Week 29 : The Dark Knight
To celebrate both San Diego's ComicCon and Christopher Nolan's latest hit (and masterpiece) Inception, this week's film is The Dark Knight. The third highest grossing film of all time, The Dark Knight is widely considered the best superhero film ever made. Featuring perhaps the most iconic performance in the last 25 years with Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker, The Dark Knight broke new ground- making the essential comic book film for non-comic fans. Winner of 2 Academy Awards, including a posthumous Oscar for Ledger.
Cast and Credits:
Batman/ Bruce Wayne: Christian Bale
Joker: Heath Ledger
Alfred: Michael Caine
Harvey Dent: Aaron Eckhart
Gordon: Gary Oldman
Rachel: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Lucius Fox: Morgan Freeman
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film by Christopher Nolan. Written by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan.
Cinematography
Return Sunday, August 1st for our full review and analysis
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Week 28 : The Squid and the Whale
-Who will win- the squid or the whale?
In this grandiose and complex world there are many diverse ideas and theories surrounding the principles of love, sex and marriage. I still have no idea what my own individual set of values always are (hell, some of them change every day) yet I take comfort in the fact that deep down I am not a cynic. I believe in love- not necessarily the greeting card variety, but that strange and powerful blend of deep rooted friendship, emotional and sexual compatibility. I also believe that there are some people that should never, ever, ever be married.
Bernard (Jeff Bridges) and Joan (Laura Linney) Berkman are such a couple in Noah Baumbach’s brilliant, consistently moving and semi-autobiographical tale of divorce: The Squid and The Whale. This 73 minute picture has more to say about human relationships than any other picture I have ever seen. Not only that, but it is a great source of enlightenment for anyone seeking advice on marriage, divorce, parenting, sexuality, growing up, puberty, tennis or literature. One minute it is a wry comedy- the next, a profoundly moving and universal drama.
“It’s Mom and Me versus You and Dad” is the opening line of the picture. It is said by Frank (Owen Kline), the youngest son in the Berkman household. The foreshadowing could not be more obvious. Frank and his older brother Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) begin the film playing doubles tennis with their parents, two New York literary intellectuals living in Brooklyn in the mid eighties. Bernard and Walt team up against Joan and Frank in a very intense tennis match within the first several minutes of the picture. In a way, they will be doing this throughout the rest of the film- Frank will side with his mother, Walt- his father. Emotions, half truths, and mean spirited comments will be thrown back in forth lack a ping pong ball; constantly shifting the focus of the story and our affinity to the characters. It will all be fun and games, until somebody gets hurt.
There is no surprise that within the first twenty minutes of the picture Bernard and Joan ask the children to come home promptly after school for a family meeting. “The family meeting” has become such a cliché, such a synonym for “divorce talk” that the verbiage could easily belong in an after school special. In Baumbach’s film we don’t feel that way because it is executed just right. After the two children are told that there will be a family meeting, we briefly follow them individually throughout their day. Both are lost in their own minds, knowing that the inevitable has finally come. After school, the two parents sit Frank and Walt down and explain that they are getting a divorce.
Frank immediately bursts into tears. He is emotional, lost and confused- like his mother must have been. Walt sits still and asks questions about logistics, clearly having the intellect and cold, emotionless reaction that his father must have had when the decision was made. In many ways, this is the theme of the whole picture- Emotion vs. Intellect, the feminine vs. the masculine, the heart vs. the head. The common thread in all “family meeting, let’s tell the kids we’re getting divorced scenes” is that there is never really any conversation- no room for discussion. The children will never have a say because the decision has been made. These scenes typically play more like an announcement- a friendly memorandum if you will, than an actual discussion. The beauty of the scene in The Squid and the Whale is that there is one moment of honesty that strikes a chord above all others. Frank is in tears; Joan is comforting him while Walt looks to his father:
“What about the cat?”
--“Shit. We didn’t think about the cat.”
-No one ever thinks about the cat.
The remainder of the picture will follow the lives of these parents and children as they all live separate lives in the wake of the divorce. Bernard is a washed up writer. Once critically acclaimed, his work has sense been disregarded as obtuse by most literary circles. He earns a living teaching creative writing at local community college, spending days in a dreary haze while listening to hack poetry and lewd stories. Bernard’s success peaked years ago, so it is not necessarily surprising that when Joan, his wife of seventeen years, begins to get critical and financial success for her literary journal work, Bernard is less than pleased. Bernard is the consummate intellectual- a connoisseur of fine literature, film and the arts. He is also a really smug prick, giving his wife notes on improving her work and discouraging his children from reading literature or seeing films which he sees as inferior. After the divorce he engages in a purely physical relationship with a young girl in his creative writing class named Lili (Anna Paquin), the kind of girl that sits with her knees wide open, reads nothing but Henry Miller, and writes poems about her cunt.
Joan is certainly more intellectually grounded yet more emotional in her behavior. She wears her heart on her sleeve, gives the children pet names (“Chicken” for Walt, “Pickle” for Frank) and urns for something more. It is clear that she has had many, many years of emotional neglect and all she wants is someone to love. She ends up finding companionship with Ivan (William Baldwin), the local tennis pro at the country club. Ivan is the polar opposite of Bernard- a complete idiot that appears to have a good heart but the intellect of a snow pea. He is the type of person that wears a headband outside of athletics, while also having a penchant for using the phrase “My Brotha” after virtually everything he says.
Then there are the children, Frank and Walt. Baumbach has stated in many interviews that The Squid and the Whale is the semi-autobiographical story of coping with his own parents divorce. I don’t know how in the hell “semi” can even be a part of the previous sentence. Baumbach’s mother was a critic at the Village Voice while his father was a novelist and film critic. I have a feeling that Frank and Walt are both sides of Baumbach- of us all. Frank is raw emotion. Walt is raw intellect. They both side with their respective parents, making the same mistakes in their own young lives- both reaching out in their own ways.
Walt engages in a relationship with Sophie (Halley Feiffer), a young girl in his class. He appears to like her a great deal but his father’s sense of perfectionist elitism ruins the relationship. He looks at everything logically. He can “get serious” with Sophie, but this limits his opportunities for sexual encounters elsewhere- particularly with Lili. Once again, we see the parallel between the parents and the children. Walt has intellect- Frank has heart; both sides of the same coin vying to land on top.
-“Hey you, out there on your own, always doing what you’re told, can you hear me?”
All parties act out in their own ways. Frank, the youngest, acts out the most severely. He drinks alone until he blacks out and masturbates in public- wiping his semen on things he loves (a girl’s locker) and hates (library books- the intellect that destroyed his family). Walt sabotages his relationship with Sophie and other close friends- seeking a perfection that will not come, while also lying and cheating his way to artistic success. At the beginning of the film, before the divorce even takes place, he sings his parents a song that he wrote all by himself. The lyrics (which I have heard dozens of times) are, to this day, some of the best I have ever heard.
Hey you, out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old
Can you feel me?
Hey you, standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles
Can you feel me?
Of course these lyrics don’t belong to Walt at all. Clearly, in all of Frank and Joan’s superior intellect they have never heard of Roger Waters or Hey You from Pink Floyd The Wall. Things get serious when Walt plagiarizes the song to win the school talent show and is ousted as a fraud. His parents are shocked but the school mandated therapist that Walt is sent to seems to get it. Walt is having a difficult time- he needs acceptance, and needs an outlet for his feelings. The therapist asks Walt to recall a favorite memory. Walt brings up watching Robin Hood with his mother and going to the Museum of Natural History with her. He talks about always being afraid of the diorama of the squid and the whale and his mother comforting him.
“Where was your father?” the therapist asks.
“He wasn’t in that one.” Walt replies. Clearly the mind can never win in matters of the heart.
In the end nothing is really resolved, but there is a certain amount of catharsis in living vicariously through the lives of the characters. Baumbach knows this. He keeps direction simple; his angles are direct and to the point and he never is overtly showy with his cinematography. This is a movie about story, characters, emotions and dialogue and every single element of what matters is delivered flawlessly. The picture doesn’t outstay its welcome- and when it ends we know how we got to that point and why.
I am often asked what my favorite films are. Any lover of the movies will know as well as I that the question is utter nonsense. While my favorite film frequently changes, my top ten are pretty consistent. The Squid and the Whale is in my top ten list, and has been for several years. Watching it now, as I go through my own divorce, I realize how fine of a film it really is. I daresay it’s a masterpiece.
I frequently think about the closing images of the movie. Walt has realized that he loves his mother, resents his father, and just wants to run away from it all. He races across town and to the museum where he finds the squid and the whale. The image haunts my dreams. The enormous whale lumbers against the squid, with razor sharp teeth clinching against the squid’s massive tentacles. The squid fights back, wrapping his arms around the whale- struggling to break free. The image is frozen in time, the two will always be in battle; the whale the mind, the squid the heart. The mind wants to hold the heart back, but the heart struggles to get away. Or maybe the whale is the past, always trying to hold back the future. Either way I think I’m right. I just wonder if I’m the squid or the whale. Shit. I don’t know.
Ask me again tomorrow.
Review and analysis by Shaun Henisey
Cast and Credits:
Frank: Jeff Daniels
Joan: Laura Linney
Walt: Jesse Eisenberg
Frank: Owen Kline
Sony Pictures Classics and Samuel Goldwyn films presents a film written and directed by Noah Baumbach.
Produced by Wes Anderson and Peter Newman. Cinematography by Robert Yeoman.
Running Time: 88 minutes. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic dialogue and language.
Return Wednesday, July 28th to preview next week's film.
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Week 27 : Close Encounters of the Third Kind
-Children trust the light
Steven Spielberg is at his best when he is giving us something that will fill our hearts and minds with awe. With the exception of his war masterpieces, Spielberg's best films make us feel as if we are a child again. There are sequences in his best films we watch with our mouths agape; we feel like children again. If film is about manipulating emotions (and I believe to a certain extent that it is) then Spielberg may be the greatest puppet master of all time.
I don't think any of his films do a better job of relaying the sense of wonder I am talking about than Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s not necessarily his best film, but it is the one picture in his catalogue that is actually "about" that sense of wonder. The film's production title was Watch the Skies, and after watching Spielberg's opus about contact with extraterrestrials, one can't help but do just that.
While the phrase "spoiler alert" seems ridiculous for a picture that is 33 years old, I will give one nonetheless. I must honestly recommend that if you have not seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind you stop reading this review now. Get on Netflix, go to your local video store, whatever flips your cookie, and watch the picture. Don't look at any of the promotional materials. Don't watch the preview, or clips on YouTube- just watch the movie. This is a dessert best served cold.
There are three story arcs in Close Encounters. The main plot involves a utility worker named Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) and his family. UFO’s are spotted over Muncie, Indiana and are responsible for a large blackout. Roy is dispatched out in the field to make some electrical repairs. His truck suddenly stops and an amazing bright light engulfs his car from above. The UFO appears to scan Roy and his truck while also implanting a certain consciousness inside of him. From this point on Roy’s life will never be the same. He chases after the UFO and finds a small group of people that have also had similar “close encounters.” They sit and watch the night sky in amazement- irrevocably changed by the experience.
Another arc involves two of these onlookers, Jillian (Melinda Dillon) and her four year old son, Barry (Cary Guffey). Barry seems to have a special connection with the aliens. Earlier in the picture, he has appeared to have seen an alien with his own eyes. Jillian and Barry return home, changed as well by the experience. Several days later, in the best sequence of its kind, Barry is taken by aliens. Jillian is now torn between a desperate desire to understand this new consciousness inside her and find her son.
The final storyline features an international group of scientists searching the globe for evidence of the extra-terrestrials. The group is led by a French man named Lacombe (the superb François Truffaut), who, along with his interpreter David (Bob Balaban), investigate the strange occurrences beginning to happen all around the globe. They find a group of World War II airplanes that went missing fifty years ago- still in tact and like new, in the middle of a desert. They visit India, where thousands of people have not only seen the UFO’s, but have heard them as well. The Indian people chant a five note melody (musically- G, A, F, (octave lower) F, C). When Lacombe asks the crowd where they heard this wonderful music the people simultaneously point up.
Over the course of the first two acts of the film, the three main characters, Roy, Jillian and Lacombe, will separately be drawn towards Devils Tower, Wyoming. Lacombe is the only one truly in the know. He understands that the aliens are trying to inform the people of Earth where their first contact will be held. Lacombe and the U.S. Government work together to cover up the encounter, evacuating the area under the guise of a deadly chemical spill.
Roy and Jillian are not told so bluntly what must be done. The aliens have implanted the vision of Devil’s Tower (a 1,267 foot rock monolith) but have not spelled out specifically what the image is or what will happen there. Roy and Jillian become obsessed with the image. Jillian paints it and draws it over and over again, until her house is littered with nothing but paintings and drawings of the mountain. Roy’s situation is more complicated. He has three children and his wife, Ronnie (Teri Garr). Ronnie and the kids were not with Roy during his encounter in his truck. Therefore, when Roy begins sculpting Devil’s Tower in his mashed potatoes at the dinner table their only assumption is that Roy has gone utterly mad. In a series of heartbreaking scenes, described later, Roy’s family eventually leaves him. Shortly after, Roy and Jillian make the connection between the image of the monolith in their minds and Devil’s Tower, and make their journey towards the film’s final destination.
I will stop here. I don’t know what to even write about the last forty minutes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The ending of the film is simply miraculous. Words cannot describe the utter beauty of the scenes that take place at Devil’s Tower. I will only say that Spielberg has created the only convincing first contact sequence ever shot on film. The John Williams score (accompanied by the five notes described earlier) is edited seamlessly into the film’s coda. There are long sequences where words are not spoken because the characters, as well as the audience, are trapped in a sense of awe. In the end, the aliens are not malevolent, but peaceful creatures seeking a new kind of intelligence. These final sequences are simply among the greatest ever put on the screen.
-First Contact
In this film, Spielberg has created one of the boldest and most ambitious projects ever made. Like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, parts of Close Encounters work on the level of opera or ballet. The entire last act of the film is universal. You could not speak English and watch the film without subtitles and still get the same effect. It is simply utterly beautiful to behold. It is by no means a sad picture, yet when watching it I get an overwhelming sense of emotion. If there ever is contact between aliens and humans I would want it to be like in Close Encounters.
It is no coincidence that Spielberg comes from a broken home, a product of divorce. Look at his greatest films of this era. They are all, in certain ways, means of coping with this childhood. When Spielberg married and started having children of his own in the late eighties, these themes went away. I can imagine that the sequences of the children screaming at the top of their lungs while Roy and Ronnie argue in this picture are very close to Spielberg’s heart. They are gut wrenching in their realism. Spielberg’s mother was a concert pianist; his father was a computer programmer. In an interview for Inside the Actor’s Studio, James Lipton used these facts to somewhat psychoanalyze Spielberg. Lipton confronted Spielberg.
“Your father was a computer engineer; your mother was a concert pianist, and when the spaceship lands, they make music together on the computer” as if it was the only way the two could communicate. In the interview, Spielberg agrees with the statement and appears to tear up for a moment.
I don’t think a movie like Close Encounters could be made today. Scratch that. I know a movie like Close Encounters couldn’t be made today. There has not been a “good alien” movie in decades because the teenage boy crowd (who Hollywood markets) is only interested in aliens as an antagonistic force. They want to see Independence Day on the big screen, not E.T. or Close Encounters. This is the sad nature of the business. This reality makes films like Close Encounters, E.T and 2001 gems to cherish for the ages.
I could write paragraphs about Spielberg’s skill here as a director. This is a grandiose production, with filming taking place around the globe. There were a record 11 cinematographers, on Close Encounters- each of them working diligently to get the perfect shots Spielberg wanted. I could speak of my joy seeing the great French director François Truffaut (founder of the New Wave) on the screen in perhaps the most important role in the film. I could explain the differences between the original cut, the horrible “special edition” of the picture, and the directors cut (the preferred version). I could digress regarding the beauty of Williams Score- but it would only serve as digression. The film should speak for itself.
In a recent blog, Roger Ebert discusses an emotion called Elevation. It is the emotion that you get when you feel a certain sense of uplift and hope. He cites a Salon.com article by Emily Yoffe, who, along with Dascher Keltner- a professor of psychology at Berkeley, studied the reaction of humans to Elevation. Yoffe writes:
“Elevation has always existed but has just moved out of the realm of philosophy and religion and been recognized as a distinct emotional state and a subject for psychological study. Psychology has long focused on what goes wrong, but in the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in "positive psychology"--what makes us feel good and why. University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, writes, "Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental 'reset button,' wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration."
I can think of no better term to describe the end of Close Encounters. It is one of the grand movie experiences.
Elevation. Pure and utter Elevation.
Review and analysis by Shaun Henisey
Cast and Credits:
Roy: Richard Dreyfuss
Lacombe: François Truffaut
Jillian: Melinda Dillon
Ronnie: Teri Garr
Laughlin: Bob Balaban
Columbia pictures presents a film written and directed by Steven Spielberg. Produced by Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips.
Cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond. Editing by Michael Kahn. Music by John Williams.
Rated PG:For intense scenes and language. Running Time: 137 minutes
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