A Bullseye from the Archers

by Brandon Colvin

Of all the greatest “color” films – those cinematographically-immaculate demonstrations of chromatic control – one stands above the rest in its mastery of expressive hues. Flawlessly photographed and delicately designed, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1946) is a startling demonstration of colorfully cohesive narration and tone, from its costuming to its sets to its breathtaking matte effects. Utilizing a bold palette that does not shy away from geographical grandeur or ethereal atmospherics, The Archers’ film – their best, along with The Red Shoes (1948) – is undeniably gorgeous from first frame to last. Aided by the unparalleled craftsmanship of their frequent Pinewood Studios collaborators – legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff and influential production designer Alfred Junge (both of whom justly won Oscars for their work on Black Narcissus) – Powell and Pressburger’s film boasts stunning visuals, but is not merely a work of superficial spectacle; the film’s psychologically dense narrative reflects Hitchcockian levels of tension and complexity, perhaps even influencing the subsequent work of the Master of Suspense himself, while adhering to a melodramatic mode reminiscent of Douglas Sirk at his most feverishly expressionistic.


Closely adapted by Powell and Pressburger from Rumer Godden’s best-selling 1939 novel of the same name, Black Narcissus takes place in Godden’s signature setting: British-occupied India, specifically, the Himalayan region near Darjeeling, where a group of Anglican nuns naively seeks to endow the locals with a Westernized school and hospital. Led by the young Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr, at her best), a handful of nuns, including the maniacally unstable Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron), initiates the project, taking the Young General (Sabu), a regional aristocrat, under their collective wing. Cultural conflicts quickly create strife between the nuns and the locals, however, whose religious ideal is embodied by the stoic mysticism of a silent holy man (the Young General’s uncle) rather than the intrusive ethnocentrism of the Anglicans.

Further complicating matters, Sister Clodagh becomes oddly attracted to the generally repulsive Mr. Dean (David Farrar), an alcoholic atheist groundskeeper with lascivious intent, causing her to confront her repressed romantic inclinations, particularly in the form of flashbacks (which feature Kerr at her most ravishing) to the failed courtship that forced her into the nunnery. Not only does this sensual temptation lurk like a specter in the shadowy, gothic corridors of their Himalayan convent, it seems to demonically possess the disturbed Sister Ruth, plunging her into the throes of psychotically violent jealousy while seeking to claim Mr. Dean for herself. Black Narcissus becomes not only a critical commentary on imperialist arrogance, but also a dreamlike, expressionistic narrative of the “return of the repressed” and the overpowering sexual subconscious – an untamable desire, impervious even to the rigorous discipline of divine duty. It is no surprise, then, that Powell declared Black Narcissus the most erotic film The Archers ever made.


The film’s scintillating sensuality is certainly not limited to its thematic content. Black Narcissus’ approach to color and design is rooted in a resolutely maximalist style, externalizing and celebrating the unbridled sensory extravagance buried within its outwardly ascetic characters. The painterly detail and lush imagery displayed in Cardiff and Junge’s work, approached only by that of Antonioni’s The Red Desert (1964) or Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits (1965) or Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1965), is astonishing and predates the comparable efforts of those 60s masterpieces by two decades – eons in terms of film technology and technique. Inspired by the vibrant paintings of Vermeer, Cardiff and Junge’s palette is full of stark whites and grays, deep blues and greens, purple and orange-tinted lighting, and kaleidoscopically-brilliant traditional Indian garments and interiors. Working in Technicolor, but without ‘Scope, Cardiff’s cinematography beautifully captures Junge’s glass mattes and blown-up, pastel-chalked landscape paintings to depict an uncanny studio-built sense of Himalayan majesty.

The artificiality of Black Narcissus’ world accentuates the surreal, psychosexual interiority explored throughout the narrative, appropriating landscape and architecture by transforming them into symbolist playgrounds. The matte mountains are crafted to evoke the sublime spiritual abyss which Sisters Clodagh and Ruth teeter over, both figuratively and, later, literally, in a climactic scene bearing a remarkable resemblance to the conclusion of Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). An eerily-lit artificial wood, glazed in ghastly orange, attains metaphorical significance when the manic Sister Ruth, her face rouged and eyes wild, stumbles through it en route to Mr. Dean’s abode, wandering through the dark forest of her own mind. Powell and Pressburger are at their most expressionistic in Black Narcissus, employing emotionally-charged artifice without the diegetic mediation of the stage, which distances the “real” from the artificial in The Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffmann (1951). In Black Narcissus, the two are inseparably fused – reality and artificiality interlocked in a crisp, vibrant cinematic environment, dripping with color and oozing the unreal in a way analogous to Sirk’s Magnificent Obsession (1954) and All That Heaven Allows (1955).

It is with the latter film’s concluding frames that the final shot of Black Narcissus shares a certain kinship. In Sirk’s film, the closing image is of a lone deer, standing on a studio-crafted patch of forest beyond a blue-tinted, frosted window as huge imitation snowflakes float down to the falsely snowy ground. The image is a final self-reflexive suggestion of All That Heaven Allows’ constructed nature, its recognition of its own falseness, a fact underscored by the isolated actuality of the deer, surrounded by fakery and obvious unreality. In the last shot of Black Narcissus, this scheme is inverted, but a similar effect is achieved. As Sister Clodagh and the defeated nuns somberly flee their Himalayan environs astride miniature horses, studio rain begins to trickle, dropping on leaves in one of the only non-studio locations in the film before building to a fake downpour, blurring and hazing the nuns’ retreat through the real surroundings. The real and the artificial are merged in the film’s final moments, the sheets of false rain representing the subsuming of the real under the power of the film’s design and artifice, its expressionistic bombast flourishing, being absorbed into every celluloid particle like the wash of rain. Indeed, it is impossible for the viewer of Powell, Pressburger, Cardiff, and Junge’s masterwork to avoid succumbing to the same incredible spectacle of color and craft, a visual smorgasbord of Technicolor, mattes, and shadows as striking today as it must have been over 60 years ago.


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Burning Yourself Down

by James Hansen

Given the recent events in Texas, Breck Eisner’s The Crazies initially seems full of restrained timeliness. Something is wrong in Ogden Marsh. The small-town has been filled with something causing several residents to act strangely. A man saunters onto a local baseball field during a game with a loaded shotgun. Another locks his wife and child in a closet before lighting his house on fire. Local law enforcement – notably the sheriff, David, and his deputy, Russell – scrambles for answers as the town begins to implode home by home. Ah yes, small town America is as crazy as ever. And what could be the cause? This would-be timeliness vanishes pretty quickly with a sloppy narrative and even messier director. Unfortunately, The Crazies follows the fate of the town and burns itself down entirely too quickly.


This premise, slightly reworked from George Romero’s 1973 film of the same name, fits the bill for standard horror fare, yet Eisner and his production team instill in the opening sequences a taught atmosphere creepily mimicking the quickly dissolving population. The first 20 minutes are a wonderful balance of hard and soft light, noise and stirring silence, and craft a dangerous aura that one can only hope is sustained throughout. But just as the narrative’s zombie-fied residents and baffled authority set up a strong base for the “small-town on the brink of nothingness” dilemma, Eisner and screenwriters Scott Kosar and Ray Wright pull the rug out from under their own first-act momentum by abandoning Ogden Marsh and heading for larger power struggles between the individual and the government, as well as internal debate, that only feels confused and half-hearted. After about an hour, it becomes impossible not to ask, “Where in the hell did the movie go?”

The Crazies shifts gears moving away from the town and into a government-run facility before our sheriff and deputy break out, wander around, go back to the government-run facility, and then walk around some more. Losing interest in the town, The Crazies tacks on story after story of David, Russell, and Co. trying to run away from...something...and defeat the...zombies?... government?... a disease?...their self worth? Trouble of it is, there is never a sense of what the characters are trying to do as they cycle around looking for “answers” amidst a narrative that never posed any questions. Instead, the characters just wander, as does the film, without the faintest purpose ultimately recalling shoddy Romero fare that has been placed in a broken blender and liquified with half-assed versions of The Road and Gerry.


Perhaps too indebted to Romero or not bold enough to move away from Romero’s obsession with trapping characters in buildings and having them escape with large vehicles (hard to know how much influence Romero had with an executive producer), The Crazies screenplay traps itself in a narratological no-man’s land. Of course, Romero, at his best, knows how to work through what he has created. The same cannot be said for Eisner and his team. After Ogden Marsh becomes totally incidental, maybe unintentionally, The Crazies pulls out a small bag of tricks to keep it moving (warning: secondary characters introduced an hour into a horror movie have no chance for survival) but it just becomes canned, flat, and crazzzy boring. After it gets lost, there is no finding its way back. In destroying its own ability to reflect on Ogden Marsh in a movie distinctly about small-town mania and destruction (you can really tell how misunderstood the material is with the inclusion of an abysmal coda) The Crazies locks itself in a closet and lights its house on fire. But if we know the house is empty, then why bother watching?

C
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Wishing and Dreaming

by Samuel B. Prime

“What I used to able to pass off as a bad summer could now potentially turn into a bad life.”

In our formative years, we define ourselves with temporary labels called our major and minor fields of study. We give ourselves over to the insular community common to college life; we fit in and find our place, but before we know it, it’s over. Each of us is thrust out into the white, rushing waters of adult responsibility, forced to fit a new mold – of growing, of aging, of moving on in stages all the while trying to keep our heads above the water. Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming (1995) is the story of a group of inseparable friends (Grover, Max, Otis, and Skippy) who would rather drown in the throes of their post-graduation stasis and indecision than move on to real life. In the endlessly quotable, equally hilarious and tragic hour-and-a-half that follows, Baumbach illustrates a post-graduate worst-case-scenario filled with failed plans, delayed impulsiveness, and a brand of nostalgia which for the viewer becomes the film’s most endearing, relatable quality.


Kicking and Screaming begins on the evening of college graduation, the type of evening where Murphy’s Law rules the night, lurking around every corner and at every bend – especially for the film’s protagonist, Grover (Josh Hamilton), it is an evening of unpleasant surprises. Not five minutes into the film, Grover finds his girlfriend Jane (Olivia d’Abo), whom he met in his senior year, has not only quit drinking and smoking (the latter a habit he picked up from her), but that their mutual plans to move to New York to make their break as budding fiction writers have been dashed by her sudden change of heart to accept a writing fellowship in Prague, in the Czech Republic.

All that can go wrong will go wrong. And this first major inciting incident with Jane sets the dour tone of the narrative’s progression, a downward spiral in concentric circles of malaise, interspersed with the absent-minded wishing and dreaming of people with too much time on their hands and frankly too little to do with it. But it’s not entirely a down note of a film, despite the unnerving sense that its characters are going nowhere and taking forever to get there. Despite their lack of any connection to the real world, the days lived from moment to moment are remarkable on account of the mass of misdirected youthful energy put towards sleeping with Freshmen and devoutly watching detergent commercials to see if they get the stain out.

Each character deals differently with their inert lifestyle – Grover repeatedly ignores answering machine messages from Jane, while she desperately tries to correct her mistake by reconnecting across oceans; Max (Chris Eigeman) does crossword puzzles relentlessly and dates younger women; Otis (Carlos Jacott) chickens out on his grad school plans, deferring so he can move back in with his mom and work at the local video store; and Skippy (Jason Wiles) wades in the regrets of four years wasted in college and so re-enrolls after graduation in another failed attempt to make up for lost time.

Each character comes replete with his own set of quirks, further amplified by Baumbach’s memorable dialogue. Kicking and Screaming is, by all accounts, the most quotable film of the 20th Century. Baumbach succeeds in capturing the witticisms of everyday collegiate life in a concrete form, the phrases overheard and the quips made by the wayside, all of which form the narrative stasis of the film. While most are funny in ways that resonate with the viewer, their only purpose seems to be for the creation of an instant nostalgia both for the characters and for the audience. In the film’s most self-conscious moment, over beers with his buddies at the local hangout, The Penguin, Max admits, “I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I'm reminiscing this right now. I can't go to the bar because I've already looked back on it in my memory... and I didn't have a good time.”


It is this characteristic memory and nostalgia that renders Baumbach’s semi-cautionary tale of post-graduation planning gone awry so inexplicably endearing. We, like Max, begin to reminisce moments that have not even happened, we attempt to preserve Baumbach’s narrative in our minds by recalling its many quotes precisely because the portrait of these directionless young men is so open, so uncompromisingly revealed. But memory and nostalgia, while they serve an important emotional purpose, serve in this story to work against the present by keeping its characters stuck in the past.

Grover’s story being the primary, we see the world most often through his eyes. we experience the past and present through the framing device of Jane’s calls from Prague, at first ignored by Grover, and only acknowledged once it becomes too late. A message she leaves for him is revealed in incomplete stages, and only near the film’s end is it clear that the heart of her message is that she misses him.

Grover spends his time remembering Jane in flashbacks, and meanwhile his other friends are busy concerning themselves with the future instead of the past. Max applies for a job in his former school’s Philosophy department, Otis leaves for graduate school and Skippy gets so fed up with the stasis of the environment, he has a nervous breakdown and disappears. Grover had his chance to seize the moment, to speak up and admit how much he likewise misses Jane – but for Grover that moment has passed. Jane doesn’t call any longer, and he is left alone, wishing and dreaming for recently bygone days.

The film’s final moments, contrarily, are its most beautiful and heart wrenching. Appropriately, it comes both in the form of a memory and of a wish, wherein Grover lets his thoughts take him back to a memory of Jane, a construction of what is an impossible future for the both of them, but for Grover just as much a wish in the present as the past.

Grover: Ok, the way I see it, if we were an old couple, dated for years, graduated, away from all these scholastic complications, and I reached over and kissed you, you wouldn't say a word, you'd be delighted, probably, but if I was to do that now it'd be quite forward, and if I did it the first time we ever met you probably would hit me.
Jane: What do you mean?
Grover: I just wish we were an old couple so I could do that.

Kicking and Screaming is a testament to a timeless generation, to any who face the oncoming challenge of entering the “real world” following college graduation. It is the harrowed poetic illustration of the tendency of youth to resist authority and the becoming of something they cannot satisfactorily be proud of. Likewise, it is the making of important choices and the realization of the consequences that follow, whether positive or negative. In one’s formative years, there are the trivial and there are those people and things that define who you are and who you want to be in the future. Baumbach warns us not to let these people pass us by – it’s a long life, but the opportunities that it affords us are often as temporary, if not more so, as a four-year safety net called college.
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Blinded by the Light

by James Hansen

Selected as the Opening Night Film for MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight 2010 (running now through March 3), David Christensen’s The Mirror focuses on an interesting story, presents it pleasantly, yet misses a larger opportunity to really illuminate various aspects of a strange town that it puts on display. In the mountains of Northwest Italy, Christensen finds a small village called Viganella, which from November to February, due to the location of the surrounding peaks, gets no direct sunlight in town. The eccentric mayor, along with a local architect, decides to build a giant mirror and install it in a specific place on the mountains so it reflects sunlight into the village square.

The story of the mirror is cute enough, but The Mirror finds its life in the town’s residents. The mayor, Pierfranco Midali, is fascinating to watch as he plans and promotes the arrival of mirror. Basking in this small bit of glory which his town has never seen before (media come from all over – even Al Jazeera, assuring him that they aren’t terrorists), Pierfranco gives The Mirror an energetic presence. A local priest compares the mirror to God’s gift of light. Other locals don’t see what the big deal is, but are happy enough to help. Christensen’s camera captures the beauty of Viganella’s landscape and goes from home to home finding an equally magnificent group of people.

Unfortunately, when The Mirror is over, it seems as if the townspeople ultimately get a short shrift. Nearly all the interviews focus on the mirror and what they think it means for the town. Though this central concept is interesting enough, The Mirror grows tiresome after 85 minutes of local musicians and mirror-talk. (Also not helping at all is an embarrassing, tacked-on reflexive conclusion.) As most of the town’s residents see the mirror as a ploy or a social experiment, The Mirror bites into the visitor ideology that it simultaneously tries to break from. Seen as a small episode in a larger project, Viganella’s mirror could be a quirky trait from this unexplored part of the world. The Mirror, however, never wanders far enough from its basic premise to fully explore other elements of Viganella. In missing this opportunity, it feels like a long news piece on a weird little town. At times, you can feel The Mirror trying to break from this mode of address, but it always comes back to the mirror rather than to Viganella.

The Mirror was apparently shot over the course of a year, so it’s even more strange that there wouldn’t be footage investigating larger elements of the town, the intimate cross-cultural founders, or the actual lives of the people. With a great opportunity like this, Christensen’s simplicity backfires. It’s a fun vacation/adventure story, sure, but why not look a little deeper next time?

C+
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Cusp of Hilarity

by Brandon Colvin

Saturday Night Live, that bastion of incisive film criticism, featured a sketch this week in which Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness – a condensed remake of the former Bond director’s own 1985 BBC miniseries – was described as a combination of elements from other horrible Mel Gibson vehicles: Ransom (1996), Conspiracy Theory (1997), and Payback (1999). What’s shocking is how humorously accurate the observation is. Mel loses child. Mel gets obsessed with harebrained political intrigue. Mel goes on a violent rampage. That’s the film. As SNL noted, it’s basically a compilation of scenes from other half-assed Gibson thrillers sloppily pasted together with a nice glob of whiz-bang. The film, which verges on farce, amounts to a jumble of worn-out plot devices, tritely philosophical one-liners, and ridiculous anti-corporate paranoia manifested in a government-sponsored nuclear research company that surreptitiously makes bombs for – gasp! – Middle Eastern terrorists. Seriously? Gibson’s weathered, incessantly snarling mug suggests so. Like SNL, I beg to differ.


As mourning/frantic/self-loathing homicide detective Thomas Craven, Gibson’s strained, pseudo-Bostonian bark amounts to little more than a hyperbolic hamfest of grunts, growls, and grumblings, suggesting that the actor may have a future in some sort of post-post-modern comedy shtick (I’m looking at you, Lorne Michaels). His performance presents an unintentional parody of the revenge-driven macho-maniacal hardass, one that repeatedly pushes the film to the point of hysterics, even when tempered by the typically icy demeanor of Danny Huston as the villainous Jack Bennett, proprietor of nukes and wily murderer of whistle-blowing activists – including Craven’s daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic). Tossed into the mix, Ray Winstone, whose talent is sadly squandered, does an adequate job of portraying Captain Jedburgh, an enigmatic British agent with unstable loyalties and a terminal illness who sips Scotch and gets introspective while problematizing Craven’s quest, conveniently popping up and uttering cryptic clues regarding Emma’s death like a hard-boiled whack-a-mole.

The convoluted plot unfolds predictably, replete with all sorts of stammering minor characters informing Craven that he’s only seen the tip of the iceberg, that the whole thing goes deeper than he can imagine, that he’s messing with the wrong folks. Craven does not heed their warnings. He continues bursting through doors, tampering with evidence, and getting involved in numerous car accidents depicted with an overabundance of tacky smash cuts. What happened to the Martin Campbell of Casino Royale (2006)? How did he go from directing one of the most crisply and vigorously structured thrillers of the past decade to creating one of the laziest, most hackneyed examples of the action aesthetic in years? Beats me. I’ll chalk it up to Gibson’s soul-sucking aura of boring conventionality haunting the film, just as the maudlin memories of his character’s dead daughter plague the shoddy narrative.


Such pedestrian paranoid-thriller clichés would be somewhat forgivable if not for Edge of Darkness’ complete fumbling of every possible instance of emotional intensity, including the aforementioned moments of sentimental drivel in which Craven recalls/imagines/hallucinates Emma. In addition to a few snippets of mysteriously non-diegetic home videos depicting a pint-sized Emma frolicking on a beach, the film features her disembodied voice muttering encouraging words to the despondent Craven – even having full conversations with him in which he all-too-obviously verbalizes his internal struggles – as well as younger versions of her inconsistently inserted into Craven’s surroundings, only to be revealed as his fleeting subjective projections in annoyingly routine reverse-shots. It’s hard to conceive of a film trying any harder to jerk a tear yet failing so miserably. Craven’s memories come off as awkward grasps at resonance that fall into eye-rolling banality, denying any investment in the character’s pain, a problem made infinitely worse by Gibson’s inability to appear sincere in between launching spittle and fists at sneering opponents.

But Edge of Darkness is not all bad; it has one great shot and one interesting character. The shot is the first of the film – a wide shot of a picturesque lake at night, moonlit and placid, doused in syrupy shadows. After a few atmospheric seconds of cricket chirps and gently sloshing water, a shape slowly emerges from the water, lumpy and amorphous. Suddenly, two more similar shapes float to the surface. A few glimpses of protruding hands and heads suggest the shapes are formerly submerged corpses, announcing themselves to the dim scenery. The film’s title appears in the center of the frame. Then the rest of the film starts and the provocative noir opening, full of understatement and patience, sinks into cornball slapdashery.


The subtle, evocative movie suggested by Edge of Darkness’ first frames would undoubtedly sideline Craven in favor of Winstone’s Capt. Jedburgh, the only character with psychological depth, a moral trajectory, or any memorable qualities. Jedburgh is conflicted, ambiguous, dangerous, and dying – all of which is glossed over, making him merely a useful cog in the film’s dues-ex-machinery. That such a promising character is relegated to serving Mel Gibson scenery to gnaw on is perhaps the worst of the film’s many failures. However, this is The Mel Gibson Show, as every bit of the film’s marketing suggests. Unfortunately, as a chunk of awkward chuckles and did-that-just-happen buffoonery Edge of Darkness is far inferior to the more cinematically-astute SNL; forget about a live studio audience, there’s not even a laugh track.

F
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Hidden Horrors and Assured Ambiguity

by Brandon Colvin

Michael Haneke’s cinema is one of elision and obfuscation. From The Seventh Continent (1989) to Caché (2005), the Austrian auteur’s oeuvre hinges, formally and narratively, upon withheld information: off-screen occurrences, inscrutable interiorities, fragmented framings, cryptic (in)conclusions. Haneke has frequently remarked that his style – owing much to work of Bresson and Tarkovsky – is intended to activate the viewer, to burden her with interpretive responsibility, thereby inciting creative participation. Crucial gaps are left unfilled. Cracks are allowed to widen, opening up the narrative. Cinematic space and time are made malleable in their uncertainty – a result of ambiguous implication and deliberate deception. Haneke’s newest film, The White Ribbon, a beautifully crafted, black-and-white, Palm d’Or-winning period piece, is a continuation of the director’s interest in oblique storytelling and is as visually/aurally precise, emotionally intriguing, and interpretively demanding as his best films, presenting the viewer with a moral and epistemological puzzle of devastating intensity.


Set in a provincial north-German village of Eichwald during the months preceding the onset of World War I, The White Ribbon details the mysterious and violent deterioration of a community terrorized by what might be best described as the wrath of oppression. Narrated as the dubiously remembered experiences of a young schoolteacher (Christian Friedel), the film is populated with despicably self-righteous, callous control mongers and their justifiably reactionary victims – not the least of which are their own psychologically and physically abused children, whose collective sense of justice has been disturbingly deranged. Whether suffering the totalitarian indulgences of the local pastor (Burghart Klaußner), the resident baron (Ulrich Tukur), or the town doctor (Rainer Bock), the villagers are subject to constant exploitation, a circumstance that grows even more horrifying once a series of brutal, seemingly connected, incidents befalls the community, culminating, suggestively, just as the news of Archduke Ferdinand’s infamous assassination reaches Eichwald. In trademark fashion, Haneke leaves the viewer with many more questions than answers regarding the various mutilations, deaths and defilements that arrive in bursts of agonized ferocity throughout The White Ribbon. Though clues abound, the culprit(s) are never specified. Motivations are never made explicit. Events are frequently left unresolved. The heart of the matter is tactfully skated around, preserving its dark complexity while providing an ominous outline for the viewer to fill in.

Of course, Haneke is not alone in creating his note-for-note, pitch-perfect symphony of cruelty. The ensemble cast never misses a beat, maintaining a consistently subtle performance style throughout – never showy, always measured – imparting an appropriate sense of communal as well as individual existence to the characters by limiting the ability of a handful to charismatically dominate the narrative. As a result, the story is effectively forged as the confluence of a multitude of fragmented perspectives (regardless of the fact that the entire film is ostensibly the memory of the schoolteacher). Most impressive are the many child actors in The White Ribbon, all of whom handle Haneke’s emotionally challenging material with startling maturity and heartbreaking depth; Haneke and his casting directors (Simone Bär, Carmen Loley, Markus Schleinzer) certainly deserve recognition for the remarkable acquisition of such capable adolescent performers, young actors who certainly make the film come alive.


The most lauded of Haneke’s collaborators on The White Ribbon – and definitely on par with the uniformly excellent cast – are production designer Christoph Kanter and cinematographer Christian Berger, both of whom contribute to the film’s impeccable visuals. Though Haneke creates shot-by-shot storyboards for all of his films, determining the vast majority of their appearance before ever using a bit of celluloid, the deft execution of his plans by Kanter and Berger (aided by certain digital effects) is masterful.

Intricate and impressive, Kanter’s work convincingly captures the film’s 1914 atmosphere without flashily emphasizing period detail, allowing the characters to exist in a lived-in environment, one that appears as if the filmmakers had somehow stumbled upon a hermetically isolated, unchanged locale, existing on a mythic plane of parable and preserved past. Berger’s efforts in actualizing Haneke’s compositions and photographing Kanter’s production design are perhaps the best in any film this year, replete with carefully obscured framings, fluid movements, and gorgeous lighting. Two of Berger’s shots have haunted me for months: the first, a stationary composition, depicts a peasant farmer viewing the corpse of his deceased wife, partially concealed by a foreground wall and held in an aura of light defused by a hanging curtain; the second, a complex steadicam shot that gracefully reveals the nature of the same peasant farmer’s shocking demise before gliding away to find his tragically unaware son nearby. Both shots are precisely lit and paced and both pack an indelible emotional wallop achieved through understatement and implication – two of Haneke’s most effective narrative tools.


Just as astonishing as The White Ribbon’s visuals, however, is its sound design, crafted by Haneke along with sound editor Vincent Guillon and Haneke’s frequent sound mixer Guillaume Sciama. As in many of his previous works, Haneke is prone to keeping many moments off-screen, seducing the viewer’s imagination and allowing representational ambiguity to flourish as a series of sonic intimations replaces visual certainty. With this narrative mode in place, Guillon and Sciama’s contributions become absolutely critical to the success of numerous scenes, providing an evocative soundtrack that intersects and complicates visual information rather than merely accompanying it. The film’s aural environment expands the narrative beyond the frame, initiating a dual perception of the seen and heard, each informing the other in striking ways. A painful scene depicting the pastor’s abuse of his young children exemplifies this technique. The camera lingers outside the room where the lashings occur, yet the sounds of the beatings make the remote spatial area as palpable as the pictured hall, doubling the simultaneous space of the scene and sparking an imaginative curiosity in the viewer, imploring her to mentally construct the unseen, yet heard, components of The White Ribbon’s cinematic world, those lying beyond the frame’s edge. Haneke’s stated aims of activating the viewer are fulfilled in such instances of audio-vision, encouraging cooperate creativity from the viewer in completing his narratives while demonstrating absolute technical virtuosity.

Indeed, from script to acting to image to sound, The White Ribbon is a masterpiece, one that recalls the sober works of classic art film directors from Bresson and Tarkovsky to Bergman and Dreyer. Refreshingly, Haneke has made a serious film with serious intentions. No winking. No self-reflexive evasion. No postmodern playfulness. The White Ribbon is as unflinching, sophisticated, gripping piece of cinema – revealing not only a trust in the active viewer, but also a confidence in the ability of a film to be successfully crafted in complete earnest. Some have criticized Haneke as being too “didactic” as a result of his undiluted solemnity but The White Ribbon’s sincerity and gravity strike me as indications of a filmmaker with sustained conviction and moral purpose – traits absent from far too many modern movies. Here’s hoping Haneke never loses his severity; if he does, we will lose something even more devastating: one of cinema’s greatest artists.

A
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Out 1 Film Journal's Best Movies of the 2000s

I'm sure you've all seen Best of the Decade lists, and, yes, this is another one adding to the many you've seen online and elsewhere. We tried to spice things up in a couple of ways. One, by including a wide range of writers who are friends, acquaintances, and all-around excellent critics. Two, by asking each of the writers to submit 13 movies rather than 10. This allows everyone to fit in a couple more titles in impossible difficult to make lists and goes along with a riff in Jacques Rivette;s Out 1 - revolving around Balzac's History of the Thirteen. So, using thirteen lists from thirteen writers submitting their thirteen best movies of the decade, I submit you to the following results! The only stipulation was that each movie in the top 13 had to be included on at least two lists and it wouldn't have mattered points wise regardless. Each individual list contributed can be seen after the break. A special thanks to each contributor!


1. Dogville (Lars Von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/Norway/Finland/U.K./France/Germany/The Netherlands, 2003)


2. INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch, USA/Poland/France, 2006)


3. In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong, 2000)


4. The New World (Terrence Malick, USA, 2005)


5. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Italy/Germany, 2005)


6. Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2002)


7. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, USA/France, 2001)


8. Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr, Hungary, 2000)


9. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)


10. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2007)


11. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/The Netherlands, 2007)


12. Zodiac (David Fincher, USA, 2007)


13. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/France/Italy/Spain, 2008)



Directors of the Decade
1. Michael Haneke
2. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
3. Lucrecia Martel
4. Paul Thomas Anderson
5. David Lynch


Performances of the Decade
1. Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE
2. Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood
3. Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher
4. Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive
5. Tilda Swinton, Julia

Individual Lists

James Hansen

1. Mulholland Drive/INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch, 2001/2006)
2. Dogville (Lars Von Trier, 2003)
3. Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr, 2000)
4. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2007)
5. When It Was Blue (Jennifer Reeves, 2008)
6. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, 2008)
7. Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002)
8. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
9. Spider (David Cronenberg, 2002)
10. Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006)
11. In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
12. The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)
13. There Will Be Blood (PT Anderson, 2007)

Directors:
1. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2. Lucrecia Martel
3. David Lynch
4. Pedro Costa
5. David Cronenberg

Performances:
1. Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive
2. Laura Dern, Inland Empire
3. Maggie Cheung, In The Mood For Love
4. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Antichrist
5. Olivier Gourmet, The Son


Brandon Colvin

1. INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch, 2006)
2. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2008)
3. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2005)
4. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, 2008)
5. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
6. Punch-Drunk Love (PT Anderson, 2002)
7. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
8. Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)
9. Adaptation. (Spike Jonze, 2001)
10. I Heart Huckabees (David O. Russell, 2004)
11. Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005)
12. Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002)
13. Into Great Silence (Philip Gröning, 2005)

Directors:
1. David Lynch
2. Gus Van Sant
3. Michael Haneke
4. Paul Thomas Anderson
5. Steven Soderbergh

Performances:
1. Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE
2. Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford
3. Nicolas Cage, Adaptation.
4. Nicolas Cage, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
5. Steve Carrell, The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Chuck Williamson

1. The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)
2. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)
3. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
4. INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch, 2006)
5. Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2004)
6. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003)
7. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
8. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
9. The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke, 2001)
10. Friday Night (Claire Denis, 2002)
11. The Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (Hong Sang-soo, 2000)
12. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, 2008)
13. I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)

Directors:
1. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2. Michael Haneke
3. Lucretia Martel
4. Tsai Ming-liang
5. Claire Denis

Performances:
1. Laura Dern, Inland Empire
2. Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher
3. Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood
4. Christian Bale, American Psycho
5. Thora Birch, Ghost World

Joseph Bowman

1. Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003)
2. Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
3. Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002)
4. Black Book (Paul Verhoeven, 2007)
5. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
6. Yi yi (Edward Yang, 2000)
7. The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke, 2001)
8. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2005)
9. Late Marriage (Dover Koshashvili, 2001)
10. Wild Side (Sébastien Lifshitz, 2004)
11. Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, 2000)
12. The Intruder (Claire Denis, 2004)
13. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008)

Directors:
1. Olivier Assayas
2. Lucrecia Martel
3. Michael Haneke
4. Claire Denis
5. Gus Van Sant

Performances:
1. Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher
2. Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
3. Tilda Swinton, Julia
4. Laura Dern, Inland Empire
5. Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson

Tony Dayoub

(alphabetical)
25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002)
A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, 2008)
Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Spike Jonze, 2004)
I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell, 2004)
Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir, 2003)
Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)
The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)
There Will Be Blood (PT Anderson, 2007)
The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)

Directors:
-Paul Thomas Anderson (Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood) for allowing the madmen—actors—to run the asylum.
-Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche, New York) for being an auteur before he was a director.
-Michael Mann (Ali, Collateral, Miami Vice, Public Enemies) for mastering the digital camera as he ventures further into "pure" cinema.
-Julian Schnabel (Before Night Falls, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Lou Reed's Berlin) for following his muse, and making lyricism a priority in cinema.
-Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Traffic, the Ocean's Eleven series, Full Frontal, Solaris, Eros (segment: "Equilibrium"), Bubble, The Good German, Che, The Girlfriend Experience, The Informant!) for his overwhelming output, consistent in both quality and innovation.

Performances:
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Benicio Del Toro, Che
Laura Dern, Inland Empire
Mélanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds
Meryl Streep, Doubt

Jeremy Heilman

1. Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)
2. Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr, 2000)
3. The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)
4. Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003)
5. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
6. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
7. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
8. Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000)
9. I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)
10. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)
11. Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)
12. Spider (David Cronenberg, 2002)
13. Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008)

Directors:
1. Paul Thomas Anderson
2. Quentin Tarantino
3. David Cronenberg
4. Lars von Trier
5. Richard Linklater

Performances:
1. Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
2. Nicole Kidman, Dogville
3. Naomi Watts, Mulholland Dr.
4. Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
5. Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher

Nathan Lee

1 My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure (Robert Beavers, 1967-2002)
2 Mulholland Drive/INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch, 2001/2006)
3 In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
4 Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002)
5 Spider (David Cronenberg, 2002)
6 Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2005)
7 Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)
8 In Praise of Love (Jean Luc Godard, 2001)
9 Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)
10 Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)
11 The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)
12 L'intrus (Claire Denis, 2004)
13 Pootie Tang (Louis CK, 2001)

VJ Morton

(alphabetical)
Capturing The Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003)
L’enfant (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2005)
Dogville (Lars Von Trier, 2003)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungui, 2007)
Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005)
Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
La Pianiste (Michael Haneke, 2001)
Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, 2008)
Songs From The Second Floor (Roy Andersson, 2000)
Time Out (Laurent Cantet, 2001)

Jeremy Richey

1. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
3. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)
4. I Heart Huckabees (David O. Russell, 2004)
5. Sex and Lucia (Julio Medem, 2001)
6. Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)
7. Punch Drunk Love (PT Anderson, 2002)
8.21 Grams (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2003)
9. Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003/2004)
10. Vicki Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008)
11. Amelie (Jean Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
12. Auto Focus (Paul Schraeder, 2002)
13. Talk To Her (Pedro Almodovar, 2002)

Nathaniel Rogers

1. Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)
2. Dancer in the Dark (Lars Von Trier, 2000)
3. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
5. Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)
6. In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
7. Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar, 2002)
8. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008)
9. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)
10. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
11. Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
12. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
13. Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003)

Jacob Shoaf

1. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
2. No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)
3. Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)
4. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008)
5. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006)
6. Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)
7. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, 2008)
8. Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005)
9. Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr, 2000)
10. There Will Be Blood (PT Anderson, 2007)
11. Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)
12. Dogville (Lars Von Trier, 2003)
13. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)

Directors:
1. Michael Haneke
2. Guy Maddin
3. Gus Van Sant
4. Carlos Reygadas
5. Lars Von Trier

Performancs:
1. Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE
2. Sean Penn, Milk
3. Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy
4. Audrey Tautou, Amelie
5. Michael Fassbender, Hunger

Michael Sicinski

( ) (Morgan Fisher, U.S., 2003)
Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako, Mali / U.S. / France, 2006)
The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, U.S., 2003)
Dogville (Lars von Trier, Demark / Sweden / Norway / Finland / U.K. / France / Germany / The Netherlands, 2003)
The Heart of the World (Guy Maddin, Canada, 2000)
Irreversible (Gaspar Noé, France, 2002)
Phantoms of Nabua (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand / Germany, 2009)
Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel, France, 2005)
St. Ignatius Church Exposure: Lenten Light Conversions (Lynn Marie Kirby, U.S., 2004)
Still Life (Jia Zhangke, China / Hong Kong, 2006)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, Hungary, 2000)
What the Water Said, Nos. 4-6 (David Gatten, U.S., 2007)
When It Was Blue (Jennifer Reeves, U.S. / Iceland, 2008)

Directors:
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Pedro Costa
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Claire Denis
Nathaniel Dorsky

Performances:
Olivier Gourmet, The Son
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Samantha Morton, Morvern Callar
Issey Ogata, The Sun
Summer Phoenix, Esther Kahn

Blake Williams

1. INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch, 2006)
2. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2007)
3. Punch-Drunk Love (PT Anderson, 2002)
4. RR (James Benning, 2008)
5. Melancholia (Lav Diaz, 2008)
6. In the City of Sylvia (Jose Luis Guerin, 2007)
7. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2005)
8. La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001)
9. The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)
10. The Gleaners & I (Agnes Varda, 2000)
11. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008)
12. Code Unknown (Michael Haneke, 2000)
13. Dogville (Lars Von Trier, 2003)

Directors:
1. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2. Michael Haneke
3. James Benning
4. Lucrecia Martel
5. David Lynch

Performances:
1. Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE
2. Tilda Swinton, Julia
3. Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher
4. Eva Löbau, The Forest for the Trees
5. Juliette Binoche, Code Unknown
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Best Movies of 2009

As is the custom at the end of every year, we take a final look back at the year of movies in 2009. Of course, many of the best movies "made" in 2009 actually premiered at various places in 2008, which puts the time they were "made" somewhere around 2007. Semantics are always a part of these lists for what qualifies and what doesn't. Do festival screenings count? Does it need a domestic release or is it based on world premieres? Who knows. I kept a couple of my personal favorites I saw in 2009 (Ne Change Rien, Trash Humpers, DDR/DDR) since they were only seen at festivals. Alas, I included a set of films that were shown online and festivals only, and another that was associated with a festival, but screened elsewhere "publicly" during the festival. Just as we make it clear, it becomes muddy again.

So what do we know? Well, if these lists are any indication, there were plenty of good movies to be seen in 2009. Although it may have been a down year for Hollywood and American cinema, there was plenty to celebrate, denigrate, and shrug off. It was another year. And here is another set of lists.

(And stay tuned! Tomorrow, Out 1 will unveil the top 10 movies of the 2000s, as determined by 13 co-conspirators who have included their individual lists as part of Out 1's collective lists. Both collective and individual lists will be published tomorrow. Get excited.)


James Hansen

1. Primitive project (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
3. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
4. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu)
5. Let Each One Go Where He May (Ben Russell)
6. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
7. Hunger (Steve McQueen)
8. Birdsong (Albert Serra)
9. Antichrist (Lars Von Trier)
10. Jennifer (Stewart Copeland)

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical)
35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis); Adventureland (Greg Mottola); Afterschool (Antonio Campos); Beeswax (Andrew Bujalski); Crank High Voltage (Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor); Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson); Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso); Jerichow (Christian Petzold); A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen); Sutro (Jeanne Liotta)

Best Performances
Female: Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist) & Maria Onetto (The Headless Woman) (tie)
Male: Michael Fassbender (Hunger)

Overrated
The Hurt Locker - It’s a good movie, but, I mean, Jesus.

Underrated
Crank High Voltage - Aesthetically radical (in a good way) and a total blast.


Brandon Colvin

1. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
2. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
3. Adventureland (Greg Mottola)
4. Hunger (Steve McQueen)
5. Loren Cass (Chris Fuller)
6. We Were Once a Fairytale (Spike Jonze)
7. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
8. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
9. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog)
10. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical)
I Love You, Man (John Hamburg); Plastic Bag (Ramin Bahrani); Star Trek (J.J. Abrams); A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen); Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Best Performances
Nicolas Cage (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans) & Kanye West (We Were Once A Fairytale)

Overrated
Up in the Air (Jason Reitman) & Avatar (James Cameron)

Underrated
Watchmen (Zack Snyder) & Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Chuck Williamson

1. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
2. Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
3. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
4. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
5. A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen)
6. Antichrist (Lars von Trier)
7. In The Loop (Armando Iannuci)
8. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
9. You, The Living (Roy Andersson)
10. Afterschool (Antonio Campos)

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical)
35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis); Bright Star (Jane Campion); The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh); The House of the Devil (Ti West); Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino); Hunger (Steve McQueen); Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo)

Best Performances
Male: Souleymane Sy Savane (Goodbye Solo)
Female: Kim Ok-vin (Thirst)

Overrated
Avatar (James Cameron) & Love Exposure (Sion Sono)

Underrated
A Town Called Panic (Stephane Aubier & Vincent Patar)
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A Travail of Passion

by James Hansen

It might sound like an extended YouTube video gone array, but Zachary Oberzan’s Flooding With Love for the Kid – a feature length remake of First Blood shot inside a 220 square foot New York City apartment with a budget of $96 in which Oberzan plays every role – is more a (slightly schizophrenic) treatise on the illusions of film production and the (delusional?) wish fulfillment inherent in home video production. Oberzan pushes past his imposed conceptual parameters (including blatant artificiality where stuffed animals serve as forest creatures, Oberzan plays a pack of dogs, and a toaster stands in for a radio) to on full display his incredible passion for the project which propels its surprising effectiveness.


Flooding With Love for the Kid isn’t some narcissistic experiment made by Oberzan in hopes of 15-minutes of cult status. It’s an enthralling video precisely because of the intense emotion and love for the story, characters, and cinema that floods every image of its 107 minute running time. Amidst an emotionally devoid Hollywood prestige picture season, Flooding With Love for the Kid is a challenging, yet therapeutic reminder of what movies are, why they should be made in the first place, and what it actually takes to make them work.


An opening title card labels the movie as a “one man war” and, although the story of Rambo is a one man war by its own right, Oberzan’s singular war becomes more impactful. Closely following David Morrell’s novel, most importantly the bleak, impactful conclusion, Flooding With Love for the Kid serves as a metaphoric Rambo with cinematic production, just as the narrative of John Rambo follows suit with war. Without outside influence, Oberzan single-handedly fights the mores of the Hollywood action genre, spectatorial expectations, and artistic capability in a dire economic situation. A war is raging, but who and what does it take to keep fighting?


Oberzan plays the literal Rambo as his video situates itself as the figurative. A Rambo looking to the past for reference, but wildly fighting for some kind of [artistic] freedom and a fresh start. Flooding With Love for the Kid may not send shockwaves through the typically unsubstantive, non-sensical Hollywood action genre – elements the video mirrors for purpose of confrontation – but Oberzan’s video has the answers for what it takes to win a Rambo-esque war against an unflappable foe. It’s all in his title.

B+
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An Interview with "Police, Adjective" Director Corneliu Porumboiu

by James Hansen

Police, Adjective - one of the major highlights at this year's New York Film Festival - opens in New York at IFC Center today. I wrote about the film in my round-ups of the festival, but I was also lucky enough to sit down with director Corneliu Porumboiu during the festival to discuss his approach in crafting this challenging film. The following is an edited conversation I had with Mr. Porumboiu on September 29, 2009 discussing the film, his cinematic influences, and, well, words.


James Hansen: How did the story come about?

Corneliu Porumboiu: There were two stories I heard that inspired me. One was about two brothers, one of whom betrayed the other in a small case about consuming hashish. The second story: I have a friend who is a police officer and he told me about case that he had where he decided he didn’t want to solve it because of his conscience.

JH: How much did the real events effect your stylistic choices for the film like the use of real-time during the police investigations?

CP: Doing research for the second draft of the script, I discovered that police officers have a lot of time - death time - waiting and surveilling. This was very important for me because it fits into the spirit that I wanted to give to the script and to the absurd tone of my movie. I take real time and it becomes an absurd time. The movie is about meaning and a policeman trying to get that sense in his world. The real time allowed me to construct that feeling.

JH: You mention the absurdist qualities of the film, which are infused with the realism. I wonder if this is what informs the comedy of both Police, Adjective and your earlier films?

CP: I think the comedy is really just coming with me. I don’t think before I make a movie as to whether it will be a comedy or something like that. It’s something that is in my point of view on life so it’s very natural.

JH: What your major influences were for this project?

CP: I had seen many police movies (policier) like All of Us, but for this particular movie I was influenced by Bresson’s Pickpocket and Antonioni’s Blow Up. Big parts of my movie are silent and the body language counts a lot. So, in the sense of both timing and atmosphere, I was thinking a lot about these two movies.

JH: Blow Up is an interesting choice since it is all about the dissection of an image, and in Police, Adjective it seems you invert the process by dissecting language. Can you talk about your approach to text and dialogue in the film and its relationship with the image, particularly in the final sequence and conversation with the dictionary?

CP: Blow Up is one of my favorite movies. I was thinking more about the technique in Blow Up for my first movie (12:08 East of Bucharest) in trying to define the revolution. In this case, when I was doing my research, I was seeing the daily reports from police officers. With these came the idea of representation that you can also see to some extent in Blow Up. You see what he’s doing everyday by what is written on the page. And it is just a representation of what happened that day. That was the first point when I started looking at language and words and what they really mean and what the express. You have this structure that repeats day after day after day, which is what leads into the final conversation.

JH: And that all leads into the final shot of the film, which I think is stunning. Can you talk about the idea behind the last shot and how it connects back to ideas of symbology, image, and text?

CP: As I mentioned before, it’s coming from those words and details and reports. They go into the word conscience and finally the word police. The drawing on the blackboard at the end gives you the absurd tone of the movie. Everything becomes a graphic. But I don’t believe so much in symbols. An image is dealing with an image. But it all goes back to the meaning of the words. And it’s a repetition leading to a certain kind of art. Plus, I prefer being a little cynical.

JH: Is your cynical approach to the search for answers and clarity in Police, Adjective related to your personal your views about Romania, whether before or after the revolution?

CP: For me personally, after the revolution, I was thinking all the changes would come the next day. I had quite a romantic point of view about it and life in general. Years after, I’ve become a more cynical. Maybe it’s the way things should be, but, for me, the expectations that I had were broken. For my research, I asked ten different friends to define the word conscience. There were so many different definitions! After that, I started to write and that was my idea in the end: what is in the back of these words? If it’s in a dictionary, I think it’s absurd, and that is the feeling I had writing and making this movie. What is the link to these words? What is the conscience of a society? It’s coming from this sentiment I have. The definitions [of conscience] were so different, but, at the same time, they express, as I feel, that in Romania we often don’t understand each other. The words are no use at the end.
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