#78 - Requiem for a Dream

“I'm somebody now, Harry. Everybody likes me. Soon, millions of people will see me and they'll all like me. I'll tell them about you, and your father, how good he was to us. Remember? It's a reason to get up in the morning. It's a reason to lose weight, to fit in the red dress. It's a reason to smile. It makes tomorrow all right. What have I got Harry, hm? Why should I even make the bed, or wash the dishes? I do them, but why should I? I'm alone. Your father's gone, you're gone. I got no one to care for. What have I got, Harry? I'm lonely. I'm old.”

Seeing has been fundamental to the identity of cinema for as long as it has been existed. It has been the means by which we have seen things we never could have imagined previous, both in spectacle and in intensity. It has also been the dream of millions to be in movies and to be seen, to have their shot, their (to borrow Andy Warhol’s, now clichéd, mantra of popularity) 15 minutes of fame. That’s what Sara Goldfarb wants. She sits in her armchair every day, a retired and lonely woman, and watches as the smiling faces, bright lights and constant validity are projected from her small, decrepit, rabbit-eared television. She watched across a gulf of knowing that she will never be on that side of the screen until one day she receives a suspiciously benevolent phone call offering, and not selling, her the opportunity to be on television. This miracle chance becomes her reason for being. She gains a new raison d’etre and decides that she needs to loose the weight of her years of lethargy and sugar addiction and fit back into the red dress that she wore to her son’s graduation, the last time she remembers feeling desired. Sara starts dieting, eating only egg and grapefruit until she is told that there is a regime of pills that can help her loose weight with a fraction of both effort and time. After a gained prescription from an indifferent doctor she beings to loose weight and gain energy, but as time drags on, and the reply from Madison Avenue is not forthcoming, she beings to slip, and her perfect routing begins to become unsustainable. Like the other characters in Requiem for a Dream, her control over her addiction begins to crack and her world becomes more and more enclosed and disturbed.

Sara’s speech to her son, as well as being a highly emotional and fantastic piece of writing, contains both the wish to be seen and to be understood; for someone to see from her point of view. Point of view is key to this film as it require a great amount of compassion, and endurance, to see through to the end the decent each character endures through consequence and addiction. Subjectivity is necessary as people like Sara, Harry, Tyrone and Marion are routinely dismissed in civil society as no-good junkies and scum. It is their point of view that we experience throughout the film through Aronofsky’s use of framing and image. Empathetic subjectivity through image is key to the film’s identity (as signposted by the frequent shots of the eye, whose retina is altered by a fresh dose and which take prominent place on the film’s poster). Without it the film would still be a powerful film, no doubt, but it wouldn’t effectively work the way it does and probably wouldn’t be on this list and it also wouldn’t effectively show the effects the various addictions are having on the film’s central characters.

One example of the use of image is Aronofsky’s use of split screen. Usually a device for either reducing the visual gap between characters during a phone call (most likely to avoid frequently cutting between the two side of a conversation) or for a clever piece of juxtaposition, like in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall where two separate psychiatrist meetings are paired, with even the dialogue alternating scenes between lines (and actually shot at once with a fake wall between scenes). But in a conversation between Harry (Jared Leto) and Marion (Jennifer Connelly) the split screen shows two halves of the same image, the same conversation, only, that there is a delay of a few seconds between what seems like fluid conversation and delayed physical actions. This technique shows them as both together but also distinctly apart and isolated. Each having their own perspective and own individual world that is disconnected from the real world. Along with this, there are a vast amount of similar techniques used to portray a similar unreality and fragmentation (the film itself has around 2000 cuts, as opposed to most films having on average 600-700) and in no way shies away from showing exactly how each addiction takes it’s toll on all the characters.

The film gives a voice to those looking for solace and meaning, but are controlled by their addictions and acts, not as some have feebly called “anti-drug propaganda”, but rather as a viewpoint rarely seen before. Cinema does indeed show worlds rarely seen before, and here is no exception. The core difference being that this is a world that some would rather not see and does exist, and not a world we may wish to see, but doesn’t and deserves to be seen all the more for it (provided you are old enough as it is a VERY tough film).

#36 - Spirited Away

Spirited Away #36

The top animation film in the IMDB top 250 wasn’t made by Disney, isn’t primarily in English, is hand-drawn and isn’t made just to keep kids entertained for two hours whilst parents busy themselves. Instead it was made by a man who believes children need less comics and video games, and who thinks children should only watch, at most, two animated films a year, and yet his film takes the 36^th spot on the (predominately western voted) list of greatest films of all time. What is it that makes Spirited Away as loved and popular as it currently is?

As I mentioned in the post about remakes, films that come from other culture often have a vast amount of cultural, social, historical, religious and political layers that generally will go over the heads of any of the films non-native viewers; these cultural layers are greater in Spirited Away than the majority of foreign films as the world that constitutes the majority of the films is a world made of an almost pure mixture Japanese culture, history and religion. But there is something in Spirited Away that transcends cultural boundaries, something that speaks to the heart of a great many western viewers who may know little, or nothing, about Japanese culture. What I think the common link between all of the films viewers, the unifying aspect that appeals to all, is childhood; that time where everything seemed magic, where anything was possible and where you find out whom you really are.

With elements that either reference, or are reminiscent of, stories like Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz and a dozen folk and fairy tales, there is always a familiar element of being lost throughout the film, of being a child in a seemingly new world. The world seems as unfamiliar and fantastical to us as it does to Chihiro, the films 10-year-old protagonist, and in that shared unfamiliarity we gain sympathy and shared confusion with Chihiro as she encounters the spirit world and its ways.

From the film’s opening image of a goodbye card with Chihiro’s name on it we know that it is going to be a film of finding out who you really are and about finding home and what is truly important. Despite all manner of danger, uncertainty and fear it isn’t what Chihiro gains that is important, it is what she learns about herself. In so many films the protagonist learns that strength only lies in others you have around you and the importance of friends to help you accomplish the impossible (or at least, the really hard), that that is not the case for Spirited Away. Yes, in the beginning Chihiro needs the help of Haku, but by the end it is the strength in Chihiro that helps others find their own place in the world; she helps Haku find out his true name, she finds no-face a home, she cleanses the river spirit of pollution and saves her parents. She finds strength in herself that is often passed over and ignored in a lot of children (and characters). She is not helpless, patronised or looked down on by the films finale, instead she is celebrated by those whom recognise her worth and courage. I honestly think more films should find a character’s worth not only in their friends/allies but in their character’s own self and identity and worth. I think it is this refusal to patronise children that has helped elevate Spirited Away to such lofty heights.

The question that follows, then, is this: is Spirited Away a children’s film? For me the answer is a resounding “no!” I am fully aware that Hayao Miyazaki made this for a certain child, but the merits of the film for me lie in it being about childhood. In a similar vein to Where the Wild Things Are, the film shows the world that being a child is hard, that we shouldn’t forget the wonder of being a child and that we should never look down on, or patronise, children. It is a way of temporarily entering back into the world of childhood to understand who you are by going back to the age when you first started to get a grasp on yourself. I am by no means suggesting children shouldn’t watch this. It is, after all, a wonderfully rich and imaginative film and features a fantastic character that is actually worth looking up to as a role model.

As a final side note, I just wanted to acknowledge two aspects of the film that have stayed with me ever since I first saw it years ago:

1.              The sublime score which I recommend looking up as it is as beautiful as it is mystical and is strongly reminiscent of some of the fabulous pieces of music composed by the superb Ryuchi Sakamoto.

2.              The image of the train travelling alone the surface of the water…

#229 - Rope

Whose side are you on?

What challenged me most about rope was the sheer gut wrenching tension. All it took was one person to make one seemingly innocuous comment, or for the maid to start clearing space on the body laden chest to have my stomach in knots. Tension is nothing new, but this was different. I wasn’t worrying that the bad guys were about to kill the hero, I wasn’t worried that the monster was about to get the girl and I wasn’t worried that the hole in the spaceship was going to suffocate everyone, I was worried that the murderers were going to be found out and that the perfect murder would no longer be perfect and that worried me. Am I a sociopath who thought that the perfection of the crime was more important than justice?

Fortunately, I’m not, but that then leaves the question of how a film has had me worried that two murderers were going to get caught. How had one film, in less than 80 minutes have me rooting for ‘the bad guys’, and if one film could do that, what influence had every other film I had ever seen have over me?

“Nobody ever feels really safe in the dark”

Every film has an ideology, a ‘Representation of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence’, and during the films run time that ideology will be played out to you. Whether that is the ideology of the writer, director, actor, producer, composer or anyone else involved each film has an ideology. Some films you will watch and something will jar with you; you may see a character defend capitalism when you yourself think it is malicious system of greed and control, or you may see a story with strong religious overtones that you fundamentally reject (as was the case for films like Book of Eli, which many people rejected on that basis). On the other hand, you may see a film that either affirms, or presents, an ideology you hold or agree with (I for one would gladly see Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life driven out of town with pitchforks). Either way, each film hold an ideology and what Rope appears to do is test your own ideologies and moral code.

In the film’s beginning you are shown a man get strangled with a piece of rope and dumped into a wooden chest. It is a brutal act of murder and unflinchingly shown in all its aftermath. But what plays out afterwards are all the finishing touches of bravado that pulls in the film’s viewer and entrances with its sheer audacity. Each murderous reference is almost applaudable in its blatancy and sheer daring, the lengthily discussion of permissible murder with the victims father is near heroic in bravery and the invitation of the one man who would either complete, or ruin, the perfect crime is the finishing touch on the whole affair.

“It isn’t someones birthday is it?”

“Don’t look so worried Kenneth. It’s almost the opposite”

I was so enamoured by the audacity of Phillip and (mostly) Brandon and their flouncing of the crime that I didn’t want them to fail. I didn’t want the murderers caught and for the next hour each close call leaves me with knots, but the films saving moral compass is found in Philosophy professor Rupert Cadell who was Brandon’s inspiration for the crime through his lectures and lessons on death and art and ideology.

“He thinks murder is a crime for most men but…”

                                                                        “…a privilege for the few”

One mans ideology manifest into physical action and that ideology is of the value of people and the chances for manipulation of ‘lower’ people in the name of high ideals.  He (Cadell) is, in a way, in the same position as the regular cinemagoer. We cheer when the good guy wipes out scores of the bad guys goons, we punch our fists in the air when the death star it destroyed, we are satisfied when average people are saved by the violent deaths of the bad guys who threaten their innocent existence. At some point we have all condoned murder on celluloid and agreed that it is ok because they are ‘bad guys’ who are being killed. The BBFC and the MPAA would much easily give a lower rating to a film where hundreds dies than a film where two people have sex. When did sex become more offensive than death?* Murder in theory, and film, is apparently ok as no one really dies so can we really be blamed when it manifests. Can we really blame films, and not the cinematic culture of moral warping, when someone sees an act of violence and thinks its ok to recreate because they see themselves as ‘the good guy’?

“He and I have lived what you and I have talked”

It the films finale (spoilers) Cadell states that there is something deep inside Brandon and not inside himself that is to blame for the murder. He now has to live with the shame of enabling the murder, he is the reason that Brandon did what he did and he now has a debt to society, but do we have a debt for the current cinematic culture?

This is an argument that has gone on for decades and will do for many, many, more years. Just check out any interview with Quentin Tarantino and a news reporter to see how heated this question can get. As viewer we need to not be so blankly accepting of this, or any other cinematic ideology, and instead think about our own views, morals and codes that govern our lives and weigh up how much of those are influenced by what we see on the silver screen.

Finally, remember to spare a thought for those storm troopers on that death star when you watch Star Wars, and pity the guard to the volcano lair in You Only Live Twice, it may not be their fault they couldn’t get better work after all.

*Scores of books have been written on subjects like this and as such, I have no intention of answering this unanswerably large question

#48 - The Departed & #208 - Infernal Affairs

“They’re out to get you Barbra”

They are everywhere, nothing is sacred, they can represent the deteriorating mind-set of advanced capitalism and consumer culture, they are unavoidable, they often resemble inferior copies and don’t seem fundamentally right and, more often than not, they stink. They are often swiftly and spectacularly killed, their existence is seen as an abomination and there seems to be no hope for the future.

That’s right, Remakes.

They’re everywhere. Wherever you look, there are remakes. They have been around almost as long as film itself, but why are there so many of them? And why do films get remade in the first place?

A recent-ish trend that has grown has been the remaking of non-English language films (usually horror) into an English language setting, often with disappointing reviews and even angry reviews. Films like The Ring, Let The Right One In, One Missed Call, The Grudge and most recently the phenomenal Oldboy have all been remade, and for what seems to be no better reason than the fact they aren’t in English. When films like Let Me In arrive with less than 2 years after the official release date of the original it does bring up questions of its reason for existence. Are they really only made for people who can’t, or won’t, read subtitles when watching a film?

Sometimes yes, but I like to think on the whole that isn’t the case. It is, after all, very easy to slip into this form of cinematic cynicism when thinking about remakes. When that happens everybody suffers, including:

1.     The Original Film. If it isn’t worth the effort of watching in subtitles, why should it be worth watching at all? Although the original may garner a few new fans it is often left aside in favour of it’s anglicised remake. This is made even worse if the remake is a stinker.

2.     The Remake. If it exists purely for money and thus should not be thought of as a film, but instead as an overblown moneymaking machine will it ever get an objective viewing? (well, as objective as one can get anyway)

3.     The Remake’s Audience. Anyone watching just the remake will automatically be maligned by the film going society and marked as a mindless drones

4.     Fans of the Original. You will now sound like an arrogant nob whenever mention of the remake is made (and on a par with people who evangelistically tell you over and over about how “The book was better”).

But instead of falling into a slough of despondency at the state of “modern cinema” (equally annoying as those mentioned in point 4*) there are English language remakes out there that are fantastic films and that hold their own with the best of them. If it weren’t for remakes in general the Spaghetti Western genre wouldn’t have classics like The Magnificent Seven and films like Some Like It Hot and many other fantastic films would not have existed; which brings us to the only occurrence on the list of both the original film and it’s remake.

Infernal Affairs and The Departed.

 One cop, one criminal, both undercover amongst their respected enemies and both trying to find out the identity of the other mole. The original was a hi-paced, tense thriller with a pitch perfect level of suspense, story, plot and character; the remake was an epic with scope and grand ideas and a grand director. Both films are master-classes in creating tension and questioning what drives men and what it means to be a good guy and a bad guy.

Aside from the language there is a whole level to Infernal Affairs that will pass over most of its western audience, and that level is cultural. For starters, the film’s title actually translates as The Unceasing Path. This path is in reference to the lowest level of hell in Buddhism, a hell that is perpetual and never-ending.  This alone would pass over the heads of most westerners, as Buddhism is not our culturally dominant, or founding, religion. We have not been brought up with a concept of different levels of hell and the anguish of perpetual torment, so when we watch the film, Yan’s refusal of the gift of a watch, on the grounds that he never wears watches, might seem rude, but to it’s home audience it will make much more sense.  They will make the connection between Yan’s refusal to want to tell the time and the lack of need for time in perpetual hell and see that living as another is his perpetual hell he can never escape from. We are worlds away from the cultures on the other sides of the planet and there are nuances and subtleties we can never understand.

I don’t think, for example, I can ever fully grasp a Studio Ghibli film as they are richly steeped in the ancient culture of Japan. To me, all the wonders of the world of My Neighbour Totoro and other such marvels will remain largely that, marvels. Something I can look at in awe but only begin to understand after prolonged immersion in Japanese culture. That does not mean I would ever dare to suggest that they should be remade in the West. They exist in Japanese Culture and all I can do is try to understand the world they are set in and appreciate just how beautifully varied and diverse that world is. To remake them would be like running a bulldozer over what made them great to, and for, me; their sublime unfathomability.

This cultural levelling, to alleviate any bump in culture clash, is why any Americanised remake of a J-horror will never work; they are not the ghosts of our culture and cant be made to move overseas to haunt affluent white people (as tempting as it may seem). But, just because there are cultural boundaries does not mean a film cannot be transported overseas. A film, despite its different language and wholly remote culture, may hold themes and issues that speak out to all people and it is when those themes are carried over that a remake’s existence can be justified.

We all know what it feels like to be acting like someone and how it starts to make us worry about who we really are. We all know about the concepts of good and evil and have wondered what side our actions may fall on, and whether there is a middle ground between them. These ideas are universal ideas that exist in every culture and these are what carry best from Infernal Affairs. Instead of applying foreign ideas of the Buddhist perpetual hell or the complex relationship between triads and police in Hong Kong, The Departed takes the bare bones of the plot and infuses Martin Scorsese’s views or questions on ideas such as morality, guilt and identity which fit with the original’s structure. Instead of keeping the brisk 100 minutes of Infernal Affairs, he opts for a long, meditative film that looks over masculinity, Irish settlers in America, conflicts within fractured cultural identity in America and other such cultural issues, issues that would pass over the head of almost any non-American watching the film.  The reason that The Departed works best as a remake isn’t that Scorsese is trying to shoehorn a Chinese film into an American culture, but that he takes the original’s universality and uses that as his template.  The story of two men, being who they aren’t, looking for a true existence through the other person, I guess. I mean, what do I know? I’m neither American, nor Chinese.

*I can’t in any way claim innocence from any of these. I have repeatedly committed all three instances of sounding like a cinema snob on multiple occasions

#15 - Inception

 

A reel dream.

Before watching Inception it had never stuck me before how much a dream and a film have in common with each other. They are both formed through an idea, an idea which may have formed itself within the sub-conscious, they are both a form of alternate reality and escape from the real world, they are constructed and they can both be destabilised and have multiple meanings drawn out of them by the self and others.

For many people both dreams and cinema is a profound means of escape from a life that may seem dull, monotonous or unsatisfactory and are looking for a new existence. Look at James Cameron’s 3D spectacle Avatar, which with it’s ground-breaking 3D environments and lush, attractive scenery drew many, many people to immerse themselves in the world of Pandora and watch the film repeatedly, wishing to once more experience a world unlike their own.  For over 100 years cinema has created worlds that are both fantastical and familiar and which, when one is completely immersed, are not questioned but simply experienced.

“Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realise something was actually strange.”

This passive viewing of a film or dream engages with the immediate “feeling” of the inhabited world; in a nightmare you would feel just as afraid as if you were watching Jack Nicholson terrorising Shelly Duvall in The Shining or you may be as emotionally involved in a dream featuring loved ones as you may be whilst watching It’s a Wonderful Life. When you are immediately engaged with the created world you don’t question what created this world or why it exists, you just exist with it and become a part of it. It is as soon as you begin to question the world and realise that it is a construction that you begin to destabilise it. In a film you could become suddenly aware that you are watching actors assisted leaping around a bright green stage, and not a seasoned cop dodging a violent explosion by mere centimetres.

When Ariadne first realises that she is not actually sat in a quaint Café in central Paris but actually within a shared dream, the world around her begins to collapse, with shops, streets and buildings destabilising and breaking apart. It was only when she realised that the world was not real that it began to fall apart. This carries over to film where there whole areas of criticism devoted to highlighting and destabilising the constructedness of a film and understanding how it creates it’s convincing world within the viewers mind. When the artifice of film and dreams is understood it can be manipulated to great extent, with both film-makers and Cobb’s team creating great impossible worlds that feel real to the viewer. It is not only in the visual or the palpable that films and dreams exist; they also exist on a deeper level, with vast under-currents of meanings, desires and ideas flowing below the surface.

“You mind telling your subconscious to take it easy?”

Dreams, and the study of dreams, have been around for as long as humanity has walked the planet. They were seen as messages from the gods, revelations of secrets and sources of divine inspiration, but in recent centuries they have been seen as they key to the human psyche, with many psychoanalysts peering in and deconstructing dreams to reveal the hidden forces that drive the self. This approach to the hidden meanings within the dream has been carried over to almost every form of human communication and has become a staple in the analysis of films. We search for the hidden meanings, not only in people, but also in films. It is in the highlighting of this deconstruction and expansion that we find the ideological core of Inception; the notion of “The idea”.

“Your world is not real!”

Ideas are what have shaped humanity. They have given us the ability to create vast structures, complex machinery and advances that have brought us to where we are today but where do they come from and is it possible to put an idea in someone’s mind? The plot of Inception revolves around the task of implanting a fully convincing idea within the mind of a business rival. To do this they create worlds, replicate and repeat a specific set of numbers and employ a plethora of trickery and façades in order to plant the single idea that he is not his father. This process is strikingly similar to the construction of the film itself. Firstly, There is the idea that is created by the screenwriter (Saito), which is then passed on to the Director (Cobb) who then assembles of team to work with, including; a producer (Arthur), a production designer (Ariadne), an actor (Eames) and an audience (Fischer).

Taking this approach then, that every film is capable of performing inception, what influence has film held over our lives? Is it possible to say there wouldn’t be as many scientists if it wasn’t for films like 2001:A Space Odyssey?

There is, though, an inherit danger in taking this approach to films as it does put films in the position of being used (by either film-makers or active viewers) as a tool or weapon to justify a particular ideological stand point. You can visit almost any news page and see claims of violence in games or films being to blame for real life acts of aggression, but this is not interpretation, but rather, manipulation. Every film will invariable have it’s own moral, social, ideological or political compass and in examining and highlighting how that compass is constructed we can actively see, and explore, the value and integrity of the film’s (or dream’s) idea.

For Cobb, the artificially crated dreams in Inception have become the only way he can dream and I think that may also apply to me. For whatever reason, I very rarely remember my dreams and when I do they are half forgotten fragments. The only way I can dream is by willingly, and actively, immersing myself in another’s dream, and through these I can not only understand how their dream is made but also in seeing what I take away from each film I can better understand who I am and how I work.

“I just want to understand.”

Ariadne