REVIEW: Watchmen

This review contains massive spoilers, but if the box office is any indication, anyone who will see the movie already has.

Watchmen is a bad film with a lot of good elements and its heart in the right place.

That took me a week and a half to figure out. I’ve got to speed up my thought process.

Its heart is set on creating an intelligent examination and deconstruction of superheroes and crimefighters – how they relate to the world, what makes them dress up in outlandish costumes, and why we look up to them. The comic did this beautifully, of course; that goes without saying at this point. The movie works in some of the same respects. It brings up things like power fantasy, sexual gratification, corruption of power, but doesn’t seem invested in them.

First, though, Snyder’s no slouch behind the camera. His frames are elegantly composed, even when he deviates from the comic (which I wish he’d done more). The action scenes, as any smart viewer of 300 would know, are inventive and exciting, though not to the extent that they were there (the prison break comes close, but it was too similar to the hallway fight scene in OLDBOY to not make me remember that particular bit of genius). But Snyder’s too close to the material, too devoted to recreating something rather than adapting it (that said, he should have left the sex scene alone).

I recognize that in the adaptation process, things have to be lost. The problems with this adaptation arise because they cut out a lot of scenes, but don’t adjust, in the slightest, the scenes they keep. So you end up with a lot of Greatest Hits moments with no dramatic build to justify them.

When the film is at its best is when it adapts Watchmen to the medium, bringing in media elements like The McLaughlin Group or the stunning credit sequence, an absolute masterpiece of image, sound, and editing that had me convinced I was about to witness a masterpiece. It’s at its worst when it is absolutely intent on recreating the comic aesthetically, in everything from set design to dialogue.

I hate to rag on Alex McDowell’s production design, first because he’s done so much fantastic work in the past (Fight Club and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas should be good graces enough for a lifetime*, never mind Minority Report), and second because I suppose he did a great job insofar as his instructions went, which seemed to be basically to build some stuff that looked like the comic. Somehow this didn’t bother me in the prerelease stage, as the giddiness for seeing the comic come to life completely blocked basic common sense. Maybe I just had to see it in motion to realize that this world simply did not look real. And for a movie so intent on integrating superheroes in the real world, that’s a big, big problem.

(*incidentally, I’m convinced that the only two people who would be fit to tackle this material would be David Fincher or Terry Gilliam, with heavy preference for Fincher)

The design works in the comic purely for that reason – it’s a comic book. The world can be stylized so long as we accept them as real. In film it’s different. Bending reality in a set allows for greater expression of the way a character perceives his or her world, or just for transporting us to another world. While you could argue Watchmen is supposed to transport us to another world, I don’t buy that the times have a-changed that much.

I don’t buy a lot of other things in the film. I don’t buy Dr. Manhattan’s decision to leave Earth (escape from the TV studio, sure, but there is no build-up there that makes me believe he needed to leave completely). I don’t totally buy Laurie and Dan’s romance, but I didn’t totally buy it in the comic (I certainly don’t buy their sex scene, the new example of the complete destruction of a great idea). I don’t buy any of the makeup or most of the special effects (Manhattan aside). I don’t buy Laurie or Sally as characters.

I sure as shit don’t buy the conclusion.

Don’t chalk it up to fanboy dedication either. When I heard they were getting rid of the squid, I thought it was the smartest decision I’d heard on the film yet (aside from casting Billy Crudup). The squid works tremendously in the comic because it’s the kind of thing that happens in comic books all the time, especially coming out of the Silver Age, but so far the most threatening villain in the modern superhero film has been a guy with clown makeup on. Audiences expect their threats from more human levels.

And on that level, the conclusion is a pretty nifty idea, but it doesn’t make any sense in terms of Veidt’s overall goal to unite humanity. If the idea with Dr. Manhattan is that he was America’s defense against pretty much everything, and that he was always the thing America could just show and be like “hey, don’t screw with us,” there is no way the rest of the world would rally alongside them. Even in a case where parts of America get destroyed, this was a man America built – partly through accident, partly through grooming – and he would absolutely be held as America’s responsibility, even if they bore part of the fallout. There would be months ahead of debating that responsibility, and MAYBE after that the world would find its common thread. But not immediately, not in a world where the Doomsday Clock is set five minutes to twelve. No way.

Billy Crudup and Jackie Earle Haley are incredible in their roles of Manhattan and Rorschach, respectively. Haley was doing a fine job before the prison sequence, but it wasn’t until that sequence that his performance became iconic. There’s a shot when he’s first being introduced to prison where he’s glowering just off-camera and his cheek twitches ever so slightly. It’s a tiny detail, but completely exemplary of the commitment Haley has to this role, particularly when he’s allowed to act with more than his voice and body.

Crudup, on the other hand, is absolutely perfect from his first moment onscreen to his last, and in without a doubt the toughest role in the film. He has to communicate a sense of humanity with dialogue that allows for none. Illustrating the isolation created by being the most powerful man on Earth, all the while being fascinated with the way it fits together, all the while being genuinely in love with a woman, all the while being able to genuinely recognize that she doesn’t belong with him…if the comic is, as TIME Magazine would have it, one of the greatest American novels of the modern era, Dr. Manhattan is without a doubt one of American literature’s greatest characters. And for all my bad feelings about the film, I will rewatch it many times over to take in Crudup’s performance.

Patrick Wilson and Jeffery Dean Morgan do really fine work as Dan Dreiberg and Edward Blake, respectively, hitting many of their notes consistently (Dan’s geeky excitement for adventuring and commitment to his ideals; Eddie’s charm), but falling behind on others. Dan doesn’t really feel as castrated as he did in the comic, and Eddie’s not nearly as much of a bastard, even when committing many of the same actions.

And that’s something I can say about a lot of Watchmen as an adaptation – same actions with so much less behind them. I’m interested to see Snyder’s cut, the full three-and-a-half hour bonanza with the Black Freighter stuff and forty additional minutes of the principle story. There is a lot that could be massively improved by being fleshed-out (Laurie, for example; not the strongest character in the comic, but here relegated to a footnote), but there is so much here that cannot be fixed, mainly the way the world feels much like Carla Gugino’s makeup – fake, a little cartoony, and unconvincing.

One of Those Things That Makes Me Love Being a Cinephile

Around the 15th of every month, I start to get a little giddy. Moreso since last December, when it was finally officially revealed that The Criterion Collection would be releasing Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, one of those true great New Wave avant-garde masterpieces that is, as it happens, not currently available on Region 1 DVD (and if you want to hit up Region 2, which is how I saw it, you have to deal with the most massive subtitles I've ever seen).

That waiting was rewarded on Monday, when they revealed the coolest damn set you could ask for. Two shorts by Resnais? New translation? Brand new documentary on the making of the film? Interview with Resnais? Interview with a film scholar? And most importantly, a Blu-Ray transfer? Heaven.

Then I notice a little something else...an updated release of The Seventh Seal? A movie I've been wanting to own for years but couldn't convince myself to fork over the money for a nearly barebones release? Oh, and it includes an 80-minute documentary on Bergman? Oh, and it's ALSO on Blu-Ray?

That's probably enough for me to handle. My inner film geek is overjoyed, and will have much to look forward and much to actually do in June when these are released (thankfully a week apart...my wallet and schedule can only handle so much).

And then something...odd...happened. Paramound announced the specs for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with a release date of May 5th. I knew the second I saw the film that, in spite of my misgivings about it, I would absolutely buy the DVD, probably the Blu-Ray. David Fincher almost always gets a great DVD out, even when the films make little to no money (Fight Club, Zodiac). I glanced down to the package art and noticed a familar "C" in the corner.

Yeah...The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and more importantly Fincher, are getting a spine number.

Yeah, the script's a rehash of Forrest Gump, and besides that is massively overwritten with absolutely no confidence in its director or cast. But God, what direction. What images. And what a story. I've defended this film many a time, and even though I still remember every little thing I hate about it, I find I love it a little more each day. Anyone who truly loves films has a few like this in their stash - films that are anywhere from imperfect to irredeemably bad (Button falls somewhere in the middle), but which you cannot help but love. And though there are parts that I hate, there are parts of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that I adore and am hopelessly in love with.

Three hours of special features and a commentary by Fincher? Criterion-supervised Blu-Ray transfer? No hesitation. I am in.

And yes, I know, I spent more time talking about a semi-decent David Fincher film than Bergman or Last Year at Marienbad. Wait 'til those discs come out and I'll gush all over them. Seriously. Big time.

Scott can be reached at ScottN_86@yahoo.com

Revisiting the Classics

So last week my girlfriend and I popped Citizen Kane into the DVD player. It's a weird thing to do. Like my girlfriend said, it seems like you should have to do something special when watching THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE, but really we just hung out and watched it like any other movie. And dammit, it might not be the best, but there's a damn good reason it's called the best. Neither of us had seen it in years, and it seems like the sort of movie you should be able to discuss with some authority if you care about movies.

Just watch the way Welles takes absolute command of the film as a performer (his command as a writer and director should be of no contest by this point). Listen to the way the dialogue sings as it bounces from performer to performer. As with so much of the film, nearly the whole scene is done in a single shot. And look at that camera MOVE, man. God, when was the last time you saw a camera move like that? At that pace? For that long? In a movie that old?



Then, a few days ago in New York, we saw Bringing Up Baby at the Museum of Modern Art. It's a film I love dearly, but it was the first time I saw it projected in 35mm. Not that it's a terribly visual film - as was Hawks' way, he mostly set up the shots to get the action. Really, the pleasure is seeing it with a crowd and not feeling like a loon (pun intended) when you burst into laughter.



"Hello? Is that zoo?" It's a tiny line that's given no time to let its hilarity sink in, but it's the kind of touch that makes the movie what it is.

Art and the Cinema, Part 2

Hey, again, for anyone who cares, sorry for the lateness of this. Midterms stacked up and I went to New York for a few days, and though I planned to work on the bus ride, I forgot I can get carsick. So yeah, hope a few of you stuck around and it isn't too little, too late.

As you may recall from Part 1 of this article, I was discussing my personal reaction to an article in Design Observer. Though I agreed with, and was greatly moved by, many of the points made there (especially by Rick Poynor), I did take issue with one section of the article that started all this, and it’s a trend I’ve noticed across cinephile blogs.

The contemporary obsession with “look” is often a distraction: all these numbskull caper and action movies that try to disguise their emptiness and lack of heart with desaturated colors, hyperactive camera lunges, syrupy layers of post-production, and the feverish intercutting of blip-length shots. That’s not what I mean by a concern with visual expression. I’m interested in visual style as a product of vision, not as an end in itself, and that’s what we see in Godard, Herzog, Malick or Lynch.

The more of this “look” filmmaking I see — Domino (2005) was probably the pits: I had to bail out — the more I admire the locked-off shots, long takes and trust in performance, made possible by fine writing, seen in classic American, European and Japanese cinema, where the action is allowed to unfold in its own time within the film frame, after careful planning. The frenetic contemporary shooting style often seems like a denial of the power of the image. It annihilates the image, smashing it stupidly into a series of transitory kinetic sensations that prevent you from looking at anything for very long, or thinking about what you are seeing and why the director wants you to see it.

…..

So, turning back to film, it’s unlikely that many experienced viewers would consider Tony Scott, as “author” of Domino, to be the artistic equal of Bergman, as author of Fanny and Alexander.

Let’s start at the end and work our way back. First, it depends on what Poynor means by “artistic equal.” If he simply means, “Tony Scott doesn’t make films as great as Ingmar Bergman,” then, well…yes. Of course. That’s just silly. I am but a young cinephile, but I consider Bergman to be, if not the finest director who ever lived, then certainly one of the finest; a true master. Bergman is a man almost devoid of “equals,” especially if you consider the accomplishments made over his lifetime and variance of his work (say what you will about tone, though there are legitimate arguments to be made there; I’m talking about variance and development of style). The man simply made some of the best movies ever, and did so stunningly often.

But I strongly object to the use of quotations around “author” in regards to Scott, but not to Bergman. There is little doubt in my mind that Scott’s technique was not only more difficult than many of those Bergman employed, but was equally as inspired in its curiosity in exploring the possibilities of film. Bearing in mind Tony Scott’s process, is his achievement in Domino, in visual terms, really all that different from what Bergman experimented with in Persona?

There’s a fantastic featurette on the Domino DVD that deals solely with the visual style of the film. Basically, they used six hand-cranked cameras for all of the “manipulated” shots. All of those cameras were loaded with high-speed reversal film, which increases the grain and pumps reds, greens, and yellows. They would crank the cameras forward and backward to get images to layer over each other, sometimes shooting at different frame rates. The film would then be processed on machines not meant for that stock, and transfer at a high speed, creating streaking and trails. The ultimate goal was to create texture you can touch, reach, and smell, and to let the mistakes that would happen with reverse-cranking inspire them. Thankfully, the DVD shows some of the dailies, which aren’t so different from the final product, indicating relatively little postproduction work on the individual image.

Upon revisiting the film, I found that there actually weren’t as many “manipulated” shots as I’d remembered. A good number of them are composed, lit, and colored in a pretty standard fashion; maybe a touch high-contrast, but skin tones still look like skin tones.

But Poynor’s after something more fundamental here – this constant insistence that quick-cutting is a lesser form a filmmaking than the long take. I’ll admit my reverence for the long take, both in admiration of its execution and proclivity to be mesmerized by it. Indeed, Poynor’s example of the man in the car wash immediately brought to mind Matt Damon and Casey Affleck’s walk through the desert in Gerry, which – as those who read Part 1 remember – I’m quite fond of.

But I never for one second questioned Domino especially as a piece of art, and it still strikes me as that. For one, it uses the “look” more effectively than any other film that comes to mind to illustrate a character tripping on…I believe mescalin. Second, working on the definition I do, this is a film that constantly transcends what it literally represents, when it’s even representing something literal. And, finally, if the issue is that it’s just hard to follow, I’d ask any viewer to just pay closer attention. There’s no more tired argument, whether it be against Paul Greengrass (the Bourne films), Christopher Nolan (the two recent Batman films), or Tony Scott, but it’s all there onscreen, easily interpreted and deciphered.

Further, the art of Domino IS the editing. A few readers suggested I only saw compositions in film, but here’s an instance where the art is in how the shots relate to one another. Scott’s compositions are fairly standard, with only a few standouts (remember, this is the guy who you could very well credit with the silhouettes-against-the-horizon look that plasters the standard summer blockbuster), but the way the shots end up relating to each other is stunning. First, I challenge anyone to come up with an average shot length for this film; at the very least, it would be a frame-by-frame exercise, and even then I’m not entirely sure it could be done. Second, if you do, PLEASE explain how you decided where some of the shots end. There are several instances where only a few frames are cut to create a jump-cut, sometimes across film that’s already been reverse-cranked, so you have figures and their “ghosts” moving fractionally across the screen.

What you end up with, when the film is at its absolute height, is a revolution of the term “motion picture.” Shots will seem to morph into and around each other, and though you know subconsciously that at some point the set-up has changed and there WAS a cut, it becomes nearly impossible to figure out where and how that happened. Scott’s ability to challenge and subvert the very basics of the language of filmmaking – how one picture relates to another when projected in rapid succession – makes Domino one of the supreme artistic achievements of the new millennium.

Not Just Another Load of Studio Ads: Ten Movies REALLY Worth Looking Forward to in 2009

Hey all. Still working on Part II of the “Art and the Cinema” thing, but I’m in the middle of a busy week and it’s taking a little more work (outside of the actual writing) than I expected, so I figured I should get something up for all the good people who found this blog.

Whenever I’ve thought about doing a “look ahead” sort of piece, it seemed like a pretty dumb idea. I figured everyone kind of knew what was coming out, and there are so many really exciting projects that will be released by December 31st, 2009 that we don’t even know exist yet. And if we do, we don’t know how amazing they will be. Soderbergh’s Che wasn’t anywhere on my radar this time last year – I knew about it, but the subject didn’t particularly interest me at all. Then I read reviews from Cannes, and I saw the movie, and I was blown away. I hadn’t even HEARD of Wendy and Lucy until…November last year? Now it’s my favorite film of 2008. Meanwhile, I was desperately awaiting The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, until the more trailers that came out made it clear it would not be all that it could be. Such is the way these things go.

But then I actually read a lot of those look ahead pieces, and don’t you hate it when you see those “Ten Movies To Look Forward To This Year” and it’s all big-budget blockbusters you’ve heard about since last summer? First, they’re so often NOT the movies worth looking forward to, and second, it’s nothing new. They’re not really making you aware of anything you weren’t already (wait, there’s a new Terminator movie coming out? STOP EVERYTHING!).

So here are ten movies worth looking forward to (organized purely by whatever release date I can come up with), from everything I can divine. Maybe you’ve heard of all of them, but hopefully at least one is new to you so I can feel like I’ve accomplished something today.

Oh, and I am looking forward to Watchmen, but it’s pretty much out already.




AN EDUCATION (dir. Lone Scherfig) – Whether from Salon – “There's no movie in this festival that's quite as ravishing, as witty, as well-acted or as satisfying overall as An Education” or Jeff Wells’ more blunt assessment – “Lone Scherfig's An Education, a coming-of-age period drama set in 1961 London, is the absolute shit,” I keep hearing such damn good things about this movie. Oh, and it won the Audience Award at Sundance. And the Cinematography Award. And it stars Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Olivia Williams (Rosemary Cross from Rushmore), Emma Thompson, Sally Hawkins, and what everyone’s calling an astonishing performance by someone named Carey Mulligan. Sony Pictures Classics has it, and although no release date has been announced, they’d be very smart to have this out at the end of the summer. October if they feel really, really good about it.



OBSERVE AND REPORT (dir. Jody Hill) – I didn’t see The Foot Fist Way, Jody Hill’s acclaimed 2008 comedy. But I did see the red-band trailer for this film, and it made me laugh in all the right ways. It takes a special kind of something to build humor largely in tone, without specifically funny lines or physical humor, but I was laughing my ass off at Seth Rogen’s entire monologue running over the trailer. The fact that it also stars Anna Farris – the funniest woman in show business, for my money – Ray Liotta, Michael Pena, Patton Oswalt, and Aziz Ansari (whose breakout year is now)…puts this over the top. See it April 10th.



CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE (dir. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor) – Crank is one of…at least the five best action movies of the decade. Probably one of the three. It’s consistently inventive, visually stunning, and is somehow able to keep up a breakneck pace from the second it starts to final, unforgettable frame. It is without a doubt the nuttiest piece of mainstream cinema I’ve seen in some time. If the sequel is half as insane as it looks (and to go by that image above, that's a big hells yes), it’ll still be twice as insane as the original. April 17th.



THE ROAD (dir. John Hillcoat) - Directed by John Hillcoat? Check. Starring Viggo Mortensen? Check. Score by Nick Cave? Check. Relentlessly grim? Check and CHECK. Hillcoat blew me away with The Proposition and Mortensen is having an absolutely incredible run. Just stunning. I cannot, can NOT wait for this movie. Whenever the hell it'll come out.



MOON (dir. Duncan Jones) – Every so often, a movie comes out that’s all proud of being “a thinkin’ man’s sci-fi movie!” The only one that’s lived up to that in recent memory is Primer. I have a good feeling about Moon, I really do, which is about an astronaut (Sam Rockwell) and how he’s coped with living on the moon for three years. We’ll see if that feeling is unfounded on June 12th.

THE GREEN ZONE (dir. Paul Greengrass) – The Bourne Supremacy was astounding. United 93 ensured I would see everything Paul Greengrass would ever do for the rest of his life. The Bourne Ultimatum made it clear that was a very, very good decision. Greengrass is one of the five or so most exciting directors working right now, and while nobody’s been able to make a halfway-interesting movie about the Iraq War, this is the guy who made a 9/11 film that didn’t feel the least bit exploitive. Release date is TBD, but this feels like a solid October release.




A SERIOUS MAN (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen) – New Coen brothers movie. I don’t know anything about it, and I won’t read available plot synopses. I will simply see it on October 2nd. Because that is what you do when Joel and Ethan Coen make movies.



WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (dir. Spike Jonze) – I’ve heard things about this movie that pretty much describe why I see movies. Spike Jonze has a solid track record, but nothing so far has felt truly indelible. Things may yet change on October 16th.



AVATAR (dir. James Cameron) – James Cameron is the best big-budget, summer blockbuster director of all time. There, I said it. No other director, ever, has been as consistently innovative technically, while also managing to produce truly compelling dramatic works (or just flat-out entertaining, in the case of True Lies) every single time out of the gate, as James Cameron. Nobody. Now he’s venturing into motion-capture (which he claims is photorealistic), 3D (which, from what I recall, he claims will be presented without the need to wear glasses), and IMAX. This has the potential to be the defining film of the new millennium.

WHATEVER TERRENCE MALICK IS UP TO (dir. Terrence Malick) – So…in late 2007, I think, it was announced that Malick’s The Tree of Life was moving forward. It had Colin Farrell attached for awhile, but when it was announced it starred Heath Ledger and Sean Penn. Then Ledger dropped out and Brad Pitt fell in. Then it was filming for awhile and would undoubtedly be at the top of my most anticipated film of the year by virtue of being the new Terrence Malick film. Then some rumors floated around that it was actually Q, a project Malick was developing after Days of Heaven but the studio abandoned when it got too unwieldy.

Then, just a few days ago, visual effects artist Mike Fink told Empire Magazine he was animating dinosaurs for the new Terrence Malick movie, and that there would be three cuts released, including one in IMAX.

Then, just YESTERDAY, Mr. Beaks reported that Douglas Trumbull is heavily involved in the film, shooting footage himself. Trumbull was instrumental in creating the special effects for 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Blade Runner. Three classics not just of the sci-fi genre, but of film in general, and landmark achievements in special effects. Beaks went further to say that there will be a whole second movie. There’s The Tree of Life, and then an IMAX movie “depicting the birth and death of the universe.”

I don’t live the most exciting life in the world, but I have more than a few things going on. But for me, I live for new Terrence Malick movies. They exemplify what I love so deeply about movies, and if this ends up to be way too much for him and he truly is in over his head – as some have said – the end result will still be nothing less than a joy for me.

It’s important to note that this might not even come out this year. If they do want to do something massive on IMAX, they’ll have Avatar to contend with, because there’s no way a guy like Malick can have any movie, much less one like this, ready before December. But right now that’s the plan, so it’s on the list.

In case you want a tenth film that WILL be released this year…



BROKEN EMBRACES (dir. Pedro Almodovar) – I’ve only seen two Almodovar movies, but one of them was Talk to Her. His older stuff doesn’t interest me terribly, but that was a truly shattering experience. Plus, he’s to my girlfriend what Malick is to me, so honey, this is for you. November 6th.

Feel free to chime in! I’ve totally left out the fact that Steven Soderbergh has two very different movies coming out this year, Martin Scorsese has a new movie, Sam Raimi’s returning to horror, Terry Gilliam has a new movie, Jim Jarmusch has a new movie, David O. Russell has a new movie, Quentin Tarantino has a new movie, Toy Story 3 is coming out, Wes Anderson has a stop-motion movie, there’s a musical adaptation of Fellini, Benecio Del Toro is playing a wolf, and loads and loads and loads of things we won’t know about for months. I love the movies, and I hope you’ll all keep tuning in through it.

Art and the Cinema

You'll forgive the title, but I felt it was the most effective way to invite those for whom those things matter into the discussion.

Last week, there was a link on IMDb that said “Appreciating Films As Visual Art, Part 1.” I was skeptical, as this isn’t exactly groundbreaking territory, but what was contained within better expressed what the cinema does to me than nearly anything else I’ve read in my entire life. The piece is a collection of correspondence between Rick Poynor and Adrian Shaughnessy, two names I couldn’t be less familiar with. And even though if, like me, you end up taking one side over the other (as you’ll soon see), if you glean from it half as much as I did, you’ll find it incredibly rewarding.

POYNOR:
Radio On is entirely carried by its acute matching of wonderfully moody monochrome images of roads, buildings, interiors and bad weather with a soundtrack that includes music by Kraftwerk and David Bowie. There’s an exquisitely severe shot of the DJ, sitting at the wheel of his ancient Rover in a car wash, looking through the windscreen at the inky blur of the whirling brushes as Devo’s dislocated, robotic version of the Stones’ “Satisfaction” clanks away on the soundtrack. The camera doesn’t move; the shot lasts a long time; nothing else happens in the scene. This isn’t a psychological moment in any explicit sense — we can only see the back of the actor’s head — yet this oblique image, like the rest of the circuitous, dramatically reticent non-narrative, still packs great emotional, symbolic and cinematic power.

Aside from making me add Radio On to my Netflix queue, like, now, Poynor hit at the very essence of cinema that seems to allude nearly everyone I discuss it with – the great moments in cinema aren’t something you can define, much less explain. They’re not written, acted, lit, and even the idea that they’re photographed seems distant and unreachable. They simply are. They transcend what they literally depict and become…art, in a word.

Last fall, I took a class called The Artist and the Making of Meaning. The central goal of the class was to define what Art is, and also what is not. Basically, Art became defined as an occurrence when something transcends what it literally represents, and instead represents itself. To use Poynor’s example, director Christopher Petit seems to have created a scene where what we see onscreen is no longer a guy in a carwash, it’s…Art.

The explanation of Art in The Artist and the Making of Meaning helped to explain what happened to me that day – part of what happened was Art. If you can wrap your head around that much (many in my class could not), we can proceed.

Basically, that concept explained everything I hadn’t been able to concretely define for myself. It explains why an art exhibit featuring a telephone in an empty room feels more like art than nearly any of the portraits I saw in the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. (although there are some exceptions there, as well). It absolutely explains why the insistence that to be Art, it has to display some sort of skill is insane, as if the idea that a piece on display could be painted by your kid somehow invalidated it. And, more importantly, it explains why some films are Art and some are not (though where that distinction lies depends on the viewer, certainly).

It explains why the rigid formalism in, say, Funny Games, Revolutionary Road, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is art, but the rigid formalism on display in, say, The Dark Knight, Gran Torino, and Australia is not, even though all six of those could be described as “beautiful” or just photographed in a way that pleases the eye – between the construction of the images and the execution of their scripts, they fall into the still-respectable class of Great Craft. And I wish there was more I could do to define that, but basically, aside from the shot of The Joker leaning out the police car, I can’t think of a single moment from that film that transcends itself. Australia certainly LOOKS as good as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but the latter was undoubtedly art while the former almost certainly isn’t, because it focused heavily on making sure everything looked good without giving thought to why it looked how it looked, aside from perhaps the goal to update the feel of Classical Hollywood Epics.


The lighting's right...there's even a lens flare! And yet we feel something essential is missing; we sense a lack of inspiration that we can't quite put our finger on, a sense that nothing in here matters in the context of the film.


The perfect shot. We sense a master's hand at composition and the ability to convey theme, especially when placed in a larger context.

(If you want further, moving examples of this, simply compare Button's theatrical trailer with Australia's. Pay attention, and you can easily discern story and theme from Button, while Australia is devoid almost entirely...the films themselves would pan out in similar manners)

So while executing Australia may have been physically harder than executing Wendy and Lucy, the latter contains all the inspiration and grace in the world, while the former lacks any inspiration at all. And anyone who’s seen the two, while they may not be able to say why, knows that in their heart.

Let me expand on this with a personal experience.

In early 2003 I saw Gus Van Sant’s Gerry in theaters. The film has its champions and detractors, but that remains one of the most powerful cinematic experiences of my life. It fundamentally altered and expanded the way I look at movies. There comes a moment in the film, and it’s different for everybody, but a moment comes when the rocks crunching beneath Matt Damon and Casey Affleck’s feet, the sight of them walking through the desert, the wind, the sun, the clouds, everything stops looking and sounding like any of that and just…becomes. Beyond that moment, I was absorbed; it felt like I didn’t blink for the rest of the film and just absorbed it, become one with it. It’s almost impossible to describe, but to borrow from Martin Scorsese’s recollection of seeing and thinking about L'Avventura for the first time, it “changed my perception of cinema, and the world around me, and made both seem limitless.” He was eighteen when he saw that film. I was sixteen when I saw Gerry. These are the kinds of inexplicable, sudden, profound realizations you can only have at a certain age – old enough to have what you believed were firm conceptions on life and art, but young enough to instantly subvert them.

The only other experience like that was the first time I saw Terrence Malick’s The New World, almost three years later. I don’t expect it to happen again. Sometimes I sense it happening at home, but films at home are never as powerful as those in a proper theater. Not that there haven’t been better movies, or movies that have shook me deeply. The cinema continues to astound me, surprise me, give me hope and change my life. And when I’m lucky, I’ll see a film like Marie Antoinette, Youth Without Youth, Speed Racer, There Will Be Blood, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, or Wendy and Lucy that will contain a few moments that start to affect me the way Van Sant and Malick did through the entirety of their films. Those moments are beautiful, wonderful, and beyond any explanation. They are the cinema.

I'll be publishing a second part to this in the next week or so, in which I respond to the allegations made that quick-cutting in films could never be art. I'll be defending Tony Scott's Domino to the bitter end. I hope you'll join me.

Scott can be reached at ScottN_86@yahoo.com

Top 10 Films of 2008

Late? Whatever. I don't live in New York or LA, so I have to wait for movies like Che to roll through my town before I can call for a verdict on the year previous.

First thing's first - maybe it's because I'm coming off the wondrous glow from 2007 (I was rewatching The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford last night when I realized that nothing this year was as good as that is, and there were three other films from that year that were as good if not better), but 2008 felt unimpressive. The Top 7 on the following list, to me, are truly special films, worthy of high regard and endless discussion. The rest are somewhere between entertaining and really, really good.

HONORABLE MENTION

Every year I pick an Honorable Mention (or two) that I could not possibly include in the Top 10 for one reason or another (usually coming back to the fact that it's probably not very good), but one that I feel didn't get the attention it deserved. This year, that honor goes to...



PUNISHER: WAR ZONE

It’s not that Punisher: War Zone is a bad film, although it is frequently bad in any objective, and most subjective, definitions of the word, it’s just that it’s clear where the film’s interests lie and where they really just didn’t give a shit.

The film is rated R for pervasive strong brutal violence, language, and drug use. Eliminate the last two and I’d say that’s pretty much where the interests lie. People get all sorts of killed in this film (my personal favorite…well, I’ll save it for now, but a close second favorite is a shotgun blast that removes a man’s entire head).

Places where they don’t give a shit involve pretty much everything else. Except for plot, actually. I mean, the plot’s silly as hell, but it does a great job of gradually ramping up the stakes and effectively gathering together a bunch of people for The Punisher to kill.

It's the kind of film that's loads of fun to watch and loads of fun to talk about. And it's a shame more people aren't taking part in it.



THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

While the screenplay prevents this film from ever being more than good, Fincher's direction, especially in his understanding of the frame and visual narrative, catapult this film to the top of the list in terms of what in 2008 was really worth going to the cinema for. And if it begins and ends, for you, with how good the movie is, then I guess that's your business, but that's too bad, because there are efforts such as this that are middle-of-the-road when evaluated as a whole, but contribute enormously to that most essential quest of cinema - giving us lasting images.

It's that quest for the indelible, endurable image that brings me back to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a film absolutely rife with them and, aside from MAYBE Che, the film most committed to them and most accomplished in this respect (watch the teaser trailer again...tells the whole story of the feature at a fraction of the length and with exponentially more grace). For this reason, the film has grown very close to my heart, and I implore you - each and every one of you - to never forget that as inundated as we are with style over substance, to never forget that images matter, so long as they be solid in foundation and glorious in execution. So long as they evoke and express, so long as they contribute to, and in the best of circumstances serve as the method of delivery for the story and its themes. For those reasons I beg you...do not forget this film.



































Runners-Up: Funny Games, WALL-E, Burn After Reading, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Ballast



10. PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

Dismiss it as a stoner comedy all you want, because it totally works in that vein. But for those lucky enough to see past that, to see that it's the total wish-fulfillment of its cast of characters, or even those who just enjoy seeing fun, inventive filmmakers letting their imaginations run wild (on a budget), you couldn't do much better at the movies. It's not that this is a great film in spite of the fact that it makes almost no sense - it's a great film BECAUSE of that.



9. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

I'm smart enough to know when I'm being manipulated, but appreciative when a film makes me like it. It's tough to remind myself that I did genuinely like this film, because it is without a doubt the most overrated film of the year (aside from the incredibly mediocre Frost/Nixon), but dammit it's still really, really good. I'm amazed by those who found Boyle's style overcooked - I thought it captured Mumbai just as well as the critically-acclaimed City of God - and who thought it glorified poverty. There's a rich tradition in western literature of addressing the problems of poverty, but ultimately finding an odd sort of shimmer within. And even when the plot gets overly contrived and the characters continue to flatten (how does a central character get less interesting as he ages?), the story never ceased to be enrapturing.



8. THE DARK KNIGHT

One of the most controversial films among critics, but what the hell. I still love it. There's a lot worth talking about surrounding the film - about how it evokes our post-9/11 fears better than any mainstream film yet, about Heath Ledger's performance, about the effectiveness of Bale's Batman voice - but I'll make it simple. Every time I read a negative critique of the film, I remember a few specific feelings I had during the film - the sense of dread when the Joker pull up in the truck in the Lower Fifth chase sequence, for example. But no moment in the film stuck in my head as forcefully or affected me as deeply as when Jim Gordon is confronting Two-Face at the construction site, and yells at him "I'm sorry, Harvey...for everything!" Gary Oldman's voice cracks ever-so-slightly, chills run down my spine, and I know I'm watching something truly great.



7. IN BRUGES

Two of the best-realized characters of any film I saw this year. Certainly the most fully-developed relationship between two people. If Sam Fuller was right that cinema is emotions, In Bruges is cinema. Entertaining, morose, funny (very, very funny), happy, depressing, and really intriguing exploration of ideas beyond our mortal coil while still drenched in the concerns of it.



6. REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

You can do worse than to have well-acted, well-directed, beautifully shot, compelling family drama. One of my friends, after seeing the film, said he didn't care about the characters. But really...who gives a shit? I didn't care one wink about Daniel Plainview, but I found his economic rise and emotional downfall captivating. Similarly, when you have actors this good (of all their crimes, not nominating Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio for their roles was the Academy's gravest offense this year) tearing each other apart...the subtext might not run deep, the characters may be petty, the right answer obvious, but this was absolutely riveting. And I don't care what critic groups or the Academy said, no one directed their film this year nearly as well as Sam Mendes directed this.



5. CHE

It's hard to even consider this is a single film, as each part is so radically different from the other in every respect, cast aside. Steven Soderbergh has always quietly fascinated me, but with this he's proved himself (I know I'm like the last person to be convinced he's a great director, but at least I got there). No other director this year put such clear thought into each and every shot, and how it relates to the picture as a whole, as Soderbergh did here.

I really need to see it again to discuss it with a great level of authority. It took me days to figure out why Part II seemed aimless, disorganized, and flat-out confusing, but once I did, I was astounded. This may yet emerge the best film of the year, but I certainly won't know for a long time to come.



4. THE WRESTLER

On one hand, I'm glad this film was marketed solely for Rourke's performance (which deserves the Oscar, especially among such a bland field of nominees), because I was able to discover on my own that the film falls into that all-to-rare field of great films that just happen to have a great performance at their center. On the other, the film really has been talked about no only in terms of Rourke's performance, which discredits the amazing screenplay, and Darren Aronofsky's achievement in stripped-down filmmaking (every filmmaker should be put to such a test). It's hard to make formula work, much less to make it feel so fresh.



3. SPEED RACER

The year's greatest surprise - I expected the fun and exhilarating race sequences, but I didn't expect to care this much.

Even though it's a far more accomplished film than most are giving it credit for, I recognize that my response to it is personal. I just don't understand who wasn't genuinely touched by Speed and Pop's talk at the end of Act 2, or wasn't genuinely filled with joy at the end of the film. That it was a big-budget adaptation of a really awful cartoon hardly seems the point, though I have no doubt that if the characters were completely original, this would have been one of the most acclaimed films of the year. This was, hands down, the happiest I felt at the theater this year, and movies that make us really, truly happy are in short supply.



2. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

A commenter named Mark on Jason Bellamy's blog The Cooler wrote that the film is "frustrating, a bit pretentious, and ultimately depressing." I agree, except that he was mentioning these as problems with the film.

Synecdoche, New York is special, and truly extraordinary. It's the only film I saw all year, besides Speed Racer, that seemed interested in telling stories in new ways, making it easily the most essential film of the year. The film is at once episodic and continuous, and I found that - using episodes over the course of decades to not just add up to a satisfying whole, but tell a cohesive, continuous story - to be one of Kaufman's greatest triumphs. A cut from one scene to another might span years, but the mood and emotions carry through.

The moments of light in an otherwise very, very bleak film were some of the most joyous I felt all year - Caden and Hazel finally connecting emotionally, Olive remembering a game she used to play with her father. And they wildly outstrip the film's missteps (the house constantly on fire, little Kaufmanesque tricks like Caden seeing himself in ads and on websites).

I've always enjoyed Kaufman's work before, but this is the first film he's been associated with that matters. That extends beyond its clever premise to really, really matter.



1. WENDY AND LUCY

Man am I glad I saw this in time. Wendy and Lucy is, in every respect I can think of, a perfect film. I went in expecting something much more downbeat, much more depressing, but instead found one of the most quietly uplifting films of the year. Don't get me wrong, the low points are some of the lowest I saw all year, but there were few moments in the cinema this year as genuinely uplifting as when a security guard gives Wendy a few dollars.

Michelle Williams' often subdued, never indulgent or showy performance as a woman on the edge of poverty and quietly terrified of falling over is one of the best performances of the year, and finally moves her from my list of actors to keep an eye on to someone whose presence in a film automatically elevates it. Co-writer/director Kelly Reichardt made a thoughtful, enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable film with Old Joy, but this elevates her into a league all her own, not just at the forefront of women filmmakers or independent filmmakers, but simply filmmakers.

Before making this list, I was about to put Che, The Wrestler, and Synecdoche at the head of the class in no particular order. I liked them all about equally, but didn't get that feeling I got last year regarding films like The Assassination of Jesse James, No Country for Old Men, Zodiac, There Will Be Blood, or even Michael Clayton - the need to evangelize. The need to call attention to a film and tell people they absolutely, no-holds-barred, must see it. A film with a deft sense of artistry, but is easily accessible. A film absolutely united, in which any element that may stand out still serves complimentary to the picture as a whole.

Wendy and Lucy is such a film. At this moment I can say, unequivocally, that it's the best film of the year, and I feel truly privileged to have been able to see it.