Conclave: Big Whoop
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I was rooting for this one pretty heavily after an alluring trailer and plenty of great reviews from people whose taste I enjoy. I mean a film about the political jostling and jousting in the midst of the secretive and mysterious institution that is the Vatican, cloaked in its opulence and surrounded by the power and absurdity of ritual and religion? -thats proverbial catnip for someone like me. But, alas that was not to be the case. From it's mechanistic, “sound the trumpets” opening - to its “did you get it?” ending, most of my issues with “Conclave” are the same I had with director Edward Bergers breakout remake of “All Quiet on the Western Front”, which could be summarized as a very acute case of "Beautiful Gowns, Beautiful Gowns". In both films there is/was an insidious stagey-ness to Bergers style, that made them confusingly sterile considering the drama and moral dilemmas on display. There are major tensions and philosophical contentions at play amongst some of the most petty, code driven, dastardly, hypocritical liars on the planet and there is no drama save for what lives in the language and what lives in the lines of these actors faces and under their tongues as they speak. How could there not be one moment where I registered any distinct emotion in a movie where “the pope is dead!” is just the beginning is a question Im still asking myself. There is a stark sense of the operatic, and the melodramatic in the films story of bitchy clergymen, in fresh fits, a mere gesture at the “Goodfellas” in smoking jackets film we could've had, but save for the acting and the words, the actual feeling of drama only comes in fits. For a movie that in actuality is frankly a bit funny, the framing and shots in this film are as quiet as a graveyard. “Tough crowd” is a line that could follow a number of sequences that failed to register what was so clearly on screen. There's one sequence during which one clergyman takes a sassy hit off his vape as another is being condemned and even then Berger seems disinterested in just how absurd a lot of this is. Even when a bomb outside explodes and sends a beam of light shining through the hole in the dome, it feels anti climactic, and very self involved, instead of something that acknowledges the grand nature of the farce and hypocrisy. It's also an angry film, but Berger hampers that too. The politics of “tolerance” are treated like precious gems newly discovered by a brilliant mind willing to sift through the veils of human ignorance when it mostly comes off as innert imagery driven by a baseline understanding of the obvious.
Ultimately Conclave hermetically seals itself in its own overwrought sense of self importance. A film far too aware of itself, far too obsessed with beauty in contrast to the petty ugliness that lives within these men (and by consequence this institution) as in and of itself profound. Symmetry and ornate aesthetics abound, but they keep us at a distance from the drama rather than connect us to it. When it reaches its conclusion and it's big reveal, it revels in its own sanctimony, proud of how little it challenged the audience, and how little it truly has to say about that reveal in everything leading up to it. Despite some of the best performances I've seen all year, a few eye opening shots, and a crackling script, I somehow came out of the movie with a sarcastic “big whoop”, and an eye-roll and a desire to watch “The Popes Exorcist”.
Audition: The Lady of Rage.
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The very first scene is a moving one, a man watching his wife's final breaths before he sinks to the floor, his son walking in with a project just for his mother now faces the fact that she's gone. Too young to actually process it, the father grieves for two. The man, Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) is bathed in a warm, leathered, beige light, his arms outstretched to his wife for one more grasp at her life. She is still, she has nothing to say. Later in a dream she will only inform him of danger as a representation of his guilt, she is more a function of his voice than her own. She is dead, and she has no voice. For the audience It is the first time we see him and it is meant to endear us to him immediately, to connect us to him as a man worth empathizing with in the midst of grief, before it quite literally rips him apart; both figuratively and literally. This is one of the strongest aspects of Takashi Miike's “Audition”, it's spell, it's daring, it's willingness to make a pitiable and understandable man ultimately the villain of his own story. He is so understandable because he is the everyman. His misogyny is not the white hood version of patriarchal hegemony, nor cruelty, it's the Sears, softer side of the institution. It's benign, average, much like the rest of ours, and this in contrast to the visceral fury of Asami's (A devastatingly full Eihi Shiina) anger and the happiness she finds in it. This contrast, this disproportion, and the lack of judgement in it (intentional or not) is Miike’s greatest feat in the film, and maybe it's scariest idea.
The honeymoon phase with Aoyama doesn’t last long before Daisuke Tengan’s script is already picking at its creation. Time and time again throughout the movie we see the protagonist utter very casual bits of misogyny; acknowledgments of his ignorance about women even as he grieves the one he loves. He's fishing with his son and compares women to fish, later as he consumes that fish, his son informs him of the ability of certain fish to change their sex, and he states he “doesn't know much about ovaries” (something he shares with a great deal of real world men) the irony being that it's a major aspect to women's bodies, to his dearly departed wife, the same bodies that are often steeped in such supposed interest in, respect for, love for. Aoyama listens to, and affirms a nasty bit of misogyny from his friend Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura) about a table of women minding their business. When that same friend asks him what he's looking for in a woman, “maturity” is seemingly the primary trait, yet when Yoshikawa sets up this elaborate rouse- the titular “Audition” (in and of itself a misogynistic plot) and states that he will make the age range 20 to 35 Aoyama doesn't question the earlier part of that group at all. The message present in the audition process isn't just in what the process itself is set upon, or the fact that it extends out from an imbalanced power dynamic that sets the women on the task of qualifying themselves to men who are aware that in most cases these women would not be in their league - but in the creation of the rules that govern it. Looking over the potential candidates Aoyama remarks that trying to choose is as hard as “choosing his first car” Yoshikawa replies “How can you compare the two?” It is unclear whether the offense is with comparing a woman to a car, or a car to a woman”. Aoyama sits comfortably at his desk and reads Asami’s profile and her innermost thoughts a a voiceover read those words out to us in Asami's voice “To live is to approach death gradually”. Aoyama connects with this on the basis of the loss of his wife, but what Asami is talking about has to do with the specificity of her own life and the inner lives of women at large. Upon finally meeting her face-to-face Aoyama takes some pleasure in patronizingly and condescendingly explaining Asami’s words to her. “In your essay you said giving up what was most important to you was in a sense similar to accepting death. I was most impressed, everyone has had similar experiences, you are bound to have to give up something precious in your life and there's nothing you can do but except that fact. That's life. I mean.. I was amazed that a girl as young as you understands that”. “I was amazed a ‘girl’ as young as you” and “Everyone has had similar experiences” is informative as to Aoyama's essential flaw. The former being condescending, the latter patronizing and assumptive. In a Harvard lecture on “The Architecture of Cooperation” Dr. Richard Sennet discussed this as a sympathetic expression of what he calls “The Majesterial self” which he also calls a benign mode of taking control. “When we express sympathy, ‘God I feel what's you're feeling’- it's as though we're saying ‘nothing is really foreign to me, any experience you have if I react to you I'm going to identify as though I understand it myself”. Asami’s story, her desire, asks of Aoyama something he is unable to give in his current state of self centered-ness. It asks of Aoyama to look at she and other women beyond what they do for him, how they make him feel, it eludes him for the same reasons he didn't know and doesn't want to know about women's ovaries, a lack of curiosity in any meaningful sense. The connection between Yoshikawa’s suggestion that the best women for him to target are women who in essence lack the ambition to want to be a star, and Aoyama’s attraction to Asami being her acceptance of not only physical death, but the metaphorical death of her career in ballet, as well as her lack of desire for extravagance is also directly related to that self centered nature. There is no specificity to his supposed love for Asami, the bodies are housed in a trope, and within this any woman could fit. After Aoyama begins to feel the hazy symptoms of the poisoned drink he has unwittingly taken, and before he falls, we are shown a sort of dream sequence, where Aoyama is about to receive filatio, and as he looks down he sees his secretary then become Asami, who then becomes his sons potential girlfriend, the suggestion is that to Aoyama these women are somehow interchangeable even as he vehemently denies it. The mask of respectabality fades, the fact that he isn't a man that literally burns his women, does not seprate him, as he occupies the same time and space in the dream as other vicious men from her life. As she beheads the teacher who abused her Asami says “I never felt unhappy really, because I never stopped being unhappy!”. Aoyama is watching and she seems aware of his presence, it could just as well be addressed to him as the teacher. The very next part of the sequence we see a woman holding a boy, who says “men need women to support them or they'll exhaust themselves”, we are then taken back to the scene when his friend suggests the audtion, then to Aoyama now sitting in the audition chair previously occupied by Asami “my son said I better marry again because I looked worn out”. We are back to the present Aoyama falls backward (this is literally his figurative fall) hitting the floor and sees Asami, it is the first time he is actually seeing her.
Miike and Tangens film moves its protagonist and antagonist in the same direction until they meet each other, and when they do it is neither as protagonist or antagonist but simply two very flawed people now finally connected in the truest sense that they ever could be. Aoyama and Asami start out sympathetic figures and become somewhat unsympathetic by the end. Asami's rage then is not evil, but human, and perversed as it may be..justice. It balances the scales between the shape of their lives. The “Heroine of Tomorrow” is the aspirational for Asami. It promises of something more fulfilling, of something as big as a movie star, something larger than life. It mentions nothing of relationships, and yet here she was auditioning. One gets the feeling that this is the beginning of all of her ill-fated relationships. A constant refrain of hope and disappointment. Asami’s, (by way of Eihi Shiina's intricately detailed performance) deliberate setting of the table, a fork in the road here, a spoonful of context there, a plating of the elements that fed Asami ‘s rage are meant to be in service of the main course that is Audition’s grotesque finale. The last 15 minutes or so of this film are not merely shock and awe, nor a twist, but a small performance piece both in the context of the film and outside to the spectator. It is a movie in and unto itself, that ends up connecting and informing the entire thesis of the film. Asami’s ascension into her largest self is less a revelation of her evil, than of her counterparts in the world. It is the revelation of her joy, which is the form the purity of her rage takes. Every prick of the acupuncture needle, every rip of the flesh, every vibration of Aoyama’s pain rushes through Shiina’s body like sugar, this is a delightful dish. This is her best work yet, a masterpiece of her commitment and she is having the time of her life. Every “Kiri Kiri” spoken by her is slapped across a canvas of expression that implies the exact opposite. It is not just her body that transforms (Shiina's movement in general is so much wider, so much grander and vivrant) but her spirit, her soul. This is who she is, this is what she wants, this is her “Incredible thing”. Miike's film has the good sense not to apologize for it.
Women's rage whether that is in the context of life in general, or in the context of the performer who is willing to have courage enough to bare their raw self to an audience in a way that may attract them just as well as it may repel them- doesn't have the built-in apologencia that men enjoy. Films dealing with it, that come anywhere near an endorsement have always stood out, but many times the men upon whom this fire is released are objectively hideous. Audition even moreso than Andrzej Żuławski’s “Possession” inflicts this upon a empathetic male subject. He is not heinous, he is not a rapist, or an abuser, he is a loving father, a grieving widower, he seems good at his job, but he is also a man. He has a fling with his co-worker while he was married, possibly while his wife was sick, he ghosts her without much thought as to how that might feel. He goes along with this audition idea enthusiastically for the most part, again without thought. He patronizes, condescends, he takes, lionizes women’s sacrifices even as he sacrifices nothing. He is neither the worst example nor the best, he is merely the average man. That he be the one to suffer so, is an integral part of her performance piece. A challenge to the expectation of suffering for women crystallized by doling out an analogous amount of suffering to the unwitting party. That for most of the movie Asami is playing a role and her finale is the courage to challenge her destiny, to challenge the role she has been given, is the fear factor. As with most stories in reality that involve murderous women, the underlying phobia is of women as more than what we can concieve. Though gruesome murder by men can be shocking due to the more sensational aspects of the “how”, it is largely expected or at least understood that this can happen. Violence is so directly associated with masculinity that there are whole rituals and rites of manhood around inflciting it, for women though it borders on unimaginable, to men especially. If the role of the performance artists or the actor in any stage setting is a search for the truth in human experience then Asami's reveal of something much closer to her true nature, something in defiance of the narrow confines of not only men's expectations, but her own. Something that it is also so monstrous to someone so sympathetic it eludes all conceived possibilities in the mind of the first time audience- is the act of courage. Wives, secretary’s, maids, even movie stars as women and girls, moving, living, existing, to indulge and confirm men's destiny, we see this repeatedly even as they appear normal in the film, just as we normalize everyday bits of misogyny in our own lives. “You call a lot of girls to the audition, reject them, then ring them up later to have sex with them you are all the same” “Audition” isn't just the in-context audition in the film, it's the auditions women endure in their lives to and for people about as curious or interested in them as an employer is in you. It's ending is then not one based in damnation or martyrdom, it is merely an off-beat affirmation of Asami's life and of her words. “You are paralysed, but your nerves are alive”, “When you are in pain you see your shape clearly”, and maybe most importantly “I truly have no one else you have others”, after all, it is because he had somebody that he survived, and as it happens that somebody is male. In a way Miike's film is an affirmation of the common sentiment amongst certain groups of women that if misandry were as real as some men like to insist, the results would be catastrophic for men, and the fallout would be much more than merely words. That Miike's film gives us an outlet to see the power, the beauty, the ferocity, and fervor of female rage without inhibiting or impeding it, without judging it, and without the aid of a cinematic sermon is what makes it so delicious. Here at the end Aoyoma is with yet another dead woman, on equal footing, (pun intended) eye to eye, suffering in exquisite pain, inhibited, barely able to speak, scarred. For a moment Asami tipped the scales, and more importantly she found her most courageous self and it was rage, it was power, and it was horror.
Rebel Ridge: Surviving is Necessary
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One of my favorite quotes is one I feel has become more consistently relevant in these times as our quality of living continues to degrade in all sorts of ways. The quote comes from the great orator and scribe of our collective humanity Maya Angelou; “Surviving is necessary, thriving is elegant”. Inside those words lie a truth that is often hidden in a society where we are under the constant threat of poverty, of death, of ostracization. Hidden within the muscular, sometimes bone breaking thrills of Jeremy Saulnier’s latest thriller is this very thing. It is the source code to the existing obstacles for its protagonist -those both exterior and interior to his person. What Saulnier provides by the way of agonizing tensions between capitalism, white supremacy, and sexism- and then riveting sites of dialogue and action is an exciting (if not fully satisfactory) portrait of exactly the power of thriving over surviving. A movie about a stranger who comes into a random town running into the exact space of difference in between these two, a man who up until this point is a man surviving, but by the end a man thriving -by way of an insular and integrity filled justice.
As a person of color and especially as a person of color who might be a woman and/or black there is an inherent suggestion in our society that the status quo is irrefutable, that what is is what has been, and our best bet is to learn how to work within from within that framework. Our movies and television which feature a large amount of black people and POC as cops, as military, as some form of state sanctioned adjudicator around justice reinforce that, but contrary to popular belief going along is not getting along, and in a society this lopsided, this bent towards violence as a feature of its success not a bug - it's vital to understand that violence IS getting along. It is the universally understood language. Destruction in America is construction, and Saulnier's movie doesn't take long to ride us right into the wave of just how. When Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) arrives into town he is on his bike immersed in the blaring symphony of rage of Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” he is literally knocked out of his peace by an oppressive authority figure who sees it as a threat. In essence he is antagonized for merely existing by the folks that are meant to be justice. There is no making peace with anyone who sees your very existence as adversarial. This is something Terry is meant to eventually come to, by way of channeling his Rage and his focus. Rage and focus are separate but equal in Richmond's mind, but in Saulnier's film they are bonded equals. Terry’s separation of the two, using one to subdue the other, is a form of survival, of going along to get along, and from the moment he is attacked, he begins moving in various modes of evading and subduing his rage to maintain focus. Watching this alternating, incompatible, but justifiable swap is consistently part of the excitement and frustration of Rebel Ridge. Terry's rage is what allows him to connect to his sense of justice, to his own personal desire for something more than survival, to thriving, meanwhile his focus allows him to survive attack, but when used to maintain restraint it only further disintegrates his relationship with peace. Early on in his arrest he asks if he lets the officer look into the package the officer found in his backpack, will that expedite this process, and the officer says “The more cooperative you are, the better”, Richmond agrees, and it in fact does not get better. They legally, but immorally (a distinction that makes itself known throughout this film) confiscate the money they found, falsely charge him with drug trafficking, and and send him on his way much worse off than he was when he started. In essence, for his compliance he was rewarded with theft, and the destruction of his recently revealed plan to help his cousin get out of jail. Later when in the station to lodge a logical complaint, Terry in favor of getting along commits maybe his most outrageous bit of compliance by agreeing to let Don Johnson’s dollar tree cartel keep 26,000 of his hard earned money, and only give him back the portion most important to his cousins release (10,000 dollars ) which is of course as we eventually find out, turned down. Not only does Don Johnson’s Chief Sandy Burnne end up turning that down, but uses the information Terry willingly gave up about the restaurant he co-started to shut the restaurant down, under the principle that Terry's offer was itself a case of entitlement. The presentation of the competing interest of Terry's innate and socialized instincts for survival -versus a system which was born and raised in violence that only understands violence as an answer is the great dilemma of this movie. Saulnier’s action piece which of course is not intentionally about this particular subject so incisively depicts this tension that it ends up doing it better than many films that intended to.
Action films almost innately come with the expectation of violence, and as such they make a near perfect house for this particular story. When one of Chief Burnne’s cops asks Terry if he'd like to be tased the expectation is violence. When Don Johnson continues to probe and prick at Terry with sly remarks and statements about his cousin that are meant to be inflammatory the expectation is violence. Many have compared Saulnier's film to 1982’s genre classic “First Blood”, this is a more than fair comparison. Many have also called this a revenge thriller, that is a much less fair comparison or rather a much less accurate comparison. “Rebel Ridge” is no more a revenge thriller than its predecessor was, unless you indirectly connect both to revenge against the state there's not much being avenged in either. It is in fact more accurate to call these survival films, as we are witnessing survival tactics, whether that be in the more literal sense of how to physically survive in environments and conditions normally unsuitable for life, or in the spiritual sense of trying to maintain peace or sanity in environments and conditions normally unsuitable to either. Where they are certainly similar is in their integral understanding of the relationship between restraint and violence, not just in the film's protagonists, but also between the film's protagonist and their antagonist, so that both characters practice restraint and violence when necessary as an instinct for survival even while their restraint only seems to stoke the anger of their antagonists. In the first act of Rambo, after the initial confrontation, Stallone reminds Brian Dennehy’s Sheriff Teasle that he could have killed his man rather than just injured him, and that he could have indeed killed Teasle himself, rather than de-escalate it only serves to wrangle Teasle further. I already spoke to how Terry’s offer to Burnne only incensed him further. In both films the police as a function of the state are inherently violent almost innately so. They need no offense to create offense, they are offended perpetually by the existence of these non-assimilated identities. Be it John Rambo or Terry Richmond, these men are strangers, vagrants, unknown unknowns, and as such, a perceivable threat to their operations. The beginning of their interactions are intentionally agitative versions of “Give me a reason” -knocking Terry off of his bike, stopping John for walking on the street. Where they differ is in that very same identity, and out of it extends all of the integral differences between these two films. To state the obvious Rambo is white, and Terry Richmond is black, and it the differences are apparent immediately. While Rambo is bewildered at this response (“Why are you pushing me?”) Terry knows exactly what's going on, he doesn't know why he's being charged with, but he understands exactly why they're acting towards him the way they are and because of his knowledge of this, because his existence demands this knowledge for his survival, Terry Richmond is also much slower to move to violence than John Rambo. Rambo is in the somewhat privileged position to immediately react in kind to his instigators, the entire experience is new to him. It took his participation in an extremely unpopular war and vagrancy for him to run into a common circumstance of the existence of a Terry Richmond. The level of devastation he is allowed to enact is also vastly different from Terry Richmond, in part due to the fact that he is a white male and in part due to the protection of an intercedent, a high ranking government official in Richard Crenna's Col Sam Trautman. Richardson’s only allies lie in community, his intercedents in this film are an Asian man and his presumed son who run a Chinese food shop. While they are definitely of help to Terry's cause, their positioning in a xenophobic and spiteful country where one is still seen as the enemy is of such a precarious nature that they themselves become victimized from a distance. Once Terry arrives in town his only ally is a courthouse clerk herself in the precarious position of being nestled in the middle of this ring of corruption as well as being a woman, and eventually she too is victimized. As such this film cannot seriously label itself a revenge thriller nor in particular adhere to many of the narrative tropes of the action film. An action film can have its protagonist die, survival is not the main point of an action film, neither is justice, although of course they may very well have both. A revenge thriller can have its protagonist die, survival is not the main point of a revenge thriller neither is true justice, because justice is not synonymous with revenge. A survival film is dependent upon well…survival.
One of the films great joys reminds me of a joke made constantly in the black community that black people are always aware of the law. I don't believe this is intentional on Saulnier's part but it is nonetheless something that comes out of this film- that at almost every turn Terry makes sure that he is hyper aware of the law, the parts that he knows and the ones that he doesn't, and if he doesn't know, he seems very intent on making sure he does know it. It could be assumed that he doesn't hurt anyone because he is holding himself back, but I think it more likely that he isn't hurting anyone because it keeps him just inside of some well drawn lines that would lead to a lot more problems, namely his survival, his freedom, and his own personal peace. Frequently, Terry makes decisions that are based almost purely on his survival, one of which he admits in saying that the reason why he left town the first time and felt gratitude was the instinct for self-preservation in part owing to his training and in part (one could guess) to being a black man in America. Mr Liu is is a Chinese immigrant where he fought “for the other side” (in Im assuming either the Korean or Vietnam war) and affects a heavy accent in order to come off as more authentic to Americans who buy food from him. When broken down that accent is at its core another instinct for survival. Courthouse clerk Summer Mcbride makes many of her decisions especially her initial decisions like when and where to talk, and whether she talks at all, based upon her need for survival. Elliot the courthouse clerk,(Steven Zissis) “Serpico” (David Denman) Officer Sims, all of these characters are initially so concerned with their survival they’ve completely forgotten the elegance of living, of flourishing, of feeling good about oneself, and about what one does. Apathy in effect became a a given that rotted the town from the inside, and by consequence many of the lives therein. Terry's arrival is the instigating force in creating a fire that would spread to certain members and burn just hot enough to wake them up out of their slumber, rather than choke them in their sleep. The ending, the choices made, Terry’s exhale, they are all about survival and they are also about doing more than, being more than. What Saulnier's film then leaves us with is a connective thread that ties together and bonds together our ability thrive, to progress, to self-realize, to ultimately reach our highest goals- is directly tied to our ability and our willingness to rebel against apathy, against a reductive form of self preservation, and injustice, all of which are incompatible with the elegance and grace of thriving.
Godzilla Minus One's Most Impressive aspect.
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I can remember like it was yesterday my first time experiencing a sense of philosophy emanating strongly from a film it wasn't any one film, but rather many that helped give rise to an awakening a sense of my political ideology, but one film that stood out for me in the sense of the nature of war and it's direct conflict of interest with our humanity was 1995’s “Crimson Tide”. I remember being puzzled them as to why this seems like it was being painted as a strong debate when it was pretty clear that one side was unconscionably reckless with human lives in a global scale in the balance. I remember being wowed by the line “In a nuclear world the true enemy is war itself”. The sense of power not stemming from the words in and of themselves and what they might suggest about the man who spoke them, but more-so how they triggered the other respondents including Gene Hackman’s Capt. Frank Ramsay in that scene. The way that the characters, (not necessarily the movie) framed Denzel's Commander Ron Hunter as somewhat cowardly in his apprehension to be involved in something that in and of itself should be regarded as a human evil. The movie paints what should be a pretty simple answer as a complex quandary; To wait to press “send” on nuclear Holocaust without clarity as to whether it's necessary, or not to. This would follow me into my experience watching 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, and the now infamous scene of private Upham’s act of cowardice. In a scene that would elicit a lot of palpable audience anger towards the character (which I initially felt as well) Commander Ron Hunter’s words “the true enemy was war itself” would reappear now calcified in the fires of my rage against private Upham's lack of action on screen. Those words now entrenched in my gut I saw the complexity around the repelling nature of cowardice in and of itself, and the repelling nature of putting people in these conditions that inevitably wreak havoc on a person's stress responses and in a more broad sense their humanity. Movies should not be relied upon for our politics seeing their position within our systems of oppression, but they can at times reinforce them, bond them, make them tighter. Whereas those movies were moments, and yet so memorable as concrete moments for my own personal political growth, Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One, a boisterous, operatic, blockbuster film that pretty much never stops from go, it sets the entire movie around the subject of cowardice as much as it does around the King of the Monsters himself. My extremely positive impression comes not a a reinforcement of my now pretty firm, but still evolving politics, but of my genuine glee that those thoughts would be so adeptly presented in a film and a boisterous, operatic emotionally dense blockbuster no less. The film opens with a kamikaze pilot named Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) landing his plane on a repair base. His arrival is immediately called into question because of the obvious; he is a kamikaze pilot, his one job is to die in service of this grand cause, and yet here he is back from the mission…alive. Ultimately a clear answer as to what has happened and why he's still here is evaded, which only makes the answer that much clearer. What becomes a question is not whether or not he evaded his “duty” but the ethics of that duty in the first place. That question is ultimately the thesis of the movie, centered around the idea of courage especially in lieu of actions by the state that could be called cowardice in and of itself. The arc of this movie is the arc of this man's courage, and where he finds it is I think an interesting treatise on where and when cowardice actually counts as cowardice.
In Rob reiner’s adaptation of Aaron Sorkin's play “A Few Good Men” it is pretty clear that the ultimate philosophical reveal of the film is that though Dawson and Downey acted on a supposedly “legal” order in the strict sense of the word, that they exhibited cowardice in their inability to take a moral stand against what they were asked to do. The film and play are meant to make clear the difference between legality and morality. In Godzilla Minus One, much of the same is present, except “A Few Good Men” is a courtroom drama where this kind of artistic discourse is fully expected, Godzilla: Minus One is a large scale monster movie. After his actions are clearly discovered one of the soldiers on base a skilled mechanic named Sōsaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) approaches Kōichi Shikishima with these words of understanding and compassion; "Why obey an order to die honorably when the outcome is already clear". That “outcome” is most immediately identified as the second world war itself and the fact that the war was a lost cause, but just a little digging would further reveal that even before the outcome was clear; the cause was a lost one, further still because imperialism is a lost cause. Once you arrive there, the notion of cowardice in this context is questionable. Even as we watch with anticipation of the moment he might one day redeem himself, we are treated to a stout redressing of the supposed hierarchy of the bloodthirsty needs of a state to increase its holdings in the world over the need for human bonds and life itself to be considered precious. The rest of the movie is not really about him making up for being a failed kamikaze pilot who rightfully sought to protect the sanctity of his life over the need to please his overseers, nor for being scared again when he knew that the outcome was sure, but to learn that when the conditions were right for him to be a hero, his heroism would arrive.
About a third of the way into the film a meeting is held between those who have decided to risk their lives in what is to be a final stand against Godzilla, the monster who represents the folly of American and Japanese imperialism, and eco-terrorism. Before he adjourns the meeting former naval engineer Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) tells the members of this rag tag strike team to go home and spend the remaining time with their families. A soldier responds “You mean be prepared”- the logical assumption being for death. Noda, full of regret that betrays a man who knows he's played a role in the loss of lives in this war, takes a beat before unconsciously shaking his head “no”, and replies solemnly; "Come to think of it, this country has treated life far too cheaply”. He then goes on to lay out the various ways in which they showed this disdain which runs the gamut from indirect (logistical callousness) to direct (Kamikaze Pilots) callousness for lives. He then (beginning to find passion in his voice) says “he would take pride in a citizen led effort that risks no lives at all”. The two most important words in that small speech are “country” and “citizen”, the context in which they are used and the difference in the attitudes associated with them, as well as the difference displayed in the mood of their orator. Each of these things are separate and distinctively different feelings which then forces the inherent understanding of the disassociation between citizen and country. The former is often victimized and exploited by the latter using the inherent desire of human beings to gather into social groups as a ploy to create a false sense of oneness that can be exploited in any number of ways, including engraving a sense of duty to what amount to the wills of a greedy few and not their individual or collective needs. The films defense of what is normally framed as cowardice magnifies the tension between the idea of country and it's connection to citizenry. In pointing out that this country was frivolous and apathetic towards life, Godzilla Minus One declares that this mostly citizen led effort will be about life and a fight for the future explicitly absolving Koichi and to some extent the audience for their empathy of the crime of cowardice. The realization being that to assert such a claim would be akin to victim blaming, taking us back to the first half of the Air technicians words “Why obey an order to "die honorably" when the outcome is clear”.
The theme that comes most clear in Godzilla minus one is the shame, doubt, and trauma, inflicted upon everyday average citizens indoctrinated by the powers that be of any nation state to take on the mindset of their conquerors. After that the redemption that extends out from freeing oneself from the shackles of incentivized homicide, and into a return to our actual social needs; one being the primacy of life itself, of which as Commander Hunter so articulated; war is the natural enemy of. It's a heavy concept fit snugly inside this stunning, roaring, spectacle of a movie and it's the true glory of this Godzilla film. A visual culmination years coming in my own cinematic journey towards the answer to a question began in the 90s with one submarine movie, all which arrived from the depths of either the sea or my mind.
I Like What Axel F is, I Mourn What it Could Be, and Maybe That it Shouldn't Be.
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Beverly Hills Cop as a franchise is an interesting if not frustrating journey over the years, both as a production and as a viewing experience. The former because even the first one had an entire makeover before it made it to our screens, and the fourth spent a couple of decades in development hell. The latter precisely because it's so uneven as a franchise with both quality and tone, changing drastically from film to film even while the formula remains mostly the same. For two entries it somehow came together, for one it finally revealed the flaw in the undertaking of sequels in the first place, and for the latest I’d say the results are complicated. Unlike other major franchises the built-in plot line is one that makes repetition a quandary, because it's literally called Beverly Hills Cop it means either this Detroit cop has to keep coming back to Beverly Hills, or simply move to Beverly Hills..they chose the former. Something like “Aliens” lends itself to being set in different locations, different times, with whole entirely different cast of people if one should want. Indiana Jones can go on different adventures, Rambo can go on different missions, Rocky can have different fights, but Axel Foley coming back to (never mind having reasons) Beverly Hills to do work there while not working there is the definition of cinematically “stretching” milk with water, and yet here we are at the fourth iteration. This has always been the problem with Hollywood and more to the point capitalism, this unwillingness to let something that was profitable just live as it's most pure self because there's a shred of a possibility that money is being left in the table. The the obsessive and possessive desire to repeat what probably shouldn't be repeated because there's an opportunity for more money to be made is a prime example of Dr Ian Malcolm’s (Jurassic Park) proverb “You were so concerned with whether you could, you never stopped to think whether you should” and has taken the life and the love out of many a venture, many an idea, and in this case many a movie, and it's no different here.
Beverly Hills Cop: “Axel F” is a practice in cognitive dissonance of joy. It's fun, it's funny, it moves pretty well, the action is fine, the jokes are pretty good, there's some chemistry, and depending on your taste, you will find the acting anywhere from fair to very fair. The premise is the same, the result predictable; Axel needs a reason to come back and because it's a legacy sequel you can bet there is some kind of family involved. In this case there's a daughter that we had never seen before, by a mother we had never seen before and the movie proposes to deal with that by nudging in a not too shabby subplot about Axel being so in love with his job that he prioritized it over his daughter and then refuse to apologize for it. It's the kind of conflict that needs a lot more than it's being given here but it's in an applaudable effort to create something out of nothing -again “stretching the milk”. There are dirty cops, there's Kevin Bacon, we see most of the old players come back, it's not a bad time. I found it to be pleasantly better than I expected. “Better than expected” is fine, but it feels cheap and somewhat depressing to say that about a franchise that started on the notes this one did, and that relative quality is notable. Though it most certainly could’ve and should’ve been a theatrical release, there is something TV-like about this film, something in the cooking that makes it feel smaller, safer. I could mention the score, Lorne Balfe’s music has its moments of brilliance, but it's not ambitious enough nor anywhere near as creative as Harold Faltermeyer’s legendary score. I could definitely mention the script, which feels aggressively hollow, hackneyed, and predictable, and moves along like a sitcom. I could mention the direction which though far superior to the other aspects of production, doesn’t have the moxie or compositional detail of the Scott sequel which is this films most clear kinship of the series. The “why” of this particular blandness in the ultimate outcome, becomes a bit clearer in the ingredients of the credits. The original (Penned by Daniel Petrie Jr) was nominated for an Academy Award, the sequel was written by men (Larry Ferguson, Warren Skaaren) whose credits include “The Highlander”, “The Hunt for Red October”, “Alien 3”, “Beetlejuice”, and “Batman” combined. The first two were directed by gifted journeyman Martin Brest, and Tony thee Scott, director of “Top Gun”, “The Last Boy Scout”, “True Romance”, and “Crimson Tide” to name a few. “Axel F” is directed by a first timer whose previous credits are Apple Commercials, and written by the guy who brought you 2013’s “Gangster Squad” (a movie I almost forgot existed until I looked up writer Will Beal’s credits) and “Aquaman”. The other writers are a TV guy (Kevin Etten) and the writer/director or “That Awkward Moment” (Tom Gormican) another “Forget-Me-Please” legend. Factor in that somewhere back in time there was supposed to be a TV show involving a family angle (A son that time) and it helps map where the underwhelming bits might have come from. This kind of absurd drop in resume quality is is exactly my issue with the film and over that, capitalism because it shows not only are you committed to forcing something that ultimately may be best left alone in pursuit of something original, but that even when you're forcing it you're so disinterested in the actual product you don't even care to make sure that you put the best people around it even while knowing the history of the things that preceded it. Handing the reigns of a legacy franchise sequel over a TV writer, two poor movie writers, and a commercial director with no movie experience is telling and frustrating. It says to me you weren't aiming to make this a Blockbuster movie that would simply air on Netflix, but rather a high-end TV movie for Netflix, which is mostly what Netflix produces; “Bright” except not written by Max Landis, but kinda. When when the people behind “Top Gun” Maverick go into production and they enlist the likes of Peter Craig (“The Town”, “The Hunger Games”, “The Batman”) and the director of two of the most visually satisfying movies of their decade in “Oblivion” and “Tron Legacy”, it says to me “Oh they mean business”, and by comparison it makes the folks behind Axel F seem as if they barely tried. To be fair, movie making is always a crap shoot, and maybe over 20 years of trying to get this off the ground led to a willingness to compromise, but quality of the people you collaborate with and the people around you are indicative of not only a desire to want to make the best movie possible, but a belief in the product. So it then begs the question; “Why didn't the people behind this want to make the best movie possible?” . “Who doesn't believe in Beverly Hills Cop as an IP?”
Part and parcel to the frustration of watching something that is merely “fine”, put together by an assemblage of people who's resumes are merely “fine” when and maybe especially because the last was such a huge commercial and artistic failure, -is all the unanswered questions it calls forth. Most chief amongst them; is “fine” all we can hope for? This goes beyond even this franchise. When John Mctiernan leaves the “Die Hard” franchise for whatever reasons were behind that, why is no one looking for the best to replace him? Why weren’t John Woo, Tsui Hark, Martin Campbell, Paul Greengrass, or Michael Bay, given a ring? Why are Len Wiseman (fine) and John Moore (not good) taking up the work of a bona-fide action movie legend? In a world where 8 “Mission Impossible’s” in, they're still some of the best action films out there, I don't see the point of going into something with the ingredients to only make something acceptable rather than something that not just reminds people of the nostalgia they once experienced, but of the ingredients behind the quality they once experienced, the greatness they once experienced. Is Tom Cruise the only guy in Hollywood that knows action well enough to know how to follow great acts? I know the answers in a certain sense of what capitalism is bound to do, I just don't understand it on a kind of natural level. Where does pride in what you do not come into play? What you produce, putting your name on something. I'm not talking about Eddie Murphy who I think has made it pretty clear he’s sincerely trying, to some extent that's probably the main reason why this turned out any good in the first place. I'm talking about Netflix, I'm talking about Paramount, maybe even (dare I say it) Jerry Bruckheimer. I'm asking why is it that when Tom Cruise wants to make a legacy sequel it seems like a signal goes out for Hollywood’s best to get behind what is intended to be a global event, but when Eddie Murphy wants to make a legacy sequel of one of the most popular movies all time it seems like “The Replacements” from that one Keanu Reeves movie shows up? Though race may quickly come first to mind, considering the facts behind the aforementioned “Die Hard” series or the treatment of the remake of Mamoru Oshii’s sci-fi classic “Ghost in the Shell”, this is less an issue of racial disparity and more a disparity of higher ups who care about movies.
when there is sincere care and love brought on by some of the best doing today legacy sequels can rock
Back in 1998 Roland Emmerich riding high off the success of Independence Day would take a run at an American version of Ishiro Honda’s post nuclear eco-classic monster flick “Godzilla”. Culturally the movie was by and large a disappointment, the public felt it was forgettable and it showed itself in the drop off in the box office in only its second week, but it nonetheless was commercially successful and ended up making nearly three times it's budget back, and yet despite this the shutter doors were closed on any sequels for Godzilla. The market and the people recognized it wasn't a worthy pursuit. Funny enough, a revisit to Emmerich's Godzilla flusters one with a rush of nostalgia not simply for a time by-gone, but for a craft, for an attention to detail in storytelling that then was a bare minimum, and now barely exists. This is the struggle of not only watching the latest entry of what was a classic franchise but of watching movies in general today. The lack of care, the lack of intention, the the lazy acceptance of mediocrity, that has infected not only the upper echelons of Hollywood, but to some extent the audience which includes a certain amount of critics. When IP’s, sequels, and remakes initially started to noticeably dominate theater screens I kicked and screamed, but eventually their near ubiquitous proliferation led to a sort of mild acceptance and then eventually to a sort of celebration of the best of the worst, but at some point I've come full circle back to where I started. I no longer find myself in the mood to celebrate mediocrity disguised as invention or fun. If I watch either of the most recent Japanese Godzilla films (Shin Godzilla, Godzilla Minus One) and I see big, boisterous, emotional, fun as hell thrill rides, and then I watch “Godzilla vs King Kong” and it's just the same rock'em sock'em effects I got in those two and nothing else, why should I applaud the latter? When I played little league football I had one of those loud cranky old school Bear Bryant characters as a coach. Coach “Pete” was prone to vitriolic evil -John Wooden-like maxims like “Your saliva is 99% water drink that”, but from time to time his over simplifications and flat out lies hit. One such quote was “If you can touch it, you can catch it”. The words hang banner like over my feelings toward this current iteration of movie making. I would only slightly change the context to if you can touch greatness, than you can catch it. If you can get the monsters right and the joy of what we see in them, then you can get the characterization of the people affected by their actions right, you can get the rest of the storytelling right. a I'm not going to applaud you for cheating those aspects as if its either/or. Whether it was an Ed Wood picture or Berry Gordy's “The Last Dragon”, “Roadhouse” or any number of Golan-Globus productions, those films didn't end up becoming the cult classics they became because the directors were knowingly winking at the audience, or because they were aiming low. All of those people were sincerely trying to make the best picture possible and more important due to the insularly nature of the productions they were empowered by people who mostly wanted the same, and that heart and that desire along with other more indefinite factors regardless of skill, regardless of budget, ended up showing themselves in the final product. For those who have boots on the ground of an actual production it is not for me to say whether or not they actually are putting their heart and soul into these productions, that doesn't become clear till years later when somebody's brave enough to talk about what went on, but it is more than evident that the powers that be, that provide distribution, that green light, that hold final say over what talent they can afford to get, or want to go after, are definitely not invested in producing good art, and at this point they’re not even invested and producing great entertainment. They are not concerned with the legacy of films like “Beverly Hills Cop” beyond the extent to which that legacy makes the movie profitable. Whether its the fun but rather flat in comparison to their antecedent Bad Boys sequels, the crushing emptiness of the “Jurassic Worlds” or the sad afterlife of “Ghostbusters”, the continuing onslaught of reanimated skinless, corporatized nostalgia as content and time passable entertainment and it's disruptive effect on those of us who still wish to see those dearly departed bits of our past is frustrating to say the least, even when the final product is “pretty good” or “not too bad”. “Axel F” is just the latest example of Hollywood taking the safest road possible, the most risk adverse path to the creation of art and entertainment. For all intensive purposes the entry seems to be a success and the part of me that loved that series and what made its original entries such an important part of my '80s cinematic experience is happy for that, but the fact that that success only further incentivizes the disruptive nature of the philosophy of content over that of art and entertainment deeply saddens me.
Challengers Represents a Challenge for Zendaya.
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“Challengers” the latest from autuer Luca Guadagnino is the tale of a couple Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) who then becomes a throuple when they meet the enigmatic and stunning Tashi (Zendaya) and the torrid stormy road they take to being able to fully become who they are, who they want to be. A movie so tethered to a foundational need, to desire, to sex, to hunger couldn't have been more bland and worse still, clumsy. Guadagnino’s latest is supposed to feel like a light hand under your shirt, in the small of your back, gliding upwards pressing on some muscles, sliding in others until it reaches the nape of your neck and pricks you deeply with a sharp fingernail. Instead Challengers "sex scenes" and it's ploys for lust and desire feel like someone making a bunch of racket as they try and sneak up behind you only to grab you by your neck and bang your head on the table. Every single moment felt forced, abrupt, there was no sense of timing, no sense of patience, and no true willingness to go “there”. Guadagnino likes to give us tantalization as pure presentation and it never works for me. He keeps his camera still and at a distance, it sits there like an observer who is outwardly about as moved by it as Spock. The camera is never there with its subjects in the ways Adrian Lyne voyeuristically enjoys Fatal Attraction, or the way Paul Verhoeven allows the camera to make it a throuple in “Basic Instinct”. In “Call Me By Your Name”, there is the infamous fruit scene, the camera nearly falls asleep as Chalamet commits to the act with all the passion of turning a doorknob..Where is the writhing, the self touching, why are his shorts still on? For an act so based in unbridled desire it feels like Ben Stein giving a class on lust. The director always seems trapped in a purgatory where longing and lust are in direct conflict. He never wants his subjects through the camera, he's rarely interested in their faces when they're burning for each other, just when they're attracted to each other. His choices are dull and it effects or maybe shows itself in his choice of actors who are the hinges upon which this doorway into desire hang. Zendaya in what many are calling a movie star showing is the prime manifestation of this conflation. Some have said this movie doesn’t work without her and they’re right…it doesn’t.
Zendaya is one of cinemas great movers, I believe that is what people most see when they talk about her movie star power. She is elegant but forceful, composed and lithe. It shows in the scene where Patrick first introduces her to us and Art, her body commits to every end position with force, but the getting there is smooth and wave like. Its much like the catwalk, the step into the ground is a earth, but the body before the step is water. Zendaya in so many ways resembles a cat, but she hasn't met a director yet who is interested in or wants to play with that energy and she's seems too interested in protecting herself to bring it out on her own. Sex and playing “sex” or “sexy” is about letting go. You have to be unafraid to let the camera as a disembodied partner see your primal self. Think about the way Jamie Lee Curtis performs this exact act in James Cameron’s “True Lies”. Playing a woman who has never done anything truly adventurous, who has always been prudent, a woman who wants more but has no idea how to get there -Curtis starts off stiff very aware of herself, and her watcher, but slowly, surely, she stops protecting herself and begins to lean into feeling her body, opening up the camera to her most sensual self, and by consequence we voyeuristically join, the man in front of her all but disappears. Zendaya’s Tashi is no Helen Tasker, but Zendaya herself reminds me of her in this small regard; she has made to date, prudent choices, smart choices, but she has not been adventurous in choosing her roles, and though this is her attempt, much like Helen Tasker in the beginning of her dance, she doesn't seem to really know how to get there. Zendaya has no moment in Challengers, where sensuality, sex, or unbridled emotion feel as if they have taken over her body even while she is in control. No encapsulation of Meg Ryan's orgasm scene in “When Harry met Sally”. In essence some true sense that while everyone is turned on, or appalled by her being seemingly lost in the throws of her own self passion, she was in full control and putting on a show the entire time.
I feel much of the same way about Zendaya as I do Michael B Jordan, two actors with untapped potential that remains corked under the fact that they never seem to let us into that hidden self, or to that creation of self that appears knowable, that calls us to peer inside them on camera. They have the looks, they have to a certain extent - the energy, but they seem to always be protecting themselves. Image production is of course a responsibility and an aspect of any acting career, but as with all things it's a spectrum that is in a different place for each actor it represents. Those actors we revere for their acting not for their image production is a result of their leaning being further on the spectrum towards the craft than it is towards the image, with Zendaya and Jordan, it's more image production than craft to an extreme. True vulnerability almost always seems to escape them, and any true sense that they are giving themselves over to us escapes us. Tashi may move as if she is always aware the camera is on her, but Zendaya should move as if the the camera is apart of her. Tashi may not be open to letting anyone in, but Zendaya should be sneaking us in through the back door. In one of her stronger scenes in the movie, Tashi and Patrick are involved in a conversation where her true desires have been have been exposed, it is in essence quite possibly the summation of Tashi as a character, and yet it's telling that outside of aesthetics nothing profound occurs in Zendaya's face and body. Whenever there comes a time for an interesting emotion of expression Zendaya performs the one that would get you the least points in “Family Fued, because it is the one that would come most readily to just about anyone. What Patrick is telling her is meant to cause a mixture of shock, hurt, attraction, and anger, because it is based in truth, (we know by what she does later) Zendaya only plays anger. One eye widens larger than the other, the rest of her face appears pained, constipated, as if Patrick is speaking is foreign language she struggles to understand. This is not bad if the only idea is that this idea is detestable to Tashi, and she wants Patrick to feel that way, but the audience should see what's going on underneath as well and the “underneath” is what Zendaya has trouble playing. Critic Angelica Jade Bastien was absolutely right when she connected Zendaya's acting with the Katherine Hepburn quote about Meryl Steep, you can most certainly “hear the wheels turning“, because Zendaya is thinking more than she's feeling . If you only pay attention to how she moves, how picturesque she is, you might be impressed but when you listen to how she cuts Patrick down, and you watch her face it's banal, far too straightforward there's no knife to it, it sounds mean, because the words are there, but she delivers them in exactly that energy with no interestimg curve. Often the most interesting and cutting words we've seen on screen have been delivered in the opposite energy, you don't get angry, you smile. You don't play emotive anger you calmly and cooly say “You're nothing to me but another dead vampire”, or you if actually pierced you allow a tiny face drop, near imperceptible, but a clear receipt. Zendaya'‘s face does not betray her, and Zendaya is not vulnerable enough to break through facade in the least, especially subtly. When she walks away it's a thing of beauty, if you're just watching the walk, but in her face, nothing. The anger she shows provides no interesting choice, merely furrowed eyebrows. The opening salvo between Michael Douglas's Dan Gallagher and Glenn Closes's Alex Forrest in “Fatal Attraction” is a Master class in the importance of A; a director knowing the value of direct close ups in titilation and anticipation, and B. two actors that understand the subtleties of facade and how and when it breaks. Gallagher wants to play the loyal husband merely here for an innocent drink, Alex sees through it and start sending arrows directly at him. Glenn Close’s poker Face and the subtle brakes in Douglas that ultimately lead to the sex scene are vital to what makes Fatal Attraction one of the sexiest movies of all time.
Zendaya does not appear to be a good poker player, Tashi needs to appear that way. The bedroom is one of the few places that Tashi can exert control and uninhibited desire, where her true face should come through crystal clear, not necessarily to the boys, but to the audience. Guadagnino could've helped her. A bedroom scene with Patrick is so stilted as to conjure no appetite whatsoever. He shoots it from medium wide, (why?) this is a form of intimacy, even if Tashi is a bit mathematic about sex we should see Patrick's desire for the fantasy in contrast to Tashi's desire for control and power. On the surface level Patrick and Tashi have this in common with Catherine Trammel and Nick Curran of “Basic Instinct” ; Patrick like Nick knows exactly who and what his “Catherine” is, he just doesn't care. He wants her badly enough not to. These are the moments for interesting choices in a scene, from all involved in that dirk room. See Eihi Shiina’s wildly over the top movements as she saws off Ryo Ishibashi’s foot in “Audition”. In that scene, mutilation is made decadent. This is Asami’s bedroom, and the mutilation is her sex, and the reckless abandon and joy she receives is thick in Shiina's movements and expressions. Director Takashi Miike's camera goes in close and personal, intimately because here is where Asami finally has control, here is where the facade breaks, where her true self is revealed and the coy child like fantasy is peeled away. In contrast Challengers will have no such moment with Tashi, nor with Zendaya. There's a scene where Tashi deeply hurt by something that has happened to her, you can't tell it's supposed to have hit her hard, she nearly drops under a tree and it all kind of comes crashing down. Again, there are no interesting choices. Zendaya isn’t patient enough, she isn't open enough. She sits there for a moment and nothing radiates, no rage, no sense she is truly trying to hold back against a rising tide in her body. Guadagnino goes in for a close up on her face and nothing really happens. These are the moments where actors are made. The emoting with Zendaya is never bad, it's just never great, or distinctive, or provocative. Tashi is an example of a number of women I've seen on screen the kind that are aware of this stipulations and gendered expectations the world places up on them and in this case most especially as a black woman or even more specifically a biracial black woman, and yet Zendaya seems as disinterested in this aspect as the movie is in it. There may be the tiniest of hints and illusions as to how her race plays into all this but there is definitely no sincere interest to explore this aspect of Tashi. Guadagnino and Zendaya could do to have taken a look at Viola Davis and Steven McQueen in Widows where despite the fact that Viola's character clearly moves in white circles her blackness within them plays a significant role in what we are seeing in the movie as well as what we see in Viola herself. Veronica Rawlings is overall quite a different woman from the much younger Tashi, but they do have in common the shared desire to keep it together. They are both manipulators and they both deeply understand the value society places on appearances, they have to. Yet Viola creates these profound moments of breakage, moments where the mask slips where she must find some place for this energy to go. Whether after being slapped by Elizabeth Debicki, or in her final scene. The most representative of what the vast difference is, is in the opening scene when she finds out that her husband is dead. The stare in the mirror that turns into a primal scream and then the immediate fixture, back to work, “I will not let this consume me” even as it is consuming her. I believe Tashi seen under the tree should have been that kind of moment, not the exact same moment but the same art in a sense that she needed to be somewhere where she could let it go for just a moment, pull it back together, and get back in the game. Zendaya doesn't omit, she clearly emotes, she just simply doesn't do anything interesting with it and maybe more importantly neither does Guadagnino. Challengers and its star ends up a missed opportunity for the kind of potential that exists for films to make a return to eroticism and for movie stars to make a return to form. There are suggestions, there are implications, and there are a few exciting moments where it feels like we are back, but for most and much of this movie it feels like wanting to play in the snow but only being able to watch it on the inside of a globe. There's something there, but I wasn't able to feel it and as such eventually I just put it back down.
Dune Part Two: Hollywood Doesn't Really Want Frank Herbert's "Dune"
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What Hollywood wants from Frank Herbert's Sci-Fi epic “Dune” is a blockbuster film, this is its first and primary concern. This is not an insight, nor a damnation in and of itself, but it is a fundamental block in my ongoing issues with this franchise and the repeated tries at making a successful on screen adaptation. If the marriage was more successful, (and by successful I mean balanced) I would love Dune, but this Dune is a diluted, convoluted, distilled Dune, maintaining almost none of its capacity for thought provocation, and only a certain portion of its sense of wonder. Denis Villanueve is a director who deals in ambiguities and the incomplete. Frank Herbert's canonical Sci Fi text is as comprehensive a bit of storytelling-weaving as you can get in the genre. Well-beloved by many not just for it's exhaustive attention to detail in world building, but as a challenging narrative allegory of western power, ecological decimation, and imperialism, but is also as German historian Frank Jacob refers to it “Anti-Colonial Colonialism”. It stands against the idea in theory, but in practice it's still upholds it. The ongoing nature of this conflict of perception is representative of the cohabitative nature of the deconstruction and reconstruction of orientalist themes, symbology, and interpretation in the original text. The ongoing conflict between the original text and it's on-screen adaptations is a product of the cohabitative imbalance of capital and art in the industry, the latter of which is represented in the choice of director and holds an unsuitable amount of influence over the former in which both work to reduce a dense, rich text to pure artifice and almost no edifice.
In Denis Villanueve's two part adaptation of the first Dune, the book’s dense characterizations and cacophony of political machinations are reduced to broad strokes. There is no interest in building the interdependent and volatile nature of these relationships and the characters that represent them. The emperor’s integral role in what happened to the Atriedes being completely absent from the first film, is introduced in the second mostly through scenes that fly by and tell you absolutely the bare minimum about who the Emperor is as a character, much less that of the triumvirate of the noble houses, the navigator’s guild, and the emperor. Much of the political intrigue, tactics, and infighting which reinforces the prescience not only in events, but in incisive portraits of the psychological approach of colonial powers are also gone. Paul's doubts and unease about being a messiah are highlighted and over-represented, his foibles and ego silenced until he drinks “the water of life”, which then makes it seem the water of life caused it, rather than his own deficiencies. Villanueve’s own way into the book is a tell as to what he sees and values as the important thrust and even moreso, what he doesn't by way of silence. On the podcast “Q with Tom Power” Villanueve is asked what drew him to Dune in the first place, he answers; “There's something about the journey of the main character Paul Atreides, the feelings of isolation, the way he was struggling with the burden of his heritage, family heritage, genetic heritage, political heritage, climatic heritage, all this weight on his shoulders, then finally being able to find freedom through the contact with another culture.” Villanueve’s words are indicative and representative of Villanueve's focus on the hero's journey and since our “hero” is Paul, the Fremen are merely a device by which Paul is catapulted to self discovery. The hero’s journey aspect of Herbert’s book has always represented the source of Hollywood’s fervent attraction to this series, as it to them is what defines its potential as an intellectual property. The dollar signs in the eyes of industry executives easily push aside the fact that in some respects the source material is a rejection of that narrative, and the choosing of a director (a very skilled one) who shares the belief, means that by consequence of the machine through which it is produced, any chance for any meaty meaningful reconstruction or deconstruction of the original texts’ obvious themes is jettisoned, and that is a choice in every sense of the word. The spectacle which is what is wanted and desired by most of the execs, and most of the general public is not unimportant, (especially in a era so devoid of any true examples of it) but it is very much standing in the place of the politics and thematic breadth of Herbert's vision.
The spectacle of Villanueve's Dune is as oppressive as the book’s various houses and characters. Alot of thought was put into building this world and it's clear in the design; from costume, to set, to technology, and beyond. Harkonnens float like spacemen in an early Hanna Barbara cartoon above arid dunes and rock formations. A helicopter on fire freefalls in the background as we watch Zendaya and Timothee Chalamet race across the sand under the shade of the Harkonnen version of a John Deere for the desert. Sandworms slide through earth parallel to each other from a birds eye view. A harrowing supremely well choreographed fight occurs more than once, with a finale sure to be on the minds of everyone long after they have left the theater. All of these things are such forceful sights to behold, it's difficult to dismiss Dune part two’s success as spectacle. They take up so much air in the film you can almost forget to take a breath and remember that Dune is essentially a space epic with alot more than spectacle on its mind and far too politically intricate to be reproduced on screen by an entity so dedicated to the reproduction of the very things the book seeks to deconstruct. In essence how are you going to faithfully adapt such an anti-Star Wars book through the funnel of an enterprise that wants exactly Star Wars? The aspects of these films that most align themselves with the aspects most fetishized by both those in the industry and consumer at-large are in rare form. This version has alot more in common with those intitial Star Wars films than the difference in execution and skill might allow one to believe. The delayed introduction of the emperor, the reluctant hero with a family name that rings out, the focus on languages, creatures, clothing, weaponry, world building in essence, these are the parts of Dune that sell it. The parts that make it consumable to a vast mass. It has none of the weighted emotional heft of Spielberg's “Minority Report” or “AI” to deter some audiences. None of the narrative integrity to the challenging themes of its source material that “A Clockwork Orange” maintains to repel them. It does not carry the narrative foreboding present in George Lucas's prequels. Much like the initial Star Wars trilogy, characters having names and titles serve mostly utilitary and perfunctory functions to the script. The characterizations are airy, the politics are broad, there is little to detangle, little to sit with outside pageantry. The oatmeal density of the books themes and politics now water, Dune’s transformation to “popcorn movie” is now complete.
Frank Herbert had much more distinctive and specific desires for his book as it pertains to its themes and its political commentary. The parallels in the relationships between the noble houses, the emperor, and Arakkis (which even phonetically sounds like Iraq) are undeniable and as such unavoidable, thusly anyone who adapts the book must in essence agree with the intricacy, the specificity. You cannot deal in the abstract with a text like this. The source material, (which as it pertains to the fremen, also deals in forms of abstractness) lends itself to orientalism, if you then become even more abstract then what is left? The answer is movies that talk like the book about a man seeking to align himself with and become equal to a people no less than him, while asserting his superiority in nearly every image and piece of text. Movies that imply that merely feeling conflicted over your inarguable “superiority” is the same as deconstructing it. In his landmark book on the subject literary critic and academic Edward Said had this to say about “Orientalism”; “In a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand.” Knowing this, the question here is not whether or not Paul and the Atriedes are white saviors, (Though there could certainly be an argument they most certainly are as both the literature and screen do not truly deny that Paul is the messiah, but rather the efficacy of the role) the question is; “What are the Fremen?”
For all the time spent around the Fremen as a people, they are largely bystanders in a story that largely concerns them. They bookend the first film, appear in the second (as with most of the characters in this film) as a large collective meant to signify one character, and in no way are in charge of their own destiny. In text and then re-creation of the text, they are reduced to pawns. Their land is occupied, they cannot defeat their occupiers on their own and so the ways to defeat them are given to them by the foreigner - “You’ve been fighting the Harkkonens for decades, we’ve been fighting them for centuries” - their prowess as a fighting force is reduced to the swarm like behavior rather than the elite man to man skill that saw even small numbers of Fremen decimate large numbers of Harkonnen soldiers and the Sardaukar. Even their religion is given to them by way of the Bene Gesserit. Villanueve a man heavily drawn to the image seems completely disinterested in any image that shows the fremen people (his favorite in the book) as a mighty force independent of Paul. The interest is not in them as a people, but in the collection of symbols, signs, and cultural iconography that convey their “otherness”. The romance at the center of the movies suffers not only from the lack of any deep chemistry between Chalamet and Zendaya, but from the lack of any specificity around what exactly draws Chani to Paul despite her natural and very valid fears about him as an interloper. Gone is even the patience to suggest a slowburn as exemplified in something like “The Last Samurai”. Paul's whiteness is taken for granted as inherently attractive in and of itself. It is the draw, it is the pull, and as told on film it is irresistible no matter what place white men occupy and felt almost on sight. So, Said’s words remain; at what point in these films is Paul's relational superiority not clear? What are we to say about a narrative that continually highlights a groups mysticism and the abstract symbols of their culture apart from their humanity? One willing to turn “Jihad” into “holy war” as to not invite controversy, but unwilling to use one’s imagination as to how to present the MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) coded fremen in a complex relationship to a complex man? Why chance that potentially mine ridden path, when they can just have the horde remain mostly nameless and faceless save for those descriptors which most reliably tell us who they are stand-ins for? There is no need for a hypothetical about what would happen if MENA actors were placed in this precarious story of jihad, because there are MENA actors in this precarious story of jihad. Hamza Baissa as “Young fremen patrol”, Hassan Najib as “Young fremen patrol” and Omar Elbooz as “Young fremen patrol and on it goes. In the caves, on the worms, and any time we see the Fremen's collective ethnic makeup it is quite clear they're mostly MENA looking, they just don't need to speak or have much agency. What are we to make of a film that reduces Thufir Hawat - feared and revered master of assassins to glorified guide and head of security in one movie? His vital role to the goings on in the narrative cut completely? To the disappearance of Liet Kynes importance and her (gender reversed) relationship to Chani? To the reduction of Yuen's relationships? To the quick deaths of almost every person of color in the first and the reduction of Stilgar to a form of elevated comic relief in part two, almost pointless to the movie except as a pair of shoulders for Paul to sit on? The presence of the opposite or a challenge to any one, or two, or maybe three of these things would still make for a movie taking positive steps in the right direction, and none of them by themselves or in and of themselves harmful to the movie as an adaptation, it is the collection of them that does that.
Since Europeans, Western powers, America, and Hollywood center themselves as the cultural and political centers of the world so too do their literary and cinematic avatars, and as such it remains in Dune. You cannot free yourself from a narrative by adapting the narrative, no more than you can disband hegemonic structures and ideas from the “inside”. You are not subverting the trope of making the “other” a prop to show white superiority, by making them a prop to show the folly of white superiority. You cannot find yourself or seek the “true self” in another culture, (as Villanueve alluded to later in the same interview) this is nothing more than the guiding force behind the whitewashing of yoga or rastafarianism and many other appropriations, Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” where the burden is his guilt over his capacity to consume. This is the flaw in any overall belief in the Hollywood structure to do something that would inflict even minor damage to its self perpetuated mythology. Dune is undeniably a story about a gigantic and enormous conspiracy to rob a people of a resource that rightfully belongs to them and the prophecy that uphold it's players criminal machinations. That POV is not the only read available, but it is amongst, if not its most apparent. That POV would mean trying to build a blockbuster around a hero that is in essence a villain, and the lack of investment in it forbids something as imaginative as allowing the events of Dune to fold out from a fremen perspective beyond a voiceover from Zendaya’s Chani. That POV would mean following through consistently on the implication made by Chani’s narration in the first, that the Atreides are just the fremen’s latest oppressors. Which would mean a blockbuster that played out superficially at least like “Killers of the Flower Moon”. For all the pomp and gravitas, this latest Dune has failed to acknowledge that aspect to even the degree a bare minimum would decree. It is not some understated study of the power and hegemony and in fact borders on a celebration of it, just ambiguous enough to not fall on that side. That alone would still not be enough for me to hold back my excitement for such detail to world building, had that world not been so aesthetically tied to this one, or so clearly the entire point, as film critic Richard Brody said about Villanueve’s vision in a recent tweet; “Nothing distinctive in his filming of gigantic sets, either—they themselves are the idea”. A decent emotional exploration in this movie mined for effect might've won me over to the film as well, but while certain images brought some sense of wonder there was nothing behind them to make them weighted. What's left is a movie that looks the part but doesn't feel it, a movie that feels like it sold out on the books most apparent themes, (nevermind imagining something beyond them) and couldn't even bother to replace them with something more revelatory or inspiring than ugly toys and sad faced boys.
Mr and Mrs Smith: “Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave”
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Two thoughts reigned supreme as I watched Donald Glover's reimagining of the 2005 Pitt/ Jolie vehicle “Mr. and Mrs Smith.”; “Spy movies are very cool and Donald Glover is not’, and ‘there is a underlying contempt here for the things he's mimicking”. Ultimately I could end this entire thing with just that sentence. There are a lot of reasons why I didn't fall for this show, and why at a certain point it started to become a chore to watch it, but most of them could be housed under the statements above. What I found fascinating about the show was the contrast of what the interviews leading up to the launch wanted us to believe the show was going to do, and what the show actually did. The mission (at least by what has been said in interviews seemed to be to subvert the genre, push something deeper out of the marriage angle, and embrace something opposite of what the film possessed. But for all the conversation about how different this was going to be from the film, this was pretty much the same, just with people, places, tech, lighting, cinematography, vehicles, fashion etc that were less cool or interesting than both the original film and most of the movies/TV shows in the spy genre.
There had been a couple of quotes from Donald Glover that had made their way around Twitter prior to the show's debut. I found them somewhat annoying and misguided, but once I started watching I thought initially Mr. and Mrs. Smith had done a great job building a relationship between two people, with two people who had such glaringly astonishing chemistry. Erskine and Glover really do bounce off of each other magnificently. They have similar timing, similar forms of self-depreciation, and are a match aesthetically and spiritually, but they were right when they said in interviews that they are not Brad and Angelina and they “can't replicate that”. Episode five was the beginning of the scratch to an itch I had even while mostly enjoying the show up to that point. “Do You Want Kids” had all the ingredients for an unforgettable banger; Ron Perlman, a subject that is very much so worth deep conversation and commentary, a car and foot chase with hand to hand combat, expensive homes, and Lake Como, Italy. What came out was completely forgettable unless you count how forgettable it is as memorable. Perlman is a stand in for a “trial baby” in an episode about the couples different views on having kids. Unfortunately it's handled with all the subtlety of a mack truck in space, from the title to Perlman’s performance (which is very good, but also very obnoxiously on-the-nose ). It has nothing interesting to say about parenting or about the two potential parents, (outside of their differences of opinions on children) and nothing very interesting or memorable besides Perlman. Leaving the episode I thought “You had far more time to explore the issue of rearing children in this career field and you've come away with something not much deeper than what the original film had to say about it.” Worse still, the film made very clear that child rearing was something that they didn't necessarily need in their lives. In a country that has pushed child rearing on woman's bodies like crack cocaine, and is currently doing everything it can to force them into it as an inherent duty, which is more refreshing?
“I watched it and honestly, I was like, ‘I don’t understand it’ . I mean, I get why it’s iconic because of the people starring in it - it’s just two gorgeous people in this situation. But the story I didn’t quite understand. I called my brother and he was like, ‘This is just a great date movie. It’s boys vs. girls. What else do you want?”
