Southland Tales

Saw Southland Tales. It was nuts! Overstuffed with plot, imagery, and allusion in the spirit of The Invisibles, Tank Girl, and Transmetropolitan. Jesus figures, twins, fiercely political pron stars, inexplicable dwarfs (because of course inexplicable dwarfs,) a Watchmen-style ubiquitous smiley face, even a strangely prescient government spying program. On top of all of this awesome nonsense it features performances from Amy Poehler, Dwayne-The-Rock-Johnson, the always-up-for-a-bit-of-weirdness Wallace Shawn, and a bible-verse quoting Justin Timberlake.

This film comes from the same director as Donnie Darko, a film which I didn't like very much. I didn't like Donnie Darko because I saw the absurdity and artistic experiments in it and mistakenly assumed it was trying for (and failing to achieve) some level of profundity. Really it was just trying something new and I expected too much from what was really a grab-bag of intriguing techniques and ideas. Similarly with this film it's easy to mistake this for having (or intending to have) some kind of profound point. There is no profundity here, just amazing visuals and rampant, overwhelming absurdity. This movie is bullshit. Amazing, amazing bullshit.

Klassikko

Saw Klassikko. It was I think a comedy about an unknown writer who goes through life-changing lengths to gain notoriety for his new book. To this end, he first adopts a kind of rock-a-billy persona which he bases on a be-mulletted man he glimpses one day. This be-mulletted man becomes a major character. somehow the writer knows everything about his life. They covet each other's cars and eventually engage in a race across Finland's highways. They wind up in the clutches of a hilarious police man who calls drunk drivers "clients" and scolds other policemen for bad-mouthing them ("without these daring men, life would be like a sterile laboratory!") There's also some funny business with an car salesman who is obsessed with a certain news anchor.

The end of this film reaches an awesomely bizarre and goofy climax, but getting there takes a bit of work. It's not particularly funny, but kind of breathlessly wacky in the manner of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (though, as I say, much of the humor is kind of lost in translation.) A strange movie.

Dekalog VI

Saw Dekalog VI, Thou shalt not commit adultery. A lot of sex in this one. Nothing too crazy though (this is TV after all.) The plot follows a boy who is obsessed with and spies on his across-the-courtyard neighbor, an adult woman who is perhaps an artist and who has many boyfriends. In this post-Hitchcock land, it's always more interesting (and entertaining) to imagine a voyeur as a kind of audience stand-in. to aid us in this endeavor, the boy is cast as a kind of camera early on. One of our first shots of him is through a teller window, his eyes perfectly framed by the little circular hole in the plexiglass. The woman's apartment has this strange fish-eye lens in the window which, although it's never the center of a frame or anything, none the less renders many of her bedroom scenes as little play-house dioramas. The boy later reveals he has excellent memory and can play back any scene he wants to in his head. I felt an homage to Hitchcock's Rear Window in certain scenes, but it may be referencing something slightly more general than Hitchcock specifically.

Of course the peeping tom situation comes to light and the woman exacts fittingly ironic revenge by letting him be her boyfriend for a bit. He is of course completely out of his depth and terrified. He leaves her in a panic and she, fearing for his safety, becomes his watcher/pursuer in the end. One of the last shots is of her eyes framed by the plexiglass hole. Very fun.

But then there's also this adultery thing. Disaster seems to befall the pair when they get closer together. Neither of them really betray the love of anyone else. In a way perhaps she betrays him by dating and pursuing him? This seems a bit shoddy though, blaming the victim for seeking satisfaction from her stalker. True, her actions are not 100% moral (which 100% moral action would be to forgive) but this doesn't seem right to me. Does he betray his love for her by interfering with her life and revealing his obsession with her? This isn't really satisfying to me either. There is also some business with milk and a pendulum that I don't understand. A nice diorama image of her arm holding out this pendulum, btw.

I think I got too distracted and hung up on the "boy = camera" theme-spotting fun. Too bad. At least I have better subs now! I was driven to seek out new subs when an non-correctable error in mine made one subtitle show up for 2 solid minutes while rapid, untranslated dialogue flowed.

Edit: check out the imdb review. I can only aspire to such heights of pretension. "abusive collector of undue slices of reality" indeed.

Prince of Darkness

Saw Prince of Darkness. It was a ripping old horror from the 80s. It's never terribly scary (tense at a few moments, but not bad on the whole) and kooky science abounds ('a message from the future!' 'Must be tachyons.') which ordinarily causes nerd-rage in me, but the point of this film is clearly not to educate but to amuse and surprise so alright. I also liked the colossal computers and pointless hardware. There's kind of a shitty moment when one of the characters seem to imply the homeless are 'lesser animals.' OK. The rest of the film is fun and surprising, keeping the imagery coming at a good enough clip.

I also want to highlight the film's music. That synthed-out soundtrack is so typical of the horror-themed puzzle-games that I used to love in grade school.

There is the usual ambiguously bad ending Carpenter delights in. His 'twist' endings make the film a bit more chaotic, but I find them to be also a bit contrived and cheap, like the inevitable twists at the end of Twilight zone episodes. Horror generally works better the more unpredictable it is, so though it's annoying to see the expected 'or is it?!?'-style ending, it's refreshing to see that Carpenter eschews the prim morality found in many horrors of the era (the only couple to have sex, for example, survive quite long.) Fun, imaginative, silly movie.

Pride and Prejudice

Saw Pride and Prejudice (thanks, Kim!) Its punches were a bit pulled for me, as I am fairly familiar with the TV mini-series. It is not shocking to me that X falls in love with Y after all or what have you. Refreshingly, in this period-piece there is almost no silly are-they-or-aren't-they and instead the more imperative will-they-or-won't-they (the questions have become essentially synonymous in modern rom-com.) I wish they had stuck closer to the cliff-hangers of the plot however. When Elizabeth finishes her epic rejection of Mr Darcy they have this weird almost-kissing moment, which kind of undercuts the preceding awesome tirade. I think we are meant to be reassured, but I would rather have been left in suspense.

Tremendously fun in the margins, this film has excellent business (the mother swinging her legs, Mr Collins' banal horribleness) that it shows off here and there. I'm of course being greedy, but I wish that the humor had been a bit more center stage because what humor there was was perfect. I'm also glad that the attitudes of the characters are accessibly modernized. Only one scene I remember where the girls are talked of as chattel and that one was intended to be distasteful.

My favorite scenes in the film are when it's being swooningly sentimental. There is a scene shot from the inside of Lizzie's closed eyelids that is intimate and wonderful. Later, the camera lazily drifts from window to window, sort of benignly looking in on its occupants. It's a bit treacly but it's artfully done and interesting. A film without any bite, but very sweet, and very kind.

A Serious Man

Saw A Serious Man. It was a troubling Coen brothers film. It ties together questions of morality and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It surrounds a man who seems blessed. All ills which should befall him seem to land elsewhere, usually to his advantage. Instead of becoming happy-go-lucky, he becomes a Dostoyevskian mental-case. He worries that he doesn't deserve this bounty and seeks answers to how to deal with the crushing problem of having no problems. The rabbis from which he seeks answers are in turn absurd, willfully abstruse, and impossibly inaccessible. Meanwhile, through all of this, he is faced with a moral dilemma in the form of a bribe given by a student. The stunning ending seems to answer the riddle of why he is so blessed, but a short shot of this image ambiguously colors the given answer.

The Coens' genius for capturing attention where attention doesn't even seem warranted is on full display. I don't know if it's framing, plotting, scripting ("moral turpitude" what an awesome phrase!) or what it is, but it's great. Little clever nothings of scenes, like when the protagonist climbs onto his roof, there's a shot of blue sky, a ladder rises and falls, then he's on the roof.

Trying to analyze this film is very annoying because a philosophy of apathetic ambiguity is given thematic prominence throughout. Many times our hero is told that it is impossible to fathom the mind of god and to stop worrying and relax. It's tempting to dismiss the entire film in this way: If it's being willfully absurd, why bother? It's so overstuffed with little ideas and themes though, I feel it can't be that simple and disappointing. On the other hand, it's easy to latch too firmly onto one aspect of the film (as I perhaps have at the end of the first paragraph) and miss the forest. There is much machinery to dismantle, and a lot of it seems to be working at cross purposes.

Another cute thing to notice: just before disaster befalls another person, that person starts becoming like the main character in some way: The lover is waiting in the car (setting up this pattern,) his brother keeps shouting "I didn't do anything!" and lastly, his son passes a major milestone in his life.

Alright, off to read some real critics and feel stupid once again!

Talvisota

Saw Talvisota. It was a war movie, a genre I feel I have already thoroughly explored. It follows the usual story arc: fresh-faced recruits become grim warriors, discover war is serious business, have a meaningless and disappointing visit home, witness complete breakdown of rhyme and reason on the front before ending in a victory that maybe (bear with me here) but just maybe wasn't even worth it to begin with? This film does nothing new and a lot that is old. Perhaps it was groundbreaking when it debuted? I've had books and films spoiled for me before by too-frequent homages and thefts by later works (The Hobbit, Citizen Kane, and The Maltese Falcon come to mind in this regard.)

As it stands, this film is about three brothers who go to war. Once shit begins seriously hitting the fan, they all become permanently coated with a shifting layer of dust, grime, and beard. Unfortunately at this point I am no longer able to tell them apart, or even distinguish them from their non-sibling comrades. I believe they die one by one with possibly one last brother surviving. I have no idea really, because apart from one bald character, I couldn't tell them apart at all. I'm only slightly embarrassed about this because (in my arrogance) I feel I already know everything a relatively honest war film has to say. War is a senseless waste which is abhorrent to human nature, there is absolutely nothing ennobling or moral about it, and the combatants ultimately become so dehumanized that by the end they are merely cringing mammals, reacting arbitrarily to stimuli. Being subjected to the same thesis, told in a variety of doleful ways, could be viewed as a metaphor for war itself. It is repetitive, numbing, and unending. I have yet to begin sawing through a list of war movies.

Hopefully I'll look back at the above someday and cringe at how badly I missed the point. I really hope there's more to be said about war by someone, someday. I hate to relegate an entire genre to irrelevance (especially as we are in fact currently in a war, as we have been somewhere or other, continually, for the past 13 years.) I hope the above is just sophomoric reaction to the raw horror of war, and that I'm wrong about war films. I guess I'll see what the future holds.