The Vault #34: Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker

You start off loving movies. You probably see Apocalypse Now or Goodfellas or Star Wars (American examples) and become infatuated with the promise of the silver screen, all the possibilities and configurations of plot, character and style. You gobble up everything you can see. Eventually, you realize there are some ground rules, and some revered masters that define the boundaries of greatness within the art. You start off discovering Hitchcock, Kubrick, Huston, Ford, and more obvious foreign names like Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa and Godard.

You will like a lot of what you see. You will branch out into people like Resnais, Antonioni, Mizoguchi and Murnau. And you will whittle off your list of must see films and must know directors. There will always be a few film that you shy away from, have less motivation to delve into, directors whose subjects hold intrinsically less value in your personal hierarchy.

For me, that director was Andrei Tarkovsky. I first became aware of him through Soderbergh's remake of Solaris, which seemed weird enough that whatever continental pillar stood behind it must be effectively impenetrable. Guided by Paul Schrader's canon list, I eventually saw Andrei Rublev, a legitimately beautiful film about a medieval painter that lasted for nearly three and a half hours. It's a common critique of older foreign films (Bergman's in particular) that they seem cold, disconnected and inhumane. I frankly think its hard to get one's head around Soviet culture, let alone through a period piece.

If this all seems like an unnecessary and overlong introduction to a blog post, its only fitting for the film being discussed, Stalker (1979), Tarkovsky's low budget yet totally immersive sci-fi journey. It's pure allegory from frame one as a Writer, a Scientist and a Stalker head into "The Zone" a place where all mens' wishes come true. Only to kill them. Only the Stalker knows his way through the treacherous terrain, and the Writer and Scientist are here meant to symbolize all men.

Concept sound pregnant enough? Using Godard's techniques from Alpahville, Tarkovsky creates an alien landscape without any effects or out of this world sets. Beginning in soul-sucking sepia, the three men escape from police, who watch the entrance to the Zone (a rusty and dead industrial enclave) at all times, and board a slow-movine rail cart. After about ten minutes of chugging and churning noise (one aspect of Stalker that may be divisive among audiences are repetitive noises and shots that sometime continue to the point of madness), the men arrive in brilliant color at the end of an abandoned railway, in a vibrant landscape that nevertheless feels devoid of life. They must follow the instincts of the Stalker, who somehow feels at home surrounded by danger, and who can communicate with The Zone in order to keep the three alive.

As maddening and top-heavy as the setup is, the execution of it is perfect. Tarkovsky's cold manor comes off as unspeakably creepy; Stalker occasionally plays with the thrills and chills of The Shining. And despite the "soldiers can only thrive in war" cliche of the Stalker, it turns out he's just as frightened as the Writer and Scientist, whose motives for venturing into the Zone are slowly made clear.

Stalker eventually is about something less interesting than we might hope, but it is so consistently hypnotic that the ending is irrelevant. It's the kind of movie that you don't forget, because it's a trance that fades without disappearing. Sort of why you started watching movies in the first place.

Blog Fusion: Robert Siegel's Big Fan

If you did not know, I have another blog. That blog deals with the NFL, this blog deals with film. So now a sports movie exists that offers a perfect opportunity for a crossover post; the movie is Big Fan, Robert Siegel's follow-up to The Wrestler, about a sad-sack Giants fan who becomes unintentionally involved in the fate of his team.

If you're a football fan, Siegel hits every note perfectly as we see fat losers eat chips, drink soda and pin their hopes and dreams on 11 men in the huddle. When it isn't game day, leading man Patton Oswalt slogs to his job in  parking garage, and meticulously plans his next call in to talk radio, where a rivalry brews between his character, "Paul from Staten Island" and a crude Eagles fan  named "Philadelphia Phil". The accuracy of these back and forth radio calls could be enough for a movie about petty regional hatred, but Siegel has to give us something out of the ordinary.

One night, Paul and his buddy "Goon" (this will be the name of all Kevin Corrigan roles going forward) run into Paul's favorite player, Quantrell Bishop, in a gas station and trail him all the way to midtown Manhattan, where a night club incident occurs. Long and short of it is, Paul is forced to decide whether he wants justice or for the Giants to win and beat the hated Iggles.

Whenever a movie delves into a world as uncinematic and everyday as that of the sports fan, perfect mirroring of reality is essential. And though I don't suspect Siegel has ever been to a Giants Stadium tailgate, he gets the feel perfectly. There are many sequences in Big Fan that slip into montage, as when one thinks about a big game, or watches a big play. And Bishop himself, name and all, perfectly combines any number of news items regarding Plaxico Burress, Ray Lewis and Lendale White. There is a lot of legit football knowledge peppered into the background of Big Fan, which makes it feel legitimate as a study of fan psychology.

As for that part of it, forget those lovable losers in Major League. Oswalt is playing the lowest of the low, the fan who is so completely obsessed with his team he doesn't even really know a lot about football, just that the Giants are the best at it. One of the best things about this movie is how Oswalt and Corrigan pack visceral emotion into cliches like "you can't blame this one on the defense" and "he looked rusty". Oswalt has the same kind of connection to reality as Travis Bickel, but if you're thinking that as you watch, Siegel is one step ahead of you.

While Big Fan is a lot like any Sundance picture (two acts, 1 1/2 performances, minimal resolution, a lot of fill-in music), it's a must see for any sports fan. It also comes out in time for Plaxico's incarceration and Vick's redemption. But as interesting as the mindset of the athlete might be, that's not for this movie. This is about the fans. It's a lot like Siegel's previous script, The Wrestler, but from the sidelines, where as much as we'd like to have an effect on the outcome, we just can't.

The Vault #33 Four Hours To Kill Edition: Once Upon a Time in America

Late works by great directors are often indulgent, over the top epics with more care and detail given than any previous effort. Sensing this film may be their last, the auteur creates something more beautiful, lyric and complex than he has before. Of course, this means the films end up overthought, necessarily pretentious and certainly in excess of comfortable movie length. Though we might not consider Sergie Leone to be in the upper echelon of filmmakers, his last, Once Upon a Time in America, confirms the suspicion.

Viewers are aware of Leone from his spaghetti Westerns, Clint Eastwood vehicles with intense zooms and closeups, climactic gunfight and the claning guitars and screeching trumpets of the soundtracks composed by Ennie Morricone. Leone is known for being a director of wide open spaces, simply psychology and fast-paced linear plots. Once Upon a Time eschews all of these conventions. Rather than a few action packed days, it covers nearly 60 years. Instead of a straightforward structure, it employs jumps between three time periods almost at random and without warning.

Normally, flashbacks are anchored at specific point in time. A film can flashback from that point, and then when it arrives at the "present" move forward. Or it can never reach the "present" and end in the past. In the opening of Once Upon a Time, we see 30s gangster Noodles (Robert Deniro  (okay, maybe this movie is not wholly original)) enter an opium den and start puffing. The film will go forward to Deniro as an old man and backwards to his childhood, all to explain something he's guilty about, but it never anchors its flashbacks except to this arbitrary point in the center of the story. Are the images of old Deniro real? Dreams? His actual future? When we first see him meeting up with old friends and discussing whatever happened that night, it certainly seems like we should be flashing back from the 60s. However, the movie constantly returns to its chronological center as though Deniro is reliving events from the fulcrum of his life, rather than the end.

Confusing? Perhaps not as confusing as making a four hour movie starring Robert Deniro in which he appears for about 5 of the first 100 minutes. Films that span the entire length of complex relationships, like the ones Deniro has with his jazz-age love interest Elizabeth McGovern (the First Lady from Independence Day! And the mom from Donnie Darko! Also she's played as a child by Jennifer Connelly!), or with his fair-weather partner in crime Max (James Woods), often begin showing a few scenes where the characters as children. Leone spends almost an entire film's worth of screen time in 1915 before revealing his stars. The effect is phenomenal - we grow attached to the teenage actors rather than just viewing them as stand ins for the actors "really" playing Noodles and Max. In general, Leone seems uninterested with stars in this film. Treat Williams, Danny Aiello and Joe Pesci all pass in and out. Even Morricone is on hand, but unobtrusive.

So what's the import of all that time jumping, child actor mugging and Deniro pipe puffing? Noodles is completely alone, and in the scenes where he is and old man, trapped in a world he can barely understand. Has he been in jail all this time? Out of the country? What does a ball at a senator's mansion have to do with any of this? And what is he guilty of/about?

Once Upon A Time in America was Leone's final film. It is the only one that has the quality of a prestige picture, of a film campaigning for oscars, with great performances and believable drama. Like any four hour film, it's a mess, but the vast majority of it is beautiful, evocative and tragic. It's a side of Leone no one would have guessed was there, but which must have been all along.

Repertory: John Huston's Fat City

There's a definite shortage of decent sports movies, and what few exist are invariably concerned with boxing. It's nice to see another work of kitchen-sink realism about men who chose to brutalize each other for measly pay.

John Huston fell off the map when young American auteurs started coming out in the mid sixties. He was making fare like Fat City, a study of two Northern California bums who put on the gloves. It's a depression-era tale told in modern times, a strange cross between Raging Bull and The Grapes of Wrath.

Seem unlikely? What's most amazing is the performance from Stacy Keach, face already broken for the role, as the old brawler forced into uncomfortable domesticity with a worn-out femme fatale played by Susan Tyrell. Keach spends his time in tired, dead locations like the one pictured, waiting for his next buck or bad break. One day he wanders down for som impromptu mentoring of a young up and comer played by Jeff Bridges. Fat City barely brings the two leads together after this first encounter; sure, Bridges and Keach share a few moments, but one or the other just happens to be there; they have no real relationship. They are too mired in their own personal muck. While Keach wears out his welcome with his moll, Bridges is rushing into a puppy love marriage.

Huston does an incredible job of creating a feeling of realism and improvisation throughout, though I suspect this is more of an effect than a reality. Plenty of scenes fade away more than cut out, culminating in the final shot, where Bridges and Keach "talk awhile" in total silence. It's a sad, quiet film that closes on a low note. True.

The Vault #32: Short Cuts

Literature, especially when it is referred to as such, is incredibly difficult to adapt well to film. Short fiction, the forte of many great authors past and present, poses an even greater challenge. John Huston did a pretty good job with The Dead, but he had the sense to avoid doing the whole of Dubliners. Many have compared individual Hitchcock films to the short story form, but those were never strict adaptations of any scenarist but the master himself. Short stories have a quick, impressionistic effect on the reader; stay with them too long and they wear thin, become didactic, or turn into novels. This leaves filmmakers without a method of getting at the genius of writers like Borges, Chekhov and Hemingway who worked a great deal in short spurts.

Robert Altman conceived of a method, to be oft emulated but never quite equaled, of mixing and matching brief stories. Short Cuts, which brings to the screen over a dozen stories by hard boiled relationship hater Raymond Carver, is a neat trick in filmmaking. He simply cuts each story into half a dozen parts, introduces a few common characters, and takes his time with his A-list cast, who each probably spent about a week on set. The result is a magnificent theater piece, perfectly suited for Altman's trademark meandering style. Since we know the whole is not cohesive enough to come to a single climax, we don't expect one. This leaves us to enjoy and dissect each little moment, which puts all the strain on the actor and none on the director.

Short Cuts is an interesting, if completely opposed, companion piece to Altman's previous film The Player, an entirely constructed satirical thriller about the movie business. Both are LA movies, both have huge casts of big names. Even the visual styles, from invasive zooms to mysterious jazz soundtracks, are similar. Yet the effect could hardly be different. The Player reminds us again and again we are watching a movie, that a producer and writer conspired to make the product in front of us enjoyable. Yet Short Cuts sometimes hits huge narrative road bumps, alternates between comedy and drama unevenly, and in general does not provide as much background as a conventional film would about each character or situation. It's slapdash, unrehearsed and raw.

While The Player is my favorite Altman film, Short Cuts may be his best rendering of character and emotion. He generally doesn't have the patience to setup and payoff two-hour stories without his usual riffing, 1/2 dimensional supporting characters and heavy doses of Elliott Gould. But in Short Cuts, all that is taken away by the film's concept. We really get deeply moving short stories, and film is a compilation. It recreates in an original and cinematic way the experience of reading Carver, not unlike the way Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, with its loose relationship to Burroughs' novel, recreated that author's style. Altman does his own thing, but within confines that allow him to succeed.

The All Decade Top Ten

10. The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) D: Joel Coen
The Coen Brothers have stepped into many worlds and many genres, all with the same tongue in cheek tone, intent on mocking the tropes of earlier films, times or locations. However, one genre looms over much of their work as a serious structure: that of noir, which informs everything from the black comedy Fargo to the gangster film Miller's Crossing to the thriller No Country for Old Men. They have made one film which takes noir head on, and it not only one of their finest, it is also the most overlooked. The Man Who Wasn't There is one of the most beautiful films of the decade; Roger Deakins, the best cinematographer working, hands down (we'll run into him again on this countdown) shoots a hyper-real black and white, every pore and bead of sweat on the characters' faces crystal clear, as though in a dream. Just by the choice of film stock, The Man Who Wasn't There takes on the quality of a dream, and this artiness, or perception of artiness, immediately distances the viewer from what is actually a very funny and inventive take on the form.

9. Let the Right One In (2008) D: Tomas Alfredson
Children have a unique perspective on things - this has been explored in many ways, from The 400 Blows to Eve's Bayou. However, when it comes to children in horror movies, they're usually just there to creep us out. Not so in Right One, which follows two children, one a terrifying vampire running amok in a Norwegian housing project, the other a normal boy getting picked on by bullies at school. Alfredson blends two normally B-movie plots: 1) the emo kid who doesn't fit in having a terrible time with puberty and 2) The cheesy "don't go out at night" vampire film; the result is a work only defined by what it is not.  Let the Right One In somehow leans more towards preteen romance than gothic horror story, and the result is strangely moving.

8. The Departed (2006) D: Martin Scorsese
Love it or hate it, Martin Scorsese regressed for this irresistible cop movie about moles in the "lahr enfahrcement" community. A cavalcade of stars, an LP's worth of the Rolling stones, plenty of cursing and gunfire brought Marty back into the fold when he shifted his focus to a mob a few hundred miles North. Probably the best successful movie of the decade in America, its a wonder to watch Scorsese balance the egoes and personas of so many name actors into a rollicking, edge of your seat, 2.5 hour whole. Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg have never been funnier, and Matt Damon has never been better period. It might be giving us just what we crave, but who better to do it than a master craftsman.

7. The Hurt Locker (2009) D: Kathryn Bigelow
The Vietnam War produced many classic American films; the Iraq war, which has been compared to the previous conflict, has not. That is, until The Hurt Locker, which takes head on Francois Truffaut's claim about going to war being thrilling. A complex psychological nail-biter, Locker is an immersive experience, from its plotless first half to its unknown cast, that really puts the viewer in the center of Baghdad without the frills of normal filmmaking. Like another entry on this top ten (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days), The Hurt Locker takes us to the brink of actually being there, and the experience is at once terrifying and exhilirating. Truffaut may have been right, but that means most of us are insane.

6. Cache (2005) D: Michael Haneke
A couple is receiving unedited videotapes of the exterior of their home. No one is in the tapes, and nothing out of the ordinary happens on the tapes. However, seeing one's home on film turns out to be very unsettling to TV personality Daniel Auteil, who suffers a breakdown and delves into his (and France's) dirty past in this film that ingeniously combines a commentary on cinema and voyeurism with a political statement. A really inventive story combined with masterful production design make for Haneke's most balanced film of the decade. I'm not really a fan of the Austrian auteur, who famously made Funny Games as a lesson to Cannes Film Festival audiences, but this film is too disturbing to forget (see Irreversible from the previous post).

5. The New World (2005) D: Terence Malick
Okay, I'm a huge Malick fan, so maybe this is overrating a little: this is the best American history film ever made. Malick's biggest pet theme is escaping into the natural unknown, so the discovery of America is a logical project for him to take on. While many people can lay claim to discovering parts of America, only one explorer story comes complete with a romance: John Smith. Bringing his trademark collage style to a period piece envisioned by the studio as a Colin Farrell vehicle was not easy, and it resulted in at least three existing versions of the film. Even the shortest of these is brilliant, shot masterfully in natural light by Emmanuel Lubezki (who's latest is a collaboration with David Fincher). You forget you're even watching Farrell (or his opposite number, friend of the list Christian Bale), as they improvise their way through a dream-like retelling of the first conquest of America, or the princesses therein. Bonus points for being the most realistic recreation of Native American culture ever put to film.

4. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days 
(2007) D: Cristian Mungiu
Sometimes just documenting an everyday situation can reveal a wealth of cinematic material. We saw this in The Hurt Locker, but it turns out there's something scarier than defusing an improvised explosive device; getting an abortion in the Eastern Bloc. That's all this movie is about: one friend helping another to arrange a simple medical procedure. There are about 3 and a half relevant characters, and no subplot. Mungiu delivers a neorealistic bomb-shell practically in real time, and when one considers that the threat of life in a prison camp lies at every turn, 4 Months is as white-knuckle as any action movie, especially as it inches to the climax. Whereas an American movie about abortion would be tear-jerking and possibly uplifting at the end (or perhaps never made), Mungiu's work reminds us again and again that no matter how we try to connect with these women, we have never and will never undergo the horror of their experience.

3. Zodiac (2007) D: David Fincher
This is where things get tough. The top 3 are separated by hairs, so ignore the order from here on out. When I first (and second) saw Zodiac, I'm not sure I got it. David Fincher, master of tight, plotted thrillers, makes a three hour true-crime movie with no resolution? This film is a challenge to the viewer, but eventually you will see that Zodiac isn't biography of the three men obsessed with finding the California serial killer, but rather autobiography of a man who spent all his energies to get to the point where he could make a film about a story that captivated him as a boy. Fincher lived through the Zodiac story, an experience he now brings to us. A film about obsession should be obsessively made, and Zodiac lives up, from the dozens of locations to the sprawling cast of C-list actors, made up to look perfectly groovy (those were the times), the classic cars, the perfectly choreographed murder scenes, and the police report detail of each new development. Bazin said that films should have the quality of novels; Zodiac is bookish, but its more a dissertation than a work of fiction.

2. Synechdoche, New York (2008) D: Charlie Kaufman
I came so very close to putting this number 1 that I wrote the below entry first. Then I reconsidered. Charlie Kaufman's magnum opus is cluttered with quirky detail, one-off misdirection and mind-bending gags, so perhaps its just the sum of all of these that makes it seem like a worthy heir to the throne of 8 1/2. Caton Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is given a grant to create a massive theater piece; ultimately, he gets sucked in, as the word "massive" is redefined several times over. And encyclopedia of neuroses, insecurities and various artistic & sexual hangups, Synechdoche is perhaps a little too much information, but its the first of Kaufman's films to follow through in the third act. Where his other ideas remain simply "cute", this film is transcendent, asking legitimate existential questions without seeming pretentious or canned. There is a lot to unpack, but there may be more quantity than quality.

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) D: Andrew Domenik
Now, this one I was into from the first time I saw the first frame. Brad Pitt produced and starred in this revisionist take on the most famous man in America (circa 1882), and his murder at the hands of an admirer. Roger Deakins was again on hand to capture some eye-searing imagery (see above), as was Nick Cave to provide the score. The notables don't stop there, as a bevy of accomplished character actors (Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepherd, Jeremy Renner, Paul Schneider) and a lot of Terence Malick's regular team (production designer Jack Fiske worth mentioning) were on hand to help young gun Andrew Domenik (this was only his second feature). The result was a staggering, thoughtful epic which cost a bundle a made a fraction of that. It's beautiful, its lyrical, its literary, it should have been Brad Pitt's Oscar, and that still doesn't convey how perfect this movie is. It's a Western, its a commentary on fame, it's a character study, it deals with the nature of Myth. And thats the first twenty minutes. I don't expect Domenik or Pitt will ever be this good again. That would be nearly impossible.

All Decade Wrap: Honorable Mentions

As a continuation of the All-Decade series, I thought we might actually get to my top selections from the past ten years. However, this was a bountiful decade, and just picking ten would leave a great many worthwhile titles out in the cold. So here are a few films that were great, if not the best of the best. I've left out obvious entrants like The Dark Knight and No Country for Old Men, as well as films I've covered before like Gerry, Miami Vice, Full Frontal and Dogville, but all of those would qualify for this list of just-missed top ten films.

Irreversible (Noe)
Vincent Cassel and Monica Belluci undergo a stressful experience one Paris night, told backward and through nine staggering tracking shots. It might be chauvinistic, narrow-minded and uncompromisingly brutal, but this film takes a concept to its breaking point and returns with a series of images thats less a story than the cinematic equivalent of being punched in the face. Irreversible earns a mention because it is thought-provoking, audacious, and demands a lot of its audience. You certainly won't finish it without a strong opinion.

Sideways (Payne)
At first, it seemed like a cute comedy about aging yuppies who get sloshed for one more pathetic shot at a one night stand. Then it was a tear-jerking drama about a ugly and untalented English teacher we all had in 8th grade and his miserable attempts at friendship and love. Alexander Payne's 2004 oscar nominee is stranger, better acted and more touching than all its Little Miss Sunshine look-alikes. This film gets funnier and more tragic with each viewing, which doesn't make any sense. "You might get books, and film, and wine, Miles, but there's one thing you don't understand. You don't understand my plight."

Spider (Cronenberg)
A mumbling man in three trenchcoats and a terrible haircut gets off a train in the South End of London. Though David Cronenberg went on to garner critical acclaim for his 2005 film A History of Violence, Spider is Cronenberg at his best, exploring the damaged corridors of one man's mind. Ralph Fiennes hardly says 50 intelligible words as he walks about an abandoned industrial neighborhood, bouncing between his muddle present and his troubled past. A production design that brilliantly mirrors its characters troubled psyche, along with Fiennes tour de force performance, make this film one of the most compelling and frightening depictions of insanity ever made.

All the Real Girls (Green)
After his epic Malick subversion George Washington, David Gordon Green turned to his own life for inspiration, exploring love and loss among twenty-somethings in a rural North Carolina town. The first memorable film roles of Paul Schneider and Danny McBride (now on their way to being household names), All the Real Girls might be lost among the myriad Garden State ripoffs. However, a great script that relies heavily on Fellini's La Strada and a perfect anti-resolution, as well as the personal and improvised sense of humor throughout the film, make it authentic and enjoyable more than your average indie-romance. (Zooey Deschanel is present, but fear not).

The Prestige (Nolan)
In between the release of his two Batman films, Christopher Nolan made a labyrinthine follow up to his breakout film Memento. The story of two magicians who approach the art from very different perspectives, The Prestige was lost in the confusion between it and the vastly inferior Edward Norton vehicle The Illusionist. Nolan told a complicated story with many twists and special effects with incredible efficiency, and even conjured a pair of great performances out of Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. That he turns the whole affair into a meditation on storytelling and entertainment while in the middle of a Hollywood spectacle is a magic act of its own. Any decade's end list should include a box office flop with a brain.

I'm Not There (Haynes) 
Like Bob Dylan or not, you have at least be grateful for not having to sit through a three-hour Ghandi-style story of his life. With a dozen films' worth of stylistic flourishes (metaphorical characters, breaking the fourth wall, musical sequences, dreams, stock footage) Todd Haynes tells the story of Robert Zimmerman, the traveling folk singer from the Iron Range of Minnesota. Through six different actors and just as many genres, Haynes combines several short films that approach Dylan from one angle or another into one relatively smooth narrative. The effect is great, as the biopic is never slow, overly dramatic or even serious at all. It does not attempt to tell us why Dylan did what he did; it in fact posits Dylan was a different person from minute to minute, and assigning causality in his life or any other would be a grave mistake.

Gomorra (Garrone)
Some people might begrudge my exclusion of Fernando Mereilles' City of God (2002) from this list, but the fact is that Brazilian Goodfellas ripoff gets bested in every way by the original mob culture - the Italians (no offense). Gritty, sprawling and tragic, but without any cute narration or pop music, Gomorra is a tapestry of urban poverty and crime on par with HBO's The Wire, only without catchphrases and stock characters. It's easy to get lost in the comings and goings of the plot, but every one of the five stories within it rings true. It's not a bildungsroman or a family drama. It's the mafia for what it is - a business.

The Wrestler (Aronofsky)
When he released Pi, Darren Aronofsky seemed like the next big thing in American independent cinema. Then he spun his quick-cutting wheels so fast they fell off in Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, got lost in his own editing room, and failed to hit the right emotional note. His films were overflowing and overdone. His fourth film was a masterful denial of aesthetic instincts. We follow Randy the Ram, a once glorified glutton for punishment, as he lives out his last days in a New Jersey trailer park, popping pills and courting strippers. No one would have expected the understated or neorealistic from Aronofsky, which is what makes the film so effective. The intensity and raw emotion of the previous projects are there, but their presentation is elegant, quiet and all the more devastating.

The Dreamers (Bertolucci)
This one's for the cinephiles in the audience that are still reading this epic post. It might not be the best movie, but Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris Thirty Years Later is certainly a interesting idea masterfully realized. An American moviegoer befriends a French brother and sister, and quickly slips into a fantasy world centered around movies and sex, where every thought leans towards one or the other. It's not Brando and Schneider - in the postmodern take there are three lovers instead of two. It's the same "let's go into this apartment and break from reality" idea, but from the perspective of an old man with regrets rather than a young one with fantasies. Sort of lost in the shuffle over the years, but an interesting late work from one of the cinema's most important directors.

The Vault #31: Red Beard

So I have not done one from The Vault in a while, and even though I've covered a Kurosawa title in this space before, I can't resist looking at a lost classic. The Onion A.V. Club has a recurring entry entitled Gateways to Geekery. Were they to feature AK in this item, Red Beard would probably appear in the "where not to start" section. It's long, lacks a strong central narrative, and only has one scene of action (teased above). It isn't iconic like Seven Samurai or Rashomon, it is not one of those late life feasts of imagery and color like Kagemusha or Ran; it isn't a present day thriller in the mold of High and Low or Stray Dog.

Red Beard is a meandering, humanist character study, close in tone to lesser known Kurosawa efforts like The Lower Depths and Dodesukaden. These films focus on downtrodden urban communities, far from epic war and strife. Like Depths, Red Beard is set in the mid nineteenth century, just before the shogunate fell, but when katana-toting behemoths had been long gone for a while.

It's curious to see Toshiro Mifune, whom Kurosawa sculpted with his own hands, sulking around this setting as a bitter old physician (with a gigantic, out of place beard, which we're to take on faith from the black and white cinematography is red in hue), lording over a lowly free clinic for peasants who come there for a few square meals before they succumb to their various illnesses. He is hated by his staff and feared by his patients. Enter onto the scene Yuzo Kayama, a recent medical school grad just off his last feeding from his father's silver spoon, sent out to the provinces to get his hands dirty.

Like any movie about a bitter old person and an idealistic young person (The Devil Wears Prada, Star Wars, Finding Forrester) Red Beard presents an offensive and unpleasant picture of the mentor at first, and then slowly softens him, and shows how his ideals and those of his protege can be one and the same. Through shows like E.R. and General Hospital, American audiences have been indoctrinated in the "saintliness of doctors" theme. It's a lot more tragic to watch it unfold in the time before real medicine. Think of Brad Dourif on Deadwood; all tragedy, no relief. It's no coincidence that I am bringing up television shows, Kayama learns through several disjointed sequences: a dying soldier reveals the story of his first love; a comely mental patient escapes from her cell; Red Beard himself attacks a group of brothel guards to save the life of an infected prostitute.

Red Beard was the last film in the director's incomparably prolific period from 1947-1965. During it, he made well over a dozen films, all of which starred Mifune with the exception of Ikiru (1952). Many critics cite Ikiru as the overlooked gem of AK's career; I would counter with Red Beard. It has the same level of technical skill, visual flair and commensurate emotion, but it has none of the convention or tear-jerking.

Why was it the last film? The Japanese New Wave was already in full swing by 1965: Oshima, Suzuki, Imamura, Teshigahara and Okamoto were tearing down what Kurosawa, Ozu, Kobayashi and Mizoguchi had so carefully constructed. Perhaps this explains the film's freer form; an old man trying to keep up with the young pups. But the central thrust remains; an old man has a lot of wisdom to impart.

Please read this article by Scott Murray

Decade Wrap: The Changing Face of Prestige

Prestige pictures used to be The Deer Hunter, Schindler's List and Ben-Hur. Epic movies with a historical slant, reflecting upon human history and trying to glean a simple moral message. America sucks, humans are worth saving, man used to be a cruel and unenlightened beast. These films were always spectacles, but technology kept the spectacle somewhat in check: we couldn't depict massive fights in space with inconceivable enemies. We had to look at real wars. Imagination was constrained, but moved a bit more freely in a smaller area. Studios funneled a huge amount of money into blowing up antique trains and building full-scale versions of Auschwitz. Until very recently, the Gone with the Win model of big-budget film was still in place: a big, sappy love story, a few big expensive setpieces distributed sparsely throughout, and a great deal of important-sounding talk.

The film most responsible for transforming this convention was James Cameron's Titanic, the most expensive film ever made. In order to examine the changing face of prestige in the 21st century, we have to delve into the ways Titanic built upon and subverted the epic genre. It had the love story, and it had the history, but the second half of Titanic broke ground in a way that studios could never expect to go back. The action was non-stop, computer generated and unprecedentedly expensive. Gone were the days where audiences would sit for three hours without a pile of violence and danger. Everyone remembers Saving Private Ryan for its opening, not necessarily the way it ends.

So where did the money go? Studios are spending more and more and more on fantasy. Even "historical" epics are more in the vein of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button than The Age of Innocence; the more razzle-dazzle, the more success. It is no wonder then that our own history is no longer interesting; younger audiences are either embarassed or bored by it. This is a new age. No one wants to hear about the glory of the civil rights movement or ancient kings. That is, unless they are fake kings with an unimpeachable mythology:

Lord of the Rings was the biggest thing to happen this decade outside of Harry Potter. British wizardry undisputedly draws a crowd. What does this mean? It means film has gone from the age of television to the age of the internet, that now senseless spectacle, unbounded magic and effects have to be unleashed. The films of this generation cannot concern themselves with "the real world"; they need Spiderman, Batman and the Watchmen to carry them through.

Consequentially, the great films are harder and harder to find, and the films that win best picture less and less profitable. Top tens coming.

Hollywood Diversions: Intro to Decade Wrap

I can start by saying this: the 00s are the first decade I can fully appreciate from a year by year release basis, without relying upon top ten lists, Academy Award nominations or general critical approavl to guide me in my movie consumption. that said, it's hard to think of a decade where truly mainstream cinema has produced less of value. Sure, since the sixties people who fancy themselves "artists" have been avoiding Southern California more and more, instead opting for independent productions, limited screenings and the respect of their peers. Despite that general trend, however, in the 70s, 80s and 90s, big time studio execs had no time finding brilliant screenwriters and directors to make "prestige" pictures to roll out at award season. Many of these, from The Godfather, Days of Heaven and Chinatown to Amadeus, Goodfellas, Do the Right Thing and Unforgiven were classics in their own right, popular success notwithstanding.

Now, I do not mean to say that Hollywood is making worse movies than ever or that they have turned their sights away from lasting cinema. Plenty of money is still funneled into great filmmaking at the center of corporate cinema. Smart, edgy films like The Prestige, Zodiac and Rescue Dawn are still getting made, no expenses spared; the difference between the old days and now is that few people are going to see these movies. The Bridge on the River Kwai was the most profitable film of 1957; Spiderman 3 it wasn't.

When I look back at this decade in American film I think about Zodiac, but also The New World, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Synechdoche, New York, Sideways, The Dreamers and Spider. Despite many of these films having big stars and even bigger name directors, none of these, except Sideways, enjoyed even moderate commercial success. There are a gaggle of international titles (Cache, Irreversible, Let the Right One In, In the Mood for Love) that were great and largely ignored, but let's keep this focused on what has changed about American audiences over the past years.

Perhaps the best way of judging how the prestige picture has evolved is by examining the work of one director who has maintained, even increased his popularity from the 80s to the present: Martin Scorsese. Here is the trailer for GoodFellas, which failed to bring home any major awards outside of Joe Pesci's supporting actor trophy (seen being traded for ponies at a racetrack near you):

GoodFellas is a scattered memoir, strung together by the most novelistic of conceits: the voice-over. The older a film you watch, the more likely it has a voiceover, when audiences were used to reading stories with either first or third person narrators. Citizen Kane is considered as great as it is mostly for its groundbreaking multiple narrators. GoodFellas is a film with action and suspens within it (take for example the scene where DeNiro sends Bracco "around the corner"), but it has an unmistakeable literary pedigree, one which eschews the cheap thrill for a nostalgic, remorseful story of one man's rise and fall in organized crime.

Compare this with the kinetic spot for The Departed, 2006 Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay winner, adapted from a Hong Kong action flick:

The contrast is obvious: The Departed is an action movie at heart, a movie for guys who like movies that happens to have an A+ list cast and the director of Taxi Driver. The characters are more stereotypical, the propulsive plot more linear, the conclusions drawn in the third act more definite. The Departed cuts between multiple complex situations, whereas GoodFellas takes its time. Ray Liotta's contemplative distance in GoodFellas is nowhere to be found in The Departed. We can find this sort of novelistic quality in Jesse James and Zodiac, but that is no longer en vogue.

In other words, the audience has lost its patience for memoir. They want to be in the moment, and not a "based on a true story" moment, but as exciting and dangerous situation as possible. Say, double double agents. A very similar comparison could be made with any one of the earlier Coen brothers films and No Country for Old Men. The film which most embraces the spirit of in-the-moment-excitement, and was hugely popular, and made by an up and coming auteur (if we can call him that) is Chrisopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. Since everyone is probably nauseated by analysis of that film, I will leave it at that.

In part two of the decade wrap, I'll discuss popular prestige pictures of the decade (that Almost Famous still is a big hint) and poke holes in them. Also, an official top ten list with synopses.