that no matter what I tell myself going to a movie alone is to flout vast networks of entrenched social convention and practice.
I wrote about this a while back on a solo blog of mine:
Some people, on the other hand, seem to have a big problem with going to the movies by themselves. It is like a personal admission of social failure or something but what exactly happens when you go to the movies? You sit quietly in a dark room for two hours. What's so social about that?
I've always thought that movies were great for first dates because you only have to sweat through dinner then it's two hours of quiet time to gather your thoughts and you automatically have something to talk about, the movie, on the ride home. But it's the two hours in the dark that count.
I'll admit that I try to avoid going to the movies by myself at multiplexes and malls during prime date night hours which is when it seems the most obvious that no matter what I tell myself going to a movie alone is to flout vast networks of entrenched social convention and practice.
I wrote about this a while back on a solo blog of mine:
A movie is what unfolds on screen but the movies includes everything going on around the space of the theater and within it. Perfumed skin, hard plastic, harder stares, the smell of butter and salt -- territories mapped and remapped a hundred times in the concession line.
The movies teem with social, cultural and technological currents that stay in flux right up to when the lights dim and beyond. In the dark they transform, cease to seethe and go all slippery and silvery. Merging themselves with our fantasies and change course, again, forever. A movie is what we go see, the movies are what we live ...I [wonder]: Why do reviews only ever talk about what happens on screen?
ASTRONAUT FARMER
I didn't think of the Polish brothers (Twin Falls Idaho, Northfork)as aspiring children's filmmakers so I wasn't expecting anything quite as normal as what The Astronaut Farmer turned out to be. I suspect I felt a little like a David Lynch fan walking into The Straight Story cold.
Still, I enjoyed it. If you're in need of a straight shot of Follow Your Dreams inspiration, this is it.
Still, I enjoyed it. If you're in need of a straight shot of Follow Your Dreams inspiration, this is it.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
ZODIAC
*SOME SPOILERS*
There's a shot deep into David Fincher's latest -- his best film to date and an easy candidate for best film of the year -- that begins with the camera positioned at the peak of one of the stanchions of the Golden Gate Bridge looking out over the city. The camera pans down to reveal the bay and bridge shrouded in a soupy fog.
It's a strikingly oneiric moment in a film that draws heavily on the tropes of the police procedural but it also marks the transition from when, a decade or so after the first Zodiac killings, the active pursuit of a killer has devolved, for the men consumed by the investigation, into a slow burning obsession with chasing ghosts. That Fincher should turn to the dreamy expanse of the Golden Gate Bridge to signal this shift in energy and mood is not surprising as it recalls that other great San Francisco-set masterpiece of personal obsession, Vertigo. Similar to James Stewart's Scotty, there's comes a point when the cops and journalists of Zodiac are no longer seeking practical answers to questions in the present but rather struggle to reconstruct the past in an effort to understand who they were and who they've become. "It was important," insists Jake Gyllenhaal's cartoonist-cum-amateur-Zodiac-sleuth Robert Graysmith years after the crimes and letters to the editors have ceased as his own life falls to pieces in the present.
One assumes that Fincher thinks it was important too, important enough to bring it to the screen with a running time of almost three hours, and there's much to be mined from the film as a critique of the media, spectacle and the movies. No sooner does it become clear that the Zodiac case may never be solved than SFPD Inspector David Toschi (a stellar performance by Mark Ruffalo) finds himself in a theatre watching Clint Eastwood take down the Zodiac-inspired "Scorpio" in Dirty Harry (1971). When we can't find closure in real life, leave it to the movies to settle all scores. Nevermind, grumbles Toschi in the lobby, due process.
The movies are ever present in Zodiac as cultural and personal artifacts. Graysmith connects a line from the killer's first letter to the SF Chron to The Most Dangerous Game (1932) and later we see the movie posters, mostly noirs and thrillers, that cover the walls of his own apartment. Interestingly, the movies end up being one of the film's many tantalizing dead ends (the killer was inspired by the novel!). Still, movie love or obsession, runs just beneath the obsession with
the real life thriller that envelopes all of the characters' lives. Indeed, one obsession feeds the other as the search for resolution in life seems, in part, motivated by a desire for the satisfying closure that fictions feed us on a regular basis. None of this, mind you, is explicitly or even implicitly stated by Fincher but it's there in the art direction, the composition and the shifts in tone. In the linkage to Vertigo through a hallucinatory vision of the Golden Gate Bridge Fincher ties his film to a fiction that runs counter to the norm in which the search for resolution or closure itself becomes a form of madness.
There's a shot deep into David Fincher's latest -- his best film to date and an easy candidate for best film of the year -- that begins with the camera positioned at the peak of one of the stanchions of the Golden Gate Bridge looking out over the city. The camera pans down to reveal the bay and bridge shrouded in a soupy fog.
It's a strikingly oneiric moment in a film that draws heavily on the tropes of the police procedural but it also marks the transition from when, a decade or so after the first Zodiac killings, the active pursuit of a killer has devolved, for the men consumed by the investigation, into a slow burning obsession with chasing ghosts. That Fincher should turn to the dreamy expanse of the Golden Gate Bridge to signal this shift in energy and mood is not surprising as it recalls that other great San Francisco-set masterpiece of personal obsession, Vertigo. Similar to James Stewart's Scotty, there's comes a point when the cops and journalists of Zodiac are no longer seeking practical answers to questions in the present but rather struggle to reconstruct the past in an effort to understand who they were and who they've become. "It was important," insists Jake Gyllenhaal's cartoonist-cum-amateur-Zodiac-sleuth Robert Graysmith years after the crimes and letters to the editors have ceased as his own life falls to pieces in the present.
One assumes that Fincher thinks it was important too, important enough to bring it to the screen with a running time of almost three hours, and there's much to be mined from the film as a critique of the media, spectacle and the movies. No sooner does it become clear that the Zodiac case may never be solved than SFPD Inspector David Toschi (a stellar performance by Mark Ruffalo) finds himself in a theatre watching Clint Eastwood take down the Zodiac-inspired "Scorpio" in Dirty Harry (1971). When we can't find closure in real life, leave it to the movies to settle all scores. Nevermind, grumbles Toschi in the lobby, due process.
The movies are ever present in Zodiac as cultural and personal artifacts. Graysmith connects a line from the killer's first letter to the SF Chron to The Most Dangerous Game (1932) and later we see the movie posters, mostly noirs and thrillers, that cover the walls of his own apartment. Interestingly, the movies end up being one of the film's many tantalizing dead ends (the killer was inspired by the novel!). Still, movie love or obsession, runs just beneath the obsession with
the real life thriller that envelopes all of the characters' lives. Indeed, one obsession feeds the other as the search for resolution in life seems, in part, motivated by a desire for the satisfying closure that fictions feed us on a regular basis. None of this, mind you, is explicitly or even implicitly stated by Fincher but it's there in the art direction, the composition and the shifts in tone. In the linkage to Vertigo through a hallucinatory vision of the Golden Gate Bridge Fincher ties his film to a fiction that runs counter to the norm in which the search for resolution or closure itself becomes a form of madness.
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