Happy, Selfish Souls: The Loneliest Planet

After watching Julia Loktev's fascinating, subtly philosophical and psychologically complex  The Loneliest Planet, I read several reviews to see what other people had to say about it. Of the six or seven reviews in The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, and others, everyone focused on a key moment that takes place about midway through the film. While this moment is admittedly unsettling and presents a turning point in the relationship between the engaged couple, I thought there were three additional moments that, though perhaps not as shocking as the first, were equally interesting and equally troubling.



The film tells the story of Alex and Nica, played by Gael Garcia Bernal and the Israeli actress Hani Furstenberg, and their backpacking trek through the Caucasas Mountains in Georgia. Alex and Nica, engaged to be married in a few months, seem quite happy together. Opening with a nude Nica jumping up and down to signal her doting Alex that she needs help washing her hair, the film reveals many small scenes that typify their loving and happy relationship. They playfully swing on bars inside a bus, dance together and apart in a local Georgian bar, stand on their heads counting "one chimpanzee...two chimpanzees...three chimpanzees," practice Spanish verb conjugations, and politely listen without judgment to the often crude or slightly bigoted stories of their local guide. All while nearly constantly smiling or laughing. This seemingly perfect couple love each other and seem destined for nothing but happiness in life.



All of this becomes much more complicated after the aforementioned moment. (SPOILER ALERT: Don't read on if you think you might watch the film. Please see the film and experience it for yourself.) As Alex and Nica are walking with their guide, they encounter what might be a father and his two sons. The father(?), a man perhaps in his 60s carries an assault rifle. (A couple of the reviews thought the men were guerrilla soldiers, but the boys seem too young to me and they weren't armed, so I'm not really sure who they were supposed to be.) The three appear to know the guide and speak to him in Georgian, but we don't get subtitles, so we don't know what they are saying.  The conversation quickly become tense and there are raised voices; they seem to be upset about Alex and Nica. Alex asks what's going on and the armed man suddenly turns on him, pointing the rifle at Alex's head. This is the shocking moment: Alex quickly grabs Nica and uses her as a shield by putting her between him and the rifle. It's a skillfully staged moment, and it's clear that it is not a calculated move by Alex. It's an unconscious instinct; he does this without thinking about it. He does it to protect himself. After this incident, Nica is understandably upset. Her almost constant smile turns to an almost constant scowl. She doesn't want to speak with Alex and doesn't want to be touched by him. What is interesting about this situation is that, while it was certainly a cowardly and selfish act, it was not done maliciously. He did it without thinking. But the question is, does that matter? Whether is was instinctual or not, he still did this horrible and selfish thing, and we wonder if the relationship can last after this, despite how happy they seemed at the beginning of the film.

The theme of the power of instinct and the question of how much control we have over our actions is reinforced by the mise-en-scene and cinematography. While the film is mostly shot outdoors and we are nearly overwhelmed by the green, verdant, unspoiled grass and mountains, Loktev frames all of the shots in such a way as to never show us a true horizon line. Sometimes I thought I was seeing a horizon line but it was really just a snow-covered mountain in the background. Thus, the greenery and mountains close the characters in an imprisoning, inescapable world. This is done subtly, but it's a perfect example of how cinematography can add to the meaning of a film.

Another key moment occurs when Nica crosses a shallow stream and falls in. Loktev again films and edits the scene brilliantly. The camera is pointed at Alex's back, following him after his safe crossing, and we only hear the splash and cry off screen. Partly because of the guide's position (you'll have to watch this for yourself to judge), the guide rushes in to help her. Alex enters the water, too, but is too late to help and is told to rescue her backpack instead. The guide carries Nica safely to dry land and Alex takes her from him. She immediately jumps out of her fiance's arms. Once again, Nica is visibly upset but we aren't sure if she is upset at Alex for not helping her (maybe she fell in on purpose to test him), or if she is still angry over the earlier shield incident, or if she is angry at herself for falling.

The two other key scenes occur toward the end. Alex retires to his tent early while the guide and Nica remain by the fire drinking out of a ram's horn and exchanging stories of love and loss. The guide asks Nica if he can kiss her and she laughs and then says he can on her hand or check. The guide moves to kiss her on the check but kisses her on the lips instead. He kisses her long and deep and passionately while he caresses her body and she not only allows it but seems to be enjoying it--at least in the moment. Nica returns to her tent, cuddles with Alex and they begin to have sex, but suddenly she gets nauseous and rushes out of the tent and vomits. Alex caresses her bright red hair in a scene that mirrors the hair washing scene from the beginning.

So, here are the questions: Is Nica's kissing the guide justified? Is it an act of revenge? Is it as bad as Alex's selfish act? And what is to be made of her nausea? Is it guilt? Or does the thought of relations with Alex now sicken her? And the biggest questions remain unanswered. Will their relationship survive this trek through the loneliest planet? We see at the end that this couple is clearly more flawed than we initially thought. They are not destined for the happiness that we had hoped for them. Maybe they will separate. Maybe they will remain together and regret it. Or maybe they will be able to forget and forgive each other. My take on the film is that all of these moments, while revealing the flaws of these sympathetic characters, really tell us that they are simply human. They do selfish things that they might not really be able to control, but these acts are representative of who we are as human beings. We fail in so many ways. But if we can't move past our failures, we, too, will live in what can only be the loneliest planet.

The Great Emancipator

Taking place in the months after the Gettysburg address, Steven Spielberg's latest film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and based on the Dorris Kearns Goodwin book Team of Rivals, tells the fascinating story of the passage of the 13th Amendment, the amendment that would abolish slavery. There aren't many great historical political dramas in the history of film. The Battle of Algiers and All the President's Men are, I suppose, the two classics, but if we break the genre into historical political films about the passage of a law, those are certainly rare. Lincoln is not only a great historical political drama, it's a near masterpiece and one of Spielberg's best accomplishments. Period. I just saw a free advanced screening, so for once, I'll say a few things about it before most others have seen it--I might even have seen it before most film critics. Cool.



First,  Day-Lewis will win the Academy Award. I can almost guarantee it--or, I would be shocked if he didn't. I can't imagine a better performance. It's a remarkably subtle characterization, especially considering his ridiculously over-the-top, overly theatrical performances in both Gangs of New York and There Will be Blood--both of which were a bit too much for me. In Lincoln, he plays a soft-spoken, pensive, psychologically complex, almost frail and seemingly vulnerable Lincoln. A kind but tormented president, Lincoln is troubled with the blood spilled and great sacrifices given daily on the battlefields of the Civil War, troubled by the fact that he recently lost his young son, troubled that he, as president, cannot grieve for him, and troubled that his eldest son wants more than anything to join the Union cause and fight. Lincoln is witty, warm, forgiving, and angry when he needs to be. He is a great listener, a man famous for placing former rivals in his cabinet, and a great storyteller. He always knows just the right story to tell in just the right moment. In one scene, his secretary of war storms off during a particularly tense moment, yelling that he can't take another God-damn story. But everyone else seems eager to listen.

And all of this praise is coming from someone who doesn't think very highly of Spielberg. In fact, Spielberg is one of the most overrated directors. His films are fun, popcorn fair, made for a mostly mindless mass audience. He almost always overdoes the musical score and cranks up the sentimentality with close-ups and lighting. I like Jaws well enough, and I'll always be a bit nostalgic for the Indiana Jones films, and first two Jurassic Park films were pretty fun, but I think Schindler's List is overrated. Rarely do we see Spielberg grappling with interesting ideas. He's usually only concerned with plot and character. This is why Lincoln surprised me. It was deliberate and stately, almost European in its pacing. There were a couple of cheesy Spielberg moments--one occurs right at the beginning where several soldiers start quoting the Gettysburg Address and the John Williams score plays in the background to make sure we know this is the moment we are supposed to be moved to tears. But mostly he tones down the sentimental music--at least compared to his other films. The fact that he has directed a moving and gripping drama about the passage of an amendment is saying something.

I wasn't a big fan of Tommy Lee Jones. He just sounds too much like Tommy Lee Jones and didn't disappear into his role. I couldn't get the person out of my head, whereas with Day-Lewis and Sally Field I could. But this is a fairly minor quibble.



What struck me from nearly the first moment was the relevance of the story. It was very difficult to get people from Lincoln's own party to support the amendment--and vastly more difficult to get the overtly racist Democrats to sign on. I couldn't help think about how difficult it was for President Obama to get the healthcare law passed. It's true that there wasn't bipartisan support, but there wasn't bipartisan support for the abolition of slavery either. The handful of Democrats who voted in its favor only did so because they were lame ducks and were promised lucrative political positions afterword. And it was a much more moderate amendment than the radical Republican wing wanted. Stevens and others wanted not just to free slaves but to give blacks the right to vote.

It was a monumental task, and Lincoln had to lie and cheat a little to get it done. Maybe honesty is a bit overrated.

The Poetry of Woody Allen

 

 

I watched Woody Allen's latest film, To Rome with Love, a few weeks ago, and I was nothing but disappointed. Alec Baldwin should make any film watchable, but his role was so strange it bothered me throughout. He was both a character in the story and some sort of omnipresent life force who would appear out of nowhere to give one of the other characters advice about love and life. I guess Allen was attempting to resuscitate the Bogart character in Play It Again Sam (1972)--in both films only the male character can see the Baldwin/Bogart character; he's invisible to the women. On the whole, I've been pleased with most of Allen's recent films: Match Point (2005) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) were masterpieces and Midnight in Paris (2011) was great--maybe not a masterpiece but very good. On second thought, despite my mad love for Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm, Whatever Works (2009) was pretty terrible and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) no better. Allen's problem is that he is so prolific that he doesn't seem to want to slow down to refine his work. It's either hit or miss for him.



After watching Rome, I decided to revisit some classic Allen films, including Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) and Husbands and Wives (1992). I guess I was second-guessing how highly esteemed Allen is. I mean, how is it possible that the same person who wrote and directed Celebrity (1998) also did Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)? But after re-watching those classics, my doubt was alleviated and I was fawning over Allen once again. While I still absolutely love Annie Hall and Manhattan, I was especially taken by Hannah and Her Sisters. It's a moving and dramatic film about love, adultery, loss, and death.  But its power lies in its balance between drama, philosophical profundity, and humor. It's true that the main story follows Hannah, her husband, and the affair her husband has with one of Hannah's sisters.

But the subplot with Allen's character makes the film beautifully poetic. Allen plays Hannah's ex-husband, a television producer and severe hypochondriac. While he is with the doctor for a routine phisical, the doctor finds something he wants to check out. It might be cancer. The possibility of this throws Allen into a tailspin of paranoia and existential dread while he waits for the test results. He visits the doctor again, finds out that he does not have cancer, and leaves the doctor's office literally jumping and skipping for joy. But suddenly he stops. And in that moment, that perfectly paced and edited moment, he realizes that while he is not going to die of cancer, he will die eventually, and this fact fills him with more dread. He then spends time turning to religion, testing out different denominations other than the Judaism he was brought up with: Catholicism and Hari Krishna. Not surprisingly, these options don't work out for him but add lots of classic Allen moments. Ultimately, he learns the great lesson about life--that life is a struggle, that death is inevitable, but that we can all find some measure of happiness despite these ineluctabilities.

Citizen Lame

I'm teaching a film class for the first time, and I thought I would start the class by watching Orson Welles's classic 1941 film Citizen Kane. The film appears on the top of many best-of lists. It's number one on the American Film Institute's top 100 American films, number two on Entertainment Weekly's list (just below The Godfather); and while the most recent Sight and Sound list upended CK with Hitchcock's Vertigo, if you look at any other list since 1962, CK is number one (the list comes out every 10 years). So, I thought, why not start with the best and talk a bit about why critics and filmmakers consider Welles's film the creme de la creme? My idea was that we would discuss the film before opening our textbook, before learning any technical terms. I would have students evaluate and analyze the film based on their past English-class reading knowledge. While I speculated that students may not recognize every element of the film's formal style, I thought it would be a nice foundation for us to refer back as we proceeded through the year's instruction.



But as I watched the film for probably the fifth or sixth time (though the first time with students), I quickly realized I was bored, and I didn't care much about the story or the characters. My perception of the film in this viewing may have been clouded or influenced by what I thought my students were thinking while they were watching: Are they bored? Are they paying attention? Did they notice that shot? Do they regret signing up for the class?



To their credit, my students didn't sound off any displeasure or physical or emotion pain for making them watch the film. And when we spent a couple of days discussing the film and its merits, many students offered keen insights into the film's characters, themes and visual qualities. And I should qualify my grossly hyperbolic post title by saying that even though my personal reaction was one of boredom, I still recognize the film's technical qualities. It is impressive in its visual complexity; every shot seems perfectly crafted with the lighting, props, and placement of characters clearly adding complicated meaning to every scene. The editing is equally complex, not only in its overall non-linear structure but in its variation of cuts, montages, and overlapping shots. Even the makeup is impressive, especially for a film from 1941. I've seen several current films where characters are aged and the makeup looks horribly unrealistic. Finally, the film is thematically rich; it's a film about ideas, about time, power, memory, truth, and perceptions. I like big ideas, so why couldn't I get into the story this time?



Well, it could just be this particular viewing. Maybe I'll change my mind next time.

Richard Matheson: Idea Man

I just finished reading my third Richard Matheson story collection, and I have to say I'm hooked on this guy. Of course, he's been writing since the 1950s, so he's not exactly a recent fad. Like Kurt Vonnegut, Matheson served in the army as an infantry soldier during WWII, got married after the war, and then began writing short stories. Also like Vonnegut, Matheson dabbles in the science-fiction genre, but where Vonnegut is a satirical humorist with a distinctively simple style and primarily interested in exploring whether free will exists, Matheson's styles, tones, and themes are far more wide-ranging. Stephen King said, "I think the author who influenced me the most as a writer was Richard Matheson." And if you read just a handful of Matheson's often disturbing stories, you see why this is true. While Matheson is sometimes interested in breaking free of genre conventions, many of his works are decidedly fixed in the horror, fantasy or Western genres.



Several of his stories and novels have been adapted into television shows and films, including I Am Legend (1954), "Steel" (1956, adapted as Real Steel), The Shrinking Man (1956), A Stir of Echoes (1958), "Duel" (1971), "Button, Button" (1974, filmed as The Box), Bid Time Return (1975, Somewhere in Time), and What Dreams May Come (1978). He also wrote scripts for several Twilight Zone episodes, including the famously shocking "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (1963 and remade in 1983). Matheson continues to write today; one of the anthologies I read included two of his recent stories, one from 2009 and one from 2010. But he seems to have slowed down his rapid production quite a bit in the last few years.



Here's a sampling of the types of stories he writes: A woman is told she will be given $50,000 if she presses a button on a box which will result in killing someone she doesn't know, a man goes to a funeral home and makes arrangements for his not-yet-deceased wife, a man searches for the origins of dirty jokes and finds a secret society, a family prepares to live in an underground tunnel system as a result of an impending nuclear attack, a young girl shows her friend a possessed dress belonging to her deceased mother, a scientist travels back in time to witness the crucifixion of Jesus, a man discovers he has a double, large groups of people walk into the Pacific Ocean and drown for an unknown reason, a young man discovers that being a gunslinger in the Old West is far more difficult than he ever imagined.


I like Matheson because he is first and foremost a good story teller. He knows how to begin and end stories well, and many of the stories have surprising "twist" endings (often a bit like the ending in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"). And he is a pretty good writer of sentences. He's no Cormac McCarthy or Joseph Conrad, but he's not trying to be poetic and dense either. He writes with a natural rhythm with often surprisingly sophisticated diction that doesn't get in the way of his rapid pacing.



What I like most about his works is his emphasis, and this isn't always the case but often is, on ideas, on moral questions and unsolvable dilemmas. For instance, I Am Legend raises lots of interesting questions, some directly, some indirectly: if you were the last human on earth, would it be better to die than live alone? Is sexual desire and consummation an essential quality of the human condition? What is the worth of human life? How much effort would you put into saving your own life? Do we have control over our desire for vengeance? Similar types of questions could be asked in relation to "Button, Button": Is it morally right to will the death of an innocent person? Is there a price on innocent suffering? How well do we know our spouses and family members?

Of course, Matheson doesn't answer these questions. He is not completely ambiguous in his leanings, though. His overall vision seems pretty dark. Matheson's world is a world where innocent people suffer for no real reason. It's a world of pain, of darkness, of pure evil, where terrible monsters lurk, where people betray their families and spouses, where you can't rely on the compassion of others, where machines and mankind itself is working against you and there is nothing you can do to stop it from coming. But it is also a world of the individual, a kind of dark and realistic Ayn Randian vision (as opposed to her romantic individualism). For Matheson, the individual can will himself to survive or fight, and he can accomplish great things, but it's usually only temporary. Eventually, the individual loses. In this way, Matheson is like a Greek tragedian. His characters are caught up in a world that is out of their control, and there is no winning or escaping. But like many of the Greek characters, there is something noble in Matheson's characters attempts to do the impossible. To persevere in a world where the deck is stacked against them.

Existential Spider

When I first saw the trailer for the latest Spiderman film, I, along with I assume many others, wondered why so soon? The first Tobey Maguire  film only came out ten years ago, and this latest film covers much of the same territory as the earlier one. Are two origin stories in ten years really necessary?  I could see an alternate origin story told, say, twenty or thirty years apart, but not ten.

I did like Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. He's appropriately nerdy and awkward but also genuine and sweet. He delivers his lines with a natural purity of expression, pausing at the right moments, smiling a charming smile that I'm sure makes all the girls swoon (he doesn't do much for my wife, though). He makes us believe he is in high school. One small problem I had, though, is that Garfield's body in the Spiderman suit is a bit too lanky. I'm not saying he should be ripped or anything, but Tobey Maguire's body was more believable as a superhero. Emma Stone is also great as Gwen Stacy, even though it's not very believable that she is in high school; she looks much too old. And it's a little odd that she is the head intern at Oscorp--what high school student would be in charge of taking future interns on a tour of a major research and development corporation?



This latest Spiderman film is much less campy or silly; the first really plays up on the corniness of the comic. I found this one much darker--or darker than I remember the first anyway. I think the darkness of the story and the mise en scene is appropriate for the story, though. Spiderman's world is a dark, absurd one, a world that is devoid of meaning. This existential hero is the only figure who can establish order in this meaningless reality. He may still conform to traditional notions of love and relationships--at least to some degree, but he does everything in his own terms. Sartre and Camus and Nietzsche would approve.

One thing I missed from the first film is Spiderman's discovery of his powers. There is this kind of cool scene in this version of Spiderman skateboarding, but I loved the Tobey Maguire scenes where he figures out that he can climb walls and learns how to swing from his webs.

All-in-all it was a fairly entertaining film and I mostly enjoyed it--not exactly a resounding endorsement, though.

A Game of Dragons, Direwolves, and Death

All the hype about the HBO series Game of Thrones, based on George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, sent me to the library to discover the first book, titled A Game of Thrones (1991).  I finished the 600+-page novel a couple of weeks ago and was somewhat surprised how much I enjoyed it. The story is engaging from the first page and was often difficult to put down, but I was finishing it in the last weeks of school, so, alas, I had to succumb to sleep or grading those final exams. In my experience few authors have truly mastered giving characters really distinctive voices and personalities. There are surely others but Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible comes to mind. Each of the Price daughters sounds nothing like the other. I think Martin is in the same league here in terms of characterization and voice. Whether it is a seven-year-old boy who must come to terms with his immobility (Bran), a thirteen-year old princess who must step out of her brother's cruel shadow (Dany), an honorable 30-something Lord who reluctantly accepts the offer to become hand of the king (Ned), or a dwarf who compensates wit for his lack of height, Martin imbues each of these and many others with richness and distinctiveness. His characters are all flawed. None are purely good nor are any purely evil (well, maybe that is debatable). These are characters who are real, who are human. You know you love a book when something happens to a character or a character does soemthing (and I'm thinking of a couple of examples), and you are shouting at the book: "No!" or "Don't do that, please, please!"



Another admirable quality is the array of interesting and complex female characters. So often in fantasy stories do female characters (if they exist at all) get minimized or placed in cliche roles like prostitute or loving wife. Martin has a prostitute and a loving wife but they are interesting, intelligent, powerful, and not at all stereotypical.

Martin also has a distinctive style and uses several clever idiomatic expressions such as "he's not yet a man grown" or "take the black" or "unleash the dragon." For me great writing has little to do with plot or characterization. Greatness is in the language. And Martin writes with a poetic, even classical, quality that takes the reader to a whole new world.

There were a few minor issues I had with it, though. I found it a bit odd that the novel begins with a vidid and haunting supernatural scene but no other supernatural or fantastical element occurs for another 500 pages. In other words, the supernatural seemed rather inorganic to an otherwise highly political and realistic book. I'm assuming Martin will return to these supernatural elements in his later books, several of which he has already published but I haven't yet read. On a related note, the dragon witchcraft scene at the end was a bit odd in relation to the rest of the story.

I did also watch the first season of the HBO series, and I liked it. But the book is much better. The series is very faithful, but they do add some elements. For instance, they make the king's brother gay and give him a lover. I guess I don't have a problem with that; it was just a little surprising. The question I kept wondering is, why do they always have to make movies out of great books? Why can't people just read the book?


All in all, a great read.