Being Elmo, A Puppeteer's Journey

Saw Being Elmo, A Puppeteer's Journey, a documentary about the life of Kevin Clash, the voice and puppeteer of Elmo. The film is short and very sweet, intended to rekindle happy memories of childhood TV programs and promise more magic to come. The story of Kevin's life is a whirlwind rags-to-riches adventure where he dreams as a child of being a puppeteer and, through fanatical devotion and rapid ladder-climbing, he achieves his dream. There's a lot of interesting information about Kevin. We are told that he created muppets in high school and was (of course) bullied for it. We then instantly turn to talking about his performances for mentally disabled children. And the whole documentary is kind of like that. We come within a hair's-breadth to turmoil and conflict and then trip merrily off to heart-warming pleasantness.

This isn't a weakness exactly. I mean, the film is clearly meant to just be heartwarming and nice and there's nothing wrong with being heartwarming and nice, it's just that there's a large and obviously unhappy hole missing in the story of Kevin's life. The unending sweetness seems unreal and illusory. I don't feel lied to exactly, just that I was not told the whole story. Kevin starts off the film talking about the magic houses and kingdoms of Captain Kangaroo and Walt Disney, and how he wished he could crawl inside of the television into that more wonderful and happy realm. To go by this documentary, he appears to have actually succeeded. He has achieved his dreams and does meaningful work which he loves. The story of this journey is heart-warming and sincere and forces smiled on your face but as far as I can tell real life isn't like that. This film is sweet and substantive, but not analytical. I think it's very good and appropriate for mass audiences that this isn't biting or incisive, but it leaves me personally feeling suspicious.

The Chaser

Saw The Chaser, a Korean crime film. This one follows an ex-cop turned pimp who has lost one of his girls after she went to a john's house. Then the same john calls for another girl some time later (months or years or something) and his ex-cop-ly skills are re-aroused to investigate. Sure enough, the john is a psycho killer whom fate smiles upon and gets every lucky break while the increasingly harried-looking pimp always remains just a few tantalizing steps behind him. The film is a cop-drama with an ex-cop, not that that changes much. It just means that the cliched turning-in-the-badge scene has already happened. Anyway, I thought the film was pretty good.

It has the rhythms and beats of a comedy, with tiny infuriating details and coincidences always frustrating the hero, and goofy idiot-side-kick characters and also an adorably sullen little girl to silently judge the pimp when he screws up. There's also a B-plot going on about the mayor of the city having poop flung at him by a protester. This thread serves to muddy the main plot when the cops become involved, but I was hopeful that there could be some message hear about classism, that the mayor being dirtied was a more sensational story than a mere prostitute being killed. I think some theme along these lines could be mined out, but it's certainly not the main point of the film. The film is much more straightforward, so far as I can tell, and is more interested in the simple thrill of the chase.

I think this film wouldn't bear up to repeat viewings. The tension of the chase is undercut somewhat if you already know who gets away. Also, the killer tantalizingly slipping through the righteously indignant fingers of the pimp is frustrating enough the first time. The film is messy and fun however, full of false starts and blind alleys. Also I loved the twisty back-alleys that the film is predominantly set in. Also, I have to commend this film for being relatively light on the melodrama. I've whined about the Korean predilection for melodrama before and was worried that this one would be full of pointless histrionics but, baring one or two scenes, this one was almost understated. Anyway, not a bad film at all. Also the scene where the prostitute is realizing what deep trouble she's in is great.

In the Realm of the Senses

Saw In the Realm of the Senses, a frankly erotic film made in Japan and distributed by a French production house (so you know it's gonna be pretty crazy. They couldn't even find a Japanese distributor for this nuttiness.) It's a fictionalized version of the exploits of Sada Abe. The film is fairly lurid, more shocking than revealing. It's fairly edgy for a drama but fairly tame for a porno. All of the naughty bits are on display and there's a ton of sex happening but the focus of the film is on the spiraling, mutually-destructive love affair between the concubine Sada and married gigolo Kichi.

The film has many interesting artistic flourishes. For example, their relationship starts in the depths of winter. Spring or summer would make more sense, but instead their fiery passion lies in contrast to the weather. Later, as the relationship becomes debauched and veers into dangerous excesses, it becomes spring. This inversion of the normal symbolism of romance feels off-kilter and bizarre. Based on a true story as it is though there's some parts that don't make thematic sense, such as her intellectual customer on the side who pops up now and again.

But yes, there's a lot of sex. You see fellatio, penises and vaginas. It's very frank and usually fairly sexy. The film is not as progressive as you might think based on this however. It only gets away with all of this flopping genitalia by ultimately being kind of schoolmarmish-ly dour about their relationship. It starts off passionate but the passion never fades. This sounds great, but their romance veers into bizarre, controlling areas. Knives make repeated appearances, with associated symbolism involving penetration, blood and slits. The final, violent ending serves as a prim reminder for us to stick with missionary position for the sake of procreation. It's a kind of inverse Romeo and Juliette, focusing less on romance than on sex and ending not with a beautiful tragedy but with an ugly tragedy. I wish the film had been a bit kinder in its ending but that of course would not mirror reality and would have been cheating.

We Live in Public

Saw We Live in Public, a documentary about the life of Josh Harris, an early 90s internet mogul. He opens with him greeting us with a "Hello, Mom." He addresses us, or perhaps his camera, as his caregiver. This is a clip from a video he sent to his dying mother in lieu of visiting her. He immediately follows this with a declaration of "virtual love." It's an odd moment. Josh Harris, we discover, had the foresight to predict youtube and streaming video as being a media game-changer back in the 90s back before broadband even existed. He also predicted the rise of home-brew, flash-in-the-pan internet celebrities. He then missteps in his remarkably accurate prediction and extends this to everyone. Ala Andy Warhol, he predicts everyone will be living public lives all of the time. But in a way, of course, he's right.

So, the film follows Josh as he becomes suddenly and fantastically wealthy (net worth $80M) founds some far-fetched media websites and descends into excess and art-film experiments on how constant attention effects society. Throughout it all, he and other new-media personalities pontificate about how everyone wants to be seen and how this will change everything. They've got a point that here in the future we are sharing things a lot more than we used to be, but he doesn't realize that much of what we put out is carefully filtered and posed to show off our best sides. Control of our public image and the ability to conceal what we want has only become more important. The reality-tv pioneers of the past thought we would become more comfortable with being more open and accessible but if anything it's resulting in personas and masks and poses becoming more important. To be art-school cute for a moment, We Pretend In Public.

One of Josh's experiments involved setting up a bunker of food and and drugs and guns and cameras and inviting a bunch of attention starved (and very enthusiastic) performance artists to live there for a few months. At first they're loving the non-stop attention but after a while they get very tired of constantly performing. The project is shut down after a police raid (which is hilarious) and Josh then reverse the camera, becoming the star of his own 24-hour surveillance show and, of course, broadcasting everything onto the internet. He slowly discovers what every actor already knows: that a performer is really far more at the mercy of their audience than the reverse. His desire to be watched is really a desire for acceptance but all he gets is scrutiny. How like his absent and "virtually loved" mother we are perhaps. All Josh seems to want is a hug but discovers that a stage is a lonely place to be, even one as seemingly intimate as an internet chatroom.

National Treasure

Saw National Treasure (thanks, Chris!) It was an unusual film, coming out in 2004 in the midst of a rapid polarization of American politics and riding on the coattails of the hit summer novel The Da Vinci Code. The Christian right was denouncing the idea that Jesus had a wife while the left was bitterly recounting votes. Conspiracy and paranoia were thick in those times and lo, here comes human internet meme Nicolas Cage to weave a treasure-hunt mythos around the founding of America. A very well-timed film. I imagine it did very well for exactly one box-office weekend [fact-check: actually, it was #1 for almost three weeks.]

Curious timing aside, it's a fairly breathless film. It's not very substantial but then no one expected it to be. The heroes are kind of cliche stock characters: the love interest, the sarcastic comic foil, the wiley protagonist. The love interest is also super-smart and competent for a change, but then again they keep talking about how she never shuts up (although she talks considerably less than the motor-mouthed Cage,) so I don't think this counts as progressive exactly. Oh well. The point of the movie, and indeed its greatest strength, lies in the chase from clue to clue, each one relying on knowledge of ever-more obscure trivia relating to 1700s America.

The film is very fun in an action-film sort of way. I was immensely gratified that it didn't pull any "The real treasure was freedom!"-style shenanigans. This is a very straightforward film, it's fundamentally fluffy lightness is only briefly hidden by the timing of its release. It's relatively long but doesn't feel that way. It jumps from climax to climax, always entertaining, never challenging. A pleasant little film.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Saw We Need to Talk About Kevin, a film about the mother of a school shooter (named Kevin.) The film opens with the mother in her younger years attending the tomatina festival, the largest tomato-throwing fight in the world. She is held aloft over the crowd, arms outstretched like Christ on the cross, as buckets of tomato viscera are poured over her. She will be crucified over the actions of her son for the peace of mind of the parents of the other dead children. She welcomes this abuse, angrily (or perhaps warily) rebuffing all help and sympathy.

The film is pretty intense. It's shot exactly like a horror film (read the imdb plot summary. It sounds like The Omen.) This stylistic choice forces us to instinctively tense and flinch, but no screams or scares come. This film is really more about guilt and about uncertain dread. The essential message of the film is that the parents of these monsters are sometimes equally victims of their children. It's very gripping.

The film is not without its flaws however. It requires the mother to be very cold sometimes and to be a complete patsy to her son's barbs. I mean, your son is a sociopath lady. He's not the right person to cattily whisper-criticize fat people with. At one point she's reading him the story of Robin Hood in old english, full of thous and thees. He loves it in spite of being a bit tricky to follow even for adults. Unrealistic. Also Kevin himself is very boilerplate crazy-kid. His bad relationship with his mother is drawn realistically in his infancy but as he grows older, he becomes this 4chan-dweller who collects computer viruses and doesn't wield a katana, but might as well. Also he's this darkly attractive, beautiful dude who in real life would be drowning in attention (if not sex.) There's also some laziness short-hands here and there (wine and pills, huh? So I guess you're in some kind of mental difficulty?)

All that aside however, it's a very interesting, mesmerizing film. The horror-film pacing keeps us watching and this mounting sense that something is going wrong and should be corrected. I kept thinking that if she just talked to everyone involved it would be better, but perhaps that's the point of the film.

Brotherhood of War

Saw Brotherhood of War, a Korean war film. It's called the Korean Saving Private Ryan and indeed is extremely reminiscent of the Steven Spielberg war film. Both films start in the present day, with an old soldier recalling his entire life up to that point. Both films are full of pathos and drama, feature horns and violins on the soundtrack, and both are clearly just oozing with money. There are elaborate crowd scenes with hundreds of refugees, stretching off into the distance and of course endless battle scenes with a football field's-worth of sod being flung into the sky.

The plot is much goofier than Saving Private Ryan however. It is this: two brothers in pre-war Korea spend their lives eating candy out of each other's hands and lolling their heads in a perpetual near-swoon of absolute ecstasy. Their adorable lives are brought to a screeching halt by the Korean war being declared. They are both drafted and the older brother sets about trying to keep his younger brother safe and/or sent back to civilian life. He does this by volunteering himself for every risky mission there is, so that his brother is spared as per a bargain struck with his commander. This results in the brothers' personalities diverging. The elder becomes battle-hardened, blood thirsty, and decorated and the younger brother stays more normal and undistinguished. The brothers clash, switch sides and battle against the evil communists and even against the cruelties of the South Korean army. Eventually the war ends.

I didn't think very much of this film. War films are not really interesting to me. I sort of enjoy them as history lessons (I'm very ignorant when it comes to history) and find all of the grandstanding and posturing to be faintly ridiculous. At one point the brothers embody the pro/anti war sentiments, shouting back and forth "We've got to kill them! They're savage animals" "But we are not animals!" "They started this war!" etc. I side more with the naive younger brother but of course I have the enormous luxury of not having my opinions matter that much anyway. The film is not so much about justifying war or teaching history as it is with glorifying warfare. Somber violins and horns respectfully play over coffins of anonymous dead. By dint of running and shouting, the two brothers play mayhem with the army's structure and, (most damning of all) the trenches almost look like a kind of fun place to be. There's a lot of hustle and bustle and limbs being blown off, but our two brothers are safe behind their protagonist-shields. What matters nations and ideologies to this film when there is family drama to mine?

The Blue Angel

Saw The Blue Angel, a black and white film starring Marlene Dietrich. It follows a puffed-up fussy little professor who falls for a show-girl. The film first establishes the professor's character in a complex way: He is merrily whistling to his pet bird over coffee. The bird is not whistling back however and upon investigation, he discovers his bird is dead. Stricken, he holds it's body in his hand until his landlady brusquely tosses into the fire, noting "it stopped singing a long time ago anyway." This establishes the professor as fussy, vaguely effeminate, buffoonish, but also childish and tender-hearted. The plot of this film sounds like a dirty joke and for the first half of the film I was worried about who the joke was going to be on. Was the professor going to be fleeced by a sequined jezebel or would she bring some love and warmth into this absurd old man's life? Well, the film was made in the 30s, so that should answer that.

Indeed, this film is a tragedy. At first the professor is humbled for the better by his infatuation with the showgirl. He is made ridiculous, but doesn't mind burning off some of his dignity. The pork is whittled away from his personality. As the film goes on however, we hit the natural ending if this was meant to be a film about the saving power of love, and there's still an ominous half hour left to go. Throughout the courtship, there are faint clues that things will turn out well: Dietrich has a living bird in her apartment which sings like anything, suggesting a life of warmth and ease, but then again we have a shot of Dietrich brightening up when money is mentioned, and a baleful clown who is always on the periphery, the only other man in a company of women. When the professor first enters the nautically-themed nightclub where Dietrich performs, he is momentarily literally caught in a net.

This film is a fairly dismal morality play, warning us of the dangers of easy women. It climaxes in a heart-breaking performance by the professor in the burlesque show. This is a show-biz-ish film, preoccupied by the grand stand and the shallowness of illusions. We are meant to feel sorry for the ridiculous professor and, I suppose, to swear we will not be caught by the charms of an evil woman. It's very moving and well-constructed but, I think, a bit dated with its message. I suppose it might be considered sort of wickedly fun for a while, but those final scenes were just too brutal for me to laugh off.