8/10/15: Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here

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Adam Butcher, Alexander Conti, alpha males, Andre Chemetoff, Arnold Pinnock, Balmorhea, Bryan Murphy, bullies, Canadian films, cinema, co-writers, correctional officers, Dewshane Williams, Dog Pound, drama, emotional abuse, English-language debut, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, first-time actors, guard-prisoner relationships, hunger strike, independent films, indie dramas, inmates, Jane Wheeler, Jeff McEnery, Jeremie Delon, juvenile detention facility, juvenile offenders, K'Naan, Kim Chapiron, Lawrence Bayne, Lynne Adams, male friendships, Mateo Morales, mental abuse, Michael Morang, mother-son relationships, Movies, multiple writers, Nikkfurie, non-professional actors, pecking order, physical abuse, power dynamics, power struggles, prison films, prison rape, prison riot, rape, remakes, Scum, Shane Kippel, Sheitan, Slim Twig, suicide, Taylor Poulin, Trent McMullen, William Ellis, writer-director, youth in trouble

Humans are amazingly resilient animals. We can endure any number of extreme climates, fight back against overwhelming odds and turn veritable wastelands into virtual paradises. We can ponder questions both basic and metaphysical, learn to do just about anything we set our minds to and wrestle the world at large into submission by sheer force of our nearly boundless will. Humans can do all of this (and more) with surprisingly little: all we really need is air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and a little something to keep the elements off of our heads.

While these biological necessities go without saying, humans also need something that’s a little harder to categorize, a little more difficult to study in a lab. We also need hope. Hope that bad situations can become better, hope that we can achieve our dreams by working hard, hope that we can not only survive, on a day-to-day basis, but find some measure of personal happiness and satisfaction. Humans need hope just as much as we need sustenance and oxygen: without either one, we’re just empty husks of decaying meat, carcasses too stubborn to know that we’re already dead.

There is no hope in French writer-director Kim Chapiron’s Dog Pound (2010), although that’s not really surprising: after all, there was precious little hope in his shocking debut, Sheitan (2006), either. As a filmmaker, Chapiron possesses an almost supernatural ability to submerge his characters (and his audience) into such unrelentingly dark, tragic and terrible situations that the very concept of hope is both elusive and rather laughable. We know that Chapiron’s characters are all doomed from the very first frame: that they often don’t recognize this futility makes their inevitable struggles even more sad. These characters aren’t waving their arms for rescue: they’re thrashing around, frantically, as their increasingly tired bodies drift further and further from the shore, closer to their ultimate ends than they are to any new beginnings.

Essentially a remake of the grim and unrelenting British prison film, Scum (1979), Chapiron’s English-language debut (the film is Canadian but set in Montana) concerns the Enola Vale Youth Correctional Facility and the various individuals who are imprisoned there, as well as the ones doing the imprisoning. We’re quickly introduced to three inmates who will become our entry-way into this particular world: 16-year-old Ecstasy dealer/born victim, Davis (Shane Kippel); 15-year-old repeat offender/car-jacker Angel (Mateo Morales) and 17-year-old hot-head/nominal protagonist, Butch (Adam Butcher).

After being thrown into the facility (Butch has been transferred to Enola Vale after laying a ferocious beat-down on an abusive guard at his previous facility), the trio are quickly brought up to speed by Superintendent Sands (Trent McMullen) and the boys’ immediate authority figure, CO Goodyear (Lawrence Bayne). The rules are easy: do everything you’re told, behave yourself and walk the straight and narrow. The boys who manage to do that become “trustees” and earn more responsibilities, perks and freedom, along with signifying black shirts. The ones who don’t follow the rules get orange jump suits and a one-way ticket to “Special Unit” or, in extreme cases, solitary confinement.

As with any prison film (or actual prison, for that matter), day-to-day life in Dog Pound revolves around a strictly observed pecking order: the alpha dog gets to call the shots and dispense the punishment in whatever way he sees fit. In this particular case, the alpha dog is one seriously scary bully by the name of Banks (first-time actor/former prisoner Taylor Poulin, in a genuinely frightening performance), a character who takes an immediate dislike to both Davis and Butch, albeit for different reasons.

In Davis, Banks and his cronies, Looney (comedian Jeff McEnery) and Eckersley (Bryan Murphy, another first-time actor), see the quintessential weak link, the eternal victim that’s as vital to any bully as oxygen is to those aforementioned humans. They steal his new boots, envy his short sentence, submit him to constant abuse and, in a particularly devastating moment, subject him to a particularly violent sexual assault. Davis is the naive lamb, the chosen sacrifice for those too hard and jaded to feel anything besides hatred and the need to dominant. He’s the face of every petty drug offender tossed into the correctional system, the minnows that feed the sharks.

With Butch, the bullies see something altogether different: a genuine threat to their established social order. In order to maintain his position at the top, Banks must bend Butch to his will, show the pugilistic teen that he may have been able to take out a CO but he’ll never stand against Banks and his minions. While destroying Davis is “pure entertainment” for Banks and his crew, taking Butch down is something much more important: it’s a matter of survival, plain and simple.

As Davis, Butch and, to a much lesser extent, Angel (Morales ends up with the least screen-time, overall, leaving his character rather under-developed) try to negotiate these increasingly choppy waters, CO Goodyear tries to reach the youths through a combination of “tough love” and an unyielding need to do the right thing, even when the right thing isn’t the most pleasant thing. He’s not a perfect man, by any stretch of the imagination: over-worked, under-paid, given to sporadic moments of anger and too thin-stretched to ever affect much change, Goodyear, at the very least, tries. That all of his goodwill becomes undone in one tragic, accidental moment is, unfortunately, to be expected: there is no hope for anyone at Enola Vale, whether they’re behind the bars or in front of them.

This, ultimately, is both the film’s source of strength and its ultimate weakness: since there is no hope for anyone, Dog Pound is an unflinching, full-throttle descent into a literal hell on earth. The camera doesn’t cut away, we get no reprieve from anything that has happened or is about to happen. Even when the characters find some tiny measures of individual happiness, such as when Davis regales the other boys with made-up stories about outrageous sexual dalliances and becomes, if only momentarily, the closest thing he’ll get to “respected,” there’s always the notion that more misery, tragedy and gloom lies just around the corner.

In one of the film’s most subtle, if icky, moments, Butch immobilizes a wandering cockroach by spitting on it until the crawling critter is stuck fast in a globular prison of phlegm and saliva. The insect twitches and moves, compulsively, doing its best to break free, to pull itself from its sticky bonds and scurry off into the safety of the nearest dark corner. By the morning, however, the cockroach is still in the exact same position, drowned in a tiny pool of Butch’s spit. Despite what it might have thought, the roach never had a chance: it was dead the minute Butch’s spit nailed it to the floor, whether it knew it or not. In Dog Pound, the differences between the youthful offenders and the dead roach are many but the similarities? Infinite.

Despite its constantly dreary subject matter, Dog Pound is beautifully made and exquisitely acted, no small feat considering the non-professional status of a good half-dozen of its cast members (many of whom, like Poulin, are actually youth offenders, themselves). Andre Chemetoff’s cinematography captures the inherent grit and claustrophobic quality of the facility perfectly, while the subtle, moody score (featuring the work of instrumental ensemble Balmorhea, among others) counters the often sudden, stunning violence to masterful effect. As with Sheitan, it’s obvious that Chapiron is a filmmaker in full command of every aspect of his craft.

For all of this, however, Dog Pound is still pretty difficult to recommend. The reason, of course, goes back to the point I’ve been hammering this whole time: there is absolutely no hope to be found here, in any way, shape or form. This isn’t to say that every – or even any – film needs to end happily: this is to say that Dog Pound makes a particular point of pounding each and every character so deep into the ground that there’s no possible outcome but the one we get. Each and every victory is false, any and all attempts at understanding or evolution are met with the harshest possible retributions. There is no need for comic relief here, no hope of any of the protagonists coming out on top of their individual struggles. If there is any kind of message to Dog Pound, it’s as basic, cynical and bleak as possible: if you end up in this situation, you are completely, totally and irreparably fucked.

As an example of “feel-bad cinema,” Dog Pound is nearly peerless: this is the kind of film destined to ruin any good mood, turn any optimist into a card-carrying misanthrope. While the world around us can be a harsh, grim place, the world inside Enola Vale is nothing but gray: a million little variations of the shade, infecting every single person that steps behind its walls.

It’s tempting to say that Dog Pound is the kind of film that could change anyone’s opinion about the correctional system (or, at the very least, the youth correctional system) but that just isn’t true: the guards don’t shoulder an inordinate amount of the blame here any more than the inmates do. This is not a tale of power-mad authority figures trying to beat their wards into submission, nor is it a story about hard-working correctional officers dealing with the soul-killing every-day business of keeping individuals locked away from society.

At its heart, Dog Pound is a story about average people making (and continuing to make) terrible decisions, the kind of decisions that can bring nothing but pain to all around them. This is a film about wasted youth, about squandered loyalty and altruistic intent blown to pieces about the terrible reality of the human condition. This is a tragedy, in every sense of the word. This is a hopeless film about hopeless people in a hopeless place, crafted by a singularly unique, uncompromising filmmaker. If you can stomach it, Dog Pound will rip your beating heart from your chest and smash it to smithereens on the floor. There is truth to be found here, some fractured beauty and hints at what could have been, under far different circumstances.

There’s a lot to find and appreciate in Kim Chapiron’s Dog Pound but hope? That, my friends, is one commodity that’s in perilously short supply.

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2/9/15 (Part Two): Between a Russian and a Hard Place

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action-horror, auteur theory, Ørjan Gamst, Best of 2014, Charlotte Frogner, children in peril, Christian Wibe, cinema, co-writers, dark comedies, Dead Snow, Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead, Derek Mears, Dod Sno, English-language debut, Evil Dead, extreme violence, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, flashbacks, foreign films, gore films, Hallvard Holmen, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, horror franchises, horror-comedies, Ingrid Haas, Jocelyn DeBoer, Kristoffer Joner, Martin Starr, Matthew Weston, Movies, multiple writers, Nazi zombies, Nazis, Norwegian films, Peter Jackson, Russians vs Nazis, sequels, special-effects extravaganza, Stig Frode Henriksen, Tommy Wirkola, Vegar Hoel, voice-over narration, writer-director, zombie hunters, zombies with weapons

At one point in Tommy Wirkola’s Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead (2014), intrepid American zombie hunter Daniel (Martin Starr) turns to our put-upon hero, Martin (Vegar Hoel), and tells him, “I’ve seen thousands of zombie movies and this is not in any of them. You’ve created a whole new genre here, man!” Wirkola might not have invented a whole new genre with Dead Snow 2, per se, but he certainly seems to have perfected the one he’s working in: in every way, shape and form, Wirkola’s long-awaited sequel to his outstanding Dead Snow (2009) is top-shelf entertainment, 100 minutes of pure, unadulterated zombie-killing bliss. Bigger, better, funnier and more explosive than the original, Dead Snow 2 is that very rarest of sequels: it takes the original film, turns it up to 15 (sorry, Tap: this amp is way louder) and gives fans every single thing they wanted, along with lots of things we didn’t know we needed. I hate to draw a line in the sand but here goes: Dead Snow 2 is the single greatest Nazi zombie flick in the long, storied history of moving pictures. Wirkola has done it again.

In a stroke of pure genius, Dead Snow 2 picks up from the very shot that ended the first film, providing one of the very best examples of continuity possible (even more impressive when one considers the five-year gap between the films): all of the principal crew return, along with the previous film’s Vegar Hoel, allowing both films to dovetail as neatly as possible. After escaping from the villainous Herzog (Ørjan Gamst) in a white-knuckle car chase that culminates by introducing the undead commandant to the front grill of a speeding semi (right after he loses his saluting arm), Martin crashes and wakes in the hospital.

Afforded a little breathing space, Martin notices two things right off the bat: he’s handcuffed to the bed and he appears to have a new right arm. A nearby police officer cheerfully lets Martin know that they suspect him of massacring all of his friends from the first film, while a doctor cheerfully tells him that they found his severed arm in the vehicle and decided to reattach it. That’s right, folks: Martin’s new right arm is Col. Herzog’s old one! Faster than you can say “Evil Dead 2,” Martin’s possessed arm is killing the living shit out of everyone around him, forcing him to go on the lam.

As Martin tries desperately to control Herzog’s murderous limb, the undead Nazis rampage across the countryside, slaughtering dozens of unsuspecting civilians at every turn, only to resurrect them as additional zombie soldiers. Herzog’s army grows ever larger and it seems that all might be lost until Martin gets an unexpected call from the Zombie Squad, an American team of professional zombie hunters (according to Daniel): they’re heading across the world to help bail him out and squash the undead Nazi threat once and for all. As we see, however, this group of “professionals” actually consists of Daniel and his two friends, Monica ( Jocelyn DeBoer) and Blake (Ingrid Haas): they operate out of Daniel’s basement, have arguments about the merits of Star Wars vs Star Trek and have, to the best of our knowledge, never actually set eyes on a member of the living dead.

We don’t get to pick our heroes, however, and it soon becomes apparent that Martin, the Zombie Squad and new recruit, Glenn (co-writer Stig Frode Henriksen), are all that stands between the unsuspecting citizens of Norway and an honest-to-god Nazi invasion. When the chips are down, however, Martin will be forced to rely on a rather unorthodox solution: he’s going to have to use Herzog’s arm to resurrect the slain members of a rival Russian POW group. With undead Russians on one side and undead Nazis on the other, however, Martin and his team will quickly learn that leaping from the frying pan to the fire is a mighty fine way to get burned. Will they be able to stop the zombies in time or is the entire world on the cusp of a terrible, bleak new dawn?

As someone who absolutely adored the first Dead Snow, I’ll admit that I was more than a little nervous when I first sat down to watch the sequel: after all, this could only be a disappointment, no matter how small, and actually ran the risk of affecting my positive feelings towards the first film. Turns out I should have had a little more faith in ol’ Tommy: not only is Dead Snow 2 not a disappointment, it’s actually one of the very best films of 2014, horror or otherwise.

The key to the film’s success comes from amplifying those elements that really worked in the first film (the over-the-top action setpieces, the sly humor) and downplaying or eliminating the elements that weren’t quite as successful (namely the fact that Martin is kind of a drippy hero, for much of the film). While the first film had plenty of creepy, more traditionally horror-related scenes (such as the outhouse stalking), Dead Snow 2 is almost completely action-oriented. There are plenty of scenes devoted to zombie mayhem, don’t get me wrong, but nearly all of them are pitched as frenetic, over-the-top action moments, rather than more traditionally “scary” ones. Some of the best scenes in the film are the impossibly mean-spirited ones where the zombies rampage through veritable mobs of innocents, dispatching them in some truly inventive, eye-popping ways. Nothing’s sacred in the film (literally, as one of the plot points involves killing and resurrecting a priest), which anchors the film completely and totally in “early Peter Jackson” territory. From the gag where a tank rolls over a sandbox full of kids to the one where a zombified Nazi guts someone, uses the intestines to siphon gas out of a car and then gives a cheerful thumbs-up, Dead Snow 2 practically holds up a banner that says “Anything’s possible” and dares you to think otherwise.

In fact, this element of “anything goes” is one of the most intoxicating aspects of Wirkola’s film: there’s invention, originality and individuality to burn here, yet it always feels like the biggest surprises/delights are still over the horizon. By the time we get to the resurrected Russians, a ridiculously thrilling fight atop a moving tank and the simply fantastic finale (featuring, quite possibly, the best use of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” that anyone could come up with, ever, period), the film feels like it’s going to keep piling on badassitude until our collective heads explode. This is the kind of film where the final credits roll and you realize that your chest hurts because you’ve been holding your breath without realizing it.

As with the first film, Wirkola and Henriksen’s script is rock-solid and almost impossibly funny: they’ve doubled-down on the number of gags in this go-round, gifting us with classic moments like the one where Herzog tries to Sieg Heil without his missing arm, the outrageous scene involving Martin and the kid in the hospital that manages to be horrifingly hilarious and some truly inspired bits involving a friendly zombie (Kristoffer Joner) that manage to one-up Bub in every way. The film is a lot funnier than the original, yet still manages to deliver plenty of hardcore/badass moments: the bleeding stained-glass windows as Herzog strides into the church deserve to be iconic and the scene where Daniel turns into a full-on zombie slaughterer is a real thing of beauty. As with the first film, Wirkola perfectly melds the horror and humor: this time around, everything just hits harder because it’s all so much better. Talk about a success story!

As with the first film, Dead Snow 2 looks and sounds absolutely killer: the effects are all top-notch and, with the exception of a few dodgy CGI blood shots, look as real as they need to. Acting-wise, the sequel is head-and-shoulders above the original (which was, itself, no slouch): besides the reset of Martin as a more traditional hero (ala Ash), we also get the always reliable Martin Starr as Daniel; another great, silent turn from Gamst as the vile Herzog (he really gets into the character this time around, giving us a handful of scenes that do the impossible and almost (just barely) begin to humanize the monster) and the brilliant addition of Hallvard Holmen as the impossibly obnoxious Gunga, a rural police chief who’s half-way between a Keystone Kop and James McAvoy’s repellent Bruce from Filth (2014). DeBoer and Haas are quite wonderful as Daniel’s perpetually feuding cohorts (DeBoer’s “May the force be with you” is a definite highlight) and Henriksen is equally great as Glenn: the scene where he, singlehandedly, stands up to the entire Nazi battalion is pure poetry and a real fist-raiser.

I’ve always enjoyed Wirkola’s films (I’ve seen the original Dead Snow quite a bit in the five years since its release and I seem to be one of the few people in the world who really enjoyed Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)) but there’s no denying that Dead Snow 2 marks a new evolution in his filmmaking. At this rate, Wirkola stands a very good chance of becoming the reigning clown-prince of horror-comedy: the level of polish and quality here is astounding. With one foot firmly in the outrageous gore comedies that influenced him (those looking for the red stuff need not fear: Dead Snow 2 is, quite possibly, one of the most splatterific films since Romero’s unassailable Dawn of the Dead (1978)) and the other in the kind of bright, big-budget multiplex fare that have always been anathema to “real” horror, we might be looking at the next, great “uniter,” similar to Edgar Wright. With a sequel to Hansel & Gretel in the works, I’m willing to wager that Wirkola plans to take his game to the next level. Bully for him: as a die-hard member of Team Tommy, I, for one, cannot wait.

11/30/14: The Last Train Out of Town

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12 Monkeys, action films, Alison Pill, auteur theory, betrayal, Blade Runner, Bong Joon-Ho, Chris Evans, cinema, class systems, class warfare, climate change, dystopian future, Ed Harris, end of the world, English-language debut, Ewen Bremner, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Hunger Games, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Ko Ah-sung, Luke Pasqualino, Movies, near future, Octavia Spencer, rich vs poor, sci-fi, Snowpiercer, Song Kang-ho, Steve Park, The Host, Tilda Swinton, trains

Nowadays, with the space between the haves and have-nots not so much a gap as a massive, bottomless chasm filled with baying hellhounds, the notion of class warfare has never been more prescient. Increasingly, it seems that the world can be neatly divided into two groups: those who can afford the basic necessities of life (food, clean water, housing, security, justice) and those who must struggle to divide up whatever dregs remain. We can argue notions of economics, supply-and-demand, consumerism, et al until the cows come home but it does nothing to change the basic facts: as it stands, our modern world is but several very slippery steps away from the feudal system that proved so “effective” during the Middle Ages. While issues of race, gender, religion and nationality will always plague humanity, anyone who doesn’t see the underlying class issues behind them is either willfully ignorant…or a part of the problem.

For his English-language debut, Snowpiercer (2014) Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho takes a good, long look at this underlying class warfare, wrapping it tight within the guise of an environmental message film before bundling everything up within a stream-lined sci-fi/action outer-shell: if you will, Joon-ho’s film is the turducken of big-budget multiplex fare, a multi-layered feast that reveals new flavors and wrinkles with each turn of the script. If the ultimate result ends up feeling somehow less revelatory than expected, it does nothing to detract from the overall quality of the film: anyone worried that making the transition to English-language films would blunt Joon-ho’s edge should check their fears at the door, since Snowpiercer is nothing if not a highly accomplished spectacle, relentlessly paced and endlessly thrilling.

From the outset, we learn that efforts to reverse global warming, involving a material known as “CW-7” have proven a little too successful: the Earth has now frozen and the vast majority of life has been wiped out. The only survivors now live on a massive “super-train” that zooms in a perpetual, never-ending loop around the frozen desolation, unable to ever step foot outside lest they instantly freeze. Aboard the train, similar to the breakdown on the Titanic, the survivors have been separated into two groups: the wealthy, powerful members of society get the front of the train and all of the perks (real food, drink, tanning beds, raves, shopping, sushi), while the poor, downtrodden masses get the tail section and live in complete squalor, subsisting on some sort of strange, black “food” substance and whatever scraps the upper berths don’t want. To make matters worse, the poor are constantly beaten and abused by the thuggish security detail and have their children constantly taken from them, spirited away to the front of the train, never to be seen again. The system is stretched to breaking and something must change…and change, it does.

Revolution enters the picture in the form of Curtis (Chris Evans), the charismatic “folk leader” of the lower classes who, along with their de facto leader, Gilliam (John Hurt), has devised a plan to wrest control of the train from the haves and return it to the have-nots. Quite simply, “whoever controls the engine, controls the world,” and Curtis knows that their only hope for change is to fight their way all the way to the front of the train. At first, the task seems all but impossible: the security detail is huge, well-armed and cold-blooded; the ruling regime, represented by the bizarrely presentational Mason (Tilda Swinton), don’t see the lower classes as anything other than fodder and free labor, so have absolutely no problem with dispatching as many of them as necessary to make their point. During the moment of truth, however, as Curtis’ rebels square off against the security team, something miraculous happens: the guards are revealed to be out of ammo, after all. Fortune, it appears, has just smiled on the brave.

Seizing the moment, Curtis and his fighters gain the upper-hand and begin their perilous trek to the front of the train, working their way towards a climatic meeting with Wilford (Ed Harris), the mysterious industrialist and engineer who not only foresaw the current environmental crisis but created the Ark as humanity’s last recourse. Along the way, the group picks up Nam (Song Kang-ho) and his daughter, Yona (Ko Ah-sung), a pair of drug addicts who may just know how to get Curtis into the engine room. As the group will find out, however, nothing on the train is quite as it seems and Curtis will soon be neck-deep in betrayal, shocking revelations and life-changing decisions. At stake? Nothing less than the fate of all humanity.

For the most part, Snowpiercer works spectacularly well on several different levels. For one thing, the film is a superb action film, showcasing several impressive set-pieces (the tunnel massacre is pretty unforgettable) and throttling forward at a breakneck pace. We’re jumped into the action from the get-go and the film never really lets up: in some ways, it almost feels as if we’re dumped into Snowpiercer in media res, although the film is streamlined enough that abject flailing about is fairly minimal. Everything is filmed in a highly stylized, kinetic fashion that will be immediately familiar to fans of Joon-ho’s back catalog (especially his iconic monster flick, The Host (2006) and the various fight scenes, full of highly evocative slo-mo and balletic movements, are consistently impressive.

Snowpiercer also succeeds as a dystopic future flick, albeit one that doesn’t add much to the lexicon: even the revelation of the icky looking protein bars (Spoiler: it’s not people) feels like part of a fairly well-established formula. That being said, the film’s look and world-building is fully immersive: this is recognizably our world but it’s tweaked enough to give a proper sense of disorientation. It reminded me of Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys (1995), although Joon-ho’s particular vision isn’t quite as singular or unique. There are moments when the film approaches the iconic city scenes of Blade Runner (1982), especially during our introduction to the tail section of the train and the moment where our heroes first pass into the posh upper class section.

The third area where Snowpiercer excels is as a message film: while the script can, occasionally, be a little too on the nose, there are plenty of layers here and some truly interesting discussions of responsibility, personal sacrifice and the value of the individual against the many. Wilford may be the film’s de facto villain (although Swinton’s ludicrously over-the-top Mason fits that bill in a more classic manner) but his climatic meeting with Curtis raises more questions than it answers: a latter-half revelation puts his actions into a new light, making easy condemnations just a little bit harder. Wilford may be a real son of a bitch but he’s anything but arbitrary: the fact that he, technically, has a point doesn’t absolve him or his peers of responsibility for their terrible actions but it should definitely lead to some interesting post-film conversations/arguments. In many ways, Wilford represents the unwavering, coldly clinical eye of government: decisions and actions that seem unconscionable on the ground sometimes take on a different meaning from the war room.

Despite all of the pluses, however, I must freely admit that I didn’t find Snowpiercer to be the complete revelation that others have: if anything, the film is an exceptionally well-made, tightly plotted action with lots of themes and meaning but, ultimately, not much different from similarly intelligent multiplex fare. Often, I was reminded of the Hunger Games series: while Snowpiercer is a much more mature, artistic film, craft-wise, it’s really not that far removed, thematically. Unlike the uncomfortable class discussions of something like Society (1989), nothing in Snowpiercer really feels “game-changing,” as it were: we’ve seen this particular conflict many, many times over the years and, while it may be timely, it’s certainly not shocking. This is not to knock the film’s themes in any way, however: I would rather see an overly familiar discussion of class and environmentalism on the big screen than no discussion at all, thank you very much. That being said, I frequently found myself wishing that the film took a few more risks: even the double-crosses felt a bit familiar and the ending, while beautifully executed, didn’t seem to pack the punch that it could have.

Ultimately, however, my quibbles about Snowpiercer feel fairly petty: above and beyond all else, this is the kind of intelligent popcorn film that we definitely need more of in this era of the “turn your brain off and react” action film. The acting is excellent, with Captain America’s (2011) Chris Evans almost unrecognizable as the grizzled hero and Song Kang-ho serving as a more than suitable foil. If Hurt and Swinton end up turning in yet more variations on their past work (“gruff mentor” and “quirky oddball” could very well be chiseled on their gravestones, at some point in the far future), it doesn’t take away from the basic pleasure of watching either one work. Ditto for Ed Harris who’s managed to avoid disappointing me for at least a couple decades now: a film could do a lot worse than have him play a megalomanical leader with a God-complex and distinct ideas on the social contract.

Is Snowpiercer one of the best films of the year, however? To be honest, it’s kind of a difficult question to answer. The film is certainly one of the best action films of the last several years, hands down, but I just can’t help shake the feeling that it’s still slightly less than what it could have been. Despite it’s epic scope and feel, Snowpiercer, somehow, feels like a slightly lesser film than The Host. Chalk this up to to the transition from more personalized family struggles in one to more “universal” issues in the other and we begin to see where the issue may lie. While watching Snowpiercer, I kept waiting to feel the intense connection to the characters that I did with the family in The Host but it really only happened with Nam and his daughter: whenever the two of them share the screen, Snowpiercer is able to transcend its sci-fi/action trappings and become something simultaneously more intimate and more far-reaching. In a film that purports to be about the very essence of humanity, it’s only when we spend time with this disenfranchised father and daughter, so wrecked by life yet still so inherently hopeful, that the film truly seems to come alive. I’d like to say it’s enough to melt the most frozen heart but that would be kind of precious, wouldn’t it?

10/8/14 (Part Two): The Ties That Blind

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31 Days of Halloween, auteur theory, Chan-Wook Park, Chung-hoon Chung, cinema, Clint Mansell, coming of age, Dermot Mulroney, dysfunctional family, English-language debut, family secrets, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Flannery O'Connor, flashbacks, Harmony Korine, insane asylums, insanity, Jacki Weaver, Lady Vengeance, Matthew Goode, Mia Wasikowska, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, murder, Nicole Kidman, Old Boy, Phyllis Somerville, psychopaths, psychosexual, Stoker, Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Uncle Charlie, uncompromising voice, voice-over narration, Wentworth Miller

Pitched somewhere between Flannery O’Connor’s Southern Gothics and Pedro Almodovar’s psychosexual jaw-droppers, Korean auteur Chan-Wook Park’s English-language debut, Stoker (2013), is quite a piece of work. Long known for films that are as impressive to look at as they are often difficult to watch, Park’s newest film pulls few punches and holds even fewer hands, coming off as more fairy-tale influenced than any of his previous films, achieving an intoxicating, if confounding, atmosphere that’s fairly close to a fever dream. For anyone who expected the transition to Western films to “tame” park, Stoker stands in towering confirmation to the idea that Park, like all true film auteurs, will always follow his muse first and popular conventions second. While the film won’t supplant Park’s classic “Vengeance” trilogy anytime soon, Stoker is a meticulously crafted, often beautiful, treatise on the destructive nature of obsession and the familial secrets that haunt us all. While the movie seems slightly more subdued than films like Oldboy (2003) or Lady Vengeance (2005), it still packs a pretty vicious bite, albeit one informed by a particularly chilly sensibility.

Stoker centers around the surviving members of the titular family, namely the neurotic Evelyn Stoker (Nicole Kidman) and her odd, 18-year-old daughter, India (Mia Wasikowska). India’s father, Richard (Dermot Mulroney) has just been killed in a car accident, an event which has, effectively, shattered what remains of Evelyn and India’s lives. At the funeral, the Stokers are introduced to Richard’s long-lost brother, Charlie (Matthew Goode), a handsome, intense young man who claims to have been traveling the world for many years. He wants to stay and help Evelyn and India make it through their current tragedy, although his motives seem to lean more towards romancing India’s mother than to helping to soothe their mental wounds.

As Charlie hangs around, India begins to pick up little hints of things that may be…well, just a little askew, as it were: a strange argument with the housekeeper, Mrs. McGarrick (Phyllis Somerville), that seems to come out of nowhere; Charlie’s strange, knowing glances at India; Aunt Gwen’s (Jacki Weaver) seeming distrust and unease around Charlie; a piano lesson that hovers at the acceptable boundaries between instruction and seduction…indeed, trouble seems to follow Charlie around like a second skin, facts which are certainly not lost on young India.

To complicate things, however, India appears to be just as mysterious and complicated a figure as her uncle. She’s a dour, serious young woman who’s constantly bullied and harassed at school (one obnoxious student draws naked pictures of India and shoves them in her face, while constantly “punching at” her face, always stopping just shy of actually making physical contact) and doesn’t seem to have any friends whatsoever. There’s one telling scene where India spends her art class drawing the detailed pattern on the inside of the vase, rather than the vase, itself, as her other classmates do: as with everything else, India just doesn’t see things in the same way as the rest of the world.

As Charlie continues to stay with the Stokers, however, the psychosexual storm gets whipped into a veritable frenzy: India’s sexual awakening seems to coincide with Charlie’s increased interest in both Evelyn and India, although her coming-of-age has started to take on certain violent aspects, not the least of which is the explosive moment where she finally strikes back at her bully. As events progress, India gets ever closer to deciphering the mystery of the key that hangs around her neck, a key that will help explain not only Uncle Charlie’s strange behavior but will also set India upon a path of self-discovery, a path that will ultimately lead to both salvation…and destruction.

As with all of Park’s films, Stoker is so carefully crafted as to seem almost like a clockwork marvel. The film is a constantly moving, evolving puzzlebox, a tricky construction that purposefully obscures key information, leaving the audience in the dark for a majority of the proceedings in a similar manner to Oldboy. This sense of complexity extends to every aspect of the film, from its narrative structure to its visual language, although the cinematography ends up being the most identifiable aspect of this structure. Quite simply, Stoker’s cinematography and shot construction, courtesy of long-time Park collaborator Chung-hoon Chung, is a complete marvel. It goes without saying that Stoker is frequently beautiful and always interesting to look at: more impressive are the myriad ways in which Park and Chung use the visual language of film to get across their subtextual themes and ideas. The scene where India is completely encircled by identical shoeboxes…the bit where a spider crawls up her leg and between her thighs…the gorgeous, surprising shot where brushed hair suddenly becomes a flowing field of waist-high grass…unrelated imagery juxtaposed in ways that seem to indicate that everything, no matter how irrelevant is interconnected…Stoker is all but bursting with subtle nuance and just-out-of-eyesight symbolism.

Into this beautifully realized visual tapestry, then, Park pours a trilogy of performances that manage to accentuate and support each other in some nicely organic ways. Mia Wasikowska, currently making quite a name for herself in just about every type of role imaginable, is pitch-perfect as the morose, guarded India. In the hands of any other actress, India might have come across as more enigmatic than necessary, a “real-life” Wednesday Addams who exists purely to pour Pernod on everyone’s ice cream. Wasikowska is amazingly subtle, versatile performer, however, and India becomes a full-realized character in her capable hands. I won’t lie and say that I found India to be likable, at any point in time, but it wasn’t hard to see things from her point of view, as twisted as it may be: her continuous voice-overs were also well-handled, allowing us insight into her cluttered little brain.

For her part, Kidman turns in another dependably solid genre performance: there’s always a thinly concealed streak of insanity running through her controlled performance but Kidman’s Evelyn never comes across as a certifiable nut. If anything, she’s a wounded, needful mother who foolishly pines for the one thing that mothers take for granted: the love of their own children. Evelyn is never a completely pathetic character, however, mostly thanks to the cold steel that Kidman brings to the performance, as if one could see the metal framework just below the skin.

Special mention must also be made of Matthew Goode’s performance as the sinister Uncle Charlie. Although I must admit to being far less familiar with his career than either Kidman or Wasikowska’s, I was completely taken with Goode’s performance. Like Wasikowska’s take on India, Goode brings an overriding sense of barely contained neuroses to his depiction of Charlie: he’s able to convey a world of information with just the barely perceptible uptick of an eyebrow or a smile that’s just slightly too curdled to instill much warmth. Goode’s performance is the epitome of restrained tension: you know that he’s going to uncoil and explode, at some point, but you’re damned if his eyes give any indication as to when that might be. By the film’s conclusion, Goode and Wasikowska make an almost unbeatable pair, playing off of each other’s mannerisms and tics in some truly impressive, startling ways. Park is definitely an “actor’s director” and his newest film comes top-loaded with some typically impressive treading of the boards.

As with almost all of Park’s films, Stoker is incredibly easy to respect, although it’s just a little more difficult to really love. While the film is constantly twisted and the narrative always unpredictable, this complexity sometimes translates into moments that are pure-headscratchers: by the conclusion, I found myself second-guessing a few “facts” that previously seemed pretty solid, mostly because I felt a little lost in the back-and-forth of the flashback-heavy narrative. The film is also just about as bleak and chilly as a film can possibly get: this sense of frigid sterility may be a little off-putting for many Western audiences, although there’s nothing in here that will challenge Western taboos in quite the same way as the plot twist from Oldboy does.

Ultimately, Park’s Stoker is an impressive English-language debut and a mighty fine film on its own rights, even if it’s not quite as incendiary or feral as the Korean films that preceded it. On a craft-level, the film has few equals: quite frankly, it’s one of the most astoundingly beautiful films I’ve ever laid eyes on. If the narrative/thematic elements of the film don’t get me quite as jazzed as the visual/aural elements…well, that’s alright, too. I respect and trust Park enough to stay with him on his cinematic journey into the darkness of the human soul: in a world where more and more things seem to get “dumbed down” for the masses, it’s always refreshing to find an uncompromising voice who trusts that we’ll “get it,” even if we’re not quite sure what “it” is.