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Banshees of Inisherin: Grief Through Folklore

4/29/2023

3 Comments

 
by Emma Salvato
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For his fourth feature length movie, British-Irish writer-director Martin McDonagh brings back the duo Colin Farrell/Brendan Gleeson, already tried and tested in his 2009 movie In Bruges, the story of two hitmen who are awaiting for orders from their superiors in the Belgian city. Cynical and darkly humorous, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) sets to explore the themes of sorrow, ambition, and friendship as the last days of the Irish Civil War play in the background.
On the island of Inisherin, a fictional piece of land off of the Irish coast, lives a small community of people; there are farmers, musicians, pub owners, all their lives forcefully linked by the scarcity of land they can occupy. Amongst these people there are Pádraic (Colin Farrell), a farmer who lives with his older sister Siobhán (Kelly Condon) and his miniature donkey Jenny, and Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), Pádraic's best friend and local fiddle player.

On Inisherin, Colm is known as a man of enviable culture: he's a skilled musician and has been able to built the reputation of almost being an academic, his interest for all things that lie beyond the rocky Irish coast manifesting itself through the purchase of Japanese men-yoroi masks and African trumpet horns, enough to decorate his entire house. His knowledge is so vast that the people of the island are quite surprised that the man has not yet tried his fortune on the mainland too, and would rather spend his days playing the fiddle at the local pub and chatting with Pádraic, who is but a lowly countryman with no interest for music and even less for culture and literature.

It's because of these different personalities of theirs, that the people of the island aren't surprised, when Pádraic begins moaning about his friend refusing to speak to him, merely asking if they're "rowing" and telling him to just follow Colm's wish of being left alone once and for all. Despite everybody telling him so, Pádraic cannot bring himself to follow their words: Colm is his best friend, has been so for years, so he needs to know if the man is enraged at him because of something he has said or done.

In one last, brief conversation Colm concedes to him, Pádraic discovers that the reason why the man doesn't want to be his friend anymore because he now considers Pádraic to be dull, and fears that his dullness might hinder his future as a brilliant player and composer. Colm wants to be surrounded by people like him, people who are cultured and engaging, who will stimulate his desire to produce art. Pádraic, as nice as he might be, doesn't inspire anything in him, and therefore he now considers spending time with him as a waste.
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Confused and hurt, Pádraic seeks comfort in Siobhán, who reassures him that he's not dull, he's just nice, and in the company of Dominic Kearney (Barry Keoghan), the slightly slow-minded son of Paedar, the local police officer (Gary Lyndon). Although Pádraic treats Dominic with contempt and considers him to be a dimwit, when he discovers that his father beats him, he doesn't hesitate to house and feed him in his own home, despite his sister's initial objections.

Still, Pádraic is unable to leave Colm alone, and the man, frustrated with the other's constant need of attentions, decides to threaten him: "I have a set of shears at home, and each time you bother me from this day on, I will take those shears and I'll take one of me fingers off with them, and I will give that finger to ya, a finger from me left hand, me fiddle hand, and each day you bother me more, another I'll take off and I'll give you, until you see sense enough to stop, or until I've no fingers left."

Although this promise of self-violence leaves Pádraic shocked, he cannot control his desire to go bother Colm again, and he falls into temptation twice. The first time, when he's drunk, he approaches his former friend and asks him why being nice isn't enough anymore (Colm's answer, snobbish, further highlights the distance between the two men, as he says: "Ah, well... I suppose niceness doesn't last then, does it, Pádraic? But I tell ya something that does last? Music lasts. And paintings last. And poetry lasts."); the second time, he does so because of the information that Dominic wrongly reports to him, according to which Colm, after the scene Pádraic caused in the pub the night before, now considers him to be better than before. Both times, Colm takes a pair of shearing scissors and cuts off his fingers (the former time amputating only one finger of his left hand, the latter all of the remaining ones), throwing them at the door of Páedar and Siobhán's house so that they both can see the damage their family caused.
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In the midst of the men fighting, Siobhán decides that she is done with the life on that small island, and disgusted by the pettiness of the people who inhabit it, and applies for jobs on the mainland, being hired as a clerk of a public library. On the day Colm throws his remaining fingers at their door, Pádraic accompanies her to the port and watches the ferry carry her to Ireland sail thorugh the water.

Already saddened by the departure of Siobhán, Pádraic goes home to find his dear donkey, Jenny, dead: while he was at the port, she found Colm's fingers and began nibbling on them, accidentally choking on one of them and suffocating. Truly enraged for the first time, Pádraic finds Colm at the pub and it's his turn to threaten him: "Your fat fingers killed me little donkey today. [...] Yeah, no, I'm not joking you. So tomorrow, Sunday, God's day, around two, I'm going to call up to your house, and I'm going to set fire to it, and hopefully you'll still be inside of it. But I won't be checking either way."

The following day, as he said at the pub, Pádraic loads his cart with gasoline and oil lamps and drives it to Colm's house, taking the man's dog before it can get injured and then douses his friend's house. Before setting it on fire, he checks through the windows for Colm and even seeing him sitting on a stool, smoking, he goes through with his plan, then watching the house be engulfed by flames.

Later, as he's standing on the beach that faces the coasts of the mainland, Colm reaches him, dirtied with tar but still alive. While they're there, watching the water and the land that war ravaged  for more than a year, Colm makes a comment about how the conflict must be finally coming to an end, prompting Pádric into responding by saying that, from some fights, there is no coming back from.
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Proper to Irish folklore, the banshees are the spirits of cloaked women who appear to whose who are going to soon lose a loved one. These wailing figures (or, rather, "keening," word that comes from the Irish "caointeoireacht," meant to indicate the concept of sorrowful laments) are predictors of death, loudly announcing the death of a family member of a friend. In the movie The Banshees of Inisherin, however, no true banshee appears: these mythical creatures are only a metaphor, a ghost whose presence permeates every second of the story.

From a visual point of view, the specter is represented by Mrs McCormick (Sheila Flitton), an elderly woman who lives in a cottage by the lake. Clad in black clothes that are traditional to Irish costume, she wanders in front of the Súilleabháin siblings whenever they are in pain or uncertain about their future.

When the siblings are first introduced, they are already grieving: in a conversation between Siobhán and Mrs McCormick, it's revealed that both of their parents died seven years prior in an unspecified sudden accident that left them alone; their impossibility to process their parents' death is shown by having them still sleeping their childhood bedroom, in twin beds that are almost too small for them to rest comfortably in. Throughout the story, this feeling of oppression and sorrow only hightens: for Pádraic, such feelings are born out of his broken friendship with Colm (and, later on, caused by Jenny's death), while Siobhán is already grieving herself, as she worries she will be stuck on Inisherin for her entire life, cursed into sharing all human interactions with that group of bitter island people.
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Colm too, although not as blatantly, is grieving. His sorrow, rather than being caused by outside sources, finds its roots within: he's desperate to become a famous musician, to be respected and beloved and admired, but he's subconsciously aware that his place is nowhere but Inisherin. Even his culture, for which he's widely praised, is put into discussion by none other than Siobhán herself, who, after listening to his speech about how he wants to be like Mozart, known for his music rather than his niceness, corrects him by telling him that Mozart was born in the Eighteenth Century, and not in the Seventeenth as he stated.

His sudden hatred for Pádric is nothing more than self-hatred he expresses by attacking his best friend, putting him at fault for his own actions. Colm already carries the desire of cutting his own fingers off, an extreme measure to put a drastic end to his career of fiddle player before what he fears the most can happen: discover that he's not as talented enough to make it.
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The film is a two-hour long metaphor for the Irish Civil War, which, in The Banshees, appears as a background element. The conflict was fought by two Irish groups: IRA (the Irish Republican Army), which wanted Ireland to be its own, fully independent state, and the Irish Free State, which believed that Ireland should've remained part of the British Empire. Although the war was brief, as it only lasted eleven months (began in June 1922 and ended in May 1923), the consequences were dire: it was a particularly bloody conflict in which many, both soldiers and civilians, lost their lives, and that forced people to take a stand against their fellow countrymen. The divisions and tensions between these two faces of Ireland brought, on the long line, to The Troubles, which plagued the North of the country up to the late Nineties.

At the end of the movie, despite the both of them having lost everything because of one another (Pádraic lost his sister and his donkey, Colm lost his fingers and his home), Pádraic speaks the truth: some conflicts cannot be solved, and not everything that has happened between them can be ignored so that things can go back the way they were. In the same way, the conflict that took place between 1922 and 1923 changed the history of Ireland forever, making it impossible for its citizens to resume how they used to live before it.

As Colm said towards the end of the story, now earth is struck by enough grief for the banshees watch, amused and silent, as humans only bring more pain and death to one another.
3 Comments

Martin Eden: The Handsome Desperation of Individualism

4/14/2023

6 Comments

 
by Emma Salvato
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This essay contains spoilers

Hunched over a voice recorder, Martin Eden (Luca Marinelli) mumbles his disappointment for modern society: "Those who build prisons express themselves with far less clarity than those who build freedom," he says in a drawl, exhaustion making it impossible for him to keep his eyes open. As he begins to fold over the table, unable to support the invisible weight he carries onto his shoulders, the scene abruptly cuts to stock footage from the early Twentieth Century, people smiling and waving at the camera, excited by the novelty of the contraption in front of them.
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This is how Pietro Marcello's Martin Eden (2019) begins: depicting its titular character nearing his end, apathetic and drained, disillusioned with the reality that surrounds him, and cruelly juxtaposing him to people who are able to find happiness in the simple act of being filmed.

Marcello, a young Italian director whose body of work mostly focuses on documentaries, took on the ambitious task of adapting Jack London's final (and most autobiographical) novel for the screen, modifying it to fit a reality he could better understand and represent. Rather than being set in the San Francisco of the early Twentieth Century, Marcello's Martin Eden takes place in the Southern Italy of an unspecified decade (the presence of flared pants and tightly collared shirts hints at it being set after the Protests of 1968, a time of collective disillusionment for all those who believed revolution was possible), but is nevertheless able to explore the story and themes presented in its source material.
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After its abrupt beginning, the movie settles for a more traditional narrative style: the plot is spun back of several years, before Martin could become successful and discover discontent. The second time he is introduced to the audience, he is presented as a strong and handsome sailor, charming and carefree. His lack of formal education doesn't bother him, nor does the hard labor that pays for his meals.

His destiny changes when, the morning after a party, he saves a boy, Arturo Orsini (Giustiniano Alpi), from being beaten, and is invited to his house for lunch as a sign of gratitude. Arturo is not like the ones Martin was raised alongside with, initiated to the harsh lives of manual laborers while still in childhood: he was born into a wealthy family who owns mansions, cars, cushy lifestyles that allow for its members to spend their lives focusing on academia. In Arturo's home, Martin is incredibly out of place, his rugged clothes and swarthy appearance unable to fit within the pristine and delicately constructed world of the Orsinis, a world in which everything is fragile, pale, expensive.

Although Martin is self-aware enough to recognize the class differences between him and the Orsinis, his ignorance allows for him to deceive himself into thing that they, just like anybody else he has previously encountered, can be charmed into thinking of him as a peer with a couple of good chats.

It's Elena (Jessica Cressy), Arturo's older sister, who makes him realize that this is not the case: after a brief conversation before lunch, in which the woman corrects his French pronunciation in a rather patronizing manner, Martin finds himself smitten and tries to seduce her (in the scene right before this one, Martin was shown effortlessly flirting with another girl, indicating that, for him, it's almost a habit, to use his charms and good looks for such purpose), but Elena immediately makes it clear that she won't stoop down her social position for anyone.

If Martin doesn't abandon his working class roots and rises to Elena's social class, she will never pursue a relationship with him.
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Resolute in his quest to prove Elena his devotion, Martin begins using all his wages to purchase books and educate himself, going as far as attempting to take the exams necessary to receive an elementary school diploma.

However, what began as a journey to seduce a woman quickly evolves into one of self-discovery: through his process of schooling, Martin reaches a new level of self-awareness, of understanding of the social class divide between him and the Orsinis, of the concepts of proletariat and bourgeoisie.

Frustrated by his incapability to earn an elementary school license, Martin sets a new goal for himself: he'll become a writer, and when his first work will be published, he'll go back to Elena and will ask for her hand, strong of his worth as an intellectual. Cargo ships and Naples abandoned in favor of a simple life spent renting a room in the house of a widowed woman, Martin writes and writes and writes, struggling by as he chips at all his savings, getting more and more discouraged as all the newspapers and publishing houses he submits his works to don't deem it worthy of publication

Even the letters he receives from Elena are a form of disappointment: she thinks his dream of gaining social footing by becoming an author is foolish, useless, and although the snippets of his writing he sends her are beautifully written, they are not in her taste. The differences between them are solidified through an in person encounter that takes place when Martin travels back to Naples for a few days: even now that he is educated and can mingle with the friends of the Orsinis without much effort, Elena thinks of the themes of his writing as crass, violent, unable to depict reality. Frustrated, Martin grabs the woman's arm and jostles her around, dragging her through the streets he was raised in, where prostitutes and thieves abound, scaring her.

The reality Elena is accustomed to is simply one that is for the very few, her privilege made her blind and deaf to the struggles of the normal people, and even now that Martin has presented her with them, she would still prefer to close her eyes and ignore them, finding them undignified.

Fully disillusioned with Elena and the feelings he has for her, Martin abandons her and goes back to writing.
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The climax of the story is presented little after: Martin, after a severe illness, finally receives a letter of congratulations from a publishing house, its editors so enthralled by the work he submitted that they'd like to publish everything else he has written.

Now that his talent has been discovered, Martin becomes an overnight sensation, pays back all his debts, keeps writing while the flame still burns. With the help of Russ Brissenden (Carlo Cecchi), an eccentric older writer he met at a party held by the Orsinis, he navigates the world of success, and learns an extremely important lesson: he has to fight for those who can't, for those who, just like Martin at the beginning of the story, don't recognize the inferiority their ignorance and low economic status gives them within society. Martin's unique position in the world, that of a man who was able to rise against all odds, allows him to be their voice. "How many people do you see starve to death or go to jail because they're nothing but wretches, slaves, ignorant and stupid?" Russ asks him. "Fight for them, Martin."

Initially, he tries to do so, participating in conferences organized by unions, but soon enough his face and words are noticed by a journalist who writes an article about him, leading to Martin being misunderstood and disliked by many for his political views, which are branded as being those of a communist. The last spark of the Martin that was dies when Russ suddenly commits suicide, leaving him to navigate the world that wants to tear him apart in complete solitude.
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The more Martin's works are praised and paid, the more he finds himself alienated from his roots. He doesn't belong to the working class anymore, his days as a sailor long gone, but is also unable to properly fit in the society he was so desperately wanted to join, as he is aware that they see his works about the poor and struggling as nothing more than fantasies they can entertain themselves with.

Life embitters him, further makes him sink into disillusionment. Now wealthy, he purchases a luxurious apartment that resembles the Orsinis' mansion and dresses only in the finest of clothes, bleaches his hair to be blonde (a characteristic that, at the beginning of the story, was discussed as being a recognizable sign of someone belonging to the bougeoise class), hires the last longtime friend he is still in contact with (Nino, played by Vincenzo Nemolato), but his new state of indifference and exhaustion turns him ugly. Like the nobles who spent their days lounging at the Palace of Versailles, he too can pull his teeth out, blackened and rotten.

On the day he is supposed to leave for the United States to promote his new book, he meets Elena for one last time and then goes to the beach, enters the water, and swims until the end credits begin rolling.
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Marcello's filming style is saturated with his past as a documentary-maker: the shots are mostly handheld, their target seemingly that of simply archive the rise into stardom of this Neapolitan writer.

Of the shots realized with the use of a tripod, the more notable ones are those depicting Elena's letters: to avoid the stereotypical scene of Martin reading them while a voice-over tells the audience what was written, they were realized by making Jessica Cressy stand in front of a bright red wall (a color that, in the palette of the movie, seldomly appears) and look directly into the camera as she recites out loud their contents.

The way this shot is set can remind of the sorrowful scenes presented in Ingmar Bergman's  Cries and Whispers, a movie from 1972 whose plot revolves around two sisters (and a maid) grieving the death of the third one. The film, whose plot is divided into four chapters, allows each of these female characters to have their own part to better display the anguish they are going through. Each part begins with a shot similar to those of Jessica Cressy reading the letters: the actress, the one whose character is going to dictate the point of view of the next part of the story, stands in front of a bright red wall and looks into the camera.

Although the story is never told from Elena's point of view, it is easy to see why Marcello would choose to be inspired by such a scene: in both movies, those moments signal the beginning of a discussion regarding death, loss, and grief, and in Martin Eden, the latter part of the plot is spent crying the identity the titular character lost.
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Martin Eden is, most of all, a story of identity and class struggles.

Its titular character is initially presented as being sure of both his personhood and status: he is a hard-working sailor, his body is marred by the scars of past fights, his education level is low but functional, his wages are enough to keep him fed and clothed. In the ignorance that Elena considers to be inferior, Martin is content. It's when the status quo is shaken, that he begins drowning and loses his sense of self: those things that were normal, to his eyes, are now unfair injustices he has to oppose himself to.

As the minute count of the movie advances and the story progresses, Martin's hatred for himself grows, further cultivated by the notion that he has brought this situation upon himself for a woman who, simply, couldn't love nor understand him.

Ultimately, Martin Eden makes its audience pose questions about themselves, their position in society, and if they are willing to ask themselves questions about them both.
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6 Comments

A Jump-cut in History: How Breathless Revolutionized Filmmaking

3/27/2023

3 Comments

 
by Hope Roberts
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In 1960, director Jean-Luc Godard’s crime, drama film Breathless was released. The plot follows a man called Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who is on the run after killing a policeman. Not knowing where to turn, Michel resorts to asking his American journalist girlfriend (Jean Seberg) to run away with him.

The film is not only revered for its intense plot, but for its stylistic acting and editing techniques too. Throughout, there are many long takes in which the actors improvise off of one another and, at times, it is edited with numerous jump cuts that cue “jump forwards” in time have occurred and that are able to create a rich and full story for the audience to dive into.


The strange and innovative techniques that were established in this film have given it the reputation of one of the classics of world cinema.

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There are many instances in which a writer can incorporate an allusion into their work, but they all are to be placed to serve a purpose. To put it simply, “[A]n allusion is an indirect reference” (Irwin 287). However, in this case, we are more closely examining literary allusions: indirect references that are utilized to help readers or viewers keep certain people, places, events, other literary works, or any source in mind when reading or watching the material. These references can form an association within one’s mind. Directors and screenwriters can influence their audiences through the use of allusions. In the case of Breathless, there are multiple allusions that Godard implements throughout the film that could contain various meanings.

The opening frame of the film is dedicated to Monogram Pictures, a production company that is well-known for creating and releasing B-movies such as Montana Incident (1952, dir. Lewis D. Collins), a famous Western about two railroad surveyors, and Suspense (1946, dir. Frank Tuttle), a noir-drama about a man who works for an ice-skating magnate.

Godard could have included this frame for a multitude of reasons: he might have been paying homage to the company itself for releasing movies that could be seen as subpar and giving them the credit they deserve, or he might have also put it in as an Easter egg for film buffs, to make them excited about the story to come. Personally, I believe that Godard added these frames because of the former: Monogram Pictures was known for not making ground-breaking films, and its placement at the beginning of the movie could be a subliminal message. One of the most important aspects of watching a movie, in order to enjoy it, is by going into it with the right mindset. When people go into a Hollywood movie, they do so certain expectations, and if those expectations are not met, they will most likely leave the theater feeling disappointed.

By referencing a B-movie company right away, the director might have been trying to get the audience to subtly think of the film as being on the same level as a B-movie without them realizing or trying to make a commentary on B-movies in general. This way, the viewers would’ve gone into the movie with a lower set of expectations, causing its appeal to strike a wider audience.

If, however, it is the latter option, Godard might have just had a great deal of respect for cinema and Monogram Pictures in general, and wanted to show his appreciation by paying homage to it at the beginning of his own work.
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Overall, I do not believe that Godard went into creating this film with the goal of violating filmmaking conventions as a way of creating shock and surprise. If he wanted to do so, he could have gone and pushed the limit much further than how he ended up doing. However, as it turns out, it was not in Godard’s original plan to implement the editing technique that made Breathless so widely known. “His jump-cut technique […] like most innovations, it came about accidentally: the rough cut was too long, and Godard and his editors hit upon the idea of snipping out the extraneous linkages in storytelling” (Rainer 1).

Despite all the praise the film and those who had worked on it received, the jump cuts were never actually something that was planned, but rather decided upon in the last stage of post-production. So, Godard did not set out to try to purposefully mess with his audience: he did so in order to adhere to the runtime requirements. In the long run, the decision ended up being extremely productive for the crew due to the massive turnout the film has received over the years. They were able to create a new technique of filmmaking and a different take on storytelling while still keeping a cohesive plot.

The way in which Godard and his crew made this film incoherent-like almost reflects the way of the environment at the time: “[T]he French [...] tend to be drawn to ideas, while the English [United States] distrust them, with the result that English art is often less intellectually informed than one would wish” (Cohen). When viewing the film, keep this in mind: it makes sense for the plot and acting to not be always straight-laced, as they were never meant to be.

Similarly to the rough jump cuts throughout the film, the editing is not the only aspect of Breathless that stands out: the performances from the main actors are not what one would classify as following the traditional standard of characterization and acting.

The most obvious way in which the two actors depart from the standard of acting is that there are many scenes in which the two engage in improvisation. With improv, actors have little to no rehearsal because it is something that has to come in an instant. With the newly created lines, the other actor has to make split-second decisions on how to emote and what their next line should be. Without the use of a script, the activity is no longer “typical” acting, but whatever the actors can think up on their own. The dispensation of rehearsal in favor of improv causes two major problems that can make the acting unrealistic.
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The first issue that arises from the situation are the awkward pauses between the actors: because they do not have a script, they are forced to come up with their own reactions and responses to what the other is saying or doing, which is nearly impossible to do without awkward pauses and causes the scenes to come across as unrealistic and not what one would typically expect from a movie. It may seem as though the pauses would better reflect real life, due to real life not being scripted, but this film is not exactly trying to emulate reality. If so, it would be a documentary or, at the very least, a documentary-esque movie. However, since it is not, there are certain liberties that one takes with film, a certain suspension of disbelief.

The second major problem that can result from doing improv is that there is no guarantee that what is said will connect to and support the plot. The greatness of screenplays is oftentimes based onto the fact that every aspect of it either factors or plays an important part in the story. If the actors have to improvise the majority of their lines, there is a good chance that all the acting will do is merely pad out the runtime while adding nothing meaningful to the plot.

On the other side of the argument, the improvisation might benefit the film in that it is not traditional and will make itself stand out amongst other films of that time (and even today). 

However, while Godard allowed his actors to interpret their lines as they wished, he did have a plan to keep the story on track. “Coutard [the cinematographer] has stated that the film was virtually improvised on the spot, with Godard writing lines of dialogue in an exercise book that no one else was allowed to look at. Godard would give the lines to Belmondo and Seberg while having a few brief rehearsals on scenes involved, then filming them” (Matthew).

By giving his actors notes, Godard was able to keep a form of consistency to the plot while keeping that “natural” feel of improvisation.

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Breathless can be seen as having an overall awkward tone due to both the improvised long takes and the inclusion of numerous jump cuts, as it is strange to combine the two so heavily in a single body of work due to their juxtaposed nature, which causes disorientation.

Long takes are typically employed so that the audience can have a better understanding of the environment, the characters, and the plot while providing a more realistic take for the viewers, while jump cuts remove aspects from the plot, giving the impression that there is a hole in between shots, causing a sudden change that ignites feelings of confusion and agitation. By choosing to film and edit this way, Godard presents a stark contrast between the scenes in which these techniques are employed, and forces the audience to pay closer attention to what is and isn’t important.
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When viewing Breathless, it is easy to see the influences of neorealist French filmmakers such as Jean Renoir and of realist film theory that were employed by Godard. Neorealist films tend to represent modified versions of reality, which this film does, but there are many instances in which the extent of that realism is pushed past the boundaries of what can and cannot be considered realistic too.

When considering wherever Breathless contains anything realistic or not, the answer to that is definite: certain aspects of the plot are heavily influenced by real-life events. Francois Truffaut, a collaborator of Godard, “[H]ad been inspired by a true story that had fascinated tabloid France in 1952, when a man named Michel Portail, a petty criminal who had stolen a car, shot a motorcycle policeman who pulled him over, and then hid out for almost two weeks [...]. Portail had an American journalist girlfriend who he had tried to convince to run away with him” (Hitchman and McNett). So while the more specific details of what happened when portail was in hiding and the conversations he had with others may not be an exact replica of what truly occurred, the basic concept of the man is inspired by a news story from the time.

Godard’s fascination with the idea of life as depicted by the medias is what inspired the story based on real events mixed with fictional overdramatization. While the news does report on events, some tend to tell only the more dramatic aspects, overexaggerating them too in order to increase viewership, a style and tone of storytelling that Godard wished to replicate with his film.

Despite it being over sixty years old, Breathless should still be considered by today’s viewers an innovative and dynamic piece of cinema. Wheeler Winston Dixon claims that: “Seen today, Breathless seems primitive, classic, not at all the audacious ground-breaker it seemed to be in 1959. The jump cuts which were so radical then are now a staple of MTV.” There are many flaws that can be pointed out in Dixon’s argument. His reasoning as to why Breathless can no longer be seen as innovative hinges on the belief that, because the techniques that made the film stand above the rest during its time are now seen on the average television program and have become basic methods that are frequently utilized, then they make the film lose all the creativity and innovation it held in the past.
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Instead, I would argue the complete opposite of what Dixon is trying to convince his readers of. The jump cuts might have never become the staple the are today if it were not for films like Breathless, which took a chance at trying something new and stylized. Furthermore, if Dixon’s logic is to be followed regarding every film that invented techniques that are now considered to be mainstream, then the argument could extend to other innovative pieces such as Citizen Kane (1941, dir. Orson Welles), which is regarded as one of, if not the, greatest films of all time. Responsible for the establishment of countless new innovations in cinema history, this film is most notable for the application of deep focus, which is a cinematic technique utilized by many filmmakers nowadays. Therefore, does this somehow take away from the film that did it first? Should Citizen Kane be viewed as primitive and no longer ground-breaking simply because the incredible systems they created are now common practice?

These films should not be insulted because their techniques have become mainstream, but praised for it. Because of the crews who worked on these films, people today have so many more tools in their arsenal to make great movies. Dudley Andrew makes an interesting point when he states that “Breathless belongs to that very short list of films that stunned audiences in their own time and continue to stun us today.” While the utilization of jump cuts is much more prominent in today’s time, I cannot recall a film or television show that has implemented them in the same way as Breathless. Watching this film was a bizarre and wonderful experience, and it still stuns me with the creative choices that were settled upon.


WORKS CITED
  • Cohen, Paula Marantz. “The Potency of ‘Breathless’: At 50, Godard's Film Still Asks How Something This Bad Can Be so Good.” American Scholar, vol. 78, no. 2, 2009, pp. 110–114., https://doi.org/https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=4&sid=4e3b2825-f286-4a51-bce1-bf5edd6ce209%40redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=37155447&db=asn.
  • Hitchman, S, and A McNett. “Breathless (a Bout De Souffle) - Jean-Luc Godard.” Newwavefilm, http://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/breathless.shtml.
  • Irwin, William. “What Is an Allusion?” Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism, vol. 59, no. 3, Mar. 2001, https://doi.org/https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=11&sid=cefa381d-2bc9-476b-bd80-cb4c2b483caf%40redis.
  • Matthew. “Breathless (1960).” Classicartfilms, http://www.classicartfilms.com/breathless-1960.
  • Rainer, Peter. “Breathless: Movie Review.” Christian Science Monitor, June 2010, p. 1. 

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A New Age of Diversity, not Orientalism

3/26/2023

3 Comments

 
By Lau Lu-Zheng
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 Crazy Rich Asians, by Jon Chu was released in 2018, and blew Hollywood and it's international spectatorship by storm. also authored the documentaries of Justin Bieber: Believe (2013) and Never Say Never (2011). If one is into dance movies, you’ve probably seen his youth-audience targeted smash hit series Step Up. Still no clue? How about G.I Joe (2013) and Now You See Me 2 (2016)? 
    The film won the 2019 Golden Globes Best Comedy Motion Picture, alongside many other awards. However, it also  gained controversy, criticized for exoticizing South-east Asians and painting them in an unrealistic light. In this article, I explore the means in which people might deem this novel-adaptation an “Orientalist” film, and how instead, it can be seen as the breaking of stereotypes, and the celebration of the Southeast.
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    The Palestine-American critical thinker Edward Said (1935-2003) in his book, Orientalism regards the term Orientalism not just as “the academic study of the Orient”, but historically, the subjugation of the Orient. He continues to say that the “Orient”, then is not just the homogenized Middle East, East and Southeast Asia, but the advantageous(lucrative? shrewd?) epistemological mindset of the Western, as he writes:  “(the) Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” (3) From sensual depictions of Middle Eastern women in paintings of the 1800s, to the films we indulge in to this day, Said heightens our senses to the historical and present-day media that subconsciously play into this idea that the Westerner domineers over the eroticised, sensual and mystical Easterner. However, Said’s discourse and exposure of Orientalism does not conclude with his advocacy for boycott, much like we do in our hypersensitive present. Instead, in the 1970s when the book was published during the height of Orientalist Hollywood filmmaking, his total focus was against the “distortion and inaccuracy”(9) of the communities depicted.

      In Crazy Rich Asians, Rachel Chu, an Asian-American (much like the director himself) travels to Singapore to meet her boyfriend’s family who turns out to be the richest family in the city. In this isolated reality above the gentry, one cannot argue against the patterns that might convey Orientalism: Nick’s scoffing mother despises Rachel for her poverty, and sends investigators to expose her family’s messy past, exemplifying a overly political and harsh asian older woman — whereas younger asian women are seen in colorful dresses and bikinis, seemingly one-dimensionally present for their exotic beauty. How can one condone this apparent blatant misrepresentation of peoples, just for an aesthetically pleasing epic?
   Often we are concerned with the matter of representation, and indeed with the monopolization of media by Hollywood, it tends that only the Western upper class can be heard, but this does not disclude the diaspora that make it out of their quasi-rural countries. Jon M. Chu is a first generation Chinese-American, his parents immigrants from China, now running a restaurant. The film is adapted from the fictional novel by Kevin Kwan, but is based on the Chinese (race) in Singapore, not from China — significantly different in culture. 
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     Hence, it would have been easy for Chu to have depicted the population he has never been to, homogenizing “Chinese”(referring to nation) culture, assimilating Singaporean Chinese into the larger nation of China that he would have any personal knowledge of. Instead, there was intentionality in the preserving of accuracy in the portrayal of cultures, much like how Said hopes in his book, Orientalism. In an interview with Vine, he recalls specific mise en scène, referring to the Peranakan (mixed Chinese-Malay) speciality wall tile designs and the set team's mistake of putting up white lanterns, a symbol of death used in funerals instead of red lanterns, prosperity inviting symbols. Getting mahjong experts to build a symbolic game for them, asking for input from local actors: Additional post-production work, delays and costs were added to the production because of Jon’s stress on getting culture right and not distorting it. 
       Chu can also be seen to advocate for the Asian acting community in Hollywood, much less deprecate them. After 25 years, it would historically be the second ever full Asian cast to be represented in Hollywood studios since the screening of Joy Luck Club in 1993.  In between and even before, it was not uncommon for the Asian Hollywood community to play the side role, belittling themselves to fit the racially motivated role. “They think we’ll say yes to anything and we’ll just be grateful,” Constance Wu, lead actor of Rachel Chu, says to a writer about her career.
 Jon M. Chu even throws a punch towards orthodox Hollywood by casting Ken Jeong, an American-Korean actor as a Singaporean-Chinese man. In his most famous casting as Leslie Chow, an ineloquent, thick accented mafia leader in The Hangover, Chow retorts: “I'm Chinese, not Korean!” In Crazy Rich Asians, Jeong satirically plays into the stereotype, he begins his appearance in the film by jokingly speaking to Rachel in a thick, incomprehensible Asian accent — only to immediately switch back to fluent english and tell his daughters to finish their nuggets, there are starving children in America — a covert blast against classic misrepresentation in Hollywood.
    Historical Cinema is all too peppered with Orientalism, and to those that have seen it happen all too often, ex: Lawrence of Arabia(1962), My Geisha(1962), and even movies that are closer to our hearts such as Indiana Jones(1984), that play into the mystical men and women of the Middle East tamed by the White male, it is not unforgivable to be hyper-sensitive of it in films that attempt to capture and celebrate diversity instead. It is then, as critics of the work graciously provided for us, our responsibility to take up arms against those that might, as Said suggests, distort and inaccurately portray communities, as well as hold up and advocate the minority that stands against a pitifully undiverse industry. Certainly, Chu plays with the conventional stereotypes that have seasoned the writer’s rooms, but through the explanations of these generalizations, he exemplifies a new wave of filmmakers that risk crossing this polarizing matter, without ill-representing or inaccurately depicting communities in the process, ultimately bringing new perspectives and exposure to the International spectatorship.
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Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and the Effect of Mature Content in Media

3/26/2023

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​Since the dawn of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), rating system and the abolition of Hays Code in 1968, filmmakers have been able to be more forward in the type of content they can add into their films. Fast-forward to current times, and PG-13 and R rated are among the most watched and produced films. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022) is a short anime television series that puts on display just how much a diverse range of mature content can impact the telling of a story in positive ways, as well as just how necessary it sometimes is.
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David Martinez is a high school student who lives with his single mother Gloria in Night City in the year 2076. They are a lower class family,, but Gloria works hard to make sure her son goes to the best prep school in the city, where he is looked down upon. After a freak accident kills his mother, David is left alone and Night City, an unforgiving capitalistic society, leaves him high and dry with unpaid bills. After deciding he has enough, David gets a cybernetic implant and eventually joins a mercenary group.
Violence is a central part in many action films and television shows. One could say it is the epitome of conflict management. Oftentimes it jump starts plots as well as ends them. If one is an edgerunner in Night City, the jobs will often have the necessity of fighting and killing. It is a simple fact of how things are in the universe. While some aspects might be able to be toned down, in order to portray Night City as the sort of R-rated place that it is, it kind of needs the snowball effect of different kinds of content being in the show. It really depends on the target audience. How much do you want to sacrifice in terms of content to have a potentially larger audience?
Since Edgerunners is an animated production, the line might be a bit lower on what is generally allowed to be shown. But that gives the show the opportunity to go harder in with the realism and/or stylization. There are people being cut up and shot by cybernetically enhanced individuals, so it is hard to say whether what we see would be an accurate representation of what happens or, rather, a stylized account of it. In terms of realism, it satisfies the hunger for knowledge that prompts us to watch more educational content. As it does not happen, at least usually, people wonder what would happen if this or that happened to somebody, so this show seeks to satisfy their curiosity. When the violence starts getting to the point of stylization, it is mainly for entertainment value. The possibly “primitive” parts of our brains like watching violence, so certain aspects like fighting style and blood content are enhanced beyond realistic expectations. This can also be better for those that do not like seeing realistic blood and gore, as the sometimes goofy nature of stylized violence can take them out of it. 
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Language is also commonplace in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and it does its part to enhance the setting of Night City as a rough place as we follow a gang of mercenaries. It wouldn’t make that much sense or sell the city as dangerous and shady or the Edgerunners as hardened and deadly if the people had the “decency” to not swear. It makes even more sense when they are in high pressure situations (such as fleeing a scene to avoid the authorities), the language evokes a sense of urgency and has a different tone than just casual profanity.
Sexual content and nudity can also be useful in fleshing out a setting or characters. In the case of this type of content, context plays a big role. In one of the first scenes, David is pranked into viewing pornographic material. Contrast that with the many times people are naked around each other seemingly for no reason. Both are surprising, but with the former, it sets up a character named Doc’s personality (as well as likely being a warning to viewers to let them know just what they are getting into). With the latter, some members of the mercenary squad show a bit more skin sometimes (for plot related reasons), and it shows how comfortable the squad is around each other. The same could be said for David and his love interest Lucy towards the end of the show. They are sometimes naked in their apartment together. I would like to think for the same reason the squad does, although the other, more sexual implication might be just as likely, even if the scene itself isn’t like that at all.
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Lots of people enjoy seeing more mature content in film and television, although if not done carefully, it can come off as crude and unnecessary (which might be the goal sometimes, i.e. exploitative films). Most of the time, this is achieved through paying attention to the setting, plot, and the characters in the story and trying to be as realistic to those elements so as to necessitate certain types of content. For the same reason people don’t like to see a story where nothing happens, some people would like to see intense things that do not happen as often or at all in daily, mundane life. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, being a science fiction show set in the future, is chock full of such things that do not happen in contemporary life. And the show handles mature content excellently, both for stylization and entertainment value and to sell just how things are in Night City. It isn’t afraid to show what it can to make the best possible production.
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Titane: A New, Monstrous Humanity

3/17/2023

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by Emma Salvato
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French director Julia Ducournau (1983 - ) is not new to stories that focus on the horrors of the flesh: her first movie, a short titled Junior (2011), tells the story of a girl who goes through puberty through the metaphor of a snake shedding its skin, posing it as an unpleasant (and sometimes disgusting) rite of passage. Similarly, Ducournau depicted the passage from adolescence to adulthood in her feature length movie Raw (2016), in which the change from adolescence to adulthood is represented as a horrific experience dictated by insatiable and uncontrollable cravings. In her latest work, Titane, Ducournau settles her characters into adulthood, focusing on the depiction of parenthood, gender roles, and generational trauma.
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Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) at the beginning of the movie.
Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), an exotic dancer who performs on the hoods of muscle cars at motor shows, is a ruthless serial killer: robbed of her natural ability to feel empathy when she was a child, during a car crash caused by her father, she has very little tolerance for whoever bothers her. After murdering a fan who forcefully tries to kiss her, Alexia has sex with one of the cars left in the warehouse where the show took place. A little latter, while in the company of Justine (Garance Marillier), Alexia notices that her belly has become swollen and rounded, and is shocked to see the pregnancy test she takes give a positive result. This sudden discovery ignites her homicidal rage and, to the rhythm of Caterina Caselli's Nessuno Mi Può Giudicare (No One Can Judge Me), Alexia goes on a killing spree, murdering Justine and all her roommates except for one. Aware that she's going to be reported to the police, Alexia flees from her parents' home and seeks refuge in another identity: she steals that of Adrien Legrande, a boy who disappeared ten years prior and whose father, Vincent (VIncent Lindon), is still desperate to find.

Forced to mask her true identity and instincts, Alexia begins her new life with Vincent, slowly learning how to take care of other people and how to let others take care of her as, under the weight of her sci-fi pregnancy, her body begins breaking down.
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Alexia showering after killing one of her fans.
Despite the emphasis on body horror (Alexia bleeds motor oil, the skin of her belly splits open and reveals that, underneath its thick layer, lays a rounded titanium plate; and at the beginning of the movie, when Alexia takes Adrien's identity, she breaks her nose by violently slamming her head against the corner of a public bathroom sink) the movie does not aim to disgust its audiences. Just like in Junior and Raw, the story's interests lay in the relationship between the characters, how their pasts can be represented through their present day actions. Trauma, in Julia Ducournau's films, is always a pivotal theme, and in Titane, its great generator can be found in faulty parenthood.

When Alexia is introduced, she is a child playing in the backseat of her father's car. Annoyed by the noises she is making, the man turns around to punish her and loses control of the vehicle, causing it to crash at the side of the road. Alexia, who was not wearing a seatbelt, hits her head against the window and is urgently brought to the hospital, where she has to undergo a surgical operation in which a titanium plate is welded onto her skull, leaving her with a gnarly scar and robbed of the innately human sense of empathy. "Watch out for any neurological signs," one of the doctors recommends the day of Alexia's discharge. Her mother and father both utterly fail to follow the advice, either because they are unable to recognize how differently their daughter is acting or because, to put it bluntly, they cannot bring themselves to care enough to notice. Their faulty parenting style, detached and unwilling to prioritize Alexia, is what brings to the catastrophic events depicted in the movie.

In the same way, Adrien's life too has been ruined by his father's inability to be a good parent: throughout the movie, it is hinted that the disappearance of the boy was caused by none other than Vincent, who was an inattentive father. The plot does not seek to give further information regarding what happened to the boy after he went missing: he is to be forgotten by all, even by the screenwriter.

Adrien is, in all senses and purposes, Alexia's mirror.
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Alexia as a child, hugging her parents' car after she's discharged from the hospital.
Keywords of this story are "generational trauma": Alexia was left scarred, both physically and mentally, by her parents' inability to take care of her, while Vincent trudges through life riddled by guilt, blaming himself for Adrien's disappearence.

When Vincent picks Alexia, who is posing as Adrien, from the police station, a detective states that they are going to run a DNA test to guarantee that the person claiming to be the missing boy is, in fact, none other than the missing boy, Vincent stops him. "Think I can't recognize my own son?" he asks. It is left open for the audience to decide if the man was always aware that Alexia was tricking him, or if he deluded himself into thinking that the woman is actually his son. By the time he finds out, stumbling into Alexia fresh out of the shower and not yet wrapped in the oversized clothes that conceal her identity, Vincent declares that he does not care for her identity, or why she took Adrien's place: she is her son, and he loves her deeply.

Finally offered this second chance at fatherhood, Vincent struggles to find a healthy place between his old and new ways. The old part of him inhabits the world of toxic masculinity: captain of the local firefighter station, he has become a gym rat with a steroid addiction in a desperate attempt to show the younger men that surround him that he is still superior to them, no matter how old he might get; while the new wants him to be soft-bellied, milk as milk, caring father he never was before. He wants to teach Alexia/Adrien how to shave their face, gives them a piece of titanium that will give their broken nose a more natural shape, employs them at the fire station and immediately ensures that the other guys will not pick on them for their weird looks and frail body, but also wants to keep his position of tough man.
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Vincent (Vincent Lindon) right after he injected steroids.
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Vincent teaching Alexia/Adrien how to shave.
In a similar fashion, the depiction of Alexia's gender sways from the traditional roles ascribed to women. When she is first introduced, she is an over-sexualized woman - as a showgirl, she is depicted wearing nothing but fishnets and a bikini, and dancing seductively while looking right into the camera, seducing both her diegetic and non-diegetic audiences - who suffers the consequences of being an over-sexualized woman; even her pregnancy, which the movie indicates as having been caused by her sexual encounter with a muscle car, is nothing but what is considered to be the natural consequence of being a woman: it does not matter how much you might not want a child, you will get pregnant and find your true calling in motherhood, one day. Despite everything, Alexia is still not delicate nor in need of protection until she begins posing as Adrien: under Vincent's obsessive attentions, Alexia is suddenly shielded from every harm and critique - Vincent intimidates any of the firefighters who push Adrien around, telling them that they will be fired if they do not respect his son, and later on, when one of them notices that there is something wrong with how the "boy" is acting, the man scares him with the threat of physical violence.

In the world of Titane, women are ruthless serial killers always able to conjure back-up plans on the spot, and men are weak creatures who cower in front of difficult situations, unable to protect what they cherish the most, and haunted by the consequences of their own actions.
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Alexia/Adrien and Vincent dancing at a party at the fire station.
In an interview, writer-director Julia Ducournau revealed that the story was inspired by the Greek lore behind the birth of the Titans, the pre-Olympian gods who were banished by Zeus from the upper world. Gaia, the ancestral mother of everything, emerged from the Tartarus and generated Uranus, the personification of heaven, so that he could hold her from every side; laying together, the two created the Titans, imperfect creatures that brought great shame to Uranus, who was so offended by the sight of them that he hid them in Gaia's body. Unable to free them herself, Gaia requested that her children organize an uprise against their father, but only Cronus obeyed the order, surging from his mother's body brandishing a sickle and using it to castrate his father.

It is a story that depicts a desperate, incestuous kind of love, much like the one presented in Titane, in which the lines of what is acceptable and what is not are blurred. Per Ducournau's words, the baby Alexia conceived with the muscle car marks the birth of a new, monstrous humanity.
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Bullet Train: A Wild Ride

2/10/2023

7 Comments

 
by Aaron Argot
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    Bullet Train (David Leitch, 2022) was intriguing in earlier trailers, but also seemed like a movie that would miss the mark. Although the low expectations may have made the film that much better to experience and it proved to be one of the most entertaining films I had seen that year.
    The plot follows a number of different assassins/thieves all getting on the same bullet train in Tokyo, not knowing that goals coincide. “Ladybug” is on a mission for an unavailable colleague to steal a briefcase said to be on the train. The English brothers, “Lemon'' and “Tangerine” are the briefcase holders, and are ordered to bring it and “The Son,” whom they rescued from kidnappers, to a Russian yakuza boss named “The White Death.” Yuichi, “The Father,” boards the train looking for the one who attacked his son. “The Prince,” who is actually female, and the attacker of Yuichi’s son. There is also “The Hornet,” who is after “The Son,” and “The Wolf,” who is after the one who poisoned his wife and wedding party.
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     The characters start to interact with each other as the film moves forward. The plot starts to have the feel of a Knives Out (2019) film, with character traits and motives being revealed as time goes on while also being used as pieces to a puzzle, such as, when Lemon uses the gag of  his Thomas the Tank Engine stickers to tag the manipulative “Prince” as an enemy. All of the characters do not even come together until towards the end of the film, so there are many subplots and interactions constantly happening throughout that are all intertwined. I was impressed with the film’s ability in this endeavor without it feeling confusing. It is a masterclass in Chekhov's Gun, and makes you hold on to every detail.
    The characters themselves are a big part of what makes the film stand out. The confused, logical demeanor of “Ladybug” makes him an oddly relatable main character, and Brad Pitt does a good job of embodying the character. The same should be said for Joey King as “The Prince.” She performs incredibly as a confident, two-faced manipulator and makes for a great villain character. The relationship between Lemon and Tangerine is one of the best parts of the film. Every time they talk with each other, it definitely seems like they are siblings. I could listen to their banter for ages. There is also a bit of sibling love thrown in, which is a nice contrasting touch to a film where many characters are fueled by hate and revenge. Some of the characters, namely The Hornet and The Wolf, are lesser points of this film. Bullet Train is based on a novel, so it may not be inherently the fault of the director or screenwriter, but they both are plot devices. The scenes that contain each of them are entertaining and do add to the overall film, however their characters do not hold a lot of weight. The Wolf is added to stop Ladybug from getting off the train, and The Hornet is there to be the in plot reason The Wolf gets on the train and to cause problems with her snake/snake venom. These characters were meant to be minor and to pave the way for the main ones.
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     Yet, the directing was surprisingly good. Something that aided in the well framed shots and epic action sequences was the setting. I have always loved the train setting for film and television due to its enclosed and traveling nature. It all but ensures characters interact and a goal is being pursued. With it also being a Japanese bullet train, the style is ramped up, which is displayed through the overall look and colors of the train and the characters on board. 
    Of course I can’t stop talking about a film directed by the same artist who directed the John Wick series without talking about the action. It is everything you expect, violent, bloody, clever, and pretty funny in some instances. The action is a crucial part of the movie where everyone has a legitimate reason for fighting while still being over-the-top. The puzzle piece feel of the film culminates with the choreographic fights, which is where pieces of the plot develop or end due to what happens during or after the fight. 
    From departure to arrival, Bullet Train never fails to keep you entertained. The plot keeps building to the end with great direction, action, and characters. The style is different and charming, with everything culminating in spectacular fight scenes. While a few additions may seem convoluted, Bullet Train delivers on creating a fun experience backed up by real quality, definitely an unexpected hit.
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The Sadder, but Wiser Batman

4/8/2022

41 Comments

 
by Ned Kuczmynda
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            Making a Batman movie must be a daunting task. Not only is there the legion of fans with high standards and strong opinions that comes with every fandom adaptation, but whoever directs the film must pick up the mantle of a trilogy that changed what it meant to be a superhero film. Some people are begging for more from the caped crusader, others (this reviewer included) question the necessity of a third Batman in the space of a decade. Hearing all of this, director Matt Reeves has done something special with his take on the material, finding his own lane with a more mysterious plot, and a distinct visual language.
            Much has been made of The Batman’s visual references to classic noir cinema and detective stories, as well as its rootedness in the neo-noir of the 1990s. While all of this is true, most importantly this film is steeped in the best thing a comic movie can be: comic books. Watching this film felt like a deeper immersion into the Gotham imagined by the likes of Grant Morrison (Batman Omnibus), and the city presents less like a teeming metropolis than it does a fever dream of shadows and vice.  ​
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Paul Dano’s Riddler is an exciting change of pace for the character. He is what the film does best, it presents us with an actual mystery that our hero has to solve. Batman has always been a detective but we usually see fisticuffs take precedence over crime scene analysis – this film feels like it is mostly crime scene analysis. It’s a good enigma, not necessarily a whodunit, a riddlerdunwhat perhaps. Batman, Catwoman, and Jim Gordon race to crack a series of increasingly bizarre puzzles that reveal the corruption at the heart of Gotham. The film molds Riddler into the chic new “villain-with-a-point” archetype as his exploits expose corrupt legal officials, politicians, even presenting a new conundrum as Bruce Wayne is revealed to be the inheritor of a dark legacy
            Some of the casting in this film is truly fantastic. The Penguin for instance is reimagined here as a consigliere of sorts to Carmine Falcone played by Colin Farrell (not that you’d recognize him under all that makeup and prosthetic scarring). This iteration of the character brings a lot to the table; not so with Andy Serkis’ Alfred who, despite prior acting experience with Reeves fails to bring any of the life to the role that Michael Caine did. This is fine, until the film expects us to have an emotional connection to him that it just hasn’t earned. 
            Robert Pattinson’s turn under the cowl has certainly been a positive one. His performance presents his vigilantism as something between a duty and an unhealthy obsession; not necessarily a personal quest to conquer fear but an unhealthy expression of trauma. In one of the first scenes of the movie Batman encounters some thugs in a subway station, mid-robbery. Unimpressed by his get-up one of the criminals takes a swing. We’ve all seen this one before, Batman blocks his blow, and takes him down. Where this Batman differs is he doesn’t stop hitting the thug. He rains blow after blow on him long after the man would have stopped being a threat. Pattinson plays a man so sunken into his grief and anger that he’s become numb to it, indeed throughout the film his face hardly changes as he beats his enemies to a pulp.
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Colin Farrell as The Penguin
The strength of this movie is its holding back from high action set pieces (with a high octane car chase as a notable exception) and intricate combat scenes in favor of important dialogue and moments of deduction. For just about an hour Reeves accomplishes the nearly impossible task of holding the attention of a superhero film audience with crafty puzzles, crime scenes, and dialogue. This all falls apart in the third act as Riddler’s minions open fire on a stadium full of innocent people. The very citizens who Riddler was previously claiming to be fighting for and revealing the truth to he now decides are worthy of death.
            This is a problem. The film wants to have its cake and eat it too. They’ve presented a villain with admirable motives, and evil means but in the desire to have an explosive third act given him a plan that doesn’t make sense. Riddler shouldn’t want to kill regular citizens, he should want to kill cops, politicians, Gotham’s elite. However the film needs an army of faceless goons for Batman to fight off and so we get snipers in the rafters of a stadium wearing riddler masks. Just for an extra dose of cynicism, one of the final scenes shows the Riddler behind bars meeting the Joker for the first time. I can’t escape the feeling that the cart is being put before the horse.
            The Batman really is a solid offering, all things considered. Its got atmosphere in spades, and presents several exciting new takes on Gotham and its seedy underbelly. Nonetheless it feels lacking, in a way that it’s possible each Batman will from now on. It attempts to carry a thematic weight that it can’t shoulder and it often feels like the writers rely on our familiarity with characters from previous iterations to provide emotional stakes. This movie does a lot of things that are very special, and when it leans into them it’s great, but the third act grand finale feels corporate mandated, goes a long way towards souring the whole thing. 
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Perception of the Vampire: Analysis

3/25/2022

135 Comments

 
by Sammi Shuma
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From Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) to Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008), many interpretations of the vampire have appeared on screen. Sometimes they appear more monstrous with hideous fangs and claws or look more human to mask their true intentions and (oftentimes) for a young girl to fall in love with them. When it comes to vampire movies, most of these ‘creatures of the night’ are male characters. Their alluring nature traps women into their gaze, lost forever. A male is the predator while the female is the prey. In a film like Fright Night (Craig Gillespie, 2011), the vampire, Jerry, trails after a highschool girl. In the case of Matt Reeves’, Let Me In (2010), the roles are reversed. It is the story of a 12 year old boy, Owen, becoming friends with and ultimately falling in love with a female vampire, Abby. As we find out what Abby is towards the middle of the film, we see where her true intentions lie with Owen. Comparing this to the events in Fright Night, we will see some of the differences between how male and female vampires are portrayed in film. Depending on their gender, their characteristics change the level at which audiences can empathize with them. 
There is a distinct difference in goal when it comes to why the vampire is targeting a character. Abby’s main goal is survival, to continue killing to help herself. She is not neat or methodical when she attacks her prey. At the beginning of the film, she has a man, who poses as her father, Hakan, go out on his own to get blood for her. On one of these trips, Hakan gets into a car accident, leaving Abby to fend for herself. While Hakan would attain blood without leaving a trace, Abby was less methodical. Attacking one of Owen’s neighbors, she is impulsive and reckless. She struggles to control her impulses, making her dependent on others to survive. She needs a servant. Hakan’s death was bound to happen, and Abby planned for his replacement to be Owen. As a vampire, she has the inability to take care of herself in a way that will prolong her existence. Due to her lack of self control, she uses her charm to trap Owen into Hakan’s fate. Owen is a tool, an opportunity to continue living an easier life where she does not have to control her impulses.

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Jerry is self-sustaining, as he has been able to keep himself alive for over 400 hundred years. We see him be able to have a day job, with enough money to buy a house. When it comes to drinking blood, he doesn’t kill his victims, but turns them into vampires and has them live in his basement. Jerry is methodical and he has a plan in which he can fulfill on his own. He goes after Amy for companionship, but also to get back at Charley, a teenaged boy who is actively trying to kill him. He strides for a larger goal; to have dominion over his subjects. We see that he is actively manipulating his victims through compliments and his charm in his need for power. He is the main driver of conflict throughout the film; Jerry pushes against the other characters, willing to do anything for his goal because he has the strength and confidence to do so. Abby is much more passive, being more willing to have opportunities come to her. As she takes time to form a relationship with Owen, it becomes difficult to realize her manipulative strategies until near the end of the film. Jerry relies on his strength to meet his goals while Abby uses her intellect to swoon a boy into being her caretaker. 
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While their goals are on a different scale, each of them wants control of others. Their means ultimately change the audience’s perception of Jerry and Abby. As the truth about Abby is unknown to us at the start of the film, audiences are left to fill in the gaps about her past. Being introduced to her, we see her and Hakan walking into Owen’s apartment complex. Abby walks barefoot in the snow, giving us the impression of mistreatment and lack of care on Hakan’s part.
There are common traits that vampire characters have on screen. Dracula (Tod Browning, Karl Freund, 1931) and Twilight show how alluring vampires are. Women are drawn in simply by their gaze. Jerry and Abby accomplish this in different ways. In Fright Night, Jerry captures the hearts of several female characters through his muscular frame and confidence. He’s a lady’s man, able to attain anyone he chooses. It is his predominantly male traits that get him what he wants, succeeding for most of the film’s runtime. He is portrayed as a real villain, an unstoppable force. His charming façade quickly falls apart in the audience’s mind, becoming unlikable. Fitting into the typical vampire model, his dark intentions are clearly laid out to the audience early on. While this is amplified by the story telling, Jerry’s physique and domineering allows him to achieve his goals with ease. As he has no faults, he appears less human to the audience. Empathizing with his character becomes impossible because he has no faults.
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Abby is portrayed as weak, lonely and excluded from the joys of childhood. As she meets Owen at the playground of their apartment complex, she doesn’t go for him immediately. She tells him that they cannot be friends and she tries to avoid him. As a young girl, she is shy and reserved, leaving us to feel she is withholding herself from the goal of companionship. The film gives Abby and Owen the time to form a meaningful relationship, where Abby struggles to get what she wants. It is through these struggles that the audience feels empathetic and invests in their friendship. Her gendered characteristics separate her from other vampire characters. Unlike Jerry, Abby struggles to achieve her goal. She appears more human to the audience, which ultimately blindsides us by the end of the film. The idea of the vampire becomes reimagined as is more than a villain to the main characters. Abby is endowed as a trusting best friend to Owen, we see her work to be by his side. She doesn’t just take what she wants simply because she can, but makes discoveries as to what works and what doesn’t. It is in her imperfection that Abby is likable, which is a departure from other descriptions of vampires in film.
Out of the hundreds of vampire movies available to watch, very few show vampires depicted like Let Me In. While she has fangs and kills people, she fails to eat her prey in a way that protects her from being discovered. Abby fails, seeking food and shelter from the assistance of others. Despite the strength she may possess as an immortal monster, her female fragility makes her easy to empathize with. Jerry is a more common example of a vampire in film. He takes whatever he wants without consequence, making his death satisfying to the audience. We see his true intentions early on in the film while Abby’s is masked by her weaknesses. By comparing Fright Night and Let Me In, we have seen how the difference of gender can make a vampire character more likable and easier to empathize with.
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The French Dispatch: A Critical Analysis

3/18/2022

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by Sebastian Tow
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From Stranger Things, to Tarintino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, there is a trend in the film industry to profit off a culture of nostalgia. But, is this merely a trend, or a symptom of a deeper cultural sickness? Not only in film, but in music, media, and, indeed, all modes of popular culture and otherwise, there is a growing sense of nostalgia. Wes Anderson’s latest hipster dereliction, The French Dispatch, is the most prominent example of this. It is an anthology, featuring a large cast and following three different storylines within the overarching plot depicting the fictional Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper as it creates its final issue. The first story follows an inmate and painter (Benicio del Toro) as he falls in love with one of the prison guards (Léa Seydoux), and is commissioned to paint a fresco. The second depicts one of the paper’s journalists (Frances McDormand) as she follows a group of French students (Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri) plotting a revolt, reminiscent of the real May ‘68 Paris protests. The third story of the film features Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, and Stephen Park, and follows the kidnapping of a police commissioner's son. Bill Murray also stars as Arthur Howitzer Jr., the paper's editor, while Owen Wilson appears in a short segment that introduces the film's setting in the fictional French town of ‘Ennui-sur-Blasé’.
 
The name ‘Ennui-sur-Blasé’ directly translates to ‘Boredom-on-Jaded’, and this phrase sums up the essence of The French Dispatch perfectly. Anderson’s style has gone well beyond that of self-parody, and it is clear that behind the meticulous aesthetics is nothing more than cynicism, and one could say, a vague boredom. But is Anderson to blame for this? On a closer, more sociological reading of the film, I would say no, not completely. Anderson as an artist and a director is, at least partially, unconscious of this, and can even be said to be attempting to counteract this. I intend to argue that The French Dispatch, and Anderson’s work as a whole, can be analyzed and understood as symptomatic of a bored and jaded culture, trapped in a deadlock of nostalgia and self-parody. 
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To understand this assertion one first has to look at the context the film is coming out of. In our times art is a commodity. Art is in the business of consumer entertainment; the film industry simply looks to maximise consumption of their product, so there is no room for deviation from this goal. Authentic art is always a result of a deviation from the traditions that preceded it, it is an event that results in a bloom of originality. But in a society predicated on business for business’ sake, art is unable to perform this act. In this way, from the 1970s onwards, art has proliferated the postmodern by incorporating every anti-establishment attitude into the cycle of the establishment, the cycle of art as commodity. Anything deviating from the mainstream, or acting against it, is quickly sucked up into the vacuum of production, and sold as the very thing it sought to counteract. This can be seen in Anderson’s work from the outset.  In The French Dispatch, the very fact that art is commodified is known, and this is commented on within the film itself. The first story of the film makes the standard postmodern gesture of deprecating its own plot and imagery. The dance back and forth between Moses, the artist, and Julien, who wants to buy the art, reduces the character’s reverence for the art itself to nothing more than a joke. The story plays on this idea of art as trapped in commodification, as Adrien Brody’s character announces explicitly that “all art is for sale, you wouldn’t make it if it wasn’t.”  
 
Cultural theorist Mark Fisher would say that this is only natural. According to Fisher, there is no question of art enacting genuine deviation anymore. The concept of art as an ideal that seeks earnestly to create new horizons is laughable now. Fisher  pairs the commodification of art with this cynicism found in contemporary culture. Each story in The French Dispatch depicts characters who are artists and revolutionaries, yet through their self-mocking, blank style of delivery, the characters make fun of the things they stand for. Under the explicit content of the film, depicting artists and manifesto writers, is an implicit subtext of cynicism. This is one of the largest consequences of postmodern culture. And this is a major factor resulting both in a nostalgia culture, and in the nostalgia of Anderson's style. In a comment on Peter Sloterdijk’s book Critique of Cynical Reason, Slavoj Žižek says that “[today] ideology’s dominant mode of functioning is cynical. (...) The cynical [person] is quite aware of the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality, but he nonetheless still insists upon the mask.”  One can see this insistence in The French Dispatch. On the surface is the mask of nostalgic celebration of all things vintage, creative, modernist; yet beneath this is nothing but mockery. 
 
Using these insights, we can track the timeline of the emergence of nostalgia culture in Anderson’s work. According to Fisher, the artistic impotence created by these forces reached a new high in the 2000’s. By that time, it became conceptually impossible to create anything new, at least in the mainstream, and ultimately this is when nostalgia culture emerged. From ‘business ontology’ came artistic ‘hauntology’: a depressed nostalgia for new art forms, a nostalgia for a time that was not caught in a loop of recycled forms, endlessly commented on by the metalanguage of cynicism. Anderson's early films, made between the late ‘90’s and the early 2000’s, like Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums, still existed, at least conceptually, within the time period they were filmed. The development of Anderson’s acutely nostalgic aesthetic was already running counter to this in his early work, and by the 2010’s Anderson’s films began to lose all context of time altogether. Films like The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom bore the aesthetic of the 20th century, yet no one can say they are period films. They neither exist in the 20th century nor in the time they were created. Anderson’s films are packaged in the new-old, they give the viewer the fake experience of modernist artistic aesthetics, while their form remains within the harshest postmodern disposition. The characters of The French Dispatch, just as the characters of Anderson’s previous works, adorn a closet of perfectly coordinated outfits, pastel and perfect down to the hem. The set dazzles with its reminiscence, Ennui-sur-Blasé reminds one of the streets of Paris pictured in an early François Truffault film; but, unlike the earnestness seen in the eyes of Antoine as the camera follows him to the end of the beach at the climax of Truffault’s Les Quatre Cents Coups, Anderson’s characters speak in monotone voices, filled with mawkishness, and his sets are only the enhancement of recycled references. Anderson’s films are explicitly nostalgic, yet they do not repeat the true gesture of the past they imitate; every gesture, every line in the script, is but a simulation of itself, making fun of the very aesthetic referent its nostalgia is built on.

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This style reached the threshold of tolerance in The Grand Budapest Hotel. It’s no wonder that The French Dispatch, Anderson’s first non-animated film since Grand Budapest, has gone past the point of recovery. The pace of the film is excessive, reducing the time for characters to utter a quip here and there, as the plot attempts to cram as much visual nostalgia into two hours as possible. In the third story, that of the police commissioner’s son, the levels of narrative are cramped and confused in pace. The story jumps back and forth to Jeffory Wright’s character, the journalist recounting the story to a TV audience, clad in a ‘70’s jacket that looks like it belongs to a guest on The Dick Cavett Show. The rest of the narrative is depicted by animation and hurried takes between the myriad of characters. In the second story, Revisions to a Manifesto, the logic of nostalgia culture built on business ontology is laid bare in its reference to Paris ‘68. We see here another hallmark of postmodern cynicism, the depoliticisation of culture. In this way, a past event such as the Paris student riots of ‘68, an earnest, yet failed attempt at political and cultural emancipation, is the perfect reference point for Anderson’s aesthetic. Out of the film's sense of nostalgia, covering an unconscious true nostalgia for earnestness and emancipation, it ends up mocking this nostalgia itself, visualizing it with black and white cigarettes, stacks of books, and stylishly dressed students playing chess in Parisian cafes. McDormand’s character blandly comments on the students, writing up their movement as nothing more than the  “touching narcissism of the young.” Anderson’s mocking depiction of the sixtyeight-er zeitgeist speaks to the central contradiction that sustains us as inhabitants of nostalgia culture: it is impossible to get out of the loop of cultural recycling, cynical distancing, and depoliticization, yet we long for earnestness and artistic emancipation in culture. We mock the culture of the past, yet we wish it were actualized today. In this way, The French Dispatch is completely turpitudinous; the finality of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun as it ends with its last issue, echoes the very finality of The French Dispatch itself. The cast that has remained in Anderson’s work for years are but variations of the characters they have played in films before, reduced to proliferating the deadlock of nostalgic logic further, so there is no out, no way to go forward. 

Analysis of the film raises a question as to how conscious Anderson is of these dynamics. From one angle it appears as though he is aware of the social and cultural dynamics at play in his own work, and one may venture to say that in The French Dispatch he chose to take the logic of nostalgia and cynicism to its endpoint in an attempt to critique this logic itself. This must be partially true, due to the very conscious choices made; was naming the setting for the film ‘Boredom-on-Jaded’ a mistake, or was it merely a sally of wit? Yet, whether or not Anderson is conscious of these dynamics does not redeem the film. I would predict that Anderson’s style has no place left to go but to reproduce a variation of the same blueprint pictured in The French Dispatch in his next film. It is not up to Anderson to break the postmodern logic inherent in nostalgia culture. For art and film in the wider sense, the only way to break from this deadlock is to be liberated from cynicism by emphasizing a new earnestness, non-referential to any imagined aesthetic of the past. The French Dispatch should be seen as the prime example of the existing order of cultural production that needs to be destroyed if there is any hope of taking art to a place of possible new creation.
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