7/29/15 (Part Three): Uncle Herschell’s Dirty Movies

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1960's films, adults only, auteur theory, bachelor party, bad films, Blood Feast, Bonnie Clark, casual sex, cheating fiances, cinema, Dee Howard, Ed Wood, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, Forman Shane, go-go dancers, Godfather of Gore, grindhouse, Herschell Gordon Lewis, houseboat, infidelity, James Brand, Jeanette Mills, lingerie salesman, lost films, Mark Hansen, Movies, non-professional actors, pseudonyms, set in 1960s, sexploitation films, Sharon Matt, soft-core, strippers, Suede Barstow, Swingers, terrible films, the 1960s, The Ecstacies of Women, The Wizard of Gore, Two Thousand Maniacs!, Victoria Bond, Vincene Wallace, Walter Camp, William Allen Castleman, William Vickers, writer-director-cinematographer, X-rated films

With some directors, you never know what you’re going to get from one production to the next: they might try out a few new techniques, opt to shoot in a completely different format, attempt a genre they’ve never tried before, move on from “popcorn movies” to “prestige films”…with some filmmakers, it’s all about shaking it up, constantly moving and evolving in order to prevent falling into a rut. The progression from the first film to the thirteenth? The difference between fish with legs and early Homo Sapiens. And then, of course, there’s Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Across a career that’s spanned over five decades, Lewis (the original “Godfather of Gore”) has been responsible for some of the most amateurish, inept and flat-out mind-boggling films to ever screen in actual theaters (grindhouses count, folks). Touching on everything from “nudie-cutie” movies and soft-core sexploitation flicks to outrageously splatterific horror films and impossibly wrong-headed treatises on social mores, Lewis has jumped genres with reckless abandon, even if he’s still most famous for his gore epics like Blood Feast (1963), Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and The Wizard of Gore (1970). Indeed, the only constant in his impressively broad career has been the excruciatingly bad quality of his films.

You see, for all of his passion, drive, inherent chutzpah and genuine innovations (in almost every way, shape and form, the world had never seen anything like Blood Feast, especially in the dawning of the ’60s), ol’ Herschell is a truly terrible filmmaker. To a one, his films are characterized by non-professional actors doing their best to maintain character, poverty-row sets, an inability to do anything with the camera but set it in one place and hit “record,” some of the worst sound recording in cinematic history, the appearance of lights and equipment in every other shot…you name it, Lewis has done it. As writer, director and cinematographer of his films, Lewis is a true auteur, albeit one more closely aligned with Ed Wood than, say, Orson Welles.

For all of this, however, one fact remains plainly evident: despite their endless shortcomings, Lewis’ films have another common denominator…they’re (usually) a tremendous amount of fun. As someone who grew up on his gore films (I’m not ashamed to admit that Two Thousand Maniacs! is one of the greatest horror films of all time, regardless of the quality), Lewis has been a go-to of mine for some years now. Despite this, however, I was woefully ignorant about his other films, particularly the soft-core adult films that were liberally sprinkled throughout his career. Of these films, a couple were considered “lost” to the world at large until they popped-up several years back. The Ecstacies of Women (1969) is one of those films. It is, of course, absolutely terrible.

In a nutshell, The Ecstacies of Women concerns Harry (Walter Camp) and the bachelor party thrown by his friends, Gene (William Vickers), Fred (James Brand) and Ted (Forman Shane). As the guys hang out at a strip-club and ogle the awkward dancers (there really is no other word to describe them), Harry entertains the others with “wild” stories about his numerous sexual conquests, all by way of “purging his system” for his upcoming nuptials.

The pattern is so simple that it’s basically a loop: the guys sit around, conversing in ways that could never be considered natural (everyone seems genuinely drunk, for one thing, which might explain a lot) before Harry puts his head back and seems to go into a coma. This, of course, is our cue that we’re about to move into the “adults only” portion of the program. If anyone out there thinks things get better from there, let me remove all doubt: they get much, much worse.

All-in-all, we get several different vignettes involving Harry and his random conquests. Harry picks up a woman (Jeanette Mills) in a bar, takes her back to his houseboat to “model lingerie” (he’s a traveling lingerie salesman, dontcha know) and proceeds to grope her into orgasm. Harry gets picked up by an aggressive health-freak on the beach (Vincene Wallace), takes her back to his houseboat and proceeds to grope her into orgasm. Harry gets picked up by an aggressive teenager (Sharon Matt) while parked at a stoplight, takes her back to his houseboat and proceeds to grope her to orgasm. Finally, we get the piece de resistance as Harry, Gene, Fred and Ted take a bunch of strippers back to the houseboat and proceed to grope them into orgasm. Harry decides to run away with Summer Frenzy (Bonnie Clark, who seems to be on heroin for the entirety of her performance, at least judging by her slurred speech, unfocused eyes and baffling “performance”), leaving his unlucky (very, very lucky?) future spouse in the lurch. The End.

Lest it seem from the above description that there’s an overwhelming sense of repetition to what we see, let me clarify it: the whole film is, essentially, the very same scene played out, multiple times, with slightly different people. Each of the “dream sequences” lasts for about 20 minutes (most of which are awkward dialogue scenes that don’t seem improvised so much as dropped from the sky, like bird shit) and features Harry dry-humping and pawing his nude conquests. For variety, Harry sometimes wears his tighty-whities during the “action,” while other scenes give us glorious shots of his pale, pimply ass. There’s never any sense of “realism” to the scenes, which mostly involve Harry fondling bare breasts until over-dubbed heavy breathing indicates a sprint to the finish-line.

There’s absolutely nothing sexy, titillating or, to be honest, particularly interesting about anything that happens. In fact, The Ecstacies of Women might be the single dullest film that I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit through, regardless of the “adults only” designation. As with all of Lewis’ films, the camera-work is as basic as it comes, the non-professional actors constantly flub their lines and talk over each other (one amazing scene features the guys trying their damnedest not to crack up as one “actor” manages to call everyone by the wrong name, several times) and the whole thing looks about as ugly as could be expected.

We could talk about the film’s representations of women, the sex-positive natures of the encounters (at the very least, everyone seems to be having fun, although I’m not quite sure how) or the ridiculously “groovy” catchphrases that must have made this hopelessly dated the week after it came out. We could put a little thought into it but, really: who the hell would we be kidding? The Ecstacies of Women is pure crap, through and through, the kind of oddity that no one could possibly take seriously. In certain ways, the film is absolutely critic-proof: who goes into a Herschell Gordon Lewis film (especially one of his skin flicks) expecting anything more than what’s been presented here?

While I can usually find at least something to recommend in a film (satisfying curiosity, if nothing else), I find myself at a complete loss here: unless you’re a Herschell Gordon Lewis completist (or Mark Hansen, as his pseudonym reads here) or the kind of person who prizes non-acting, tone-deaf dialogue and unattractive people pretending to have sex…well, friend…there’s just not much for ya here.

To quote Harry’s immortal final words: “Gang, goodbye. Goodbye, gang.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

5/10/15: A Real Wild Child

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2015 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, abusive childhood, Art Alexakis, based on a book, based on a true story, Best Actress nominee, Best Supporting Actress nominee, brother-sister relationships, casual sex, Cathryn de Prume, Cheryl Strayed, cinema, Dallas Buyers Club, dead mother, director-editor, dramas, drug addiction, dysfunctional marriage, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, Gaby Hoffmann, grief, hiking, infidelity, isolation, Jean-Marc Vallee, Keene McRae, Kevin Rankin, Laura Dern, Martin Pensa, memoir, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, multiple editors, Nick Hornby, Oscar nominee, overcoming adversity, Pacific Crest Trail, Reese Witherspoon, self-discovery, self-help, self-improvement, set in 1990s, sex addiction, Wild, Yves Bélanger

Author C.S. Lewis once described grief as “like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” While this is certainly a poetic and serene way to look at it, I’ve always equated the emotion with something older and a bit more mythological, personally. As far as I’m concerned, grief is a hydra: cut off one head and numerous ones sprout up to take its place. In order to truly overcome grief, one needs to get right to the heart of the matter…trying to tackle each individual feeling, each moment of pain, sorrow and heartbreak is as pointless a task as Hercules trying to sever each individual head, only for two more to grow back. In order to truly overcome grief, one must confront the inciting incident head on: emotional honesty, no matter how painful, is the only true way out.

When Cheryl Strayed started out on her 1,100-mile trek down the Pacific Crest Trail, from Mexico to Canada, she was motivated by grief: after losing her beloved mother to cancer, Strayed spiraled into a mess of drug addiction, marital infidelity and self-destructive behavior, culminating in the realization that she either had to get better or risk a complete and total meltdown. Her intensely arduous undertaking (difficult for an expert hiker, all but impossible for a complete novice like Cheryl) would begin as a way to find some sort of peace in her life but would end with her finding something more important: herself. In the hands of French filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee, Strayed’s journey comes to vivid life with Wild (2014), based on her memoir of he experience. While the story is an interesting rumination on grief, the film ends up being disjointed and rather rote, a decided step down from Vallee’s previous effort, the similarly Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club (2013).

Employing a flashback structure, Wild starts us in the “present day” (June 1995), as Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) is just beginning her incredibly long hike, before jumping us backwards to get a sense of the events that led up to her decision. We see her relationship with her hard-working, single mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern) and younger brother, Leif (Keene McRae)…we see Cheryl and Bobbi taking college classes together…we see Bobbi diagnosed with a particularly vicious form of cancer…and, of course, we see Cheryl’s life collapse around her after the death of her mother. Falling into a toxic combo of drug addiction (first smoking, then snorting, finally shooting smack), casual sex with strangers (particularly troublesome given her current married status) and self-hatred, Cheryl seems doomed, burning alive by the intense heat of her own grief.

After hitting rock bottom, Cheryl makes the spur of the moment decision that would end up changing her entire life: she decides to hike all 1,000+miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone, with no previous hiking experience. Her (now ex-) husband, Paul (Thomas Sadoski), is cautiously supportive. Her best friend, Aimee (Gaby Hoffmann) thinks she’s nuts. Regardless, Cheryl sets out on her journey with no idea of what she’s doing, a pack that’s at least five times heavier than it should be and more determination than a small city. Along the way, Cheryl will see plenty of natural beauty, run into a few natural hazards and meet lots of interesting folks, including fellow hikers, a kindly farmer, a reporter for the “Hobo Times,” sinister hunters and a Grateful Dead cover band. She’ll learn to rely on herself and the kindness of strangers but she’ll also learn an even more important lesson: no matter how white-hot the pain of grief may be, life does, in fact, go on. Sometimes, all we can do is go along for the ride and see where it takes us.

As a story, Wild has an almost irresistible pull: there’s something primal and inherently satisfying about watching a damaged, fractured human being take a healing journey, especially when the backdrop is the awe-inspiring beauty of the great outdoors. Witherspoon does a great job bringing Cheryl to life, making the cinematic version feel like a real, flesh-and-blood person as opposed to just a character. As usual, Witherspoon is an all-in performer: in order to fully appreciate Cheryl’s redemption, we need to see her degradation and Witherspoon holds nothing back, whatsoever, resulting in one of her rawest roles since Freeway (1996). While I didn’t think that her performance in Wild was the very best of last year, it certainly deserved the Oscar nomination and proves, if nothing else, that she continues to defy the expectations imposed on “mainstream” Hollywood starlets by the industry, as a whole.

While Witherspoon’s performance is typically strong, however, the film is a lot more problematic, in general. My biggest complaint comes via Vallee’s flashback structure, which ends up doing two things, neither of which seems desired: it tends to make the narrative unnecessarily confusing (in particular, the timeline seems all over the place) and makes the film feel like more of a series of vignettes than a cohesive whole. For the most part, the film breaks down thusly: Cheryl walks around, flashes back to drug use and orgies, meets interesting folks, lather, rinse, repeat. In short order, Wild begins to seem distressingly formulaic, which certainly robs the film of much of its tension: even during presumably high-stakes moments like the redneck hunters, Wild seems constrained by its structure.

There’s a sparse, spare quality to much of the film that’s both lovely and thematically important (Cheryl is, after all, desperately searching for some sort of stillness within herself, the same stillness echoed by the natural landscape) but this spare quality is constantly dashed by the endless flashbacks. Perhaps if the peeks into the past had felt more organic and motivated, as opposed to part of a regimented structure, they would have retained more impact and had less (negative) effect on the film’s tone. As it stands, however, Wild ends up feeling more disjointed and piecemeal than it does cohesive.

I also had a problem with the relationship between Cheryl and her mother, at least as depicted in the film. While I’m not familiar with Strayed’s actual memoir, I have to assume that the intense connection between her and her mom is better delineated on the page than it is on the screen. As depicted, however, we really don’t get a clear sense of this devotion: Bobbi seems quirky, positive and fun-minded, sure, but the flashbacks to her and Cheryl don’t seem to hint at an on-screen relationship that’s any more intense than any other cinematic mother-daughter pairing. Losing her mother seems to be the catalyst for Cheryl’s spiral into a drug and sex-fueled hell but, prior to her death, the pair just seem to get along okay: for me, at least, this ended up being a bit of a disconnect from the film.

Acting-wise, Wild is full of good performances, although the vast majority end up being short, bite-sized little bits as opposed to more substantial scenes: this is very much the story of Strayed and Witherspoon is, for the most part, always the focal point. Despite garnering a Best Supporting Actress nomination, I wasn’t particularly impressed by Dern’s performance as the doomed Bobbi: despite being a big fan, her transition from happy-go-lucky to hair-pulling felt too abrupt and nothing really stuck out for me. Ditto for Gaby Hoffmann, who ends up with a few minutes of screen time as Cheryl’s friend, which seems a bit of a waste given Hoffmann’s ability to handily steal focus. Kevin Rankine is personable as Greg, the hiker that Cheryl keeps bumping into on the trail, but Keene McRae is fairly awful as brother Leif…it’s a real “six of one, half-dozen of the other” scenario.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Wild but was never blown away: considering how great I thought Dallas Buyers Club was, this definitely struck me as a bit of a disappointment. While I think the core story is a fascinating one (if the notion of a complete novice hiking over a thousand miles to “find” herself doesn’t strike you as fascinating, the core issue definitely doesn’t reside with the movie), the actual film never really clicked for me. To each their own, of course: while the actual film ended up being a bit of a let-down, Strayed’s story is interesting enough to make this worth a watch, even if it’s decidedly more run-of-the-mill than it could have been.

4/19/15: The Game of Life

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2014 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, Alan Turing, Alex Lawther, Alexandre Desplat, Allen Leech, arrogance, Óscar Faura, based on a book, based on a true story, Benedict Cumberbatch, Best Actor nominee, Best Actress nominee, Best Adapted Screenplay winner, Best Director nominee, Best Film Editing nominee, Best Original Score nominee, Best Picture nominee, Charles Dance, cinema, code-breakers, crossword puzzles, cryptography, dramas, early computers, Enigma machine, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, Graham Moore, Headhunters, homophobia, homosexuality, Jack Bannon, James Northcote, Keira Knightley, life during wartime, Mark Strong, mathematicians, Matthew Beard, Matthew Goode, MI6, Morten Tyldum, Movies, multiple award nominee, mystery, Oscar nominee, persecution, race against time, romances, Rory Kinnear, Russian spies, secrets, set in 1940s, set in 1950s, set in England, spies, The Imitation Game, thrillers, Tom Goodman-Hill, Turing machines, war films, William Goldenberg, World War II

True heroes, unlike their cinematic counterparts, rarely receive the appreciation that they deserve. Oh sure: they may be honored, feted and immortalized via statuary but this is usually long after they’ve ceased drawing breath on this particular plane of existence. The reason for this, in most cases, is that true heroes…the kinds who save tens of thousands, if not more…usually operate in the shadows, away from the spotlight of public scrutiny. They’re the doctors and scientists who discover new cures and immunizations on a regular basis…the engineers who continue to craft safer buildings, bridges and roads…the unsung politicians, bureaucrats and civil servants who toil away behind the scenes, not for power, money or glory but because they honestly don’t want to see their citizenry starving or freezing to death in the streets. Cinematic heroes are a lot more thrilling, sure: watching Batman punch the living shit out of garishly clad supervillains is much more thrilling IMAX fare than watching Jonas Salk develop a Polio vaccine. When it comes down to brass tacks, however, it’s kind of obvious that Salk has saved at least a few more folks than Batman has, albeit with much less panache.

Morten Tyldum’s multi-Oscar-nominated The Imitation Game (2014) takes a look at one such unsung hero, the prickly, brilliant mathematician/cryptologist Alan Turing. Aside from being responsible for the Turing machine, a proto-computer that would be a nice enough feather in anyone’s cap, Turing was also one of the British code-breakers responsible for cracking Germany’s infamous Enigma machine during World War II, allowing the Allies to move the war into its endgame. Estimates put the number of lives saved by ending the war early at around 14 million, give or take: in other words, not bad for a guy who wore a sweater and slacks to  work instead of a spandex suit. Along with being a world-class code-breaker, however, Turing was also a gay man during a time period when sexual orientation was illegal. Years after his triumph over the Engima machine, Turing was prosecuted and found guilty of indecency: choosing chemical castration, Turing would go on to commit suicide roughly a year after his “therapy,” at the tender age of 41.

Similar to The Iron Lady (2011) and The Theory of Everything (2014), The Imitation Game takes the real facts of Turing’s life and expands, folds and manipulates them into something altogether more “cinematic,” if arguably less factual. By employing a flashback structure, Tyldum runs three simultaneous timelines: the “present-day,” circa 1951; the “war years,” circa the 1940s; and Turing’s childhood, circa the late-’20s. While the meat of the story takes place during the war, the “present-day” material opens the film and sets up a mystery (of sorts) that the school and war eras will attempt to “solve.”

In the present day, we follow Detective Robert Nock (Rory Kinnear) as he investigates a mysterious break-in at the home of Prof. Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch). As Nock investigates the incident, with a minimum amount of support and help from the prickly Turing, he becomes stymied by the reclusive professor’s redacted military record. This leads us into the film proper, with Turing attempting to offer his services to the British government as a decoder, despite a complete lack of interest in politics, social disorder or even a rudimentary understanding of the German language.

As Turing butts heads with his rigid, disapproving commander (Charles Dance), he also manages to tick off the other code-breakers that he’s supposed to be working with, labeling each of them as “worthless” in each own, indomitable way. He does, however, manage to find a kindred spirit in Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley): their friendship eventually develops into an engagement, albeit one inherently doomed by Alan’s homosexuality. We then get the third part of our little “triptych” as we journey back to Turing’s boyhood years and witness the young genius (Alex Lawther) as he’s introduced to the world of cryptography and falls in love with his classmate, Christopher (Jack Bannon). As these three timelines move and maneuver around each other, we gradually develop a more complete picture of Turing as the quintessential outsider, a man tasked with saving the social order that , ultimately, condemns and hates him. You know: pretty much the definition of the selfless hero.

While the historical details behind The Imitation Game are certainly up for debate (as they were in the aforementioned biopics) the film, itself, is a much sturdier, well-made and entertaining affair than either The Iron Lady or The Theory of Everything. Credit certainly must go to Cumberbatch, who tears into the role of Turing with complete and absolute gusto: while he gets several “big” scenes, it’s all of the small, almost invisible personal tics and quirks that really make the character come alive. While there’s nothing here that’s completely foreign to Cumberbatch’s work with the new Sherlock series (aside from a new-found sense of vulnerability that would fit the smug detective as poorly as a reverse-mohawk), he’s pretty effortless as getting across the commingled pain, hubris and awkwardness that seemed to be at the heart of the character. Cumberbatch is an actor who understands how important it is to listen: there’s a rare joy to be found in watching an almost endless cycle of emotions sail across his expressive face, from boyish mischief to hopeless defeat. Rather than simply indulging in mimicry (as with Streep’s take on Maggie Thatcher or Redmayne’s performance as Stephen Hawking), Cumberbatch does it the old-fashioned way and just acts.

As befits this type of large-scale production, Cumberbatch has quite the cast to back him up. While Keira Knightley has never especially blown me away, I quite enjoyed her low-key performance as Joan: the bit where she tells the obnoxious Turing that, as a woman in a man’s job, she “doesn’t have the luxury of being an ass,” like him, is subtly (but witheringly) delivered but as sturdy as concrete. There’s also good work coming from Matthew Goode, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard and James Northcote as Turing’s put-upon co-workers, with Goode getting some especially nice moments. If Charles Dance and Low Winter Sun’s Mark Strong come off more stereotypical and clichéd (as the stodgy commander and sneaky MI6 agent, respectively), chalk this up to roles that serve more as plot-points than to any deficiencies in the acting, which are top-notch.

From a filmmaking perspective, The Imitation Game mostly works, although I’ll admit to not being a fan of the flashback structure. For my money, this would have worked much better as a more traditional narrative, moving from Turing’s childhood up to his indecency conviction: the constant cutting between eras often has the effect of pulling us out of the moment, making it difficult to ever get fully invested in the structure. The “present-day” material also exists solely as a contrived “mystery,” especially since the final emotional resolution occurs via screen-text after the film has actually ended. Running it chronologically (with, perhaps, a return to the childhood-era for the final revelation/emotional wallop) would have kept the focus on Turing, eliminating the unnecessary mystery element. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that the various newsreel cutaways and war scenes, while de rigueur for this type of film, really stick out like a sore thumb: they never feel authentic or, to be honest, even particularly well-integrated.

While The Imitation Game would go on to rack up an altogether impressive array of award nominations (including a win for Best Adapted Screenplay), there were also plenty of critics who decried the film’s various historical inaccuracies and seeming desire to minimize Turing’s homosexuality. From my perspective, I didn’t necessarily find this to be the case. While it’s certainly true that the film makes certain deviations from the historical record (including creating characters and conflicts that never existed), it would be difficult to find a cinematic biopic that doesn’t do that: certainly, The Imitation Game seems no more guilty of this than does the similarly lauded The Theory of Everything, which managed to paint its subject in such glowing terms that the whole thing seemed more than a bit fanciful and overly romantic. The Imitation Game is a much more gritty, down-to-earth film, albeit one with a foot planted firmly in the kinds of historical biopics that multiplex audiences will be more than familiar with.

I also felt that Turing’s homosexuality was portrayed in a much more organic way than many films like this might opt for: the silly “mystery” angle notwithstanding, the childhood and war-era storylines opt for a refreshing “show, don’t tell” mentality that never feels forced. While the final text does seem like a bit of a cop-out (for the most part, the entirety of the film’s equality message is shoe-horned in right before the credits roll), there’s enough subtle characterization and commentary, throughout, to get the message across loud and clear.

Ultimately, The Imitation Game is a suitably sturdy, well-made character study, although I certainly didn’t find it to be the best film of 2014 (or even one of the best, to be honest). While Tyldum is an assured hand with the material here, guiding the film’s many tense setpieces with a ruthless sense of efficiency, there’s also very little that stands out, aside from the excellent performances. For my money, Tyldum’s previous film, the astounding Headhunters (2011), was a much more impressive, mind-blowing piece of art: The Imitation Game, while more important and “serious,” is certainly the lesser of the two, in close comparison.

Despite its (decidedly minor) issues, however, there’s no denying that The Imitation Game is a solid, powerful and well-crafted film. In an era where the LGBT community still fights for the rights, respect and understanding that has been sadly absent for too long, there’s no denying that this is a story that definitely needs to be told. As long as any person is forced to go through what Alan Turing was put through, all of humanity collectively suffers. Here’s to hoping that, in the future, our children will look back on the events depicted in The Imitation Game as an example of a petty, small-minded and terrible time that no longer exists.

True heroism, after all, isn’t about making the world better for yourself: true heroism is about making the world better for everyone, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, nation of origin, religion (or lack thereof), political-leaning or personal wealth.

3/3/15 (Part Two): All The Time In the World

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Alejandro Hidalgo, Cezary Jaworski, childhood trauma, children in peril, cinema, directorial debut, dramas, Efraín Romero, family secrets, father-son relationships, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, foreign films, ghosts, Gonzalo Cubero, Guillermo García, haunted house, haunted houses, Héctor Mercado, horror films, house arrest, husband-wife relationship, infidelity, José León, La Casa del Fin del Los Tiempos, Miguel Flores, mother-son relationships, Movies, mysteries, Rosmel Bustamante, Ruddy Rodríguez, set in Venezuela, Simona Chirinos, supernatural, suspense, The House At the End of Time, Timecrimes, Triangle, Venezuelan films, writer-director, Yoncarlos Medina, Yucemar Morales

Some films grab you from the first frame, locking on like a steel bear-trap and refusing to let go until the end credits roll. Some films, however, take a little longer to work under your skin. Alejandro Hidalgo’s debut feature, La Casa del Fin del Los Tiempos (The House At the End of Time) (2013), is one of those “growers”: while the film has rough patches, it gets gradually better as it progresses, culminating in a genuinely powerful finale that features a twist that’s organic, surprising and very satisfying. For a first-time writer-director, I really couldn’t ask for more.

After spending a couple of decades in prison for the murders of her husband and son, the now-aged Dulce (Ruddy Rodriguez) is released under house-arrest, right back into the same home where the murders originally occurred (her son’s body was never found). Left alone with only her thoughts, memories and the “ghosts” of her past, Dulce settles into a lonely existence, her ever-vigilant guards and the local priest (Guillermo García) serving as her lone connection to the outside world. She’s a sad, broken-down person, surrounded by the ghostly remnants of her former life, never more than a few rooms removed from the place where her husband met his bloody end and her child vanished into thin air.

As Dulce roams around her former home, however, she notes a number of odd occurrences: strange sounds, doors that seem to open of their own volition and, most disturbing, the seeming specter of an elderly man (José León) wielding a butcher knife. The film parallels Dulce’s investigation, in the present, with flashbacks to their original events, decades in the past. In the past, we see a much younger Dulce, her husband, Juan Jose (Gonzalo Cubero) and her two sons, Leopoldo (Rosmel Bustamante) and Rodrigo (Héctor Mercado), as they go about their lives in the house. Before long, the two timelines collide, as Dulce uncovers the full truth of the terrible events that sent her to prison, as well as the full story regarding Leopoldo’s disappearance. What is the history behind the house and its strange, subterranean tunnels? Do ghosts walk its halls or something decidedly more earthbound? And, most importantly: did Dulce really kill her own child?

The House At the End of Time opens with a great deal of atmosphere, similar to the thick Gothic miasma that enfolds Del Toro’s more sedate films, and manages to maintain this for the majority of its runtime. Indeed, one of the film’s great strengths is its claustrophobic aura: Hidalgo and cinematographer Cezary Jaworski get a lot of mileage out of the numerous creepy shots of Dulce exploring her old home, slowly walking from one abandoned hallway to the next. A less self-assured film might pile on the jump scares but Hidalgo shows a remarkable degree of control there, as well: you won’t find a musical stinger or scary-faced spook hiding around every corner in this particular haunted house.

In many ways, the film is a variation on the “alternate timeline” trope, ending up in the same basic peer group as Timecrimes (2007), Triangle (2009) and Coherence (2014). That being said, Hidalgo throws some interesting twists into the idea: it’s nowhere near as complicated as Timecrimes or Coherence but it manages to evoke much of the same vibe. While the various plot machinations don’t always make perfect sense (there’s a reliance on chance and pure, dumb luck that’s uncomfortably close to a deus ex machina, for one thing), it all manages to come together, in the end, and the final resolution is not only a smart way to wrap it up but a genuinely emotional ending.

As mentioned, the film isn’t always smooth sailing. The pacing is slightly off for the first third of the film, giving the movie a lurching, uneven quality. There’s also a few inconsistencies in the performances: while Rodriguez and Cubero are always good (Rodriguez, in particular), the kids waver between decent and way too broad (think sitcom-quality acting). Similarly, Guillermo García is quite believable as the sympathetic priest who takes a personal interest in Dulce’s case, whereas the police officers who guard her feel one step removed from slapstick. None of these are particularly critical issues, mind you: the cops are basically background characters and both of the young performers have plenty of great scenes. The focus of the film is squarely on Rodriguez’s capable shoulders and she acquits herself just fine. For the most part, it’s just the little details that keep the film from really hitting its full potential.

I’ve also got to take a minute to call out the film’s rather dreadful old-age makeup: the constant flopping between past and present obviously necessitates this but there’s absolutely nothing believable about Rodriguez’s “present day” makeup. I’m willing to wager that this was due to budgetary constraints and, as above, is definitely not a critical issue: I’m reminded of how much I enjoy cheap Italian zombie films, despite the fact that the makeup often resembled lumpy oatmeal. It only seems to be an issue here since we spend so much time with “old” Dulce: it’s kind of like having your rubber-suited monster in every single shot…it gets a little hard to properly suspend that disbelief.

When all is said and done, however, The House At the End of Time is a more than worthy accomplishment. Low-key, creepy and intelligent, the film has all the earmarks of a genuine sleeper and bodes good things for Hidalgo’s future. To use one final comparison: imagine the film as an old, reliable vehicle. It may take a few tries to get the motor started but, once it’s chugging away, you have no doubt that it’ll get you to the destination. As I’ve said before: you could ask for a whole lot worse.

2/21/15 (Part Two): Love, Loss and Everything Else

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87th Annual Academy Awards, Abigail Cruttenden, Alice-Orr Ewing, ALS, Anthony McCarten, based on a book, Benoit Delhomme, Best Actor winner, Best Actress nominee, Best Picture nominee, biopic, caregiver, Charlie Cox, Charlotte Hope, Christian McKay, cinema, David Thewlis, dramas, Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, genius, Harry Lloyd, husband-wife relationship, James Marsh, Jane Hawking, Jane Wilde, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Lou Gehrig's Disease, Maxine Peake, Movies, multiple award nominee, Oscar, romantic films, Simon McBurney, Stephen Hawking, stylish films, The Theory of Everything, troubled marriages, true love

While watching James Marsh’s multi-Oscar nominated The Theory of Everything (2014), I was struck by how much the film reminded me of another Oscar nominated biopic: Phyllida Lloyd’s The Iron Lady (2011). Like Lloyd’s film, The Theory of Everything is a glossy historical romance anchored by a massively impressive act of mimicry and several strong, if more subtle, surrounding performances. Perhaps the biggest parallel between the two films, however, is the way in which each portrays its subject as less the public figure we all know and more of a “regular Joe” in extraordinary circumstances. In the case of The Iron Lady, this tactic sought to gain audience sympathy for an often divisive public figure. In the case of The Theory of Everything’s portrayal of Stephen Hawking, however, it has the curious effect of taking one of the world’s foremost thinkers and making his world-changing ideas something of an after-thought.

The romance aspect of The Theory of Everything isn’t surprising since the film is based on Jane Hawking’s memoir, “Traveling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen.” As such, we begin with a young Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) speeding around Cambridge University in the ’60s, as fit, spry, gawky and full of unrepressed energy as any young genius. We see him meet, fall in love with and court young Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones), including actual fireworks to frame the happy couple. We follow Stephen as he works on his doctorate with his mentor, Dennis Sciama (David Thewlis), and are with him when he first gets diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a two-year death sentence that is currently stretched into its 50th (and counting) year. We follow the happy couple as they marry, have kids, go through difficult stretches and end up in the arms of others: Jane with choir director/Stephen’s first live-in nurse Jonathan (Charlie Cox), Stephen with his nurse/vocal coach Elaine (Maxine Peake). Time, we see, marches ever onward, despite the best ministrations of mankind.

With the exception of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s tedious, overly obvious and leading score (Oscar nominated, to boot, albeit for no discernible reason), The Theory of Everything is a perfectly serviceable tearjerker, even if it never gets much deeper than that. From the very first frame to the very last one, it’s pretty obvious that Marsh is more interested in the “tortured romantic” aspect of Hawking’s life than in the “tortured genius” aspect: for the most part, Hawking’s various theories and ideas are introduced quickly and act more as character building moments than actual cornerstones of the film. This isn’t necessarily a terrible thing: as previously mentioned with The Iron Lady, any biopic is told from a particular slant and The Theory of Everything’s source material is Jane’s memoir, not “A Brief History of Time.”

The cinematography, courtesy of Benoît Delhomme, is consistently attractive, even if the overly “Vaselined” lens effects tend to lend everything a bit of a cheesy air. While the beginning of the film is (rather inexplicably) shot in blue tones, the rest of the movie looks quite warm, lovely and inviting, rather like the bygone Merchant-Ivory weepies. The flash-back structure is effective for telling the story, although I’ll freely admit that the silly “rewind” effect at the finale is a bit of a bridge too far: it’s another affectation that seems calculatedly designed to give the ol’ heartstrings one final tug on the way out the door.

Much has been made of Eddie Redmayne’s pitch-perfect portrayal of Stephen Hawking (he would go on to take home the Best Actor trophy at the ceremony) and there’s no doubt that it’s masterful: from his early scenes as a gawky, shy, budding cosmologist to the mid-portion where he begins to lose control of his faculties and the final half where he’s in the full-blown grip of ALS, Redmayne displays a remarkable ability to fully inhabit the character. There’s no point during the film’s two-hour runtime where he’s ever anything less than completely convincing and his rakish charm, in the early going, goes a great way to establish Hawking’s reputation as a bit of a snarky genius. While I still prefer Michael Keaton’s performance in Birdman (2014) as far as all-out acting showcases go, there’s no denying that Redmayne was a worthy recipient of his praise.

For my money, though, the real standout in the film is Felicity Jones: her portrayal of Jane is subtle, multi-faceted and possessed of some genuine power. Jones and Redmayne have marvelous chemistry together (their early courtship scenes are just so damn cute) but it’s the scenes that develop Jane’s character that tend to hit the hardest. While the rest of the film is framed, for the most part, as a fairy tale, Jones is brilliant at letting us see the toll that being Stephen’s caretaker has taken on both her life and her academic career (or lack thereof). The scenes between Jones and Charlie Cox have a genuinely sad cast to them that often stands at marked contrast to the rest of the film’s heavy-handed, baroque sentimentality: it’s the difference between a paintbrush and a spray-gun.

Ultimately, The Theory of Everything is the latest in a long line of well-made, well-cast and well-realized soap operas, dispensing the expected dramatic beats in all of the expected places. The acting is strong, the film looks quite nice and the less said about the score, the better. That being said, I can’t help but feel as if the film’s rose-colored glasses and tunnel-vision sell its subjects a bit short. In between all of the shining bits, soaring strings and three-hanky moments, there are occasional moments of real, raw power. It’s an important thing to remember: we may want to keep our heads pointed towards the boundless infinity of the cosmos but the real living, the flesh and blood stuff, is still happening right down here, in the dirt.

11/1/14 (Part One): Through the Killing Glass

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Absentia, Brenton Thwaites, brother-sister relationships, childhood fears, childhood trauma, children in peril, cinema, co-writers, differing viewpoints, estranged siblings, evil mirror, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, haunted mirror, horror, horror films, horror movies, institutionalized, James Lafferty, Jeff Howard, Karen Gillan, Katee Sackhoff, Miguel Sandoval, Mike Flanagan, Movies, Oculus, paranormal investigators, possession, Rashomon, Rory Cochrane, voice-over narration, writer-director-editor

Is truth absolute or relative? It’s a question that philosophers and social scientists have been asking for pretty much as long as the disciplines have existed. If we perceive something as “true,” does that make it so? The vast majority of us can agree that 2+2=4 but is this because the math behind it is absolute or because enough people agree that it is to make it so? What if 2+2 actually equals 5 and we’ve all been deluding ourselves, accepting as “true” something that only exists thanks to our shared rationalizations?

The question of “What is truth?” or, in variation, “What is real?,” is one that films have been asking (and answering) practically from their genesis. When the Lumiere brothers first shocked audiences with the dread notion that an actual train might rampage from the screen straight into the theater, there was much discussion about capturing the “reality” of life and putting it on the big screen. Some fifty years later, legendary auteur Akira Kurosawa would explore the idea of absolute vs relative truth with his classic Rashomon (1950), which explored the vagaries of a single terrible crime through multiple, opposing points of view, leading audiences to wonder whether there could ever be “one truth” when multiple individuals are involved. And now, over sixty years past Rashomon, we once again visit the concept of truth with writer-director-editor Mike Flanagan’s stylish slow-burner Oculus (2013), in which childhood memories and fears come back to haunt the grown children, leading them (and the audience) to wonder just what is true and what is a horrible nightmare.

Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) has been under a psychiatric hold for years after some undetermined childhood trauma: after being deemed fit to re-enter society by his shrink (Miguel Sandoval), Tim must now make the difficult reintegration back into “the real world.” Luckily, he’s got his sister, Kaylie (Karen Gillan), for support: they both lived through the same trauma, so who better to lean on? When Tim moves back into the old family house with Kaylie, he ends up receiving a pretty huge shock: the supposedly cursed mirror that Tim held responsible for the tragic deaths of their parents is back in Kaylie’s possession. Kaylie, for her part, is revealed to be more than a little obsessive: while Tim has spent his years in the looney-bin trying to forget the evil mirror, Kaylie has spent the same amount of time tracking it back down, with the ultimate goal of destroying the cursed glass once and for all.

This, of course, is not as easy as it first seems: the mirror appears to possess a feral intelligence and ruthlessly protects itself, confusing both Tim and Kaylie with hallucinations and false memories. Or does it? You see, neither Tim nor Kaylie seem to be playing with full decks and we get the notion, early on, that all is not as it seems. Things become even more complex when we begin to get flashbacks of their childhood incidents, their individual memories of which completely contradict each other. Who’s actually telling the truth, Tim or Kaylie? Is the mirror actually haunted or are these just two very damaged individuals who need to be locked away from polite society? What actually happened to their parents all those years ago? And if the mirror really is malevolent…what does it actually want? By the film’s powerful twist conclusion, we’ll get the answers to all of these questions, along with a host of others that we didn’t even think to ask.

Mike Flanagan first came to my attention with the indie horror film Absentia (2011), a subtle, creepy little movie about what happens when a woman’s long-missing husband mysteriously shows up again, as if nothing had ever happened. While I enjoyed the ideas and measured pace behind Absentia, there was something about the film that just left me cold: I was left with the notion that Flanagan was a potentially fascinating writer-director who just needed a slightly better vehicle. I’m very happy to report that Oculus is, indeed, just that vehicle and manages to surpass his preceding film in every way imaginable.

Look-wise, Oculus is an elegant, stately affair that fits in nicely with the polished aesthetic of recent films like Insidious (2010) or The Conjuring (2013). That being said, the film is actually a good deal more vicious than either of those entries, coming in as a more intelligent, well-made variation on Alexandre Aja’s gore-athon Mirrors (2008). Oculus gets lots of mileage out of the notion that Tim and Kaylie might not be perceiving reality in the same way that we are: the thoroughly uncomfortable scene where Kaylie gets ready to take a big bite out of a juicy apple that’s probably a lightbulb is a real eye-opener. This particular conceit works so brilliantly in the film precisely because it’s so intrinsically tied with the notion of true: if we can’t believe what we see, how do we actually know what’s true and what’s an illusion?

Structurally, Oculus employs a dizzying melding of the past and present, as we witness two separate timelines (Tim and Kaylie as kids, in the past, and adults, in the present) play out, oftentimes simultaneously. By the film’s rollercoaster final third, the two timelines have become so connected that they seem to overlap and blur into each other: as Kaylie and Tim get more and more lost down the rabbit hole of their childhood, so, too, does the audience get more and more lost trying to figure out what’s taking place when. While this could have become unnecessarily frustrating and overly complex, the tactic works like a charm: the film is so tense and chaotic by the end that I was, literally, riveted to the front of my seat.

One of Oculus’ biggest assets is a whip-smart script, courtesy of Flanagan and co-writer Jeff Howard. Rather than dumbing things down for an (assumed) tuned-out audience, Flanagan floors it and lets spectators hang on for dear life: Oculus is absolutely not a film that rewards lazy viewing, as so much of the film happens in the margins. Oftentimes, what Kaylie and Tim don’t say to each other is more telling than what they do. There also seems to be a refreshing lack of holes in the storyline: while we’re still left with doubts by the end credits, the most important realization is that Flanagan and Howard had none…everything about Oculus speaks to careful planning and exact execution.

On an acting-level, Oculus is, likewise, rock-solid: Gillan and Thwaites make for an appealingly sympathetic pair of protagonists: even when they appear to be deep in the thrall of complete insanity, we really push for them to pull through. There’s a deep vein of tragedy that runs through Oculus (or, perhaps, fatalism?), similar to films like The Burrowers (2008). Thanks to the jagged performances and forbidding atmosphere, we’re never far from the notion that this all will end horribly: when it does, there’s not so much the idea of “calling the ending” as there is Shakespearian pre-destination. These characters will not fail because they are bad people: they will fail because they, like all humans, are fallible and bound by their fate. Oculus is one of the few modern horror films that actually earns the word tragedy, imbuing it with every inch of the classical definition it deserves.

All in all, Flanagan’s Oculus really is an exceptional, powerful film: it should easily appeal to fans of “prestige” horror films, despite the occasional gore scene that “goes to 11,” shall we say. There’s a rare intelligence and grace here that marks Flanagan as exactly the sort of filmmaker I was hoping he would turn out to be: with any luck, he’ll continue to create individual, memorable works like this for some time. While there will always be a soft spot in my heart for mindless slashers and creature features, I’ll take intelligent, mature horror like this any day. If nothing else, Oculus might make you think twice every time you walk by a mirror or catch movement out of the corner of your eye: like any good horror film, it burrows its way into your psyche, taking up residence in the attic of your mind like so many family ghosts.

9/22/14: Plowed Under

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alcoholism, black comedies, Canadian films, cinema, drama, Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, gallows' humor, independent film, indie dramas, Isabelle Nelisse, Marc Labreche, Movies, odd couple, snow plow, stranded, Thomas Haden Church, Vincent Hoss-Desmarais, voice-over narration, Whitewash, writer-director

If there’s a big takeaway from writer/director Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais’ exceptional debut feature, Whitewash (2013), it’s a pretty cynical one: people suck. Oh, sure: individuals may do good, selfless things but the rest of humanity will, invariably, find some way to screw it up. To wrap it up with a nice, clichéd bow: no good deed goes unpunished. The journey to this revelation is a twisted one, however, and there’s a genuine mystery at the heart of this blackly comic little wonder, albeit a small one: why, exactly, did Bruce (Thomas Haden Church) run over Paul (Marc Labreche) with a snowplow?

The event in question happens at the very onset of the film and the answer will be gradually revealed over the next 80-some minutes via a series of flashbacks. What we get at the beginning, however, has all of the linear insanity of a nightmare: we see Bruce run Paul over (via a gorgeous long shot) and then join him as he rides his snowplow off into the darkest recesses of the nearby forest, where the vehicle inevitably stalls out. From this point on, the film splits its difference between being an outdoor survival flick, ala Wrecked (2010), and being a prickly dark comedy about the subtle ways in which humans drive each other crazy.

There’s more to the film than meets the eye, however: much more. For one thing, unlike most survival dramas, Bruce doesn’t appear to be trapped. There’s no giant boulder pinning his arm, no crushed car to keep him in place. Rather, what’s trapping Bruce out in the cold hell of a brutal Quebecan winter is his own internal turmoil. As we begin to piece more of the story together, via the numerous flashbacks, we also start to put together a better picture of Bruce: a hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth type, Bruce is an easy-going fella who’s fond of eating his dessert before his entrée and thinks nothing of helping complete strangers, regardless of the inconvenience to himself. He’s a sad man, in many ways: his wife has died and the house is filled with belongings and memorabilia that makes her an omnipresent figure. There are a lot of facets to Bruce but one questions hangs heavy over everything: why would a guy like this run over someone else with a snow plow?

We do eventually get the answer but, as often happens in these situations, the journey is more important than the destination. As we learn more about Bruce and his “victim,” the mysterious and unbelievably obnoxious Paul, we begin to understand, piece by piece, what might drive a seemingly ordinary guy to snap. By the time we get to the brilliantly concise finale, we have many but not all of our answers. To paraphrase the Big, Bad Wolf: all the better to use our own minds, then.

For a modest, unassuming film, I was most impressed with Hoss-Desmarais’ debut. For one thing, the cinematography (courtesy of Andre Turpin) is absolutely astounding: with no hyperbole, the film looked like a million bucks and featured some stunningly beautiful shots. There’s one shot, where Bruce’s snowplow recedes into the background, taking all of the light with it and rendering the screen pitch-black, that’s practically a masterclass on evoking mood (besides being gorgeously framed). The film’s colors are bright and vibrant, with deep blacks, crisp whites and a truly ingenious use of shadows and negative space.

The other high point in the film, of course, is Thomas Haden Church’s commanding performance as Bruce. For the most part, the film is a one-man show and Church is more than up for the task. Even his voice, deep and reverberating, brings new layers and context to a voice-over convention that is too often misused: the voice-overs in Whitewash don’t repeat unnecessary visual information…they deliver the main character’s inner thoughts and observations in a way that enriches the overall story. If for nothing else, I must praise Hoss-Desmarais’ writing skills and entreat other screenwriters/directors to follow his lead: make the voiceover mean something or get it the hell out-of-the-way.

Awesome voice aside, Church is stone-cold perfect in the role: his dryly humorous quips and facial expressions deliver miles of character in shorthand and the actor is so charismatic that spending an entire film stuck with Bruce is something significantly less than torturous. Truth be told, I had kind of forgot about Church before this film, despite being a big fan of the TV show Wings back in the day. I’m not sure if Whitewash counts as a comeback (did he ever go anywhere or was I just not paying attention) but Church deserves more (and bigger) films in the future. Here’s to hoping this helps kick the door in.

Also impressive, for different reasons, is Marc Labreche as the odious Paul. Paul is kind of a difficult character to parse, since we start to learn about his true character over time. Nonetheless, Labreche is pretty great at hitting all of the necessary beats: his long-winded story about Mexico starts to pull back the curtain hiding the wizard (in a truly organic way), while his ridiculous bar-room dance must be seen to be believed. Most importantly, Church and Labreche make a great odd couple: the film wouldn’t be nearly as effective if their relationship didn’t seem so real.

Lest my praise seem too effusive, Whitewash is definitely not a perfect film. Despite the great script, there are a few odd plot-holes that never get resolved and the back half of the film ends up being more confusing than seems necessary. In the long run, however, none of the film’s problems ever approach the level of “deal-breaker.” The acting is extraordinary (no lie, Church deserved some kind of award for this), the script is tight and the cinematography is flat-out beautiful. Hoss-Desmarais makes particularly good use of the Canadian countryside, which almost becomes a third character in the film. The cherry on the sundae? A pitch-perfect, sardonic, dry-as-dust final shot that feels like the filmmakers decided to take a victory lap.

Nowadays, it seems that cheaply made, disposable independent films are a dime-a-dozen (hell, maybe that’s what Netflix is payin’ em these days). The good ones? Far less frequent. The great ones? Even rarer still. Whitewash, in case anyone is keeping score, is one of the great ones. Here’s to hoping this is the beginning of a long and fruitful writing/directing career for Hoss-Desmarais, who first cut his teeth as an actor in films like The Day After Tomorrow (2004). While moving behind the camera isn’t always the best move for an actor, Hoss-Desmarais proves that the best things don’t always fall neatly within the lines.

7/24/14: Allergic to the World

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agoraphobia, Alex Pastor, Barcelona, Blindness, Children of Men, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, collapsed civilization, David Pastor, dystopian future, epidemics, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, foreign films, Isak Ferriz, Jose Coronado, Leticia Dolera, Marta Etura, Movies, non-linear structure, pandemic, Pere Ventura, Quim Gutierrez, sci-fi, Spanish film, survivor, The Last Days, The Panic, writer-director

Nowadays, it seems that everything under the sun is “antibacterial,” as if the single greatest threat to humanity isn’t climate change or interpersonal conflict but, rather, microbes, viruses and assorted germs. It’s gotten to the point where roughly 90% of the soaps on the market are antibacterial which, of course, has led to the inevitable backlash: perhaps all of the antibacterial stuff is actually weakening our immune systems, leaving us more susceptible to the very bacterium that we’re seeking to defend against. Ah, humanity: providing the universe with a constant source of amusement for millions of years.

What if this obsession with germs is a completely futile exercise, however? What if our bodies aren’t reacting to specific irritants but, rather, are reacting to everything? In other words, what if we’re all becoming progressively more allergic to the outside world? This rather frightening idea forms the crux of co-writers/directors David and Alex Pastor’s quietly powerful new film, The Last Days (2013). While the film isn’t quite as good as its most similar parallel, the neo-classic Children of Men (2006), it’s still a more than worthwhile entry in the “intelligent sci-fi/dystopic future” subgenre and establishes the Pastors as filmmakers to keep an eye on.

The Last Days begins with the kind of monochromatic atmosphere that informs similar films like 12 Monkeys (1995), Children of Men and Blindness (2008): everything is gray, the sky looks like it’s just about to open up and slam down rain and every single person looks as battered and shell-shocked as any survivor of a protracted siege. In this case, however, “shell-shocked survivor” is a pretty apt description: as we find out in short order, the citizens of the world have all developed a sudden and extreme form of agoraphobia. Unlike the “regular” kind, this particular fear of open spaces kills: victims seize up when outdoors, bleed from every orifice and drop dead unless they’re returned to the “safety” of the indoors. This has led to a situation where everyone has been trapped inside whatever building they happen to be in for months: society has broken down, unchecked fires ravage the streets and the people are gradually losing their basic humanity…and their hope.

Enter our protagonist, Marc (Quim Gutierrez), who’s been trapped with his co-workers in an office building for the past three months. As food reserves and supplies gradually disappear, the trapped people have been attempting to tunnel out from their underground garage into the nearby subway system, which would allow them access to the rest of Barcelona without risking travel in the outside world. Via flashbacks (the film employs a non-linear but fairly simple flashback structure wherein the past and present each get their own “timeline,” although the timelines are intermingled throughout the film’s run time), we learn that Marc’s office has been visited by an “efficiency expert, Enrique (Jose Coronado), whose presence leads to firings and increased stress in Marc’s relationship with his girlfriend, Julia (Marta Etura).

In the present, Marc and Enrique end up working together after each man realizes that the other has something he needs: Marc has managed to get a hold of a flashlight, while Enrique has stolen a coveted GPS system from a car in the garage. The two strike up a deal wherein they will first go to Marc’s apartment building, in search of Julia, before heading to pick up Enrique’s ailing father at a hospital. The journey will be difficult and fraught with peril, not least of which involves the fact that they’re unable to step foot outside: they’ll have to make it from one end of Barcelona to the other using only buildings, underground routes and the like for cover.

As if this wasn’t enough, however, Marc and Enrique will need to deal with that most insidious of dystopic concerns: the violent devolution of humanity in the face of an overwhelming, extinction-level event. Anyone familiar with things like Children of Men, Blindness or The Walking Dead will know that the “event” is never the biggest problem: humans will always be more capable of evil than any disease, zombie invasion or outside force. In The Last Days, people have turned the cramped interior spaces of buildings, subway stations and garages into stuffed-to-bursting pseudo-cities: think the ruined vibe of Blade Runner (1982) jammed into the equivalent of a broom closet and you get some idea of the insanity. As is wont to happen whenever the masses of humanity are forced into constricted locations, tempers flare, the rules of society are abandoned and brute force becomes the law of the land. Will Marc and Enrique survive the human menace long enough to reach their respective loved ones? Will humanity ever be able to rebound from what appears to be an evolutionary development designed solely to extinguish people from the face of the Earth? Will we ever be able to go outside again?

If there’s anything really derogatory to say about The Last Days, let it be said that the film isn’t particularly original or unique, even if it is extremely well-made. While the basic plot is different from films like Children of Men and Blindness, the overall themes and tone are nearly identical to any one of a number of dystopic sci-fi films: I hate to say “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all,” since it’s such a restrictive, negative thing to say but it’s kind of true. That being said, I could follow that up by adding, “If you liked the others, you’ll like this one, too.” Unlike something like a generic slasher or low-budget monster film, The Last Days is anything but a cookie-cutter film, even if it brings to mind other, more well-known movies. While the Pastors’ film doesn’t break any new ground, it’s still an incredibly solid, thrilling and thought-provoking experience: innovation is certainly appreciated but there’s still something to be said for just making an overall good film and The Last Days certainly delivers on that front.

The acting is uniformly solid, with Gutierrez and Coronado making a really effective duo: there’s a genuine progression to their relationship that never feels forced and seems to reflect a pretty realistic grasp on how people would actually react in a similar situation. There are a number of setpieces in the film (collecting the rain, fighting the bear in the abandoned church, the insane fortified department store at the end) that are as good as anything else out there, with the bear fight easily standing as one of the most thrilling, well-staged action pieces I’ve seen in some time. It’s always interesting to see how a film will (or won’t) survive multiple butts in the director’s seat but there doesn’t seem to be any notable flaws in The Last Days craft: if there can truly be any flaws, they come from the unnerving sense of deja vu in the film – even if you haven’t seen these particular episodes before, it might feel like you have. As already mentioned, this is both a blessing and a curse: while the Pastors don’t break any new ground, they also don’t phone it in, either.

Ultimately, The Last Days is an interesting, solemn and mildly thought-provoking film that programs nicely in with the rest of its peers, yet doesn’t really have a complete identity of its own. There are certainly some interesting ideas here (the notion of us all becoming gradually allergic to the outside, as our lives and interests increasingly occur indoors, is a solid, frightening one) but the film, ultimately, takes a different route to wind up at the exact same location: we have seen the enemy and it is us. I may agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment but it doesn’t mean I haven’t heard it before.

6/14/14 (Part Two): When Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend

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1960's films, American Old West, Andy Devine, auteur theory, cinema, classic films, classic movies, Denver Pyle, Edmund O'Brien, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, gunslingers vs lawyers, James Stewart, James Warner Bellah, John Carradine, John Ford, John Wayne, Ken Murray, lawyers, Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cleef, legend vs reality, Liberty Valance, Movies, Ransom Stoddard, senator, Shinbone, statehood, Strother Martin, the law vs the gun, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the myth of the Old West, the Old West, the taming of the Wild West, the Wild West, Tom Doniphon, Vera Miles, Westerns, Wild West, William H. Clothier, Willis Goldbeck, Woody Strode

In many ways, the American “Old West” is just as mythical a location as Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Lewis’ Narnia: composed of equal parts real history, tall tales, folk legends, personal myth-building, self-rationalization and flat-out malarkey, the Wild West has become so absorbed into the fabric of pop culture, by this point, that is hard to say where the stories end and the truth begins. Much of this mythologizing is thanks to the work of American filmmakers like John Ford, Howard Hawks, Sam Peckinpah and Fred Zinnemann, directors who helped shape the public’s opinion of the American Old West as a rough-and-tumble, lawless land where the six-gun was the only jury and where a strong-willed man could carve out an empire with his bare hands. Classic Hollywood Westerns such as Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), Broken Arrow (1950), High Noon (1952), Shane (1953), The Searchers (1956),  Rio Bravo (1959), The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Wild Bunch (1969) have long posited the West as just such a brutal, beautiful and untamed wilderness, America’s last refuge against the relentless march of progress and industrialization that swallowed the rest of the nation part and parcel.

Nothing, of course, can withstand the march of time for long and the “Wild West” was no exception. Once the railroad began to unite far-flung settlements into something that resembled a larger community, as well as linking the West with the much much-maligned, industrialized East, it was only a matter of time before the formerly untamed frontier would fall to the natural progress of the modern world. As someone who became one of the mythologized West’s biggest proponents, it likewise fell to auteur John Ford to write its eulogy, once the time had passed. To that end, Ford tolled the funeral bell with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), a film that purported to bring together two of the Westerns biggest stars, John Wayne and James Stewart, even as it brought the curtain down on traditional notions of the Old West.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is structured as a flashback narrative, beginning in the “present-day” and moving backwards in time to show us the events that led us to where we are. In the present, Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles), have returned to the tiny frontier town of Shinbone in order to attend the funeral of one Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). Once there, Ransom and Hallie reconnect with old friends, including Shinbone’s former marshal, Link Appleyard (Andy Devine) and Doniphon’s faithful manservant Pompey (Woody Strode). When the local newspaper editor pressures Stoddard for a story concerning his return to the dusty hole-in-the-wall that is Shinbone, Stoddard deigns to give him the full scoop, telling the story of how he first came to Shinbone as an idealistic lawyer fresh out of law school and met Tom, his future wife, Hallie, and the miserable human being that would end up helping Stoddard secure his reputation: the outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin).

Stoddard describes how he came to Shinbone after being waylaid, beaten and robbed by Liberty Valance during a stagecoach holdup. Despite the continued advise of the cowardly Marshall Appleyard and all-around good-guy Tom, Stoddard is determined to bring Valance to justice with the letter of the law, rather than the vengeance of a six-gun. Easier said than done, however, as Valance and his minions, Floyd (Strother Martin) and Reese (Lee Van Cleef), pretty much run the town, keeping everyone scared (including the Marshall) and under the thumbs of the local land barons. When the topic of statehood comes up, Valance and Stoddard end up on opposite sides of the issue: Stoddard knows that statehood will lead to modernization, industrialization and law and order, whereas Valance’s employers know that statehood will spell the end of their unchecked land rights. Neither man will back down, sending everyone in Shinbone, including Tom and his then-girlfriend Hallie, hurtling towards a violent confrontation that will signal the end for some while heralding a bold, new beginning for others. Liberty Valance is the second fastest gun in the territory, however, and Stoddard is the epitome of the “citified dude” – he’ll need more than justice on his side to take on Valance…he’s going to need a guardian angel.

As with any elegy, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is an exceptionally sad film, not only for the events which take place on-screen but for the greater significance that these events held for our society. Although Ford’s film is full of rousing action set-pieces, lots of sharp humor and some nice, broad characterizations (Andy Devine is particularly goofy as the whiny, constantly eating sheriff), there’s a muted, toned-down feel to the proceedings that mark this as the furthest thing from one of Ford’s more “traditional” Westerns, such as Fort Apache or Rio Grande (1950). There’s very little in the way of celebration here, even in those moments where the “good guys” are succeeding (the saloon scene where Tom kicks Valance’s guy right in the face, the statehood representative meeting), since the film seems to be all too aware that these successes will, ultimately, spell doom for the old-fashioned Old West. If Tom Doniphon stands for the traditionally rugged Western settler/survivor, he also stands for the mythologized Western director, as well: whereas artists like Hawks, Ford and Zinnemann plied their trades for a particular mindset in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, auteurs like Peckinpah, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood were dealing with not only the “death” of the traditional American Old West but also changing audience expectations and perspectives.

Your particular stance on progress and industrialization will probably color your particular view of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as being more or less a tragedy. On the one hand, Ransom Stoddard’s relentless quest to bring law and order, along with the niceties of “polite” society, to the untamed West is a noble (if slightly naive) pursuit. Industrialization in the American West led to a number of irrefutable benefits, such as the proliferation of better medical practices, educational institutions, the creation of a justice system that was wholly dependent on mob justice, etc… but it also led to the marginalization of hard-scrabble folks like Tom Doniphon (and Liberty Valance, if we want to split hairs), folks who would be completely out-of-step in a newly “Easternized” West. After all, this was their land, too, and there’s something inherently sad about the notion that a fundamentally good person like Tom (at least as portrayed in the film) will be allowed to lose everything, including the love of his life, in order to uphold Stoddard’s “new order.”

This notion of “the good of the many vs the good of the few” seems to be foremost on Ford’s mind, as the film makes no bones about the fact that Hallie and Tom were the “truer” couple, whereas Hallie and Ransom are the more “proper” couple. Hallie and Tom’s love is portrayed as passionate, romantic and messy, whereas Hallie and Ransom’s marriage seems to be more convenient, albeit more clinical. This, in micro, is the argument between the messier, more wild and more “authentic” Old West versus the more restrained, civilized and law-abiding “New” West. It’s the cactus rose versus the actual rose…Tom Doniphon’s antiquated notions of right and wrong versus Ransom’s Stoddard’s stubborn reliance on the rules of law and order…the emotion versus the intellect.

While The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is full of great performances, particularly John Wayne’s out-of-place cowboy Jimmy Stewart’s pompous, blowhard but well-meaning lawyer, the film really belongs to Lee Marvin’s dastardly villain: Liberty Valance is easily one of the greatest cinematic monsters to ever slime across the big screen and Marvin brings him to terrifying, shuddering life. He’s able to spit out “dude” with the same venom that others might reserve for “motherfucker” and the scene where he horsewhips Stoddard is as horrifying as something from a fright film. Marvin, ably backed up by Peckinpah mainstay Strother Martin and the one and only Lee Van Cleef, is a true force of nature in the film but he’s anything but a one-dimensional villain. In many ways, he functions as the flip-side to Doniphon’s “noble cowboy” character, showcasing the dark side of the Wild West that made Stoddard’s brand of law and order such a necessary, if game-changing, development in the building of the West.

Elsewhere, on the acting front, Edmund O’Brien provides some welcome comic relief as the besotted local newspaper editor/newly-elected statehood rep Dutton Peabody, while Vera Miles is an expressive, eternally sad presence as Tom Doniphon’s beloved Hallie, who ends up embracing both Ransom Stoddard and the change that he embodies. Truth be told, the only performances that grate a bit are Andy Devine’s ever-foolish Link Appleyard and Woody Strode’s ever loyal Pompey. Devine’s whiny schtick gets old quick, although he has some really nice, emotional beats in the “present-day” part of the film, particularly his quietly lovely scenes with Hallie, whereas Pompey is pretty much a non-entity, serving only to follow around and support Tom without much characterization of his own (the most we get is the rather on-the-nose bit where Pompey is able to remember everything about the Declaration of Independence except for the “All men are created equal” part).

As with all of Ford’s films, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance looks great, a truly panoramic vision of the Old West that still manages to convey a sense of muted sadness. The black and white cinematography, courtesy of William H. Clothier (who shot several dozen other John Wayne Westerns), is always crisp and clear and there’s a typically expert use of directional lighting and shadows, particularly in the climatic scene where Stoddard and Valance face-off in the streets of Shinbone. Fittingly, the film often feels slightly oppressive, as if there’s a hanging sense of doom over everything: it’s the sense of tension befitting something like High Noon but with none of that film’s sense of release. Even after Valance is dead, Doniphon isn’t (personally) victorious and Ford’s film doesn’t seem particularly interested in celebrating his failure to preserve the old way of life.

Despite it’s status as a classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is just as much a character drama or tragedy (Doniphon’s fatal flaw is his inability to change with the times, which ends up being Stoddard’s biggest strength) as it is a traditional oater. While John Ford was responsible for some of the most iconic visions of the Old West put to film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is just a little bit different. Rather than a celebration of a by-gone era and the people who forged a nation, Ford’s opus is a quiet, serious meditation on the unflinching nature of progress, industrialization and the “taming” of the Old West. In any other film, the moment where Ransom and Hallie end up together would be the culmination of their struggles and a source of joy for the audience. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford asks viewers not to focus on the “winners” in the foreground, but the “losers” in the background, those men and women, including Tom Doniphon, who triumphed over a harsh landscape but ended up being shot straight in the heart by that most unavoidable of all enemies: the modern age.