Film Deathmatch: All Is Lost vs. Knife in the Water

Drawing comparison between films to tease out their strengths and weaknesses. 

All Is Lost

Directed by J.C. Chandor

Starring Robert Redford (Our Man)

Written by J.C. Chandor

Cinematography by Frank G. DeMarco and Peter Zuccarini

Edited by Pete Beaudreau

Released in 2013

Knife in the Water

Directed by Roman Polanski

Starring Leon Niemczyk (Andrzej), Jolanta Umecka (Krystyna), and Zygmunt Malanowicz (Young Boy)

Written by Jakub Goldberg, Roman Polanski, and Jerzy Skolimowski

Cinematography by Jerzy Lipman

Edited by Halina Prugar-Ketling

Released in 1962

All Is Lost is a film I hesitate to criticize at all since it does so much right. The plot follows a lone man on a sailing expedition trying to survive as he deals with collisions and storms. Aside from an opening monologue, there's no backstory, no narration, no other characters, no exposition, and no dialogue in general (except for a few mutterings and an expertly deployed F-bomb). The film is minimalist to its core. 

Chandor and Co. trust the viewer to find the simple tension in just watching a person deal with a perilous situation. It helps that said person is played by Robert Redford, who's weathered appearance brings an extra dimension to the film. Redford capably conveys the thought process's behind "Our Man's" actions and his increasing sense of desperation solely through shifting facial expressions and body language. I haven't seen any of Redford's other famous roles, so I can only speak about his performance as it pertains to All Is Lost. However, I'd imagine that the role would have extra resonance for someone who grew up with the likes of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and All The President's Men. All is Lost isn't the first film to cast an aging actor in an against-type role, but that choice suits the film well. 

My criticism has nothing to do with the film's story or acting, but with its style. For the most part, the

camera is either squarely focused on Redford, or adopting his point of view, and fit snugly into the confines of the boat, both directorial choices heighten the cramped feeling of the setting.  However, the film will occasionally cut to something that isn't directly related to Redford. This is more of problem during the second half of the film, when the action moves to a life raft. Chandor repeatedly moves to underneath the raft, which does nothing but break up the claustrophobia. There's even a sequence that looks like a deleted scene from Planet Earth, where the camera just watches tiny sea creatures swim about. It's fine and pretty, but, again, has no relation to anything else going on.

On a few occasions, jump cuts are utilized. A jump cut, a technique where a small part of a continuous shot is snipped out, is very disruptive to the flow of a scene. Typically, it signals that a character is experiencing mental confusion or disorientation, or it is used to indicate that a movie is going to be formally experimental. In other words, it's a technique that calls attention to itself. I can't really think of a good reason why jump cuts are used here. There are times when Our Man feels distressed, but it's more physical than mental, and Redford's performance gets that stress across perfectly well. All Is Lost doesn't mess with form in any other ways. Most of the film is told in a very simple, process-oriented way, and the jump cuts disrupt that continuity. 

Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water shows how claustrophobia can be created with precise framing. First, Knife in the Water has a narrower aspect ratio (1:37:1) than All Is Lost (2:40:1). I can’t say this was an explicit choice by Polanski, since during the 60’s most Polish films were shot in that ratio. However, it does create an immediate feeling of restriction, and forces the three actors into a tighter space. Next, a common composition in Knife in the Water involves an actor’s body in the foreground partially blocking action happening in the background. It’s an effective way to make even the outside scenes feel constrained, like there’s not enough space to for all three actors to exist in the same shot. Lastly, the camera is almost always centered on the boat, only leaving it to follow the three characters.

 On one level, comparing the two films is unfair. The plot of Knife in the Water involves multiple people, which allows for a greater shot variety. I’m not quite sure how Chandor could have pulled off Knife in the Water-style compositions with only Redford, but I do think All Is Lost could have been improved if Chandor had aped some aspects of Polanski’s style. 

Something Else: Frankenstein

Random thoughts of random lengths on random films. 

Directed by James Whale
Starring Colin Clive (Henry Frankenstein), Mae Clarke (Elizabeth, and Boris Karloff (The Monster)
Written by Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh adapting the novel by Mary Shelley
Cinematography by Arthur Edeson and Paul Ivano
Edited by Clarence Kolster
Released in 1931

Stop me if you've ever heard any variation on the following phrase before. A movie similar to Frankenstein  would not get made today.

Anyone reading should now yell "STOP!" at their computer screen. 

I know everything I'm about to say is a cliche and reflects an awful form of nostalgia that I'm subject to, but I'm going to continue writing just in case a Hollywood higher-up is reading and wants a few tips on how to take commercial cinema in a different direction.

James Whale's Frankenstein was a commercial product (this is not an insult to the film). It was made at the beginning of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and was the next step in creating the cottage industry of monster movies for Universal Studios after the release of Todd Browning's Dracula. The film is blessedly simple. Dr. Henry Frankenstein creates a monster and his colleagues fret over his mental state and experiments. In turn, the monster attacks its creator, escapes, rampages through a nebulously-European village, and is killed by a mob. The film follows a linear narrative and has a strict beginning, middle, and end.

The most enjoyable aspect of the film is that it lets itself be a fairy tale. There's no elaborate backstory for Henry and no dialogue wasted on explaining convoluted pseudoscience (aside from Victor's former professor mentioning "chemical galvanization through electrobiology" the existence of which makes the world a better place as far as I'm concerned). Frankenstein also has a great German Expressionist-bent to its style, with lots of shadows and heightened sets. The opening graveyard scene and Henry's tower are particular highlights.

If the film were made today, (which I guess it was with prequel/sidequel/remake/reboot I, Frankenstein) that fairy tale-like simplicity would be lost. The film would have a complicated mythology built around it, be 2 1/2 hours long, and have a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, with CGI to make it look "gritty" and "real".*

It's interesting to consider how what's commercial and what's unique or auteur-driven changes over the years. If you wanted a contemporary film like the original Frankenstein, you would need to go to a Tim Burton, David Lynch, or Guy Maddin. It's somewhat baffling. I wouldn't want a shot-for-shot remake, but a throwback to that era would be nice. Universal could make such a film cheaply, so that box-office failure wouldn't matter, and they would be ensured a groundswell of critical support if it turned out even halfway decent. As it stands now, Universal is planning to challenge Marvel and DC by creating a similar universe for their old monster movies, which no.

*I was partly inspired to write this due to Noel Murray's excellent piece "The Problem With Prequels" over at The Dissolve. 

The Existential Horror of Close-Up

Note: This essay was done for a series being put on by The Dissolve commenters to celebrate the month of October by discussing unique experiences in horror cinema.

My first viewing of Close-Up left me underwhelmed. A year and a half ago I started working my way through the BFI Top 50, as I hadn't seen a good majority of the films listed. Needless to say, my expectations were high. When I got to Close-Up, I was confused by its inclusion. At first glance, Kiarostami's film seemed very simple. An Iranian man, Hossein Sabzian, is arrested for duping a family into believing that he is famed director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. These events are shown in flashback recreations and interspersed with Kiarostami's documentation of Sabzian's real-life trial. I separated these elements into staged and documentary categories, and Close-Up quickly left my mind as I moved on to the next film in my marathon.

Then a strange thing happened. Close-Up kept popping into my thoughts. A month later, I was still regularly thinking about it, which is rare for a film that I didn't have an initial positive response to. Eventually, I started reading about the film, and my post-viewing interest became a full-blown obsession. I quickly learned that my division of Close-Up into neat "fake" and "real" segments was worthless and that the film was far messier in this regard than I could have ever anticipated. I found out that Kiarostami had written parts of Sabzian's "dialogue" during the courtroom scenes and that the Ahankhah family was unhappy with the verdict (Cheshire). Also, the sound cutting out during Sabzian's meeting with Makhmalbaf, one of the most memorable parts of the film, wasn't an actual error on the part of the filmmakers, but an intentional edit of Makhmalbaf’s conversation (Tarik).

My mind started spitting out thousands of questions. Were Sabzian and the Ahankhah's aware of Kiarostami's manipulation? Where do each participant's "performance" end and their real life begin? Was Sabzian affected by having a film made about him? If so, how and what happened to him after it was finished? If I was somehow able to find concrete answers to any of these questions, dozens more were immediately raised.  At one point, I did a cursory internet search to try and find the original article detailing Sabzian's case and couldn't come up with anything. This caused me to seriously think that Kiarostami had fabricated the entire event, used trained actors, and thrown in the documentary angle just to spice the film up. One aspect of the film that particularly haunted me was Kiarostami's role during Sabzian's trial. Kiarostami prods Sabzian into giving these elaborate answers that make his deception seem more reasonable. Kiarostami also ensures that the judge understands precisely what Sabzian is saying at all times (Tarik). In my view, Kiarostami basically directed reality in a way that would provide a satisfying narrative arc for a movie, which kind of freaks me out and makes me question whether or not he crossed a line in his manipulation (Cheshire).

The main reason I'm writing about this film for Scarefest is due to Sabzian himself. Here's what we learn about him through Close-Up. He lives with his mother, he's divorced, has two children (one who lives with him), doesn't have a stable job, and loves cinema. That last point is key. Some of Sabzian's lines wouldn't be out of place in the comments section of The Dissolve: 

• “It’s a film you have to see a few times.” 
• “I read it, and it brings calm to my heart. It says the things I wish I could express.” 
• “For me, art is the experience of what you’ve felt inside.”

However, I doubt anyone here would take their love of cinema to the extremes shown in the movie. Sabzian has been so ground down by his life of poverty and is so passionate about film that the only way he feels he can escape is by becoming someone else. He also breaks down in tears when he finally meets Makhmalbaf, which is understandable given everything he’s been through, but maybe a bit of an overreaction. Their meeting brings up further questions. Isn't meeting Makhmalbaf going to be the high point of Sabzian's life? Will his life get better after this or will everything just seem dull and grey in comparison? I wouldn’t say that Sabzian’s obsession with cinema has wrecked him as there are numerous other factors for why he’s in his current state, namely his class, but I do think it dominates his thoughts to the detriment of other parts of his life (Chokrollahi).

Sabzian’s plight is directly responsible for an odd fear I’ve developed over the past year. Like everyone else here, I watch and read about a lot of movies, and as that love has grown, I can’t help but worry that it will negatively affect my own life. Like I will get so obsessed and enraptured with how the world is represented in movies, that reality will become boring and uninteresting. A lot of this has to do with the specific time I watched Close-Up. During my senior year of college just as I was becoming less and less interested in my major, and after I had moved to a new dorm to become an RA, which caused to me to drift away from the friends I had made in the past three years. I was lonely, bored, and had a growing affection for a film. All of which gave me a lot in common with Sabzian, and that terrified me.


P.S.
Hopefully, I don’t come off as too conspiracy-theory crazy in this piece. A lot of my initial reaction to Close-Up had to do with stuff that was outside of the film that I became obsessed with for reasons I don’t think Kiarostami intended. I watched the film again recently in preparation for this piece and had an entirely different experience. I let myself just roll with the film’s shifts between documentary and fiction. I’m still not sure how I feel about Sabzian though. I didn’t respond to him at all during my first watch, became worried that I would turn out like him as I mulled over the film, and had a much more basic, sympathetic response to his situation during my rewatch.

References
“Close-Up” Long Shot. Dir. Mahmoud Chokrollahi. Feat. Hossein Sabzian. The Criterion Collection. 1996. DVD.
 Benbrahim, Tarik. Interview with Abbas Kiarostami. Close-Up: The Criterion Collection. (2009).
Cheshire, Godfrey. “Close-Up: Prison and Escape.” The Criterion Collection. 22 June 2010. Web. 21 Sept 2014.

Random Notes

• Strangely the two films Close-Up reminded me of were Citizen Kane and Pulp Fiction. Citizen Kane came to mind due to a few specific shots that were similar to Welles’s film. There’s a scene where Kiarostami is interviewing Sabzian in prison and his back is to the camera, obscuring his face, much like the reporter character in Kane. During the recreation of Sabzian’s arrest, there’s a shot of him way in the background, with another person turned slightly away from camera in the foreground. Comparable shots are all over Kane. 

•  At the beginning of Citizen Kane there’s a shot of Kane’s room through a broken snow globe, and near the end of Close-Up there’s a shot of Sabzian and Makhmalbaf riding a motorcycle through a cracked windshield. Both reflect each film’s concerns with fractured identities.

• I don’t know if Citizen Kane was an influence on Close-Up. It's possible since Kiarostami started working before the revolution, when it was much easier to see foreign films. I've never heard him bring it up interviews or seen Citizen Kane mentioned in discussions of Kiarostami's work. Still, the similarities are striking. Both films follow an investigator trying to learn about someone else intercut with flashbacks to that person’s life.

• I thought of Pulp Fiction, because both it and Close-Up begin with car rides featuring long, rambling conversations that also lay out the basic plot of each film. Also, the two films jump around in time, but not in the exact same way.

• Unless Kiarostami had a time machine there’s obviously no way he could have seen Pulp Fiction before making Close-Up. However, it’s possible that Tarantino had seen a few Kiarostami films during the early 90’s. He is an admirer of Kiarostami’s work (one of Tarantino’s quotes was even used in the trailer for Through the Olive Trees). You would have needed to be very on top of film culture to know who Kiarostami was in the 90’s though. Either way, it’s cool that similarities can be found between films with entirely different subjects and styles made in different countries.

Video Game Corner: The Problem With Cutscenes

Ramblings about video games. 

Re-playing Resident Evil 4 recently, it's easy to see why the game was so widely-acclaimed. For one, it revolutionized third person shooters. In fact, that genre wouldn't exist without the 4th entry in Capcom's zombie-killing simulator. That facet of the game may not hold up today. The stop-and-shoot mechanic plays a bit stiff and awkward compared to Gears of War, but it's still manageable. However, one aspect that still clearly comes through is its atmosphere. Resident Evil 4 takes place in some imagined, backwoods corner of Europe, full of crumbling houses, rotting vegetation, and dense fog. For the first few sections, the game has some subtlety in that it's creepy and nerve-wracking without being chock-full of jump scares and gore scenes. There's a fantastic sequence early on where the player is required to backtrack, except it's now night and enemies can only be seen when lightning strikes. Tension is built through hearing the moaned mutterings of the zombies, getting a vague sense of where they are, and trying to carefully walk around until they are revealed. 

Eventually that mood is left behind when the things go over the top and giant, slimy, tentacly Cthulu-beings start popping out of people's head, which makes for a great surprise the first time happens and feels a bit silly long before the 10th time. However, that's not the problem I want to discuss. 

Mood can be difficult to dissect. Its creation is often due to the imperceptible combination of multiple elements. I know one thing about Resident Evil 4's mood for certain though, that it is totally annihilated whenever the game moves into a cutscene. RE4's cutscenes are full of awful, expository dialogue delivered in the worst, most cliche manner. I swear 30 minutes into the game, I'd heard "the president's daughter" repeated grimly about 50 times. And you know what the worst about the cutscenes are? Most of the time they are completely unnecessary. Any information or background they provide can be gleaned from exploring the environment.

This gets into my general annoyance with game cutscenes. They yank you out of the experience of playing the game. The medium specificity of video games is that they can be directly interacted with. Cutscenes take that away and ape the language of cinema, which brings up unfavorable comparisons as most games don't use cutscenes in an aesthetically interesting way compared to film. Cutscenes can also cause a battle between the forced narrative and the narrative created by the player's actions (there's term for this called ludonarrative dissonance, see GTA IV and Bioshock: Infinite for examples).

I don't think this problem has been "solved." While games don't necessarily need a complex story to be engaging, it's nice when it's attempted and cutscenes are the easiest, if not necessarily the best, way to do so. I do wish more games would experiment with storytelling methods though. The Half-Life series never stops for cutscenes. The player's movement is simply restricted for a short amount of time while other characters speak. Also, a lot of extra world-building is done through background detail. Thomas Was Alone and Bastion both use constant voiceover narration to relay the story without stopping gameplay.

Video Game Corner: Why A Wolf?

Ramblings about video games.

For every sequel in The Legend of Zelda series, a new wrinkle in the formula has been added on top of the basic combination of combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving that has been the series trademark since the beginning. In A Link to the Past, it was switching between the light and dark worlds. Ocarina of Time added 3-D, Majora's Mask had time travel, and Wind Waker provided a new method of traversal. These new mechanics were central to each game's world, created new ways for players to interact with their surroundings, and complemented the basic Zelda gameplay. 

Recently, I watched my brother play two Zelda titles for the first time, A Link Between Worlds and Twilight Princess. Based on my talks with him, A Link Between Worlds continues the tradition of Zelda sequels I outlined above. In the game, Link is given the ability to turn flat and slap himself onto his surroundings. This mechanic creates new ways to get around the world and allows for some ingenious puzzle design. I imagine the game probably gets more and more demanding in the way it expects you to utilize this ability. 

Watching my brother play Twilight Princess (a game I played during its initial release), I realized that Link being able to transform into a wolf doesn't add much. The changes are minor at best: you can run faster, you can lock-on to multiple enemies, and you can uncover hidden objects. But all of those differences are either slight tweaks on Link's normal abilities or a part of inconsequential mini-games. Becoming a wolf doesn't significantly alter the core Zelda gameplay. The other major feature of the game, switching between light and dark worlds, is lifted directly from A Link to the Past without the neat twist that A Link Between Worlds puts on it. 

This isn't good or bad, it's just random. If it's not going to bring anything new to the game, why have Link turn into a wolf? Just because it's cool? Was there a sudden increase in wolf popularity in 2006? Did a higher-up at Nintendo hand-down a mandate to the developers while under the influence? 

I don't know the answers to any of those questions. So I'll pose the question I asked in the title of this piece to any Nintendo employees who, with 99.99999% certainty, will never come across this blog. Why a wolf?

Video Game Corner: Mario's Life Conundrum

Ramblings about video games. 

What I am about to say is a criticism of only about 10% of Super Mario Galaxy 2. You will only encounter the problems I'm about to detail if you're a completionist and feel compelled to obtain every star in the game.

First, a quick detour to another game, inspired by the Mario games of the NES and SNES eras, Super Meat Boy. That game is all the difficulty and challenge of the early Mario titles distilled to their hardest and purest essence. Super Meat Boy also has an ingenious design. Every level is difficult, but takes only 30 seconds to complete, so, while the amount of skill required to beat a level is high, it only needs to be maintained for a short time. In addition, when you die, the level restarts immediately, literally the second after death.

Which brings me to my complaint with Super Mario Galaxy 2, a game that I recently went back to, after spending four years away from it. Ever since the Wii, Nintendo has adopted an interesting strategy for the Mario games. In order to make them playable to all ages, the early levels serve as tutorials for the basic mechanics that will be expanded upon throughout the rest of the game. The difficulty is slowly ramped up as the game progresses, and the very hardest levels (the ones comparable in challenge to the old Mario games) are kept for the last world or hidden away in a secret area.

During my initial playthrough of the game, I obtained most of the stars in the early levels and came back to it to finish up the odds and the ends. This meant I had to beat the harder, later levels, which meant a lot of dying. And herein, lies the nit I have to pick with the game. Every time I died, I had to button through multiple cutscenes and boxes of dialogue. Furthermore, because Mario has a finite amount of lives, every once in a while I would get a game over screen and have to suffer the game telling me to take a break. I know these extra touches are meant to add to the personality of the game, and for 90% of the time they do, but during that 10% where I'm playing the game for its mechanics, those additional layers become frustrating. I would much prefer an instantaneous restart like Super Meat Boy. 

Something Else: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Random thoughts of random lengths on random films. 

Directed by Tobe Hooper
Written by Kim Henkel
Starring Marilyn Burns (Sally Hardesty) and Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface)
Cinematography by Daniel Pearl 
Edited by J. Larry Carroll
Released in 1974

When I sat down to watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for the first time a few weeks ago, I expected a standard slasher film. What I got instead was something else entirely. The film walks a tightrope between dead teenager movie and experimental nightmare (think Eraserhead or Tetsuo: The Iron Man), falling definitively into the latter during its brutal final third.

Immediately, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, establishes a total sense of dread that it maintains for its entire runtime. An ominous, elaborate voiceover details the case of the eponymous murder spree. The screen cuts to black for an unbearable length  of time. Eventually, rustling sounds are heard, a camera flashes multiple times, slowly unveiling a grisly something. In blinding sunlight, a horrific human effigy is revealed. The credits roll as close-ups of sun spots dance in the background. The film revels in random shots of things like the sun, the moon, and spider nests, giving it an abstract feeling of doom. And, it beats The Wild Bunch for the honor of being the dirtiest, sweatiest, and hottest piece of work ever put to celluloid.

There are strange undercurrents of sadness and humor to the film as well. The central family is forced out of work when air guns are introduced at the slaughterhouse. The dark joke of the film is that they immediately switch to murdering people. What else are they supposed to kill? It's hard to call Leatherface a villain. There's a childlike logic to the way he attempts to play dress-up and defends his house by thunking any and all intruders over the head with a hammer.

Who will survive and what will be left of them? serves as the tagline for the film. You would be hard pressed to come up with something more catchy and fitting. The answer? One girl and not much. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre finishes with a final girl segment common to slashers, but subverts that cliche by ending on a note of pure nihilism. Sally, drenched in blood, laugh-screams as she is driven away, an image that will be seared into my brain for the rest of my life.

Something Else: El Topo

Random thoughts of random lengths on random films. 

Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky 
Written by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Starring Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo)
Cinematography by Rafael Corkidi
Edited by Federico Landeros
Released in 1970

How weird is it that Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1970 acid western is just out there in the open for everyone to see? First screened in New York, the film was deliberately shown late at night to signify that it was a strange, wild event, starting the midnight movie phenomenon. Due to the support of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the movie was distributed by the manager of The Beatles, Allen Klein. After a run in the US, disputes between Jodorowsky and  Klein kept the film from additional runs and prevented a home video release until 2007. After its initial release, the film gained a special aura due to its unavailability and cult nature. If you wanted to see it you either had to be extremely lucky and pray for an arthouse screening, or hunt methodically for a bootleg. Between hearing about the film and actually watching it, you would hear whispers about its content, and build the film up to mythic proportions. The fact that it was only available through bootlegs gave it an illicit quality, like it was something that shouldn't exist and shouldn't be watched. While it's great that the film is easily available now, there is a little extra quality to it that is lost when the time between learning about the film and owning it is nonexistent.

It has been commonly acknowledged that elements of El Topo are taken from the bible (the chapters are given names like Genesis, Psalms, and Apocalypse). In addition, the film is broken into two parts, taking inspiration from Jesus's death and resurrection (stigmata appear on El Topo's hands and feet when he is shot to death) and the Old Testament/New Testament split. To analyze the religious elements of El Topo further though is to court madness. Ingrained biblical images are littered through out the film. The bee's that made a hive in the corpse of a lion killed by Sampson appear (the lion also shows up), water springs from a rock in the desert like when Moses and his followers were about to die from dehydration, and El Topo and Mara try to become the Adam and Eve of a wasteland. However, the context of these images is so different from their inspiration that ascribing a single meaning to them is impossible. Add Jodorowsky's appropriation of eastern religions and his riffs on the western genre and trying to "figure out" or "get" El Topo becomes an exercise in futility. That last comment might seem like a criticism, I don't mean it that way. As with other cult films, the best way to watch El Topo is to suspend your disbelief, relax, and let the striking images Jodorowsky creates provoke a reaction or push your mind to come up with new associations.

Luckily, in his re-contextualization of religious and western iconography, Jodorowsky allows some fantastic visuals and juxtapositions to fall out of his skull. And, in a strange way, El Topo becomes one of the best representations of the Old Testament. Because El Topo isn't a straight adaption and takes place in some netherworld of a desert, it can be true to the spirit of the Christian text, without tackling any of its specifics. It's very easy to forget that the Old Testament is a weird and violent work. A woman gets turned into a pillar of salt, a man slaughters an entire army with a donkey's jawbone, and people get eaten by whales or squished by giants. El Topo is almost tame in comparison.