You see a work differently when you do some writing yourself. The choices you made- how to tell the story, how to structure the plot, whose perspective should be the focus, what to show and what to hide, what to keep and what to omit... help you notice and make you think about the choices the author made that otherwise you might have paid no attention to.
Yesterday evening I watched 45 Years. The plot is simple: it's almost a week of Mr and Mrs Mercer before their 45th wedding anniversary on Saturday (the structure: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,..., Saturday). On Monday, at the start of the film, the husband receives a letter in German informing that people have found the perfectly preserved body of his ex-girlfriend Katya, who 50 years earlier slipped into an Alpine crevasse (right before him). 45 Years isn't about the anniversary party alone. It isn't about Katya and her death or the love story between her and the husband, Geoff, before the future Mrs Mercer, Kate, comes along. It isn't about Geoff and how he deals with the news and comes to terms with it, how he immerses himself in memories with all the pains and regrets and what-ifs. 45 Years is about Kate- how she's affected by the news and its effect on her husband, how she deals with that past of her husband of which she wasn't a part, how she's bothered and then pained by his reawakened grief and something like an attempt to get Katya back, how she ponders over hypothetical questions, how she tries to come to terms with some newfound knowledge that seems to tear her world apart, how she all of a sudden sees her whole marriage differently whilst arranging on her own the wedding anniversary that she herself isn't certain they should have.
I watched 45 Years and thought about Andrew Haigh's artistic choices. The photos of the friend Lena's grandchild that she shows the couple, whilst Geoff is distracted with thoughts about climate change and the Alps and the accident and Kate is also distracted with concern for him but looks out of politeness, aren't shown; the photo of Katya that Geoff looks for in the middle of the night and Kate demands to see isn't shown; what we have instead are Charlotte Rampling's and Tom Courtenay's faces. Geoff's visit to the travel agency isn't shown; instead, we see Kate go there to ask and discover that he has come to inquire about Switzerland, and see her reaction. Geoff's meeting with long-time friends, of which he wanted to back out but couldn't, isn't shown; instead, we see Kate pick him up afterwards and him whine about it. Haigh omits all that can be redundant, unnecessary. And he goes further. Many details are withheld, the characters' motives and emotions aren't verbalised- why the Mercers have no children isn't explained, whether Katya dies pregnant or what happens to the foetus/ baby if that's not the case isn't stated, how Kate really feels about the discovery isn't expressed; all we have is what we can see on the screen. He even lets Kate imply but not talk about what she has known, and we thus can never know how Geoff might respond to what she eventually leaves unsaid.
The most interesting decision is perhaps not to show any flashback. None whatsoever. We never see the young Geoff with Katya. We never see Katya's last day and the accident. What Andrew Haigh does is to let Geoff tell it to Kate. The camera turns from the husband telling the story, to the wife hearing it. This is usually a "crime" in films- the language of cinema is image, and what can be shown with images shouldn't be told in words. By not showing the accident, Haigh seems to choose an easy way, at the cost of not conveying the awfulness of the memory, thus reducing its nightmarish, haunting impact and not depicting to the full extent Geoff's pain. The reasoning isn't hard to grasp- from the beginning to the end, 45 Years focuses on Kate. It begins with her, and ends with her. But Haigh's decision has an effect- as we the audience hear the story from old Geoff, as we can't see it and are kept distanced from it, as we know only what Kate knows, that puts us in Kate's position and brings us closer to her, as though we wonder the same things, ask the same questions, have the same doubts. That is interesting. And it makes us realise the painful truth that the happiest and most stable of couples are made up of 2 persons that are essentially alone, and strangers to each other.
Come to think of it, it's not an easy way that Haigh has chosen. The focus now is on emotions and reactions, the weight is now on the actor and actress (and Haigh's casting and directing). Like Marion Cotillard in De rouille et d'os or Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter, Charlotte Rampling has a subtle performance, and says so much more with her face than many actresses could with words. Without her and Tom Courtenay, 45 Years wouldn't be such a beautiful and moving film. As it is.
Tuesday, 26 January 2016
Thursday, 14 January 2016
"Can't Help Falling In Love"- Elvis Presley vs Celine Dion
"Can't Help Falling In Love" is better in Elvis Presley's rendition than in Celine Dion's. It's not only because of his low, warm voice, but also, and more, because he sings it simply, which conveys more effectively the spirit of the song, the feeling that the speaker's love is simple and natural and meant to be. Pay attention to the lyrics- "Wise men say only fools rush in", he doesn't want to rush; "Shall I stay? Would it be a sin?", he hesitates; but it happens, naturally, "like a river flows surely to the sea". Celine Dion, great as her voice is, drags the notes and chooses such a dramatic, melismatic, affected approach that it goes against the song and the "assertion" that the speaker can't help falling in love. She butchers the song.
Monday, 11 January 2016
Sunday, 10 January 2016
On the new BBC adaptation of War and Peace
I tried watching the new adaptation of War and Peace last night.
I couldn't watch a whole episode.
You know I love Tolstoy. You know what I often think of adaptations. You know what I think about Andrew Davies and the Colin Firth effect (my fear came true, by the way).
So I won't say anything about this series. What I say instead is: fine, this isn't for me, but we'll always have the book, and if this adaptation gets more people to read War and Peace, great.
You can say, let's be realistic, most people won't. Some will be interested but find the size daunting. Some will think watching an adaptation is good enough. Some will intend to read it but never come round to reading it. After all I'm not much better- I can humiliate myself now by making a list of classic novels I haven't read despite watching the adaptations: Les Misérables, The Three Musketeers, The Age of Innocence, A Room with a View, The Wings of the Dove, Washington Square, Jude the Obscure, Far from the Madding Crowd, Barry Lyndon, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and so on and so forth. The seen-the-film-not-read-the-book list will be much longer if we include more modern works: The Green Mile, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Psycho, The Shining, American Psycho, No Country for Old Men, True Grit, Brokeback Mountain, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, We Need to Talk About Kevin, etc.
Still, it will get someone to read the book. However critical I am of the adaptations of Anna Karenina, they led me to the novel. For years I heard my mom's praise of Tolstoy and was indifferent- or I was interested, but not enough to tackle the book, partly because of its size, partly because of its tragic ending, partly because of my ignorance of Russian literature and indifference to Russia. Then after watching about 4 adaptations, I thought: why not read Tolstoy's novel when I'm obsessed with Anna Karenina and already know the story so well? So I won't be angry now. I'll see this new adaptation as 1 of those TV series that other people watch and I don't, like Games of Thrones or Downton Abbey (I'm indifferent to many things in popular culture anyway*), or something that motivates someone to read Tolstoy's book. That's it.
We'll always have the novels.
*: I intended to write a post called "Di Nguyen on pop culture, or Why I have no friends", but it sounds pretentious and hipsterish, so never mind.
I couldn't watch a whole episode.
You know I love Tolstoy. You know what I often think of adaptations. You know what I think about Andrew Davies and the Colin Firth effect (my fear came true, by the way).
So I won't say anything about this series. What I say instead is: fine, this isn't for me, but we'll always have the book, and if this adaptation gets more people to read War and Peace, great.
You can say, let's be realistic, most people won't. Some will be interested but find the size daunting. Some will think watching an adaptation is good enough. Some will intend to read it but never come round to reading it. After all I'm not much better- I can humiliate myself now by making a list of classic novels I haven't read despite watching the adaptations: Les Misérables, The Three Musketeers, The Age of Innocence, A Room with a View, The Wings of the Dove, Washington Square, Jude the Obscure, Far from the Madding Crowd, Barry Lyndon, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and so on and so forth. The seen-the-film-not-read-the-book list will be much longer if we include more modern works: The Green Mile, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Psycho, The Shining, American Psycho, No Country for Old Men, True Grit, Brokeback Mountain, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, We Need to Talk About Kevin, etc.
Still, it will get someone to read the book. However critical I am of the adaptations of Anna Karenina, they led me to the novel. For years I heard my mom's praise of Tolstoy and was indifferent- or I was interested, but not enough to tackle the book, partly because of its size, partly because of its tragic ending, partly because of my ignorance of Russian literature and indifference to Russia. Then after watching about 4 adaptations, I thought: why not read Tolstoy's novel when I'm obsessed with Anna Karenina and already know the story so well? So I won't be angry now. I'll see this new adaptation as 1 of those TV series that other people watch and I don't, like Games of Thrones or Downton Abbey (I'm indifferent to many things in popular culture anyway*), or something that motivates someone to read Tolstoy's book. That's it.
We'll always have the novels.
*: I intended to write a post called "Di Nguyen on pop culture, or Why I have no friends", but it sounds pretentious and hipsterish, so never mind.
Saturday, 2 January 2016
Sanditon
Jane Austen never ceases to surprise me.
Reading Sanditon, I thought of The Watsons and Virginia Woolf's comment "... the stiffness and the bareness of the first chapters prove that she was one of those writers who lay their facts out rather baldly in the first version and then go back and back and back and cover them with flesh and atmosphere...", only to realise that Sanditon's not so bare. Indeed, the writing is not very polished, and there are superfluous remarks that could and would have been removed (for example, she doesn't have to say that the 3 Parkers' ailments are imaginary, which we can see for ourselves, and she often says enough), reminiscent of the abundant comments and unnecessary explanations I see in Trimalchio that aren't in The Great Gatsby, and yet it doesn't really look like a rough draft, and doesn't look like it was written by a dying person (I mean, look at the sentences!).
I was also expecting something different. After a melancholy, autumnal work like Persuasion comes a satire of hypochondriacs, hypocrites and fortune hunters? That feels odd. I know, I know, after publishing the bright, light and sparkling Pride and Prejudice, she created an opposite of Elizabeth Bennet to be her heroine, and created an anti-heroine superficially similar to Elizabeth; after the sombre work Mansfield Park, she returned to comedy with Emma; after the sparkling Emma, she wrote a novel sadder than anything she'd ever written. What feels strange is that Persuasion is melancholy and passionate and romantic, and Jane Austen seemed to be going in another direction. Now I read Sanditon, and she in a sense goes in yet another direction, writing about the verbal construction of a town and people's reactions towards change; in another sense goes back to her early self, goes back to comedy and satire, to depicting, mocking and making fun of ridiculous, affected people. The ridiculous characters in Persuasion are pushed far into the background, pale, insignificant, more forgettable than such characters in previous works, as the focus is entirely on the story of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. In Sanditon, at least in the draft we have today, the caricatures are prominent. Whilst The Watsons is clearly a story of Emma Watson, Sanditon doesn't quite look like a story of Charlotte Heywood (or the Parker brothers).
Another interesting thing is that Jane Austen seems to expand her scope beyond love/ courtship stories. If in Persuasion, she mentions war, deals with change in society and writes about old money vs new money, in Sanditon she again takes up the theme of changes in society and writes about the construction of a seaside town, a bathing place.
Sanditon takes me aback, so to speak. It's different, there are so many things in it, and the story can develop in any direction, I wonder how Sanditon might have turned out if Jane Austen had been able to complete it.
Another interesting thing is that Jane Austen seems to expand her scope beyond love/ courtship stories. If in Persuasion, she mentions war, deals with change in society and writes about old money vs new money, in Sanditon she again takes up the theme of changes in society and writes about the construction of a seaside town, a bathing place.
Sanditon takes me aback, so to speak. It's different, there are so many things in it, and the story can develop in any direction, I wonder how Sanditon might have turned out if Jane Austen had been able to complete it.
Thursday, 31 December 2015
2015 film wrap-up
1/ The 10 best films I watched this year are:
Brief Encounter (1945): Voted to be the most romantic film of all time, this David Lean film goes against the usual motifs of romance films: the actor and actress are not glamorous, the love story is an affair between 2 married people, the affair begins with the man's help for a woman that has grit in her eye and ends with a shoulder squeeze and is unconsummated. Brief Encounter begins with the scene of the 2 characters at the tea shop, there's a sense of awkwardness, and a vague feeling in the air of something unsaid, but we don't yet know what's going on- it's only later when the narrative goes back to the beginning and all the incidents unfold before us and gradually lead to this scene again, that it becomes particularly beautiful and moving. I've written about it here and here.
12 Angry Men (1957): The best courtroom film, whose actions actually don't take place in a courtroom. Sidney Lumet demonstrates how he can make a film almost set in only 1 room, and make it work- except for the opening and a brief scene outside the courthouse in the end, the entire film takes place in the jury room. It's driven by characters and emotions- Sidney Lumet uses heat to create a sense of claustrophobia and worsen the tense, stressful, irritable atmosphere, as he has done in Dog Day Afternoon. Regarding plot, a man is convicted, 12 men who don't know him and don't know each other walk into a room to decide his fate; 11 men think "guilty", only 1 man, played by Henry Fonda, thinks "probably not", and slowly he breaks their arguments and convinces everyone else. 12 Angry Men is about law and the concept of reasonable doubt, about the job of jurors, about persuasion, about evidence and logic, about reason and prejudices, about justice, about conscience, about standing up for what you believe in even if everyone else in the room disagrees with you.
Witness for the Prosecution (1957): The best courtroom film if 12 Angry Men is excluded because strictly speaking it isn't set in a courtroom. Or the courtroom film with the best twist. Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton are wonderful, and if the film isn't as often mentioned as it should be, the simple reason is that it's made by the man who made the masterpieces Sunset Blvd and The Apartment, which naturally overshadow everything else. I briefly wrote about it once.
Le notti di Cabiria (1957): This is early Federico Fellini, before he created Felliniesque films and started being accused of being fanciful and self-indulgent, but it's unmistakably a film by Fellini: Nino Rota music, dancing, parties, magic shows, clowns, a female Charlie Chaplin, a scene of hypnotism, religion, smooth camera movements, people walking as though dancing to music. The film starts with an ordinary story and a stock character, a naive prostitute with a golden heart looking for love in vain, but Fellini works wonders. It is sad but not cynical, moving but not sentimental. A comparison with Sweet Charity shows how restraint, how controlled and unsentimental Le notti di Cabiria is, Fellini knows when it's enough, and refuses to make his Cabiria self-pitying. I've written about it here and here.
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970): Billy Wilder is often cynical, this is when he's most humane. Roger Ebert thinks that after some interesting scenes at the beginning, the film tells an ordinary Sherlock Holmes adventure- even though he's my hero in film criticism, his assessment is mistaken. On the surface, it's just another adventure, but Wilder makes Holmes more human by letting him fail and giving us a glimpse of his vulnerabilities. Like Fellini and other great writers, Wilder doesn't exploit emotions, he knows when it's enough, he allows silence to suggest more and invites the audience to fill in. A melancholic film, partly thanks to the use of Tchaikovsky's music. I once wrote about it here.
Chinatown (1974): Roman Polanski at his best. I remember those days when my favourite film ever was The Pianist; then I was unimpressed with Rosemary's Baby, rather scared but underwhelmed by The Tenant, puzzled about Bitter Moon, critical of Repulsion, and was for some time indifferent to Polanski. Knife in the Water is great, in its subtleties, I just didn't have the same enthusiasm as a few years ago. Now Chinatown makes me think I have to watch again the films mentioned above (except Repulsion, because I've never seen Catherine Deneuve as a good actress, and she looks too classy for the role), and other films by Polanski. Jack Nicholson plays a Bogart character that looks tougher, more aggressive, but has a heart and a conscience and even some kind of idealism behind his cynicism, wit and sharp tongue.
The Godfather Part II (1974): Is part I better or part II better? It is unfair to say, when part I I've watched 3-4 or even 5 times, and watched part II for the 1st time this year. Francis Ford Coppola does several remarkable things here: he creates a sequel-prequel on a par with the 1st film, he gets from Al Pacino a performance almost as great and memorable as Marlon Brando's performance as the Godfather, and if part I sees the mafia from within and might make people like being part of the mafia, because of the power, principles, sense of a large family, and stress on honour and loyalty, part II portrays the mafia as a lot more violent and ruthless. One may say that Michael betrays his father's values and has no heart, thus isolating himself and making everyone enemies. On the other hand, it's not hard to understand his disillusionment, disappointment and distrust, when the people closest to his family and even his own brother betray him. At the same time, the plot of the young Vito lets us see that violence has always been there, since the beginning- it's just violence begetting violence.Part I is about a powerful man. Part II is about a lonely and self-destructive man.
Annie Hall (1977): I wrote about it a few days ago.
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989): I also wrote about it a few days ago (a novelistic approach). There are 2 plots, with counterparts and opposites (the Judah in the Misdemeanors plot is Lester, a successful but pompous, self-important, ridiculous film producer; the Ben in the Misdemeanors plot is Cliff). Woody Allen combines the 2 plots together by analogy, by film scenes Cliff watches with his niece that echo scenes in the Crimes plot, by the talk between Cliff and Judah at the end of the film, and by the the-evil-are-reward-the-innocent-are-punished conclusion. The 2 strongest performances are from Martin Landau and Alan Alda, who play the 2 douchebags.
Birdman (2014): If you break down Birdman to its basic plot, it's a story of a faded film star unable to come to terms with ageing and being forgotten or replaced, which would place it in the same basket as Sunset Blvd, All about Eve, The Artist or Clouds of Sils Maria, but it doesn't belong there, because of Alejandro G. Iñárritu's treatment of the basic story and handling of the material. In fact, Birdman doesn't belong to anything, any genre: it has been seen as "a black-humor film, a mental health film, a realism/surrealism/magical realism film, a dark-humor parody film, a film of psychological realism, a failed domestic reconciliation drama, or a film concerning theatrical realism and naturalism". Iñárritu puts much in it that sometimes the film feels a bit messy, but the approach is so creative, particularly in the use of the Birdman figure, with all the imagined flying scenes, that the experience is thrilling. 1 of the most brilliant films produced in recent years.
2/ I watched 18 films again. Some of them pale a bit when viewed again, like Match Point and Mother (South Korea). Anatomy of a Murder is still good but the 2nd time felt a bit slow. Scarface is no longer a favourite. Charlie's Angels now appears unbelievably silly, especially as this time I notice its so-called feminism. A Room with a View still puzzles. Some Like It Hot and Bringing Up Baby are still fresh and hilarious. Some films, no matter how many times I've watched them, are forever wonderful and captivating: The Godfather, The Silence of the Lambs, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring. Psycho gets better the 2nd time.
3/ Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring is the most zen, poetic film about life. The 4 seasons are the 4 periods in a person's life. The film is full of symbols, many of which may be lost to people unfamiliar with Buddhism. What do they mean, the doors that close nothing out or in, for example? Roger Ebert thinks: "They are not symbols, I think, but lessons. They teach the inhabitants that it is important to follow custom and tradition, to go the same way that others have gone, to respect what has been left for them." Again here I differ from him: in my interpretation, the doors are only symbolic- barriers are in the mind, if you ignore right and wrong and decide to cross the barrier, as the young monk does in the film, no door can hinder your way. The doors close nothing because they can block nothing. However, even if we don't catch all the symbols and understand their meaning, we can still see it as a beautiful film about the different stages in life, and each episode/part is like a koan, about cruelty to animals, about sexual desire and desire for possession, about anger and jealousy and murder and then remorse and repentance and redemption, etc. There is little dialogue, but Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring says a lot, and each time, something new.
The only puzzlement is: how is it that such a beautiful, thought-provoking film could have been made by the same man who made those twisted films Dream, Samaritan Girl, The Bow and, worst of all, Pietà?
4/ The most important directors to me this year are Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, Federico Fellini and Alfred Hitchcock.
By Wilder, so far I've seen Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd, Stalag 17, Sabrina, The 7 Year Itch, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, One, Two, Three, Irma la Douce, The Fortune Cookie and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. 12 films. In terms of cinematography, techniques, he can't compare with, say, Kubrick, he started out as a screenwriter, his strengths are in plot, dialogue, details, characterisation and working with actors. When he's great, he does everything perfectly, as though effortlessly. When he's not so great, he's never really bad- his weaker films always have some "saving grace", like charming Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, sly Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie or energetic James Cagney in One, Two, Three.
Woody Allen is different from Billy Wilder and not as diverse, but there are a few similarities: both are cynical, both are extremely witty and can be funny, satirical as well as hysterical and absurd, both are not innovative in techniques. I've watched Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), Love and Death, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Midnight in Paris, To Rome with Love and Blue Jasmine. 11 films in total, which is very little, considering how many films he has made. It means something though- I didn't care much for Woody Allen till recently, as I realise that in recent years he hasn't made anything really good that can be on a par with Annie Hall or Crimes and Misdemeanors, which means that I will search for his earlier films instead of watching Irrational Man. Think about it: how many people can write and direct and act and do all well? It is unfortunate that many people dismiss his works because of his personal life, or interpret them in its light.
If the films of Wilder and Allen show the primacy of writing, Fellini's art is about images. Fantasy, dreams, childhood memories. Some directors please the eyes with epic scenes and stunning visual effects but forget the brains, some directors create good films but forget that film is a different medium, using a different language and having different advantages, and Fellini makes wonderful use of cinematic language- he uses images where someone else, a weaker or less confident director, would use voice-over as a short cut. So far I've watched 7 films: I vitelloni, La strada, Le notti di Cabiria, La dolce vita, 8 1/2, Fellini Satyricon and Amarcord. With a bit of Fellini's Casanova. Even whilst personally preferring early Fellini to late Fellini, I don't see him as indulgent- in fact, I like Amarcord and see 8 1/2 as a masterpiece and intend to watch more of his works.
Last but not least, another director I love and consider important to me this year is Hitchcock. My knowledge of his long career is limited, only 10 films: Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie and Family Plot, with a bit of Rebecca and a bit of Strangers on a Train. I might have watched Foreign Correspondent. Not all of these films are well-done: Rope, also inspired by Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment like Match Point and Crimes and Misdemeanors, goes well for most of the film and falls flat in the end, because James Stewart's character's sudden realisation is weak and unconvincing; Marnie is interesting, but there is a problem with the psychology (the incident can't explain Marnie's hatred of men and her mother's apparent dislike of her); The Man Who Knew Too Much has 2 main characters that are too slow, thoughtless and dim-witted. But they aren't that bad- perhaps I'm more critical of them than they deserve because I've seen Hitchcock at his best, like Vertigo and Psycho and The Birds, which show him as the undisputed master of suspense. The Trouble with Harry is another favourite, partly because it's so uncharacteristic of Hitchcock.
5/ This year I watched 7 films produced in 2015.
Furious 7 and Mission: Impossible- Rouge Nation are well-done and highly entertaining. Magic Mike XXL is entertaining, but in terms of plot is weaker than the 1st film. Spectre is visually pleasing and no more, it offers nothing new about James Bond and has 2 forgettable Bond girls and is almost as bad as Quantum of Solace (may I mention in passing that Lea Seydoux's light blue satin dress doesn't look good on her skin and doesn't go well at all with her dark lip colour?). Daniel Craig is very good as James Bond, better than Pierce Brosnan, but his best Bond film is still Casino Royale.
A Most Violent Year is good but perhaps will soon be forgotten.
Far from the Madding Crowd seems a bit weak, even though I haven't read the book to compare. Carey Mulligan delivers a striking performance that runs the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B. As I understand, Bathsheba has 3 different kinds of feeling for the 3 men, and Carey Mulligan shows no distinction. However, it made me want to read the novel, that is probably good enough (I almost didn't read Mansfield Park because of the 1999 film, for example).
Bridge of Spies is good. Tom Hanks in this film isn't very different from himself in Saving Mr Banks, but James B. Donovan is such a fascinating, admirable person that it doesn't matter.
6/ http://thefilmstage.com/features/tokyo-story-hits-criterion-blu-ray-questioning-a-canonical-classic/
I feel less alone. I'm 1 of the people not wild about Tokyo Story. It is good, yes, but is it that good? It's the same way everyone else praises Boyhood to the sky and I alone dislike it.
So next year:
- I have to watch more Ozu. Even if I never warm to Ozu (we can't expect ourselves to like all directors), at least I'll know what I'm talking about.
- There are other directors I have to see or know better. Priorities: Akira Kurosawa, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Ingmar Bergman, Vittorio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonio, Luis Bunuel, Roman Polanski.
So, there.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, FOLKS. I wish you all peace, joy, luck, good health and success.
Brief Encounter (1945): Voted to be the most romantic film of all time, this David Lean film goes against the usual motifs of romance films: the actor and actress are not glamorous, the love story is an affair between 2 married people, the affair begins with the man's help for a woman that has grit in her eye and ends with a shoulder squeeze and is unconsummated. Brief Encounter begins with the scene of the 2 characters at the tea shop, there's a sense of awkwardness, and a vague feeling in the air of something unsaid, but we don't yet know what's going on- it's only later when the narrative goes back to the beginning and all the incidents unfold before us and gradually lead to this scene again, that it becomes particularly beautiful and moving. I've written about it here and here.
12 Angry Men (1957): The best courtroom film, whose actions actually don't take place in a courtroom. Sidney Lumet demonstrates how he can make a film almost set in only 1 room, and make it work- except for the opening and a brief scene outside the courthouse in the end, the entire film takes place in the jury room. It's driven by characters and emotions- Sidney Lumet uses heat to create a sense of claustrophobia and worsen the tense, stressful, irritable atmosphere, as he has done in Dog Day Afternoon. Regarding plot, a man is convicted, 12 men who don't know him and don't know each other walk into a room to decide his fate; 11 men think "guilty", only 1 man, played by Henry Fonda, thinks "probably not", and slowly he breaks their arguments and convinces everyone else. 12 Angry Men is about law and the concept of reasonable doubt, about the job of jurors, about persuasion, about evidence and logic, about reason and prejudices, about justice, about conscience, about standing up for what you believe in even if everyone else in the room disagrees with you.
Witness for the Prosecution (1957): The best courtroom film if 12 Angry Men is excluded because strictly speaking it isn't set in a courtroom. Or the courtroom film with the best twist. Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton are wonderful, and if the film isn't as often mentioned as it should be, the simple reason is that it's made by the man who made the masterpieces Sunset Blvd and The Apartment, which naturally overshadow everything else. I briefly wrote about it once.
Le notti di Cabiria (1957): This is early Federico Fellini, before he created Felliniesque films and started being accused of being fanciful and self-indulgent, but it's unmistakably a film by Fellini: Nino Rota music, dancing, parties, magic shows, clowns, a female Charlie Chaplin, a scene of hypnotism, religion, smooth camera movements, people walking as though dancing to music. The film starts with an ordinary story and a stock character, a naive prostitute with a golden heart looking for love in vain, but Fellini works wonders. It is sad but not cynical, moving but not sentimental. A comparison with Sweet Charity shows how restraint, how controlled and unsentimental Le notti di Cabiria is, Fellini knows when it's enough, and refuses to make his Cabiria self-pitying. I've written about it here and here.
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970): Billy Wilder is often cynical, this is when he's most humane. Roger Ebert thinks that after some interesting scenes at the beginning, the film tells an ordinary Sherlock Holmes adventure- even though he's my hero in film criticism, his assessment is mistaken. On the surface, it's just another adventure, but Wilder makes Holmes more human by letting him fail and giving us a glimpse of his vulnerabilities. Like Fellini and other great writers, Wilder doesn't exploit emotions, he knows when it's enough, he allows silence to suggest more and invites the audience to fill in. A melancholic film, partly thanks to the use of Tchaikovsky's music. I once wrote about it here.
Chinatown (1974): Roman Polanski at his best. I remember those days when my favourite film ever was The Pianist; then I was unimpressed with Rosemary's Baby, rather scared but underwhelmed by The Tenant, puzzled about Bitter Moon, critical of Repulsion, and was for some time indifferent to Polanski. Knife in the Water is great, in its subtleties, I just didn't have the same enthusiasm as a few years ago. Now Chinatown makes me think I have to watch again the films mentioned above (except Repulsion, because I've never seen Catherine Deneuve as a good actress, and she looks too classy for the role), and other films by Polanski. Jack Nicholson plays a Bogart character that looks tougher, more aggressive, but has a heart and a conscience and even some kind of idealism behind his cynicism, wit and sharp tongue.
The Godfather Part II (1974): Is part I better or part II better? It is unfair to say, when part I I've watched 3-4 or even 5 times, and watched part II for the 1st time this year. Francis Ford Coppola does several remarkable things here: he creates a sequel-prequel on a par with the 1st film, he gets from Al Pacino a performance almost as great and memorable as Marlon Brando's performance as the Godfather, and if part I sees the mafia from within and might make people like being part of the mafia, because of the power, principles, sense of a large family, and stress on honour and loyalty, part II portrays the mafia as a lot more violent and ruthless. One may say that Michael betrays his father's values and has no heart, thus isolating himself and making everyone enemies. On the other hand, it's not hard to understand his disillusionment, disappointment and distrust, when the people closest to his family and even his own brother betray him. At the same time, the plot of the young Vito lets us see that violence has always been there, since the beginning- it's just violence begetting violence.Part I is about a powerful man. Part II is about a lonely and self-destructive man.
Annie Hall (1977): I wrote about it a few days ago.
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989): I also wrote about it a few days ago (a novelistic approach). There are 2 plots, with counterparts and opposites (the Judah in the Misdemeanors plot is Lester, a successful but pompous, self-important, ridiculous film producer; the Ben in the Misdemeanors plot is Cliff). Woody Allen combines the 2 plots together by analogy, by film scenes Cliff watches with his niece that echo scenes in the Crimes plot, by the talk between Cliff and Judah at the end of the film, and by the the-evil-are-reward-the-innocent-are-punished conclusion. The 2 strongest performances are from Martin Landau and Alan Alda, who play the 2 douchebags.
Birdman (2014): If you break down Birdman to its basic plot, it's a story of a faded film star unable to come to terms with ageing and being forgotten or replaced, which would place it in the same basket as Sunset Blvd, All about Eve, The Artist or Clouds of Sils Maria, but it doesn't belong there, because of Alejandro G. Iñárritu's treatment of the basic story and handling of the material. In fact, Birdman doesn't belong to anything, any genre: it has been seen as "a black-humor film, a mental health film, a realism/surrealism/magical realism film, a dark-humor parody film, a film of psychological realism, a failed domestic reconciliation drama, or a film concerning theatrical realism and naturalism". Iñárritu puts much in it that sometimes the film feels a bit messy, but the approach is so creative, particularly in the use of the Birdman figure, with all the imagined flying scenes, that the experience is thrilling. 1 of the most brilliant films produced in recent years.
2/ I watched 18 films again. Some of them pale a bit when viewed again, like Match Point and Mother (South Korea). Anatomy of a Murder is still good but the 2nd time felt a bit slow. Scarface is no longer a favourite. Charlie's Angels now appears unbelievably silly, especially as this time I notice its so-called feminism. A Room with a View still puzzles. Some Like It Hot and Bringing Up Baby are still fresh and hilarious. Some films, no matter how many times I've watched them, are forever wonderful and captivating: The Godfather, The Silence of the Lambs, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring. Psycho gets better the 2nd time.
3/ Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring is the most zen, poetic film about life. The 4 seasons are the 4 periods in a person's life. The film is full of symbols, many of which may be lost to people unfamiliar with Buddhism. What do they mean, the doors that close nothing out or in, for example? Roger Ebert thinks: "They are not symbols, I think, but lessons. They teach the inhabitants that it is important to follow custom and tradition, to go the same way that others have gone, to respect what has been left for them." Again here I differ from him: in my interpretation, the doors are only symbolic- barriers are in the mind, if you ignore right and wrong and decide to cross the barrier, as the young monk does in the film, no door can hinder your way. The doors close nothing because they can block nothing. However, even if we don't catch all the symbols and understand their meaning, we can still see it as a beautiful film about the different stages in life, and each episode/part is like a koan, about cruelty to animals, about sexual desire and desire for possession, about anger and jealousy and murder and then remorse and repentance and redemption, etc. There is little dialogue, but Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring says a lot, and each time, something new.
The only puzzlement is: how is it that such a beautiful, thought-provoking film could have been made by the same man who made those twisted films Dream, Samaritan Girl, The Bow and, worst of all, Pietà?
4/ The most important directors to me this year are Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, Federico Fellini and Alfred Hitchcock.
By Wilder, so far I've seen Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd, Stalag 17, Sabrina, The 7 Year Itch, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, One, Two, Three, Irma la Douce, The Fortune Cookie and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. 12 films. In terms of cinematography, techniques, he can't compare with, say, Kubrick, he started out as a screenwriter, his strengths are in plot, dialogue, details, characterisation and working with actors. When he's great, he does everything perfectly, as though effortlessly. When he's not so great, he's never really bad- his weaker films always have some "saving grace", like charming Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, sly Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie or energetic James Cagney in One, Two, Three.
Woody Allen is different from Billy Wilder and not as diverse, but there are a few similarities: both are cynical, both are extremely witty and can be funny, satirical as well as hysterical and absurd, both are not innovative in techniques. I've watched Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), Love and Death, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Midnight in Paris, To Rome with Love and Blue Jasmine. 11 films in total, which is very little, considering how many films he has made. It means something though- I didn't care much for Woody Allen till recently, as I realise that in recent years he hasn't made anything really good that can be on a par with Annie Hall or Crimes and Misdemeanors, which means that I will search for his earlier films instead of watching Irrational Man. Think about it: how many people can write and direct and act and do all well? It is unfortunate that many people dismiss his works because of his personal life, or interpret them in its light.
If the films of Wilder and Allen show the primacy of writing, Fellini's art is about images. Fantasy, dreams, childhood memories. Some directors please the eyes with epic scenes and stunning visual effects but forget the brains, some directors create good films but forget that film is a different medium, using a different language and having different advantages, and Fellini makes wonderful use of cinematic language- he uses images where someone else, a weaker or less confident director, would use voice-over as a short cut. So far I've watched 7 films: I vitelloni, La strada, Le notti di Cabiria, La dolce vita, 8 1/2, Fellini Satyricon and Amarcord. With a bit of Fellini's Casanova. Even whilst personally preferring early Fellini to late Fellini, I don't see him as indulgent- in fact, I like Amarcord and see 8 1/2 as a masterpiece and intend to watch more of his works.
Last but not least, another director I love and consider important to me this year is Hitchcock. My knowledge of his long career is limited, only 10 films: Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie and Family Plot, with a bit of Rebecca and a bit of Strangers on a Train. I might have watched Foreign Correspondent. Not all of these films are well-done: Rope, also inspired by Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment like Match Point and Crimes and Misdemeanors, goes well for most of the film and falls flat in the end, because James Stewart's character's sudden realisation is weak and unconvincing; Marnie is interesting, but there is a problem with the psychology (the incident can't explain Marnie's hatred of men and her mother's apparent dislike of her); The Man Who Knew Too Much has 2 main characters that are too slow, thoughtless and dim-witted. But they aren't that bad- perhaps I'm more critical of them than they deserve because I've seen Hitchcock at his best, like Vertigo and Psycho and The Birds, which show him as the undisputed master of suspense. The Trouble with Harry is another favourite, partly because it's so uncharacteristic of Hitchcock.
5/ This year I watched 7 films produced in 2015.
Furious 7 and Mission: Impossible- Rouge Nation are well-done and highly entertaining. Magic Mike XXL is entertaining, but in terms of plot is weaker than the 1st film. Spectre is visually pleasing and no more, it offers nothing new about James Bond and has 2 forgettable Bond girls and is almost as bad as Quantum of Solace (may I mention in passing that Lea Seydoux's light blue satin dress doesn't look good on her skin and doesn't go well at all with her dark lip colour?). Daniel Craig is very good as James Bond, better than Pierce Brosnan, but his best Bond film is still Casino Royale.
A Most Violent Year is good but perhaps will soon be forgotten.
Far from the Madding Crowd seems a bit weak, even though I haven't read the book to compare. Carey Mulligan delivers a striking performance that runs the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B. As I understand, Bathsheba has 3 different kinds of feeling for the 3 men, and Carey Mulligan shows no distinction. However, it made me want to read the novel, that is probably good enough (I almost didn't read Mansfield Park because of the 1999 film, for example).
Bridge of Spies is good. Tom Hanks in this film isn't very different from himself in Saving Mr Banks, but James B. Donovan is such a fascinating, admirable person that it doesn't matter.
6/ http://thefilmstage.com/features/tokyo-story-hits-criterion-blu-ray-questioning-a-canonical-classic/
I feel less alone. I'm 1 of the people not wild about Tokyo Story. It is good, yes, but is it that good? It's the same way everyone else praises Boyhood to the sky and I alone dislike it.
So next year:
- I have to watch more Ozu. Even if I never warm to Ozu (we can't expect ourselves to like all directors), at least I'll know what I'm talking about.
- There are other directors I have to see or know better. Priorities: Akira Kurosawa, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Ingmar Bergman, Vittorio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonio, Luis Bunuel, Roman Polanski.
So, there.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, FOLKS. I wish you all peace, joy, luck, good health and success.
Monday, 28 December 2015
Crime and Punishment vs Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point
Match Point and (1 of the 2 plots of) Crimes and Misdemeanors have a similar story: a man has an affair and, when threatened with exposure, chooses to keep his life of privilege and comfort by murdering his mistress and then gets away with it. It is as though in the last scene of Crimes and Misdemeanors, Judah Rosenthal indirectly confesses his murder by telling a murder story to the film director Clifford Stern and Cliff takes the idea to create Match Point. The themes are also the same: both start from the premise "What if there is no God?"; if there is no God, anything is possible and there is not always punishment for bad deeds.
If we compare the 2 films, C&M has 2 plots, MP has 1; C&M has philosophical debates and insight into the psychology of the murderer, MP tells the story in a straightforward manner and is hardly more than a crime thriller; C&M is more like a Woody Allen work, MP not only lacks a Woody Allen character but also lacks humour, witty dialogue and one-liners and is set in London. In both films, the man, Judah Rosenthal and Chris Wilton respectively, is married, but if Judah has a happy 25-year marriage with Miriam, Chris doesn't really love Chloe. In both films, there is a mistress, but Nola in MP is a lot younger and more sexually attractive than Dolores Paley in C&M. In both films, Judah and Chris choose murder because they place their own interests above all else and have to cover up the affair, but if the former doesn't want to lose everything after a long life of success and respect, Chris doesn't want to lose the life of privilege that has just begun for him. In both films, they don't say anything to their wives, but in MP, Chris tries once and fails. In both films, they get away with murder and have some remorse though they don't turn themselves in, but if Judah moves on and lives normally 4 months later, Chris seems to be haunted still 9 months afterwards, though there's an impression that he might have a few bad moments but goes unpunished too.
A question now arises: which death is more necessary? Dolores? Because she threatens to expose Judah as a cheating husband and an embezzler? Because she wants to destroy his 25-year marriage and long career and reputation? Because she's hysterical and irrational, expecting him to choose a 2-year affair over everything else? Or Nola? Because she is pregnant and the pressure is strong? Because Chris knows well that he doesn't have talent and only leans on his father-in-law, and to lose that is to lose everything? Of course the answer is neither. The danger of these 2 films is that we may root for Judah and Chris- seeing the women act hysterically and irrationally, we may, for a brief moment perhaps, think a small affair isn't worth it and shout in our heads "Kill her!" like it's the answer, like there is no other choice. Of course they have a choice, we all do, they don't see it simply because they aren't willing to give up anything, because they are basically selfish, because they want always to gain and never to lose, because they don't want to face the consequences of their own decisions and actions. Chris even has greater freedom, because the marriage hasn't been long, Chloe has difficulty getting pregnant, he doesn't fear trouble with the law as Judah does on account of his embezzlements and, considering how diffident, foolish and subservient Chloe is, she's more likely to accept his infidelity than Miriam to deal with Judah's affair.
That leads to another question: between the 2 men, who is worse? Is it Chris, because we follow the whole affair from the start and see him actively pursue and seduce Nola, who is reluctant at 1st, (at some point he tells Nola "Maybe I will [leave Chloe]") and he must pay for his own actions? Or is it Judah, because 4 months after the murder, he happily moves on and comfortably talks about his crime whereas Chris doesn't seem to have got over it after 9 months? Or is it Chris, because Judah doesn't do the killing himself and it becomes an abstraction, whereas Chris makes an elaborate plan, cold-heartedly looks at Nola in the face when killing her, and not only so, kills an unborn baby and an old woman, and right afterwards goes to a musical? In a sense, Judah's killing is defensive- he wants the trouble to go away and everything to stay the way it is, Chris's is offensive- he's a social climber that does everything to get what he wants, and gets rid of anything that is in the way. Or is the worse one after all Judah, who might not be so cold-hearted but who is more hypocritical? Dolores's instability and unreasonableness, as well as Judah's talks, may fool us into thinking that he's pushed into evil, unlike Chris, but before he has embezzled simply because he can't go down after "a long life of hard work" and now does it again. He's just hypocritical. His speech is full of self-justifications ("I was flattered, vulnerable") and self-defences ("I promised nothing", "I prevented nothing", "Moving funds is not stealing"); he asks what choice he has and asks if what Dolores does to him is just, thinking of nothing but himself; he contacts Jack, knowing well what kind of person his brother is, but pretends to say "I don't know" and feigns shock at Jack's suggestion of getting rid of the lover; he only thinks that by getting Dolores killed, he can sleep again, without thinking that he's talking about a human being; he wants her dead but doesn't do it himself since, as Jack says, he doesn't want to get his own hands dirty; he says "I'm shocked" after the act is done and shows some bad conscience but retains enough clear-headedness to go back to her place and get everything that may lead to him; he later thinks of confessing to the police just because he has trouble sleeping and again thinks of himself; and in the end, loses nothing and puts it all behind him. Even worse, he has been brought up a religious boy. The what-should-I-do conversations in the 2 films also mark an important difference: Chris's friend says he can get another job at another firm but at the same time remarks that he doesn't love the other woman enough to give up everything for her, whilst Judah talks to a rabbi and hears about God, moral choice, ethics, forgiveness and love, and yet still goes on with his actions.
Compared to C&M, MP doesn't have the same philosophical depth: the discussions are fewer and shorter, the story is told in a more straightforward manner, the film doesn't dig as deep into the mind of the man. Yet both films are Woody Allen's debate with Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment: for C&M, the allusion is right in the title, for MP, Chris is seen as reading Dostoyevsky and said to have an interesting conversation about the Russian author with Chloe's father. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky expands on his arguments earlier expressed in Notes from Underground- Western ideas in general and utilitarianism in particular are not only unrealistic and inapplicable because human beings are irrational and want to act on free will, they are also dangerous. Raskolnikov, embodying these ideas, shows us the dangers. To Dostoyevsky, the answer, the better alternative, is religion, God. Woody Allen plays with these ideas and responds to them by asking: well what if there is no God? Some people say the endings, especially that of MP, mean that Woody Allen sides with the privileged and the immoral, makes us root for them, and lets them win. Some people go further, connecting the films with the director's personal life, they say he's a nihilist, and whilst it doesn't mean he necessarily commits immoral actions, it means he lacks a compelling reason not to do so. To think that way is to misunderstand the films. What Woody Allen does is to have a debate with Dostoyevsky: both C&M and MP can have the subtitle "Crime and No Punishment". That's how life is: not all crimes are solved, not all criminals are caught, not everyone who does wrong has to pay for their actions. A person may be bothered by bad conscience, but not everyone has a conscience. If a man isn't found out, if he's not punished by the law, nor by some higher power, nor by his own sense of right and wrong, doesn't that mean he's free and can happily live his life? He may have to face judgement after death, but what if there is nothing after death? Woody Allen draws attention to 1 point in Dostoyevsky's ideas: right, that's very well, but what if there is no God? Or what if there is a God that doesn't care? To raise these questions is not to say murder is OK; he just provokes thoughts, and that shows his cynical outlook on life- that there are in fact such people who do terrible things and go unpunished, that life isn't fair, that "Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation".
Recycling his own material, Woody Allen develops the same story in a different direction. C&M focuses on moral choice and God's indifference: God turns the blind eye on evil. The eye is the motif of C&M: Judah is an ophthalmologist, "The eyes of God are on us always", Dolores talks about eyes as windows to the soul, Judah sees her corpse and looks into her open eyes and sees nothing there, Ben the rabbi goes blind in the end... The later film focuses on greed and lust and luck. The role of luck is stressed right from the beginning: the scene is of a tennis ball flying towards the net, with the voice-over of Chris talking of that moment in a game when the ball, if you are lucky, flies over the net, or it doesn't. A mirror of the scene appears near the end of the film with the wedding ring replacing the tennis ball and the railing replacing the tennis net. There is a talk about luck, in which Chris says it is important, whereas Chloe and her brother Tom, not realising that being born to wealth is a kind of luck, say they don't believe in it, only in hard work. This is where MP is inferior to C&M- because the concept of luck dominates and drives the film, there are too many instances of Chris's good luck that might be seen as contrived and unconvincing: Chloe doesn't open the tennis bag with the gun inside; of all things, it's the ring with inscriptions that knocks against the railing and falls back on the pavement to be found; of all people, it's a drug addict that finds the ring and then is killed, which fits perfectly with the scene of a staged drug-related robbery; the detectives find the diary and suspect Chris because he has motive but still dismiss the case and don't bother to check if Chris has a shotgun; the drug addict that has the ring is killed before 1 of the detectives officially sees Chris as a suspect. It seems contrived, even though it's not impossible in real life.
Strangely enough, even though in the end Judah returns to his normal life and Chris turns his back on others with a faintly haunted look on his face, I somehow see MP as a bleaker film. 1, MP, as Roger Ebert puts it, "is a thriller not about good versus evil, but about various species of evil engaged in a struggle for survival of the fittest- or, as the movie makes clear, the luckiest". Tom is egoistic- he just leaves Nola at home and goes to the cinema when she has a headache, for example, and later we're told that he earlier tells her to get an abortion. Nola gets into a relationship with Tom though she doesn't really love him- she's "overwhelmed with attention". Sweet Chloe basically has her dad buy Chris for her. C&M has a balance of selfish, cold-hearted people and good, honest people. 2, C&M ends with professor Levy: "... Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more." That's a positive note at the end of the film. One may say that if there is no God, life has no meaning, but we and our capacity to love give meaning to life. On the 1 hand, we see that "[t]he evil are rewarded, the blameless are punished, and the rabbi goes blind." On the other hand, there is a sense that even if there is no God, even if life isn't always fair, even if it's foolish, life goes on and people keep trying and can find joy in the little things in life. The fact that the professor commits suicide doesn't necessarily turn that quote into an irony. MP has nothing that saves it from bleakness and cynicism. C&M isn't like that. We give meaning to life.
Roger Ebert's reviews:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-crimes-and-misdemeanors-1989
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/match-point-2006
If we compare the 2 films, C&M has 2 plots, MP has 1; C&M has philosophical debates and insight into the psychology of the murderer, MP tells the story in a straightforward manner and is hardly more than a crime thriller; C&M is more like a Woody Allen work, MP not only lacks a Woody Allen character but also lacks humour, witty dialogue and one-liners and is set in London. In both films, the man, Judah Rosenthal and Chris Wilton respectively, is married, but if Judah has a happy 25-year marriage with Miriam, Chris doesn't really love Chloe. In both films, there is a mistress, but Nola in MP is a lot younger and more sexually attractive than Dolores Paley in C&M. In both films, Judah and Chris choose murder because they place their own interests above all else and have to cover up the affair, but if the former doesn't want to lose everything after a long life of success and respect, Chris doesn't want to lose the life of privilege that has just begun for him. In both films, they don't say anything to their wives, but in MP, Chris tries once and fails. In both films, they get away with murder and have some remorse though they don't turn themselves in, but if Judah moves on and lives normally 4 months later, Chris seems to be haunted still 9 months afterwards, though there's an impression that he might have a few bad moments but goes unpunished too.
A question now arises: which death is more necessary? Dolores? Because she threatens to expose Judah as a cheating husband and an embezzler? Because she wants to destroy his 25-year marriage and long career and reputation? Because she's hysterical and irrational, expecting him to choose a 2-year affair over everything else? Or Nola? Because she is pregnant and the pressure is strong? Because Chris knows well that he doesn't have talent and only leans on his father-in-law, and to lose that is to lose everything? Of course the answer is neither. The danger of these 2 films is that we may root for Judah and Chris- seeing the women act hysterically and irrationally, we may, for a brief moment perhaps, think a small affair isn't worth it and shout in our heads "Kill her!" like it's the answer, like there is no other choice. Of course they have a choice, we all do, they don't see it simply because they aren't willing to give up anything, because they are basically selfish, because they want always to gain and never to lose, because they don't want to face the consequences of their own decisions and actions. Chris even has greater freedom, because the marriage hasn't been long, Chloe has difficulty getting pregnant, he doesn't fear trouble with the law as Judah does on account of his embezzlements and, considering how diffident, foolish and subservient Chloe is, she's more likely to accept his infidelity than Miriam to deal with Judah's affair.
That leads to another question: between the 2 men, who is worse? Is it Chris, because we follow the whole affair from the start and see him actively pursue and seduce Nola, who is reluctant at 1st, (at some point he tells Nola "Maybe I will [leave Chloe]") and he must pay for his own actions? Or is it Judah, because 4 months after the murder, he happily moves on and comfortably talks about his crime whereas Chris doesn't seem to have got over it after 9 months? Or is it Chris, because Judah doesn't do the killing himself and it becomes an abstraction, whereas Chris makes an elaborate plan, cold-heartedly looks at Nola in the face when killing her, and not only so, kills an unborn baby and an old woman, and right afterwards goes to a musical? In a sense, Judah's killing is defensive- he wants the trouble to go away and everything to stay the way it is, Chris's is offensive- he's a social climber that does everything to get what he wants, and gets rid of anything that is in the way. Or is the worse one after all Judah, who might not be so cold-hearted but who is more hypocritical? Dolores's instability and unreasonableness, as well as Judah's talks, may fool us into thinking that he's pushed into evil, unlike Chris, but before he has embezzled simply because he can't go down after "a long life of hard work" and now does it again. He's just hypocritical. His speech is full of self-justifications ("I was flattered, vulnerable") and self-defences ("I promised nothing", "I prevented nothing", "Moving funds is not stealing"); he asks what choice he has and asks if what Dolores does to him is just, thinking of nothing but himself; he contacts Jack, knowing well what kind of person his brother is, but pretends to say "I don't know" and feigns shock at Jack's suggestion of getting rid of the lover; he only thinks that by getting Dolores killed, he can sleep again, without thinking that he's talking about a human being; he wants her dead but doesn't do it himself since, as Jack says, he doesn't want to get his own hands dirty; he says "I'm shocked" after the act is done and shows some bad conscience but retains enough clear-headedness to go back to her place and get everything that may lead to him; he later thinks of confessing to the police just because he has trouble sleeping and again thinks of himself; and in the end, loses nothing and puts it all behind him. Even worse, he has been brought up a religious boy. The what-should-I-do conversations in the 2 films also mark an important difference: Chris's friend says he can get another job at another firm but at the same time remarks that he doesn't love the other woman enough to give up everything for her, whilst Judah talks to a rabbi and hears about God, moral choice, ethics, forgiveness and love, and yet still goes on with his actions.
Compared to C&M, MP doesn't have the same philosophical depth: the discussions are fewer and shorter, the story is told in a more straightforward manner, the film doesn't dig as deep into the mind of the man. Yet both films are Woody Allen's debate with Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment: for C&M, the allusion is right in the title, for MP, Chris is seen as reading Dostoyevsky and said to have an interesting conversation about the Russian author with Chloe's father. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky expands on his arguments earlier expressed in Notes from Underground- Western ideas in general and utilitarianism in particular are not only unrealistic and inapplicable because human beings are irrational and want to act on free will, they are also dangerous. Raskolnikov, embodying these ideas, shows us the dangers. To Dostoyevsky, the answer, the better alternative, is religion, God. Woody Allen plays with these ideas and responds to them by asking: well what if there is no God? Some people say the endings, especially that of MP, mean that Woody Allen sides with the privileged and the immoral, makes us root for them, and lets them win. Some people go further, connecting the films with the director's personal life, they say he's a nihilist, and whilst it doesn't mean he necessarily commits immoral actions, it means he lacks a compelling reason not to do so. To think that way is to misunderstand the films. What Woody Allen does is to have a debate with Dostoyevsky: both C&M and MP can have the subtitle "Crime and No Punishment". That's how life is: not all crimes are solved, not all criminals are caught, not everyone who does wrong has to pay for their actions. A person may be bothered by bad conscience, but not everyone has a conscience. If a man isn't found out, if he's not punished by the law, nor by some higher power, nor by his own sense of right and wrong, doesn't that mean he's free and can happily live his life? He may have to face judgement after death, but what if there is nothing after death? Woody Allen draws attention to 1 point in Dostoyevsky's ideas: right, that's very well, but what if there is no God? Or what if there is a God that doesn't care? To raise these questions is not to say murder is OK; he just provokes thoughts, and that shows his cynical outlook on life- that there are in fact such people who do terrible things and go unpunished, that life isn't fair, that "Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation".
Recycling his own material, Woody Allen develops the same story in a different direction. C&M focuses on moral choice and God's indifference: God turns the blind eye on evil. The eye is the motif of C&M: Judah is an ophthalmologist, "The eyes of God are on us always", Dolores talks about eyes as windows to the soul, Judah sees her corpse and looks into her open eyes and sees nothing there, Ben the rabbi goes blind in the end... The later film focuses on greed and lust and luck. The role of luck is stressed right from the beginning: the scene is of a tennis ball flying towards the net, with the voice-over of Chris talking of that moment in a game when the ball, if you are lucky, flies over the net, or it doesn't. A mirror of the scene appears near the end of the film with the wedding ring replacing the tennis ball and the railing replacing the tennis net. There is a talk about luck, in which Chris says it is important, whereas Chloe and her brother Tom, not realising that being born to wealth is a kind of luck, say they don't believe in it, only in hard work. This is where MP is inferior to C&M- because the concept of luck dominates and drives the film, there are too many instances of Chris's good luck that might be seen as contrived and unconvincing: Chloe doesn't open the tennis bag with the gun inside; of all things, it's the ring with inscriptions that knocks against the railing and falls back on the pavement to be found; of all people, it's a drug addict that finds the ring and then is killed, which fits perfectly with the scene of a staged drug-related robbery; the detectives find the diary and suspect Chris because he has motive but still dismiss the case and don't bother to check if Chris has a shotgun; the drug addict that has the ring is killed before 1 of the detectives officially sees Chris as a suspect. It seems contrived, even though it's not impossible in real life.
Strangely enough, even though in the end Judah returns to his normal life and Chris turns his back on others with a faintly haunted look on his face, I somehow see MP as a bleaker film. 1, MP, as Roger Ebert puts it, "is a thriller not about good versus evil, but about various species of evil engaged in a struggle for survival of the fittest- or, as the movie makes clear, the luckiest". Tom is egoistic- he just leaves Nola at home and goes to the cinema when she has a headache, for example, and later we're told that he earlier tells her to get an abortion. Nola gets into a relationship with Tom though she doesn't really love him- she's "overwhelmed with attention". Sweet Chloe basically has her dad buy Chris for her. C&M has a balance of selfish, cold-hearted people and good, honest people. 2, C&M ends with professor Levy: "... Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more." That's a positive note at the end of the film. One may say that if there is no God, life has no meaning, but we and our capacity to love give meaning to life. On the 1 hand, we see that "[t]he evil are rewarded, the blameless are punished, and the rabbi goes blind." On the other hand, there is a sense that even if there is no God, even if life isn't always fair, even if it's foolish, life goes on and people keep trying and can find joy in the little things in life. The fact that the professor commits suicide doesn't necessarily turn that quote into an irony. MP has nothing that saves it from bleakness and cynicism. C&M isn't like that. We give meaning to life.
Roger Ebert's reviews:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-crimes-and-misdemeanors-1989
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/match-point-2006
Wednesday, 23 December 2015
Season's greetings; best books of the year; reading ideas for 2016
The best fiction books I've read this year are:
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Despair by Vladimir Nabokov
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Lev Tolstoy- Penguin, especially "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", "The Forged Coupon" and "Polikushka"
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
(in the order in which I read them)
You might have noticed that among the ones left out are Daniel Deronda by George Eliot and Shirley by Charlotte Bronte, but I'm glad that I have read them.
As I usually don't talk about books read in the year, it's hard to say if it's a good year or not. Well, bad in the sense that once, a long time ago, I thought of a Norwegian literature challenge (in which nobody participated) and have failed completely. Because you all ignored me, that's why. Okay I just kept postponing and procrastinating till I realised, in the last 3 months, that it was too late and so I just abandoned it altogether. Isn't that a shame? But it's also a good year as I read Middlemarch, universally acknowledged as George Eliot's greatest novel and recently ranked as the greatest British novel according to the rest of the world; discovered Henry James (= read another bad marriage novel); read The Moonstone, the 1st detective story in English, and read people's thoughts on Jane Austen's Emma, undetectable detective fiction; and read 3 classics everyone has heard of but very few have read- Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Bram Stoker's Dracula, only to discover that they were rather distorted by popular culture.
Jazz was an interesting read, I hadn't read Toni Morrison for quite a long time, but its significance is the fact that it's linked to jazz music, which I started loving just before summer.
Corregidora by Gayl Jones, read in March, is now in the list of 5 novels by female writers that I hate or dislike the most. The other 4 are The Twilight saga by Stephanie Meyer, The Tattooed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and Kitchen or Asleep or both by Banana Yoshimoto. This adds to another shame of mine- a post I intended to write, with explanations and such, after reading Jennifer Weiner's excellent, persuasive, well-argued article about gender and literary criticism, to show how hopelessly brainwashed I am by the patriarchy (or perhaps to prove that I'm actually not female). Now I'm too lazy to write an elaboration on my hatred (though if you ask, I'll answer).
Reading ideas for 2016:
1/ Still prioritise reading deeply over reading broadly: Tolstoy (The Cossacks, Hadji Murat), Dostoyevsky (at least another novel), Gogol, Turgenev, Nabokov... And perhaps reread Madame Bovary.
2/ Read more Dickens. Top priority: Bleak House.
3/ Read more 19th century American literature. Read more of Henry James. Probably read Hawthorne and Wharton. Top priority: Moby-Dick.
4/ Get acquainted with the French writers of the 19th century, especially Zola and Stendhal.
5/ Read Norwegian literature. I won't start another challenge (I mean, what if I fail a 2nd time?), but I'll try. Not Knausgård, however.
6/ Read ****: The Anatomy of Melancholy by Matthew Selwyn- I've been impolite enough to the guy (sorry Matthew).
7/ Read more of Faulker, Woolf and Nabokov, perhaps early James Joyce- build up for Ulysses.
No, I must stop myself here. To continue I would write so much that I may not even fulfil in 10 years.
So that's it. What are the best books you've read this year and what are your plans for next year?
A present for you all: as these days I've been listening to Patti Smith, here is a Christmas song performed by her.
Thank you all for all the lovely comments and interesting discussions here. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, folks! <3
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Despair by Vladimir Nabokov
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Lev Tolstoy- Penguin, especially "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", "The Forged Coupon" and "Polikushka"
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
(in the order in which I read them)
You might have noticed that among the ones left out are Daniel Deronda by George Eliot and Shirley by Charlotte Bronte, but I'm glad that I have read them.
As I usually don't talk about books read in the year, it's hard to say if it's a good year or not. Well, bad in the sense that once, a long time ago, I thought of a Norwegian literature challenge (in which nobody participated) and have failed completely. Because you all ignored me, that's why. Okay I just kept postponing and procrastinating till I realised, in the last 3 months, that it was too late and so I just abandoned it altogether. Isn't that a shame? But it's also a good year as I read Middlemarch, universally acknowledged as George Eliot's greatest novel and recently ranked as the greatest British novel according to the rest of the world; discovered Henry James (= read another bad marriage novel); read The Moonstone, the 1st detective story in English, and read people's thoughts on Jane Austen's Emma, undetectable detective fiction; and read 3 classics everyone has heard of but very few have read- Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Bram Stoker's Dracula, only to discover that they were rather distorted by popular culture.
Jazz was an interesting read, I hadn't read Toni Morrison for quite a long time, but its significance is the fact that it's linked to jazz music, which I started loving just before summer.
Corregidora by Gayl Jones, read in March, is now in the list of 5 novels by female writers that I hate or dislike the most. The other 4 are The Twilight saga by Stephanie Meyer, The Tattooed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and Kitchen or Asleep or both by Banana Yoshimoto. This adds to another shame of mine- a post I intended to write, with explanations and such, after reading Jennifer Weiner's excellent, persuasive, well-argued article about gender and literary criticism, to show how hopelessly brainwashed I am by the patriarchy (or perhaps to prove that I'm actually not female). Now I'm too lazy to write an elaboration on my hatred (though if you ask, I'll answer).
Reading ideas for 2016:
1/ Still prioritise reading deeply over reading broadly: Tolstoy (The Cossacks, Hadji Murat), Dostoyevsky (at least another novel), Gogol, Turgenev, Nabokov... And perhaps reread Madame Bovary.
2/ Read more Dickens. Top priority: Bleak House.
3/ Read more 19th century American literature. Read more of Henry James. Probably read Hawthorne and Wharton. Top priority: Moby-Dick.
4/ Get acquainted with the French writers of the 19th century, especially Zola and Stendhal.
5/ Read Norwegian literature. I won't start another challenge (I mean, what if I fail a 2nd time?), but I'll try. Not Knausgård, however.
6/ Read ****: The Anatomy of Melancholy by Matthew Selwyn- I've been impolite enough to the guy (sorry Matthew).
7/ Read more of Faulker, Woolf and Nabokov, perhaps early James Joyce- build up for Ulysses.
No, I must stop myself here. To continue I would write so much that I may not even fulfil in 10 years.
So that's it. What are the best books you've read this year and what are your plans for next year?
A present for you all: as these days I've been listening to Patti Smith, here is a Christmas song performed by her.
Thank you all for all the lovely comments and interesting discussions here. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, folks! <3
Tuesday, 22 December 2015
"To love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer..."
Lately I've been watching Woody Allen films, and now just watched Love and Death. Go see it if you haven't. Who wouldn't love this film? It's hilarious, it's absolutely hysterical and absurd, and it's a spoof of Russian novels.
Here are 4 of my favourite scenes from the film:
Here are 4 of my favourite scenes from the film:
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