movies – Suddenly, a shot rang out …

Dragonwyck (1946)

In case you missed it, I’ve got a bit of thing going on with Vincent Price. It was entirely unintentional, but whenever I want a movie that is guaranteed to be delightful without being too terribly serious, I go for something starring Mr. Price. Because Vincent Price is cooler than you or me, and he knows it.

So imagine my excitement when I realized that I had not sene THE movie that more or less made Vincent Price into Vincent Price. That is to say, up until Dragonwyck, Price had been a standard supporting player, appearing mostly as second-class villains or smarmy pretty boys (Laura). Despite a pretty creepy turn in Samuel Fuller’s Shock, a non-villainous part in The House Of The Seven Gables with George Sanders, and a few minor villain roles, Price had not quite become the gothic creeper we all know and love.

Then along came Dragonwyck. Price plays Nicholas Van Ryn, a New York landlord with medieval sensibilities who falls (kind of) for his distant cousin Miranda (Gene Tierney). But Van Ryn’s wife (Connie Marshall) is in the way, so he’s got to get rid of her before he can marry his pretty cousin and ruin her life too. Meanwhile, the tenants of Van Ryn’s land want out of their rather feudal contract with their master – and are trying to get there with the help of the hunky local doctor (Glenn Langan), who’s also falling for Miranda.

Dragonwyck represents Price’s first real foray into the realm of the gothic villain. His Van Ryn is charming and frigid, a vindictive head-case with delusions about his place in society. He’s a snob, a vicious landlord, a classist, a suppressor of men’s rights, and an apparent believer in the droit de seigneur. He’s also positively gorgeous in a way that I did not really think Vincent Price was capable of being.

But although I watched Dragonwyck for Price, the movie really belongs to Gene Tierney, who plays a sympathetic and remarkably strong young woman. It’s understandable how the daughter of a Connecticut farmer and minister (played, by the way, by Walter Huston, just because) could be seduced by her handsome, wealthy cousin. But at no point does Miranda fall into the common position of gothic heroines. She stands up to her autocratic husband, despising and loving him at the same time. As her illusions are stripped away, she does not become less powerful but more so.

Dragonwyck is a surprising film. It could very easily have fallen into a typical gothic tale of innocence assaulted and corrupted. But none of the characters are stereotypes. Miranda’s father preaches at her, then softens, saying, “Indulge me. You won’t have to put up with me much longer.” Huston plays him as a decent, God-fearing man who wants very much to give his daughter what she desires, even if it does not tally with his beliefs. He is in direct contrast with Van Ryn, who does not believe in God but in himself. This is not just hubris – it is a fundamental aspect of Van Ryn’s character that is more tragic than dangerous. He’s a man imprisoned by his ancestors and wholly incapable of escaping them.

So Dragonwyck exceeds its gothic underpinnings. While there are the requisite secret rooms, creepy servants and haunting portraits, the film produces a complex tale of power and religion, love and possession, the sickly past and potential for the future. It’s a fascinating film, and not just because Vincent Price is beautiful. Although, there’s that too.

The Inessentials: Trafic

Jacques Tati’s final Hulot film Trafic (1971)is not the filmmaker’s greatest … but that’s like saying that a particular vintage of a fine wine is not quite as good as the years before. It’s still a remarkable achievement, and a pleasurable experience.

For fans of Tati, Trafic takes on an immediately recognizable conceit. The plot, such as it is, revolves around Monsieur Hulot – Tati’s gentle and clownish character who already appeared in M. Hulot’s Holiday, Mon Oncle, and Playtime – now a designer for car company Altra. Hulot and truckdriver Marcel (Marcel Fraval) have to take a truck containing a recreational vehicle to an auto show in Amsterdam. That’s it. That’s the whole plot.

Tati’s films are never plot driven, but this one probably even less than the others. The truck consistently breaks down, runs out of gas, or gets into trouble with the cops and border patrol. PR woman Maria (Maria Kimberly) throws hissy fits, but gradually softens as her journey through the French and Dutch countryside transforms her from the clichéd high-fashion maven to a calmer, happier human being. Intercut with Hulot’s journey is the auto show itself, with typical Tati sight and sound gags that include comical juxtapositions of car trunks opening and closing, the construction of a ‘forest’ in the middle of the show, and small boys who keep stealing car brochures.

None of the gags fall flat, but some of them are repeats of Tati’s visual or aural puns from Playtime – widely considered the filmmaker’s masterpiece. Some of the best, though, are hilarious: the traffic collision begun by the Altra truck, Hulot’s sprint through the fields when he goes looking for gas, the extended sequence at border control as Hulot and Marcel exhibit to the Dutch police all the accoutrements of their car, the ‘moonwalk’ performance of Marcel and a car mechanic (Tony Knepper) after watching a rocketship take off. The character development, particularly of Maria, is subtle but touching: her constant outfit changes indicating the relaxation of her character as she goes from haute-couture to a leather jacket and jeans. If there’s a problem, it’s that there isn’t enough Hulot, whose gentility and decency permeates the other Tati films to a far greater extent.

But that’s a minor quibble in what is ultimately a beautiful, funny film. Hulot is there, after all. What makes Tati’s film so wonderful – I don’t know how else to describe them – is his obvious love of humanity. Here is the human condition, in all its weird glory, interacting with each other and with technology. Tati makes no judgements; technology is neither the enemy nor the indicator of human progress. It’s funny and bizarre, but it only serves to highlight how wonderfully eccentric human beings can be. Technology mirrors and accentuates the people it serves – or fails to serve. Windshield wipers imitate drivers; cars limp and groan when they’ve lost a wheel; a traffic jam sends people out into the rain.

If Tati preaches anything at all, he preaches a gospel of humanity. His Hulot is a bit of a buffoon, but he’s a well-meaning buffoon, a man who is not superior to anyone, who is never at odds with the world. Even when he’s fired from his job, he shrugs his shoulders and moves on, off into the rain with the newly happy Maria and her dustmop dog.

Trafic does not represent the crowning glory of Tati’s achievement, but it is a fitting farewell to a character as gentle and humorous as the Little Tramp or Buster Keaton. All through the three previous Hulot films, Hulot seemed to just narrowly miss getting the girl, always rejected by the adult society that he really has no problem with. At the end of Trafic, Hulot does not walk off into the sunset; he walks off into the rain with a grand smile on his face and Maria on his arm, crowded together under the perpetual umbrella. For a moment we almost lose Hulot as he vanishes into the underground, but suddenly he returns, borne back on a tide of humanity.

The final image is of a massive traffic jam with umbrellas flitting here and there. The people, it seems, have left their cars and crowded beneath umbrellas together – a sea of Hulots in the midst of the technological wilderness.

Gentlemen, You Refuse to Understand Us

Every year on the 4th of July, I sit down and watch 1776, a musical (!) about the writing of the Declaration of Independence. It never fails to make me feel good about my nation. But this year was the first that I actually felt affected by it. Perhaps this is because I have spent almost year out of America, the longest I have ever been away from home. I’m used to spending 3-6 months at a time away from home, and have been since I first started attending college at St. Andrews when I was eighteen years old. But a whole year outside the nation of my birth, and the nation that I still feel a deep and abiding connection to, definitely has affected me. So on the 4th, watching 1776 had a peculiar resonance with me.

It wasn’t, amazingly enough, about the actual object of the Revolution. It was about what it means to be an American. I found myself focusing not on what the characters of Adams, Franklin and Jefferson were saying, but on what their opposition said. Not that I agree in any way with the opposition, rather that I began to consider what it means to be an American, in all our eccentricities, our values, and our contradictions. For our nation was born out of contrast and contradiction, a dedication to tradition given us by our British forebears, and a hope for the future and progress that came with not only ceasing to be a part of the British Empire, but also with the curious mix of ethnicities and races that make up the weird and wonderful place of the United States.

This came home to me watching the arguments that 1776 puts forth. While not the most historically accurate of films, it does give a sense of the very real controversies underlying American independence. Most specifically for me, it comes in the character of Edward Rutledge, the delegate from South Carolina and one of the leaders (in the movie) of the opposition.

I’ve become positively fascinated by Rutledge, and not just because he gets one of the best songs in the movie (or that John Cullum has one hell of a baritone and looks good in ruffles). Rather it is because both he and Dickinson, as the most stalwartly opposed to independence, express an element of America that we tend to either vilify or ignore. ‘Molasses to Rum’, although not historically accurate (the historical Rutledge did not oppose any sort of anti-slavery clause in the Declaration and Thomas Jefferson did not free his slaves until after his death), is a powerful polemic against hypocrisy. While it is easy to vilify Rutledge as a slave-holder, it is a hard pill to swallow when he points out that commerce in America was built upon slavery. That while the South may have held the whip, the North reaped the rewards of an economy built on blood and suffering. As white Americans, there’s not one of us that gets to take the high road on this one. And as a Northerner with numerous Southern relations and background, I feel quite aware of the question.

But beyond the slavery question, the character of Rutledge provides one of the more interesting points of 1776. America might be divided along North/South, East/West/Midwest binaries, but we are all (and here’s the bombshell) Americans. This country does not belong to the flag-waving creationists. But it also is not the sole property of eastern liberals. Claiming that one man does not (and cannot) understand another because of the location of his home, the state he was born in, the color of his skin, how long ago his ancestors came to this nation, what his first language is, etc, etc, is quite simply a cop-out. We won’t take the time to listen. Not to the pundits or the politicians, but to each other.

This is not to say that we’re all going to agree. We’re not. Nor is it to say that we should bow down to ignorance, bigotry, or the curtailing of basic human rights. But, as Americans, we’re stuck with each other. I’m not going to move to Canada, like some of my liberal friends have threatened (especially after Bush was elected). Because this is MY country. I love America. And I believe in it enough to want to understand the people here. I have a strange hope that if we were to only stop, all of us, and face each other as Americans, to accept that we are all a part of the same nation, we might actually discover that we don’t disagree quite as much as we think we do, or that at least those disagreements are not as earth-shattering as we make them out to be. As it is, we refuse to understand each other. It’s not because we can’t. It’s because we won’t.

24 Year Old Curmudgeon: Why I Hate Harry Potter

I hate Harry Potter. Yes, hate is a strong word, particularly to level at a popular series of novels. But I do. I thank God that the last movie is FINALLY coming out. This will be a diatribe. I apologize in advance.

I do not know why I hate Harry Potter. How can I? The books are very popular and well-written…to a point. I will only concede ‘to a point’. At the very least they have inspired people to read, which is always good, particularly children. And fandom is something I can get behind. I love Ghostbusters and I have friends who are obsessed with Lord of the Rings, comic books, video games, novels, etc, etc. I have no problem with that. I get obsessed too, usually over very esoteric things. To object to that would be the pot calling the kettle, as it were. So why do I hate Harry Potter? What has he ever done to me?

Well, he’s invaded my cinema, for one thing. I believe that that was the start of my vitriol. Before the movies began intruding on my life, I simply did not care about Harry Potter. I don’t know if I was too young or too old or simply more interested in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test to care about wizards. When the first book came out I was eleven years old and obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. So I never read the books as a child. But I have seen the movies. And even my most Potter-y friends admit: those kids Can. Not. Act. They still can’t act. Daniel Radcliffe has all the personality of a wet towel; Emma Watson has almost as many expressions as Mr. Potato Head; Rupert Grint whines and whines and whines. This might be a fault of the source material, of course, or of the scripts. Regardless, it’s positively grating to watch them on screen.

And what of the Aging British Thespians Brigade? Alan Rickman! Maggie Smith! Richard Harris! Gary Oldman! Ralph Fiennes! Emma Thompson! If you weren’t in Lord of the Rings, you got your chance in Harry Potter. I love all those actors. Rickman particularly seems to be enjoying himself immensely, but then he always does. Every time he talks with one of the kids, I only hear ‘I’m Alan Rickman. And you’re not.’ Which is fun. It cannot carry a movie, much less a franchise, but it is fun.

The fact is that the movies are really only supplements to the books. It’s impossible to follow them without having a serious knowledge of each novel in turn. As I came to the movies first, perhaps that was my problem. I was hopelessly confused most of the time. With the possible exception of whichever film was directed by Alfonso Cuaron*, the movies are fairly dreadful, confused and confusing. I am of the opinion that cinema should be able to stand on its own, and the Harry Potter movies do not. So perhaps that is the source of my antipathy. Like everyone else, I cannot divorce the books from the films any longer and the Films. Suck. That is my highly thought out critical opinion born of two years at film school. They suck.

But even this does not suffice. Because, the truth is, I should like Harry Potter. I should like the idea of wizards and good versus evil and betrayal and all that. I might even be persuaded to endure teenage angst. I was an angsty teenager once. I once felt like the world did not understand my intrinsic greatness, like I must be a wizard in disguise. I love outsiders and rebels and grand adventures. I should really have no problem with Harry Potter. And yet…

I can analyze some of the sources of my intense dislike. The books seem derivative, combining elements of Lord of the Rings, Greek and Roman mythology, folktales and old British traditions, not to mention the ever-present Christ story. But then so do most books; everyone takes their inspiration from somewhere. Perhaps it’s that the inspiration comes close to simply lifting whole subplots and characters from other places.

The Christ angle bothers me too. Maybe I’m just sick of the ‘One who will save humanity (or wizardry) by sacrificing himself for…whatever’. The Christ story has been done, over and over and over, so that whenever I hear those dreaded words (often phrased differently, but with the same purpose) ‘You are the one…’ I actually cringe. The world is always coming to an end. A hero must rise. Again. For the hundredth time.

Maybe I’m tired of good vs. evil narratives when we’re living in a world where that simply does not cut it anymore. To separate characters into good and bad nowadays seems dull, simplistic, and potentially damaging. Rather than understanding differences, we seek to vilify them. Rather than examining the darkness and the light within every human being, we draw a dividing line. We still do it, despite all evidence to the contrary in this world. Despite the shades of grey.

I know that we need those kinds of narratives, if only to keep our faith in the inherent goodness of humanity. That was one of the sources of my adoration of Sherlock Holmes: he was the voice of reason and goodness in a terrifying world. But he was also complex, not always nice, and sometimes not even right. He believed in the rule of justice, not necessarily law. I would never argue for always turning the world on its head, for always giving the villains the upper hand, for the defeat of the good guys. I am not really all that cynical when it comes to humanity. I believe that all human beings are intrinsically good. I believe that the human capacity for good is greater than the human capacity for evil. But I find it dull when it is all made so simplistic, so derivative, so easy to define.

I am a hypocrite. I have not made an exhaustive study of Harry Potter and I am probably glossing over all sorts of complexities that make those books so popular. So, I will tone down my language: I do not hate Harry Potter. I intensely dislike Harry Potter. I don’t really know why. Maybe I’m just contrary. Maybe I’m a curmudgeon at the age of 24. Maybe I should give the books another chance. Perhaps it would change my mind. I doubt it. Good for Rowling for creating a character that so many people seem to love and identify with. But I just can’t.

That said, I kind of want to see the last film. I want to see Rickman sneer one more time. I’m just not certain if it’s worth an 8 pound ticket.

*I thought it was Guillermo del Toro. Thanks, Jon Morris, for pointing out the error. Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part.*

Bad Men and Why We Love Them

OK, a little misleading. I’m not talking about REAL bad men. Not really nasty no-good sonofabitches. I’m talking about fake ones. Bad boys. Bastards. Assholes. Villains.

There’s just something about them, isn’t there? They’re not anti-heroes; they’re just the bad guys. You know that at the end of the movie, or the book, or the play, they’re going to either be dead, or heading to jail, or at least punished for their misdeeds. Most of the time. Not always, anymore, but at least in mainstream media the bad guys still tend to get it in the end. And we don’t really want it any other way.

Lucifer the Cat — Effing Mice Not Gonna Sing No More.

I have a fascination with villains. My favorite character in Disney was I was a little tyke? The cat Lucifer in Cinderella. He was mean and fat and wanted to eat all those annoying little mice and I loved him. Not that I wanted him to win in the end; no, not at all. But I enjoyed watching him be bad. I enjoyed the fact that he just did not care. He was a jerk, and I loved him.

Many years on and my fascination with villains has not waned. Best Shakespearean character? Iago. And he’s listed as literally ‘A Villain’. Not a soldier, a commander, a husband, a lieutenant, a friend … nope. Just ‘A Villain’. That’s what his character is and he fulfills it, better than any other Shakespearean villain. He’s mean and evil and hates everyone, including himself. He murders his own wife, he destroys his own friend, he drives Othello to destruction, he gloats and grimaces and makes the audience complicit in his nastiness. He’s hateful and cruel. He has no real motivation, no reason to do what he does … except that he’s a villain. And he’s delightful. He’s far more interesting than Othello, at least to me. He’s defined by his villainy. At the end of the play, does he beg for forgiveness? Does he confess to all the terrible things he’s done? Nope. He refuses to say a word. He’s responsible for the untold destruction of almost all the other main characters and he does not care. He just doesn’t give a shit.

So, why villains? What makes them so fascinating that they sometimes even overshadow the heroes? John McClane is a badass in ‘Die Hard’, but where would he be without the sneering, sexy Hans Gruber? We all hope Robin Hood saves the day, but Guy of Gisbourne is pretty fucking cool (and he’s Basil Rathbone). George Sanders made his career out of being an erudite, purring villain. And he’s more delightful to watch than most of his antagonists.

Part of it, I think, is simple sex appeal. Villains, often because of their villainy, get to be sexy in ways that heroes simply don’t. The hero has to fulfill all these stereotypes. He must be pure, intelligent, gentlemanly. If he has flaws, he must overcome them. He never gets to do bad things because he’s the hero. We’ve got to root for him. When he does something nasty, he must justify it in the end. Otherwise we won’t accept his triumph.

The villain has no such difficulties. Shoot innocent people? Done. Kidnap the heroine? Sure, why not. Cancel Christmas? You don’t get any presents. He gets to sneer and make snide remarks (Rickman, Irons, and Oldman are heirs to Rathbone, Rains and Sanders in that department). He’s often erudite, urbane, an aesthete, an intellectual. He tends to get the best lines, in books, in movies and in plays. He can be mean and sarcastic and do horrible things, and at some level we forgive him, we’re not bothered by it, because he’s the villain and that’s what he does. The villain, in other words, does not carry the moral weight of the world on his shoulders.

Hitchcock understood this. His villains tended to be likable, complex individuals, while his heroes tread the lines of hypocrisy. Consider the lackadaisical All-American boy detective (more or less the ‘hero’) in ‘Shadow of a Doubt’. A duller romantic figure never existed. The battle of ‘Shadow of a Doubt’ is really between Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright, the Old and Young Charlies. And Cotten is charming, funny, frightening but incredibly enjoyable to watch. Then there’s the sociopathic Brandon in ‘Rope’, while Jimmy Stewart find himself descending deeper and deeper into a hypocritical netherworld. The dedicated lovesick Alexander Sebastian in ‘Notorious’, versus the cold and even cruel hero Devlin. And the charming Johnny of ‘Suspicion’, who gets to be both hero and villain in one.

The most distressing of these villains in the Hitchcockian oeuvre is Bob Rusk in Frenzy. He’s a rapist, a murderer and a psychopath. He’s also more interesting, funnier and more charming than the supposed hero. We follow him throughout the film, having seen him murder a woman in one of the most terrifying and heart-wrenching scenes I’ve ever had to sit through. And what is really disturbing is that we actually begin rooting for him. He scares the hell out of us, but as soon as he’s caught, the movie’s over.

Rusk is an extreme example of charming villainy, but he makes the excellent point that part of what we like about villains is how easily they charm us. The villain forces us to examine a dark side of ourselves. Half the movies we see and books we read (detective stories, thrillers, adventures) are directly wrapped up in the darkness. We want to see the murder, hear the screams, laugh at the one-liners. We want to see good triumph, but there’s something delightful in evil getting its day. Hitchcock always pushed us closer to discomfort, making us shift in our seats as we realized that the man we like the best is also the man doing the worst things. He reminded us that the good guys aren’t always so hot, that there’s something attractive, fascinating in the bad. It’s disturbing, it’s uncomfortable, it’s … dark as hell. But it’s true.

Oh, besides that, villains also look like this:

In Defense of the Slow and Boring and Fast and Entertaining

Hitchcock/Truffaut — Hitchcock explains to Truffaut that he can't remember why he framed a single shot a particular way 40 years ago.

A recent New York Times article, by two critics whom I respect and mostly trust, gave me pause. The article, entitled In Defense of the Slow and Boring, is a response from A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis to another article in The New York Times Magazine by Dave Kois (available here) that purports to describe certain films (I believe we call them ‘art house’) as slow, boring and, above all, not entertaining. Scott, Dargis and Kois raise some interesting questions (although I do hope that they realize the questions are not exactly new): are films meant to be entertainment or art? Can they be both? SHOULD they be both? And so forth. What troubled me about the Dargis/Scott article, however, was not that they asked the questions. It was rather the way they asked them.

Being a film student and proud cinephile, I am not exactly new to the arena of film snobbery. Ever sat through Michael Snow’s Wavelength? Ever had, by my count, 12 whole minutes of your life stolen by Stan Brakhage’s Mothlight? Ever stared blankly at Alain Resnais’s Muriel? Ever prayed for death during Diary of a Country Priest? No? Then don’t talk to me about boredom, confusion or general malaise. Now those are all movies that I find dull. But I have friends, cinephiles, who enjoy them. Who find them fascinating, moving, educational. And that’s just fine. We can argue about it, debate the merits of Brakhage, of Warhol, of Resnais and Bresson. We might not ever agree, but we can find some common ground for discussion.

As I’ve said before in this blog, I also like my fast movies, my stupid comedies, my entertainment. And I baulk when someone accuses me of snobbery simply because I enjoy Resnais and think Michael Bay should not be called a ‘director’. That’s not snobbery; that’s taste. And if your taste is for Bay’s massive explosions, more power to you. Those films will never go away, and really, we shouldn’t want them to. Because the people those films entertain are not the idiot masses, as some film critics would have you believe. Thor does not belong in the same class of films as Solaris, but (and here’s a shocker to Scott and Dargis): it’s not supposed to. It’s a big, dumb action movie and it’s a pretty good big, dumb action movie. It aspires to be nothing more; it should not aspire to be more.

There is an incipient disrespect for films at the bottom of the Scott/Dargis argument, not to mention a disrespect for audiences. Modern audiences don’t want to think, apparently. I think they do, just not every minute of every film. Compare to the difference between eating a hamburger and a milk shake with eating a filet mignon and red wine. You’ll always recognize that the filet is, technically speaking, BETTER than the hamburger. That doesn’t mean you want to eat filet all the time.

The films that I find most pretentious are ones like Inception, the ones that purport to be full of depth and intellect and are actually nothing more than meaningless amalgams of better films blended with pop-psychology and a healthy dose of Sartre for Dummies. Films like that insult the intelligence of the audience because they masquerade as something better, deeper. But that’s just my opinion. At base, movies (like books and theatre and television) have the capacity to provoke, to challenge, to educate, and to entertain. Lest we forget that Alfred Hitchcock, the darling of the French New Wave and a massive influence on everyone from Truffaut to Tarantino to Scorsese to (I suspect) Malick, was one hell of an entertainer.

Geek Love #1: No, Seriously, Who ARE You Gonna Call?

Ghostbusters Tattoo — No, as a matter of fact, I am not afraid of no ghosts.

I was going to do a review of Thor (big, shiny and sexy, for those who want to know), but then I decided that everything good, bad and indifferent about it has been written. Go here for a good, comprehensive review by someone far more knowledgable about the Marvel Universe than I. Instead, I’m going to favor you with one of my continuous obsessions. One that a lot of people share.

I have a tendency to get really, really excited about certain things. Books, movies, actors, directors, writers, bands … these usually form the center of my obsessive desires. I geek out all the time. But it’s a wide and varied spectrum, untethered by time period or coolness factor. And there are gradations of obsession. I was passionate about The Beatles for most of my high school career. I don’t think there has been a time since I first saw Notorious when Alfred Hitchcock was not my favorite director. Hunter S. Thompson has been a great hero since college. And then there’s Ghostbusters.

You know Ghostbusters. EVERYONE knows Ghostbusters. It came out two years before I was even born. When I was a child, I mashed the two Ghostbusters movies together into one gigantic Ghostbusting memory that undoubtedly involved the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man fighting the Statue of Liberty in the Hudson River. Egon Spengler was one of the first crushes I ever had. Yeah, that’s right, THIS guy:

I think it was the hair and the glasses and the whole brainiac thing. Also, being a faculty brat and continuous student, I have a thing for slightly weird academics. I still think he’s pretty damned sexy, but that’s another post. I watched the Ghostbusters cartoon, wholly confused by the fact that Egon seemed to be wearing Cool Whip on his head and Peter sounded like Garfield. I had an outfit, made up of khaki pants and an army jacket that I stole from my mother. I pinned poorly drawn decals of ghosts to the sleeves. I WAS a Ghostbuster, dammit!

In the years that followed, my passion for this greatest of American comedies waned. I turned to other, more esoteric interests. I became a cinephile and book nerd and looked down my nose at such common things as popular comedies. Then, one day, I went to Montreal with my parents for a film conference. And the first Ghostbusters happened to be playing on television.

That was when my little five or six or seven year old self began running around, crying to be let out. I felt suddenly ecstatic, like someone told me the Easter Bunny was real. In the days, weeks and months that followed, I basically relived all my childhood. I wrote a paper for my horror/sci-fi class at NYU on comic apocalyptic imagery in the first film. I rewatched both films numerous times. I began watching the TV series again. While I did not go so far as to, say, build a proton pack or buy a jumpsuit, I definitely did my best to completely geek out.

Ghostbusters for me was not just a really cool movie. When I was a child, I was frightened of ghosts. Still am, to tell the truth. And what Ghostbusters did was prove to me that ghosts were scary, yeah, but they were also funny, ridiculous, something to laugh it. And when they were scary, well, there were always those guys dressed like exterminators who would show up and stop them. For me now, Ghostbusters represents New York, home, and the exceptional power of the comic to transcend terror. In less than a week, I’m going to get a tattoo on my shoulder of the Ghostbusters logo. It might be a little trite, a little straightforward, but it actually means something to me. It means that, in the end, laughter will win. Or maybe it just means that I was born in the 80s. One or the other.

‘Cave of Forgotten Dreams’: What About the Albino Crocodiles?

Only Werner Herzog could get me excited about a movie about cave paintings. The thought of one of our greatest living filmmakers descending into the depths to examine the secrets of prehistoric man is wonderful to me. And, as usual, Herzog did not disappoint. He crafted a film in which paintings came alive, in which the weird world of calcified remains and sparkling geological wonders, buried beneath the surface, awakens into our own. ‘Cave of Forgotten Dreams‘ is both riveting and elegiac, and creates a sense of wonder coupled with a sense of just how small our current world is in comparison with that of our ancestors.

Herzog manages a great deal with a limited camera crew, limited lighting and limited mobility within the cave. The images he produces are spectacular. The paintings themselves — of cave bears, cave lions, furry rhinos, wooly mammoths, wild horses, and a host of other animals, many now extinct — are brilliantly shaded, complex drawings that exhibit the artistry of what we like to call primitive humanity. The cave sparkles under Herzog’s lighting as he wanders on a narrow metal track, pointing out calcified skulls of cave bears, and the markings of animals and human beings alike. One image that he can only describe and never show is that of a footprint of an eight-year old boy next to the pawprint of a wolf. The images that evoke movement — a stampede of horses, two rhinos fighting — are linked to cinema, and Herzog dexterously draws out the correlation between some of the earliest forms of art with the most modern one.

There are moments when the film drags. Herzog, for some inexplicable reason, seems to have an obsession with New Age choral music that detracts from the majesty of what he’s trying to present. Rather than allowing the sounds of the cave to speak for themselves, he introduces a somewhat clunky heartbeat that recurs throughout the film and hammers home the point that the cave has a life of its own. Some of the analysis of the archaeologists takes on a ‘well, we know nothing about this, so we’re going to speculate wildly’ tone, which might have been toned by a bit more scientific/historical discussion rather than what it feels like, which is rampant speculation.

There’s also plenty of Herzogian weirdness to go around. A master perfumer wanders the forest trying to ‘sniff out’ caves. One of the archaeologists attempts to throw a spear. Another reveals that he was a circus performer before turning to archaeology. And, finally, there are those albino crocodiles that take up perhaps one of the strangest postscripts in the history of documentaries. But I won’t completely spoil that one for you.

I wish I could have seen the film as it was meant to be seen, in 3D (never thought I’d say THAT), but even in 2D, it is spectacular. Herzog remains a master of his craft, a deft commentator on the beauty and futility of human endeavor. He hasn’t quite mellowed in his old age, but he has achieved a new spirituality that is both welcome and, at times, a little weird.

‘Rubber’ Review: No Reason

If, like me, you are a cinephile, then I wish for you to take a brief moment to imagine the following film. Imagine that Luis Bunuel around about his Mexican time period (when he was making a lot of films in the desert) suddenly came across a young producer by the name of Roger Corman. Imagine that Corman asked Bunuel if he would be interested in writing a movie with a promising young man named Pynchon. Imagine finally, that Bunuel and Pynchon wrote that movie for Corman, that Bunuel directed it, and that David Lynch supervised the editing process. You might very well come out with Quentin Dupieux’s flawed but immensely entertaining ‘Rubber‘.

As everyone who has heard of ‘Rubber’ is well aware, the film centers around a psychopathic tire named Robert with telekinetic abilities. That in itself was enough to make me want to see it. What is pleasantly surprising about the film is that the psychopathic tire is only the beginning. The film opens with a character addressing an on-screen audience, touting the need for a factor of ‘no reason’ in the greatest of films. The lack of reason for Robert to become ambulatory, much less murderous, is what drives the plot. Why does Robert wake up, shake off the sand that has covered him, and begin rolling across the desert? No reason. Why does he suddenly discover a destructive ability to explode things (bottles, bunnies, people’s heads) just by … well, shaking a lot, but the implication is that he does it with his mind? No reason. If the lack of reason in the film is meant to comment on the malaise of modern filmgoing, then there’s a problem. But if, as I suspect, it is meant to be exactly what it says it is (an homage to No Reason), then it is remarkably successful.

That on-screen audience provides the highest dosage of meta commentary, as audience members (standing in the desert watching Robert’s progress) comment on the action. And here the movie lags, then threatens to disappear up its own tail-pipe. On-screen audiences show up far too much in cinema to be unique, although handing them binoculars and then torturing them in various way is a nice conceit. Their comments neither move the action along, nor contribute to the enjoyment of the off-screen audience. They are too self-conscious to be interesting, and the scenes centred around them become increasingly wooden and dull. And about mid-point through, the entire film becomes derailed to concentrate on this audience in an overlong scene of metafiction. The fact is, we really want to see what Robert will do next, not what the audience members think he will do next, nor how aware the characters are that they’re in a movie.

Robert is the most developed character, as we watch him come to life, discover his powers, discover sex, discover death and destruction, suffering and excitement. Without speaking a word, without having a face or eyes or being anything other than a tire, he manages to evoke sympathy, terror, humor, and a good amount of self-awareness. One gets the sense that Dupieux’s interests lie in the same place and that he was suffering from too much cleverness when he added in the running commentary. If only he let Robert do the talking, the film would have rolled along much better. As it is, though, I cannot resist the sheer enjoyment of watching a tire best humanity, without speech and finally without reason.

I’m assuming that ‘Rubber’ can be viewed in theatres, but it can also be downloaded from iTunes. Really, it is well worth it.

One Genre to Rule Them All…

As my friends are well aware, I am a total snob. I’m a film snob, a literature snob, and, most recently (due to my sudden interest in Nietzsche, that syphilitic genius), a philosophy snob. I watch movies with long names and long takes, like Last Year at Marienbad and Dr. Mabuse the Gambler. I read Thomas Pynchon for fun. I like Baudrillard and Foucault and words like ‘signification’ and ‘heteronormative structures’. I write douchey posts on my blog, like this one.

But …

I also like terrible B-movies, slasher flicks, sappy romantic comedies and things in which Bruce Willis or Vin Diesel blows shit up. And I read genre books: crime fiction, sci-fi, fantasy and their subgenres, steampunk, cyberpunk, even the occasional romance novel. I do not like contemporary literary fiction as a rule. Everything recent that I’ve taken interest in usually turns out to be what would be broadly classified as ‘genre’ fiction. You know, genre. That thing that snobs are not supposed to like. That thing that is repetitive and has rules and is, like, generic and stuff. That section of literature (or film, or art) that is not ‘serious’.

Recently, a furor broke out over the BBC’s World Book Night last month. Lead by Stephen Hunt (an excellent steampunkish author), a group of fantasy/sci-fi writers responded to what they perceived as the BBC’s anti-genre attitude. I believe the phrase ‘sneering derogatory tone’ was used. The BBC of course denies that they sneered at genre fiction. (Hunt’s original post can be found here: Stephen Hunt vs BBC , the BBC’s response according to The Guardian here: BBC Denies Sneering at Genre Fiction ).

I did not see the program, so I really can’t comment on how right or wrong the sci-fi authors or the BBC are. Being that an opinion is much easier to hold if not hampered by the facts (thank you, Mark Twain), I choose to side with the authors. But the point that this whole debate makes is one that keeps coming back to me: what’s the matter with genre?

What is it about so-called genre fiction that makes folks like the literati over at the BBC sneer? I use the BBC specifically, but this extends to a whole section of writers, readers, professors and intellectuals. Why is To the Lighthouse literature, and Farewell My Lovely not? I once took a whole class in 20th Century Crime Fiction at a university known for its stalwart dedication to the canon of English literature. Why is this debate still going on?

Warhol, like him or hate him, made great strides in making pop culture art. Thomas Pynchon wrote a potboiler, a steampunk novel, an adventure story. Cormac McCarthy writes westerns, but no literary critic will admit that he’s working in the tradition of Zane Grey. Robert Louis Stevenson is taught as canonical, but lest we forget that he was a genre author: horror (Jekyll and Hyde) , adventure (Kidnapped, Treasure Island), historical fantasy (The Master of Ballantrae). Dickens was a popular writer who got published in monthly installments in magazines. Jane Austen, let’s face it, wrote chick lit.

I blame the Modernists. Before Virginia Woolf et al began venerating themselves, novels were largely modes of entertainment. They were a popular medium intended for a wide audience longing for a three volume escape from mundanity. They were TV for the middle classes. The best ones (for my money, Dickens, Hardy and Thackeray, but that’s debatable) were entertaining first; the depth of their subjects, their political commentary and social consciences were a marvelous addition. The Modernists made the novel deep as a cave and just as dangerous. They gave it a greater social conscience, and moved it towards real political efficacy, but in the process lost sight of entertainment value. We read Ulysses because it’s important, but is it fun?

This is not to say that there is no place for intellectual books. I love intellectual books. I also don’t want to be bored by something just because it’s ‘important’. Anti-intellectualism is a terrible thing, but sometimes I get the sense that intellectuals are looking to cordon themselves off from the rest of the world, to look down their noses at something just because it does not fit into an arbitrary criteria of ‘art’. The fact is that literary fiction is as much a genre as anything else: there’s BAD literary fiction, and there’s good. We just slap the phrase ‘literary’ on it and suddenly it’s a tome worthy of the New York Review of Books. Good genre fiction is difficult; it requires as much skill, as much intelligence and attention to detail as any other work of art. Entertaining people is hard work. So, basically, we all need to get our heads out of our own asses and realize that literature is a slippery category. Besides, some literary fiction could be improved by a dirigible or two.

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