Carnage

Saw Carnage, a slam-dunk of a film based on the play by renowned playwright Yasmina Reza, directed by Roman Polanski, starring Agent Singer, Rose from Titanic, the head Nazi from Inglorious Basterds, and John C. Reilly (for whom I can't come up with a cute show-case role.) It's great. Of course it's great.

The film is a one-room drama where two couples meet to civilly discuss a park brawl that their kids were involved in. Things start off brittle and overly chipper, one the husbands constantly serving coffee and "crumble," one of the wives repeating that it must all have been a mistake. They clearly annoy each other, but it's kept petty, only little fake smiles and repeated words conveying their mounting frustrations. Eventually things gloriously break apart and they're all openly shouting at each other, airing marital laundry and slinging politically charged vitriol.

I was worried that the film would just become a cynical Mamet knock-off, or a retread of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (both of which I'm gonna go ahead and claim as influences because both of them have influenced pretty much everything anyway.) and although that would've been fun anyway, instead it turns out that everyone gets along much better after the hostility is out in the open and that's the little knotty core of the film's preoccupations. Yes, civility is all well and good, the film keeps saying, but honesty is better. The characters each indulge themselves and lose their restraint and by the end, they all seem to get along much better.

The film is pretty much flawless. It feels a little arid sometimes and my only real criticism of it is that no one here seems to be trying especially hard. Everyone is doing what they've become famous doing. This isn't a challenge to them, it's stuff they could sleepwalk through and, alas, I think for the most part they kind of do sleepwalk through it. The film is extremely professionally made but I think that the result of all of this raw talent is something kind of unexciting and almost corporate-feeling. I wonder if too much compromise had to be made between egos to allow for exciting risks? Was this a film by committee? I also wonder if I'm actually on to something here or if I've just found a weird way of dismissing something I can't find an actual fault with.

Well, as ever, your mileage may vary. I think this film would be great to study for acting tips (or for writing tips or cinematography or whatever) because it really is great and really polished in every way that I was paying attention to. Like I say, I may have merely hit upon a way to dismiss a good film and feel clever about doing so, but it felt a tad tame to me.

Infection

Saw Infection, a fairly tame Japanese horror. It takes place in a hospital where a patient has been admitted who is turning into green goo. It begins fairly auspiciously, with a repeated motif of calls for help being ignored. An ambulance is calling for help, but the doctors turn the radio down. An elderly patient is found fallen out of bed. He claims to have called for help over and over. This is a fairly sinister place to start. Unfortunately, the film doesn't really go anywhere after that.

There's a lot of low-grade scares floating around. It's rated R but, honestly, you could show this film to most grade-school kids. There's fluids and a lot of needle horror, but not a single jump (thank goodness) but no real tension either. After the rhythms of the film are established, nothing is surprising. No anticipation or tension is built up and the result is fairly morbid but also sedate, almost mournful. Also, there's a lot of dead-end imagery.

Mirrors pop up all over the place, indicating illusion. This illusion undercurrent is reinforced by a boy in a kitsune mask and a discussion about how colors are recognized by our brains. In the mandatory Big Twist Ending, this kind of comes into play, but then there's this stupid double-fake-out "or is it?" ending which negates all of that imagery anyway. There's also a swing set that is shown ominously swinging as though ghosts were on it. This would be spooky but for the marked absence of spooky children (kitsune-boy is a patient and is often the horrified witness to scary events, not exactly a threatening figure.) What does a swing set have to do, thematically, with a killer disease? What could have been an interesting image is just confusing.

There's some kind of allegory that I thought I saw: the infection claims the doctors like an auto-immune disease, destroying the very mechanisms of defense against infection, but I think this is not actually in the film so much as just in my head. I think the film was sort of muddled but not terrible, not very good either, just... eh.

Alexander Nevsky

Saw Alexander Nevsky, a well-made historical epic. It originates from soviet Russia and if you look for it, there's fairly obvious and blatant propaganda. The plot follows the war between the Russians and the invading Germans. The Russians are lead by their noble prince Alexander who is so humble and down-to-earth that he spends most of his time hanging around a fishing village, repairing nets and helping bring in the haul. Very salt-of-the-earth, this guy.

In contrast, every other noble or upper-class character is blatantly evil. In the cities, the merchants demand that the Russians avoid war for that would be bad for business. The German army, meanwhile, spends a lot of time murdering babies and being blessed by a bishop of some kind who looks like the grim reaper. The Germans wear helmets which cover their entire heads, leaving only glaring little eye-slits to see out of. The Russians have open-faced helmets and concerned expressions. It's very unpleasantly nationalistic. In those simpler times, audience manipulation had not advanced to the sophisticated point it is at now and the clumsy slight-of-hand is sometimes visible. Sometimes the message is integrated into the story and it's fairly nice, but other times it's fairly tedious (there's a long subplot about a woman deciding which man to marry. She chooses "he who shows most valor in battle!" Gag.) The film hits the anti-Christian, anti-German, anti-nobility, pro-Russian thing over and over again, really hard.

Apart from the propaganda-spotting, there's two scenes which stick out to me: The first is a quick moment when Alexander is accepting the position of army-leader from the people. There's a shot of a woman in a frenzy of exaltation who is baring her teeth and bulging her eyes. She's very pretty and I think it's supposed to evoke something sexual and exciting but I was just kind of horrified. Anyway, the other scene is the money-shot of the film: the battle on the frozen lake. That was amazing. (It was so amazing, by the way, that Ralph Bakshi stole the sequence whole-sale for his film Wizards.) Eisenstein has an excellent eye for crowd choreography. His individual characters are good, but nothing to really write home about. His battle and crowd scenes are amazing. The film spends about half an hour on the battle and it's the best part of the film.

So, see this for the lake-battle and forgive it its obsession with earthy, real people and with how awesome it is to die in battle. Or don't. Y'know. Whatevs.

Zardoz

SawiZardoz, the Sean Connery-in-a-bikini film. It was interesting. The film takes place 200 years in the future, when some kind of apocalypse has rendered human civilization ruins, kept barely in check by squadrons of men with guns (and who wear bikinis) who worship a giant floating head. Sean hitches a ride in the head and winds up in some idyllic garden-of-eden where effeminate, sexless and deathless people prance about being apparently in charge and apparently totally decadent.

The film is certainly interesting. It's aggressively alien and unusual, but it definitely has something to say about man embracing his brutal inner nature. It's very 70s-ish, what with its lone, beautiful-beast hero and its perverse connection of sex and death (there is a fairly frank lecture where they explain that an erection can only be achieved if there is a small amount of fear. As a fearless erection-producer, I can tell you that this is bullshit.) To say very much about its philosophical arguments is to kind of give away to punchlines of the film, so I'll stop now, but as an example of the film's uncompromising nature, consider this scene:

Sean and his wife are seated side-by-side, his wife nursing their child. As classical music plays, we fade into the characters arranged in the same way, but now the child is a boy, seated between them. Another fade and the boy has become a young man, and then a full-grown man. He looks to his father (Sean) and walks away. The mother reaches out to hold him back but without breaking stride he walks on. Sean catches her hand as it falls and they fade-transition into old people and then clearly plastic skeletons, still holding hands. The skeletons too fade away and the camera zooms into two hand prints left on the wall, like cave paintings. This is how the film ends.

The sequence is interesting and poetic but also oppressively weird and aggressive. How are skeletons holding hands? Is this supposed to be poignant or celebratory or, I dunno, condemnatory? Why include things like the mother holding him back, but not the father interacting with him in any way? I feel like whatever the point was, it could have been conveyed more directly and more simply. This sort of stirring but confusing imagery plagues this whole film. It also involves other very strange symbols for simple ideas. For example: without death, there is a contingent of folks who want to die. They turn themselves into old people and dance eternally in a run-down old-folk's home. One character joins them, his left half becoming old suddenly. Again: why only half? Also, this idea of wanting to die is treated as really edgy and exciting by the film, when everyone in this modern, post-Kevorkian time is familiar with euthanasia. It's very tedious sometimes.

So, bottom line: the film is interesting and worthy of serious discussion, but its uncompromising imagery and frequent poor production values ensure that that will never happen. (On the poor production values: there's a scene where Sean enters some five-dimensional magical laboratory. It apparently sucks him in or something because he does this hands-over-the-head pirouette into it. Also, there's a "How did it get burned!?"-style scene where Sean jumps around a mirrored room shouting "Kill the tabernacle! Kill the tabernacle!" It's just way too goofy to take as seriously as it obviously takes itself.)

The Last of Sheila

Saw The Last of Sheila (Thanks, Anne!) It was a fun mystery from the 70s. It opens with the hit-n-run murder of a woman named Sheila. We then clip over to the opening credits which play over her husband writing on a typewriter, surrounded by mechanical puzzles and board games. Clearly, he is the master manipulator whose diabolical cleverness will expose her killer. He has probably already figured it out, we conclude and will be killed himself, only to reveal that he has faked his own death, or something like that. The sequence ends with a freeze-frame of him smiling in front of a Cluedo board which has been tacked up on the wall. Very cute.

The characters are all fast-talking, pun-spewing Hollywood types. Their repartee went a little too fast for me, leaving me to try to reconstruct what they said many times. Thankfully, when the grand explanation-scene comes, they give the patter a rest in favor of slow, clear enunciation. The film was clearly shot in the 70s but may well have been written in the 50s. Both decades were not very kind to women and of the three women, I report two shrinking violets and one oversexed blond. Not so bad for the 70s. Homosexuals also come up but I can't really talk about their treatment without major spoilers, so: I thought the treatment of the homosexual was perfectly fine. It unfortunately comes from an age when the only homosexual roles that existed were murderers and psychopaths, so it's not very progressive, alas. That said, I think it could be shown today without inciting major unrest.

The film very nicely drops coy little hints and you can indeed figure out who done it long before the characters do. I didn't, but I would often understand a clue a few minutes before it was officially explained. For example: (spoilers) I distinctly remembered an "Alcoholic" card although it didn't show up at the card-claiming scene, and I understood the SHEILA acronym as soon as they showed it again which happens, of course, just before the characters explain what that clue means to each other. This made me feel smug and clever without actually spoiling the film. (Also, this completely petty, but I wanted to see exactly what little puzzles the puppet-master had sprinkled around his yacht. I love little puzzles like that.)

The film is very fun. It doesn't have the strongest characters or writing, but then mysteries are usually so preoccupied with creating an unpredictable but sensible plot that all other aspects play second fiddle. It does have an incongruously hilarious scene during the exposition scene (two words: hand puppets) and I am completely in love with the idea of the central game they play on the yacht. A very fun and clever little film.

Another Earth

Saw Another Earth, a hard-sci-fi film about a planet that is discovered slowly entering our solar-system. It turns out to be an exact duplicate of Earth. Really though, this film is about second chances. I suppose hard-sci-fi is the wrong term for this film. It focuses almost completely on the characters. The second earth is almost a backdrop for their relationships. There's no crazy visuals and even the socio-political impact of the second earth is relegated to background noise.

So, the story is this: a girl with a bright future ahead of herself gets distracted by the other earth while driving. She plows into a family, killing everyone except the father and then goes directly to jail. When she is released from jail, a few years later, the second earth is all over the headlines, but she is more interested in crucifying herself over the accident. She hears of a Mars One-style contest to get a trip to Earth 2 (as the other earth is called. I believe the name is even meant to evoke Mars One.) This trip becomes a symbolic hope for escape for the girl.

Her release from prison is a second chance. It carries with it an implicit hope for a better future. Unable to forgive herself, she purposefully sabotages this future (asking the unemployment office for a job in manual labor for example.) The trip becomes a suicide-like retreat from the world she knows. Then it is revealed that the other earth is a mirror image of this earth, down to the people and the lives of this earth. Even this pseudo-death will be a second chance. She is stuck on this treadmill of chances until she can break free by forgiving herself. It's very karmic.

The film is fairly slow and, for all of its sci-fi trappings, the film is more interested in the philosophy of forgiveness. (Also, there's a bit of a nerd-rage moment when they promulgate the flat earth myth.) I didn't enjoy the film very much. It was too slow and also the characters didn't behave in a very believable way. They are supposed to be sort of idealized people, embodying self-loathing and guilt, and behaving more like symbols than like humans. They move and speak in a soothing, meditative way that invites contemplation but also sleep. I believe they do achieve the wisdom they're seeking, it's just that they're very restrained getting there. I'd prefer more hysteria or, failing that, more visuals. Oh well.

Triangle

Saw Triangle, a clever film. It's so clever as to be kind of convoluted. I feel like everything in the film is so enslaved to the clever central idea that the characters are not so much people as merely variables in some elegant equation. The equation is very pretty, and very cute, but it leaves me feeling kind of removed and analytical. I don't want to give away the central conceit but the film telegraphs pretty hard that this is gonna be a head-trip. The central protagonist woman starts the film comforting her autistic son, telling him to pretend he's somewhere else, like she does when she's upset. She goes on to say that she imagines herself here with him, just like this, dropping a pretty heavy hint right there.

The woman then goes to a party on a friend's yacht. The party hits bad weather and wrecks, but the surviving party-ers find refuge on a seemingly-abandoned cruise ship. On the ship, mirrors abound, time screws up, they talk about Sisyphus and his father Aeolus (whom the ship is named after. This is where the title of the film partly comes from. Aeolus is the triple god of the wind.) Later on, there's a three-paneled dressing-room mirror that the protagonist is reflected in. The room number of the cabin is the same as her house number (edit: this is a reference to The Shining apparently. There are a huge number of The Shining references, so that's fairly apt.) The hints are thick as flies and mostly sort of self-consciously signify "oh watch out! Tricky tricks are a-comin'!"

The film is like something I would be really proud of writing: very clever but also very proud of its own cleverness and not quite as subtle or sly or mind-blowing as it thinks it is. Lacking in character or empathy but thinking that an abundance of foreshadowing and film-101 symbolism will make up for it. For the most part it's fine and I want to emphasize that it's really not bad. I'm just harping on how it's not great. And at this point, if you want, I'll spoil the film for you here: The woman is trapped in a time-loop of some kind, repeating the same actions over and over. When the film ends, she has gone back to her son, but must inevitably set sail and be shipwrecked once more. Note the reference to Sisyphus.

There's a couple of clever scenes, such as (spoiler:) when Susan crawls onto a heap of already-dead Susans to die. which I dug and enjoyed. There's also a few bewildering references which are maybe red-herrings, such as (spoiler:) the repeated hints that this is all imaginary. At one point a character literally says "this is all in your head." I wish the characters were a bit more fleshed out and that the film was less interested in making sure the equation came out just right, but as it is, the film is indeed clever and fairly fun. A film to watch if you like puzzles, but easy puzzles.

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas

Saw Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, a silent, black and white film from Murnau. It follows two lovers in the idyllic pacific islands. They defy the decree of the mountain-god that the girl be sacrificed to the gods, bringing the Tabu down upon their heads. The Tabu seems to be some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy of doom, personified by a white-haired dude who haunts them and may be imaginary. The film was made in the 30s and features much picturesque ethnic dancing and, well, tits. It's a little exploitative at parts, but the film's heart is obviously in the right place. The characters are taken seriously and treated with respect. Later on in the film, the lovers join a pearl-diving company and although their wage-slavery is at first depicted as kind of happy-go-lucky, it soon becomes apparent that they are being taken advantage of.

The film is short and well done. It's sometimes brutal and sometimes evocative. All-round this is quite a good film. It isn't even very racist, which is amazing for a film from the 30s about tribal people. Well, not racist so far as I know anyway. It may well be that some of their actions were "Americanized" or even further exoticized for western audiences. Part of the appeal is supposed to be that we're seeing these men and woman in their natural habitat. A pre-credits crawl informs us that these area ll indigenous actors. How authentic their actions are is unknown to me.

Alas, although the movie is quite good and interesting, I was put to sleep, as usual, by the silent film. This is my fault entirely, but I report it as a warning for the similarly short-attention-spanned.

1990: The Bronx Warriors

Saw 1990: The Bronx Warriors, a film that's about as good as its title. An Italian film, I was only able to get hold of the English dub. This added to the film's appeal. Anyway, it's set in the far, distant future, in the year 1990, where your library card can operate a telephone inside of your very car! The film postdates and shamelessly rips off the film The Warriors. The plot is this: the Bronx borough of NYC has essentially been given up as a loss and given to the gangs to run. The attractive daughter of the mayor/CEO of New York City (it's really unclear if he's the president of New York industries or something. Anyway, he's basically god.) runs away to the Bronx and joins up with Trash, the equally attractive leader of the gang The Riders (here's a picture of Trash. He's on the right.)

Most of the entertainment from the film comes from how ridiculous everything is. At one point, the Riders are traveling through enemy territory. Suddenly, a rival gang tap-dances out from behind pillars in terrifying lamé outfits and face-paint. Later, there's a gym of leotard-ed men on trampolines. They are another gang. Also, there's much childish snickering to do about the sexuality of the protagonist, Trash. He's very pretty and although he's nominally dating this rich girl, he has a much more intimate relationship with his gang-members. Also, note the oddly-worded bit of trivia, second-to-the-bottom. Very low-hanging but delicious fruit.

Anyway, the plot follows some stupid double-cross and features some impalings. It's all very dumb. At one point a major character is dying in the middle of a flame-thrower fight. In the middle of the death-scene, the film kind of realizes we haven't had a flamethrower-to-the-face shot in a while, gives us one of those, and then the character literally rolls their eyes and dies. We are given one last flamethrower-to-the-face bit before the bare-chested Trash (his shirt was burned off by this point, obviously) swears vengeance.

It's total bullshit. It's not as glorious bullshit as say Flash Gordon or Con Air, but the bullshit is fairly pure and at least not tedious. This crap should only be enjoyed with friends and with beer.

The Phantom of the Opera (1943)

Saw the 1943 version of The Phantom of the Opera (thanks, Paul!) It was an opulent film about the famous tale of the disfigured man living under the Paris opera house, murdering singers, dropping chandeliers, and generally causing a ruckus. This film laid bare (for me anyway) the underlying idea behind the phantom. He is the monstrous truth behind the pretty lie. The opera house is chosen as the setting for the way that the theater's majestic stage hides a rat's nest of catwalks, dressing rooms, and crawlspaces just behind it. Petty and genuinely evil actions are hidden behind an alleged quest for perfection in art. A sweet and demure role hides a vicious and cruel woman, a dignified crowd of high-society men and women hides the exploitation of laboring masses, and, more viscerally, a pretty body hides ugly entrails. There's so many directions you can take this in! I'll have to see more films, but I think someone should really revisit this story (someone who isn't Andrew Lloyd Webber that is. He turned this juicy hypocrisy into some very tame satire.)

Anyway, back to this film. All of the above, I think, is hinted. I took it much further than the film did. The film is very restrained, very gracious, very opulent. It was produced in the 40s and although I swear the above is all in there (in the form of hints and allusions,) it's never, ever, made even slightly explicit. I was often frustrated by the film not embracing what was to me an obvious and rewarding interpretation of the central phantom myth.

Anyway, the film introduces the phantom pre-disfigurement. He is a genial but aged violinist whose apparently healthy body is giving out on him. He has a nervous twitch which causes errors in his playing. He is embarrassed about this problem, but tries to cling on to the opera which he loves. He quickly finds, though, that the theater which claims to be so sentimental and loving turns hard and cruel very quickly. This is the ugly truth behind the lie: that theater is a business. His ancient and decrepit body reflects the opera house. Notice that it is later revealed to be rotting from the inside, another hint a hidden corruption.

I spent most of the film noticing other hidden evils and fantasizing about what I would do with the story, so I may well have ignored some obvious counter-currents and sub-themes. that said, here are two film-connections I noticed: The film opens with the director telling Christine that she must choose between her singing or her love-life. This false dilemma is mirrored by the false choice of which suitor to pick. They are identical. This false dilemma is repeated in The Red Shoes, a similarly opulent stage-film. Also, the scene with the chandelier falling is amazing. I can't find the reference, but I think Hitchcock may once have mentioned it as an influence (if memory serves maybe perhaps.)

The film was interesting. I think I read more onto it than into it, but it entertained me even so. It's fairly tame, being an artifact of the 40s. It focuses mostly on glamor and schmaltz. It's a bit cloying at times (I could have done without the whole warring suitors subplot, for example) but these bits are small and quick and I forgive them. Then there's also this vague feeling of depth I get from it. In addition to the above free-associations about facades and ugly truths and so on, the very last scene has a maid congratulating Christine on an excellent performance. Is she congratulating Christine, or the actress portraying Christine? There's something going on here. I'm not totally sure what that is (see above for guesses) but it keeps me awake and interested. Interesting film.

Certified Copy

Saw Certified Copy, an arid, Linklater-ish film where a man and wife talk and talk and talk. The occasion is the publication of the husband's book which provocatively argues that a copy of a work of art is almost always better than the original, a position he admits to not totally believing himself. His wife is an antique dealer and is of course only interested in authenticity and originality. Their marriage is uneasy and they snipe back and forth about these topics for a while. Essentially, the husband is a pragmatist, valuing the results and effects more than the intent, while his wife is an idealist, caring about the idea behind the reality, and the thought behind the action.

They are given juicy little monologues and moments together. Their son is a prototypical indolent youth, always craning over his cellphone and annoying his mother with his indifference. In reaction to tales of the son's behavior, the husband praises his hedonism. The wife points out that his hedonism comes at her expense, but the husband shrugs this off. She accepted this life, he reminds her. This is essentially the crux of their relationship woes. He is doesn't want to be put upon and tied down, she does not want to be abandoned.

This film offers little in terms of hedonism on its own. There's very little to sensually delight in. There's very pretty plazas and buildings but these serve only as backdrop. The actors wander through museums but the camera stays fixed on the actors, leaving whatever curiosities there are off screen. There is, of course, not a single car-chase. This reveals pretty clearly where the film's heart is and indeed the idealistic wife comes off a lot better than the defensive husband. This may be due to my preoccupations however and I suspect that this is one of those films you could show to your friends and every one would have a different interpretation.

Here are a few observations: There is a theme of newlyweds. The husband and wife go to a very popular church where bride and groom after bride and groom parade by in the background, while the wife and husband are endlessly arguing. Also, the film seems to heavily imply that the pair are speaking at cross purposes. The film is multi-lingual and sometimes they are literally speaking different languages. The wife, and later the husband, are told that they should just relax and accept their partner, flaws and all, but of course neither of them can really do that. Divorce is never brought up, but then the two seem borderline estranged already.

I really didn't like this film. It's thinky and interesting but it's completely over my head. I found the endless bitchy sparring utterly tedious and silly. At one point, they are in a restaurant and the wife decides to put on earrings and lipstick, hoping to amuse or surprise her husband. When she comes back, he is industriously complaining about the service, the wine, and finally even turns on her brittle, let's-just-have-a-good-time cheeriness. It's such an annoying and obvious scene. The ogerish, hedonist man vs the idealistic, hopeful woman. There's even a shot of a marriage party just outside of the window. It's such boilerplate war of the sexes.

This will sound ridiculous coming from me, but I think this film is pretentious. Its philosophical preoccupation about the real thing vs the imitation thing is not that interesting to me. The woman has a point that authenticity and verifiability are important and the man has a point that essentially nothing is truly original, but these are not actually opposing views. They are treated as such by the characters, but the characters are mainly talking past each other, at cross purposes! This leaves us only their childish squabbling to consider.

I understand that married couples can easily fall into petty arguments and I understand that they are not really arguing about what they're arguing about, but I also understand what it is that they're arguing about! She: you don't love me enough. He: I love you as much as I am able to. Repeat. Hiding the emotional core behind a veil of noise, language, and plazas is realistic but also neutering, boring, and pointless! I feel this suspicion that I've missed the boat here, but so far as I can tell, this film was two intelligent people talking past each other for two hours. I think I hated this film for the same reason I hate screwballs. They're just infuriating. What reward is there here for me? I think none.

Session 9

Saw Session 9, a horror film. It opens with a foreman being given a tour through a colossal, abandoned mental asylum (~woo~oo!) His crew is supposed to gut the asbestos insulation of the building so it can be refurbished. His overly intense assistant is introduced along with his crew. The film uses smeary digital cameras and no post-processing, looking like a cheaply-produced film. One of the crew-members is a stupid but pretty dude, there's also the smart one, the asshole, and of course the foreman and sidekick. It looks a lot like it's shaping up to be a throwback 80s slasher. The tour-guide even informs them that mental patients sometimes come back, setting up the killer.

However, this film sticks close to Shining-esque mind-games and vague hints at a haunting/possession. Each of the men is personally effected by some strange aspect of the building. The stupid one reveals he is afraid of the dark, but of course must spend a lot of time in unlit crawlspaces. The sidekick is weirdly militaristic about the job, describing people as 'obstacles' and 'liabilities.' The asshole finds an incinerator where holocaust-evoking gold teeth and glasses have piled up. He schemes endlessly about how he can keep this hoard to himself. The smart one obsessively sneaks off to listen to taped interviews with one of the patients, a woman with split personality. And the foreman is clearly falling apart under some huge home-life problem.

Gloriously, the film is quite scary but completely jump-free. Thank heaven! It often does that thing where the soundtrack gets all quiet and the camera slowly zooms in, but nothing jumps. Instead, the built-up tension curdles into worry and, yes, fear. The film is not terrifically subtle, but it is atmospheric and moody. The dilapidated asylum evokes the hell-sequences in Silent Hill. The plot is strongly reminiscent of The Shining. The visual aesthetic is cheap and I think, alas, that this is due to actual budgetary constraints. The filmmakers embrace the limitation, but it does hinder the film a bit, I think.

The film is a nice little horror. It never cheaps out with jumps and so I was able to handle it pretty well. Take this statement for what it is, friends. I am a total wimp about jumps, so you'll find none of that here, but I am pretty tough when it comes to tension and grotesquerie, and there's a bit of that here. Not a bad film. It's not one of my favorites, but not bad.

A Star is Born (1954)

Saw the 1954 version of A Star is Born. It was a slightly hysterical show-biz film. It stars a struggling chorus-girl who is capital-N-Noticed by a drunken movie star at the height of his profession. She is talked into pursuing her dreams and a whirl-wind star-manufacturing montage follows. That montage, by the way, is pretty fun. It gives a sense of smallness to the protagonist and the anonymity of being cared for by professional servants for whom you are just another mouth to feed. Anyway, she falls in love with her drunken leading man and makes it big while, simultaneously, the leading man's boozing catches up with him and he loses popularity.

The film is very, very schmaltzy. It gives the viewer a vague sense of seeing behind the curtain, where hopeful starlets are regarded as disposable, and where movie stars are seen behaving badly. Of course, this film came out of both Hollywood and the 50s so of course none of this is dwelt upon. The film is the sort of show-biz spectacle where an Oscars ceremony provides a sort of climax. At one point, the drunk leading man is feeling down without work, so the actress puts on a lavish, impromptu musical number, involving props and dance numbers. The film is trying to establish her as a workhorse, valiantly combating his depression, but I feel that if I were moping around and feeling sorry for myself, that a huge, elaborate, "cheer up" song and dance would be about the worst thing. Just give him a hug and sit with him for a while, lady.

That depression (under the guise of alcoholism) is even brought up at all is pretty amazing, considering the time and genre of the film. Of course it is handled in this very goofy way, but we must count our blessings. As the film progresses, it hits all kinds of treacly notes before ending on a hopeful note, smiling bravely through its tear-streaked mascara. I really hate show-boating theater-films, but even so I was pretty suckered by its emotional hysterics. Someone less in love with melodrama might not take this film so well. It swoons and climaxes, but don't be embarrassed if all of this fails to dazzle you.

The protagonist is played by Judy Garland who is spectacular. She has personally battled many of the issues faced by her on-screen husband and (if wiki is to be trusted) this film sparked a comeback for her career. I'm not really interested in the mythology of Hollywood, but this is an interesting little tidbit to puzzle over while watching the film. It's a very long film, made longer by the odd, remastered version I saw. It had still shots for many key scenes, with the actor's recorded dialog playing over them. These scenes seem very pivotal however and I'm not sure why they were cut/lost. There's another story here, I guess. Over all, I liked this film, but I feel like its melodrama is stuck playing second-fiddle to an imagined and guessed-at story playing out behind its own scenes.

Day of the Dead

Saw Day of the Dead, another installment in Romero's zombie epic. It focused on an outpost of (possibly) the last humans in existence. There's a group of increasingly crazy army dudes, a team of earnest but effeminate scientists, and a few techs. The film follows the last living female, a scientist, who is apparently holding the whole thing together by much shouting and generous application of drugs. The film is fairly grim and nasty.

I believe society is a bit more genial than this film makes it out to be. For example, at one point, the crazy head-army-dude commands one of his underlings to shoot the female protagonist. Said underling is hesitant to do this, so the head-army-guy motivates him by pointing a gun at the underling. This is stereotypical villain behavior. I can't believe he could do this without some seriously mutinous mutterings following. I think in real life, this would have prompted a conspiracy to quietly drug his coffee and shoot his crazy ass. As I've said before, the zombie genre is seriously in love with guns and paranoia. It's a refreshing change of pace from the usual pablum of peace and tolerance, but I frankly prefer the myth of the peaceful community to the myth of the rugged individual. To each their own.

The film is mostly just grim, though. At one point the protagonist has a discussion with an amiable helicopter pilot. He is trying to convince her to give up this crazy "cure" business and just accept that society has ended. He makes a compelling point, but it is a nihilistic, hopeless one. He equates all of the useless records sitting in databases in their bunker with the fruits of civilization. This dismissive and defeatist tone rubs me wrong. When he claims they should start over, raising a family on an island somewhere, I grumpily note that with only one women around, they'll be looking at a long line of aggressive inbreeding. They might know this, of course, if they had only read the information in their databases.

As usual for a zombie film, the survivors ultimately eek out a happy ending, but only just and it's not so much hopeful as just comfortable for now. A nihilistic film, it soft-peddles its despair, making its grim conclusions seem palatable and even sophisticated. Not for me.

Persuasion

Saw Persuasion (thanks, Anne!) It was a period drama, based on the Jane Austen novel of the same name. The protagonist, Anne, is an unmarried woman who is regarded as essentially sexless by her friends and family. They cavalierly throw her under various buses and nobly sacrifice her happiness to the common good. She is left unsupervised, in a sort of familial isolation which, thanks to her strength of character, is not a prison but a sanctuary. Most of the plot's activity happens to other people while Anne watches and listens and waits her turn. Even the climactic kiss (this is, naturally, a romance) is upstaged by a passing circus parade.

The film opens underwater, looking up the bottom of a boat. Although of course we don't know it at the time, this scene sets up some themes for the film. We are looking at a peaceful, blue stillness while frantic activity is taking place above the water, outside of the camera's view. This is also a little detail that most period films would skip. Therefore, it is no great surprise to learn that this film was shot entirely on location and in natural light. This is a detail-obsessed film. Close-up shots emphasize tiny details which are sometimes used, solo, to tell the story. A hand on Anne's hip as she is helped into a carriage, a purposeful lack of eye-contact, a backward glance, these tell us uncertain volumes. There is an essentially comic montage early on, showing how much Anne is emotionally exploited by her family. No one behaves particularly badly, no one even raises their voice, but we understand how trapped and how put-upon Anne must feel.

Usually, restrained films don't get to me. I don't really know why but this one did. Perhaps the uncertain, almost gossipy (but never salacious,) way in which the film is shot made it easy for me to be interested. Does she really mean what she's saying there? Why did she emphasize "family" just then? Why did he emphasize "duty?" Why are we closing up on their shoes? It's a very fun maze to navigate. Not all of these questions are relevant, and sometimes I hit dead-ends, but the film ushers us along to a satisfying ending that side-steps schmaltz and hysterics. This is a restrained film, but not dry, and not moralizing. Classy is more the word.

A Separation

Saw A Separation, an Iranian courtroom drama. It starts with the core-drama of the breakup of a husband and wife. The wife goes to live with her mother, leaving her daughter with the husband. Tensions arising from the wife's absence spiral into an argument with the maid which results in her being pushed, falling, and miscarrying her baby. This involves the maid's husband and a whole host of very fraught class issues. Everyone comes off ugly. The husband retreats into pride and crusty dignity while the maid's husband starts stalking the daughter and harassing everyone involved. The women, meanwhile, confer secretly and desperately, trying to save face and make peace. Throughout all of this maelstrom, the daughter of the couple sits, torn between a father whom she loves but believes to be guilty and a mother she believes has abandoned her.

The film is full of jaw-dropping twists. It's very domestic and hyper-realistic, so things never get really crazy, but things are definitely kept interesting. The film could be said to be melodramatic in parts, but I make no such claim (such is my vice. I love me some drama.) Of the husband, wife, daughter, maid, maid's husband, each delivers a dynamite performance. The film is not easy enough to actually let you sympathize with any of them for too long. The maid comes off about the best for me, but in some scenes I hated her cringing reluctance to cause trouble. The maid, incidentally, has her own daughter. She is very young and, although she makes it through most of the film cheerful and cute, even she starts glowering by the end.

The film has shades of Rashomon in it. It's unclear, even to the viewer, even until the end of the film, who did exactly what during that push and fall. Unlike Rashomon, however, this film is less interested in the slippery nature of truth and more interested in the morally compromising alliances of family and pack-mentality. The daughter of the husband and wife is being forced to choose sides, between her mother and her father, between what she believes to be justice and her family. The class issues tie into this as well. The film pointedly makes the father an ugly bourgeois in some scenes. During one courtroom scene, the maid's husband insinuates that he (the husband) does not care about poor people. The husband raises his finger and shouts "show some respect!" This is bad behavior, but the judges eat up his show of dignity and are aghast at the resultant outburst from the maid's husband.

The film is very fraught. It's a sort of Kramer vs Kramer style domestic brawl but with a touch of class issues mized in, full of moral ambiguity and shades of gray. going into this film, I frankly would have preferred something more lighthearted or dry, something with less weight and uncertainty. But that's how reality is, I think, full of both, and I therefore laud this film for not defaulting to easy side-taking and pat "answers" (as though life really were as simple as a mere puzzle.) For all of my intellectual approval, though, I think I need a hug. Tough going.

À l'Intérieur

Saw À l'Intérieur (AKA Inside) It was one of that crop of modern, extreme horrors. True to genre, the film starts slow and kind of sad and slowly becomes more and more difficult to watch. The plot follows a young woman who is one night away from a scheduled cesarean birth. The baby's father was killed in a car crash four months earlier and it is now Christmas eve. Another woman, dressed like Morticia Addams, begins menacing our hero, trying desperately to extract the baby one day early. Just going on the premise, it's pretty harrowing.

The film is horrifying. I had to watch nearly the entire thing with the sound turned waaaay down. I missed out on a lot of the film that way, I'm sure, but at least I was able to watch it (at all.) I was struck by how specifically feminine the horror is. Obviously, there's the central pregnant woman (and it's Christmas eve. Remind you of any other famous mothers?) but also the murderess's weapons are all fairly femme. She preferentially wields a sturdy pair of scissors and at one point uses a knitting needle to great effect. She uses a gun once, which blows a bit of a hole into my theory, but I've never let contradictory evidence stop me before and I won't start now!

The antagonistic woman is ugly. She is gap-toothed and lank-haired, wearing a black dress, complete with corset and spool-heel shoes. She evokes the witch, the fates, the midwife. At one point, she pretends to be the protagonist's mother. All of these are powerful, feminine symbols. The protagonist is dressed in a white (but increasingly soiled) night-gown. She cowers for most of the film in a fluorescent-lit bathroom, which ironically evokes the controlled environment of a hospital. Almost all of the protagonist's would-be saviors are men who are each either completely useless or downright burdensome to her before they inevitably succumb to the antagonist's scissors. I believe the antagonist symbolizes the implacable, uncontrollable, force of nature that is birth. The protagonist does not want the baby removed from her, but it's going to come out. She wants the process to be controlled and safe but it is bloody, messy, and unbelievably painful. Throughout her struggle, she is alone with this monster and, worst of all, once the baby comes out, it stops being hers.

By the way: there's also gallons of blood, tons of stabbings, and an emergency tracheotomy that we're treated to, so this is no chilly think-fest. I found the lady-centric angle interesting, but make no mistake: the film is meant to be an ordeal and is. It's fun in moments in an extremely morbid way (if you're into that (which I am not.)) At one point, the antagonist brains someone with a well-slung toaster. It's so bizarre, you have to laugh a little. I was a bit disappointed at the weird, ugly CGI baby that shows up a few times. It floats around, presumably in the protagonist's womb, doing flips and bouncing off the 'walls' (which I don't think can actually happen. I've seen pictures and it seems like there's just not that much room.) Anyway, I think the baby would have worked much better in the abstract. It's much more potent as a symbol when it's not seen (and not clearly made of meshed polygons.)

So, this movie was tough. It was interesting, which I liked, but also very scary, which I didn't. It got the better of me and I think, based on the preceding details, that you can tell if it would be your cup of tea. Enough.

Berlin Alexanderplatz, Episode 14

Episode 14, My Dream of the Dream of Franz Biberkopf by Alfred Döblin, An Epilogue:
Franz has gone mad and consequently most of this final episode takes place inside of his fevered imagination. The symbolism is ratcheted up to incredible, hyperbolic heights. Franz is hoisted up on a cross, Reinhold makes an appearance in Nazi togs. In fact, Reinhold shows up a lot in various guises. He is at one point an opponent to Franz in a boxing ring, symbolizing pure, antagonistic evil. At another time he is whipping Franz as Franz kneels on a pew. They are both wearing makeup which makes them look luridly effeminate and kind of stagy. In another fantasy, Reinhold is equated with Meize, as a sort of love-interest gone wrong and rotten. Clearly, Franz is feeling deeply betrayed and confused.

All of Franz's ex-es show up, at first hostile and sneering. Later on they become mere ill omens, singing about death and standing around morbidly. Meize is only ever shown dead. Even when she is moving and speaking, Franz acknowledges her as being dead. Eva is made into a mother, as Franz suckles at her teat and dresses her as the virgin Mary. It's very extreme and tremendous fun for a while. It's a great change of pace from the usual (relatively) straight-faced storytelling.

There's many call-backs to previous characters: the Jews from the first episode, the fruit-gang, the shoelace-merchant, the salvation army, the satanic monk, Meck, Reinhold. They draw a parallel between the nefarious actions of the shoelace merchant and Reinhold, an obvious connection I'd totally missed. In both cases, a smarter, eviler man uses Franz to exploit a woman. There is an obvious parallel left for us to draw between Reinhold/shoelace merchant and Hitler and between Franz and the German populace.

Another point made which completely escaped me is how childish Franz is. He clings to women like they are his mothers. He seems best suited to Meize, because of her childish demeanor. Here, at last, was a woman on-par with his childishness. This characteristic also made him very lovable throughout the show. He comes off as cruel and stupid and, well, he is cruel and stupid, but he is also pathetic and well-meaning. He is lazy, jealous, and deeply flawed, but also soulful, vital, and noble in his own way. He is the ugly, beautiful human animal, reflecting the vices and virtues of all of mankind.

The episode revolves around Franz trying to accept the death of Meitze and come to terms with Reinhold. He imagines himself a religious penitent, begging forgiveness for his life of crime. He imagines himself insane, seeking to blame his actions on mere misfiring neurons. He imagines himself to be an animal in a slaughterhouse, passively being victimized. He hysterically imagines himself to be Jesus, suffering for some greater good. During this last fantasy, an atomic bomb goes off and the narrator declares that the man we know as Franz is dead and that another man has now taken his place. It's very Lynchian for a moment (the rest of the fantasy is much more stagy and aggressive, more like Jodorowsky.) Then we are back in the real world. Reinhold gets a mere 10 years in prison (we discover, oddly, that his is in love with his cell-mate. He is as confused as we, but perhaps his woman-troubles are more explicable now.) and Eva tells Franz his child is dead.

So endeth the lesson. The show was mostly a morality play, I think. Franz begins the film with a reprieve, a second chance. His struggle to be do good by that chance mirrors Germany's struggle to stay out of another conflict. Franz's slow slide back into vice reflects Germany's slide back into militarism and fascism. The show is more interested in the literal, real-world, moral compromises of Franz than it is in building a neat allegory, which lead to my being kind of confused by the there-and-gone-again connections.

The show spends a lot of time primly moralizing on Franz's actions, judging him but remaining optimistic and charitable. In the final episode, two angels follow Franz for a while. They cheerfully pile up imaginary dead bodies and teasingly push Franz to accept responsibility and guilt. They are willfully absurd and oblique and I believe they reflect the attitude of the show to a great extent. The show is playful and absurd, morbidly wallowing in Franz's ugly squalor but always reminding us again of his fundamental humanity. The show is ultimately on Franz's side, but doesn't give him a free pass. It's more intelligent and nuanced than that.

It's also very long and takes its time reaching any point. This is a blessing if you like nuance but a curse if you like incisive wit. I am glad the show is over however. It was very morbid and grim. It was difficult to parse (I still, for example, am not sure what the bird-cages are really meant to signify and I have no idea what that machine in the center of Franz's apartment is (a printing press? a cotton gin?)) which was wearying after a while (there's only so many times I can write "I don't know" before I begin to wonder what I do know.) An interesting series, but more interesting in hindsight. I started off looking in a slightly wrong direction and I think the show got away from me a bit. I get the sense that it would have been a bit too deep and subtle for me in any case though. I may have to return to this show someday.

Priest

Saw Priest. Now, I see a lot of crap. But rarely do I see such a shining, glorious, beacon of crap as this film. It's set in an alternate universe where humans fight communal, insectoid vampires. On the human side are super-warriors called priests who fight off the vampires with little shurikens and dainty knives and are apparently way more effective than boring old tanks and guns and such. Everyone lives in a big city ruled by an authoritarian theocracy of vaguely Christian clerics. Outside of the city is the wild west where human settlements alternate with vampire "reservations" (which are maybe supposed to evoke Indian reservations??) There's a lot going on. Anyway, the film starts just after the priests and co have won some big war which finally killed off all of the vampires (or did it!?? Or did it really only drive them underground where they are growing in strength and numbers??! Could that, in fact, be??)

The protagonist is an infinitely tortured and badass priest. For absolutely no reason he is shunned by the city-folk, mothers inexplicably shooing their children away from him and city bureaucrats bewilderingly sneering at him. I suspect there is some really obvious allegory about the shabby treatment of real-life veterans going on here, but it makes no sense transplanted into the vampi-verse where apparently the vamp-war happened just a few years ago. It feels either pandering or choir-preachy and anyway completely misguided.

Also, I don't know how seriously we're meant to take the religious thing. The priests will say a little prayer (for the world, presumably) before some battles, but then the authoritarian church is clearly meant to be some vague stab at organized religion which I believe is meant to be taken seriously. It's a weird and hilariously ineffectual bit of dour commentary in a film which also devotes a good chunk of time to priests on motorcycles. Are we meant to actually take any of this seriously? I can't tell if the film is just randomly throwing iconography around or if it actually has some kind of agenda, buried deep under its stupid, stupid surface.

Religion aside, there's something for the ladies too: very icky gender politics! The film contains exactly two girls, not counting extras (they never speak to each other at all. Bechdel test: failed.) One is a helpless lass who is captured by the emerging vampire-army (which is lead by a cowboy wearing fake vampire teeth.) She spends most of her time wailing like Olive Oyl and wearing a grimy dress that hugs her curves (ie her tits.) The only other female is a lady-priest who is a badass and who we know is in some kind of love with the protagonist from the moment she is introduced, gasping at his name. She is also established as a virgin because that's important you see.

There's a lot of action-movie bullshit which is both incredibly stupid and (I'll admit it) hilarious. At one point the hero-priest is charging at some kind of vamp-ogre. His lady-priest-friend throws two stones which, in his Crouching-Tiger-esque martial-arts flight, he uses as stepping stones. That was pretty amazing. There's also a hilarious teaching-monologue about vamp-killing: "Their body-weight pulls them in concentric patterns", "There are always two points. A and B. Know them both, and you'll kill a vampire." Bewildering! Amazing!

So, this movie is pretty much bullshit. I was actually infuriated a few times by its self-aggrandizing nonsense (I was shouting "what the fuck does that mean!?" during the "two points" speech.) It would be tremendous fun to make fun of. There's just so much to be confused by: the weird religion angle, the retrograde treatment of women, the incredibly over-stuffed world-building, the macho posturing, and the arbitrary, episodic, video-game-like action. This one is pure, glorious trash.

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted

Saw Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (thanks, Paul!) It was the latest installment of the ongoing adventures of those oh-so-zany animals. Either the schtick is showing it age or I was in a bad mood or something, but I didn't really dig this one. It opens tremendously strongly, with the animals escaping from a casino, being chased by an animal control officer woman who looks like Lucille Ball with a pear-shaped body. That woman is hilarious. For a dowdy, dumpy lady, she is hilariously lithe and cat-like. That's a great joke. Then they hide out from her in a train full of circus animals. It is at this point that I began to get bored.

The circus animals have no personalities. The most memorable can be summed up with a single adjective each: angry, sexy, stupid, etc. There's a pair of elephants who are complete non-entities, ditto for the show-horses. The worst new character is this Italian seal with a "Mama-mia! My-a spaghetti!"-style accent who is supposed to be lovably dumb. The trouble here is that the lovably-dumb role is amply filled by every other character in the film. They are all lovably dumb with flashes of competence when needed to move the plot forward. So, we get a completely pointless addition to the cast who (because he is supposed to dumber) is not even competent and therefore has flashes of neediness when the plot must be pushed. This is kind of grating.

The animals spend a long time working on circus acts. This sequence is light on comedy but full of character development, so okay I guess. Note though that the characters develop in ways that don't really matter: the zebra discovers he likes to fly, the lion hits on a cheetah, etc. This is just how this franchise works however. This is really a sitcom in disguise so no major changes can be allowed to disrupt the formula. Anyway, there's a great ongoing joke that's introduced here: One tiger's act is physically impossible, acknowledged as such, and never shown. It's a huge and purposeful plot-hole and I find it pretty funny that they never address it at all.

But apart from that, there's not much else that's very funny. They at last debut their act (which is of course a kick-ass performance) and the animal-catcher rouses her troops (via a great, nonsense-french rendition of Je Ne Regrette Rien. Everyone has running-mascara-tears, even the guys.) The film picks up a bit but ultimately of course we have to have lessons and closure and also the super-competent woman must be humbled and defeated. The film doesn't recapture the greatness of the opening sequence.

Also, The film gives King Julian a love interest. Worse, he is pathetically in love with her (her! I mean, c'mon, we all know what Julian's effeminate mincing and love of dance music is really about, right?) This is a throw-back to the "hilarious" gender-role jokes of the 20s, with fussy dukes and their bull-ish duchesses, all of which I think is pretty tasteless. I don't really want to make a huge deal out of this because, after all, this is a bigger issue than mere lazy writing, but it is annoying none the less. Also, it's very out of character for Julian. King Julian's thing is that he's hilariously entitled, pompous, and vain but also a Machiavellian schemer. In the last film, he somehow enslaved the entire population of flamingos within days of arriving. In this film he's a mere buffoon. He should be snubbing the romantic advances of others, not making pathetic advances of his own. I like Julian. I don't want him to be nice and stupid.

Anyway, all of this is to say that although the film definitely has some very good parts in it, this franchise is running out of steam. There are long periods where wheels just spin and there's queasy romance and sincerity. Let's hope this franchise can pull out its slump before the next installment. It's not bad yet. Yet.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Saw Martha Marcy May Marlene. The title is the protagonist's name. She opens the film leaving the collective farm she joined two years ago. She calls her sister and awkwardly asks her to pick her up. At the sister's house, she sleeps a lot and through flash-back we discover that the farm was a full-blown cult which she has just escaped. The film is mainly a portrait of a woman trying to recover after being severely mentally and physically abused. It focuses on her mental struggle to reject the nonsensical teachings of the cult-leader guru and to become comfortable in a world which does not try to hurt her, but also does not particularly care about her.

For dramatic reasons, the deck is stacked against the sister to whom Martha flees. Her house is palatial and immaculate. Her husband is a tightly-wound architect. They react with open hostility when she criticizes them for being too materialistic (they view her as the charity case and therefore as having no moral leg to stand on.) Via oblique reference, we learn that Martha had been left to take care of her hostile and aged aunt when she was younger, while her sister "escaped" to college. Communication between the sisters is strained. Even a simple apology for abandoning Martha is misconstrued as a dismissal of Martha's autonomy ("I took care of myself, okay?") which is in turn misconstrued as a refusal to accept an apology. Contrast this awkward unpleasantness with a self-sufficient farm which is lackadaisically managed by a wise guru and populated by young models wearing sun-dresses and tank-tops who all love you.

As the film goes on, Martha (and therefore we) realize that the farm was not self-sufficient at all, that it was robbing from neighboring affluent folks, that the twaddle of the guru was only self-serving post-facto justification for rape and murder, and that the "love" was orchestrated love-bombing. But then again... then again, they genuinely valued her, and they may have also genuinely loved her, and at least she was not abandoned and did not feel alone. The guru tells her she is a leader and a teacher. So far as we can tell, up until this point, no one has ever told her that she is anything at all. Can she leave this carrot behind as easily as she can leave the stick?

The film adds a final twist in at the end which I found pretty frustrating. I won't ruin it but the situation by the end is only making that smallest, most tentative steps toward improving and the twist throws doubt on the progress. My frustration is intentional however and shows that I've fully entered into Martha's world of paranoia and self-doubt. The film could be construed as a salvo in the war of the Haves vs Have-Nots, but I shy away from this more political interpretation. I'm much more invested in the imaginary Martha and her problems as mirrors of real events. Viewed in this way, the film is an interesting little character study of a woman trying to free herself.