Crazy Stupid Love

She's too hot for him (and should really be looking at me, instead...but I digress...)

Not crazy, just stupid

Is this the state of rom-com today? Talent and effort and mucho production budget, creating a huge, yawning 'meh' of a movie?

So we have Cal (Steve Carell) married to Emily (Julianne Moore)--and right there credibility just zoomed straight out a window. Try as I might, and I did try for about the length of the picture, I just could not picture Emily marrying Cal short of Emily suffering from, oh, severe mental retardation, or Cal possessing a stack of incriminating photos. She's just too much woman for that wimp.

But--okay, granted we swallow this premise, hook, line, sinker, whale--Emily straight away tells Cal she wants a divorce, because she had an affair; Cal promptly tosses himself out of the speeding car. Nice jolt of a moment, but the gesture sets you up for a movie full of Carell committing all kinds of wild and wacky gestures and, well, this turns out to be his entire quota; nothing quite as out-of-left-field will happen again, though there is an eight-way confrontation late in the story that is intricately amusing, if not as startling.

Carell repeats the schtick he's mastered since Forty Year Old Virgin some four years before--the awkwardly sensitive fortysomething around which the world revolves (hey, he's the producer after all). His is the most fully written and realized character, of course, with every change in feeling or sensibility, every conflict or humiliation or wound to his pride dutifully recorded and given proper recognition. Everyone else trails from far behind, and the women in particular suffer from a lack of character detail--Emma Stone's Hannah, an up-and-coming lawyer, only pops up once in a while until the big reveal (you keep thinking she belongs in another picture entirely--and that is a dead giveaway, plotstructurewise); Ryan Gosling's Jacob, who teaches Cal how to pick up women, is an unlikely confection (he spends so much waking hours chasing women you wonder how he amassed enough money for his awe-inspiring bachelor's pad--is he really a rich kid (where's his rich family, then?)? A drug dealer? Maybe Carell should be a little more careful about associating with him...). Granted Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), the family babysitter who Cal's son has the hots for and who in turn has the hots for Cal, is a reasonably rounded character--but, you keep suspecting, that's only because she's such an important plot function to the storyline of both males.

Most egregious example is Emily--who is she? I mean, really? Gorgeous wife, hot mother, great actress. we don't know what she's like with the kids (besides a four-minute wordless pantomime through glass windows), we don't know what the kids think of her new boyfriend, we don't know what she sees in Cal (hell, we don't know what she was smoking when she saw Cal--I'd at least want to know that much), and we don't know what made her precipitate her affair with the infamous David Linhagen (Kevin Bacon as--believe it or not--the most likeable male in the movie), or why she chokes it off when she does. There are hints of an unhappy, complicated person here--Moore is more than good enough an actress to suggest this--but she's working with thin material. You're constantly aware that all the focus is the prod--sorry, husband.

Of directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, former writing team (Bad Santa 2003) turned directors (I Love You Philip Morris 2009) one has expectations, but combined with Dan Fogelman, who wrote the script (not to mention Cars (2006), Fred Claus (2007) Bolt (2008), Tangled (2010), Cars 2 (2011)--guy apparently believes in quantity over quality), the fusion is more family friendly, decidedly toothless. As is true with practically every recent comedy the look is sitcom flat and undistinguished (what was the last good-looking comedy I'd seen? Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet? Maybe. Last good-looking rom-com I'd seen? Wow--Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation” (2003), perhaps?).

Rom-com as a genre is dead, or at least close to total creative exhaustion, and I doubt if this will change matters much. The picture doesn't have the go-for-broke spirit of, oh, the Farrelly Brothers' Hall Pass (which has a penis joke that leaves this movie's penis joke feeling flaccid in comparison). It certainly doesn't have the crisp, swift wit of Steve Moffat, whose TV series Coupling (2000-2004) has four times the laughs, and twice the insight into what makes relationships work (better yet, Moffat manages to write a series of brilliantly hilarious monologues--usually delivered by Jack Davenport--that define clearly and definitively how relationships work). It doesn't even have the piercing romantic spirit and imagination (much less humor) of Moffat's 2006 script for the TV series Dr. Who (The Girl in the Fireplace).

Am I such an unsentimental old curmudgeon, demanding so much of my romantic comedies? I don't think so; I just like to think I have standards, is all.

First published in Businessworld, 8.18.11

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Lung Bunmi Raluek Chat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)

The man called 'Uncle'

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's latest, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Lung Bunmi Raluek Chat, 2010), is ostensibly about an old man undergoing renal failure, and his final days--but don't let that synopsis fool you. It's steeped deep in the beauty of Northern Thailand's countryside and jungle--but no, this is not your usual 'beauty-of-nature' flick. It's filled with spirits and strange creatures and even stranger occurrences--but don't let those elements waylay you either. The film is not quite as fabulist as it sounds, and not easy to engage with (for one, it moves at a pace a snail would find leisurely) but it can be ultimately fulfilling, if you manage to cotton on to what the director is trying to do.

As mentioned, we have this dying uncle (Thanapat Saisaymar); he's visited by his sister-in-law Jen (Jenjira Pongpas), and Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee, who's often in Weerasethakul's films). While at the dinner table they're visited by Boonmee's dead wife Huay (Nattakarn Aphaiwonk) and his long-lost son Boonsong (Geerasak Kulhong), who isn't dead but transformed into a 'monkey ghost' when he chased and mated with a similar creature. Huay's entrance is simple enough--she solidifies out of the thin air--while Boonsong's isn't: a pair of glowing red eyes (an allusion to the ape-men in Kubrick's 2001?) rises from the staircase, cloaked in deep shadow. Weerasethakul had a practical reason for keeping the creature half-lit (it helped hide the fake costume), but the quiescent ambient sound, the total lack of background music, the sheer profundity of the surrounding dark gives Boonsong's entrance an impressive if sombre power.

But that's not what the film's all about, it's not what gives Weerasethakul's work its unique flavor. Once Boonsong steps away from the shadows and Huay greets her husband and his relatives, talk devolves to gossip and health news. All sorts of spirits and fantastic creatures (as Boonsong notes) may be drawn to Boonmee's approaching death, but the living and human welcome them as they might any dinner guest, and insist on bringing them up to date with affairs as they would a long-absent friend or relative. Later, there's this interlude involving a princess and a catfish in a pond admiring her, and what captures your attention isn't the catfish (a lump in the water at first) but the princess' ease in adjusting to the the idea of a talking fish and eventual, sensual response. The fantastic and the familiar encountering each other, accepting each other, achieving intercourse with each other in every sense of the word.

At the same time Weerasethakul presents the quotidian as something extraordinary. Boonmee, a landowner, goes out to his tamarind plantation. In one of the finest sequences in the film he has Jen taste the honey from his apiary, straight from the comb; he notes that the syrup has the flavor of tamarind and maize--a sort of sweet-and-sour combo. Jen, delighted, exclaims that it's like chewing gum. Boonmee rests at a small hut he's built for the purpose, drains the tubing of his errant liver, takes a nap, and there's this lovely moment where Jen gazes at his sleeping back while he lies on the hut floor, surrounded by the orchard's bright green beauty.

Critics note how nonjudgmental Weerasethakul is; that said, I doubt if everything and everyone in the film is as benign as they appear, or that the film is as light-hearted as it makes itself out to be. Boonsong turned his back on his father and fellow humans to become a monkey ghost (did he think of what his disappearance might do to his parents?); Jen's nephew Tong serves as a Buddhist monk, and on his last day sneaks out to Jen's and his sister's hotel room where he insists on taking a warm shower (“What if someone sees you?” he's asked; “Then let me in,” he replies--the scene has this faint air of incestuous hanky-panky about it).

Most ambiguous of all is Boonmee. When he visits his plantation he jokes with his workers--illegal immigrants from Laos--in awkward French, the language of their former colonizers; the workers laugh appreciatively, as they would with any boss who has the power to have them deported. “I've killed too many communists,” Boonmee later frets, thinking the karmic burden this represents won't allow him to reincarnate as a higher being. “You killed communists for the nation, right?” Jen asks, presumably in an attempt to ease guilty feelings; no reply. Possibly Boonmee was a member of the local counter-insurgency forces, which were known to have inflicted violence, even killings, against communist sympathizers in regions like the Isan countryside--but Weerasethakul doesn't over-elaborate; he suggests that Boonmee has a troubled conscience, and moves on.

Perhaps the film's most extraordinary passage is a dream Boonmee describes, depicted by Weerasethakul as a series of stills a la Chris Marker's La Jetee (1962). He talks of going into the future in a time machine (yep--Marker); of an unnamed ruling authority that can make people disappear; of a light shining on him that can make him disappear; of having to run. It's an unsettling moment, and I can't say I have absolutely deciphered it, but the dream suggests a vision of retribution--perhaps revenge. The scenes that follow in the cave suggest, for all their melancholy sparkle and beauty, that Boonmee accepts this judgment as his fate (he sits, his head bent down, with all the wordless pathos of a wounded-down toy, seepage trailing from his side). A beautiful film, one of the finest of last year--of the last several years--and a fitting winner of the Cannes' Golden Palm. 

First published in Businessworld, 8.18.11 

 

L'Inferno and Nosferatu

A still from L'Inferno

The horror, the horror

Thanks to the generosity of the Goethe Institut, the Japan Foundation, The Instituto Cervantes, the Embassies of Italy and Greece, The 5^th International Silent Film Festival will unfold from August 26 to 28 at the Shang Cineplex 2, in Shangri-La Plaza Mandaluyong, and oh, wonders of wonders--at least two of them are horror films (well, one indisputably is; so is the other if you stretch definitions a little).

The rarer creature (and borderline horror) is Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe de Liguoro's L'Inferno (1911). This largely forgotten silent was a huge hit at the time of its release, with plenty of applause during and after its premiere screening in Naples (the film went on to gross over two million dollars in the United States). Today it stands as a curiosity, at sixty-eight minutes the first Italian feature ever made.

Mind you, we're not talking D.W. Griffith here; the intertitles do most of the narrative heavy-lifting, giving us a clunky ten minutes of exposition explaining what's going on in Dante's life, who Beatrice is, why he's wandering a desolate wood, threatened by various largely symbolic predators. When Virgil finally takes him under wing (at the behest of his beloved Beatrice, who descends upon the great classical poet like the Good Witch of the North) he is informed that the path to salvation leads first through the depths of hell--you have to know the worst in human nature, Virgil seems to say, before you start trying for the best. It's not going to be an easy path; “abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” Dante is warned before entering. The line still retains a chill, even in this film, even now.

The film is basically a series of tableaus of increasing levels of complexity, and horror, though some victims are given background stories, to flesh out our sympathy for them (possibly the most poignant involves the Count Ugolino and his family, who are tormented by the Archbishop Ruggieri). Some of the effects are still striking; the forced perspective shots of Minos, of Pluto, and especially Antaeus--lowering Virgil and Dante on the palm of his hand--is well done. Effects shots of flying sinners stutter and shake as if pushed by palsied fingers, but nevertheless retain some kind of power--they are unmistakably human bodies, they are indisputably naked and vulnerable, and they tumble helplessly across the damned skies.

Some of the simpler images still have the power to shock, or impress--I'm thinking of Dante ripping a tuft of hair off one trapped sinner, of another gnawing on a fellow sufferer's skull, of Dante and Virgil walking out of the darkness (the mouth of a cave) and into the light. Satan's ultimate appearance is the most elaborate of effects shots, and while not exactly horrific, he does have some of the scale and grandeur of Dante's original.

Of the print I have this to say: the black-and-white graininess and visual crudity only serve to increase the film's power. Not only does black-and-white improve the ancient special effects, but you sometimes get the impression you're watching video footage from a camera smuggled into Hell--there's an eerie sense of stolen imagery, of footage shot without permission (which helps explain the obscurity and difficult lighting, one imagines).

F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu suffers from the terrifying burden of its reputation as “the most frightening film ever made.” Perhaps not at first glance, but today's definition of frightening is in my book far too limiting and literal, if not downright dull. What would it take to make one jump out of one's seat? A serial killer leaping out of a dark corner p'raps, complete with screechy music and a family-size pizza's worth of tomato sauce and toppings...but then a dog jumping at the big screen might suffice, and so (in one of its earliest incarnation) might a bus screeching to a halt (see Cat People (1942), Jacques Tourneur's most famous if not necessarily finest film). Nosferatu is horror of a different kind; it drips its venom quietly, without untoward fuss, until one is overwhelmed--as designed by Murnau, it's a silent, remorseless killer of a film.

Take the Carpathian mountains, where Count Orlock (Max Schreck) lives--a tortured landscape, forever straining upwards or dropping precipitously from a great height. The castle is a massive, mute fortification, all thick, brooding walls and gigantic doors that dwarf their human inhabitants.

Orlock himself is a fantastic creation, a creature Murnau must have imagined clinging to the vertical rock faces of this castle among these mountains--something reptilian and pale, with huge eyes (the better to see with, in the dark) and clawed hands for a tight grip. The two gigantic fangs sticking out at front instead of at each side seem laughably grotesque at first, but it's Murnau giving the creature rodent features, not just reptilian--as Schreck plays him, the laughter tends to die gurgling its way out one's throat.

Midway through the film, separating Orlock's world from our own is a sea voyage, possibly Murnau's most lyrical horror sequence. Orlock has front-loaded the ship with box upon box of rat-infested earth (at one point we see text explaining that the “nosferatu's” strength comes from the earth he carries with him). The rats take over, the crew disappears one by one; the ship takes on the aspect of a haunted vessel (think the Mary Celeste, or the Flying Dutchman). When the ship glides into view in Wisborg ('Bremen' in some translations), it's a ghastly thing, a black presence that slips uninvited into the town's rational sensibility like spilled ink into a sheet of white paper.

It's worth noting that the scenes of Ellen (Greta Schroder) pining for Count Orlock so many leagues away feel like a parody of love--of two people yearning for each other's embrace, albeit for more bizarre reasons (the one-way transmission not of semen, but of blood; not for procreation, but for a perversion of immortality). Again, here the power isn't so much in the ability to startle or shock, but to subvert ordinary conventions, upend notions of human relationship. Ellen desires not Orlock's love but his voracious hunger; Orlock desires not Ellen's admiration but her long, beautiful neck, with all the veins pulsing within.

The rats and the plague they carry with them are the invention of screenwriter Henrik Galeen, and Murnau runs with the idea as far as he can. The images of rats, and of corpses--of vertical beings rendered horizontal by invisible presences--subvert stable, sober Wisborg; Murnau has a line of coffins making their way up the town's geometrically precise, neatly laid-out street, a burlesque of the town's evacuation procedures. The rats--and more, the plague--take Bram Stoker's syphilis metaphor (with its anxieties involving human sexuality) a step further, and evoke older, more powerful fears: of bubonic plague, of death on a massive scale. The world with its level ground and vertical buildings is being upended, brought closer in line with Orlock's world of high mountains and deep ravines; the balance of nature and of the world in general is slowly being destroyed.

I actually like Murnau's resolution better than Stoker's--in the novel Dracula (of which Murnau's film is a blatant rip-off) we have an extended chase that ends in a pitched battle, very physical, not very evocative; in Murnau's film the balance is corrected by a sacrifice of the highest kind, by one whose purity is in stark contrast with the corruption at the heart of the story. A great horror film? I think so; and I'm willing to fight fang and claw with anyone to prove my case.

First published in Businessworld 8.25.11

Cowboys and Aliens (Jon Favreau, 2011)

Boom boom bang bang

What to say about Jon Favreau's Cowboys and Aliens? Like Samuel Jackson's Snakes on a Plane (2006), what you read in title pretty much what you get: hard-riding Western folks battling fanged-and-clawed extraterrestrials. Like the movie or not, you can't accuse 'em of false advertising. Unfortunately.

Story begins with Jake (Daniel Craig) waking up in desert with big metal bracelet in one wrist and no memory. Arrives in small town, is accused of being an outlaw by townfolk, including rich cattleman named Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) who accuses Jake of robbing his gold. Matters reach state of tumultuous furor (well--bubbly fizz) when aliens arrive in what look like giant metal dragonflies, use hi-tech lassos to snatch people off the ground and carry them away. Plenty folk taken, including Dolarhyde's son Percy (Paul Dano); Jake and Dolarhyde ride out together to try bring 'em back.

Forgot to mention: Jake meets Mysterious Woman (but aren't they all?) named Ella (Olivia Wilde). Doesn't add much to party 'cept when she dies body is thrown into bonfire, resurrected, walks out of flames in her altogether. Wilde perfectly suited for last part, but that's about it far as entertainment value concerned--she can't even strike sparks off of flinty Craig, who has apparently decided to glower for rest of the picture (why, I don't know--artist's expression of aesthetic disapproval over putrid production, perhaps?).

Favreau's career a puzzler; after directing generic comedy fare (Elf (2003)) and special effects-heavy children's book adaptations (Zathura 2005), suddenly ups ante by coaxing Robert Downey Jr. into giving only recent Marvel movie performance with any sense of emotional texture (Iron Man (2008); Iron Man 2 (2010)); now Favreau seems to have dumbed self back down with blow-em-away, blow-em-up summer flick complete with Indiana Jones as grizzly curmudgeon and James Bond as cool-as-cucumber (if somewhat robotic) protagonist.

Granted both played by Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, who are capable of good work, and Paul Dano who, in films like There Will Be Blood (2007), shown to be capable of more than good work--but what they doing in this piece of cow flop? Favreau set up expectations; proved that with good actor could come up with something watchable, if not enjoyable. Craig under Favreau seems to be phoning--no, telegraphing in (phones not invented yet). Plays cool cowboy same way he plays cool secret agent: stoic, not a little stolid. Ford warmer, perhaps livelier than in last few pictures: here plays what is ostensibly called 'bad' guy, or nasty customer not adverse to tying man between two horses. Meanness mainly show, of course (Dolarhyde cuts man loose from one horse); when this becomes clear movie collapses to ground with soft whispered 'pffft!'

Dano--as said terrific in There Will Be Blood--mostly wasted here. After playing dissipated youth in movie's first twenty minutes, is captured by aliens and kept in storage for most of picture.

Isn't as if Favreau were hotshot action filmmaker. Fight sequences in Iron Man movies never high points; high point was always Downey fooling around, trying to bring comic-book character to life (with Gwyneth Paltrow lending touch of rom-com frisson to proceedings). Given title like Cowboys and Aliens expect decent action sequences, but these look secondhand, as if borrowed from sources of not much higher quality (this year's incomprehensibly shot and edited Battle: Los Angeles; Neill Blomkamp's 2009 District 9; and--thank you much for reminding--Roland Emmerich's ridiculously overblown, just-as-if-not-more-so derivative Independence Day (1996)).

Keep thinking: Howard Hawks could've done this in his sleep. He master of western genre, knows how to shoot horses riding across Arizona landscape, knows how to stage gunfights, how to get maximum dramatic and comic mileage out of even halfway talented actors (and actresses). Hawks knows when odds are too one-sided how to even 'em up, in inventive and entertaining ways (thinking of literally explosive finale to Rio Bravo (1959)); even has experience in directing alien invasion pictures, albeit on small scale (The Thing From Another World (1951)). Hawks know how to apply special effects (as little as possible), how to stage, shoot and cut action sequences (cleanly and coherently), how to have woman address man (saucily as possible, to provoke not just man but all males in audience). High art or low entertainment, Hawks would produce something that grab attention, or at least be watchable. He at least make girl saucier, instead of hot human body hiding wet noodle alien brain with nada personality.

Not stupidity of basic concept I object to--as suggested, Hawks could have done this in deep sleep, wearing pajamas--but laziness of execution of final product. Back to home planet from whence originate!

First published in Businessworld, 8.11.11

Vacation (the sequel)

My forays into New York aren't always about eating, and aren't always about film; sometimes I just want to re-visit locations that for me define the city, or at least define some of the most memorable ways man has put stone and steel to use. 

Take Grand Central Terminal, shown below:

The soaring ceiling, once looked overgrown with dark moss, is now a bright green, thanks to an extensive restoration job; the at one time dull-brass stars are now gleaming constellations (a little hi-tech help from LED bulbs)--you think of gold coins glittering from the bottom of an upturned aquarium. The brass four-faced clock perched atop the center ticketing booth, the sunlight streaming down from barred cathedral windows--this Church to the Railway Gods with its unceasing buzz (it houses forty-four platforms connected to sixty-seven tracks, the largest train station in the world) is a drama few filmmakers can resist shooting (it's one of the most common images of the city on film). Not everyone has managed to justify their use of it, though; some of the most memorable include Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King (which magically transformed Grand Central into a grand ballroom full of waltzing commuters) and maybe Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way (which turned the terminal's escalators and tunnels into playground setting for a deadly game of tag).

Sometimes I feel like something quieter:

The Cloisters in upper Manhattan seem like another world--you step out of the subway station, see a playground across the street, climb stone steps, find yourself in Fort Tryon Park. You take winding paths past flower beds and giant trees (surrounding rocky fort battlements with breathtaking views) to the highest elevation in the island, and finally to a monastic castle in part assembled from pieces of actual castles and monasteries, brought to the country stone by ancient stone. 

The museum has an extensive collection of Medieval art and crafts including intricate silver and gold pieces (a gold-plated salt cellar, an early silver-and-rock-crystal fork with an uncomfortable resemblance to a dagger); it has a garden planted and laid out exactly as in a monastery, with plenty of herbs and medicinal plants (monks were a practical people who expected long periods of isolation, if not outright siege); it has beautiful examples of stained glass (including grisaille and bright-colored windows, some of which contain unforgettably vivid shades of deep yellow); and playing cards, oblong shaped and intricately drawn and colored (reminding me of Tarot cards--and why not? One's fate or fortune, decided by a draw from the pack).

Some of the most memorable sights uptown aren't found inside The Cloisters, but here:

A view of the Hudson River and George Washington Bridge from Fort Tryon Park. I doubt if all the vegetation or forest is native to the area, but you do get some sense of what the island must have looked like before the settlers took over.

And sometimes the fascination doesn't involve an entire castle or river or park; sometimes it can be a detail as small as a subway sign--

--complete with Braille dots and mounted for some reason on cork. Possibly one of the oldest in the city? Possibly.

Calling Katz Deli an institution doesn't help, does it? Even if Katz is a repository of New York Jewish foodcraft and artifacts, it's hardly a museum--not when people throng inside actively interacting with and consuming said artifacts.


I've tried other delis; love the fatty tenderness of New York pastrami, the richness of their chopped liver. It's just that Katz's hand-slices the pastrami (meaning the meat is just that much thicker yet oh-so-tender, and the outside crust of peppercorns crumbles and falls between the slices), and the chopped liver has...something (Liver? Boiled egg? Schmaltz, or rendered chicken fat? A combination of the three?)...mixed into it that makes it that much sweeter. A varied plate of pickles, a bottle of Dr. Brown's Celery Tonic (the vegetable-y soda offsets the taste of deli flesh), a slice of cheesecake (thick and creamy and faintly flavored of vanilla) and yes, I can die a happy, happy man. 

And, yes, sometimes it isn't bad to spend a little money. We called M. Wells Diner, one of the hottest new restaurants in New York for a reservation.

"Ten o'clock?"

"It's the only one available."

"In the evening?"

"We'll call you back if anyone cancels."

In retrospect, I suppose we were lucky to get a reservation that same day. I remember listening to one man--he'd just finished dinner and was talking to the hostess--make a reservation for four in October. 

At around 9.30 we took the 7 train, stepped out at Hunter's Point, looked around--and we were there. An old building offered steak and seafood, all shuttered up, and right beside it was this tiny diner car, all gleaming stainless steel. Pushed in the diner doors and were told we were too early. 

So we sat outside, and waited. And waited. Ordered a lemonade, sipped it. Waited some more. Ten on the dot we stepped back inside, and no, the table still wasn't ready, so we waited at the entrance. 

Mind you, that's just the time aspect, which felt infinite; I haven't even begun mentioning space, which was anything but. The diner was tiny, about the size of a sardine can if you took out all the sardines. The booths were jammed with customers, the counter seats stuffed with customers; the only appreciable free space was behind the counter, and with all the waiters and cooks and hot appliances bubbling and hissing and running about I doubt if our presence would be appreciated there either. I wondered stupidly: why don't they move into the building next door if  they were so crowded? Knock out a wall, connect the two spaces, voila! Instant gratification. Wouldn't be the same, I suppose. A critic suggested the whole thing was 'performance art,' and I wouldn't be surprised; all that's missing is a gang of young actors hanging in a unisex restroom, lighting it up and talking about their next gig... 

We were finally seated, some half an hour later--and here I might as well present a bit of history and philosophy: M. Wells is the brainchild of Sarah Obraitis and her husband Hugue Dufour, formerly of the famed Au Pied de Cochon, in Montreal. Dufour cooks and decorates his little eatery according to the principles of what you might call 'casual minimalist.' Just click on his website above: all you get is a photo featuring their name, their hours, phone number, address, email address, and not much more.

Note that they're open for brunch, but not weekends; according to one article, they don't have the facilities to serve the 200 diners weekend service would involve. Ballsy statement, assuming two hundred people would want to come on a weekend to what looks like an industrial neighborhood, all shut warehouses and not much else beyond the Long Island Expressway roaring nearby.  That said, with this much crowd sitting and waiting to sit, you tend to believe them.

The menu was divided into small plates, big plates; we ordered four small, three big. The tomato tart was fresh tomatoes on nutty cheese on crackling crust--a perfect little pizza, only tastier. The Russian breakfast was blinis--crepelike pancakes--with caviar, creme fraiche, smoked sturgeon, simple and fresh. The lobster roll was chunks of lobster  in a perfectly toasted roll (the textures--chew of lobster, creaminess of brown butter (with a hit of tarragon), crispness of bread--played like a light melody on the tongue). The escargot and bone marrow with shallots and red wine puree, served on half of a shank bone, was a spectacle to both eye and mouth: toothsome mollusks in the richest meat butter in the world, substance and style in every bite. 

Big plates were exactly as advertised, really big food served in what I can only describe as ceramic tubs. This included roasted mackerel with fried gnocchi and ratatouille--not the little fish they stuff into cans; we had a huge slab of smoky fish draped into and barely fitting the little bathtub with firm, flaky flesh, the texture nicely offset by crisped gnocchi, the flavor by earthy vegetables. 

The saddle of lamb with tahini and pomegranate molasses (what on earth is a 'saddle?' The pelvis?) is amazing--each slice has a different texture and flavor, from dark, smoky crust to sweet and juicy pink to tender chewy translucent tendon. It's like the roast transforms with every tap of the knife, the trick performed against a backdrop of slightly bitter tahini (say the main ingredient aloud, and the cavern opens into a subterranean wonderland) and tangy-sweet molasses (for contrast, and Middle Eastern flair).

Then there's the BibiM Wells, their version of the classic Korean bibimbap. The bibimbap I ate in Jeonju was Korean comfort food, sliced-and-diced vegetables and shredded beef over broth-flavored rice, with a fried egg on top for richness. This version was a seafood bounty: razor clams, scallops, gravlax, accompanied by julienned vegetables and fried yam chips that I kept mistaking for crisped bacon (I was thinking all the while that it was an odd if welcome touch, the addition of pork to the dish), all over fluffy steamed rice. Instead of fried egg for richness, foie gras; to tie it all together is the mildly spicy sweetness of a maple chili sauce.

"How is it?" the waitress asked.

"This shouldn't work," I said. "Gravlax, clams, scallops and foie gras? It's crazy. It should never work. But it does."

The waitress didn't seem pleased. Maybe I was babbling; maybe I came across as thoroughly pissed. I meant well.

I suggested dessert, but everyone was stuffed; they wouldn't hear of it. I pointed out that the blueberry pie behind us, doing a good imitation of a manhole-sized disc of cracked asphalt, was constantly shrinking as waitress after waitress hacked off hunks for customers. C. replied that all he wanted was to get up and walk a little or he would burst, literally. I suggested the maple pie, or how about the Paris-Brest, "a kind of funnel cake?"  Everyone groaned in protest.

"Do waitresses get paid a lot?" La. asked.

"No, but add the tips and it's a decent wage. Why?"

"Because I'd like to work here someday."

Postscript: according to recent articles, M. Wells Diner will be closing down at the end of this month. Two thoughts come to my mind with the new: first, we were lucky to actually eat there, and second: that guy who made reservations for four in October--what's he going to do now?


8.21.11

The 'Kulo' (Boil) Exhibit

Mideo Cruz's Poon

Silence!

I'd been following the recent controversy over the 'Kulo' (Boil) exhibit over at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), from the initial news splash about Mideo Cruz's exhibit to the shitstorm that followed to the closing of the exhibit and resignation of CCP visual arts department head Karen Flores and the artists' response that followed, and I have this much to say:

Art should be free to shock. Art should antagonize. Art should shake up established norms and thinking and provoke discussion. Otherwise, what is it good for? 

Mind you, I'm not saying that artists and the art they create should enjoy zero responsibility, or that they should be totally immune from all consequences; if they offend, why, the offended have every right to protest right back, to agitate, demonstrate, declare in print or audiovisual media their indignation. Viewers and readers have every right to stake out a position and loudly agree or disagree, to boycott or even picket the exhibit's entrance. That's a right too, every bit as important as the artist's to freely create. 

You can even attack the work from an aesthetic point of view, criticize not the artist's morals or intentions (which are irrelevant anyway) but his skill, as Lito Zulueta does in an Inquirer column. Of all the protests against Mr. Cruz, I find Mr. Zulueta's piece the most persuasive. 

Artist act; viewers react. That's what is known as dialogue, the discourse between two opposing views (for an equally if not better reasoned and well-written opposing view, check out Luis Teodoro's thoughts on the matter). Dialogue is a good and healthy thing; what isn't healthy is when the dialogue is silenced, the discourse interrupted, the exhibit closed down, and an atmosphere of threats and fear pervades. When you can't see what the fuss is all about, you can't talk about it; when you can't talk about it, you forget, and perhaps stop talking (or you stop talking because you're afraid to continue).

Mr. Zulueta's article condemning Mr. Cruz's artwork is a good thing; it's two opposing parties responding to each other (or at least one responding to the other--far as I know Mr. Cruz has yet to reply to Mr. Zulueta). Congressional leaders demanding that the CCP budget be cut and worse, cyber terrorists threatening violence and death are not a good thing; they encourage silence and fear, and silence is a friend of censorship, and censorship as an active and consistent policy is in turn an essential condition to foster and maintain dictatorships throughout the world.

Not saying the Philippines is presently a dictatorship--far from it. But from here to September 21, 1972 isn't so much a distance of some thirty-three years as it is a distance of some three to four inches--roughly the distance a pen has to travel to write someone's signature onto a document declaring martial law. And all that was needed to send that pen scribbling over those three inches was a decision on the part of one man, and enough people behind the man to enforce his signature, the document, everything that followed. If it takes a handful of men deciding to act to send the country spiraling down a toilet bowl for fourteen years, how many will it take to repeat what happened today? Starting with the right of free expression? Not much, I'll wager. Not if we keep silent, do nothing, let them have their way with us.

Am I making sense? Is this too much of a leap I'm taking, are the dots I'm connecting too far apart and crazy? That's for you to decide. Discourse and dialogue, not silence and forgetting. If you disagree with me, let's talk--but for god's sake, please don't stay silent.

8.11.11

Confidential Report (a.k.a. Mr. Arkadin, Orson Welles, 1955)

 

Book cover of the novelization

The mysterious Mr. Arkadin

(Revised; warning, story discussed in close detail)

Wow--do I really want to do this? Dip my toe into the murky history of Welles' Mr. Arkadin (1955), the film famously taken from his control, re-edited, eventually released in seven different versions? A picture every bit as baroque in the viewing as it is in its making? I say seven versions, but there are suggestions that "an infinite number of Mr. Arkadins" is possible, so--

I'd seen Confidential Report--the Warner Studio's recut version of Welles' picture--years ago, on laserdisc, and agreed with a list that called it "one of the most bizarre films ever made;" I'd recently rented The Complete Mr. Arkadin issued by Criterion, with three discs (Confidential Report, the Corinth print, and a 'comprehensive' version assembled by Stefan Drossler). Interesting to watch, but as interesting if not more so was Jonathan Rosenbaum's essay posted just days after I'd seen the discs--basically he asserts that of the three versions here, the most preferable is the one generally considered the most mutilated (Confidential Report), and the least preferable is the 'comprehensive' version. Rosenbaum points to University of Paris film professor Francois Thomas' essay defending Confidential Report, citing as his criteria the one quality that print possesses beyond the other two (said quality being mentioned in Rosenbaum's article, and discussed in more detail in Thomas' essay (found as an extra in the Criterion release)).

I think I agree. Look, say, at the Neapolitan dock scene in the Comprehensive Version, where Dossler opts to carry over the narration by Van Stratten (Robert Arden) for a few extra minutes. Confidential drops the narration and plunks us right in the middle of the docks--a dark and forbidding place, silent save for the clack of footsteps on stone. Van Stratten's voiceover in the Comprehensive is an intrusive accompaniment, whereas in Confidential we get this strong sense of mystery, of foreboding: "where are we, what's about to happen?" one wants to ask. Police shout out, shots are fired; chaos reigns, only the chaos in Confidential is more confusing--the noises louder, the editing more frenetic. 

Certainly Dossler's cut is easier to follow. The voiceover helps establish that Van Stratten is there (but didn't he say as much before the film shifted scene?), that there are mysterious figures about (don't we see these figures?), that one of them has an unsteady gait (don't we realize this anyway, when Bracco (Gregoire Aslan) falls flat on his face?). Confidential's edit of the ensuing shootout is, as noted, harder to follow but more dramatic. Welles here seems to cut to startle, not clarify; some shots last long enough only to register (that steam engine--does it run on rails or roll on cobbled ground?) before another pops into place. The soundtrack reinforces this with the steam whistle's shriek declaring a state of emergency, the melody skittering hysterically over the action, horns blowing ominously in the far distance.

But that's today's (tonight's) assessment, based on what we know so far;  tomorrow Rosenbaum may have a different opinion, or something may come out to shed even further light on the matter (the surfacing of Thomas' long-yearned-for August '55 premiere print would do nicely). And we have to remember Welles' thoughts on the matter were in a constant state of flux as well; his final version of Arkadin (if we could say definitively that could be a final version of anything Welles creates) could have been completely different--better, even--from what's available right now.

That's possibly the most obvious example. I'd just stop here and repeat Rosenbaum's warning: not all restored scenes are desirable (some scenes or shots are dropped by the filmmaker for a reason), and not all restorations are the best versions of the film (in the sense that they don't necessarily follow the director's original intentions).

Rosenbaum mentions the film's resemblance to Citizen Kane; I'd agree plotwise, and also point to actual images. Like when Arkadin (Welles) confronts Zouk (Akim Tamiroff); the scene at first recalls a similar one in Chimes at Midnight (1966), when Hal confronts Falstaff, one standing over the other in a position of power and authority, the moment wordless yet eloquent (did Welles base the scene in Chimes on the earlier one?). 

Arkadin laughs; Zouk asks "So what's so funny?" "Old age," Arkadin says. He repeats it again: "Old age..." and you can hear the dots trail away as he walks slowly out the door. Kane does something similar--whispers "Rosebud" then drifts away past a hall of mirrors. 

Why didn't Arkadin kill Zouk? Because he realized the man was no threat (then why kill him later?)? Easy to think Arkadin likes his privacy, and there was at least one witness inconveniently on hand (a nameless Tamara Shayne)--that makes sense. Or like Stalin (on whom Welles was said to partly base the character), Arkadin whimsically decided to spare Zouk, and as whimsically decided to finish the job later.

You could chart Welles' view of the world and of the character he plays across the films, and be instantly struck by the trajectory, like a cannonball fired at a low angle. From Kane the richest man in the world to Arkadin the richest man in Europe; from Kane the balding old recluse to Arkadin the insanely jealous (yet touchingly impotent) father. Kane's wealth was easy to depict--Welles had the resources of RKO studios behind him, and Gregg Toland to photograph the extravagance; Arkadin was reportedly a greater challenge--according to Patricia Medina (who plays Milly, Van Stratten's assistant/girlfriend), they had to steal furniture from a nearby Hilton to decorate the rich man's yacht. 

That said, the Christmas party at Arkadin's apartment (yes, one sometimes has to shake one's head to remember, but the film ends on Christmas morning) is a gloriously prodigious affair, complete with crossed swords, triple vodkas (you need to finish one to get past the swords), miles of Christmas lights, a forest of heavily decorated trees, table after table heavily laden with food and drink, a tossed beach ball, and--love this--a miniature racing track complete with toy cars racing around. Even with poverty-row filmmaking Welles knew how to throw (and shoot) a party.

But it's more than just a matter of budget; the world of Arkadin is danker, darker, full of chaotic, uncivilized behavior. Police officers shoot first, ask questions later (criminals don't even bother to ask, they just shoot); knives are planted in peoples' backs; drug addicts are tortured, dying men tormented; rich daughters are courted in a spirit of full cynicism, with both parties aware that it's all about the money (and access, and power). 

Not just the acts, it's the attitude. Half the world is lost in dreams or slipping into despair; the other half is scrabbling up the ladder of success, stepping on the faces of anyone in the way (the first half, in other words). Arkadin is presented as being one of the hardened, and the film records the eventual crumbling and falling away of this visage, the same time it records the ascent and bitterly inevitable victory of Van Stratten. Citizen Kane was a record of a man's rise and eventual fall; Confidential Report is a record of a man's rise at the expense of another man's fall--a far more deliberate, not to mention ruthless, path.

It's not as simple as that, of course (with Welles it never is). Rosenbaum and Indiana University professor James Naremore point out many instances where Welles equates Arkadin and Van Stratten: he repeats a camera angle when Arkadin crosses a courtyard that Van Stratten had crossed earlier; he match-dissolves from one head to the other; he has Zouk ask of Van Stratten: "What are you, Santa Claus?" and later has Arkadin actually wear a Santa mask ("are you kidding me?" Van Stratten snaps, exasperated--expressing our own reaction to this too-weird touch). If Kane was destroyed by his own flaws, Arkadin is essentially destroyed by another man who embodies Arkadin's younger, stronger, less compassionate self. 

In fact for most of the film Arkadin pretty much has the upper hand, effortlessly intimidating Van Stratten and chasing him all around town in his gliding black limousine until Van Stratten realizes what is really going on (Arkadin is terrified that his daughter Raina (Paola Mori, who--kinky detail here--became Welles' third wife) will learn of his less-than-dignified origins). When Van Stratten has a true understanding of the situation he seizes the reins--strides out of the church in which he was hiding, climbs into Arkadin's car, orders the vehicle to the airport. The driver questions him, and he replies that those are "Mr. Arkadin's orders!" In effect he's telling the truth--he is Arkadin, or has become more like him the moment he made the decision to act accordingly, to play in full the role of the old man's doppelganger. 

Once this tectonic shift has been made everything else falls into place. Arkadin cannot get on the plane to chase after Van Stratten because, as one airline staff declares, all seats are taken, and an airline is a public service that cannot favor one passenger over another, no matter how much richer. Nice bit of democratic bugle-blat Welles tosses in there, though nowadays one imagines the airline could finagle some kind of excuse to bump Van Stratten off his reservation ("I'm sorry sir, we overbooked our flight; you'll have to wait. We would be happy to refund you, of course, or give you an upgrade..."). More, Arkadin can claim that Van Stratten has done something criminal,  like steal his limousine. Why he doesn't no one knows; either he dislikes involving the police, or there's a strange integrity to his struggle with Van Stratten--an integrity Van Stratten (or a younger, less self-conscious Arkadin) doesn't seem to share. When Arkadin pleads to the passengers for a seat on the plane Van Stratten unhesitatingly jeers at him; the passengers lose all sympathy and walk away. 

Rosenbaum defends Mori's performance in the film, despite her being dubbed (by Billie Whitelaw)--I agree, she may not be skilled, but she's skillfully used. He defends Robert Arden's performance and I also agree; Arden plays an unsympathetic protagonist only too well, and the lack of sympathy probably influenced the many evaluations of his talents as an actor (he's pushy and loud--and suddenly you have an idea of what the young Arkadin must have been like). 

I don't agree with Rosenbaums' assessment of Welles' Arkadin. Yes it's underwritten; yes, he's mostly a facade of gestures and gimmicks  and the occasionally poignant line reading, flash and filigree hiding an emptiness inside--but I think this is part of Welles' concept for the man, and I think it works. The way I see it Arkadin is so tired and disgusted with himself he's already half-willing to leap out of that plane. The amnesia could be a half-truth; possibly he doesn't want to think about his sordid past, or the lives he's bought and sold ("White slavery?" Van Stratten wonders at one point). Arkadin asks if Van Stratten knows what it's like to be ashamed of something you don't even remember; I think Arkadin does remember, wishes he doesn't, is trying with all his might not to. 

Welles holds back on introducing Arkadin, finally does so from behind a mask--he's possibly trying to reproduce the same impact Carol Reed achieved when he introduced Harry Lime (Welles) in The Third Man (1949). Arguably he fails (despite the baroquely beautiful introduction to the masquerade ball, complete with papier-mache masks inspired by Goya), partly because Lime comes out at the perfect moment (some three-fourths of the way into Reed's picture and after over an hour's worth of preparation), partly because Welles' film is such a complex Yuletide ornament it would be difficult to introduce any kind of surprise.

(Yuletide--Rosenbaum and Naremore in the commentary wonder endlessly at Welles' religious beliefs, mainly because Arkadin meets Van Stratten in a church. To which I thought: but a Christmas movie must have a church scene! And why, they also wondered, doesn't Arkadin just kill him in that church? Because, I thought, the church is too crowded, and far as I can see Arkadin likes privacy when he kills.)

Arkadin doesn't really come alive for us, doesn't really engage our sympathies as a character until we meet Sophie (the great Katina Paxinou). "I was crazy in love with him," she growls, and suddenly we have a picture of a handsome young man, a gigolo, with enough dash to capture a gang leader' fierce heart, but not enough to openly ask the 200,000 Swiss francs he needed to start his own fortune (he has to sneak away with the money). Yet there must have been good in him--enough that Sophie would feel for him and leave him alone when she learns his secret. 

Through Sophie's eyes we see a young man; through Zouk we see Arkadin at the height of his power, so far above Zouk he doesn't even bother to kill the poor man at once. Through Raina we see a possessive yet beloved father; through Van Stratten we see a frightening enigma turned wavering giant, on the brink of a precipitous fall; we also see Van Stratten himself, millions of dollars richer and many decades older. Through Arkadin's own eyes we see a monster who has begotten an angel of a child, and wishes to protect that angel from his monstrous past (sometimes a child's image of her parents is the most damning of all). As Welles himself wrote, in an earlier film: "You put all this together--the palaces and the paintings and the toys and everything--what would it spell?" A man's life is then compared to a jigsaw puzzle, but Arkadin's isn't so much a puzzle as it is a labyrinth, with himself playing Minotaur.

Has Welles failed to bring this eponymous figure to life? I don't think so. Is Rosenbaum correct in thinking this is minor Welles? I don't think so, either. It's Welles' remake of Citizen Kane--but Kane was done by a young if precocious man at the dawn of his life; Arkadin was done by a man who has lived through some of the harrowing times his protagonist talks about (you see it in his tired, tiring eyes). The film is informed by a hard life, and hard work; the stench of despair about it is authentic, not a fashionable pose. He would push this portrait of an outsized man brought down low to a far more despairing, if not far more Byzantine, extreme in his Touch of Evil (1958)--also a masterpiece, also butchered by its studio.

One more thing: the film has possibly the single most poetic end for a screen character ever--just vanishes into thin air, leaving the plane to sputter and fail and crash. Welles' hollow man has been completely hollowed out, his power, ambitions, hopes, even (or so he believes (but such is the power of belief)) the love of his daughter--the one thing he truly cares about--taken from him. Like a great prestidigitator, a Prospero doing his final trick, he makes himself disappear, allowing the white sheet covering his body to flutter to the ground. Show's over; time to go home. 


7.31.11 (revised 8.6.11).

Captain America (Joe Johnston, 2011)

We don't need another hero

Joe Johnston's Captain America (there's more to the title, only I'm not that motivated) is fairly decent entertainment--moves at a lively pace, has a nice retro look, (circa late '30s to early '40s, complete with Unisphere and the 1939 World's Fair somehow teleported from Queens into Brooklyn), even surrounds itself with a royal flush of vivid supporting performances. Like its newly minted star Chris Evans (who plays the eponymous officer), the picture is a well-made example of standard-issue factory product, and just about as exciting.

You can tell Johnston has watched a few movies: the opening of the movie is a direct steal from the opening of Howard Hawks' 1951 horror thriller The Thing from Another World (well, Christian Nyby--but who's tracking?), where a giant craft has been discovered buried in the Arctic ice; the movie goes back some seventy years, borrowing the plotline of Buster Keaton's 1926 The General with scrawny Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, digitally reduced to chicken wishbone status) attempting again and again without much success to enlist in the army.

Hey--what worked for Keaton works just fine for Johnston, only with half the wit; Keaton for all his talent, however, did not have the assistance of Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci, grabbing this chance to sport a Teutonic accent) and his miraculous super-secret serum, designed to create an army of super-soldiers for the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR). The formula transforms Rogers into real-life Evans: blonde, blue-eyed, be-muscled, basically bland save for a hint of naïve idealism that Rogers once suggested, pre-transformation. A Nazi assassin kills Erskine and prevents further production of said super-soldiers; this disappoints SSR officer Col. Chester Philips (Tommy Lee Jones turning Philips' weary “why me?” attitude into consistent comic gold), who was promised the aforementioned army. Poor frustrated Philips refuses to recruit Rogers, and the hapless fellow ends up on a war bonds fundraising tour with a collection of leggy chorus girls, where he chafes at his mainly figurehead role (uh--the 2006 Flag of Our Fathers?); Rogers finally decides to take matters into his own hands by taking on a secret mission to penetrate and destroy a Nazi group turned renegade named Hydra, led by the nefarious Johann Schmidt, a.k.a. The Red Skull (Hugo Weaving, in default Agent Smith mode, albeit more large-scale). The finale is a combination of, oh I don't know, everything from Inglourious Basterds (2009) and The Dirty Dozen (1967)--where crack teams of heros penetrate Nazi strongholds--to even Dr. Strangelove (1964), complete with nuclear devices decorated with names across their blunt noses, and the promise of some kind of German apocalypse. A coda set in present day momentarily evokes, of all things, the elaborate hoax in Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint, before turning into an extended trailer for Joss Whedon's upcoming The Avengers, due out next year.

Evans as Rogers, the sweetly heroic square-jawed Captain, embodies the movie's sweetly heroic, square-jawed appeal; if you like the type, you're going to fall for this movie. Frankly I'm marginally more interested in bad boys like Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark (in the Iron Man movies), though what really rocks my world are the nuttier visions of distinct filmmakers--or even just filmmakers who have gone above and beyond their usually bland selves to deliver something genuinely nutty (Ang Lee's Hulk (2003), which for my money is the best or at least the most interesting of Marvel's line of superhero pictures--though Sam Raimi's soap-opera Spiderman movies are an entertaining alternative).

It's all so terribly complicated, and not a little familiar--nostalgia for an innocent America (with the innocent notion that America's enemies only have to be punished with a pummeling) combined with a smart-aleck attitude (the war-bond tour has Rogers wearing the cheesiest red-white-and-blue wool costume I've ever seen, complete with little white turkey wings drooping from each side of the hood). Evans manages to subtly skewer his heroism while still playing it straight (a feat Christopher Reeve once managed to do in the Superman movies, in the '70s and '80s). 

The battles are meat-and-potatoes action filmmaking--Johnston obviously took his best ideas from the master himself, Jack Kirby--the canted angles, the fluid fight choreography, the endlessly varied uses to which a disclike shield can be put. Only thing missing is Kirby's exuberance, the sense of forces straining dramatically against each other with the fate of the universe at stake--all for our immediate viewing pleasure.

I don't know, I don't know--if you ask me, I much prefer Joss Whedon's 2008 online mini-musical: Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. In the show's slim forty-minute running time I found more super-powered wit, heart, drama, tragedy and, yes, singable music than in all of Cap'n Crunch's two-hour-plus running time (or, for that matter, either of the Iron Man movies, the three Spider Man movies, the various X-Men movies, the Thor picture and the second Hulk flick--more than in all of Marvel's big-screen output, almost (I still kind of like the Ang Lee film)). I'd include Erik Matti's gloriously silly Gagamboy (Spiderboy, 2004) as being superior to all this Hollywood heroics and for good measure throw in Artemio Marquez's James Batman (1966)--and I haven't even begun to talk about superhero movies that I really like. In other words: why settle for blandly flavored if competently made factory product, when there's crazier stuff out there? Start looking folks. Elsewhere.

First published in Businessworld, 7.28.11