Once Upon A Time In America

365 Films

Entry #157

Once Upon A Time In America (1984)

Directed by Sergio Leone

              Here we finally come to the completion of Sergio Leone’s second trilogy with Once Upon A Time In America.   I will completely understand the confusion for I have not only left an enormous gap between blog entries, but I have also begun with Mr. Leone’s final trilogy of work.  It’s sort of like starting at the end of a puzzle and then waiting a month only to start right back up again at the end.  If that analogy works I’m going to submit it to urban dictionary so please let me know if it does in the comments section.  Magnum opus doesn’t even begin to describe Once Upon A Time In America.  It is a film so big that it can’t even be contained in its mammoth run time of three hours and forty-nine minutes.  A recent Cannes premiere of a four-hour plus cut only substantiates the theory that Leone had more movie to put in this than any single movie can take.  Fitting that it was his final film because I can’t think of a better send off for this larger than life cinematic presence.  Trying to condense a coherent series of thoughts from this film in the space of a few measly sentences is futile at best and insulting to the work at worse.  Therefore, I will attempt a sort of free form, free associative series of thoughts and observations on the final work of Mr. Leone and hope in some small way to at least inspire someone who stumbles on this blog to seek it out and make a night of viewing it.  In a recent conversation I had with a friend about the film he said it simply and rather eloquently: “That movie is a bummer.  That movie bums me out.”  That observation really got to the heart of the film for me because it is so wonderfully easy to spot the exhilarating spectacle of Leone’s filmmaking abilities.  The sets, the Morricone music (seriously one of the most moving film scores ever created), and the sweeping scope of Leone’s camera, collectively work their hardest to indulge in the kind of myth making he seems intent to destroy and burn to cinders.  It’s a similar approach to Once Upon A Time In The West only that film seemed to be clinging to one last vestige of hope for the way of a certain kind of life in the old west whereas this film is most decidedly an Eastern and one that seems to suggest the entire foundation of this country was and always will be rotten to the core.  Leone’s last three films all work as a triptych exploration of a land that seemingly both intoxicated and repulsed the Italian filmmaker.  And the elements that intoxicated him were more firmly situated in the fantastical Hollywood realm of our national psyche.  Once Upon A Time In America is the final attempt to wrestle both of those contradictory impulses to the ground.  Is it successful in doing so?  I don’t think I’m quite equipped yet to answer that question but what I do know is that, like a lot of the films on this blog, it’s boundary pushing imperfections make it the awe inspiring and immortal work of art that it is and always will be. If you’ll kindly indulge me in a bit of a rant, I would like to make the suggestion that perfection if highly over rated.  If anybody can remind me of a “perfect” film please do so in the comments below this post.  The idea has always been silly to me because everybody’s ideas of perfection are so wildly unique and personal that it seems a moot point to ever label a work as such.  To that extent, I also happen to find imperfect films usually more fascinating and much more rewarding in the department of conversation ignition.  Imperfect works are also always much more indicative of their creators because human beings are by definition imperfect so why should we ask our films, literature, or any other art form to rise above the status of their creators.  This is not to say people should stop seeking perfection, but only that in the pursuit of perfection does one ever push themselves beyond any standard definition of the word and into an entirely different stratosphere.  One where, in a film such as this for example, each cut seems like the work of human hands spilling open the contents of their brains and attempting to sort out the mess through images, music, and dialogue.  Those are the kinds of films that always attract me and they are why I’ll always return to Once Upon A Time In America.  Even if I never see the “complete” cut or whatever new permutation someone believes to be Leone’s final word on the matter, I’ll always recognize that film contains everything I love most about cinema.  So forgive me if this particular entry is entirely haphazard and completely without form or content.  I was trying to approximate the kind of feelings that this particular film inspires.  I don’t want to say it’s a kind of lost art of filmmaking, because somebody will bring it back someday.  But it makes the process of breaking it down element by element for a casual analysis very difficult for me.  I’m sure there is a plethora of great writing out there both pro and con for the film.  I just love this film for it’s championing of the myth of America but also its mourning of all the ways in which we, as Americans, have thoroughly failed that myth.  

Undertow

   365 Films

Entry #156

Undertow (2004)

Directed by David Gordon Green

             Editor’s Note: I understand some of you may have been under the impression that this blog was dead and done for, but I am pleased to announce that this is not the case.  I haven’t quite worked out the math yet but it’s probably statistically impossible for me to complete this blog in the stated goal of 365 days.  That being said, there’s nothing in the rule book that says I can not finish 365 films over some other pre-determined arbitrary length of time is there?  No.  There is not.  Stay tuned for what length of time that turns out to be. 

Continuing the David Gordon Green retrospective, today’s entry brings us to Undertow, the woefully under-appreciated stepchild in Mr. Green’s wildly varying filmography.  It’s interesting to consider the amount of grief Mr. Green sustained upon the release of Pineapple Express and his subsequent “stoner comedy” period when re-visiting Undertow.  This is a film that is almost as big a leap for the filmmaker as any of his later studio pictures.  Sure, it retains a lot of the lyrical visual stylistics of his prior two films, and the southern setting certainly fits this filmmaker well, but compared to those previous films, Undertow is almost a Jerry Bruckheimer production in terms of the pyrotechnics.  Adapted from a story conceived by the master Terrence Malick (who also produced the film but is credited under a pseudonym for the story by credit), Undertow relates the tragic and somewhat horrifying family history of the Munn family and the subsequent events that led to young brothers Chris and Tim being orphaned and left to fend for themselves in the woods of Georgia.  Borrowing beautifully from a grab bag mix of The Night of the Hunter (another future 365 entry…someday) and a Dukes of Hazzard episode (decidedly not on my list), Undertow is like most great films decidedly imperfect but injected with a kind of vibrancy that can only be the product of a genuine talent figuring out his or her filmmaking philosophy.  There are scenes of earth-shattering violence juxtaposed with Green’s unique sense of goofy observational humor.  There’s a blossoming teen romance thrown in with a subplot involving younger brother Tim’s anorexia caused by his anxiety over not being able to grasp the concept of infinity.  There’s even one of the most genuinely beautiful and heartbreaking scenes ever filmed of a man sitting alone in a kitchen eating cake. Oh, and that opening credit sequence is one for the ages, one of the best of the past ten years by far.  Undertow was a big step outside of Mr. Green’s wheelhouse and he paid the price for it.  The usual praise chorus that greeted George Washington and All The Real Girls was this time replaced with indifferent shrugs.  It was the first time Mr. Green would meet that kind of hostility for stepping out of his comfort zone but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.  I remember describing the film to a friend and saying it was a southern gothic fairy tale and before I could even get the last syllable out of that description he put his hand up and said, “yeah, not interested” and walked away from the conversation.  Nearly ten years later Undertow stands as a remarkably courageous transitional work for a filmmaker barely into his career.  Which is not to say the film only has symbolic value, only that it is a thrilling and unsettling work by a true filmmaking talent.

Also here is that opening credit sequence for your viewing pleasure.  Umm, something kind of gruesome happens in it but I'll let you discover that for yourself.  Enjoy! 

All The Real Girls

365 Films

Entry # 155

All The Real Girls (2003)

Directed by David Gordon Green

In honor of my brother’s birthday today, it seemed only fitting to pick a film that he holds as near and dear as I do.  All The Real Girls is a difficult film for me to summarize, much less perform any kind of critical analysis on its filmmaking techniques.  So ingrained are some of the moments into my own memories not just of the time when I first saw it, but also images from my own life, that it seems trivial to even attempt any kind of objective distance.  Therefore, I will cop-out with my usual sentiment of suggesting that if you are not familiar with All The Real Girls that you drop everything and go see it no matter how inconvenient it is for you to do so and make up your own mind.  The best I can do, and how I will attempt to tie this all into a celebration of Nate’s birthday is explain the context and story behind why this film has become so important to the both of us.  It was a frigid February weeknight back in 2003 (at least I think it was a weeknight, Nate feel free to correct if I am wrong).  I was in the second semester of my freshman year at NYU and Nate was just a few months away from wrapping up his four year stint at NYU as well.  A bit of back-story for the back-story, as a freshman at the NYU film program (back then at least) did not involve any actual filmmaking.  You take a bunch of introductory classes and don’t get your hands on a physical film camera until the following year.  The importance of this is that I was not yet equipped with the experience of being in the “shit” at NYU, Nate had been fully immersed in it for the past three years.  Without getting into any specifics, mainly because that’s Nate’s story to tell and I do not wish to dredge up any unpleasant memories in too much sordid detail, Nate was a little frustrated with the creative progress he was making at that particular moment in his college education.  The reason I bring this all up is because he knew little to nothing about the film All The Real Girls before we sauntered into the basement of the Angelika that night to see it.  I knew very little about it as well except for the fact that the film’s director, David Gordon Green, had previously made George Washington a film for which my deep and everlasting love has already been well documented on this site.   That name being listed in the credits was reason enough for me to check out anything regardless of the content (an edict that would come back to bite me in the ass a few years later with a few of Mr. Green’s films).  I remember Nate was hesitant and I don’t think he had yet seen George Washington, but he was not entirely sold on this based on the usual marketing materials.  He was interested for sure, otherwise he just wouldn’t have gone, but to say he went in wanting to love it would be an overstatement.  The reason I’m attempting to catalogue these seemingly innocuous details is because collectively, they make his reaction to the film afterwards all the more joyous.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen my brother react to a film so instantaneously the way he did for All The Real Girls.  It was as if the film gave him a dozen shots of pure creative adrenaline, which subsequently gave him a sense of clarity in regards to the creative struggles he was having with school at that time.  I just remember walking back to our dorms in Union Square and Nate was almost unable to stop talking about what he had just seen.  People sometimes (myself included) describe the primary pleasures to be taken from watching a movie as those of the escapist variety.  You watch a movie to be transported “somewhere else” and flee the boring reality of day-to-day existence.  Movies like All The Real Girls spin that very notion on its head and in fact, offer the exact opposite.  The feeling Nate and I had that night was one of personal engagement with the larger world; we felt a pure sense of connection with not only the film and its creators but also the fact that we lived in a universe where such a film could be made in the first place.  As absolutely eye-roll worthy as it sounds, this film gave us both a collective sense of hope.  When you hear the stories about films that changed people’s lives on first viewing, they are usually associated with epics or large scale pieces that offer a “game-changing” approach towards technique and craft.  Not to diminish that sentiment and surely I’ve experienced that with those films as well.  But there is something to be said for the films that seem to be made just and only for you.  There is something to be said for the fact that even the most restrained releases of films solely being shown in sparsely crowded, subterranean cinematic pits such as the Angelika still offer us the chance to step back out into the world feeling as if we’ve just witnessed something remarkable.  Even to this day, All The Real Girls fails to retain the qualities it needs in order to be a lifeless object to me.  It grows with me and each viewing offers the chance to be opened up to a new sense of understanding with the purity of its cinematic sincerity.   It is not something to be necessarily studied or poured over detail by detail (the film is certainly dense enough for that, I just don’t have the ability to do it).  It’s more like checking in with an old friend that you haven’t seen in a very long time.  You laugh at the same goofy moments and marvel at the emotional understandings you still share after all this time.  Personally, I think there’s something else going on in my mind every time I sit down to watch this film, a feeling that perhaps lords over even the very specificity of the film itself.  Even ten years later, I can’t help but be reminded of the look on Nate’s face and the passion in his voice when he spoke that night about a film that truly and deeply moved him.  It’s a beautiful thing to witness a piece of art lift someone up like that, perhaps even more so when it is someone for whom you happen to care a great deal.  And that person in turn, imbues the film with a sense of life that will last far beyond its run in the theaters.  I don’t want to speak for Nate on this, but I know that for myself, if I ever forget why this field is worth pursuing in the first place, I simply think of that film and that night. 

Happy Birthday Nate. 

Duck, You Sucker!

365 Films

Entry #154

Duck, You Sucker! (1968)

Directed by Sergio Leone

Let me just start off immediately by pointing out that Duck, You Sucker! is an AWESOME title for a movie.  It's not the only one this one has and by far the one that makes the least sense, but it's still pretty damn awesome.  In certain territories it's also known as A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon A Time In..The Revolution.  The last title makes a lot more sense considering this is the second entry in Leone's "Once Upon A Time..." trilogy, but that's neither here nor there.  I think my favorite part about the Duck, You Sucker title is, as Keith Uhlich wrote in Slant for the subsequent DVD review: "It is rumored that Leone's original title for Duck, You Sucker was Once Upon a Time…The Revolution, which it did eventually, and appropriately, go under during its French release. Frayling explains in an accompanying video interview that the English title is both a loose translation of the original Italian, Giù la Testa (literally: "Keep your head down, balls") and the result of a mistaken assumption on the part of Leone, who was convinced that "Duck, you sucker!" was a common phrase of American slang."  I don't know, that shit makes me laugh.  The film opens with what must be the only example of a an introductory shot announcing itself to us with a close up shot of piss.  Leone's capacity for stripping his environments down to their grubbiest, most base components gets a good exercise with the first section of this film.  In one of the most nauseatingly disgusting sequences ever committed to film, Rod Steiger's  Juan Miranda, a mexican outlaw gets picked up by a wagon carrying the worst examples of the white race within a 1,000 mile radius.  The group proceeds to berate Juan and his countryman (along with any other group on the planet that isn't white and christian) for being grotesque savages.  Leone visualizes their brutal words literally with a devastating montage of oral close-ups as they sloppily stuff their faces and spew racial bile at record speed.  For my money, it's one of the most memorable sequences Leone's ever committed to film, especially considering there's not a gun fight in sight.  To be fair, the scene's exclamation point does come in the form of a gunshot to the head, but it's definitely the ONLY way that sequence could have ended.  The reason I'm spending so much time waxing over this particular opening is that it sets up the overwhelming sense of cynicism that not only courses through so much of this film, but through all of Leone's work.  We are introduced to the hero of Duck, You Sucker and he is a vile, misogynistic sadist who also happens to be dedicated to his comrades and family (including the children from several different women to which he lays claim).  His eventual partner in crime is James Coburn's John Mallory, an early IRA explosives expert on the run from the British.  The point being that these two rise to the top like cream when the rest of the world is as shitty as the one run and ruled by the white institutions represented by the wagon in the form of money, violence, and religious hypocrisy.  And what Miranda and Mallory learn is that in order to destroy those institutions, they have to play by their rules and that is what sets apart Duck, You Sucker from so many other films of its type.  Leone has no romantic ideals about revolution and does not for one second see them as anything remotely glorious and cinematic as his filmmaking brethren.  For him, the founding of this country and fateful meeting between civilization and the frontier were not tidy nor orderly affairs.  Much like the trail of death left in the way of the railroad in Once Upon A Time In The West, the characters in this film are dragged kicking and screaming through the idea of progress and nobody comes out clean in the end. 

        

Once Upon A Time In The West

365 Films

Entry #153

Once Upon A Time In The West (1968)

Directed by Sergio Leone

Once Upon A Time In The West is a strange place to start my Sergio Leone retrospective, but then again, it's sort of strange for me to be doing a Leone retrospective in the first place.  It really is apropos of nothing; no anniversaries, no commemorative screenings, not even an exhibit at LACMA.  Then again, I should say my appetite was re-whetted after seeing The Lone Ranger a month ago and just relishing the obvious passion Gore Verbinski displayed for Leone in the film, which, along with his previous film Rango should play as a double bill Leone tribute for some enterprising repertory theater someday.  My personal interest in Leone came from a bit of fanboy marketing on the part of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino back in 2003 upon the release of Rodriguez's Once Upon A Time In Mexico.  The story goes that Tarantino pointed out how Rodriguez had inadvertently made his own version of Leone's Dollars Trilogy with El Mariachi and Desperado, all he had to do now was make his The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  Thus, Once Upon A Time In Mexico was born.  I can also remember my brother, while I was still in high school, talking about a class he was taking at NYU that was entirely focused on Spaghetti Westerns.  A term that all at once baffled and delighted me in that I thought it referred to some kind of cinematic cross breeding between a splatter/slasher movie and the western (I thought Spaghetti was referring to tomato sauce, as in the color of blood gushing all over the screen, it wasn't until later I learned it meant Italian filmmakers making westerns).  With all of this cross-pollination of information, my interest piqued somewhere around January of 2004 and I eventually made the momentous decision to rent a bunch of movies from the video store.  Oh shit, I almost forgot, Kill Bill came out in the fall of '03, didn't it?  Yeah, that definitely played a part, what with Tarantino's liberal cribbing of Morricone's music for the film and its corresponding advertising.  In any event, I remember a sort of week long splurge of every Leone film I could get my hands on.  Lucky for me, all of Leone's major achievements were available on DVD by that point with the exception of Duck, You Sucker.  The only problem was, I had to make due with a tiny television set in my college dorm room, which was absolutely fine for every other purpose it served, it just couldn't make Leone that memorable.  I remember being very fond of the films, but none of them really hit me the way I wanted them to.  It wasn't until I had the opportunity to see Once Upon A Time In The West at the Egyptian theater here in Hollyood a few years back.  All I can say is: holy, fucking, shit.  It was a transcendent experience, and if you don't believe me, try watching that film on a giant screen and just wait until Claudia Cardinale makes her entrance.  When the camera soars majestically over the train station building and takes its very first view of the blossoming town nestled within and Morricone's score kicks into high gear, I dare you not to be a big blubbering mess by the end of it.  I can now say with utmost certainty that not only is Once Upon A Time In The West my personal favorite of Leone's, but it is definitely in my top five of films ever made (maybe even top three).  Sure, there are minor quibbles to be had, most of them involving Leone's complicated (to put it mildly) treatment of his female characters.  That's a discussion I'm not really equipped to have in this particular forum but I will point out that I acknowledge it and still love the film in spite of it.  It just seems down right nutty to ignore the indescribable majesty of the rest of the film.  And I would also argue that Claudia Cardinale turns in an extraordinary performance that delivers some much needed shading to a precariously sketched character.  Everything about this film from the chill-inducing score (I honestly can't think of a more successful and mind-blowing collaboration between director and composer than Leone and Morricone) to the stellar performances from Bronson, Fonda, and Robards (all outstanding, particularly Fonda), to the unbelievably operatic scope of the thing.  I hate making statements like this but I'm going to do it anyway, there is a part of me that thinks if you don't like Once Upon A Time In The West, you might as well stop watching movies because clearly you just can't vibe with what they are pedaling.  This was the first in what would later be known as Leone's second trilogy (since un named) after the Dollars or Man With No Name Trilogy.  It was to be his final pure western and the beginning of a three film examination concerning the brutal beginnings of this country.  As a swan song that evocatively captures the mythic qualities of a vanishing western genre (and way of life) while simultaneously under cutting every single one of those romantic qualities with shocking and punishing reminders of the violence inherent to the American character, Once Upon A Time In The West reminds us that the western, (or any forgotten genre really), regardless of knee jerk reactions to current popularity can be re-vitalized and say something bold and relevant about the society which created it.  We could really use another Once Upon A Time In The West really soon as far as I'm concerned.  We could use more filmmakers like Leone too.   

Manhattan

365 Films

Entry #152

Manhattan (1979)

Directed by Woody Allen

I know I said I was going to devote most of this blog to Vietnam war centered films for the time being but have you tried watching one of those recently?  I needed to take a break and with the release of Blue Jasmine, I thought it would be a good time to explore some of the earlier work of Woody Allen and what better place to start than two of his most overly-analyzed classics Annie Hall and now, Manhattan.  If you haven't been able to smell the over-powering whiff of desperation from this blog, I sincerely applaud your humane inclinations towards mercy.  Manhattan came at an interesting cross roads in Mr. Allen's career.  Where Annie Hall was a tremendous box office success and gobbled up all the major Academy Awards, the follow up to that film, Interiors produced only baffled and disappointed reactions from the Allen faithful up to that point.  Editor's note: I just watched Interiors for the first time last night and was pretty mesmerized by it but I can also completely understand the reputation it holds as perhaps one of Allen's least beloved films.  In one of Mr. Allen's boldest strokes, Manhattan doesn't seem like a corrective to Interiors but more of a melding of that films obsessions with   theatrical displays of adult behavior with the goofy romanticism of Annie Hall.  That said yearning comes occasionally in the form of the forty-two year old main character Isaac's relationship with a seventeen year old high school student does put an unfortunately creepy tinge on the proceedings.  Then again, even that bit of unpleasantness does quite a number on factoring out the highly idealized vision of Manhattan that the film creates.  The buildings and skylines may be gorgeously photogenic, (and the Gershwin score, as iconic as it is, is still incapable of being described through mere words) but within those cavernous streets and avenues are housed some of the most neurotic, twisted, and mentally unbalanced people one would ever hope to find.  It is ultimately the vision of Manhattan as a cinematic paradise that wins out and it is one that continues to inspire feelings of both nostalgia and a deep intense longing for a place that quite possibly never existed in the first place.  Mr. Allen seems to be suggesting (and it is a theme that has continued to obsess him ever since) that maybe we'll never find what we're looking for in this life but we can always find it in that infinitely beautiful cerebral headspace known as the movies. 

Annie Hall

365 Films

Entry #151

Annie Hall (1977)

Directed by Woody Allen

Unfortunately, for somebody in my particular age bracket, Woody Allen was only known as something of a punchline growing up in the early 90's.  The tabloid ready nature regarding the fall-out of his marriage to Mia Farrow made it all but impossible to understand that there was ever a respected filmmaker beneath that sordid affair.  It also didn't help that I first came into contact with Mr. Allen's work right around the beginning of his so-called "decline" period that seemed to have ended (although this depends entirely on who you ask) with 2005's Match Point.  I can't remember exactly which film it was but my first Woody Allen experience was either Mighty Aphrodite on video or Deconstructing Harry in theaters.  I guess I was too young at the time to fully grasp the particularities of the humor on display but the consistent and collective laughs of the adults around me indicated that something harmonious was being put up on screen.  It was not enough to get me to go back and begin tracing the origins of Mr. Allen's filmmaking career but I do remember seeing and quite enjoying the incredibly goofy Small Time Crooks.  It wouldn't be until sometime around early 2007 that I would finally get around to seeing Annie Hall.  It was an experience I can only equate with those that described any film watcher's first encounter with Star Wars or color film, it was literally mind blowing.  I remember watching Chris Rock on Charlie Rose being interviewed about Dogma and he said the reason he wanted to work with Kevin Smith was because he thought Chasing Amy was the best romantic comedy of its kind since Annie Hall.  For some reason, that ringing endorsement from no less a genius than Chris Rock did not inspire me to immediately run out and rent the damn thing.  The fact that I was also pretty unhealthily obsessed with Chasing Amy only confuses matters more (I haven't gotten to Chasing Amy yet but don't worry, I'm working on it).  Rocks' insight was incredibly spot on because  n Annie Hall, one can practically see the origin of every single romantic comedy created in its wake.  The self awareness, the visual gags, and the ultimately bittersweet tinge to the final images are all fairly standard ingredients in the modern day romantic comedy but unfortunately, influence has the problem of running both ways.  What makes Annie Hall so unique is that Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman are never in any hurry to busy the plot with thoroughly hare-brained contrivances.  The notorious Hollywood tales of Annie Hall starting out as a murder mystery with a romance subplot and a two and hour and twenty minute original edit speak to the importance of editing but also the idea that Annie Hall began as something as thoroughly conventional and over stuffed as any modern day take on the subject.  It makes sense somewhat considering that even the final ninety-three minute Annie Hall feels like Woody Allen making the last movie he would ever be allowed to make.  The film is almost a sprint through his comic mind, mixing up a taste of his early slap-stick heavy work with a gorgeous visual palette beautifully refined by Godfather cinematographer Gordon Willis.  The prickly and piercing observations on modern romance seem integral to the piece and wisely those elements survived all the judicious editing.  It's funny that in revisiting the film, the scene that still stuck with me the most is Annie's panicked phone call to Alvy in the middle of the night (I know this film has a dedicated following, so you'll have to forgive me if my singling out of this scene is forehead-slappingly obvious) to ask him to kill the spider cornered in her bedroom.  The scene was painful to watch then and remains so to me six years later.  Watching a relationship thought to be deceased blossom again with a mixture of playful flirting and lonely neediness is just one of those movie moments to which it is damned near impossible not to relate.  The fact that a film as universally beloved as Annie Hall could only have come from the singular mind and vision of an eccentric like Woody Allen only speaks to the beguiling powers that only true works of art like Annie Hall possess.  

 

Casualties Of War

365 Films

Entry #150

Casualties of War (1989)

Directed by Brian DePalma

The tagline on the Platoon poster is "the first casualty of war is innocence" and it seems fitting in an odd way that Brian DePalma's Casualties of War would take that idea to its logical conclusion.  The last half of the eighty's produced a surprisingly robust number of films examining the Vietnam war.  It makes sense in Hollywood terms because Platoon was a massive box office success and collected four Oscars in the process.  Perhaps that's the only way to describe how a film as grim and fatalistic as Casualties of War ever got made in the first place.  That it was a fairly sizable box office dud should have come as no surprise to anybody.  And for all the nit pickers out there, yes, I am fully aware that it was most likely the financial strength of DePalma's prior film, The Untouchables that most likely got this film made so let's just agree to meet somewhere in the middle.  In any event, Casualties of War documents with an unbearable amount of detail, the gruesome story of the incident at hill 192 wherein an American squad kidnapped, gang raped, and murdered a twenty year old Vietnamese woman named Phan Thi Mao on November 19, 1966.  All but one in the squad participated in the brutality and that soldier eventually attempted to report the incident to the proper authorities only for it to fall on deaf ears.  Even when he succeeded and a court martial was brought against his four fellow soldiers, all of their combined punishment amounted to a little more than a collective slap on the wrist.  That is not, however, the focal point of Casualties of War and if anything the film promulgates the idea that the damage will never be undone no matter how many years of jail any one person serves.  Told as a bookended day dream flashback of the Michael J. Fox character as he attempts to sleep on a San Francisco street car, the character of Eriksson is more haunted by what he didn't do than by the crimes his squad actually committed.  Sean Penn's Sgt. Tony Meserve cuts as frightening and imposing a figure that one could think of to be capable of something like this.  What makes Penn's portrayal ultimately so heart breaking is the child like way in which he handles the characters speech and behavior gestures.  He pumps himself up to sound tough, he throws temper tantrums when things don't go his way, and we rarely see him handle himself in combat with anything resembling composure.  Watch the way his eyes dart around during the film's unforgettable bridge sequence, it's almost as if he's positioning his opposing forces the same way a child configures their action figures.  That's not to say DePalma or screenwriter David Rabe let that character off the hook, if anything his utter naivety ultimately make the character more terrifying, as if at a certain point in the film he simply switched off and turned into a homicidal maniac out of a child like sense of boredom.  For my money, however, the most gut wrenching and painful performance in the film belongs to John Leguizamo as Diaz.  Watching the veneer of his humanity simply melt away when faced with the terrifying prospect of not obeying the alpha male is utterly devastating.  What impressed me most about Casualties of War upon my most recent viewing is the way DePalma's visual signatures enhance the proceedings rather than distract from them.  One would not naturally assume that a showman like DePalma (anything but a slam) would be a proper fit for an insightful critique of the Vietnam war but in a way, those exact qualities are distinguishes Casualties of War from almost any other film about Vietnam.  As DePalma passionately argues in an interview on the DVD, he did practically anything to get out of being drafted.  He faked illnesses, allergies, even homosexuality to convince the draft board he was unfit for service.  In a way, that mindset colors the entirety of Casualties of War because while it is a dramatic re-enactment of a real life event.  DePalma's distance and his primal fears allow him to stage the film in the only and most proper way that it could be: as a cinematic nightmare.  Casualties of War burrows into your psyche in a way very few other films are capable of and its unique mixture of pop sensibilities and an unrelentingly cynical view of human nature at war guarantee it will stay there for quite some time. 

Platoon

365 Films

Entry #149

Platoon (1986)

Directed by Oliver Stone

It seems moot at this point to ask for a little bit of indulgence on the part of the brave few who still dare to tread through this infrequently updated blog, but I will ask it nonetheless.  I have just finished Nick Turse's remarkable book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam in which Mr. Turse lays out a thoroughly convincing case about how the U.S. involvement in Vietnam came to resemble more a war against unarmed civilians than the North Vietnamese soldiers they were sent over to fight in the first place.  Orders came from the very top that resulted in the death and injury of millions of North and South vietnamese civilians alike as soldiers were taught to disregard any and all rules of engagement as the literal mantra of "kill anything that moves" was endlessly pounded into their skulls.  A few of these war crimes have managed to spur a fair amount of media attention such as the my lai  massacre and the incident at hill 192 but even those atrocities were written off as the actions of a "few bad apples."  Turse's book attempts to dis lodge that myth permanently from the American psyche and he does so with devastating first hand accounts of some of the most unimaginable horrors that not even the most hard bitten fiction writer could concoct.  Upon finishing the book, my interest in revisiting a selection of films about the war perked up instantly.  The first one that popped to mind was to write about also happens to be the first one I saw, Oliver Stone's Platoon.  Platoon came to me already in myth form for most of the major events of the piece were relayed to me by my brother after he had watched it for a high school class.  I don't want to say I was enraptured by the tale or that it was told to me as some sort of bedtime story, but something about the images, even in descriptive form, spoke to a kind of nightmare hell-scape as cinema.  That is exactly what Platoon feels like, even some twenty-seven years after it's release.  Drawing from personal memories and recollections, writer-director Oliver Stone has created one of the most intensely personal war films ever made.  Particular details like Stone stand-in Chris Taylor's (Charlie Sheen) almost mild indifference to learning of a parasitic leech sucking on his cheek, or the rhythms of each individual soldier's particular style of speech lend the feeling of total immersion.  It's as if we were being plopped down into the middle of the shit just like Taylor is at the beginning.  What Platoon also executes rather beautifully is an articulation of the moral and philosophical argument that is truly the heart of the film.  While the voice over narration confirms (a little too neatly, but that's okay) that Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) and Sgt. Elias (Willem Defoe) are battling for possession of Taylor's soul, the implications of this internal conflict appear to ripple outwards through the rest of humanity.  On my most recent viewing, I came to see Platoon as another exploration on the part of Mr. Stone of a subject that has fascinated him throughout his filmmaking career: the schism and disappointments of the American Left.  While Barnes and Elias don't quite break down into the opposing forces inherent in the progressive movement, I could make the argument that Barnes represents the "fuck-it-all" apathy nature of the left while Elias stands for the engaged, active, and connected nature of the movement.  Again, these labels are a little reductive but Stone does make it abundantly clear that Bravo Company, 25th infantry division is more than a Platoon near the Cambodian border, it's a microcosm of America and its culture.  That is what ultimately gives Platoon it's breathtaking scope and heartbreaking clarity into the nature of war, it's a personal story with global implications.  And while Taylor escapes and emerges from the ruin and destruction with what appears to be some inkling of an insight (the haunting final shot says more about this than words ever could), it's hard to forget the fact that we've just watched a mild mannered and naive young man turn into a damaged killer in a span of two hours.  One doesn't so much finish with Platoon as they do emerge from it.  It's a hell of an experience either way.        

Summer Of Sam

365 Films

Entry #148

Summer of Sam (1999)

Directed by Spike Lee

In determining what order I should proceed with regards to the films I select for this blog, I’ll make an honest confession to you: it all happens by accident.  If I’m stumped, I usually consult the Wikipedia page for films in the year____ and go off of that.  Sometimes I’ll do a retrospective of a director to coincide with a release of their new film (albeit directors with a relatively short list of credits).  Other times, I like to respond to something that triggers a sense memory within myself that instantly takes me back to the time in which I first encountered a work.  Visiting New York City at the beginning of July and subsequently getting fairly constant updates on the unbearable nature of the recently broken (let’s hope) heat wave, there was one movie that begged for a re-visit (well, two if you include Do The Right Thing but I already wrote about that so feel free to ignore this post and jump over to that one if you wish), that film is Summer of Sam.  I don’t know why I spent so much time building that up, the answer was right in the title of the post.  I saw Summer of Sam sometime over the July 2^nd weekend of its release.  Just take a minute and absorb the information that there was a time (only 14 years ago too!) when Spike Lee could get a period-ensemble-sexual revolution-serial killer-city symphony piece made in the middle of the fucking summer.  Not to put too fine a point on it (and date myself severely here) but the fact that one of our greatest living American filmmakers has to resort to crowd-funding to get his next movie made is embarrassing at worst and rage-inducing at best.  In any event, this was the third entry in what I call my personal Spike Lee trifecta.  Beginning with Get on the Bus, followed by He Got Game, and concluded with Summer of Sam these were the first Spike Lee films I saw in their initial releases and the three that began my obsession with his work.  I know I haven’t gotten to He Got Game yet but bear with me for the time being.  I remember reading a glowing review of 25^th Hour upon its release in which this particular critic remarked that he hopes Spike Lee never makes a “perfect” film because that’s just not what he does.  I can’t think of a better sentiment that more adequately describes why I love Mr. Lee’s work or one that better describes the exhilarating, fever dream known as Summer of Sam.  Some filmmakers would have approached this as a standard issue serial killer detective story, others would have taken it as a Bergman-esque dissection of a marriage in the death throes of the sexual revolution, but only Spike Lee would have stuffed all of that and more into one movie and made something as crazily ambitious as Summer of Sam.  I know a lot of times people refer to movies as ambitious as code for, “it doesn’t really work, but you can tell they were trying really hard.”  I hope you can believe me when I say that Summer of Sam is incredibly ambitious but also incredibly successful in achieving those ambitions.  In attempting to mount a portrait of what it was like to be alive in the South Bronx in the summer of 1977, Lee obviously bites off more than he can chew but the film never really suffers for it.  Ellen Kuras’ brilliant camerawork races through each scene as if trying to seek any kind of temporary relief from the heat, the fear, and the hysteria of the time.  The cast mightily embodies a plethora of neurosis, selfishness, and anxiety-ridden tics without once ever stooping to overly mannered actor bullshit.  These people feel like the complicated patterns of real life, as if we were simply plopped into the middle of their neighborhood at random.  As much as the film is obviously an amped up version of reality, there is still a commitment to verisimilitude that never allows the story to be absorbed by the funky costumes and kooky cultural touchstones of the era.  In other words, this is the story of people, which then becomes the story of a neighborhood, which then becomes the story of a borough, only to then become the story of a city, and ultimately becomes the story of a country.  Spike Lee’s thematic obsession of individuals carving out territories of New York City to coincide with their personal identities is still prevalent throughout the film.  What makes Summer of Sam so unique and so exciting is Lee’s devastating portrayal of how it can all fall apart when it’s hot outside and there’s a killer on the loose.  I can’t say enough about the bounty of riches that this film has to offer.  All I can say is it is another remarkable chapter for one of the most unjustly ignored American filmmakers of the last thirty years.   

   

Magnolia

365 Films

Entry #147

Magnolia (1999)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Magnolia is a spinning top of a movie that threatens to launch itself careening off the table at any given moment.  It is for that reason and that reason alone that it is my favorite of all Mr. Anderson’s film.  Through every single scene, it becomes almost nakedly apparent that the film is walking an ever so delicate tight rope and with one false choice the whole thing could come crashing down to earth.  That being said, the most frequent note of critique heard roundly when the film was released was that the film did exactly that in its final twenty minutes.  One of the people with whom I saw the film said the exact same thing upon exiting the theater.  Speaking in the broadest of terms, Magnolia comes across as the exodus of clutter from one filmmaker’s mind.  As if Paul Thomas Anderson wrote and directed Magnolia as an attempt to purge the unending trough of conflicting thoughts, emotions, and ideas from his head and hopefully formulate some kind of story from them.  Self-indulgence doesn’t even begin to describe this film and if anything, Magnolia is a testament to the power of self-indulgence in creating indescribable cinematic moments.  There really aren’t too many situations in which frogs raining from the sky (fourteen year old spoiler alert), a cast karaoke version of an Aimee Mann song, or scene after scene of endless snot draining soul bearing confessions should ever work in the same cinematic time and space, but Anderson pulls it off here beautifully.  There are many legitimate arguments as to why this will never work for some and with all due respect to Mr. Anderson, I can’t think of very many other filmmakers whose work consistently inspires such heated and necessary debate.  Magnolia is a prime example of a filmmaker high on his own supply and rather than tamp down the controversial aspects of his previous films (sorry Boogie Nights fans, that’s a film that piles on one too many melodramatic contrivances in the last hour of its run time and seems to do so because it is lacking in any other ideas of how to wrap itself up) he widened his scope, bet double or nothing, and went all in with Magnolia.  It is for that reason that I will always admire this audacious and breathtaking work of show off cinema.    

The Iron Giant

365 Films

Entry #146

The Iron Giant (1999)

Directed by Brad Bird

The late summer release of The Iron Giant seemed like an after thought.  Released by the non-Disney animation studio known as Warner Brothers (perish the thought of carrying on the legacy of Chuck Jones, right?) and perhaps most offensively of all, it was created in the medium about to exhale its very gasp of breath: traditional, hand drawn, two dimensional cell animation.  Bear in mind, I’m trying to recreate the mind set of a terribly ignorant and small minded movie-watcher and that those opinions, by no means, reflect any of mine at the time (cough, cough).  What can I say? I make a lot of mistakes.  Luckily, that error was quickly corrected by actually watching The Iron Giant (and hat tip to Nate for actually viewing it first and telling me it was very much worth my time).  Time has also been incredibly kind to The Iron Giant and its profoundly moving ode to non-violence.  It’s also the best iteration of the Superman mythos to ever grace the screen, and without a doubt, the best performance of Vin Diesel’s career and one he is not likely to top any time soon.  It’s hard to argue with The Iron Giant’s political aspirations (somebody needs to make “I Am Not  A Gun” slogan t-shirts to wear at rallies pronto) but what is most indelible about it is Brad Bird’s simple yet devastatingly eloquent evocation of child hood and specifically, the unique ability the child like mind to find wonder in the face of overwhelming paranoia.  There are also sequences of sublime physical comedy that reinforce Bird’s dazzlingly visual strengths.  The Iron Giant, in other words, is perfect, with nary a single false note nor forced emotion to be found.  It’s a unique reminder that no matter what the supposed “dated” medium, a film can be as revolutionary as it chooses to be.  You are what you choose to be.