Brewster McCloud

In 1970, MASH provided Robert Altman with his one and only mega-hit. His choice as a follow up, and he had the freedom to choose anything, turned out to be the strangest and most idiosyncratic film of a career that would always be unconventional.

Which leads to the question, what kind of film is Brewster McCloud? Is it a modernization of the Icarus myth as commentary on the soon to be former idealism of the sixties? Is it a juvenile comedy with a lot of bird shit jokes? It may be kind of both, but I believe it’s also a blueprint, a rough draft of the kind of filmmaker Robert Altman wanted to be.

If Robert Altman would spend much of the seventies deconstructing different film genres, Brewster McCloud would be his “comedy”, but as an Altman comedy, it wouldn’t play by the rules. Its bone dry humor would not come into fashion until Wes Anderson became its spokesman. With a loose structure, it was broad enough to directly parody the Steve McQueen’s then recent hit, Bullet, and provide such Altmanesque touches as using a connective device (here, the lecturer) and introduce such quirky characters as Shelly Duval in her movie debut.

A tight film it is not, but it announces that fact immediately in the opening credits, which Altman often utilizes to instruct an audience how a particular film should be watched. In “A Cinema of Loneliness,” Robert Phillip Kolker describes it in detail:

“The MGM logo appears, but instead of the expected lion’s roar, there is a voice saying, “I forgot the opening line.” The film cannot quite get itself started. No smooth entry into the story is promised. A rather strange man appears, a lecturer who talks to us about birds, men, the dream of flight and environmental enclosures. As he is about to speak of the last, there is a shot of the Houston Astrodome and in it Margaret Hamilton, the wicked witch of The Wizard of Oz attempting to lead a marching band of black musicians in the national anthem. The credits begin. Hamilton stops the band and attempts to get them to sing on key. The credits begin AGAIN, and the band breaks into gospel, completely out of control. This film, which will concern itself with the conflict of freedom and constraint announces this conflict from the beginning, not only in its images, but in the difficulty it has getting its images started. Brewster McCloud parodies itself, its existence as a controlled formal structure from the very start.”

By extension, Kolker seems to suggest that Altman might not just be deconstructing comedy, but film itself. Before we ponder this too deeply, bird shit jokes soon follow. However the low comedy does give way to a consistent Altman theme, the individual’s place in the community. While MASH posited that a sub-culture of hedonists could make wartime bearable, Brewster (played coldly by Bud Cort of Harold and Maude fame) chooses to isolate himself from any sense of community, denying even his guardian angel and single mindedly following his dream of individual flight at all costs. This certainly hints of tragic undertones beneath the silliness.

Stroszek vs. Children in the Wind

This review is part of a series focusing on the MUBI DIRECTORS CUP. This informal online bracket competition pits films of various directors against each other, with the winner moving on to the next round with a different film. The only criteria for voting is that both films must be viewed.

Stroszek (1977)is an amazing film that keeps getting richer with repeated viewings. For a leisurely paced film of normal length, a hell of a lot is happening on a character, visual and thematic level.

Most striking is simply the fact of Bruno S. in the title role. He’s either pretty much playing himself or has given one of the all time great film performances. A little reading about Bruno reveals that, like his character, he’s been abused and is mentally challenged to some degree (although functional). What we are seeing in the film is apparently Bruno’s own unique, larger-than-life personality, including that wonderfully odd speech pattern. This is most purely seen as we watch Bruno singing and playing the accordion with such gusto in the alleyway. This, along with director, Werner Herzog’s own background as a documentary filmmaker, plus the use of non-actors in most roles, blurs the fiction/reality line and lends a sense of authenticity to every scene.

Werner Herzog has an uncanny ability to make any landscape he films look like an alien environment from another planet. That he can achieve this effect shooting the Amazon in Aguirre: The Wrath of God or Antarctica in Encounters at the End of the World is one thing, but making this location magic work for Wisconsin is impressive on a whole other level. Being from Chicago, my perception of Wisconsin has always been that it’s a bit boring, but generally normal. Of course, Herzog is from Germany, as are his characters, so regarding the American Midwest as a foreboding and exotic land gives a similar sense of cultural displacement that ended up prominently featured in Lost in Translation.

The main theme is an indictment of societies that do not care for its weakest members. Bruno’s band of outsiders, being himself (a retarded man), his prostitute sometime girlfriend and a strange old gent, are brought together more by surrounding hostility than real affection toward each other. As the trio try to make their way in America, we get a distinctly foreign impression of the American Dream. I’ve heard stories that my grandparent’s generation thought the streets here were paved with gold. That seems not too far off from Bruno and his friend’s expectations. What seems to really demoralize the group is not that life remains hard, but that the American Dream represented a promise that couldn’t even be hoped for in Germany. For Herzog, the outsider remains an outsider no matter where he or she goes.

This idea is repeatedly represented, both through dialogue and visually, by the motif of a never-ending circle. It comes to fruition in that unforgettable, funny, sad, whacked out and perfect ending. It’s so perfect that I don’t even want to describe it in case there’s someone reading who hasn’t already seen the film.

Hiroshi Shimizu’s entry also takes an outsider looking in point of view. This time, looked at through the eyes of children as they try to perceive the problems of the adult world. Nowhere near as ambitious as Stroszek, Children in the Wind (1937) is still successful in its depiction of two young Japanese brothers who must cope with their father’s firing, arrest and their subsequent relocation. The younger brother, Sampei, reacts by acting out (not that he wasn’t a handful to begin with), putting himself in dangerous situations and generally driving the relatives caring for him crazy.

The plot is very basic and, if it were made in Hollywood, would probably showcase the adorableness of the kids and milk the melodrama for all it was worth. Happily, Shimizu does not pander and his child performers are not cutesy, but naturalistic. Early scenes of neighborhood children running wild gave the impression that they were one plane crash away from going completely Lord of the Flies on each other. It’s been commented that the kids can be pretty annoying, which is true, but also true of many of their real life counterparts. The parents, however, remain strangely passive, preferring to teach by example, I suppose.

In addition to offering a perceptive view of family dynamics, Children in the Wind also has a strong visual sense. The framing, in particular, stands out. Look at the house scene where we see through a translucent drapery at the adults in the center of the frame, while the children are sleeping/listening from their beds in the bottom corner of the screen. Until they start to move, we could miss that they’ve been on screen the whole time. There are also plenty of humorous bits of business that keep the film lively, like the scene where Sampei attempts to reach his father’s hat hanging on the office wall.

I’m glad to have seen Children of the Wind, a film that normally would have escaped my notice, but my vote goes to Stroszek, a great work of true originality that I plan to keep revisiting.

Manhattan vs. Szindbad

This review is part of a series focusing on the MUBI DIRECTORS CUP. This informal online bracket competition pits films of various directors against each other, with the winner moving on to the next round with a different film. The only criteria for voting is that both films must be viewed.

Chapter One – Manhattan vs. Szindbad. I adored Woody Allen. I idolized him all out of proportion. Then he spent the last twelve or so years making crap films and I got over him. Revisiting Manhattan (1979) showed me that, unlike the characters in this film, I was not suffering from delusions, but was watching one of the great directors in his prime.

It’s one of the unforgettable openings in film. Stunning black and white images of New York City, while the soundtrack plays Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, combined with Allen’s narration commenting on what he perceives as his ideal self in his ideal locale. We will soon find out that Allen’s character Isaac, as well as the rest of his flawed entourage, idealizes relationships as well. Here’s what’s brilliant about the opening. By showing NYC in such a magical light, we are being primed to buy into these ideals. Because Isaac is played by Woody Allen, the lovable loser, we may not register that he’s no longer the underdog, but a successful, somewhat selfish man very capable of hurting others.

Isaac spends much of the film trying to justify, continue or end his affair with a 17 year-old high school student. Normally, this would alienate us from him, but it doesn’t, because he’s self aware enough to feel guilt (unlike a certain Hungarian lothario I’ll get to shortly) and Mariel Hemmingway’s understated portrayal of Tracy, who she invests with such maturity and smarts, that the relationship seems somewhat less inappropriate. We kind of have to keep reminding ourselves that an affair between a man of 42 and a girl of 17 is wrong. (Yes, this brings us some issues in Woody Allen’s personal life, but I don’t give damn about that. I’m only interested in his films.)

The Diane Keaton and Michael Murphy characters are not much better off. Despite their charm and likeability, they are serial adulterers, smart enough to know better AND to care, but not so smart as to commit to any kind of mature relationship. All this is after the fact analysis that doesn’t take into account how much Manhattan lures us into identifying with these flawed characters. I also haven’t mentioned how damn laugh out loud funny this film is. It contains possibly the sharpest writing of any Allen script, combining humor with a wistful sense of romance and the best looking cinematography Allen’s ever been associated with.

Szindbad AKA Sinbad is also a beautiful film to look at. This 1971 Hungarian period piece from director, Zoltán Huszárik, is told as a deathbed recollection of the title character trying to assign meaning to his life. There’s some artsy stylizing at hand with quick cuts to related, but separate moments from the narrative as well as to seemingly abstract close ups.

Sinbad’s recollections are that of an upper class turn-of-the-19th century womanizer who life was spent seducing and abandoning an endless array of beautiful women. Unlike, the characters in Manhattan, these relationships are embarked on with no sense of self awareness and no real joy either. Zoltán Latinovits plays Sinbad as an utter drip. With the exception of an elderly ex-lover he confides in, the women in his life are all interchangeable (although the death of one seems to have left a mark.) As viewers, we’re given little to distinguish his many conquests from each other.

The films many (tame) love scenes are filmed without an ounce of eroticism. In fact, Sinbad seems to regard these seductions as somewhat of a chore. There is, however, one very sensual scene, but it involves food rather than women. Sinbad sits down at a fancy restaurant to confront the ex-husband of one of his lovers. The meal is lingered upon in the kind of long and detailed close ups that exist nowhere else in the film. This sequence begins a more compelling final act than what came before.

All in all, my reaction to Sinbad was mixed. I admire its ornate look and how it captured its time period through sets and landscapes. If I was left cold by the lead performance, I’m sure this was by design. The risk of having distant characters is that you can end up keeping your audience at a distance. From a distance, it was interesting, creative and had something to say. That’s about as much affection as I can muster up for it.

My Alternate Oscars

A quick disclaimer – I’m borrowing this idea from Danny Peary’s book, Alternate Oscars. Like Peary, I think the Academy gets it wrong more often than not. Unlike him, I’m allowing foreign films to be among my choices. In any case, Alternate Oscars is a great book and also includes best actor and actress picks.



THE ACADEMY’S CHOICE…………………….MY CHOICE

2009 - "The Hurt Locker" .......................... Inglorious Basterds
2008 – “Slumdog Millionaire”…………………… Synecdoche, New York
2007 – “No Country for Old Men” ………………Black Snake Moan
2006 – “The Departed”………………………….. United 93
2005 – “Crash”…………………………………… Sin City
2004 – “Million Dollar Baby”…............... Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2003 – “Return of the King”…………………….. Kill Bill: Volume 1
2002 – “Chicago”………………………………… Adaptation
2001 – “A Beautiful Mind”………………………. Memento
2000 – “Gladiator”…………............. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
1999 – “American Beauty”……………………… Fight Club
1998 – “Shakespeare in Love”………………….The Truman Show
1997 – “Titanic”………………………………….. Wag the Dog
1996 – “The English Patient”…………………… Breaking the Waves
1995 – “Braveheart”…………………………….. Se7en
1994 – “Forrest Gump”…………………………. Pulp Fiction
1993 – “Shindler’s List” ………………………….Shindler’s List
1992 – “Unforgiven” …………………………….. The Player
1991 – “The Silence of the Lambs”……………. The Silence of the Lambs
1990 – “Dances with Wolves”………………….. Goodfellas
1989 – “Driving Miss Daisy”……………………. Do the Right Thing
1988 – “Rain Man”………………………………. A Fish Called Wanda
1987 – “The Last Emperor”…………………….. Wings of Desire
1986 – “Platoon”…………………………………. Hannah and Her Sisters
1985 – “Out of Africa”…………………………….Ran
1984 – “Amadeus”………………………………..This is Spinal Tap
1983 – “Terms of Endearment”………………….The Right Stuff
1982 – “Gandhi”………………………………….. E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial
1981 – “Chariots of Fire”…………………………Raiders of the Lost Ark
1980 – “Ordinary People”……………………….. The Empire Strikes Back
1979 – “Kramer vs. Kramer”……………………. Apocalypse Now!
1978 – “The Deer Hunter”…………… National Lampoon's Animal House
1977 – “Annie Hall”……………………………….Star Wars
1976 – “Rocky”…………………………………… Taxi Driver
1975 – “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”……Nashville
1974 – “The Godfather Part II”…………………..Young Frankenstein
1973 – “The Sting”………………………………..The Exorcist
1972 – “The Godfather” ………………………… The Godfather
1971 – “The French Connection”………………. Fiddler on the Roof
1970 – “Patton”……………………………………M*A*S*H
1969 – “Midnight Cowboy”……………………… The Wild Bunch
1968 – “Oliver!”……………………………………2001: A Space Odyssey
1967 – “In the Heat of the Night”………………..Samurai Rebellion
1966 – “A Man for All Seasons”…………The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
1965 – “The Sound of Music”…………………… Red Beard
1964 – “My Fair Lady”…………………………… Dr. Strangelove…
1963 – “Tom Jones”………………………………The Birds
1962 – “Lawrence of Arabia”…………………… Lawrence of Arabia
1961 – “West Side Story”……………………….. West Side Story
1960 – “The Apartment”………………………… Psycho
1959 – “Ben-Hur”………………………………… Rio Bravo
1958 – “Gigi”……………………………………… Vertigo
1957 – “The Bridge on the River Kwai”………..Throne of Blood
1956 – “Around the World in 80 Days”………… The Searchers
1955 – “Marty”……………………………………. Rififi
1954 – “On the Waterfront”………………………Seven Samurai
1953 – “From Here to Eternity”………………….Tokyo Story
1952 – “The Greatest Show on Earth”………… Ikiru
1951 – “An American in Paris”…………………. A Streetcar Named Desire
1950 – “All about Eve”……………………………Sunset Boulevard
1949 – “All the Kings Men”………………………The Third Man
1948 – “Hamlet”………………………………….. Red River
1947 – “Gentleman’s Agreement”……………… Black Narcissus
1946 – “The Best Years of Our Lives”………….Notorious
1945 – “The Lost Weekend”……………………..Children of Paradise
1944 – “Going My Way”…………………The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
1943 – “Casablanca”……………………………. Shadow of a Doubt
1942 – “Mrs. Miniver”……………………………. Casablanca
1941 – “How Green Was My Valley”……………Citizen Kane
1940 – “Rebecca”…………………………………The Grapes of Wrath
1939 – “Gone with the Wind”…………………… The Wizard of Oz
1938 – “You Can’t Take It with You”……………The Lady Vanishes
1937 – “The Life of Emile Zola”………………… The Grand Illusion
1936 – “The Great Ziegfeld”……………………. Modern Times
1935 – “Mutiny on the Bounty”…………………. Bride of Frankenstein
1934 – “It Happened One Night”……………….. The Scarlet Empress
1932/1933 – “Cavalcade”……………………….. King Kong
1931/1932 – “Grand Hotel”…………………….. Freaks
1930/1931 – “Cimarron”………………………… City Lights
1929/1930 – “All Quiet on the Western Front”…Pandora’s Box
1928/1929 – “The Broadway Melody”…………. Steamboat Bill, Jr.
1927/1928 – “Wings”……………………………. Metropolis

THE NYLON CURTAIN - Billy Joel

The Nylon Curtain
Billy Joel
1982

It only takes one great idea to make a great album. Billy Joel’s The Nylon Curtain has two. As hinted at by its cover of identical silhouetted houses, it’s a quasi-concept album exploring the theme of the dark side of suburbia (which, to save space, I’ll be referring to as DSOS.) Musically, it harkens back to the late 60’s and specifically recalls the style of The Beatles.

To place the album in context, Billy Joel had just released Glass Houses in 1980, which was his attempt to echo the then contemporary New-Wave movement. In 1983, he would release An Innocent Man, delving into the late 50’s early 60 roots rock and doo-wop he grew up with. The results were uncannily authentic and the best retro-album I’ve ever heard.

It was in the middle of this highly creative period of exploring different musical eras that The Nylon Curtain came about. Billy Joel, of course, had already developed his own sound, coming to fruition in his excellent The Stranger. This is key because, only incorporating The Beatle’s style into his own, could lead to an innovative work. Most efforts to simply sound like The Beatles result in fun, but inconsequential bands like The Smithereens.

As far as The Nylon Curtain as a concept album goes, it can only be loosely viewed as such. It does not tell a narrative story or reference particular characters, but does keep coming back to its lower income suburban setting and a family struggling to make sense of the American dream in an environment where pain and regret lay just underneath the idyllic surface.

If this theme sounds familiar, it’s not because you’ve heard it on other albums, but because of its recurring presence in later movies. David Lynch’s Blue Velvet may have been the first of the DSOS films, but it was most successfully realized in Sam Mendes’ 1999 Best Picture winner, American Beauty, a film that owes more than a small debt to The Nylon Curtain. It’s not that the plot points are the same, but Kevin Spacey’s protagonist could easily be the narrator of “Pressure” or “A Room of Our Own.”

Let go through this track by track. The first single, “Allentown” is a perfectly constructed song and one of the best of Joel’s career. The Beatle echo is slight, but its highly melodic pop feel would make the Fab Four proud. It provides an actual locale for the album and there’s no reason to think that all of the DSOS songs don’t also take place in Allentown. While most of the album will deal with suburban decay on a personal level, “Allentown” is about the decay of the town itself. Unemployment and the decline of industry leads to an overt questioning of the American dream and why this generation isn’t reaping the benefits their parents had.

“Laura” is Billy Joel trying to channel John Lennon at his most White Album bitter. The narrator’s relationship to Laura is so dysfunctional as to be rendered comic. If later songs are about a failing marriage, “Laura” shows it all going wrong in the courtship. It’s a relationship, not based on love, but the need to be loved. There’s a constant, sometimes violent imagery of being trapped – “these careless fingers, they get caught it her vice, till they’re bleeding on my coffee table.” By the end of the song, our narrator is completely emasculated, asking, after making his girlfriend sound like a she-devil, “How can you hang up on someone that needs you that bad.”

Joel abandons the Beatle sound for a few tracks starting with the synth driven “Pressure.” The second single from The Nylon Curtain is about tension and sounds tense. The narrator’s breakdown here results not just from home life, but a work environment where “you’re just like everybody else.” Innocent domestic pop culture references like Sesame Street, Time Magazine and Peter Pan are rendered sinister in the context of the song.

Shifting gears to “Goodnight Saigon,” we come across one the most unique songs in the Joel catalog. More Andrew Lloyd Weber than British Invasion, this tribute to Vietnam veterans has the pomp and power of a great musical theater curtain closer. It’s also the song the most critics of Billy Joel hone in on as, in their view, Joel is singing from a point of view he knows nothing about, never having served in Nam. Well, that’s why it’s called writing and not all songs need be autobiographical. The fact that “Goodnight Saigon” is sincere and without irony may be a problem for some, but I feel it only adds to its charm.

Featuring some of his most assured vocals, “She’s Right on Time” is The Nylon’s Curtain’s hidden gem. Both musically and lyrically, it’s a mirror image of “Laura.” Here, Joel celebrates his love’s return while, this time, leveling venom at himself – “A man with too much tension, far too many sins to mention.” The fact that the narrator has torn out his telephones is a wonderful contrast to the earlier songs repeated telephone imagery.

“A Room of Our Own” may sound like a holdover from Glass Houses, but its DSOS lines are among the most vivid on the album. At this point, the narrator and his now wife are in full conflict. To a solid rock beat, everyday differences between man and wife are exaggerated and made irreconcilable. Again the Lennonesque bitter humor reveals itself: “You’ve got diamonds and I’ve got spades. You’ve got pills and I’ve got razor blades. You’ve got yoga honey, I’ve got beer. You got overpriced and I got weird.”

The Beatle sound rejoins the Lennon-influenced lyrics in “Surprises.” What constitutes the surprise may be left to our imagination, but it brings the narrator to the conclusion that the dream is over. Perhaps he’s admitting to an affair or just falling out of love. Whether the relationship is too end or continue in unhappy silence is also not clear, but while the open conflict of “Laura” and “A Room of Our Own” revels in its dark humor, “Surprises” is more somber with a note of regretful acceptance.

This acceptance may be why “Scandinavian Skies” seems to abandon the DSOS motif altogether. Its clever world geography wordplay is offset with the most severe cribbing of the Beatle sound on the entire album. The musical source is clearly “I am the Walrus” and it’s a ballsy move to come so close to the originals influence. Joel gets away with it, first, because it’s a damn good song and, second, because he’s been teasing the Beatle sound throughout and here comes clean.

“Where’s the Orchestra?” is a bit anti-climatic after all this. This quiet sad song about broken dreams, is actually much sadder in the context of the whole album. The little hint of the “Allentown” melody at the very end is an appropriately Beatlesque touch of bringing an album full circle.

Billy Joel may have better individual songs than those on The Nylon Curtain, but he has never before or since put together such an ambitious and meaningful work.

Favorite Films of 2008

5) Slumdog Millionaire

Ever wonder what might have happened if Frank Capra directed a script based on a Charles Dickens novel? What if the gritty neorealism of Indian films of the 50’s somehow were to merge with the shiny happy musical romances of today’s Bollywood? Finally, what if it was all put together by a quirky British director best known for films about drug addicts and zombies? The answer to all those questions is the joyously original Slumdog Millionaire.

That’s original only in its execution. The story itself is pure Hollywood in the old fashioned sense of the word – Poor boy makes good, tries to win girl’s heart. The difference here is in the setting. Director Danny Boyle’s camera lovingly explores both the tourist attracting beauty of India and its gritty underbelly. Through an infectious soundtrack and a playful editing style, Slumdog Millionaire has a real kinetic energy that’s hard to resist.

The standard plot is given some new twists. Jamal, a young man from the Mumbai slums finds himself on the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” No one, least of all the authorities, can understand how this dirt poor kid with little education can know all the answers. We find out how through a series of flashbacks to the adventures of Jamal and his friends at different ages of childhood.

Scenes of suspense sit comfortably with the humor and romance. Other films on this list may be deeper and more substantial, but why so serious? Slumdog Millionaire is the most enjoyable MOVIE movie of the year.


4) Frost/Nixon

What is it about Richard Nixon that has inspired such consistently compelling films? From Oliver Stone’s Nixon (possibly his best work) and Robert Altman’s one-actor-film, Secret Honor, all the way back to All the Presidents Men, a masterpiece in which Nixon did not appear, but was a constant presence, Richard Milhous Nixon never ceases to fascinate. His on-screen incarnations tend to elicit the sympathy that he never received in real life, mostly due his fall being depicted as the stuff of Shakespearian tragedy.

Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon (also, possibly this director’s best film) carries on this tradition. Frank Langella, one known for having played Dracula, provides Nixon with menace and vulnerability, but unlike previous portrayals, a healthy dose of humor. This Nixon has already been through his darkest days and is now seeking a comeback via a televised interview with British journalist/entertainer David Frost.

Langella is so spot on as Nixon, that Michael Sheen’s Frost might get overshadowed if he weren’t matching him note for note. David Frost, as it turns out, also has something to prove, as he’s been dismissed as a lightweight pretty boy who could never hold his own against the former president. He has to deal with, to quote the title of a completely unrelated film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

What follows, interestingly enough, takes on the structure of a great sports movie. We see each camp in “training” with aides (kudos to Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell and Kevin Bacon for bringing their A-games to the supporting roles.) The interview itself takes on all the aura of “the big game,” complete with an underdog seemingly outmatched and in search of a comeback.

The politics are really beside the point. Just like the play on which it was based (featuring the same lead actors), Frost/Nixon is about the mindsets and foibles of these two very different men who may have more in common then they suspect.


3) Let the Right One In

In reading reviews of Let the Right One In, there seems to be a movement to consider it something other than a horror movie. Yes, this Swedish import is about vampires, but it’s also a coming of age drama about the friendship between an awkward 12-year-old boy named Oskar and a vampire girl who also appears to be 12 (but, as she says, has been so for a very long time.)

It is, in fact a horror film, one of the spookiest and best to come out in many years. Just because it’s ambitious enough to be about more than scares does not remove it from the genre which, at its best, can be just as rich as any other type of film. Carrie was also coming of Age story, The Shining about a family falling apart and Dawn of the Dead was a political allegory about consumerism in the Reagan era. Let the Right One In is about loneliness.

Its visual style is dark (set in the frigid Swedish winter), but the realistic tone begs the question, what would it actually be like if vampires existed in our world? We learn about the “young” vampire, Eli, at about the same rate as Oskar does and, despite her dietary needs, we like her. It does establish very clearly, however, that it worse to be a vampire than a vampire’s victim.

Because we are so involved in their relationship, when scenes of horror do arrive they are incredibly unsettling. One sequence, taking place in a school swimming pool presents its violence in such an unique way that I was spellbound. Even more impressive than any overt terror, is a very subtle plot thread that could easily be missed, but, if you think about it, makes even the more innocent moments scarier than most horror films would dare to be.

With my #2 choice having already been seen by just about everyone and my #1 pick just as likely to be hated as loved, Let the Right One In is the 2008 film I most strongly urge my fellow film buffs to seek out.


2) The Dark Knight (SPOILER WARNING)

Most of what’s great about The Dark Knight is obvious. It’s a superior example of its genre. The action, suspense, special effects and pacing make it not just one of the best superhero movies ever made (joining the first Superman and Spider-Man 2 in that exclusive club), but one of the great thrillers in the tradition of Se7en.

Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker has been justifiably lauded as one of cinema’s most chilling villains. The actor’s untimely death has focused much of the discussion of the film around this performance, but it would not have been as effective without the quality that surrounded every aspect of the production. Credit must also be given to Batman Begins for so thoroughly exploring the title character that the sequel was able to seamlessly move forward onto fresh territory.

It’s this fresh territory that distinguishes The Dark Knight from even the better popcorn thrillers. Very serious political and social themes are delved into under the cover of entertainment. The character of The Joker himself is as different from traditional movie villains as the current terrorist threat is from Nazis or Cold War enemies. The Joker has no rational goal and values nothing, not even his own life. He kills for an anarchist ideology that knows know rational motivation.

Faced with the threat of pure chaos, it’s fascinating to see how the good guys respond. In fact, with one exception, every character from Batman himself to idealistic prosecutor Harvey Dent to Commissioner Gordon, Lucius Fox, Alfred the butler and boatloads of Gotham citizens end up compromising their own integrity in facing The Joker. Most provoking is Harvey Dent’s gruesome transformation into Two-Face and the resulting idea that true justice is so meaningless that it may as well be left to the toss of a coin.

In the wake of the Iraq War, many films have come out questioning U.S. foreign policy and how we respond to the terror threat. They have tended to be dogmatic and none have been successful. What Christopher and Jonathan Nolen have done right is to pose these important questions without providing pat answers. That, and by remembering their primary objective was to make a great and entertaining movie. Mission Accomplished.


1) Synecdoche, New York

I strongly believe that Charlie Kaufman is the most daring, original and creative screenwriter currently making films. If you’ve seen Being John Malkovich, Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you already know that his high concepts are mind benders leading to unpredictable places. Knowing this will not prepare you for Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman’s directorial debut and a work of mad genius. Charlie Kaufman without a net.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays a neurotic theater director, who, if you can’t guess is based on the real Charlie Kaufman at the beginning of the film, you will surely know by the end. His family is falling apart and he suffers from real and imagined illness. His personal life is a mess, but his work is so successful that he is given a massive grant to produce his masterpiece. His new project will be nothing short of a theatrical replication of his own life, along with everyone he knows and the city in which he lives.

At about the point where Hoffman’s secretary moves into a perpetually burning house, the movie stops making any rational sense and proceeds till its conclusion with dream logic that will either enthrall or alienate you. I can’t imagine one feeling neutral about this film. It’s a love it or hate it proposition. I actually did start to dislike it at certain points only to discover some of what I love most about the film days after the screening.

I’m actually not a big fan of surrealism and have a hard time with some acclaimed directors of the style like Fellini and Bunuel. The difference with Kaufman is, even as the story and images become more surreal, he keeps us grounded by never severing our empathy with the protagonist. Of course, that’s probably because he is dealing with the universal subject of the fear of death and, as in Adaptation, he has made himself his own protagonist. As in that earlier film, the image of a snake eating its own tail applies here as characters are doubled and doubled again until finally they become individuals.

Synecdoche, New York is a film to be engaged and challenged by. To be a passive viewer would be missing the purpose because this is a film as much about the audience as about its characters. It will not provide the missing puzzle pieces. That’s my job and yours. I felt rewarded with a deeper understanding of some very human themes (and an amazing filmgoing experience.) What you get out of it will depend on what you bring into it.

MYSTERY TRAIN by Greil Marcus (book review)

Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music
by Greil Marcus
1975


Greil Marcus’ Mystery Train is the closest thing to literature that I’ve ever experienced reading rock criticism. That may be because it’s also the closest to fiction. Defiantly subjective, Marcus assumes his readers are already familiar with his subjects and dives right into his primary thesis, that rock music is a lens by which we can understand American culture as a whole and vice versa.

He divides his subjects into “ancestors” and “inheritors,” the former being legendary bluesman, Robert Johnson and a relatively obscure novelty folk singer named Harmonica Frank. The latter are The Band, Sly & the Family Stone, Randy Newman and, in the longest and most interestingly named piece (Presliad), Elvis Presley.

Marcus’ love of these artists is palpable in every sentence of Mystery Train. This passage discussing Robert Johnson’s song, “Stones in My Passway” demonstrates an ability to elevate his own listening experience to epic level:

“The song is enormous. I cannot put it any other way. The image of the words is subsumed into Johnson’s singing, his guitar, into the eerie, inevitable loudness of the song. The music has its claims to make: no matter how low you set the volume, the music creeps up louder, demanding, and the only way to quiet it is to shut it off.”

While having great admiration for Robert Johnson as the most vital of the early bluesmen who set the stage for rock n roll, I was not affected by “Stones in My Passway” as Marcus was, but his eloquence in making his case renders agreement or disagreement irrelevant. I believe him when he claims to have spent many months listening to nothing but Robert Johnson (whose recorded catalogue includes only about 30 songs.)

I also believe him when he claims that Johnson’s songs were musically structured in such a way that, had he used a full band and amplified sound, rock music, as we know it, would have been invented in the 1930’s. Of course, Johnson’s mythical selling of his soul to the devil is the stuff of legend that Marcus thrives upon throughout the book. What’s most affecting about the Johnson chapter is his observation that the blues is such a purely American art form because it’s the first to embrace the American dream and then demonstrate the tragic results when it does not come true.

Nowhere is Marcus’ free association taken to such an extreme as in his chapter on Sly and the Family Stone. He actually only wants to talk about one of Sly’s albums, There’s a Riot Goin’ On. Earlier releases by the group were feel good late sixties funk, but Riot was a sullen and depressing album, purposefully distant and cold. It was the sixties ending before our ears, with brotherhood replaced by racial divisions and drug induced highs inevitably leading to dark withdrawals.

From this album Marcus riffs, at length, about how Riot was really under the influence of an African-American murder ballad, literally covered hundreds of times, called “Stagger Lee.” The song differs slightly in all its many iterations, but is basically the story of a badass gambler who kills a man for stealing his hat and usually gets away with it. Loosely based on an actual incident, Stagger Lee became the black equivalent of Jesse James and the Western outlaw legends.

Marcus uses this song as a general umbrella for a more aggressive stance taken by many black artists in the seventies. It was the Stagger Lee influence that led The Temptations, for instance, from the Motown fun of the mid-sixties to a song as bleak as “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” Stagger Lee was also the father of blaxploitation movie anti-heroes like Superfly. It’s an impressive feet of the book that an analysis of Sly and the Family Stone culminates with a detailed look at the obscure (but worth a rental) violent Blaxploitation police thriller, Across 110th Street.

His take on The Band also relies on symbolism, but of an even less tangible kind. Their first two albums, Music From Big Pink and The Band are widely hailed as masterpieces of Americana. If they are concept albums, it is not readily apparent, but Marcus finds all kinds of fascinating connections. If the American Dream seems unattainable in the African-American experience (remember, this was written in 1975), for The Band it is a possibility, but first must be defined, or in some cases even desired.

Take this passage from Big Pink’s most well known song “The Weight”:

“I picked up my bag, I went looking for a place to hide
Then I saw Carmen and the devil, walking side by side
I said, hey Carmen, come on, let’s go downtown
She said, I gotta go, but my friend can stick around”

There’s more to be noted about these lyrics than there’s space for here, but what’s most fascinating to me, is how Marcus contrasts the devil imagery in “The Weight” with Robert Johnson’s legend and songs like “Me and the Devil Blues.” For The Band, the association is more nebulous, while Johnson’s spelled doom.

The Band, by the time of their self titled second album, was able to see America from a variety of perspectives, with voices ranging from the farmer of “King Harvest” to the Civil War rebel of “The Night They Drove old Dixie Down.” Randy Newman, on the other hand, also looked at this American landscape, but through much darker glasses.

Newman, who would cast himself as the devil in his version of Faust, writes with absolutely wicked humor. Marcus compares him, not to other musicians, but to pulp crime novelist, Raymond Chandler. The Newman song most discussed is “Sail Away,” which is melodically beautiful, but tells its story from the point of view of a slave trader in Africa, selling the idea that the natives would be happier as slaves in the colonies. It’s a mark of Newman’s craft that, despite his narrators being the most unpleasant sorts, his songs are so rife with irony that we never confuse his storytelling with approval.

Shifting gears, Marcus ends with Elvis Presley. By this time in the book, it’s no surprise when Presley is described as a combination of Huckleberry Fin and Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab. More biographical than the rest of the pieces, Presliad traces Elvis from the ambitious poor boy to visionary artist to (in his opinion) Vegas hack. Marcus states:

“Beside Elvis, the other heroes of this book seem a little small time. If they define different versions of America, Presley’s career almost has the scope to take America in.”

Of course, Elvis doesn’t need Greil Marcus to tout his legend. That job’s been done. Instead, Marcus looks at his rockabilly roots, particularly those early sessions at Sun Studios. He cites “Good Rockin’ Tonight” as a defining example of the previously unmatched energy that would define rock ‘n’ roll. The unresolved tension of “Mystery Train” and “Hound Dog’s” sexual danger are also considered indispensable turning points.

Then, as the fifties ended, he went into the army and spent most of the next decade making interchangeable and forgettable movies. In 1968, Elvis launched a televised “Comeback Special” that marked the first time since he became The King” that he had something to prove. Marcus believes that, with the song “One Night,” Elvis captured the essence of his greatness and marked the high point of his career.

Mystery Train ends with a discography. Actually, to call it a discography is a bit of an understatement as it takes up a good third of the book. Updated to 1997, the discography not only details the recorded works of the artists featured, but also other musicians who influenced or were influenced by them. Anecdotes abound and, frankly, Marcus just goes off about whatever he wants to. He’s earned that right.

Mystery Train is a sprawling book that perfectly matches the sprawling nature of its subject, and that can apply to both rock ‘n’ roll and America.