Viewing log: July 17, 2014

The Immigrant: I know there have been bolder, happier, and more entertaining movies thus far in 2014 but James Gray’s latest is probably the best. While the others (I’m thinking Under the Skin and Grand Budapest – I haven’t seen Boyhood or Snowpiercer) are getting their fair share of just accolades and box office fortification, The Immigrant tanked and basically snuck onto Netflix Instant this week. The story concerns Ewa (Marion Cotillard, give her all of the awards please?), a Polish woman entering Ellis Island with her sister. All of their trials thus far have led to a very brief honeymoon with the land of the free as the sister is quarantined and prepared for deportation due to a case of tuberculosis while Ewa is accused of immoral activity on the boat, the details of which are heartbreakingly revealed later on during confession. From this suspicious conundrum enters Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), let’s call him an entrepreneur in the pleasure industry. He saves her from deportation and eases her into his business. He thinks of himself as compassionate and most of his women believe this to be so while Ewa knows better and hides none of her contempt for him. The Immigrant’s driving theme amidst the systematic despair is that of a woman holding on to any strand of hope in a better future for her and her sister. That glimmer comes in the form of a magician named Orlando (Jeremy Renner), a cousin to Bruno and the mark of all of his contempt and envy. You can probably guess that things get complicated and bleak as a result of this enmity. What you probably can’t guess is where it all ends up. I don’t want to give anything away other than to say that it evokes another New York film set amongst dead end dreamers, with one of the characters in this movie pulling a Rocky Sullivan act for the benefit of another’s mental justifications. Gray’s restrained New York is shabby and tattered, with an attention to what’s lacking in every frame rather than a typical period piece show and tell. He’s more interested in the complexities of human desperation as well as mining the deepest and most honest of emotions from knowingly melodramatic material. I know it’s been said before but it’s worth repeating that this film is like a good novel from the same period, much like Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence or Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons. And the final shot is a stunner.

That Obscure Object of My Desire: What is this object? I think I have an idea, and if I’m right it would make sense that it could reduce bourgy patriarch duff Mathieu (the game Fernando Rey, perhaps Bunuel’s greatest clay clod) to an immobilized fly heading towards a crowded light bulb. Those of us lucky/unlucky (I kind of like not being in control) enough to be stricken with the same weak impulse know at least part of what makes him so pitiable. We have been there, at least in the desire part of the spectrum. When we hear lyrics like “my knees get weak,” we know what that feels like. You start to lose balance the closer you get. Hopefully most of us have learned not to feel entitled to anything belonging to anyone else, even if we’ve been bred to feel that way. Mathieu has this sense of entitlement and it has woven itself into his life so tightly that he can’t see past his own folly, thus leading to his downfall. Moments of clarity come rarely, usually because she (played by both Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina) slips up the power balance. Even gravity has its dark matter, but soon enough he goes from repulsed right back to drawn with the simplest of gestures. You don’t doubt who is in control here. I don’t doubt it myself. Bunuel understands this too, so much so that he chose to go out with it, leaving everything to fireballs and debris in his absence. Maybe he was always in charge after all.

The American Friend: This very loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game follows a sick picture framer who is diagnosed with a deadly disease who agrees to get involved in some seedy activity to earn money for his family. Sound familiar? Wim Wender’s The American Friend is about moral compromises in impossibly complicated situations, but it’s more about one man rushing towards death. After learning that his condition has been greatly exaggerated, by the same man who seems a guardian angel, he finds himself trying to mop up after a messy situation. The results are Wenders gold. PS, Sam Fuller and Nicolas Ray make cameos.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: This sequel follows the parallel Balkanization and collapse of two correspondingly conflicted sects of survivors. The first group is the upshot of a revolution of apes freed and united by a primate enlightened by a drug that happened to wipe out most of the human population. The remaining humans are having a much harder time surviving the elements and go wandering into what used to be the Muir Woods National Monument in search of a dam that could potentially provide them with power. These two groups who had only suspicions of each other’s existence suddenly meet and within seconds a human shoots an ape, beginning what will be a nasty tit for tat war that splinters both groups into mutinous dissidents. I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the conversion of Koba, an ape with a justified distrust for humans due to lab testing and torture, though I was moved by his motivations for revenge. One of his mirrored human counterparts was less human/interesting by comparison, the typical short fuse with an aberrant detestation for the apes, while his ultimate/surprising foil is more plausible and effective. What makes the uprising so effective, when taken from the point of the view of the betrayer, is the chilling scene in which Caesar beats his future Brutus to a bloody pulp. I could personally understand it as a decisive betrayal and as such it’s heartbreaking. And it’s not even all that justified, at least not from a leader’s standpoint. A temper flared and Koba therefore succumbs to his humiliation. Matt Reeves’ horror chops elevate the material and franchise, and the effects team here pulls off some minor miracles. Despite the fact that San Francisco looks more like Seattle or Binghamton (overcast all the time), I dug the look here. The Hooker’s and dark moss green really worked to ground the CG apes in their surroundings, and those nighttime battle scenes initially made me think of the Wind Demons from Rankin/Bass’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause, especially that often mentioned shot of Koba riding the horse and firing off not one but two machine guns. It almost looked like stop animation. Though it’s probably a gross oversimplification of current turmoil (Israel/Palestine, sectarian war in Iraq/Pakistan/Syria/Egypt/Somalia/Rwanda/etc, the U.S. government) --- and just so you know, I don’t think this is the purpose of the film altogether ---- Dawn gets closer to the core of our convoluted times than most of its peers, meaning summer blockbusters. It questions the catalyst of war, specifically is ease, the shoulders on which the blame falls. It’s not entirely on Koba because that momentary lapse of judgment from Caesar provided more than enough fuel for the fire. It was a display of strength and superiority, which had me immediately thinking about the pundits and politicians who complain about our own need to dispel the appearance of “weakness.” It’s dangerous banter. Note also how Koba saves Caesar’s life at the beginning and see how that plays out towards the end. Dawn is a tragedy that has heart and, thanks to some exemplary filmmaking, it’s damn dirty good.

1977 in film

1.       Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)

2.       That Obscure Object of My Desire (Luis Bunuel)

3.       Stroszek (Werner Herzog)

4.       The American Friend (Wim Wenders)

5.       Star Wars (George Lucas)

6.       Sorcerer (William Friedkin)

7.       Annie Hall (Woody Allen)

8.       Opening Night (John Cassavettes)

9.       The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko)

10.   Cross of Iron (Sam Peckinpah)

Honorable Mentions: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg), 3 Women (Robert Altman), Eraserhead (David Lynch), The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven), Rabid (David Cronenberg), Suspiria (Dario Argento), Martin (George Romero), The Last Wave (Peter Weir), New York New York (Martin Scorsese), The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Wolfgang Reitherman), The Rescuers (Wolfgang Reitherman), Hausu (Nobuhiko Obayashi).

Glaring Blindspots: The Devil Probably, Providence, The Man Who Loved Women, The Report, Citizen’s Band.

Viewing Log: July 9th, 2014

Cheap Thrills: Funny Games, but with less formal aptitude and virtually no limb obtruding out of the figurative posterior. Both films are tackling a problem within the human condition, a problem brought about by larger social/economic ills, and each meticulously designed to lure out the worst proclivities towards destruction supposedly veiled within each of us. The difference of course is that Cheap Thrills opts to play it loose and have fun with it and for that I choose to salute it with some stipulations. I like it’s attitude. I like it’s style. I like the performances; though there isn’t much for poor Sara Paxton to do (she’s basically one of the masked villains from The Strangers, without the mask). As timely as the film seems insist, it’s too eccentric to take seriously, and maybe that’s why it worked overall for me. I was also impressed by its “tastefulness” in regards to what it actually decided to show us, though that fades with time. Plus, that final shot is gold.

 

Blue Ruin: Like Cheap Thrills, this movie follows seemingly ordinary people, dropped into violent situations by outside circumstances virtually beyond their control. We follow and relate to the main character’s rationale, and suffer with him through the various forks in the road or arrows in the thigh. Revenge means something to us, even those of us who have been lucky enough to not seriously contemplate it. The main schlep’s goals in what’s left of his ruined (no pun) life are simple, to kill the man responsible for his parent’s death. Like any responsible film about revenge, things get knotty, nasty, and virtually irresolvable. Motives and actions aren’t as black and white as they initially appear and our anti-hero starts to blur the lines between himself and those that we once considered so worthy of cold hard retribution. This is the nature of violence, as many books and films have reminded us, to seemingly no avail. I would have liked Blue Ruin more if it stuck to its guns as opposed to firing them off in hopes to tie up loose ends. I would have also liked it more with a different lead, but that sounds mean. Still, it’s got a nice sense of environment, and by that I guess I mean it brings the setting into the action in ways that enhanced the drama. What does that mean? I have no idea. I guess a better version of this mess would be Shotgun Stories, but you can do a lot worse than Blue Ruin so see it.

 

Locke: I don’t know that the gimmick here serves any other purpose than to draw audiences but the story and central performance are good enough to push beyond its aesthetic weakness. I haven’t seen a film in recent years with the fortitude and composure to handle adultery this way. If you boil the title character down to the man he is trying to become, he’s an honest husband/father/worker trying his best to make the best of a bad situation, a situation that he openly admits to fumbling all by himself. The adulteress is not the crazy psychopath who boils rabbits and attempts to rat out or kill in order to win her man. She has made a similar decision to move forward and only wants him to be there for the birth. The man doesn’t blame anyone. He briefly tries to explain his mindset, but understands that he’s in for the battle of his life if he wants to mend any of the damage his egocentricity has caused. This is a moral film that reaches beyond its simple allusions. It’s not necessarily a cinematic marvel (there really isn’t much to do visually with this gimmick), but it’s timelier than Blue Ruin and Cheap Thrills combined.

 

The Blob (1988): I used to be grossed out by the 1958 film so you can guess how much this one ruined my dinner. I don’t think I can be even slightly objective here because that slimy 80s gore really gives me the creeps. You’d think I would appreciate it more for getting under my skin, but no. I didn’t eat jelly for months after watching the original, and honestly I’m starting to think this one viewing might have similar reverberations. No more of this for me.

 

The Ascent: Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent descends to hell, hell being war and war being the type of hell that turns even the best of us into devils caught up in its vortex. I guess the notion suggests that all of us are implicated within its web of compromise, backstabbing, tattling, killing, and the list goes on hopelessly. It’s a domino effect eventually making its way to everyone, at least every character in this bleak film. The first chapter slowly chronicles the crux of a specific moral plummet as we follow a soldier through some of the prickliest physical scenarios imaginable as he bravely drags his wounded comrade to safety through the snow, wind, and brush while also attempting to save his own life. I immediately associated might with right just like in any other war film ever made, a formula almost too conveniently turned on its head later on. I also found the temperature in my living room dropping the longer the film raged on. The brave soldier’s actions are unquestionably valiant and even death defying, a true fortitude. It speaks to the warrior’s capacity to confront death in the thralls of combat, but it also calls into question the warrior’s motivation and possibly his need for glory. As we are asked to call his bravery into question in the second and third act, it’s as though he was merely hearing his own triumphant score playing in his head as he trudged on. It’s all the more jarring to find this same hero suddenly dwarfed, cowardly, and trembling in the face of a decidedly less decorated slow systematic death. Suddenly it’s the weaker wounded soldier who becomes the “hero”, the “Father forgive them” symbol of bravery and nonconformity. Shepitko challenges the triumphs of war in a way that may be too on-the-nose and emblematically opportune, but I’m happy The Ascent left me with more questions than answers, and it’s a powerful experience if you go with the flow. Tragically it was Shepitko’s final film, which only piles on more questions about the director she might have been.

 

Strozsek: I’m far from the “Herzog can do no wrong” fan club, and believe me when I say that such a crowd exists. I think sometimes I veer a little too far in the skeptical side of the aisle that I’ve created for the convenience of this paragraph, but just when I found myself rolling my eyes I was reminded of why such a club exists with Strozsek. One of my annoyances with Herzog’s painstaking self mythology would be his audience’s incongruous laughter of the unconventional characters that inhabit his films. On one hand the director seems to imply that those who reject the supposed norm should inherit the earth (to which I would mostly agree) but he’s also clearly wringing amusement out of their behavior and personality for his own good. We are invited to laugh at them, not with them. I guess I shouldn’t use the word “clearly” as I’m not privy to his intent, but when you read interviews in which he boasts about his reputation as “certifiably insane” you understand that he’s not only in on the joke but also at least partly constructing it. Long winded bunny trail aside, I’d rather spend time with the characters of Strozsek than pretty much anything or anyone coming to the multiplex this or any other summer. I got the sense that he’s not exploiting his three wandering companions here for cheap laughs in order to further build up his own myth. And anything characteristically “weird” here is communicative and caring first, and maybe odd only if you try and reason with it; i.e. dancing chickens, tractors manned with angry armed farmers, etc. It’s more than the disillusioned American Dream set-up, it’s the perception that the world at large has no place other than a cell, a brothel, or a nursing home for people like Bruno, Eva, and . Herzog clearly hates this, and the film feels like an altar unto their unrewarding talent and exuberance. He’s stepping out of the limelight for his characters. Bruno S. is a hero, one of the most admirable screen cohorts that I’ve ever come across and it’s clear that Herzog shares that same respect.  At the end of the day, or the movie in this case, you get the sense that he and his protagonist are simply throwing their hands in the air, and we the audience are invited to share that same sensation of frenzied surrender, and somehow this chaos feels incredibly enriching.

 

Godzilla (2014): I think Hollywood should start about limiting these big sprawling blockbusters to a small clump of characters experiencing big, mind blowing incidents from a level relatable to the rest of us. Don’t bounce back and forth from the military man with his hand on the detonator to the wife in the hospital. Don’t place us the conference rooms where generals and scientific experts expound on the beasts wreaking havoc. Am I the only person who spaces out during these scenes? Let’s just hang with the guy who happens to see it all go down. Let’s watch most of it from his perspective. Let’s occasionally cut away to see the mayhem from the sky or a skyscraper. But root the action in something personal and the whole enterprise will work as well as the admittedly worn scene where the great Juliet Binoche dies just on the other side of a fortifying door. Even with these complaints, which have kept me from giving a hoot about almost all of this or last summer’s tent pole attractions, I liked this 32^nd installment quite a bit.

 

That’s all I got for now. I’ll try and do a Cheddaresque post sometime this month to keep up with all of the movies I’ve been watching.

1988

                             1988:

     1.       Distant Voice, Still Live (Terence Davies)

     2.       Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodovar)

     3.       Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis)

     4.       Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata)

     5.       They Live (John Carpenter)  

     6.       My Neighbor Tortoro (Hayao Miyazaki)

     7.       The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese)

     8.       A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieslowski)

     9.       Ariel (Aki Kaurismaki)

   10.   As Tears Go By (Wong Kar Wai)

Honorable Mentions: Die Hard (John McTierney), The Firm (Alan Clarke), The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris), Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg), Bird (Clint Eastwood), Hairspray (John Waters), The Land Before Time (Don Bluth), The Vanishing (George Sluizer), Willow (Ron Howard), A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Chrichton), A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Master (Renny Harlin), Alice (Jan Svankmajer), Beetlejuice (Tim Burton), Frantic (Roman Polanski), The Horse Thief (Tian Zhuangzhaung).

Under the Skin

I’m at a loss when it comes to processing UNDER THE SKIN, so writing about it is even more daunting. I suppose I could admit that it had me firmly onboard from start to finish, but that’s probably not worth much to anyone but myself. But amidst all of the visual splendor, the sustained atmosphere of complexity, and the occasional dashes of humor there were two scenes that had me considering it possibly the best horror film since Zulawski’s POSSESSION. The first scene occurs after we’ve been acquainted with the basic formula, a TROUBLE EVERY DAY-esque bait-and-switch with a beautiful alien luring unsuspecting Scotsmen to a black void where she walks safely across as they hypnotically sink and are harvested for their meat. The first scene that shook me out of my hypnosis occurs at a beach where Johansson’s alien preps a surfer for the grinder, as the ocean seems to be warning everyone and everything of her presence. While she is talking with him he/we notice a drowning dog being dragged out to sea with a woman (the dog’s owner) swimming hopelessly to rescue him. Her act of love sparks a series of snowballing tragedies, all seemingly the result of putting your heart above your mind.

Keep in mind that all human activity in UNDER THE SKIN is being watched by this extraterrestrial. All of our odd eating, socializing, recreational, and sexual habits are on display and we the audience are invited to observe our own peculiarity safely beside her. The scene at the beach is one in which we can’t quite look upon our own kind with her resolute disdain, especially as we see and hear a baby screaming helplessly and trying to escape the oncoming tide. I actually sweat during this entire sequence, I couldn’t help but think about Dean. It felt like a nightmare in its casualness. I wonder why Jonathan Glazer put it in the film. It’s obvious that he staged the entire episode, though it honestly looked and felt as though the cast and crew witnessed a horrible event and filmed it with the same detached fortitude as our alien guide. But it’s the mixture of the baby’s frightful howling with the execution of the horrible events that eventually had me in awe of this film’s focus and complexity. Once the sweat settled I was sure I was witnessing something special.

In that scene we witnessed our inherent weakness, our inability to think through situations logically, and our dwarfing in regards to greater powers such as rip currents, tides, and the unyielding rocks that they smash us against. Within that scene we saw the best and worst of what we had to offer ourselves, each other, and the impassive world that hosts us. The alien’s lack of compassion would have made for a nice dreadful night at the movies if it hadn’t been shaken up by the second scene in which her compassion is suddenly triggered.

As Johansson cruises around looking for meat she encounters a young man with his face deliberately covered. She approaches him like all of the others, but this time the bait isn’t as easily convinced of his own vanity. As he enters the car his face is revealed. He has neurofibromatosis, a disorder that causes tumors to develop on nerve tissue, in this young man’s case it’s on his face, hence why he’s out shopping at such a late hour. Adam Pearson’s performance in this scene is as genuine and human as any I’ve seen in a long time. She begins with the typical drill, trying to coax him by playing into his vanity but realizes that he won’t be so easily ensnared. She asks him if he has a girlfriend, he sits for a second and avoids any eye contact only to slowly shake his head. She then asks him if he has any friends, this time it takes longer for him to respond but he eventually shakes his head two or three times. It’s one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen in a film and it needs to be. This is the moment when this lonely being finally empathizes with something or someone on our strange planet. Like him, she would be met with similar exile if everyone knew what she really looked like. Up until this point she has only understood that men typically respond to her superficial beauty and her acknowledgment of theirs. He doesn’t believe in her advances until she talks about his hands. Glazer cuts to a shot of this young man pinching himself, so sure he must be dreaming. I felt the same way.

From this encounter the film takes on a deeper meaning once we’ve clawed past the exterior. It’s fitting that a film about the treachery of surfaces would begin with such a monotonous visual and narrative décor ripe for rupturing. I’m still trying to swallow the finale, in which our navigator encounters the worst of human narcissism and specifically what happens thereafter. It’s a harsh note to end on, and an even harder note to wake us from this wonderful dream.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL opens with a girl with patches on her coat, holding a book in a cemetery and staring at a statue of a man known only as “the author.” She sits on a bench and opens a book that’s ostensibly written by said author and we are shot back to 1985, where Tom Wilkinson/author sits neatly within frame, much like every other shot carefully composed in every other Anderson film with the exception that he is seated there on his own accord, preparing to read from the book seen in the punk girl’s hands. This orderly shot is interrupted by a young boy shooting a toy gun followed by a quick outburst of anger and a nice little exchange to set things right before continuing on. Though it seemed merely a zinger tucked within a fun but needless casing this rapid violent disruption and its consequent affection becomes a repeated motif throughout the actual story. From Wilkinson we meet his younger self played by Jude Law circa 1968 staying at Grand Budapest in the midst of the Cold War. From here he/we meet Mr. Moustafa played by F. Murray Abraham, described as one of the richest men in Europe. Law’s “the author” has dinner with this wealthy enigma in order to hear how he came to his current privilege, sending us once again back deeper into 1932 Zubrowka, only two years before the proxy Axis would clench their leather gloves around the good people of Zubrowka’s neck resulting in 80,000 fictitious civilian deaths (you catch the drift). It’s here that we meet the crass but noble M. Gustave, and the story begins.

Whether or not you buy the necessity of the framing devise it certainly invokes the illusion of immersion within a story told mostly within what many are now calling Anderson’s “dollhouse” structure. Once within the story, things move fairly undeviating with the exception of a montage or two as well as some visual cues serving as “a ha’s” within a character’s mind. Anderson is able to weave us in and out without much if any confusion or break in momentum. It’s a gift he’s mastered at this point in his career. Those who complain that his style is grating, or even those who politely confess reiteration fatigue have to admit that though he’s instantly recognizable as an artist he’s also cultivated his style and storytelling abilities impressively over the past three features. This meticulous world, with its succinct movements and shipshape décor is growing denser in detail and moving smoother within itself. For those who complain that it’s this exactitude that drives them mad, I wonder how we would feel if he tried the shaky cam or if his films started to lack his trademark sense of humor. By the way, I am guilty of the same “why doesn’t he try something different” delusion and Grand Budapest seems to have put me firmly in my place.

Once within the story of M. Gustave, played flawlessly by Ralph Fiennes, we meet the younger Moustafa who went by Zero at the time. Zero is played by Tony Revolori whom I haven’t encountered yet in a film but I expect to see more of, at least in future Anderson projects. This young man comes from tragedy, though you wouldn’t know it if he didn’t tell you. He under the care and instruction of the tough, loving, oblivious but considerate, and always didactic M. Gustave. Gustave is a man who puts great emphasis on appearance and scent, though he bubbles beneath his urbane guise with a volcano of curse words and immature sentiments. It’s fun to watch his air blow away as the film progresses, his filter all but gone by the time he makes his glorious exit (you pockmarked fascist assholes!). He oversees the Grand Budapest and takes good care of its guests, especially the septuagenarian blond women whom he calls his friends. When one of his friends passes away she leaves him a valuable painting called “Boy with Apple” much to the vexation of her son Dmitri who immediately spurts out a nasty slur and makes threats that might not be as empty as his conscience. This sets off the action which is not limited to a decapitation, an exploded cat head, a miniatures ski chase, a prison break, four severed fingers, and fucking cable cars. I found all of it consistently funny and entertaining, which is frankly enough for me hold it in high esteem, but it was the ending that really set this apart for me.

I had a brief back and forth with someone about the “lack of meaning” that brought the film down for them. I disagreed, but I’m not as interested in trying to convince someone to feel something that they aren’t predisposed to feel. For instance, that same person found the film not as much funny as delightful or worthy of a perpetual smile rather than uncontrollable laughter. I found myself making a scene within the theater. I was loud. I was annoying. But this is just a subjective divide that we probably won’t ever bridge. As for the “lack of meaning,” I found the film plenty “significant” for a number of reasons. First, I found the various references fitting within the setting, structure, and theme. I believe that there is more than just back-patting delights in spotting cinematic odes to Hitchcock, Reed, Junge, Borzage, Ophuls, Kathleen Byron, Farrar, Renoir, The Shining, Bresson, and blah blah blah. Second, it’s nice to see a similar story to Haneke’s The White Ribbon of encroaching fascist doom and the good people in its wake without the life and humanity dutifully sapped out. There is an interesting bookend to this that takes place on a train, one where M. Gustave’s bravery and loyalty to his young apprentice are honored and another in which all honor and respect hide beneath a uniform and earn this good man a rifle butt to the nasal bone and bullet to the head.

And of course there are many more examples of “substance” but I’d rather end with a little framing device of my own. I was introduced to the director in 1997 when my best friend Steve’s older brother Reid brought home a VHS copy of Bottle Rocket. I loved it, but I wasn’t really tuned in to the existence and importance of the director as much as the cast. By the time I saw Rushmore in 1998 in my friend Matt’s basement, I knew who he was and very much looked forward to following his career. In many ways The Royal Tenenbaums was my first experience in an independent theater, The Charles Theater in Baltimore. At the time I was reading Lou Lumerick faithfully because a teacher at the school I was working at would bring in the Post and I wanted to find out what was being released in cities with an actual independent film market. Binghamton had an Art theater but it didn’t typically get movies that I wanted to see. So when in Baltimore I asked my bandmates if we could make an effort to see this new Wes Anderson film and I remember all of us quoting it for weeks after. Since then I’ve been a slightly less impressed, or perhaps just less interested in revisits which has oddly become a litmus test for a film’s stature. I guess it makes sense, wanting to dig deeper or simply reenter a movie’s world is a sign of its depth and with that in mind I guess I find myself now wanting to check back into this picture to laugh, bask in its visual pleasures, and hunt for more references in order to make myself feel like a good cinephile. In fact, come to think of it, one of the first thoughts that I had while watching it was, “damn, I forgot how much loved this guy’s films.”

Ps, Reid’s last name was Anderson and he named his first son Wesley.

Nymphomaniac: Volume 1

I learned a thing or two about the way Public Relations works hand in hand with websites, magazines, etc. When talking with a PR agent this past year I realized that it’s their job essentially to create a narrative about the artist that existed outside of the actual work being promoted. In other words, I needed some kind of lurid, profligate, or peculiar angle to sell the idea of my band to a hip site. Did I cut my head open while playing? Was my mother famous or she die in some horrific fashion? Did we ever get arrested for something funny that would make a great story? This is the way media seems to work; it looks for a tabloid report to tack onto the release of an artist’s work. Then as I would read these cover stories from Rolling Stone or Pitchfork I could immediately see it, some story or allegation to rest the entire piece on rather than an invested interest in the work at hand. It is how many syndicates employ their staff and how they create a larger narrative for the artists they promote. It’s a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” system and Lars Von Trier is one of the best at playing along.

He knows damn well that by becoming a household scoundrel he is also giving his films that extra boost to reach a wider audience without necessarily having to compromise his visions (though I’m sure many would argue this point). He, like Tarantino, knows how to sensationalize legitimate artistic endeavors in our modern film culture risking their names in the process. Think about his last three projects on paper, as proposed to those of us who read Indiewire, Slant, etc. His first was a horror film that outdid the modern splatter scene at their own game when the violence actually kicked in which outside of the opening sequence was pretty much only the final 20 minutes, adding real sex and genital mutilation to further complicate the madness. People fainted in the aisles and the director howled from the rooftops that he was greatest living director in the world, eliciting an all too easy response which led to more media coverage than even Tarantino’s Nazi scalper epic could conjure. It also elicited a very mixed critical reaction, one that found very little middle ground in its initial run (of course the aftermath of such a film finds more sober reactions surfacing once the hysterics die down). Either critic’s loved it or hated it, a line seemed drawn in the sand. That the film has been getting more and more reverence as time distances us from the preconceived PR campaign may be a testament to the fact that his devious plan may have worked. The second was about the end of the world, and while the content was admittedly hushed compared to his previous effort, he made up for this by getting himself banned from France at the Cannes press conference by saying some incredibly stupid shit to piss off the easily rattled targets.

My point in all of this would be to point out that the man will do any brazen exploit to ensure his work is seen and reckoned with. He isn’t interested in making something slight anymore, he doesn’t want his work to slip between the cracks. He’s also addicted to the limelight and willing to stage the most petty and immature stunts imaginable to ensure that other films simply get buried beneath his ego. At the same time we have to look at the success of these stunts. In this way Von Trier seems a step ahead og the game, a true entrepreneur, realizing that alienating certain reactionary sects might allow his work to be examined in the history books without the viral frenzy to cloud the rest of our judgment. He knows that time heals all wounds, that all art will eventually speak for itself. In the case of both of these films, each a brutal and uncompromising vision with all of the paltry baggage sprinkled in and saved for some by reflective/brooding flourishes, he got the debate raging.

These two films were battles waged within, an introspective approach that felt refreshing after his finger pointing society-is-fucked morality tales. For once Von Trier appeared truly concerned with his own trajectory and inner turmoil in relation to his past and present predicaments, and both served as an outlet to exorcise his spiritual/mystical/moral angst. Now I’m wasting your time by explaining the artistic process, but I assure you it’s all for the purpose of pointing out that while I have found all of his work extremely problematic, I’d take a sloppy, honest, and personal vision over just about any other kind any day of the week. For all of his cheap tricks he lays himself disconcertingly bare.

His latest is a PR dream come true is NYMPHOMANIAC. The title alone ensured it’s press, a supposed 4 hour art porno. Jesse and I gave a try. If you lump this film along with the other two aforementioned projects you could call it the “learning to accept myself and all of my flaws” trilogy. It opens with the sound of rain dripping off of gutters and down brick walls, immediately calling to mind the factories of STALKER until Rammstein abruptly overpowers the sounds of chilly dampness. Von Trier patiently scans the area, building tension with the sound of cold condensation until finally revealing a trodden lifeless body amongst the puddles. She is discovered by a man and taken to his apartment to recover where she recollects her story in flashback, slowly learning how she got where she is.

You could probably gather from the title of the film that her story fixates on her various sexual experiences, but it’s more interested in reading memories and making psychosomatic sense of their impact on who this woman is. It’s also about unapologetically confessing one’s misdeeds while correspondingly begging someone to challenge and correct your path. It’s a film at war with itself, a movie about battling whims and deep psychological wounds. The woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is the director’s proxy and the man (Stellan Skarsgard) is his mentor. Von Trier is having a little chess game with himself, disputing his impulses (the side that clips the nails on the left hand first and the side that likes to fly fish) and letting us watch. It’s hard to know what narrative embellishments come from the director’s past but it all feels autobiographical with many of the actions changed to fit the film. Jesse pointed out that by using the flashback apparatus he was probably forced to enliven things visually in ways he hasn’t before, and this probably elevated everything beyond what we thought it capable of. NYMPHOMANIAC features plenty of new tricks, most of which helped along by the Fibonacci Sequence’s contrived inclusion to the storyline (Jesse knew it Fibonacci was on the horizon when he heard 3 and 5, I felt very stupid watching this film with him).

It’s a neat trick, one that allows breaks in continuity and visual scheme. The events are built upon algorithms involving ash trees, Bach, fly fishing, and loin thrusts. In all of this there exists connections and excuses for more Tarkovskian underwater flora, a dick montage, and some nifty jaguar/antelope footage to zest up the proceedings. This is one of his many ways of ensuring that his career won’t be boxed in by the festival circuit’s expectations. This impish quality can be grating at times, none more so than the Uma Thurman scene where she acts like Piper Laurie out of CARRIE. In that chapter we are supposed to finally question the woman’s careless game because one of her lover’s is a married man with two children. The wife brings the kids to her apartment and calls out her husband and makes the children watch, it’s supposed to shock us but the scene is so daffy and out of step with the rest of the film that the mentor’s unwarranted shock feels like a fraud. We can see why the husband has left her right from the moment she first speaks and whatever sympathy we could have had for the resentful wife drifts away. It would have worked better and have developed a more transparent dilemma for the audience.

I had plenty of little problems with the film, as I do with most of his work (it seems borderline cruel to ask Shia Lebouf to do an English accent) but as I said before, he has a fascinating messiness to him. It’s that same quality that preserves his vitality as an artist. It keeps his films alive. He’s constantly challenging and destroying things that he builds up. He is a heretic unto himself. Nothing seems to irritate him more than the algorithms that “self-deluding liberal humanists” or “hypocritical petty commoners” seem to expect from him film to film. He seeks to shatter all dogma’s and reaffirmations that were once expected of him. Here it’s as if he’s saying “all is love” and “all is grace” while whispering in our ear “forget about love” and “grace is for hippies.”