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.
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.
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.
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.
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 2nd 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
25th 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 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 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.
I know the last thing anybody wants to hear is my
monumentally ill-informed take on some recent current events. What I decided to do instead was vent
some of my frustrations in the most productive and active way I know how: I
watched Do The Right Thing. Truth be told, I went through a period
in high school where I was OBSESSED with this movie. I even attempted a half assed independent study wherein I
would examine the relationship between controversy and popular cinema by
examining Do The Right Thing and another movie, I think an Oliver Stone title,
needless to say the project never materialized. On the plus side, I watched the film so many times as to the
point of near memorization (certain scenes anyway) and I read countless essays,
reviews, and reactions to the film discussing its incredibly layered visual and
ideological content. Perhaps I
should re-wind a bit and relay some facts about the VERY first time I sat down
to watch Do The Right Thing.
Having been a Spike Lee fan from a very early age, it is surprising that
took me almost until the end of high school to finally watch DTRT. I remember grave warnings from my
parents as to the more morbid aspects of the film and the sickening feeling one
gets from watching the various conflicts laced throughout go from bad to
shockingly awful in a matter of minutes.
I probably should have prefaced this with a warning by saying if you
have not seen Do The Right Thing, you should perhaps cease reading right now,
drop whatever you were doing, and go watch it immediately. I remember being quite taken with the
earlier portion of the film where Mr. Lee examines a fairly average day in the
life of a Bed-Stuy block and the pizzeria around which all activity seems to
buzz. The colors are dazzling,
particularly the way Mr. Lee and cinematographer Ernest Dickerson portray heat
on film. The photography in this
film deserves a very special place in the cinematic hall of fame for so
beautifully capturing the essence of what it feels like to take five steps on a
New York City sidewalk in the middle of summer and find yourself drenched in
your own perspiration. The
characters are lively and engaging and Mr. Lee seems to have adhered to the
Matt Groening design for cartoons in that almost every character in this film
is distinguishable in silhouette.
This is not a theory I have tested under any circumstance but I believe
it speaks more to the care and careful attention Mr. Lee allotted every single
speaking part in this film. Each
character has such exact mannerisms, speaking patterns, and wardrobe that it’s
almost as if even though we are being introduced to them in a very short amount
of time, we feel as though we are just another resident of this particular
block. It’s actually a very tricky
thing to pull off and Lee does it with an expert amount of subtle character
work. All of this is going through
my head and then night begins to fall in the film and that sneaking suspicion
that has been rearing it’s ugly head throughout that something terrible is
about to happen becomes a feeling of dread nestled firmly in the pit of your
stomach. Then an argument happens,
there is an escalation, an escalation upon that escalation, and even further
escalation and then…all hell breaks loose. If one wants a cinematic master class on how to direct an
angry mob and a subsequent riot, all one needs to do is watch the final half
hour of Do The Right Thing. On a
personal note, I happen to think abrupt, visceral crowd scenes are a particular
specialty of Mr. Lee’s. See also
Malcolm X, Red Hook Summer, and Summer of Sam (damn, Spike Lee makes a lot of
good movies about summer time, doesn’t he?) I can vividly remember how troubled
I was by the ending of Do The Right Thing but I was troubled for exactly the
wrong (in my later revised opinion) reasons. I was more hurt by the fact that four walls and a roof were
knocked down than the life that was taken just a scene prior. I was more outraged for Sal and his
sons over the destruction of their community than the actual neighborhood
having to watch another Black teenager be needlessly killed. It’s shameful to admit it now, looking
back on it, but I remember the helpless feeling I had watching that lifeless
slab of real estate burn to the ground.
This is where it helps to re-watch films and gather as many outside
opinions on them as you possibly can because in the intervening years I was
able to do a complete 180 in regards to my sympathies and it was then that I
realized this was a film that would take several viewings to even begin to wade
through the myriad of complicated ideas Mr. Lee is attempting to channel. I’ll try to wrap this up by briefly
summarizing why I believe Do The Right thing has lasted nearly twenty-five
years and will continue to endure as long as civilization is still standing. First things first, this is a very
angry film, and there’s really no getting around that. Mr. Lee was clearly enraged by a slew
of recent, racially motivated murders in the New York area so that would lead
one to believe that Do The Right Thing is at its core, essentially the story of
an unarmed Black kid killed by the NYPD.
Don’t get me wrong, when I say angry, I don’t mean to imply that it’s an
all consuming sense of anger because there are also deep wells of sadness
embedded through every single interaction in this film. Take the opening credits sequence for
example, there is the lone dancer played by Rosie Perez and she appears to be on
an anonymous street lined with brown stones. The lighting is fairly exaggerated in a classical sense,
almost what you would say in a soundstage for a Hollywood musical. This could be the set of Singin’ in the
Rain but the type of dancing in which Perez is engaged and her continually altered
wardrobe suggests a more modern and much more aggressive form of human movement
(Lee even puts her in literal boxing gloves at one point). What this suggests to me is a motif
that runs throughout the entire film, that of style, culture, and generations
nestled uncomfortably on top of one another. Every single interaction in the film primarily consists of
individuals from a particular group or identity asserting their own collective
power on this crowded block in Brooklyn.
The sadness, I would argue, comes from the fact that sometimes these
types of interactions lead to some wonderfully human moments of compassion and
understanding. That is what it ultimately
makes it all the more heart wrenching when moments of anger, cowardice, and racism
lead to the lifeless body of a young black teenager. To Mr. Lee this is not simply a pained cry for justice, but
rather, as summed up by the two opposing quotes from Martin Luther King and
Malcolm X at the end, a sorrowful examination of how we will most likely never truly
understand and trust one another.
Sadly, we have come to the conclusion of our Guillermo Del Toro retrospective and oddly enough we end at the beginning of his career with his debut feature film, Cronos. It's an odd and rather touching modern day Vampire tale (in which the word vampire is never uttered) that Del Toro himself has admitted he would probably do entirely differently had he the opportunity to direct it to today. In a way, it's almost a perfect debut feature, the awkward passages are akin to watching a toddler learn to walk but all of the Del Toro signifiers are there for future film historians to discover. Cronos is ostensibly about an antique dealer and his granddaughter discovering an ancient device called the Cronos which grants eternal life to whomever allows its claws to penetrate their skin. The only catch is the oldman also adopt an insatiable thirst for human blood. Meanwhile a dying businessman and his greedy thug of a nephew (ably played by Mr. Perlman) conspire to forcibly pry the device away from the Grandfather in order to prolong his own life. The thematic obsessions with machinery and symbols, familiar relationships exposed and shattered (and possibly rebuilt) by the supernatural genre elements, and last but not least, the presence of Ron Perlman. Mr. Del Toro also brings in a welcome dose of humanity to the proceedings by displaying genuine fear over the eventual decomposition of the human body. It's hard to not watch this film and think of the AIDS epidemic which, at the time, was finally gaining worldwide notoriety for the swath of destruction it had been cutting for some time. Cronos shows a young mind trying to figure out its place in the cinematic universe and that in and of itself places it head and shoulders above most comparable debut features.
It's always intrigued me how the term Horror movie has become much more expansive and wide-reaching than most other specific types of genre. Horror movies can extend all the way into psychological thriller territory or be reigned in by the tropes of the slasher film, it encompasses everything. Myself, never being much a fan of the goriest that the genre had to offer, tended to drift towards the quieter and sadder ghost stories offered up by the likes of Guillermo Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (Alejandro Amenabar's The Others is a fellow worthy entry which we will have to get to later). It is with great regret that I admit to having missed The Devil's Backbone in it's initial release but I can at least say that I remember reading about it (I think). I doubt it was something that would have announced itself on my radar but looking back, I was quite taken with the aforementioned Others so I'm having difficulty remembering why I didn't seek out like minded movies to accompany it. If there's one thing we can be thankful to M. Night Shamalayan for, it is that the Sixth Sense made these kind of movies in vogue for a few years. The natural cycle of horror then shifted into a wildly different direction and now we're stuck with a lot of crap that I won't care to mention at this particular juncture. In any event, catching up with The Devil's Backbone (probably around the time Pan's Labyrinth came out) I was immediately entranced by it. Having revisited the film, I was struck by how concretely embedded some of the images have become in my brain. The central one, for example, involving the defused bomb slammed and stuck directly into the middle of an isolated boys' orphanage playground is a typically genius Del Toro visual signature. Fully exploited the emotional potential inherent in all ghost stories, The Devil's Backbone reveals itself to be far more interested in exposing the frayed nerves of a childhood cut short (particular through the consequences of an adult war) than a cheap jump scare with a cat on a garbage can. The film begins with a monologue asking the question of "what is a ghost", and it's a testament to Mr. Del Toro's craft and his dedication to the particulars of cinematic story telling that the answer we get has little or nothing to do with the supernatural. I have to admit I find myself going back and forth between Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone in order to answer the question of which is the best film by Guillermo Del Toro. On days when I can't decide, I simply shrug my shoulders and smile grateful for having to make a choice between two such exquisite films.
Forgive me for jumping around in the Del Toro chronology of films, I'm not even doing a very good job approximating the order in which I originally saw them. But if you'll permit me a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking, one could make the argument that I have segmented the films into two categories: we just completed his English language projects (with the exception of Mimic) and now we are onto his Spanish language films. The crown jewel of which (at least to the eyes of the Academy) is his 2006 fairy-tale during war magnum opus, Pan's Labyrinth. What I remember most vividly about the release surrounding Pan's was that it felt like this (not very well kept, mind you) secret in the film world was about to be unleashed upon the general public. I say this as someone who was a deep admirer of Mr. Del Toro at the time even though I still held a few blind spots in the form of Cronos and The Devil's Backbone, a situation which was to be resolved immediately. I was so taken with Blade II and Hellboy that I really didn't need any other film related evidence of Mr. Del Toro's genius and it made Pan's Labyrinth seem like the coming out party he had so richly deserved for almost fifteen years. Again, this is what happens when you don't know anything, Mr. Del Toro was already on a countless number of radars for his entire career and Pan's Labyrinth represented little more than just another step up for a rapidly progressing director, but what can I say, it felt good to think I was sharing his work with the world. Set five years after the Spanish Civil War in the early years of the Francoist period, Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of a young girl named Ofelia who must navigate the unrelentingly harsh world of her new step father, Captain Vidal's military outpost while simultaneously completing a series of tasks assigned to her by the mythic Pan creature in a world that seems to exist just beneath or outside Captain Vidal's mill of misery. Del Toro beautifully weaves some of his most ambitious creature and fantasy designs with some of his most ambitious story telling to date. The cumulative emotional power this film possesses, powerfully rendered by its devastating final moments is impossible to deny and Del Toro's obsession with primal fears that animate the lives of children has never been more potent. It's difficult to marvel enough at the sheer beauty of some of these images but where Del Toro proves his ultimate mastery is never letting either the beauty nor the horror dominate over the other. Both realms of existence (the real and the fantastic) both possess the capacity for disappointment, joy, love, and terror. If Pan's Labyrinth represents the truest expression of Mr. Del Toro's filmmaking fascinations, let's hope there's plenty more where that came from. It's hard to imagine that only seven years later the fairy tale genre would be relegated to the depths of whatever new YA franchise crops up over night, let's hope Del Toro gets several more opportunities to restore it to its proper glory like he did with Pan's Labyrinth.
If Hellboy was Mr. Del Toro’s unleashed id, than the follow
up known as Hellboy II: The Golden Army
is like that id having a baby with the Tasmanian devil and unleashing it into
recess with a group of caffeinated, sugared-up fourth graders. And I do not AT ALL mean that as a
backhanded insult, in fact it’s one of the things I love most about Hellboy II
and what makes it to these eyes, a superior entry in the series. Gone are the draggier, introductory
(albeit necessary) beats of the first film and in its place is a sheer headlong
rush into whatever fantastical image pops into Mr. Del Toro’s seemingly
boundless imagination. It’s difficult
to describe the way Mr. Del Toro assaults you with images, ideas, and side
narratives while simultaneously allowing you to luxuriate in the very
environment of the film. The troll
market sequence and subsequent battle with the elemental creature almost seem
like a Hellboy short film packed within the larger narrative in the way that
you almost want that story to go on and your heart yearns to spend as much time
as humanly possible exploring the various designs at work in said troll
market. I think what endears me
the most to Hellboy II is the sly domestic comedy Mr. Del Toro weaves within
the larger fabric of a story of a decimated civilization attempting to kick
start an apocalypse and regain control of the planet. Similar themes of familial sacrifice and villains motivated
more by pride than faceless evil are mixed with the genuine pathos of realizing
one can no longer occupy the consequence free lifestyle that so many other comic
book heroes are promised. In fact,
all of the B.P.R.D. characters throughout the course of the film are faced with
decisions that they must make in which the fate of one close to them is pitted
against that of the entirety of civilization. I can’t think of another comic book movie that successfully evokes
sympathy for a city-destroying monster the way Del Toro does for the elemental
creature, and the absolutely beautiful sequence caused by his eventual
destruction is truly one for the comic book film hall of fame. Aligned with his theme of maturation
and teamwork, Del Toro also goes out of his way to supply a rather complicated
and empathetic presence for his villains.
None of the antagonists in this film are pursuing mass slaughter simply
for the fun of it; they are simply trying to regain a piece of what they once
had. In fact, they are not all
that different from the heroes of the story and when it comes time for them to
meet their ultimate fate, Del Toro never takes the easy way out with something
as facile as a cool death and a clever punch line. There are real world consequences to his Hellboy universe
and death is not something from which any of the witnesses will easily walk
away. That’s not to say these
films are a slog through comic book revisionism. I can’t think of another sequence in a comic book film
that has plastered as big of a goofy smile on my face as the one in this film
where Abe and Hellboy do drunken karaoke together. Nor can I think of another comic book movie that would dare
to stop dead in its narrative tracks in order to achieve such a scene. That scene in essence captures the
essence of the Hellboy films in a way.
It’s genuinely touching because of the detailed character work Del Toro
has laid before it, it’s genuinely funny because it’s two grown man slathered
in an unholy amount of make up singing Barry Manilow together, and most
importantly it feels completely of the wonderful world that Mr. Del Toro has
created. The series that began as feeling somewhat off had beautifully hit its
stride by entry number two, I just hope we get another one someday.
Continuing the unofficial Guillermo Del Toro retrospective
in honor of his new release, Pacific Rim, we come to might be the only example
of a comic book passion project: Hellboy. If IMDB is to be trusted as a reliable
source, (and if it isn’t, then all hope is lost) Del Toro had his pick of the
litter after the financial bonanza that was Blade II. Rather than reap the benefits of any number of straight down
the middle fastballs thrown his way, he chose to pursue a deeply personal,
rather obscure comic book character as his next project. That to me, is the best way to approach
Hellboy and its subsequent sequel because I believe these films are as about as
close as we are going to get to a full-on biological and psychological
dissection of the being known as Guillermo Del Toro. As I have made my feelings known about the current slate of
comic book adaptations we are forced to endure, I shall refrain from pointing
out sorely missed this quality is in essentially every other film of the
sort. Watching Hellboy for the
first time, the viewer is likely to be taken aback just by the sheer oddity of
it, in that, there is simply something off about the entire enterprise. Del Toro doesn’t go for the sitcom
style jokes of his peers but rather the moments before and after the joke that
are so thoroughly enmeshed with his sense of character. His dialogue may not reflect a stylized
sensibility of someone like Mamet for example, but it is always unpredictable
and highly precise. If a common
theme throughout Mr. Del Toro’s work is how individuals succeed or fail within
larger organizational systems, than the work itself is highly reflective of a
mind that is completely at ease within big budget studio efforts and smaller,
more personal films. I believe
that is why I find the Hellboy movies so fascinating because they brilliantly
demonstrate the unstoppable personality of Mr. Del Toro that can’t help but
burst through even the blandest of expositional material. If the original Hellboy was not a break
though success (and it is my understanding that Hellboy II came about on the back
and success of Pan’s Labyrinth than its predecessor), that is all the more a
testament to Mr. Del Toro’s particular brand of quirk than any kind of agreed
upon opinion as to the quality of the work. And as we have seen from the recent smiting of The Lone
Ranger, weird usually leads to ruin rather than financial success. In a recent reprisal of Mr. Del Toro’s
filmography by Slant Magazine (I swear, I had the idea first) the observation
was made that Hellboy is, in actuality, a companion piece to Blade II. I had never made that connection before
but in revisiting the material there were certain parallels that definitely
surprised me this time around. The
resurrection of Rasputin, for example, has the villain rising out of a pool of
blood in a strikingly similar manner to Blade at the end of that film. Superficial visual rhymes aside, the
two films show Mr. Del Toro’s pressing obsession with how individuals overcome
or succumb to their pre-ordained roles in life. Both films feature brash, outlandish sons butting heads with
more stern and seemingly unfeeling fathers and more importantly, both films
show that while our day to day life might be littered with symbols, maps, and
stories of our lives written ages and ages ago, our ultimate purpose will
always be decided by ourselves alone.
The same could be said for Mr. Del Toro’s adventures in Hollywood.
I wish I could expound on how Ondine fits in with the wildly diverse yet thematically coherent works of director Neil Jordan. I will be the first to say here and now that I am not currently equipped to pull such a thorough and comprehensive analysis out of my behind. I just ask that you be patient and hopefully within the next couple of months I will complete the many blind spots I currently possess for Mr. Jordan's oeuvre. What I can tell you, however, is that Ondine is completely worth your time (as is Byzantium, his most recently released film) and that from what I understand, if there was ever a director worthy of tackling a modern day Irish folk tale, it is Neil Jordan. This film is so visually splendid, it's quite easy to get lost in the boggy gray skies and lush green hills of the Irish coast so as to get lost in the melancholic fun Mr. Jordan has by toying with our fairy tale expectations. The story centers around a recovering alcoholic fisherman named Syracuse but nicknamed Circus by friends and relatives for reasons that are doled out piece by piece throughout the story. He shares custody of his daughter, Annie with his currently alcoholic ex-wife and Annie has a kidney condition that requires weekly dialysis. These elements seems to be setting up a slog through kitchen sink Irish melodrama (nothing against those films mind you) but Jordan invigorates this particular tale by introducing the title character of Ondine, caught in one of Syracuse's nets and thought to be a sea nymph originated from the myths of Scottish folklore. This allows the director to indulge in one of his favorite (again, supposedly) leitmotifs: that of the magical realm of storytelling gracefully and sometimes forcefully instilling itself into that of the quotidian everyday. One of the things I love most about Ondine is Jordan's reluctance to push the qualities of either method too far so as to weigh the other one down. The story is neither as dreary, nor as fantastical as it has the potential to be and far from being muddled or confused as to its tone, it aims to possess a compelling balance of both and succeeds mightily. Also, for anyone who knows me and my musical taste, Ondine is a bit of a no brainer for it boasts a very heavily Sigur Ros-accented score and soundtrack. It wouldn't be a stretch to suggest that the film means to prove once and for al the truly ethereal, other-wordly cinematic qualities of the Icelandic trio's music. Sigur Ros has been long heavily leaned on as the triumphant capper to an emotional climax in other films but what Jordan does here is utilize the music is in a more ambient, atmospheric sense so that it is almost as much a part of the cinematic landscape as the rolling hills. Spoiler alert, but somebody needs to tell me which part of Ireland has Sigur Ros concerts being broadcast on television in the middle of the day because I'd love to be flipping around and stumble upon that sometime. In other words, it's difficult to imagine the film without the accompanying score, so firmly in sync it is with the visuals. In fact, that might be the more comprehensive way to describe the pleasures that Ondine has to offer: everything is so perfectly calibrated, perfectly aligned in a very tricky balance that you wouldn't want it any other way.
