Before We All Get Too Excited About The Artist…

Yes, I know. It’s really something, isn’t it? This time last year, did you expect a black-and-white and (mostly) silent movie to win Best Picture? No, of course you didn’t. For this reason alone, The Artist winning Best Picture is something to celebrate. It also helps that it’s a pretty good movie, too. Even for those of us who had some problems with the film, it’s hard to get caught up in the usual Best Picture backlash. It’s just so darned loveable.

But I can’t help but think that part of the reason why the Academy and the majority of critics have been showering so much praise on The Artist is the hope that if a lot of people see it and are charmed by it, they will seek out more silent movies and discover the joys of Lang, Murnau, Chaplin and Keaton. Yes, that would be fantastic. And maybe some people will do that. But unfortunately, I don’t think that The Artist will lead to a mass rediscovery of silent film by the movie-going public.

Part of that has to do with the fact that a Best Picture might not be enough to convince people to see a silent movie. It is possible that the Weinstein machine can provide The Artist with a success similar to The King’s Speech from last year, but I think The Artist will probably end up looking more like The Hurt Locker and No Country for Old Men.

But even if The Artist draws a large post-Oscar audience, it still won’t convince people to seek out silent films. I know this because as charming as the movie was, one of the most dispiriting moments I have ever experienced in a movie theater occurred during this movie (spoilers ahead). Yes, The Artist is a silent movie for the most part. And for the most part, seeing a silent movie is a packed theater with an audience that was enjoying it was an exhilarating experience. And they were enjoying it. But like I said, The Artist is not an entirely silent film. There’s a nice dream sequence where George Valentin’s subconscious is seemingly taken over by a Foley crew that forgot to ADR his voice (why was this scene, a scene with sound, chosen by the Oscars to highlight Jean Dujardin’s silent performance?). But there’s also a moment at the end when George Valentin finally makes the transition to talkies and sound comes in for good. As we heard the characters speak for the first time, some people in the audience began to applaud, and my heart sank. To be fair, it wasn’t the entire audience applauding; it was probably about five people. But I think this audience reaction reflects a truth about The Artist and the people who have seen it.

The hardest part of getting people to watch classic movies is convincing them that there isn’t something missing when a movie is silent or in black and white, that these movies aren’t broken versions of “normal” movies, that in fact, being silent or in black and white (or both) can actually make a movie better. This is a little easier to do with black and white than it is with silents. Most people are already familiar with black and white from TV Land, music videos and sometimes modern mainstream cinema even if they’ve never seen a movie made before 1980.

It’s a little harder to convince people to watch silent movies. Now, it could be that I make this distinction because, while I was raised on black and white movies, I wasn’t raised on silents. But the more that I think about, the more this seems like it might be a common experience, even among cinephiles. I think this is probably because black and white remained part of the entertainment experience for a long time after the introduction of color, while silent cinema disappeared fairly quickly after the transition to sound. Not only were a great number of movies still being made in black and white, television was almost exclusively in black and white for many years. Television was never silent. Children born in the Sixties were still accustomed to watching movies and TV in black and white. For them to show their favorite movies to their children (my generation), they would most likely have to show black and white movies at some point. I don’t recall ever complaining about watching a black and white movie as a child. I have no way of knowing if my experience is a common one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is.

My point is that while black and white was still considered to be a normal way of watching movies for a long time, silent cinema quickly became something abnormal, either the domain of academia or something that was too silly to be taken seriously as entertainment. This makes it even harder to convince a modern audience to watch silent movies.

Unfortunately, The Artist simply doesn’t do a very good job of convincing the audience that there isn’t something missing from the movie. Most of this is due to the fact that, despite what you may have heard, The Artist is not a silent movie. It is a parody of silent movies. A loving parody to be sure, but it’s primarily concerned with gently spoofing the conventions of silent cinema rather than really trying to create a silent movie. To convince an audience that a silent movie is not missing something, the audience should not be aware that the movie is silent. With The Artist, the audience is constantly aware that it is watching a silent movie. Maybe it would be impossible to make the audience forget that the movie is silent, but The Artist doesn’t really make an attempt to do this. The most obvious example is the fact that the movie uses sound. The ending reveals to the audience that not only was the movie missing sound, but that the filmmakers have been withholding sound from the audience. Sound in The Artist essentially becomes the shark in Jaws, something that the audience wants to see (or, in this case, hear), but the director is keeping away from us.

But there are less obvious ways in which The Artist is telling the audience that sound is missing from the movie. Let’s take just about any dialogue scene in the film. Obviously, this story requires people to talk with each other, but the problem is that Michel Hazanavicius shoots his dialogue scenes as if he is shooting a sound movie. There is usually at least a minute of cutting between rather boring medium shots of two characters moving their mouths with no words coming out, intercut with title cards. The instinctive reaction of the audience is to notice that something is missing. Hazanavicius wants the audience to know that something is missing. He wants us to recognize that we are watching a silent film because, of course, the nature of parody requires that we know what is being parodied.

If Hazanavicius really wanted to pay homage to silent cinema, why not try to create a truly great silent film, one that convinces the audience that it is watching a movie and allows it to forget about the fact that the sound is gone? Silent filmmakers like F.W. Murnau knew that too many title cards would break the spell of the story, so they had to use visual ingenuity in order to tell stories with pictures. The best moments in The Artist come when it uses its visual strengths, and these usually come from the physicality of the performances.

But the greatest strength of silent cinema is in its ability to create an experience that is dreamlike and completely unreal. To do this, the filmmakers have to convince the audience that silence is a good thing. In Murnau’s Sunrise, what could the husband possibly say to his wife after he has tried to murder her? What words could make her love him again? Instead of words, Murnau gives us pure emotion that he creates entirely from images. As his camera glides behind the couple while they walk heedlessly through the traffic of a big city, we know all that we need to know. Words are unnecessary.

We can understand the greatness of silent cinema through silent masterpieces like Sunrise, but we can also look at the early talkies. If we look at Fritz Lang’s M, we’ll see a sound film that barely has any sound. Since Lang was visionary silent film director, he knew the true power of silence and sound. There are extraordinarily suspenseful passages of silence in M, and when they are broken (most often by the murderer whistling The Hall of the Mountain King), the effect is chilling.

But what is perhaps more enlightening is to look at how, in many ways, early sound films were inferior to silent pictures. Take Victor Halperin’s 1932 film White Zombie. The movie is pretty lackluster, not to mention uncomfortably racist, and at 69 minutes, nearly interminable. Part of this may be due to the terrible condition of the picture on the DVD, but it’s mostly due to some truly bad performances. The exception is Bela Lugosi, who knew how to use his voice to create an unearthly and memorable character, just like he did in Tod Browning’s Dracula, which also surrounds him with normal characters whose performances have not aged well, particularly Dwight Frye whose fingernails-on-the-chalkboard performance nearly kills the wonderfully atmospheric first act of Browning’s film. Though White Zombie makes some occasionally good uses of sound, it mostly creaks along until a surprisingly lyrical and visually poetic silent climactic sequence. The movie immediately becomes better, more haunting, and more dreamlike without the sound. Several scenes in Browning’s Dracula work the same way (I love those long shots of mist rolling across the lawn of the mansion). As much as I would miss the sound of Lugosi’s voice, much of White Zombie (and probably Dracula, too) would work better as silent.

The highest function of combining black and white and silence is to make a movie much more unreal and dreamlike. Maybe this is why The Artist could only really function as a self-conscious silent movie. The story is too dependent on reality, too dependent on meetings and financial troubles to create the dreamlike effect that is the pinnacle of silent cinema. Instead of making an obviously silent film, why not pursue Murnau’s dream of making a silent film that can function without title cards? This is what is necessary to convince an audience that silent cinema is just as legitimate as sound. Otherwise, it’s just a strange kind of novelty, a funny way that people used to watch movies. A movie that gets people to look at silent cinema has to convince them that they will enjoy a silent movie just as much as they would enjoy one with sound. The audience that I saw The Artist with surely enjoyed the movie, but the ones who clapped toward the end were relieved that sound had returned. If you make a truly great silent movie, the audience shouldn’t miss sound at all. They should realize that if people come to the movies for dreams, then silent movies are the most dreamlike of all.

A Celebration of Cinema

Lists are kind of silly aren’t they? Particularly lists of movies, and most particularly, those that rank movies. I wish I could say that this was my reason for not really doing a Top 10 list this year, that I came to some epiphany about the pointlessness of making lists like that. No, the truth is that I was kind of lazy and kept pushing it back. And when I started thinking about it (after all, who’s rules would I be breaking to post a Top 10 list in February?), I realized how silly it would be to exclude a bunch of movies and hold up ten as THE BEST, especially when there are still so many films from last year that I haven’t seen yet. Instead of telling you what I think are the best films of 2011, why not just celebrate all that I loved about film last year, especially since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is doing the same thing tonight? To be fair, this will look very similar to a Top 10 list, but I think it’ll be less rigid, more relaxed. Whose rules do we have to follow anyway? Will I return to the usual format of the Top 10 list next year? Maybe. We’ll see how this goes. I might do this again next year, just, you know, earlier.

So, let’s get started with my favorite movies of 2011, in order:

Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life may have been one of the main reasons why I postponed making my list. I absolutely loved it when it came out last May, saw it three times in the theater, and it became my de facto favorite movie of the year. Yet in the months that I went without seeing it, I began to question my reaction to it? Was it really the soaring cinematic achievement that I thought it was, or had I just been going along with the standard critical opinion? I knew that I needed to see it again before declaring it to be the Best Film of the Year.

And after seeing it for a fourth time, it remains my favorite film of 2011. I am still in awe of Malick’s ambition, which is no less than to capture all of existence into one film. Yet, ambition alone is not sufficient to make a great film. The (in)famous sequence depicting the creation of the universe is not a random IMAX documentary dropped into the film. It is a glorious ballet of light, color, sound and music. The memories of 1950s Texas, which make up the bulk of the film are meandering and seemingly disconnected, but they are a fantastic evocation of childhood. It is ironic that a movie that spans the entire history of the universe could create such an incredibly distinct sense of time and place.

Yet, Malick’s focus also goes smaller and deeper. When a wounded dinosaur (yes, there are dinosaurs in this movie) struggles helplessly under the foot of a predator, Malick is asking: what is the value of life, something so frail that it can disappear in an instant? Watch the way that Malick’s camera (guided by the amazing cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeski; here’s hoping he finally gets his Oscar tonight) moves through a playground full of children, and you’ll see that Malick has his answer. We keep expecting that he’ll focus on one of our main characters, but he doesn’t. He just keeps moving through. Any one of these children would be worthy subjects of a movie. Malick’s camera often glances around at other people who wander in and out the frame. There is, after all, nothing all that special about the O’Brien family, but for Malick, they are worthy subjects of a film simply because they have lived. The events that happen to them are normal and happen to many people. The father tries to accomplish great things, but ultimately his greatest accomplishment is simply having a family. For Malick, that is enough. For Malick, every human, every plant, every dinosaur, every life is worth something. What a wonderful, joyous, life-affirming film this is.

Woody Allen is at the top of his form as a writer and a director with Midnight in Paris, an exhilarating delight of a movie. Yes, there is an element of (thankfully unexplained) magic in the film, but the magic is present in art, music and the joys of a great city. This is a film about seeking wonderful things, and not closing our minds to them, no matter what age they are from, whether they are living or dead. In a year filled with nostalgia in cinema, Allen finds the perfect way to deal with it. Maybe nostalgia is denial (as the pedantic professor says), but there are still many things to celebrate in the past. And of course, the movie itself is an absolute joy from start to finish, with a wonderfully crafted screenplay, expert direction and a pitch-perfect ending.

Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins is one of the very best action pictures to come along in recent years. It depicts a group of (you guessed it) 13 assassins who are ordered to kill a feudal lord who is so sadistic, so narcissistically pleased with his evil nature that he makes other recent movie villains pale in comparison. The first half of the film is an intricately plotted set up for the heart-pounding, gloriously violent second half, when the 13 assassins take on the feudal lord and his 200 bodyguards. As pure spectacle and entertainment, it works majestically. But it’s also an intriguing study about the nature of authority and disobedience. On the one hand, this is an elegy for the samurai era, which is already coming to close with the approach of the Meiji Restoration. The samurai in this film gladly sacrifice their individual lives to protect society, but on the other hand, their mission is to disobey authority, to kill a lord who is dangerous to society precisely because he thinks that individuals below him must sacrifice themselves for his pleasure. The eternal tension between the individual and society, always present in the samurai film, is at the heart of 13 Assassins, not as an obvious message, but as a fascinating argument, an argument that is ultimately fought out with arrows and swords (and don’t forget the exploding bulls).

Criminally overlooked by the Oscars, The Interrupters is an extraordinarily powerful and moving documentary about former gang members in Chicago placing themselves into the line of fire to stop gang violence. The film takes place over the course of an entire year in which Chicago essentially becomes a war zone. Director Steve James uses interviews and harrowing footage to create a distinct sense of time and place. But though this is an emotionally devastating film about unspeakable tragedies, it’s not depressing. It’s about families being ripped apart, but also about communities coming together to heal themselves. Despite all of the tragedies, there is so much joy in this film. This is a film about life, not just death.

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is a joy to behold, a movie filled with the magic and wonder of cinema. As a family picture, Hugo succeeds beautifully, telling the story of a young boy living in a Paris train station in the 1930s. Scorsese shows a surprising ability for physical comedy and harrowing adventure. His visual imagination knows no bounds, with a camera that glides around the train station with the same ease as Murnau’s camera in his silent films. Yet, this is also the story of an old man (I won’t say who he is, for those of you who haven’t seen the movie) who feels that he is past the prime of his life and has locked away the memories of his youth. In this way, Hugo bears a striking resemblance to Pixar’s Up, that other great recent children’s movie that isn’t really for children. Both films are about old men who, with the help of children, are able to reclaim the dreams of their youths. There is danger in this film, despair and tragedy, but there is also joy and wonder. I had an enormous smile on my face for the entirety of this movie.

Take Shelter looks and feels like a quiet, indie drama, but even at the beginning there is a growing dread in this film, and it slowly reveals itself to be an emotional and powerful tour de force. Michael Shannon should have received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a well-mannered, well-respected husband and father in the rural Midwest who begins to have visions of the apocalypse. Knowing that his family has a history of mental illness, he talks to counselors and tries to seek treatment. But just in case he isn’t crazy, he also begins preparing for a coming storm, to the growing alarm of his neighbors, his coworkers and his family. Shannon’s performance is a masterpiece of acting, and the scene when he finally explodes in public is a towering, heart-stopping storm unto itself. This is a film about a man driven to protect his family at all costs. He just doesn’t know if he has to protect them from the apocalypse or from himself.

One of the great cinematic sagas came to a close last year with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Perhaps inevitably, the conclusion has some difficulty standing on its own as a film, but the emotional power of the climax more than makes up for that. A great deal of that power comes from the fact that the film succeeds surprisingly well as a battle piece, rivaling such masterpieces as Zulu and Gettysburg. The preparations for the battle at Hogwarts are some of the finest of that variety in cinema, and the huge number of casualties creates a real sense of devastation and loss. In the three times that I’ve seen it, Harry’s last conversation with Hermione and Ron before he walks out to the forest never fails to put a lump in my throat. But most of the power comes from Alan Rickman’s brilliant performance as Snape (also worthy of an Oscar). The flashback scene when we learn the truth about Snape (so memorable in the book) is wonderfully rendered in the movie, perfectly capturing the longing that is so prevalent in this series. It’s all there in that brief moment when a little boy shows a little girl a little bit of magic on a hilltop: the innocence, the mystery, the wonder, the sadness, the joy and the longing of someone in the present looking back on the past.

With Meek’s Cutoff, director Kelly Reichardt delivers a fascinating, patient and absolutely engrossing Western about a wagon train lost in the wilderness. Shooting the film in the old Academy ratio (1.33:1) has the curious effect of opening up the canvas, showing how small these people and their problems are in the vast expanse of nature. The women on the wagon train are outsiders: their faces are hidden in shadow beneath their hoods, and they can barely overhear enough of the men’s conversations to know that they are lost. But a steely tough woman played by Michelle Williams begins to show her strength, and the way in which she takes control is quietly thrilling. Ultimately, the film comes down to one striking image of a wagon rolling out of control down a hillside. Just like the wagon, these people are completely at the mercy of gravity, the wind, and the ground beneath them. They may come to a crashing end, but maybe, just maybe, they can stay upright and keep moving.

Just like Hugo seemed like a strange choice for Martin Scorsese, so does A Dangerous Method seem like a strange choice for David Cronenberg. The story of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and a rivalry between them centered around Sabina Spielrein, this is essentially a movie about people sitting in rooms and talking. But it is an absolutely fascinating character study beautifully directed by Cronenberg. A great deal of credit goes to the screenplay by Christopher Hampton (based in part on his play), but watch the wonderful ways in which Cronenberg ever so subtly plays with the visuals. I particularly love his use of deep focus, and the way that he tries to keep two people in the same frame when they are talking, though it’s just as exciting when he decides to cut the other person out and push in for a closeup. Though the material is fascinating, the performances by Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley and the direction by Cronenberg make it thoroughly engrossing.

Melancholia, director Lars von Trier’s film about the end of the world, is an emotionally draining and curiously life-affirming cinematic experience. It’s a film about madness and despair, but there’s such a strange joy in the storytelling, certainly helped by the powerhouse performances from Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsburg. Like Terence Malick, von Trier confronts enormous ideas on an incredibly personal and human level. In this film, the end of the world is not about last minute romances or panic in the streets. The end of the world is happening to these few characters alone. The greater part of the third act is so quiet and so lonely, but the very end is the exact opposite of quiet and lonely. It may have been the vibrations from the speaker system in the theater, but all I know is that the end of this film left me shaking.

The sign of a wonderful year for movies is the pain that comes when you have to eliminate movies from your list of favorites. So, here’s another top ten in alphabetical order:

City of Life and Death: A harrowing, unflinching chronicle of the Japanese occupation of Nanking, shot in beautiful black and white Cinemascope with strikingly disturbing and powerful images.

Give Up Tomorrow: A powerful, maddening and virtually unseen Filipino documentary about an infamous kidnapping and murder trial and a possible miscarriage of justice. The film paints an incredible portrait of two families on opposite sides of the case whose lives are devastated by a violent tragedy.

The Guard: John Michael McDonagh’s gloriously weird dark comedy with a wonderful performance by Brendan Gleeson as a cheerfully politically incorrect small town cop in Ireland.

Into the Abyss: Werner Herzog’s devastating documentary about the American capital punishment system. Herzog openly states his opinion on the death penalty, but he doesn’t judge any of his subjects or attempt to prove anyone’s innocence. He simply observes and listens to them, creating a piercing document of humanity.

Life, Above All: A wonderful, powerful movie about a girl in South Africa trying to keep her family together as it deals with tragedy. The threat of AIDS is barely whispered about, but its presence is always circling the events of the film. Khomotso Manyaka gives a spellbinding performance in the lead role.

Rango: A visually astonishing animated Western with dazzling images and exhilarating storytelling. Its Apocalypse Now-inspired chase scene through a canyon is one of the best action scenes in recent years.

Super 8: J. J. Abrams’ tribute to the golden age of Steven Spielberg films is a fantastic science-fiction adventure with a terrific group of young actors in the lead roles. Of course, the special effects and action scenes are dazzling, but the film is most exciting as a celebration of cinema and movie making.

Tabloid: Errol Morris’ documentary about 1970’s sex scandal in England is a fascinating look at an infamous media circus, but it’s also a wicked and hilarious study of human nature.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: A chilly and atmospheric adaptation of John le Carré’s classic Cold War spy thriller with a fantastic performance by Gary Oldman. Director Tomas Alfredson creates a distinct sense of a world that has been destroying these characters from the inside for longer than they can remember. Oldman’s recollection of a confrontation with his arch nemesis is a tour de force of acting, and the very last sequence of the film is one my favorite scenes of the year.

War Horse: A glorious epic from Steven Spielberg that follows two creatures, a horse and the boy who loves him from rural England to both sides of World War I. Spielberg fills the screen with masterful images throughout the film. The scene when the horse runs across No Man’s Land is pure cinematic poetry.

And even now, I still haven’t finished listing all of the movies that I enjoyed in 2011, so here are all the other pieces of cinema that brought me joy last year: The Adjustment Bureau, Amigo, The Artist, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey, Captain America: The First Avenger, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the opening sequence of Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Source Code, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, X-Men: First Class.

And as I mentioned earlier, there are still so many films that came out last year, that I still haven’t seen, which removes any attempt to claim that my list is at all definitive. Here are the films I wanted to see, but didn’t get a chance to: The Adventures of Tintin, Certified Copy, Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, Contagion, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, 50/50, The Help, The Ides of March, J. Edgar, Louder Than a Bomb, The Mill and the Cross, Project Nim, A Separation, Shame, The Skin I Live In, The Swell Season, Terri, Tyrannosaur, Winter in Wartime.

I find it necessary to keep track of all the movies I’ve seen in a year, so the other day, I started making my list of movies seen in 2012. Most of the items on the list (there are about 5 titles so far) are movies I was catching up on from last year: The Artist, The Descendants, War Horse, etc. But I started to smile when I typed in the one new film I’ve seen so far this year: The Grey, a gloriously violent adventure film, easily the best of the recent Liam Neeson action vehicles. I smiled not just because I enjoyed the movie and the fact that my family refers to it as “Liam Neeson in Nice Doggie,” but also because I’m already looking forward to another year of cinema. As much as I enjoyed you 2011, it’s time to say farewell. This is what the Oscars should be about: waving goodbye to the movies of last year and celebrating them as we wave. Now tomorrow, after we’ve done our requisite grousing about who should have won and how the entire ceremony was completely illegitimate because The Interrupters wasn’t nominated for Best Documentary, it will be time to look ahead. After all, we’ve got The Hobbit to look forward to. And The Dark Knight Rises. And Prometheus. And new movies by Alfonso Cuarón and Wes Anderson. I’m getting excited already.

Chaos Theories

“During the first decade of the 21st century, film style changed profoundly… Contemporary blockbusters, particularly action movies, trade visual intelligibility for sensory overload, and the result is a film style marked by excess, exaggeration and overindulgence: chaos cinema.” –Matthias Stork, Press Play

It is possible that no filmmaking technique is more controversial than the combination of quick cutting and handheld camerawork, the technique known (among other terms) as Shaky/Queasy-Cam, Run and Gun, Snatch and Grab, and Intensified Continuity (the indispensable term from David Bordwell). A recent video essay by film scholar Matthias Stork has introduced another term to the conversation: Chaos Cinema. The quote above essentially sums up Stork’s argument (but don’t let that summary stop you from watching the video): the modern trend toward fast editing and handheld cinematography makes action sequences unintelligible and has led to a decline in action filmmaking.

Predictably, this has stirred up a lot of discussion on the Internet. The best responses I’ve read so far have been from Jim Emerson at Scanners and Matt Zoller Seitz at Salon.com. What is a little odd is that the discussion about the shakycam style is not anything new. I would say that the debate started becoming more heated in 2007 with the release of Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum, but recent discussion of audience and critical discomfort with handheld camerawork dates back at least to The Blair Witch Project in 1999 and probably to Natural Born Killers in 1994. Earlier this year, Matt Zoller Seitz declared war on the shakycam, and Stork might just be answering his call. But perhaps no one has summed up the common arguments against the shakycam technique quite as succinctly and angrily as Stork.

I have been hesitant to join either side of the debate in either heaping praise on Stork or vehemently condemning his argument. In general, I agree with him in lamenting the current state of action pictures and the wild overuse of the shakycam. I particularly agree with his criticism of the opening car chase in Quantum of Solace, which may have been the first time that I decided that a movie was going to be awful within the first thirty seconds of its running time (and having stayed to the end, I can say that my early judgment was correct).

But there are some holes in the essay that bother me. First of all, I don’t think that Stork provides particularly good analysis of the images that he is showing. The exception is the part about Quantum of Solace where Stork makes a brilliant observation about the increasingly intricate sound designs of action movies (“What we hear is definitely a car chase…but what we see is a ‘car chase’”). But I some of his other examples don’t work so well. It’s not that I always disagree with them. I just don’t think his analysis is very good. He shows clips and describes them with various adjectives: “coherent”, “comprehensible”, “riveting” (for good examples), and “overstuffed”, “hyperactive”, “sloppy”, “blurry” and “shallow” (for bad examples). He cites cinematic techniques that are a general part of this chaos cinema (“rapid editing, close framings, bipolar lens lengths and promiscuous camera movement”), but he rarely draws attention to specific examples of them. Instead, Stork’s strategy is to juxtapose action sequences that he thinks are effective with examples from the chaos tradition so that we will see the difference.

And this leads me to my second problem with Stork’s essay: I’m not entirely sure what he means when he uses certain clips. He uses scenes from The Dark Knight to begin both parts of his essay, specifically scenes involving the Joker: “Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order and everything becomes chaos” (hence the title of the essay). Stork also uses action clips from The Dark Knight in the introduction, but he never uses or refers to them again in the body of his essay. Isn’t it a little strange that Stork would use a particular movie as the basis of his argument, but never specifically refer to it? It’s especially strange because The Dark Knight is such a fascinating jumping-off point for a discussion of this chaos cinema. By having the Joker shoot videos with a handheld camera (that he shakes around a lot), Christopher Nolan deliberately associates the Joker with the shakycam. This creates all of sorts of interesting implications about the Joker as a movie director: think of the way Heath Ledger acts during the hospital demolition scene and the way that the Joker essentially hijacks the pacing of the movie in the third act. But aside from the introductory passages, Stork never refers to The Dark Knight.

I assume that Stork does not care much for Nolan’s direction of action sequences (though he responded positively to the film) because he uses a clip of the Mombasa chase scene from Inception in his negative examples of chaos cinema. But for me, this just leads to more confusion because Stork does not really explain what is wrong with this scene. A common reaction from detractors of this essay is to say: “I didn’t think those scenes were incomprehensible.” Since this reaction is entirely based on subjectivity and personal taste, it is not very helpful, but Stork does not do much to prevent this reaction, and honestly, I couldn’t help from thinking it several times during the essay. I found the Inception clip particularly lacking in purpose because it was so brief. Stork excludes Nolan’s use of overhead shots that establish the locations of the pursuers and the pursued (in addition to bringing in some wonderful maze-like images). And frankly, I just don’t understand what specifically Stork finds wrong here. Again, the point is not that I disagree with Stork’s argument. My problem is with his method of argument. A quick glance through the (admittedly brief) archive of this blog will let you know that I am a huge fan of director Christopher Nolan. Yet, I found Jim Emerson’s shot-by-shot criticism of the truck chase in The Dark Knight fascinating and thought-provoking. Emerson uses various elements of film grammar and composition to explain in great detail why he finds this sequence confusing and poorly-made. I’m not suggesting that Stork should have gone into this level of detail, but some more in-depth analysis would have made his argument much more effective.

Stork’s examples of classical action filmmaking should have offset my confusion, but in actuality, they just deepened it. I understand his inclusion of the iconic chase scenes from Bullitt and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I think the reference to John Woo’s Hard Boiled is out of place because shooting most of an action sequence in one long take is not necessarily a staple of classical filmmaking. But the source of my greatest confusion is with his inclusion of the final shootout in Sam Peckinpah’s Western masterpiece The Wild Bunch, one of the most beautiful and visually poetic examples of pure cinematic chaos that I have ever seen. Yet, Stork considers this an example of classical filmmaking.

And this leads to my final objection. Film scholar David Bordwell characterizes the modern trend toward faster cutting and moving cameras as “intensified continuity.” But Stork believes that “Bordwell’s phrase may not go far enough. In many post-millennial releases, we’re seeing not just an intensification of classical technique, but a perversion.”

I think Bordwell is closer to the mark. In the 2002 Film Quarterly essay that Stork cites, Bordwell describes the trends of increasing camera movement and decreasing average shot lengths throughout film history, noting that cutting started becoming a great deal more rapid during the 1960s. Certainly intensified continuity has grown more intense in recent years, but my point is that this technique did not suddenly come out of nowhere. In tracing the origins of chaos cinema, Stork blames the usual suspects: music videos, television, shortened attention spans, CGI. But he ignores the many films that have been pointing the way toward the modern trend. The Wild Bunch’s average shot length of 3.2 seconds might seem a little tame now, but I doubt that anyone thought so in 1969. Perhaps the biggest flaw in Stork’s argument is that he ignores what may be the single most influential action scene in any film: the Battle of Shrewsbury in Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight from 1965. Surely influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (itself perhaps the most influential of all action pictures), Welles conceals a lack of extras by cutting rapidly between handheld shots placed amongst groups of men and horses. The two sides are seen separately as they charge through mist, but when they clash, all order disappears. The men slash and bludgeon each other, and by the end, they are all writhing around in a pile of mud and blood. Welles said that this sequence (along with the death of Harry Hotspur) is supposed to represent the end of chivalry. These are no knights in shining armor fighting a glorious battle for honor. These are common men in a struggle of life and death for no clear purpose. We cannot even tell who belongs to which side. Though not widely seen, this sequence has had an enormous influence on action pictures, particular medieval epics like Braveheart and war films like Saving Private Ryan. Anyone who has seen a modern action movie will recognize the cinematic techniques here.

And there is no denying it: Welles’ Battle of Shrewsbury is chaos cinema. It is marked by rapid cutting and handheld camerawork. It is loud, intense and disorienting. Aside from being shot in black and white, it would not be at all out of place in a modern action movie. And it was made in 1965 by one of the great visual stylists of the cinema.

To be clear, I am very much in sympathy in Matthias Stork’s complaints about modern action cinema. Nearly every Michael Bay film gives me a splitting headache. (Why, oh why, did I pay to see that last Transformers movie? I should have at least brought some aspirin.) Aside from Deathly Hallows Part Two, I think that David Yates’ shakycam action sequences have been the weakest parts of his Harry Potter films (the forest chase scene near the end of Deathly Hallows Part One is an embarrassment in an otherwise glorious entertainment). I guess I’m not quite as quick to vehemently condemn or passionately support this not-really-so-new chaos cinema as others clearly are. Personally, I would rather that we all join forces to slay the monster known as 3D or form a task force advocating for the tasteful use of CGI (critics won’t have to fear much opposition from Nolan fans on either of those fronts). Yes, I have grown more than a little tired with the shakycam, and I agree with Matt Zoller Seitz that it is time for filmmakers to “get a new fad.” Maybe directors should take a sabbatical from intensified continuity and explore other methods of filmmaking. Maybe instead of remaking The Wild Bunch, Tony Scott should do a Psycho-style shot-for-shot remake of Tokyo Story. Perhaps Michael Bay should take an apprenticeship with Alfonso Cuarón in the art of long take cinema. And Christopher Nolan should…no, he can do whatever he wants. Perhaps directors will find new and better ways of visualizing action. If not, the handheld camera is always waiting for them when they return.

“A Glance From Your Eyes”: Drawing Into the Universe of Terence Malick

Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life is probably the must-see movie of the year. Forget the new Transformers, Hangover or Pirates of the Caribbean movies. This is an event movie. Simply put, if you are passionate about cinema, you have to see this movie. Does this you mean you have to like it? No, in fact, it’s probably going to be the most divisive movie of the year. No one can quite agree on what this movie is about. You’re bound to find hundreds of different interpretations of it on the Internet. This will not be one of them.

Yes, you read that right; this will not be an interpretation. I’m still not entirely sure what to think about the film. Once I see it again, I’m sure I will write an interpretation, but for now, I’m primarily concerned with the film as cinema. How can a movie address the entirety of existence and the history of the universe in less than three hours and still be watchable? Essentially, why is The Tree of Life a good movie?

Terence Malick may be an iconoclast director who does not care for conventional filmmaking, but he knows that his ideas will not matter if people fall asleep or walk out of the theater (many moviegoers have already done this during The Tree of Life, but I can’t speak for them). He will not pander to audiences, but he does want them to come along. His first masterstroke in creating an interesting movie for his ideas to inhabit comes with how he handles the voiceovers. Malick has used voiceovers in every movie he has made, but in The Tree of Life, they sound quieter and more indistinct, less like narration and more like prayers or whispers. We can hear them, but just barely. This is a brilliant way to draw viewers into his film because our first instinct when we hear a whisper is to lean forward and try to make it out more clearly. Kelly Reichardt uses a similar technique in her brilliant Meek’s Cutoff by having the women on the wagon train listen from far away as their husbands discuss plans. The overheard dialogue in that film is even harder to make out, but it feels just out of reach as if we can almost grasp it. What a wonderful way to draw us into the story. Instead of bombarding us with noise, Malick and Reichardt use quiet and near silences to have us grasping out into the story, wanting to know what the characters are saying, wanting to know what’s ahead. Of course, Malick has never been afraid to crank the volume up to 11 (see The Thin Red Line, with its DVD instructions to “play the movie loud”).

Terence Malick is such a legendary filmmaker that he always attracts talented people to his movies, both in front and behind the camera. For the second time (the first being the beautiful The New World), Malick works with the brilliant cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeski, most famous for his work with director Alfonso Cuarón on films such as Y Tu Mamá También and Children of Men. In Cuarón’s films, Lubeski’s visuals are usually dominated by handheld shots following characters through extended takes (think of the final battle scene in Children of Men). Although Malick tends not to use longer takes in The Tree of Life, the approach is very similar. Many of the shots involve following behind characters as they walk around houses, buildings and streets. The very first shot of the film is from behind Jessica Chastain as she looks out of a window. The dominance of shots from behind the characters, especially as they walk, creates a sense of being lead into another world. These characters would still live their lives if the cameras were off. We’re just following along with them. There may be more shots from in front of the characters, but I can only remember one: after Jack has shot his brother’s finger with a BB-Gun, he walks through a forest, then stops, turns around and starts walking back toward the camera. I need to revisit the film and see if there are more tracking shots like that, but it’s such a powerful image that I can imagine Malick wanting to single it out.

The other major visual talent that Terence Malick employs behind the camera is production designer Jack Fisk, who has worked with Malick on all of his films. Fisk’s greatest accomplishment in The Tree of Life is to create an entire world for these characters to inhabit. This is the key to why the movie works. It attempts no less than to encompass everything in life. It visualizes the birth and destruction of the Universe. It even has dinosaurs. And yet, the film balances this epic scope with a fully grounded depiction of a small town in Texas. The treatment of the family drama is philosophical and unconventional enough to make sure that this blend is not incongruous. The movie doesn’t suddenly become “normal” when Brad Pitt shows up. But the entire environment of the family’s house and the small town around it is so fully realized that it becomes a distinct place. Malick explores the characters going about their daily routines at school, at work, in the garden and at the dinner table. He focuses in on some details and lets others go right on by (I loved the DDT truck spraying gas all over the kids as they play in the street). Again, Lubeski’s camerawork is key here because he keeps the camera on the ground level, following the characters around as they explore their world. By making the environment complete, Malick creates the sense that we’ve just picked one ordinary family and we’re following along with them as they go about their lives.

I know that I need to see The Tree of Life again before I can get a better grasp on it, and I’ll certainly need to see it many more times to fully understand it (maybe I never will). But even though I don’t understand all of the themes, it’s an extraordinary piece of cinema by one of our greatest living filmmakers. One of the most exciting times for film lovers is when they can analyze a new movie from a great master. We may not have new films by Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Fellini, Bergman and many of the other legendary auteurs, but we do have a new Terence Malick. The Tree of Life is a cinematic gift. Let’s unwrap it and see what we can find.

Thinking of Winter in the Middle of Summer

Spoilers for Game of Thrones ahead (but I think I’ve kept out spoilers for the next book).

When viewing an adaptation of a book, I always try to keep the source material out of my mind, but damn that can be hard sometimes. It was especially hard when watching HBO’s Game of Thrones, the first adaptation of a series that I am currently engrossed in (deep into the third volume, A Storm of Swords, at this point). This is not a preferable method for reviewing an adaptation, but since I can’t get the book out of my mind, I’ll use it. Don’t worry. I work at a higher level of criticism than this old staple of disappointed (usually Harry Potter) fans: “They cut out my favorite part!”

In fact, my biggest criticism of the adaptation has little to do with the book. I’ve previously written about the importance of tone and mood when it comes to fantasy, but I have to harp on it again. The adaptation of Game of Thrones does a terrific job with characterization, but it’s not always successful at creating a sense of time and place, one of the most important tasks to accomplish when dealing with fantasy. A fantasy world does not have to be realistic, but it has to feel like a distinct place that exists in the mind. Peter Jackson did this incredibly well in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, the current high point for cinematic fantasy, as did Alfonso Cuarón in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the best of the Harry Potter films.

HBO’s Game of Thrones only occasionally accomplishes this. I appreciate that it slows down for dialogue scenes instead of rushing through the plot, but I wish that it wouldn’t skip creating a sense of atmosphere. A lot of the dialogue works, especially the scenes between King Robert and Ned Stark. They help to provide the series with a sense of history as the characters reminisce over the rebellion that they led several years before. However, we never really get a sense of King’s Landing as a place. I’m not even sure we get an establishing shot of the city. The show almost approaches Attack of the Clones territory as an epic fantasy dominated by scenes of people talking in offices. I’m not saying that it should have fewer dialogue scenes, but that the dialogue scenes should help to establish the location. There should be more scenes like the one where Littlefinger walks with Ned through his courtyard and points out all of the spies working there. One of the masterstrokes of storytelling in the book was to have Arya wander through the poorer streets of King’s Landing late in the story. This does a brilliant job of making the city feel like a real place, and it sets up the terrific dual-layered story structure of A Clash of Kings. In the show, this sequence is truncated to about 30 seconds. It’s not a flaw because it deviates from the book, but it wastes a good opportunity to create some atmosphere. Of course, at that point in the story, there isn’t much time for creating atmosphere.

But creating a better sense of atmosphere and mood doesn’t have to take time. Lighting alone can radically alter the mood of a scene. Far too many of the sets in Game of Thrones feel like, well, sets, particularly the Frey’s Castle and the streets of King’s Landing. Think of how effective the scenes at the Wall are, especially the scene in the last episode when Jon’s friends catch him in the woods as he tries to desert. Look at the way the scene seems to only be lit by the torches, creating a nice interplay of light and shadow that heightens the tension. That’s atmosphere. That’s mood. The show also makes very good use of setting for the scenes in the Eyrie (well set up by a nice establishing shot form the valley below). The throne room provides the location for one of the weirdest character entrances I’ve seen (isn’t that boy a bit old for that milk?) and a duel around a large hole in the floor. The set piece conclusion of the penultimate episode also has a great deal of suspense, and the last episode winds up with a lot of tension as we see various characters moving off to their storylines in the next season (I loved seeing the Night’s Watch riding out under the Wall at the end).

But unfortunately, the show suffers from the same flaw as the book: the story spends far too much time spinning its wheels. There isn’t enough of a driving story engine. The central mystery behind Jon Arryn’s death and the attempt on Bran’s life is compelling, but the story doesn’t spend enough time propelling that thread. There are a few too many dialogue scenes that don’t really add much to story, particularly the ones that set up characters for the next book. Yes, I know that Lancel Lannister and Theon Greyjoy become important in Clash of Kings, but they’re not terribly important in Game of Thrones. They should spend a little more time with Robb Stark because he is much more important for this story than Theon. As in the book, there isn’t quite enough momentum as the story moves toward the conclusion, and the war begins. The show actually improves on this a little by making the Lannister plans (the scene between Tywin and Jaime is terrific, not least because of the symbolism involved with Tywin gutting a stag) and the Stark plans a little clearer. I assume that budgetary constraints are the reason why we’re robbed (no pun intended) of any battle scenes (which makes me a little worried for the Battle of Blackwater in Clash of Kings). And although the Daenerys storyline has a great payoff, it proceeds in fits and starts and mostly just meanders around, just like in the book.

There’s a lot to like in Game of Thrones. I love the opening title sequence, and I can’t decide whether I want the creators to keep it for next season or see what they can come up with next. Peter Dinklage is terrific as Tyrion, and young Maisie Williams makes for a great Arya. Her storyline is the best part (with competition from Jon and Tyrion) of Clash of Kings, and I’m really looking forward to how the next season handles it (this season already makes an enormous improvement over the rather cruel way the book leaves off with Arya’s story). Sean Bean is so good as Ned Stark that he provides HBO with an interesting problem. The center of the show’s marketing was based around Sean Bean and he was the main reason why a lot of people tuned in. Just like in the book, we like him so much that we can’t believe it when he dies in the penultimate episode. I hope Tyrion, Arya and Jon will be enough to make people watch the next season, but maybe HBO will use the casting of Stannis and maybe Ser Davos as a way of bringing in some big names. As if marketing has any effect on the quality of the show.

I’m not entirely sure I trust my reaction to Game of Thrones. I read the book much too recently, and I’m still reading the others in the series. Maybe I’ll feel better about it if I revisit the series after the books have faded a little from my mind (hopefully this happens before next season). I will say that there aren’t many TV shows that I watch regularly, but with Game of Thrones, I watched, enjoyed and highly anticipated each episode. This doesn’t happen often, so consider yourself lucky, HBO. And did I mention that I’m hooked for next season? How could I not be?