Film Is a Battleground #8: Wonderful, Difficult (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Collateral)

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (on DVD)
COLLATERAL (in theaters)

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (Michel Gondry, 2004)
**** (Masterpiece)

Like most great popular art, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND manages simultaneously to seem shockingly new and completely familiar. The imaginative expression of universal truths triggers an intense, instinctual and very personal reaction which renders criticism difficult. Am I examining the film or its impact upon me? Certainly this conundrum presents itself in varying degrees when analyzing any film though there’s little trouble dealing with films at the opposite end of the experiential spectrum. A certain cathartic joy lifts the spirit when attacking a repulsive film. Though it did not make the time spent watching the film worthwhile, the time spent delineating all that I objected to in AMERICAN BEAUTY, for example, helped purge the ugliness from my system.

What to do though, with a film one loves? The impulse toward protection does not always preclude argument. It’s tempting but unsatisfying to dismiss discussion because of claims one party “doesn’t get” the film. I understand that most people don’t get De Palma but I have little trouble identifying and articulating what they’re missing, what I see.

However, there are certain films, few in my experience, that exist primarily as a delicate emotional relationship between viewer and image and for which my passion overwhelms my understanding. Were you to offer a reasoned, coherent analysis of the aesthetic limitations of CQ or BOTTLE ROCKET or BEFORE SUNSET I would, despite my passionate appreciation of those films, struggle to provide a coherent defense of their virtues. Those films connect with me so deeply that not to love them seems incomprehensible. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is a similarly wonderful, difficult case.

I remember the joy I experienced watching BEING JOHN MALKOVICH transcend my expectations. I had hoped for little more than an especially watchable, if somewhat snarky, hipster comedy. Instead, I witnessed a metaphysical comedy unlike anything I’d previously seen.

Charlie Kaufman’s subsequent scripts revealed a writer unafraid of silly, absurd characters, situations, and incidents yet profoundly committed to considering the themes he broached (identity and morality in CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, civilization in HUMAN NATURE, identity, art, and commerce in ADAPTATION).

After MALKOVICH, I rated HUMAN NATURE, Kaufman’s previous collaboration with Michel Gondry, as his best script. HUMAN NATURE contemplated the nature vs. civilization issue in a traditional, screwball structure. The film, with its refusal to presume correct answers existed for the questions it posed, lacked pretension. That understated quality, combined with Michel Gondry’s technical restraint (when compared to his music videos), must be the root cause for the film’s lack of impact with audiences and critics.

Gondry shows no such restraint in ETERNAL SUNSHINE. He maintains the technical inventiveness of his videos over the length of a feature. The difference lies in his source material. Though his videos are jaw-dropping, involving, and hypnotic to look at, the only thing you really think about is how he conceived of and achieved the effects.

Kaufman’s script for ETERNAL SUNSHINE, concerned both intellectually and emotionally with the universal human experiences of love, pain, and memory, allows Gondry to pair emotional immediacy with his technical inventiveness. The how-did-he-do-that wonder registers momentarily, before being emotionally transformed by the subjective experience of memory.

It’s the emotional power of this film that elevates the script above Kaufman’s previous work. At some point all his previous scripts became more involving on an intellectual, meta-textual level. ETERNAL SUNSHINE doesn’t sacrifice intelligent self-awareness to push emotional buttons. For the first time Kaufman successfully integrates the emotional and intellectual elements for an entire film.

Besides marking the best work of a gifted writer and director, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND represents a simultaneous leap forward for both art and genre cinema. It owes ostensible debts to the strictures of both the science fiction and romantic comedy genres, but it’s a science fiction film like LA JETEE and ALPHAVILLE were science fiction films and it makes even the best recent romantic comedies with metaphysical concerns (GROUNDHOG DAY, BEFORE SUNRISE) seem relatively insignificant.

COLLATERAL (Michael Mann, 2004)
* (Has redeeming facet)

Michael Mann makes films about men (usually cops and criminals), the process of their work, and their relationship to their work: how process defines identity.

Tom Cruise plays characters that simply are something (spy, lawyer, pilot, bartender, pool player). His characters are not predisposed to contemplating the process of their behavior or their reasons for doing what they do.

COLLATERAL fails to reconcile the above dilemma.

The first film that Mann has directed without writing the screenplay, COLLATERAL contains individual scenes that connect with Mann’s oeuvre, but overall the film is minor stuff. Reminiscent of the Coen’s INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, the film seems less the work of a recognizably individual talent than an imitation thereof.

Despite being saddled with Cruise for most of the film, Jamie Foxx manages to give another fine performance. On the rare occasions when he gets a scene with another actor (the great Javier Bardem, or even the surprisingly good Jada Pinkett Smith) he briefly lights a spark within the film. Similarly, one wishes to see more of the cops played by Mark Ruffalo and Peter Berg.

But the film instead circles back on Cruise who is unable to carry the weight of Mann’s exploration of masculinity. That’s not slur on Mr. Cruise’s manhood. Rather, he fails to be recognizably human, thus rendering his methodical, relentless hitman more ludicrously stilted than chilling.

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Film Is a Battleground #7: Time Heals Some Wounds (Videodrome, demonlover, Masked & Anonymous)

What’s special about this week’s effort? Issue Number 7 is the first to debut at filmisabattleground.blogspot.com, sport a title, and feature a tenuous thematic relationship between the films. Three films of varying quality set not quite in the present and not quite in the future for your perusal.

VIDEODROME (on DVD)
demonlover (on DVD)
MASKED & ANONYMOUS (on DVD and cable)

VIDEODROME (David Cronenberg, 1983)
*** (A must-see)

The consensus on the occasion of the release of Criterion’s DVD of VIDEODROME, seems to be that the film marks the beginning of Cronenberg’s serious work. Though clearly central to Cronenberg’s oeuvre, one would be hard pressed to identify how VIDEODROME significantly surpasses, in terms of serious social commentary, from SHIVERS or THE BROOD.

The social satire of SHIVERS works on two levels. Textually, Cronenberg uses images and ideas derived from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD to express his ambivalence about the benefits, both culturally and individually, of the sexual revolution. Meta-textually, this somewhat conservative, certainly cautious, idea transmits itself in the guise of a disreputable, exploitative film financed on the basis of its explicit nudity and gore.

THE BROOD contains elements possibly derived from Polanski’s REPULSION, ROSEMARY’S BABY, and THE TENANT to examine the systemic way abuse is hidden and misunderstood within a community. It’s a subtle, sensitive, and terrifying film in much the manner of Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS and MULLHOLLAND DR.

True, VIDEODROME is the first of Cronenberg’s films to explicitly explore the confluence of art, technology, and the body, but the earlier horror films examined and satirized society in ways atypical for the genre. VIDEODROME remains as odd and chilling as it was on its debut. No other director manages to create quite the same sort of discomfort in audiences as does Cronenberg. There is something about watching intellectual turmoil manifest itself physically that makes viewing VIDEODROME, THE DEAD ZONE, CRASH, or SPIDER uniquely unsettling.

So, granted, the best of Cronenberg’s films prior to VIDEODROME have recognizable antecedents whereas VIDEODROME still seems to owe its birth to an unknown, unspoken source. I would propose that those influences evident in the earlier films were fairly superficial, endemic to genre filmmaking, and that Cronenberg’s personal thematic concerns manifest themselves clearly.

Furthermore, satire, especially when present within the structure of a genre film, rarely receives its due upon initial release. Witness the scheduled re-release of David O. Russell’s THREE KINGS. Largely ignored or patronized upon its release in 1999, the film has drawn more interest now that it is topical. That the film has always been morally, aesthetically, and politically relevant does not seem to factor into Warner Brothers’ decision to re-market the film. This is evidenced by the studio’s reaction to the documentary Russell made for use as a bonus feature for the DVD release. Explaining the studio’s reasoning for rejecting inclusion of the documentary, spokeswoman Barbara Brogliatti revealed the manner in which corporations ignore or deny the content of their product: “This came out to be a documentary that condemns, basically, war. This is supposed to be a special edition of THREE KINGS not a polemic about war."

Ms. Brogliatti is correct that THREE KINGS is not a polemic about war. It’s more accomplished than that. It does however plainly criticize the decisions of the George H.W. Bush Administration during both the first Gulf War and its aftermath. The AP article from whence the above quotation is taken also reports, but does not quote the following statement: “The heads of Warner Bros. rejected the documentary this week, saying it was inappropriate to distribute a documentary about the director's personal political views in conjunction with his 5-year-old drama.” Warner’s understands that the current war in Iraq exists not be questioned, but as a marketing tie-in to be exploited.

Or, to take an example from Cronenberg’s career, there’s eXistenZ, his 1999 film, an updated re-examination of VIDEODROME’s themes: art, morality, technology, reality, and the body. eXistenZ ranks among Cronenberg’s best work yet roused few of those who reflexively tout VIDEODROME’s greatness to its defense. Receiving little backing from Miramax (if it had received half the attention, or ad budget, of the KILL BILL films the world would be a better place) it appeared and disappeared from screens largely unnoticed.

Almost all writing about film that appears in the media is essentially writing about film business as opposed to film art. Most critics revel in the proximity to fame and wealth gained by forgoing responsibility in favor of insider status. To be deemed important is far easier than to be important. The few critics who insist on dealing with film as art are threatened with irrelevance as only commercial films are widely distributed theatrically. How much influence can one have by championing a film being shown for one week in New York, Chicago, or Seattle then appearing on DVD months later, if at all?

So, in lieu of a discussion of relevant works of film art, reams are wasted contemplating THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST and FAHRENHEIT 9/11. Not that those films should not be contemplated and discussed, but the scope and volume of the discussion should be in the proportion to the quality of the film rather than the quality of the hucksterism. To discuss the theology of Mel Gibson’s film while ignoring the theology of Neil LaBute’s films is negligent behavior and if the time and energy devoted to Michael Moore had accompanied the original release of THREE KINGS perhaps a more informed, aware nation would not have allowed the raw material of Moore’s film to exist.

demonlover (Olivier Assayas, 2003)
* (Has redeeming facet)

Assayas has wandered far from the allusive seduction of LATE AUGUST, EARLY SEPTEMBER and IRMA VEP. Much like Robert Altman’s PRET-A-PORTER or Woody Allen’s CELEBRITY, demonlover embodies the result of making a film for which one has an idea, but no solution for dramatizing that idea. The common element of these three films is that the grand ambition of the idea which stems from the writer-director’s desire to demonstrate profound truths about society magnifies the shallowness of the finished film. These films are watchable yet bereft of insight. demonlover offers more shock value with its suggestive (rather than explicit) use of sex and violence, but its lack of coherence lends the film an air of chic nihilism rather than profundity.

MASKED & ANONYMOUS (Larry Charles, 2003)
** (Worth seeing)

A non-narrative experiment heavily indebted to Sam Shepard (you’d think Jessica Lange would be capable of a better performance, familiarity with the vibe and all) just now showing up on pay cable. I can’t in good conscience recommend it for everyone, but it should intrigue and delight sympathetic viewers.

Larry Charles and Bob Dylan’s funny and self-referential script, wherein each character speaks in phrases that sound lifted from unwritten Dylan songs, clearly separates the real actors (John Goodman, Jeff Bridges, Giovanni Ribisi) from the movie stars (Lange, Penelope Cruz, Val Kilmer). Both Dylan and Mickey Rourke are consistently compelling, though I don’t think you could classify what either does as acting, per se. The action culminates with Dylan and his band giving a live performance of “Dixie,” one of the most compelling musical scenes in recent film history.

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Film Is a Battleground #6 (Garden State, Revengers Tragedy, The Girl Next Door)

originally published September 9, 2004

GARDEN STATE (in theaters)
REVENGERS TRAGEDY (on DVD)
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (on DVD)

GARDEN STATE (Zach Braff, 2004)
** (Worth seeing)

As a writer of dialogue, Zach Braff’s current limitations stand out in contrast to his impressive abilities as a writer and director only because he’s equally ambitious in all three endeavors. Though too earnest in its moments of navel-gazing and sentimentality, GARDEN STATE is an extremely promising debut. That Braff desires to include serious moments of reflection and sentiment speaks to his ambition. Though clever, he understands that cleverness should not supersede ideas and emotions.

I’d only previously seen Braff in THE BROKEN HEARTS CLUB, a slight film most notable for giving Timothy Olyphant (see below, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR) his first lead role. Playing a hysterical innocent utilized primarily for condescending comic relief, Braff gave no hint of the timing he brings to both the physical and verbal comedy of his role in GARDEN STATE.

Not that he just demonstrates comic timing as an actor. GARDEN STATE rises above both the many lifeless examples of debut films made by actors (Robert Redford’s ORDINARY PEOPLE, Todd Field’s IN THE BEDROOM, Spacey’s ALBINO ALLIGATOR, Frank Whaley’s THE JIMMY SHOW, and many, many others) or young hyphenates discovered at Sundance (GARDEN STATE certainly underscores the self-satisfied lie that is Edward Burns’s career). Without relying on well-known quantities behind the camera (not impugn the fine work of cinematographer Lawrence Sher, editor Myron Kerstein, or production designer Judy Becker, just to acknowledge that none are household names), Braff has created a specific universe for his film. Not that it’s an especially unique universe. The film’s portrayal of suburban ennui caused by blunted, frustrated ambition resembles, without being derivative of, the more accomplished work of Dave Eggers and Wes Anderson.

Were Braff not so talented, his decision to surround himself with a cast consisting of Peter Sarsgaard, Ian Holm, Ron Leibman, Denis O’Hare, and Jean Smart would seem more self-destructive than self-confident. All give good performances in roles of varying size and complexity. Leibman shines, especially. He gives a better, more relaxed version of the compassionate, professional elder he played in AUTO FOCUS.

Natalie Portman gives her best performance since BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, but I’m not sure how good it is. An interesting case, similar to Claire Danes and Julia Stiles, in that they are all beautiful, young, Ivy League-educated American actresses who should be much more interesting than they are, Portman can be compelling on-screen without ever seeming to commit to a character. Granted, most of the film roles offered to young women don’t provide anything to which one can commit. Still, the examples of Anna Paquin and Sarah Polley remind you of the heights these young American actors have yet to scale.

REVENGERS TRAGEDY (Alex Cox, 2002)
*** (A Must-see)

Alex Cox’s most recent theatrical feature (and only the second he’s been able to see to completion since 1992’s HIGHWAY PATROLMAN) offers a stirring reminder of his talents.

Cox possesses a pop sensibility in the best, classical sense of the word. He believes in the power of universal common experiences. Furthermore, he has the talent to create them. REPO MAN has felt contemporary and relevant for twenty years. SID AND NANCY, made fifteen years ago, still offers a fine example of how to make a lively biopic and/or rock film. (One of the surprises of the great 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, also written by REVENGERS TRAGEDY screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce, was Michael Winterbottom’s ability to appropriate something much closer to Cox’s generous spirit than his usual ponderous tone.)

REVENGERS TRAGEDY stages Thomas Middleton’s Jacobean tragedy in a near-future Liverpool decimated by violence, media, a controlling elite, and full of people speaking in classical verse. The use of verse, perhaps because, unlike most filmmakers working with classical material, Cox understands the language, is not a limitation. Instead, Cox uses the un-reality of the language as an impetus to forgo realism all together. The film is electric, absurd, and coherent. The performances are theatrical (sometimes mock-theatrical), witty, and emotional. It seems that the outsized, all-encompassing nature of Vindici’s revenge (and the allowance to address the camera/audience directly) has unleashed in Christopher Eccleston an intense charisma heretofore hidden. As in THE CAT’S MEOW, Eddie Izzard uses his wit to reveal the depth and complexity of a self-consciously theatrical character.

REVENGERS TRAGEDY, released directly to home video in the States, offers the perfect opportunity for say, someone just arrived at graduate school, to impress his undoubtedly arty and pretentious classmates with something cool and unknown yet derived from the theatrical arts. You’re welcome.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (Luke Greenfield, 2004)
* (Has a redeeming facet)

Earlier this year, Timothy Olyphant finally got a role worthy of his talents on HBO’s DEADWOOD. His performance in that (on-going) series stands out even amidst the uniformly excellent work of the ensemble and may yet rank among the great performances in the history of the Western, especially if he gets to do another episode with Walter Hill. I defy anyone to stop watching DEADWOOD after absorbing the first scene of the first episode, starring Olyphant and directed by Hill.

Olyphant gave his first compelling performance in a negligible film in Doug Liman’s GO. Despite generally lifeless, neutered surroundings he brought a bit of wit, sexuality, and danger to THE BROKEN HEARTS CLUB and ROCK STAR as well. He does the same in THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, another film completely undeserving of his talents.

A rip-off of RISKY BUSINESS that fails to achieve even the modest aims of that (inexplicably well regarded) film, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, it seems, exists only to promote the possibility of seeing Elisha Cuthbert naked. That this proves to be an empty come-on isn’t surprising as people tend not admit complaint when their investment in prurience is not rewarded.

Olyphant has the Joe Pantoliano role. With his first appearance he takes command of the film and every subsequent second he’s off the screen seems interminable. Even by the standards of teen sex comedies this film seems unimportant and its creators disengaged. Why, for example, in a contemporary youth film does the soundtrack consist of “Under Pressure,” “The Killing Moon,” and “Baba O’Reilly?” Is it to make the audience stop thinking about all the movies better than the one they’re watching and start to consider worthy music as well?

As for the film’s nominal leads, Ms. Cuthbert is lovely but lacks much of a spark, though blame for the material’s shallowness should not fall at her feet. Emile Hirsch, the putative hero, though not as unrelentingly blank as Tom Cruise, strolls through his role with the minimal effort it deserves, though he comes to life briefly after Olyphant slips him some ecstasy under the guise of aspirin. Such passes for a comic high point in this film.

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Film Is a Battleground #5 (The Company, The Human Stain, Thirteen)

originally published August 31, 2004

THE COMPANY (on DVD)
THE HUMAN STAIN (on DVD)
THIRTEEN (on DVD and cable)

THE COMPANY (Robert Altman, 2003)
*** (A must-see)

People are least interesting when they’re trying to be noticed. In those moments, people attempt merely to express a single idea or hide a particular truth. When people try to go unnoticed, however, they reveal their complexity, the conflicting nature of the multitude of truths they posses.

Robert Altman understands that uncertainty, captured, almost stolen, onto film reveals not the best but the most in people--contradictory, sub-conscious impulses that register fleetingly--and that a collection of these moments, which would seem to invite chaos, instead takes root in the minds of those for whom such moments imply significant meaning to such a degree that all criticism of that which such a method forgoes (a traditional narrative approach to plot and a defined hierarchy of the import of characters and incidents within the film, individual scenes, or even within a frame) seems utterly beside the point.

It’s an ingenious, imperfect approach. Ingenious as it has proven to be a successful method for maintaining a productive career built upon only a single, unqualified hit made thirty-five years ago. Imperfect because when the volume of those stolen moments fails to coalesce, a film’s flaws are obvious and undeniable.

I am unquestionably sympathetic to Altman’s method. I believe his talent and body of work to be equal to those of the greatest American filmmakers: Hawks, Welles, Sturges, Minelli, Fuller, and De Palma. All of the above made films that didn’t, for a variety of reasons, succeed. None of them, though, given complete artistic freedom, made films as empty and lifeless as IMAGES, QUINTET, or PRET-A-PORTER; films no less technically accomplished than Altman’s best, but completely bereft of insights into the nature of human behavior, the quality that makes comparisons between Altman and Renoir legitimate.

THE COMPANY treads ground dangerously close to that which lead to the creation of the above three blemishes on Altman’s body of work. Like IMAGES, THE COMPANY constructs itself around its leading lady’s real-life extracurricular interests. Like QUINTET, it forgoes conventional narrative structure, revealing its structure gradually and mostly without expository dialogue. Like PRET-A-PORTER, it examines a particular, insular milieu without a distinct point of view such as Altman brought to the western with McCABE AND MRS. MILLER; to the detective film with THE LONG GOODBYE; to race, jazz, love, and politics with KANSAS CITY. Yet, despite these similarities with Altman’s most obvious failures, THE COMPANY succeeds. It is a minor masterpiece, a skeleton key to Altman’s method.

I am completely ignorant of ballet and the works on display in THE COMPANY do nothing to foster my interest. I’m completely unqualified to asses their quality, but they left me unmoved. They seemed pretentious and theoretical--thought but not felt.

It is this very disengagement from the film’s main action--the dances--that brought the accomplishment of Altman’s technique into such stark relief. Chief among them Malcolm McDowell’s performance, which so many critics have consigned to the comic-relief ghetto with faint praise (much as they emptily praised De Palma merely for making an effective thriller upon the release of FEMME FATALE), but which contains significant, substantive elements possibly derived from Altman’s work, years ago, to adapt ANGELS IN AMERICA for the screen. McDowell’s comic moments are infallible but his more serious asides about art, identity, and sexuality place the insular society of the ballet company in the context of our larger society. These moments, one public, one private, are moving. They sneak up on the audience; their straightforward revelations lack the self-congratulatory air of Mike Nichols’ leaden touch that rendered the most delicate elements of Kushner’s aesthetic embarrassing in the HBO film.

Similarly, the film’s love story exists not as a sop to the conventions of narrative drama, but in accord with the collection of incidents that makes up the film. The economy of photography and montage with which Altman conducts the courtship between James Franco and Neve Campbell mirrors itself in their performances. All the necessary information is conveyed with the minimum of, almost to the exclusion of, dialogue between the characters. Furthermore, in a film averse to drama, their relationship, based on shared artistry, youth, and sexual attraction, represents a modest, realistic model. Their relationship seems both undeniably pleasant and unlikely to be either permanent or life altering.

James Franco, despite having almost no dialogue, takes advantage of his best role (and the only one to call upon the entirety of his talents) since FREAKS AND GEEKS and Neve Campbell delivers on the promise of her performance in PANIC. The timid indecisiveness of her previous, mediocre work didn’t hint at the confident, controlled actress she’s become. In both THE COMPANY and PANIC, she commands the complete attention of a substantial leading man without the audience ever questioning his behavior.

Most interestingly, the film expands upon the possibility of digital video existing as an artistic choice rather than as the last resort to get an under-budgeted film made or as and excuse for sloppiness and an absence of talent. The common element of the most effective (and most affecting) video photography, found in THE COMPANY, IN PRAISE OF LOVE, waydowntown, and the coda to Kiarostami’s A TASTE OF CHERRY, is their celebration of vibrant colors, colors too bright to caught crisply on video.

But, whereas the other films listed above use video in counterpoint to equally accomplished film photography, THE COMPANY uses video exclusively. Director of Photography Andrew Dunn’s color compositions redeem the film’s final, ridiculous ballet. “Blue Snake” is not, I contend, about anything. The choreographer’s explanations of his work are either scathing self-parody or evidence of Altman’s bullshit detector, but the filming of the dance, the integration of camera movement, composition, and editing with the dance’s choreography equals the achievement of Gene Kelly’s collaborations with Stanley Donen and Vincente Minelli. The film even presents itself as a less rambunctious version of the putting on a show about putting on a show genre most gloriously exemplified by Donen’s SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN and Minelli’s THE BAND WAGON.

I’ve written previously of how the impersonal, though technically accomplished, work-for-hire demonstrated by De Palma and John Woo in the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE films revealed the key themes of their greatest personal films. De Palma’s choice to turn the first third of his movie into a concise re-make of BLOW OUT and Woo’s re-enactment of the climactic fight from BULLET IN THE HEAD in his episode underlined the importance of the original manifestations. Now, in a film that, while not a crass, commercial enterprise, remains one that he was hired to make (both Campbell and screenwriter Barbara Turner are to be commended for insisting that Altman, despite his initial disinterest in the material, direct the film), the method of Altman’s genius appears in its greatest clarity.

THE HUMAN STAIN (Robert Benton, 2003)
** (Worth seeing)

Robert Benton’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain suffers only in comparison to its source material. Benton honors the depth and complexity of Roth’s novel despite making necessary compromises.

Benton transfers Roth’s compelling story intact but sacrifices the novel’s breadth and much of its humor. Benton’s choices are defensible and understandable. Much of the power of Roth’s novel is extremely literary. Little in the history of American literature can match the electric intensity of Roth unfurling a dexterous rant running several pages in length. Benton and Anthony Hopkins do a commendable job of dramatizing what Coleman Silk (Hopkins) expresses internally in the book, but Benton largely drops the internal lives of Silk’s chief tormentors. Ed Harris commands the screen in his brief appearances as Lester Farley, jealous husband and Vietnam veteran. But, because Roth details that Lester torments Silk as part of his struggle to deal with the two seminal traumas of his life: Vietnam and the death of his children. The absence of this material makes Lester less specific, more generically villainous and diminishes the film.

One could hope for a greater exploration of Lester Farley as the plot, even in a condensed form, necessitates his presence. Benton completely excises the importance (and viewers who haven’t read the book likely won’t register the existence) of Silk’s professional tormentor, Delphine Roux. Though one of Roth’s most richly drawn female characters, for Benton to make full use of Professor Roux would necessitate expanding the film’s running time to near-epic lengths.

The distillations of adaptation leave the film with three major characters. Benton has chosen to retain Roth’s framing device of having Nathan Zuckerman tell the story of Coleman Silk’s life. Zuckerman is a distinctly literary creation, a long-serving alter ego to Roth, a fictional manifestation of a confessional narrative voice attuned to the nuanced interaction of narrative, process, and history. As this is a studio film, Nathan Zuckerman is played not by an actor resembling Roth, but by Gary Sinise. Sinise gives a fine performance, serving honorably as Anthony Hopkins’s foil, but he doesn’t, can’t, provide for Benton what Zuckerman provides for Roth.

The best parts of the film flashback to Coleman Silk’s youth, the details of which I won’t reveal here except to say that Wentworth Miller, an actor with whom I am unfamiliar, gives a truly great performance. He matches the nuanced, passionate stillness Hopkins brings to the older Silk. The twinned performances match the skill and import of Brando and De Niro in THE GODFATHER films.

Those flashbacks, Silk’s memories of youth, are driven by his relationship with a younger woman, Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman). Roth created Faunia as an enigma, an empty vessel, the desire for whom compels Silk to re-examine long suppressed memories. Though Kidman’s presence makes Silk’s desires perfectly understandable, her character gives her little to play. Faunia seemed like a plot device in the novel (Her presence in Silk’s life, in the novel, further inflamed Professor Roux, who is for all purposes absent from the film.), but the rich supporting characters which surrounded her made her functional presence necessary to the book’s delights. In the film, her limited function as a character stands in sharp relief. As a result, Kidman strains to make something of a nothing role much as she did in her worst moments in EYES WIDE SHUT.

Unfortunately, of the three characters Benton retains in their (near) entirety only one, Coleman Silk, is compelling. Fortunately, the particulars as to why Silk is a compelling character are multitudinous and worthy. I suppose that, to audiences unfamiliar with the book, my reservations will not matter, and the film, intelligent and compassionately made, will exist on its own terms. It’s a fine film derived from a great work of art.

THIRTEEN (Catherine Hardwicke, 2003)
0 stars (Worthless)

That this poorly conceived and sloppily executed exercise in hype got a distribution deal and earned respectful reviews while Bob Odenkirk’s MELVIN GOES TO DINNER, which also premiered at Sundance last year, made its debut on home video serves as a stronger indictment of the state of independent cinema than anything in Peter Biskind’s most recent book.

As a depiction of a lost generation of teenagers and of the parents who have lost them, THIRTEEN can’t hold a candle to Kinji Fukasaku’s BATTLE ROYALE. That film’s use of elements derived from LORD OF THE FLIES and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK creates not just a significant example of genre filmmaking but an abiding interest in the very real problems on which its premise rests.

It is, I propose, the very rigor of thought and clarity of action necessary to create an efficient genre film that THIRTEEN most clearly lacks. It’s not that the film’s luridness that is inherently offensive; rather, the film deadens the soul because it is merely lurid.

THIRTEEN fails to present a single coherent thought or perceptive insight. Instead, we witness a middle-aged director get off on images of teenage depravity. Reminiscent of Larry Clark, though lacking even his limited compositional skills, Hardwicke has no interest in creating characters. Thus, instead of revealing something about life through the endless depiction of shocking behavior (basically the subject of every cover-story expose in The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, or New York over the last five years designed to make concerned parents hysterical), we merely witness two young, not very talented actresses play a lurid game of dress up.

The entire spectacle is decidedly unpleasant, the praise the film garnered inexplicable, and the film’s finale, lifted from THE 400 BLOWS, borderline criminal.

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Film Is a Battleground #4 (Before Sunset, The Manchurian Candidate)

originally published August 12, 2004

BEFORE SUNSET (in theaters)
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (in theaters)

BEFORE SUNSET (Richard Linklater, 2004)
**** (Masterpiece)

The last two films Richard Linklater has written and directed, WAKING LIFE and BEFORE SUNSET, have returned him to the subject matter and aesthetic of his first released feature, SLACKER. (Criterion’s upcoming DVD of SLACKER will include Linklater’s first, unreleased film, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO LEARN TO PLOW BY READING BOOKS.)

WAKING LIFE expanded on the pop-philosophical arias of SLACKER by centering its characters’ theorizing on the relationships between waking and sleeping life, dreams and reality, life and death.

All of Linklater’s films, excepting his two studio features, THE NEWTON BOYS and SCHOOL OF ROCK, consist of characters taking stock of their lives in the context of long conversations about what they could have/should have done and can/should do. In BEFORE SUNRISE (written by Linklater and Kim Krizan), one such conversation between two characters, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), constitutes the entire movie. BEFORE SUNSET (written by Linklater, Krizan, Hawke and Delpy) consists of the next conversation between those characters, but unlike SUNRISE, and like SLACKER, this conversation takes place in real time within a series of very long takes.

In BEFORE SUNRISE, Jesse and Celine’s conversation was occasionally interrupted by other denizens of the Viennese night. These strangers made assumptions about the two near-strangers, forcing them to explain and define their burgeoning relationship to the strangers and each other as it was developing. On the occasion of their first meeting, they needed help from these outsiders to move their own conversation forward. In BEFORE SUNSET, once Jesse and Celine meet again, they talk almost without interruption. The events of that night in Vienna nine years ago and the failed meeting six months later continue to inform their lives. At this point they only need to define their relationship with each other for themselves.

Sympathetic audience, depending on their sensibility, members saw the ending of BEFORE SUNRISE, with the new lovers making a plan to exchange no personal information but to meet again six months later, as either beautifully hopeful or beautifully hopeless. We learn that Jesse and Celine now view the plan ruefully, as a youthful folly. To make a naïve statement about the nature of love, they sacrificed knowing each other. At that point in their lives, they knew mostly what they didn’t want to be. Despite having lived and matured through unsatisfying relationships (Celine is now dating a photojournalist who works primarily in war zones, Jesse is married and has a child. Neither is particularly happy.), they cannot let go of the memory of the one special night they shared. The tension of BEFORE SUNSET concerns how their combined, accrued knowledge of the nature of life and the nature of themselves will decide the outcome their second meeting. As they tell each other of their lives in the intervening nine years, they postpone answering the question of whether their meeting offers an opportunity for an ending or a beginning. The decision, now, carries more weight. It offers both more hope (an escape from lives that have become routine) and more sadness (breaking ties with their current partners). The ending, beautifully rendered, acknowledges both of these conflicting elements completely.

A great, modern romantic triple feature could be constructed out of BEFORE SUNRISE, BEFORE SUNSET, and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. This bill would provide thrills both aesthetic and emotional and the rare opportunity to experience sentiment and self-respect simultaneously.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (Jonathan Demme, 2004)
** (Worth seeing)

It’s difficult to fully engage with Demme’s MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE while watching it. Familiarity with the original makes the differences between the two films clear and triggers the analytical portion of the mind to ponder the reasons for the changes. The holy moment proves elusive.

After time and upon reflection, Demme’s achievement becomes clearer. While maintaining the premise of the original film (and Condon’s novel) he has re-conceived the particulars so as to reflect its contemporary setting. Frankenheimer’s version (much credit due to George Axelrod’s script) managed to be equally adept in functioning as a thriller, a comedy, and an existential drama. It was, in some ways, both the last film noir and the first film of the 1970s. It struck a nerve at the time of its release, seemed disquietingly prophetic in retrospect, and has remained politically and aesthetically relevant for forty years.

The stature of Frankenheimer’s film makes this a different sort of project than THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE, Demme’s remake of CHARADE. Stanley Donen’s film was a delightfully breezy vehicle built upon the unique foundation of talent and charisma possessed by both Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Most critics lazily dismissed Demme’s delightful version because it lacked the presence of Grant and Hepburn. They missed or ignored the relaxed beauty of Demme’s original, multi-ethnic, and modern version (had Pauline Kael lived to review THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE she would have most definitely judged it “funky”) simply because it differed from the original.

Demme has received more respectful reviews for his update of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. The current political environment makes it more difficult to pretend films don’t have meaning. Complaints by a number of critics have been made about the scarcity of laughs in Demme’s version. Though still satirical, Demme’s film, unlike the original, is not a comedy. Frankenheimer and Axelrod satirized ideology, especially its literal, absurd application to a complex world. Demme satirizes, chillingly, the behavior of individuals (media, corporate executives, politicians, handlers, military officers, and government employees) as they consolidate the power of the institution which employs them. Comedy requires the existence of a norm to violate. Demme makes clear that corporate behavior, with the inherent organizational protections which deny individual responsibility, occurs in an amoral vacuum. The ability to withhold information, the ability the disseminate fabrications as truth, and human beings are transformed by the villainous corporation, Manchurian Global (an amalgamation of The Carlyle Group, Halliburton, and the Defense Policy Board), from truth, lies, and lives into assets.

Prolonged exposure to this moral vacuum deadens Bennett Marco’s (Denzel Washington) spirit. Forgoing the macho posturing of TRAINING DAY, Washington withholds his charisma from the audience. It’s his best performance since HE GOT GAME. Washington’s egoless willingness to appear blank and lost for the greater good of the film is reminiscent of Warren Beatty’s best work. In fact, the tone of this MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE owes less to the original than it does to Alan J. Pakula’s THE PARALLAX VIEW. Like Beatty’s reporter in that film, Washington suffers from the crushing discovery that the world he knows exists within a greater, more powerful world he does not understand and cannot control. The dark metaphor of Pakula’s film--that obsessive pursuit of paranoia leads not to destruction by madness, but to destruction by enlightenment--haunts Demme’s version of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE as well.

It’s very much a post-Vietnam, post-assassination, post-Watergate manifestation of American culture that the private truths are so much worse than the worst of our imaginings that to know them would force cataclysmic ruptures in one’s relationship with the world. Contrast that with the early 20th Century Progressives who believed that reconciling public postures with private truths would serve to better society. Perhaps the difference exists because those of us who have benefited from the industrial and post-industrial explosion of American wealth find it less and less possible to imagine a life without the pacification of both material and intellectual comforts.

Liev Schreiber’s performance as Raymond Shaw, the titular candidate, suggests the latter. More recognizably and movingly human than Laurence Harvey’s wickedly affectless Shaw in the original, Schreiber’s vulnerability to manipulation stems from an incapability to extract himself from the life of power and privilege into which he was born. In fact, his one attempt to leave that world, by joining the Army, triggers the decision to “improve” him without his knowledge or consent.

As the one making the final, constrictive decision regarding Shaw’s future, Meryl Streep gives an electric performance. Oft-criticized in her younger days for elevating technique (though exquisite) over feeling (never absent), Streep has, over the last fifteen years, given a number of exciting, relaxed, and fully human performances in films of widely varied type and quality: SHE-DEVIL, POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, DEFENDING YOUR LIFE, DEATH BECOMES HER, THE RIVER WILD, THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, ONE TRUE THING, ADAPTATION, and ANGELS IN AMERICA. Streep carried some of those films (some further than they deserved to be carried), worked in tandem with Albert Brooks, Clint Eastwood, and Shirley MacLaine, or as part of an ensemble with equal distinction. She has amassed a body of work to envy.

With his three leads working at such a high level, Demme surrounds them with a panoply of skilled character actors. Jeffrey Wright, Jon Voight, Miguel Ferrer, and Bruno Ganz stand out in their featured roles.

I’ve never been especially troubled by the existence of remakes. Granted, most are of negligible value, but I fail to see how their existence diminishes the original films. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE has value because it respects the source of its inspiration without slavishly replicating it. The result is akin to Godard’s early crime films, or De Palma’s use of Hitchcockian tropes. Jonathan Demme uses another artist’s material as the basis for creating an original, personal film as relevant, politically and aesthetically, as Frankenheimer’s.

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Film Is a Battleground #3 (Son Frere, Starsky and Hutch, Buffalo Soldiers)

originally published August 6, 2004

SON FRERE (on DVD)
STARSKY AND HUTCH (on DVD)
BUFFALO SOLDIERS (on DVD and cable)

SON FRERE (Patrice Chereau, 2004)
**** (Masterpiece)

Following the dark sprawl of THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN, Patrice Chereau attempted to make a similarly penetrating film on a smaller scale. The resultant effort, INTIMACY, wasn’t a bad film. It featured brave performances by Mark Rylance, Kerry Fox, and Timothy Spall and, because it was in English and dealt with heterosexual relationships, it got shown in more theaters than any of Chereau’s films, save QUEEN MARGOT.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting the largest possible audience to see your film as long as that desire doesn’t dictate what film you make. Despite my auteurist tendencies, I understand the amount of compromise (with producers, cast, and crew) inherent in so collaborative an art form. I don’t wish to speculate as to Chereau’s motives for making INTIMACY. He has no reason to answer to me. However, Chereau has made four films in the last ten years. Two of those films, the royal period piece QUEEN MARGOT and the explicitly heterosexual INTIMACY have received theatrical distribution and home video promotion. The other two films, THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN and SON FRERE, were released to one screen combined, and, though they are available on DVD, have not been promoted in such a way that one might stumble upon them. Which is a serious shame as they are two of the best films made anywhere in the world in the last ten years.

SON FRERE concerns two brothers, one of whom is dying. Chereau shows the events of their re-connection, not necessarily their reconciliation, achronologically. The sequence of events, skipping back and forth over the course of a few months, flows emotionally from peak to valley. Witnessing the moments of bickering, impatience, and half-remembered slights is never jarring or enervating as in 21 GRAMS. Chereau jumbles the chronology to prevent the story’s melodramatic elements from dominating the proceedings. He’s not interested in making a weepie, though he may make the viewer weep. He withholds moments and information (the dying brother’s disease is never named) not as sleight-of-hand but as part of an insistence that both his characters and his audience understand that death is a universal element of humanity. Death and disease impacts all lives: gay brother, straight brother, mother, father, doctor, nurses, and lovers both male and female. To limit the exploration of death to this man or these causes would drain the film of its power.

It’s suggested that the brothers’ denial of the reality of death has played a key role in their dislocation from their family, colleagues, and lovers and that, by accepting the fixed parameters of life they create first a filial bond based on this understanding, which grows to envelope those they earlier only purported to love. This grace-like quality sneaks up on the viewer, only revealing itself when uninvolved outsiders ask questions regarding both brothers’ behavior at the time of one’s death.

Chereau and his DP Eric Gautier made wonderful use of the dark, wet settings and endless supply of key characters in THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN. The shots in SON FRERE set mostly in light, sterile places are more specific, yet the frame remains open and accommodating to the supporting characters that fill out and enrich the brothers’ world. This visual style, specific, yet open suggests Minelli’s mise-en-scene re-imagined in the modern terms of zoom lenses and a hand-held camera.

SON FRERE provides an antidote for the disappointment of HBO’s production of ANGELS IN AMERICA. Well acted though it was, the film required a greater talent than Mike Nichols to complete the transition from both stage to screen and from the last decade of the 20th Century to first decade of the 21st Century. ANGELS seemed simultaneously timeless and dated. This lack of specificity limited its scope and dampened its emotional impact. SON FRERE, despite its short running time and small cast of characters, offers the bracing immediacy of the original, stage version of ANGELS IN AMERICA. It makes a specific, queer story universal.

STARSKY AND HUTCH (Todd Phillips, 2004)
* (Has redeeming facet)

Though it never scales the comedic heights of OLD SCHOOL’s best moments, STARSKY AND HUTCH does a better job of integrating its comic set pieces within a structured plot. The cast’s relaxed performances keep the film buoyed despite this excess of professionalism.

OLD SCHOOL was a mess, but it was really funny. STARKSY AND HUTCH suffers from being too faithful to its source material. Its plot could be lifted directly from an old episode. I don’t think many people watched the TV show for its story. Its appeal rested almost entirely on violence and banter. There’s certainly plenty of the later between Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller and to a lesser extent between villain Vince Vaughn and his sidekick, Jason Bateman.

Like THE BIG BOUNCE, George Armitage’s Elmore Leonard adaptation which also starred Owen Wilson, STARKSY AND HUTCH creates the atmosphere of a cool, tossed-off film but fails to deliver the goods. It’s just diverting enough to make one disappointed that it isn’t very good.

BUFFALO SOLDIERS (Gregor Jordan, 2003)
0 stars (No redeeming facet)

Its release delayed for almost two years as the U.S. Army resumed operations as an active military force, BUFFALO SOLDIERS, is just now making it to pay cable. The film proves not be a victim of corporate timidity but rather a cynical, small-minded film that flatters itself as a military satire. Made up entirely of bits lifted from CATCH-22, M*A*S*H, and STRIPES, the film offers little humor and no insight into military life. It denies even its putative heroes any humanity. Dullards and simpletons are exploited and manipulated by selfish individualists. It’s the worldview of an incurious teenager who mistakes his narcissism for wisdom. At least the talented cast (Joaquin Phoenix, Anna Paquin, Ed Harris, and Scott Glenn) escapes with their dignity intact.

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Film Is a Battleground #2 (Spartan, Anchorman, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story)

originally published July 26, 2004

SPARTAN (on DVD)
ANCHORMAN (in theaters)
DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY (in theaters)

SPARTAN (David Mamet, 2004)
*** (A must-see)

By creating a context consisting almost entirely of interconnected allusions to the political scandals of common memory (similar to the disturbingly reasonable culture of fevered paranoia DePalma created for BLOW OUT) within which a soldier embarks upon a relentless, task-specific journey (reminiscent of that which Cliff Robertson undertook in Fuller’s UNDERWORLD U.S.A., a superior precursor to Boorman’s POINT BLANK) culminating with the soldier’s enlightenment--the establishment of a personal, moral, and philosophical motivation for his actions, David Mamet does not just demonstrate his own evolution from writer-director to metteur-en-scene, but also creates a landmark example of a personal, political film smuggled into theaters in the disguise of an action film. It’s equal to the best work of Samuel Fuller and Walter Hill.

Mamet forgoes both sentimentality and the self-congratulatory hype in which exposés traffic. Revealing how things really are excites the naïve on a superficial level. The disingenuous difference between reality and the presentation of reality isn’t newly gained knowledge for Mamet. Furthermore, he understands why the men and women of action, the soldiers, on whom he focuses, have relinquished the responsibility of decision-making to their superiors. The soldiers’ survival depends upon their complete immersion in the moment on their stage of action. He also understands the temptation for the decision-makers, from a safe distance, to use soldiers as tools to achieve both necessary and ignoble ends. This expands upon the central idea of WAG THE DOG; that ultimate power rests in controlling media.

WAG THE DOG received a warmer response from critics than did SPARTAN. Dustin Hoffman, in particular, brought an undercurrent of jokiness to WAG THE DOG that made its themes easier to ignore. SPARTAN, by contrast, is terrifically serious; its portrayal of power relationships impossible to dismiss. Many critics have been forced to quibble over the realism of plot points rather than engage with the film’s politics. (That critics allow that the film has some political content could give Mamet the comfort that he’s being treated better than DePalma.) Mamet’s central point is not that these exact events and the decisions that drive them could or will occur, but that once one achieves a certain amount of power, all decisions are essentially between maintaining and relinquishing that power.

SPARTAN confirms, in a contemporary context, the thesis of James Ellroy’s historical “Underworld U.S.A.” trilogy (American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, the final volume TBD):

“Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.”

Ellroy then identifies the vehicles of those gestures and quantifies their import:

“They were rogue cops and shakedown artists. They were wire-tappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it.”

Though he forgoes Ellroy’s epic, scuzzy vision in SPARTAN, Mamet illustrates the above thesis by showing the consequences of such a life deviating off course.

There is a certain perversity inherent in Mamet, for whom plot is inessential, making a genre film, the pleasures of which are grounded in the regular occurrence of plot point. Perhaps, in addition to its other qualities, the film functions as a con on a conceptual level.

ANCHORMAN (Adam McKay, 2004)
** (Worth seeing)

There are comedies and there are gag films. Comedies attempt to make the audience laugh more often through characterization and situation than with jokes and without relying heavily on the strictures of any particular genre. Comedies are hard to make. The few that get over the conceptual hurdles are generally either the work of an exceptional writer-director (Sturges, Brooks, Linklater, Stillman, Anderson/Wilson) or a hopelessly deluded narcissist.

Gag films concern themselves with individual moments. It’s easier to manufacture a tenuous relationship between unrelated gags than to integrate character, situation, and story into a unified whole, so more gag films get made. But they’re not any easier to make well.

These distinctions are not absolute. Many a comedy features a quality gag. Both OLD SCHOOL and the AUSTIN POWERS films seem to have started out as comedies but arrived in theaters as gag films.

Mike Myers has set the contemporary standard for gag films. The AUSTIN POWERS films, despite their obvious shortcomings as drama, demonstrate his exceptional ability to create and commit to a variety of gags (verbal, physical, and filmic).

Will Ferrell doesn’t demonstrate a similar imaginative variety in ANCHORMAN, but he mines his particular creative vein quite effectively. Ferrell’s performance style owes a good bit to Fred Willard (who is on hand here in what would be in more generic circumstances a straight man role). Ron Burgandy is a direct descendent of Jerry Hubbard, Willard’s sidekick character on “Fernwood 2Nite,” a genial, absurd, and instinctual man oblivious to his own intellectual limitations. No one like Willard, simultaneously disconcerting and non-threatening, has appeared until now.

But Willard has not, to my knowledge, initiated a project as Ferrell has done with ANCHORMAN. The most interesting thing about the film’s conception is its lack of a (not especially disturbing) villain based on Lorne Michaels. I can’t speak to all the Sandler, Spade, and Schneider films I avoid, but both AUSTIN POWERS and BRAIN CANDY created a major role for a Michaels manqué. ANCHORMAN’s satire, which is gentle and secondary to its silliness, is not so specific. The absurdity underlying the entire premise exists because of a hyper-masculine work environment filled with ambitious people who accept the established goals and etiquette unquestionably. That’s a condition not limited to the offices of “Saturday Night Live” and Ferrell and McKay’s willingness (presumably encouraged by producer Judd Apatow) to engage, even in a modest fashion, with uncomfortable realities makes their progress as filmmakers something to watch.

DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2004)
* (Has redeeimg facet)

Rawson Marhsall Thurber might turn into the gag comedy PT Anderson. It seems Thurber, like Anderson, can recognize talented actors without understanding how to make use of their talents. Vince Vaughn, master of uncomfortable verbal aggression, rarely shares a shot with a fellow actor and Stephen Root is stuck playing a one-note reduction of Milton from OFFICE SPACE.

Thurber’s not untalented. His throw-away bits work consistently especially the running gag about championship dodgeball coverage on ESPN8. Pretentious play-by-play man Gary Cole and free-associative color commentator Jason Bateman both elevate material that’s clearly derivative of Bob Uecker’s work in MAJOR LEAGUE and Fred Willard’s maniacal turn in BEST IN SHOW. I someday hope to enjoy something as much as Bateman looks like he enjoyed his performance in this film.

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Film Is a Battleground #1 (Fahrenheit 9/11, The Terminal)

originally published July 20, 2004

FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (in theaters)
THE TERMINAL (in theaters)

FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004)
** (Worth seeing)

Michael Moore’s long-standing method of confronting unawares those who exercise power uncritically has often undermined the legitimate points he attempts to illustrate. The sight of Moore waddling after mid-level executives or congresspersons, common people in tow to grant him moral legitimacy, has often made me uncomfortable, especially when I agree with the point being made. Moore’s willingness to behave as a disingenuous trickster highlights the complex, unacknowledged tension of his relationship with those whose cause he takes up. His predilection for turning protest into a self-aggrandizing performance piece often allows for just complaints to be easily dismissed. Moore’s work on film and television illustrates why socialism has failed to work for the American left. One’s desire for equality and justice for all does not preclude an equal or greater desire to succeed, nor does it diminish one’s ambition to transcend the station of the proletariat.

Times have become so strange and troubled that Michael Moore has exhibited his first signs of humility. The genuinely moving sight of an almost speechless Moore accepting the Palme D’or in May was an appropriate prologue to the film itself. The perfidy of the Bush Administration, their lack of shame and contempt for the concepts of truth and honor, has focused Moore’s anger. His desire to enact social change has surpassed his desire to provoke and preen.

Though Moore narrates the film, he keeps his on-screen appearances to a minimum, and uses his public stunts briefly, as buttons to punctuate his satiric points with a laugh.

With Moore’s penchant for self-aggrandizement held mostly in check and the object of his derision so deserving, the only complaint one can have regarding the film itself is that it merely scratches the surface of the regime’s corruption says more about the ingrained, long standing, and far-reaching nature of that corruption; a full study of which would be exponentially longer than FAHRENHEIT’s running time and necessitate daily updates. My reservations regarding the film are mostly extratextual.

Most importantly, the film is not a work of art, political or otherwise. PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET is political art. WEEKEND is political art. BOB ROBERTS is political art. THREE KINGS is political art. BULWORTH is political art. Those films engage and embolden both mind and spirit. FAHRENHEIT 9/11, though a useful, effective piece of political propaganda, contains nary an original thought (nor an obvious inaccuracy). Neither should Michael Moore be mistaken for a talented filmmaker. At best, he is a competent filmmaker in possession of a few rudimentary tools of the craft.

The outsized audience for the film so far (and again, I want to make it clear that the film offers merely an overview of the Bush Administration’s abuses of power) should embarrass the mainstream media for choosing to ignore and/or being complicit in suppressing much of the information in the film. Moore may have a conflicted relationship with working-class Americans, but that’s far better than the disinterest with which the political media treats anything occurring outside their immediate, insular world.

Given that the film intends to call the otherwise apathetic or uninformed to action this November, rather than examine how our nation might extricate itself from the compounding, destructive policies of the current administration, the degree of Moore’s success or failure will not be clear until the ballots are counted.

THE TERMINAL (Steven Spielberg, 2004)
*** (A must-see)

Unlike FAHRENHEIT 9/11, THE TERMINAL expresses its political criticisms through the artistry of its director. Sadly, Spielberg’s empathetic vision of American achievement and potential has been overshadowed by Moore’s polemic. Moore’s film will give you some of the news deemed unfit to print, but he lacks Spielberg’s ability to uplift the spirit.

Spielberg has often been criticized, accurately, for his unbridled optimism. I, for one, found SAVING PRIVATE RYAN to be the ultimate manifestation of Spielberg’s willingness to demonstrate his technical mastery unburdened by any ideas.

A.I., however, demonstrated a profound change in Spielberg’s methods. The emotional immediacy of his technique, for once, did not occur in a void. The cold ironies of Kubrick’s script brought the feeling Spielberg arouses from audiences into sharp relief. A.I., MINORITY REPORT, and CATCH ME IF YOU CAN all featured heroes emotionally shattered by the disintegration of the family unit. Those films’ individual and cumulative power derived from the self-destructive, obsessive attempts the heroes made to reconstitute their families. It’s interesting that the only false note in those three films occurs at the end of MINORITY REPORT, where the vision of a successfully reconstituted family undermines and diminishes everything that has come before. A.I. and CATCH ME IF YOU CAN are Spielberg’s masterpieces because Spielberg empathizes with his characters need to undertake their journey while understanding their efforts to be futile. He finally engaged themes worthy of his technical gifts and emotional facility.

In THE TERMINAL, Tom Hanks portrays an obsessive acolyte of the family. Stranded in the International Terminal at JFK because his home nation fell into civil war while he was in flight, Viktor Navorski (Hanks) finds himself a man without a country and thus unable to be processed through the system. Upon arrival Navorski does not speak English. Thus he must express himself physically.

Hanks hasn’t really had a chance to exhibit his skills as a physical comedian since BIG. His skills have matured since then even though he’s too rarely taken roles worthy of his talent. The precision of intention and execution he brings to the film’s physical moments have drawn just comparisons to Tati. It’s a tremendously inventive and accomplished performance. Though his character’s physicality dominates the first third of the film it does not disappear once his character learns English and establishes his verbal intelligence and wit. Viktor Navorski proves to be a gifted artisan, and it’s this element of his physicality that makes it clear that though he is stranded, he is not helpless.

Spielberg also gets an outstanding performance from Stanley Tucci. Playing the putative villain, Tucci rejects the opportunity to manifest oppression. His petty torment of Navorski is motivated by short-sighted self-interest rather than innate malevolence. His growing resentment of Navorski remains impersonal; he doesn’t like the man simply because his presence exemplifies systemic inefficiency and failure. He wants only to make this unclassifiable man someone else’s problem. Tucci’s reticence and sublimity is repaid in a scene where, upon the occasion of Navorski’s arrival, he coolly and clinically informs an uncomprehending Navorski of the impossibility of his situation. Tucci has always been at his best in two-handed scenes where some unspoken resentment or slight informs a surface of polite conversation. Hanks provides him his best foil since Oliver Platt in THE IMPOSTORS. The scene plays like the lost segment of Jarmusch’s COFFEE AND CIGARETTES, the cross-cultural exchange of polite good intentions ineffectually disappearing in the void between them.

Though THE TERMINAL offers a much sunnier world view than do Spielberg’s previous three films, the lives on view exist in the context of war, dislocation, poverty, bureaucratic power, and adultery. Though most reviews have accurately compared certain sequences to Tati, the film put me more in mind of Preston Sturges. Sturges always presented his social satire in an optimistic context, though Spielberg’s optimism is relentless where Sturges found optimism to be a slightly absurd mental state. In our current climate of fear orchestrated by an Orwellian executive branch, optimism, especially the multi-ethnic, land of opportunity optimism Spielberg practices here, seems less naïve than a form of social protest.

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Introduction

PIERROT LE FOU is my favorite Godard film. It functions both as a summation of his career to that point and a preview of the revolutionary nihilism of LA CHINOISE and WEEKEND. Godard, in PIERROT, attempts to assimilate his love of American genre cinema with his increasingly anti-American political ideology. It’s a personal, insular film. As much as it fascinates, I couldn’t honestly recommend it to someone who hadn’t seen BREATHLESS, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, VIVRE SA VIE, CONTEMPT, BAND OF OUTSIDERS, and ALPHAVILLE.

Early in the film, Jean-Paul Belmondo goes to a party where the guests speak only in advertising copy; precursors both generational and in the filmography to MASCULIN-FEMININ’s “children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” There is a singular exception, one guest who speaks of personal experience, Samuel Fuller. Belmondo asks Fuller what his proposed film, FLOWER OF EVIL, is about exactly. Fuller responds by defining cinema itself: “A film is like a battleground. It’s love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emotions.”

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Welcome

Film Is a Battleground has transitioned from e-mail newsletter to blog.

The uninitiated should know a few things.

1) New issues appear irregularly.
2) This effort is not at all thorough, at least in the short term.
3) I take requests.
4) I appreciate opinions both assenting and dissenting and will gladly argue with the latter.
5) I employ a rating system. If Jonathan Rosenbaum can give films 0-4 stars, my doing so is no great indignity. In fact, I’ll just cop his system. The classifications are as follows:

0 stars = No redeeming facet
1 star = Has redeeming facet
2 stars = Worth seeing
3 stars = A Must-see
4 stars = Masterpiece

Enjoy Issues #1-#7 and expect Issue #8 sometime next week.

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