Little Murders (1971)

New York's Alright If You Like Being Jaded

“Are you really so down on people, or are you just being fashionable?” asks Patsy, an eternal optimist. She refuses to let life in New York City beat the smile from her face. Alfred, on the other hand, has turned off his feelings. As a devout apathetist Alfred no longer feels pleasure or pain. Opposites attract, so of course, they fall in love…sort of.

Little Murders explores the ways we defend ourselves from madness, either through well recognized institutions and traditions or by developing our own system of procedures designed to protect us.  Before his world collapses into madness Alfred states, “It’s dangerous to challenge a system unless you’re completely at peace with the thought that you’re not going to miss it when it collapses.”

Prior to meeting Patsy, Alfred exists as an emotionally zombie, uncaring, unfeeling. She tries to change him and nearly succeeds, but when he opens up, he falls apart. I hate to think that either director Alan Arkin or writer Jules Feiffer truly believe the only way to survive in this world is to become jaded. Funny as he maybe, Albert’s character holds a deep sorrow. Whereas, Patsy and even her rather particular family, overflow with emotion. Her mother and father often start their statements with a hand clap or a knee-slap.  The percussive sound of hands slapping quickly call to attention the excitement of the speaker. It as if their joy can no longer be contained.

That hand-clap along with the exclamation “Terrific”, a phrase Patsy’s mom and dad both use, is a lively, animated gesture akin to what the characters in a Cassavetes film do. I find this just terrific. Yes, “Terrific!” It is not only a phrase you don’t seem to hear that often, but it is done with such a leave of energy that its strikes my ears in a strange yet comforting fashion. Today, most people live more reserved, like Alfred, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting to get socked with the next big disappointment.

I certainly don’t think this is anyway to live life, whether in New York or otherwise, but as a survival tactic it might do just fine. So the question is, do you risk it all for the heights of joy knowing that there might also be great pain or do you block it all out and save yourself from both joy and pain? Little Murders takes a satirical look at this troublesome paradox.

Bug (2007)

Conspiracy theories: I've got you underneath my skin.

Two confessions. I’m a sucker for a good government conspiracy. I’m paranoid about bugs that burrow under your skin. So admittedly Bug needed to do little to catch my attention.

Holding my attention, that is another matter. Any fool can spin a conspiracy yarn. Any fool can make a horror story about bugs. Many have tried. However, to make one in the same and to make them believable that takes some talent.

Scaled down to nearly one location, a seedy motel room, and with a limited cast of about 5 characters the film does exhibit some of its stage roots. Ashely Judd, who with the exception of Ruby in Paradise, I have previously found to be barely interesting, wonderfully plays the victim to Michael Shannon’s madness. Deceptively innocent, but utterly paranoid, Shannon is a Gulf War veteran on the lam. He comes across as an awkward man occassionally unloading tiny bits of conspiracy laden information only to pull back at the instance he feels he’s alarming or losing his victim. What follows is both terrifying and masterful and Shannon slyly carries the whole movie.

Playwrite Tracy Letts does a wonderful job of tossing out the right bait to weave together a grand conspiracy theory. UFO’s, the, Oklahoma City Bombings, the Gulf War, Bio-Terrorism, Letts does not create these things so much a collect redistribute them. Once the pieces have been laid out, the pace and tension of Bug accelerates to a destructive climax with the audience filling in the gaps as quickly as Ashely Judd’s character.

Director William Friedkin hasn’t been this masterful since The Exorcist and were you to stand these two films side by side, the similarities in pace and structure would be stricking. Yet, the films almost working as positive and negative of one another. The Exorcist creates a spiritual terror. Bug deals with science. The Catholic church is the institutional power represented in The Exorcist. In Bug it is the US government. The Exorcist rebuilds faith in the power of the divine. Bug attempts to destroy trust in the government.

Friedkin argues that Bug is not a horror film. He claims it could just as well be a romantic black comedy. I guess it depends on your sense of humor and just how paranoid of a person you are. In an age of speculation where all information can be perceived as misinformation, random bits of history and unsubstantiated facts can act as unnumbered dots to be connected in any order and form. The results become whatever you want to see.

The Big Mouth (1967)

Learning how to laugh

Not too long ago Cadillac ran an advertising campaign designed to reach out to more youthful car buyers. “This is not your father’s Cadillac” proclaimed the commercials. The hope was that younger buyers would stop seeing the Cadillac as a stuffy boat of car, the kind you transition into during your autumn years. For me, the ads just solidified my feelings of the Cadillac being a car for older people. Jerry Lewis comedies pose a similar problem. They feel both modern and dated; like a new Cadillac.

While I have giggled at many Lewis comedies I feel like I have to meet the films on their terms. They never rise to my hopes or expectations.

The Big Mouth looks and feels like an artifact from a bygone era. The humor is innocent, cartoonish, a tad racially insensative, but not vulgar. Jerry Lewis’ bumbling, good-hearted, love struck hero is not that far removed from Jim Carey in Dumb and Dumer or Adam Sandler in just about any of the roles that launched his career. Still, Lewis drops this man-child persona from time to time and there are glimpses of a suave straightman that show through. I cannot think of a time when I have felt like Sandler or Carey are mature grown men playing fools and not just grown boys foolishly trying to avoid adulthood. It is no wonder they have such trouble with serious roles.

Lewis’ character is an innocent, childlike creature in a sea of adults. The Big Mouth features an entire cast is of adults, not thirty-years olds, twenty-somethings, teens, or kids. Yet, the film carries none of the so-called ‘mature’ humor that makes up a genre known today as adult humor. I find it hard to imagine adults in 1967 enjoying this film or finding that it entertained their adult senses of humor. This is, after all, the work of a man who surely told filfthy jokes at Friar’s Club roasts.

For me the film, is a challenge. I feel as if I am watching an  film that has been neutred of all that makes things ‘adult’. I am not speaking of vulgarity or sex, but rather politics, personal and worldly. I cannot come to terms with its humor.

Then, I read an essay like the one linked to below and I realize how I’m not coming at th film from the right perspective and that maybe I’m asking a fish to be horse.

http://templeofschlock.blogspot.com/2009/03/big-mouth-1967.html

Right or wrong, this essay makes me re-think and value The Big Mouth slightly more. It also helps me feel less guilty about finding Twin Peaks laughable.

Antichrist (2009)

Seriously von Trier, what is your problem with women? Better yet, what is your fascination with reverb?

Antichrist is one part Persona, , one part In the Realm of the Senses, one part Misery, one part Don’t Look Now, and one part Calvin Klein commercial. Simply put, it is a mess and it doesn’t help that the entire film’s dialog is drenched in reverb. At first, I thought von Trier might be trying to do something interesting with the audio. The cavernous dialog is displacing. It has a similar effect to the ears that Dogville‘s set had on the eyes. However, it doesn’t work.  It grows distracting, especially when the characters retreat to the forest.

I assume this choice in audio filtering is part of the whole dream like atmosphere that von Trier is striving for throughout the picture. The problem with films that strive to recreate dreams  is that this pursuit gives them carte blanc to do what every they please and dismiss all failed ideas with that catch-all excuse of “Well, it’s a dream”. Sadly all dreams are not good ones and Antichrist is a nightmare of epic proportions.

I am all for adventurous filmmaking and have been a fan of some of von Triers most outrageous ideas, but when he says that Antichrist is a the workings of a sick man he’s right. It also feels like the work of a lazy man, with its symbolism being rather uninspired and its need for attention coming mostly through shock tactics.  Should I even bother to mention the talking fox or the genital mutilation? I, for one, do not see how the sex and violence and suffering he exhibits in this film could be the least big cathartic.

That von Trier dedicates the entire piece to Tarkovsky is confusing if not off-putting . It is hard to see the Russian’s inspiration on this mad Dane. By attempting to align himself with Tarkovsky, von Trier’s work seems even more desperate and misguided.

I can only hope von Trier’s next film finds him less sick, but who am I to judge the self-proclaimed greatest filmmaker ever?

Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971)

Narratives are not a construct of reality, are they?

Dusty and Sweets McGee is interesting as an example of a film that devises its own grammar. Critics of the film might simply say that the picture is scattered, disjointed, incoherent, even pointless. I’d argue that a film about heroin addiction should be just that. Especially, when the film adapts a pseudo-documentary style with the intent of giving a more accurate depiction of life under the influence.

The film mixes documentary interviews and dramatic scenes with real people playing under pseudonyms. Music and audio carry the majority of the film.  To some extent this is a soundtrack film, akin to Easy Rider or American Graffiti, but here the soundtrack serves less as an emotion lynchpin, but as a haunting audible patchwork of sounds that drift in and out of the film, like foggy recollections from a substance soaked evening. Actions do not move along a plot. There is no plot. Just the next high. Scenes as often stopping abruptly or running out of steam and ending in a freeze frame. In a way, scenes just nod off or pass out.

Never having done heroin, I cannot speak to the accuracy of this films depiction of the drug’s effects. I am inclined to believe that the ‘nodding off’ that occurs in these scenes is far more truthful than the more dazzling depictions of drugs we are accustomed to from Hollywood. Like Alan Clarke’s Christine, that reduces addiction to a grinding, dull routine, Dusty and Sweets McGee leaves most of the highs aside and focuses more on patterns of dependency and repetition.

One scene in particular captivated me mostly because it felt so foreign from anything you’ll find in a narrative where each scene must propel the narrative. An aging greaser with a rolled up sleeve exposing a swastika tattoo waxes his yellow muscle car while a young girl sits in a patio lounge chair listening to him talk about his car and a regretful tale about a gangbang he was involved in. It is as if he seeks sympathy as he tells this story, but the girl is too far gone to respond. The scene just peters out. A confession goes unheard, a connection doesn’t get made. As simple as it sounds, the effect is stattering.

Director Floyd Muturx has at least three amazing credits to his name. He wrote Freebie and the Bean. He directed Aloha Bobby and Rose and American Hot Wax. Now, I’d add Dusty and Sweets McGee to that list. Sadly, his work seems cursed. Freebie and the Bean and Dusty and Sweets McGee finally came out on DVD, but only as no frills DVD-Rs from the Warner Brothers archive. Aloha Bobby and Rose received a small release on Anchor Bay and American Hot Wax is still waiting for a DVD release. Hollywood Knights is his only film to get any real release and while entertaining, it is not close in humor or psychology to these others.