Sunday, July 25, 2010

Having Adulation Ride on Your Back















Why does Rush’s album Moving Pictures have such durability; durability that the band both reaps from and at the same time is haunted by? (They will always be known for this album as if this is the album that defines them.) Maybe it stems from the fact that it is the album that defines not necessarily them (as if any album could do that) but instead what they constitute-which is illusiveness, staying out of the limelight of definition, even when your fan base and your detractors beg for such a definition. Maybe the answer resides in Red Barchetta.
Before I write about this song, a song that all three members of the band say is the one song that never gets old when played live, or when the original recording is simply listened to, consequently inferring that many of their other tunes do when making such a comment, I want to talk about the bands awareness of themselves and what they constitute; it’s this quality that makes me such a fan of theirs. The moment, heavily documented in the Rush documentary, when Rush exhausted themselves as a band simply from overexerting themselves technically as musicians, marks a turning point in their career. What were they going to do; sell out and make radio friendly tunes? Permanent Waves held the answer. The album started with a song that dealt with this conundrum entitled the Spirit of radio, a song that was a critique of their sounds new home. The band doesn’t like their abode at all. This song is the antithesis of that home. It’s the most exuberant thing I’ve ever heard. Yet, there’s a tragic awareness to the music-to the whole album-that gives the sound its depth. It’s the awareness that that home will always be there, no matter how eroded. The song is a view into the future. It’s aware of lady gaga and how Gaga will have more lasting impact than this band ever will have in the general consensus of the listening audience. The tragic awareness is not that that’s a shame because Rush is the better artist. That would be self-indulgent and egotistically biased, but rather that for the sake of the radio, Gaga is a horrible influence. Actually, Rush, as guitarist for the band Alex Lifeson has said, has always benefitted from this strange position of being sandwiched in the middle of adulation and contempt; of you’re the greatest band I’ve ever heard to who are you again? There’s more pressure on a Gaga to go in one direction or the other. Rush is completely free. That’s the sound that I hear on Permanent Waves. The album is the awareness that this wiggle room can’t do anything to influence anybody. There’s tragedy behind the happy go lucky sound of the album. It’s the depth that people who say they don’t like Rush can’t hear. It’s the awareness on the artist’s part that they can’t do anything to stop the impending doom that is the future.
The band’s epiphany (which is Moving Pictures) comes when the band decides to become more radio friendly. Like I stated earlier I love their self awareness because it was a right decision no matter if their loyal fan base got mad or not. The statement from such an act was not that this bands simply about making money but that they are not merely a cult progressive rock band. In other words, that they are not just a band that exists to not make money. In my opinion, what this means is that there’s no guilt in this band’s not trying to change the world like they were trying to do so much in the past. If Hemispheres is the last time that they did try to change the world, and Permanent Waves is the lament over this, then moving pictures is the celebration. There’s a part in Red Barchetta when Alex’s guitar part is the sound that they could never have on their earlier more “complex” albums. It’s the weapon that keeps the picture moving; that is progressive while at the same time making a term like prog rock look trite and too constricting. This band is not just about changing time signatures. When one listens to their music they shouldn’t be saying: ahh I understand completely what they are doing here. What they should be saying is: what am I listening to? Simply talking about their musicianship or their objectivism or whatever, is making them the lie that most rock critics see them as, which is something boring and geeky. The sound of Alex’s guitar on Red Barchetta is the doorway out of this. It’s the car that is outlawed. It’s something taken for granted. Something not talked about properly by either its detractors (the ones who expect too much of them) or its fans (the ones who expect too little). Something unheeded and completely itself. This sound is where the durability of the album stems from. Fans like Billy Coogan and the filmmakers of the rush documentary ask the question: can Rush be the ultimate way in which to save the radio in order to enrich the potentiality of the music form? The song answers: who cares?
The other extremely poignant song off Moving Pictures that I want to write about is Limelight. Limelight is the song that deals with the outlawing of nebbishness; of not ever being able to be completely aloof and completely yourself anymore because of societal pressures (in other words the antithesis to Rush). The plangency that is felt when one listens to the song comes from the fact that there is no red barchetta in this song. There isn’t even any future. Now is the future, which means one has to take action now. What is now in the drummer and lyricist for the band Neil Peart’s eyes? More importantly: where do the constraints come from? Do they come from the accuser, or something much more terrifying to consider, the accused? Now in Neil’s eyes is the feeling that he’s going to lose his integrity because of his fan bases misconstruing what he is. (Suddenly that fan base becomes the person beating up that kid in glasses, while ineptly thinking that it is that kid. It becomes the societal pressure that it thought it was up against.) Its Neil’s depth. What is so shocking about his depth is that it makes one realize that most, if not all, in the limelight don’t have it. It makes Neil himself realize that he could very easily become what he always feared and fought against. His prognosticating skills, his ability to see that the album he’s making that’s turning him on so much creatively might very well be his downfall (because he will forever keep trying to replicate that magic because he will believe what society tells him now that he’s in the limelight; now that he actually has a chance of being influenced by what they say: that this is his best album and he shouldn’t try to make anything better but to simply make the same album over and over again) and his ability to talk about this in one of the songs on the album explicitly is, I think, his true brilliance. This daring song, a song that criticizes the adulation that it’s receiving, is a criticism against the whole album, against even itself.
If there was one sentence that conjures up this band for me it’s: How far can you progress creatively before outlawing yourself and ultimately pleasing everyone except yourself? If Neil’s way of combating this is by being totally cut off from his fans which means not only never meeting them in person but never satisfying their expectations as well, in effect never making Moving Pictures 2 which ultimately makes one realize that he’s a consistently changing viable artist, more power to him. The listener that’s listening to Limelight is hearing Neil’s realization that this is the turning point and that barriers have to be put up in order to cut off the influence of fame; in order so that he doesn’t become another Hemingway. In order so that he doesn’t become a talented individual that’s a lost cause, that’s even made infamous by that lost cause (which is an adherence to the style that everyone wanted him to write in to the point where he couldn’t evolve away from that style). Rush isn’t that kind of band. Rush is a band that has always been destined to draw the line between fame and influence (In other words, even if they are incredibly famous, what they turn out is only influenced by themselves, not by what initially garnered them their fame), and moving pictures is that line. The line that creates durability-that keeps a band going. The line that makes the band realize that it’s done something that they could never improve by making something similar and ultimately better from it. After that line is drawn, for the first time the band doesn’t feel intimidated over the fact that they will never make a better album in their fan bases eyes. Once Neil stops writing fantasy lyrics (once the fantasy is dropped) that band realizes that that flying car was their need to please their fan base without pleasing themselves.
Now that Neil’s deep need to appeal to his fan base in order to understand himself has already been done on this album, for the rest of his career he’ll be an objectivist looking at everyone but himself. His integrity throughout the rest of his career becomes his struggle to stay this way. The struggle that is outlined in Vital Signs, the last song off Moving Pictures: “Everybody got to elevate from the norm” repeated over and over again, which shows how hard it is to maintain this feeling. The struggle is the friction of the day alluded to in Tom Sawyer, the first song off Moving Pictures, which is this band’s existence; which should be all band’s existences. The friction is to stay out of one’s comfort zone in order to evolve creatively even if your fans don’t want you to. Why should one be so adverse to their fans wishes? One should be this way because in actuality, those fans secretly do want you to evolve even if they tell you otherwise.
Once one becomes implicated by this band (that one is comprised of this bands fan base; the one that is considered the norm in Vital Signs), one begins to say, why can’t there be more Moving Picture type Rush albums? The turning point itself is so great. Silly, I presented the answer a couple of paragraphs above. Limelight is terrifying because it knows too well how much you like it.

The Different Forms Of interpretation in Regards to the Threat of Nuclear War

Fail Safe (1964), a film that came out at the height the fear of the
possibility of nuclear warfare between the United States and Russia, is flawed because it never allows its main characters to be fools. In the context of nuclear Armageddon, politicians and military personal are inevitably fools. Stanley Kubrick, the director of Dr Strangelove: or, How I stopped Worrying and Loved the Bomb (a satiric take on a similar situation in Fail Safe; both films came out at the same time.) talked about this when he stated that:
“But after a month or so I began to realize that all the things I was throwing out (the elements in his treatment of Red Alert that were satiric) were the things which were the most truthful. After all, what could be more absurd than the very idea of two mega-powers willing to wipe out all human life because of an accident, spiced up by political differences that will seem as meaningless to people in a hundred years from now as the theological conflicts of the Middle Ages appear to us today” (Nelson, pg. 85)?
It’s the fact that these officials are so ensnared in their military regulations and technology, in Dr. Strangelove, that they don’t realize how inane their handling of a situation like the possibility of Nuclear Armageddon really is. It’s the regulations that disallow the characters to do anything about the situation. If that’s not Black comedy, I don’t know what is. Yet, Lumet’s Fail Safe doesn’t see the comedy in the situation. Fail Safe is a film that doesn’t allow comical abstraction because it doesn’t allow speculation on why just such an accident would occur. By making his treatment of the threat of nuclear war comic, “…Kubrick…redirect(ed) and expand(ed) the novel’s (Red Alert’s) psychological/thematic emphasis…Kubrick shows a more profound interest in origins, both psychological and philosophical, than does George’s novel (or any film treatment of this type of material at that time)” (Nelson, pg. 87). Kubrick in Dr. Strangelove is examining the reason for why these people are the way they are, not to ultimately poke fun at these characters, but rather to show the audience his worries over how easily a nuclear situation could occur. Characters rely purely on protocol, to the point where their logic exits the situation. Examples constantly persist in the war room. When Air Force General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) tells President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) about General Ripper’s (Sterling Hayden) instigating the go code for American fighter pilots to bomb Russia, Muffley is incensed. He says to Turgidson, “When you issued the human reliability tests, you assured me that there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring.” (He’s referring to a general becoming psychotic, and not being detected by the reliability test in anyway.) Turgidson’s response is that, “Well, I don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slipup, sir.” Some slipup.
Kubrick’s film is actually more terrifying than people realize. The abstract fools in Strangelove are silly to the point of horrific action (or consequences) that has a great deal to do with the context of reality. The actions exhibited in the film could become an eventuality; it’s simply comically presented. (Kubrick’s film is also highly prophetic: another characteristic that Lumet’s film doesn’t have the distinction of exhibiting. When Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) says to President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) that he feels that the president is too afraid of his perception of what the president will appear like in history books, the scene could very well be Donald Rumsfeld talking to George W. Bush. Lumet’s film is merely dated.) Lumet’s film doesn’t depict this human fallibility in anyway (probably because it’s too afraid to.) The film respects all of its characters to the point where the movie becomes theatrical dramaturgy (and highly unrealistic dramaturgy at that. There are elements in the film, like the bomber pilot having a dream about a bull being hunted down and a woman obsessed with death that are more fake than anything in the abstractions in Strangelove.) Why should a filmmaker respect someone who inadvertently causes nuclear annihilation? Fail Safe is disingenuous probably by accident; by noble intention, which is an error similar to the errors exhibited by the characters in Strangelove. Fail Safe doesn’t deal with the inherent flaws in provisional thinking in anyway. It doesn’t have moments like the one in Strangelove where Turdigson discusses Plan R; an inane provisional maneuver that allows a general to give the go code towards bombing Russia, in case the President is delayed in doing so. Fail Safe doesn’t have the gall to criticize a character like Turdigson; while Kubrick’s satiric structure inevitably criticizes the figure. The problem stems from figures who are in love with provisional thinking, and would never criticize the process, even to the point of nuclear annihilation. When one thinks about it, Kubrick’s film really isn’t that far-fetched, which is actually a more terrifying concept to ponder over. Strangelove posits that military figures are as preposterous as abstract satiric monsters; like Strangelove. Fail Safe doesn’t dare do so, for fear that it will disrupt the status quo; even to the point of nuclear annihilation.
Henry Fonda’s president in Fail Safe is in such contrasts to Sellers president in Strangelove. Fonda’s president, “…impress(es) the audience with…(his) humanity and sense of responsibility; for in the end, it is a problem that we all must share and for which we all must be held accountable” (Nelson, pg. 86). Kubrick’s film logically holds the figures in charge culpable, and that’s because he as a filmmaker believed in the concept of human error, opposed to the easy excuse of mechanical error.
It’s of interest to compare the two telephone conversation scenes between the presidents of the united states and the Russian Premier’s in both films. The president in Fail Safe is not delusional in terms of how confident he is. Rather, he’s a very sensible individual who tries to handle the situation as logically as possible. In Strangelove, Kubrick makes fun of this kind of sanctimonious interpretation of the president’s capabilities. He doesn’t honestly believe that these officials are as in control as we as a country assume that they are, and this has to do with the fact that Kubrick naturally distrusted this image of public officials. If they were that good at their jobs, how could the country get in this mess in the first place? Wouldn’t something like the threat of nuclear war be prevented by a capable politician? Even though Strangelove is satire, it also points to salient concerns on Kubrick’s part. There’s an underlay of realism in all of the fantastical elements of the film; almost as if this nightmare could become an actual reality. (Fail Safe is the inversion of this.) The scene of Fail Safe has both the President and the translator being rather nervous at the prospect of talking to the premier; almost as if the Cuban Missile Crisis never happened before, or they’ve never dealt with a situation of this magnitude before. Doesn’t this take some of the disturbing element out of the scene? Isn’t it more disturbing, and more having to do with the problem, to consider the fact that politicians like the president are so used to this occurrence of the threat of nuclear war that they are bored of it; almost as if it were another form of malaise? That’s the way Sellers performs the scene. Strangelove is a film that counters what Fail Safe does as a film. It’s almost as if sanctimony were being countered by a strange form of realism.
Kubrick wanted to make the ultimate Cold War film, and he did this by countering the common way in which to deal with the subject matter. Most filmmakers like Stanley Kramer and Sidney Lumet dealt with the subject matter in a pat fashion, in which these filmmakers would, …”rather be on the ‘right’ side of a morally complex issue than transform or unsettle an audience’s perception by showing how such a problem, more often than not, originates from deep inside the structures of a social mythology and the paradoxes of human nature” (Nelson, pgs. 86-87). Therefore, Kubrick filmed his Cold War drama in a new style, consisting of new kinds of camera angles and use of lighting—finding the unreality and phantasmagoric in the situation without sacrificing the realism. It’s the idea that there are horrific intentions lurking under all of the apparent orderliness of the military environment. Characters like Turdigson and Ripper and Strangelove have heinous designs lurking underneath their “official” decorum, in order to deceive the public into believing that they are responsible individuals.
Therefore Kubrick felt that, “The real image doesn’t cut the mustard, doesn’t transcend. I’m now interested in taking a story, fantastic and improbable, and trying to get to the bottom of it, to make it seem not only real, but inevitable” (Nelson, pg. 89). Kubrick employed this idea in his aesthetics: “In the B-52, once the “go” code is received, fantasy should take a backseat to both the hard reality of the machine and Kubrick’s cinema verite camera, which, in a cramped atmosphere illuminated only by source lighting, works close-in through quick zooms and jerky motions to document the intricacy of instrument panels and attack profiles. Yet the satiric exaggeration of Kong’s character turns realism towards the fantastic…” (Nelson, pgs. 89-90). If one where to compare this film’s aesthetics to Fail Safe, then they would realize that the style of Fail Safe (or the lack of style) is highly anachronistic; it doesn’t attach any new meaning to the situation of nuclear determent. It’s simply a detached documentary in terms of style. Ultimately, Strangelove is more of a complex film than Fail Safe because unlike Failsafe, Strangelove enters into the nightmarish possibility that our contentment, our belief that the military and government can handle a threat like nuclear war, is ultimately a façade.

Works Cited:
1. Nelson, Thomas Allen. Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze. Indiana University Press; Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2000.

The Termite Eating Away At the Detritus

Manny Farber’s (1917-2008) aesthetic terminology (what he was greatly
known for as a critic) involved movement, rather than just talking about pictorial composition. Farber was like a great ballet critic; he understood the exciting kineticism involved in movies. His favorite filmmakers were the ones, like him, who were aware of the possibilities of kineticism. This form of filmmaking that Farber was invested in writing about had nothing to do with ideology; if anything, ideology (and pat descriptions of aesthetics—devoid of movement) in his opinion distracted the audience from what was really transpiring on the screen. Reading Farber makes one aware that movies are a more pleasurable art form when painters interpret them. Yet, to my mind Manny is the only major film critic who was also simultaneously a painter.
Sometimes, the films that Manny liked had strange ideological points, but that didn’t matter to him. For him, if the ideology of say a Herzog film was hard to fathom and interpret, all the better. In Manny’s opinion, strange elusive immersive films were all that one needed to enjoy the art form. He didn’t like clarified pictures with one obvious theme; to him these types of films were simply too easy to interpret. Ironically enough, the films that Farber didn’t like, because they were simple or “complex” politically, were pretty banal aesthetically as well. Farber was a man who was weary of prestige filmmaking.
Farber felt that everything in a movie, including its politics, was felt in the movement and space of the film. This is a revolutionary concept. If you were a critic, greatly influenced by the way Manny wrote and studied film, you’d have to be like a detective and tunnel your way out in your deductions to figure out why a movie works or doesn’t work. You’re not allowed to have an easy impression of the movie as soon as you come out of the theatre. What Farber would do when watching a movie was start with the parameters (aesthetics) which is a very sensible and grounded form of criticism, and slowly go from there (this greatly gets rid of the necessity to generalize). Because of this unorthodox method of deduction, many find his style of writing difficult to read. Farber worked with what he knew, rather than getting distracted by a concept that was outside of his frame of reference; like the “artistic purpose” of the filmmaker, or the filmmaker’s “statement” in the work. He cared less about prestigious terminology like that, and readers reading him today are unused to this rebellious form of analysis.
Farber had a tendency to write about his love of B movies. This attraction to the Underground sensibility stemmed from his own personality.
Farber wasn’t necessarily trying to please anyone, or trying to cultivate celebrity status in anyway. (This is proven by his never having a consistent period of staying at a regular prestigious post. He wrote for The New Republic, Time, The Nation, New Leader, Cavalier, Artforum, Commentary, Film Culture, Film Comment, and City Magazine. He is one of the only critics I have ever read that was not highfalutin but sensible about the films that he liked. He saw B movies in their proper context, and didn’t over-inflate their importance in anyway; falsifying what those films meant could have taken the spontaneity out of them. Farber wrote in great detail about what bothered him in the movies that he liked, which meant that he kept a proper perspective of the topic at hand. Sometimes this made it hard to interpret his criticism; to figure out whether he liked a movie or not. What Farber was doing in his writing was relating his own puzzlement to a movie to his reader, and he never falsified this emotion in anyway by easily stating that something he saw was “good” or “bad”.
This was a critic who never tried to be different from everyone else; he just naturally was that way. Even though Farber constantly set trends in the critical establishment (like the importance of writing about the director’s style) he would always constantly shift ground and contradict that trend. For the longest time, he wrote about his ardor over B movies. It seems that once he set this trend, he suddenly shifted ground later in his career to write about low budget experimental minimalist films. This hipster attitude of his had to do with his not having a set opinion on a movie or a genre or a filmmaker. Therefore, he made it impossible for others to copy his style.
It’s amazing how Farber never got distracted from what he was looking at. His termite art approach made it impossible for him to be weighed down by obstructions like sentimentality and “quality”. He didn’t like anything that was obvious or “beautiful”. He liked the challenge of writing about films that were tonally constantly changing, and upon initial inspection messy and “disorganized”. Farber felt that if one constantly looked at a painting in different instances and in a new light, surely one could do the same towards a movie. Hence, his constant reappraisal of a film.
Farber wrote about what was exactly in front of him, opposed to getting into generalizations outside of the context of the movie (including, ironically enough, his own opinion.) Farber felt that critics were too obsessed with getting their set opinion on a movie, rather than on how a film actually works. Farber was more interested on figuring out the artist’s process, rather than the actual merit of a movie. He, to quote his own phrase was “process mad”; because he was an artist in his own right, he was more interested in how an artist achieves their effects rather than on whether the movie was “good” or not. Farber felt that opinion could be a detriment towards the more important role of the critic, which is figuring out what one has just seen on the screen. Farber was into the architecture of a given film—he wanted the reader to enter the terrain and talk about what he likes or dislikes, much like a tourist. One doesn’t have the time to talk about matters that don’t concern them. One sees a building in relation to its terrain—not the other way around.
Farber was a very subtle writer, in that there are hints of his own personality in the writing. For instance, one can detect his contempt for people who didn’t follow his subscribed method of analysis. He felt that once one gets away from a rapid and direct tone to whatever it is that they do, one loses their integrity (like John Ford). Farber never let “organization” get in his way; he found his own organization or style as a writer/painter/teacher. (There is subtle organization in the writing, but it’s very hard to detect how the writing flows. It, like his paintings, appears beautifully disorganized and highly original). The writing feels as if it were merely comprised of great observations, divorced of a thesis.
Every sentence is a fantastic observation, and not something that deviates from the films elements. Nobody ever talked about a movie in this practical way which appears odd on the page. Farber wrote about the elements that a director uses to make a scene work rather than what a scene means. In a sentence like, “Few movies (he’s writing about Hawks Scarface) are better at nailing down singularity in a body or face, the effect of a strong outline cutting out impossibly singular shapes” (Farber, pg. 25), the qualifications for liking this film are of the most original variety. There’s no thesis to that sentence because the spontaneity and elusivity of his impressions would be gone if he generalized the writing in anyway.
Farber never followed anyone’s subscribed notion of how to do something. (An example being his never showing a complete film to his students but rather teaching bits and pieces of a movie. Sometimes he would even run a film backwards.) Farber encouraged writers to do their own fresh form of analysis. He basically felt: what are the layers that one notices that no one else is talking about in relation to a work?
Works Cited:
1. Farber, Manny. Negative Space. Da Capo Press, 1998.

Like the Dust That Hides the Glow of a Rose—Film As Anti-Escapist Art

The film begins with a lullaby being recited to the audience, and
right away Charles Burnett has us enter a world and terrain that we are not accustomed to. Or have we been there before, but simply blocked it from our memory? Killer of Sheep has the audience enter a terrain of listless unawareness, where the audience is as unsure of where they stand as the characters in the film are. Watching the film is a frustrating experience.
Why is there no plot? Where’s the tempo and rhythm in the movie? Burnett does not give the audience that satisfaction. Instead, he wants us to experience what the characters in the film are experiencing, which is a lack of a context for existence. They, like us in life, are simply too distracted (or tired) to really study their own lives. Life is not like a movie; it usually is much less exciting and lacks dramatic context.
Burnett’s film is interested in the root of malaise. As a filmmaker, he questions where this phenomenon stems from. The first scene shows the moment where malaise and dispiritedness enters a young boy’s life. The boy is being berated by his father. The father thinks he’s giving his son sound advice about life, when really he’s just making his son more like him. He says to his son that he’s got no sense. The irony of this moment upon second viewing is that none of the grown-ups in this film make any sense. They’re just like the kids in Killer of Sheep, except they lack the energy that the children have. As soon as the child is slapped by his mother, he realizes that life is not a comforting existence. The audience can see this change of state in the child’s expression; he resembles in great detail the main character of the film by the name of Stan (Henry Gale Sanders). As soon as the film begins, it’s immediately apparent that this film has a revolving pattern, where characters resemble other characters, and actual moments and comments are repeated verbatim as if life were forever revolving and not changing in anyway. We all experience this; we just don’t care to admit it. (That’s why the shot of Stan and his wife (Kaycee Moore) dancing to that sad tune is so potent; it’s a representation of what we’ve been watching; these characters are simply going through the motions in an ever revolving pattern of non-intimacy.)
The film is comprised of very static shots. These shots are what make the movie frustrating to sit through because an audience is generally accustomed to quicker forms of editing in movies. Burnett feels that most films are mere escapism; that they are sensationalistic experiences that don’t really reflect how life actually is (like Black exploitation films that were coming out around this time.)
Even though it may not be particularly “enjoyable” to see characters who are basically just going through the motions, its important for audiences to see that other people are going through what they go through. (I’d be interested in seeing an upper class audiences reactions to the film.) It’s also important that middle and lower class people not delude themselves about how happy they are, simply for the fact that they may never want to attain greater financial goals. Stan doesn’t realize that there are better outcomes out there. All he has to do is try to attain a better job, but he doesn’t realize that there are better options out there in life. He lives in neighborhood content in their being, or at least it appears that way. Maybe everyone in that suburban area are going through what he’s going through but are simply better at hiding their emotions. We don’t see what their life is like behind doors. At one point, he tells his friend that he’s not poor, and the indication of that is that he gives to the Salvation Army. He a’int poor but he a’int rich either, and Burnett’s comment on this middle class state of being is that it’s a limbo state emotionally. You’re neither here nor there; you’re simply going through the motions. The importance of the film is that it acts as a mirror for the middle class audiences watching the film; its an indication of the trajectory that they have in life, in hope that they will try to attain a greater financial position.
Burnett’s study of just how this sort of malaise sets in stems mainly from the intercutting in the film. The film constantly intercuts between the children and the adults in the neighborhood. The children are always idle and playing games to relieve their boredom. Yet, there’s not that much of a difference between them and the adults in the film. The adults are merely getting paid to be idle—it’s idleness as occupation. (When the children play their games, the sound design implemented is not as harsh and metallic as when the adults work at their jobs. The hammering away that some of these adults do is a very disquieting sound; almost as if they were hammering away at their lives. Stan doesn’t realize this predicament that he’s in, because he feels there’s nothing better in life. He doesn’t realize that that’s the reason for why he can’t sleep. Maybe if he saw a similar film like Killer of Sheep (or Killer of the Spirit) he would change the trajectory in his life instead of merely counting sheep. Stan lives a deceptively safe life, free of any dramatic conflict. Yet, that’s the problem; it’s a waking-sleep inducing existence. One’s not aware that they are killing their own spirit, and that’s because their environment is so quiet and comforting. One’s not aware that they are completely emotionally detached from even their loved ones because they are half awake. This is represented by the shots of Stan at his job. When’s he’s shoving the sheep around, he’s not aware that those sheep are a representation of his own existence. Clifford Thompson writes about this when he states that, “The sheep in the slaughterhouse, of course, have no clue about who is responsible for their condition and little perspective on the condition itself. They’re just in it. The same is true of Stan’s peers, who give no thought to the forces dictating the way they live—only to the occasional, doomed efforts to change it” (Thompson, 32-33). Stan is basically the hunter of his own demise, and he doesn’t realize this because he’s not used to contextualizing his life and environment in anyway (just as we’re not used to a movie that doesn’t contextualize.) Like I stated before, the film is a mirror on our own state of existence. It’s showing us that we are not aware of the hole that we are digging for ourselves, because we always use escapism to comfort ourselves and make us forget. No wonder it’s such an unpleasant experience; who would want to see themselves on the screen? The men who approach Stan, and try to get him to work with them in an illicit operation, are living out their own fantasies. Stan’s not like them. He’s in the limbo state of being middle class. He’s aware and yet not aware. He’s basically living a dream like existence like a child. Burnett’s comment on this is that that state of being never ends; it merely becomes more dispirited. The problem has to do with escapism; these characters are not completely conscious that they delude themselves like children do. Children do not lack intimacy and this is apparent when Stan’s child comforts him. Yet Stan’s wife is crying at this moment because she can never be intimate with him. If one continues acting like a child as an adult, they begin to lose their intimate hold on life. An image that has that metaphor implicit in it is when the children are on the roof while the adults are situated below them, grounded in their own “reality”. Even though the emotional states are different between the two groups, they both are living out a fantasy.
The only intimate emotion that Stan experiences is his obsession with his unhappy state of existence. He tells everyone that he can’t get any sleep, and this relating of existence is his only connection with people. (It actually ironically enough makes people not want anything to do with him.) This obsession is a fantasy that makes Stan unaware of the fact that he’s leaving behind his connection to life or the life-force, just like he leaves behind that car engine. Stan’s literally not getting that car started is a metaphor for how he’s completely non-aware of the reason for why he’s impotent both physically and emotionally.
A major moment of awareness in the film is when one of Stan’s daughters stares at her parents not being able to connect in anyway. The expression on her face indicates that she’s aware of the hopelessness of her situation-of her future. Escapism simply leads to a lack of awareness of that bitter pill of reality; yet, it’s important to experience those moments because the realization of where you are in life makes you realize what you can do to amend that problem.
Works Cited
1. Thompson, Clifford. Good Moments in a Tough World-The Films of Charles Burnett. Cineaste, Vol. XXXIII, No.2, 2008.

Bonnie and Clyde-in relation to film criticism

The problem with Bosley Crowther’s critique of Bonnie and Clyde is that the reviewer is not evaluating the film in any depth.
The reason this doesn’t happen is because the reviewer felt at the time that the film was below the level of proper evaluative criticism. The importance of evaluation is that it inevitably leads to constructive criticism. Constructive criticism is an important tool for a writer to have because it can help the filmmaker’s learn from their mistakes for their future endeavors.
Crowther had such disrespect for Bonnie and Clyde that he simply wrote a scathing review. In my opinion, nothing is learned in the process of simply panning a movie. Personally, I feel one’s opinion of a movie is not relevant. Rather, what is relevant is the evaluative process. I understand that a film can be so bad that it’s not worth discussing in any depth. However, Bonnie and Clyde is not that type of movie. Whether one feels it is a good film or not is irrelevant. Rather, what should be discussed is what a pertinent film Bonnie and Clyde is in terms of the times in which it came out of. Bonnie and Clyde was a very important part of the sociological zeitgeist of the 1960’s, and it should be written as such. It ushered in a new style of filmmaking that was free of censorship constraint, and simple filmmaking convention. To not see this as a critic is ludicrous, and this is where Crowther stubles as a critic and Pauline Kael succeeds. She was perceptive enough to see what a pertinent movie Bonnie and Clyde was, irrelevant of whether or not it was a good or bad film. She saw how the film impacted culture, opposed to simply brushing it off as just another reprehensible movie.
Crowther was simply too much of an old vanguard to realize that a new age of filmmaking was coming in, and that Bonnie and Clyde represented a start to that change. He simply concentrates on how accurate the film is in terms of representing the Barrow gang. His is a simple argument, because it has no basis in terms of what the filmmaker’s statement is in the movie.
Bonnie and Clyde is not a documentary, and quite frankly, how would making the film more realistic add value to the movie in anyway? Another problem with Crowther’s review is that he doesn’t have any interesting salient points whatsoever. He is simply sticking to a one dimensional form of evaluation; the performers are not good in anyway, ect. Kael was trying to get at something deeper in her evaluation of the film. She tried to describe in great detail why the film was so disturbing to someone like Crowther (he certainly couldn’t), and why that disturbing element was what made the film interesting thematically, opposed to it being a reprehensible element. “Suddenly, in the last few years, our view of the world has gone beyond ‘good taste.’ Tasteful suggestions of violence would at this point be a more grotesque form of comedy than Bonnie and Clyde attempts” (The New Yorker, pg. 161). Kael is welcoming change in an artform. She is not restrictive of violence, as long as it pertains to the subject matter at hand. Crowther can’t go outside of his comfort zone in this regard. He does not evaluate the film in any meaningful way because he is not a critic that welcomes change, but rather is condemnatory of what he dislikes and laudatory of what he likes. He doesn’t necessarily want to think about what he dislikes. At the end of Crowther’s review he states that the film, “…leaves an astonished critic wondering just what purpose Mr. Penn and Mr. Beatty think they serve…” (The New York Times). A critic should figure out the filmmaker’s purpose, regardless of whether they agree with the filmmaker’s intentions or not. This man was simply too afraid to do so.
A.O.Scott’s reinterpretation of Crowther’s review is interesting because it has so much more depth than Crowther’s review. The critic is finding the purpose of why the film is disturbing, and more importantly, why the film made such an impact to
the culture. (To not see that the film is pertinent in anyway is ludicrous; this was Crowther’s dilemma at the time, which lead to his firing.) Scott is arguing for the importance of examining whether violence in movies is exploitive or not. Violence, in this day and age and in regards to mass entertainment, is such a given that audiences have become sensitized to it. He basically blames films like Bonnie and Clyde for making violence redeemable for the sake of art. Scott feels that we should question that practice because it has lead to the reprehensible actions of today’s violent filmmakers. I respect Scott’s article because it writes about more pertinent subjects than whether or not Bonnie and Clyde is a good film. However, I don’t agree with Scott’s feeling that Crowther was an innocent victim. Crowther was a critic who didn’t ask the questions that are raised in this article; he merely had initial impressions divorced from any pertinent evaluation. He was very much how many in today’s culture are in relation to the question of violence. He was simply the inverse of that phenomenon; the prude who doesn’t ask the relevant questions.
There is a key sentence in Kolker’s article that struck me and that is when he states that, “Penn is concerned with the contradictions inherent in the representation of violence” (Kolker, pg. 55). Kolker states that Penn is aware that what he is doing in his depiction of violence is unsettling and morally troubling. My response to that, and I feel Kolker would agree with me, is that what Penn does in Bonnie and Clyde is the best way to start a conversation about what is taboo in the arts, which ultimately makes the arts more stimulating and thought provoking. Challenging films are what make the art form more progressive (Kael) rather than retrogressive (Crowther).

Works Cited
1. Kolker, Robert Phillip. A Cinema of Loneliness. Second Edition. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 2. Kael, Pauline. Bonnie and Clyde. New Yorker. Vol. 43, Oct. 21, 1967. 3. Crowther, Bosley. Bonnie and Clyde. The New York Times. April 14, 1967.

Becoming a Good Film Critic

In order to talk about the qualities that make a good film critic, one first has to discuss the qualities that make a bad film critic. A bad film critic is a viewer that never goes outside of his comfort zone; that is never flexible. He is consistently sure of himself; that is, he can never like a film if it doesn’t pertain to his subscribed notions of life. This viewer invariably goes into seeing a film with preconceived notions of whether he will like the film. This is the genteel form of seeing and discussing a film; yet there are dire pernicious consequences that result from such naiveté; hence, the importance of film criticism.
A good film critic is a rebel of this fuddy-duddy approach to aesthetics. (Well, if this film is advertised as merely being an action film for teenagers, then it can’t be any good!) Yet, this is the most popular approach to film criticism; if a film that’s being reviewed doesn’t have any marketing buzz behind it than newspapers editors will frown, and there’s nothing more horrifying in a film critic’s eyes. (Pretty soon an editors merely sneezing could be construed as an indication of the apocalypse). What a critic needs to combat fear, what any artist needs because after all film criticism is an art form, is to have complete confidence in their convictions providing that they have thoroughly analyzed the film. The film critic shouldn’t be afraid to analyze a film in an honest contrarian way. If no critic did so, then the profession would result in every review looking like a clone of it self. This is what I like to call advertising. It takes true dedication to write what you truly feel, especially in this p.c. minded age. Perhaps the p.c. approach to art is what has ultimately made everyone truly afraid to express the way they feel about something.
And for God sakes, have some humor in your piece! This profession has become a night of the living dead of solemnness. A good critic should show that they are a very active viewer, no matter how bad the period they are writing in is. I think Pauline Kael once said that the critic’s job is to get the audience to the movie theatre—period. If we have such a negative opinion of the profession that we are writing about, then why are still writing? We don’t just go to the movies to see good movies; its fun to see and think about bad ones as well. When did we become such a dignified culture that we can’t even bear the thought of seeing a bad movie? (Another rule: Come up with some good topics for an essay or two, which will hopefully stir the pot a little bit. Isn’t that the ultimate aim of criticism: Having some kind of positive impact on the movie industry?)
I think the question should be asked: why does one become a film critic? The answer must surely be that as David Edelstein
rightly stated: film critics become film critics because they have to establish themselves against people, “…who dismiss critics…” The problem with dismissing criticism is that, “…(one) is implicitly saying that a work of art ends the moment it has been consumed—that it’s not supposed to have any kind of after-life. That’s not just wrong: When you’re dealing with a medium as powerfully manipulative as cinema, it’s also dangerous” (Cineaste, pg 33). I feel that Edelstein nailed it right there.
Critics are ultimately fighting against ossification, which is what is leading to the decline in all the arts today. A critic should never forget this important role that they have. A critic should never forget the sensory pleasures that derive from fighting that battle.


Works Cited
1. Edelstein, David. Editorial from Cineaste magazine. New York. 2000.

Differing Views on New York

In all honesty, I see more similarities between Do the Right Thing and Mean Streets, in terms of style, than Manhattan. Scorsese’s and Lee’s films both deal with lower class individuals, and the debacles that they face in everyday life; opposed to Allen’s self-contained upper class New York. Stylistically, both films share many similarities. Like Do the Right Thing, Mean Streets employs a heightened color scheme all throughout the film, to give the environment that Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro) live in some kind of tension. The tension that the Italian characters in Mean Streets face have to do with their illicit dealings with the law, and the violence that erupts from simple lower class malaise. Violence of a similar kind also erupts in Mookie’s (Spike Lee) environment in Do the Right Thing, but that violence more has to do with racial tension between the Italians in the neighborhood and the black people in the neighborhood.
There are many similarities between Sal’s pizzeria in Do the Right Thing, and the bar that Charlie hangs out in in Mean Streets. Both areas are where heated violence erupts; and both are filmed in similar heightened fashions. (Both films employ slow motion effects in these key areas.) Also, both spaces have pop music constantly blaring throughout them, giving an impression that these areas are frequented by young people. Yet, there is a difference between the two areas (and between the two films) and that is that the point of view of both movies is told from the perspective of two different ethnicities. In Pauline Kael’s review of Mean Streets, the reader gets a sense that the writer could be talking just as well about Do the Right Thing, except that the pov in both movies is radically different.
In the review, she writes that, “These Mafiosi loafers hang around differently from loafing blacks…these hoods live in such an insulated world that anyone outside of it—the stray Jew or black they encounter—is as foreign and funny to them as a little man from Mars” (Kael, pgs. 169-170). The Italian characters at Sal’s pizzeria are just like the characters in Mean Streets, except the film is not told from their perspective.
Allen’s New York is completely different from both Scorsese’s and Lee’s. His New York doesn’t contain an iota of racial tension, probably because his environment (areas like Manhattan) are more upper class than the areas depicted in Lee’s and Scorsese’s films. Manhattan is stylistically the complete polar opposite of Mean Streets and Do the Right Thing. The film is elegantly shot in black and white by Gordon Willis. The film frames that Allen uses are uncluttered, whereas the frames that Lee and Scorsese utilize are full of mise en scene and bustling activity. Allen’s New York is a non-cluttered one, where there are no epitaphs being uttered and no real racial diversity. Everyone’s white, rich, and eating at sardi’s. The only conflict is the one of couple’s cheating on couple’s, but there’s no real guilt felt by the protagonists (opposed to the huge amount of Catholic guilt felt by Charlie and racial guilt felt by Mookie.) Allen’s New York is like the New Yorker publication, whereas Scorsese’s and Lee’s New York represents everything left out of Allen’s representation. Upper class guilt is so much less stressful on the protagonists than lower and middle class guilt, which has the possibility of turning violent. The worlds in Mean Streets and Do the Right Thing, are much grittier that Allen’s world; in Manhattan the banter is witty and erudite compared to the gruff repartee that occurs in a film like Do the Right Thing. Yet, there’s more sociological information present between Mookie and the Italians that he works for at Sal’s than all of the dialogue in Manhattan.
Allen’s comments upon releasing the film were very revealing, in terms of the tone of the film and how it differs from Scorsese’s and Lee’s takes on New York. “According to Allen, the idea for Manhattan originated from his love of George Gershwin’s music. He was listening to one of the composer’s albums of overtures and thought, ‘this would be a beautiful thing to make…a movie in black and white…a romantic movie’…Allen decided to shoot his film in black and white ‘because that’s how I remember it from when I was small…that’s how I remember New York. I always heard Gershwin music with it, too. In Manhattan I really think that we…succeeded in showing the city. When you see it there on the big screen it’s really decadent” (Wikipedia article on the movie). The New York that Allen is depicting is merely the upper class view of the city, freed from any tension or even realistic conflict.

Works Cited:
1. Wikipedia article on Manhattan 2. Kael, Pauline. Reeling. Atlantic Monthly Press Book; Boston—Toronto, 1976.

Lee’s Criticism of Post 9/11 Culture

Lee’s Criticism of Post 9/11 Culture
New York Directors 3/31/09
25th Hour is an interesting film in that it deals with the post 9/11 culture, but doesn’t do so in an explicit way. The mournful tone of the film (felt in Terrance Blanchard’s score) is an indication of how the main characters in the movie are at an emotional standstill. These characters are a metaphor for what happened to many New Yorker’s spirits post 9/11. Particularly in the case of Monty" Brogan (Edward Norton), who’s a drug dealer who has one last day of freedom before he has to go to prison.
Monty doesn’t trust anyone anymore. He has lost his allegiance with his best friends and loved ones. This is especially true in the case of his girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson). When Monty got picked up by the FBI, they made him believe that Naturelle was the one that ratted him out. From then on, Monty has not trusted his girlfriend. What the FBI are doing to Monty is scaring him to confess that he was working with Uncle Nikolai, who’s the person that the FBI is really trying to obtain. They are basically saying to Monty: kill yourself (which is what would basically happen if Monty confessed his allegiance to Uncle Nikolai) or remain unhappy. This is Lee’s metaphor for the scare tactics that the government was beginning to use post 9/11. These scare tactics actually perpetuate the problem. This distrust and lost of allegiance, which is something that makes Monty constantly obsess about the past and his mistakes, is depicted by showing Monty as a character who barely moves. His inertia is in contrast to the rest of the New Yorkers in the film, that are constantly moving (like in the club scene) or jogging. There’s even a very literal image of Monty putting his hand on the couch where the evidence against him was found. Monty’s never letting go of the past could be Spike Lee’s metaphor for how many New Yorkers lost their spirit and allegiance to the city post 9/11. Some simply gave up trying to persevere in their homeland and moved somewhere else, because they were so afraid that the city would never be the same. Monty’s going to the slammer and being tempted to go somewhere far away in the country is a metaphor for this. Lee felt that this is delusional on many New Yorkers part. (Hence, the literal delusional moment where Monty imagines himself living away from the city.)
He feels that one should not let events like 9/11 keep from preserving one’s initial spirit; once a New Yorker always a New Yorker. This is why he has Monty stay in NYC and has him do his time in jail. His friends are trying their best not to be dispirited. Jacob Elinsky (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) misses the youthfulness and vivacity that he once had; hence his need to be attracted to Mary (Anna Paquin), his student. Frank Slaughtery (Barry Pepper) who is working as a Wall Street trader also wants life to go on, and to not think about his friend anymore, but he can’t seem to do so. This attachment to something he’s lost (Monty’s basically a walking ghost in the same way that the lights taking the place of the World Trade Centers were ghost like in appearance), is visually represented in the scene involving Jacob and Frank’s arguing in Frank’s apartment. It’s not merely coincidence that his apartment is situated right outside Ground Zero. Frank wants to believe that he can hang on to the memory of the World Trade centers, but he eventually has to let them go and move on with his life as an energetic New Yorker. An energetic New Yorker is someone who doesn’t worry about their past mistakes (in some strange way Frank blames himself for Monty’s going away) because they simply don’t have the time. Monty has the time. When Jacob castigates Frank for not having manners, this is an indication of Frank’s not really caring about his flaws, like any typical New Yorker. It’s not a coincidence that Frank works for the hectic and loud and energetic stock exchange. This idea of effrontery and vivacity that is in Frank, and how it is quickly whisked away at the thought of Monty (the man who is getting punished for making a fatal mistake), is a metaphor for how many New Yorkers stopped in their tracks post 9/11; they probably felt that the city was paying for its transgressions. I’m sure the government’s fear tactics didn’t help the situation. Yet, most eventually realized that life goes on, and so does Frank. Rules and morals constantly haunt the three male leads in the club scene, which is ironic considering that the club is the ultimate extension of youthfulness and vivacity. These three characters barely move; they remain stagnant ironically enough on a couch that resembles Monty’s couch; a continual visual motif representation of one being haunted by their mistakes. It appears that Monty simply can’t move on his own volition anymore (it’s almost as if he needs his dog with him in the club), whilst the youthful Mary almost floats towards her destination. Pacquin’s transgressing society by flirting with her teacher, and illegally entering the club, is a representation of how it’s healthy to physically learn one’s boundaries; something that it took a post 9/11 culture a long time to re-learn. The statement in this film is what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; Monty has understandably forgotten this adage. So have the rest of his friends—they are haunted by rules, probably because their best friend is being sent to prison for breaking rules. (If Monty didn’t transgress society, he would have never dated Naturelle, who initially was a minor when he met her.) The shot of the three guys sitting on the couch in the club, barely speaking to one another because they are careful in what they say (which is not a very vibrant NYC quality for one to have), speaks volumes. It appears as if there are reversed horizontal jail bars in the back of the characters. These three do not want to transgress society anymore, for fear that they will be punished for breaking society’s rules. Hence, why Jacob doesn’t want to sleep with Mary, why Monty doesn’t want to be near Naturelle, and why Frank castigates Naturelle for not doing anything about stopping Monty from stopping his habits. These qualities that these men inhabit in this club are not natural in anyway; it’s almost as if they are deluding themselves from their real nature because of fear tactics set off by society. They are losing their New York quality. (An interesting side note: Monty begins to lose his Irish identity, and when Frank mentions that they could always start an Irish bar when Monty gets out, like any other Irish New Yorker, Monty blows him off.) It’s fascinating composition wise, how the two shot of Frank and Naturelle resembles the two shot of Frank and Jacob in Frank’s apartment, except that here Frank is on the right side of the screen, instead of the left side. In the initial scene, Frank was the one being castigated. In the later scene, he’s the judgmental one. This man is beginning to lose his identity because of being fearful of the proper rules. Visually, Jacob makes a stand by getting off the couch to make out with Mary. He has to transgress society in order to find out that he really doesn’t want to sleep with her. By doing so, Jacob won’t be obsessed with his mistakes anymore. Once Jacob does so, he moves freely on his own volition again (in a shot reminiscent of the earlier one of Mary). When Monty meets up with the Russians, a similar amount of fear tactics are instilled into him. They tell him that he’s probably not going to make it in prison because of his good looks. This is a generalized societal belief that does not have one iota of truth in it, and yet Monty believes him because in this stage of the game, he has nothing but society to rely on. In order for Monty to have Frank beat him up, he has to put on a mean performance. This is not Monty’s true nature (It’s ironic that all of this stems from the FBI’s instilling fear tactics in this man, so that he’ll believe anything that society tells him.
This scene is very similar to the one involving the FBI’s coming into Frank’s apartment to obtain him. In both scenes, Monty’s dog is barking.) Monty is shot on a low angle view in relation to Frank, which is a visual representation of the imposing nature of Monty who has an instilled belief given to him by society that he has to get beaten up. He’s consequently becoming a very imposing individual, in relation to Frank. They are not on the same level anymore. It’s interesting how this positioning is reversed once Frank starts beating Monty up; now Frank is shot on a low angle and this is a representation of his now believing the lie instilled by society. The social criticism in this film has to do with Lee’s feelings towards the post 9/11 culture. He stated in an interview that, “…I think that if you look, there’s a lot of anger in 25th Hour. If we wanted to stay in that comfort zone, we wouldn’t have included the 9/11 references at all because Disney did not want us to do any of that stuff…Studios say that they’re doing it out of respect for the audience, but I find that hard to believe. I just think they’re steering clear of anything that might even remotely impact on the bottom line” (Cineaste, 6). Lee’s film is heroic because he doesn’t censor his feelings about the post 9/11 culture, unlike other filmmaker’s at the time. His film is meant to alert an alarmist culture to wake up, and stop being intimidated by society’s social pressures, particularly in regards to what and what is not moral. Lee feels that worrying over such matters results in a dispirited state.


Works Cited:
1. Cineaste, Volume XXVIII, No. 3, 2003.

For Stam Criticism is Inherent—Beyond Fidelity

Robert Stam’s article, which deals with the question regarding whether or not a film should have complete fidelity to its source material, questions why such a need is there in the first place. Stam argues that because film is a different medium from novels, inherently the adaptation will be different. He feels that readers become disappointed for the wrong reasons. Any kind of description of anything in particular in a novel is always generalized because the novel is not a visual medium. Stam argues that film is inherently specific. (Stam, pg. 55). In that sense, the way someone looks or the way the locale looks will always appear different from how it did in the novel, and the reader’s interpretation of events will have been breached; it’s inevitable.
Therefore, Stam argues than rather try to be as close to interpretation to the source material as possible, a filmmaker should tell the primary tale (the important feeling of the work and a retaining of its ideology) rather than try to stay as close as possible to the version told by the teller. Stam’s argument is that since one is working within two mediums, this need to have absolute fidelity toward a given text is a losing battle. (Stam, pg. 58).
Stam feels that the reason for why there are so many weak adaptations of books doesn’t have to do with the fact that the movie wasn’t being faithful to the book, but rather that the movie was trying too hard to be the book; to be literary. Stam’s feeling is that successful adaptations, for instance Tom Jones, stays true to the source material by using filmic conventions instead of literary ones to retain the feeling of the work. The novel Tom Jones references past literary conventions; the film references past filmic conventions. There was no other way the adaptors could have told their story, Stam argues, because a film is not inherently literary. (Stam, pg. 68). Rather, films are polyrhythmic—i.e. they contain elements from all of the arts—and fragmentary. (Stam, pg. 60). Stam argues that film, rather than being an inherently limited art form, is so rich and has so many elements running throughout it that filmmakers are scared to contradict the novel that they are adapting’s intentions. They are scared to admit to themselves that film may be a better medium to tell the story in than the novel. (Casting can tell a film audience a lot about a text that the text itself could not tell because the text never dealt with performance and interpretation. The casting and performance in a film can make a comment on the text itself, which the text could never do. In fact, because one medium is dealing specifically with another, making a comment in the form of criticism of that medium is inevitable.) (Stam, pg.60). Stam is completely against the bias of fidelity mainly because this notion censors the film medium to try to be a literary medium only. How could one do that to a medium that also contains elements of painting, dance, ect.?
Stam’s ultimate argument is that filmmakers are afraid to alter or even criticize a given text that they are adapting because filmmakers and filmgoers have a bias that literature is the greater medium; therefore films highest aspiration is to be literary and have complete and total fidelity to the text being adapted. (Stam, pg. 59). Ultimately, Stam feels that the primary function of films, when they are adaptations, is to, “…explore the notion of adaptation as demystifcatory critique” (Stam, pg. 63). His argument is that if a filmmaker is required to adapt a book that they disagree with ideologically or even stylistically, do they then have to have complete fidelity to the work and censor their own impressions or beliefs; thereby censoring the art form of movies altogether? Stam feels that this bias known as fidelity is a belief that needs to be done away with for fear that it will make all filmmakers timid towards expressing their own artistic temperament toward a given text that they are adapting. He argues that adaptation gives duration toward the work being adapted (even if it’s criticizing it) because it’s updating (by making a comment on) the initial work, for future generations. (Stam, pgs. 62-63). For him, adaptation is criticism.

Works Cited

Naremore, James, ed. Film Adaptation. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Subtle Bleakness

Ghost World, both the book and film, are works that deal with a girl by the name of Enid’s constantly reaching an impasse in her life. In both works Enid is the instigator of those moments of impasse that happen to her; of the moments when she’s not connecting with anyone. However, the difference between both the graphic novel and the film is that Daniel Clowes’ graphic novel never gets inside Enid’s thought processes, while Thora Birch’s Enid in Terry Zwigoff’s film is a much richer characterization. Birch’s performance gives credence to Enid’s view of the world. (An audience can tell that Zwigoff and company truly respect Enid’s individuality.) In the film, it’s not so much that Enid is an isolationist because she’s an unconscionable jerk, but that she’s an isolationist because she’s so unlike everyone else. There’s an opposing dialectic between graphic novel and film: in the graphic novel, Enid is too immature to connect with other people, while in the film Enid’s estrangement from others is her way of becoming an adult.
One of the key differences between both film and graphic novel is both works sense of spirit. In my opinion, the graphic novel is more malicious than the film; not only characterizing both Enid and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson in the film) as stereotypically hipster criticizers who reject everything in their path, but characters they make fun of are also stereotypically caricatures or composites of “weirdoes” . (It doesn’t help that the work is a graphic novel.) No one gets off easy in Clowes’ universe.
One gets the impression when they read Ghost World that no one can connect in the graphic novel because everyone holds derision towards everyone else in Enid’s town. (I for one would not want to take up residence there.) A scene like the one where the Seymour (Steve Buscemi in the movie) like character goes into the Diner looking for the woman who answered his personal ad, only to find that he’s had a prank pulled on him (Enid was the one who called Seymour) stays a malicious prank in the graphic novel because Enid never gets to apologize to Seymour, like she does in the film. In fact, in the film, Enid goes out of her way to personally know Seymour. She’s fascinated by the man in a way that’s completely a new experience for her, considering that’s she’s not fascinated by anyone else. In the graphic novel, the Seymour type character remains a composite-an image out of a comic book that lacks any dimensionality because the reader doesn’t see any more of him. Actually, the character traits of the Seymour in the film are regulated throughout many different characters in the graphic novel, diminishing the aspect of the man as individual. I think the casting of Steve Buscemi in the film helps the audience gain empathy with a man like Seymour, to the effect that he becomes rather endearing. The audience, like Enid, begins to view this man as a cool unique individual. More than that, he’s a man that shares a common sensibility (and sensibility is the key word here, opposed to the graphic novel) with the protagonist of the film. They both find ideas like the whitewashing of hatred in modern society interesting, while others simply dismiss the idea because it’s so taboo. These criticizers have a one dimensional viewpoint of Enid’s and Seymour’s ideas. (It’s the reverse in the graphic novel. In the graphic novel, a person like Enid sees everyone as one dimensional.) Throughout the movie, both figures occupy the same frame opposed to the comic book where the Seymour type character is relegated to his own comic book frame by Enid’s pov; in a sense being mocked in his own cage like an animal. (In the movie, others mock Enid’s artwork; hence why she maturely becomes an isolationist opposed to the inverse mocking in the graphic novel.)
The color scheme of the graphic novel makes Ghost World a one dimensional work of art-makes it a frigid aqua blue type of graphic novel. The graphic novel is a black and white one dimensional view of the world, whereas the film is in bold primary color denoting the enjoyment and thrill of being an individual. All one has to do to compare both works is to compare the two scenes in the Diner to see that Zwigoff sees individuals like Weird Al the waiter, Seymour, and even Enid as enjoyably eccentric; he imparts the space they inhabit, like the Diner, colorfully with primary reds. Clowes doesn’t.
Yet, there’s a downside to this exuberance of sensibility in the film and that is that it’s ephemeral. After awhile, one cannot share this point of view with others. This is a much more logical viewpoint than the graphic novel’s; the graphic novel’s snide viewpoint that snide people remain forever alone, because they’ve alienated everyone around them, can begin to be rather repetitive by book’s end. Zwigoff subtly imparts this knowledge throughout the movie; in effect taking away the snide tone of the book. In the key scene where Enid is listening to the Blues music that Seymour has lent her, even though this is in a sense Seymour and Enid’s way of connecting, Enid is sharing the moment by herself. Throughout the film, there are other subtle indications of Enid’s isolationist temperament, like when she starts relegating Seymour to her answering machine-a much more subtle form of relegating someone than found in the graphic novel. Is it ironic that the moment when Enid is at her most desperately alone, the color scheme of the bed that she’s lying on while crying is at its most flamboyantly colorful? There is a subtle bleakness to Ghost World and that is that the film shows how true individuality can lead to loneliness.
One of the clever ways that the film has added to the conception of the graphic novel is by a)altering Rebecca’s character in an interesting fashion and b)adding a new love interest for Seymour. In the film, Rebecca’s the one that is basically the influence for Enid to enter the conventional corporate working world, opposed to the instigator of her critical nature, in the graphic novel. In the film, Rebecca tries to convince Enid to get a job so that they can get an apartment together. For Seymour’s character, the person that is pulling him towards normalcy is his new girlfriend. (Both women share similar corporate working places, as well as dull bland apartments lacking the originality of Enid’s and Seymour’s place.) Interestingly enough, both break it off with the two characters and yet still Seymour and Enid don’t get in a relationship with each other. Much of this has to do with the mere idea that the two have some kind of connection to conventionality that they both don’t want to face, as evidenced in the scene where Enid notices that Seymour’s girlfriend bought him conventional jeans; this is the moment when both characters start to share their own frames much like in the graphic novel, i.e. they both become critical of one another. I prefer this form of estrangement opposed to the graphic novel’s. There’s no malicious arguments in the film. Instead, simply other people indicate the flaws in both Enid and Seymour’s relationship. Even though the square world doesn’t understand individuals like Enid and Seymour at all, at the same time individualistic people know each other all too well, and know when they are showing hints at being square. (In the graphic novel these complexities are missing in the Seymour Enid argument scene at the Diner. It’s not even so much of an argument, as a scene where Seymour tells Enid off.) So instead, they simply separate themselves from everyone else (including the audience, i.e. the film ends.)
Yet, Enid is not as callow as she was in the graphic novel, even when being separated from everyone else because of her point of view. Even when Seymour gets incredibly upset at Enid once he finds the first sketch she ever made of him, what he doesn’t see, until Enid shows him, is the other sketches she has made of him once she got to know him better. The surprise of the film is that Enid, like Seymour, is a truly mature person, as indicated visually when she goes home, washes the dye out of her hair and listen’s to Skip James’s Devil Got My Woman. The hipster image was merely a façade, while in the graphic novel it’s only when Enid is tragically alone, because of her own doing, that Clowes gives her an isolated moment away from Rebecca; the one who promulgates her hatred of everyone. (The one non-superficial similarity between graphic novel and film is that Enid’s isolated moments serve as a relief away from Rebecca.) One gets a sense of this if you compare both isolation scenes from the graphic novel and film. An image like the one where Enid has an empowering close up in the film, while listening to Skip James, is in direct contrast to the image on the second panel of page 62 in the graphic novel where Enid in long shot is holding her head down low in tears, basically (and arguably) being criticized by Clowes for her actions.
Yet in the film, no matter all the good intentions from both parties, Seymour and Enid still drift apart. This is an indication of the complexity (and maturity) of Zwigoff’s Ghost World; in the film once one is imparted with the knowledge that they should be themselves, they begin to become isolated. Even though no one gets off easy in Zwigoff’s universe, the filmmaker doesn’t condemn those people either.

Internal Dignity

It appears that both the film and novel versions of The Sweet Hereafter deal with the mutability of perspective. In both the film and the novel, everyone has their own interpretation on not only the events concerning the bus accident, but also their own actions and morality. Even though little “action” happens in both book and film, Atom Egoyan and Russell Banks want to show the complexity and importance of people being involved in a major accident either wanting or not wanting to investigate what happened to them; this is something that is not presented in a great deal of fiction. Someone like Nicole has a right not to want to seek the “truth”; however, Mitchell Stephens also has a right to seek the “truth”. The problem in this situation is that since nothing can be factually proven in regards to the circumstances of the accident, the “truth” is the different character’s interpretation of events which are always clouded by their moral perspective. I think it’s this complexity that leads to the complex structural choices of both novel and film.
One of the themes that intrigues me about the book of The Sweet Hereafter is the idea of how truly hard it is to interpret whether someone is lying or not, or whether they are guilty or not. The questions that Banks subtly hints at to the audience reading his novel is that we do not live in a black and white world were certain people are designated as good and certain people as evil. Many characters in the novel lie for good reasons, regarding the bus accident that killed many students. A clear example is Nicole Burnell’s account of what happened. In the novel, Nicole realizes that she’s being used as a linchpin in a case that she doesn’t necessarily agree with. (She’s being used this way because she’s the only surviving student on the bus that day.) Also, she feels powerless because she is being used both by the lawyer Mitchell Stevens and her own family, who want to simply win a case where they can obtain money to buy a new computer. She’s trying to win back her individuality from her father who molested her. Nicole feels that the students on that bus never would want to have their case investigated, just like many of their parents don’t want to tread down that road; for a parent like Billy, dragging the whole situation in a courtroom is not the proper private way of mourning his child’s death. The private nobility of characters like Nicole and Billy is in contrast to someone like Mitchell Stevens. Banks is a writer who never wants to have a predisposition towards any one characters viewpoint in his novel. Rather, he’s a writer whom believes in questioning character motivation before coming to a conclusion; even a character he may empathize with. Mitchell Stevens doesn’t do this.
By the end, it’s the reader that has to decide on their own who is right or who is wrong in a situation like this. Is there such an easy answer? Yes, Stevens may be right about making someone pay for the accident. However, Does Stevens have a right to investigate in this matter, considering that those were not his kids who died in the accident? Also, does Stevens have a hidden rationale for doing what he’s doing? The problem with idealists, especially ones without the proper facts who are simply following their gut intuition, is that no one examines why they are so passionate about the cases that they are involved in; no one examines their intentions because they feel that if someone is selflessly trying to find justice that there can’t be any hidden rationale behind such an act. In fiction, the selfless lawyer is always morally right in doing what he/she is doing. Banks shows the reader that Stevens took this particular case so personally because he felt guilty for the fact that he could never save his own daughters life. He’s attributing his victimhood onto the other parents involved in the accident. This is wrong because some parents are not feeling those particular emotions that he’s feeling, and it’s also wrong because once a lawyer is personally involved in a case, they begin to be blinded into believing whatever they want to believe. What makes the book such a complicated one is that Stevens is not necessarily a villain. This quote is an indication of how hard it is to judge someone as selfless as Mitchell Stevens: “But it wasn’t greed that put me there; it’s never been greed that sends me whirling out of orbit like that. It’s anger. What the Hell, I’m not ashamed of it. It’s who I am. I’m not proud of it, either, but it makes me useful, at least. Which is more than I can say for greed” (Banks, pg. 89.) He is someone who also may not necessarily be wrong in doing what he’s doing. No one, including the author, really has any answers in this regard.
What is satisfying about the film is how, in some strange way, all the feelings mentioned above are enhanced to greater effect. Even though the film stays closely attuned to the book, both in terms of tone and plot, there are differences that merely enhance what Russell Banks was getting at in his novel. Banks has admitted this, in relation to the Pied Piper aspect of the story. When one reads the novel, there is a very subtle feeling that Nicole (Sarah Polley) is trying to honor the children of the accident in her own way by not trying to cheapen their names in a legal action. The film literalizes this feeling for the audience by adding the Pied Piper story to the concept. In the Pied Piper metaphor, the piper’s forever wishing that he could have gone with the children who have left the town, crystallizes the idea that Nicole feels that she should separate herself from the people who are inadvertently using her for their own gain. This is her form of closure (Landwehr, pg. 217.); if she doesn’t do so she will forever feel like a walking ghost much like how Billy Ansel (Bruce Greenwood) feels. She has the power that Billy never had. This is in the novel, but it’s not as emotionally powerful or explicit. One does not get a sense that there’s that strong of a connection between Nicole and Billy Ansel, except if they were to consider that their two perspectives are some of the only ones that the reader reads. In the film this connection is more apparent because of Atom Agoyan’s highly ingenious structure, which is not in the novel. When Billy and Nicole have a similar sentiment, Agoyan can cut back and forth between the two of them and create a parallel between the two characters that would be hard to find if the film where told in chronological order, or in the deposition type format found in the novel. Agoyan makes one feel that they are actually watching a town and how citizens of that town connect with one another in times of tragedy, even if they are not in the same scene with one another. The grieving townspeople are emotionally stranded, and at the same time emotionally united. They have an internal form of dignity, and they feel no need to make that public. This enhances the feeling of the book; that feeling is there it’s just not as public about the sentiment.
Both film and novel share a similar purpose in showing the audience/viewer that the world is not as simple as a lawyer’s deposition presents it to a judge. There are many different elements that go into a person’s motivation to do anything. Both Banks and Atom Agoyan don’t believe in showing one character’s viewpoint on a given situation, but instead believe in showing several interpretations of events. A film like A Civil Action or a John Grisham book’s response to anything is to go to court. Once something enters that particular domain, the lawyer becomes the dominating viewpoint for everyone to pay attention to. He’s the writer, and Banks can obviously empathize with this viewpoint. Stevens (Ian Holm), like Russell Banks, phrases his words in a certain way to convince anyone listening to them (Banks a Agoyan section of the DVD); hence the deposition type structure in the novel. What Banks is trying to do in his novel is separate his particular moral standing on his subject matter. He’s trying his best not to be Stevens while at the same time not condemning his actions in anyway. Agoyan concentrates on this complexity in his film and adds another layer; Stevens becomes the film director. (This makes sense considering that film is a visual medium, and that Agoyan is himself a film director.) There’s a love hate aspect to this character that Agoyan has talked about in countless interviews. Stevens in the film is almost manipulating a family to respond a certain way, in much the same way that a director manipulates his actors; it’s all to create a great performance. Yet, he may be doing this for just intentions, just as Nicole is whenever she lies. They are coming at different angles, and yet their actions all amount to the same thing which is simply trying to keep one’s integrity in times of grief; how to empower oneself to get out of grief (Charlie Rose interview with Atom Egoyan.)
What’s wonderful about both the book and film is the fact that the case never reaches the courtroom; the situation never gets a chance to become that fictional. Both the book and film are about being emotionally rooted. The difference between both book and film is that the deposition format is much like a courtroom, in that each party is trying to make their case. Therefore, emotional honesty leaves the picture. In the book, the reader can tell in the case of someone like Dolores Driscoll that she’s trying to make herself look as innocent as possible in the eyes of the lawyer. When she states that:
“No, I am almost sure now that it was an optical illusion or a mirage, a sort of afterimage, maybe, of the dog that I had seen on the Flats and that had frightened and moved me so. But at the time I could not tell the difference. And as I have always done when I’ve had two bad choices and nothing else available to me, I arranged it so that if I erred I’d come out on the side of the angels. Which is to say, I acted as though it was a real dog I saw or a small deer or possibly even a lost child from the Flats, barely a half mile away,” (Banks, pg. 34.) clearly she’s trying to sell an image of herself being responsible that is somewhat farfetched. This doesn’t happen in the film (Dillon, pg. 228.) One is not choosing sides here; it’s more like an emotional tapestry where past, present, and future all commingle to create a character as they actually are; not as what they want to be viewed as.
In the novel, Stevens can create a persona for his reader that paints a false picture of the man. In the film he’s not in charge of how he’s presented. Therefore, the past can interweave in certain points contradicting a given impression that the audience has of him, and that he has of himself. This occurs in the film when Stevens runs into an old friend of his daughter’s. His past that he’s been blocking out of his mind for so long inevitably catches up with him here, and he begins to recount a horrible moment where his daughter almost died from an insect infection. Stephens talking to his daughter’s friend is narrating the shot where Stevens is a young man, holding a knife to his daughter’s throat. He had to do so because if his daughter’s swelling continued, he’d have to perform an emergency tracheotomy on her. This is an indication of how the past present and future are really synonymous moments in this film. Stevens is haunted by this image, because it’s indicative of how he feels a tremendous amount of guilt over being the man who cares so much for his daughter’s life that he will irrevocably damage her in the process. It’s a metaphor for what he’s doing to the dead school children; basically going against their wishes. Before this moment was a scene showing the bus accident; it’s the intercutting that occurs throughout the film, without the adherence to chronological order, that basically blows Mitchell Stevens’ cover in the audience’s eyes. Stevens is trying to create a civil case out of the bus accident out of guilt for the fact that he could never save his daughter.
Another indicative moment is the high overhead shots of a young Stevens in bed with his family which is interspersed throughout the film. It’s a moment of happiness lost, much like what happened in the bus accident. It’s not a coincidence that the one moment occurs after the other; the editing is drawing connections that are not in Banks book. These are moments that show that even though these characters are separated emotionally from one another, they are still connected through their all dealing with grief; this is something the lawyer doesn’t want to remind himself of but is haunted by constantly-hence the constant going back to that particular moment throughout the film. The title shot, which moves horizontally showing Stevens family in bed, is a metaphor for the structure of the film-it’s like a timeline and yet what’s missing on that empty floor that they are laying on is the other grief stricken moments that happen to the others in the film. Hence, the emotional isolation that all these characters are feeling, even if they are experiencing the same emotions. Linear time separates all of them, just as the deposition format separated the characters from the novel.
An interesting dialogue between film and novel occur in the moments when the film differs from the book: examples include the changing of the setting from upstate New York to Canada, and Nicole’s reading of the pied piper of Hamelin story to some of the children who eventually die in the bus accident. For the change of setting, I almost feel that it changes the tone of the story to one of even more mysteriousness than the novel. In my opinion, Canada is a beautifully mysterious place, where the people there are content in the mystery. This would help the feeling of the victims wanting to be left alone with their grief, and not wanting to necessarily know the “truth”. As Agoyan has said, Canada is not as much of a litigious society as the United States is (Charlie Rose Atom Egoyan interview.) They are content in their emotionally frozen states. What’s interesting about this is that Banks writes about this, and its simply more subtly stated and harder to interpret because the reader is so focused in one character’s viewpoint on the situation; unlike the film the reader can’t clearly see a connection between one character’s state and another’s because the viewpoints are not joined together by editing. In the novel, when Billy states that, “The snow continued to fall, and from the perspective of Risa and the others back at the accident site, I must have disappeared into it, just walked straight out of their reality into my own. In a few moments I was utterly alone in the cold snowy world, walking steadily away from everyone else, moving as fast as I could, toward my children and my wife” (Banks, 72.) What he doesn’t realize is that he’s much closer to the townspeople than he thinks; they all share in the same ideal that the lawyer is ostracized from, and the film makes this connection explicit.
No matter the differences between both book and film, the basic emotional core of the story is there and this is what makes The Sweet Hereafter such an interesting case of adaptation. It’s almost as if Atom Egoyan and Russell Banks are looking at the story from different perspectives, and yet both reach the same conclusion. It’s this type of emotional maturity that I think both hope for in a better world; I think this is the message that both are trying to get across to people. It’s also what the story is all about. One doesn’t necessarily have to be on the same page to understand where someone else is coming from. In this instance, The Sweet Hereafter is the perfect book to be adapted into film because it’s all about adapting to someone else’s viewpoint. This is something that the filmmaker and writer and audience go through when encountering this story; moral prejudice about a given character is gone. This is not something that the different characters go through, and that’s because the structure of both book and film have allowed that to be that way. The characters are stranded from each other.
However, even though Nicole and Stevens are contrasting parties in terms of moral beliefs, they are not enemies. Both Banks and Egoyan care more about the integrity of their characters and the sustaining of their integrity, than whether or not they solve their emotional problems in a legalistic manner, because once something enters the courtroom the situation does turn black and white in an instant. Roles have been cast; there’s always a villain and a hero. One shudders to think what this film would be like if it was made in a non-independent vain, with the studio system involved.
This passage by Russell Banks: “They wanted her to stash her pain and guilt where they didn’t have to look at it. But she wasn’t having any of that. Silently, with her head bowed, Dolores was plunking herself down in the exact center of the town’s grief and rage, compelling them by her presence at these funerals to define her. Was she a victim of this tragedy, or was she the cause of it? She had placed herself on the scales of their judgement, but they did not want to judge her. To them, she was both, of course, victim and cause; just as to herself she was both. Like every parent when something terrible happens to his child, Dolores was innocent, and she was guilty” (Banks, 144.) makes me immediately think of the actors in the film. It’s almost as if Sarah Polley and Ian Holm’s faces are synonymous with that novel, and I don’t think this deters from the novels intentions in anyway (usually it’s a bad thing when you read a novel and can’t help but think of the actors in the adaptation because this does take away from the novelist’s intentions.) However, here it’s almost as if these actors were born to play these parts; they basically enhance the book’s intentions. I can’t think of any other actors who could play multilayered characters such as these; they make one aware of how Egoyan and Banks intentions are to not show a black and white world on the screen. Everyone involved in this enterprise has just as much quiet dignity as the roles that they are inhabiting. All one has to do is study the independent nature of Sarah Polley’s career to see that she very much is like the character that she plays in this film. She had a chance to become a big Hollywood actress in Hollywood, and decided to continue making independent films in Canada instead; consequently making much less money than she could have made had she went to Hollywood. The whole idea of this enterprise is independence away from people who think they have your better interests at heart, even if this is the “wrong” thing to do.
Works Cited:
1. Landwehr, Margarete Johanna. Egoyan’s Film Adaptation of Bank’s “the Sweet Hereafter”: “The Pied Piper” as Trauma Narrative and Mise-en-abyme.” Literature Film Quartely, 2008, Vol. 36 Issue 3, pg. 215-222.
2. Dillon, Steven. Lyricism and Accident in the Sweet Hereafter. Literature Film Quarterly, 2003, Vol. 31 Issue 3, pgs. 227-230.
3. Charlie Rose segment on the Sweet Hereafter: Interview with Atom Egoyan.
4. “Before and After The Sweet Hereafter” produced and directed by William M. Patterson and David L. Miller at Roaring Mouse Entertainment Inc.
5. Banks, Russell. The Sweet Hereafter. Harper Perennial, New York, 1991.

Similarity and Disparity Never Being Obvious in American Film

One of the qualities of American film that obsesses me is finding out something on one’s own that has never been mentioned in film scholarship or the history books; in finding connections that no one ever thought of on their own or never wanted to find on their own. It’s much easier to let history do all the talking, but I find that hard to do considering that the film medium is still a very new art form. Therefore, in my opinion, similarities and disparities can never easily be found in American film.
Two conspiracy suspense thrillers that deal with all the ambivalences of paranoia are The Conversation and Blow Out. Even though both films deal with men ensnared in a conspiracy who entangle themselves more and more in danger because of their obsession with that conspiracy, there is a major difference between both films and that is that The Conversation represents the beginning period of paranoia mounting in America during the 70’s, while Blow Out represents the end of that period. That doesn’t mean that Blow Out is a less complex or less disturbing film than The Conversation; I’d actually argue that Brian DePalma’s film is more disturbing than Coppola’s film because Blow Out represents the end of a period that Coppola obviously felt disdain towards and that De Palma revered.
For De Palma, the 70’s was a period where it was right and just for people to feel paranoid; for him this was a form of inquisitiveness on the part of the American people, in terms of distrusting their government, and who could blame them after Watergate? It’s because of the paranoia felt by reporters like Woodward and Bernstein that crooks like Nixon were held accountable for their actions. (Actually, the paranoia felt by the American people was justified considering that Nixon was pardoned by Ford.) For Coppola, the paranoia felt in the 70’s creates creeps like Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) who is obsessed with paranoia only for his own personal satisfaction; he gets off of surveilling others, and the feeling that he himself is being surveilled; he could care less about the victims of his obsessions. For Jack Terry (John Travolta), he becomes obsessed with the conspiracy that he’s entrenched in for the simple reason that he feels that what has been done (a governor running for president was murdered, and the murder was made to look like an accident) is morally repulsive. Therefore, something needs to be done to rectify the situation. Fortunately, Jack recorded the “accident”, so therefore he can hold those responsible accountable. However, Jack didn’t realize that the era where citizens were willing to stick their necks out on the line for the sake of liberty has passed. No one believes his theory and by the time the film ends Jack goes powerlessly mad; reduced to forever being the sound man on schlocky Horror films. (Caul works in a line of work where everyone’s a paranoid bugman-in Blow Out Jack is the lone wolf. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if movie technicians started turning on the government?)
This is a brilliant metaphor on De Palma’s part considering that he has often been accused of making schlocky Horror films, but more to the point De Palma’s belief in this film is that empty headed films serve as a distraction away from the grave reality of what’s going on in the real world-which is that everyone is apathetic towards real causes that matter and that society post the 70’s simply loves window dressing. By the end of Blow Out Jack has gone back to the role that society has relegated for him-it’s De Palma’s stating that audiences in the future will keep him away from making another Blow Out, and he was right. Even though by the end of both films both characters end up totally disgruntled and destroyed, in The Conversation Harry brought this onto himself, while in Blow Out society has created another Harry Caul in Jack.
What I find interesting about both films is the casting of the leading men. In The Conversation, Harry is cast indelibly; Gene Hackman is the perfect person to play an obsessive considering that he himself is such a method acting leading man type. What’s odd is the casting of fun lovin’ Vincent "Vinnie" Barbarino/Tony Manero in the part of an obsessive paranoid. However, I think there is a point to this casting choice (not to mention that Travolta is brilliant in the part) and that is that initially Jack shouldn’t be off putting like Harry. It’s only as the film goes on that Jack becomes more and more the stereotypical paranoid, which is just another way for society to castigate him. (In some ways, Blow Out is a subtle critique of The Conversation, which is odd, considering the fact that De Palma was probably highly influenced and enamored by the film.) It’s this sense of being enamored that makes Blow Out a more romantic version of The Conversation; it’s also why a romantic leading man type was cast as Jack. (The Conversation is an all out renunciation of everything in its sight-perfectly fitting for a 1970’s downer of a film, and perfectly fitting for Gene Hackman to play the part.) Jack is in love with the victim of this conspiracy Sally (Nancy Allen) because she represents his love with liberty against tyranny; he wants to keep that ideal/her alive. Harry has no attachment with his victims, other than being obsessed with them-as if they were tabloid figures. However, I find the style of Blow Out to be more disturbing than The Conversation, because of the fall from grace aspect of Jack’s character. It’s reminiscent of the shower scene in Psycho; the audience tragically knows ahead of time what is going to transpire for Jack, while in The Conversation, Harry is lost in his own obsessivness, so that by the time the ending happens it’s a complete shock. I think the reason for this is that Blow Out is the more plangent film; it’s 1980’s statement is one of lament in the form of a question directed toward The Conversation and Coppola-What’s the point of even fighting the system, when you know that it and everyone else is crooked?
Seeking justice in the American landscape is a difficult endeavor; especially in American film. That’s because it’s so difficult to apprehend the motives and rationale behind seeking justice; analysts constantly get it wrong. Even though it’s popular to state that Unforgiven is an example of how Clint Eastwood’s politics have changed as a filmmaker compared to his earlier work, I feel that Eastwood’s ideology is more complicated than that; let’s say for the purposes of argument that his politics have changed and they haven’t changed. If one were to compare Unforgiven to Dirty Harry, one could clearly see that even though both films hold different stances toward violence, both films also hold the law that’s protecting a given area (in Dirty Harry that area is San Francisco, while in Unforgiven that area is Big Whiskey, Wyoming) in contempt. The way both films are different is that both have different takes on why those particular forces should be in contempt, in relation to that particular law system’s views on violence.
If one were to compare both films they could clearly see that both Dirty Harry’s structure and Unforgiven’s structure are similar. In both films the characters that Clint Eastwood plays (Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry and William Munny in Unforgiven) both have to fight the law of the land to seek justice. In Dirty Harry, the police force that Harry Callahan works for won’t charge the mass murder in the film because of lack of evidence and Harry’s unethical behavior in going after him. Therefore, Harry has to go after the killer illegally, in order to stop him. Clearly, the film has an ideological hatred of the ethics of the police force and judicial system in San Francisco circa the 1970’s. Unforgiven has a similar contempt for how the sheriff Little Bill Daggett runs his town. In the film, William Munny (an ex-killer for hire) comes out of his retirement for one last job, which he takes ironically enough because of his ethics. The job concerns killing the man who disfigured a prostitute and was not reprimanded in anyway by Bill Dagget. In Munny’s efforts to seek out this man, he seeks out help from his old partner in crime, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman); these two are a similar partner team to both Harry and his partner Chico Gonzalez (Reni Santoni) in Dirty Harry. They are lone wolves seeking out justice without the help of the law. Both films share the similar trope of having their middle and end scenes be reversals of each other. In Dirty Harry, when Harry tracks down the killer, the killer one ups Harry by beating him up, and by the end of the film there’s a reversal of roles where Harry beats and kills the killer; the same occurs in Unforgiven.
Yet, there’s a subtle difference between both films and that is that the villain in Unforgiven, the character who resembles Andy Robinson’s Scorpio killer in Dirty Harry, is Gene Hackman’s character. This is clearly Eastwood’s way of stating that even though he still does not trust the Law of the land, at the same time he does not advocate violence like he did in the past. (In Dirty Harry, the police force were keeping Harry from administering violence on the Scorpio killer, while in Unforgiven it’s ironically enough the sheriff who believes in administering violence on people who don’t deserve to be treated in such a harsh way.) There are other indications of Eastwood’s stand against violence (albeit not against vigilantism.) It’s in the characterization of William Munny and how he doesn’t have it in him to kill anymore, even if it’s for justice. It’s interesting that both Eastwood’s character and Hackman’s character used to be murderous gunslingers. Hackman’s character hasn’t changed at all, even though it appears that he’s become a law-abiding citizen; he loves the prestige that he now receives as a psychopathic sherrif while Munny doesn’t want anything to do with the biographer who tries to glorify him by film’s end for killing so many people.
It’s almost as if Eastwood is criticizing the character he played in Dirty Harry for not being a vigilante in the right way; it’s almost as if he’s equating him with the initially psychopathic William Munny who hasn’t reformed. There’s an indicative scene in Unforgiven when Eastwood says to the Schofielfd Kid (who in Dirty Harry would have been the Scorpio killer or another victim of Harry’s like the bank robber at the beginning of the film because he views himself as a pro in unlawful acts) that, “We all have it coming kid,” meaning that everyone will get what’s coming to him in Heaven or Hell. (This Eastwood character is different from Harry Callahan in that he’s religious opposed to viewing himself as the enactor of justice in the world-in Dirty Harry it’s almost as if Callahan’s Magnum gun was a holy religious object-in Unforgiven guns are abhorred by the filmmakers.) If one were to compare this scene to the one at the beginning of Dirty Harry where Eastwood threatens a bank robber by saying, “I know what you’re thinking—“Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But, being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya punk?” clearly Eastwood is trying to subvert the Eastwood mythos of being pro-violence and pro-guns.
The scene where in Unforgiven where Morgan Freeman’s character can’t shoot one of the men who disfigured the girl, and Eastwood reluctantly (which is the key style in Unforgiven-everything including the look of the film is reluctant and not quite sure of itself-including the film’s politics) kills the man is perhaps the best part of the film; the scene ends when Eastwood demands that the other men give the person he just shot some water. If one were to compare this scene with the one in Dirty Harry when Eastwood and his partner come down on the Scorpio killer in the middle of the film in the football field, it’s an indication of Eastwood’s distaste in his past films for vigilante justice.
However, there still is that caveat that the law doesn’t help matters in anyway-both films deal with a figure like Hackman’s stripping citizens of his town of their guns so that they can basically be unsafe from him. It’s this version of Eastwood’s politics (perhaps his view on gun control and distrusting of the government) that hasn’t changed. Even though one form of the government in Dirty Harry are pacifists, and one form of the government in Unforgiven are for appearance’s sake pacifists, Eastwood equates both factions as the same reprehensible force; they both don’t believe in protecting citizens from harm’s way but instead mean to merely hide their reprehensibleness behind a set of regulations; it’s always the Eastwood character who is looked down upon by everyone else as being a vigilante. In some ways, Unforgiven isn’t that different from Dirty Harry at all.
Films that do share similar qualities, albeit not obviously, are both Citizen Kane and The Usual Suspects. Both films deal with men who are complete legends because they are so mysterious (Charles Foster Kane (Orson Wells) in Citizen Kane and Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects.) Both films utilize a highly complex structure of someone else’s perspective on the individual in question. What’s brilliant about The Usual Suspects is that it’s a modernist subversive take on the Citizen Kane idea in that the person being interrogated—Verbal (Kevin Spacey)—is Keyser Soze. Imagine if in Citizen Kane the person being asked on what Rosebud was was actually Kane in disguise! Well, that’s not a bad way to create an alibi for yourself and get away with a crime in the process.
Perhaps the ingeniousness of The Usual Suspects occurs because, unlike Citizen Kane, it was a film made in the 90’s opposed to the Forties; the one good thing you can say about films made in a recent decade is that so many narrative devices have been used throughout the years that films have to become more ingeniousness in their storytelling techniques. For the 40’s Citizen Kane’s use of telling a story (in this case Kane’s life story is the plot) through different interpretations, or viewpoints, of events was a highly ingenious way in which to tell a story, because the audience would be basically receiving information from unreliable narrators, much like in a novel. The audience had to choose which perspective was the correct one for themselves; they never got a hold of the “true” Charles Foster Kane, and that’s because the movie wasn’t told from an omniscient narrator’s perspective. If a person hated Kane, they obviously would make him out to be a jerk; if they loved him he would be viewed as a saint. What makes the ending of The Usual Suspects so shocking is that the whole movie is a lie and the audience isn’t aware of this until the very end of the movie; at least in Citizen Kane the audience was aware that no viewpoint on Kane was the “correct” viewpoint. They weren’t lulled into believing that what they were seeing was actual fact. In The Usual Suspects, the audience is tricked into believing that out of everyone in the movie, what Verbal is saying in comparison to everyone else’s interpretation of events is gospel; by the end of the film it turns out the audience has been duped by the Devil.
Both films not only were influential in terms of their structures, but also were influential stylistically as well. I think in terms of style this is where both movies differ. For Citizen Kane, the film’s use of deep focus shot composition made it so that the audience could see both the figure in the foreground and the background as well. I think this, coupled with the highly flamboyant aesthetics of the film (the camera is constantly making an interesting movement or is constantly showing an event from an interesting perspective) allows the audience to feel that what they are seeing is highly dubious at best in terms of being factually accurate. The Usual Suspects use of slow zooms and non-flashy aesthetics creates an impression, in terms of the audience’s interpretation, that Verbal’s story is factually accurate.
What’s similar about both film’s is Orson Wells and Bryan Singer’s use of the maguffin. In Citizen Kane, the maguffin is Rosebud, while in The Usual Suspects it’s Keyser Söze. Both things are not as important as the journey that the audience goes through to find them; they are just a pretext for a film to exist. Both films deal with trying to extract information on what exactly those things are, yet by film’s end both the reporter from Citizen Kane (William Alland) and the police investigator from The Usual Suspects (Chazz Palminteri) (who are basically surrogates of the audience) don’t satisfactorily receive what they want. (The reporter never finds out what Rosebud is and the police investigator figures out, only too late, that Verbal duped him, and that he really was Keyser Soze. Verbal flees by the end of the film; Rosebud goes up in flames.)
It’s fascinating that both films have very satisfying powerful cathartic endings, and yet at the same time there’s something off about them. I think this has to do with the fact that even when the maguffin is solved by film’s end, the mystery remains the mystery. In Citizen Kane, even though the audience figures out what Rosebud is the audience still doesn’t know why Rosebud was so important to Kane’s life; here’s a man who owned everything and yet the thing he most cared about was this paltry sled? In The Usual Suspects, even though the audience figures out who Keyser Soze is, the question audiences have been asking for years afterwards is, what was fabricated in the film and what wasn’t? Audiences for both films have obsessed over both maguffin’s for years afterwards because both mysteries haven’t quite been completely solved. For years afterwards, audiences have resembled the look on Chazz Palminteri’s face upon recounting The Usual Suspects and Citizen Kane; they are stupefied by both film’s inconclusiveness.
Both The Hangover and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie share similarities in that they are entirely made up of segments. They are interesting films in that they are both linear and non-linear at the same time. It’s very difficult to follow character progression when trying to study a series of Youtube clips, and the same applies for both films. You might say that they were made for the Youtube generation. If one sketch doesn’t pan out, there’s always another to relieve the disappointment. This isn’t situational comedy so much as it is almost a surreal form of comedy. In Bunel’s film, each segment turns out to be someone’s dream, while in The Hangover moments don’t connect in terms of thematic development and that’s what makes the movie funnier. (I’m thinking of the song number that comes out in the middle of nowhere at one point in the film.) What this type of structure allows the filmmakers to do is to basically please themselves and the audience without worrying about whether or not they are breaking convention; the movie can all of a sudden turn into a musical or a slapstick farce and the filmmakers would be applauded rather than derided for their efforts. I think it’s rather endearing that the young director of The Hangover, Todd Phillips, was inspired by an older directors efforts; I think it’s what makes The Hangover rather touching and surprising.
I feel that what makes The Hangover so fresh is the fact that it appears from the outset to be like another stupid bromance fraternity house type of comedy, and yet it unfolds in such a beautiful manner that it becomes a rather graceful comedy by its conclusion; just like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. I think this has to do with the fact that the audience has missed the stupid escapades of the three main protagonists; there’s subtlety in the fact that the movie that the audience was expecting is bypassed by the filmmakers. These guys have to retrace their steps in order to figure out what they did the night before. It’s a sobering experience. I feel this is also greatly inspired by Bunel’s film. In The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, the Bourgeoisie characters that Bunel has aped and made fun of so much in his past films keep trying to attend a dinner but somehow never get to because of one thing or another. The audience in that film is also constantly getting hints of what they are missing and nothing more. I feel this device is supposed to show, in a subtle comical way-and therefore the right way in which to do so, the maturing developmental nature of these characters. Their point of view on matters has to naturally shift because they can’t reach their original traditional (it’s tradition for them to do these kinds of things) goal; in a sense they have to grow up. Stu (Ed Helmes) has to finally realize that his wife is horribly controlling and that he shouldn’t be bossed around by her anymore, just as Rafael Acosta (Fernando Ray) has to realize what a pretentious man he is, and that he shouldn’t put down the poor because he’s just as much, if not more so, of a buffoon than they are. Stu is constantly trying to show how much more mature he is from his friends, only to realize by film’s conclusion that his state of mind is basically a macho fantasy; should one constantly suffer for the sake of being mature? As The Hangover consistently shows, it just a’int worth it because eventually one can’t keep hiding the mess that they have created for themselves-one should rather embrace it.
What makes both films subtle and graceful (almost like a Chaplin comedy) is the fact that both Bunel and Todd Phillips do not condemn or put down their main characters, even though they very easily could have. This must have been hard for Bunel, considering that he always held the bourgeoisie in such contempt in his past films; age cooled him out. He sees their actions as comic and rather endearing in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, just as Phillips is enamored with his characters, because they begin to embrace their faults. It’s interesting that both films mark drastic departures for both filmmakers. Bunel’s previous films, especially The Exterminating Angel, hold characters like the ones featured in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie in great contempt. The Exterminating Angel shows the dinner party that the audience misses in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; there the audience and the main characters can never leave the dinner that they attend. Bunel hated the bourgeoisie because he was a deeply political man. I don’t know if I would call Todd Phillips a deeply political filmmaker, but there is a similarity to him and Bunel in that his past films like Road Trip and Old School have a contemptible streak in them when it comes to depicting the main characters in the films. Maybe it’s because of the lack of depth in those films and those characters that Phillips had a stupid snide feeling creep into those films; well, Bunel may have been going through a similar process albeit in a more rich manner.
It’s amazing to me that supposed “disparate” films like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Hangover, and The Usual Suspects and Citizen Kane, have more in common with one another than supposed “similar” films like Blow Out and The Conversation, and Unforgiven and Dirty Harry. I particularly find this shocking, considering that the films that share similarities with one another don’t have the same subject matter at all, while the films that are dissimilar from one another share basically the same exact subject matter and milieu. I think these oddities are a testament to the richness and complexity in American filmmaking, as well as to their deceptiveness. It’s almost as if Blow Out and Unforgiven are subtle critiques, made to look like homage’s, of The Conversation and Dirty Harry. Whereas The Usual Suspects and The Hangover are subtle enhances of the methods, both in terms of style and content, utilized in Citizen Kane and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The irony in the appreciation of American film is that we are comparing the wrong films to one another.