Last Man Talking
Watched Basic in two parts. Basic is a movie with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson that tries to create a sense of confusion as an investigator struggles with facts. The movie is, well, okay. When I watched the first hour, I was very taken with it, and wanted to finish. When I finally caught the whole thing, however, it was obvious I had overestimated how good it would be.
That’s not the point. The point is that the movie is an example of storytelling to trick the audience. There has always been a difference between the story itself, and the way it is told. It might be told sympathetically to the narrator, up close so that the audience feels they are part of it, or dryly in a way that removes much of the emotional content while giving a grander or more finely detailed picture. Some movies alternate, such as Schindler’s List. In that, we got both the scope of the holocaust and the individual tragedy.
One way of telling a story is to withhold key parts from the audience, so that they experience a revelatory moment. “I like to be surprised.” This goes back to Oedipus “Luke, I am your father” at least. In our times, it has developed in the fertile field of mystery novels and films. The “whodunit” approach. This, naturally, like a synthetic genetic mutation in corn crops, leaked over into wild plants. So we get action movies with a “whodunit” sub-plot.
Basic isn’t a great example of this, but it’s an example of what happens when a filmmaker tries to add more and more if this element to a film that is already full. Like adding more and more salt, because audiences like salt, eventually you gross out everyone except the fast-food junkies.
One you are done watching Basic, and think to yourself, what was the story, anyway? You realize there isn’t one. Many potential versions are thrown at you, one seems relatively final, then a final one is added that resolves the basic flaw in the movie. The flaw being that John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson have to end up with some kind of buddy-relationship, for the movie to work. But the final story is far less plausible than any of the intermediate versions thrown at the audience.
So, when watching this movie, you have to think to yourself, what level is real here? The only real that makes sense of this story is the Real needs of the Major Stars to come out On Top and Together.
Is Garden State a Chick Flick?
Arguably, the character is a guy, working out issues with his mother, while in a developing romance with a somewhat crazy woman. According to the generally accepted Chick Flick Indicia Scale, those factors put this at about a seven. Still, I saw it by accident. We’d been planning to see Collateral. But somebody got the time screwed up and the only well-reviewed movie starting within an hour of our arrival was Garden State.
I had no idea what the movie was about, I just know that somehow Natalie Portman ends up screaming while wearing a football jersey and the rain pours down around her. Now Natalie Portman is heavily tainted by the whole Star Wars thing, but she can really act.
Anyway, I was with the main character as he slowly emerged from an almost comatose level of slacker-dom in spite of the fact that his mother had just died. We slowly understand more about his life as he re-connects with old friends in the small town he had long left behind.
There was a genuine nature to the goings on, and when Natalie Portman shows up, even though romance is clearly in the air, she’s enough of a quirky character to keep the movie on the fun/interesting level. It is never about the romance angle. So I’m saying it’s not a chick flick.
But, in conversation today, a woman asks a guy: “have you seen Garden State?”
Stupidly, I interject that I have, in fact, seen it.
The guy says: “I’m not dating anybody, why would I go see that?”
Another guy, off to the side, says: “Total Chickus Flickus.”
Me, I withdraw my claim to having seen it.
Next time I’ll say I meant “Garden State Massacre.”
Ruling: not a chick flick on the merits, but is totally a chick flick on reputation. Which counts.
Real Gilligan's Island?
Noted on a bus: The Real Gilligan's Island.
Now, Gilligan's Island was probably the perfect sit-com. Not the best, by any means. The Honeymooners, Seinfeld, the Simpsons, all far better in terms of writing, acting, production. But Gilligan's Island assembled the best group of archetypes to match the time. It provided a premise that ensured that, no matter what happened, the central group of characters would all stay together. And, most importantly, the inherent structure of every episode is hope followed by failure.
But that's mostly a sidenote. I'm a little worried about the evolving use of the term "Real". Once we described the "Real" version of a story as, perhaps, more historically accurate. Or, perhaps, as pertaining to the source material of the story. The "real" Cheers bar, the "real" soup nazi, etc. Sometimes local news people will introduce some off-beat character as the "real" version of a literary device just to get a headline. But at least the quirky character is genuine.
Gilligan's Island certainly had no source material, no historical accuracy to be concerned with. It was probably not based on real people. The characters were exaggarations, archetypes or caricatures.
Are there some genuine off-beat quirky types out there living a Gilligan's Island existence? (Maybe Bob Denver, who knows?) But that's not what the show is about.
The new, Real, Gilligan's Island is using the term to refer to a genre. "Reality Television". Nothing real about that, of course. Reality Television is a fraud. Everyone knows it's a fraud and many still insist on enjoying it. Like professional wrestling. That's fine, people should be able to enjoy well-perpetrated frauds as long as they know or should know better.
But calling this the "Real" Gilligan's Island expands the genre into quasi-history and docu-drama, at least in terms of the language used. Now we are mixing our forms of fraudulant entertainment, reducing the ground from which "real" can be extracted. Oh well.
How are the archetypes going to be updated? Gilligan is eternal, but the Ginger/Mary Ann split is dated. Young religious women who consider themselves prudes already dress in terms that Ginger would probably find too shocking. Meanwhile, the simple, nice, home-baked girl is cynical and worldly and tattooed. The professor has gotten himself rich enough to hire strippers, and Mr. Howell has his own reality show where girls compete to be his "assistant." The Skipper is an overweight type whom has largely been banished from television.
I hate to admit it, but I'm curious.
The Village of Idiots
M. Night Shyamalan doesn't so much make movies as he creates a sense of gaming with the audience. This could be a good thing, and was best done in The Sixth Sense. But movies are essentially stories, and stories are about the characters in the movie. That's why I hate it when someone is creeping around and then gets surprised by the bad guy whose sole method of hiding is to be Offscreen. You can't hide offscreen! There is no Offscreen! Not to the characters, only to the audience.
So if a secret matters to the character, its revelation is profound as part of the story. If it is primarily a secret that is being kept from the audience, that's more smoke and mirrors. In The Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis discovered something essential about himself at about the same time that the audience figured it out. This epiphonous moment was so perfect that it ruined the filmmaker.
Since then, Shyamalan is so obsessed with reproducing the surprise effect in the audience that he has failed to connect it to the stories. In The Village, there are several intense story/transformations going on. The elders are questioning their roles, the crazy guy is transforming into a killer, and the blind girl is learning The Truth. Unfortunately the pace of all this is one of slowly teasing the audience about The Truth, and ignoring the revelations/transformations of the characters. In the end, The Truth doesn't even really change the supposed main character. The trick of revelation has buried several good stories in this movie. This issue also goes to the question, what is the 'truth level' in the movie? I.e., from what perspective is it 'really happening?" more on that later.
Being confined is good for you
Today I had to send Henry V, starring Kenneth Branaugh, back to Netflix. It sat in my DVD player for weeks. I've made it through about one hour. I'm told it's a good movie, well worth my time. But the TV is in my room. My room is, currently, a mess. Also, there is a computer and a PS2 in my room. The only place that is far enough from the computer and the PS2 controller for me to watch a movie like Henry V is in bed. But then sleep becomes an option.
A good movie doesn't have to catch you and hold you from the beginning. IT doesn't have to thrill you every moment. In fact, a movie may build up tension, may spend time creating background, develop character, whatever. To do that, the filmmaker is relying on someting holding the audience in place. Discipline could work, but that's hard to find among the MTV generation. Traditional movie theaters work. You've bought your ticket, found your seat, and it's dark. Moving around brings social approbation. This is one reason films will always have far greater quality than television shows. Television audiences are fully equipped with remotes, so you have to entertain them through each moment instead of building a quality product.
The danger is that, as DVD sales become more and more important, filmmakers will lose that guarantee of a bound-up audience.
Brain on Fire
Fahrenheit 9/11 brought forth good and bad. Good is that documentaries really can make lots of money. Good is that it's now possible to laugh, or at least chuckle, at the psycho-neo-cons who are inexplicably running the country. Bad is that now nobody knows what a documentary is. Bad is that liberals are often in a corner defending the spotty, self-absorbed, Michael Moore.
Good and Bad are the stream of follow-up movies. Film-makers are cleaning out their trunks, puffing out little shows, and sending all manner of trash out into the theaters. Some of this trash will turn out to be freshly discovered treasures. Some will be relatively inoffensive, and some is just bad. Outfoxed is marvelous, and you will never watch Fox News again without laughing. Bush's Brain is a bit of a stretch. Corporation is mindless trash, and mostly serves to give conservatives an easy target. Fortunately, none of them went to see it.
What is a documentary? Even traditional documentaries have a weak claim on truth. Some may rigorously report nothing but facts. Yet facts are very small things. Picking a few to draw a picture results in a picture that came mostly from the mind of the fact-picker. Even those that present "facts from both sides" create a balance point. That balance point is rarely objective truth, and usually is the point of view of the filmmaker. Fictional movie creators have at least as much chance at getting to the truth, because they are more constrained by an internal logic that is, in some sense, honest. Fahrenheit 9/11 is mostly true in this sense. Facts may be fudged, points pushed, and the narrative tied to a conspiracy theory that is implausible. But the movie gives us a true picture of what is wrong. Truer than could be obtained by a 'real' documentary.
-dan jeffers
Sky Captain and the world of too much talking
As I approached the theater, God attempted to save me. God came in the form of a PR man handing out free tickets to another movie, "Wimbledon." After handing me a pass for two, he would not take it back.
"Give it to somebody else."
Now, all of a sudden, I'm a PR guy for Wimbledon, trying to pass off this free pass. Guerilla marketing, I suppose. Or maybe Viral Marketing. I saw a likely looking couple and handed them the pass. They actually looked happy and entered the theater, apparently on their way to see Wimbledon. Me, I was waiting to get into the press screening for "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"
A man walked up, after I had given away the pass. He immediately asked if I could hook him up. I told him I'd only had one pass, and as it was for two, I wanted to hand it to a couple. We made a couple jokes, then I saw the PR guy floating around.
"You can probably get a pass from that guy," I said.
"What's it for?" he asked.
"Wimbledon," I said.
"Wimbledon?" he asked, eyebrows arching, "I"m a black guy."
He was also angling to get into Sky Captain. Technically, I'm not a black guy, but I'd have to agree that something about the movie, Wimbledon, screams "Too romantic, too upper-class, too white."
Of course I was wrong about Sky Captain. (If I review it, you can probably find my review at
Breakingitdown.com) So maybe if I was dragged screaming into Wimbledon I might enjoy it at the time, laughing as I did during much of Notting Hill. But afterwards, I would hat myself.
-dan jeffers
