Just because I am shying away from the challenge of Pynchon does not require that I shy away from challenges in General.  Terence Mallick’s The Tree of Life seems like as good a place as any to start.

I just finished writing 1,000 words about The Tree of Life (most of which I have ditched) and I am no closer to coming to an acceptable explanation of this film.  It is very abstract and hard to understand and the best I can do for you is to present a guide for how to see the film.  I strongly recommend watching it as there are few films like this made nowadays.

I have ambivalent feelings about this film.  For a while now I’ve been increasingly disappointed in the amount of shitty movies that are made.  It used to be I could find at least one bearable film in the theaters.  Nowadays watchable movies seem to be fading from the theaters, replaced by formulaic romantic comedies, predictable action films that do little more than showcase a studio’s amount of CGI-related toys and “independent” films that all seem to bare a striking resemblance in story and sight to the dry/quirky/visually stunning stories told by Wes Anderson.

So the thought of seeing a film that asks questions without answering them should have been exactly what I wanted.  I will admit when I’d first heard of this movie (it was a story on NPR) and how fans were leaving the theatre 30-minutes into the story because it was so abstract and non-linear (two snobby terms that get my heart racing), I couldn’t wait to see it.  But the film’s abstract inaccessible message clashed with all too familiar scenes of an all too familiar dysfunctional family in an all too familiar town living all too familiar lives

Malick relies on this familiarity to tell his story.  Rarely throughout the film are we treated to an entire conversation, but what we do hear is familiar enough for us to fill in the blanks.  One need only catch the snippets to get the gist of the thing.  It is a handy method that goes well with the general aesthetic of the film.  the idea of a Tree of Life gives one the impression we are to be told a parable, and therefore the details are familiar and trivial to us .  A lifetime spent watching TV and movies has conditioned us to recognize certain flashes of “reality”:  A father bullying his children, struggling with financial security and maintaining an emotional distance from his wife.

But where it does disservice to the story is that we are left without nuance, nothing to relate to these particular people above the throngs of familial familiarity splattered on television screens throughout our lives.  The characters are deduced to mere caricatures of people we know too well.  Is it simply the flip side of a coin, or was Malick clumsy when constructing his subjects?  Do we really need to care about this family when Malick’s message (whatever it may be) transcends their small lives in a small town?  It might be a matter of preference in the end.  I personally felt a little let down.

But this movie does have its shining movies, and it is in that favorable light where this optomist chooses to focus the girth of his argument.  While I still don’t know what Malick wanted to convey in this film it was certainly clear what he was asking: are we children of God, or Monkeys?  This is a pretty simplistic and obvious interpretation.  But he makes very little effort to conceal his intent.  We open the film with a nice little history of the world from a Darwinian point of view.  Just before being led through this lesson, we are asked a question by the voice-over of Big Mama (these characters didn’t have names, so I have christened them myself). The voice-over guides us through the film, being the most accessible element in the film  we are able to discern what Malick wants us to be thinking.  In the beginning, we are told “In man’s palace there are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace.  You have to choose which one you’ll follow.”  It is clear who Big Mama favors: “Nature only wants to please itself (tight shot on Brad Pitt) and others to please it too.”  But are we really to believe the way of grace is the way to go?  When taken out of its favorable light, is grace really so good as Big Mama claims?

“Grace doesn’t try to please itself.  It accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked.  It accepts insults and injuries.”  These are not the signs of a constructive way of life.  These are the signs of a coward, someone ill fit to survive in a world dominated by nature.

Opposite grace’s favor is Da played by Brad Pitt (who if he doesn’t claim at least one slot of the five Best Actor nominations will be a crime against humanity.  And I think we all know beautiful people are never in the line of fire when nature takes its vengeance out on humanity.) who makes nature look like an asshole, with its random cruelty and harsh lessons we never seem to get straight.  Pitt forces his way through this film like an angry hurricane, darkening the dispositions of all in his presence, providing a life for his family but one in which they are always in fear of the random explosions whose impetus they never quite figure out.

It is unclear throughout the film whom Malick favors.  Is grace the virtuous way of life, while we are forced accept nature’s existence as a necessary evil, or are we really all a part of a great natural force that will guide our planet and this universe to its inevitable end?  The 15-minute montage of mankind’s evolution certainly makes an argument for Malick’s respect for natural dominance.  But surely the final sequence at the beach speaks to a supernatural world not seen on this planet.  Is this brightly-lit, seemingly endless ocean front the salvation we pray for at night?  Even in the naturalist sequence, we see a dinosaur show mercy to a lesser species, a contradiction to the Darwinian ethic we Atheists were raised to understand.

One can come up with a hundred theories regarding the message of this film, but the diplomat in me wants this film to be an argument for the reconciliation of the great God/Mutha Naytcha.  Not that both evolution and Christianity are right in the binary sense of the word, but that those championing both sides are capable of living in the same world, regardless of what happens afterward.  It gives me hope in the end to see the man and the man he’s made come together and relate to each other if nothing more than on a strictly human level.  It is an optimistic view indeed, but one worth documenting.

And as for the more technical parts of the film, these are by far the best I’ve seen in a long time.  Camera work, lamented by one reviewer as constantly in movement plays a very effective role in conveying the harsh nature of the characters in the film.  When we see a group of pre-teenage boys terrorizing the neighborhood and causing as much damage as they are capable, the camera circles and bumps up against them in an aggressive way, seemingly pushing the kids into committing the petty acts of boredom and anger on those unsuspecting.  We are given multiple views of characters drifting down the street like leaves off a tree and the camera follows suit, drifting back and forth along a vaguely similar path.

And as I’d mentioned before, Brad Pitt is an absolute force of nature in this film.  He is stubborn, mean, angry and violent by nature.  He makes this film what it is and should be honored as such.  The only problem I’d had was his sudden flip from Dick Da to  regretful, “what have I done with my life” Da in the blink of an eye.  And that can be attributed to weak character development in the writing as much as anything else.

But that brings me to my last point: there is no plot to this film.  It is meant to be a statement, not a story.  The fate of the family is not our concern here.  Their story is all our story and their fate is to mimic that of the fate of mankind.  They don’t go away, they don’t resolve anything and nothing ends.  We go through our lives and we are forced to make choices.  These choices dictate how we are seen and how we see the world.  They are wholly effective, if not a product of our environment.  Our decisions can say more about our environment than they do about us.  In the end, we may be effected by nature or grace, but the only thing that is sure is that we are affected.

Okay, we’re warming up and we’ve got a list.  Next week, Brad Pitt makes the miraculous jump from angry abusive father to angry abusive general manager of a baseball team, and I (totally heterosexually) fawn over his diverse acting ability and “stage presence.”  Selah.

Alouishis

Okay, maybe I was being a little ambitious by trying to review what Stephen Colbert called a 700-page novel of experimental fiction about entropy.  But seriously, have you seen that book?  It’s ridiculous, how can you possibly review something so unconventional and abstract?  You just have to take it at face value.  All I can really tell you is that I have never read anything like it, and while it was often frustrating, I felt better off having read it and would recommend it to anyone looking for something new and challenging.

I was wrong to tread outside comfortable waters.  I belong in the world of the moving pictures and it is time to come home.  Oscar season is once again approaching and I will take a look at some of the possible nominees and anything else I feel like watching.  Next up, Terence Mallick’s makes the most original movie seen in years, but still steals the title from a fortune cookie.

Well, we’ve had a nice week off and the post Oscar high is starting to fade.  It appears the momentum going for The King’s Speech was able to push it on through to the big prize.  I might have been too deeply involved in a Sorkin love-fest to notice what was right in front of me.  Everyone else seemed to know.

But no one’s perfect and life goes on.  Besides, I think still must be batting something like .996.  Not too bad even for me.

So spring is coming, shit’s growing in my yard that ain’t supposed to.  The birds that never fully departed for the winter are coming back in droves, waking me up on Sunday mornings in the midst of a terrible hangover, wanting nothing more than some fucking peace and quiet, which is why I bought the damn house in the first place.   But it’s alright, I have a pellet gun along with proof of violation of an unwritten social compact.  We had a deal and they reneged.  You know what that means…

But we musn’t get lazy as the sun warms are muscles, our bodies requiring less of us as the temperature rises.  Just because the sun is beginning to shine doesn’t give us an excuse to get lazy and fat.  There’s work to be done damnit and if we don’t do it, who will?  It is time for a new project, this is a little more of a long term project but life is a marathon we must run, and it gives us a pretty good reason to sit out in the sun and read until wed get too drunk to do so, passing out and suffering a wicked burn.  A hell of a way to kill a Saturday.

As an intelligent under-achiever, I have coasted into a job that does little more than keep me really busy much of the time.  There is little room in my working day for intellectual stimulation.  It happens on occasion, but not with enough frequency to satisfy a man of my manner.  I require a sharp mind; for such a tool will be as important as a sharp knife come the revolution.  Survival of the fittest my dear friend, and the way things are going, I suggest you stay fit.

So there are people out there who like to read books.  There’s not many left, and most of them prefer reading Stieg Larsson, Dan Brown, or whatever conspiracy-theory, action riddled swill we decide has a vague hint of cleverness.  I believe reading is to be encouraged, and if the material requires a healthy amount of rape, corporal punishment or profligate Apple Laptop plugs, so be it.

But there are those of us who still like a challenge.  There are others who kill themselves to create the kind of challenge worthy of our descendants’ efforts for the next few hundreds of years.  We all have personal preferences.  A small fraction thinks them geniuses, the other 80% calls it pretentious crap.  But these men and women make us think more than others, they are often ill understood if understood at all, and it gives us a sense accomplishment from simply attempting to read them.

Difficult books are a necessity as a high water mark for intellectual accomplishment.  Not everyone needs to read them, and those who read them don’t need to know them to a T.  But their existence acts as a measurement of our minds’ capabilities.  Surely Joyce’s Ulysses must act as some benchmark for the power of imagination.

This truly is what sets us apart from computers, other animals and all other beings in existence.  I cannot abide a man who feels we are neither more nor less than these beasts.  There is nothing wrong, and it is even recommended for one to get in touch with his or her primal side.  There are qualities amongst all living things that we share, and it is important to embrace these.  But all beings are unique in their own way.  some are great sprinters, others great hunters and some can change the color of their skin to hide.  All of these qualities set each respective species apart from one another, imagination is no different.

To the point?  Okay.  We are no mere mortals and it is important for us to appreciate that.  As a casual reader, I have endeavored for the past year to read the most challenging novels I can find (excepting Finnegans Wake, I mean c’mon!  That’s not even English).  It is these novels that pushes our respective imaginations to the brink of their capacity.  Surely there must be something as beautiful about that as any physical test of meddle.  Either way, I suggest we find out.

We will be discussing books over the coming months.  Difficult books.  We must push ourselves, there’s no other way.  I will be blowing your mind on other subjects at the same time, but we must remain faithful to this task.  We start with Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, a book that took me three months to read and I still couldn’t tell you exactly what it’s about.  Until then.

Alouishis

Well, it’s the big day and I’m dragging this thing out to the last minute.  Once again life has gotten in the way and I’ve procrastinated.  But here I am at the finish line and I can’t think of a better film on which to wrap things up.

If Inception made an argument against expanding the Best Picture field, then surely Winter’s Bone must act as a full-throated argument for it.  A small independent film that received little critical attention upon its release, it is a movie that deserves to be seen and its nomination should give it the kind of attention it deserves.  I can’t imagine it will win if only because it is so modest, but I have to think this is exactly the kind of film The Academy had in mind when they sought to include a greater variety of films in the Best Picture category.

Winter’s Bone isn’t the first film of its kind.  American Cinema’s history is littered with small, exceptional artsy-fartsy films that are overlooked due either to their subject matter, their lack of star power or they fall victim to poor timing.  I don’t know why I hadn’t heard of Winter’s Bone until its nomination, but I couldn’t turn on a television without seeing a trailer for Inception last year.

Perhaps its not surprising that Inception has those three elements that Winter’s Bone lacked.  John Hawkes does an incredible job as a very shifty man whose character and intentions are slowly revealed throughout the film in an eerie way that leaves you unsure in the end of what he is capable.  But he ain’t Leo DiCaprio.

Inception sold itself as a psychological thriller that messed with your mind while providing a healthy amount of action and special effects.  All those elements contain mass appeal, but you would be hard-pressed to find someone who wants to lay down eight dollars to hear a story about a back-country hillbilly who skips out on bail after getting busted for cooking crystal meth, putting his home up for the bond, leaving his daughter to care for her catatonic mother and two siblings without a home.  What redemption could possibly exist within such a bleak, depressing story?  And if we are simply seeing a story of a family thrown out of their home, we might as well take up crystal meth ourselves if only to numb the dull agonizing pain that this story reveals as being just another part of life.

Inception’s makers were both skilled and fortuitous in its release.  In these ever increasingly hot summers we find more people flocking to theaters to get out of the heat.  Released in mid-July, Inception was able to capitalize on the lack of competition that made up last year’s weak Blockbuster market, gaining a much wider audience.  If you only saw one movie at the theaters last summer, I am willing to bet it was Inception.

Released a month prior to Inception, Winter’s Bone is exactly the kind of movie you don’t want to see in the heat of the summer.  It is cold and dark, both in subject matter as well as in aesthetics.  My mother used to take my friends and me to movies in the summers after we went swimming and then we’d go to McDonald’s.  Good family fun.  But do you think we would have liked to see Driving Miss Daisy?  Fuck no, we wanted to see Ghost Busters 2. Whoever decided to release Winter’s Bone in the middle of blockbuster season either wanted the film to fail, or was too stupid to do his or her job.

But there is redemption within Winter’s Bone and it is well worth witnessing.  Like the unappreciated art-house films that preceded it, there is beautiful cinematography that brings out the stark beauty of the Ozarks and its mysterious inhabitants.  In its efforts to retain some sense of authenticity, many of the actors traded their wardrobes with the locals and many of the actors were locals.  These are always great stories that accompany films of this nature to give the viewer some validation that what they are seeing is the genuine article.

Whether this films strikes a fair representation of the Ozarks or not, one can’t deny the story’s humanity.  Characters are hardened, a blanketed quality that must exist in a world that is commonly referred to as the Third World Country within the United States.  These people are leery of outsiders and often brutal within their own circles.  Hawkes’ character (Teardrop) practically chokes his 17-year-old niece in an early scene of the film and we never are quite at ease that he won’t try it again.  His motivations are true to his family, but they are reckless, and in the end, self-defeating.

The main character (Ree) tasked with saving the family land and adjoining woods is equally as cold and sharp-tongued as her uncle, but her devotion to the protection of her family is different in approach, though not necessarily in its ends.  Her journey takes her into harm’s way so many times, the viewer can’t help but imagine the horrible things that might happen to a girl of her age in real life.  But she goes in stubbornly, unafraid to ruffle what feathers she needs to find her father.  We see how scared she is and can only imagine what kind of bravery it would take to overcome these fears.

Christian Bale will in all likelihood win Best Supporting Actor tonight, but mention must be made of Hawkes’ performance (again).  An alumni of Deadwood, he has proven to be a skilled and versatile actor whom I think we will be seeing more of in the future.  Jennifer Lawrence’s tight-jawed performance of Ree is also worth mentioning and I will look forward to seeing her in future films as well.

If there’s anything bad to be said of this film, it’s that I wasn’t really sure where the arc of the film was.  It seemed to resolve itself without you even knowing it, and I wanted to know more about Teardrop.  It’s obvious by the end of the film that his days are numbered and his end is left to our imagination with little need for guidance.  But it didn’t seem like enough.  He crashed in and out of the movie sporadically and it seemed in the end like he was little more than a sidekick to Ree, assisting her for his part when a strong male presence was required.  Even writing this I realize I am making a pretty weak argument against this film, but you’ve to play Devil’s Advocate.

So we’ve come to the end of this journey, but this is not the end of our association.  Life is long and there’s a lot out there to cover.  I haven’t changed my opinion in the past month and I am now more confident than ever that The Social Network will be victorious tonight.  It’s been a lot of fun and I feel a little less cynical about the film industry than I did when I started.  I didn’t think Hollywood put out ten good films a year, but despite my varying opinions I feel that all these films are at the very least good movies worth your attention.

I am mulling over my next project, but fear not.  We will be back together soon.  Until next time.

Alouishis

Requiring a significant stretch of the imagination to be able to call myself an outdoorsy-type, I often have a hard time getting excited to watch movies about extreme people in extreme conditions.  The idea of someone out by themselves in nature doesn’t often inspire great story-telling.  I see a lot of walks through scenic settings, soft music in the background.  We are meant to see why these people are where they are, wish we had what it took to forsake our materialistic lives in the name of something purer, a bucolic life.

Maybe its my Pacific Northwest upbringing; a region so varied and beautiful all within two hours’ drive and even within the city, that the idea of escaping civilization seems trite to me.  I’ve never had that problem.

But 127 Hours is one of several films that have proven to be much more interesting than I originally imagined.  Given further thought, I can now see how the appeal to the story might lie in other places than the beautiful landscapes.  What does it take for a man to mutilate himself?  How long must he wait?  Does dementia have to set in, can a person of fit mind really do something like that to himself?

I remember hearing the story when it actually happened, wondering at what point I would break, if I could indeed do such a thing.  But it was a distant thought, something that gave me pause for a few minutes, shaking it off with a quick look of disgust and disbelief.  I didn’t internalized it.  Getting my hand caught in a rock out in the middle of nowhere seemed like a very small possibility, the odds have to be in the trillions, so I never felt the need to concern myself too much with a hypothetical test of will.

So I do have to admire Danny Boyle (writer/director) for taking the time to look into what makes a person like Aron Ralston tick.  Here was a guy who would go out into the Utah desert for days at a time without telling a soul or concerning himself with any kind of emergency contingency plan.  People like Boyle and Jon Krakauer have a gift for looking into what makes people do potentially fatal things, and how they handle the pressure when things do go wrong.

127 Hours turned out to be a great study in what made Boyle tick.  Through flashbacks and hunger-induced hallucinations (a predictable plot device as the audience probably doesn’t want to watch all six days of Ralston trying to escape in a row) we see a life of solitude and alienation.  Ralston ignores his parents and his sister.  We see that he breaks up with his girlfriend (at a Jazz game of all places!) in an Ebenezer Scrooge-like fit of silence, Aron sits through a one-sided argument with his girlfriend wherein he’s too proud to ask her not to leave.  Her final condemnation that he will always be lonely is a summation of the message of the film (laid on quite thickly): singularity is suicide.

But his pride is common among men, and many have found themselves in his situation due to stubborn, dumb-ass pride.  It’s the other edge of the sword in the strong independent male.  They have to be independent, there’s no other way.

As for the film itself, I think it deserves extra points in the Degree of Difficulty category.  The very fact that most people know the story already pretty much guarantees it won’t win Best Picture or get a large audience.  Not because popular stories don’t sell, but because the nature of this story (on the surface) does not lend itself to excitement and attention-grabbing scenes.  I rolled my eyes when I’d heard it was made into a film, and I really wasn’t looking forward to watching it.  I have to figure mine was not the only reaction of that nature, and to make this into something appealing to a mass audience is damned near impossible, not even worth trying.  Boyle did better to stay true to the story and count on a core audience of action junkies and morbid freaks who want to see just how gory the big scene in the end really is (I thought it was pretty fuckin’ raw, personally).  A stomach-churning story of this nature is not born for mass appeal.

James Franco got a lot of credit for his acting, as well he should.  But I don’t believe his role was as challenging as he may have been credited.  His demons were laid out pretty early on and following scenes reinforced them, pounding a lot of nuance and complexity out of his character.

And it is that lack of grace that I feel will cost this film a Best Picture award.  I think Boyle was very upfront with what he was trying to say, and surely it is a message worth delivering.  But it was done in a somewhat clumsy manner, and the viewer is left with little to contemplate, other than whether they would have the guts to do what Ralston did.  I want to put this film in the top three solely on the fact that Boyle was able to make a very difficult story to tell look easy.  But I am having a hard time with that.  I think this film would have received honorable mention in the five-picture era.  But it’s really only a good movie standing up against the great ones of the season.

We’ve got to review one more movie before the big night.  I’m getting knock-kneed.

Alouishis

Having only vague memories of the first Toy Story and absolutely no memory of the second (as I did not watch it), I was interested to see how the third and final (?) installment of the most popular animated series of movies in recent history could be nominated for Best Picture.

I guess it’s not that surprising.  There has been an increasing public outcry from the animated community that their films aren’t getting any respect.  And as one intended result of expanding the Best Picture category to ten films was to include deserving films that might otherwise be overlooked, this seems to be the perfect time.

It helps that the Toy Story trilogy is one of the most popular and well made animated series of all time.  It also helps that it was made by Pixar, seemingly the only game in town when it comes to animated films.  But allow me to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment.  Would this exact same film have been nominated if it hadn’t been the third in a trilogy (it’s not like the plot was dependent on the other two), or was it nominated because it had the most gravitas of the most recent animated films and was chosen as more of a representative of the genre?  Was it simply the Best Animated film and thrown in there to shut up the cartoon gestapo?

There are those who will agree, but it is important to think about what this film was trying to accomplish.  The tear-jerker scene at the end wasn’t meant for people like myself who only saw part or none of the previous two films.  It was meant for those who had invested themselves in the series, in the outcome of the characters whom they’ve seen develop and change over the years.  It was meant to be an acknowledgment of the inevitable passage of time and expiration of life, while reminding us of our ability to look back at times past and remember what we once had, that we might have some version of it again.

But that brings us to the big question tonight: does a film need to stand on its own to be considered for the Big Award?  Or is it okay for a film to sit on the shoulders of its predecessors, a seemingly unfair advantage to the other films?  The answer lies within our expectations of the viewers.  The Return of the King was not the best Lord of the Rings film and wasn’t the best film made in 2003 (the others being Mystic River, Master and Commander, Lost in Translation and Seabiscuit). But it was overpowering in its scope and depth of storytelling when matched with its two predecessors.  To watch The Return of the King without having seen the previous two is to watch a passable action film with great special effects, beautiful cinematography but bad acting.  But our viewer would have no appreciation for the characters’ journeys, the weight of their struggle elemental in what made the last episode so powerful.  The Lord of the Rings trilogy wasn’t really three separate movies, but more like a feature-length version of a mini-series; a continuous story wherein the three sections were dependent upon each other to tell a bigger story.

There is nothing in the Academy’s rules that says a film must stand on its own  (this is actually a blind assumption, I haven’t read the rules).  And perhaps it is best that we do ask that of our viewers.  Times change and making deeply involved stories is a good way to reintroduce nuance and an attention to detail to a generation that hasn’t been reading as many novels as its ancestors.  One need only look at the most popular television shows today to see that long-drawn out plots that evolve over an extended period of time have been succeeding over the Law & Order model where a storyline lives and dies within its 60-minute allotment.

We have also seen that you can’t make a shit series of movies and hope that the fact it is an intricate, extended story gets it any Oscar consideration.  The Matrix trilogy never got that love, and rightfully so.  It consisted of one great film and two awful ones that should have never been made.  The godfather actually achieved the opposite, getting two Best Picture nods, and then forever tainting its legacy with a god-awful attempt at tying up loose strings that didn’t need to be tied.  Go figure.

So where does Toy Story 3 figure in to this argument?  It’s definitely better than the third Matrix film, but not quite as good as Return of the King.  It won’t win because in the end it’s a children’s story and therefore rather simple and at times cheesy.

(This, of course, brings us back to the argument of whether a film’s initial goal is to be taken into consideration.  Toy Story 3 might be the best children’s film there is, and therefore a very good film, but does the fact that it speaks most effectively to pre-adolescents keep it from getting the big award?  It is adults after all voting for the award and the Best Picture, being the last one aired on the big night, is usually aired after bedtime.)

But I do think it’s okay for this last (?) film to be boosted up by its forbears.  It speaks to an attitude that we as viewers should embrace more in the future: that investing more time in a story yields exponentially greater reward.  To understand the nuance of a story, one must be familiar with the details.  And it is in nuance where we find real drama.  We see insecurities, imperfections and infidelities on a much more personal and real level.  Hearing others speak of Toy Story 3 makes me wish I had seen the first two (or at least paid better attention).  I would have liked to appreciate that final scene more.  It could have been  rewarding to truly understand what it meant that this kid had grown up and was moving on with his life, casting away that which he could no longer relate to, but was still capable of appreciating how informative those times were on his life.  I think I would have liked it a lot more.  But there are only so many hours in the day.

I have six days to go, the same amount of time it took my next subject to summon the balls to cut off his own arm.  Surely I will accomplish a feat no less impressive in that time.  Until then…

Alouishis

He may be a royal asshole, but Christian Bale can act.  If he doesn’t win Best Supporting Actor for The Fighter, it will be a crime against humanity.  I can’t specify what it is he does and what it takes to play a convincing character, but every second he is on the screen he seems to be telling me something.  He is such a force that you want to see what he’s doing, even when he isn’t the center of the scene.

Bale’s very convincing because he is able to find a unique and even humorous side to his addition.  Too often we’ve seen characters with drug addictions go through the same motions.  They get a taste, usually after we’ve established their downy innocence.  They descend, alienate their peers, screw over their wives (I can’t think of a female addiction film at the moment) and children and usually end up in jail.  This is not always rock bottom, but it is at the very least in our sights.  There’s a scene, you know it well.  Eyes are winced.  Fists clenched.  Perspiration, lots of it.  They go through hell and come out clean.  There are often flashbacks, voice of a living ghost, demons to overcome, haunting our protagonist in his darkest hour.  He comes out clean.  We rarely see a relapse.  Much of this can be said of The Fighter.  The detox scene is just as cliched as the scene in any other biopic and Dickie seems to triumph over his addiction easier than you’d think.  But the opening scenes of the film are really something special.

We meet Dickie already deep in the throes of his addiction.  He deceives himself into believing HBO wants to make a film about a comeback to his boxing career.  We can see from the get-go there’s something wrong with this picture.  When we learn well into the film the documentary was about crack addiction, you may not have guessed it but you’re certainly not surprised.

Dickie’s addiction is less introverted.  We aren’t meant to see how the drug affects him, but his family.  Mark Wahlburg’s role almost takes a backseat to Bale’s and one wonders at times if his character only exists as a punching back for Dickie’s many drug-addled fuck ups.  The movie could have ended when Dickie delivered the cake to his former crack-head friends and wiped his hands of them.  The ensuing fight where Mickey wins the championship – the scene we thought we were waiting for – feels anti-climactic compared to Dickie’s accomplishments.  There’s a parallel comparison to be made between Bale’s scene stealing performance, and the favoritism bestowed upon the character, Dickie by his mother and sisters.  No matter how bad he gets, he is always overshadowing his little brother.  In his mother’s eyes, Mickey’s career is merely a way for Dickie to get back on his feet.

And it is easy to see why.  While goofy, and often the butt of jokes he doesn’t see, Dickie nonetheless outshines his brother, endearing himself to everyone around.  While Mickey sits in the background, brow furrowed, arms stubbornly folded, Dickie is in your face cracking jokes, forcing you to laugh, making you happier than you were before he entered the room.  When his mother digs him out of the crack house he is living in and the horror of what her son has become is thrown in her face, he knows just which Bee Gees song to sing, lifting her spirits and the terrible train wreck that is his son – stark evidence of her failure as a mother – are swept away in an instant.  Back to the Dickie and Alice show, a nonstop force, sisters in tow behaving as a twisted methed-out version of a Greek chorus line, capable of bulldozing Mickey into…whatever makes it so they can continue to bully him.

It took Wahlburg something like ten years to get this film made.  Numerous false starts and crew changes kept him in impeccable shape over the years as he was always able to see the film at the end of the tunnel, ready at a moments notice to play a professorial fighter, never knowing what obstacle would be thrown in his way.  I really admire that dedication, and you know there’s something about this story that he felt was really important.

Wahlburg has become a really great actor in the past decade and in The Fighter he gives another solid performance.  He plays the perfect straight man to Bale’s over-the-top version of his bigger brother.  But you want more from him.  He doesn’t have to be a complex person, boxing is not a complex sport (there are 13 rules to boxing, compare that to the NFL rule book), I just wanted him to be a little more human, maybe develop a little over time (even in the end he was giving in to his mother and brother when they got in his face).  In the end his triumph seems staged.  You’ve seen this ending before and while the journey may be the important part of this film, there’s no drama to its resolution.  He just wins.  I found out later that the fight he won was a monumental performance by both boxers in real life.  Mickey takes a beating and is able to muster the strength to win.  But I didn’t feel the magnitude of his comeback in the film.

I heard somewhere that since Rocky was first released, Hollywood has released boxing films on average of one every year.  They aren’t all winners, but there’s been enough successful films to justify the genre’s existence.  Something about the sport will always get us to the theaters, even when the amount of actual boxing fans is in decline.  I think The Fighter is one of the better boxing films I’ve seen, but what made it unique didn’t seem to play out through the entire film.  As time went on we felt more and more like we’d seen this movie before.  The end was anti-climactic to the extent that it seemed to happen too fast. In the end, I think it lasted too long, go figure.

Whenst next we meet, I’ll tell you the tragic inevitable story of how I cried watching a fucking cartoon.  Enjoy this lovely holiday weekend.

Alouishis

Before we officially begin, I have a bone to pick with the plot: am I the only one who felt Mark Rufallo’s character (I think it’s Paul, so we’ll just go with that) got a raw deal?  I don’t think when he was jerking off into a cup at Dr. Schweinberg’s sperm donor clinic he ever had any desire to see the possible product of what he was projecting twenty years later.  But these kids had legitimate questions about where they came from and he tried to make it work.  He certainly fucked up and it was probably most likely best for all parties involved that he stay away from them, but he didn’t need to be cast aside so easily.  He was a major force in the story and his issues with his “children” were unresolved.  I wanted more for him, even if he didn’t deserve it.

And here we begin with a question: what was this story about?    Was this to be a film about a man thrown haphazardly into the modern world of gay couples and the unique complications that come with it?  The movie isn’t of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner quality, but a comparison can be made.  Times change and issues must be modernized not only in their content, but also in the manner with which they are dealt.  As good as Spencer Tracy was, he comes off now as unrelatable.  As time has gone on and gays, blacks and all other strange creatures of the Earth are mixed in the big boiling pot of the American Experience, forced to live similar lives in similar settings, dealing with the same issues, it would be unrealistic for Paul to react to his unique situation with the same shock and ignorance as Tracy did his.  Paul is reticent, off guard and obviously in over his head.  One gets the feeling if he were ever honest with himself, he wouldn’t approve of homosexuality, but his reactions are indicative of the modern era, a reticent acceptance and willingness to roll with the punches.

But that is not what this film is about.  It is an example of a new modern family drama we will be watching for years to come.  As homosexuality becomes more accepted and more gay couples adopt children, we can expect to see films that deal with unique situations like this.  It’s nothing wholly new, but more of a progression in main stream acceptance of non-traditional families that mirrors a progression of our society in general.  But looking just a little closer at the film, you can see the same themes pop up that one would see in most dramatic films about families: adultery, parental alienation from children, adolescent peer pressure, the pressure of a career on a marriage, etc…

Within the scope of this unique family, Julianne Moore (Jules) and Annette Benning (Nic)’s characters play very traditional roles.  Nic is a doctor who is married to her job and constantly belittles whatever job or scheme masking as a career Jules is working on at the moment.  She takes Jules for granted and when Jules gets fed up with Nic’s condescending remarks, she accepts an offer to landscape Paul’s back yard more out of spite than an actual desire to work.  The scenes, while slightly off kilter, lend themselves to the same kind of humorous situations that all family dramedies have.  There’s an awkward discussion about sex where Nic and Jules have to explain to their son why they like gay male porn.  When Paul spends an afternoon with the son and his horrible friend, he gives a very awkward lecture to his “son” about how this guy is a bad influence.  He’s basically an estranged father trying to establish some paternal authority, but you can’t get over the fact that he’s only father by artificial insemination.  Jules and Paul start an affair and the sex scenes are awkward and more comical than erotic.  A lot of the scenes in the film end up feeling awfully familiar, even if they are within an unusual context.  But it’s okay.

What I probably liked most about this movie was its ability to seamlessly go beyond the I’m alright with the Gays message.  You don’t watch this film to pat yourself on the back for being okay with homosexuality, this movie takes it for granted with neither an apology nor a pat on the back.

That’s why I don’t mind the predictability of this film.  It is almost unpredictable in its ordinariness.  My original bone to pick is actually indicative of this.  Paul represented in the film a consciousness of the unique situation we were in.  The odd man out looking in, by casting him aside so casually the director (Lisa Cholodenko) is saying we needn’t concern ourselves with the outside world and how this situation might look to an outsider.  The story is self-contained and those who matter are those who are in the middle, living the story.  The situation is not unique to them.  The kids are so great because there isn’t one scene where we see them dealing with their parents’ homosexuality.  They don’t get picked on, even the son’s jerkoff friend takes this situation as a given.  Issues and conflicts are long since dealt with.

So now we get to the Why This Isn’t Going to Beat “The Social Network” part.  I know I just spent three paragraphs praising this film for being a standard family drama and you will probably be pissed that I fault it for the same reason when it comes to the big prize.  While I like that it’s a traditional family comedy, I must remind you again that we are not looking for solid or admirable films.  We are looking for the exceptional, the cream of the crop.  The Kids are All Right probably wouldn’t have been nominated two years ago.  It’s a good film and I give it an enthusiastic go-ahead, but it certainly had its faults; mainly the ending.  The film falls apart after Jules and Paul’s affair is exposed.  Dialogue goes downhill, the story fades along with the writing and by the end you’re ready for it to end.  I think the acting could have been better as well.

Well we have less than two weeks and four films.  I’m going to need to freebase some crack to get through the next two weeks.  Thankfully I learn how to do that in our next film.

Alouishis.

You know Hollywood is running low on ideas when this year’s Most Inspirational Film is about a member of British Royalty with a stutter.  So bravely did this man overcome the horrible impediment cursed upon him by God with nary but the assistance of a humble man from humble beginnings was he able to rise up to the greatest tyrant the world has ever known and single-handedly defeat him by speaking in complete sentences.

Michael Oher and Forrest Gump are very disappointed, your highness.

But I kid.  This is a vast over-simplification and while there might be something humorous about the idea of a member of royalty having to overcome something so mild as a speech disorder (especially since it wasn’t  a result of inbreeding), such disability is greater than anything I’ve ever had to deal with.  So who am I to talk.

In the couple of weeks since I have endeavored on this journey, The King’s Speech has risen to become the favorite (by some accounts, who can really tell) for best picture.  The film does have all the makings.  the foreign intrigue and obscure historical references give the story a very artsy feeling.  The acting is superb and the cinematography is mesmerizing.

There is a way the characters are framed during extended conversations that adds an air of antiquity and gravity to the scene.  A similar method was used in the John Adams biopic on HBO a couple of years ago.  The camera frames the characters in the opposite third of the frame.  They are generally shot slightly further back than usual, including the upper abdomen and sometimes even the waist.  They often sit in empty rooms, sometimes nothing but a desk or small table beside them.  They are displaced from whomever they’re speaking with.  The result gives the viewer a feeling that they are seeing a portrait speak.  The effect lending the historical relevance of the characters to what you’re seeing on the film.  You are reminded that these are ancestors memorialized throughout our nation as the fathers of our nation.  Their influence on us is felt to this day and to literally put them on pedestals as we often do, it is easy to separate the man from the myth.  John Adams (the series) brings those two back together in a visually stunning manner.

The King’s Speech uses similar techniques, but gets a different result.  Much of the film is of a discussion between two men not entirely comfortable in each others’ presence.  The result of this awkward relationship is shown in the way the framing of the characters is away from one another.  The camera angle is not natural to the traditional idea of the 180 degree imaginary plane.  The camera acts as a manifestation of their desire to be apart from one another.  This is in only a few scenes, but it is a brilliant way to show the desire of two characters in a world that traditionally forbids any kind of outward emotion.

I don’t mean to harp on this one point because the cinematography in all aspects is noteworthy.  It is dramatic and stark and the viewer is delivered a breathtaking image of life in London before the second great one.  Whoever did the set and costume design also deserves an award.  The film was visually gorgeous.  Geoffrey Rush’s suits appeared as if they were fashioned from the same substance as the musky walls of his immense office.  Brown is the theme of this film, and it shows everywhere, providing a sepia-toned element to everything.  I think The Coen Brothers have a rare competitor for these two categories in which they’re normally a favorite.

So why doesn’t it win?  There aren’t a lot of reasons, but the story is definitely not the greatest ever told.  Despite my demeaning little introduction, the story does much better as a story about friendship.  The climax of the film wasn’t that the King was able to give his speech, but it was in the way he and his therapist were able to work together after a tumultuous relationship to achieve a remarkable goal.  It may not be fair to say I was disappointed in the modesty of the story.  There may be a great effect one can derive from such an intimate relationship set within a palatial setting, but I didn’t feel it.  The film felt more like a vehicle for Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush to show what great actors they are.  And don’t get me wrong, they are.  But I feel like their talents are better suited to loftier endeavors.

Watching this mix of actors, designers and director must have been what it was like watching the US invade Grenada.  The mightiest military in the world was certainly not a perfect fit for the task.  The Boston Police Department would have been a better use of our resources.  I will probably watch The King’s Speech again because it is so visually beautiful, but I imagine my interest in the outcome will be just as indifferent.

Next up we see how effective Mark Ruffalo is at curing this seemingly unending scourge of lesbianism that is sweeping across the country.  Until then…

Alouishis

One would have a hard time finding a genre in which to fit Black Swan.  Indy drama, while a fitting title when viewing a trailer of the film, simply won’t do when one actually sees the drama in this film is quite unusual.  You could try to mark it as a horror film.  There is definitely blood, shock value and some very disturbing images.  But to call this a horror film would diminish the message the movie is trying to convey: the nightmare one lives when dealing with obsession run amok.

Natalie Portman does a great job as the frigid, tight-ass white swan of the film who is struggling to release her darker side.  What’s at stake?  The leading role in the second most well-known ballet there is.  Mila Kunis also does well as the supposed black swan.  But you expect a little more competitiveness from her, and don’t get it.  There’s no backstabbing, sabotaging or really any kind of negative energy cast in the direction of the always paranoid Portman.  On the contrary, Kunis spends the movie trying to show us just how much of a problem she doesn’t have with Portman’s character.  For being the black swan, she isn’t much of a bitch.

But the film doesn’t leave much to the imagination in utilizing the light/dark aspect of the ballet.  If there is something bad to be said about this film, it’s that you don’t get to draw the parallels for yourself. It’s not as obvious as Star Wars, but it’s not far off.  The comparison is right there in front of you, forcing to you acknowledge it.

But it should be noted the main theme of the film was not good v. bad, so one wants to forgive this bludgeoning cliche.  Where the movie is really great is inside the mind of Portman’s character (okay, I’ll look her name up, it’s Nina.  I’ll call her Nina from now on).  Having dabbled very lightly with obsessive-compulsive behavior, I really enjoyed seeing a visualization of the absolute nightmare experienced by Nina throughout the film.  Nina’s horrors were manifested several ways including self mutilation, hallucination and eventually losing all touch with reality and creating a self-destructive mind-set that would be her undoing.  Fear was the driving force of the movie.  Before Nina even got the part she was scared of her competition, scared of her mother and mostly scared of failure.

Driving this fear was what seemed at times to be a living ghost, Nina’s predecessor.  Having slipped over the edge herself, Winona Rider’s character, Beth, seems intent on ruining any enjoyment Nina might get from her dancing.  But Nina doesn’t seem to understand what’s good for her.  Her morbid fascination of Beth’s emotional decline keeps Nina from shutting Beth’s negative energy out for good.  It’s as if she can see exactly what direction she’s heading toward, but is too obsessed with her drive for perfection to do anything about it.

It is never clear whether Nina gets the part because she’s the best, or because the director was trying to quash a possible sexual harassment suit.  The viewer is left to hypothesize as to what her ability really is.  There is no doubt she is a technically sound dancer, but her psyche as well as her inability to shut out her emotions are her biggest enemy.  By the end of the film, she is such a wreck that you wonder if she’s even capable of completing a single performance.

The violence in the film has been criticized as gratuitous, but it was necessary to show how these emotional problems can come through in physical form.  I hate metaphor as much as the next red-blooded American, but those physical wounds were representative of Nina’s damaged interior, culminating in the final moments when she stabs herself in the stomach while hallucinating.  The obsessiveness that got her the perfect performance she wanted so bad also got her killed (or did she make it?  I can’t remember now).

So, where does this behavior come from?  Why, the parents of course.  In this case, it’s just the mother, but as a strict Freudian I believe it’s important that we all find something about us that is wrong and blame it on our parents.  In this case, it is obvious to see where Nina gets her behavior.  Her mother’s portraits of her daughter as well as her violent mood swings (including an attempt to entrap her daughter when she feels Nina has strayed to far) lends a creepy reality to this kind of cyclical behavior.  Through her mother, we can already see where Nina will be in thirty years.

So to sum things up, I give this a definite go-ahead.  I doubt it will win best picture because it did seem to lay things on pretty thick.  But if you can stomach it, I highly recommend this film as a great example of a damaged interior to a beautiful body.  Oh yeah, and there’s a great lesbian scene.

Whence I return we will discuss how the world was saved from the clutches of Hitler by a foppish Aussie with a crooked nose.  Until then.

Alouishis