Saw A Brief History of Time, an Errol Morris documentary. It dovetails a biography of Stephen Hawking with a biography of the universe as understood by Hawking. His life is an interesting mix of triumph and pathos. The documentary closes with a stirring quote from Hawking, that if we could answer the question of why we exist, then that would be the ultimate triumph of human reasoning for then we should know the mind of god. This is juxtaposed with an image of the back of Hawking's wheelchair, set against a field of stars. His ironic vanity license plate and giant bulky speech synthesizers are placed in mute opposition to his grand words. They make him seem fragile and faintly ridiculous even while his words fire our imaginations.
Throughout the documentary, Hawking's illustrative physics metaphors are given dramatic weight by suddenly returning to Hawking's biography. He explains entropy by pointing out that we see teacups fall and shatter, but we never see the pieces reassemble into a teacup and leap up onto the table. The film shows a shattered teacup and then launches into the story of how Hawking finally lost his ability to speak. The imagery is clear. The teacup lays shattered. Hawking will not speak again. Later he tells us how he mistakenly believed that time would run backwards when the universe started collapsing. "It is no good waiting for the universe to collapse to return to our youth" he poignantly jokes.
But the film is not only gloomy ruminations on paralysis. There is also the science, which seemingly gives the whole thing a purpose (and also I loved the delightful super-nerds that surround Hawking.) We learn that, prior to the paralysis, Hawking was brilliant but directionless and indolent. It took the sickness to motivate him to work. His sickness and the nebulous death of the universe are symbolically linked in the film which seems to imply a great and vital journey for humankind. The film lacks a satisfying conclusion (which would be either a nice, soundbite-ready explanation of fundamental truths of the universe or, more simply, Hawking's death) but by ending here we go out on a high note. Fascinating usage of non-fiction in this film. This is the reason Errol Morris is so renowned.
Jan 29, 2014
Jan 27, 2014
Away We Go
Saw Away We Go. It was about this guy and girl, married and pregnant, trying to find a place to put down roots. They travel around North America, visiting friends and family and sampling the various cities they come across. The story is therefore of the road-trip archetype. They kind of rush from one place to another meeting hilariously awful people and running away from them. There's a lot of cameos from various strange people. They also deal with their baby-angst and their evolving relationship.
The central couple themselves are believable. She is sensible but fretful, he is silly but slightly obnoxious (they're having a daughter and on her father's behalf, I preemptively fear her terrible teenage scorn.) Together they are adorable and sweet. At the emotional climax, things do become a bit too treacly. This couple is in such good shape, all that's left is for them to reach out their hands and select a home from anywhere that they wish. They are poor, true, but they have enough to survive and are quirky and hip and awesome. So, we watch an already good situation merely improve.
The above are all complaints, but I liked the film nonetheless. It's really sweet and I guess I just wanted some sweetness. There's also some well-observed moments (contemplating the move, they worry about being fuck-ups. I feel the fear of being a fuck-up is the defining trait of a certain generation.) and there's a lot of really funny bits too. The first family they meet are ruled by this heinous woman who believes (for some reason) that her children cannot hear her and speaks freely about all the times she would have left her hubby but for the kids and the wedding vow. Later, she makes a move on the guy-main-character. Another couple is a parody of the Hathor Cow-Goddess types. They are creepy and sneeringly 'enlightened' and hilarious. They condemn them for not having a midwife before realizing that, as poor people, they of course couldn't have known any better. A lot of humor to be had here. Later, as I say, it becomes kinda twee, but it's a heck of a ride. (bonus Hathor!)
The central couple themselves are believable. She is sensible but fretful, he is silly but slightly obnoxious (they're having a daughter and on her father's behalf, I preemptively fear her terrible teenage scorn.) Together they are adorable and sweet. At the emotional climax, things do become a bit too treacly. This couple is in such good shape, all that's left is for them to reach out their hands and select a home from anywhere that they wish. They are poor, true, but they have enough to survive and are quirky and hip and awesome. So, we watch an already good situation merely improve.
The above are all complaints, but I liked the film nonetheless. It's really sweet and I guess I just wanted some sweetness. There's also some well-observed moments (contemplating the move, they worry about being fuck-ups. I feel the fear of being a fuck-up is the defining trait of a certain generation.) and there's a lot of really funny bits too. The first family they meet are ruled by this heinous woman who believes (for some reason) that her children cannot hear her and speaks freely about all the times she would have left her hubby but for the kids and the wedding vow. Later, she makes a move on the guy-main-character. Another couple is a parody of the Hathor Cow-Goddess types. They are creepy and sneeringly 'enlightened' and hilarious. They condemn them for not having a midwife before realizing that, as poor people, they of course couldn't have known any better. A lot of humor to be had here. Later, as I say, it becomes kinda twee, but it's a heck of a ride. (bonus Hathor!)
Jan 26, 2014
O Thiasos
Saw O Thiasos, a war film. It follows a troupe of traveling actors and musicians in Greece from 1939 to sometime in the late 40s. Things get rough. The most central character seems to be a woman whose mother and father are the leads of the group. She develops an intense hatred for one of the other actors after her mother cheats on her father with him. He rats the father out to the secret police, she rats him out to the rebels. We watch her turn from innocent naif to a hardened politico. Eventually, it starts to feel too pointless to her to continue to care this passionately and she starts up the troupe again.
This film is founded on the principal that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Dues are payed to the ravages of war of course. Several of the actors suffer greatly (or just die.) One becomes a raving, half-mad Marxist. Another recounts how he was broken, body and soul, in the POW camps. This suffering, we feel, cannot be meaningless, but over and over the film repeats the image of a sound-truck blaring slogans to re-elect Papagos (and later Papandreou.) The fascists, the communists, and the British occupation all surge back and forth, at one point literally claiming and reclaiming a street, seemingly only differentiated by the uniforms of their thugs.
I don't know why the film chose actors as our avatars. There's something interesting and meta-level going on here certainly. At two points the actors directly address the camera. The film opens with one of the actors introducing a play (in my innocence, I hoped this would be a lighthearted paean to show-business.) One of the actor-assassinations takes place on stage and the audience applauds, thinking it part of the show. The central woman is often an uninvolved spectator, present for no clear reason. Perhaps we are meant to understand that the actors, as stage-people, are allowed to pass behind the curtain (so to speak.) They only preform one play over and over (though we never see them get all the way through it) but this meshes with the cyclic nature of history that the film presents. The play is perhaps meant to be their culture as the old guard dies and is replaced by fresh youths.
An interesting film, but I must warn you it's 4 hours long. Tough to get through in one sitting, I wish I'd had someone to watch it with and to bounce ideas off of. Also, I'm getting sick of WW2 and Nazis. I fear for the sake of my poor patience if many more Nazi-films are in the pipeline.
This film is founded on the principal that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Dues are payed to the ravages of war of course. Several of the actors suffer greatly (or just die.) One becomes a raving, half-mad Marxist. Another recounts how he was broken, body and soul, in the POW camps. This suffering, we feel, cannot be meaningless, but over and over the film repeats the image of a sound-truck blaring slogans to re-elect Papagos (and later Papandreou.) The fascists, the communists, and the British occupation all surge back and forth, at one point literally claiming and reclaiming a street, seemingly only differentiated by the uniforms of their thugs.
I don't know why the film chose actors as our avatars. There's something interesting and meta-level going on here certainly. At two points the actors directly address the camera. The film opens with one of the actors introducing a play (in my innocence, I hoped this would be a lighthearted paean to show-business.) One of the actor-assassinations takes place on stage and the audience applauds, thinking it part of the show. The central woman is often an uninvolved spectator, present for no clear reason. Perhaps we are meant to understand that the actors, as stage-people, are allowed to pass behind the curtain (so to speak.) They only preform one play over and over (though we never see them get all the way through it) but this meshes with the cyclic nature of history that the film presents. The play is perhaps meant to be their culture as the old guard dies and is replaced by fresh youths.
An interesting film, but I must warn you it's 4 hours long. Tough to get through in one sitting, I wish I'd had someone to watch it with and to bounce ideas off of. Also, I'm getting sick of WW2 and Nazis. I fear for the sake of my poor patience if many more Nazi-films are in the pipeline.
Jan 25, 2014
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Saw Night of the Living Dead, the 1968 version. It was the by now familiar tale of survivors banding together to stop the zombie horde, or at least survive the night. It hits all the right notes: unrelenting grimness, one of the survivors 'turning' after a little bite, telephone wires somehow cut, cars always low on gas, hands reaching through boarded-up windows. All of these have now become genre staples and so they seemed a bit worn out to me. But you must remember that this is the film all the subsequent films tried to copy, and the reason for that is that it all works together really well. Like the inner workings of a toilet, it is obvious, but only once you've seen it in action.
The film starts with a woman and a black dude (who actually survives quite a while) holed up in a farmhouse. She is so irritatingly shell-shocked by the zompocalypse that she can barely stop from breaking down (all women in this movie are completely useless, btw. Ah, the 60s. They were a simpler time.) He industriously tries to board up the house and gather information. Whereas his actions are more understandable to us as serene audience-members, as an armchair psychologist I think her reaction is the more realistic. I liked this mix of realism and story-necessitated fantasy. Rather than feeling like hedging, I feel it lets us eat our cake and have it too. Eventually they discover more survivors and try to gas up the car and we shift into the phase of the film where it looks like they might survive.
As per the zombie formula the plan goes slightly awry due (in part) to societal tensions which develop among the survivors. We become not only scared of the recently dead, but also of our friends, the soon-to-be dead. I've never been entirely comfortable with the zombie genre's emphasis on social paranoia, guns, and back-woods outposts. It's very fun to see the survivors building forts but less fun when they inevitably screw everything up in the third act. I think the frustration of seeing them fail is part of the shitty grimness of the zombie-movie but for once I'd like to see them live (and not in a "yes they lived, but the whole world is doomed" sort of way that I'm sure I've seen before.)
Edit: What the actual hilarious fuck Reader's Digest?
The film starts with a woman and a black dude (who actually survives quite a while) holed up in a farmhouse. She is so irritatingly shell-shocked by the zompocalypse that she can barely stop from breaking down (all women in this movie are completely useless, btw. Ah, the 60s. They were a simpler time.) He industriously tries to board up the house and gather information. Whereas his actions are more understandable to us as serene audience-members, as an armchair psychologist I think her reaction is the more realistic. I liked this mix of realism and story-necessitated fantasy. Rather than feeling like hedging, I feel it lets us eat our cake and have it too. Eventually they discover more survivors and try to gas up the car and we shift into the phase of the film where it looks like they might survive.
As per the zombie formula the plan goes slightly awry due (in part) to societal tensions which develop among the survivors. We become not only scared of the recently dead, but also of our friends, the soon-to-be dead. I've never been entirely comfortable with the zombie genre's emphasis on social paranoia, guns, and back-woods outposts. It's very fun to see the survivors building forts but less fun when they inevitably screw everything up in the third act. I think the frustration of seeing them fail is part of the shitty grimness of the zombie-movie but for once I'd like to see them live (and not in a "yes they lived, but the whole world is doomed" sort of way that I'm sure I've seen before.)
Edit: What the actual hilarious fuck Reader's Digest?
Jan 24, 2014
Jackie Brown
Saw Jackie Brown (thanks, Mike!) it was a Quentin Tarantino heist film. The indomitable Miss Brown, an ex-smuggling air hostess, sits coolly at the center of a labyrinthine plot involving a gun-running Samuel L Jackson, his stoned girlfriend and criminal friend, a bondsman and the good men at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The heist is tense and revisited from several angles, so we can see from more and more omniscient viewpoints what, exactly, goes down. The film is fun and satisfying with a Swiss-watch feeling of exactness to its cuts and pans, but it also manipulates and shifts the audiences sympathies cleverly enough to tincture the fun with something interesting.
The film is not very heavy in Tarantino's quirks. Yeah, there's a single close-up of feet for no damn reason and old funk & RnB out the wazoo, but it's not nearly as self-indulgent as Deathproof was (no pretty women suffer ridiculously, for example.) True to form however, the film takes place smack-dab in the middle of a moral no man's land. Jackie is obviously conniving to keep as much as possible of a massive shipment of cash to herself. We start off in her corner. She seems, at first, like a tough but decent lady. Soon, however, she starts shifting alliances as easily as she changes outfits. She is sneaky and cut-throat, only redeeming herself when we see where her roulette wheel finally stops, and yet we are firmly on her side. I was really hoping she wouldn't wind up allied with Samuel L because he's the villain and I want to continue to like Jackie. But what has Sam done that's so wrong? If that money belongs to anyone it is him and he's only looking out for himself, as Jackie is. There's a feeling that Jackie doesn't want to hurt any more people than she has to, but she connives to murder sometimes and Sam's feelings for a downed comrade seem genuine.
I am perhaps forcing this moral relativism (it is my pet theory that that's what Tarantino is largely about, moral relativism) but I did sometimes felt sympathy for Sam and sometimes was uncomfortable with how easily Jackie manipulated everyone. Far from detracting, however, this adds some spice to the story which I believe is at heart a good old heist movie, full of fun and surprises. Who comes out on top is pretty much (though of course not totally!) a forgone conclusion, but it's so much fun seeing how they pull it off. It has shades of blaxploitation as well (look no farther than the title) and may be homage-ing things I don't know about. Ok. Enough. Good movie.
The film is not very heavy in Tarantino's quirks. Yeah, there's a single close-up of feet for no damn reason and old funk & RnB out the wazoo, but it's not nearly as self-indulgent as Deathproof was (no pretty women suffer ridiculously, for example.) True to form however, the film takes place smack-dab in the middle of a moral no man's land. Jackie is obviously conniving to keep as much as possible of a massive shipment of cash to herself. We start off in her corner. She seems, at first, like a tough but decent lady. Soon, however, she starts shifting alliances as easily as she changes outfits. She is sneaky and cut-throat, only redeeming herself when we see where her roulette wheel finally stops, and yet we are firmly on her side. I was really hoping she wouldn't wind up allied with Samuel L because he's the villain and I want to continue to like Jackie. But what has Sam done that's so wrong? If that money belongs to anyone it is him and he's only looking out for himself, as Jackie is. There's a feeling that Jackie doesn't want to hurt any more people than she has to, but she connives to murder sometimes and Sam's feelings for a downed comrade seem genuine.
I am perhaps forcing this moral relativism (it is my pet theory that that's what Tarantino is largely about, moral relativism) but I did sometimes felt sympathy for Sam and sometimes was uncomfortable with how easily Jackie manipulated everyone. Far from detracting, however, this adds some spice to the story which I believe is at heart a good old heist movie, full of fun and surprises. Who comes out on top is pretty much (though of course not totally!) a forgone conclusion, but it's so much fun seeing how they pull it off. It has shades of blaxploitation as well (look no farther than the title) and may be homage-ing things I don't know about. Ok. Enough. Good movie.
Jan 23, 2014
Inland Empire
Saw Inland Empire. It was amazing. David Lynch's films all take place in a sort of nightmarish nether-world. In the beginning of this film, a possibly crazy woman pays a call on her neighbor, a rich actress. Long awkward pauses and our sympathetic uncertainty about exactly when it's polite to kick out a crazy woman prepare us for the rest of this film. This film takes place in these anxious places where normal society just begins to break down. And then the crazy woman completely accurately predicts the future which we are suddenly in. (Notice, there's no big reveal that the crazy woman is psychic here. We may be inside her fantasy from now on, we may be seeing through the eyes of the bewitched actress, or possibly the woman predicted the future. This is yet more queasy, understated uncertainty.)
The plot (or rather, the lowest-hanging bits of the plot) follow the rich actress as she starts in a new movie. It turns out this movie is actually a remake of an ill-fated Polish film where the lead actor and actress were allegedly murdered. The actress begins to have feelings for her co-star, but her rich, jealous, mob-affiliated husband keeps a jealous eye on her. We think we see where this is going. But of course, no, now she's a poor woman living with her poor husband, now she's a whore indolently lounging on the floor of her tiny home, laughing fraternally with her whore-friends. Throughout it all we flash back to a Polish prostitute who is crying and watching a wierd TV show about rabbit-people. But the Polish prostitute may only be a character in a radio play. These stories intertwine and overlap in confusing, cryptic, ominous ways.
Everything in the film is repeated at least twice. The rabbits, for example, come up again in conversation: the actress's husband kept horses and rabbits for a circus. At the circus there is a man who would hypnotize the audience. There is a woman who claims to be hypnotized with orders to kill someone. This woman horrifyingly reveals she has a screwdriver stuck in her abdomen. The actress's husband invites his circus friends to a weenie roast, where he spills ketchup all over his abdomen. The film is full of meaningless dream-associative chains like this. There is a feeling of almost-logic to it which makes me feel deliciously as though I've lost my mind. David Lynch's films are like nightmares where nothing really makes sense and everything is vaguely unpleasant.
There's great fun to be had arguing interpretations of what's "realy" going on in Lynch's films (I personally believe this film to be the Polish prostitute's fantasy, borne of feelings of rage and envy stirred by an insipid cheating-on-hubby drama she was watching on TV.) but I think they are really best enjoyed with the mystery fully intact. Just enjoy the confusion, the hostile world of conspiracies and omens. They are sensual and terrible and wonderfully rewarding.
The plot (or rather, the lowest-hanging bits of the plot) follow the rich actress as she starts in a new movie. It turns out this movie is actually a remake of an ill-fated Polish film where the lead actor and actress were allegedly murdered. The actress begins to have feelings for her co-star, but her rich, jealous, mob-affiliated husband keeps a jealous eye on her. We think we see where this is going. But of course, no, now she's a poor woman living with her poor husband, now she's a whore indolently lounging on the floor of her tiny home, laughing fraternally with her whore-friends. Throughout it all we flash back to a Polish prostitute who is crying and watching a wierd TV show about rabbit-people. But the Polish prostitute may only be a character in a radio play. These stories intertwine and overlap in confusing, cryptic, ominous ways.
Everything in the film is repeated at least twice. The rabbits, for example, come up again in conversation: the actress's husband kept horses and rabbits for a circus. At the circus there is a man who would hypnotize the audience. There is a woman who claims to be hypnotized with orders to kill someone. This woman horrifyingly reveals she has a screwdriver stuck in her abdomen. The actress's husband invites his circus friends to a weenie roast, where he spills ketchup all over his abdomen. The film is full of meaningless dream-associative chains like this. There is a feeling of almost-logic to it which makes me feel deliciously as though I've lost my mind. David Lynch's films are like nightmares where nothing really makes sense and everything is vaguely unpleasant.
There's great fun to be had arguing interpretations of what's "realy" going on in Lynch's films (I personally believe this film to be the Polish prostitute's fantasy, borne of feelings of rage and envy stirred by an insipid cheating-on-hubby drama she was watching on TV.) but I think they are really best enjoyed with the mystery fully intact. Just enjoy the confusion, the hostile world of conspiracies and omens. They are sensual and terrible and wonderfully rewarding.
Jan 22, 2014
Eagle vs Shark
Saw Eagle vs Shark, a quirky hipster/indie romantic comedy set in New Zealand. It follows the romance of the man-child Jarred and the saintly but kind of lame Lily. The film opens by showing Lily's infatuation with the be-mullet-ed Jarred. She is attracted because he has a mole just above his lip, just like she does. Eventually, he becomes interested with her after witnessing her natural ability at a Mortal Combat-style game called "Fighting Man." Everyone in the film are nice people who are sort of terrible at what they do. Lily's brother is a cartoonist who is not funny and can't draw. Lily is fired quickly from her job at a fast food joint. Jarred works at a movie store and clearly sees himself as a sensitive ninja/stud. Much comedy is mined from Jarred's delusions.
The dialogue throughout the whole film is sort of flat and emotionless. This dead-pan delivery is familiar to anyone who's seen Flight of the Concords and which I guess is part of the New Zealand culture or something ( this is based on the, like, three non-Peter-Jackson things I've seen that were from New Zealand.) Everything's very quirky. There's also stop-motion interludes following the adventures of the two apple-cores. Very twee and cute. I really don't mind these twee indie films. I'd rather watch a film drip with artificial sincerity than with equally fake, pat, glibness.
A cute little movie, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Napoleon Dynamite (which, I think, this movie is heavily copying/referencing.) There's a touch more pain in this one, but there's more romance too.
The dialogue throughout the whole film is sort of flat and emotionless. This dead-pan delivery is familiar to anyone who's seen Flight of the Concords and which I guess is part of the New Zealand culture or something ( this is based on the, like, three non-Peter-Jackson things I've seen that were from New Zealand.) Everything's very quirky. There's also stop-motion interludes following the adventures of the two apple-cores. Very twee and cute. I really don't mind these twee indie films. I'd rather watch a film drip with artificial sincerity than with equally fake, pat, glibness.
A cute little movie, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Napoleon Dynamite (which, I think, this movie is heavily copying/referencing.) There's a touch more pain in this one, but there's more romance too.
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