Review: Boyhood

Directed by Richard Linklater
Written by Richard Linklater
Starring Ellar Coltrane (Mason), Patricia Arquette (Olivia), Ethan Hawke (Mason Sr.), and Lorelei Linklater (Samantha)
Cinematography by Lee Daniel and Shane F. Kelly
Edited by Sandra Adair
Released in 2014

Knowing that Boyhood would end with Mason starting college, I expected to be hugely moved by the latter portions of the film as making that same transition was an emotionally fraught time for me. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the sections probing Mason's childhood the most. Dozens of kids films are released every year, but very few recreate the actual experience of being a child (the only one I can name off the top of my head is My Neighbor Totoro). The greatest achievement of Boyhood is that it offers a rare chance to see through fresh eyes. Moments like Mason quizzically processing a dead bird he's uncovered or erasing his past by painting over a height chart most clearly evoke the film's obsession with the passage of time. Similarly, through careful framing, Linklater does an excellent job of pricking Mason's innocent view of the world. He confusedly watches his mother and father argue through a window, only half-hearing them. Later, an everyday walk home suddenly becomes dark when Mason stumbles upon a fight between his mother and step-father. At these points, Linklater effectively uses the langue of cinema to put the viewer in the mind of young boy.

It's unfortunate that Boyhood gets less and less interesting as it goes along. Part of this is unavoidable. In it's later half it becomes a coming-of-age tale which have been beyond numerous throughout film history. The familiarity problem could be avoided, but Boyhood isn't a particularly unique, specific, or revelatory version of this type of story. Basically everyone has put forward Boyhood's shooting schedule as an argument against that previous assertion. While I think Linklater should be given all the credit in the world for creating a functional movie out of such an abnormal situation, I don't find that part of the film makes up for its flaws. Many critics have mentioned Truffaut's Antione Doinel films, the 7-Up series, the Harry Potter movies, and various television shows as antecedents for Linklater's vision.

The main reason I don't find Boyhood's central conceit memorable is that Linklater himself has already created a similar event in the three Before films. Watching Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight all at once is an amazing experience. You can see two people mature eighteen years and go through the major stages of life in the span of five hours. The fact that I did such a marathon shortly before watching Boyhood is one reason I'm not as high on the film as everyone else. Comparing the two also elucidates Boyhood's flaws. The Before films are laser-focused on investigating very specific characters and honestly exploring a romantic relationship. Jesse and Celine are Jesse and Celine, there's no one else quite like them. In addition, the "one day or less" limitation helps immensely in providing immediacy, conflict, and tension (if you asked me what my favorite thriller is, I'd answer Before Sunset only half-jokingly). Furthermore, that restriction turns intellectual ideas like the fleeting nature of time and the problems and pleasures that come with age into emotional gut-punches.

In contrast, the second half of Boyhood is a vague drift through random parts of a poorly-defined person's life. Mason goes through important events, relationships, and hobbies to no impact, because no one thing is given enough time to develop. He's into graphiti, then photography, now he has girlfriend, now he doesn't, now he's over her, now he's alone at college, and then immediately has friends. The movie fails at showing why Mason is attracted to such pursuits, how those interests developed  over his life, and why his teenage relationships turned out the way they did. I know the counter to my argument is "That's the point, it's just like real life." Fair enough I suppose, but it's not dramatically satisfying in any way.

Finally, I'll bring in another comparison. Surprisingly, I have yet to see a review of Boyhood that mentions Jane Campion's 1990 film, An Angel at My Table. Angel concerns New Zealand author Janet Frame, and, like Boyhood, it covers a huge swath of her life. The film is broken up into three parts, roughly corresponding to Frame's childhood, her development as a teacher and misdiagnosis as schizophrenic (which leads to horrific shock therapy), and her travels around Europe and later development as an author. Campion carefully seeds why Frame is drawn to literature early on. A remarkable continuity is kept between the three actors who play Frame, showing that you don't have to follow the same kid for twelve years for the same effect if you have an eye for casting. It helps immensely that Frame's life is packed with far more incidence than Mason's and that her New Zealand homeland allows for some truly gorgeous cinematography (another area I found Boyhood lacking).

As the details surrounding Boyhood came to light over the past year, it sounded like a one-of-the-kind cinematic event. However, after my first viewing, I couldn't help but feel Boyhood was an okay copy of ideas and techniques I had seen before.

Shocktober: Night of the Living Dead

Directed by George Romero

Written by John Russo and George Romero

Starring Duane Jones (Ben) and Judith O’Dea (Barbra)

Cinematography by George Romero

Edited by George Romero

Released in 1968

While reading about Carnival of Souls, I'd heard that it was an influence on Romero's debut. I'd somehow never seen Night of the Living Dead up to that point, so I couldn't agree or disagree. Having rectified that, I wholeheartedly concur. Herk Harvey's lo-fi, cult favorite is an undeniable progenitor of many of the stylistic choices found in Romero’s shocker.

The design of the zombies is kept simple. They're basically unkempt extras with smeary white face-paint and large amounts of eye shadow. It's spartan, but looks effective in black and white. Romero keeps things loose and rough in terms of camerawork and cinematography and that, combined with the worn-out look of the non-professional actors, gives the film that outsider art, small-town nightmare vibe that Carnival of Souls also captured.

Romero has maintained race did not factor into the casting of Duane Jones in the role of Ben. So, the extra dimension he brings to the proceedings is either a stroke of luck or of genius depending on how much stock you put in the director’s statement. It’s rare for an African-American to lead a horror (really any) film even today, and basically unheard of in 1968. That daring casting choice causes many fascinating undercurrents to flow through the film. Ben is shown to be highly capable in fortifying the house, beating down zombies with blunt objects, and crafting Molotov cocktails. It’s never outright stated, but it’s easy to see his actions and extrapolate that these are tasks he had to learn due to the racism and social upheaval of the sixties. Similarly, epithets are never thrown at Ben, but racial conflict heightens the struggle between him and Harry. Harry’s indigence about taking orders from Ben makes all too much sense considering the political climate at the time.

Even today, it’s easy to see why Night of the Living Dead was so controversial. For one, all of the pre-release material had the whiff of a cheap, silly fifties sci-fi spookfest (see the goofy photos and green font of the poster and the cheesy trailer). I’m not sure at what point the audience who showed up expecting such things realized what they were was far more disturbing. My guess would be when the zombies suddenly start dining on the recently deceased Tom and Judy, or when Ben fatally shoots Harry. If neither of those moments did it, then it had to be when Karen disembowels her mother. That scene, by the way, retains all of its shocking power forty-six years later. It’s a terrifying, chiaroscuro fantasia that branded my brain the second it came onto screen.

I’d like to think that the first people to see Night of the Living Dead stepped out of the theater dazed; worried they’d wandered into a new world of nightmares and chaos. At the very least, horror was never the same again. 

Shocktober: Kuroneko

Directed by Kaneto Shindo
Written by Kaneto Shindo
Starring Kichiemon Nakamura (Gintoki), Nobuko Otowa (Yone), and Kiwako Taichi (Shige)
Cinematography by Norimichi Igawa and Kiyomi Kuroda
Edited by Hisao Enoki

Released in 1968

I'd seen Kaneto Shindo's other major film in the Criterion Collection, Onibaba, before watching Kuroneko. I found it enjoyably lurid and frightening, but overall I thought it was more of a minor cult object than an underrated great. So color me surprised when I sat down to watch Kuroneko and was immediately entranced by it.

I dislike using "beautiful" as a descriptor, mainly because any film that's in focus and clearly-lit gets the word tossed at it, but there's no better way to describe Kuroneko's cinematography. It's beautiful, gorgeous, pretty, radiant, and stunning. It's also haunting, spooky, atmospheric, and moody. I'd rather post stills from the film than write about it. Phew, alright, now that I've exhausted my thesaurus, I'll try to get more concrete.

I've seen plenty of striking, black and white films at this point (8 1/2, Wings of Desire, Beauty and The Beast, Eraserhead, and Citizen Kane just to name a few), but none of them have quite the same look as Kuroneko. The whites are blindingly so, like the characters are moons, reflecting the sun's intense rays back at the viewer. And the blacks are either subsumed as light gray, or pitch as the darkest void of space. The contrast results in unbelievable moments. Like when spotlights shine on the characters and they dance around as the only light source in pools of total darkness.

Shindo's willingness to go for pure style produces unbelievable results (literally, in some moments). Due to the dense fog, double exposures, and trippy dancing used to establish the mood of Yone and Shige's haunted abode, I could never quite process the exact dimensions of the place. Which is great, and, I assume, totally intentional. The space occupies a strange nether-realm between the world of men and the plane of ghosts, and Shindo's technique goes a long way towards creating that effect.

Other moments made me smile solely from their outré craft, which might not be the best way to respond to a film, but, whatever, I couldn't help myself. Gintoki riding home, with a huge sun in the background, almost elicited a cheer from me. A sequence quickly transforming Gintoki from a dirty, matted-hair savage to a clean-cut samurai (there were a few scenes where I didn't recognize him), uses montage to great effect. There's even a shot that reminded me of Eraserhead. 

Aside from all that, Kuroneko is surprisingly emotional for a film about cat demons. Kuroneko opens with its two main characters being senselessly murdered by a roving band of warriors. Through sheer force of will, and the help of a black feline, they come back as avenging spirits. The potential for supernatural silliness is there, but the resurrected duo's situation is taken seriously. They retain a tiny sliver of their humanity and struggle with amnesia and the unending demands of their curse. Eventually, Gintoki recognizes the ghost Yone and Shige as his mother and wife respectively. Again, setting up tragic situations where the dark-world demands of the two wraiths conflicts with their human desires. Shige sacrifices herself for one last week of bliss with Gintoki, and, in the haunting, melancholic crescendo, Gintoki yells in frustration for his mother's recognition.  

If you couldn't tell from the previous six paragraphs of gushing, I unabashedly love this movie. Both because it was such a surprise, and just generally high-quality. It's a film I'm compelled to evangelize for. Kuroneko demands a sizable cult, scratch that, it deserves a huge audience and reappraisal as a classic. Horror-buff, cinephile, or film-newbie, all could find something to enjoy in Shindo's phantasmal tale.

Shocktober: The Innocents

Directed by Jack Clayton

Written by John Mortimer, William Archibald, and Truman Capote adapting The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Starring Deborah Kerr (Miss Giddens), Megs Jenkins (Mrs. Grose), Martin Stephens (Miles), and Pamela Franklin (Flora)

Cinematography by Freddie Francis

Edited by Jim Clark

Released in 1961

A British manor during the turn of the century is the perfect setting for a horror film.

1. It's isolated, so any help that could possibly come will take a long time to get there.
2. It provides plenty of opportunities for doors to creak open, wind to blow ominously through curtains, and people to walk through darkened corridors lit only by candlelight.
3. It's huge and empty. There's only four main characters in The Innocents and they occupy a monumental house. That leaves plenty of space for them to be creeped out and go crazy from cabin fever.
4. The stereotypical British politeness and repression sets up a great conflict where highly rational people desperately try to deal with a supernatural, irrational situation.

Aside from its location, The Innocents makes some great choices in telling its story and building its mood. The first is that the film is very, very careful in maintaining its ambiguity. Is Giddens actually seeing ghosts or is her buttoned-down personality causing her to hallucinate? Are the children possessed or just creepily precocious? The Innocents never answers these questions. Kerr is in every scene of the film and every time something supernatural happens it's either within frame of Giddens or from her viewpoint. Other films that attempt "is it all real or not?", such as The Descent or Audition, ruin that tension by having revelations occur in frame with side characters or in more objective real shots (not to say those films are bad).

The Innocents has been justly praised for its cinematography (watch the Criterion supplements for an excellent technical overview). It's got that great Citizen Kane, deep focus look with Kerr in the foreground and foreboding things going on in the background. There's striking clashes between the manor's grand surface and the little bits of decay that are buried just underneath. And dissolves are used to marvelous effect to create a floaty, dreamy mood (a sequence near the middle where different dissolves and superimpositions pile-up is a true stand-out).

However, I found the soundscape more interesting. As the story progresses, it gets densely layered. Ominous woodwinds and brass set the tone. Distinct background noises like clocks, winds, and birds are always hovering nearby.  Various screams, laughs, mutterings, and whispers fade in and out of each other. Piercing shrieks and high-pitch noises flare-up whenever Giddens gets frightened. The manor amplifies every sound with a haunting echo. Combined, it wraps Giddens, and the viewer, in a sonic cocoon of slowly-building insanity. Like Eraserhead, The Innocents proves that sound is just as important in creating horror as image.

Video Game Corner: Fusion between mechanics and theme.

Ramblings about video games. 

Note: the following was a part of a conservation I was having about the Legend of Zelda series. It's in response to someone else praising Twilight Princess. My comment was a bit rough, but it elucidates an aspect of games I frequently mull over.

I don't know. The dark tone Nintendo went for feels very slapped-on. My brother played through the game for the first time recently and I watched a little. The look of the dark world does not hold up. It looks very messy and oversaturated. Like they didn't have a clear art direction for that part of the game.

As for the story... I'll have to explain my thoughts on what differentiates video games from other art forms to illustrate my point. Warning: this will get long and rambly.

I'm very against cut scenes and long, scrolly text boxes in games. They ape other art forms and pull you out of whatever state the game had been working to get you in. Whatever ideas, themes, or feelings you get from a game should come from its mechanics (i.e. how you play it). In Twilight Princess the majority of what you're doing is puzzle-solving and fighting creatures in a way that feels like a rehash of Ocarina of Time and A Link To The Past. I barely remember the story because it amounts to such a tiny percentage of the overall game and it's conveyed in a lazy (cutscene-heavy) way.

Contrast that with Majora's Mask. Every element of that game goes toward getting across this messed-up, dark-fairytale world, including the mechanics. The time-manipulation results in tragic situations where nothing you do is permanent and no one remembers the heroic, arduous tasks you've accomplished. The mask-system delves into disturbing body-horror where Link is transforms into other races. And the masks are typically acquired by helping other characters work through depressing situations, like accepting their own death. Those are all core mechanics and they all work toward expressing the vision I described earlier.

Twilight Princess lacks that synergy between mechanics and theme.

Shocktober: Scream

Directed by Wes Craven
Written by Kevin Williamson
Starring Neve Campbell (Sidney), Skeet Ulrich (Billy), and Rose McGowan (Tatum)
Cinematography by Mark Irwin
Edited by Patrick Lussier
Released in 1996

I was riding high off the one-two of Rosemary's Baby and The Descent. Each embody two different styles of horror, but both are equally successful, enjoyable for horror neophytes, and at least adequate in acting and dialogue. Unfortunately, Scream has knocked me off my figurative horse and back into grouch mode.

Let me get to the good first. The best part about Scream is that it makes it's protagonists feel capable of actually defeating the villains. Similarly, the killers don't feel unstoppable and their attacks are just the right amount of messy, which makes sense considering their ultimate reveal. The film gives Neve Campbell's Sidney the proper dosage of self-referential material. She's smart, competent, and aware, but not to the point where her character is sacrificed on the altar of meta. Scream's opening sequence could serve as it's own terrifying short film. It has both the film's scariest moment (Barrymore trying to scream, but being unable to), and its best reference (the killer's gotcha Friday The 13th trivia). Of course, the problem is that the rest of Scream fails to match those moments.

Now to the bad. Throughout film history, movies have investigated what makes their own genre tick, the act of film making and film watching itself, and celebrated the wild and crazy world that is cinema. Among them are some of the greatest films of all time such as Man With A Movie Camera, Singin' In The Rain, and Vertigo. Then there are the films that use referential and meta elements as sprinkles, to distract the viewer from noticing that the core of a film isn't all that different from it's attempting to pick apart.

Scream falls firmly into the latter camp. Its script is choked with references to other, better horror movies (Psycho, Halloween, The Exorcist). Almost every character seems to have infinite knowledge regarding the genre, despite there being only one character designated as a horror-junkie, to the point where otherwise decent performances are ruined. Williamson also constantly reminds you how he is aware of the genre's tropes and how this film will be totally different! However, you would be hard-pressed to distinguish the basics of Scream from every other slasher. There are still masked killers, superfluous characters being offed to no impact, a final girl sequence, and a lame exposition dump detailing the motivations of the murderers.

This is an odd place to say the following, but it's something that's been on my mind for a while that I've never actually written down. And Scream is as good a film as any to use as a jumping off point. I don't like the way most 80's and 90's films look. Compared to previous decades, there are changes in the way films were lit and people looked and dressed that make the physical act of watching movies less pleasurable for me. It's an opinion I've seen nowhere else, so I chalk this annoyance up more to being harmfully nostalgic for past styles than anything else.

Anyway, that's not a knock against Scream's form, which is fine for the most part with a few stand out sequences. However, there are a few tricks that Craven overuses. One is the combination of scary moment + loud music + dutch angle that becomes laughable by the end. The other is the music in general. I can't say for sure that the suspenseful parts of Scream would work better in silence, but that's the general sense I got. It doesn't help that Scream's music feels terribly generic, which is odd considering Craven's horror knowledge. Surely he's reflected on the incredible, inseparable music of Psycho and The Shining, right?

If any genre needs to have the piss taken out of it, it's horror. I imagine part of the reason that Scream was so well-received on its initial release is that it finally ended the endless stream of creatively-bankrupt slashers that had dominated the genre ever since Mrs. Voorhees starting killing nubile teens at Crystal Lake. Scream revealed that sub-genre as silly at best and regressive at worst. For that reason I suppose, I'm glad the movie exists. However, today, it's difficult to see the death blow that Scream apparently dealt.

How To Sound Smart When Talking About Film

Mention a respected director and slap the "ian" suffix on to their name. Bonus points if you namedrop a painter. Super bonus points if you use Brechtian.

Toss out a reference to an artistic movement that has nothing to do with film and don't explain how it relates to the movie at hand.

Use phrases that indicate you think a film looks nice, but are vague and don't say anything meaningful (i.e. "well-shot" and "perfectly-framed").

State how the film reflects an "ism" (modernism, structuralism). Extra credit if you slap a "post" on there.

Build your entire argument about a film around an obscure concept from philosophy or psychology.

Disparage several entries on other people's best-of lists.

Print out a list of the highest-grossing films of the year, nail it to a wall, blindfold yourself, and throw a dart at it. Take the film the dart lands on and come up with your own convoluted system of logic to make the film sound like a masterpiece.

Lynchian Is Not a Synonym for Weird

It's common in film criticism to compare current works with stylistically-similar older films. I have no problem with that practice. In fact, I enjoy doing it as well. Spotting influences and watching movies borrow and talk to each other throughout history is one of the joys of being a film buff. However, I take issue when a director's name is tossed out without explaining what exactly about that director's style matches the film under discussion. I'm also annoyed when a director gets the "-ian" suffix and is then used as a synonym for a common word (examples: Hitchcockian = thrilling, Kubrickian = cold).

The most common example of this phenomenon is the use of Hitchcockian. The Hitchcockian label has been applied to so many films at this point that I'm unsure about what it means. Often, it seems like you could replace it with "thrilling" without losing anything and remove any ambiguity people unfamiliar with Hitchcock's film may have. I'm not an expert on Hitchcock (I've only seen Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo), but based on those films, I'd say there are three elements that make up a Hitchcock picture:

1. An identity crisis, which includes the "wrong man" trope as seen in North By Northwest and the more esoteric identity confusion of Vertigo. 
2. An element of voyeurism. Both Rear Window and Vertigo involve main characters spying on someone else or attempting to control another person. Usually, this investigates the relation between the audience and the film as well. 
3. A messed up male-female relationship. North By Northwest, Rear Window, and Vertigo all have central relationships that twist and turn in various, sometimes dark, ways. Not exactly related, but a sub-theme of Psycho is how men try to dominate women. 

If a film doesn't have any of those elements, then it shouldn't be called Hitchcockian. That devalues the word and causes confusion when a simple "thrilling" would do.

The one use of this type of shorthand that personally annoys me is Lynchian. If you've read a review for any weird film made after Blue Velvet, you've probably seen Lynch namedropped. Like with Hitchcockian, it's almost always a substitute for a common word, in this case "weird". That strikes me as a massive misunderstanding of Lynch's aesthetic. On the surface, his films are nightmarish and bizarre, but never for no reason. Lynch uses a very out-there style to explore a common fear or emotion, in a way that makes those feelings so palpable that they jump off the screen. No film has made fatherhood as terrifying as Eraserhead, feelings of jealousy and bitterness have never been portrayed as overwhelmingly as they have in Mulholland Drive, and very few films have dealt with incest and child abuse as directly as Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. In addition, Lynch's films often contrast the seemingly ordinary, 50-esque surface of a place with it's dark underbelly and, like Hitchcock, involve voyeurism to some degree.

To apply Lynchian to any old weird film without seriously considering what makes his films unique isn't just lazy, it's wrong.

Shocktober: Suspiria

 Directed by Dario Argento
Starring Jessica Harper (Suzy Bannion), Stefania Casini (Sara), and Joan Bennett (Madame Blanc)

Written by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi partially adapting the novel Suspiria de Profundis by Thomas De Quincey

Cinematography Luciano Tovoli

Edited by Franco Fraticelli

Released in 1977

Before I get into the review proper I need to clarify my thoughts on film in general and horror in particular.

1. It is okay for a film to eschew plot and focus on mood and imagery.

2. That does not free a film from being uninteresting. It still needs to spark an emotional response or inspire thought. 

3. If a film accomplishes those first two points, that's a good way to ensure it will become a personal favorite. 

4. I do not consider horror a lesser genre. Plenty of great, interesting horror films have been made and many fascinating ideas and fears have been explored through the genre. 

5. I love many horror films such as Psycho, The Shining, Eraserhead, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. 

6. All that being said, that does not excuse horror films from massive deficiencies in acting and dialogue. I expect horror films to succeed in those areas as much as I would a drama.

Watching Suspiria was a constant battle between my appreciation for its formal elements and my embarrassment at everything else. As has been said before, the film has the look of a technicolor nightmare. Every set is bathed in blood red. Characters are lit in different colors while standing right next to each other. And Argento chooses extreme angles and odd shots to further the disorientation. It's all very garish, and very lurid. Looking at stills shots from the film is mesmerizing. It's a cliche, but you're not going find anything else like it.

During its opening minutes, Suspiria attains the dreamlike state that so many of its acolytes have praised. Suzy walks out of an airport into a dark downpour and steps into taxi. Harsh red and blue neon lights morph around on her face, distorted by the rain and the glass. The taxi's headlights slash the dark of a forest straight out of a Grimm fairy tale. Suzy arrives at her destination, and sees a young woman in the doorway screaming something nonsensical. The woman runs dreamily through the woods, her ivory white skin contrasting hauntingly with the blackness of the forest.

And then... people start talking and the film whiplashes from atmospheric horror to unintentional comedy at neckbreaking speeds. Everyone speaks with a vaguely European accent, and says their lines in a clipped, robotic manner. It doesn't the help that the dialogue is synced poorly to the lip movements. I am aware that most Italian genre films were dubbed and that this was a problem for a lot of them, but that knowledge didn't temper my immediate reaction. And so much of the dialogue is blatantly expository, forcing the actors to speak in a comically inhuman way. 

I suppose I was expecting the wrong things from Suspiria. Most reviews don't mention the problems I had with the film and focus purely on the its style. Here's a few stereotypical descriptions of the film: 

• "Its outlandish, confounding style does more than virtually any other film to create the exact      sort of unsettled, panicky mood in the viewer that is at the hear of horror." ~ Timothy Brayton

• "Encountered as one might a childhood nightmare or a flesh and blood incarnation of a Grimm   fairy tale." ~ Rob Humanick

• "From stormy start to fiery finish, it's a stylish, compelling, phantasmagoric movie." ~ Philip       French

I desperately want to see the movie that all of those critics saw, and I have seen it, multiple times in fact, but none of them are called Suspiria. I was surprised to learn that Argento's film and Eraserhead came out in the same year. Compared to Lynch's nightmare, Suspiria is a daydream. Despite its insane colors and pounding music, it fails to reach the giddy, deliriousnes heights of House. The issues I've already mentioned tear down any mood Suspria manages to build up. Furthermore, the elements the film is commonly praised for (Goblin's aggressive score, the wild color scheme) become grating by the end. The score is especially tough to deal with. Anytime it starts up is like a giant warning sign saying "SCARY THING ABOUT TO HAPPEN!!!" It's tension-destroying and becomes maddeningly annoying the nth time it's repeated.

The final problem is that Suspiria doesn't attempt to explore a common fear. While horror doesn't necessarily need that quality to be effective, it helps immensely in making a resonant film. Without that, all Suspiria has are a few stylish, but not particularly scary, kill scenes. I don't want that to be held up as an exemplar of anything.


P.S.
Despite my negativity, I consider watching Suspiria a fascinating experience. Usually, when I have a contrarian opinion on a film, it's because I'm nonplussed by a movie others consider a masterpiece. Often with such films, I'm capable of understanding why they're held high regard after doing some reading. Suspiria is the first time my reaction has been 180 degrees away from the critical consensus. I don't really know what to with that. Obviously, I don't consider everyone else's opinion on the film wrong. I've read a few reviews, but can't shake off my response and see the good in the movie. I suppose I should try watching it again.

The Limits of the Auteur Theory

Anyone who has dipped their toe in the waters of film history and criticism is familiar with the auteur theory. The idea that, despite a movie requiring dozens if not hundreds of people to create, that one person can be the author of a film and that their unique, personal voice can come through in the finished product. Typically, that person is the director, and the vast majority of people are now aware of the role a director plays in creating the carefully-constructed experiences that are movies. However, the basics of this idea can sometimes be misunderstood and I recently came upon two articles that stretched the bounds of the theory too far. 

First, here's a quote from Jim Emerson of Scanners that mimics my thoughts on the basics of the theory:

"...the so-called auteur theory was hardly a formal theory at all. It wasn't an absolutist dogma (or didn't have to be), but was more like a general rule of thumb, a working principle. And it never posited that the auteur must always be the director. It could be the producer, the writer, an actor (nobody ever tried to argue that "Gone With the Wind" was A Victor Fleming Film), and it was born out of an appreciation for the personal artistic signatures of Hollywood filmmakers laboring within the studio-factory system, when virtually everyone working on a picture was under contract (from the writers to the directors to the technicians and cast) and was basically assigned to work on one project after another."

Emerson's third point is important. The auteur label usually gets slapped on to the director, but it is entirely possible, and in sync with the theory, for someone else working behind the scenes to be the guiding voice. I'll add that the auteur status of a film has nothing to do with its quality. Just because a distinct personality marks a film doesn't mean it's good or bad, and plenty of great films with strong visions have been made by journeyman directors. It's helpful when discussing a director's body of work if they have pet themes or a distinct style to link everything together, but that desire can result in overrating a mediocre movie from an established director or dismissing a good movie lacking a clear hand. 

The first article that drew my interest came courtesy of Noel Murray from The Dissolve:

"I can’t argue that the same is true for Reitman, because I haven’t seen Men, Women & Children yet, but you folks may have just offered a useful defense of the film. If its attitude toward humanity—and one half of humanity in particular—has been affected by Reitman’s own issues, then even if it’s a shitty movie, doesn’t it at least offer some insight into its creator?"

It's true that Men, Women, and Children may offer insight into Reitman's psyche, but that doesn't automatically make the film interesting. It's the ideas within the film and how those ideas are communicated that's important. If Men, Women, and Children only offers up clichéd thoughts on the state of the world and does so through sloppy execution, then it doesn't matter what it reveals about Reitman. 

Of course, Murray goes on to say as much:

"Bear in mind that even if Reitman and/or Baumbach’s personal circumstances are tainting their work, that doesn’t automatically make the films better (or worse)."

The second article was a discussion Anne Helen Petersen was having on Buzzfeed:

"And he uses silence so well! And sound design! Soderbergh is one of the few directors for whom I’ll tolerate the “auteur” label, in part because he not only directs most of the time, but also serves as the director of photography (under a pseudonym) and often contributes to the screenplay as well (although less so in recent years)."

This was the statement that really confused me. The auteur theory doesn't mean that one person did all the work on a film. The theory came about during the 50's when the Cahiers du Cinema critics (many of whom would go on to become the leading directors of the French New Wave) noticed that, despite working in the rigid studio system of Hollywood, directors like Nicholas Ray, Alfred Hitchcock, and Howard Hawks all had distinct stylistic touches and thematic concerns that were evident in the majority of their films. Nowhere does the theory say a director needs to be involved in multiple aspects of film production for their voice to get across.

October Horror Marathon

For the month of October I will be attempting to watch a horror movie a day. I've heard of numerous people in the online film community doing similar marathons, so I thought I would in the fun. I am a horror novice, so this will give me an excuse to catch up with a lot of acclaimed films that I've missed due to my past aversion to the genre. I'm not committing to writing full pieces on each film because that would be far too stressful. I started a Letterboxd account and I'll be writing a short paragraph on each film over there.

Here's the full list. I think it's good mix of classics, the contemporary, and the cult, and gives a good overview of how horror has changed over the years.

Vampyr

The Bride of Frankenstein

Cat People

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The Blob

Jigoku

Carnival of Souls

The Masque of Read Death

Kwaidan

Kuroneko

Rosemary’s Baby

Night of the Living Dead

Sisters

The Exorcist

Suspiria

The Brood

Poltergeist

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Re-Animator

Hellraiser

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

Candyman

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Scream

The Blair Witch Project

Audition

The Descent

Let the Right One In

The House of the Devil

Kill List

Resolution