Cannes Affront Report: Antichrist

Lars Von Trier has made some "difficult" films. His Dogme 95 period demands patience, and his Pandemic trilogy, while visually striking, often lacks the plot required to engage the audience. Von Trier is purposefully elusive, creating cinema that infuriates its audience more than entertaining it.

I've always been cautiously supportive of the Danish ideologue, however, because he clearly sticks to his aesthetic guns. With Antichrist, Lars Von Trier has finally broken through. He has combined the sludge-thick visuals of his early films with the overwhelmingly pessimistic view of human nature from his later films to make a gripping gothic horror film not soon to be forgotten.

The film begins with a gorgeous black-and-white sequence, with leads Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg (credited only as "He" and "She") making love while their child falls to an accidental death. Every movement is captured in slow motion, from a bottle falling off a table to a puzzle breaking into separate pieces. The effect i excruciating, neither erotic or tragic. Within the first five minutes, Von Trier announces that we are under his control.

On its surface, this film is about Gainsbourg's attempt to deal with her guilt following the incident. Her husband, Dafoe, is a therapist who thinks he can help, better than her assigned doctors. He proposes they go to an intentionally ominous place, a sans-electricity shack, pregnantly referred to as Eden, in the heart of a black and foreboding forest (the film is set in the Pacific Northwest, but was shot in Germany). There, he hopes to confront his wife with her darkest fears, so that they both may go on with their lives. In the classic mold of films like Gaslight and The Shining, Dafoe is made to seem the villain. Going against convention, this may not be the case.

In documenting "Her" fear, Von Trier does a good job of scaring the audience as well. Werner Herzog has made a lot of movies where nature is a scary prospect, but none of them are horror films per se. This film is filled with disgusting natural images, like a fox consuming its own flesh. Whether these are His, Hers, or shared hallucinations is unclear. A lot of things are unclear. However, as the insanity mounts, we care less and less about an explanation, and more and more about the next shock.

It's not just the events of the film that are unsettling; Von Trier's style zig-zags uncharacteristically from static woodland compositions to off-kilter docudrama zooms and swirling visual effects used to enhance the dream/nightmare quality. The effect is perfect; you're shocked on both a visceral and artistic level. Gainsbourg'a performance oscillates with these changes, from bereaved mother in a domestic tragedy to possibly possessed psychotic. She deserves any award she gets.  Antichrist is a fabulous horror movie, replete with strange mythology and a creepy child. But don't dare call it formulaic.

Review - Where the Wild Things Are

You were waiting for this one. If you read this blog, you're probably in your twenties, know about "music" and are "college-educated". Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) is familiar because you saw that one DVD compilation of his music videos freshman year. You probably remember Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are as one of the "more intelligent" children's books your parents read to you. It's lack of bright colors and encouragement of the id excited and confused your pre-adolescent story times.

Well, Warner Brothers has delivered one with a bow on it for all you disillusioned, post-Katrina Hipster Runoff readers. This isn't the Jumanji treatment. As you can see abov, this is "well-photographed" "film", not at all intended for children. Sure, it centers on a child and his dream-world, but everything else is taken from "quality" music videos and early Terence Malick. Lots of pregnant pauses and natural light. When I say Jumanji, you probably remember a disastrous Robin Williams vehicle filled with special effects, action sequences and plenty of David Alan Grier. Little kids probably loved that movie. Jumanji didn't pay much attention to its source material, but the idea of a board game unleashing adventure was undoubtedly there.

The only thing for kids in Wild Things is its male-version-of-Dakota-Fanning star Max Records. Records, hipsters love those! I'm sure seven year olds will appreciate the voice casting of James Gandolfini and Lauren Ambrose, stars of HBO adult-themed dramas The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. Records lands on an island inhabited by some seriously depressed beasts, including a bull creature so sad about his unemployment and the foundering economy under Obama he can't speak. Max as "Max" brings a spark of joy to their strange environment by helping them build a fort. This is all that happens. No actions. Little adventure. Oh, the Mom from Home Alone plays one of the things! I don't want to go to PG movie based on a children's book and feel like it's being marketed to me. Makes me uncomfortable.

Oh there is the romance between Carol (Gandolfini, as Max's best beast friend) and KW (Ambrose, playing a creature made to look like Zooey Deschanel / Jenna Malone / Ellen Page). This is the most forced part of the film. I want more wild rumpus! Unfortunately, that would make the film about 45 minutes long. While on its surface, Wild Things seems faithful to Sendak's book, its in fact just uses his illustrations as a vehicle for a Dave Eggers screenplay about relationships. Jonze does a pretty good job, but ultimately its an overlong, pandering mess with only occasional humor.

"Naturalism" - Coen Brothers Intro

From The Onion A.V. Club interview with the Coen Brothers:

AVC: The performers you work with specialize in a kind of stylized acting that hearkens back to pre-World War II Hollywood. Do you have a sense of what about that style appeals to you collectively?

EC: You know, I kind of know what you mean. What does he mean? I kind of know what you mean. Yeah.

JC: I do too. But only kind of. Around the edges. And it has to do with the difference between, I think, the way we imagine characters and scenes, and also stories in general, that would prohibit us—and this is a real backward way of approaching your question—from doing a movie like, in a weird kind of a way, Michael Clayton. You know? There’s something about that completely naturalistic style within the current understanding of naturalism in Hollywood, you know what I mean, that we just don’t truck with for some reason, and I don’t fucking know why. [Laughs.] But in that respect, I kind of know what you mean. It’s like I can’t imagine our doing a movie which requires of an actor exactly that.

EC: Yeah, that’s somehow disconnected too. Yeah.

JC: And it goes to, I think, just the way we think about stories and actors, characters, and just scenes. You know?

EC: Right. If an actor tried to, you’d shake the actor and go, “No, you don’t understand. It’s a story.” [Laughs.]

JC: But I say that it’s naturalistic only, I think, within Hollywood’s current idea of what naturalism is, because there isn’t really that. That doesn’t exist in the abstract as a pure thing.

EC: It’s funny, because even Fargo, which was an exercise in naturalism…

JC: It was an attempt at naturalism.

EC: It was like, true story, but a “true story” in quotes because it wasn’t fucking true.

JC: Yeah. And it has what you’re talking about, the same thing in terms of acting, what we were after, or what was understood.

EC: It was more like, “Act like it’s a true story.”

JC: Yeah, act like it’s a true—but it doesn’t have that thing, it still has the stamp of that certain kind of acting or approach to character. So yeah, I do know what you mean, but it’s a hard thing to put your finger on.

AVC: It’s as if Hollywood’s conception of naturalism begins with The Godfather.

JC: In a weird kind of way, I think The Godfather might not be that. I would think more like The French Connection, you know? More like a ’70s movie about cops. Or Sidney Lumet. We wouldn’t do that.

EC: Serpico.

JC: Sidney Lumet, we wouldn’t do. It’s not the way we think about it. But it’s an interesting question. It really is. It’s an interesting observation.

EC: It’s funny, yeah. We were talking about Malkovich being fired in Burn After Reading. The Sidney Lumet scene. Because kind of it is, and…

JC: Kind of it isn’t. And the ways in which it isn’t are the ways in which you’re talking about.

EC: That scene is as close as we get to naturalistic.

JC: And yet it isn’t that. And everyone sort of understood it wasn’t that.

Second Wind: The Coen Brothers' Revival Continues with A Serious Man

For almost twenty years, the Coen brothers had a perfect record. They were outsiders, the inventive savants off in the corner of Hollywood's vast sandbox, making films that mocked genres, eras, regions and conventions both on and off the screen. Then they made Intolerable Cruelty, which while in their mold, was probably their weakest film to date, followed by The Ladykillers, an unnecessary and painful remake of a British classic.

We know how this story ends, however. They won multiple oscars with No Country for Old Men, and hit their comedic stride in Burn After Reading. What did Joel and Ethan learn? That no matter how clever you are, you can't be totally original every time out. Filmmakers can't explore themes and create unique characters and visually represent both in new ways every time out. Individuals, even a pair, have their limits. Every director has recycled, but great ones are able todo so with great results.  See Hitchcock reusing The 39 Steps to make North by Northwest.

So after Ladykillers, the Brothers Coen fell back on their strengths. They used the natural tension and film-long chase of Blood Simple as the backbone of Old Men; the madcap meaninglessness of Big Lebowski clearly informs Burn. And now the neurotic Jew's search for meaning, first documented in Barton Fink, finds new life in A Serious Man. In Fink, the Coens made their artiest (most pretentious) film, about an artist seeking "authenticity" in the moral wasteland of Hollywood. In A Serious Man, they pose the same questions, but in a much more personal and relatable way.

Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnick, a physic professor in the midst of half a dozen crises. His brother is out of work, constantly in trouble, and sleeping on his couch; his wife wants a divorce; his son is always in trouble, even with his Bar Mitzvah coming up; he faces lawsuits, temptations and natural disasters on all sides. All while trying to maintain a faith he feels less and less each day. On its surface, this might seem like a bad-day-constantly-getting-worse type of comedy, but the Coens set the tale in the peculiar yet familiar (to them at least) setting of suburban Minnesota in the late sixties. Its not that this is essential to any aspect of the plot; only that this atmosphere, and what transpires in it, informs the audience where that peculiar Coens' sense of humor comes from.

It's no surprise that this film lacks the lineup of stars, or even Coens regulars that fans have come to expect. The relative lack of recognizable faces make the humor more unexpected and the punch lines more natural. It's not likely to make a great deal of money or draw a lot of attention at award season, but this is a deceptively complex film, and the Coens probably do themselves their best service as editors (under their usual pseudonym Roderick Jaynes), keeping the Bar Mitzvah, the rabbis and all the relations straight as the climax approaches.

All Fink was looking for was a screenplay that spoke to and about the common man. Larry is seeking sane guidance in an insane world. They don't find what they're looking for; instead, resting for a moment as their respective films draw to a close, they stare into the abyss. And we stare back.

"This is not part of the film" Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

In 1968, experimentation wasn't just a buzz-word; it was a way of life. Cliche enough? Here's another one: all films are cliche, or compilations of stereotypes into rote genres and scenarios. We go to see the exceptional performances or innovative aesthetics, but as "works of art", films don't reveal anything particularly meaningful. The best films tell an interesting story well, but if we forget the details two steps outside the theater, so what? We were entertained.

This was the thought process of William Greaves, who in that heady summer of '68 shot the every-rule-in-the-book-breaking Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, a pseudo documentary about a film crew shooting a melodramatic break-up in Central Park. One camera focuses on the actors; another watches Greaves and the first camera; a third film crew takes in the entire scene. The three perspectives are edited together by Greaves, along with footage of the crew questioning the director's methods. It's a bit like Orson Welles' F for Fake, in that if this were truly a documentary, it would be quite effective. But it is more than implied that every time we see Greaves on camera, he too is performing. This frustrates the crew to their secret meetings (which Greaves will watch and incorporate later on anyway), and makes the actors unsure of what to do. Ultimately, every time we see the scene within the film played out, it comes off as cheesy and forced, compared to the "real" scenes of the crew.

Greaves' concept is ingenious because of its ability to tackle multiple metaphysical questions at once; the obvious issue is "what is a film?" but Take One explores what a film production is as well. What we learn is that its a collection of people who love to think they are a genius, or in the presence and service of a genius. The crew feels betrayed when they have to work with Greaves' "on camera" personality; they feel he isn't being the "real" Greaves they know. Aren't moviemaking types always shining people on to keep everyone on set happy anyway? These questions keep multiplying.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One is a work of conceptual art from a "revolutionary age"; it's a bunch of barefoot hippies thumbing their noses at the "establishment". It's certainly engaging, and it doesn't navel gaze too much. It reveals the pretensions of artistic types, the vanity of actors, and absurdity of filmmaking.

The Vault #35 - Before Light Had Entered into the World Edition: Sansho the Bailiff

Historicism is "the set of philisophical claims that established an organic succession of events, and that local conditions and peculiarities influence outcomes in decisive ways." Essentially, it's the belief, discussed most notably by Foucault, that thoughts, events, beliefs, behaviors and even complex works of art are the product of their surroundings more than they are individually created. In this way, we cannot assess blame or moral judgment on people from earlier eras, because they had a very different perspective on their actions. The cardinal sin of most period pieces (Gladiator, I'm looking at you) is that they put anachronistic words and convictions in their character's mouths to draw in the modern day audience. But if historicism holds water, how can any filmmaker accurately render the past?

The solution is to do so only hypothetically, a tactic I've only seen once executed: today's entry, Sansho the Bailiff. 12th Century Japan: a magistrate dares to treat his subjects as equals to the upper classes, and is banished for it; before leaving, he imparts an impossibly ahead of its time lesson: "without mercy, man is like a beast" and that all men should be treated as men, not animals or numbers. Unfortunately for his son, Zushio, the opening titles tell us:

"The origin of this legend of Sansho Dayu, the Bailiff, goes back to medieval times when Japan had not yet emerged from the Dark Ages and mankind had yet to awaken as human beings."

Zushio and his sister, Anju, are kidnapped and sold into slavery. This move, of shifting aristocratic children to the bottom dregs of society, is the most important of the film. Suddenly, we're watching a jidai-geki not about samurai or codes of honor, but of slaves trying to maintain their humanity, their mercy. Their mother is forced into prostitution on a different island, and they lose all hope of seeing her again. However, ten years later (!), they learn she is alive and Anju begins planning escape from their imprisonment in the house of Sansho Dayu, the Bailiff.

There are many reasons I think this is the greatest Japanese film of all time, and thusly, one of the greatest period. It was one of the final films of Kenji Mizoguchi, the master whose socially realistic films often dealt with women and their oppression within Japanese society. The smallest moments, from gathering firewood to weaving textiles, have gravity within a story whose scheme is on a scale with the greatest works of Homer and Shakespeare. It's a perfect example of Andre Bazin's novelistic filmmaking, where words like "without mercy..." actually have a life of their own down through the years.

Sansho the Bailiff is an epic tragedy, but it is not nihilistic. On the contrary, it is further unique in that it is a deeply religious film, with Buddha message of compassion central to every section. This is a film where the main characters are learning a lesson the rest of the world will not learn (in KM's opinion) until ten years before the film was released (1954). It brings us back to the middle ages effectively, and shows how impossible it would be for impulses of love and human dignity to survive in times of darkness.