Fish Tank, Grand Illusion, Funny Games, and recently completed season of Louie are highlights from this abnormally great and lengthy week. Minimal amount of schoolwork, a realization that this is my last year of school and thus last chance to really go all out with my movie watching, and also the ending of two television show seasons all culminated in a lot of entries for this week. In this post you'll find discussions on how the differences between a great miserabilist film and a bad one, the benefits of personal filmmaking, and the lack of intellectual provocation in the movies.
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, USA, 2011): I reviewed this not too long ago already, and it was a fairly lengthy review. You can find that here. I'm not going to get into the movie again at the moment, because I do hope to get the chance to do a long full analysis of the movie once I get to see it a third time when it comes out on DVD (time is an issue so it may not happen, but I hope it does). I'll just say that on a second viewing the film was not any worse, nor was it any better. And considering my enthusiastic response to it the first time, it's pretty impressive. It's still a marvelous work of art that demands and rewards endless analysis. In relation to Malick's filmography it may be his best and most important work. It's definitely his most personal, and I think that's what makes it so great. I mention this later on, but personal filmmaking almost always ends in very fascinating films.
Grade: A
Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, UK, 2009): Social realism on film has been a mainstay in the movies (mostly non-American movies) ever since the post-war neo-realist movement in Italy. But even before the genre became popularized due to the Italians, there was a sub-genre that branched out called poetic realism (one of the first poetic realist films was Grand Illusion which you can read about below). They are unflinching realist films with characters that go through deep hardships and disappointments. The poetry comes from the inclusion of images or sometimes story-lines with abstract meaning that enhance the emotion and themes. Fish Tank is a film in that tradition. It centers on a female character who lives in a housing project in Britain with her difficult-to-deal-with mother and foulmouthed younger sister. It's established fairly easily that she lives a hard life. She doesn't have many friends, and people in the area aren't used to being very polite. There is lots of screaming and swearing early in the film because that's just how people talk, being nice and polite will get you nowhere in this culture. For our main character, Mia, nothing goes right. Where the poetry comes in is certain images, including some scenes in which Mia sees a white horse chained to the ground which she tries a couple times in the movie to free. In other movies these types of metaphors would feel forced, but when the character of Mia and the world she lives in is so well-realized we can't help but be moved by those images.
Non-actor Katie Jarvis plays Mia, and it is the fact that she is not a trained actor that enables her to truly occupy Mia and make the audience want to understand her and the problems she faces. Mia uses hip-hop dance to get away from everything, that's her alone time, and those scenes are beautiful examples of the power of self-expression for troubled youth in our world. For much of the film Mia has a crush on her mother's boyfriend played by Michael Fassbender (one of the finest actors working today). Director Andrea Arnold slows down the moments where Mia is with him, so we can feel what she feels. There may be some weird scenes that don't quite fit but by the end we get a great understanding of the character and the hardships and hopes she has. The poetry of some of the scenes and images are to me refreshing and wonderful reminders of the art that is cinema.
There are numerous miserabilist "poverty porn" films out there that revel in the character's horrible situation. Films like Precious are well-intentioned, but they don't understand that we know that character is going through a bad time, we know that before the movie even starts. We've seen it on the news, we've seen it in charity advertisements. The way to make the audience to actually feel for these characters beyond feeling bad for them is through the presentation of the situation. Precious lays down horrible situation over horrible situation because it seems to think the worse it gets the worse we'll feel for the character. Actually it doesn't have to get to the point where an obese abused black teenager living in the projects of Harlem gets raped and impregnated by her father for us to feel for her. People have the potential to feel for a character going through any one of those things. Fish Tank knows that the presentation of the situation and beautiful, sometimes metaphorical images help the audience understand and empathize.
Grade: A-
The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, USA, 1956): Known as Kubrick's first "mature" film (meaning first actual film that is feature length), this heist noir was Hollywood's introduction to the man who would eventually be known as one of the greatest directors of all time. There is one aspect of this film that really made me enjoy it more so than otherwise, and that is its simplicity. The film is about 83 minutes long, it centers on a heist with multiple players that each get their story told by the narrator, and when it begins the players are all in order and we just witness the heist and its aftermath. The characters in the film try to steal from a horse racing track, the story is really quite simple. But the Tarantino-like POV structure of the film keep the film from seeming too dull. I love that the movie is lean, efficient, and also so effective. The movie tells its story in an entertaining way and then gets the emotion into it by punctuating the film with a couple of poignant scenes, primarily the very end of the film (which is the best example of lean and effective).
In today's colloquial terms you would call this film "short and sweet." Something you don't see a lot of these days. One of the more similar films to this in modern day is Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's 11. That film is not "short and sweet" like The Killing because it tells a much larger story. There's nothing wrong with telling a larger story, but it's nice to watch a movie that doesn't feel the need to tell you the whole story of how everyone got together, how they decided on their parts, how everyone lived in the years after the heist, etc. Despite the fact that this movie was made in 1956, it feels like a movie that benefits if many have seen similar heist films like Ocean's 11 (and I realize that heist films were made before 1956). Another reason why I enjoyed the film more than recent heist movies was its noir aspects. It has a femme fatale and it's got some tragedy. All of it done in remarkably few scenes and certainly aided by its unconventional structure. The story of The Killing may be familiar, but it's Kubrick's presentation that makes this a movie to remember. Kubrick made this film for very cheap and was vaulted into Hollywood after it, which as you we all know, helped him on his way to making some of the best movies of all time. For 50's era Hollywood first films, this is a mighty strong effort.
Grade: B+
Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, France, 1937): Effective movies about unique ideas and deeply held beliefs. There aren't many of those unfortunately, especially ones with the unique ideas. It's okay to make a film about a theme like the strong bond of love or how life is hard, I won't find those ideas cliche if the presentation is unique, but we don't have enough people making films about ideas that are more specific and unique. On top of that, a lot of people just make films asking questions, and rarely making statements (something much more prone to controversy). That is partly why I now after seeing Grand Illusion have immense respect for Jean Renoir. His 1937 film is about a group of French prisoners of war in World War I and their life and attempts to escape. But this is not a war film. This is a film about the artificial boundaries and borders in our world between humans, whether they be racial, national, or class-based.
This is certainly and truly an optimistic humanist film, but it never feels hokey or fake because there is so much truth to it. Every scene breaks down barriers. The film shows French prisoners of war and German soldiers getting along very well. It shows a French aristocrat sacrificing himself for the good of the working class soldiers. It shows a French man falling in love with a German woman, all during World War I. War is when these borders are at their most ridiculous, and this the best time for Renoir to show how even when humans are supposed to be fighting each other, they're only doing it because it's their duty, not because they have any hate or ill feelings towards people from across a fake border. Even in a time of war, humanity overcomes all disagreements and transgressions. The movie never shows any battles, because this is a film about humanity and all they can overcome. Governments are forcing people to choose sides, but in reality we are all humans and we are all global citizens. We may identify with our culture and nation, but we also identify with other humans beings no matter where they're from. It's a beautiful message and it makes for the most effective hopeful film I've ever seen.
I have not seen many films that take on contemporary issues like this with such sophistication and thought. Many war films that came after this one have been plagued by showing only one side of the fight, and reducing the other side to either evil caricature, savages, or nothing at all. Those who fight on both sides of the artificial border lines are humans, and both have duties to fulfill. World War I may have been a different war though than future wars, which is one reason for the lack of fairness in more current war movies. This was before Germany was associated with Naziism and Hitler. This was a war in which the people fought solely to do their national duty, not out of any moral or ethical duty towards fighting the evil in the world. As Jean Renoir called it, this was a war of gentlemen, and it comes across splendidly in the film. The movie is also coincidentally a scathing critique of nationalism shortly before World War II was about to start, a war in which nationalism in European countries, especially Germany was astoundingly high. This is probably why Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbel's declared this movie "Cinematic Public Enemy #1" and banned all prints. It's an example as to why this film is so important to our society. We must not let its message be ignored, if we do our world will be unjust and it will weaken. This is a film that attempts to save our humanity by reminding us we have it.
Grade: A
Wilfred: Season One (David Zuckerman, USA, 2011): I tend to like comedies that do more than just try to be funny. That's why I don't like to grade a show relative to its genre, I think something in every genre can be great, and something in every genre can be horrible. Genre's are meant to be descriptive terms, and that's what I use them for. There are many shows that are examples of why you can't confine them to one genre (Breaking Bad, Louie being two), but Wilfred is interesting because it seems to have a hard time trying to juggle the comedic and the dramatic. It's a show that sometimes displays a lot of promise and brilliance, but sometimes gets boggled down in its concept of a talking man-dog. When you have a show about a man who sees a dog as a man in a dog suit that he talks to, you can go many ways with it. In this first season the show's writers take it to many different places and it struggles to find consistency. The tone of the show can change on a weekly basis, or even during an episode. The tone ranges across wacky dog jokes, raunchy humor, dark comedy, relationship comedy, comedy with heart, or even surreal psychological comedy.
The show does all of those things, and I'm not completely sure why. It may be that they spent this first season trying out different tones and trying to figure out what they want this show to be in the long run, or it may be that they wanted to be all of these things at once and have not completely succeeded. My favorite iteration of the show is when it becomes a morally ambiguous dark comedy that gets Ryan (played by a well-cast Elijah Wood) to realize things about himself, his life, and the world he lives in. The show does this a couple times this season and it was brilliant for those episodes. The show tried that out but didn't seem to want to go with it in the last few episodes. The last few episodes (which for now I will take as a precursor to the second season) tried to combine the comedy with heart and relationship comedy parts of the show. Unfortunately the part of the show where he tries to get the girl are probably the most uninteresting parts of it. Ryan is clearly a psychologically disturbed character and the show is at its best when its exploring it. And when it comes to comedy, aside from the dark comedy, the raunchy stuff is pretty great as well. The show seemed to get away from the traditional "man doing dog things" comedy it tried a bit in the early goings, and instead took the man-in-dog-suit concept to write some pretty hilarious and vulgar material that works great. Because I'm a completist I will come back to this show next season, but right now I'm not feelings so enthusiastic about it. I'm interested in exploring Ryan and Wilfred's relationship and the show seems to be as well, but I'm not so interested in seeing Ryan try to get a girl who is just a bit too normal and boring. Fortunately the show has displayed a lot of potential and I'll be looking forward to seeing what it does with that.
Grade: B-
Louie: Season Two (Louis C.K., USA, 2011): This is a show that is unlike anything I've ever seen, and is everything I've always wanted to see. I have immense respect for auteur directors and I think it works out best for them when they do a story that is heavily based or influenced by their own life. When you do something that is informed by your own experiences it's hard to go wrong because you know those experiences so well. When you do stories based on your own life and your own personality it will almost always be interesting because there is no one in the world who knows those personality and experiences better than you. Louis C.K. takes that theory and adapts it with the utmost success to television. He directs, writes, edits, and acts in every single episode, and the stories in each episode are always heavily inspired by his own life. Because of that there is authenticity and honesty in every episode. It's hard to pinpoint one thing this season is about, because it's basically about Louie the character. It's about his life, his experiences, and his worldview. In interviews the real Louis C.K. says that the show is still fiction, and that the character in the show is not the exact same as his real persona and that in a way the character is almost a younger under-evolved version of himself. That fact enables the show to really showcase the decisions of Louie as pretty dumb, and it enables the author Louis C.K. to reprimand his past self for being so dumb.
The show takes on a whole host of issues and themes, ranging from the complexities of sex, the beauty and ugliness of New York City, the inability to empathize with people different than you, the lack of appreciate of life from those who are younger, and even the psychological issues of a chronic masturbator. One of the more unique aspects of the show is also the structure. There is no singular theme and there is no running story line (but the final moment of the season does have precedent). It's similar to a short story collection, but in this case you have the same main character for every story. But it's not that every episode is a short story, what's so unique is that you won't know how many stories an episode may have. It may have one, or it may have two. This enables Louie to sidestep one of the biggest constraints of television: running time. What I mean by running time constraints is not that running time on TV is too short, what I mean is that on TV you always have a specific running time you must adhere by. You can either do a 22-minute show or a 43-minute show (sometimes 48, depends on the network). I imagine this is especially hard for storytellers to deal with, especially directors, who would have a hard time cutting a couple minutes from an episode they think is perfect. Here's what I assume Louis C.K. does: He gives himself a time limit of, say, 20 minutes, but that's just a limit. The stories he films can be at any length from like 30-seconds to a full episode, it just depends on what the story demands. So for example if a story ends up being 12 minutes and it's perfect, he can shoot another one aiming for like 10 minutes. But say the second one ends up perfect at like 8 minutes, and he has two minutes left over. So he would then just fill that 2 minutes up with his stand up routine. So he's got much more freedom to do what he wants.
This show was possible because of the freedom that FX granted him. They give him money, he goes out and shoots what he wants to shoot and they see the end product. No notes, no story pitches, nothing. It's very rare in both movies and television. The results though are amazing. The show is edgy and provocative, but it's all for a reason. The show is dark and offensive, but also for a reason. The shows is so very morally and emotionally complex, more so than almost anything on television right now. The first season was really great as well, but this second season Louis C.K. just did whatever he wanted to do. Just because he's known as a "comedian" doesn't mean everything has to be funny, and now that he knew he could get away with stuff that's completely serious he went all out. He took many more risks, even including really surreal touches that would scare away most audiences. When I said in the Wilfred review above that genre's are for descriptions only, I was wrong, because they can also be used for hyperbole. In that spirit, the second season of Louie is probably the best season of comedy television I've yet seen.
Grade: A
The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, USA, 1988): Recently Troy Davis was executed in Georgia despite insufficient evidence that he killed anyone. It's a case eerily similar to the one in The Thin Blue Line, but in the case in the movie the accused murderer was released because of this documentary. It's a film that made a big impact on our world and probably even saved a persons life. For that reason it's a very well-regarded and famous film, one of the most famous documentaries of all time. Because of its dedication to the truth and its eventual real-world impact it's a film that deserves all the respect it gets. But when I review movies I review them as they are from beginning to end. I also don't consider if a film was the first to do something, I respect films that were the first to use a film technique, but I don't particularly feel the are better films. Important maybe, but not better than others. This documentary was a film that popularized the detective style of documentaries, it also popularized the use of re-enactments in documentaries (something we see quite often now). Everything in this movie is very well done, but it has lost some of its impact 20 years later because of how influential it has been.
The argument in the film is told brilliantly. It uses a lot of logic, but also uses emotion. The end result of the film is obvious going in, but Morris does make the investigation pretty interesting mostly because of the well done re-enactment scenes, shown repeatedly from different angles and perspectives. In addition, the score by Philip Glass is also very repetitive, and it adds to the atmosphere of the movie. The audience really feels like they're going through that night over and over again picking apart every little detail, and it is quite fun. On top of that we get jabs at the justice system, the most interesting being the notion that district attorney's and police departments work extra hard to get a quick and clean conviction when a cop is killed. Sometimes that haste can lead to bad convictions on lousy evidence, and that's the most important thing I think a modern audience can learn from this movie. Morris is a very talented documentarian judging on this and the first movie of his that I've seen, Gates of Heaven. Even though The Thin Blue Line is not as impacting as it may have been 20 years ago Morris definitely deserves mention as one of the best documentary filmmakers working today.
Grade: B-
Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, USA, 2011): I reviewed this film for the paper, so you can find the full review here. It's definitely not a movie that everyone will like. It's not the epic, emotional, big outbreak movie that some people may be expecting. It's completely detached from its characters, always objective. It may not work for some people, but for me I found it the right way to go. For this subject matter a detached filmmaking style was completely necessary. When a virus like the one in the movie becomes an outbreak, you have to live a detached life if you want to live. It really emphasizes the necessary sacrifices a person would have to make if they were in the same situation as the characters. The movie definitely has a few aspects that could have been improved, but the emotionally detached nature of the film is not one of those things.
Grade: B+
Funny Games (Michael Haneke, Austria, 1997): This is a cruel movie. It's not that there is a lot of violence and torture on screen, almost all the violence is actually off-screen. It's because this movie makes the viewer an accomplice to all the violence that happens in this film. Michael Haneke is a notorious provocateur, but unlike others he is actually brilliant. The story of the film is that a couple young men break into a home and give a nice family of three a horrible night. It's a scenario filled with real and psychological violence. How this movie becomes brilliant is in its self-awareness. There are numerous times in which one of the attackers breaks the fourth wall, and there are times when he mentions things like "entertainment value" as reasoning for why he just doesn't kill the family. Funny Games is a scathing attack on violence in the media and how all who watch movies with similar stories as this one (but without the self-awareness) are all accomplices to that senseless violence.
In some ways this film is what Haneke is attacking, and some critics couldn't seem to get passed that. I personally don't know how you can avoid the very significant scenes in which one of the attackers does things like talk to the audience. It's a film that breaks conventions by following convention. The violence in many movies today is so detached that many of us have become desensitized to any violence, not feeling anything. Even when there is gruesome violence on screen in films, the audience finds it exhilarating. Torture porn films have become huge hits for a reason. With this film Haneke purports that not just the filmmakers, but the audience as well are responsible for that violence. He says that the violence on screen is there to fulfill the desires of the audience, and thus the audience is responsible. In Haneke's film the attackers involve the audience heavily, asking them whose side they're on and playing with the audience. That breaking of the fourth wall makes us, the audience, aware of what we're asking for when we watch movies like this. It adds a whole new layer of psychological horror when we know that the attackers are not only playing with the victims in the movie, but also us at home.
I'm not sure if this film is one thing. I tend to see it as a parody, a deconstruction, and a commentary of violence in the media. It can be hard to watch because it really punishes the audience, but the message of this movie is such an important message and so well-told that it's refreshing to see a director use his provocative filmmaking for good. Haneke is truly one of the great European directors working today. He not only has the mind and the guts to make difficult, cruel, and important cinema, but he's got the talent to do it well. Funny Games may not be the horror movie you're looking for, but then again, maybe it is.
Grade: A
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