#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