Reviews

While Solyaris was Tarkovsky's attempt at a science fiction film, I think Offret can best be understood as his entry into the horror genre.

Yes, there are no jump scares, no shocking moments, hardly anything traditionally frightening at all, but the film still succeeds at horrifying as it follows the descent of a man into spiritual delusion and pride.

This is a story of a lofty academic, a man who lives a secular life and to all appearances has no need of crusty outdated institutions like Church or Tradition. His life is a privileged one, a life of academic ease and high social standing. And yet, not all is well in the house. Cabinets open mysteriously. Objects move. A postman who claims to be a "student of paranormal phenomena" speaks with a mysterious charisma.

Into his life of bourgeois pains and pleasures, the news of a potential beginning to WW3 is announced through the radio. Completely lost in fear, he begs God to spare the world this tragedy, even if it means sacrificing what he has. Otto, seizing on this moment of weakness, explains to him that sleeping with his maid, a "witch," will somehow stop this. So this man disconnected from God becomes convinced that sleeping with a woman not his wife is a "holy sacrifice."

The next day, the threat has abated, if only for the moment. In his delusion, he destroys all that he has in an attempt to parallel the life of Abraham and Isaac.

Being the sort of man who holds traditional Christianity in contempt, he has failed to understand basic Christian theology; his actions are thus an ape of Christianity, a strange twisted mockery. He fails to understand that Christ is the lamb of sacrifice which God gave Abraham so that the Earthly sacrifice is not necessary. The Sacrifice that Christ calls us to is the sacrifice of our own pride, such that God can carry the burden for us. In thinking to make a bargain with God to spare the world, he comes to see himself as the man responsible for saving the world, and all humility in him is destroyed.

How was this possible? How could such a thing happen to such an intellect? A lack of immersion in the Orthodox tradition that Tarkosvky himself would have been well familiar with. The Eastern Orthodox teach that one must constantly be wary of demons tempting us to become prideful and in other ways sinful. Even the simplest Babushka or catechized Malchyk would have seen through the preposterous suggestion of Otto's.

In the end, the pride which Otto tempts Alexander to immerse himself in damages Alexander greatly, as his mind breaks as he tries to fulfill all the terms of the sacrifice which he mistakenly thinks he made to God. This is again fitting with the Russian conception of Sin as a form of self harm, for which the remedy is humble repentance. Does Alexander repent once in this film? Not that I can remember. He becomes a man lost in his own psyche, with what is certainly a difficult path ahead of him.

It's difficult to know exactly how much lee-way to give a film like this in terms of being generous. To be sure, the camera was not very active in the 1910s. Although there were individual scenes in films which give the camera some movement and agency, by and large the camera was still, this stillness as much a result of the relatively limited camera technology as it was a result of early film seeming to come out of the fixed-perspective of theater-going.

However, people in the 1910s were beginning to understand the effectiveness of moving the camera for effect, and certainly by 1918 it was a known tool. A good example of this is in Yevgeni Bauer's 1915 film "Daydreams." Six minutes into the film the camera follows the action of a man walking down the street. They clearly intended to keep him in frame, but he accidentally walks out of frame as the camera slowly turns to the left to continue observing him; at the same time, the camera slowly backs away. As it does so, we see more of the buildings.

The Outlaw And His Wife would have been well served, in my opinion, with some more camera movement. It is a story of the lives of two characters on the edge of society, one who is there by circumstance, the other by choice. You would want the visuals of a tale like this to carry your audience away with them, so that more than merely witnessing the events in their lives we feel as though we are traveling along with them, leaving society behind.

Still, the film is better than many of its peers at the time in its attempt to break free of parlor-drama constraints. Sjostrom shoots in Nordic environments (Sweden, I believe) to give us the sense of life in remote Iceland, complete with landscapes which both seem to contain the characters within them while providing far off horizons and open skies which create a sense of freedom and limitlessness. More important still are the way Sjostrom uses the elements to create for our eyes an environment which both invites and threatens. The element of water almost becomes a character in itself, as the two main characters live out a life in Icelandic wilderness, in close proximity to both geysers and a lake/stream where they walk. One of the first (was it the first?) shot of the main protagonist is of him passing by a clear flowing mountain stream and drinking from it. In the final shot (SPOILER SPOILER) ice is used to great effect to illustrate the final outcomes of the two lovers, frozen in both space and time. Their reconcilement is ennobled by the ice which preserves them together, as two souls who care for each other despite their own mistakes our societies.

It is for moments like that and scenes where the film seems to break free of traditional constraints that the film is worth watching. The story is a pretty traditional tale, I can only imagine a plot considered well-trodden in 1918 as much as it would be today. The weakest link in the chain is, sadly, Edith Erastoff as Halla. I am willing to accept her as a romantic lead, despite her not being as attractive to a modern sensibility as perhaps she was in her day. However, she mostly over-acts, while at the same time her character over-reacts. Sjostrom is far more subdued, and lets the viewer imagine his emotions, while she uses wild facial expressions and physical gestures to force us to into recognizing her emotions. The film is also not entirely gloom and arctic winter darkness; Sjostrom effectively captures the warmth and growth of Spring in the far North as we see the two leads raising their daughter together.

If water is almost a character in the film, the environment certainly is, as the two outlaws of the film's title wind up living by a cliff-face. The practical effect of this is that they must tie their toddler by a rope to their camp, so she doesn't accidentally fall off. This is a nice visual illustration of the dilemma faced by Halla and Eyvind. Without societal support, their existence in the wilderness, while at most times sustainable and content, is only one mere slip away from destroying them both utterly.

I had been putting off watching Porco Rosso for quite some time. It wasn't so much that I was anticipating not liking it. Rather, it was more a trepidation that while good, Porco Rosso wouldn't quite measure up to the other Miyazaki films which I've loved.

I should have known better.

The simplicity of the cover, and the description of the plot that I had in my mind were so much less than what Porco Rosso contains. The marketing, advertising, and so forth, place emphasis on the struggle between Porco and the pirates of the Adriatic. The second point of plot typically mentioned is the "curse" that he has fallen under. In truth, neither of these things form the real backbone of the story: psychology is at the heart of this narrative.

A film simply about a bounty hunter versus pirates could be a fine ride, if executed in a way which stirs. However, without the kind of psychological backdrop that we get in Porco's character, it wouldn't be possible to really move the audience. What raises this story from simply engaging to stirring, moving, is our main characters' relationship to their individual and shared pasts.

In a really clever way, the film introduces this haunting aspect of the past not through the main character, but through the character of Gina. Of a similar generation, Gina introduces this idea during her first conversation with Porco, where she receives news that her husband has been confirmed dead, she seems unusually unemotional. As she expresses to Porco, she has shed so many tears already, that she finds she has no more left to give. The carnage of world war 1 and the vagaries of life in a world where fate can snatch love from us has left her emotionally drained.

Where Gina is melancholy and stoic, Porco broods and isolates. As the sole survivor of a battle where Gina's first husband died, he feels personally responsible. This sort of survivor's guilt is reflected with his constant self-deprecation; constantly we see signs of him expressing a low sense of self-worth. He doesn't deny his skill as a pilot, but what he does deny is that he is in any way a "good guy." When Gina tells him that her husband didn't make it home alive, he responds "the good guys never do," making explicit this contrast between himself and a good guy.

His profession as a mercenary is almost ideal for his state. It allows him to pretend that he's only in it for the money, while at the same time he has put himself in a position to do good works: saving children, defending the monied defenseless, etc. He does have a sense of morality, of course. We see this in his careful targeting of his opponents planes: he always aims to cripple and shoot down, never to kill the opposing pilot. It is difficult for him to see the evidence that we see, however. We understand the regret he feels as a sign of his ethical standards; he dismisses it out of hand. One imagines that, for him, that is a bare-minimum, rather than a characteristic that one can be proud of.

The devices that film uses to achieve the character development of Porco can, at times, be a bit trite. The character of Fio is perhaps a bit too on-the-nose as the young idealist who, unshackled by a painful past, is able to help shake off some of the emotional armor that Porco has surrounded himself in. However, Miyazaki saves the character by simply writing her as an intelligent, brave, young woman whom the audience can both respect and relate to. Even more intelligently, although Fio develops an admiration for and a crush on Porco, this thread isn't really developed. As a character, Fio wouldn't really work as Porco's love interest. It would add on the additional cliché of older-man younger-woman and that would just take Miyazaki's use of common story devices too far.

Gina is the more realistic love interest for Porco, and just as a sense of feminism imbues the character of Fio, so too does a sense of feminism shape Gina. Far from the virgin-whore duality that infects so many female characters, Gina is fully realized as a woman with hopes and desires, losses and memories, that make her an equal of Porco. She has been married, and she has known love, but this doesn't "spoil" her. Rather, it has matured her.

Even more impressively, the relationship between Gino and Porco is based on friendship, a friendship which goes back to happier times. How refreshing to see romance kindled in such a realistic way, as compared to the constant barrage of films where characters either fall in love with each other for narrative convenience.

As good as this movie is, I suspect that its greatest impact can be felt on those who are struggling with the emotions of Gina and Porco. To struggle with one's past is no uncommon thing, and those who are working to set aside feelings of loss and self-loathing will probably find the greatest amount of catharsis as Porco slowly comes to realize that he doesn't need to define himself as a pig any longer. Certainly, only those who have run out of tears will be able to fully appreciate the emotional desolation the Gina describes.

This is a fantastic documentary film, and while it is true that it's success wouldn't be possible without the fantastic charisma of Jodorwsky himself, I think the director also should get some credit for weaving all the interviews to create the feel of a tight story. It's essentially a "gathering" story, sort of like Seven Samurai, where Jodorowsky travels around the world to find his 'spiritual warriors' necessary to aid him in executing his vision.

There's an interesting blend of naivety and guile in Jodorowsky's actions as he is both able to bribe Orson Welles by appealing to the man's psychology while at the same time he is manipulated by Dali's patently unrealistic and unfair demands. Although an artist in his own right, he was clearly lower on the totem pole than figures such as Dali or Welles.

I've heard people express skepticism at the idea that Mick Jagger would've actually appeared in the film, claiming that it's unrealistic. It's important to remember that he had ties to the art- film scene, performing in Performance and working with outsiders like Kenneth Anger. It seems totally realistic to me that Jagger would be willing to show up in a codpiece in this film at a very reasonable price, given the association Jodorowsky had with Warhol's art community just by itself. Although the man loves money (who doesn't?) he also seems to value being a part of the art scene, the art world, and he would definitely want to be a part of this.

One note that I'd like to make - Jodorowsky uses the word "rape" in one of his interviews to describe how he approached adapting Dune. I really don't think he meant it the way it is used most commonly in our current culture, as in nonconsensual sex. Rather I think he was more trying to convey a sense of, to quote the dictionary, "plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation." I think it would be foolish to argue that the man is pro-rape. Still, there are plenty of people who will feel at liberty to take things out of context in order to feel either righteous or smart.

One lingering question that the movie leaves us with is, just how insane is Jodorowsky? He's described often as a visionary madman, a modern day prophet. This is a pretty deep question actually, and reaches into further questions of psychology and philosophy. Is there no mysticism to the world? Is there nothing beyond the seemingly- straightforward mechanism of the atoms of the universe? Modern physics, with its newfound uncertainty, gives new age beliefs more wiggle room: everything is energy!, they exult. But is this just a cheap justification to cling to comforting superstitions? How do we differentiate between superstition, religion, and mysticism, or do we? In the end, will the question of Jodorowsky's "sanity" devolve into an argument of semantics? That seems likely.

One accusation that I've heard leveled against Jodorowsky is that he is too much a madman: that there is nothing to understand about his films, as they are the work of a deranged mind. Deranged? That hardly seems likely. He seems to way far too functional to earn that label. An author as well as a filmmaker, he is clearly a person of some thoughtfulness. What makes him different, however, is that he is a magical thinker. I mean he is a magical thinker in two senses: first, that he is prone to applying causal relationships where, to quote wikipedia, "scientific consensus says that there are none." Secondly, he is a magical thinker in that his imagination is vivid, almost magical in the connections that makes between various elements of this strange life on Earth.

His personal beliefs, so central to the message of this film, flow from spiritual traditions, from philosophies that depend upon magical thinking for their support. He holds an idea of psychogenealogy, for example, which draws upon Jung's collective unconscious. One can take Jung's ideas more or less literally, but there exists enough ambiguity in the style of Jung's writing that a popular interpretation of the collective unconsciousness is that of a sort of world mind, a sort of wellspring which exists outside of our reality and perhaps unbounded by time. In this way, the experience of the father, and the father's father, are the experience of the son.

The father-son relationship is, of course, key to The Dance of Reality. Ostensibly an autobiographical look at Jodorowsky's childhood, the film diverges quite often from following the story of the child to illustrate the story of the father, perhaps as imagined by the child. My girlfriend, having watched this with me, found this a bit jarring. These two narratives, however, are unified, as one comes to understand the character of the father in The Dance of Reality as a sort of avatar of Alejandro. We all become like our fathers, in at least some ways, and it is our great challenge to differentiate ourselves. It should come as little surprise that part of the abuse heaped upon child-Jodorowsky by his father stems from a desire on the part of the father to slough off any such "weaknesses" that he exhibits.

The elder Jodorowsky represents, in this film, a sort of arch anti- magical thinking mindset. Portrayed as a true-blue communist, he rejects religion as an "opiate of the masses." When the child escapes into the world of theosophy as a way to experience happiness outside of the bitter realm of his father, the father reacts by flushing the religious symbols which hold such meaning down the toilet. A thinker like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris will certainly react negatively to such an illustration of a rational thinker. But remember, that in their writings, they essentially patronize the magical-thinker.

But this is perhaps too far a digression from the film itself. After all, as the story unfolds, we see Jaime, Jodorowsky's father, going on a sort of picaresque journey of suffering and redemption. Only, unlike most picaresques, the main character experiences transformation, more in the vein of Apuleius's Lucius than Fielding's Tom Jones. During this journey, we see his strongly-held beliefs stripped away from him as his goals are at once realized, hindered, and transformed. The person he was no longer proves to be a trustworthy guide; he must create for himself a new identity, and indeed perhaps discover what he was all along in the process. It's important to look at this film not as an attack on rational thought, but rather an exploration of how catharsis and suffering can help a person develop a stronger self- awareness, and subsequently develop an identity which provides them with greater happiness.

As a sometime magical-thinker myself, I can relate to and sympathize with Jodorowsky's point of view. When I like to imagine that there is some sort of divine purpose which guides the river of time, I immediately chastise myself for allowing such intellectual indulgences. I know that it is absurd; at times, I wonder if perhaps that is the very reason why I sometimes believe, why I always want to believe. Heresy, of course. I like to mollify myself by saying that I'm somehow different: what I imagine to be sacred, to be god, differs immeasurably from the simplistic, straight-forward theology that we see so often in our culture. But that feels hollow, like I am simply using what intelligence I have to construct a more complicated, more elaborate and perhaps more fashionable way of putting forward what is still simply a magical thought.

Is it cowardice? Perhaps. Perhaps I am simply afraid of being called a lunatic – of thinking myself a lunatic. Certainly, Jodorowsky has no such fears. Although I don't agree with Jodorowsky on what may actually exist and what is true in regards to matters of the spirit, I can't help but admire his willingness to go out on a limb.

Watching a film like this, I find in myself a strong desire to dig deeper. What is the real truth of the matter? Was Jodorowsky's real father this much of a tyrant, or a communist? Was his mother so dramatic and bosomy? Just how many cripples and lepers did he encounter as a child, after all? Ultimately, such matters must remain unknowable. We can no more depend upon a child to accurately portray his father than we can depend upon a painter to paint a relation with photo-realism.

All we can really depend on is to discover truth through the fabulism present in this work. Core truths which shine through and are your own work, and indeed pleasure, to discover.

I don't want to get too hyperbolic in my criticisms of this film. I'm tempted to call it a desecration, but to do that I'd have to successfully argue that the source material was sacred. I enjoyed the book that this film was rather loosely based on, but I'm not interested in taking time here to assert the quality of C.S. Lewis' work.

However, whether the original book was great, good, or bad, it was certainly better than this. At least, to my taste. I was ready and willing to enjoy this film, so ready, so willing. Having grown up on the seacoast, I have done a fair bit of sailing myself: I really enjoy tales of the sea. I have stood watch at the bow of a ship all through the night; I was young, and struggled to stay awake as the clipper gently rose and fell. The waves themselves had a gentle swaying motion, it seemed, not unlike the rocking of a cradle. Of course, had I fallen asleep, I could have easily slipped overboard and drowned. All of this was vividly in my mind as I looked up at the stars and focused my mind as best as I could to make it through the hours of my shift.

The struggle was not against a dark lord, or an evil witch, but against my own frailty or childish whims. It was time for me to grow up and meet a challenge that was unusual but not impossible. I think that the Voyage of the Dawn Treader is about a similar struggle, not against a "big bad" but rather is a more ambiguous, abstract struggle. It is a tale of exploration, both of the world around us and of our internal psyche.

However, what forces were behind the creation of this product were of limited vision. In their desire to make something profitable and safe, they essentially took a winding, exploratory narrative, and grafted it onto the only sort of story they really understand: bad guys versus good guys. The essential centerpiece of the story previously was the transformation of Eustace, this has been sidelined into it becoming a story of bravery overcoming dark, nebulous "evil" forces of an island essentially invented from whole cloth for this new story. It's an aping of a Harry Potter, where the characters grow through overcoming an external antagonist, but I doubt Rowling would approve.

Grotesquely, at times the search for the seven swords comes to resemble a world of warcraft-like fetch quest.

The irony is that I believe much of what fails in this adaptation stems from an honest desire to make an adaptation which Lewis would be proud of. The adapters hope and believe that Lewis would be understanding of the changes as "necessary" in order to make the story able to be told in a cinematic way.

However, cinema as a medium was perfectly capable of telling a compelling story closer to C.S. Lewis' vision. Some of the greatest motion picture history do not have an obvious antagonist. For example, Andrei Rublev is a compelling narrative which follows the life of its main character, exploring ideas while moving from small enclosed story to other stories. OK, OK, maybe a little obscure and high-brow, I grant you. Let us not forget that C.S. Lewis was an oxford professor, an expert on such highbrow things as Paradise Lost and medieval literature. But let us grant that the forces behind this adaptation don't have the patience or the ability to use something as sophisticated as Andrei Rublev or Paradise Lost as a model. (One wonders if they were to adapt Paradise Lost if they'd make it into a movie about Adam having to find the twelve blessed tchotckies in order to vanquish the evil Satan or something like that)

Well, there are plenty of examples of more audience-friendly stories which also eschew the rote good-guy, bad-guy plot. Take for example Kiki's Delivery Service, an excellent family film which gains its narrative thrust from the conflict not of a young girl on a quest to save the realm, but from a young girl going out into the world to find her place within it, to start her own business, and to overcome her own doubts of self-worth and periods of internal darkness.

I can understand the temptation to want to create an enemy to have your characters face against. Even Pixar, as great as they are, have trouble creating narratives which don't depend on the crutch of employing an easy-to-hate villain. However, Pixar aren't trying to adapt a piece of literary history, and adapting a work of a sincere person such as this demands, I think, a little more reverence.

Take a piece of art off the wall, and polish it and polish it: what are you left with? Perhaps a pleasant blur, but lacking the meaning and complexity of what you started with. This essentially corporate polishing has gone beyond just the story, other aspects of the film are also effected. The boat itself is a bit too clean, to pristine to feel real. The magic manor Lucy explores also suffers from this. They could have drawn on inspiration from magic houses in cinema history, such as Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, or the magic interiors from The Blood of A Poet. The end result is that the experience feels less magical, less enrapturing, a cost of making the experience theoretically more palatable to a wider audience.

Also, laziness, ignorance, or lack of talent, taste, or intelligence could be responsible. As a humble critic, I shrink from assuming that this was precisely the problem, but certainly one wonders if this was not the case.

I've been reading about gender in film, and having to deal with the fact that a great deal of what is talked about is the alienating effect of the male gaze. The objectification of women through the camera lens, and the resulting lack of supposed connection of the female to the narrative quality of the camera-eye (if you want to impress a cinéaste, say "kino-eye"). I hoped to find a film where we have the camera completely focusing on the female desire, and how would a male character look from such a narrative standpoint? Well, I found my movie. And that movie is "Family Blessings," a film where Lynda Carter plays a widow who ultimately finds love in her dead son's best-friend.

The moment that cinched the deal for me is during the lovemaking scene - the camera, lying underneath, tracks slightly to the right, and his face hangs over the camera, his eyes staring into the audience's. Here we have a camera-shot which is entirely centered on feminine desire, and completely unnerving to a heterosexual male viewer. Ah, I say! So that is what it's like to be confronted with a totally alienating camera presence! And in what setting does the lovemaking take place? In a bedroom with beautiful linens, and enough candles glowing to... well, make the place look really 'romantic' I guess. Sorry, no punchline there.

Now, why doesn't this film work? Well, part of it is that it's a WE-film. Meaning, it's a message movie, and any message movie automatically has strikes against it. Stuff like "you know, I really learned a lot this year, about the importance of family" and so on and so forth. But I think there's a deeper problem - I could've enjoyed the film simply based on the novelty value of having a young cop falling in love with Wonder Woman. To be honest, I liked the story, in a I-know-this-is-terrible but I like it anyway sort of fashion. I was interested to see how the filmmakers would conspire to put the two lovers together, so that they could love. How does that work, exactly? I think that the real, fundamental problem of this film is that it doesn't choose a central character around which it can revolve. Lee, the widow, is the avatar for the obvious demographic of the film, but so many scenes are all about Chris' life, and his angst. It's as though the film wants to tell Lee's story from Chris' point of view, and then switch over to Lee's point of view whenever necessary. It becomes awkward. The problem is, we can't have too much Lee because Lynda Carter is an absolutely terrible actress. This Steven Eckholdt guy isn't exactly hot stuff either, but at least he's trying, and his voice doesn't sound the same, line after line after line. Is anyone still reading this? I suppose through this film we can still see the dominance of the male-centric narrative. Even in a WE film, the influence is unavoidable.

But I'd like to talk a bit more about feminine desire. Let's look at the construction of Chris as a character. He's strong, but sensitive. When Lee tells him that she's scared of what the others would think, he tells her that he's scared too, but he's man enough to face up to that fear. From a broken home, he loves his parents like a sensitive man ought to but he's an independent man, who is constantly trying to help his mother break away from his borderline-abusive, alcoholic father. He's a cop, and we often see him looking very trim indeed in his uniform. But not just a cop, he's also in one of those big brother programs, helping a young black kid who just can't catch a break at home. He revels in the role of being a father, loves those kids, but at the same time is a young, impassioned and rebellious lover who'll be damned if he cares what society thinks! Nobody is reading this anymore, are they? It's too damned long for a plan entry. As a character he treads the fine line between too mature to land him permanently in "just friends" territory and too forward with sexuality to make Lee freak out. By the time Lee's family finds out about their relationship, when they suspect him of "taking her for a ride" financially (see: William Wyler's "The Heiress") we as an audience have been programmed to say "No! Not our Chris! He's that one guy who really does love her for who she is!" In fact, I'm pretty sure one of the lines is "I love you for who you are!" Or something like that.

This is not a good film. Not at all, really. But it IS interesting to look at if you're going to talk about gendered camera in film. There's only one really interesting shot - Lee takes her son to an art museum to give him a sex talk. They sit down opposite each other on a bench in the middle of a gallery, and the camera rotates around them as they talk. But Lynda Carter kind of messes it up with her monotone voice.

One interesting point: the character's birth-year is 1951, which is the same as Lynda Carter's, so there's at least absolutely no deceit as far as her age is concerned.

Oh, and one LAST interesting fact! This is the second film I've seen where we have a competition between mother and daughter over a male lover! And in both of these stories, we have the mother as successful in having the male's affection - in both the dichotomy is daughter irrational, mother rational. The other film I'm talking about is of course the 1917 Russian melodrama Za schastem (For Happiness). Why do I watch movies like this? INSANITY, that's why.

The characters are broadly sketched, of course. The science is ludicrous, but no one asks you to buy into it. Perhaps the film does seem to take itself a bit too seriously at times. However, in a film where the rules of the day are constructing phallic, earth-penetrating ships from a material known as "unobtanium" perhaps some of the common expectations we hold for films should be thrown aside.

The easy comparison for the film is, of course, the lamentable Armageddon. One only has to look at how the characters are portrayed in the two films to realize that the makers of the Core see themselves as working on a higher level. The assembly of a squad of technicians almost always stands in for the squad of film-making technicians: whereas the heroes of Armageddon are working-class, unsophisticated, and rather haphazard, here we have scientists, engineer-dorks, a scientist who steals other peoples ideas and a tremendous NASA over-achiever.

However, The Core reaches beyond even self-conscious winking at the audience, and works as actual poetic metaphor. The story itself, when they enter the magma, has sacrificial and cthonic connotations that are reminiscent of Ancient Greek tales of descent into the underworld. Indeed, at nearly every stage of the journey, a sacrifice is made, culminating with our scientist-heroes actually arguing over who gets to die for the cause.

The first time I saw this film, I found the concept amusing - Hollywood guilt transformed into the wholesale slaughter of their screen surrogates. On returning to the film, I find that I can pick up on the subtleties of emotion. I deny the very idea that the film is bad then: the actors have absolute conviction. Aaron Eckhart, coming from a long-line of scumbag characters, makes for an authentically plebeian hero. When Stanley Tucci begins to crack under the high-pressure ending, one cannot help but wince and empathize. As Delroy Lindo becomes overwhelmed by the destructive light of magma,the effect is more than simply profoundly sad for this man who wishes to shed his own blood for his ship, but reaches the near-transcendental.

Everyone (in movies, that is) has been to space. Space is easy. The Core takes us into a subterranean journey which, although occasionally wallowing in clichés, manages to be something quite a bit more. The use of rich purples and blacks as Eckhart carries fuel rods into a compartment near the end of the film carries striking emotional effect. The director more than winks at his audience, but plays a fair game of narrative.

Two men sit at a sleazy French bar at two in the morning, getting wildly drunk. One man sits - the woman next to him opens her mouth wide with wild desire, and she presses down upon his mouth with intensity. The other soldier, his brother, sits glumly opposite him - another French woman accompanies him, but she does not press like her friend. Rather, she watches his eyes, wondering the reason for this man's melancholy.

Scenes like this, full of carnal desire and honest despair are pieces of what make Hell's Angels such a masterful film. Our two heroes, Monte and Roy, are brothers but different in temperament. Monte, who embraces the french woman I mentioned in the previous paragraph, is out mostly for a good time and a lark. Roy, with a face and voice to match, takes things far more seriously. Together, they venture off to war - one because he feels he is doing the right thing, the other because the RAF offers kisses to those who enlist. Also joining the war effort is the licentious Helen, in a provocative performance worthy of Louise Brooks or Ann Dvorak. She's not half the actress, and her face isn't actually that attractive, but she has the body, and she can project carnal desire on screen. And that is what is needed.

For the sexuality in Hell's Angels has a much more liberated air than a typical Hollywood film. After 1934, you couldn't get away with this. Harlowe's character treats our two brothers rather horridly, and the film does not punish her actions. At the end of the film, she is off in the ether, her future unimportant. The reality of life, as mirrored in this film, is that sometimes, no matter what you do, you're fücked, and the fückers get off scott-free. Sexually, the film does not condemn premarital sex, but rather treats it as something normal and natural, without judgement. Monte, our lusty young gentlemen is introduced to the story in a very well shot scene in which a German general walks in on him making out with the general's wife. Oi! This sexual digression warrants a violent reaction: a duel. The duel is also startlingly well-shot.

At the very beginning of the film, I had my doubts. The scenes inside the German beer hall are stereotyped, conventional, rather dull, patronizing and contain horrible dialogue. However, that first make-out session with the German wife abandons the earlier artifice and feels far more palpably real. With this scene and the one after it, the duel at dawn, I relaxed, knowing that this would be a cinematic journey worth traveling. Indeed, the first half of the movie offered many surprises, and because of the nature of the film-making (first filmed as a silent, then as a talkie) I felt like I was observing some weird hybrid (this is a good thing). There's two-strip technicolor, regular black and white, black and white tinted, like a silent film, silent sections, dialogue, intertitles, the lot. It appears Hughes recycled some of what he had already made, and the result is a film unlike any other.

Indeed, as spectacle, Hell's Angels has few peers. The calm zeppelin, cruising through the sky has all the malice and threat of an imperial star destroyer, and as the plucky British planes roar off an airfield, they have the visual power of Laurence's horseback Arab army, riding across the desert. The first half was a grand crescendo to the zeppelin battle over London. But this had little prepared me for Hughes' second half, which is again a grand crescendo. In pacing and prowess of visual editing the climax of the entire film, a grand air battle over rural France, is positively Eisensteinian. The second act begins quietly enough, showing us the daily life of air officers during the war.

However, not all is well, as Monte begins acting out against what he perceives as a sucker's game - as a soldier, why should he fight for a capitalist enterprise? His voice is shouted down as cowardice, and he responds that they are the true cowards for fearing to express their own unwillingness to make war. Monte's brother calms him, and pretty soon the two are off on an extremely dangerous mission. Roy doesn't want to die either, but he certainly doesn't have the zest for life that Monte has. Ultimately, their story turns nihilistic as they are captured by Germans, and thus condemned to death. Now, this is an interesting set up, and mirrors the earlier zeppelin battle. You see, in order to gain speed, the commander of the zeppelin orders soldiers to jump from the zeppelin. These scenes have shock and horror: as the men walk off the floor and into the black darkness below, Hughes' camera captures primal horror. I was taken aback and quite literally gasped. The image of a man falling through a cloud and to his presumable death is unshakable. However, all of this is quite futile, as a zealous British airman kamikazes the zeppelin, causing the thing to explode, in what is surely one of cinema's most colorful and powerful explosions. The futility of this enterprise, the struggle for survival, truly captures the abominable center of warfare.

Hughes' film teaches us that no matter what we do, we're fücked. Like the zeppelin officers in the first half, Roy and Monte by the end are irrevocably doomed. The acting in this film isn't magnificent, but the futility on display in the film had me extremely moved for these two brothers, especially Monte. Monte's mad struggle for survival isn't condemned - he exists the film with grace and reverence. No, the only thing Hughes' war epic truly condemns is the futility of warfare. Even Roy's sacrifice at the end is in vain - mere moments after the two brothers die, the British attack begins, and the secrets they held would have been rendered useless.

A sunny day in the Mountains - Dr. Johannes Krafft is out mountaineering with his lovely wife and a mountain guide. In his youthful exuberance, he looks up at the mountain that stand before him and laughs.

And like a furious and vengeful Greek God, the mountain strikes him and his life down. As his wife is standing next to a crevasse, peering down into it, an avalanche begins. In the ensuing chaos, the rope which connects her to safety is cut, she falls into the terrible deep, and Johannes clutches the end of the rope with force.

This is a film of primal, operatic power. The plot is threadbare - the entire story could be summarized quickly, with little loss of important events, but the plot is hardly the point of the film. What Pabst and Franck accomplished in their two hour mountain epic was to create a poem of beautiful horror. To combine the elements of wind and water, moving from Winter into Spring, and to express to us, the audience, what a mountain truly means, and to place us firmly in the shoes of those victimized by its terrible beauty. Terrible beauty: a dead man lies sprawled over an ice bridge. As searchers approach, the light shines through the ice, but not through the man's body, crisply showing us the fact of his death in combination with the grace of the piece of ice upon which he rests.

Some of the cinematography present is as beautiful and stirring as anything in cinema itself. The film takes a few moments just to show us the textures of things, cinematically interesting surfaces and movements. There are images, many of them having to do with clouds, that have nothing really to do with the matter of the plot, and yet no single frame ought to be taken away, for they support our experience of entering the world completely and wholely. There is some 'filler', sure. But the film can hardly faulted for not constantly hitting the giddy heights it occasionally reaches. Fanck and Pabst take us to a high realm of cinema, and if they slip a few times, they can hardly be faulted. As this film shows us, climbing is a dangerous occupation.

It's best to forget that Leni Riefenstahl is the female lead, in order to enjoy the film more purely. And then, afterwards, remember that she must have surely seen the film, and been inspired by it, to some degree.

The film's tagline is "You think you know who you are. You have no idea." I reject both the suggested idea that I have no idea who I am and the inferred suggestion that this film tells me who people truly are. If people in real life are really like this, then man, we're screwed.

A bilious film that I walked into late and left prematurely. A film which is so wrapped up in its goal of becoming The Race Film of All Time that it loses sight of the very tools a film must use.

The rules of Hollywood are such: if you show something in the first half, it must be used in the second half. Thus the gun that the daughter worries about her father buying will somehow find its way into the story in the second half. The rules of Hollywood are to make dialog 'real' - a concept which changes with every decade. Is this 'real dialog' somehow less ludicrous than the 'real dialog' of Kevin Smith ten years ago? The rules of Hollywood state that we set the scene, and as action rises, the camera moves in closer to the faces - in this film primarily so we can see the supposed shame, humiliation and transcendental realism of the characters. The strings increase, the frame-rate slows down, and our heart is meant to break.

This film is as crassly manipulative as it is vapid. I have my own prejudices against L.A., which I freely admit, so to combat this prejudice I will not say that this is a natural situation stemming from the location, but rather probably from the author and director. The writer, Paul Haggis, already showed a taste for polemics over humanity in his Million Dollar Baby, which at least had a director who understood how to make the vision of the film bring out the best of a script's ideas. Now that Paul Haggis has his own hands on the camera it becomes obvious that not only does he not know how to write true, natural human drama, he does not know how to photograph or direct it as well. Paul Haggis comes from the land of TV, let us not forget: the land of diminished expectations.

Everything is as obvious as a TV-movie, simply presented for simple minds - Haggis drills into us, over and over again, that while on the surface people may seem to be awful, they have secret pains hidden. This is a nice idea, but so hamfistedly presented that the whole juxtaposition of bad/good has an amateurish feel. Structurally the film is broken up, in the tradition of Magnolia and other earlier films. The editing is as typical and conventionally "cinematic" as could be - if there is a dramatic movement, such as a door opening or a car driving past between the subject and camera, the editors use that extreme movement to give the cut that occurs there a more kinetic quality. The problem is that other than the drive to keep things moving, there is very little intelligence and thought behind the cuts - everything is kept by the books. Not only are the puppets of this hideous racial punch and judy show ineptly handled, but even the curtains are lowered and raised with incompetence.

The film tries desperately to present reality, but there's just no talent whatsoever. Some of the actors are good, some of the actors are bad, and all of the performance get muddied together, brought down by the low, low aesthetics of the film. We have cinematography which is technically clear: we can see the scene, we have a clear understanding of what is happening. However, not only is the cinematography unremarkable, but it is thoughtless camera-work and framing which believes that it actually is inspired. The result is little stylistic flourishes which one recognizes but do not actually add anything to the drama or pathos. For example - and this is a spoiler - as a father holds his dying child (the father might be shot too, I didn't stick around to find out) the camera sees his face and gives us the famous Vertigo track/zoom. The Vertigo shot!!! It was at this point that the film became hysterical and I just had to leave. I had to leave because it was so bad. I left because I was in the middle of a crowded theater, and I wanted to express to the audience that I was sick of emptyheaded Hollywood 'art' which is full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing (in the Bard's own words). I hate to waste such good Shakespearian references on something this remarkably bad.

There seems to be a great deal of backlash to this film, mostly resting on its supposed technical ineptness. I've heard poor acting - not true. Plot holes? Not particularly, if you take the film on its own terms as a world where hypnotism can actually do such things. Too much violence and gore? I've seen gorier and more disturbing films which did not produce quite the distaste and bitterness in my mouth that Oldboy managed.

No, I suggest that in order to understand this movie, you have to understand some fundamentals of drama, and in order to understand why it feels so emotionally unrewarding one has to turn to Aristotle's poetics. Start with books ten and eleven, if you want to get right to the meat (but you'll be doing yourself a disservice). It details the dynamics of reversal and recognition, both of which almost overwhelm the ending.

The film follows much of Aristotle's demands for making tragedy excite pity and fear. We have the "man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty" and as said before recognition. And yet, while watching the film I felt little pity and no fear. Well, the teeth-torture had me cringing, but that's a shock-horror trope which cannot help but have that effect. I think because the film may actually be to wrapped up in theory, caught up in so much crude narrative mechanics that the motivations of the characters are not properly fleshed out. This is a very fatalistic universe which Chan-wook Park has created. The director has embraced the modern shock aesthetic too firmly, and mostly abandoned the poetry which a tragedy requires. What poetry there is lies in some of the films cinematography, when it is not too caught up with spectacle and forcibly impressing the viewer.

This is technically a good film, but seems to me to lack grace. The ambiguous ending also seems half-baked. We understand that this character has gone from a good situation to a bad situation, but does the last-minute oddness make it slightly less bad? Perhaps the only way to deal with such a traumatic situation? What was the intent, exactly, to have the relationship between Oldboy and his lover to continue as it does? I don't think that this is a polemic in favor of decriminalizing incest - I suspect that the director just thought it would be another cool way to mirror Oedipus Rex, where the father, blinded, walks off into the sunset with his daughter, to wander the world.

Hopefully, the next film will be more Sappho-influenced. For a better, more tender example of modern reversal and recognition, look no further than eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

There are two slight references to F. W. Murnau's Faust in this new film from Christopher Nolan, and they are two of the slightly brighter spots in this dark, muddy and often incoherent film. One occurs in flashback - young Bruce going to Faust as an opera, where dancers and singers float around on strings, and the violent music threatens to overwhelm. Little Bruce, unnerved by the diabolical proceedings, leaves the theater, where his real troubles begin. The second occurs after Batman has, and this is a spoiler, essentially failed to prevent citizens of Gotham from being subjected to a fear-inducing gas. So they, in the throes of this psychotropic drug, look into the air and see Batman flying overhead, his eyes glowing red and the general effect being eerily similar to Emil Jannings wrapping his dark satanic wings around a medieval German city.

Neither of these moments have any substantial weight because they are unsupported by the film as a whole - the Faustian theme of whether one can enact one's dream and retain the soul is totally abandoned thematically, replaced with an immature social conscience that is unabashedly pretentious - with every sweeping movement of the score the Hollywood system is demanding that we recognize what we see as of critical importance, and intelligent. The film seems to ask questions regarding the rightness of the vigilante way, and perhaps what is necessary to combat evil, but fundamentally the thoughts of the film have all the weight of vapor. There's no guiding theme which is informed by the visuals of the film, and ultimately the entire project degenerates into the predictable life-threatening situation, where somehow the day must (and, no surprises here, will) be saved. The Faust angle is slightly touched on at the very end, when a completely directionless Katie Holmes says something only half-meaningful about who Bruce Wayne actually is.

The dialogue is embarrassing, the editing shameful. Not only are the fight scenes difficult to digest with the relentless quick-cutting, but almost the entire film is paced as an action sequence. The narrative moves from scene to scene with no change in pace, no grace and no thought towards creating a film which works cohesively. Every action has supposedly profound meaning, with the exception of a few trite one-liners. The end result is a story operatically simple but utterly lacking in depth. A simple movie suited for simple minds which desire to have complexity with none of the effort. That, perhaps, is the devil's bargain for the audience. The third bargain is that of Christopher Nolan who has the opportunity to use as much money as he wants, but only ends up debasing himself. One can tell that he's trying, and there are some nice visuals, some good performance - even good ideas, but they are swamped by the incessant score and the hapless editing.

Katie Holmes is pretty awful, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine bring themselves and nothing else, and Christian Bale's vocalizations as the Batman are closer to the Macho Man Randy Savage than the Dark Knight. Tom Wilkinson is a stereotype, but a well-done one. Liam Neeson and Cillian Murphy are the only two who really impress - Neeson has a tangible commitment to his arch plan, and Murphy gives the viewer a psychopathic glee. The Scarecrow is an almost intellectual villain - he calls his own image a Jungian archetype.

All I asked was one shot - just one, that went on longer than five seconds. The camera has been emasculated - the only power that's in this entire work are the images of a city in flames vaguely reminiscent of Bruegel. They do not have the clarity and savagery of any of his paintings, and are ultimately as meaningless to the viewer as that part of the city is to the narrative. The art has been abandoned, ignored, and consequently withers. Christopher Nolan must decide whether his partnership with Hollywood was worth it.

It begins with some nice campy battle-action: two armies fight each other on a bridge. It's interesting that the 'good' are made up as Christian paladins, whereas the 'evil' are more in the vein of pagan savages. Then it moves up in time, to a dude ordering a hit on his spouse's unborn child, and again forward in time as this man has joined an odd group of fighters who keep evil presences in line. The cinematography is obviously inspired by Delicatessen, although not nearly as good as that film - overuse of CGI really distracts from photographic integrity. The set-up reminded me of Witch Hunter Robin - the narrative certainly seems to draw greatly from Eastern influences. So - we have easily identifiable influences. However, I could not identify where the movie's heart was - it seemed sadly absent. There are a few moments of emotional tenderness and importance, and there are scenes of tension, but without a firm hand directing the film toward its logical conclusion nothing gells together quite properly.

Perhaps I would have understood more clearly had I read the novel. Also, the child's decision at the end to go over to evil felt a bit odd and underdeveloped. Many of the elements were underdeveloped actually. I would've liked to have seen more of the other watch, and understood more what exactly this world is that we're looking at. It was all quite muddy and rather incoherent. Olga was cool, though.

One section of this film works marvelously however - the short 3-5 minute black and white animated sequence that tells us the story of "the virgin" who brings death to everything she touches. This film is worth seeing for that moment alone. I'd like to take it out of the film and watch it by itself, over and over again.