You Can’t Handle the Truth . . . Can You?

Last night after my husband (a 1L) heaved a sigh of relief after turning in his open memo, we celebrated by watching The Paper Chase (1973).  Until the final moments of the movie, I was completely invested, but since I’ve reserved this blog as a place to celebrate the good, I’ll leave the ending out of the picture.  (The director would have been wise to do so as well.)

That being said, there are few movies that dare to drop you down into the middle of a world that is not your own and just let you go without backstory or preparation or explanation.  One of the few films that stuck out to me as functioning in this way is one of my favorites, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (interestingly enough also from 1973).  We get plummeted into a world of crime and connections and navigate as we go.  The Paper Chase worked in the same way.   We enter the classroom (not just any classroom but a Harvard law classroom, the most glorified, deified of hallowed educational grounds) with the protagonist Hart (played by Timothy Bottoms).  We go in knowing just as little as he does about what to expect.  Neither of us read the posted assignment.  Neither of us are prepared for what lurks ahead.  And orchestrating the most intense piece of the experience:  Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr., a renowned legal genius who feeds on the fear and incompetencies of these neophytes of the law in the form of a bow-tie clad T-Rex turned professor.

For a little under two hours, those of us who are outsiders to this subculture are granted passage into what it’s like.  We navigate the various echelons of student performance and study groups, the politics of competition.  We see and even feel the effects of hero worship in academia, watch how the mighty tower over and alternately terrify and inspire those crouching at their altars.  We recognize the thrumming, ever-present competition, destroying dreams and lives and pushing some beyond the limits of what they thought possible, for better and worse.  Aside from just observing Hart, we are granted an invisible seventh spot in Franklin Ford III’s exclusive study group (probably to the chagrin of Bell, who would probably call us a “pimp” and deny us access to his 800 page outline).  This group shows us the many faces of 1L’s and how pressure manifests itself differently in various personalities and backgrounds.  

And impressively, we’re left to draw our own conclusions about this elite microcosm.  Maybe Kingsfield is a self-aggrandizing bastard whose closest thing to a human connection are the photos on the walls of his study.  Or maybe he’s a truly inspiring genius who grants his students the gift to be the living extensions of the judges.  Perhaps Kevin is a pathetic, throw-away bourgeoise, living like a king on his in-laws’ dime and driveling about a photographic memory.  Or perhaps he’s a determined young man trying to balance a family with a program that’s eating him alive despite extraordinary effort.  Either/or, we get to make our own judgments.  And in the end, we recognize that whether we think Kingsfield is the ultimate ass or feel pity for Kevin, it absolutely doesn’t matter.  Harvard Law (and any successful sect of academia) with its traditions, its “grooming of minds to rule the world” as Hart says, is going to continue and thrive despite any of our outsiders’ (or insiders’) assessments.  It’s a whole more grandiose and self-interested than any of its minuscule, individual parts.  And it’s captured and parceled so well in this film.

Hipsters and Angst and Art--Oh My!

I love movies that are off-the-wall, but every once in a while, I run across a movie that comes to that wall, rams it head first, and completely obliterates it.  That’s Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood (1959).  It is an oddball, razor-sharp black comedy that had me one second laughing out loud and the next harboring pity for social outcasts.

The movie focuses on the artistic counterculture, and the beatnik parodies in the film are beyond perfection.  The opening sequence features the character of Maxwell (for me, the show-stealer of the movie) reciting his own poetic take on society a la Ginsberg’s Howl.  He’s a pompous windbag and the Grand Poobah of this self-satisfied band of hipster hangers-on.  In fact, these characters are so believable and relevant that upon opening your door, you may find them boycotting the Starbuck’s down the street because it’s corporate and infesting any local, little-known coffee shop or cafe with their arrogance and disdain.  As their sanctified and sanctimonious skipper, Maxwell parcels out his florid knowledge, and his disciples lap it like hungry alley cats.  For instance, he proclaims with conviction that “Life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art.” And “I refuse to say anything twice. Repetition is death.  When you repeat something, you are reliving a moment, wasting it, severing it from the other end of your life. I believe only in new impressions, new stimuli, new life!”  The beatniks refer to themselves as “aware” as if the adjective is a badge of honor endowed on so few.  When one of them is questioned as to what it is exactly that she’s aware of, she responds with “Not anything, stupid.  Just aware.”  The audience and the movie makers know that everything spewing from Maxwell, and in turn his followers, is pure shit, but the characters have no idea they’re playing in the sewers.  The credibility of Maxwell (and art in general) rests only on the tenuous agreement by the followers that merit is to be found in the words he strings together--an idea the movie brings into sharp, critical, hilarious focus.

And then comes the truly tragic figure of Walter--a boy as much victim as he is villain.  Walter works as a bus boy in the coffee shop where these hipsters meet to fester in their own self-importance, and he desperately wants the acceptance and acclaim that Maxwell and some of the others have achieved.  But the obstacle is that Walter lacks the creativity, intelligence, and artistic inclination to make any sort of name for himself.  This unwillingly makes Walter the whipping post of his intellectually superior peers, and he only half understands how truly suck-tastic his position amongst them is.  In speaking of Walter, Maxwell says, “Walter has a clear mind. One day something will enter it, feel lonely, and leave again.”  This is the shared sentiment of Walter’s usefulness and ability within the beatnik community.

But the tides turn when Walter accidentally stabs the boardinghouse cat, Frankie, with a steak knife through a plaster wall, covers the corpse and weapon in molding clay, and calls it art.  Bam.  Instant success.  His greatest fan and supporter?  Maxwell--who has no idea that the sculpture is anything other than a molded figment of Walter’s imagination.  Walter enters what I’ll call a very active and fertile creative period, turning out more sculptures of greater, er, stature and increasingly gruesome detail.  And rather than indict him, I root for Walter, the poor bus boy turned artist with slow-firing synapses and a desperate need for love and acceptance.

In the end, the truth is discovered, and rather than eat their words (they’d rather have wheat-germ bagels), the beatniks embrace the social groupthink to which they are so opposed and hunt down Walter.  The cycle has come full circle, and Walter is once again their whipping boy, an easy target for damnation to handily erase their misguided hero worship and praise for the “artistry” of brutal murder.  

But the real “artistry” is in twisting a tale to make the killer the victim and the smarmy pseudo-intellectuals the savage perps of social injustice.  The mixed metaphors and spoken-word mumbo jumbo that these counterculture culprits go tossing about are as deadly as Walter’s hands.  Their exclusivity and cruelty breeds a desperation that most people can relate to on some level.  What wouldn’t we do to belong?  Hand over our lunch money?  Play a cruel prank on someone even further on the outside than us?  Do the bidding of someone higher on the social food chain?  Completely sign over our self-worth and dignity?  Corman’s vision is a gathering of geeks with the adopted mentality of bully jocks, and in all its cult-film coverings, it’s as real and relevant today as it was over 50 years ago.  A dynamic social critique with some of the most quote-worthy, hilarious lines of all time make this well-worth viewing.  

S-T-A-U-N-C-H

Where can the world’s most inventive fashionista with Vaudevillian dreams of grandeur and a socialite background possibly carve out a worthy niche in this world and find daily inspiration?  If your mind went to the posh East Hampton, playplace for the privileged, then you would be right.  Sort of.  But only if in the 70s, you had taken a real estate survey and mixed it with a game of “one of these is not like the others.”  Upon doing so, you would have stumbled upon Grey Gardens, a namesake homestead for one of my favorite films of all time.  Grey Gardens (1975) is documentary magic.  Its very real material is the stuff of great fiction.  Bizarre.  Unflinching.  Lovable.  Loathsome.  Tragic.  This sad manifestation of the mother-daughter dynamic is, to use Little Edie’s term, pulverizing.  But there’s a hopeful panache in Little Edie simultaneously miraculous and inspiring.

Mother and daughter (Big Edie Bouvier Beale and Little Edie Bouvier Beale) inhabit their decaying mansion (named Grey Gardens) in East Hampton, New York.  Actually, decay is a pretty kind term for the unlivable squalor that festers around them, and it’s made all the more severe when juxtaposed to the manicured perfection that surrounds their estate.  On top of that, add the fact that this dynamic duo are the aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis.  And beyond that, add the daughter’s resent for imprisonment and a mother’s overbearing, life-sucking, ever-critical dominance, and you have more tension than a fishing line with a great white on the end.  The thin line of connection could sever at any moment.

Big Edie has hoarded her relationship with her daughter.  After Mr. Beale left the family, Little Edie became bound to her mother and Grey Gardens.  Little Edie’s every waking moment belongs to Big Edie, so long as the matriarch is cognizant.  Even Little Edie’s name, her very identity, mirrors that of her mother--one more tether to remind her of the life chosen for her.  One of the most disturbing images in the film is the “bedroom” in which the women appear to primarily live.  They cook there on a hot plate.  They play hostess there.  They house the haphazard family treasures there.  Particularly, it is the mattress, sans sheet, upon which Big Edie lodges that is so disastrous.  Unidentifiable stains run down the sides.  Newspapers, bits of food, relics, and any number of cats clutter the tiny twin-sized pad of existence.  You can almost smell it through the screen.  And as they sing their shrill notes in turn (Big Edie was apparently a recording artist of some repute) and chirp angrily over one another, I’m reminded of two exotic birds, the last of their kind teetering on the brink of extinction, gathering any assortment of bits and pieces with which to build a nest, albeit an unhappy one.

But in the face of her ever oppressive environment, it’s Little Edie’s optimism that can charm the audience.  For instance, her dress, which she deems “the revolutionary costume,” basically flips the bird at the establishment, at the town, at her dreary confinement.  Little Edie has found more uses for pantyhose and fishnets than you would ever believe humanly possible.  Well-worn terry cloth towels become regal headscarves with the right antique brooch.  With the right heels, a bathing suit makes a cocktail or even day dress.  And when is there not reason to wear a cape?  After all, her struggles are heroic.

And Little Edie’s cosmopolitan creativity extends to interior design as well and literature as well.  In a scene of gut-wrenching vulnerability, Little Edie walks us through a room she’s currently trying to re-do.  She’s clipped magazine photos of roses and glued them together for a collage, a reminder that beauty is real and accessible.  She’s hoarded travel magazines and a bird cage, and she walks us through the idea for her layout with the utmost creative confidence.  As she peruses a book on astrology, she becomes quite animated at the discovery that a Libra man would bring order to her life.  For her, that answers all the questions and sets forth a simple solution to all her woes: al she has to do is find a Libra man.  WIth legs crossed, magnifying glass in hand, “Little” Edith Bouvier Beale can face the world in all its harsh ugliness.

And there’s Little Edie’s maternal nature, as heavy a cross as anyone has ever had to bear.  Her mother needed her in the wake of a failed marriage, so Edie came home to do the bidding.  As the Brothers Maysles (the filmmakers) come and go everyday, it is Edie seeing them in and out and offering hors d’oeuvres made from only God knows what.  As Big Edie barks out demands, it’s Little Edie carrying them out with an efficiency that surprises even her mother.  From the rat’s nest, she fishes out records, radios, food items.  And for the raccoons nesting in the attic (and any of the cats that may have strayed so far), she molds a mountain of Wonderbread and cat food to keep them nourished and happy.

The rancor and rot of Grey Gardens is, no doubt, a tragic existence for both women.  Their reclusive symbiosis is as unhealthy a portrait of American living as I’ve seen.  But shining through the rubbish is the sparkle of Little Edie, her dreams and hopes.  No judgments or degradations can kill her spirit, and this film is like an old friend come to hear a self-proclaimed staunch woman reveal her triumphs and tribulations.  And as long as we’re watching, listening, Little Edie (so much larger than her epithet implies) has a lifeline to the outside where she still believes anything is possible.

Little Edie’s greatest moment of triumph comes in the form of a performance of original choreography.  Clad in a black leotard, black stockings, high heels, and a color block head scarf, Edie literally marches to the beat of her own music--a military march she has on record.  With American flag in hand, she struts and twirls like a top that may spin right off the plane of this existence and into some other dimension.  In this short stint in a dim spotlight, she’s a woman unburdened.

Ground Control to Major Tomfoolery

Amusement parks are unsettling.  They have as much sinister potential as any dark alley.  Even the smallest, seemingly innocent aspect, like the permanently smiling mascots greeting you just inside the barred, prison-like gates, can start to look monstrous if you stare too long.  Those kids screaming in fear, refusing their parents’ attempts at a photo op . . . maybe they’re ultra perceptive to the lurking evil.  And the rides designed to simulate sensations of fear and danger?  What if they were too good?  What if the animatronic dinosaur short circuits and hoists someone to a life-threatening height between his razor-sharp metal teeth?  Sure, Jurassic Park went there, but before there was Jurassic Park, there was Westworld.  And after Westworld, there was Futureworld (1976).

There’s a difference between plot and shit that happens.  Futureworld is concerned with the shit that happens, never mind the narrative thread that holds it together, and it really is a dated, wild ride completely worth taking.  If you’ve ever wondered what might happen if David Cronenberg could run Disney for a day, this film is your answer.  Futureworld is just one theme park offered by the Delos Resort.  Guests can opt for a medieval or ancient Roman holiday, complete with violent or sexual interaction with realistic robot replicas of human beings.  But our protagonists (two reporters--Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner-- attempting to dig up dirt on Delos after the murderous disaster of Westworld) set off for Futureworld, so our ticket is punched.  

The adventure starts with the simulation of a space shuttle launch, and this is interesting for a couple of reasons.  First off, the simulation forces vacationers/participants into roles laden with responsibility, such as flight commander.  The stress and panic of the simulation quickly burden these characters, and one proclaims, “Hey, I’m supposed to be on vacation!”  True.  What constitutes vacation?  Why do we go seeking these elaborate albeit temporary stressors?  How far is too far?

Once the shuttle “lands,” guests can frolic in a space-port that looks like a hybrid between Studio 54 and a Sega game.  They can drink.  They can fornicate with robots.  They can play a game of chess with living game pieces (which are confessed elaborate holograms).  There’s an early version of Nintendo Wii available where patrons can don boxing gloves wired to two humanesque robot boxers --Mike Tyson’s Punch Out with life-size knockoffs of people, if you will.  Or there’s always a shuttle available for skiing on the red snow caps of Mars.  

And then our reporters get a view behind the scenes at mission control for this virtual reality.  They find mostly robots running this portion of the park, except for the lone Harry, the maintenance man who has to be kept around to deal with any water issues as the robots are unable to get wet.  He has a faceless robot pal named Clark whom he salvaged from the trash.  They play cards together.  Of course there’s also exclusive access to the next Delos attraction--a machine that makes dreams visible and interactive.  (Total Recall, anyone?)  Blythe Danner has a strangely erotic dream sequence with Yul Brynner (the dead robot gunslinger from the now defunct Westworld) that defies description.

But for all their snooping, our reporters get red-clad surgeons (think prototypes for Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers) who scoop them up in their sleep to probe, prod, and run tests on them.  Why?  Because the Delos Resort is on a mission to create cyborg clones of all the most important political figures in the world . . . and these two reporters.  Gotta have good publicity, you know.  

In the end, our reporters destroy their cloned counterparts and escape back into reality to foil the plans of Delos.  Their final act of defiance?  Peter Fonda flips the bird to the head scientist of Delos who orchestrated all this evil and then slips through the Delos gateway back to the world belonging exclusively to humans . . . or does it?  It’s not a new idea--technology devouring humanity--and this certainly isn’t the first movie to handle it.  But what’s interesting here is we’re looking at technology as a danger in the form of leisure.  Like anything with the potential to become addictive--how much is too much?  At what point do you break from the real world and lose your ability to come back to it all?  How do you get to the point where reality becomes the escape from the fantasy?  These musings are snuggled deep below the surface of a 104-minute strange little trip to a Futureworld that is distinctly and deliciously from our past.  And if you never get deep enough to see its innerworkings, it’s still worth fastening the belt and pulling down the lap bar to see all its candy-colored tricks and treasures.

Poised on the Edge of the Clift

I’ll just get right down to it: has there ever been anything so beautiful on film as Montgomery Clift in From Here to Eternity (1953)?  (I can only think of Redford as Hubbell Gardner, and even then Monty still might win out.)  Lord knows a beautiful face at the center of a sprawling Hollywood drama never hurt anything, but there are certainly a few cases where even a hunk was unable to help much less save a film.  Unlike its tragic Karen Holmes, From Here to Eternity was never in need of saving.  From start to finish, it’s a stock pond of characters we genuinely care about, floundering to find solidarity with something, someone, anyone, ANYTHING!

Sounds melodramatic, right?  It is . . . but it’s melodrama done in that magical, arresting, classical Hollywood way where it’s completely successful.  It dares to take tired, worn out elements (like the damsel in distress) and do them so well that only in afterthought are these characters and circumstances anything other than a fresh fantasy with all the tragedy and romance of which human life is capable.

The enchantment, the spell this movie weaves rests largely in the characters.  And even deeper than that, there are these moments, seemingly minuscule but ultimately, quietly larger-than-life, that just wring my guts and my imagination.  A slew of these moments come from the ill-fated romance of Karen and Sergeant Warden.  The beach scene is wonderful--grandiose in the traditional brass band sort of way.   And visually, it is one of those pop culture points of reference that you know before you really know.  You see the scene in context and go, “So that’s where that’s from.”  Karen’s soaked locks hanging down actually make her look deflated, just like she feels, and her brave confessional and Warden’s complete acceptance of the circumstances are emotionally electric.  But even before that, the two share a moment that gives the audience a visceral jolt of tension and longing.  Warden shows up at the Holmes residence, and his boss’s wife treads the porch in her childish shorts, caught completely unaware: there’s a foreshadowing and anticipation of something simultaneously beautiful, powerful, and threatening.  Karen Holmes is bewildered, and yet she isn’t at all.  And Warden knows what he’s getting himself into, is in full control of his intentions, and yet not at all.  When they’re locked in a staring contest on that porch, rain pouring, and Warden breaks it off by presenting the “important papers” for the Captain to sign . . . it’s the roller coaster’s slow ascent to the peak before the plummet.  

While I’m not by any measure Sinatra’s biggest fan, he’s convincing as Maggio, one of the only true friends to Clift’s Private Prewitt.  Maggio is a conduit for some of the funniest and most tragic moments of the film.  His stumbling escape-turned-death from the stockade is, as expected, an emotional power play.  His drunken galavants through The New Congress Club and many other fine establishments are memorable glances at a deceptively happy clown with what will undoubtedly be a short lifeline.  But there’s a moment in the barracks, so slight and natural, that completely encompasses the camaraderie that lies at the center of the film and the core of all it’s characters’ desires.  Private Prewitt (“Prew”) is flat on his bed, staring at the ceiling; he’s just realized the line he’ll have to toe by refusing to box.  He isn’t bitter (he loves the army), but he’s hardening his shell, preparing to survive despite sticking to his principles.  The convivial Maggio comes by and invites him into town with him and the rest of the guys.  Prew is unresponsive, too deep in his brooding.  Maggio starts in about The New Congress Club. And then, he tosses a shirt (a “loose, flowing sports shirt,” no less) to Prew.  “My sister bought it for me.  She always buys stuff too big.”  That’s the moment . . . a simple act of true friendship and love, unasked for.  Pure altruism--a reason for hope in the midst of all that’s hateful and angry and self-serving.  And with that, Prew, complete with stone-cracking grin, is off to be a civilian for a night and forget his unjust trials.

And let’s come full circle back to Montgomery Clift and his Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt.  He’s visually stunning.  He’s likable (lovable, even), determined, fair, principled, and grateful for an institution that continually spits in his face.  But above all, he’s really, truly beautiful.  Do I feel shallow in this assessment?  Nope.  Because he has a grace (not feminine or masculine but just human grace) that pulls the viewer in.  If he were on the other side of a crowded street with a parade going down it, you’d be watching him.  Because of the lines and the intensity in his face.  Because of the way the wind whipped his shirt around him.  Because of how he’s carefree and at once, ready to pounce.  Because of how engrossed he is in life and living and everything before, in between, and beyond.  I think it’s fitting to end with one of Prew’s tiny but life-eclipsing moments:  he’s just showed up to his new assignment with G Company where Sergeant Warden has reprimanded him for taking a shot at pool.  Warden turns and leaves, expecting the young private to follow.  Prewitt stands a moment, pool stick in hand, and the takes his second shot before walking out.  And with the clink of the cue ball setting all those little bodies in motion, I knew at once that he was too pretty, too stubborn, and too tragic to live.  And I watched anyway. 

Buck Up!

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is equal parts frightening and funny.  And between the laughs and sheer ridiculousness in the War Room, there is a real sense of panic that transcends the screen (I can only imagine how intensified this was in context).  I suppose the panic starts to live and breath and grow with the disclaimer that precedes the movie because it’s an unexpected piece of nonfiction that isn’t normally required in our fantastical little movie universes.  And then, when General Ripper, a powerful man whose craziness does nothing to diminish his control until his death, warns us to trust no one and fire on anything within 200 yards, a little piece of our minds discards that disclaimer . . . because we’ve seen what American politics and military are really capable of.

But this is a masterful black comedy because hilarity is perfectly juxtaposed with the grim.  People marvel at Peter Seller’s triad of performances a la Alec Guiness in Kind Hearts and Coronets.  And he is fantastic.  And I’m a big Peter Sellers fan.  But, for my money, in this film, I’ll take George C. Scott as Buck Turgidson.  He absolutely killed me.    He is so frightfully, deliciously, stereotypically American, but he manages to create a very individual character within that broad range of possibilities.  His qualm with allowing the Russian diplomat into the War Room, even in time of immense crisis?  “But he’ll see the big board!” delivered in the brash whine of an impudent child.  The slurs and insults he slings at will, completely unaware of the social situation, make him the War Room Rube.    When he finds out that the Russians have a Doomsday Machine, we expect a full-scale tantrum of pounding fists and kicking legs . . . and George C. Scott lets us know that that’s what ole Buckie really wants to do.  This man with so much power and national presence is, at the core, the brattiest of little boys: picking fights and eyeing the other boys’ toys in the big, bad War Room, his own very expensive playground.  And when Buck has managed to make this have some semblance of a game, we can laugh a little, albeit uneasily.

Step Right Up

Central Kentucky and its lack of glamor has afforded me vivid memories of traveling carnivals because for one glorious week each summer, there were big lights (at least in my eyes) shining on our hamlet.  If the carnival was running seven nights, I was there for at least five.  And it was always the same . . . someone pukes after the Tilt-O-Whirl.  A kid wails like a barn owl at the top of the ferris wheel and has to be taken off.  Someone breaks a tailbone after plummeting down the towering slide on a burlap sack.  The world’s cheapest tchotchkes are bought and paid for with blood, sweat, and blisters from tossing undersized rings onto oversized milk bottles.  

And while the the key elements are the same, the routine, predictable as it may be, never alleviates the strangeness of mood or atmosphere.  And that’s magical, right?  To know exactly what’s coming (high prices for a bag of bolts put together clap-trap in an empty parking lot) and still feel as though you’ve been transported beyond the realm of the real is perhaps the greatest sleight of hand ever pulled off.  And that’s the trick at work in Carnival Magic (1981).  I gladly confess here that the ticket for this little-known circus of entertainment came from TCM Underground . . . a treasure trove of sassy strangeness and my favorite thing about TV.  Period.   

I walked away from this film scratching my head.  It was strange and strangely touching.  And had the accents of the carnival-goers been any thicker, I would have sworn that young me and many folks I know had been sitting in those side-show tents and riding those rickety rides.  Aside from the overwhelming nostalgia, the mysterious, kind-hearted hero with a dark past (Markov the Great--traveling magician with extra sensory perception) versus the archetypal jealous, overly-macho villain (disgruntled animal trainer who beats up on his co-stars and his girlfriend) is so black and white, good versus evil, that you want to see things set right, lives saved and relationships forged, before the credits roll.  You see this rag-tag band of society’s fringed figures find their own brand of happiness and success, and you’re rooting (in my case, vehemently) for them to hold tight to these triumphs.  Mix that in with carney weirdness:  A PR man dressed like a Miami Vice reject, an owner struggling to raise a daughter single-handedly and make a buck, a young girl struggling with her femininity, an ex-Miss America contestant turned magician’s assistant, and our clearly defined hero and villain.  The result is, well, pretty much like that central Kentucky carnival.

Did I mention that Markov the Great’s closest friend in the world is a talking chimp (Alex, short for Alexander the Great) that he’s trained as a way of coping with the grief from losing his wife?  Well, there’s that.  And the scenes that absolutely transfixed me were the scenes in which Markov and Alex are performing their show.  So strange and inexplicable are the feats performed by Markov--I’m watching myself in the confused, amused faces of these carnival goers, like a funhouse mirror of sorts.  I’ve seen behind the curtain, into Markov’s personal life, and I know some of his personal secrets.  But the magician’s presence and performance is in no way tarnished or explained--he’s as mysterious and unsettling for me as he is for any other person who pays a dollar and wanders into that tent.

This movie is a time capsule that moves and talks, a strange little drama that grows weirder the deeper you go . . . like any carnival I’ve ever been to.   It’s barkers’ signs made with plywood and puff paint.  And the radioactive shade of a snow cone that tastes like no fruit or flavor as yet identified by man.  Or popping three sagging balloons with tired plastic darts for an airbrushed poster of unicorns in flight. It’s wild and wonderful, mundane and marvelous in a package at once shiny and dull. 

Dance Dance Revolution

The black fairy tale that is Metropolis (1927) absolutely blew me away the first time I saw it.  It’s visually arresting in and of itself, but that something from 1927 could possess that optical splendor was a shock.  The opening scene of a workers’ shift change and a plunge into their underground city.  Freder’s short-lived frolic in the Garden.  The craggy labyrinth of the catacombs where the workers meet.  Rotwang’s laboratory, complete with bubbling liquids and rings and bolts of life-granting light.  It’s a feast of fantasy laid before us and not just for fantasy’s sake.  I appreciate the theme and the ideas that underlie the narrative, but what sticks with me after the lights come up is the dance sequence and the surrounding scenes . . . and the dark and blatant sexuality.

The initial image of Rotwang’s machinated woman on screen is pure sci-fi delight.  A svelte column of quicksilver, this invention lets us know that we’re dealing not just with a revolution of industry but with one of sex as well.  Bathed in probing rings of lightwhich create literal halos around her, it becomes obvious that it isn’t just the men in the club who are to worship this being.  We, too, should look to her on a pedestal and pay our respects with awe and reverence. Then machinated woman takes on Maria’s countenance, and C. A. Rotwang delivers us a written invitation  to see this erotic dancer, this devious mediator between the minds and the loins of the privileged.  

The stage for her performance harkens bondage, with muscled men in loin cloths (real or carved or does it matter?) holding the stage on their shoulders.  And the stage they hold is an elaborate, self-luminous creation like an oversized trinket box from a lady’s vanity.  The top opens, like a clam proffering its pearl, and from a powdery haze of smoke and light, Maria ascends.  With a headdress to rival Egyptian royalty, she is before us, and the magnificent stage melts away lest it compete with Maria’s impending performance.  Her arms spread and the backlighting reveals a cape that could be woven from dew drops and air it’s so light and twinkling.  A draping of beads from waist to foot, strategic beaded coverings, and flesh fill the screen.  She spins like a top until she’s free from the excess draping of the cape.  She marches into geometric poses, signaling to us with hands and knees.  Then, she gyrates into fluid movement, her arms creating such snakelike semblance across her back that we’re assured that archetypal evil is in the moment.

And even though this is stunning, what really shakes me up are the splices of her male audience.  I’ve seen sex scenes in movies and listened to lots of dialogue about sex, but I’ve never been as convinced of the presence of sheer, furious lust as when I look at the faces of those men.  The open-mouthed panting.  The determined eyes and half-drawn smirk.  A ravel of aggression and desire.  

In his fever-induced delirium, Freder receives a message, and we get it too--as a screen of dialogue: “For her--all seven deadly sins!”  Well, they are for us, too.  Death’s bony fingers guide a melody on the human bone he plays, and he and the sinful statues now dance toward us.  And when the statues take up their place on Maria’s revised and rising stage at the end of her performance, the men of privilege bombard her plateau to actively partake in the sinful fantasy she offers.  But beyond their rush, ending this particular sequence, the lone Death still creeps eerily toward us, his scythe posing above his head and gashing toward us like a mortal mark of punctuation to emphasize his message.  And while Death descends upon the city, new life is brought to our minds and cinematic consciousness.

One Cinephile’s Manifesto

We’ve become a society groomed to look for what’s wrong.  The media, especially concerning pop culture, has trained itself and its audience to hunt for the downfalls and sniff out what is problematic. We’re becoming a population of Debbie Downers, inept at recognizing and celebrating beauty because we’re too busy lying in wait like vultures ready to prey on any mistake or ridiculousness that crosses our paths.  Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t absolute shit being cranked out in hopes of mass consumption; I won’t deny that in the least.  And I won’t deny the place or the necessity for useful, thoughtful criticism.  But instead of focusing on all the crap out there, I’ve decided to spend my time indulging my appreciation of the weird, the wonderful, the wild, and the wildly underrated.  Life’s too short to deal in drudgery.

I’m not here to offer comparative ratings of blank-and-a-half stars.  I’m also not attempting to be the source for extensive background research detailing the creative differences between Cinematographer X and Director Z.   I’m not here to dig up and divulge factual or technical errors.  My very simple goal is to praise the films I enjoy and love, explore what is most affecting about them, and share it in writing.  I realize that no movie is perfect (maybe Bergman’s a god, though), but a great many movies have delivered a great many perfect moments of delight, terror, anger, and tragedy.  In looking to those moments in this blog, I hope both myself and any potential readers can find shared appreciation of said moments and maybe discover a few films that otherwise would never have blipped on our cinematic radars.

So, here’s to blipping radars, happy reading, and a lifetime of great cinema.