On Representation and Wish Fulfillment

by Adam Hofbauer

2012’s two most visible films relating the experiences of African Americans were both made by white men.  Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild fantasized a magical Mississippi Delta, where most of the magic seemed to involve ignoring any racial or post-Katrina related subtext and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained continued his increasingly Ouroboros like cycle of cinematic self-reference.  Here is a superhero origin story for a man whose superpower is cultural reparations via bullet to the nuts, where the intended pleasure is escapist, bloody fantasy. 

It is not these films’ treatment of race that raises eye brows, but their shared filter of wish fulfillment.  Their creators seem to be using blacks in the south as set dressing for their own personal fantasies.  Controversy over Django has been mostly limited to its use of the word “nigger”, with little question raised about its muddy approach to morality.  That the film all but equates freedom with gun ownership seems to little trouble audiences and critics when there is so much bloody carnage to enjoy.  Obviously, praise for Django has not been unanimous.  The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb called into question many of the film’s issues, from its portrayal of slaves as “ciphers passively awaiting freedom” (a diminishing of populist slave resistance that finds echoes in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln) to its replacing of history with morally simplistic mythology.  Of course, even a cursory viewing of Django reveals that this is its very intention, restaging the legend of Siegfried through the kind of lone wolf emancipator inspired by real life rebels like John Brown.  Of course Tarantino is aware of his history.  The issue is the wide spread acceptance of stories that reshape history and contemporary politics for the sake of emotional catharsis.

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An Endless, Thoughtless Bloodbath: Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)

by James Hansen 

Over the past few weeks, the internet has been abuzz with critics, pundits, and politicians considering the moral, ethical, and political implications in regard to the representation of violence – particularly torture – in Kathryn Bigelow’s highly acclaimed Zero Dark Thirty. Interest in the movie has grown in large part because of these discussions, almost making an actual analysis of the film itself a moot point. (I’ll still have something to say about Zero Dark Thirty once it opens locally in Columbus.) Not garnering the same amount of controversy prior to its release – aside from a breif dustup when director Spike Lee commented that he will not be seeing the film – is Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Recalling both films now, I have to admit the outrage(ous) [responses] to the films feel somewhat backward. What I want to offer here is a bit polemical as to the reactions each film has received (again, leaving a direct critique of ZD30 for later) which stand as indicative of the relative merits of each film. That is, if Zero Dark Thirty has been, at the very least, a “conversation starter,” a lack of furor over Django Unchained reveals an utter lack of seriousness, the complete absence of even a veiled attempt at critical dialogue, in Tarantino’s blaxploitation-slavery-revenge epic. 

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And Must I Now Begin To Doubt?: On the Disappointments of "Les Miserables" (Tom Hooper, 2012)

by James Hansen

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t mention at the start of this review that I grew up as something of a Les Miserables nerd. It’s one of the first (traveling) Broadway shows I ever saw. In high school, I only had a few tapes in my car to listen to on my 20 minute drive to school and the Les Mis soundtrack was one of them. I still randomly quote lyrics from “The Confrontation Song.” So, when several friends, unaware of this fact, wanted to watch the movie, I clammed up, got a bit jittery, and could hardly contain my hysterically nervous trepidation of watching this thing – my thing – with other people. Naturally, they found this hilarious, pressed forward, and demanded we watch it together. We did. And it wasn’t pretty. In fact, I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t say that this fan of the show found it completely disappointing. 

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The Hobbit (Peter Jackson, 2012)

by James Hansen 

"...Jackson’s unwillingness to streamline anything leaves The Hobbit feeling more like a special-effect sledgehammer set to automatic and left to bludgeon its audience for an interminable running time." 

It’s a little strange writing a review of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit because anyone who has seen his Lord of the Rings trilogy (which is pretty much everyone) already knows exactly how this movie is going to look and operate. Of course, Jackson is using newer technology here – his choice to shoot in 3D 48 fps has been much discussed – and there are new adventures and creatures, but, at the same time, the color pallette, the swooping landscape shots, the near-identical score are all present. Even more than Lord of the Rings, the technology permits Jackson’s supreme indulgence with effects, here building an almost completely animated world in which the characters walk around, eat, drink, walk, run away, fall through things, fight things, and triumph. 

Bilbo’s heroes journey is extremely familiar, but, of course, this isn’t the point at all. The narrative is merely a cardboard cutout for Jackson’s technical wizardry. The Hobbit nearly abandons its narrative every 15 minutes or so to take us into the world of a new creature – glimpses of spiders and dragon, the already familiar home of elves, rock monsters, orc armies, etc. Jackson desperately wants to create an entire world here, but a world not established by space but rather by number of small things in it. Given the film’s epic scale, it does seem a bit strange that, aside from the aforementioned helicopter shots, there is little spatial orientation, often shooting in close ups to reveal the “naturalism” of the creatures rather than establishing the dimensions in which the story takes place. 

Still, this isn’t to say there is no excitement – there are several spectacular sequences – but Jackson’s unwillingness to streamline anything leaves The Hobbit feeling more like a special-effect sledgehammer set to automatic and left to bludgeon its audience for an interminable running time. More so, perhaps a credit to the 48 fps, the motion and color of the creatures is so fascinating and vivid (good thing!) that the main characters seem almost entirely out of place (bad thing!) Undoubtedly, there remains a tension between the effects and the actors, the technology and the narrative. That is, as the creatures become more “realistic,” the actors look more and more artificial. Indeed, if The Hobbit shows us anything, it’s that this fantasy stars a bunch of dudes playing dress up. 

Grade: C+ Continue reading...

Gaming the System: "Wreck-It Ralph" (Rich Moore, 2012)

by James Hansen 

In what is surely the most welcome surprise of the cinematic year thus far, Rich Moore’s Wreck-It Ralph, the latest release from Disney Animation, ingeniously combines the central conceits of both animation and gaming into a thrilling and heartfelt animated film. Moreover, it does so with a regard to history as simultaneously an aesthetic and technological question. If Disney has lagged behind its younger brother Pixar in recent years, Wreck-It Ralph usefully shifts the dynamic back to the kind of risk-taking Disney once took and Pixar overtook before it began inundating itself with useless sequels alongside overconcentration on technique and naturalism, threatening to turn the form against itself and mutate into something “accomplished” yet hyperstatic (a la Peter Jackson). Thankfully, Moore (and co-writers Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee) allows Wreck-It Ralph to ponder where it came from and where it will go next. 

That this all works so well is in large part due to the delicate balancing act of Moore and his screenwriters. Wreck-It Ralph, a Donkey Kong like figure, is the villain of the arcade game Fix-It Felix. After 30 years on the job, Ralph, distressed by his bad guy status, goes on a mission to win a hero medal in order to be seen as a good guy and, thus, welcomed by the rest of the villagers of Fix-It Felix. Here, the rest of the games in the arcade stand-in as a networked world in which characters navigate through electric portals into other (sometimes newer) game spaces. The majority of the film takes place inside the game “Sugar Rush,” seemingly a Mario Kart version of Bratz. Here, a young girl, Vanellope, takes Ralph’s hero medal to cash in for a coveted spot in the Sugar Rush race. Vanellope, a character identified as a systematic glitch, has been banished from racing (thus the space of the actual game) by King Candy. Meanwhile, Fix-It Felix teams up with a Halo-esque female commander, Calhoun, to break into “Sugar Rush” and bring Ralph back before the arcade manager says game-over for the game, unplugging it from the network, leaving homeless characters wandering the portal.

Though this falls into a familiar story of outsider characters finding their place within their changing worlds, Wreck-It Ralph approaches this with a supreme tenderness as it slides between the worlds and the characters come to realize their outdatedness, their glitchy quirks, and their inability to assimilate with their coded, networked spaces. Making ongoing references to strictly defined game code as something to overcome, there remains a tension between the character’s desires and their technological constraints. Wreck-It Ralph doesn’t quite go all the way with its aesthetic – the old, 8-bit game characters are more natural inside their game space and, therein, more alike other characters than different. (This is something of a practical question, as it is unlikely anyone would respond to 8-bit, talking characters versus more natural ones, but it really would have been something if Moore and company would have tried and fully committed to the aesthetic question, actually allowing for the 8-bit world and the modern game world to collide. Can’t have it all...) 

 Nonetheless, the films remains reticent to updating and regenerating as a means of staying alive. Here, Wreck-It Ralph picks up where Enchanted left off. Whereas Enchanted negotiated the ambivalence between reality and fantasy, the real world versus the princess, the two-dimension versus the three-dimension (see my full Enchanted review for more on this), Wreck-It Ralph operates within this interstitial space, brilliantly conceived as a gaming question, where the villain manipulates code to deny the avatars freedom – the very thing that “avatars” supposedly provide the user. This doesn’t suggest, as one may think, that the coded game is seen as pure, manipulable loss, hence reiterating the old analog versus digital, but rather is an embrace of the glitch, of the code as something which can break down, of the individual who embraces assimilation (or, at least, connection) through difference.

Thus, Wreck-It Ralph denies the input/output logic of the coded network and looks instead for a territorializing glitch which can code, de-code, and re-code. The character Vanellope is key here. Befriending both the destructive forces of Ralph and reconstructive help of Felix, she builds, breaks, and rebuilds her car, her code, and herself. Wreck-It Ralph moves through these concerns with great sincerity, delicacy, and heart. Not merely a technological game, the film packs a serious emotional punch, emotions which underly the very issues of individuality, building and rebuilding, deforming and reforming, which are at the core of the character’s (the the film’s) concerns. Moore may still be navigating an undecided space, but, here, it is one that incorporates its history – both good and bad – as it moves along to a new game. Wreck-It Ralph, you may just be our hero.

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Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)

by James Hansen 

In some ways, this shift is precisely how Holy Motors functions as an ambiguous narrative – one which maintains investment, sincerity, and demands “belief” while at the same time explicitly directing itself toward its own detachment, its irony, its artificiality. These things are never certain, but its all part of the game, part of how culture marks time, part of how we live.

A beguiling hit at this year’s Cannes Festival, Leos Carax’s Holy Motors opens, somewhat unexpectedly, in Columbus today. An ever-playful, generous, and loving celebration of all things cinematic, Holy Motors verges, at the same time, on a mournful, melancholic death drive, which has uselessly dominated discussion of film’s transition to digital technologies. Its incorporation of images from early motion experiments, however, should indicate that this not a movie singularly about the death of celluloid. While it is unquestionably concerned with death, its constantly reshaping temporalities suggest an ongoing reformation – of the image, of the body, of life itself – through performance, recorded motion, and, thereby, cinema. 

Yet, this is already much too academic and gets away from the joyful pleasure of watching a showcase for actor Denis Lavant. Starring as the shape-shifting Monsieur Oscar, Lavant gives the performance of the year, not just because he effectively plays so many roles, but because of the almost primal physicality invoked through each character. While the acts occurring during his “appointments” become increasingly violent as the film progresses, Lavant ceaselessly maintains an extreme energy with each characters, so much so that it comes as no surprise when the events spill over into purposefully flagrant excess. One appointment involving motion capture has been used to discuss Carax’s recognition of the shift from indexical film to binary 1s and 0s of digitally manipulated code; still, it has to be said (and seen) that this remains tied to a body, Lavant’s body, as he sways above, under, and around the body of his female partner. This extraordinarily physical dance is the marvel of the act which transposes itself onto another screen, in another mode, for another purpose. In some ways, this shift is precisely how Holy Motors functions as an ambiguous narrative – one which maintains investment, sincerity, and demands “belief” while at the same time explicitly directing itself toward its own detachment, its irony, its artificiality. These things are never certain, but its all part of the game, part of how culture marks time, part of how we live. 

Going far beyond a bifurcated structure, Holy Motors uses Monsieur Oscar’s appointments as constant disruptions and narratival ruptures, which nonetheless become absorbed in the film’s “reality” as it plays out. Holy Motors has a kind of plasticity allowing it to expand into new places yet always retracting back into Lavant, into the body, into the film. Who were we? Where are we? Who will I be now? Who will I be next? Considering these questions and structure, Holy Motors follows up by Joe’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and transports it into a different type of holy territory – one of flashing lights in the sky (or the back of a car), speaking to each other, waiting to take on a new, angelic, yet earthly forms. Indeed, if the final moments echo back to the beginning of Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, then the circle Holy Motors makes isn’t a retread over well-worn surfaces, but an expansive tailspin into new riches. Amen. 

Grade: A Continue reading...

Reviews In Brief: "Arbitrage" (Nicholas Jarecki, 2012

by James Hansen

Effective in the way that only films with no stakes or logic can be, Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitrage finds hedge fund executive Robert Miller (serious-faced, yet effective Richard Gere) in a bind after his mistress (who he seemingly makes no effort to hide, giving her major financial support, freely breaking into her house, and flaunting her art events around his office) is killed when he falls asleep at the wheel. With a major financial merger on hold – and the reality that he has committed major fraud to his investors – Robert, desperate to avoid a scandal, calls his dead driver’s son (who he seemingly has no relationship with) to pick him up, take him back to the city, and cover up his lie.

Arbitrage plays this all by the books, as Robert’s daughter Brooke (stoic-faced Brit Marling) and wife Ellen (concerned-faced Susan Sarandon) slowly realize and confront their patriarch about his financial obsessions and how this has “brought down the family,” despite everyone ending up pretty a-ok when all is said and done. Brooke’s naivete contrasts Robert’s assurances, knowing that no matter the outcome he will be on top. Still, Brooke’s brief cover up – “He’s my dad. I have to trust him.” – is so elementary and blandly delivered that any investment in the actions becomes laughable. Not helping matters is the film’s strangest role, the super-invested Detective Bryer (Tim Roth) who apparently has been trying to bring down Miller for years. Or something. How Detective Bryer’s case extends beyond the parameters of an involuntary manslaughter, leaving the scene of the crime inanity and into a full fledged felony of his own that almost goes without mention is unclear. (A late confrontation with a judge who sternly says, “You have to get him the right way” has to make us wonder if this conversation has anything to do with anything that actually takes place in the film, and, if so, exactly how these characters would be aware of it.) Arbitrage may offer some easily digestible entertainment, but its numbers never add up. 

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The Possession (Ole Bornedal, 2012)

by James Hansen

It isn’t all that surprising that Ole Bornedal’s The Possession is derivative. Exorcism movies all follow the formula set by The Exorcist, which undoubtedly remains the benchmark of the horror subgenre. Nonetheless, several recent films (The Unborn, Orphan) have found ways to blow open the category in relatively interesting, exciting ways. Unfortunately, The Possession is not one of those films – it starts too big, telegraphs nearly all its scares, and never breaks free from its box of horror movie cliches.

The Possession starts strongly enough. A creepy, wooden box sits on a shelf calling to an older woman. Soon, her mouth begins to bleed and, in true PG-13 fashion, she is barely seen being violently thrown around the room by a demonic spirit. (Nevermind why this spirit that feeds on children is attacking an old woman. Spirits have their reasons.) A short while later, a recently divorced father, Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), buys the box for his youngest daughter (an effective Natasha Calis) who has come with her sister Hannah on a weekend visit. In a new house among a developing neighborhood (although there are no neighbors in sight), Emily cracks open the box. Before long, her eyes become distant, her personality changes, her room fills with a swarm of giant moths, and her inner anger transfer to her father who she stabs in the hand with a fork. 

Blame it on the divorce. The confusing thing here isn’t so much stylistic ineffectiveness – although Bornedal relies too heavily on audio crescendos punctuated by a single, deep, pounding piano key – but rather that this is all too much too soon. While the film spends time establishing the supposedly fraught relationship bewteen Clyde and his ex-wife Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) – Stephanie remains much too flirtacious and Clyde too attached for this to be heading anywhere other than reconciliation – some of the first things we see Emily do – sitting in the middle of her bed, staring in the distance in a room suddenly filled with angry moths – are far too extreme for the attempts at realism (“She’s acting out because you left us!”) that the script pitches. Instead, the parent’s indecision comes too slowly and becomes laughable, just as Clyde’s Google search discovery of Jewish exorcism and complete embracing of the theory comes too quickly. Similarly, too many moments build to family unrest or Emily seeming upset rather than the brooding violence and terror of her body being overtaken. 

By the film’s third act, it is already out of steam. Despite the hilarious discovery of the spirit through an MRI (finally convincing Stephanie that something is wrong) and a pretty spooky culmination of the exorcism, The Possession never really clicks. Its overemphasis on family issues along with its lack of build and repetitive stylistic techniques have it land with an all to familiar thud. 

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The Road to Hysteria: Killer Joe

by James Hansen  

...the primary task of Killer Joe appears as a negotiation between ideal and actuality. Playing off various sets of contractions, often within individual characters – save Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) the self-consciously clueless father – Friedkin and Letts thumb at the scales of a balancing act – between innocence and violence, sincerity and theatricality, comedy and horror – which percolates throughout the film, slowly building toward and finally culminating in the spectacularly absurd (yet undeniably vicious) already notorious finale. 

From its opening moments, William Friedkin's film of Tracy Letts's Killer Joe lays out its fantastical artifice and places it in immediate opposition to its supposed southern authenticity. The upbeat soundtrack creates a mismatch with the dark setting and violently barking dog. For an instant, the scene is completely quiet and dry before an enormous downpour begins. Then, as Chris (Emile Hirsch) beats on a door constantly spouting what becomes his entrance refrain (“Shut up, T-Bone!”) while screaming for Dottie (Juno Temple), the camera slowly tracks up the body of the young girl grasping a snow globe as she sleeps. Chris is not met with Dottie’s angelic presence, but instead the exposed genitals of his evil stepmother Sharla (Gina Gershon). 

For the rest of the film, the primary task of Killer Joe appears as a negotiation between ideal and actuality. Playing off various sets of contractions, often within individual characters – save Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) the self-consciously clueless father – Friedkin and Letts thumb at the scales of a balancing act – between innocence and violence, sincerity and theatricality, comedy and horror – which percolates throughout the film, slowly building toward and finally culminating in the spectacularly absurd (yet undeniably vicious) already notorious finale. 

Most crucial to all of this is the relationship between Joe (Matthew McConaughey) and Dottie. Both McConaughey and Temple are terrific, giving inspired performances with no reservations. Their opening scene, so crucial to the tone of their relationship, transfers a slightly nervous energy between them into the as-of-yet unrealized potentialities – both high and low – of their characters actions. The scene carefully moves from Joe’s intrusive entrance, met with Dottie’s kung fu, into a calming and spectacularly bizarre conversation regarding Joe’s past, the craziest thing he has seen, and Dottie’s own infantile memory of surviving attempted murder. While the rest of the characters underestimate her, Joe’s fascination with Dottie becomes our own. (Of course, this doesn’t happen without the incredibly tight, brilliant screenplay by Letts, who has already proven himself as one of our most important playwrights.) 

This leads to one of the film’s two great scenes – Joe’s “courtship” of Dottie after being given her by Chris and Ansel as a retainer for his killing service. The scene carefully moves through Joe’s charm and into his commanding, more dangerous role. Dottie transforms from an unaware childlikeness to a knowing and willing participant. All the while, both characters retain some kind of vulnerability and tenderness, perhaps locating it in the foil of the other. 

As the film progresses and the relationship becomes threatened, the carefully composed tone swings a bit more wildly, following the motivations and (ir)rationality of the psychopathic killer and his princess. If Killer Joe gives us something like an unresolved ending – you can almost feel a blackout light cue hit as if on a stage – it is because the film breaks exactly where its task hits its highest point and explodes. Joe’s real, violent self breaks Dottie’s view of his idealized rescue, taking her away from the misery of the South and its misdirected family values. (Letts seems nearly obsessed with breaking down families at the place where they most often meet – the dinner table.) Similarly, the film’s artificiality breaks down amidst the extreme violence, which is certainly meant to provoke a level of disgust even as the stakes become more cartoonish. (A short scene of Dottie’s fascination with a cartoon in a diner hints toward this direction.) Like Dottie and Joe, pushed to their limits, the stable, opposing categories that Killer Joe plays itself off of collide and fall apart into each other. After that, the only thing left is hysteria.

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Reviews in Brief: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (2012)

by James Hansen


It would be easy to attack “visionary” director Timur Bekmambetov’s Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter for its gross historical implications – its trivialization of slavery, Gettysburg, not to mention Lincoln’s own personal matters (his relationship to Mary Todd, the death of his infant son, etc.) Glenn Kenny has gone so far as to claim “It constitutes a moral sin, if not an outright moral crime, and commits a grave insult to history.”

Fair enough. But perhaps what is most shocking about ALVH is its complete cinematic incompetency, even on the most basic level. It isn’t merely that the film bounds from vampire slaying to actual historical events, thereby leaving its own revisionism in the dust, but that the movements happen so quickly and so insignificantly, that they are constructed so sloppily and, frankly, embarrassingly, the film never reaches a high level of absurdity to allow for the pomposity of visually confusing fight scenes amongst a sudden fleet of crazed horses, a misbegotten invasion of a Louisiana plantation to save Lincoln’s African American companion (no matter the vampiric annihilation of seemingly hundreds of slaves), or nighttime raid of a railroad that methodically burns to the ground. Instead, ALVH hops, skips, and jumps over everything it sets up leaving a trail of emotional and narratival confusion. With storytelling this lazy and images this haphazard, the most baffling thing about ALVH isn’t its premise or its historical sins, but rather that a major studio ever let it out of an editing room. Continue reading...