Last Year at Marienbad

I sat on the Tube for almost an hour (two, both ways), listened to some angry old men bitterly discuss RAF WWII squadrons, and had to endure two different sets of couples making out (not just a little, tongue and all). And I got soaked in the rain. For what? To see Alain Resnais' 1961 Last Year at Marienbad. After all of that (plenty of time to think about it), I still have little idea what the movie was actually about.

Ostensibly, the plot concerns a man X who finds a woman A at an elaborate resort hotel and tries to convince her that one year ago they were lovers; he has returned to rendez-vous with her as planned. She , however, does not (or does) believe him (and she has a scary vampire-y husband/lover who must be accounted for). This is not what the movie is about.

Resnais apparently once said that the film had no meaning--it's an interesting statement because it makes the film nothing more than an exercise in formalism and modernist aesthetics. It's a carefully constructed "clever" puzzle piece, like something you may have found in the Surrealist circles of the first half of the twentieth century, no more. If you look at it from this point of view, it does make an interesting study--the camera angles are beautiful and smooth, the B&W lush, the editing snappy and brilliant. It makes you question reality in just the right way; it is l'art pour l'art. And if this is the case, I guess that's alright. I'm more of a narrative girl myself, but hey, a little Chris Marker or, in this case, M. Resnais is a welcome diversion once in a while.

Not surprisingly, it appears the movie spawned a bit of a cottage industry of theorists. Apparently the original idea for the movie comes from a novel by a colleague of Borges; it is the low-brow Fantastic at its best, or at least at its most Spanish. Resnais fails to credit this source material at all (I suppose it would have, you know, made the movie reference something outside of itself--and we couldn't have that, could we), but its suggestion of the world as a virtual reality, a world made of holograms essentially, makes the movie slightly more compelling for me and seems to place it as some sort of weird precursor to the glut of alternate reality sci-fi fests that have come along in recent years. But, uh, this is all theorizing, and involved outside resources, and there's not a chance in hell that you would have inferred an obscure mid-century sci-fi novel, en espanol, from the film's text.

I love the film visually, and assuredly it makes an interesting discussion piece, but it lacks any compelling characters (or characters at all, frankly--they're largely hollow stand-ins for reality (but this is, of course, the point)) and in all honesty, any compelling narrative (or lack thereof). Structurally, formally it is a feat to be admired. Oh--and organ music? Super creepy.  

Bad Education, pt. 2

Almodóvar, trannies, Gael García Bernal--you couldn't ask for more in a foreign film, could you? Well, or okay, maybe I could--I still have some reservations with Mr. Bernal, but beyond that, the component parts (uh, clearly there are those beyond the aforementioned) should suggest that Bad Education is a great movie. My problem is that, ever since seeing it, I've been alternating between thinking it is brilliant and really disliking it.

I can feel the reader's wrath. Be decisive, you shout. But I'm not, so deal and bear with me for a moment here.

The story of Bad Education is fairly straight-forward. Enrique (Fele Martinez) is a film director who is suddenly approached by an old schoolmate Ignacio (Bernal), now an actor, who offers him a story that recounts their childhood in strict Catholic school. It is at this Catholic school where Enrique and Ignacio fell in love, only to be pulled apart by Father Manolo, the school's principal, who is also in love with Ignacio. Following so far? Good. Enrique decides to film the story, and two decades of secrecy and abuse start to unravel. The catch, of course, is that it would be too straightforward to film it like this; thus, the movie appears to recount something like four separate stories (the fictionalized reality of the boy's school, the fictionalized falsity of the adult Ignacio, the real adulthood of Ignacio, and the real present day of the film). Okay, boring plot summary sort of covered.

Given the subject matter, it's not possible for the movie to be anything but political. To discuss molestation in the Catholic Church without claiming some sort of strong political position is clearly impossible; Almodóvar wants his audience (maybe there was someone somewhere who was oblivious to the recent molestation scandals...eh...maybe) to recognize that yes, sexual abuse=bad results in adulthood. But more interestingly, perhaps, he doesn't make the villainous priests into completely black and white monsters. They're sinister, yes (especially the scary fat one), and horrible people, but especially with the actor playing Father Manolo there's something more beneath the surface than pure eeeeeeevil. And the regular people are perhaps just as frightening as the fallen clergy.

Gael García Bernal is very good in what amounts to, essentially, three roles. I suppose I haven't liked him that much in the past because I'm vaguely threatened by him. There's something perpetually...insidious...about him, and certainly that characteristic is well used by Almodóvar in this film. And for those Bernal lovers amongst you, there's certainly a good deal of gay Bernal sex. Or rather, there's a whole lot of gay sex in the movie just in general.

The sheer amount of homosexuality in the movie (there are only like two speaking roles that are not gay) is certainly bold, and is somehow not suprising, given the relative homoeroticism of previous Almodóvar outings. It's interesting, though, how little of the sex is portrayed in any positive light. Sex, in Bad Education, is secretive and manipulative; it is entirely about power play or about the act itself, (almost) no affection here.

The movie is very typical Almodóvar visually, with a sun-drenched Spanish color palette (visuals that should be used to more effect by other filmmakers--they look great) and always always a bit of grit. My sole reservation with the film (and I don't think it makes it less good) is the sheer harshness of the storytelling. The movie shows the worst of human nature, the worst possible things that people do to each other, and how they so easily get away with it all. It makes it a bit hard to watch at points, and a bit hard to reflect on, and not to be all Miss Cynical but Almodóvar's bleak worldview in this movie is probably a lot closer to reality than you would think at first glance (the movie is about a drag queen and sexual molestation after all...and it's a Spanish soap opera...). I'll probably see it again when it opens in America, and probably I'll hate it, but for now, while I can't say at all that I liked it, I think it's a very good movie indeed. 

Bad Education, pt. 1

Huh. This is the movie for all of you (and you know who you are) wondering what it would be like if Douglas Sirk had made politically-minded, narrative-twisted gay porn in Spanish. Just saying.  

Nosferatu

I should preface this by first admitting to something—I have a bit of a long-standing fascination with vampires and vampire stories. In particular, I am a rather staunch defender of that much maligned/admired television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (clearly for reasons beyond the presence of vampires, but that is for another essay). That series, however, demonstrates an interesting (and significant) characteristic of the modern vampire story—vampirism with mad sex appeal.

Those familiar with the show know that two of the three major Buffy love interests over the course of the series were (gasp) vampires, the very creatures that she was meant to destroy. Teen melodrama, you cry (clearly not fully appreciating the show)—just some ploy to create some sad situation in which Sarah Michelle Gellar can use her soap-opera-honed crying skills. Well, certainly, for a show originating on the WB, this is part of the reason. The better reason, however, is the more obvious one—the vampires, or at least Spike and/or Angel, were far and away the sexiest characters on the show. They had a certain sinister allure; they were, at least at first glance, prototypical bad boys...with fangs. Clearly this is not a new concept—check out half of the vampire movies made and you'll find that they're largely an attractive breed, with a penchant for tight, sexy clothes and weird accents. Not only is it not a new concept, but most theory regarding vampires in art and literature would tell you that this was only appropriate; there is, after all, something inherently sexual about the vampire. Right? Right. Penetrating fangs and all, y'know. This is the image of the vampire with which we are mostly familiar, an impossible seducer, an homme fatal, if you will.

There is another kind, however, that seems rather lost in all of this, hidden behind the capes of Dracula, the leather coat of Spike, or the smile of Luke Wilson in that episode of The X-Files. He is the vampire of folklore, and the creature that F.W. Murnau gives us in the very first of all vampire movies, Nosferatu. I am rather, okay, very ashamed to say that it was not until recently that I had seen that film, despite having seen oodles of other fang-fests. In many ways, it is exactly what you would expect. It's silent (duh), it has at times (in the version I saw) a very cheesy score, the black and white is a truly bizarre tone—all the things appropriate to a feature made in 1922, I suppose. And the image of the Count (Olok, not Drac due to some issue with ol' Mrs. Stoker) as played by Max Schreck is pretty much seared into our collective memories.

Clearly the movie entirely hinges on Schreck's performance, in all of its animalistic insanity, with the black-rimmed sunken eyes and long creeping hands. There is nothing sexy about this vampire—he is actually quite terrifying. He is a monster, no different from the bogeyman or some sort of demon with horns and a tail. He is in many ways much of what is missing from the modern vampire. (Although, the vampire, as disease or predatory beast, is still applicable to contemporary life—infections seem to be more frightening than ever, and a creature, like the one in Nosferatu, who lives on the Plague, remains particularly resonant today). Regardless, whether we look at Murnau's monster as virus or beast, it is still very primal, which is really interesting in context of what I, at least, am used to seeing.

In theory at least, most modern monsters, vampires included, prey on our very modern societal fears. We hear stories of killers and such who seem perfectly harmless, charming even. And the vampire, beneath his suave smile and fitted black clothing, is a fanged killer (as if to say, let that be a lesson to you, missy, don't go trusting tall, dark, mysterious strangers). It is the nightly news reflected in the supernatural. Certainly we take note of this, but then something like Buffy comes along, or a billion spoofs, and the fear is removed—if anything we remain afraid of men (or women) in dark alleys wearing capes (as well we should be..or anyone wearing capes, just as a general rule). It's certainly hard to find any "monster" more cliched than those creatures of the night. The power of the story, then, comes not from it being about, or even having anything to do with the vampire, but from some other element. Think about it—Blade, Underworld, most recent movies dealing with the vampire are arguably more about some other theme (race, war, whatnot) than they are about monstrosity.

Which brings us back to Nosferatu...When I was a kid, the scary story that scarred me the most involved a bestial vampire that kept breaking into this house, and it kept getting harder to stop it (like it crept through ventilation ducts and such, and clawed through windows. Agh. It's creeping me out just thinking about it). It was a frightening folk-lore-style vampire story, as is Nosferatu. And there's something really surprisingly scary about it, whether it's the fact that it's a version of the telling we're not really used to anymore, or whether it's the style (the silent film and the sepia tones certainly make it more frightening), or whether it's the performance of Max Schreck. Clearly I'm ignoring other themes that are going to be present in any vampire tale, especially one based on Dracula, but they're focused on enough elsewhere. I'm intrigued by Nosferatu because, strangely, its vision was fresh, the original so far detached from its replicas that it somehow escaped the cliche, even watching it now. For once, you kind of remember why this was a feared figure of folk-lore, and not a kick-boxing superhero. That said, I'm obviously still going to stick with the less-scary, much-more-complex antiheroes of Buffy, etc.  

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I love the Harry Potter books, I really do. Quite sadly, there are people (and I know many of them) who stare and roll their eyes when the topic comes up. It's easy, I think, to feel derision toward the books—they're ubiquitious, they're over-marketed to the absolute extreme, the mania (even while somewhat subsiding) is a turn-off. The Harry Potter backlash is a bit unfortunate, however, because the works themselves remain very well crafted, terribly fanciful pieces that really deserve their place in the kiddie lit canon. It's been difficult to say the same thing about their film adaptations.

The first two films in the series were, how do you say, crap-tastic. They were perfunctory screen adaptations at best, with Chris Columbus transferring the plot from page to screen with an embarrassing lack of imagination or screen vision. They were plodding and overlong, the strong cast of Brit film stalwarts the only saving grace. To be fair, Columbus put certain necessary elements in place—Hogwarts and the characters look about right, good casting, okay score. They were, for children's fare, probably perfectly good movies, however lacking in grace. Clearly, though, the series needed a better director to possibly pay any sort of tribute to the novels, and it found that in Alfonso Cuarón.

While I said in another post that I had reservations with Y Tu Mamá También, I still hold its director in high esteem. His version of A Little Princess, in particular, has always proven that children's films can be as beautifully crafted as any movie offered to adults (seriously, go rent it, if only for the bizarre performance of the lead actress, and the damn creepy monkey friend). Cuarón frankly cements my faith in him with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Far and away, it is the best of the movies made from those omnipresent kiddie epics. Cuarón, unlike his predecessor, films the movie less as a page by page screen adaptation, and more as an entity in and of itself. Not only is the adaptation better (story-wise), the feel of the film has significantly improved.

The biggest accomplishment with the new movie is a visual one. The film is almost grainy, rough around the edges of the grandiose special effects. Even the editing is a bit less pristine. He favors flickering dissolves that are almost reminscent of early film. Somehow all of this is infinitely more appropriate to screen adaptations of Rowling's books. The books are not all light and crystal clear jewel tones, not all about the Quidditch matches and special effects wonders of the wizard world. Certainly there is a fanciful light-heartedness about many elements of the world of Harry, and if anything, you could criticize Cuarón for focusing on the darker elements at the expense of "day-to-day wizarding life," but you'd be missing the larger picture. This book is darker than the ones that came before, so naturally the film must be, but there's more going on here. I don't necessarily think that serials should have an auteuristic touch to them (isn't a serial by nature somewhat generic?), but that is, to a degree, what is happening here. We see Cuarón in the film—there are flickers of all of his earlier works (or at least the three I've seen) in this, and as a result, it feels like someone cared about making it, that it wasn't just some other by-product of the Harry Potter phenomenon. And quite bizarrely, it gave me an entirely new found appreciation of Y Tu Mamá También. Go figure.

This isn't to say that the movie is great. It's not. It is still overlong, the pace still falters in moments not connected with the main plotline, and no new director can convince one Rupert Grint (a.k.a Ron Weasely) to expand his facial expression repertoire beyond that of singular, signature bug-eyed astonishment. But you know what, both Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson have actually improved their acting chops (and, uh, looks) with this one, and that's something. And David Thewlis and Gary Oldman are nice additions to the cast (although I hold that Sirius Black, despite the years in Azkaban, should still be more attractive than Mr. Oldman). And as I said, it looks great.

It seems that I'm sort of carving out an unfortunate niche for myself as commentator on over-blown studio fests, but eh, what can you do. At least at Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban I could feel in some way that I was supporting the Latin New Wave, and you know, rather surprisingly it's not a bad movie at all.  

More June Movie Previews

Huh. So June movies are looking a bit...well...When the bright spot might actually be Spider-Man 2, I start to panic a bit. Fortunately I won't be in the country, will get to see a bunch of European films not yet released here, and you poor saps are stuck with the remnants. That said, let's contemplate the bright spots.

June 2: Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut. Okay, so it's not exactly fair that I'm putting this on the list, as it appears to only be playing in Seattle. What needs to be said about this? You've all seen the original (and if not, for shame!). And with twenty minutes of additional footage, I can only taunt you all, and myself, with the prospect...

June 4: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. You look at the screen aghast, I can tell. But hell, it's not going to be any worse than any other summer special effects extravaganza, it has some mild cred with Alfonso Cuarón (although, guilty confession, I'm not so much a huge fan of Y Tu Mamá, También), and, well, Hermione and Harry seem to have improved with age...I mean...Uh. Alan Rickman! Alan Rickman is cool, forget my last comment, just think about the crotchety British thesps filling out the rest of the cast.

June 11: The Stepford Wives. Oops, no, not a bright spot. The television ads are never-ending and look just atrocious. One can hold onto a sliver of hope that it will just be good self-conscious, cheese-tastic summer fun; on the other hand, that seems to be its problem, a dreadful reliance on kitsch and Nicole...I do love the Walken, though, so I'll not entirely leave out the possibility of redemption. But have you seen the trailer? Bah.

June 18: The Terminal. Okay, yes, I realize that Hannah listed this on her preview, but I feel compelled to comment on it. I have not yet found the Spielberg forgiveness, and while I think the trailer is actually pretty decent, I still have reservations about recommending a Spielberg movie (Catch Me if You Can brought him closer to redemption). But this seems to be lacking any apparent little-boy-lost issues (see: Catch Me if You Can, A.I., Hook, The Last Crusade, etc, etc) and while we can assuredly expect a damn schmaltz filled inappropriate ending to fuck up the whole thing, it looks like it might be a nice change. And, indeed, helloooo Miss Zeta-Jones...just when you think there can't be old-school movie stars...

June 25: Fahrenheit 9/11. The Brothers Weinstein (although, c'mon, you know it was all Harvey), to no one's surprise, are going around Disney to release documentary's biggest blowhard Michael Moore's latest Palme d'Or winning polemic. That said, I'm excited to see it--supposedly less Moore, more damning Bush footage. And if it means more bad press for the Bush Administration...One comment though: It's being released by a group founded purely for this purpose, and those crazy Weinsteins decided to name it The Fellowship Adventure Group. Wha-a? What were they on when they came up with that one? I mean, can we expect some Hobbits and wizened old wizards to be involved with this? And did anyone look at the abbreviation? Just saying...

June 30: Spider-Man 2. What can I say? The first one wasn't bad, I'm kinda sorta into the comic book superheroes. It's just...Kirsten Dunst is not acceptable and Tobey Maguire just keeps getting worse. But the elderly woman v.o. in the trailer? Superb. Nothing says good summer fun like moralizing old ladies. And steel-tentacled men. And spidey suits.