After watching The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, I got into reading the wikipedia page for the real Kaspar Hauser. That dude sounds like a lying bastard. I'll take the Bruno S version any day.
Also, an extension of my Nic Cage thought from earlier: there is a brutally honest and metaphorical truth to be found in a film where Nic Cage plays a famous actor who buys a European castle to save it from decay, goes broke and then takes creatively unfulfilling, miserable, big-money roles to make his money back to live his dream.
Expect me to keep pushing that idea until it happens.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser: The Liveblog
Hi there, all!
Superbowl weekend. Usually I take two days to make a single post, but with the festivities around this weekend, I would rather get something up quickly. I've been thinking of using this format every now and then, so let's test it out: I will be liveblogging Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Never seen it before, but I've blogged about other Herzog films before. Consider this as though I was tweeting these thoughts individually. Here goes something (hopefully!)
"Thank you all for listening to me. I am tired now."
-Kaspar Hauser
Superbowl weekend. Usually I take two days to make a single post, but with the festivities around this weekend, I would rather get something up quickly. I've been thinking of using this format every now and then, so let's test it out: I will be liveblogging Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Never seen it before, but I've blogged about other Herzog films before. Consider this as though I was tweeting these thoughts individually. Here goes something (hopefully!)
- Hoo boy. It's gonna be interesting to do this for a movie with subtitles. All those years of learning to type without looking at a keyboard - finally worth something!
- I like that this film was introduced via scrolling text explaining Hauser's life (discovered not knowing how to speak, not knowing how to walk, no history, no name, etc,). It really lets us get on with the thing - imagine if every movie used the first half of its trailer to rush through the setup before the action began.
- Strange note I realized before starting: there is no trivia page on IMDB, and this is, last I checked, Herzog's highest-rated work on the site. A movie as mysterious as its character...
- Ah, some wonderful still shots of the village, fields, etc. Such a great eye for these little details, and the elegant opera brings the perfect ethereal mood.
- Same goes for the shots of townsfolk looking at Kaspar and the diagetic sounds that have been paired with them.
- Bruno S. as a screen presence, is a find. I may have mentioned that in writing about Strozek last week, but there's just something fascinating about him: always nervous and not exactly "endearing," but something a standard deviation removed from that. It's different from the contagious intensity of Kinski or his work with Christian Bale and Nic Cage.
- On the subject of Nic Cage: doesn't his recent off-camera life sound like a Herzog movie? A world famous actor buys a broken European castles with the intention of fixing them up, then goes broke? I hope one of them thinks of making it into a movie.
- It's impossibly endearing when Bruno or the children look off camera. It's like the next words out of their mouths are "What do I do next?"
- I don't think anything has made me smile so much all day as Kaspar making a cat walk on two feet.
- The use of animals in this movie is freaking fantastic. I would say the parallels between Kaspar and the animals is a little heavy-handed, but this movie has some really cool shots of animals. And what is up with that camel!?! What the fuck - is that what they look like?
- I have little to say about this scene where Kaspar is being taught religion except that it is an excellent scene, both in concept and execution.
- This scene trying to explain inanimate objects is better. Go apple!
- Yesterday-ish, a couple of people I follow on Twitter were saying that Herzog's movies feature somewhat stilted acting. I propose this: it is not the acting that is stilted, but the situations. The actors in many of his movies are reacting as natural as they can while knowing they've got a camera watching.
- I feel like I've seen something like this before, where someone is corrected but their "misspeak" reveals some kind of truth. Yet, there's still something very moving about this film and its tone.
- Helping the dreamlike atmosphere: the untraceable passage of time. I was shocked earlier when it said Kaspar had been in society for two years. Now, he's learned to read music and play some piano, and no one's mentioned how many years it's been.
- I may have to rewatch this movie with the swans in mind - there's a definite motif there, but I've got to focus in on it to see what that's about.
- Oohh, that was actually pretty perfect timing: I was just typing that the second half of this movie loses some of the natural-ness of the beginning, so it's less charming. But then it switches to a story being told by Kaspar.
- Okay, I thought the story about the procession up the mountain through death would be a good ending. Then I thought the story about the caravan led by a blind man would be better. But the actual ending is superb thematically.
"Thank you all for listening to me. I am tired now."
-Kaspar Hauser
Friday, February 5, 2010
Pierrot Le Fou, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Be Ok I guess with Godard Sort of Probably
O! Hall hallo there there
Some history, to start: the first Godard film I saw was Notre Musique, in a film class, and I honestly cannot recall a thing about it other than it being in color. There's a distinct chance I nodded off during it, since my sleeping patterns get weird in the winter. I bought and watched Alphaville next - as part of some deal on Criterion Collection DVDs at Barnes and Noble. That one left me cold, but it was interesting. Next, Breathless, possibly his most renowned film - I quite liked that one. So going into this movie, Godard was 1 for 3: a track record hardly befitting an acclaimed director. And now I've watched Pierrot Le Fou, which has charmed me more than the rest. Yet, I can't decide if it's because the film's that much better, or if I have gotten used to Godard's directing style.
I'm inclined to think the difference is that I'm getting increasingly used to what he's doing; the last three, at least, are almost entirely built around exemplifying film technique. More consistently than any other major film maker, Godard makes me consciously aware that I am watching a movie. His characters, at least in Breathless and Pierrot, are seemingly conscious that they're in movies, or at least are consciously willing to imitate movie characters. Music and sound cues are conspicuous; the characters break the fourth wall (one character to another: "who are you talking to?" "the audience." "oh."). They don't behave realistically, at any rate, and the plot is a vessel through which one hangs a feeling.
And in this way, while watching Pierrot last night, I realized: my feelings for Godard must be how someone who dislikes Quentin Tarantino's films feels about those. Specifically Pulp Fiction, where the characters exist solely to have highly stylized dialog come out of their mouths. Are you really that worried when Uma Thurman overdoses in that movie? Nah, but it's the shit when Travolta stabs her in the heart with the adrenaline needle. Pierrot Le Fou is the same way: you barely see the gangsters chasing the main characters, or even remember them half the time, but the characters are fun to be around.
Part of the fun is the contrast between the two leads: Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a man of stoic cool, and Marianne (Anna Karina), an almost impishly joyful presence. They play off of each other beautifully, so when a spontaneous musical moment breaks out (the movie's not a musical), it's fun to watch, rather than annoying. Similarly, they're both easygoing about the whole "being chased by gangsters" thing, which gives the film a playful tone. This is helpful: at times with Breathless and Alphaville, I got annoyed by their protagonsts' almost dour nature. It makes the dissolution of their relationship feel more subtle, and I almost did a double-take when I realized they'd split. It also grounds the movie, which is unnatural in its editing and sound choices.
The editing, specifically the pacing of the thing, is what won me over the easiest. Time isn't wasted on fight scenes or action sequences. They're memorable and brief, but more or less beside the point. It's an inversion of most action movies: when an Asian midget is holding Marianne hostage and a scene later is face-down with bloody scissors in his neck, no explanation is necessary. Who cares how Marianne got out of that predicament? It's like a dance they do, splitting and rejoining, so it only makes sense Marianne would be out of Ferdinand's life before they inevitably meet again. The ending is also well-paced. Ferdinand spends lots of time painstakingly painting his face blue and wrapping his head in dynamite. He lights the fuse, then instantly says "this is stupid" and tries to put out the flame. He can't; he explodes. From him lighting the fuse to the explosion is less than 10 seconds, I bet. It's a smart use of timing, since the movie knows that there's little tension to be taken from this predicament. He's gonna die, and the movie's gonna end. And then Ferdinand and Marianne meet in a meta, characteristically pithy way to end the movie, too.
All of this adds up to how self-aware the movie is, which can be grating but generally works well. The verbal dance where Ferdinand and Marianne speak over shots from offscreen, alternating sentences, can be hit or miss. It feels too cute. Same goes for Ferdinand addressing the camera with his angst. But then it adds something when the music clashes with what's going on onscreen, like when dramatic music fades in and out while Ferdinand is looking at a car. Or when Marianne imitates a Lauren and Hardy gag (after stating her source of inspiration) to get out of a tight squeeze. It's these moments that are fun and, most of all, make you consider the construction of a movie without being alienating.
The editing, specifically the pacing of the thing, is what won me over the easiest. Time isn't wasted on fight scenes or action sequences. They're memorable and brief, but more or less beside the point. It's an inversion of most action movies: when an Asian midget is holding Marianne hostage and a scene later is face-down with bloody scissors in his neck, no explanation is necessary. Who cares how Marianne got out of that predicament? It's like a dance they do, splitting and rejoining, so it only makes sense Marianne would be out of Ferdinand's life before they inevitably meet again. The ending is also well-paced. Ferdinand spends lots of time painstakingly painting his face blue and wrapping his head in dynamite. He lights the fuse, then instantly says "this is stupid" and tries to put out the flame. He can't; he explodes. From him lighting the fuse to the explosion is less than 10 seconds, I bet. It's a smart use of timing, since the movie knows that there's little tension to be taken from this predicament. He's gonna die, and the movie's gonna end. And then Ferdinand and Marianne meet in a meta, characteristically pithy way to end the movie, too.
All of this adds up to how self-aware the movie is, which can be grating but generally works well. The verbal dance where Ferdinand and Marianne speak over shots from offscreen, alternating sentences, can be hit or miss. It feels too cute. Same goes for Ferdinand addressing the camera with his angst. But then it adds something when the music clashes with what's going on onscreen, like when dramatic music fades in and out while Ferdinand is looking at a car. Or when Marianne imitates a Lauren and Hardy gag (after stating her source of inspiration) to get out of a tight squeeze. It's these moments that are fun and, most of all, make you consider the construction of a movie without being alienating.
That quality is probably the thing that dawned on me, this time around. There's something very mechanical about the construct of Godard's films (from the few I've seen), and in some ways it clashes with what might be a personal perspective. His interest in how films work is laudable, and understandable given his past as a film critic. It doesn't necessarily make for movies that I'd revisit very often (though I would see Pierrot again if someone wanted to watch it with me), but there's also something necessary and vital to his films from this period. I at least understand why he's "important" now.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Bigger, Stronger, Faster: The Size of Manliness
allo ther
"I think pro athletes should be forced to use steroids. I think we as fans deserve the greatest athletes science can create! ... I have high definition TV; I want my athletes like my video games. Let's go! I could care less if you die at 40. You hate life after sports anyway, I'm doing you a favor." -Daniel Tosh
Daniel Tosh is a stand-up comedian, but there's a harsh truth to that quote. Bigger, Stronger, Faster is just over 100 minutes, but it covers a lot of ground in the subject of steroids. Too much, I would argue. There's a lot here, and Chris Bell, the director, does a little bit of a lot of things. Including:
- His brothers' and his own history of using steroids
- The perception of steroids (and their effects) in the media vs. the results of research
- The competitive cultural pressures that would lead an athlete to use them
- Societal pressure that would lead one to use steroids for aesthetic purposes
- His family's reaction to finding out he and his brothers use them
- The supplement industry
- The government's investigation into performance enhancing drugs in baseball
I think the most notable thing about this movie is that it implies that Bell is less concerned with the medical side effects of performance enhancing drugs and more concerned with the things that cause a person to use them and the effect heightened performance has on society. He's a bit disingenuous about this; he cites numbers that say drinking and smoking cause more deaths than steroids, for example. Of course they do - but few people are going to need to enhance their physical performance with drugs compared to the people who drink and smoke. It's probably the most obvious example of misrepresentation here, but it makes steroids seem more harmless than they probably are. His focus on the medical effects are more or less focused on steroids straight-up killing a person, while he glosses over the possibility of sterility. It still seems nearly fair compared to the "facts" constantly repeated in news reports whenever the topic comes up.
Essentially, this means that much of the movie focuses on the various ways society reacts to and sometimes encourages it. Bell recounts his youth, idolizing action stars of the 80s and watching pro wrestling. It's these images of larger than life men that can define society's image of manliness, and it's not surprising that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the inspiration to every model and body builder he talks to (his name is even in my spell check!). The example set by these kinds of entertainment is less ubiquitous than the influence of models and women's magazines, etc. etc. on women, but it still got through to a small subset of guys. And these guys wanna be bigger than would be natural. It also seems to stick out that everyone Bell interviews is around the same age group, and they all cite 80s action movies and pro wrestlers as inspirations for their lives. That makes it seem like there's a chance that this is somewhat of an aberration in cultural history: before and since Arnold's heyday we've seen action stars trim down to more reasonable levels of muscularity.
The near-impossible quest for washboard abs remain, but it's probably easier to a Jason Statham level of fitness. This slow changeover isn't covered in the movie, but then, it isn't covered in the heads of the guys Bell interviews. His brother, most notably, seems driven to obsessive levels of becoming a big star, either in wrestling or in acting, and he's not alone. The sight of grown men who believe that with size everything will go their way is thoroughly depressing. His brother and at least one gym employee says "you never know" and hold out hope for an acting career based on looks. It's like a weird alternate universe, now that our action stars include Nic Cage and John Cusack. Reliable ol' wrestling will still promote the shit outta John Cena, though, and Hulk Hogan's still limping around. I guess not everything has changed.
The parts about athletics are informative, too, and the movie itself is persuasive enough to reconsider whether 'roids are "cheating" in light of regular-ass modern medical advances. Not persuasive enough to convince me totally, with its aforementioned occasional leaps in logic and such. The kinds of surgeries and other medical/health knowledge that makes today's athletes so much better than anyone even in generations past is fascinating; it'd make a good PBS special on its own. Hell, it probably has been done, and most know better than to directly compare an athlete from the 1930s to one today. I was also impressed by the research going into better enhance people's physical abilities; those segments create a vision of the future that is either amazing or frightening.
The most convincing segment of the movie, though, is Bell's interview with Rep. Henry Waxman, one of the congressmen who spearheaded Congress' then-current (current?) investigation into steroids in baseball (and, to a lesser extent, pro wrestling). His inability to answer anything - even the legal drinking age for alcohol - without help from an aide was saddening at best, distressing at worst. A cynic might say that it's no surprise that politicians will put their face on a cause they don't really care about (and Bell does juxtapose the segment with an interviewee saying just that). It's just captivating to see it illustrated so directly.
In the end, though, the movie stops short of being very great for its information, mainly because there's so damned much of it presented. There are good and insightful bits here and there, but Bigger, Stronger, Faster feels like it's trying to cover as many bases as possible. It thankfully isn't pro- or anti- anything directly, but it also lacks focus. In its explicit primary goal, it works to start considering a more balanced discussion on the role of performance-enhancing drugs in sports that likely will never happen. Otherwise, though, it works better as a reflection of a conflicted culture, which is one of its secondary goals.
The parts about athletics are informative, too, and the movie itself is persuasive enough to reconsider whether 'roids are "cheating" in light of regular-ass modern medical advances. Not persuasive enough to convince me totally, with its aforementioned occasional leaps in logic and such. The kinds of surgeries and other medical/health knowledge that makes today's athletes so much better than anyone even in generations past is fascinating; it'd make a good PBS special on its own. Hell, it probably has been done, and most know better than to directly compare an athlete from the 1930s to one today. I was also impressed by the research going into better enhance people's physical abilities; those segments create a vision of the future that is either amazing or frightening.
The most convincing segment of the movie, though, is Bell's interview with Rep. Henry Waxman, one of the congressmen who spearheaded Congress' then-current (current?) investigation into steroids in baseball (and, to a lesser extent, pro wrestling). His inability to answer anything - even the legal drinking age for alcohol - without help from an aide was saddening at best, distressing at worst. A cynic might say that it's no surprise that politicians will put their face on a cause they don't really care about (and Bell does juxtapose the segment with an interviewee saying just that). It's just captivating to see it illustrated so directly.
In the end, though, the movie stops short of being very great for its information, mainly because there's so damned much of it presented. There are good and insightful bits here and there, but Bigger, Stronger, Faster feels like it's trying to cover as many bases as possible. It thankfully isn't pro- or anti- anything directly, but it also lacks focus. In its explicit primary goal, it works to start considering a more balanced discussion on the role of performance-enhancing drugs in sports that likely will never happen. Otherwise, though, it works better as a reflection of a conflicted culture, which is one of its secondary goals.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Orson Welles' The Trial: Feel the Gathered Masses Closing in
heeelllloooooo there!
Why the hell is Orson Welles' The Trial a cult item? It's based on a story by Franz Kafka! It stars Anthony Perkins (shortly after Psycho, at that)! Directed by Orson Goddamn Welles! By the praise Citizen Kane gets, you'd think every one of his films would be revered, if not puzzled over for their failures. Instead, it seems like the consensus is that Kane, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight and The Magnificent Ambersons are Great Films, and you're on your own for the rest. Those last two aren't even available on DVD in America right now!
"Bollocks!" I say! The Trial is at least as great as Touch of Evil, and it seems like it was released more or less as Welles intended (though it looks like there was an edited version in the US). That's more you can say about Touch of Evil. All The Trial needs, I reckon, is a Criterion DVD release with cleaned up audio.
Welles' European years generally get short shrift, though, and I guess The Trial is no different. It makes me glad that it's at least available on DVD (among a slew of bootleg copies, though). Like I said, seems that it's a bit of a cult item; it's at least generally well-regarded by the subset of people who have seen it and have rated it on Amazon and IMDB. Yes, that's part of the same demographic that once put The Dark Knight as one of the top 5 films of all time, but it's still high praise from a relatively large group. Does 4-stars from Roger Ebert sound better?
(Side note: I generally don't link to Ebert because he's that much better a writer than I am, but I do like that review an awful lot for its insights. I will try to avoid doubling over on it. What he has to say about Perkins' sexuality is fascinating, though.)
But on to the film itself: it's a story centered on accusation. Anthony Perkins plays Joseph K, who is accused of... nothing in particular, and eventually he stops asking. But he's put through the rigeurs of a legal system that seems to only consist of loopholes and an unrelenting, loopy but lockstep logic. Everything seems to be going against him in this series; every person, no matter their intention, seems to be getting in the way somehow. He never sleeps once he wakes up at the start of the film. At every turn, it seems like the world is out to trap him. In its shadows, in its rules, in its multitudes.
It's those multitudes that caught my eye on this first viewing; almost every scene that takes place in a space that would be cavernous is filled, packed with details. The actual courtroom where Perkins is on trial is a large auditorium consumed with people. It echoes the stage of Charles Kane's big campaign speech. But where that was a triumph for that character, this setting is terrifying. Joseph delivers a speech, too, but it's harried and interrupted. The room is relatively small, but every frame is packed with so many people watching this "trial" that it is intimidating, even for a viewer from home.
Perkins carries himselfs perfectly, too, giving his character the perfect blend of innocence, determination and frazzled intensity. The guy's under stress, and it's not just his trial, from what we see of his workplace. His office is an endless sea of rows of people at typwriters, typing furiously. It's a constant, noisy racket, made only noisier by the lousy sound quality on the version streaming on Netflix. Just walking from the door to his desk (a lone desk on a short pedestal above the other desks) seems to take minutes, and there isn't an open space within the frame in that whole time. Later, we see there's a computer, and this, too seem to be the length of infinity, a giant even among the standards of the early computers.
Welles was a master at using expressionism to get into his characters' heads. It was somewhat subtle in Kane, but increasingly apparent by Touch of Evil. In this movie, it's at an absolute peak. His lawyer, The Advocate (Welles) lives within what appears to be a maze of bookshelves, walls and windows, lined with hundreds of lit candles. It's as intimidating as the castles in Super Mario Bros, where it always seemed like the same castle with new traps. There's a sense of paranoia and dread here that's impenetrable, and the very use of objects plays a large role in it. Would the mood be the same if The Advocate's study was littered with random objects, rather than seemingly infinite newspaper bundles? I think not. Would The Advocate himself seem as much like a big deal if his office was lit with a few lamps or a chandelier? These things get into your head, too, don't they?
The effect changes the tone from a could-have-been comedy to a psychological torture. I imagine this movie was one of the influences on Scorsese's After Hours, which has a similarly absurd plot (that one is Kafka-esque, this one is by Kafka). But where Welles' movie creeps along with great fear, Scorsese's is comedic in its absurdity. The strangeness. Note how the protagonists wind up chased by groups: Joseph by a horde of young girls, After Hours' Paul by an angry mob of people he'd run into over the course of the movie. The latter is directly threatening the protagonist's life, yet it's taken as a dark comedy. We understand their misunderstanding, and their familiarity makes it funny. Not so in The Trial. The girls (again, we're talking huge numbers that overwhelm the frame) seem to only annoy with their persistent adoration of Joseph. They are less a character and more an unrelenting force, much like the movie's events. More unsettling is when they're locked out of a room with shabby wood, perfect for peaking within.
It's interesting that this is the kind of story told by two great filmmakers in despair. Welles always seemed to be despairing in his later career, with his films almost obsessively centered around men whose world is collapsing while he scrounged for funds for his projects. Scorsese found himself needing to show resilience with After Hours. It's the mark of their genius that the freedom afforded by surrealist stories let them consolidate their strengths, but their genres reveal much about the film makers. In The Trial, the protagonist is constantly being watched or surrounded by others. He's being judged. How much of this is a reflection on Welles film career? His films seem to be awfully perceptive of their maker's place in the world at all times.
In a lot of ways, The Trial is a great film. There's something deeply personal about it, I'd say, that makes the absurdism gripping. The internal logic is fascinating on its own, anyway. Some of it, too, is the grand scale of so much of it. Much has been written about Citizen Kane's... well, everything. But its camera tricks specifically. The Trial contains much of this ambition in its very framing of things, and not for the sake of doing things on a grand scale. Put aside just great film making; The Trial is straight-up great psychological trickery.
Expect it to come up again when I do After Hours some day.
Why the hell is Orson Welles' The Trial a cult item? It's based on a story by Franz Kafka! It stars Anthony Perkins (shortly after Psycho, at that)! Directed by Orson Goddamn Welles! By the praise Citizen Kane gets, you'd think every one of his films would be revered, if not puzzled over for their failures. Instead, it seems like the consensus is that Kane, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight and The Magnificent Ambersons are Great Films, and you're on your own for the rest. Those last two aren't even available on DVD in America right now!
"Bollocks!" I say! The Trial is at least as great as Touch of Evil, and it seems like it was released more or less as Welles intended (though it looks like there was an edited version in the US). That's more you can say about Touch of Evil. All The Trial needs, I reckon, is a Criterion DVD release with cleaned up audio.
Welles' European years generally get short shrift, though, and I guess The Trial is no different. It makes me glad that it's at least available on DVD (among a slew of bootleg copies, though). Like I said, seems that it's a bit of a cult item; it's at least generally well-regarded by the subset of people who have seen it and have rated it on Amazon and IMDB. Yes, that's part of the same demographic that once put The Dark Knight as one of the top 5 films of all time, but it's still high praise from a relatively large group. Does 4-stars from Roger Ebert sound better?
(Side note: I generally don't link to Ebert because he's that much better a writer than I am, but I do like that review an awful lot for its insights. I will try to avoid doubling over on it. What he has to say about Perkins' sexuality is fascinating, though.)
But on to the film itself: it's a story centered on accusation. Anthony Perkins plays Joseph K, who is accused of... nothing in particular, and eventually he stops asking. But he's put through the rigeurs of a legal system that seems to only consist of loopholes and an unrelenting, loopy but lockstep logic. Everything seems to be going against him in this series; every person, no matter their intention, seems to be getting in the way somehow. He never sleeps once he wakes up at the start of the film. At every turn, it seems like the world is out to trap him. In its shadows, in its rules, in its multitudes.
It's those multitudes that caught my eye on this first viewing; almost every scene that takes place in a space that would be cavernous is filled, packed with details. The actual courtroom where Perkins is on trial is a large auditorium consumed with people. It echoes the stage of Charles Kane's big campaign speech. But where that was a triumph for that character, this setting is terrifying. Joseph delivers a speech, too, but it's harried and interrupted. The room is relatively small, but every frame is packed with so many people watching this "trial" that it is intimidating, even for a viewer from home.
Perkins carries himselfs perfectly, too, giving his character the perfect blend of innocence, determination and frazzled intensity. The guy's under stress, and it's not just his trial, from what we see of his workplace. His office is an endless sea of rows of people at typwriters, typing furiously. It's a constant, noisy racket, made only noisier by the lousy sound quality on the version streaming on Netflix. Just walking from the door to his desk (a lone desk on a short pedestal above the other desks) seems to take minutes, and there isn't an open space within the frame in that whole time. Later, we see there's a computer, and this, too seem to be the length of infinity, a giant even among the standards of the early computers.
Welles was a master at using expressionism to get into his characters' heads. It was somewhat subtle in Kane, but increasingly apparent by Touch of Evil. In this movie, it's at an absolute peak. His lawyer, The Advocate (Welles) lives within what appears to be a maze of bookshelves, walls and windows, lined with hundreds of lit candles. It's as intimidating as the castles in Super Mario Bros, where it always seemed like the same castle with new traps. There's a sense of paranoia and dread here that's impenetrable, and the very use of objects plays a large role in it. Would the mood be the same if The Advocate's study was littered with random objects, rather than seemingly infinite newspaper bundles? I think not. Would The Advocate himself seem as much like a big deal if his office was lit with a few lamps or a chandelier? These things get into your head, too, don't they?
The effect changes the tone from a could-have-been comedy to a psychological torture. I imagine this movie was one of the influences on Scorsese's After Hours, which has a similarly absurd plot (that one is Kafka-esque, this one is by Kafka). But where Welles' movie creeps along with great fear, Scorsese's is comedic in its absurdity. The strangeness. Note how the protagonists wind up chased by groups: Joseph by a horde of young girls, After Hours' Paul by an angry mob of people he'd run into over the course of the movie. The latter is directly threatening the protagonist's life, yet it's taken as a dark comedy. We understand their misunderstanding, and their familiarity makes it funny. Not so in The Trial. The girls (again, we're talking huge numbers that overwhelm the frame) seem to only annoy with their persistent adoration of Joseph. They are less a character and more an unrelenting force, much like the movie's events. More unsettling is when they're locked out of a room with shabby wood, perfect for peaking within.
It's interesting that this is the kind of story told by two great filmmakers in despair. Welles always seemed to be despairing in his later career, with his films almost obsessively centered around men whose world is collapsing while he scrounged for funds for his projects. Scorsese found himself needing to show resilience with After Hours. It's the mark of their genius that the freedom afforded by surrealist stories let them consolidate their strengths, but their genres reveal much about the film makers. In The Trial, the protagonist is constantly being watched or surrounded by others. He's being judged. How much of this is a reflection on Welles film career? His films seem to be awfully perceptive of their maker's place in the world at all times.
In a lot of ways, The Trial is a great film. There's something deeply personal about it, I'd say, that makes the absurdism gripping. The internal logic is fascinating on its own, anyway. Some of it, too, is the grand scale of so much of it. Much has been written about Citizen Kane's... well, everything. But its camera tricks specifically. The Trial contains much of this ambition in its very framing of things, and not for the sake of doing things on a grand scale. Put aside just great film making; The Trial is straight-up great psychological trickery.
Expect it to come up again when I do After Hours some day.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Les Diaboliques: The Stranger Details
O 'ello there.
Anyway, I think it's only fair that I warn that there will be spoilers here. Normally, I don't care, but this film does end with a warning not to spoil the movie for my friends. Plus, it was nice of the movie to ask that specifically. And I do consider anyone reading this to be a friend.
Les Diaboliques concerns two women, the wife and mistress of a boarding school principal named Michel, and their plot to murder him. The wife owns the school, technically, but the principal's force of will seems to overpower that detail. He's a cruel man, not just to them, but also the schoolchildren and his other employees. He seems to have a short fuse, and the first time we see Nicole (his mistress, played by Simone Signoret), she's got bulky sunglasses on to hide bruises. The guy's painted as a bastard quick and hard, activating my Sword of Vengeance: Sense of Justice rule, as it should. The murder's only the setup, so it makes sense to make the audience understand why these women want this guy dead fast. Michel's murder is wrapped up in the first third of the movie; a less inspired film could've done that as the whole movie.
From the get-go, though, something's off: Nicole is awfully dead-set on killing Michel. Christina, his wife (Vera Clouzot), is nervous about it and backs out a couple of times when it's too late. This is one of the things the movie gets right, since my inclination to think the two women would turn on each other. They don't, which is an interesting surprise. In some ways, that's more surprising than the idea of a wife and mistress working together, but I digress. I was actually more worried about Nicole more than anything for the first third of the movie; she would not take "no" for an answer for the murder. At one point, she says that she's seen a corpse before in her life. Does that imply she's done this before? I was glad at the end that, winds up, she was conspiring with Michel all along to kill Christina via heart attack (she's got a heart condition. It's a movie. She's gonna have a heart attack.) to take ownership of the school. Winds up she wasn't a sociopath. Just your run of the mill... uh... Conspirator-Thief?
But then again, the guy does let them murder Christina. Their plan does come to fruition, and he only comes out of the shadows to arrest them after the deed is done. The ending may imply that she and he came up with their own solution - but how would they do that?
That ending, in and of itself, makes be absolutely glad we got this movie in 1955 rather than 2005. A young boy who'd previously been the only student to see Michel after his "death" mysteriously gets his confiscated slingshot back from Christina after she was already dead (I know! OH SHIT!). It's a final turn of the screw that maybe goes too far, since it doesn't make much sense. Yet, it's the kind of thing that's become standard for horror films. If this movie had come out in 2005, we'd be on our third or fourth direct-to-DVD sequel by now, where the ghost of Christina (or otherwise her ghastly friends) would be haunting the new owners and boarders of the school, slow dread of the original replaced by hilarious, cheap gore. I do appreciate that Clouzot thought it would be necessary to add one more mystery to the movie, though. It's some out of nowhere business to throw off a movie whose real twist is one of those "that makes so much sense, why didn't I think of it?" deals.
Another logical choice the film makes is to explain why the boarding school was so crumbling and shabby: because Michel's a cheap bastard who doesn't even want to run the school (again, Sword of Vengeance rule). That gives the movie the freedom to have the building be functional without ever seeming pleasant. In the black and white photography, it allows the pool to be so dirty it looks like ink. Along those same lines, the setting helps make the climax - where Christina seems to be chasing Michel's ghost - so much more enveloping. The sight of Michel rising from the tub after this chase is easily one of the most memorable images in film. It and the chase preceding it are easily the most virtuoso sequence in the movie; it's the one thing that moves Les Diaboliques from mysterty/thriller to horror movie. Its technique won me over, though, making me truly love the film in that moment.
Much of the middle part of the movie, where Christina and Nicole investigate the strange occurrences around Michel's disappearance, was tense and well-done, but I never bought it. I did get a real shock when I found out Nicole was planning this whole thing with Michel, but I had guessed that Michel was still alive. In some ways that makes me a jaded modern viewer, but I recently watched Psycho and found it effective, still, even knowing every step of the plot. Maybe my opinion of Les Diaboliques will improve with repeated viewings. There is much to love here, though, most of all, the way the movie makes all the little details matter.
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 25 Movies So Bad They're Unmissable
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 25 Movies So Bad They're Unmissable
You best believe many of these will make the Hall of Fame.
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