(Burning Down the House, 1983, d. Byrne)
 |
| (The Exorcist, 1973, d. Friedkin) |
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Capsule Reviews, Meta-Hollywood-Style, or "What's the Matter With Right Here?"
Quite coincidentally, I recently watched three films that in their own way, and with varying levels of success, deal with the, as they say, Classic Hollywood Style. Below, you will find capsulized reviews of that shit.
In a Lonely Place (d. Nicholas Ray) - Early on in this noir classic, Humphrey Bogart, as the embittered and potentially violent screewriter Dixon Steele, twice asks the question "Whats the matter with right here?" In both cases, there's some aggression behind the words -- in one case, Steele is literally looking to get into a fight -- because Dixon wants things to remain as they are. Not professionally, because he's treading water, and not in his relationships with women, because he doesn't have any, but in order to fix either problem he'd have to not merely change, but become a better person, and he's too busy feeling superior to every living creature that crosses his path. So what's the matter with right here?
Nicholas Ray's 1950 masterpiece, which has just been released on Blu-ray and DVD by Criterion, is one of the most psychologically devastating noirs ever made, and because of that, in its own way, one of the most narratively unconventional crime films I've seen. It's based on a novel by Dorothy Hughes, a major cult writer who I'm afraid I've never read, but Ray's film resembles more than anything a cross between James M. Cain and Charles Willeford. Both writers (Willeford began writing after In a Lonely Place was released) specialized in creating characters who find themselves thrust into intense situations, but discover that on some level that they sort of don't care. In In a Lonely Place, Bogart's Steele meets a coat-check girl (Martha Stewart) who's read the novel he needs to adapt, and he asks her back to his place to tell him the story, thereby cutting out the middle man. When, the next morning, the girl turns up murdered, Steele is at most bemused to find himself in a police station. There he meets his neighbor Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) who witnessed Steele and the victim together (and saw the girl leave without him), with whom he eventually falls in love.
What's rarely acknowledged is that Gray gives even less of a shit about the dead girl than Steele does ("Gray" and "Steele" may be names that weren't chosen at random). In fact, Gray is drawn to Steele precisely because of his associations with a murder case. She's not presented, and Grahame doesn't play her, as a ghoul, but it's not hard to connect the dots. It's only when the couple draws further into domesticity that Gray begins to listen to the warnings from the cops who still suspect that Steele is a killer.
The answer to the question "whodunnit?" isn't hard to land on, but it's also sort of irrelevant, for reasons I'll leave for those who've haven't yet seen In a Lonely Place to discover. But it's not irrelevant in a cold way -- it's somehow irrelevant in a way that specifically remembers that dead coat-check girl. Because you never know.
Gardens of Stone (d. Francis Ford Coppola) - When his 1981 film One From the Heart flopped so notoriously (that it's a great film is, of course, immaterial) that it not only contributed to the death of Hollywood's auteurist phase of the previous decade, but also bankrupted him and put the breaks on his juggernaut of a career, Francis Ford Coppola did what any desperate artist would have done: he politely said "Fuck it" and doubled down on One From the Heart's radical style. This took many forms, and one form, the one I find the strangest and most surprising, involved unironically employing classic Hollywood aesthetics in the aid of new films of the exact type that led to the development of those aesthetics in the first place. See Tucker: The Man and His Dream, his take on the biopic, and, more to the current point, 1987's Gardens of Stone, his mostly forgotten entry into the "war at home" melodrama.
Starring James Caan as Sgt. Clell Hazard, stationed in Fort Meyer in Arlington, VA during the Vietnam War, Gardens of Stone is essentially an anti-war film, but not of the puling sort that by then had become the norm (Clell insists, convincingly, that he's not a pacifist). Instead, it's a sad, funny, weird, inspired, honest, and honorable look at the world of U.S. Army as it functions at home while the war these characters were trained to wage is happening on the other side of the world. And while Clell and his best friend Sgt. Major "Goody" Nelson (James Earl Jones, and the pairing of Caan and Jones is sort of brilliant) seem to be the smartest guys on base, that's not because they, or the film, views the military as corrupt. Though Wyler's film is post-war, Gardens of Stone most resembles The Best Years of Our Lives in its depiction of military life as something only those actually living it can understand, or appreciate.
And Coppola does all this while having his actors pitch their performances at a level that would have been immediately understood and appreciated by the original audience for The Best Years of Our Lives, but less so by audiences who'd just seen Lethal Weapon. But Coppola doesn't believe that cinematic styles "evolve"; to him, the aesthetics of every era exists in the same era, which is to say, the present. It's not a matter of paying homage to what came before -- it's a matter of using whatever tools most inspire him.
On a side note, even though he's one of the most adventurous of all American filmmakers, when you read about Coppola online these days, you're more likely than not going to find some bullshit snark along the lines of "How could the guy who made The Conversation have made Jack???" Never mind how far in the past Jack is now, people still won't shut up about it. In any event, my response to such comments is "How many films as good as The Conversation have you made? Actually, scratch that: how many films as good as The Conversation have you seen?"
Joy (d. David O. Russell) - So, one way to do classic Hollywood is to actually be classic Hollywood. Another way is embrace the style on your own terms, several decades removed. And yet another way is to do it while pretending you're doing something else. Which brings us to David O. Russell, a filmmaker who's been an uninteresting traditionalist since Flirting With Disaster, his second film, and who made his best film (in my view, anyway) with The Fighter, which is the one time he shed any pretensions of "edginess." Since then, it's all been downhill (again), and while his latest, last year's Joy, must count as an improvement over his previous American Hustle, when this film opens with a title card that reads "Inspired By True Stories of Daring Women," you can practically see Russell waiting for the applause.
Based on the true story of Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence), the woman who invented the Miracle Mop -- and I sort of got the feeling that being able to call this movie Joy because in this case that word is multi-layered was the main reason for making it in the first place -- Russell's film turns what could have been unique source material into boilerplate inspiration. Joy struggles, and is beset on all sides, but finally succeeds, don't you know. As usual, Russell is relentless in his use of popular songs, presumably because deep down he knows that he's Martin Scorsese, and, as usual, he's no damn good at it (further proof, if any was needed, that David O. Russell is in fact not Martin Scorsese), playing songs just to play them, or because the brutal obviousness of using "I Feel Free" just appeals to him on some level. Later, when Joy gets a shot at promoting her invention on QVC, Russell wants to convince the audience that QVC is somehow this invigorating environment pulsing with the very juice of life, like an ER or an old-time newsroom. The idea isn't to bring out what's special about Joy Mangano's story, but rather to reduce it down to the kind of film we're comfortable watching.
But Jennifer Lawrence sure is good. Her talents as an actress are as natural and seemingly effortless as any I can think of in modern American films. The suspicion I have that Russell is, at this point, clinging to her desperately is one that persists.
In a Lonely Place (d. Nicholas Ray) - Early on in this noir classic, Humphrey Bogart, as the embittered and potentially violent screewriter Dixon Steele, twice asks the question "Whats the matter with right here?" In both cases, there's some aggression behind the words -- in one case, Steele is literally looking to get into a fight -- because Dixon wants things to remain as they are. Not professionally, because he's treading water, and not in his relationships with women, because he doesn't have any, but in order to fix either problem he'd have to not merely change, but become a better person, and he's too busy feeling superior to every living creature that crosses his path. So what's the matter with right here?
Nicholas Ray's 1950 masterpiece, which has just been released on Blu-ray and DVD by Criterion, is one of the most psychologically devastating noirs ever made, and because of that, in its own way, one of the most narratively unconventional crime films I've seen. It's based on a novel by Dorothy Hughes, a major cult writer who I'm afraid I've never read, but Ray's film resembles more than anything a cross between James M. Cain and Charles Willeford. Both writers (Willeford began writing after In a Lonely Place was released) specialized in creating characters who find themselves thrust into intense situations, but discover that on some level that they sort of don't care. In In a Lonely Place, Bogart's Steele meets a coat-check girl (Martha Stewart) who's read the novel he needs to adapt, and he asks her back to his place to tell him the story, thereby cutting out the middle man. When, the next morning, the girl turns up murdered, Steele is at most bemused to find himself in a police station. There he meets his neighbor Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) who witnessed Steele and the victim together (and saw the girl leave without him), with whom he eventually falls in love.
What's rarely acknowledged is that Gray gives even less of a shit about the dead girl than Steele does ("Gray" and "Steele" may be names that weren't chosen at random). In fact, Gray is drawn to Steele precisely because of his associations with a murder case. She's not presented, and Grahame doesn't play her, as a ghoul, but it's not hard to connect the dots. It's only when the couple draws further into domesticity that Gray begins to listen to the warnings from the cops who still suspect that Steele is a killer.
The answer to the question "whodunnit?" isn't hard to land on, but it's also sort of irrelevant, for reasons I'll leave for those who've haven't yet seen In a Lonely Place to discover. But it's not irrelevant in a cold way -- it's somehow irrelevant in a way that specifically remembers that dead coat-check girl. Because you never know.
Gardens of Stone (d. Francis Ford Coppola) - When his 1981 film One From the Heart flopped so notoriously (that it's a great film is, of course, immaterial) that it not only contributed to the death of Hollywood's auteurist phase of the previous decade, but also bankrupted him and put the breaks on his juggernaut of a career, Francis Ford Coppola did what any desperate artist would have done: he politely said "Fuck it" and doubled down on One From the Heart's radical style. This took many forms, and one form, the one I find the strangest and most surprising, involved unironically employing classic Hollywood aesthetics in the aid of new films of the exact type that led to the development of those aesthetics in the first place. See Tucker: The Man and His Dream, his take on the biopic, and, more to the current point, 1987's Gardens of Stone, his mostly forgotten entry into the "war at home" melodrama.
Starring James Caan as Sgt. Clell Hazard, stationed in Fort Meyer in Arlington, VA during the Vietnam War, Gardens of Stone is essentially an anti-war film, but not of the puling sort that by then had become the norm (Clell insists, convincingly, that he's not a pacifist). Instead, it's a sad, funny, weird, inspired, honest, and honorable look at the world of U.S. Army as it functions at home while the war these characters were trained to wage is happening on the other side of the world. And while Clell and his best friend Sgt. Major "Goody" Nelson (James Earl Jones, and the pairing of Caan and Jones is sort of brilliant) seem to be the smartest guys on base, that's not because they, or the film, views the military as corrupt. Though Wyler's film is post-war, Gardens of Stone most resembles The Best Years of Our Lives in its depiction of military life as something only those actually living it can understand, or appreciate.
And Coppola does all this while having his actors pitch their performances at a level that would have been immediately understood and appreciated by the original audience for The Best Years of Our Lives, but less so by audiences who'd just seen Lethal Weapon. But Coppola doesn't believe that cinematic styles "evolve"; to him, the aesthetics of every era exists in the same era, which is to say, the present. It's not a matter of paying homage to what came before -- it's a matter of using whatever tools most inspire him.
On a side note, even though he's one of the most adventurous of all American filmmakers, when you read about Coppola online these days, you're more likely than not going to find some bullshit snark along the lines of "How could the guy who made The Conversation have made Jack???" Never mind how far in the past Jack is now, people still won't shut up about it. In any event, my response to such comments is "How many films as good as The Conversation have you made? Actually, scratch that: how many films as good as The Conversation have you seen?"
Joy (d. David O. Russell) - So, one way to do classic Hollywood is to actually be classic Hollywood. Another way is embrace the style on your own terms, several decades removed. And yet another way is to do it while pretending you're doing something else. Which brings us to David O. Russell, a filmmaker who's been an uninteresting traditionalist since Flirting With Disaster, his second film, and who made his best film (in my view, anyway) with The Fighter, which is the one time he shed any pretensions of "edginess." Since then, it's all been downhill (again), and while his latest, last year's Joy, must count as an improvement over his previous American Hustle, when this film opens with a title card that reads "Inspired By True Stories of Daring Women," you can practically see Russell waiting for the applause.
Based on the true story of Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence), the woman who invented the Miracle Mop -- and I sort of got the feeling that being able to call this movie Joy because in this case that word is multi-layered was the main reason for making it in the first place -- Russell's film turns what could have been unique source material into boilerplate inspiration. Joy struggles, and is beset on all sides, but finally succeeds, don't you know. As usual, Russell is relentless in his use of popular songs, presumably because deep down he knows that he's Martin Scorsese, and, as usual, he's no damn good at it (further proof, if any was needed, that David O. Russell is in fact not Martin Scorsese), playing songs just to play them, or because the brutal obviousness of using "I Feel Free" just appeals to him on some level. Later, when Joy gets a shot at promoting her invention on QVC, Russell wants to convince the audience that QVC is somehow this invigorating environment pulsing with the very juice of life, like an ER or an old-time newsroom. The idea isn't to bring out what's special about Joy Mangano's story, but rather to reduce it down to the kind of film we're comfortable watching.
But Jennifer Lawrence sure is good. Her talents as an actress are as natural and seemingly effortless as any I can think of in modern American films. The suspicion I have that Russell is, at this point, clinging to her desperately is one that persists.
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Night is a Place for Gun Killings: A New Detective Mystery
Chapter 1
Dennis the hero detective got on a plane to go to Los Angeles California. He hated it. "What a bad city," he goes in his mind. "It is all full of Whore-ly-weird stars and terrible tales! It is a place where the innocent go to eat a pound of sin, an act which they die from!" But Dennis went anyway because the other day, like a day or two ago, like Wednesday or Thursday, he was in his office, sitting there at a desk with a newspaper. He read the paper thinking "Oh jeez. A baby got killed by a criminal. Why is this in the WORLD???" He screamed that last word. What a good point, too.
Then a guy came into the office. He had a great jacket, it was gray. His whole deal was like a car made it. What a situation this guy was. Dennis was all "The bank is downstairs, buddy." But the rich "bub" answered back, check this out: "No this is where I'd like to be."
Dennis spit out his apple juice. What?? "Okay sire," he goes. "Tell me what you need."
The guy says "My name is Hertford Longk." Dennis sniffed with derision. He knew all about the Longks. "And I am so rich I could buy eight sandwiches and twelve music records and I wouldn't even know it. How much would that cost? No money. It's just records and sandwiches. Listen to me, Mr. Detective" Hertford Longk sneered, "I have all the sandwiches and music records I need."
Dennis in his brain thought 'That's true. Hertford Longk has so many boats. When I got to the docks to drink my special hard booze, which is first you get a glass and you fill it half with milks, then you put a bunch of cinnamon in there, and then boy when you add that hot apple liqueur, it certainly becomes Christmas in my mind, it's my favorite time of year, no question, although I also like Halloween, and when it's Halloween you can actually do the same drink, you don't have to change it, but if you go to the Dollar Store they have plastic cups with spiders and things on them, and you can put the drink in those, and that makes it even tougher because you're drinking a booze in a glass about death. So when I'm at the boats drinking my Spooky Apple Cider, I sometimes see Herford Longk and he's just lookin at boats, like 'I love my boats.' I always knew he was a corrupt official."
Then in Dennis's office Hertford Longk says "My daughter, she is a missing person. Here is a picture of her."
Dennis took the picture. The girl in the picture looked as though her hair was made of not just any butter, but specifically yellow sunshine butter, and her lips were all red like sex organs. Additionally, the picture included information pertaining to her boobs, and Dennis thought "Oh brother, here we go."
Hertford Longk say "She is my daughter Petulia. She has gone missing. We are in New York City right now but Petulia has gone to California, in my opinion."
"How old is she?" Dennis went.
"She is only nineteen years old," said Hertford, "And I th--"
"Hoo buddy, nineteen?" screamed Dennis. "Boy oh boy. Nineteen. Yee-hee-eesh."
"And I think sire," Hertford kept going, "that she has been taken over by a 'movie man.'"
Dennis suddenly spit out his Sprite from 1940.
"Wait..." he said. "Do you mean a Hollywood movie man???" He was so curious about this.
"Yes," said Longk. "A movie man. You will need to go to get on a plane to a Hollywood place in L.A, California. It is not Manhattan, Queens, NY." Hertford Longk looked at Dennis with the eye of a piece of shit bunny rabbit: "Can you do that sire??"
Dennis said "Oh ha ha I sure can, let's shake on it!" It was the toughest thing he'd ever done.
Chapter 2
When Dennis landed in his plane on the ground of "L. Angelo, CalifornStar," as they call it there, even the plane people were like "Do you have a movie, do you have a movie, do you have a movie?" Dennis couldn't believe it! These people only cared about if if you have a movie! It reminded him of drugs.
He got in cab and said to the guy "Take me to movies" but the guy goes "Ha ha you are a tourist!" and drove him not to movies, only near them. Dennis punched the man to death. Then he went to a bar and said "I need to relax. Give me a whole bottle of coffee." A whole bottle of coffee was given to him, "California style". Dennis looked at a newspaper while thinking "Where is she where is she where is she." Then a guy at the bar goes "Who are you lookin for, funbuddy?"
Dennis grinned. The guy had said the best friend word which was "funbuddy." Even if he didn't know about crime, he would be a nice man to talk to!
Dennis went "What is your name funbuddy?"
The guy's like "Gene."
Dennis is all "Can I buy you some sherbet?"
This is Gene about sherbet: "Oh yum yum yum! Gimme all that sherbet!"
Dennis ordered delicious sweet sherbet for Gene and another bottle of coffee but this time with wine, beer, sherbet, and watermelon vodka in it for himself. This drink is called a "Morning Rendezvous" and Dennis pretty much made it up himself. You can find it in booze bars if you ask.
Then Dennis showed Gene the picture of Petulia and says "Have you seen this?" but Gene says "Oh no, oh no, I ain't seen that girl, oh heck no, I don't even know what a lady is! I am lonely!"
Dennis smashed the guy with his half-a-pineapple. "YOU KNOW WHERE SHE GOES AT!" Dennis roared. "SHE IS A LADY IN MOVIES! BAD MOVIES!"
Gene said "Hey wow woops sheesh, owch" that's how hard that pineapple was hitting him. Then he goes "What kind of bad movies?"
Dennis went "You know what kind...the bad kind." Then Dennis's voice was low and hoarse and gravelly and knowing and sad. He's like "You know there are girls. Girls from a farm. In the farm is a cow and a horse and the girl I'm referring to pets a horse and pets a cow. It is innocence. And the girl take her biscuit and her corn and she go into a pond of not just anything, but a pond of water. And she eat her biscuit in the sunshine. The sunshine is like a heaven of god. The corn is also like a heaven of god. Then her brother Goofbo bring her a skillet of beans. Those skillet of beans are like a biscuit of sunshine."
Gene was totally crying.
Dennis said "Are you her brother?"
Gene said "No. Goofbo has died in a log accident. But I know where Petulia is."
"WHERE??????????" Dennis thundered.
Gene was like a little ball of shit, or not, like a kitten, or no...he was like, I guess he was in a chair. Gene was in a chair and he said "Genesis Pictures! She's under contract!"
Then Dennis began to laugh.
"Genesis Pictures?" goes Dennis. "I guess everything bad will happen!"
And with that terrifying premonition, Dennis went to a famous burger place, the kind of burger place you can only find in Lots Angular, and he bought like literally eighteen "cheese"burgers. A "cheese" burger is a kind of sandwich you can only find in "El Lay" and what you do is, okay, listen: you take a meat. You make sure the meat is okay. Then you put the meat on a pan. Good. Then you take a bun and on that bun you put a walnut "ketchup." There are many kinds of ketchup. Now that your burgered meat is ready is it pink enough? Great. Put it on the walnut ketchup. The only thing now to do is dump a bunch of dry macaroni onto whatever you are eating. Put it on your meated burger. Put it on your plate of sauce. Do you have a sweat poatot pastat? That is good now. Put it on a plate.
Dennis punched Gene's teeth.
Chapter 3
Dennis went to Genesis Pictures. It was a big studio and he knew all about it. They had made No More Please and Down a Street is a Whole Dame and The World of a Christ: Bible and Herntf Blerntf and The Floating Cavalcade of DinoCars. All the best movies. So much art Too many Oscar times to even count. How Could Petulia be caught up with these great artistic total weirdos?
He went to the guard and said "Take me to Randy Genesis, I am a private detective."
The guy went "We don't got nothin about you here tonight you piece of garbage monster."
Dennis goes "Tell him Hertford Longk sent me."
Then the guard's like "Wooooweeewoooo!" and he danced around like a cute baby. Then he let Dennis in.
The main guy at Genesis Pictures was a guy called Rorstein O'Genesisberg. Everybody knew that. He was a big fat guy who had a big glass of apple juice in his hand and a plate full of pizza. Oh God, thought Dennis, I will never be so "rich" as they say!
"What can I do for you!" yelled Rorstein.
Dennis took out his picture of Petulia.
"Her!" he shrieked! "Where is her!"
Rorstein took the picture. He stared all at it.
"I have seen her," he said with so much sadness. "She was going to be in our movies." His eyes became like apple juice. "Can't you see her? She would be a star! She would be in all our star movies. She would be in Look Out, Town! and Panther on the Balcony and Newspapers for Sure! and Boat into the Mouth of Hell and Jungle Cindy: Leave Me Be and Jungle Cindy: Appalachian Roundabout. She could have been the star of forever!!!"
Dennis choked on his glass of water with a splash of beer that the lady who worked there brought him.
"Then what happened?" he asked.
"Then???" yelped Rorstein. "Then she got taken up...she got taken up bad..."
"By whom???" Dennis had never been more angry.
Rorstein sipped his whiskey which also had in it chocolate syrup and cloves and it was mostly ice. "By Yantlo Romblo...:
Dennis spit out his water and beer and threw the glass on the ground. "Tell me about him you jerk!!!"
Rorstein flinched like a cat when you, well, not when you light a match, because if you have cats yourself you'll know that sometimes it's hard to get close enough to them to light a match if you want to scare them that way (which I would never do!) but if you want to startle them up close, I mean...I don't know, it seems mean, but if they trust you enough to get close to your face, you could...no, you know what? This is mean. I'm not going to do this.
So Rorstein said "I once saw him eat a dog. He was like 'I like the taste.'"
Dennis couldn't believe the kind of evil he was facing. He went "Jeez louise! This fellow sounds like a total human prince!"
He punched his fist into Rorstein. Rorstein said "If you want to find him you should go to the Turtle Club. They have pizza there."
Dennis gasped. Pizza???
Chapter 4
Dennis went to the Turtle Club. All the stars where at that place: Johnny Jones, Lady Lornams, Glenton Cardborax, Flennison Von Shorntown. All the best stars! Including Pulix Montsammory, Billing Tershtorion, Mandice Lassintrolph...the best of all acting celebrities. Even directors such as Farpchance Merchporliance and Wanfgown Sorkblownce. What a magnificent parade of the stars.
But Dennis only wanted one of the celebrity guys. He only wanted Yantlo Romblo.
So he goes into the place and there's so much rich people eating their "chicken" and their "salad." Dennis screamed "I am coming for you, Yantlo Romblo!"
All the stars in the Turtle Club dropped their pizza. It had pepperonis on it. They all looked at Dennis.
Yantlo Romblo had a lady and he was going to do things to her that is like if you were you, okay, but, listen, the kind of thing YOU would do isn't good. You should not. But here is Dennis. Now Dennis turned to Billing Tershtorion. "Are you married?"
Billing Tershtorion said "Yes I am. I am married to Wanfgown Sorkblownce."
"Okay," said Dennis. "What if you were eating some great delicious pizza but then that pizza turned out to be Wanfgown Sorkblownce??"
"Sire!" cried Billing Tershtorion, "this is the Turtle Club! You have no place to talk to me about things in the realm of this! Police! Police! Arrest the shirted man!"
But Dennis was already running. None of the "rich-o's" would help him. But there were stairs that went up so he just kept going up them and then there was a door and then he opened it and there was Yantlo Romblo, and Petulia was there, too!
Dennis point his gun at Yantlo.
"WHY YANTLO???" he shrieked
Yantlo was all twitchy.
"Because mother and father," he went, "and soft blankets and spiders in my hair and I just want to touch a soft blanky movies movies movies, my mother and father put cracked mirrors in my room and they drank and--"
Dennis shot him through one of his eyes. Petulia, who was pretty much naked, ran to him. Dennis put his hand on her butt.
"Ssh, quiet," he said. because she was crying a lot. "Seriously shut up."
Chapter 5
Dennis took Petulia back to her dad, Hertford Longk. Her dad got out of the car at the street next to the poor building where Dennis lived.
Her dad said "Thank you Dennis. You saved my daughter from a movie."
Dennis said "Did I?"
Hertford Longk said "Yes."
Then Dennis is like "Keep your money!" and he tore up the check!
The rich dad spit out his apple juice in a rage and drove away with his daughter. What a world of sadness.
Dennis the hero detective got on a plane to go to Los Angeles California. He hated it. "What a bad city," he goes in his mind. "It is all full of Whore-ly-weird stars and terrible tales! It is a place where the innocent go to eat a pound of sin, an act which they die from!" But Dennis went anyway because the other day, like a day or two ago, like Wednesday or Thursday, he was in his office, sitting there at a desk with a newspaper. He read the paper thinking "Oh jeez. A baby got killed by a criminal. Why is this in the WORLD???" He screamed that last word. What a good point, too.
Then a guy came into the office. He had a great jacket, it was gray. His whole deal was like a car made it. What a situation this guy was. Dennis was all "The bank is downstairs, buddy." But the rich "bub" answered back, check this out: "No this is where I'd like to be."
Dennis spit out his apple juice. What?? "Okay sire," he goes. "Tell me what you need."
The guy says "My name is Hertford Longk." Dennis sniffed with derision. He knew all about the Longks. "And I am so rich I could buy eight sandwiches and twelve music records and I wouldn't even know it. How much would that cost? No money. It's just records and sandwiches. Listen to me, Mr. Detective" Hertford Longk sneered, "I have all the sandwiches and music records I need."
Dennis in his brain thought 'That's true. Hertford Longk has so many boats. When I got to the docks to drink my special hard booze, which is first you get a glass and you fill it half with milks, then you put a bunch of cinnamon in there, and then boy when you add that hot apple liqueur, it certainly becomes Christmas in my mind, it's my favorite time of year, no question, although I also like Halloween, and when it's Halloween you can actually do the same drink, you don't have to change it, but if you go to the Dollar Store they have plastic cups with spiders and things on them, and you can put the drink in those, and that makes it even tougher because you're drinking a booze in a glass about death. So when I'm at the boats drinking my Spooky Apple Cider, I sometimes see Herford Longk and he's just lookin at boats, like 'I love my boats.' I always knew he was a corrupt official."
Then in Dennis's office Hertford Longk says "My daughter, she is a missing person. Here is a picture of her."
Dennis took the picture. The girl in the picture looked as though her hair was made of not just any butter, but specifically yellow sunshine butter, and her lips were all red like sex organs. Additionally, the picture included information pertaining to her boobs, and Dennis thought "Oh brother, here we go."
Hertford Longk say "She is my daughter Petulia. She has gone missing. We are in New York City right now but Petulia has gone to California, in my opinion."
"How old is she?" Dennis went.
"She is only nineteen years old," said Hertford, "And I th--"
"Hoo buddy, nineteen?" screamed Dennis. "Boy oh boy. Nineteen. Yee-hee-eesh."
"And I think sire," Hertford kept going, "that she has been taken over by a 'movie man.'"
Dennis suddenly spit out his Sprite from 1940.
"Wait..." he said. "Do you mean a Hollywood movie man???" He was so curious about this.
"Yes," said Longk. "A movie man. You will need to go to get on a plane to a Hollywood place in L.A, California. It is not Manhattan, Queens, NY." Hertford Longk looked at Dennis with the eye of a piece of shit bunny rabbit: "Can you do that sire??"
Dennis said "Oh ha ha I sure can, let's shake on it!" It was the toughest thing he'd ever done.
Chapter 2
When Dennis landed in his plane on the ground of "L. Angelo, CalifornStar," as they call it there, even the plane people were like "Do you have a movie, do you have a movie, do you have a movie?" Dennis couldn't believe it! These people only cared about if if you have a movie! It reminded him of drugs.
He got in cab and said to the guy "Take me to movies" but the guy goes "Ha ha you are a tourist!" and drove him not to movies, only near them. Dennis punched the man to death. Then he went to a bar and said "I need to relax. Give me a whole bottle of coffee." A whole bottle of coffee was given to him, "California style". Dennis looked at a newspaper while thinking "Where is she where is she where is she." Then a guy at the bar goes "Who are you lookin for, funbuddy?"
Dennis grinned. The guy had said the best friend word which was "funbuddy." Even if he didn't know about crime, he would be a nice man to talk to!
Dennis went "What is your name funbuddy?"
The guy's like "Gene."
Dennis is all "Can I buy you some sherbet?"
This is Gene about sherbet: "Oh yum yum yum! Gimme all that sherbet!"
Dennis ordered delicious sweet sherbet for Gene and another bottle of coffee but this time with wine, beer, sherbet, and watermelon vodka in it for himself. This drink is called a "Morning Rendezvous" and Dennis pretty much made it up himself. You can find it in booze bars if you ask.
Then Dennis showed Gene the picture of Petulia and says "Have you seen this?" but Gene says "Oh no, oh no, I ain't seen that girl, oh heck no, I don't even know what a lady is! I am lonely!"
Dennis smashed the guy with his half-a-pineapple. "YOU KNOW WHERE SHE GOES AT!" Dennis roared. "SHE IS A LADY IN MOVIES! BAD MOVIES!"
Gene said "Hey wow woops sheesh, owch" that's how hard that pineapple was hitting him. Then he goes "What kind of bad movies?"
Dennis went "You know what kind...the bad kind." Then Dennis's voice was low and hoarse and gravelly and knowing and sad. He's like "You know there are girls. Girls from a farm. In the farm is a cow and a horse and the girl I'm referring to pets a horse and pets a cow. It is innocence. And the girl take her biscuit and her corn and she go into a pond of not just anything, but a pond of water. And she eat her biscuit in the sunshine. The sunshine is like a heaven of god. The corn is also like a heaven of god. Then her brother Goofbo bring her a skillet of beans. Those skillet of beans are like a biscuit of sunshine."
Gene was totally crying.
Dennis said "Are you her brother?"
Gene said "No. Goofbo has died in a log accident. But I know where Petulia is."
"WHERE??????????" Dennis thundered.
Gene was like a little ball of shit, or not, like a kitten, or no...he was like, I guess he was in a chair. Gene was in a chair and he said "Genesis Pictures! She's under contract!"
Then Dennis began to laugh.
"Genesis Pictures?" goes Dennis. "I guess everything bad will happen!"
And with that terrifying premonition, Dennis went to a famous burger place, the kind of burger place you can only find in Lots Angular, and he bought like literally eighteen "cheese"burgers. A "cheese" burger is a kind of sandwich you can only find in "El Lay" and what you do is, okay, listen: you take a meat. You make sure the meat is okay. Then you put the meat on a pan. Good. Then you take a bun and on that bun you put a walnut "ketchup." There are many kinds of ketchup. Now that your burgered meat is ready is it pink enough? Great. Put it on the walnut ketchup. The only thing now to do is dump a bunch of dry macaroni onto whatever you are eating. Put it on your meated burger. Put it on your plate of sauce. Do you have a sweat poatot pastat? That is good now. Put it on a plate.
Dennis punched Gene's teeth.
Chapter 3
Dennis went to Genesis Pictures. It was a big studio and he knew all about it. They had made No More Please and Down a Street is a Whole Dame and The World of a Christ: Bible and Herntf Blerntf and The Floating Cavalcade of DinoCars. All the best movies. So much art Too many Oscar times to even count. How Could Petulia be caught up with these great artistic total weirdos?
He went to the guard and said "Take me to Randy Genesis, I am a private detective."
The guy went "We don't got nothin about you here tonight you piece of garbage monster."
Dennis goes "Tell him Hertford Longk sent me."
Then the guard's like "Wooooweeewoooo!" and he danced around like a cute baby. Then he let Dennis in.
The main guy at Genesis Pictures was a guy called Rorstein O'Genesisberg. Everybody knew that. He was a big fat guy who had a big glass of apple juice in his hand and a plate full of pizza. Oh God, thought Dennis, I will never be so "rich" as they say!
"What can I do for you!" yelled Rorstein.
Dennis took out his picture of Petulia.
"Her!" he shrieked! "Where is her!"
Rorstein took the picture. He stared all at it.
"I have seen her," he said with so much sadness. "She was going to be in our movies." His eyes became like apple juice. "Can't you see her? She would be a star! She would be in all our star movies. She would be in Look Out, Town! and Panther on the Balcony and Newspapers for Sure! and Boat into the Mouth of Hell and Jungle Cindy: Leave Me Be and Jungle Cindy: Appalachian Roundabout. She could have been the star of forever!!!"
Dennis choked on his glass of water with a splash of beer that the lady who worked there brought him.
"Then what happened?" he asked.
"Then???" yelped Rorstein. "Then she got taken up...she got taken up bad..."
"By whom???" Dennis had never been more angry.
Rorstein sipped his whiskey which also had in it chocolate syrup and cloves and it was mostly ice. "By Yantlo Romblo...:
Dennis spit out his water and beer and threw the glass on the ground. "Tell me about him you jerk!!!"
Rorstein flinched like a cat when you, well, not when you light a match, because if you have cats yourself you'll know that sometimes it's hard to get close enough to them to light a match if you want to scare them that way (which I would never do!) but if you want to startle them up close, I mean...I don't know, it seems mean, but if they trust you enough to get close to your face, you could...no, you know what? This is mean. I'm not going to do this.
So Rorstein said "I once saw him eat a dog. He was like 'I like the taste.'"
Dennis couldn't believe the kind of evil he was facing. He went "Jeez louise! This fellow sounds like a total human prince!"
He punched his fist into Rorstein. Rorstein said "If you want to find him you should go to the Turtle Club. They have pizza there."
Dennis gasped. Pizza???
Chapter 4
Dennis went to the Turtle Club. All the stars where at that place: Johnny Jones, Lady Lornams, Glenton Cardborax, Flennison Von Shorntown. All the best stars! Including Pulix Montsammory, Billing Tershtorion, Mandice Lassintrolph...the best of all acting celebrities. Even directors such as Farpchance Merchporliance and Wanfgown Sorkblownce. What a magnificent parade of the stars.
But Dennis only wanted one of the celebrity guys. He only wanted Yantlo Romblo.
So he goes into the place and there's so much rich people eating their "chicken" and their "salad." Dennis screamed "I am coming for you, Yantlo Romblo!"
All the stars in the Turtle Club dropped their pizza. It had pepperonis on it. They all looked at Dennis.
Yantlo Romblo had a lady and he was going to do things to her that is like if you were you, okay, but, listen, the kind of thing YOU would do isn't good. You should not. But here is Dennis. Now Dennis turned to Billing Tershtorion. "Are you married?"
Billing Tershtorion said "Yes I am. I am married to Wanfgown Sorkblownce."
"Okay," said Dennis. "What if you were eating some great delicious pizza but then that pizza turned out to be Wanfgown Sorkblownce??"
"Sire!" cried Billing Tershtorion, "this is the Turtle Club! You have no place to talk to me about things in the realm of this! Police! Police! Arrest the shirted man!"
But Dennis was already running. None of the "rich-o's" would help him. But there were stairs that went up so he just kept going up them and then there was a door and then he opened it and there was Yantlo Romblo, and Petulia was there, too!
Dennis point his gun at Yantlo.
"WHY YANTLO???" he shrieked
Yantlo was all twitchy.
"Because mother and father," he went, "and soft blankets and spiders in my hair and I just want to touch a soft blanky movies movies movies, my mother and father put cracked mirrors in my room and they drank and--"
Dennis shot him through one of his eyes. Petulia, who was pretty much naked, ran to him. Dennis put his hand on her butt.
"Ssh, quiet," he said. because she was crying a lot. "Seriously shut up."
Chapter 5
Dennis took Petulia back to her dad, Hertford Longk. Her dad got out of the car at the street next to the poor building where Dennis lived.
Her dad said "Thank you Dennis. You saved my daughter from a movie."
Dennis said "Did I?"
Hertford Longk said "Yes."
Then Dennis is like "Keep your money!" and he tore up the check!
The rich dad spit out his apple juice in a rage and drove away with his daughter. What a world of sadness.
Friday, May 6, 2016
The Foam of Days
In 2012, Portuguese director Miguel Gomes released his third, superb, and breakthrough, film. Called Tabu, the title intentionally evokes F. W. Murnau's 1931 Tabu, a Tale of the South Seas (also superb) . Outside of that direct reference, the other parallels between the Gomes and the Murnau Tabus are somewhat under the surface. The primary inspiration Gomes seemed to draw from Murnau had to do with storytelling, certain themes, and exoticism. Had he never told anyone, it's doubtful anyone would have watched his film and thought "Oh he's just riffing on Murnau." It's perhaps a new kind of homage: you wear it on your sleeve, but it's barely in your movie.
Then, as a follow-up, Gomes took a similar, though rather different all the same, approach to another classic, this time a classic of literature. His Arabian Nights is a 6-hour flood of story, but as each roughly-two-hour volume (though make no mistake: this is a 6-hour film that has been chopped into thirds) reminds us, none of the stories Gomes is telling have been adapted from the ancient collection of Arabic folk tales known One Thousand and One Nights. What Gomes is adapting, according to the one-screen text disclaimer found in each volume, is the structure, though that structure is also one of the stories. Though Gomes doesn't linger on it very much (which is relative, given the length of the thing), we still have Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate), still staving off horror night after night by telling stories to her violent royal husband Shahryar. But for the most part, Gomes takes the opportunity provided by the structure of an essentially massive one-filmmaker anthology film to not only dive into the current political and, especially, economic turmoil which is devastating modern Portugal, but to also explore the fantastical that is inherent to One Thousand and One Nights. Because, I mean, why not?
The whole megillah has now been released on Blu-ray, courtesy of Kino Lorber, so that now you, as well as many others, including myself, can be entranced and/or perplexed and/or frustrated and/or moved by this monumental project the goal of which -- to be a kind of angry political entreaty as well as a kind of fanciful carnival of stories -- near the beginning Gomes, playing himself, insists is pretty much impossible to achieve. Having seen the damn thing now, I'm not sure if I agree with him or not. Or rather, yes, it's impossible to achieve as he no doubt conceived it as a perfect thing, which his Arabian Nights certainly isn't. That it may not have been worth taking a swing at, that I can't entirely get behind.
Not entirely. But Jesus, what a confounding heffalump of a film. And how to summarize it? Some acknowledgment must be made of the political/economic crisis in Portugal that led to Arabian Nights being made in the first place. In Portugal as in other countries during the global financial recession, taxes soared and social programs were severely cut, so that poor people became poorer, and middle class people also became poorer, and so on. In this sense, Arabian Nights is an old story. The stories Gomes chose to tell, so goes the copious on-screen text, were all pulled from Portuguese news stories spanning from 2011 to 2014. And in terms of style and, for lack of a better word, genre, those stories run the gamut, at least as Gomes tells them: in the dozen or so stories and sub-stories Gomes adapts, stark realism stands side-by-side with fantasy and absurdity, sometimes within the same story. Sometimes within the same minute.
Although from what I've seen most critics seem to be on board with Gomes's approach here, I have seen a number of dissenting opinions and one of the criticisms that caught my eye is that some of the stories told here -- and in total there are about ten or so -- are simply sketched out fictional versions of the true ones. For example, the second film, called Arabian Nights Vol. II: The Desolate One, opens with a story called "Chronicle of the Escape of Simao 'Without Bowels,'" which is basically about an old man who is on the run from the police through the hills of Portugal, because he has murdered his wife and daughter. This was a real news story in Portugal at the time, mainly because when the man was caught and brought back to his town for trial, he was greeted by his community as a hero. And it's true that Gomes doesn't "explore" this, as they say, nay demand, but rather simply tells it. Similarly, in the first film, Arabian Nights Vol. I: The Restless One, in a story called "The Story of the Cockerel and the Fire," which is in fact two stories, in the second of those, the one about the fire, which is based on a true event involving a teenager starting a forest fire in a fit of heartbreak, Gomes again just dramatizes this, with the only blatant bit of innovation, something not so innovative at this point, being the texts that the three teenagers send to each other being splashed in all their gibberishy abbreviations across the middle of the screen. What, specifically, the criticism goes, does Gomes think these have to do with the Portuguese economic crisis?
Well, and pardon me for skipping around so much but what can you do, at the end of the third and last film, called Arabian Nights Vol. III: The Enchanted One, Gomes, in a sudden burst of nearly sentimental optimism that is mostly at odds with the six hours that has come before, puts yet another paragraph of text on the screen which reads:
To Carolina Gomes who was 8 years old when we filmed the Arabian Nights and may she watch the film when she's old enough and may she derive from it what she well pleases. And may she be happy. The end!
I must assume that Carolina Gomes is his daughter but either way, the relevant phrase here is "may she derive from it what she well pleases." Which is to say, this is a massive and expansive 382-minute film. Must every varied piece of it conform directly to the theme that, admittedly, at times it seems to insist you notice? I'd say no, and as insistent as each volume is, beginning as they all do with that goddamn text saying basically "This is about the economic crisis, the Portuguese government is shitty and because of that Portugal is poor, all of these stories are from a very specific time period etc." Gomes himself, during his cameo in The Restless One, points out the impossibility of marrying his ambition to make a film about that economic crisis with his ambition to structure it around the fancifulness of One Thousand and One Nights. The Restless One begins with what I took to be documentary footage of a shipyard that was about to be closed down, and documentary audio of shipyard audio of the workers who would soon be jobless talking about their work. Gomes says in this section that he sees a metaphorical link between this and another crisis having to do with wasps overwhelming the bee population. But he admits that he doesn't know what it is. But he goes ahead with it anyway. Now I'll grant you, when Gomes begins to set these things side-by-side, the metaphorical link is far less mind-boggling than he lets on, but I do believe it sets up the viewer to understand that, when dealing with all the stories we will see/hear/read over the next several hours, narrative and theme needn't be so ruthlessly paired. Not to mention, the wasp/bee material is also built from documentary material, and when Gomes cuts from it, we're cutting to him, Gomes, actually Gomes, and two of his crew (probably actors) buried up to their necks in sand, about to be executed. Sort of. Anyway, the point is, fancifully-speaking, we're off.
None of which is to say that anything goes, or that everything works. I am, in fact, pretty thoroughly conflicted in my opinion of The Arabian Nights as an overall film. There's a blurb on the Blu-ray from critic Nick Pinkerton which says in part that The Arabian Nights is "the work of a free man," and this is hard to deny. But there are stretches of the film, sometimes long stretches, where one might be tempted to think "So he's a free man. So what?" For the most part, the sections that blended fantasy and economic politics worked the least well. In The Restless One there's a story called "The Men With Hard-Ons," which is a satire about men and power and erections and which might as well have been written by the staff of Jezebel. In The Desolate One, there's a story called "The Tears of the Judge" which has the amusingly sharp structure of a trial in which the accused has culturally or economically-based reason for doing what they did, which inevitably blames someone else, who is also in the courtroom (and open-air courtroom that resembles a kind of Greek theater), who he or she has their own culturally or economically-based reason for and so on. This perhaps shouldn't go on for forty minutes, however. Once again, there's one joke, and it is repeated. Nothing much is gained by doing so. The most interesting thing about "The Tears of the Judge" is the odd framing device, oblique and rich in nudity, having to do with the loss of the judge's daughter's virginity. This may or may not have anything to do with economics. May the viewer derive from it what they well please.
The strangest and at times most infuriating thing about the style Gomes employs in the making of Arabian Nights is the way he relies -- not as a crutch, but as a style -- on both narration and, more particularly, on-screen text. He used narration to great effect in Tabu, and frankly I admire anyone who so viciously attacks any sort of narrative convention that so many people buy without question, in this case "show don't tell," which is nice, but has never been the only game in town. At times, however, in doing so in Arabian Nights, Gomes disappears up his own ass. He does so most notably in The Enchanted One, in a long story -- one that actually interrupts and stomps on a story called "Hot Forest" which seems like it's going to be the next story we're going to hear, but, kind of, no -- called "The Inebriating Chorus of the Chaffinches." This is about what is not but eventually feels like an endless procession of lower-class Portuguese men who raise chaffinches, a breed of finch, so that these birds can compete in an annual singing-chaffinches competition. What's interesting, though only in a sort of cold, disinterested way, is that Gomes is entirely aware of what he's putting his audience through. The copious on-screen text, which after a while you kind of wish could hear you when you tell it to fuck off, alternates between information about the characters and chaffinches and the competition, and lines about Scheherazade -- who you must remember is telling these stories every night to her murderous royal husband in order to stave off disaster -- stopping when morning comes, and starting again when night falls. At one point, unless I missed something, a line about stopping when morning breaks and beginning again at nightfall is followed up immediately with a line about stopping when morning breaks and beginning again at nightfall. So on some level, or many levels, Gomes is fucking around, and fucking with us. So he's a free man, and so what? The only moment in the "Chaffinches" chapter that struck me as particularly good in any way was the detail that one character, who'd lived with his family long into adulthood and then lost them either through death or simply moving out, now lives alone and each night chooses which room he will sleep in.
Speaking of which, well no, first of all: it's either curious or telling or both that my favorite volume of Arabian Nights is the second one, The Desolate One, about which more in a minute. But what's curious about that preference is that it's the one that, as The Hollywood Reporter noted, could not stand on its own. It was never meant to, and nobody would ever watch it in isolation, so there's that bullet dodged. Yet the context of the Scheherazade story hangs over it less than the other two (twice Gomes makes Scheherazade's situation a story in itself, and neither time does it particularly engage) which frees each story to be whatever it is. Sometimes that includes the politics that partly inspired this whole crazy project, and sometimes it includes great footage of a wonderful dog, as well as the ghost of a dog. The longest chunk of The Desolate One deals with this dog, the living one, named Dixie, and how Dixie shifts from owner to owner in this community of poor residents of an a pair of apartment complexes. So much about everyday human life -- and yes, specifically lower-class life, which fits neatly into the politics of it all -- is covered in this section. I feel like what the film is about, and the way its politics are best communicated, or not as the case may be, is found in moments like the middle-aged couple getting into bed together to watch TV, and each lights a cigarette, and they snuggle together, smoking. Or in the aforementioned "Chronicle of the Escape of Simao 'Without Bowels,'" when the murderer hitchhikes a ride from the guy driving the snack-supply van and keeps asking for bottles of juice.
But the most emotionally striking moment in the whole six hours comes in that section about Dixie, called "The Owners of Dixie" (and there are sub-chapters), when an impoverished young couple, now in possession of the dog, goes to pick up their weekly supply of government-supplied canned food, and they ask, quietly and politely but somewhat insistently, for a little bit more variety in the food they're given. The woman in charge tells them they've already been given a variety of food, but the couple says it's all the same. They just want a little change. They want only the most meager of things to look forward to, but they're told over and over again that they're already getting that. It reminded me of a moment in that last scene in David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis when the almost comically poor (I think that there is a comic aspect intended by both Cronenberg and Don DeLillo, author of the original novel) character played by Paul Giamatti is telling the certainly comically rich (see above) character played by Robert Pattinson that he walks by a cafe with outdoor tables, and sees groups of friends sitting there, having drinks, and he knows he can't do that simple thing. He has no money. He can't do it.
There are other moments like that in Arabian Nights, but it's not full of them. Parts of it are filled with nonsense and tedium, and other parts are filled with moments that may or may not have anything to do with the rest of it. You may do with it as you please.
Well, and pardon me for skipping around so much but what can you do, at the end of the third and last film, called Arabian Nights Vol. III: The Enchanted One, Gomes, in a sudden burst of nearly sentimental optimism that is mostly at odds with the six hours that has come before, puts yet another paragraph of text on the screen which reads:
To Carolina Gomes who was 8 years old when we filmed the Arabian Nights and may she watch the film when she's old enough and may she derive from it what she well pleases. And may she be happy. The end!
I must assume that Carolina Gomes is his daughter but either way, the relevant phrase here is "may she derive from it what she well pleases." Which is to say, this is a massive and expansive 382-minute film. Must every varied piece of it conform directly to the theme that, admittedly, at times it seems to insist you notice? I'd say no, and as insistent as each volume is, beginning as they all do with that goddamn text saying basically "This is about the economic crisis, the Portuguese government is shitty and because of that Portugal is poor, all of these stories are from a very specific time period etc." Gomes himself, during his cameo in The Restless One, points out the impossibility of marrying his ambition to make a film about that economic crisis with his ambition to structure it around the fancifulness of One Thousand and One Nights. The Restless One begins with what I took to be documentary footage of a shipyard that was about to be closed down, and documentary audio of shipyard audio of the workers who would soon be jobless talking about their work. Gomes says in this section that he sees a metaphorical link between this and another crisis having to do with wasps overwhelming the bee population. But he admits that he doesn't know what it is. But he goes ahead with it anyway. Now I'll grant you, when Gomes begins to set these things side-by-side, the metaphorical link is far less mind-boggling than he lets on, but I do believe it sets up the viewer to understand that, when dealing with all the stories we will see/hear/read over the next several hours, narrative and theme needn't be so ruthlessly paired. Not to mention, the wasp/bee material is also built from documentary material, and when Gomes cuts from it, we're cutting to him, Gomes, actually Gomes, and two of his crew (probably actors) buried up to their necks in sand, about to be executed. Sort of. Anyway, the point is, fancifully-speaking, we're off.
The strangest and at times most infuriating thing about the style Gomes employs in the making of Arabian Nights is the way he relies -- not as a crutch, but as a style -- on both narration and, more particularly, on-screen text. He used narration to great effect in Tabu, and frankly I admire anyone who so viciously attacks any sort of narrative convention that so many people buy without question, in this case "show don't tell," which is nice, but has never been the only game in town. At times, however, in doing so in Arabian Nights, Gomes disappears up his own ass. He does so most notably in The Enchanted One, in a long story -- one that actually interrupts and stomps on a story called "Hot Forest" which seems like it's going to be the next story we're going to hear, but, kind of, no -- called "The Inebriating Chorus of the Chaffinches." This is about what is not but eventually feels like an endless procession of lower-class Portuguese men who raise chaffinches, a breed of finch, so that these birds can compete in an annual singing-chaffinches competition. What's interesting, though only in a sort of cold, disinterested way, is that Gomes is entirely aware of what he's putting his audience through. The copious on-screen text, which after a while you kind of wish could hear you when you tell it to fuck off, alternates between information about the characters and chaffinches and the competition, and lines about Scheherazade -- who you must remember is telling these stories every night to her murderous royal husband in order to stave off disaster -- stopping when morning comes, and starting again when night falls. At one point, unless I missed something, a line about stopping when morning breaks and beginning again at nightfall is followed up immediately with a line about stopping when morning breaks and beginning again at nightfall. So on some level, or many levels, Gomes is fucking around, and fucking with us. So he's a free man, and so what? The only moment in the "Chaffinches" chapter that struck me as particularly good in any way was the detail that one character, who'd lived with his family long into adulthood and then lost them either through death or simply moving out, now lives alone and each night chooses which room he will sleep in.
Speaking of which, well no, first of all: it's either curious or telling or both that my favorite volume of Arabian Nights is the second one, The Desolate One, about which more in a minute. But what's curious about that preference is that it's the one that, as The Hollywood Reporter noted, could not stand on its own. It was never meant to, and nobody would ever watch it in isolation, so there's that bullet dodged. Yet the context of the Scheherazade story hangs over it less than the other two (twice Gomes makes Scheherazade's situation a story in itself, and neither time does it particularly engage) which frees each story to be whatever it is. Sometimes that includes the politics that partly inspired this whole crazy project, and sometimes it includes great footage of a wonderful dog, as well as the ghost of a dog. The longest chunk of The Desolate One deals with this dog, the living one, named Dixie, and how Dixie shifts from owner to owner in this community of poor residents of an a pair of apartment complexes. So much about everyday human life -- and yes, specifically lower-class life, which fits neatly into the politics of it all -- is covered in this section. I feel like what the film is about, and the way its politics are best communicated, or not as the case may be, is found in moments like the middle-aged couple getting into bed together to watch TV, and each lights a cigarette, and they snuggle together, smoking. Or in the aforementioned "Chronicle of the Escape of Simao 'Without Bowels,'" when the murderer hitchhikes a ride from the guy driving the snack-supply van and keeps asking for bottles of juice.
But the most emotionally striking moment in the whole six hours comes in that section about Dixie, called "The Owners of Dixie" (and there are sub-chapters), when an impoverished young couple, now in possession of the dog, goes to pick up their weekly supply of government-supplied canned food, and they ask, quietly and politely but somewhat insistently, for a little bit more variety in the food they're given. The woman in charge tells them they've already been given a variety of food, but the couple says it's all the same. They just want a little change. They want only the most meager of things to look forward to, but they're told over and over again that they're already getting that. It reminded me of a moment in that last scene in David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis when the almost comically poor (I think that there is a comic aspect intended by both Cronenberg and Don DeLillo, author of the original novel) character played by Paul Giamatti is telling the certainly comically rich (see above) character played by Robert Pattinson that he walks by a cafe with outdoor tables, and sees groups of friends sitting there, having drinks, and he knows he can't do that simple thing. He has no money. He can't do it.
There are other moments like that in Arabian Nights, but it's not full of them. Parts of it are filled with nonsense and tedium, and other parts are filled with moments that may or may not have anything to do with the rest of it. You may do with it as you please.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Like Being in Love with a Buzzsaw
There's this way people have of dividing films into two camps -- in a way that implies one is better than the other, although I suppose that goes without saying -- that has been popular for a long time and which drives me totally batshit. Once so divided, the camps are "plot-driven films" and "character-driven films." The idea, I suppose, is that when a film's narrative is driven mainly by plot mechanics, it is therefore a worthless chunk of shit when set next to a film that's really just about people. The problem as I've always seen it, when this division is used on modern films, those films labeled "character-driven" are quite often films in which specific characters move through a plot that may be loosely or tightly constructed, but is still a plot, and the characters are the characters because of how they react to or are affected by that plot (this being also more or less what happens in "plot-driven" movies). So when discussing or judging or thinking about movies, typically I've never gone for this sort of thing.
On the other hand, Howard Hawks. Though the great director was no stranger to working with plots, even complex ones -- the plots to comedies like His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby hardly take a second to breathe; plus, you know, The Big Sleep and everything -- but his unique signature can be found in what Hawks super-fan Quentin Tarantino refers to his "hangout movies." This term has most famously been applied to Hawks's Rio Bravo, but is in fact best exemplified by his follow-up to Rio Bravo: 1962's Hatari! While Rio Bravo does have a bare sketch of a plot (and an engaging one) used to bring its characters together, Hatari! doesn't. In that film, Hawks and screenwriter Leigh Brackett establish a group of characters, a job, and a location, and for 157 minutes invites the audience to watch it all just colorfully exist. Hatari! is truly, almost radically plotless. Though the exoticism of the African locale and of the job the characters have to do (capturing animals for zoos, etc.) are not insignificantly engaging, the film is almost entirely, purely character-driven. One of very, very few films I've ever seen that earns that description. Classic Altman looks almost like House of Games by comparison.
But Hawks had already done this, and even more gracefully, over twenty years earlier. In 1939 Columbia Pictures released on of that legendary film year's true masterpieces with Only Angels Have Wings, Hawks's light but weighty, balletically, grinningly serious adventure about airmail pilots in South America. Just released on DVD and Blu-ray by Criterion, if Only Angels Have Wings wasn't almost eighty years old it might play like a supremely confident rebuke of the currently accepted wisdom that the mark of a good film is that every scene moves the plot forward (although, to reiterate, and just as an aside, Hatari! walks up to the prone body of that accepted wisdom and steps on its neck).
The film begins with Bonnie (Jean Arthur), a singer/piano player/all-around entertainer arriving in the South American port town of Barranca. She's supposed to be there only for a layover, but very soon she becomes caught up in the whirlwind existence of Barranca Airways, the airmail service owned by Dutchy (Sig Rumann), who also manages the restaurant-nightclub out of which Barranca Airways operates, and managed by Geoff Carter (Cary Grant), a seen-it-all pilot whose attitude to the dangers he and the other pilots face on a daily basis Bonnie soon learns seems to mask, but in fact reveals, a deep humanity. Within about twenty minutes of her arrival, Bonnie has already witnessed the death of a pilot when his plane crashes trying to land on the runway outside the nightclub. His former comrades eat the steak he ordered before he had to fly an emergency mail-run, and pretend he never existed. Disgusted at first, Bonnie very quickly learns this isn't heartlessness; it's a means of staving off heartlessness, and panic.
The cast of Only Angels Have Wings is filled out with a host of ringers, from Allyn Joslyn as pilot Les Peters (I actually think Joslyn's casual naturalism is one of the film's secret weapons) to Rita Hayworth in one of her earliest roles, as Judy MacPherson, an old flame of Geoff's, to, as the two most crucial characters in the film outside of Geoff and Bonnie, and perhaps even including Geoff and Bonnie, Thomas Mitchell as Kid, Geoff's right-hand man, and one-time silent film star Richard Barthelmess as Bat MacPherson, Judy's husband. Bat arrives in Barranca looking for a job as an airmail pilot, but his reputation for cowardice due to an incident years ago in which he abandoned Kid's brother to die, is known to everyone in Barranca Airways, and his request for work is met by everyone with mockery, anger, and disdain. "I don't think even you can spoil good liquor," Geoff says to him (the script by Jules Furthman, based on an original story by Hawks, is as sharp, funny, and moving as that writerly era ever produced). But Geoff takes him on anyway. So the film has a villain! Except, no.
It's strange to me that Barthelmess would only make three more films after Only Angels Have Wings before retiring from acting, having failed to carry his silent film-stardom over to talkies. Because he was too low-key, perhaps? I don't know, I was unfamiliar with him prior to this, but I think his performance here is extraordinary. It's so tamped down, too, and to play Bat's shame and determination to work pitched so low, and still stand out among the big, wonderful, Hollywood presences of Grant, Mitchell, and Arthur, strongly indicates that his instincts for film acting weren't confined to one style. In any event, I must now stress that the appearance of Bat (and Judy) comes maybe halfway into Only Angels Have Wings, and as great an impact as it has on the film, and the characters, it plays in the film as just another of the things that happens in the world of Barranca Airways. A very dramatic thing, to be sure, but one that doesn't overwhelm the film's last hour. Though Bat, and Kid, turn out to be the guts of the film, this reveals itself only gradually. It doesn't become plot; it becomes incident.
There are some iffy plot things -- or anyway, there's one -- that keep Only Angels Have Wings from going full Hatari! But otherwise the films are two of a kind. The audience is at first introduced to an environment they would most likely never know, and then they are immersed in it. It's a matter of atmosphere as much as it is character, to be honest, but either way the viewer lives among the characters. To say a film is absorbing is to pay it a compliment, and Hawks's films is almost literally absorbing.
Friday, April 8, 2016
I Have Snakes in My Fingers
In 1929, the French writer Jean Giono published his first novel. Originally called Colline, in 1930 it was translated into English under the title Hill of Destiny, the last two words of which, once you've read the book, turn out to be utterly meaningless. They should have stopped at Hill, which in fact is what "colline" means in French. And that blunt stamp of a word -- without even a "the" -- also helps to prepare the reader for the strange starkness of Giono's brief story.
In fairness to whoever chose Hill of Destiny for the English translation, I can sort of understand, or anyway I have a theory about, why they did, however much the decision may reek of confusion and cynicism. One of the unusual things about Hill (which has just been reprinted by NYRB Classics, under that title) is that, while I don't for a second believe Giono was thinking along these lines, the fact is that his book, which comes in at just over 100 pages, reads, at least on a plot level, as a kind of environmental horror story, one of those "the Earth shrugs us off" pulp classics that were popular in the 1950s through, say, the 70s (and are becoming popular again now). It was impossible, frankly, for me to read Hill and not think of it as a work of horror, and I believe, at least now, almost ninety years after its initial publication, that facet of it is one of it's chief pleasures. That this take on Hill would probably make Giono, who died in 1970, roll over in his grave is not something I have any control over.
All of the action in Hill takes place in an area called the Bastides, "the remnants of a hamlet" which is located "in the frigid shadow of the mountain range of Lure." Early on, Giono lays out his dramatis personae, and does so concisely, there not being all that many personae:
Married couples live in two of the houses:
One belongs to Gondran le Mederic. He married Marguerite Ricard. Her father, Janet, lives with them.
One belongs to Aphrodis Arbaud. He married a woman from Pertuis.
They have two little daughters, one three, one five.
Then there are:
Cesar Maurras, his mother, and their young welfare worker.
Alexandre Jaume, who lives with his daughter, Ulalie. And finally, Gagou.
So they're an even dozen, plus Gagou, who throws off the reckoning.
Gagou is a mentally handicapped man who comes by his name through saying no other word than "gagou," Which is a genre trope -- in fantasy, not in horror so much, but anyway think of Hodor from A Song of Ice and Fire and Gollum from The Lord of the Rings (Gollum says a lot, but his name derives from a meaningless, hacking noise he makes). Anyway, his place in Hill is not quite the same as that which is occupied by Martin and Tolkien's characters.
Presently, Janet, Gondran's father-in-law is obscurely injured -- is he caught in a flood of sluice waters? Does he have a stroke? Whatever the case, he becomes an invalid who regularly spews forth a barrage of insane words, which nevertheless strike some, especially Gondran and Jaume, as obscurely, but terrifyingly meaningful. He says to Jaume:
"The toad that lived in the willow has come out.
"It has the hands and eyes of a man.
"A man who's been punished.
"It made its home in the willow, out of leaves and mud.
"Its belly is full of caterpillars. But it's still a man.
"It eats caterpillars, but it's a man, you only have to look at its hands.
"It runs its little hands over its belly to check itself out: 'is it really me,' it's asking itself, 'is it really me?' It has good reason to ask, and then it cries when it's certain it really is him.
"I've seen it crying. It's eyes are like kernels of corn, and the more it cries the more music it croaks through its mouth.
"One day I asked myself: 'Janet, who has any idea what he did to be punished like that, to be left with only his hands and his eyes?'
"These are things that the willow would have told me if I knew how to talk its language. I tried. But there was nothing doing. It was as deaf as a fence post."
Later, a cat appears, and Jaume speaks to the men in the hamlet. He tells them that he's seen this cat before, many times before. Every time he's seen it, two days later something terrible has happened, including the suicide of his wife. Most of the terrible things would be referred to now, literally or figuratively, as "acts of god": floods, lightning strikes, etc. And perhaps, the suicide of Jaume's wife applies there as well. Eventually, the men of the hamlet decide that Janet is not simply raving, nor is here merely a dark prophet: they come to see him as the agent of their potential destruction, and plans are made for dealing with him.
Hill becomes most literal about its intentions in a section when Gondran goes hunting. He has no particular goal other than to bring back food, yet in the course of things he senselessly kills a lizard. After graphically describing the act, Giono writes:
He thinks about Janet and he cocks his eye at the little pile of brown dirt still twitching over the crushed lizard.Blood, nerves, suffering.
He's caused flesh and blood to suffer, flesh and blood just like his own.
So all around him, on this earth, does every action have to lead to suffering?
Is he directly to blame for the suffering of plants and animals?
Can he not even cut down a tree without committing murder?
It's true, when he cuts down a tree, he does kill.
And when he scythes, he slays.
So that's the way it is -- is he killing all the time? Is he living like a gigantic, runaway barrel, leveling everything in his path?
So it is really all alive?
Janet has figured this all out ahead of him.
Everything: animals, plants, and who know, maybe even the stones, too.
So, he can't even lift a finger anymore, without unleashing streams of pain?
Giono's biography presents him as a very political artist -- a lifelong pacifist, including during World War II, he was falsely accused of collaborating with the Nazis -- and this first novel shows that off as well. His depiction of the natural world in Hill is fierce and unforgiving regarding what he viewed as the destruction of it by humanity. So fierce and unforgiving, in fact, that his argument seems to be, as implied in the passage quoted above, that nothing anyone does, not even taking a step or taking a breath, will not bring death down on something. It's hard to react to that in any way other than choosing between continuing on as you were, or sitting still until you rot. As such, if Hill is an activist novel, it fails: what exactly do you expect me to do, then?
As a bleak piece of horror writing, though, Hill is quite effective. Eventually, there is death as the curse proves real, and a bitter irony at the end that fits the tradition of Poe and Saki and Roald Dahl and EC Comics. It's not a rare thing to use genre (if that's even what Giono was consciously doing) as a prop for Something Meaningful. It's also not rare to use horror to express hopelessness.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Home
For reasons I can't quite put my finger on, no other blog post I've written has generated as many e-mails from readers interested in knowing more about the subject than this one from 2012, about the mysterious horror writer William Scott Home. The phrase "mysterious horror writer" may explain most of it, I suppose, but anyway I get a lot of e-mails asking if I know anything more about the man, or if I ever got into contact with Home's sister, who some time after it was published found the piece and left a comment that I didn't notice until a while later. So my answer to the curious was always some version of "No, sorry."
Well, without saying more than I should, and not to make the events sound more clandestine than they were, especially since outside of writing that post I had nothing to do with any of this, there's now a blog about Home that has been put together by people who actually know the man. I've been kept in the loop about this, for which I'm very flattered, but I mostly had to keep mum because certain people have been waiting for certain things. But the thing's live now, as is the first post, which is a fairly detailed short biography of William Scott Home. He's a surprising guy. For example, perhaps you don't know that he's alive and well and living in Alaska doing work in the fields of biology and anthropology, and he doesn't seem to have much time for the internet.
Anyhow, check it out. Here's Tracking William Scott Home.
Well, without saying more than I should, and not to make the events sound more clandestine than they were, especially since outside of writing that post I had nothing to do with any of this, there's now a blog about Home that has been put together by people who actually know the man. I've been kept in the loop about this, for which I'm very flattered, but I mostly had to keep mum because certain people have been waiting for certain things. But the thing's live now, as is the first post, which is a fairly detailed short biography of William Scott Home. He's a surprising guy. For example, perhaps you don't know that he's alive and well and living in Alaska doing work in the fields of biology and anthropology, and he doesn't seem to have much time for the internet.
Anyhow, check it out. Here's Tracking William Scott Home.
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