W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism * Dusan Makavejev * 1971

This film is somewhat of a collage, defying category. Makavejev weaves together various elements, consisting of a documentary about psychoanalyst and founder of orgone energy Wilhelm Reich, a narrative film about two Yugoslavian women and their love affairs, one of whom courts a Russian ice skater who, after achieving his first massive orgasm, beheads her with the blade of his skate, a Soviet propaganda film about Stalin, and various shots of transvestites, protesters, artists and other 1970s New York weirdos. (The latter footage includes Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs marching around masturbating a toy rifle and artist Nancy Godfrey creating a cast of Screw magazine editor Jim Buckley’s erect penis.)

Prior to the screening of this film, I was entirely unfamiliar with both Reich and orgone energy, which, onscreen, involves people lying with their backs arched, hips gyrating, moaning and screaming out, “No, no, no!” or the occasional “Mama!”—in one scene, a whole room full of people engaging in such activities appears especially bizarre. Reich coined the term in reference to a “universal life energy” with healing and sexual powers that he claimed to have discovered in the 1930s. Unfortunately for him, his theories were wholly rejected by American psychologists, his books burned by the FDA.

The film’s underlying theme seems to explore the relationship between Communist and sexual politics, that if everyone were able or willing to release their orgone energy, much of the world’s political problems would be cured. However, this is a somewhat loosely laid out argument, the various components of the film not forming a clear-cut whole, but rather an insane hodgepodge. I was more engaged by the first half hour or so, when it appeared to simply be a straight documentary about Wilhelm Reich. Not to say that I disliked the rest of it, though I can’t say I’m certain as to what to make of it. The film was originally rated X, though I’d disagree with that evaluation—there are a number of sexually explicit scenes, but it isn’t exactly pornography. This did not, however, stop the middle-aged couple seated next to me from leaving in a huff mid-screening. Really, what did they think they were getting themselves into?

Movies watched, week of January 21-27, 2006

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, George Clooney, 2002
Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, 2006
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1975
W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, Dusan Makavejev, 1971

Movies watched, week of January 14-20, 2007

The Good Shepherd, Robert De Niro, 2006
The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir, 1939
City of Lost Children, Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1995
An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim, 2006
Muppets Take Manhattan, Frank Oz, 1984

Hospital * Frederick Wiseman * 1970

Frederick Wiseman’s vast body of work spans three decades, an important compiling of documents concerning various American institutions—high schools, the army, hospitals, welfare, and so on—which, unfortunately, has rarely been seen by the public, as Wiseman’s documentaries are only available through his distributor, Zipporah Films. Thus, one has to be lucky enough to chance upon a PBS or film society screening in order to see them, as I did.

Wiseman’s 1970 film, Hospital, depicts a cross-sampling of the daily activities of the Metropolitan Hospital in Manhattan. While each vignette is depressing in its own way, it doesn’t appear that the predicaments in which the patients find themselves have resulted from neglect on behalf of the individual hospital staff members, who, for the most part, seem to genuinely want to help the patients but are restricted by greater sociological and institutional factors. A doctor voices his official complaint concerning a woman who was improperly transferred from another hospital, her life put in jeopardy, which he has apparently done many times, though no improvement has been achieved. A group of nurses try to determine what to do about the baby who fell 15 feet out a window because no one was watching him, the matter further complicated by his family’s refusal to pick him up (one particularly concerned nurse wants to put him up for the night, while an older nurse whispers “you don’t want to get involved in something like this.”) A doctor struggles to convince a man who has sustained a head injury to receive further medical care, but he won’t listen to reason because there is no one at home to take care of his children. It’s clearly the system that’s at fault, i.e. inadequate health insurance, not enough available beds, a lack of communication, and all the other bureaucratic bullshit that is endemic to such institutions.

Wiseman takes a naturalistic approach to filmmaking, often referred to as “cinema verite,” avoiding the flashy accoutrements that other documentarians fall prone to. There is no voiceover narration, no music, just a string of scenes edited together to portray the scope of activities occurring inside a hospital—“pure voyeurism,” as it is described in The Boston Phoenix. This style is what I especially liked about the film; the jokes, and tragedies, come through in the editing.

Wiseman masterfully edits his films, weaving together a narrative, a story, out of the hours of footage that has been shot. In Hospital, there is a dramatic structure, though perhaps not a conventional one; there is no distinct rising action, denouement, or conclusion, and the only suspense occurs within each individual scene. The film ends with a shot of the hospital itself, slowly panning out to the highway running by it; we've been introduced to a small sampling of the characters within it, and now here is the main character, in a way a living organism in itself.

For me, the film's most memorable scene involves the young man who took a pill from some guy in the park and is given ipecac in an attempt to purge it from his system. He incessantly moans, “I don’t wanna die,” even as the doctor repeatedly assures him that he'll be fine, abruptly sitting up in bed and uttering phrases like, “I just feel so lost.” He eventually pukes up more than you'd imagine could fit in his stomach, very theatrically and exaggeratedly, spewing it all over the place. He then remarks that perhaps he should move back in with his parents in Minnesota, because he's studying art in New York but "you can't do anything with art." This scene generated a significant amount of laughter from the audience, though I found myself feeling a little guilty in doing so. But his look of intense confusion, his ridiculous actions, coupled with the doctor's patient yet deadpan demeanor—“Nurse, give me 10 ccs of ipecac…better make it 20”—are too amusing not to provoke such a reaction. Yet it somehow feels unsettling that we’re made to laugh at him, as, though his situation is not life-threatening, it’s probably a terrifying experience.

Many of Wiseman's films raise such ethical questions: is it acceptable to film people in these intimate situations? Are they in the right frame of mind to give consent? Are they pressured to give consent? I'm not sure that I can supply a definitive answer. In a 1998 interview in The Boston Phoenix, Wiseman stated, in reference to his interviewing style, "I try to be friendly, and I hope that I am friendly, but not phony. I try not to convey the impression that we are going to be friends for a long period of time."

One can speculate that the participants don't really understand what they are agreeing to, or that such films are exploitative. But (with noted exceptions) while their vulnerabilities are aired for generations of strangers, this documentation enables us to feel compassion for them, making us aware of a set of difficulties and struggles we might never have considered. On the whole, Wiseman's films supply an essential record of a largely overlooked history.

Movies watched, week of January 7-13, 2007

Hospital, Frederick Wiseman, 1970
Crumb, Terry Zwigoff, 1994

Movies watched, week of December 31, 2006-January 6, 2007

Rififi, Jules Dassin, 1955
Paper Clips, Elliot Berlin, 2004
Sir Drone, Raymond Pettibon, 1989
Big Deal on Madonna Street, Mario Monicelli, 1958
Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story, Kate Fix and Jason Summers, 2004

Sir Drone * Raymond Pettibon * 1989

In 1989, artist Raymond Pettibon shot four movies on home video equipment: Citizen Tania, Weatherman ‘69, The Book of Manson, and Sir Drone, a chronicle of the trials and tribulations of two nascent punk rockers in late 70s L.A. as they struggle to not be posers.

The quality of these films is cheap and low-grade, akin to that of the home movies my parents shot of my brother and me when we were kids. Sir Drone was filmed in two days, all the dialogue read from cue cards—which isn’t too surprising considering the quality of the acting. The cuts are particularly amusing, completely lacking in subtlety. In the middle of a scene, the sound will suddenly increase in volume, the lighting slightly altered—clearly somebody blew a line or started laughing and they had to stop taping for a second. Not to say that any of this is bad, as I often champion such DIY endeavors, preferring raw, “lo-fi” aesthetics to slick production. Moreover, this style complements the subject matter well, particularly in Sir Drone.

Duane and Jinx—played by Mike Watt of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE, and artist and one-time member of Destroy All Monsters Mike Kelley, respectively—desperately want to start a punk band. They sit on the floor of their sparsely decorated apartment playing inept, discordant noise not unlike that of early Half Japanese (I have to hand it to them—it’s not easy to fake such musical incompetence, as the two actors are actually talented musicians). Jinx in particular doesn’t know how to play “real” chords, making them up instead, which never ceases to infuriate Duane, whose ideas of what a punk band should look and sound like are quite rigid. Jinx, while naïve and insecure and thus all too willing to follow Duane in his quest to embody this strict punk rock image, seems like the visionary of the two.

Duane is particularly concerned about Jinx’s long hippie hair, and is always running after him with a pair of scissors, tauntingly cutting the air. At one point he claims that Jinx won’t cut his hair because “his hippie mom won’t let him,” to which Jinx whines, “that’s not true!”, their banter akin to that of children squabbling. It is revealed, however, that not too long ago Duane was a hippie as well and is now embarrassed, urgently trying to cover up this fact. While waiting outside a Dils show, for example, he complains that they’re checking IDs; though he’s over 21, he doesn’t want to take his out because in the photo he has “hair down to here.”

The film, one might say, is about posers desperately trying not to be posers. In one scene Duane randomly yells out his window, “Hey, you poser!” When Jinx asks who he’s yelling at, his response is “Just some poser.” He then grabs a radio and holds it out the window, claiming he’s going to throw it at a hippie, but can’t bring himself to do it. He wants to act outrageous but doesn’t have the guts.

At a show, they run into Duane’s cousin, Vince. (“I’m not Vince anymore, Duane. Call me Gun.” “I’ll call you an asshole before I call you Gun.”) Apparently Vince is a punk now, and they invite him back to their apartment and later to sing in their band. Now all they need is a drummer to complete their quartet, so they audition various people who seem wholly unimpressed. When the particularly arrogant Bizz attempts to play along with the other three, he scoffs at Jinx’s guitar playing: “Man, my sister can play better than that!”

Things really start to go downhill when Jinx brings home a girl named Goo* and Duane gets a little jealous, tension heightening in the household. Jinx quits the band several times, despite the fact that he’s still playing music with them.

The auspicious moment arrives when Vomit, played by Raymond Pettibon, shows up looking for Bizz, and mentions that he has an open time slot at a gig he’s setting up. A drawn-out “harrowing” scene follows—I won’t ruin this part but it involves scissors.

The film ends on a cheerful note, the band playing as a four-piece with Goo on drums, the final shot a hand-drawn Pettibon flyer for an X/Germs/Dils/Punktones/Sir Drone show.

While the characters can be gratingly annoying, they’re also strangely endearing. The dialogue is brilliant and at times hilarious, my favorite line occurring when Vince holds up some Peter Frampton records and asks who they belong to. Duane, mortified, says, “all that shit belongs to Jinx,” who replies, “I play ‘em at 78, man!” Another great moment comes when the band is trying to come up with a name. The rejected suggestions include Neutron Bomb, The Glue Snifters, Acne Condom (“I like that one, but not for our band”), Gigantor in Bondage, Chairman of the Bored, The Men From Punkle, Revoltin’ Travolta, Summer Picnic Nightmare, and The Jacket Offs, among others.

On the surface, the film appears to be making fun of punks, though I think the theme is a little more complex than that. Like anything of its kind, the punk scene spawned more than a few Johnny-come-latelys who turned it into a parody of itself, and perhaps Pettibon was trying to portray these negative aspects. Or maybe he just wanted to tell the story of two young, insecure, awkward kids who want so badly to be punks that they forget to be themselves.

* I wonder if Goo is named for the Sonic Youth song “My Friend Goo,” the title character a girl who plays the drums and “looks through her hair like she doesn’t care.” The fact that Raymond Pettibon drew the cover art for Goo seems to reinforce this theory, though I can’t be certain.

Movies watched, week of December 24-30, 2006

The Gleaners and I, Agnès Varda, 2000
The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005
Volver, Pedro Almodóvar, 2006
A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater, 2006

Inland Empire * David Lynch * 2006

There are some who might say that one shouldn’t try to understand Inland Empire, that viewers should simply sit back and immerse themselves in the creepy, dark, strange world that David Lynch has created. But being the stubborn person that I am, I feel as though there is meaning behind this film—besides, trying to decode the mystery is half the fun.

As far as I can tell, there are three stories transpiring within the film: a) that of Nikki (Laura Dern), Devon (Justin Theroux), and Kingsley (Jeremy Irons), the actors and filmmakers about to make a movie called On High in Blue Tomorrows, b) the story of that film, and c) one involving Polish prostitutes, including a tearful woman who watches a sitcom in which three people wearing bunny heads communicate cryptic deadpan messages to canned laughter. (While that last part probably sounds a bit insane, I suspect that the bunny heads will impart more significance with a second viewing; either way, they certainly add to the unsettling atmosphere.) Though these three stories are cut together rather seamlessly, Susan, the character Nikki is playing in Blue Tomorrows, speaks with a Southern accent, making it a bit easier to discern which world we’re viewing at the moment.

And what about the Polish prostitutes? The actors are told that the film they are about to make, which involves a cursed Polish gypsy folktale, is actually a remake, and that the two leads in the original version were mysteriously killed before they could finish filming. My theory is that the Polish scenes are from the original film, and the three worlds—reality, and the two films—keep blending together, simultaneously coexisting. One of the film’s underlying themes seems to be that of dual realities, or the lines between film and reality blurring, tearing. There are parallels between the actors’ lives and the story within the film, so that Nikki begins to confuse the two. While filming a scene, she suddenly stops and says to Devon, “Oh, damn, this is starting to sound like a line out of the movie!” and at one point comes out of a scene looking disoriented, as though she hadn’t realized she’d been acting.

As the film progresses, one begins to realize that the characters in the Polish scenes have American counterparts, both Susan and the teary-eyed Polish woman asking people, “look at me and tell me if you’ve seen me before.” Towards the film’s end, Susan (or is it Nikki?) and the Polish girl come together and embrace, Susan vanishing into thin air, or perhaps melding with her. The Polish girl is ecstatic, and for the first time is able to leave the room she has been confined to. She is then reunited with the two characters from the American film version, ostensibly her family. These scenes only further reinforce my theory that the two women are the same person, and by converging are finally made whole again.

At the beginning of the film, Nikki is visited by an eccentric old woman who claims to be her new neighbor. The woman, speaking in a Slavic accent, asks her strange, seemingly random questions about whether the film in which Nikki is up for a role involves a murder (she insists it does, though Nikki says no—we soon discover the old woman is correct), about an unpaid bill that needs paying, and so on. She recites several old folk tales, one involving a little girl who gets lost in the marketplace—“the alley behind the marketplace leads to the palace but we always forget.” Throughout the film, everything this woman says is referenced, though it is unclear as to its significance, at least upon the first viewing.

Inland Empire marks Lynch’s first film shot on digital video, a medium he says he’ll be using from now on, abandoning celluloid film forever. I’m generally a staunch naysayer concerning digital film (pretty much all digital approaches to making art, really), but here it actually seems fitting. The crudeness enhances the surreal quality—not that it needs any enhancing—lights leaving a trail, people going out of focus. Many scenes involve overexposed lighting, in which, for example, Laura Dern’s neck blends in with the white wall she’s leaning against.

Lynch says he prefers digital filmmaking because it allows for greater freedom: “…the length of the tape, the size of the cameras. It goes right into the computer and you can start working on it in a million different ways.” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) I still prefer celluloid, for various reasons, but perhaps Lynch will prove me wrong with subsequent projects, pushing the medium, showing what one can do with it.

Having seen the film eleven days ago, I’m probably leaving a lot of things out, but then, even if I’d rushed home to type this up immediately after watching it, I’d still be leaving things out. This is a bizarre film, I won’t deny that—it features Lynch’s trademark slow motion shot, where we know everything is going to get very strange from here on out—and there are so many details and plot twists, so many rabbit holes, tunnels and weird déjà vu-like feelings that it would take many viewings to really soak up everything.

I found myself following the plot—and there is a plot—better than I expected, making many connections, though the bigger picture still remains fuzzy, and I’m not really sure how all the pieces connect. But I’m not left feeling discouraged, or cheated, but wanting to watch it again and again, equipped with a pen and paper to take notes, diagrams, flow charts, whatever it takes. While I wouldn’t want to have to work this hard to understand every film I saw, I enjoy the challenge when it arises. But even if I never truly understand Inland Empire, the experience of simply watching it, of immersing myself in the strangeness, is enough to satisfy me.

Movies watched, week of December 17-24, 2006

Wordplay, Patrick Creadon, 2006
Mulholland Drive, David Lynch, 2001
Annie Hall, Woody Allen, 1977
Miracle on 34th St, George Seaton, 1947
A Christmas Story, Bob Clark, 1983
Other various Christmas programming: How The Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Pee Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special

Now that I have the next week off (thank you, Penguin Group) I may actually post something besides a list.

Movies watched, December 5-16

I Heart Huckabees, David O. Russell, 2004
Riget, Lars von Trier, 1994
Inland Empire, David Lynch, 2006

I've spent all week packing and moving into a new apartment, so there was not too much time to be had for movies. Also, now that I don't have the Internet set up yet--I'm posting this from my local library--there won't really be any posts for awhile either. Not that anyone reads this anyway. Nevertheless:

Movies watched, week of November 26-December 1, 2006
Love Liza, Todd Louiso, 2002
Vivre sa vie (My Life To Live), Jean-Luc Godard, 1962

Who The $#%& Is Jackson Pollock * Harry Moses * 2006

“Fairy tales start with ‘once upon a time,’ but a truck driver’s story starts with ‘you ain’t even gonna believe this shit.’”

So begins Who the $#%& Is Jackson Pollock, the story of Teri Horton, a foul-mouthed dumpster-diving grandma and former trucker, and the “ugly” painting she bought at a San Bernardino thrift store as a joke to cheer up a friend. (The asking price was $8, but Horton haggled it down to $5.) Neither she nor her friend had room to store the large painting (“We were just gonna throw darts at it”) so Horton ended up trying to sell it in a garage sale, where a local art teacher told her it resembled a Jackson Pollock painting (to which she remarked, “Who the fuck is Jackson Pollock?”) After learning how much Pollock’s paintings sold for (as much as $100,000,000) Teri decided to hold onto it, to see if anyone could tell her what she really had, thus initiating the series of events that led to the creation of a documentary film.

Since she doesn’t have a provenance, and cannot trace the painting back to Pollock through a paper trail (that and the thought of finding a Pollock painting at a thrift store seems ludicrous) no one will take Horton seriously. Those who inspect the painting turn it down immediately, saying it simply “doesn’t feel like a Pollock.” Besides, “She knows nothing. I’m an expert. She’s not,” as Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, states after examining the painting in a rather exaggerated manner, bending down and twisting his head around, finally pronouncing it “dead on arrival.” The art world wholly rebuffs Horton, which only further drives her ambition to prove its authenticity, to show these snobs that they don’t know anything either.

No one will believe the truth, so Teri, ever the character, conjures up the bizarre, incredibly far-fetched yarn that she was given the painting by “Pops,” an elderly California bar owner. According to Pops, the bar was frequented by movie stars, and one winter night, Pollock, along with Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, and that “interfering bitch” Joan Crawford, were snowed in during a blizzard and all decided to paint pictures to pass the time. (According to Teri, Pollock signed the painting with his dick, “as he often did.”) Unbelievably, people believed this story more than that of the thrift store find, one gallery owner even claiming to have known who Pops was.

The story takes an unexpected turn when Horton’s son enlists the help of renowned art world forensic expert, Peter Paul Biro, who uses a scientific approach to prove the authenticity of paintings. He discovers a fingerprint on the back of Teri’s canvas, and though Pollock did not have an official fingerprint on file, as he never served time in the army or in prison, was able to find a fingerprint embedded in a paint can on display inside Pollock’s Long Island studio, to which even his wife, Lee Krasner, had limited access. The two fingerprints were exact matches. Upon further inspection, Biro found that the microscopic gold particles (from a can of spraypaint used on another Pollock painting) found on the floor of Pollock’s studio also appeared on Teri’s painting. Finally, Biro compares a swatch from an official Pollock painting, “No. 5,” to a swatch of Teri’s painting; not only are the colors a close match, but it’s hard to tell which one is the official Pollock and which is the one in question.

And yet, the response of the art dealers is to the effect of, “Science is fascinating, but in this case, it really doesn’t prove anything.” If one’s fingerprints are found all over a murder weapon, that’s enough to sentence them to a life in prison, or even death, yet not enough to secure the authenticity of a painting? It seems absurd that, despite several counts of forensic evidence, the art world is still discounting its legitimacy because, to them, it “doesn’t feel like a Pollock, doesn’t sing like a Pollock.” Can one really disregard scientific proof over gut instinct? Or, perhaps more disconcertingly, they would rather risk missing out on an important new discovery by one of the 20th century’s most influential painters than bestow upon Horton the accreditation she deserves. As the director, Harry Moses, told the New York Times, the film is “a story about class in America.”

While somewhat infuriating (not the film’s fault), Who The $#%& Is Jackson Pollock is fascinating, and at times hilarious. My only gripe (besides the soundtrack, which at times reminded me of the music they play on the Weather Channel) is the filmmaker’s attempts at comparing Horton to Pollock, which, while they both drank heavily, is kind of a stretch.

Teri’s painting, to my knowledge, is still for sale, after she turned down a $9,000,000 offer. Clearly she’s not after money, but the satisfaction of having been taken seriously by the condescending, pretentious art world elite; knowing that Pollock’s “No. 5” recently sold for $140 million, she feels that that day has not yet come. She still lives in a trailer, surviving on Social Security checks and by digging through the trash and scouring the thrift stores and garage sales for bargains, although I wonder how much her lifestyle would have changed had she taken the 9 mil. I think, or would hope, that even as a millionaire, Teri would still hang out at the local dive bar, nursing a beer with her friends under a thick haze of smoke, cursing and telling stories and laughing over that ugly painting she found.

Movies watched, week of November 18-25, 2006

Detour, Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945
Vidas Secas, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1963
Repo Man, Alex Cox, 1984
Strange Parallel, Steve Hanft, 1998
For Your Consideration, Christopher Guest, 2006
Dancer In The Dark, Lars von Trier, 2000

Stranger Than Paradise * Jim Jarmusch * 1984

In an effort to expound upon the origin of this blog’s name—and to discuss one of my favorite movies—I figured this was an opportune time to revisit Jim Jarmusch’s 1984 film, Stranger Than Paradise.

As the film opens, egotistical self-styled Lower East Side hipster Willie complains to Aunt Lottie that his Hungarian cousin Eva’s impending ten-day stopover at his apartment on her way to Cleveland will force him to put his life on hold—however, we soon observe that his life consists of sleeping, watching TV, and playing cards, not to mention long periods of staring at walls. Moments later, Eva is seen lugging her swollen shopping bags down the graffitied run-down streets, while Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell On You” plays from a tiny handheld tape player hooked between her fingers: the catalyst looms closer and closer to the reactant.

Throughout her stay, Willie constantly gives Eva a hard time, telling her she can’t come with him to hang out with his friend, Eddie, whose welcoming but naively clueless quality well-complements Willie’s, criticizing her for not embracing American customs—more on that momentarily—and berating her when she scoffs at his warning not to wander south of Clinton Street: “You don’t know what’s going on with this city, you’ve never been here before…you think you’re so motherfucking together!”

Willie derides Eva for her inability to grasp the concepts of American staples like TV dinners (“It doesn’t even look like meat”) and football (“I think this game is really stupid.”) In one of my favorite scenes, Eva asks for a vacuum cleaner so she can clean the dirty apartment. Willie tells her that the phrase “vacuuming” is too formal, and that if she really wants to speak like an American, she should call it “choking the alligator.” Eva smiles, though it is uncertain as to whether she has been duped by this feigned act of kindness or she is simply amused by his creative attempts at fucking with her, repeating, “I am choking the alligator.”

Willie is embarrassed of his Hungarian descent to an irrational degree—perhaps it was the subject of derision for him when he was a child, or he is terrified that it will somehow make him un-cool. He repeatedly implores Aunt Lottie and Eva to speak English, and, it turns out, has changed his name from Bela to the more American-sounding Willie. He has shed every ounce of his Hungarian heritage, completely assimilating into American culture, so that upon meeting Eva, Eddie says to Willie, “I didn’t know you were from Hungary, or Budapest or any of those places. I thought you were an American!” Willie shoots back, “I’m as American as you are!” Despite all of Willie’s attempts at hipsterdom, it is quite clear that Eva is infinitely cooler, especially since she doesn’t have to try so hard. (She wins extra points after the line, “It’s Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and he’s a wild man so bug off,” in response to Willie’s objections to the music she’s listening to.)

Willie eventually warms up to Eva after she brings home some food that she apparently shoplifted. (Willie: “I thought you didn’t have any money.” Eva: “I got this stuff with no money.” Willie: “You’re all right, kid.”) In a gesture partly in apology, partly out of self-importance, Willie presents Eva with a dress he bought for her, imploring her to put it on, as she “should dress like people dress here.” She reluctantly wears it out the door on her way to the train station, but pulls on some pants once she’s outside, removing the dress to reveal another shirt underneath. “This dress bugs me,” she tells Eddie as she passes him on the street. (Once upstairs, Willie brags to Eddie about the dress.)

Now that Eva is gone, they return to sharing a beer in silence, staring at each other, not knowing what to do with themselves. They don’t even seem to have anything to say to one another. She has been the single most interesting event to come into their lives in some time.

“One year later,” as we’re told by the stark white lettering on the black screen, Willie and Eddie are leaving town to visit Eva in Cleveland after being caught cheating at cards (by none other than Rockets Redglare, former bodyguard of Sid Vicious and Jean-Michel Basquiat, in a cameo appearance), though Willie claims the two events are unrelated. Eva is ecstatic to see them, especially when they agree to take her with them on the next leg of their trip to Florida. It seems as though they’re rescuing her from her dreary mundane existence working at a hot dog stand, staying with crotchety Aunt Lottie, who treats her “like a baby”—probably not the exciting vision of America she expected—but once in Florida, Willie reverts back to his old self, forbidding Eva from leaving the motel room while he and Eddie go to the race tracks.

Disappointed and isolated, Eva wanders alone by the barren beach, waiting hours for her travel companions to return. In a subtly humorous scene, she, wearing sunglasses and a floppy hat she bought at a gift shop, is stopped by a man wearing goggles and a woolen hat with earflaps (played by rapper and graffiti artist Rammellzee) who, clearly mistaking her for someone else, dumps a wad of cash in her hand and stalks off, exasperatedly announcing, “You tell Romero I ain’t down with this no more!”


By now completely disenchanted with America and fed up with her cousin’s erratic behavior, Eva takes her newfound fortune to the airport, where, inexplicably, the only flight to Europe leaving that day is to Budapest. However, it seems she’s not quite ready to go home just yet.

This is not a plot-driven film; rather, it is more about capturing a mood, an impression of understated beauty and bleakness. Shot in grainy black and white, the film’s high contrast quality generates a number of poignant scenes, namely when Eva, Willie and Eddie, go to Lake Erie during a heavy snowstorm. The three figures, clad in black so as to nearly resemble silhouettes, gaze out at a vast white expanse of nothingness (Eddie proclaims, “It’s so beautiful”), the jutting lines of the fence post they are leaning against their only separation from the void. Upon arriving in Florida, there is a similar scene on the beach, the sand and white-capped waves under a haze of fog replacing the snow.

Jarmusch’s films are marked with a distinctive visual and narrative style. In Stranger Than Paradise, there is very little camera movement, no cuts, only a series of long sequence shots, with several moments of blackness to separate scenes—the editing process consisted of putting the shots end to end. On one hand, this technique might be a result of necessity, or lack of experience—the film is Jarmusch’s second feature film, after Permanent Vacation in 1981, and the aspiring filmmaker may simply have not had the means or know-how to go about filming another way. Or, perhaps it is quite deliberate: the long shots create a feeling of slowness, accentuating Willie’s and Eddie’s stagnation, their laziness and lack of direction.

While in Cleveland, Eddie casually says to Willie that, “You know, it’s funny. You come to someplace new and everything looks just the same.” This, it seems, is a rather revealing insight into the film’s thesis, embedded in a seemingly insignificant, offhand remark. All three characters have traveled the country—in Eva’s case, the world—in search of change, excitement, “something new,” as Willie says, but neither has found what they were looking for.

Movies watched, week of November 12-18, 2006

Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola, 2006
Stranger Than Paradise, Jim Jarmusch, 1984
Out Of The Blue, Dennis Hopper, 1980
Who The $#%& Is Jackson Pollock, Harry Moses, 2006
Stranger Than Fiction, Marc Forster, 2006

Marie Antoinette * Sofia Coppola * 2006

When I think of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, I picture an enormous, decadent cupcake iced with inches of thick pink frosting and sprinkled with silver nonpareils. Perhaps this is due in part to the abundance of towering desserts throughout the film, coupled with the prominence of hues of pastel pinks, greens, and blues over darker tones. The film’s overall impression is one of extravagance and excess—a sugary, delicious, gluttonous bite of cake.

The film is a departure from the hazy, subtle dreaminess of Coppola’s two previous films, a garish display of grandiose interiors, debaucherous parties, and credit card-maxing shopping sprees (the historical equivalent, at least.) But one cannot entirely blame Marie Antoinette for her behavior—her high spiritedness and youthful energy are stifled by her environment, exemplified when her attempts at applauding the opera—“It was wonderful, clap!”—are initially responded to with indignant stares. She does not have an appropriate means of expressing herself, instead indulging in lavish parties and fancy shoes. Unfortunately, Marie Antoinette’s ennui ends up rubbing off on the audience, as the constant parties and displays of excess become somewhat repetitive, and, well, boring.

Much fuss has been made over Coppola’s use of 1980s pop songs on the soundtrack, but I found them to be highly effective; such modern touches, though anachronistic, humanize the characters, so that one can relate to them on a personal level, rather than as distant, historical figures, on a higher plane of existence than our own. Moreover, the music of bands like New Order and The Cure captures a certain romantic spirit that succeeds in creating an impression, a feeling of what it was like to be these people.

Coppola attempts to present the film from a personal point-of-view, that of Marie Antoinette as a young girl coming of age under trying circumstances—particularly her arrival in France, when she is forced to strip before dozens of strangers in order to shed her Austrian belongings, and her difficult marriage to the disinterested Louis-Auguste (brilliantly portrayed by Jason Schwartzman). Thus, the political context, while present, is just below the surface, barely hinted at. While I’m not an expert on the subject, I imagine that Marie Antoinette led a rather sheltered existence, out of touch with reality and unaware of the significance of the events that were occurring beyond the grounds of Versailles. Thus, when the outside world ultimately comes crashing through her proverbial bubble, in the form of an angry mob storming the palace, the result is jarring and unexpected. Perhaps it was experienced in much the same way by Marie Antoinette—as a total shock.

The final scene of the ruined palace bedroom is rather affecting, but I wonder if the film would have been more powerful if it had delved deeper into the events that followed: the family’s placement under house arrest in Paris, the beheading of Louis XVI—it is said that Marie Antoinette fainted upon hearing the crowds cheering at the sight of his severed head—the imprisonment and ultimate death of their eight year old son, Louis Charles, and the beheading of Marie Antoinette herself. The extreme contrast between their sheltered, pampered lifestyle—marked by cute puppies and fuzzy lambs and wealth beyond my comprehension—and their brutal end would most likely have been quite moving. However, it was Coppola’s intention to tell a different story, and perhaps her omission of the beheading was a wise choice. Ultimately, I’m pleased that she does not give in to the viewer’s morbid curiosity.

I did find the film’s portrayal of the passage of time to be somewhat confusing. Until I researched some of the historical facts after watching the movie, I hadn’t realized that so much time had passed throughout the course of the film; it was seven years before Marie and Louis consummated their marriage—I had imagined it was more like a year or so—the film encompassing about 20 years on the whole. Several major events are quickly glossed over, such as the death of their oldest son, Louis-Joseph, which is briefly gestured at with a scene depicting Marie Antoinette clad in a black veil, gazing despairingly at a small coffin. (In fact, they had a fourth child, Sophie Beatrix, who, as far as I can remember, was not mentioned at all.) Such decisions were surely made for the sake of time, although with a running time of 123 minutes, it seems that there could have been some cuts in the baroque party scenes in favor of more exposition.

Though a divergence in style from The Virgin Suicides and Lost In Translation, Marie Antoinette is thematically consistent with Coppola’s previous works, focusing on the female protagonist’s sense of isolation, as she is immersed in a world that cannot truly appreciate or understand her. While it may be flawed, the film is nonetheless beautiful, a refreshingly unique approach to the historical period piece.

Movies watched, week of November 5-11, 2006

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Martin Scorsese, 1974
Paris Nous Appartient (Paris Belongs To Us), Jacques Rivette, 1960

I just started a new job this week, thus the amount of time allotted for movie viewing has been drastically shortened. Maybe next week I'll be able to budget my time a little better.

Tideland * Terry Gilliam * 2005

I had such high hopes for Tideland. Terry Gilliam’s latest, I had been planning on going to see it at IFC Center on Saturday, only to discover that not only was that the last day of its run, but there was only one showing, at 11:40 p.m. This information was somewhat discouraging—especially when, after a full day of wandering around the city, starting with the WFMU record fair, I was beginning to yawn around 9:30—but I decided to wait it out and see the movie, despite the inevitable resulting 2:30 a.m. bedtime.

Gilliam’s brief introduction—in which he states that “many of you are not going to like this film,” and instructs the viewer to “forget your prejudices, fears, and preconceptions that you have developed as an adult,” to watch the film through a child’s eyes—was the first indication that I had made an error in judgment.

Usually when everyone seems to hate a film, it only drives me to like it even more; conversely, when everyone seems to love a film, I tend not to have much interest in it. So the statement that “many people are not going to like this film” didn’t really bother me; it was more the presence of the disclaimer itself. I don’t like being told how to view a film; there’s always more than one way to look at art. Gilliam clearly has in mind a specific mode for perceiving Tideland, but that doesn’t mean he should provide the audience with instructions. If a film is successful, that intended way of seeing should be self-evident; if Tideland is meant to be portrayed through the eyes of a child, then the viewer should understand that simply from watching the film.

Based on the novel by Mitch Cullin, Tideland follows the plight of Jeliza-Rose, a 10-year-old girl whose job is to cook up daddy’s heroin so he can take a “vacation.” When her shrill, caricatureish mother, who often sounds like she’s coughing up a lung, violently O.D.s, her dad takes Jeliza-Rose to his mother’s dilapidated (vandals have spraypainted the phrase “fucking shithole” on the wall, perhaps a more appropriate description) farmhouse somewhere in the Midwest, where he proceeds to take a permanent vacation in an easy chair.

Left alone in the middle of nowhere, Jeliza-Rose, apparently oblivious to her situation, frolics in the wheat fields surrounding the house, playing with her deformed-looking severed Barbie doll heads, and later her freakish and only neighbors, Dell (an amateur taxidermist obsessed with bees) and Dickens (Dell’s semi-lobotomized mentally challenged brother). Gradually, she slips further and further from reality, conversing with squirrels that live in the walls, and imagining herself swimming in an underwater kingdom. (Eventually, we begin to hear the dolls’ voices when Jeliza-Rose’s mouth is closed, perhaps implying that the girl is experiencing auditory hallucinations.)

Perhaps my most significant problem with this film is that Jeliza-Rose shows no emotion, no fear. She barely reacts to anything that happens to her, no matter how horrific, appearing totally oblivious to the fact that her father is rotting in her living room. Instead of grieving, she climbs onto his lap, despite the flies and his blackish-purple tongue, and asks him why he won’t talk to her anymore. It makes sense for her to retreat into a fantasy world as a defense mechanism—but not completely. This film would have been more moving and sympathetic if she expressed at least some fear for her situation, and, moreover, grief for her parents. A ten-year-old knows what death is—I know I did. Thus, this ostensible lack of understanding (or perhaps acknowledgement) of her parents’ death does not compute.

In general, the “innocence of children” aspect was overplayed, to the point of ineffectiveness. Jeliza-Rose’s naiveté does not allow her to comprehend the gravity of what has befallen her. And yet, her apparent precociousness makes it hard believe that she is as innocent as she is acting. Towards the end of the film, she has decided that Dickens is her boyfriend, resulting in a few kisses (albeit quick pecks) and vaguely unsettling sexual references. The people involved don’t understand what they’re saying (they think that wiggling your tongue around in someone’s mouth is silly, or funny), and yet there’s something about Jeliza-Rose that seems more adult, seductive. She tells Dickens that if he shows her his "special secret" she'll love him forever, laying back on his bed tauntingly, most likely in imitation of someone, perhaps her mother.

The film does possess stunning cinematography—though the falling down the rabbit hole sequence is a little clichéd and cheesy, what with the floating syringes—and oddly beautiful imagery, such as Dell wandering around looking like Death in her black beekeeper’s outfit, her dance around the burning beehives, the train crashing through the wheat fields. On the clichéd end, most of the camera shots are tilted at exaggerated angles—while Jeliza-Rose and her father are traveling to the farmhouse, it looks like their bus is falling through space—with extreme close-ups of the actors’ faces. (Okay, I get it; the movie is told through the eyes of a child—enough already!)

This film had so much potential for greatness. If Gilliam had held back just a little, exercised some subtlety or restraint, I might have felt differently about it. Instead, it overdoes everything, from the acting (the portrayal of a mentally challenged man is fairly exaggerated, and Jeliza-Rose’s fake Southern accent is awful to the point of grating) to the mode of storytelling. Paradoxically, as the story becomes more and more outrageous, it also becomes more and more boring. For me, this was an utter disappointment.

Movies watched, week of October 29-November 4, 2006

The Departed, Martin Scorsese, 2006
Virgin Spring, Ingmar Bergman, 1960
In The Year of The Pig, Emile de Antonio, 1968
Eyes Without A Face, Georges Franju, 1959
I Vitelloni, Federico Fellini, 1953
The Shop On Main Street, Ján Kadár, 1965
Tideland, Terry Gilliam, 2006