“I was in my parents’ living room stuffing my face with potato chips when I first heard and saw the video for Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. I almost choked. The punk rock bands that I was heavily in to then, were long gone, so the noise and anarchic imagery coming out of the television spoke to something inside me, my depression, my anger, and disenfranchisement with society. It was almost as if my generation were given a new chance at something beautifully chaotic, life rendering, changing, and a way to rebel. The plaid shirts, baby doll dresses, and existential dirt emanating from that video was loud and it was pure rock and roll. Beyond Dave Grohl’s speed punk drums and Krist Novoselic’s infectious bass, there was the raw gravelly scream Kurt Cobain. That voice expressed pain, love, and a myriad of vivid emotions….” Read more here: http://nextprojection.com/2015/04/25/hot-docs-kurt-cobain-montage-heck-np-approved/
I’ve heard that once you finish writing a book and set it out into the world, it ceases to become yours and it becomes the work of the reader. I understand that somewhat.
Sometimes I’ve had people give me feedback on a poem, short story, or piece and tell me what they got out of it. I find the process of authorial transference to reader consciousness fascinating. It’s like coming up with an idea and watching people riff on that, eventually the idea becomes an independent entity this way. I find the same thing happens with film.
When screenwriters give their scripts to filmmakers, they release the visual interpretation of their words to the director. As in the case with No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy wrote the novel, Scott Rudin bought the rights to the film, the Coen brothers then adapted it into a screenplay to make into a film. The film is seen by audiences to parse in their minds. I haven’t read much criticism on this film and I’ve seen it many times though and know that there are a few books out there that are dedicated to the critical parsing of it.
For me, I’ve enjoyed its silence, its in depth character study in that silence, the epic scenery, and the realization that it’s actually a visually loud film in all that muteness. There is also a huge difference between watching a film like this on the small screen and seeing it loom large on the big screen. I’ve made it a point to watch as many films on a big screen as much as I can purely for the fact that I notice so much more in it’s re-watching in a theatre. No Country For Old Men last night was a new experience for me upon its re-watch at the Lightbox.
For the purposes of time (I have to go put up the Xmas tree and work on some overdue poems), and a lack of brain cells (I stayed up way too late), I’d like to jot some things down and share with you before the steam train leaves my head station (and pardon the quick no grammar/spell check. I’ll come back and edit if necessary later).:
There’s definitely music in the film. When I got home I immediately wiki’d and imdb’d the hell out of it and besides the ambient noise, there are instruments being played at times. That’s one of the things I couldn’t really discern on the dvd. I mean, I cop it to being possessed by the film; for the film subtly gets under your skin. Besides the ones I’ve seen pointed out (the first coin toss – humming, the buddhist bells in the desert scene), there are natural sounds and that’s something I’ve paid attention to before. My favourite on the re-watch is the great street shootout between Llewelyn and Chigurh. As Llewelyn gets up, he fires a series of shots at a car where Chigurh is supposedly hiding. We hear the car tires deflate and the bullets ricochet from all over. Llewelyn is right by the car, picks up a rifle, and we hear the faint, but definite chug of a train trundling in the near vicinity.
Of course, setting this film in the western genre, a train is very symbolic. However, in the context of the film, it takes this symbolism in a variety of analytic levers.
Trains were a symbol of the industrial revolution in the time the classic western was usually set.
In No Country For Old Men, it’s a reminder of that, but also part of the recurring “something is coming” theme. Fate plays a big part in the film (If things are meant to be, they work out, if they don’t, you’ll get killed). The trundle of a train is steady and you can’t really run away from its set path. It’s either doom or be doomed.
A few scenes caught my eye that reminded me of the way Stanley Kubrick or Alfred Hitchcock used to set up single person shots. It’s kind of a short tableau vivant (something directors Alain Resnais & Claire Denis drag out, as do the Coen brothers usually) and/or rather more like watching a moving graphic novel.
The above being one of my favourite scenes for that. There’s something very clean and OCD about it. The lines around Wells frame him in his absurdity. A veteran who is, in every sense of the definition, the embodiment of the western hit man: he’s got an omniscient knowledge of things beyond the scope of the viewer or the people he deals with. He’s smooth and calm, even when confronting his possible end. Yet there he is clean-cut in a power suit, but he’s wearing a white cowboy hat. He is the corporate cowboy. A contemptible notion, but when you think of a cowboy going from veteran to fighting for the power that drives the money, it makes ridiculous sense. Yes, this is a Texan fashion (having seen it when I lived in Dallas myself), but in the context of the film, he’s the only one wearing a power suit and a cowboy hat.
Just before Wells leaves the office, he asks about the missing floor. I may be wrong, but he might be referring to the missing “13.” In the line of work that he is in, he notices these things. It’s also a way of his pointing out that even in the buildings that house the money, old school superstitions still come into play, thus alluding to an assumed lack of control over fate.
In the realm of symbolism and impending doom, this is the one that sticks out:
As Chigurh approaches the windowed door, his shadow transforms into a black triangle comprised of circles. There’s something very esoteric in that symbol. It very well mean nothing, but if we can delve into an occult meaning of light, all seeing eyes, and the figures of light and power, that scene pretty much shows elements to that effect. The women at the counter refuses to give Chigurh the information he demands, even challenging him with her expressions. The totally utilitarian Chigurh can easily kill this woman, but the fact that someone is in the other room, and that she has agency over him with the information she holds, would have made her death illogical. The man that can kill indiscriminately (God), leaves the room a bit emasculated in the moment. It’s a hilarious scene for that.
I think this is my last one I can think of at the moment. I love love love LOOOOOOOVE the settings in this film. They’re so palpable, they remind me of travelling desert country as a kid. For its running themes of fate, decay, doom, the old hat handing over the goblet to the new, this scene is a beauty:
One can assume that cats are used as symbols of death and evil (the cat drinking the overturned milk in an implied death scene, Ellis’s home overrun with cats as him and Bell converse about death). However, in the cinematic frame of filmmaking, a cat is a quiet observer. It offers comfort of place in a world of chaos. Anton Chigurh is chaos. As the old time cowboy faces an unknowable foe (for the trick of the western was in the respect of knowing one’s enemy), he feels impending doom for the first time. Chigurh is not a knowable enemy or one that you can just work over in a classic show down. Chigurh is a force of nature, bred in an alien world as the world of consumer culture and corporate war isolates the cowboys (the original superheroes), and brings them down to level ground. The cowboy now fears the darkness and waits for the fire in the night to guide him to a familiar home (think of Lord of Rings where the mythical world hands over the universe to the time of Men). In the last scene, Bell talks about the dream of his father holding a horn with fire guiding his way to camp in the desert. He’ll always be waiting there for him.
I’m reminded of how filmmaker Chris Marker adored his cat Guillaume. Cats were super-human and empathetic to him. In the scene above, the cats just hang around Ellis, either wild or domesticated, but they stick around the old man. They are his eyes when someone walks in, and they are his old country companions; reassurances that things will always be the same no matter how much they change.
Ellis: Whatcha got ain’t nothin new. This country’s hard on people, you can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.
And it’s true. Down here, in this time, cowboy, you’re just like everyone else. So this is they way I saw the film. Like a book, a film becomes a viewer’s work even if that interpretation is different than the maker’s. We can never be unbiased about what we view or read, nor can what we read or view be unbiased about the mind of its consumer.
Ok, I gotta have a brunch, I guess. I let the time fly. But feel free to comment if you agree or disagree or if you’ve got other ideas on the film. I’d love hear them before I start reading up on it and the book.
This is an analysis and not a review per se. THERE ARE SPOILERS EVERYWHERE HERE so THIS IS A SPOILER ALERT! A SPOILER ALERT! DANGER, WIL ROBINSON! I recommend you watch the trailer, go see the film, then come back here if you’d like an interpretation or analysis.
A common thread I’ve seen among Canadian horror film directors is that they never assume that the audience is dumb. Many of them, like Cronenberg, are keenly attuned to the idea that there are untapped layers in the human brain; there’s a whole other film in the mind. Films like My Bloody Valentine, The Changeling, Cube, Dead of Night, and the seminal Black Christmas ***, are interpretable story allusions.
I watched Panos Cosmatos‘s Beyond The Black Rainbow this weekend at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. The first time I saw it was at home. I was on two hours of sleep and dozed off while watching it. I was intrigued, but tired and the great visual/musical combo was just right thing to sleep to. This last time I was on maybe three hours of sleep, but luckily still had enough caffeine to appreciate the film. And how. I’ll most likely watch it a few times, it was that good.
I think a plot rehash may be a little too much for it, so I’ll post up the trailer and let go:
Let’s start with Mercurio Arborio. He’s an 80s new age visionary who uses a combination of benign therapies, pharmacology, herbal therapies, naturopathy, and neuropsychology to help humanity attain happiness and inner peace. In the commercial that starts the film, the Arboria Institute is described with phrases like “A New State of Mind: A New Way of Being,” and “A Practical Application of An Abstract Ideal.” The most telling of these is: “Born Of A Dream: To Create A Reality.” This one kind of stuck with me and I will talk about it in a bit.
Mercurio Arboria’s name is an interesting new age-y made up entity. Mercury is a Greek god that can travel between the worlds of gods, human, and the dead. The word mercurial means flighty or constantly changing. Breaking down Arboria as a word, it brings to mind trees. My thoughts veer toward Dr. Arboria representing someone from the 80s new age movement. Luckily (or unluckily), I was born in 1973, and a lot of the visual and religious shopping aesthetic of the early 80s resonates strongly. These were the times when drugs and spirituality were mixed freely as a reaction against the political oppressive environment that surrounded the world back then. I grew up watching doomsday clocks and tv films like The Day After, that continually plugged the notion that the end was near. Constant mass anxiety is a means of control, ie. cold war era propaganda and sensationalism. In turn, some would experiment with religion the same way they would experiment with drugs to release themselves from that anxious reality. Aleister Crowley–Helena Blatvasky retro-inspired cults (Jim Jones) flourished in these sorts of environments. The new age movement provided alternatives to their already repressed lifestyle. Unbeknownst to them though, they were leaving institutions for other institutions wrapped up in esoteric terminologies.
Harken back to the word Arboria = trees. This is an integral advertence to archaic religious and societal structures based on hierarchy.
While Dr. Arboria presents the Arboria Institute as a “new way of being,” it has evolved into another regulating entity. Thus, we have Dr. Arboria at the top with his assistant/prodigy, Dr. Barry Nyle, below him or at his side. His “customer(s)” are imprisoned in this giant compound with “award winning gardens.”
After the Arboria Institute advertisement (which have visuals reminiscent of Stan Brakhage’s Mothlight and Dog Star Man, much to my delight), we are given low-angle shots of Nyle. He looks dominating, meancing, and cold.
He’s also the only one that interrogates Elena, the heroine of our story.
The only people in the institute seem to be:
1. Dr. Mercurio Arboria (played by Scott Hylands)
2. Dr. Barry Nyle (played amazingly by Michael Rogers – creepy and sort of delicious to a freak like me)
Elena has special powers….or does she? Since the Arboria Institute experiments with drugs and spirituality which is “born of a dream to create a new reality,” I suspect here that there is way more than meets the eye. I posit that there are a multitude of ways interpreting Beyond the Black Rainbow, but one of the theories that sticks to me is that the otherworldly aesthetics and supernatural abilities seen are merely perceptions built upon drug fuelled visions of an actual truth.
In a flashback, the audience is given clues to the Nyle’s true character. In 1966 (the heady days of drug experimentation and acid trips), Nyle is young, looks doe-eyed up at his teacher (Arboria), and gazes lovingly at Mrs. Arboria before his big transcendental drug trip. “Bring home the mother load, Barry,” Arboria says as Nyle goes into black pit (a black eye is drawn on his forehead, referencing the new age movement’s appropriation of the Hindu third eye). Somehow the journey turns sour. Images of Nyle’s face burning and being melted away in lava lamp like sequences fade in and out of the screen. Whatever good facade Nyle has had up is stripped away and obliterated. As Nyle emerges from the pit, an overhead shot reveals the black liquid pool as the iris of a giant eye.
Out of the spiritual realm, Nyle comes out a psychopath and inexplicably kills Mrs. Arboria. Soon after, Elena is born, her mother’s death, Dr. Arboria says, shall “not be in vain.” “Let the new age of enlightenment begin,” he proclaims as a masked Nyle quietly looks on.
There is nothing but menacingly masochistic dominance left in Nyle. He must wear a false veneer with a wig and contacts, for his true face is monstrous. Every scene has him either orgasmically high on control or holding back a constant disgust for others. As he goes in to visit a highly sedated and senile Dr. Arboria, he rolls his eyes at his textbook new age phrases. Only a hint of the old Nyle comes out in a regretful glance at his mentor while injecting him with a fatal drug overdose.
Throughout the film Nyle pops drugs into his system and in one scene, even smiles at his reflection after downing several of them. His supposed control is artificial. His alienation/alien-ness is an alternative reality concocted from a continual hallucinogenic state. As he picks up the phone he hears static combined with radio white noise. There’s a robotic voice somewhere in there, but it sounds more like someone changing radio channels. While no actual words are discerned, Nyle perceives a conversation that elevates his paranoid state, possibly triggering the deadly events that are soon to follow. Elena, in turn, kills Margo with her brain and talks to Nyle telepathically. But does she really?
Cosmatos has presented us with a trance film, therefore putting us in a trance-like state (hence the overly long pacing and the slow moving characters. I will also point out that there are such things such as hallucinogen videos that exist. If they actually work, I do not know.). The camera becomes an unreliable narrator giving us hints of real vs unreal worlds through Nyle’s or Elena’s perspectives. When Elena moves, it’s unstable and slow, and since she’s been drugged all of her life, it makes perfect sense. However, her view of reality can possibly be skewed in such a state. As she escapes her jail, she travels from weird room to another weird room, encounters a mutant, and a Sentionaut, and finally comes face to face with the unmasked Nyle. As Nyle pleads to Elena, his foot catches on a branch and he falls, hitting his head on a rock and dies. Elena might also assume she has pushed Nyle telekinetically, because she smiles, and a great sense of relief comes over her face at that moment. This, however, is questionable. I first thought that Nyle’s death was abrupt considering the time it took to get to that point in the film, but if you think of it as something that occurs outside of their mutual drug fueled states, it makes the death far more meaningful.
Another possible theory I’ve been parsing in my head is one of the film as a story continually played out by a comatose Elena, (This is where I release my feminist slash philosophical view on the film). Elena is a young girl in a coma. She’s probably been there since before adolescence, maybe placed there due to a car crash (Nyle drives with purpose on long roads with no traffic), where her father was driving in a drug induced haze. Her mother dies and she survives only to end up in the coma. Dr. Arboria and Dr. Nyle are the same person: her father (a young drugged sinister figure and an old weak one that eventually succumbs to his addictions). Perhaps her father was a scientist who dabbled with drugs and, in turn, a comatose Elena creates this dark Elena in Wonderland world.
An infinite world of possibilities can occur in Elena’s mind due to the ever evolving world of the subconscious. In the “interrogation room,” hospital/video game-like noises occur every time Dr. Nyle makes a provocative statement at Elena. She might recall video games or the unique sounds of a modem (ie. the noises in Nyle’s telephone).
The mise en scene is a sampler from various 60s-80s movies aesthetics: Kubrick’s 2001 (interrogation rooms and flashing buttons); Trumbull’s Silent Running (the domed indoor gardens); Cronenberg’s early works (dispassionate tone and repressed scientist); and Lucas’s THX-1138 (the hallways and Sentionaut). I’m sure there are more references, particularly towards the end when we stumble upon two heavy metal drunks in the field (one of them being Chris Gauthier who’s in John Carpenter’s “Cigarette Burns” from the Masters of Horror Series – the mutant on the floor we see in the middle of the film is similar to the imprisoned angel in that episode). That scene could have been plucked from a variety of horror movie tropes. My point being that these are scenes and settings out of film driven archetypes. Elena could either have been exposed to them as a child before her coma or subconsciously in her hospital room while in her coma. Furthermore, we continually see Elena in a hospital room-like bed in a white surgical gown. She is immaculately kept, but there’s no bathroom in sight. The only thing in her room besides her bed are the tiny televisions that change channels on their own, or we can believe that she changes the channels with her mind, (Note: in the channels shown, one of them shows a karate tournament, another shows a police chase, and the last one is a cartoon man being pulled apart. At the end of the cartoon man’s story, a wolf comes out of nowhere, transforms him into a medicine bottle, swallowing him whole. These can also be images she uses in empowering herself in her eventual escape).
Nyle represents the male imposition of desire on a young woman who is “coming of age” ( I loathe those terms because they are generalizations, but they fit this theory to describe this phase in Elena’s life). The only figures she can emulate or have archetypes for, are male (with the exception of the very stoic nurse and a perceived “soft dead mother” trope). Her father is absent and the only male she truly encounters is the psychopathic Nyle who’s obsessed with her and her “abilities.” Nyle can be a collection of male voices (doctors, father figures, sounds from her hospital television). Elena envisions a world made up of those media driven voices without the context, discerning a reality that can be ultimately terrifying to a girl.
Keep in mind that Elena in a coma is extremely vulnerable, naive, and scared of the world outside of her head, especially if she’s going through puberty at the same time. For all we know, she’s only been exposed to a fake corporeality via drugs or the television in her room. Turn on the tv for any length of time and close your eyes. Imagine fashioning a reality or a dream state with the visuals that come to mind from the audio you hear. Then try to parse that through the mind of a teenage girl reaching womanhood. I’m sorry, but when I was in that phase, it was chaotic, confusing, and extraordinarily hard to navigate the real world in that sort of environment.The Sentionaut is revealed to have a childlike face with a perpetual catatonic expression, maybe representative of Elena’s frozen age existence. It is perceived to assist her and aiding her in her release from that phase.
That mirror shot with the multitudes of Sentionauts is both an aesthetically pleasing scene of assuredness in Elena’s visions. Mirror images are a way that her 2-D experienced mine can parse the 3-D world, thus alluding to her creation of various dualities (there are two Nyles- the masked controlling villain and the unmasked unhinged villain; there are two Elenas – the one that is still asleep and the one that awaken; there are two mothers – the dead mother and the passive and fragile Mrs. Rosemary Nyle –rosemary the herb is a symbol of remembrance, love, and loyalty).
Elena’s slow movements imply her moving through sluggish dreams. As she ventures out from room to room, she marvels at her surroundings, seemingly knowing where she is supposed to go. As she reaches the “outside” her sensory perceptions peak. Elena smiles as her feet hit the soft ground and her eyes marvel at the starry world above her. Sensual and climatic in expression, her reaction comes from a newfound experience of the true present. Meanwhile, Nyle (like many horror movie villains of the 80s can only kill if the heroine’s virginity is threatened.”You fucked her,” Nyle accuses the drunk before he kills him in classic horror movie fashion (of note here is the excessive spraying of blood; a sensational body horror tactic from the 70s).
Skipping to Nyle again at the moment, while it’s still fresh in my brain: the leather suit he puts on is made by a company called Noriega Leathers. Now with references to Ronald Reagan and the famous Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega, one can posit that these are things she most likely would have heard in her hospital room. The weapon Nyle uses is called the Devil’s Teardrop. Keeping in mind that there are a ton of videotapes in Dr. Arboria’s room, and he watches a lot of nature shows. The last scene we see him in, he’s watches a documentary on Molokai which is an island created out of ancient volcanoes. Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock.The devil’s teardrop is also a nickname for obsidian. Elena could have put the two facts together out of the nature shows her father watches in her room.
Elena, fresh from her escape, walks towards the blue lights of the televisions coming from suburbia. She’s flown from one controlled environment into another. After the credits, an action figure Sentionaut is seen on a carpet. A voice similar to the one Nyle heard on the phone can be heard repeatedly asking, “Do you read me?”
Is someone trying to wake Elena up? Does she relive an escape every day? Is the Sentionaut a combined archetype of the action figure craze of the 70s and 80s?
If we go back to the Deleuzian-Guattari rhizome theory I mentioned above (you can click on the quotes to get a small summary on their theories):
By Dr. Arboria’s attempt to bring a new state of mind and a new state of being beyond the tree-like hierarchy that the 80s future world follows, his alternative solution is built upon a rhizome-like artifice. It ironically ends up being the same tree-like tower (hello controlling prism), with the same oedipal structured branches. Elena can never truly escape the maze and her stories until she wakes up to her true reality.
(These theories are just theories and may be not the vision that the director intended. However, as with all film, like poetry, it’s reader/viewer that ultimately experiences the film in their own way.)
Taking out any interpretation beyond the director’s own words of it being about control, trance like film states, and his horror film cover exposure, one can gather that Beyond the Black Rainbow is something out of the dreams of Panos Cosmatos. Like many directors, Cosmatos manifests horror, sci-fi, and suspense influences and renders them into an extraordinary film journey. It is highlighted by an amazing cinematographic vision by Norm Li (whose previous exposure on Battlestar Galactica can easily be seen in the lens work in this film), and a minimalist analog score by Jeremy Schmidt.**
**(As an aside, I’m huge fan of Mellotron use in film scores and that black and white contrast scene before Nyle’s drug trip was extremely eerie and satisfying. Kind of TMI, but as a kid I used to dream in mostly black and white and it was contrasted heavily like that; at least that’s how I perceive it now looking back. The television my family first owned was a black and white one that I’d spend a long time watching and changing channels to 0 just to see and hear the white noise. Parts of Beyond the Black Rainbow reminded me of this and enhanced my already enthralled state in the watching of it.)
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** I’m a bit of a Bob Clark fan. I think his reputation for directing A Christmas Story and Porky’s largely overshadows his work in creating one of the foundations to modern slasher film, which was Black Christmas. He’s both an underrated director and BC is an underrated film, (and, admittedly, he also made forgettable movies as well).
* Too many times I found myself typing out Nye (as in Bill Nye the Science Guy) instead of Nyle.
Much like my review of Upstream Color, I fear at this point I have to install not just a POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT, but this analysis is hopefully a thorough one with details some might just want to witness first on the big screen so THIS IS A SPOILER ALERT! A SPOILER ALERT! DANGER, WIL ROBINSON! However, Only God Forgives is not based on any spoiler per se. My analysis is based mostly on my own readings and my own film critical viewing background.
My one problem with Only God Forgives was that it was sold as a hyper violent action, kickass fight flick with an intelligent twist. It’s not. It’s hyper violent and intelligently done. There’s little fighting in it though and you’re not going to get a hero. Looking back at a history of Nicolas Winding Refn flicks, who wouldn’t expect something akin…
Like most of my reviews that are basically analysis’s of the film, THIS IS A SPOILER ALERT! A SPOILER ALERT! DANGER, WIL ROBINSON! My analysis is based mostly on my own readings and my own film critical viewing background.
If you want reasons you should see Gravity without a spoiler alert, I will tell you now that I LOVED GRAVITY, but I had problems with it, which are illustrated below. If you want a preliminary review without spoilers go here or here.
Once again there are spoilers down below due to my analytic nature, so go see the film and then come back to this page and see if you agree or not. SPOILERS BELOW.
As part of some conceptual work, I’ve been taken excerpts from scripts with male lead roles and changed their gender. It’s been an interesting experiment and I’m still reworking some and gathering info on reader’s reactions to them.
What first struck me about Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity before even seeing Gravity was the fact that there was a possibility of an actress taking over the lead role in a space flick. For that, I am satisfied and Sandra Bullock is to be commended for her performance in it (although I think they could have utilized her better and will attempt to explain why below).
Bio-mechanical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is on her first space mission with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) who is on his last command mission. While doing their last space walk to repair the Hubble telescope, a Russian anti-satellite test causes space debris to imperil the mission. The team is asked to abort, it gets lambasted with the catastrophic detritus, hurtling the pair into a perilous situation.
Gravity is a technically brilliant disaster movie. I am impressed by directors who envision not just scenes, but entire films in their heads, without regard to how they can techically make them happen.
Cuarón has accomplished quite a feat by visualizing long tracking shots set in space and making them a cinematic reality. We don’t just see the illusion of a long tracking shot, but the combination of depth of frame perspectives creating a unique “possible” 4th wall view. As the camera pans back from a two dimensional view of earth, Stone and Hubble are revealed. Earth becomes a background, Stone is our centrepiece until Kowalski appears floating by stealing our focus from Stone and places the audience back in space again. Moments later, the shuttle becomes the background while Kowalski continues to charge our view becoming bigger and smaller as he space walks. Plopping himself next to Stone, the pair frames Hubble making it the focus while Earth continues to be the backdrop. The viewer witnesses the astronauts interactions, listens in as Mission Control interjects, and we are placed back in our seats in the theatre, hovering over the impending action: a bolt escapes Stone’s hands, Kowalski rescues it right at the tip of the audiences’s noses: we are cast back in three dimensional space as part of the scene. This technique repeats itself throughout the film: from beyond the calm until disaster strikes where we are thrown from viewer to participant. Cuarón places the viewer into a point of view perspective from inside Stone’s helmet, then cutaways to space or Kowalski, and then back to extreme close ups of Stone’s reactions.
It’s something akin to an IMAX science centre 3-D presentation with thrills and drama looming around the viewer. It’s a sui generis in film techniques to be able to make the audience part of the action in a very attenuated way: generating dynamic white-knuckle environments while still reassuring the filmmaker’s audience that they are merely spectators to an event. If cinema is the visual materializer of dreams, then to wake up is to see the magic within its emotional evocations. Cuarón takes the idea of the lucid dream in space and plays with it rather well here. I will reiterate though that Gravity will merit a few more re-watchings for me to declare it anything more than just a stepping stone in filmmaking (I’ve seen it two times).
I’ve read many opinions comparing it to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 . From my view, I can see how technologically it may start something new in blockbuster film. Using a combination of art film techniques (depth of view, Hitchcock-esque long tracking shots, etc.), with big budget frameworks in a film is not a revolutionary action. You can see art house in blockbuster films such as Inception or Titanic. However, utilizing the same suspense genre art shots in Titanic doesn’t make it new Psycho. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 was visionary and stands alone as one of the best science fiction films out there because Kubrick envisioned a new way of looking at science fiction: as a prophetically introspective possibility. Philosophically, Kubrick took Nietzschean views of the superman, mixed them with Eastern philosophies, and molded them into a otherworldly story set in our solar system. In Gravity, Cuarón has taken the story of a space disaster and used it to chronicle one person’s desperate struggle to get back home. There’s no philosophy here and there’s nothing grandiose in its premise. Stone’s isolation from those that can save her down at Mission Control is a very palpable situation. Without her connections to Earth she is entirely left to her own devices to survive.
Is this then basis for comparison to 2001: as a simpler version of 2001? Not even close; the similarities stop with both subjects being astronauts. . Although he is a big fan of Kubrick, Cuarón hasn’t made Kubrick a focus. What Cuarón presents here is a portrait of disconnect, loss, fleeting interactions with others, and the meanings one can find within the short moments in the present. Stone grieves the loss of a child. Kowalski and the Earth (home) provide an anchor (where she has none) for her to hold on to. She goes from endeavouring to subsist, to suicidal defeat, and then to a full blown yearning to fully live again. Kubrick’s 2001 didn’t have these themes and had way more symbolically (in its colour schemes, visual metaphors and film processes), than Gravity did from beginning to end. The story in Gravity is in its continual action which makes it more of a modern redemptive spectacle instead of a symbolic tale; which is quite alright though. Not everything we enjoy and marvel at can be both ingenious in technique and in narrative, but I digress.
The story: I had issues here with the film. Casting a female lead for this film was ballsy enough of Cuarón and I am so glad he fought against the grain for it. My issues lie with the female empowering trope placed by popular culture which the director might have subconsciously fallen for: Stone only finds meaning in her life in remembrance of her lost child. I think this part of the plot could have been thrown out. She could have found value in her life’s work as a bio-mechanical engineer, or to have a life outside of work, for instance. If it had been Kowalski in her shoes, he would have wanted to get back home because he just wanted to. His observations of the things back home from space, made him think about how small he was in comparison. He sacrifices his life for Stone because he inherently believes in living, his last moments are filled with meaningful views of his place in space. Stone’s character is someone who has gone through thorough training to get to be in NASA, yet we don’t see her acknowledge her awareness of her unique situation. She’s a person in space! Maybe this fact could have given her a purpose to pause, but instead Cuaron goes for the easy route, that familiar female trope: she has to be a mother for her to have meaning in her own world. This is not a small issue; it’s a rather grand issue for female heroines’ future in film: one that needs to be acknowledged, discussed, and remedied.
(This isn’t just the mothering trope, but the parenting trope that storytelling has fallen into. If Kowalski had been the focus, I would have pointed out how it would have been more of a red herring for the plot. Humans find meaning in their lives beyond the need to procreate and to connect besides romance. If we are to forecast a future of true equality, we must begin to think of ourselves as varied individuals and not just these traditional goals or needs from family and marriage. Not everyone aims to be a parent or to be married and there’s nothing wrong with striving for anything but either.)
There’s a scene where Stone connects with a Chinese man on Earth. There’s a huge language barrier, but they manage to exchange names. She tries desperately to connect to him more. This was another way Cuarón could have established Stone’s agency for survival. Instead, as she listens to the man sing a lullaby to his child, it’s then that she gives up and prepares to die. She can’t live without her motherly connection. It’s only until the spectre of Kowalski appears to reason her out of suicide that she wake up: she must continue on for the sake of her lost (her child), redeeming her in the eyes of the audience, and opening up a continuation to her narrative. Understanding that these moments are imparted within the span of a just few minutes (suicide, stay alive, redemption through her need to live on for her child), thus making Stone’s “awakening” feel quick, empty, and hastily tacked on.
The Kubrick reference where Stone throws off her spacesuit (which in reality would not find her in her underwear, but a rather involved inner suit of wires and tubes), floating like the giant space embryo from 2001, feels manipulatively placed. It is by far not a subtle image created here and one that I can’t imagine would play off well if Kowalski had been in her shoes. Cuarón is excellent at making one forget the magic used to create a movie, since it’s palpably felt in its realism. Unfortunately, what he does best is left to the film’s technical aspects and not utilized in fulfilling the true potential in its story.
It’s almost as if the film could have been more if it had more silence in it (out of the silence it already has which is awesome). Stone could have been an astronaut doing whatever was in her power to get back to Earth (with no mention of children or possible romance), instead of the suicidal mother finding meaning in her child. Her disconnect with the grand world beyond her helmet’s view would have touched us all by it’s universal message. The grieving parent is an overused trope. I would be the first one to acknowledge Gravity as a groundbreaking film if this were the case. Instead, it is a thrill inducing, tear inducing, roller coaster and not the masterpiece that most have declared it to be. It’s not a flawless film and I’m not about to throw those flaws out the window without acknowledge the great spectacle of it.
I will acknowledge that Cuarón wasn’t afraid of making Stone’s character a bit flighty and spastic as opposed to going the other extreme: making her more manly in her reactions. Bullock’s delivery was genuine and something unique to both the actress and her previous portrayal of characters. She’s in charge, but still fallible, like any other human might be in her circumstances. I’m also not going to say the film should be discounted because of the faults I found in it. It was a great film to watch.
I would say Children of Men was superior, but Cuarón did have the story aiding device of a book to follow in making its story. Y Tu Mama Tambien is far more groundbreaking story-wise and I wish more people would go back and see that film and compare its narrative progression to Gravity’s. Cuarón is incredibly skilled, but DaVinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa every time either (not to say his other works weren’t masterpieces. Everything stands alone with muted tones or excelled brilliance in its palettes).
My favourite part of Gravity though, besides the parts where I found myself cringing in delight my seat, was when she finally arrives on land to be reborn from out of the sea, spilling herself onto the brilliant red and green masses of Earth. There’s something Joycean in that mermaid with legs symbolism there: a human taking on a new form with newly found legs. Stone teeters, but eventually stands up strong out of her trauma, her head towards the horizon, and everything is worth living again.
See? There is meaning there for her and it could have been unsaid; left to the audience’s imagination, that fourth wall view Cuarón had been hinting at could have been given a life of its own within the audience’s mind. The audience is both naive watcher and intelligent in that naivety; an empowering set up all its own. There is continuation beyond cinematic tropes, but it its too late for the audience to grasp it as the word Gravity signals the film’s end, so does the audience’s power to enlighten within.
I’m incredibly happy the film is doing so well in the box office because the world needs more action films with female leads; especially ones that don’t play into a stereotypical female plot development (Gravity may have casted a female lead in a non-traditional role, but still confined her within thata traditional female mother trope).
Sandra Bullock, I didn’t appreciate your acting before this film (except for your work in Demolition Man), but I do now. I will give your other works a chance again just to see the potential you could have had beyond the confines of Gravity. Kudos also goes out to Steven Price’s personal evolution in soundtrack work. Good stuff overall, Alfonso and Jonas Cuarón.
Much like my review of Upstream Color, I fear at this point I have to install not just a POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT, but this analysis is hopefully a thorough one with details some might just want to witness first on the big screen so THIS IS A SPOILER ALERT! A SPOILER ALERT! DANGER, WIL ROBINSON! However, Only God Forgives is not based on any spoiler per se. My analysis is based mostly on my own readings and my own film critical viewing background.
My one problem with Only God Forgives was that it was sold as a hyper violent action, kickass fight flick with an intelligent twist. It’s not. It’s hyper violent and intelligently done. There’s little fighting in it though and you’re not going to get a hero. Looking back at a history of Nicolas Winding Refn flicks, who wouldn’t expect something akin to the Pusher trilogy with a dash of Bronson and Drive? Refn is auteur who is not just an art house director, but a continual film fan/student. Therefore, like with most of the riskier directors these days (ie. Steve McQueen, Shane Carruth…I’m just thinking of films I’ve seen recently), Refn utilizes influences while still pushing boundaries within them.
More on that later. Refn’s own explanation for the basis of this film:
For those of you who haven’t seen the film, but are still reading this analysis: Julian (Ryan Gosling) is an American working at a boxing academy in Thailand. It’s not entirely sure if he’s a former boxer, but it’s implied in his knowledge of boxing and his mother saying, “He was never a good fighter.” His brother, Billy (Tom Burke), has a penchant for brutalizing people, especially underage girls, and he works there too. Billy goes too far one night and murders a sixteen year old prostitute. Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), an inexorable chief officer, brings in the girl’s father and instructs him to kill (to put things right), Billy. Chang then amputates girl’s father arm (by an ever hidden, yet present, sword) to atone for his sins (sins being that his daughter shouldn’t have become a prostitute in the first place). Julian finds the girl’s father for revenge, but let’s him go after being told of Billy’s own deeds. Julian’s mother, Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), appears and upon hearing of Julian’s inability to deal vengeance, looks for it herself by hiring her drug goons to do it for her.
Julian is a man in search of God/religion/spirituality. His brother lacked all sense of morals, was a lowlife who beat up and murdered a child. Chang is a police official who is godlike and believes in putting things right karmically, at least in his own sword loving version of karma. So let’s start there: Julian searches for God and finds it in Chang.
Chang is an interesting character. He’s superhuman: in a scene where he uses his sword to kill a man who was hired to shoot him, he cuts right through his rib cage in one swift motion (you can see his ribs sticking out as the blood spurts from his carcass). Chang also senses when things are about to happen and has a heightened sense of perception: he feels danger before gunfire erupts at a restaurant; with one look at Julian he knows that he wasn’t the one that killed the dead girl’s father. He’s calm. He’s cool. Chang is a collected man. He’s badass evil Highlander. The biggest clue is that hidden sword. Where does he hide it? Before we ever see him pull it out, Refn gives us many shots of Chang’s back. There’s no holster. There’s no bump to see where he’s pulling it out of his shirt and jacket. There’s no way Chang can pull the sword out that cleanly through a collared shirt and the collared suit on top of it. It’s either an invisible, magical ethereal sword, or the sword doesn’t exist (which, when you think about it, maybe Chang since he’s a godlike figure, maybe doesn’t exist either).
Julian sees Chang in a vision before he even meets him. Chang appears in a black doorway (reminiscent of the all encompassing black of Kubrick’s monolith from 2001), and amputates Julian’s arm as he reaches out. Later, when Julian sees Chang in person, he watches him greet the children from the boxing academy (they bow down to him in either reverence or respect). As Chang passes Julian he says, “He isn’t the one,” and keeps walking. The camera goes right to Julian, his chest visibly heaving while his eyes open wide with a sort of wonder and admiration. He’s just met God and as he stands there in the lobby of the boxing academy the audience perceives Julian’s bellicose stance: Julian wants to fight God. In turn, Julian gets the chance to fight God (“Wanna fight?”), he loses to him, almost on purpose, making himself humble before his God/father/circumstances.
Is Julian in hell? Maybe just a version of it. The colors of the film are saturated red, green and yellow with hints of green (Refn is somewhat color blind, but highlights natural color to give an allusion/contrast of realism versus imagination). I gave up on looking for symbolism with the colors because they were inconsistent. At first I thought that blue was a sexual situation, but then red becomes the focus more when Julian watches his prostitute/hired girlfriend, Mai (Yayaying Rhatha Phongam), masturbate in front of him. I believe the colors here are mostly stylistic in nature. Cinematographer Larry Smith (was a gaffer for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, chief of lighting for Barry Lyndon, and lighting cameraman for Eyes Wide Shut, and cinematographer for Bronson and Fear X), almost pays tribute to Kubrick through the intense reds and fluid panning shots along walking subjects. The camera holds steady on focus to the characters while the background looms bright, illuminating filigree more like tarot card portraits of elementals rather than humans. These can be seen as character snapshots, but they’re meant to be more of a visual feast.
Refn is also highly influenced by Martin Scorsese:
The famous massacre scene from Taxi Driver is referenced with the spurting gore in which the red of the blood is sometimes neutralized by blue or hyper dark lighting. When the violence happens, it is alarming and abrupt. I see a lot of the Taxi Driver anti-hero in both Drive and Only God Forgives, but what most people forget are that these anti-heroes are psychopaths. This is the brilliance of both Scorsese and Refn: to make a character that is disturbingly relatable. Peripherally, Only God Forgives can be seen as a revenge flick, but in reality it’s the existential tale of a murderous psychopath in search for God. As told by Crystal, Julian killed his father with his own hands under her direction. I’m not entirely sure (maybe due to Gosling’s lack of emotion), but he does seem to express a desire for redemption. Since he can’t seem to come to terms with his existence or what he has done himself, “only God forgives” and only God can give him that absolution. He has Mai tie his hands before she masturbates for him. Julian clenches his hands continuously like a man unable to control his urges and fighting with the monster (the psychopath) within. Hints to his mother inappropriate relationship with her sons are littered throughout the film. Instead of having sex with Mai, Julian envisions himself probing her with his hand (the hand that gets cut off in the vision), and in turn uses that hand to penetrate the wound he inflicts on his dead mother. The same soft lilting music wells up during these scenes alluding to a need for love, a need for a mother, a need for a purpose beyond Julian’s inner demons.
In the end, his never ending visions become somehow true as he feels the innards of his mother/where he came from, the birth of a monster, creates a hyper real dream: he gets both of his fists amputated by a worthy god. Why? Either to keep him from becoming who he truly is or for ultimate redemption.
Many critics have complained of Gosling’s and the rest of the cast’s lack of expression. Some may see it as a blank canvas, a mask that can inhabit our own anxieties. Scary, if you enjoyed this film, is that this effect makes it more comfortable for the audience to place themselves in Julian’s shoes, then want to immediately step out, then go hide themselves in Chang shoes, and immediately run away from that too. You keep away from Crystal. You…you just do.
I usually have an issue with the Lady Macbeth trope. It’s overused and an easy way for directors or storytellers to create sympathetic beasts. However, Thomas is a relish to watch. She plays that character like she invented her and slashes and dices with words the way Chang does with his sword.3 Crystal who goes out of her way to go beyond the archetype or trope. She’s the one who begins this mad chain of events. I’ve never cheered for such an evil character and when she spits out “cum-dumpster” at Mai, I almost leapt to my feet. I don’t know why, I just felt compelled to. Crystal got under my skin. I get what Refn was creating here with Crystal, and I’ve yet to see him “get women right.” They’re either pure evil or pure helpless waifs. I suspect Refn of misogyny.
I have no problem with pornography (Porn is awesome!). But if we’re thinking of Refn struggling with inner demons and using women in his films to either “save” or “as emasculating bitches,” as a pornography then we can suspect what those demons may be.)
The reason I don’t have a problem with this trope here is because Thomas portrays her character as an entirely self-made person. Sure, she’s a villainous, vengeful drug dealer, but she’s her own boss. She snakes through each of her scenes like she owns the whole production and for that, it’s a commendable performance.
Magical realism is a big part of Only God Forgives and this maybe the main tribute to his friend, director Alejandro Jodorowsky. Almost every scene has a distorted reality. In some scenes, Julian wears a white shirt and then is seen with a black shirt/suit. People sometimes glide instead of walk. Characters stare at each other for extended periods of time, almost as if they are relaying intuitive messages to each other. Where Jodoroswky goes all alchemy and scatalogical, Refn goes incestual and bloody violent. Actors are merely devices to a larger picture, but the picture, although dreamlike is all too real and archetypal that it’s hard not to try find meaning within the transfixing images these directors focus on. While Julian lives in his version of hell on Earth, Chang is a supernatural being outside of the world like God would be, yet their conflicts become less about plot devices and transform into the base ideals/horrors within ourselves.
This all makes the film more like a hermetic exegesis of a tarot card reading more than a story and that’s why I loved it.
The Cliff Martinez score is rife with Wendy Carlos love, it’s not even funny; it’s amazing. Just give me scenes with any of these characters, or just even Eyes Wide Shut hallways, violins, and Kraftwerk synthesizers and I am so there forever (make sure to splice Kristen Scott Thomas saying “cum-dumpster”). I’m running out to get the soundtrack as soon as I can.
Should I touch on the infusion of karaoke? Chang sings and his minions listen attentively, almost appreciatively. The scenes are very David Lynch (another influence that is seen and is also mentioned in the credits). I don’t see it so much as a contrast or as detail to Chang’s “softer” side, but rather since besides being God and stuff, he’s also an angel of vengeance, he must sing and sing like an angel. The scenes in the karaoke bar are still. No violence occurs inside of them. It’s God’s sanctuary and all are invited, but only God can sing.
So as you can tell, I really enjoyed Only God Forgives (as I’ve seen it two times in two days). I could have hated it if I was expecting an action revenge flick, but I wasn’t. I expect risky directors to push the bar and bounce from the foundations they’ve set. I honestly would like to see Refn do something better with women. I know he was interested in doing Barbarella and Wonder Woman, but seeing as those are both seen as more sexual beings than “heroes” I hold little hope for that. I do enjoy Refn films because when I see film, I see gender as a secondary thing and in my head can easily place a woman in Julian’s shoes. I think it’s frightening for a lot of people to see a Julienne, raped by her father, become a psychopath searching for her God. She wants her hands chopped off for killing her mother and in the end, she violates her father and vision quests the demons out of herself or becomes a true killing machine.
“Original” doesn’t mean its chases, cliffhangers, shoot-outs, skullduggery and last-minute rescues. Movies have trafficked in those things forever. What’s new here is how writer-director Tommy Wiseau packages all this with a concept that allows his characters to chase and shoot across multiple levels of a building or something.
This is, in some ways, a con-game movie where the con is on you.
I don’t want to talk about it. *pillow fights*
Wiseau has outdone himself. “The Room” puts him not only at the top of the heap of tragedy in bad directing but it also should put this release at the top of a garbage heap somewhere. It’s very hard to see how a film that plays so bad to so many demographics would even be considered a film.
Not that the film doesn’t have its antecedents. “Tampon Commercial” featured a woman running through a field because for some reason tampons make you do that, and, of course, in “Toilet Bowl Cleaner” a blue disc cleans your toilet bowl. It’s all very exciting.
In “The Room,” Wiseau imagines a new kind of thing wherein a woman enters a man’s life and drives him crazy. This is helped by an entire team of “extractors” ie. “friends” who “act” in three rooms and sometimes outside.
Anyway, how’s your sex life?
Tommy Wiseau plays Johnny, a guy who works in computers, who is for what initially are vague reasons unemployed. Lisa (Juliette Danielle), is his girlfriend who says she loves him, but says he’s boring behind his back. YOU’RE TEARING ME APART!
Lisa wants to do the impossible: Instead of marrying Johnny, she wants to dump him to fuck Mark, an idea that will cause Johnny deep psychological trauma or something.
She’s a stupid bitch.
Meanwhile, you meet the other building dwellers –Peter (Kyle Vogt), Johnny’s longtime friend/psychologist; Michelle (Robyn Paris), Lisa’s friend; Denny (Philip Haldiman), some kid Johnny almost adopted and a budding pervert; and Lisa’s mother, Claudette (Carolyn Minnot), who does not live in the building but gives her opinion anyway.
“A man holds a gun on you! You almost got killed and you expect me to forget that happened?”
I want to forget every second of this film.
A good deal of the first hour is spent, essentially, selling the audience on the idea that this is really bad soft core “porn.” You witness awfully dubbed moaning (?) that fails and Johnny laughing at odd moments. The movie….I don’t even.
Oh hi Mark.
If you don’t follow all this, join the club. It will perhaps take multiple viewings of these multiple rooms or dreadful love scenes with grody “oh baby baby music” to extract any logic out of The Room. I AM NOT WATCHING THIS EVER AGAIN.
Don’t touch me motherfucker.
Something else might come more easily after I throw up: With incredibly tense situations suspended across so many scenes of throwing footballs within three feet of each other, all that lethargy in saying “Oh hi” or “bye” might induce a kind of reverse stress in audiences, producing not quite tedium, but you may want to shout, “WHERE AM I?”
Hi doggy.
This is especially true in the hectic action in one scene: a white gangster hoodlum attacks Denny. Johnny and Mark grab the assailant and take him to the police. Lisa and Claudette stay behind to yell random things at Denny.
It’ll be ok.
Probably what “sells” this “movie” is the “actors.” Wiseau disembowels filmmaking with a performance that is so atrocious yet excruciating to watch despite hysterical chaos breaking out all around him, especially as he wreaks havoc in an extended scene of him trashing his room. OH THE ROOM I GET IT NOW. Is that it?
Lisa too displays a dumb blonde aesthetic and keen stereotypical manipulation in the face of this absolute misogynistic jumble. Especially surprising is Mark as the traitor; you find yourself genuinely sympathetic to a guy who looks like he stumbled into a movie set.
Why, Johnny? Why? Johnny, why? Why?”
It is quaint that Wiseau strives to keep green screen effects to a minimum. It’s economical to reuse cuts from other love scenes. This photo-unrealism certainly helps to keep the idea that half of the movie is compiled of stock footage of San Francisco, including shots of the outside of the Full House set. Credit cinematographer Todd Baron with so neatly blending the real and surreal in incredibly awkward hokey moments. Ditto that for production designer Mercedes Younger and the various stunt coordinators and effects teams. Meanwhile, editor Eric Chase eats a sandwich. Sometimes originality comes at a cost though: At the end, you may find yourself utterly exhausted.
And I called it. I cried and yelled, “Please, please make him die at the end.”
AND OH BOY why didn’t it finish then?
Everybody betrayed me! I’m fed up with this world!
