Jayclops' musings on his favorite pasttime and escape.
Blvd. of Broken Dreams
May 31, 2007Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
The sun has set. The curtains have fell for the last show. And Sunset Boulevard is a mesmerizing experience. While it’s the perfect classic Hollywood movie, it is at the same time a critique of Hollywood. It is an examination of dreams and the death of it, grand illusions and obsession. Sunset Boulevard is in fact one of the famous streets in Hollywood flanked by the usual glitz and glamour that veils the decadence of hopeful dreams and the stars who continue to cling on to it.
Joe Gillis (William Holden) is writer whose latest project might have to be shelved. He is broke and he is hounded by car insurance agents who will relinquish his only possession, his car. On a chase along Sunset Blvd. the car breaks down and he is forced to park in an old mansion, where a psychotic silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), is wallowing in her forgotten stardom. She has written herself a screenplay that according to her would mark her comeback to the screen, “to the audience who would never forgive her for leaving them.” Truth is they don’t make those movies anymore. The audience has already discovered the wonders of the ‘talkies’.
Though the audience has forgotten about this sensation, one fan has truly remained loyal, the only one who still believes “that Madam is the greatest star of them all.” He is Max, the butler, whom we would later learn as Norma’s first director and the first of her three husbands. He has painstakingly supplied Norma’s delusions through daily fan mails that he himself wrote. He made her a star and he loved her that much, not leaving her despite the fact the Norma is already falling for Joe, who she commissioned to help her write the script for her comeback movie.
On the other hand, there is Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson), the personification of the Hollywood dream. She is a script reader but also an aspiring scriptwriter who hopes to make it big. Joe, who begins to feel the entrapment of the mansion and Norma herself, helps Betty draft her story during the wee hours. Betty falls in love with Joe during the process. But things are complicated for Joe. We are being hinted that he enjoys the perks being Norma’s apple of the eye but there comes a mixture of pity, patience and respect for the poor Norma.
What is brilliant about Wilder’s intimate examination of the characters and the nature of stardom in general is how it managed not only to be relevant and thematically contemporary but also by its noble attempts to be realistic as possible. The places and characters are real. Swanson’s Norma Desmond is perhaps one of the greatest performances of all time. Her eyebrow-raising and over-the-top facial expressions are indicative of a silent movie star. (She even did a Chaplin impersonation.) In fact, this might also be Swanson portraying herself, who was among the greatest silent stars of the time. Erich von Stroheim who plays Max, the one time director, may also be portraying himself. Von Stroheim is one of the great directors of silent movies along with D.W. Griffiths and Cecile B. De Mille. De Mille himself appears on the movie as the director who is being insisted by Norma to direct the script she’s writing.
The last ten minutes of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is one of the best cinematic moments of all time, critics and film historians touted it to be. If I was a young film buff during the early 50s and was among the first to marvel at this magnificent storytelling, I wouldn’t have forgotten it and will remain in a top ten list or something like that. Who knows, if I live up to watch the movies that I should, it would probably be on the running. As of the moment, it already is.
To the moon and back.
May 29, 2007Solaris - (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
The concluding scene in Andrei Tarlovsky’s Solaris is a mind-boggling experience to me. I am not even sure if I got it right or that the director’s intention is really that to allow us to interpret it in different perspectives. For though the goals in the movie are scientific it is not about science; it is not even the science-fiction that it may seem to be. Tarkovsky’s film is an exploration about love and humanity in general – such mundane subject matters actually, but the entire journey is anything but.
The first part of the film is a lengthy discussion of a planned mission to Solaris by Chris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) and its background. Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky), the cosmonaut who came from the Russian space station tells of the mysterious deaths and apparitions in the spaceship apparently caused by emissions called ‘neutrinos’ by the Solaris sea which surrounds the planet. Exposure to such would lead to a thought-extraction process which is substantiated in form. The memories, thoughts or yearnings extracted are of course distinct because it would have to be of specific importance to the person. These are not ghosts but human in form.
Thus, Chris encounters an embodiment of his deceased wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), the importance of which we would later learn as the story unfolds. Hari, in a human form though is experiencing some kind of amnesia – the only memories accessible to her are as far as Chris knows, so as the other ‘guests’ in the spaceship who are embodiments of thoughts or memories of two other astronauts. Chris also finds a tape from a dead crew member which warns him of the mysteries enveloping the spaceship. Much of the narrative in part two would center on the relationship of Chris and the spaceship’s Hari as opposed to flashbacks of their relationship on Earth when she was still alive.
I can’t help but attribute some of its qualities to Kubrick’s adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Solaris is also an adaptation of a Polish science fiction novel by Stanislaw Lem. Both films are human missions to space prompted by a scientific aberration: in Odyssey a mission is sent to space in search of clues for what might be the first possible evidence of intelligence in outer space while Solaris, of the deaths and mysteries apparently caused by the planet itself. What is interesting in Solaris is that it is in fact a journey to oneself set in the background of space – the scientific journey made into a philosophical discourse on human nature.
Both films use rhythm to emphasize space and the irrelevance of time. The journey is long, in fact 2 hours and 39 minutes. The slow and often boring rhythm is coupled by scenes of confounding length. This is not only true in the lingering pans inside the ship but on Earth itself. This length shows us the whole experience of traveling as a process of meditation and Tarkovsky invites us to do the same though not convincingly because we are first overridden with restlessness – we are inside a traveling car passing through tunnels and seemingly endless and repetitious routes. (I saw a clip of another Tarkovsky film, Nostalgia, and this character walks back and forth aimlessly among damp and murky ruins.)
Which brings me to the whole point of the experience – as humans we don’t achieve genuine reflection as we pass through life’s tunnels, repetitious and tiring routes. We need to be catapulted to outer space to be able to do so. We are restless. It is as if life is made up of brief fast-pace chapters.
At world’s end.
May 27, 2007Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - (Gore Verbinski, 2007)
The third Pirates installment is so unnecessarily long. Though I am not the one to say that some subplots should be scrapped, because considering that this the last of the franchise, the director might have everything in his disposal for a grand showdown. The longevity of it wasn't able to sustain any energy to up the ante, even the the overwrought romance can't find its place against the mishmash of talky connivances, except that, to finally emphasize the two lovers' — Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) — longing, their awaited kiss is set in the backdrop of swordfights in the midst of a huge maelstrom.
There is really something good going here like the interesting character explorations of both Swann and Will Turner, the sudden steppin'-to-good-side of Capt. Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush) and even Sparrow's comeback. Even the character of Chow Yun Fat was an interesting diversion, but only to be underutilize for a purpose. But the director is perhaps too enmeshed with the idea and expectation that this is a summer blockbuster in the first place, thus, explosions, and the kiss amidst a gigantic storm and old tricks that are not only unnecessary but borders on mere sillininess. I can't believe people are actually laughing so hard (with matching seat-slapping) with the friggin' monkey when it's fucking annoying already.
Life in frames.
May 26, 20078 1/2 - (Federico Fellini, 1963) a.k.a. Otto e Mezzo
Felliniesque. It's weird to put director-adjective to a film that is by the same director, say attributing Rear Window as Hitchcockian. But I guess this only applies to directors who have stuck to their style and consistency that you can't help but coin an adjective in their own names. Such maybe the case for Fellini, who may not always be agreeable. I guess I made a mistake watching Fellini's 8 1/2 when I was tired from work and woozy and all that. In a more conditioned state I could've appreciated it more, but in trying to regain alertness I could not discount the fact the it is a masterpiece. After all, how many films are there about the filmmaking or the experience of it?
Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) is a director who is running out of ideas, or let's just say, he doesn't know what to do next. While checking into some sort of spa, his writer tells him ideas that do not really appear interesting to him, coupled with the insistent proddings of his producer to come up with his next picture. Apparently, Guido has constructed a science-fiction inspired set for his next film, but even that doesn't seem to help the block. While trying to regain momentum, he instead unknowingly tread a path of soul-searching, traversing from his childhood past and dream-like concoctions.
The opening sequence is unbeaten. We would see a "dream of asphyxiation" set in the context of a traffic jam in some sort of tunnel. A man (which we would later learn as Guido) is sturggling to get out of an enclosed car — he seems to be suffocating– amidst a sea of vehicles whose passengers is a bit dreary as the atmosphere who seems to be either waiting for some sort of liberation or enjoying the stagnation. The next we thing we know, he is flying in air. Men throws a rope at him and yanks him back to a shore. This begins the journey of contemplation for Guido, and the next scenes would resemble a montage of dreamlike sequences reminiscent of Freud and past recollections of childhood and Catholic guilt, and then yanks us back to reality again.
There is chore to distinguish what is recollection and the subconscious because the transition is seamless, or rather there is no transition at all; the scenes flow in such a fluid manner, much like the energy of the camera which seems to be moving a lot, making the whole idea of a film-within-a-film resemble that of a grandiose production. I'm sure though that the childhood scene where a young Guido adulates a monstrous prostitute called Saraghina is a childhood memory, and the psychosexual dream scene where Guido is surrounded by women, both real and imaginary is his subconcious telling him of his relationships with women from his wife (a gorgeous Anouk Aimee), a mistress (Sandra Milo), the 'dreamgirl' (Claudia Cardinale), and even his own mother.
The concluding sequence, which appears to me as a director coming to his senses after a 'recollecting process' feels emotionally detached from the whole exercise. He sets up choreographed sequences of circus-like proportions with weird characters that we don't know where it's actually going. But as Alan Stone said, Fellini emphasizes images over ideas, which clearly achieves with this one. And yes, after all the drollery, Fellini would like it to be a celebration not just of cinema but of life as well.
To be a kid.
May 24, 2007The 400 Blows – (Francois Truffaut, 1959) a.k.a. Les Quatre Cents Coup
Francois Truffaut was one of the young directors to have come out of the French ‘new wave’ cinema, the term mostly referred to as the transition from the classics to the modern cinema. The 400 Blows is Truffaut’s first feature-length film. He started as a filmmaker at a young age of 27.
While this being a very personal film because most of the scenes are from Truffaut’s own childhood – and not a very pleasant and happy-go-lucky one – it is also the auteur’s paean to a lost childhood where bitter memories flood like hidden tears in the dark and the joys are as fleeting as pre-adolescent jokes. It can also be seen as a social critique to the issue of juvenile delinquency and as Truffaut would impress to us, and leading from his own experiences, the unattentive home and faulty parenting to the uncaring and unjustified educational system.
In 400 Blows, Truffaut places himself in the shoes of Antoine Doniel, a carefree 12-year old who is about to discover the dog-eat-dog world. His uncaring parents are made up of a deceitful and fed-up mother who wants to get out of their impverished situation (Antoine once caught he kissing another man on the streets) and a friendly but out-of-touch patriarch who can't really seem to establish a genuine father-and-son bond with him. At school, Antoine is unjustly stereotyped by his authoritative teacher as troublemaker without having to see the boy's potential. When a picture of a scantily clad blond is passed around the class, the teacher finds it in the hands of Antoine and makes the boy stand in the corner without having to finish his test.
Because of the disintegrating situation at home and school, this leads Antoine to abandon schooling making forged excuse letters and making alibis like the death of his mother. He is accompanied by his classmate-friend Rene who has gained Antoine's trust and together they managed to steal a typewriter and sell it; however Antoine decides to return it where he is eventually caught. He is sent to a jail with thugs and hookers cramped in a tiny cell and later to the Observation Center for Juvenile Delinquents where he realizes that his parents has truly despised and abandoned him.
One of the poignant scenes that I really liked was the interrogation part and Jean Pierre Lieaud portrays Antoine with a mix of honesty and naivete. His Antoine is deeply felt — we are with him in his escapades and we mourn with him at his darkest moments. (I think I last saw a grown-up Lieaud as a self-absorbed boyfriend of Maria Schneider in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.)
The concluding scene where Antoine ran away from a soccer game to a nearby beach where the camera finally zooms in Antoine's face staring directly at the audience is perhaps the most famous one. It may appear detached at first but for me this part is very instinctive, a trademark Truffaut, who once said that he is not interested in anything but capturing the agony and the joy of cinema. In this scene, he captures the height of joy both liberating and instinctive. In an earlier conversation, we would learn that Antoine dreamt of being in the Navy because he never went to the sea before, secluded in the old Parisian streets and buildings. When Antoine stares at us, its as if we are actually staring at ourselves, at our own childhood bereft of the joys and pains.
Thief for a thief.
May 23, 2007To Catch a Thief - (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955)
I remember watching Psycho and Vertigo when I was a kid in some shabby late night local Sunday programming. Though I can’t remember a single scene of Vertigo, and even at what age I was, the shower scene in Psycho is so trademark that I practically cannot single it out everytime I happen to watch a slasher flick.
And I’m not saying this because of a random thirst for wanton gore, but because you can’t help attributing suspense cinema to the master auteur of suspense that is THE Hitchcock. It’s not even about the gore and violence, because it’s basically an entirely different approach whether it’s shock cinema or as an element in itself or exercise in style. In old Hitchcockian style, it’s about the buildup of tension and how well it is sustained, whether you’re dealing with serial killers, or a classic cat-and-mouse chase. (Speaking of killer chases, David Fincher comes to mind.)
In To Catch a Thief, the classic cat-and-mouse chase is set in the lush French scenery of restaurants, hotels and village houses along the Riviera. Commotion is stirred when high-priced jewels start disappearing. The police are quick to point their fingers to a once-big time crook John Robbie (Cary Grant). Mr. Robie insists he has left this kind of life, with a mansion perched atop Cannes; however, he vows to catch the thief himself, to prove that he is innocent.
Grace Kelly plays Frances Stevens, an American lady he meets at the hotel with her insistent mother. She’s the elusive muse alright but sometimes may not seem as what she is. Kelly and Grant’s war-of-the-sexes banter shames just about every romantic comedy of recent memory. The camera lingers on the two as much as Hitchcock generously feed us with the visual pleasure of the scenery, which is actually a great diversion to balance off the general mood of the film. To Catch a Thief is dolled up with familiar characters and twists but catches us right before we doze off.
The horrible and the miserable.
May 21, 2007Annie Hall - (Woody Allen, 1977)
Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) are lined up in a theatre to watch a documentary about the Nazi occupation. It promises to be a full-packed theater because the line is long and the least you would want is some smart-ass media teacher talking about Fellini’s ‘self-indulgent’ filmmaking to Marshall MacLuhan’s theory of hot-medium-cool-medium. You’d swear you could smash a pile of horseshit to shut the blabbermouth up and pull out a fake MacLuhan hiding from a tarp and let the theorist say “you know nothing about me!”
That is actually what happens, which makes it really funny. Annie Hall is made up of these moments that will just make you shake your head at how brilliant Allen has written this simple and humane comedy about the relationships and individual differences. This is a kind of film about characters, which could only mean it will rely on good writing – and Mr. Allen is one talented writer. Once you see Alvy talking about life in the opening monologue, it sucks you in up to that scene where they parted in the street.
Diane Keaton, who won an Oscar for her role is a natural charmer – her emotions are raw and she is equally matched by Allen himself. I really liked that scene where they first met after a tennis match. Annie asks Alvie if he has a ride and he says no, and asks if Annie needs a ride. Annie says she has a car and Alvy says it’s weird for her to be asking that because he thought she would want a ride with Alvy.
Mr. Allen wants us to see that life sucks – how about categorizing people into the miserable and the horrible, relationships are difficult to get through but you must want more of it – more of love, more life – because that’s just the way it is. It’s a simple thesis actually but Allen wants us to see the beauty in it.
Along came Spidey.
May 18, 2007Spider-man 3 - (Sam Raimi, 2007)
Black is back. Emo is too. Suddenly it’s cool to put eyeliner for guys. Jazz is suddenly pop. The kids would be donning their black outfits soon or start listening to Buble or Cullum or Norah Jones. Lest we forget, this is Spidey’s third adventure, which explains the necessity to show puzzle pieces of the two previous films as the opening credits roll. Enter Sandman. Unlike Doc Oc this villain proves much harder for Spidey to get his hands on.
Peter disses MJ. He gets to save another damsel in the person of Gwen Stacey and gets to wallow in his iconic stature and gets a kiss — not just any other kiss but the trademark MJ-Peter upside down kiss. The French thing didn’t work out and they broke up. Peter learns the real killer of Uncle Ben is Flint Marko which happens to be Sandman himself. New guy Eddie Brock steals show from Peter and gets to kiss J.K. Simmons ass. Symbiote devours him, so did revenge.
Let's skip the usual superhero story arc because Sam Raimi surely made one hell of an undertone with this one. It is rumored that this will be the last franchise he'll be directing, even Maguire who seemed to be comfy with the role and undaunted by possible career demise, made it look as if this part was his last show. From the obvious publicity stunt — the deletion of a supposed lip-lock between Harry and Peter — there was sure something fishy going around. And then I finally saw it.
It's written everywhere. In tabloid headlines: "Spider-man shows true colors". In a seemingly innocent and evasive reply to an equally innocent question — MJ: What's up with you and Harry?" Peter: "It's complicated." To Harry's wide beaming (all-teeth) smiles and Peter's longing gazes to the buddy-buddy theatrics. Peter disses MJ alright, but not for Gwen, who looks stunning by the way with the now-meatier Bryce Dallas Howard. Okay, I'm just playing it, but I think I heard a couple of sneers from my back so it's not just me.
This is not to say I totally detested it, Spider-man 3 is actually more fun and hipper than the previous two, but I don't think it quite achieve, at least technically, what the previous one did. Topher Grace of That 70's Show fame who was a charmer in In Good Company, plays Eddie Brock who falls prey to the remnants of symbiote and becomes the Venom. Thomas Haden Church who was brilliant in Sideways, plays Sandman. But then there's little much to do with their characters.
But for what it's worth, this one can stand on its own — it doesn't have to prove anything grand. It's a good thing I didn't bring popcorn or else I would've have spill it from the Neanderthal-like manners of the person who sat behind me (I reckon it was some kid) who kept pushing the seat. My viewing was punctuated with intermittent jerks and I could've said. "What's wrong with your fucking feet? You want me to butcher them and throw them up front?" Then I remember it was Spider-man I was watching, not 300.
Riding the bomb.
May 16, 2007Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
What will happen if an Air Force general suddenly went berserk and order his B-52 bombers to bomb the Soviet Union with nuclear missiles, and the special code to abort the mission is lost forever because he decided to kill himself after a long lecture that the whole process of fluoridation on water is a part of a Communist plot to annihilate the right-wing idealists? A recipe for doomsday.
Much to the horror of the British attaché sent to dissuade the deranged general, he has to call Col. Turgidson in the Pentagon, the air-force top level official who seems to be having a grand time breaking bad news after bad news to the flared-up US president Muffley. While the president and all his men are practically pissing in their pants, one of his advisers Dr. Strangelove reveals that the Russians have a ‘doomsday device’ which would be happy to go off once the Soviet is bombed. The president negotiates with President Dimitri who sounds the least fazed by the ‘urgency’ of the matter. He is annoyed that the US President has disturbed him in his sleep.
When Col. Turgidson and the Russian ambassador, who was secretly taking photographs of the War Room, lost their control with each other, the President reprimands, “You can’t fight in the War Room!” Some of the funniest scenes are those of the British attaché who can’t seem to make the call because he’s held at gunpoint, he has to use his loose change on a public telephone and the operator keeps bitching that she can’t allow a collect call to the Pentagon; and Dr. Strangelove himself who can’t control his bionic hand from doing a Hitler salute. Strangelove is played by Peter Sellers who also interestingly happens to play the President and the British officer.
The whole point is clearly to make a satire out of the military adventurism and the futility of diplomacy at the behest of power. But even though scene after scene seems to be full of this satirical tone, it can actually be terrifying and dangerous, whichever way you look at it. The concluding scenes are funny and terrifying at the same time. Believe me, you have to actually see it.
Hello, stranger.
May 15, 2007Closer (Mike Nichols, 2004)
I watched Closer for the second time over the weekend. Natalie Portman seems to get better with the second viewing. But it’s not only the famous striptease, with the very lucky Clive Owen, that I liked about it. This is one movie that I appreciated because of Patrick Marber’s screenplay — one that displays the British’s wit and sardonic humor.
In the striptease scene, Alice (Portman) says, “lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off, but it’s better if you do.” (Recently, the phrases find themselves as titles to two tracks to Panic! at the Disco’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out album.) When her boyfriend, the childish Dan (Jude Law) confesses to have fallen out of love with her and says sorry to have taken such a long time, Alice quips, “Irrelevant”. She asks Dan why, to which Dan quickly retorts, “Cowardice”.
Closer is a different way at looking into relationships. Marber’s script chose to focus on both ends: the sugar-coated, intoxicating, sex-filled start and the often bitter and vengeful end. Because of the limited episodes we get to see the four characters, it has the tendency to reduce them into mere caricatures, except for Ms. Portman, who is saved by her breathtaking performance. Julia Roberts’ character seems to be underdeveloped and one-dimensional, so do Clive Owen’s Larry. Jude Law is irritating in his over-the-board facial contortions.
But perhaps, in the end, this is what Mr. Marber wants us to think of these characters, which we are forced to know in the bittersweet brief chapters of their relationships — that we are all indeed strangers dying for a piece of intimacy.
