Our far-flung correspondents

A howl of desperation for those who cannot howl

2012-02-10T21:38:59Z

• Scott Jordan Harris in the UK

Streaming for $2.99 via MUBI.com

There is a shot in "Voices from the Shadows" that shows a man in his twenties lying forlornly in bed.

Like the rest of the documentary, it exists to illustrate the miserable effects of the illness Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or ME, which is often unhelpfully called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

There is a detail in the shot that haunts me. The man has a beard, of a length and thickness unusual, and unsuitable, for someone his age. He has the beard because he is unable to stand up long enough to shave and because having his parents, or a nurse, sit and shave him as he lays in bed is messy, uncomfortable and undignified. Every morning he thinks about shaving but his reserves of energy are so limited that he has to choose between being able to go to the bathroom because he wants to shave or, later in the day, being able to go to the bathroom because he needs to go to the bathroom.
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He could shave instead of telling his carers what he feels able to eat that day, or instead of eating it, but that's not a sensible idea. He could shave instead of speaking to the friend who will visit him for ten minutes in the afternoon, but he hasn't spoken to anybody besides his parents and his doctors in two months, and he really wants to talk to that friend. He could shave instead of counting out and swallowing the painkillers he needs to roll over in bed without wincing but ... well, that's just crazy talk. Besides, you need light to shave, and electric light gives him migraines and blurs his vision. Every day, this pattern recurs. Although shaving is always on the list of things he wants to do, it never makes it to the top. And so the beard grows.

None of this is discussed in "Voices from the Shadows" - the man is unnamed and his beard is unmentioned - but I know about it because I have the same beard. I have the same beard because I have the same illness and, apart from three years of remission in my teens, I have had it since I was 11. I'll be 30 this year. I always hope to get better. I never expect to.

As a child, I was an inexhaustible over-achiever and what, in America, is called a straight A student. At 10, I was an assistant karate instructor and on course to be one of the youngest black belts in Britain. At 11, I had a routine inoculation - a common catalyst for ME - alongside the rest of my school classmates. I was never inexhaustible again. Eighteen hours later, I couldn't lift my arms. My skin erupted in a rash. Daylight burned my eyes. My migraine made me cry. My dad thought I had measles. I wish he had been right.

I couldn't go back to school for a year. My childhood stopped, and I measured time by counting down the intervals between doses of painkillers. A couple of doctors, and several teachers, didn't believe I was ill. I learned a new term, one whispered to my mother and father when doctors thought I couldn't hear, or couldn't understand: 'school-phobic'. If it hadn't been for my combative parents, my saintly GP and my fast mouth, I would have been referred to a psychiatrist, or reported to a truant officer.

Eventually, I recovered. I went to high school, and tried to reclaim the time I'd lost. I was captain of the debating team, the rugby team and the athletics team. I was on the basketball team and the swimming team and the cricket team. I wrote the school play. I was champion athlete on sports day two years running. I played rugby for the town and the county and the local club, sometimes four times a week and twice a day.

And then I started to feel ill again. A few months later I was back in bed, trying not to throw up the little food I could keep down, exhausted by the effort of cleaning my teeth, and as completely reliant upon my parents as I would have been if I'd become quadriplegic. I stayed that way for years. Once, when I was sick of being 16 years old and unable to take a damn shower by myself, I tried to take one while my parents were out. My legs buckled and I had to lie on the bathroom floor. I was there for two hours. I was never well enough to finish high school. Again, there were doctors who thought I wasn't really ill. There still are.

I'm in a better situation than most of the ME-sufferers in "Voices from the Shadows." For one thing, my symptoms are not as severe as they used to be and I am able to work a little from my bed. (I'm a film critic. Or at least as much of a film critic as one can be without ever really getting to the cinema.) For another thing, I'm still alive.

"Voices from the Shadows" does not just document the effects of ME: it documents the abuse of those who have it by doctors who fail to recognize it is a physical condition and treat it instead as a mental illness. The World Health Organization has defined ME as what it is - a neurological disorder - since 1969. Especially in Britain, but elsewhere too, sufferers born more than twenty years later are still being treated as malingerers.

Of the patients profiled in "Voices from the Shadows," two stand out. One is Sophia Mirza and the other is Lynn Gilderdale, whose face - pretty and pale, and somehow serene despite struggling not to grimace with pain - is one of the film's unshakable images. I knew Lynn Gilderdale. I didn't know her well, but then it wasn't easy to know her well. She could barely move, and the idea of her leaving the house was laughable. She had 48 Facebook friends and I was one of them. We exchanged occasional emails. I took longer to reply to hers than I should have. I didn't realize the opportunity to know her would be so brief.

Lynn's agony was incessant: her ME tortured her with an intensity that shocked me. Before I knew her, Lynn's body had been damaged by doctors who thought she was at worst lazy and at best mentally ill. She never recovered, and her life worsened day on day. In early December 2008, a friend told me that Lynn was dead, and that her mother had been arrested for murder. Lynn's illness had become insurmountable and, one night, she attempted to overdose on morphine but didn't have the strength or co-ordination to do it. Walking in on her, Lynn's mother - in a supreme act of maternal love - assisted with the overdose. An autopsy revealed that Lynn's spine was severely diseased. Her illness had been purely physical.

The film doesn't describe the circumstances of Lynn's death, and offers no opinion on assisted suicide. (The endorsement of the actions of Lynn's mother implicit here is mine and not its.) This is neither bravery nor cowardice on the part of the film-makers: it is an astute decision made to ensure the debate about this film does not became a debate about assisted suicide. "Voices from the Shadows" is not about the tragic circumstances of Lynn Gilerdale's death: it is about the tragic circumstances of her life.

Sophia Mirza's ME was similar to Lynn's, and far worse than mine. As a girl, Sophia was bright and beautiful and lively - and then she developed ME, and suddenly she was none of these. But her doctors didn't believe that such a change could be due to physical causes and so they insisted she simply didn't want to be well. In the most excruciating sequence in Voices from the Shadows, we hear the recording Sophia secretly made when those doctors, accompanied by police officers, forced their way into her home and took her to a secure mental institution. There, like other patients profiled in the film, she would no doubt have been forced to exercise - to prove to her that there was no physical reason why she could not. (Exercise only worsens the symptoms of ME; nevertheless, it is still prescribed as a treatment.)

But she was too ill even for that. The stress of being committed to a mental hospital when she had no mental illness, of being fed food she couldn't eat, of not being allowed to sleep when she needed to, and of being treated at all times as if she was physically healthy, made her symptoms deteriorate to such an extent that a judge eventually ruled she should be allowed home. She never recovered and, two years later, she died. Sophia Mirza was bullied to death by medical professionals who ought to have helped her; no criminal charges have been brought against them. An autopsy revealed that Sophia's spine was severely diseased. Her illness had been purely physical.

"Visions from the Shadows" isn't technically or artistically impressive. It isn't the bold new work of a brave new film-maker. It is a howl of desperation from co-directors Natalie Boulton and Josh Biggs - the mother and brother of a young woman with ME - on behalf of those who cannot howl themselves. Much of it consists simply of people sitting and talking about ME. What makes this invaluable is that the things they say are seldom said. Or rather, they are seldom listened to.

No documentary has ever devastated me like "Voices from the Shadows." Unless you are an ME-sufferer, it's unlikely to have quite such a powerful effect on you - and I am glad of that. I couldn't in good conscience urge people to see a film that would do to them what "Voices from the Shadows" did to me.

Although "Voices" joined "The Artist" and "Albert Nobbs" in winning a prize at 2011's Mill Valley Film Festival, it has no theatrical distribution deal. Boulton and Biggs sell European DVDs of the film through their website; outside Europe, it is streaming for $2.99 from MUBI.com.

I can't be impartial about this film, and I can't conclude my review of it - if this is a review of it - with the customary, balanced summation of why you should, or should not, try to see it. But I can, with total sincerity, say this: if I could make everyone in the world see just one film, this would be the film I'd choose. It's my film of the year. It'll be my film of the decade.

As a critic, I spend my life hoping to find films that will be speak to me. "Voices in the Shadows" goes beyond that. It is a film that speaks for me. And I want you to hear it.

Voices from the Shadows website

Wikipedia page on Lynn Gilderdale

Website about Sophia Mirza

Scott Jordan Harris is editor of The Spectator's arts blog, The Big Picture magazine and the books World Film Locations: New York and World Film Locations: New Orleans. He is often bedridden because of ME.

All images copyright Josh Biggs and Natalie Boulton 2011. Used by permission.

The great movies of my childhood

2012-02-09T23:00:48Z

• Krishna Bala Shenoi in India

Of late, I've been thinking about how I got here. Here, in love with movie watching and movie making. Here, in a design school in India, and not an engineering college or a medical school like predetermined for most Indian students. Here, in correspondence with a huge role model of mine. Here, doing what I love.
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I guess it's all thanks to a beautiful series of events and coincidences. Even today, as I think back, I'm discovering little things that made big changes. How the purchase of a random toy led to something big. Or how the viewing of some documentary on TV led to a page on the internet that led to something else entirely. If any one of those little things didn't happen, I wouldn't be here. If there are indeed parallel worlds with other versions of me leading different lives, I'm almost certain I've got the best deal.

Who I am now and where I am now also has a lot of it has to do with what I was exposed to as a child. My father spared no expense in surrounding me with whatever I wanted, whether I needed it or not. Toy cars, Ladybird Children's Books, action figures, et al. It's a wonder I wasn't a spoiled child. When I grew up a little more, it was VHSs (DVDs weren't around yet). My mother and father bought me numerous Disney classics.

And soon, my mother introduced me to the greatest movies I have ever seen.

She brought to me "Superman: The Movie", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial", "Back to the Future", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", and several others. As I grow older (I am now eighteen), I chance upon more serious films, films that are deemed "classics", films that end up on those lists of the greatest films of all time et al. While I find some of those films remarkable, and some curiously engaging, I still prefer my "Back to the Future".

It is my good fortune that my mother showed me just the right films at just the right age. I'm not sure if she knew she was doing it, but she was feeding my growing imagination and love for film to such an extent that I began looking at the world through the lens of a camera, in my mind's eye. As I perceived objects around me, I quietly looked at them from mental camera angles. (I was just eight or nine when I got into this habit; I didn't know they were called camera angles.) Now that I think of it, my childhood was sort of the opposite of The Truman Show. In the show, everyone knew Truman's life was on TV while he did not. In The Krishna Show, I was the only one in on the little secret. The rest of the world was unaware. Yes, I was a silly child.

But even though I was, and maybe still am, a silly child, I'm grateful that I grew up surrounded by Spielberg's magic, Christopher Reeve's Superman, Disney's early live action comedies, their animated classics, and Ray Harryhausen's visual wonders, while most kids my age grew up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Power Rangers, and whatever was playing on cable TV. I'm thankful I went through junior school with my imagination ignited by what I believed to be magic, and not blown to bits by explosion-happy TV shows and kiddy kitsch. I'm sorry if I've watered down your childhood memories by my analogies and what may be mistaken to be condescension. I might be wrong. I beg your pardon.

Anyway, my mother saw all those wonderful films with her eldest brother, who would read print film reviews to decide whether buying two tickets for that particular film was a worthy investment. If it was well reviewed, to my mother's delight, they would go to the movies. You can see her smile with her eyes when she talks about all this, and most times that smile's contagious to me.

She still fondly remembers how she fell head over heels for Christopher Reeve's Superman. And later, Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones. And then, Michael J. Fox's Marty McFly! Her love for these films was hardly fueled by her crushes on these movie icons, though. It was the magic that got to her, and many years later, me. These films had extraordinarily memorable imagery, and more importantly, great stories and characters that you loved and cared for. Some created new worlds, other filled our own world with the fantastic. These movies felt inviting and friendly, and though they sometimes had the most absurd and out-of-this-world ideas, you felt like you were watching... I dunno, close friends? It feels like that to me, at least.

Once we bought ourselves a DVD player, my mother began a habit of taking me shopping with her and buying me the DVD titles that were on discount. I thank my stars that many of Spielberg's great movies and most of the Ray Harryhausen Signature Collection were among those titles.

So, like I said, whatever I saw as a child deeply influenced me and sent my mind reeling with ideas. And the effect these movies had on me grew deeper and more profound--it brought me to think about the most crazy things, and later to the realization of these ideas. Experiencing those wonderful stories, I felt a great urge to tell my own. I started with comics. Now that I think back, I remember several of the images from my Superman comics, of which I made oh-so-many! I also remember I was so young when I came up with them that I couldn't even draw a proper Superman logo. Back then, a triangle with an 'S' scribbled in it seemed adequate.

My Superman dealt with his issues in interestingly odd ways. Consider this classic Superman obstacle; a giant asteroid is heading straight for Earth. The original Superman would fly straight for it and the collision would destroy the asteroid. My Superman had the mind of a seven-year-old. What does he do? He 'laser-beam's the Earth in half, letting the asteroid pass right through the center. And then he fixes the Earth back together again. Obviously.

After comic book creation, film making came next. I unearthed a rarely used Sony Handycam. (This was back in the days of cassette tape recording, so the editing and special effects were all done in camera, while shooting.)

Enter Ray Harryhausen, who I discovered myself by accident. In many ways, he changed my life. Harryhausen has told us, time and again, the story of how he saw the original "King Kong" on the big screen when he was just a kid, of how he was inspired by Willis O' Brien's pioneering special effects and of how that lead him to where he is today. In case I end up in the movies, I foresee myself telling people the story of how I was inspired by Harryhausen's work. Hopefully, the chain will go on. I am kidding, of course, but it's a nice thought anyway.

While most kids in the 90's would be oblivious of stop-motion (with CGI growing popular), I was in awe of it. There is a sense of life in stop-motion animated creatures. It's the kind of life that much of CGI lacks. No matter how smoothly or realistically your computerized monster moves, there is something more subtle that stop-motion captures better. Harryhausen's creations seem to be thinking, or feeling, not just moving. They have personality, an attribute that so many of today's CG monsters lack.

Also, no matter how crude a stop motion model might be, it still exists. It occupies space and has weight. The Transformers, no matter how many cars they bump into and send flying, aren't really there, and many times, they seem to be walking 'through' space, not occupying it.

One more thing that gives stop motion animation a distinction from other forms of animation is the dream like quality it has. While 2005's CGI "King Kong" was a wonderful work of modern CGI special effects, the 1933 film has a nightmare quality to it that CGI will never achieve. Look at the realistic Pegasus from the recent remake of "Clash of the Titans" and then look at Harryhausen's version? Tell me, which one left you smiling?

There is a spectacular sequence in Harryhausen's most popular picture "Jason and the Argonauts" in which Jason and his crew do battle with seven sword fighting skeletons. This is surely one of the greatest special effects sequences in motion picture history. There are shots in which the screen is filled with the men fighting all seven skeletons. This means that Harryhausen would have to move each of the seven skeletons such that they match the chaotic live action footage of the men mock-fighting, shoot a frame, move them again one by one, shoot a frame, and so on. 24 frames make one second of action. It is hard to imagine how Harryhausen did all the special effects on his films solo (save for his first and last films, on which he had help). And it is not surprising that the skeleton sequence from "Jason" took him four months to complete.

Other films of his have very challenging special effects too. If you have not watched any of his films, YouTube them and watch the brilliant sequences. That'll convince you. Try the sequence where the cowboys try to "rope" Gwangi, in which Harryhausen had to painstakingly match the ropes on the live action footage to the ropes on his stop-motion model. Or the tug of war in "Mighty Joe Young", using a similar technique. Or the sequence with the giant bird from "Mysterious Island", which works well with Bernard Herrmann's goofy score. Or the Washington destruction scenes in "Earth vs. Flying Saucers". Or It from "It Came From Beneath the Seas". Or Pegasus in "Clash of the Titans", or Medusa, from the same film. Or anything from "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad", my personal favorite film of his.

Ray Harryhausen's career is a long one, populated by dreams and nightmares, masterfully shot one frame at a time.

You can see Harryhausen's influence on so much of today's fantasy film world, from the work of Spielberg (there are references in "Jurassic Park") to the films of Tim Burton (he is one of the strongest supporters of stop-motion today. The piano in "Corpse Bride" has a name plate that reads "Harryhausen) to Peter Jackson (who remade Willis O'Brien's "King Kong" into one of the greatest fantasy adventures in recent years) to even Pixar (the restaurant in "Monster's Inc." is called "Harryhausen's").

In an attempt to recapture some of the magic that amazed me, I tried stop motion myself. I had a very basic idea of what stop motion was from a few documentaries I saw among the bonus features of the DVDs my mother bought me, but no one ever taught me anything or asked me to do it. I was my own student and teacher, and it was my own interest that fueled my persistence. All I had was a camera that recorded on tape. How did I shoot the video, frame by frame? I would quickly double-click the "record" button, hoping that the little shots I was getting were all around the same length, and short enough. They really weren't, but back then, it worked for me.

Harryhausen deserved better films and higher budgets (his films were so low budget that at several times, the full extent of his vision wasn't realized. It is now popular trivia that the octopus in "It Came From Beneath the Sea" actually had only six tentacles as they couldn't afford to build a model with eight). Though the films have inspired several of us, it was, in most cases, only the special effects that kept the films from being mediocre B-movie fare. It is sad that he didn't work with greater talents. Imagine what would have come out of such collaborations.

This master of animation was snubbed by the Academy year after year for each of his films, the films not even getting nominations for their special effects, until, years after his retirement; they gave him an honorary Oscar, which, I suspect, is more of an apology than a token recognition. I've read somewhere that Harryhausen reasons his films didn't get recognized by the Academy when they were released because they were shot in Spain, and not in Hollywood. It makes sense.

Once my fascination with special effects faded, I was interested in another aspect of fantasy films. Story. And this is where Steven Spielberg comes in. His films (at least the ones I watched then) all had to do with the fantastic, and all their stories were extremely well told. Most of the films of his I saw then dealt with this incredible synergy of amazing fantasy and honest humanness. Boy, is that a mouthful.

My mother tells me of how she, as a child, would lay down on the terrace under the night sky and search the heavens for shooting stars, all because of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". How many films produced today inspire that sense of wonder in children? Few film producers stop to think about these things while they're too busy calculating the box office numbers and sequel prospects.

I consider "Close Encounters" to be Spielberg's greatest achievement, and that's saying something, considering the number of revolutionary films he has given us. You can call him "syrupy" or "sentimental", but no one can deny the fact that he changed things and brought us some great stuff.

"Close Encounters" follows Richard Dreyfuss's character Roy Neary as he, after experiencing "close encounters" with UFOs, becomes increasingly obsessed with the mystery of the aliens. He wants to know what those lights in the night sky are and why there are seemingly meaningless images of mountains in his head. His obsession grows to a point where he is completely disconnected from his family.

There is a very well acted-out scene in the film, around halfway through it, at the dinner table. Roy is playing with his food, forming mountains out of the contents of his plate, lost again in thoughts about the images in his head. He notices his family staring at him and stops. His eyes move between his three confused children and his wife, who is suppressing tears. His son looks at him, tears falling from his eyes, as Roy covers his face, holding back tears too, and says, "Well I guessed you've noticed something's a little strange with dad. But it's okay." He looks up at them. "I'm still dad."

"I can't describe it. What I'm feeling. What I'm thinking. This means something. This is important."

His wife looks at him, convinced he is a lost cause. She has lost the man she fell in love with. But then again, judging by the scenes that take place before these "close encounters" begin, she, in some ways, lost him a long time ago. There is no more love in the family.

In the dinner table scene, we see that Roy's wife doesn't understand him, he doesn't understand his family, and the poor children don't understand what their father is turning into. Later in the movie, when Roy seems to go further round the bend, hysterically trying to make a larger model of the mountain using everything from dirt in the garden to the neighbor's fence, his wife takes the kids and leaves. He tries to stop them at the moment, but once they're gone, he continues making the model. At a point, he seems to forget about his family.

Consider the end of the film. As Roy walks into the mother ship, he looks back at Jillian (a woman who has had a similar close encounter to his) and smiles. Does he think about his wife then? And what of his children? He is leaving them for the unknown. He doesn't know if and when he will be back.

Spielberg has said that if he had had children back when he made "Close Encounters", he would never have let Roy leave his family. It's a good thing that things worked out the way they did. I believe "Close Encounters" would have been a lesser film if Spielberg did it today with his present sensibilities.

Of course, the emotional complexity of the film was lost on me then, but that didn't make the film any less amazing. The visuals were enough.

Designed by Douglas Trumbull, of "2001", they are breathtaking and so original, and to this day, I have not seen a more beautiful spaceship at the movies. Spielberg has always worked with glowing lights in very interesting ways, be it the sun, a gigantic moon or flashlights, but here, the lights drive the film, whether on or off the screen, and many a time they make us stare at the screen, gaping, much like the characters in the film.

Though most people, including Spielberg, would remember the image of the boy opening the door to the golden light outside, the first image that comes to mind when I think of the movie is the shot of the boy and his mother crouched on the road, when the first UFO of the film is seen, flying into the shot from around the corner. There is a low hum as it flies by, giving off a wonderful ochre glow. And then it is followed by a few more.

"Ice-cream!" the boy shouts after one of the UFOs that fly by. Indeed, there is one that looks oddly like an ice-cream. Later in the film, I noticed a UFO that looked conspicuously like an oxygen mask, but I did not expect anyone to shout that out.

The third act of the film, at Devil's Tower (the mountain images that Roy has in his head are actually pointers to the location of the place where first contact is to take place), is exceptionally memorable. It is an excellent sound and light show, with its strong memorable visuals aided by John Williams's excellent score. Spielberg supposedly edited that section of the film to match the music, instead of the usual method of composing music to fit the edited film footage. (Now that I think of it, it can be said that John Williams scored most of the music that I played in my head as a child. This man is responsible for most of the great movie themes. "Jaws", "Star Wars", "Indiana Jones", "E.T.", "Superman", "Close Encounters", "Jurassic Park", "Harry Potter". All one man. Wow.)

The third act reinforced my belief that instrumental music was a sort of universal language. "Lyrics are irrelevant; instrumental music can capture emotion perfectly well on its own," I used to say, defending my choice of music, which consisted of only movie scores. But think about it: what is the five-tone anyway? What could it mean? The aliens play it to us and we back to them, without knowing what it means. And yet we all have this strange conversation. And it goes well, which is vital. Remember first contact in "Mars Attacks!"?

Roy, who was an outsider in his own home, separated from his family, feels right with the aliens. "We Are Not Alone," reads the tag-line of the "Close Encounters". It makes sense on more than one level.

Few films have impressed me as much as "Close Encounters", and even fewer will stick around with me the way I know this one will. I often say I would like "Close Encounters" to be the last movie I watch before I die. Though I say it as a joke, I will not deny there is some truth to those words.

But I doubt "Close Encounters" was my introduction to Spielberg. I think I saw "Jaws" first. Yes, I definitely did. The film got me obsessed with sharks. I began to collect books about them, read about them, and draw them everywhere I could. Thinking about those drawings now, I realize that I drew most of my sharks posed in the manner of the Great White on that famous "Jaws" poster. The film had such an effect on me that, apart from studying sharks in startling detail, for a kid my age anyway, I stuck to the shallow side of the swimming pool in our building for a while. (Now that I think of it, it might be questionable behavior to let your kids watch "Jaws". Though I am thankful that she showed me all those movies when I was young, my mother also exposed me to stuff like "The Exorcist" when I wasn't ready for it yet. I was, what, nine? Eight?)

Watching "Jaws" recently, I was amazed by how effective it is. It absolutely terrifying because it doesn't show you what is killing these people for an unusually long time. There is something horrifically scary in not knowing, and Spielberg is daring in not how he shows us the shark, but how he does not. I now realize that it is a great compliment to Spielberg and his team that I recall there being more scenes with the shark than there actually were. It just goes to show that though the shark is hardly in the shot, its presence is felt so strongly in the scene. Spielberg masterfully builds up the tension for the first two acts of the film. The third act is when all hell breaks loose and the shark shows itself. Though those shark scenes may look a little tacky when seen in isolation, the obvious fakeness of the shark does not in any way reduce the strong impact of the film when seen in it is seen in its entirety. It's all in the buildup.

And it helps that the three protagonists all play their parts excellently. The scene at night, in the boat's cabin, is a perfect example of how Roy Schneider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw portray distinct characters that contrast well with each other: the straightforward police chief, who is afraid of water; the young, passionate marine scientist who comes from money and seems to want to prove himself; and the fisherman, who doesn't give a shit about you. He wants to get that shark. He has his reasons.

In that cabin scene, the three separate characters seem to compromise on their differences. They know they need to work together to get that beast. That beast, who has been terrorizing their little town and killing their people. And ruining their summer tourist season, the mayor might like to add.

There are daring shots in Jaws, some excellent underwater POV shots that help build up the tension, and some very interesting transitions (consider the scene in which Brody is on the beach with his wife, looking at people playing in the water, fearful of a shark attack. Each shot flows into another with a person on the beach walking past the camera), and John Williams's Oscar winning score adds to the film greatly. Though it is one of Spielberg's earliest films, it is also one of his greatest. Many say that no film of his since has reached its greatness. That film and the excellent "Duel", which I saw much later, are films with simple story lines that yet keep us on the edge of our seats, or tucked hard in them.

"Jaws" became the highest grossing picture made at the time (1975). In 1982, Spielberg gave us "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial", which, again, became the highest grossing film at that point. (Spielberg would break his own record again, with "Jurassic Park", a film I have somehow never admired as much as the rest of the world.)

"E.T." is surely his most popular effort. Spielberg himself has said that it epitomizes his work. It is one of those rare films that feel both powerful, uplifting and big, and sweet and gentle at the same time.

"E.T", as most of the world must know, tells the story of the friendship between a boy, Elliott, and an extra-terrestrial being lost on earth. The extra-terrestrial, called "E.T.", is a masterwork of movie creature design by Carlo Rambaldi, who also created the alien creatures of "Close Encounters". Spielberg employed animatronics, puppets, and dwarfs to realize this iconic character, and it is surprising how well he pulls it off. The little creature was voiced by Pat Welsh, a woman that legendary sound designer Ben Burtt ("Star Wars", "WALL-E") chanced upon in a camera store. Imagine, the source of that endearing voice saying "E.T. Phone Home," is actually a chain-smoker. Whatever works, right?

Apart from the great technical skill involved, "E.T." was so successful because of the great, natural performances by its child actors. In fact, the film is populated with them. For the first two acts of the film, all adults save for Eliot's mother Mary (played wonderfully by Dee Wallace) are shown from the waist down, much like in the "Tom & Jerry" cartoons we all grew up with. Somehow, us kids, we weren't bothered by that one bit, were we?

Henry Thomas is excellent as Elliott (notice how the first and last letters of Elliott are E and T?). There are several scenes that a lesser child actor could have messed up, but Thomas plays the character the way a real child would react. There are scenes that require him to cry, and laugh, and be amazed, and so much more, and he pulls it off beautifully. His performance is part of the reason the film touched so many of us in ways not other movie has. I wonder what he is doing today.

A young Drew Barrymore plays Elliott's sister Gertie. She is touchingly sweet, hilarious, curious, and so natural, but if I were to find my own E.T. and Gertie was my sister, I would not tell her. It's too dangerous; more than once in the film does she endeavor to tell her mother that her son is hiding an alien in his cupboard.

One more thing to appreciate about "E.T." is that, though it is clearly a children's film, it never talks down to kids. It does not assume that they will not understand some aspects of it.

Consider the theme about Elliott's father. Where is he, through all of this? There is a scene early on in the film, when Elliott tries to tell Mary, his elder brother Michael, and Gertie that he saw something strange in the shed. They dismiss it, saying it was his imagination. "Or a leprechaun. Or alligators in the sewers," Michael adds, helpfully. Elliott says that no one will believe him. His mother suggests he call his father and talk to him about it.

"I can't. He's in Mexico with Sally," says Elliott, at the table. There is a long silence. Mary is clearly hurt, trying to fake a smile, while Michael gives Elliott an accusing stare and looks like he knows he has to say something, being the elder.

And then a confused Gertie softly speaks. "Where's Mexico? Who is Sally?"

Scenes like this are honest. They are not cute. They are real. They do not water anything down for children.

When E.T. drops in, he is there for Elliott in a way no friend, brother or father has been. And in a strange new world, Elliott is the only person E.T. can trust. There is a beauty in their relationship, in how they both need it. It isn't about a boy helping an alien, like one would be quick to say- they are helping each other.

There are two scenes in "E.T." that I particularly admire. The first is an obvious choice and the second is less so. The first is the beautiful sequence when Elliott is riding his bicycle through the forest with E.T. up front. "It's too bumpy. We'll have to walk from here," Elliott says. E.T. telekinetically controls the bicycle and sends it forward as Elliott screams. They're heading toward a huge drop. And we all know what happens then. That sequence is among the most memorable in film history. The shot of the two of them flying on the bicycle silhouetted against the huge beautiful moon is iconic.

The second scene is the one in which Elliott first introduces E.T. to Michael. You know, the one in which when Gertie walks in. That sequence is well shot, well edited, and, primarily, well acted. She takes one look at E.T. and stops in her tracks. E.T., in shock, extends his neck. Gertie screams. E.T. screams. Michael backs up into a wall and knocks some shelves off the wall. Elliott screams. We laugh.

I saw the film for the first time when it was re-released in 2002, on the big screen. I was nine, and amazed. My sister's friend watched it with us. She must have been seven or eight. I remember how we had all cried at some point, and how we were all amazed at what we had seen. Later, I got to know that my sister's friend was under the impression that the alien was real. If you ask her about it now, she might deny it, but I remember.

Thinking more about "E.T.", I suddenly remember how wonderfully Spielberg incorporates popular fairy tales into his own tales. In "Close Encounters", there are references to "Pinocchio", in dialogue and in music (John Williams does a variation of "When You Wish Upon a Star" near the end of the film). Roy Neary wants people to believe him. He doesn't want to look like a liar. He wants to show everyone that he did indeed see flying lights in the sky. He wants the lights, the aliens, to make him a real boy, to show him what he doesn't know. Now, suddenly, I am reminded of Spielberg's "Artificial Intelligence", one of his best more recent films.

And what of the fairytale in "E.T."? There is a delicate scene in which Mary reads "Peter Pan" to Gertie as E.T. watches quietly from the cupboard. I suppose E.T.'s adventures on Earth are much like Wendy's on Neverland. She enjoys the adventures for the most part, and she loves Peter but she needs to go back home to her kind. But Peter wants her to stay. "You could be happy here, I could take care of you. I wouldn't let anybody hurt you. We could grow up together, E.T.," Elliott says. Of course, Peter Pan's idea wasn't to grow up.

But what if he did grow up? Spielberg attempted to answer that question with his "Hook" in 1991. Critics hated the film, and today it is remembered as one of Spielberg's worst offerings, but, having had recently seen it, I don't see what is so bad about it. It worked for me, and often made me smile. But "Hook" is a topic for another day.

More important is Indiana Jones.

I am in love with the original film trilogy, and yes, I quite like the new addition, though not as much as the classics.

There is so much to admire and enjoy about the Indy films. The films take you on incredible adventures in all kinds of exotic places, and they make you cover your eyes and smile and scream and just sit back and chuckle at (or with) the characters and all that is happening on the screen.

They have brilliant heroes that don't seem cardboard, despite there not being as much character development as you'd expect from Spielberg. Again, that's not a criticism, but an observation. It's not a shortcoming of the series, but Spielberg's attempt to capture the feeling of those old TV serials. And it's not like the film doesn't have enough in it for it to require character development. The film is above that sort of thing.

I enjoy Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones. I think he's the only one who can do it, and if you know your history, you'll know it's just one of those lucky happenings that he got the role in the first place. He plays the role with a sense of serious kidding, if you get my meaning. No matter how many times he's back-stabbed, beaten up, raced, cheated, whipped, chased, poisoned or shot at by Frenchmen, Nazis, Kali worshippers, or whoever else Spielberg's ready to make into a heinous villain we'd love to hate, Indy is ready with that droll smile, his sidekicks, and his whip. And his fedora. Never forget the fedora.

Speaking of sidekicks, the Indy girls add to the whole thing too, so much so that I think calling them 'Indy girls' belittles their forceful natures. Bond girls are, more often than not, just Bond girls. Spielberg never objectifies Indiana Jones's girls. Indy playfully objectifying them is another matter.

When I was younger, I always favored the gorgeous Willie, played by Kate Capshaw, because, well, she was gorgeous. Now, I think she screams too much and is more often a liability to Indy than an aid, but I enjoy her character nonetheless. I don't understand the hate from fans. Of course, age has brought with it the understanding of a simple truth: Capshaw's character has nothing on Karen Allen's Marion Ravenwood, who is so spunky she's never watching from the sidelines; she participates. Perhaps I like the fourth film more than I should because they brought her back. It felt like a wonderful reunion of old friends, if nothing else.

I smile when I think of Indy and his dad, played by Sean Connery, and all that they did together in "The Last Crusade", the funniest of the Indy films. The relationship between them is well developed (being, perhaps, the strongest relationship in the Indy films). They both need to prove themselves to each other on different levels. Dr Jones needs to prove to his son that he did and does indeed care for him, and Indy needs to prove to his father that he is worth something. "Don't call me Junior," he says, more than once. It seems to be a running joke in the film, but there is some deeper meaning to it that slowly reveals itself as the film proceeds.

The conclusion of "The Last Crusade" is quite beautiful, regarding the father-son story. It does not end in a massive spectacle of special effects or a pulse quickening action scene like the rest of the movies, but in a quieter, more human way.

It is quite a feat, now that I think of it, that these action films have such memorable characters. Again, I compare those films to the ones that pop up today: how many mainstream action films bring us to care for the characters?

Coming back to Indy. I really, really enjoy the special effects throughout the series. The mine cart chase in "The Temple of Doom" is spectacular, and few action chases sequences can match up to it. I learned that whole sequence was done using everything from sets, blue screens, matte paintings, models, to stop-motion animation. Ben Burtt recorded a roller coaster's sounds for the scene.

That whole sequence of the opening of the Ark of the Covenant in "Raiders" is brilliantly ethereal, and I do not know what the heck you're talking about when you call them fake-looking cheesy effects. The melting faces send me smiling with delight.

One of the key reasons for the success of the action sequences in the "Indy" films, I think, is that they are well directed, well edited, inventive, and fun to watch. You know where the characters are in relation to each other and have an understanding of what's going on throughout. Most films today, even Christopher Nolan's great Batman movies, have failed at achieving that level of engagement with their action scenes, thanks to choppy editing, shaky cameras, and the filmmakers reliance on the "It's like that because we're going for realism" excuse. There is a balance between putting you in the shoes of the action hero and letting you in on exactly what he is doing, and Spielberg is the master of that balance. Even in his new "The Adventures of Tintin", with its kinetic, over-the-top action scenes, one even being a five minute long single shot, he lets you know what's going on.

Only recently, I learned that "The Temple of Doom" was banned here in India. The powers that were didn't let Spielberg and his team to shoot in India and rejected the script, saying it was too offensive to Indian culture and Hinduism. The government demanded several changes to the script and final cut privilege. Obviously Spielberg would not have it. He shot the film in neighboring country Sri Lanka, doubling for India, and it's all just as well. I am an Indian, and I was born a Hindu, and yet I don't see what is so wrong with the film. Even today, you will not find a DVD of "Temple" here in India. Not an original copy, anyway. You need to know where to go.

Bottom line, the Indiana Jones film are great fun, and they know it. I hold it in higher esteem than the Star Wars trilogy, simply because I was more engaged in Indy's adventures. Now surely most of you have no respect for my opinion.

When I was younger, there was another film trilogy that impacted me much more than "Indiana Jones": the Spielberg-produced, Robert Zemeckis-directed "Back to the Future" trilogy.

The "Back to the Future" films are sensational entertainment, because of the rich, clever stories, the well fleshed out characters, the awesome visuals, the fun feeling to the whole thing, and so much more. There is endless innovation within the plots of the films, particularly the first one. The next two feel like unnecessary extensions, now that I look back. Zemeckis didn't even want to do them, but others pushed for it, or so I've heard it said.

The first film is a masterpiece. The story is brilliant, original, well told, and something you can relate with. The questions asked, "What if you went back in time and saw your parents when they were your age?", or "What if your mother had the hots for you?" surely get you asking yourself those questions. You might shudder at the answers, but more often than not, you'll catch yourself laughing at Marty when he goes through the answers, after being sent thirty years back in time to 1955. The film has scenes of genius, like the one in which Marty is sitting in the café, unaware his father is seated next to him. They both are in the same pose. "McFly," Biff, the film's bully, calls from behind, and they both turn the same way. Like father, like son, you think. Later in the movie, we realize how far from the truth that is.

Michael J. Fox is very good as Marty McFly, with his amazed, confused face never failing to humor us. The initial scenes of him in 1955 work very well, with him walking around, flabbergasted at how everything is (or was) different.

And then it happens: Marty accidentally stops his parents from meeting the way they should have. And so Marty's mother, Lorraine, played by the beautiful Lea Thompson is smitten by Marty instead of the man she is supposed to marry, putting Marty's existence in danger. There are a couple of hilarious and awkward scenes in which Lorraine tries to get close to Marty, even trying to kiss him at one point. The look on Michael J. Fox's face during these scenes is priceless. Soon, he realizes the only way to save his own life and restore everything to the way it was supposed be is to get his parents to fall in love. And so he starts pushing his father George McFly, a shy, awkward, teenage sci-fi geek, to ask Lorraine to the upcoming dance. George is played by Crispin Glover, who is hilarious and so convincing in the role. In a film so funny, it is a great compliment to him that I find him to be its funniest aspect. I wish he returned to do the next two movies instead of asking for more dough and therefore being written out.

Oh, and Thomas Wilson is just brilliant and, I think, quite underrated as Biff Tannen, and his ancestors and descendants, throughout the series. "Hey, butthead. Why don't you make like a tree... and get out of here?" Man, you can never forget these movies!

I have done the impossible. I've written some three hundred words about "Back to the Future" without mentioning Doc. Christopher Lloyd is crazily, hilariously superb as Dr Emmett L. Brown, the creator of the DeLorean time machine. Boy oh boy, did I love that character. I even named my cat "Einstein", after Doc's dog. When I was that age, the German scientist was secondary to Doc Brown's dog.

The friendship between Marty and Doc keeps the films running. I know I might be repeating these phrases, but damn, does it feel me with glee when I think of all the "Great Scott!"s and "This is heavy!"s the two characters have shared! Their relationship is the only aspect of the series that keeps getting better throughout the series. You really do care for these two people, and all the crazy situations they find themselves in.

Part II was a loud film that was less easy to relate to, but Marty and Doc keep it afloat, as does the ingenious third act (which has them go back to the 1955 events of the first film). I enjoyed the little jokes in the 2015 section of the film, like the Hoverboard, and the "Jaws 19" gag, but somehow, the whole movie lacked the heart of the first. There is something delightful, simple and human about the first film's plot; the second one is larger in scale, and somehow, a sense of urgency and engagement is lost. And it doesn't function on a human level the same way the first one did.

Part III had more heart than II, but it at times felt lazy and uninspired. The series lost some more steam here. When I was younger, I almost never watched this film, but today, I consider it the better sequel. A sweet aspect of the film is Doc's love for 1885's Clara, played by Mary Steenburgen.

Oh, and the car! The DeLorean. It's really something, how this brilliant time travelling car has embedded itself into pop culture, and with good reason. It's not an H. G. Wells-esque time machine; it's damned sportcar! Why? Well, as the Doc says, "If you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?" It's a good thing that Zemeckis and his team didn't go with their initial idea of making the time machine a refrigerator. I have two model DeLoreans. I suspect I would not have bought two model refrigerators.

My unconditional love for "Back to the Future" led me on a quest to track down other Zemeckis features. We bought the VHS of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and sat down to watch it. This was years ago. I was just eight or nine.

One minute into the movie, my father suspected that it was the wrong cassette in the box--he had heard that "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" was a film in which live-action and animated characters co-existed, but what we were watching was simply an animated short. Two to three minutes in, it didn't matter, for it was turning out to be a great animated short anyway. And at around the four minute mark, we were amazed. Just after Roger Rabbit drops the refrigerator on his own head while trying to save Baby Herman, the director of the animated short, who turns out to be 'real live-action', screams "Cut!", steps into the shot, and loudly reproaches Roger for having tweeting birds flying around his head in circles when the script clearly mentions that the "Rabbit gets klunked, rabbit sees stars." Not birds, stars, the director yells at him. Oh, was it startling to see that 'real' director shouting at the animated mammal. And then seeing the toon Baby Herman smoking a cigar and shouting at the director in a voice a tad too mature for someone of his stature, "How many times do we have to do this damn scene?! I'll be in my trailer, taking a nap!"

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is incredibly funny and displays top notch craftsmanship and such soaring ambition. When you watch it the first time, you will initially be amazed at the effort and creativity that, obviously, has been so lovingly poured into it... and then you'll just sit back, have a great time, and laugh with it. It rests among my favorite movies of all time, along with Robert Zemeckis's other great movies "Back to the Future" and "Forrest Gump".

Back then, I just enjoyed the special effects of "Roger Rabbit". I was amazed by how the 'real' bed vibrated and the 'real' sheets creased as the 'toon' Rabbit jumped on it. How he interacted with all the stuff around him; books, letters, doors, drawers, chairs, and people. And then I was amazed by the 'real' Detective Valiant's (mis)adventures in Toon Town. I didn't understand how the animated world and the real world had gotten themselves entangled so beautifully, but I beyond loved every second of it. I learned later that it was all painstakingly planned, shot, and then drawn over. Every frame is the work of intricate pre-production and planning, careful shooting, and then top notch animation.

The end result is seamless.

Today, I admire the film for more than just its craftsmanship. The story is ingenious. The invention is endless. And the actors, including Bob Hoskins's Valiant, know what they're doing. Not even once do they overact; they talk to the cartoon characters straight, just like they would anyone else. And they don't look through the cartoon characters, like in the Disney classics of yesteryear; they're looking at them.

There are other films too. I was a huge fan of "Superman: The Movie", starring Christopher Reeve, but not so much its sequels. I've already written about it here.

Oh, and remember those great Disney live-action comedies? "The Love Bug"? "The Absent-Minded Professor"? "Blackbeard's Ghost"? "Mary Poppins"? They were, and still are, favorites. "The Love Bug" and its sequel "Herbie Rides Again" were my favorites then, but today, I hold true that "Mary Poppins" is one of the greatest live-action children's films ever made. Oh, and here's an interesting fact for you: All the Disney live-action comedies I've mentioned above, and so many others, were directed by the same man: Robert Stevenson. I can only wonder why we don't hear the name more often.

Just the other day, I was watching "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" on my laptop when a college mate sat down next to me and peeked into my screen. "Is this 'Space Jam'?" she asked. I was incredibly offended, but quietly answered, "No. It's 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit'."

She just said, "Oh," or something, and added that she really loved "Space Jam". And then she walked away.

I sat there, thinking about what she was missing out on and what she had got instead. And then I suddenly felt this surge of gratitude towards my parents, specifically my mother, for showering me with all these great films.

And so, what is this huge, meandering article all about? It is a love letter, or a vote of thanks, or something of the sort. To the great movies of my childhood. And their makers.

And so I thank you, Harryhausen, Spielberg, Zemeckis, Stevenson, and I'm thankful for all your great movies. All of you, in some small or big way, have made me what I am. Sure, my parents started the whole thing, making me, and then making me who I am, but you guys helped out along the way.

Thank you.

(P.S. I suppose I've used the words "great", "wonderful", "brilliant" et al too many times, but I don't think I know enough synonyms to compliment these movies and their makers.)

No Exorcist Can Handle Possession

2012-02-09T20:45:24Z

• Michał Oleszczyk in Kraków

To call it overwrought would be an understatement. Andrzej Żuławski's 1981 masterpiece, butchered upon its original American release and relegated to spurious video-nasty circulation, is now returning in all its hysterical glory, as a part of Brooklyn's BAMcinématek complete Żuławski retro, which will then move to Cinefamily in Los Angeles. Featuring what is arguably the bravest female performance ever put on film - namely, Isabelle Adjani's Cannes-winning turn of shamanistic intensity - the film dares its viewer to enter a trance-like state, in which genres blur and mate to yield a new level of cinematic expression.

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"Possession" opens with the end of a marriage: Anna (Isabelle Adjani) tells Mark (Sam Neill) she needs to leave him, even though she doesn't understand why. "Maybe all couples go through this...?", she wonders in their early, perfectly civil nighttime conversation, right before things go really crazy. As Anna becomes unhinged, sneaking off to an unseen lover and professing her newly-found independence in a variety of violent ways, Mark's reduced to mumbling "ma-ma-ma" over the phone, before curling up in a fetus-like position on his bed. Very soon, rows begin and quickly get physical - they involve mutual battering around as well as garish self-mutilation. Not exactly a cinematic shrinking violet, Żuławski casually punctuates one of the couple's shouting matches by throwing an unrelated car crash into the shot, just for added emphasis. It's all like a fast-forwarded Ingmar Bergman film on bad acid; "Scenes from a Marriage" as played in a home-made abattoir.

The movie enters its second, violently surreal act, when we learn of the true nature of Anna's extra-marital tryst: she regularly visits a dilapidated apartment, inhabited by a blood- and sex-starved monster, whom she both nurtures and couples with. Żuławski boldly literalizes the trite 'beauty and the beast' premise when Mark finally witnesses his ultimate trauma, peeking at his wife having sex with the creature - her limbs all mixed up with its tentacles. (The monster's design is courtesy of the great Carlo Rambaldi, who concocted it exactly one year before presenting the world with its ultimate cuddly friend, "E.T. - The Extra Terrestial").

Judging from the above, "Possession" is not exactly the kind of movie you'd expect to have been inspired by real-life events - and yet that's exactly the case. Żuławski wrote the script after his marriage to Małgorzata Braunek (the Polish star of his first two movies) hit the rocks and it was left to him to take care of their son Xawery (nowadays a celebrated director in his own right). With Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" as an alleged source of additional inspiration, Żuławski and his co-screenwriter Frederic Tuten put together a viscerally acute portrayal of male jealousy and rage, which includes a double set of not-to-be-revealed doppelgängers and is ultimately about the perils of personal freedom taken to its extreme.

Shot on location in divided Berlin, the movie makes a great, conspicuous use of wide-angle deep-focus photography, which renders each interior eerily compressed and all exteriors airy and ominous at the same time. "Possession"'s first image is that of Berlin wall itself, and Mark and Anna's place overlooks one of the wall's outposts, with the communist eastern part of the city looming in the background as a reminder of a violated, enslaved reality that the film's Polish director knew all too well (having been kicked out of his country twice). What's more, many shots of the main couple are organized so that the growing division between them is mirrored by dual composition, with Mark and Anna reigning over separate halves of the frame.

Contrary to William Friedkin's "The Exorcist", which relied on (often brilliantly used) horror-genre gimmickry, "Possession" is pervaded by a genuine sense of casual dread and sadness. It's not mere 'Satan' that takes over Adjani's body - it's evil itself, albeit defined in purely secular terms. In a notoriously graphic scene of Adjani's hyperactive convulsions in the Berlin subway, Anna gives birth to something even the director hesitated to define - and yet it's that something that causes the world's fracture in the film.

If one would try looking for comparisons that best describe Żuławski's sensibility, it would probably be wisest to position him mid-way between Brian De Palma and Ingmar Bergman. For all his love of cine-hyperbole, which often makes his movies feel like mere strings of 'grand' sequences, Żuławski doesn't share De Palma's slickness - or his heartlessness, for that matter. Instead of reducing his cinema to formal pyrotechnics, Żuławski remains deeply engaged with the secrets of the human soul, which he perceives as being forever torn apart by violent contradictions. In that alone, he's a deeply romantic director: a passionate explorer of what's most self-destructive about us. And yet, one feels him strive for an elation that would prove redemptive enough to help us carry on despite our deeply divisive desires. Even if "Possession" was once described as "a movie about a woman who fucks an octopus", there's no mistaking the fact that deep inside, Żuławski's cinema is all about searching for grace.

Playing the Blinking Game with The Driver

2012-02-08T04:09:09Z

• Wael Khairy in Cairo

The Driver is the best at what he does. "You put this kid behind the wheel, there's nothing he can't do." He doesn't rely on luck and spontaneous driving; he knows what he's doing. He studies his environment, analyzes human behavior and acts accordingly.

As he drives you can tell that every move was planned ahead of time, every turn calculated with absolute precision. His plan is unpredictable; that's why watching it unfold in real time is so damn electrifying. He comes out of nowhere surprising his foes and disappears in plain sight just as easily. The driver is always in total control of the situation.

All this is projected in one of the most intense opening scenes in recent memory. The driver is a stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver. "Drive" begins at night minutes before a getaway. Most chase scenes lack this kind of intensity, for the driver doesn't rely on sheer speed to grab our attention.

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The great adrenaline rush we get is not caused by a cheap close-up of a needle quickly circling a speedometer, but through admiration of watching the driver outsmart cops chasing him and helicopters searching for him. It's the driver's intellectualism behind the wheel that dazzles us. The driver doesn't just drive skillfully; he drives in sophisticated style.

He drifts from his day job to his night job unchallenged. In fact the driver is so good at what he does, his remarkable street maneuvering and stunts seem effortlessly achieved. He must have felt the thrill of it once but at this point in his life he's overconfident and doesn't feel any kick to the dangerous line of work. Maybe this isolation is the reason he seems sad and unhappy. His own brilliance drove him to a state of loneliness that fueled his need to find companionship.

If you read any review of Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive", you're bound to see critics and reviewers pointing out references to different movies, "Taxi Driver", "Risky Business", "Shane", "Scorpio Rising", "Bullitt", "Collateral", "Le Samourai", and countless other films. While "Drive" does in fact reference a lot of films, it somehow remains fresh, unique and unlike any of the previous mentioned. Refn took a deep look at the history of film, recognized what he admired in various films and used those elements to paint his own canvas. The story of "Drive" is one that has been told numerous times but Refn reinvented the plot using hypnotic mise-en-scene that steadily plunges the viewer into a bloody fairy tale. If you haven't seen this instant cult classic by now, I advise you to stop reading as I'll discuss scenes in detail.

After the almost dialogue-free yet surprisingly involving opening scene, the screen fades to black and cuts to a beautiful nightscape view of Los Angeles reminiscent of the LA Michael Mann showed us in "Collateral" and "Heat". There's an 80's vibe to the title sequence as the electro track by Kavinsky called "Nightcall" kicks in and pink-"Risky Business"-like font appears over various striking shots of our protagonist driving around the city and moving into a new apartment. Somewhere in there we see the first of four key elevator scenes that display the development of a bond between the driver and Irene (Carey Mulligan), his innocent looking neighbor.

Our driver walks towards the elevator as Irene walks out of it. This is their first encounter. After they walk past one another, the scene cuts to a POV shot from within the elevator. We see Irene as she walks away when the elevator door closes between them. Not much happens here in terms of interaction, as the characters don't know each other at this point. The second elevator scene occurs right after the title sequence. Our protagonist is on his way up when the elevator stops and Irene walks in. He asks her what floor she headed to and she replies "Four. Thanks." He doesn't push a button as it's already lit. They experience an awkward silence on the way up. The driver catches Irene looking at him and smiles for a brief second and they both look away. This happens a lot throughout the film, their chemistry is delightful because it feels real and natural. By the end of that elevator journey they barely know one another but at least they know they're neighbors living on the same floor.

The third elevator sequence occurs after her car engine breaks down and he drives her home. This time, there's a third party in the elevator, a young boy- her son. The boy and the driver look at one another for the duration of the ride. They're playing the blinking game (seeing who will last longer without blinking). He wins but that's not important. What's important is the fact that he starts to bond with the kid. Afterwards he drops her groceries at her place and they get to know one another a bit more. He learns that her husband is in prison and she finds out he's a stunt man. Following this proper introduction their bond strengthens. She later drops by to get her car fixed, and while fixing it he plays the blinking game with kid again. Their way back is one of my favorite scenes in the film. He asks her "Hey do you want to see something?" before taking Irene and her son on a fun ride down an empty closed down highway. Bright sunlight strikes their faces, as "A Real Hero" plays in the background. This is probably the first time we see the driver genuinely happy. By the end of the unofficial date he carries Irene's sleeping son over his shoulder to the apartment. Irene watches this kind fatherly act and she's almost love-struck. It's a beautiful moment.

More scenes of the driver spending time with the family follow including one where Irene puts her hand on his, their fingers lace together as he drives. Another worth mentioning comes after the driver has a talk with Bernie Ross, a ruthless gangster played by Albert Brooks. Through their common link, the Driver's friend and acting agent Shannon (Bryan Cranston), Ross is willing to invest thousands of dollars to back up the driver as a potential professional racer. Their dialogue is a subtle threat from the gangster to the driver. He shares a tale about how Nino (Ron Perlman) broke Shannon's legs after being disappointed.

The purpose of their talk is to scare the driver into giving it his all, because he wouldn't like Ross' right hand man when he's angry. The driver doesn't respond but a facial expression eclipses his face not of fear but of worry. That same expression can be seen moments later when the driver is watching a cartoon with Benicio. He asks the kid how he can tell that one of the cartoon characters is the bad guy. "Because he's a shark.", he assures him. "There's no good sharks?" he asks. "No. I mean just look at him. Does he look like a good guy to you?" The same look of worry takes over his face. He's thinking of Bernie Ross concerned about what he's getting into.

That's when the tone of the film begins to shift from romance to crime. The exact turning point however comes later when Irene's husband comes home. "Drive" surprised me in many ways; the portrayal of the husband is one of those pleasant surprises. Betraying conventional cinema, the ex-con who returns home just as things seemed to get better for Irene and her son turns out to be a decent guy embarrassed of his past and willing to change. Oscar Isaac plays the husband, Standard, and while I'm probably in the minority here, I personally believe he gave the best male supporting performance in the film. His speech in the welcome back party is very tricky for it requires the performer to convince viewers that he's not a bad person and asks the audience to forgive the fact that he's interrupting the film's central romance. Isaac does exactly that by delivering his lines with honesty and shame. We can't help but forgive him and in return feel sorry for Irene's current dilemma.

Through a series of shots cutting back and forth between them, we can see that both have the other in mind, they seem sad. The driver then does what any guy would do in a situation like this; he goes to a bar. Once there, a man recognizes the getaway driver and proposes a heist job. The driver probably upset about the husband situation, stressing on the gangster threat and unpleased by the fact that the guy is asking him to take part a second heist, flips out with a badass line fans will be quoting for years, "How 'bout this. You shut your mouth, or I'll kick your teeth down your throat and I'll shut it for you." The driver releases a vicious stare and the guy backs off.

This is the first time we get to see the driver's violent side and the violence only builds up from this point on. Refn understands how to display violence. He managed it well in his previous two pictures, "Valhallang Rising" and the excellent "Bronson" and here his approach is even more impressive. His use of violent content is relevant here for unlike most pictures it serves a purpose. Up till that point not a drop of blood has been spilled and as far as we know the driver is a romantic loner. But then he shocks us with a verbal threat that is too detailed for any set of ears. Later we see him blow Standard's killers to pieces with a shotgun and stab a gangster's chest with a shower curtain rod. The driver slowly moves off camera his face entirely covered in blood.

Now the audience pretty much knows how dangerous and violent the driver can get and we're quite surprised by this sudden transformation. Right from the start we get the sense that there's something mysterious about him, we don't know his past and don't need to but Refn gradually peels off layers of characterization till we get to the core of the driver, a trapped monster.

This eventually leads to the most violent scene in the picture and probably the most memorable one too, the fourth and final elevator scene. By now the driver is a wanted man, the gangsters he killed happen to be connected to Nino and Ross. After explaining how he was helping Standard pay a debt from prison resulting in his death, Irene slaps the driver. He looks at the ground in shame; "I just thought you could get out of here if you wanted. I could come with you. I could look out for you." His almost pathetic communication skills remind me of a frustrated Travis Bickle confused of what went wrong after Betsy rejects him for taking her to a porn theater. He looks up at her and the elevator doors open. One of Nino's hitmen is in there; unknowingly they hop in for the ride.

Notice how this is the first time we see the elevator descend, silently to inevitable doom. Most of the scene takes place in slow motion, which only adds to the building tension. When the driver spots a gun tucked in the man's suit. All sound fades away, he extends his arm and pushes Irene to a corner, the lights dim, Cliff Martinez' haunting score breaks the silence as the driver kisses Irene in probably the most passionate kiss I've seen on film in quite a while. This is the best-directed scene of the year. We see all elements of mise-en-scene poetically merge in harmony. Cinematically, this is the most visually artistic moment in "Drive". Dimed lights light up the scene again, the music fades away and slow motion is no longer used when suddenly both males attempt to strike one another. Seconds later the driver knocks the man to the floor and stomps his head repeatedly. We see his boot smashing into the dead hitman's face till nothing is left but bits and pieces. I love how the scene switches from utter beauty to disgusting violence in a fraction of second.

Prior to this scene, only the viewer has witnessed the driver's violent nature yet even such aggression is bound to shock anyone. A stunned Irene moves to the corner and watches the frenzied attack in fear. The elevator door opens and she backs away. Driver turns around and looks at Irene who's looking back at him in complete shock. Mirroring the first elevator scene the doors close between them. Only this time it does so while she looks at out protagonist. She sees him in his true form. Driver probably preferred to conceal his boiling monstrous side from Irene but when cornered and with no choice he kissed her goodbye.

The final act is upon us; a showdown between the driver and Ross is foreseeable. He calls the boss and asks, "You know the story about the scorpion of the frog?" For those of you don't know the fable, it goes like this. A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across the river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion insists that if it stung the frog, both would drown. The frog finally agrees to carry the scorpion across the river. Midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why he did this, the scorpion point out that it's in his nature to do so.

"Your friend Nino didn't make it across the river." This was symbolically expressed almost quite literally in a visually beautiful scene where the driver forces Nino's head below the water. Erin Benach's choice of having a big scorpion on the hero's iconic jacket makes perfect sense now. In the fable both the scorpion and the frog meet their demise, so if familiar with the tale viewers would expect the same to happen to both protagonist and antagonist. The driver knows for Irene and Benicio to be safe, he has to go. It's the only way.

The driver meets Bernie Ross and indeed both stab one another in broad daylight. Two shadows fall to the ground, one barely alive the other dead, we see the driver with a fatal wound to his stomach.

Hitchcock once said, "I enjoy playing the audience like a piano." The following shot is a perfect example of a director interacting with his audience. The camera pans up revealing the bloodied and perfectly still driver sitting in the front seat of his car. We reach his head motionless on the seat's headrest, his eyes remain ever-fixed, unblinking, piercing empty space. When I first saw this scene, I studied his face in search of the slightest proof of life, a twitch, a blink, anything. The frame remains fixed for quite some time. At this point we can't afford to blink because we could miss the fate of our hero. Refn is directly forcing the viewer to play the blinking game with the driver. He blinks and drives.

Fighting after the war is over

2012-02-05T04:54:35Z

• Seongyong Cho in South Korea

There exists a stationary phase in wars unless they end quickly. The soldiers on both sides doubt whether they can survive; they are more exhausted day by day and it seems their hardship will last forever until they are killed in the battlefield. Even so, when the time to battle against the enemy comes again, they have no choice; they always do whatever their survival instinct drives them to do, and there come more scars and pains to be stored in their hurt lockers.
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The South Korean war movie "The Front Line" presents us with the last chapter of the Korean war, which was far less dramatic than its major events but, according to this film, far more frustrating to the people on the both sides of the battle line. When North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25 in 1950, the North Korean army was confident that they would win in a short time, but the situation was soon reversed when the allied forces of South Korea, the US, and the UN quickly pushed the North Korean army to nearly the North Korea-Chinese border. Then China entered the war in January 1951, the Allied forces retreated to the south, and then they counter-attacked again to push North Korea and China to the north. Eventually, they arrived at the stalemate with the battle line that divided Korea in half as before the war.

That situation lasted for more than two years until the sides finally signed an armistice agreement in July 1953. Ironically, while top military officers were negotiating for the truce at Panmunjom, the soldiers on the front line kept fighting to defend or recapture areas as if they were in some kind of endless extension game. In one scene, when the officers on the both sides are finally about to reach an agreement, they are suddenly informed that the military demarcation line has been just changed during the latest combat. The negotiation is adjourned as a result, and there will be soon another combat, and...

The circumstance can be summarized by one darkly amusing montage scene in the middle of the story. The North Korean soldiers take over a hill on one day, and then they are chased away by the South Korean soldiers on the other day, and then the North Koreans take it over again. As a matter of fact, it has happened so many times that one character cynically says to his friend that he cannot even remember how many times they took over the hill, which is becoming more like a mass mound; when they dig up the ground to bury bodies, they come across other ones they buried previously.

Its name is Aerok Hill. The Alligator Company of South Korean army has fought for a long time around that hill, and the soldiers have been praised for their valor, but they have recently been under suspicion from the counterintelligence department. The company commander died during combat under a questionable circumstance. He was shot by a gun from his company; don't ask me how they came learned that in such a busy situation). Somebody in the company is sending letters from North Korean soldiers to their families in South Korea.

Eun-pyo (Sin Ha-gyoon), a lieutenant from the counter-intelligence department, is assigned to surreptitiously investigate this incident. While happy to learn that his friend, Soo-hyeok (Ko Soo), who was taken by North Koreans when they fought together in 1950, is alive well in the company, Eun-pyo senses there is something awkward about the soldiers of the Alligator Company. The company is led by Il-young (Lee Je-hoon), a captain who is far younger than the soldiers under his command. It can be said that the de facto leader is Soo-hyeok, but he and others really respect Il-young's commanding position, and Il-young does have courage and experience as the leader. Though there is visible comradeship among them, there also exist the things they do not want to openly talk about; is it possible that their secrets are connected to the death of their former commander?

Even before a third of the film's running time is passed, it is revealed that the question is a MacGuffin to pull us into something deeper than a "murder mystery." There are secrets, but they are revealed earlier than we expected, and they give us insights into the extraordinary human conditions during wars. The soldiers on both sides fight like hell when they have to, but even while conflicting with each other, they form a strange, complex relationship only possible in war. After so much ruthless violence between them, there is enough humanity left for them to show a little kindness to each other indirectly if they can afford -- but they never forget their duty as soldiers, of course.

The screenplay is written by Park Sang-yeon, who wrote the novel "DMZ", which Park Chan-wook's "Joint Security Area" (2000) was based on. That film is also about an unlikely relationship between South Korean and North Korean soldiers at Panmunjom, but, in that case, the story is milder and more sentimental - probably because, despite everything that has happened during last 62 years, North Korea and South Korea have learned a contradictory way of getting accustomed to each other while still conflicting with each other. We had another headache due to North Korea in 2010, but, as usual, after the tension was considerably increased, the situation then become less tight, even after Kim Jong-il died in last December.

The director Jang Hoon, who was the assistant director in Kim Ki-duk's "The Bow"(2005), makes a solid war film. The battlefield scenes are handled well; they are dirty, bloody, chaotic, exhausting, and dynamic. At first, with quick cuts and a hand-held camera, the movie gives the disorienting feeling of a battlefield we have been familiar with since "Saving Private Ryan" (1998), and then it begins to look at the battle scenes with smooth, steady camera moves under his confident direction as if we ourselves were getting used to what's happening around the characters. Jang Hoon does not lose human dimensions amidst lots of explosions; every step forward feels really hard for the soldiers.

As the lead performers, Sin Ha-gyoon and Ko Soo admirably carry the film while complementing each other, though they are pretty much stuck in a typical male melodrama plot with predictable turns. When I saw cute little war orphans hanging around the company soldiers, I knew there would be a moment when somebody would make at least one of them cry.

The best thing about their neutral performances is that they allow lots of space for talented supporting actors. We have such reliable veteran supporting actors of South Korean films like Ryoo Seung-Soo, Ko Chang-seok, and Ryoo Seung-young, and it is also nice to watch young new actors like Lee Je-hoon or Kim Da-wit (Yun Jung-hee's reckless grandson in Lee Chang-dong's "Poetry") holding their places among their seniors. When they are together as company soldiers, the bond between them is palpable. We accept them as a band of brothers right from our first encounter with them.

Though there are the standard stock characters we've met in countless war films (an old-timer who frequently talks about his battle experiences, a young inexperienced soldier who has never been to battle, a shell-shocked soldier, a soldier who misses his family, an ineffectual commanding officer insensitive to the ordeal of his men, etc.), the actors make these clichés into the life force of the story as a group. The mystery in the story gets less important as the plot progresses, and their daily struggles becomes a compelling element to drive the story. As a matter of fact, you can picture them as the characters of some epic TV miniseries with a little touch of Robert Altman's "MASH" (1970).

All the supporting actors are uniformly good. Lee Je-hoon, who was very memorable as a tragic bully in "Bleak Night" (2010), gives the best performance as the young captain, who rigidly hides the memory of an impossible situation he had to deal with. What he chose to do was quite horrible as shown in a flashback sequence, but who can blame him? Survival is the No.1 priority in wars, and he did what should be done for saving himself and others -- but not all of them. Ko Chang-seok, who delighted me and others in two previous works directed by Jang Hoon, steals the show again as an old-timer who has accepted war as the part of his life. Ryoo Seung-young and other performers accompanying him bring the human side to their North Korean characters, and so does Kim Ok-bin as only substantial female character in the film (you probably remember her as the heroine of Park Chan-wook's "Thirst").

In spite of many good qualities, "The Front Line" is ultimately marred by its third, which is too long and unnecessarily preaches to the choir. Still, it is not a fatal flaw, the movie doesn't entirely lose its grip on us, and it has a point about how horrifically and absurdly meaningless it was to force the soldiers to certain death only to push the demarcation line forward a little more even when war will officially end within less than 12 hours. The movie lags significantly compared to its first 90 minutes hour at this point. As several South Korean critics pointed out, it could have been a lot better if its lagging third act had been trimmed around 20 minutes at least.

"The Front Line" was South Korea's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 84th Academy Awards this year. It was a good choice, but I do not think that was the best choice considering other more stellar South Korean films that came out in 2011, including "Bleak Night" and "The Yellow Sea." While revisiting the film, I thought about how generic it is as a war film. On the technical aspects, it is needless to say that the movie is excellent, but I also could see several spare parts from other war films, which make the film look less distinctive. And I again found that two main characters are the least interesting human beings in the film as I did when I watched it for the first time in last July.

Despite its flaws and weaknesses, the movie remains good enough to be recommended, and I think it is better than other Korean War films I have seen during the last decade. War is surely hell or hellish purgatory, and here is a good war movie which tells that universal truth without any ostentation while depicting a painful chapter of modern South Korean history.

How to Win an Academy Award

2012-02-03T01:11:14Z

• Omer M. Mozaffar in Chicago

The Academy Award winners for the past thirty years have followed consistent molds, primarily in the categories of Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Picture. It is a very simple set of templates that I will explain with excessive evidence. This is not to say that the Academy Awards are a conspiracy run by some secret society, although that idea would be quite fun. Rather, at the very least, there is a subtext to American culture that plays out in the ideas and ideals in American cinema, and it plays out consistently. At the very least, I'm illustrating some unwritten ideals in American culture. Whether or not they are healthy or corrupt, they are there in us. So, "Best Picture" is not a great movie; rather, it is a great movie that fulfills the mold.
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My goal here is to be proven wrong. My complaint is that American Cinema is so limited in its imaginative and emotional possibilities, especially compared to films of other lands, that I hope this essay compels voters and moviegoers to change things. I doubt that I will be proven wrong by contrary evidence. Rather, I hope that future winners break the molds I list below.

Feel free to test my arguments against those award winners that I do and do not list. The films I leave out are either films that also support my point, or are films whose stories I do not remember, or in a few rare cases are films that I have not seen. I will let you decide if I am playing fast and loose with important details. You can look back in my Twitter feed from last year, when I repeatedly said from the beginning that the original runaway favorite for Best Picture ("The Social Network") had no chance of winning. Because, it did not fit the mold. Others were so convinced that I was wrong that they offered wagers that I should collect upon.

Now, let us see who the Oscar always goes to.

The Academy Award winner for Best Actress always goes to a performance for whom gender and/or sexuality is a major part of the character's story. If you remove the sexuality aspect or the importance given to gender in the character's narrative, then you will fundamentally change the character. This point, as we will see later, is not true for Best Actor.

I won't be speaking much about this year's nominations, but I do have to make a special point here about the nominations in this particular category: just looking at the trailers, I have not seen any of these films, yet it seems that I just described all of them. Glenn Close is sort of a man in "Albert Nobbs." I have not seen Fincher's movie, but I did see Oplev's film, so I can say with some confidence that Rooney Mara's sexuality is very much a part of the story in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Meryl Streep is "The Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher in the man's world of late Twentieth Century Britain. And, Michelle Williams is Ms. Monroe in "My Week with Marilyn." The usually amazing Viola Davis in "The Help," may or may not be an exception.

Looking through the recent history of winners, however, we see that this trend is consistent. Natalie Portman in "Black Swan" (2010), Hillary Swank in "Million Dollar Baby" (2004) and "Boys Don't Cry" (1999). Charlize Theron in "Monster" (2003). Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball" (2001). Julia Roberts as "Erin Brockovich" (2000). Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love" (1999). Susan Sarandon in "Dead Man Walking" (1995). Holly Hunter in "The Piano" (1993). Emma Thompson in "Howard's End" (1992). The exception here might be Jodie Foster in "The Silence of the Lambs," (1991), although the script and original novel fully fit this template. Of course, gender dynamics in the professional world in 2012 are significantly different than they were in 1991, so it may be that as a part of a 1991 film, her gender was very significant.

Nevertheless, if I am correct about this mold, then this point is rather disappointing, isn't it? I do think that this is a serious, perhaps scathing commentary on the plight of women in our culture: gender and/or sexuality is part of feminine identity in our culture in a way that it is not for masculine identity. In other words, a woman is reminded that she is a woman far more than a man is reminded that he is a man. Of course, if the Academy Awards represent masculine identity through Best Actor, then we have other issues to wrestle with.

The Academy Award for Best Actor will go to a performance about a man who is pushing against a very difficult, un-accepting, maddening world. That man has some trait that makes him a square peg in the circle of society. Of course, this point sounds like the story of nearly every movie ever made, especially every hero movie, but these movies are usually not about heroes.

Consider the winners. Tom Hanks is mentally challenged in "Forrest Gump," (1994) and gay in "Philadelphia" (1993). Nicholas Cage is the drowning alcoholic in "Leaving Las Vegas" (1995). Geoffrey Rush is beaten by his father into mental breakdown in "Shine" (1996). Jack Nicholson is obsessive-compulsive in "As Good as it Gets" (1997). Denzel Washington is an insane cop in "Training Day" (2001). Interestingly, the deleted scenes of "Training Day" reveal biographical bits that further illustrate that this character fits this "Best Actor" mold.

Further, Jamie Foxx is the African-American "Ray" Charles in bigoted American life (2004). Sean Penn is gay in "Milk" (2008), and a father trying to find his daughter's killer "Mystic River" (2003). Forest Whitaker is the increasingly crazy leader in "Last King of Scotland" (2006). Daniel Day-Lewis is the tyrannical businessman in "There will be Blood" (2007). The character that seems to least fit this mold is Jeff Bridges' "Crazy Heart" (2009), unless we consider his socially-rejected quality to be his age in a Country Music world that reveres youth. If the Academy Award Best Actor depict the American man (even if the actor or character is not an American), then the American man does not fit in society.

Best Picture. The biggest category might overtly seem to be the most American. The Academy Award Best Picture is, generally speaking, a liberation story. The Oscar goes to a film that involves someone in some sort of prison, seeking and achieving some sort of freedom, though death often takes place in the process (along with some sort of love interest, usually).

"Dances With Wolves," (1990) is about Kevin Costner fighting to free the Native Americans from the American Army. The central plot of "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991) revolves around Jodie Foster's attempts to find a girl kidnapped by a serial killer. In 1993, Liam Neeson in "Schindler's List" works in his capacity to free Jews from the Nazis. In 1995, William "Braveheart" Wallace seeks to free the Scots from British. In "Titanic" (1996) Rose is trapped, at times physically and at times metaphorically, mostly by her mother, by the obligations of her social class. "American Beauty" (1999) is in some ways the most blatant; Kevin Spacey repeatedly appears in scenes hiding or hidden behind what look like prison bars; he gets freed in a most unfortunate way.

In 2003, all of Middle Earth is imprisoned by that evil eye in "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" until Frodo and his little buddies can get rid of the Ring. In "The Departed" (2007) Leonardo DiCaprio keeps demanding to be freed from his assignment as an undercover cop. "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008) works on multiple levels, but the core story involves Jamal repeatedly trying to free Latika. "The Hurt Locker" is about a few soldiers seeking to end their tour of duty and go home. "The King's Speech" (2011) is about a man imprisoned by a speech impediment and hires someone to cure it.

Of the remaining films, the film that seems to be the exception is "No Country for Old Men." The main thing I remember from that movie is , his hair and his weapon. Also, Forrest Gump frees Jenny from the clutches and memories of her father; I don't know if this thread would be central to its story, but I suppose it is. On a side note, even though it's been nearly twenty years since that movie, every time I meet someone named Jennifer, in my mind I start saying, "I know what love is, Jen-nay." Now that I think about it, I also keep imitating Gollum, from "Lord of the Rings." Maybe I need to spend less time analyzing movies and go read a book or make a friend or open my drapes, or something.

I have to emphasize that these molds seem to be true for the last 30 years (at least since 1990). Prior to 1990, the molds do not work as well. It seems that after the blockbusters in the 1970s, Hollywood did transform itself by reducing its possibilities. After "Star Wars," it made Campbell its patron saint. Meaning, Hollywood films consciously started following the mold of Joseph Campbell's legendary book, "Hero with a Thousand Faces," in which he asserts that all cultures have mythologies that have heroes that follow the same series of steps from the moment they receive their first call, to the moment they return home. Hollywood, capitalizing on the astonishing success of "Star Wars" subsequently made most of its films into Hero movies following Joseph Campbell's model. It follows then, that the variety of films we saw from Hollywood, up through the 1970s, decreased tremendously from the 1980s onward, through to today. And, it seems that the Oscars for the major awards likewise promoted their own specific molds, starting at least from the 1990s.

So, where do these Academy Award molds come from? I wonder if there is something Biblical here, in our American imaginations of females (like the women in the Bible), males (like the prophets in the Bible), and life in general. Meaning, films from Europe, especially from Sweden and France, really seem to have Catholic undertones. Films from America might be equally Protestant in nature, with the emphasis on liberation from authority and tyranny. This point is especially interesting, considering that many of the filmmakers and performers are non-believers, might even be non-American, but drink from the same American waters that the rest of us do.

By the way, this does not mean that if you make a film that fits the above models, that you will win Academy Awards; obviously, multiple nominees fit their respective molds, but only one wins. It also does not mean that all the nominations will fulfill the models in their respective categories; the winner, however, will most definitely follow the mold.

I just hope that things will change, and we will return to an older Hollywood, where we saw a greater variety of stories, characters, and ideas. Thus, I hope you do win an Academy Award through a project that breaks all the molds.

Page design and Captain America graphic by Marie Haws.

Hero's journey chart from Wikipedia.

In search of a miracle

2012-01-29T00:38:17Z

• Seongyong Cho in South Korea

I have never been to Lourdes, a small town near the Pyrenees in southwestern France, but, considering Jessica Hausner's film "Lourdes," it looks like a nice place to visit. The hotel shown in the film looks good, and they serve visitors with care and respect. The landscape surrounding the town is nice to look at; at the meadow around the tops of mountains, you can see the green land below and the other mountains covered with snow.
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But most people don't come to Lourdes to enjoy fresh air and pretty scenery. Lourdes has been known as a place of pilgrimage since a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous serially encountered an apparition of the Virgin Mary at a grotto outside the town in 1858. (Her story was later fictionalized into a novel which and then adapted into the 1943 film "The Song of Bernadett," for which Jennifer Jones won the Best Actress Oscar). The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes was established a few years later.

It was said that water from the spring in the grotto had healing power, and many people have visited with the hope of miraculous healing. I have doubts (according to scientific analysis done by the chemists, it's just plain underground water), but several cases of "miraculous healing" (or scientifically inexplicable medical cures) were reported, and some of them were officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.

If God exists, and if God really proves his existence to us through the healing water of Lourdes, we could say he is as generous as Las Vegas casino managers. Only 67 cases have been recognized as authentic miracles by the Church after its thorough investigation process; the last one in 2005). Those are low odds considering that the place has been visited by around 200 million people since 1860.

Nonetheless, people still have been coming to Lourdes with hopes not too different from the ones we have when we come to Las Vegas, although the chance of getting a jackpot is much higher than the chance of being healed by Lourdes water. Whether these hopes are absurd or not, they're is good for the town. Around five million people come to this small town with a population of 15,000 every season, so pilgrimage has become its main industry. In one brief shot in the film, people gather together for a group picture with the Rosary Basilica (built in 1899) behind them, and I could not help but think of the castle in Disneyland. Minus their hopes and beliefs, they are more or less tourists visiting a theme park.

I am afraid I sound grouchy to you (I must confess; I am a skeptical atheist whose family is officially Buddhist), so I have to assure you that the film "Lourdes" is neither anti-religious nor religious. Maintaining its neutral position, it calmly observes the people who visit the town and other people who help them in this religious system. The caregivers are volunteers, and some of them, if not all of them, are devoted to their work. I was a little touched by a young caregiver who has become more serious about her duty than before while helping disabled people.

The group of pilgrims in the film are as diverse as the passengers in the "Airport" films, with various kinds of illnesses and disabilities. Many of them need wheelchairs or walkers to move around; some of them can move for themselves, and the others need help. We see a mother and her mentally ill daughter in a wheelchair who have been to Lourdes many times. We also observe a couple of middle-aged women who seem to come here just for tourism (one of them wants her eczema to be cured, but I don't think she's that serious). They throw sarcastic one-liners from time to time. Another middle-aged woman is a quiet lady with faith, but she has some questions to ask during the pilgrimage. And we also have the priests the guards and their chief, and the caregivers and their strict, fastidious supervisor.

But this is not a variation of the famous movie cliché the "Ark Movie." The movie gives us little knowledge about the backgrounds of the pilgrims, let alone their names or information about their illnesses. For instance, one reviewer says a certain character is another character's mother, but I'm not so sure about that. Some conditions like dwarfism are apparent to our eyes, but, while watching one woman in wheelchair, I was not sure of the cause of her paralysis. Another woman character suddenly reveals her health status at one point, but it is because her body cannot help itself, not because she wants to show it to others around her. The movie avoids the possibility of melodrama inside that character and moves on according to the itinerary.

Their procedures over the week observed in the film are interesting to watch even to the outsiders like me. They visit the grotto, and they wait in a long line (the more you are disabled, the sooner you can go inside the grotto), and they bath with Lourdes water or drink it. The blessing ceremony is held at the big hall filled with lots of the people, and there is an amusing sight in which one of them attempts to move closer to the altar because she thinks that will increase the probability of miracle.

They watch a video together showing the testimonies of people who experienced the miracle (or did they?). They and others gather at Rosary Square in the evening where the hundreds of candle lights brighten dark night. On the last day, they will have a picnic at the mountain meadow (it's only for the people who can walk, by the way), and a farewell party in the evening will follow.

Meanwhile, something happens. Is it a miracle? The movie never explains or tries to explain it. There is no music but only silence in that scene, and the camera quietly focuses on one of the pilgrims, Christine (Sylvie Testud), in her bed one night. She begins to do something impossible considering her medical condition. On the next morning, everyone is surprised and most of them naturally think it is another miracle from God.

Or is it? She is soon diagnosed by a doctor to confirm whether it is a miracle or not. The doctor says it might be the sort of temporary recovery observed in many other people who visited Lourdes, but she is happy to be freer than before. Now she does not need help from others when she wants to enjoy the ice cream for herself at the cafe in the sunny afternoon, and, when she does that, my God, she does look really happy.

I do not remember seeing her in other films before, except "La Vie en Rose" (2007), but I can say that Sylvie Testud is a wonderful actress. Though she does not move much in her wheelchair, she slowly holds the movie with her serene, weary face while never asking for pity; we come to care about her, and we are joyous to see her face more brightened than before thanks to this sudden happening.

While it is possible that this was not a miracle, there are lots of questions in the film, regardless of what you believe. As one character asks, what should we do if we want a miracle? Is there any particular way for receiving it from an existence high above the sky? And why does God show his power rarely, though he is said to be almighty enough to heal many sick people on the earth who need help? And, in some characters' view, why does God seem to be unfair, when there must be people more devoted and desperate than Christine? Characters in the movie ask such questions and more, but the priest doesn't give satisfying answers. One of his answers is the one you have probably heard many times from men of monotheistic religions. To be frank with you, I could not help but burst out a laugh when he said that. Oh, come on, father, that's a cliché - but it can be true, perhaps.

The director, Jessica Hausner, is not judgmental on her subject or her characters. The camera looks at the people like an unseen observer with a cool, objective attitude and carefully composed shots. In the marvelous opening scene, the camera patiently watches the dining hall while it begins to be occupied by people one by one, and our attention is slowly increased with a slow, subtle zoom-in. There is a serious undertone, but the movie is not entirely humorless. There is a small funny joke about Jesus and the Virgin Mary told by the priest, who is a man of religion both easy-going and sincere, and I think it will make my Catholic acquaintances laugh.

The final sequence of the film, the evening party on their last day, reminds me why some of us, if not all of us, need the religion or its alternatives like Alcoholics Anonymous. Life is basically miserable for most of us (after all, from the beginning we are approaching that darkness called death). Life is particularly terrible for the people like Christine, and we're all worried about whether our life has a meaning or not, apart from passing genetic information to the next generation. Regardless of whether God exists, it is nice to be with others, and we are consoled at least for a while that we are not alone, like the people in the film. The music plays, the people drink, and they dance (only those who can move their legs, of course). In its austere but humane view, the movie treats Testud's Christine and the other characters equally as human beings. They show envy and skepticism while congratulating Christine, but that is behavior as human as when the pretty young caregivers show their interest in the young handsome guards.

"Lourdes," which won awards at the Venice, Vienna and Warsaw film festivals, is a very thought-provoking film accessible to you even if you do not have a religion; you will have lots of things to talk and discuss after watching it. When a final single shot of doubt is hurled in the finale, we have a question about the ambiguous last shot as a consequence; was it not a miracle, after all, or was it a "cruel" miracle, and God intended it for a different outcome? How does Christine think about that? I have no clear conclusion even after re-watching, and neither does the film. Testud neither says nor reveals anything at that moment, either -- but let's say she makes an exit as gracefully as the movie does.

Art selection and page design by Marie Haws.

A man who is on everybody's mind

2012-01-27T04:58:52Z

• Omer M. Mozaffar

A few years ago, I set up an internet alert to inform me whenever Muhammad Ali was mentioned in the news. At the time, he wasn't doing anything newsworthy. It was years after the Michael Mann movie. A decade since his appearance in the Opening Ceremony of the 1996 Olympic Games. Nearly three decades since his last fight. But, for whatever reason, he was on my mind. The strange thing I discovered is that he was in the news, somewhere in the world, every single day. Every single day. That's his astonishing mystique. For whatever reason, he was and is on everyone's mind. The most popular of all basketball players, Michael Jordan, is in the news for shoe sales. The most popular of soccer players, Pele, is in the news for soccer. The most popular of all cricket players, Imran Khan, is in the news for politics. Muhammad Ali, however, is in the news for being Muhammad Ali. Rather, he is in the news for who Muhammad Ali was and is to us. And, in Pete McCormack's wonderful "Facing Ali," we learn who he is and was for the fighters he faced.

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This is a unique documentary. The boxers, George Chuvalo, Sir Henry Cooper, Ron Lyle, Ken Norton, Earnie Shavers, Leon Spinks, and Ernie Terrell each tell their own stories. And, there is something remarkably calm, friendly, and silent about them. Except for those who went on to further or renewed fame - George Foreman, Joe Frazier, and perhaps Larry Holmes - we would probably not care about any of them. Meaning, we tend to idolize those who are at the center of fame, but forget those who are forgotten, even though they continue to live and breathe. Here, we learn that beyond the popping lights and screaming noise of the lonely, sweaty ring, these are men with sometimes difficult, quiet lives. These are men with sensitive memories, telling tales of struggle. One boxer faced the deaths and suicides of almost all of his family members. Another boxer had trouble with the law immediately after winning the Heavyweight title. Another boxer gets lost in his new-found fame as a fighter. On the other hand, another boxer experiences a religious awakening. For some of them, the high points of their lives were their losses to Ali. Ken Norton (who did not lose) says, "A fight with Ali gave me a chance at life." He further tells us that he suffered paralysis from a car accident, being unable to talk or walk, and Ali visited him in the hospital. And, comatose Norton responded.

We explore all of Ali's legendary phases. In that sense, I don't think the film offers anything new for Ali fans. But the fighters narrate this story, sharing their praise and criticism of the man through talking heads and voice-overs. Ali dances through his fights, his famous clips, and his biting quotes. We watch his rise to the Heavyweight title. His membership in the Nation of Islam, and complicated relationship with Malcolm X. His refusal to fight in Vietnam and subsequent infamy. His "Thrilla," his "Rumble," and the "Fight of the Century." And, his professional and physical decline. In terms of biography, there is no new terrain here. Still, the boxers revere his skill, not as audience members, not as enemies, but as sportsmen: fellow professionals, admiring rivals, and indebted adversaries. What I did expect from the film was a huge amount of respect for Ali by these (formerly) gifted athletes. What I did expect, but did not receive, was anger against Ali. What I did not expect was that almost all these fighters - having faced harder punches outside the ring - seem to have made peace with themselves and with their circumstances. What I did not expect was the huge amount of love directed to Ali. The repeated sentiment, even from a teary-eyed, sympathetic Joe Frazier, was modest gratitude. These men were grateful for his role in their lives, as fighters, as African American men in the Civil Rights era. They were grateful for the sense of value and courtesy he gave them. This movie would be the best, most endearing eulogy a person could ask for.

Muhammad Ali has held a very special role in my life and the life of my peers. I was a child in Chicago in a time when the most famous Muslims were mainstream heroes. Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The recently built John Hancock Center and Sears Tower, the tallest of buildings in the world, were designed by a Muslim structural engineer. Cat Stevens just converted. Even Imran Khan of Pakistan was one of the most beloved Cricket Bowlers in the world. That is not to say that any of these people were saints; the fighters in "Facing Ali" make that clear about Ali. Rather, I was a spectacled kid in a time when the world was telling me that my obligation as a Muslim was to be the best and to conduct myself with dignity, because that is what these Muslims did. So, it follows that today, when pathetic individuals seek personal elevation by vilifying Muslims, I don't feel any need to win their approval. Rather, I pity their states. It's bizarre that such pitiable opportunists are even given any attention, but that is the state of things. But, I feel the need to defend all those young kids who keep getting beaten down by the daily onslaught of Islamophobia in the press, and in some cases, their personal lives.

But, what is this fascination we have with boxing? I have difficulty watching the grunting, crackling of helmets and necks in football. I even have difficulty with the violence of rattling first person shooter video games, whether the victims are humans or aliens. And, boxing is the most brutal of all sports. Yet, boxing captures our attention. We watch the two lone contenders staring at each other like gladiators. Their jabs, punches and blocks are chess moves requiring the most intense concentration in an arena of blaring fans. Theirs is a battle of skill and will. With Ali, we have the battle politics. He shouts at Ernie Terrell to respect him by calling him "Muhammad Ali" rather than "Cassius Clay." He takes the energy of the Civil Rights movement and turns it against Joe Frazier. Now that Boxing's popularity is getting overtaken by the short speedy fights of Mixed Martial Arts, I wonder if the hour long boxing matches are a thing of the past. Or, maybe boxing was just a regular sport graced with the presence of such a gifted man. And, we get the sense that the men who faced him were themselves real people, speaking of a dear friend, that they hold not in high esteem, not in reverence, but in a loving awe.

A sermon no one can sleep through

2012-01-21T21:01:14Z

• Gerardo Valero in Mexico City

Many of today's films seem to be made solely for financial reasons, but the case of "The Exorcist" is more complex than most. It was a tremendous financial success, the all-time box office champ for a while, but only a psychic could have predicted that people would line up to see a movie of this nature.
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In a recent article called "A sermon no one can sleep through" author William Peter Blatty talked about his motivations for writing the source novel and his disagreements with the picture's end result. Is there really a sermon to be found within "The Exorcist"? Almost forty years have passed since it first opened and, even though Blatty denies writing it as a horror piece, the film is widely regarded as the most frightening feature ever made. "Sermon: is certainly not the first word that comes to mind when discussing it.

"The Exorcist" is an important motion picture of considerable craft and depth. Based on the ability to reach its genre's goals, it is surely among the most effective films ever made. It should be a priority for many movies to make the audience sense they've lived through the proceedings on screen, and this one does it in spades (never mind it is the equivalent of having salt poured into your open wounds). Among horror entries, this is a completely different animal. The picture represents a sensationalistic portrayal of rare events considered by many as true to life, and that makes it all the more difficult to shake off. It is by no means your typical, overblown flick about satanic activities that bring one bizarre death after another; those seem fun in comparison. This one goes straight home with you, and good luck getting it out of your head.

"The Exorcist" is mainly the story of Father Karras (Jason Miller), a Georgetown Jesuit priest who's called upon by actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) when her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) goes through a radical change of personality with no physical explanation. Karras is living through a crisis of faith and his reaction is to disregard any possibility of a supernatural explanation with the same attitude as St. Thomas (show me and I will believe it) that he used when evaluating his own life convictions.

Lt. Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) is assigned to investigate a crime related to the case and he represents an outsider's point of view that allows the audience to go deeper into the event's intricacies and to better understand the principal characters, religious and otherwise. As Karras finds himself over his head, he is assigned Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) a veteran expert on demonic possession..Together they head for a final, epic confrontation with Merrin's old nemesis demon that can only eventually be overcome by Karras' tragic act of self-sacrifice. At film's end we come to realize this was also essential for the man to come to terms with his own beliefs and doubts.

"The Exorcist" doesn't resort to the genre's usual clichés to frighten an audience, nor does it needs to. It takes its time immersing us on the subject, which it treats dead seriously; there's not a moment of lightness or humor to be found. Director William Friedkin employs many cinematic techniques to generate a sense of wrongness. Some, like the numerous shots of closed doors, or the use of subliminal images, are very subtle; many others are obvious. This is one of the rare horror pictures in which the day scenes are just as horrific as those set at night. The filmmakers show no scruples about providing unbearable sights and notions (think of the involvement of Karras' mother in the plot). They seem to be on a mission to unsettle the moviegoer. Nothing is off limits. Once the show is over, the nine-minute exorcism itself feels like it lasted much longer (as we would say here in Mexico, it does feels nine minutes long, but as if lived underwater).

The film came out during the early 1970s, a revolutionary period of cinema in with films that would have been unthinkable just a few years before, such as"A Clockwork Orange" and "Last Tango in Paris." According to Wikipedia, Blatty based his novel on a real life case that allegedly occurred to a boy in the 1940's, though reportedly it was nowhere near as extreme. Choosing a child as the victim clearly increased the impact of the role as did the additional fact that the victim was made female; we're not prepared to see a little girl acting in such a disturbing way). It's hard not to wonder whether the casting of a young child in such an intense role constituted some sort of child abuse but then again, Blair was selected among 600 other hopefuls, any of whom would have required parental consent to take the part.

The central predicament in "The Exorcist" is that Karras is only able to find his way by living the most horrible of experiences and saving the girl with his improvised final decision, an act of blind faith. It's worth noting that in Blatty's novel, he wasn't the only character whose views on religion were affected by this ordinance. According to Wikipedia, Blatty was disappointed that the ending "did not suggest that the Ellen Burstyn role had been drawn into God's orbit precisely because of the horrendous experience she has endured".

Considering that Blatty wrote the screenplay himself, it would seem that his priorities differed from Friedkin's. Blatty seems to be under the impression that God's existence can be re-affirmed by the individual's awareness of the existence of evil and even thought the movie unquestionably awakes the viewer's senses, I have my doubts it achieved that goal, despite the fact that it provides as happy an ending as it possibly could. Perhaps Blatty's intentions got lost somewhere among the excessive gore which ironically, may represent the best explanation for the picture's commercial success. That millions saw it makes about as much sense as the idea of long lines of people hoping to get waterboarded. I can see it appealing only to that part of us that stops and looks when passing by a car accident.

My first viewing of "The Exorcist" came at age 17, after years of listening to all sorts of tales about it with disbelief. As the film progressed I remember asking myself what possible reason could be keeping me from leaving the theater. Even though there was no good answer, I chose to remain. Perhaps this was about an idiotic self-challenge of sorts. As we grow older it becomes harder for movies to scare us but I find "The Exorcist" to be the sole exception; repeated viewings diminish none of its impact.

On balance, it has brought me more harm than good as I believe it is despair that it is best at provoking. I can rationalize its morale, but never fully appreciate it. Years later "The Passion of the Christ" came out with its own share of disturbing, demonic scenes and yet it managed to leave me with the most positive of marks. I tend to see "The Exorcist" simply as the one recurring nightmare left.

Some years ago, a question in one of Roger's Answer Man columns expressed disbelief that some young people were witnessed laughing at a reissue of the film. I believe there are only two ways of looking at this: either they felt overwhelmed, and their laughter represented a defense mechanism, or all sensibility had been lost by them. We've been bombarded with so much gore and violence for some to lose all traces of sensibility, but I tend to favor the first explanation. I have a friend who once told me this is the first film he recalls seeing as a child. That sounds to me like skipping the tricycle and learning to drive on an eighteen-wheeler instead. Actually, he turned out to be a very nice and normal guy.

I would like to thank my old friend Mario Zavala for pointing me to Blatty's article and encouraging me to write this.

The Metaphysics of Digital Mysticism

2012-01-20T22:42:52Z

• Omer M. Mozaffar

The sunglasses, scowls and black leather make it easy to forget that the Wachowski Brothers' mega-popular "The Matrix" (1999) is a dystopian superhero movie, if that makes any sense. The story is an exciting but familiar origins story. We experience and recognize its Frankenstein mythology telling us that our creations, the machines, have conquered us. We see its Orwell/Kafka environment, sometimes taken straight from Orson Welles' "The Trial." And we appreciate its fantastically choreographed martial arts (at least early on, paying homage to video games and Hong Kong movies). And, the philosopher will appreciate the conscious exercise in semiotics. Perhaps, the greatest fun of this movie is the popcorn entertainment. But, for me, even though the movie invests itself so much in its coolness, the overarching appeal of "The Matrix" is its mysticism.
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The machines have evolved into increasingly complex insects, and may someday evolve into humans, who would then construct something that conquers them. The zombies here are not moaning, dismembered nuisances, but are well dressed adults with combed hair. The Messiah is a skeptical biracial computer hacker supported by a rainbow coalition of cyber-warriors.

When we reduce God from a conscious, active, interacting reality to an abstract concept, then the end result is an agnosticism encaged in arbitrary dogmatics. Meaning, for many of us: God is there somewhere as a concept in our minds, but He is largely irrelevant, and imprisoned by rules we have established for Him, rules preventing any escape into the rest of our consciousness and being. Further, when we reduce our personal relationships to abstract concepts, then the result is two-fold. First, we experience an apathetic somnambulance. Second, destruction gets interpreted as mere ugliness. Meaning, for many of us, life is a purposeless collage of sights and sounds we are sleepwalking through - rather, daydreaming through - alongside countless acquaintances but with very few friends, while hoping for something but not caring. And, as we devour the earth with our petty appetites, we avoid considering the legacy because it is not a happy thought. Test it. In those scenes where countless people die, how much do you feel it, if at all?

Taking the point further, "The Matrix" replaces the connection between the human hearts with terminal screens. I feel as though I just described 70% of the college students I have met, and 90% of the high-schoolers I have met; I don't expect that these numbers would have been that high in 1999. Even in my case, I spend far more hours in the day looking through the smooth, bright, colorful screens on my electronic devices than I do looking at other textured, breathing humans, face to face. I have multiple classes each week online, looking at the pixelated expressions of my sometimes pixilated students, and they feel almost real.

On the flip-side, many of us yearn for the beyond. Part of the appeal of the Jedi in the "Star Wars" movies is the sense that they have tapped into that unseen and can make use of it. But, that is also part of the appeal of "The Godfather" movies, in that the Dons have tapped into something (perhaps base) about our humanity and can control it, without any need for mysticism. And, part of the appeal of "The Matrix" is the same: there is entry into and control over the unseen world. In "The Matrix," however, the unseen world is not the metaphysical, but the metadigital.

In addition, many of us yearn not for the beyond, but for interaction. Video games provide us with full lifetimes. The DVD sets of season-long television shows provide family members we can invest in. Online videos clips provide us with acquaintances; pornography is the lonely man's or woman's intimate conversation.

And, then there is the ultimate tool for reaching the beyond and for interaction: religion, and within religion we have mysticism. With the digital realm, we can expect, then, a rise of a cyber-Christianity, cyber-Judaism, cyber-Islam, cyber-Hinduism, cyber-Buddhism, etc., as well as cyber-religions that have no embodiment in the analog world. The seeds have already been planted on websites and video games. The question, then, according to "The Matrix," is: will they be constructed as organic processes resulting from human yearnings, or will they be merely opiates serving the greater system?

But "The Matrix" ventures further than religion, into mysticism. We often lump together many diverging traditions into "mysticism" or "spirituality." We pigeonhole these diverging traditions - the Gnostic, Hasid, Kabbalist, Sufi, Vedant, Yogi, and Zen - together as the stuff of Joseph Campbell, as though they are the same rose with different names. But, the goal, for example, of the Sufi is in some ways the complete opposite of the goal of Zen. Though this practice of merging traditions is akin to grouping all novels together into one category, one point that is common among all of them is that they branch from paths that already assert that there is more to reality than this material realm. Regardless of whether or not there is any truth to any of the claims of any of these paths, these particular mystical traditions emanate for those who seek more than the ritualistic practices of the masses. If the masses seek a connection with the unseen, the aspirants of these mystical schools seek entrance into it. Now, in our digital era, "The Matrix" expands the aspirations into a virtual mysticism. Again, this is an expected result. "It's the questions that drive us," says Trinity. In the language of mysticism, it is yearning. As Rumi says, "Do not seek water; seek thirst." The mystics have larger questions: there is something more, what is it? Some mystics, because of their enormous curiosities, seek a rush to feel real. That is the story of Mr. Anderson (Neo).

Interestingly, according to "The Matrix," most of the primary rules of the digital mystical process continue from the analog realm. Meaning, everyone has a worldview. We form understandings about what is and is not possible, and these understandings are mostly dogma resulting from our perceptions of patterns. Just as the world around us is fully logical and comprehensible, so too is the digital world. But, we often restrict the possibilities of the world without justification. Thus, we need to remove those unnecessary restrictive dogmas. In Yoda's language, "You must unlearn what you have learned." In other words, knowledge is a prison as much as it is liberation.

Next, when the aspirant is ready, the guide - Morpheus - finds the aspirant and leads, exposing the aspirant to the world beyond. The key here, however, is that from the perspective of those locked in the material world, the world beyond is imagination. Thus, the concepts of the beyond are, from the perspective of physics, nothing but metaphysics and imagination. But, central to the mystical path is the reality that the world beyond is the actual center - the actual reality - and this world is its shadow. Those who pursue further pursue deeper, discovering more advanced teachers and oracles.

The challenge of the prison of rules is, according to "The Matrix," three fold. First, the structural problem: physics. Even though quantum physics allows the possibilities of numerous religious claims in a way that Newtonian physics could not, it is not physics that prevents us from breaking its rules, but our belief that rules are there in the first place.

Second, inevitability and fate work against free will. If physics is the dogmatic prison of the material, then determinism is the dogmatic prison of choice, further limiting our possibilities.

Third, the devils oppose any growth. In some of the mystical schools, most of the devils are internal. In "The Matrix," moving beyond the devil of skepticism, they are sentinels and agents seeking to protect the system, at times employing failed aspirants. And, it is here we find such hacker groups as Anonymous. They take on the role of fighting off the digital devils, often by way of attacking the real and perceived analog devils of corruption in the system.

But, most central to the spirituality of "The Matrix" is that all mysticism is at the service of (a) promoting the Messianic One, and (b) liberating the masses. Some schools of mysticism place emphasis on a past savior that shall return. Others focus on a future savior that shall appear. Others speak of a savior, whose appearance bears little relevance to the here and now. And, some discount any notions of such a figure. But, some of the mystical schools require spiritual development to work by way of abandoning the masses (and their perceived corruptions). Other schools require immersion among the masses in the process of liberating them from the prisons of the world. Meaning, some mystics live in caves, while others make spirituality and social justice inseparable.

Now, the next two "Matrix" films take different directions in this digital spirituality. That will be the subject of future essays. The goal here is to exclusively explore the first film.

So, was this analysis anything but academic self arousal? Perhaps. But, considering the leaps in cyber-consciousness we have taken since the rise of social media and electronic mobility, we can expect that we will further develop alternate identities and lives in the digital realm. And, consequently, we will develop cyber-religion, cyber-spirituality, and cyber-mysticism. I remember a few decades ago, when urban legends spread about people who lost their sense of reality through role-playing games. Here, we are speaking of something that in some ways is far more substantial, yet in other ways, just as flimsy. The web encompasses so much of our imagination, yet we are repeatedly told that the internet is nearing its limits in traffic. We might not be wearing sunglasses in the digital world, but I think our eyes will hurt. But, all in all, the goal of dystopian films is to prophecy a bleak future, whether we like it or not. This one, however, happens to have a lot of hope to aspire to, because it is also a superhero movie, if that makes any sense.

Page design by Marie Haws

The right hand of great directors

2012-01-18T09:53:02Z

• Anath White in Los Angeles

Awards season again. Last year, as you may recall, a many months pregnant Natalie Portman received the Oscar for Best Actress for "Black Swan." Her lithesome acceptance speech, without notes, thanked many colleagues she knew had helped her stand there. As both a lifelong moviegoer and a worker on films, my spirit lifted at these words: "There are people on films that no one ever talks about, that are your heart and soul every day, including Joe Reidy, our incredible A.D..." Along with so many others, I was thrilled by her sentiment -- and especially pleased for Joe Reidy.

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We had worked together on "Talk Radio" (1988) when I served as a technical advisor to director Oliver Stone. That extraordinary experience was my first time observing an Assistant Director in action. (Before this, I couldn't have defined what an "A.D." -- or most of the 100 or so people listed in credits -- do in the long and challenging hours that occur before a film arrives in a theatre.)

Years ago, I pitched an article to the late, lamented film journal, Premiere. It was a cameo about Joe Reidy, tied to the opening of Martin Scorsese's film, "The Age of Innocence" (1993). My first story for the magazine, it seemed easy enough. Probably a nice bit achieved rather quickly.

Little could I know that the Scorsese film would be delayed around 18 months --- enough time for "Premiere's" founding editor Susan Lyne, who'd commissioned my piece, to depart, and for the magazine to be extensively redesigned, dropping 'Cameo.' But I always believed in the piece with its worthy subject; I'm incorporating some of that material here.

On an afternoon in the early 1990s I phoned Martin Scorsese. Our conversation was entirely about Joe Reidy, with whom he'd then collaborated on five films; I was also interviewing Oliver Stone about him. Scorsese was articulate and generous with his time, telling me of "a kind of trust. Joe has a kind of control and objectivity. I even appreciate hearing bad news from him because he knows how to deliver it. He reminds me of Edgar Kennedy, a comic actor in the Laurel and Hardy films, who was kind of the foil. He was known as 'the slow burn' - - he had a wonderful reaction of annoyance and anger, but totally kept in control. Joe Reidy reminds me of Edgar Kennedy's slow burn."

The Director's Guild of America offers this definition: "The First Assistant Director (A.D.) is the Director's right hand. A.D.'s are responsible for the assembly of all the elements needed for filming and for the daily operation of the shooting set. Their objective is to provide the Director with everything he or she needs to put his or her vision on film. Their duties are supervisory, organizational, administrative - and multifarious. Working within the structure that is governed by budgets, union and guild contracts, industry custom, and so on, they make schedules, attend to the cast, direct extras, oversee the crew as each shot is prepared, create detailed reports of each day's events, among many other things, and are looked to by cast and crew to solve the many problems that continually arise."

Many call Joe Reidy the best A.D. in the country. The first choice of top tier directors like Stone and Scorsese, Joe is always working, and his film credits are tough to beat: Stone (4), Robert Redford (3), Francis Ford Coppola (2), Ridley Scott, Steven Soderbergh, Adrian Lyne, Volker Schlondorff, Robert De Niro (1 each). And with Scorsese - now a whopping 13.

Reidy makes it look so easy that visitors to a set often ask, "What does that guy do?" On "Talk Radio," with his spectacles and longish, brown choirboy hair, the Ohio native seemed younger than his 36 years, and hardly the crucial participant that he is on every film. Stone once joked about "Joe's bland '50s look." "Roll sound, please," he calls out, invariably politely, or "going again." Dozens come to attention, instantly silent.

Reidy may have been born with an ideal temperament for this job but admits "I've practiced. It's important to create the absolute perfect atmosphere, a special place, for the director and actors to work. It can be quite delicate, like being a referee or intermediary." Or a psychiatrist, patiently smoothing the inevitable frictions among many colorful - and sometimes out-sized - personalities colliding on a movie set. None matters more than the director's, and for each Reidy "attempts to be a bit of a chameleon."

After NYU Film School, Reidy aced an arduous exam for the two-year Assistant Directors' Training Program sponsored by the Directors' Guild. The jobs followed. He describes the position as "like an aide-de-camp or the stage manager on a play -- the person caught in the middle, trying to please both the director, in helping accomplish his or her vision, and the producer, in accomplishing the production goals of the schedule, budget, etc."

About Stone, Reidy observed, "Oliver is interested in immediacy - the set, the actors, all of his surroundings. I don't need to know exactly what he's doing. In fact, he'd rather that I not; I could be sloppy anticipating him. What's next, he knows -- but I have to find out." Oliver Stone calls this "playing cat and mouse. He gets inside your head. That's the mark of a great A.D.: the ability to read your mind. You could get spoiled working with Joe, I think, like eating too much chocolate. You could get to a shortcut phase."

Reidy says Scorsese is a near opposite, and "in a way, very easy. Marty has a precise vision in his head, and he shares it with us in shooting the movie." "The Age of Innocence" brought special challenges. Adapting Edith Wharton's novel of America's upper class, circa 1880, meant portraying the etiquette of the day, including the proper method of hand-kissing, and such seemingly mundane actions as entering rooms. Reidy felt like he was "in a foreign country. The extras playing servants had to go in and out almost like Kabuki -- like shadows moving. Doing their jobs, yet being invisible." Very different from, say, "Goodfellas."

It's been many years since Joe Reidy and I had spoken so I used social media to reach him again. We go back and forth with emails, voice-mails, texts, the standard modern routine, until we finally connected by phone. Turns out he's still burning brightly (albeit with a bit less hair), A.D.'ing nearly 30 more big features, while also garnering Producer credits on some, Second Unit Director credits on others. An altogether admirable career in film.

Reidy tells me he hasn't worked with Oliver Stone since "JFK," but hopes to again sometime. "Oliver asked me several times but there was always a scheduling conflict." His most recent film with Martin Scorsese was 2010's "Shutter Island." "Marty's taking a break from me," he says, adding he feels they're "kindred spirits" and will do more in the future.

Recent credits include "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (the late Sidney Lumet's final film), "Revolutionary Road," "Che" (Parts One and Two), and "Black Swan," with "The Dictator," starring Sacha Baron Cohen, and "Premium Rush," written and directed by David Koepp, both due out in 2012.

Since he's not able to say much publicly right now about those upcoming pictures, I return to "Black Swan," that shape-shifter of a film this past year. Grossing $329 million worldwide thus far, earning 107 nominations and 46 awards, it secured Darren Aronofsky's place in he firmament of A-list directors for some time to come.

"Black Swan," Reidy says, "...was a very interesting experience. Darren, like Marty, is very prepared. He's an artist. And he's done his homework. He'd learned a lot about ballet before shooting started."

I comment that Aronofsky is still something of a "younger director," to which Reidy replies that he comes off "lots more experienced than just having done a handful of movies. He has a vision for his film and he knows how to achieve it. And working with Matthew (Libatique, Aronofsky's gifted cinematographer), their close artistic relationship was a pleasure to observe."

Reidy describes the film's two key locations, at SUNY/Purchase and Lincoln Center. Scheduling on the low-budget $13 million film had to work around the ballet season and all those holiday performances of "The Nutcracker." The stage at Lincoln Center was spacious, relatively easy to shoot in. But the dressing rooms! So much happens in Nina's tight, mirror-filled room. And they were all crammed in: Aronofsky, Portman, Reidy, Libatique (operating hand-held), trying to shoot in that tiny, reflective space. Reidy allows that visual effects were employed a couple of times in post-production to "erase" some inadvertent reflections of the working crew.

He also wondered as they shot how the film would come together. "Darren was pushing boundaries, mixing genres. You could tell the acting was excellent. Really tour de force. But how would the horror effects work? The story? You often can't tell when you're in the middle of shooting. We were doing such bold things. I didn't know."

The end result, the reaction? "I was just really happy about it. It was a wonderful experience."

I asked him to single out a particularly challenging film. Not surprisingly, he replies, "There have been many. "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988), when we didn't have much money. And "Gangs of New York" (2002) --- there are two huge fight scenes and a riot (the Draft Riots of 1863) in that film."

To see what he means, one need only to check youtube for a few minutes of the first fight scene, where there are more than 300 people, running, falling, throwing knives and slashing at each other.

Reidy: "We shot that film at Cinecitta Studios in Rome, creating a real neighborhood...," which represented the Five Points neighborhood of New York, circa 1830s at the film's start, shifting to the 1860s by the end. "The majority of the crew were Americans and Italians. There were many months of pre-production. We started casting months ahead because casting, even of the extras, was very complicated." The people hired had to look the parts; as so many were Italian, lighter-complected Italians had to be found who were believable as lighter-complected Irish Catholics.

"It was a highly coordinated team effort, including my counterpart - an Italian First A.D., and another 8 or 9 Second and Third A.D.'s, speaking both English and Italian. We set up a stunt training camp, with an American stunt coordinator and an Italian stunt coordinator. The extras were mainly very skilled stunt people, who spoke mainly Italian or English, with a few Czechs and Slovenians, and a few American service people. Many had to be trained to use the period-appropriate knives and weapons. We broke the 300 or so people into groups of 50 or 100. Then we paired them off to be worked with together. And the costumes --- every costume was unique by design, and important. Even if they were background extras, they had to behave properly and look like they belonged there."

Within the huge cast, with co-star Cameron Diaz and supporting players such as Jim Broadbent, Liam Neeson and John C. Reilly, Leonardo Di Caprio and Daniel Day-Lewis have the central roles.

Daniel Day-Lewis (with whom Reidy first worked on "The Age of Innocence") "is always highly prepared. He inhabits his character, becoming the person completely. He took his costume home to get accustomed to it and kept his accent the entire shoot. He's a very serious person. Quiet, polite and stays somewhat off to himself to do his work." Leonardo Di Caprio (with whom Reidy has now worked on 5 films) "is a bit more engaged with the crew but also very prepared and focused. Daniel and Leo have the same work ethic and worked very hard, including doing hard physical training, for their roles on this film. I love working with both of them."

"Marty would pre-plan the shots, the angles, the intercutting, each section of a fight. Some scenes would be rehearsed, some tested. And then we would shoot. These scenes took weeks and weeks. So much was going on at once. And there was no green screen. No digitized people. It was all real."

And Joe Reidy, right under Scorsese, was responsible for all of it.

Were there fraught moments, times when something went really wrong? "Mostly, you worry about somebody getting hurt. We were fairly lucky...Otherwise, if you've prepared well and have a strong team, the fraught moments are really about a general pressure to get the movie done. Concerns are about being on time, getting a shot before you lose the light. The pressures of going over budget, over schedule. Pressure. All the time, pressure."

Shooting a film is "so much about relationships. A director needs to figure out how to use me and my experience. To see what I can do for him or her. And I need to read between the lines with a director, to anticipate what's needed or wanted before it's asked. I like to work in the European style, where the A.D. has some input into the creative aspects of the shoot. Otherwise it's mechanical, like a timekeeper or policeman, and less interesting to me. The communication on a film is always better at the end than the beginning."

And now -- after all this time in the industry - is he still as engaged by the work? "I have as much enthusiasm as when I started," Joe Reidy says. "I need to feel a movie speaks to me, is meaningful in some way, and that I'm working with a great director. That renews my faith in my job, and in cinema. I've been incredibly lucky. I've worked with some of the finest directors on some of the top projects. It doesn't get better than that."

Joe Reidy on the set of Scorsese's "Gangs of New York"

The Heart is a Lonely Fighter

2012-01-12T23:27:37Z

• Omer M. Mozaffar

Thinking about this movie, I had to go to a thesaurus to find any synonyms for "underdog." Try it. The point is that I had little interest in watching another dark horse movie because they tend to follow the same unique long shot formula to such a degree that there are not many synonyms even for the word that describes them. Further, the admittedly exciting trailer for Gavin O'Connor's geometrically constructed "Warrior" (2011) seemed to give away all of the film's secrets, including the most preposterous plot points. More than that, all the villains in these Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) matches seemed too familiar and too cartoonish. But, a few friends recommended the movie; then, my fellow Far Flung Correspondent from Cairo, Wael Khairy, appreciated this movie somewhere in his list of the Best Films of 2011.

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And, when the film opened with the all too familiar shots of small town factories and churches, my skepticism against any originality only grew. But, Wael was right: this is a great movie. This film is indeed an underdog movie, and the story is indeed appropriately preposterous, but it has only one real villain: pain, of the body and heart, of course. Now that I think about it, maybe pain was the real villain in most of the "Rocky" movies also.

"Warrior" takes us through three character driven subplots that all meet in the same empty chain link hexagon. There is no overarching plot, except that Sparta must find a winner. Like most movies about fighters, it is the story of broken souls seeking healing in an arena of broken bodies. The secondary characters are mostly happy and healthy and eager, though the central characters spend plenty of time brooding. Nick Nolte is a recovering alcoholic working beyond his thousandth day of sobriety. Joel Edgerton is a physics teacher struggling to pay his upside down mortgage. Tom Hardy is a mysterious recluse returning home. And, the three face each other at Sparta, the world's largest UFC MMA (Ultimate Fighting Championship) competition. One seeks redemption. Another seeks the jackpot. The third seeks redemption through the jackpot.

Does the trailer reveal too much? It does and it does not. Any moviegoer with even a little experience will not be surprised by the final showdown. Should I tell you the secret? No, I won't. Still, the film is thoroughly predictable. The secondary characters are too animated for this film to be anything but optimistic. But, you know the alcoholic stumbles closer and closer to relapse. You know the physics teacher is going to have moments with his family, fearing the future. And, you know the recluse is going to have an elaborate story hidden somewhere in the capillaries in his heart. And each of those scenes appears on schedule, tugging at all the tender spots. The moments are completely expected, but they are played well. Very well. The movie works because it is more than the story of broken men seeking money and/or redemption. It shows modest men struggling against the rules of the big institutions: the bank, the school, the military, the media, and (to lesser degree) the church. Further, the film repeatedly portrays reunions. Athletes reconnect with their coaches, rival fighters have rematches, sons reconnect with their father, a soldier reconnects with someone he spots in an online video, and it seems as though every male is a "brother." Most of all, however, "Warrior" succeeds because it's the story of a broken institution - the broken family - unexpectedly repairing itself through a series of fortunate events.

Beyond this, the real secret is neither the plot, nor the showdown. The film's secret is Tom Hardy. All of the characters in the movie are so likeable, in the way that we tend to like poking, blue collar Irish guys in the movies. But Tom Hardy excels with his blunt, vulnerable ruggedness, recalling the subtext of anger in Russell Crowe's performance as "Gladiator" and Stallone's subtext of woundedness as "Rocky." Unlike Crowe and Stallone in those roles, however, Hardy's Tommy Riordan seems like someone with the ability to explode, but has exhausted himself, now replacing moments of fury with sighs, hoping to exhale away thick memories of dysfunction. I imagine he could spend some time with Mike Tyson, staring at pigeons.

The movie, like so many such films inspired by "Rocky" pays its homage. Among the challengers, one is a Mohawked competitor recalling Clubber Lang ("Rocky III") and another is an unstoppable Russian, recalling Ivan Drago ("Rocky IV"). Like the training sequences in the "Rocky" saga, one fighter trains in a luxurious gym with a Beethoven soundtrack, while the other pounds old truck tires. Further, if "The Karate Kid" shows a sort of "Rocky doing Karate," and "Rudy" shows "Rocky doing Football" and "Hoosiers" shows "Rocky doing High School Basketball," and "Moneyball" shows "Rocky managing a Baseball Team," then this film shows "Rocky doing MMA." The difference here is that in "Warrior" all the central characters are underdogs, as though we are watching Rocky fight Rocky.

I wonder about the future of MMA. Like most theologies, it traces itself to ancient traditions that may not hold any organic relationship. It seems so hyperkinetic that I wonder if it can some day give birth to a Muhammad Ali or those political rivalries we watched play out in the boxing ring. In terms of the filmmaking, however, I have complained again and again that movie fighting lacks choreography, resulting in clunky cuts that narrate but do not perform. This film is no different. While some fight films sacrifice opera for MTV, this film seems to take a butcher shop style of pugilism. It relies too often on body slams, miscellaneous names for moves I do not know, and a whole lot of crunching and tearing. That might be the approach of this immensely popular sport, but as a film method it does not work.

So, in my search for a satisfactory synonym for "underdog" I found only "dark horse" and "longshot" (also the name of a recent underdog movie, featuring "Rocky as a high school girl playing boys football"). And, I haven't seen enough movies to agree with Wael that "Warrior" is one of the best films of the year, but it does take some unique turns and is certainly one of my favorites.

Film stills and page design by Marie Haws,

A Simple Plan

2012-01-08T01:38:39Z

• Seongyong Cho in South Korea

Sometimes ordinary people becoming evil are more frightening than Dr. Hannibal Lector or Frank Booth. Villains like them are downright scary, but they are basically outsiders with a monstrous nature beyond our common sense. In contrast, the characters in Sam Raimi's crime thriller "A Simple Plan" (1998) are nice, ordinary people we can identify with, at least in the beginning. We can recognize their human wishes, desires, and motives. We can understand why they are driven into the plot while it's getting bloodier and more complicated. As a result, it is frightening to observe them doing horrible things, and one question immediately pops up in our minds - what would I do if I were in their circumstance?
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Their life in some small rural town in the Midwestern region of US is the emblem of a simple American life. In the opening narration, looking back at what happened during the the darkest time in his life, Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton) muses on how plain but happy his life was until that "lucky" incident happened to him and others. He has a decent job, though it does not pay him much, and he has a loving wife, and he also has friends and neighbors who like him. This is indeed a nice life to anyone on the earth; as one short South Korean review which I read twelve years ago pointed out, I can imagine them as the people in those weekend country soap dramas shown on South Korean TV when I was young.

A fateful incident happens during the afternoon on New Year's Eve. After visiting the grave of Hank's deceased father at the town cemetery, Hank, his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), and Jacob's friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) are on the way to their homes together in Jacob's pickup truck. Suddenly a fox, with a hen in his mouth runs across the road in front of the truck, and they decide to go after that fox which runs into a nearby forest. They fail to capture it, but they stumble upon something more tempting than that in the middle of the forest.; they find a small plane which has crashed into the forest, and, besides the dead pilot, it contains a bag containing 4.4 million dollars in cash.

At first, Hank thinks they should call the police, but Jacob and Lou, who have been nearly broke, have a different idea. As far as they know, no one is looking for the plane and the money around their town -- so why not keep the money for themselves? In their view, this is a good chance to realize each one's own American dream, and, tempted by this possibility, Hank ends up being persuaded by them with one condition; he will keep the money in safety for a while until it is confirmed 100% that nobody is looking for it. Then, they will get each own share and live the town forever for avoiding any suspicion.

As the title suggests, this sounds like quite a simple plan to them, but, as we have already guessed, it turns out to be not so simple as they initially thought (it seems they have never watched "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) - too bad for them). Thanks to their greed, foolishness, and mistrust, the plan begins to go wrong right from the very moment when they load the money to Jacob's pickup truck. The troubles keep coming, and they try to cover their tracks and secure their safety, but, every time they try, their plight grows bigger and bigger, like a huge snowball rolling down a snowy hill. When they start to realize how deeply they're stuck with what they have done, it is already too late for them to go back to where they were; they must do anything by any means necessary to not be arrested by the police.

After watching the film on VHS in early 2000, I found Scott B. Smith's novel at the campus library and read it out of curiosity. The novel is one of the most bone-chilling crime thrillers I read during the last decade; it was thrilling to witness the straitened circumstance of the characters getting out of control step by step, and it was also terrifying to observe the dark portrayal of human nature under psychological pressure. No wonder Stephen King lamented that Smith has so far published only one novel besides this work. His second work "Ruins," which was made into a feature film a few years ago, is another taut thriller with a psychological trap squeezing its characters. The premise is far more unreal, but their mental ordeal is as horrible as the creature menacing them.

With the adapted screenplay written by Smith himself, the director Sam Raimi made a first-class thriller. It has suspenseful scenes to be remembered, and some of them are still capable of making my body tighten. The most memorable scene to me is the one where one conflicted character must choose between other two, both of whom he cares about. While watching this scene last night, I was again marveled by the excellent jobs done by Thornton and Paxton. Their facial expressions and their dialogue say one thing while implying other things, so they keep us guessing and agitated till the payoff finally arrives. I still wonder to some degree - was Jacob's behavior just an act from the beginning or was it more complex than that?

The movie deserves to be categorized as "country noir." The best recent example is "Winter's Bone" (2010), whose heroine faces the darkness of her rural town and its ruthless criminals while searching for her missing father. The bleak atmosphere of a Midwestern town on winter days is well-maintained; a bunch of crows on bare tree branches render an ominous tone to the snow-covered background, and the characters discover the evil inside themselves while struggling in the twisted plot and helplessly sinking into a moral quagmire.

"A Simple Plan" sounds a little similar in some respects to "Fargo" (1996), by the Coen brothers. Not so surprisingly, "A Simple Plan" was mainly shot in Minnesota, the same region where "Fargo" was shot, and Raimi actually got some advice on the location shooting from the Coen brothers, who have been his close friends since the early days in their careers. As a matter of fact, you can easily imagine its finale with Marge Gunderson saying to one of the characters that there is more to life than a little money. I think she would probably solve the case even before the third act of the plot begins, but the town sheriff in this film (Chelcie Ross) is so gullible that he does not sense anything suspicious from his dear neighbors, let alone the outsider whose questionable identity is the major source of the nail-biting suspense in the third act along with several bullets that may not fit into one gun.

Amid the messy situation depicted in the movie, there is a bleeding heart inside the story, and he is Hank's pathetic loser brother Jacob. The novel version of Jacob is a lot different from Billy Bob Thornton's appearance (in the book, Jacob is more like Brent Briscoe, at least in my imagination), and his role in the story is considerably changed in the film. I don't know anything about how that change was made in the adaptation process, but I can say it was a good choice, because such a dark drama like this film is more effective when it has the character watching what's going on in horror while standing by as the hero crashes into an abyss.

Thornton's harrowing performance portrays Jacob as a shabby man with simple wishes. Maybe Jacob is dim and unwise like his drinking buddy Lou, but he turns out to be not as stupid as we thought at first. It may be okay to him to take away the money when nobody looks at him, but what he and his brother do for keeping it begins to trouble him. Their crimes have already taken a toll on his mind, so he desperately clings to his wishes which can be fulfilled by money.

Thornton has a sad scene with Paxton in which Jacob tells his brother about only girl he ever dated. Though it turned out that the relationship was part of cruel bet, he didn't mind about that and he was grateful to her, because it was one of the few happy times he's had in his miserable life. Jacob tries to believe that he could be happy like that againwith the money, but the circumstances become more unbearable to him, so he arrives at the decision which results in the heartbreaking climactic sequence near the finale.

Bill Paxton, who is good as a corruptible decent man, and Bridget Fonda, who plays Hank's manipulative wife, are also crucial in making the drama in the film work. As average decent people, they've been content with their mundane daily lives, but now the money brings out the discontent and other negative things hidden inside them, so they gradually become a couple of weasels who will stop at nothing for their safety and, above all, for the money. Hank is at a loss about what he has become while losing the conscience his brother retains, but he also finds that, once he crosses the line, the rest is, to his horror, very easy to do.

Fonda's character is the most unlikable character in the movie because she is indirectly responsible for the chaos in the film, but I feel a little sympathy for her. As the Lady MacBeth/famme fatale of the story, Fonda gets her own moment when she is at the hospital right after giving birth to her daughter; when she and her husband are left alone in the room, she immediately spins her brain to concoct a new scheme for them while at the same time showing tender mother love for her child. Later, there is a bitter monologue in which she lets out her dissatisfaction with a life that has no visible bright future, and I think many middle-class people at this hard time can understand and identify with her frustration and desire.

While operating ruthlessly within its logic, "A Simple Plan" is ultimately a morality play fueled by the dark side of human nature. We all were taught that if we come across a bag of money, we should call the police, but I am not entirely sure about what I would do if I were in their shoes. Thanks to this film and the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men"( 2007), I think I will more likely to do as my teachers and my parents told me, but we human beings are capable of anything.

The characters in the movie eventually learn that truth while paying a cost far bigger than they have ever imagined. Perhaps they can continue to lead their lives while other people around them will never suspect about what kind of people they really are, but, as Hank bitterly admits in the closing narration, they cannot fool themselves because the consequences of their acts will always be with them for the rest of their lives and they know all too well what they are capable of.

Sandwiched between two major successes in Raimi's career, "A Simple Plan" can be easily overlooked. Its critical success was a turning point for Raimi; it helped him move on from being the director of "The Evil Dead" (1981) to being the director of "Spider-man 2" (2004). Though "Spider-man 3" (2007) was a disappointing end to his trilogy, Raimi recently proved to us that he has lost none of the horror/comedy skill of his early days by making "Drag Me to Hell" (2009), where he plays us like a drum with the sense of diabolical fun. I hope he will get another good chance to play us like a piano as he did in this film.

"A Simple Plan" is not streaming free, but can be purchased for streaming through Amazon Instant, iTunes and Vudu. Netflix has it available via mail.

Taking the Plunge

2012-01-08T00:08:54Z

• Michał Oleszczyk in Krakow

Some tricky music rights issues finally got resolved, and so Jerzy Skolimowski's "Deep End" is back on the map, and with a recent run at Brooklyn's BAMcinématek under its belt to prove it. A legendary specter for years - lusted after but near-impossible to track down and watch - it now arrives as part of the adventurous BFI Flipside series in a lush DVD/Blu-ray edition that will have you gasping equally at Jane Asher's copper-red coiffure and John Moulder-Brown's baby blue eyes (the latter firmly fixed on the former throughout the movie).
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The story concerns a fifteen-year-old working-class virgin boy (Moulder) getting his first job at one of London's public bathhouses and undergoing a near-grotesque hell of sexual confusion. Most of it is due to the presence of his gorgeous co-worker Susan, played by Asher as a supreme oxymoron of a tease: down-to-earth and ethereal at the same time. Mike's obsession with the girl, as well as his bottled-up jealousy over the two men she's dating, reaches a frenzy once he finds a go-go-club cut-out that may or may not be a photo of her.

As he chases Susan down the subway, demanding to know whether she's capable of something as morally dubious as posing for nude pictures, he carries the cut-out with him, half-covering its black-and-white "filth" with his own coat. The violent confrontation that ensues is observed by none other but the director himself, making a Hitchcockian cameo turn and - in a masterful in-joke to delight his still-enslaved compatriots - deeply enveloped in an issue of the most stalwart communist Polish daily of its time, "Trubuna Ludu" ("People's Tribune").

As if this showdown wasn't enough, there's a near-symbolic final section, in which Mike and Susan are forced to look for a diamond lost in a pile of snow (an irony Andrzej Wajda, of "Ashes and Diamonds" fame, must have appreciated). Once the precious stone is found, Mike places it in his mouth, thus coming up with the only possible way of making his body desirable for Susan. What happens next both cashes in on the sense of casual foreboding that pervades the whole movie, as well as elevates it to a new level of lyrical abstraction.

With the possible exception of Louis Malle's "Murmur of the Heart " (1971), it's hard for me to think of another film that is so successful at depicting adolescent craving for sex as a form of comic predicament - while still rendering it acutely painful. Mike's erotic misadventures include a hilarious session of roughing up by the voluptuous Diana Dors, as well as paying a brief visit to an immobilized prostitute, with a huge "Dzięki!" (Polish for "Thanks!") scribbled across her leg cast. Nowhere is the movie's electric ambivalence about sex on a clearer display than in the porn-cinema sequence, which has Mike cruelly teased by Susan, even as a hilarious spoof of a sex-flick (shot by Skolimowski himself and scored with Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries") unspools before the despondent-looking patrons.

Skolimowski's own background in painting is showcased throughout "Deep End," with the color red making regular intrusions practically from the word go, when a mysterious drop of blood coincides with the appearance of the movie's title (as well as with Cat Stevens' opening shriek: "But I might die tonight!"). The whole film has a lively, organic feel and is astonishingly adroit in switching gears from the hand-held immediacy of Mike's daily bathtub routine to the dreamy slo-mo underwater visions of his imagined erotic fulfillment, which seem imported straight from Jean Vigo's "L'Atalante" (1934) and carry a similar load of strange erotic beauty.

In its sheer immersive power, the movie more than lives up to its title. Much like Roman Polański, with whom he co-wrote "Knife in the Water" (1962) and who also left Poland for political reasons, Skolimowski is a master at making his movies seem as if they were projections of their main characters' psyches. His methods are as off-hand as possible, and yet manage to convey what Simon Abrams called, in his excellent new piece on "Deep End," "a hangover-style haze of [the] lead protagonist's experiential confusion".

Andrew Sarris, an early champion of the film, intuited correctly that there's an undercurrent of bewilderment in Skolimowski's gaze at swinging London, with all its Soho-based sexual permissiveness and an overall sense of violent generational split. While "Deep End" certainly partakes in the stylistic freedom and prankishness of the British 1960s cinema (in fact, it plays almost like a Richard Lester movie pushed to an existential extreme), there is no mistaking Skolimowski's outsider's perspective (according to his actors, he spoke practically no English at the time of shooting). And yet, as Sarris said in his enthusiastic review: "There was never really any place in the gray new world of Eastern Europe for a sybaritic temperament like Skolimowski's. He had to come west to the Free World where men and women create their own hells under the benign neglect of the System".

You may almost say that, with "Essential Killing" (2010), which had Vincent Gallo's Muslim terrorist thrown into the middle of wintry Poland (only to undergo an ordeal of forced survival) Skolimowski came a full circle of sorts. Gallo may be older, more sinewy and hirsute than Mike, but his basic predicament is the same: he finds himself within a new, unwanted frame of reference and tries to make some sense of it. Which, come to think of it, is what the thunderous process of growing up is all about.

Michał Oleszczyk is a film critic, translator and festival programmer based in Kraków, Poland. He regularly contributes to many Polish outlets, and has been an occasional contributor to Fandor and Slant Magazine. He published the first Polish book on the films of Terence Davies, as well as a translation of J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Midnight Movies". He runs a blog at oleszczyk.blogspot.com

Tender Traumas of Helplessness

2012-01-06T01:27:00Z

• Omer M. Mozaffar

For the first time in a long time, she has breakfast with her husband. But now, nobody in her house will talk to her. She is Arati, wife of Subrata, and to help pay expenses she starts her first job outside of the home. In Satyajit Ray's tender "Mahanagar" (1963) aka: "Big City", we follow a quiet Indian family's struggles against the nearing claws of modernity.
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It is the middle of the twentieth century. The Indians are newly liberated from the British, and now wrestle with the intense transformations demanded by mass production, international trade, fluctuating economies, and subsequent urbanization. The new noisy metropolitan world wreaks trauma on the sacred, stateliness dignity of the home. In this process, we follow the travails of the Mazumdar family, living tightly packed in an apartment. Subrata, a banker, struggles to provide for his wife, son, sister, mother and father but in this role, he finds his sense of worth. Arati struggles to maintain her decorum against the various stresses at home, has thoughts of the world outside, but smiles as she cares for those she cares for.

She gets a job selling sewing machines in Calcutta, even though she is initially frightened by the big city, frightened by her boss, and frightened by her clients. Simultaneously, as his bank abruptly closes, he loses his job and loses his self worth. Meanwhile, his cranky father, unsettled by his own aging and consequent wounded pride, gives up on get-rich-quick schemes, disowns his son, ridicules his daughter-in-law, and sets out in the big city to find others - former students - to care for him. As the story unfolds, we get the sense of increasing feelings of a world closing in on them, leaving them feeling helplessness and worthlessness in the face of these changes.

Their apartment is so small that their conversations are given soundtrack from the music and conversations of their neighbors. The natural assumption is that the neighbors might likewise listen to them. So, their at-home conversations are already hushed to maintain dignified privacy from each other, but reach the point of whispers to keep the neighbors out. The result for us is a very deeply intimate movie. The film is so quiet, yet the sentiments are so vivid and so deep.

Further, the Western cultural encroachment plays out differently for each of the main characters. Subrata often carries himself in a western posture, especially with his cigarettes. His wardrobe is partly western and partly Indian; often he dresses in western blazers (incidentally imported culturally from the Turks to the Europeans to the Indians) with Indian Shalvar and Kameez. As Arati works in her sari, she is exposed to lipstick and sunglasses. And the seemingly cantankerous father announces that he is in a Cold War against his son.

At the heart of the story, however, is Arati's new job. The first hour of her morning, preparing work, eating breakfast with her husband, is rough. At first, her son complains of sickness and abandonment, but does soften. Her In-Laws ignore her, offended that she is working, and complaining about the burdens her absence will place upon them. It is not so much that they are grouchy; rather, the new cultural onslaught defies their notions of appropriate behavior. There is a short moment where the father waits in a doctor's office and pages through a magazine, quickly getting disgusted by the photos of bikini-clad women.

And, the first days of her job are difficult. Arati and her new colleagues are placed in environments they've never faced. At first, she runs from men and is terrified by her boss. Through the course of the film she gains her confidence and speaks freely with men, speaks freely against her boss, especially when she disagrees with him. He discriminates against an Anglo-Indian in overt ways (demoting her) and covert ways (paying her in crumpled bills, while paying Arati in new, crisp bills), and she lashes at him for his unfairness. But, we also see that she begins to lie to clients also. And, as she exhibits her transformations, Subrata watches from the background, getting troubled not only by her developments, but also by his decreasing sense of usefulness. She correspondingly, is troubled by his changes, yet never demands that he morph for her. There is no question of devotion; the challenge is change.

It is easy to watch this movie and see it merely as a feminist - rather, womanist - story of an Indian woman's expanding horizons. In that way, we might categorize it with other movies like Ousmane Sembene's "La Noire De" (commonly known as "Black Girl") or James Ivory's "Howard's End." Or, culturally, we might naturally think of such icons as Rosie the Riveter. And, to great degree, this point would be correct. But, in that process, we might fall into the common Western trap of sympathetic condescension toward the allegedly naïve natives. But, the conversation on gender in "Mahanagar," and to some degree in these other films, takes place in the greater conversations on cultural dynamics responding to changes in the business world.

But, perhaps the most wonderful aspect of this film is that if the viewer misses the role those forces play, it is hard to miss the very tender story of a family struggling to remain together. Further, the joy of watching films by Ray or Ozu or Rohmer is that I never know what will happen next. My Hollywood conditioning expects scandal, and these films certainly do explore scandal. But the scandal is of the variety of human struggle, rather than crime. You will feel the moments of lipstick in this film, perhaps like in no other movie.

It is wonderful that these Satyajit Ray movies are available on DVD, but the prints need to be updated. The translations are satisfactory, but are incomplete, and sometimes too imprecise. Even with those complaints, the deep heart of this film beams through even in low light.

Graphics selection and page design by Marie Haws