Mr. Nobody

Saw Mr. Nobody (thanks, Nick!) It was one of those mind-fuck films that are willfully obscure, the fun being not in the plot or the characters but in the teasing out of what actually happened, the settling of the contradictory stories made significant by the invocation of quantum theory and the chaotic nature of life as symbolized by the butterfly effect. For such a film, it's not easy to say what happened, but here is what I believe happened anyway: we are listening to Nemo, the last man to die in a world where death is a curable condition, talk about his life up to that point. From a young age, we learn, he has always been able to predict the future but in this film's interpretation of physics the future is not yet set. We see all kinds of visual metaphors for this notion: branching and joining train tracks, stories being edited and rewritten, and of course the world "butterfly" sprinkled about everywhere (although if I must be very picky (and I must) the butterfly effect suggests only that the future is very difficult to predict, which is different from being impossible to predict, you know.)

Anyway, we have old Nemo recalling young Nemo predicting his own forking future, personified by three girls who he will wind up married to depending on his choices. As an old man, he keeps waking up from literally dreaming of death. Water is a recurrent symbol for death and destruction but, as a young Nemo angrily tells his mother, he loves water. So, first lesson: sometimes it's kind of a relief to die.

Another lesson: sex scenes are very boring after a while. In one version of his life Nemo is in teenage love with this girl and they fuck like rabbits. I think it's supposed to be sort of a cute and pure expression of love but after a while I began remarking to myself "ah, I see they're at it again." On that note, the acting and filming is alright. The film never lets you follow a life-story long enough to build an emotional connection and no sooner are you getting to know some woman Nemo's shacking up with than you're back in the future, with Nemo is old-man makeup, talking to a man whose Maori tattoos clearly say "PSY." The film is frequently too clever for its own good. I enjoy a good puzzle as much as anyone else but please don't drag in fancy physics concepts as window dressing to your drama because it adds nothing to the drama and frequently films get the physics wrong in some way anyway.

Anyway, the film is not as bad as my spleen-venting in the previous paragraph makes it sound. There's delicious opera and slow motion explosions and calm voices explaining complex ideas to us. It's really a knotty little romp of a film, full of twists and turns. I really enjoyed the film, even as I picked at it a little. It's a good film for inducing spirited discussions.

Human Planet, Episodes 7 and 8

Episode 7 - Rivers
This was a very watery episode. It starts off with this dude net-fishing on a torrential river, swollen by seasonal rains. The narration informs us again and again that this is perilous and extremely dangerous, but this is clearly just this dude's normal life so he, the actual fisherman, is totally nonchalant as he breezes across a tightrope slung over the mighty river in his little blue flip-flops. Anyway, we then skip over to a frozen ice floe which some kids mustwalk down (for six days!) to get to school. It really makes me appreciate the ten-minute drive to school I had as a kid, although perhaps these kids take their education a bit more seriously as a result? We then take a break with Canadians who must break up 2-foot-thick ice before it causes trouble with a nearby bridge. Of course, they just use dynamite, but not before cutting the ice up with some impressive buzz-saws. We then travel to more dusty climes as camel-herders follow elephants to find the easiest access-points to the water table beneath a dried-up riverbed. When the camel-herders return to their village, we see them descend into a Stygian hole which is their village well. Well, well. We then see villagers repairing a thousands-of-years-old mud mosque with a mixture of river-bed mud and fermented rice husks. The kids of the village help and then sling mud at each other with infectious glee. Finally we hit (what was for me) the climax: the perpetually wet, mountain-top land of Meghalaya, where the rains erratically cause flooding, washing away all man-made bridges. So, the people build living root bridges with the roots of the strangler fig. These bridges take more than a single human's life to complete and look like a fucking fantasy illustration. Amazing. Human superpower: craftily farming turtles to turn algae into a more human-accessible food-stuff (ie: turtle meat.)

Episode 8 - Cities
We end in cities, a welcome change for me from the nomads of the desert and veldt. Like the Planet Erath series however, this final episode contains a heavy dose of the moralizing usually hovering just out of frame in a normal episode. We start with a thorough examination fo how humans and animals live together in cities: peregrine falcons hunting pigeons in Dubai, and the Bishnoi women breastfeeding (incredibly adorable) baby gazelles. We also see the dark side, with rats in New York City and bed bugs in London. We are given the sterling example of an experimental city being built in the desert somewhere (I didn't catch it, but probably Dubai) which is self-sustaining, burning waste for energy and harvesting solar energy for their (no-doubt) self-driving electric cars. This is green high-tech which is an uncomfortable fit next to the show's adulation of elephant-powered logging and fig-root bridges and so on. Also in this episode is a cop on a segway, frightening the invading caribou. We also see an urban beekeeper, teaching his quirky, twee clients how to raise bees. We then see an extended sequence of tilt-shifted, fast-motion loading/unloading boats and trucks, as people teem around groceries and so on. I'm reminded of the Mayans. So, can't we all live together, the show asks, us and the animals? It doesn't sound so bad, I guess, so long as I have my computers and my internet.

The Sum of Us

Saw The Sum of Us, a slice-of-life drama about Harry, a retired dude looking for love, and his gay son Jeffrey who lives with him. The film came out in the early 90s, so Harry's tolerance of his son's sex life is treated as an immensely exotic thing. Jeffrey's life takes up a good deal of the film (he even narrates the opening back-story) but Harry is the protagonist essentially, explaining his son's actions to us in direct-to-the-camera monologues and eventually reaching a grand crescendo of emotion as he thinks about his own love life, his son's love life, and as he recalls the way he treated his own mother's late-life homosexuality.

The film is intensely emotional and touching. Its rough and kidding exterior gives way to live-theater-style familiarity (direct-to-the-camera monologues) and the sort of lame comic relief that only adds to the pathos. The film holds up very well despite showing its age here and there. There is (thank god) no gay-bashing scene and there is only minimal talk of AIDS. The fundamental message of tolerance is an enduring one, even though the intolerance on display already seems a bit overly cave-man-ish.

This is a film for straight people though. I found it sort of fun and comforting but it's almost always pleading for tolerance and acceptance which is of course preaching to the choir for me. Jeffrey's character is a respectable homosexual which straight audiences can accept, to wit, a completely straight-acting and straight-looking plumber played by Russell Crowe. Harry's tolerance is exaggerated to the point of over-compensation. At one point Jeffrey brings a guy home and Harry wants to make him feel welcome and approved-of. Very sweet but by the time Harry's giving the poor dude porno mags "just to get him started" I started to wonder just how far Harry's affection went. Overbearing, I suppose was the enviable alternative to hostility.

A sweet film, full of love and acceptance. It wants to change minds but of course no one's going to buy a ticket for a film they think they'll disagree with. A bit cheesy in parts but never too egregious, it's a friendly little movie about friendly little gays who just want some understanding please.

Make Way for Tomorrow

Saw Make Way for Tomorrow, a beautiful, sentimental old film from the 30s about an old couple who have their house seized by the bank. The film was made just after social security began existing in the States and while FDR was still president. Sympathy for the penniless was thick in the air. Sure enough, this film is about the ungrateful able-bodied children of the old couple turning their backs on them. The film is an extended plea for tolerance and understanding and is therefore a tragedy (in spite of the profoundly stupid meddling of studio heads at the time, if imdb trivia is to be trusted.)

The film is a Norman Rockwell picture come to life, full of the adorable dignity of old folks and faded glory. Everyone is sympathetic, the old folks being irascible and frustrating. I felt they really shouldn't have made such a nuisance of themselves, but of course this is only because I'm weak and frightened and want to think that if ever I had to impose on younger relations that I wouldn't be much of a bother, as the couple in this picture ceaselessly claim. This was a film made in hard times which may be slowly returning. Definitely a message piece, it wants us to value our elders, not for any gain we get out of them, but for their own sakes, because we love them. Orson Welles said of this film that it would make a stone cry. He's not wrong.

The Cove

Saw The Cove, a documentary about an annual dolphin slaughter which occurs in Taiji, Japan every year much to the dismay of environmentalists and apparently without the permission or knowledge of anyone at all. Most of the film is taken up with behind-the-scenes shots of the making of the film itself. The dolphin slaughter actually occurs in a secluded cove which is surrounded by steep cliffs and is staunchly protected by local fishermen and police. To merely film the slaughter was a monumental task spanning five years. The heist itself, involving drones, infrared cameras, deep-water divers, and Hollywood model-makers, is pretty crazy. It's too chaotically filmed to really know what's going on, but of course that's not the point of the film.

Like most environmental films, this is not a happy picture. In a credits montage the filmmakers tally their victories mostly in firings of mouthpieces and in small symbolic acts (some schoolchildren do not get fed dolphin meat.) The film also does not convincingly explain why the dolphins are hunted. Every explanation is met with a head-shaking rebuttal. Perhaps the dolphins are eaten? They shouldn't be: they contain high levels of mercury. Perhaps the dolphins are devouring too much tuna/bass/etc? They can't possibly be eating more than human beings and furthermore if we upset the aquatic ecosystem by removing a top predator, we'll damage the fish supply far worse than the dolphins do. And on and on.

The film is a call to arms and thus cannot reassure us. It talks at great length of the majesty and intelligence of the dolphin, suggesting even that they are more intelligent than humans (but that's ridiculous of course. If they're so smart, how come they don't have cellphones?) The activists are lionized as they weeping at the cruelty of the dolphin-slaughter and as they skate around local officials who seek to arrest them. It's fairly effective.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)

Sa The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) (thanks, Chris!) It was a recording of a live production of the play by the same name, in which three dudes reenact all of Shakespeare's plays in the most frantic, high-energy manner, prefacing each one with a small discussion of the play or a bit of fire eating. It's very fast-paced and ridiculous. The jokes are not particularly witty but they are delivered at high volume, so it's jolly fun anyway. The actors look like they're having a whale of a time and the audience is all slightly nervous smiles.

The audience, by the way, is interacted with to within an inch of its life. It must be a hell of show to see live though, of course, not one you want to sit too near the front for. For the most part the audience was game, even merrily booing a lame joke near the end. It felt very high-school-y to me. The jokes are broad and topical, they acknowledge the more obscure plays but hand-wave them away as boring. But to be frank they are mostly boring, and broad and simple as the jokes in this show are, it's entertaining. Like a good loaf of bread, it's unpretentious but enjoyable. In keeping with my memories of high-school performances however, I found myself cringing through a lot of it. Every so often the audience shots show someone stonily playing along and I felt sympathy. It's mostly entertaining with a hint of direness in parts.

May

Saw May, a dark comedy about a quirky girl named May. She sews her own clothes and, due to a lazy eye, never had many friends as a child. She collects dolls and works at an animal hospital. So clearly she's caring, quirky, kind of arts-n-craftsy and single. This film came out in early the 2000s, a time rich with quirky comedies about quirky boys and girls falling in unconventional but oh so a-dork-able love. In this film however, May is clearly extremely, violently, dangerous. She stares at the world through a tight-lipped smile, complementing people's body parts in creepy ways ("I like your hands!") and telling "hilarious" stories about a dog's intestines falling out. She's the dark shadow of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

I really dug the film. All of the characters are these annoyingly precious alternative kooks, who love horror movies and who have café-style booths in their homes. They view May as another kook, ready to be mined for memorable experiences and sex and home-made clothing. They're not wrong, it's just they didn't expect it to be this different. The concept is just great.

The film is lacking in many areas aside from the concept however. Many moments feel very forced and there's a hot lesbian co-worker who's always hitting on May in a whiny, baby-girl sort of way. It felt kind of gross to me. Also there's some business with May volunteering a school for the blind that's thematic in many ways (how kooky!) but is clearly not thought out very well. Adults don't actually let fragile delicate crazy flowers around disabled children. All that said, the scenes involving May are always great and the scene where she finally snaps pretty much saves the movie for me. So the film's lumpy in parts with a couple limp scenes and confusing performances but it's atmospheric and moody and has such a great idea that I enjoyed it anyway.