Slumdog Millionaire: Trash on a Pedestal

Slumdog Millionaire is cotton candy; it's junk food because it tastes good, but dissolves fast. Thematically and emotionally, it offers pseudo-profundities that only seem really deep. Its declarations of fate, for instance, are no deeper than those found in the ultra-consumerist anime Yu-gi-oh!. It provides us with nothing profound or troubling to think about, instead indulging the audience in what it wants to see, rather than what it ought to see. It is an instance of trash revered as art; audiences and critics fawn over it because they don’t know the difference—or because they can't find anything better. Slumdog Millionaire is no more artful than Armageddon, and the Bruce Willis picture is arguably a more genuine and honest work. The thing that irks me about Slumdog is its aspirations to be more than it is and the attention that’s lavished on it as if it’s a work of truth and brilliance. It is not art, it has nothing especially challenging or interesting to say, and frankly, it’s an emotional dud.

Slumdog is so dependent on its gimmick that if we were to remove it, we’d see how banal the movie really is. The Who Wants to be a Millionaire angle is little more than a novelty. The indictment of westernization is slight and innocuous; the let’s-see-how-he-knows-the-answer business is contrived and shallow. What’s more, that silly question at the beginning and the answer at the end merely make a gimmick out of the gimmick; it’s like a parody of parody. Such a juvenile declaration of fate deprives the audience of anything to think about. “It is written.” No questions, please.

Such a message not only has little basis in reality but flattens the characters in the story. Instead of representing real people with real thoughts, feelings, and aspirations, these characters become one dimensional pawns used by the movie to appeal to the mass audience and their wishes. The movie's been called a love story "above all" but does it even do a good job of that? We're frequently shown our star-crossed lovers Jamal and Latika separated or being separated by outside forces, so it’s no wonder we’re getting all anxious to see them [finally] be together. But they spend so much time apart, I begin wondering what Jamal even knows about Latika. In pretty much their only conversation, they dream about what they’ll be able to buy (“weddings, government things, big parties…Big money”). Their concerns are entirely juvenile and materialistic, but the real problem is they don’t grow up. Especially Jamal. I remember the inspector saying to him: “all you think about is money.” That, and Latika. So it’s money, money, Latika, money, and Latika.

Jamal is such a banal character that I wonder how people could take a liking to him. He’s not the one making things happen; things are happening around him and he either lucks out or not. That’s the whole premise of the movie and repeatedly Boyle provides us with imagery that shows Jamal as the helpless but spirited kid from Bombay. Early on, we see alternations between Jamal on the show with the Indian version of Luis Guzman and being tortured by the host’s private investigator. The torture scenes hold no power to shock us, just as the shaky camera and dutch angles galore don’t have the impact they should. This is because Boyle releases his tension in little bursts, thus desensitizing us with excess.

Rather than see a single spike of violence, we get it diffused across a scene; rather than a single, jarring cut to a dutch angle, Boyle cuts, cuts, and cuts from one dutch angle to another—I swear it’s like a seesaw. Such effects seem effective, but only intellectually so. This is the problem with the shot-by-shot analysis I’ve grown so weary of; it’s academically true, but we lose the flavor and feel of the picture when we start assigning meaning to individual shots and cuts. In other words, we think about what we should feel without actually feeling it. Boyle probably saw Do the Right Thing or The Third Man in film school and decided dutch angles would be good for chaos/change/character development/tension/emotion. The thing is, he uses it for every one of those things to the point where the shot no longer has the impact it once did. These effects would be forgivable if Jamal weren’t such a shallow, underdeveloped character.

The movie is so intent on dazzling the audience that our understanding of its characters suffers. What do we know about Jamal? Well, early on we see him incapacitated, with the interrogator stringing him up, slapping him around, and running electricity through his toes. Dev Patel excels at that I-just-got-slapped expression but it’s about the only one he can do. We then see a young Jamal about to catch a cricket ball but then getting blown over by an airplane’s gust. Such images peg him as powerless; he is subject to whatever fate the heavens have in store. “It is written” the movie concludes, but by whom? Is it God? Not likely, since the movie barely carries any religious weight to it. The only person actually seen praying is Salim, and he’s hardly given any sort of proper redemption. He dies in a bathtub full of money, having “redeemed” himself by helping Latika. Yet this final act—perhaps the only humanist one in the movie—is completely dropped by the end as Dev Patel and Freida Pinto lead into a Bollywood dance number.

It’s like the movie wants to show you terrible things, but then wants you to forget how badly they made you feel. Yes, the poor, poor [bourgeois] audience needs some consolation for the frightening realities they’ve just been exposed to, so here’s a Bollywood dance number. Salim, who is probably the most human and realistic character in the movie isn’t given the time he deserves. He’s Jamal’s brother, but his death is glossed over by 20 million ruppees, [finally] meeting at the train station, and breaking out into an exhuberant dance number. The movie wants to give its audience an endless respite from the horrors it shows, but it is so intent on—or maybe obligated to—showing those horrors in the first place. Everything it does is designed to defuse terrible realities. A child covered in shit isn’t meant to garner our sympathies but is there for comic relief. Indeed, the audience I saw it with roared with laughter at a young Jamal covered in excrement. The scene is as absurd as the Who Wants to be a Millionaire device and is pure novelty; it’s no more than exploitation.

That Slumdog has been showered with awards is a sign that Kael was right when she said: “When we championed trash culture, who knew it would become the only culture.” Slumdog Millionaire is little more than wish-fulfillment, but what makes it so detestable is it obviously aspires to something greater. It reminds me of that Simpsons episode where the producers of Itchy and Scratchy are trying to figure out what their audience wants: “So you want a realistic, down-to-earth show that’s completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots?” Slumdog wants to show awareness to the reality of slum life. It wants to be a compelling love story, it wants to make its audience happy but uncomfortable, and it wants to criticize westernization while embracing it all the same. It’s a movie that thrives in the politically correct milieu we have today and is just as wishy-washy. It ends up doing everything half-assed; it’s like the [often liberal] person who wants to be politically and globally “aware” and knowing, and achieves that by a skim of the newspaper headlines.

Much of my argument is dependent on how Slumdog Millionaire has been received, which is usually frowned upon. But to evaluate such a movie—which is so beloved by critics and audiences alike—in a vacuum forgoes one of the main functions of the movie medium. Perhaps more than any other, movies are a public medium. Public perception, while not everything, is integral to evaluating a movie; how a work is perceived indicates its merit. To simply blame the audience for misinterpretation precludes artists from reproach and rejects the responsibilities they have. In the end, however, it’s a two-way street. Audiences are to blame for idolizing and enjoying a movie that turns shit-covered children into a laughing stock, and the artists are to blame for feeding them such wishy-washy, pandering “art.”

War of the Worlds (2005)

Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Josh Friedman and David Koepp (based on the novel by H.G. Wells)
Starring: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin and Miranda Otto

Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is a severely misunderstood work. Praised or dismissed as a summer blockbuster, the movie deserves reconsideration as a timely work of art; a post-9/11 allegory reflecting a climate of shock, confusion, and fear. Cahiers' placement of War of the Worlds as the 8th best picture of the decade is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, this choice will not be met with kneejerk skepticism, but with thoughtful revision. War of the Worlds is a movie that can't be analyzed so much as felt, and it holds special resonance with our post-9/11 generation. If ever there is a work capable of invoking our nationalistic sentiments in a non-exploitative manner, then War of the Worlds may be it. That it achieves this as a blockbuster is amazing; balancing simultaneously as entertainment and as an expression of contemporary sentiments.

Roger Ebert makes some astute observations in his review of the movie, but fails to understand their implications. He complains the aliens aren't believable or interesting, describing their invasion as "pointless" and concluding:

"The thing is, we never believe the tripods and their invasion are practical... It's a war of the worlds, all right -- but at a molecular, not a planetary level... A planet that harbors intelligent and subtle ideas for science fiction movies is invaded in this film by an ungainly Erector set."

Criticizing the aliens for purposelessness and adhering to a monomaniacal rule that the aliens need recognizable motives misses the point. The aliens and their tripods are not an extraterrestrial threat so much as a metaphor of man's capacity for war; pure violence incarnate. Note that the alien tripods do not "land" from outer space but come up from beneath our cities and our homes, suggesting they have been with us all this time. Symbolically, they are not an external threat but represent the inner chaos and capacity for destruction that lies beneath a seemingly benign and civil facade. The "war" the title suggests is not a macroscopic fight between man and alien. Rather, it takes place, as Ebert said, on the molecular level; an internal "fight" between man's polarizing tendencies towards violence and nonviolence. The picture becomes a roadsign; cautioning us against reactionary violence and eye-for-an-eye. It’s not simply preaching anti-violence, but rather asking us to proceed with caution and ask ourselves where our responsibilities lay.

The pointlessness of the alien attacks is necessary for meaning and emphasizes the nonsensical, inexplicable consequences of violence. Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) finds himself at a loss for words. How does he explain to his children the horrors he's witnessed? How do you explain people not just being killed, but vaporized into ash all around you? To insist that such violence needs "purpose" borders reprehensibility. While I understand Ebert's complaint with respect to narrative, he inadvertently advocates violence in the process by trying to rationalize it. War is rarely so clear-cut. You often hear of veterans after the war, saying how nobody even remembers why it started. The same applies here. It becomes very easy to stray from the path we set out upon; to lose our sense of purpose and wander aimlessly into battle.

Spielberg is not making another Close Encounters of the Third Kind or E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, where aliens invoked genuine beauty and wonderment. In War of the Worlds, the aliens and their tripods are supposed to be ungainly. As avatars of violence, their grotesquery and instability make sense. War of the Worlds proposes the apocalypse, but its strength lies in balancing on the precipice between a life-affirming, yet cautious optimism, and a meaningless, nihilistic void. Violence can be overcome and it does have weaknesses. The movie offers us hope that chaos is not invincible and affirms the existence of harmony and humanism in the universe.

Somehow, War of the Worlds is criticized for a lack of emotion. This becomes difficult for me to understand because when I recently watched the movie again, I was struck by how poignant these images were, in part because they are tied to my own sense of nationalism. When Ray takes his kids to his ex-wife’s house and the plane hits, Spielberg is reenacting 9/11 on an expressionistic microcosm. Tragic events like these bring the child to the forefront. On one level, the urge to shield our children from the horrors of violence becomes an anchor; grounding us from the ensuing chaos. On another level, these events make us all like children; regarding violence with wide-eyed shock. Such concepts are hardly shallow, and how critics can ignore or belittle them is beyond me. These same critics go on to criticize the 9/11 allusions as exploitation. So contemporary issues are taboo for blockbusters? The mainstream picture can't be art? You can only deal with these issues in a literal sense? Preferably via "independent" filmmakers with shaky camera work? Is the allegory dying, or is it already dead?

Critics who say the movie lacks emotion must have ice water in their veins. Not that they don't feel anything, but they resist and reject that emotional pull. 9/11 is unacceptable subject matter, not because of how it's handled, but because it makes us uncomfortable and blockbusters can't be serious. Yet War of the Worlds is not using 9/11 for cheap thrills, but as a springboard into discussing violence and our national atmosphere. It, along with Minority Report and Eastern Promises, present unique and sound approaches to violence in an age where death (and rape) become ever more casual in the movies and on TV. If it makes violence uncomfortable, it's doing its job. Those three movies handle violence effectively because they do not rely on increasing detail or raising body count. Minority Report is essentially a thesis on violence, setting up a hypothetical world where murder is virtually nonexistent. A death in Minority Report shocks us and resonates deeply, because the world of the movie has convinced us murder doesn't exist; lulling us into a sense of security. Eastern Promises, as I've written before, doesn't pile up a faceless body count. Each act of violence is tied to the dramatic and emotional arc of the picture. And War of the Worlds. The overwhelming loss of innocent human life is intensified by those 9/11 allusions. What would you rather have: a blockbuster that belittles human life for entertainment (Lord of the Rings), or one that presents violence that does disturb us?

War of the Worlds is not a picture that relies on its narrative so much as the images it presents. Ray with his daughter, watching the storm brewing in the distance evokes our false sense of impunity before 9/11; the illusion that the US was invulnerable to attack. It’s not simply the attacks of 9/11, but the falling popularity of our subsequent actions. 9/11 was a slap in the face; a wakeup call that War of the Worlds captures magnificently. Other images, like Ray seeing people turn to ash all around him, his speechlessness afterwords, or his frustrations as he tries to fulfill his role as a parent are humanist at their heart. Ray is not looking for vengeance but to protect basic human values. These values are tested and their complexity is enriched when he needs to kill Harlan Ogilvy (Tim Robbins) in order to protect his daughter. War of the Worlds is not a black and white message movie offering simplistic morals to complex situations. If the movie has plausibility, it lies in its characters’ actions. These are believable reactions to a state of chaos and cover a vivified spectrum of human nature. There is a desire to seek vengeance, protect our children, stare in wide-eyed wonderment, clamor for our own safety, act with benevolence, or go mad.

The mainstream picture is denied contemporary allusion whenever the critics feel like it. Not because of how it handles the material, but because of what it inherently is. It depends on who's in the movie and who directed or funded it. War of the Worlds is socially conscious and moralistically sound; its metaphor of violence is hardly outrageous or blameworthy. I don't even think it's a partisan picture. And somehow it receives more flak than subversive, politically biased, poorly constructed messes like Slumdog Millionaire or Avatar.

War of the Worlds is a movie that must be felt. Analyzing it shot-by-shot can be done, but such a method is reductive and runs the risk of losing the feel of the work. Rejecting a movie simply because it invokes our nationalist sentiments reeks of elitism; arbitrary rules are put in place dictating what gets put on the pedestal of Art and what's throwaway entertainment.

"Are we still alive?"

-Rachel

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Spoilers.

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Screenplay: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Sergei Lopez, Maribel Verdu, and Ivana Baquero.


Images from the 2007 New Line 2-disc Platinum Series.

Pan's Labyrinth may be a movie I'm too close to, but as Jim Emerson has said (repeatedly): If a movie is worth talking about, then let's talk about it.

Why is it that I rank del Toro's movie so high? Is it sentimentality? Its place for me, personally, as a gateway into cinema that moves beyond the form of entertainment? In a way, I find these movies tougher (or perhaps more daunting) to talk about, but that shouldn't stop us. Citizen Kane seems to have fallen into an almost automatic place at the top of many people's lists of bests (or worsts). But if we like a movie, we have to like it for a reason. "Just cuz" doesn't cut it. So why is Pan's Labyrinth so special for me?

Movies are, at their heart, an acceptance of the screen's reality and departure from our own. Ultimately, though, our escape is still standing on the border between two worlds. As a movie lover, I am fascinated by that line: the division between our reality and another, which Pan's Labyrinth balances upon like a seasoned gymnast. Its interest is not plunging into the fantasy world but standing at the doorway separating the two realities. Pan's Labyrinth is many things tied together and rolled into one: A coming of age parable, fairy tale, rumination on escape from the horrors of reality, and an existential dichotomy of physicality and transcendence.

From the very first shot, we can already see a focus on a transitional state; one of transcendence between two concepts. The camera pans across darkness to cinematically reverse Ofelia’s later death, and then shows her ascending from the underworld into our own. The film uses the screen to reciprocate birth and death; events bookending lives and heralding the arrival and departure from a world of suffering. Indeed, the film carries with it spiritual currents in tune with Buddhism or Christ’s teachings that acknowledge and shed light upon the suffering inherent to life and the burden of physicality. It’s the level of existentialism found in The Seventh Seal, although its ultimate prospect isn’t as grim.

I've heard two criticisms of the movie, neither of which I feel address any significant flaw in the picture. The first is the characters' simplicity; the idea being they haven't been "fleshed out" enough but remain archetypal. The problem with this line of reasoning lies in applying judgment for one type of movie to another and assuming these criteria are universal. Fantasy, and more specifically a fairy tale, necessarily simplifies its characters into archetypes. It's as fundamental to the genre as breaking out into song is for musicals. A problem with the characters not being "John Cassavetes characters" (to use del Toro's phrasing) is a problem with the entire genre and not the execution of making the film.

The other criticism is that not enough time is spent in the fantasy world. Yes, we are left craving more of the movie's visual delights, but to depart from reality any more would compromise the picture thematically. Again, this has to do, in part, with understanding the role of fairy tales. To view fantasy solely as a means of escape is to miss the point. Rather, the genre is a way of confronting and clarifying ideas and issues in the real world. By extension, this is what any type of fiction generally seeks to do: to hold the looking glass up to the world.

If you know your fairy tales, you know many of them are really coming of age stories that allegorize adolescence into narratives, often involving curses, princes, princesses, and sexual repression. Ultimately, what many of these have in common is a progression from naiveté to a greater awareness of adulthood. This is growth that Ofelia undergoes in Pan’s Labyrinth. Early on, she’s blithely ignorant of her mother’s pains; distracted by her imagination and books while her mother staggers from the burden of pregnancy.

Children view the world through a simplified lens that is simultaneously a gift and a limitation. Their blissful ignorance leaves them hermetically insulated from experiencing complex feelings of pain and anguish, but also incapable of empathy beyond simplified emotion. Ofelia understands her mother is lonely, but cannot distinguish physical and adult loneliness, or mother-daughter love vs. adult love. Her mother tells her she’ll understand when she’s older.

Ofelia is Princess Moanna in the Underworld. Yet in her Earth life, her mother treats her as a princess too, and dotes upon her with dresses and patent leather shoes. In this sense, her cinematic death could be read as marking a spiritual death of the childhood self (princess). The film, therefore, serves as a “cutting out” of the princess. Consider, too, the scene where Mercedes is milking the cow and tells Ofelia to be careful because “we can’t have you getting milk on your new dress.” Indeed, the Ofelia of the movie does not enter nubility and remains a princess. Her maturation over the film’s course is not one of sexuality, but of a different kind.

Just as there isn’t one type of love, maturity isn’t simply defined by a person’s chronological progression into adulthood. Beyond physical development is mental and spiritual maturation, which is the focus of Pan’s Labyrinth. It isn’t necessarily determined by age, but occurs as a result of compassion being born within us. Perhaps Ofelia’s transcendence to the Underworld not only marks the removal of the physical child, but also heralds spiritual wisdom and understanding that the common denominator is our mortality in the corporeal world.

Ofelia and Captain Vidal value life, but that is where their commonality ends. The difference lies in why. Captain Vidal is archetypal, but the movie isn't a character study and that shouldn't be seen as a fault. Rather, Vidal comes to represent a side of humanity; one that values life not as an end to itself, but out of fear towards the alternative. Vidal's character is structured around actions and habits focusing on worldly, material concerns. The first time we see him, he's staring at his pocket watch with a Quentin-esque gaze a la The Sound and the Fury; a motif that's repeated over and over. The watch represents the one white elephant he can't dispose of or wield. His "bienvenidos" to Carmen is really by proxy: his physical actions revealing a concern only for his son, which is the closest he can get to immortality.

I don't think del Toro is calling Captain Vidal a villain so much as an attribute of humanity that we deny out of shame, but must ultimately accept in its presence, to whatever degree, within ourselves. Life, for Vidal, is merely the alternative to death and as such is not valued for the sake of life alone. Consider the story that Ofelia tells to her mother’s womb of the rose atop a mountain surrounded by venomous thorns. The rose brings the promise of immortality, but:

“Men talked amongst themselves about their fear of death, and pain, but never about the promise of eternal life.”

This story overlaps with Vidal cleaning his pocket watch. When I first saw Pan’s Labyrinth, I made the connection that he was a man who did strive for the rose of immortality. Yet this would elevate him, and I don’t think that’s the point. There is too much commonality between Vidal and our own material concerns. What the rose suggests is not immortality in the physical realm, but the spiritual one. Del Toro is arguing for the eternal existence of the soul, but only if we allow ourselves to see that. The story regards “men” generally, meaning those of us who treasure life out of fear from death. This is something all of us face to some extent and Vidal is emblematic of that fear.

His obvious concern for his son cannot be disregarded if we face that thought ourselves. Hackneyed ideas are what they are because we continue to dismiss them as such. If we fear death, then let us acknowledge that. With our children lies the hope that some part of us will remain once we’ve left. Yet the narrow view through which Vidal sees this isn’t sufficient to grant us immortality or even a legacy, del Toro is arguing. What does blood even mean as an end to itself? Ofelia takes after Doctor Ferreiro and Mercedes more than Vidal or even her own mother. The movie talks of family that transcends and subverts the blood-axiom.

Consider Mercedes, too. Upon hearing one of the rebels has been captured, her thoughts turn immediately to her brother, Pedro. Yet it isn’t with relief that she reacts to learning it was instead the stuttering rebel. She’s still affected because she realizes that the prisoner is still her brother, if not by blood. The image of Mercedes, lost in thought and chopping potatoes, isn’t one of fear that she’ll be ratted out. It’s one of compassion and sorrow for a brother in spirit. Yet her strength lies in noticing that incorporeal idea. Her strengths (in spirit) and weaknesses (in physical being and location) are reciprocal to Vidal’s.

Women are strong. We’ve been down this road a lot. Much of the time, this is emphasized by their ability to give birth where men cannot. Yet that is only the starting point. Carmen and Mercedes come to form two types of mother figures to Ofelia. One by blood, and the other by adoption (in spirit). Carmen displays the woman’s traditionally held power: pregnancy. But del Toro isn’t really focusing on that strength per se. What the film does is elaborate this idea beyond the physical. Mercedes carries her knife hidden against her abdomen. Where Carmen wields the ability to give birth, Mercedes holds the ability to subvert the expectations given to women. Vidal’s thinking is limited to these conventions and that ultimately proves his downfall.

I’d also point to the chalk. When Vidal picks it up, it breaks. He lacks the mindset to wield that key into understanding spirituality and transcendence. The movie uses the fairy tale as an allegory for reality, something that Vidal could never comprehend (I doubt he’d watch movies very much). The tasks Ofelia performs are somehow connected to something she, or someone parallel to her, must overcome in real life.

The fig tree is a source of bounty and fertility, yet the monstrous Toad has festered its roots. The tree, and more specifically the entrance, is a maternal image and parallels Ofelia’s mother. The introduction of the toad, of course, is Vidal. Ofelia tricks the toad into eating the stones to obtain the key. Similarly, Mercedes uses Vidal’s own pride and underestimation of women against him, evident in the store room key. Ofelia’s ingenuity also foreshadows her spiking Vidal’s drink with the sleeping medicine; combining something tempting with something deadly. The ultimate idea of this task is that Ofelia confronts her fear and gains independence.

The Pale Man sequence holds another key to understanding del Toro’s message. Namely, it is the idea of choice, regardless of benevolence. I’ll point to the strong parallels between Vidal and the Pale Man: both pose a significant obstacle to Ofelia/Mercedes/Doctor Ferreiro, both hoard a mountain of food in their abode tempting their enemies, and finally, they are both defined by their physical action. The Pale Man is the fantasy surrogate for Vidal, his eyes and perception literally and figuratively indivisible from his actions (his palms, in this case). Anything he sees is an action, and any action he takes necessarily guides his sight. In other words, his sight is confined to his physicality and he is incapable of transcending his body. Notice, too, that the Pale Man is stuck in his realm, whereas Ofelia is able to pass freely from one to another.

The Pale Man scene also plays out like Eden. Yet del Toro’s take on this isn’t one of reprimand, but one of acceptance as a necessary trait defining humanity. Utopia is not a place of growth and learning, del Toro is saying. Casting out of Eden was a necessary step in humanity’s coming of age. Ofelia needs to defy the Faun’s instructions because it is her choice. Limiting our free will limits our spiritual maturity, which is the distinction the movie is making from sexual maturity.

Pan’s Labyrinth is ultimately a movie arguing for spirituality. Regardless of whether you’re religious or not, spirituality can still exist as a belief. It involves moving beyond physical appearance to read between the lines. Whether this manifests itself as God, Allah, or whatever misses the point. Rather, it is the idea that we are not limited by our bodies.

“It is only in His physical absence that the place He occupies in our souls is reaffirmed.”

Blade Runner (1982)

Spoilers.

Director: Ridley Scott

Screenplay: David Peoples

Starring: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, and Rutger Hauer

Images from the 2007 Warner Home Video 4-disc Collector's Edition.

Films are very much products of their time, whether unconsciously echoing that era’s beliefs or values, or actively rejecting those customs. The 80s, rife with morbid, self-centered materialism saw many films revel in that excess, although the decade also gave birth to the likes of Blue Velvet, Videodrome, Brazil, Time Bandits, and Blade Runner; films that openly defied bureaucratic, consumerist, and suburban values. Of these, perhaps none has held up a more serious lens to its subject than Blade Runner. The rest are all, to varying degrees, mired in dark, dark satire. Blade Runner, by comparison, is coldly melancholy, with its noir roots asking us what defines humanity while incisively examining rampant capitalism. With the 2007 Final Cut, Ridley Scott lent to the film an even darker, less certain prospect by the end, which is a fitting reaction to materialism that only seems to have grown since the 80s.     

The glow of a Coca-Cola advertisement hovers over a futuristic L.A., divided into sleek skyscrapers and a crumbling underbelly. The city seems to be growing in on itself, threatening to collapse under its own weight. The capitalist mentality is rooted in the idea that we are better off with what’s being shoved into our eyes. Today, everything has a sponsor. Sports, television, and even film are no longer havens from the proliferation of product placement. Michael Bay, notorious for his own morbid product mongering, deserves a little credit for recognizing the aesthetic that goes into a commercial, even if his films lack any sizable merit. Billboards in Blade Runner rise above the tangled urban sprawl like beacons, enticing with promises of better, cleaner worlds. The film focuses on the dregs of its futuristic society, unconcerned with those privileged that migrate to new homes. The great unwashed get thrown in the garbage pile along with, ironically, the leftovers from yesterday’s consumerist orgy. 2008’s Wall-E would attempt a successful (if dramatically uneven) indictment of capitalism just as Blade Runner did.   

The world of Blade Runner is divided into the backwater alleys of societal dregs and the metropolitan elite (Tyrell) hovering, like the billboards, as gods ruling the rest from their unfathomably colossal monoliths. We live in a world of manufactured excess. All around us, with a few exceptions, are items that have undergone some production process, or at the very least, have had a price tag attached to them. We are ruled by capitalism, and those precious few things that we once thought were unsellable are worming their way into the global market. This is not to say everything has gone downhill. Slavery is no longer what it once was, but there is still class division that suffuses us with prejudice, and there are horror stories of modern day sex slave markets. So whatever progress we make feels like taking one step forward and a half step back. Blade Runner blurs this line even further by having mankind attempt to systematically terminate the humanity that their slave Replicants have come to evolve to.  

Science fiction has a perpetual fascination with what defines humanity that is rooted in reductionism. The idea of an artificial, man-made being that evolves to increasingly human characteristics is such a provocative one that the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica borrows from, and eventually elaborates upon, the core concept that Blade Runner puts forth. If we can essentially manufacture ethos; that is, forge an identity a la Frankenstein in the laboratory using tangible ingredients, then what makes us human?   

Blade Runner takes this a step further. Mankind is easily frightened by things that we don’t understand or that threaten our identity. We know our existence, as Descartes (and Pris) said: “I think, therefore I am.” We can’t offer explanations as to why we exist or why we’re human but it is like some unquestionable axiom. That’s just the way it is. With Blade Runner, we are presented with Replicants that begin developing their own emotions. This scares us. It’s okay that they are physically stronger than us because we built them that way. But emotions (and I mean complex ones rather than simply fear, or hunger, or lust) are something we identify with, and having our own creations asserting their individuality is something that mankind cannot accept. We have no way of knowing if it’s simply excellent software, but that doesn’t prevent us from empathizing. Rachael is different among Replicants because in addition to emotions, she has memories with which to anchor them. Deckard ultimately accepts her as a conscience being with real emotions. He could or could not be a Replicant. For me, it is more philosophically interesting if he’s a human. Calling him a Replicant seems to simplify, or at least rationalize, Deckard and Rachael’s love, whereas a human-Replicant relation suggests deeper, more ambiguous complexities to our emotions.   

What Blade Runner posits by mixing the division between human and Replicant identity leads to an interesting exercise in empathy as we observe humans during the film. The common observation/complaint I hear about the movie is that the characters are difficult to sympathize with. To put it simply, I believe that’s the point of the film. It is certainly necessary for Blade Runner’s ability to blur the categorical lines we mentally form about human identity. The implications posed if Replicants are indeed developing genuine emotions can be astounding. If we accept that Replicants do feel emotional pain and pleasure no different from our own and if we accept that emotional complexities imply a conscience being, then what does this say about our desire to stamp out these entities like an experiment gone awry? Furthermore, how foolproof is the Voight-Kampff test and can we really reduce emotion to an analysis of questions, answers, and pupil dilations? Certainly, there have been people to fool a polygraph that we’re certain are humans.   

One intriguing motif is the focus on eyes. The Voight-Kampff test examines the pupil’s contractions like a pulse, or like peering into the window of a being’s soul. If you’ve taken general anatomy, you’d learn that the only living surface tissue is from the eyes. The 30 or so layers of skin cells we see are in fact dead. Similarly, eyes offer us something intrinsically insightful to understanding our subject. Present us with a shady person covering his eyes, or someone with dark sunglasses, and we form a preconceived notion of their accessibility in the back of our minds. This focus on eyes brings to my mind the camera lens itself, garnering the film with a self-examination of sorts. To an extent, the act of filming is something of a mirror image to the Voight-Kampff test. Rather than examine existing emotions, film instead (often artificially) produces emotions, often in settings that couldn’t be further from intimate (a common complaint about film acting, I hear, is how impersonal and haphazard it seems compared to say, the stage).   

The film distances us from the humans, and other than knowing that the Replicants aren’t human, the playing field is leveled. My own sympathies lie closer to the Replicants, partly because it is not their choice to exist as they want. They have been born into slavery to the point where they are no longer treated as humans but mechanical beings that have developed emotions as if by downloading software. Mankind has built them with a specific function: manual labor, assassination, pleasure, or military services. I am reminded of a Simpsons episode where Bart and Lisa are at military school, and their CO tells them that in the future, wars will not be fought between humans, but between robots and preferably in space. Yet this prospect is being fulfilled right now. Today, pilots are able to fly remote bombers from the comfort of their own home and drop several megatons of ordnance with the push of a button. The disconnect has risen, and killing almost becomes a virtual act. Blade Runner has taken this idea one step further by incorporating the weapons with a conscience. Prostitution, too, is a common point of attack on capitalism, the idea being that selling yourself is something of a violation of our dignity. There have certainly been a few masterpieces on the subject. The reference to Pris as a “basic pleasure model” is said with such casualty, it again suggests a disconnect with what should be a touchy subject. The Replicants are not so much prostitutes as they are sex slaves, and it is disturbing how such a thing can be accepted just because they aren’t considered human. Are they lesser even than animals?   

I said earlier that I sympathize with Replicants because it is not their choice to exist. I realize a potential hole in this argument, since we too, have not chosen to exist, but were borne into this world by our parents’ choice (or accident). In Blade Runner, there is the idea of Man playing God, so to speak. I am not religious, but I’m not adverse to the ideas and implications thereof. Tyrell is like God, creating Replicants in his own image. He is constantly tinkering with his design, attempting to perfect not merely form or emotion, but the act of creation itself. If you accept the auteur theory to any degree, than Ridley Scott, too, is the God of his film, constantly improving his creation through modification. Tyrell, seemingly safe in his obsidian, Mayan-like pyramid, is something of a father figure to Roy Batty, who is obviously supposed to be Christ. In a sense, Blade Runner accomplishes what The Last Temptation of Christ did: give its Christ a human face and allow us to empathize with what is possibly the most mythological figure in history. Roy is born into the world with a destiny, so to speak. He is confused and grappling with his own existence because of his new-found emotion. By the end, we even see him drive a nail through his palm, ultimately accepting his fate and sparing Deckard. Perhaps this is another rationalization for having Deckard as a human: He serves as an allegory for those that Christ sacrificed himself to save. The end of the film offers a measure of hope, even if the Final Cut wisely removes that incongruous ending of the original.   

Why does Roy save Deckard? I don’t believe it’s because he’s a Replicant, as this seems to simplify Roy’s actions. The film does depart from a straight Christian parable, partly because Christ didn’t drag humanity through the mud only to save them in the end. I think part of it has to do with empathy. Roy is essentially near death, like being cursed with a terminal disease out of his control. By having Deckard not only being helpless, but also dependent on Roy, he is turning the tables and switching roles with the blade runner and making him see what it is like to be so close to death. Roy accepts his fate, but this final act is a way of putting Deckard in his shoes, in the hopes of making him (and mankind) see his existential dilemma.   

Christ didn’t kill God as Roy kills Tyrell either. The lead up to that scene, with J.F. Sebastian, plays like something of an uprising from the lower class. Roy is leveling the social playing field, which has so often given the upper classes, well... the upper hand. As Roy and Sebastian physically rise to Tyrell’s level, they are rising up to socially meet him face to face, symbolized by the chess game. Sebastian is a societal reject, having to build his own friends and is essentially treated as a child (he does, after all, appear to be the oldest person ever with Methuselah Syndrome; and children, too, create their own friends). He is something of a poster child for the lower class. But wait a minute... Roy kills both of them! It can’t be because he’s scared of having a witness. Rather, I think the act of killing Tyrell and Sebastian represents a kind of social purging. If you want another biblical allegory, perhaps it is akin to the Noachian flood. He is killing off the class structure and through Deckard, removing humanity’s prejudice.    

Blade Runner, admittedly, isn’t the easiest film to watch. There’s so much going on in the frame that it takes multiple viewings just to sort out who everyone is and to penetrate their character’s superficial inaccessibility. I have only seen the original 1982 cut and the 2007 Final Cut. The voice over of the original, interesting for what it is (and because it adds to the noirish feel), is wisely removed from the 2007 cut. I don’t have a strong desire to watch the other versions, and I do think the Final Cut works well, but I’ll try and get to them eventually. Regardless, Blade Runner is a fascinating, monumental achievement that is deeply rooted in a kind of 80s counterculture. 

Eastern Promises (2007)

Director: David Cronenberg

Screenplay: Steve Knight

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, and Vincent Cassel.

Images from the 2007 Focus Features release.

Eastern Promises, I am inclined to think, is one of David Cronenberg’s best works; a film that depicts the inheritance of social standing with heartbreaking detail. I know that some of Cronenberg’s fans have been disappointed with his turn to what is generally seen as more popular material, but I couldn’t be more impressed. What’s so refreshing is to see an artist not content to make the same film over again, but rather tinker with his own conventions, adding new layers to his repertoire while continuing to explore themes that interest him. Perhaps it helps that the first two Cronenberg films I saw were A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. When I saw them, I had no idea who he was, and as such, did not carry with me the rest of his oeuvre. I've now worked through 12 of his features, and I've grown to see the Mortensen collaborations as two of the most thoughtful meditations on the nature of violence. Deciding which of the two is better is difficult for me, but I am slowly convincing myself that Eastern Promises is the more complete work, with a pace that feels mournful and sad.

If you’re wondering why I used the above picture to introduce the film, and not Naomi Watts or Viggo Mortensen, it’s because I believe the shot is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful in the film: a young woman used as an object for a rite of passage. The film may be about another girl’s story, but this woman and every other woman has a story too, and her vacant gaze as she sings a lullaby reveals a soul so damaged, that where she comes from and who she is is reduced to names and facts. Whatever ambition she once had, perhaps to support a family or start a new life, is gone now and all that remains is a life of prostitution. She has been forced into this so brutally that we can see her spirit waning as she stares blankly into nowhere, having been chosen like a horse from a stable. To those trafficking women, she is viewed not as a human being but as a commodity to be bartered, sold, tortured, or used. It is frighteningly true, yet it is something most of us turn a blind eye to, as if our ignorance of the problem will make it disappear.

Cronenberg excels at portraying violence as it ought to be: Horrible, brutal, nauseating, and clumsy. Yet he is rarely exploitative of violence, and much of his work, including Eastern Promises, is more interested in developing characters. When violence does bubble to the surface, it erupts with such force that I continue to cringe after many viewings. You see action movies today, and most of the action has lost its shock value. The editing in those epic battle sequences has become so cookie cutter, you may as well just stick with The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Death has become belittled to a split second shot of a faceless enemy dying. These sorts of films, in a way, are morally reprehensible in their treatment of death as entertainment. Eastern Promises (and A History of Violence, for that matter), subverts the Hollywood convention. Even though the violence in something like Kill Bill is more graphic, the violence in Cronenberg’s films feels uncomfortable, grimy, and less exhilarating by comparison.

I’ve often wondered if violence should even have an entertainment value. I do enjoy movies like King Kong (2005) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, yet they are guilty of defusing the brutality of violence for the audience’s comfort. And John Woo’s Hard Boiled is maybe the ultimate treatment of human beings as bodies to put bullets into and I still admire it. I can’t really account for why I still like these films at this point. Perhaps it is human to be drawn to violence, and the sort that does not make us cringe is what audiences crave most. I do think the value of showing the consequences and horrors of violence, however, has a significant place in the cinema, and it’s refreshing (?) to see Cronenberg do it with unnerving success.

The fight scene in the sauna is one of the most brutal and ugly things I’ve seen in the cinema, and that, I think, is the core of Cronenberg’s philosophy to violence. Treating it as something real, rather than fantasy does not allow the audience to regard it at arm’s length. Instead, the film pushes the violence uncomfortably close to the audience, not offering them an external experience but rather a visceral one. Having Nikolai fight naked in a sauna adds a level of realism, and the audience identifies with his own vulnerability. Fight scenes in many Hollywood movies have the nasty habit of making it sleek and elegant, and the hero suffers minor scratches at best. In Eastern Promises, Cronenberg does not spare the audience and Nikolai is brutally slashed with linoleum knives.

Speaking of which, the setting and mode of attack is another stroke of genius. Cronenberg said he used linoleum knives because if the two guys were caught with them they could say: “They’re for work. We’re linoleum cutters.” Cronenberg is intentionally subverting the conventional switchblades of gangster films, grounding it that much closer to reality. These knives tell me: violence is not something remote, but it can happen at anytime and with the simplest of tools (a screwdriver or a hammer could've been used for that matter). The sauna, too, is not a normal association with violence. It is in fact, thought of as a sanctuary for peaceful discussion and meditation; a place for healing rather than wounding. Yet it is, in a way, Cronenberg’s own arena of meditation on violence, and as he exposes the audience to this brutality, he is getting under their skin and making them feel vulnerable. Vulnerability, I think, is a key part of Eastern Promises.

Eastern Promises penetrates the surface of the Russian mob, concerning itself not with mechanics but with the people involved and the shockwaves of their criminality. This movie makes me feel so vulnerable, in part because I inhabit these characters’ own vulnerability. The scene where Kirill makes Nikolai have sex with one of his father’s prostitutes (from his own “stable”) is such a demeaning, exposed rendition to what is normally considered intimate and private. And afterwards, as I’ve already written, we see the damage of forced prostitution. Nikolai asks Kirilenko where she’s from, and how she responds is more important than what she says. She whispers her hometown like a faded memory that hangs by a thread. She appears lost in thought, willing herself to block out the awful treatment of her humanity. When Nikolai says: “stay alive a little longer,” I wondered what that meant. The first time I saw Eastern Promises, I doubted any benevolent intentions, but after a fourth viewing, I now think Nikolai had the hope of saving her. Martin Scorsese calls it the “goddess-whore” complex, and I’m inclined to believe Eastern Promises does it as well, if not better than, Taxi Driver.

After all, the central story of Eastern Promises is concerned with a woman who is forced into prostitution, raped and impregnated, and then dies giving birth. Birth is the miracle of life, and the tragedy is that in many parts of the world, giving life means a woman’s sacrifice of her own. It is the one thing men will never have the power to fully control. The gangster movie is often an arena for masculinity on display, and in Eastern Promises, the façade of male power is flayed back to reveal their internal weaknesses. That men seek to force a woman’s ability to bear a child is terrible, yet it happens. And regardless of whether the audience wants these stones uncovered or not, Cronenberg is intent on lifting them up to reveal the horrors that exist in the world, because denying their existence will not make them go away.

The tattoos are a source of vulnerability as well as pride. To see them is to allow your entire life to be read: you are on display. It’s the body language, and by extension, the body, that tells who you are, not your words. They can be a source of pride and for Kirill, they mark his inheritance: “These stars are a fucking birthmark.” For Nikolai, the inheritance comes from an inability to escape his past. Any action that is performed is carried with him throughout his life, symbolized by the tattoos. In a way, this makes Eastern Promises a sequel-in-spirit to A History of Violence, which was also concerned with the idea of whether we could put aside our past and start anew.

Inheritance is another layer to Eastern Promises, and it is intrinsically linked with the idea of an heir. Kirill doesn’t strike the same presence as his father (the subplot is concerned with a murder he orchestrated for rather petty reasons), yet Semyon clings to the fact that their blood is the same. He is willing to sacrifice the more practical Nikolai to save his weaker bloodline. At the same time, the illegitimate bloodline in Tatiana’s baby can be used against him, so he orders it to be destroyed. Kirill isn’t perfect (surprise!), but he has a level of humanity that brings a measure of hope. His inability to kill Tatiana’s child (and his half brother) is the mark of a merciful soul not beyond redemption.

If Eastern Promises is more brutal than A History of Violence (and I say it is), then it is also more hopeful by the movie’s end, offering the audience a reprieve that feels welcome and even deserved. I don’t believe the ending is a cop-out at all, because just as not every movie needs a happy ending, not every one need to drown the viewer in endless sorrow. Eastern Promises offers us hope in Anna, and her home feels like a sanctuary. Yet I wonder if this success story of Tatiana’s child will distract audiences from the hard fact that this is just one case in thousands of others. We are left not with a sense of closure and happiness, but with a sense of unease; something neither uplifting nor depressing but a decided uncertainty. I don’t know what’s the proper way to end a movie like this, and I am left wondering what intentions Cronenberg and Knight had (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

Atonement (2007)

Indubitably, there are spoilers, good chap.

Director: Joe Wright

Screenplay: Christopher Hampton (based on the novel by Ian McEwan)

Starring: Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai, and Vanessa Redgrave. 

Images from the 2008 Focus Features release (Canadian).

Atonement is a magnificent movie. By no means perfect, but magnificent nevertheless. For me, it's fascination grows on a second (or third) viewing because my thoughts of what's on screen are influenced by having seen the entire film. Adapted from the novel by the same name, Atonement has the feeling of a book, with one thought bleeding into the next. There are moments where it achieves a kind of stream of consciousness, and if the narrative seems rocky, that's fitting, I think. The film serves as a line of thought, filled with regret and a longing for the innocence of childhood, as well as a question of what value fiction has as a means of atoning for past sins.

Atonement tells the story of Briony Tallis, who's misinterpretation and possible jealousy of the budding romance between her sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner (the Tallis family's gardener) results in Robbie being accused of rape. The two are torn apart, and kept that way by World War II. It's difficult to talk about the rest of the film without throwing spoilers out left and right, so you're better off just watching the movie.

Fleeting Innocence

The film begins in the countryside, and the lighting during this time is bright and clean:

The scenes at the Tallis' countryside home are a haven of sorts, and the clean light brings to mind a feeling of innocence and purity. There is peace here, and one thing the film makes very clear is just how fleeting this is. These scenes have the look of Eden, yet there is dread that lurks just beneath the surface. This is not a place of sheer benevolence and childhood innocence, but a world grounded by reality and firmly planted between the two World Wars.

The opening scene is of Briony writing her first play. Through these opening shots, we are told a lot about her and I see the entire film as her brainchild (except the final scenes). It is through fiction that she finds a catharsis, as well as a means of atonement, which the title clearly suggests. The film's score, even, uses the sound of a typewriter to emphasize moments of confession. 

Briony is a child that needs attention, yet I don't view her as simplistic as others do. The synopsis on the dvd, for instance, says:

"[...] her jealousy drives her to tell a lie that will irrevocably change the course of all their lives forever [...]"

Yet the entire film (and again, the title) conveys her as a woman completely wracked with guilt and she seems bent on flagellating herself through her own fiction as a form of penance. The film is coloured through her eyes, and the tranquility of the opening scenes makes it seem like a distant memory. Therefore, I don't think we can label her as villainous because the film is her own biased (and self-loathing) account. Whether she wasn't at least a little jealous of Cecilia and had a crush on Robbie, there is little doubt. But I don't agree we can simplify her actions to jealousy alone.

It is important that we first see Briony at the age of 13, since this is an age bordering childhood and adolescence. It is also, I think, the time at which the height of our imaginations meets the height of our paranoia, and it is this that plants the seed that will rend the peacefulness of these early scenes. There is an element of voyeurism, as if Briony is only beginning to encounter maturity.

The ambiguity at play here is in part what makes the film fascinating. To what extent is it Briony's "fault" and to what extent are her actions a product of her age? It is at this age that she is still young enough to "do the right thing," yet old enough to suspect Robbie as a pervert. The film conveys her as the "villain" because it is her narrative and because she is so guilt stricken. There is an element of truth to her suspicion, as well, because Robbie did indeed write a lurid note to Cecilia.

Yet the film's point in all of this, I think, is that the difference between "right" and "wrong" is never so clear cut. There is an understanding that not every action we do is on purpose or intended to be seen and as such, this blurs the line of morality that seems to be so clear during childhood. Briony is still young enough to believe that there are "right" things to do in one box, and "wrong" things in another and that there's no mixing the two. She is at the age where ambiguity is a word learned later in life.

There are moments of perversion hidden behind seeming innocence. Perhaps the best scene of this is when Paul Marshall and Lola (the Tallis sisters' cousin) are conversing in the playroom with the twins. Paul, who is actually the one who rapes (then marries) Lola, is the perfect example of the sinister lurking beneath a veneer of innocence. This is quite apparent, since he owns a chocolate factory, and attempts to seduce Lola with chocolates. 

War, too, is an arena for lost innocence, as in one of the best shots in the film:

During this scene, there is a moment in which the close up lighting on Robbie's face changes for an instant. At first drained and austere, the light suddenly warms for a moment (reminiscent of those earlier scenes) and then fades. It's brief, but it's a magnificent use of light. It is after this shot that we segue into Robbie's own memories. We see him with Briony, who jumps in a river so that she will save him and we see a kind of frustrated chivalry in him.

The scenes at the beaches of Dunkirk, in terms of pacing, almost seem sloppy and I wonder if that's fitting. It is during these scenes that Briony, in writing a fictional account, attempts to recreate Robbie's experiences through historical record. At this point, she can only guess at his actions and thoughts, so perhaps that is why the narrative seems choppy. 

Through these scenes, we see a yearning for the safety of childhood, as when Robbie imagines his mother with him:

As in introduction to Dunkirk, there is an impressive long take showing the beaches and the community of soldiers that has sprung up there waiting to be evacuated. This shot serves as a time capsule that fixes the historical evacuation of Dunkirk onto film. Here, we see many things, from men shooting their horses, to soldiers singing, to riding merry-go-rounds, and in the distance, a great ferris wheel amidst the smoke and rubble.

The whole scene is a juxtaposition of innocence and brutality. The amusement park rides in particular, bring to mind the desire to regain the innocence of our childhood. The screenshot itself looks straight out of a historical textbook, which would make sense, since this is partly the material that Briony is working from to recreate Robbie's experiences.

Postcard Perfect

In addition to the history books and firsthand accounts, Briony's other source for Atonement (the novel in the film, not the film) was probably Robbie and Cecilia's letters.

These moments gain a kind of stream of consciousness, again because it is Briony through which these scenes are created. In many ways, it is her idealization of how things looked and how they went. She has essentially romanticized the letters into her own vision of what they looked like rather than adhere to reality. There are shots that are achingly beautiful, like when Robbie tells Cecilia he will come back for her.

These shots look less like photographs and more like paintings. In some ways, this is akin to Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, which also created shots that looked more like 18th century oil paintings than actual cinematographs. What the Kubrick film says, for me, is similar in many ways to Atonement. That is, these are events that have passed and they are frozen in time by the records that have been kept of them. Where these films differ is in the handling of these records. Atonement's emphasis is on fictionalizing them, and the value that it has. 

What the postcards do for Robbie and Cecilia is provide a reprieve from immediate reality, best symbolized by their aspirations to live in a cabin by the sea. 

The shot of Robbie lighting a match to see the postcard is indeed magnificent, easily one of the best shots in the film and emblematic of the fleeting happiness these postcards bring. The match, like the happiness derived from living in a postcard, fades. 

Atonement and Confession through Fiction.

Yet the value of those moments of happiness match the kind of fictional happiness Briony is attempting to bring Cecilia and Robbie. I've said before that I tend to be adverse to happy endings, but that does not mean that happy endings are taboo. Of course they're welcome when done properly and not given to the audience like how one spoon feeds a baby. Likewise, I generally don't like determinedly bleak endings with no affirmation. Somewhere in the middle, with an ending that gives us hope while grounding us to reality, is ideal for me. It's not naive, but it's not a downer. Atonement manages to do this effectively, and moreover, it is aware of it. 

Just as she romanticized images from the letters, Briony also imagined a whole life for Robbie and Cecilia. It is, for her, a gift to them and a means of repentance. The idea of it, for me, is of course well intentioned, but I wonder just how one handles such subject matter. As Briony says, she started out by telling the whole truth as a way of doing justice for Robbie and Cecilia. Yet, and this is the kicker, she found the reality of it too cold, and in an act of pity (since she is essentially the deity in her fictional (and past) world), gave Robbie and Cecilia the happy ending they deserved. Whether this is "right" or not, I have no way of saying, and I don't even think Briony knows for sure. Her decision, I would say, is understandable given her position.

Briony hovers just out of frame in practically every scene and you can feel her presence. After all, it is her story. The opening scenes have the clarity of a memory, and like any nostalgia, they are bathed in an effervescent glow. The war scenes are darker and more stark, in part because she is writing as a secondary observer from firsthand accounts, letters, books, and her own imagination. The most interesting scenes, for me, are those where she attempts to imagine what Robbie and Cecilia were feeling. As mentioned before, there is the scene where Robbie imagines his mother tending to his wounds. 

One that sticks out in my mind is where we see Robbie's arrest and all events prior to that in reverse. 

In this shot, we see that this is a different point of view of what Briony saw from her window. Here, there is an surrealism to it, since there is a fog that wasn't there before. This moment, that occurs in Robbie's head, clearly has some of Briony's own memory in it. She has transplanted herself into Robbie's mind to see just what she has done. The rewinded shot, of course, comes from her own regrets and desire to undo the damage. 

Fiction serves as a catharsis and a penance. In Atonement, Briony seems to be cast in a negative light because she is self-flagellatory and critical of her actions. In her novel (seen as the film itself), she drags herself through the mud out of guilt. There is a scene where she is washing her hands and she is obviously Lady Macbeth. It is her last book because it is her dying confession and she needed to release it. The scene where she meets Cecilia and Robbie in their flat is fictionalized, and it is this scene where she begs for forgiveness, and allows Cecilia and Robbie to have their vengeance on her.

There are shots at each stage of her life that clearly show her in a confessional:

First, a false confession.

Then a moment of contemplation.

And finally, a truthful confession.

It's interesting that in this series of shots, we see the camera get closer and closer to her face, each time getting closer to the truth, and more importantly, her atonement.

Some attention must be given to the score, which one the Oscar for 2007. What the music in the film does for me is evoke a sense of urgency, as if Briony is hurrying to tell the truth, racing against her own clock. The typewriter sounds, in particular, emphasize this, and they seem to come up during moments where Briony would be most frustrated with herself in hindsight. It's as if she is typing the novel of Atonement out of self-hatred. 

Atonement has its share of flaws, and maybe a few scenes that I can't decide on their importance, beyond what is apparent. Still, it addresses many things that I find fascinating in films: The division between reality and fiction and walking that line. Imagination and its constructive and destructive powers. The desire for penance. And maybe above all, a yearning for childhood innocence and the loss thereof. 

Sin Nombre & Slumdog Millionaire: Two Takes

Sin Nombre, written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, is a film that has been in my head since seeing it yesterday. It's a magnificent, uncompromising film and I do hope it does well at the box office, as it is Fukunaga's directorial debut and an extraordinary one at that. If you've seen El Norte, you'll instantly recognize the story and perspective that's taken here. Yet stylistically, El Norte is rooted in magical realism, whereas Sin Nombre adopts a neorealist approach to its subject matter. I can't really decide which I like more, but I feel both are valuable portraits of South and Central American immigration. While mulling it over in my mind, I couldn't help but think about the critics' darling of 2008: Slumdog Millionaire, and perhaps this is the result of repressed honesty on my feelings towards that film. More on that later.

First, a bit on Sin Nombre:

Sin Nombre tells two stories that eventually converge. Willy is a member of La Mara gang, and his young friend Smiley is a new recruit, having passed his initiation by members of the gang kicking him until he can barely walk and is covered with blood. We are brought into this seedy underbelly of society and witness horrific acts of violence as the two friends try to prove their worth. Willy has a girlfriend, Martha Marlene, who he keeps secret from the gang. When she is discovered, she is accidently killed by Lil' Mago (one of the gang lieutenants and reminiscent of, wait for it... Lil' Dice from City of God) when he tries to rape her. Willy eventually kills Lil' Mago, and in the process, meets Sayra, her father, and uncle. They are a Honduran family fleeing north to a better life. The rest involves an attempt to escape the grasp of La Mara and cross the border northward.

That the scenes depicting gang life are grisly and uncomfortable is to the film's advantage, I think. Cinema, by in large, falls into two categories regarding acts of violence these days: glossing over it, or exploiting it. Sin Nombre is a hard-nosed portrait of gang life that neither sugar coats it, nor fetishistically revels in it. The result is a film that approaches its subject matter realistically and pragmatically. In this sense, the film draws from the strengths of neorealism: commonplace characters (many extras here were cast on location) with simple, realistic goals, plausible situations, and a clear, focused narrative.

What the movie accomplishes very well, I think, is a strong contrast that mirrors the impetus to emigrate in the first place. In the beginning, for instance, the film jumps back and forth between the stories of Willy and Sayra. With that staggered narrative comes an undulating sense of comfort. With Sayra and her family, we feel safe. With Willy and El Mara, everything feels dirty, grotesque, and dangerous, and there is desire to leave those scenes at least on a level of comfort. The scene between Lil' Mago and Martha Marlene is perhaps the most potent and horrifying, in part because you can see it coming before it ever happens, and because it is an unflinching, honest representation of reality. That she is killed almost becomes a reprieve for her as well as the audience, yet the possibilities between living in a gang (where it seems everything, women included, is communal and shared) and death are not a choice that anyone should have to make. In a way, she is spared from a life of humiliation.

The imagery and look of the film are exceptional. This type of movie hearkens back to older, on location methods of filmmaking.

The dynamics and camaraderie of the immigrants hitching a ride on top of trains is a miraculous image, and the one that first piqued my interest in the film. What the film does is simply observe this community, furthering its neorealist approach while creating images of events that are happening right now as I type this. The image, for me, is both surreal, yet documentary. It is Werner Herzog who says:

"What this world needs is more images, and that is something I am trying to work on."

Somehow, I think he would approve of Cary Fukunaga and Adriano Goldman's final product. Sin Nombre is a film that presents a dichotomy; a world that is both startlingly beautiful and hideously grotesque. Because of this, the film feels complete. It does not drag us deeper into despair with no hope, nor does it gloss over the horrors in false feel-goodness. I think it is because of the neorealist approach that it manages to work so effectively. Sin Nombre is a film that I hope does well, and I will certainly be examining it more in the future.

Everybody Loves Slumdog:

I'm going to be brutally (more like tough-lovely) honest. I don't love Slumdog Millionaire and I certainly don't offer laudatory praise, like so many others. I see it as Hollywood kitsch disguising itself as independent, international cinema. I just don't see what the praise is all about. By no means did I hate it, and I actually found quite a bit to like, but I kept asking myself: What exactly is this film trying to do?

I have heard of Slumdog Millionaire being called a brutal portrait of the Indian slums, which I'd only agree with if by "brutal" you mean "fantastical." It is not uncompromising, but rather caters to the audience's ultimate desires rather than ground itself in reality. Is it a bad thing to eschew reality? Absolutely not, but for me, Slumdog Millionaire amounts to little more than a child's fairy tale disguised by violence and shit-covered children because of this.

There's one problem I had: The film defuses any discomfort the audience has through comic relief, thereby lessening any messages to be had (which the film is clearly trying to convey). There is so much gloss and diffusion of reality that it's difficult to glean anything profound from the film. This is evident nowhere more than when Jamal, who sees his Bollywood hero in the distance, must crawl through raw sewage and water to get there. Is there supposed to be something funny about this? The audience I was with roared with laughter. Haha! Look at the little shit-covered Indian boy! Don't you find that funny? I sure do because I'm an American bourgeois living in my suburban home, driving my kids to soccer practice in my Volvo station wagon and I won't ever have to see anything that ludicrous in real life! Now the question is, was that reaction by the audience a misinterpretation of what the film was trying to do or did the film want to elicit that reaction? Judging by the timing and the editing, I think it's pretty clear the audience was supposed to have that reaction. For me, that doesn't make sense, I don't find that funny, and I don't really know what the film was trying to accomplish with that little stunt.

Another thing that annoyed the hell out of me was the cross-over to english as well as the bizarre subtitles. I can actually understand, allegorically, the importance of the crossing over to english as a parallel to India's westernization, but I get the feeling it was merely another way in which the film caters to the audience. That brings up the question: why is catering to the audience a bad thing? To answer that, I would say that it is not a bad thing necessarily, but it is overused. To some level, you have to give some sort of comfort level to the audience otherwise you risk losing them entirely. What abusing this does, however, is create a sense of complacency in the audience. I think the expectation of a happy ending is so ingrained in audiences today, that any movie that dares to have a sad one is largely deemed "bad" or "okay."

The subtitles, I hear, were jazzed up with colours and would appear next to whoever was talking because the director wanted to engage the audience more. Mostly, however, I found this distracting, and somehow I doubt Danny Boyle was trying to make some profound statement about that. Shots that call attention to themselves (or fancy-schmancy shots, as Wilder would put it) have their place in cinema. But lately, I feel this "Queasy-Cam" effect is sweeping the industry in all the wrong places. What, exactly, does incorporating distracting elements to a dramatic picture do for the movie? Ah yes, that's right, it distracts us from the weakest part of Slumdog Millionaire: the dramatic arc of the story and its characters.

I don't see Slumdog Millionaire as much more than a fantasy that almost completely glosses over the horrors of slum life. It is a fairy tale with destiny as its ultimate message (or something, I'm not really sure). Every character we are supposed to like is absolutely gorgeous. Even the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? host is a sexy version of Luis Guzman.

For me, the most annoying aspect of the film was Jamal. James Berardinelli writes:

"Boyle's feature draws the viewer in, immersing him in a fast-moving, engaging narrative featuring a protagonist who is so likeable it's almost unfair."

This, I don't understand at all. What exactly, is so likable about Jamal? I found the character underdeveloped and simple-minded to say the least. The relationship between Jamal and Latika, that is buried under great physical distance, a lot of quite cutting, dutch angles, and catchy Bollywood music, reveals itself to be rather thin and uninteresting. He meets her once, he falls in love and will scour all of Mumbai to be reunited! Jamal's fortune, too, arises not out of his own cunning, but out of luck. Or is it fate? Luck? No, it's fate. The movie makes sure of that. The notion of destiny rarely interests me, because it takes free will out of the equation. If we are not acting of our own free will, then what's the point? Boring.

Far more interesting a character (disappointingly underdeveloped, then completely forgotten about by the end) is Jamal's brother, Salim. Had the film focused more on him than the weak storyline of Jamal and Latika, I might hold it in higher regard. That and getting rid of the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? segments, which take up maybe half the movie and amount to little more than a gimmick to put into posters. What seems like an arena ripe for social commentary amounts to little more than a waste of space and loss of time that could've been used to develop characters. The problem with Slumdog Millionaire, I think, is that it is messy. It tries to have its cake and eat it too, and the result is a half-baked romance and a half-baked indictment of western culture.

What Sin Nombre has, and what I feel Slumdog Millionaire lacked, is a sense of focus and restraint. Sin Nombre divorced itself from any overt politics and chose instead to focus on the people themselves. Slumdog Millionaire wants to be a wonderful romance while simultaneously preaching the dangers of westernization, and the result is muddled.

I now open the floor to [constructive] criticism.