(3/12/08)
My favorite thing about Be Kind Rewind, and I oddly enough haven't seen this mentioned in any reviews, is how much it actually manages to feel like the type of movie you might have randomly picked up from an old video store, the way that wandering around in a well-stocked video store always made it feel like there were just an infinite number of movies out there and if you were in the right kind of mood you could just pick up some movie because it had an interesting box, and it didn't really matter if it was good or not, it was just that sort-of discovery... or something... Anyway, because video stores really only thrived like that for a certain time period, and because when I was in high school their back catalogue consisted largely of movies from the mid-eighties to the early-nineties, the type of movie that I associate with that video-store discovery is from that time period, and not exactly indie but low-profile enough that I hadn't really heard of it. Somehow, this movie was a really well-done evocation of that. From the not especially well-thought-out characters who make perfect sense within the logic of the movie but who absolutely could not exist outside of it, the one bit of "spectacular" special fx (when Jack Black is zapped by electricity from the power station), etc. Which is not to say that it's like a B-movie by any means, but still that a lot of the charm of this movie is in its sloppiness, or maybe casualness.
And of course there's the pure joy of some of the visual hijinx of Gondry, like the the perfectly camouflaged suits of Black and Mos Def when they're breaking into the power station, and the cardboard gangster cars in the homemade bio of the jazz legend guy.
Let's see... I also really enjoyed that the "villain" in this movie is nothing more than the manager of a local DVD store, who seems to have some unexplained history with the heroes, a history that isn't explored at all or even explicitly commented on in any way. Again, I guess, it was just a charming sort of sloppiness. Not the same sloppiness of a good B-flick, not the same annoying sloppiness of something like that shitty Boleyn Girl movie...
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
No Country for Old Men
I went to this again to try to get 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days out of my head. To no avail. Nevertheless, I at once was more impressed by this movie the second time and didn't enjoy it quite as much. I was more impressed, I think, because the first I watched I had the book so freshly in my mind so I was mostly trying to compare scenes to the book (which I believe it compared favorably in virtually every respect). I enjoyed it less just because 4 Months kind of changed the size of the scale.
Javier Bordem and Tommy Lee Jones, especially, were way more impressive to me this time. The first time I thought Javier pretty much let his haircut do his acting for him, but, no. He nailed the part. And he totally inhabited that haircut. That one shot, basically at the beginning of the movie, like the clamactic scene of the prologue it was I'd say, where the Coens' really go for their only flourish of the movie, with the camera slowly spinning down from above while Javier makes probably the creepiest face anyone with a normal face has ever made, some sort of inexplicable combination of... shit... I dunno... evil joy, menace, anger... it's both completely unrecognizable as a facial expression and perfectly transparently expressive, the only indication ever of any kind of interiority on Chigurh's part.
Anyway, the movie's also a lot funnier the second time. Especially Tommy Lee Jones's ultra dry line readings. Best actor worthy? I mean, I guess if you're not gonna even nominate Casey Affleck for either of his incredible part this year (see Gone Baby Gone, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), which I guess obviously you're not since Best Actor is an old man's award, then... OK.
* * * * *
(3/12/08)
It's occurred to me that I maybe shouldn't be giving the Coens too much credit w/r/t a certain aspect of this movie. When I first saw this I was comparing a lot of it to the book, and the most significant part of what I thought they changed seemed to be the speech the old uncle gives Sheriff about how there's always been evil the world. I saw that speech as being something of a rebuttal to the book's having never made that gesture, and letting Sheriff get away with a lot of unexamined assumptions about how much worse the world is now than it was. So, what I was thinking yesterday or the other day is that this rebuttal, that, "No, actually, the world has been full of evil all along," isn't that much more useful of an ideological stance. Mainly because, there's the specific part in the book at least where Sheriff mentions some survey done of school kids in the forties and then repeated at a time approximately contemporary to whenever this movie's supposed to take place, the difference between the answers being really telling: the survey asked what their primary worries were, and in the forties one it was grades, the opposite sex, whatever; in the contemporary one it was guns, crime, drugs. Obviously, there's a lot of room for holes and drawing conclusions from just that brief a description of the survey, but the major point is still valid, and can't really be explained away by "well, the world's always been full of evil." And what that answer really does is push just as strongly against an actual analysis of the situation as does the original idea from the book that world is just going straight to hell. There are actual causes for the changes in the answers to that survey, and those reasons are material and have causes of their own and are a part of reality that can actually be effected by public policy and other things. Just saying that "the world's going to hell" or "no, there's always been evil," both of those ideas just make that downturn (or some other better word) a fundamental part of reality, not something that can be changed by actual people living in the world. And so they're both bad ideas, I'd say.
Javier Bordem and Tommy Lee Jones, especially, were way more impressive to me this time. The first time I thought Javier pretty much let his haircut do his acting for him, but, no. He nailed the part. And he totally inhabited that haircut. That one shot, basically at the beginning of the movie, like the clamactic scene of the prologue it was I'd say, where the Coens' really go for their only flourish of the movie, with the camera slowly spinning down from above while Javier makes probably the creepiest face anyone with a normal face has ever made, some sort of inexplicable combination of... shit... I dunno... evil joy, menace, anger... it's both completely unrecognizable as a facial expression and perfectly transparently expressive, the only indication ever of any kind of interiority on Chigurh's part.
Anyway, the movie's also a lot funnier the second time. Especially Tommy Lee Jones's ultra dry line readings. Best actor worthy? I mean, I guess if you're not gonna even nominate Casey Affleck for either of his incredible part this year (see Gone Baby Gone, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), which I guess obviously you're not since Best Actor is an old man's award, then... OK.
* * * * *
(3/12/08)
It's occurred to me that I maybe shouldn't be giving the Coens too much credit w/r/t a certain aspect of this movie. When I first saw this I was comparing a lot of it to the book, and the most significant part of what I thought they changed seemed to be the speech the old uncle gives Sheriff about how there's always been evil the world. I saw that speech as being something of a rebuttal to the book's having never made that gesture, and letting Sheriff get away with a lot of unexamined assumptions about how much worse the world is now than it was. So, what I was thinking yesterday or the other day is that this rebuttal, that, "No, actually, the world has been full of evil all along," isn't that much more useful of an ideological stance. Mainly because, there's the specific part in the book at least where Sheriff mentions some survey done of school kids in the forties and then repeated at a time approximately contemporary to whenever this movie's supposed to take place, the difference between the answers being really telling: the survey asked what their primary worries were, and in the forties one it was grades, the opposite sex, whatever; in the contemporary one it was guns, crime, drugs. Obviously, there's a lot of room for holes and drawing conclusions from just that brief a description of the survey, but the major point is still valid, and can't really be explained away by "well, the world's always been full of evil." And what that answer really does is push just as strongly against an actual analysis of the situation as does the original idea from the book that world is just going straight to hell. There are actual causes for the changes in the answers to that survey, and those reasons are material and have causes of their own and are a part of reality that can actually be effected by public policy and other things. Just saying that "the world's going to hell" or "no, there's always been evil," both of those ideas just make that downturn (or some other better word) a fundamental part of reality, not something that can be changed by actual people living in the world. And so they're both bad ideas, I'd say.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
One of the best movies I've ever seen. Everything the movie tries to do it does perfectly.
It's almost too bad that Mungiu chose to center the movie around an abortion, since abortion is one of those things that is just an "issue" and that is almost impossible for people to actually talk about in any truthful way because it's so hard to see past the "issue." It's not "almost too bad" because it's in any way a flaw of the movie; in fact, among the many many amazing things about the movie is the fact that it is a movie about an abortion--and the trouble that surrounds having an abortion in a place that it's illegal--that actually manages to not be about "the issue" of abortion (that is to say, the characters and the plot and stuff never once come even close to becoming allegorical). It's just too bad that because the movie is about an abortion, so many people will probably end up not seeing it or not being able to see past the abortion issue to the actual movie. It's one of the most incredible movies ever made by human people.
I'm still kind of in awe right now.
* * *
(next day)
I had the same type of feeling after seeing this movie that I first identified after reading Endgame by Beckett, which is that the subject matter of the movie is really pretty depressing, and the whole move makes you feel very tense (Robin said, "I just need a drink!" while we were on the bus after the movie, and a random other bus passenger then said, "Did you just see that 4 Months movie, too?"), but despite that and what most of the reviews I've read have referred to as the "bleakness" of the movie, I left feeling totally exhilarated, and that exhilaration was just about how incredibly made the movie is. It's like this exhilaration about the sheer amazingness of human creation, and when it's this good it really trumps any level of bad shit (ie, existential angst, trying to obtain an abortion in Ceausescu's Romania). I mean I feel like it actually completely overcomes it. In some way. Or something. I don't know. This movie is just frickin' good, though. I'm still thinking about how perfect random shots were, and there really wasn't a single one that wasn't perfect. God. Wow. Shit.
* * *
I just got a new high score in Jetman! 2479! While I was playing, I was thinking about this movie and how a lot of other movies that I would group into a "like this one" category, largely based on the really long takes, which isn't really an especially useful category, but I was thinking that a lot of movies that I would group into a "like this one" category, like movies by David Gordon Green and Lost in Translation and Cuaron's movies, that a lot of the complaints about these movies is how "nothing ever happens," in them, or how they generally also avoid a tight plot, seemingly as a part of their adherence to greater realism or something. Which I would sort of agree with although it's not really a "complaint" in my book. But one of the things that was so incredible about this movie was how it was a "like this one" movie (duh!) that also was super tightly plotted. The plot was done so well because it never felt like the plot was driving the movie along, but it was definitely very tightly plotted. Reviews say almost Hitchcockianly so, which just makes me realize I need to watch more Hitchcock.
And also about the absence of music, which never felt like a device at all, it just seemed like it didn't need music, and I had this idea that most other movies that don't use music totally use it as a device although I can't really think of any good examples except No Country for Old Men, and not that that's bad to use no-music as a device, but that it's impressive to use it not as a device. Although maybe it still is. Anyway, that scene of blondie sitting at the chair and not saying anything, after the dude left, that went on for quite a long time, that scene would have been absolutely ruined by music. (Rififi, of course, used the abscence of a score to incredible effect, although that was only for part of the movie. That may be the only example I can think of that used it so effectively.)
Then I started thinking about how I totally set a new high score in my Jetman game and that I did it while thinking about this movie so I should totally blog about it. Then I tried to not think about that but instead to think about this movie some more, but it didn't work. Then I lost.
It's almost too bad that Mungiu chose to center the movie around an abortion, since abortion is one of those things that is just an "issue" and that is almost impossible for people to actually talk about in any truthful way because it's so hard to see past the "issue." It's not "almost too bad" because it's in any way a flaw of the movie; in fact, among the many many amazing things about the movie is the fact that it is a movie about an abortion--and the trouble that surrounds having an abortion in a place that it's illegal--that actually manages to not be about "the issue" of abortion (that is to say, the characters and the plot and stuff never once come even close to becoming allegorical). It's just too bad that because the movie is about an abortion, so many people will probably end up not seeing it or not being able to see past the abortion issue to the actual movie. It's one of the most incredible movies ever made by human people.
I'm still kind of in awe right now.
* * *
(next day)
I had the same type of feeling after seeing this movie that I first identified after reading Endgame by Beckett, which is that the subject matter of the movie is really pretty depressing, and the whole move makes you feel very tense (Robin said, "I just need a drink!" while we were on the bus after the movie, and a random other bus passenger then said, "Did you just see that 4 Months movie, too?"), but despite that and what most of the reviews I've read have referred to as the "bleakness" of the movie, I left feeling totally exhilarated, and that exhilaration was just about how incredibly made the movie is. It's like this exhilaration about the sheer amazingness of human creation, and when it's this good it really trumps any level of bad shit (ie, existential angst, trying to obtain an abortion in Ceausescu's Romania). I mean I feel like it actually completely overcomes it. In some way. Or something. I don't know. This movie is just frickin' good, though. I'm still thinking about how perfect random shots were, and there really wasn't a single one that wasn't perfect. God. Wow. Shit.
* * *
I just got a new high score in Jetman! 2479! While I was playing, I was thinking about this movie and how a lot of other movies that I would group into a "like this one" category, largely based on the really long takes, which isn't really an especially useful category, but I was thinking that a lot of movies that I would group into a "like this one" category, like movies by David Gordon Green and Lost in Translation and Cuaron's movies, that a lot of the complaints about these movies is how "nothing ever happens," in them, or how they generally also avoid a tight plot, seemingly as a part of their adherence to greater realism or something. Which I would sort of agree with although it's not really a "complaint" in my book. But one of the things that was so incredible about this movie was how it was a "like this one" movie (duh!) that also was super tightly plotted. The plot was done so well because it never felt like the plot was driving the movie along, but it was definitely very tightly plotted. Reviews say almost Hitchcockianly so, which just makes me realize I need to watch more Hitchcock.
And also about the absence of music, which never felt like a device at all, it just seemed like it didn't need music, and I had this idea that most other movies that don't use music totally use it as a device although I can't really think of any good examples except No Country for Old Men, and not that that's bad to use no-music as a device, but that it's impressive to use it not as a device. Although maybe it still is. Anyway, that scene of blondie sitting at the chair and not saying anything, after the dude left, that went on for quite a long time, that scene would have been absolutely ruined by music. (Rififi, of course, used the abscence of a score to incredible effect, although that was only for part of the movie. That may be the only example I can think of that used it so effectively.)
Then I started thinking about how I totally set a new high score in my Jetman game and that I did it while thinking about this movie so I should totally blog about it. Then I tried to not think about that but instead to think about this movie some more, but it didn't work. Then I lost.
Friday, February 15, 2008
SF Indie Fest
Sleepwalking through the Mekong
Sleepwalking is a pretty amazing documentary. It's main thrill is from watching something as cliched as "the power of music to bring people together" actually happening in a way that doesn't seem really forced at all. I guess that aspect of it works mainly because the interviews with the band members make them seem really likeable and down to Earth. You get the impression that the just went on this trip essentially on a lark and they're just as wide-eyed about the level of connection they're able to achieve with the Cambodian people, just by playing their music. It's such a common thing to believe in for the type of people who like to believe in that sort of thing, and this film captures it actually happening without any ponderous ruminations on "the power of music to bring people together." Yeah, I liked it.
Also, aside from all that feel good stuff, the film is just incredibly well shot. There's some (especially) amazing shots of dusk and night in Cambodia that are absolutely beautiful.
The New Grass
This little doc was good enough to make me interested in checking out both the bands featured in it at some point, which I guess is probably the main point of it, so, kudos.
La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo
There are some really good ideas behind this film, but that's the best thing you can say for it. The problem is that a lot of the good ideas didn't actually make it into the film. I suppose it could succeed as something to show in a class about revolutionary Marxism, because ultimately what we get here is a movie that really needs every bit of external support to hold it up. Which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but there's no reason for none of that external stuff to actually be folded into the movie. If the conceit is that it's a "found" video of these women in this prison, just extend the conceit to include the idea (or fact or something...) that whoever found the footage actually turned it into a watchable movie. I feel a little bit uncomfortable about this criticism because I feel pretty sympathetic toward the idea that a film (or anything) doesn't need to be self-contained, but in this case the exclusion of that stuff from the actual film itself doesn't add anything to it's effectiveness, and actually kind of prevents the movie from being watchable. I mean, I was fucking bored out of my skull through most of this, and I never get bored watching movies. And, sure, I even agree that boring isn't necessarily bad, but in this case it is.
Cave Flower
Harmless.
Actually, there were a couple of really great things about this short: the first being the way the girl is reintroduced when she gets on the subway with shyguy: just that quick flash of red first through the window and then as she walks in front of the camera, and shyguy's reaction. It's impressive the level of control of the colors that the little shock of red sticks out so much that you know immediately it's her. Then shyguy's little fantasy dream shot on eight millimeter, with the footage of boating around and the shots of trees and stuff, all of that was very excellent. The whole romanticizing of the squatting life? Meh. (This part especially seems gross to me, considering the fact that in the post-viewing Q&A the director and actress both said they were pretty horrified being in squatting-guy's room to see the squalor and the used needles everywhere... even contact with and disgust of actual squatting apparently isn't enough to break through upper-middle class romantic notions of the freedom of absolute poverty...) The whole "quirky" meet cute where shyguy gets up the nerve to ask red girl for a date? Yuck.
I have to admit, though, the little touch of having her write the credits on a pad when she's supposed to be writing her number was pretty charming. Although I was a little disappointed to discover that's what she was writing after she began by writing "Cable: Youngblood" which immediately made me think the movie was suddenly veering into some completely unexpected place of geekdom. Alas.
(2/24)
Sleepwalking is a pretty amazing documentary. It's main thrill is from watching something as cliched as "the power of music to bring people together" actually happening in a way that doesn't seem really forced at all. I guess that aspect of it works mainly because the interviews with the band members make them seem really likeable and down to Earth. You get the impression that the just went on this trip essentially on a lark and they're just as wide-eyed about the level of connection they're able to achieve with the Cambodian people, just by playing their music. It's such a common thing to believe in for the type of people who like to believe in that sort of thing, and this film captures it actually happening without any ponderous ruminations on "the power of music to bring people together." Yeah, I liked it.
Also, aside from all that feel good stuff, the film is just incredibly well shot. There's some (especially) amazing shots of dusk and night in Cambodia that are absolutely beautiful.
The New Grass
This little doc was good enough to make me interested in checking out both the bands featured in it at some point, which I guess is probably the main point of it, so, kudos.
La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo
There are some really good ideas behind this film, but that's the best thing you can say for it. The problem is that a lot of the good ideas didn't actually make it into the film. I suppose it could succeed as something to show in a class about revolutionary Marxism, because ultimately what we get here is a movie that really needs every bit of external support to hold it up. Which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but there's no reason for none of that external stuff to actually be folded into the movie. If the conceit is that it's a "found" video of these women in this prison, just extend the conceit to include the idea (or fact or something...) that whoever found the footage actually turned it into a watchable movie. I feel a little bit uncomfortable about this criticism because I feel pretty sympathetic toward the idea that a film (or anything) doesn't need to be self-contained, but in this case the exclusion of that stuff from the actual film itself doesn't add anything to it's effectiveness, and actually kind of prevents the movie from being watchable. I mean, I was fucking bored out of my skull through most of this, and I never get bored watching movies. And, sure, I even agree that boring isn't necessarily bad, but in this case it is.
Cave Flower
Harmless.
Actually, there were a couple of really great things about this short: the first being the way the girl is reintroduced when she gets on the subway with shyguy: just that quick flash of red first through the window and then as she walks in front of the camera, and shyguy's reaction. It's impressive the level of control of the colors that the little shock of red sticks out so much that you know immediately it's her. Then shyguy's little fantasy dream shot on eight millimeter, with the footage of boating around and the shots of trees and stuff, all of that was very excellent. The whole romanticizing of the squatting life? Meh. (This part especially seems gross to me, considering the fact that in the post-viewing Q&A the director and actress both said they were pretty horrified being in squatting-guy's room to see the squalor and the used needles everywhere... even contact with and disgust of actual squatting apparently isn't enough to break through upper-middle class romantic notions of the freedom of absolute poverty...) The whole "quirky" meet cute where shyguy gets up the nerve to ask red girl for a date? Yuck.
I have to admit, though, the little touch of having her write the credits on a pad when she's supposed to be writing her number was pretty charming. Although I was a little disappointed to discover that's what she was writing after she began by writing "Cable: Youngblood" which immediately made me think the movie was suddenly veering into some completely unexpected place of geekdom. Alas.
(2/24)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Tarkan Vs. The Vikings
How do you make it look like a dog is climbing a stone wall? Tilt the camera sideways! How do you make sound effects for arrows? Have your foley peeps make loud unvocalized "whick whick" noises! How do you make it look like underwater footage filmed in a pool is actually the ocean? Um... why would you need to do that? They're already under water! I guess you could kind of half-assedly wave some green shit in front of the camera, to heighten the "illusion," but, really, they're already under water! That's really all that matters! What if the shot you took of a guy walking out from the fortress to a boat to greet the king's just returned daughter turns out to be too long? Just speed up the whole shot!
Such are the technical innovations of Turkish Pop Cinema as presented in Tarkan Vs. the Vikings. Frankly, this part of the double-bill wasn't nearly as amazing as The Deathless Devil, but it was still quite enjoyable. But whereas Devil seems to have taken the technical limitations of Turkish cinema and somehow managed to use them to create a movie of almost pure kinetic energy, Tarkan only manages to be incredibly charming. Of particular note:
-The costumes! I think they were supposed to look like they were wearing animal furs or something, but it looks like they actually just slaughtered a nation of muppets and are wearing their skins around. The absolute best touches were the fuzzy shields, which were shields that inexplicably had a ring of day-glo shag around the edges. I guess so the vikings could use their shields as pillows during long nights of pillaging? Or for that point in the day when they all just take a nap at once on their boats, leaving the door wide open for their oarmen slaves to kill them all and escape... although, of course, the oarmen only took advantage of that opportunity when Tarkan was there...
-Of course, the Octopus! I love that they didn't bother even trying to disguise the fact that it was just a some giant rubbery inflatable thing. It was never really clear, when various characters were fighting the octopus, if they were winning or not. Especially the scene when the giant fights the octopus, the first of the obviously-in-a-pool shots, where from the underwater shots it was obvious that his head was above the water and he was just kind of floating near the surface while the octopus sank slowly down, which looked like he'd vanquished the monster, but the reaction shots of the other characters--and the fact that the giant never appears again and the monster does--make it clear that the shots were supposed to depict the giant being killed and eaten by the octopus. I have to say, though, that even though it never stops looking completely ridiculous, there is still something very subliminally menacing about the shots of people just standing there screaming in agony while the octopus's tentacles limply hang on their bodies--as if what the octopus is actually doing to them is so terrible that it can't really be depicted, or something...
-The dogs! Both named Kurt, apparently. Maybe that's the Turkish word for dog? Obviously they had trouble getting the dogs to do exactly what they wanted, so they just kind of let the dog do whatever it wanted and we figure out what it's supposed to be doing based on the reactions of the human actors. They couldn't even get enough shots of the dog barking, apparently, so they just played barking noises over shots of the dog standing there obviously not barking.
So, yeah, at best this movie is enjoyably silly. The only part that really matched Devil for kind of insane success totally in spite of itself were the orgy scenes, which were just far more chaotic and actually orgy-like than anything you'd see in "competent" movies, probably because their tactic for filming an orgy was to just have a bunch of actors all pretty much have an actual orgy. Likewise the chaotic final battle scenes, which, of course, were pretty much mixed in with the orgy scenes. I don't know if I've ever seen scenes shot with such a total embracing of the chaos they were trying to film. Obviously whatever was happening was pretty much out of the control of the director and the camera people. Another thing just occurs to me about these scenes, which is that in almost all other movies I can think of, which the possible exception of Clockwork Orange, because scenes like this are supposed to be obviously morally contemptible they're filmed toward that end, but throughout the whole three hours of Turkish Pop Cinema you have on this disc, it's totally clear at all times that every aspect of what's being presented is supposed to be a cathartic joy for the (presumed entirely male) audience. So the orgy scenes, or the scene where Lotus inexplicably does a striptease for Tarkan before she's going to kill him, these are all presented without any hint of moral conflict: they're absolutely there to be enjoyed by the audience. The audience is not supposed to wonder if these things are possibly bad or prurient or something: they obviously are in reality, but the whole point of the movie is expression of how fun they are when removed from reality. I don't really know a lot about Turkish culture and how different it is from American culture, but I'm sure there must have been tons of moral posturing by the types prone to that sort of thing in Turkey, but nevertheless, part of what is ultimately so exciting about these films is that the people who made them obviously had no such qualms, or even the slightest inkling toward them. The heroes are the good guys just because that's their function in the movie, and the villains are evil just because that's their function in the movie, and once that's established they don't feel really any need to prove it or show why. It's kind of at once very stupid, but also refreshing in that it doesn't presume an audience that needs to be taught those lessons for some reason. I guess, maybe, if the movies are just by default disreputable, they don't have to try to pretend that they're not?
Such are the technical innovations of Turkish Pop Cinema as presented in Tarkan Vs. the Vikings. Frankly, this part of the double-bill wasn't nearly as amazing as The Deathless Devil, but it was still quite enjoyable. But whereas Devil seems to have taken the technical limitations of Turkish cinema and somehow managed to use them to create a movie of almost pure kinetic energy, Tarkan only manages to be incredibly charming. Of particular note:
-The costumes! I think they were supposed to look like they were wearing animal furs or something, but it looks like they actually just slaughtered a nation of muppets and are wearing their skins around. The absolute best touches were the fuzzy shields, which were shields that inexplicably had a ring of day-glo shag around the edges. I guess so the vikings could use their shields as pillows during long nights of pillaging? Or for that point in the day when they all just take a nap at once on their boats, leaving the door wide open for their oarmen slaves to kill them all and escape... although, of course, the oarmen only took advantage of that opportunity when Tarkan was there...
-Of course, the Octopus! I love that they didn't bother even trying to disguise the fact that it was just a some giant rubbery inflatable thing. It was never really clear, when various characters were fighting the octopus, if they were winning or not. Especially the scene when the giant fights the octopus, the first of the obviously-in-a-pool shots, where from the underwater shots it was obvious that his head was above the water and he was just kind of floating near the surface while the octopus sank slowly down, which looked like he'd vanquished the monster, but the reaction shots of the other characters--and the fact that the giant never appears again and the monster does--make it clear that the shots were supposed to depict the giant being killed and eaten by the octopus. I have to say, though, that even though it never stops looking completely ridiculous, there is still something very subliminally menacing about the shots of people just standing there screaming in agony while the octopus's tentacles limply hang on their bodies--as if what the octopus is actually doing to them is so terrible that it can't really be depicted, or something...
-The dogs! Both named Kurt, apparently. Maybe that's the Turkish word for dog? Obviously they had trouble getting the dogs to do exactly what they wanted, so they just kind of let the dog do whatever it wanted and we figure out what it's supposed to be doing based on the reactions of the human actors. They couldn't even get enough shots of the dog barking, apparently, so they just played barking noises over shots of the dog standing there obviously not barking.
So, yeah, at best this movie is enjoyably silly. The only part that really matched Devil for kind of insane success totally in spite of itself were the orgy scenes, which were just far more chaotic and actually orgy-like than anything you'd see in "competent" movies, probably because their tactic for filming an orgy was to just have a bunch of actors all pretty much have an actual orgy. Likewise the chaotic final battle scenes, which, of course, were pretty much mixed in with the orgy scenes. I don't know if I've ever seen scenes shot with such a total embracing of the chaos they were trying to film. Obviously whatever was happening was pretty much out of the control of the director and the camera people. Another thing just occurs to me about these scenes, which is that in almost all other movies I can think of, which the possible exception of Clockwork Orange, because scenes like this are supposed to be obviously morally contemptible they're filmed toward that end, but throughout the whole three hours of Turkish Pop Cinema you have on this disc, it's totally clear at all times that every aspect of what's being presented is supposed to be a cathartic joy for the (presumed entirely male) audience. So the orgy scenes, or the scene where Lotus inexplicably does a striptease for Tarkan before she's going to kill him, these are all presented without any hint of moral conflict: they're absolutely there to be enjoyed by the audience. The audience is not supposed to wonder if these things are possibly bad or prurient or something: they obviously are in reality, but the whole point of the movie is expression of how fun they are when removed from reality. I don't really know a lot about Turkish culture and how different it is from American culture, but I'm sure there must have been tons of moral posturing by the types prone to that sort of thing in Turkey, but nevertheless, part of what is ultimately so exciting about these films is that the people who made them obviously had no such qualms, or even the slightest inkling toward them. The heroes are the good guys just because that's their function in the movie, and the villains are evil just because that's their function in the movie, and once that's established they don't feel really any need to prove it or show why. It's kind of at once very stupid, but also refreshing in that it doesn't presume an audience that needs to be taught those lessons for some reason. I guess, maybe, if the movies are just by default disreputable, they don't have to try to pretend that they're not?
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Great World of Sound
Elliot said he wouldn't be my friend if I didn't like this movie, and we seem to still be friends, so I guess that answers that question.
I did, though, think, "And here, of all places, I've stumbled across a perfect example case for an argument against trying to make characters wholly believable. Main character guy, the skinny white guy, whatever his name was, (Martin, IMDB tells me) is, I think, supposed to be kind of blank so we, the audience, can feel like we're experiencing the movie from his POV, but he's also supposed to be a fully realized "character," possibly the only real one in the movie. He stares meaningfully into the middle distance in that way that fully realized characters do when they're experiencing crises of consciousness or when they're suffering because their girlfriends don't understand them. He is quirky but not too weird. Etc. Anyway, I believed that he was realistic enough that I couldn't figure out for the whole movie why he hadn't just left this job immediately. It was so obviously a total scam, and the only way I could figure out that he didn't notice as soon as that Shank guy started talking what an absolutely illegal scam this company was is that he must have some sort of mental problem in which he can't really pay much attention to stuff that's happening around him and maybe when total scams present themselves he's busy watching those crazy leprechaun/zebras that keep growing out of the ceiling. Really, the only reason that he keeps the job is because the movie requires that he keep the job in order to get to it's gimmick: the music audition stuff. Which there should've been more of. More music; less Martin and his black "friend" trying to talk them into signing. Showing them do it once or twice outside of the key plot ones would've been enough. So what I meant way back up there at the beginning was that if Martin was not such a total cipher and was instead allowed to be as less-than-three-dimensional as every other actor's character in the movie was, it just would've worked better, and I wouldn't have kept wondering why he was being such an idiot. But, of course, it would've been possible for Martin to be a totally believable character who was just too stupid to catch on to what a total scam everything around him was. Yeah, that would also have worked. But then the filmmakers would've been asking the audience to inhabit a dimmer fellow than themselves, which just isn't really done (and maybe it's impossible?) and they seemed to want us to inhabit the main character so we would feel more strongly the moral dilemma he finds himself in. And that was the thing I liked least about the movie. Because, really, what moral dilemma? That it's bad to scam people? I learned that one already. There was almost no point during the movie at which I thought I couldn't have made a better decision than Martin did; and by "I" here I mean actually not myself but pretty much every person I know." But I was kind of just being a jerk. So what if everything that was really good about this movie was not the main character or his life? He's forgettable enough. Just ignore him and enjoy what's left, which is a lot.
* * *
Still trying to figure out a way to articulate my argument about main-character-guy: I do think a lot of what I find so problematic about him is that the movie makers work so hard at making him a realistic character, but his situation just isn't really consistent with him being realistic. Because he's doing something that's so obviously morally bad, and since the audience is supposed to at once like him and feel that he shares a basic moral set with them, the result is that he has to spend a lot of time in the movie being obviously introspectively tortured about the whole thing. This pops up in the meaningful blank staring that he does at various points as well as in his inability to communicate with his girlfriend: he's so conflicted about what he's doing that he can't focus on communicating with her properly, or something like that. But, again, the problem with all of that is that it doesn't really make any sense, given the presentation we're shown by the GWS folks, that he would ever go along with this in the first place. Contrast to a movie like Bay of Blood where the wife/daughter character is once shown being absolutely horrified by death and murder and then in subsequent scenes she is not at all those things and becomes the most rationally evil character in the movie, killing and encouraging her husband to kill purely for her own financial gain. Of course, the fact that her inconsistencies are not addressed and are ignored as if they don't exist makes the movie a "bad" movie, but, for me, it's just so much more interesting than all the work GWS goes through trying to resolve main-character-guy's inconsistencies. My argument is that the movie would be served better by taking that "bad" movie approach, that is, by having him apparently go along with the scheme in full force through most of the movie, and then having him, at the point of the movie where he needs to be morally superior to the GWS people, suddenly be so.
I did, though, think, "And here, of all places, I've stumbled across a perfect example case for an argument against trying to make characters wholly believable. Main character guy, the skinny white guy, whatever his name was, (Martin, IMDB tells me) is, I think, supposed to be kind of blank so we, the audience, can feel like we're experiencing the movie from his POV, but he's also supposed to be a fully realized "character," possibly the only real one in the movie. He stares meaningfully into the middle distance in that way that fully realized characters do when they're experiencing crises of consciousness or when they're suffering because their girlfriends don't understand them. He is quirky but not too weird. Etc. Anyway, I believed that he was realistic enough that I couldn't figure out for the whole movie why he hadn't just left this job immediately. It was so obviously a total scam, and the only way I could figure out that he didn't notice as soon as that Shank guy started talking what an absolutely illegal scam this company was is that he must have some sort of mental problem in which he can't really pay much attention to stuff that's happening around him and maybe when total scams present themselves he's busy watching those crazy leprechaun/zebras that keep growing out of the ceiling. Really, the only reason that he keeps the job is because the movie requires that he keep the job in order to get to it's gimmick: the music audition stuff. Which there should've been more of. More music; less Martin and his black "friend" trying to talk them into signing. Showing them do it once or twice outside of the key plot ones would've been enough. So what I meant way back up there at the beginning was that if Martin was not such a total cipher and was instead allowed to be as less-than-three-dimensional as every other actor's character in the movie was, it just would've worked better, and I wouldn't have kept wondering why he was being such an idiot. But, of course, it would've been possible for Martin to be a totally believable character who was just too stupid to catch on to what a total scam everything around him was. Yeah, that would also have worked. But then the filmmakers would've been asking the audience to inhabit a dimmer fellow than themselves, which just isn't really done (and maybe it's impossible?) and they seemed to want us to inhabit the main character so we would feel more strongly the moral dilemma he finds himself in. And that was the thing I liked least about the movie. Because, really, what moral dilemma? That it's bad to scam people? I learned that one already. There was almost no point during the movie at which I thought I couldn't have made a better decision than Martin did; and by "I" here I mean actually not myself but pretty much every person I know." But I was kind of just being a jerk. So what if everything that was really good about this movie was not the main character or his life? He's forgettable enough. Just ignore him and enjoy what's left, which is a lot.
* * *
Still trying to figure out a way to articulate my argument about main-character-guy: I do think a lot of what I find so problematic about him is that the movie makers work so hard at making him a realistic character, but his situation just isn't really consistent with him being realistic. Because he's doing something that's so obviously morally bad, and since the audience is supposed to at once like him and feel that he shares a basic moral set with them, the result is that he has to spend a lot of time in the movie being obviously introspectively tortured about the whole thing. This pops up in the meaningful blank staring that he does at various points as well as in his inability to communicate with his girlfriend: he's so conflicted about what he's doing that he can't focus on communicating with her properly, or something like that. But, again, the problem with all of that is that it doesn't really make any sense, given the presentation we're shown by the GWS folks, that he would ever go along with this in the first place. Contrast to a movie like Bay of Blood where the wife/daughter character is once shown being absolutely horrified by death and murder and then in subsequent scenes she is not at all those things and becomes the most rationally evil character in the movie, killing and encouraging her husband to kill purely for her own financial gain. Of course, the fact that her inconsistencies are not addressed and are ignored as if they don't exist makes the movie a "bad" movie, but, for me, it's just so much more interesting than all the work GWS goes through trying to resolve main-character-guy's inconsistencies. My argument is that the movie would be served better by taking that "bad" movie approach, that is, by having him apparently go along with the scheme in full force through most of the movie, and then having him, at the point of the movie where he needs to be morally superior to the GWS people, suddenly be so.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Rambo
The opening credits say "A Film by Sylvester Stallone," and I know we're not speaking the same language. This movie is brutal, far more brutal than I expected going in. The violence is kinetic, with blood and whatever else is inside of people exploding out of them visibly and with such velocity that it all disappears, a mist, into the air in seconds.
At least, that's about all I remember of this movie and it just ended about half an hour ago. There also were some slow parts when Sylvester Stallone's face kind of sat there on the screen looking like he must have suffered a stroke (did he? I don't remember hearing about that...) at some point in the past, and once he said, "Fuck the world," and I think maybe he meant it. Later it appears that Stallone has stopped trying to portray a human character at all and has instead decided to portray some kind of Tyrannosaurus, or perhaps he's upset he didn't get to play Kong and that dweeby Andy Serkis guy did so he's showing Peter Jackson where he went wrong? Of course, King Kong was a far more expressive and sympathetic character than John Rambo is.
Right after the climactic battle (I saw this band play a while ago called "Health" who basically stood around on stage and screamed and hit their instruments with as much demonstrative force as they could manage; the battle scenes in this movie were pretty much the movie equivalent of that) the blonde actress lady looks up at Rambo from among the dead bodies and cries, but not really as part of the story I don't think, like not that she was crying because she just witnessed a disgusting bloodbath after being trapped in a cage for several weeks and presumably raped a lot of times, it seemed as if she were crying along with us, the audience, as some kind of final giving up to John Rambo, as if he'd just spent ninety minutes screaming in our faces that we say "Uncle" and we finally did even though we weren't really sure why he came up to and started doing that in the first place. Obviously, this time it was because I paid the man $9.50 to do it. But still...
And what of using a real-life human rights atrocity as the stage for this movie? Is Stallone trying to raise awareness? It seemed kind of cheap to me, because ultimately the movie isn't about actually ending the genocide of the Karen people, it's just about how missionaries shouldn't go in there because they'll get killed and raped, and then a bunch of annoyed macho dudes will have to go and kill a bunch of people to save them (and in the final moments of the film apparently Rambo has come home to where his dad lives (comically, the mailbox says "R. Rambo," which I couldn't help but pronounce in my head), so any character development that happens certainly doesn't involve Rambo learning to become conscious of the world around him and of his ability to have an effect on the bad things that are happening but instead of him learning to be an ordinary American who wants to reconcile with his parents). The Karen people were pretty much just props, fodder for the games of the bad guys so we wouldn't feel at all conflicted when John Rambo tears their throats out with his bare hands or cuts open their bellies so their intestines fly out of them while they roll down hills. Sure, it's cathartic after watching the brutal shit they were doing, but Rambo and his mercenary compatriots (not friends; Rambo can't have friends) didn't stick around to try save the Karen girls who were getting gang raped. They only cared about saving the blond missionary girl and her missionary friends. Although, really, they didn't care about saving them that much either, I don't think. Rambo has this flashback where he decides that he's just a killer, so I think ultimately he's using the blond girl as a convenient excuse to kill a bunch of people, is the point. I guess you kind of have to give Stallone credit for making a mainstream Hollywood movie with this bleak of a basic view of the world, if you feel like you should give people credit for things like that.
I stuck around for most of the closing credits, just to see if Stallone actually walked all the way down that dirt road to that farm house, and he kind of did; at the end he turned away from the farm house and disappeared behind a tree. I was wondering first of all if that really was Stallone who made that walk or if they hired a guy to do it. Also, that in some way the fact that he's walking down the dirt road to his dad's house after being gone for over twenty years, twenty years of absolutely no contact, that the walk leading up to that reunion was in it's own (less violent) way just as dramatic a thing as anything else portrayed in the movie, but that we're so disinterested in any actual human part of Rambo that the actual scene of that happening is just used as the flat backdrop for the final credits to roll over. Maybe Rambo 5 will be John Rambo taking care of his father as his mind and body deteriorate but he refuses to leave his isolated farm? And they learn to love each other again or something?
Die Hard 4 was certainly much more fun than this, but I have a feeling I'm going to remember the sheer visceral feeling of being at this movie way more than I remember that one.
I remember pretending to be Rambo when I was a kid a lot, but I don't know if I actually remember ever seeing any of the Rambo movies. Say what you will about Stallone, but he's portrayed (and in the case of Rocky, actually created) two characters whose names have entered the ordinary lexicon of Americans. "Rambo" is in the fucking OED, which is more than you could say for John McClane.
***
The ending credit scene is actually kind of ambivalently poetic if you imagine that as Rambo is making the slow walk down the gravel road to the country house nestled in the country hills of rural America the names scrolling up beside him, such as "Karen Naked Girl" along with the names of all the actors who played the kids who get asploded that its like those names are an actual manifestation of Rambo's conscience or of some aspect of his consciousness, reminding him of what he left behind in Burma in order to fulfill his self-centered desire to see "what's changed" back in America.
At least, that's about all I remember of this movie and it just ended about half an hour ago. There also were some slow parts when Sylvester Stallone's face kind of sat there on the screen looking like he must have suffered a stroke (did he? I don't remember hearing about that...) at some point in the past, and once he said, "Fuck the world," and I think maybe he meant it. Later it appears that Stallone has stopped trying to portray a human character at all and has instead decided to portray some kind of Tyrannosaurus, or perhaps he's upset he didn't get to play Kong and that dweeby Andy Serkis guy did so he's showing Peter Jackson where he went wrong? Of course, King Kong was a far more expressive and sympathetic character than John Rambo is.
Right after the climactic battle (I saw this band play a while ago called "Health" who basically stood around on stage and screamed and hit their instruments with as much demonstrative force as they could manage; the battle scenes in this movie were pretty much the movie equivalent of that) the blonde actress lady looks up at Rambo from among the dead bodies and cries, but not really as part of the story I don't think, like not that she was crying because she just witnessed a disgusting bloodbath after being trapped in a cage for several weeks and presumably raped a lot of times, it seemed as if she were crying along with us, the audience, as some kind of final giving up to John Rambo, as if he'd just spent ninety minutes screaming in our faces that we say "Uncle" and we finally did even though we weren't really sure why he came up to and started doing that in the first place. Obviously, this time it was because I paid the man $9.50 to do it. But still...
And what of using a real-life human rights atrocity as the stage for this movie? Is Stallone trying to raise awareness? It seemed kind of cheap to me, because ultimately the movie isn't about actually ending the genocide of the Karen people, it's just about how missionaries shouldn't go in there because they'll get killed and raped, and then a bunch of annoyed macho dudes will have to go and kill a bunch of people to save them (and in the final moments of the film apparently Rambo has come home to where his dad lives (comically, the mailbox says "R. Rambo," which I couldn't help but pronounce in my head), so any character development that happens certainly doesn't involve Rambo learning to become conscious of the world around him and of his ability to have an effect on the bad things that are happening but instead of him learning to be an ordinary American who wants to reconcile with his parents). The Karen people were pretty much just props, fodder for the games of the bad guys so we wouldn't feel at all conflicted when John Rambo tears their throats out with his bare hands or cuts open their bellies so their intestines fly out of them while they roll down hills. Sure, it's cathartic after watching the brutal shit they were doing, but Rambo and his mercenary compatriots (not friends; Rambo can't have friends) didn't stick around to try save the Karen girls who were getting gang raped. They only cared about saving the blond missionary girl and her missionary friends. Although, really, they didn't care about saving them that much either, I don't think. Rambo has this flashback where he decides that he's just a killer, so I think ultimately he's using the blond girl as a convenient excuse to kill a bunch of people, is the point. I guess you kind of have to give Stallone credit for making a mainstream Hollywood movie with this bleak of a basic view of the world, if you feel like you should give people credit for things like that.
I stuck around for most of the closing credits, just to see if Stallone actually walked all the way down that dirt road to that farm house, and he kind of did; at the end he turned away from the farm house and disappeared behind a tree. I was wondering first of all if that really was Stallone who made that walk or if they hired a guy to do it. Also, that in some way the fact that he's walking down the dirt road to his dad's house after being gone for over twenty years, twenty years of absolutely no contact, that the walk leading up to that reunion was in it's own (less violent) way just as dramatic a thing as anything else portrayed in the movie, but that we're so disinterested in any actual human part of Rambo that the actual scene of that happening is just used as the flat backdrop for the final credits to roll over. Maybe Rambo 5 will be John Rambo taking care of his father as his mind and body deteriorate but he refuses to leave his isolated farm? And they learn to love each other again or something?
Die Hard 4 was certainly much more fun than this, but I have a feeling I'm going to remember the sheer visceral feeling of being at this movie way more than I remember that one.
I remember pretending to be Rambo when I was a kid a lot, but I don't know if I actually remember ever seeing any of the Rambo movies. Say what you will about Stallone, but he's portrayed (and in the case of Rocky, actually created) two characters whose names have entered the ordinary lexicon of Americans. "Rambo" is in the fucking OED, which is more than you could say for John McClane.
***
The ending credit scene is actually kind of ambivalently poetic if you imagine that as Rambo is making the slow walk down the gravel road to the country house nestled in the country hills of rural America the names scrolling up beside him, such as "Karen Naked Girl" along with the names of all the actors who played the kids who get asploded that its like those names are an actual manifestation of Rambo's conscience or of some aspect of his consciousness, reminding him of what he left behind in Burma in order to fulfill his self-centered desire to see "what's changed" back in America.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
The Deathless Devil
1. A brief attempt at justification for my thinking, while watching this, that it was kind of a triumph Jarry-an theater, at least according to Alfred Jarry's "Of the Futility of the 'Theatrical' in the Theatre," an essay I'd just read for my class:
Jarry:
Just like almost any comic book movie, this movie largely relies on the audience's familiarity with certain tropes, "universally known fables," in order for them to understand that characters. There is no explanation of the characters, they are simply: Scientist. Scientist's daughter. Hero. Mad scientist. Robot. Etc. You already know what's going to happen, essentially, before watching more than five minutes of the movie. The thrill is simply in watching it happen; not even in watching how it happens, since that's largely a given as well. Literally it is just about watching it happen.
Jarry:
Much like the last paragraph, this film accomplishes this largely because of the fact that it's so recognizably modeled after comic book tropes. Aside from Copperhead, of course, none of the characters wear a mask, but they may as well, really. Every character in the movie is given away completely by their face and their facial hair. The good men all have no facial hair, unless their old and distinguished in which case they may have a mustache. The bad guys all have facial hair. Etc. Likewise, nobody really has changing expressions. They sometimes convey emotions although they're all very basic emotions that are communicated more through the soundtrack and the way their faces are shot than by any actual facial contortions of the actors.
More Jarry:
This is the most Jarry-an aspect of the movie. There is not any attempt to convey actual human emotions, but rather every emotion portrayed is basic and universal. We do not have to wonder how a certain character might convey or deal with a certain emotion. They all convey emotions in exactly the same way, and, again, they're all conveyed mostly through sound cues and camera angles rather than through any actual "acting" on the part of the actors.
Well, enough of that. This movie is incredible. The soundtrack, for starters. All of the music seems to be stolen from mainstream American movies and thrown together without a lot of concern for consistency or anything, and mostly they are just clips of the most exciting bits of music, one leading directly into the next with no transitions or breaks. Add to that the exaggerated sound effects, especially from the fight scenes. The sounds for punching in this movie are amazing! They're just like this kind of explosion of random harsh-sounding noise, somewhat reminiscent of punch-sounds from other "better" movies, but in no way actually reminiscent of the sounds of real punching, and they sound like they've been turned up way to loud for the sound equipment, the sound of going all the way into the red. And really it is a result of trying to replicate an already faked sound but trying to outdo it.
And the movie just punches right along. There's so much plot in this movie, so many (completely expected) twists to go through, but it's only ninety minutes because the movie never bothers to slow down to give the actors a chance to try to actually portray characters or anything. It's just: exposition (always brief and concise), action, twist, expostion, action, twist, etc. I honestly don't remember ever seeing a single movie zip along as quickly and as excitingly as this movie. It was way more like an amusement park ride than, say, Cloverfield or even any slasher film, just because the movie isn't interest in engaging any emotions beyond excitement.
The "comic relief" guy who dresses up as Sherlock Holmes and feels like Dorf has just invaded the movie... the pointless sex scene... the Robot! Jesus, the Robot was incredible! Like, the ultimate slow crappy robot of all slow crappy robots, and everyone reacts to it as if it were the most horrible thing they've ever seen. No acknowledgment at all that it is slow and so immobile that it couldn't actually catch anyone. And their horror is so extreme!
And then there's the end, where the hero guy walks off balancing comic relief guy on his head! Just absolutely bizarre and nonsensical, but one of the most delightful things you'll ever see on film, possibly because of how bizarre and nonsensical it is.
I'm willing to acknowledge that a lot of what is so interesting about this movie is that it's a very rare example of an idiom that I've never been exposed to but that is very obviously a reaction to an idiom I very much am, so it inevitably seems fresh and exciting and new. But I don't care. This is flat-out one of the most exciting movies I've ever seen.
Jarry:
The public only understood, or looked as if they understood, the tragedies and comedies of ancient Greece because they were based on universally known fables which, anyway, were explained over and over again in every play and, as often as not, hinted at by a character in the prologue.
Just like almost any comic book movie, this movie largely relies on the audience's familiarity with certain tropes, "universally known fables," in order for them to understand that characters. There is no explanation of the characters, they are simply: Scientist. Scientist's daughter. Hero. Mad scientist. Robot. Etc. You already know what's going to happen, essentially, before watching more than five minutes of the movie. The thrill is simply in watching it happen; not even in watching how it happens, since that's largely a given as well. Literally it is just about watching it happen.
Jarry:
The actor should use a mask to envelop his head, thus replacing it by the effigy of the CHARACTER. His mask should not follow the masks in the Greek theatre in betokening simply tears or laughter, but should indicate the nature of the character: the Miser, the Waverer, the covetous Man accumulating crimes....
[...]the eternal nature of the character is embodied in the mask.
Much like the last paragraph, this film accomplishes this largely because of the fact that it's so recognizably modeled after comic book tropes. Aside from Copperhead, of course, none of the characters wear a mask, but they may as well, really. Every character in the movie is given away completely by their face and their facial hair. The good men all have no facial hair, unless their old and distinguished in which case they may have a mustache. The bad guys all have facial hair. Etc. Likewise, nobody really has changing expressions. They sometimes convey emotions although they're all very basic emotions that are communicated more through the soundtrack and the way their faces are shot than by any actual facial contortions of the actors.
More Jarry:
They are simple expressions, and therefore universal.
This is the most Jarry-an aspect of the movie. There is not any attempt to convey actual human emotions, but rather every emotion portrayed is basic and universal. We do not have to wonder how a certain character might convey or deal with a certain emotion. They all convey emotions in exactly the same way, and, again, they're all conveyed mostly through sound cues and camera angles rather than through any actual "acting" on the part of the actors.
Well, enough of that. This movie is incredible. The soundtrack, for starters. All of the music seems to be stolen from mainstream American movies and thrown together without a lot of concern for consistency or anything, and mostly they are just clips of the most exciting bits of music, one leading directly into the next with no transitions or breaks. Add to that the exaggerated sound effects, especially from the fight scenes. The sounds for punching in this movie are amazing! They're just like this kind of explosion of random harsh-sounding noise, somewhat reminiscent of punch-sounds from other "better" movies, but in no way actually reminiscent of the sounds of real punching, and they sound like they've been turned up way to loud for the sound equipment, the sound of going all the way into the red. And really it is a result of trying to replicate an already faked sound but trying to outdo it.
And the movie just punches right along. There's so much plot in this movie, so many (completely expected) twists to go through, but it's only ninety minutes because the movie never bothers to slow down to give the actors a chance to try to actually portray characters or anything. It's just: exposition (always brief and concise), action, twist, expostion, action, twist, etc. I honestly don't remember ever seeing a single movie zip along as quickly and as excitingly as this movie. It was way more like an amusement park ride than, say, Cloverfield or even any slasher film, just because the movie isn't interest in engaging any emotions beyond excitement.
The "comic relief" guy who dresses up as Sherlock Holmes and feels like Dorf has just invaded the movie... the pointless sex scene... the Robot! Jesus, the Robot was incredible! Like, the ultimate slow crappy robot of all slow crappy robots, and everyone reacts to it as if it were the most horrible thing they've ever seen. No acknowledgment at all that it is slow and so immobile that it couldn't actually catch anyone. And their horror is so extreme!
And then there's the end, where the hero guy walks off balancing comic relief guy on his head! Just absolutely bizarre and nonsensical, but one of the most delightful things you'll ever see on film, possibly because of how bizarre and nonsensical it is.
I'm willing to acknowledge that a lot of what is so interesting about this movie is that it's a very rare example of an idiom that I've never been exposed to but that is very obviously a reaction to an idiom I very much am, so it inevitably seems fresh and exciting and new. But I don't care. This is flat-out one of the most exciting movies I've ever seen.
Friday, February 1, 2008
The Orphanage
Sooooooooooooooo scary! Seriously, I haven't been anywhere close to this scared from a movie since The Others, and even that movie wasn't all that scary so much as it just made me tingly when there was the big reveal and I realized what was going on. Like The Others, a lot of what's so effective about this movie is its commitment to atmosphere. I wonder, also, if a part of the reason is that it ultimately only had one big scary scene? Most of the movie was just buildup to this scene, either establishing the atmosphere or whatever, and even though I guess other scenes might be considered scary, there definitely is that one scene that made the guy in the theater behind me go, "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH HOOOOOOOOOLLLLLYYYYYYYSHIT!" I appreciated that guy a lot. I almost wonder if he was paid by the movie people to be there, except that I went to this at a late night showing on a random Saturday night well after it'd been out for several weeks, so I can't imagine they would actually have paid someone to be there to do that. I don't know why I actually bothered to refute that idea...
Aside from the whole commitment to that one absolute scary scene being the reason for that scene's total scariness, the other theory I concocted for why it works is that it's such a primally scary scene: alone in a dark house at night, wide open room behind you, if you're at all ever scared of the dark like I am sometimes you've swung your head around and expected there to be a ghost behind you. Well, that actually is what happens here. Kudos for tying in the childhood game they're playing at the beginning as well, which I thought was totally creepy when they were doing at first anyway, before they were little ghost children. But, god, they did it perfectly. She turns around and there is a fucking ghost child!
I didn't get the gore with the old lady, really, though. It seemed like the one thing that really kind of broke away from the atmosphere of the movie. She got nailed by the bus, which was a total cheap shock just like they pulled in that Final Destination movie, fine, it was cheap but whatever... But then why the flash of her destroyed face? They cover it up first and you get just the vaguest hint that her face has been mangled by the fact that mouth-to-mouth guy has blood all over his face, that seemed bad enough and really, to me, kept with the way the movie was playing with your imagination a lot. But then the cloth gets pulled away and we get to see the really great work some make-up artist or set-design person or somebody did creating this gruesome smashed face, and we make a little "oh gross" gurgle, and then we wonder why we had to just see that. The only thing I could think of was that they were trying to unsettle us in a different way, like throwing in a body blow after a long series of precise jabs just to throw off our defenses a little (I don't know anything about boxing). All it did for me was make me think for a brief moment that the movie was going to go somewhere way more gruesome than I expected it to, which felt like kind of a let down. I'm glad I wasn't let down in the end.
Some people might think the weird fake smiley ending with the husband looking up and smiling at what might be ghost of his wife entering the room was a little cheesy, and it was, but I didn't think it took anything away and it was just denouement anyway. Plus, it was totally the police counselor showing up all happy that his wife was dead, not his wife's ghost. I'm sure of it.
Aside from the whole commitment to that one absolute scary scene being the reason for that scene's total scariness, the other theory I concocted for why it works is that it's such a primally scary scene: alone in a dark house at night, wide open room behind you, if you're at all ever scared of the dark like I am sometimes you've swung your head around and expected there to be a ghost behind you. Well, that actually is what happens here. Kudos for tying in the childhood game they're playing at the beginning as well, which I thought was totally creepy when they were doing at first anyway, before they were little ghost children. But, god, they did it perfectly. She turns around and there is a fucking ghost child!
I didn't get the gore with the old lady, really, though. It seemed like the one thing that really kind of broke away from the atmosphere of the movie. She got nailed by the bus, which was a total cheap shock just like they pulled in that Final Destination movie, fine, it was cheap but whatever... But then why the flash of her destroyed face? They cover it up first and you get just the vaguest hint that her face has been mangled by the fact that mouth-to-mouth guy has blood all over his face, that seemed bad enough and really, to me, kept with the way the movie was playing with your imagination a lot. But then the cloth gets pulled away and we get to see the really great work some make-up artist or set-design person or somebody did creating this gruesome smashed face, and we make a little "oh gross" gurgle, and then we wonder why we had to just see that. The only thing I could think of was that they were trying to unsettle us in a different way, like throwing in a body blow after a long series of precise jabs just to throw off our defenses a little (I don't know anything about boxing). All it did for me was make me think for a brief moment that the movie was going to go somewhere way more gruesome than I expected it to, which felt like kind of a let down. I'm glad I wasn't let down in the end.
Some people might think the weird fake smiley ending with the husband looking up and smiling at what might be ghost of his wife entering the room was a little cheesy, and it was, but I didn't think it took anything away and it was just denouement anyway. Plus, it was totally the police counselor showing up all happy that his wife was dead, not his wife's ghost. I'm sure of it.
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