The Tempest

I'm taking a break from our regularly scheduled Halloween marathon to bring you an advance review of Julie Taymor's The Tempest  which screened last night at the Chicago Int'l Film Festival.

The Tempest is my favorite play.  By far.  It's not the best of Shakespeare's plays by any stretch, but it is the last and certainly most ambitious of his works.  The story of Prospero's wrongful deposition from the Dukeship of Milan by his usurping brother, exile to an island where he gains mystical powers and his plot to right all wrongs done him is an odd blend of magic, social commentary, philosophizing and above all, an intentional exit from the stage for the world's most lauded playwright and a lasting testament to the power of imagination.  The Tempest is Shakespeare's most introspective play, it's very clearly a journey into his own mind and soul.  It's his final say on what he thinks of this 'brave new world' before he bows out.  We have characters culled from all of his plays:  usurping family members, conniving politicians, star-crossed lovers, monsters, fools and even the very incarnation of the muse which sings in all storytellers.

Shakespeare's characters in The Tempest are so varied and ambiguous that it's almost like a personal challenge from the Bard himself to make sense of it all.  I've heard many interpretations, a storyteller's meditation on imagination, a Machiavellian meditation on power, post-colonial satire, pro-colonial propaganda, the list goes on.  Julie Taymor's rendition recasts the male Prospero as Prospera, the duchess of Milan after the death of her husband.

Alack!  This film is awfully weightless, and while the actors may be partly to blame, the real problem is the directing.  What Taymor misses is cohesion.  The Tempest in itself is not one character's tale, the cast of The Tempest is a playchest of archetypes whose movements in the narrative are fixed but the motivations and sympathies are very slippery.  The director's job should be to sew these stories together visually and with careful acting direction to push the narrative toward a common theme.  This is Taymor's first failure.  She seems to have contented herself with each actor's individual interpretation of their character with no attempt at orchestrating them all toward a meaningful climax.  Unlike Shakespeare's other dramatic plays, the story does not primarily chronicle the journey of one or two main characters.  The Tempest is a series of vignettes between different groups of characters who have been strategically placed around the island at the behest of Prospero the grand puppetmaster.  To make this work, especially on film, the director must find a way to insert a commonality of theme or interpretation to make the play's befuddling climax truly cathartic.  This is not a play that a director/writer team can content themselves to just sit back and 'be faithful' to the source material.  The Tempest is Shakespeare's erector set for directors, a 'Create-Your-Own-Masterpiece^TM' package that a director must assemble with careful direction of actors, visual spectacle and (in a film's case) editing.

One would think that Taymor would at least have the visuals down pat but I'm sad to report that she does not.  Her interpretation of Ariel is frustratingly literal.  Ben Whishaw's otherwise semi-great performance is rendered in harsh translucence.  You can almost see the blatant overlaying of Whishaw's form over the stark Hawaiian lava field set.  The shots look like they belong in the pre-production section of a 'making-of' documentary or a rough effects test.  His motion is equally as annoying.  One shot in particular shows him literally leading the characters toward Prospera's circle of reckoning.  It's a frustrating visual, that looks like the first thing that would pop into any schmo's head when reading the play.  A translucent ghostly form gliding stupidly above the turf, his body so obviously suspended by a wire and callously superimposed over the shot.  There is no interpretation between Shakespeare's stage direction and Taymor's vision of it.  If the stage direction says Ariel flies away into the sky, then she will have Whishaw's stiff form hastily rotoscoped and tossed into the clouds with a bad trail effect.  Whishaw's Ariel doesn't look spiritual, he just looks like he's not really there.  Taymor's love of spectacle contrasts curiously with her lack of depth perception.  It seems that she's never quite left the stage, and I suspect she had few collaborators commenting on the look of her film. I'm sure she had a costume designer but trusted herself to act as concept artist, thinking that hiring one would be unnecessary for a 'visionary direector' like herself.


It could be that this look is intentional.  One can create the affect of genius by sort of throwing off the precedents of filmmaking in an effort to create something new or original or 'true to vision', and Taymor's strengths do lie on the stage, hence the visuals could have looked intentionally sparse, but a film is not a stage play (unless you're Lars Von Trier).  This is a movie and blending theatrical minimalism and visual grandeur requires a particularly keen eye, one that I don't think Taymor has.  Interestingly, though, there are precedents for this sort of look.  Tarsem Singh's The Fall displays the sort of minimalist wonder that would have served this film well.  In my mind, it even would have helped had this film been entirely done on green screen with a digital environment like 300 or Sin City.  'Visionary directors' (as Taymor is credited on all of her posters), tend to poo-poo computer generated effects simply on principle.  There's a perception that a director's artistic vision is curtailed the more CGI is introduced.  A lot of directors resist green screens because it's supposedly hard to solicit felt performances from actors on a blank soundstage, but this is exactly what could have worked with The Tempest.  Wouldn't a green-screen soundstage be a perfect venue for a seasoned stage actor?  The Tempest is often performed completely minimally with no set dressing at all in an attempt to highlight particularly grand performances.  It's a matter of prestige for an actor to be able to fill an empty space like that with pure feeling and oral power, so why couldn't this work on a green screen and awesome visuals be added later?  This would certainly be appropriate for The Tempest since it all takes place in such a mythical setting.  Taymor's environment looks like a series of mid-grade sets.  Not quite rich, not quite minimal, thoroughly dull, which is unfortunate since the island itself is a silent character in this play.  This theme is given a bit of credence in one scene as Caliban monologues about the island's wonders, but the environment doesn't back it up.  The whole place looks pretty unremarkable.

I do not think the main problem with this film was Taymor's lack of understanding of Shakespeare.  As an experienced stage director, I believe she does understand Shakespeare, but she doesn't understand film.  It is the cinema that eats up her play.  Her hopelessly two-dimensional idea of film undermines her attempt at visual grandeur but it also ruins the actors' performances.  The staging of this film is lost between the relative two-dimensions of the stage and the unavoidably 3-dimensional environment of the camera.  The performances simply don't pop off the screen as in other adaptations.  They're either swallowed up by sound effects (in the shipwreck scene) or dulled by the wide open spaces of the natural sets (Prospera setting her trap).  They don't fill the space of Prospera's cavern or the Hawaiian lava fields.  Again, the assembly is the problem.  The editing is pretty abysmal (even I noticed some rough camera jumps) and a lot of the visual compositions (as when Ariel speaks to Prospera) are just downright lazy.  Often, because of the digital overlaying, Ariel and Prospera appear to be looking past each other, so here Taymor is a paradox, at once making her special effects plain and literal, using the philosophy of the stage director, but doesn't even care to preserve stage fundamentals such as making sure actors' eyelines work convincingly.  This is a particular instance that makes me think that there is little philosophy behind Taymor's visuals.  They are poorly constructed. They have no goal, they are just a series of moving pictures, shot in different places, pasted together and the resultant lack of depth and attention to detail is distracting.

The acting ranges from mediocre to pretty good.  Djimon Hounsou's Caliban is (I thought) impressively spirited.  Russel Brand seemed like a good idea for Trinculo, but he shows little nuance.  Alfred Molina's Stefano is more memorable.  Chris Cooper and Alan Cumming get the job done but don't bare any teeth, though they do play the difficult roles of a pair of powerless villains.  The standout performance was Felicity Jones' Miranda and the only real train wreck was Reeve Carney as Ferdinand.  His delivery was painfully sleepy and his look was irritatingly hipster.  It looked like he'd stepped right out of Brooklyn or an alt. country band...based in Brooklyn.

One thing Taymor does interpret with care are Ariel's songs.  Music has long been a stand-out element of her productions.  These sequences are carefully constructed, but are overlong and even do little to season the film with style.

This has been a long rant so far but I haven't gotten to my central disdain for Taymor's Tempest.  I can forgive cut-and-paste TV miniseries visuals and even less-than-inspired performances from some of the actors but the thematic interior of this film (or lack of it) was the final blow.  Mirren plays her Prospera far too down-to-earth.  Her sole motivations seem to be reclaiming her Dukeship, doing good for her daughter and satisfying her conscience in the process, but Prospero is more than these things.  The character is of higher mind than all the other players in the tale.  They are the puppets and Prospero is the puppetmaster.  He has earthly considerations, but he lives in the ivory tower of the creator.  The island is his realm of imagination, where he can accomplish anything he wants.  The island is the stage, and the stage is life.  Ariel is the sprite of inspiration, Caliban the totem of the earth and together under Prospero's command, they do the bidding of the mastermind.  This trinity is the makeup of the human mind.  The human being is capable of spritely flights of fancy and the ability to imagine all things, yet stubbornly earthbound and downtrodden.  Prospero's love of Ariel and disdain for Caliban could be seen as a statement of Shakespeare's own values.  A playwright loves his muse but not his limitations, the reminders of his own mortality and the earth to which he must return.  But all we get from Prospera's great 'wisdom' is a look through a Freudian kaleidoscope in which Ariel is seen changing gender whilst flying through space.  It seems that the only real existential depth that Taymor is capable of portraying is the sexual, as if that is what is at the heart of all mankind.  Ariel's gender-bending is not in itself a bad thematic move--(s)he is the spirit of all things incarnated which applies to both genders--, but placing that imagery at the center of humanity distracts from weightier themes of mortality and imagination.  Thus, Mirren's delivery of the famous "We are such stuff as dreams are made on..." speech holds all the profundity of a dirty joke.  Prospero is talking about the soul and lot of mankind which Taymor can only represent with Ariel's growing and retracting breasts, then splitting in two as if through mitosis and performing the holy Sexual Act.  This interpretation is illiterate and ultimately says nothing about human kind other than that we are sexual creatures (and fully resists definition as to what that means).  Taymor produces provocative imagery but fails to paint a nuanced portrait of the human being.  Instead she uses sexuality to elicit a visceral response from the audience and create the illusion of depth.  Shakespeare saw higher things in men.  Sex was definitely included, but it was not worshiped.  Certainly not beyond love.  Taymor, in typical 21st Century fashion, conflates the two as one in the same.  For Shakespeare, the center of the human experience was a bittersweet tension between the spiritual bliss of imagination and the harsh, monstrous clay to which we must return.  For Taymor, it is a drug bender, a one-night-stand and a morning after.

One thing I will say, is that unlike a lot of naysayers out there, I don't think Taymor is pretentious.  I just don't think she is a good filmmaker.  She lacks focus and real intentionality to her errant visions.  She is Mirren's Prospera, not Shakespeare's Prospero.  She is earth-bound and frustratingly literal.  She holds no dominion over the spirits of creativity.  I will say that the end credits sequence was cool.  We see Prospera's treasured books sinking into a deep blue sea while Ariel's song plays hauntingly over it.  Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn't fill out this fleeting vision.  I wanted to love this movie as much as I love the play it's based on, but the film misses the point and fails to assemble the story and infuse it with meaning.  Such a shame.

The Tempest - C

Halloween Movie Marathon Part 3

The Shining

Kubrick never contented himself to make an 'homage' to a genre.  He would instead erect a monument to it.  2001: A Space Odyssey continues to battle it out with Blade Runner for #1 sci-fi film ever made on just about every top 10 list out there.  He turns the genre itself into the film's principle character.  In 2001 it was the ascension of consciousness.  In The Shining it's just plain terror.  There are a lot of interpretations as to what exactly Kubrick is commenting on here, but in my mind if you just make a film about evil itself, then all applicable commentary naturally follows (the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears, class tyranny, racism, familial abuse, patriarchal violence, sexual violence).  The Shining represents vileness in all crevasses of the human heart and all manner of wrongdoing.  This is the power of genre filmmaking.  Instead of setting out to allegorize one specific issue (e.g. the evil of the Holocaust), you exorcise the spirit of that event and send it coursing through the events your narrative.  You'll tend to come out with flat characters and a storybook plot but stories like these must necessarily be told in broad strokes.  "For the near-blind you have to draw large simple caricatures" --Flannery O'Connor.  The apocalyptic nature of this film and its lack of character complexity was what caused critics to at first pan this film.  Heck, even Stephen King didn't like it.  Years later, as with most of Kubrick's films, opinions took a positive turn and The Shining was hailed as one of the greatest horror films of all time.

Watching this film for the first time was an engrossing experience.  I was shocked to learn how few critics liked it when it came out.  It's just so huge and heavy.  I actually expected to not have a profound experience with this movie since I'd thought myself to have absorbed most of its key moments through the general osmosis of homage and satire (most memorably The Simpsons' parody).  The film has become so iconic that I didn't think that could really offer me anything that I hadn't seen before, but even in 2010, it definitely did.  I was afraid every second of this film.  It was unsettling in a way that I hadn't experienced before, a kind of relentless fear from which there is no escape.  Stephen King famously remarked that Kubrick was a man that "thinks too much and feels to little."  This may be true, but you need a thinker to take you through the headspace of a psychotic.  Kubrick slights every other element to the tale in favor of patterning the mind of the aggressor.  Even the ghosts, which one would think would be pivotal to a story about a haunted house, are left somewhat to the backdrop.  Kubrick's specters are the pantheon of a disturbed mind rather than a spiritual force.  The Shining is a monolith of a thriller.  It is at once dense and sparse, like the contrast between the massive hotel interiors and the sense of claustrophobia it induces, and it drops on your psyche like an anvil. Repeat viewings of this film would surely yield many more opportunities for interpretation but I think I'm content to visit this house of horrors only once.

The Shining - A (freaking) +
Scarometer - Deeply disturbing.  No 'jump out at you' scares.  Entirely, 'doubt your psychological stability' kind of stuff.  Hugging your significant other will do little to lessen the haunts of The Shining, especially because you'll likely be questioning the power motivations inherently laced into your very embrace.  This is no roller-coaster ride, it's a draught of pure fear.

Halloween Movie Marathon Part 2
The Orphanage

"The Orphanage" is just about the perfect scary movie.  It really is the most fun I've had watching a film after dark since the golden age of Shymalan (oh, those were the days).  Men, if you have significant others (or prospective ones) this is the perfect opportunity to have them jump straight into your arms.  They just won't have any choice.  Miss Schmunk actually screamed out loud twice during this film which left me with the pleasant job of consoling her nerves (though mine were just as tense).

Well-meaning couple Laura and Carlos move into the abandoned orphanage where Laura grew up for sentimental reasons and also to establish a new home for mentally handicapped children.  Their son Simon's obsession with a group of imaginary friends causes Laura to wonder if there is someone from her past that still haunts the building.

This is horror for old souls.  Juan Antonio Bayona pays no attention to the recent wave of nihilism that has infested our thrillers, and puts sympathetic characters and real villains into his ghost story.  Empathy is one of the fundamental tenets of fear (just ask Sophocles), and it just makes for good old fashioned drama.  He also has a deep appreciation for both the rich tradition of Spanish horror, and familiar old-Hollywood styles.  Both are represented here with loving flourishes.  Belen Rueda delivers a strong lead performance and is someone that the audience can really get attached to.

Bayona's scares are twofold, one complimenting the other.  He perfectly captures that "unknown" quality that is so necessary for ghost stories, but then, just when you think you've got his number, he jumps over the line to outright horror.  There was one scene in particular (which I will not spoil) that completely upended all of my expectations for the film.  You'll know it when you see it.  Bayona's willingness to dip (if sparingly) into the graphic depictions of the grotesque, derails the film just enough from its rich air of melancholy so that when we return to the shadows, we really are afraid of what might be lurking back there.

Beyond the fright, this film has a great story.  It's full of tragedy, mystery and dedication, the stuff of great classic cinema.  Some of the locales evoke such classics as Rebecca and Spellbound.  Bayona's fondness for classic suspense coupled with his willingness to break from those traditions gives 'The Orphanage' heart and horror in equal measure.

The Orphanage:  A


Type of scare:  Haunting, eerie, mysterious, with some sparing moments of real shock.

Halloween Movie Marathon Part 1

Let The Right One In

Vampire love story.  Thanks to the Twilight series, at this point this plot description is the stuff of Jedis, Pirates and other established Hollywood tropes.  Let The Right One In came out the same year as its high profile cousin, but it is paramount that the two not be confused.  Major differences from Twilight are as follows:

1.  This film does not suck (that is, in the sense of it being bad).
2.  This film is Swedish.
3.  This film's protagonists are 12 years old.

To further dispel any confusion:  you may have noticed a fairly similar looking film out in theaters right now called "Let Me In".  This is an American remake of Let The Right One In.  I have not seen it, so I can't say that it's totally redundant (especially since the more I hear from Reeves the more I like the guy) but to be clear, if you have the mental fortitude to deal with subtitles, then this is the film you need to see--or at least see first.

An often bullied little boy in a quiet, remote town befriends a young girl who has just moved into his apartment building.  As he grows more infatuated with her, he becomes aware of her connection to a series of grisly murders and ultimately that she may be something other than human.

This film has been called a masterpiece and after finally watching the thing, I can see why.  Each shot is painfully still and the composition is excellent.  Its violence feels incidental, but not casual; horrifyingly muted.  The only moment where the director allows any hint of B-movie campiness is a scene involving a room full of cats (I'll leave your mind to wonder).  Otherwise, this is an art film through and through.  Prepare yourself for weighty silence.

This is also the first movie I've seen that actually makes the state of vampire-ness something seriously regrettable.  It's presented like a sickness, and it's something you do not want to catch.

This film is also contains a refreshing return to the twist ending.  The best twists are the ones that were right under your nose the whole time, ones that you could have and should have seen coming before the reality of what's happened smacks you over the head.  There's also never a 'sucker-punch' moment where the director pulls the twist out of a hat.  You can connect the dots at any point throughout the second half of the film.  I didn't realize it until the very last shot.  Eli strung me along just as well as Oskar.

It seems like the prevailing doctrine on how to make a 'good' monster movie is to make the creature a metaphor for something else.  The thrill of watching the monster itself has long left us in the era of special effects.  We all know what a vampire is, but what does a vampire mean?  Let The Right One In manages to be metaphorical (it's a cautionary tale and a twisted coming-of-age fable) but also never sacrifices the inherent thrill of its monster.  Before the word 'vampire' is even uttered, the film has built its monster from the ground up, lending new definition to a word loaded with preconceptions.  This is an entirely new breed of vampire and believe me, you won't know what to expect.

Let The Right One In:  A


Type of scare:  Unsettling.  Mixes suspense with sparing moments of stomach-turning violence.  The monster is not left in the shadows but her intentions are.  Its scares are slow and well punctuated.

Halloween Movie Marathon

I'm not a horror movie guy.  Why?  Because they totally scare me.  Ever since seeing the Matrix at a tender age I've respected the power of a film to totally derail my mental state.  I watched The Sixth Sense when I was around 16 and still went to bed with the lights on.  Yeah, that's right, The Sixth Sense, like the least scary of scary movies.  But I did learn something from the experience.  While I detest horror films, I am a fan of the scary movie.  There's a difference.  Allow me to explain:

Horror movie - Affects you by means of shock and disgust.  Revels in the grotesque to the point of creating a pornography of violence.
Examples:  Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saw, Hostel.

Scary movie - Frightens you by challenging your mind with a mood of fear and suspense without resorting to graphic offensiveness.  Horrific events tend to be more suggested than depicted and vary in style (this is encompasses many genres).  There are many ways to scare somebody and many different flavors of fear.
Examples:  The Sixth Sense, The Devil's Backbone, Alien

It should be noted, however, that it sort of ruins a scare if one knows going in just how much is left unseen.  I've often been asked after recommending a scary movie "Is this like, one of those horror movies where you don't see anything?"  Such categorizing ruins the effect.  Part of a good scare is knowing that something horrible could very likely occur at any moment, so if you're sure that most things are left unseen then you'll know what (not) to expect.  This is something I shall attempt to handle delicately to preserve the experience for you but still give you some idea of whether or not the film is too graphic to be worth watching.

Note that my Scarometer^TM is especially sensitive and what frightens me may not frighten you, but if you're like me and haven't traversed too far into the teeming mass of scary movies, then this may just be the guide for you, from one frightened rabbit to another.

My prospective list is as follows.  Note that these picks span several genres and decades:

Let The Right One In
The Shining
The Orphanage
Donnie Darko
Nosferatu (1929)
Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nacht (1979)
The Mist
Eraserhead
Night Watch
Timecrimes
Zodiac
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Cape Fear
Pi
The Host
Night of the Living Dead
Dark City
The Ring

We'll see how many myself and my romantically obligated companion (the supportive yet considerably braver-than-I Miss Schmunk) can get to before the 31st at which point I shall shun all other Halloween activities, including Trick-Or-Treating, to finally view AMC's long-awaited comic adaptation The Walking Dead.  Which shall rule.  You can be certain of that.  Get your freak on.

The Social Network 

Hail to the Geek

By now you've heard enough about "The Social Network" to imagine it in your head even if you haven't seen the film yet.  

I was a bit worried going in that I was going to be getting a heaping spoonful of Aaron Sorkin banter^TM with some Fincher set dressing.  I admit I hadn't researched his work too well but it's only because the man's penchant for turning all of his characters into verbal machine-guns prevented me watching any more of his acclaimed TV show 'The West Wing' after one episode.  Personally I think there's only a few actors that deserve to deliver lines that fast (Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Michael Lerner) and only two screenwriters that should be allowed to write them (Joel and Ethan Coen).  These preconceptions were all for nothing.  After some mildly irritating Sorkinized sparring between facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his fictional girlfriend, the film sets into a fast-paced but sensible rhythm, the perfect tone for the story of the inception of today's internet social networking.  I enjoyed this film a lot, in no small part thanks to David Fincher, whose distinct color palette gives the film a cozy if slightly foreboding air.

This is a biopic, but not of a person.  This central character of this film is not Mark Zuckerburg, but the new entrepreneurial school, the new digital marketplace supplanting the old, the internet's transformation from a playground into a fully perfected, aerodynamic profit machine.  Sorkin takes the boardroom of the settlement hearings as a meeting between generations, the privileged Winkelvoss twins, the darlings of Harvard and aristocratic old money, Eduardo Saverin, the victimized representative of old-fashioned, honest business and then Zuckerberg himself, the visionary symbol of digital progress.  Sorkin and Fincher are wise not to deconstruct Zuckerberg.  Some critics (most vocally Armond White) have called this a lack of serious critical reflection, and while I am sick of antiheroics and morally ambiguity paraded around by Hollywood as automatic intelligence, this film is an exception in my mind.  "We don't know what it is yet, we do know that it is cool."  Zuckerberg the prophet delivers this line in the film while trying to dissuade his CFO from slapping ads on facebook and turning a quick profit in favor of letting his website grow into its full generation-defining potential.  It serves also as a guard against the kind of moralizing White calls for.  Deconstructing Zuckerberg would be like deconstructing the internet itself.  I am not saying we can't or shouldn't hold the digital age and its priests accountable to certain standards, but in a time when the internet is still gaining momentum as the most important media outlet in the world, inevitability wins out over critique (and it's worth noting that Nazis felt much the same way about their country's rise to dominance).  Sorkin and Fincher on the digital age:  we will have to wait because we don't know what it is yet.  Good or evil, all we know now is that it is cool.

Much was made of David Fincher's likening the film to 'Citizen Kane', but after watching this film I realized that this is a humorous quip at best.  The full quote was that it was the "Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies". The Social Network does not 'define a generation' in the same way.  This is not an intimate character study of the soul of our times, but rather a portrait of the movement of our times.  This film is about business and money.  Who's on top and who got dumped and why.  There are only minor hints at a spiritual subtext and they seem a bit out of place.  The final shot was surprisingly heavy-handed (I smell Fincher all over that one).  There was simply too much story to tell here to dive into what it all means, though the film's cinematography and mood seems to suggest that the events do mean something terribly important for humankind beyond just the creation of the next giant corporation.  The film sticks with 'exclusivity' as facebook's main theme.  The dynamic of who is 'in' and who is 'out' being the driving force behind what made facebook what it is today is compelling but I think there must be more to it than that.  Interestingly, the film's trailer hinted at more eternal themes than the film itself.  Thom Yorke's lyrics sung by a boy's choir lilt over slow shots of nameless profile pictures and status messages "I don't care if it hurts.  I wanna have control.  I want a perfect body.  I want a perfect soul."  The biggest questions about facebook--of what we are actually doing to ourselves when we log on--is left untouched and though I think exploration of just that topic would have been the thing to elevate this film to Citizen Kane status, it also would have had to be a totally different movie to explore it (for more introspective theories about facebook, see Catfish also playing in theaters).  I think there is a desire to see ourselves in print and create a digital habiliment for oneself that transcends the frat boy desire to be involved in something exclusive.  Facebook sort of takes that scrapbooking desire to the next level.  It is a record of ourselves that changes as we change, that sets down the truth of what we are in permanent ink and then altered at will.  It allows us to be the masters of our own worlds

Zuckerberg is on record as calling this movie 'fiction'.  Which gets a big 'no duh' from me.  All biopics put their subject matter through a heavy filter of interpretation.  What makes this film unique is that it has the gall to do this to events that happened only a few years ago and people who are still in their youth.  'The Social Network' is a requiem for a group of folks who are still very much alive and kicking.  An article by David Kirpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect sets out to dismiss the film as such but only succeeds in disconfirming minor things like Zuckerberg not actually being as tormented as he is portrayed, or the creation of a fictional girlfriend character and the leaving out of another.  This film respects the actual events that inspired it much more than, say, Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can.  The romantic subplot, which I regarded the weakest part of the film, also turns out to be the least accurate and but is also the least important.  Most of the other events are either accurate or comparable facsimiles to actual events.  The Winkelvoss twins are fairly pleased with the film's accuracy and Kirpatrick admits that Saverin's side of the story is fairly represented.  That leaves Zuckerberg himself.  As I've mentioned before, Sorkin's Zuckerberg is not really described in detail.  His portrayal is an opinion, not a tell-all.  Eisenberg's Zuckerberg is an enigma on screen and Sorkin and Fincher are content to keep it that way.  Mark Zuckerberg may not think of himself as a jerk but it's likely that other folks in his life see him differently.  The eclipsing reality here is that the Zuckerberg on screen is more of a figure than a person.  The film only bolsters the man's mythic status.  Zuckerberg needn't worry, at least not about the only thing a true businessman should worry about: irrelevance (though his anxiety about his image could have been the very thing that netted Neward Public Schools a cool $100 million).  When was the last time you saw a movie hero portrayed as anything other than just 'driven'?  Sorkin's Zuckerberg fits nicely into this category.  If he didn't do it then someone else would have.  I wouldn't call the film sympathetic to his character but I would also point out that the public doesn't value morality anymore.  We revere greatness over right and wrong alike.  It does not matter if he was a hero or a villain, the key point is that he was important.  He is both an asshole and a hero, a tragic figure, both great and small.  The film functions like Mark Zuckerberg's facebook profile.  It says little of substance about him as a human being, but adds gravity to his person.  I think this is what all of us covertly set out to do when we create our own facebook profiles.  What we are matters less than that we are.  We announce ourselves to the world and care nothing for anyone's approval.  Mark Zuckerberg could be a hero or a villain but the important thing is that he is set in stone.

The "A" I give this film represents the success of this film in proportion to its intentions.  The Social Network is a nigh-on perfect film for what the creators wanted to accomplish and the discussion they wanted to stimulate.  They wanted to tell us the story of facebook and tell us what they think it means.  It's a taught, intelligent film that will surely be widely appreciated for years to come.  It's also worth noting that for a film set entirely in the arenas of computer programming and IP litigation, this is one heck of a thrill ride.  Fincher moves things along at an even and exciting pace, sure to satisfy everyone from old folks to the overstimulated.  Does it define a generation?  Its lack of spiritual focus forces me to say 'no' (for a definition of a generation must also include a definition of the humanity within that generation), but it will surely launch us into an awareness of our own generation perhaps sooner than in any other.  Thanks to websites like facebook our self-awareness is accelerating.  Sorkin and Fincher have significantly reduced the turnaround time for a biopic and insodoing, have accelerated our conversations.  We no longer need to wait until all is said and done to be introspective.  We can comment on our own generation in real-time.  A few more 'up-to-date' films like this one and we'll all be as neurotic as Zuckerberg.

Devil
B+

I have always been an M. Night Shyamalan apologist, but apologies are wearing thin these days.  I still remember excitedly purchasing my ticket for Lady in the Water and sitting down in the theater anticipating what must surely be my favorite director's most ambitious and rewarding story to date.  Then I was subjected to a sustained bullwhipping unlike I'd ever experienced.  It's the same feeling I would get in a school play when things are going horribly wrong.  I'd feel embarrassed for the actors but also for myself somehow.  Maybe it's because of how easily I shunned all critics and naysayers and waltzed right into the lion's mouth.   I'm no slave to Rottentomatoes and Metacritic.  I've loved a host of movies everyone else hated.  Watching Lady in the Water was like watching something I once loved get beaten to death and then rise from the grave, a pale shell of its former self and lumber around for a bit until it finally lays down and dies.  Y'know, like in zombie films, when a guy's wife gets bitten and turns into a zombie and he doesn't want to shoot her in the head because he still loves her and he can't accept that she's dead and his friends are all like, "It's not her!  There is nothing of her left!  She's dead!  Come on, we gotta get outta here!"  I love Night, don't get me wrong.  His style is good old Twilight Zone fare that is poised to engage the heart and mind in equal measure.  But grassmonkeys?  Come on Night.  A man can only take so many lashes.

At one time I thought the answer was for him to back up and direct a Harry Potter movie.  He was certainly offered it more than a few times, but he decided to make the Crappening, uh I mean the Happening instead.  Again, I've not seen it but if any of you think I should, feel free to call me out on that.  No one?  Really?  Okay, I'll go on then.  Then I caught wind that he would be adapting Avatar: The Last Airbender, an excellent little Nickelodeon show that I happened to just love.  Well, rumor has it he's pooped on that one as well and heaven help me I just can't bring myself to go see the thing.  I want to support you, Night, but I just don't want to sit there and feel embarrassed for you.

Well, after seeing Devil, I think we've all found the solution for Night's slump.  Think up ideas and then don't write and direct them.  At least not for a while.  The Night Chronicles is a series of films that are based on Night's ideas and given to other writers and directors to bring to life.  It's the first time Night has ever trusted anyone besides himself to bring his vision to life and it's about #$&@ time.  No one clings to the his writer/director status as closely as Mr. Shyamalan and no one (according to Michael Bamberger's unintentionally hilarious book "The Man Who Heard Voices") is as unfriendly to creative input.  Come on, chum!  Everybody's doing the whole creative process thing!  You could like get people together and work as a...team!  How's that crazy idea sound?  Guillermo del Toro does it!  If you do it right you can even have people thinking that you directed a great film that you didn't.  I can't count how many times I've heard "My favorite Guillermo Del Toro movie is The Orphanage."

Anyway, after that long rant, Devil is a great little film.  It does exactly what it sets out to do, deliver a feature-length Twilight Zone episode to chill your blood and make you jump.  I don't generally attend much horror fare, so I may be a little more sensitive than the average moviegoer, but I was thoroughly chilled.  Five people caught in an elevator with Satan is a premise oddly well-suited to my own lifestyle since I work in a downtown office and take elevators every day and I confess my hairs stand on end every time I step into one.

The best thing about this film is it has some heart.  Flat as the characters were, I was very fond of them by the end of the film.  These aren't stupid teenagers who are asking to die.  There's a real sense of good and evil here and the resulting struggles plays out with high stakes.  The film is getting a lot of flak for its religious themes, as if the addition of a religious element into a plot is an automatic cop-out.  But why?  In a film like Devil, thematic complexity would only serve to obscure its thrills, and religious overtones are the perfect notes to hit.  Plus, somebody might actually find it compelling.  I did.  Maybe some moviegoers out there are still religious.  Anyway, it's bad form just to call something stupid because it's 'religious', you need to tell me why those themes fail, not call them dumb just by virtue of what they are.

The thing I liked most about Devil was that it has a lot of heart for a horror movie.  There is a clear enough sense of good and evil throughout that one can actually pity the characters involved.  Pity is a necessary component to fear.  You want them to come out all right, you don't want the bad guy to win.  It's by-the-numbers drama , but after so much nihilism in the movie world we need some reeducation in the basics.

Devil is a good Twilight Zone episode.  I'll be looking forward to the rest of the Night Chronicles and I fully support my dear Night's first venture into the 'producer' role.  Who knows, maybe he'll learn somthing.

Inception

A-

High concept films are in a bad way these days because they are in such high demand. Ever since “Jaws” ramped up to 11 the level of immersion and intensity a B-movie premise could deliver, studios have never dismissed a movie’s potential for Blockbusterdom based solely on a silly premise. The result is that every summer flick that comes out is filmed and marketed as just the most mind-blowing, intense experience you could possibly have even if the movie is stupid. Pirates, superheroes, wizards, aliens, any wackiness could be the next mega-hit and Hollywood will try anything once. Transformers was a numbskull idea, creatively speaking, but it worked well. Take some toys, make them big and realistic-looking and have them romp around several of the world’s urban centers. It’s as silly as Godzilla but the films are injections of pure id. Nobody has time to consider that there wasn’t much of a coherent story. The current Tentpole movie mindset is something akin to a roller-coaster ride: simple premise, heavy experience. It works especially well in tandem with ideas that are already embedded in our cultural consciousness (lately, this has meant all manner of Hasbro and Parker Bros. products. “Battleship” is currently in development). But what happens if you have a really high concept film? One that is just as harrowing as anything Michael Bay could create, but will just stretch your brain doing it. Everybody knows what a Transformer is. Oh, you don’t? Well, it’s a robot that turns into a car. That’s it. Transformers are a safe concept. But what about a dream within a dream? Isn’t this just the kind of artsy weirdness that studios try to avoid? There is nothing existential about a Transformer.

The public responded to Inception. Financially, the film kicked serious butt. Maybe not as serious as a Transformer would, but darn good for an original concept. This throws a bit of a wrench into the studio idea that American moviegoers are dumb. If the vast majority of us are such lowbrows, then how did Inception do so dang well?

(a) The Dark Knight paved the way for success off of Nolan’s name alone?
(b) Inception was a fresh, exhilarating thriller that was excellently executed and harrowing to watch.
(c) American moviegoers are not simpletons, but they are staunchly concrete, and Inception caters perfectly to that sensibility.

The correct answer is ‘all of the above’. This film was very exciting to watch. The action tightens and gains speed and claustrophobia with each successive dip into the recesses of the mind. You’ve probably heard enough about how great this movie is (because it is great), so I’m going to continue on why I do not think it was Nolan’s masterpiece, and how it falls just short of making high concept films actually matter, though it was one of the more valiant attempts.

Inception is a very complicated tale. From the get-go, Nolan is definitely aware that he has some ‘splaining to do, and ‘splain he does. In fact, it takes the entire film to successfully ‘splain what’s going on. No plot thread is left hanging and nothing is left out. Nolan works out his plot with all the deftness and skill of a mathematician, but there is nothing wondrous about a formula. The film has all the right components, a tragic love story, life-threatening peril, crazy action, good philosophical questions, but it’s all ticked off scene-by-scene. Structurally, the film holds its own weight, but there is little beauty to it. It is effective, but is nothing beyond the sum of its own parts.
However, this does work well when catering to a left-brained movie audience. The American public, I maintain, is not stupid, they are concrete. We will eat up a complicated film as long as it makes sense. Complexity is not what turns us off, it is anything left unexplained. We want everything laid out in front of us, connected all together in a sensible pattern. Compared to most films out there, Inception towers like a giant erector set, but all of its pieces fit together. Unfortunately, this is what cripples it from being a true masterpiece. The problem with the public is not that we don’t want to think, it’s that we don’t want to feel. Tentpole films that push us too far in an introspective direction tend not to work by the very fact that we come to the movies as observers wanting to see something interesting and intricate. We don’t ever want to turn the camera in on ourselves and consider who we are and what we are doing. It’s too uncomfortable, and we just don’t have time for all that metaphysical junk. Only a few high concept films have even attempted that project and they didn’t do to well, financially (Blade Runner is the perfect example).

Explaining a premise too much takes away from its “WTF factor”. For anyone who may not know, the “WTF factor” is usually the first few minutes of a high concept movie in which you have no idea what is going on, but whatever is going on is really really cool. Bewildering sequences draw you into the action with no explanation and makes you want to know what’s going on. Inception does kick off this way, but its structure is too similar to The Matrix to be novel and too imbalanced to be cathartic. You can build a dream world and do whatever you want in the dream world if you’re creative enough. There’s even a ‘training’ scene with Leo and Ellen Page that was indistinguishable from Morpheus and Neo’s digital walkabout. In The Matrix, the mystery is unraveled lovingly, teasing you bit by bit by peeling back layers of reality slowly throughout the first half of the film until it totally rams you with the blunt end of what’s really going on. Inception is like a how-to booklet. Characters tell us too much about the world instead of us seeing it for ourselves. This is not the way to create tension. Instead of telling us that you can ‘die’ in the dream under these conditions, or saying “we can’t do that because then this will happen blah blah blah”, make something happen. Show us the thing you’re talking about and leave us to wonder what just happened. Don’t tell us about it. I thought Nolan’s previous “between Batmans” effort The Prestige captured this mysterious spirit more effectively because it left quite a bit of its inner workings behind a curtain of inference and left us to wonder and piece things together for ourselves. The man could use a little J.J. Abrams in him, (the other established ‘high concept’ man out there) who is making, not deep, but good, hearty mainstream entertainment. Abrams always manages to revel in his cinematic world just enough to take us along for the ride but never so much so that we get overwhelmed and tired of the fiction (I’m talking to you, Lucas). Nolan, by contrast, just doesn’t seem to love his flights of fancy. Even The Dark Knight, for all its grandeur felt slightly soulless. His no-nonsense approach is welcome when dealing with a character like Batman, whose story we already know (a story that has been told a hundred times over), but limiting when it comes to all new characters and an original world. We have to fall in love (or in a kind of love) with the dreamworlds of Inception before we can even have the interest in them to discover their inner workings.

The other thing that bothers me is Nolan’s idea of dreams. Leo delivers a brilliant line that sums up his entire approach to his dream sequences: “Dreams feel real while you’re in them. It’s only after you wake up that you notice something was strange.” It’s a compelling idea. We’re so used to dream sequences in films just being random images thrown at the screen, midgets riding by on unicycles and the like. Nolan’s technique is far more subtle. Ellen Page sums it up a little more ham-handedly later on: “You’d think dreams would be all about the visuals, but it’s really all about the feel.” That’s true, and it’s a good idea. It disconnects the viewers from the action when something weird gets thrown at them. The moment a midget on a unicycle rides by, it’s obvious artifice and we’re disconnected from the scene. It’s an admirable task to create a dream sequence that it feels like you’re actually in, rather than just looking at weirdness. But still, I’ve never had a dream that’s even remotely close to any of the dreams depicted. The main problem is the logic. Nolan’s dreams just make too much sense and everybody seems to be perfectly aware that they’re in them. This kind of devalues their quality as dreams. A dream isn’t a fantasy world you make up in your head, it’s a romp through your sub-conscious, a parade of all the nameless feelings and desires that we keep regulated in waking life. Dreams are full of feeling and symbol. My dreams are always illogical but that doesn’t make them feel any less real or make them any less important. I’d cite David Lynch and Michel Gondry as directors that have pulled off the dream sequence remarkably well by purposefully bending logic to create that ‘feely space’ that dreams have. Just because an experience isn’t totally left-brained doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel ‘real’. We humans have a an emotional component to us that defies rationality, and, to us, it’s just as ‘real’ as anything else. But to Nolan, ‘real’ means logical. The love story in this film just wasn’t misty enough, the tragedy is seen but not felt. The drama plays out before a camera lens, not in one’s mind, not in the heart and certainly not like it would in a dream. Nolan just uses dreams like the Wachowskis used computers, to create a space for his characters to play in. On his account, dreams are just virtual reality, and this is a bit too shallow for my tastes. He brings up a few good concepts. I loved the idea that your dream gets stranger the more your attention is drawn to its strangeness. But this facet was left unexplored and didn’t really factor into the plot too much. It would’ve been really cool if the characters were actually affected more by their dreams, like if you’re the dreamer, you can’t know your in the dream or you’ll wake up, so if you’re in someone else’s dream you’d have to keep the dreamer oblivious and then turn around and convince him he’s dreaming. That would’ve been cool, right? Just an idea.

This lack of feeling could be due to Nolan’s disdain for camp, but though this film is anything but cheesy, it tends to come across as overly self-conscious. Everything and everyone is just a little too slick and cool. Contrast this with Blade Runner, a symbol-heavy movie with oodles of commentary on our present age and exploration into the human soul. Ridley Scott, though takes the time to let the atmosphere of his future-world hang heavy over the audience, filling us with foreboding and intensity. We feel the truth before it is spoken. “Quite an experience living in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.” By the time Rutger Hauer says this at the end of the film, we’ve been under Scott’s paranoid spell for so long that we believe what is being said. Nolan’s mood was a bit too spartan to reach that level of profundity, but this is not to say the film’s questions are irrelevant. Inception is about a different kind of paranoia, that of the mind. Am I who I think I am? Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing? are questions that are particularly timely in our age, and in that respect I think the film is very important. There is a sense in which the modern man, like Leo, is always just beyond his own reach. One has to go deeper and deeper through layers and layers of awareness to actually get to the bottom of who one really is and be sure that your life is what it’s supposed to be, to really find your home. It’s like turning a mirror in on itself. You can chase your own reflection for eternity, but you’ll only end up wasting yourself. You’ll end up an old man lost in an endless limbo with nothing but your paranoia. Then there’s the interesting theory on ‘pure creation’ as a paradoxical loop. It puts forth the idea that creativity is just self-reference between different planes of consciousness and meaning and purpose are just memories of other selves. A compelling (if depressing) idea.

Ultimately, Inception is as darned close as anybody’s come in recent years to a return to Kubrickian high concept that uses a fantastical premise to communicate messages that we earthlings need to hear and truths that we need to experience. Unfortunately, Nolan became too preoccupied making sure his ship could float that he sacrificed any ambitions of his work really soaring into the clouds of true profundity. Nolan has big ideas and even bigger concepts. Here’s hoping he’ll trust his own creations a bit more next time around and give us a real trip through our minds that will engage our souls as well.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

B+



Ever since 'Sin City', I've been waiting breathlessly for the film that will truly transport the experience of reading a comic book to film. Actually, that doesn't quite get at it. I mean the film that will reinvigorate a sense of rich spectacle into mainstream films. Movies just aren't pretty anymore. There is so much style and artistry that can be employed with today's special effects technology, but instead we're making more spaceships. Special effects can be used to create an environment and be itself a vehicle for meaning rather than just elaborate set dressing and comic movies are at the forefront of injecting some much needed style and symbolism into the faux grittiness of the handheld camera action scene.

Long story short, I'm still waiting. Scott Pilgrim is a fun movie, but it lacks the emotional punch to make it a truly great film. The story has so much potential, but Wright increases his comic action while decreasing his characters at an increasing rate as the film goes on. This is not the way the story progresses in the comics. Bryan Lee O'Mally's clever little picture-books read like the doodles you used to draw in the margins of your notebooks in junior high. Simple lines sketch out cartoon characters that become increasingly more complex as the story progresses. Its surrealism gives way to real dilemmas and predicaments at times and its drama is centered squarely around the destinies of two lovers and whether or not they're really star-crossed. Somehow, Wright misses the heart of the books while remaining true to their style.

The film is brilliantly made. Its comic visuals are the best yet. The first 30 minutes plays out almost frame for frame with the comics, but as it goes on there is just so much craziness that is packed in. Real life takes a backseat as set-piece after set-piece is thrown at you in a dizzying haze of quick cuts and whimsical special effects. The movie is an easter egg basket, a feast for the eyes, but it lacks emotional glue. The premise is no less compelling but at about the 45 minute mark the pinata bursts and the film's visuals pour out over you like a deluge of brightly-wrapped candies. The first few boyfriend encounters work well metaphorically speaking and begin the process of slyly commenting on the characters and their conflicts, but the film gains pace exponentially until there is no time for a quiet moment and Scott and Ramona's love is left to skate on the idea of the original setup rather than building to any kind of payoff.

Still, it's nonstop hilarity and the visuals are like nothing ever before filmed. I also can't say enough about the editing. It's just staggeringly impressive at what Wright can accomplish and I can't even imagine how many separate shots make up this film. The action scenes are really really fun and the film has a lot more intelligence than much of the other junk that has banked at the box office. It's smarter than your average popcorner, but falls just short of being a masterpiece. This is surprising since Wright has proven himself to be a master of weaving in genre comedy with real emotion and self-aware commentary (if you haven't seen Shaun of the Dead, watch it now). I can't think of a more perfect director to handle Scott Pilgrim, but Scott Pilgrim lacks structure and craft. Shaun of the Dead was an extended metaphor, a coming-of-age story by way of zombie apocalypse. Scott Pilgrim is a love story by way of videogame, but it lacks the structure and parallelism that caused the former to be such surprisingly meaningful comedy. Another example of this is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a similar, smart genre comedy with some great whimsy and a solid emotional center that solidifies in one simple scene at the very end, when Martin Freeman monologues about the purpose of his life and his dedication to his true love just before his brain is about to be drilled by two megalomaniacal mice. It's an insane bit of cinema but it tugs at the heartstrings in a surprising and fresh way. Scott Pilgrim could have used a scene like this. Where the action dies down for just a moment and our hero gets the chance to say what all of this really means.

Still, I'm sickened that this film did so poorly at the box office. It only pushes the disturbing reality that moviegoers these days are hopelessly concrete. Our flights of fancy must always be hedged in by logic. We won't allow any room for disbelief; realism must rule the day. Personally, I think the world would be a safer place if we drew such a clear line between reality and fiction as Scott Pilgrim. The violence in this film is not even remotely imitatable and a strong current of whimsy pervades. It comes admirably close at putting comic films squarely into the mainstream, but its financial failure is quite depressing in that respect. Someday, true believers, someday.