Review: Interstellar

Directed by Christopher Nolan
Written by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan
Starring Matthew McConaughey (Cooper), Anne Hathaway (Brand), and Jessica Chastain (Murph)
Cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema
Edited by Lee Smith
Released in 2014

Kubrick’s interstellar opus has a modern reputation as challenging and difficult sci-fi. Despite that, it’s entirely possible, and okay, to enjoy the film on a base level as spectacle. Gawking at the special effects Douglas Trumbull and his crack team came up with is immensely enjoyable. They range from detailed costumes (the apes), elaborate sets and models (the futuristic vessels and bases), and the hallucinogenic (the disorientating slit-scan photography). The effects have such a great physical presence and look so detailed, that they surpass anything the CGI age has offered up so far. At times, 2001 feels less like a film and more like a vision of the future, sent backwards in time, and beamed directly into the brain. Another slight misconception about 2001 is its status as the premiere head movie. This is no doubt due to the murmurings that audience members regularly dropped acid during 2001’s first screenings. I’ve never been convinced that this was a regular occurrence. The drug use probably occurred a few times and was then magnified through gossip. The “Dawn of Man” and the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” sections contain the right ingredients for “the ultimate trip” (to quote one of the film’s posters). However, the moon-base and Discovery One portions, which make up the majority of the runtime, are detail-oriented and process-driven. As soon as HAL begins to malfunction, the action changes to that of a basic survival story. Not exactly the most LSD-friendly material. 

All that being said, if 2001 were just a simple tale wedded to insane spectacle, I doubt its critical cache would have lasted this long. The advanced techniques are used to get across complex ideas related to humanity and technology.  Most famous is the match cut from an ape’s bone flying up in the air to a futuristic space station. In a single juxtaposition, Kubrick evocatively and immediately links the ape’s brand new knowledge of weaponry to all of scientific progress. Kubrick identifies the inherent possible danger of new tech and the sometimes sinister motivation behind its development. A kind of post-human point of view is revealed when spinning space stations, ironically scored to balletic classical music, are intercut with a stewardess stumbling down a hallway and a man snoozing in zero g. The message? In the future, glimmering titans of metal will be more graceful than us Homo sapiens. The incongruity between the banality of the space travelers and the grandeur of their surrounding vistas sneaks in a bit of visual humor. The stewardess looks she stepped off a Pan Am flight from the 60’s, Dr. Floyd has an everyday conversation with his daughter while the goddamn Earth is spinning right outside the window, and the chatter between him and his colleagues sounds like it was taken from a 50’s commercial.

HAL is the sun around which 2001’s planetary themes orbit. Commonly, the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer is seen as more human than the astronauts that look over him (or are looked over by him). While Bowman and Poole’s demeanor is comically sedate, I can’t fully agree with this conclusion. HAL is nothing but a red dot, a monotone voice, and a small amount of flicker. So much of human communication involves reading facial cues, body language, and subtle vocal inflections that it is nigh impossible to determine HAL’s man-or-machine status. The duel that eventually develops between HAL and Bowman sparks all kinds of interesting moral quandaries. HAL does not start killing off the crew until Bowman and Poole make it clear they intend to shut him down (note that self-preservation is a universal signifier of life). On the other side, Bowman’s strongest emotional beat comes from responding to HAL’s murder attempts. Bowman doesn’t feel real until he’s in that red-tinted control room, wrenching out HAL’s intelligence core, and breathing and sweating like a madman. If you’re inclined towards pessimism, you could encapsulate two significant parts of the film, separated by millions of years of progress, as two entities trying to kill each other.

A Space Odyssey captures all of the complex attitudes people have about extraterrestrial flight, technological advancement, the vastness of the universe, and our tiny place within it. Plenty of films have explored different elements contained within its 2 ½ hours. Star Wars combined the excitement of old serials and pulp stories to a sci-fi setting and perfectly captured the wonder of a gigantic universe. Alien, with its terrifying bio-mechanical sexual imagery, made visceral the sheer terror of encountering the unknown. Blade Runner explored the hazy line between man and machine using a messy, ambiguous narrative. The Terminator followed common thriller rules to spin a tale of mankind being wiped out by its own creations. All of these have their merits, and I enjoy all of them, but none surpass 2001. Simultaneously grand and steeped in minutiae, it is one of the few pieces of cinema whose world seems to exist beyond the frame of the camera. It is so awesome in scope and brimming with ideas that turning off your brain and picking apart every second of footage are equally satisfying.

The Comfort and Mundanity of Eraserhead

Directed by David Lynch
Written by David Lynch
Starring Jack Nance (Henry Spencer), Charlotte Stewart (Mary X), Judith Roberts (Girl Across the Hall), Laurel Near (Lady in the Radiator), and Jack Fisk (Man in the Planet)
Cinematography by Herbert Cardwell and Frederick Elmes
Edited by David Lynch
Sound Design by Alan Splet*
Released in 1977

Discussion of David Lynch's debut tends to focus on the nightmarish imagery, the gross-out effects, or its relation to Lynch's daughter, then newborn Jennifer Lynch. My first viewing had similar results. Watching Eraserhead was like being plucked from reality and dropped into a bizarre, logic-free dream world with no grounding or explanation as a safety net. Expletives of disbelief were released  upon the first glimpse of Henry Spencer and Mary X's baby? animal? mutant? horrifying combination of all three? The sudden appearance of boils on Henry's tiny amalgam of creature and human caused screams, jumps, and tightly-shut eyes. His disaffected "You are sick!" was the perfect unsettling spice to the already freaky base scene. As reproductive, fetal, and lunar images and symbols piled-up in the latter half of the film, a sickening, uncomfortable sensation developed in the pit of my stomach. Afterwards, I had to attempt sleep, worried that some of Eraserhead's surreal essence had leaked out into the real world.

Upon a second watch, the disturbing elements of Eraserhead were still present, but moments of surprising comfort, mundanity, and humor wormed their way in as well. Is it odd that I experienced a small amount of happiness during such an immediately strange film? I should clarify that it is Eraserhead's existence and continued success that I took pleasure in, not quite the movie itself. Eraserhead is an uncompromised vision, straight from the mind of Lynch, and without outside interference. That such a dark, twisted world found an audience, albeit a small one, due to a few adventurous distributors and theater owners placing it on the midnight circuit is an inspiration. The tiny amount of wider cultural cache it has gained over the decades allows me to use phrases like "Man in the Planet" and "Lady in the Radiator" without people thinking I'm crazy, for which I am eternally grateful.

The extra-textual materials on the Criterion release reveal that Lynch and co. faced overwhelming obstacles during the film's making. Funding ran out multiple times, forcing production to halt only to continue years later. Virtually everyone on the team had to work an additional job. Lynch himself ran a paper route (sadly he did not deliver newspapers on a bike, a too-perfect image). The project survived the loss of its initial DP, Herbert Caldwell, nine months in. The story of the making of Eraserhead is triumphant. The stuff of treacly biopics.

Lynch litters his film with traces of the mundane. The opening consists mainly of Henry just walking back to his apartment, lone grocery bag in hand. The environs he passes through look wild due to the lighting, but there's a recognizable quality to the industrial maze of tanks, pipes, tunnels, and abandoned buildings that block his path. Henry's dinner at the X household follows the same track. The camera just sits back and watches as the group attempts to make awkward small talk and Mr. and Mrs. X cook dinner. Sure there's a litter puppies noisily sucking away in the corner, Grandma X is catatonic, and the cooked "chickens" jump back to life for a few seconds, but the core of the scene is oddly relatable. The hard faces of the X's, the deserted spaces, and the desperate sequence that gives the film its name are reminiscent of Great Depression era photographs. Anyone who spent a night at their grandparents' home as a child will appreciate the steel bed frame, tattered blankets, and worn-out wood furniture that make up Henry's apartment.





















These contrasting components (the common and the uncommon, the earthly and the otherworldly, and the real and the surreal) collide with each other and create the curious friction that gives Eraserhead its terrifying pull.


*Not a title I usually include, but half of the film's success is due to Mr. Splet. Also, his last name works as an onomatopoeia for many of the noises in the movie.


P.S.
A few weeks ago, I attempted to clarify why Eraserhead's special effects were so memorable. By coincidence, I read Maitland McDonagh's Criterion essay for Kuroneko. She used the word unheimlich, which I was not familiar with. I rushed off to Wikipedia and discovered that it's a Freudian phrase which translates to uncanny in English. Here is the definition per Wikipedia:

The uncanny is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be both familiar yet alien at the same time, resulting in a feeling of its being uncomfortably strange. Because the uncanny is familiar, yet incongruous, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject, due to the paradoxical nature of being simultaneously attracted to yet repulsed by an object. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize

I smiled to myself when I realized how perfectly that describes the creatures populating Lynch's universe. There's something human buried underneath all the paint, goo, and make-up of Man in the Planet and Lady in the Radiator, but they simultaneously look so off, that the mind rejects them and classifies them as unsettling. The cocktail of different animal and infant characteristics that form the baby works in much the same way.

Review: Birdman

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Written by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, and Armando Bo

Starring Michael Keaton (Riggan), Emma Stone (Sam), and Edward Norton (Mike)

Cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki

Edited by Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione

Released in 2014

Birdman alternates between fun and frustration. The short time span and theater setting allow the gifted actors to riff, yell, pontificate, emote, and explode in dizzying succession, making for engaging, sometimes too melodramatic, showcases. While the single long take conceit eventually becomes a little grating, it works well in creating a claustrophobic feel, and Lubezki playfully messes around with shifting color and lighting. Keaton plays his character's at first simmering, then boiling, insanity well. His split personality inner voice, a riff on Christian Bale's Batman growl, is a particular treat.

The problems come when Birdman attempts to criticize modern culture at large. By the end, I felt like I could make a list of things González Iñárritu doesn't like: cell phones, instant messaging, social media, celebrity obsession, superhero movies, and critics. Multiple characters rail against the stupidity of the current state of the world. Judging by Birdman, I'm probably in agreement with González Iñárritu on most of those topics. I've said much the same either online or out loud several times. However, hearing those complaints from established actors in the context of an actual movie comes off as terribly awkward and childish.

Furthermore, Birdman fails to offer an alternative to the loud, empty entertainment it holds in contempt. The film is constantly surging forward. Antonio Sánchez's all-drum score is consant, Lubezki's cinematography barely allows for moments of quiet or reflection, and the acting is pitched so high that the moments of pathos fall flat. It never stops and never grants room for ambiguity or analysis. While it's scope is smaller, in some ways, Birdman is just as superficial as Iron Man 3 and its ilk.

The counter-argument is that everything I just mentioned is meant satirically. That the picture is poking fun at the self-seriousness of theater-types and ego-filled actors. While my opinion on this may change after another viewing, the fact that almost every character has a big, profound speech pushes me to disagree. In addition, there's a moment where Keaton's alter-ego looks directly into the camera, at the audience, and indicts everyone for enjoying big, dumb action flicks. That moment is Birdman in minature: immediately bracing and sometimes funny, but shallow after even a small amount of deliberation.

Something Else: Seven Samurai

Random thoughts, of random lengths, on random films

Directed by Akira Kurosawa 
Written by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni
Starring Toshirô Mifune (Kikuchiyo) and Takashi Shimura (Kambei Shimada)
Cinematography by Asakazu Nakai
Edited by Akira Kurosawa 
Released in 1954 (Japan) and 1956 (USA)

Kurosawa's Warring States Period epic has been copied since the moment it was first released. The "ragtag group of heroes takes on impossible odds" scenario has been used in everything from westerns (The Magnificent Seven), war films (The Dirty Dozen), comedies (Three Amigos), and cartoons (A Bug’s Life). The  characters created by Kurosawa and co. and imbued with life by the film's actors have been appropriated innumerable times. An overreaching lawyer could sue Star Wars for plagiarism as many of its central cast has an one-to-one correlations in Seven Samurai. Obi-Wan Kenobi as the wizened leader = Kambei, Luke Skywalker as the naïve hero = Katsushiro, Han Solo as the reluctant hero full of bravado = Kikuchiyo, and Boba Fett as the silent assassin = Kyuzo. 

Seven Samurai is the wellspring from which all of modern action cinema flows out of, and, despite the endless imitators, it remains sweeping, thrilling, moving, and utterly human (as if I needed to tell you that). As epic as the film eventually becomes, it never forgets the full-bodied people who populate it or the time it takes place in. From the outside, Seven Samurai may seem like an uncomplicated, white hats vs. black hats story, but every character has intriguing moral wrinkles and the situation always remains frighteningly desperate. 

The titular septuplet of warriors all have complicated, sometimes never-defined reasons for agreeing to the peasants' insane mission. A sense of altruism seems to drive Kambei, along with a possible desire to go out with one last good deed. Katsushiro is the most simplistic, agreeing mostly out of youthful idealism. The other samurai join up because they're attracted Kambei's character, want to test their skill, or need a few bowls of rice. Kikuchiyo is fueled by a combustible mix of pride, a need to prove his samurai bona fides, and sympathy for the farmers' situation. Both parties make tough, sometimes distancing, choices. Kambei forces a few breakaway villagers back into line by sword edge, and some secret food and liquor stores mysteriously show up before the ultimate confrontation. 

The violence is never cathartic or enjoyable. Even the bandits, who are ostensibly the villains, die messy deaths. Most of them are dispatched by bamboo spear (which really looks like an awful way to die), shot in the back, or burned to death. The way the bandits are treated gives the film a little extra heft, and instead of being a standard action picture it becomes a commentary on the brutal nature of ancient Japan.

After the final battle scene, Seven Samurai ends on a downbeat note. Half of the heroes have been slain, and Katsushiro, driven mad by battle-lust, collapses into tears once he realizes it's all over. Following a quick scene showing the farmers happily planting and singing, the three remaining swordsmen realize they're no longer needed, accept their peripatetic nature, and ruminate on what their victory truly means. All while the graves of their comrades loom over them.

Shocktober Reflections

Final rankings:

     The Best: Tie between Kuroneko and The Innocents

     The Great: Audition, Carnival of Souls, The Descent, Kwaidan, Night of the Living                                                Dead, Rosemary's Baby, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

     The Good: Cat People, The Exorcist, The House of the Devil, Poltergeist, The Ring 

     The Mixed: The Bride of Frankenstein, Inland Empire, Jigoku, Santa Sangre

     The Okay: Candyman, The Brood, Kill List, The Masque of Read Death, The Nightmare Before                            Christmas, Re-Animator, Sisters, Vampyr

     

     The Bad: The Blair Witch Project, The Blob, Resolution, Scream, Suspiria

Random people, places, and objects I'm now afraid of:

• Men with one syllable names
• Dead leaves rustling quietly along sidewalks
• Misplaced tongues
• Doorbells with impeccably sound-designed rings
• The preventable, total breakdown of society due to an easily dealt with supernatural element
• Autonomous trees
• Cat demons, snow-based she-devils, and seemingly innocent, but secretly unstable dancers
• Ear removal
• Children cursing 
• Tannis root-based drinks
• Video tapes, TV static, and VCR's

General thoughts on marathons, specific films, and horror in general:

Well, I had to extend the marathon into the first week of November to finish, but I finally watched 31 scary movies, which I consider quite a feat for a self-proclaimed horror novice. Astute readers will notice that my final list up there is different from my original. Netflix disc ended being quicker in their deliveries than I expected, so I was able to add some other films based on that. 

A year ago I tasked myself with watching every film on the BFI Top 50, so I had gone through an ordered list of films before, but I didn't have a set schedule and made my way through each film in a leisurely manner. This was my first time doing a film-a-day marathon. I have to say, such a method is a bad way of absorbing movies. As exciting as some of the movies I watched were, I couldn't help but feel resentful about having to watch a movie every day regardless of my mood or what else I had going on. If I were to do it all over again, I would pick a few films to watch on weekends, or view a handful on Halloween night. 

Even the best horror films tend to work within certain limits and hit similar beats. My regular viewing habits involve jumping around a lot between different directors, styles, genres, and decades to avoid burnout in areas I would otherwise enjoy. Therefore, a general annoyance seeped in once I got a third of the way through the list. Most of the films in the "okay" section probably would have been bumped up to "good" if I had seen them under typical conditions. Quickly picking up on specific tropes and formulas definitely hurt the fright factor of these films as well. 

My main takeaway was noticing that, after a certain point, horror switched from a genre that studios regularly dabbled in (employing expert craftsmen and established actors in the process), to low-budget affairs directed by outsiders or B-movie mavens and starring unknowns. If I had to pinpoint one film that caused this schism, it would be Night of the Living Dead. I don't mean to denigrate either side. Working outside of the studio system provides freedom to explore taboo subjects, push boundaries, and experiment with form. When someone who knows what they're doing is pushed by constraints, or when a crazy visionary somehow scrapes together just enough funding, the results can be stupendous, begetting films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Audition, Eraserhead, and Tetsuo: The Iron Man. 

On the other hand, I wish that studio horror would return to a pre-'68 mindset and that multi-talented directors would work within the field. Rosemary's Baby and The Innocents were both made by people more known for drama than straight horror. The outside perspective makes both well-rounded, fully-satisfying, and resonant on a human level. Smart application of studio resources can also result in moody eye-candy, as evidenced by the trio of Japanese films on my list (Jigoku, Kuroneko, and Kwaidan). 

Finally, I can't stress enough how critical good sound design and memorable music is to establishing mood, generating tension, and providing jolts. The Innocents serves as a masterclass on how to weave a singular musical theme in and out of multiple contexts, giving it a different meaning each time it's replayed. The use of a biwa in the third story of Kwaidan gives a hypnotic power and distinct flavor to a tale of warrior-ghosts, haunted ships, and frightened monks, and is a major reason why that section is the best in the film. The Descent and The House of the Devil focus intensely on the small sounds made by footsteps, shallow breathing, and creeky/claustrophobic man-made and natural architecture in a way that makes the loud moments all the more terrifying. 

Shocktober: Halloween

Directed by John Carpenter
Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode), Donald Pleasance (Dr. Sam Loomis), and Tony Moran (Michael Myers)
Cinematography by Dean Cundey
Edited by Charles Bornstein and Tommy Lee Wallace
Released in 1978

There are two simple techniques Carpenter employs to add an unsettling edge to every shot in Halloween. The opening shot famously takes place from the Myers' point of view and sets up the long, fluid takes that make up most of the film's visual language. Once the plot moves to Laurie and her friends, Myers either randomly pops up in Laurie's field of view or is revealed to be watching the unfolding scene by a slow pan backwards. As a result, every scene is called into question, and those two tricks show why cinema is perfect for horror.

Like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, there's a sick joke at the center of Halloween. I don't know if Halloween was the first horror movie to be explicitly set in the suburbs, but that location is used to great effect. And Carpenter's film uses the "dark doings in a small town" trope years before Blue Velvet and American Beauty. Once the adults go out for the night, the entire town of Haddonfield becomes a wasteland, with only one, ineffectual cop to protect it. "Nothing bad could happen here right? This is a suburb!" is a thought that must have gone through every parent's head. It's one of the reasons why Myers' rampage is accomplished so easily, and it makes for a tense, painful scene where Laurie runs around yelling for someone to help her to no avail.

There's also a fun, anthropological quality to Halloween. I didn't know what $100 would buy you at JC Penny's in the 70's, but I do now! While elements of the slasher were set in place before Halloween (mainly by Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), the sub-genre that would engulf horror for the next 15 years basically begins here. It's interesting to consider the differences between Halloween and its successors. The most notable being that Halloween relies very little on shock, blood, or gore. Almost all of the dread and scares come from good-old-fashioned suspense filmmaking. Even the trick of Myers doing nothing but staring at Laurie has its roots in classier fare. Mainly, Jack Clayton's Gothic ghost tale, The Innocents.

When the kills do come, they're terrifying and brutal, but they never wallow in violence and they never dip into "enjoy watching assholes get their comeuppance" territory. It's true that many of the problematic elements of slashers are found in Halloween. The characters who smoke marijuana, drink, and enjoy sex end up dead and the character who abstains from those activities is left alive. However, I don't think Halloween is anti-sex or anti-drug or that it's trying to impart regressive, puritan values. I'm not going to say that the dialogue between the three main female characters is realistic, but their dynamic is believable and the scenes of them just bullshitting help make their deaths more impactful. On the subject of these problematic elements Carpenter had this to say: "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy."

If Halloween has any problems, it is with Donald Pleasance's Dr. Loomis. He doesn't do anything important until the end (a role that could have easily been filled by Annie's cop father. The random cutaways to the good doctor during Myers' rampage detract from the rising tension and, near the beginning, Pleasance is forced to sell some awkward dialogue setting up Myers as an ultimate evil.

Review: Nightcrawler

Directed by Dan Gilroy
Written by Dan Gilroy 
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal (Louis Bloom), Rene Russo (Nina Romina), and Riz Ahmed (Rick)
Cinematography by Robert Elswit 
Edited by John Gilroy
Released in 2014

Jake Gyllenhaal has played dangerously obsessive before (Zodiac, Prisoners, Enemy), but his performance as Lou Bloom takes that thread and runs rampant with it. It's one of those rare, totally transformative roles that doesn't involve huge amounts of weight gain/loss or other radical changes in physical appearance. Gyllenhaal creates Bloom through tiny changes in posture, facial patterns, and tone of voice (think Joaquin Phoenix in The Master). He's squirm-inducing from the first frame to the last. I kept trying to worm my way through the back of my seat just to escape his distressingly blank gaze.

Gilroy's film gets all of its bite from it lead. Bloom is an ambulatory collection of self-help books, American Dream platitudes, and business seminar buzzwords. There's not a single time where the facade drops. No humanity or self-reflections is allowed to shine through. We never even learn why he's so driven. Money is the obvious answer, and he's shown buying an expensive care once he has established himself as a guerrilla cameraman. However, he never takes pleasure in showing it off, and he's still stuck in his one-room apartment at the end. Maybe status? Again though, there doesn't seem to be any genuine want for relationships or a higher position. It's all just a means to an end, then another end, and another, and another, and so one and so forth. The true answer is because these are things that capitalist society has deemed important. Bloom has no personality of his own. His desires are a mash-up of what he's heard from other people.

Where Nightcrawler falters is that nothing else is able to match Bloom's crazy ambition. The cinematographer, Robert Elswit, is a frequent collaborator of Paul Thomas Anderson, and I wish some of the formal daring of the likes of Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Bloodi had filtered over to here. The only sequence that truly sings is a shootout/car chase near the end that dance neatly between the protagonists' points of view. and that of their cameras. For a story involving amateur directors, Nightcrawler makes surprisingly little use of the possibilities of multiple screens. Similarly, James Newton Howard's score is a bit confused. The music is meant to be satirical, playing Lou's descent as moments of crowd-pleasing triumph, but it comes off as too generic to generate the intended effect.