Critic After Dark

Andrew Sarris profile on The New York Times

2009-07-12T21:27:00.009-04:00

O'Hara, in a less than cheerful pose

I remember my first interview of Filipino filmmaker Mario O'Hara was in this tiny dim sum shop on the third floor of Glorietta Mall in Makati City and just after a few minutes of talking, of what I thought of his work and the fact that he hasn't made a picture in two years, he laughed out loud and exclaimed (in Tagalog): "you're treating me as if I were already dead! I'm still alive, you know."

That was some fifteen years (has it been so long?!) and six films ago; far as I can tell O'Hara is alive and well, but living in his habitual mode, under the radar. Last I heard was through a niece, who passed on to me his recognition that his filmmaking days are probably over, and the young Turks with their digital cameras have taken over the filmmaking scene.

I'd love to pull him aside and yell in his ear "are you kidding? With that box full of scripts you haven't directed?" but I'm stuck here on the other side of the Pacific with no realistic way of getting in contact with him (he doesn't even have a telephone, much less Twitter). So I'm thinking violent thoughts, in the hopes of getting him off his ass and maybe working again, in any capacity (aside from directing he's a noted writer and actor, in theater, television and radio). I'm not writing him off just yet.

So it's probably premature to write off Andrew Sarris, even if in a recent New York Times profile article he's pretty much made it clear that he won't be writing for a major newspaper any time soon (though articles for Film Comment have not been ruled out). Why such a profile, now? Would like to think such people--institutions established after decades of struggle--are always newsworthy, though beneath the bravado one hears the whisper: this is a salute in honor of the man while he's still alive, and we can still do him some measure of justice.

I've never been so complacent as to think The Grim Reaper's clammy grasp would never find my neck, but there are moments--now more often than ever--when I feel those bony fingers brushing past my shoulders, reminding me that he'll be back. Nothing stops, nothing lasts, nothing remains the same; we survive, after a fashion.

Michael Jackson, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton, 2005), A.I. (Steven Spielberg, 2001)

2009-07-11T23:17:00.019-04:00

Talk about strange developments--saw a broadcast of Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) recently and two things struck me stronger than ever before: that the dramatic center of the film belonged to Charlie (Freddie Highmore), from whom this version of Roald Dahl's book rightly takes its name, and that Johnny Depp is basically channeling Michael Jackson:

You think?

I know I'm hardly the first one to notice the similarities, but in my own blinkered way I've started to realize just how deliberate and, well, inspired the choice may be. Burton and Depp tap into Jackson's lurid reputation to give their protagonist the kind of subtext Gene Wilder's Wonka was never able to exploit. Of course the earlier version had Wilder, no mean asset, who could play an infinite variety of lunatics to perfection better than Depp ever can--but beyond the actor's considerable abilities no, no tabloid unwholesomeness.

The film's funnier this way, considering recent events; one thinks more and more about parallels to events in Jackson's life, and how they add resonance to Wonka's own story--Wonka's factory standing in for Jackson's Neverland; Wonka and Jackson's desire for secrecy competing against a pathological need for attention; the five Golden Ticket winners enjoying their tour, at any moment in danger of being invited to a sleepover at Wonka's private quarters...

And, finally, a comic justification for Burton's addition of Wonka's father, always to my mind the film's weakest element. Of course a man will suffer severe trauma, will develop into an eccentric (to put it kindly) introvert when the biggest single adult influence in his childhood is Dracula, or Joe Jackson; I for one am not surprised.

And it's not as if Burton's caricature were totally unkind. He grants Jack--sorry, Wonka--a certain amount of closure, plus the possibility of a surrogate family. It's the kind of benign ending one might have wished for Jackson, too.

Also saw again after many years (and much urging from fans whose opinions I respect) Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001). I'd dismissed it as a Spielbergian botch of Kubrick's (Philip K. Dick's?) ideas. This time around the film seems much more poignant (if still far from perfect), easily Spielberg's most ambitious and troubling work.

The film's first third (funny how Kubrick's projects--2001, A Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket come most readily to mind--tend to break down into sections of threes) is the most emotionally wrenching: a dark, domestic comedy about the sibling rivalry between boy and robot for mom's affections (come to think of it, aside from Lolita and The Shining Kubrick has done precious little drama or comedy, domesticwise--it's almost always genre fare). Here Spielberg to my mind most closely hews to the look and tone of Kubrick's films, at least in coldly recording the various emotional dislocations being inflicted on the hapless Swintons. The abandonment in the forest that climaxes this first third makes one think of the tale of Hansel and Gretel--a parent's mixed feelings of love and repulsion resulting in a scene as wrenching as anything Spielberg (or Kubrick for that matter) has ever done.

The middle third is said to be Spielberg's take on A Clockwork Orange. I don't quite see the similarity--despite the striking production designs, Kubrick's vision of future England displayed a sterility and desolation toe other can't quite match. Spielberg may be aiming for a dystopia, at least where robots are concerned, but what I see here is a vibrant, colorful tomorrow, filled with technological marvels. The man can't help being what he is, I suppose; even in Minority Report (2002), where he relies heavily on Janusz Kaminski's gray color palette to make the future look unappealing, there are 3-D ads that call you by name, a marvel of an electric car that assembles all around you, and (lovely touch) creepy carnivorous flowers that nip at your fingertips. Spielberg, unlike Kubrick, has a difficult time doing despair. There's just too much restless energy to his filmmaking, where Kubrick can sap the juice out of one's optimism through the sheer architectonic power of his images.

I questioned the high level of intelligence of the existing mechas in my article on the film. Actually, I may have missed the more complex view Spielberg and Kubrick had in mind--these robots are smart, very smart, capable of a high level of logical reasoning; what the film's diminutive hero David (Haley Joel Osment) possibly represents is a robot able to jump tracks, use imagination, connect seemingly disparate elements to form a cohesive whole. The heart of this segment--of the film's debate on what constitutes genuine intelligence, I think--is the "Dr. Know" sequence where in the space of seven questions (three of which are wasted) David manages not just to track down his Blue Fairy, but also point up the qualitative difference between his mind and other robots'. David's companion Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) may provide crucial information (where Dr. Know can be found, how much each question costs), but it's clearly David who drives the interrogation--bringing up the subject of "fairy tales," suggesting it's possible that what they're looking for is both "fact" and "fairy tale," formulating the final, crucial question that gives them their first real clue.

Later Gigolo Joe brings up a disturbing possibility--what if what David's looking for isn't real? In the face of doubt, David professes faith ("My mommy doesn't hate me! Because I'm special! And unique! Because there's never been anyone like me before, ever!")--something robots are supposedly incapable of doing. Joe replies to David: "She loves what you do for her, as my customers love what it is I do for them." Sharp observation, but that's all it is: an observation, a distillation of what he's seen and known.

Joe does conclude with these words: "We are suffering for the mistakes they made because when the end comes, all that will be left is us. That's why they hate us, and that is why you must stay here, with me." Joe turns out to be prophetic, and seems to display some evidence of affection, or need for David's companionship (true Joe is programmed to show affection--he's a love 'bot, after all--but David is presumably not in the category of clients he's supposed to show affection to). Which brings us back to my original objection, or question, or whatever: just how special is David, and why does he represent an advance in artificial intelligence?

The middle third climaxes with the presentation of the story's ostensible final solution--a solution David ultimately rejects. The last third begins with yet another of Kubrick's 'magical journeys' (think 2001), here through time, not space. On my first viewing I was unhappy with the possibility that David will hibernate through his tedious trip on low batteries; this time I managed to ascertain that David is conscious, and will be for for a possibly very long time before he runs out of batteries (But what happened to his DAS, or Damage Avoidance System, and his ability to find creative solutions? Do they just run out, like the batteries).

As for the ending (please skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the film)--yes it's sad, tragic even, but I'd love to have seen Kubrick's take. According to Spielberg, Kubrick wanted to produce the film with him to direct, but I'd love to have seen Kubrick's version (of this scene, at least). I know Kubrick intended for Strauss to play in the background (did he intend the ending to mimic so closely the final scene of 2001?), but knowing Kubrick and his handling of drama and accompanying music (see, oh, the finale of Paths of Glory, the farewell scene between Humbert and his beloved in Lolita, the climactic duel in Barry Lyndon) he would most likely have handled it in a different manner--the emotions of the scene as merely an element (a disciplined element) of the whole, and not threatening to overwhelm everything as it does here. As mentioned before, I suspect Spielberg despairs of ever doing despair properly.

Let the Right One In; The Sky Crawlers

2009-07-05T04:17:00.014-04:00

Lat den ratte komma in (Let the Right One In, 2008) is fondly remembered, apparently, less for Tomas Alfredson's bleak storytelling than for the low-key romance that blossoms between two-hundred-year-old vampire Eli (Lina Leandersson) and twelve-year-old youth Oskar (Kare Hedebrant).

I see it a little differently, however; I see the blossoming of a low-key seduction of Oskar. I see Eli eyeballing Oskar as a possible replacement for Hakan (Per Ragnar), her adult companion and facilitator. From what I understand about the source novel, writer John Ajvide Lindqvist makes it clear that Hakan and Oskar are in no way similar, and that Eli has genuine feelings of affection for Oskar. Alfredson chose to cut out Hakan's backstory, making his relationship with Eli more ambiguous, and pointing up the parallels between Hakan and Oskar.

It's telling, how Alfredson views Oskar--basically as a serial killer-in-the-making. Central to Alfredson's take of the character is Oskar's brief scene with a knife and a tree; without a word of explanation, Alfredson makes it clear that this is what Oskar would like to be, this is how Oskar would like to treat his tormentors. Sad fact of life, but victims of bullying sometimes aren't martyred saints, but passive youths forced (by bullies, by authority) to repress their anger and frustration until they find some other outlet for their anger--or, ultimately, explode in a paroxysm of violence. In this case, Oskar finds a tree; in later years in a series of chosen victims, perhaps. I see this happening where I work.

Does Eli love Oskar? I say--why not? One can love someone at the same time one is exploiting him or her. If there's anything I don't believe in, it's a pure, untainted love. At our best we try, as much as possible, as often as possible, to think of what's best for our beloved, and hope this is enough.

Alfredson takes his cue from the cold, bleak weather and landscape; the camera rarely moves (as if frozen in place) and at night the snow seems to have its own faint glow, less fairyland than nightmare, less enchanting than chilling. Not the greatest vampire film ever made (you can see the influence of Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995), George Romero's Martin (1977), even of Ingmar Bergman at his most gothic), but easily one of the best recent examples of the genre.

Mamoru Oshii's Sukai kurora (The Sky Crawlers, 2008) is, in a word, breathtaking. Based on the novel by Hiroshi Mori, the film tells the story of a group of pilots engaged in a series of aerial battles, their struggle enveloped in an air of mystery--how this happened we don't know; why, we don't know either; for whom isn't really made clear, other than the fact that they and the pilots flying against them work for opposing companies. This is corporate warfare pushed in extremis but beyond the canny observation (how many of the world's conflicts are inspired, abetted, maintained by corporate interests?) that's not really the film's point; rather, it's the pilots' psychological state, a (as Oshii noted) state of stasis where they don't know how and why they came to be fighting, and don't really care.

I've seen these kind of people before, not in a movie but a novel--or rather, a series of novels; Oshii's film may be the first animated attempt to bring the works of J. G. Ballard to the big screen. All the hallmarks are there: the disaffected characters, the sense of alienation, of dislocation, the occasional surreal imagery against perfectly blue skies (maybe it's Magritte, but when I picture an image surreal, I picture it against flawless blue skies). The pilots don't so much gaze at each other as they do past each other, or past one another's faces at some unknowable, invisible goal; their priorities are all askew--serenity, not survival, some kind of equilibrium achieved by any means possible, seems to be the objective here.

Animationwise, Oshii combines documentarylike digital animation (3-D planes with unusual propeller designs (double propeller and canard wing configurations) with more traditional 2-D animated characters--the solidity of 3-D for the fighter sequences, the expressiveness of 2-D faces for the dramatic exposition (no, Oshii's characters are not known for being expressive, but this makes their minutest gestures all the more important--where a digitally animated human face would seem robotic, a hand-animated human face would seem to be underacting).

But one doesn't go to Oshii for seamless integration of cutting-edge technologies; one goes to him for a certain dry emotional tone, an austere look, a metaphysical sensibility. In this case, the results are what Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987) might have been like if the film were told from the pilots' point of view, totally in the spirit of Ballard's novel. An enthralling film.

Los Ultimos de Filipinas (Last Stand in the Philippines, Antonio Roman, 1945)

2009-07-04T04:44:00.003-04:00

Last man standing

For years now Instituto Cervantes has been presenting Antonio Roman's Los Ultimos de Filipinas (Last Stand in the Philippines, 1945) and no matter how many times I have seen it it's still a hoot, a real jaw-dropper. Imagine this: it's the middle of the Philippine Revolution in 1898; the Filipinos are winning the war on land, the Americans winning the war at sea. In the town of Baler, formerly of the province of Nueva Ecija (since re-allocated to the province of Aurora), fifty soldiers abandoned by their hard-pressed government (Spain was too busy surrendering to the United States) hold out in a yearlong siege, representing the country's last stand in the country (hence the title).

Any Spaniard watching this film will probably discover a quaint but nevertheless stirring hurrah for Castilian courage; any Filipino watching will stare, wide-eyed, at the way Filipinos are portrayed--as a tireless, implacable, near-invisible enemy, quick to exploit any mistake or risks taken, and willing to wait out a desperate opponent running low on food and ammunition. To find a more recent and familiar equivalent to the picture's view of the unstoppable foe, one might look at American movies on the Vietnam War. In films like Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986), and John Irvin's Hamburger Hill done a year later (my personal favorite of the genre), the enemy is faceless and mysterious, an unknown quantity that will pull down and kill the unwary given half the chance. In each of these as in Roman's film the emphasis is on the American (or Spanish) soldier, on his crisis of faith and morale, his physical and spiritual suffering, his eventually bitter Pyrrhic victory.

Strange to think we Filipinos--who are rarely implacable and who almost never give the impression of being quietly mysterious, not when there's a chance for food and drink nearby--should be seen this way; stranger still to look at the landscape behind the Spaniards as they fight their lonely, drawn-out battle. Never mind the studio sets, one can forgive those for their airless, artificial quality, but when the action moves outdoors the countryside, while recognizably hot, has plenty of palm trees--no end of palm trees, from the towering kind to the chest-high variety, roughly half of them visibly drooping. One wants to ask--where are the forests of coconut trees, with gracefully swooping trunks? Where are the banana trees with their oar-like armsand heavy necklace of fruit? Where are the mango trees with their spreading limbs and distinct spearhead leaves? One badly wants to believe the film is set in the Philippines, but every once in a while you see a palm frond with dried-out leaves and your fingers twitch, wanting to reach for a hose or watering can. Actually, American films about Vietnam look more persuasively like they were shot in Southeast Asia, and no wonder--most of them were shot in Southeast Asia, in the Philippines to be specific, with perhaps the most notable exception being Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (made the same year as Hamburger), which was shot entirely in London, with (what else?) visibly drooping palm fronds.

Still! Antonio Roman is a formidable craftsman who directed most of his thirty-plus films in the '40s, and is a friend of horror master Mario Bava. Watching the film one thinks of Michael Curtiz, and his way of advancing and retreating with the camera for dramatic effect; one also thinks of Curtiz whenever Roman uses shadows expressively--to add mood or atmosphere, or throw a cruciform shape on soldiers, suggesting the comforting presence of Christ.

The film isn't so much a war film as it is a siege drama (think Cy Endfield's Zulu (1964), only not as claustrophobically confined, and with less emphasis on siege tactics)--instead of drawn-out battles, we have men standing around, looking wearier and more dispirited with every passing minute; instead of flag-waving, we have mournful musical interludes. At one point the hymn "Ave Maria" is sung while the camera trucks past a sea of melancholic soldiers wearing a scraggly collection of 5 o'clock shadows, pans past the walls of the distinctly dilapidated church, comes to rest on the figure of the Catholic priest saying mass--again, the film reminds us of the invincible, unyielding hand of the church, sustaining its supplicants (Roman, one might dare observe, is no Bunuelian skeptic, at least not here).

A later and more affecting sequence is of a beautiful lass sitting by the window, singing a melancholic song. The camera pulls back, taking in the small nipa (dried grass) hut she inhabits, then cuts to several men in various stages of exhaustion and despair, listening to her sweet voice. Cut to the camera descending from its vantage point back to a more intimate view of the girl as she ends her song, bowing her head in quiet resignation.

I said the film is a hoot to watch, and it is; part of the pleasure is in watching a Spanish filmmaker struggle to portray a country he obviously has not once visited (and probably received little support from) during the length of production; part of the pleasure is in watching ourselves as the bad guys, the Implacable Other seen in so many Hollywood-made Vietnam war movies. But the keenest pleasure, I suppose, is in watching the Spanish ultimately hold their heads high as they leave their beleaguered fortress, finding victory in defeat and honor in humiliation; in a way it's a left-handed compliment to the Filipino freedom fighter, and the dismay he is capable of inspiring.

First published in Businessworld, 6.26.09

La terza madre (Mother of Tears, Dario Argento, 2007)

2009-06-27T00:41:00.004-04:00

Mother of all horrors

The appearance of La terza madre (Mother of Tears, Dario Argento, 2007) on limited release in the United States, and its belated commercial screening in Metro Manila screens (undoubtedly butchered, in the approved Argento manner, by our Philippine censors), at least offers this not-insignificant revelation: Argento is back, and is as unapologetic and loony as ever.

The film is the capstone to what fans now call Dario Argento’s 'Three Mothers' trilogy, loosely inspired by essayist Thomas de Quincy’s Suspiria Profundis, a collection of essays recorded from opium-induced visions, particularly the section "Levana and the Three Sorrows." Levana, Roman goddess of childbirth, is reportedly joined by three companions: Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs; Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Shadows; and Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears.

De Quincy imagined the three mothers as figures representing human suffering; Argento re-imagines them as three powerful witches that create suffering just for, well, the hell of it. If Argento recasts De Quincy’s ideas in an altogether simpler, perhaps cruder form, he does accompany said ideas with intense and lyrical (and violent, and unhinged) visual poetry — fitting complement to De Quincy’s writing, which are often considered some of the finest examples of prose poetry ever written.

The film wastes no time introducing Argento’s visions: Asia Argento (the director’s daughter) plays Sarah Mandy, a student working at the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome. After witnessing a museum assistant being butchered (the assistant had broken the seal of a small ancient urn and — worst of all — spilled blood on it), Sarah runs from both the police and the witches pursuing her, at the same time attempting to learn the secret of the urn, and of the just-released Mother.

So far so what; the outline barely qualifies as a respectable premise, much less synopsis to a screenplay. Argento does add this much of a twist: turns out Sarah’s mother is Elisa Mandy (Asia’s real-life mother Daria Nicolodi), and that Elisa had previously battled Mater Suspiriorum; Elisa died in the battle, but Mater Suspiriorum was so drastically weakened that Jessica Harper’s Suzy Bannon managed to finish her off in Argento’s Suspiria (1977). A touch more history has been added to Argento’s sketchy mythos, and Sarah, unlike Harper’s hapless Suzy and Leigh McCloskey’s Mark Elliott (in Inferno [1980], Argento’s second film in the trilogy), has more at stake than mere survival (vengeance for her mother and the salvation of the world, for starters). And there’s a touch more logic to her continued survival than just pure dumb luck — Elisa was skilled in "white magic," and managed to pass some of her abilities on to her daughter.

But but but but--plot and characterization and least of all plausibility have never been high on Argento’s list of priorities (think of said elements as being the skeleton on which Argento hangs some of the bloodiest, most stylish hides ever harvested): a beautiful woman breaks a seal and demons promptly choke her with her own intestines; a lesbian medium admits to being a friend of Elisa and is horrifically impaled by a phalluslike pike, her lover blinded by a medieval instrument.

The film’s most elaborate deaths, to the disappointment of many Argento fans, aren’t on the level of lyrical excess of Suspiria or Inferno. But this is Argento some 30 years later, addressing the torture porn of directors such as Eli Roth and James Wan; more than repeating himself, or outdoing the single- (narrow-, small-) minded intensity of the younger folk, he seems to be instructing his artistic inferiors on the true potential of horror — not just the depiction of a single body’s violent overthrow but of the overthrow of a community, a city (at one point someone declares "the second fall of Rome"), by extension, a world. Streets are often empty in Argento’s other films; here they’re crowded, and full of the kind of violence one might find in a society at the edge of collapse. Killings in his films are often complex, violent, gory beyond belief; here Argento stages one of his most horrific scenes with the simplest of elements--a child, its mother, a bridge. To describe the Mater’s many onscreen manifestations throughout the city of Rome one has to go back to Quincy, from whom Argento has taken more than just the premise: "they utter their pleasure, not by sounds that perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret rivers." Argento is allowing his sensibility to bleed into our more familiar world; purists may call this dilution but I submit that it’s more of a contamination.

The apocalyptic sensibility probably didn’t make much sense when the film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, 2007 (the economic meltdown started in earnest in July, but only deepened a year later); seen in today's more depressed, more depressing global conditions, one feels much more receptive to the idea of worldwide brinksmanship, of a darker, less certain, less hopeful planet. Argento at this point in his career doesn’t seem so much passé as he is prescient, not so much overwhelmed as he is overwhelming; it’s just that the scope of his latest is different, far wider in scope and ambition, shot on a relatively modest production budget.

And the ending, reviled by most, beloved by a few (please skip this paragraph if you have not seen the film)--the kinder critics call it a mood breaker; I say it’s a far more ambiguous moment. Sarah and her police escort emerge, alive, to laugh hard and long. But what, exactly, are they laughing at? At the joy of being alive? At the absurd intensity of the horrors they have survived? At the intense absurdity of having gone through literal hell, only to emerge into a world in apparent ruin, the end of all hopes and dreams? Yes, Argento, changed but unbowed, is back; all hail the dark lord, and may he wait only a fraction as long to produce a fourth "Mother" film.

First published in Businessworld 6.19.09

2009-06-25T00:37:00.004-04:00

82nd Academy Awards to Feature 10 Best Picture Nominees

82nd Academy Awards® to Feature 10 Best Picture Nominees

Beverly Hills, CA (June 24, 2009) — The 82nd Academy Awards, which will be presented on March 7, 2010, will have 10 feature films vying in the Best Picture category, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis announced today (June 24) at a press conference in Beverly Hills.

“After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year,” said Ganis. “The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009.”

For more than a decade during the Academy’s earlier years, the Best Picture category welcomed more than five films; for nine years there were 10 nominees. The 16th Academy Awards (1943) was the last year to include a field of that size; “Casablanca” was named Best Picture. (In 1931/32, there were eight nominees and in 1934 and 1935 there were 12 nominees.)

Currently, the Academy is presenting a bicoastal screening series showcasing the 10 Best Picture nominees of 1939, arguably one of Hollywood’s greatest film years. Best Picture nominees of that year include such diverse classics as “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Stagecoach,” “The Wizard of Oz” and Best Picture winner “Gone with the Wind.”

“Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize,” commented Ganis. “I can’t wait to see what that list of ten looks like when the nominees are announced in February.”

The 82nd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, February 2. The Oscar® ceremony honoring films for 2009 will again take place at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.

Eh.

Year One (Harold Ramis, 2009); Frozen River (Courtney Hunt, 2008); Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975)

2009-06-19T21:59:00.019-04:00

I didn't mean to watch Year One (2009)--it seemed to be the least repugnant choice available at the local multiplex--and was surprised to learn that it was directed by Harold Ramis.

One has expectations of Ramis; one can't help having them. He is, after all, the director of Groundhog Day (1993), one of the finest films of the '90s, one of the finest metaphysical films ever made, and about as near-perfect a comedy as anything I can think of in the past sixteen years. Daunting standards to hold a man up to, but Ramis, while never quite reaching so high again, has made a few decent attempts: Stuart Saves His Family (1996), for example, takes an unpromising Saturday Night Live sketch and turns it into a quietly desperate, ultimately moving film about the pleasures and perils of self-affirmation; Multiplicity, made the year after that, posits multiple copies of Michael Keaton scurrying everywhere (a hilarious or horrifying idea, depending on how you take to Keaton). Analyze This (1999) seems like the ultimate idea of the psychiatric patient from hell--it's only halfway realized, but at least the idea had something of the absolute about it.

Judging from the cries of blood surrounding Ramis' latest (Roger Ebert gives the picture one star, spends a whole paragraph discussing the movie's poster, and sums it all up as a "dreary experience"--one gets the impression the man could barely bring himself to engage with the movie, much less like it), Ramis has failed yet again to touch the comic heights of Groundhog (But what else does?). He has failed but surprisingly, despite the unpromising trailer and the generally negative outcry, he does leave an indelible mark.

It's a cross between Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I (1981) and Monty Python's The Life of Brian ((1979)--Brooks for the formless, across-the centuries format, Python for the subject matter (religious hypocrisy and faith). It's not laugh-out-loud funny, even if it does have more than its share of flinch-worthy gross-out moments; fact is, it's remarkably thoughtful in its treatment of and attitude towards religion and faith. It has a handsome look for a comedy, mostly burnished desert sun and torchlight interiors (checked out cinematographer Alar Kivilo, and the only work of his that stuck out were Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan (1998) and some Sandra Bullock vehicle called The Lake House (2006)), and is competently edited (one expects no less from the director of Groundhog, which is all about editing).

The climax, strangely enough, bears some passing resemblance to that of Ishmael Bernal's Himala (Miracle, 1982)--I'm sure we needn't accuse Ramis of stealing from Bernal, though.

So. Find myself in the strange position of recommending a solidly Hollywood summer movie, and a comedy to boot. Goes to show how accurate 'common consensus' can be, in gauging a picture's quality--sometimes you just have to go and see for yourself.

Courtney Hunt's Frozen River (2008) is despite its bleak setting a lovely film. Hunt captures the essence of lower-class living in the colder Northern states--the prefab houses, the junked cars, the temp jobs, the pinched-face people struggling with one scam or another (as either victim or perpetrator) and earning a meager wage, all under the gray skies and endless snowdrifts of upstate New York (some of the scenes look exceptionally difficult to shoot--not only are you dealing with a whitened ground that often radiates more light than the sky, you're dealing with the shifting, often treacherous conditions of the eponymous river itself).

The two protagonists, Ray Eddy (an amazing Melissa Leo) and Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham) make a good odd couple--they embody their respective social classes (poor white trash, Native-American destitute), they have a genuinely spiky chemistry that makes any possibility of collaboration or friendship seem less than certain, more the result of life's strange vicissitudes than of opportunistic plotting.

The river itself becomes a visual metaphor (a nicely unforced one) for the women's lives--for the kind of fragile, uncertain ice they skate on, struggling to keep their balance, hoping to God the surface of things holds and doesn't drop them into the cold water.

I remember Roger Ebert granting Richard Fleischer's Mandingo (1975) not one but zero stars--apparently the eminent critic, harumphing about "taste," was shocked at all the decadence and exploitation going on, not to mention the sultry, sensual ambiance.

Recommendation enough. It's a startlingly beautiful to look at and despite--or precisely because of--its trashy, melodramatic roots, full of unwholesome energy. It's also declared to be (by film critic Robin Wood, among others) "the greatest film about race ever made in Hollywood." There's always Roots, of course, which aired on broadcast television two years later, but that well-made production doesn't have the inimitable image of James Mason as Southern plantation owner Warren Maxwell, planting his feet on a black boy's belly in the hopes of drawing the rheumatism out of his aging body into the healthy child.

The film is more than the sum of its grotesqueries; Fleischer has taken a Kyle Onstott's pulp potboiler, pruned some (but not all) of the more extreme sadism, given (with the help of writer Norman Wexler) the blacks in the film a social and historical consciousness, overall fashioned a distinctly gothic tragedy. With the help of cinematographer Richard H. Kline (they've collaborated on films like The Boston Strangler (1968) and Soylent Green (1973)) Fleischer has conceived of a doomed, decadent South: the Maxwell mansion is a brooding presence full of huge, shadowy rooms and, despite their wealth, dirt-stained walls (mansions of other families, particularly those with womenfolk, are noticeably better kept); the surrounding forests are lit by dustmote-thickened sunbeams and teem with tropical plants that thrive in the Southern heat.

I can't help but think that the film's violent setpiece, a no-holds-barred bareknuckled fight between two black men with bets placed, may have been the inspiration for the duel to the death in Mario O'Hara's Bagong Hari (The New King, 1986). Other than the common premise, the two sequences couldn't be more different--Fleischer stages his fight as a claustrophobic battle, with teeming crowds on the sidelines and a handheld camera lunging in for closeup shots; O'Hara's is more of an arena event, with tiers rising above and away from the circular floor, torches bordering the battle area, and the camera confining itself to more aloof medium and long shots. Preference for one over another may be a matter of taste--I love O'Hara's cool appreciation of the desperation far below, same time as I like Fleischer's sense of immediacy; I was startled by Fleischer's bloody conclusion, same time I appreciate O'Hara's one wince-inducing moment, involving a meat hook. Both worked with small budgets (O'Hara's being the far smaller), both show a distinct flair for and understanding of violence.

At the film's center is Warren's son Hammond (Perry King), an angel-faced, ostensibly kindhearted plantation owner who at the same time feels more comfortable bedding and deflowering his black 'wenches' than he does bedding Blanche (Susan George), his upper class white wife. Yet he's not above stringing up an old black slave upside-down, and having another slave beat the man's naked bottom bloody with a paddle drilled with holes (to reduce air resistance and speed up the swing). The old slave's crime? Learning to read.

Hammond is in the classic mold of the tragic hero--like, say, Macbeth he is basically a good man, a promising catch for Southern women what with his money and his progressive attitude towards slaves; like Macbeth he never fully realizes the precariousness of his position, never learns that unlimited access to power can lead to its unlimited abuse, and eventual payback. Robert Keser in The Film Journal argues that when matters come to head, when "the crisis peels away Hammond’s velvet glove, revealing his essence as he reverts to violence," he precipitates "the final wave of tragedy." Keser goes on to conclude that "A benign despot with an attractive smile and surface compassion is a despot nonetheless."

I don't quite see it that way. Hammond's moments with his favorite 'wench' Ellen are about as touching as anything I've seen on film, his vow to her that "No one, black or white, gonna take your place" a far more real declaration of matrimony than anything he says to poor Blanche, who is in turn as much a victim as any of the wenches in the Maxwell plantation (she just has more bite, is all). I see Hammond as being an essentially tenderhearted, loving man, who unthinkingly embraces the violence inherent in the institution of slavery; any punishment he instigates is out of obligation, as in the bloodying of that old man's behind (when a cousin walks in and takes over the beating with greater relish, Hammond immediately objects). The real tragedy I think is that a loving heart is not enough; the institution victimizes blacks and their masters alike, robbing both of their humanity as Hammond is gradually robbed of his.

When push finally comes to shove, I don't see the event as Hammond reverting to a violence that was always there so much as it is a matter of a soft heart pierced to the quick, striking out in unaccustomed fury. It's a truism, I suppose, that the gentlest people when provoked express the most extreme reactions, but that's the truism I believe Fleischer had in mind for the film's climax. Hammond has the numbed face of one trying to hide his inner revulsion at what he intends to do, and he carries out his mission with the briskness of one who knows he has to do things quickly, unthinkingly--if he paused to consider, he would fail to go through with it.

In a kind of reverse trajectory, Hammond's favorite buck slave Mede (boxer Ken Norton) gradually gains his humanity. He doesn't have it at film's beginning; in one of his earliest scenes, he's examined and prodded and looked over like a prized racehorse. His preferential treatment is thrown at his face time and again; fellow blacks keep pointing out that on issues that matter, his benign white masters will turn on him. When a runaway slave is about to be hanged, the condemned man looks at Mede and declares "at least I die a free man." As push again comes to shove and Mede finds himself facing the unfortunate end of a rifle barrel, his eventual recovery of the dignity he had lost makes for a stirring counterpoint, a hopeful (if faint) note to contrast against Hammond's own despairing, downward spiral. A great film, absolutely.

Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi, 2009)

2009-06-12T21:01:00.003-04:00

Devil take the hindmost

You can imagine Sam Raimi on the set of his Spider-man films, viewing the various installments of the Hostel and Saw franchise and thinking: "I can do that; I can do better than that. Give me a chance, and I can show them how it's really done."

With Drag Me to Hell (2009) Raimi gets his chance, and how. Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) hopes to impress her boss Jack (David Paymer), so she turns down a request for extension on a house payment from a Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver), a decrepit, milky-eyed old Romany woman with a set of slimy dentures. Things go horribly wrong, and Christine finds herself on the receiving end of a particularly nasty curse: for three days she will be tormented by the Lamia, a demon with the head and hooves of a goat (originally, she's the daughter of Poseidon and Lybie, becomes a mistress of Zeus, and is turned into a half-woman, half-snake creature that eats small children), then dragged through cracks in the ground to the Infernal Pit, to suffer Eternal Damnation.

Bummer. Actually the whole thing is simply an excuse for Raimi, who has struggled with the Spider-man franchise for some six years, to relax and cut loose. The camera doesn't pan so much as whip from side-to-side; it doesn't truck so much as careen into an actor's face at bruising velocities (one hopes the performer has his or her health insurance premiums all paid up). Raimi enlists shadows, flames, flies, staplers (have to see this to believe it), creaks, whispers, embalming fluid, anything and everything under the sun (and a number of which are buried or hidden otherwise, under a full moon) to his cause, whirling them around poor Christine in a non-stop devil's twister of a comic-book ride.

I said "comic-book," not that more pretentious term "graphic novel." Raimi is no Zack Snyder, making a bid for artistic seriousness with an overproduced, thuddingly literal adaptation of a literary title. He evokes the term "comic book" in its old-fashioned sense, that is, a story told through a series of images with dialogue, full of graphic energy and inventiveness and wit (Raimi can teach Star Trek director J.J. Abrams a thing or two about coherent action sequences). Along the way we have belly laughs and in-your-face horror a-plenty, sometimes both at the same time, but we also sense a surprisingly subtle eye at work: in the film's rip-roaring opening, when a victim is dragged to his intended place, the camera rises from the floor up to the second floor terrace to move in on spiritual medium Shaun San Dena (Adriana Barraza); the shadow of the victim's outstretched hand falls on her face, summarizing the situation and what's at stake (and what will happen to Christine if San Dena doesn't do something) in a single image. Later Christine, desperate to fob off the curse on someone else, looks around at the people in a twenty-four hour diner in a funny yet graceful dumb-show parody of a morality play (Who to give it to--her work rival and backstabber Stu (Reggie Lee)? The annoying waitress who keeps hinting she should order something or leave her booth? The old man with the oxygen tank who obviously doesn't have long to live?).

Raimi knows as any genre master will that to instill a sense of true horror in the audience you don't just assail them with intestines and decapitated limbs and instruments of torture. You build the story, you tease them, you distract them with sympathetic characters and brief bursts of visual beauty (Christine in a sunny yellow dress) and oddball touches (Mrs. Garush sucking on sweets from a dish on Christine's desk with repulsive relish), you soften them up and leave them vulnerable to attack from all and any direction, at any time.

The film is a homage to classics both under and over-rated (Raimi like Quentin Tarantino has collected a pack-rat's worth of influences; unlike Tarantino he has the visual and aural chops to fuse these influences into a distinct look), from William Friedkin's The Exorcist (grudge match between demon and demon fighter) to Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon (desperate victim attempts to get rid of cursed talisman). It's an encyclopedia of Raimi-isms, from the floating ghouls and popping eyeballs of Evil Dead 2 to the stop-motion animation of Army of Darkness to the hauntingly beautiful transition from face in dismay to face in mourning hours (or days) later in Darkman. But the movie isn't some mere patchwork sum of its parts; the various appendages aren't sewn clumsily together, nor do they work clunkily against each other--Raimi has thoughtfully (That word! Applied to this movie!) laid each effect in its proper place, and the overall impression is of a smoothly rising swell. Well, not too smooth--Raimi has left in rough edges, has not completely finessed the handmade quality out of the special effects, has not made your standard-issue Hollywood horror flick, proper and essentially polite.

Are Saw and Hostel polite? Why--yes. They promise torture porn, they deliver. They don't renege on expectations aroused by their trailers; they don't surprise you, or unsettle you, or make you squirm in ways you don't expect (Watching these pictures is about as stimulating as a business transaction). Drag Me To Hell cleverly plays on our preconceptions of who is the heroine, who the villainess--pretty (but nevertheless morally weak) Caucasian girl from the banking industry (Raimi claims the relevance of her job to the present economic crisis is coincidental, but who is he kidding?), or aging Romany woman with a nasty propensity for casting curses? It delivers a cornucopia of surreal jokes, expertly timed "boo!" moments, fluids in a rainbow of colors (from bright red to chemical green) and textures (from arterial spray to chunky sewer sludge) squirted out of a variety of orifices into a variety of other orifices. More, a movie with a séance scene involving a nanny goat cannot be, by definition, bad.

Raimi has survived the worse that Tinseltown has to offer, the helming of not just one but three major movie productions, one of the more successful comic-book franchises in Hollywood, and made it out more or less whole, his voice, his distinct storytelling sensibility still intact. Is he an artist? Possibly not; he doesn't seem to have anything more substantial to say to us than "Hey! Look at this!" But he's a wonderful stylist, and a great entertainer, and he's back in a big, big way.

First published in Businessworld, 6.5.09

"Ma saison preferee" (My Favorite Season, Andre Techine, 1993), "Van Gogh" (Maurice PIalat, 1991)

2009-06-12T20:48:00.004-04:00

Fire and ice (the French Film Festival, part 2)

I haven't seen enough of critic-turned-filmmaker Andre Techine's films as I would like, but Ma saison preferee (My Favorite Season, 1993) is easily my favorite. The novelistic, episodic texture of his films, the deceptively simple camerawork, the prominent place of nature or the outdoors (for a sensibility so dark and melancholic, there's a surprising amount of sunshine in his films), all are present in this feature, in a nicely balanced dynamic.

Fact is, what probably makes Techine so difficult a sell to Americans and to a wider audience is what makes him so special to those who can appreciate what his films can offer--the subtlety, the self-effacement, the seeming aimlessness that disguises a wider appreciation for the knotty complexities of life. One can say Ma saison preferee is all about a brother and sister (Daniel Auteuil as Antoine, Catherine Deneuve as Emilie) attempting to fit the care for their ailing mother (Marthe Villalonga as Berthe) in their busy lives, but it's so much more than that--it's about sibling intimacy (more difficult to render interestingly on the big screen than sibling rivalry); about parent-child disconnect casually accepted; about retaining or failing to retain one's childhood sense of wonder (and what is lost and gained as a consequence); about love long unrequited, or at least unconsummated.

The focus is on Antoine and Emilie, who have had a longstanding fondness for each other. The attachment is suggested early on--Emilie visits Antoine in the hospital, and lies about this to her husband afterwards--but remarkably no one actually remarks on this, or even mentions it in passing. Emilie's husband and children and Berthe seem to pointedly ignore the elephant sitting in the room with them, though judging from the looks they throw at Emilie and Antoine, they're hardly unaware.

It's not incest; that would be the obvious, easy answer, I think. No, incest would actually be a relief to these two--something clearly and physically wrong that they could take to the nearest therapist to deal with, hopefully exorcise. This relationship seems to have formed a major part of their early life, their subsequent reaction to which forms the major part of their present life: Emilie flees into the arms of her husband Bruno (Jean-Pierre Bouvier), while Antoine finds himself pining away in lonely anti-social bachelorhood (he doesn't even have a girlfriend, nor does he show any interest in acquiring one). Berthe's forced move to Emilie and Bruno's household (she's been suffering from dizzy spells) brings Antoine back into Emilie's life, precipitating major changes, some of them catastrophic.

What I've written might suggest something dark and dramatic; far from it. Perhaps Techine's supreme achievement is his ability to tell his story with a startling effortlessness, to show Emilie and Antoine's emotional interdependency, their alienation from Berthe, Emilie's increasing distance from Bruno and her children--all these as natural, almost inevitable, developments.

Techine's visual effects are equally unforced, elusive almost, acting like quicksilver fish in the way they flash and glimmer and vanish--the opening image, for example, of Berthe shutting out the breathtaking French countryside as she bangs close the windows of her house; or the old woman who suddenly breaks out in song, then is led away in slow motion; or Antoine's sudden vision of an empty bed, an open window, and the horror he knows waits for him on the street below.

It's also painfully, deadpan funny, with repeated images of Antoine sitting on a toilet bowl, trying to school himself on exactly what he's going to say and exactly what he's going to do (which often as not doesn't turn out how he planned). Auteuil fights the temptation to turn Antoine into a monster; the man keeps our sympathies no matter what outrageousness he commits. He makes us understand that Antoine is in direct touch with his feelings and says exactly what he thinks and feels (hence his lavatory sessions rehearsing one hypocritical platitude after another, in an attempt to get along). Of the two siblings he understands Berthe best, which is why she talks most openly to him and not to her caring, attentive daughter.

Deneuve is and always will be a great beauty (she's almost unbearably radiant in Les parapluies de Cherbourg (Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy, 1964)), but I've rarely if ever seen her display this much depth of emotion and character before (or since, for that matter). Hers is the more difficult role, of course; Jonathan Rosenbaum in his review of the film points out that her name is a direct reference to one of the Bronte sisters, to whom Techine devotes his fourth feature. Possibly the kind of unbidden, faintly unholy love Catherine and Heathcliff had for each other (remember they lived together as brother and sister for years) is what Techine had in mind; Deneuve has to struggle under the weight of all that symbolic and emotional baggage, and still move with the lightness and grace the director demands. Wonderful film, an absolute masterpiece.

Maurice Pialat started out wanting to be a painter; I suppose the film Van Gogh (1991) was only inevitable. Done in Pialat's flat, unsentimental style with nary an emotional soundtrack, with camerawork consisting almost exclusively of medium shots, and acting reminiscent of Robert Bresson's disaffected "models," it's not so much a tribute to the famous artist as it is Pialat's statement on what artists are, to society, to friends and family, to themselves.

His isn’t the straining anguished manic-depressive Kirk Douglas played in Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956); this Van Gogh (Jacques Dutronc) is a massively brooding, self-absorbed depressive, more likely than not to sit in one corner and either smile wanly at a friendly face, or lash out at sincere attempts at human contact.

Pialat seems less interested in creating a conventional biopic than he is in conveying some sense of Van Gogh's personality at its most fully formed--presumably to be found during the last few months of his life in Auvers. Women are drawn to him, presumably because his helplessness aroused their maternal instincts; at the same time there's an emotional honesty to him that appeals to their need for quick, direct, even cruel judgment (either he likes you or he doesn't; either he's interested in what you have to say or he isn't) His greatest benefactor, his brother Theo (Bernard Le Coq), understands the attraction and why wouldn't he? He's fatally drawn to the man himself.

I called Pialat's storytelling "flat;" that hardly seems like a fair description. He records events matter-of-factly, earning him the label of being a "realist" or a "documentarylike" filmmaker. I say he's neither, that he's actually an anti-sentimentalist. His camera unflinchingly observes life in all its details, from a woman being bathed by her husband to a young girl trying to ignore a prostitute nuzzling her neck to Van Gogh eating a bowl of onion soup as a group of women look on (Van Gogh bends over said bowl defensively, almost as if he were afraid they would take it from him). The director evokes the lighting and colors not just of the artist, but of various contemporaries--I spotted bits of Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, among others--but doesn't do so slavishly more than anyone the artist the film most successfully emulates is Pialat. The man is inimitably and indomitably himself in his films, just as this is inimitably and indomitably his Van Gogh.

First published in Businessworld 6.12.09

"Les quatre cent coupe" (The 400 Blows, Francois Truffaut, 1959), La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher, Michael Haneke, 2001)

2009-06-12T17:38:00.008-04:00

Classical and neoclassical French cinema

Francois Truffaut's first feature film Les quatre cent coups (The 400 Blows, 1959) was mainly a reaction to what Truffaut witheringly called the "tradition of quality." Where "quality" films emphasized production value, Truffaut used everyday Parisian locations; where "quality" films used smooth-gliding camerawork and flawless lighting Truffaut used handheld equipment and available light; where "quality" films were mainly literary adaptations of known classics Truffaut drew from his own life and improvised dialogue on the set.

The result was anything but traditional. One gets the impression of a sketchbook filled with doodles by turns funny, tragic, provocative, sad. One gets the impression of quickly filled spaces, of scenes thought up on the spot, of setups executed on the sly and as quickly dismantled (because the director just thought it up, and possibly didn't have the proper permits ready).

It was what was called camera-stylo, or "camera-pen," where every element directly reflects the director's personality and statement. Funding for these films is often scarce, dictating artistic choices almost as often as the director's philosophy does; concerns of the moment (the images, the sounds in the film) upend one's longstanding set of priorities (familiar characters, a logical plot, a profound theme commenting on the condition of general humanity).

But more than its significance to film history, to the French New Wave, to Truffaut himself who was in effect writing his childhood autobiography, the film is a valentine to the Paris of the late '50s-early '60s. Truffaut's alter-ego Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) runs across a park and pigeons take flight in an explosion of feathers; the early-morning milkman delivers a crate to the doorsteps and Doinel snatches a bottle--we watch Doinel daintily tear off the seal, then chug the milk down (you feel the chill richness flowing down your throat). He plays hooky to ride a giant centrifuge, his flattened body (photographed head-on) become a gravity-defying effect--become, in other words, Truffaut himself, defying the world by means of a simple visual effect.

Beyond the energy and exuberance of a longtime critic turned rebel filmmaker, beyond the delinquent shenanigans so shocking then, so harmless now (for all his crimes Doinel does not do drugs, does not commit arson, does not sexually assault anyone) there is the bitter loneliness of an unwanted child. I've met and talked to youths who have done worse, but the force of Doinel's hurt when rejected by his mother then taken via police van to a placement, that pain retains its sting. Looking out the van windows Doinel sees the glittering lights of Paris, perhaps for the last time; the swaying vehicle, the tinkling music, the enchanting lights--all the more enchanting because they're glimpsed through barred windows--give the moment a sharp, almost unbearable poignancy.

There's a different kind of edge to Michael Haneke's La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher, 2001). Haneke sketches the portraits of a pair of monsters: Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert), frigid bitch saint of a piano teacher who spends the day informing her students of their abundant lack of talent, and the teacher's mother (Annie Girardot), who inflicts similar psychological torments on her when she comes home.

Erika becomes obsessed with a young man; her icy facade cracks. Beneath the facade is a seething brew of sadomasochistic impulses so repulsive they almost drive the young man away--almost. He returns to confront her, and she in turn is forced to confront the implications and consequences of her impulses.

Haneke's strategy is to shock the audience using the least amount of effort and fuss; he foregoes the handheld camera in favor of largely static setups--an unflinching gaze, in effect, to allow us a clearer view of the horrors he intends to inflict (then there is Huppert's performance, every bit as ferocious as Haneke's gaze, daring us to look away). Perhaps not a great film, certainly not as great as Truffaut's Les quatre cent coups, but easily one of the most memorable to come out of French cinema in many a year.

The films are showing as part of the 14th French Film Festival in Manila, June 5 to 14, at the Shanri-La Plaza.

First published in Businessworld 6.5.09

IndioBravo Film Festival (Brillante Mendoza's Tirador, Ishmael Bernal's Himala, and more)

2009-06-09T21:39:00.007-04:00

The IndioBravo Film Festival (June 11- 14, New York City)

Some of the best new digital and independent Filipino films and filmmakers happening today. Including Confessional (Jerrold Tarog and Ruel Dahis Antipuesto, 2007), Brillante Mendoza's Tirador (Slingshot, 2007) among many others.

My thoughts on an Ishmael Bernal classic featured in the festival:

On Sunday was Ishmael Bernal's Himala (Miracle, 1982), about a village girl who finds she can do miracles, and the cult and industry that grows up around her. On introducing the film I noted that the picture wasn't particularly well-liked by the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (Critics of Philippine Cinema--the country's most prestigious critic's group), that it's an easy target because of its rather stale canonical status ("It's been considered a classic since forever!") but that actually watching the film through unbiased eyes, one might realize that this was Bernal's most visually daring film--an almost prescient picture that predicts the desolated look and feel of Central Luzon after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the early '90s.

And it was prescient, in more ways than one--at one point the film's protagonist Elsa (played by Nora Aunor), says that as a child she had always wanted to be the Philippines' first woman president (which we eventually got, two of them); at another point I noticed how uncannily the film in many ways mimics the career of its famous star; the town's fortunes rise and fall, rise and fall, much like Aunor's own.

In many ways the script felt pretentious, mock-poetic. When Gigi Duenas' prostitute talks about the wind carrying the prayers of the townspeople up the hill to where she was sitting, I thought: "She's not a hooker, she's a hippie" (which, in fact, she is; Bernal will at times willfully ignore or set aside realism for a specific effect). But the alien quality of the locale--barren landscapes rarely if ever seen in the Philippines (the film was shot in Laoag, in Northern Luzon)--is a memorable metaphor for the barrenness of peoples' souls, and if Aunor's Elsa seems less than adequately sketched out (I believe Bernal conceived of her as the enigma at the heart of the film), the people surrounding her--the aforementioned prostitute (a Magdalen figure, of course), the religious fanatic (Luara Centeno, one of my favorite performances in the picture), the passive yet troubled documentary filmmaker (Spanky Manikan, standing in for the director's consciousness and conscience) have been delineated with admirable skill. If Elsa herself remains stubbornly opaque, her effect on others is refracted through the various people surrounding her.

The crowd scenes have often been mentioned, but I feel the need to mention it yet again--it's almost a principal character, this evolving, pulsating, ululating, many-limbed creature that pulls and tears and tramples everything around it; its character and appearance evolves constantly, from the orderly masses that stand patiently outside Elsa's house to the panicked mob that swarms like a nest of frightened ants over the little sand hill where Elsa has her visions to--most alarming of all--the masses of praying faithful crossing the sand on their bare knees, sending their petitions heavenwards in an act of futile desperation. This is Bernal's film on faith and religion, and in many ways he flubs his message; in many ways the film is much larger than said message. He set out to create an anti-religion picture and instead created a film that testifies to the awful, awe-inspiring majesty of a people's faith.

I noted to the audience afterwards that Aunor had missed winning the best actress award in the Berlin Film Festival by one point, because she hadn't been able to attend. I also noted that many of the crew did their best work here--Sergio Lobo, Bernal's favorite cinematographer, came up with the hallucinatory images; Joel Lamangan directed the powerful crowd scenes; Racquel Villavicencio did the haunting production design (leafless tree standing twisted amongst the sand dunes). I finished with the observation that the image of Aunor kneeling with palms pressed together and head thrown backwards is as famous and iconic an image to most Filipinos as Scarlett O'Hara with fist upraised or Bette Davis descending a staircase is to many an American viewer.

Nora Aunor in Himala, (Miracle, 1982)

Terminator Salvation (McG, 2009)

2009-06-07T22:02:00.003-04:00

Terminator terminated

When I learned there was to be a fourth Terminator installment, first question I asked was "why?" When I learned this fourth Terminator was to be directed by the auteur responsible for the Charlie's Angels movies, I asked: "why him?" When I learned that the fourth Terminator was to star Christian Bale and run ten minutes past two hours, I asked: "why bother?"

It's not as if the franchise were all that good. The first, written and directed by James Cameron, was by far the best, taking as it does elements from two of Philip K. Dick's short stories, "Second Variety" and "Jon's World." The first story proposes a constantly developing robot series, designed to imitate human form and infiltrate organizations and communities accordingly (Cameron's original idea was to tell the story of a killer robot that resembled an ordinary human, and was to have Lance Henriksen play the terminator); the second story is a sequel, a time-travel tale where men attempt to go back to try prevent the invention of the robots in the first place (and here you see the seed of the idea that eventually became both Terminator and Terminator 2). Daniel Gilbertson, who was developing a script adaptation of "Second Variety" for Hemdale (his script eventually became the movie Screamers (1995)) claimed (in the January 1998 issue of Cinefantastique) that Cameron had a look at the script back when he was developing The Terminator.

(Yes, Cameron did openly admit that he was partly inspired by two Outer Limits episodes written by Harlan Ellison--"Soldier," and "Demon with the Glass Hand;" yes Ellison sued and got his names on the movie's final credits. But Dick had died two years before Cameron's movie was released, and (unlike Ellison) was in no condition to bring suit against Cameron for copyright infringement.)

Cameron went for gigantism in the sequel (a mega-sized version of "Jon's World," in effect) with a dubious anti-violence message grafted on; he abandoned the franchise (he'd since won gold doorstops for Best Picture and Best Director for Titanic (1997)), handing over directing reins to skilled craftsman Jonathan Mostow for the third picture in the series.

Unlike the previous three movies, where cyborgs and humans from the future invade present-day Los Angeles, the fourth picture foregoes the present altogether and is set entirely in the future. McG has opted for a washed-out cinema verite look--plenty of handheld shots, a gritty desert palette (you can see the attempt to evoke the Iraq war). Thank goodness the shaky-cam footage doesn't involve too much shaking--the action sequences are blessedly shot and edited with an attempt at coherence, and you can follow what's happening without suffering too much of a headache (though McG is apparently far more skilled at depicting machine-on-machine or machine-on-human action than he is at depicting simple hand-to-hand combat). Plus there seems to be a partial return to puppeteered machinery (a la the late Stan Winston, to whom this movie is dedicated), as opposed to your boringly standard-issue digital effects.

To say the script has problems is to put matters too kindly. The picture seems to break down into two main lines of action: one involves killer Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) who is executed in present-day and resurrected in the future; is captured by the rebellion; is possibly a terminator sent to kill John Connor. The other involves the legend himself, John Connor (Christian Bale, who seems to be taking himself entirely too seriously) trying to find his father/friend Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin).

I understand why Wright is here and why what he is trying to do is important--in effect, he's our eyes and ears, a figure from our times thrust into this unfamiliar world. But what about Connor? Aside from testing out a signal that might shut down Skynet machines and (when he remembers to do so) worrying about his unknown father, Connor seems pretty much relegated to the bench, constantly waiting to be called into play (there's this visually impressive sequence where Connor boards a copter, takes off, is buffeted in-flight by an explosion, crashes. All happening within a single lengthy shot that unfortunately also seems to sum his problems in a nutshell). When Marcus escapes the rebellion and heads into Skynet headquarters, Connor defies orders and does the same, and you want to ask: couldn't the two have simply joined forces and gone to the Emerald City--sorry, Skynet headquarters--together? That would have cut, oh, maybe twenty minutes of unnecessary parallel action right there.

(Apparently (skip the next two paragraphs if you plan to see the picture) there was an original script that envisioned Christian Bale as the terminator (talk about typecasting) not Connor. John Connor was to make a brief appearance in the picture's final moments, having kept himself hidden for most of the film (which would have made sense, considering all the robots that have traveled through time to try kill him). Bale signed on wanting to play Connor, not the terminator, and demanded that his role be built up accordingly, hence the narrative fat.

None of which is necessary to appreciating--or deprecating--the film. All one needs to realize is that the picture seems to wander aimlessly here and there, trying to find something to do; there's none of the hurtling, race-against-time quality that made Cameron's original B movie so memorable)

But issues with script and director and unnecessary leading man aside, the picture is really struggling with two more basic issues. First: setting the story in the future instead of present robs the picture of whatever sense of evocation and poetry it might have had. Seeing the future through glimpses and brief flashes (as we did in the first three pictures, but most effectively in the first) actually increases our interest in it, makes us want to see it; any attempt to actually show said future kills the fascination right there. Think of a striptease--it's the dance that excites and arouses; when the last piece of clothing falls, so does your interest. The final revelation can only be an anti-climax no matter how much money you throw at it.

Second: this particular tomorrow is so damned grim. Cameron had many flaws as director and writer but at least he had a sense of humor. Probably the best dialogue scenes in his Aliens (1986) are of the space marines indulging in sophomoric quips; possibly the best dialogue scenes in the original Terminator was between Lt. Traxler (Paul Winfield) and Det. Vukovich (Henriksen)--Cameron seems to have a gift for depicting working-class camaraderie. Unrelenting gloom doesn't enhance intensity, it just enhances boredom; McG in his bid for dramatic greatness might have done better to remember this, and allowed the audience a bit of fun along the way.

First published in Businessworld 5.29.09

The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer, 1952)

2009-06-07T04:55:00.011-04:00

Tight spot

Richard Fleischer’s The Narrow Margin (1952) at eighty-one or so minutes is arguably the leanest, tautest noir ever (the competition is, heh, tight; off the top of my head I can think of Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour and not much else). It’s not so much the compactness that’s impressive as it is how much Fleischer manages to cram into the small space. Aside from providing characterization for roughly eight significant characters (including two leads), the small film manages to sketch an entire milieu (the American passenger railroad system), make some kind of statement about misleading appearances (the story turns on a trio of killers’ quest to assassinate a woman they have yet to identify).

Even the overall theme is at first deceptive. When the film opens, one is made to believe that this is a strict delivery job, and that all the two police officers (Charles McGraw as Det. Walter Brown, and Don Beddoe as Det. Sgt. Forbes) have to do is transport a crucial witness (Marie Windsor as Mrs. Frankie Neall, widow of a mob boss) to a California courtroom; the officers’ banter about first impressions (and the five-dollar wager they place, on whether she’s going to be a standard-issue moll or something different) sounds just like that at first, banter; later we realize it's a crucial exchange, implying a major theme.

Noir is often noted for the distinctiveness of its lighting (or relative lack of), less frequently for a sense of claustrophobia; but I submit that the latter is almost as indispensable a quality as the former, at least in the very best noirs (The web of pursuit tightening around Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang’s M; the dingy hotel rooms, the bars and filthy alleyways, the cavernous space beneath a sewer-choked bridge where Charlton Heston hides in Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil). I’d go as far as to say that if you don’t have any difficulty with your breathing come the end of a noir, maybe the film isn’t noir enough. The majority of Narrow Margin’s hour-long-plus-change running time is on the train, and Fleischer is about peerless in realizing not just the locomotive’s narrow corridors and tiny compartments, but everyday bustle—the conductors punching tickets, the dining-car waiters clearing tables, the passengers whiling away time by smoking or snacking or hanging about in the space between cars (the only privacy passengers can have, short of a private compartment).

In more recent films set on trains--in more recent action films, or films period--the director often sends the camera following the passengers down one passageway after another. Fleischer worked with handheld cameras in this picture, but moves his camera only for emphasis (like the breathless moment when Mrs. Neall runs for safety to her compartment). Too much movement would break the spell of extreme confinement that surrounds the film (of course the decision to do this was as much practical as it was aesthetic: the handheld cameras then were bulkier). Fleischer often positioned his camera at or near corners looking down the corridor’s length with the unseen far corner marked by someone appearing or disappearing around it. He makes use of the rectangular space to create the impression of a maze, with only so many twists and turns (even the room to maneuver within this maze is limited).

The style creates other incidental effects: either the gangsters approach and expand in size, suggesting greater threat, or the witness and her protector move away, their diminishing forms signifying their increased helplessness. There’s also this awareness that the whole contraption is in constant motion at sixty miles an hour, a difficult effect to achieve especially when you learn that the film to save money was shot mostly on fixed, unmovable sets in-studio (Fleischer ingeniously suggests unsteady movement by jiggling the cameras not the sets), the paradox again playing into the overall theme of deceitful appearances. Fleischer later increases the sense of hurtling narrative by adding a pursuit car, flying down a road parallel to the train; we constantly glimpse the car through the train’s small windows, a silent, ominously inescapable Angel of Death looming over the passengers’ destiny.

I’d go so far as to suggest that Kurosawa must have studied this before making the tour-de-force train sequence in his own noir masterpiece, High and Low, that Hitchcock must have borrowed the hiding-in-the-foldout-bed gimmick for his greatest of chase films North by Northwest, and that every other filmmaker since who has toyed with trains (Sidney Lumet in Murder on the Orient Express, Arthur Hiller in Silver Streak; Peter Yates in the 1990 remake of this picture) has tried to emulate Fleischer’s compositions, to lessening degrees of success. Fleischer’s noir gem is I submit inimitable; feature films are no longer so brief, nor so densely conceived, nor do they make use of so limited a space so brilliantly.

Philippine Customs lifts taxes on imported books; "Up;" "A Woman Cut in Two;" "Sunshine"

2009-05-31T02:08:00.017-04:00

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo lifts taxes on imported book

Some thoughts on this whole brouhaha:

1) Shouldn't have happened in the first place. I understand the government scrabbling to find ways to earn revenue, but if it had encouraged in itself and in the country a culture that valued education and literacy, then a tax on books would have been unthinkable. As is, one wonders what other unpleasant elements are to be found in its mindset.

2) Let this be an object lesson: vigilance, always vigilance. One needs to watch little encroachments on freedom like these. It would have been all too easy to just shrug one's shoulders and say: "So it goes."

3) If the government is still desperate for cash, couldn't they keep the tax on Twilight?

Peter Doctor and Bob Peterson's Up (2009) is pretty much standard-issue Pixar. You have your crusty old man being taught a lesson by a dewy young boy; you have your dreams (in this case, a house beside a waterfall falling from a plateau straight out of Willis O'Brien's The Lost World (1925)) being pursued no matter what the cost--either the film encourages this pursuit, or urges the hero to abandon his dream for a more achievable goal (in this case, returning an avian mother to her children). Along the way Doctor and Peterson openly celebrate their inspirations--not just O'Brien, but Hayao Miyazaki, particularly his Laputa, Castle in the Sky (1986) and many flying sequences in various pictures (Miyazaki, as his fans know, is a master of the aerial flight sequence).

This is a cartoon, of course. We aren't asked to wonder why the hero manages, seemingly overnight, to conceal thousands of balloons in his house (Where did he get the money? Why are they strong enough to lift the house, with what looks like common string? (Wired.com has something to say about this)? Why haven't they lifted the building even before they're released from his attic?). We aren't asked to wonder how he manages to construct not just sails for forward propulsion but a mechanism for steering said sails. We aren't asked to wonder how a long-lost explorer manages to amass so many dogs, and how they managed to develop an obsession for squirrels (in South America, no less).

Too sentimental for my taste, though I'm sure this will be a big hit for people who still believe animation is strictly for the kiddies. For my money the year's best animated feature to date is Henry Selik's Coraline, from the novel by Neil Gaiman, which admits to the possibility that childhood isn't just full of wonders, but terrors as well.

Claude Chabrol's La fille coupee en deux (A Girl Cut in Two, 2007) invites, as usual, comparisons to Hitchcock, but from where I'm sitting the most distinctive quality the two share, at least at this stage in Chabrol's career, is elegance in storytelling, elegance in all elements of storytelling, from characterization to dialogue to mis-en-scene to soundtrack (the opening credits roll to the strains of Puccini's Turandot, the plot of which suggests interesting sidelights to the plot of Chabrol's film). Even the title works overtime to raise questions in the viewer's mind--just why is the eponymous girl (local TV weather girl Gabrielle, played by Ludivine Sagnier) cut in two? Because she's of two minds? Because she's desired by two men? Because a whirling blade literally cuts her in two?

One often thinks when thinking of Hitchcock of visual challenges solved with brilliantly, sometimes breathtakingly elegant solutions (the problems of confined space in Lifeboat or Rope or Rear Window; of a shower-stall murder in Psycho; of wide-open spaces and sustaining tension through a cross-country odyssey in North by Northwest). Chabrol in this case solves one kind of challenge: the suggestion of perverse sexual appetites with the least amount of fuss (a head sinks below a table; a girl crawls on all fours in shadow; a private club is visited, and one member asks another a pointed question: "does she know what goes on here?").The story is loosely based on the killing of architect Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw, for a long-ago affair White had with Thaw's wife Evelyn Nesbit, updated with a bit of class rivalry.

Central to the film is the mystery of Gabrielle: is she corrupted innocent or cruel sadist? Middle-class victim or social-climbing instigator? In Turandot, the two main female characters are the eponymous princess and the slave girl, Liu, and Gabrielle seems to embody qualities of both women--she is by turns loyal and loving to her elderly lover, cruel and distant to her young husband. By combining the two in one woman, does Chabrol make his heroine more or less convincing, more or less complex--both, maybe? Sagnier plays her as a cool blonde in the best Hitchcockian tradition (I have to take back I suppose what I said earlier about Chabrol's resemblance or lack of to Hitchcock). Towards the end she's revealed as more innocent and less guileful than she seems--or is she instead completely at the mercy of her own inner demons? She's the lure, the McGuffin, the enigma that draws both men--and herself--to their irrevocably entangled dooms.

Danny Boyle's Sunshine (2007) for the first hour manages to make you forget all the scientific inaccuracies it so blatantly presented. Boyle wears his influences on his sleeve: the heavy-breathing spacemen and extra-vehicular activity (EVA) from Kubrick's 2001, including one sequence involving explosive decompression (silly it seems to worry about freezing in outer space when the human body loses its heat so slowly); the dripping water and marauding predator in Scott's Alien (1979); the haunted space station in Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972).

Hard to take this wannabe science-fictional philosophical treatise seriously, when it doesn't do its homework. The sun is dying, but no mention is made of the fact that its death occurs some five billion years too early (in the DVD commentary physicist and film advisor Brian Cox mentions the possibility of the sun capturing a Q-ball, dark matter in a specific supersymmetric form--though reportedly the sun isn't dense enough to capture so massive an object). The story's set fifty years into the future but already we have artificial gravity, with no explanation how this miracle comes about.

In one of the deleted scenes they did mention that their payload, a 'stellar bomb' meant to rekindle the sun's nuclear fusion processes, has the mass of the moon compressed into the size of a football field--but this raises more questions than it answers. Why, if the payload generates enough gravity to create one-gee conditions throughout the ship, can people walk on its surface without being crushed (the gravity on the surface would be greatest, less so for objects further away)? Why, if the payload generates gravity, does weight turn on and off like a light switch in the airlock? Why if the payload generates gravity do men in spacesuits float around when stepping outside the ship?

All this can pretty much be forgiven if Boyle had given us a reasonably plausible drama, but late in the game Boyle introduces an incredibly silly supervillain with heavily scarred skin that we see mostly through a distorting lens. The lens gimmick is a terrible idea; Boyle's action sequences are never the most coherent, but the addition of a lens only makes the action even less so. Worse is the gobbledygook that comes out of the villain's well-roasted lips--"When he chooses for us to die, it is not our place to challenge God." The man is crazy, the laziest excuse for villainy in all of storytelling (he's nuts, ergo he's capable of anything). For all the sunlight in Boyle's picture he does little to illuminate human nature through his villain, or through the conflicts his villain creates.

Duplicity (Tony Gilroy, 2009)

2009-05-30T03:21:00.002-04:00

Doubletalk

Tony Gilroy's sophomore effort Duplicity (2009) is that fizziest of genres, the romantic spy thriller--basically about a CIA officer named Claire (Julia Roberts) and an MI6 operative named Ray (Clive Owen) who conspire to steal a supersecret formula from under the watchful eye of Burkett & Randle's Chief Executive Officer Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson). Plots and counterplots ensue; bedroom couplings, secret meetings, surveillance operations, and so on; twists within twists within twists within. There's story enough for half a dozen less generous thrillers, and sufficient chemistry between the two stars to keep us listening to their fairly witty repartee.

One does not suspect this of Gilroy--he had previously been known as the scriptwriter of the supergrim Bourne movies, Robert Ludlum's humorless attempts to supplant Ian Fleming's James Bond novels (to be fair, Fleming's books are every bit as unfunny as Ludlum's; the sly humor came from the movie adaptations, especially those starring Sean Connery); he later debuted as a writer-director with Michael Clayton, a dramatic thriller. The introduction of comedy has greased the gears spinning in Gilroy's mind--this time the plot is improbably intricate, the improbability matched by the cast and movie's sleekly stylized glamour. This isn't real life, Gilroy seems to be saying, and thank God for small blessings.

In one sense Gilroy does retain a distinctive feature from his previous feature effort, the fractured time scheme. Duplicity starts in the tense present, with Burkett & Randle CEO Tully facing off against Equikrom CEO Richard Garsil (Paul Giamatti) in front of their respective corporate jets, under the pouring rain. The story veers off into the past, and we learn that Claire and Ray have met before, have in fact scammed each other before, alternately taking off with the prize while leaving the other holding the proverbial bag.

The movie proceeds on two levels--well, maybe three. There's Burkett & Randle constantly trying to get the better of Equikrom and vice versa; there's CIA trained Claire trying to get the better of MI6 operative Ray and vice versa; and then there's poor Claire trying to ascertain whether or not Ray is worth trusting, perhaps even loving (and vice versa).

Gilroy keeps it all moving along at the required brisk pace; he also manages the more difficult challenge of keeping the complex plot coherent (more or less--it lacks the one indispensable quality of the very best complex plots: it doesn't all boil down to one elegantly simple structure); and finally he manages the most difficult of challenges, to keep all this consistently interesting, if not amusing.

He enlists a fine cast of characters to his cause: Owen, who after a series of somber roles in heavy drama films reveals himself here to be a fine comic actor; Giamatti and Wilkinson, who play to the hilt the pair of business rivals literally at each others' throats.

Roberts, the heavyweight Hollywood star who balances out the movie's outsized share of testosterone, is an oddly unexciting choice for me. One really wants Claire to be smart, funny, sexy--Owen's match in every respect only wearing garters, if possible. Roberts is smart and funny (she's improved immeasurably since her days as America's sweetheart), but the word 'sexy' doesn't readily come to mind. She's played wholesome roles for far too long (remember her Wonderful World of Disney interpretation of a prostitute in Pretty Woman (1990)?), the same time her physical resemblance to her less famous brother is far too strong. Most viewers today may have forgotten Eric Roberts; I remember his various turns as the sweetly goofy Paulie in Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), his hapless corporate executive distracted by the lovely Greta Scacchi in The Coca-Cola Kid (1985), his punk sidekick trailing behind Jon Voight's outsized convict in Runaway Train (same year). Most memorably, there's Eric's ferocious performance as the unlikeable, near-unwatchable Paul Snider in Bob Fosse's Star 80 (1983). Every time I look at Julia, in effect, I keep seeing murderer-rapist Snider in a fright wig.

That aside (couldn't they get, oh, say, Mira Sorvino?) it's a good if not great confection.

A great confection--isn't that a contradiction in terms? Not really; if anything, great confections are far more difficult and demanding to create than great dramas. You needn't hold back when doing great drama; anything and everything is open to you, from the very heights to the very depths of the human heart. With a great confection, however, you need to meet all those requirements plus you need to make it all seem effortless, lighter than air (a confection is not a confection when it drops on your lap like a load of Wagnerian concrete).

Take the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Many of his early British pictures are prime confections, arguably the best of which (my favorite, anyway) is The 39 Steps (1935). Talk about deadly conspiracies and hairbreadth escapes and sexual chemistry--Robert Donat with Madeleine Carroll had plenty of the last, but better than chemistry is Hitchcock's prankish, malevolent mind. He conjured up a love interest for the hero (the John Buchan novel had none), has them dislike each other intensely at first, then hits upon the device of handcuffing them together--an idea so effective, so brilliantly simple, any number of thrillers and action flicks have been cuffing people (odd couples, mixed racial pairs, comedy duos, what-have-you) to each other for decades afterwards.

Hitchcock, of course, helped matters along--story goes that when Donat and Carroll first met they rehearsed a scene cuffed together, after which Hitchcock confessed to having lost the key. Donat and Carroll were forced to wait while everyone searched; they eventually found themselves talking to each other about friends, films, experiences. Whereupon Hitchcock declared: "Now that you two know each other we can go ahead," and produced the key from a waistcoat pocket. The 39 Steps is arguably an early high water mark in the genre of romantic spy thrillers, or espionage/suspense films with a strong romantic element (another would be Hitchcock's North by Northwest, made twenty-four years later--but that's material enough for another article). I wouldn't say Duplicity comes anywhere near Hitchcock's level, but it does lunge at that general direction--that's the highest praise I can give the picture.

First published in Businessworld, 5.22.09

Roger Ebert kills Brillante Mendoza's 'Kinatay' (which wins Best Director in Cannes anyway); Coraline; Rear Window; Le Plaisir

2009-05-24T02:17:00.017-04:00

Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay

Roger Ebert, the gray eminence of Chicago film criticism, has weighed in on Kinatay (The Execution of P, 2009), Brillante Mendoza's latest work, presently in the Competition section of Cannes, and his verdict is not kind:

Here is a film that forces me to apologize to Vincent Gallo for calling "The Brown Bunny" the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival.

Ah, but the episode with The Brown Bunny ended happily, didn't it? I remember Ebert calling that "the worst film in the history of Cannes" (Ebert shares this curious ability with George W. Bush of moving goalposts and standards upwards, downwards or sideways as it suits them) and of Vincent Gallo responding by putting a hex on his colon. Ebert (in a curious lapse of good taste) compared the experience of viewing Gallo's film to viewing his own colonoscopy (he favors the latter). Some judicious pruning of the running time (about twenty-six minutes' worth) and a few diplomatic exchanges later, the two kissed and made up.

I haven't seen Kinatay; I plan to, definitely; can't comment otherwise on the merits of Ebert's argument against the film. I think I can comment, however, on the merits of Ebert as a film critic--that he's the great champion of middle-of-the-road taste, with a finger very much on the pulse of what mainstream America likes or dislikes. Far as I can see he's got the best track record of any celebrity film critic when it comes to predicting box-office hits; either that, or he's liked so many movies that a boxoffice hit would actually have to work very hard to escape his approval...

And it isn't the conventionality of his taste that galls me as much as the sheer cluelessness he sometimes displays. His review of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004), for example, makes much of the physical violence visited upon Christ but makes no mention of the theological violence visited on the biblical text the movie is supposedly based on (the movie, incidentally, is more closely based on the writings of the anti-Semitic Anne Catherine Emmerich).

He writes of Gibson's picture: "if it grosses millions, that will not be because anyone was entertained," ignoring the possiblity that people will watch it 1) to see what all the fuss is about, and 2) to confirm their extremist view of Christianity. He adds: "The filmmaker has put his artistry and fortune at the service of his conviction and belief, and that doesn't happen often." No it doesn't, but money and attention (I can't quite say 'artistry,' not in Gibson's case) poured into a project isn't an ironclad guarantee that a movie will be good, as I've tried to say not just once but twice.

So; Kinatay is attracting more than its share of controversy--all the more reason for me to want to see it (aside from the fact that I've been following Mendoza's career with considerable interest). As for Ebert--haven't much use for the man, or his writings, or anything he has to say on Filipino films, or any film in general. Far as I'm concerned he's The Great White Middlebrow of American Cinema, and I can't afford to be too bothered by the fuss he's spouting through his blowhole.

And the latest--Kinatay wins Brillante Mendoza a Best Director award at Cannes.

Terry Gilliam handed Mendoza his award. Given the microphone, he had this to say: "First of all I would like to thank the selection committee, who are responsible for bringing my films here for the past three years. And now with an award for Best Director, I would like to thank the Jury. And of course I’d like to thank my producer; thank you for the trust and faith in my films. I’d like to thank also a very committed staff and crew. I’d like to share this award with my daughter, Angelica, who has always been my number one critic and to an actor I really respect, Coco Martin. Thank you all for embracing my kind of cinema."

Anyone who's read anything I've written or followed this blog knows what I think of awards, Oscar, Cannes, whatever--that they're mostly political gestures, subject to compromise, and that they have nothing to do whatsoever with the winning film's (or losing films') artistic merits.

That said, I do recognize the fact that winning an award grants a filmmaker (and the country he represents) certain advantages, even bragging rights. Mendoza has every right to enjoy the moment, at least momentarily; he's done every Filipino filmmaker who has ever dreamed of winning a major award (or deserved to win a major award but failed to snag one) proud.

On to (relatively) lighter fare--have not yet seen Pixar's new movie, but so far I'm thinking Henry Selick's Coraline is the best animated American feature this year. It possibly has the best opening of the year, of a pair of hands cutting up and sewing together a stuffed doll--shot in such a way that you can't help but be reminded of a serial killer cutting up and sewing together a human body (shades of Kinatay!). Forget the Saw or Hostel franchise, this is horror conveyed metaphorically, with a real sense of lyricism.

I'd always felt some kind of respect for Selick--A Nightmare Before Christmas was a thing of beauty to look at, whether one is watching it on 2-D or 3 (even the way the 3-D effects are handled--sparingly, with a nice understatement--puts it head and shoulders above similar productions). Watching it for the first time or fifth, there are always details to discover or cherish, every time (Is that a cat's tale the mayor is twisting to sound the alarm? Is it just me or is Santa in this picture a self-righteous, malevolent jerk?).

It's a cold piece of work, however, with no real sense of drama, or pain, or suffering, set in a fantasy neverland where holidays aren't just holidays, but discrete worlds (cute idea but, at least in my opinion, barely exploited). Whereas Gaiman's story provides Selick with what he badly needs, a solid narrative with a genuinely affecting emotional core---basically Coraline, feeling neglected by her parents (they're busy finishing an important project), faces the possiblity of losing them once and for all. Combine this with Selick's impossible attention to detail (the final shot for example, a breathtaking glide from back yard to the front that takes in Coraline's entire world, which basically looks like a massive tabletop model of a house and garden) and vivid imagery (the most memorable of which is the simplest: a pair of black buttons sitting on a woman's palm--and everything those two buttons imply). The very best children's literature (or cinema) is based on very real childhood traumas, as Maurice Sendak, the Brothers Grimm, or Hayao Miyazaki will tell you. Coraline is a not unworthy new addition to that short, exclusive shelf.

Been trying to teach the art of storytelling--well, am doing my best, it's my first time. After introducing such wondrous concepts as conflict, characterization, structure, point of view, tone and mood, I ended the mini-course with two examples of the art (Warning: plot of both Le Plaisir and Rear Window discussed in close detail).

The first is "Le Modele," the final segment of Max Ophuls' Le Plaisir (1952). The young men and women (men more than women) protested at having to watch a black-and-white film, protested further upon learning they had to watch a black-and-white French film, with English subtitles ("if you don't want black-and-white and subtitles, stay out of places like this, then" I replied).

The film is roughly fifteen minutes long, I pointed out; more reason for Ophuls to be as economical as possible with the time allotted. The way, for example, he shoots the two lovers' first meeting as a single wordless shot--the camera follows Jean the artist (Daniel Gelin) as he runs up some stairs after a woman (Josephine, played by Simone Simon), pans left to a different set of stairs, catches Jean and Josephine coming down said stairs, arms entwined ("We don't need to know what Jean said to Josephine," I said. "This is a story not about how they met, but how they broke up"). Or later when Jean and Josephine walk down a riverside and Jean insults Josephine for the very first time--we hear her shrill response, then the soundtrack drops their dialogue, taking up the narrator's voice as he moves onwards ("We learn that they're unhappy; we don't need to hear the actual argument," I said).

I pointed out the use of irony. "I'll kill myself," Josephine says playfully at least twice, which may be why when she says it a third time, Jean can't take her seriously. "I can't live without you" Jean declares early on, something no one thinks to remind him of having said, some three months later.

Also pointed out Ophul's use of point of view, spectacularly demonstrated by the shot that takes up Josephine's eyes as she climbs a flight of stairs (her shadow, already ghostlike, flashing on this landing and that), walks to the window, shoves it open, and steps out (the sequence obviously inspiring Stanley Kubrick (an ardent Ophuls admirer) to stage a similar POV shot of Alex swanning out a window in A Clockwork Orange (1971)).

I next showed Rear Window (1954), Alfred Hitchcock's supreme exercise in point of view. I pointed out Hitchcock's method of characterization--we know thanks to a tracking shot that Jefferies (James Stewart) is a photographer laid up with a broken leg (this without a word of spoken dialogue, just the picking out of specific details). We know all about Stella (Thelma Ritter), her job as insurance company nurse, her husband, her comically cynical view of life from her own words (characterization through monologue). We know about Lisa (Grace Kelly) long before we see her, thanks to Stella and Jefferies' discussion of her faults and virtues (characterization through dialogue, or secondhand sources).

I pointed out that almost everything we see and hear are almost exclusively confined to what Jefferies can see and hear; that we see his neighbors in long shot when Jefferies looks out his window with naked eyes; that we see them in medium shot when he uses his binoculars, and that we see them almost in closeup when he uses his long telephoto lenses.

I pointed out the use of contrast, particularly the lyrical music played over the soundtrack while Lisa is being assaulted (possibly my favorite thriller setpiece in all of Hitchcock); I also pointed out the most disturbing detail in the whole film, the look of adoration Jefferies throws Lisa when she comes back from a particularly dangerous mission. "Throughout the entire movie, he's ignored her, insulted her, taken her completely for granted," I said (a student told me he couldn't keep watching because "the guy's crazy--beautiful girl like that, smart, and rich too, and he don't appreciate her").

"And now, look at him! That's the look of a man in love, folks. She's risked her life for him and this excites him, arouses him.

"He's what we call an adrenaline junkie. Danger turns him on. Worse, he's dragged Lisa and Stella into his way of thinking (that Thorwald (Raymond Burr) is guilty), shown them what a thrill it can be to take risks, court danger, even bend a law or two.

"This is all going to come back to him in a big way, of course, and soon. Only next time he won't be enjoying it as much."

And he didn't. But they did, and in a big way, of course.

What if someone else directed "Star Trek?"

2009-05-18T00:45:00.003-04:00

Just saying--I liked Star Trek well enough to think that J. J. Abrams is perfectly capable of continuing the franchise for years to come; my one major reservation being the fact that, well, he can't direct action, at all, not here, not in Mission Impossible 3, not in any film he's directed or produced.

And I'm not alone in thinking this. David Bordwell took Paul Greengrass to task for his incomprehensible camerawork in the Bourne movies; he's spoken out in favor of the coherent action sequence (of which Hong Kong filmmakers are some of the best practitioners, and Johnny To above all, at the moment, the best of the Hong Kong action directors) compared to the Greengrass/Abrams style of shaking the camera and cutting the footage to the point of incomprehensibility, or nausea, whichever comes first.

Which makes me wonder: who could be a better director for the Star Trek movies? I mean, given that Abrams produced (after this monster hit, I doubt if they're going to let him have anything less). If we listen to Bordwell and look for a Hong Kong filmmaker--could we get Johnny To? He doesn't seem interested in leaving Hong Kong, at least in the forseeable future.

Tsui Hark? Maybe not the Hark of recent years (he's taken to handheld camerawork and his editing has edged towards the incoherent, though nowhere near Greengrass or Abrams (or Tony Scott, for that matter))--I'd love to see him do it in the style of the Once Upon a Time in China movies, which had wonderful wirework and martial arts combat and filmmaking (every time I see someone pick up an umbrella in anger, I think of this film; come to think of it, every time I see a wet towel I think of this film). Plus he's fluent in special effects, even digital effects (though I'd love to see him do Star Trek with plenty of wirework).

Spielberg? Everyone's first choice will probably be Spielberg, so everyone can have him--moving on to the more interesting choices.

John McTiernan? Inevitable--too inevitable. He's done fun films, but after all is said and done, he's dull--strictly a meat-and-potatoes man.

Robert Rodriguez--would he be interested in Star Trek? I'd love to see a lot more Latin-American crew members in the Enterprise--and I'd have no problem with him directing. He's got a cartoon style that takes after Hong Kong with a swoony romantic feel all his own. Just don't give him input on the script--he doesn't know how to end a story (witness Once Upon a Time in Mexico)

David Lynch--now we're talking. Dennis Hopper as a gas-sniffing Klingon? Spock and Uhura having obsessive bouts of sex in their quarters? A finger-snapping midget talking backwards on the bridge? Lynch's done science fiction before, and the results were baroque and fascinating (the fans hated it, but I've always argued a somewhat antagonistic as opposed to slavishly accomodating relationship with fans makes for interesting work). I'd love to see him do a Star Trek, maybe with an Angelo Badalamenti score.

David Cronenberg--even more interesting. Can you imagine the creatures they might face? A gigantic biomechanical penis threatening the Enterprise? I've always wondered why Cronenberg and H.R. Giger never worked together--too big egos, perhaps?

Kurosawa Kyoshi--can you imagine Kirk picking up a communicator and Spock whispering in his ear "help me...help me..."

Dario Argento--hey, can you imagine the Three Mothers in space? Or what Argento might do with something like the lirpa?

Kevin Smith--feh. We're talking filmmakers.

Brian De Palma--truth to tell, I'd love to see him do this. He's done franchises before, and he's big on science, and I liked, oh, about 95% of his much reviled Mission to Mars. Plus he's the very antithesis of the fast cut and unsteady camera hand--always with the smooth dolly shots, the precisely built and paced movements, the dance of pursuer and pursued and camera (a kind of pas de trois, if you will). Plus he'd bring a sensuality to the images that I know will freak Trekkers out.

Hell, can you imagine him doing a remake of Amok Time?

"How do Vulcans choose their mates? Haven't you ever wondered?"

"I guess the rest of us assume that it's done quite logically."

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek

2009-05-10T23:52:00.005-04:00

(Warning: important story points discussed in close detail)

Have not the time to do a properly researched and reviewed post on the brand new Star Trek movie, so I suppose this will suffice for now.

Hated the action. I'd hope that J.J. Abrams' previous foray into feature filmmaking, Mission Impossible III would prove to be only an anomaly, but no, this is apparently the filmmaker's signature style: handicam footage so shaky only an epileptic viewer could make sense of it, cut together so swiftly and in such a confusing manner audiences have to watch the film twice to understand what's happening, who it's happening to, and why (which may be the intent all along).

I've seen better. Nicholas Meyer's The Wrath of Khan is funnier, more thrilling, more poignant overall (maybe it's my taste, but watching a bunch of kids find their destiny isn't half as moving as watching a bunch of aging has-beens realize their destiny has pretty much passed them by, or is at the point of doing so. Plus, of course, there's the treat of watching Kirk get his comeuppance--I mean, finally come to terms with the 'no-win scenario').

But it's more than a crotchety old fart thinking the old ways are best, I think (well, I hope). Two reasons why:

1) The action. Not just that Meyer took his time with his shots and edited them together coherently, but that he gave the battle sequences a distinct look and feel, like that of sailing ships of old. The Enterprise in Khan was shot and lit to look like a magnificent man-o'-war, with the engine nacelles resembling masts, and the control saucer tilting to the left or right like a mainsail.

It isn't just the resemblance; the ships moved like naval vessels, snuck past each other around a moon the way warships snuck around an island or peninsula. When they attacked, they slid past each other, cannons--sorry, phasers--blazing away; photon torpedoes weren't weightless SFX fireflies but resembled fiery cannonballs, with heft and momentum, and when they struck they slammed into a ship's hull with the proper destructiveness. These ships were massive, they had a sense of grandeur; they were relics of the past, brought to spectacular life.

The way the crew spoke about their ship carried the metaphor further; I'd catch Kirk yelling "swing her around!" to initiate another attack, or whispering "full stop," and wait like a dead fish for the enemy to surface (In space? But the metaphor's so strong and Meyer has you so caught up in the action you can't help but buy the idea).

It was different, is all; it offered an alternative to the Star Wars movies' headsplitting shock-n'-awe style of interstellar battle (which were based on an entirely different kind of battle: World War 2 aerial combat footage). One might think suspense and thrills are more difficult if one refused to resort to fast cutting, but no, I'd argue the opposite is true: it's actually easier to create suspense, build tension, and overall send a thrill up one's spine when the camera stays on a movement or action from beginning to end. One wonders (when the motion is started): will it succeed or fail? Will (while the motion is ongoing) it be interrupted? When the movement is concluded, one feels a surge of satisfaction, as if watching a crack crane operator successfully fit a thousand-pound steel beam into a particularly tricky slot.

Would like to go on the record and say that while I'm not a big fan of the shaky-cam, chop-suey editing style of filmmaking, I don't quite disapprove of all such practitioners. James Gray, for example, manages to employ handheld camerawork brilliantly in We Own the Night; Joss Whedon used a handheld camera in Serenity, but does so without the operator acting as if he were falling-down drunk. Whedon follows the action in Serenity, shoots it with clarity and coherence, pretty much treats it (as he should) like a musical dance number, where conveying a sense of the choreography is all-important (but then he did do "Once More with Feeling," which pretty much is a dance musical).

2) The cunning. In this latest film the solution is provided by a late addition to the cast, who comes almost literally out of nowhere. Yes, he did stay 'out of the way' so certain personages could kindle certain chemistries, but still, he had to hang around and provide hints and allegations as to the ultimate outcome. In Meyer's film no such person pops out of a magic box; Kirk and Spock pretty much have to deal with Khan as best they can, through sheer deviousness (remember that Meyer, who wrote the script, is a veteran at ingenious crackerjack storylines--H.G. Wells hunted Jack the Ripper in Time After Time; Sherlock Holmes met Sigmund Freud in The Seven Percent Solution. In The Undiscovered Country, the original Star Trek cast's final film, Meyer married current events (the collapse of the Soviet Union) with Holmes deductive techniques and a plot straight out of The Manchurian Candidate).

(Where is Meyer anyway--did he feel too old to do this sort of thing anymore? Ah, well)

Worse than the action or the science are the emotional implausibilities. Given that Nero's home planet was accidentally destroyed, that he's fallen through a black hole and gone back in time, wouldn't one's priority be to warn said home planet of impending doom? Granted one wants revenge, but shouldn't one do home planet first, maybe hand over advanced tech to one's family ancestors in the meantime, before risking life and limb on a bid for revenge (a bid, incidentally, that resembles in no small way Khan's obsession with Kirk in Wrath of Khan).

And given that an Academy rookie has tried to usurp one's position, and is more or less an all-around pain in the ass, isn't it a bit, well, excessive of Spock to maroon said rookie on a nearby planet? Yes, there's a Federation base eleven miles away (which you have to get past several nasty monsters to get to) and breathable air (but not a friendly climate; he should have been marooned near a more Jamaica-like environment), but whatever happened to the possibly quaint notion of confining the prisoner to his quarters? Does he consider Kirk that dangerous? If Spock could cite some provision in Academy law that allows him to do this then maybe, but far as I can remember he doesn't. Kirk had a basis for replacing Spock all the time, right there.

But still, but still. Abrams is worthless as an action director but unlike, say Christopher Nolan, he does fill his film to the brim with interesting ideas. I've heard it mentioned elsewhere that if you're going to do prequels, this is the way to do it, not, say, George Lucas' way.

But I'm being unfair to Star Trek. Star Wars is and has always been science fantasy, closer to Lord of the Rings than to real science fiction. Star Trek is science fiction--not great SF, not even scientifically accurate SF (the ships still make popping sounds when going into warp drive, and one wonders why with all that faster-than-light technology they still haven't invented seat belts), but at least a sincere stab at science fiction, with at least a cursory attempt to root some of the more outrageous ideas in scientific fact.

That 'red matter' business, for example--on paper it sounds like the film's silliest idea, but if one has read Larry Niven's "The Hole Man" it becomes a trifle less so (Niven doesn't actually suggest that you can siphon off quantum black holes, though, or float them around like so many interstellar vacuum cleaners, sweeping up pesky nova explosions).

And I may rag on Abrams for having Spock strand Kirk, and rag him further for the enormously ridiculous coincidence of having Kirk and the older Spock meet (of all planets, of all the ice caverns!), but here I think we go into mythmaking or fabulist territory. Younger Spock is right to maroon Young Kirk because the latter has to meet Older Spock; Young Kirk and Older Spock have to meet because Young Kirk needs Older Spock's advice (not to mention he's the last person in the universe we expected to see, and a great WTF moment). Older Spock giving advise to rookie Kirk is an idea far more entertaining and ingenious and resonant than say, 900 year old Yoda giving advise to either Obi-Wan Kenobi or Luke Skywalker (think of Odysseus consulting with the gods, or of King Arthur receiving guidance from Merlin--Abrams is linking Kirk and Spock to that kind of storytelling mojo). I can see Nimoy's Spock popping up once in a while to give sage or at least mysterious advice in succeeding instalments, maybe even popping into his own alternate reality to check in on aging Kirk to see how he's getting on. It's Spock as his own oracle. feeding him his own wisdom. Cool and narcissistic at the same time.

This is Star Trek despite all the revisions, and recognizably so, and here's my favorite reason why: Kirk and Spock are back. The eternal romance has been rekindled. "You are and always will be my friend"--who're ya kidding, ya sentimental Vulcan?! The two have been and always will be an item, and an eternal source of fascination--just hasn't been the same since Jean-Luc Picard and his bland o'brothers took over. Star Trek's appeal has been and always will be the homoerotic subtext--that, and the cheesy sets and costumes (Abrams got the costumes more or less right, wish he had the guts to go for cheesier sets). Star Wars has always aspired to be opera; its unforgivable crime for me is that it's dull opera, a charge you can't level against Kirk and Spock, one of the great gay-coded couples of pop culture (ideally the couple is completed in the next movie as a menage a trois, with McCoy as third wheel, competing with Spock for Kirk's attention--something this already long and busy movie couldn't include).

Ultimately, I approve. Not the best Trek film ever, not even the best feature film this 2009 (arguably that's either James Gray's Two Lovers--if you can consider it '09 and not '08--or Henry Selick's Coraline), but maybe the best blockbuster hit I've enjoyed in many a year. May it endure and flourish.

Philippine Customs continues to block book imporation; responds to criticism; is responded to in return

2009-05-10T23:24:00.012-04:00

From Manuel Quezon III's blog, a timeline of this whole brouhaha.

Most interesting is Usec Sales' latest argument for taxing books, that "there really is a provision for a 1% duty on imported books (”educational, cultural, etc.”) that are for sale and for profit" found in Sec. 105 of the Tariffs and Customs Code.

To which the Book Development Association of the Philippines replied with a document, here reproduced in full:

Position Paper of the Book Development Association of the Philippines Re: Tax and Duty Free Importation of ...
Position Paper of the Book Development Association of the Philippines Re: Tax and Duty Free Importation of Books Into the Country mlq3 Industry position paper in response to Department of Finance imposition of import duties on books.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Taxes & Accounting Business & Law ebook culture

Which basically all boils down to "the Department of Finance is breaking international and its own laws imposing this tax, the National Book Development Board has the sole authority to determine when and how and if books are to be taxed and anyway Republic Act No. 8047 is the last word on this subject."

And so matters stand. So far.

Postscript: on NPR today two members of the Obama transition team discussed his possible choice to replace Justice Souter, and, paraphrasing roughly what they said, it was significant that Obama mentioned the word 'empathy' as one of the qualities he's looking for in a new Supreme Court justice.

In effect, he's looking for someone who would look not at the letter of the law, but the intent for which the law was enacted, and its overall impact on people.

An interesting idea! If, say, Usec Sales used such a radical principle to weigh the pros and cons of her proposal to apply levies on book importation (Proposal? It's fait accompli, a done deal; like the Somali pirates, she's boarded the ship and is shaking down the crew), Sales in effect would be weighing the increase of a few million pesos in revenues (I mean, how big is the book industry in the Philippines, anyway? Certainly not bigger than the TV industry!) against the growth and development of the country's collective intellect.

A couple of pesos against a country's cultural and educational future. Does not take a genius, I think, to figure that out.

Lino Brocka films thoughout the month of May

2009-05-09T06:02:00.008-04:00

For the entire month of May, at Magnet: Katipunan: a month-long festival of Lino Brocka's films (link includes times and schedules).

Here's my article on the affair:

Brocka unbound

Lino Brocka has helped develop or collaborated with artists and actors--Mel Chionglo, Joel Lamangan, Peque Gallaga, Laurice Guillen, Tikoy Aguiluz, Mike de Leon, Mario O'Hara, to name just a select few--who have gone on to become major filmmakers in their own right, at one point or another adopting or reacting against his brand of melodramatic realism. He's shaped generations of filmmakers who may have not worked with him but have seen his films: Raymond Red, whose Palme d'or-winning Anino (Shadows, 2000) was directly inspired by Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975); Jeffrey Jeturian, whose Pila Balde (Fetch a Pail of Water, 1999) is a tragicomic variant on Brocka's slum dramas; Brillante Mendoza, whose internationally renowned Tirador (Slingshot, 2007)--and, for that matter, entire filmography to date--is Brocka realism set to an edgier, more contemporary rhythm; Korean filmmaker Park Kwang-su (Jeon tae-il (A Single Spark, 1995)), who cites him as an influence.

Filipino critics gives him his due, either positive or negative--Rolando Tolentino, Agustin Sotto, Bienvenido Lumbera all profess admiration for the man (Joel David, to name an opposite example, is more an admirer of Brocka's longtime rival Ishmael Bernal). Foreign critics interested in world cinema show at least a passing familiarity with his work (Charles Tesson, Dave Kehr, Elliott Stein, Tony Rayns, Pierre Rissent (who managed to save the prints of some of Brocka's best works, and helped produce one of his last films)).

Even filmmakers who refuse to declare an artistic debt to Brocka betray his imprint--Lav Diaz's kilometric works, for example, do their utmost to avoid Brocka-ish melodrama, choosing a more contemplative, less commercial running time and tone; John Torres' films experiment with a melancholic autobiographical essay structure, doing away entirely with the conventional narrative Brocka favors; Raya Martin's pictures possess a playful lyricism that you don't find in Brocka.

He is, in effect, the sun that deforms the trajectories of comets moving through his system, drawing some to the glare of his influence while driving others into frostier directions. Dead for some eighteen years, Brocka has for the past thirty-five dominated Philippine cinema.

So it's a strange and strangely moving development that only now are we having anything like a comprehensive retrospective of his work, most of them presumably on DVD or VCD (and except for the more famous films probably without English subtitles (it would be nice if someone actually listed them)), at one of Manila's more interesting small venues (Magnet Katipunan near Rustan's Supermarket, opposite Miriam College, Katipunan Road in Diliman, Quezon City). Ideally this should be an international event, to which cinephiles and critics all over the world are invited, after which there should be a world tour covering the major film cities--New York, Paris, London, Tokyo.

On the other hand, what more fitting place can there be for a Brocka retrospective than in an indie venue, frequented by students and indie filmmakers? For whom did Brocka make his movies but Filipinos, and who responded best to his films but young Filipinos hungry for something new, something good, something that spoke more urgently and frankly than ever before about sex and love and hatred and passion and cruelty? When Brocka established Cine Manila, his maiden offering Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Were Judged and Found Wanting, 1974) was a hit reportedly because he marketed it to students, to the hopeful and curious young. He would not have the same critical and commercial success ever again--some of his greatest works were boxoffice flops, while his more solidly commercial hits lacked the depth of feeling, the bleak yet somehow defiant sensibility that informs his finest films.

He made money; he was too good a filmmaker and too cunning an entertainer not to do that. He also lost a lot of money--"Mother" Lily Monteverde, head of Regal Films, tells stories of how she would lend him cash or even throw a project his way because he was up to his ears in debt. He made friends--sadly I had the privilege to shake his hand only once, to remind him that my identical twin brother once worked for him ("Oh," he said; "that's why you look familiar."); he also, or so it's told, made a lot of enemies, some of them the right kind (Marcos in his later years, Aquino when she lost control of the vigilante forces patrolling the countryside), some of them wrong.

And he made for great stories. I don't just mean the movies; I mean all the anecdotes about him, about half of which were true (did he really audition with a now-famous Hollywood star, for the leading roles an award-winning Hollywood film?); he died in a car crash in 1991, and even his death is shrouded in mystery (Was it an accident? An assassination?). If half the stories about Brocka are true, his life whould be a fabulous story--wonderful material for a biopic, someday, done perhaps in an approximation of his unique heartfelt style.

And then there are the films themselves.

It's a pity the organizers didn't arrange the films chronologically; it would be instructive to see his development in four short years from successful commercial director (Wanted: Perfect Mother (1970)--which isn't showing, pity; Santiago (also 1970)) to master filmmaker (Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang onwards).

The three years from Tinimbang to Insiang (1976) represent the height of his career, when each year he seemed to come out with a masterpiece, along with fascinating lesser works (one of which, Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa (Three, Two, One, 1974) is in this retro). They are arguably the apex of achievement in Philippine cinema, three attempts at dramatizing the Filipino struggle for love and acceptance in a hostile world, from a panoramic portrait of a small town (Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang) to a man's odyssey through the urban jungle (Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag) to a young woman's harrowing betrayal (Insiang). I'd made the argument before that the heart of the Filipino is basically melodramatic, that these three films represent melodrama at its finest, that Brocka's sense of realism and urgency (you get the sense that he shot these pictures just outside the theater and delivered them, still steaming, straight to the big screen) helps sell these melodramas as absolute truth. The three are found in the retro's last weekend, apparently to finish the festival on a high note. Those unfamiliar with Brocka might want to keep that weekend free; the rest might want to look at his earlier, lesser-known films.

Santiago is his recently re-discovered second picture, his only war film, and his only collaboration with legendary action king Fernando Poe, Jr.; it's fascinating for the portrait of the social outcast Brocka sketches, an early model for the more complex version he will develop four years later, with Tinimbang.

Stardoom (1971), a showbiz melodrama about a mother's all-consuming obsession with her son's singing career, features a great pair of performances from Lolita Rodriguez as the mother and Mario O'Hara as her unwanted son. Tubog sa Ginto (Dipped in Gold, also 1971) was re-discovered in 2006, and is an adaptation of the Mars Ravelo story of a husband leading a double life, notable for its retro-progressive (retro for today, progressive for '71) attitude towards closeted gay men.

Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa is a triptych of short films ranging from a drug rehabilitation drama to a young woman torn between her Filipino mother and American father to a rare gothic piece about an old spinster fascinated with her handsome gardener.

The recently found Ang Tatay Kong Nanay (My Father is My Mother, 1978) is arguably as if not more interesting than Tubog sa Ginto in that it presents the gay man as a possible parent figure; it's also the only collaboration between Brocka and comic legend Dolphy.

Ina, Kapatid, Anak (Mother, Sister, Daughter, 1979) pits two acting legends (Charito Solis and Lolita Rodriguez) with two radically different acting styles (one flamboyantly theatrical, the other naturalistic and understated) against each other, playing rival sisters. Ina Ka ng Anak Mo (You are the Mother of Your Child, same year) is a middle-class version of Insiang that combines the talents of Brocka with writer/playwright Butch Dalisay, Jr., and actresses Lolita Rodriguez with Nora Aunor. The film, incidentally, is critic Augustin Sotto's favorite Brocka. Jaguar (1979)--based on a Nick Joaquin essay ("The Boy Who Wanted to Become Society"), adapted for the screen by Pete Lacaba and Ricky Lee, and featuring Conrado Baltazar camerawork at its brutally darkest, is arguably Brocka's finest noir film.

Bona (1980)--of all the roles singer/actress/producer/uber-celebrity Nora Aunor ever played, she will probably be best known for two: Elsa, the miracle worker in Ishmael Bernal's Himala (Miracle, 1982) and this, the story of a young woman's obsession over a minor movie actor. Brocka's urban slum version of Francois Truffaut's L'Histoire d'Adele H. (The Story of Adele H., 1975) was for many years the least seen of Brocka's major works (a print was only recently made available). Brocka would be inspired by Truffaut at least one more time, taking his La mariee etait en noir" (The Bride Wore Black, 1968) and retelling it through a "komiks" series by Carlos J. Caparas. The result is Angela Markado (1980), which features gorgeous noir cinematography by Conrado Baltazar and memorable theme music by Jeric Soriano.

Kontrobersyal (Controversial, 1981), Brocka's potboiler about the rise of a starlet (Gina Alajar) is the quintessential rags-to-riches, prey-turned-predator story, brimming with true-life anecdotes and an authentically acerbic sense of the seamier side of show business. The film, it must be noted, is UP Film Institute programmer and critic Nonoy Lauzon's favorite of Brocka's pictures.

Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim (My Country, 1984) is, along with Mike de Leon's Sister Stellla L (1984), one of a handful of mainstream films that had the courage to openly criticize the Marcos regime. Both films' screenplays were by auteur-screenwriter Jose "Pete" Lacaba.

Miguelito, ang Batang Rebelde (Miguelito the Rebel, 1985) is remembered for being the first time popular movie idol Aga Muhlach essayed a dramatic role, the son of a potentially corrupt political figure; the film should really be known for the wonderful pair of performances by the late Nida Blanca (as Miguelito's convict mother), and Rey "PJ" Abellana (as one of the father's political henchmen).

With Babangon Ako't Dudurugin Kita (I Will Rise and Crush You, 1989) Brocka tried to do for Sharon Cuneta what he did for Aga Muhlach; the results were a mixed bag if you're not a Sharon fan (which I'm not, unfortunately). Macho Dancer (also 1989) is considerably better, a noir involving erotic male dancers with memorable performances by Jacklyn Jose and Daniel Fernando. Possibly the best film Brocka made that year, however (it was a busy year) was Orapronobis (Pray for Us), Brocka's considerably courageous statement on Corazon Aquino, the housewife who helped break strongman Ferdinand Marcos's stranglehold on the Philippine presidency--namely, that her political ineptitude was in some ways worse than Marcos' corrupt despotism (the film would be banned for years by the Aquino administration). Partly funded by the French, written with sinewy leanness by Pete Lacaba and lensed by Mike de Leon regular Rody Lacap, the film had a distinct look and feel unlike any other Filipino film of the decade, and is a late high point in Brocka's career.

Gumapang Ka sa Lusak (Dirty Affair, 1990)--this melodramatic take on the last few years of the Marcos administration is arguably Brocka's last decent work. It is notable for Christopher de Leon's understated performance as the outlaw hero, and for Charo Santos' memorably sociopathic performance as an Imelda Marcos parody.

First published in Businessworld, 5.8.09

Sherad Anthony Sanchez's "Imburnal" wins the JIFF Woosuk Award

2009-05-09T05:11:00.017-04:00

Sherad Anthony Sanchez's Imburnal (2009) which screened in the just concluded Jeonju International Film Festival has won both the Woosuk and NETPAC award.

The film is an over four hour long nonlinear digital film about two boys who spend (or misspend) their childhood hanging out in a sewage ditch in Barangay Matina Aplaya, Punta Dumalog, in Davao. They curse, talk about sex, collect cockroaches in jars, and (arguably the most disturbing image of all) bathe in the ditch's filthy waters.

The film has had its share of controversy. It was rejected three times by the Movies and Television Ratings Board (MTRCB) for its "objectionable presentation" of poverty (Which makes one wonder what the board would have thought of the films of Lino Brocka--most of which portray poverty, and which former First Lady Imelda Marcos objected to because they portrayed the Philippines in an unfavorable light (the board also seems to have inspired other government agencies on their policies regarding the encouragement of intellectual and cultural freedom).

The NETPAC and Woosuk Award jurors must have seen more than mere shock value in the film, however. The film was chosen "because it fulfills the progressive spirit of the JIFF: it is an innovative, experimental, even miraculous work, a unique blend of documentary and fiction, which returns us to the fundamental question of the past and the future: what is cinema?"

The Woosuk Award comes with a $10,000.00 prize. The film also won the Best Picture at the 4th Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival, and the Lino Brocka Grand Prize at the 10th Cinemanila International Film Festival.

Philippine Customs blocking imported books

2009-05-09T04:46:00.007-04:00

A blog post from Robin Henley, University of Iowa Creative Writing professor on a fellowship in the Philippines:

Philippine Customs imposes illegal duties on imported books

Setting aside the impression one gets that the reasoning behind their duty-happy spree is idiotic (that 'missing coma the Undersecretary points out being a particularly brilliant piece of idiocy--one wants to check her educational credentials), and setting aside the fact that if one more copy of Stephanie Myer's moronic Twilight never lands on the Philippines I'd be a happier Filipino, there are serious consequences to this development.

Like the curtailment of knowledge between countries. Like a further financial burden on educational or cultural organizations (never much of a priority for governments, mind you) that depend on these books. Like students or youths or anyone even remotely interested in a subject that might require a book suddenly finding themselves out of luck, because someone insists on hanging government policy on a missing comma.

Shame, shame.

Postscript: a cursory google search reveals several blogs discussing the subject, including an excellent one on the legal ramifications. Problem is, though, they all quote the same source (that website I link to above) and I haven't spotted (yet) a major Filipino newspaper covering the story. So in case this whole thing's a hoax (I don't know, it just so sounds like the government), For the record, I at least entertained the possibility.

Sansho the Bailiff, Come Drink with Me, Two Lovers

2009-05-01T15:17:00.022-04:00

James Gray in an interview says The Yards (2000) came out of his father's job of supplying parts to the New York subway system, that Little Odessa (1994) and We Own the Night (2007) came out of years growing up knowing Russian gangsters, that We Own the Night also came from the fact that his stepbrother was a police officer. In the case of his latest film Two Lovers (2008) the project is, or so he claims, his least autobiographical and most personal work to date.

Like all of Gray's films it's heavily character-driven. Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix) is bipolar and at times suicidally depressed; his parents (the benign Moni Moshonov, the unusually matronly yet still resplendent Isabella Rossellini) have arranged for him marry sexy, supportive Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), when what Leonard really wants is beautiful yet unstable Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Not the most original scenario in the world, but part of Gray's uncanny appeal comes from the way he takes old-fashioned narrative arcs (the grateful nephew turned anguished informer, the prodigal son turned faithful avenger) and invigorates them, invests them with a passion and level of filmmaking they haven't enjoyed since, well, Francis Ford Coppola in his heyday (in the case of We Own the Night--which owes a good deal storywise to The Godfather--I actually prefer the former to the latter).

Gray delivers on the filmmaking, either with the quietly witty throwaway shot (Leonard waiting in a fine dining restaurant for Michelle and her married lover Ronald (coolly confident Elias Koteas), the vertical stripes on the upholstery matching the vertical slats of the blinds behind, matching the vertical thrust of the huge vase sprouting out of Phoenix's head, wordlessly underlining his turgid impatience) or with more elaborate sequences. In one scene, Michelle and Leonard are on their apartment rooftop, standing inside an open shed while she asks Leonard what he thinks of Ronald; Leonard leads her from one doorway of the shed to another, revealing shifting views of Brooklyn as he attempts to shift her view of her lover.

In the crucial scene where Leonard confesses his love for Michelle, the pair are back on their rooftop, the shot beginning with the camera perched atop a crane, starting from high behind Leonard's left shoulder and approaching the pair as Leonard approaches the object of his desire. Phoenix's performance here as Leonard is remarkably brave, or foolhardy--his tongue thick with lust, his voice halting and infantile, he shuffles forward like a weeping child, demanding comfort, satisfaction. One waits with bated breath for Gwyneth's Michelle to respond--will she embrace him, or push him away? Somehow Gray manages to make either possibility terrifying.

I can empathize with Tsui Hark as he viewed King Hu's Da zui xia (Come Drink with Me, 1966) for the first time, feeling a mounting sense of excitement as government soldiers battled bandits: Hu's measured pacing, his magisterial camera movements--simultaneously patient yet precise--envelop the balletic battlers in their struggle. One can see the influence of old-school action filmmakers in Hu, from John Ford to Akira Kurosawa, in the way ambushing forces stand along a mountain range, or the way opposing forces deploy themselves over a battlefield, like so many chess pieces. One even sees (I admit I may be reaching here) the influence of Hollywood musical directors like as Vincente Minnelli or Stanley Donen, in the way the camera stays with the fight choreography, cutting only to punctuate, or to conclude the sequence--for what is martial arts but a form of dance, its arrangement a kind of choreography?

That's the film's first half; by the second one might accuse Hu of careless continuity, or shoddy production value. The heroine Golden Swallow (Chiang Pei Pei, who worked with Hu on only one major project (this one), but maintained a strong bond with the man for the rest of his life) is wounded by a poisoned dart and faints; when she later opens her eyes, liquid yellow drains upwards from the screen (Hu creates this effect by spilling the liquid on a sheet of glass positioned before the lens, the footage then projected backwards) to reveal the ceiling of a small hut. Later Swallow steps out of the hut and glares weakly at a small pond; the pond glares back, radiating a bright radioactive green.

Hu's color palette has become strange, his editing even stranger--when Golden Swallow confronts Abbot Liao Kung (Chih Ching Yian), the Abbot shoves her to the ground; Hu cuts and suddenly Swallow and Abbot are twenty feet apart, where a second before they were at arm's length. The Abbot has a showdown with Drunk Cat (Hua Yueh), and it's as if they could fold space, jump time, instantaneously switch positions with each other--Hu edits this sequence not so much for plausibility or logic, it seems, as for some kind of ad hoc clarity; to paraphrase the White Queen, he feels the need to depict three impossible things before breakfast.

I understand how a viewer enjoying Hu's crystalline action filmmaking might rebel when everything he's been enjoying so far has been pulled out from under him; also understand how this kind of response to the picture is ultimately incomplete. After achieving effortless mastery in the first half, Hu strives to exceed that mastery, strives for transcendence in action filmmaking, for the kind of abstraction and experimentation that distinguished his later masterpieces (Xia nu (A Touch of Zen, 1969) and Chung lieh tu (The Valiant Ones, 1975)). In this, his first and most conventional wuxia pian, Hu is already pushing the boundaries of the action film, seeking the next stage of development. He seems aware of how few films he will be allowed to make, and is impatient to realize as many new ideas onscreen as he possibly can--hence the density, the odd structure of the film.

After years of sitting through 16 mm prints of varying quality finally a Criterion DVD of Kenji Mizoguchi's Sansho Dayu (Sansho the Bailiff, 1954), with excellent commentary by Japanese Literature professor Jeffrey Angles and interviews of Kyoko Kagawa (who plays the young woman Anju) and film critic Tadao Sato, talking about the picture.

If there's a disappointment in all this, it's the fact that after drinking deep of a clear copy of the film, I find myself with little to say. What can you say about a film that may well be Mizoguchi's masterpiece, and one of the greatest films ever made? What can you say about a film that, as Tadao Sato tells us, is Mizoguchi's simplest work, the simplicity arrived at through comprehensive and absolute mastery of filmmaking in all its aspects? That it's a perfect distillation of Mizoguchi's vision, of a world of suffering and deprivation relieved here and there by moments of sacrifice and transcendent insight? That it's his most ruthlessly heartbreaking work?

That what is oft praised as possibly the single most beautiful shot in all of cinema, the descent of young Anju (Kyoko Kagawa) into a deep pond, is partly the result of an accident? As Kagawa put it in her interview, wooden boards were laid out underwater so that her walk in would be smooth, instead of that funny waddle people do when wading into deep mud. The boards, however, were extremely slippery and Kagawa extremely nervous; she had to pick her way carefully into the water.

The result is as unique and exquisite a death scene as any I've ever seen. Anju's steps as she enters the pond are hesitant and delicate, as befits a frail young woman entering a world of which she knows nothing about; at the same time, there seems to be in her a kind of calm anticipation, a serene acceptance of her fate. Watching her impeccable posture as the water (undoubtedly cold) rises past her waist, one thinks of a shy maiden quietly advancing to meet her lover, simultaneously fearful and resigned and, yes, eager.

Interesting to compare this to Taiji Yabushita's The Orphan Brother, an animated version made some seven years later (please skip the next four paragraphs if you plan to see both films). As I pointed out in that earlier piece, Yabushita retells the story in childlike fantasy terms (in effect returning the story to its fablelike roots), with perhaps the loveliest effect being Anju's transformation into a swan.

There is one moment where Yabushita's film exceeds Mizoguchi's at least in terms of bleakness: when Zushio meets Tamaki there is no epiphany, no sudden access to spiritual wisdom to soften the blow. Tamaki is besides Zushio, who is decked out in the finery and grandeur of his office, and all she can say to him is: "Oh, the sufferings I've had!" Zushio's incredible luck has had little effect on her state of mind; she can only think of the enormity of her suffering.

But pessimism and despair can only do so much to turn the mind. I remember Mizoguchi's climactic scene, the awful image of Tamaki sitting blindly on the parched earth, waving a stalk over the drying millet. I remember Zushio's expression of dismay, as the realization steals over him that this parody of a human being at work could possibly be his mother. I remember his anguish at having to tell her of Anju's and Masauji's fate, of the hope in her face being ground, like a dropped cigarette, into the dirt as Zushio weeps inconsolably.

I remember most of all the moment when Tamaki's shoulders stiffen, a stern expression on her face as she says "What are you talking about?" Suddenly she's Zushio's mother again, reprimanding him for a moment of weakness; suddenly this scarecrow of a woman, left there to frighten birds away from the millet, somehow finds the energy within her to flash her old spirit. Every man has a breaking point, they say, and Tamaki showing us (after everything has been said and done) a mother's indomitable strength never fails to find mine.

Too twisted titans, and an unforgettable lensman

2009-04-24T23:52:00.026-04:00

1. The unforgettable lensman

Jack Cardiff is readily and rightly remembered for his work in Michael Powell's Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948) (though arguably their most enchanting collaboration is the lesser-known A Matter of Life and Death (1946).

One mark of a cinematographer, though, is the quality of his work in less than ideal circumstances. Thus:

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) is a racist piece of ordure but Cardiff's lenses help transform the jungle captured in above photo into a wonderland of oiled and polished greenery, where fat leeches thrive on naked flesh (before being bloodily flicked away by oversized knives), and Vietcong officers stand helplessly out in the open only to burst into balls of orange flame.

His work in John Irvin's The Dogs of War (1980), about mercenaries staging the overthrow of a small African regime, is some of the finest, Greene-est imagery I've ever seen in a major production. Scenes such as the one above (Christopher Walken, framed by a grimy window, aims what he calls an 'XM-18 grenade launcher') possess a documentary realism and understated style that evokes the corruption, the grinding poverty of a developing country far more effectively, I think, than the flashier filmmaking of more recent directors.

2. One twisted titan

With a tribute site as thorough and well maintained as that, I doubt if I can add much more that's original to his better-known works.

But I think something crucial, something iconic, something perhaps like the crystallized essence of the man can be found in an early work, The Crystal World. Easily the most original of his three end-of-the-world novels (arguably the most original of any apocalyptic fiction, anywhere), here Ballard posits a world slowly being destroyed not by fire, not by ice, but by crystals, a literal hardening and solidifying of flesh into faceted form.

Of course we still have the classic Ballard obsessions--beautiful writing, externalized psychology, an almost blithe unconcern for the standard priorities of a disaster novel both literal and literary. The protagonist, Sanders, is barely characterized; he's mainly a two-legged video camera programmed to wander about and capture as many of the fantastical images Ballard creates as possible--survival is a secondary priority.

What's so fascinating about this--it reads more like a prose poem than conventional fiction (or several ornate poems hung on an arbitrary narrative skeleton)--this work is the way Ballard manages to extend his metaphor (crystallization as death/fulfillment) to almost all aspects of existence. Musing on what's happening all around him, Sanders speculates that an effect of gemstones drawing light into themselves is the focusing--or compression--of time; when that light is released, so are these stored packets of time: "Perhaps it was this gift of time which accounted for the eternal appeal of precious gems, as well as of all baroque painting and architecture." He believes that the intricate lines of baroque design, its quality of "occupying more than (its) volume of space," provides admirers with an "unmistakable premonition of immortality." He also muses that the leprosy virus with its crystalline structure is possibly yet another manifestation of this disease in time.

If crystallization is the result of super-saturation in a solution (and everything that occurs in the novel a result of super-saturation of matter over time), it may be argued that The Crystal World suffers--or soars, depending on your response--from a super-saturation of Ballard's prose. Certainly many of Ballard's works give us other extremes--techno-porn in Crash, the profound psychological and sociological effects of architecture in High Rise, the autobiographical source of much of his surrealism in Empire of the Sun--but in The Crystal World you get the sense that Ballard has no other concept to develop, no other agenda to push other than to render the world in crystalline terms, in cold, brilliant words. I like to think of the novel as Ballard in amber--all his desires, his nightmares, his dreams hanging in mid-space, frozen, slowly turning in the light for all of us to see. The Crystal World is about the very opposite of moderation, restraint, dilution, mediocrity. It's Ballard at his most concentrated.

3. Too twisted titan

Ballard has his shocking moments (check out his short story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan"), but he is a timid boy scout compared to Philip Jose Farmer. As Harlan Ellison in his SF anthology Dangerous Visions once put it, Farmer "has doggedly gone after one dangerous vision after another." We've heard about how Farmer's The Lovers was a seminal work on sexuality in science fiction; what we haven't heard as often is how in Blown he has a man receive oral sex from a decapitated head, or how in Lord Tyger a woman makes love to a freshly butchered baboon heart, still beating. Farmer is best known for his Riverworld series, and for bringing sex and sexuality to science fiction; what's less known is how he's brought extreme sexual perversion and outlandish violence--both often yoked together, like the proverbial 'beast with two backs'--to the genre (in A Feast Unknown, Lord Grandrith, Farmer's Tarzan stand-in, is at one point raped, at another point manages to slaughter a roomful of men) .

Not to mention an unfettered, outsized imagination (see the Riverworld books). The World of Tiers series takes place in a 'pocket cosmos,' an artificial universe containing only three astronomical objects: the World of Tiers, its small moon, and its small sun. The World of Tiers is a gigantic structure, a series of stepped plateaus with entire worlds and peoples of different times and nations spread out on each plateau; at one point the series' hero, Lord Kickaha, battles across the Lavalite World, where the earth heaves and sinks and swells and separates and floats about and violently re-combines like the heated oil-and-liquid mixture in a lava lamp. Bad enough to have characters winking in and out of different universes (possibly Roger Zelazny had to force himself not to imitate this in his later (and to my mind, far less colorful) Chronicles of Amber novels), but for the very earth to reform, every few hours! It's enough to drive a man insane, and you can't help but wonder how Farmer was able to live with his bubbling cauldron of a subconscious all the time.

In The Unreasoning Mask (science fiction editor David Pringle's favorite amongst his works), Farmer proposes that the multiverse--the series of universes that make up our reality--are really the cells of an unconscious, unthinking child or fetus (hence the book's title). A deadly antibody the size of a small moon flits about the various universes, killing the viruses afflicting the fetus--namely intelligent beings, or us; Hud Ramstan, the Muslim captain of a living ship must find a way to fight this monster, save the multiverse. Metaphysical hijinks ensue.

Farmer rarely reeks of literature--his novels move fast, and are never dull. But unlike entertainment writers of lesser metal, he has an unflinching view of humanity and of the various cruelties (and heroic sacrifices) we are capable of, and he records them in clear, unambiguous language. He's a unique read, definitely not for everyone; I've seen echoes of his writings here, there. Some of the more shocking atrocities in Farmer's Image of the Beast and Blown seem to have inspired Brett Easton Ellis in creating Patrick Bateman's rampages in American Psycho; I've mentioned the World of Tiers' tidal pull on later fantasies such as Zelazny's Amber series; and Farmer's influence was openly acknowledged by Robert Heinlein in writing his famous counter-culture novel Stranger in a Strange Land.

Pringle did note an escapist element in Farmer's work, a tendency to go into fantasy or classic science-fiction mode when confronted with a dead end situation (the conclusion to his Gods of Riverworld, for one). I tend to think of Farmer as the most realist of fabulists--no matter how fantastic the situation, his men and women fought, fled, fucked, defecated; they felt fear, fury, frustration, the need for fun, and the need to crack really terrible puns. Many writers describe adventurers climbing up a dizzying mountain trail; none but Farmer thought to write (in The Magic Labyrinth) about the problems of urinating or worse defecating on a ledge thousands of feet high; many write about the problems of surviving without food and water; few write (as Farmer did in A Feast Unknown) a detailed treatise on the relative merits and flavors of various animal dung (hyena manure is inedible; zebra, however, is almost delectable).

His characters in effect experience the same biological and psychological processes we all undergo, and in a genre where even the mention of a toilet bowl--much less its use or misuse--was a major event (I'm thinking of the intricate instructions for a zero-g toilet found in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey). Farmer took such realism to be more standard than startling, an essential element in his stories; all this, plus an imagination second to none.

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2009)

2009-04-18T01:10:00.005-04:00

How to be a millionaire

Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008) is that one-in-million movie, a slick, scrappy, rags-to-riches flick complete with love story, chase sequences, menacing gangs, a helpless young beauty, a pair of scrappy brothers, a slum the size and population of a small city.

It's thrilling, funny, tragic, sensuous, infuriating; it's bright-colored and deep-shadowed, crammed full of danceable music, its characters running the gamut from insatiably greedy to viciously hateful to selflessly heroic to endlessly loving. It's the type of movie no one wanted to touch before getting made, and everyone loves after breaking boxoffice records; a heartwarmer, a tearjerker, a golden doorstop winner (Best Picture, Best Director, best yadda yadda yadda)…

I despise the movie.

Let me put it this way--there isn't a single authentic moment in the picture. The storyline (rags to riches, boy meets girl) isn't just a staple of Hollywood movies, but a staple of pop Indian films for as long as there's been a cinema; the style, all deep colors and bright music and restless, hurtling motion, the house style of every modern-day Indian musical, only tarted up with a little Hollywood production value. Danny Boyle borrows from the variously dramatic and bombastic manner of Indian films like Ram Gopal Varma's Mumbai crime flick Satya (Truth, 1998), two-brother melodramas like Yash Chopra's Deewaar (The Wall, 1975), and Ramesh Sippy's superultrapopular Sholay (1975), the last two starring the legendary Amitabh Bachchan (who appears in Boyle's movie through archival footage and a carefully photographed stand-in). Beyond them, of course is the seminal influence of Indian cinema's true greats: Guru Dutt (Pyaasa, (Thirst, 1957)), Raj Kapoor (Awaara (The Tramp, 1951)), Satiyajit Ray (Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956)).

The sense one gets here is of a British tourist--a dilettante, if you will--coming to a land of movies and moviemaking that's doing perfectly fine on its own (Indian cinema is one of the few in the world where the film production rate easily outpaces the United States--about a thousand pictures every year, double that of Hollywood--and boasts of a viewing audience numbering in the billions (to be exact: 3.1 billion, give or take a few hundred million, compared to Hollywood's 2.9 billion, as of 2006)). Said British tourist looks around, is delighted by the colorful misery around him, the colorful melodramas made by Indians dealing with said misery. He borrows this fantastic, highly coincidental plot twist; lifts that intensely melodramatic crying scene; pinches this oddly tilted camera shot; pilfers that vividly lit color palette; ties all together with a string of popular songs, pours the mix into a Black & Decker blender, and hits "puree." The resulting masala (Indian term for "a mixed paste of various spices") may be hot enough for most audiences, but for those who have tasted the real thing, it's like sipping week-old engine grease--thick and noxious, with the unmistakable flavor of the secondhand.

Perhaps the plotline is forgivable--Indian musicals have come up with much more preposterous premises (I remember in Manmohan Desai's Amar Akbar Anthony (1977, also starring Bachchan)) where three brothers are separated and raised up Hindi, Muslim, and Christian respectively, and all three reunite to give their dying mother a triple blood transfusion). That said, even Salman Rushdie found the source material, a novel by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, to be "a corny potboiler…a patently ridiculous conceit, the kind of fantasy writing that gives fantasy writing a bad name." Call this a fairy-tale picture then, but please don't call it as famed film critic Roger Ebert did "The real India, supercharged with a plot as reliable and eternal as the hills" (the movie gets about as close to the real India as Mike Myers does in The Love Guru, and the story isn't so much "reliable and eternal" as it is hoary and tired).

What I do find unforgivable is Boyle's generically attention-deficit filmmaking style. I thought it fresh and funny when I encountered it in Shallow Grave (1994), saw it at its most fulfilling in Trainspotting (1996)--or was I responding more to Irvine Welsh's drug-drenched sensibilities? Boyle's trick editing and handheld camerabatics grew wearying about the time of 28 Days Later (2002), where Boyle stole his best ideas from George Romero's Day of the Dead (1985)--the military base, its paranoid soldiers and chained pet zombie in particular--but not Romero's idea of the zombies being actually dead; in Boyle's picture they acted more like spastic convulsives with a bad case of rabies, felt less supernatural, less disturbing, and hence considerably less interesting.

Back on the subject of Slumdog and its disco-Pollyanna view of urban poverty: the poor, to paraphrase a famous philosopher, are always with us, and so are and will be stories and films about the poor. Perhaps the sharpest opinion on the subject comes from the Philippines' most brilliant filmmaker (and to my book most underrated satirist), Mike de Leon: in his short Aliwan Paradise (Pleasure Paradise) from the omnibus film Southern Winds (1993), he proposed an alternate-reality Philippines saved from its chronic poverty by a TV reality-show exploiting said poverty for its entertainment value (this, mind you, suggested years before there ever were reality shows). De Leon's "by his bootstraps" solution sounds remarkably similar in spirit to the idealistic garbage Boyle has been putting out in recent interviews; one wonders if Boyle himself is a de Leon invention, an instance of life startlingly and grotesquely imitating art.

First published in Businessworld, 4.11.09