The Coen Brothers’ 1991 film Barton Fink has been on my “to-do” list for quite some time, and finally I have gotten the chance to watch it. Famous both for its use of visual metaphor and Biblical and literary allusion, Barton Fink is an excellent, albeit rather unfocused, multi-genre picture.

It is 1942, and Barton Fink (John Turturro) is a newly successful New York playwright who is offered a chance to work for “Capitol Pictures” in Los Angeles, writing movies. At first reluctant, he eventually agrees and travels to L.A., planning to stay in the Hotel Earle, a decrepit and strange old place that he opts for because, as his slick producer instantly sees, it’s “not too Hollywood”. Upon arrival, Barton sets his typewriter on his desk and receives his first assignment, to write a script about wrestling. After sitting down, he hears loud, strange noises coming from the room next door and calls the front desk, and soon receives a knock at his door: Charlie (John Goodman), a large and jolly insurance salesman, apologizes for the disturbance he caused and offers Barton a drink.

As Barton struggles to get his script off the ground, he bumps into a well-known writer named W.P. Mayhew, who he befriends, quickly realizing that he despises him. Barton continues to struggle with his script, as his room is seemingly falling apart and he is plagued by a mosquito that wakes him as it buzzes closer and closer to his ear. Meanwhile, his large and friendly neighbor Charlie barges in and complains of ear infections, requiring a gauze to plug up the puss secreting out of his ear. Part Bates motel, part The Shining (the Coen brothers cited Kubrick’s film as an influence), Barton Fink is mysterious and at times disgusting. Within the confines of his room, all Barton has to look at is a simple painting of a woman lying down and staring at the ocean from the shore.

In keeping with my unspoken refusal to spoil a story, eventually Barton’s private neurosis manifests into a major problem in the reality of the film- a climactic culmination of small, easily unnoticed details that add up to something larger than Barton can imagine. Of course, when things begin to unravel into chaos, Fink is at his most inspired, and with mounting pressure from Jack Lipnick, a rich, robed studio head with a palace, he gets a massive, “big” (not large, but important) script finished.

What struck me about Fink, in keeping with the Coen brothers tradition, is a film with enough ambiguity to intrigue but enough immersive storytelling to engage the audience, rather than the audience attempting to engage the film. A problem I could easily see is someone discussing Barton Fink and the numerous instances of symbolism, metaphor, and allusion that the average moviegoer would never notice- and much of that symbolism is unintentional on the part of the Coens, who are creative and brilliant, but by no means mystical or fanatically dense. It would be a mistake to take this movie for more than what it is- a mystery, a comedy, film noir, and maybe even a wrestling pictcha rolled into one accessible work.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…they have their exits, and their entrances…”

William Shakespeare’s famous line, from his play As You Like It, seems to be the existentialist wind that pushes forth Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a misanthropic playwright in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. A film that has divided critics and audiences, Synecdoche is certainly one of the boldest and most brilliant films I have seen in quite some time, so much so that the physical DVD should be locked away in a cabinet somewhere. The ideas about death, life, and art are perhaps too fierce for our mortal minds to handle, a welcome feeling compared with much of the fare gracing cineplexes these days.

Charlie Kaufman’s previous screenwriting credits, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, are far-reaching metaphysical tragedies, disconserting contemplations on the human condition. If you thought they were at all morose, Synecdoche will knock you over- Caden is left by his wife Adele (Catherine Keener), who takes their daughter Olive to Berlin. He becomes convinced that he is dying, and after receiving a MacArthur Grant, sets to work on arguably his, and mankind’s, most ambitious dramatic production- an unnamed project that requires a full-scale set of New York City in an old airport hanger.

All is surreal in the film; Caden’s box office attendant Ellen (Samantha Morton) lives in a house that is perpetually on fire. Caden finds Olive’s diary underneath her bed, and it seems to fill out as the years pass, even as Olive is somewhere deep in Berlin. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Maria, friend of Adele’s, who prevents Caden from finding his daughter. Meanwhile, his untitled project continues to gain momentum, requiring more actors and more set pieces. Time in the film is used deceptively- from one scene to the next, everyone seems to age years. From his small beginnings, Caden’s life and the film itself evolves (or devolves) into a grand landscape of non-sequiter.

To summarize the events of the film is, a this juncture, impossible- Kaufman distills time and pours as many different concepts and tricks into each scene as possible. You could not possibly catch all that there is to see just from one viewing, but by the slow fade to white at the end, it becomes obvious that, while not handing it to the audience, the film is ripe with intellectual concerns: the nature of inevitable death, existential angst, and the severe pain of love, coupled with the impossibility of making, as Caden strives to do, “a work of brutal truth and honesty”. In it’s own self-fulfilling way, however, Kaufman’s film achieves what few movies ever do: a true emphatic impression upon its audience, who are confronted not through violence of the harshness that all human beings experience.

My distaste for the “stoner-slacker” genre of Judd Apatow’s flock is, admittedly, also tinged by a hint of interest and awe- a bunch of friends making Hollywood comedies together. That they give credit where credit is due (Bill Murray, Steve Martin) is only icing on the cake. In I Love You, Man, these twenty and thirtysomethings finally eschew the narcissism and underlying negativity, ending up with a comedy that is actually “feel-good”.

Paul Rudd (who seems to be in every movie these days) plays Peter Klaven, a hopelessly nice guy that, at the beginning of the film, proposes to his girlfriend Zooey (Rashida Jones). She accepts, and they are excited, but soon it becomes obvious that Peter has spent his life catering to girlfriends and doesn’t have a single true male friend. Whereas in Knocked Up and The 40-Year Old Virgin, and Superbad, guys littered the screen, Peter is actually surrounding by women, at least until he starts looking for a best man for his wedding. He tries meeting guys for dinner (a definite “no-no” according to his gay brother Robby, played by SNL cast member Andy Samberg), and eventually gives up. He’s a realtor trying to sell Lou Ferrigno’s house, and during a house showing, he meets a guy named Syndney Fife who’s scoping out potential female divorcees. After describing the food Peter serves as “a revelation”, they exchange business cards.

The awkward concept of “man-date” is thoroughly explored in this film; whether or not it’s appropriate to call and so on, and Peter, the hopelessly nice yet hopelessly awkward “girlfriend guy”, struggles to fit in. When he finally meets up with Sydney, he’s unable to come up with a cool nickname for him (Sydney calls Peter “Pistol”). It’s painful, and yet you realize that a trip to the mall or any public place would show groups of dudes hanging out together, conversing in a very specific and regulated way. It’s a blessing that Peter doesn’t know the dumb guy stuff, and it’s a blessing he’s not Sydney Fife, a perpetually laid back slacker with a “man-cave”, replete with drum set, Rush posters, and jerk-off station (wait, what). Sydney seems incapable of settling down.

While there are some minor conflicts throughout the film, overall it’s a mainline dose of happiness and fun, without a hint of tragedy to be found. Everything works out, everyone is happy, and we all learn a thing or two in the process. The dialogue is comic genius, a combination of awkward pauses, gibberish when one can’t think of what to say, and pop culture references (Syndney’s dog is named Anwar Sadat). Filmed in and around Los Angeles, it’s a bright, sunny movie, with no ugly references to the economic or political or moral conflicts plaguing the country- we’d be cursed if this was the only kind of movie to come out, but as a pick-me-up, I Love You, Man works.

The difficulties in capturing historical politics on-screen are numerous; accuracy is essential considering the film has little to do with “history” if it manipulates the facts or leans towards a particular political spectrum. So many films (Ollie Stone, I’m looking at you) distort and expand on reality in such a way that often you are watching the creator’s own impression of the events, rather than an honest recreation. Ron Howard’s newest film, Frost/Nixon, risks political bias and never quite achieves the relevance it hopes for, however salvaged the final product is by humanist perfomances courtesy Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, and Matthew Macfadyen, among others.

Michael Sheen plays David Frost, a toothy talk show host in search of a big ratings draw. He decides that an interview with the recently resigned Richard Nixon (Langella) would be the publicity Frost needs to rocket into fame, and so he and his producer John Birt (Macfayden) broker a deal independent of the networks and eventually offer Nixon an exorbant fee to conduct a series of interviews over the course of four long days. Nixon, a looming competitor, battles wits with Frost both on and off set.

It is a compelling film in that it gives heightened drama to what could have been a mundane interview; Frost interrogates Nixon, bringing up several pieces of evidence that had come to light only after Nixon had resigned. The interviews themselves are intense, albeit short- Nixon cause Frost to stumble. In fact, the first few interviews are rocky for Frost, to say the least, as Nixon is able to enter into soliloquy upon soliquly outlining his achievements.

While not a failure by any means, Frost/Nixon fails to capture the true underdog energy of Frost, and at no point did I find myself truly awed, or even remotely moved. It’s a strictly by-the-numbers political drama, effectively photographed, yet the obvious influence of its previous incarnation as a play (the playwright, Peter Morgan, penned the film’s script) saps a key amount of visual energy. Frank Langella, who earned an Academy nomination for “Best Actor”, is compelling as the bully (ignoring obvious physical differences), and pulls off the sad puppy look when he is at last trounced, but I have to believe (and hope) that the actual events weren’t so pathetically cliched.

Jim Jarmusch has a new movie coming out in May: The Limits of Control. It stars Isaac De Bankolé, a native Ivorian (from Cote de Ivoire), as a well-dressed assassin, and there could be no better preparation than to watch Ghost Dog, Jarmusch’s 1999 film about hip-hop and urban samurai.

Forest Whitaker stars as Ghost Dog, a loner who receives contracts from a mobster in the form of notes attached to a passenger pigeon. Ghost Dog reads up on the “Way of the Samurai”, and the film is interspersed with quotes, like “the Way of the Samurai is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.” Despite the Eastern philosophizing, Jarmusch’s script is fundamentally a gangster movie, as lavishly devoted to hip-hop and the Wu-Tang Clan as it is to old school Yakuza flicks. Immersed in its own influences, Ghost Dog is a druggy and mysterious film meant to be watched late at night.

The intriguing aspect, one that I was drawn to, is the meditative and ancient methodology employed by Ghost Dog in his profession. While he is a “warrior” in the sense that he deals in death, his approach is akin to Wall Street suits citing Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in boardroom battles. His loneliness and solitude, also, brings us into his introspection, aided by the plodding pace and strange atmosphere pervasive in each scene. The mobsters who wish to kill him are confused and dismissive of his “poetry crap”, yet their own evil is uneven and unfocused. The dialectic between the cold, modern world and the cold, ancient one is brought up- impermanence and chaos. We could all be Ghost Dog in whatever diligent work we may choose to do.

Perhaps the most surreal aspect of the film is the Brazilian ice cream vendor Raymond, Ghost Dog’s only friend. Despite the fact that neither can understand what the other is saying, they bond over ice cream cones. A brief cameo by the head Wu-Tang clan member RZA, credited as “the samurai in camoflauge”, adds to the mystery.

Not all of us can be samurai assassins, with eccentric numbers of pigeons on our roofs, yet you might learn to appreciate the code of the samurai in daily living, as well as the effective and obvious synthesis of Eastern philosophy and warrior spirit with the grittiness and self-possession of hip-hop. A quiet, strange, and ultimately bloody movie crafted for the grindhouse by a true master.

The Squid and the Whale is Noah Baumbach’s 2005 ode to growing up amidst the snobbery of academics in 1980’s Brooklyn- capturing a time and a place with cinematic fetishism while crafting a fascinating portrait of a particular family, based roughly on Baumbach’s own. Jeff Daniels is a literature professor named Bernard Berkman who’s career is on the decline- as his wife Joan (Laura Linney) begins gaining respect for her own work. Their two sons Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline) are regular kids, until their parents sit them down in their Park Slope apartment and reveal that they are going to separate.

The ensuing power struggle is the heart of the film, as Bernard gains the allegiance of the eldest boy Walt (the character most resembling Baumbach). Walt is a seventeen-year old intellectual, and Jesse Eisenberg plays the role to perfection- spouting phrases such as “Kafka-esque” and turning into his father’s sycophant, echoing his father’s opinions on literature (Tale of Two Cities is “minor Dickens”) and his mother. In a way, the film centers around Walt, following his strained first love and musical aspirations- performing Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” at the high school talent show while claiming he wrote the song himself. Eisenberg is born for this role, and it will certainly last as one of his best performances.

Walt’s younger brother Frank is a strange boy who takes tennis lessons from a “pro” (William Baldwin), who gives him the encouragement lacking in his real father’s parenting. His mother soon begins seeing the tennis pro, and a jealous triangle pits the family against one another.

The film, directed by Baumbach but produced by Wes Anderson and containing obvious influences, is on-point- the wine, the New Yorker, and all elements of WASP snobbery rolled into something quite funny. Like Anderson, Baumbach borders on the surreal, especially with the idiosyncratic dialogue and exaggerated pomposity of all parties. The end result is both an intelligent and heartfelt slice-of-life narrative that, while limited in scope, is extremely enjoyable.

Never has a film done so much with swaying fields of wheat. Andrew Dominik’s Western The Assassination of Jesse James wields the natural elements more effectively than it does its star, Brad Pitt, who plays the infamous outlaw bandit Jesse James. He’s a quiet, troubled, very nearly angsty individual, often smoking cigars and staring into the distance. When a young man named Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) shows up at the James’ gang camp looking for work. A long-time fan of the infamous Jesse James, Ford is at first rejected, but then allowed to tag along on a late-night train robbery in the woods.

Robert Ford’s unhealthy preoccupation with Jesse James propels most of the film- bordering on lust, Ford had kept comics and novellas detailing the largely exagerated exploits of Jesse James under his bed since he was a boy, and so the chance to not only meet but ride alongside James is more than appealing to him. Pitt is clearly comfortable in the charismatic, cool-guy role- not unlike Tyler Durden in Fight Club, his level of “cool” is leaps and bounds above the geek squad that surrounds him. Not to say that the performances by Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, and Paul Schneider are anything short of excellent- in fact, they are leaps and bounds above Pitt- but they certainly aren’t filmed as romantically. The cinematographer, Roger Deakins, pulls out all the stops in this particular film, which at times feels like a showcase for over-thought and overwrought camera technique. It can be said, however, that all elements carry that same ominous tone, an almost religious-like solemnity that pervades all of the characters up to their inevitable deaths.

Let’s be honest- you know that Jesse James gets killed, and judging by the title, should be able to deduce that it’s Bob Ford that does it. The murder is crafted brilliantly, a strange alignment of tables and chairs and a feather duster and the quick, brutal act combine to again, provide a strange atmostphere. Also in keeping with the unfolding story, the scene is absent of cliche, and Dominik seems to try his darnedest to do what you don’t think he’s going to.

The film is unfortunately mostly absent of substance- sure, there are characters, but they are secondary to the lighting and the atmosphere and emotive tone. Nonetheless, whilst overlong, it appears a successful experiment and harkens back to the auteur days- a companion piece to the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men.

Released in 2008 by Overture Films, The Visitor has gone largely unnoticed by the general populace.  The film was written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, who’s previous film The Station Agent pointed towards good things. With The Visitor, he cements his talent, crafting a slow-moving realist drama, a contemplation of subjects ranging from culture and art to death and the political atmosphere of post-9/11 New York, all fueled by the beat of a djembe drum.

Walter is a quiet, lonely professor living in the Connecticut suburbs at the beginning of the film. When a colleague asks him to go to New York City and present a paper- the subject of which is never made clear- he is forced to accept. He has reduced his number of classes to one, to give himself time to write a book- the subject of which is also never made clear. He arrives in New York, to his old apartment, and finds two  people living there. Shocked at first, they are more distrustful of him than he of them. Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira) are two immigrants from Syria and Senegal respectively. Walter invites them to stay until they find a place to live.

As Walter is exposed to new foods and customs, it is painfully obvious that he lacks drive or direction with his career. It is revealed that his wife had passed away several years earlier. Tarek plays the djembe in his spare time, and he offers to teach Walter, who gladly accepts. They go to Central Park one day and jam with a drum circle, and Walter cracks his first genuine smile as he assimilates into the pulsing beat. Unfortunately the happiness  is short-lived, as his new friend is halted in the subway by NYPD cops who, with a dash of racial profiling, send him to a deportment facility.

Walter is finally pushed into real action- he goes to the facility, a blank building in the middle of a slum, and tries to help Tarek out as Zainab fears the worst: deportment back to Syria. The bureaucratic entanglements make it nearly impossibly for Walter to help his friend. An immigration lawyer with far too many cases on his hands is unable to offer assistance.

McCarthy makes a point not to sugarcoat anything: cinematography, make-up, and set design all lend the film an almost documentary-like feel, and the plot moves at a pace that quietly mimics the awkwardness of reality. Perhaps most painful is the feeling of helplessness once Tarek is arrested; he is illegally “here”, but what good is “here” if we eliminate a good person such as him with a piece of paper? While straddling the fine line between drama and sermon, The Visitor actually stumbles upon some important human elements of the immigration issue. Much like 2004’s Maria Full of Grace, it puts a face on a  “hot-button” issue.

Also similar to Maria Full of Grace, the film earned an Academy Award nomination for Richard Jenkins (“Best Actor”), which is good because it gave the film some publicity. Jenkins is excellent, but Haaz Sleiman is arguably the greater star, a charismatic Syrian with a sense of resiliency even in the face of ignorance and injustice. Bringing a difficult and easily ignored issue to light, The Visitor is one of the more effective and affecting films of 2008.

A well-dressed man floats dead in a pool. Police and press observe the scene, jotting down notes and flashing bulbs. The camera sits underwater, at the bottom of the pool, angled upwards. The face of the dead man looks bloated and ridiculous. A narrator describes the action as it occurs. Black and white, we are watching a true murder mystery, and at the center of the pool lies its subject.

Billy Wilder, the film’s director, captures our attention through the use of voice-over and the thick mist of suspense. Who is this man? Flashback to Joe Gillis, the dead man, still alive and struggling as a B-movie screenwriter trying to hawk a baseball flick. Toiling away, he describes the scene of Los Angeles in 1955: mostly inhabited by failed screenwriters. After a chase by repo men, Gillis parks in the garage of a luxurious mansion and runs to the door, where he’s greeted by a strange bald butler (Erich von Stroheim). Apparently the man thinks Joe’s an undertaker, and shows him upstairs where he first meets the incredible Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a once-famous silent movie star.

Sunset Boulevard is Billy Wilder’s ode to the Hollywood tragedy; Norma Desmond, played in fully authentic extravagance by Gloria Swanson (herself a former silent film star), is crazed by a desire for the return to glory. She holes up in her mansion, working on a tired script about a beautiful princess. Joe Gillis, desperate and looking to make his own money, agrees to help her. The strange bald butler mostly watches on.

In its Hollywood eccentricities, Sunset manages to capture the fatally flawed notion of fame. The film industry is a fast-moving, quickly evolving machine that leaves the imperfect in the dust. Unable to face the prospect of irrelevance, and so conditioned to be treated as royalty, Norma Desmond lives entirely disconnected from reality, watching her own movies over and over again. It is in fact profoundly tragic, but the film has such an energy that never once does it feel bogged down by gloom. Rather, it is a swift, clever satire- both a celebration of the moments of joy that come out of fruitful work and the illusions of entitlement and self-obsession that fuel so many hapless dreamers.

Sunset Boulevard creates an atmosphere thick with cigarette smoke, serving as a truly self-conscious analysis of the film industry. Clearly, nothing has changed. Joe Gillis does nothing to free himself from Norma’s clutches, entering a pampered vegetative state that deludes him into becoming childlike. And who wouldn’t wish to live in the lap of luxury, as Norma does? The famous staircase scene, with Norma’s cringe-inducing soliloquy, is the pitch-perfect culmination of a pointed critique: reality blurs with the moving pictures.

]]> http://mantisfists.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/sunset-boulevard/feed/ 0 Jeff sunsetblvd1 http://mantisfists.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/who-enjoyed-the-watchmen/ http://mantisfists.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/who-enjoyed-the-watchmen/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:39:16 +0000 jeff http://mantisfists.wordpress.com/?p=3183 ]]>

As I sat in my theater seat on Thursday night  for Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, expectations were floating at around 50%. I had always felt, since seeing the trailer last summer before The Dark Knight, that Zack Snyder was an inappropriate choice to direct and lead such an ambitious, beloved project. Alan Moore’s original comic was an epic, albeit convulted tale. Despair, revolt, and cynicism pervade throughout most of Moore’s work, partially thanks to the blurry distinction between  “somber” and “weighty” in the world of mutants and plasma. Moore, a man who “smokes too much hashish and worships lizards”, disavowed involvement with the film version of his 1987 graphic novel, yet Snyder and a cast of relative unknowns, armed with the same crew that crafted 300 and a budget of one hundred and twenty million dollars, tried to replicate the comic panel by panel.

The plot is ludicrous, and in Snyder’s Watchmen, this is detrimental; the 1987 setting, with a gray-haired Nixon serving his third term and the U.S. “on the brink of nuclear war” with the Soviet Union, is no longer as controversial or politically apt twenty-two years later. New York City is a rat-infested, crime-ridden comic book city, and the ‘Watchmen’ are a group of costumed vigilantes, inexplicably masters of hand-to-hand combat. Their names are the Comedian, Rorschach, Nite Owl, Ozymandias, Silk Spectre, and Doctor Manhattan, who’s walking and talking nuclear man.

Someone’s picking the Watchmen off, and meanwhile, the “Armageddon Clock”- which gauges how close the nation is to nuclear war- marks five minutes till nuclear winter. Aimless wanton political allegory aside, the plot skips around, providing no backdrop- who are these characters and why do we care? That stubborn refusal to engage emotionally is in the spirit of Dr. Manhattan- the metaphysical anomaly capable of traveling anywhere in space or time- he is detached and disinterested. Snyder’s Watchmen assumes that you are invested from the get-go, yet the film crumbles apart during the opening titles- another pop culture time-line from WWII through JFK and hippies. Like Benjamin Button, Hollywood perpetuates an oversimplification of American history. Garbage.

Watchmen is a grotesquely absurd yarn, and attempting to summarize it would no doubt be an injustice; know simply that Rorschach (Jackie Earle Hale) is a masked detective who narrates his journal entries and the problems at hand seem to be Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), fully naked blue man, and his potentially harmful radiation. Also, throw in wanton murder and vigorous sex in the cockpit of the Owl ship. Having read the comic, I can tell you that the directors who had attempted the project (Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky) were right: it is an impossible task. The “prison scene”, in which several Watchmen kick ass during a prison riot, is a memorable moment in the book, but what Snyder produces is a painfully banal cookie-cutter superhero fight without momentum.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian, a grim, cynical soldier perpetually smoking a cigar, unleashes some of the more potent demons of the comic book onto the movie screen. Misogynistic and offensive, the uncomfortable irreverence of Moore’s work comes through his brutality. Rorschach as well, the psychologically damaged (completely insane) man who lacks human sympathy, is compelling on the big screen. One cannot help but feel that each separate storyline detracts from a common thread, pulling what was a tightly knit graphic novel into a loose, jumbled pile of yarn.

The lack of soul throughout is most reminiscent of Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, which relied on similiar theatrics to entice herds to the cinemaplex. Colorful, rubbery, and staggeringly unsubstantive, both films are mindless hogwash. Perhaps Watchmen’s crime is greater, however, as it deludes millions of geeks into thinking that “deep thought” can be found in the ramblings of Dr. Manhattan, or the cartoonish and, really, lame portrayal of Richard Nixon. Alan Moore, a Brit, was simply writing his own idiosyncratic fantasies, and the sensation of seeing them projected on-screen is nothing short of strange. Maybe the graphic novel wasn’t as good as I thought.