Under 800: It Comes at Night (2017)

It Comes at Night can only be described as an overtly competent film. There is no denying its impeccable atmosphere, generated, surprisingly enough, mainly by its haunting soundtrack that never misses a beat or misplaces a tone. The close confines of the cabin in the woods that Paul has hid his family in in order to ride out the apocalypse in relative safety make for a quaintly unsettling experience that is constantly teetering on the edge of terror. The interwoven nightmares that we experience along with Travis, Paul’s son, are an impressive attempt at combining the tone of Cormack McCarthy’s The Road with constrained surrealism à la Lynch in The Straight Story, where he found the perfect balance between coherently telling an emotional story and sprinkling in moments that are closer to his typical dream-like absurdity. The set is well constructed and presented, an incredibly important detail when it comes to creating paranoia and low-burning fear. Director Trey Shults has admitted to taking inspiration from Kubrick’s The Shining for the layout of the house that Paul and his family live in, deliberate leaving it unclear and confusing, a maze that the viewer’s mind can’t help but attempt to navigate. Overall, there’s no denying that the film is pretty damn good. So why, then, have audiences shunned it? Why do some hail it as the best horror movie of the past few years while others see in it nothing more than a polished turd?

The first part of the answer is simple – people hate being misled. The trailers for It Comes at Night made the movie seem much closer to the typical horror movie than it actually was. Most of its audience went in to see a straightforward monster flick, expecting the “It” in the title to refer to a zombie or a ghost. What they got instead was a visceral meditation on the nature of trust and the unreliability of the human brain’s perception of reality. Travis is as unreliable as narrators get, and that is where many of the seeming inconsistencies and plot holes arise from. None of the scenes we see through his eyes are representitive of what actually happens in the movie’s world. And that’s one of It Comes at Night‘s main stregths – the viewer is never put in a position of omniscience. We’re given just as much information as the characters dealing with the situations on screen. When Will, another survivor who happens upon the family by chance, moves his wife and son into Paul’s house, we’re given visual cues that make us doubt their true intentions. As Paul grows ever more suspicious and begins regretting his decision to invite them in, the viewer is still unsure as to the reality of the situation. Is Will a good guy? Is he simply waiting for the right time to strike? And no, in the end we realize there are no bad guys in this situation. Will and Paul both work towards the same goal – protecting their loved ones. They like each other as people, they like being together and keeping eachother company in the face of the overwhelming sense of isolation and ennui that is inherent to the deepest parts of any forest. But the world as they know it has collapsed, and no one can truly be trusted, except if they aren’t an immediate family member. The loneliness runs deep in It Comes at Night, bubbling just below the surface of each character’s perpetually uneasy demeanor.

The second thing that seems to have left many people upset is the lack of resolution to many of the film’s themes. It’s true, It Comes at Night raises many questions but rarely even so much as approaches an answer. How did Stanley the dog make it through the first door to the house, especially considering it was sick and lost in the woods just hours prior? Who opened the second, red door? Did Travis really see Will’s son sleepwalking? Were the events at the end of the movie indicative of the existence of some creature outside the house? Many audience members weren’t satisfied by the notion of a truly confused and possibly insane narrator. And it’s hard to argue this point because it comes down to personal preference. I personally thought that seeing the most important parts of the story through Travis’s eyes was a brilliant touch that fit the movie like a glove, thematically speaking. The way I saw the movie, there never really was an “It”. “It” is fear, coming at night when the characters are at their most vulnerable, creeping in the gloomy, dimly lit edges of the house. Travis is only unreliable during the night, when he is scared out of his mind and unable to stay asleep, constantly seeing scarier versions of the things that terify him in his waking life.

It Comes at Night is very much an experience and is definitely worth a watch for anyone willing to go into it with an open mind.

 

 

Under 800: Contagion (2011)

Contagion is about as realistic as epidemic movies get. Not once does it jump the shark and succumb to the seemingly innate ridiculousness of its genre, and that is perhaps its greatest strength.

The movie follows the story of a global epidemic, somewhat reminiscent of SARS, through the eyes of a variety of characters. From civilians to military officials and CDC workers, we’re allowed a peek into every facet of life during a catastrophic disease outbreak. We see Mitch (Matt Damon) dealing with the death of his wife and step-son while doing his best to protect his daughter; Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) going around the continental US in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus, while Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) of the CDC tries to coordinate the scientific community’s efforts to find a cure; and then there’s Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) spinning his online web of conspiracy theories and profiting from his followers’ naiveté. Oh, there’s also Marrion Cotillard as Dr. Orantes in a plot line that never really converges with the main one and is quite pointless, only serving to demonstrate the global reach of the epidemic while not adding anything of import to the story.

There are quite a few characters in this movie, and all of them are given a sufficient amount of time to grow on the viewer and develop. Some remain boring and two-dimensional (the aforementioned Dr. Orantes is possibly one of the most useless characters I have ever seen in an otherwise good movie), but the majority are decently fleshed out and, perhaps more importantly, behave like rational human beings. There is very little incompetence in Contagion, if any at all – Mitch is ever alert and ready to protect his daughter, both from the disease and from the consequent collapse of the rule of law; the scientists all talk and behave like, well, scientists; even Alan Krumwiede is good at what he does, which is making money off a fake cure by convincing all of his viewers and readers that it actually works. All this may seem somewhat trivial, but take for example one of the movies that influenced Soderbergh, Outbreak (1995), which relied heavily on lapses in communication between the characters and scientific teams and on a sort of universal dullness, as if the overall level of intelligence in the world the movie was set in was somewhat lower than it is in reality.

Contagion succeeds in making the viewer feel uneasy, uncertain of what is going to happen next during its civilian segments. Mitch isn’t connected to some telepathic pool of knowledge that feeds information from the script straight into his cranium. His actions are often frantic, reactive. There’s always a look of slight confusion on his face, a great touch on Matt Damon’s part that shows just how shell-shocked Mitch is, to the point where he is somewhat removed from reality. The scenes he and his daughter are involved in give us a taste of what the average Joe might have to endure during a worldwide disaster – looting, food shortages, but most importantly, constant fear. The camera work goes a long way in translating the anarchic confusion of Mitch’s world to the viewer. Close-ups, clever angles that conceal some of the information that could be gleaned from the screen. In contrast with most disaster movies, Contagion is shot almost exclusively with steadicam and never resorts to shakiness and distortion as a means of creating artificial suspense or confusion. It’s a well-shot movie that doesn’t reach particularly high with its visuals because it doesn’t need to. The grounded, calm style of filming really fits the tone of the movie, while the more intimate, close-quarters shots that show us the reaction and shock of the characters in the face of death offer a great look into the psyche of a regular man faced with unimaginable circumstances.

Contagion is the most plausible disaster scenario ever put to the silver screen. At the end of the movie there is a sequence that shows us the very beginning of the virus. It spreads from forest bat to pigs in an industrial pork farm. It mutates during its brief stint in the pigsties and finds its way to its first human host, a chef in Macau, who becomes infected through his contiguity with the sick pig’s infected blood. From there it spreads to an American tourist, Mitch’s wife Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), as well as one of the waiters in the restaurant, a man from Hong Kong. Each of them spreads it to the people who come into contact with them, et voila – we have the beginning of a bona fide epidemic. The CDC does its best to find patient zero, while virologists try to isolate and examine the new pathogen. Director Steven Soderbergh, of Ocean’s Eleven fame, consulted multiple virologists during the making of the movie, while some of the cast members even learned how to do things like taking genetic samples. Unlike most disaster movies, Contagion doesn’t end with the destruction of humanity or even the collapse of civil society. The movie sounds and feels like it was ripped straight out of a handbook on viral outbreaks, and that’s what makes it worth a watch.

On Christopher Nolan and Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar is a mediocre movie. And the reason lies not in the product, but in its creator and his hubris. What was supposed to be a modern sci-fi epic in the vein of 2001: A Space Odyssey, turned out to be no more than a melodramatic adventure movie with pretences of intellectual depth.

Around the release of the movie, many gushed over the stunning visuals of Interstellar, praising its beauty, as well as the realism of the CGI. I’d be inclined to agree, if we were discussing still photography. But the fact of the matter is that Interstellar is a boring movie in every sense of the word, and that includes its visuals. See, most great directors have mastered the art of visual storytelling. Blocking, lighting, transitions and editing, different in-camera effects. What Interstellar presents us with is sterile cinematography. There’s nothing clever about the way things are shown and presented to the viewer. No depth to the image. No meaning behind it. Everyone remembers the match cut in 2001, the one that transitions from a bone thrown in the air, the very first weapon in the history of humanity, into an orbiting satellite with nuclear capabilities. There is very little of that in Interstellar. The cinematography of Interstellar can only be described as functional. It shows you what is happening. Nothing more, nothing less. There’s very little symbolism or world building to be derived from it. Take a look at this still from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This is a great example of a meaningful shot. As the apes huddle around the black monolith that has appeared in their lair over night, the camera is placed at its very bottom, staring up at the rising sun. It’s the dawn of man. The beginning of our long journey, our evolution. There is much more that can be said about this in the context of the film, but I won’t go any further than that.

Now look at this page full of stills from Interstellar. Thousands upon thousands of them, probably every single shot of the movie is in there. And what do we see? Establishing shots. Close-ups. Mid-shots. Shot-reverse shot during conversations. The occasional view of the Earth from far away. Some stills of a CGI black hole. Dust. Space. There really isn’t much to look at, and really the only memorable shot was during the chase sequence with Dr. Mann, when the geography is distorted and seems to be closing in on the camera, heightening the tension and raising the stakes.

Now, one must agree that the lighting is quite exceptional and van Hoytema did a great job, considering the spacial constraints inside the space ships. It’s never easy for a cinematographer to work with practical effects, especially ones that move and are as complex as those in Interstellar. That is one thing I will always praise Nolan for – avoiding CGI when it isn’t strictly necessary and using practical effects where possible.

The issues I have with Interstellar’s cinematography play into a much wider problem I have with Nolan’s work, and that is his tendency to tell instead of show. There is a constant barrage of ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ in Interstellar. Characters spend minutes describing things to each other that both parties should already know. Whole discussions end up being nothing but very thinly veiled exposition. Nolan’s movies aren’t known for their riveting and believable dialogue, his brother Jonathan, the one who writes and co-writes all of his movies, is no Tarantino. It’s an issue that was most obvious in Inception, where one of the main characters served almost no other purpose than to ask questions so the audience could learn the rules of the world. Much the same can be seen all throughout Interstellar. Scientists, considered the best the world has to offer, sit around and discuss relativity like 8th graders, just so the viewer could learn that 1 hour on the planet they’re about to touch down on is equal to 7 years on Earth. Which in and of itself is hooey. Kip Thorne, an astrophysicist and scientific consultant for Interstellar, did his best to explain to Nolan that it was impossible for something like that to occur, but alas he was forced to bend the rules of physics in order to come up with a half-way plausible scenario.

The final scenes of the movie are always completely spoiled by this insatiable need to placate the audience with needless information. Initially, the inside of the black hole is interesting, it’s odd, it’s mysterious. But as the viewer tries to piece together the puzzle, to understand how this queer place, one that modern scientist aren’t even close to understanding, works, he’s overwhelmed by narration. The sense of wonder vanishes, as does our interest in what is happening on-screen, as everything is explained, down to the most minute detail. Connections are made instead of us. There is no payoff because Nolan takes it from us, replacing the satisfaction of figuring out a complex sequence of events with a melodramatic shouting session, courtesy of Matthew McConaughey.

And that brings me to the last point I want to touch on. As the credits roll, we’re hit with a realization – this movie wasn’t about saving the world from starvation or lack of oxygen. It was about family. Now, that could work, of course, anything could work as long as the execution is good enough. I’m sure that someone somewhere has a brilliant idea about how to put together a movie that combines familial struggles with epic space opera. That someone isn’t Christopher Nolan. Why? Because his characterization is abhorrent. His protagonists are almost always tropes, as are most of his characters in general. They act like walking clichés. Everything about them is plastic, it feels like you’ve already met them before, quite a few times at that. And that’s because Nolan doesn’t care about his characters, or his story for that matter. The man has a set of abstract ideas in his head, and very rarely do those ideas translate into anything more than a good popcorn movie with well-choreographed stunt work, great practical effects and horrible fight scenes. And I say that as someone who considers The Dark Knight to be the greatest blockbuster film ever made. But at the end of the day, that’s what his movies are – blockbusters. They’re meant to make money, not push boundaries. And decent movies make quite a bit more than bad ones.

 

 

Under 800: Come and See (1985)

Come and See is possibly one of the most bleak, depressing experiences that cinema has to offer. Elem Klimov’s film about the Nazi invasion of Byelorussia follows a young boy’s descent into madness and desperation at the sight of the unspeakable horrors unfolding around him. At first the boy, Florya, is excited to become a partisan and defend his country. He digs through the sand near his village in search of a gun, a remnant of past skirmishes, in order to join the resistance forces and aid his fellow countrymen in the Sacred War. But his enthusiasm is short-lived. Every bit of Florya’s innocence is dismantled and discarded. First he loses his childish looks and the happy gleam in his eyes, then he loses his hearing and, finally, his mind.

What makes Come and See the definitive portrayal of the horrors of war is its detachment thereof. When Florya’s forced to give his boots to an older and more experienced partisan and is left behind by his comrades, there is no judgement on the film’s part. When the bombs fall and Florya and his new friend, Glosha, are nearly killed, there is no judgement. When Florya finally realizes his mother and sisters are dead, there is, again, no judgement. The list of atrocities grows ever longer, yet Klimov refrains from giving the viewer anything other than Florya’s reaction, his pain, his fear and confusion, only occasionally interrupted by the camera’s meandering through the bloody mise-en-scene.  It’s simply the story of a boy that is forced to endure, to survive in a climate that so many succumbed to, that haunts our collective consciousness even today, more than 70 years after the end of the war.

Not once are we, the viewers, permitted to avert our gaze. The camera focuses on the hellscape that surrounds Florya. There is no optimism to be found in Come and See, no respite for the boy or for the viewer. In scene after scene we see charred fields, misty villages full of unhealthy-looking common folk, bogs and swamps, destruction and decay. Nothing remains whole in this world for long, not the characters, not the scenery, not even the animals. When Florya and his uncle steal a cow in order to feed the people of their village, they are almost immediately beset by sentry fire in the middle of an open field. The uncle dies, but his passing is quick, painless and almost tranquil. The cow on the other hand stands amid the whizzing bullets, utterly confused and unable to process what is happening before finally being hit and killed. Much like the common people, those who suffered the bulk of both Stalin and Hitler’s murderous fantasies and power games, it was caught in the middle of something much larger than itself, something it couldn’t comprehend. And maybe it shouldn’t be able to comprehend it. After all, war is not part of nature. It’s a human creation that escaped our grasp and morphed into something that runs contrary to everything we are, everything we should be.

One of the main components of this carefully composed parade of confusion and terror is the sound design. There is overlapping babble of soldiers during the scenes in which the camera is left to wander, abandoning Florya’s nightmarish perception of what is unfolding around him and taking a stroll through the devastation, giving us an unflinching look at the pain and suffering caused by the Nazis on their march through Byelorussia, which we are told at the end of the movie resulted in 628 villages burned, along with the people in them. Back in Florya’s skin, we’re subjected to constant noise, reminding us of his damaged hearing and acting as a sort of barrier between him and the rest of the world. It is only at the very end of the movie that we hear music, uninterrupted and pure, as the camera looks up, towards the snow covered peaks of the pine trees in the forest and Mozart’s Lacrimosa from Requiem plays. The viewer is left to make of that what they will. Is it a hint of optimism at the end of a film that portrayed the beginning of a bloody campaign? Or is it Klimov’s way of saying c’est la vie and turning to the sky in a sign of complete bewilderment and desperation?

And, of course, I can’t help but mention the one sequence that most people talk about after seeing this movie. Florya, after witnessing the execution of the men responsible for the mass murder just minutes earlier in the film’s run time, sees a portrait of Hitler floating in the mud. As he points his gun at it and pulls the trigger, he witnesses time running backwards. All the events at the end of World War 2 are reversed. We see Hitler’s life in rewind all the way back to his first days on this planet, as a new-born babe in his mother’s hands. And Florya, shocked, lets go of the trigger. Again, no clear-cut answer is provided. Was Florya taken aback by the realization that his sworn enemy was not, in fact, an alien or a monster, but rather a human being just like him, yet capable of unspeakable evils, testament to the darkest parts of our psyche? Or did Florya simply snap at that moment and lose what remained of his marbles, going off with his comrades to fight in the war as a way of coping with his complete loss of humanity? Most great movies are ambiguous, and this one is no exception.

Philosophy of the modern Western, part I – No Country for Old Men

Sergio Leone once described the Western as “set in a world in which life has no value”. Nowhere is this concept more readily recognizable than in No Country for Old Men where Anton Chigurh, the primary antagonist, determines the fate of his victims in a simple coin toss. Heads or tails. One means he gets to kill the person calling the toss, the other means said person walks away with his or her life. Life has no intrinsic meaning in No Country for Old Men, it is no more valuable than a speck of dust. That point is further hammered in with the death of the protagonist, which happens off-screen and in what some might describe as a rather anti-climactic manner. Chigurh simply shoots him. There is no monologue or long stand-off. The bad guy wins because he’s a professional assassin, the ‘good’ guy (who’s actually no more than a regular person whose blessing turns out to be a curse) loses because he’s not well-versed in the game he’s playing. Like most of the Coen brothers’ other movies, No Country for Old Men showcases the reality of the human experience, its complete absurdity (in the purely philosophical sense, as coined by Albert Camus) and our, at times, fruitless attempts at dealing with whatever comes our way. And, in a sense, that’s the very essence of the Western. The stakes are never particularly high. Win or lose, it’s usually only the protagonist and his family and friends that are involved in the situation. There is no existential threat to humanity or its way of life. It’s an intimate story that pits man against man, that’s what a Western is at its very core, once you strip off all the extra layers that are necessary for the creation of an easy-to-watch and at least somewhat entertaining plot. But No Country for Old Men goes further than most other films in its genre.

Let’s return to Camus for a bit. In the very beginning of his essay titled The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he details his philosophy of absurdism, he writes, “There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide” (MS, 3). It is the decision whether to partake in existence, as it were, to indulge in life or to reject it and everything it has to offer, to reject oneself and to return to non-existence.

…The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job — not to be glorious. But I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand.

You can say it’s my job to fight it but I don’t know what it is anymore. More than that, I don’t want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, OK, I’ll be part of this world….

This is a transcript of the voice-over during the opening scenes of the movie. Sheriff Bell, a sort of secondary protagonist and in-universe narrator, is basically saying the same thing that Camus did more than 60 years earlier – a man has to agree to be part of this world. It’s his choice and his choice only. The whole monologue is a barely-concealed metaphor for life in general. We all know that, in order to appreciate life, we have to be fully aware of death’s constant presence, it’s the looming last stop at the end of the joy ride. Glory isn’t guaranteed, hell, it’s probably not even preferable to most people.  But possibly the most human part is the last line of the first paragraph. It’s a vulnerable admission of fear in the face of something that is alien to us, something that we do not and cannot understand. And it’s what makes the movie so beautiful, as Tommy Lee Jones’s character struggles under the sheer weight of what he perceives as his approaching demise. Retirement for him is the second to last step of the ladder. But there is no clarity as he nears the end. No answer occurs to him.

There’s a scene in which Bell reads a horror story from the morning newspaper to his deputy, Wendell, who barely contains his nervous laughter. “That’s alright, I laugh myself sometimes,” Bell muses, “There ain’t a whole lot else you can do.” Wendell’s laughter isn’t out of amusement or ignorance, it’s desperation, acknowledgement of the extraordinary nature of what’s happening. This very response is also one that Camus has explored in The Fall, where the main character, Jean-Baptiste, often laughs during inappropriate moments, at times that most would find offensive or even horrifying. He laughs not because he finds his world particularly funny, but because he realizes that it is fundamentally absurd. In The Fall, laughter is the sound of the Universe judging man’s futile attempts at rationalizing his condition of constant suffering.

One last point that I’d like to discuss in regards to No Country for Old Men is the role of Anton Chigurh in the story. Much and more has been said in reviews and analyses about his violent and brutal nature, some have even gone so far as to misrepresent his character as a glorification of what they see as a culture of aggression and destruction. But it’s disingenuous to think of Anton as a manifestation of politics or any other aspect of the modern world. He represents something much more ancient. Anton Chigurh is the shadow of death. The point of his character is to act as a source of impending doom, a force of nature that cannot be reckoned or bargained with. All that matters in its face is chance. As Harvey Dent puts it in The Dark Knight, “The only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.”. That’s exactly how Anton sees the world. He is merely an instrument, a function of the Universe. Death is a fact of existence, a constituent part of our reality, as paradoxical as that may sound.

Furthermore, Anton acquaints his victims with the thought of their own mortality before letting chance run its course and decide their fate. He looks them in the eye, enters their personal space, makes them uncomfortable, aware of his imposing presence. His shadow is often the focal point of some of his scenes, especially those that try to subtly reveal the power he has over whoever has had the misfortune of crossing paths with him. The laws of man do not bind him, for he only follows those that govern the Universe as a whole. Anton Chigurh is, for all intents and purposes, a personification of Death itself. He almost single-handedly drives the plot, just as the knowledge of our own mortality drives us to live our lives the way we want and to do with them as we please.

The final monologue sums up the story quite nicely.

Had dreams… Two of ’em. Both had my father in ’em. It’s peculiar. I’m older now then he ever was by twenty years. So, in a sense, he’s the younger man. Anyway, the first one I don’t remember too well but, it was about meetin’ him in town somewheres and he give me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by – just rode on past. And he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down. When he rode past, I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do, and I-I could see the horn from the light inside of it – about the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold. And I knew that whenever I got there, he’d be there. And then I woke up.

On its surface, it seems like a fairly straightforward visualization of moving on, beyond life and into whatever awaits us after death. But there’s something else about it that represents the most fundamental part of absurdism – the fire in the middle of the dark and cold. It’s our existence despite the knowledge of life’s perverse nature. Our perseverance in the face of the Absurd. Just as Bell realizes that losing all hope and accepting reality frees you and permits you to live with at least a certain degree of contentment, Camus, in the last sentence of his Myth of Sisyphus, tells us that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”.

The art of violence in Bronson (2008).

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson is 92 minutes of pure rage. There’s no rhyme or reason to Charles Bronson’s actions. He’s the most notorious and violent prisoner in the history of Britain, despite never having actually killed anyone. There doesn’t seem to be any contempt for his fellow man in his behavior. Bronson simply fights for the heck of it. He wasn’t raised poor, his parents in the movie were fairly well-off and in real life they were mayor and mayoress of his home town. There’s no rebellion against an unjust system, no attempt to escape attempts at subjugation or indoctrination, poverty or systematic discrimination. There is quite literally no reason for Bronson to be the way he is. And yet he exists, both in the film and in modern day England.

There are a few possible explanations for Charles Bronson’s seemingly (and most likely truly) insane actions. The most obvious and succinct one is that Bronson is simply a masochist and enjoys getting smashed to a pulp over and over again. Another is that he suffers from a severe mental illness. But I’d like to present an alternative view, one that is based more in interpretation than original intention and shouldn’t be considered as an attempt to legitimize Bronson’s violent behavior, but rather to rationalize it and use it as a means to explore questions that quite possibly haven’t even entered his head at any point in his life. Also, the following thoughts shall be based mostly on the film, so bear in mind that they might slightly misrepresent Bronson’s current image and attitude, as he seems to have mellowed over the past few years.

The one recognizable emotion that Bronson, portrayed masterfully by Tom Hardy in one of his career best performance, expresses is his distaste for mental facilities. Why would that be? Because there he can be subdued. He is tranquilized and spends a large chunk of his time there in an immobilized state that does not permit him to do the one thing he does best. It’s that one thing, fighting, that gives him agency over his life. In a sense, one could see Bronson’s constant indulging in short bouts of fisticuffs against numerous foes as an expression of freedom, of his ability to choose when and how hard to be walloped. In prison, everything is fairly simple – the hierarchy is clear, as are Bronson’s foes. He knows who’s going to give him the best beating, and he knows exactly how to ask for it. His biggest joy is being able to strike back and knock a few teeth out. The people he holds hostage are merely catnip, a way to attract more attention and thus, more guards to hit.

Furthermore, Bronson isn’t a man focused on the material. His only possessions are practical, like butter to cover himself in to make it harder to for his opponents to grasp. He’s seen escaping to the rooftop of one of the prisons he’s kept in, not in an effort to leave the facility and start anew, but to destroy property and cause damage.

There is no growth, no character arc. Bronson simply is. Towards the end, we see him practicing his painting skills and becoming close with a member of staff in the prison who helps those incarcerated to find the beauty in art. The viewer is left, even if only for a while, under the impression that Bronson is rediscovering himself, that there might be hope for him yet to be reintegrated into civil society. But what does Bronson do once the warden notices his interest in painting and begins making plans for his future? Bronson once again rears his animalistic side, the one that is ever present, and destroys everything in the final showdown between him and the guards in the movie. Does he achieve anything? Not really. He gets to paint a clown mask on a man’s face while listening to classical music. Then he hits some people over the head and causes a bit of a ruckus. It’s not grand. It’s not some overarching philosophical achievement that advances him as a person. It’s just a man doing what he does best, doing what he enjoys. Incidentally, that turns him into a celebrity among the British prison population, and Bronson seems to enjoy that. He, like every man, enjoys recognition and appreciation for his work, if you could call it that. It’s all very basic, very reminiscent of primitive societies that saw violence and physical strength as a sign of spiritual freedom and a basis for respect.  And fame and recognition are two things that Charles Bronson seems to enjoy – he’d rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

What Bronson does to assert his freedom of the spirit and will is abhorrent to most, and justly so, but it’s an extreme response to a feeling that everyone experiences. That creeping sense of worthlessness that comes whenever we realize that we have no effect over whatever is going in our lives or in the world in general. It’s an idea that’s been explored in many great films over the years as well. Taxi Driver, Fight Club, Brazil, as well as many others, explore this lack of individual agency from different angles, but fundamentally it all boils down to the same feeling of insignificance in a world that is moving on and growing ever smaller in the distance as the protagonist watches it with despair and disappointment in their heart. The difference is that Bronson doesn’t justify its main character’s actions, it doesn’t rationalize his behavior or glorify him. Refn doesn’t give us much backstory or motivation for Bronson’s current attitude towards the world, but simply presents the man as he is and lets the viewer decide what to make of him.

The movie itself is very well made. It walks the thin line between indie arthouse and action-fuelled romp, and it keeps the balance thanks to its levity and good direction. The editing is great, combining a more subdued take on transition and visual imagery with what I can only describe as the old English gangster movie style that emerged in the 80s and was mainly popularized later on by the likes of Guy Ritchie, with flashy cuts, matching or fading transitions and constant narration that adds an extra layer of entertainment. The action scenes are decently choreographed, though at times it’s a bit too easy to tell just how far Tom Hardy’s knuckle stopped from his fellow actor’s body, making the punches feel floaty and weightless, thus causing the fight to lose traction. And, last but not least, Tom Hardy delivers a phenomenal performance which alone makes the movie a must-see. Hardy switches effortlessly between schizophrenic stage performance based loosely in classical acting and more modern method acting that he prepared for with the help of Charles Bronson himself. A truly masterful display that cements his place as one of the greats of our generation.

 

Under 800: The Tree of Life (2011)

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is quite possibly the most frustrating, uneven movie I’ve ever seen. It was also the most profound cinematic experience I’ve ever had.

As Preisner’s Lacrimosa crescendos, the dust finally settles. What started off as a slightly confusing sequence showing the birth of everything that is, turns into a visualization of the grandeur of existence. We see galaxies in their full brilliance from impossible angles that make the viewer feel immaterial, a ghost flying through the beauty of this finite Universe that we have found ourselves in. We see the clouds of creation, we move towards them, through them, despite their size, despite the physical impossibility of it all. It was at this moment, as Lacrimosa reached its very peak, that I felt The Tree of Life had achieved something unimaginably profound and meaningful – it had dwarfed the viewer. It’s a visual experience that beats even Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s art in its most raw, unfettered form, and it’s cinema as Tarkovsky saw it – no symbolism, no ideology or attempts to make a point, no place for rationalization or coherent thought. It’s an emotional experience that gives a sort of nebulous appreciation for the very essence of being and nothingness. It’s not something that can be precisely put into words, because it’s not meant to be. I urge everyone to watch at least the first 40 minutes of The Tree of Life.

And this is where the frustration sets in. The rest of the film focuses on the life of an American small town family in the 1950s. Mr and Mrs O’Brien have three kids and we see them growing up, but the story is mostly told from the point of view of Young Jack, the oldest of the children. He goes through multiple phases during his adolescence, from witnessing the death of one of his friends and questioning the existence of God at a rather tender age, to praying for his father’s death and even considering bringing it about himself. Sounds interesting enough, right?

Except it isn’t. What we get is a jumbled mess of poor cinematography and unlikable characters. Constant close up shots, dutch angles and poor cutting and editing make the experience a particularly jarring one, as the viewer struggles to understand what’s happening on-screen. The themes this latter part of the movie explores aren’t particularly hard to spot. There’s contemplation on the constant cycle of life and death (which is a recurring theme even outside of the family’s story, as evidenced by the frequent underwater shots of overhead waves, penetrated by rays of light, and the pitch black transition shots that linger long enough to make their presence known) and its effect on those of us left behind after a person’s passing; there’s religion, spirituality, a child’s realization that their childhood is slipping away from them and there’s nothing they can do to stop the process, innocence, anger, the list goes on. And that’s exactly the problem – while trying to tackle almost every single aspect of human nature, The Tree of Life fails to flesh out and truly explore any one of them. The result is the cinematic equivalent of name dropping during a rap song. It’s void of any sort of substance to the point where it’s almost insulting at times. I firmly believe that the only driving force behind this part of the movie is the viewer’s imagination and projection. I could definitely understand someone who grew up in the same environment enjoying this part of The Tree of Life, but it did very little for me. I appreciate what Malick wanted to achieve here, but it just felt like a complete mess, despite the interesting yet underdeveloped themes. Oh, and there’s Sean Penn’s part of the movie that is somewhat confusing, to the point where even he’s admitted he had no idea what he was doing.

And this isn’t to say I disliked this movie. If I were to compile a list of my ten favorite films of all time, The Tree of Life would be a strong contender for a spot in it. If only because the first half of it left me awestruck and managed to transport me into a place that’s both real and magical at the same time. In a sense, The Tree of Life suffers from the Full Metal Jacket syndrome. Kubrick’s film about the Vietnam war also starts off incredibly strong, a beautiful look into the way young men’s identities were subverted and replaced by predatory instincts. The main character of that first part is Pvt. Leonard Lawrence, who is out of shape and out of depth in the military world. He’s bullied, beaten and shamed into complete madness and, in his madness, kills Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, a vile man with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, before turning the rifle on himself in a haunting scene that showcased the cold determination of a suicidal man. Then the movie moves on to Vietnam and loses a lot of its steam, though the drop-off isn’t even close to being as steep as that of The Tree of Life. Are both of these movies worth watching? Definitely. But don’t be surprised if you’re left feeling that they could’ve been so, so much more.

The Master and power.

Paul Thomas Anderson is a controversial figure. Some laud him as the greatest contemporary film maker and a potential inductee to the pantheon of cinema, while others remain unconvinced by the former’s enthusiasm, and that’s putting it mildly. Accusations of baseless pretentiousness and lack of coherence, both in thematic and narrative structure, have accompanied the release of most of Anderson’s films. Before I get to discussing the work at hand, I’d like to make clear my own thoughts on the matter. The rules of art are not set in stone. In fact, I’d go even further and assert that there are no rules when it comes to creating a work of art. The writer cannot be held at gunpoint by a set of arbitrary requirements or expectations. Neither can the painter, the singer, the actor or the director. The rules should only exist as a guideline, as a means for the creator to keep in check his or her unrestrained flight of fancy. Bearing this in mind, one cannot fault Paul Thomas Anderson for creating films that aren’t cut and dry. That ask the questions but provide few answers. He engages the audience and challenges it to find the truth, their truth, wherever it may be, whatever it may be. Does a free man need someone else to tell him what is good and what is evil, what is just and what is not? No, because a free man is a thinking man, and the mind needs quandaries and inner debate like an engine needs oil.

So what is the deal with The Master? A great many viewers felt disappointed or confused upon finishing the movie because of what they perceived as a lack of payoff, be it in terms of character arc or closure of the story. But what’s important to note about The Master is that it is not a story as such, it’s a character study that pokes and prods, like all memorable works of art, at the very heart of the human experience, in this case power. Power is an abstract term, I know, but it’s a fundamental component of our societies and has been since the very dawn of our existence. There has always been a leader at the head of the group, someone who’s achieved superiority in one way or another. In primitive societies this superiority stems from the physical abilities and traits of the would-be ruler. In our modern, advanced world the difference between the leader and his followers is much harder to notice, much harder to perceive from the outside. Yes, money and birth factor in, but these two alone wouldn’t be enough to convince a large group of people, each member of said group being an educated, thinking, semi-rational human being with needs and desires of their own, that this particular person is worthy of climbing the ranks and receiving a great deal of influence over the group. And this is where we can learn much about the dynamics of power from The Master.

People are prone to becoming invested in ideas. Whether it be the thought of travelling the world or writing a book, an idea is something that gives purpose to our existence, it’s the driving force behind each of our conscious actions and decisions. But there is a particular set of ideas that is more lucrative than the rest, as evidenced by the creation of countless religions and philosophical schools of thought – those that explain our existence and give us a rough outline of what to expect after death. Fear is motivational, but hope even more so. Even if it isn’t well-defined or expressly stated, hope resides in the mind and heart of each individual with the will, power and opportunity to continue existing. And that is what Dodd, like many religious and spiritual leaders in the real world, offers to the followers of his doctrine. He claims not only that each and every person has lived and died before, but that this process is a continuous loop, as old as time itself. Life, according to him, is as intrinsic a part of the Universe as death. Add to that the fact that the knowledge of your previous lives is lost upon rebirth, and you have a cautiously optimistic theory that provides each person with an endless amount of blank slates and start-overs. This is the basis for Dodd’s cult following. The other important part of his success is he himself. He’s charismatic and well-spoken, fiery and emphatic when needed but tender and mannered when not challenged. His view of the world is that of a visionary, at least in the eyes of those who choose to drink the cool-aid and accept him as their master (quite literally, as that’s his title among his followers). At first he seems to single out potential members of his cult, vulnerable or useful people who he manipulates easily enough and keeps by his side as boot-lickers, body guards or, as was implied by his wife, sex dolls. It is this tendency to surround himself with a group of blind and easily manipulated fools that puts into question Dodd’s committal to his own idea. Does he truly believe in what he preaches? Or does he simply feel an innate desire to be followed and revered? Again, this film does not tie any loose ends. It merely asks and gives out hints, leaving the conclusions to the viewer. But of hints there are plenty. It’s hard to ignore the camera work in The Master, and it is the most obvious way of recognizing the relationship between whichever group of characters is on screen. The actors are placed and presented in certain ways or in certain parts of the frame so as to indicate their importance and their place in the hierarchy, and this is made blatantly obvious fairly early on, during a wide shot of the ship where Lancaster Dodd and Freddie Quell first meet. As the ship sails, the lower deck is full of people dancing, drinking and laughing. It’s hard to discern any one of them, it’s a large group of people having fun. But just below, on the lower deck, we see a lone couple having a discussion. The woman is seated obediently, staring up at her husband who towers over her and talks down, while a waiter stands a good distance away and tries not to interrupt. This shot shows us not only that power will play a role in the movie, but also that there will be a striking difference between the surface and the substance, between what’s visible to the public and what stays in the family. As the film goes on, we learn that Dodd isn’t nearly as powerful or all-knowing as he would have everyone believe. He isn’t even the strongest and most influential member of his family when it comes down to it – his wife defies and at times even controls him, his son believes him to be a hack. Scientists mock him and run circles around his idea of the way life works and his theory of processing which supposedly induces a sort of counter-hypnosis and permits the subject to become one with time and glimpse their past lives that aren’t actually past, but parallel (because cult ideologies are weird that way). But still, his following grows larger as the years go on, his detractors, as well as eventual inconsistencies in his teachings, remain largely unheard and ignored.

Another visual example of power dynamics in The Master is Quell’s hunched back, which shows that he is neither the leader nor the follower. He takes both roles at different times in the film, never committing fully to either. The hunched back shows that he’s not a kneeler or a ruler, but an amalgamation of both that comes out somewhat awkward and stunted. He comes to see Dodd as his surrogate father, but at the same time he can’t completely come to terms with his viewpoint or the way he runs things. Nevertheless, Dodd recognizes the fact that Quell is much stronger and sturdier mentally than any of his followers and in an effort to once more and for the last time assert his dominance, he tells Quell that, if he didn’t fully commit to the Cause, he would be his mortal enemy in the next life. This is possibly a throwback to Greek mythology, where Cronus realizes the threat his children pose to his rule and chooses to devour and destroy them before they can grow strong enough to defeat him. Quell doesn’t accept Dodd’s influence. At the end of the film, we see him using Dodd’s method on a woman he meets at the bar, further solidifying the point that Quell is a man in the middle of the road between master and mastered.

The Master is an intriguing movie, brilliantly directed and gorgeously shot. At times it even defies some of the most basic cinematic conventions like the shot-reverse-shot dialogue, but it does it in style, in part thanks to astounding performances by Joaquin Phoenix and, one of the greatest of all time, Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It’s a great, if somewhat loose, package thematically and visually and a must-watch for anyone willing to experiment with films that push the envelope.

Under 800: Drive (2011)

There appears to be an unspoken consensus that action movies are supposed to be low-brow summer flicks that offer cheap thrills and excitement without being anything to write home about when it comes to the technicalities of film making and story telling. But for every twenty or so new entries in a redundant franchise like The Fast and the Furious, there is one movie that pushes the envelope and delivers something that is actually worth more than a cursory glance.

One such movie is Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. It’s a slick action-noir story that follows Ryan Gosling’s unnamed character (who I shall henceforth refer to as the Driver for clarity’s sake) in his quest for… well, nothing, really. Drive is an interesting beast in that it offers very little in terms of backstory or characterization when it comes to the protagonist, while still turning him into someone the viewer can root for and sympathize with. He’s a deeply cautious and introverted man who seems to share Neil McCauley’s philosophy in Heat – never get attached to anything you can’t walk out on in 5 seconds’ time once push comes to shove. His face is an emotionless mask that manages to appear both awkward and intimidating at the same time thanks to Gosling’s amazing performance. The Driver’s sullen silences prompt his interlocutors to talk more than they usually would, and while this could’ve easily resulted in a series of expository monologues that would’ve taken away from the movie’s atmosphere and understated presentation, not once does any of the information we are fed feel forced or out of place. 

The story itself is nothing spectacular. Sure, it’s quite a bit darker than your run of the mill action flick, but it isn’t particularly complex or hard to understand. What’s interesting about it is that it offers a cyclical sort of development for the main character. The Driver goes through three distinct phases: first, we see him as a cool-headed getaway driver with a stoic complexion and nerves of steel; then he falls in love with his neighbor, Irene, and his budding relationship with her and her son Benicio takes him on a journey towards something resembling a normal life; and in the third act of the movie we find the Driver back where he was in the beginning, except now he’s filled with a lust for vengeance and violence. There is no redemption for the main character in Drive. The Driver ends up in an even darker spot than he once was, a sort of existential hero that has once again fallen out of love with life and realized that meaning cannot be derived from anything worldly.

Script aside, possibly the most exciting part of Drive are its visuals, which is unsurprising, considering it’s a prime example of the so-called arthouse action film genre that was spawned by Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai in 1954. The lighting is practically a character of its own in this movie, it parallels the Driver’s internal struggle and reflects his choices. The elevator scene is a prime example of this. The shadows change position as the Driver switches between the reality he wants to achieve and exist in, in which he is with Irene and nothing else matters, and the one that he is presented with and is forced to deal with, in which he has to fight for his life and be as brutal and unforgiving as possible. There are countless examples of brilliant lighting tricks in this movie, and their effects are enhanced even further by the consistently interesting framing of the shots. There are other techniques used as well, the type you usually see in foreign movies nowadays, which aren’t exactly central to the story but all add up to make the gloomy atmosphere as enveloping and crushing as possible. One of them is the Vertigo effect, as the Driver looks out at the city from his apartment. The foreground remains stable but the city itself seems to shift further away, its size changes and morphs ever so slightly, just enough to make the viewer completely cognizant of its slow retreat. It’s a form of perspective distortion that works remarkably well when used in the appropriate moment and to the appropriate degree.

Overall, I believe Drive to be one of the best action movies ever made. I do have a few minor nitpicks, like the nauseatingly annoying vocals in some parts of the soundtrack and the admittedly lacking story, but they just aren’t enough to eclipse the movie’s great technical and visual efforts. The car chases are as intense and gritty as they come and their influence on movies like Mad Max: Fury Road and Baby Driver is obvious. And at the end of the day, isn’t that the most important thing about a movie that doesn’t set out to be a huge box office hit? To push the boundaries of its genre and ask of us, as viewers, to pay a little more attention to the smaller, more subtle beauties that the medium can offer? I believe that to be the case, and Drive does it in style.

Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead and a closer look at zombies in fiction.

It’s extremely unlikely that there exists a single person on this planet who hasn’t heard the word ‘zombie’ or seen a movie that features the living dead. We can thank (or curse, depending on your stance on the matter) the late, great George A. Romero for turning what was then an obscure subgenre of horror into one of the biggest film categories to ever exist. According to this list on Ranker, there were more than 400 zombie movies being streamed on Amazon Prime and Netflix Instant at the time of writing, and I’m confident there are quite a few missing as well. But, looking through this long list, one would be hard-pressed to find movies that are objectively good. Sure, there are some outliers like 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead, but the majority is just C-movie schlock that somehow slipped through the cracks and added to the slow yet steady decline of a genre that was already suffering from untimely erosion in terms of raw quality.

Shaun of the Dead was the first movie to signal both the emancipation and death of zombie cinema. Its story beats closely mirror those of other movies in the genre, but unlike them it rarely takes itself seriously. Shaun is a loser and a bit of an idiot. None of that changes throughout the course of the movie. His plan is to quite literally have a pint in his favorite pub and wait for the whole mess to blow over. It’s not elaborate, it’s not heroic, hell, it’s not even reasonable. It gets most members of his group killed, but even that doesn’t make Shaun reconsider. There are dramatic moments, and they work very well because, in the midst of all the madness and hilarity, these rare minutes of somber clarity catch the viewer by surprise. But they’re just that – moments, minutes. The whole movie is just 100 minutes of satirization and dismantling of genre tropes and cliches. It’s almost ironic that Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead is cited today as possibly the greatest zombie movie ever created, when its whole point was to show how ridiculous the genre was and how easy it was for someone with actual talent and film making flair to come in and trample all the low-brow efforts that came before.

Then came Zombieland in 2009. While Shaun of the Dead was, like the rest of the movies in the Cornetto trilogy, Edgar Wright’s take on a tired genre, Zombieland seemed more like an effort to reinvigorate this particular dead horse. If I was only allowed but one word with which to describe this movie, that word would ‘fun’. It’s a lighthearted play on action movies in general, but instead of making fun of their relative simplicity, it takes the ridiculousness even further and uses it to create a story that is genuinely amusing. The characters are likable and witty, the dialogue and banter between them is engaging, with some neat reference sprinkled in to reward the more observant fans. Bill Murray’s cameo is one of the best I’ve ever seen, and possibly one of Bill’s best performances to date. The atmosphere switches effortlessly between optimism and melancholy, never lingering too long on either. The editing is crisp (if at some points too heavy-handed and distracting), the action is well shot and rather imaginative, with zombies being killed by all manner of items, such as banjos, pliers and even falling pianos. We’ve seen countless zombie movies try to be cerebral and deep, but none of them succeed because the people behind them have no idea how to achieve anything meaningful. George A. Romero was the first and last to successfully use the zombie as a vehicle for social commentary. The Walking Dead, AMC’s hit TV show, came close to being philosophical at times during its first two seasons, but then Frank Darabont was ousted and the role of director was given to a makeup artist who hasn’t the slightest clue about how to create a coherent, engaging narrative. Zombieland is the anti-thesis to all of this. It is, at its core, a movie that aims to entertain, while still successfully weaving in some more serious elements.

Both Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland failed to change the genre’s direction. Zombie movies are still fairly common, good ones are still a rare and valuable commodity. Train to Busan is the only recent one I can name off the top of my head, and it isn’t even a Western production.

But there is one movie in particular that has, over the past few years, made me appreciate just how mediocre the genre is, despite the incredible potential that it has. Brad Pitt’s World War Z is a bland, unbalanced and horribly paced mess that shambles its way to the finish line, carried only by Brad’s acting ability and its high budget action sequences that offer some degree of satisfaction. All of this in and of itself is not particularly bad, plenty of movies like this one get released every year and make huge sums at the box office, but what is particularly infuriating about WWZ is that the book this movie is supposed to be based on is one of the best pieces of zombie fiction ever created. It’s a series of interviews with various people from around the world, with occupations ranging from marines on a Chinese nuclear submarine to bodyguards of Hollywood celebrities. All of these people are survivors, meaning they made it through the outbreak of the zombie virus, and they recount their stories to the interviewer, a man working for the UN. The stories reveal the changes that the world went through during the crisis – religious, political, social, environmental, psychological. Does this sound anything like Brad’s movie? Not at all, because all the studio needed was a name that would sound well and make it easier to bank on the zombie craze.

I feel this is a case of ‘I’m not mad, I’m disappointed’. There is an incredible deal of potential not only in zombie movies, but in the apocalyptic genre in general. There’s so much room to explore deep themes, to create immersive and interesting environments a la Mad Max: Fury Road, to introduce the viewer to characters that aren’t your run of the mill Mary Sue or Mary Stu. And I believe there’s still hope for that. With David Fincher directing the sequel to World War Z (which is rumored to be a reboot, rather than a continuation of the first movie’s story) and Zombieland 2 in the works, maybe it’s finally time for the apocalypse to become interesting again.