HopkinsCinemAddicts

Stereotypical but not typical

Precious follows Claireece "Precious" Jones, an obese, illiterate 16 year-old in 1987 Harlem. She is kicked out from school for getting pregnant the second time (both times by her father) and at home, is abused by her tyrannical mother, Mary (Mo’nique). Her life starts to turn when Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), her GED instructor, and Mrs. Weiss (Mariah Carey), a social worker, help her transition out of abuse and illiteracy, yet not beyond the entrenched boundaries of poverty and HIV.

“Mariah Carey and Mo’nique are in it? And Tyer Perry’s producing it?” My friend saw a still of Precious and assumed it was a comedy.

When names like Mariah Carey, Tyler Perry and Oprah, who co-produced the film, are being mentioned, it certainly doesn’t evoke impressions of spellbinding acting, seriousness or poverty, respectively. Additionally, because the premise of Precious is already incredibly dramatic, it predisposes the film to be judged and criticized before it’s been seen. But descriptions like “poverty porn,” “stereotypical,” and “Lifetime-y,” are unoriginal presumptions that overlook the film’s idiosyncrasies.²

Watch before you judge: serious and Mariah Carey unite impressively well in Precious. Flickr Creative Commons.1

Viewers will be afraid to blink throughout the film or will cover their eyes completely because director Lee Daniels will engage you by making you feel uncomfortable. The camera in Precious is rarely completely still, even when attending still scenes: this perpetuates the underlying vigilance and instability that characterized 1980’s Harlem. Contrastingly, Precious is stoic and stagnant: she hesitates to speak and readily accepts abuse. Her appearance may suggest otherwise, but she's inhibited and defenseless, handicapped by years of trauma. It is through this presentation, a perspective only film can provide, we can begin to sympathize with Precious, the girl who symbolizes every one of America’s problems.

And abandoning our preconceptions is easy for a film this unique: nothing is unnecessarily sensationalized because nothing needs to be. Precious herself may be a 350-pound cliché (especially as she steals fried chicken and craves McDonald's) but the film’s approach to New York’s social injustice is surprisingly stark and believable. Guns, drugs and male aggression are ignored. The film instead spotlights exclusively on minority women and depicts the most pervasive kinds of violence: domestic, sexual and worst of all, unreported. It’s startling just to see Mary talk: Mo’nique revealed she was portraying her own abuser from childhood, and the camerawork complements her intensity with frequent close-ups, shots from Precious’s colossal yet vulnerable point of view, and cut-ins of hand gestures (which reveal a lot about internal state).³

Consequently, Daniels’ discreet portrayal paints a New York City darker than what we’re used to: he reveals endemic issues that can’t be solved valiantly or temporarily as they can be in Martin Scorsese’s films or Slumdog Millionaire. Precious may be one of the most painful films of the year because it concentrates on familiar social problems resolved by acquiescence, not fairy-tale endings.

"Bittersweet" is a fitting oxymoron to describe general reaction: it's that sad film you love because it makes you cry. And maybe because it’s that time of the year, an incongruous alignment of Holiday cheer and finals stress, I was especially moved by Precious. My problems and pains may all be relative, yes, but how lucky am I? How lucky are you?

Image Credits

¹ "Marcel Duchamp and Mariah Carey play chess." Wreck and Salvage. Flickr Creative Commons. 1 Nov. 2008.

Works Cited

² Peterson, Latoya. "Precious Reactions Interesting, Infuriating." Jezebel. 02 Nov. 2009. Web. 08 Dec. 2009. <http://jezebel.com/5395444/precious-reactions-interesting-infuriating>.

³ Hirschberg, Lynn. "The Audacity of Precious." The New York Times Magazine 25 Oct. 2009. The New York Times Magazine Online. 21 Oct. 2009. Web. 8 Dec. 2009. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25precious-t.html?pagewanted=4>.

The Function of Dysfunction

Perfect is boring. Even though this existence is something we seem to strive for as a society, this unreachable ideal really isn’t that interesting. Nobody wants to read a book, hear about, or see a movie about anyone or anything being perfect.  Perfection doesn’t breed conflict and that’s why we’re drawn towards things with discord, with problems, with issues.  That’s why the dysfunctional family has been a trope found in film:  it’s the perfect situation for conflict, and lots of it. There are the serious films dealing with family dysfunction, but a more unique breed is the comedic dysfunctional family. Two modern examples are The Royal Tenenbaums and Little Miss Sunshine, films that make us laugh at things that aren’t supposed to be funny. Though they’re both from the same family (forgive the pun), these two films address dysfunction in different ways, yet still make us laugh.

Family isn't a word...it's a sentence.¹

Nothing screams dysfunction more than the Tenenbaum family:  the interactions between Chas, Richie, Margot, Etheline, Royal, and the other cast of characters that make up their extended dysfunctional family can hardly be called average. We’re first introduced to the Tenenbaums as Royal is telling the children (Chas, Riche, Margot) that their mother (Etheline) is kicking him out and keeping the kids and the house. Already a broken family, each child is introduced as the prodigy they are:  Chas the businessman, Margo the playwright, Richie the tennis pro. Even though they’re a fragmented family this is the peak of the family’s success, and as the narrator says, “Virtually all brilliance of the young Tenenbaums had been erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster.” Jumping ahead those two decades the Tenenbaum kids have grown up, but have only gone downhill in the years. And when Henry Sherman (friend and business manager) proposes to Eltheline, Royal isn’t too pleased she’s planning on getting married to someone else. So Royal takes matters into his own hands, and of course doesn’t handle things in a very deft manner. When he ambushes Etheline on the street to ask to spend more time with her and the kids she of course refuses, and instead of taking no for an answer he tells her he has cancer, that he’ll be dead in six weeks. Royal’s “illness” brings the family back together, and reunited under the same roof for the first time in seventeen years. The Tenenbaums’ dysfunction is only amplified as the film continues.

One of the most apparent ways the Tenenbaums are dysfunctional is their interactions together. Speaking on the collective whole, the characters in The Royal Tenenbaums have a skewed sense of right and wrong, and this results in inappropriate behavior-a lot of it. There’s the time Chas asks Richie inappropriate questions about his suicide attempt the first time he sees him after the incident, or how Margot’s cheating on her husband with childhood friend Eli, or any of Eli’s drug-induced actions (especially crashing into the house). Royal is by far the biggest culprit of them all:  from lying about his “illness,” his condemning Margot’s first play on her 11^th birthday, picking up half the flowers he just put on his mother’s grave to Chas so he can put them on his wife’s grave.  The root of the dysfunction comes not from the Tenenbaums behaving badly, but their honest belief that their actions are morally right.

The happy family. ²

Beyond just their actions amongst each other, the clearest way the Tenenbaums’ dysfunction shines through is in their dialogue.  Much like their physical actions, their communication is wrought with inappropriate moments.  Provocative, revealing statements and moments are often followed by lines that have nothing to do with the problem at hand, or speak to such an insignificant part they’re almost non sequiturs.  When Eli and Margot break off their “relationship,” at one point Eli says to Margot “You’re in love with Richie, which is sick and gross.” After a pause, all Margot answers with is, “Do you send my mother your clippings and your grades from college?” When Richie and Margot’s husband, Raleigh St. Clair, go to a private investigator to see if Margot’s having an affair, Margot’s secret past is revealed in a fast paced montage of her life. After discovering his wife smokes and the many, many, many people she has slept with, all Raleigh can say is, “she smokes?” These seemingly off base responses demonstrate how the Tenenbaums are unable to deal with confrontation, further heightening their dysfunction.

"Wait...so most families don't wear matching tracksuits?"³

Overall, the Tenenbaums aren’t an exemplary family: they lie, have affairs, keep secrets, abuse drugs, divorce, and generally behave badly. But despite all this, the reason we can laugh with and at the Tenenbaums is their world isn’t really the one we inhabit. Yes, they’re in New York. Yes, those are streets we could drive down. Yes, we too could own Chas and Co.’s red Adidas tracksuits or Etheline’s Hermés handbag. But the Tenenbaums’ reality is most definitely a surreal one. Their personal successes of epic proportions are improbable, even if they all are the prodigies they are presented as. Their social interactions cross the realm of probability:  yes, a coked out writer could drive his sporty convertible into a brownstone, but its unlikliness coupled with everyone else’s responses crosses the line into unrealistic. Even their home is a funhouse of extremely affluent proportions. Of course, their world is meant to exist in this realm of hyper reality. The Royal Tenenbaums is told as a story, complete with narration (Alec Baldwin, what a voice), chapters, the classic opening of a book (guess the title) as the first shot of the film. We’re meant to view this as a story, as a fable, as fiction.  By lifting our expectations of realism also lifts the societal expectations of appropriate behavior on both the character’s and our behalf. So it’s okay to laugh at the Tenenbaums, because we all know this really isn’t happening.

"Everyone just pretend to be normal." ⁴

Meet the ­­­Hoovers.  There’s Sheryl, mother and head wrangler of the ­­­Hoover clan.  There’s Richard, father and motivational speaker determined that his “Nine Step Program” is revolutionary, something that will raise his family out of the economic realm they’re in. And there’s Dwayne, the teen so dedicated to getting into flight school and Friedrich Nietzsche he doesn’t speak. At all. There’s Frank too, the second highest regarded Proust scholar in the world and the newest addition to the Hoover’s. He’s staying with his sister Sheryl fresh from the hospital after a suicide attempt. Oh, and he’s gay too. Grandpa, Richard’s father, lives with them as well and besides being a heroin addict, he's a very, very perverted old man as grandfathers are often portrayed, right?   And of course there’s seven-year old Olive, youngest daughter and the adorably bespeckled second runner up to in the regional Little Miss Sunshine pageant.  But, when the winner of the regional has to forfeit her crown (something about diet pills), Olive takes the title and with it the chance to compete at the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in sunny California. So the gang all piles in the yellow Volkswagen bus for a southwestern adventure, and with all that dysfunction in one car, comedy ensues.

For the Hoovers their dysfunction lies within each character’s individual personalities. From the above synopsis above it’s easy to say no one character is even remotely like another, and we see a glimpse of how they all function in the early scenes of the movie. Around the dinner table, Dwayne sits mutely as Grandpa loudly curses the entrée. Sheryl bickers with Richard as he goes off on a rant about the Nine-Step-Program, and Olive keeps asking Frank why his wrists are all bandaged up. It’s clear there’s a level of tension between these people, a manifestation of their inability to interact with each other. Their differences and inability to accept these differences creates an incohesive family, a cornerstone of the dysfunctional family.  But Little Miss Sunshine amps up the Hoover’s dysfunction to a whole new level by sticking all six of them in the Volkswagen for an extended period of time. The proximity and length of their journey to California from New Mexico exponentially heightens their incapacity to relate and function together. Each person’s personality and characteristics becomes even more pronounced and apparent, conflicting and contrasting even more so with the others in the confines of the car. Grandpa’s inappropriate statements move to a sexual level when he advises Dwayne to “f*** a lot of women. Not just one woman. A lot of women.” Richard rants for an even more expended period about the “Nine Step Program” to his captive audience, prompting Frank to respond with the “refuge of losers,” aka sarcasm. And when Richard’s program doesn’t sell like it’s supposed to, he and Sheryl get into a full-blown screaming fight.  The Petri dish that is the yellow van intensifies the Hoover’s dysfunction, making their different personalities clash on entirely new levels.

The epitome of a happy family. ⁵

The Hoovers are no Tenenbaums. Their world is painstakingly realistic:  there’s no denying the setting of Little Miss Sunshine functions in our own world. So how come we can still laugh in the end? Little Miss Sunshine relies on situational, physical comedy much more than The Royal Tenenbaums, meaning many of our laughs come from the visual:  watching the Hoovers frantically drive back to the rest stop after they realize they’ve left Olive there, or seeing the policeman go to the back of the bus and uncover porn magazines rather than Grandpa’s dead body. While these laughs aren’t directly dysfunctional, it’s the Hoover’s dysfunction that creates these humorous situations. That’s not to say there aren’t moments that are funny because of their maladjusted nature. Objectively speaking, is sneaking Grandpa’s body out the hospital window and into the back of the car funny? Of course not:  it’s horribly morbid and a little disgusting. But the physical comedy and amplification of hyperrealism from the Hoover’s dysfunction allows some scenes, like this one, to teeter the line of believability, and their comedic aspects keep us laughing and buying the storyline. The root of Little Miss Sunshine’s comedy is in their dysfunction, but instead of us laughing at them, we laugh at the situations and reactions their maladjustment illicits.

Both the Tenenbaums and the Hovers are unquestionably dysfunctional, yet their issues and problems are vastly different so it seems they have little in common. The Tenenbaums are maladjusted in a moral sense, which causes them to act and interact in the ways they do.  The Hoover’s dysfunction comes from personality traits and their inability to connect because of their differences. Dysfunction is no laughing matter, yet both films find humor in this sadness through suspending reality, or using dysfunction as a device to create humorous situations. As Tolstoy said “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and that’s definitely the case with the Tenenbaums and the Hoovers.

Photo Credits:

1. Photo from Vicky (Picasa)

2. Photo from OffOffOff

3. Photo from Photobucket

4. Photo from Beard Papa (Flickr)

5. Photo from Screenwriter's Corner

Lost Time

Production Journal #6

The first thing any film student learns in school is that film runs in normal time at 24 frames per second. Usually, people take that as a simple matter of fact...that the human eye cannot detect any flash of an image that runs at less than 24 frames per second. This idea is even further neglected when entering the realm of digital where frames don't tangibly exist. Capturing someone on film is like seeing the world in slow motion. Every single twitch and movement is precisely documented on individual celluloid frames. All of these fleeting moments that not even the eye can detect are preserved. For example, to the human eye a blink lasts less than 1 second, it's fast and often missed. When we blink ourselves, our vision is virtually uninterrupted. We live on knowing that there is a small fraction of a second of obstructed vision, this lost time goes by and we barely miss it. But on film, the progression of the eyelids closing is caught in individuals frames, therefore elongating the process. Film has the ability to divide movement into this kind of progression, while we can only see action as a unified entity. These undetectable fractions of a second are frozen on film, making them visually available to us. The lost time is found in the film and it presents to the viewer a new and otherwise unnoticed way of seeing things. How great is it that film can uniquely present us with the ability to capture the world as we know it as well as the world as we've never seen it? 

She senses that something is wrong.  

This idea of 24 frames per second became very real for me while putting together my last project. As described in my last post, I shot my project Panic on b&w 16mm. Inspired by the great Stan Brakhage, I decided to scratch onto my film to try and capture the emotion of panic. The scratches were to represent the evil negative energy of anxiety that wakes up my subject and drives her into a horrifying panic attack. The film follows the progression of this girl sensing a bad presence and eventually giving into hysteria; by the end of the short her mouth gapes open as she screams. The scratches pour out of her mouth and eventually take hold, overwhelming the frame and distorting her face. At the end shot, I scratched her entire face out; I wanted to show that the girl has completely lost herself in panic.

Still from Panic...the panic won this battle

The process of scratching is where the whole 24 frames per second concept hit me. It wasn't until I began that I realized what I was in for. In order for anyone to see what I was scratching, I'd have to scratch it in 24 times for it to appear for just 1 second. Throughout the process, my comprehension of time was completely lost. As I edited the film ran according to the speed of my arm spinning the spool. There was no sense of minutes our hours, I worried that I was miscalculating everything and that I was spending all my time putting together something as short as a 1 minute film (which still meant 1,140 individual frames for me to scratch). All I had to comfort me was the solid and reassuring fact of 24 frames per second. In the end, everything worked out. My film was longer than 1 minute (ended up being around 2 minutes and 30 seconds = estimate of 3,600 individually scratched frames!!!), and it gave the emotional effect that I wanted; it succeeded in raising the heart rate of my classmates. Once I get my film processed and transferred digitally, I will post it online. Till then, stay tuned for news on my next experiment which is supposed to be a sound project (unchartered territory for me). Until next time!

Diana.

Waltz with Bashir: life imitates art, calls for animation

Waltz with Bashir (2008) follows director/producer Ari Folman in his journey to rediscover his past from the 1982 Lebanon War. Initially, his pursuit is to confirm an ambiguous scene he witnessed as a soldier by interviewing veterans and interpreting their memories with a psychologist friend.  The film shifts from a series of personal recollections to a diplomatic appeal when each man’s account reveals the haphazardness of the soldiers, commanders, general public and war in general.

 
Waltz with Bashir is a hand-drawn animated documentary with careful attention to details. Waltz with Bashir. Flickr Creative Commons.¹

The genre is an interesting hybrid of documentary and animation: actual people are represented in cartoon versions of themselves yet dialogue is intact. Visually, it’s bold, stylish and impressively meticulous.  Over 3,000 frames were hand-drawn with tactful consideration to various visual cues (shadows, motion parallax and fine texture details) reminding us of the incredible effort and patience often overlooked in animation. With visual language this captivating, it's not hard to forget this is an educational documentary: Folman learned from previous documentary projects that cartoon-izing interviewees makes them readily familiar and accessible, thus more engaging to the audience. ²

And to portray each man’s shell shock, only the flexibility of animation can cater to human memory’s distortion, an underlying theme in the film. Whereas Folman’s memory is elusive, his friends can explicitly recall every dog that was shot, dismembered body parts floating amidst demolition, or their escapist wet dreams. “War is like a very bad acid trip,” Folman said, and that “animation is the only way to tell this story, with memories, lost memories, dreams and the subconscious.”³ Here, it's clear Waltz with Bashir proves life does indeed imitate art.

What then sustain the integrity of documentary amidst the punchy animation are the real voice recordings. Actual testimonials anchor us in reality so no matter how embellished the stories seem, the weariness and vulnerability in each veteran’s voice remind us that war is impossible to exaggerate. Appropriately, the film ends with real footage of the Sabra and Shatila massacre aftermath that Folman himself witnessed: the camera pans slowly across stacks of dirty corpses yet can barely keep up with the hysterical women that follow. We see it all through Folman’s cartoon eyes, emphasizing the contrast between the fanciful, imaginative world to the real.

Although animation will indefinitely be known for the naïve, childish fables of Saturday mornings, it is perhaps that stigma of novelty and innocence that accounts for Waltz with Bashir’s ingenuity: we are not used to seeing explicit content in cartoon, making the scenes all the more compelling. Funnily enough, lavishly funded war dramas with Hollywood actors can rarely resist glamorized action scenes or romantic conflicts. Waltz with Bashir ultimately does not challenge the seriousness of war and gives animated films the last laugh.

Image Credits

¹"Waltz with Bashir poster." Flickr Creative Commons. Wolf Gang. 11 Nov. 2008.

Works Cited

²"Ari Folman: "Animation, or Not at All"" Interview by David D'Arcy. GreenCine. All Media Guide, 23 June 2009. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. <https://greencine.com/central/arifolman>.

³"Ari Folman Finds Freedom in Animation." Interview by Steve Erickson. Film and Video. Studio Daily, 18 Dec. 2008. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. <http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/10304.html>.

 

Who needs a narrative...Not Stan Brakhage!

Production Journal #5

"Let it be the feelings that bring about the events. Not the other way"

Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer

Still from my next project Panic

It's really easy to get caught up in a storyline. Narrative has become so important in films today that it's hard to imagine a film without one. There are very few films that come out of mainstream hollywood today that don't have a planned out traditional plot. Unfortunately, many movies end up sacrificing the most important aspects of film in order to put all emphasis on the narrative. The visuals end up suffering as a result of this. The shots only purpose is for the revealment of plot information. There is no room or need for a creative eye therefore destroying the visual importance of film. For me, visuals are the most important. In order for me to really like a film, it has to engage me visually. The shots need to be dynamic and thought out; they have to have more purpose than just giving plot information (which is what most Hollywood blockbusters do). I want to see more! I want beautiful shots that move me. 

Maybe the best idea is to throw away all narrative and focus on the visceral visual experience of watching a film. This is what many avant-garde film directors have decided to do and so this week in class, we reviewed the works of many of these greats. The director that called out the most to me was Stan Brakhage. I was especially impressed by his great ability to capture an emotion or feeling without entering the narrative realm. I found myself most attracted to his films; his amazing ability to capture these raw emotions is moving. He is also a true filmmaker; the physical film is very important. You see this through the way he physically manipulates the film; by his scratching and painting directly onto the celluloid. I found that through the lack of story line or plot Brakhage was able to better focus on capturing the emotions that inspire him. 

As you can see, the theme of my week has been this idea of non-narrative. For my next project I was prompted to become inspired by these past great avant-garde filmmakers. I decided to honor Stan Brakhage and try to capture an emotion. I decided to try to capture the feeling of panic through film; to do this I used an actress and used some experimental camera techniques. I originally wanted to shoot in color. I wanted to experiment with color (as Brakhage did) and use it as an instrument for expressing an emotion. Unfortunately, I also wanted to scratch the physical film as well, but that was not going to be possible because that would require an extremely long and complicated process that I simply would not have time for in this 2 week deadline. So, I decided to shoot on black and white 16mm film which I could easily edit manually; good old scissor and tape holding the film together. I shot again on the old Arri-S camera. The shoot was difficult, but only because I was my own crew. It was difficult working the lights, using the heavy arri-s camera handheld, and directing my actress all at the same time. But I managed and the footage turned out relatively well. In terms of experimentation, I played with lighting and focus to represent the chaos and derealization one experiences when having a panic attack. I just got the film back, and will begin editing manually this weekend. I'm going to be adding scratches and perhaps coloring onto the film. For this project, I'm just going to let it all go.

 Stills from Panic: The slight defocus of the shot really throws things off and makes everything a little creepier; which is exactly what I wanted.

Next blog, I will try to include pictures of these same frames but with the scratches. Until next time.

Diana.

Organic, no additives

The storyline of The Celebration (1998) is simple. It centers around a wealthy Danish family celebrating its patriarch’s 60th birthday: Helge is enjoying his dinner party when his son, Christian, accuses him in front of all the guests of raping him and his twin sister, Linda (who recently committed suicide). When Helge later admits to his fault during a family breakfast, his eldest son Michael tells him to leave the table so the rest can finish their meal. The family is clearly is dysfunctional, but contextually The Celebration is subtly complex, leaving more grays than black and white. What we’re shown on screen is so candid we’ve become nuanced to the family’s situation, discouraging us from making hasty judgments.

Why? Because the camera is truly like an eye in The Celebration: sequences are undiluted and coarse, almost encroaching and nosy. The sense of uncomfortable intimacy can be attributed to the hand-held camera movement, the lack of special effects, and the tightness of the shots mimicking eye contact (long shots in The Celebration only serve to provide general scenic framework). The second-hand awkwardness is vicarious and we feel twinges of shock and subtle comedic relief, rather than bursts of them: realistically, the film borders voyeurism, not fabricated entertainment, and there is barely a trace of post-production. But this seemingly rudimentary approach to filmmaking is incredibly calculated.  In the Dogme 95 approach to filmmaking, everything must be painstakingly planned to avoid the need for post-production, cover-ups or cinematic gimmicks.

Its “Vow of Chastity”¹ states:

1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed.
3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the action takes place.
4. The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen.
10. The director must not be credited.

Extracting poignancy from the mundane is Dogme 95's objective, maintaining that art does not have to rely on frills. Thus, not only does the filmmaker have to rely solely on the pedestrian for provocation, the audience is then given an unprocessed version of a story. These films can’t be watched passively: attention must persist or else we “fall behind,” risking appreciation for Dogme 95 entirely. Like in everyday life, in which we can be unsettled by the smallest deviations from the norm, The Celebration demands the same sensitivity: there is no “cheating,” like forewarning music or exaggerated shots to guide our expectations.

And obviously Dogme 95 has its limits. By its definition, it cannot film fantasy, imagination or history, all concepts cinema is characterized by, and in many ways, obliged, to depict. This strict doctrine exiles almost every popular filmmaker but it should not be considered as a backlash at or challenge to Hollywood. All films aim for the same goal of surprise, empathy and escapism: The Celebration goes to show that a narrative, a family affair, a deeper look into the less-dignified life can evoke all three.

Works Cited

¹"Dogme 95 -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 19 Nov. 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95>.

Rose-colored glasses, stocking-covered lens

For nearly the first hour, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell Atonement (2007) circumscribes World War II, if watched in mute, that is. The scenes are too lush, blithe and buttered in upper-class ennui to emit the faintest traces of war like gratitude or concern. While the camera voyeurs on English girls in pretty dresses, bitching about the guest list and dozing on the grass, it’s then the sound’s duty to portend doom: menacing piano keys, perforated by the vigilant, almost militant, cadence of a typewriter recur in war and peace. Although music is clearly a motif in Atonement, the cinematography is far too overwhelming to be sharing a blog post. 

Atonement. Creative Commons.¹

Class tension might have been the initial block in Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie’s (James McAvoy) romance. And petty social schisms seem a few years later amidst the war. Robbie serves the army now, no longer Cecilia’s family, and nurse Cecilia serves thousands of other soldiers. Estranged from her family is she for loving Robbie, wrongly accused of rape by her younger sister, Briony, (Saoirse Ronan) who was thirteen at the time. It was Briony’s accusation that sent Robbie to prison, then war, and Atonement is Briony’s appeal for redemption.

To show the contrast between war and pre-war, the mise-en-scene is incredibly indulgent up to the rising action. It’s a rare summer day in 1935 England and the dinner party is going to be so awkward that Cecilia just smokes, swims and sunbathes outside her mansion, wearing a different outfit for each doing. Here, the audience can easily feel summer’s drowsy spell. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey reportedly used Christian Dior stockings behind the lens to filtrate a sensuous haze: effective in simulating the hot weather, basked in pastels, warmth and tension, not unlike a Barbara Walters interview. Romanticism works well here, depicting the fleeting antebellum luxury of boredom and laze.

Pre-war scenes, elegant mise-en-scene. Atonement. Creative Commons.²

Not so much for the next half of the film set in 1941 (a bad year to be in England), which follows the trio in mostly battlefronts and emergency rooms. Explicitness alone would work well but Atonement just had to color-coordinate the outfits with the wallpaper so it’ll bring McAvoy’s eyes out more.  It’s a shame when camerawork upstages casualty because it feels phony and hollow, inconsistent with the contextual intricacies. The audience is consistently fed poetic composition (the teal of Briony’s eyes in sight of crimson gore) but at times unnecessarily from already provoking situations: civilians drowning in the tube station, the disastrous evacuation at Dunkirk, or strategically supine dead school children in a meadow. The camera work then becomes obnoxiously conspicuous when we feel awe instead of horror. Bastardizing humanity’s lowest low for cinematic frill aside, Atonement is definitely one of the prettiest movies I’ve seen.

 

Robbie in combat...in a poppy field. Atonement. Creative Commons.³

For a movie based on one of the greatest books in recent years, it sure has a weak narrative content. Granted, the books will always be better. The attempt to adapt a film accurately to its text has proven so futile that ingenuity no longer dictates filmmakers: to an extent, visual confirmation of what we imagined from reading is enough. Director Joe Wright seems OK with this: for his first feature film, Pride and Prejudice (2005), he unabashedly claimed he had never read Austen. But literary adaptation in Atonement doesn’t nearly get the same precedence as aesthetic. The disparity is so grand that Atonement could might as well be McGarvey’s portfolio.

Image Credits:

¹"Atonement movie poster." Flickr Creative Commons. Wolf Gang. 19 Nov. 2007. 

²"Cecilia and Robbie in the library." Flickr Creative Commons. Lori Tabor-Randall. 7 March 2008.

³ "Private Robbie." Flickr Creative Commons. Alice Dice. 26 July 2008.

We ♥ L.A.

[As with my last post, I’m writing under the assumption that you’ve seen both Chinatown and Crash. Again, same rules apply: see them immediately for your personal well being or check the links.  There’s no way I can even begin to summarize Crash, let alone Chinatown, in any sort of all encompassing sentence. But seriously. Watch them.]

 Hollywood sign? Check. Smog? Check. Palm trees? Check. Welcome to L.A.¹

Los Angeles. It’s the City of Angels, the land of palm trees, opulence, beautiful beaches, sunny days, smoggy days, and the cultural advantage of being able to make a right turn on a red light (thanks Alvy Singer).  Of course, Hollywood has become synonymous with the city itself, and it’s not just the white letters nestled in the Hollywood Hills. The film industry’s headquarters are based in Los Angeles, a town overflowing with celebrities and “industry figures” alike.  As the city has grown so has the American film industry, and their simultaneous expansion has made the two essentially interchangeable in many ways. While the streets and hills of Los Angeles are the backdrop to more films than Hollywood wants you to believe, there are a few films where LA plays an integral part to the storyline. Chinatown and Crash are two films where Los Angeles is more than a backdrop, and it is interesting to see a sort of “then and now” view on Los Angeles in comparison. While it seems both films should depict two very different versions of the city, they both show Los Angeles as a surprising similar place:  a city beyond its glossy stereotype, full of its own complicated problems. 

The Los Angeles director Roman Polanski creates in Chinatown is a place where not everything is as it seems. Set in the late 30s, the film follows private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) as he attempts to find the answers to a case that is, well, not what it seems to be. In the process, Gittes travels all over L.A., from the recognizable glamour of Beverly Hills to the desolate farmlands in the Valley to the impoverished area of Chinatown.  The city we see is not the shallow façade of glitz and extravagance: Polanski delves deep beyond this shiny exterior to expose a more realistic depiction of the city.  Correlating with the theme of the discrepancies between the haves and have-nots, two very distinct sides of Los Angeles are depicted in the film. There’s Evelyn Mulwray’s (Faye Dunaway) home, the quintessential wealthy stereotype of Los Angeles living.  Set back from the street, the enormous mansion is exquisitely furnished, impeccably kept, with lavish grounds complete with its own stable.  This idea is sharply contrasted against many of the other locations, including the Valley and Chinatown. Even though it’s just over the hill from the city, the Valley is an entirely different world, an expanse of barren land populated by some orange groves and poor farmers the water company is attempting to force out.  Back in the city, Chinatown is a place we experience even before we visit it.  Nicholson’s famous line of “as little as possible” to describe his time in Chinatown sets the scene as a place of corruption and problems, and when we finally arrive there in the final scenes it fulfills these expectations as a dark place with bad neon lights and crowded streets (the ominous music doesn’t make the place seem any more auspicious, either). By painting Los Angeles as a city comprised as more than just wealth and sunshine, Polanski creates a place that reflects the corruption and problems he addresses.

 

"Forget it, Jake.  It's...." ²

^{Within the film, the locations around Los Angeles serve to additionally underscore certain aspects of the film. In the beginning of the film Gittes follows Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) around the city, from Echo Park to the ocean to dry riverbeds north of the city.  These locations not only provide a sense of what a physically diverse city Los Angeles is, but also integrally tie Mulwray to the idea of water from the start. Our villain, Noah Cross (a wonderfully evil John Huston), is also depicted in a similar way when Gittes visits him out on his estate on Catalina Island.  Yes, Catalina isn’t technically on the mainland, but it still represents a certain facet of the city. The choice to show Cross on the island depicts both his extreme wealth (Catalina used to be a place for the wealthy to get away from the city) as well as his relation to water:  Catalina is an ideal location to show Cross’ obsession with water by literally surrounding him by it.  While there are many other locations throughout the city with double meanings, one of the most apparent is Mar Vista, where Gittes and Mrs. Mulwray go to visit the “owners” of essentially the entire San Fernando Valley. Mar Vista is a neighbor of Los Angeles on the south end of the west side, and its name reflects its view of the Pacific Ocean.  Here though, Mar Vista takes on an additional meaning: phonetically, Mar Vista sounds like “marred vista,” or damaged sight. Of course, this ties into the idea that the residents of the retirement home have no idea they’re now some of the biggest land owners in the city.  While the locations throughout the city are important, their deeper meaning helps enhance the film as well.} 

^{While corruption doesn’t tie in to the physical locations of L.A., it is one of the major characteristics that drives how the city functions and survives. Again, breaking away from the sunny disposition of the City of Angels, Polanski chooses to depict a city where not just the people are corrupt:  the city is too.  Cross may be the man behind the idea to create a dam to irrigate the Valley, but the Department of Water is well aware and endorsing what’s happening too.  The corruption even runs into the police force:  in the final scene in Chinatown, when Gittes tells Evelyn to let the police take care of Cross, her response is “he owns the police!” a definite statement validating the depth of corruption.  The idea of corruption ties integrally to the theme of how everything isn’t as it seems, building Los Angeles into a city not as perfect as it visually appears.}

 

"I think we miss that sense of touch so much, that we crash together, just so we can feel something" ³

Set almost seventy years later, Crash portrays Los Angeles in a surprisingly similar way as Chinatown. A film depicting how people different in very divergent ways can all be interconnected, Los Angeles’ broad diversity of neighborhoods sets the scene for these interactions and reactions.  But the Los Angeles that writer/director Paul Haggis creates is a more “silent” version than found in Chinatown.  There are no instantly recognizable locations, save for the opening and closing shots of the film (of Hollywood from the Hills and downtown, respectively).  3^rd Street Promenade is just another street; Carney’s is just a diner. Even Chinatown (which, coincidentally, is where Crash’s final scene takes place) is understated, only recognizable by those bad neon lights. This L.A. is one based on insider knowledge of the city-the places aren’t explicitly described or laid out, but if you look close enough, you can figure out where you are.

 But that’s not to say Los Angeles doesn’t play a major role in Crash; instead, much like Chinatown, L.A. enhances the social differences that are at the core of this film.  Here again Los Angeles’ diversity characterizes it as city of privilege and disadvantage, each in sharp contrast to one another.  Jean and Ricks’ well-appointed house is a far cry from Daniel’s family’s tiny and grim home (which is even a step up from where they used to live), Shereen and Farhead’s convenience store is nothing like the studio set Cameron Thayer works on as a director. These places create a focus around the idea of extravagant wealth versus a blue collar lifestyle that defines the Los Angeles of Crash, and the locations are used to further emphasize these differences.

Haggis also depicts a side to L.A. that doesn’t first come to mind: corruption, but this time with a racial spin. In Crash, it’s more of a focus on individual corruption within the government, but this still makes the system corrupt.  Within LAPD, officer John Ryan is an angry, jaded cop who shows blatant racism on the job.  There’s Lieutenant Dixon too, who lets racism slide within the system in order to keep his status. And of course, there is the exchange between detective Graham and the district attorney  (who is, surprise! Rick) and his staff.  Here, we see corruption run both ways, and it’s hard to know if they are good people doing bad things, or bad people acting accordingly. These people and their actions define how we may view Los Angeles, and creates the layers of just how deep the problems run. 

 

^{There are mountains behind L.A.? Downtown on a (very) rare clear day.4}

^{Even though Los Angeles has changed so much physically and demographically over the years, in Chinatown and Crash things are essentially the same.  There is still a big stratification between social and economic classes.  There are still distinct neighborhoods.  There is still corruption.  Of course, it’s too early to know if Crash will hold up to the a classic as Chinatown has proven to be. Time will tell, but either way these films pay homage to the hometown of the film industry: a dark homage, but an homage nonetheless.}

Photos: (all found through Creative Commons)

¹ Photo from Wikimedia commons

² Photo from Sir George Martinn (Flickr)

³ Photo from Fermi Zhang (Flickr)

⁴ Photo from Todd Jones Photography (Flickr)

Taste the Rainbow

Production Journal #4

Still from my last film Lovely Lane. The sky painted dome in the main sanctuary of Lovely Lane UMC.

Last week, I shot my first color film. Though it might not sound like a big deal, this is a huge step in my young and unexperienced filmmaking career. Before this, I'd only ever shot on 16mm b&w film. Though this isn't unexpected considering I've only made four films before this, I always found my self avoiding the color realm. There's just something magical about b&w. Maybe it's the striking contrast between the shades of dark and light. Perhaps it's the way it makes the light look. Or maybe it's the fact that everything; people, places, and things just look better in b&w. I am in love with b&w and somewhat hesitant towards color. For my last film, I was asked by my teacher to take Eisenstein's soviet montage and apply it to my own project. I decided to shoot at a church because they have a lot to offer aesthetically. To avoid complicating my film by making great Eisensteinian statements about religion, I decided to focus on the architecture of the church. Churches tend to have their own personalities and moods that I thought would be interesting to capture. I finally shot at Lovely Lane United Methodist Church. Lovely Lane is the oldest Methodist church in Baltimore and is well-known for it's gorgeous romanesque architecture. The second I walked into the church I was blown away. Its unique dome shaped sanctuary is awe inspiring. I was impressed the most by the sky painted on the dome's ceiling which is apparently astronomically accurate. The people at the church were very welcoming. One of the members was even nice enough to take me around and show me the church's nooks, crannies and secret passageways. I decided for this film that it was time for me to explore and experiment with color. How could I not? The church is saturated with it. The stained glass windows, the rich red and gold tones of the main sanctuary, the cool colors of the old chapel. It was time for me to let go of my inhibitions and taste the rainbow.

Still from Lovely Lane. The organ in the old chapel of Lovely Lane UMC.

It's funny because I used to have the complete opposite opinion of this. Ask the average person what they think about b&w films and they'll say they don't like them. Ask them, why? "Because they're boring". The plot could be perfectly engaging, the cinematography could be gorgeous, but for some reason the fact that it's b&w predisposes a film as boring. Many years ago when I was still a kid, I was one of those people. One Thanksgiving, my family and I were having dinner at a family friends house like we did every other year. Understanding that my sisters and I were children and that we'd eventually get bored of "adult talk", Michael (the head of the house) tempted us with a film. Instead of the usual Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the 1971 version...not that Johnny Depp nonsense) we watched every other Thanksgiving, he suggested we watch Cyrano de Bergerac, the 1950 film directed by Michael Gordon. When I saw the black and white stills on the back of the VHS box, I was instantly turned off. "Oh. It's in black and white? Boring." My sisters agreed. Michael assured us that the film was very funny and wonderfully made, but nothing he said could convince us. Poor Cyrano didn't stand a chance against the technicolored glory (and chocolate) of Willy Wonka. In the end we won, and despite the lecture we received from our mother later on for being difficult, we felt it was worth it. It wasn't until I saw the film noir Laura (1945) a few months later that I began to appreciate b&w films. Later on, I also began to take a photography class which shot in b&w. Soon enough, I was transformed and I found myself in love with b&w. 

 
Stills from Lovely Lane. The contrast and richness of colors are so beautiful in this church.

Now that I've broken through and seen the beautiful results color can bring, I'm definitely going to explore the color world more in my next project, a sort of homage to Stan Brakhage. Hopefully I'll be able to get some beautiful color images in this project as well. I'll keep you posted on how that's going.

Until next time,

Diana

All I Wanted was a break from midterms

(Spoilers ahead)

The spokesmodel of carnage: whatever she's selling, we'll buy a million.  Vanity Fair.  Creative Commons.¹

In Wanted, a secret fraternity of assassins kills whoever’s name an ancient loom encrypts in weaving and their assassinations are entirely prevention: targets are predicted to commit heinous crimes, asserting the Fraternity's “kill one, save a thousand” motto. In turn, these predetermined criminals are nipped in the bud, killed while still innocent: fate is a lingering motif but free will makes the grand finale when Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) cheats own death sentence by destroying the organization (the loom eventually encrypts every assassin’s name since vicious-cyclically, they killed the thousands the loom named before. Get it?). I don’t know why McAvoy decided to be in this movie but Angelina Jolie plays herself, Morgan Freeman has a cool voice and I can't look at peanut butter the same way again.

Essentially it’s a junk movie sprinkled with telltale camera tricks (decreed by The Matrix), but nothing can compensate for its reliance on overplayed heuristics (hot girls, hot cars, hot blood). The movie’s sadism strikes me most although the mise-en-scene is conspicuously outdone (reviews have gushed its bullet-time cinematography and saturated colors. Lipstick on a pig). Too personally I'm offended when films justify recreational murder, so I'm confused why I liked this one.

If Jolie is given a gun, the film is automatically glamorizing violence. That's a rule. Wanted. Creative Commons.²

I was drooling at the Bellagio blood shows, ricochet of Ferrari's and Jolie's mannequin body when I noticed two of my biases surface: my prejudice and cynicism for summer blockbusters versus my generosity to accredit acclaimed films for any twinge, chuckle or sigh they elicit as signs of ingenuity. If erudite, I should probably enjoy The Departed, The Godfather, Part II or Reservoir Dogs and not enjoy Wanted: I didn’t and did, and like McAvoy’s character, Wanted diverted my premature disfavor against all odds. Admitting this is embarrassing at best, shameful at worst.

With that in mind, it’s not always hypocritical to like things we should hate (like carnality and trans-fat), especially if they’re presented in a light that’s reasonable and enticing. The Fraternity’s 99.9% yield is pretty convincing and as a premise, I'll buy it although I know this is a movie, but that doesn't stop my unconscious from bargaining: “I’m willing surrender my rationale and beliefs if you can entertain me or at least keep my eyes open for two hours.” Furthermore, film and TV can abuse this compromise, returning our perceptions ever so slightly, but increasingly, distorted. Without a doubt media is powerful, spellbinding us to a hum, then leaving us gobsmacked.

 

Too real to be real. April 17, 2007 at Virginia Tech. Flickr. Daniel Lin.³

But I doubt the filmmakers were trying to expose America’s underlying hypocrisy for violence: entertainment, not uncovering social ills, is their aim. Yet double-standards would be a prettier problem to approach since the real problem is unfortunately more persistent: violence has dangerously acquired more pardon and charisma over time. It should never be entertaining to see someone die. Why is wishing someone a painful, slow death great story development but cancer is not? Is it because cancer’s never been paired with glamour, gusto or Angelina Jolie? Why are Scorsese, Coppola and Tarantino considered today's most intuitive directors despite differences in portraying carnage?  I ponder, not preach, of violence because its interpretation requires painstaking-to-philosophical appraisal, sociocultural dissection, deduction over induction, but mainly because there are too many grays. Inciting depth criticism is perhaps why one could argue Wanted is above mind-numbing Hollywood detritus, but I’d hate to admit I was wrong again.

Image Credits:

¹"Angelina Jolie, Vanity Fair." Flickr Creative Commons. Tammy Manet. 16 Sept. 2008.

²"Wanted screenshot." Flickr Creative Commons. Poakpong. 3 July 2008.  

³ "03 Virginia Tech Vigil." Flickr. Daniel Lin. 18 Apr. 2007.

a + b = c

Production Journal #3

One of my absolute favorite parts of production is editing my footage. Putting together the pieces and making them whole; mixing and cutting each element till together they make a film. It's in this process where the film gets its power. Here's an analogy for you: the shots are words and editing is putting the words together to form a sentence. No one is going to understand what you're saying if you just say random words. Once you take the time to put the words together to express what you want to say, people will finally hear and understand.

Still from Trav'lin' Light: actor Jacob Israel Chilton

I recently spent 16 hours in the computer lab putting my last film Trav'lin' Light together. For two nights, I sat and stared at a computer screen for 8 hours looking at the same photographs over and over. Thought this may sound like an extremely boring process, it's everything but. It's exciting, thought provoking, and oh so satisfying when you see the final result. Editing is mathematical and very calculative. Though I vowed never to take a math class again once I graduated from High School, I love making a+b=c: putting shots together to create the whole film. I enjoy the puzzle of cutting film together. My eyes might not have appreciated the strain and my legs may have began to suffer from muscular atrophy, but it was totally worth it. 

For some filmmakers, editing is everything. In one of my classes, we've been discussing the works of the great Soviet Montage filmmakers Eisenstein, Vertov, and Pudovkin. To them, editing was the key to communicating certain things to the viewer. Eisenstein felt that creating conflict between images was the golden rule of editing and successfully putting together a film. My favorite kind of conflict he created was through intellectual montage; which is basically putting together images to get across some kind of intellectual (often propagandistic) message. For example, in his film Strike (1925), Eisenstein talks about a factory worker strike in pre-revolutionary Russia. In one climactic scene, he focuses on the violent and brutal manner the military used to stifle the strike. In this scene, he juxtaposes images of innocent workers, women, and children violently beaten and killed with some very atrocious images of a bull being brutally slaughtered (Eisenstein actually filmed a bull being killed - the guts and organs falling out are real). Of course, by putting these images together, one gets the idea that the military are treating these innocent people like animals. In result, the audience becomes further disgusted and outraged at what's going on. This scene is the perfect example of how he juxtaposed images to create some kind of idea or emotion. 

It's moments like this where I realize how manipulative film and editing can be and how vulnerable that makes us. At the same time, being an aspiring filmmaker, I got the power (menacing laugh)! For class, my next film assignment is to include Eisenstein's theory of soviet montage and editing in my own project. It's due next thursday, so once again you'll find me living in the DMC till then. It's very exciting though, I will be shooting in the oldest methodist church in Baltimore. Wish me luck, and I'll let you know how that goes down.

Until next time,

Diana P.