C'est Non Un Blog

——Winter Light——

(A-)

Winter Light is an almost direct continuation of theme from Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly, although in this installment things have gotten much bleaker. The story concerns a pastor who has lost his wife some time ago and now preaches to near empty churches. After one service a man comes to him for help, since he has become depressed with the news that China now has the bomb and is not afraid to use it. He needs some reassurance, but the pastor can give him none because he has been plagued by “God’s silence” ever since his wife’s death and thus ends up giving the man such a bad speech that the man goes out and kills himself. The pastor slips into deep depression as he works out his relationship with an aging spinster teacher who is deeply in love with him, but he feels next to nothing for her.

This film makes connections with Through a Glass Darkly by repeating the image of the grotesque spider God and the idea that “love is God,” meaning that love is the physical manifestation that is the proof of the existence of God. This movie is much more bleak though, and much harder to get into. The movie at times becomes as stark as winter itself, and the viewer at times will find it hard to identify with the pastor, since he is kind of a prick. It is a challenging film, but by the end a very rewarding one. The pastor thinks that God has forsaken him by taking away his wife who was his love, and thus his proof of God’s existence. His preaching has become shallow and canned now, but at the end a cripple compares his own suffering to Jesus’ passion on the Cross, mentioning that the physical pain was probably nothing compared to the feeling of being forsaken by God. Then, even though there is only one person in the church for the service, his spinster sometimes mistress, he decides to carry on the mass nonetheless, bringing optimism to the picture that as long as there is at least one person to save, they are still worth servicing to.

——What is the Meaning of Life?——

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life — (A-)

VS.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — (A-)

What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? I saw two comedies that sought to answer those questions and succeeded with the deft ability missing in most dramatic films of the same type. Both films seem to find that the answer is not really as important as the journey of getting to that answer, and the answer is really as easy as have fun and be nice to one another.

Monty Python’s stab at that most eternal of all philosophical questions might even more aptly have been titled Monty Python’s Look into the Male Mind. There are plenty of bare breasts and penis jokes and more than enough physical humor to keep even the least sophisticated of us entertained. The film never quite rises above being a sketch show and yet it never tries to be more than that either; while characters from separate sketches do overlap with each other it is never for more than the purpose of showing how each sketch has been interrelated. Even the short film that precedes the film (a hilarious look at old, oppressed accountants who take over their firm and sail it around like a bunch of commerce pirates) intersects at one point with the main film as if to further the point that modern commercialism, materialism, and capitalism destroy the fun in life by telling everyone what they are suppose to like. (As Ferris says, “It is not that I condone fascism, or any –ism for that matter. -Isms in my opinion are not good. But a person should not believe in an –ism, he should believe in himself.)

The film is really about how much fun there is to have in life, and really most of that fun comes from sex. A Catholic sings about how every sperm is sacred while a Protestant complains about how stupid the Catholics are since Protestants can wear condoms and have sex whenever they want, although the Catholic is actually getting much more sex than him because of his prudishness. Sex Ed is dissected to its most boring; the teacher has sex with his wife right there in the classroom and no one seems to care. All the schoolroom rules are so complex that the students’ brains have become cluttered and they don’t seem to care about anything other than answering the next question aimed at them correctly. A man is sentenced to death of his own choosing, which just happens to be death by beautiful naked women. Heaven is a bunch of topless woman dancing and singing that it is Christmas every day in Heaven. As Monty Python points out at the end of the movie, the only way you can really get anyone’s attention anymore is with cheap titillation, and it works in bringing out the point of life, which in perspective seems rather mundane.

Ferris Bueller it seems has read of the book of Python and uses his knowledge to live every moment in life to the fullest. Ferris gets away with everything because he isn’t really worried about not getting away with everything. If something is worth doing you do it and damn the consequences, and even though he comes close to getting caught playing hooky several times and seems to show fear in getting caught, he never loses his cool. This is what makes him different from all of the other main characters. His best friend lives in constant fear and ends up doing nothing out of fear of what might happen if he does something. The principle lives under a strict adherence to the rules and is thus unable to adapt to Ferris’ many tricks. And his sister is so envious and spiteful of her brother’s popularity and ability to get away with anything that she has forgotten that she has that ability in herself, and it is only through realizing it doesn’t matter what her brother does, but what she does that she experiences joy at the end of the film.

Ferris seems to hit the nail on the head by recognizing that we don’t have that much time on this earth anyway, so we might as well get the most out of it that we can before it’s too late. Leading a parade is just the tip of the ice burg for him, and he teaches his best friend and, indirectly, his sister to live it up a little before it’s too late. This is the exact same virtue spelled out by Monty Python, although in a slightly different way. But then again, who of us has not at one time or another thought of riding his office building to plunder the seven seas of business investing? I know I have.

Happy 10th Anniversary Conan!

——From Dusk Till Dawn——

(C+)

You haven’t really lived until you’ve seen this film. It’s not like it is any good or anything like that, but it is so bizarre, and the tone of the movie changes so unexpectedly that you have to see it just to say you have. That starts as a fugitive bank robbers on the loose running for the border movie turns into a freak-out the strippers are really vampires gore-fest. The dialog isn’t really that great half the time (even though it is written by Quentin Tarantino) and the plot is fucked up to the max (why does a vampire turn into a rat monster?) but it does have a few good moments, and is so messed up that you’ll want to watch it at least once in your life, even if you never end up watching it again. The effects are pretty good for those who care, and it has some good actors in it, even if they aren’t really giving their best performances. But still, it’s messed up, which should make you all want to see it. But then again, if you want to see a really great messed up Rodriguez movie, go see Once Upon a Time in Mexico instead (see below).

——Once Upon a Time in Mexico——

(A-)

This movie is probably the most fun you’ll have in a theater this year. Once Upon a Time isn’t necessarily a great movie, but it is so delightfully over the top that you’ll be grinning from ear to ear for the entire film. You won’t even notice silly things like plot whenever Johnny Depp says something, or whenever Antonio Banderas pulls out his double shotgun pistol to blow someone across a room. Forget Pirates of the Caribbean, THIS is the Johnny Depp movie of the year. Every line he has is hilarious. Everything he does is hilarious. And like I said, everything is extremely over the top. This is a cult film in perfection if I’ve ever seen one. Robert Rodriguez uses shots and scenes and plot elements from El Mariachi and Desperado, but then improves upon them greatly, making this a much more satisfying film than either. Finally all of his skills as a filmmaker are actually being put to use in an action movie. I never felt cheated watching this movie and I was always entertained. Everyone get out and watch this movie now!

——Matchstick Men——

(B+)

Matchstick Men, a movie about con men, leaves you feeling like you yourself have been conned when you walk out of the theater. The film builds itself up so beautifully, only to collapse in the way you least expect in the final ten minutes, leaving you flabbergasted as to what just happened. The film does work in its own way, but you kind of wish it didn’t try to. Literally the whole reason you end up loving the movie is taken away from you in those final moments, and although Nic Cage seems to feel fine with that, you don’t. It kind of makes sense and works, but it so alienates the audience that I don’t understand why we should go along with the filmmakers.

That said the rest of the film is a pretty solid little movie about con games and father/daughter relationships. Nic Cage is great, Sam Rockwell is great, and Alison Lohman gives a fantastic performance as Cage’s long lost daughter. This is a character drama, and a pretty good one at that, although there is nothing really spectacular about it. It is the final con of the movie that throws you off though; the more you think about it, the less likely it seems. But it could work, and you’ve got to admire the filmmakers for at least trying it. Still I don’t know if I would recommend this film to anyone other than those who really want to see it. The rest of you might as well stay away from the shell game unless you really know what you are getting yourself into.

——Rear Window——

(A+)

What a brilliant idea for a movie. Take a film (which in a sense is already a kind of voyeurism) and make it about voyeurism. Have the main character not only be representative of our voyeurism (he’s stuck looking out the rectangle of his window unable to interact with what he’s watching, much like us) but also the focus of our voyeurism. To be honest, a film about a guy looking out a window didn’t sound at all appealing to me before I saw the film, but it is amazing how well the actual concept works. It is so easy to become riveted to what is happening out in the courtyard just like James Stewart is. Hitchcock plays with our own natural impulses to look out that window so well that I was literally hanging on every moment just like James Stewart was. As Hitchcock pointed out we are all voyeurs in one way or another. Although none of us will admit to it, if we walk by a window and see our neighbors doing something we’ll stop for a moment to watch. It is as if we are daring ourselves not to watch, but we can’t help it because our imagination gets the best of us, just like Jimmy Stewart there was able to get his nurse and girlfriend hooked on what he was watching as well as the audience. This is such a film about film that it’s not funny, and yet it is so light and interesting that we don’t even seem to notice that. Meanwhile we are getting played like instruments by Hitchcock, who not only gives us a view into the apartments around Stewart’s, but also gives us a view into Stewart’s life revolving over the question of whether or not to get married. The cutting from scene to scene is like the opening and closing of blinds, or having to leave and come back to the story. You’re only given certain pieces of information that feed your imagination just like Stewart’s. It’s no real coincidence that the film opens with the opening of the blinds, and closes with the closing of the blinds. And beside the technical brilliance of the film, there is just the fact that the film is so damn fun and compelling. This film probably has the easiest character in the world to relate to, because we are in the exact same position as him. That coupled with the excellent performance from James Stewart and the amazing beauty of Grace Kelly (she has to be the hottest screen siren from that era, bar none) and you have an amazing and delightful movie experience on your hands.

I got my Kingdom Come Superman and Wonder Woman toys in the mail today.

I have to say I’m a little disappointed with the coloring job. (Doesn’t it look good in that picture?) The sculpts are awesome but the blues and reds on both of them are way too bright. The colors are suppose to be a little muddy like the fuzzy morality of the comic. Instead we have the bright primary colors of truth, justice, and the American way. Any other Superman figure and it would be OK, but they should have put a little more energy into better coloring (especially for what I paid for them). Wonder Woman is a little too thin also, but otherwise they are pretty damn cool toys. Not as good as the MacFarlane stuff, but still better than about 90% of the other stuff out there. I just wish the Batman from Kingdom Come didn’t look so lame, as I still don’t have a Batman figure for my collection. Although if the Jim Lee designed DC Direct line of ‘Hush’ toys looks as cool as Lee’s sketches, I might not have to wait long for one.

There are two new CDs from two new bands that I think you should all check out: the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Raveonettes.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs I first saw on Conan and they so totally blew me away with their live performance that their name just kind of got stuck in the back of my mind. They played Y Control, which I think is probably the best track off of the album. They are just amazingly animated live (which I can say for almost no other bands I’ve seen). Then I saw them on Letterman I think and again they were awesome, so I decided to pick up their CD. They kind of sound like a combination of the new garage rock sound combined with 80’s music, punk and the Cure, and the lead singer Karen O sounds like PJ Harvey gone wild. It’s quite an addictive sound, with lots of great tracks on the album. Pick it up.

The Raveonettes are this Danish duo who are obsessed with pre-Beatles America and 50’s movies and with making their albums based on single keys (this album I have is all in B flat major). It sounds great, like Phil Spector-ish Rock n’ Roll transplanted in the new millennium. A hint of country here, a hint of blues there, and a Beach Boys sound over there, all made into fun, addictive love songs. It’s real good stuff.

——The Killing——

(A)

I was a little surprised to see that I liked this film as much as I did. Why? Well for starters this film is just like just about every other heist movie and film noir you’ve ever seen. There is nothing really in the story that will seem all that new to you. So why did I like it so much then? Because it’s not the story that matters, but how you tell the story. Kubrick pretty much pioneered the non-linear story in commercial American cinema with this movie (you can see its impact all the way up to Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs) and it works brilliantly. By starting at the moment of the heist, and then flashing back to the beginning only to work your way back up to the heist and then watch each man play out his part in flashback before actually getting to see if the heist is a success is brilliant. Elements are repeated and the story builds up remarkable tension as Kubrick keeps pulling you away from what you really want to see and only showing that at the very last minute. In our minds we think we have a good idea of what the other characters are doing, but instead of jumping straight from one story to the next we have to watch each one overlap to see how each piece of the puzzle fits together. Information is only given when it is necessary, which makes it a lot easier to build the suspense of wondering who is going to get out alive when, say, the one man’s wife (a perfect femme fatale) finds out about the money and has her boyfriend ambush the other men for the money. On top of that the ending is quite excellent. The main character’s final words left me quite surprised and yet satisfied.

Kubrick’s cinematography isn’t quite up to the levels of brilliance that we will see in Dr. Strangelove (I enjoyed the fact that the main character of this was the general afraid of the communists contaminating his fluids in Strangelove), and yet it is still miles above most other directors. The tracking shots through rooms were quite good and there was one scene in particular that really impressed me. We see the main character open a door, walk down a hallway, and then the camera pulls back to show us that we were actually looking in a mirror as he walks out the opposite side of the screen that we expected. The shot then continues down the length of the room, allowing Kubrick to film the entire movement without cutting once. Nice.

——Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)——

(B+)

This movie wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped (it had been compared to The Thing as an all time great remake) but it was still pretty darn entertaining. Just the idea of everyone around you being replaced and becoming someone different that you don’t know scares me. What if you woke up one day and everyone was a Republican, for instance? (Which is an actual extremely subtle joke at the beginning of the movie, by the way.) Anyway, the idea of the film is far scarier than the actual pods, which look like giant sea cucumbers with big plastic flowers sticking out of one end. The replicate bodies are pretty creepy though (at least the ones that don’t look like infant adults). Donald Sutherland (in all his porn mustache glory) plays the lead very effectively, playing doubtful to the crazy woman’s claims that her husband is different at first, but then quickly becoming a believer when the weird things start piling up. I’m not really sure why Jeff Goldblum is in the movie, but Leonard Nemoy (looking totally like a pimp with his huge sideburns) is great as the psychologist who is trying to convince everyone that they are just having a nervous breakdown. The ending is quite a shocker (lame at first but then as you think about it, it gets quite cool). The film deals with paranoia real well. It is not the greatest film in the world, and yet it is still creepy enough to get my recommendation.

——The Wild Bunch——

(A)

I’m not really sure why I didn’t take to this movie the first time I saw it. Maybe I have become so desensitized to violence that the groundbreaking sequences in this film didn’t impress me because everyone does now what they started in this film. Maybe it was because it has taken me a while to warm up to the Western genre and only now can I appreciate a film like this. This was one of the first (if not the first) Western I’ve seen in my more mature period of film viewing (i.e. since starting college). Maybe I was in a bad mood that day, I don’t know; the point is that I really missed out the first time around because this is a truly great film. As Peckinpah says several times on the documentary on the DVD, The Wild Bunch is just an adventure movie, but an adventure movie that deals realistically with its characters’ motivations. Peckinpah apparently built the film around the premise of taking a pretty standard plot (outlaws do the right thing in a climatic shoot-out) and making it work so that you actually believe these characters would have done what they did in the real world.

On second viewing the opening sequence became much more impressive in my mind. In it the Wild Bunch ride into town dressed as Army personal in order to rob a bank. What they don’t know is that it is a set up, and several men sent by the railroad are waiting to take them out. The Bunch figures out men are waiting for them and decide to shoot their way out when a temperance parade makes its way in front of the bank (which is made extremely ironic since the Bunch consumes obscene amounts of alcohol throughout the film). This shoot-out turns into a massacre as the town gets caught in the middle with seemingly no discretion taken on the part of the “good guys”. In fact they seem to be purposefully shooting the civilians, or at the very least not caring who they shoot, and in the ensuing chaos the majority of the bunch escape. This scene is meant to disgust the audience right from the get go. Right from the start Peckinpah is trying to tell us this is not a normal Western. As if to make this point double clear the opening sequence is framed by some children throwing scorpions onto of the nests of fire ants to watch them fight. This cruelness combined with the fact that, like the scorpions and fire ants, there are no clear “good guys” lets us know what kind of film we are about to see. Finally the children throw hay on the bugs and burn them, subtly letting us in on how the film is going to end.

So why do the Wild Bunch march to their death at the end? Well, part of it has to do with the fact that there is still honor among thieves. The Bunch’s pursuer once rode with them. There is an admiration between the two main men. And yet the pursuer is on the outside now, a betrayer of their cause, and that relationship becomes a metaphor for the attitudes of the whole bunch. “We do it right and we do it together, or we don’t do it at all.”

And yet that mentality only takes them so far. They don’t rush to help their captured Mexican ally right away, and feel more that they owe it to him more than anything else. And then once they shoot the general and everyone else holds up there hands there is this moment between the Bunch where they laugh because they know at this moment they could get away without anything happening to them. But then they also know they can take it all too. In a blaze of glory they try to achieve the impossible, and almost do it too, killing an impossible number of Mexican troops before finally succumbing themselves. It’s all about the symbolic nature of the act. These are men who time has passed them by. Industrialization and modernization is coming to the West, and Texas is suddenly getting smaller. Mexico is in the middle of a revolution itself. They are running short on time, and their kind isn’t long for the world. They know this so they try to take one last grab at glory. They need that one last score. Most of these men want to retire anyway, and they need to make one last stand to show that they are the best. It doesn’t turn out well for them, but their point has been made in a brilliantly stunning film filled with exquisitely composited scenes, amazing uses of lenses (including probably some of the best use of a zoom lens I’ve seen) and editing that still impresses today with its ferocious intensity.