Eros + Massacre (1969)

January 22, 2021January 17, 2021 AlexArt, Cinema, Cinematography, Daijirō Harada, Eros + Massacre, Etsushi Takahashi, Film, Film as a political medium, Hasegawa Genkichi, History, Itō Noe, Japan, Japanese New Wave, Kamichika Ichiko, Kiju Yoshida, Love, Mariko Okada, Nouvelle Vague, Politics, Revolution, Temporal relations, Time, Toshiko Ii, Toshiyuki Hosokawa, Tsuji Jun, Yûko Kusunoki, Yoshishige Yoshida, Ōsugi SakaeLeave a comment

Eros + Massacre

“The fundamental theme is: how to change the world, and what is it that needs to be changed? Reflecting on the present situation through the medium of an era already past, I came to believe that Osugi’s problems continue to be ours.” – Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida, Cahiers du Cinema, Oct 1970.

Writing on Eros + Massacre, Yoshida’s 1969 abstract epic, will be an incomplete task by its’ end. I say this not only due to my own limitations as a writer to grapple fully with the range of historical context and the extremely intricate construction/style. I say this because Yoshida’s film is like a maelstrom in the sea, the currents of past, present and future swirling around each other in an ocean which contains them all. If an artwork or a film begins to sprawl out, it becomes tougher to comprehend; to remember, to be sure or confident in the judgements you make concerning any analytical or emotional responses/interpretations. Conventional cinematic viewing can often lead to two responses to material which you don’t understand; hostility or reluctance to speak at all. For several reasons I’m sure, Yoshida’s films have travelled in high places but their release and exposure to the wider mainstream of cinema and it’s viewers has been largely invisible throughout common film education. In fact, until I saw Eros + Massacre, I was not aware a Japanese New Wave in cinema even existed.

So I am grateful to Arrow Video’s work in restoring the film (alongside others) in a 2017 release. I am also grateful that Yoshida’s work has managed to travel continually in some form, because that maelstrom you experience when watching the film is reflective of the same one we live in continously. By design, Eros +Massacre takes the alternating streams of conflicting histories, narratives we tell ourselves, and half-remembered reveries and unleashes them through the screen, releasing a dam of cinematic forms that has been continually choked by the need to fix a singular narrative in place, a singular plot with a singular story. In a film concerned with what it means in the present when we try to construct ‘a usable past’, it is difficult to cope with a visual presentation closer to the real life experience of our own, consciously navigating ourselves through societies different conflicting accounts of “what really happened”, “who really did what”, “why did that happen the way it did?”. History is built from the ruins of the present, interpretations from different arenas of society (with differing amounts of pressure), and the narrative channelings of any one human writer looking to find out why things are the way they are. To put this onscreen is no easy task.

So my writings on Eros + Massacre will forever remain incomplete, and I think Yoshida would be contented to know that. At the very least, love and its’ limitless potentials combined with its’ consequences, is a good place to start.

It feels strange to pick a starting point when discussing the film, if only because it’s reflecting the film’s own obsession over how malleable the temporal world that we navigate can be. Eros + Massacre starts in the 1960s, but it’s tracing a circle back to the 1910s/20s, where the principal characters are displaced by their visions of the future, and the actors of the present are grasping the sands of the past running through their fingers.

Pinning the story to the wall reveals some facts, Eiko (Toshiko Ii) and Wada (Daijirō Harada) are two students in the late 60s, adrift in the modern cosmopolis of Tokyo. Beginning with an interview, Eiko spends much of the runtime trying to make sense of her past, and her relationship to her mother Itō Noe, who was involved in the feminist and social upheaval happening in Japan in the late Meji and Taishō periods of history. She was also involved with Ōsugi Sakae (Toshiyuki Hosokawa), a radical Japanese anarchist who entertained three simultaneous couplings; one with his wife Yaruko Hori, one with journalist Kamichika Ichiko (played by Yûko Kusunoki, she is referred to in the film as Masaoka Itsuko due to the real Ichiko attempting to sue Yoshida for violation of privacy which led to a theatrical recut for release), and one with Itō Noe (played by Mariko Okada). He did this through a radical profession of free love, in the denial of the self and of the social pressures enforced on society through monogamous coupling and private property ownership. His philosophy was in conflict with the state pressure and forces of Japanese politics, but also at odds with the desires of each of the women he was in relation to. It is from this pool of love, politics, philosophy and time that Eros + Massacre spends it’s time swimming in.

To try and separate the stories in order to make better coherence of them, is precisely what Yoshida’s construction is designed to resist. The histories of this time are thrown together in parallel, at times bleeding into the reality of each other with such actuality that the timelines and their characters quite literally unify together in the same space on screen. Eiko is subject to the role of the interviewee from the beginning, the camera (and by extension its’ operator Wada) becoming a cypher for our own way into this world, but Eiko also becomes the interviewer and tries her best to get answers from her mother, who’s enigmatic appearance reveals only enigmatic answers.

To be living in the present means you do not have full access to the past, and cinema for a long time has carefully glided over that fact by creating an external frame to witness the events of the past, which are in fact only interpretations filtered down through the creative process that any film crew embarks on when producing a film. So the film continually investigates and re-investigates itself, freed from trying to pretend that the past is both fixed and fully accessible, the film is continually reflecting on the impressions and echoes of the positions we place ourselves in in our spatio-temporal existences, the echoes of the paths previously tread and the imagined ones we have yet to walk.

All of this sounds very metaphysical, and that is perhaps because it is. One of the struggles of trying to give shape to writing about this film, is the very fact that it wants to be oriented in this tangle of metaphysical tensions. It’s revolutionary bent in style and substance means the film is a chaotic mass of roots growing downwards, it’s divisions only allowing you to see the more complex relations between each strand. Take the monumental work of cinematography in the film (fulfilled by Hasegawa Genkichi), which contains some truly exquisite and deft compositions. It’s long focus and depth of field means the surroundings are filled with an atmosphere of the Japanese architecture, a sense of understanding is built between the environment and the people who inhabit it. The compositions themselves then not only possess a treasured sense of environmental scale lost in modern cinema, but the compositions are radically de-centred; they resist being images easy to process, reflecting the turbulent and complicated relations between the characters they are not easily found on screen, lurking in the corners of frames or partially shielded from view.

This grows as the architecture becomes an active element in the environment; characters are reflected through windows and mirrors as they speak to each other heightening their fractured distance; they burst continuously from shōji (Japanese paper-style walls) appearing from hidden pockets and frames within the cinematic one. But this is the cinematography only of the earlier period, and the shooting style of the 60s era embraces the nouvelle vague‘s more confrontational camera work, of a more direct exposé of the characters onscreen. Here Wada and Eiko are not just subjecting themselves to the looming stare of the long spiral of history, but they are in the throes of confronting themselves and their own gazes. So the cinematography expands here, visual extremism as the analysis digs and digs in the ruins of time. Eiko even has the past projected onto her literally through a screen projector, as she confronts Wada on notions of love, manhood and the gap between desire and fulfillment of them.

As the film progresses, that visual extremism or dynamism starts to affect the more traditionally composed cinematography of the past sections building upon it even further. The film’s most reknowned sequence is a tri-part replication of the Hikage Teahouse Incident, where Kamichika Ichiko stabbed Ōsugi Sakae after discovering him living with Noe. The tri-part, comes from it going over different depictions of how the event could have taken place, each version of events with its focus and dynamics shifted. Here the camera bleeds through an abstraction of archaic stage-play kabuki theatrics, classical cinematography and the more experimental angles of it’s present day focus and artistry. The past becomes the present reflected through the past, and all of these complicated tensions never unify into a single position; the variants and perceptions of history are shrugged off by Eiko (complaining that the incident may never have even happened), and so too the cinematographical strands are left untied into a neat knot. The cinematography fuses together in the moments of brilliant experience when the story is being encountered, but it refuses to contain itself to the limits of past/present/future. It is all those at once, and more.

Do you see why it is difficult to talk about Eros + Massacre? Even now I’m reflecting back the film’s own concerns with its’ presentation. As Eiko and Wada submerge themselves into the stream of the world around them, the film does the same. It concerns itself so much with its’ own construction it even exposes it, a sequence where the director and camera set up is shown initiating Eiko and Wada into their next scene. Their world is inextricably linked to the celluloid reality they’re being burned onto by Yoshishige and his editor Yasuoka Hiroyuki. By the end of the film, not only have all the characters come together across space and time to be preserved in a photograph (“a monument for the future”), but characters in both the past and present have simultaneously commited suicide and reached death and still possess life onscreen, one even hanging themselves with the celluloid and embracing that reality to a deliriously surreal conclusion. The film opens out like a puzzle box, where not even the conventions of mortal life need to necessarily be respected or entertained as they so often are in conventional cinema. You cannot throw off these boundaries, it is not that Yoshida’s work isn’t interested in them. It is more that the work approaches them and explores them intimately through film, a form which isn’t necessarily bound by the limitations of the human form.

Once you move through that, you then can see the huge chasm that is being carved into the psyche when the film communicates on love, on politics, on the massacre between them. Yoshida’s position on these matters is a culmination of the thought and ideals of those real historical figures for sure, but they are also very much his own. Grown from the environment of the 1960s, a time when across the globe cinema was experiencing an internal revolution in how to portray itself. So the theories of Ōsugi on free love are placed in chronic opposition to his undermined sense of self, as well as his betrayal of revolutionary ideals to become an informer. Itō Noe’s genuine desires of self-realisation are undercut by her inability to free herself from the tangles of her own pride and her love with Ōsugi, or rather than undercut they are simply challenged by. Itsuko (real life- Ichiko) listens to Ōsugi’s words, we can hear her agreeing with his philosophies even though you can see in her face that she does not believe them and it drives her to madness. Eiko’s ambition to make sense of her past can’t be fully reconciled with the impossibility of ever fully knowing what happened or even why. And all of this takes place against the barely visible backdrop of that metaphysical conversation of being both in society and of it, the white gloved hands of the state slowly grasping tighter around the necks of those who radically rebel against its’ structures.

I’m sure there are plenty of “answers” out there written by critics and academics alike on what the content of Eros + Massacre means, and I’m sure that plenty of those reasoned pieces provide valuable insight into how the film manifests meanings that are difficult to explain in language. But Yoshida’s masterpiece is a contemplation on the limits of love without end, and it is designed to flow through you and fill you with understanding, before closing it’s doors until you decide to enter again (quite literally!). For me to have written a piece which could ever claim to answer these questions in full, would be blind to the negation of self that Yoshida seems transfixed by in this film and the answers that can be felt when moving beyond the ego. There is wisdom in the film, but it is on you to define and shape it into a usable experience for your world, just like Eiko wants to create a usable past out of the infinite fragments and permutation of the human experience.

I would never fully claim to understand it, and I don’t need to claim to mindlessly agree with the full extent of its politics and discourse to show you it is worth watching. It is a film born in a maelstrom, its’ characters whipped and thrown through the seas of time and culture and memory and dreams. They are placed in the infinite set of tensions created by our own complex and ever-evolving desires; our reason, our regrets and our ambitions. All of which continues to evolve moment-by-moment against or with the society around us, and the lies and truths we tell to each other, to ourselves, to the world. Even in love, one of our most freeing feelings we can experience, we still cannot make sense of its’ complicated edges, the way our personalities can hold conflicting dissonances and enable us to repress our desires through multiple layers of filtration (society, lover’s egos, our own sense of self and how honest we can be etc.). If Yoshida’s film was the defining statement on these matters, we could all go home and rest easy, but Eros + Massacre is borne of a restless current, of a train surging forward from one side of the screen to the next.

So I leave the work here, incomplete and in ruins. And there is a humbling sense of peace in that, like Tsuji Jun (Etsushi Takahashi), Itō Noe’s second husband who she leaves for Ōsugi. He weathers this storm of life in the film, retreating into his shakuhachi (Japanese flute) playing as a way to cope with love leaving his world. Maybe there is more wisdom in this path, maybe less. Maybe the value of his choice is not dependent on how good or bad it is, but simply that it is at all. Maybe that is all we should ask from ourselves, from our art. It might not answer every question, and it might demand more from us in the future, but perhaps that at least might be a good place to start.

-Alex

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Soul (2020)

January 4, 2021January 17, 2021 AlexLeave a comment

Soul

Where are we these days?

I suppose that question can always be asked, whatever the time or place. Those of you reading this near the time of writing will find that question looming like a stormcloud across our day-to-day life, but this question has always been relevant no matter when you’re living. Perhaps this collective vehicle we’ve built called society needs a collective maintenance check-up from time to time. ‘An unexamined life is not worth living’ is a phrase which jumped from Socrates’ mind across a vast abyss of time, culture and history, and has landed here in the discussion of Soul (2020, Dirs. Pete Docter and Kemp Powers) Pixar’s newest animated feature released exclusively on Disney+, the company’s streaming arm extending into our television sets and our lives.

So that’s where Soul is. It’s right there as a large (soon to be smaller) promotional icon on Disney+, a little windowed adventure on the collage board of choice. But on where we are, on where our souls are in these hyperactive unstable times, then where is Soul? What strands of animation have been woven together in an attempt to resonate with us, as art is so often intending to do? And if we can’t find out where we are, can we find out where we’re going?

This may be a lot to put on any one film, but perhaps a film which deals with the abstract should also be approached in an abstract way. And a warning note for those who continue to read, since the production process, exhibition and distribution of Soul has gone through one of the biggest corporate monoliths in entertainment, what this will head into is a reckoning with the internal tensions between Soul and its very existence in a part of a larger entertainment schema. The film (in an over -dramatic and yet very real way) is caught in the midst of the battle for cinema’s soul, as the turmoil over streaming vs the big screen entered an existential crisis during this pandemic. Slated to originally release on June 20th this year in cinemas, its’ exhibition and release is another sign that the times are changing.

Switch to another perspective however, and things take a very different view. Pixar Animation Studios has long been a brilliant jewel in Disney’s crown (or tiara), and has been filled with a rich display of artistry in both its’ own technical achievements and in its’ fable-esque ability to imbue stories with wisdom meant for children and adults alike. In doing so the studio has become one of the founding cornerstones of Western cinema in our time, their work plumbing the depths of human imagination through undeniably exquisite computer animation. It has done this however, under the eyes of no doubt the biggest entertainment company releasing film media for children (and some would include adults in at this point). The shining jewel of Disney’s crown has stayed polished and near immaculate through decades, but it is fixed in its’ position by a million different corporate hands holding it in place. Art usually stays allied to power, and it is important to get a lay of what that landscape means when it comes to thinking about Soul.

The film follows, the life and death and re-life of Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx); a jazz musician, a teacher, a son, a friend, a human being. Lost in the motions of daily life in a teaching job he doesn’t find fulfilment in, Joe dies suddenly and unexpectedly. Encountering the ethereal spectrum of the afterlife (referred to as The Great Beyond/The Great Before), Joe is paired with an as yet unborn soul, in an attempt to mentor them into existence by finding their spark, their reason to live. What we witness in the running time is a meditative journey through the consequences of Joe’s life, as it becomes reimagined through the eyes of 22 (voiced by Tina Fey) who careers like a wrecking ball through Joe’s built up frameworks and perspectives on getting through life. 22 is an unborn soul; cynical, reluctant and fearful of understanding life, but also free of the cultivated limitations we can impose on ourselves and have imposed on us when we live on Earth long enough.

So, a metaphysical dialogue bounces back and forth between the two, as both interrogate each other on what it even means to live an existence. A spiritual rainstorm falls from above, courtesy of Docter and Powers’ vision. To try and deny the depth of their work, to try and reduce it to just another light silly Disney film, is to also miss the point of what has made the regular work of Pixar so universal, so accessible and so beloved by its parent company. We live in a world where it has become more paramount than ever on handling the mental health aspects of our lives, and it is not by accident that the emotional resonance of Soul guides towards a healthier understanding of what it means to be alive.

Soul grounds its’ story in the African-American experience, but Pixar’s modus operandi has always been about recognising the humanity and the experiential qualities of life in whatever world you may find yourself in. Docter’s last film asked you to find humanity in anthropomorphised emotions (Inside Out, 2015) and Pixar’s output for a long time eschewed human animation (as a technical/logistical choice as well as an artistic one since computer generated animation of human figures was considerably more complex). The black experience is given a spotlight here so rarely gifted to modern media, and is enhanced (or used as window dressing and gutted depending on how cynical you are) by Pixar’s continual drive for universality and accessibility.

Especially in the media world we live in today, Soul will mean a lot more to a lot of people simply for what it represents than what it is. I’ve always worked hard on this site to try to experience films as their own internal experiences, to see what a film means in its presentation and in its knowledge; ‘Style and Substance’ and why/how it does both. But what sits at the crux of Soul, is a disconnect between its own substance and the very company which is responsible for its’ existence. Soul breathes the integrity of true art, of fables told throughout time to show us wisdom and enchantment. It is about striking your own understanding of the world alight, away from responsibilities or weights which your spirit might be carrying unnecessarily. Perhaps that sounds too magical or ridiculous, but this is the very world Soul is predicating itself upon, a magical reality of fantasia.

But that magical reality is warped hard by the concerns of the real world. A limitation is reached, when exploring these issues in only a kid-friendly environment. In a way, am I grateful simply because Soul has figured out a way to get these questions to adults at all? One of the reasons the film will resonate significantly across audiences is because in part a lot of us may feel like this, lost and crushed by the weight of expectations which are only half our own, mixed in with the highly fractious expectations of ourselves and others. In a Disney film however, Soul can only tackle these issues in a de-fanged world, one who’s relation to the real world is at once very close but also very far since it can’t address the more complicated socio-economic reasons we may find ourselves trapped in jobs we don’t find value in. It can only address these matters through the personal, Joe’s relationship with his mum, a student, a soul. Not necessarily because it’s mistaken in doing so, but because to entertain any idea beyond the pale of palatable, personal relations would harm the earning potential of potential markets. The corporate dance to step on as few toes as possible de-fangs Soul‘s ability to speak. It is not Disney’s responsibility to educate the world, but their designed monopoly of entertainment inevitably will have an effect like that. Our own internal desires are constantly navigating a struggle in a complex architecture of many layers we have designed together to channel, guide and sometimes suppress us all collectively in various ways. Soul’s great release of understanding life is so generous, but it can’t ever say that the world around us is working hard to keep you distracted from realising its preciousness. On that Disney remains silent.

Why would a company like Disney want something like that? Primarily because it’s ethos as has been to dominate entertainment with a succession of good-return sequels and story continuations, stretching material over and over again because financially to greenlight a sequel is a much sounder investment than financing an unknown project. From Toy Story’s (1995, Dir. John Lasseter) first release, it would be another 16 years before Pixar would release any other sequels. Perhaps through their striking originality and success, they have managed to preserve an ability to still meaningfully cultivate original material in this domain, but they have certainly fallen more into step with Disney’s corporate line in the last generation or so. Sequels are not inherently evil, but the focus on continually milking established intellectual properties has created an overwhelming current towards prioritising repeated slim variations of similar stories to make sure merchandise continues to get sold in vast quantities.

Corporate control extends further though, when Disney’s abilities and resources allow it to commandeer and marshal the resources of art at a level most can never understand. In short, this made itself apparent as I witnessed the hippie iconography of Moonwind and his ship, sound tracked to Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. Sanded down as much as possible, Docter is free to lift the imagery of a counterculture movement and fold it into his world, while using one of the most revolutionary rock songs in a tiny snippet to allow credibility (and representation!) but without allowing any of the lyrics to be played, removing the songs tumbling context to provide glamorous set dressing. On the flip side of this, is the knowledge that the original incarnation of Mickey Mouse as Steamboat Willie is still copyright protected until 2024 nearly 100 years after its own inception, thanks in large part to the machinations of those involved at Disney. More so than any company, they have worked to shape the flow of the artistic domain we all reside in to put commercial concerns above artistic freedom or experimentation, a pool that Disney spent a great deal of time drawing from in establishing most of their own early works (most fairytales are public domain). Artistry can be pulled up into the Disney experience, but it has to be streamlined to be as inoffensive as possible. And heaven forbid trying to integrate Disney’s work anywhere else into the pool, even as their lobbying has helped create a void of artistic culture dominated by IP law. In my mind, does Disney function as a film company who sells toys, or a toy company who makes films? Of course it can be both (if not more), but where do the priorities point towards in its’ art? And what might those priorities mean for film culture outside of the film as merchandise feedback loop?

Soul to me appears caught in an existential bind, another film caught in an abyss of cognitive dissonance being carved out by Disney. Usually, I want to describe how all the elements of a film can work in tandem or against each other to create a unified vision, but in Soul a unified vision is only apparent on the surface, and it seems to be tearing itself apart with an irrepressible desire to elucidate on the human experience while having to toe the line of corporate-approved storytelling. I guess I do slightly admire this psychological dance between these poles, it is so easy to get lost in a dichotomy of anything corporations do being seen as evil, and what Disney and Pixar have continually built upon is the genuine integrity of the human endeavour to live, to love, to be fulfilled in a world which has the potential for magic bursting from all its seams. That is especially true in their films always being such spectacular feats of exquisitely rendered animation, objects and space imbued with talking fish, monsters, cars, toys, and now our own souls and their mentors.

But the integrity of the film’s soul is compromised by its’ own mentor, and moving into a world where Disney’s ambition of endless repeatable stories inside selected worlds for maximum audience retention and maximum profitability is siphoning off air to the very creative spirit it supposedly champions and wants to inspire in us through this film. The patronage of the white gloves of Mickey comes with a heavy burden, a burden perhaps that even the directors may not be fully aware of. Soul can just as easily be seen as a unconscious cry for help from its internal developers as an urgent plea for us to awaken into our own lives more readily and freely. Soul asks you to learn what it means to be free, but without ever asking you to acknowledge those who are benefitting from you staying caged. What Soul illustrates so well is how the complexity of the world can allow you to lose yourself, and how even those close to you can misalign what it means to love and care for each other in a world of day-to-day experience. For that it should be admired. But I’ve heard before that the devil covers with one hand and uncovers with the other, and what this film doesn’t say maybe should be feared, or at least understood and reckoned with.

Because if we don’t take care of our souls right, who will?

-Alex

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Grit/Motion: Dogtown and Z Boys (2001) & Lords of Dogtown (2005)

October 9, 2020January 17, 2021 AlexLeave a comment

Dogtown

I am finding that this year has turned up a lot of our earth, a lot of our collective soil which we’ve all grown in together. For whatever reason, I have felt that the time spent in these last months has allowed some of my older, more submerged roots to become visible again. Parts of my culture and my identity that used to shine so clearly at my forefront that have since been reshuffled into my psyche.

It is also the first time in a long time I’ve thought about rewatching some films. Quite self-consciously, I’ve tried for a long time in my life to continually pursue films unseen, unexperienced. Especially when considering material for this site, I have tried to hold true to a quality of new and original experiences, and not allow the work to just become an expulsion of opinions on things I already like and why I like them. Great art can create waves of reckoning inside yourself, and I was concerned that in cinema I had already seen and liked, that reckoning had already since passed.

But in the spirit of this revealing of those hidden roots, I returned to a story which has captivated me for a long time, which made an impression on me at a young age, and whose tracks I can now trace through myself as a much older man. The first glimpses I saw of this story, was when Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001, Dir. Stacy Peralta) was playing wordlessly in a skateshop I used to visit, endlessly looping on a TV mounted on the wall at the back. I browsed the shop for a long time, long enough to get shouted at to hurry up by my mum who was sheperding me through this early experimentation with skate culture. I couldn’t grasp much from the silent frames, but the furious impression they seared into my mind was something that marked me.

Skateboarding to me was a defining, sculpting part of my childhood. The concrete sprawl of my city was a spider’s web to get lost in, the gravel and the concrete became very close friends. Communal skating in underground car parks was so common to me that it was a real shock when I fell out of it, as my friendship group splintered and fractured apart around 13/14. It was also where I honed my first filmmaking skills, shooting clips through a shitty Sony Ericsson W810i and editing them through the in-built software. Skateboarding from the outside looks like a very simple barebones activity, but hiding underneath it’s griptape surface is a creative vibrancy and anarchic sense of invention and play which draws disparate elements and disparate people together.

There is a line to be traced however winding and convoluted, between myself and every other kid who picked up a skateboard since, and the Z-Boys of Dogtown. The sand of California’s grittiest beaches has been swept far by the wind, a legacy crossing through time and generations of disaffected youths.

For those coming to it fresh and unknown, the Zephyr Skateboard Team (a group of young, anarchic-spirited kids from the zone they marked as Dogtown) helped to revolutionise skateboarding into the modern phenomenon it has become today. To some that means very little, but to this ragged clan of urban guerillas it meant pioneering the use and invention of stylistic elements which changed the form in which the sport was experienced. Infusing surf culture and style into the concrete, their fierce and ecclectic personas bubbled above a churning cultural firestorm, as their exploits and stylistic experiments helped to reform the fundamentals of the culture itself.

What makes Dogtown and Z-Boys so special in its’ documentary experience, is the closeness and authenticness of its’ own creation. Stacy Peralta, the film’s director, was also one of the original Zephyr team. The cultural scene which the audience expects to be revealed, is guided by its’ key participants of the living history they catalysed into existence with an intimacy of subject matter that most documentarians would struggle to achieve. Skate culture and its’ relationship to filmmaking has been relatively fruitful, with a niche cottage industry of videos shot for the community of interested participants which can again be traced back to Peralta, director of the first ever skate video (The Bones Brigade Show, 1984).

The film is, more directly than others, born from the earth that made it. For those more cynically minded, it’s a lesson in self certified myth-making, but that is to mistake the understanding of what their story means. The spirit of this story is embedded in every fibre of its’ being, and its hyperactive gritty collage layers an experience onto its’ audience of what it is like to turn your junkyard into your playground. As fiery recollections swirl around footage of twisted skaters under a washed out sun, the private world of Dogtown is cracked open by those who helped set up its fortifications.

Roses grow from the shit, not from the petals. A documentary lens has always been more infused with that anthropological spirit, subjects and not actors. And to be opened to the world of skateboarding and its’ evolution, is to be opened up to the lives, dreams, catastrophies and successes of its key players. The atmosphere is on fire, collisions of turbulent adolescents meeting disorganised intoxicating adults who take them under their spray-painted wings. The blaze of success becomes an inferno, and in their different ways the documentary examines how each subject, each friend, ally and enemy coped with their own peculiar set of burns.

The truth is shown in Dogtown and Z-Boys, or rather through a ragged and incendiary collage, the truth is assembled and presented as best as it could have from those who witnessed it from the inside out. The area between South Santa Monica, Venice Beach and Ocean Park, gave lightning in a bottle to a bunch of 11 year old kids and they smashed it open to grab hold of it. The instinctual urban play of poorer, spiky youths in the blazing sun leading to sponsorships, rifts, careers, mistakes and drifters. A scene is catalysed, but it is never evenly generous to its’ makers. And who better to understand that than its’ own participants?

Lords of Dogtown (2005, Dir. Catherine Hardwicke) was knocking on doors for a long time, and it was only when the documentary landed that it’s creation began. But it’s creation is just another point on the long journey from those original bankside turns carved into moments of space and time, circa 1970something. Stacy Peralta was the screenwriter for the film, and the film’s authenticity in reconstructing the gnarled history of Dogtown is cut close to its’ bones.

In recreating the film, the now outdated 70s style of skating had to be resurrected, which also meant the cast had to learn how to skate in the first place. Sets were built closely to the original specifications (the Zephyr Shop for example), and the original Dogbowl swimming pool was resurrected from its’ grave to provide a new location that had already been an old home. The layers of history run deep and collide over each other, the real Zephyr skaters guiding their fictional counterparts to play themselves in the locations where the real skaters made these marks. “Under the paving stones, the beach!”

An anthropological experience is one thing (one almost reminiscent of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing), but Hardwicke’s direction takes point on delivering the feeling of this world, the truth that this skate crew lived out. The camera work is an urban guerilla too, frantically crashing against waves of editing to a mellow roll in brief, clear moments of peace. The skating sequences flow through the air, their motion exquisitely captured in balance with the environment around them. The purity of the pursuit of skating is presented with the same genuine reverence that the Z-Boys expressed in their documentary. And that balance, which is only found fleetingly, is the binding invisible thread tying together their world as it explodes from its centre.

For sure, their history is more glamorised here, their counterparts more chiselled and handsome and made more palatable in their aesthetic to the cinema world we are used to. The scuzziness however, is never hidden away or betrayed by that often cultural compromise we make when we make fiction out of our history. To watch origins become truth become record become myth is something we are constantly doing as humans, editing and re-editing endlessly the stories of who, what, when, why and how did all that happen. The intermediaries along the way sometimes have good judgement, but often the boiling down of history to fit a feature length timeslot kills a lot of the deep truth of the events. For better and for worse, the Dogtown crew had some input into how their history, their myth was presented. First in their own lens, and then in the lens of a sympathetic, closely aligned in artistic spirit director. This allows the films to be alive in a deeper way, to be unified with that anarchic low to the ground pursuit which fills the imagination of the screen.

Roots are important because they support what grows, even if their presence becomes invisible to the naked eye. To spend time in the mud is to understand it, become accustomed to it, see what the world looks like from the ground. Skateboarding in my life has meant a lot to me, and it has in general always been defined antagonistically towards general society. A refuge for many continually painted as danger, a threat. Society spends a great deal of time outcasting its’ subjects, and navigating the world these days feels more complex than ever. Perhaps I feel that call again to pick up a board and just experience the grit under my feet and the motion of the air around me. The same wish, same spirit which traces haphazardly through the past to the present of 1970s California.

The urge to feel free.

-Alex

Studio Ghibli (2/2)

May 29, 2020January 17, 2021 AlexAkira Miki, Animation, Arietty, Castle in the Sky, Film, From Up on Poppy Hill, Gorō Miyazaki, Grave of the Fireflies, Hayao Miyazaki, Hidekazu Sato, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Hiroyuki Morita, Howl's Moving Castle, Isao Takahata, Isao Takahata and His Tale of Princess Kaguya, Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, My Neighbors the Yamadas, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Ocean Waves, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko, Ponyo, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Studio Ghibli, Tales of Earthsea, The Cat Returns, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, The Story of Yanagawa's Canals, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, The Wind Rises, Tomomi Mochizuki, When Marnie was ThereLeave a comment

Studio Ghibli Isao Takahata

The tangled and vibrant exuberance of Miyazaki’s world are clear, waves of a surreal ocean washing over the audience. But water in moments of stillness, provides a reflective surface too; a mirror we can stare into, wash ourselves with. Isao Takahata’s Ghibli filmography is not drenched in dynamic surrealism which excites the imagination in fantasy. He uses the richness of the animated medium to create a lower-key of intimacy with the fabrics of the stories he adapts. Here in Takahata’s pools, the characters are enveloped by the gentle unfolding atmospheres, tones and moods which echo throughout impressionistic environments. Clouds of memory drenched in the fog of forgetfulness, flights of imaginative fancy, daydreams lurking in melancholy wishes; the reflectiveness of Takahata’s surfaces pull us into the nature of our imaginations when they relate to the reality of the world around us.

The characters which rise through these surfaces, swimming along its canals are ones which are pure of heart, at least in their intentions. The concerns they face might be deeply personal, such as Taeko’s gentle manoeuvring through her own half-faded memories as she walks a path of re-discovery as to who she is and who she wants to be in Only Yesterday. In an even more impressionistic and incomplete space, we see the family of My Neighbors the Yamadas navigate the intimate familial push-and-pull of existence, as the relationships of the family are knotted together through the experience of the world around them in a series of haiku-style vignettes. Their personal events become spaces for interaction, for reflection and growth of the oldest and deepest kind, as kids, parents and grandparents all move through space and time.

Or perhaps the characters face a more deeply embedded external issue. Seita’s turmoil and exile from the world around him in Grave of the Fireflies, which leads to some of the starkest and most painful consequences depicted in animation, is rooted in the uncaring and unmoved society which surrounds him. A supposedly civilised and right world which allows him and his sister to slip through its’ cracks. In Pom Poko, a whole range of external issues submerge the tanuki as their forest home comes under the threat of redevelopment. With only an ominous and impending danger the group is awash with inter-personal conflicts; debates and motivations which pulls their minds and their bodies in different directions, all the while the pressures of the human world closing off their space, their time. Choosing to stay distant from any one perspective, the events and characters of Pom Poko are viewed through a prism of viewpoints, allowing the audience to understand the events as they affect the world on a macro-level, beyond the micro-personal events of his other works.

Isao Takahata was Studio Ghibli’s wildcard, a man developing new structures of expression and animation which infuriated even his own Studio. Growing bored of cel-animation (the image Ghibli has managed to help transport across the world), his development of an impressionistic incompleteness in the animation of his work threw the Ghibli production process into chaos. So much so, that after work finished on My Neighbors the Yamadas, Miyazaki upon returning to the upheaval declared that Takahata “would never again make a film at Ghibli”. His character and story structure has always deftly sidestepped more obvious concerns, continually refocusing on gentle and intimate moments of expression which culminate in resonating moments uninterested in forced plot or character development which pulse throughout modern filmmaking. For Takahata, to see the world was enough, and the artwork he made reflected a sense of patience and time that is hard to understand, but important to have been exposed to.

And in his long-gestating and long-awaited final film, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, all of these concerns and experiences culminate in a film which turns even the ideas of Japanese animation on its’ head, ideas he helped to formalise with the very studio he founded. The lines of the film are wild and rough, the impressions of the world fade into beautiful watercolour dreamscapes which stream through your mind. It swirls with a sketched immediacy, unconcerned with the precise perfection of traditional cel-drawn animation. Kaguya’s compassionate expressions portray a personal conflict rooted in an anguish, a longing for a past never to be recovered. While her very existence in the world of medieval Japan is a catalyst for a plethora of societal issues: her nature as a princess, as a growing woman, as a lost child, a mythical being. Her human condition is unravelled to us as a tale of beautiful magnificence, and heart-breaking tragedy. The same can be said about the works of Isao Takahata.

Studio Ghibli Rest of 1 Studio Ghibli Rest of 2

I don’t mean to denigrate the other works of the Studio by addressing them here as a singular grouping, but rather just for the sake of structure and clarity. Here in the realms of Tomomi Mochizuki, Yoshifumi Kondō, Hiroyuki Morita, Gorō Miyazaki & Hiromasa Yonebayashi, we see the worlds of Ghibli expand beyond the auteur visions of the studio’s founders. And here it is important to talk about the cost of that expansion. Animation demands an almost overwhelming surrender to its’ creation, to continually conjure a world which does not exist beyond the frames it is drawn on. That level of demand, of engaged precision must take a tremendous toll on any animator, any director. To direct an actor is a taxing job in itself, but to constantly render that actor to life in every detail of their design even through a team, is a task which must seem relentlessly tough as these films can have be made of over a hundred thousand storyboards (to give examples, Gorō Miyazaki’s From Up On Poppy Hill contains over 70,000, while his father’s Ponyo contains over 170,000).

Animation is a brutally time and energy consuming process, and the effects on the creators themselves can be hard. The production of Ocean Waves, a television feature whose ethic was to design at a much faster rate, still ran considerably over budget and over schedule taking a serious toll on those who designed it. Yoshifumi Kondō, who had spent considerable time working in Ghibli films as a key animator and character design staff, died from an aneurysm at 47 brought on from overwork, as the toll taken on his health finishing production on his directorial debut Whisper of the Heart and his work on Princess Mononoke proved to be too much to bear. In a different side to animation’s personal cost, Gorō’s fractured relationship with his father has been well documented, as both have spent their lives dealing with the consequences of an artistic industry and process which demands nothing short of total absorption. Besides the familial and intricate personal consequences of Gorō’s childhood and subsequent adult life, their own artistic shadows and ambitions have led to serious production issues during the making of his two features under Ghibli’s umbrella.

Even though this post is more concerned with the artistic expressions finalised in their feature forms, it is important to give respect and understand the consequences of the creation of these works. In animation it is even easier to hide the human cost of these productions, as the work is built into its’ own inseparable reality. The directors’ name shrouds hundreds of staff in the invisible shadows of the work; animators, colourists, technicians and design engineers. This is true of regular filmmaking also, but when there is no physical reality to connect to it can often be harder to see.

What can be said about these works is that the spirit of Ghibli burns as brightly through their veins, even as their visions shift from the autocratic eyes of the animators who created the production studio. Hayao Miyazaki wrote the scripts for both Whisper of the Heart and From Up On Poppy Hill, but both films have a uniqueness about them that goes beyond his work, as Kondō and Miyazaki Jr’s own auteurist visions develop throughout. Ocean Waves shirks off the shroud of the surreal that would later define the studio, a tale of simpler fragile hearts caught in a love triangle at school. Yonebayashi, now at work in his own Studio (Studio Ponoc), developed a duo of films concerned with the same intricate themes often expressed in the founders’ work; the innocence of childhood, the memories and transformation of environments, the fantastical dangers of a fantasy world. But they are also films which express those themes in subtly different ways, highlight subtly different and unique visions of those same ideas.

It is both a blessing and a curse that these films live in the shadow of Ghibli’s two mythical animators. Like Haru in The Cat Returns, there is a double-edged nature to even the gifts and good things in the world. These films will always be judged against the towering filmographies of the studio’s founders, because they have been the one’s to establish that identity, an identity which even they can’t agree on. Miyazaki semi-seriously dismisses Takahata’s work in The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, calling it “foolish”. Takahata grew so bored with the Studio’s animating style that he set fire to previous working methods, throwing the studio into chaos through uconventional and painfully slow production processes. The directors working under the Ghibli umbrella have found their own way, perhaps with sometimes less assured footing, to carve their own paths through the gauntlet of the animating process, and they deserve to be commended for it.

What’s even more special is that every one of these films has heights of animation and vision which do more to mesmerise you than most modern filmmaking can achieve. Little gems of artistic perception which glisten in your mind’s eye. The Cat Returns has the moment where Haru and Muta are caught by a spiralling whirlwind of crows. Arietty’s grappling hook excursions through the kitchen carry a beautiful range of emotions associated with adventure. Tales from Earthsea, long derided as unworthy of appreciation, has an existentially mature tone which falls into uncharted territory for most of the Studio’s work. When Marnie Was There has a darkly haunting sequence involving a silo that still haunts my memory. These films, even at their weaker moments still express visions of the world which truly excite the imagination, which use animation to inspire moments of artistic alchemy and to allow entrance to the gates of magic in a way that physical reality-based filmmaking hardly ever crosses through.

Studio Ghibli Cover

In an interview in 2002 regarding Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki expounded on the concept of “ma”, the moments of visible emptiness before an event or happening, using the time before a clap as an example. This philosophy is embedded into his own works, moments of happening which are like connecting tissue between the skin of his films. They aren’t structural story devices or cogs in a fictional machine, they’re moments where the characters simply exist in the present, to be. This whole experience of working through the Studio’s artworks, has allowed these moments of ma to flourish in a world currently off-kilter and violently oversaturated with media noise. The first time in my life I saw My Neighbour Totoro, it astounded me how a film could be so interesting while having so little happening, and that feeling has only compounded with each new Ghibli perspective I’ve encountered.

The moments of ma have resounded and echoed throughout these months of research and writing in a way that has allowed me to see the world in a way which animators do, as a place filled with a timeless shifting nexus of dreams, played out on a canvas of the world. You can dive into any of these works, and find those invisible resonances. In Only Yesterday, there’s this captivating moment where the whole family gather round to gently prepare and enjoy a pineapple in a quiet silence. There’s nothing overtly said or expressed, but the whole scene has a quiet and moving joy in its’ frames, in its’ heart, that speaks volumes to what those at Ghibli want us to see.

They want us to see life, and they want to see those living it.

– Alex

Studio Ghibli (1/2)

May 19, 2020January 17, 2021 AlexAkira Miki, Animation, Arietty, Castle in the Sky, Film, From Up on Poppy Hill, Gorō Miyazaki, Grave of the Fireflies, Hayao Miyazaki, Hidekazu Sato, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Hiroyuki Morita, Howl's Moving Castle, Isao Takahata, Isao Takahata and His Tale of Princess Kaguya, Kiki's Delivery Service, Mami Sunada, Mathieu Kassovitz, My Neighbor Totoro, My Neighbors the Yamadas, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Ocean Waves, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko, Ponyo, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Studio Ghibli, Tales of Earthsea, The Cat Returns, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, The Story of Yanagawa's Canals, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, The Wind Rises, Tomomi Mochizuki, When Marnie was There, Whisper of the Heart, Yoshifumi KondōLeave a comment

Studio Ghibli Cover

“What you show in a movie is one hundred per cent of the reality that you impose on the audience. They cannot imagine anything else, so you have to balance everything.”

This is a quote from Mathieu Kassovitz, being interviewed about his seminal 1995 film La Haine in the latest edition of Sight and Sound (May 2020). He was making a point about the characters in his film, but the quote stuck with me as I made my way through the entirety of Studio Ghibli’s feature filmography, alongside three significant documentary releases related to the studio (these are Isao Takahata’s The Story of Yanagawa’s Canals, Mami Sunada’s The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness and Akira Miki & Hidekazu Sato’s Isao Takahata and His Tale of Princess Kaguya).

Animation is an art form which demands a surrender to it, both in it’s making and it’s reception. There is a single scene in Pom Poko (1993, Dir. Isao Takahata) where the tanuki/raccoon-dogs are watching the television, and some tempura prawns are dropped into a frying pan. This is the only moment in their fictional works which is a scene captured from real life. Every other frame, every other character, every other motion and movement and atmosphere and tone, is a created work of animation, be it hand-drawn or computer generated. The realities of these works are ones which have sprung to life from drawings, designed by a small army of artists over several decades. They have animated life into these frames, into these scenes, into these stories. They have asked you to surrender to worlds which are vividly not real, and often delightfully surreal. The works are not constrained by the limitations of the physical world around them; every image is malleable and designed in a way few directors and designers could ever have control over.

So when you can have anything to show, what do you see?

Of course, infinite possibilities do not make a film. It is the very narrowing and precise decision making which leads to these sculpted pieces of artwork. To fashion a world, a place, a story out of thousands of blank pages and frames with no lead shed, no ink spilt on them. Studio Ghibli’s roots are firmly grown in Japanese soil, in an industry which uniquely supports the release of animated entertainment in which is allowed a much greater tonal range of emotional and intellectual maturity. It’s founders, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata (alongside producer Toshio Suzuki) had already been long at work in Japan’s animation industry before the studio’s creation. Both had intertwined, maturing careers and both were becoming grounded in the artistic visions they were looking to express through their work.

With Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki), the groundwork and more importantly the financial capital existed to create the studio itself. The ideas then developed from the funding, alongside significant (and stressful) delays of Takahata’s documentary mentioned above, before Castle in the Sky (1985, Dir. Miyazaki) became the first official release of the company to save Miyazaki from going bankrupt. What would then follow would be a path which continues to stretch forward today as Miyazaki continues to work on a new film (scheduled for release in the coming years), twisting and winding through some of the most breath-taking animation ever put forth into cinema. Throughout the scenes in Sunada’s loving documentary, all three founders express their understanding in how the others shaped this future they drew up together, how this studio which came to define their artistic legacies has been caught in the feedback loops of each other’s impressions on one another, and their impossible imaginations.

Studio Ghibli Hayao Miyazaki

It is easy to mythologise the Ghibli story, especially as their creativity swirls with abandon through the threads of each and every work. At least to the outside world, what spins at its’ phantasmagorical core is the works of Hayao Miyazaki, perhaps the most recognisable face aside from Totoro associated with the company. Here lies a backbone of dazzling and fantastical animation, of invented worlds dripping with cel-animated detail. The characters are filled with a sense of dynamism in their environments, often enhanced by the intricate and elaborate vehicles they use to get around.

True, most of these vehicles are aerial in nature, and Miyazaki spends a great amount of time and care detailing the fluid motions of characters cutting, gliding and arcing through brilliant blue skies. From Nausicaa’s sleek glider to the WWII-esque planes of Porco Rosso to the dazzling flight of Haku the dragon in Spirited Away, the image and pursuit of flight courses through the skies of his works. But the animated motion spills all over the earth too; in the castle jankily grumbling along in Howl’s Moving Castle to the little put-put of Sosuke’s toy boat in Ponyo, there is a respect and richness in depicting the ways characters move from place to place. Filtering anything from action set-pieces to deep meditative reflections on the nature of flight à la The Wind Rises, the magic of movement and motion drives through the frames. Miyazaki has even said himself, what is animation without movement?

But there is also a stunning array of characters which move through his pieces, creating the movement and motion of fiction. Characters caught in deep, torn rifts in their societies like Nausicaa and Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke, characters which strive to ride the currents of war into a better future for us all, even as they shoulder the psychological and physical sacrifices which come with it. We have characters wrapped in innocence unravelling into worlds which create external dangers and internal existential anxieties. Chihiro must navigate a bizarre and serpentine spirit-space in Spirited Away, rapidly coming to terms with a dream world with a dream logic.

In more muted ways, Miyazaki explores the lingering edges of adult life. In Porco Rosso, the melancholy ghosts of love, war and existence lurk beneath a shiny, more playful surface. In Kiki’s Delivery Service, Kiki’s witch powers vanish in a period of absence which sends her into a deep inward and existential crisis, as the abilities which helped defined her are no longer there to support her, to give her definition and meaning to her own self. Even the relatively innocent world of My Neighbor Totoro lurks the very real dangers of any child exploring unmonitored by the secure eyes of adults, it’s frames filled with an emotional resonance and care that few films ask us to entertain. And while his films are renowned for their rich and three-dimensional female protagonists, his curious grab bag of reluctant and sometimes haunted dreamers, boyish adventurers and staunch idealists fills his male characters with a depth and sensitivity which remains in some way uniquely his.

Regardless of gender, his worlds and their inhabitants navigate spaces rich in dynamic motion, waves of ideas crashing against the boundaries of the screen like Ponyo running on the cascading tsunami. The worlds of his films stretch and expand to accommodate multi-layered landscapes overflowing with layers of tone and atmosphere. In Princess Mononoke, Irontown is given a range of scenes to flesh out and enrich its inhabitants and their position in the world, with ethical complications only enhancing the moral tone of the film, not diminishing it. Or on a structural level, Howl’s castle becomes a shifting magic box throughout the film, the space and the body continually reinventing itself inside and out. It entertains the viewer through lively animation but it possesses an emotional growth as well, as the castle which has been Sophie’s home (and ours) evolves, rises and disintegrates with time. If anything, the spaces of Miyazaki’s films are navigated by adventurous and complicated explorers, brimming with the tensions of childlike innocence against the knife-like edges of an adult world cutting through the mist.

Miyazaki’s visions of the world have come to define the public perception of a business and artistic endeavour which was not always destined to succeed. The working ethos mentioned had always been “If this one succeeds, we’ll make another one. If it sinks, we’ll just close down.” The production of the some 144,000 frames and additional work of Princess Mononoke in 1997 was the most expensive anime feature production ever at that time, and it would have sent the studio into ruin if it had not succeeded, and was nearly the end of Miyazaki’s career after he announced his decision to retire after its’ release (he did not). This was some 12 years after the studio was founded, and here they still are on a knife edge of a nexus between artistic vision, cultural impact and financial concerns. Miyazaki’s work runs a gauntlet of visceral and illuminating tonal ranges. His unbridled joy, his deep rooted pessimism, his harmonious connection to nature and his troubled connection to humankind.

To try and truly sum up what makes his work so rich and vibrant is a fool’s errand. His work is a visual forest, filled with colossal trees of emotion and soaring aerial displays of character, motion, the lifeblood of animation. Perhaps you might get lost in this forest. Perhaps you might find what you were looking for.

– Alex

Honey Boy (2019)

March 27, 2020January 17, 2021 AlexAlma Har'el, Childhood, Film, Film Pravda, Honey Boy, Parents, Shia LaBoeufLeave a comment

Honey Boy

There’s a saying, “better to be a dog in peace time, than a human in times of war.” From a Chinese author in 1627, Feng Menglong, it speaks of the troubles which assail our species during our existence on Earth. Apparently the roots of this phrase got tangled throughout time and cultures, and the British imported it to attribute a new phrase to its’ roots and created a supposed curse; “May you live in interesting times”. The irony is meant to break out through its’ delivery, supposedly condemning it’s subject to a life filled with the conflicts we supposedly wish to avoid in order to achieve or maintain happiness in life.

Honey Boy (2019, Dir. Alma Har’el) manifests that saying, the whole film runs like an explanation of that phrase, as we traverse through an autobiographical forest of Shia LaBoeuf’s early childhood, handled by Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges as young and older Shia respectively, while Shia himself embodies and plays the role of his father. The trees talk in this forest, and they have a lot to say.

We do pay a price for the sins of our fathers in this life. They actions of our ancestors tumble and unfold across this Earth and have been doing so for generations, and especially as we grow as young and impressionable children, we take stock and absorb the actions of our parents (if we have them). Their actions mark us, mold us, scar us both mentally and physically. As a child, you are bonded to your parent, your carer, your protector and mentor in a large and vertiginious world. You cannot navigate the real world space as a child, you need a support to lean on. But a child does not choose their support, or any of the associated bindings that come with it. Human beings cascade through life crashing against it’s shores, and sometimes those shores result in new humans that they are now attached to. Interesting times manifest as a growing little child, orbiting around you and whatever deitritus you’ve picked up along the way.

The parent-child bond whips its’ own way throughout life, and hell hath no fury like telling a parent how to raise their kid properly. But it’s universal that children are impressed upon by their adults, especially their parents. Where Honey Boy swerves into its’ own lane is the uniqueness of the source material, since Shia LaBoeuf’s own twisting childhood was intertwined with his exposure to the world as a fictional son in the eyes of millions, through his career as a Disney child star and actor. For those young enough to have grown up with that experience, the story activates layers of meaning which other stories can’t spin around. His fictional presence in a disney-fied familial setting was impressed into our own minds as children, a heavily Americanised and sanitised setting, that work he did was sustained and fed the abusive real childhood that he went through and which is now the basis of another fictionalised story. Honey Boy’s existence springs from a well where the boundaries of fiction and real life are much thinner, and so the work takes on a peculiar sense of being as it unfolds.

It is nasty to watch a child grow up in a world that you can see isn’t right to them. But it is also the lot of many a child across the world. Har’el can see this, and makes sure that Honey Boy doesn’t get away with washing down and cleaning up the ugly growths of LaBoeuf’s childhood. Even among the mechanised, well-lit and well ordered sets of film workers, LaBoeuf’s childhood slips in betweens the cracks of alcoholism, separated parents, and emotional and psychological issues which crash straight through any semblance of normality. There’s a particularly caustic scene where Otis (the moniker for LaBoeuf in the film) has to relay a conversation back and forth between his father and his mother on the phone, being exposed to the vitriol and the content of a fight which doesn’t need to be channeled through him. It’s moments like these which slowly eat away at the fragile stability of a child’s world, the kind which leads to problems down the line.

And so it goes, as Otis spends part of his adult life going through therapy as part of a rehabilitation program, trying to stitch back together some of these psychic wounds which were left open. The process in the film is one of remembering, an act which can be traumatic in and of itself. The impressions that are left on us by our parents fit their shape, not ours and that conscious readjustment is rarely smooth. It is painful to see, because it is painful to bear. The two timelines of the films allow an understanding across time of how the weight of our parental conflicts affects us throughout our life, not just in the moment they happened in.

So too do the fantasies, as one of the most crushing moments arrives as Otis sits in a filmed version of a family dynamic, a nurturing father giving guidance to his son. It echoes the footage I must have seen of LaBoeuf growing up, footage that I must have absorbed at the time of how a father and son should talk in the Disney-fied world. And it is hard to know that that fantasy which echoed the illusion of a genuine family which I as a child probably yearned for, was an illusion which carried sharper spikes for it’s performers. The conflicts and ideas of our childhood spill like oil across the rest of our lives, and it is their sticky residue which come back to haunt us.

May you live in interesting times is what I hear throughout the film, bouncing off it’s surfaces. The lives of these characters, based off of the lives of these real people, are cannonballs hurtling through the sides of ships, splintering fragments of war everywhere. James, Otis’s father, explodes again and again detonating over his son’s psyche, and the consequences lash against them both. But through the most violent and turbulent times, the bond which binds the two carries throughout time, interesting or not. There is a reckoning by the end of the film, and the happiness which lurks in the daydreams and fantasies of our lives is replaced by a contentment with the interesting times we occupy, because they are all we have.

-Alex

The Divided Self: Enemy (2013) & The Double (2013)

February 28, 2020January 17, 2021 AlexDenis Villeneuve, Divided Self, Dreams, Enemy, Fiction, Film, Film Pravda, Herman Hesse, Identity, Life, Reality, Richard Ayoade, Steppenwolf, The Double, TruthLeave a comment

Enemy and The Double

Its difficult to keep track of all the fragments of your personality. The older you get and the more experience you accrue, it all eventually mounts up; like layers of discarded masks picked up as and when you need them. It’s easy to see a unified version of yourself at a glance, all contained inside your fleshy shell. You can look in the mirror and see who you are now, take it all in and keep your memories like photographs, clothes in a closet that you never wear again but still live there.

It makes sense then, that fiction is used as an avenue to explore something interesting: yourself. Or rather, fiction can manifest those sides of your personality that you no longer have access to, the sides you keep desperately repressed, the sides that lurk just out of your vision waiting for the chance to become a reality. The masks slip and tumble off our faces, first a grin and then a grimace. Our personalities can be frankensteined collages of the faces we’ve worn and will come to wear, and it’s this subject which swirls at the core of both Enemy (2013, Dir. Denis Villeneuve) and The Double (2013, Dir. Richard Ayoade).

The churning dark currents of our identities, when they’re acrobatically examined by the lens of fiction, what do they reveal?

Enemy has the tone of an opium dream. Silent, brief moments of clarity punctuate a strung out rhythm of asymmetric beats and scenes. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Adam Bell, a man who upon watching a rented film, discovers and tracks down a man who looks just like him, Anthony Claire (played by Jake Gyllenhaal). The two men are identical in looks, but their personalities are apart. The morbid curiosity to stare into the eyes of someone who looks as you do propels Adam into an entanglement with a mirrored image which acts independently of your whims, your movements. The film unfolds in jagged, mellow, spiralling bends as their lives start to entangle. Anthony forces Adam to give him a romantic getaway with his girlfriend, looking into eyes which look exactly the same while they demand something different.

Except the opium dream seems to disentegrate through your fingers. Adam’s dreams themselves start to blur into his waking reality, and the nature of the divided men begins to collapse in on itself. The two self’s of the film distort into a more subterreanean realm, that of the fractured mind of a singular person. As the film’s legs begin to stretch over your mind, you are guided towards the understanding of how Adam and Anthony are the identity of a singular man over time, that is being warped into the framework of two separate figures. The film, like a klein bottle, holds both possibilities in it’s construction of the external nature of the two of them, and the internal nature of the two men merely being two different masks that have been slipped on and off in time.

The story, boiling away with intensity, spills over the top, oil-slick and messy and staining your understanding of what’s happening. Literally and symbolically, Adam/Anthony’s greatest enemy’s are themselves/is himself. His changing and splintering identity becomes divorced from merely an internal voice in his head, it becomes a real conflict which pushes and punishes himself through the brief window into his life we can see. It feels almost delirious, as the web keeps spinning around all the characters involved in the film, the hollow yellows of the film’s cinematography keeping you company as this shifting mass of identity conflicts churns mysteriously at the film’s heart.

Enemy’s answers to navigating identity are like magic tricks which are never explained, their secrets unknown and left to silence. The film’s nature finally collapses into a merging of it all, the fictions and the realities of the world are one and the same, and the mysterious entanglements of the web spun around you prevent you from ever being able to separate which is which. The divided self here merges into all that it can be, a unified discord of chaos.

The Double has the tone of a fever dream. Relentless and spiky stacatto rhythms drill into the world around you, only rarely giving way to moments of quiet, gentle melancholy. Jesse Eisenberg plays Simon James, a quiet and nearly anonymous employee at a dystopian data processing centre, who one day is confronted with his doppelganger (and brand new employee), James Simon. The two men are identical in looks, but their personalities are apart. James is a shadow version of Simon, a Machiavellian reimagining of Simon’s meek and long-suffering existence. His mirror image (acting independently) can only exacerbate the deep-rooted insecurities and foibles lurking in Simon’s head and heart, and the amoral heart which drives James forwards soon turns towards more sour ends. The serrated cuts they make to each other lives start to bleed, and their entanglement quickly becomes a fight of moral and mortal proportions.

The fever dream never breaks. The doppelganger is externalised fully, not a folding web of intricate identity fragments, but is a shadow version of Simon made whole. The world is indifferent to his plight. The curiosity of looking into the eyes of someone who resembles you so closely is paired with the wretched agony that no-one seems to care. Simon screams “He stole my face!”, a mask picked up by a different person, one who can be you “better” than you can. The horror is different here, because the internal identity is never questioned by Simon himself. This isn’t a matter of collecting up the salvageable pieces of who we are over time, the things we couldn’t imagine we might ever do and where our identities might take us next. Simon’s matter is that his identity is wretchedly irrelevant to the world around him, and it’s hostility is so great that he must take it upon himself to affirm it or die.

Having a double becomes a matter of cold, calculating rage, a furor which erupts only after every ounce of strength has been spent repressing it. Literally and symbolically, Simon’s greatest enemy is a version of himself which seems to have sprung from the swamps of his own unconscious, an enemy which could know him only as well as he knows himself (if not more). His doppelganger haunts him because he can expose bare how much the circumstances of Simon’s identity are not fixed by some magic framework, but they are in flux; changeable. He exposes that Simon’s identity is more of a construct than he would ever like to admit, a bitter pill to swallow which becomes unbearable. The self becomes divided to a point where it cannot be reconciled, and the shades of identity must murder one another or go mad.

The Double’s answers to navigating the murky seas of identity, are like magic tricks which are explained. The dream-like excitement and curiosity gives way to a colder, more brutal reality of sleight of hand, of deception; of being fooled. The web being weaved around Simon is not one of fog-like entrancement, of a world that cannot be known. The world becomes increasingly exact, increasingly clear about where it stands on Simon. It’s indifference only grows in focus as the story runs its course. The film’s nature doesn’t collapse in on itself, it unfolds methodically to a confrontation with itself, and requires nothing more than to kill or be killed. The divided self here separates into all that it can be: a manifestation of our own personal chaos, unified only by death.

Enemy and The Double both spin on a similar axis: a confrontation with a doppelganger, a person who looks like you. Exactly like you. They both explore what it might look like to confront yourself, someone who externally resembles you so well that you cannot tell the difference. This obvious boundary marker of who we are, what we look like, becomes tested and attacked and deeply questioned. Our identities are far more abstract, far more complicated than most of us would ever like to understand or give time to study. Films, art, fiction, they’re all ways of exploring ideas which we don’t find capable of grasping fully in the real world. The masks we have worn are many, and it’s impossible to keep track of them all.

What both films do then, is confront that thorny and stubborn issue that most of us would like to avoid looking at. Both find different outcomes, different meanings in the confrontation of a divided self, but both are transfixed by the same issues of who we are, why we are, and what does it mean to be how we are. Both stories in their own right, are a struggle with how to identify who we are when our identities are in flux. At first glance it might look gloomy, the answers offered involve include lying, repression, hallucinatory madness, manipulation, a joint suicide/murder. All that can be said is that are answers which reflect the human animal, and their exaggerated struggles of holding onto the many threads of their identities is meant to resonate with our own tangled webs, our own tangled struggles.

There are no succinct answers to questions of identity, mainly because there are no easy questions. You open a box which cannot be closed, but cannot fully ever be examined, and there are more masks to try on then you or I could ever imagine. Instead, the parallel which comes to mind, comes from Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf, a tale of a man wrestling with his own divided self. He’s told,

“Learn what is to be taken seriously, and laugh at the rest”.

And the one similarity I find most interesting between these two films, is that as both Simon and Adam reach the end of their knotted stories, both of them have the faintest smile on their faces.

-Alex

Parasite (2019)

December 20, 2019January 17, 2021 AlexBong Joon-ho, Character, Cinema, Film, Film Pravda, Life, Parasite, StoriesLeave a comment

Parasite

It’s a rare time in my life when I’m catching movies as they’re coming out. Truth be told I struggle to keep up with releases, and am often catching the talked about films much later when the hype has died down. But Parasite (Dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2019) is still very much boiling away in the current cultural melting pot, at least where I am. From the outside the world has seemingly “woken up” to the import of Korean cinema, or at the very least from a few select and eccentric male auteurs. One of cinema’s best abilities has always been its ability to cross transnational boundaries, the image tells a story (with the aid of translation) which I can understand, a person who doesn’t know the language of Korean. And Parasite is another example of that, but what else is resonating in Parasite to make it bubble away in the focus of the cultural eye?

Well the easy answer is a lot, because Parasite is a very good film.

Often I’ll deconstruct a film when I write these, wanting to separate its elements, to analyse and focus on what gives them (for me) both meaning and excellence. And while I could give the same treatment to Parasite, it’s more interesting to me right now to try and contemplate on what Parasite wants to communicate to us. What story is Parasite trying to tell, why? Why does Bong Joon-ho open this cinematic portal to us? I think in an age where media is more accessible than ever, and media consumption only increases, it is easier than ever to only engage with film from an entertainment perspective. Even for those who love and enjoy cinema for more than it’s purely spectacle inducing qualities, the stars and the special effects and etc, it is harder than ever to pay homage to or even contemplate what movies can truly do. Maybe it’s elitist to say, but with distractions more rife than ever I know I find it difficult in between life, in between laziness and in between the lows to find time to pay attention to cinema.

Maybe Bong Joon-ho agrees with me, or disagrees, or doesn’t care. The director’s words are an authority, but to run to him for the answers and/or for the “proper” meaning or reasons Parasite exists is a mistake. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t listen to him, he’s a gifted visionary and probably has a lot of wisdom under his belt. But also art has always been a conversation between artists and the world around them, and to grow a film experience is only one part, while its’ absorption and digestion by an audience is another. Film’s are constructed experiences and perspectives, and they have more than enough dimensions to accomodate how you see them, not just how the director does. A horse can be taken to water, but it cannot be made to drink.

So what grows out of Parasite? A vision of a home, a vision of shelter. A vision of family, a vision of animals. A vision of turmoil, a vision of the soil of the Earth. Our family, or at the least one Bong Joon-ho asks us to gravitate towards, is a family which lives in an environment, in the layers of the world that surround us too. They try to get employment, they manipulate a wealthier, “classier” family into siphoning their money towards them, feeding off of the world around them. The different tribes and insects of the environment act and react towards each other, circling and twisting and attacking and defending. The home space begins to take on definitions beyond it’s surface. The walls contain characters from each other, allowing developments such as when the son Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-shik) can begin flirting with Da-hye (Jung Ji-so). Hiding places begin to reveal themselves in plain sight, as the architecture of the building itself is explored by the families. The environments of our lives contain these structures, we all have our houses and they all have their spots that we may or may not know about. Our vision only lets us see so much, and we’ll never know the full extent of our shelter’s and their collective experiences.

So is this what resonates with us? After all humans enjoy watching other humans, and it is not hard to see the conflicts unfolding in Parasite and understand, relate to or even empathise with any and all of the characters in the film at any particular point. The terrarium they live in, which we observe with patience and an ability beyond our usual bounds, is one where we can see ourselves in it. Our yearnings for family, stability, the complex and shifting layers of social communication we build up over time with the people around us. The parasites of this world make up the fabric of it, and we become draped in their mind’s clothes. As the environment’s fabric becomes stressed, torn and ripped apart, so too does our relations to them. Change comes to all, but the twisting and unexpected changes which come to fruition through the house resonate with us because they are reflective of the unanticipated consequences of real life, of discovering secrets in the unknown which can’t be put back in their boxes.

Film engages in a double edged trick. It is not real, but it is often designed to ‘feel real’. The easiest metaphor to make is that it is a parasite, feeding off our dreams and imaginations and bringing them into existence. We relate to the constructed mock-ups of humanity, in a terrarium we watch imagined characters play out imagined conflicts. We judge, align, pick and choose where we are in relation to the world of the film, grounding ourselves in a vision of humanity enclosed away from our interaction. Maybe that is just the resonance we get out of films, maybe it isn’t really all that deep. Maybe Parasite bubbles briefly in the cultural consciousness because it’s a film about people and people are interested in people.

But then being a parasite, or being a human, or being anything inbetween isn’t summed up by just an easy word. Parasite’s frames show us that the experience of life, on every level through whatever structures we pass through, spend time in, are played out on a landscape which is far more complicated than we could ever understand, and all we can hope to do is navigate it well enough to survive, feed and hope for better times. I don’t think I could ever properly answer what’s happening to make Parasite the centre of attention now, but at the very least I can try to do justice to what I can see emanating from the film, what kind of resonance it wants to evoke in the final piece of the cinema experience.

You watching it.

-Alex

Mr. Nobody (2009)

December 13, 2019January 17, 2021 AlexCinema, Film, Film Pravda, Jaco Van Dormael, Jared Leto, Life, Mr. Nobody, PhilosophyLeave a comment

Mr Nobody

It’s hard not to give up, with life I think. I felt that, as Jared Leto delivered a couple of lines about how the universe extends through entropy and the atoms of the world continue on a trend of disorder and disappation. Growing through time means more experiences, more ups and more downs. More edges to fall off, dead ends to get stuck in, whirlpools of life which you had not prepared for. The metaphor in Mr. Nobody (2009, Dir. Jaco Van Dormael) is life on tracks, different paths. Their intersections, their parallels, their different destination and journeys along the way. Life dances with increasing complexity each day, and it’s design pushes you into spaces and times that unravel around you dizzyingly. If you can hold on, you can. So you do.

But is that really it?

Sometimes we look up to the skies, and think. The reason we don’t do this all the time someone once told me, was so we could avoid being eaten by sabertooth tigers. There are no sabertooths now, but we still don’t stay in that state of contemplation today. Should we? Mr Nobody, concerns a man at the end of his life, in a future where death has been put on pause. Except for Nemo Nobody, a 118 year old man who is remembering his life. Except for the fact that he’s remembering possible versions of his life, experienced from the point of the present, when the human element of choice allows more than one outcome to happen. Which way does he go? Every way. Routes unfold along separate tracks simultaneously, and Nemo is along for every ride in a different form. His life is malleable, changed by the circumstances of chance.

Nemo has a lot of time to think, and several metaphorical sabertooth tigers to confront. It’s something of a cerebral house of mirrors, Leto’s performance reflected and transforming in the moment, across different lives and different experiences. Leto shifts like a true chameleon in a role which is akin to water, Nemo fills up whatever space and time contains him, taking on elements of their form. We’re asked to see Nemo in a perspective which cuts across our usual viewing senses, not to relate to him as a singular entity, but to relate to him in whatever adaptation his life has taken across multiple streams. Actions in childhood affect our older selves, which affect our oldest selves. The consequences are often unclear, distant, only revealed with time and reflection and even then maybe not. But the water of Nemo’s character fills the shape of the film itself, and we are asked to push beyond our normal understanding of time to see with greater clarity, the way life happens.

Nemo has big worlds to think in as well. The environments of the Earth (and beyond) fill up the screen, with VFX work which really blew me away. The visual aesthetic of the film is woven deep into the film in general. The cinematography is varied and dense, the codes of each world cinematically helping us to form understandings of different worlds. If “life is a playground or nothing”, then the artistic construction of the film lives up to it, as it plays effortlessly with different cinematographic styles. It’s music spills over at times, and gently accompanies at others. The stylistic expressions follow those possibilities, ebbing and flowing and evolving with where Nemo is, who Nemo is, when Nemo is. There is breadth and power in variety, and Van Dormael knew that when he stitched together the pieces of Mr. Nobody.

Is there a great resounding answer I need to write here, to prove to myself and you the reader about the worth of what the film has to say? Life is there to make of it what you will, and holding onto its dizzying turns is a complicated procedure. Mr. Nobody wants you to know what life could mean, and it pushes through the very fabric of our understanding of the world to do so. It splits open the human experience in a way only the imagination can do, to show us the possible fruits growing at its core. But it’s a film, 2 and a half hours of a day which turns into a week into a year etc. Life is communicated through art. But life isn’t lived through art, it’s reflected by it. Art is our hall of mirrors, our water to fill up the forms of our lives. The reflections you see, only you can make peace with them. Van Dormael offers a path, one that doesn’t have to be taken. To him, they are all meaningful, whichever one is taken.What is important is that paths can be taken, life can be lived.

Art is not going to be around forever, or maybe it is. We’re not going to be around forever, or maybe we are. The answers are what we seek, but we don’t live in answers. Most of our lives are spent searching for them, so that’s where we spend most of our perspectives. I know I’ve gone off on a tangent, but life can cope with that. Life copes with tangents, with edges and dead ends and whirlpools and whatever else is here in the playground. The variety of it all overwhelms any one particular answer, one particular life. Questions about life can only get you so far, answers can only get you so far. Thinking about life can only get you so far. What is meaningful is that life got us anywhere at all. And the sooner I can make peace with my reflection, the sooner I can get back to avoiding those sabertooth tigers. “If you never make a choice, anything is possible” goes the tagline for the film. Well, I’ll try make anything happen then.

-Alex

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

November 29, 2019January 17, 2021 AlexBill Finley, Brian De Palma, Cinema, Film, Film Pravda, Jessica Harper, Music, Paul Williams, Phantom of the Paradise1 Comment

Phantom of the Paradise

Things have been quiet on the site for a long time now. Life does it’s own thing. Here however, is a guest review from a very good friend of mine, @henryatthemovies.

With the lush colours, mad story, blend of soulful ballads and adrenaline boosting rock ‘n roll; it certainly can be said that Brian De Palma gave the Phantom of the Opera story a bump of coke and dressed it up in flares and a sequin cape. The 70’s re-contextualisation of Gaston Leroux’s original 1910 novel transforms the gothic mystery novel into a commentary on the music industry of the time, with a healthy mix of Faust and The Picture of Dorian Gray to bring a supernatural spin on the idea of selling your soul for rock and roll. Its’ inception came from De Palma hearing The Beatles ‘A Day in the Life’ transformed into elevator music; sad how this beautiful song had been turned into soulless corporate background music. This was the genesis of this crazy commentary on the 70’s rock scene and filled it with sexual manipulation, back stabbing and musical neutering.

A lowly songwriter, Winslow Leach, has his music stolen by the mysterious record producer Swan and is thrown in prison. After an accident leaves him disfigured, he becomes the thorn in Swan’s side as he tries to champion the talent of the timid singer, Phoenix. That’s the setup but it’s a plot that’s brimming with so much. Things get crazier as it goes on, the unpredictability of a plot that reaches an insane conclusion that feels suited to the film. It’s a very free adaptation of Leroux’s novel, taking a good portion from the 1943 Universal remake. De Palma isn’t bound to the source material; he adds so much to the story, using that base as a jumping board for his own creativity.

It still has echoes of the Phantom novel with the mysterious hermit dispatching an ostentatious singer and replacing them with his own unknown, timid muse. The Faustian aspects allows for critiques on the music industry; Winslow signs a contract in his own blood and there is a later Satanic twist involving Swan. There is not a single scene that drags, they all entertain and work in the grand scheme of things. My favourite is the ‘Upholstery’ car bomb sequence where De Palma pays tribute to the legendary opening sequence of Touch of Evil but with split-screen. The tension builds up off-stage as we witness the first of the Phantom’s sabotage attempts that builds uneasiness in the audience as one of the Juicy Fruits becomes paranoid about a ticking noise. Behind the scenes we see the exploitative nature of the music business hidden behind the fun music and bright colours.

I often hear comparisons between this film and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, both being rock and roll centred musicals with plain, normal characters thrust into a realm of freakishness. The two were also failures upon release but found new life as midnight cult movies, though Phantom beat Rocky Horror to the cinema by a year. Another fun connection is that Jessica Harper (Phoenix) played Janet in the sequel to Rocky Horror – Shock Treatment (1981). Rocky Horror’s two leads, Brad and Janet, are very normal people who get sucked into the world of the mad scientist Dr Frank N Furter. Phoenix is the closest we get to a normal character in this film; our ‘hero’ Winslow shows from the beginning that he is unstable and can teeter between rationality and irrationality.

They’re really the only two main characters with any positive traits even though Winslow does resort to murdering people and violently disrupting the goings on at the Paradise. Winslow is a great anti-hero who can be both sympathetic and terrifying in the same scene. Finley’s bug eyes lend him a rather scary look that served him well in De Palma’s Sisters (1973) as it does here but it’s the dark avian look of the Phantom costume with the silver teeth that creates a menacing and iconic look. The bird look also pairs with Swan Songs dead bird logo – Swan has destroyed the songbird but this one rose up against him. Great work by costume designer Rosanna Norton and Finley for their aesthetic.

Up against Bill Finley as Leach is singer-songwriter Paul Williams as Swan. It’s genius casting having this embodiment of music scumbaggery being portrayed by a 5ft 2 soft-spoken, mop headed pianist known for writing songs for the Muppets (among others). It gives Swan an unassuming demeanour that hides his true malevolence. Originally called Spectre (in a not so subtle nod to producing superstar Phil Spector), we don’t see his face when we are first introduced to him, we only see who he is at the orgy scene. Discussing Winslow with Philbin, the faceless producer here begins to plot how to take Winslow’s pop cantata and manipulate it into something that suits the clean-cut Juicy Fruits. Gerrit Graham as glam rocker Beef is a part of Swan’s mutilation of Winslow’s music and is played with outlandish brilliance (his lip syncing not included). The glam rocker is this version’s Carlotta from Opera and his story beats are similar to her own, with an added ‘electrifying’ finale. A memorable moment between Beef and the Phantom is a drawn out homage to Psycho’s iconic shower scene with it’s own twist on the payoff. The glam rocker is a juxtaposition to the soft spoken Jessica Harper as Phoenix, who Winslow deems to be the only one who should sing his music. While not the most interesting character in the film, Harper makes up for it with her wonderful musical numbers and she is a strong actress.

Not only did Paul Williams take on the role of Swan, he was also responsible for the film’s fantastic score; writing the songs as well as lending his voice to ‘Faust’ and the ending song ‘The Hell of It.’ Due to the inclusion of the genre shifting Juicy Fruits/Beach Bums/The Undead, Williams proves his excellent song writing skills by managing to create three separate songs in different styles: doo-wop, surf and glam rock. ‘Faust’ is transformed from a soulful section of Winslow’s pop cantata into the superficial (yet incredibly fun) ‘Upholstery,’ replacing deeper emotions for a surface level summer romance with girls and cars – very reminiscent of early tracks from the Beach Boys. There are two songs that also share similar traits: ‘Life at Last’ and ‘Old Souls.’ The bombastic ‘Life at Last’ is performed by Beef with unashamed brashness and flamboyancy whilst Phoenix’s rendition of ‘Old Souls’ becomes a ballad that gives the song an emotional edge rather than a sexual slant. ‘Goodbye Eddie, Goodbye’ opens the film and it’s an upbeat doo-wop tribute about a rock star who kills himself so his album sells in order to help out his ill sister. An incredibly strong start for the soundtrack but it never falters afterwards, the songs only get better and better.

De Palma’s Phantom is a wonderfully delirious trip delivered in his trademark 70’s style with loud colours, split screen and crash zooms galore. The zany film is backed up with an incredibly strong soundtrack provided by one of the greatest songwriters of all time, each one as strong as the other. The often sad stereotype of dishonesty in the world of music is exaggerated with voice control and satanic pacts, but also among the flashiness is a glimmer of hope for the struggling artist to come out on top of it all. Certainly one of De Palma’s best and should be mandatory viewing for any fan of cult cinema. Check it out.

-Henry

Follow @henryatthemovies here as well if you wanna read more of his thoughts on cinema!

-Alex

Film Pravda

Film truth(s) by film lovers.

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Eros + Massacre (1969)

Soul (2020)

Grit/Motion: Dogtown and Z Boys (2001) & Lords of Dogtown (2005)

Studio Ghibli (2/2)

Studio Ghibli (1/2)

Honey Boy (2019)

The Divided Self: Enemy (2013) & The Double (2013)

Parasite (2019)

Mr. Nobody (2009)

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)