Glenn Heath Jr.Filed under: 2009 Releases | Tags: Cameron Diaz, Frank Langella, James Marsden, Richard Kelly
This week at Gone Cinema Poaching, I contemplate Richard Kelly’s The Box, a bizarre and unsettling film that cannot be missed. I urge each and everyone of you to see it, despite the overwhelming indifference from many homegrown critics. You can find my review here.
Filed under: Best of the Decade Project | Tags: Isabelle Huppert, Michael Haneke
- “The Best of the Decade Project” is an ongoing series of essays written by Match Cuts and The Filmist concerning the finest films of the last ten years.
Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf plays out like an endless nightmare tunneled through a constricting vision of the modern world slowly descending into chaos. Set mostly in the French countryside during some unmentioned national catastrophe, the film follows the Laurent family’s quest for survival, breaking down their struggle to an elemental level. As in most Haneke films ambiguity reigns, degenerating spaces through jarring cuts and sudden jumps in time. The film meticulously pulls back the everyday façade of human existence to unearth the inherent abuses and evils underneath. The apocalypse has never been this restrained or this horrifying.
In the opening moments, Haneke introduces a visual motif that will produce considerable menace later in the film – an intimidating tracking shot slowly charting a quiet languishing drive through the forest. The camera seems lost in the hypnotic endlessness of the landscape until Anne Laurent (Isabelle Huppert) and her family arrive at a vacation cabin isolated far away from their city existence. The darkness of the dank cabin reveals a surprise – a family of squatters, led by a man holding a shotgun. Something is amiss, not only in this particular scene but on a collective level. There’s a panicked nature about these character’s actions, and the gripping scenario produces deadly results.
After Anne’s husband is senselessly killed in a terrorizing moment of off-screen violence, Haneke jettisons the mother, her young son Benny, and pre-teen daughter Eva into the either, brutalized and alone. We see them in an epic long shot, framed by the edge of a tree line, drifting through the space like phantoms searching for a destination. But they have nowhere to go, as neighbors turn them away in lue of some larger, global crisis. There’s talk of dwindling supplies, food, and water, and Haneke reveals this collective angst through subtle clues in the dialogue. All Anne can do is keep moving, but where?
It becomes clear very quickly that Anne’s personal tragedy has come at the height of some grander event, something far bigger enveloping the family during their mourning process, and Haneke paints the situation in extremes. Darkness shrouds every night scene, allowing the sound design to creep into the aesthetic consciousness unveiling a place without light, figuratively and metaphorically. Daytime isn’t much more comfortable, as thick fog nearly bleaches out the frame and rainfall falls in droves from a dark sky above. Haneke plays everything close to the chest, much like Anne and her family are forced to do, and it makes for a brilliantly complex narrative, one that borders on instinctual.
Anne and her children finally arrive at makeshift railway station where a small group of people are shacked up waiting for train to arrive. Later, a larger group of people reach the station, sending the community into a state of mass flux. As the amount of distressed bodies in each scene grows exponentially, Haneke begins to expand his themes regarding human nature. Survival trumps dignity, greed destroys compassion, and survival remains at the heart of each action. Most apocalyptic films deal with these ideas, but Time of the Wolf displays them within brilliantly nuanced confrontations between people ripped of all necessities, trying to hold on for some semblance of life that may never come to fruition. Haneke once again uses his roving camera to explore the dead space between conversations, the impending presence of nature enveloping man, and ultimately the way human beings confront mass trauma.
Time of the Wolf represents Haneke at his most fluid state, evoking his patented visual menace through slow revelations of action, but also a glaring thematic weight transcending the shock value and moral cynicism the director is know for. It’s a film of muted colors (even blood takes on a grayish crimson hue) and blank stares, burnt bodies and broken spirits. Its landscape often houses burning animal corpses and empty spaces where humans once dwelled. Fire often plays a key role in signifying both death and rebirth, and in the haunting final sequence, the misguided need for sacrifice. Haneke doesn’t force a contrived or entertaining scenario on his narrative, because civilization doesn’t need zombies, or natural disasters, or Mayan forewarnings to break down permanently, just people slowly losing faith in each other’s humanity.
To Haneke’s credit, Time of the Wolf ends with a stunning vision of salvation, a point of view shot from a moving train looking out onto the green terrain, a definite parallel to the opening jaunt through the forest. Is it coming for the Laurent’s, or have they already boarded? We’ll never know, but the mere recognition of the train careening forward is good enough. This simple sequence lends much needed hope to a film that bluntly deconstructs family and community in times of collective despair.
Modern Horror films rarely take their time unfolding, usually pounding visceral material early and often. But Pontypool, the new film from Canadian director Bruce McDonald (The Tracey Fragments), slowly engulfs the viewer, containing the entire film within a single location then utilizing a complex sound design to surround the space with offscreen terror. This makes the opening act a highly effective re-invention of the Zombie apocalypse, as disc jockey Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) and his small crew try to make sense of the shocking eye-witness accounts phoned in from their small Ontario town. Conflicting stories from panicked citizens blur the situation and Mazzy’s cocky arrogance soon turns to sincere fright. McDonald handles these early scenes with delicate care, using close-ups to pressurize character emotion as the exterior audio feeds begin to grow more extreme and the walls of the underground radio station close in.
But the brilliant ambiguity of the first half quickly dissolves into random exposition and contrivance as McDonald attempts to explain the cause of the violent outbreak and mass psychosis, ultimately lessoning and simplifying the impact of the set-up. The words of the script end up defiling the haunting audio storytelling taking place, and our imaginations aren’t able to run wild any more. Which is a shame, because at its best, Pontypool ambitiously deconstructs the end of the world down to a series of screams, pleas for help, police sirens, and helicopter gun fire. As Mazzy and company listen in horror, we are forced to wonder when and where the damn will break, and McDonald layers on the possibilities using frequencies of sound and to contemplate a new form of interior destruction that words should never describe.
Filed under: Best of the Decade Project | Tags: Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Maggie Cheung, The Coen brothers, Tommy Lee Jones, Tony Leung, Wong Kar Wai
- The following is the fifth of ten planned online discussions between MATCH CUTS and THE FILMIST regarding the best films of the 2000’s. These transcriptions have been slightly edited due to length, but the published content remains exactly as written.
THE FILMIST: The Brothers’ Coen’s 2007 release, No Country For Old Men, is a film that, beyond the basic attraction of “hey, it’s a Coen Brothers movie!,” didn’t catch my eye all that well on first viewing, as a few of the other films on my list have done. But, then I watched it again, a year later – after seeing Burn After Reading, coincidently – and, it really began to warm up to me. Maybe it was because I hadn’t been in the right mood for it grab me beforehand, I don’t know. We Irish are a strange folk – but, that next time, it really took me by the collar. Everything just began to jump out – the cinematography, the use and disuse of silence and music respectively. Everything that you’d think I’d have noticed on first viewing, but for some reason just flew right past me.
MATCH CUTS: That’s interesting, I’ve also gone through a roller coaster ride with this film. I watched it twice in the theaters, the first time being blown away by it’s technical prowess and cynical nature, and when the second time I felt like I had gotten everything there is to get, which invariably lessoned my opinion of it since I love films to grow and grow upon multiple screenings…but watching it again on Blu Ray for this project, I was once again sucked into this disparate world. I think Deakins’ visuals and the Coen’s tactical direction create this complete overarching menace that I absolutely love. The way the violence suddenly occurs, then drops offscreen, then just pure quiet. I’ve always admired the Coen’s ability to pace a film, but this might be there finest use of mise-en-scene ever.
F: Yes, the use of quiet, of almost pure silence in the film – and the contrast it creates with the loud and insane acts of violence beforehand, which stand out all the more against the stark canvas the Coen’s create due to the lack of music behind them – is the thing that stands out to me, before anything else. The sudden silence in between words, and phrases – creating implications. Something best seen in Chigurh’s (Javier Bardem) discussion with the gas station owner.
MC: That scene for sure, but also the scenes between Ed Tom (Tommy Lee Jones) and his old friend at the end of the film, there’s just this sense of dread throughout each, and the inability for lawmen to protect innocent people plays into this aesthetic. The film’s great point comes when Ed Tom realizes that the violence has always been there, despite what you think. He’s no different from his predecessors.
F: It’s not waiting around for him to catch up, is what his friend says – right?
MC: Exactly, and it’s selfish to think you’re special in the face of pure evil. Just because you are witnessing it doesn’t make the situation unique. Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) even says that there’s no shortage of psychopaths out there.
F: “You ain’t nothin’ new.” One of the things that strikes me most about the film, in regards to the now-iconic Anton Chigurh character, is how it seems like, for most of the film, he’s almost a pure embodiment of evil. An abstract, much like a more deadpan version of Ledger’s Joker, on a smaller scale. But, toward the end, just for a few fleeting moments, his armor seems to be stripped away by Llewelyn’s wife, Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald). His voice quivers, and he seems confused about how she could refuse to flip the coin. Unnerved.
MC: It starts with Carson’s critique of his methods, and evolves with Carla Jean’s refusal, then culminates with the car crash, albeit by chance, but it’s as if the universe is coming for him, just as he has come for all of his victims.
F: Yes – and, it actually reflects on the philosophy that he espouses to the shopkeeper, earlier in the film. “Let me ask you something: if the road you followed brought you to this, of what use was the road?” And, the general message that comes across in the tagline for the film, itself that there are “no clean getaways.”
MC: Even for the devil.
F: And, surrounding all of them – the vast, wide expanse of nineteen eighties Texas, both urban and rural. It’s astonishing what they were able to do with our little old state, I’ll say that much. Still and quiet – the camera on the dash of a car pushing up the street, and on and on, until we meet the other, stranded on the side of the road.
MC: I wanted to talk about the essence of offscreen space in this film, the way Anton seems to exist primarily offscreen, through shadow, footsteps, the pressure of his air tank, and the way decisions occur suddenly but the action is so incredibly slow and meticulous.
F: Yes, indeed – the way the Coen’s convey an almost supernatural essence to Anton up until the end of the film. He’s a force pushing in from the outside of the frame.
MC: It’s also interesting to see the Coen’s hold back on their patented darkly pointed dialogue, although there are a few moments that stand out, but ultimately this film relies more on space than words, facial expressions, textures, blood, the way wounds are sewn up, bandaged, the puncture wounds of bullets. They take time to show us every moment that creates a more complex vision of the world.
F: Yes, and it seems that – coupled with their use of silence in the film – they’ve doubled back and relied more on visual storytelling to convey the sense of time and place that the story takes place in, creating authenticity that nevertheless feels slightly skewed, slightly off. It feels a lot like McCarthy’s prose, really.
MC: I mean, they’ve always been masterful visual storytellers. Miller’s Crossing, my favorite Coen film, is hands down one of the most beguiling, entrancing films of all time, and it’s because of their use of space. But this film is very fragmented, much like McCarthy’s book, and I love that they stayed true to that.
F: Oh, sure. I think one of the things that most stands out to me as far as the film’s structural composition is concerned is the double-take the film makes the audience do, when first we see the police lights haloed around Llewelyn’s hotel, around the mid-point of the film. It’s only then that the audience seems to figure out who the real protagonist of the film is, despite the title.
MC: It’s no coincidence that when Ed Tom is about to come in contact with Moss for the first time, he’s driving down the road, hears gunfire, sees the RV full of Mexican gangsters drive away, then pulls up the hotel and sees the bodies of all the victims. It’s a stunning sequence, and speaks to the idea that no one can be protected in this world, they never have been able to be protected.
F: In the book, something like this is less-stated, because there’s a stronger reliance on Bell’s narration and point-of-view. But, here – until this point – it seems like he may just be one of Llewelyn’s many pursuer’s, though less violent than Mr. Mop-Top. And, there’s actually an interesting parallel there to the way Moss discovers the dead gangsters in the desert.
MC: Absolutely, this film is chalk full of those parallels, both character and space. As a segue way, it might be interesting to talk about the isolation of both No Country and In the Mood For Love. They are different beasts altogether, but each shares a singular examination of people at odds with their environment. What’s your experience with In the Mood For Love?
F: I only saw it just recently, actually – and, one of the things that really stuck out for me on the first viewing was how influenced Wong seems to have been by Hitchcock. Not in a De-Palma-esque sense, but in the similarity of the interplay between the characters, and their eye teeth.
MC: Interesting, Hitchcock doesn’t immediately come to mind because Wong is such a dynamic, individual artist, but I get what you are saying.
F: Well, that’s what I thought, as well – and, then I was reading an interview with Wong, and he compared the Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) character with Jimmy Stewart’s character from Vertigo, and that’s when it really seemed to click, I think. Still, the other thing that stuck out so clearly was the cinematography, the composition. This is a studiously-composed film, and Wong conveys his characters through a dense, darkly colorful mise-en-scene that at times reminds one of abstract. And, the clocks. All the clocks.
MC: You get hands, the backs of necks, the way Mrs. Chan’s (Maggie Cheung) fingers graze a wall, all filtered through this haze of slow motion. Just completely enthralling from a romantic standpoint, but it’s all based on these unromantic tendencies, deceit, mistrust, inadequacy. And this plays into the idea of time, the purity and fleeting seamlessness of the way time passes.
F: All those pan-downs from a giant Siemens clock onto Mrs. Chan at work. Catching her in the midst of a pensive mood, unsure. What was interesting about the clocks I noticed was that Wong uses the same motif – and, even the same actor- in an earlier film, Days of Being Wild.
MC: It’s great how their relationship slowly develops, mostly over these very formal, neighborly meetings. Their spark seems to transcend all of these social institutions playing against them. Mr. Chow ultimately leaves because of the gossip of the neighbors, and Wong paints this separation as inevitable, yet still incredibly tragic, if not expected.
F: Yes, indeed – it feels almost like a “two lovers against the world” type of story, filtered through the sixties, which is then filtered through a slow, caressing dreamtime, where there’s a strong, anonymous social anxiety in the air. And, the use of red as a signifier throughout the movie coats all this in a red, crimson haze. Also, the irony inherent in the whole situation – the two of them becoming attracted to each other over a suspicion (later confirmed) that their respective spouses are cheating on them, with each other.
MC: Yes, the situation is ironic for sure, but the pacing is so melancholy, so lyrical, that the irony drifts away and is replaced by this connection, this brilliant series of moments between two people who don’t know each other that well, but can connect on a instinctual level.
F: And the strong texture that surrounds the two of them through the camerawork, shot by Christopher Doyle seems to enlarge these moments, this connection. Everything – the “threads of Tony Leung’s hair, the cracked patterns of an bare wall, or the pink fibrous texture of a steak -” seems subtly emphasized. And, the cigarette smoke. And, the wallpaper.
MC: Every texture gets a shot, a moment to be dwelled on, which occurs in every Wong film. Both In the Mood for Love and Happy Together seem to depend on this aspect more than any of his other films. I return to Wong hoping for him to reinvent this aesthetic, hence my disappointment with 2046 and “The Hand.”
F: I haven’t seen those two yet – what went wrong with those two?
MC: Well, 2046 is very fragmented, alternate reality Sci-Fi continuation of In the Mood for Love, and “The Hand” (one of the three shorts in Eros) seems to me a complete rehash of In the Mood For Love. Both seem to me as simple re-imaginings of his best films.
F: I don’t know, a sci-fi continuation of IML seems intriguing, actually.
MC: In theory yes. I just didn’t respond to it in the same way. It’s very distant, very cold, very off-putting. But maybe that’s the point. In the Mood For Love is that perfect incarnation of Wong’s cinematic flavors. It’s tough to beat.
F: Indeed – still, I wonder when and if he’ll ever decided to do an out-and-out sequel to “In The Mood For Love,” now that I think about it.
MC: We can only hope.
F: …set eight hundred years – in the past.
MC: Ha. that would be something.
F: Instead of the reserved, almost conservative Hong Kong men of 1962, there’s just a bunch of screaming, red-faced guys in plates riding around on horses.
MC: Being all moody and somber.
F: All sheened in red.
MC: I can see it now.
Every time Woody Allen turns a corner toward leaving his late career mediocrity behind, he makes something like Whatever Works, a tedious, maladroit third person comedy shooter that fails to illicit any laughs or complexities. Allen returns home to NYC, jumping back across the pond after four films set in Europe, and the shift re-reveals his greatest flaws as a comedian and filmmaker. Whatever Works blatantly exposes its reflexiveness through the biting and condescending mouth of Boris (Larry David), Allen’s stand in who consistently addresses the camera breaking the fourth wall with reckless abandon, gleefully preaching contradiction and irony. Much like Boris and his legions of “cretons”, Whatever Works comes across as plodding, overblown, and despite many interesting subjects, completely idiotic. Allen’s ramblings about love, fate, tragedy, and comedy are astonishingly stale, lacking immediacy in areas that demand passion and reflection.
Where Vicky Christina Barcelona revels in the sensual nature of the environment and languishing beauty of its character’s dilemma’s, Whatever Works painfully charts the ideologies and “developments” of simplistic, obvious characters looking for answers in world that can’t provide any. It’s the same old bullshit from Woody, and his inability to mix up his auteurist vision makes me yearn for his days of glaring originality and brilliant nuance, the days of Hannah and Her Sisters, Another Woman, and The Purple Rose of Cairo. VCB shows signs of that Woody re-emerging, but the likes of Scoop and Whatever Works beat down the hope of him ever regaining his master status again. I’ve never felt this weary with one of my favorite all-time directors.
Filed under: Best of the Decade Project | Tags: Edward Norton, Spike Lee
- “The Best of the Decade Project” is an ongoing series of essays written by Match Cuts and The Filmist concerning the finest films of the last ten years.
The weight of costly decisions infuse every moment of Spike Lee’s 25th Hour. During the film’s daylong timeframe these moments add up to an overwhelming sense of regret and unease, amplifying the fragile relationship between character and environment. The singular story of Monty Brogan (Edward Norton), a convicted drug dealer spending his last night with family and friends before beginning a seven year prison sentence, takes place in the tender months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, exploring deep into the traumatized heart of New York City. Locations become shifting, tormented characters, and Monty’s personal tragedy becomes a bedfellow for a larger often unmentioned day of reckoning.
But 25th Hour does not display an overt analysis or mosaic of life post 9/11. Unlike many of his other films, Lee doesn’t stand front and center yelling at the moon. No, this film concerns itself completely with Monty’s understanding that the life he knows is about to end, allowing for complexities and contradictions to resonate from the subtext. We make connections, assumptions, and judgments much like the characters themselves, and the beauty of the film seeps from the many incredible scenes shared by people repressing panic. In one way or another, everyone in the film has missed a crucial wake-up call, either out of arrogance or ignorance, and Lee brilliantly lingers on each coming to terms with this realization.
Monty spends this last day of freedom with his stunning girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson), his childhood friends Frank and Jacob (Barry Pepper and Phillip Seymour Hoffman), and his father James (Brian Cox), slowly bringing in to focus the situation at hand. Lee uses a series of flashbacks that both explain and complicate his relationship with each, deepening this seemingly simple situation with layers of consequences and ramifications from past actions. The personal becomes intrinsically collective, and we are left with a story about the transcendent nature of pain, the overarching remnants of past decisions coming back to haunt us in ways we see coming from miles away, yet are unable to stop.
25th Hour could have easily been a paint by numbers morality tale about a drug dealer’s last night before entering an earthly hell. But Lee, director of photography Rodrigo Prieto, and musical stalwart Terrence Blanchard each reveal the fissures in this man’s life through a synergy of aesthetics, a joint effort of pressure on all the right points. Early in the film, there’s a quiet series of shots when Monty walks down the street, his dog Doyle leading the charge, heading somewhere, nowhere, anywhere but home. Prieto’s hypnotic moving camera follows from every angle, while Blanchard’s sweeping score fills the trees with somber recollections, revealing instead of telling. The film is full of these cinematic joys, where endless depth is given to a seemingly simple surface.
The specific moments of character in 25th Hour become everything and whether it’s the opening brutal screams of a dog being beaten, or Naturelle silently waiting for Monty to return home, Frank and Jacob overlooking the devastation of Ground Zero, or James calling out Monty’s name seconds after his son leaves the room, each clarifies and confounds the decisions these people make. Ultimately, the worst damage usually springs from trying to do right, and in this sense Monty’s tragedy is not limited to his skin. We are all “touched”, in one way or another, by the failures of communication, by the jealousies and insecurities of a friend, and the doubts felt toward those who care for us the most. In the face of complete mental isolation and destruction, these things matter less and less, and the tragedy takes on a whole new retrospective meaning.
25th Hour forces its characters to take notice of the time they cannot retrieve, using a fantastical, imaginary flash forward to highlight what will never be, jumping back to inconsistent memories that won’t let up, then living in the present with a character that has no where else to turn. At one point, Monty stares into the mirror and his reflection begins an onslaught of destructive discourse toward minorities and types. By the end of the virtuosic sequence, Monty tells his alternate self, “no, fuck you.” The anger, the stereotyping, the hatred are all guided at himself, and there’s no use in ignoring personal accountability. The decisions we make have to add up to something more than merely what’s on the surface, or what’s the point? 25th Hour is a daring, ambitious, ultimately devastating masterpiece about loss, both collectively and personally, and Lee blurs the lines between the two until one cannot be separated from the other, and all that’s left is silence.
- The Filmist’s #5 entry, Che: Part One/The Argentine, can be found here.
