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Viewing Diary – Tintin, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Zodiac

Written by . Posted on December 22, 2011. Filed under Reviews, Viewing Diary. Tagged , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

Dir. Steven Spielberg

There is a lot to like about Spielberg’s first animated film. It’s gorgeous to look at. The environments are stunning, and the film’s movement (Spielberg’s primary obsession in the film) is at once limitless but bound to Spielberg’s cinema. 3D makes all these things all the more pleasing. Oftentimes, Tintin is exciting and fun—but something is missing. In some ways, it is most similar to the Indiana Jones films, which I also have problems with, and partly for the same reasons. As a protagonist, Tintin (like Indy) is an intelligent, assured hero, so accustomed to adventure so as to be completely prepared for all its surprises. Think of Spielberg at his best. His protagonists have a naivete and a vulnerability (maybe the most important quality) and it is when these characters are confronted with the strange and wonderful, that his films are at their most moving—in most cases his characters are confronted with situations beyond them, that are either frightening or awe-inspiring, or both. Thus, from Tintin a key element is absent, the one that raises Spielberg films from being just expertly crafted to having an intangible magic. That being said, all else is intact, and at its best Tintin is among Spielberg’s best adventures. One chase sequence is among the best of its kind and may even be Spielberg’s highest accomplishment in crafting action. Spielberg’s ambition seems to be to do what he couldn’t quite do with a camera—in some ways Tintin is ideal Spielberg, where his camera can keep up with his instincts, and it is when this ambition is realized that the film at least approaches greatness. Snowy, Tintin’s dog, is a more ideal character for Spielberg in this universe, one that evades characterization and yet has the most personality—a purer vehicle for what is a successful exercise in extreme fluidity, if nothing else.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Dir. David Fincher

How is Fincher so blunt and subtle at the same time? The straightforwardness of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, like Zodiac, is almost a smokescreen. Fincher’s fixations are so complexly realized that it is difficult to pierce the simplicity of their appearance. This is, of course, precisely what makes him one of the most interesting contemporary filmmakers working in Hollywood. Not as obvious with its obsessions with technology as The Social Network, but just as invested in the integration of tech into its narrative, as part of its own process, though not as its subject. The punk CGI explosion of the opening credit sequence (truly one of Fincher’s shining moments) reveals explicitly what Fincher is concerned with in the film. The coming together of two characters, and the intervention of technology as an underlying element. The relationship between Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth Salander and Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist is surprisingly moving, and what makes the film work. How Fincher develops the characters on their own for what must be the first hour of the film is all in service of what is a fast-moving but arresting portrayal of a sincere connection. The used and abused Lisbeth gives herself to Mikael because he asks of nothing from her, and although the matter-of-fact nature of their coming together is about as unromantic as one can imagine, it is seriously affecting. This effect is possible because of how Fincher has laid out these characters lives (not in a typical characterization sense, we don’t know them so deeply, but we know them as Fincher likes to know his characters, through routine, demeanor, etc.) and especially because of how the film portrays sexuality. Quick, pleasure seeking sex—not “making love” but fucking—is actually rendered as the film’s most human gesture (note one sex scene where Mikael, distracted, begins to talk, but Lisbeth insists he shush while she climaxes).

Defining this relationship is the film’s most important element—Fincher disrupts the comfort of the whodunnit narrative, shifting the structure so as to make plot’s natural peak just a bump on the road, and removes the emphasis from the mystery, and extending the prologue-esque early portion of the film beyond what other filmmakers would be willing to—the real arc of the film lies in Lisbeth and Mikael and how they change each other. Fincher ends on a deceptively quiet shot (as he has done before), so modestly tragic, and in retrospect, rather beautiful. In some ways, this is his most evasive great film, and the one that most fervently demands for a repeat viewing, for a chance not to penetrate the mystery of the plot, but the mystery of the narrative—this distinction being the one that classifies Fincher’s digital cinema, where his stories are no longer collaborators with his style, and the telling of them is all that remains. Seven/Fight Club/etc. Fincher vs. Zodiac/Social Network/etc. Fincher = stylized stories vs. stories swallowed whole by their telling.

Aside: A fun train of thought; contrast Fincher’s investigation of character via sexuality with Cronenberg’s—Fincher doesn’t care about psychology, or deep inner-workings, but cares just as deeply, but about the surface. Cronenberg wants to know what makes people tick but Fincher is a better listener.

Zodiac (2007)

Dir. David Fincher

I initially thought this was a great film back when I saw it on 2007, but upon revisiting it in preparation for Fincher’s new film, I’d say it’s more like a masterpiece. One of the most fascinating Hollywood films of its decade, Zodiac is a maddening experience. If you’re not careful, you can find yourself as obsessed as the characters—but the trick is not to—Fincher isn’t, he’s just mapping out time as it unfolds relentlessly. Like with The Social Network, this is about characters alienated by obsession and driven from real life by their intelligence. Watch as each character crashes and burns, with the biggest brain left standing, satisfied with himself above all else, but alone. Fincher’s suspense here is completely singular, separate from anything we’d simply associate with whodunnit plots of the past. The driving force of the film is the friction between the investigators and time as they subtly become separate from reality. Watch how Fincher quietly shows the cracks of real life as small moments between large momentous stretches of “cracking” the case. Also, note the lack of synchronicity between the characters’ obsession and the filmmaking. Fincher holds the film steady, refusing to crack like his characters, he even films a murder (in what may be cinema’s most effective stabbing since Psycho, I kid you not) with little cutting (no pun intended), in some ways amplifying the real horror of it but also refusing to sensationalize what takes place. He takes his time and is more like the killer than his pursuers. He doesn’t give into their obsession—though he does chart it meticulously—but perhaps that’s a different type of obsession, the one that has made Zodiac, The Social Network and now The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo into fascinating charts of information, and brilliant exercises in narrative form.

Viewing Diary – Nostalgia for the Light, Essential Killing, War of the Worlds

Written by . Posted on April 4, 2011. Filed under Reviews, Viewing Diary. Tagged , , , , , . No comments.

Nostalgia for the Light (2010)

Dir. Patricio Guzmán

Guzmán’s graceful documentary gets more out of its subject by evading the simple comfort of facts and instead probing the meditative and interweaving with the precise. In this way, Nostalgia for the Light makes meaning out of finding overlap in the scientific and the spiritual, something I can’t help myself from musing that it that is the meaning of the metaphor that is the entirety of the cinema. I mention this with the caveat that this films does not specifically examine this point but that it merely provoked the thought. Guzmán uses his childhood history and life long love for astronomy as the jumping off point for a film that investigates his native Chile’s relationship with the past, present, and future. His subjects come from two distinct factions: people using the Atacama desert as a means for studying either astronomy or archaeology and those searching for loved ones executed as political prisoners and buried in the vast landscape. The desert is ideal for both astronomy and archaeology because of its’ clear skies and hot climate, but as Guzmán illustrates, this clarity is not indicative of his country’s consciousness. The mistake of Chile being to always look outward for answers, never inward.

Essential Killing (2010)

Dir. Jerzy Skolimowski

With Essential Killing, Skolimowski strips away the context, political or otherwise, of a struggle to survive, leaving only the humanity and the animal instinct of a man’s attempt to flee those who aim to capture him. The result reveals the universality in any struggle and how human suffering at its core will always evoke empathy, and persistence within an aggressive environment will always prompt admiration. Vincent Gallo is magnificent as a vulnerable, desperate man traversing landscape after landscape. My impression of the film is similar to Daniel Kasman who wrote in The Notebook at MUBI “It’s mysteriousness isn’t exactly one of evocation, despite its silence (Gallo never utters a word) and lack of explanation, psychology, ideology, etc., but, due to its supreme dedication to tracking land and the coverage of it by man, it has a kind of geological mysteriousness to it.” Land in many ways plays the biggest role in the film, and Gallo’s need to adapt to the myriad locations and their unique properties always ensures that no matter how adept this character is, the land is always more versatile, more cunning. Of course, nature has the final word, or, rather, the final image.

War of the Worlds (2005)

Dir. Steven Spielberg

As an exercise in visceral filmmaking, War of the Worlds is a flat-out masterful work of art, in which Spielberg turns America inside out. He seamlessly melds a story and its’ characters with the viewer’s role in the film, making this one of the most involving and authentic successes in the genre of invasion films. This genre, an imperialist phenomenon, always gives the public an enemy to blame and to use as an excuse to unite as people and as a nation. Spielberg’s interest lies more in people’s darker reactions to the situation and places the onus on their shoulders. People turn on each other, fending for themselves and their loved ones. Instead of a film which stands back and judges (ex: Dogville, which is effective in other ways), we are cast in the role along with Tom Cruise, of protecting one’s family at any cost. The peaks of War of the Worlds reach heights of emotion exceeded only by Spielberg’s best film, A.I.

 

Viewing Dairy – Paul, Rango

Written by . Posted on March 19, 2011. Filed under Reviews, Viewing Diary. Tagged , , , , , , . No comments.

Paul (2011)

Dir. Greg Mottola

The on-screen duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is a unique one. Two real-life best friends who make each other laugh have become famous comedic presences simply from making fun work that embraces their geeky sensibilities. With the wonderful TV series Spaced and their two hilarious parodies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, they have mostly succeeded as a trio with filmmaker Edgar Wright. Together, their authentic friendships have brought a natural emotional center to their primarily comically oriented work. With Paul, directed by the American auteur Greg Mottola, responsible for Adventureland, one of the best films from the last decade, it is an outsider eye making a film partly about this friendship and its’ warm chemistry. The films scores extra points for transforming the Comic-Con-goer from just being a fan to being a legitimate movie lead. This is a film of modest aim with a handful of small problems (a couple awkward characterizations, a hit-or-miss musical score) that represents an acceptable step back for Mottola.

References to Steven Spielberg’s films are plentiful and range from subtler touches like adopting traces of the auteur’s mise en scène to an actual voice-over cameo from the man himself. Mottola borrows Spielberg’s way of introducing the antagonizing adults in E.T., showing only the feet and flashlight of a FBI agent hot on the trail of the fugitive alien, Paul. There are also a couple references to John Williams’ musical scores, such as an obvious Close Encounters moment, but the more clever moment has a band with unlikely instrumentation playing the song from the Star Wars Cantina in A New Hope (a joke admittedly made firstly by Trey Parker in Team America). Mottola makes his inspiration abundantly clear when a small-town cinema in Paul has two films listed on its’ marquee: Duel and Easy Rider.

Like with Easy Rider, the two friends who traverse America in Paul are assaulted by American hegemony and institution. At once, the characters are being chased on the road by the FBI and a bible-thumper with a shotty. They also encounter two disgruntled rednecks in an Area 51-themed bar. The film strongly asserts itself against American ignorance with Kristen Wiig’s character Ruth, at first a devout Christian when forcibly added to our group of RV-bound fugitives, with a pair of glasses  that covers her one blind eye with a shaded lens, symbolizing her narrow view. Then Paul works some alien mojo on her, sharing his consciousness and collective experience with her, as well as correcting her bad eye, shattering her religious views in the process. Later in the film, an FBI agent played by Bill Hader (Mottola’s good luck charm who also appeared in his last two films) is violently pursuing Paul and his accomplices and has one of the lenses of his sunglasses knocked out, recreating the symbol of ignorance that donned Wiig earlier on. As Paul ultimately doesn’t fully characterize an antagonist, it is as if this ignorance is the antagonistic force of the film, made tangible through several characters. Paul himself spreads the antidote of consciousness, a figure of liberation in the form of a cinematic archetype.

Rango (2011)

Dir. Gore Verbinski

Gore Verbinski’s post-modernist foray into animation is unexpectedly fortuitous. The splendidly oddball Rango is a meticulously crafted, thoughtful work of popular art that surpasses everything else the otherwise unremarkable filmmaker has done, and is a strong early front-runner for animated film of the year (considering Pixar’s offering this year is Cars 2…). The film is inventive and consistently entertaining but is most satisfying with its’ surprisingly layered structure. Rango has a political edge and an existential core. Using water as a metaphor for wealth (has Verbinski even seen Film Socialisme?), the film critiques America’s economic system (the bigwigs of the small town in Rango even play golf, the smug, privileged bastards) and climaxes with a redistribution of said wealth. It should be noted that Rango ingeniously uses Las Vegas as a symbol, evoking two American masterpieces from 1995: Casino and Showgirls. The title character, meanwhile, has an arc from complete alienation to existential certainty that is well handled.

The animation is really quite something, with really fluid motion. The character designs are original and are distinguished from the usual “cute-sification” of animals in animation. and there are flourishes of brilliance such as when Rango is “freed” from his terrarium in a breathtaking sequence at the onset of the film, or during a brief and delightfully absurd dream, or in a particularly beautiful sequence that finds Rango wandering through the desert at night. The film is referential but not in a banal, random sense (Family Guy, Shrek). The ensemble cast is one of the most impressive as far as animated films go with a great lead performance from Depp and also with nice bits from the likes of Ray Winstone and Harry Dean Stanton. Timothy Olymphant’s voice shows up in a scene with a (visual only) cameo from Clint Eastwood/The Man With No Name. The patriarchal staple offers the protagonist words of wisdom then pimps away in a golf cart full of Oscars. Absurd genius.