Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, von Trier's Europa, and the final season of Deadwood all feature in this post. Yes it's been a long while since my last one, and I am good awfully behind, but I am determined to keep it going. Quite a large variety of stuff in this one. It includes a couple of television documentaries about history and also the culmination of a series that almost serves as the history of society. The Deadwood post is possibly the longest in this blogs history, maybe being second only to The Tree of Life post.
Prohibition (Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, USA, 2011): This five and a half hour long documentary that aired on PBS is a long journey through the history of the Great Experiment: Restricting the selling and purchase of alcohol in the United States of America. If you've seen a Ken Burns documentary you know exactly how this will be. I had never seen a Burns documentary but his style has been so embedded into our culture that it's not much of a shock. Stylistically the documentary has nothing impressive, but its content is fascinating throughout. The movie is split into three sections that recount Prohibition in roughly chronological order. There is a straight historical story line, but Burns and Novick take many detours into individual stories of people or events that shine some light on the larger story. Many of these smaller stories are very fascinating and help add to the context of the larger narrative. Some of the stories I was most compelled with were the stories of the gangsters of the era, like Al Capone and George Remus (if you watch Boardwalk Empire you'll recognize a fair amount of the names in this segment of the story).
In the end, there are many things you can take away from the movie, but one of the most important things was why prohibition failed and how it can help us today. It failed because the dry movement proved to be too extreme in their demands. They got what they wanted, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and when the states passed this amendment many of them did not know that beer and soft liquor would also be banned. Many were under the impression that it was only hard liquor. When people came to experience the effects of prohibition and started bending the rules, the members of the dry movement did not compromise and make way for the moderate wets. Because of this the government was overwhelmed with the amount of law-breaking and because the dry's were not willing to compromise the public decided it was in their favor to go against the dry's and repeal the whole act. Prohibition was a fascinating time in American history and Ken Burns has made a fascinating documentary to go along with it. It's a bit long, but there is so much you will take away from the experience that your time will definitely not be wasted.
Grade: B
Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2005): Even the most adventurous of film buffs will have a difficult time with this one. Not just because this is a very experimental film that is sometimes a pure sensory experience and requires lots of patience. The main reason why so many "experienced" film viewers will be confounded by this movie is because of the abrupt change in the middle of the movie from relatively linear and conventional gay romance to a very slow and allegorical trek through a jungle. The first half is a sweet love story and doesn't veer away from what we would expect from this too much, though it's very effective. The second half morphs into another story that may or may not have the same characters as the first one. In the second one, a man goes into the jungle to hunt a tiger that's been killing the cattle. In the day time the tiger is a naked man, and it seems like the naked man/tiger and the solder are the two lovers in the first half.
The second half is also a love story, but a very different one than the first. The second half seems to comment much on nature and the wildness of humans. The film equates love with being one with nature, and the combining of spirits. The slow pace of that second half can be a chore to some on the first viewing but when you watch it again or start thinking about it more, the brilliance comes out. It's understandable as to why the film received such a mixed reaction, but it's also understandable as to why the movie is so heralded by some. It's one of the more original films you'll see and on a sensory level, it's a completely unique experience. The superb jungle cinematography and brilliant directing by Weerasethakul is the reason for the sensory experience the movie gives out. Intellectually the movie can be what you want it to be, and it's not something that's ambiguous for the sake of being ambiguous. There are themes of nature, spirits, love, and other lives. It's a difficult to accurately review on one viewing, but it's such a unique experience that I can't help but commend it.
Grade: B+
Deadwood: Season Three (David Milch, USA, 2006): The third season of this fabulous, complex, and entertaining show was never meant to be the final one. The show ended without a proper series finale, and that fact has probably prevented it from being more well known. Even without a proper finale, the show still merits mention in conversations regarding the greatest television show of all time. The show still ended with characters who had gone through immense change that encapsulated the series' themes.
The third season of the show introduced George Hearst as he moves into Deadwood and tries to benefit from the mini gold rush in town. His addition into the burgeoning town represented a new conflict for the town to fight against, and a test to see how the town can band together to take down outside forces. Deadwood is predominantly a show about community and togetherness, and in this third season, George Hearst represented the opposite of that. Hearst represented self-interest. He was a man who personified cutthroat capitalism (literally) at its most extreme and most dangerous. He was here to take advantage of the town and take their gold and the members of the newly annexed town were forced to stop him. The members of the town, and our main characters, realized that coming together and ignoring their short-term self-interests would benefit this town and thus their long-term self-interests. The only way to fight against a powerful selfish maniac is to come together effectively and figure things out together. This was the main theme of this third season, can community truly overcome emotion-less self-interest?
The end of the series is slightly pessimistic (I'm not sure how Milch would have ended it if he could give it a proper ending). Nobody really wins in the end, but the message is a complex one. A good society doesn't come easy, and it doesn't come quick. People and culture have to undergo fundamental changes, and those changes take time and don't happen in a perfect way. Deadwood has a cautiously optimistic worldview. It knows that we need to be relatively selfless on occasion and we need to be able to band together to create a society that works, but it knows that this can't be done in perfectly, and that compromises will have to be made. The show can possibly be seen as a metaphor for the growth of America, and society in general.
The changes certain characters, like Al Swearengen, went through from season one to season three are symbolic. Al was an violent saloon owner in the first season, and by the end we know him as a much more complex and kind person. Seth Bullock was introduced as a retired sheriff who believed in the law, but as the series went on we saw him to be a man who had a hard time translating his beliefs into action. There are so many characters on this show and the amazing thing is that all of them are filled with depth that is a result of the unbelievable writing and the flawless acting by all involved. I've mentioned the dialogue in past reviews of season one and season two, but it won't hurt to mention one more time that the language Milch uses is the most beautifully profane in television history.
Aside from the actual content of the show, Milch sufficiently addresses the themes by the structure of the show. The first season I called a tapestry of subplots, but by the third season the show is almost completely made up of a single story that includes all the characters. It's symbolic of the development of a community that happens over the course of the three seasons. Deadwood has so much depth and complexity because it simply knows its characters and it knows how people and society work. There are some minor flaws, but I don't blame them on the show. The third season had subplots that don't go anywhere, but I have no doubt that they would have been addressed in the nonexistent fourth season. I have a lot of faith Milch, his writers, and actors and because of that I'm sure I'll go back to the series to dive deeper into the subtle complexities that I missed the first time around. This third season was just as good as the first two seasons and best of all, it adds on and completes the themes of truly magnificent story. Deadwood is one of the best shows I've ever seen.
Grade: A
George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Martin Scorsese, USA, 2011): Paul McCartney and John Lennon were extraordinary musicians and two of the most talented songwriters of all time. The two wrote the majority of the discography of The Beatles. They appropriately get a whole lot of attention for that work they did, but George Harrison also wrote some of the biggest hits and greatest songs by The Beatles. He was known as the quiet one; the one who had his own ideas and influenced the rest of the group in making some of their more interesting later albums. he ended up going his own way, and in doing so created probably the best solo Beatles album in All Things Must Pass. He was almost certainly a fascinating figure if someone could get to know him. I suspect it was this reason that Martin Scorsese decided to make a three-and-a-half hour long documentary about him.
The part of the film that didn't work for me as much was the beginning. Scorsese focuses the first 25% or so of the movie on the beginnings of The Beatles, and the history of The Beatles will probably be old news to most people watching this documentary. It has a focus on Harrison, but it's all mostly old information to Beatles fans. Where the movie gets really good is when we get into Harrison's spiritual side and transfixion with Eastern religion. That spiritual side of Harrison would inform everything about his life, including his music. That's when we see a guy tries so hard to find peace with God and separate himself from the artifices of the world. But as the title suggests, Harrison lives in a material world. The struggle between spirituality and materialism would encapsulate his life, and spirituality would not always win out. His quest for happiness without the aid of drugs is a fascinating ride. If this documentary cut out much of the historical information that is included solely because of its ambitions to be a definitive documentary on Harrison, then his film could have been a truly great movie period. As of right now, it's a great documentary on Harrison.
Grade: B
Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, USA/Canada, 1988): Instead of the body horror that David Cronenberg is known for, this film is more of a psychological horror film. It delves into ideas about the interconnectivity between twins and how it affects their love life. It also has this macabre element in that both twins are gynecologists, and that makes for some incredibly disturbing stuff when one of them starts having a mental breakdown. Jeremy Irons plays the twins, and his performance is really spectacular. Most movies would distinguish between the twins with some sort of physical difference, like hair or glasses, but the twins have absolutely no difference in this, not even their wardrobe. But in most scenes you can actually tell between the two because of slight personality trait differences. There are also a couple scenes in the movie in which I couldn't really tell who was who, and I'm not completely sure about this, but it seems that this confusion was on purpose. Cronenberg explores twins in a way that is complex, but very disturbing.
There aren't a lot of the most distinctly Cronenbergian aspects of the movie, especially to audiences when this came out in 1988. Before this movie he was known for body horror pictures that had unique special effects. This one has only unique special effect moment, and it's in a dream sequence. But there are these medical instruments that the twins make, and these instruments provide a whole lot of the creepiness in the movie. I'm a male, so I can't imagine how much more disturbing some of the instruments would have be to females. The real creepy stuff though comes through when one of the twins goes through his long mental breakdown over love and it causes him to make mistakes and do some horrible things to himself and others. Why he has the breakdown is not all that unique and really is not all that important, what is more important and more impressive is the long spiral downwards he has in the movie. The breakdown feels legitimate and feels complete at the end. This isn't the best Cronenberg movie I've seen (that would be "Videodrome"), but of the five I've seen so far, it's certainly stands pretty close to the top.
Grade: B
Europa (Lars von Trier, Denmark/Germany, 1991): This is a wonderfully strange film made by a wonderfully strange man. I am quite familiar with the legend of Lars von Trier, but not as much with his work. Before this, I had only seen Antichrist, a film that was amazingly well made, but with a lack of real substance. Europa is much older, and is one of his first films. It's a film about a pacifist German-American who comes to Germany to help out with the rebuilding after World War II. He's a man who believes the war is over and that the focus is completely on rebuilding and making life easy again. But he finds out that he's too much of an idealist, and that the war is not over. Nazi's who call themselves "werewolves" continue to fight back against the allied forces in a fight that resembles the Iraqi insurgency of post-invasion Iraq.
Earlier this year von Trier made some comments (or jokes?) at Cannes Film Festival about how he "understands" Hitler. He later apologized, but you can tell that if he doesn't "understand" Hitler, he certainly sympathizes with plight of post-war Germans. It shows the destruction of war and also the continued destruction that happens after wars. The film is shot in black and white with splashes of color every once in a while, and whenever the color comes up the movie feels more modern. It's a film that looks back at history with an eye on today.
All of the social commentary is there, but really it's the style of the film that is the stand out. The plot of the movie is straight out of a noir film, but the style makes it a European neo-noir. It calls back to many noir films of the past, but it uses things like rear projection, double exposures, and color to create all new visual motifs. There's also the narrator of the movie, played by Max von Sydow, whose voice starts the movie as he undergoes a hypnotic countdown. The rear projection is an especially impressive visual motif, that may be seen by some as a gimmick (but how many formal innovations aren't?), but adds an off kilter feeling to the scenes, especially when the rear projection and the characters in the foreground interact with each other. It's something I've never ever seen before, and innovation should be applauded in a culture of movies that has proclaimed the death of originality many times. Some say this is a gimmicky movie, but these are gimmicks that add to a story that would be bare and simple without them.
Grade: B+
The Ides of March (George Clooney, USA, 2011): I reviewed this film for the paper, and you can find that review here. The plot of the film is definitely the selling point, but it's the in's and out's of a modern day political campaign that sticks with you after you leave the movie. In the review I also talk about the current political climate and how it affects the reaction to the movie, and contrary to the fact that apparently Clooney held off on making the movie until now, I still believe that. It's a solid movie with more good than bad, and as I do often, I will downgrade it a bit for review on this blog now that I've had some time to think about it and also in direct comparison with other movies on the blog.
Grade: B-
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Bunuel, France, 1972): Surrealism is pretty difficult to do, especially if you want to make sure the audience can get the movie on the first viewing. Satire is also very difficult to do, especially if you want to make sure the audience gets "the message" the first time around. Bunuel attempts to do both in this film, and unsurprisingly, the man who started the surrealist movement in cinema, is pretty successful at it. To be fair, I wouldn't cal this a surrealist satire, I would probably call it an absurdist satire. There is a lot of stuff that makes pretty much no sense in the movie, but it's all very light-hearted, and so the word absurd comes to mind a lot. It's about a group of upper class bourgeoisie who can't seem to ever have a successful dinner together. It's a film in which we laugh and revel in their inability to do what they want. In addition to making fun of the elite, Bunuel also makes fun of the Church, the military, and politicians.
Part of the movie is gratification from seeing the elite suffer and be confused, but much of the film is going deep into the hypocrisies and contradictions of the elite. We see how the elite don't judge others the way they judge themselves. Through numerous dream sequences (sometimes dreams within dreams), we see the deepest and darkest fears of the bourgeoisie come alive, including one in which a man is forced to literally confront the fact that his life is a performance. In some ways, this is a vicious movie, but at the same it's very light-hearted and frequently hilarious. The title alone tells so much about what Buneul thinks about these people (it's also one of the best movie titles of all time). This is a film that is very smart and incredibly entertaining. This is all despite the fact that it's difficult to really parse together the significance of many of the scenes. There are some absurd moments that make no sense and it's hard for me to really love the movie if I don't completely understand it yet. One of the benefits of that is that it makes this movie highly re-watchable. It's one of those rare hilarious, but still completely smart movies.
Grade: B+
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