28/01/2013 - 03/02/2013
Lorraine! [Danièle Huillet &
Jean-Marie Straub, 1994]: Like the
masterpiece Sicilia! (1999), Lorraine! is a film about place. About the power of a place, its histories
(because "history" should always have a plural, denoting more than
one) and the recollections of its people.
The emphasis on place has always been important to the films of
Straub-Huillet, whether in the setting of Père Lachaise in Every Revolution is
a Throw of Dice (1977) (where the film becomes a clear attempt to bring dead
forms back to life) or in the imagined America of Class Relations (1984) (a
stylistic effort to capture the European "Amerika" of Kafka's novel
from the author's own perspective of having never visited the U.S.). Here, the region of Lorraine, and in
particular its capital, Metz, becomes the subject of the film, beginning with a
slow panoramic shot that ends on an image of the Moselle, as symbol of its separation. As with the work of John Ford, the landscape in
Straub-Huillet's film becomes like a central character; as expressive as the
actors who speak the words that give weight to these images of the city, where
the contours of the landscape evoke the march of time, or where the presentation
of its roads and rivers not only create figurative barriers (both natural and artificial)
but illustrate the movement of people as shorthand for communication. The river in the opening scene becomes an
obvious representation of the divide that exists at the centre of the film and of
the city itself. Metz, not only a city
divided, geographically - existing adjacent to the tripoint alongside the
junctions of France, Germany and Luxembourg - but historically too; calling
into question the idea of heritage, especially in relation to the Siege of Metz
in 1870, after which the previously French region was briefly annexed into the
newly created German Empire. Again, like
Sicilia!, the filmmakers capture this divided landscape with a slow panning of
the camera, from side-to-side and back again, suggesting the progression of
history; where the past becomes a metaphysical "revenant" that
intrudes upon the present in the form of the young Collette; this vessel for
the haunted words of Maurice Barrès.
Doghouse [Jake West, 2009]: I was surprised by the accusations of misogyny
that some online pundits had brought against the film. If anything, Doghouse is a work that employs
the recognisable tropes of "ladsploitation" (right down to the
casting of the controversial Danny Dyer; the sub-genre's wide-boy archetype)
only to subvert them through a kind of comic exaggeration. Each of the characters is in some way an
over-the-top personification of a certain masculine tendency, from the
womaniser, to the geek, to the "new-age" male. These characters (or caricatures) are placed
in an absurd and largely incongruous situation (it didn't necessarily have to be zombies), which provides them
an opportunity - in their own minds, at least - to reinforce their individual
masculinity and reclaim dominance over this murderous female horde. As a concept, the machinations of the story
might have proved problematic had the male characters not turned out to be
quite so inept; diving head-first into this difficult situation without even thinking,
and generally acting like a group of football hooligans on a Friday night brawl. I wouldn't go so far as to call the film
"satirical", in the more sophisticated sense, but I do think the writer
and director have knowingly exaggerated the traits of their protagonists to
such an outlandish degree that the film becomes a rather obvious (and largely
tongue-in-cheek) parody of inherent male stupidity. In Doghouse, the humour of the film continually
derives from the hapless nature of the central characters, who instead of acting
like rational or intelligent human beings, almost immediately descend into a
kind of posturing male chauvinism or cocksure bravado, viewing the threat as
nothing more than an excuse to act out the part of John Rambo (or even The
Terminator), as opposed to taking charge of the situation, with any kind of
perspective or genuine common-sense.
Roselyne and the Lions
[Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1989]: Beineix
uses the spectacle of lion taming as a metaphor for the often destructive impulses
that drive the majority of relationships, where anger, jealousy, passion and
pain threaten to obliterate the bond that exists between two people, driven close
to insanity by their obsessions and insecurities. The spectacle of the film, where the 'tamer'
and 'trainer' attempt to control these wild beasts that stalk and prowl the
barred perimeter of the cage, works as a visual representation of their love
for one another; all-powerful and all-consuming; dangerous and destructive;
volatile enough to spill out into violence or blossom, flower-like, into
something beautiful; a display of pure emotion, which, in its graceful theatricality,
becomes art. The art of living or the
art of ardour? This presentation of the
film could also be viewed as a sort-of commentary on the cinema itself, from
its production to its distribution. For
instance, the relationship between the actress and her director is reflected in
the central relationship between the two protagonists, where the young trainer,
Thierry, works tirelessly behind the scenes preparing for the show, before the
beautiful tamer Roselyne (the public face of their affiliation) wows the
audience with her commitment to the routine.
There is also the obvious cinematic suggestion of the final
"performance" (or literally, "the last act"), where the routine
and the reactions of an audience that Beineix intercuts with the caged
exhibition on-screen, presents a clear acknowledgement of our own role as spectators,
and the performance itself as something closer to theatre (albeit, a theatre abstracted
by the use of shots and cuts into the purity of cinematic expression). Viewed in its complete, three-hour form, the
experience of Beineix's film is absolutely exhilarating. The technicality of the film and the work of
the actors when face-to-face with these ferocious lions that respond (and
perform) to their every command is thrilling in its authenticity, but more than
that, it's the combination of this reckless, dazzling demonstration of
technique, in contrast with the more intimate, character-driven story, that
moves as much as it enthrals.
Dreamcatcher [Lawrence Kasdan,
2003]: When browsing the "Bad
Movies We Love" series at the blog 'Rupert Pupkin Speaks', I was genuinely
surprised to see how many of its contributors considered this to be amongst the
very worst films ever made. I saw it on
DVD not long after it was first released and only remembered finding it fairly
boring, as the early promise of a creepy supernatural mystery eventually became
entangled within a mess of extraterrestrial subplots, inexplicable character
developments and the usual hokum that we've come to expect from any adaptation
of a work by Stephen King. The plot of
Dreamcatcher recycles the most well-worn elements of Stand By Me, The Shining,
It and The Tommyknockers, but also adds more bizarre ideas, like a parasitic
alien virus that erupts from the sphincter of its host, an on-screen
representation of a character's memory rendered as a dusty old library, and a
last minute appearance by the actor Donnie Wahlberg playing a character that's
been described, rather unsympathetically, as a "magical retard" (not
my words). I didn't find these elements
to be as embarrassing as many of the film's more vocal detractors (though the scene
where Thomas Jane's character literally uses his gun as a telephone did cause
my eyes to roll) but the film still feels overlong and unfocused, as if the
writers were throwing every possibly idea they could at the screen in the hope
that something might stick. For me, the
film would have worked better as a more intimate story, focusing on the
characters and how they deal with the situation, and not necessarily going the
way it did, with Morgan Freeman's crazed army Colonel and his scenes of
extraterrestrial genocide.
Interestingly, for a film with so much in it, the end result still felt
somewhat empty.
Dream House [Jim Sheridan, 2011]: Remember what I said about Neil Jordan's In
Dreams (1999); that the ending was a cheap twist that turned a
thought-provoking psychological drama into a senseless supernatural one? Well, this is the opposite. The twist here turns what is initially a
senseless supernatural drama into a thought-provoking psychological one. I'm not going to suggest that the film is in
any way a misunderstood masterpiece - especially since there are several things
here that don't necessarily work - but I do think the story is a lot more
interesting than the majority of (so-called) professional reviewers might
suggest. Even discounting the
psychological aspect of the film, which to my mind was beautifully developed,
there is also a rather interesting "meta" element (again, see In
Dreams) in which the central character is writing a novel, which when completed,
turns out to share its title with the finished film. This, to me, seems significant, and ties in
nicely with an earlier exchange in which the protagonist sits down to tell his
children a bedtime story that contains echoes of several scenes and
developments explained in the final act.
Once again, there is the suggestion - albeit, a muted one - that much of
what we've seen here might be taking
place within the realm of creative fiction, or possibly even as an invention of
its central characters. Given the film's
rather torturous production process - which has led to director Jim Sheridan
and the actors Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz effectively disowning the film -
it's difficult to know (with any great certainty) what the original intention
might've been. Since I'm very much a
believer in evaluating the film for what it is, rather than what it isn't, I
think it's best to try and look beyond the fairly implausible plot developments
of the third act and focus instead on the psychological unravelling of the
central character; the way the use of the plot-twist gives new layers to the
presentation of events and creates a context for the initial feeling of
artificiality, which is most obvious in its earlier scenes, prior to the big reveal.
Daisy Miller [Peter Bogdanovich,
1974]: A film about first love or love
at first sight; as much about the relationship between producer/director
Bogdanovich and his actress Cybill Shepherd as about the characters
on-screen. The implicit jealousy and
insecurity - where the director must watch as his leading lady falls hopelessly
into the arms of another man - finds some expression in this story of the upstanding
gentleman Frederick Winterbourne, destroyed by love (or for love) through his unrequited courtship with the titular Daisy
Miller. In Bogdanovich's film, the
character of Daisy is less a protagonist in the conventional sense than a
symbol that haunts the young Winterbourne, whose unfilled passion for Miller
and his concern over her reputation following the character's scandalous encounters
with the suave Mr. Giovanelli, not only anchors the film, emotionally as well
as narratively, but also defines it's atmosphere and approach. Watching the film, I was strangely reminded
of another work of the same era (which incidentally also featured Cybill Shepherd
as the object of a character's fixation), the Scorsese- Schrader collaboration Taxi Driver (1976). The two films couldn't be any more different
in terms of their genre and sensibility, but both are nonetheless carried by
the intense and very much internal performances of their respective male
protagonists, where the inability to express or receive love inevitably turns
to obsession and, eventually, resentment.
Looking at the film in light of its various criticisms, I can perhaps understand
why Daisy Miller failed to connect with audiences at the time. Bogdanovich's vision of the film is classical
(almost old-fashioned) in its observational (and conversational) approach,
while the emotional development of the film is simply too subtle (or too gentle)
to create the kind of drama necessary for the viewer to feel involved in the
proceedings. It's a film as staid and as
reserved as its central character, always looking, rarely engaging, which for
me, wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
