Man on Wire

(What follows is my full review, originally written for the Examiner, which was initially linked up at this spot. From now on this will be its home.)

Best of the 21st Century? (#196)

(Counting down the most acclaimed films of the decade.)

We're skipping ahead quite a few spots on the list, because Philippe Petit didn't play by the rules, and neither should we. So at #196, sure to advance (as the more recent films usually do over time)...Man on Wire, the true story of a man who walked on air, 1,368 feet of it to be exact. While observing that Petit did not play by the rules, it should not be assumed he was careless, absent-mindedly whimsical, or entirely spontaneous. His spirit may have conveyed such vivacious joie de vivre but within the impulsive performance artist was a rigorous disciplinarian. This is almost always the case with a great artist, but it's especially true of one whose art involves standing upon a thin wire, suspended between the two tallest buildings in the world, dancing 110 stories up from the pavement, where one wrong move, one ill-read gust of wind can end with the kind of flop you don't recover from.

So of course the aura of death hangs around this film, but it's a subdued background noise, one which we are only subconsciously aware of. After all, we know that Petit will survive - even if we haven't heard his marvelous story before, he's right there onscreen being interviewed, thirty years after the fact. The film even manages to make us forget, or only dimly remember, that if Petit remains alive and well, the towers which he traversed (which one might have reasonably expected to outlast the little man) are gone. That event is never addressed directly in the movie; indeed, it isn't even really addressed indirectly. Sometimes the documentary even seems to exist in a universe innocently independent of the tragedy (I never found myself thinking about the terror threat parallels as Petit and his crew avoided security in the towers).

Ye elsewhere, a weirdly, sadly tangential connection is evoked between Petit and the hijackers. Certainly, an early "scene" in which the participants describe their eerie "morning of" mood of subterfuge and steeliness carries strong connotations of terrorists bracing for action. Indeed, the "zero hour" calendar marking for Petit's plan says simply "the coup," and he watches numerous heist films to brace himself for the attempt. The extent of the planning, occurring in distant lands, existing under the radar, and involving ruses and phony identities, also calls to mind the al-Qaeda tactics, though we tend to be too involved in Petit's maneuvers to draw the connection overtly.

At any rate, as previously stated, by the time Petit and his allies (several Americans and several close French buddies) are inside the World Trade Center, on the top floor, setting up their rigging for Petit's only-hours-away crossing, we are too involved in this specific plan to draw grim parallels. Then, finally, on a foggy morning, Petit takes a deep breath and steps out onto the wire. The mist rises, a crowd gathers, and Philippe Petit begins his 45-minute performance...nearly an hour in real time, probably a moment in his mind, and an eternity for anyone who caught the spirit of the event and gaped upwards in awe (even a policeman seems dazed and vaguely moved by what he had just witnessed).

On the wire, Petit's all smiles (as the photographs - no film taken - attest): he moves, lithely and with deceptive ease, laying down, bending on one knee, walking back and forth, even gesturing to the crowd below like a benevolent guardian angel. The film, which has relied heavily (perhaps too heavily) on re-enactments till now, quietly steps back and lets the still-stunned voices of the witnesses and participants complement the mostly monochrome photos of Petit's leap of faith.

Here, after a few minutes, the lingering memories of a later date rise to the surface and settle in an aura of poignant melancholy around Petit's joyous demonstration. The crowd points and murmurs in disbelief, just as they would nearly thirty years later. A photo shows Petit on the wire, directly in between both towers, with an airplane (which almost looks to be the same size as him) soaring in the background. Here, in this one image, we can briefly sense the symmetry between tragedy and joy, negation and affirmation, destruction and liberation. In this tiny figure we have the actual, absolute, incarnate opposite of the horror which was unleashed on another bright morning. Not the organized might of a state, but one man, pushing himself to the limit, defying nature and law alike not with brute force or heartless cunning but with impishness; he is defiantly human, suspended between physical limits and spiritual release at the top of the world.

The danger, rebelliousness, and awesome skill of Petit's "coup" is worth remembering. Because even this joyful celebration had a sad falling-out. The friends who built his wings from scratch and steadied him as he got his bearings, had to watch Phillippe fly away into the vanishing horizon line, so to speak, never to return. Yes, he came down from the wire, and was whisked away by police. Charges were dropped in return for a public performance, the tightrope walker became a media hero, and he even bedded a groupie (hey, it was the 70s) while his girlfriend waited patiently for him to come back to earth. He never would. Both his lover and his friends recall, some with tears, how this was the end of their relationship with Petit. Details are left vague but it's implied that Petit's ego soared along with the rest of him, while the humbler souls who'd helped him every inch of the way could only wave goodbye.

Man on Wire is an excellent film about a beautiful gesture, one too in touch with the danger and torment of the edge to be sugary or sentimental, one too real (despite the excessive re-creations) to appear glib or manipulative. Even without relatively recent events, the movie would be moving, and the filmmakers wisely choose not to draw the parallels themselves, allowing us to do so - and also to ignore them in order to get at the universal truths which Petit's ascension of the abyss evokes. Petit not only maintained his balance between the twin towers, he also managed, philosophically, not to fall into either excessive comfort or destructive rebellion; his feat remains an inspiration to this day. If he'd fallen, of course, we'd be talking about his madness, and any film made would have been entirely different in tone. Yet if he hadn't run the risk of falling, neither his walk nor this movie would be nearly as powerful.

Where is Mulholland Dr.?

For months now, I've been slowly making my way through 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (usually in the bathroom or bedroom, as it's difficult to transport it elsewhere). It's a nifty tome to have on hand, and since I bought it at a discount I don't regret the purchase. That said, most of the prose is merely serviceable, despite the occasional splash of liveliness (usually courtesy of Jonathan Rosenbaum or, especially, Jean-Michel Frodon). What's more, the descriptions, while attempting to be succinct and introductory, are often burdened by academic jargon and strained sociopolitical readings - as if the authors can't decide whether they're writing for scholars or laymen. There are also a surprising number of gaffes, grammatical and factual, throughout the book. Granted, a tome this size (nearly 1,000 pages) must have been hard to edit but a cursory check-through should have taken care of most of the mistakes. At any rate, despite its flaws, the book mostly serves its purpose, which is to establish a rough canon of the most talked-about, popular, and/or acclaimed films in history - if not 1001 films you must see before you die, at least 1001 films you should probably know about.

However, there's one startling omission which throws the whole enterprise into question. Tonight, I was reading the entry for Lord of the Rings - all three films squeezed into two pages. True, I have my problems with the trilogy but, given its impact, its popularity, and the critical acclaim which greeted it, the saga certainly belongs in the book. As I turned the page I looked forward to another entry from 2001: Mulholland Dr. David Lynch's masterpiece, which aside from being a personal favorite (and what I consider one of only two or three great American films I've seen this decade) is also one of the most acclaimed films of the 21st century. It's controversial, to be sure, but about as noteworthy as cinema gets in the 2000s. In other words, an absolute-brainer for this book, something I think even opponents of the film could recognize.

Yet on the next page was The Pianist. But that meant we were already into 2002, and no sign of Mulholland! I was immediately perplexed; had they gotten the wrong year for the film? (It wouldn't be the first time.) But no, as I flipped back and forth it became increasingly clear that they just hadn't bothered to include Lynch's book. Huh? To me, that's inexplicable. It fits all the criteria for inclusion, there's plenty to discuss (just think what Frodon could have done with it!), and it's certainly a more obvious inclusion than, say, Meet the Parents, which greets us a few pages earlier. What's going on here? A massive typo in which a whole entry was accidentally excluded? I must admit I'm perplexed. What's the point of a canon which doesn't include what is by many accounts the best film of our young century?

This week on Examiner

Originally this provided a link to a preview of my upcoming work at the Examiner. Here are links to the new homes of the pieces written that week: Man on Wire, In Bruges, Capturing the Friedmans.

Reading I Met the Walrus

Last night, I settled down to read a book I'd received a while back as a birthday present from an aunt (the same one whom I mentioned in my Michael Jackson obit this past summer). I'd already started it several weeks earlier, and enjoyed what I read without finding it especially astonishing. Now I thought I'd read a little more before falling asleep, but I couldn't stop until the book - a short tome, but still about 150 pages - was finished.

I Met the Walrus is written by Jerry Levitan, and while it contains illustrations and some nifty designs to liven up the pages, most of it consists of his text. It's a memoir of sorts, focusing on one specific incident in his life: when, as a precocious and fearless 14-year-old, he infiltrated John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's hotel suite in Toronto and conducted a lengthy interview with his genial hero. In summary form, the story seemed like just a nice little anecdote; the first part of the book, recounting Jerry's fascination with the band, was entirely familiar to me - in a comfy but unexceptional way - from the reams of Beatle & me memoirs I've perused in bookstores over the years, being a great fan of the band myself.

But when Jerry's and John's paths intersect, the enthusiasm of the story suddenly becomes infectious. Jerry wavers on the line between obsessed stalker and devoted fan but ultimately falls on the latter side due to, paradoxically, to both the innocence of his exuberance and the sophistication with which he gets himself on the "inside." Ultimately, he's able to wrange a long and revealing interview with the great Beatle star, possibly the only one Lennon offered in Toronto, while a bevy of seasoned press pros salivated at the hotel door. (Jerry even gets a date with willowy Apple beauty Mary Hopkin, to boot!) By the end of this little book, I had a an ear-to-ear grin, and I'd recommend it to all Beatles fans and perhaps those who aren't as well. Jerry is obviously a lifelong dreamer, but his conclusion betrays an adult voice that he manages to keep subdued for most of the text, where he succesfully recaptures the bright but somewhat naive perspective of his youthful self. We learn of his struggles and failures later in life, as well as some rather astonishing successes (though unforgettable, the Lennon interview was not his last daliance with the big time).

Indeed, this book is actually a tie-in to a larger project of which I was unaware, but I'm thankful for my ignorance as it lent my reading a true feeling of discovery. If the title I Met the Walrus doesn't ring a bell with you either, read no more about the book, starting at the beginning if you can, and check it out whenever you have some time to kill in a bookstore. It's that rare achievement, a genuinely affecting, charming, and - no less - true "feel-good" story.

Handcrafted Cinema and Figuring Out Day of Wrath

Two excellent essays from the Criterion Collection: one on Il Posto, written by Kent Jones, one on Day of Wrath, written by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Tonight, I just read the latter and re-read the former and was so taken with both that I had to link them up here.

Jones' sensitive piece wonderfully conveys both the humanist spirit of Il Posto and the larger context in which it was birthed; Rosenbaum's brief but penetrating discussion of Day of Wrath manages to be both subjective (memorably conveying his own initial indifference and later emotional engagement with the film) and objective (placing the film in its various historical contexts, that of its making and that of its telling; also, thrillingly conveying the formal audacity of the Great Dane).

Two selections, to convey the flavor. From Jones:

One of the most unusual features of Italian cinema of the late ’50s and ’60s is the way that it affords us multiple perspectives on the same event, namely the economic boom following the postwar recovery. Where the directors of the French New Wave each created his or her own unique poetic universe, Italian cinema of the same period feels like a series of moons circling around one planet. Again and again, one encounters the same sociological material, filtered through Michelangelo Antonioni’s elegant precision, Luchino Visconti’s luxurious emotionalism, Dino Risi’s exuberance, or Valerio Zurlini’s sobriety. Again and again, one sees the construction sites, the quick-stop cafes, and the cramped apartments owned by nosy landladies that were constants of postwar Italian society. Most strikingly of all, these movies feature a parade of young men fitted outfitted in regulation white-collar attire, betraying their essential inexperience. They are ill equipped for a life of work and responsibility in a mechanized, high-efficiency world, and lonesome for the nurturing comforts of home.

From Rosenbaum:

Set in 1623, when people still believed without question in witches, the film views that world from a contemporary perspective without for a moment dispelling our sense of what it felt like from the inside. Dreyer pulls off this difficult task through his singular style, involving a sensual form of camera movement he invented: the camera gliding on unseen tracks in one direction while uncannily panning in another direction. It’s difficult to imagine—a three-dimensional kind of transport that somehow combines coming and going in the same complex journey—but a hypnotic experience to follow. The film’s first real taste of it comes fairly early, when we follow Anne in her sinuous progress towards the torture chamber where Herlof’s Marte is being interrogated. The camera tracking with Anne around a pillar prompts our involvement while its simultaneous swiveling away from her establishes our detachment. And enhancing the strange sense of presence that results is Dreyer’s rare employment of direct sound rather than studio post-synching—giving scenes an almost carnal impact that becomes lost in smudgy and staticky prints.

Two of my favorite films, and two wonderful pieces of criticism. Enjoy, and happy Thanksgiving.

Ballast

(What follows is my full review, originally written for the Examiner, which was initially linked up at this spot. From now on this will be its home.)

Without warning, the screen lights up - if "lights up" is the right word to describe the overcast, gray, yet eerily beautiful Mississippi Delta landscape which fills the wide, wide panorama. A young boy in a parka approaches a flock of birds, then begins to run: the birds, hundreds of them, spread their wings and fly in the air, rising off the marsh as the handheld camera shudders, struggling to keep up with the boy. The kid (named James, and played by JimMyron Ross) watches the sky, vaguely impressed, expression nonetheless rather inscrutable. Cut to new vista, solid white letters imposed over the image: "Ballast."

Truck drives up to ramshackle house. Knock on door; man on couch, wrapped in blanket, won't move, looks like he's in shock. Truck driver (old man, white moustache, well-intentioned but with a hapless air) wanders around the house, discovers a dead body (man on couch's twin brother), calls 911, man on couch (a hefty, silent man named Lawrence, played by Michael J. Smith, Jr.) gets up and leaves. The old man is mumbling something on the phone about Lawrence being unresponsive - BANG! - shot rings out, man drops phone, runs outside, discovers Lawrence lying on floor of adjoining house (not in one continuous shot but in several, linked by rapid if not especially flashy cuts). Old man stutters and fumbles around impotently. Paramedics arrive, complain about Lawrence's weight, whisk him off to the hospital. Lawrence is treated in a lonesome corner of the cinderblock, his nurse changing his bandages while the reflection of forlorn Christmas lights blink in the glass divider. Cut to Lawrence's twin brother, similar body, lying dead in morgue, somehow cleaner and neater in death than Lawrence is in life. Return to bedside. Doctor speaks to Lawrence, tells him he'll be okay. Lawrence looks disappointed. Cut to immobile, deadpan plastic deer on Lawrence's lawn. Lawrence back at home, still unresponsive when old man volunteers to keep his dog for a few days. Lawrence looks at spot where he plugged himself. Looks at bed where brother passed away. Lies in bed, doesn't move.

The speed and tone of Ballast's opening sequence tells us several things. Firstly, that despite the subdued grandeur of the photography, the movie will not be sentimentalized or sensationalized, but approached with a sense of no-nonsense straightforwardness; secondly, that it will not linger or dwell, but move briskly along, employing rapid-fire storytelling economy even as it eschews conventional characterization. Thirdly, that the whole thing skates along the edge of black comedy: it's hard for uneasy laughter not to follow our initial gasp when that first shot is fired - we've just met these characters and already they're dropping like flies (although, as it turns out, they don't). Is that edgy laughter, evoked not just by the shock and the rapid clip but by the old man's bumbling reaction, intentional? The press materials and critical reactions seem to suggest a somber, earnest affair; as Manohla Dargis puts it in her very favorable review, "There isn’t much talk and not a drop of cynicism in 'Ballast,'" but the humor is there nonetheless, and it adds a welcome dose of humanity and wry perspective to the proceedings, however intended.

The lack of music or stylization means that, even with the quick edits and narrative short cuts the film doesn't feel rushed, just purposeful. Still, it can take a while to adjust to that purpose. Hammer seems so eager to avoid sentimentalization or exploitation of his characters and their real-life analogs that he rushes over these initial emotional moments, resulting in that perhaps unintentional humor which nonetheless redeems the early passages from an overdose of bleakness. Hence the deadpan, cut-to-the-chase style of the movie, interspersed with more meditative (though still not drawn-out) moments like that opening bird chase, is both a virtue and a risk - also occasionally a drawback. Hammer's approach doesn't force anything, yet nor does it initially endear us to these admittedly odd characters (the boy, pulling a gun and threatening his uncle with faux staccato bravado, turns out to be a crack addict).

Yet by the time James' somewhat ineffectual if still threatening drug dealers pull up alongside the car of his mother Marlee (Tarra Riggs), the unforced tempo of the scene flow pays off and we feel genuine dread; the boy frantically tries to warn his mom but she doesn't understand. When the family, resettled with estranged uncle Lawrence (whose brother was Marlee's ex-husband) for safety, draws closer until Lawrence gently attempts to kiss his brother's ex-wife and Marlee recoils, our hearts sink, even as we may chuckle at how deftly Hammer and cast have undercut our conventional expectations, and perhaps in fraternal recognition of Lawrence's wounded romanticism. When James lies in the weeds and stares at the clouds, when Marlee matter-of-factly reopens her dead husband's store and adjusts to the demands of running it, when James quietly studies algebra at the dinner table, we can calmly appreciate the moment because it fits in with the whole. The film is all of a piece, and because it neither downplays or overplays its hand, quiet moments balance out with the dramatic turning points. (This is the stylistic meaning of the title, whose thematic meaning is played out in the reunion of the remaining twin with his other half's mate and offspring.)

Ballast belongs to a relatively new, developing genre of American independent films, which approaches the nation's poor and largely unseen citizens with muted compassion, compassion that is not played up in the style or narrative. Rather this sympathy is allowed to manifest itself in the naturalistic yet quietly lyrical placement of the camera, and the unforced performances of the nonactors. The films of Ramin Bahrani (including Chop Shop) belong to this new movement, as does Frozen River to a certain extent. Junebug (though that movie used an urban outsider as its protagonist), with its refreshingly uncondescending approach to the American South, may have also been an influence here. An obvious historical echo of the present movement is Italian neorealism, in which filmmakers took to Italy's postwar streets, using natural lighting and nonactors to tell realistic stories about the lives and struggles of working people. (And yet another influence, one more strongly-felt in terms of these films' unpretentiously poetic style, is Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray's close-to-the-ground 1955 debut Pather Panchali.)

Yet while these films were revolutionary for the time, there is admittedly an ever-so-slight whiff of the stale about this neo-neorealism. Manohla Dargis (who points out another influence in the Dardennes brothers, whose work I have not seen) also writes of the film, "Mr. Hammer puts in the time, but never asserts that he knows this world and his black characters from the inside out, a wise choice for a white boy playing the blues." It may be a wise choice, but if it is a necessity it's an unfortunate one - it means that we're still outside these characters. Caution and guilt do not overburden Ballast or the better films like it, but they threaten to. As Dargis puts it, in praising Hammer, he "hovers near his characters without ever piercing their skin." Hammer eschewed some of this distance by working on the story through improvisations with the performers, giving them co-authorship in the development of the film. But the execution is still his, and the sense of removal remains, even in the movie's finest moments. While one must take and appreciate Ballast for what it is, the sense of distance, of over-respect of the subject, remains dimly frustrating (which is why that initial humor, however intentional, is welcome). All this makes one long for the day - which may be approaching faster than we think, given the increasing availability of video technology - when the presently powerless can tell their own stories in their own voices without the intercession of an interpreter, however well-intentioned. Then the scales will be truly balanced, or at least begin to be so.

Flight of the Red Balloon

My review of Flight of the Red Balloon is up.

Pirate Radio

(What follows is my full review, originally written for the Examiner, which was initially linked up at this spot. From now on this will be its home.)

Ironies and contradictions abound with the U.S. release of The Boat That Rocked, er, Pirate Radio as it's been rechristened stateside (the name change itself is a kind of paradox: despite its obviousness and seeming desire to ride the coattails of pirate-mania, it's actually a much better title). First there's the fact that the movie, about the bold offshore DJs of mid-60s Britain who refused to accept the watered-down programming of the BBC (which only played a few hours of rock a week), has itself been watered-down. Not only by its American recutting - which excises, according to the Village Voice's Robert Wilonsky, some of the funniest bits - but also in its very conception. The screenplay loudly proclaims an allegiance to rebellion yet the film is essentially a sweet-natured farce which eschews drugs, politics, and even generational warfare (most of the DJs are rather long-in-the-tooth).

Despite a profusion of sexual activity, the film is never raw or edgy; the sexual politics and countercultural values feeling about as provocative as pre-time travel Austin Powers. Furthermore, the film doesn't really capture "the sixties" (circa 1966, Swingin' London vintage) the way that primary documents do: instead of the jolt of recognition one gets listening to the Stones, Who, and Yardbirds, or watching films like A Hard Day's Night and Blow-Up, we immediately recognize that we're watching a bunch of actors dress up in 40-year-old fashions, listening to rock tunes (not all of them of the period, for whatever that's worth), and then having a good time. Which, when you come right down to it, more or less redeems the film: Pirate Radio is fluff, but it's genuinely good-hearted, enjoyable fluff, and worth seeing if that's what you're in the mood for.

Plot takes a back seat to a string of incidents, some charming, some flat, some mildly amusing. The "conflicts" meant to move the story along mostly fizzle, and the screenplay lacks the structural sophistication and effective balancing of writer/director Richard Curtis' directorial debut Love Actually. Still, Kenneth Branagh has more fun than anyone else in the movie as the Hitler-moustached, delightfully glib politician Sir Alistair Dormandy, a stick-in-the-mud whose mission is to shut down the station. While the villainy is rote, Branagh clearly relishes the part and makes the transparent superficiality of Dormandy's diabolical squareness an element of camp - almost to the point where he's the most subversive presence in the film.

The rest of the cast also has a great time, which is good since Curtis' script has the tendency to build up situations and conflicts without delivering effective punchlines or resolutions. The laugh-out-loud moments come not from the incidents themselves, nor even the dialogue used to deliver them (which frequently strays into obvious territory), but from the panache of a cast which commits itself to characterization. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, the most familiar name to American audiences, is front and center in the U.S. promotions, but he's actually a secondary presence in the movie. He does gets some good scenes (including one in which he sadly observes that this is the best time of his life - a time which will soon be over, the recognition of which he invests with a resigned pathos). However, he's ultimately overshadowed by the rest of the cast, which includes the very funny Bill Nighy, the vaguely reptilian ladies' man Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, Rhys Darby, and many others including the hilariously burnt-out Ralph Brown (who has a great, and surprisingly poignant, scene with Tom Sturridge, the film's teen protagonist, in which Brown's character faces an emotional challenge which he can't summon up the energy or interest to face head-on).

There are also cameos from Emma Thompson and January Jones (virtually every female in the film oozes sex appeal) as well as an enticing turn from Talulah Riley as Nighy's nymphette-neice who breaks in Sturridge, despite the fact - seeming overlooked by everyone in the movie - that she's possibly his cousin. Sexual hijinks and drinking games abound as the characters fill the screen-time with scenes that have the feel of worked-over improvisations. Above all, everyone has a lot of fun, until Branagh finally succeeds in shutting down the station - at which point, they become true radio pirates and continue to have fun, while the audience grows restless. Indeed, one final irony of Pirate Radio is that anything was cut from the film at all; the well-over-2 hour runtime already feels too long for the slight material. The faux-Titanic conclusion lacks suspense and the laughs are somewhat overshadowed by the pyrotechnics, but thankfully, even here the film does not lose its lightness of touch. The movie ends with the biggest flotilla since Dunkirk (and one far sexier, methinks) followed by a montage of album covers meant to prove that rock never died (if so, some of the LPs are poorly chosen...).

Pirate Radio arrives at the end of a decade which has repeatedly attempted to capture the spirit of the 60s and 70s, particularly the super-conscious, fun-loving Swingin' era circa '65/'66, with varying degrees of success (the charm often seems shopworn and contrived). Meanwhile, Radio also echoes other 00s comedies like Life Aquatic and Almost Famous in everything from set pieces to plot points. Yet in the end, the movie remains a charming good time, unburdened by its very influences or half-hearted attempts to evoke an era. (By the way, did they really play "Never Have I Ever" in 1966?) It was apparently swamped at the box office by 2012, and was steamrolled this past weekend by the angsty werewolves and vampires of New Moon, but if you're in the mood for mindless entertainment, entertainment with a warm regard for its own characters and an inability to take itself too seriously, you could certainly do worse than to tune in to Pirate Radio.

This week on Examiner

Originally this provided a link to a preview of my upcoming work at the Examiner. Here are links to the new homes of the pieces written that week: Pirate Radio, Flight of the Red Balloon, Ballast.

Frankenstein

Close on the heels of Dracula, I re-watched Frankenstein, James Whale's 1931 horror classic which is, if anything, even more iconic than the vampire pic. In many ways, Whale's movie has more to offer - while the vampire myths are fun and can be interpreted any variety of ways, Mary Shelley's gothic-romantic classic is compelling on a different level. The idea of man-created man both fascinates and repels us, and it only grows more relevant with time (evidenced by the countless sci-fi and horror spin-offs of the film, as well as the popularization of the term "he's created a Frankenstein monster"). Yet in some ways, I find Frankenstein less satisfying than Dracula, perhaps because it is more ambitious than the other film, and hence it's more noticeable when it falls short.

That's not to criticize the film too severely - it's quite entertaining, full of rich imagery and compelling ideas, and filled with little moments of black humor and detailed asides which James Whale would fully unleash in the richly comic sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein (which is a bona fide masterpiece). It's a classic that must be seen, even if the story is a little unwieldy at times (the narrative doesn't really develop, as we rush from the monster's escape right into the climax). And, like Dracula, it offers a thrill of recognition at moments of extreme influence: in this case, the mad scientist bringing his creation to life ("It's alive! It's alive!") in his gloomy castle on a dark and stormy night.

That said, I find Shelley's original depiction of this profane "birth" - quiet, unexpected, dreadful - infinitely more chilling:

It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

What passage, what story better evokes the horror of the creator, beholding a previously-controlled creation now severed from himself? The horrible realization of culpability in this eternal mystery (which remains, steadfastly, a mystery, whosoever is responsible)? Is this how God felt when he breathed life into Adam? Frankenstein's monster is the ultimate "other": he is an alien being, regarded with dread as a holder of all mankind's dark qualities, the very elements which we fear within ourselves. This explains the paradoxical sympathy may readers and viewers have with the creature. He is at once less human and more human than the fully conscious, rational, "natural" people around him. They think, he feels, and in doing so he reminds us of our own innate helplessness and the raw, confused turmoil of our natural state (such resonance also calls to mind the question I posed a few weeks back, Why are kids' movies sadder?).

But I've saved the best for last. One reason we find ourselves so unexpectedly aligned with the monster, so attuned to his pain and confusion (so much more so then the misplaced comforts and conventional concerns of the "real" people) lies with the film's foremost claim to greatness: "?".

Or so he is listed in the opening credits. In fact, "?" was Boris Karloff. On his first appearance, standing erect in the doorway, glowering in dim perception without understanding, the intensity of his presence motivating Whale's camera to a series of unprecedented cut-ins, Karloff makes such impression that I might have gasped.

This is a great performance, not merely an influential or iconic one, but a truly masterful embodiment of character. It's on a higher plane of reality than all the other performances in the movie (ironic when you think about it), and it's almost impossible while watching to think that Karloff is "acting"; instead he seems to be the creature, inhabiting his skin with a complete lack of pretension. Yes, the makeup (still impressive) helps, but Karloff's pure conviction is contagious. It elevates the film - at least the moments he's in - to the level of greatness. As the beast lumbers towards the fatal lapping waters of the placid lake, hand-in-hand with a doomed little girl, it's hard not to wonder whose innocence is the more terrible. Probably his, since hers will soon be extinguished, while he will soon bear the shock of yet another rude awakening, one of so many in his short, agonized life.

Dracula

Dracula is a film that can come full-circle if you let it. Ostensibly a straightforward chiller upon its 1931 release, it arguably launched decades of horror films - an avalanche which has kept rolling in one form or another to this day. Of course, as the form kept developing, the original monster movie (or at least the original monster talkie) began to seem creakier and creakier. Though Tod Browning had crafted some distinctive work before and after Dracula, much of his most famous film was confined to English drawing rooms; meanwhile, film technology was still adapting to the advent of sound and while the German master cinematographer Karl Freund was able to memorably maneuver his camera from time to time, the film overall is not especially fluid. Furthermore, Bela Lugosi's legendary performance may have frightened people at the time, but now it's become a museum piece, a template for hams throughout the ages (including Lugosi himself). Right?

Well, not quite. Dracula has come full-circle, albeit at a slightly different angle, because its at-times primitive technique and lack of fully self-conscious irony (though there's plenty of offbeat humor on hand) have made it seem distinctively creepy today. The complete lack of a musical score, the slow pacing, the mixture of deadpan sincerity and ghoulish creakiness all add to an eerie atmosphere which makes you chuckle and shudder at the same time. And Lugosi is central to this effect - his Dracula is actually not a hammy performance at all, because he commits entirely to the laconic delivery, haughty bearing, and erotic intensity of the famed Count.

Adding to the impact of the film are the Gothic sets by Charles D. Hall, the indicatively campy yet genuinely unsettling performance of Dwight Frye as insect-eating sidekick Renfield, and some of Browning's fleeting but unforgettable shots (like the boom to the ground as an intensely hungry Renfield, his eyes practically popping out of his head, crawls on hands and knees towards the comatose body of a nurse whose blood he hopes to suck). This is a film whose imagery and story have become such familiar cliches, that it's almost a surprise to go back to the original and discover its primal power, even amidst all the dated elements and labored plot mechanics (and the film does start to sag a bit in the final third, as everyone seems to be struggling to delay the inevitable climax).

What's ultimately so creepy about Lugosi's Count Dracula is that he isn't entirely an inhuman ogre, like Nosferatu. Rather, Dracula is part "us", part "other" - for example, he inhabits the body of a man, yet casts no reflection in a mirror. This uneasy, undefined border zone in which both Dracula and Dracula exist makes the vampire and his film all the more unsettling, even today. It won't make you jump out of your seat, but images and moments might follow you around for the rest of the day and, what's more important, into the night.

What are the Best Films of the 21st century?

This post is no longer active, and is out-of-date to boot. An updated list and intro to the series will be coming up on Wonders in the Dark soon, and will be linked here when it's ready.

Welcome to Hugowood

Of course, the big Newsweek news this week is Sarah Palin's cover photo, apparently filched from Runner's World magazine without their permission. You can see it here - quite unsurprisingly it's stirred up cries of sexism, and not just from the (suddenly sensitive) right. Frankly, I'm as scornful of the pathetic ex-governor as the next sensible person, but I don't think Newsweek's cover is doing the anti-Palin cause any favors. Actually, I see it as part and parcel of Newsweek's increasing tendency to take too strident, crusading, and misguided a tone with its journalism: see also "The Case for Killing Granny," Newsweek's boneheaded cover from several months ago which attempted to discredit the "death panel" crowd by, um, making their case for them (?!). Sold a lot of magazines I'm sure, but I highly doubt it won many fence-sitters to the side of Obamacare (and should that even have been Newsweek's mission in the first place?). Editor Jon Meachum's introductions to each issue also seem to take a frequently holier-than-thou tone, and this is by my count the second Palin cover issue to rather hysterically warn the country against her. If you wanted to turn her fans and quasi-fans even further against the mainstream media and the "liberal elite" (and throw in a few previously sympathetic feminists to boot) you couldn't do a better job if you were a GOP operative.

Well, that's more than enough on that - I only mention it because I went to the site for another link and wound up with a lot of articles on Palin and Newsweek's homemade controversy. The article I was digging for is actually a small piece in an issue from a few weeks ago, which I just read tonight. It's called "Lights! Camera! Revolución!" and it details, with a snide tone, Hugo Chávez's attempts to create a Bolivarian Hollywood, replete with propagandistic entertainments, empty studios, and censorial government boards.

Look, I'm not one who will eagerly step up to Chávez's defense. Despite his egalitarian promises, he seems to be a colossal boor with strong authoritarian tendencies, one too scatterbrained and egotistical to lead his country to the promised land which he himself has promised them. In addition, he's alleged to have decimated Venezuala's cultural scene in a philistinic quest to stamp out "elitism" in the arts.

But - and this is a huge but - he is not a "totalitarian"; not even close. He remains hugely popular and has won several elections. Say what you will about him, note his repression of the press and opposition, and affinity for Castro and Ahmadinejad, but implying he's a dictator is stepping way out of line. Yet this is what Mac Margolis does repeatedly in the Newsweek piece, casually comparing Chávez's homegrown film industry to that of Stalin, Franco, and in the author's words "other 20th-century autocrats he emulates."

This kind of careless language is no light matter given the U.S.'s history in the region. Think the toppling of Guatemalan democracy in the 50s (at the behest of United Fruit), the CIA-fueled bloody coup and violent reign of Pinochet in Chile in the 70s, the illegally-funded war against the Sandinistas (who also won an internationally-monitored election) and the devastating support for a government which facilitated nun-raping, priest-assassinating death squads in El Salvador in the 80s. With that kind of history (to name just a few examples) government and media labelling of an admittedly flawed ruler as dictatorial and now even "totalitarian" are to be regarded with extreme suspicion. How interesting that Newsweek, and the rest of the media, lets loose a lot of excessive liberal yapping on a cultural issue like Sarah Palin's presidential ambitions (despite the fact that even conservatives think - and probably hope - she hasn't a chance) yet they unquestioningly go along with the neoconservative line that Chávez is a "dictator" in the same category as other anti-American despots like Castro, Mussolini, and even Hitler, despite the verifiable fact that he is not.

(This is not the first time I've found a Newsweek article so wrongheaded I had to air my objections. Last winter I criticized Newsweek for another article - this one a tone-deaf, yet highly indicative, piece of cultural criticism looking back on art in the Bush years. Here is my response.)

Frozen River

(What follows is my full review, originally written for the Examiner, which was initially linked up at this spot. From now on this will be its home.)

Ray Eddy's very name sounds tough, and upon first appearance the name seems to fit. The scraggly hair, worn-out clothes, and lined face suggest a woman who's been on the ropes and knows them well. While ostensibly married, she's effectively a single mom; her deadbeat husband is a compulsive gambler who has fled his home and family just before Christmas. As the holidays approach her threadbare household, she must support her two sons (one a bitter, shaggy-haired teen, the other a sweet little kid barely out of toddlerhood) on the income earned from a dead-end part-time retail job. Meanwhile, her double-wide trailer, long dreamed of and half paid for, will not be delivered until she's paid the full deposit. Ray's toughness transcends the stoic - she also carries a gun around and isn't afraid to pull it on the sullen Mohawk woman Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham) who has stolen Mr. Eddy's car and parked it on the local reservation, a patch of land that spans the border between the Canada and New York state. When the young Native American offers Ray a job of dubious legality as payback, Ray accepts and is soon engaged in a criminal enterprise ferrying illegal refugees (or contraband slaves?) across that very border.

Yet despite all these signs of resolution and determination, Ray - the main character in writer/director Courtney Hunt's wintry, close-to-the-ground independent feature - isn't so very tough after all. Her petulant young boss easily deflects requests for a promotion; the delivery man remains unmoved by her excuses for the deposit; her adolescent son pouts and defies her at every turn. Lila has her own motivation for taking Ray on as a partner, and Ray herself - while unafraid to fight back against Lila's pushy intimidation - tentatively keeps returning for more smuggling jobs. She needs the money and Lila has the connections. What's more, throughout all these experiences, Ray's face betrays not just a grim weariness but a flickering sensitivity and a cautious intelligence. There's a hardness to the appearance of Melissa Leo (who earned an Oscar nomination for this performance), but also a softness around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, betraying a wounded soul beneath the occasionally ill-mannered exterior.

The larger film is likewise warm-hearted beneath its frosty, grungy surface - perhaps too much so. Still, it's hard to resent Hunt's empathy and good will towards her characters. Try as she might to follow through on the movie's initially bleak existential vision, Hunt can't help throwing them a bone from time to time, getting them out of jams and rewarding them with lucky breaks and narrative slaps on the wrist. The movie even closes on an embarrassing and completely unnecessary note of reconciliation, in which Ray's teenage son apologizes to an old woman he scammed - as if even the possibility of the boy's callousness had to be happily washed away. Of course, some relief (however misapplied) may be in order after the dread and despair Hunt manages to dredge up for an hour and a half - there are times when you are absolutely certain something awful is about to happen, and often you're quite right. (At other times, the dread remains unresolved yet undispersed, hanging in the air like the smoke after Ray's teen son accidentally starts a fire outside the trailer.)

Shot on HD in real locations, the movie is initially gritty and grim but as the plot gets moving, we realize this "true-to-life" independent is also something of a thriller - and a pretty effective one at that. The run-ins with a nasty Quebecois smuggler, Ray's slow realization of what this business entails, and the runs across the titular body of water, are all packed with suspense and tension. The choice of setting is thematically rich, as the Mohawk reservation is a kind of no-man's land - neither U.S. nor Canadian police can trespass on it and in a weird technical way, the smuggling could be construed as free trade (at least that's how Lila initially describes it to Ray). When Ray enters "Indian territory" to retrieve her car she is unknowingly crossing an invisible line and entering a new zone - like the cowboys in old Westerns she has arrived in a place where the rule of law is weak, social constrictions are loosened, and both danger and reward are dramatically amplified.

We don't see much of the reservation community as a physical entity, though we meet a good deal of its inhabitants: what we do see is uninhabited wood and the hostile plain upon which Ray and Lila will make their smuggling runs. The Mohawk reservation, and particularly the frozen river which stand as its portal to the "other side," is a symbolic passageway, an in-between space on which Ray can test the boundaries of her own fortitude and eventually even discover her own compassion (the outcome of this trip into uncharted moral territory is actually a strengthening of Ray's character, though it's admittedly a long time coming). At the same time, while mythologizing the location, Hunt mostly keeps the people humanized and down-to-earth. She has an interest not only in telling her story, but in showing a largely unseen people and their way of life, and she deftly weaves together reportorial observation of the Mohawk population (as well as the rural working-class whites) with entertaining, often tense, storytelling.

That's not to say there aren't weaknesses - characterizations can descend into the obvious, plot quandaries are solved with a little too much ease (particularly a certain matter involving Lila's son), and occasionally a tone of earnestness prevents complete involvement. The acting is a little ropey, a fact exposed by the unpolished aesthetic - even in high-definition, video has the uncanny ability to show up artifice in a performance. And as previously stated, the screenplay tends to wind things up a little too neatly. Yet Frozen River remains a compelling, involving piece of work and an effective feature debut for the 44-year-old Hunt, who studied law at Northeastern before becoming a filmmaker. The movie won several awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, with Leo's performance invariably the center of discussion. Her work is a good, thoughtful bit of acting, but it's also the evocative sense of place and rich suggestiveness of Hunt's story that make the worth checking out.

For the Love of Movies interview

(What follows is my full review, originally written for the Examiner, which was initially linked up at this spot. From now on this will be its home.)

When critic/filmmaker Gerald Peary set out to document the history of movie criticism, his subject's story had a beginning. Now it seems that the story may have an ending too, and not a happy one. Or is it merely a rebirth? Nearly a decade after he initiated his project, For the Love of Movies: The Story of Film Criticism is completed and showing around the country (the next screening will be Thursday evening at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH). Print criticism is rapidly disappearing (since the release of the film, which already featuring dire warnings of a crisis in criticism, the number of fired critics has grown enormously). Meanwhile, the rising presence of the Internet seems to be shifting the definition of criticism - but towards what exactly? Last week, I spoke to Peary about the past and the future of criticism, and also about his own work, both as critic and creator. Most of the discussion is contained here, with some slight edits for clarity and space. My words are in red, Peary's in white. Clarifications are offered in italics throughout.

[For background on the film itself, you can read my review of For the Love of Movies, published back in September.]

Just to begin with, could you give me a little bit of background on your interest in criticism and what it was that led you eventually to the Boston Phoenix (and the other publications you've written for)? I read your conversation with David Cairns, so I got a little sense of what made you love movies, but what brought you specifically to that profession?

As I said [in Cairns' interview] I always watched movies since I was a little kid and I had, I guess, really good taste without even knowing it! All the movies I liked when I was 5, and 6, and 7, and 9 years old turned out the best ones; almost all invariably are by "auteur" directors. I didn't even know who they were, but they turned out to be by, you know, people like John Ford, or Howard Hawks, or Nicholas Ray, it's quite strange. So I guess I always looked at movies differently. And I think from the age of about 15 I was reading criticism without any thought of being a film critic ... I was influenced by critics [as to] what movies I saw, and I liked the way that they looked at things, so I think all the vocabulary was sort of absorbed by me before I ever ever wrote anything. ... It wasn't till I was I guess in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin and ... I was writing finally a PhD in film and I wanted to stop. I was going too fast and I started writing reviews for the school newspaper in Wisconsin called the Daily Cardinal. I was the arts editor and I wrote reviews. And that's the first time when I was, I guess 25 or something like that. And it was more just to stop my PhD and go slower, and just a bit of being a slacker. I ran a film society and I wrote reviews, but I don't think I thought that's what my profession would be.

So what were you getting the PhD in?

Well it turned into ... I only took a couple film courses in my life. I was getting into drama but because I got sick of drama (I couldn't stand directing actors anymore) somehow they allowed me to switch my dissertation. I wrote my dissertation on the rise of the American gangster film, about silent gangster films. ... This was an unpublished dissertation but I was just doing research and reading plots and learning things about movies that seemed to have been lost. ... You can see it in my film because I'm a film historian and that's really fun for me to try and put film history together. That was actually - I didn't think about it till this second, it's the first time I've ever thought about but, it's a pretty analogous story trying to invent a history of the gangster genre and in this case invent the history of film criticism.

So, during your history as a movie buff, where it was not a professional duty, and then becoming a professional critic, did you ever find that your love of movies and your duty to report and review them for the public ever clashed?

I've always been kind of a social worker film critic - that's my term that like to use. I like to find films that people don't know about, find underdog movies by, you know, young filmmakers that nobody's ever heard of and try to get them seen by people. That was the first thing I ever did with the Daily Cardinal. We had ten film societies on campus and I would write little blurbs about movies playing that night, and so ... getting butts into seats is what my object has always been, for odd movies, rare movies and it still is.

At what point during your career as a critic did you take an interest in the history of criticism, or had it just been something you accumulated by reading so many critics in your youth?

I guess I read contemporary [criticism] when it came out. But I remember reading the [older] criticism like the books of James Agee reviews when I was probably about 17 years old. Those were about films from the 40s and that was an amazing book, beautiful writing, and it literally led me to see films from, you know, a critic's perspective, historical perspective. So that was the first time I read about John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It was written about with great enthusiasm by Agee. ... And I think for a while John Huston was my favorite film director, and that was because of, not contemporary criticism, but from critics writing in the 40s about how wonderful John Huston was.

So at what point during the process either of this documentary, or just being a critic, did you feel that you started to see the writing on the wall, in terms of a demise of print criticism? Because that certainly seems to be a subtext, or even an overt text of the film. When you started to make the film did you have that in mind or did it just happen?

Well, it was there. The movie took so long to make - it started now literally nine years ago - so when it first began there was nobody being fired on the job. I did feel that critics were being less read and that was one of the objectives ... it's kind of fallen by the wayside because of the big crisis, but if people actually saw critics' faces and saw how they talked, that they would therefore take more interest in at least reading the critics they had. And now it's changed into, they see the faces, they see they're interesting, but those critics are disappearing right and left. This really was in the middle of the movie, it's only, it's been the last 4 years that this is happening. I just saw Elvis Mitchell (and I interviewed him three or four years ago) and we just said, at that point the crisis didn't exist, we were just talking in general. It's too expensive - but for a while I kept changing the word "critic" [onscreen] to ex-critic, ex-critic all the way through the movie. The last bunch of ex-critics are just still listed as critic because we can't do anything about that.

Yeah, there aren't going be too many critics left there especially with Andrew Sarris [the legendary critic who was recently laid off from the New York Sun]. That happened right after the film was completed, right?

Yeah, so the fact that Sarris isn't there anymore. ... The thing with 27 critics at the beginning is long, long gone. You know, twice that much or three times as many critics have gone since I wrote the warning at the beginning about 27 critics having lost their jobs.

Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Or unfortunate. Or both.

Yeah.

When you were interviewing the critics, or seeking interviews, was anybody resistant to the idea, were there some people who didn't want to do it, or was pretty much everybody on board with this thing from the get-go? 'Cause's there's so many, so many critics in it.

Not everybody. Manny, Manny Farber I didn't interview. I think I have clips of Manny Farber but he was pretty old. [He died about a year ago, in his nineties]. His wife, who was also a critic named Pat Patterson, was trying to urge him to be in the film but he wasn't interested. I actually just called him randomly on the phone in California and I think he said two words: I think they were "Go away!" That's all! And the other person that's clearly missing, these are print people, is Manohla Dargis, the New York Times critic, and she just will not - she had nothing against the film but does not want to be seen publicly in any kind of medium. If you even look on the web there's no picture of her, it's for that reason she would not do the movie. But other than that everybody was...I think everybody said yes.

The one other person who pops to mind, obviously a very contentious critic, doesn't have the best relationship with other critics it seems, is Armond White. Did you ever consider interviewing him, did you approach him?

I did. Well, he was actually on a list to be interviewed at a point that we ran out of money completely. 'Cause we had one guy who was the executive producer for a while and then I bought the film from him and in that little gap ... he had a lot more money than I did to work with, so we just kind of cancelled the interview. But I would have loved to have Armond in the film

Would have been very interesting I think. Maybe the sequel.

Yup, I mean contentious people are fun in movies and he's just a complete loose cannon and who knows what he's gonna say! But it would have been interesting, yeah.

When you were creating this film how did the process of seeking and organizing the material go about? Did you write any narration beforehand or did you just do the interviews and then see how you would pull it together afterwards? Or did you have an idea at the beginning of the structure?

Yeah, it's a much more edited film. I had some idea it would be critics today talking about earlier critics who influenced them and the most important thing was to see the history. So the last chapter ... is the part about the rising of the Net and the changing of the Net and whatever that means. That was the last few years also, trying to make more sense of that and still, it's still very hard to make sense of it because we're right in the middle of it. It's too early to have a perspective on what's going on, but you know… So yes, so the answer is yes, the film developed as it went along, and it's been edited [a lot]. I think there are thousands of cuts and thousands of choices, so the editing room is really, really important in putting the film together.

Now, at what point did you come up with the idea to show The Passion of Anna and play Vincent Canby's words? Because I thought that was one of the most effective pieces in the movie and I was sort of wondering what was the process, the thought process and the execution behind that? [In For the Love of Movies, a clip from Ingmar Bergman's 1969 film is shown while the New York Times review is read on the soundtrack. There were some similar sequences, with different films and different critics, used throughout the film.]

I mean, I can't say that was any different than any other one. I think, yeah, that one worked better than some of the other things. No, the thing is, the important thing is that we used "Fair Use" for the film. Which means that we can't use long [clips] and I didn't have to pay for many, many of those clips. They're all connected to using them with the critic's voice over them. So so I think that particular clip goes a little bit longer, or is more contemplative -

For some reason, it's stuck in my mind...

Yeah, I agree.

I can't get it out - I liked it a lot.

There's a guy from German TV who watched the movie, hated it, thought it was the worst movie, except he liked that. It was the only thing he liked in the whole movie!

Well, you can't go wrong with Bergman and Canby, but I thought you put it together really well and I appreciated that. But also in terms of what you're speaking about - the fair use and the use of the clips - is there a possibility with a DVD release... Which is actually a separate question but you can answer that here as well, when it might be coming out on DVD. Is there a possibility…

It is coming out. It actually is coming out, you know we just did a recall 'cause we sucked out one thing on the DVD, but the DVD is officially out in a few weeks.

Great, I was wondering then ... how many special features were you able to include in terms of lengthier clips, I suppose, from past - like Pauline Kael on television, things like that, or were those all unavailable?

No, the thing is when you, we didn't do lengthier anything because, [while] we have really good extras the use of clips is also limited, just the way it would be on normal movies. So if you use the clip on extras you gotta pay what you would pay normally. The television stuff with Pauline Kael we paid for, so if we used more of it, we'd have to pay more money. So therefore it's not in the extras 'cause this is a low, low-budget movie; we don't have any money. But we have really good extras which are extensions of the interviews: an interview with me, a self-interview; a wonderful section with John Waters talking about his favorite gay film critic, a guy named Parker Tyler from the 40s, that's fantastic; and we have more Roger Ebert explaining "thumbs up" and where that came from, and what he thinks of it. And of course Stanley Kauffman, who's kind of the dean of American film critics, who's in his 90s. Also a section about women critics... Somebody I guess who just lost her job is on Spout, right, is ...

Karina Longworth? That's surprising. I hadn't heard anything about that ... That's very surprising.

Karina, yeah, I think... So she's an ex-critic too. It's even hitting the web people now.

I guess that's the state of professional criticism, in terms of [getting paid].

Awful, awful...

I was going to ask you as well in terms of the critics you spoke to, and what you included, was there anything you regretted not including in the film? Not in terms of something being in the extras like an extra clip of an interview but something maybe structurally. I know you had wished to interview more sort of articulate bloggers.

... The intention was to have more people. I do mean that, when you guys feel that it's anti-Internet it's not because you know … I just find people all the time and especially doing these interviews, I've actually found lots of smart people have interviewed me, they're writing on the Net and they're really good. I thought your writing was just great on the movie, it was just beautifully written ... So that's, you know proof, that you're out there.

No, yeah, I appreciate that and I think also, in the movie when you included the pieces with Roger Ebert and Jonathan Rosenbaum at the end, I thought ... I'll admit there was a point sort of about two-thirds of the way in where I was getting a little [annoyed] but then it seemed like you balanced it out pretty well and I appreciated that too.

Well, what started the Internet thing was, the first three voices you hear are critics who are anti-Internet. That was on the cusp of when the Internet started and I think the first voices you heard were exasperation: who are these new people, they don't know anything. And then as the Internet goes on, it becomes clear that along with a bunch of illiterate ignoramuses who are writing out there, a lot of people are really good who are writing out there. My only thing is, I wish the Internet had more influence, and I wish the people who had good taste on the Internet could actually make people go to movies en masse the way that print critics used to be able to do it. That's - I mean we don't know that, but talking to theater owners and talking to distributers they're completely despairing right now. They don't say there's a lot of Internet [criticism] that's getting people to the movies. I don't think it is. You think it is? You know, a little bit, but…

Right now, what David [Cairns] says in his interview with you, on a small person-to-person basis, is it's like a film society I think, it's a more localized phenomenon. Which actually leads into [another question] ... I think one thing that's different about the blogosphere and print criticism is print criticism is very focused around daily reviewing. It's usually a certain format whereas it seems like the blogosphere embraces many different sorts of film writing, it sort of mixes them up. Do you think there's a separate film to be made, not just in terms of blogging but in terms of the long history of film writing outside of [reviewing]: historical, I guess cultural criticism? There's a little in the film but it seems more about where that interacts with film reviewing.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

And would you want to make that - ?

It's a very focused film - 'cause you just can't say everything in one movie, nor would I want to. If I did that it would just make my movie kind of stupid, so I would love to see other movies about other subjects - you know start the whole history from the whole different - outsiders writing about movies. That certainly is the great thing about the blogosphere, that you can write in all sorts of forms and that's fine with me. So, yeah, another movie - fine, excellent.

You said earlier that for your own part the love of movies and the broader interests and the daily reviewing kind of melded together, but how do you see the difference between reviewing and criticism? Because it seems like a lot of figures in the film, especially the older ones, especially in the period where you say criticism mattered - in the 70s - mixed the two. And it seems like since the 80s maybe, a bit of the higher-end criticizing, the polemicizing so to speak, has fallen off and there's been more of a focus on daily reviewing. Do you see that, and how do you think the relationship has played out over the history of criticism between a polemic and a review?

Well, one of the problems is it's hard to be a critic writing so short, which is what the story of the world today is. I mean the great thing about - this potential on the web is you guys can write as long as you want to write. And you know, I don't think you can really write criticism unless you can. I think I talked about this, every time it's about contextualizing, it's about seeing movies in terms of history, in terms of politics, in terms of genre, in terms of other movies ... maybe being autobiographical, bringing the writer in. Writer's point of view. But you need some room to play around, and some space to do all those kinds of things. ... One of the other things, obviously, is really good writing is about language ... a good critic is a great writer. Reviewing could be more about, question one: should you go to this movie or shouldn't you go to this movie and here's an opinion why you should or shouldn't; that's the narrowest part of the reviewing. And the criticism is all the other things, all the contextualizing the movie and seeing it in different mirrors and different ways of looking. That's criticism.

Well, one thing that struck me about Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, who are obviously sort of central to the film, inevitably, is that they were both reviewers and they seem to be talked about a lot of times as reviewers. But when you really look at what they are remembered for, it's the longer polemics like "Circles and Squares," The American Cinema, even when Pauline Kael would use a movie and sort of start with that, and then go off into this criticism. One thing about David Bordwell's discussion of your movie which interested me was the thesis that maybe a lot of the deeper thoughts went into academia and became kind of stultified there, and we lost a little bit of the mix between the journalistic, very reader-friendly approach and the challenging thought process that sort of combined with it. I was wondering if you felt that was true as well.

You said it well. Well, that's sort of the American - I like the European idea of the kind of public intellectual and that's I think what David is talking about. ... I'm a professor but I don't really hang out in professor circles, you know, I'm much more in the journalist world. But there are whole circles of conventions or professors giving papers on movies, and hardly any of them write in the public sphere - it's all kept in the academic sphere. And so it can get stultified, and it sometimes did, but I would love much more of a mix. I mean, David Bordwell himself is, I don't know if you've ever met him, like one of the friendliest human beings -

I haven't met him but you get that impression just from reading his writing online. Everything I've read on that blog is mind-blowing and it's written in such a readable, approachable way. It's fantastic.

Approachable - yeah, you said it well. He does - he's just that. Wonderful, friendly, completely open, you know, totally curious. I just saw him recently, had breakfast with him, he's just a super guy and he's not cautious and he's just completely excited about movies. And that's very different from a lot of academics who are sour, reserved people in a certain kind of way.

How would you describe the relationship between the reader and the critic, and how did that change making this movie? Because it seems sometimes antagonistic but they keep coming back and reading, or at least they did until recently.

Well, having gone through an earlier period where critics' awards were taken quite seriously... I mean I can say, as a critic, that maybe that gives you a swelled head, but it's sort of nice that you actually can feel that your words were read with some kind of thought and actually could send people to movies. I suppose the missing part was the link that people couldn't answer back like blogging, but on the other hand the answering back was that as you walked around and went in public, you'd find people that actually read your review and talked about it. And in the last bunch of years, at least as print critic, I almost never get anybody, ever, ever, ever who says they've read anything I've written, it's almost unheard of. I'd be shocked, you know, I write for the Boston Phoenix and there's a tiny letter column but we don't really get mail, nothing comes to us. I have no idea what anybody's thinking except I think they're not reading it very much.

So probably it's a much better world to, you know, feel your readers and talk to them, especially when they're intelligent people writing back on a blog vs. just people saying, "This bites." There's a lot of that stuff; a lot of cowardly people [with], I guess, no sense of power, decided to be powerful by writing anonymous horseshit at the bottom of people's articles. That's popular - there's a lot of smart people and a lot of stupid people out there and I guess there always have been. But...being connected to readers is what should be important to everybody. You're not just writing out to cyberspace or a newspaper space.

But there's no doubt that the influence of print is just diminished completely. I'll tell you, when I first came to Boston in 1978, thirty years ago, I came here to be a critic for the Boston Real Paper. There were two weekly papers, the Real Paper and the Phoenix, and they were 50 cents each. And literally on weekends I could like walk up to Harvard Square and you'd see people all over who'd bought both of them and were perusing both to see what to read. The articles were really long and the movie articles - there was competition. I remember once I was sent to New York one week ahead to see Woody Allen's Manhattan so we could scoop the Phoenix … what a wonderful world that was! I'm saying this as a print person. Because you know there was no web at all, so there's nothing else to read, all people could do is read print or watch I guess, you know, Ebert and Siskel or something. So as people say in the movie nostalgically, we had a lot of influence then. And there's a great line where Richard Corliss says, "Critics had the power to shape the debate." Unbelievable - to shape the debate about a movie! So that seems to be gone. So, yeah. It's a different world... You know, I talk as a print critic, so that's what I am.


Gerald and I continued to talk for a while after this; when I finished questioning him he essentially began to "interview" me, and and seemed genuinely curious as to what brought me to love and write about movies myself. For my part, I encouraged him to make the leap into the blogosphere like some of his peers. While he demurred for the moment, hopefully he'll reconsider, as he has a lot to say and seems to miss that connection to an "audience."

Meanwhile, his film will be showing at the Music Hall later this week, and possibly in some Boston-area theaters in the near future. It will also be available on DVD, exclusively through his website, within the next few weeks. Anyone with an interest in film and film criticism should check this documentary out - For the Love of Movies is fun, informative, and timely; hopefully it marks that rebirth, rather than the end, of writing with passion and knowledge about movies.

The Stars Are Beautiful

[Thanks to Rommel Wells, whose My Space page - which I googled - allowed me to copy and paste Brakhage's text instead of having to transcribe it all myself.]

Stan Brakhage's 1974 film The Stars Are Beautiful is unusual among his works, primarily because it features a soundtrack, in the form of a narration (as well as direct sound which accompanies home-video footage of his children clipping a chicken's wings). He wrote the voiceover himself over the course of a month or two: growing tired of the same old creation myths, he invented a new one every night - imaginative speculations on where the stars, sun, and moon came from. The film itself is not one of his strongest works but the narration is inventive, humorous, often silly, and occasionally quite stirring. Here it is, in full:

The Stars Are Beautiful
by Brakhage

There's a wall there; a great dark wall with holes in it. Behind the wall is an enormous fire of white flame.

The stars are entirely in the eyes of those who are looking at the sky; if no one is looking at the sky, it is entirely dark. The stars in the eyes are very much the same in all eyes, and those looking at the sky at the same time are all participating in the kinds of communication that have to do with stars.

It's a great roof, studded with sequins. The movement of the stars is in relationship with the movement of the sun, giving the impression that the stars are moving across the sky.

The stars are optical nerve-endings of the eye which the universe is.

Sparks from the train of God's thought. I have one big toe in bronze and the other in eternity.

There is such an intense brightness that we can't really see it. The sky is really burning white and the stars are black. The daytime is less bright and therefore the yellow—that is really there in daytime—we see as blue. The sun we see as yellow—it is really blue-black. That that we see as blue sky is burning away the black spot of the Sun. And the sky at night is burning away at the black stars. Novalis has seen the Sun as black, and so has everyone who has closed his or her eyes on it. Retention-colors are the only true colors.

The stars are sparks of lightening.

The stars are the loopholes in the two hundred and fifty six dimensions.

The fact is: the earth is falling into a well; the Sun is the top of the well, the blue sky the walls. The stars are reflections of the real stars behind the Sun.

It is a furry animal—the stars are silver hairs.

The sky is a …cylinder to the moon.

The sky is altogether not composed of such great distances as we suppose. In truth, it is an old fire. The stars are sparks. The Sun a burning coal.

The black of the sky at night is ashes in a bubbling drop of water. This is the same with us—i.e., as the universe burns, so do we. Our heads contain water very much like the sky holds moons. The burning in us keeps the water in our heads boiling and sputtering.

The sky is the dead, decaying body of God. The stars are glittering maggots.

It is the back of a blue dragon, and we are the eye of the dragon, watching him die. The Sun is the blood-hole.

The sky is a cup of tea, which the Earth drinks every day, then at night inverts the cup to read the leaves.

The sky is a lens of air magnifying a single atom of itself.

There was one of these stories that I liked but didn't believe, so neither Jane nor I could remember it.

This one's fairly traditional: The Sun is the ejaculation of the penis in the vagina of the universe. The stars are the sperms searching for the eggs of moons.

The universe is part of a vast brain, the stars the firing of the brain cells, each a visualization of the bark of a dog. I.e. when a dog barks, the response of the ear of the sky is a star; when a dog howls, the response is the Moon.

The Sun is where everything else goes to a further place or places, and we really don't know what happens there.

The stars are trembling silver strings to everyone's brains; the Sun and Moon are the eyes of the great puppeteer. Once a month he smiles and winks. He has control of our fates.

The day sky is a pool of all of our tears. The world is getting smaller and smaller. The night sky is a blotter to all our black thoughts. There is very little space left.

The sky is the low-water beach on which are left phosphorous and plankton, which will grow to be enormous beasts.

Light is everywhere, and the sky draws everything to it that we make. For instance, it draws our air and condenses it, until it becomes black with our breathing. And it draws water in gigantic drops which we see as stars. It draws the Earth in streams until it blazes golden. And finally, it draws all our fire into the ash of the Moon.

The Earth is a pool of brown watery waves in a forest of trees we see as stars near a golden bird flying after its white mate.

The stars are clear sounds. The Sun a magnificent silence. The Moon? Whispers, that are almost sounds in the undulating wave of noise the universe is.

The sky is the solid state of time. The Sun? Its emergence. The Moon, the tube it falls into. The stars are the fragments that never move on.

God, taking pity on those who stopped smoking made the stars to look like so many cigarettes burning. The clouds to look like smoke. The Sun to remind them of the striking of a match. And the Moon in the shape of a filter-tip.

The night-sky is a fold-over pattern of the Sun…the Moon is a visual echo.

The stars are a flock of hummingbirds; if you look closely, you can see their wings flickering. The Sun and Moon are their flowers.

The Sun, Moon and stars are the footprints of God. We are his head, as he walks currently in a circle.

Everything is happening at once, but the sky is a clock, and makes things look like they are happening one at a time.

The stars and the Moon are reflections of the Sun, which can't be seen.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was in the sky at night only the Moon, as now in the day there is only the Sun. Then some wise men projected into the sky hieroglyphs of their thoughts so that everyone who looked after that would know those thoughts and be wise also.

The stars are the places where snowflakes are made. Each star has a different shape and makes a different shaped snowflake. When the snowflakes fall from the stars, they shrink and become changed in shape. And thus, every snowflake is also a different shape.

The stars are the broken fragments of the mirror that reflects reality.

Big dust motes.

The nets are boiling.

This week on Examiner

Originally this provided a link to a preview of my upcoming work at the Examiner. Here are links to the new homes of the pieces written that week: For the Love of Movies interview, Frozen River, What Are the Best Films of the 21st Century? (no longer active; updated version will be appearing on Wonders in the Dark shortly).

discussing Schindler

As expected, Schindler's List (placing #23 on Allan Fish's "best of the 90s" countdown) has opened up an interesting discussion on Wonders in the Dark. Does the film trivialize the Holocaust? Did Spielberg spread himself too thin? Are there actually 22 better films from the decade? Is Rage Against the Machine overrated? (Wonders threads have a delightful tendency to wander.) Jump in and discuss - the more voices the merrier.