Night at the Movies

The Anatomy of a Biographical Film

2008-12-06T14:27:00.005-05:00

After I had rented the movie Gandhi from Netflix, I came across this quote on Wikipedia by Lawrence James:

"The film ... is pure hagiography, the late-twentieth-century equivalent of a mediaeval encomium of a remarkable saint rendered in words and illuminated pictures."

Despite the eponymous title, I don't consider Gandhi a biography of the man. I instead consider it a biography of the philosophy of a man through which the man is a conduit. A film like Patton explores the man- not just his philosophies, but his entire network of thought and being. Consider that Patton covers the issue of reincarnation far more than Gandhi does, though the latter is rife with religious subtext while the former is not. That's because Patton posits that reincarnation buffets the entire framework of the man. He is not just a student of war history - he is a part of that history.

Gandhi instead pursues other virtues. We are seldom treated to Gandhi's definitions - his boundaries, his girth. We are not told why he has dedicated himself to a life of nonviolence. All we know is that he was thrown off a train and decides to do something about it. And then we are not told how he becomes such a persuasive figure, able to convince apart from his actions. One scene he is meek and reticent. The next scene he draws a chorus of applause with his words. From the outside he seems a mystery, simple in that his simplicity is pure virtue. He shows no moments of weakness, and because of that we get no look at his soul. That is fine if there is a reverential, giant quality to him, which the film portrays without blemish. It has to work in that regard, however. Gandhi only looks so virtuous because his philosophy is so virtuous, and that is what the movie is trying to show.

This is, after all, a film first and a factual thesis second. A film is biased. It has an initiative, a theme. It has to say something extraordinary beyond the realm of what simply is. If a film is so concerned with telling something honesty and exhaustively, then I think it has license to pursue what it wants.

Quantum of Solace

2008-11-19T15:31:00.003-05:00

Quantum of Solace is a film that must be approached with precision. Some reviews have evoked the Jason Bourne comparison as a simulacrum, others an effigy. The difference in my mind is that Bourne is anchored to this world, and Bond is a force of nature above it. In other words, Bond is pure fantasy, unstoppable, implacable, always calm and in control of the world around him. He is the center of the fictional universe. And Craig's Bond more than any other is rough, hewn, and weathered.

Before Craig, Bond was played with an increasingly inhuman emotional detachment. That Bond perhaps was an action hero, one with style. Not that this Bond is now brimming with character development. His sole purpose is one of survival to complete the mission, and in one of the defining scenes of the movie, Bond reveals the true value of a dead agent, worthless and forgotten, no soul to redeem. Craig has a style, and it's ominous and brooding. There was certainly something cold and ruthless in Fleming's work.

The action is ubiquitous and at times difficult to follow, but the cinematogrophy and visuals are striking. The story itself is a never ending carousel filled with unclear motivations that could stand for a few moments of clarity. There is definitely a foundation here that could have been cultivated a little better. The world marches against Bond, and one only gets a basic sense of why.

Vesper Lynd made a much better companion to Bond, but it is the fact that Camille is more of a detached killing partner that she works, kindred spirits in parallelism only. She stays with Bond in order to find the soul-cleansing revenge that she seeks. Whether Camille finds it or not, much of the movie delineates along the lines of Bond seeking his own solidarity. As Bond is deposed by the consequences of his actions, he discovers who he hurts and who he must keep his distance from. This is not of the caliber of Casino Royale, but it is a proper companion piece that compliments the origin story well.

W.

2008-11-12T11:29:00.003-05:00

It has been said that a President seeks equanimity by fulfilling in his office that which he could not fulfill in his life. In the film W., Oliver Stone makes the case that George Bush is driven by an almost incorrigible need for approval. His relationship with his father, George H.W. Bush, grounds the movie and provides a gravity for the rest of the surroundings. The senior Bush plays upon this insecurity in order to motivate his son. George W. Bush applies for Harvard just so he can step out from beyond the shadow of his father. Short of attending, he quits before he begins. The only problem is that his father pulled the strings. Nothing more is said about the matter, but nothing else needs to be said: it is assumed that he attends Harvard and graduates so that he can do one thing beyond the long reach of his father. When the two nearly descend into a wrestling match, the act itself doesn't matter. They are constantly wrestling in Bush’s head.

It is this tenet that provides the drumbeat of the film, and as it switches between W.'s past and the 2002 preparations for the Iraq war, certain parallels can be drawn. The movie would not have worked if the audience doubted W's authenticity. With his approval ratings at an all time low, it would be easy to cast blame on him. Instead, even in moments of tragedy there is seldom any darkness because Bush is so charismatic and bluff, and the tragedy that does exist is Bush himself. He is easy to read and always goes with his gut, never attempting to placate anyone by an effacing act. When he decides to get into the family business, it is because of the celestial configurations of fate, and when he runs for the Presidency, it is because he has an almost prescient glimpse of coming events. Something big is going to happen, he says with conviction as if channeling the will of God, and his country needs him.

When Bush says that he wants to eradicate evil, there is no doubt of his authenticity. There is an underlying belief with Bush that in refusing to depose Saddam Hussein, the people of the United States didn't respect his father, and as he creates his own war, he seeks to get out from under his family's shadow and become his own man. He thinks he can do something his father never did, which is spread democracy throughout the world. Jeb Bush is rarely shown, but he is always waiting in the shadows as the superior statesmen and a favorite of his father (or so W. Bush perceives).

During many of the modern set pieces, the movie shifts gears to a more intellectual pace, which is fascinating if only to capture the prevailing headwinds of the time and provide tension between the characters. George Bush knows what he needs to do but is frustrated with the tenuous trail that leads him to Saddam's door. Cheney enters the oval office and stands off to the side, and then later he speaks to Bush alone during lunch, whispering in his ear. It is at this moment that the confidence the two men have in each other becomes obvious and is one of the few scenes that Bush shares alone with anyone. Cheney himself seems to be interested in empire building, though he only seems to speak of it for a moment. Karl Rove is interested in Bush's political career. Colin Powell is the only one who tries to make an argument against the war and comes out more admirable in the process.

I have not seen Stone’s other political movies, but I imagine that the liberties he takes with the events are vast. Oliver Stone transposed many details from the books Bush Tragedy and First Son. Stone quotes a line from Brent Scowcroft via the book State of Denial: "George W. couldn't decide whether he was going to rebel against his father or try to beat him at his own game. Now, he had tried at the game, and it was a disaster.” And yet Scowcroft himself has come out and said that he never provided information for the book. In politics the truth is hard to find, and only history may someday reveal the veracity of the men who rise to power.

There is Life on Mars

2008-10-10T19:16:00.004-04:00

ABC's Life on Mars began as a conversion of the hit BBC drama. Without professing any knowledge of British television, I thought that perhaps a straight airing of the original was in order if they were intent on a simple scene by scene remake, but I expect further divergences in the future, and being a show about time travel, time and place will effect the tone and content of Life on Mars.

Yet in spite of David E. Kelley's panache for eccentric characters and wild narratives, the first pilot felt lifeless. Colm Meaney is good at playing a brute, but he lacks the street smarts that Harvey Keitel brings to the part of Gene Hunt. I don't know what would make a good Annie Cartwright, but thanks to an expanded part, Gretchen Mol doesn't get lost in the shuffle (the uniform also makes her more distinctive). Gretchen is much more personable of an actor here.

There is a lack of urgency in the original pilot that made the aired version so compelling. It lacks some punch. The aired version knocks you on the floor from the opening moments: Chris Cornell's Ground Zero is conflated with the sound of sirens and the bickering of Sam and Maya as they rush to the crime scene. It dispenses with all of the pointless fat that made the original pilot so slow and instead drives forward with purpose. Not much time is spent on Colin Raimes, fortunately, and the show drives forward to the clever reveal. The misplaced twin in a moment puts Maya in imminent danger, and it's the kind of punch that is lacking from the original pilot. As Sam arrives in the past, the aired version is once again more emotionally resonant. The song Life on Mars soars, and the image of the twin towers distills everything that is wrong with the situation. It only took half the time to arrive at this point, but already this is the more compact and hard hitting version.

It's unavoidable in time travel stories all of the stages of disbelief and acceptance that the main character faces. Mercifully, Life on Mars makes it quick. The twin towers here reminds me of a scene in the movie Philadelphia. Tom Hanks plays a man with AIDS who faces prejudice and hate. The moment in which his lawyer realizes the humanity of the Hanks character could have been overwrought and ridiculous. Instead, it is a scene where Hanks plays an opera that mirrors the strife and struggle that a homosexual must face. Wordless, breathless, and beautiful, Hanks bears his soul as the music plays. It is the best way to fight an inevitable cliche: do it through images and sounds that contain powerful of emotions, or create a scene that is so clever that it actually fights the cliche.

The narrative remains mostly constant here until the end, so the aired version asserts itself in different ways. Casting is one element. The heavy saturation of yellow drips from every frame, foreign and strange, suggesting life on another planet. Music isn't just rock and roll from the time but instead quintessential 70s. Camera cuts are swift and effacing as Sam dispenses paranoid glances at the people passing him by. He spins around often. Time jumps. The viewer is never allowed to be placated or get a feel for the surroundings. He enters the police station and finally loses his grasp of reality. Contained within are some clever riffs on the state of 1970s society.

The two versions diverge again at the end. In the original pilot, Sam is confronted by a psychologist who tells him that he is actually in a coma. Convinced that he is in an illusory world, he goes to the rooftop with the intent to jump from it, believing that it is the only way to wake himself. However, it is here Annie reveals that she put the psychologist up to it so that he could connect with Sam and get through to him by his own logic. This is the best part of the pilot, but once again I think that it lacks the urgency of the aired version, in which Sam urges a criminal to shoot him in the chest so that he may wake up from what he believes to be a coma. The reason it works is because the decision is not in his hands. Sam cannot do it himself, so the onus is on a man who may or may not be cold enough to pull the trigger. Of course Sam isn't going to jump from a building, so using logic to talk him down from the edge isn't very evocative.

The aired version also presents Sam with the chance to kill the child who will grow up to harm Maya. No time travel logic, thankfully. Once again there is no doubt that he will make the right decision, but it works here because it confronts the audience with the possibility that Sam might become a monster in order to save more lives than it will cost. That it is an emotional decision makes it even more senseless and poignant.

The grandmother scene tends to fall flat without Hunt coaxing the information out of her. It shows some wisdom on his part in how he interacts with people.

I look forward to discovering the mythology behind the series. What he does in past won't matter if Sam truly is in a coma, and there was more than one clue to suggest this. I would like it all to be real, however, if for no other reason than to offer a far more complex and ultimately rewarding solution than the simple coma explanation allows.

The Universe According to Charlie Kaufman

2008-10-08T20:02:00.000-04:00

The directorial bent of Charlie Kaufman is just another one of his attributes that will make easier the transition from his solo career as writer. A lot of writers can work with something on paper. Kaufman has a higher sense of the structure and flow of a movie and of the dialog that really needs to be spoken to be heard that makes him adept at the art of film making. You can view the latest trailer his new film, Synecdoche, New York, in which he serves as writer and director, here. IMDB sums it up: "A theater director struggles with his work and the women in his life as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play."

I always assumed that the Kaufman protagonist was in some measure different reflections of himself, the awkward fellow ranging from the loquacious (Craig Schwartz in Being John Malkovitch) to the extremely reticent (Joel Barish in Eternal Sunshine). Caden Cotard, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is in the same gallery. An intelligent, sensitive man, his autonomic functions are slowly shutting down. It seems to be Eternal Sunshine with a more seamless blend. Instead of a clear divide between conscious and unconscious, Synecdoche moves between reality and unreality as Caden deteriorates.

In fact, many of his works bend reality in different ways. My favorite script of his, Dangerous Mind, is based entirely on a confessional and the reality as one man sees it regardless of truth. The declination of Chuck Barris is such that he begins to invent his own violent reality toward the end of the film, which perhaps is one reason why the story is so endearing. Kaufman knows exactly the length and content of each scene that is necessary for communication. One of my favorite parts of the movie is the inversion of Chuck Barris in the movie theater: first, he is the only one not kissing his date, then, he is the only one kissing. And the only scene of his childhood, the one that shaped his life, is given appropriate measure of about thirty seconds before it moves on.

Kaufman dialog has always relied on a lot of repitition, folding back on itself, and truth about individual reality spoken through the common person. It has a real rhythm like most good dialog does.

I look toward Kaufman the director with real hope for his work. He is at the same time funny, evocative, and peculiar, and he is never afraid to twist the grammar of a film toward his advantage.

Heroes Needs a Savior

2008-09-26T10:06:00.007-04:00

Beyond the season premiere, Heroes feels like it has already begun its long slide into the sea. I can best describe it as a tedious journey in which the destination is another quantum plot development with no art in the storytelling.

As season two lurched from one twist to another like some twitching, lobotomized monster, it reminded me of why the Charlie-Hiro arc distilled so much of what made season one triumphant. There are two reasons.

1. Creator Tim Kring commented that Heroes doesn't necessarily do romance well, but there was some gestation of romance between Charlie and Hiro that made for a compelling story. Charlie was a rather sheltered woman who through her power could bridge a large gulf with a man who was probably even more innocent than she was. There was a connection in the dichotomy of homegrown Texan and Japanese man who wanted to become a hero but didn't necessarily understand the ramifications of his responsibility, and seeing them connect through the use of language showed an awareness of good writing. Ironically, Tim Kring himself wrote that episode.

2. The powers were as much a statement on the limits of a character. When Hiro found himself powerless to stop Charlie's death, it was much better than something contrived like in season two when Peter had his identity taken away through amnesia. I liked the show a lot better when Peter helped those around him understand their powers even as he struggled to understand his. That was one of the most effective storylines throughout the first season: as Peter contemplates whether he has powers and what they could be, even as Nathan discovers and discards his, and eventually tries to control them before they destroy him, he always embraces them.

Some of the greatest authors of the 20th century - Stephen King, David Foster Wallace, Kurt Vonnegut - have likened a story to controlled chaos. In other words, a story once set in motion must play itself out in the evocation of sincerity and an organic bloom. In the opening episodes of season three, Hiro transports himself not to the future but to a time and to a destination where the writers want him to procure the intended information, setting off a chain of improbable events. Mohinder's storyline is given no time to marinate before he injects himself, and so the great thing about Heroes, the pacing and the discovery of its mythology, is rendered inert. It seems so manufactured and contrived, and I wouldn't be surprised if viewers continue to jump ship as Heroes treads water. This is not good news for NBC, who is desperately seeking a moratorium for sinking ratings and who probably won't receive one from the influx of freshman shows into the fall lineup. They banked a lot on Heroes and need the convalescence that Kring promised.

For Nerd Eyes Only

2008-09-17T09:32:00.000-04:00

Gene Roddenberry may have created Star Trek, but in a way he was the show's greatest predator, and his ideas for Star Trek II (Kirk and Company travel back in time to the Kennedy assassination) may have been poison in celluloid form and symptomatic of a larger problem of Roddenberry's - namely, that in three short seasons he revisited some of the same recursive formulas - this time mimeographing the chemical composition of City on the Edge of Forever. When Harve Bennett was hired by Paramount to create a sequel out of the ashes of The Motion Picture, he conspired with Jack B. Sowards to write a script that was tailored together by director Nicholas Meyer into its present permutation. Roddenberry never agreed with Bennett's vision of the future - in a way, he birthed something and had it stripped from him as other people coaxed it along and nurtured it - but shedding old skin amounts to an unemotional process. An executive must have the fortitude to stop the guy in charge creatively from driving himself and others over the edge of a cliff, even if it is on a gilded road, and the simultaneous foresight to make the calculated risk of choosing a visionary to carry the franchise forward.

Star Trek Nemesis tried to sweep away some of the old talent in order to emulate the approach taken with The Wrath of Khan, but this time the stakes were a dying franchise. Berman was still on board, but John Logan ruddered the screenplay efforts, and Stuart Baird, a long time editor with Warner Bros., was assigned to direct the picture. But unlike Bennett, who treated Star Trek with the reverence it deserved and telegraphed it with his exhaustive consultation of the original series before work began, Baird had absolutely no pulse on The Next Generation. I am sometimes loathe to blame writers. This is a director's field, and in the hands of a bad director, the writer might not like the treatment given to their scripts anymore than we do.

But Nemesis sidestepped much of the character work that made Khan so good, supplanting Star Trek as a lame action vehicle for illogic and bad science. Thematically, it was a blank piece of paper with only the barest hint of an outline. Beyond Kirk's age, beyond the danger of receding into his house of antiques, the James Kirk of Star Trek II was the perfect compliment to his younger self: he was a man who always had an answer and who bent reality with unwavering intolerance for loss when domineered by an ostensibly impossible situation. When he is faced with a choice between losing his ship or losing his best friend, he finds that there are no rules he can break to emancipate himself of that situation.

It's culpable of Nemesis that the episode The Best of Both Worlds did a far better job in capturing what should have been one of the movie's main themes. If you remember back, Riker was too comfortable on the Enterprise and refused to assume the captain's chair of any other ship while savvier officers passed him by. Like any good story, he was eventually forced to come into conflict with his frailties and make the tough choices that few other hot shots could make. Why does Riker want the captaincy now? Who are these people and how did they get here? Following the Dominion War, Worf only seems like he's aboard because it's in Dorn's contract. Data's sacrifice is a noble gesture of humanity, but there is no bearing in what he has done since First Contact. When B4 is needed most to provide a contrast to Data, he is cast aside by the plot, and he is too much of an idiot to absorb anything that Data tells him: Data would have made an excellent teacher. Nemesis should have been a referendum to explore the changing lives of the crew in the fifteen years that they had been together. Instead, it amounted to a wasted opportunity. The best part of the movie comes in the dying moments. As Riker tries to recall his first meeting with Data, the camera zooms in on Picard, evoking a similar shot in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Picard is given a moment of introspection, but it does not last, and Riker's memory fails him. That's kind of how I felt about this film...everything forgotten.

One of the hardest things to do is to turn inward with introspection and question your liabilities because you might find that you are no longer needed - or worse, not good enough to rise to the occasion - and just like Roddenberry before him, I feel that his protegee Rick Berman did not recognize this. Elevating Braga to producer was a mistake - Braga was a competent boilerplate writer when he had the established crew of The Next Generation to work with, but he was limited. Roger Ebert in reviewing Nemesis said that, in some uncertain terms, Star Trek was tired, bloated, collapsing in on itself with its own mystique, lost in an infinite regression, and yet like a political campaign Berman forged ahead with four more years, twisting the knife through the heart of a dying franchise. Ten years earlier, Harve Bennett originally had eyes on doing a recast for the upcoming Star Trek VI that featured the crew in their academy days (presented in flashbacks so that it could feature Shatner and Company). Back then I think the idea was somewhat misguided because Bennett and Meyer were masters of their fate, and the risk of an academy treatment in the wrong context might have been averse to Star Trek's increasing popularity with the proverbial transference of the torch to the TNG crew imminent. In 2008 the time is not only right - it's the only way to revive Star Trek.

What strikes me most about JJ Abrams - and I suspect this is why he got the job - is that he has a panache for character work, a verve for humor, and a wild sense of sci-fi and mystery. Meyer brought a very practical and naval masterstroke to Star Trek, and though Roddenberry couldn't always see it, that evolution was as much in retrospect a celebration of Star Trek as it was an attempt to preserve it and move it forward. Abrams will return to the values of the original series. That it is a time travel plot is incidental. With his academy script, Bennett saw that it was necessary to contrast the old cast with the new cast in order to make the juxtaposition palpable. This time Nimoy represents in its totality the old arc, and it will form the basis of the film.

I don't think that roles should be proprietary. Fans may hold characters up to be icons - what they want to see is the old character, but they know that it would be treasonous to duplicate the performances. The benefit in bringing in a new actor is that he'll have a different take on the part. There was nothing in Shatner's acting ability that couldn't be surpassed (this isn't like recasting Brando's Corleone), and there are ways a new actor could play Kirk that weren't necessarily in Shatner's range, so I say that change is good. If Pine is trying to play the same Kirk, then it won't live up. But if it's an alteration of the character based on what the script calls for (and he has license to do this since it's a younger Kirk), then the alteration is warranted. It might be Kirk, but it's a different kind of Kirk, just like how Craig is a different kind of Bond with his own set of strengths and weaknesses.

Paramount is investing a lot into this project - $150 million, which is just about as much as any Star Trek film has grossed worldwide (although Star Trek is a breeding ground for merchandise, so there is a lot of revenue that is not factored in). Paramount has never even invested more than $50 million into a Star Trek film, but the price of creating a blockbuster has become expensive, and the awareness of the Star Trek brand is far reaching, so it's a matter of selling the film to the right people. This film is a new beginning, one that require neither a history book nor a tech manual. The danger in sci-fi is that it can be completely unrelatable. Showing the Enterprise built plate by plate by men with blow torches humanizes it a bit. Star Trek has always treated technology as something cold and technical, which is great for fans who love the mythology, but it's not so great for everybody else. I trust in the ability of Abrams to make something palatable for fans and newcomers. Nimoy seems to think that Abrams is on the right track too, and when it comes to Star Trek, I have always trusted his opinion. He has proved that he is not an apologist, which is what Star Trek needs: an honest look at itself.

9/11 on Film

2008-09-12T17:09:00.006-04:00

War makes heroes or villains out of us all. That premise seemed to be the calling card of most Vietnam films in the 70s and 80s, and this kind of post Vietnam era outlook has carried over to movies such as Saving Private Ryan where it is not so much the war but the valor in war that matters.

There was a sort of war-athon occurring on AMC recently, and back to back they showed Midway and Letters from Iwo Jima. In watching, I noticed two diverging philosophies. Midway showed men on both sides as honorable and intelligent and unfailing in their duty. Letters from Iwo Jima, despite whatever inaccuracies that some groups are likely to say the films incurs, showed the unpleasant realities of some men committing questionable acts and others engaging in acts of heroism. I really don't know if Vietnam films helped bring that out, but it seems like most of the recent war films have found a new way to play on that basic tenet. That might be a theory that needs testing.

The Deer Hunter, which arrived only a few years after Vietnam ended, was one in a string of movies that helped to make sense of the war, not just in the actions of the soldiers who were there, but in the context of what it all meant. The perspective deployed as the years went by run the gamut, from Apocalypse Now to Born on the Fourth of July, and each had something different to say. Coppola once famously said that Apocalypse Now wasn't about Vietnam. It was Vietnam.

The Movie Blog has a 9/11 feature you might be interested in about the realities of 9/11 on the silver screen, which compelled me to write this article. Like Vietnam, 9/11 movies might help us to make sense of the events, especially as these films are given different contexts based on directorial voice. It's probably impossible to take as many liberties with 9/11 as we do with war films, as tragedies come with their own set of rules. Since we were the victims, the heroism would have to come through the triumph of the human spirit. One "tragedy movie" that comes to mind is Munich, which came out decades after the tragedy and dealt primarily with the aftermath, and I'm reminded that tragedies are difficult to swallow. We all feel like the victims when we remember them. For example, I have difficulty in imagining a Katrina movie, at least one that tells it like it should be, and the only reason I advocate 9/11 films is because 9/11 was a turning point that cast our enemies in a whole new light. It didn't have anything to do with war, but it was part of a larger conflict.

People do seem to be mistrustful of films that use these kinds of events since money is going into so many different hands, and the controversy seems to be ubiquitous such as when the filmmakers tried to procure the rights to use the United 93 crew in the eponymous film. But I think that like Vietnam there is an opportunity here to talk about 9/11 in a way that nothing else can capture. Simple text can not unveil emotional potency, and video only tells us what happened. Finding a creative way to distill the themes and values of 9/11 will be the next step, and I think that it can be beneficial to the viewer if done right.

The Return of Superman

2008-09-05T07:17:00.004-04:00

It's therapeutic to admit that I enjoyed Singer's Superman. People like me are few in number, hiding in caves and living like scavengers off of the land. Last time I made it clear that I don't have the mental processes to consume a comic book the way I do a film. In fact, I leave it to the comic aficionados to debate the dichotomy between Clark Kent and Superman. What gravitated me toward Singer's interpretation was the way in which Clark went incognito. How do you fool people with a pair of glasses? Project yourself as an irreverent, off beat caricature, rendering the pictorial ambiance and heroism of Superman inert. Clark needs no introspection because his desires are evident as Superman. He is in a position to woo Lois Lane but isn't the person to do it. Superman is the person to do it but isn't in the right position. I thought that Singer got some neat, charismatic character work out of his actors in the fulfillment of these roles, and so I treated the news ruefully when I heard that Singer wouldn't be on board for the Man of Steel.

However, in transmigrating the tone of Donner, even down to Lex's insidious plot, Singer dispels the biggest advantage of a directorial change of hands: that is, a change of authorial voice throughout the film. I liked where it picked up (the reasoning was probably as simple as this world desperately needing something to believe in, both in the real world and in the world of the film, hence Superman's flight and return), but it does tend to look inferior to the original when it presents some bad jokes and gets off to a shaky start both with story and acting. I felt that it was at its best when Clark was the focus. And the Superman dies angle turns to pancake batter upon subsequent viewings since the shock factor dispels. They should have either killed him or excised it entirely. At least if they had killed Superman, they might have salvaged a sequel.

It makes me worry when a studio exec christens a move based on a latest trend, in this case the trend of being "dark", whatever the hell that means, but the most exciting thing to come in the Nolan aftermath is the possibility that in the right hands superhero movies might finally get the script treatment that they deserve. If Superman Returns was any good, it was not because the script was a work of art. Singer has done some wonderful stories in his time, but I think that even he got caught up in the old superhero movie archetype (that is just an assumption, but the end product feels old world, old philosophy). New talent means a new take on the character, and it would be in their best interest to bring in someone with something unique to say about Superman.

The most common criticism of the Superman character is that he ultimately proves to be uninteresting, but that's because writers treat him like the invincible hero he is. They get caught up in devising elaborate plots to bring him down. Singer was at least smart enough to focus on the unassailable man wanting what he cannot have because he is still bound to a code of morals. When a series is over the top, it cannot last very long without collapsing in upon itself. This is true for a lot of superhero stories, and it's especially true for Superman. Every time they "reboot" Superman, it seems to lose combustibility in mid-flight. Smallville had the good graces of never taking its villain of the week plots seriously, but even that succumbed to the curse.

I am not averse to seeing a visitation to the origin story as long as it does what previous films didn't. Donner was thorough but still brushed past much of Clark's early life. Singer presented some thrilling visuals and a few story strands but nothing conclusive. There is still a lot here to cultivate. Lex Luthor is not an option, but Batman Begins proved that the only thing keeping a villain from being well written is the writer, even if the villain is a relative unknown. On the "darkness" meme: conflicts naturally involve darkness of some kind. The difference between alacrity and graveness is that a film like Batman Begins uses darkness as a springboard to explore the psychology of the man behind the mask. "Dark" will work in Superman if those behind the camera take it as a charge to create a serious film with heavy handed issues. It will not work if they try to be brooding for its own sake.

Watchmen

2008-09-03T22:38:00.002-04:00

Reading ahead isn't recommended for those who are not intimate with the book.

Having never shared the same blood that binds many to the quirk of graphic novels, the origins of Batman as a comic book character seem in disregard to the latent image I have of him in the cartoons and movies. I suspect that most people also think of Jack Nicholson's (or Heath Ledger's) Joker before they think of the comic versions. I think this is a part of a larger social progress that recasts these characters as film stars and detaches them from their comic heritage, which has mostly become an intramural medium.

The term graphic novel is a neologism. Comic book seems to suggest something comical, but the more I interchange the words, the more I am sure that I'm staring at a fractal pattern, each the same as the other. I'm not sure if a graphic novel is a comic book or a comic book for adults. Preceding Watchmen I have never actually read one from cover to back, and I am not aware of the state of the graphic novel industry. I have treated it over the years much as I treat anime: an interesting medium without the creative engineers to exploit it. There are exceptions, but on each occasion that I pick one up it seems to be malleable to the same superhero mold that permeates the genre, its story another tired spin on that same archetype.

Enter Watchmen. The graphic novel came out during an age when I would have been too young to understand it, and it's always interesting to reach back knowing what I know now to try to put myself in a time where this was still the present. Twenty two years in the wilderness hasn't brought with it much absolution, but it has made me question my beliefs. A book is a medium of art through language, and a movie uses the aesthetics of visuals and sound. Much heat has been given as to the superior medium, but comics are unique and proprietary by their use of communication and thought through static images. Films are similar, but all of the images must flow together in a harmonic wavelength. Comics can be striking from one panel to the next through the use of different images, and Watchmen uses this to good effect, even going so far as to mirror two different stories on top of each other. This is a distinctive style of the comic book.

Style is often misrepresented as visual flair - art, special effects, etc. But style also exists to turn simple themes into emotional resonant patterns (Rorschach's famous opening lines for example). When Zach Snyder directed 300, I think it was his mission to use style to communicate blunt, visceral ideas of brutality and honor. A lot of films have pretty faces but are ugly underneath, or, in other words, the visuals barely communicate anything thematically to the rest of the movie. They simply exist to provide something cool to look at. But great films use style to tell a story. 300 can be dumb, but it also can be very striking. Great camera work, good set design, those things help too. What really defines Watchmen, however, is its structure, its complex pentameter. Situations are not grouped by chronological events. Things go out of sequence, out of order, and it retells some events from the perspective of different characters. As the characters of the Minutemen and Crimebusters mingle, their stories intertwine. Many events are also linked for thematic purposes only. There are stories in here of crimes that are only meant to represent the senseless brutality of the world, and there are swathes of symbols and allegories to go around.

Most stories begin with a simple idea and turn it into something emotionally profound; style gives you something digestible up front on a more visceral level, and structure is the totality of organized events designed to reveal information about the story and its characters. Watchmen is so full and complex that the totality isn't always clear. Personal interpretation of the moment becomes important. A lot of people debate their own interpretations. I personally don't care what it says as long as it has something to say.

Watchmen willingly divides itself into chapters; there are films that follow a similar stricture, essentially those christened by Tarantino. With so many calories, however, the Watchmen film might have to cut down on the amount of recurring flashbacks, synthesizing repeat sequences into one, and splice all of the stories together. If the film can improve on anything, it would be a slightly more coherent and evenly paced vision. The symbolism is so ubiquitous in the comic that I feel it sometimes is diluted; there are connections everywhere that are only established because they have some common visual or dialog bond, not because there is any real meaning. The corollary is that there are some interesting transitions between panels. The comic might transition to the past by using two panels that look similar but are obviously different in place and time. Second issue: there is such an onus on the first nine or ten chapters that the last few feel disjointed. Veidt's misguided and destructive diplomacy is kept from the reader so that it will have more emotional resonance, but I think that it comes at the expense of the murder mystery, and his plot is so shielded from the light that in its hole it leaves a vociferous shout, obvious and apparent. Veidt is mysterious (I don't even think that he's given a chapter until the end), so I could only conclude that it was him behind it all. I would opt for better pacing rather than a sudden surprise.

Watchmen is an incredibly well spun tale, and its praises have been sung down in a chorus for decades. However, there are a few weaknesses within the comic attended to by its strengths. For example. It's easy to write about evil deeds. It's hard to write a character who does truly evil things. The Comedian is only efficacious partly in my mind. He ultimately works because of Dr. Manhattan's apathy to his actions and the portrayal of the Comedian as a true nihilist next to Rorschach's codified but out of date methods of brutality. There are a lot of Vietnam movies that depict the American soldier slaying the innocent, but I had to buy into their desperation first. I understood the characterization of the Comedian's nihilism, but it never really touched me.

There is other borderline ambivalence. Rorschach is sent to prison and threatens to destroy the mental well being of his therapist. This could have turned out wrong since there is some dissonance in the idea that a prison therapist could have the structural integrity of his world destroyed.

If I may delineate for a moment: Rorschach's story is meant to be shocking, but I wasn't shaken to the core. Just like the Comedian was supposed to be shocking. These characters are set up from the start as people who would commit indecency, and you wouldn't be paying attention if you didn't see that, so it's not shocking to me as their actions unfurl. I have some partiality to the Taxi Driver approach: the movie establishes an evil character and shows his entire fall from grace. I am not talking about backstory but rather what pushes him over the edge. Taxi Driver, coincidentally, also deals with the line between hero and villain. Watchmen obviously doesn't have the time to painfully establish all of its characters to that degree. But these isolated stories are fragmented so much that I feel they could have benefited from the emotional resonance that a properly paved and paced storyline can bring. Not everybody will share that opinion, and I myself admit that there is some solidarity in repudiation if I someday change my way of thinking. Perceptions alter upon further readings, and Watchmen is a comic that is meant to be mined.

End my long slide into the sea. What really makes the therapist scenes evocative, however, is not that the therapist is brought down, but that those around him live in a bubble where people like Rorschach don't exist. And then his wife leaves him. To break her link with her husband is to break her link with Rorschach.

Chapter IX brings with it one of my most hated cliches. Exploring the meaning of life brings with it so much faux philosophy and pseudo intellectualism. It's a blunt question with no answer. I feel that the chapter works, however, because of the layers, the symbolisms, the style, Dr. Manhattan's penchant for relating everything in scientific metaphors. Coincidentally, Dr. Manhattan is probably the closest approximation I have seen to God in fiction without actually being related to a god. Why should anything matter to him when he can create life? He marvels at it and appreciates it but does not love it.

Finally, the dying chapters narrowly avert another awful cliche, the bad guy who wants to remake the world in his own image and weathers the immolation of lives. Like Heroes, it ultimately works because the underlying story is compelling even if the plan is convoluted. The final words between Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias are especially evocative too. "Nothing ever ends," which is why I am distrustful when someone breaths the old line of thinking that stories need to be neatly wrapped up. Thematically? Perhaps. But there needs be a hint that things go on. Unfortunately, articles don't always have that luxury.

The Aviator

2008-08-28T16:48:00.004-04:00

Continuing the aperture of my untimely reminiscence, I recently came upon The Aviator on TV. As I watched it (I had been meaning to do so for years), I tried to imagine it reverse engineered as a book, all the intricacies of Howard Hughes and his obsessive compulsion explained in detail. But I think that The Aviator is perfect as a movie in that it thrives on the lack of information. Consider the opening of the film. Though the viewer realizes that he is much more of a blinding visionary than a wasteful and unorganized fool, the film certainly attempts to blur the lines because he never once explains himself to anybody. There is only an intensity to Howard Hughes, and though nothing is said about the quality of his work or his emotional state, Hughes is presented as a man who will do anything in the fulfillment of his vision and only gets away with it because he is so good at it. As the audience finishes the first screening of Hell's Angels and roars in acceptance, it sets up a common theme: how close triumph skates with disaster.

Within the context of the film his behavior is also never given an awareness of its own. He washes his hands with a cathartic zeal and during movie premieres has to hold himself together through the light of ionized gas and speeding electrons like he holds his plane through the sparks and heat of a bad landing. This is a man who struggles with a darkness that to others seems eccentric unexplained and mentally disturbed when it is known. The movie says a lot about what he does, not why, and I think that these are things that cannot be understood because they are a product of his mind. Sometimes the mind can't be known. What is important is what we understand from watching him, how he designs his planes, and what he does to get what he wants. The subject material governs this. It allows the film to focus on the story of his life while the seedy underbelly beneath it goes unexplained. The brilliance cannot come without the madness, and at some point this simply becomes a movie about a man's life. I also enjoy movies about how the best of us (intellectually, creatively, financially) cope with darkness.

The thing that stays with me the most is that out of one last triumph the movie ends on the eve of his biggest disaster. It remains consistent with the rest of the film and never moves his issues to the forefront, but it also foreshadows his declination with words that are strangely prescient. Howard Hughes continuously banks everything on the future, only to gamble on it again, and yet this is a man who is quickly hurtling into the sun.

A Trek Through Time

2008-08-27T04:37:00.004-04:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation had a style that was best nurtured as something eclectic, as scripts were often received in venal mercenary pacts from outside the writing staff. I myself felt like I was once part of this organism, then I fell out it, and then I reintegrated myself back into it. Its values favor those who are apprehended by rich, interconnected worlds, but the best of Star Trek chafes against the very grain of its stereotype. Star Trek is still sci fi and has been pigeonholed for a good reason, but these works are very human, very dramatic, and the stories have plenty of verve. Theory: sci fi writers are introspective, thoughtful, idea oriented, strapped to their own imaginations. A lot of them have trouble writing good characters. Even fewer write good dialog. They are transfixed by the universe but don't necessarily understand people, and so they write about the universe. There are numerous exceptions, but I think that there is some truth to that. And so I want to honor what I feel are the very best and most human episodes of The Next Generation in its long and treasured run.

I seldom see The Offspring crop up on many lists, but it is Patrick Stewart's favorite episode, and I share the sentiment. Jonathan Frakes's directorial debut, written by René Echevarria, finds fertile ground in the opening acts. Data has the ability to create life and yet does not understand the implications of it. The episode has excellent pacing, and there is a nice montage with a voice over from Data that is most impactful in sequence because it shows Lal trying to emulate human behavior. It's quick and orderly, and the impact would be lost if it was unabridged. In fact, the episode features a misdirection, as it spends most of its time debating the qualifications of Data as a parent and ends with Lal's inadvertent death. Admiral Haftel almost becomes the stock villain but is instead expertly used as a Trojan Horse to evoke sympathy at the end - the man who thought that Lal would be better served in a laboratory gives an almost frightening eulogy as he informs Picard that he couldn't follow the speed of Data's hands as he tries to save Lal. In a strange way Data cannot love but instead shows how much he cares, and it is enough to convince Haftel and shake him to his core.

Another underrated episode is the fourth season's The Drumhead (also directed by Frakes, written by Jeri Taylor). This episode works as a triumvirate. In the opening acts we are treated to the threat of a Romulan collaborator (a Klingon no less) linked to a larger conspiracy. Immediately the viewer is set with expectations, and for a time he's obliged; a medical technician, the diffident Simon Tarsus, is questioned in conjunction with the investigation and is revealed to have Romulan blood. The initial cover up binds it all together, never mind the fact that it was necessitated by his approval to Starfleet Academy. Worf takes on the perspective of the audience: he pushes the conspiracy angle hard before his realization that the trial has become a tragedy, then a farce. This is to mirror the emotions of the viewer. Jean Simmons gives an excellent portrayal of Rear Admiral Norah Satie, who initially establishes herself as a rational, eloquent woman. We only know who she is because of what we see of her. She is obviously an inveterate, distinguished person. Is the episode trying to say that a righteous vigilanti can appear rationale and eloquent? Or did she just go too far?

The Inner Light (which, curiously enough, was filmed almost exclusively on an indoor set) is often cited as the very best of TNG, a national prizefighter if you will. I am more agnostic here; I believe that it could be, but I'm not entirely convinced. The previous two episodes used pacing and structure to provide the dramatic hook and enhance the story. The emotional resonance of The Inner Light hinges almost completely on the premise: an alien probe from a ruined world forces Picard to relive a lifetime of events in only 25 minutes. But the episode is very honest. Picard's life on the Enterprise fades in reflection, and with that existence on the fringe, he becomes something that he would never oblige himself as a starship captain. He becomes a family man. The juxtaposition of these two realities works well. One of the final scenes featured some excellent acting from Stewart as his family and friends, timelessly preserved as their younger selves, tell him that he is burdened with carrying the weight of a long dead civilization.

A lot of reasons are given for why Tapestry succeeds: Picard relives a life he once reviled and becomes something he hates even more, context is given for his famous laugh at the edge of a knife, established in Samaritan Snare, and of course it was written by Ronald D. Moore. Beyond that, however, the first thirty minutes could have been very dry with the outcome already in place. These initial segments work for two reasons: 1) Picard's life is at stake, and at the end of the episode he would rather choose death than a safe, comfortable life, and 2) Picard hates the young man he is forced to live as, and it exacerbates the issue when Q provides commentary. Picard is given the opportunity to live his earlier days as he lives as captain of the Enterprise, which ironically ends his career before it begins. Foresight can be dangerous, and it is only through the spontaneity of life that we learn from our mistakes.

I am not going to delineate much about The Best of Both Worlds, but its strengths provide context as to why much of later Trek failed: it pushed the crew to the brink, forced them to make tough decisions, and was anything but predictable storytelling.

The Road Not Taken

2008-08-22T04:40:00.004-04:00

The movie version of No Country for Old Men was my first contact with Cormac McCarthy's work. The last words of the film were powerful, the dream of the love between father and son in a world where such love doesn't seem likely to exist, told in a time where the evil of men was oppressive. This symmetry seemed iron cast for a worthy story, and so I bought The Road, of which was called McCarthy's most accessible work. The Road is a book, in that it cannot be anything else. It jumps between action and thought without seam, containing nothing but the insular projection of father and son. Dialog goes without quotations and recedes into the rest of the text, and time and place seem to be abolished as the reader floats through the world without reason or explanation. It has the sensation of peeling away some one's mind and observing their layers of thought from above, wonderfully random and unhinged. You might be treated to a flashback one moment and an action piece the next.

The vituperative world is relayed through exact and technical descriptions (for instance, stone "flues"), and he delivers evocative metaphors and strings of thought that stand strong amongst the isolation of the world that he has created. His style is unique and transformative, turning docile words into powerful and emotional beasts. Standard rules of grammar are trivial in McCarthy's world. Such things as a comma are intended to shield common clusters of thought so that they are understandable while being conveyed. But McCarthy organizes his thoughts in such a way that there is never any confusion.

With the movie arriving later this year, I think that this will be an interesting experiment to assess what can be culled from the ashes of a book that relies on the strengths of a written medium through and through. Books stylistically diverge from one another in both voice and detail. McCarthy is aware that you will come to know the characters better by the resonance of their nightmares than you will by their names. The Road is such a beautiful piece of literature because the writing is so transportive and the language is so eloquent in the crudeness and the brutality that seeks to emancipate hope from father and son.

But the film will have to rely on visuals and editing, and the hazy vision that McCarthy has presented will ring with a little more clarity. I think that there is strength in ignorance. I'm not sure if I want things to be patched together. Details in The Road pass by at arms length along the panorama, but it is seldom certain. A flashback to some dialog might have happened sometime and somewhere, and it is the uncertainty that makes it so fleeting in a world of lurid despotism on the brink of total despair. It is not up to us to know.

I said that The Road cannot be anything else but a book, and I meant that only in its present form. The movie will of course take the basic form of the story and make a film out of it, relying on all of the conventions of a film, and what will come out on the other side will be a very different take on the same familiar story. I don't think that should be disparaged. Instead, it should be nurtured along and encouraged. McCarthy's work is exhaustive and breathtaking, but it cannot be all things, and the movie will hopefully provide something that the book is not.

Does Nolan Look Like a Man With a Plan?

2008-08-20T04:51:00.008-04:00

Christopher Nolan is a quantum filmmaker; each of his movies is an event. Memento established him in the directorial firmament, but Insomnia proved that he was consistent. The first thing I sensed as I watched The Dark Knight was his inveterate approach and his signature fingerprints: rich, complex scene composition. He establishes so many things within a brief span of time.

Batman Begins was raw and visceral. The exploration of Bruce Wayne as a character takes place on open ground that is impossible to miss. It is explained to us, but it is not shouted down in a chorus, and this works perfectly because the dialog is so well written and so larger than life and the characterizations are strong. Bruce's dad is given only a handful of lines (his mother doesn't even speak), but the movie wastes nothing in telling you what kind of man he is, and he is important since he is the harbinger of his son's descent into Batman. Bruce is a man seeking answers. At the beginning of the movie he is in disrepair, and so it is as much a journey for us as it is for him.

The biggest divergences from Batman Begins are illustrated best with this scene. Ducard delivers one cohesive speech that spans several different settings, and despite looking whole on paper, context changes based on the scene. Two separate lines are given in the midst of a scene transition ("We can teach you how to become truly invisible." "Invisible?"). This mirrors a similar occurrence in Citizen Kane where a dramatic jump in time is masked by an otherwise cohesive line ("Merry Christmas...and a happy New Year"). Cuts are employed extensively. Time and space seem to be abolished as the music swells. The movie moves fast, never lingering on any one scene for too long, and it realizes that the presentation of Bruce's psychology and the pacing of it is important in understanding the man behind the mask.

Batman Begins is crafted with perfect atom-point precision for the first fifty minutes. This can't be sustained, of course, since it has to move forward into Gotham and the crime drama that awaits, and so it undergoes a shift in tone and pacing. The Dark Knight I feel is the model of equanimity. To quote Salieri from Amadeus: "Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall." Everything in The Dark Knight works in perfect tandem, relaying information about the characters on multiple levels while establishing future events. Though Nolan sometimes bends reality, there is a sense that the movie becomes so rich and detailed that it begins to reflect life itself. For instance, he deftly establishes the Batman copycats and conflates them with the state of the criminal underworld as demonstrated by Scarecrow. That scene also sets up several future storylines (suit upgrades, the mobster and the dogs later in the film), and it's an excellent interlude into the Joker's story: Bruce may think that Batman has no limits as he has the mob on the run, but that ideology will soon be tested. The Dark Knight is like any other great movie. It rewards you for being perceptive.

I only have a working theory that Batman Begins was endemic of a David Goyer approach. The Dark Knight feels more certifiably Nolan brothers. There are some bridging qualities, for instance, the symbolism of the purging fire. But they seem to be two textile approaches to otherwise similar movies.

Juno

2008-08-15T14:58:00.005-04:00

There is a moment in Juno when the tall Savannah grass parts and the movie’s wild vision becomes clear. It is a scene in which Juno shares a dance with Mark Loring, the room itself cloistered away with his junk in his otherwise neat and opulent home. As Mark begins to relive his early years, he confides in Juno that he is going to leave his wife Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), a woman with whom he can’t even connect any longer on the level that he has connected with Juno through her unexpected and unwanted pregnancy. Vanessa disrespects Mark’s diverging values throughout the film. The pacing of the movie initially sets Mark up as the stilted and faithful husband, which makes it more poignant as he unwinds before Juno, and the irony is that she rebuffs him as he reveals himself to be yet another flawed man in a flawed marriage.

The scene that follows downstairs between Vanessa and Mark is especially uncomfortable and sweltering, and I think that it was made all the more potent by the warning of Juno’s stepmother Bren about corresponding with an older man alone. The warning didn’t have any other relevance but to enhance the distress throughout that interaction, but the magic here is that it makes the scene absolutely gripping.

Juno reunites Arrested Development alums Jason Bateman and Michael Cera (which coincidentally I had finished that very morning), though neither of them share a scene together. Cera’s Paulie Bleeker, the father of Juno’s child, seems to arise from the same ancestral home as his AD character George Michael. Both are reticent, cautious youth, and Cera himself is skilled at expression while showing little. Ellen Page delivers a grounded performance as Juno, the incontinent, tangy teen, knowledgeable in the ways of the world but lacking seasoned experience.

Most of the beginning acts rely on Juno’s character, who I didn’t necessarily find myself aligned with, as several of her scenes were awkward and socially unacceptable, especially when she is juxtaposed with the tidy, picture perfect couple of Mark and Vanessa for the first time. But I enjoyed watching her character from afar because there are no swathes of truth. She is neither hero nor villain. She is a teen under the umbrella of pregnancy. Bren had obviously taught her how to stand up for herself and speak her mind. Both Paulie and Juno appear as self aware characters that work well together, and as Juno finds herself questioning whether a true relationship can ever work, she eventually comes to realize that it is her odd relationship with Paulie that matters.

Director Jason Reitman made the comment in reference to Juno’s pregnancy that her parents (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney) were more heartbroken than angry, and I think that this speaks to another flawed but honest relationship. Reitman himself imbues the movie with simple shots. There is some repetition, for instance, the cross country and track teams during each of the four seasons, and three times Juno moves against the heady confluence of a crowd.

I don’t feel that the script is as strong as No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood, but I think that Diablo Cody’s freshman effort deserved Best Original Screenplay. The style is obviously a granitic obstacle for some, but I think that Juno fulfills the style well. I believe that Juno doesn’t understand the implications of creating life. This is a girl for whom walking out of an abortion clinic is as cavalier as walking in. And she displays no sentimentality as she talks about extracting the child through birth with the cold calculations of removing a wart. She understands the world but not its intricacies. Like any teenager she is conflicted between how simple the world should be and how complex and boundary ridden it really is. I think that her development in this regard is subtle, but of course she puts on an abrasive front. I am not necessarily concerned with that because it is how she chooses to present herself. The movie mixes it in with dexterity once the film begins to take flight, and her presentation isn’t as important as how she copes with her surroundings.