The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

Being a fan of David Fincher's work, and knowing how often his collaborations with Brad Pitt result in amazing films (such as Se7en and Fight Club), I couldn't help but be excited by his newest film, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. I'd read the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story some time prior to seeing the film, and was expecting something that would be ultimately heartbreaking. Instead, I was extremely unfulfilled with the entire 2-and-a-half hour ordeal.
Granted, the film did have moments of sublime beauty, which I shall relate a bit later. Fincher's eye for detail resulted in some amazingly accurate period set-ups (Apparently Levi's jeans supplied the vintage apparel for the characters in many of the pre-WW2 scenes), and his visual composition was often amazing (Daisy's dance routine in a fog-drenched gazebo was beautiful, as was Benjamin's walkin Moscow with Tilda Swinton's Elizabeth Abbott; the entire U-Boat attack), but the emotional cues were off for me.
Taraji P. Henson's Queenie was the doting mother-figure was the one constant emotional lynchpin to the film, never straying from her adoptive son, but rarely allowing more depth other than to lay words of wisdom on Benjamin, words that sound vaguely similar to writer Eric Roth's former Forrest Gump. Jason Flemyng, as Benjamin's father, Thomas, upon seeing his elderly newborn son, immediately rushes off to get rid of the boy, at first contemplating drowning him befroe dropping him off at the nursing home run by Queenie and her beau. In a film this long and lovingly detailed, Benjamin's origin feels unneccessarily rushed (and no one at all questions the fact that he ages backwards...I know that it's a matter of suspension of disbelief...but no one questions it). Eric Roth wrote a meandering script, one which offered situations without motivation, characters without context, conceits without meaning, and during one sequence, he wrote a five-minute monologue featuring about five characters who never reappear in the story but who exist solely so he could write a meandering description of how a major character was hit by a car. Why not just explain it? Get to the point.
The romantic story between Benjamin and Daisy worked well enough...but for some reason it just didn't click for me. These were two people who, for lack of a better context, met in media res in terms of their lives: Benjamin ages backwards and meets Daisy when she is a small girl and he is (physically) about 85 or so. By the time they're in their mid 30's, its logical for them to finally get together and live out their romantic lives.
But what of it? Sure, stories about people waiting years to be with whom they wish occur to millions of people every single day (hell, I know that feeling from experience), but in a movie the connections should mean something. When Benjamin meets Elizabeth and begins an affair with her in Moscow, he learns about loving. And then...they keep meeting up and having an affair. And she talks about almost swimming across the English Channel. And then...she just kinda leaves the movie. And she doesn't come back until the very very end when we see her, as an elderly lady, having just swum the English Channel. Did she do it because Benjamin inspired her? We don't really seem to know, and by the time she actually did swim across, his story was already over. The emotion wasn't there for me: a character is told for the first time that Benjamin is her father, and we receive about 2 minutes of her coping with that shocking revelation...and then it is never brought up again.
The scenes that held the most emotional weight for me were any featuring Queenie, and every single one featuring Captin Mike, the tattooed tugboat captain who becomes Banjamin's surrogate mentor. His was a presence that stuck with me primarily because it felt real. Capt. Mike is the cynic, the realist, seeing life as it is.When his fate unfolds, it's the only truly poignant moment in the film for me, but even then it's ruined by a CGI hummingbird that appears with little context.
And at the end of the film that's what I felt was missing: context. A point. What's the point in making a character age backwards if little to nothing is done with the conceit, and if none of the characters even really acknowledges the phenomena? Sure, watching Benjamin grow younger and more sharp as he watches those around him grow old and pass on is emotional stuff, but it could be just as emotional if he were to age normally as well.
Normally, Fincher is adept at manipulating emotions without making it ever feel like he is, and even his most heady and meticulous works offer insight to contemporary issues (even his period piece prior to this one, Zodiac). But Benjamin Button just didn't supply the weight I was hoping for after reading the story (not to say the short story was untouchably perfect...far from it. The themes therein are slightly dated, and even Fitzgerald ignores the conceit of a man ageing backwards in the middle section; as a reader of the story but not a disciple of it, I was fine with updating the timeframe and adding to the story). The short story ended with such a heartbreaking conclusion: a man lived a life, fought a war, and loved a woman whom he watched die of old age, and then, as he gets younger and younger, couldn't get the respect from others he'd earned, nor could he even remember his real age, nor his entire life for that matter).
Claudio Miranda's cinemaography, though, was lush and gorgeous; he employed a wide range of earthen tones to create an overly warm enviornment for the story, and the production design for 1920's New Orleans was meticulously detailed. Fincher's flawless design of Benjamin integrated Brad Pitt's likeness seamlessly onto the actors who portrayed the character at various points in history, pushing the visual effects in that regard to its limits (until James Cameron's Avatar premieres), but the special effects during other scenes (most notably the U-boat attack) seemed typical by comparison. In fact, there was a point in the film where Benjamin appears and Brad Pitt is actually younger than he was in Thelma and Louise, his first film. Watching a movie star age in real time over the past twenty years or so becomes so much more complex when you see him as he was and how he is currently within the same film.
This isn't one of Fincher's best films (Panic Room is still my least favorite of his), but it is ambitious. I can give it that much. With a meandering script, a cold-molasses-slow pacing, and an emotional center that doesn't even appear until the third act, it is a chore to sit through. It's not every day a director pushes the limits of his own technical abilities (especially a director as meticulous as Mr. Fincher), but even then the film should have a strong, interesting story. Perhaps it is telling that a film without an interesting story could still be nominated for 12 Oscars.
The concept of the film was interesting enough to get me to the theatre (as well as the inclusion of Mr. Fincher as director), but I still feel it could have been so much more than what the sum of its part gave me. Come for the production design and Brad Pitt face-deageing, but don't expect to be sucked in by the story.

No more hummingbirds. Please.

Joker

Joker written by Brian Azzarello, art by Lee Bermejo



I'd almost forgotten that this one-shot graphic novel was written, though I'd read about it on Batman-On-Film a few months back (the interview is interesting in that it predates the production of The Dark Knight, but Bermejo's design ideas for both the Joker and Two-Face are clearly reflected in the design of both those characters in that film). I read a few pages while waiting for class earlier this week and immediately picked it up to finish later.
Bermejo's work never fails to captivate me. Azzarello is hit-or-miss for me: I loved Lex Luthor, but thought the Superman: For Tomorrow storylines were too overtly symbolic, although Jim Lee's art in that series really complemented Azzarello's writing. that said, if Bermejo and Azzarello were to do nothing more but collaborate for the rest of their careers, I'd be quite happy with that. The art is beautiful. I'd read the previous Azzarello/Bermejo collaboration, Lex Luthor: Man Of Steel, and Bermejo's art was absolutely beautiful. He utilizes lots of sharp edges, where nothing looks fluid or organic, but looks as if it were pieced together from straight edges. At other moments, usually of emotionally moments or turning points in a story or a scene, Bermejo paints those frames, making them beautifully dynamic.
The story is told from the perspective of Jonny Frost, a low-level criminal who dreams of making it big, of being as recognized and feared and respected as The Joker. He is charged with picking up the Joker at Arkham Asylum, where he is being released (the reason is never explained, nor does it matter. His response to Croc when asked how he got released is almost exactly as Heath Ledger would have played it). While driving the Joker around, he comes to admire the Clown Prince of Crime, getting himself closer and closer to the villain, and finally realizing just how detached the Joker truly is from reality, sanity, and anything resembling humanity. By that time however, there's really no way out for him.
By telling the story from the point of view of someone closer to the Joker, but not neccessarily as twisted as some of the other rogues, we're able to really understand the Joker as a force more than as a person; Jonny is one of us, a "normal" person on the outside who slowly gets sucked in. Not once is it truly explained how he got out of the Asylum, what his intentions are, or why he kills certain people (and he certianly does kill some people in this: a bunch of slashings, numerous shootings, a broken bottle in the face, shooting a jaw off, and even flaying a henchman in a strip bar). His relationship to other rogues is explored (his interaction with Two-Face is pretty well played and works well in explaining why Two-Face never "just" kills Joker), and his ultimate relationship to Batman, which is summed up in three words and about five pages at the end, is the perfect epilogue.
The story is an exploration of the Joker's relationships: to his henchmen, to Harley Quinn (who is very much the Bonnie to his Clyde), to his fellow rogues, to Batman, and, more importantly, to Gotham City itself. The Joker and Gotham City form a bond that is stronger and more permanent than the bond between Joker and Batman. As Frost says in the last few pages, Joker is a disease, a disease that existed long before Gotham, the city infected. Joker represents not the evil inherent in man, but the insanity that dwells in the world. An urban madness made manifest in white, and red, and green, and purple.
This is a Joker more twisted, dark, and depraved than any previous incanation that I've read. Few times are his actual killings shown, merely the aftermath: but it's the aftermath that is shocking. His treatment of everyone (including Jonny, and especially Jonny's wife) show just how gone Joker is as a person. This is one of the seminal Joker stories, just as "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge", The Killing Joke, A Death In The Family, Arkham Asylum, or his first two appearances are. Hell, even "The Clown At Midnight" merely comes close to how dark the character can be when put in the hands of a capable writer.
And Azzarello is an incredibly capable writer (aside from, once again, what I feel is the clunky, overtly-symbolic Superman: For Tomorrow). There are instances of inspired subtlety in the narration: Joker's advice given to Jonny throughout; his recollection of a fellow inmate who believed he could drive around the world in a single day; his confrontation with the Batman; all of it is beautifully handled. Jonny, as a character, is given a cursory backstory: his wife has divorced him, he has a son, and he just recently got released from jail. A brief mentioning of a camping trip and a toad he had as a pet round out his backstory. The past, in this case, doesn't matter. What matters is the moment, and what the Joker does with it is the story. Azzarello manages to say much, much more in four words than I can manage to write here.
And what Azzarello does so perfectly is mold the Joker into both clown and psycho, thus completing a transition from the character's first appearance as a murderous thief, through his harmless phase as a jester during the 1950's, and leading right into the persona we now recognize: pitch-black humor, insane tendencies, and murderous rampages. Only now he appears much more real, much more potent. Much more like the evil incarnate as he is usually described.
As stated earlier, Bermejo's work and designs are beautiful and inspired. The Joker wears his Glascow smile and wrinkled, cobbled-together attire like a uniform (the only purple in his suit is his pants), and his red lips are now the result of his constantly chewing and sucking on his mouth. Other characters are presented in a more realistic light as well, especially the otherwise-fantastic-looking Killer Croc, who here looks exactly like a large man with a skin condition rather than and actual reptilian creature. The Penguin, already a realistic character, is expanded upon not on his look, but in his demeanor: much more of a power player, businesslike, and utterly afraid of the Joker. The Riddler's appearance is the most surprising: the character is visibly based on Johnny Depp, but his physical traits (which I won't describe here) were a surprise. And the less I say about Harley Quinn, the better (trust me, you won't forget her).
Bermejo's art is at once crisp and clean, and grittily real. The colors meld together in a barrage of greys, browns, and reds, and his rendering of faces is something I wish I were able to reproduce on my own. And I will tell you this, never before has an artist drawn so perfectly the point-of-view of a drunk character.
And that first image of the Joker walking out of Arkham...man I wish I could frame that.

Anyway, I suppose that's all I can mention. The book is an interesting read, but extremely dark, once again reminding me how dark a character Batman can be, how violent his universe is (seriously, who in God's Name would live in Gotham City?), and just how pefect a villain the Joker is.
You might want to wait until this gets into paperback before picking it up, though, but it is worth a purchase if you ever get around to it.
And when you do get around to it, you just might need a shower afterwards...

Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire:


If it weren't for my girlfriend, I would not have seen this movie in theatres and would have either waited for it to come to DVD, or watched in online (and missed the entire experience of actually going to the theatre, and supporting the previously lamented Ridgefield Park Theatre).
I'd read and heard a significant amount about this film, all of it pretty much unanimously positive. After seeing the film, I can say that none of it is exagerrated nor undeserved. This is one of the best films I've since last year, which itself was damn near chock-full of great movies (for the fanboy and cineaste in me).
The story is as such: Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) lands on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and after answering the first few easy questions and becomes the most unlikely contestant ever: a homeless orphan from the slums of Mumbai facing the opportunity of winning 20,000,000 rupees. Suspiscions run high from the host of the show (played with considerable range by Bollywood superstar Anil Kappor) and the police (who believe Jamal is cheating, and they will do anything to find out how he is getting the answers). But Jamal jsut knows the answers. He's not a genuis, and he's not cheating. He's lived the life and through his experiences knows the answers.
It is during his interrogation at the police station that we learn about Jamal's life living in the slums of Mumbai, and how each of the questions asked during the course of the show relate to that life: the murder of his mother; meeting his favorite actor, Amitabh Bachchan; playing with his friends and brother on the runways of airports; swiping food from those better off than he; being manipulated by (and finally escaping) the gangster Maman (Ankur Vikal); watching his brother Salim grow accustomed to life on the street and eventually (and heartbreakingly) pushing Jamal away; meeting, saving, escaping with, and eventually falling in love with Latika (Freida Pinto, as the oldest incarnation of the character, oozing a beauty and elegance I feared was lost in film); getting his job at a telecommunications company, and finally landing on the game show and inspiring all those living in the slums, as well as the nation of India.
I've never seen a Bollywood film (my friend Rob has seen a few...I need to get his advice as to where to start), but if this film is any indication then I shouldn't have too much of a problem following (although I also heard from my girlfriend that they're nearly 6 hours long...meh). The film is vibrant with a life and energy that I'd realized were missed from a majority of late-December releases (you know, the ones that just scream "Oscar!") That's not to say Slumdog didn't scream "Oscar" also, but it did so while also telling an engaging story, running the gamut of cinematic emotions, and pulsing with life; the "Oscar", if this movie was screaming such, was screamed like an afterthought, a gasp of breath in between frentic scenes.
Danny Boyle, a director I admired ever since I first saw Trainspotting back in high school (damn, was that really 5 years ago?), and known more recently for 28 Days Later, The Beach, A Life Less Ordinary, Sunshine, and Millions (among others) managed to surprise me. He allows his cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, to create a colorful palette of imagery using a variety of techniques (more canted angles than I could count; exagerrated colors; a repetition of scenes and shots; non-intrusive handheld movement; extensive variety of depth-of-field, the list goes on and on). More prevalent are the themes that tie all these elements together: family; escape; truth; love; sacrifice; commitment and luck. It's not to say Boyle's flourishes are missing: there are clever uses and freeze frames and jump cuts (and a combination of the two teechniques that I don't think I've ever seen before), a savage, addictive soudntrack, lots of violence, a street savvy script that doesn't once sound contrived, and a Hindu god standing in a doorway (perhaps the second-best image in the entire movie).
Jamal and Salim's relationship reaches a few apexes, some which were entirely unexpected but none which felt hammy or insincere. When Jamal, after seeing his brother for the first time in years, says, "I can never forgive you", you feel the words. Salim's redemption, as symbolically important as the questions Jamal questions, is perfectly realized, and it is the only way he can ensure the happiness for Jamal and, also, Latika. Jamal's determintion borders on obsession, doing everything possible to get close to Latika; but after everything he's been through in his life, he has the right to hold onto something so dear as closely as he wants. Latika, on the hand, is almost always the victim in the story, and in one of the few scenes where she is proactive and is the only one who can help Jamal, she cannot even do that. That doesn't take anything away from Latika or Freida Pinto at all, oh no. Not every character needs to be proactive, because not everyone in life is proactive. But her lack of being able to take matters into her own hands bothered me some time after I saw the film and was able to think about it.
The cast does amazingly well in their roles. Dev Patel as the grown-up Jamal never once feels out of his element, imbuing Jamal with an innocence yet determination that immediately makes him the center of every scene (although there are a few scenes that are stolen if not by any incarnation of Salim, then by the beautiful cinematography). Freida Pinto is impossibly beautiful as Latika, an orphan who becomes Jamal's singular love and inspiration (it is for her that he competes on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?).
I might be (and probably am) mistaken when I present the opinion that this film is Danny Boyle's most alive film since Trainspotting almost 13 years ago. But whereas that film is almost irredeemably satirical and downright frightening, Slumdog Millionaire is organic, with a definite love for each and every character onscreen (Trainspotting, on the other hand, pushes its characters through gauntlets of abuse, both physical and emotional, and at least two of the characters seem to be unloved by the story). In a conversation about the film with a coworker, I was asked how I viewed the film when I saw it: what did I take away from it? What mood was I in? Was I supposed to take it seriously or just enjoy it? For those who ask those questions and plan to see it I'll let you know that the film pretty much tells you exactly how to view it once the end credits begin. If you stick around for those, you'll knwo what I mean.
On the other hand, antoher question I found myself answering was whether the film is successful (in the States, anyway) for being a Western film in what would otherwise be considered an exotic setting. The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire inclusion, plot point about English cricket players, and hip-hop heavy soundtrack (I will never be able to listen to "Paper Airplanes" by M.I.A. on its own terms ever again), it was feared, was shoehorned into the story to make it more relatable to Western audiences. The fact that most of the locations of the film are set in the slums of Mumbai has been criticized by Amitabh Bachchan at http://bigb.bigadda.com/, and also by social activist Nicholas Almeida, who apparently finds the term "slumdog", which writer Simon Beaufoy apparently made up, to be offensive to the residents of the slums of Mumbai; while Almeida wants to court-order the title be changed to something "less offensive" (whatever the fuck that means), Bachchan's argument seems to be that Western audiences would receive a negative view of what India is. It is not all slums and shoeless orphans. We know that. And yes, Mr. Bachchan, there are cities in Western countries that are just like that, that have worse slums and ghettos and poverty. And those parts of society are also illustrated in movies. Look at Night And The City, or pretty much any movie Scorsese made from 1968 to 1980. This is not a blatant attack on a country's image; it is a story that happens to be set in the slums of Mumbai from the 1980's to 2008. (To be fair, neither of these complaints are held nationwide by India, and Bachchan also commends the film, just with a nervousness that audiences will get the wrong impression.)
That rambling aside, hopefully Slumdog Millionaire will inspire audiences to rediscover Indian cinema, which is the most prolific film industry on the planet (I for one want to see The Story Of Apu now), or study Indian history. That might be pushing it, but maybe I'm wrong. But for a no-star, mostly-subtitled independent film to not only gain explosive popularity, but to also be critically acclaimed and the single film to beat for the Academy Awards, something must have been done right. This is a film vibrating with life, almost ripping from the movie screen and grabbing you by the arm and reminding you why movies are even made.
If you haven't seen the film, do yourself a favor and do so. And stick through to the end credits. They're great.

If only I can get "Jai Ho" out of my head now...

The Taking Of Pelham 123 (1974)

A heist movie set in 1970's New York starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw? What can go wrong with that? Well, very little.
The Taking Of Pelham 123 gets the plot rolling along in less than 10 minutes, as ringleader Robert Shaw (along with three of his colleagues, including Martin Balsam, Earl Hindman ---of Home Improvement fame---, Hector Elizondo) hijack a subway train (the red line heading to Pelham Parkway) and hold the passengers hostage. Walter Matthau stars as Lt. Garber, a transit authority police lieutenant who is busy showing the Transit Authority headquarters off to a group of Oriental investors (whom he insults, assuming they don't understand English). The hijackers make their demands shortly after clogging up the entire subway system: either the City pays them$1,000,000 within 30 minutes, or they execute one hostage every minute until they do. It is up to Lt. Garber, and his on-duty partner, Rico Patrone (played with laid-back zest by Jerry Stiller) to stay one step ahead of the hijackers, save the hostages, and also figure out how the hijackers plan to escape from an underground train that can only go one of two directions. Car chases, shootouts, disregard for political correctness, and Robert Shaw ensue.
Walter Matthau spends much of the film trading barbs with Robert Shaw's Mr. Blue via two-way radio, bargaining for time and any concessions to prolong the execution of the hostages. While I liked that he was never in control of the situation I often wanted to see him do more than just talk into a microphone. He plays a very passive role here, which is necessary as he is someone who is almost out of his league with Mr. Blue (although he does manage to outsmart and trick them on at least two occassions). His expression in the final frame of the film, that humdrum, ironic look, is classic Matthau and an amusing coda. His blatant sexism ("What good's a plainclothes cop on that train, especially if it's a goddamn woman?") is amusing because it seems so out of character for the actor.
This is very much Robert Shaw's film: from his first apeparance on screen he commands attention, and manages to get it at every moment. He is epitome of cool, calculation (when not talking to Lt. Garber he plays crossword puzzles while contemplating which hostage to shoot). His character, given a cursory backstory, was a mercenary of some sort, and knows how to handle weapons, uncontrollable colleagues (personified in Hector Elizondo's Mr. Grey), and any inconsistancies in a plan. The man is also a sociopathic psychotic, expressed in a fun way near the climax. His demands, spoken clearly and in crisp, perfect English with a polite British accent, undercut the deadly person he has in store; even when leading a hostage off the train so he could be shot in the back, he calmly asks him to watch his step to avoid the third rail.
Mr. Elizondo's Mr. Grey is set up as an unstable mob hitman who was fired for being too uncontrollable, and he expresses that with an itchy trigger finger and a mysoginistic attitude towards one of the female hostages. He also trades harsh words with Mr. Blue, who takes it all in with cool deference. Mr. Grey is more a foil for Mr. Blue than Lt. Garber is, as Mr. Grey is an ever-present force aboard the train. Earl Hindman's Mr. Brown is given little screentime, but it is established that he and Mr. Blue are friends of some sort; that's about all the backstory we get on the guy. Martin Balsam's Mr. Green has a surprisingly large role, and one that has a pretty amusing payoff (which I won't ruin here); he is the one conscientious hijacker, not really wanting to hurt anyone, and his involvement stems from a drug bust in which he got caught and wants revenge on the Transit Authroity (he used to work as a motorman and knows how to operate a subway car).
The hostages are a bag of caricatures. the credits describe them simply as The Pimp, The Old Jew, Mother and Kids, The Homosexual, etc. etc. Everywhere throughout the movie are hints of a conservative society that was changing drastically: Lt. Darber and his coworkers often whine about letting women into the workforce; Lt. Darber makes pseudoracist remarks to the Chinese businessmen he believes don't understand him; Lee Wallace, as the mayor, is unliked by the citizens, and often weighs saving the hostages against losing the election; the homosexual in question is dressed like he came from a Stonewall Inn anniversary parade. It was 1974 New York in all its glory: fuck being PC, PC doesn't exist, and even if it did this is New York City with Walter Matthau as its star. He and the rest of the characters can say exactly what's on their minds because, you know what? That adds to their character. That gives them depth. Stop pussyfooting around and say what the fuck you want, even some people are offended. You're a character in a movie.
Director Joseph Sargant jumps directly into the action, tossing the audience into the plot without explaining anything and letting the audience slowly get to know the characters, their motives, and what's at stake (like any good director should. All this bullshit about knowing everything about a character, about where they came from, what their childhood was like, and whether their mothers hugged them is bullshit, boring, and takes away from the mysitque). The pace slows in the second, but once the mayor agrees to pay and the race is on to get the money from Chamber St. to the 18th St. station in less than 4 minutes things really pick up. Everything is played light and fun, exactly the way a good heist movie should be: the key isn't the payoff, but the coming together of every element, the escalation of suspense. Watching a genius at work is more exciting than watching the aftermath of their struggle, and here Robert Shaw is a genius.
Another genuis move is the score by David Shire. His score incorporates extensive use of percussion and trumpets, creating a motown-influsenced jazz score that reverberates like a heartbeat. The score is listenable apart from the film, although, unfortunately, it isn't used as extensively as I would've liked. After seeing the film I'm curious to find David Shire's other works to see if they hold up.
The film is a good heist movie, a lot of fun, and is a great showcase of 1970's New York, a New York that no longer exists as it's been Disneyfied and cleaned up and glamourized in the past two decades. Whether it's better or worse depends on who you're asking, as well as what part of New York you're referring. But the film isn't without its flaws as well: the payoff, which was hinted at for at least an hour throughout the movie is not nearly as exciting as it seemed. The second act slows down considerably, and some of the motivations for the police seem unexplained (they concede to Lt. Garber's decisions at nearly every turn without debate). The plainclothes policeman onboard the train is alluded to every 12 minutes, but when it comes time for him (or her) to get to the action, his (or her) actions seem somehow anticlimatic. Finally, all the blatant sexism, racism, and uncouth behavior, while interesting and fun to watch, doesn't hold up wel lat all in today's PC world.
This is a good movie, very fun, funny, with some great car stuntwork by Joie Chitwood and his team (who did the enjoyable-to-amazing car stunts for the James Bond films from 1971 to 1974), a great jazz score, and fun performances by Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. Perhaps the upcoming remake (on which I worked) will improve on some of the pacing problems, but I fear a lot of the un-PC behavior, which made the characters more interesting, will be lost and Lt. Garber's role will be made to be much more active (with Denzel Washington in the role, that is almost guaranteed). And unless they change the whole "big twist", it'll be gravely anticlimactic.
I'm sure I'll pick this up once the inevitable special edition comes out to coincide the release of the remake this summer.

Wake Up Call, my newest film, will be done, completely by the end of this week. I decree it.

Waltz With Bashir

Waltz With Bashir:
I saw this movie last night (in the only theatre playing it on the eastern coast, apparently), and I was initially not going to review it. I was only going to write, "Just see it. Please." and leave it at that. Because I truly was speechless and couldn't find the words to describe what I'd seen. But if director Ari Folman could find the images that describe partially what he'd experience in the Lebanon War in the early 1980's, then surely I could at least find some of the words to describe my experience while watching the film.
Animation has matured significantly the past year. With Wall-E and Persepolis (as well as Chicago 10, which I've yet to see) being released last year, animation has matured to the point where they can convey adult situations (not neccesarily sex) and universal themes. With Wall-E, at least, the story was still grounded in a children's tale. With Persepolis, the story is an autobiographical account of living in Iran during the rise of the Ayatollah. The animation is dreamlike in that film, drawn in the same steam-of-consciousness style in which the story is also told.
Waltz With Bashir is more on par with watching a coherent, always-entertaining version of Waking Life in which we actually see the things of which the characters are talking. The film is an autobiography, a documentary, and a therapuetic film. Director Ari Folman, about eight minutes into the film, is asked by one of his friends "Can't a film be therapeutic?" This film attempts to answer that question, and the answer is "Yes...but only to a point."
Folman interviews his friends and fellow compatriots, Ronny Dayag, Dror Harazi, Ori Sivan, Carmi Cna'an, Boaz Rein-Buskila, psychiatrist Dr. Zahava Solomon, and reporter Ron Ben-Yishai. Each of these players is in some way connected to the Lebanon War, and the related Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinians by Phalangist Christians.
The film opens with an arresting image of a group of yellow-eyed dogs rampaging through a town, ignoring pedestrians, cars, and everything else. They're vicious, evil-looking, and seem otherwordly. They stop outside a modern apartment building and bark. And bark. And bark. 26 dogs barking. A man appears at the window and stares at them.
We learn that image is a dream by one of Mr. Folman's friends, prompted by an incident that occurred twenty years in the past, when, during a raid, he sniped 26 dogs that were barking when his platoon arrived to pick up suspected terrorists. The dogs were used to warn the suspects so they could, and Mr. Folman's friend, unable to kill people, was instructed to snipe the dogs. The 26 dogs in his dreams are specters of his past, haunting him and, in turn, causing Mr. Folman to begin having flashbacks himself.
Waltz With Bashir is an attempt for Mr. Folman to come to terms with memories he had suppressed for over 20 years. The interviews he conducts with his friends and fellow colleagues illustrate the successes they've each had (one friend teaches karate; another owns 10 acres in Holland, having made a fortune in falafel), but each speaks of their experience with the same detached manner, the mechanical, cold responses. The sense that while having been in the war, they weren't "really" there.
Dr. Solomon, when interviewed, described how a war photographer was abe to keep his distance from the emotional impact of what he was witnessing: he viewed the war through an "inner camera", observing everything through a cold detachment, looking always for "the next best shot". His detachment was shattered, in the first of several powerful recollections, when he went to a stables and saw the dead, dying, and suffering Arabian stallions, once beautiful, immaculately-tended and cared-for animals, crawling and neighing and struggling just to stand up. Emaciated. Dying. Too weak to walk. Able only to lie down and wait for a slow death as the flies ate their eyes. Their fate was sealed simply becase they happened to be in hostile territory. That's what it took to break a cold detachment.
Other interviews take a decidedly surreal turn: one of the interviewers describes his traveling on a "love boat", a chartered yacht meant to disguise the movements of troops across the sea (the yacht turned out to be a normal crew transport). The interviewer, in his mid twenties during this episode, got seasick and fell asleep on deck and dreamt a 20ft. tall woman swam naked to him, lifting him up and carrying him on her belly as she backstroked across the water as he watched his "love boat" and all his friends aboard get firebombed.
Another segment shows Mr. Folman's squad leader, unable to get across a besieged highway, seizing a MAG antipersonnel gun and shooting into buildings, performing a waltz while firing in order to dodge bullets, and leaving unscathed while, at the same time, reporter Ron Ben-Yishai merely walked through the melee without caring, not once getting hurt.
Animation in this film is a pefect way of conveying all of these surreal, deeply subjective memories without once losing any of the impact. The choice of animation styles present (traditional 2-D; rotoscoping, and cel-shading are evident) each create separate emotional cues (rotoscoping is evident with the interviews and a lot of the action scenes; cel-shading for the more surreal segments; 2-D for sequences that are culled from interviews or are recollections that needed to be recreated, etc.). The music, by Max Richter, is modern blend of pop orchestra, with a few reworked pop songs (one song by Cake, "Korea" was reworked into "Beruit") and culled rock songs of the era (P.I.L.'s "This Is Not A Love Song"). While sometimes Mr. Richter's score didn't always mesh well with the film, overall it did, and when it worked it really worked. It is a score worth tracking to listen on its own merits.
However, the animation and the music aren't as important as the story. Or, rather, the stories. Everyone gives their recollection of events leading up to and including the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, internment camps where entire families of Palestinians were killed by Phalangist Christians following the murder of President Bashir. The massacres were carried out with the knowledge of the Israeli Army, and with some of the men in Mr. Folman's platoon as witnesses. Mr. Folman himself witnessed the aftermath of the event, and his friends, in their interviews, recall not knowing exactly what was happening...but knowing that it was wrong.
In the end, Mr. Folman doesn't paint his interviewers as being responsible for the massacre, but yet they realize their complicity in what can be described (and has been described, even by Mr. Folman himsefl) as a genocide. The blame doesn't rest with these men whom have finally faced what they've done, or with the director who has finally come to terms with his own complicity. They are responsible for their actions, each of them, and they realise that. Mr. Folman with this film tries to make sense of everything they recall, literally painting their memories into a story.
But what Mr. Folman can't articulate, what no film or director has yet to fully encapsulate, is the tremendous loss, both mentally and physically, that war forces upon everyone involved. The last interview Mr. Folman films is of a friend who was one of the first to witness the aftermath of the massacre. Walking in through the main gate he noticed a small hand buried in the rubble of a collapsed building. Taking a closer look, he noticed black curly hair atop a tiny face, eyes closed, buried in rubble up to the nose. The face of a little girl with her arms raised in the air. The face of a girl that reminded him of his daughter. Same age. Same black curly hair.

Animation and the imagination can only go so far, Mr. Folman says in the last few minutes of the film. The real world, this one we're caught in, is more fucked up and savage than anything the id can imagine. Nothing, no medium, can ever encapsulate impact of war. Kubrick knew that when he abandoned his Holocaust project. It's too much, too big for film. Mr. Folman comes as close as I can imagine it being. I rarely get moved to tears by a movie.

As we close on an animated visage of 21-year-old Ari Folman staring in shock at what happened in the last few minutes of the film, a sea of crying and wailing mothers and grandmothers rush past him, and the image cuts and turns real. A grainy video image. The real thing. Bodies piled atop one another. Puddles of blood that the living step over to avoid touching. The aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. And as the camera pans to the left, as we continue to see and hear the wailing mothers in the background and the bodies of the dead strewn about, the camera holds on and zooms in on a tiny hand partially buried in the rubble of a collapsed building, and the half-buried face of a little girl with black curly hair.

Synechdoche, NY

Charlie Kaufman is one crazy motherfucker. In this, his directorial debut, he creates a labyrinthine story of...well...everything. This movie is about art. It's about marriage. It's about death. It's about getting old. It's about the relationship between father and child. It's about how, in a massive city, hell, in the entire world, our little lives mean little to nothing in the long run. It's about loss. It's about meaning. It's about finding meaning in everything you do in your life, and how, for most of us, that's a fruitless endeavour. At least, that's what I think it's about.

This isn't a film for those who don't know Kaufman's previous works; the people who like this movie will probably be the people who have followed the writer for years, and are the people who know they're going to like his films. Kaufman the writer explores themes that few other writers explore, and does so in what can only be described as a quirky, wierd way that often blends genres (Being John Malkovich is a sci-fi fantasy disguised as a study in relationship...which it happens to be at the same time; Confessions of A Dangerous Mind is a thriller/biography/satire; etc.) Kaufman is one of the cold artists of film: someone who's next project will always have an audience. Like Tarantino. Or David Fincher. Or any James Bond movie. It's rare today that he happens to be a cold writer (like Paul Schrader was in the 1970's).

Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Caden Cotard, a theatre director whose revival of "Death of A Salesman" has garnered exemplory reviews from his critics, the adoration of his cast and crew, and which wins him the Macarthur Genius Grant and several million dollars to fund his next project. But his health is failing, with his pupils failing to dialate properly, his gums being infected, strange sores appearing on his body, and nervous shakes occurring, amongst other things (he takes hypnotherapy classes to teach himself how to induce salivation and crying). He witnesses his life fall apart just as his genius is recognized by everyone else except his wife, Adele (played by the always amazing character actor Catherine Keener). She is an artist all her own, specializing in miniature portraits (which need to be viewed with special magnifying eyeglasses). Busy with a exhibition in Germany, she leaves for what starts as a month, but eventually escalates into years, taking young daughter Olive with her. Caden, unfettered, prepares his magnum opus, a play about life, about failure...about everything. Full scale. With a full-scale reproduction of New York built within a massive warehouse.

Caden's play is based on his life, and he soon finds himself involved with one of his actresses, Claire, as well as the actress playing Claire, and finds that the actor playing him, a man called Sammy (played by Tom Noonan) who would appear inexplicably in several scenes early on, presents aspects of himself that he never once considered to exist. To be honest, it's hard to describe the film as a Film, as it's so much more than the sum of its parts. The title itself is a play off the name Schenectady, which is where the movie opens before moving to New York (and taking a short detour to Germany). Synechdoche is a word for a thing that is a representation for another thing. In this context, Caden's play is a representation for his entire life, a life which has gotten old and fallen apart and failed even as he tries to direct it into something so manageable that he can see the point of it. But right at the third act, when a woman named Emma (played expertly by Dianne Wiest) in the film begins to play Caden in his play (and directs Caden himself to play Emma within the play...confused yet?) it is at this point that Caden realizes that he isn't in control of his life. He can't be. He has no notion of living his life on his own terms. He wears an earpiece which Emma uses to direct him in every single aspect of his life. When to sleep. When to wipe his ass. When to die. But through her we, the audience, comes to realize how much he's lost in his search more meaning. Every woman he'd ever loved left him in one form or another. His play, after 20 years, never had an audience (or an audience within the audience, as he actually creates a play within his play, and a play within that play....and ad infinitum). His search for meaning yielded nothing but loss. He thought himself to be the star of his life, when he is merely the costar sharing the stage with every other human being on Earth. "There are no leads. Everyone is the star in thier stories."

Kaufman shows a very deft technical knowledge of filmmaking; his composition was top-notch and simplistic enough to not be noticed (which is why I haven't commented upon it). The theatre in which I viewed the film is a small art theatre in my town, and the screen was too small for the film, so some of the edges weren't projected, and there was some damage to the stock that resulted in some wavy lines onscreen. But these were no fault of the director. The only time I noticed the directing was when there was something wrong with the projection, if that makes sense. Again, early on in the film we see Sammy in the background (at one point in bed with Caden and Hazel, played by the always beautiful Samantha Morton), and these little flourishes and foreshadows did confuse me initially.

And now that I mention Samantha Morton, I must add that she truly is remarkable in this film. She was gorgeous in Jesus's Son, and good in Enduring Love, and convincingly unrecognizable in Minority Report (I just realized she was Agatha! Holy crap!) But it's her role as Michelle in Jesus' Son that made me notice her. And with her work here as Hazel...she truly is heartbreakingly genuine. A woman looking to be loved but having to settle. A woman standing by the man she loves, despite the shit and insanity he spews out of his deranged genius. Kaufman's films have always involved strong, layered women with complex needs and motives, but here Hazel, with her moments of breaking Caden's heart and in turn having hers broken by him, is nothing less than the ideal. She literally lives in a burning home, and her last scene with Caden in bed, as an old woman (not very good makeup effects, I'm afraid...although Hoffman's makeup was considerably more convincing) is reminiscint of Kate Winslet telling Jim Carrey about Clementine, the childhood doll her character had in Eternal Sunshine. It's the money shot. It's the heart of the film, placed smack-dab in the middle of a burning house. She is every woman you will ever date. She is every woman I will ever love. She is the definition of patience, devoted to Caden to the very end.

Kaufman is extremely smart. That said, he throws a lot at the audience, not seeming to care whether or not we understand it all (at least one person in the theatre left halfway through, and I and one of my friends were the only two laughing during a lot of it...either we missed something, or we were the only ones getting the jokes). Like Michel Gondry, I feel that left to his own devices Kaufman indulges himself a bit, which is not undeserved, but which leaves his audiences craving more (with Kaufman, it's clarity; with Gondry, it's a plot). Together these two artists make an amazing team (Human Nature is too underappreciated; Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is simply perfect). I like Synechdoche, NY, but as rewarding as it is as art it is an ordeal to sit through and understand as a film in one sitting. I'm not saying that a film can't be smart, but there's also a risk of alienating your audience. I made it through the film and would like others to give it a shot...but those without patience will not like this film (I suppose that's why I had to give this film a few days before writing this). This film will benefit from repeat viewings, but it'd take a lot to do it willingly (my friend, after walking out of the theatre, commented, "That was amazing. I love that movie. I will never see it ever again."...he said the same about There Will Be Blood last year too...) I love Synechdoche, but for the emotions, not the story. I know a lot of people may not like that, but that's okay.

This is a film at which I literally almost cried during at least two scenes (the aforementioned burning-house scene with Caden and Hazel, and the entire closing voiceover), smiled at just due to its sheer audacity and genius, and at the end of the movie I couldn't talk and had to immediately begin moving around, my mind alive with ideas. Just ideas. Not images (although, looking up at the clear night sky I kept expecting to see scaffolding and a roof), just ideas. I haven't felt that way walking out of a theatre in such a long time (when was the last time? During The Fountain?) Having seen this film just 2 days after seeing Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas just left me a complete mess intellectually. I need to pace myself.

I recently got the Martin Scorsese boxed set for Christmas, and just saw Who's That Knocking At My Door, so expect a review of that shortly.

I also plan on seeing Slumdog Millionaire sometime this week.

Kudos to Kaufman, Hoffman, and Samantha Morton (not like they need me, a nobody, to give them praise). But thank the three of you for making Synechdoche, NY. One of my favorites of the past year.

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

I love Terry Gilliam.
I remember first seeing Brazil at a friend's house for his birthday few years ago (that's the sort of thing my friends and I do for 13th birthday parties), then discovering for myself his earlier antics in Monty Python's Flying Circus, before seeing Twelve Monkeys, Lost In La Mancha, and Time Bandits. I've not seen his more recent efforts, specifically Tideland, which may or may not be worthy of the buzz (both good and bad) it has garnered since its release last year. However, this film is not for everyone, and it certainly does benefit from repeat viewings,
I had bought Fear And Loathing some months ago, but never got around to seeing it, and after mentioning my purchase of it, a friend said, "You need to see it. It's definitely your sort of movie; but you need a day or so afterwards to just be able to look at the world." It was perhaps good timing that I saw it Christmas Day this year.
I had read a few chapters of the book back when I still worked at Barnes and Noble (damn, it's been nearly a year since I'd worked there) and was immensely impressed by every single sentence in those pages. And after seeing the first 5 minutes I felt as if no one could pull off a film like that, in the tone the book described, other than Terry Gilliam.
The story is about Hunter S. Thompson's (here called Duke) attempt to cover a desert motorcycle race in Nevada for a magazine in the early 1970's, and his subsequent adventures in simultaneously looking for America. He and his lawyer, the Samoan Dr. Gonzo, played by Benecio del Toro, experience Las Vegas by following every single rule in the book about living in Vegas: they burn the locals, destroy or steal public property, disrespect and swindle tourists, and, well, live life beyonf the edge of sanity, fueled and fed by a steady diet of hard drugs, liquor, and heavy introspection bordering on insanity.
That's probably the best word to describe the movie: insane. I'm not sure if Mr. Gilliam managed to encapsulate the experience of a bender (I've not used any illicit narcotics at this point in my life), but it seems as if he himself had gone on the craziest bender, saw some of the most insane images the mind could imagine, and decided to film it (after listening to the commentary, I stand corrected: he never took any of the drugs in the film, but his colleagues who have commend him for "getting it right".) This film is less about a "story", and more about the ideas and images tied to living in the moment in drug-crazed America. In the end, the race, the Mint 400, is completely unimportant and carries no weight in the plot.
Duke and Dr. Gonzo spend two days in Vegas, gambling, sneaking into musical shows and casinos, and searching for what America "is". The film is rife with symbolism, both of the drug culture, but mostly of America (notice that there is often an American flag hung in the hotel rooms, or draped on Duke's shoulders), and the Bazooka Circus sequence is a microcosm of the entire country (old people throwing hypodermic needles at tied-up drug addicts? Glimpses of New Orleans? The Vortex of the American Dream being a merry-go-round? A monkey dressed as a ku klux klan member? Perfection!) And there are midgets...lots and lots of them (including Verne Troyer, in one of his first roles). The cameos and bit parts are also inspired casting: Tobey Maguire as a balding hitchhiker; Christina Ricci as Anna, an artist who paints portraits of Barbara Steisand; Woody Harrelson as a lonely highway patrolman. But, again, the show belongs to Depp and del Toro...especially del Toro, who is at turns both frightening, funny, and mesmerizing without ever being likeable. This isn't a man you ever want to meet, much less act as your lawyer. But he owns the world of Las Vegas.
The cinematography and the production design are beyond perfect for the film and become increasingly more unsettling as the film progresses. Canted angles abound in the film, with wide angle lenses being the primary choice, augmenting each angle into grotesque proportions. The production design throws everything at the screen (try taking in every single detail of the final hotel room Gonzo and Duke inhabit...yes, the flooded one with the ketchup smeared around a pinned-up portrait of Nixon). Even when the film is not in the grips of a drug-induced psychosis, one should marvel at how seamlessly Gilliam recreates 1970's Las Vegas, as well as how perfectly Johnny Depp channels Hunter S. Thompson (who himself shows up in a flashback...where his younger self, played by Depp, notices the older, real-life visage).
The film, as with the book, addresses the follwoing question: who are these people that come to Las Vegas? What are these masses with their big cars and nice clothes and pristine manners? Why do they expect instant respect and prestige just for visiting? For being cops? For being lonely? For being mature? For being married? For being a Las Vegas native? For being a tourist? For being American? Who are these people surrounding us in every street, what is their American Dream, and how do they live within the confines of that concept?
Duke's means for living the American Dream, again, is a smorgasborde of drugs, cocktailed and cooked and eaten and drunk in a manner that, in real life, would leave anyone dead in 2 hours. But here Gilliam and Duke use drugs to illustrate to ugly depravity underlying Sin City and, essentially, our way of living. (On the commentary, Gilliam noted that he didn't really know what his film was truly about, but, as the film progressed and he reflected he realized how sickening it was to live in a world that is so politically correct that anyone saying anything must sanitize their words to avoid offending anyone, and that that very act of sanitizing thoughts is a dangerous progression...or regression.)
By sugarcoating one's words, you're hiding exactly what you mean to say, and anyone can take anything away from your comments. You have no say, no opinion, no truth, and once you lost that you lose the very thing that makes you human. This film cuts out all the bullshit and sugarcoating and tiptoeing and gets right to the point: the world is a scary, fucked up place and the only way you can survive within it is to be more crazy and fucked up. You must go beyond fucked up, to a point of depravity so beyond imagining that they ("They" being the cops, the authorities, your friends, anyone) can never bring you down.
That is the American Dream.
That is Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.





By the by, this is a great short film I worked on back in the early months of 2006:

Killing Killian by Andrzej Rattinger

Killing Killian from Andy Rattinger on Vimeo.