6/27/15 (Part One): The Unreality of Modern Life

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absurdist, Adaptation, Alain Chabat, art films, auteur theory, Élodie Bouchez, breaking the fourth wall, Charlie Kaufman, cinema, confusing films, dark comedies, dream-like, electronic score, Eric Wareheim, experimental film, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, hogs, Hollywood producer, Hollywood satire, husband-wife relationship, insanity, John Gallagher Jr., John Glover, John Heder, Jonathan Lambert, kooky psychiatrist, Kyla Kenedy, life imitating art, Lola Delon, loss of identity, Matt Battaglia, meta-films, Movies, Mr. Oizo, Patrick Bristow, producer-director relationships, Quentin Dupieux, Reality, Rubber, surrealism, Susan Diol, Synecdoche New York, Thomas Bangalter, videotapes, writer-director-cinematographer-editor, Wrong, Wrong Cops

Many filmmakers merely flirt with the weird and “out there,” toeing a carefully demarcated line in the sand between material that genuinely challenges viewers and material that upholds our own, personal status quos. These films may seem impossibly strange, from the outside, but cracking them open, as it were, tends to reveal their decidedly mundane inner workings. Gussying up a traditional narrative with stylistic tics and quirks, complex timelines and pseudo-philosophical meanderings doesn’t make it genuinely challenging any more than slapping a suit on a dog makes it the chairman of the board.

Standing on the fringes of these “politely difficult” films, however, are another batch of filmmakers: the agitators, the genuinely strange and the patently difficult. These are the filmmakers, artists like Charlie Kaufman, Yorgos Lanthimos, György Pálfi, Guy Maddin and Gaspar Noé, who possess singular visions that sit so far outside the mainstream as to seem almost alien. From films like Adaptation (2002) and Synedoche, New York (2008) to movies like Taxidermia (2006), Enter the Void (2009), Dogtooth (2009) and Tales From the Gimli Hospital (1988), these headscratchers are as far from popcorn multiplex features as one can get, immersing audiences into bizarre worlds that look strangely like our own, albeit twisted through a fractured mirror.

And, just to the left of that particular group, stands French auteur Quentin Dupieux. With a body of work that includes some of the most genuinely bizarre, out-there films I’ve ever seen, Dupieux has quickly become one of my very favorite modern filmmakers. As a firm believer in the auteur theory, Dupieux is sort of my gold standard in this day and age: not only does he write and direct his films, he also shoots, edits and performs the electronic scores (Dupieux is also a world-renowned electro-musician who goes by the name Mr. Oizo)…talk about a one-man band! Any new Dupieux film is cause for celebration, which leads us to the subject of our current discussion: his newest oddball creation, Reality (2014). Did I expect the unexpected? But of course. Did Dupieux deliver? Between my aching cranium and over-stimulated imagination, I’m gonna have to answer in the affirmative.

Coming across as a bizarro-world take on Adaptation, threaded through with elements of The Truman Show (1998) and left to melt in the noonday sun, Reality deals with three separate individuals and the ways in which their lives eventually crisscross each other, leading to no small amount of pandemonium, confusion and inner turmoil. Reality (Kyla Kenedy) is an inquisitive young girl whose hunter father (Matt Battaglia, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a young Paul Newman) has just killed a wild boar in the woods and pulled a blue videotape from its carcass. She also seems to be the star of some sort of film being shot in her room, while she sleeps, by a kooky director named Zog (the always-kooky John Glover)…you know, your basic kid stuff.

The next corner of our triangle is inhabited by Dennis (John Heder), the mopey, downtrodden host of a TV cooking show who wears a moth-eaten rat costume and scratches his (possibly imaginary) eczema like it was going out of style. All that Dennis wants is a little relief from his constant irritation but a trip to outrageously obnoxious Dr. Klaus (Patrick Bristow) makes him out to be either a liar, an idiot or both.

The final point of the triangle, preternaturally nice cameraman Jason (Alain Chabat, who featured prominently in several Gondry films, among many others), also ends up being our defacto protagonist. After working his way up from receptionist to cameraman on Dennis’ show, Jason now wants to take the next step and secure funding for his own film, a strange little sci-fi movie about evil, sentient televisions called Waves. When Jason goes to pitch his idea to mega-producer Bob Marshall (Jonathan Lambert), however, the Hollywood exec is only interested in one, single aspect of the proposed production: if Jason can come with the best, most “Oscar-worthy” groan of all time, Marshall will fund his film, sight unseen.

From this point, it becomes a madcap dash as our three corners all attempt to achieve their goals: Reality needs to find out what’s on the videotape, Dennis needs to cure his skin condition and Jason needs to find the ultimate expression of pain and present it to his increasingly unhinged producer. Did I also mention Henri (Eric Wareheim), Reality’s school superintendent, whose cross-dressing dreams appear to be bleeding into reality? How about Jason’s wife, Alice (Élodie Bouchez), the shrink who’s treating Henri in between disparaging virtually every aspect of her husband’s life? Somehow, all of these disparate elements come together to form a real tsunami of the strange, culminating in a truly mind-melting meta-commentary on the nature of authorship, the terror of identity and the inherent insanity of the Hollywood movie machine. In other words: par for the course for Dupieux, the crown-prince of impish cinematic provocateurs.

As an unabashed fan of anything and everything Dupieux (last year’s Wrong Cops was my pick for best film of the year), approaching any new film of his is always a bracing mixture of anticipation and nervous optimism: I haven’t been let down, yet, but I’m the kind of gloomy gus who always expects disappointment around every potential corner. As luck would have it, however, Reality isn’t the film to break Dupieux’s hot-streak, although it definitely doesn’t rank as high as Wrong Cops or Wrong (2012) in my personal metrics. Despite being a much more baffling, confounding experience than any of his prior films, Reality handily displays an outsider filmmaker in full control of his faculties, bound and determined to submerge us in his particular flavor of “reality,” whether or not our poor minds are equipped to handle the experience.

One of the most notable differences, right off the bat, is the more austere, “realistic” vibe of Dupieux’s newest film. In fact, it isn’t until nearly 30 minutes in where it really “feels” like a Dupieux: the scene where Wareheim is introduced, driving a jeep down the street while wearing a gray dress and red scarf, all scored by that subtle “Oizoian” brand of simmering electronica, is quintessential Dupieux and one of his most striking scenes yet. While the film goes on to blend the more serious vibe with some of the goofier elements of his past films (Klaus is the kind of character that can pretty much only exist in a Dupieux universe), there’s a much different vibe here than either Wrong Cops or Wrong. If anything, Reality plays like a more under-stated, low-key take on the existential insanity of Wrong.

As befits Dupieux’s films, he gets some extraordinarily great work out of his cast. While Heder doesn’t get quite as much screentime as I would have liked, he gives the role his all: at times, his performance reminded me of Michael Keaton’s outstanding work in Birdman (2014), albeit without many of Keaton’s subtle shadings. Kenedy does a great job as Reality, disproving the old adage that child actors can’t hold their own amongst the grownups. Glover is predictably odd as Zog, while Lambert has an obscene amount of fun as the batshit crazy producer: whether he’s forcing cigarettes on poor, non-smoking Jason or sniping surfers with a high-powered rifle (complete with scope), Marshall is an absolute force of nature.

For his part, Wareheim turns in my second favorite performance of his ever, the first being his role in Wrong Cops. I never actually liked anything Wareheim was a part of until he got involved with Dupieux’s films: needless to say, I still don’t care for any of his other roles but I’ll be damned if he’s not an integral, necessary part of this particular world. Any and all of Wareheim’s scenes here are easy highlights (the dream sequence where he yells at an old man is, hands-down, one of the funniest sequences of the entire year) and he fits the overall ethos like a glove: as strange as it seems, Wareheim just might be Dupieux’s muse.

While the ensemble cast does remarkable work, however, Alain Chabat’s performance as Jason Tantra is the beating heart of the film. Reality would frequently collapse into chaos if we weren’t so invested in poor Jason’s quest: as he tries to satisfy not only his work and home commitments but his inner, artistic ones, it’s easy to see Jason as a kind of “Everyman” (albeit one focused on the entertainment industry), an avatar for a modern world lost in the clang and bustle of its own progress. The scenes where Jason fights to retain not only his sanity but his very identity are so fundamentally powerful because Chabat cuts through the inherent absurdity and shows us the real, scared and confused individual beneath.

As befits the rest of Dupieux’s oeuvre, Reality looks and sounds amazing: he really has an eye for crisp, colorful cinematography that pops on the screen and that trademark score elevates and enhances everything it comes into contact with. Dupieux may wear an awful lot of hats but he wears them all like a champ, not a chump: he’s a true auteur, in every sense of the term.

While Reality is a typically strong film, I would also be remiss if I didn’t admit that I found the whole thing rather baffling and confounding: this is the kind of film where logic and narrative cohesion mean a great deal less than mood and intention. Although none of Dupieux’s films could ever be called “simplistic,” Reality layers level upon level of meta-commentary until the only natural response for one’s brain is to yell “Stop!” and pull the dead man’s switch. While I’m fairly confident that I understand aspects of the film (the commentary on authorship is pretty difficult to miss and it’s rather easy to see the character of Jason as a surrogate for Dupieux’s own filmmaking experiences), there’s much that remains a complete mystery to me, at least until I’ve managed to watch the film several more times. Suffice to say that Reality is such an experience, I don’t mind doing the heavy-lifting: much better to imperfectly understand a clever film than to be endlessly bored by a dumb one, methinks.

At the end of the day, there’s really not much to say here that I haven’t already said about the rest of Quentin Dupieux’s films: the French filmmaker is a true marvel, one of the freshest, most ingenious voices operating today and just the kind of filmmaker who can help push the industry into a higher plane of existence. If Reality doesn’t rank as my favorite Dupieux (it actually ranks towards the bottom, perhaps tied with Rubber (2010)), it still manages to stand head-and-shoulders above most of what’s out there, proving that the most fascinating things are still coming out of the fringes. Here’s to hoping that if Dupieux ever gets co-opted by the mainstream, he manages to retain more of his identity than Spike Jonze did: I’d love the chance to see him play in a bigger sandbox but only if he got to do it on his terms and his alone.

6/3/15: Outside the Lines

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absurdist, animated films, animated shorts, animation, based on a short, Brian Hamblin, cinema, dark humor, depression, Don Hertzfeldt, dramas, dysfunctional family, false memories, fear of death, film festival favorite, film reviews, films, flashbacks, growing old, hand-drawn animation, insanity, It's Such a Beautiful Day, memory loss, mental disorders, mental illness, Movies, multiple award nominee, multiple award winner, Rejected, sad films, surrealism, the meaning of life, voice-over narration, writer-director-producer-cinematographer

In many ways, mental disorders like depression, schizophrenia, OCD and dementia can be more brutal and debilitating than any physical injury a person might get: after all, upon seeing a cast, one can handily deduce a broken bone…how possible is it for one to deduce a broken mind using the same process? Not only do many who suffer from mental illness suffer alone, many of the ill don’t even realize how “sick” they are until their conditions have spiraled wildly out of control: when you’re trapped within the fun-house of your own mind, after all, it’s difficult enough to make sense of the world on a moment-to-moment basis…trying to figure out your place in the larger, cosmic scheme can be nigh impossible, similar to building an entire jigsaw puzzle of identical, blue sky pieces.

Legendary counter-culture animator Don Hertzfeldt’s extraordinary, immensely painful It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012) examines the issue of mental illness from the inside, putting us into the shoes (and mind) of an ordinary, every-day sort of fellow named Bill. When we first meet Bill, his off-the-wall observations about the banality of life have the rhythm and flow of a genuinely hilarious stand-up comic, the incisiveness of his commentary belied by the off-handed simplicity of Hertzfeldt’s hand-drawn stick figure animation. As the film goes on, however, Bill’s observations gradually become stranger and more surreal, a tonal shift further accentuated by the increasingly bizarre and absurd visual images.

As Bill begins to describe his very colorful family, we gradually get more of the corner pieces in this particular puzzle: the history of mental illness in his family is very explicit…as one character says, “Genetics is pretty messed up.” When put into context of the growing gulf in Bill’s mental faculties, much of what we’ve already seen comes into sharper focus. Just when we’ve gotten used to this sudden shift, this virtual pulling of the rug from beneath our feet, Hertzfeldt makes another hairpin turn and we’re suddenly knee-deep in some of the most beautiful, challenging discussions about the meaning of life and the nature of happiness to factor into any film, much less one animated with simple stick figures. By the time the film ends, not only do we emerge with a greater understanding of the enigma known as Bill but we walk out with a greater understanding of the human animal, as well. Bill is us and, under the right (or wrong) circumstances, any one of us can, and will be, Bill.

At times, you’re confronted with films that pack such a hefty emotional punch that watching them often feels like going ten rounds with an iron-fisted juggernaut: Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day is one of those films. Stitched together from three previous shorts, with additional material to help it all cohere, the film is nothing short of stunning: even at just over an hour, in length, there’s nothing about the film that feels small or inconsequential. Indeed, the film becomes so raw and painful, after a point, that the animated style almost feels like a necessity: any more sense of realism, here, and the whole thing would be almost to intense to bear. It’s to Hertzfeldt’s immense credit, then, that It’s Such a Beautiful Day so expertly balances its hilarious moments with its heartrending ones: too much on either side and the film might risk becoming sappy or melodramatic.

One of the more ingenious things that Hertzfeldt does here is to co-mingle his animation with brief flashes of the “real world,” a technique that begins gradually but builds to a truly dizzying climax that completely obliterates our preconceived notions of what, exactly, constitutes an animated film. While this isn’t the first film to freely blend live-action and animation (in a way, its closest relative might be the use of live-action in The Lego Movie (2014), although Hertzfeldt’s shorts easily predate that film by several years), the use of the technique is much more subtle and powerful here. In many ways, Hertzfeldt may have come up with the perfect visual depiction of a fractured mental state, one in which live-action, animation, repetitive voice-overs, unreliable narrators, splashes of color and sudden noises combine to keep us constantly on edge and at arm’s length from our troubled protagonist.

In almost every way, It’s Such a Beautiful Day is a complete tour de force for Hertzfeldt: written, directed, narrated, produced and shot by the animator, his pitch-black sense of humor and inability to sugarcoat difficult subjects covers every frame of the film like an especially rich veneer. Were it not for the involvement of Brian Hamblin (known not only for his editing of the Hertzfeldt shorts that comprise It’s Such a Beautiful Day but for effects editing on huge productions like Spider Man 3 (2007), I Am Legend (2007) and Watchmen (2009), as well), It’s Such a Beautiful Day would be a virtual one-man show. As it is, there’s a singularity of vision, here, that marks the film as a complete, unified whole, the equivalent of carving a detailed wooden totem from a single block of oak.

As someone who’s not only known plenty of folks with mental disorders but lived several decades with his own, it should come as no surprise that It’s Such a Beautiful Day hit me pretty hard: I’ll wager that would be the identical outcome for anyone in a similar situation. While Hertzfeldt’s film is not overwhelmingly dour or emotionally manipulative, there’s a brutal honesty and inherent melancholy to both the subject and film that’s difficult to shake. By turns hilarious (the segment involving a tenacious guy with a leaf-blower could have been lifted wholesale from my own experiences), terrifying (the segment involving Bill’s highly disturbed grandmother and her “cat therapy” is truly the stuff of nightmares) and almost overwhelmingly sad (the segment where Bill begins to lose memories of his loved ones is incredibly difficult to watch), It’s Such a Beautiful Day really puts you through the wringer, albeit in the best way possible.

Ultimately, despite its grim subject matter and overriding feeling of helplessness, Hertzfeldt’s multiple-award-nominated film is not the alpha and the omega of sad cinema: in truth, there’s an underlying air of optimism and hope in the film’s message, much of which comes during the penultimate scenes where Bill is “transitioning” from this reality to the next. At this point, Bill comes to the life-affirming notion that the world is constantly filled with wonder and beauty, most of which we glance over en route to whatever our ultimate “goal” is. We can try to soak it all in at the end, ingesting as much beauty and life as we can in huge, shuddering breaths, like one drowning and trying, desperately, to fill sodden lungs with necessary air. That’s one way to live life, no two ways about it, and many people do just that.

On the other hand, as Hertzfeldt so cannily notes, there’s a lot to be said for trying to get the most out of the ride, soaking up and absorbing as much beauty, tragedy, wonder and horror as you can, well before you start that final, terrifying plunge into the unknown. For the millions of people, worldwide, who deal with mental illness on a daily basis, it can be all but impossible to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hertzfeldt, through his unforgettable art, reminds us, one and all, that there’s always hope.

As Bill calmly echoes, at the very end: “It’s such a beautiful day.” It is. Or, at least, it can be, provided you’re able to open your heart and your eyes to the possibilities. Life will never be easy, or fair, or logical: it can be beautiful, however, and that’s probably all that any of us can reasonably expect.

12/27/14 (Part Four): Chaos, Dread and the Human Animal

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based on a book, Best of 2014, cinema, Danny Bensi, Denis Villeneuve, doppelgängers, doubles, Enemy, favorite films, film reviews, films, insanity, Isabella Rossellini, Jake Gyllenhaal, Javier Gullon, Jose Saramago, Kedar Brown, literary adaptation, Melanie Laurent, Movies, Nicolas Bolduc, Prisoners, Sarah Gadon, Saunder Jurriaans, secret societies, set in Canada, Spanish-Canadian films, spiders, surrealism, Tim Post, twins

For better or worse, I’ll probably remember 2014 as the cinematic year of the doppelgänger: while its true that film fads tend to come in groups (hello, superhero films…), there seemed to be something almost systematic and planned about the sheer number of double/doppelgänger movies that were released last year. Right off the top of my head, there was The Double, The One I Love, Coherence, +1, The Face of Love and Enemy…to be honest, I’m sure that I’ve even missed a couple somewhere along the way, which is always the best indication of a too-crowded field.

While I managed to see all of these doppelgänger films (with the exception of The Face of Love), there was one that stood head and shoulders above the rest: Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy, based on Jose Saramago’s novel, The Double. Not only was Enemy the best doppelgänger/double movie that I saw in a crowded field, it was also one of the very best films I saw all year. Paranoid, grim, heavy with sustained tension and more than a little existentially terrifying, Enemy is a modern classic, a cracked, black mirror that reflects back the unbelievable ugliness of our post-industrial era and asks us all to take a good, long look at our reflections.

In a way, Enemy hits all of the familiar beats in any doppelgänger film: it’s what it does with them that makes the film such a spectacularly creepy, unforgettable march towards insanity. Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a college history professor with what seems like a pretty mundane, run-of-the-mill life: he rides the bus to work, teaches a room full of bored young people about things like patterns and repetition and then goes home to have sex with his equally bored girlfriend (Melanie Laurent). Adam’s comfortable routine is shattered, however, after a co-worker makes a seemingly innocent movie recommendation. After watching the film, Adam notices something a little shocking: the waiter in one of the background shots is a spitting image of himself. After doing some lo-fi detective work (thanks, Google), Adam discovers that the actor, Daniel Saint Claire, is actually named Anthony Claire.

In short order, Adam is obsessed with his suave double and begins to follow him around, before progressing to calling his home and speaking with his wife, Helen (Sarah Gadon). In no time, Anthony is aware of Adam’s existence and the two schedule a face-to-face meeting in a no-tell-motel. Once the two men finally meet, however, the mystery only deepens: it turns out that Anthony is not only the exact image of Adam but that he also has all of Adam’s scars and birthmarks. Freaked out, Adam decides that he wants nothing to do with this bizarre situation and attempts to remove himself. As it turns out, however, Anthony is now just as intrigued as Adam and has no intention of letting him get away. As Adam finds his life becoming more intertwined with Anthony’s, he also runs the risk of losing his identity completely. What’s the real truth behind their relationship? What’s the deal with the strange, underground club that Anthony frequents? And just what, exactly, is right over the horizon, intent on wiping away the dividing line between fantasy and reality, between waking world and nightmare?

The very first thing you notice about Villeneuve’s film is the sickly yellow, jaundiced pallor that suffuses every frame of the film, from the very first shot to the very final image. It’s a diseased, queasy effect that perfectly meshes with the film’s unbelievably deep, sustained sense of dread to create something that could best be described as the apex of “feel-bad” cinema. When combined with the film’s choppy editing style and evocative score, the effect is all but suffocating: many films attempt to grab an audience and refuse to let go but Enemy is one of the very few that succeeds to such a fabulous degree. It’s absolutely no lie to say that I found myself nervous, tense, jittery and, to be honest, kind of seasick for the entirety of the film’s 90 minute run-time. There are many, many reasons to absolutely love Enemy but one of the very best reasons to admire the film is for that unbeatable sense of dread that Villeneuve threads through everything: you keep waiting for something terrible to happen…and waiting…and waiting…when terrible things finally do begin to happen, it’s not so much a release of the built-up tension as it is a confirmation of your worst fears. I can think of very few films from last year that even approached this level of tension, much less executed it so flawlessly: in this aspect, Enemy is heads-and-shoulders above most of its peers.

While the film looks and sounds amazing, there’s always an important factor to consider with any doppelgänger movie: the “twin” performances. In this case, Villeneuve coaxes some astounding work from Gyllenhaal, who’s quickly becoming one of this generation’s most intriguing, impressive actors. Unlike my complaints with Jesse Eisenberg’s performance in Richard Ayoade’s The Double (2014), Gyllenhaal is able to bring enough separation between Adam and Anthony to establish them as distinctly different personalities. It’s all in the small details: a smirk here, a squint there, the particular way in which one of the “twins” stands as compared to the other…there’s nothing as obvious as what Eisenberg did and Gyllenhaal’s performance is all the more impressive for it. In fact, I’m rather surprised that he appears to have snubbed during the awards talk rounding up the year: I found his performance to be exquisite, certainly better than his work the year before in Villeneuve’s Prisoners (2013) and, perhaps, the equal of his performance in Nightcrawler (2014), which I’ve yet to see.

If I can have one real complaint regarding the film’s performances, it would be that Melanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon get much less to do than Gyllenhaal does. While Gadon gets some nice scenes in the film’s final reel, Laurent never gets much to do beyond looking bored and reacting to what happens around her. It could be that Villeneuve and writer Javier Gullon purposefully kept the character of Mary slight, as a form of comparison with Adam, but it still seems like somewhat of a missed opportunity. While there’s virtually no reason to compare Enemy with Prisoners, aside from the obvious Villeneuve/Gyllenhaal connection, I can’t help but think back to Melissa Leo’s excellent performance in the latter and feel like Enemy really could have used a strong female presence to provide some balance.

One of the most impressive, unforgettable aspects of Enemy has to be the way in which Villeneuve combines the mundane, everyday aspects of the film with some truly surreal, nightmarish visual flourishes. While the oppressive yellow color palette is the most obvious, continual example of this, there are plenty of creepy, weird things happening in the margins and backgrounds of the film, along with some pretty outrageous showstoppers: I wouldn’t dream of spoiling any of the film’s surprises but suffice to say that Enemy featured two of my very favorite horror scenes of the year, which is doubly impressive considering that the film probably wouldn’t be considered a true horror film in most quarters.

Here’s the thing, though: Villeneuve and company understand that true horror, the soul-shattering, world-destroying kind, isn’t precipitated on fountains of gore and slick CGI monsters. True horror is based around dread and fear, the sustained, horrifying revelation that everything we think we know and hold dear is actually an illusion or, worse yet, a lie. In this aspect, Enemy is practically Lovecraftian: the film peels back the corner of our comfortable reality, revealing the howling, mad chaos that lurks behind everything. There’s a truly existential sense of horror here, the idea that everything we are can be wiped away in the blink of an eye, by forces too powerful and terrible for us to even begin to understand. Enemy ends before we get to see the “real” picture but we get enough of the image to know that what lies beneath the thin veil of reality is enough to end us all a hundred times over.

I’ll be honest: based on last year’s Prisoners, I wasn’t particularly impressed with Villeneuve. While the film was well-made and featured some truly great performances, it never really seemed to take off like it should have: by all accounts, I found Big Bad Wolves (2013) to be better than Prisoners in just about every way, including its darkly comic tone. This time around, however, I was completely blown away. Enemy is such a well-made, exquisitely crafted film that I’m now obligated to hitch my cart to Villeneuve’s wagon. There’s an intelligence, mystery and genuine sense of horror found here that I find all too rarely in films, regardless of their era or genre…to say that I’m eagerly awaiting Villeneuve’s next film might be a bit of an understatement. There are no easy answers to be found in Enemy: if anything, the film’s logic seems to intentionally frustrate any easy notions of understanding or empathy on the part of the audience. Enemy is a truly strange, alien, unsettling film and, without a doubt, one of the very best of the year.

12/14/14 (Part Three): I and I Can’t Survive

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1984, based on a book, British films, bureaucracy, Cathy Moriarty, cinema, confusing, dark comedies, dark films, doppelgängers, doubles, dramas, film reviews, films, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoevsky, insanity, J. Mascis, James Fox, James Simon, Jesse Eisenberg, literary adaptation, loss of identity, Mia Wasikowska, Movies, Noah Taylor, office romances, Richard Ayoade, Simon James, Submarine, suicide, surrealism, The Double, UK films, Wallace Shawn, writer-director, Yasmin Paige

For better or worse, we appear to have experienced a bit of a renaissance in doppelgänger/double films over the past decade: The Prestige (2006), Timecrimes (2007), Moon (2009), Black Swan (2010), Another Earth (2011), The Face of Love (2013), +1 (2013), Enemy (2013), and The One I Love (2014) have all dealt with the rather nightmarish experience of coming face to face with yourself and the resultant difficulties that inevitably result from such meetings. While the above films are all (for the most part) as different from each other as possible, they all share the paranoid idea that, somewhere out there, there’s an exact duplicate of you just waiting to step into your shoes and take over your life. To this group, be sure to add writer-director-actor Richard Ayoade’s newest film, The Double (2014), a blackly comic adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s same-named novel that came out a mere two months after another similarly plotted film, Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy (2014)…talk about doubling your pleasure, eh?

What’s fueling this sudden interest in doubles? While plenty of folks have their own ideas, I think it has a lot to do with our society’s uncontrollable need to be “the best possible _____” we can be. In an age where fame is only a YouTube video away and social media contacts are worth more than any over-stuffed Rolodex, many folks must be coming to the conclusion that their “allotted” measure of fame has somehow been held-up, way-laid by some unknown force. If everybody is getting famous and you aren’t, there has to be a good reason: perhaps, just perhaps, you’re not getting what’s coming to you because another version of you is. Maybe you aren’t the next singing sensation because your doppelgänger already got a contract. Perhaps there’s another version of you that’s more successful with the opposite sex, wealthier, more powerful, etc…The whole concept of doppelgängers provides a handy “out” for those folks who just can’t seem to secure a foothold on the ladder of success: it’s not my fault…the “other” me got there first!

Jesse Eisenberg stars as Simon James, the neebishy, milquetoast and nearly non-existent office worker who toils his days away in an oddly anonymous company run by the eccentric fellow know only as The Colonel (James Fox). Living a life of quiet, tedious desperation, Simon has worked at the company for seven years, yet still has trouble being recognized by the overly officious front-desk guard (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) or even his own supervisor, Mr. Papadopoulos (Wallace Shawn). Simon also pines, in silence, for his lovely, yet equally odd, co-worker, Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), although she doesn’t seem to exist, either. This doesn’t stop Simon from peering at her apartment through his telescope, however, but it does (probably) preclude him from ever asking her out. Not to put to fine a point on it but Simon’s life is pretty damn shitty.

Things take a turn for the bizarre one night, however, when Simon chances to see someone jumping from an apartment across the way: the figure seems to smile and wave at Simon before leaping, which the poor guy finds suitably distressing. Imagine his further distress, then, when he seems to spy an exact double of himself through another apartment window. Faster than you can say “double your pleasure,” Simon’s company has just hired a dynamic new employee, someone who looks awful familiar: James Simon. As is par for the course with most doppelgänger films, James is pretty much the exact opposite of Simon: he’s outgoing, boisterous, popular, suave, aggressive and sly, all things that poor Simon has no experience with whatsoever. At first, James offers to help Simon woo Hannah, in exchange for posing as him and taking some aptitude tests. In short order, however, James has insinuated himself into every aspect of Simon’s life, stealing the credit for his work, blaming his foibles (such as seducing Mr. Popadopoulos’ daughter) on Simon and getting extremely friendly with Hannah.

As James appears to take over more and more of Simon’s life, the other man finds himself losing what little identity he appeared to have. A co-worker calls Simon a “non-entity” and the loss of his pass-card puts him in a completely untenable situation: he doesn’t exist, since he’s not in the system, but can’t get into the system unless he has a card, which he can’t get unless he’s in the system…a classic Catch-22 if ever there was one. Just when Simon’s situation seems as hopeless as it could possibly get, he hatches a desperate plan to get James out of his life forever. Will Simon be able to reclaim his identity? Is James as real as Simon? Can two objects occupy the same space, at the same time? If not, who will be left standing when the dust clears: meek Simon or assertive James? But most importantly: just what the hell is actually going on here in the first place?

Ayoade’s adaptation of The Double has quite a bit going for, not least of which is the film’s intriguing look, a visual style which splits the difference between the lo-tech dystopia of films like 1984 (1984), Brazil (1985) and Barton Fink (1991) and something like the noirish Gothica of Proyas’ Dark City (1998). None of the machines in the film, office or otherwise, look quite “right” and it’s impossible to assign any sort of time-period to the film: it might take place in 1950, 2050 or 12050, for all we know. Despite looking great, David Crank’s production design does have one unforeseen side-effect: rather than feeling like Dostoevsky, The Double often feels more in line with one of Kafka’s paranoid nightmares. While other critics have pointed this out as one of the film’s most damning flaws, I must politely disagree: as far as your humble host is concerned, the film’s production aspects are the most impressive thing about it…dig below the surface, however, and things get a bit dicier.

For one thing, the acting in the film tends to be rather hit-or-miss. Eisenberg is quite believable as the neebishy Simon but somewhat less so as the charismatic James. While playing opposite yourself is never the easiest acting gig, I’m instantly reminded of Mark Duplass’ much more interesting, dichotomous performance in the far-superior The One I Love: in that film, Duplass was able to portray both halves of himself as completely different, if inherently connected, individuals…they walked differently, talked differently…even smiled differently. Here, the differences between Simon and James are not only less consistent (James is never quite as assholey as he should be) but far less interesting. While I’ve never been the world’s biggest Eisenberg fan, I fully realize that he’s capable of much more than he does here.

The actor who really gets the short-end of the stick, however, is Wasikowska. So fascinating and vibrant in films like Albert Nobbs (2011), Stoker (2013) and Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Wasikowska is completely wasted here: made into more of a non-entity than even Simon, Hannah flits like a ghost from scene to scene, affecting nothing and matters not one iota, in the grand scheme of things. Her only expression seems to be a mild hint of confusion (or is it just gas?) and we get so little character development as to make her seem more symbolic than anything else. While several aspects of the film disappointed me, few were as vexing as the complete marginalization of Wasikowska.

The single biggest issue with the film, however, is just how hollow and meaningless the whole thing, ultimately, ends up feeling. While never intended as a particularly “warm” bit of entertainment, I was still expecting to feel something by the end of the final reel. As it stands, however, the only emotions I really walked out with were my previously mentioned disappointment, along with an overriding sense of frustration over the needlessly complex conclusion. Truth be told, the ending of the film makes absolutely no sense, even from a purely symbolic standpoint: perhaps I would need to go back and reread the original novel but The Double’s head-scratching finale felt more like philosophy freshmen riffing than any sort of “real” conclusion.

For all of this, however, I still find myself in the odd position of not really disliking the film…at least, not much. Despite the film’s many flaws, Richard Ayoade is an extremely talented filmmaker – his debut, Submarine (2010), is a rather excellent coming-of-age flick and the craftwork behind The Double is quite nice. I’ve always been a sucker for this kind of dystopic worldview and dystopia is one thing that The Double has in bushels. There are plenty of creepy moments to be found here (Simon’s first glimpse of “himself” is a real goosebump-raiser), along with some thought-provoking ideas about what it means to “be yourself,” as well as the frightening notion that, somewhere out there, there’s a more accomplished version of yourself then you’ll ever be. For a society obsessed with being the very best, this may be the hardest pill of all to swallow: no matter how much you want it, some thing’s are just out of your control.

6/19/14: Uncle Walt Wouldn’t Care

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Allison Lees-Taylor, amusement parks, Annet Mahendru, bad fathers, black-and-white cinematography, cat flu, cinema, Danielle Safady, directorial debut, Disney, Disney World, Disneyland, Elena Schuber, Epcot Center, Escape From Tomorrow, fantasy, fantasy vs reality, father-son relationships, feature-film debut, film festival favorite, film reviews, films, guerrilla filmmaking, independent film, independent films, indie dramas, infidelity, Jack Dalton, Katelynn Rodriguez, Lee Armstrong, lost at Disney World, low-budget films, missed opportunities, Movies, pop culture, princesses, Randy Moore, Roy Abramsohn, sci-fi, science-fiction, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, subversive films, surreal, surrealism, the Happiest Place on Earth, the Wicked Witch, unauthorized film, underbelly of America, Walt Disney

There’s certain things that you’ll only ever get one chance to do. You only get one chance to make a first impression, after all, and you only get one chance to see your first sunrise. You only get one chance to sneak up on someone (unless they’re critically careless, of course) and you only have one chance to perform certain orbital procedures, if you’re an astronaut. You only get one shot at a once-in-a-lifetime moment (if there’s truth in advertising) and certain celestial events will only come by once in any given person’s lifetime: be there or be square, as it were. To this list of one-time events, you could certainly add “covertly shoot a subversive sci-fi/surrealist film at Disney World,” since, for all intents and purposes, filmmakers will only ever get one chance at this particular feat. The filmmaker who beat everyone else to the punch? First-time writer-director Randy Moore, whose guerrilla film, Escape From Tomorrow (2013), will probably stand the test of time as the first and last film to be shot in the Magic Kingdom without the express permission of the Disney Corporation. Does Escape From Tomorrow have any real value, aside from the curiosity factor of its genesis, or did Moore’s shot across the bow spoil the party for other, more subversive filmmakers who might want to take a shot at the house that Mouse built? Tack on your wings, grab some fairy dust and let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Jim (Roy Abramsohn) has just taken his family, including wife, Emily (Elena Schuber), daughter, Sara (Katelynn Rodriguez) and son, Elliot (Jack Dalton) to Disney World for a much-needed vacation when he gets a call from his work: due to some sort of vague restructuring, Jim has just been laid-off. Fantastic. Rather than spill the beans to his loving family, Jim decides to keep the bad news to himself and give everyone the chance to enjoy one last family vacation before things, presumably, go to complete shit. The problem is that Jim seems to be going a little cuckoo: for one thing, he’s become obsessed with a pair of underage French teens (Danielle Safady and Annet Mahendru) and has taken to stalking them throughout the amusement park, his young son in tow. Jim has also begun to see very strange things, including some clichéd “scary faces” on the It’s a Small World ride and assorted “odd” images elsewhere. Is the stress making Jim crack or is he, somehow, seeing through the smooth, happy, plastic veneer of the “Disney dream” and into the cold, dead eyes  that lurk beneath it? Why does he keep running into the same strange people, including an obnoxiously leering man in a motorized scooter (Lee Armstrong) and a strangely beguiling, if rather witch-like woman (Allison Lees-Taylor)? And what, exactly, lies below Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center? Before it’s over, Jim will find himself in a waking nightmare of malevolent fairies, demonic little children, strange scientific procedures, absurd medical maladies and enough surrealism to choke Dali. Welcome to the happiest place on Earth: stay as long as you like, just don’t go poking around in the darkness too much…you might not like what you dredge up.

Right off the bat, let me get the kudos out of the way: against absolutely all odds, Randy Moore was able to covertly shoot a film at one of the most “shenanigan unfriendly” places on Earth, get it edited in secrecy (supposedly in South Korea) and get it released into theaters, all without bringing Disney’s eternally sharp ax down upon his noggin. For these facts alone, I can only say: Bravo to you, good sir, bravo. Escape From Tomorrow is a film that should not exist, by any stretch of the imagination, yet it does: this, in itself, is more accomplishment than many films ever see. Moore and his cast and crew were able to shoot the film on the run (certain shots were planned out months in advance and actors rode the rides over and over in order to perfect the takes) and the finished product doesn’t necessarily feel like an ultra-low digital video feature (not all the time, at least). The black and white cinematography looks quite good, most of the time, and Moore is able to use some surprisingly evocative lighting, which must have been no mean feat under the shooting conditions. This is a film that could easily have ended up looking like someone’s covert concert footage (“Quick, security’s coming: stuff the camera under your coat!”) but it rarely, if ever, does: that’s a pretty big achievement all by itself. If Escape From Tomorrow were a children’s’ book, it might be “The Little Engine That Could.”

On the other hand, despite its back-story, genesis and intent, Escape From Tomorrow just isn’t a particularly good film. Moore had a great idea (shoot a film at Disney World, guerrilla-style, that exposes the seamy underbelly of the American dream) but his execution ends up being muddled, clichéd and, worst of all, decidedly uninteresting. For one thing, the film isn’t nearly as surreal and odd as it thinks it is: much of the “creepy” imagery takes the place of decidedly old-hat things like “scary faces” on animatronic dolls (yawn), suddenly jet-black eyes on people (double-yawn) and surprise “demonic faces,” ala the Paranormal Activity films (again?!). There are a few genuinely surreal moments/images once Jim descends below Epcot Center but these end up being a bit “too little, too late,” by that point. Some of the Disney imagery is used to good, surreal effect (the witch is a nice touch, as are the hazy, druggy scenes that surround her) but a lot of it is pretty trite and wasted: the whole “cat flu” angle is aggressively stupid and seems tacked on, to boot, while the closing fairy image has surprisingly little impact.

By its very definition, Escape From Tomorrow was always going to have some inherent filmmaking issues: if there’s one thing that guerrilla filmmaking doesn’t really lend itself to, it would definitely be polish and fine-tuning. To that end, the acting in the film is pretty awful, across the board, with Jim and his family being some of the worst offenders. Roy Abramsohn is a thoroughly unlikable presence as Jim, which has equal parts to do with his off-putting acting style (“big and dumb” come to mind) and the rather icky character, itself. There’s no point in the film where Jim following the teenage French girls ever comes across as anything more than creepy and pervy: if there was some kind of deeper meaning Moore was going for, it was completely lost on me. For the most part, Jim just seems like a scuzzy jerk and his various fantasies involving the young girls are both pathetic and severely creepy: if I was his wife, my first call would be to the police and my second one would be to a good lawyer. Moral questions aside, however, is the basic notion that Jim is a truly odious character: whiny, self-absorbed, neglectful of his wife and kids, prone to extramarital affairs at the drop of a hat, callous…none of these qualities seem designed to endear him to the audience, which seems to be the point…but to what end? Like everything else in the film, Jim’s constant assholery seems to exist “just because.”

Despite the film’s voluminous shortcomings (it’s basically just a great concept and a few nicely atmospheric shots, the very definition of “style over substance”), there are inklings of the film this could have been. For one thing, nothing at all is made about the inherent link between crushing consumerism and the “Disney dream,” nor is there any insightful commentary regarding the homogenized “Disnified” vision of the world that the amusement park conglomerate foists upon the globe. If Moore avoids any “big” issues, he also manages to completely miss the small ones, as well: there would have been a truly interesting, nightmarish story here if we could only have focused on Jim’s mental breakdown, exploring his fractured psyche as he begins to fall to pieces midst the hustle, bustle and happy families of the Magic Kingdom. There are some genuinely disturbing avenues to explore with Jim and the French teens, as well, but Moore is all too content to just give us some surface ookiness before retreating to the “safer” ground of stereotypical “demonic” activity. The part where Jim and his young son exchange a lascivious leer while ogling the young girls is at least 1000 times more disturbing than the one where the girls get “creepy faces”: any examination of this angle, however, runs the risk of becoming truly subversive and Moore never gets anywhere close to that particular demarcation.

Ultimately, Escape From Tomorrow will stand as a curiosity and missed opportunity, more than anything else. Owing to its truly unique genesis, Moore’s film stood a very good chance of becoming one of those pop culture milestones, like Jodorowky’s Holy Mountain (1973) or Banker’s Toad Road (2012). Instead, the film ended up being fitfully engaging, occasionally interesting and fairly atmospheric, none of which are praise enough to keep it in the cultural zeitgeist for very long. To be honest, I’m not surprised that the Disney corporation chose to respond to Moore’s film by summarily ignoring it, rather than attempting to suppress it through legal avenues. With the proper focus and a truly subversive goal, Moore’s film could have been the kind of thing that would give Disney executives nightmares for a lifetime, let alone the residual effect on a generation of filmmakers raised on the notion that “Walt Disney” is synonymous with “purity.” What Moore actually turned in, however, was a rather tired sci-fi/fantasy that happened to utilize Disney as a location but failed to dig any deeper into the actual mythology.

There’s a truly terrifying, subversive and harrowing film that could have been shot at Disney World, a film that would be impossible to forget or deny, something that would play on the public’s positive association with Disney while reminding them that large corporations tend to grind up humanity for fuel. Escape From Tomorrow isn’t that film, however, which is a pity: thanks to Moore’s film, we’ve probably lost any chance to really peel back the skin and see what makes the mouse tick.