There’s a new “edition” (new to my knowledge) of Oliver Laric’s Versions posted to his website. This time, Laric makes use of Disney’s penchant for reusing animation cells and the Romans’ tendency to copy Greek artwork to riff on the status of the image, which Laric argues is not watered down by but in fact requires reproduction (and always has). Laric’s versions are essential to any understanding of the multiplicities of the internet—-I’m extremely grateful for this one.

Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

Leaving Inception yesterday, my cousin and I made for the Exit door immediately below the screen.  Walking briskly down the subsequent staircase, we found ourselves finally at an Emergency Exit door that wouldn’t open. An architectural dead-end.

Inception–sort of a millennium generation answer to The Matrix– is about fantasy worlds within the mind, and the tenuous grip that people who indulge in fantasy maintain on reality.  In the requisite exposition-heavy section of the movie, as Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) explain the rules of Inception’s world to newbie dream-architect Ariadne (Ellen Page), they demonstrate how the architects of their brand of manipulated dreams cut corners through spacial paradoxes and architectural dead-ends.  Much like the hidden limitations of a video game world, the horizon isn’t infinite.

Unfortunately, Inception later abandons a number of the rules it takes great pains to set down in the first third of the movie, either for expediency or heightened drama–a practice George A Romero would refer to as lying.  When, at the outset of trouble in the movie’s centerpiece dream-caper, Cobb reveals to his team that in this dream (as opposed to all others) dying means dying in real life, not just waking up, one can’t help but think that Mr. Nolan didn’t know how else to up the stakes.  When Cobb admits that he couldn’t have convinced his team to attempt the job with all the facts, the issued apology from the filmmaker rings as empty to the audience as Cobb’s does to his team.  No one likes to be artlessly manipulated when they’ve committed themselves to be at the mercy of a boss’s whim–whether the boss is Mr. Cobb, or Mr. Nolan–for so long, and at such considerable expense (to say nothing of the people who ponied up for the IMAX experience).  A few similar loopholes–those nagging why didn’t they just’s–inevitably become the fodder for the car-ride-home conversation.  Cinematic dead-ends.

Inception is a very engrossing and entertaining few hours.  Luckily, Mr. Nolan’s characters eventually stop talking and get to work, at which point the movie becomes far more appealing–and, I might add, beautiful.  The normally stellar Joseph Gordon-Levitt–who, having obviously been instructed to talk in his deepest, suavest voice, comes off as a little boy in DiCaprio’s clothes–gets the best of this silent time; a lengthy balletic sequence in which he fights his way through a gravity-less hotel is really the high-point of the movie (indeed, Mr. Gordon-Levitt’s character grows on you every moment he’s not speaking).  Like The Matrix, Inception revels in showing its audience just how constructed movies really are–and Mr. Nolan is more than a match for the Wachowskis as a magician of film time and space.

The shortcomings of Inception are oddly similar (although much less grave) to those of Avatar–namely, artless dialogue and wooden acting muddying a film with unparalleled visual and technical virtuosity.  This is the current state of the blockbuster–filmmakers dream bigger and bolder, at the expense of other concerns.  Unlike Mr. Cameron, Mr. Nolan still seems to cater to intelligent, film savvy viewers–hence Hollywood’s jumping on the Christopher Nolan bandwagon with such fanfare.  He’s the Steven Spielberg of this colder, darker era, producing smart, hypnotic moneymakers.

The architectural limitation of Inception is in its impact.  Inception–the planting of an idea in a sleeper’s mind–is difficult, Cobb explains, because for a planted idea to take hold, it needs to appear to arise organically, and carry some emotional weight. Mr. Nolan has no trouble planting certain images in the audience’s mind, but he has more trouble when it comes to convincing his audience to care, because his films feel neither organic, nor emotional.  Inception is a movie you begin to forget as soon as you leave the theater.  Unless, of course, you don’t leave the theater.

My cousin and I turned around to climb back up the stairs (we’d passed a second-floor exit on the way down to the first floor), and discovered we were leading some twenty people.  By the time we pushed open the second floor exit–to reveal a different set of stairs–we were leading forty or fifty.  This second flight of stairs led on for some time–to another flight.  It smelled strongly of urine.  We turned around, fighting our way through at least sixty people, having decided to go back to the theater exit.  Which was locked.  We looked up at the stairs that rose above us, and seemed to go on ad infinitum.  Only my cousin’s vaguely horrified look told me that I wasn’t going crazy, or at least not alone.  We banged on the door until an unnerved theatergoer opened the door and was surprised to find seventy or so people, trapped in a dream.  We were happy to leave.

I’ve been trying, desperately, to come up with something intelligent to say about Toy Story 3 (something other than, “My mother and I cried watching this movie). With any luck, that review will be up here by the end of the week (any luck, really…). For now, I’ve been able to distract myself with the trailer for the film New Jerusalem, which stars Will Oldham. I love Oldham’s music and his acting, so I’ll be keeping and eye out for this one. As Vulture points out, his output is prolific. But it’s his presence in films–heartfelt, bizarre, genuinely talented and pleasurable to watch–that always fascinates me. This one looks no different.

I spent two rainy, somewhat cold, humid days in Paris last week. Exhausted and dirty, I felt like a young hero from a Balzac novel: none of the nobility, all of the fervor. At least I wasn’t wearing Tevas and crew socks. I had been travelling for three weeks, and I wanted to relax in the European city I best knew my way around. For most, Paris is the city of light because they illuminate all the monuments at night. For me, Paris’ association with light is due to the cinema. When I was small, Paris belonged to Sabrina and the countless other charming movies I saw with my mother (not to mention The Aristocats); as I grew older, it belonged to Renoir, Ophüls, Buñuel, and Godard.

This time, the city came to belong to another Paris: Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders dreamy desert rose that swept the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. It’s a beautiful film: shot in the American west, it delights in the huge landscape and blank faces of its characters; at times I thought it kind of a remake of The Searchers. When the film moves, briefly, to urban centers like Los Angeles and Houston, it’s as smart as the best parts of Zabriskie Point or Playtime, and more beautiful than either.

I’d seen the movie before, but I hadn’t seen the film.

Seeing Paris, Texas reminded me of the cinema, real cinema, and how I haven’t seen something that wasn’t digitally projected since I don’t know when, and I miss it. I miss the grain and the cackle of the projector, the imperfect image, the projectionist who misses a beat because he’s engrossed in the film or making out with his girlfriend, the warmth and the color. But this longing isn’t just a question of moralistic aesthetics. Cinema doesn’t have to be film (shot on film): it has to be cinema. Everyone is familiar with Susan Sontag’s rallying call for form over content. I don’t want to repeat it, but I think this might be an appropriate time to relearn or at least remember it. Now that we can ask–as Godard himself has–what was cinema?, we have to at least remember that it wasn’t whatever it is we see now.

Godard once said cinema was the last form of public transportation. The Lumière brothers took us to Lyon, Georges Méliès took us to the moon; we’ve been traveling ever since. The cinema takes us there together—I know, I know, it sounds like the slogan from BP’s upcoming save-our-image-please-trust-us ad campaign, but it’s true. The problem with the home theater isn’t that you lose some illusory connection to your neighbor or the guy in cool glasses sitting in the back; it’s that an honest encounter with the erotics of cinema is a confrontation that’s only possible in common, in public. Like a train wreck or an airplane crash.

What’s lost, then, with the digital technology and the dispersion of cinema (which makes it, really, anti-cinema), is this in common, what Godard referred to as public transportation. Digital technology takes you there alone: you watch something on your iPod and you let the world know you’re not paying attention to them and fine, whatever. I take my laptop everywhere and watch whatever I want. You can watch the entirety of The Aristocats on Youtube, or you can just watch that one great scene. I do it all the time: greatest quotes from Superbad, the very end of My Darling Clementine, Hollis Frampton fragments or World War Two newsreels.

The joke, though, is on me. I remain unmoved: I watch comedies and I don’t laugh, I watch Paris, Texas and I don’t cry. You watch it alone and you travel alone and you remain totally and completely insulated from the potential a work of cinema has to move you because you remove it from its form. You neuter it. You consume its content and discard everything that is cinema.

Paris, Texas’ protagonist, Travis, has a problem: he can only move forward alone–he can only unite his son and his wife and then he has to keep going, alone. It’s a modern perversion: movement and freedom. I can’t sit still when I pop something into the DVD player at home. Sometimes I think the best place to watch movies is on an airplane. It might be the model for a cinema of the future: everyone individual, their own nation, moving at once. But it won’t be cinema. This is something else, something that moves you without your being moved.

I’ve been plagued by jet lag for the past few days, waking up around 4 wide-eyed and unable to roll over and talk in my sleep for hours (like I’d like to). It’s a nice, icy blue time of day–good to catch up on some reading, but even better to do some lonely home viewing. Here are a few of the things I’ve been enjoying at unlikely hours.

1. Breaking Bad — Okay, maybe you shouldn’t watch this at 4 AM: its tone is downright apocalyptic; and it’s more melodramatic than AMC’s other amazing offering, Mad Men. But Breaking Bad is not only engrossing and addicting, it’s pointed and truly modern in a way that fills a void left by The Wire and The Sopranos. The Season 3 premiere might be the best “the way we live now” ever.

2. By Brakhage — I’ve been revisiting these in preparation for the day when I buy Volume Two. Watching Brakhage without the flicker of the projector can be bizarre, but on DVD in the deserted morning it seems perfect: just let yourself zoom in, frame by frame, and watch everything pass and flow. But don’t look at it like a painting: it’s a film.

3. JFK — Why, yes, a healthy dose of epic conspiracy theory before the sun rises is more enjoyable than at night with friends. Paranoia is better in the dawn? Maybe. Don DeLillo in the evening, by the fire; Oliver Stone in the morning, with coffee. Back and to the left.

4. The Silent World — You’ve seen The Life Aquatic. Now spring for the real thing: Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle collaborated on this Oscar winning documentary which seems timelier now more than ever. All the DVD collections of Cousteau’s explorations are also highly recommended.

5. Guy Maddin — All of Guy Maddin’s bizarre and beautiful films are made better by early morning confusion and lightheadedness, especially Archangel and the amazing Careful.

Bingo.

Exit Through The Gift Shop made its Boston debut a few weeks ago at Kendall Square.  Seems that Banksy is pressing his film’s American release his own way.  I very much enjoyed Gift Shop, by the way; expect a review quite soon.

I wanted to tell the people there DON’T PAINT OVER THIS, IT’S ART! IT’S IMPORTANT!  But, given that it’s stayed up for nearly a week, they probably figured out how much it’s worth.

Iron Man 2, dir. Jon Favreau (2010)

Nothing in Iron Man 2 seems old: like the arc reactor in Tony Stark’s chest, everything glows for no reason. The screens with which Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) interacts throughout the film go past physical presence and become the very air of Stark’s workshop, which he can manipulate with his touch. He not only tells robots what to do, he is himself a robot. It becomes difficult to stop thinking you’re watching The Jetsons.

Favreau’s camera follows things smartly: it follows Stark as a film camera, TV camera, or a security camera. Sometimes you watch through the eyes of Stark himself, or through the camera-eyes of Iron Man (they are, after all, one in the same).  When Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke, who must utter five lines throughout the whole film) nearly axes Iron Man, we watch through a fake worldwide news agency. Vanko’s father worked with Howard Stark to invent arc reactor technology, though according to Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, who has not, as of yet, left Pulp Fiction) Stark the Elder had him deported for wanting to profit off of the invention.  How someone was kicked out of the United States for desiring to be a good capitalist in the 1960s is the one piece of the film’s logic that seems far too far-flung.

Sometimes we watch the film through CNN or C-SPAN, as when Stark refuses hand his suit over to the American government because, he says, it’s not only his suit; it is him. This scene–featuring Garry Shandling–is the highlight of the movie’s awkward fist half hour.  Despite the rocky start, though, Jon Favreau picks the movie up and manages not to miss a beat until an out of place, whitewashed fight scene featuring Scarlett Johansson’s charmless shadow beating some guards senseless. Johansson, in fact, is a strange presence throughout the film. Unlike Gwenyth Palthrow, Johansson is eerily silent, as if Favreau simply didn’t tell her where to stand.

Later, at StarkExpo, competing weapons developer Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) presents a veritable army of drone Iron Men, who attack Iron Man and his new sidekick, War Machine (Don Cheadle) in the film’s final battlesetpiece. Vanko controls the drones, and the film presents him much in the way we imagine all drone operators: with the malicious pleasure of someone playing a particularly violent video game.

All of this makes the film’s most shocking moment the point at which Stark, effectively under house arrest by SHIELD until he gets his act together, watches a 16mm film of his father Howard Stark (John Slatterly, who didn’t even have to leave the set of Mad Men for his brief role). The radical disjuncture between the smoky film and the smooth, gleaming, and edgeless atmosphere of Iron Man 2—both the world within the film and the film itself—serve as a melancholy reminder of what is both lost and gained in the digital age. Iron Man 2 begs everyone to believe that despite the apparent warmth of analogue technology, there is something exclusionary about it, while everything new and digital lets us in. Yet something under the surface of Iron Man 2 is running contrary, and it has to do with history: Stark is rediscovering his father, he is finding the key to America’s future. It is a key that was constructed after World War II–when America was America–and has been kept hidden until now, when Iron Man can bring it back. Despite the veneration of the new, there’s a serious nostalgia here for the past. It’s nostalgia not only for righteousness but also for a particular kind of familial cruelty, which Stark’s own aggressive alcoholism indulges.  In the final battle, Vanko’s distance from the machine he controls is a source of anxiety and evil; while Stark’s unity with the suit offers safety and stability. The coldness of 16mm film comes from Stark’s distance from it: a distance of time and a distance of knowledge, something about that analogue technology doesn’t let him inside. The best technology is the kind you can become. It’s the way of the future–rooted in the past.

]]> http://sainteliotandco.com/blog/screen-memories/feed/ 0 http://sainteliotandco.com/blog/dispatches-from-the-fest-circuit-thoughts-after-the-first-screening/ http://sainteliotandco.com/blog/dispatches-from-the-fest-circuit-thoughts-after-the-first-screening/#comments Sat, 17 Apr 2010 14:31:57 +0000 Adam Hirsch http://sainteliotandco.com/?p=2097

At around 6:00 p.m. yesterday, the shorts program ended here at the Geneva Film Festival and I walked over to the bar across the street.  I sat down, got a drink, and on the back of the napkin began writing down the first things that came to mind after seeing my work screened (with other people’s hard, truthful work — but more on that in a later post). Here, unedited and unfiltered, is the list.

• Always keep story and quality in equal balance. Don’t try to over compensate one for the other.
• Never assume that your audience is coming to the theater wanting to think.
• Brevity is the soul of wit. So true.
• Spectacle helps.
• Better to have made a beautiful, meaningful film for $3000.00 than a kitschy, campy film with great production value for $65k.
• Don’t let your teeth rot.
• Never apologize for your work.
• Never get caught outgunned; always keep a shotgun hiding where no one suspects.
• Make something real.  Make something original.

I’ll post the complete write-up of the festival tomorrow on the flight back.

The Hurt Locker opens with a quotation from a book by the journalist Chris Hedges called War is a Force that Gives us Meaning. “The rush of battle,” Hedges writes, “is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” Its relevance to the film’s storyline is obvious: Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner) is addicted to war; so addicted that, before returning to Iraq, he tells his infant child that war is the only thing he loves. On some level, the film isn’t so different from Iron Man: much of James’ character is defined by his interaction with the clunking, heavy, uncomfortable suit he wears to defuse bombs. When Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) wonders if he can wear the suit, James tells him no, of course not.  It’s not an issue of masculinity.  Sanborn can never wear the suit because James can’t give it away; it has fused with his body, it is part of him. It’s the same reason Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) reveals his alter-identity at the end of Iron Man: he has become the suit, without any opportunity for separation.  Its hardly surprising that, drunk, James wears the helmet to bed.

What makes The Hurt Locker interesting is how it manages to explore the uniqueness of the American occupation of Iraq through its narrative structure. War movies about WWII or Vietnam feature men on missions: they walk across great swaths of terrain, be it rural France or humid jungle. No one does any walking in The Hurt Locker: the EOD team comprised of James, Sanborn, and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) doesn’t have a destination. Everyday they leave to explore, diffuse, and return. They are unfurled and then folded back to base, with food, showers, alcohol, coffee.

The Hurt Locker speaks to the fact that the ‘war film’ itself is so played out that there can’t really be a satisfying plot anymore, only a series of strung together vignettes. The same was true of Sam Mendes’ Jarhead: no narrative could have held the film together; thus the film becomes chiefly interested in the bizarre moments it can bleed out of Gulf War I. Though The Hurt Locker’s masterful use of tension and suspense covers its tracks, it still holds true: every excursion by the EOD team is an opportunity to illustrate something strange, without consideration for the plot.

Despite the rawness of the Iraqi landscape and Baghdad’s cityscape, it is the rawness of America that strikes the truest note in the film. The supermarket—the quintessential symbol of American excess—is portrayed with a funereal bleakness. It might be the most ignored portion of the film, but it’s a potent portrayal of the disconnect soldiers can feel from consumer society—a similar disconnect experienced by soldiers in Europe following WWI. Here, though, the war continues: the film offers no conclusions, and neither do the characters. The war remains; somehow we need it overseas, lest we fold it back onto ourselves.

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