The Morality of Noir: Femme Fatale

This is my contribution to For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon, hosted by Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Films and Farran Nehme of Self-Styled Siren, in what I sincerely hope is becoming a yearly tradition. Be sure to click the button at the bottom of this post and donate what you can - every penny counts. For a poignant (if I do say so myself) reminder of the rich history lost with every destroyed film, read my contribution to last year's blogathon, on the sad fate of many of the films shot in my hometown of Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale can be viewed as the director's personal essay on film noir, a great movie artist taking what he responds to most about a genre and applying to it his perspective on morality, ethics, and politics. This is not to say De Palm'a film "elevates" the genre or should be viewed apart from noir in any way - the noir elements recontextualize De Palma, not the other way around. De Palma, so frequently trivialized as a mere Hitchcock plagiarist/imitator, can be thought of as an American Godard as well, in that a considerable element of his artistic identity is analyzing the morality of cinema.

Proper film noir could certainly be viewed as a moral movement in American film - more or less all film noirs deal with people who are rotten to some degree, and many are blatant morality plays - but I feel that can be reductive as it implies that there was some kind of unified aesthetic, which I don't think has ever been the case in mainstream American movies. These stories were told because they were popular for a time, reflecting a desire to be "bad" vicariously within the safe confines of a movie theater; to get a glimpse into a sleazy underworld of detectives, criminals, beautiful women, sex, and violence. With Femme Fatale, De Palma similarly gives us a glimpse into that world, but as is typical of the film maker he forces you to think about what it means to watch.

And the very act of seeing has always been vital to even the weakest of De Palma's films - his elaborate camera work, extensive use of split screens, propensity for depicting voyeurism, and grounding in movie history aren't merely stylistic flourishes, they are examinations of perception, and Femme Fatale contains his greatest ruminations on the subject. Consider the director's often imitated but never equaled use of split screen in an early sequence, where one half of the screen is taken up by the tabloid photographer Nicolas (Antonio Banderas) while he photographs Laure from his balcony, the other taken up by Laure's former accomplices as they watch her through a pair of binoculars from afar. One half of the screen depicts curiosity while the other half depicts resentment and rage; as with everything in life, it's all a matter or perspective.

Femme Fatale is undoubtedly a post-modern noir, a movie very much aware of film noir aesthetics and its place in cinema history. This is established masterfully in the film's opening shot, which shows the main character Laure (Rebecca Romijn, who was a Stamos at the time) watching Billy Wilder's seminal Double Indemnity on French television, and we see Laure's reflection superimposed over that of Barbara Stanwyck's standard setting femme fatale. Though you can't even begin to compare Romijn's acting abilities to that of Stanwyck's - who could literally do it all, and brilliantly - one thing they share is that neither woman is overwhelmingly beautiful, but each exudes sexuality. Watching them cast their feminine spells, one gets the impression that they're the ones in charge (perhaps no actress was ever better at being the sexual aggressor than Stanwyck) To put it bluntly, both chicks know how to work it, though naturally by virtue of working in post-code Hollywood De Palma is able to be much more frank about the film's sexual undercurrents.

Although Femme Fatale is ultimately a serious movie, it opens with De Palma at his most playful, though De Palma when he's playful is still as incisive as it gets. The picture opens with a heist, though the heist doesn't take place at a bank or a casino, but at the Cannes film festival. This sequence is both thrilling and satirical, and it plays as a "fuck you" to the film making establishment that De Palma has always remained on the outskirts of, in spite of his sporadic critical and financial success. The heist itself - of an outfit worn by a film director's date, made of gold that just barely covers her breasts, another hilarious gag that paints the film making establishment as decadently bourgeois - is a brilliant sequence, a visual symphony that showcases De Palma's incredible aesthetic sensibility and his inventive use of camera movement that establishes and explores cinematic space as radically as any director since Carl Dreyer.

What with Laure being cut from the classic femme fatale cloth, she fucks over the people in her gang of criminals and makes off with the loot herself. She disguises herself, is found anyway, and is thrown off a high railing by a pissed off ex-accomplice, and when she hits the ground a couple mistakes her for their troubled, suicidal daughter and takes her home with them. If all this sounds contrived it is, but here De Palma is taking the classic mistaken identity element of film noir and making it genuinely, profoundly existential. She walks around their home, sees pictures of the daughter she has been mistaken for, in effect getting a glimpse into a life. Again, it is the very act of seeing portrayed as a reflection of human experience.

And this is the point when the film dives down the rabbit hole, morphing from thriller to metaphysical examination of existence that invites comparison to David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. Laure falls asleep in the bathtub and dreams that the real daughter comes home to kill herself, and she observes her suicide and follows through on stealing her identity, in effect transforming herself into another human being. She takes the dead girl's plane ticket to the United States, and as it turns out the plane was overbooked so she moves to first class where she winds up seated next to a kind, wealthy American, who she proceeds to marry. This is where De Palma begins exploring the concept of fate, which will play a vital role in the remainder of the picture.

Flash forward seven years - the wealthy American that Laure (who now goes by Lily) married has become the American ambassador to France (in a touch typical of the politically charged De Palma, there are implications that he purchased the Ambassadorship), so she finds herself back in France and doing everything she can to hide her identity, lest her ex-accomplices find her ("Bad people read newspapers, too", she remarks late in the film). An interested party calls on Nicolas to find a way to take her photograph, and he manages to sneak a picture of her by pretending to have been hit by the Ambassador's car, which ignites a cat and mouse game between the two.

And naturally this interplay between the two becomes not just a battle of the sexes but a battle of sex itself, culminating in a sexually charged fever dream that allows De Palma to put on full display the themes of latent sexuality that true noir had to mask. After taking her picture Nicolas tracks Laure down in a hotel room and finds her with a pistol, and tries to stop her from committing suicide; he convinces himself that she's a damsel in distress and he's her savior, but really she's one step ahead of him and manipulating him every step of the way - in typical De Palma fashion, the woman is the one in charge and the man is powerless, in effect emasculated. Laure never planned to kill herself, she wanted him to take the gun away from her, and the moment he steps out onto the streets she calls the police, reports a bogus crime, and has him arrested. The hopelessly masculine desire to save the beautiful woman blows up in Nicolas' face.

While he was under arrest, Laure sends an e-mail from Nicolas' computer to her husband telling him that she's been kidnapped and demands a ten million dollar ransom for her return. He comes home and discovers this, and realizes that he's essentially fucked and has no choice but to go along with her plan. He meets her on a bridge overlooking the Parisian skyline, and she uses her sexuality in an attempt to lure him into going along with her plan. She takes him to a bar, and in this sequence De Palma fully explores the themes of emasculation and voyeurism, depicting sex itself as an expression of gender power dynamics, hostility, and attraction. Once again, Laure uses the masculine desire to protect against Nicolas, putting herself in a position where a man will be forceful with her so Nicolas can step in to save her. He beats up the would-be rapist, and then proceeds to have aggressive sex with Laure - she thinks he's fallen into her trap, and he thinks she's fallen into his, as he records her saying that the whole kidnapping plot was her idea.

On the bridge, with Nicolas in kidnapper attire, the Ambassador arrives with a briefcase full of cash, and Nicolas tries to explain the truth of what's happening. Laure shoots the Ambassador and turns around and shoots Nicolas, and as she walks over to Nicolas to shoot him one more time, her ex-accomplices grab her and, as they did in the beginning, throw her over the railing. As it did the first time, being thrown from a high distance begets a rebirth, as she lands in the river and is suddenly naked, and it's clear that she's not actually in the river but in the bathtub once again. This is a deeply, profoundly spiritual moment - a linking of life, death, and dreams that examines the infinite depth of a single instant.

Laure awakes in the bathtub suddenly, as every movie character in history does from a nightmare. Once again, the real Lily comes in to kill herself, but only this time Laure stops her and informs her that, in spite of how awful things may seem, a great life awaits her - all she has to do is get on that plane. Laure needed to see how awful things would get before she made the moral decision to change her life, to not indulge her desire to fuck over everyone, to cease being an archetypal femme fatale and to become a true human being. While the film acknowledges fate as a spiritual precept, De Palma also seems to be saying that we're ultimately the ones in control of our destiny - Laure writes Lily's future by telling her to get on the plane, and ultimately her commitment to changing her ways will bring her to her true love, Nicolas, who is the only character in the movie who has proved to be her intellectual (and sexual) equal.

Femme Fatale is simultaneously De Palma paying homage to film noir and expanding it by expressly highlighting the moral, political, sexual, and spiritual elements of it. De Palma has always been a director with an aesthetic deeply rooted in genre and film history, and Femme Fatale may contain his most pronounced analysis of each, as the genre is a perfect vehicle for his sensibilities. By looking to cinema's past, De Palma found an eminently beautiful way to relate out history to our present.

Spielberg Blogathon Reminder

Hello friends, just popping in real quick to remind you all that in one week's time the feverishly anticipated moment that will surely define a generation, The Spielberg Blogathon, will begin, commence, and so on. To participate, just host a piece on your own site, send Adam and myself the link, and we shall post it on our respective sites and also at the Blogathon's official site. And that's about it, really. If any of you could advertise it on your blog by hosting a banner or even just throwing up (no not like that) a quick post to get the word out, I'd appreciate it greatly. Click the above image for the Blogathon's official site, with announcements, banners, and more (actually there's only banners and announcements).

And once again:

Adam Zanzie's e-mail: adamzanzie@gmail.com

My e-mail: medflyquarantine@gmail.com

Hope to hear from you next week. Looking very forward to it.

Over and out.

Bloggin' Spielberg

My friend and partner in crime Adam Zanzie and I would like to take this opportunity to announce a little pet project of ours: we'll be hosting a Steven Spielberg blogathon come December. December 18th, to be exact. It will run a full ten days, so that means it ends the 28th, for the mathematically challenged among us (I used a calculator). Anyone and everyone can participate, just please send myself and Adam (or just one of us, if you're lazy) the links to your work when it's published, and I will link to them here as well as on a blog I created specifically for the blogathon (click picture for link).

Also on the blog you will find banners for the blogathon. If you could place them on your own site, I would greatly appreciate it.

Adam Zanzie's email: adamzanzie@gmail.com

My email: medflyquarantine@gmail.com

Thanks in advance, everybody.

The Business of Junk: Naked Lunch

Junk is the mold of monopoly and possession. The addict stands by while his junk legs carry him straight in on the junk beam to relapse. Junk is quantitative and accurately measurable. The more junk you use the less you have and the more you have the more you use. All the hallucinogen drugs are considered sacred by those who use them - there are Peyote Cults and Bannisteria Cults, Hashish Cults and Mushroom Cults -`the Scared Mushrooms of Mexico enable a man to see God'' - but no on ever suggested that junk is sacred. There are no opium cults. Opium is profane and quantitative like money. I have heard that there was once a beneficent non-habit-forming junk in India. It was called *soma* and is pictured as a beautiful blue tide. If *soma* ever existed the Pusher was there to bottle it and monopolize it and sell it and it turned into plain old time JUNK.

- William S. Burroughs,
"Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness"

David Cronenberg's adaptation of William S. Burroughs' junkie manifesto Naked Lunch surely ranks as one of the great film adaptations of all time - as much a biography of the novel's troubled author as an adaptation of his most well known work, which Cronenberg has cited as his favorite book of all time. Since the novel only barely has a plot, Cronenberg was forced to improvise much of the content of the picture, and the result is an often hilarious, occasionally tragic, perpetually surreal film - one that dramatizes Burroughs' psychological state at the time he wrote the famed novel. In spite of the numerous alterations to the text, this is a surprisingly faithful adaptation, as Cronenberg's film is a scathing satire that attacks Capitalism, drug culture, Corporate America, even the creative process - ultimately, it's as true to Burroughs' novel as any adaptation could possibly be, while also a new dimension to the text: an extremely moving portrait of its author.

I must confess that I did not care for Burroughs' novel, though I've had trouble deciding if I find it bad or simply disturbing, as Naked Lunch reflects a particularly tumultuous time in its authors life. Burroughs further wrote in "Deposition" that he had "no precise memory of writing the notes which have now been published under the title Naked Lunch", which certainly explains the novel's lack of grammatical and narrative structure, as well as the often repulsive imagery that Burroughs employs (it's the only book I've ever read to make me physically ill). Cronenberg's aesthetic is a good match for Burroughs', creating similarly revolting depictions of flesh on the screen. By merging biography with fiction, Cronenberg dramatizes Burroughs' subjective reality; in spite of the numerous artistic liberties he takes with the book and Burroughs' life, Cronenberg beautifully dramatizes the state of mind of the author at the time of writing Naked Lunch, creating an extraordinarily rich and moving allegory for the creative process.

Peter Weller plays William Lee, an exterminator working in 1950s New York, and the film evokes the period before it properly begins with stunning opening credits in the style of the great Saul Bass. The film opens with Lee performing an extermination job and running out of bug spray in the middle of it, and he realizes that his wife has been lifting his bug powder for her personal use - the film uses bug spray as a representation of heroin - and the very beginning of the picture details her descent from user to all out junkie. Burroughs later states in "Deposition" that " [he] could look at the end of my shoe for eight hours. I was only roused to action when the hourglass of junk ran out. If a friend came to visit - and they rarely did since who or what was left to visit - I sat there not caring that he had entered my field of vision - a grey screen always blanker and fainter - and not caring when he walked out of it. If he had died on the spot I would have sat there looking at my shoe waiting to go through his pockets. Wouldn't you? Because I never had enough junk - no one ever does.", and we gradually see Lee's wife, Joan (Judy Davis), slipping into this barely cognizant state. When Lee walks in on one of his friends casually fucking his wife on his living room couch, she urges him not to be jealous - she assures him that his friend can't come, because of the spray, and she doesn't need to. Though the film never deals with Burroughs' actual drug use (the film only shows him drunk, in one scene), it nevertheless portrays the drug culture that Burroughs' art was a result of.

Naked Lunch also details the paranoid mind of a drug addict -though Lee is never depicted using drugs recreationally, he nevertheless confesses that he experiences "severe hallucinations", presumably a side effect of being in constant contact with the spray. After being apprehended by police for misappropriation of his insecticide, he has a vision of a large bug that speaks out of its asshole telling him that he must kill his wife because she works for "Interzone Inc.", and, moreover, isn't even human. He winds up inadvertently completing his 'mission' when he suggests that he and his wife do their William Tell routine, misses, and shoots her in the head. This is a key moment, both in Burroughs' life and in Cronenberg's film, an event that fueled Burroughs' writing. "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death", the author wrote, and the film examines the profound effect that him killing his wife had on his life and his work.

The inclusion of the death of Burroughs' wife is part of the genius of Cronenberg's film; Cronenberg sprinkles in details of Burroughs' personal life to at once make Naked Lunch a cohesive narrative and an expansion of the text upon which it is based. Rather than treating the man's work and his life like they are two separate entities, Cronenberg suggests that the two are intimately related - that understanding the man is key to understanding the art, and vice versa. After shooting his wife, Lee flees to Interzone to complete his mission, and it is here that that the picture details the writing of the novel, which it imagines as Lee's reports from Interzone.

Perhaps the most inspired detail in the picture is the way it transforms the character of Doctor Benway - a crazy, corrupt surgeon in the book - to a pharmaceutical doctor, a daring connection of illegal drugs to legal drugs. Lee visits him early in the film to receive a substance that will get his wife off the spray, called The Black Meat, though in fact it's a more dangerous drug than the drug spray; Benway is the most successful pusher of them all. Lee finds Benway's factory in Interzone at the end of the film and witnesses a few barely conscious human beings feasting on the insides of Centipedes, high out of their minds, highlighting that pharmaceuticals - abused as frequently, if not more frequently, than illegal substances - can produce the most strung out junkies of them all.

This discovery prompts Lee to leave Interzone for Annexia, accompanied by Joan Frost - also played by Judy Davis - and when he arrives at the border he is ordered to "prove" that he is the writer he claims be. He turns around to see his wife in the back of his car, and suggests that they do their William Tell routine. Once again, Lee shoots Joan dead, and this is the point when Cronenberg's approach towards translating the novel to the screen takes on truly tragic ramifications. As Burroughs wrote, he would not have become a writer were it not for the death of his wife, and the film pays homage to the fact that this event is part of Burroughs' artistic identity - there is no getting around it, he did a terrible thing, but it was an event that formulated his art (though it's worth noting that, while Burroughs expressed profound guilt over shooting his wife, he didn't feel bad enough to serve any kind of punishment for it). Cronenberg takes a senseless tragedy and ingrains in into the fabric of William Lee's very existence, and the implications of a never ending cycle of guilt and regret - yet Burroughs' necessity for it - are truly heartbreaking.

[This has been an entry in The Cronenberg Blogathon, hosted by Cinema Viewfinder, where this piece is cross-published. The blogathon runs from September 6-12]

Fort Hollywood, My Home Town

This is my contribution to For The Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon, hosted by Marilyn Ferdinand and Farran Nehme, a.k.a. The Siren. The Blogathon runs from February 14-21.

An interesting footnote of American film history is that before there was Hollywood, California there was Fort Lee, New Jersey. It doesn't have quite the same ring to it (perhaps not where a young mechanic can be a panic), but for all intents and purposes it's the location of the birth of a large-scale motion picture industry, one of the first the world had ever seen. The fact that the industry was born here is fitting really, as Thomas Edison and his assistant W.K.L. Dickson invented the 'Kinetograph' (history has suggested that Dickson was the more instrumental of the two), a crude early version of the movie camera which was designed to shoot films for Edison's Kinetoscope (essentially an early version of the Nickelodeon) when located at Edison's lab in West Orange, New Jersey. Edison also built his famous "Black Maria" soundstage in Fort Lee, thought of as the first proper film studio. But Fort Lee was the artistic home of many legends of the early medium: D.W. Griffith (as actor and director), Douglas Fairbanks, Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Theda Bara, Oscar Micheaux, Mary Pickford, W.C. Fields, The Marx Brothers, Raoul Walsh, Lionel, John and Ethel Barrymore are among the noteworthy artists and performers to have worked in the town. In addition to this, Fort Lee housed many early manifestations of some of the medium's most noteworthy studios: Metro Pictures Corporations, Fox, Biograph, Keystone, The Champion Film Company (a precursor of Universal Studios) and Selznick Picture Corporations are examples of some of the studios that operated directly across the river from New York City.

The proximity of Fort Lee and the New Jersey Palisades (the term 'cliffhanger' is said to refer to the area's distinctive cliffs) to New York was what initially attracted film makers to the area, as the large amount of undeveloped land created an ideal situation for location shooting as well as land to build studios on. One of the earliest films shot in Fort Lee was Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (pictured below), directed by Thomas Edison and staring a young actor named David Wark Griffith, who would later achieve some notoriety as a director. Griffith got his proverbial foot in the door on these hallowed grounds, and soon after his appearance in Edison's film he would begin a prosperous relationship with Biograph as actor and later as a director (probably most noteworthy is the fact that Griffith shot some exteriors for his seminal The Musketeers of Pig Alley in Fort Lee).


As more and more studios began to set up shop in Fort Lee, the area became more and more prosperous. Between businesses designed to help the movie companies and businesses catering to the tourism of the area, Fort Lee became the first great movie town in America.


Alas, as with all great American institutions - from the Colonies to Baseball - a Westward pilgrimage was imminent, taking the movies away from the East Coast and relocating them to sunny California. Nestor Studios, which operated out of Bayonne, New Jersey, was the pioneer of West Coast based film making, as they were looking to make use of California's vast open spaces and year round warm weather (Nestor Studios would eventually be swallowed by mega-conglomerate Universal). Other studios quickly followed suit. Some studios kept their labs located on the East Coast but by the early 1920s the movie industry had more or less completely relocated to Hollywoodland.

The tragic element of this story is that very few of the films shot in Fort Lee have survived to this day. Studio fires were fairly common, between ultra-flammable nitrate film stock and the fact that the studios were built with large windows that trapped heat in the studios like a greenhouse (example below), and one studio after another burned to the ground. For instance, The Marx Brothers first film Humor Risk was screened once in New York and is thought to be lost forever. The incredibly rich cinematic history of Fort Lee has been almost completely destroyed, which is a hole in my heart, as I would love to see what my hometown looked like a century ago. Who knows what early masterpieces will remain unseen for all time?


And this is, as they say, the hook. So many films - as valuable a cultural indicator as we have - run the risk of suffering the fate the films of Fort Lee did. But we know so much more about the art and science of preserving films now, the only thing that's missing (and it's a big thing) is monetary support. That's why two of the most wonderful writers on the internet joined forces for this blogathon: to raise awareness and money for this most noble cause. As film bloggers, we do something very valuable by sharing our views with the world and engaging with works of art, but this cause is extremely important. This is bigger than all of us. It's estimated that 75% of all silent films are lost forever, though this is impossible to accurately gauge as accurate records were not kept at that time. I'm sure that 75% contains more than a few duds, but isn't it possible that we've lost films on the level of Metropolis, The Passion of Joan of Arc, or The Last Laugh? Though the quality of the films saved is virtually irrelevant, at any rate - as Henry Langlois said, "One must save everything and buy everything. Never assume you know what's of value. " We need to preserve these films for future generations, and let them decide what's great and what is not. And that starts with us. Donate anything you can spare to The National Film Preservation Foundation. Let's give something back to the medium that has given us so much.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO THE NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION

Growing Up with the Movies

The blogger known by the handle The Kid in the Front Row has instigated a blogathon, which states that the participants recount an experience at the movies that's particularly memorable. Now, I'm much too indecisive to pick just one solitary night at the movies; so many incredible experiences are so ingrained into my psyche that I'd feel bad leaving so many out. So, in chronological order, here are some experiences at the movies that have helped define the person I am today (take that as you will).

We probably all had a time when we started to appreciate movies differently, more substantially, when our understanding of movies become more enriched. If I could draw it to a point, I'd say at the start of High School is when I began to expand my cinematic horizons. I began to watch older movies, foreign movies, or generally anything that was canonized in any way. Due to this, as I got older and older I could feel that my taste was out of sync with those of my peers. Some of them didn't like going on to movies because I would dare be critical of them. Also, when I hit High School, I began to take myself to movies and didn't rely on my parents to drop off and pick up, so going to the movies became less of a special, once in a while thing, and more an ingrained part of my day to day existence. Due to this, from 2002 and onward there are plenty of movies I saw that left a great imprint on me, but this list will only cover pre 2002, thereby reflecting the time in my life when my going to see a movie was a rare occurence --- and the true great experiences were few and far between.

Beauty and the Beast
Circa Christmas 1991

This is the first movie I have clear memories of seeing, and thus it warrants an inclusion on this list regardless of quality. That it happens to be the last watchable, let alone good movie that Disney's hand drawn animation studio made is beside the point, but it certainly doesn't hurt. I was like 3 years old at the time, so my memory is hazy to say the least, but I remember getting very, very upset when Gaston plummets to his death from atop the Beast's castle. I mean, that had to hurt really bad.

Jurassic Park
Circa Summer 1993

Again, I was 4-going-on-5 when I saw this movie, so my memories of it are hazy, but they're more clearly defined than my memories of Beauty and the Beast. This was the first non-Disney, non-animated, non G-rate movie I saw in a movie theater, and I remember being very excited to be seeing something that wasn't expressly 'kiddy'. I remember being scared shitless during the film's claustrophobic, expressionistic opening sequence, being in awe when we got our first glimpse of dinosaur's (the Brontosaurus sequence is quintessential Spielberg --- human beings eclipsed by technology), and then spending the rest of the movie scared shitless when all hell (not to mention carnivores) breaks loose. Most people find the T-Rex sequence to be the scariest and most memorable, but it was the Raptors that had me watching the movie between my fingers --- I had nightmares about being chased by Raptors for years and years afterward. Besides, the T-Rex is basically the hero of the movie, saving our protagonists from certain, painful death (one of the most glorious Deus Ex Machina's in modern movies). Those Raptors, on the other hand, were real bastards.

Every movie lover has that movie: the movie they saw at just the right time in their childhood that will always stick out as being the one that showed them the real power of movies. For me, Jurassic Park is that movie, in that it's the first movie I remember having a visceral, intense reaction to, and for that it will always have a place in my heart.

Toy Story
Circa December 1995

Not many movies have the distinction of being the first of a kind, but Toy Story certainly is that; and a thoroughly charming, clever, and incredibly economic one at that. I remember before we left for the movies, my parents gave me the choice between seeing this and Jumanji, for whatever reason. I chose wisely. Little did I know at the time that I'd seen Disney's swan song, their last truly great contribution to the moving image, nor did I have any conception that Pixar would some day become my mortal enemy. I just loved the movie to death, and still do.

Star Wars (none of this A New Hope shit)
Circa early 1997

I was late to the whole Star Wars party, about 20 years late, to be exact. I hadn't even heard of the movie before I started to see advertisements about the re-release of the so-called special edition of the movie, just in time for its 20th anniversary, and to help build anticipation for the upcoming series of prequels. The experience is memorable for me for many reasons; it's one of the few movies I saw in a theater as a child that actually tapped into a childlike sense of awe, and I went into the theater with virtually no expectations, because I had no idea what this movie was. I loved the movie's sense of adventure, the action, the characters, and it's sense of fun. But this is not the only reason it was memorable; I wanted to sit in the front, because I knew this was going to be a big movie, but my parents opted to sit in the middle/close to the back, so I got to sit by myself. Now, I know this seems relatively inconsequential, but to a 9 year old, this is a big deal. I felt so independent, and I remember sitting between a guy who was probably about 20 and some kid who was like 7, and chatting it up with them before and after the movie. Man, I felt so cool.

Titanic
Circa Christmas 1997

I know, I know, James Cameron's epic blockbuster is everything that's wrong with Hollywood film making: bloated, reliant on special effects, and hijacks history to tell a trite love story. Or at least, that's what I've been told, but it's hard (nay, impossible) to erase the impact that this movie had on my 9 year old self. I was always something of a history buff, so I was fascinated by the Titanic since I was about 6 years old. I remember the first movie I saw on the subject was the Clifton Webb version from the '50s, which is everything that Cameron's film is so often accused of being: overblown, tawdry melodrama that uses the ship as a backdrop for a trite familial drama. One thing that I don't think can be argued about Cameron's film is that the ship itself is the star of the show, and it's the humans that serve as the backdrop to the grandeur and tragedy of the ship, instead of the other way around. I also saw A Night to Remember a few years before, and though I enjoyed it for its factual recounting of the events of April 14, 1912, there was no dramatic grab to the movie, at least for me (the book is truly great, though, for precisely that reason).

And then, I remember hearing whispers of this huge Hollywood movie that was going to be about the Titanic. I remember hearing that this was going to be the most expensive movie ever made, and that painstaking attention was paid to every last detail of the ship. The recreation was going to be simply unprecedented. I remember it was due to come out in July of 1997, and then it being abruptly pushed back because the movie wasn't ready. I just had to see this movie, come hell or high water.

So, when December of 1997 finally rolled around (and it felt like a long wait --- this is the first movie I remember looking forward to for more than a year before it came out), and the movie became a phenomenon, my anticipation grew. I'd heard stories of people going to see the movie and being forced to stand in the back, I'd heard stories of people going to see it and then getting on line for the next showing, of people (especially teenage girls) walking out of the picture sobbing. This was the first time I remember living through a movie that captured the popular zeitgeist. Like it or not, this was a movie everyone just had to go see.

When I finally did see the movie, it was everything I could have hoped for. I would have been more than happy if the movie just provided a recreation of the ship that had captured my imagination, but I found the love story that is the film's dramatic center to be extremely involving and moving as well, and an apt representation of the tragedy of the ship. I also remember crying like a baby from the time the ship sank to the final shot, and all the way home. But I was always a giant sap. It's also the first movie I ever saw twice, once with each of my parents.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Circa December 2001

Being a 13 years old sucks enough, but the period after 9/11 was especially rough, what with my living in the Metropolitan area, and some good escapism was sorely needed. I couldn't get too terribly into Harry Potter, but I was intrigued by the upcoming Lord of the Rings movie, the first of a trilogy. I remember checking its IMDb page a day or two after it had come out, and was floored to see it had been voted to number 1 on the top 250! (when I cared about such things) Now, I was definitely curious. I hadn't read the books, and wasn't particularly familiar with the story, so I walked into the theater more or less cold, having no clue what was about to unfold before me. I was taken in by Jackson's film in the same way I was taken in by Star Wars just a few years earlier; I was seeing a complete, self contained, spectacularly detailed cinematic world. This was also something of the end of an era for me, as even by the time Jackson's incredibly inferior sequels rolled out, I found myself mostly bored by the movies (I tried watching The Two Towers the other night, and was struck by how incredibly silly and insubstantial it is --- what you see is what you get, if that much), but the first one, due to good timing as much as anything else, will always be a night at the movies that I treasure. Plus, The Fellowship of the Ring is full of promise, except I don't feel that Jackson's vision for the saga ever realized that promise.

If I was going to stretch this list into my adolescence/early adulthood, there would be dozens and dozens more movies listen, but I figure I've rambled enough for today, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Visions of Life: Mission to Mars

This piece is being cross-published at Tony Dayoub's Cinema Viewfinder as part of The Brian De Palma Blogathon. The blogathon runs from September 7-16.

One of the most inexplicably hated movies of this past decade, Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars is not only "not that bad", it might even be great. The film presently rests with a score of 34 on Metacritic (which translates to "generally unfavorable reviews", to those who don't speak the language), and a confounding, outrageous, wholly unjustifiable 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. Of course, much of this hatred arises from the fact that the movie was marketed one way (a space adventure from the man who made Mission: Impossible just a few years earlier), while actually being a thoughtful, humanist, post-modern take on science fiction lore. And I feel it's the film's unique encapsulation of the science-fiction genre on film that may have jarred some at first; it has the grand, cosmic mystery of Kubrick, the humanistic benevolence of Spielberg, and the spirit of science fiction pulp and B-movies. Tim Robbins' character Woody Blake wears a Flash Gordon rocketship around his neck, and like the Robbins character, Mission to Mars keeps the adventurous spirit of b-movies close to its heart; but it's more than a celebration of trash, it's a transcending of it. So many action spectacles are given a free pass in spite of more often than not being nothing more than B-movies with high production values, but Mission to Mars understands the child-like sense of wonder these films would tap in to --- De Palma has never been an artist who denied cinema's more base pleasures --- but De Palma does much more here than dress-up empty material with CGI.

The movie begins with one of De Palma's patented long takes (complete with some Buckwheat Zydeco on the soundtrack), but it's so much more than showing off technique --- he introduces us to all the film's principle characters here, the two teams of astronauts that will be the first human beings to set foot on Mars. They each consist of three men, one woman ("same handicap", one character quips at the beginning of the film, but women being equal to men is one of the key elements of Mission to Mars), and this is fitting, as gender dynamics have always been a key element of De Palma's work --- and in Mission to Mars, gender dynamics define space exploration, as husband and wife couples are chosen to give support and strength to one another during the long duration of the voyage. It's at this point that the movie introduces us to Jim McConell (Gary Sinise); an astronaut who, along with his wife, was slated to be on the first manned mission to Mars. However, it is revealed that Sinise's wife got sick and passed away, and he had to unfortunately give up his and his wife's life-long dream of going to Mars in order to be at his side while she died (apparently, playing characters who almost-but-not-quite go to space is Sinise's specialty). For a movie that so many reviewers wrote off as 'poorly written', the dramatic elements of Mission to Mars are poignant and extremely well played by the film's performers. Yes, it's a film that wears it's heart on its sleeve --- but is that really such a bad thing? It's one of the most earnest movies of the decade, so enamored with its central concept and characters that I personally find it difficult not to love it as well.

Mission to Mars, with its large-scale subject and budget, also gives De Palma great material with which to flex his directorial muscle; the incredible special effects and set design make it one of the few movies, outside of 2001, that have actually taken me to space. There is one sequence in a spaceship where the characters dance to Van Halen's "Dance the Night Away", and the camera is as weightless as the characters. Even if you don't like the movie I defy you (seriously) to tell me that this sequence, at once romantic and bittersweet (romantic in that it shows how in love the Robbins character is with his wife, bittersweet in that it highlights the loss felt by the Sinise character), doesn't at least bring a smile to your face. The sequence that shows the Mars Rover exploring the Mars Terrain (one that recalls R2-D2's arrival on Tattoine from Star Wars), with Ennio Morricone's soothing, beautiful music on the soundtrack, uncannily recreates the surface of Mars in gorgeous widescreen. Brian De Palma has always been a film maker who operated within the Hollywood system, all the while subverting it within his films, and it speaks to what an idiosyncratic artist he is that he managed to bring his unique moral stamp to a large-scale Hollywood spectacle.

The film strips away the usual xenophobia of space action/adventure movies by portraying aliens as benevolent givers of life, as opposed to relegating them to a generic monster role; "Life reaches out for life" is the film's simple, eloquent, and profound mantra --- and it's the exact notion that so many film's on this subject fail to grasp. It's so easy for films to give us empty spectacle that offer nothing in terms of ideas or subtext, but for a film to challenge our ideas about life, the universe, and everything (to borrow from Douglas Adams) is a rare thing that deserves praise. Of course, this is Brian De Palma we're talking about, so these ideas come from within the firm boundaries of genre; but the subtext is still there, and it's still powerful. Mission to Mars expands on popular folk-lore by making the so-called "Stone Face of Mars" (something that allegedly 'proved' there was life on Mars that was proved to be an optical illusion right around the time of the film's release) a central plot point; one character says "In all our myths, in every human culture, Mars has always held a special attraction. I mean, what if that means something?" Mission to Mars assumes that the fact that Mars has tapped into the popular imagination in the manner it has does mean something, and so expands on that pop-mythology by making Martians the creators of life on Earth; it is revealed at the end of the movie (set inside the 'Stone Face') that upon the destruction of Mars by an asteroid that Martians 'seeded' life on Earth. An inspired CGI sequence gives a brief history of Earth, with the first single celled organisms evolving into fish, then reptiles, then mammals, then humans --- this causes Sinise to realize that we are one with not only one another, but with the Martians as well "We're them, they're us" is the film's ultimate realization --- all life coming full circle and being intimately related to one another. Then Gary Sinsise's Jim McConnell, like Richard Drefyfuss' Roy Neary from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is given a choice between remaining with his human compatriots or hopping in the Martian spaceship into the great unknown, and Sinise makes the decision to go on the quest of eternal enlightenment; the decision many of us would probably like to make, if we weren't too scared of what we might find.

Mission to Mars is, ultimately, a supremely good-natured, highly entertaining adventure film --- but one that understands the essence of science ficition, which is ideas about existence and humanity. De Palma gives us all this in the guise of a Hollywood action movie (one released by Disney with a PG rating, no less), but when you take De Palma's career as a whole and realize that he's always been as much defined by popular modalities of storytelling as by his own, highly idiosyncratic style, Mission to Mars feels less like an anomaly and more like a flawless distillation of themes he had previously tackled; at once paying homage to genre and expanding on it. The cosmic perspective of Mission to Mars would pave the way for his next film, Femme Fatale, which instilled his preferred genre (the thriller) with similar cosmological and existential queries presented in Mission to Mars. It has marked the beginning of a bold new phase of De Palma's career, one that would challenge the popular notions about the kind of director he is ('plagiarist', 'stylist', and so on) and enrich his art with bold, dazzlingly self-assured technique.

An Artist Trapped in a Hack's Body

This is my contribution to The Spirit of Ed Wood Blogathon, hosted by Greg Ferrara of Cinema Styles.

The notion of a man being trapped is what drives Tim Burton's Ed Wood, the best movie the director has ever made. Watching the film makes it clear that Burton has a personal investment in the story--- he identifies with the director in unique, unexpected ways, and that's what makes Ed Wood a great film. It would have been so easy for Burton to make a mean-spirited biopic that relishes in the director's weaknesses--- after all, Ed Wood's reputation precedes him; he's commonly referred to as "the worst director of all time", he was a transvestite, he was an alcoholic, and his career is defined by his relationship with Bela Lugosi, who was a has-been at that point. But Burton goes the other way with his portrait of the director--- it's one of the most sympathetic, warm, loving portraits I've ever seen in a biographical film. Which isn't to say that Burton's film falls into the trap of idol worship--- rather, the warmth emanates from Burton's identification with the director.

It's because Burton empathizes with the director's plight that he was able to make a movie like Ed Wood. Burton understands Wood's love of cinema, and he's struck by the comic-tragic ironies of the man who made Plan 9 From Outer Space being inspired by Citizen Kane, of all things. Johnny Depp's Ed Wood, king of the B-movies, lives in the shadow of Orson Welles; there are many scenes in Wood and his girlfriend's (Sarah Jessica Parker) apartment where the poster for Citizen Kane literally eclipses the man, and he keeps comparing his own progress to that of Orson Welles'. This element highlights the way cinematic history has treated Wood; as a freak, an anomaly, a side-show in the main attraction of high-art. So many over the years have condescended towards Ed Wood, and it's this notion that Burton spends the entirety of the film rejecting. It's because Burton sees elements of himself in Wood that he is able to portray the man so warmly and affectionately--- the relationship between Wood and Bela Lugosi (an uncanny Martin Landau) mirrors his own with horror icon Vincent Price, and Burton's sensibility undoubtedly has a rooting in the B-Science Fiction horror that was Wood's specialty, only with a comically expressionistic overtone.


Again, it's the idea of a man trapped that Burton seems to most strongly identify with. Burton, having experienced hardships in the Hollywood system with the two Batman movies, understands the way the drive to express yourself artistically is made into a commodity. When Wood is getting interviewed for his first chance at a directing job, a schlocky B-Movie called I Changed My Sex (later to become Glen or Glenda), the producer tells him "Ed, you seem like a nice kid, but look around you...I don't hire directors with burning desires to tell their stories. I make movies like Chained Girls. I need someone with experience who can shoot a film in four days that'll make me a profit. I'm sorry. That's all that matters". Ed knows that he, above everyone else, is qualified to make this movie, because he sees himself in the main character. But just because Wood has that "burning desire" to tell the story doesn't mean he has a talent or the experience to do so--- and this is where the element of being trapped comes into the picture. Ed, in spite of his dreams of being a film maker of Wellesian proportion, simply doesn't have the chops. As Burton sees him, Ed Wood is trapped in his fate as the 'worst director of all time'.

When the movie introduces us to Ed Wood, it is opening night of his play The Casual Company in Los Angeles. It's pouring, which is a theatrical superstition for bringing good luck to a production, but naturally not in Wood's case: it's press night, but there isn't any press. As the typically corny play unfolds in the run-down theatre, Wood emphatically mouths the lines backstage--- in a way, this early scene sums up Wood's fate. He has the enthusiasm, the drive, the passion--- but he is unable to bring the all the elements together successfully, partially because of lack of resources, but mostly because of a lack of discernible talent. And his play, a drama about World War II, is full of the cornball social pretense that would permeate Wood's career. The vision and enthusiasm are there, it's the other elements that are lacking.


The scene immediately following shows the cast out celebrating, and Wood opens a local newspaper to read the first of the many critical trashings of his career. His loyal group of friends huddle around him as he reads the evisceration--- and while we don't get to hear the entirety of the piece, we get a clear enough understanding of the extent of the pan by the players' reactions. "Do I really have a face like a horse?", his girlfriend asks, "What does 'ostentatious' mean?", another of his friends ask. While such a slaying would surely be enough to discourage even the strongest of egos, Ed stays focused on the positive. "You just can't concentrate on the negative. He's got some nice things to say... See, 'The soldiers costumes are very realistic,' that's positive!" He is, right of course, that it could have been far worse--- there are some reviews where they don't even mention the costumes. Burton understands the kick-you-when-you're-down methodology of show business, and here he shows the extent of its cruelty. Another later scene illustrates this, which shows a Hollywood Producer viewing Wood's first opus, Glen or Glenda, and, astounded by its sheer awfulness, is convinced that it's a practical joke. When Wood calls the studio later to ask if they were in business, the Producer tells him that Glen or Glenda is the worst film he ever saw, to which Wood's reply is "Well, my next one will be better!". Though, knowing what we know of Wood's reputation, his can-do enthusiasm is borderline depressing.


Johnny Depp gives what may be the best performance of his career as the energetic, optimistic Ed Wood. Depp has said that his Wood was a combination of "the blind optimism of Ronald Reagan, the enthusiasm of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, and Casey Kasem", though the performance is never pitched as caricature. Rather, Depp uses the quirks in his performance to expose Wood's humanity, and in one of the movie's most affecting sequences he asks his girlfriend "Honey, what if I'm wrong? What if I just don't have it?" Anyone who has tried to express themselves through art understands the fear of not having that great intangible thing called talent--- and with this admission Burton makes the relatively diminutive career of Ed Wood something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But what an exuberant, joyous self-fulfilling prophecy it is! The sequence near the end when Wood makes his 'masterpiece', Plan 9 From Outer Space, is simultaneously hilarious and bittersweet--- the movie treats Wood's infamous film as though it was Da Vinci painting The Sistine Chapel, or Mozart penning Requiem. "This is the one,", Wood says of his most famous film, "I know I'll be remembered for this film". He was right in more ways than he could have imagined. Yes, Wood may have carved out a legacy as the 'worst director' in the history of the medium of film--- but Burton is suggesting with Ed Wood that an infamous legacy is better than no legacy at all. Tim Burton's Ed Wood stands as a unique tribute to one of film history's strangest and most idiosyncratic figures. No one did bad like Ed Wood, and Burton understands why, perhaps more than he would like.