The Vault #9 John Cassevetes Hunh? Edition: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Is it me, or are John Cassevetes movies boring? Just watched most of Chinese Bookie, the moody mob tale of low life club owner Ben Gazzara who must murder his way out of a gambling debt. In the hands of Allen Baron or Jean Pierre Melville, this might be interesting territory, but mostly I didn't get it.

Cassevetes shoots one hell of a picture, and gets good performances, but mostly the lack of music, plot and to a large extent, character, makes watching his compositions a chore of creative interpretation. Is the name of a restaurant ("The Source") meaningful, or purely coincidental? Is this a commentary on race? The main character's girlfriend is black, but a third act confrontation about the past is poorly recorded so who knows what Ben's relationship with his girl's mother really is. I know this guy is the most important influence on many modern independent filmmakers, but i didnt quite get this movie.

A Small Correction on Saw Movies

This is another great thing. See, it doesn't always have to be women forced to make impossible, and sometimes paradoxical decisions about which of their loved ones must die.

The Vault #8 Australian Boondock Saints Edition: Chopper

Given the tremendous reception of the works of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino, not to mention the auspicious debut of boy genius Troy Duffy, it's a wonder no major distributor tried to turn a profit on Chopper, the first feature from Australian director Andrew Domenik. Like Reservoir Dogs, Chopper is a microproduction with stylistic influences rooted in works of 70s Machismo like Mean Streets  and Point Blank, and like Boondock Saints, Chopper is about a recently reformed sociopath who decides to mete out justice on his own terms, while enjoying every gore drenched minute of it.

What today's audiences will be most shocked by is the performance of its then unknown star, Eric Bana. Bana plays Marc Read, a celebrity low-life who works as a police informant and a coke-fueled vigilante on the side. Bana was a standup comedian in Sydney when he was cast in this role, but his hamminess fits the part of cackling yet dangerous buffoon perfectly. None of the all too convenient music or overstylized monologues of Domenik's Northern hemisphere counterparts can be found however; Chopper is a trashy tell-all which realizes its trash, and doesn't try to convince the audience otherwise.

In doing that, Domenik actually opens the door to a compelling visual experience. Starting off in the undersaturated blue and gray prison days and moving into the loose cannon, tabloid sensation, hyper-chromatic phase of Read's life, the film's style brilliantly parallels the rise to infame of its hero. This is all based on a true story, so no gay cops or Mr. Blonde's to grab you by the throat and make you pay attention. It bares some comparison to P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights, an incredible but true story which, like so many others, fails to recuperate.

Tendencies: Synthesis

So what is ideal, and what many film/movies do, is find a happy medium between showing the audience something disturbing, but in a way that is pleasing. There is perhaps no better example of this than Roman Polanski's Chinatown, a movie about civic scandal punctuated by incest, but formulated as a mystery/thriller with charismatic leading man Jack Nicholson. Chinatown is about stealing water to increase real estate values. It isn't inherently interesting, but giving it the ole' prestige picture sheen makes it a classic.

The important thing to realize about these tendencies (see previous posts with this word), is that one applies to form, and the other to content. Flashy Hollywood style is fine, as long as it doesn't seep into the sweep of the story. The exception would be a blockbuster like North by Northwest or Jaws, where the story is obviously a flight of fancy from the beginning. The point is, don't ham up something serious, like the Holocaust or rape, by copping out. Don't let J-Lo kick that guy's ass at the end of Enough. It insults my intelligence. Ya dig?

Why Saw Movies Are Great

its pretty obvious, isn't it?

Tendencies: "Truth"

I've already talked about the ability for movies to remove us from our lives, entertain us, and make us giggle, recoil or get out blood aboiling. This opposite aspect will sound much more pretentious than that.

A movie can also expose, like journalism, or enlighten, like a novel. We don't read Joyce or Dickens to move close to the edge of our seat, we don't laugh at Walter Cronkite weeping over the death of John Kennedy. But those things can be made art. And those things are more important, perhaps, then when and how the next big Death Star substitute explodes. 

Maybe this is pretentious, or maybe the better filmmakers also happen to be the deeper thinkers in the profession. While Nic Cage and Michael Bay blow up robots, or hospitals, movies like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days and Let the Right One In try to get us closer to the truth. Note: the vampire movie isn't a work of social realism, but it also isn't overly sensational. Truth in this case is more referring to psychological realism than pure social realism (picture from Bicycle Thieves notwithstanding).

Now. These two tendencies can be reconciled. The audience can be presented with convincing characters and entertaining plot at the same time. More on that in the next post. 

IndyTicker: The Lookout

Nowadays, independent film follows formulae just like the rest of the movie industry. So imagine Fargo, Memento, Mysterious Skin and Midnight Cowboy meet in a dive bar just outside of Kansas City. The resulting offspring might very well be Scott Frank's The Lookout. A hotshot jock with everything going for him speeds down an empty road on a summer night, fireflies in the air. It's the last warm image we'll see.

Cut to four years later, where following a horrific accident and severe head trauma, Chris Pratt is about to be embroiled in the plot of a low rent thriller. Sure, he writes copious notes to himself, and sure, he lives with an all to kind and wise blind man played by Jeff Daniels, but the well worn tracks of this Sundance fodder have something fresh to offer. The Lookout isn't funny. It isn't a mystery, or really meant as a heist movie. It's not built around its seemingly high-budget, sexy young cast (Joseph Gordon Leavitt, Isla Fischer and Matthew Goode). 

Frank wrote Soderbergh's Out of Sight and Spielberg's Minority Report. He knows how to bring the flash. But much like Christopher McQuarrie's The Way of the Gun, The Lookout is a smart movie from a smart writer who could not sell his pet project to a bigger studio. The starts followed, however. Leavitt is masterful, more subtle than Guy Pearce's headcase and at the same time more earnest than Voight's starstruck yokel. Leavitt is a rising star, and this movie displays his merit as well as any. And I shouldn't post this without saying that, yes, Jeff Daniels is a great actor. Even in a throwaway part, he gives his all. 

The Lookout might only have a C+ plot and B- direction and visual style, but the actors and the screenplay make this film more than worthwhile. 

Antichrist: the Latest from Lars Von Trier

Looks like the latest installment of the U.S.A. trilogy of Dogme 95 auteur Lars von Trier will have to wait. The director's latest film, Antichrist, focuses on a grieving couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) who retreat to a secluded cabin, where Gainsbourg is confronted with disturbing visions. I've embedded the trailer in the link, but fair warning, even the sneak peak is not for the faint of heart. Looks like Lars is heading off in an atmospheric but decidedly mainstream direction. If this film didn't have his creative pedigree behind it, this would look like another over-stylized horror film like Godsend or The Ring. Von Trier hasn't gone anywhere near horror since his seedy, otherwordly films Europa and The Element of Crime in the 80s. Why he is returning to such well worn and strangely religious territory is a mystery. I am cautiously pessimistic.

The Vault #7: Anatomy of a Murder

Ah, the days of the studio picture. When men were men, women were women, and you always knew where your children were. The army was full of willing, upstanding males defending our nation from enemies foreign and domestic, and country lawyers were paragons of virtue for all to behold To Kill a Mockingbird style. 

Otto Preminger, career journeyman director of above par, but generally by the book genre fare like Laura (1944) and Bunny Lake is Missing (1959), took a flier in 1959 when he adapted John Voelker's novel of the same name for the big screen. Its about a U.S. soldier played by Ben Gazzara (known to younger generations for his lecherous roles in The Big Lebowski and Buffalo '66) who murders a bartender he claims raped his wife (Lee Remick). The main character is played by Jimmy Stewart, a local defense attorney hired by Remick to get her man out of the tight spot. 

Old Hollywood had an even older rule: no one could get away with murder without receiving some form of comeuppance, legal or otherwise. The fact that Remick's role in the whole scenario is kept murky at best all the way through makes Anatomy run a fine line between original sin sexism and explicit, though court-room based, descriptions of sexual acts. Doesn't sound like Peyton Place anymore. 

Now to some specifics. Shot in a small town by Sam Leavitt, who would move on to films like Cape Fear (1962) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), Anatomy of a Murder has a classic noir look, penetrating a sleepy small town with an incredibly racy plot. Not to mention its controversial, to say the least, resolution. The mood is set perfectly by an all over the place Duke Ellington score, which makes it seem like a New Orleans movie, though it isn't. The show is ultimately stolen by a young George C. Scott, who plays a bulldog of a district attorney intent on proving Remick consented to the dead man's advances. An emigre born in Austria, Preminger always stood in the shadow of fellow Eastern European Billy Wilder, even being openly mocked when cast as the commandant in Stalag 17 (1953). However, with this movie, Preminger steps out with a riveting screenplay: a tense courtroom drama which alternates effortlessly between meandering social satire and riveting suspense. 

Tendencies:

To start slightly from scratch.

Movies, as all other concepts, inventions, organisms and works of art do, possess two primary modes. If everything possesses Full Metal Jacket star Matthew Modine's unforgettable "duality of man", surely cinema is no different. This entry will seek to explore the first tendency which film has to its credit. 

Pictured above is Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark. This film is brilliant for its evocation of 1930s serials, which used to play in movie theaters, wild fantasies filled with cliffhangers, one-liners, pretty dames and bad baddies. Insert Nazis, sketchy religious mythology and few high tech action setpieces, you've got yourself a franchise. Indiana Jones has been successful throughout the years, rightly or wrongly, because it keeps things simple. Stupefyingly simple. No one crafts an actioner like Spielberg. 

Hitchcock was probably the best to realize this first tendency of cinema: films can be as riveting as a drug, and the more dissociative they are, the more engrossing they are. No businessman looks like Carey Grant, and they certainly don't just stumble on a woman of Eva Marie Saint's caliber on their way to South Dakota, but in good escapist fare, both of these things happen with disturbing frequency. To put it simply, Movies are real in the sense that they involve photographing live action, but they do not have to take place in our reality. 

It might seem obvious to lay this out. But let's take the other side of the coin, where little kids learn, in this day and age, about the evil of Nazis from Indiana Jones first, and history class second. People know that movies are make believe, but how many of them suddenly feared sharks at the beach or taking showers alone? The movie that is presented purely as entertainment in a way has more of a lasting effect on the psyche than one approached as a legitimate and textured work of art. 

We'll take a look at those tomorrow. 

What I Just Watched: Coppola Reborn?

It might sound strange to say that there are mixed opinions on Francis Ford Coppola. Odd for two reasons. From a classic point of view, Coppola has to be hailed as a great director if just for his seventies output. On the other hand, the overall opinion of the man might be appropriately low if you consider works like Peggy Sue Got Married and Jack. At least one critic, Brian Dauth, suggests that the commonly-held opinion of Coppola as wunderkind gone hack is wrong. In this piece on Senses of Cinema, Dauth argues that many of Coppola's post Apocalypse Now films are essential to understanding the man's vision as a whole.

This brings us to his most recent release, his first in over a decade, Youth Without Youth. Based on a short story by University of Chicago grand poobah Mircea Eliade and set in Romania in 1938, the film is about a Romanian linguistics professor who, realizing his life's work will never be complete, decides to kill himself. However, a bolt of lightning stops the septaugenarian in his tracks. When he heals from his trauma, he is a forty year old man with a heightened intellectual sense; he sets out anew on his life's work, which involves discovering the original human language. Also, he's searching for a reincarnation of a lost love.

Sound like a lot? I'll be the first to say the film has flaws, and the first two movies that come to mind for comparison are The Fountain and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Similar in the sense that they tell the story of a man defying time in some way while attempting the impossible. Dissimilar in their aesthetics; Coppola spent very little time on digital effects, instead using some downright silent movie techniques to evoke the terror and wonder of the world he has created. Tim Roth is the only name actor, and he delivers marvelously; the rest are actual Romanians whom Coppola had dubbed in post-production by cutmaster Walter Murch.

Youth Without Youth is a titanic undertaking of storytelling; it requires much more of Coppola than, say, Bram Stoker's Dracula. It is probably most notable for its connotation of old movies; a studio era credit sequence and Picture of Dorian Gray climax complete the feel of a lost classic. Like the professor in the film, here we have an old man taking years to complete his masterpiece. Though it was reviled by critics, the bottom line on Youth Without Youth is that it is a serious film made by a great director. It should be seen. 

Vault #6: The Pornographers

I've said in other forums that Japanese New Wave director Shohei Imamura reminds me a lot of Billy Wilder. Both make biting social commentaries, both love incorrigible outcast male leads, and both make wickedly funny movies.

Nowhere is this similarity more evident than in Imamura's The Pornographers. A sadistic tale of a pornographer in an affair with his landlady but secretly coveting her daughter, this film bears a lot of comparison to Wilder's The Apartment (1960). Both are tales of a lonely man with little life of his own, but whose connections to both higher and lower rungs of society reveal man's general depravity. 

Subu is not only a photographer of naked women - he is also a borderline pimp, and outright drug dealer and, perhaps, a murderer. His customers are no better. Where Jack Lemmon lends out his apartment to his many bosses, Subu provides corporate Japan with uppers and dirty movies. Corporate is the key word. Where many directors had, by the sixties, embraced Japan's massive post-war growth, as Ozu did, or moved into genre cinema hardly related to reality, like Okamoto and Suzuki, Imamura remains committed to a depiction of the real. As darkly comic as The Pornographers is, it always reminds us that the eccentric religious beliefs, fetishistic skin plots and social stigma of "election fraud" were all very real, even if exaggerated, elements of Japanese life in the sixties. Imamura finds himself walking in the footsteps of Mizoguchi's Street of Shame. 

It's hard to believe I've written this much and have not said one word about the visual concept of the film. Shot in perfect scope and glistening black and white, The Pornographers steps well beyond the conservative visuals of Billy Wilder. A great deal is told from the watery perspective of a carp. Form and content combine to make a sordid tale a transcendent work.