The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012)

Hero worship

Joss Whedon's The Avengers (2012) is a pretty good comic-book movie. 

How good? Let me put it this way: it's smarter than Zack Snyder's Watchmen (which unintentionally parodied--not to mention trashed--the more unsettling aspects of Alan Moore's book), more entertaining than Bryan Singer's Superman Returns (which spent too much time on melodrama, and limp melodrama at that), wittier and more varied than any of Nolan's Batman movies (Whedon's better at directing action, too), more moving than Robert Rodriguez's Sin City (okay, not saying much there).

It's a satisfying conclusion to what has been a lackluster string of Marvel movies--an indifferently directed Thor (Kenneth Branagh despite his Shakespearean chops couldn't bring his digital Asgard to life), a so-so Captain America  (Joe Johnston couldn't quite capture Jack Kirby's magic--the only reason to be interested in this square-jawed, straight-shooting hero), a passable Iron Man (passable only because Robert Downey Jr. could make even a metal armor suit amusing), a disappointingly dumbed-down Hulk (much prefer the more psychologically bizarre Ang Lee version--possibly the only Lee movie I actually like).

Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966)

The flick that fathered a hundred sequels

Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966) might be called the bastard son of a bastard remake of a bastard parody. 

Arguably it was Sergio Leone's fault. He did not strictly speaking make the first Spaghetti Western (or as Italians call them western all'italiana)--Raoul Walsh did The Sheriff of the Fractured Jaw in 1958; Mario Amendola did Terrore dell'Oklahoma (The Terror of Oklahoma) in 1959; and you might say Puccini's 1910 opera La Fanciulla del West (Girl of the West) was an Italian production set in the California Gold Rush...

But--trying to stay on-topic here--Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) took Akira Kurosawa's jidai-geki samurai comedy Yojimbo (The Bodyguard, 1961), transposed it to the American West, and produced a hugely influential hit that turned genre conventions upside-down, morphed the noble white-hatted protagonist into a dark, cigarillo-chewing anti-hero, basically created a whole new mythology for a bastard new genre.

Which is doubly ironic--Yojimbo itself was a parody, Kurosawa's subversion of the chambara (or swordfighting, a subset of the jidai-geki) genre, his way of sending up ossified conventions that he himself helped establish (Of course Yojimbo would became a hit and revitalize the genre, spawning its own sub-genre with countless imitators). Adding just one more twist is the fact that Kurosawa himself was heavily influenced by classic western filmmakers--John Ford, Howard Hawks--and all we need to complete the circle is a Japanese ripoff of A Fistful of Dollars or Django (arguably Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) is just such a picture)...

Coming back to Django (and trying, again, to stay on-topic), Corbucci's film doesn't even try very hard to disguise its influences--as with Yojimbo and Fistful we have the lone hero; as with the previous pictures the hero comes between two warring factions (the Mexican bandits and a troop of renegade Confederates (needless to say, they're racists)). Corbucci does away with the cyclical nature of violence, the vision of man outdoing fellow man in greed and depravity--he probably felt the two previous pictures wasted a lot of running time and effort keeping the complicated plotline coherent, and damned if he wasn't right: Django lives or dies on its extravagant setpieces of sadism and suffering and little else (there's a subtext involving racism, a topic Corbucci would develop further in other films, particularly Navajo Joe (1966), but it's more subtext here--an additional sharpness to the stink in the air, almost--than anything bold, or especially memorable).

Corbucci's visual style unlike Leone's doesn't try capture the action through sweeping tracking shots, nor does he try create a sense of outsized scale (the vast barrooms, endless cemeteries, gigantic closeups of Leone's films). Corbucci's action is mostly fast and functional, stitched together with quick (but coherent) cutting; when Django faces off with a bandit Corbucci intercuts handheld, high-angled footage of the two struggling with even shakier footage of the breathless onlookers, giving the viewer a strong sense of you-are-there immediacy. 

When called for, however, Corbucci can serve up cinema as grand and operatic as anything from Leone. He introduces one confrontation with the sparely beautiful image of standing fences and a spindly water tower, a lonely flute playing in the background; renegade Confederates strut into view and Luis Enriquez Bacalav's baleful trumpets take over, a snare drum giving crisp accompaniment. 

Corbucci (unlike, say Leone) doesn't have his camera track backwards, following the soldiers; instead he shows us Django's patient point of view, angular rail fences pointing as if in alarm at the approaching soldiers, the reverse shots showing Django's doomed position, perched atop his coffin behind a gigantic felled tree trunk (remarkable the contrast in imagery--the soldiers' unstoppable approach, the tree trunk's implacable solidity). More soldiers appear, wearing Klansmen-type hoods, only (a baroque touch) dyed a bright blood-red. Django continues to sit on his coffin behind the tree trunk; the music, the editing, the emotions escalate to the point where the very frame vibrates with tension--you know the climax when it comes will be something...

It comes, and it is something; it's also the punchline to a long and elaborate joke, one that began preparations from the moment we set eyes on our hero. Here's another difference between Leone and Corbucci: Leone's Man Without a Name (played with lanky minimalism by Clint Eastwood) shows a trace of faint amusement at Leone's complex shenanigans; said Man embodies Leone's point of view, an Olympian sense of distance flavored with irony. Corbucci's Django (played with soulful earnestness by Franco Nero) isn't nearly as interesting a character--he's totally immersed in his situation, no distance or irony to his posture, a classic western all'italiana hero. If there is any humor in the film--and there is, considerably--it comes from Corbucci himself, who gleefully sets up intricate visual and narrative pranks which detonate, then with ceaseless enthusiasm begins preparations for the next gag. 

I'd earlier said there's little more to Corbucci here than sadism; I'm not a little wrong. Hands are a significant motif, from a bandit spitting into his hands preparatory to whipping a helpless prostitute, to a Confederate major pulling a blood-red scarf from his pocket to wrap round the neck, to Django tenderly slipping a woman's camisole off her shoulder...later clutching desperately at his coffin, and being as desperately clutched in return. Hands, Corbucci seems to say, are arbiters of one's fate and expressive of one's inner state; to damage them is a grave sin, to have them damaged a great suffering.

So, Corbucci or Leone--who is better? Leone is an epic lyricist, Corbucci a baroque sadist; Leone likes to build complex narratives that resolve themselves smoothly, in ingenious fashion; Corbucci can barely be bothered with narrative bumps (he can't even be bothered to hide the fact that his narrative was lifted from somewhere else). Leone is a poet, Corbucci a near-madman; the world is a richer place for having both artists, and I for one refuse to pick between them. 

5.5.12

Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

The Passion of Brandon

Steve McQueen's Shame, about Brandon, an ad executive and closet sex addict, is a fascinating passion play--'passion' in the older sense, of a dramatic re-enactment of Christ's trial, suffering, death, with Brandon as the Christ figure.

Difficult to avoid the religious overtones--McQueen practically mashes your face in it. Brandon (Michael Fassbender, McQueen's collaborator here and in his first feature Hunger (2008)) is like a flagellant purifying his flesh for God, only it's not a whip but his phallus he's both wielding and mortifying at the same time (convenient, when you think about it), on and against any available woman.

As with any flagellant turned upside-down and inside-out, the pleasure (like pain) is not an end in itself, but the means--to what, exactly, is the mystery at the heart of the film. There's a humorless fervor to Brandon, a tendency during the act of sex to see past the woman--past her clenched haunches, her heaving breasts--towards some unseen objective. At one point McQueen gives us a series of explicit images, and the music (by Harry Escott) practically pounds into us (artfully, artfully) the idea that Brandon is a pilgrim on a personal Calvary, an impossible quest that can only lead to disaster, one pelvic thrust at a time. You get the impression that if McQueen had used unknown actors and just tilted his camera a few inches to the right or left of the shot's focus, one might mistaken the film for something directed by Robert Bresson--back when Bresson thought there might be such a thing as a human soul worth saving.

And then--and here's the conflict of the film--we're given Brandon's sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), who's everything Brandon's not. Where Brandon is prosperous, Sissy is homeless (she asks to stay at his apartment for a few days); where Brandon is cautiously self-contained, she is recklessly expressive; where Brandon as played by Fassbender is all hard angles and chiseled muscles (his flaccid penis being the only thing soft about him as he pads around his place naked), McQueen for a first glimpse of Sissy gives us right off a full frontal view: childlike, with tiny breasts and a slight pudginess developing around the waist. Later Brandon comes to watch Sissy sing at a nightclub and she offers a fragile, wavering interpretation of “New York, New York” (with its lyrics about determination and success in the Big City, what song could be more inappropriate for such a tentative performance?). McQueen gives us a gigantic closeup of Mulligan's gamin face, padded with dimples and a pair of plump cheeks, breathing into her mike: “I want to wake up in a city that doesn't sleep / to find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap,” and Brandon (in a similar closeup) finds he has shed a teardrop. The irony of Sissy singing that song is big--too big, actually; McQueen's firm grip here starts feeling a bit obvious, if not oppressive--and older brother can only sympathize. It's a crucial moment, a turning point: that drop is possibly the first sign of empathy to be squeezed out of him onscreen.

To complicate matters McQueen adds a strong undercurrent of sexual tension between siblings. Sissy is naturally affectionate; Brandon holds her firmly, and not a little desperately, at arm's length (he's like a cokehead asked to safeguard a kilo of cocaine). The tension awakes unknown needs in him--the need, for one, to have a normal relationship with a woman as another person and not some sexual object, not some mere receptacle for his sperm (again, you have this strong sense of foreboding that matters will not end well).

McQueen directs in a series of long takes, framing his characters in a relentless medium shot that on occasion follows them as they move about, but usually sits down patiently to wait for the scene to resolve itself. He repeats shots over and over, of Brandon standing at the subway station like a warrior-knight waiting to ride into battle, or of Brandon pacing naked in his room, a tiger restlessly measuring the limits of his cage. From Mulligan he elicits a minor miracle; where in Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive (2011) she was a rather dull young mother, here he uses her very same physical immaturity to give the film vulnerability, emotional accessibility, warmth.

Fassbender is the central consciousness of the film; his asceticism is our asceticism, his suffering our suffering, and the film is relentless in its fidelity to this idea--we only see or hear what he sees or hears, can infer only what he feels, thinks. It's a wearying task, carrying an audience's attention for most of a film's running time, stretching without snapping the string of sympathy between him and the audience; to do it while being for a large part naked and performing budoir gymnastics is something of a feat. Fassbender's physical charisma gives the film its magnetic pull; no matter what little he does or how much he seems to want to pull his shell tighter about him your eyes are still drawn to him, you're still invested in what he is about to do or say.

Shame largely succeeds, I feel, in what it set out to do. It startles; briefly, it even shocks. But it doesn't unhinge you. Can't help but think of another work about endless sex, with a wilder, far more uncompromising imagination: David Cronenberg's adaptation of J.G. Ballard's Crash (1996), about a disparate group of people who discover the erotic power of the car crash (Crazy? If you only knew). Consider a protagonist with Brandon's relentlessness but without the spiritual anguish; a creature with an insatiable appetite for sex who just doesn't care. Accepts his bizarre psychopathology totally, cruising the roads in search for a chance at penetration, carnal or metal or both. 

Cronenberg shoots the novel with a pornographer's unflinching eye, depicting the most bizarre sexual acts with the calm professionalism of a lab scientist recording the mating practices of a rare beetle; he has Ballard's cold regard down perfectly, effortlessly translated to the big screen. McQueen is a genuine artist, I think, a romanticist with an ascetic's approach--but he's basically covering ground Cronenbeg has trod years before, and contaminated with the spunk of a more current, more unsettlingly amoral generation. 

First published in Businessworld, 4.26.12 

Into the Abyss (Werner Hezog, 2011)

Dead man talking

Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss (2011) opens with a harrowing account by a chaplain of being with each convict as they are executed. He describes how he 'empties' himself of all notions and expectations, making himself a mere vessel to be filled with the experience. All proper and humble, until his voice cracks, and he has to stop and pause; it's at this point you realize that along with all the talk of being 'in the proper frame of mind,' of 'preparing oneself to be filled with the experience,' one must deal with the cost of watching men and women being strapped down and killed, again and again and again.

The documentary is about Michael Perry and Jason Burkett who in 2001 killed Sandra Stotler, her 16-year-old son Adam, his friend Jeremy Richardson. According to police Perry and Burkett approached Ms. Stotler in her house and shot her from behind; they later waited for her son and his friend to arrive and shot them too. The motive? Ms. Stotler's red Camaro.

It's a strange documentary, even for a man known for making strange films. Here Herzog has been criticized for de-emphasizing the facts--he doesn't question the solidity of the case against Perry and Burkett, nor does he even try cross-examining the two convicted killers for veracity, at least not much (Perry claims Burkett committed the killings while Burket claims the opposite). He doesn't develop a case a la Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line (1998)--doesn't even appear to be trying.

Herzog states right off with his first interview that he's basically against the death penalty; he tells Perry point blank he doesn't have to like the young man, but respects him. He's quite open about his stance, but doesn't seem all that interested in building a case against said penalty.

Instead, for better or worse, Herzog seems to be trying to explore the emotional impact of the crimes on the people involved, the victims included. There's Sandra's daughter (and Adam's sister) Lisa: we hear of the pain she felt, having lost almost all her family overnight, and the consequences to her life from that day onwards. We listen to Charles Richardson, Jeremy's brother, who has to live with the fact that he introduced Jeremy to Michael and Jason.

We listen to the testimony of a warden who oversaw over a hundred and twenty executions, at the rate of two a week; at one point he goes home, and suddenly can't do it anymore--just can't do it. He's firmly against the death penalty now.

Perhaps the most painful and honest interview is Burkett's father, Delbert. There's some sad comedy to their life--at one point father Delbert, son Jason and one other brother are reunited while transporting on the way to their respective placements, and it struck Delbert how embarrassing this all was: a family reunion with hands cuffed and ankles chained. He seems to be the most clear-eyed of all of them, acknowledging just how terrible a father he's been to his sons, how bad his life is right now, and how low he must seem to everyone watching on camera. Hard material to view--no, impossible--without being affected.

You wonder if, as some critics assert, perhaps Herzog has gone all soft-headed here; you wonder why he doesn't ask more pointed questions, confront his subjects with the contradictions in their testimony, strip away the illusions that so obviously shore up their respective worldviews.

I think one clue to what he's doing and why can be found in what's different in his approach: unlike in most of his documentaries he's hardly in this one, preferring to stay offscreen as a questioning voice-over (it's not as if he's unaware of his personal charisma, either--he can play the engaging, somewhat lunatic host-documentarian either in his own work (Grizzly Man, 2005; Cave of Forgotten Dreams 2010) or a parody of such in others (Zack Penn's Incident at Loch Ness, 2004).

Seems to me he's deliberately erasing himself from this film, allowing others' voices to come to fore. At one point he offers the rare--at least in this picture--opinion that Jesus wouldn't agree to the death penalty and tries to get Lisa Stotler to agree that an alternative like life without parole might be satisfactory, to which Lisa smiles and shakes her head. “But some people do not deserve to live,” she says. Herzog does not argue with her.

He seems to be laying out the groundwork, marking the boundaries--the depth and width--of suffering involved in murder, from the killers (legal and illegal) and victims' standpoints. This was reportedly an expansion of one episode in a mini-series to be titled On Death Row, and if he has anything more definite to say, he may possibly say it in further episodes.

Meantime Herzog has staked out some powerful, if vaguely organized, material here. He's basically stepped out of the way to allow some  memorable people to come to fore--no less memorable for the fact that I've met and talked to (and come to know) people like Michael, Jason and Charles (some not as far gone perhaps; some as internally anguished). The picture of Michael Perry grinning at the camera is haunting precisely because I've seen that grin so many times before, directed at me. You think: "he can't possibly have a violent thought in his head; he can't possibly be a killer." Oh yes, he can.

Seeing them on the big screen, pouring their hearts out to this visiting German filmmaker, is a remarkable sight (I suspect his accent disarms them--confessing to a stranger can be easier for some people). They spin out their stories, they praise God for what meager blessings fall their way, they express a nervously defensive hope for the future. What one can't see in their faces is a strong sense of security, of serenity in life, of emotional and spiritual peace.

First published in Businessworld, 4.19.12

Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa (Lino Brocka, 1974)

Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa 

Lino Brocka's Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa (Three, Two, One, 1974) shows the filmmaker's versatility in the short form, working with various writers.

The first segment, Tony Perez's Mga Hugis ng Pag-asa (Faces of Hope) has Jay Ilagan play Noni, a drug addict struggling in a drug rehabilitation center. And while the segment is generally considered to be the weakest of the three, it does feature cinematographer Romy Vitug's fine monochromatic camerawork, and the startling image of Ilagan being shaved of all his hair (a shockingly traumatic sight when I first saw it at the tender age of nine).

Brocka is at his melodramatic best with Mario O'Hara's Hellow, Soldier. Hilda Koronel is Gina, a young slum dweller waiting for her American G.I. father to pick her up and take her to America; Anita Linda is Gina's mother Lucia, who wants her daughter to leave, yet is unable to face the loneliness of life without her. O'Hara's deceptively simple story is an evocative metaphor for any number of themes: the lurid legacy left behind by the American Occupation (Lucia was unapologetically the American's mistress, and raised the child herself); the troubling questions that arise when someone tries to do something (should Gina live with her mother or father? And what happens to Lucia?); the bitterness, the rage, the--most shameful secret of all--affection felt by Filipinos for their onetime ally and master and ostensible lover.

Brocka has his actors play their roles at a higher emotional pitch than usual, which may put some off; some, however, will believe that this is unaccountably the right way to go--how can you not be affected, with issues this personal, this deeply felt?

Orlando Nadres' Bukas, Madilim, Bukas (Tomorrow, the Darkness) is Brocka's uncharacteristically gothic short masterpiece. Brocka, who has rarely done a period film and who almost always locates his stories in the urgency of the here and now (almost always in the Manila of today), with Vitug's help creates an airless, languid realm, not so much isolated as abandoned by the outside world.

Trapped is bedridden invalid Atang (the great Mary Walter) and her spinster daughter Rosenda (the equally great Lolita Rodriguez); their relationship together is a study in miniature of a love-hate, master-servant, mother-daughter antagonism of almost unbearable intensity. Enter the ugly-handsome Miguelito (Mario O'Hara, this time as actor), Rosenda's one chance to escape her lifelong imprisonment. The result is a kind of stylized melodrama you wish Brocka could have done more often (if the results can be as wonderful as this)--Brocka's penetrating analysis of human relations, transformed by a fevered imagination and a sense of doomed poetry.

(Published here as apparently the website of CineFilipino--for which I wrote this piece--has vanished, assumed defunct)

Cabin in the Woods; Mirror, Mirror; Super Noypi; Citizens' Band; The Shanghai Gesture

The last word

Cabin in the Woods (2012) is fun, a deconstruction exercise the way Scream was only wittier and more imaginative, with some serious muscle behind the evil behind it all.

Best way to see it is go in knowing as little as possible, I'd say; Whedon's script lets you know quickly what kind of movie this is, then complicates matters as swiftly as possible.

I do like it that the film takes the time to individualize the characters--we get some sense of who they are, care if they survive or not. Also like it that the film pulls some fast ones in plausibility--some unlikely coincidences, some lucky breaks--that stretch but don't snap the rubber bands of credibility (can't recall the proper term, was best I could think of).

Joss calls this his reaction against torture porn; damn straight. We need more of this kind of horror, less of that dull torture fare.

Only wish Joss had directed it--think he's a fine director, that he can do more with the camera (even the handheld kind) than most directors his age, or younger.

It's just a fantasy

And to continue with the genre-benders, Tarsem Singh's Mirror, Mirror (2012) is every bit as sloppily told as his Immortals--sloppier, in fact--but for all the cheesy effects, the story does enjoy the benefit of a genuinely funny script, and a cast as good-naturedly game as it is energetic (the standout being Armie Hammer as the unreservedly silly prince--for once, genuinely charming--and Julia Roberts as the deliciously evil queen).

The film's real star is Singh, who (unlike, say, Gary Ross) knows how to stage and shoot sword fights--they come off as both coherent and inventive. He knows how to wring every ounce of drama out of his always impressive sets (a ballroom with a gigantic bow of an entrance; a cozy dwarves' den; an enchantingly enchanted forest) and his outrageous costumes (designed by the late Eiko Ishioka, whose work on this film was, alas, her last).  

Super hero

 Quark Henares' Super Noypi (2006) isn't without its share of problems--okay, more than its share of problems--and you can see what a frustrating experience this must have been for the filmmaker: he's finally gotten a decent budget, a chance to show what he's got, and he's forced to fashion what he feels to be a piece of ordure. 

But after all's been said and done--the movie isn't that bad. Yes, the effects are terrible and some of the sets and costumes worse; yes the storytelling can at times seem painfully awkward. At the same time it manages to communicate the essential sanity of teens, it's inside them the way John Hughes likes to think he is (mostly with upper middle-class Caucasian teens, and a lot less often than you'd imagine). 

The plot twist when it comes is genuinely surprising, and surprisingly moving, and you can't help but note the differences between this and something like Chronicles: in the former the anti-hero commits crimes in the name of a wronged father or mother or beloved other; in the latter the anti-hero suffers his past hurts and his angst and doesn't really give a damn about anyone else...

Talk radio

Jonathan Demme's Citizen's Band (1977) is a lovely tribute to middle America--to ordinary people reaching out and annoying each other from hundreds of miles away (anticipating the Facebook culture by some twenty-six years). It's a colorful cast--a bigamous trucker; a hooker operating out of her trailer home; a seductive-voiced siren; an eager operator determined to enforce the rules of on-air courtesy (Paul LeMat) at the risk of life and limb.

The last is the hero of the film, for no other reason than that he has the most screen time, and has the unthankful task of trying to rein in his fellow conversationalists--not going to happen, but we have a time watching him try.

Charles Dickens might have written the screenplay to this movie, if he ran a ham radio: the sense of teeming, overwhelming life; the occasional touches of sentiment and pathos; the sympathy for all people, no matter how 'little.' These qualities shine through and feel like a updated version of his fiction, only Demme's has an unmistakable American quirk to it--every character there realizes he possess by birthright the opportunity to reinvent him or her self on a larger, more vivid scale, befitting the larger, more vivid landscape, and does so accordingly.

Come with me to the casbah, darling
 

Adopted from a play by John Colton, Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture (1941) had to turn the original brothel into a casino, the drug addict into a degenerate gambler--but what a casino, and what a gambler! The club rises in a series of concentric circles, with a roulette wheel spinning at the very bottom, each circle embraced by wrought metal rails depicting paradisiacal birds and lush forests, the floors teeming with Asians and Europeans of every type indulging in every kind of vice. Think of Rick's Cafe conceived as an oriental Dante's Inferno--hell choking cheerfully in its own cigarette fumes.

(And who else should be spinning the bottom roulette wheel but Marcel Dalio himself? Obviously Michael Curtiz or his producers had seen this film and appropriated the man as a kind of Seal of Authentic Decadence for their own (frankly impoverished-looking) gambling den, in a far more wholesome (read: bland) melodrama)

As for the beautiful Eurasian Poppy (the name being the only hint left of the girl's original addiction), the censors kept Gene Tierney from really cutting loose, but she and Sternberg did their level best to suggest hedonism at its most amoral and monstrous, and damn if they didn't come close, with Tierney draped over every available sofa and bar counter and man, her luscious body poured into the various slinky gowns designed for her by her then-husband Oleg Cassini.

Censorship be hanged--it's a heedless spectacle where Victor Mature recites Omar Khayyam-like verses with all the relish of a Penthouse Forum Letter of the Month, where Ona Munro as Mother Gin Sling lovingly describes her sexual degradation from one big-city harbor to another, and Walter Huston as Sir Guy Charteris smiles icily, thinking himself protected by money and power, unaware of the fatal course his destiny is describing--a gradual but inevitable spiral into destruction and despair. A masterpiece, in short.

4.13.12

Titanic (James Cameron, 1997)

The Love Boat 

No doubt about it: at a rumored budget of $250 million, with whispered stories of a long, difficult shoot; then a triumphant film opening in Japan, and huge boxoffice takings thereafter (not to mention Best Picture Oscar buzz)—Titanic has got to be, right here, right now, The Greatest Show On Earth (Last year's Greatest Show On Earth, the death & funeral of Princess Diana, has already lost its fizz).