The Big Heat

Lately, I've had a fondness for noir. I've developed an interest in American genre films in general. Thinking in genres lends new weight to films that seem contrived and stereotyped. Actually, it is this perceived stereotyping and following of convention that make them so interesting. This reverence I have for classical genres makes me wonder sometimes if I'm too quick to disregard contemporary films whose themes seem too overplayed or omnipresent. For instance, this "bro-mance" revolution might turn out to have unforeseen cultural significance. Honestly, it probably will. I'm sure I'll have a post dedicated to this at some point, but right now, back to the initial topic. Out of classic American genres, film noir is by far the most interesting, and most beloved of genres, both within our country and without.


Directed by famous German emigre, Fritz Lang, The Big Heat is a traditional noir in all aspects, depicting the confrontation of a police officer with dark forces outside of his control. In The Big Heat, Sergeant Bannion (Glenn Ford) falls deeper into city's underground as he delves into the suicide of a fellow officer. As his investigation progresses, he discovers just how little the law actually affects the order of his community. Instead it is the mob boss, Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby), who wields utter control over the city. Bannion quickly throws out the rule book once he realizes that there is a new set of rules, previously elusive to him. Abiding by a moral code that separates him from the other characters, he strives for what is right no matter what the consequences. His persistence loses him, first his wife, then his official title, leaving him to wander alone through the deceitful underbelly of this unnamed city.


In a confrontation with Lagana's right hand man, Vince Stone (Lee Marvin), Bannion meets Debby Marsh (Gloria Grahame)--a woman who initially repulses him because of her willingness to stand by a man she acknowledges is no good, just to reap the benefits of his association. In her own defense, she claims that there is a good side to him. Still, when Vincent gets wind of her rendezvous with Bannion, he scars her face with a hot pot of coffee. From this point on, her face is two-sided, signifying the moral duality that Debby embodies. Once she has been outwardly marked with the signification of evil, she acts accordingly. Acknowledging that Bannion is too good at heart to do what needs to be done, she takes it upon herself to take action, knowing that the resulting murders make her no better than her boyfriend, Vince. As she contemplates her actions, she sits in the deep contrast of the shadows cast by those beautifully stereotypical venetian blinds.

With her hard drinking and lascivious ways, Debby also forms an interesting opposition to Bannion's guileless, loving wife. In her final moments, Debby asks Bannion to describe his wife to her, as if wanting to extract her virtues in an improvised version of last rites. As she dies, the camera rests on her face, and she turns her clean, un-scarred cheek upwards. In this way the question of right and wrong goes unsolved. In a world where there are no real rules, is her revenge justified? Is killing one corrupt woman in order to release the city from the grasp of Laganda really wrong? Most of all, is it wrong that she did these things out of her love for Bannion? The Big Heat depicts a world typical of noir, where right and wrong are as subjective as a detective's preference for cigarette brands, where the law is thrown aside in pursuit of rights that lie outside the designated lines.

Just one thing

Or maybe this one suits you more:

Oh, Ha Ha.

Taking Woodstock

Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock has garnered rather mixed reviews. But regardless of reviews, this movie is destined to succeed, because its target audience is the nostalgic and the envious, all of them revved up for this 2 hour romp into the romantic past. In these reviews, several misdemeanors are cited, including poor performances and general dullness, but the most ubiquitous criticism is that there is no concert to be seen. Yes, anyone who was helplessly hoping to relive the concert through Lee's camera lens will be sorely disappointed. I'll admit, part of me was hoping for this as well, but let's be honest. Why bother? Why bastardize the memory of three days of peace, love and music by commercializing them into a mainstream film? Perhaps this would have been apt, given the subject matter Lee explores, but I, for one, am just as happy he didn't try.

This not a film about Woodstock so much as it is about the climate of the 1960s. Not that I was there or anything, but I think in this regard, Lee does a fine job. Even while Lee takes moments to rejoice in the free spirit of the times, an undercurrent remains of all of the things the hippie movement attempted to circumvent, but could not inevitably avoid. Lee's film portrays a subtle criticism of the 1960s climate that mostly falls into a dichotomy between the communistic idealism of the hippies and the unavoidable capitalistic leanings of those who stood to benefit from the concert. At the outset, these two forces collide as Michael Lang (Jonathon Groff) and his company attempt to make a monetary deal that will allow the Woodstock concert to continue. These free-spirited flower children create an oasis amongst the conservative townspeople who threaten to evict them.


The whole movie represents Elliot's journey. He begins as an outlier, and is soon baptised into the 60s culture. This journey becomes literal as he moves from his parents home into the crowd of beaded, muddied, peace toting young people. The baptism becomes literal as Elliot takes acid for the first time and emerges from his tent in full-on hippie garb. In one of the several scenes depicting the long, crowded walk to the concert fields, Lee's camera swings over the makeshift stands that have been erected by the road, food stands and the like, all trying to capitalize off the concert by charging for corn and lemonade. Once he reaches the fields, however, everything is communal. Capitalism and selfish motives are forever nipping at the heels of freedom and love. Elliot's movement serves as a pilgrimage, but it is inevitably an aborted one. He never makes it to the mecca, the concert itself, though he tries several times. He remains on the edge, halted by drug-use and mud-bathing. In the end, it is the electric current running through the mire that prevents Elliot from finishing his journey.

By the end, the idealism in the film has run out. The vision we are left with is a muddy, abandoned field. "Beautiful," Michael notes, as the camera takes in the apocalyptic view. He then tells Elliot to follow him to San Francisco, where he alludes to having his hand in preparations for the notorious Altamont concert. There is a detectable note of irony here, as the free-spirited youngsters seem blinded by their idealism. "Far out," the friends note.

Another theme that floats hazily through the film is the idea of perspective. As Tisha (Mamie Gummer, also Meryl Streep's daughter!) puts it, perspective is what divides us, and kills love (yes, the truth speaks). The translation of her dreamy, zen-speak is that we must find a way to combine perspectives in order to commune, to love freely. In a way, the film is all about perspective. For one thing, we are never given a perspective that will allow us to see the concert (We are treated to Elliot's acid trip, though). The split-screens, which are an homage to the documentary, also reflect on this notion. The viewer is taken a step backward, out of Elliot's view and into an omniscient one, where nudity and smoke and sexin' are rampant. These parallax views are prominent during the construction of the concert, when hopes are high. They disappear by the end of the film.

There are other elements at play here. I haven't even touched on Elliot's Jewish immigrant parents, or his homosexuality, or the Vietnam War, but I'll leave that to someone else.

This is film is flawed, certainly. But it is not lacking merit in some areas. In conclusion, this movie might not be about what you think, but I might be reading too much into it. It is something I have been known to do. Probably, it depends on your perspective.

500 Days of Summer

This is going to be an extremely brief overview, but since I saw it, I might as well write something on it.

For a film debut, I really think this is pretty good. I found it to be somewhat inconsistent, but overall it was very interesting. If Truffaut was an American, and slightly less accomplished I could imagine him, or some other French New Wave filmmaker having created this film. Like Jean Luc Godard's Pierrot Le Fou, it is told in chapters, and, also like that film, the chapters are out of sync, disregarding the formulaic narrative arc. In using the same strategy, Marc Webb focuses, not on the overall arch of the plot, but on the nuances of the relationship itself. He also employs a completely unneccessary narrator to make the self-reflextive story telling even more obvious. I nearly always question the use of a narrator, unless it is ironically. As such, I didn't especially enjoy this one, except for his unintentionally comedic effect.

Once again, the focus on the relationship itself and not the boy meets girl story is very reminiscent of many new wave films. In particular Truffaut's Jules et Jim came to mind. The only problem with drawing these comparisons is that the relationship between these characters is much less interesting than those explored by Truffaut and Godard. There are some quaint moments, though. I very much enjoyed the scene where the couple strolls through Ikea, playing house. It seems like a wry, ironic commentary on domestic American life-- everything at once pristine and sleek and empty. The two seem wary of committing to a lifestyle that might be furnished by cheaply and mass produced commodity items. Still, they romp playfully through the store, and the camera follows them, more out of fun than anything else.

Again, given that this is Webb's first film, I think he has done an excellent job. It's far less contrived than it could be, given this fact. I think he shows promise. As long as he loses the narrator, and doesn't rely on the supporting cast to bring out the emotions of the protagonist, he should do even better next time.

Helvetica

Have you ever wondered where fonts come from, and what impact they have on the world around you? Have you ever wondered how the appearance of text is affecting your consumer decisions? I sure hadn't. Until I read about this documentary, I didn't know that I wanted to know. In the beginning, I tracked down Helvetica because the notion of a film about a font was so laughable. Admittedly, It still kind of is, but in the best of ways. What makes this little documentary so interesting is that it pursues a topic that has the capacity to be incredibly dull, but isn't.


The film is mainly composed of interviews interposed with shots of the street where examples of Helvetica usage are in prominent display. The result is discomfiting, because director Gary Hustwit quickly demonstrates how unobservant the average person is when it comes to such details. I had absolutely no idea what a monopoly this type-face has over advertising and public signs, and pretty much everything else. Even more interesting are the designers thoughts on what Helvetica expresses to them, and why exactly it is so prevalent. The various designers are all equally passionate about what they do, shedding an interesting light on their philosophy of design and how Helvetica fits into it.

Visually, the camera is often stationary in order to record the interviews. Once he steps outside the office buildings, Hustwit utilizes many extreme close-ups in order to take the letters themselves out of context, showing the art of the text itself. Some of these shots are quite lovely--from crumbling signs to shining store-front letters that reflect the moving clouds from the sky. Even the wider shots have a way of isolating the text, and drawing it out for closer inspection.


The interviewees also discuss the history and evolution of graphic design, and the kitschy, overwrought designs of the 1950's that are responsible for the heyday of Helvetica--the text that represents sleek, clean efficiency. The designers use this particular font as a lens to discuss the culture at large. The most seemingly unnoticeable and innocent of details is representative of the movements of society.

My sister and I have resolved that a sequel called Comic Sans should be created. Let's see what we can do to get that in the works. Perhaps it can air on MTV with interviews from the slew of pre-teens who use it as a primary mode of self-expression. Unless this butchery of the font-face has ceased. Let us hope that it has.

But I digress. Helvetica. Thought provoking and worth seeing, but you might have to spend some time looking.

Videodrome

For me and David Cronenberg, it was love at first sight. Strangely enough, the first film I ever saw of his was Crash. No, not that Crash, but the 1996 film based on the novel by J.G. Ballard. I say "strangely" because it is one of the hardest to find, and probably one of his weirdest. Still, one serendipitous day a few years ago I was lucky enough to walk into a Hollywood Video and buy it at a VHS sale for 1 dollar. It was actually a great introduction to Cronenberg's films, as it contains all of his favorite things: a moody score by Howard Shore (before he was enlisted to accompany hobbits and elves), some dark mis-en-scene, some oozing orifices, some sex, and some violence.

Despite the overtness of his themes, I never feel like Cronenberg is pontificating. More often, I feel like he is playing with his audience. There is a B-movie quality to many of his films, which all utilize gross-out horror (taken to extreme measures in the Fly), and performances that seem deliberately understated. Rather than criticizing our present tendencies, it is more as if Cronenberg is simply preparing us for an unavoidable future. And seemingly it is a future he is simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by.

As Crash reflects on the human relationship with the automobile, Videodrome reflects on the human relationship with television and information technology. Existenz is another film that explores somewhat similar territory, in the form of virtual reality. In both films, technology actually becomes part of the human body, as if the two are organisms that have begun to co-evolve. In each case, violence, sex and technology are inextricably entwined in shocking and perverted ways.

In Videodrome, small-time network producer Max Renn (James Woods) becomes obsessed by the shocking violence of a program called Videodrome, which he intercepts from a satellite. As it turns out, the program contains a signal that causes the growth of brain tumors, and triggers nightmarish hallucinations--hallucinations that slowly take over reality. Some of Max's more colorful hallucinations include a heaving, moaning television set, the opening of a gaping vaginal VHS drive in his chest, and the transformation of his hand into a gun. Don't even get me started on the implications of that particular image. I think you can all insert your own thoughts on this.

The violent world of Videodrome is hermetic and self-contained. Perhaps it is a manifestation of the collective imagination. To Max it is, nevertheless, impossible to access. Its signal cannot be located, and Max cannot ever seem to determine whether the violent acts portrayed on Videodrome are simulated or not. It is almost as if the images within the broadcast exist in a metaphysical plane all their own, in a place where there is no distinction between the real and the simulated. In the film, this televisual plane becomes equated with the after-life. Where man and film technology meet, a new being is created.


Seemingly, the first to achieve this digital nirvana is television personality, Professor O'Blivion (Jack Creley). Max seeks him out, only to find that he can only be reached through the television screen; he no longer exists in the flesh, but through his recorded video tapes. And as the omniscient O'Blivion notes,

"The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television."

By extension, the hallucinations that are induced by Videodrome necessarily become Max's reality. It sort of makes you wonder what might happen if you were to watch this film one too many times.


Eh?

Inglourious Basterds

Many of the reviews I've been reading of this film claim it to be Tarantino's best since Pulp Fiction. They speak the truth. A critic in my local paper also noted that it has a "spaghetti-western feel," which is an interesting thought.

I usually have tepid feelings for Tarantino. His films are saturated with a self-conscious awareness of their own coolness. They are high-brown escapism. They are also films that rejoice in their filmness. References and homages to Tarantino's influences are ubiquitous. All of this would be fine, except that I always sort of feel like Tarantino is teasing me and any other academic-type foolish enough to look beneath the surface of his films.

What I like about his latest is that it has meaning despite itself. Throughout the film, cinema becomes a powerful weapon, one powerful enough to eventually eliminate the Nazi regime completely. In a literal sense, stores of celluloid film provide Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) with enough explosive power to burn her cinema to the ground, while the most powerful Nazis (including Goebbels and Hitler) wait inside. Interestingly, Shosanna works in a theatre that is forced to show German propaganda films, such as those of Leni Riefenstahl, reflecting on the ways the regime used film to construct the Nazi identity. Tarantino notes the power of film to create the real. This metaphor is doubled by the experience of viewing the film, as it inevitably leaves us with a revised version of history, and an awesomely outrageous one at that.

Enmeshed in the plot, there is also a theme of legend-making and the construction of identity--how history is created. Whenever the characters meet face to face, there is often discussion of the nicknames each has earned, and rumors they have heard of each other. Consequently, viewers are treated to the likes of "The Bear Jew" and "The Little Man."




Beyond its self-reflexivity, Basterds is a superbly engaging film. Tarantino uses his characteristic dialogue to build the tension to heart-bursting levels. In the opening scene, Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz) engages in a lengthy exchange with a dairy farmer, while the Jewish family he is hiding lurks underneath the floorboards. It is obvious that the scene will not end well, and still Tarantino draws it out painfully.


Naturally, the soundtrack is well chosen and placed, and the casting superb. One thing I do love about Tarantino is his awareness of the importance of sound and imagery together. He has a knack for manipulating his audience that way. It's part of the coolness factor. There are some beautiful visuals in here, as well. When Shosanna prepares for her revenge, the screen is overwhelmed with red, creating some not-so-subtle, but still, gorgeous (and... have I said cool enough yet?) foreshadowing.

Okay, go see it now. And again. I think I probably will.

Brazil

A few weeks ago, I finally got around to watching Terry Gilliam's Brazil. I had put it off for a long time, because I wasn't sure if I was actually interested enough to commit to 2 and a half hours of dystopic science fiction. While I am interested in sci-fi, it is usually for the camp factor. There must be gooey/poorly constructed alien/monster puppets, or overacting involved. Anyway, with some encouragement from my girlfriend, I ended up watching the Criterion version of the film, which is probably the most accessible of its several versions. I rented it from an overpriced, but independent place on Cape Cod, which is where I happened to be at the time. I also happened to be living in a hovel with no television (and no DVD player, not surprisingly). As a result, I watched this on a laptop, which undoubtedly diminished the experience a little bit. Regardless, it still managed to leave in indelible impression on me.

While Brazil abounds in constrictive and grotesque alien imagery, at its heart it represents a world we can relate to. This might be the same element that ultimately makes it so disturbing--the juxtaposition of the familiar and the alien. We see a distorted reflection of our institutions that rings true even while it is exaggerated.

Of course, there is not much that is visually familiar about this world at all. In the few exterior shots, the characters walk amongst dark, forbidding buildings that seem to be ripped out of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Most of the film, however, is set inside the seemingly endless bowels of the administration in which the buffoonish protagonist, Sam Lowry (Jonathon Pryce) works an ambiguous desk job.

Within this building, the constrictions of society are symbolized by the physical machinations that disallow free movement, turning the natives of the city into machines. An elevator consistently thwarts Sam's efforts until he finally resorts to the stairwell, and the vast tubing system relays messages to employees, until Sam clogs it, causing an explosion of paperwork.

In addition to the bleak settings, some of the most memorable imagery involves Lowry's clownish mother (Katherine Helmond ), who grows younger by the second due to her cosmetic surgeries. She is pulled and prodded as if she is made out of putty, already more of a mannequin than a person. In one of the final scenes, we witness a funeral for her discarded sack of skin.

Throughout Gilliam's hellish surrealism, the story is made accessible by Lowry, an unambitious, mild-mannered working stiff who, by a mere accident becomes an enemy of the state. His incredibly human motivations ground the film in a dimension that still seems real. Lowry is simply an average man with a superlative fantasy life, and his actions are largely motivated by his crush on Jill (Kim Greist). As Lowry becomes more entrenched, the dreams increase, allowing him, and the viewer, to remain on the precipice without tumbling head-long into the abyss. The mood teeters on the edge of a nightmare as Lowry chases his dream woman in and out of his ethereal subconscious.

Lowry's fiercely beautiful dreams are the best part of the film. First, they are merely escapism, occurring during moments of true slumber. As the film progresses, they become harder to distinguish from reality, until finally, they cannot be distinguished at all. During his torture, Sam slips into a hallucination that becomes his last. He manages to escape the totalitarian nightmare, while the viewer is left to linger on his placid face, still locked into this medieval world.

In the Beginning

I have decided to write a blog in order to document the thought parade that pounds noisily between my ears whenever I watch a film. The point of this blog is mainly to discuss the films I find interesting when no one in the realm of oxygen and sound waves will tolerate my babbling. Luckily, technology has made accessible all the nerds with an internet connection, and all the cinephiliacs who need a place to convene. I intend to write about films new and old (and most likely, a few television series will work their way into the mix, because I've really been dying to analyze a few of the X-Files episodes I have in my collection). Whether it is classic, odd, or trashy, I will not discriminate, except when I do, which might be often.

I'm just an amateur young'un, and I'm very green, so this is all in good fun. Betwixt undergrad school and... the future, I'm looking for something rewarding to fill my time. Part of me hopes that the hazy future might involve film school, or something like it. Stay tuned.