Bright Star

The friend I went to see Bright Star with liked the movie, but mentioned she liked The Duchess better. The comparison is interesting: both movies, set less than half a century apart, are about women who express themselves mainly though clothing, and who cannot marry who they wish. It surprised me at the time that I enjoyed the Duchess quite a bit, but in my eyes, Bright Star is a much more interesting – if flawed – film.

More observations about Basterds

*Chap. 1: at first, the switch from French to English proposed by Landa seems a cheap trick from the director, to avoid more subtitles. I didn’t wonder about Landa’s motivation, because I assumed it to be artificial. However, as it turns out in the crescendo towards the end, Landa did have a very specific motivation for the switch, indeed, and it was no QT ploy.

*Chap. 2: After the western opening, we now move to farce. I love how there are nested stories here. There’s what really happened: that the soldier betrayed his fellows to save his life, and was let go accordingly. There’s the story Aldo Raine feeds him: that they let him escape to strike fear into the hearts of the nazis. And then there’s the story that Hitler, after hearing (the fake) story #2, orders the soldier to tell: that he daringly escapes. Thus the coward becomes a hero – all it takes is two propagandistic spins. In fact, propaganda really is (one of) the continuing thread(s) through this movie: from Chap. 1, wherein Landa references the portrayal of Jews as rats, all the way to the end.

Inglourious Basterds

Who’d have thought: Tarantino does it again, “it” being making a quintessential Tarantino movie, talky, slow, yet exhilarating too, at moments horrifying, and veering wildly from authentic dread to over-the-top absurdism. In one word, it’s awesome – though admittedly not unproblematic.

The main objection to the film, from venerable people like Daniel Mendelsohn at Newsweek and Jonathan Rosenbaum, is that the film is morally despicable, “akin to holocaust denial”. I can see the point… or could if it was unambiguous that Tarantino wanted us to root for the Basterds and cheer their vicious tactics, wanted us to glory in this revenge story, the third in a row in his recent filmography (counting Kill Billas one film). However, I’m not sure his intention is so crude. In fact, I think the case can be made that in all three films, there are significant question marks* as to whether the revenge is satisfactory and/or fully deserved. (warning: here be SPOILERS)

Public Enemies

I love gangster movies. I love the fedoras, the guns, the cars. I love the patter, the clothes, the robberies. I love how inherently tragic they are: in these movies, crime is exiting, seductive, but ultimately fatal. It used to be because of the production code, of course, but I can understand why it stuck: it’s part of the allure of the gangster that he’s not only pursued by the police, but also, more figuratively, by the inevitability of his (and sometimes her) own death. They live life as fully as they can because they feel so acutely that it could end at any time, try as they might to convince others – and themselves – that they’re immortal. Ironically enough, of course, they are immortal in a sense, because they survive in the public’s imagination. They survive in those gangster movies, and they would probably not live on so fiercely if not for their magnificent deaths. If they were not doomed.

Just a thought #1

I was reading the famous Kael essay about Cary Grant, “the Man from Dream City“. The excerpt below was a revelation: ironically enough, I finally understand now why I’ve always found Clark Gable (whose mustache Johnny Depp sports in the amazing last fifteen minutes of Public Enemies) infinitely more seductive than the suave, but distant Grant:

The romantic male stars aren’t necessarily sexually aggressive. Henry Fonda wasn’t; neither was James Stewart, or, later, Marcello Mastroianni. The foursquare Clark Gable, with his bold, open challenge to women, was more the exception than the rule, and Gable wasn’t romantic, like Grant. Gable got down to brass tacks; his advances were basic, his unspoken question was “Well, sister, what do you say?” If she said no, she was failing what might almost be nature’s test. She’d become overcivilized, afraid of her instincts–afraid of being a woman. There was a violent, primal appeal in Gable’s sex scenes: it was all out front–in the way he looked at her, man to woman. Cary Grant doesn’t challenge a woman that way. (When he tried, as the frontiersman in “The Howards of Virginia,” he looked thick and stupid.) With Gable, sex is inevitable: What is there but sex? Basically, he thinks women are good for only one thing. Grant is interested in the qualities of a particular woman–her sappy expression, her non sequiturs, the way her voice bobbles. She isn’t going to be pushed to the wall as soon as she’s alone with him. With Grant, the social, urban man, there are infinite possibilities for mutual entertainment. They might dance the night away or stroll or go to a carnival–and nothing sexual would happen unless she wanted it to. Grant doesn’t assert his male supremacy; in the climax of a picture he doesn’t triumph by his fists and brawn–or even by outwitting anybody. He isn’t a conqueror, like Gable. But he’s a winner. The game, however, is an artful dodge. He gets the blithe, funny girl by maneuvering her into going after him. He’s a fairy-tale hero, but she has to pass through the trials: She has to trim her cold or pompous adversaries; she has to dispel his fog. In picture after picture, he seems to give up his resistance at the end, as if to say, What’s the use of fighting?

Paris, Texas

The boyfriend and I are currently at my parents’ place for a few days. He has a thesis to finish, and this was the only way we could have a sort-of holiday together. On Saturday evening, after some delicious home-made sushi, I sent him upstairs to finally get some work done, while I sat down in front of my parents’ large HD flat screen, and put in the DVD of Paris, Texas I had rented.

Scrutinizing Statham

The boyfriend has two big man-crushes. The longest standing one is on the Gubernator, but currently the most prominent one is on the guy who’s already been anointed the new big action hero: Jason Statham. I’d seen a few of his movies b.BF. (Lock Stock, Snatch, The Italian Job), but with him I’ve also dived into some of his less… reputable flicks, most notably the Transporter, The Transporter 3, Death Race, The Bank Job and now Crank.

The odd thing is that Ah-nuld and Statham are quite different. I want to say they’re like the immovable object versus the unstoppable force, but that’s not quite right. The main difference is that while Arnold is strong and seemingly invulnerable, Statham is less imposing but incredibly kinetic. It’s no coincidence, I think, that so many of his films revolve around some kind of clock or count-town. While he always seems reluctant at first, once he starts going he’s always in motion, always racing. The scary thing about Schwarzenegger in the Terminator was that he was unrelenting: you could outrun him for a while, but he’d never stop coming. What scares Statham’s opponents is that you never see him coming, and you never know when he’s going to show up.

No Comment #1

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In a Lonely Place

Inspired by this great video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz and Kim Morgen, I recently re-watched In a Lonely Place with the boyfriend, who’d never seen it. I loved it, even more than the first time, for all the reasons mentioned in the essay, and had to wipe away a tear or two by the end.

The boyfriend, however, was lukewarm. This made me think, since his two main points of criticism made quite a bit of sense. First of all, he deplored that Gloria Grahame’s Laurel Gray, who starts out the film as a self-possessed, assertive woman who knows exactly what she wants (and doesn’t want), turns into a loving, subservient pillow-fluffer overnight, whose happiness depends entirely on the mood of her man, and who is scared of him to boot. His second problem with the film was that he had a hard time empathizing with Dixon Steele, because of his violent temper.

See why I love him?

Watching Log, June

Ok: so, I’ve been increasingly frustrated by the fact that I’m no longer writing, and that this blog is dead. Furthermore, participating in the terrific TOERIFC discussion of Black Book reminded me that there is some tremendously insightful, engaging, thought-provoking writing about film (and all kinds of other things) being done, but not by me (unless you count twittering).

So: on this thunderstormy night I sent the boyfriend to a poker tournament, and told myself I’d write. Just write. No idea what it’ll be, but let’s start with a round-up of what I’ve been watching recently. 100 words per film. I can’t promise it’ll be worth reading, but it’ll at least be something. Ready? Set? Go.