Film

Just Pals (1920)

At any rate he was generous, never mean, like others in the village I could mention if I chose. –Graham Greene, The Second Death

John Ford’s career at Fox began with this charming short feature starring Buck Jones as the likable, but lazy town bum, Bim. The film opens with a series of short, introductory vignettes, beginning with the elderly town sheriff looking out for trouble and a group of rowdy young boys who admire Bim, albeit to their parent’s chagrin. These two scenes serve as a perfect and effortless lead in to Bim, “the idol of youth and the bane of elders.” Already, in a few short scenes, Ford’s sequencing allows the viewer to almost intuitively grasp Bim’s situation in the town and the sources of conflict to come—Bim is an outsider, looked down upon by “responsible” adults for his idle (and thereby destructive) ways.

This outsider mentality is typical of many of Ford’s films, including his well-known later films—Wayne’s characters in Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, not to mention Fonda’s Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine. These “good bad men,” as Bogdanovich calls them, all find some kinship with Bim, only able to observe the established community from afar.

But in Just Pals, optimism rules the day. Sure, the townspeople are against him. But Ford presents Bim’s faults in a more whimsical fashion. He’s lackadaisical, but without anyone to support, he only really hurts himself. And underneath the veneer of laziness, he possesses a strong moral code. He protects helpless women and children. For instance, when Bill takes a thrashing from the railroad man, Bim jumps to his defense. With Mary at risk of public ridicule and shame, Bim protects her secret, even at his own peril.

So while Bim is an outsider, he is not completely alone. The helpless and the hungry, the defenseless and the defeated, all find Bim. Bill, the boy hobo, finds Bim. Mary, the compassionate schoolteacher, finds Bim. On the other hand, the established and hard-working townspeople not only look down on Bim, but rush to judgment against him, even to the point of death. Their calloused ways even encourage the use of orphaned children for their own financial gain.

Ford’s humanism is at work in this duality—better to be sitting with the outsiders of the world than conform to the prideful established community that can’t be bothered by stooping below their station to help a fellow human being. But there is a strain of individualism in addition to the humanism. Despite the intimations of the title and the fact that Bim has found companions in Bill and Mary by the end of the film, he would not have found these friends had he not struck out on his own and distinguished himself from the townspeople.

This resulting community of outsiders defines the optimism of this early Ford picture. Nobody’s truly alone. There’s always another “pal” to be had.

The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987)

Kenzo Okuzaki is angry. And this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill anger. No, his has been simmering on low heat for forty years, with an occasional flare up in the form of a murder or firing a few lead balls at Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s head. His cause? Justice and truth. He wants offenders exposed. He demands they admit their crimes. He hopes to console those dead souls who fell victim to heartless men.

Okuzaki was a soldier in a Japanese regiment stationed in New Guinea near the end of WWII. Few returned, primarily due to starvation. However, two soldiers died nearly a month after the war ended, apparently executed for desertion, which if true, would be murder. Okuzaki believes these were unjust killings, and that he is on a divine mission to extract the truth from the few surviving officers responsible for the crime.

The film follows him on his travels criss-crossing Japan, and with a minimum of contextualization. A few title cards occasionally serve as transitions, but the film simply plunges the viewer into this man’s journey. We know him only through his interaction with these former officers, and a brief sketch of his prior criminal record.

Two things stand out about his mission. First, his methods of extracting information: Okuzaki peppers the former officers with an intense line of questioning. If the men are uncooperative, he uses violence as an inducement, beating on them until they are ready to talk. Interestingly, in the final interrogation scene, we hear three times that the purpose of his visits is to get information out so people will learn the horrors of war and never do it again. Using violence to prevent (potential) violence? A dubious strategy for sure, but one to whose effects he seems oblivious.

Second: his lies. Okuzaki wants to get the truth out about what happened in New Guinea. However, to do so, in the latter half of the film, he uses “actors” to pose as the siblings of dead soldiers in an effort to persuade the officers to talk. The only confessions of any real substance are with these actors, rather than the actual siblings. Telling a lie to get the truth? Again, a deeply problematic strategy.

Filled with contradictions, the film also leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, the formal and aesthetic issues it raises through Okuzaki’s inner conflicts stimulate my inner film-lover. He is one of the supremely contradictory “characters” I’ve ever seen on film, ripe for interesting discussion of the issues surrounding his journey.

Of further interest: how much of this journey was Okuzaki’s idea? Did the filmmaker place him in situations he knew would be explosive, in a sense capitalizing on Okuzaki’s relational shortcomings? These questions go unanswered in the film, but make for engaging conversation about the ethics of documentary filmmaking, of the impact making a film has on people’s actions, and for the audience as we voyeuristically participate in these problematic encounters.

At the same time, Okuzaki’s single-minded pursuit garners little sympathy, primarily because he is so clearly driven by his rage and thirst for vengeance. He is more than willing to transgress the boundaries of justice and truth in his pursuit of those same ideals. Because the film identifies so closely with him and his journey, and because he is so utterly unlikable, it serves to distance the viewer from his cause.

A great companion piece to Naked Army would be Forgiving Dr. Mengele, a film which features Eva Kor on a journey to forgive her Nazi captors. Both individuals are single-minded. Both have a tough exterior that rarely, if ever, cracks. Yet Kor’s journey is so distinctly different from Okuzaki’s in its refreshing embrace of forgiveness for wrongs done. Her recognition that she has no control over whether criminals are dealt with justly frees her to forgive and move on. Sadly, Okuzaki’s blind pursuit of “justice” at all costs and his need to control the situation keep him stuck in the wrongs and misdeeds nearly half a century old. In this context, Naked Army serves as a cautionary tale to those so deeply angered and embittered by the injustices of the world.

Killer of Sheep (1977)

Director Charles Burnett made this film in the 70’s, but not, as he says, for general release. Therefore, Killer of Sheep is only seeing a general theatrical release for the first time, some thirty years after its completion. It’s in Dallas this week, as was Mr. Burnett, who presented his film at the Angelika Theater and was kind enough to offer a lengthy Q & A afterward. More on that in a bit—first, the film.

Killer of Sheep is quietly, heartbreakingly beautiful, even from its first few frames. The complexity of certain scenes emerges largely out of silence and observations. There doesn’t appear to be a perceptible pattern to the placement of the camera, except that it focuses on various elements of the characters–sometimes heads, sometimes bodies, other times hands.

This way of seeing the parts allows the viewer a unique way to ultimately consider the whole of someone like Stan. As the film is a slice of life, to use Burnett’s phrase, it presents “slices of Stan”—both of his body and his deeds. Stan works, eats, talks, and sits. But it’s not a narrative film, so these elements of his life evoke a certain kind of disconnect from one another.

Such divisions between the individual scenes provide an opportunity for the viewer to piece various elements together in unique ways, without the dominance of plot forcing us into a narrow wedge of interpretation. Instead, much like life, we meet strangers, and while we slowly get to know them, the film’s structure prods us to engage and understand, rather than telling us who’s who and what’s what.

Several scenes linger in the mind, but I really appreciated a sequence late in the film when Stan’s wife leaves the dinner table in frustration, then watches from the couch as their young daughter helps her dad relax by rubbing his shoulders. Stan’s joy in this moment stands in stark contrast to the feeling of Stan’s wife (and in contrast to Stan’s demeanor throughout much of the film).

We know Stan’s wife has been frustrated by his detachment, knowledge which helps us understand why she leaves the table so abruptly. Yet the scene serves to deepen the emotional distance between them, not through a verbose and didactic argument or narration, but by focusing on the physical placement of the family in the room. Such moments populate the entire film, creating one of the most engrossing and engaging experiences I’ve had in the theater this year.

The Q&A (which I found out about the morning of) was well attended for being at 5PM on a weekday. The theater ended up about 80% full by the end. Mr. Burnett was soft-spoken and gracious. His answers were especially informative and detailed. Having been to a few of these director Q & A’s in the past, this last quality was most impressive.

Some highlights from the Q&A:

– Burnett names Jean Renoir as an influential filmmaker for him (along with Joris Ivens and Basil Wright). He spoke about Renoir’s The Southerner (a film I’ve not yet seen), specifically about the differences between American and European views of life in the South.

– Burnett was asked a couple of times about the influence of the Italian neo-realists on this film, and while he wanted to move away from claiming them as any kind of direct influence, he did eventually acknowledge that he shared some of their concerns. Notably, he was looking for truth and honesty in his portrayal of this part of the world. He, like the neo-realists, saw the film as an attempt to separate reality from illusion.

– In commenting on documentary film today, Burnett raised the debate about portraying real suffering on screen. How much is too much? He had always been of the mindset that if people could just see what was going on in certain dark corners of the world, they’d be appalled and do something about it. His test case was a recent doc called Empire in Africa, about the war in Sierra Leone. It apparently contains some actual footage of graphic violence (limbs being hacked off and the like), which has caused him to raise this question again for himself. How much is too much? Would seeing such terrible things actually have the opposite effect than what was intended, by turning people off the issue?

– When recently re-watching Sheep as it was being graded for DVD, he found in it a kind of nostalgia, a feeling of warmth for a simpler time, even if it was still terribly difficult for these people to get by. He was asked about making a film on the poor of today, and indicated he’d probably do something less lyrical than Sheep, more factual, focusing on the failure of educational and political institutions, along with probable causes for the troubles.

– As an introduction to the film, Burnett spoke about a question he hoped viewers would ask themselves after seeing it. He wanted us to ask “How can we help these people?” The film was made on the back end of the Civil Rights movement in America, and as such, is directly informed by its concerns. Yet Burnett wasn’t so interested in being didactic with this film. Rather, he hoped that by presenting a vision of the lives of the working poor, viewers would be moved to act on their behalf.

Many thanks go out to Mr. Burnett for coming to Dallas and offering such thoughtful commentary on his film. And kudos to the Angelika for hosting the evening and being willing to run an important film like this in a city that doesn’t always embrace such things. Here’s hoping we see more of this in the future!

Half Nelson (2006)

Black and white. Male and female. Young and old. Rich and poor. Teacher and student. Addict and dealer. Parent and child. Ryan Fleck’s debut fictional feature, Half Nelson, details the shifts and transformations that come when two “opposites” collide. The film’s central character, a Junior High history teacher named Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling), frames his lectures around this concept, bringing it to his students through a variety of images. Calling his framework “dialectics” (referencing Hegel, and, probably even more, Marx), he teaches the idea that all of history is change, resulting from a collision of different objects. These collisions are always grounded in the real world, one person or group crashing into another.

The film’s characters embody the characteristics of Dunne’s philosophy of history. Their encounters are largely defined by the tensions and contrasts between them. Take the film’s central relationship between Dunne and his thirteen year-old female student, Drey (Shareeka Epps). On the surface, it’s easy to ask what a young, urban, African-American female and an older, (raised) suburban, male white teacher might have in common. They come from different worlds, his one of privilege, hers of need. His upbringing was safe, hers littered with the potholes of dealers and prisons. Yet his weakness (drug addiction) and her strength bring them together in a way that allows the dialectic to work itself out.

Fleck’s choice of shots in two sequences heightens our awareness of this dialectic in a formal sense. In the first, immediately following a basketball game (in which Dunne coached), Drey discovers him getting high in the girls restroom. The scene unfolds with handheld shots in extreme close-up. It begins with Dunne in a stall getting high, the camera going in and out of focus. Fleck cuts several times here, evoking the passage of time, which allows the drug to take root in Dunne’s system. Next comes several shots looking out from within the stall as Dunne hears someone in the restroom. When Drey finally opens the door, a second perspective is finally available, one beyond the drug-influenced vision of Dunne. Fleck cuts back and forth between these two perspectives as Drey helps Dunne by getting him some water, all the while staying in close-up.

The limits created by the use of close-ups in this sequence allow us to identify with each character’s perspective, even as they see different things in different ways (the shot often blurs as Dunne gets high). And just as the intensity dies down a bit, just as we get comfortable with our two distinct views of the action, Fleck pulls back for a wide shot, young Drey leaning over her prone teacher. The beauty of that cut lies in the fact that it serves to heighten a difference we already thought was fully distinct. Seeing this young girl thrust into such a position of fear and responsibility serves to illustrate the distance between these two characters.

In the film’s final minutes, several visual cues lead to a more complex view of this relationship. Indeed, they are not just opposites by film’s end. After Dunne has left everything, even his students, for a drug-filled night with prostitutes and other shady characters, Drey comes to get him. When she enters his hotel room, we see them in a wide shot sitting on opposite beds, facing one another. Here we find a visual moment that evokes both distinction and identification. That they face one another, that she’s black and he’s white, she a student, he a teacher, she poor and he from money—all these things lead us to see them as opposites. Yet, she sits there on equal ground with him. After all she’s been through, she too has fallen from innocence. She too has something to be guilty about. She too knows something of his addiction. And Dunne knows this. He knows she comes to him as an equal. In this way, they identify with each other.

All this leads to the final image, as she and Dunne sit in a long shot facing the camera on a couch back at his apartment. They are still terribly different people, yet their common direction and posture indicate that they’ve forged some connection. They’ve each been changed by the encounter with the other. She’s experienced a little more of the world, resulting in a chastened innocence. He’s been encouraged by a thirteen year-old girl who pursues him in the depths of his struggle. These two opposites have collided, leaving a synthesis in the midst of their pain and trials.

A Moment of Innocence (1996)

A Moment of Innocence begins with two sets of images: one set of a clapboard interspersed with another set depicting a man walking toward the camera along train tracks. The former is a series of undeniably self-aware images, as a young girl reads the titles written on the slate, each shot reminding viewers that we are watching a film. The latter shows us a man on a journey. And while we can’t be sure where he’s going, we know he’s headed in our direction. Yet the key in this opening sequence is the constant interchange between clapboard and man, between fact and fiction. Like something out of a Kiarostami film, Makhmalbaf means to play with the lines between the two, offering us a “false” portrait of “facts” and a “truthful” portrait of “fiction.” The lines remain distinct in this sequence, but become increasingly blurred as the film progresses.

We enter the narrative of the film through this man on a journey, a man acquainted with Makhmalbaf some twenty years earlier. Now that Makhmalbaf has become a famous director in Iran, this man seeks him out, hoping for a part in a film. Their encounter decades earlier was brief, albeit violent. Makhmalbaf, the young militant, attacked this man, then a policeman, stabbing him in the leg while trying to disarm him. Now that they’ve been reacquainted, Makhmalbaf decides to make a film about their earlier encounter, and after a comical scene of casting actors to play their younger selves, Makhmalbaf pairs the young actors with himself and the policeman. The two pairs of participants separate so the young men can get a sense of the parts they’ll be playing. They agree to meet back in a day or two for shooting the past encounter.

As the older men direct their younger selves, we come to see that all those on screen presumably play themselves. So as the suspense builds toward the final filmed encounter, a sense of documentary realism is always at hand. One begins to wonder just how much of this is a real experience for the “actors” and how much of it is staged. While they are ostensibly making a drama based on real events, the actor’s (and our own) constant awareness of the camera leaves the viewer wondering about the reality of these moments. Are they really “real” or just pretending to be “real”?

This line between fact and fiction (undeniably present in all films), rises to the surface here, particularly as we draw nearer to the penultimate attack. Does the film become more or less truthful if the actors aren’t just acting, but actually experiencing the emotions and circumstances on screen? Are there any films where an actor isn’t really experiencing those things on some level? Does that mean all films are recording reality, more or less? I think Makhmalbaf answers this final question with a resounding yes. There is something false in the filming of any image, but Makhmalbaf attempts to drive at the truthful portrayal of his actors even as they exist in the midst of this false environment.

To illustrate these questions rising to the surface, the actors will look at the camera, or Makhmalbaf will give verbal direction from behind it. In one scene, the young Makhmalbaf breaks down and cries, prompting the director to stop the scene and try to get the boy to regain his composure. He eventually does, but we are left wondering about the “truth” of the moment. Was it scripted or impromptu? Because the lines between fact and fiction have been sufficiently blurred so as to raise this question, it becomes clear that the truth of the moment is less about whether the boy really broke down, and more about what is being evoked through the portrayal of the breakdown.

As they shoot the final scene, we enter into the most “cinematic” section of the film. Finally, all pretense is gone; there are no references to the camera or specific directions. The adults remain off camera, “invisible” to the world of the film. The scene plays out in a more traditional filmic style, thus moving away from the self-awareness that has framed the experience thus far.

Without the visible camera just over the actor’s shoulders, the film is given over to the kind of acting so familiar to us. Yet this final scene, in its straightforward way, offers both the height of falsehood as well as a direct line toward truth and meaning. The direction of the older men falls into the background and presumably places the turn of events solely in the hand of its actors. As they are younger people, they remain largely unpredictable. They’ve no loyalties to the tradition or the political ideals of their directors. They only know the world as they’ve experienced it, and as such, act in ways that sometimes completely diverge from their elders. Yet we’ve been conditioned by the self-awareness of previous events to remember that all this occurs in the context of a film. So even though the directors are absent from the screen, what we see before us is still, at some level, false.

As they reach the brilliant and climactic moment of the attack, the film ends on a striking image of hope that the past can indeed be redeemed. And it suggests that maybe art is one means of bringing communion to people long separated by division and strife. This final moment is at once both obviously staged but at the same time deeply meaningful and true. So as the film begins with fact and fiction clearly separated, eventually they are united within a single image. We are left in the knowledge that truth and meaning come to us, even in the midst of a false vessel.

Ten (2002)

Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten has been a highlight of my ongoing and extremely rewarding mini-Iranian film fest. For the uninitiated, in Ten, Kiarostami films ten conversations, each of which takes place in the front seat of a single car over an undefined period of days or weeks. The driver of the car, a woman, appears in every scene. She converses with her son, her sister, a friend, and even a couple of strangers. Kiarostami films the action by placing two digital cameras on the dash, one facing the driver’s seat, the other the passenger’s. The film’s formal conceits and socio-political commentary provide ample opportunities for discussion.

With the film located entirely within the front seat of a single automobile driven by a woman, the director creates a space to relate with those “lesser” or “forgotten” members of Middle Eastern society: women and children. This gives viewers a unique opportunity to enter into the world of Middle Eastern women, so often covered up by patriarchal society. Kiarostami presents them as a diverse group, with differing views and reactions to any number of societal issues: sex, marriage, divorce, prayer, parenting, and beauty.

Yet while their diversity is apparent, the formal constraints of the single camera placement go beyond opportunities for interesting and occasionally mundane conversation. The single camera placement presents a confined and constricted space, mirrored in a way through the traditional head scarves the women wear. Of interest here is not simply that the car proves restrictive in some sense, but that by its very nature, it allows greater freedom through the ability to travel greater distances. No doubt these women travel to a variety of places quickly, but in the context of the film, we only ever see them inside or connected with this moving metal box. Such a move on Kiarostami’s part offers a unique portrait of contemporary Iranian society: greater freedom, albeit with continued and constant restraint.

Playing off this idea, when the driver picks up two different strangers, one a devout worshipper, the other a prostitute, Kiarostami appears to notice the peculiarity of the two women, both of whom appear on camera only as they are outside the car. In this way they avoid the constraints the vehicle provides. One is devoted to religion, the other to sex, one to the spiritual life, the other to the fleshly. Yet at each of these extremes, these women find a kind of freedom from the social restrictions that bind most middle-of-the-road women. This is further solidified in a dramatic scene near the end when the driver’s friend and fellow worshipper reveals her own extreme reaction to a loss in her life. At least for these women, it appears freedom comes only at the fringes of society.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

When Royal Tenenbaum mentions visiting his dead mother’s grave with his kids, Margot, his adopted daughter, reminds him that she was never invited to go as a child. His response is priceless for its aloofness and insensitivity: he claims he was never quite sure she wanted to go, since the old woman wasn’t really her grandmother. Writer and director Wes Anderson gives his titular character quite a number of such “thick” moments. At first glance, they seem outrageous. But once we peel back the fantastical elements of Anderson’s cinematic style, we find such moments grounded in the truthfulness of lived experience.Anderson’s third feature, The Royal Tenenbaums offers a spot on portrayal of familial dysfunction, viewed through the lens of a comic fairy tale world where everything seems slightly skewed from reality. When Royal hears that his wife of many years has received a marriage proposal, he determines to recapture his place in the family. Yet when he arrives, he’s surprised to be met by children who are essentially unchanged from their adolescent selves. They’ve simply not been able to move on and grow up, a result of the damage caused in the wake of Royal’s leaving two decades earlier.The way the rest of the film interacts with images of death, suffering, and loss drives home the pain resulting from broken homes. This pain doesn’t subside simply because people go on with their lives as they had before the split. Rather, a fundamental change of direction is needed for this family, and it only comes after Royal is found out for faking a terminal illness, exposed for the liar he is. At that moment he realizes the change must begin with him, the failed patriarch.

Three scenes at the family plot illustrate the progression of the Tenenbaums. Early in the film, Royal and the kids visit his mother’s grave. Rather than it being a bonding time, it serves only to illustrate the anger of Chas, the alienation of Margot, and the misdirection of Richie. True to form, Royal remains completely oblivious to the causes of their feelings, acting instead as if he is the one being wronged by their insensitivity.

Much later in the film, after Royal has been booted from the Tenenbaum home, he visits the grave alone. He has been officially removed from the family. They’ve all rejected him, even Richie the peacemaker. But the seeds of change were planted in that rejection, so this time, he uses the opportunity at the graveside to reflect on his separation from the family. What should he do for them? He decides to give his wife Ethel a long overdue divorce, paving the way for her to proceed with her wedding to Henry.

The final time at the cemetery comes after Ethel and Henry’s wedding. In the aftermath of the wedding, Anderson employs a fantastic two and a half minute tracking shot that effectively brings together the once-fragmented family. The unity between form and content plays out beautifully here, and after a couple of subsequent scenes, we find out Royal has died.

Anderson once again brings us back to the cemetery. This time though, as the entire family gathers to pay their last respects, it’s clear they’ve been changed in their opinion of Royal Tenenbaum. His death engenders fond memories, rooted in the change of direction he made. He saw the destruction caused by his selfish actions and purposed to offer something positive in its place.

The cemetery, once only a place of death and alienation, takes on a new character at the film’s conclusion. Without necessarily leaving those negative or neutral things behind, it also becomes a place where family and friends gather to think about a life well lived. Of course, that’s only the case when the people buried in cemeteries decide to live this life in a way worthy of such an honor.

Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

Chaplin’s first true “talkie” in both sound and style, Monsieur Verdoux also marks the first time he officially abandons the Little Tramp character he made famous. Yet “abandons” may not be quite the right word, for Chaplin himself embodies the Tramp, even as this new character of Verdoux leaves those old outward cues behind.Monsieur Verdoux takes Chaplin as actor to an unfamiliar role, that of a murderous bigamist, a mantle his Depression-era character takes on after losing his job of thirty years as a bank clerk. Henri Verdoux visits his wife and child regularly, but not often enough for them, as they complain about his always being away on business. Of course, his business is of a most unseemly and time consuming nature: he marries rich widows, fleeces them for their money, and then kills them.

The film represents a development away from the unbridled optimism of Chaplin’s old screen persona, all the while retaining (though sublimating) the same boisterous charm and playfulness of that former character. This leaves the distinct impression of both continuity and discontinuity with Chaplin’s previous work. Echoes of the earlier films are apparent, notably when the Tramp’s coy, playful smile makes an appearance in a rowboat with one of his wives.

Such continuity is evident from the first few lines of narration as the film opens. Verdoux offers a brief history of himself, finally commenting that to do what he does, one must fundamentally be an optimist. In other words, he has bought into the prevailing mindset of the modern world: the belief in undying progress and the advancement of mankind. Even at this early stage of the film, it’s clear Verdoux sees himself as an extension of the modern age.

Yet in that opening scene, with narration peppered with optimism and hope, the “new Charlie” makes his first appearance, albeit at this moment, only as director. While his words are punctuated with optimism, the image before us is one of a graveyard. We even see Verdoux’ gravestone. We know he speaks to us as a dead man, much like William Holden’s young writer will do three years later in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. Like Wilder’s critique of the Hollywood machine, Chaplin uses this imagery to undercut the optimism of the modern age in the first few frames of the film.

The sense of discontinuity only grows throughout the film, as more and more of this character becomes clear. It’s still Charlie, but he’s changed. That paradox is beautifully contained in the stunning final image, one of Verdoux walking away from the camera, in handcuffs, on the way to execution. For anyone familiar with his work, that scene evokes the final image of Modern Times, where the Tramp and the Gamin walk away, arm in arm, into the sunset. The latter image is filled with hope and determination as they head off toward their destiny. In Verdoux, destiny surely lies ahead, but this time it is one of death and destruction.

Despite the wonders of his earlier work (City Lights and Modern Times are brilliant) the discontinuity present in Verdoux takes the film to a new level. Not only does it breathe new life into Chaplin’s onscreen persona, but it traverses new ground by examining the dark underbelly of a Depression-era, Capitalist, and warmongering society. Verdoux makes it clear that such things matter, not just on the stage of world diplomacy and economics, but in deeply personal ways as well. These commitments change the structure of society, thereby affecting its people. On the one hand, they bring a surface level optimism and hope for the future – people are thinking about what can be accomplished. But on the other, such commitments work against that hope in the dark corners of our cities and people. In light of this, one wonders with Verdoux what good it is to gain the whole world, if we lose ourselves in the process.

Big Animal (2000)

Some of my favorite films portray characters that step to a different tune. Kurosawa’s Ikiru offers Takashi Shimura’s Watanabe, who takes it upon himself to cut through bureaucratic red tape and get a playground built in a poor neighborhood. In The Third Man, Welles’ Harry Lime pursues his capitalist ideals with less than pure motives. The titular character in Lawrence of Arabia walks across a desert sans guide to follow his complicated desires. It’s no wonder then that I enjoy Jerzy Stuhr’s gorgeously photographed Big Animal, which in its own way, presents a similar scenario.

The film features the always interesting Stuhr in the lead role as Mr. Sawicki, a middle-aged village banker who discovers a camel in his front yard. While he takes to the animal quickly, his wife remains cautious, and the other townspeople offer a variety of responses ranging from full acceptance to outright dismissal. Slowly, Sawicki begins to see the consequences of his individuality, and must navigate his way through the competing desires of the townspeople.

Lest this sound like dreary Polish melodrama, it most certainly is not. The film bubbles over with life, quirkiness, and outright laughter. Yet this light-hearted manner never dominates the film, as comedy and drama intertwine to provide opportunities for complex sets of responses at any particular moment. In one scene, after Sawicki knows many in the town are against his owning a camel, he arrives home from walking the camel, only to meet an “angry” mob of his neighbors. It’s raining so he hurries into his new stable, while the (remember, angry) mob stands silently in the street. Stuhr plays the scene out beautifully, creating a moment where laughing or heartbreak would make for an appropriate response (FWIW, I laughed. A lot.).

This mix of emotional responses parallels another paradoxical element: that of the individual versus the community. Sawicki comes across near the beginning of the film as a man in tune with the world around him. He plays clarinet in the orchestra. He never arrives late for work. He shares predictably quiet dinners with his wife. Yet when the camel comes on the scene, everything changes. He takes his camel for walks through the town. He decides to build an Arabian style stable in his yard. And most of all, the townspeople begin to raise eyebrows at his “strange” behavior, leaving him feeling like an outsider in his own village. What’s a man to do?

Stuhr films Kieslowski’s script in black and white, and while the circumstances of the characters are anything but, this choice evokes a bygone era, much like George Clooney’s recent directorial effort, Good Night and Good Luck. By pointing us to the past, the film’s political allegory is apparent, though due to deft writing and direction, in addition to the engaging lead performances, the allegory never overwhelms the touching personal story that drives the film. This central narrative arc of a mature couple trying to navigate between conformity and being themselves presents a dilemma many of us can relate to in this day and age.

Children of Men (2006)

Rarely do I attend a film that at its conclusion, I have a deeply visceral reaction to, either positive or negative. An example of the former is In America, which simply ripped me to shreds on a first viewing. An example of the latter is Frequency, which has a final scene that made me want to throw something at the screen. Several years on, I continue to admire In America for its charms though the emotional reaction has subsided on subsequent viewings. I also continue to dislike Frequency, and while I have no plans to rewatch it, I suspect my strong feelings of revulsion would be tempered somewhat with a second viewing, though I cannot imagine ever actually enjoying the film. All of this should be read as a caveat of sorts to my thoughts on Children of Men. In other words, while my reaction to the film was quite strong, I expect that the negative emotions will fade over time, leaving behind a general dissatisfaction with the film. My interest here then lies in exploring why it is I reacted so strongly against Cuarón’s film (a film which has received nearly universal critical acclaim). Suffice it to say that when I walked out of the movie, I found my frustration growing to a point I rarely experience. What is it that’s driving this reaction?

Briefly, CoM takes place in and around London in the year 2027. While the world has changed pretty much for the worse across the board, the most significant change is that people all over the world are infertile for some unknown reason, a fact which apparently leads to greater unrest, accumulation of filth, and a general malaise across the world’s population. Our entrance into this world is through Theo (Clive Owen), a middle-aged, former activist who ends up doing the bidding of an extremist radical group by escorting a mysteriously pregnant woman to a safe house off the coast of England.

Considering CoM in light of content and form leads to a productive distinction for me to begin thinking about my response to the film. Following this line of thought, it seems I am left with one of two options to find a source for my harsh negative reaction: Either my read on the story or plot (content) yields something worthy of frustration, and/or something about the technical elements or presentation of that content (form) is trumping any charms the story might contain.

In terms of content, it seems that a number of positive responses come from the hope that is offered by the birth of a child in the midst of a dark world. While I can appreciate and resonate with this idea (which btw, is available by simply knowing the premise of the film), I am struggling to see how CoM gives us any broader context to which that hope can be connected. We might feel good about Kee and the birth of her baby, but what effect does that have on anyone else? The soldiers can’t even seem to stop fighting long enough to get her out of harm’s way. We also have no reason to believe such a thing will be duplicated. So while I can see the presence of hope there in a more surface way, when buttressed by the death and darkness and destruction in the world, the film as a whole doesn’t appear to offer a hope with much substance or connection to its world. It really doesn’t appear to be any kind of reality-altering hope that changes everything. That, to me, is the significant failure of the story – an interesting premise that really isn’t developed to any significant degree or connected to the world in which it is placed.

With a straightforward story that doesn’t offer much in the way of development, I turn to formal issues in hopes of some answer that will account for my reaction against this film. Eminent critics like Manohla Dargis in the New York Times and Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader have been explicit in their praise for the film precisely for its formal expertise. Yet as I continue to reflect on the experience, it seems to me that while technically impressive, those same formal elements offer a particularly dark and destructive picture of humanity, something that becomes clear to me in thinking about one of those hyped, centerpiece sequences in the film. After the first rather pedestrian twenty or thirty minutes, there is a shooting in which we watch someone literally bleed to death. The violence and force with which the actual shooting was portrayed is impressive in its shocking brutality. Yet after being in constant motion during this technically astute sequence, the director feels the need to slow down and settle the camera’s gaze on this individual taking their final breath, as the blood pours from the wound.

Within five minutes of this scene, there are two more shootings, again, shocking in their swift brutality. And again, the director feels the need, having already cut away to show the escaping perpetrators, to cut back to the dead/dying men on the ground, blood pouring into the street where they lay. After an extended sequence that appears to offer no cuts (apparently there actually were cuts, but digitally manipulated to appear otherwise), it is interesting as a point of emphasis to see that one of the first cuts Cuarón makes is in an effort to take us back to those dying men, bleeding on the street. One such shooting was more than enough for me to get the point of the horrors of the world they’re in, particularly since that first character was one we’d started to know and appreciate. Yet two more on top of it, shot in a very similar way, within moments of the first, and in both cases feeling the need to linger seems more than is necessary. It felt like Cuarón was piling on at that point.

It is at this point that the film starts to take on primarily the mantle of endurance test rather than meaningful exploration of relevant issues. Our view is constantly pointed toward those destructive, dirty, or even insane forces in the world. It is that destruction and dirt which is foregrounded throughout, rather than the development of the central theme. Thus, the violence occurs, but what meaning does it offer? Do the repeated acts, the lingering on dead/dying bodies contribute in a meaningful way to the development of the film’s themes? Are those acts contextualized within the broader fabric of the film? The first shooting I understand (even if I don’t like the way it was shot). The others after it all seem superfluous.

As a point of comparison, I offer Haneke’s Time of the Wolf (or even Caché), which, while I don’t love either film, I admire quite a bit. Like CoM, they also contain single, brief, brutal, and shocking acts of violence, but those moments of brutality don’t trouble me the same way they do in CoM. I am forced to ask myself why that is. Certainly Haneke’s violence is upsetting, but Cuarón seems to stretch far beyond that. Maybe it is the way the camera lingers on death and suffering in CoM, whereas Haneke’s films trust that the audience will continue to be troubled simply by the shocking brutality of the initial act itself. Maybe it’s because Haneke refuses to pile on those images, preferring a “less is more” approach. Maybe it’s because Haneke offers us a more complex vision of reality, one that better holds the tension between guilt and innocence, peace and suffering, all in view of such terrifying violence. CoM gives us an interesting premise of hope in a dark world, but I’m struggling to see where that premise is developed, and am even questioning if it delivers on that simple statement.

I’m still exploring the reasons for my negative reaction to this film. It sounds like the far majority of people had really positive and powerful reactions to it. That’s fine. But at this point, to bring us back to the content and form distinction, I’m left with a story that doesn’t offer much development of its initial premise, and a way of presenting that story which bludgeons the viewer with violent acts against mostly nameless, faceless people we neither know nor care about. This repetition of violent death and destruction (and especially the way those acts are repeated and emphasized visually) remains at such a distance from the central, undeveloped premise, that any mitigation the “hope in a dark world” might offer is muted to the point of virtual irrelevance.