Heads up!

Site will be completed by Monday, 17 April at the absolute latest, but probably sooner.

No More Marriages! is very nearly three months old, so I think that it's high time I decide just what precisely I'm going for here. In the next week or so I'll be both redesigning and reconceiving the site. Chime in with suggestions if you've any to make, all input will be carefully pondered!

In the meantime, I'd like to thank everyone in the filmblogging community who has supported this site by commenting, linking, mentioning my modest efforts, or by some other gesture of solidarity. It has been a delight to discover so much intelligent, impassioned, and insightful film writing existing outside the traditional, hierarchical academic, industry, and media channels. And it's exciting to watch those worlds begin to blend!

Anyway, while I begin to define my own specific short-term and long-term goals, please visit my fellow cineastes and movie buffs who have been kind enough to let me join the conversation:

the chutry experiment
Don't Kick Food!
DIY Filmmaker Sujewa
Edward Copeland on Film
Electric Warrior
The Evening Class
girish
The House Next Door
If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats
Last Night with Riviera
Lucid Screening
That Little Round-Headed Boy

My apologies to anyone I forgot!

The Future Of "Quote Whoring"

From : Karie Bible
Sent : Monday, April 10, 2006 3:02 PM
To : in_lisbon@hotmail.com
Subject : Thank You For Smoking BLOG CONTEST


1. ENTER YOUR BEST THANK YOU FOR SMOKING BLOG POST


2. RATE THE SPINSIGHT AND SPINTELLIGENCE OF OTHER POSTS


3. WIN AN OPPORTUNITY TO INTERVIEW THE DIRECTOR OF THE FILM FOR YOUR BLOG.


Everyone is talking (and blogging) about Thank You For Smoking, but if a post falls in the blogosphere and nobody is there to read it - does it make sound? It will if you win and we post your blog HERE!

http://www2.foxsearchlight.com/thankyouforsmoking/blogroll/

If you think you can spin (or have spun) the best blog post on the subject, enter it here for all to see and rate. A winner will be picked from the Top 10 Rated Posts on 5/1/06. The winning post will be featured here on this site AND the blogger will interview Blogger/Writer/Director, Jason Reitman.

Yikes.

"The Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade"

The Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade 2002 United States, the St0len Collective.

The Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade simply takes footage from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and adds subtitles, relabeling the characters (Sauron is "The WTO", Saruman "Big Oil", Gandalf "Noam Chomsky", Aragorn ("Anarchist", etc.). It's meant in fun, I know. But this is an interesting film to me for two reasons:

First, I was/am apprehensive about The Lord of the Rings trilogy because I think it lends itself far too easily to an Us vs. Them mentality. I worry that its battle-of-Good-versus-Evil theme dovetails too neatly with certain divisive, simplistic ideas prevalent in contemporary American media culture: The War on Terror, Red States v. Blue States, Culture Wars. I fear that The Lord of the Rings trilogy reinforces the basic idea that all of these share in common, that life is as simple as black and white. The Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade validates my fears by showing just how easy it is to read these films in a contemporary context. In the process of re-appropriating The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, this short film convincingly suggests to me that it was originally appropriated by audiences in much the same way that I thought it would be.

Second, The Fellowship of the Ring of Trade shows an unfortunate tendency that some activists have to cast their story in this same Good vs. Evil, Us vs. Them mold. Note how the Seattle WTO protests are labeled in this film as "The Battle of Seattle." I do not personally think that this is a productive way to view this history. If we really hope for a new world, perhaps it's time we abandoned these old models of storytelling.

Watch The Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade

The Lost Film Festival

The Lost Film Festival started out geographically grounded in West Philadelphia, but in its current incarnation it travels from town to town with Festival Director Scott Beibin. Beibin describes The Lost Film Festival as a "more inclusive" form of film exhibition, and to some extent he's right. He solicits the audience for submissions, and judging from some of the films screened (untitled footage of the G8 protests in Scotland, a film called An Unconventional Critical Mass that isn't much more than video footage of the 2004 RNC Critical Mass in New York) provided it's topical it probably stands a good chance of being in future programs.

But it's inclusive only within certain defined boundaries. The Lost Film Festival caters to a fairly specific audience--flyers state, "If George W. Bush makes you puke [...] you'll love the punk-rock urgency of the Lost Film Fest" [1]. The Festival is inclusive of a certain viewpoint, but makes little effort to reach out to others. There were also definite limits to how much interaction there was between Beibin and the audience. The Pittsburgh program was hosted in a Carnegie Mellon University lecture hall, and the invisible barrier between host and audience, audience and film was largely unbroken. We were in the seats, he was at the front. Except for during brief calls for "community announcements" he was the one talking, while we were the ones listening.

The Lost Film Festival is predicated on the notion, described by Bill Nichols in the Winter 2005-06 issue of Film Quarterly, that "the public debate about pressing issues has effectively screened out everything but the conservative, institutionalized voices of established media outlets" (I've talked about this before). This is an attempt to explore alternative media outlets to give voice to opposition views. But there is room in this model for more discourse, more debate. Films like An Unconventional Critical Mass and The Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade (available online here) celebrate protesters as their heroes, but they take it for granted that that view is already shared by their audience. Beibin says, "This is about breaking the illusions cast by Hollywood & CNN" [2]. I fear, though, that there's no more information, no more argument in The Lost Film Festival than in the established media outlets--the heroes and villains are simply relabeled.

These are unrepresented voices, and if you're sympathetic to their message you'll find much to enjoy. The program I attended included, along with the films I've already mentioned: World of Evil (available online here), the musical video for a song called "The Anti-American Dance" by Gatas Parlament, Conspiracy Theory Rock (available online here), a documentary short about Italian pirate television stations called Tele-Street, Gears For Fears, a documentary short called USA Under Attack, "What Barry Says", and The Yes Men's The Horribly Stupid Stunt Which Has Resulted in His Untimely Death. The best part of The Lost Film Festival is that it's free, so I suppose if nothing else you're guaranteed your money's worth.

Upcoming tour dates:

11 April - NYU (New York)
12 April - Emerson College (Boston)
19 April - Drake University (Des Moines)
20 April - Des Moines Arts Center (Des Moines)
22 April - Versionfest (Chicago)
23 April - Around the Coyote Gallery (Chicago)

1: Flyer

2: Carnegie Mellon Activities Board calender

"Fast Film"

"Fast Film" 2003 Austria/Luxembourg, Virgil Widrich.

Fast Film is one of the most impressive, inventive short films that I've ever seen. To make the film director Virgil Widrich first captured stills from over 300 films and made from them over 65,000 photocopies (according to the film's official site). These photocopies are then folded into origami, arranged, and animated in a story that condenses a century of Hollywood filmmaking into 14 minutes. I like Peter Tscherkassky's description, although he forgets the happy ending: "A kiss, a happy couple. But then, the woman is kidnapped, and the man sets off to save her. A dramatic rescue story full of wild chase scenes begins. The audience is taken to the center of the Earth and the enemy’s headquarters" [1].

Fast Film is a celebration of Hollywood films and the Hollywood model of filmmaking. Director Widrich resurrects our favorite stars and assembles them in combinations that the strictures of time and studio contracts rendered impossible in reality, it lends itself to The Dreamers-like guessing games. But Fast Film also offers creative and intelligent critiques of that model. It reads like a history of Hollywood representations of masculinity--Bogart is replaced by Cary Grant, who is replaced by Harrison Ford, who is replaced by Sean Connery, etc. Meanwhile the film's studio era actresses have their heads pasted onto a wheel which, when turned, places each in turn atop a generic body. They are trapped in a box, pushed about by the hero. They are relegated to the role of screaming in terror while the hero devises an escape.

With Fast Film director Virgil Widrich reconciles a purist's insistence on hands-on filmmaking with the potential of digital editing, reminding us that technology can empower not just a future George Lucas but also a future Harry Smith. Fast Film marries elements of experimental filmmaking (its wonderfully tactile quality, its dream logic) to the accessibility and familiarity of narrative film. It lends itself to a staggering variety of discussions, and I think that should I ever find myself teaching a Film History class I might want to begin here.

Watch Fast Film

1: Quoted from the "About" section on the film's official site.

* * *

At Strictly Film School Acquarello discusses Fast Film in the context of Peter Kubelka's film theory. Read it, it's fantastic.

In 2002 Widrich's short film Copy Shop was nominated for an Oscar (Best Short Film - Live Action). You can visit that film's official site or watch it here.

"Tsotsi"

"Tsotsi" 2005 South Africa, Gavin Hood.

Tsotsi is the second film this year to remind me of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. The first was V for Vendetta, which appropriates Maria Falconetti's iconic shaved head for Natalie Portman's torture/imprisonment scenes. It's an empty citation that adds little to the film--a superficial echo of a much deeper, much more satisfying work. Tsotsi, on the other hand, pays homage to the humanism that makes The Passion of Joan of Arc every bit as immediate, as effective today as it was 80 years ago.

Like Dreyer, director Gavin Hood lingers on the faces of his actors. The screen is given over to the baby David for ten, fifteen seconds at a time. It is filled with close-ups of Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae): first hard and cruel, then conflicted, and finally shattered, broken. Hood knows that we are social creatures, attuned to the slightest facial tick, to minute changes in body language. He knows that our paternal and maternal instincts are awakened by a helpless, cooing baby, that our fraternal instincts respond to a fellow human being in the throes of a moral crisis. So he relies on these faces to succinctly express complex emotions that pages of clumsy dialogue cannot.

David Edelstein correctly predicted that Tsotsi would win this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. He described the "perfect" contender as a film that starts out foreign: the audience says, "What's this language? Where am I? I can only handle so much foreignness!" But then a recognizable Hollywood formula emerges and the audience yells, "That's me up there!" [1]. It's a sound analysis, one that applies to Tsotsi in many respects. There is a rogue's gallery of thugs with names like Butcher and Boston (also Teacher Man). There is a hardened criminal who is tamed by a woman and by the responsibilities of parenthood. But Tsotsi's humanism, its restraint are not learned from Hollywood. And these, ultimately, are the reasons it is successful.

That said, while Tsotsi's faces stayed with me, little else did. It's a thorough film, with no loose ends (except, I suppose, for it's "open" final shot). Early in the film there is a banner, conspicuously located in the middle of the frame, that proclaims "HIV is everyone's problem." It is typical of the film's strategy that this is later rendered literal by the revelation that Tsotsi's mother was a victim of AIDS.

Numerous early scenes (Tsotsi running away after a fight, Tsotsi shivering in the rain) are intercut with flashbacks to situations in Tsotsi's youth that parallel whatever he's doing in the present. In Anthony Lane's review of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada he comments on that film's flashbacks: "As with all such leaps, one has to ask: what would be lost or gained, were events to be laid out in sequence?" [2]. It's productive to apply this question (one of the most useful things Lane's ever written) to Tsotsi: much would be lost, because the story would be too cumbersome stretched out over that long a timeframe. But what, really, is gained? Hood would have done well to let the squalor of Tsotsi's slums speak for themselves. Perhaps he could have taken a cue from another great filmmaker, Satyajit Ray, and lingered awhile longer over this vivid, unfamiliar (to international audiences and, presumably, to the more affluent South African audience who will see his film there) world.

I quibble, I think. Edelstein concludes his review with an account of the audience of critics of which he was a part standing up and cheering, and admits that he cheered too. Tsotsi is manipulative. It is not strikingly original or insightful into the causes and possible solutions to its characters' plight. But its strengths are substantial, its humanism (is there a good synonym for this word?) a rare thing in the multiplexes in which Tsotsi will play in some cities.

1: "Handicapping the Foreign Oscars Field" by David Edelstein (Fresh Air 7 March 2006)

2: Anthony Lane's review of Tsotsi ("Job Discrimination" by Anthony Lane New Yorker 30 January 2006)

"Concert Crowds" Vs. "Melodrama Crowds"

I'm thinking more about the distinction between "concert crowds" and "melodrama crowds" that I talked about in my last post (read that one first). Both are depicted in Amadeus: the Austrian court is an example of a "concert crowd," while the popular audiences for Mozart's comedic operas are an example of a "melodrama crowd." There are some individual contemporary films that tend to draw a "melodrama crowd" (like The Rocky Horror Picture Show), but today a "concert crowd" mentality predominates.

I'm reminded of a chutry experiment post called "Oscar the Grouch" and its ensuing comments. There seems to be a bit of a reversal of the traditional association of the "melodrama crowd" with the common folk and the "concert crowd" with the upper classes. Filmmakers like Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier directly engage their audiences much more than their Hollywood contemporaries, and the only place you'll actually be encouraged to interact with a film (something like Altman's Living Nickelodeon) is at an art theater or a place like Pittsburgh's Warhol Museum. I've seen B-Movies (originally intended for a "melodrama crowd") like "I Drink Your Blood", "The Undertaker and His Pals", and "For Singles Only" as well as The Rocky Horror Picture Show itself at the Warhol with hipsters and yuppies (excuse the shorthand). Interesting. I haven't heard class invoked very often in discussions of the "box office crisis"...

Rick Altman, Etc.

First, Rick Altman will present his Living Nickelodeon tomorrow night at 7p (I think that there might be a reception at 6p) in the Frick Fine Arts Building on Pitt's campus. I'd have plugged it earlier had I known about it. As it stands I can't even go because I have other plans. Sigh.

I just got back from a lecture given by Mr. Altman called "Two or Three Things We Thought We Knew About Silent Film Sound." As the title and the description suggest, Mr. Altman is an animated, entertaining lecturer, often imitating the accents or voices of the people he is quoting. His lecture, like his recent book Silent Film Sound, addresses a variety of widely held misconceptions about sound in the Silent era. He had time today to touch on only a few, among them: musical accompaniment to silent film was not always continuous, silent film music is not the direct heir to 19th century melodrama music, and the piano was not a significant accompaniment instrument.

First, I am reminded that although most scholarship and criticism privileges the technical and the artistic development of the medium, there is also a very important social component to film history. Early film audiences were not exclusively "concert crowds" or "melodrama crowds" (a "concert crowd" would applaud at the end of, say, a symphony, whereas a "melodrama crowd" would applaud during the symphony or request that a pleasing melody be played again and again). That old chestnut about early audiences of the Lumière brothers' L'Arrrivée d'un train à la Ciotat screaming in terror depends on an idea of a silent, still audience that is very much a modern invention. It is difficult to conceive of a ribald, active, inattentive audience reacting in this way.

Another idea with a lot of currency is that nickelodeons were effectively the first "movie houses." Altman notes that films typically took second billing to "illustrated songs," and that the piano that we think accompanied silent films was actually there to accompany these live musical performers. Biograph literature suggests that the pianist be given a break during the exhibition of the films. Altman talked a bit about the capacity of the pianist to actually compete with the film. He cited this example: in a film an arsonist prepares to set a downtown building on fire and the pianist plays an excerpt from "Hot Time on the Old Town Tonight." Now, instead of a dramatic film moment with an actor as the star we have a comedic live-performance moment with the pianist as the star. We tend to think of a film as the thing we see in a theater and to think of sound as a part of that object. But this one example is a reminder of how much more fractured the film object is in reality. It interacts with auteur theory in interesting ways as well...

Altman talked about the fact that sync sound, in some form or another, was associated with film long, long before The Jazz Singer. Much of the musical accompaniment to early silent shorts focused on illustrating specific moments in the film: an orchestra plays in the film, the musicians play in the theater. A door slams and a percussionist bangs a drum. But these musicians were largely silent for the rest of the film. He talked a bit about other techniques, for instance actors standing behind the screen and giving voice to the actors and actresses on the screen.

Finally, Altman's work relies very heavily on ephemera like handbills, newspaper advertisements, and photographs. Much of his supporting evidence for the above claim resulted from noticing that in drawings of films being exhibited (in newspapers, magazines, etc.) the orchestra was shown playing only when there was an orchestra on screen--when the screen showed something else the orchestra was at rest. It's a reminder that film scholarship should be concerned not just with film texts, that much can be learned from something as simple as a ticket stub.

This is all of it interesting stuff. If he speaks near you do try to attend! At one point Altman said, "Ears, like eyes, have a history." That is a very neat synopsis of what he's doing here and a nice illustration of his gifts as an elocutionist.

* * *

You could, if you wanted to, print out the latest post at Girish's place and use it as a reading list. Throw in Silent Film Sound and you'll be one smart cookie...

"Slither"

"Slither" 2006 United States, James Gunn.

After seeing Slither I understand why it's getting such positive reviews. There's a special kind of high that comes only from a well-executed genre film, especially if it's in a genre you grew up with. You want to like this romantic comedy or that horror film, because you grew up loving romantic comedies or horror films. But as you see more and more films you realize just how few and far between well-crafted, inoffensive films in these forms can be. So when you do find one it's like finding a needle in a haystack, like finding Mission of Burma in a used records store. You feel like a kid again.

I'm something of a Johnny-come-lately to the horror genre. I was a bit skittish as a child (I forced my mother to excise the Large Marge scene from our taped-off-TV copy of Pee-wee's Big Adventure because it scared me too much), so I did not grow up watching midnight movies or gorefests at the drive-in.* If I had, though, I think that I might have liked Slither much more than I did. It's derivative, but not self-referential like Cabin Fever (which I just didn't dig). It's high spirited, but genuinely frightening. It's gory, but it's a stylized gore.

Like many horror films Slither skews puritanical. A bathtub scene with a blood-sucking alien slug resembles nothing more than a sperm en route to an egg, and the slug's subsequent attempt to swim down the throat of the teen bathing beauty (Tania Saulnier) clearly, clearly invokes fellatio. But at this point that's part and parcel of the form, and it is complicated enough (the bathing beauty, for instance, survives) that it's not problematic.

But enough of that. What I really want to talk about is Nathan Fillion's star-turn as Chief of Police Bill Pardy. Pardy is essentially the same character as Fillion's Malcolm Reynolds from the television series "Firefly" and the film Serenity. This is good news for those of us who were aficionados of both. Fillion is a latter day Gary Cooper. There is a bedrock of authority and competence under his quiet, lilting "aw, shucks" delivery. These characters are decisive but democratic, competent but modest, simultaneously cold and warm. I note with dismay that Fillion is currently filming White Noise 2. Won't someone cast this man in a real film!?

I've been thinking about the two recent articles in Newsweek (Devin Gordon's "Horror Movies: U.S. Audiences Hungry for Blood" and David Ansen's "Bloody Good Flicks") about what The IFC Blog calls "the new horror wave." Films like Slither remind me how little I know about my own body. Gordon writes, "It's practically a cliché that you can tease out a generation's subconscious fears just by watching its horror movies." Well, what kinds of fears might this generation have? AIDS is a wasting disease. Ebola and Anthrax are much faster wasting diseases. Every bump, scrape, bruise might portend the beginning of the end, might be the first sign that our body is about to turn against us. Perhaps that's what all this dismemberment and dissection is about--we're taking ourselves apart to see how we work.

* I note with sorrow the passing of the Columbia Drive-In, where I saw such memorable films as Lake Placid, Volcano, and Men in Black. I don't recall ever seeing anything there that was actually good, but it was still a pretty nice place.

Gettting A Head Start On Groundhog Day

I intend to write at length about Groundhog Day in the near future so I won't spend much time on it just now. But since I already jumped the gun at girish's place, I might as well do the same here.

I used to while away the hours compiling lists of my favorite films, but no more. Such a list would literally be in constant flux, so it just doesn't seem like a productive use of time. But any such list of mine would include Groundhog Day. By many reasonable standards it could be considered my favorite film: I watch it more often than any other, it is the movie that I go to if I'm blue (it has never, to my recollection, failed to cheer me up), it is perhaps the film that I most enjoy. Why might this be?

Pondering this question today, here's what I came up with: it is the only movie that I know in which the protagonist undergoes a thorough, convincing, life-altering, positive change. The inverse is not uncommon. A recent example is Fateless, in which Gyuri is irrevocably changed by his internment in a concentration camp. In this case his change is not necessarily negative, but it is in no way absolutely positive. When Bill Murray's Phil Connors wakes up on February 3, it is a catastrophically happy event, a joyful trauma. And this is the key to a spiritual reading of the film. Groundhog Day comes closer than any other movie I know to representing nirvana, or the Christian concept of being "born again."

What Movies Do You Watch When You're Depressed?

Tonight I finally "got" Sleepless in Seattle (which before today I was never able to finish, despite repeated attempts). It's all about comfort, isn't it? The constant, mantra-like invocation of earlier films (An Affair to Remember in particular, which I also didn't care for) echoes throughout the movie, culminating in the ending, which is Nora Ephron telling us, "Look! These happy endings really do happen in real life!" Except, of course, that "real life" is a movie. Anyway, I'm opening another beer and putting on Groundhog Day...

* * *

I did not do justice to the Dresden scene in Fateless. This scene takes place amidst utter devastation. Dresden is literally gone. It lasts only a moment, and it comes after more than an hour of the horrors of the concentration camp. Standing amongst the rubble some Hungarian camp survivors talk about the scene that surrounds them: "Do you feel sorry for them? They got what they deserved!"

This brief scene has the impact of an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. If ever there were people justified in their desire for revenge it is these men. And yet, can anyone deserve this kind of retribution? In this one scene is represented every reasonable argument that I can conceive of both in favor of and against war. I shivered.

Still My Favorite Movie Scene:

Black or white?

So...

White background and black text, or black background and white text? Does anyone care?

"Fateless"

"Fateless" 2005 Hungary, Lajos Koltai.

Fateless represents the Holocaust in a way that I've never seen before, a way that I found devastatingly effective. I can group the filmic approaches towards the Holocaust that I'd known previously into three categories that I'll name the documentary approach, the crossroads approach, and the dramatic approach. In the first group are films like Night and Fog that ask and then try to answer questions about the Holocaust. How did this happen? What happened? In the second group are films like The Big Red One that aren't properly about the Holocaust, but do engage it from some limited perspective. Finally, in the third group are films like Schindler's List, Life Is Beautiful, and The Pianist. These are fictional films that employ conventional narrative devices to tell a story set against the backdrop of the Holocaust.

All of these films assume an outsider's perspective. In the first group the filmmaker takes the role of an investigator of the phenomena, so he or she cannot simultaneously presume to experience it directly. Night and Fog resonates emotionally, but it is with our (I'm using "our" in a broad sense, as those of us who were not interned in a concentration camp) emotions--our confusion, our sadness, our fear that it could happen again. The second group encounters the Holocaust at a "crossroads", if you will, when it crosses paths with their own narratives, again necessarily assuming an outsider's perspective. The third group appears to be different: the Holocaust is their subject and their characters are experience it personally. But consider each of these three films that I've mentioned. In each a protagonist somehow avoids the camps: Oscar Schindler (Schindler's List) is not part of a targeted population, Giosué (Life is Beautiful) is shielded from the reality of the camps by his father, and Wladyslaw Szpilman (The Pianist) remains in hiding for the duration of the war. These films dare to dramatize the Holocaust, but they still refrain from identifying the audience with one of its victims.

Fateless is different. In the beginning it resembles a coming-of-age story: Gyuri navigates a budding attraction to his neighbor Annámaria (Sára Herrer), he start his first job, he is told that because he is now grown up he is "part of the common Jewish fate." But this dream of youth quickly turns into a nightmare. One day on his way to work Gyuri is rounded up with a large group of Budapest Jews and shipped off to a labor camp. They pass through Auschwitz along the way where the young, old, sick, and troublesome (an engineer who speaks "perfect German" and offers his services to the German war effort) are culled from their number. Gyuri experiences firsthand the horrors of the camps: starvation rations, the knowledge that he "could be killed at any moment", back-breaking labor. He is singled out and derided as "not a real Jew" by some of the more orthodox prisoners, he hides the death of a bunkmate so that he can take his rations, and finally he falls victim to a horrific looking knee infection. Removed from the rest of the internees he is placed with the rest of the sick in a shower facility. There is a close-up of a shower nozzle.

It's an awful moment, one that typifies the essential difference between Fateless and other films about the Holocaust. Each scene ends with a fade to black, each scene is centered around a single moment of emotional resonance--the film mimics Gyuri's memory. He is the only protagonist, so we have no one else with whom to identify. Moments like these are effective because for the first time a movie has placed itself, and thus its audience, in the position of a victim of the holocaust. In his review of the film, A.O. Scott points to a problem with movies about the Holocaust: "To the modern viewer, watching movies about the Holocaust carries an inevitable element of solipsism: what would I have done? How would I have behaved?" [1]. This problem is aggravated by the presence of a character who remains outside the camps, who remains free to make decisions. Fateless essentially cuts off this solipsistic avenue of escape.

In his review for PopMatters Mike Ward notes that the film's poster proclaim that it "dares to aestheticize the concentration camp experience" [2]. This is audacious, and cinematographer Gyula Pados (Kontroll) accomplishes this goal. There are scenes of haunting, disturbing beauty: the camp's prisoners stand in formation in the rain, mist hovers over the ground illuminated by ghostly floodlights. Music wells up as one old man fights to remain standing, so weak that the meager weight of the canteen that hangs round his neck doubles him over. And yet he remains standing because he knows that falling means death. The color gradually, imperceptibly bleeds away until all that's left are tones of blue, black, gray, and white. The bodies of the internees gradually assume the unearthly, pale hues of corpses, a likeness reinforced the maggots that devour the dead flesh of Gyuri's infected knee. First-time director Lajos Koltai is himself a very highly regarded cinematographer and it is obvious that he has taken great pains with the visual component of this film.

Even more audacious, though, is the universality of Gyuri's experience. There is no Nazi iconography in Fateless--in fact, there are precious few Nazis. The most villainous characters are internees themselves who become ever more cruel, ever more dulled and insensitive. Gyuri finds some semblance of happiness, even in the hell of the camps. He talks about his favorite hour, just after dinner, "which he waited for and loved most in the camps." In fact, he denies the "hell" of the camps: "I can't imagine hell, the camps existed." Fateless raises more questions that are not specific to the Holocaust than questions that are: questions about heaven and hell, about happiness, about human nature, about mankind's capacity to endure, about identity (the title, Fateless, interacts in productive ways with the earlier quote about the "common Jewish fate").

There are extraordinary moments in Fateless, which say more in a few seconds than most full-length films. As the train arrives at Auschwitz a woman puts on lipstick. On their way back to Hungary a group of survivors arrives in Dresden, which is simply gone (devastation on par with pictures that I've seen of Hiroshima). One of the survivors says, "Are you sorry for them? They got what they deserved." The policeman who has apprehended Gyuri motions slightly with his head for Gyuri to run away from the group of prisoners while they are stopped at a busy intersection, but Gyuri stays. These scenes are among the most saturated with meaning that I have ever seen.

Marcell Nagy, in his first film, is stunningly effective as Gyuri. For the most part he is reserved, affectless. This was problematic for Jean Oppenheimer: "Unfortunately, Gyuri's passivity works against the film. Unable to understand what lies behind his strange composure, the viewer is kept at an emotional distance [...] but viewers still need a window into a character's soul if they are to connect on a deep emotional level. And that is missing here" [3]. I disagree completely. I'm wary of that "deep emotional level," which I think is common to the other Holocaust films I discussed at the beginning of this review. It is because he reacts so little that we cannot fall into Scott's trap of solipsism--we cannot merely accept or reject his decisions, his reactions for ourselves.

A question often raised in conjunction with films about the Holocaust is, "how can we prevent this from happening again?" Since the release of Schindler's List hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) have been "ethnically cleansed" in Rwanda and in Darfur. I've seen two films about Rwanda: Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (first group) and Hotel Rwanda (third group). Filmmakers persist in copying these forms if though they aren't working to stop atrocities like this from occurring, often a stated goal of the production. There is clearly a need to more fully explore the events of sixty years past, and I hope that if nothing else people will be receptive to Fateless' attempts to cinematically reconceptialize the Holocaust. Meanwhile, what do we do with a film that is simultaneously so beautiful and so horrifying? So familiar and so shocking? We think about it. We work our way through it. And hopefully we learn something.

1: A.O. Scott's review of Fateless ("Finding the Beauty in a Boy's Days of Horror" by A.O. Scott New York Times 6 January 2006)

2: Mike Ward's review of Fateless (PopMatters 6 January 2006)

3: Jean Oppenheimer's review of Fateless ("Beauty Amid the Horror" by Jean Oppenheimer Dallas Observer 30 March 2006)

"What Barry Says"

"What Barry Says" 2004 United Kingdom, Simon Robson.

What Barry Says is a neat three-minute short animation that I saw this weekend with the Lost Film Festival. It is available online here. The animation is impressively smooth and complicated, appropriating a silk-screen aesthetic in three colors (red, black, and white) to graphically realize narration by Barry McNamara. His argument is a less nuanced, more polemical version of the one that Eugene Jarecki presents in Why We Fight: the military-industrial complex has taken the U.S. government hostage and is using American foreign policy to ensure a constant state of armed conflict, from which corporate American profits (what the film calls "war corporatism"). What Barry Says is not subtle, but it is surprisingly cogent for such a short film. It's as if Robson has brought to life the posters you might see wheat pasted all over your city. What Barry Says is a fun, stylish piece of agit-prop. It's unlikely to convince anyone of its points or sway any fence-sitters, but as a digital celebration of "street art" it's quite good. Certainly it's worth three minutes.

The Book

With this month's paycheck I first paid my rent and then immediately ordered American Movie Critics: From the Silents until Now by Phillip Lopate. I have high hopes for this one. Some chatter:

Phillip Lopate on The Leonard Lopate Show (it's his brother) on WNYC

Laura Miller reviews the book at Salon

Jim Emerson (rogerebert.com) reflects on the book and on Miller's review

The Film Society of Lincoln Center hosts a panel discussion in the book's honor

Wesley Morris reviews the book for The Boston Globe

Phillip Lopate on Talk of the Nation

Antici...pation...

Viva La Manohla!

Sara James at Women's Wear Daily reports that Manohla Dargis has been nominated by the New York Times for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism! The article includes this:

"'By no means do you ever hear that [Dargis] is the best critic [the Times] has,' said one person who's worked with her there. 'She's known for synopsizing and giving stuff away. You're not supposed to read her if you don't want to know what's going to happen.'"

Well, you'll hear it here: Manohla Dargis is the best critic that the New York Times has. Hell, she's the best film critic in the country. And I'll fight any man or woman who says otherwise!

Kudos to Anne Thompson for accurately observing about Ms. Dargis: "No namby pamby she."

"Ask the Dust"

"Ask the Dust" 2006 United States, Robert Towne.

I suppose that I should have seen it coming. As much as I was enjoying the racist and cruel, but curiously touching repartee between Colin Farrell (as Arturo Bandini) and Salma Hayek (as Camilla Lopez), it was obvious that their banter could not sustain an entire feature-length picture. Movies this rich with homages to Old Hollywood either intend to say something about the films they reference (Far From Heaven) or co-opt an Old Hollywood formula for its own plot (Moulin Rouge!). Ask the Dust is an example of the latter sort, and for its second act it unfortunately chooses to appropriate the guise of an insipid melodrama. Still, Ask the Dust is an attractive film, and some say that the entire venture was doomed to failure from the start, so perhaps we should regard it, like Kevin Crust, as "a disappointment, but with much to recommend and be glad about" [1].

I've not read Ask the Dust (in fact, to mine own discredit, I had never even heard of John Fante before seeing this film) so I cannot testify to the extent to which it is unfilmable. I can say, though, that there is a disjointed, impressionistic quality that suggests much has been left out. The sun-drenched neo-noir of the first act gives way to soft, warm, sensitive tones in the second (which, I understand, takes great liberties with the source material) in a transition that is not prepared for and is difficult to process. The song "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" provides period flavor in the first half, but in the second half it has apparently been used as a template for the film's dialogue, which includes lines like, "Don't let go. Don't ever let go." There is a self-deprecating quality to the first half (Bandini refers to himself as "A lover of man and beast alike" in a tone varies from joyful to bitingly sarcastic depending on his fortunes) that is replaced by misguided sincerity in the second.

I can see how one half or the other might appeal to someone, but not both. The first act is clearly more to my taste, and it does offer some real treats. Caleb Deschanel's cinematography is sumptuous, tactile. There is a skinny dipping scene in the ocean that more closely approximates the texture of an oil painting than any other film I can recall. At the same time it has the effectively haunting, other-worldly quality of the swimming scene in Gattaca. The film opens with a wonderful reductionist-noir tableau: an ashtray jammed with cigarette butts and orange peels. Farrell's staccato voice-over dialogue and the bizarre courtship scenes between Bandini and Camilla in the café have this same quality about them. After the film settles into a romantic idyll, though, these pleasures become few and far between. Instead, they are replaced by one cliché after another: the happy couple romps on the beach with their dog, Bandini teaches Camilla to read, they make love for the first time. It's tired, predictable. As David Edelstein succinctly put it, "in period love stories, there's no such thing as an inconsequential cough" [2].

There are pieces of a great film in Ask the Dust. It successfully invokes a Los Angeles of yore, some of the dialogue is quite striking, there are visual moments that fall nothing short of stunning. But these pieces are cobbled together with schmaltz, with half-hearted attempts to engage issues of race, with fuzzy-headed invocations of the creative process. "A disappointment, but with much to recommend and be glad about." Indeed.

1: Kevin Crust's review of Ask the Dust (Los Angeles Times 10 March 2006)

2: David Edelstein's review of Ask the Dust ("Lost Space Invaders" by David Edelstein New York Magazine 13 March 2006)

Critic Vs. Critic No. 3: The New World (Starring, In Alphabetical Order: J. Hoberman, Dave Kehr, Matt Zoller Seitz, and N.P. Thompson)

Critic Vs. Critic
Where the debates are scored, sides are taken, and thoughts are proffered for your consideration.

No. 3: The New World (Starring, In Alphabetical Order: J. Hoberman, Dave Kehr, Matt Zoller Seitz, and N.P. Thompson)

1) Matt Zoller Seitz writes about The New World ("There is only this...All else is unreal" by Matt Zoller Seitz The House Next Door 2 January 2006)

2) N.P. Thompson writes about The New World (Movies Into Film 4 February 2006)

3) J. Hoberman writes about The New World and its admirers ("Paradise Now" by J. Hoberman Village Voice 7 March 2006)

4) Matt Zoller Seitz writes about Hoberman's article and helpfully compiles all of his own writing about the film--he is one of its aforementioned admirers. (Another Look" by Matt Zoller Seitz The House Next Door 7 March 2006)

5) Dave Kehr also writes about Hoberman's article--he is not an admirer of the film. ("Malick as Messiah" davekehr.com 9 March 2006)

6) You probably already noticed Seitz's "Update" at the end of 2).

7) Dave Kehr responds to Matt Zoller Seitz ("A Response to Matt Seitz" by Dave Kehr davekehr.com 10 March 2006)

8) Dave Kehr puts his foot down ("My Own Private PATRIOT Act" by Dave Kehr davekehr.com 13 March 2006)

9) Matt Zoller Seitz puts this discussion to bed ("Challenge Declined" by Matt Zoller Seitz The House Next Door 16 March 2006)

My thoughts:

Wow, there certainly is a lot going on here. I read both The House Next Door and davekehr.com so I followed this exchange in "real time", if you will; but I've only been reading other blogs since February or so, so I had not read anything written before J. Hoberman's article. Initially I agreed with Mr. Kehr when he says, "Analysis is exactly what I would like to see from you and the film’s other acolytes, rather than infinitely repeated assertions of its greatness, backed by no evidence other than the emotions the film happened to stir in you" [7]. But this was injudicious of me: I had not perused Mr. Zoller Seitz's other posts or the comments sections attached to those posts. I agree with him when he writes in the comments section of Mr. Kehr's post, "You misrepresent me when you say I offer no specific examples to back up my enthusiasm, and if you look back over my posts you’ll see that it’s true"[7].

Specifically, I was turned off by this portion of Mr. Zoller Seitz's post entitled "Just Beautiful":

"Diversity of response isn’t prima facie evidence of a masterpiece, of course. It’s the minimum we should expect from a film that aspires to be more than a diversion. But as I look back on that evening, I am less struck by what happened afterward than by the audience’s behavior during the film. Whatever opinions they formed after the fact, while they watched 'The New World,' they gave themselves to it. They knew this movie respected them, and they responded in kind" [4].

At the time it appeared to me that Mr. Zoller Seitz was using the reaction of his audience as an important piece of evidence in his case for the brilliance of The New World. But again, at this point he had already written exhaustively about the film. He had already argued extensively for with specific examples from the film itself. In the larger narrative of his discussion of the film a consideration of one audience's reaction is not out of place. I wonder if, perhaps, Mr. Kehr was likewise unfamiliar with the bulk of Mr. Zoller Seitz's writing on the subject.

In general, the debate begins impassioned but respectful, particularly on Mr. Zoller Seitz's part ("Dave, you’re a hero to me... "). But by the end it's just mostly impassioned, and mostly just on Mr. Zoller Seitz's part. He issues a challenge to Mr. Kehr: "How about this? I will borrow a screener of the 135 minute cut from a friend who has acquired one, and write an entirely new piece concentrating only on editing, camera movement and composition, music and narration. I will post it on my site. You do the same on your site, and the readers can critique us both" [7]. The way that Mr. Kehr dismisses this challenge ("Matt, you’ve got a lot more time on your hands than I do. This ain’t my crusade; it’s yours.") seems to infuriate Matt Zoller Seitz, and it does feel a bit condescending--perhaps Mr. Kehr didn't take it seriously? I would have liked to seen this "challenge" answered, but I recognize that that is a lot of work for Mr. Kehr to do on a film doesn't necessarily interest him.

Of note:

What interests me most about this discussion has nothing to do with The New World: we have here two different philosophies of filmblogging. Dave Kehr: "I’ve been leaving most posts here stand without comment from me because I’ve been thinking of them as the internet equivalent of letters to the editor. I had my say; now the reader has the opportunity to have his or hers without any interference from me" [7]. Mr. Zoller Seitz has a vastly different approach to filmblogging. He will typically respond to just about every comment made on The House Next Door, and many of his most compelling points about The New World are found on the comments section of both his own site and of Mr. Kehr's (for instance his exchange with Steven Boone on "Just Beautiful" [4]). This is why, in addition to my own experience, I wonder if Mr. Kehr perhaps did not read all of Mr. Zoller Seitz's writings.

To be specific:

2: I agree with Mr. Kehr that N.P. Thompson is out of line here:

"The 'critics' who are either impervious to or openly contemptuous of the movie strike me as being a good deal worse than mere idiots – they are monsters who are indifferent to art, to poetry, to life, to the air we breathe, to the trees in the forests, to the pleasure of all that, and perhaps even to sunlight. They are victims of television. They cannot read books, and what’s more, this film, with its elliptical editing that expects us to think and to fill-in for ourselves, shows that a majority of reviewers can no longer muster the competence even to 'read' a movie, if a film doesn’t spell itself out on a press kit platter."

Beyond the obvious fact that none of this can be substantiated (yes, I realize that it's not meant literally), it turns people off from considering the rest of his case (me, for instance). It might be persuasive otherwise.

8: Mr. Kehr says, "OK, moderation is now in effect on the discussion boards. Basic rule: no personal attacks. First victim: NP Thompson, who’s going to have to learn at least a modicum of civility if he wants to continue to post here (and I don’t know why he would). The jihad, I’m sure, will continue at his own site."

He seems civil enough to me, but that's presumably because the offending posts in question have been removed.

The score:

I'm never actually going to "score" one of these exchanges! They exist only because I want to keep them in order!

Now that he's moderating the comments section of his site I think that we're going to see more of Dave Kehr there [8]. So score 1 for everybody...

I think it's great to see these two different conceptualizations of filmblogging go head to head. But they don't really go head to head, do they? Still, two different philosophies appear in the same exchange, allowing us to reflect on them. Mr. Zoller Seitz comes off a bit better in this debate, mostly because of his unanswered "challenge" to Mr. Kehr. I think there's a helpful lesson in all of this about opening cans of worms...

Re: The New World itself: my own experience of the film is substantially enhanced by the extent of the discussion surrounding it on The House Next Door and elsewhere, but there isn't really anything of substance said about the film in this exchange: most of Matt Zoller Seitz's most compelling points are made elsewhere. At some point Matt Zoller Seitz mentions an exchange with Edward Copeland (Edward Copeland on Film). I'll have to look into that...

Brief Thoughts On "Moving Away From the Movie Theater"

Some brief thoughts regarding Peter Bogdanovich's recent article in the Los Angeles Times called "Moving Away From the Movie Theater" (26 March 2006):

1) I think it's interesting that people often site things counterproductive to the appreciation of individual films as lasting works of art when talking about what will be missed when the movie theaters have gone the way of the dinosaur . Bogdanovich:

-Normally, therefore, we would enter in the middle of one of the two features. Part of the fun was trying to figure out what was going on.

-When I was a growing up, there were no ratings — all pictures being suitable for the whole family. Parents could, if they chose, take the family to serious films such as "How Green Was My Valley," "Citizen Kane" or "From Here to Eternity" without worrying that it might not be "appropriate" for the children.

-For one thing, they were irretrievable: Once the first and second runs were past, most films were not easy to see again.

He is lamenting the loss of a macro-"film art" but ignoring the ways in which technology advances facilitate a micro-"art of the specific film." Today filmmakers can engage controversial subjects in a graphic way without worrying about their suitability of their films for the whole family. Audiences can pore over individual films and bask in their artistry. And they can watch them whenever and as often as they want.

2) Bogdanovich touches on the reason that I, Andrew Horbal, will never abandon the movie theater:

On the other hand, a Michigan university student told me recently that one of the few classic Hollywood movies he'd seen was John Ford's version of John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath." He said he'd been looking at a "video of it" and couldn't get his "eyelids to stop drooping."

Well, of course. Not only was he alone in his living room, but he was seeing on a small screen a work that had not been created ever to be reduced so radically in size. The especially dark photography (by the legendary Gregg Toland, who the following year shot Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane") needs the large screen to convey its effect, not to mention that darkness and TV have never produced easy-to-watch results.

What's more, Ford was very much the master of the long shot. Twenty years before that famous fly-speck-on-the-desert entrance in "Lawrence of Arabia," Ford had introduced Henry Fonda in "Grapes" as a tiny figure on the horizon coming toward us. But tiny on a giant screen is not the same as tiny on a TV set. The first makes a poetic impression, the second leaves you wondering what you're looking at and causes yet more eye strain. No wonder the student's eyelids drooped.

One of my favorite movies is Howard Hawks' "Bringing Up Baby" with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn — probably the fastest and at the same time most darkly photographed comedy of all time. When I watch it on TV, I find myself getting tired and running out of steam before the film ends.

It's not just the great movies that suffer in the transition from the big screen to the small. I am almost incapable of watching a bad movie from start to finish in my living room. The allure of sandwiches in the kitchen, of a nice, cool, and ever more inviting beer down the street is just too strong (a strength that curiously seems to vary inversely with the quality of the film). There are many reasons why "bad movies" are good: they are often made by good directors, screenwriters, and actors whose larger body of work interests us; they engage issues of contemporary importance in interesting flawed or naive ways; and, well, etc.

Finally, Bogdanovich gets at one of the reasons that I think that "the theater experience" will persist, albeit potentially in a drastically modified form:

Most young people have never even seen older films (before 1962, let's say — the end of the movies' golden age, when the original studio system finally collapsed) on the large screen for which they were solely created. So it's easy to understand why they're not interested in them. That they don't know what they're missing is a sad fact, increasingly more common, therefore sadder.

All this technology is at least ostensibly in the service of creating the most quality movie experience possible. Hollywood might move to the Nollywood model, but there will always be a demand from the connoisseur for movie theaters to screen the very best in film!

I am amused by Bogdanovich's closing:

Better movies would help.

"Inside Man"

"Inside Man" 2006 United States, Spike Lee.

At the top right hand corner of this page it says, "I take no pains to not 'spoil' plot-twists or endings." Just this once, though, I'll reiterate: Stop! Spoilers ahead! On to business. As I have said, Inside Man is as thoroughly enjoyable a movie experience as I have ever had. I saw it again earlier this evening and I am delighted to report that it stands up to a second viewing 100%. Where to begin?

The early shot of the Cyclone implies, as others before me have pointed out, that a real roller coaster of a plot is about to unfold. Director Spike Lee deftly employs a contradictory cocktail of cinema history and cinema techniques to muddy the water and mislead the audience as to the specific nature of the heist instead of simply using red herrings (The Usual Suspects) or outright false information (The Sixth Sense). The film's first shot calls to mind The Lavender Hill Mob, which begins with Alec Guinness in a tropical café relating to a companion the story of his perfect crime. In the final shot the camera tracks back and reveals that Guinness is, in fact, handcuffed to his companion, a law enforcement officer come to arrest him. Inside Man's deception works in the opposite direction: Dalton Russell's (Clive Owen) reference to a "prison cell" implies that the film will end with his own apprehension. But the second half of this semi-bookend reveals that "prison cell" was merely a descriptive term. There are outright misleading moments: we see Russell remove the incriminating document from the safe deposit box, leaving the diamonds, which implies that the document is indeed all he came for. But for each of these moments Lee reveals something true: the interviews with the hostages gives away the fact that when the dust settles no robbers will remain in the bank, the police discussion of Dalton's trivia game carries over (muffled) into a tracking shot inside the bank, "revealing" the fact that the police truck is bugged. The references to Dog Day Afternoon (explicitly in the dialogue, Marcia Jean Kurtz plays a character named Miriam in both films) implies that these bank robbers have a goal as straightforward as those, but the loud, blaring brass that accompanies the early robbery scenes (these parts of the score reminded me of James Bond films--super villain music) suggest that maybe they have some more deceptive master plan.

I love the extent to which Lee seems to identify with his protagonists. Inside Man is clearly a paycheck movie, and Lee is understandably apprehensive about the implication of this project. Both Russell and Detective Frazier (Denzel Washington) engage in morally questionable actions: Russell robs a bank, Frazier accepts the clandestine assistance of the Mayor (Peter Kybart) and Ms. White (Jodie Foster) to advance his career. But neither man compromises his morality. Russell doesn't kill anyone and he robs only from a Nazi collaborator. Frazier never risks the safety of the hostages: there are clearly limits to his willingness to help White. They both delight in their work: when Russell tells us that he is going to commit the "perfect robbery" there is a tangible measure of pride in his voice. In the scenes at the beginning of the film when Frazier and Detective Miller (Chiwetel Ejiofor) head to the crime scene ("Bad guys, here I come!") they step lightly, they jostle and josh one another, and Frazier stops to adjust his hat to an appropriately rakish angle. It was a real pleasure to watch their joy in their jobs, their own abilities. It's as if Lee is admitting that this film is something of a compromise, but reminding us that he's quite good at what he does and he enjoys it.

And, most importantly, he believes in his ability to effect good in his capacity as director, even in this film. Inside Man addresses his favorite them of race relations, specifically in "post 9-11" America. Here it's a very casual racism. A hostage emerges from the bank and when his mask is pulled off revealing a turban a cop mutters, "Oh shit a fuckin' Arab." Captain Darius (Willem Dafoe) refers to the "rag heads at Munich", Frazier cautions another officer (Victor Colicchio as Sergeant Collins) to "watch the color commentary." None of this really is portrayed as significant to the plot, but it's significant that it's there. These are not bad people, but they are racist people. He paints with a much lighter (and a much more realistic) touch the same picture of the persistence of racism that was the sole subject of Crash. There is one jarring moment: the inclusion of a video game that proclaims, "Kill dat nigga!" But this too is brief, passing. The theme is there for us to reflect upon, but Lee is not about to dictate to us how we should feel.

The acting is absolutely delicious. Denzel Washington is so relaxed, so flippant as Detective Frazier that I could feel fulfilled watching his character do his taxes. He and Ejiofor have a chemistry that suggests that these two men go a long way back. Washington and Clive Owen are both calm and assured, exuding confidence. They are stunning as two chess masters engaged in a battle of wits, and each clearly loves the game. Jodie Foster is every bit the "ice queen" that Stephanie Zacherek describes her as [1] and her dominating, emasculating presence should go a long way towards redeeming Lee's reputation as a closet misogynist, of which I was reminded by a comment at the chutry experiment [2]. Look at the way Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer) bristles at her confidence! The supporting cast, both big name (Dafoe) and small (Al Palagonia, who I enjoyed in He Got Game, plays the construction worker: "100% Albanian!") adds immeasurably to the film.

The script, by first time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz, is likewise excellent. The film functions almost as a police procedural, capturing perfectly the fact that this is just another day in the life for the detectives and the police offers. When Frazier arrives at the crime scene and tells Captain Darius, "We're gonna take a walk down to the diner," (where many scenes take place) you can't help but feel that this is how a crime scene really works. The scene in which Darius describes the S.W.A.T. teams' plan to move in on the bank reminded me of Andrzej Wajda's discussion in Wajda On Film of Andzej Munk's version of the assassination scene in The Assassination Attempt [3]. Gewirtz manages to have his cake and eat it too, showing us both the real raid and the imagined, action-packed one. It also invokes Bob le Flambeur just a bit, don't you think? There's another wonderful moment that I want to mention (likely attributable more to Lee than to Gewirtz) near the end when Frazier finally arrives home. The shot consists of his shadow in the top part of the frame, with its skewed fedora, and his girlfriend's long legs in the foreground. It invokes Humphrey Bogart and serves almost as a riposte to the Blaxploitation films that fetishized other, less desirable aspects of the Bogart persona.

The dialogue is playful, hilarious. This is part good writing, part great acting. Spot-on timing permeates the film. Frazier says, "Last time I had my johnson pulled that good it cost me $5 bucks," and Darius looks up and asks, "$5 bucks?" Frazier tells Russell that he's reluctant to marry his girlfriend for financial reasons, to which Russell replies, "If you really love each other money shouldn't be a problem." Frazier responds, "Thank you, bank robber." There's a real levity about the entire script. Lee conspires to direct our attention to the writing and the acting as often as possible, and it is easy to see why: there's real quality here.

I mentioned earlier Inside Man's treatment of racial issues and I mentioned Crash. These two films lend themselves so easily to comparison--I hope that someone does some work here. Crash's argument is simplistic: we are guilty of racism, we are all both good and bad (!). Inside Man, on the other hand, actually begins to ask who are the bad guys in our society, a question with real resonance after Hurricane Katrina. It would ring false were the police or the government to have all the answers, and Lee indicts both by showing the sway that Arthur Case holds over the mayor through Madeline White. She says of Case that he's taken the saying "when blood's in the streets buy property" too much to heart, but adds that in this, "he's no different from the rest of the Fortune 500." It's a deep-seeded mistrust of power, but one that Lee shares with much of America.

As recently as this last December Spike Lee said in an interview with Lee Siegel at Slate, "But I remember thinking when we were nominated [for an Oscar] for 4 Little Girls and then finding out that a rabbi was a producer for the other one: We're not gonna win" [3]. I think that Siegel was arguably leading Lee towards such a statement with his questions ("That is an issue, right? It's followed you throughout your career, the relationship between blacks and Jews."), and I bring it up only for a specific reason: don't you just love the fact that Inside Man is, in a manner of speaking, Lee's "Jewish" movie? He treats the issue respectfully, and touches on some of the same issues as Munich. The Jewish man who identifies himself as a Columbia Law professor who studies war crimes and genocide is revealed at the end of the film to be party to the robbery. Is it possible that this heist began with his desire to exact revenge on Case? It would explain why Russell answers his question about the whereabouts of the ring by saying, "It's in good hands."

I have a great deal of esteem for this film, but I hope that I'm not overstating my case. It is great in the ways of wonderful genre films, and it ranks with Bob le Flambeur and Touchez pas au Grisbi! as one of my favorite heist films. Is it a great movie, though? I don't know, and frankly I don't give a damn. In her review of the film Manohla Dargis says, "To judge from this precision-tooled amusement, Mr. Lee may have missed his calling (one of them, anyway) as a studio hire" [4]. Given her oft-stated love for old Hollywood this is high praise indeed. And given my high esteem for Ms. Dargis, I can think of no more fitting conclusion to this rambling, disjointed appreciation.

1: Stephanie Zacharek's review of Inside Man (Salon 24 March 2006)

2: Jennifer's comment to Chuck Tryon's review of Inside Man (the chutry experiment 26 March 2006)

3: Wajda, Andrzej, Wajda On Film. Acrobat Books: Los Angeles, 1991. Pg. 14.

4: "Spike Lee - The director talks about movies, race, and Will Smith" by Lee Siegel (Slate 1 December 2005)

5: "'Inside Man', a Crime Caper Starring Denzel Washington" by Manohla Dargis (New York Times 24 March 2006)

Rent This! No. 2: "Hester Street"

Rent This!

These are films available on DVD and VHS. They are not necessarily my absolute favorites, but I like them and, for whatever reason, they are on my mind.

No. 1: "Hester Street" 1975 United States, Joan Micklin Silver.

I chose my first "Rent This!" film, Friday Night Lights, in honor of the Steelers winning the Super Bowl. My second selection is Hester Street, proof positive that every so often the Academy Awards do honor the most deserving films.

Hester Street is an independently produced and distributed film about Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe living New York's Lower East Side in 1896. It was directed by Joan Micklin Silver, who also adapted Abraham Cahan's story to the screen. It is no easy thing to do, to make a period film on an independent budget, and what impresses me most about Hester Street is how economical it is in nearly every respect. The crowded streets of the Lower East Side are represented not by throngs of extras, but by shot composition and dialogue. Early in the film Jake (Steven Keats) and Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh) decide to sleep together on the roof of a building, but to find a spot of their own they have to step over others: even the roofs are full of people. Jake boasts by saying, "I got a bed all to myself." The compositions are tight, reflecting the cramped living conditions of the immigrant population. The exterior market scenes employ quick cutting to represent the business and bustle of the neighborhood. At every turn just a few actors accomplish for Hester Street what hundreds would for a Hollywood production like The Godfather: Part II.

Compositions and lighting are typically straightforward and simple, but skillfully handled. The crowd scenes, for instance, encompass only a small portion of a city block and appear to be shot from a second or third story window, allowing contemporary New York to substitute for a New York of 80 years past. But these scenes are impeccably directed and surprisingly full of sound. The shot is always just a bit deeper, a bit longer than you'd think would be possible. It looks like the D.P. Kenneth Van Sickle had a bit more trouble with his interiors: in some shots a boom mike is visible in the top of the frame* and certain reaction shots of Gitl (Carol Kane) are out of focus. For the most part, though, these scenes have the same simple grace as the exteriors. And the film's most impressive visual flourish is an interior shot. Jake is at Ellis Island to pick up Gitl and his son Joey (Paul Freedman), just arrived from the Old Country. He stands in a doorway, occupying the bulk of the foreground. He is enveloped in shadow, from which he steps forward into the (lighted) bustle of the processing center. This strikes me as an inversion of the final shot of The Searchers. His new, American life is a bachelor's life. Community and family are "outside", with the immigrants. Though, of course, Americans would view them as uncivilized, in which case they belong outside with Ethan Edwards. Delicious!

At times the film flags a bit in scenes like the long divorce ceremony at the end, rendered with detailed, almost archival, accuracy at the narrative's expense. But for each scene like this there is at least one other that is vibrant and alive. The scene in which Jake asks Mamie for a loan, implying that it is so they can become engaged but without ever stating this directly, using the Lower East Side's inherent lack of privacy as a shield. The scene in which Mamie's lawyer negotiates Jake's divorce with Gitl. The scene in which Gitl sneaks a handful of salt into Joey's coat pocket, to ward off the evil eye. Many of these scenes seem to grow out of the same tradition of Jewish comedy that blossomed in this environment, and they are simultaneously an homage to the roots of these people and to their successful integration into American cultural life.

The acting is uniformly delightful. Steven Keats' Jake suggests a weak-willed, ambitious social-climber, but without making Jake a bad guy. He seems instead almost drunk on America's promise of freedom, somehow unaccountable for his actions. Dorrie Kavanaugh's Mamie, on the other hand, represents a more determined, disciplined desire to integrate. Their road will be bumpy, of course, but one imagines that these two might actually be happy together--they do want the same thing. Mel Howard's Bernstein is self-effacing and restrained, Doris Roberts (she has lately found success on "Everybody Loves Raymond") plays Kavorsky with a tangible empathy for Gitl and Jake's young couple, but an empathy with limits. And then, finally, there is Carol Kane as Gitl. She is overwhelmed and uncertain, helpless--but not because she is weak or uncertain herself. Her character embodies the vast differences between life in her old world and her new. This sense of culture-shock emanates from her and saturates the entire production. As she gets her bearings her performance gradually grows more assured and confident, and twinkle creeps into the corner of her eyes. A playfulness grows in her during her scenes with Bernstein until finally, at the end, they walk down the street discussing plans to open a shop. Bernstein refers to her son as Yankel and she corrects him: "His name is Joey." Jake and Mamie might be happy together, but it is these two who embody Jake's statement at the beginning of the film that, "In America you marry for love. And that's all." If Jake and Mamie are true Americans, Gitl and Bernstein better represent its ideals.

Carol Kane did not actually win the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Louise Fletcher did for her Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). To appreciate the significance of this nomination you must remember that there is Independent Film, and there is film produced and distributed independently of any studio involvement. The former category is broad, and it encompasses big budget films like Pulp Fiction and American Beauty that are "independent" in name alone. The latter category, though, consists of filmmakers like Andrew Bujalski, Jonathan Caouette, and Matthew Barney. Can you imagine one of them being nominated for an Academy Award?

Hester Street takes the period film, supposedly the exclusive realm of Hollywood directors with substantial budgets, and reclaims it for the independent filmmaker. This film expanded my own definition of what is possible for small filmmaking, what might be possible for myself. For this reason alone it is of value. But it is also a delightful film, fully of striking moments and wonderfully evocative acting. And for all of these reasons together I number it amongst my favorites.

* I didn't notice the boom mikes in the DVD version that I saw most recently, but I remember them being quite visible (but unobtrusive) in the VHS transfer. I hope that they weren't somehow removed. They were a perfect, quiet testament to the film's modest origins, and thus to its substantial achievement.