Winter Solstice

365 Films

Entry #90

Winter Solstice (2005)

Directed by Josh Sternfeld

Less you think that these entries are randomly assembled and hopelessly scrambled together in a vain attempt to produce some sort of coherent narrative, I’ll have you know that both Winter Solstice and yesterday’s entry Brief Encounter feature scenes of characters having pieces of grit removed from their eye-balls.  I totally and completely meant to do that.  I feel like there is also a scene in Pitch Black where somebody injects something into their eyeball, I guess I should do that next (I’m just kidding, Pitch Black isn’t a real movie, don’t be absurd).  Winter Solstice concerns a family’s attempt to move on from a horrific tragedy that has them seemingly stuck in place and time.  The father, a landscape gardener named Jim Winters has to contend with his two grown sons, one of whom is about to flunk out of high school and the other has been recently hit by a serious case of wanderlust and is itching to leave the nest.  The aforementioned tragedy was the loss of Jim’s wife and the boys’ mother in a fatal car accident.  So far it sounds like a fairly traditional low-key indie narrative and it most certainly is that but where Winter Solstice really shines is its attention to detail.  The setting is an anonymous Jersey suburb yet through the naturalistic sound design and idle pacing, writer-director Josh Sternfeld conveys everything you need to know about these people and their lives.  I don’t thing I’ve ever seen another movie where more characters ask each other “what are you up to?” than this one.  I don’t mean that flippantly by the way, it’s eerily emblematic of what it’s like to grow up in one of these types of areas.  That’s what always sticks the sharpest to me about Winter Solstice, the feeling that I know these neighborhoods, I know these fluorescent tinted hang outs, and most of all I know these people.  I suppose it also helps that I saw this during a time in my life when I never really experienced where I grew up represented on screen.  Winter Solstice is also indicative of another unique type of movie-going experience.  I remember when my brother and I checked this out at the Angelika way back in the spring of 2005, we knew very little to nothing about it going into the theater.  I believe it got a handful of decent reviews but nothing attention grabbing.  I think the primary motivating force for the both of us was the trailer’s use of the Iron and Wine song, Sunset Soon Forgotten (see below) and we figured anybody who’s down with the Beam can’t be too egregious a waste of time.  It’s a tricky thing to do in cinema, especially since we are so inundated with every single aspect of film production through blogs and other entertainment news aggregate sites (I know I’ve harped on this before so I’ll try not to again) but it’s a particularly unique sensation when something just completely surprises you out of the blue.  I went into this movie literally expecting nothing and I was hit with an evocation of a period in my life that I hadn’t figured out how to examine yet.  I’m not saying the film navigated me through my own memories but it certainly helped push the boat out to sea (if you’ll forgive my tortured metaphor, if that even is a metaphor).  That’s just one of the many reasons why cinema is such an invaluable art form.  One more personal rant, if you’ll indulge me for a few more sentences.  Winter Solstice was released a little less than a year after Garden State and drew about an infinitesimal percentage of its publicity and box office.  Examining the two films now, they both share thematic similarities concerning how families deal with collective grief in small Jersey neighborhoods.  The only difference is Garden State literally makes me squirm whenever I am unlucky enough to share its sphere of existence while Winter Solstice is like meeting up with an old friend.  I guess that whole hype thing can swing both ways sometimes.   

Brief Encounter

365 Films

Entry #89

Brief Encounter (1945)

Directed by David Lean

Sadly I do not have an epic account of my first awareness of David Lean and Noel Coward’s 1945 doomed romance Brief Encounter.  I believe it came down to a matter as simple as the half off bi-yearly Barnes and Noble Criterion sale and this movie looked interesting to me.  In keeping time with an entry two previous to this one, I will share with you all that I might have a slight predilection for the unrequited romance in cinema.  In fact all you have to tell me about Brief Encounter is that it’s about a couple who meet by chance in a smoky British rail-way station and I would have signed up no questions asked.  The reason I’m including it on this blog is because I instantly connected with it upon my initial viewing and it does something rather delicately that very few movies are ever capable of: it tells a small story in a grand manner without ever losing that precise focus.  Adapted from Noel Coward’s play (it’s really more of the novella version of a play, I guess a one-act? Help me out here theater people), Brief Encounter is about Laura Jesson and Dr. Alec Harvey, strangers both married to other people who have a brief, longing romance with one another only to eventually decide that succumbing to the whims of their desire will lead to their almost certain ruin.  I hope I didn’t spoil anything for you but the very structure of the film telegraphs this idea within about the first five minutes.  Told from Laura’s point of view as an imagined confession to her crossword puzzle solving husband, the story details her moment-to-moment emotional oscillations as she attempts to navigate these newfound feelings of passion through a society, which will never forgive her for them.  Brief Encounter was released towards the end of 1945, about some six months after the War in Europe had officially ended.  The actual conflict itself is never mentioned and the setting does not appear to be during wartime, but a moral murkiness pervades through every single shot.  The black and white photography seems to relish the smoky atmosphere of the railway station refreshment room while actively seeking out the shadow dense corners and alleys to where the secret lovers must retreat.  That’s not to say there are not moments of blissful romantic sunshine, but Lean heavily favors an expressionistic aesthetic to further enhance the sense of imminent mortality that such a fling would accumulate.  What fascinates me about Brief Encounter is the degree to which it reflects a society breathing easy for the first time in many years and attempting to pick up the pieces of its nearly shattered civilization.  I’m certainly not a historian so I’m going to tread very carefully here but the destruction endured by London and its surrounding areas during World War II begat an incredible bounty of films inspired by the notion of a burgeoning modern society coming into conflict with its more traditional values.  The lovers in Brief Encounter dare not speak of what they feel for the fear of “acceptable” societal rejection haunts them at every corner.  It’s a grim assessment any way you slice it because you’re either stuck in a loveless marriage or turned into a pariah because you followed your heart.  And aside from an unnecessarily tacked on coda implying Laura finally makes the right decision, what is so bold about Brief Encounter is that it refuses to make that very judgment call against its characters.  It’s a British take on very British material in that it simply observes with a clear-eyed, compassionate insight all that can be sacrificed in order to simply get on with it.  The fact that it still resonates almost seventy years from its release is a testament to its wise and knowing power.     

Bottle Rocket

365 Films

Entry #89

Bottle Rocket (1996) 

Directed by Wes Anderson

I thought for this entry I would try something a little different and focus on one particular scene in Wes Anderson's 1996 introductory opus: Bottle Rocket. 

I’m a little rusty on my screenwriting terms (so sue me, or remark upon how blatantly ignorant I am in the comments section), but I believe the scene from Bottle Rocket I have chosen would be the climax of the story. Dignan (Owen Wilson) is trapped at the site of one of the most mind-bogglingly inept robberies in the history of the universe. His brother Anthony (Luke Wilson), lookout man Bob Mapplethorpe (Robert Musgrave), safecracker Kumar (Kumar Pallana), and Apple-Jack (Jim Ponds, I’m not entirely sure what his job is), are fleeing from a cold-storage facility after the alarm has been tripped. Anthony and Dignan argue over who is going to return to the scene of the crime to rescue Apple-Jack, who has been felled by a heart attack (and he is the sole possessor of keys to their getaway van). The music playing over this section is part of Mark Mothersbaugh’s original score for the film. The tribal drums and the metronomic maracas, suggest perhaps an initiation ritual for Dignan. This is the ultimate test, the trial by fire for his 75 year plan; he could flee the scene of the crime or sacrifice himself for the well being of his fellow criminals. Dignan pleads with Anthony to let him go resorting to one of the most endearing declarations of leadership and power: “WHO is in charge here?” Claiming authority with a question is just one of Dignan’s incomparable achievements. This conversation leads to the most important dialogue spoken in the entire movie. Anthony tells him that he knows what will happen to him if he goes back to get Apple-Jack, Dignan replies, “No, I don’t. They’ll never catch me man, cause I’m fuckin’ innocent.”
The score quietly fades out and the camera pushes into Dignan’s face ever-so-slightly.  We watch Dignan’s eyes as they race through all manner of daring escapes he can make to avoid capture. It could also be read that they are illuminating his entire life for him up to this point as he prepares to make a decision that will no doubt radically alter it forever. Either way, the smile that begins to creep into Dignan’s face and the gentle acoustic strumming the opens the Rolling Stones’ 2000 Man, suggest that Dignan is not only living the dream, but about to play it out in real life. Decision made. It’s also important to note the sound design in this sequence; Anderson wisely leaves in the natural droning wind of the location. I have no idea whether this was live sound or taken from a library but let’s just assume the former for sake of argument, plus, it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. The sound of the drab storage facility wind is the boring life Dignan’s so absolutely petrified of.  That life is attempting to over-power the wistful tempo of the Rolling Stones. That life is attempting to shut off the movie that’s constantly playing in Dignan’s head.
The song completely takes over the soundtrack once Dignan takes off for the plant (save for some footsteps and yelling by the cops) and we are now in Dignan land.  It is here where Anderson cuts away from the robbery and reveals the twist of the story. The character of Mr. Henry (James Caan) reveals himself to be a small-time con-man who has cleaned out the house of Bob Mapplethorpe. He used Dignan as a surrogate son and protégé to get close to the rich friend. Over the shots of Caan organizing the moving van filled with Bob’s shit, Jagger sings about his name being a number and growing funny flowers on the window sill.  The chorus of the song is revealed as “Don’t you know, I’m a 2000 man. And my kids, they just don’t understand me at all.”  If you’ll indulge me to read WAY too much into this, I believe this is the final connection and, in effect, the severing of the chord between Dignan and Mr. Henry.   As the sequence of shots reveals, Mr. Henry is last seen in a low angle close-up, billowing cigar smoke from his mouth.  He has finally morphed into the imposing gangster figure we’ve been waiting for throughout the film. At the same time, he is left utterly and completely alone. His kind of thievery and Dignan’s brand are as different from each other as night and day. Take the very next cut of Dignan helping the ailing Apple-Jack to the van. His selflessness and humility stand in sharp contrast to Mr. Henry “I-got-mine-so-fuck-you” selfishness.  As much as Mr. Henry tried to mold Dignan into his apprentice, we now see that his failure is absolute and total.
Dignan’s sacrifice wouldn’t be complete without him actually having to sacrifice something. His valiant act of bravery aside, Dignan is still Dignan, and he locks himself out of the van. The music changes rhythm here completely. The cops corner Dignan, and we think this is the end. Then, as if spurred on by the faster tempo of the second part of the song, Dignan takes off back into the storage facility.  It is here, according to this writer, that the scene becomes iconic.  Wilson, in his banana-yellow jumpsuit armed with a gun, running away from the cops with exhilarating comic desperation. Nobody else can pull this off quite like Wes Anderson. It is here that the song begins to repeat the same set of lyrics over and over again, “Oh daddy, proud of your planet. Oh mummy, proud of your sun.” Note once again, the re-occurrence of the parent-child relationship reflected in the lyrics.  The only variance is in the following lyrics, which appear in the song when Dignan heads for the location of his eventual last stand: a giant fish freezer filled with ice. “Like it did when you were young. Or do you come down crashin. Seeing all the things you'd done. All was a big put on.” Dignan must now face the objective reality of his situation. Everything is about to come crashing down. He gets stuck in the freezer; the cops corner him, ignore his surrender, and begin to violently sub-due him. And even though he is getting repeatedly punched in the stomach, Dignan is still trying to talk his way out of it.
The last shot of the sequence is Dignan, handcuffed and led by the police out of the facility into a police car. The first thing that struck me about this final shot is how similar it looks (I guess it’s the other way around) like the shot in Rushmore of Max being led away by the police after Blume reports him for cutting the brakes on his car. The scene in Rushmore is an explosion of adolescent rage. The look on Max’s face as he’s pushed through the halls of his new high school and the pounding drums of The Who’s A Quick One While He’s Away convey this. In Bottle Rocket, the song reverts back to its original tempo and Jagger repeats the chorus. The look on Dignan’s face suggests an exhilarating defiance. He has finally achieved his dream of being a career criminal. We may not understand him at all, but we’ll follow Dignan wherever he goes. Why? Because he’s fuckin’ innocent.

In The Mood For Love

365 Films

Entry #88

In The Mood For Love (2000)

Directed by Wong Kar-Wai

I have another embarrassing admission to lead off this particular blog entry and that is that 2046 was the first time I came into contact with the writer/director Wong Kar-Wai.  It’s not too big of a gaffe on my part, however, considering his most productive creative period was at a time in my life when the local Delaware multiplexes were not exactly knocking each other down to stock up on the hottest Hong Kong imports.  2046 on the other hand, came out when I was of the right age to see it and as it turns out, it was a horrible method of introduction to Wong’s work.  At least that was the consensus amongst EVERY SINGLE PERSON I asked in regards to the fact that during most of 2046, I had no idea what the hell was going on.  Many years later, I finally came around to seeing what might be the perfect point of entry for this unique and indescribable talent, In The Mood For Love.  Actually, there’s a pretty solid argument in terms of Chungking Express holding that particular mantle but I’ll save that for another blog entry.  The point being that these two films represent two very distinct moments in Wong’s career when he managed to hit the sweet spot of universal accessibility without diluting his natural filmmaking gifts.  That might also be why those two titles are the only films of his available on the Criterion Collection.  Aside from Terrence Malick, there is no other working filmmaker today who tells stories as instinctually and without the need for any kind of scripted blue print as Wong Kar-Wai.  I find this fascinating because, in the case of In The Mood For Love, the visual style is so controlled and so precise, it’s astounding to read that the shooting dragged on interminably for fifteen months.  In that time they essentially shot two entirely different versions of the same story with the exact same cast.  The fact that the finished product is as evocative and soulful as it is remains a testament to Wong’s uncanny eye.  In telling the story of two tenant neighbors living in 1962 Hong Kong who become involved with one another as a result of their own spouses’ mutual infidelity, Wong has created one of the most unforgettable cinematic representations of memory ever committed to film.  The story is boiled down to its bare essentials and the dialogue only covers specific moment-to-moment exchanges and never gets bogged down in unnecessary exposition.  Even the structural plotting never wastes more than a beat in making drastic seasonal, environmental, and most importantly, emotive mood jumps as it progresses.  In re-watching the film I was struck by how frequently Wong uses identical camera set ups and angles through which to view scenes of varying emotional temperature.  A lot of the film appears to be dressed as a series of still photographs because there’s something incredibly distant about the cinematography. .  I hope you’ll understand that when I use the word distant, I don’t mean it as a pejorative.  That distance is a distinct kind of love that only exists in memory.  Even the transfixing slow motion sequences set to Shigeru Umebayashi’s “Yumeji’s Theme” convey a sense of reality slowing down to the point where we could be looking through a flip book of memories.  The shots are contained so tightly so as to focus on the most imperceptible hints of body language, the kind of communication that we really only notice, again, through memory.  Observe how Wong will frequently dismember the actors through the use of mirrors or other reflective surfaces.  We will catch an arm, a torso, or a head in a different location than the rest of the body.  Memory is like a puzzle that most of us have tremendous difficulty reassembling, let alone understanding.  There is so much more to unpack with this magnificent film that all I can do is implore you to stop reading and watch it right this second.

Editor’s Note: A To The Wonder/In The Mood For Love double feature should be imminent for any aspiring repertory programmers out there (of particular interest is how the two films convey bodies in confined, location specific interiors).   

Fargo

365 Films

Entry #87

Fargo (1996)

Directed by Joel Coen

I will be completely honest in admitting that my primary interest in the 1996 film Fargo came from little more than a fleeting curiosity in the fact that one of the creators had my name.  For those of you poor souls out there you have kept up with this blog in the order it has been presented, you may be puzzled by this entry in seeing as how I’ve already discussed the Coen’s preceding film, The Hudsucker Proxy.  What can I say? Sometimes shit just comes up and you deal with it.  I felt like writing about Hudsucker first so I did, but that was not the film that introduced me to the weird and wild cinematic universe of the Coen brothers.  That film most certainly would be Fargo.  I don’t know if any of you out there experienced this growing up but I always used to get my information about grown-up movies in little bits and pieces.  I don’t think I was specifically forbidden from seeing Fargo but at the time, all I really knew about it was my previously stated shared handle with one of the filmmakers (and the fact that he and his brother made the movie also kind of blew my mind at the time).  This was not an action movie, Wesley Snipes was nowhere near it, and there didn’t appear to be an explosion in sight, therefore, I stayed away.  It was only a matter of time before even someone with a mild interest in film reviews and cultural trends noticed that this film had latched on tight to the public imagination.  You would hear about certain scenes, certain moments, and in the specific case of Fargo you couldn’t escape the particulars of the variety of gruesome death on display.  The only thing I knew about this movie before I eventually saw it on video, for example, was that at some point, somebody wound up a wood chipper.  I remember being underwhelmed by Fargo upon my initial viewing.  I didn’t really get the humor and to be brutally honest again, I vividly remember how horrified I was by the idea that the sequence where Peter Stormare shoots the highway patrolman point blank in the top of the skull would be capped off by two completely random innocent victims meeting their grim fate by committing no less of a sin than randomly being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I didn’t understand how anybody could find comedy in these bleak proceedings and the whole enterprise just completely rubbed me the wrong way.  I suppose it’s entirely possible that my appreciation of Fargo only came about by way of my immediate and full-on embrace of the follow up, The Big Lebowski.  But that’s another blog entry for another day.  What happened with Fargo was that I think I was blinded by the pop-culture phenomenon of the film and was unable to see the piece for what it was.  That combined with getting older and learning to appreciate the fine art of what is commonly known as “black comedy”, I am now comfortable with calling Fargo as close to a perfect film as one can get.  There’s so much to savor in this movie that I could spend pages and pages trying to get at the all the immaculately nuanced nooks and crannies carefully tucked inside this story, so I’ll try to be as concise as I can.  I think all you need to know about Fargo is proudly announced in the film’s opening shot.  The barren, frozen whiteout alien landscape, Carter Burwell’s funereal march score, and the image of a lifeless mass being dragged through the snow to meet its ultimate destination.  All the while the iconic, frozen, and bemused expression of Paul Bunyan watches as the human folly and fatality pile up.  This is the universe as seen and created by the Coen brothers.  It’s bleak, it’s an anonymous void, and we are helpless to understand it.  This is where, for me, Fargo really earns it stripes because it’s very easy to point out the universality of the theory that we all suck and we all get what’s coming to us (there’s a movie playing right now in theaters that traffics in this kind of cynical bullshit). Yet what the Coens do here and it’s all the more remarkable because it’s an attribute of their films for which they rarely receive credit, they inject a massive dose of heart and soul into the film.  Through all the anarchic madness and mind-boggling violence, there’s Marge Gunderson.  She, the embodiment of Mid-Western politeness who is somehow able to (almost) single handedly bring down a botched kidnapping scheme and ultimately deliver what little justice is left to be served.  In her final ruminations we understand that she is not just some naïve rube content with putting blinders on and shutting out the evils of the would around her.  She doesn’t understand it entirely but she does acknowledge it and the final impressions we are left with are not those of hopeless despair, but in fact, hope itself.  Hope in the idea that there are more Marge Gundersons out there than Jerry Lundegaards.  That is why I will always love Fargo. 

     

Take Shelter

365 Films

Entry #86

Take Shelter (2011)

Directed by Jeff Nichols

Every director fears the potential sophomore slump while others are possessed by a creative zeal that vaults their work into a rarified stratosphere.  Perhaps Jeff Nichols was relieved when his debut Shotgun Stories, while critically adored, made hardly a dent at the box office.  It allowed his follow-up, Take Shelter to sneak up on an unsuspecting public and handily knock them for a loop.  Keeping in alignment with Shotgun’s slow-burn style while dramatically ramping up the cinematic tools at his disposal, Nichole has created a piece that is a cinematic cousin to its predecessor while remaining uniquely mysterious and ambiguous.  Take Shelter tells the story of Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon), an Ohio family man who begins to have dreams of an apocalyptic nature and whose subsequent obsession with protecting his family from his visions turning into reality nearly drives him to personal and financial ruin.  Jessica Chastain plays his wife Samantha, and her performance is a marvel of marital strength in the face of overwhelming circumstances.   Shannon matches her beat for beat and one of the impressive accomplishments of Take Shelter is its confident, mature grasp on married life and the two actors in particular take that ball and run with it.  It’s quite a leap from the boys will be boys attitude of Shotgun Stories and a pleasant reminder that Mr. Nichols has only begun to scratch the surface of his talent.  It is very easy to imagine a version of this story where the wife character comes off as a heartless nag who in any other version of reality would have left her crazy husband years ago.  What Chastain and Nichols do with the character is all together remarkable and in their own quiet way, Samantha becomes the heart and soul of the story.  As her husband’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic, we never doubt the strength of conviction in Samantha.  She is not just staying with him because she vowed to do so, she is staying with him because she loves him and wants him to break free of the nightmarish visions that have been plaguing him.  This might all sound like standard boilerplate but I can’t stress enough how gifted this Nichols fella is.  He accumulates all of these complex emotional readings scene-by-scene and almost literally beat-by-beat.  We are watching this family become radically altered by the events of the story in real time.  We can understand every single action and it makes the climax of the film all the more shattering.  This is where I really want to single out and sing the praises of Michael Shannon.  He does an incredibly difficult thing in this film because he has to convey a tormented psyche but never allow it to completely dominate the character.  He never tips his hand too much in one direction or another as to whether or not Curtis himself actually believes in his mental doomsday scenarios.  It is mesmerizing to watch this man fight tooth and nail to protect his family while realizing he is in fact the very thing he is fighting.  The last scene of the film (and if you haven’t seen it yet, I implore you to stop right here) is a tour de force for Chastain and Shannon.  Shannon cowers in the corner of his roided up storm shelter like a wounded animal in a cage, eyes daring nervously for any kind of comfort in what he thinks is a newly shattered world.  And Chastain, completely with him every step of the way musters up every ounce of courage she has to prove to her husband that no matter what is on the other side of that shelter door, she will be there with him to face it.  It’s a shattering climax and one that is beautifully capped off by the film’s enigmatic final shot.  I have my theories, you’ll have yours, but one thing is for sure.  In these final moments that wrap up a tremendous piece of cinematic story telling, Jeff Nichols has proven himself to be the best new American director of this young century.   

Shotgun Stories

365 Films

Entry #85

Shotgun Stories (2007)

Directed by Jeff Nichols

Writer/director Jeff Nichols first came to my attention at a Q+A event for David Gordon Green.  Someone had asked him about an aborted adaptation he was set to do of the frat house expose novel, Goat.  He began to explain in elaborate detail about how close the whole thing had come to fruition only to fall apart at the last minute.  Then his body language and vocal timbre became noticeably more energized when mentioning his co-writer on that project.  His name is Jeff Nichols and he’s got an awesome movie of his own coming out soon called Shotgun Stories (I’m paraphrasing but you get the idea, I just don’t want you to think he was reading it off a teleprompter or something).  With an already established indie demi-god like Green giving him the stamp of approval, I knew this was a filmmaker I would be seeking out as soon as I got the chance.  Then again, if Green had mentioned the name post summer of 2008, I probably would have stayed as far away as possible (I kid, I kid).  Shotgun Stories is a triumph not only of story telling but of filmmaking in general.  Shot on a shoestring budget with a cast primarily made up of un-knowns, and a first-time director at the helm, the film is a marvel of cinematic control and pacing.  Nichols makes amazing use of a naturalistic landscape and performance style that only heightens the tension as the local blood-lust rivalry between two warring Arkansas factions rises to a boil.  Enough has been written about the astonishing gifts of Michael Shannon so all I will do is point out the serendipitous turn of events for him surrounding this film.  Shotgun Stories’ theatrical release came right off the heels of Shannon’s Oscar nominated turn in Revolutionary Road.  The fact that Shannon had been working steadily as an actor over ten years prior to this makes his victory all the sweeter (and especially redemptive considering two of his earliest breaks were in Michael Bay monstrosities).  I say congratulations to him because this is a revelatory re-introductory performance.  So while Shotgun Stories may be the cinematically crudest of Nichols’ oeuvre (take that with a grain of salt, this picture looks better than most of the shit being turned out by budgets ten times its size), it does display his remarkable gifts of a keen ear for local dialogue, and a lived-in understanding of Southern lifestyle.  As we all know, this is another facet of American life that mainstream Hollywood tends to treat with utter contempt and Nichols’ refusal to play along in that game is one of his most admirable traits.  That being said, the story telling here is not always subtle.  For example, the one-eyed character called Shampoo serves very little purpose other than to be the human drop of poison whose meddling and gossip has severe and permanent consequences.  He’s clearly a construct out of Greek tragedy, yet Nichols makes it work because of the offbeat design of the character and his obvious penchant for southern literature.  The film is at once of its time and timeless, tapping into a larger historical resonance about Southern masculinity and its dominating effect on individual life while staying true to the very real circumstances of its characters.  Firmly ensconced in the genre tradition of the revenge-western, Nichols plays up his characters’ mythic qualities so that the lack of subtlety never becomes a distraction; it strengthens the story in a way.  It’s nearly impossible to think of any film pulling off such a satisfyingly simultaneous juggling of the micro and the macro, let alone one made by a first timer director.  For that is the key to Nichols’ supreme talent, he takes big themes but presents them in a most decidedly non-ostentatious manner.  Shotgun Stories never feels like the quiet meditation on male violence that it so thoughtfully and naturally is. 

Dead Man Walking

365 Films

Entry #84

Dead Man Walking (1995)

Directed by Tim Robbins

Call it the Eddie Vedder effect, because like yesterday’s entry for Hype! Dead Man Walking could only have been brought to my eleven year old attention upon the year of its release because of the involvement of Eddie Vedder.  The Pearl Jam front man contributed two songs to the soundtrack, both of which were recorded as duets with the late Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.  An interesting tidbit for maybe .05% of you out there is that if you listen to Pearl Jam’s subsequent 1996 album No Code, you can hear the clear and distinct influence of Khan on songs like Who You Are, In My Tree, and I’m Open.  If anybody is still reading this, I promise I will get to Dead Man Walking at some point.  I don’t know if I should be admitting this at this point in my life but I am hard pressed to think of any other signifier that helped shape my opinion about a societal issue such as capital punishment more than this film.  Obviously, I have not based my life long objection to the death penalty solely on the story of Sister Helen Prejean and Matthew Poncelet, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t swing my moral pendulum in a certain direction.  In fact, I am all in favor of schools showing this and Werner Herzog’s Into The Abyss as a double feature whenever the issue of capital punishment comes up in class, that shit will knock them off their asses.  Before I get carried away with myself, I would be remiss not to point out that while the opinions of the filmmakers are never in doubt, this is not some simple-minded liberal screed.  First of all, the story’s focal point character, Sister Helen Prejean (played with an astonishing mix of moral fortitude and crippling doubt by Susan Sarandon) is a nun and particularly devout one at that.  Religion in cinema, especially mainstream Hollywood product is simple minded at best, insulting at worst.  You either have Mel Gibson’s join or die cinematic crusades or a certain stand-up comedians “shocking” takedown on the subject.  He shall remain nameless but let’s just say he has an HBO talk show on every Friday night at 10pm.  What is so brave about Dead Man Walking is that it gives us a portrayal of faith that is nearly impossible to categorize.  Prejean is a believer but she also acknowledges the blatant hypocrisy of the dogma.  She wants to make herself available for all who need her help yet the look of shock on her face is completely genuine when somebody points out how arrogant an approach that is to people.  That in essence, is the soul of the film, which is laid out in its very title.  Dead Man Walking implies a state of being in which two completely contradictory forces may co-exist either peacefully or not within a given institution.  I have already mentioned the established impulses within Sister Helen but one only has to look at Sean Penn’s character to see that while he is an abhorrent killer and societal deviant, he is also a frightened, sad, and pathetic human being.  The execution scene makes particularly heart breaking use of this motif in how it shows death as a mechanized process.  Buttons light up, the machine begins to whir, and the fluids are injected one by one into Poncelet’s body but Robbins never takes the focus of the scene off of Sarandon and Penn’s silent, face-to-face prayer.  This, to me gets at the heart of the piece for Robbins is not telling us what to think in any way, shape, or form.  This film is not about an innocent man, wrongfully convicted and tragically executed by the state in a thoughtless display of bureaucratized murder (which is not to say that never happens in real life, in fact, it probably does happen in real life more than it does in movies).  This film is about the humanity trapped within any number of hierarchical systems of institutions and the people working within those confines to break free.  This is one of the most thoughtful and compassionate movies about American life ever made. 

Hype!

365 Films

Entry #83

Hype! (1995)

Directed by Doug Pray

The exclamation point at the end of the title of Doug Pray’s 1995 documentary about the Seattle music scene supernova hardly seems accidental.  Hype! implies the sudden burst of worldwide interest that quickly engulfed the region while simultaneously deflating it with an emphatic piece of punctuation that calls it exactly what it is.  That kind of self-aware, sarcasm-laden critique is exactly what makes Hype! such a charming and effective piece of musical history revisionism.  The whole Seattle phenomenon is particularly interesting to me because it hit at just the right time for me hop on the bandwagon, yet be blissfully unaware of my poser implications.  In fact, there’s a brief interview with an angry teen local late in the film whose face subsequently became the poster for the theatrical release.  His pissed-off tirade bitterly indicts someone exactly like me whom, as he puts it, “wears his Pearl Jam shirt and dresses like a poser.”  His solution for my type of music fan is to be violently spat on by him and when asked why this type of behavior enrages him so, he puts it rather succinctly, “I liked it first.”  It is within this incredibly brief interview that Pray cannily posits the lose-lose situation involved with being a fan of anything that has potential to grow.  The thing you love the most will be exploited and loved just as much by an entirely undeserving audience and turn you into a maniacal hoarder of cultural cache.  To my ears, “I liked it first” is just an empty an axiom, as “I like them because they are cool.”   Pray’s approach to the material is admirable because his detached observant technique allows the musicians, photographers, and other historical witnesses tell their own story with humor and a sly perspective.  The film was released only one year after the death of Kurt Cobain (and I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but we can probably agree that’s when the whole thing imploded, right?) so everybody’s insights are still fresh and plenty bitter.  You get the sense that while the community faced an onslaught of carpetbaggers and other resilient sponges of cultural detritus, Seattle was able to maintain its sanity by banding together in unison.  If the city was initially a hodge podge of every single kind of musical iteration under the sun, the grunge hype explosion definitely helped those bands coalesce and become (in theory) the kind of city the rest of the world wanted it to be.  Some twenty years removed from this extravaganza, Seattle seems like merely a blip on the pop culture radar.  The end of the Nineties saw the ascension and quick decline of a rainbow coalition of flash in the pan smile time variety hour acts.  From boy bands to nu metal to Latin pop, to even the entirely fairly maligned Everclear, musical tastes seemed to hop from one part of the world to the next every five seconds.  This is what finally makes Hype! such an emotional viewing experience, the corporate hypocrisy being railed against comes off like the most important thing in the world to the participants of the film.  Little did they know, it would all be reduced to some vague nostalgic touchstone of a subsequent generation entirely too young to appreciate it at the time.  We do have one thing for which we will ALWAYS be indebted to Seattle, the band name Butt Sweat.  Best band name ever.  Also just wanted to share, as a final thought, Roger Ebert’s appraisal of Eddie Vedder’s interview in the film (this is entirely a propos of NOTHING but being a life long Pearl Jam fan, I couldn’t resist).

“Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder is probably the key musical figure from grunge, and in “Hype!” he comes across as intelligent and thoughtful. While acknowledging that the grunge phenomenon was dissipated by its fame (it was most at home in small local clubs), he sounds like the survivor of a war or a shipwreck: “It will be a tragedy if we don't do something with this.” But, of course, they did.”     

That Thing You Do!

365 Films

Entry #82

That Thing You Do (1996)

Directed by Tom Hanks

That Thing You Do! is a perfect example of the “Sunday Afternoon” movie.  Other examples of this phenomenon include The Shawshank Redemption, Casablanca, and any of the first three Die Hards.  These are movies that you can turn on during any Sunday afternoon and any plans you had for that day will become immediately null and void because you have been sucked into a story that you have seen thousands and thousands of times previously.  What makes That Thing You Do stand apart from the others in this field is that it has a keen sense of its own weightlessness.  It knows that it is just confectionary and it’s absolutely over the moon about that.  One of the many admirable qualities to the film is that writer/director Tom Hanks never uses his directorial debut as a platform for unburdening his soul with either the troubles of the world or the glory of being Tom Hanks.  It’s a trap far too many actors turned filmmakers fall into; that of making a film that essentially celebrates their own talent rather than tell a story.  First of all, That Thing You Do is a comedy, something incredibly brave for a non-comedian actor to attempt to pull off.  Obviously, whether or not it succeeds is up to one’s own personal sense of humor, but at least to these eyes, Hanks definitely has a good ear for goofy dialogue.  Perhaps more importantly, he has a good eye for casting innately likable actors to carry a lot of the weight as well (except for Jonathan Schaech, his character is an asshole from start to finish).  For example, we should all thank Mr. Hanks for introducing us to the many charming gifts that Steve Zahn has at his disposal.  And secondly, I think it’s also fairly honorable that Mr. Hanks only gives himself a tertiary supporting role in the piece.  One gets the impression that the entire project was based on a desire for Mr. Hanks to find new talent and expose them to the rest of the world.  His love of actors and performance definitely shines through nearly every frame of this film.  Just look at the positively gleeful way he films the sequence when the wonders hear their song on the radio for the first time.  His heart and soul are so completely in sync with these performers that his passion is certifiably contagious.  Sure the film is as Hanks’ Mr. White puts it towards the end, “a very common tale”, and it’s recollections about that particular scene of music from the early 60’s are vaguely nostalgic at best (Not Fade Away, this ain’t).  But one only has to look at Hanks’ fifteen-year later follow-up, Larry Crowne to see how his pleasantly inoffensive filmmaking dorkiness (excuse the term) can totally backfire.  That Thing You Do is bright, colorful, and never really strives to be anything more.  As I said, perfect for a Sunday afternoon.  

From Dusk Till Dawn

365 Films

Entry #81

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Directed by Robert Rodriguez

I remember becoming first aware of From Dusk Till Dawn through one of those electronic press kit thingies they used to air on Entertainment Tonight.  It may shock some of you to know this but there was a time when the idea of George Clooney starring in his own film was laughable at best.  And in this one, he had some sort of crazy neck-down-his-shoulder-and-on-to-his-forearm tattoo, wacky shit, right?  I was also well aware that this film marked the team up of indie genre gods Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, which in and of itself had all sorts of unfathomable potential (at the time anyway).  I knew it had something to do with bank robbers who flee to Mexico and hole up in a bar filled an astonishing variety of terrifying, blood-thirty vampires.  As you may have deduced, I was a little more than tantalized by this prospect.  Yet, this is another one that for reasons I can’t quite remember; I missed in its initial theatrical run.  I was also incredibly confused by the fact that From Dusk Till Dawn didn’t set the world on fire the way I had anticipated it to.  Its release was largely ignored and subsequently forgotten.  A few months pass by and I get the chance to rent the tape when it is finally released on video and I believe the only two words that could have possibly summarized my reaction were: fucking amazing.  Now I understand from a critical standpoint and a more mature perspective, From Dusk Till Dawn is not what anybody would call masterpiece theater (I’m not actually sure what kind of movie that is either).  It’s trashy, the characters are pretty standard in their horror movie trope representation, and it is really two very different films pressing up against one another.  It’s interesting to note that From Dusk Till Dawn could be considered Rodriguez and Tarantino’s first experiment in the modern day Grindhouse genre.  An experiment that would come to fruition with their much more ambitious actual Grindhouse homage some eleven years later as a great success to some and a tremendous failure to others (I happen to be in the former camp but that’s for another entry).  This is corroborated by an unsubstantiated piece of internet gossip I read once (so it isn’t really) that Tarantino, supposedly only wrote the script up until his character dies (*spoiler alert) and then Rodriguez essentially wrote the rest of the film as a series of splatter movie and violent gross out gags.  That doesn’t really hold much water to me because the Fred Williamson Vietnam monologue seems purely Tarantinian, but then again, it could have easily been Rodriguez trying to copy Tarantino’s voice.  Who the hell knows, it doesn’t really matter other than it’s an interesting prism through which to view this film.  The set up of bank robbing brothers on the run is the Tarantino movie and the Dawn of the Dead but with Vampires second half is the Rodriguez movie.  There had to have been some division of duties between the two of them, right?  In any event, as much as this is often used as faint praise, I couldn’t be more genuine when I say From Dusk Till Dawn is a fuck-load of fun.  As someone who has never gotten quite the same adrenaline kick out of horror movies as others, I completely understood the plentiful bounty of thrills to be had by the sheer inventiveness that the genre inspires.  It’s like watching Rodriguez and his team continually pull off one grotesque magic trick after the other while never losing the sense of humor that Tarantino carefully applies in the set-up portion.  What I actually remember most about From Dusk Till Dawn is the fact that I used to think this movie was hatred-proof.  I thought you had to have a heart of stone and a funny bone of steel not to be blown back in your seat by how awesome this movie is.  Cut to, literally, my first week of college and in an attempt to bond with my new roommates I thought it would be nice to show them something that meant a lot to me but also had (I thought) enormous universal appeal in terms of its potential to entertain.   So I pop it in and we begin our group watch and everything seems to be going fine as the movie progresses.  I am getting my post-viewing, self-congratulatory pat on the back ready for bonding us all together in harmony when one of my roommates utters this as the credits roll.  “That was really great, until the fucking vampires showed up.”  That was followed by another roommate making this proclamation, “I can’t think of another movie that went so horribly downhill that fast.”  I had failed in that regard but in another I had succeeded because they all bonded with each other out of their common loathing for the film I just shown them.  They were also entirely united against me because of that.  The lesson in all this is that they were and continue to be so incredibly wrong in every single facet of their interpretation of From Dusk Till Dawn.  That is the only lesson that could possibly be salvaged from such an unfortunate debacle.  Whatever meaning is to be taken away from this, I can’t stress enough how much I love this movie.  It’s for real.