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.
Showing posts with label Embarcadero. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Embarcadero. Show all posts
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
(along with Bay of Blood)
There's not really any great reason for writing about these two movies together, except that I happened to see them on the same day, and I enjoyed one of them (Bay of Blood significantly more than the other (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and I'm not exactly sure if I can articulate why. Part of it, of course, is just that I enjoyed the slasher flick more, but I also think it was actually a better movie. Like, I'd recommend Bay of Blood to people as a movie that they actually should watch, whereas The Diving Bell is more just an accomplishment. Well...
Diving Bell is extremely well done right from the beginning. By starting with the waking up of the protagonist, actually inside his head, what he's actually seeing as he wakes up from a coma, you're not really introduced to him as a character but it's more that you, the viewer, are made to be the main character, the person who is waking up from a coma unable to communicate at all with the people you're seeing and hearing. That's the major accomplishment of this movie, and how much it succeeds seems to be pretty much contingent on the extent to which you feel like you've sort of experienced what the main character is experienced. Obviously, that can't literally happen, unless of course you do get "locked-in syndrome," which could happen, but anyway obviously the movie couldn't literally replicate that experience, but I think it does about as good a job as it would be possible for it to do. My thing, though, is that there really is this wall that you end up running into as far as that goes, that it would literally be impossible to accomplish what the movie tries to accomplish, and I always feel like it's more important to acknowledge that limit and to not try to accomplish something that actually breaks that limit. Eventually, the movie got even less interesting as it broke out of its own conceit and started presenting more and more from outside the POV of the main character. Frankly, he just wasn't that interesting of a character, and the only thing that draws you in at is the difficulty of surviving such a situation, so once we're outside that situation and just watching this other person try to live through it, I don't know, I just wasn't all that compelled. Maybe I'm a jerk (which is the other thing; this is one of those movies about which I feel uncomfortable saying things like "the guy wasn't that interesting," and I'm really distrustful of things like that from an aesthetic standpoint). The scrawled font of the credits, though, was incredibly beautiful and absolutely my favorite thing about the movie.
As for Bay of Blood, there were 13 murders in ninety minutes, which is all Mario Bava set out to do. He set up an actual accomplishable goal and then he went out and did it. Okay, that's a little cheap. This movie was just so much fun though. My favorite things about it: (1) how the German chick, the kinda hot redhead who was flouncing around in a dress that didn't fit her and then got naked and jumped in the lake just so we could watch her do it, how she was sooooo much hotter after she got killed, so much so that I'm sure Bava meant it that way, and (2) everything else (the octopus crawling over dead-old-guy's face!). It's basically a whodunnit, except that the "who" is pretty much every character. Even the kids get in on it at the end! I guess this movie is supposed to be what inspired the original Friday 13th, but this is waaaaaaay the fuck better.
A real thing that is so much more interesting about Bay of Blood than Diving Bell, and this is something that I'd say you could pretty fairly chalk up to some kind of storytelling incompetence on Bava's part but I don't care, is the way the characters work in Bava's movie. Diving Bell goes so far out of its way, like pretty much every mainstream indie movie made these days, to have consistent, realistic characters. Obviously, that's not a criticism of Diving Bell in any way. Verisimilitude accomplished. Congrats. Not so in Bay of Blood. Especially the redhaired wife, the daughter of the guy who married the old lady who owned the lake: she's at first horrified by the dead body of her father, and then almost made catatonic by the bodies in the bathtub, but within the matter of a few minutes she's suddenly an absolutely cold calculating psychopath encouraging her husband to murder people and then doing it herself. This transition makes absolutely no sense; it's just not at all how a normal person would ever behave, and especially it's not how you'd ever imagine a person behaving, even a movie psycho character, if you were going for an accurate and indepth portrayal of an actual human psyche. She only behaves that way because it makes the story: we're allowed to believe the movie is a traditional whodunnit longer because she reacts in the normal way you'd expect a potential victim to act, and then, just because the movie wants to turn the tables on us, she suddenly becomes another murderer, and the movie doesn't even bother to try to explain it away or anything. My argument would be that this second thing, Bava's way in this movie, is much more actually interesting than the normal, verisimilitudinous way.
Bay of Blood also has some pretty memorable murders: the machete that bisects the whiney student's face was pretty great, especially as his eyes rolled around while he was writhing on the floor. The best, though, the coup de grace, was the impaling of the copulating coeds, one thrust, all the way through both of them, pinning them to the bed and to each other, the girl on top and her breasts squished against the boy's naked chest. Yeah, I'm sick, but that was effing brilliant.
There's not really any great reason for writing about these two movies together, except that I happened to see them on the same day, and I enjoyed one of them (Bay of Blood significantly more than the other (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and I'm not exactly sure if I can articulate why. Part of it, of course, is just that I enjoyed the slasher flick more, but I also think it was actually a better movie. Like, I'd recommend Bay of Blood to people as a movie that they actually should watch, whereas The Diving Bell is more just an accomplishment. Well...
Diving Bell is extremely well done right from the beginning. By starting with the waking up of the protagonist, actually inside his head, what he's actually seeing as he wakes up from a coma, you're not really introduced to him as a character but it's more that you, the viewer, are made to be the main character, the person who is waking up from a coma unable to communicate at all with the people you're seeing and hearing. That's the major accomplishment of this movie, and how much it succeeds seems to be pretty much contingent on the extent to which you feel like you've sort of experienced what the main character is experienced. Obviously, that can't literally happen, unless of course you do get "locked-in syndrome," which could happen, but anyway obviously the movie couldn't literally replicate that experience, but I think it does about as good a job as it would be possible for it to do. My thing, though, is that there really is this wall that you end up running into as far as that goes, that it would literally be impossible to accomplish what the movie tries to accomplish, and I always feel like it's more important to acknowledge that limit and to not try to accomplish something that actually breaks that limit. Eventually, the movie got even less interesting as it broke out of its own conceit and started presenting more and more from outside the POV of the main character. Frankly, he just wasn't that interesting of a character, and the only thing that draws you in at is the difficulty of surviving such a situation, so once we're outside that situation and just watching this other person try to live through it, I don't know, I just wasn't all that compelled. Maybe I'm a jerk (which is the other thing; this is one of those movies about which I feel uncomfortable saying things like "the guy wasn't that interesting," and I'm really distrustful of things like that from an aesthetic standpoint). The scrawled font of the credits, though, was incredibly beautiful and absolutely my favorite thing about the movie.
As for Bay of Blood, there were 13 murders in ninety minutes, which is all Mario Bava set out to do. He set up an actual accomplishable goal and then he went out and did it. Okay, that's a little cheap. This movie was just so much fun though. My favorite things about it: (1) how the German chick, the kinda hot redhead who was flouncing around in a dress that didn't fit her and then got naked and jumped in the lake just so we could watch her do it, how she was sooooo much hotter after she got killed, so much so that I'm sure Bava meant it that way, and (2) everything else (the octopus crawling over dead-old-guy's face!). It's basically a whodunnit, except that the "who" is pretty much every character. Even the kids get in on it at the end! I guess this movie is supposed to be what inspired the original Friday 13th, but this is waaaaaaay the fuck better.
A real thing that is so much more interesting about Bay of Blood than Diving Bell, and this is something that I'd say you could pretty fairly chalk up to some kind of storytelling incompetence on Bava's part but I don't care, is the way the characters work in Bava's movie. Diving Bell goes so far out of its way, like pretty much every mainstream indie movie made these days, to have consistent, realistic characters. Obviously, that's not a criticism of Diving Bell in any way. Verisimilitude accomplished. Congrats. Not so in Bay of Blood. Especially the redhaired wife, the daughter of the guy who married the old lady who owned the lake: she's at first horrified by the dead body of her father, and then almost made catatonic by the bodies in the bathtub, but within the matter of a few minutes she's suddenly an absolutely cold calculating psychopath encouraging her husband to murder people and then doing it herself. This transition makes absolutely no sense; it's just not at all how a normal person would ever behave, and especially it's not how you'd ever imagine a person behaving, even a movie psycho character, if you were going for an accurate and indepth portrayal of an actual human psyche. She only behaves that way because it makes the story: we're allowed to believe the movie is a traditional whodunnit longer because she reacts in the normal way you'd expect a potential victim to act, and then, just because the movie wants to turn the tables on us, she suddenly becomes another murderer, and the movie doesn't even bother to try to explain it away or anything. My argument would be that this second thing, Bava's way in this movie, is much more actually interesting than the normal, verisimilitudinous way.
Bay of Blood also has some pretty memorable murders: the machete that bisects the whiney student's face was pretty great, especially as his eyes rolled around while he was writhing on the floor. The best, though, the coup de grace, was the impaling of the copulating coeds, one thrust, all the way through both of them, pinning them to the bed and to each other, the girl on top and her breasts squished against the boy's naked chest. Yeah, I'm sick, but that was effing brilliant.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Blade Runner: The Final Cut
It was hard to watch this without trying to spot differences between this and the Director's Cut, with which I'm pretty familiar. I really didn't see all that many, aside from a few short shots that seemed new to me, and of course the different order of the ending sequences, so that Deckard runs away with Rachel after surviving his fight with Batty.
I was a little confused by his nod. Since everyone knows that after the Director's Cut the big question was about Deckard's human/replicant status, it almost seemed like having the nod be the last bit of expression we see out of Deckard, after he picked up the origami unicorn, it was pretty easy to assume that the nod was meant to be in response to that question, so that Deckard seemed to be actually thinking about that question more than I ever thought he was before, except that if that were the case, just nodding seems like a pretty stupid response to him making up his mind. Or maybe he just nodded because Harrison Ford couldn't figure out how else to respond to an origami unicorn, but thought he should respond somehow. Also, maybe the shot where Batty kills Tyrelle was held a little longer? I don't remember so much blood before, but I'm not sure.
I was really happy to be able to see it on a big theater screen, but I can't see the cut seemed to be that much of an improvement over the extant one.
(12/9/07)
Okay, so my worst fears have been realized. Here's Ridley Scott on "the nod"
I've always kind of wondered how the guy who made Blade Runner and Alien could've also made Gladiator and... well... pretty much all of his other movies. Apparently it's because he's kind of an idiot (seriously, what kind of an imagination thinks "Yeah, when Deckard finds the unicorn he thinks 'Ah hah! Gaff was here. I've been told.' and then his response to learning unequivocally that he's a robot is to nod quickly and walk away"?) Oh, well. Blade Runner's still great (even if now it will forever have that silly nod), but I guess I can stop wondering what happened to Ridley Scott...
I was a little confused by his nod. Since everyone knows that after the Director's Cut the big question was about Deckard's human/replicant status, it almost seemed like having the nod be the last bit of expression we see out of Deckard, after he picked up the origami unicorn, it was pretty easy to assume that the nod was meant to be in response to that question, so that Deckard seemed to be actually thinking about that question more than I ever thought he was before, except that if that were the case, just nodding seems like a pretty stupid response to him making up his mind. Or maybe he just nodded because Harrison Ford couldn't figure out how else to respond to an origami unicorn, but thought he should respond somehow. Also, maybe the shot where Batty kills Tyrelle was held a little longer? I don't remember so much blood before, but I'm not sure.
I was really happy to be able to see it on a big theater screen, but I can't see the cut seemed to be that much of an improvement over the extant one.
(12/9/07)
Okay, so my worst fears have been realized. Here's Ridley Scott on "the nod"
Wired: You shot the unicorn dream sequence as part of the original production. Why didn't you include it in either the work print or the initial release?
Scott:As I said, there was too much discussion in the room. I wanted it. They didn't want it. I said, "Well, it's a fundamental part of the story." And they said, "Well, isn't it obvious that he's a replicant?" And I said, "No more obvious than that he's not a replicant at the end." So, it's a matter of choice, isn't it?
Wired: When Deckard picks up the origami unicorn at the end of the movie, the look on his face says to me, "Oh, so Gaff was here, and he let Rachael live." It doesn't say, "Oh my God! Am I a replicant, too?"
Scott:No? Why is he nodding when he looks at this silver unicorn? I'm not going to send up a balloon. Doing the job he does, reading the files he reads on other replicants, Deckard may have wondered at one point, "Am I human or am I a replicant?" That's in his innermost thoughts. I'm just giving you the fully fleshed-out possibility to justify that look at the end, where he kind of glints and looks angry. To me, it's an affirmation. He nods, he agrees. "Ah hah! Gaff was here. I've been told."
I've always kind of wondered how the guy who made Blade Runner and Alien could've also made Gladiator and... well... pretty much all of his other movies. Apparently it's because he's kind of an idiot (seriously, what kind of an imagination thinks "Yeah, when Deckard finds the unicorn he thinks 'Ah hah! Gaff was here. I've been told.' and then his response to learning unequivocally that he's a robot is to nod quickly and walk away"?) Oh, well. Blade Runner's still great (even if now it will forever have that silly nod), but I guess I can stop wondering what happened to Ridley Scott...
Friday, November 30, 2007
I'm Not There
The movie itself might seem somewhat inexplicable, at least insofar as there's nothing really within the movie that ties any of the pretty much discrete narratives together, so it's interesting that the movie lets itself be propped up by the reality of Dylan's already gigantic mythology. It's not a biopic in the sense that it really tries to explain it's subject to the audience, or even present any kind of new insight into him. It seems like ultimately what Haynes tried to do--or at least all he accomplished doing--was to make a movie out of Dylan's mythology. And he even tied it less the actual Bob Dylan, or the actual Robert Zimmerman, than it already was.
I especially liked how each of the different narratives was really a completely different kind of film. Julianne Moore pretty much existed in a flat-out parody of Joan Baez from the Scorcese doc; Heat Ledger was in some kind of contemporary character-driven drama about a relationship and it's disintegration; Cate Blanchett wandered around in a Fellini homage; Richard Gere in an even more psychedelic version of the Billy the Kid story than Peckinpah's original, but that was obviously the reference. Christian Bale was also in some kind of movie, but I'm not sure exactly what. The only one who seemed to really exist in just this movie was the Franklin kid, but maybe there was another type of movie he was supposed to living through. I also liked the ways some of the stories bled into each occasionally without ever really trying to account for each other in any especially satisfactory or clear way.
Ultimately, though, like Control, I don't think the movie ever managed to explain why the subject was interesting. If you weren't already interested in Dylan, I doubt you'd walk away from the movie wanting to go out and get any of his albums. I wonder, is there a music biopic that makes its subject interesting to someone who might watch it with not interest in him/her beforehand?
I especially liked how each of the different narratives was really a completely different kind of film. Julianne Moore pretty much existed in a flat-out parody of Joan Baez from the Scorcese doc; Heat Ledger was in some kind of contemporary character-driven drama about a relationship and it's disintegration; Cate Blanchett wandered around in a Fellini homage; Richard Gere in an even more psychedelic version of the Billy the Kid story than Peckinpah's original, but that was obviously the reference. Christian Bale was also in some kind of movie, but I'm not sure exactly what. The only one who seemed to really exist in just this movie was the Franklin kid, but maybe there was another type of movie he was supposed to living through. I also liked the ways some of the stories bled into each occasionally without ever really trying to account for each other in any especially satisfactory or clear way.
Ultimately, though, like Control, I don't think the movie ever managed to explain why the subject was interesting. If you weren't already interested in Dylan, I doubt you'd walk away from the movie wanting to go out and get any of his albums. I wonder, is there a music biopic that makes its subject interesting to someone who might watch it with not interest in him/her beforehand?
Friday, October 12, 2007
The Darjeeling Limited
This was certainly better than I thought it'd be, I guess because for some reason I was thinking Wes Anderson was bound to descend into a mid-career slump of crap for a while here... Not sure exactly where I got that idea. But I would say he hasn't exactly entered that phase of his career. Though he has got the point that I don't think he's really trying to figure out anything new; he's just working on perfecting what he's getting at. I'm worried he's getting close to arriving there, and I hope he knows where to go from there.
I'm not sure that I've ever seen a filmmaker aside from Kubrick who can actually control everything that you see in the frame to the extent that Anderson has managed to do at this point in his career. Even things you notice going on in the background have probably been consciously put there by Anderson, or at least taken into account. He goes about as far as it would be possible to go toward separating what he's shooting from reality. It's certainly a feat.
What does it mean that the main characters in this movie are probably the most mature main characters in any of his movies? And is that even true? I think it might be, except for maybe Anjelica Huston in Tenenbaums. It was great to see her pull off her character in this movie, too. There was no way she should have been able to make her character seem even remotely believable, but she ends storming into her scene like she's the only one with anything real going on. Wes Anderson should make a movie with Anjelica Huston as the main character. He owes it to the world. What he manages to get out of her is on a whole other level from everything else he's doing--even his resurrection of Bill Murray. Actually, I think that's a really good idea. Maybe it would allow him to escape from his little world of arrested development that, while certainly unique and interesting and entertaining, gets further and further from seeming like there's actually anything at stake in every film. I probably wouldn't even feel that way about it if it weren't for Anjelica Huston in this movie. But she really did seem more actually compelling than the three brothers during her brief intrusion into the movie.
***
(10/18)
The thing that bothered me the most about this movie, and it's something I tried to articulate to Elliot but that I also admitted to being uncomfortable with (it's a criticism I'm a little uncomfortable having) is the way the movie used the death of the Indian boy to trigger whatever "real" spiritual awakening the three brothers are supposed to have. First of all, it's just such an obvious move: the death of the Indian boy brings them out of themselves so they have to experience something beyond their own self-centered world; except that it's obviously the function of the death of the Indian boy to be that for them, so, for the movie, the death of the boy is just as much about them as everything else. I kept waiting for some moment when the audience would be forced to see the death as something outside of the symbolic world of the three brothers, but the movie never takes that step. I don't think it's just the fact that it's an Indian death triggering a spiritual experience for three white Americans: it's the fact that the narrative is so focused on the three brothers that really nothing outside of them can exist in and of itself, and this fact gives the audience permission to experience the boy's death as something purely functional and symbolic (along with everything else in the movie, of course...) And if a narrative is really nothing more than a creative presentation of thought or thinking, which it is, then this form of thinking encourages the audience to enclose experiences in symbolic trappings. I'm uncomfortable about this criticism because it's such a moralistic critique.
I'm not sure that I've ever seen a filmmaker aside from Kubrick who can actually control everything that you see in the frame to the extent that Anderson has managed to do at this point in his career. Even things you notice going on in the background have probably been consciously put there by Anderson, or at least taken into account. He goes about as far as it would be possible to go toward separating what he's shooting from reality. It's certainly a feat.
What does it mean that the main characters in this movie are probably the most mature main characters in any of his movies? And is that even true? I think it might be, except for maybe Anjelica Huston in Tenenbaums. It was great to see her pull off her character in this movie, too. There was no way she should have been able to make her character seem even remotely believable, but she ends storming into her scene like she's the only one with anything real going on. Wes Anderson should make a movie with Anjelica Huston as the main character. He owes it to the world. What he manages to get out of her is on a whole other level from everything else he's doing--even his resurrection of Bill Murray. Actually, I think that's a really good idea. Maybe it would allow him to escape from his little world of arrested development that, while certainly unique and interesting and entertaining, gets further and further from seeming like there's actually anything at stake in every film. I probably wouldn't even feel that way about it if it weren't for Anjelica Huston in this movie. But she really did seem more actually compelling than the three brothers during her brief intrusion into the movie.
***
(10/18)
The thing that bothered me the most about this movie, and it's something I tried to articulate to Elliot but that I also admitted to being uncomfortable with (it's a criticism I'm a little uncomfortable having) is the way the movie used the death of the Indian boy to trigger whatever "real" spiritual awakening the three brothers are supposed to have. First of all, it's just such an obvious move: the death of the Indian boy brings them out of themselves so they have to experience something beyond their own self-centered world; except that it's obviously the function of the death of the Indian boy to be that for them, so, for the movie, the death of the boy is just as much about them as everything else. I kept waiting for some moment when the audience would be forced to see the death as something outside of the symbolic world of the three brothers, but the movie never takes that step. I don't think it's just the fact that it's an Indian death triggering a spiritual experience for three white Americans: it's the fact that the narrative is so focused on the three brothers that really nothing outside of them can exist in and of itself, and this fact gives the audience permission to experience the boy's death as something purely functional and symbolic (along with everything else in the movie, of course...) And if a narrative is really nothing more than a creative presentation of thought or thinking, which it is, then this form of thinking encourages the audience to enclose experiences in symbolic trappings. I'm uncomfortable about this criticism because it's such a moralistic critique.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Rocket Science
8/10/07 Embarcadero, w/ Elliot, 7:30pm
Indie-comedy paint-by-numbers, (Rushmore + Royal Tenenbaums + Squid and the Whale + Napoleon Dynamite + Election + Thumbsucker), which isn't meant here to be a criticism. The movie was extremely enjoyable. Afterwards, I told Elliot, "It made me wish I was in high school again," which them prompted me to go off about how much fun all that angst was, which ultimately let to me saying something like "It was all [the angst] so visceral!," and "I mean, it wasn't fun at the time. But looking back on it is fun to remember." Any movie that makes me wax nostalgic about high school must have done something right.
What made this most different from Rushmore, and part of the reason why it probably isn't as good or why it would not hold up to nearly as many repeat viewings as Rushmore, is that the movie is very much from the perspective of the main character. The viewer sympathizes with him, and as much as we laugh at him trying to throw the cello through the window, in the end we want him to get it through. You can't really ever see him from another character's perspective. In Rushmore, it's easy to watch it from the point of view of Bill Murray's character, or the teacher lady. It's also easy to see Max from the perspective of his little friend or his father or the headmaster. In Rocket Science, the other characters exist only insofar as they matter to the main character.
The only possible exception is the character of his father, who avoids that fate mainly by not appearing in the movie after the opening scene until the closing scene, which is possibly the best scene in the whole movie. The way the father at first doesn't even answer the kid's question and instead starts to talk about how he had trouble getting off the interstate to pick up the kid instantly gives the father way more depth as a character than anyone aside from the kid. And the weary way in which he finally does answer the question with pretty much "I don't know," tired but not exasperated at the kid. The scene also opens up the world of the two characters because the conversation is obviously just another scene in the relationship of the two, a relationship we haven't really seen at all. Really, the whole movie is probably best viewed as a perfectly entertaining setup to the final scene in the car.
The other great thing in the car is the moment when the kid says something about how one day he's going to find a way to say what he needs to say at that moment. Like Elliot said, it makes you hope the movie is autobiographical at least a little bit, and that the movie is in some way the way the kind found to speak.
The voiceover narration that opens the movie at first felt a little to close to that of Royal Tenenbaums', but it was written really well and was actually quite a bit denser than RT's. I couldn't figure out why Elliot & I were the only two laughing; it was hilarious.
Indie-comedy paint-by-numbers, (Rushmore + Royal Tenenbaums + Squid and the Whale + Napoleon Dynamite + Election + Thumbsucker), which isn't meant here to be a criticism. The movie was extremely enjoyable. Afterwards, I told Elliot, "It made me wish I was in high school again," which them prompted me to go off about how much fun all that angst was, which ultimately let to me saying something like "It was all [the angst] so visceral!," and "I mean, it wasn't fun at the time. But looking back on it is fun to remember." Any movie that makes me wax nostalgic about high school must have done something right.
What made this most different from Rushmore, and part of the reason why it probably isn't as good or why it would not hold up to nearly as many repeat viewings as Rushmore, is that the movie is very much from the perspective of the main character. The viewer sympathizes with him, and as much as we laugh at him trying to throw the cello through the window, in the end we want him to get it through. You can't really ever see him from another character's perspective. In Rushmore, it's easy to watch it from the point of view of Bill Murray's character, or the teacher lady. It's also easy to see Max from the perspective of his little friend or his father or the headmaster. In Rocket Science, the other characters exist only insofar as they matter to the main character.
The only possible exception is the character of his father, who avoids that fate mainly by not appearing in the movie after the opening scene until the closing scene, which is possibly the best scene in the whole movie. The way the father at first doesn't even answer the kid's question and instead starts to talk about how he had trouble getting off the interstate to pick up the kid instantly gives the father way more depth as a character than anyone aside from the kid. And the weary way in which he finally does answer the question with pretty much "I don't know," tired but not exasperated at the kid. The scene also opens up the world of the two characters because the conversation is obviously just another scene in the relationship of the two, a relationship we haven't really seen at all. Really, the whole movie is probably best viewed as a perfectly entertaining setup to the final scene in the car.
The other great thing in the car is the moment when the kid says something about how one day he's going to find a way to say what he needs to say at that moment. Like Elliot said, it makes you hope the movie is autobiographical at least a little bit, and that the movie is in some way the way the kind found to speak.
The voiceover narration that opens the movie at first felt a little to close to that of Royal Tenenbaums', but it was written really well and was actually quite a bit denser than RT's. I couldn't figure out why Elliot & I were the only two laughing; it was hilarious.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Rescue Dawn
(8/2/07 alone, at Embarcadero Center, 4:00pm)
1) The thing is, it's a very good movie, but it's hard not to wonder why exactly Herzog made it. Somehow, by making it into a well done war/prison/survival/escape movie, the movie becomes less compelling than the story as told in "Little Dieter Needs to Fly."
2) Probably because of "Little Dieter," it was impossible to ever really feel like Bale was actually the character he was portraying, in the way it normally when watching a good movie. Not at all to fault Bale's performance.
3) My favorite pure poetic/Herzog moment from "Little Dieter," was when the slo-mo napalming video was played with the weird bouncy tribal/folk music over it. Herzog uses the same bit of film here, this time zoomed in on specific parts, with more traditional movieclassical music played over it. Again, the result is that it's not as compelling here as it was in "Little Dieter," or at least not in the same way.
4) Is this in some way a kind of indictment of the traditional Hollywood war/prison/survival/escape-type film? Nothing specifically about the movie itself made me think that, but reflection on the differences between this and "Little Dieter" has made me wonder. I need to see "Little Dieter" again. Even if that wasn't Herzog's intention, I think this movie ultimately functions that way. "Indictment" is the wrong word.
5) Yet another. I was way more disturbed by Dengler's recounting of his friend's death in "Little Dieter" than I was by the portrayal of it here. Here it just felt kind of like another in a long line of such events being dramatized in a movie. There it was singularly horrifying. I need to watch both of these movies again.
1) The thing is, it's a very good movie, but it's hard not to wonder why exactly Herzog made it. Somehow, by making it into a well done war/prison/survival/escape movie, the movie becomes less compelling than the story as told in "Little Dieter Needs to Fly."
2) Probably because of "Little Dieter," it was impossible to ever really feel like Bale was actually the character he was portraying, in the way it normally when watching a good movie. Not at all to fault Bale's performance.
3) My favorite pure poetic/Herzog moment from "Little Dieter," was when the slo-mo napalming video was played with the weird bouncy tribal/folk music over it. Herzog uses the same bit of film here, this time zoomed in on specific parts, with more traditional movieclassical music played over it. Again, the result is that it's not as compelling here as it was in "Little Dieter," or at least not in the same way.
4) Is this in some way a kind of indictment of the traditional Hollywood war/prison/survival/escape-type film? Nothing specifically about the movie itself made me think that, but reflection on the differences between this and "Little Dieter" has made me wonder. I need to see "Little Dieter" again. Even if that wasn't Herzog's intention, I think this movie ultimately functions that way. "Indictment" is the wrong word.
5) Yet another. I was way more disturbed by Dengler's recounting of his friend's death in "Little Dieter" than I was by the portrayal of it here. Here it just felt kind of like another in a long line of such events being dramatized in a movie. There it was singularly horrifying. I need to watch both of these movies again.
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