Favorite Favorites

To cap off the Practice of Theory series, I’d like to put my money where my mouth is and talk about a few of my favorite films and why they’re my favorite.  The last thing you ever want to do is ask a film student what his or her favorite film is.  I heard a joke once, that the answer will either be ‘it depends on the genre’ or ‘Citizen Kane’.  So rather than mention a few films and tell you why I like each of them, I’ll lay out a few things that I like to see in films, and then list a few that exemplify them. 

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As a filmmaker, I really love movies about movies, perhaps in the same way that a doctor might love Patch Adams or Awakening...or Robin Williams.  Films about film are self-reflexive, which means that they comment on their own creation and reflect on their own existence - they are meta-cinematic.  Film history and film production is a fascinating subject for a film, because it is often peopled with artful, if not artistic, characters and infamous events.  Some of my favorites are Fellini’s 8 ½, Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, the Coen Brothers’ Barton Fink, and Altman’s The Player.  These films take a self-deprecating, even cynical look at artistic creation, and at the less than idealistic motives that drive the film industry. 

Also, I like films that make you think, or that even confuse you.  And I also like highly stylized films -films that use technical elements (lighting, camera, color, sound, location, etc) to achieve an effect or create a certain look.  The directors I’m thinking of here are Kubrick, Tarkovsky, and Sorrentino.  A film like 2001 or Stalker or Il Divo (which are by these three directors, respectively) has a distinctive style.  Style is crafted through precise choices, to project a certain feel, or to express something about the theme, story, characters, or ethics.  These films are both stunning to watch and fascinating to think about. 

I like films that simply tell a good story, regardless of how much the camera moves, or whether the colors are stylized.  Films that I could watch over and over for the story as well as the aesthetics are October Sky, Gran Torino, Cold Mountain, Ocean’s 11, Imitation of Life, Blade Runner, Say Anything, Meet the Parents, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Raising Arizona, Shawshank Redemption, High Fidelity, and Benny and Joon.  They’re special to me for their ability to tell a damn good story, to make me laugh, or make me feel something deeply.  These are all fairly mainstream films that probably won’t show up in too many film theory text books or be taught in many Film Aesthetics classrooms, unfortunately.  But when someone asks me my favorite film, it is often one of these that first comes to mind.       

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Epilogue

[written in June...]

I write this all on the night before my Film Aesthetics final exam [with heavy revisions two months after the fact, now that I am finally posting this].  Tomorrow I will have three hours to write an essay answering one question.  I’ll have to show that I understand something about Film Aesthetics and can articulate my own opinions amid those of the theorists and critics.  Feeling pretty nervous tonight, I can say with absolute certainty that both film theory and film practice will be intertwined in my own future projects, and I know that what I’ve begun this year will be the start of a lifetime effort to the answer that eternal question, What is Film?   

Practice of Theory: Part III

One thing I've learned is that all schools of film theory come down to three simple statements.  A theorist says either: (1) Films are _____________; (2) Films should ______________; or (3) Films can ____________.   (I'll spend more time exploring the first of these, and then briefly touch on the other two.) 

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Films are...

Theories of the first statement (“Films are”) are those most properly called ‘theory’.  These theories attempt to describe the essence of Cinema.  What is this Thing that we call a film?   How do we define it - not on a narrative level or a technical level - but on a fundamental level.  Can we find a definition that transcends genre, film history, or style?

Writers like Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze write about the ontology of film – what film is, essentially.  This is an unanswerable question in my opinion, because it's like trying to staple water to a tree.  Any attempt to pin it down, to say film is this and not that, will be far too reductive and limiting.  And any attempt to conceive of film more broadly will be too general to be even useful.  (Here, I am paraphrasing V.F. Perkins’s sentiments about film theory in his book Film as Film, 1993.)

We can enumerate certain qualities of the film medium, something that theorist Rudolf Arnheim did, to illustrate how film fundamentally differs from reality.  Now it's pretty obvious that films are not the same as real life - anyone who's seen a Disney film can testify to this!  But if we see how film *on its fundamental, philosophical level* is different from reality as we experience it, this opens up some interesting avenues for debate.  It also brings us closer to understanding what film actually is. 

Here's a summary of what Arnheim says about these differences in his book Film as Art (1928). . . .

Film records something that is three-dimensional in the real world, and projects it onto a screen in two dimensions.

Film compresses the depth of the actual thing being photographed; it changes the relative size of an objet from how it would look when viewed in real life. 

When we watch a film we use the senses of sight and sound, whereas in real life we use all five senses.

In a film, light and color are often perceived differently than in real life, and in the case of black and white films, the difference from reality is pretty obvious (unless you live in the movie Pleasantville). 

Newer technology is challenging some of these atributes.  3D, high-definition, surround sound, and CGI are just a few of the advances that (paradoxically) can make a film more life-like, but can also make it more cinematic. (A curious argument has even been made that black & white films are more life-like than color films). 

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Writing about what film is does not often have obvious application to film production, or to critiquing the achievements of an individual film.  However, it is a foundational area of film theory and criticism, because often the more practical theories of film are based on assumptions about Film’s ontology.

For my own opinion, I tend to agree more with Perkins, who explores this issue very deeply in his work.  I will attempt to lay out a very rough definition that explains my view.  

Films are. . . . .  

Nope, can't do it.  I can’t think of a positive statement without a question creeping up which would have to qualify that statement.  Most prominently among these questions is, what do we even mean when we say ‘film’?   

Do we mean the flat image on the screen in the theatre?  Do we mean the *idea* of the film that the viewer has in mind while she is watching it?  Do we mean the production process that goes into making a film?  Do we mean the exchange between the viewer’s mind and what’s on the screen? Or even, do we mean the reel of several thousand meters of film inside of a canister that gets loaded into a projector?  "What is cinema?" is the question that eludes answers but that provokes the search for answers.  (What Is Cinema? is also the title of Andre Bazin’s seminal two-volume work on film.)

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Films should....  & Films can....

The second statement (‘Films should ________’) would indicate a prescriptive film theory.  The third (‘Films can ________’) indicates a descriptive film theory.  This is an important distinction. 

Some theorists think filmmakers should create their work according to certain principles and desired effects that 'the cinema' is best suited for.  Other theorists, by contrast, seek to describe what films are good at doing, while leaving room for the often vast differences between individual films.  

For film in general, I certainly ascribe more to a descriptive theory; however, for my own pursuits in filmmaking, I would like to eventually put on paper a more prescriptive theory, one that would take into account my own moral and ethical aims as an artist.  This is another topic for another article though.  Besides, I'm starting to get my fill of theory anyway... 

Practice of Theory: Part II

Continuing from yesterday's post, some of these questions we might ask about viewership are:

How much do a person’s preconceptions about an actor/director/genre/etc follow him into the theatre and color his reaction to the film? 

How does a film manage to provoke an emotional response from a viewer, causing him to sympathize or empathize with a character who is not actually real? 

Does the viewer use senses or perceptions other than sight and hearing while experiencing a film?  

In other words, what else do we do besides “watch” and “hear” a film? 

There is much more to viewership than just vision.

This brings me to the notion of film and thought – a ripe area for study.  Theorist Gilles Deleuze is most famous for making connections between cinema and philosophy.  He says that both film and philosophy are concerned with two major issues: movement and time. 

Movement of many sorts is implicit in the term ‘motion pictures’.  Films also can tricks our sense of our position in space.  A hand-held camera replicates the feel and perspective of walking, whereas a tracking shot suggests the feeling of floating or gliding. 

Time is needed to take in a film – it cannot be watched entirely all at one time, like a painting or a sculpture that can be seen instantly as a whole.  Unlike these other art forms, film occupies time as well as space.

It has been suggested that film, by its very nature, works in a way that is similar to the human mind.  This is a useful analogy when we examine how cinema is different from other arts and how it differs from real life.  Theorist Erwin Panofsky said that film, by its very nature is the "spatialization of time, and the dynamization of space."  This means that, in a way that is different from any other art form, film can manipulate time and space to achieve an effect or to present a semblance of reality.  I'll explain in a little more detail.

"Dynamization of Space"

A film can show one event taking place in one location at one time, and then instantaneously the film can cut to a completely different event in a different place and time.  For example, we can be at the police station where the detective is questioning a witness, and instantly in the next scene, it cuts to the gangster hide-out at the old train station, where Mugsy is counting his stolen cash. 

In the physical world, our bodies are bound by the space-time continuum - we cannot transport across spaces instantaneously - but in our mind’s eye we can "be" (and "see") any place as soon as we think of it.  It is the same in film.  This "dynamization of space" effect happens in smaller units too.  One minute we can be looking at a profile shot of two cowboys in a duel, and the next minute we are looking straight on at a close-up of one cowboy's eyes.   In the physical world, obviously our perspectives do not change in this instantaneous way.  Film grants us this special motive power that is otherwise restricted to our imaginations.

"Spatialization of Time"

Just as fim can jump between different locations, film can also jump between different times, and (except in the TV show 24) always does.  In the real world, time is a constant factor, moving forward at an unchanging rate.  A film, however, can jump from now to three hours from now, to ten years from now, to fifty years ago, or to 30 seconds from now.  Films frequently jump over things that can be explained by their (more dramatic) results.  When a scene between a guy and a girl begins with "Honey, I can explain!" and then jump cuts to the girl slapping the guy, we can kinda fill in the details.

Time is truly a dimension within which the content of the film is free to move.  As an element of narrative, film-time is "spatialized" because writers and directors can move and shape time to better tell the story. 

This unique quality of cinema, along with film's ability to manipulate space, are two of the things which distinguish it from real life and from other art forms.  For this reason, the Formalist school of thought insists that filmmakers should make the most of these qualities, rather than try to simulate reality as it is normally experienced in everyday life.  (This is an idea I'd like to explore more in another essay.)    

This connection between film and thought – film and philosophy – is something that interests me and that I would like to research further, but for now I’ll stick to some broader ideas about theory and practice.

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Continuing on, tomorrow I'll post Part III, where I'll talk about...you guessed it!  More theory!  

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The Practice of Theory: A Theory of Practice

This is Part I of a four-part series, where I will elaborate on some of the things I've learned during the past year studying Film Aesthetics.  I spent all year trying to come up with a satisfying answer for when people would ask me "What exactly is Film Aesthetics?"  I still don't think I've come up with an answer.  But here are some things I think are valuable, for new filmmakers and new film critics alike, to understand. I'll make some generalizations, but I'll also try to explain some things.  I know this topic is not of interest to everyone, but for those who do read it, think of it more as an essay (an "attempt") than as a blog post.  I wrote this all back in June, on my last night of prepping for my final exam. 

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Part I

In the tradition of the great cinéastes – the likes of Truffaut, Godard, and their cohorts – I want to put into words what I think is most important about filmmaking and film theory.  These men were filmmakers in the French New Wave as well as film critics in the influential journal Cahiers du Cinema.  After spending a year being barraged by theories, models, terms, and critics, while wanting all along just to prepare myself for making my own films one day, I’ve come to see the value in the wide array of film theory & criticism that has been published over the last century...or at least some of it. 

One of the first things that helped me understand this beast I was studying is this: the difference between so-called Cognitive Theories and Psychoanalytic Theories.  Both of these refer to what’s going on with the viewer while he or she watches the film.  Is the viewer actively analyzing the stimuli in front of him, engaging with the story and the images, thinking about what they make him think and feel?  This is what the Cognitive theorists would argue – that the viewer is in control of the impressions he gets from the film. 

Psychoanalytic theorists, by contrast, would say that the viewer is being acted upon by the subconscious associations that are implicit in the film, and that he is not aware of how his psyche is being affected by the story and images.  Rather than being able to think about concrete meanings in what he is seeing, the viewer is subconsciously swayed by how the film portrays people and situations. 

An important concept for Psychoanalytic critics is the concept of the ‘gaze’.  The gaze is the particular way that the film allows the viewer to view something or someone.  Often this concept can take on a political slant, such as when a female character is pictured from a point of view associated with a male character. 

For a filmmaker, having an opinion on the processes by which a person perceives a film, is of utmost importance.  If the director wishes to make the audience think or feel something, he must have conception of how a viewer is made to think or feel something.  To some degree, this depends on the individual viewer, as well as on the individual film.  Summer blockbusters operate on the intention of making the audience feel sympathy for the character, suspense when the character doesn’t know something that we know, and to side with him against his adversaries.  Often, mainstream Hollywood films do not leave much room for ambiguity within this model.  By the same token, some audience members simply want to be entertained in exchange for their ticket money, and some movies deliver just that – entertainment.  However, for a filmmaker who believes films have a deeper potential than this, bearing in mind how viewership actually works will most certainly affect the director's creative choices. 

For myself, I think that viewership functions somewhere between the two models outlined above.  We shall take as a given, of course, that not every viewer is the same.  However, we can go deeper than that and ask questions about viewership that relate to human beings in general and our commonalities, when it comes to our perception and appreciation of art.   

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Tomorrow, look for Part II on Film and the Mind.

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Little Nemo: Adventures in Allegory

Little Nemo is an oft-overlooked 1989 animated film, a Japanese/American co-production, about a little boy who can't help but dream.  The film, which took twelve years to bring into being, is based on characters from a 1910s comic strip called "Little Nemo in Slumberland."  With striking visuals, a screenplay co-written by Chris Columbus (The Goonies), and a story concept by Ray Bradbury, this film deserves some attention.

The film centers on Nemo, a little boy in 1900s suburban New York, who gets pulled into one of his dreams about a magical place called Slumberland.  This land is ruled by King Morpheus and his daughter Princess Camille, who invite Nemo to be a playmate for the princess and to become the King's future heir.  Nemo receives guidance and etiquette lessons from a man named Professor Genius.  Morpheus gives Nemo a key that will open any door in the kingdom, but warns him that there is one door he must never open - the door that locks away the Nightmare King.  Flip, a mischievous rebel clown, peer-pressures Nemo into opening the door, just a little, to see what's inside.  Doing so, Nemo releases unknown evil into the pristine and wholly-good Slumberland, resulting in King Morpheus's kidnapping during Nemo's coronation.  With the help of Flip and his questionable map of Nightmare Land, Nemo bravely ventures to the Nightmare Castle to do battle and rescue King Morpheus. 

This movie is a relic of my childhood.  I fondly remember watching it many times on a crackly VHS tape that was recorded from television.  I recently rewatched the film with my Mom (this time on YouTube), because I was thinking about the religious overtones that it strongly suggests.  If we take these overtones seriously, whether or not they were intended by the filmmakers, we can easily read Little Nemo as an allegory for the Christian paradigm of original sin in Adam, and salvation and redemption in Christ.           

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Slumberland/Eden

Take for example Slumberland itself: it is perfect, happy, harmonious.  The one time we see police officers, they are napping in the police stations, suggesting that there are never any crimes or disturbances.  Slumberland (which looks a little bit like Naboo) has the best of everything, and it functions as a monarchical kingdom.  Complete with gardens and many good things to eat, Slumberland's resemlances to Eden are obvious.  Caught in a rainstorm, Nemo, Princess Camille, and their companion Bon-Bon hang their clothes out to dry and are meanwhile clothed in orbs of glowing light.  This minor detail underscores the comparison of Nemo and the Princess to Adam and Eve, who, as many Bible scholars say, were not naked in the conventional sense but were clothed in a protective covering of God's glory, which was lost at the Fall.

When Morpheus gives Nemo the key to the kingdom, he gives him only one explicit restriction.  Flip fills the role of the serpent, tempting Nemo into transgressing Morpheus's command.  On one level the incident is a lesson for youngsters about peer pressure, and it extends one of the film's themes about keeping and breaking promises.  But on a more allegorical level, it portrays the central act of the Fall of Man, fusing a Christian idea with a Pandora's Box-like image of opening and unleashing evil. 

Not Yo' Mamma's Lucifer

The baddie in Little Nemo is a lot scarier than the baddies in a lot of current children's films.  I was always struck by the depiction of the villain in this film, because the hell imagery suggests that the hero's adversary is capital E Evil itself.  The Nightmare King is depicted with horns, red eyes, and a Darth Vader-esque voice.  The inside of Nightmare Castle looks a lot like the classical depiction of hell, dressed with cavernous expanses, pools of light and shadow, stalactites and stalagmites, and grinding noises (perhaps gnashing of teeth?).  

Behind the door that Nemo opens is a vast, oozing inky blackness - a physical, material substance.  The film is not clear whether this substance is the Nightmare King shapeshifted into this form, the force of Evil, or some medium in which Evil resides.  The fact that this "Evil" is shut up behind a long-locked door under the streets of Slumberland hints at some earlier battle that resulted in its containment.  In the same way, the Bible (and Milton) depict a battle between God and Lucifer before the universe began.   

Fall from Grace

The release of evil into Slumberland results in Nemo's fall from grace, after King Morpheus is bound and captured by the vine-like bands that steal him away.  The sequence  following this is one of the film's topsy-turvy blendings of Nemo's dream world with his home world.  After getting mobbed by an angry crowd at the coronation, he wakes up in his bed, thinking it was all a dream.  But his house is suddenly flooded by crashing waves and he ends upfloating on his bed in the middle of an endless, still sea.  He has sinned and is cast out of the Garden, so to speak. 

While caught in the doldrums, Nemo sees a waterspot that takes the form of King Morpheus before collapsing back into the sea.  Nemo then expresses his sincere sincere remorse for what he has done.  Soon after, Professor Genius floats by on a suitcase.  The two devise a plan for rescuing the King, and then paddle their way back to Slumberland.  Perhaps we can read this sequence on the water as a period of purgatory that Nemo must undergo.     

The Second Adam

While Nemo falls from grace, King Morpheus falls from power, leaving behind his magic scepter to Nemo's responsibility.  Continuing the allegory, this fall from power and descent into bondage represents Christ's humiliation and death on the cross.  Going even further, Morpheus is held captive within the hell-like caverns of the Nightmare Castle; this could be read as representing Christ's descent into hell.  Morpheus's fall from power represents Christ's giving up of power.

This is where the cool thing happens.

When he goes to rescue the King, Nemo transitions from an Adam figure to a Christ figure, a second Adam.  Nemo uses the King's scepter to do battle in Nightmare Castle, using the incantation that the King had used at Nemo's coronation.  He takes on Morpheus's mantle of power, using his words, to defeat evil.  I see this as an allegorical representation of Christ's defeat of evil at the cross.  Christ is called the Second Adam many times in scripture because he stands in Adam's (Man's) place to take the punishment for sin. 

What's more, He dies on the cross and is resurrected and restored to glory by the Father. After Nemo defeats the Nightmare King, he is overwhelmed and appears to die, or at least pass out.  Nightmare Land explodes in light, and the churning lava and fire are replaced by ice and snow.  King Morpheus, Princess Camille, the Professor, and Flip (who had all been captured and placed in some kind of cryogenic sleep) are suddenly released.  Finding Nemo lying on the ground, Morpheus uses his scepter to revive Nemo, resurrecting him even. 

The following scene shows Slumberland restored to its former state of happiness, as Nemo and the Princess float away on a dirigible back to Nemo's real world. 

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The thing I like about Little Nemo - other than its allegorical storyline, its imaginative characters, its disorienting editing and dream sequences - is the fact that it doesn't fall back on the "If you just believe in yourself, all will be well" idea that many children's film have.  Nemo must 'do something about it', but he doesn't act fully out of his own power either.  Even if we ignore the film's allegorical implications, the film is firmly rooted in the idea of taking action and keeping one's word.  Sin must be paid for, but redemption is the ultimate finale.      

Mob Week - The Consequences of Sorrentino

As many of us know, July 30 through August 5 is AMC's Mob Week.  So far, I've caught the restaraunt scene in The Godfather Part I, and the beginning of The Godfather Part II.  Despite my pitiable show of affection for Mob Week, I'd like to use the occasion to highlight one of my favorite contemporary directors, Paolo Sorrentino.

A native of Naples, Italy who's barely in his 40s, Sorrentino has the rhythm of a musician in his editing style, and visuals are as sharp and shiny as cut glass.  He's been rightly called the love child of Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Federico Fellini (here).  So far his films haven't been noticed by the Hollywood mainstream, most of his acclaim coming from the festival circuit.  However, he is certainly gaining notice far outside of Italy - perhaps his recent feature starring Sean Penn, This Must Be the Place, will help with that too.


This Must Be the Place (2011)

Set in Ireland and the U.S., This Must Be the Place is about an aging rock star, Cheyenne (based on Robert Smith of The Cure), who sets out to confront the ex-Nazi war criminal who tortured his father during the Holocaust - and in the process, finally grows up.  It has an almost Wes Anderson-style of dry humor and poignancy, and long takes that convey its grotesque yet deeply emotional undercurrent. Frances McDormand contrasts Penn's character as his energetic, health-concsious (and normal-looking) wife.  Sorrentino also brings in David Byrne as himselfe, lead singer of Talking Heads, to play one of Cheyenne's friends.  Part bildungsroman, part biopic, Sorrentino's first English-language film must not necessarily be the place to start if you want to get a sense of Sorrentino style as a director.

His pace slows down and his storytelling scope becomes more focused in this, his latest film.  His previous features have focused on Italian politics and the runnings of the Mafia, but they have always kept an intense focus on character, which is what Sorrentino chiefly does in This Must Be the Place.   Here's my take on two of his earlier films, ones which contrast organized crime with the breathing, bleeding human being that plays a central part in it.


The Consequences of Love (2004)

Staring Tony Servillo, The Consequences of Love is about a seemingly emotionless man who lives in a hotel in Switzerland.  Regularly, he delivers money to a bank account as a pawn for the Mafia.  Also, he's addicted to heroine. 

A few sequences stand out.  Each time he make the cash deliveries, Sorrentino dresses the scene with serio-comic, highly stylized music and editing.  It looks like a James Bond intro and a Jaguar commercial crashed into each other on the Autobahn.  The first couple of minutes of this.

Long takes are one of Sorrentino's specialties: the opening shot (doubling for the title sequence) is a 2-min. static shot of a bellboy traveling down a moving sidewalk.  Sorrentino is also a master of the moving camera.  When  Servillo's character sits on his hotel bed and shoots up heroine, the camera moves from a front medium shot, goes 180 degrees over his head and down the other side of the bed, while the music swells and the drug enters his body.   Acrobatic sequences like this contrast with quieter dialogue- and monologue-driven scenes.  Sorrentino's knack for conveying a stylized portrait of an inwardly tortured man continues in his political biopic, Il Divo.


Il Divo (2008)

Servillo returns to play Giulio Adreotti, who was Italy's long-reigning Prime Minister, with a political career lasting from the 50s to the 90s.   The film explores the various deaths connected with Andreotti's career and his alleged Mafia ties.  Stylistically, the film is breathtaking, and in certain places, funny.  Such as when Andreotti stares down a cat that has one blue eye and one green eye.  Narratively, you could probably get more out of the story that this film has to tell if you are familiar with Italian politics, which I am not.  But, that doesn't mean it's not worth your while.  Sorrentino said that he wanted to create for the audience the sense of being a spectator of the political scandals of Andreotti's life, flashbulbs and all.  In fact, the film's subtitle is "The Spectacular Life of Giulio Andreotti."  

The latter half of the film lags a bit by trying to compress a lot of historical details into the narrative in a short amount of time.  The film overall, however, is a beautifully conducted symphony of private monologue, musical anachronism, interactive text, and a camera with moves that would rival Beyonce's.  The trailer says it best.

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If for no other reason, watch Sorrentino's films for their music.  He's found a fusion between music and image that few filmmakers have achieved.  And his body of work shows that he's much more than a director of "gangster pictures."  That being said, I'd love to turn on AMC's Mob Week in a few years and see Il Divo or Consequences.   The Godfather, Scarface, and Goodfellas have had a good run.