What Happened Was… (1994)

Films don't change. We do.

I had not seen What Happened Was… in over five years. I remembered the plot, but not the power of the film’s conclusion.

When Tom Noonan’s character admits that something broke inside of him, years ago, and that he doesn’t know how to fix his life, the pain of self-actualization shot through me like lightning. I sat up for two hours afterwards; not in tears, but crying on the inside (COTI*, for those text messaging or chatting online).

I don’t remember the film hitting me that intensely last time. So, what changed? For one, I’ve slipped further away from the making of narrative fictional cinema. Instead, I’ve been working experimentally, producing documentaries, and designing video installations. All creative endeavors, but not exactly what I want to be doing. In some ways, I feel something in me broke or at minimum, something went off course.

The question then becomes not what happened, but what will happen next? Will I just keep watching films, telling myself it is okay, that with each film I watch I will learn something new, something I can apply to my own filmmaking or will I take action and make a change?

*I COTI much more than I LOL. What Happened Was… had me laughing out loud and I can’t remember if I ever found it so hilarious or if something else inside of me had changed, something that made the film more comedic. This change is harder to identify and not so shocking that it sends me into a state of panic, desparately wanting to reorganize my life and get back to doing what I have always wanted to do.

Phantasm II (1988)

Are sequels just halls for memories?

The last time I watched this must have been on cable in the late 80′s or early 90′s and watching it now I realize that this was the first Phantasm film I ever saw. I must have seen Phantasm I and Phantasm II out order.

What makes Phantasm (both I & II) so fun is that it doesn’t over explain the motivations of the Tall Man. Still the film starts with a re-cap of what went down in the first Phantasm. This is a convention of horror sequels I would like to see done away with.

Here, the sequel starts with long-winded unspooling of footage from the first film narrated by a girl with psychic powers – who wasn’t in the original. Personally, and this is coming from someone who watched the films ut of order, this sort of cliff notes summary undercuts what’s so great about the series. Phantasm films are built around an unclear, supernatural plot, that needs little or no explanation. There is the Tall Man who turns corpses into evil dwarfs, and has these nasty silver spheres with retractable blades that lodge themselves in victims’ frontal lobes. Then in the case of Phantasm II there’s Mike and Reggie and Liz, all people out to stop this monster. It’s freaky as hell because morgues and undertakers are freaky things, as are evil dwarfs that look like wrinkled druids. Plot just gets in the way.

I’d rather have ten more minutes of creepy dwarfs and spooky morgue passageways because even today, I find Phantasm II to be one of the few films that can send chills down my spine.

Videodrome (1983)

With this entry I begin a new catagory of posts wherein I speak of a viewing experience that includes commentary.

David Cronenberg states that James Woods is not an American film actor because he is a member of MENSA and an extremely intelligent person. Cronenberg also finds most American films to be lacking in intelligence. I can’t say I disagree with the man and should my worst fear come true, should some Hollywood producer get the grand idea to remake Videodrome I think we’ll see the proof.

What makes Videodrome so astonishing is its acute place in history; a time before the mass proliferation of home computers, before the Internet, before the multitude of ways we can plug in, log in, and live our fantasies. We’ve reached a point where two girls and cup has reached the cultural consciousness, it has gone mainstream, and without the slightest consideration of how this changes us. It’s a gag, a piece of meme, something for the 00′s Trivial Pursuit set being made as we speak.

A reworking of Videodrome done today, would simply update the technology, but not the consequences. It will be a thriller, a whodunit, a mess of mystery rapped in the latest dazzling digital technology and gross-out effects. It will be totally off the mark. Like putting young faces in old roles, Hollywood changes the only the surface and I have to agree with Cronenberg, it is not too smart.

Milk (2008)

5 Random Thoughts on Gus Van Sant’s Milk

1) Does Your Life Only Count If They Make a Bio Pic About You?
If you wanted to know the Harvey Milk story, The Times of Harvey Milk is an amazing, Academy Award winning documentary that was made almost 15 years go. All you would have to do was track it down. Of course, unless you were gay or lesbian or concerned about the rights of gays and lesbians or perhaps you were from San Francisco, you probably never came across this film or even Harvey Milk’s name.

Harvey Milk is not the same as Rosa Parks. No one’s teaching him in schools and the documentary about his life has never received the accolades that keep it in the public’s consciences. If anything, the Times of Harvey Milk was made before documentaries became of notable box office interest.

If the general public ever heard of Harvey Milk is was as a moment in time, a cultural footnote, tossed into the dustbin of time. To resurrect his ghost now and to make it palpable to a mainstream audience, especially one that is continually asked to go to the polls to decide whether or not homosexuals should be given equal rights, seems like an extremely political move.

I just don’t know if a bio-pic is going to change people’s politics. Yes, Gus Vant Sant has crafted a very touching tribute to an important figure in American history. Yet, all biopics suffer from a pared down depiction of a life that reduces key events to dots that when connected only give an outline of the subject.

We learned that this success and this tragedy and this choice propel someone to greatness. In fact, I think this is exactly how we want to see our own lives. Like the cliche of having your life flash before your eyes you want only to see the most crucial events of your life.When we see ourselves as all being important and we lose touch or never even get in touch with others, at a deeper core level, something gets lost.

2) Is this a straight film or a gay film for straight audiences?
Van Sant is gay filmmaker who often has queer moments in his films, but not since Mala Noche has he really had a film so directly focused on homosexuality. At the same time, Milk is peculiar in its representation of the gay lifestyle, especially during the era in which it is set. While there are ample references to cruising and bath houses, they are never shown. Harvey Milk, falls in love twice. It’s quick; a simple glance leads to promptly to bed. Not that this is gay, but Van Sant’s use of this, at the very start of the film gives it added significance.

According to Milk, Harvey has only two lovers. He finds them instantly and never strays. He and his lover are portrayed as any heterosexual couple, caring for each other, loving fighting, etc. Most of all monogamous.

But, what is to be made to those references of more open homosexual lifestyle? When Harvey says he has to clean up, stop smoking pot and going to bathhouses, you suddenly realize Van Sant’s depiction of life in the Castro is very guarded. Maybe even closeted.

3) Is Hollywood still closeted?
My biggest point of contention with Milk is that once again a straight actor is asked to portray a homosexual. We’ve seen it before with Heath and we saw it in Philadelphia. I understand the need for a big name to draw in an audience and you could argue that an actor should be able to play any role they can embody. This past year we saw a white actor play the part of a white actor playing a black man. Still, you’d be hard pressed to find a big name, out of the closet homosexual, to play the part of either a straight or gay man. This has been going on since Rock Hudson, even before, and it’s really no surprise today.I believe America is still more comfortable with it’s men being men – the kind that sleep with women, even if they occasionally play the part of a homosexual, because that’s just acting. That’s not real*

Still for all of Harvey Milk’s rousing speeches about Californian queers to come out of the closet in the hopes of gaining support for defeating proposition 6, few in Hollywood appear to be listening. Milk’s words seem to fall flat, especially within this film and its choice of casting. Could we not find one celebrity in Hollywood who is closeted to come out and play one of the lead roles in this film?

Given the recent political events surrounding last year’s Proposition 8 and the banning of gay marriage in California, the odd selection of a heavily heterosexual cast to play the parts of gay-activist in a bio-pic about a man who worked tirelessly to defeat similar bigoted propositions plays like a spit in the face of his legacy.

4) Van Sant needs to go back to mimicing Alan Clarke and Bela Tarr

I haven’t seen Paranoid Park, but Gerry, Last Days, and Elephant, while not perfect, felt more sure-footed (and subtle) than Milk. Strung together by a rather lazy narrative device, that oddly disappears for extended periods of time, Milk feels scatter-shot, and messy. The assemblage of various looks and modes of story-telling never gels. Van Sant’s film takes on the look and feel of The Times of Harvey Milk and that film’s mixture of source material, but Van Sant is constructing, not collecting information.

Being a film of constructed moments, the potential for dramatic embellishment is high and Van Sant rarely holds back. Worst case being when Milk receives a phone call from a distraught Midwestern teen who fears his his parents are going to send him away to get ‘cured’. First we see a medium shot of the boy on the phone. Then we see Harvey. Harvey tells the boy to get on a bus to a big city. The camera cuts back to the boy on this phone, this time in a wider shot where we can see he’s in a wheel chair. Certainly the most egregious moment, but not the only one. Where gentle handles are needed Van Sant is using fists.

5) Has Gerry become a new in-joke for Van Sant?
The name Gerry is not only the title of a film, but a re-0ccuring name in his later films. I caught reference to it here in a telephone call that Emile Hirsch places. He randomly asks if Gerry is there. It’s a throw away line other than the fact that I recall similar uses of the name Gerry in Elephant and Last Days

*Penn once played a cross-dressing small town outcast in The Beaver Trilogy. That’s another film based on a real person and one where Penn (or at least his character) directly says that it’s okay to act like a woman or ‘the other’ as a joke or a larf. As long as at the end of the day you are all man.

No one questions Penn’s manhood. We just commend him for his ability to transform himself. It’s always the good mark of an actor to be able to play ‘the other’. Penn has now played both a homosexual and a mentally handicapped person.

Bloody Mama (1970)

The real life story of Ma Baker and her Boys serves as the film’s source material. Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde is the stylistic inspiration. But, it’s Robert Thom’s (Angel, Angel Down We Go, Deathrace 2000) script that turns Bloody Mama into a twisted Oedpial nightmare. Only from his warped mind could come the prison scene where Robert Walden sings bible hymns as he nervously waits to be raped by the sadistic Robert Dern. For all its madness, Bloody Mama finds safety in song. See it just for this one scene or for the family’s singing of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

O’er the Land (2009)

During the post screening Q & A Stratman said O’er the Land is a rumination of freedom. Perhaps from her perspective it is, but what I saw was completely different.

O’er the Land is too narrow in scope. If Startman is really curious about what symbolizes or exemplifies freedom within these borders she does not  look far enough, deep enough, or with much curiosity. Her camera is transfixed, rather adversely on masculine, militaristic and materialistic embodiments of freedom. Revolutionary war re-enactments, machine gun shows, football games, border patrol agents, firemen, and a fighter pilot who parachuted into a maelstrom become dead ends, not entry points into the American psyche. All that’s missing are cowboys, wrestling, and NASCAR.

Stratman focuses her lens on typical, conservative, mostly Southern, nearly all white points of interest. From the excesses of the RV lifestyle to the machine gun toting weekend warriors Stratman does not truly open her film to its subjects in the hopes of determining how they perceive freedom. Instead, she takes a distanced response, shooting from afar, her camera is quick to catch the absurdity of situation. Her film comments, but never questions. It visits, but does not engage.

For all the talk of freedom that Stratman interjected into the post film conversation there was no mention of the freedom of speech. Perhaps what I found so striking about O’er the Land is how it limited the voices of its participants. Colonel William Rankin, the pilot ejected into a thunderstorm, refused to be in the film. Instead, Startman has his story read by an actor and it is such a terrible reading, lacking in any emotion, that one can almost envision the words on the page, not Rankin being tossed about in the clouds. Furthermore, as the story is being read a growing dissonant tone, nearly painful to the ears, consumes the story making it impossible to hear the outcome of the story. This might be the grossest and most blatant case of silencing the players. In other instances Stratman simply does not give them a voice. We know them only by their actions, as violent and foreign as they may seem.

So what I really wonder is where are all the other examples of freedom? Where are the females, the ethnicity, the city dwellers, the rich, the impoverished, the protesters, and the liberals? Were they in the audience? It certainly felt like that tonight. It felt as if we were the choir being treated to a sermon or a tale of an adventurer who had come back from other lands to re-enforce what we already suspected.

And, having said all this, I do not mean to make it sound as if I did not enjoy the film. I enjoyed it greatly. I thought it looked marvelous and flowed wonderfully. As Stratman said, it has moments of great build-up and lovely pauses that allow you to consider what you’ve just witnessed. However, O’er the Land is like a song who’s notes and rhytm are pitch perfect, but its lyrics are just too callow.

Coeur fidèle (1932)

Jean Epstein’s Coeur fidèle is  simple love story that lead to complex questions. I do not want to make this a 5 Random Questions post. So rather than asking random questions about a common film I’ll ask specific questions about a rare film.  Still, I shall limit myself to seven questions, random and scattered otherwise I might never end.

The story: Marie is an orphan. She works as a barmaid for her brutish step-parents. Her heart belongs to Jean, an unemployed dock worker. Marie’s step-parents want her to wed an abusive alcoholic nicknamed Petit Paul. Of course, she ends up with Jean, but only after a series of melodramatic events.

The questions:

1) Does reality begin where poetry ends? Epstein is known for striving to create an impressionistic voice for cinema, one that would free it from literature and the theatre. During moments of dizzying montage or through optical devices moments of wondrous poetic beauty are reached, but they are few and far between. The film relies heavily on its facile narrative construct, a trapping of literature if ever I saw one. In an attempt to free itself from the sets of theatre film was shot on location. The Marseille waterfront gives an impression of realism that blends well with the moments of cinematic impressionism. Trouble arises when the greatly the overwrought acting collides with the downtrodden locale. Histronics and history compete with one another and for all the reality that the damp, dirty location brings to the film the larger than life acting feels wholly out of place and better suited for the stage.

Wait until you see the whites of their eyes.

2) Is it a stylistic choice or a technical insufficiency? In Coeur fidèle character’s eyes glow with the reflection of light. The effect is unearthly. It’s horror or science fiction. People look possessed. If eyes are meant to be the windows to the soul it is not the case here. Instead the eyes have become mirrors that reflect the artifice of shooting with lights. It’s another reminder of the film’s construction and in the case of Gina Manès who plays Marie, the effect only compounds the vapid, miserable expression her faces wears throughout the film.

3) When is a happy ending not so happy? At the very end of the film there is the one moment where Gina Manès relaxes her facial expression to give the impression of not happiness but calmness. At the same time, Léon Mathot, who plays Jean, displays a look of disillusionment. It is as if having fought so hard to win Marie he now questions his efforts. A similar expression adorns the face of Marie Epstein who played the role of a crippled woman laboring to bring these star-crossed lovers together. She is left to hold Marie’s child while Maire and Jean embrace on a fairground ride. It is quite a peculiar ending that ties itself up so neatly, with the lovers in each others company, and yet no one seems happy.

4) Of all the unfortunate things that keep Marie and Jean apart perhaps none is  more unfortunate than when Jean accidentally stabs a police officer. He is sentenced to jail, but we are informed through an intertitle that he is released one year later. One year? That’s it? That’s all you get for stabbing a police officer in France?

5) Do we need music to fill the void and how does our choice in music change the film? The film I watched was not a film, but a video projection. I should have read the description better. I was expecting a film. Even so, I was going more because the film was being projected with musical accompaniment by someone I work with. Someone I rather like. While he did a great job providing music for the film, though a title at the end of the film made mention of music credits, leaving me to wonder if the video had music that was just shut off for the night’s performance, I spent more time wondering how musical accompaniment informs and influences the audience in ways the filmmaker may never have intended. I’ve been to many such performances, but only now did I real find the matter so unsettling. Unless the filmmaker had particular sheet music drafted for his/her film or a known preference in style is communicated directly from the artist I have to think that musical accompaniment is only being done for the sake of the audience who shudder at the thought of silence. On another level, the overacting, the heavy use of symbolism, the trappings of silent cinema that make it feel less subtle to modern tastes,  appear as compensations for a lack of ability to communicate through sound. It was only on rare occasion that the piano accompaniment added anything more than mood, but the mood is already there in the actors’ expressions, in their postures and gestures, and in the image itself. In time the music moved to the background. It became Muzak. I barely paid attention. It barely, if ever, stopped.

Who put the writing on the walls?

6) How can you tell the difference between set design and that which already existed?  I found my attention most drawn to random markings, scrawling, and graffiti etched on walls. On occasion the camera would focus on these codes, using them in close-ups to help inform what was already obvious.  In one instance, a flophouse stairwell with the most marvelous stick figures etched in the walls was demystified with one camera movement up many flights of stairs. An instance of disappointment that would never have come to light without this one unnecessary and rather extravagant camera movement.

7) Do all drunks act  Tom Waits or does Tom Wait act like all drunks? When Petit Paul goes out to get hammered his gestures and mannerism were so reminiscent of Tom Waits that I swore I was watching the inspiration for Down By Law. Perhaps, I was.