20 August 2012

12 July 2012

The Mill and the Cross

If you ever wondered why looking at stuffy old art can be a "trip," now you know what there is to see in a single painting..... something like Bruegel's updated (for 1564) Passion of the Christ, in his Procession to Calvary.

11 July 2012

12 May 2012

#J.Edgar

More a sad love story than the story of the FBI.

#TheGrey

Would have been more dire with non-synth wolf howls or less dire with a different ending, but as is was middling.

02 May 2012

It's A jungle In There: Joe Johnston's "Jumanji"





In the thirteenth century, a Sanskrit scholar named Sakya pandita Kunga Gyaltsen created a boardgame called "Rebirth" based on the Buddhist conception of the cosmos. In it, players role a die and move around the board through various kinds of incarnations. The goal is to reach nirvana, though the odds are that one will continue to be reborn in less hospitable climes.

By way of the gifted creater of some of the more sophisticated "children's" books in english, Chris Van Allsburg, we now have a major Hollywood film starring Robin Williams (with nary a funny line) that centers around a boardgame that could be "Rebirth"'s distant cousin.

In Jumanji the results of a toss of the dice become a larger-than-life reality. You landed on a square in which a hunter is called upon to hunt you? It's not your symbolic playing piece that takes the bullet. It's you. And the hunter isn't some picture on a playing card. He's flesh and blood--and deadly serious.

From this simple context, Jumanji chronicles the events of a single game of Jumanji. There is some weird witchcraft afoot in new England in 1969. The first role of the dice brings a swarm of bats into the room where the game is being played. The second role removes a player from gameroom and traps him inside the game, in a phantasmagorical jungle. And so on.

A very interesting concept, Jumanji has trouble working as a film. It's too frightening to be a "kids" movie. At the same time, it refuses to pursue the truly creepy character of the material and settles into episodes of generic Hollywoodisms. Was that car chase lifted from Smokey and the Bandit? But the story is intriguing and the plot ripe with metaphoric implications.

Once begun, the players lives are ruled by "random" rolls of the dice. They must continue to play or be trapped forever by monsters they have unleashed by their initial curiosity. How much of our "real" lives are similarly ruled by events we have as much control over as we have over a role of a pair of dice? And to what extent are our lives played out like a game of Jumanji? Begun perhaps through curiosity or boredom (or naivete or politeness or ?), we enter so many of life's interactions somewhat blindly.

Yet, as in Jumanji, our every engagement may promise endless, largely unfathomable repurcussions -- until we have no choice but to participate in horrific situations that we have unwittingly created.

19 April 2012

Turn On, Tune In--And Fight? Katheryn Bigelow's "Strange Days"

Sometimes in the afternoon a face
Looks at us from deep inside a mirror;
Art should be like that mirror
That reveals to us our own face.

from "Ars Poetica," by Jorge Luis Borges (trans. Jim Powell)

I.

Ezra Pound suggested nearly eighty years ago that there are two kinds of outstanding artwork. One kind traverses new territory. It opens to the accepted purvey of art previously closed realms of the human experience. It brings us into contact with new kinds of what Robert Bly calls "news of the universe".

The other kind of outstanding artwork perfects the treatment or utilization of these new realms. The latter achievement cannot occur without the former. And both, Pound (the unrepentant, insufferable-yet- insightful modernist) argued, are more worthy of attention than most other artistic endeavors. The implication is that if a creative expression is not doing something new--nor doing something better than what has been done before--the resulting piece of art has not achieved its potential.

This is not to dismiss efforts that reach neither of these goals. But it is to suggest a starting point from which to understand what detracts from one's appreciation of a piece of art. "It didn't say anything new." Or, "It didn't say something 'old' better than other efforts have."

One of the most difficult kinds of artistic expression to successfully create (if one judges difficulty by the number of partially successful attempts and the scarcity of compelling realizations) is the exploration of the functions of art. Each medium, whether the truly archaic (such as poetry) or the relatively recent (such as the motion picture) has a long list of works dealing with the role of art in the world. Perhaps the most difficult kind of such work examines not only the role of art in general, but the role of its own medium in particular.

Borges, elsewhere in the poem quoted above, writes:

To see in death a dream, and in the sunset A sad gold--such is Poetry, Immortal and poor. Poetry Returns, like the dawn and the sunset.

There are, to be sure, ancient assertions about the role of poetry that touch upon this comparison of poetry's fundamental likeness to an element of the natural world. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes and Hesoid's beseechment of the Muses (who live at the river's source) are two examples. But one could readily argue that Borges achieves what Pound would consider a full realization of this kind of portrayal of poetry. Borges was not the first to broach this subject this way. But one could convincingly argue that his effort--though probably equaled--has not been bettered.

II.

Katheryn Bigelow's new film, Strange Days, now playing in Arcata, is an amalgam sci-fi, action-thriller, film noir. One of the key plot elements revolves around a device called a SQUID. This is a "Superconducting Quantum Interference Device," a bit of virtual reality technology that permits the wearer to experience the events of another person's life in short but absolutely vivid thirty-minute chunks. It's basically a more involving version of the familiar camcorder. But Bigelow's treatment of the SQUID presents an interesting, nearly self- reflexive statement about the role of much art (and, especially, many films) in our society.

Bigelow and James Cameron (the creator of the story and the screenplay's co-author) present an interesting statement about film through a cross-sectional portrayal of the underground world's uses of the SQUID. James Cameron brought us the relatively definitive (and superficial) action filmThe Terminator, and such recent, overblown right-wing big-budget "gems" as True Lies. (Bob Dole suggested that this latter, Schwarzenegger blood-bath was the kind of wholesome entertainment he hoped Hollywood would continue to make.)

SQUID is an "underground" commodity. In December, 1999, the police state is in even more full-swing than in 1995. And this new form of electronic recreation has proved both more addictive than television and much more difficult for Babylon to control.

Ralph Fiennes (as Lenny Nero, fiddling while Rome/L.A. burns?) portrays an ex-L.A.-vice-cop-turned-SQUID-software-hustler. We are introduced to the popular SQUID genres via Fiennes' character. He peddles erotic electronic trips and vicariously experienced gun-point heists to his clients whose social position (lawyers, lawmakers and the like) prevents them from engaging in such activities. To the more impoverished he offers virtual ski vacations at Aspen. Hit the slopes without leaving your tenement couch.

He refuses to provide his clients with "black jacks". These are the SQUID equivalent of "snuff films" and seem to be an acknowledged "market segment". Black jacks are divided into two categories. In the first, the person recording the software died while making the recording (thus letting the "viewer" of the software experience the feelings of the moments before--and at--death). In the second kind of black jack, the point of view is that of a murderer carrying out his deed(s). As with all SQUID material, the events must really take place to be recorded via the perpetrator's/recorder's brain waves.

In scenes reminiscent of old "documentaries" about pornography (in which it was okay to present copies of pornographic material not for its own sake but for the broader purposes of the "documentary"), Bigelow subjects the viewer to experiencing the rape/murder of one of the films characters, from the perspective of the perpetrator. If one is going to portray such a heinous event (and there is ample reason to argue that such a portrayal is never appropriate, no matter what the context nor larger statement being made), it had better do more than just provide another plot device.

Returning to Pound's two kinds of outstanding artwork mentioned above, if a filmmaker is going to show me something I really don't want to see, there had better be a new or supremely well-put statement being made. We already have the previous example of a murderer/filmmaker in the "classic" 1960 Michael Powell film, Peeping Tom. And, more generally, we have the superlative examination of the culpability of voyeuristic tendencies embodied in Hitchcock's Rear Window. I think I must have missed where Bigelow broke new ground or meaningfully investigated this subject.

Barring such a use of this interlude, one is left with the impression that this graphic episode is a plot device--and, perhaps, is intended as entertainment. I didn't care for it and the plot could have worked without it. (S)'nuff said.

In the grander scheme of reflecting one of the trends in the industry (and one of the underground genres that has been with us a while), I suppose that, unfortunately, this rape/murder is not so far removed from the realm of the possible. Bigelow takes an ambiguous attitude towards the episode, but I find her ultimately implicated in the exploitation and glorification of the event. Her main character refuses to deal in "black jacks". But Bigelow readily employs their elements in her film.

III.

In contrast to the overt misogyny expressed in this and other, less blatant parts of Strange Days, some of the racial issues examined speak more constructively. In a scene frightfully reminiscent of that captured on the Rodney King video tapes, the SQUID becomes a potential instrument of social justice as it is inadvertently used to record the vigilante-style execution of a revolutionary rap artist by members of the L.A.P.D. It is in this series of scenes that the potentially beneficial aspects of the SQUID become apparent (as the camcorder became an instrument of social justice in the King beating).

But in this sub-plot, the conclusion is partially absent from the film's scenario. The implication is that, once the evidence of police misconduct is presented to the proper authorities within the law- enforcement establishment, justice will be done. Reality is decidedly more complex than this scenario implies. Certainly the trial of the police officers in the Rodney King incident presents one glaring example. But further than that, we are left with an interesting quandary.

In the absence of a camcorder (or a SQUID), is injustice inevitable? One suspects Rodney King's case would not have gone as far as it did without the video. In Strange Days, the rap star's murder is attributed to gang-land violence (and to the general social mayhem of L.A. in the 1990s in which "execution style murders" are routine). Then the SQUID recording reaches a righteous public official who will bring about justice. The implication is that rogue individuals do evil, and that they can be readily curtailed. This troubles me. It is an unrealistic reflection of the real world, where the "Mark Furhman"s who plant evidence (and who beat the "Rodney King"s) are more prevalent than the occasional, strategically placed video camera and the unfailingly righteous public official.

IV.

But Nero, the disillusioned ex-vice cop at the center ofStrange Days, is only marginally interested in these issues. Sure, he is bothered by the "black jacks". And he understands the implications of the recording of the L.A.P.D. killing a revolutionary hero in cold blood. But in both instances, his interest largely revolves around his ex-lover, Faith (played by Juliette Lewis) and her plight. He worries that she may be the victim in the next snuff clip he receives. And he is willing, at one point, to suppress the evidence of the L.A.P.D.'s crimes if Faith is delivered safely to him.

His use of SQUID involves none of the genres he peddles (or won't peddle) to his customers. He simply relives old memories of the woman who left him, preferring an artificially more pleasant world to the reality of his life. This puts the viewer of Strange Days into an interesting position. Are we, like Nero, groping in the dark at images that have no reality? To what extent have we, too, by submitting ourselves to Bigelow's world, chosen to escape into a series of delusions?

It is in this depiction of the seductive qualities of illusion that Bigelow's work (unintentionally?) begins to approach the level of profundity Ezra Pound argued all art should strive towards. Wim Wender's Until the End of the World (to name one recent, flawed example) explored some of the same addiction-to-illusion territory. Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo more successfully examined ideas about the commingling of illusion and reality. But in introducing the political element, Bigelow (however imperfect her construction) permits us to ferret out some important ideas.

Nero wants to believe that Faith and he are still lovers roller- skating along the beach in Venice. Maybe we, as viewers, find a similarly contemptible comfort in the world Bigelow constructs. The appeal of a world in which bad cops are few and their superiors are not corrupt, in which technology fortuitously serves social justice, and in which true love closes each story is obvious.

The danger lies in forgetting where reality sits. Cameron's story portrays this risk but then negates it through a series of unlikely coincidences that suggest we (like Nero) can focus on our illusions yet inadvertently do the right thing in the real world. Bigelow's film (and the unreal world it creates) embodies this risk. To what extent will her viewers--despite our submission to her illusions--"do the right thing" outside the darkened theater?

[from the archives; originally published in 1996 in The News, Arcata, CA]

16 April 2012

Ambiguity and Innuendo: Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour

In this Rorschach-ink-blot-of-a-film,
Catherine Deneuve portrays a virginal newlywed
with a troubled past.
[reprint of 2003 update to 1995 article]

Author's Note: In revising this review 8 years after the fact (2003) for posting on Greencine, I made a few changes, including the removal of several "judgmental" asides, and the softening of several "spoilers". It is that review that you see here, first. It is followed by the original review (from The News [in Eureka, California]) published in 1995.

Version Two (Revised, 2003)

In this Rorschach-ink-blot-of-a-film, Catherine Deneuve portrays a virginal newlywed with a troubled past. In a series of momentary flashbacks we are privy to her childhood molestation. These intercut her gradual movement from her "cloistered" social position to her new-found work at a high-brow Parisian brothel. The transformation would seem highly suspect, but Buñuel manages to explain it while leaving some viewers room to dismiss it.

Severine's (Deneuve's) childhood abuse seems to have two basic influences on her adult life. First, she is uninterested in sexual intimacies with her husband of one year. Second, her fantasy life is filled with episodes in which her husband facilitates and, sometimes, witnesses the domination and degradation of his wife.

The first of these fantasy interludes opens the film. This sets the whole work on unreliable footing. One is never sure whether what is transpiring on the screen is "really happening." Later this doubt serves to minimize the shock of some of the more unpleasant episodes. But in this initial sequence (probably the film's most disturbing from a conventional standpoint) the viewer is caught unaware. One accepts the actions on the screen as diagetically "real."

The viewer is thrust into a position analogous to that of Severine. This opening sequence, the other fantasy sequences in the film, and the film's conclusion all allow one to entertain the possibility that none of what one sees on the screen is anything more than a dream or fantasy created in Severine's mind. Buñuel grants us the option of denial and escape from what might otherwise be a disturbing reality.

Alternately, by relegating only the most obviously "phantasmagorical" interludes to the realm of a "dream" or delusion, Belle de Jour becomes a portrait of a series of "social ills." There appear to be no obvious cures beyond the path Severine embarks on (psychological escape). Responding to Buñuel's "Rorschach" in this manner opens some complex issues, many of which are eloquently stated and then painfully unresolved by the film.

A short time after the momentary flashback that introduces us to Severine's childhood molester, a second momentary flashback captures the young Severine's rejection of the social conventions that have provided the context in which she has been abused. Repeatedly asked to accept the wafer during communion, she resolutely refuses. The implication is that Severine wishes to reject the myriad of ills being perpetrated on her. The molestation is the most concrete; the Church, the most symbolic.

Another telling pairing of interludes occur approximately one third and two-thirds of the way through the film. In the first instance, before she has fully explored the possibility of working at a brothel, Severine asks her husband whether he has ever been to "those houses." At first he politely misunderstands her. Then he describes briefly his experiences with prostitution. She shrinks at his brief description and the episode ends.

Later, after Severine has been thoroughly indoctrinated into various non-vanilla aspects of human sexuality (at least as "strange" as her unsettling fantasy life) by way of her work at the brothel, she reaches a new level of insight into herself, her sexuality and her husband/marriage. She says to her increasingly sexually satisfied husband that she feels like she is getting closer to him and that she is understanding him better and better each day. What she doesn't say to him (but what is clearly underlying her transformation) is that her time spent in the brothel is bringing her closer to her husband, who is ignorant of her "day job."

It is in this transformation that the film may be most interesting. Buñuel seems to suggest that a natural outcome of childhood sexual abuse is both an inability to engage in "vanilla" sex acts and a predilection for other sexual interactions. At the same time, Belle de Jour implies that one "solution" to such a situation is embrace non-traditional/"norm"al/middle-class sexuality. The inability of the thoughtful viewer to easily dismiss Buñuel's portrayal of this situation creates a complex, challenging Rorschach test that, as usual, says more about the viewer than about Buñuel.

Version One (Original, 1995)

Recently, Humboldt County was treated to the reissue of a classic Luis Buñuel film, Belle de Jour, at the Minor Theater in Arcata. In this Rorschach-ink-blot-of-a-film, Catherine Deneuve portrays a virginal newlywed with a troubled past. In a series of momentary flashbacks we are privy to her childhood molestation. These intercut her gradual movement from her "cloistered" social position to her new-found work at a high-brow Parisian brothel. The transformation would seem highly suspicious, but Buñuel manages to explain it while leaving the viewer room to dismiss it (if one so desires).

Severine's (Deneuve's) childhood abuse seems to have two basic influences on her adult life. First, she is uninterested in sexual intimacies with her husband of one year. Second, her fantasy life is filled with abusive episodes in which her husband facilitates and, sometimes, witnesses the domination and degradation of his wife.

The first of these fantasy interludes opens the film. This sets the whole work on unreliable footing. One is never sure whether what is transpiring on the screen is "really happening." Later this doubt serves to minimize the shock of some of the more unpleasant episodes. But in this initial abusive sequence (probably the film's most repulsive) the viewer is caught unaware. One accepts the actions on the screen as "real" until the film informs us that they are just one of Severine's (recurring) fantasies.

The viewer is thrust into a position analogous to (though tremendously less damaging than) that of the molested Severine. This opening sequence, the other fantasy sequences in the film, and the film's conclusion in which Severine imagines her husband's miraculous recovery all allow one to entertain the possibility that none of what one sees on the screen is anything more than a dream or fantasy created in Severine's troubled mind. Buñuel grants us the option of denial and escape from what would otherwise be a deeply disturbing reality. It would be difficult to blame one for taking this route out of Belle de Jour's (or our) world.

Alternately, by relegating only the most obviously "phantasmagorical" interludes to the realm of a "dream" or delusion, Belle de Jour becomes a scathing portrait of a series of social ills. There appear to be no obvious cures beyond the path Severine embarks on (psychological escape). Responding to Buñuel's "Rorschach" in this manner opens some frightfully complex issues, many of which are eloquently stated and then painfully unresolved by the film.

A short time after the momentary flashback that introduces us to Severine's childhood molester, a second momentary flashback captures the young Severine's rejection of the social conventions that have provided the context in which she has been abused. Repeatedly asked to accept the wafer during communion, she resolutely refuses. The implication is that Severine wishes to reject the myriad of ills being perpetrated on her. The molestation is the most concrete; the Church, the most symbolic.

Another telling pairing of interludes occurs approximately one third and two-thirds of the way through the film. In the first instance, before she has fully explored the possibility of working at a brothel, Severine asks her husband whether he has ever been to "those houses." At first he politely misunderstands her. Then he describes briefly his experiences with prostitution. She shrinks at his brief description and the episode ends.

Later, after Severine has been thoroughly indoctrinated into various bizarre aspects of human sexuality (at least as strange as her unsettling fantasy life) by way of her work at the brothel, she reaches a new level of insight into herself, her sexuality and her husband/marriage. She says to her increasingly sexually satisfied husband that she feels like she is getting closer to him and that she is understanding him better and better each day. What she doesn't say to him (but what is clearly underlying her transformation) is that her time spent in the brothel is bringing her closer to her husband, who is ignorant of her "day job" until the film's conclusion.

It is in this transformation that the film may be most troubling. Buñuel seems to suggest that a natural outcome of sexual abuse is both an inability to engage in "vanilla" sex acts and a predilection for degrading sexual interactions. At the same time, Belle de Jour implies that one (temporary? imperfect?) solution to such a situation is a retreat from traditional/normal/middle-class vanilla sexuality (which probably isn't as tame as our Victorian values would like to imply) combined with a prolonged exposure to (and participation in) "deviant," mechanical, "empty" sexual activity. "Weird sex" is offered as a cure for previous abuse. The inability of the thoughtful viewer to easily dismiss Buñuel's portrayal of this situation creates a complex, challenging Rorschach test that lingers on long after one would forget an inkblot smudge on a page.

18 March 2012

Road To Nowhere

A very interesting script, completely undermined by inept pacing.

20 January 2012

19 January 2012

Contagion

Should have failed like Hereafter, with which it shares several narrative traits, but doesn't.

12 January 2012

Margin Call

One of the worst blu-ray transfers of 2011, of one of the most morally ambiguous films of 2011.