Reviews
Nirgendwo in Afrika (2001)
A different view of racism
When it comes to films about the Nazi racism, Nowhere in Africa is in a class by itself. Unlike Schindler's List and a plethora of screenplays on the subject, all of which confine the drama to the morality of good and evil, some with didactic overtones, others with pure shock value, or both, this movie illuminates, both with a spotlight, and a microscope, the social origins of racism. Here's the problem: The very institutions that teach right from wrong, that inculcate tribal loyalty, patriotism, and social identity, that teach us to pledge allegiance and follow the golden rule, have also quietly inferred, or noisily demanded, that the `other,' the `alien amongst us' in Biblical terms, is both different, and inferior. Every culture, Herodotus observed, thinks its own system of values superior to the values of others. If this is true (and I think it is), the subtext is clear: `others' are inferior. Which leads one to ask: Is it possible to have a moral, socialized populace without racism, or, at least, ethnocentrism?
Set in Kenya during World War II, the drama devolves around the struggles of an expatriate family of German Jews. Culturally, intellectually, and socially, they are Germans, not Jews, which is both fascinating, and historically accurate. Like many other Jews of their generation, the expatriate family viewed their Jewish heritage with both skepticism, and as a sentimental indulgence. Unable to come to grips with the events in Europe, reeling from and their new social status of being nobodies in the middle of nowhere, they struggle as social nomads, stuck between their privileged position as white overlords of the native Blacks, and their fallen, uncertain status as guests without rights. We watch the internal dynamics of a Jewish expatriate family through the prism of its own internalized assumptions, both as highly cultured Germans, and increasingly as Jews. And what they discover about their own hidden assumptions, their ethnocentrism and European sense of privilege and superiority, becomes as shocking to them as Hitler's Germany.
Like every other archetypal hero, being nobody in the middle of nowhere is the crucible that produces the Hero's special character, where he or she eventually returns home, in the end, bearing gifts, wisdom, and a healing balm. In the end, they emerge with real gem of a prize: they understand, both intellectually and emotionally, the comparative advantage of other cultures and societies.
What I especially loved about this film is its emotional tone. It's an emotionally evocative film, though not with the mawkish, childish paroxysms of a Disney flick. We watch adults dealing with culturally layered adult emotions, unwrapping and examining each layer as one peels an onion. Their collective emotional journey is as rich and textured and subtly presented as any I've seen.
The Emperor's Club (2002)
Mental masturbation -- a complete waste of time
Once again, I find myself in the awkward position of being forced to disagree with Ebert and Roeper, who inexplicably gave this 150 minute exercise in gum-beating prattle two thumbs up. I think this film is fatuous, bloated, constipated mawkish nonsense. If I had a dollar for every cheap cliché that fills the silver screen, I'd be a rich man. If I had been hired to play in the film, I wouldn't have been able to throw a rock without hitting someone doing a worn out caricature. If you've already seen Dead Poets Society, you've already seen it. Only this one really sucks.
Kevin Kline plays a professor of the classics (William Hundert) at an upscale prep school for the east coast elite, the rich and powerful moguls of the media, the captains of industry, and the political cognoscenti. So it's a striking irony that, as head of the schoolboys, Kline plays an archetypal schoolboy himself, a man who remains perennially confined in a schoolboy's world-view, in which dutiful, obedient children literally fear to tread off the paved paths set before them, where they memorize their lessons with the reverence of Mullah's memorizing the Koran, and where they all strive for vaulted honor of being `Mr. Caesar,' winner of a quiz-show type contest on Roman history.
What really galls me about this film is its irresponsible worship of classical history, especially the Romans. An unabashed didactic on the importance of morals and virtue, Mr. Principled Professor (Kline) is continually holding them up as exemplars. Which makes me wonder if the authors of this script ever really studied ancient history. Caesar, their archetypal man of virtue, overthrew republican Roman government in a military junta of the same ilk as Crassus, Sulla, and Pompey. Caesar loved power. What a strange lesson in civic humanism.
The Hours (2002)
Film as Literature, Portraiture, and Poetry
There are two themes of The Hours that seem to oppose each other, like the constantly reversing polarity of electrical alternating current.
On the one hand, there's the admonition to `look life in the face, and know it for what it is.' It's Luther's stubborn refusal to budge in the face of adversity, the `here I stand; I can do no other.' Mrs. Dalloway, a `monster' in the eyes of some, whose monstrous deed was to have chosen life over death, exemplifies this virtue. Having abandoned her children to save herself from the despair of an inauthentic life, she exemplifies the willingness to accept life as it is.
On the other hand, there is the last refuge of the despairing soul, the knowledge that `It is possible to die.' Deeply ironical, the person who exemplifies this type of despair is the one who has lived the fully authentic life. Richard found the courage and freedom to explore the entire world, inside and out, and take from his exploration only what resonated with himself. And yet, as a social icon of sorts, Richard finds himself living for others, like Prometheus bound, except that the ravens eating his flesh are his friends and companions. Richard tells Clarissa, `I think I'm staying alive to satisfy you.' To which Clarissa replies, `That's what people do: they stay alive for each other.' Richard escapes this last falsehood of the spirit the only way he can, by choosing death.
The Hours is almost completely bereft of metaphor, analogy, or syllogism that might be construed as an attempt to point to a meaning or lesson or didactic purpose. Like really good art, it points to something ineffable, to feelings with which we can all identify, the feelings of despair we all feel when trapped, either by ourselves, or others, in a false existence.
But to choose life it to also choose death. Every beginning is an ending. And just like singing the blues, one feels strangely uplifted after dwelling on such an apparently depressing subject. One comes away from the film with the feeling that, as Richard put it, everything's in the world is all wrong, all mixed up, but that it's also possible, and necessary, to look life in the face, and to accept it for what it is.
About Schmidt (2002)
An American Ulysses
Schmidt is an exemplar of American middle class virtue. When he retires, his many friends and colleagues gather to wish him a fond farewell. A successful VP of actuarial science in a large Omaha Nebraska corporation, his golden years before him, he looks forward to a life of adventure in his new Winnebago. At first, the process of defining himself without reference to his career is predictably tough; but then, when his wife dies, he's forced to look at himself without any of the socially constructed icons that he's used as a crutch for over forty years.
Like Jack Kerouac, he goes searching for himself on the road. And mad Captain Ahab on the maiden voyage of his Winnebago has no shortage of lunatic first mates to offer their advice always wrong, always genuine American kitsch. The situations in which Schmidt finds himself are darkly comical.
About Schmidt is a film devoted to the problem of kitsch, particularly its emotional and intellectual manifestations. There's kitsch on the left, and kitsch on the right. There's an economy based on its production, and an economy based on its avoidance. And this film finds kitsch everywhere, in modern evangelical churches, in New Age practitioners of lovey-dovey touchy-feely instant familiarity, in the mobile home parks along the road to the American Dream, in the `Precious Moments' figurines that are so nice; worthless, but nice.
I came away from the film thinking of Schmidt as an American Ulysses, of sorts, a hero forced to negate everything he'd learned to value in order to overcome the curse of kitsch. In the end, he succeeds.
The Believer (2001)
Absolutely brilliant filmmaking
He destroys the both the blameless and the wicked. When a scourge brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent. When a land falls into the hands of the wicked, he blindfolds its judges. If it is not He, then who is it? Job 9: 22-24
Danny Balint is Jew who hates Jews. Why? He claims that there's no reason. Like Catullus, he says, `I hate and I love. Who can tell me why?' And just as he says that it's in the very nature of things to hate Jews, at the very moment he insists that the id rules the ego, he goes ahead and tells us why. The Jews, he believes, `love to separate things.' They're wanderers, universalists without life-affirming ties to the soil. They're obsessed, he argues, with giving pleasure, an inherent weakness that ultimately deracinates civil society. Marx, Freud, and Einstein, he believes, gave us communism, infantile sexuality, and the atom bomb.
But that's not the worst of it. These are only symptoms of the disease, which boils down to this: Jewish people don't understand the true nature of their faith. Sure, they love and obey God. That's not the issue. The issue is the character (or lack thereof) of the God they believe in. Like Job, Danny thinks that the Almighty is wantonly cruel, given to unchecked paroxysms of jealous anger, and certainly not a creature of reason or justice or his well publicized love. And so Danny says that he's the only one who *does* believe in God. He's the only true believer, because he sees him for the `powerful madman that he is,' a deity who turned Abraham into a `quivering putz' by commanding him to sacrifice his own son. `And we're supposed to worship such a deity?' he asks. He hates Jews because they supposedly love this deity, this destructive madman.
This film is so deep, so layered, so rich and provocative, due in part to Ryan Gosling's amazing performance, I believe this is one of the finest films ever made. Ever.
Y tu mamá también (2001)
Childish "coming of age" bilge water
Spoiler!! I rented this video because Ebert and Roeper gave it two `big' thumbs up. But I think they must have been smoking the wacky tobaccy, because one should be stoned to make it through this adolescent crap. To be blunt, it's like soaking your feet in battery acid.
Y Tu Mama Tambien is your typical teenage `sexual maturity' flick, which has been totally cliché ever since The Summer of '42. The two young men, one from a socially prominent family, the other from a working class background, are both good-looking, and indescribably horny. Like most young men in their late teens, all they think about is getting laid. Boring, ain't it? But then they meet a mysterious Spanish woman, the kind that Dylan Thomas wrote about when he said that, `if the gods would love, they'd see with eyes like mine, but should not touch like I, your sweet inductive thighs, and raven hair.' She's a real no-s*** goddess. So, they set about the arduous task of seducing her. By the end of the film, they've achieved their purpose, though not without the gracious condescension of the goddess. Asleep yet?
What really galls me about this film is the way their relationship with the goddess, who initiates them into the pleasures of the flesh, descends into being decadently, indulgently sentimental. At the beginning of the film, we see her gleefully screwing the two young men, apparently for revenge against her unfaithful husband. At the same time, we see her grieving, apparently, over her failed marriage. For a woman of strong desire, she's such a delicate flower! But it's not until the very end of the film that we understand the real reason for giving her husband his freedom, for being a sexual goddess to the two young men: all the while, she was dying of cancer. She was selflessly giving herself to everyone! How generous, how noble!
Let me tell you, when comes to tear-jerking prattle of this sort, give my portion to someone else.
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)
The same as you learned in Sunday School, only the exemplars are different
Sex, Lies and Videotape will probably strike the average viewer as irredeemably degenerate, maybe even perverted, since voyeurism is still considered aberrant behavior. But as far as this film is concerned, that's the appearance, not the reality. Whereas the drama revolves to a certain extent around the voyeuristic masturbation of an impotent man, the heart and soul of the film is an unrelenting, hard driving psychological siege on the biggest erogenous zone of all: the brain.
This film is about sex. But it's not about the frothy swapping of fluids and feelings. It's about honesty, without which one can't have intimacy, which is to sexual stimulation what the water valve is to the hydrant. From beginning to end, we see this theme brought into focus by the dramatic contrast between two different relationships the one based on lies and deceit, the other based upon honesty. And guess which one wins out in the long run?
In a sense, it's what your mother and Sunday school teacher taught you all along. But what makes this movie way more interesting than your mother or Sunday school teacher is the level of honesty it suggests is necessary as the basis of a healthy relationship. Ann (Andy McDowell), for example, an acceptably moral person tells the voyeuristic masturbator `You got a problem.' He replies by adding that he has a lot of problems. But, he says, `They belong to me.'
Somehow, the openness about one's problems renders their bile and poison ineffective. `Lilies that fester,' said Shakespeare, `smell far worse than weeds.'
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)
Only what is heavy has value
Imagine you're at the theater attending a live performance, a truly living performance in which both axioms and mythological truths are entered into and shared by actors and audience alike. Now suppose that the backdrop for all the action is dark, oppressive, and heavy, while all that transpires before it is light, glib, and ineffectual. Now consider that, through the course of the play, all that is bouncy and trivial becomes overwhelmed and absorbed by the gravity of the background, like light being sucked into the gravity of a black hole, so that what was once meaningless and unimportant and even silly becomes increasingly momentous and important and valuable as the play progresses. If you can see this outline in your mind's eye, you have a good idea about The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera's novel by the same name brought to life as a movie. The film, like the novel, declares one thing: `only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value.' I so love this idea, this earth shattering insight: it effortlessly capsizes our Postmodern zeitgeist in one innocuous little phrase. And the film expresses it beautifully.
Set in the Prague Spring of 1968, when the Soviets put down Dubcek's `Socialism with a Human Face,' the weight of these events draws the lives of a Czech doctor, his wife, and his lovers, into its orbit. And instead of crushing them, as one might assume, it becomes the fire that purifies gold. Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis), for example, had previously written a treatise on Oedipus, a witty exercise in sophistry aimed at the Communist regime as a provocative analogy, nothing more. But as the essay becomes an object of obsession to the Communists, we see Kundera's definition of vertigo come into play. It is not the fear of falling, but the soul's defense against the desire to fall. Tomas wanted to fall. Why? Watch the movie, and find out for yourself.
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
Gripping story
It's a curious fact about Darwinism that it was once thought to have eliminated an end purpose or outcome of human history, a belief inherited from Christianity's prediction of the thousand-year reign of Christ. Instead, Christian teleology took a new direction from Darwinism: throughout the western world, scholars believed that they had found the holy grail of human progress in Herbert Spencer's notion of the `survival of the fittest,' an idea adopted without restraint by Darwin, in which various varieties of the same species compete for dominance. The `superior' would win out over the `inferior,' purifying the human race. The Third Reich believed it had ushered in the millennium in precisely this manner; likewise, Ellis Island phrenologists rejected or accepted immigrants based on prominent racial characteristics, while William Graham Sumner of Yale, one of the fathers of American sociology, espoused an economic and social doctrine that literally produced the squalor of New York's infamous East Side.
Rabbit Proof Fence is a heartrending tale about how these ideas played out in Australia. Shot from a native's point of view, the film simply resonates with the trance-like vibrations of their ancestral chants, the intimate attachment to land, family, and tribe, the spiritual aspirations of a people who reverenced the spirit bird, not as something to manipulate with prayers and incantations, but to look after as a source of wonder and inspiration.
Believe me, I'm not an overly sentimental person. I hate the cute and the mawkish. But this film is constructed with sinews of emotional intensity that you won't leave the theater but in tears.
Phone Booth (2002)
Nothing as troublesome as conscience
For once, here's an edge-of-your-seat action film that's viscerally lean, symbolically rich (perhaps even stunning), and uncluttered by visual noise (a cheap substitute for content), or absurd, `deus ex machina' twists and turns of fate and fortune. This film goes straight to the heart of the problem of conscience, right from the opening song, an old gospel tune that whimsically asks the operator to `give me Jesus on the line.' Every one of who watches this film will identify with the man in the phone booth, because every one of us is guilty of some kind of shortcoming or another. The really fascinating, and groundbreaking, thing about this film is this: it's not clear whether the accusatory voice of conscience is good, or evil, or both; furthermore, it's not clear whether conscience is innate (natural), or conventional (a matter of upbringing, a social construct), or both. The viewer has to make up his or her own mind!
When Stu picks up the phone, he does so by duty, by compunction, by social convention. `A ringing phone has to be answered, Doesn't it?' the caller taunts. He's gained control of Stu by manipulating Stu's innate sense of moral obligation. And like the voice of conscience, the phone booth is `the last vestige of privacy,' in New York, reminiscent of the `my own mind is my church' idea of American individualism, also on the `innate' side of the coin. Then again, on the `conventional' side, the man at the other end spends all his time watching Stu an envious, spiteful person who is, like Stu, a `walking cliché.' His ethical stance is about as nuanced (and deadly) as PTL's Jim Bakker, and just about as compelling. Coward that he is, he attacks Stu at a time of weakness, playing God with unearned entitlement and capriciousness. `If I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than conscience,' Huck Finn mused, `I'd pison it.'
Monster's Ball (2001)
Shame Kills
Shame. It's the feeling of being less than, of being flawed. It's the suspicion that, no matter how well you do, something's still lacking; that somewhere, somehow, you could'a-would'a-should'a done better. To be good or excellent isn't enough: the only valid measure is perfection, a frustrating standard that changes with every change of perspective. It's the feeling of being inadequate at some fundamental level. And that's why I think Monster's Ball is an outstanding film: it's an unusually bold excursion into the personal and social dynamics of shame, which are inherently intertwined.
Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton) plays a Mississippi `corrections' officer, who has the job of escorting death row inmates to the electric chair. His father, also a `corrections' officer before him, views his life of service as so just and honorable, as does Hank. Hank's son, Sonny, is dutifully carrying the torch to the third generation. Why, you'd be just brass statue proud to have the Grotowskis as neighbors, such upstanding pillars of the community. Inside, however, the Grotowskis are haunted by demons of self-doubt, and self-hatred.
A Monster's Ball is a set of rituals that steady the death row officers's nerves, and sets up bulwarks against the shame they feel. There's the obligatory pre-execution prayer: `They are brought down and fallen,' they chant, `but we are risen upright.' And when they practice their chthonic craft, they can't allow themselves to be human, to feel, or display, emotion -- the ultimate sin. So when Sonny commits the blasphemy of forming an emotional connection with the sentenced man, he lets his feelings show, and receives the full force of his father's considerable ability to shame. Hank condemns him as `weak,' a `woman,' a `pussy,' and a `piece of s**t.' Hank might just as well have taken out a gun and shot him himself.
Hank's redemption comes out of his personal tragedy. It's not sentimental or contrived. He makes mistakes, but he starts down the right path. It's tragic, but also very uplifting.
Gosford Park (2001)
The Mystery is not the Murder
If you're into murder mysteries, you might not like Gosford Park. It's a mystery, alright, and there is a murder; but, they're ancillary to the film. If there is a puzzle, it's the question of how the British nobility managed to survive as long as they did on their cachet of social prestige, why their indolence, concupiscence, social isolation, and wanton self-destructiveness didn't drive them to extinction, like the Romanoffs, long ago.
Both the servants and the nobility hate each other. A valet describes Lady McCordle as a `snobbish cow, completely `useless.' Another valet ridicules his master as thinking that he's `God almighty,' to which a maid replies, `They all do.' The upstairs nobility are all hopelessly incompetent; for example, when the butler demands the whereabouts of a guest from his valet, the valet replies: `I washed him and I dressed him and if he can't find his way to the drawing room, it's not my fault.' The upper classes are viewed as `pathetic.' The nobility, on the other hand, though they use their servants as sex toys and as their personal conduits of gossip, treat their servants as if they were burdens to be borne. Lady Trentham is typical: in the process of `breaking in' a new maid,' she acts as though she's bearing Christ's own crucifix. She exclaims, `There's nothing more exhausting, Is there?'
So the real mystery of the movie is why the system moved along as smoothly as it did in the face of all the glaring inconsistencies and injustices. Altman doesn't hit you over the head with an answer, but does suggest some clues; for example, in many ways, servants and masters are very similar. We see the social stratification amongst the servants themselves, and their love, like their masters, of humiliating others. We see the upper classes feeding off the human warmth of the lower, the lower classes feeding off the social prestige of the upper. The upper and the lower classes use each other. It's a false empowerment, but an empowerment just the same.
Just the same, the mystery goes unanswered when the movie is over, forcing you, the viewer, to puzzle it out for yourself.
Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001)
Failure -- C'est La Vie
After watching Amelie for the first time, I thought it was the best film of 2001. After viewing it again a second time, with even more appreciation, I have come to believe that it's one of the best films -- ever. And it's French! My God, Who would have believed it?
Amelie is a woman who lives in a fantasy world. Conditioned to behave this way in her childhood -- deprived of playmates, slung between a neurotic mother and an iceberg father -- Amelie prefers to dream, a personality trait that blossoms full-flower in adulthood. Amelie habitually retreats into the private world of her imagination, where she plays, like a lonely child without any friends.
Now, I know what you're thinking: this is another boring movie about family dysfunction and its long-term consequences, The Price of Tides with a French accent. But I'm delighted to inform you that it's not. In fact, it's the very the antithesis of such films. And it's a work of uncommon brilliance for that same reason: it takes Amelie's charming but mildly self-destructive idiosyncrasies -- her tendency to dream and remain an introvert, to `mess up her life' with stratagems, play-acting, and meddling, habits unavoidably formed in the bosom of her family -- and shows how wonderful they are. That's right, wonderful.
Throughout the film, she is helped into the real world by the affectionate counsel of an archetypal `wise old man;' but, along the way, her preference for fantasy over reality is treated with the grace and generosity of a culture that considers human failure inevitable, perhaps even necessary; a culture with the courage to say, simply, `that's life.'
`I love the word fail',' the barroom author says in an important but easily overlooked scene. It's human destiny, he insists. Doing his best `sidewalk Socrates,' he adds: `Life is but a draft, a long rehearsal for a show that will never play.' It's the perfect, ingenious set up for the question facing Amelie: Will she fail, allowing herself to merge with the ebb and flow of universal woe, or will she (through love it's so French!) overcome her common destiny to fail?
I won't spoil it for you. Find out for yourself.
American Beauty (1999)
Babbitts Everywhere
Midlife crisis: it's something we've come to expect from middle-aged men. And we've all seen the stereotypical manifestations: a `normal' guy goes out and buys a Harley, or has an affair, or just becomes a royal jackass around the house - more so than usual, that is. It's so damned cliché.
American Beauty transcends the plethora of hackneyed truisms about midlife crisis for one reason: it deals with the social and cultural forces that produce it, and not just the dramatic changes that come midway through life, changes that Jung insisted are inevitable. The difference between American Beauty's Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) and Married with Children's Al Bundy is the difference between Dante's middle aged man who, awakened, enters a deep, `dark wood,' the creative and spiritual side of life (not without it's perils!), and Sinclair Lewis's `Babbitt,' who boasted that he had never done anything he wanted to do. It's the difference between following one's bliss, and stashing one's life on a shelf until the balance of years expires. It's brilliant because when Lester Burnham, who used to be a Babbitt, reforms his Babbitt-like ways, he pisses off all the other Babbitts, especially his wife and next door neighbors, the `Fitts.' With Babbitts everywhere to be found, it's not a wonder that a midlife crisis is necessary. It is a wonder that anyone succeeds in finding the dark wood, and not an ersatz experience, like the herds of men with leather jackets and Harleys.
What's more, the conflict between Lester Burnham and everyone else is not only pithy social satire, it's outrageously comical. Anette Bening is simply brilliant as Lester's wife, who is anal, materialistic, and completely fanatical about financial success. (She was robbed of the Academy Award in 1999, I think.) Her daughter's phony friend spots her immediately as a phony (takes one to know one), as she effuses fake good cheer and beneficence. I've worked with people like that. Let me tell you, they can kill your spirit. They can make you sick.
If you haven't seen it, rent it.
L.A. Story (1991)
Martin at His Best
When Steve Martin is hot, he's really hot. L.A. Story, written by Steve Martin, is hot. The entire film keeps you in a state of constant chuckling. And, the movie has more than a few moments of comedic genius. It's the cumulative effect of little jokes littered throughout the film, both verbal and visual, that keeps you in stitches. On top of that, it piques your interest.
Here's what I mean: while Martin mercilessly it pokes fun of L.A. for it's flakiness, it's love and tolerance of idiosyncrasies, it's constant preoccupation with image, it's narcissism, the humor is never vulgar, crass, or shallow. For example, one scene takes place in the municipal art museum. We see Harry Telemacher (Steve Martin), with his friends, rapt in admiration for a painting. The camera angle comes from the canvas itself, where we watch Harry, deep in thought, dissertate on the subjects in the portrait, their motives, actions, and hidden agendas. He moves forward, backward, forward again, as if in active dialogue with the lacquer. At last, moving backward, he concludes his remarks by wrinkling his nose in disgust and saying `Look at the way he's holding her: it's almost filthy!' And then the camera moves around to Telemacher's perspective. The painting's a total abstraction. There isn't a distinct line in the entire rectangular frame. In the argot of Postmodernism, one might call it a `readerly' work of art.
It's the perfect metaphor for L.A., where you may interpret anything, any way you like. There's no standard, except one's own `personal reality.' No one can use social norms as a personal club to tell someone else, `You're wrong,' because there is none. It's all `what-E-verrrr.'
Best of all, L.A. Story is a love story, the kind of love that adores someone as much for their faults as for their virtues. Martin's satire is so effective because he loves the city so much.
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
GR8SHAG Baby, Yeah!
It's disgusting, gross, puerile, fatuous, boorish, obscene, flatulent, egregious, stupid, bigoted, and ineffably silly, among other things. And it's funny. It's really funny. I mean, tickled my funny bone. I may not have the same effect on you, but I suggest you give it a try. Really. In my case, I rented it with a strong feeling of skepticism, not quite sure if I wanted to risk four bucks on it, thinking it was likely to be another gimpy sequel, nothing more than an awkward and contrived impersonation of the original, as is so often the case. But, to my surprise, it wasn't. Sure, it had an ample number of references to shagging, but they are a bit more subtle; for example, the somewhat inconspicuous Cooper Mini license plate that reads `GR8 SHAG,' a worthy caricature of all those dumb-ass `I'm so sexy' James Bond movies, was my favorite.
In fact, I think Goldmember is the best Austin Powers yet. The reason: all the characters have evolved. I know: that sounds pretty silly, maybe even stupid. OK, I'll grant you that. It may be the dumbest thing I've ever said, which would have to be insanely stupid considering all the boners I've committed. (Yes, stupid pun intended.) But before you make up your mind, consider the following. In Goldmember, Dr. Evil isn't quite so evil. He's much more complex, especially in his relationship to Scott, a prodigal son proudly returned to the true path of evil. Herein we see his inner core of love and affection. Dr. Evil's response to Scott's inner transformation is an ambivalent mixture of pride, and fatherly concern. It's so touching. Better yet, Austin Powers is much less `shagadelic' than before. Of course, he still has excellent mojo. His mojo is so mighty, in fact, that even destroys Britney Spears with its overwhelming, irresistible power. And who could fail to appreciate that? But in Goldmember, he's almost nothing more than an appendage to Foxy Cleopatra. (Yes, stupid pun intended.) And, if you like bathroom humor, you're in for a treat: Fat Bastard's never been better. He's an utterly repulsive mixture of crude humor and vile appearance. National Lampoon can't compete with this.
Atanarjuat (2001)
Stone Age Culture Comes Alive
Set in an Inuit settlement deep in the Arctic Circle, this film is about one problem in particular: evil. This film examines its origins and consequences. It also makes a profound assertion: that the way to get rid of evil is not with more evil, but with forgiveness.
Since all the action takes place within the physical and cultural confines of a Stone Age culture, one might think that the drama lacks emotional depth, vigor, or subtlety. On the contrary, perhaps it's because the movie is bereft of theatrical embellishments and stratagems, the problem comes all the more clearly into focus. Despite the wide cultural divide between the Postmodern world of the twenty first century and the primitive world of our hunter-gatherer forebears, we easily identify with the main characters: their hopes, fears, and ambitions. For that reason alone, Atanarjuat is a remarkable movie.
With respect to the problem of evil, however, what I really love about the film is its emotional complexity, which one wouldn't expect from a three-hour epic revolving around the daily lives of a Stone Age culture. On one level, there is the Shaman and his curse. It's part of the package that comes with the religious beliefs of the people. If one believes in the ability of dead ancestors to come and render assistance to the living, it's also possible for spirits to bring calamity and misfortune to the same. In this film, beliefs that for me are about as tangible as a ghost in a fog come alive.
On another level, Atanarjuat, like Hamlet, delves deep into the origins of evil within the human heart. Good old family values such as love, affection, greed, lust, and murder, come clearly into focus. We're left with judgments about what is right and wrong judgments that the clan reaches from within the internal logic of its own values but also with understanding.
Insomnia (2002)
An Anemic Remake
I don't know why Christopher Nolan bothered to do a remake of the original Insomnia, a Norwegian film about a morally ambivalent investigating detective, whose pragmatism made him an effective investigator, but also a little unprincipled. Brilliantly portrayed by Jonas Engström, the Norse version draws the viewer into the ethical relativism of the esteemed sleuth. It's a riveting performance.
On the trail of a child murderer, he makes a mistake, shooting his partner, friend, and long-time colleague by accident while chasing the killer in a thick fog. None of the police witnessed it, so he covers it up by saying that the killer did it. One can understand the reasoning: it was an honest mistake; and, the murderer is ultimately responsible, anyway. The detective creates a cover story for one simple reason: he's embarrassed. He could have easily told the truth, and it probably wouldn't have harmed him; but, in a moment of panic and discomposure, he lies, creating a plausible cover story, making it more difficult with every succeeding lie to come clean. It's believable. Not knowing that the accidental homicide was witnessed by the murderer, the tangled web he weaves starts becoming his own personal spider web, himself the captured fly.
The American version, by contrast, is much less interesting. Why? There's no moral ambivalence. In the American version, Will Dormer's moral dilemma is the same old crap about ends justifying the means. It's like taking a melody played gently on a flute, and blaring it out all gaudy and loud on a mighty Wurlitzer. It's not as convincing as the original film, because it moral subtlety that made the original so compelling. We sit there and say, `that's wrong,' instead of sitting on the edge of our seats and saying, `it may be wrong, but it's understandable.' The ethical pragmatism of the investigating detective in the original is what gave it its edge, its grit, its dramatic tension, its cachet. Toward the end of the remake, I started to feel as drowsy as the sleepless detective.
If you want to see Insomnia, rent the original version, not its eviscerated copy.
About a Boy (2002)
Fate Demolishes the Perfect Plan
About a Boy is not only about a boy, it's about all of us everyone who hazards out upon the dark waters of a relationship. And it's about the fate one embraces whenever a person trades his or her precious freedom for the claims a relationship makes on one's privacy. Will, the main character, is an archetypal man in this respect: he wants to remain an island, the lord of his own personal domain, while also having relationships with women if only for sex.
Unfortunately for Will, that isn't possible. Why? Speaking as a man who's been through the pea patch a few times, it's because women make the rules. There's no negotiation, appeasement, or qualification. It's better to accept it without murmur. But, valiant man that Will is, he tries his best to beat the odds, to be the only man in human history who has ever achieved both his freedom, and a steady supply of feminine relationships, simultaneously. I must say, I admired his tenacity. At one point of the movie, I thought he'd cracked the nut. Completely by chance, he accepts a date with a single mom. It's everything he ever hoped for: passionate sex, a regular ego massage, and an easy breakup. Bingo! He discovered the mother lode!
But then, a number of chance occurrences intervene to totally change his fate the fate of being an island, which he chose for himself. And just like real life, chance events show themselves as fate's very own calling card: everything that occurs of necessity, is expected, or is the product of a person's imagination, is powerless to reach our souls. Chance is the Janus face of fate.
What I love about this movie is its absurdity: Chance in the absolute presents itself to Will in the guise of a twelve-year old boy. And it's this wild incongruity that really gives this film it's pithy but warm sense of humor. The compulsive fornicator becomes a surrogate father to a fatherless boy, remaining an island, but joining up with an archipelago.
Monsoon Wedding (2001)
Mawkishly, Disgustingly Trivial
Renting this video, I broke a hard and fast rule: never see a movie that's described as `heartwarming,' or which has `Marriage' or `Wedding' as part of the title. I had recently seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was such a big exception to the rule I thought I'd give this one a shot, especially since Ebert and Roeper had given it two big thumbs up. But this flick reaffirmed the correctness of my rule.
There are many things about this film that make it contrived, mawkish, saccharine and silly, but one thing in particular stands out as particularly egregious: right in the middle of the frenzied wedding preparations, while everyone is bubbly with joy, love and forgiveness just bursting to sing and dance and eat marigolds at the drop of a hat the plot meanders, very awkwardly, into the issue of childhood sexual abuse. The entire film is disjointed, with abrupt transitions that feel premature. But this is totally out of place.
As best I can tell, the reason for these disgustingly shallow scenes is to change the viewer's attitude towards the father of the bride, who, until this point, has been rude, controlling, and obnoxious. But then he steps in to protect the child victim, driving away his own relatives in the process. So now, our sympathies are supposed to change, because now he's a hero: a man of honor and duty, we understand that the conflicting obligations to tradition and family have been tormenting him. The film uses this as a theatrical tableau with which to highlight his loyal, moral character. The victims of abuse are used as a foil to draw us into the father's conflicted world of obligations.
Meanwhile, the injured parties, who invariably grow up to be egregious abusers themselves if left untreated, are just props. Their stories are discarded like wrapping paper. So the film succeeds in defending the perpetrator mentality, downplaying the victim's pain and anguish for the sake of a giddy, fatuous, offensive emotional ejaculation, which occurs at the end of the movie joy joy joy, happy happy happy. It's one of the most irresponsible things I've ever seen.
Don't be taken in by the hype: avoid this movie like the plague.
The Bourne Identity (2002)
Self Knowledge as "Remembering:" A Platonic Dialogue Continues
A question I must answer, every single day of my life, is the most fundamental of all: Who am I? Am I the product of my environment, whether good or bad? Am I defined by what I do? Am I synonymous with my job? Is my personality, my very sense of self, God's own caricature, written long ago in the stars and etched in the palm of my hands? Or, Do I have the willpower to choose who I am? Can I say who I am without reference to my past, or my occupation?
Matt Damon's character, Jason Bourne, is a man who is faced with exactly this challenge, which is what makes The Bourne Identity inherently compelling. While watching Jason's attempt to discover himself, to find out who he is, I sit and share his inner trepidation, for one reason: when he discovers his social identity, Will it be compatible with his natural, instinctive self, the self that has come to him from a near death experience like a second birth? Or, Will he find out that he's gone off the rails somewhere along the way? Will he find out that the choices he's made, the life and occupation he's chosen for himself, is in alignment with his uncluttered self? I identify with the main character because I'm forced to ask myself the same questions. Is all this stuff I use to describe myself, my personal history, my talents, who I really am? Does my personal history really reflect my deepest values? Am I living an authentic life?
This is interesting stuff, a compelling reification of Socrates's idea of learning as `recollection.' The main character discovers, as does the audience, that his past life is an identity, a cover story, and not the true Jason Bourne. It's as if he's playing `What's My Line,' and he's all three contestants. In this film, Bourne is a hero of self-discovery, and not some idiotic `James Bond' type who can't distinguish his penis from his gun.
La veuve de Saint-Pierre (2000)
"Perfect Love Casteth out Fear"
The ancient Greeks, gifted with an abstract way of thinking that was always trying to come down to earth and clothe itself with the commonplace occurrences of everyday life, did not have one all-embracing term for love, a we do, but broke it down into four types: affection (storge), friendship (phileo), sex (eros) and charity (agapao). And probably not since the ancient Greeks has a love story come along which not only divides love into its four types, but also weaves them, with enormous skill, into a single story. The Widow of Saint-Pierre is a love story of the tragic Greek proportions. It's an enormously beautiful movie, a story that gains power with every viewing. And for that reason, it's one of the most remarkable videos I've seen in a very long time.
We've all seen a plethora of films from Hollywood, which basically confine love, and the act of love, to eros. We all know the well-worn script. But what would it look like to view a film in which a relationship expresses all four types of love, and throbbing full force? I would be giving too much away if I were to tell you how these four types of love are rolled up so tightly into a single relationship, but that's exactly what we seen in the liaison between Jean, the Captain (Auteuil) and his wife, Pauline (Binoche). It's intensely interesting, because the performances are pitch-perfect. Even the cowardly bureaucrats, who feel threatened by the captain and his wife, are a picture of cowardly perfection. Their motives are all too human, all too real. But so is the unfathomable love they don't understand, and fear.
One of the things I really appreciate about this film is the way it expresses all forms of love as having boundaries. Jean and Pauline are not clinging vines. What we see is a mature, healthy relationship, each partner respecting the unique characteristics of the other. What a contrast to the infantile clinging vine romances out of Hollywood!
Minority Report (2002)
Free Will and Preforeordestination, as Huck Finn used to say: a real corker
Steven Spielberg excels at directing thrill rides like Jaws and Close Encounters. Lately, though, it seems he's been trying to fluff up his directorial resume with more substantive productions. More often than not, he seems to be in over his head. Minority Report, while visually entertaining chock full of technical eye candy is a curious mixture of the inimitable Spielberg style with a substantive issue. This time, he set his target on the problem of human `free will.'
The issue of `free will' is one hell of a good theme. There's a prismatic array of perspectives on the idea, a topic of serious argument for centuries. Erasmus and Luther, for example, had a rollicking good fight over it. But when they angrily smashed their hammers on the anvil of the subject, the sparks that flew up produced both the `Diatribes' and `Bondage of the Will,' works of lasting importance. And people like Emerson, rebelling against the Calvinist belief in free will as the puppet strings of God, claimed god-like autonomy when he boldly declared to the world, `I make my own circumstances.' And then behaviorists like Skinner and Watson sneered at `free will' as a childish fantasy similar to the ignorant Russian peasant's belief that the steam engine had an animating `spirit.' And this isn't even the tip of the iceberg.
But Spielberg well, he likes to simplify things to the point of being just plain goofy. The `pre-cogs' in this story are brain-damaged people who can see future murders. Their precognition is a `gift,' a natural compensation for their other mental deficiencies. OK, I can buy that. But here's the rub: they are never wrong, but occasionally they `disagree.' Errrr, uuuuh, like, What?? Either they're never wrong, or they're occasionally wrong, but not both. And this absurdity is the mental linchpin of the entire movie. I mean, How could anyone miss it? It's not even presented as a paradox, like the `liar's paradox' that logicians think is so clever. Discrepancies like this run through the entire length of the movie, and eventually make one's head hurt. But, if you like action, it ain't bad.
The Insider (1999)
The Bill of Rights and "Prior Restraint:" The Tobacco Companies as Censors
Back when good old James Madison was thinking and ciphering and scribbling up the Bill of Rights, the phrase `freedom of the press' had a specific meaning: freedom from `prior restraint,' which meant that publishers no longer had to submit their articles to a board of censors for approval before going to press. To the censors, just because something was true didn't mean it would be approved; on the contrary, the truer something was, the more dangerous it could have been as an instrument of sedition and insurrection.
What an irony, then, that 200 years after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the tobacco companies have the power, and authority, to exercise `prior restraint' censorship on matters of fundamental and vital interest to the public welfare. It's as if the tobacco industry has become the pre-Revolutionary equivalent of an oppressive board of censors. I suspicion that it would have made Madison's blood boil. Ain't that a corker?
Not since All the President's Men has such a significant, insightful, beautifully presented and dramatically poignant documentary film an embellished but basically true tragedy of epic Greek proportions been released. On the one side, you have Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), a producer for CBS's `60 Minutes,' whose mission is to communicate vital information to an informed, voting populace. On the other, there is Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), a former tobacco executive, who faces a monumental moral dilemma: on the one hand, he knows the dirty secrets of the tobacco industry, and deeply feels his duty to expose them; on the other hand, he is bound by his confidentiality agreement with Brown and Williamson, which he also feels duty bound to honor. Worse yet, Wigand faces an array of profoundly negative personal consequences if he decides to go public. Needless to say, no one would blame him if he decided to protect himself and keep quiet. But to talk, well, that's as valorous a deed as ever accomplished on a field of battle.
This is a true `must see' video.
Training Day (2001)
The Art of Seduction
Seduction. It's such an interesting subject. Kierkegaard used to say that it is a necessary part of religious conversion. And Kuhn used to say that conversion is an essential part of every scientific revolution. Would the world go round without it?
I love Training Day precisely because it's such a visceral foray into the art of seduction; for example, when Jake, the trainee, is faced with a serious moral dilemma, Alonzo tells him that the game they're playing is chess, not checkers, and adds, with avuncular affection, that when he's able to match what's going on in his head with the `real world,' he'll feel better. Only after he knows how to play the game, Alonzo adds, after he has become `wise' to real world, can he change things for the better. But he must become part of the system, however corrupt, before he can change it. He must have some dirt on him before others can trust him. From a pragmatist perspective, this is reasonable. From a `strategic' perspective of a chess match, it's morally superior. `They build jails because of me,' Alonzo boasts.
And so, when the rookie makes his choice to challenge Alonzo's `official' construction of reality with that of his own, he's really challenging the entire system. In the eyes of his peers, he's an egoist, a `choir boy' who's better suited for a different line of work. He's a threat, not because he's ethically superior to his colleagues, but because he just doesn't understand the fundamental realities of the situation. `It's not what you know: it's what you can prove,' Alonzo says several times over to his protégé. Alonzo has the social and political capital to `prove' anything he likes.
The more times I see the video, the more I buy into Alonzo's perspective. And the more I wonder if he wasn't right after all. The game is chess, not checkers. Watch it again and see if you don't notice a subtle change in your attitude.