10/8/14 (Part One): The Loneliest Hunter of All

Tags

31 Days of Halloween, art films, based on a book, Best of 2013, Birth, British films, cinema, co-writers, Daniel Landin, experimental film, film reviews, films, Jonathan Glazer, Movies, non-professional actors, Scarlet Johansson, Scarlett Johansson, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, set in Scotland, Sexy Beast, Under the Skin, Walter Campbell, writer-director

Every great once in a while, a film comes along that completely blows my mind. I don’t necessarily mean this in the “what a great film” way but rather in the purer, more maddening “what the hell did I just watch” way. When I was younger, El Topo (1970), Holy Mountain (1973) and Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) were three films, off the top of my head, that pretty much challenged everything I thought I knew about movies (and maybe even life, to a certain extent). More recently, Toad Road (2012) and A Field in England (2013) twisted my brain into a million little knots, although I’ll freely admit that neither film has one tenth the massed weirdness of one of Jodorowsky’s epics. To this short-list of mind-melting cinema, go ahead and add Jonathan Glazer’s amazing, eye-popping visual spectacle, Under the Skin (2013), a film which manages to split the difference between arthouse and grindhouse, coming up with something that feels dreamlike, impossibly convoluted and languid, yet startlingly alive.

Despite lacking a conventional linear narrative, Under the Skin never feels slight or half-baked, although offering a plot description becomes a bit problematic. Suffice to say that the film involves an unnamed woman, played by Scarlett Johansson, who drives around the Scottish countryside, picks up strange, unattached men (the unattached part, apparently, is quite important) and taking them back to her home. Once there, Johansson and the men undress, at which point the men appear to walk straight into some sort of all-consuming “blackness”: lather, rinse, repeat. As the film begins to take on some of the qualities of a phantasmagorical Groundhog Day (1993), other elements begin to drift to the forefront: a mysterious man on a motorcycle who appears to aid Johansson in her “job”…a strange, blue-lit “ocean” that appears to be of distinctly unearthly origin…a deformed “victim” who appears immune to whatever’s going on…throughout it all, the film relies on dialogue as little as possible, rendering the film closer to something like Kenneth Anger’s influential shorts rather than a more conventional narrative.

Under the Skin, unlike many films, is an almost purely cinematic experience: there is absolutely no hand-holding, telegraphing or easy answers to be found here. Indeed, I felt rather shell-shocked after the final credits rolled, since the entire film felt like some sort of barely remembered fever dream: it was like being rudely woken from an entrancing vision only to be unceremoniously dumped back into the real world. While other films may provoke the response “I wish it would never end,” Under the Skin practically demands it: the dreamlike aura and atmosphere is so addictive that re-entering reality feels like a severe comedown, regardless of one’s relative sobriety at the time. It’s no hyperbole to say that Under the Skin may have been the single biggest immersive experience I’ve had watching a film in recent memory.

Above all else, Glazer’s film is absolutely gorgeous, featuring some of the most stunning cinematography I’ve ever seen. Despite director of photography Daniel Landin’s relative lack of feature film experience (Under the Skin is only the fourth full-length film that he’s shot in a twenty-year career), I really don’t think anyone could have done a better job. From shots that explore darkness and shadow in impressive new ways to one astounding scene that looks to take place in a room-sized lightbox, virtually each and every shot in the film is a work of art. No lie: I’m more than happy to compare Under the Skin’s visuals to any other film out there, past or present, and I’m pretty confident that it would win each and every showdown. Under the Skin is just about the closest to a Kubrick film (in visual aesthetic) that I’ve ever seen, including any of Refn’s candy-colored daydreams.

Writer/director Glazer, whose short career (thus far) has only included three full-lengths and a slew of music videos, has such a firm grasp on the film that it becomes more than a little shocking to discover how much of it was, essentially, improvd. Apparently, Glazer would send Johannson out into the Scottish night and have her randomly “pick up” strangers: once the men took the bait, as it were, the production team would approach them with waivers, more specific direction, etc. In a way, this recalls the similar blurring of reality and fiction in the exceptional Toad Road, although Under the Skin is a much more dreamlike effort, all things considered. Even though none of the “victims” are really required to do much in the way of acting, it still strikes me as endlessly impressive that there was such an element of chance inherent to such a meticulously crafted piece of art: it’s akin to finding out that an amazing tattoo artist freehands everything, making the job as difficult as possible.

Full disclosure: I’ve never been the biggest Scarlett Johansson fan in the world. Truth be told, there have actually been very few films that I’ve really enjoyed her in, although I thought she was great in Don Jon (2013) and perfectly serviceable in Lost in Translation (2003). That being said, Johansson is absolutely pitch-perfect in Under the Skin, turning in a performance that is endlessly nuanced and as three-dimensional as a mysterious, unemotional, nearly mute character could possibly be. One of the most fascinating aspects of the movie is how completely unerotic and clinical the frequent nudity ends up being: despite her continued status as a modern “it girl,” Johansson manages to work wonders with her posture, stance and body language to craft a character that manages to seem almost utterly alien and strange. In the past, I’ve always had the dismayed sense that Johansson was a completely blank performer, no more capable of investing her characters with genuine life than she was with singing the songs of Tom Waits with any sense of passion. Here, Johansson’s inherent emptiness becomes but one facet of her unnamed character: she manages to off-set this blankness with some moments of genuine emotion. The scene where she has sex with one of the men she picks up is telling because it’s one of the few scenes where Johansson’s character displays any emotion aside from a sense of ennui: her panicky reaction works so well because it plays against everything that’s come before…watching the fine cracks spiderweb across the surface of Johansson’s frozen lake of a personality is one of the most sublime joys the film offers.

Truth be told, I still find myself a little off kilter after watching the film. While I genuinely enjoyed Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2000), there’s just no way I could have foretold that Under the Skin would be on the horizon, even almost 15 years later. There’s a genuine sense of grandeur and space that fills the entire film, a feeling that befits a work of art that has its head as far into outer space as it has its feet firmly planted on terra firma. Even a few days later, I’m hard-pressed to explain exactly what it was I saw: I have my suspicions, of course, my theories and even my doubts. At the end of the day, however, I just don’t know…and that’s a mighty awesome, invigorating problem to have. In a day and age where too many films shoot for the lowest common denominator and filmmakers seem to constantly “dumb down” their productions for less discerning audiences (hell, the Weinstein’s cut Snowpiercer’s (2013) running time because they didn’t think Western audiences would be able to patiently sit through the film), Under the Skin is that rare beast that does neither. Rather, Glazer’s film demands that audiences meet it on its own terms or not at all: I can only imagine how unbelievably frustrating Under the Skin would be to a passive, disengaged viewer.

At the end of the day, Under the Skin is many things: a mood piece; an art film; a sci-fi film; a horror movie; a romance; an allegory…it’s all of these and none of them, at the same time. While I don’t really know much the film, specifically, I do know that it really hit me hard and continues to be something that worms around my cerebral cortex. While there may come a day when I understand the film more completely (I have a nagging suspicion that I’ve missed some of the more important symbolism), I really hope that the day doesn’t come when I cease to be impressed by it. The world needs more films like Under the Skin: gorgeous, atmosphere, dense and uncompromising, the film is a true work of art. It may be a little premature to include this film on my list of all-time favorite movies (I’ll need to live with it a little longer and see it many more times before that can happen) but it’s no hyperbole to say that the film absolutely blew me away. Give Glazer another nine years and, I daresay, he might just come up with something that will set the film-world on its ear: I have no idea how he’ll top Under the Skin but I’m sure as hell excited to see him try.

4/25/14: JGL Loves His Computer

Tags

addicted to porn, Barbara Sugarman, Brie Larson, Catholic church, character dramas, cinema, Clint Eastwood, Don Jon, dramadies, dramas, eponymous characters, fantasy vs reality, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Glenne Headly, internet porn, JGL, Jon Martello, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Julianne Moore, Movies, New Jersey, porn, pornography, relationships, Saturday Night Fever, Scarlett Johansson, sex addiction, Tony Danza, Tony Manero, voice-over narration, writer-director-actor

It’s always a dicey proposition when a beloved actor decides to makes his/her mark behind the camera. On one hand, who could possibly understand the methods and motivations necessary to elicit the best performances from actors than a fellow treader of the boards? There’s a special skill to directing actors, a skill that becomes even more impressive when one begins to take note of the numerous films, popular and otherwise, that feature serviceable (at best) acting. The modern Hollywood mode appears to be to distract from any basic flaws (storytelling, script, acting) by focusing on the showier, punchier details (special effects, fast-paced editing, bigger, better and louder everything). When a career actor throws his/her hat onto the directing chair, we usually (but not always) get films that focus on the characters and acting: a quick look through Clint Eastwood’s exemplary resume gives a good example of this. When current golden boy Joseph Gordon-Levitt made his directing/writing debut with Don Jon, a fairly modest little film about a porn-obsessed, body-building, mook looking for love in all the wrong places, I was hoping he would bring the same deft touch behind the scenes that he normally does before them. For the most part, JGL delivers the goods, even if the final result ends up being a little more “same-old-same-old” than I’d hoped.

A montage of highly sexualized female images from film, TV, cartoons and the internet jumps us head-first into JGL’s story about porn-addicted guys and the women who (try to) love them. A voice-over introduces us to the titular hero, one Jon Martello (JGL) who appears to have only four interests in life: masturbating to internet porn, picking up and screwing any living thing with lady parts, cleaning his house and lifting weights. That, as Porky Pig would stammer, is all folks. Frequent super-flashy cut-scenes and montages lay out Jon’s personal philosophy pretty clearly: real girls are great but they ain’t the real thing. You see, everything about porn is cooler to Jon than the actual act of sex: the positions are better, the people are hotter, the angles are better and nobody makes goofy “O” faces. Jon may pick up and bang a new club hottie every night but he always finishes the evening by slipping away from his snoozing conquest and spending a little one-on-one time with his fave XXX sites. As we come to see in pretty short order, Jon is obsessed with the ideal of everything over the reality: ideal sex, ideal body, ideal house, ideal everything. Real life, when compared to the air-brushed perfection of fantasy, just doesn’t rev Jon’s engine, as it were.

All of this, supposedly, changes when Jon lays eyes on Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson) in the club. She’s a “ten” in his book, even though his friends proclaim her to be “long game”: she’s way too “classy” for Jon and he ain’t getting her in the sack anytime soon. Not to worry, of course, because Jon has a little way to help keep his mind off of Barbara’s naughty parts. For a while, this seems like the best of both worlds, to Jon: he gets to romance Barbara as slow as she’d like while still indulging in his own pleasure on the side. Regular visits to the confessional help keep his conscience scrubbed clean (Hail Marys are all-purpose cleaners, it turns out) and Barbara even begins to insinuate herself into the rest of Jon’s life, getting him to enroll in night school and bring her home to meet his folks (Tony Danza and Glenne Headly). Thing’s just get better when Barbara decides that it’s finally time to take it all the way. Jon is thrilled but the sex ends up being just as unfulfilling as ever and he sneaks back to his laptop while Barbara snoozes. She ends up catching him in mid-act, however, which prompts a massive blow-up and promise from Jon that this was all a misunderstanding.

As Jon denies himself the self-gratification that he’s always relied on, however, he finds the rest of his life beginning to fall apart: he’s always pissed off, for one thing, which culminates in a nifty bit of road rage where he puts his fist through a car window. Big Jon may be trying to walk the straight and narrow but Lil’ Jon is the one who calls the shots and, in time, it’s inevitable that the whole flimsy structure will fall to the ground. After Jon learns about browser histories the hard way, he sets out on a journey of self-exploration that eventually leads to Esther (Julianne Moore), the older, philosophical, sexually-secure student in his night class who’s been interested in him for some time. In time, Jon will learn that sex without an emotional connection is just as empty as the internet porn he’s addicted to, forcing him to make some hard decisions. As Blink-182 once said: I guess this is growing up.

As a feature-film debut, Don Jon hits most of the right notes. The acting, as expected, is top-notch, with Tony Danza being a particular stand-out as Jon’s ultra-mook father, Jon, Sr. I’ve never been a fan of Scarlett Johansson, finding her to easily be one of the most irritating, over-rated non-actors in the business but I admit to really enjoying her as Barbara Sugarman. There’s an honesty and vulnerability to her performance that I’ve found lacking in everything else I’ve ever seen her in (with the possible exception of Lost in Translation) and it really helps to shore up the film’s (occasional) emotional disconnect. As always, JGL is a highly personable tour-de-force in the film but he doesn’t do much different with the role: this may be JGL as envisioned by the creators of Jersey Shore but it’s still noticeably JGL: good, old’ reliable JGL.

As a film, Don Jon is a bit more problematic. The quick-cut, fast-paced editing that makes an appearance at the beginning continues throughout the film and, to be honest, it gets old kinda fast. As a rule, I’m not a big fan of hyper-active editing unless it really fits the production (Fight Club and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels being two of the best examples) and too much of the editing in Don Jon feels superfluous and unnecessarily flashy. The film also ends up being fairly predictable by the third act, mostly due to a softening of its core idea: despite all of the evidence to the contrary, Jon isn’t a porn addict…he just hasn’t found the right girl. While this may be fine and dandy for a stereotypical Hollywood happy ending, it seems to give short shrift to the film’s previous insights into addiction. In my opinion, it would have made for a much better, more powerful film if we could have truly seen Jon caught in the unhappy throes of his addiction, unable to pursue his own happiness due to his obsessions. As it stands, we get the equivalent of the nice guy who spends the entire film being unhappy with the popular girl only to find true love with the mousey librarian in the final scene. It may make for a “nicer” ending but seems to ring a bit false with everything that preceded it.

That being said, Don Jon is a good film with some genuinely interesting things to say (before it pulls its punches, that is). Some of Jon’s observations about the Catholic Church’s policies regarding confessions are both hilarious and spot-on (it seems to rely on a vague point system where masturbation and out-of-wedlock sex are each assigned different, seemingly arbitrary values) and there’s some great, messy energy to the home scenes involving his parents and (seemingly) mute sister. If some of this seems to unconsciously mimic similar scenes in Saturday Night Fever, it’s only because Jon Martello and Tony Manero are probably long-lost cousins. Julianne Moore, like JGL, is consistently good, although her character may have one quirk too many to be completely believable.

As a directorial debut, Don Jon is good but not great. While his focus on the acting results in some truly great performances, there’s a bit too much reliance on style and flash over substance which, combined with the overly conventional resolution, gives the whole production a bit of a “been there, done that feeling.” Nonetheless, I was a huge fan of JGL’s before watching the film and I don’t find my overall impression of him changed in the slightest: I still think he’s a hair’s breadth away from being a national treasure and I’ll eagerly await his sophomore effort.