The Dark Knight (revisited)

I've already reviewed The Dark Knight so I don't want to get into plot points, or the film as a whole, or initial reactions or anything like that. But I saw it again tonight, solidifying some of my early thoughts, and the whole phenomenon still fascinates. Why, and on what levels, does The Dark Knight work for me? There are a number of reasons it shouldn't.

As I discussed in my reaction to Jim Emerson's blog, I have fundamental problems with the way comic books tend to be translated from one medium to another. On the page, the symbolism and shorthand - the way characters and events stand for ideas and a kind of focused economy occurs, by which unnecessary details are left out of the frame - often packs a powerful punch. But in films, it usually feels like something is missing. This is especially true when the comic-book movie in question makes some gestures towards "realism" or "darkness" or "depth" which it then can't sustain because it has grounded itself in a shallow, surface-oriented kind of storytelling.

Critical idiocy vis a vis Fire Walk With Me

This will be my final post on "Twin Peaks," I promise (at least for a few days). Last night I reviewed Fire Walk With Me, acknowledging my ambivalence about the way the film mixed its highly disturbing subject matter with the supernatural elements. Since then, the film and especially Laura Palmer, have continued to haunt me. I must concede that Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is one of those films whose raw power overwhelms any troublesome elements, ensuring the film, flaws and all, a place in the pantheon of unforgettable classics. Which makes it all the more astonishing how thoroughly critics missed the boat.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

If you don't want to know anything about Twin Peaks, particularly the big secret, stop reading now.

For weeks I've been absorbed in "Twin Peaks," the 1990 television series, masterminded by David Lynch, which kept viewers tuning in week after week to find out "who killed Laura Palmer?" "Twin Peaks" was many things. It was often funny, but not in any one, easily identifiable way. It could be goofy, knowingly ironic, sweetly silly, absurd. It was also suspenseful, with new twists and turns leading us down a convoluted path to discover who the murderer was. It was frightening, in fact genuinely terrifying, though always just for moments, with comic relief usually coming to the rescue before long. And, of course, it was bizarre. Dancing dwarfs in red rooms, a psychic FBI agent, a woman who carried a log around with her at all times, a black lodge, a white lodge - all cryptic messages alluding to some hidden mystery, a mystery much deeper than the question of who stabbed the teenage beauty queen and threw her body in the river.

And, also, "Twin Peaks" was sad. Seldom acutely sad, the way it could be acutely frightening, although the scene in which Laura's parents find out she's been murdered dwells on their grief. Rather, there was an undertone of sadness, often so diluted it just seemed part of the pulpy overtones of the show, a mock-emotion that Lynch used to get at that eerie, ethereal flavor he was seeking. But every now and then the sadness seemed genuine, and when each episode closed with the picture of Laura Palmer, so perfect, so beautiful, and now so dead, that sadness lingered.

The movie, a prequel which details the last days of Laura, knows that it doesn't have any new secrets to reveal. Laura's murderer was exposed halfway through the second season and though the show tried to move on, it never recovered. Pauline Kael wrote that Marlon Brando's unseen presence pervaded and gave weight to the second Godfather film, even though he wasn't in it. The same is true of Laura Palmer in "Twin Peaks" and so what the film offers, far more valuable than the facts or the "secrets" of her last days, is their texture. We're drawn into the film to see Laura as she really was. I was immensely excited to see Fire Walk With Me and about halfway through I was convinced that it was a movie of rare power and accomplishment. Now that I've seen all of it, I still think so and yet I can't say for certain how I feel about it.

First things first, Fire Walk With Me is a movie drenched in pain. The jokiness of the series, the purposefully saccharine emotions, the overplayed performances and score are, after the possibly unnecessary first act, out. Laura Palmer's story is not a movie-of-the-week; it doesn't tease and then soothe our emotions, titillating us with the promise of catharsis and keeping us far enough away to avoid getting hurt. It's actually one of the most upsetting works of art I've ever seen.

That gum you like is going to come back in style...

Well, I finally finished "Twin Peaks." There's so much to say about it, but I'm not going to do so right now. First I want some time to digest, to watch the special features on the DVD, and also to read everything about the show that I can get my hands on (not literally get my hands on, I'm talking about the Internet here). The prequel film Fire Walk With Me arrives tomorrow, and I'll watch that too. A review of the movie will probably be up before my reaction to the show.

Still, some words are in order. I was always under the impression that the series was cancelled when audiences realized it wasn't going to "solve" Laura Palmer's murder, that Lynch was just using that incident as a springboard for his infamous...well, surrealism seems like too easy a word so I'll skip defining it for now. In other words, audiences just weren't with it enough to appreciate what was going on and they chickened out, and television lost one of its great shows. A wonderful little elitist tale of noble martyrdom, but in fact the series DOES solve Laura Palmer's murder, in a not-altogether satisfying way (not so much the solution, but the abrupt way it's handled in the middle of season 2). Then the series tries to become something else: an extremely quirky, occasionally violent Andy Griffith-type venture. At first this is a huge disappointment, eventually the show sort of finds a new groove, but it is never really successful. Never, that is, until the last episode, which closes the series with a bang. It, like all the best episodes, is directed by David Lynch and takes the uncanny into unforeseen dimensions. It also left me wondering if Lynch knew the show was going to be cancelled. Not only the final shot, but certain developments along the way, leave you with the feeling that there was supposed to be more, yet it also holds up as a finale.

I have to stop here because there's so much that I want to save for a full, in-depth entry, in which I'll take the time to write carefully and flesh out my conclusions and speculations. There's nothing more to say, but the blog demands a "Read More" link, so after the jump I've included a brief clip from the show, maybe its most terrifying moment. Rest assured that if you aren't familiar with the series it won't spoil anything, but it could very well give you nightmares.

2046

Writing about Wong Kar-Wai can feel like dancing about architecture, or more accurately, trying to draw a blueprint based on an inexplicably moving dance. Through slow-motion, gorgeous color, music for which the word "evocative" doesn't begin to do justice, exquisite sound design, rhythmic editing, and the sympathetic and often beautiful faces of his actors, Wong's films weave a web of seductive grace, leaving you too bedazzled to resist the narcotic bite of the director. He has us at hello, or rather, at the moment Nat King Cole beckons in his honeyed voice and Zhang Ziyi casts a fleeting, teasing glance in our direction.

Actually, 2046 (2004) is only the third Wong Kar-Wai film I've seen, but there were moments which proved more dreamily overpowering than anything else I'd witnessed in his work (or that of most other filmmakers'). Ultimately, though, I find In the Mood for Love (2000) his richest and most satisfying work overall, and at times 2046 lurks in its shadow. This is appropriate enough given that the latter film is in fact a sequel, or "sequel" as my Netflix sleeve describes it, to Mood. The quotation marks are actually appropriate, as 2046 is often entirely tangential to the earlier film, though more often it is not. Dancing through several lovers, across different genres, and over concurrent late-sixties Christmases, but sticking closely to Mood's protagonist Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and the hotel in which he stays, the film has its ups and downs, but oh, those ups...

The problem with comic books (and movies)

Over at scanners, Jim Emerson has posed a series of questions about superheroes, comic books, and movies. To answer the title of his post, "Do critics hate comic-book movies?" he surveys the collective critical reaction to movies like X-Men, 300, and The Dark Knight and resolutely answers, "No." He follows up by asking, "where did this idea that critics dislike them come from?" As I wrote in his comment section, it's a fact that most critics are condescending towards the genre, although the more rabid fanboys also fuel the perception of immaturity when they overreact to criticism.

But it's a third question, unasked yet hinted, which most intrigued me and carried over onto this blog:

Is there something fundamentally wrong with comic-book movies?

To which I respond resolutely, confidently, and without trepidation: yes, no, and maybe.

Why We Fight

Why did we fight after 9/11? Why did we fight in Iraq? Why have we fought since World War II? Why do we fight at all? What does Gore Vidal have to say about all this? Perhaps if Why We Fight had tackled any of these questions individually (well, maybe not the last one), it would be a more focused and satisfying documentary. Then again, given the paucity of answers Eugene Jaracki's award-winning 2005 documentary provides despite all the questions, we might still have come up empty-handed. Anyway, great documentaries like Hearts and Minds can juggle numerous topics and questions, so Why We Fight's big muddle is ultimately the result of a formal failure and not over-ambition.

If any war required a documentary explaining its motives, it's this one. But like the Iraq invasion itself, Why We Fight is constantly employing sleight-of-hand, moving us from one topic to another without settling down, until we feel like we're in a restaurant examining an endless array of appetizers but no entrees. No explanation is compelling enough in and of itself, nor are enough connections drawn between the various threads to give us a composite answer. It's as if Jaracki was handed a Rubik's cube, furrowed his brow, set to work, and triumphantly returned it to our hands two hours later in a new and even more confusing jumble.

THE AUTEURS: D.W. Griffith - Biograph shorts, Part Two

See Part One here.

The second Biograph disc finally arrived after much delay, so tonight I picked up where I left off. I started with the bonus shorts, which were made earlier than most of the other works on disc two. Including The Last Drop of Water (1911), Friends (1912), The Lesser Evil (1912), and The Massacre (1912), they were variations on the standard Griffith melodrama, composed mostly in medium shots, and all but one favoring historical American subjects. It's hard not to see these works as dress rehearsals for The Birth of a Nation. Indeed, The Massacre features wide-angle battle scenes in which Griffith starts to exercise his interest in a large-scale spectacle. However, lacking the human drama of his later work, it's not quite as compelling. Notable with each of these works is his tendency to start strong, with characters strolling onscreen or appearing in repose as if we've just caught them in the middle of their daily routine. Right away we're drawn in, but with the short form to work with, Griffith quickly falls back on melodramatic cliches and shorthand characterizations. These four works suggest that Griffith could have worne out the possibilities of narrative shorts and is ready to move on to a larger canvas. As for the rest of the collection...

The Incredibles

For some reason, I never end up seeing Pixar films until well after their release, often on video. Maybe it just feels weird going to an animated film when you neither are nor have a kid? Although, given the enormous success of these movies, I doubt I'd be the only non-prepubescent/parent in the theater. I'm always entertained when I finally see them, and The Incredibles is no exception. This 2004 feature may be the most acclaimed Pixar picture, with a great deal of credit going to animation auteur Brad Bird. He departs from the usual formula of anthropomorphizing animals, toys, robots, or cars, but his protagonists here aren't exactly normal humans, either...

Actually, the target of The Incredibles' ire is normalcy itself, in a fashion some have read as conservative (more on that later). The clever and often ironic, but also warm-hearted, tale follows the union of superheroes Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl. On the job, they flirt and exchange one-liners while fighting burglars, but as soon as the masks are off, they bicker and barter like any other married couple. And after a while, those masks stay off - a series of lawsuits causes the government to crack down on superheroes, placing them in a sort of witness protection program and banning them from donning cape and tights ever again. Fifteen years and several pounds later, Mr. and Mrs. Incredible have three kids, a suburban home, and the usual family fights and domestic discomforts to deal with (though invisibility and superhuman strength tend to jazz things up a bit). All is comfy, cozy, and somewhat boring. That is, until... well, you get the idea.

The Man You Loved to Hate/Foolish Wives

I'm sorry to see that great image from Daisies disappear from the top of my blog, but the time has come for a new entry. Nonetheless, if any face could replace that memorable one, it's the slightly demonic, curiously hypnotic visage of the man early film audiences (and later, studio producers) would love to hate. I'll eventually be dealing with Erich von Stroheim in my AUTEURS series, so this may seem like jumping the gun, but between D.W. Griffith and him is Cecil B. DeMille, who has something like 3,921 movies on Netflix. By the time I get to von Stroheim in that project, I'm sure I'll have a fresh perspective.

On a side note, my egregious blog-pimping seems to have worked; thanks & welcome to those who commented on A dirty dozen. I hope you'll stick around - if you want to check out some of the older posts, I'd recommend The Virgin Suicides, The Brave Little Toaster, The Dark Knight, and I'm Not There among others. Let me know what you think.

A dirty dozen

My 12 films: Some Came Running, God's Country, Paris Belongs to Us, Rosemary's Baby, Pandora's Box, Daisies, Scarface, Baby Face, Air Force, Yellow Submarine, Last of the Mohicans, Easy Rider

Do memes last more than a week? It's been eight days since Piper at Lazy Eye Theatre challenged bloggers to program 12 films at the New Beverly Cinema. Eight days in the blogosphere seems like an eternity but I'll go ahead and bite (not that anyone asked me to). The idea is to create a rep program of twelve films, in themed couplets (for example, Piper sticks High Fidelity with Punch Drunk Love as romantic comedies, and Song of the South with Coonskin as half-animated, racially controversial adaptations of Uncle Remus' tales). Some have chosen to give the entire program an overarching theme; hats off to them, but I found it hard enough deciding what to include and what to leave out.

My pairs are themed, but the overall program is not, save that they are all among my favorite films, ones I would love to share with an audience. I tried for diversity, and there are some classics, some more recent films (nothing from the past 15 years, though), all in different styles and genres. There are silents and talkies, black-and-white and color, animated and live-action, even documentary. Admittedly, all but three or four are American. And one persistent consistency proved impossible to overcome: fully half the films are from the 60s, my favorite cinematic decade. It's a testament to that era's richness that the list still feels diverse. Anyway, on to the explanations...

Affliction

(Affliction)

1998 was a good year for movies. True, Affliction's official year of release was 1997, when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and I didn't see it until 1999, when it finally opened in wide release across the U.S. But I'll always associate it with the year between these two, a year that feels now like the final hurrah of 20th century cinema. When works like Fight Club, The Matrix, Three Kings and Being John Malkovich were released the following year, giving an early kickstart to 21st century filmmaking, '98 began to seem like the swan song of classicism. These newer works were often dark, hip, witty in one way or another, and highly self-conscious in their play with structure and expectation. Call them "surface" works, expressed through a slick style which often bypassed the human element en route to big themes and grand ideas. These films weren't especially my cup of tea and still aren't, though their influence is stronger than ever.

Saving Private Ryan, Gods and Monsters, The Thin Red Line, the often-maligned Life is Beautiful, even Rushmore, the breakthrough work of the becoming-unfashionable hipster godhead Wes Anderson, were films that had people at their center. Even Babe: Pig in the City, Gene Siskel's final pick for best-of-the-year, and a film staffed by animals, had a warm, human heart. Of course, to a certain extent, my memory is arbitrary and selective. To be fair, '98 wasn't and still isn't generally seen as a high-water mark for either classicism or humanism in film. The classical era had supposedly been over for something like thirty years, and critics were already - indeed, had long been - decrying trends towards special effects and away from character. But can we really doubt that a great change occurred around this time, setting the tone for our current epoch? Not that many of these new films aren't good. Indeed, formally, they are often an improvement on well-intentioned but aesthetically unadventurous dramas. Yet something has been critically wounded in our transition into a faster-paced, slicker, more cerebral and clever art cinema...and the end product, even at its best, can seem to lack a soul.