Eden Lake (James Watkins, 2008)

Pretentious – making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction

Offensive -  causing displeasure or resentment

The two words defined above are often used unscrupulously in reviews and thoughts about film. However, if there was any film deserving of these negative monikers, it is the UK horror picture Eden Lake.

Young lovers Jenny and Steve are going to spend the weekend at a remote quarry known as Eden Lake. Steve intends to propose to Jenny while camping there, but things go sour when a band of teenagers show up, playing their music too loud and letting their dog run loose on the shore. While at first they’re merely disrespectful, the youths quickly become more sinister in their actions, and before long the couple is fighting not just for their privacy, but for their lives as well.

First time director James Watkins includes several allusions to juvenile crime and the lack of parental guidance the perpetrators of those crimes exhibit, and it is clear that he is trying to say something. However, as the increasingly contrived and manipulative plot moves forward, it becomes clear that his ends do not justify his means.

The sections with the most “commentary” are the first twenty minutes and the last five. The remaining hour long section in the middle is a standard and contrived horror chase flick, with the killers hunting down our hero and heroine through the woods where clichés abound. Climbing under or over buildings at the last minute to escape detection? Check. Getting hurt and screaming so the killers know your location? Check. Car won’t start and/or gets stuck? Check. Going into a strangers house when nobody is there? Check. The list goes on. This wouldn’t be so bad if the film didn’t have such misguided aspirations at being a shocking expose on youth violence, and if it didn’t crank up the sadism to unholy levels in the name of contributing to this supposed social criticism.

The crimes that the thugs commit increase more and more in brutality until they reach an almost surrealistic level. People are stabbed repeatedly in the body and face, their bodies burned at the stake, all shown in loving detail by the camera and accompanied by sickening sound effects. In the movies most distasteful scene, a small innocent boy no older than eight is doused with gasoline and set ablaze, and the audience is treated to his blood curdling screams as his body is slowly burnt to a crisp. Wonderful.

This movie wants to have it both ways. It wishes to be a serious commentary on contemporary issues such as juvenile crime and the role parents play in it, and also a brutal horror thriller with the terrified heroine narrowly fending off and avoiding her pursuers at every possible turn. It fails dismally in both. The simplistic social criticism paints in extensively broad strokes, and the violence is overly painful and serious-minded to be in a frivolous horror-excursion-in-the-woods picture. Watkins seems to think that bookending nearly an hour of intensely exploitative and sadistic violence with a few minutes of slight commentary makes it justified. He is sorely mistaken. What a profoundly unpleasant and empty picture Eden Lake is.

The Wrestler (Aronofsky, 2008)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before; a once great athlete, now down on his luck and ostracized by his family members, has the chance to get back in the spotlight, redeem himself, and reclaim his former glory.

While it seems contrived to a fault on the surface, The Wrestler is a deeply emotional film that effectively takes this (very) familiar formula and adds some much needed variety to the mix.

In what is a truly galvanizing performance, Mickey Rourke plays Randy the Ram, a professional wrestler who once was one of the top stars of the sport. Twenty years later, he is now relegated to performing at small, dingy community centers to infinitely smaller crowds than the ones that packed the arenas he played in during the 80’s. One day, his manager tells Randy that it is the twentieth anniversary of the match between him and his (scripted) arch-rival The Ayatollah. Naturally, Randy agrees to engage in a rematch.

Mickey Rourke is this character, and there are obvious real life parallels to Rourke’s career and Randy the Ram’s that lend an extra layer of emotional potency. An Oscar nomination is inevitable, and is entirely deserved. This is not to say that the other performances are no good, as they are indeed top notch. Marisa Tomei gives great warmth and heart to Pam, a stripper who performs at a bar Randy frequents under the name Cassidy, and whom he has feelings for. Evan Rachel Wood does a commendable job as Randy’s daughter Stephanie who detests him for leaving and choosing his career over her. Tomei and Rourke have especially great chemistry together. The slight mannerisms and inflections in their lines, and how they laugh and smile in certain ways is, to put it simply, fantastic.

Many will compare this film to others such as Rocky, Invincible, and other underdog sports entries. Such comparisons would be unfair to The Wrestler, which differentiates itself by choosing a more atypical sport for its subject. Wresting, like any other sport, has it’s own unique culture and lifestyle different from boxing and football. Screenwriter Robert Siegel and Director Darren Aronofsky explore much of the backstage aspects of wrestling in fascinating detail. We see Randy hitting the tanning beds, getting his hair colored, and purchasing anabolic steroids from a bodybuilder friend to keep up his appearance.  In a locker room before a match, other wrestlers formulate attack plans, deciding which moves to use and what areas of the body to focus on (“Don’t work his leg man, everybody does that. Work his neck.” one wrestler remarks to another as they debate). Aronofsky immerses us in this world of school gymnasiums and community centers, a land of faded tile floors, fluorescent lighting, and white-painted hallways and corridors built of cinderblocks. The fact that he has never before made a film remotely like this (his previous works include the ultra-stylized Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain), makes it all the more impresssive how he is able to so effortlessly capture the eccentricities and facets of the wrestling circuit.

Anchored by Rourkes pitch perfect portrayal of Randy the Ram, and assisted by great supporting performances and Aronofsky’s skillful direction, The Wrestler is a film that ranks among the years best. Forget the WWF, this is the real deal.

This Is The Way I See It: Subjective Filmmaking in Taxi Driver

“All the animals come out at night – whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.”

Such is the world according to Travis Bickle, and in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), it’s the de facto interpretation. Bickles malicious outlook of 1970’s New York is the only viewpoint given to the audience, and director Martin Scorsese portrays this twisted ideology through his masterful use of subjective filmmaking.

Beginning with the opening title sequence, the audience is immediately plunged into Travis’s nocturnal world of neon signs, rainy streets, traffic lights and street walkers. Close up shots depict the taxi cab in loving detail; it is Travis’s safe transport, a vessel that simultaneously keeps him safe from the filth of the city and isolates him from society. The shots of New York’s after hours inhabitants are from inside the cab and are interspersed with extreme close ups of Travis’s eyes, slowly sliding to and fro, carefully surveying and criticizing the immoral masses before him. While he has a negative attitude about the city as a whole, Travis is particularly contemptuous of African Americans. This is illustrated solely through images; we never once hear Travis single out blacks in his vehement rants, but the camera always maintains a distance between them and the camera, visually illustrating his bigotry. Much like Travis, the camera is nervous of getting too close to these especially vile inhabitants of the city.

Slow motion is also implemented to further illuminate Travis’s internal emotions. When we first see Betsy, a campaign worker for whom Travis obsesses over, she is wearing a beautiful pristine white dress. She makes her way through the lowly masses and ascends the stairs into the campaign office, seemingly floating above the crowd. All that is needed are a halo and a pair of wings, and the angelic association would be complete. When Travis puts on his best suit to meet up with Betsy to see a movie, he walks down the street in a slow motion medium shot. Travis surely feels quite confident in himself due to both his extravagant attire and the fact that he is going on a date with this woman he adores.  The slowing down of the shot captures this emotion perfectly.

The films narration is also extensively employed to immerse the audience further into the recesses of Travis’s mind. All of his bitter rants, as we come to learn, are lifted verbatim from his own diary, so the narration could not possibly be more directly connected with Travis’s personal thoughts. Under the scrutiny of Travis’s narration, New York becomes a detestable necropolis, a dingy and seedy underworld where murder, drugs, and prostitution are the norm. All of this is presented as undeniable fact; no other dissenting viewpoints are brought to the table for the entire film. As the plot progresses and Travis increasingly loses his sanity, the narration becomes more erratic. Words are stuttered and slurred, and whole sentences are repeated after being flubbed the first time.

All of these techniques and stylistic choices are a monumental build-up towards the films explosive finale where Travis bursts into a building, shooting and stabbing his way through several criminals in order to save a twelve year old prostitute named Iris. When the bloody massacre is over several cops enter the building and see Travis collapsed on the couch, exhausted and delirious in equal measure. He puts his blood-stained finger to his temple and pretends to fire. The shots that follow are the culmination of all the films thematic building blocks. A slow overhead tracking shot, panning over the havoc that Travis has wrought. With the exception of Iris, everyone and everything is frozen in statuesque poses. This is followed by a montage showing the blood splattered walls and the other people that Travis has murdered.  We have now fully entered Travis’s mind. We are completely submerged in his madness as the camera moves ever so slowly through every detail of the destruction Travis has caused. As the writer Paul Schrader notes in the screenplay, “It is the psychopath’s Second Coming.”

Taxi Driver is not a perfect film however, and one of my points of contention lies with the films ending. Travis is shown talking to his fellow cabbie buddies when one remarks that he has a fare. It turns out it is Betsy. She remarks how she read about how he saved the young prostitute from her captors, and asks how he is doing. Travis is calm and collected as he converses with Betsy, decidedly unlike his previous behavior in the film. After he drops Betsy off and drives away, he casually glances in the rear view mirror. Suddenly a strange sound rings out from the soundtrack and Travis frantically adjusts the mirror upon seeing his reflection, indicating that he is still very much insane, and as Scorsese himself explains, like a “ticking time bomb” that is waiting to go off again.

Many viewers and critics have debated over whether this coda to the film is real or if it is all conjured by Travis’s imagination. I think that the latter would be a much stronger and thematically relevant way to end the picture, and would adhere to the subjective style of filmmaking that has been used throughout. However, Scorsese seems to give the ending away as being real with a couple of shots. The entire time Travis rides and talks with Betsy, we only see her face in the rear view mirror, and it is unclear as to whether she is truly there or not. Once she gets out of the cab and speaks to Travis though, we clearly see Betsy in the flesh as it were, thus shattering the ambiguous circumstances of her appearance beforehand and seemingly cementing the fact that the ending is in fact real.

The other contention I have with the picture is a scene in which Iris’s pimp, Sport, comforts her so that she does not run away from him. It is well directed and acted, but is virtually the only scene that Travis is not directly involved in. It is the only purely objective scene in the entire film, with the events not directly being filtered through Travis’s mind. Scorsese attempts to solve this problem by showing a shot of Travis staring up at the building in which Sport and Iris reside before cutting to the scene itself, but it is a poor substitute for his absence. The scene, which was added during production, was not in the original script and Schrader was adamantly opposed to its inclusion. Inversely, Scorsese felt that Sport needed some more screen time, so he requested for this scene to be written and subsequently put it in the film.

Despite this, Taxi Driver is still a classic example of subjective filmmaking, immersing the audience completely into Travis’s deranged perception of the world that he lives in through its writing and direction. By using various stylistic techniques such as slow motion and unreliable narration, the audience is given unmitigated access to the mind of  mad man.

Resident Evil: Degeneration (Makoto Kamiya, 2008)

As I queued up Resident Evil: Degeneration, I hardly expected a masterwork. Degeneration does after all belong to the substantially execrated group of films known “video game movies”. This genres lackluster roster speaks for itself: Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros, the list goes on. So why would I voluntarily subject myself to a film belonging to this less than stellar genre?

For one, I am a big fan of the Resident Evil video games. Also, unlike the previous live action filmic adaptations of the game series, Degeneration, which is a computer-generated effort, is directly connected with the storyline from the games. The idea of seeing familiar characters from the games in a feature length animated film was admittedly quite enticing to the gaming fan that dwelled deep within me. Surely there was enough potential here to conjure a half way decent movie? How foolish and naïve I was.

The story is a convoluted and contrived affair that chronologically takes between the third and fourth Resident Evil gaming titles. Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, the two main protagonists from several of the games, take center stage here as well. To fully explain the needlessly intricate plot would be an exercise in tedium.  Suffice to say that there are a lot of big bad corporations messing with viruses that turn people into big bad monsters, and its up to our heroes to expose these corrupt conglomerates and save the day.

Degeneration also commits the cardinal cinematic sin of telling and not showing when dealing with its narrative. We are constantly treated to characters that spout out manufactured lines that serve no other purpose besides explaining what has happened, what is happening, and what is going to happen. It is the laziest form of plot exposition that exists, and Degeneration is filled to the brim with it. Characters also are controlled by the plot instead of vice-versa, commit entirely unmotivated actions for the convenience of the story, etc.

On the visual side, the film is surprisingly dated. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, made nearly 8 years before this film, was infinitely more visually astounding and aesthetically pleasing. Granted, the makers of Degeneration most likely did not have $135 million dollars to throw around in creating it like the staff of Final Fantasy did. Nevertheless, the film has an extremely unpolished look that at times looks no better than a cut scene from some of the original gaming titles. Characters move awkwardly like marionettes and their clothing clings stiffly to their bodies like cardboard. Peoples skin and clothes all have an inexplicably glossy appearance, and the lip-synching is quite off.

The action scenes, most likely the main reason for watching a picture such as this, are curiously uncompelling and are nothing that a person would not see if they played the games instead.

Resident Evil: Degeneration is one of those films where nothing is a surprise. You can finish lines before characters are done speaking them and predict actions before they occur. It is one of those movies where you spend the entire time thinking about all of the other films you could, and probably should, be watching.

Film as a Weapon: The Anti-Authoritarian Ideology of Harakiri

Masaki Kobayashi was the definition of an iconoclastic filmmaker.  Kobayashi detested almost any form of organized authority, and a majority of his films focused on deconstructing and criticizing the governmental bodies that he saw as tyrannical and inhumane. His targets ranged from the Japanese military during World War II (The Human Condition trilogy) to feudalism and samurai warriors (Samurai Rebellion, Harakiri). No matter what the subject was, all were treated with the same apprehension and scorn. This entry will specifically focus on the ideology of Kobayashi’s jidai-geki film Seppuku (English title Harakiri) and its unsurprisingly anti-authoritarian viewpoints.

Made in 1962, Harakiri is an unforgiving condemnation of the samurai class and the feudalistic system that they represent. They are shown as morally repugnant men who place obedience, duty, and an image of strength and nobility above all else. By doing this, they lose their sense of moral decency and their own humanity.

A shocking example of this negative outlook on samurai is shown early on. First a little explanation is required regarding the historical circumstances of the film, which takes place in 1630. At that point, Edo was in a state of peace after much bloody warfare, and thousands of retainers from fallen Lords had been left stranded with no work to be found. In desperation, these ronin showed up at the gates of various Houses and declared their intent to commit seppuku. Instead of wasting away from starvation, they wished to die an honorable death. Several clans, impressed with these displays of discipline, would hire the men as retainers for their own House.

Near the beginning of Harakiri, a young samurai expresses his wish to commit seppuku at the House of Iyi. He is planning on bluffing the House into hiring him as a retainer, but the House sees through this facade. Sickened at the mans dishonorable behavior, they force him to commit seppuku against his will. Doing this serves two purposes. The first is that it is punishment for the mans unseemly behavior. The second is that this will make other Houses aware of the strength and unwavering dedication to the samurai code that the House of Iyi employs.

The scene in which the young samurai is forced to kill himself is arguably the films defining sequence, and Kobayashi is uncompromising in capturing the full brutality of the situation. It is discovered that the man, being so destitute, has sold off his steel swords and replaced them with bamboo blades. “He sells off his soul as a samurai, replacing his blades with bamboo!” one of the retainers exclaims in disgust. The members of the House, greatly offended by this affront, force the man to commit seppuku with his own bamboo blades instead of lending him one of their steel ones.  The camera does shy away in the slightest from this horrific process, and the man’s execution is shown in surprisingly graphic detail. We see him lean onto the wooden sword in order for it to penetrate his body, and the spurts of blood that follow. Medium shots, close ups, and various disorientating zooms along with canted camera angles create a claustrophobic feeling of nausea and sickness. There are multiple shots of the mans face in agonizing pain as he attempts in vain to eviscerate himself with the bamboo sword. We want to look away, but the camera denies us this comfort, staying close in on the action. It is a horrific sequence that casts a grim shadow over the rest of the entire story, and never once do the samurai show a semblance of remorse or guilt.

The protagonist in the story is an older samurai named Hanshiro Tsugumo (played with brilliant silent intensity by Tatsuya Nakadai), and it is through him that Kobayashi channels his humanistic and antiauthoritarian views. Hanshiro comes to the House of Iyi seeking revenge for the murder of the samurai, who was his son-in-law. Hanshiro heavily criticizes the House of Iyi for the way they handled the situation, and explains how samurai honor is “ultimately nothing more than a façade.”  Through various flashbacks we see Hanshiro as a warm man capable of much human kindness. He plays joyfully with his infant grandson and even though he is financially destitute, he still rejects the financially lucrative aspect of selling his daughter off to a brothel. Hanshiro is the man whom Kobayashi idolizes the most in the picture. He is a loving man who possesses an infinite respect for human beings and for their well-being.

For samurai in Harakiri, the image of strength and rigidity takes precedence over such matters. They maintain an image of rigid adherence to their code, when in reality this is all a façade like Hanshiro claimed. In an extraordinary deconstruction and inversion of the Bushido code, Hanshiro cuts off the topknots of the three most skilled swordsmen of the house. These men were also the three most prominently involved in the death of Hanshiro’s son-in-law. For a samurai, having your topknot removed is a complete disgrace where death can scarcely make you save face. It is revealed that these three swordsmen, instead of following the samurai code and committing seppuku honorably, feign illness and do not report to the House of Iyi. They stay at home pretending to be sick while they frantically wait for their topknots to grow back. This action brilliantly reveals the hypocrisy of the samurai class.

Besides the samurai warriors themselves, Kobayashi also uses iconographic methods as a springboard for his criticisms. In the House of Iyi there resides a suit of armor that symbolizes all that the House believes in. The film begins and ends with a shot of this emblematic armor, propped up on its pedestal with a blank and ominous expression etched on its face. In the films spectacular finale, Hanshiro fights his way through the house, doing as much damage as he can before he is killed. Frantically fighting off hordes of men with a nearly animalistic energy, he crashes through a wall and encounters the suit of armor. He glares at it with a silent hatred that transcends words. He proceeds to tear the suit of armor off of its pedestal and slams it onto the ground, smashing it to pieces. For Kobayashi, the suit of armor could represent many different authoritative bodies, but the most likely is the Tokugawa government, which endorsed a strict class-based society with the samurai at the top of the hierarchy. The armor is all-powerful and intimidating, but is ultimately empty, devoid of humanity much like Kobayashi’s opinion of the Tokugawa shogunate.

Warning: The ending of the film will be discussed from this point onwards.

After demolishing the suit of armor, a firing squad lines up in front of Hanshiro. Faced with imminent death, he eviscerates himself with his own sword, once again inverting the Bushido code upon itself. He is a true samurai, a man worthy of dying this “honorable” death, unlike the inhumane tyrants that reside in the House of Iyi. While undeniably powerful, it is what happens directly after Hanshiros death that leaves an indelible mark in the mind of the viewer.

We see a montage of the retainers removing all traces of the battle in the House, wiping blood off of the walls and sweeping the floors. The three swordsmen that had their topknots removed are to immediately commit seppuku. If they refuse, they will be taken down by force. The men that Hanshiro killed (four in total) are reported as having died of illness, and the eight men that are seriously injured are promptly treated. “The House of Iyi has no retainers that could be felled by some half starved ronin,” the leader blankly expresses. The image of strength and honor must be maintained at all costs. The suit of armor is pieced back together and situated back on its pedestal. The film ends with this image, the armor unchanged, all traces of Hanshiros plight gone.

At first glance, this may seem an unnecessarily bleak and nihilistic ending. Upon further reflection however, the ending is revealed to be oddly uplifting and inspirational.

The final lines in the film are words of praise the Lord of the Edo Kingdom lavishes upon the House of Iyi. He commends them for their rigorous handling of the matter with the man who was forced to commit seppuku. “At peace, yet ever vigilant. Let the House of Iyi continue to embrace this principle, and your fortunes are sure to prosper for years to come” This speech, as well as the entire ending of the picture, is steeped in irony as history shows that the Tokugawa shogunate was abolished in 1868. At the end of Harakiri, the shogunate leaders believe that they will forever remain in control and reign over the kingdom. With the power of history on his side however, Kobayashi knows this will not be the case.

Kobayashi also shows that, while Hanshiro technically “failed” in his pursuit of revenge, he succeeded in shaking the samurai class to its very foundation. He challenged their fundamental beliefs and single handedly exposed the hypocrisy that resided in the House of Iyi. Kobayashi makes Hanshiro a martyr, a man who died for his beliefs. According to Kobayashi, we should not just sit passively and accept what is given to us by our governments. We should fight for what we believe in, and the ending of Harakiri shows that change is within our grasp. If one man, a mere “half starved ronin”, can do so much, then what change could be brought about if other people joined in the fight? For his entire filmic career, Kobayashi was always fighting for change. He fought with his most useful weapon by his side, his camera, and Harakiri is one of the most triumphant  of his creations.

JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechri, 2008)

 

JCVD, the latest release from martial arts action hero Jean Claude Van Damme, cleverly utilizes the preconceived notions audiences have of the Muscles from Brussels, resulting in a surprisingly emotional and thematically rich film that easily ranks among Van Damme’s best.

Van Damme, who plays himself, is an aging action star whose stagnating career is the least of his problems. He is also on the losing end of a custody battle for his daughter and is struggling to come up with sufficient finances to pay his lawyer. His checks bounce and the ATM’s reject his credit cards. In a last ditch attempt to acquire some cash, Van Damme returns to his roots and heads for his native hometown of Brussels where he is still revered as a local legend and hero. Once he arrives in the capital city of Belgium, things go awry as Van Damme unwittingly finds himself at the center of a bank heist, with the police mistakenly thinking he is the mastermind behind the operation.

From the very beginning, it is clear that JCVD is different from the standard Van Damme action vehicle. True, the very first shot of the film is a several minute take of our muscular hero scurrying through a war torn landscape, blasting away with various weaponry and kicking and punching his way through enemy soldiers. However, on several occasions, Van Damme is visibly out of breath as he leans against a wall or fallen soldier and wheezes for a moment before carrying on. A couple punches clearly do not connect with their intended target, missing the soldiers by a fair distance. One begins to ponder if Van Damme is too old for this kind of film. Then all is revealed when a wall falls down, revealing that it is in fact a movie set. Van Damme begins quarreling with the uncooperative director about how he is 47 years old and “it’s hard to do everything in one shot!” It sets the tone perfectly for this rule breaking film.

Director Mabrouk El Mechri constantly has fun toying with the film medium. Sounds are amplified, distorted, even muted completely to bring out the full emotional impact of the events unfolding. Characters refer to the camera itself. The narrative constantly shifts back and forth chronologically, playing with the audience’s perception of the events being displayed.

Perception seems to be a running theme throughout. With the way the editing is done early on, we the audience are led to believe that Jean Claude is indeed responsible for the robbery. Later on, a flashback shows that this is not the case and he is merely another hostage, proving our previous perceptions of the events to be false. Numerous citizens of Brussels speak of Van Damme as if he is a mythical figure, and some are disappointed when he is not constantly willing to meet their demands for banter and autographs. Two adoring male fans comment on how Jean Claude is shorter in real life than they thought he would be. A female cab driver scolds him for not wanting to talk to her, saying that she loves his movies but he is “rude” and that he looks better in his movies. Even though the police think that Van Damme is robbing the bank, throngs of supporters gather outside brandishing hand painted signs in support of “JC”. For all they know he could be robbing the bank, but they still love him simply because of his celebrity status.

Mechri utilizes a variety of stylistic devices to get his points across. At one point, the actual film reel shakes and slows down so we can see the individual frames before once again resuming the normal 24 frames per second. In another surreal moment, Van Damme breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the camera, delivering a heart felt and very much autobiographical monologue (nearly six minutes in length, shot in one uninterrupted take) about how he came to be a “movie star”. Van Damme’s acting shines here,  and he convincingly shows us a side of him that we have never seen before. He is somewhat self-loathing, and condemns himself for some of his past actions. When he asks himself what he has done in this world he cries “Nothing! I’ve done nothing!” and goes on about how he feels guilty for having succeeded when so many other worthy people with admirable qualities have failed. It is sure to be a divisive scene, but this reviewer found it to be very effective in increasing the emotional resonance of the picture.

JCVD is a film not afraid of challenging convention, and manages to bring up some interesting themes regarding the idolization of celebrities by the media and fans, and how we often have preconceived notions about things we really know nothing about. If this is the new direction that Van Damme is planning to take his career in, call me a fan.