Cloverfield

Cloverfield is a movie that’s going to get a lot of flak from a lot of people in just about every major camp. Its obvious critics won’t like it because it has virtually no plot. Art house hipsters won’t dig it because it’s a monster movie and it’s ridiculously far fetched. And yes, even the mainstream theatergoers won’t like it because it is fragmented, disorienting, and lacks conventional structure or resolution. I’m here to tell you, as a dissenting voice, that this film is fucking beautiful.

Never before have I seen an aesthetic established, held, and sustained that sells itself so well as to become an integral part of the storytelling. You can say it’s been done before, and yes, it has, but never this well or to these ends. The film operates on a basic suspense horror level at first glance, but it is also about the fragmentation of modern perception due to omnipresent technology and media. The film is viewed completely in first person shots of a man with a camera, dead set on documenting this important event in history that he cannot even come close to wholly understanding but through sheer intuition seems to grasp its magnitude and the necessity of its record.

The opening sequence of a party brilliantly lays the scene in fair Manhattan of hip young people engaged in their own society. There are relationship woes and romantic foibles for all and the use of non-actors draws us expertly into their flawed attempts at connection. The people who claim this film is bad because not enough is explained about the monster are missing the point completely. The film is, at its core, about the connection that one man feels for a woman, a connection so deep that he would be willing to risk his own life in the most dangerous of situations to be with her, and to make sure that she is safe. The film may be pessimistic on a large scale, but the purity of the emotions and the two final scenes generously make up for any criticism one could heap on it about being emotionally bankrupt.

This is a film that you’re either with or you’re not. If you stop to question how the battery on the camera has not run out three quarters of the way in its lost you. The film is designed in such a way as to keep you from being sidetracked. The way it is filmed almost makes you part of the actions that are occurring in all of their jumbled and obscure glory. Had the film been shot as a standard film it wouldn’t have a tenth of the impact.

Cloverfield is an intellectually fascinating, aesthetically astonishing, emotionally heartbreaking, and yes, extraordinarily entertaining film. It begs to be seen in theatres as its sound design and the sheer towering magnificence of its visuals are so very important to its experience. See it before it’s gone.

Juno

I was fortunate enough to attend a free preview screening of Juno tonight. It isn’t being released, and then in selected theaters, for about another month. It stars Ellen Page, who you wouldn’t even recognize from her turn as a vicious vixen in Hard Candy, as a high schooler who gets pregnant. It is a quiet love story, an eccentric comedy, and a mature second feature from Jason Reitman, director of Thank You for Smoking.

Everything about the movie is good, but the writing in particular is of note. It was written by first timer Diablo Cody, an ex-stripper. Juno is her first venture into scriptwriting, and wow, what an entrance. The dialogue of Juno and her friends is of over educated and slightly displaced teenagers who are struggling to match their emotions with their IQ’s. There are many laugh out loud moments in the film, with Juno’s penchant for blunt quips that get to the heart of things. The film is endlessly quotable and extremely clever.

The fact that I can only write about and have it sound cheesy is to the film’s credit that it pulls everything off without seeming overdone in the least. The characters are fully fleshed, even in minor roles, and acting is spectacular all around. The editing gets a little flashy, but never enough to be distracting, quite on the contrary to Thank You for Smoking’s fiasco. Reitman understood that this story is too pure to need stylistic fireworks.

The structure of it, going from autumn round to summer is telling. Though decidedly not Hollywood in any sense, it is an uplifting film. There was just the right amount of balance between the tragic and comic moments in the film, often intermingled. And one of the best elements of the whole film was the soundtrack. The music is diverse and interesting, but all fits a very specific mood type of gently sweet and mildly downbeat. From The Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking With You” to The Moldy Peaches' “Anyone Else But You,” all of the cues are spot on.

I’m refraining from giving away the plot, as I usually do, simply because it’s a new film and people deserve to see it fresh. Juno is an affecting, honest, and nice new little indie movie. Go see it when it comes out.

In the Mood for Love

In the Mood for Love is the perfect title for which the film it has been bestowed upon. The film is all about the mood, the feeling, the perception and readiness for love, and how it never comes to fruition. It is a deep wound that the film leaves when experienced correctly and fully. It is a film of such dramatic, such intricate yet bold styles that it is difficult to fully grasp the narrative the first, or even the first few times viewed. Much like how I had to see The Conformist a second time to even know why such magnificent frames were composed, Love provides a certain enigmatic, elliptical approach to storytelling that is not wholly impenetrable, but blurry and indistinct, just like our time worn memories of the past.

We are given little plot. Two people, a man and a woman whose lovers have supposedly found new lovers and are left to themselves only to find what they had wanted all along through aforementioned scorn. It is not the story that sets the mood: it is the style. The style is the narrative, it is the plot, the exploration, the rising and falling action, the climax. It is the character development and slowly moving poetry at the core of the film. Its style transcends simply being flashy and aesthetically pleasing—it is an integral part, if not the most important, to the entire experience.

So what is this style? On a very basic level it is elegantly composed people, or parts of people. We are shown feet, waists, and bodies without heads. We are shown rain dripping into puddles, flickering neon lights and ascending spiraling swirls of smoke. It is all very subtle, very low key. Had you not been paying attention the plot points would pass you by and you would only be left with those marvelous images of Maggie Cheung in her myriad of different outfits.

The view from the camera is often obscured or shown in part. Many things block the action, our view of it. We are never shown the faces of the suspected cheating spouses. We are only witnessing parts of the truth, the objective truths of day-to-day living. What are hidden are the secrets we keep from one another, which we try to hide and cover up. These are visually manifested onto the canvas, these blockages we must accept to continue on.

Much of the film is done is slow motion. This means different things at different times. Slow motion could signify hyper perceptivity of a particular situation. It is also used for pacing and to suggest the passage of time. This is used in conjunction with its soundtrack, which almost exclusively occurs during these slowed sequences. They together create a singular mood, an expression of longing trapped within these two main characters who are themselves trapped in an unforgiving societal taboo, even when they are viewed modernly as overly loyal victims.

In the Mood for Love is a beautiful film. It is oftentimes breathtaking in its choreography and plotting of the emotional map of longing and unrequited love which exists in a state beyond desire and beyond pain in a realm so embedded within ones psyche that is becomes engrained into the very beat of ones heart.

Punch-Drunk Love

The color in Punch-Drunk Love is nothing short of breathtaking. There are an infinite number of ways an image can be aesthetically pleasing. Films like Barry Lyndon have a richness, a softness to their tone. Films like The Conformist have outstanding cinematography and framing. Films like Play Time convey extreme amounts of information within every frame. Films like The Brown Bunny express the protagonist’s state of mind through the image alone. Of all the other ways and examples there are, the color in Punch-Drunk Love is of significant note.

Leaving out symbolic and metaphorical insight, it would be of note simply for the fact of how bold, how precise, and how pronounced it is within the film without being a hindrance. The bold primary colors that Barry and Lena wear through most of the film, the blue suit and the red dress, are more than clothes. We come to identify their characters as inextricably entwined with these garments.

The blue suit serves as being both an awkward attempt at trying to be businesslike and professional, but more importantly as a characteristic that Barry is trying to reach. He wants to be known as a serious man, he wants to be respected and admired, but in his attempt is too unsure of himself and is only treated with more disrespect and given harsh words for it.

Lena wears a bright red dress signifying compassion and strength, humanity almost. She is the redeeming factor for Barry, she is his very lifeline, and the blood in his veins is manifested in the brightness of her dress. Red is a warm, gentle color. Had she been wearing green or black the (somewhat subconscious) effect would be lost.

The multitudinous flashes of light are almost to be considered as color in this film. They are such an omnipotent force that they become part of the canvas, with dashes flying and splattering at us as we inch along through the various pitfalls and peaks of Barry’s mind. The director has used light in such a way in his other films, but not to such an extent. You can definitely tell it was a deliberate decision. And when Barry and Lena are in her hotel room in Hawaii what is Barry wearing? Nothing. He’s shed his blue suit, and she’s shed her red dress, and Barry is wrapped in a white blanket—the color that is produced when all the different rays of light are combined. A unified complete whole: just like the love each character is experiencing at that moment.

Punch-Drunk Love is an interesting film in that it subverts its genre several times. It could even be argued that it never truly establishes any genre. It begins as a somewhat comedic drama and evolves into a character study that becomes a shaky romance and then employs elements of a thriller while continuing to be a romance. It is a very complex film, indeed, and does not deserve to be pigeonholed, which is what the majority of the people who’ve seen it do.

I would venture to say there is such a backlash for this movie because of the casting. It was inspired to cast Adam Sandler in such an unusual role, but that unfortunately draws the wrong crowd to the picture. Obviously, that doesn’t affect the film, just the mythos around it.

I originally saw this film before I was into quote unquote art films and before I even knew who P.T. Anderson was. Magnolia has since become one of my all time favorites and I admire his work to the extent of explaining to people that as a filmmaker I would like to become the next P.T. Anderson. I watched it with my mother when it came out and we were both befuddled to the point of anger.

I’ve come back to it many times since, always with a fresh perspective. Different things jump out at me upon each viewing. What I initially found really interesting was the use of violence. Barry is obviously emotionally stunted, and probably partly because of his sisters. It's as if he is shoved into a corner, emotionally, and the only way he can work his way out of that is through violence. This is not really Barrys fault, I think, because he has never been able to learn a better way in our messed up society that discourages male emotion.

Think about it: he smashes the windows when he is uncomfortable at the party, the hammer thrown when he was a child because he was made fun of, destorying the bathroom when Lena brings up the wrong topic.

So when he attacks the kids with the pipe and are we supposed to be happy for him for protecting his woman? I say no. Violence is not an answer, but that has become Barrys go to solution for everything. Is this not a double standard? He is praised for violence in some situations and scolded in others. Is society sending Barry mixed messages or is he supplying them himself? Why does Barry not like himself, is it because he cries and doesn't feel like a man? Or is it that he isn't as sex crazed and is just looking for a meaningful emotional connection, albeit the wrong route, but one nonetheless with the phone sex line.

Here is a man who finally has an emotional connection to another person and can only express it to her in violent terms, and I quote, "I'm lookin' at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fuckin' smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You're so pretty."

None of that really occurred to me upon this viewing, I was too caught up in Barrys progression thorugh the exalting effects of love and in the camerawork. It was only after seeing it five, six times that I realized the masterstroke of the constantly zooming and panning camerawork. The zoom works to express the closing entrapment of Barry’s mind, everyone singling him out and waiting to set him in their sights. He is continously running away, but we keep getting closer and closer until he snaps. The panning works to express Barry’s irritability and indecision. He sways back and forth attempting to find a comfortable medium, but never does.

Only when he makes a meaningful human connection does the camera stop to observe, such as in the bedroom and when they embrace in silhouette. Everyone rushes behind them, but they are stationary and secure, absolute in their devotion and understanding.

Punch Drunk Love is one of my favorite films. Everything from the acting to the sound design to the camerawork down to its hues resonates with me. Perhaps you need to be slightly introverted, or have come from a place that Barry has to really appreciate the nuance and intricacy of his character, and the overall arc of the storyline. It is a singular film, quirky in its approach but meaningful in its delivery. I feel that Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the great artists of his generation and that Punch will always stand out as a highlight in his oeuvre.

Requiem for a Dream

The Unending Suffering in Requiem for a Dream


Aronofsky employs a myriad of techniques of editing in Requiem. The most complex and dominant is what he has labeled hip-hop montage. In the commentary he explained that hip-hop has permeated every recess of culture with the exception of, for the most part, film. He therefore developed his own hip-hop technique, most noticeably in Pi, his first full length. While you can see the seeds germinating, the flower is not fully formed until Requiem.

This technique serves several purposes. It separates the viewer from the drugs. It glosses over them and allows us to focus on the altered behavior and perception of the characters instead of ruminating on the fact that they are addicts. It allows for a much greater sense of empathy than if we had to watch them shooting up. It is also a way to move the action along. When Harry and Tyrone begin selling drugs time flies and money piles. It is a masterful way to suggest the passage of a great amount of time. Oh, and it looks cool.

Another editing technique used quite a bit is split screen. The split screen is used mainly to direct our attention to a heightened sense of awareness that one of the characters is experiencing. For example, in the scene where Harry and Marion are caressing each other Aronofsky shows us the places on each character that they are focused on. They lose a sense of self and are enraptured by their lover. The visual representation of this has to be split. To try to convey this in one shot would feel cluttered and in disarray.

One of the most effective techniques is when he cues the different seasons. All of the titles are magnificent, from the decaying letters providing an ominous introduction and foreshadowing for their characters, on down to the title card. Winter in particular gets me every time, right as Brody is being splattered onto Tyrone, it drops with the sound of a steel gate and we are too engrossed in the action to care. It just puts you more on edge, drawing out tension and making you associate winter with complete desolation and downfall.

I am a very big fan of this film. I have a long history with it, dating back to middle school. I own the VHS, DVD, soundtrack, and original novel. I’ve seen it probably about 20 to 25 times now. This was the first film that made me identify style. It made me seek it out, try to understand how it was done. So many films are straightforward and linear that they provide no challenge, just entertainment. That’s why I latched onto Tarantino in my earlier movie watching days. I’ve since renounced him as a collage artist, but that’s beside the point. These films provoked me: they made me become an active viewer because of their content and their style.

I made all of my friends watch this at some point just to see how they’d react. The only thing that doesn’t hold up after so many viewings is Tappy, but that’s nitpicking. Ellen Burstyn draws me in every time, and I always hope that Harry and Marion come out okay in the end.

The one aspect that jumped out at me the most during this particular viewing was how from the first scene on all of the characters continuously tell themselves that everything is going to be okay. They do this religiously; as if mere positive thinking will bring them out of the holes they’ve dug. That makes everything all the more depressing.

Requiem is a very detailed, urgent film. It is quick paced, but full and developed. It makes you feel before it makes you think, but it does that, too. It is not a drug movie, as most call it, but a film about all addictions, be it mental or physical. It portrays the downward spiral we all could follow if we had been in the same set of circumstances. It is just about everything you could ask for in a film, on down its haunting last utopian image. A clean, well-to-do Harry with both arms intact and wrapped around his slim, beautiful mother with the light reflecting a perfect X over the entire scene, ensuring us that such happy endings are only meant for movies and dreams.

I once read an interview with Hubert Selby Jr., who when asked if Harry survived his surgery replied, “Of course he did. He has to suffer more.”

Changes In Resonance

Almost everyone who appreciates art is bound to go through stages in terms of what resonates with them. I personally have a history of first hating what I come to love, mainly in film.

The first time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey I absolutely despised it. I thought it was boring, tedious, and overall meant nothing. Then I had my first coup in terms of arriving at somewhat good taste (by my standards, anyways). I got seriously into Kubrick, hailing 2001 the most epic film of all time, that it was the zenith point of film history and nothing could touch it. That statement seems ridiculous looking back on it, and that is mainly because of Virginia Woolf.

I've recently become infatuated with Woolf's writings, mainly To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway among others. You see, 2001 deals in big abstract intellectual ideas that we must struggle with. Woolf deals with the most human, the most necessary and basic ideas, those of humanity and connection. While 2001 may help us understand where we are in terms of time and space through the use of big abstracts, Woolf helps us understand who we are at the most fundamental level. While both are important, I just happen to have had a change in resonance.

That is one of the beautiful things about art: it does not change, we do. The film you see throughout your life is always the same film, but it is what we bring to it in terms of memories, feelings, and beliefs that truly makes it live within us.


What spurred on these ideas was my watching La Dolce Vita again. I've always loved it, claiming it in my top 10 films of all time. A poster of it hangs above my bed. But I watched it again on my birthday yesterday as a tradition that I've been trying to start for years now. You see, I saw the film before I truly had my own taste and liked it, but was somewhat befuddled by it all. I then read Roger Ebert's great movies review of it and that is what made it a top ten caliber film in my mind. He talked about how every time he saw the film he had changed and had a new perception on what the film meant to him, like I was talking about earlier. I thought it would be neat to watch it every year once a year on my birthday to try to achieve the same thing.

But actually watching it last night made me realize that it's just an okay film, not much more. Yes, we are losing the ability to communicate due to our desensitization through the constant onslaught of scandal and decadence and meaningless "loves", but so what? I'm not living in that world anymore, don't know if I ever was. I am living a fundamentally connected, human life, if ever there was one. And again, Virginia Woolf is the catalyst for this change in resonance. I can only look forward to the next work of art that will be the cause of my next change in resonance.

Jacques Tati

I just watched Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle, which was great. Tati is a very refined and humanistic director. He pays very close attention to the details and inner workings of everyday events only to reveal the complexity and multiple perspectives that something as simple as walking down a street can have. It helps that we are often thrown into situations and places we are not used to, but some people are born fumblers.

One such fumbler is Tati's creation, Mr. Hulot, whom he plays. Hulot is a warm, gentle spirit that is always unknowingly causing harmless mischief around himself just by being so clueless. He is an old fashioned gentleman, someone who is more perplexed than excited at our increasingly mechanized world.

The first Hulot film I saw, M. Hulot's Holiday, didn't have much to do with the technology aspect. It was just Hulot dilly-dallying through his vacation. I then jumped headlong into Play Time (pictured), which is clearly his masterpiece, and one of my favorites.

But before his opus that would eventually bankrupt him and essentially ruin his career, came Mon Oncle. This analyzes Hulot's sister and her stuffy husband and their confined son. They aren't bad people, they are just superficial and sterile. They exist to show off their fancy fountains and high tech kitchens. Hulot clearly does not fit in, but he connects with their boy, who is more for enjoying life than tiptoeing around it.

Play Time takes these ideas of technology as hindrance instead of convenience and lack of connection due to rampant consumerism and multiplies it ten fold, and to much funnier results. I can see most people just chuckling at Play Time, but I laughed out loud. And quite often. It was shot using a super wide frame, and every inch of it is packed full of sight gags and insanely layered nuances of subtle intertwining observations. Character development and common story arcs are thrown out for more intricate studies of human behavior amidst endless pane glass windows and slickly polished floors.

Hulot and an American tourist emerge as the two main characters, but really the main characters are all of the identical landscapes. The people just so happen to be there, too. The way it was shot, with no close ups, or anything even approaching one, is at first very cold and bizarre looking, but you slowly realize that Tati is simply letting you in on the joke. It is only once you get in too close that you can't see the cosmic proportions that mild events influence.

So these two people don't end up having an affair. They just have a connection. They share a nice night out. Hulot buys the woman a gift, and she gets back on her tour bus. There are no grand statements being made, actually there are, but that's just it, the grand statements are the small encounters and moments of connection.

Play Time is a truly optimistic film because it portrays the common decency and goodness of the everyday person even when pitted against all of the dehumanizing horrors of the modern world. Those horrors aren't so horrific when a good hearted person encounters them.

M. Hulot's Holiday 2.5/5, Mon Oncle 3/5, Play Time 5/5