Lantana

Saw Lantana, a film about the intersecting lives of four couples, all with complicated relationships. The central theme of the film is trust, and the damage that's done when trust is lost in human relationships. The plot follows the disappearance of the wife of one of the couples. Although the police procedural of the missing woman keeps us grounded, this film is much more about the relationship calculous of long-term relationships. It reminded me a lot of the film Closer. Similarly, it never introduces a new character if an established character would do. For example, one of the husbands, a cop, randomly runs head-first into a man while jogging. This other man later pops up again (for no clear reason) as the boyfriend of another minor character. The central eight characters who make up the four couples run into each other at random, as though they are the only eight people in existence. It's not done lazily or anything, it's just a stylistic choice made to keep us focussed on these particular eight.

Mirroring the central missing-person mystery, the film treats the relationships of the four couples as a mystery as well, slowly revealing key evidence and clues through conversation. The central theme of trust shows up in both the actual mystery and in the relationship "mysteries" which is neat. The central message of the film, that trust is good and the lack of trust is terribly damaging, is unshocking but nicely laid out and framed.

This is an intelligent film about relationships. Unlike more straightforward romances and rom-coms, this is not wish-fulfillment or escapism. I believe these people could exist and I sympathize with them. I feel like I've learned something about relationships myself in some nebulous way. Also there's a gay character which I thought was a nice touch, but alas he doesn't end up very well and isn't a very nice person. The film was made in 2001, so we're not exactly breaking moulds here. Anyway, a sober but ultimately kind-hearted film.

The Awful Truth

Saw The Awful Truth, a 1930s sex comedy. It's about a couple who, plagued with suspicions about each other's fidelity, file for divorce but find that they have so much fun tormenting each other that - well - but that would be telling~! The film is cutesy and goofy, the man played by the ever-silly Cary Grant and the woman played by the humorously suffering Irene Dunne. It's not a bad picture, but very stuffy and overly coy. I also didn't like the viciousness of the protagonists but then I guess that's my age showing or something. I was interested in how seriously Cary Grant is taken. He engages in comic business with the dog and falls over chairs and so on, but his romantic interests are treated with respect as opposed to, say, Harpo Marx's. I don't know how Grant gets away with it, but good on him.

I didn't really like this film very much either. It's funny in an old-fashioned wordy sort of way which is silly and fun but I don't really care about the marriage of these two people who are so cruel to each other. I'm supposed to be enjoying the black-hearted mud slinging but I'm wondering why she should forgive him after humiliating her so badly and vice-versa why he should forgive her for the same. Cary Grant was apparently sure it was going to be flop (I can't blame him) but it was a huge success, comforting people, I suppose, in their own romantic struggles. A cute, fancy little toy film.

Animal House

Saw Animal House, another anarchic college film, celebrating the revolt of the slobs against those wicked snobs. Like Dazed and Confused, and American Graffiti, I didn't think much of it. I thought the protagonists were jerks and that the antagonists were kinda cute in a bland, ken-doll kind of way. The most compelling character was John Belushi's of course, the silent, animalistic creature who smashes a bottle on his own head to cheer up one of his friends, who wordlessly and pointlessly pours mustard on his chest. I don't know if a movie that featured that character would have been better (a little goes a long way with gross out and absurd humor) but the scenes he's in, he steals.

I thought the treatment of Donald Southerland's co-ed-bedding professor was interesting. He's seen as a peer, not as a clueless antagonist. He's a rival for that one girl's affections but he's not an enemy the way the evil Dean is or the way those smirking bastards in Omega Theta Pi are. I think the zeitgeist now has cast professors and experts as out-of-touch wonks and elites, not as friendly pot-providers. Also there's a scene with a passed-out drunk girl that I think would have been underlined a bit more hamfistedly had the film been made today.

I dunno. I think it does the right things and does okay. I wish maybe the female characters had been given more depth, but eh. What do expect for a frat comedy from the 70s? This one left me cold. Too much cruelty I guess. Or maybe I just wasn't in the mood.

The Lobster

Saw The Lobster, a film from the guy who directed Dogtooth, a similarly straight-faced absurdist take on contemporary life. In this film, we're in some extremely formal alternate universe where single people are so despised that they're sent to a hotel to pair up and hunt run-away singles with tranq darts. If the good, hotel-dwelling singles cannot find a mate, they are turned into an animal of their choosing. The hotel is an extremely unpleasant place, full of desperate people and hilariously awful and ham-fisted propaganda extolling the virtues of couple-hood. At a shooting range a waiter leans in to tell the protagonist "It's no coincidence that the targets are shaped like single people, and not couples."

The film's characters have the overly-formal that Wes Anderson's characters do. They say incomprehensible things with completely straight faces. Unlike Wes Anderson however, this is less tightly-shot and far less twee. I loved the iciness of it. The film also has something on its mind about modern romance. The singles constantly refer to some unimportant quirk of theirs such as shortsightedness or a limp and only look for others with the same quirk. I was reminded of the questions on OkCupid or something , determining your selection of future mates from essentially unimportant questions about books and music. On the flip-side are the run-away singles who are just as rigorously controlled. They may never flirt or get romantically involved. The whole thing is so fascinatingly clinical.

Like Dogtooth, I really liked this film. Also like Dogtooth, I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. It's very strange. Fascinating, but unrewarding in a conventional sense. The ending, which is essentially just a giant question mark, I think will especially annoy people. However I also think most people would find it funnier than I did. The film is funny in a way that you don't know how serious it expects you to take it. A compelling and interesting film anyway. As an aside, I really wish they'd shown the hotel for gay people. The opening bit where they inform the protagonist that "bisexual" is not an option at this time is a perfect encapsulation of the film. Funny, heartbreaking, arbitrary, but with an echo of reality.

Shivers

Saw Shivers, an early Cronenberg film. It was a fairly icky film about a worm-like parasite that makes the host organism sexually rapacious. The parasite spreads by leaping from the host's mouth but even so the lust-zombies created by the parasite seem to go for the boobs and junk a lot. It's filmed in the 70s and set in a High-Rise-ish luxury apartment complex. The 70s decor reminds me of sleazy films I've seen (I can't for the life of me remember which ones though. I've seen a documentary on porn in the 70s. Maybe that's what I'm picking up? I've also seen Salo.)

The opening of the film, I feel, lays out the whole thesis. A man and a woman are being shown an apartment by an oily salesman and meanwhile, presumably upstairs, an old man strangles a woman in a school-girl outfit, cuts her clothing off, and pours acid into her abdomen. She is one of the firs sex-zombies we discover, but I think the heart of this film is in the contrast of the glass-and-steel luxury suites vs the ugly sexualized violence going on within. There's a lot of women being attacked and the old horror trope of women being objects of murderous interest is here as well. I had a hard time looking past all of that.

This is a Cronenberg film however, and body horror abounds. The parasites (which resemble flaccid penises) move lumily around in people's abdomens and one central character (played by Cronenberg himself!) tries to make friends with the disease, to become its servant. This is another Cronenberg obsession: the normalizing of the pathological. The parasites were created, we learn, by a mad scientist trying to usher in a new age, where humanity will become beautiful animals, and the earth a never-ending orgy. This is an unpleasant idea but who can say but that it might not get a following?

The ideas are interesting but there's a lot of rape and near-rape and it's all fairly gross. It's unpleasant to watch and it's not clear what statement it's making (if any.) Apparently some contemporary critic decried it as sexist trash and while I don't think it's entirely sexist trash, I can see where they were coming from. An interesting film when viewed through a Cronenberg-ian lens, but might be best to avoid otherwise (unless sex-crazed zombies are your thing in which case go for it!)

Gallipoli

Saw Gallipoli, another WW1 film, this time about an obscure battle between the Turks and the Australians. I can't help but compare this film to yesterday's All Quiet on the Western Front. This one is more modern and shot in beautiful color but is much worse from my point of view. Whereas All Quiet does not focus on one particular battle, this one does. The definiteness and concreteness makes this film much more about a mismanagement of this specific battle. The truth is of course that people dying is precisely what war is designed to accomplish. The accident should not be that our team is dying when they should be killing, but that people in general are being killed full stop!

Anyway, this film was produced by Australian media-goblin Rupert Murdoch and stars Mel Gibson, so I was kind of going in with a grudge. The two central characters are Mel, a drifting laborer who enlists seemingly for lack of anything better to do, and a younger, blond son of a rancher who enlists I think wanting earnestly to fight evil. It was interesting that Mel's character often looks to this kid for guidance. The kid is stalwart and true, but relies on Mel to hunt and gather. I wonder if there were some gay subtext.

The kid is the more idealistic, brave, and cheerful of the two, inspiring a kind of hero worship. Again, war in this film is a sort of grand adventure. As the duo approaches the front line, they see Christmas lights on strings, burning bonfires, a merry scene. A mortar explodes and they grin and whoop with delight. Do they know they are going to die? Moments before the final battle scene in the film, the kid writes a letter home about how everyone on the front is excited and happy. They feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. This does not ring true to me. I believe the horseplay and boredom of the front, the casual attitude towards danger (if not towards death) but to dwell on these things is to make it seem like summer camp.

I've never even held a gun. I don't know what war is like but I doubt that it's like this, with dramatic music cues and gleeful, apple-cheeked camaraderie. I doubt it would be that way for me anyway. I think I would just be killed.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Saw All Quiet on the Western Front, a war story about German soldiers made pre-WW2 in 1930. It's a film about the pointless horrors of war and the blithe manner in which civilians will demand more sacrifices of their boys at the front. There are many powerful sequences. Most of the battles are horrifying and intense, even for such an old film. Unfortunately, this film was made shortly after talkies were developed so many times the protagonist will be delivering some bitter line about what hell life on the front is, but he'll deliver it in a loud, declarative manner, proudly proclaiming where he really should be bitterly mumbling.

This awkwardness aside it really is a good film when no one is talking. Even when they are talking, the substance (if not the delivery) is great. At one point the soldier protagonist returns to his hometown on leave. He's asked to speak before a crowd of students, all in the process of being whipped up into a patriotic frenzy by their teacher. He tells them about how war sucks, how they eat rats and have to murder people with shovel-blades. The students call him coward and shout him down. How can he fight against this mindset? I kept thinking of Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism. These students are being told to embrace death, to celebrate only the honor of the battlefield. How can one soldier convince them that their mind will break under the horrors of war?

Another great scene is the very last scene which superimposes a field of white crosses with an early scene of the soldiers going off to war, their faces turning fearfully back, unsure that their enlistments were wise. This film enraged the Nazis of pre-WW2 Germany, was called overly pro-German by the Polish critics of the time. This film has aged a bit badly but I think it was exactly the right film for the time. Alas, due to studio meddling, it received cuts to make it more palatable to Nazi audiences and indeed some of that declarative delivery makes the characters seem very brave and indeed healthy given that they were apparently starving to death. I could see it easily re-cut to make the war look like a fun little romp, like an important and necessary event which would soon be repeated.