Alternative narrative

I have chosen Tree of Life (2001, dir Terrence Malick) to study as an 'alternative narrative'. It is not that there is no narrative but Malick has allowed this to become more of a sensory experience which takes the viewer on an emotional and spiritual journey.  Instead of the images supporting the story, they are designed to trigger memories and empathy to create experiential viewing.

Not everyone enjoys this approach. Even Sean Penn who plays the adult Jack O'Brien in the film was critical of Malick: "I didn't at all find on the screen the emotion of the script, which is the most magnificent one that I've ever read. A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context. What's more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly." (Interview in Le Figaro, August 2011)

This movie is quite autobiographical. Malick grew up in Waco, Texas where the film is set (although it was filmed in Smithville) where his father worked for an oil company but played the organ.  The director's brother Lawrence R Malick committed suicide when he was 19, the same age as the death of the brother : R.L in Tree of life. Malick's other brother died after a car crash in 2008.

Structure

Act 1 - idyllic scenes of a family home; the mother (Jessica Chastain) receives a telegram to say her child has died; she tells her husband (Brad Pitt); there are scenes of grief and cold comfort from grandmother. Some flashbacks to show the boy played guitar. Adult Jack (Sean Penn) lights a votive candle and has a phonecall with his father; mumbles about his brother; scenes in a very modern glass building where Penn seems to be an unhappy architect; some dream sequences of desert and a murmuration.

Act 2 - creation sequence - a journey through time and space evolution. Nature and grace seem to be hand in hand here.

Act 3 - 1950s Texas where we see the family begin and grow up; the father is a disciplinarian, the mother is soft and forgiving; the boys do boy things and then get a bit wilder, get into trouble, go through growing pains; we see Jack as a troubled boy who doesn't get along too well with his Dad; things go wrong with Dad's job and he admits he had the wrong priorities and he was hard on the kids.  There is some resolution here.

Act 4 - Adult Jack is wandering around the desert; more impressionistic sequences; whole family on the beach; Jack kneels at his mother's feet. The final line is "I give you my son".

Cinematography

Malick called upon Douglas Trumbull, responsible for the special effects in 2001: Space Odyssey to create many of the visuals and he seems to have successfully captured Malick's ideas and vision.

Malick wanted the interior spaces to be unlighted, so three houses were used in the main story, depending on the time of day and the position of the sun. The sun is always visible shining through the windows.  Lots of use of light and dark 

There were lots of very high angles (eg when Mr O'Brien is walking along metal ladder corridors at his job to show scale) and low angles to show the POV of the kids revelling in nature.

Book of Job theme

The Book of Job is featured heavily as part of the theme of Tree of Life - to the detail of Jack O'Brien's initials as well as being the epigraph for the movie. 

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Job 38:4,7

We hear the mother whisper - presumably to her God - "What are we to you?"  and the father later rages that  he didn't acknowledge the glory.  "I wanted to be loved because I was great; A big man. I'm nothing. Look at the glory around us; trees, birds. I lived in shame. I dishonored it all, and didn't notice the glory. I'm a foolish man."

Mrs O'Brien: "The nuns taught us there were two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow." ["Grace" and "Nature" are whispered at the start of the film.]

As voiceover: "Lord, Why? Where were you? Did you know what happened? Do you care?"

Mother

The mother epitomises forgiveness, softness, light. She urges her boys: "Help each other. Love everyone. Every leaf. Every ray of light. Forgive." She's playful - in one scene, she wakes them up by pressing ice cubes to their skin.  Several scenes are filmed with the camera following her from behind, as if she is leading the boys through life.

Father

Some reviews describe him as being almost brutal but his character almost certainly reflects how a father would have behaved at that time.  This is where life and art becomes rather cliched - that father wants to be respected and successful, fails in his job through no fault of his own and life changes for the family.  At times he takes the discipline too far and the children are clearly scared of him but he is not abusive by the standards of the time.  He is also very playful with them - making shadow puppets and drawing on their faces.

Impressionistic sequences 

There is too much to cover here but some of the things that stood out for me were how well Malick recreated the sense of long, hot childhood summers. Surely every viewer could relate to something here?  Butterflies, frogs, Halloween, reading stories by torchlight, sprinklers in gardens, climbing trees, kicking cans, playing in long grass, staring at weird adults, falling in love with classmates, firecrackers, peer pressure, breaking windows, roughhousing with brothers. And they always seemed to be surrounded by dogs.  

Roger Ebert described this beautifully as "where life flows in and out through open windows".  http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-tree-of-life-2011

The creation segments are gorgeous and epic. Much of the space imagery looks like rich baroque paintings. We see galaxies, nebulae, lava, waterfalls, cells, amoeba, DNA, jellyfish, seaweed, calm and beautiful dinosaurs, hammerhead sharks, giant manta rays, the eye of a foetus, the asteroid hitting the Yucatan peninsula.  The music and whispers and soundscapes make for a magical experience if the viewer is will to immerse themselves.

My response

This film definitely did not bore or irritate me as it seems to have done with many filmgoers.  I enjoyed the sensory experience throughout and I was definitely taken on emotional journey. I wonder if the sense of devastation of the brother dying would have been more powerful if we had seen the boys together more before we hear the news that he is dead?

Malick really succeeds in evoking the wonders of childhood and how hard it is to grow up. When you are young your family and friends are everything so small things seem unsurmountable and we really feel this through young Jack.

The impressionistic sequences elevate this from being a straight story of the mundane trials and tribulations of a family growing old together who suffer a bereavement.  This allows us as viewers to participate and explore our greater feelings about the world and why we are here and how we should behave. 

Many things puzzled me, of course ... the doorway in the desert that adult Jack (Sean Penn) walks through in his sharp suit; the lost souls wandering around on the beach; what sparked adult Jack's specific angst and sadness at that moment (an anniversary of RL's death?); what were memories, what were dreams and what was imagination (eg the tall creepy man in the attic)?; how did he finally achieve happiness and resolution? ...

There are so many things explored in this film which connect us humans and I found it to be a wonderful lyrical experience. Malick took a very simple premise - ordinary family relationships - and made something truly magical.  I can understand why people were frustrated by some of the apparently 'arty' bits but I am sure every single thing meant something to Malick and his teams and was included the final cut to help take us on the journey.


My attempts to summarise the 'narrative' in a diagram...

Review: Boyhood

Boyhood, (dir Richard Linklater, 2014) is a truly unique and wonderful film which, as many have already said, redefines the coming of age movie genre.

Nothing much happens by Hollywood standards but we go on an emotional rollercoaster with Mason and his family as if this were a documentary.  If it hadn't been for the casting of already famous Hawke and Arquette, it would have been hard to convince me that these were not real people.  The Truman Show without the deception.  And with obvious parallels with Michael Apted's "Up" series.

With the many universal truths throughout there is something for everyone to identify with - the "you are not my dad" moment, Mom saying "I thought there would be more", the spats between the siblings, all the pep-talks Mason is giving along the way, just the general awkwardness of families.

All the performances are subtle and perfectly in keeping with the low-key documentary feel. Ellar Coltrane particularly.  'Dad' is complex too - seemingly a bit of a loser at the beginning, he turns into an inspiring, supportive and fun father.  How did the adults manage to stay in character for 12 years?

Once you relax into the slow pace and enjoy all the ordinary moments portrayed, this is a joy to watch. The audience feels privileged to have access to this world and to get these intimates glimpses of life.

The genius for me - as someone who is trying to learn how to make films, albeit tiny ones - is how restrained Linklater would have had to have been. I can imagine it would have been so tempting to put in some deaths and high drama or to have tried to include more cultural references to place the segments in time.  The subtleties of the edit are truly remarkable too. One very poignant scene is when Mason is upset with his Dad because he has sold his car, rather than giving it to his son - as promised, allegedly. A conversation is referenced which we never saw or heard which reminds the audience what a vast number of memories and moments we collect over even a very short time on this planet.

There are some savage critics. Here is an excerpt from a review on IMDB:  

The film which is much too long follows an unstable family and focuses on the life of Mason, a character that has absolutely no interesting characteristics whatsoever. The intelligent viewer will be unable to connect with such a person. Mason walks through this film as if he was in a coma or half asleep; he has no ambitions. At some point he gets his first kiss, gets interested in photography (the ultimate art form for unimaginative lazy people) during high school (haven't we seen that already too many times?), goes to college at which point the film ends. I kid you not, this is the whole movie. The mother becomes a teacher at a local college and always seems to attract the wrong guys. The father is an unemployed loser who only talks about pop music and ends up being a square. Mason's sister (the director's daughter) grows up too and that's pretty much all you can say about her.

It is actually impossible to spoil this film because nothing happens (unless you consider the fact that Mason finishes high school a spoiler). Linklater completely fails to dramatize his ideas. As a result, following this movie feels like watching family home videos of a family you do not care about - just with better picture quality.

"photography (the ultimate art form for unimaginative lazy people)"??

I must confess I did feel it was a very long film and there were times that I was not as fully engaged as I would have liked. Partly I feel this is because we are so conditioned by the Hollywood machine to expect action or tragedy. I feared throughout the film that something devastating was going to happen - every time someone said 'take care' or 'driver carefully'. Not sure if this was deliberate or not or if I would have enjoyed the movie more or less if I had known the story.


A couple of bits of quite interesting trivia....

Richard Linklater cast his daughter Lorelei Linklater as Samantha because she was always singing and dancing around the house and wanted to be in his movies. At about the third or fourth year of filming, she lost interest and asked for her character to be killed off. Linklater refused, saying it was too violent for what he was planning (Lorelei eventually regained her enthusiasm and continued with the project).

The film began production as The Untitled 12 Year Project and then became titled 12 Years. When the film was finished, Richard Linklater changed the title to Boyhood, to avoid confusion with the similarly-titled, Academy Award-winning 12 Years a Slave (2013).

Review: The Fighter

There is some kind of post-modern irony that movies based on true stories can seem less believable than fiction. In the case of The Fighter (dir David O’Russell, 2010), this also makes it more quirky. There are off beat moments and the narrative is less formulaic, less Hollywood than expected.   Music is a very big part of the film – setting atmosphere and pace very well (diegetic and non-diegetic are combined and confused).  But it’s the superb acting that carries it.  Apart from some of the fight scenes, which just did not ring true for me, overall I found this to be an engaging and enjoyable film.

It is impossible to watch this genre without thinking of Raging Bull or On the Waterfront or Rocky but there is some colour to the story.  It is rooted firmly in Lowell, set in a moment in that town’s history, and this allows for some tremendous authenticity. The dialogue is chaotic and even incomprehensible at times. Clichés abound (redemption, atonement, broken dreams, blue collar gritty realism etc) but some of the characters are multi-dimensional. 

It was shot in just 33 days and stars some of the real life characters from Eklund and Ward’s life (Mickey O’Keefe, the cop who was Ward’s trainer; Eklund’s nephew etc). They used the actual Lowell West End gym where the boxers trained and Christian Bale spent a lot of time with Dicky to understand how his mind worked.  The interviews at the beginning and end were improvised by Wahlberg and Bale; they set the tone and tie off the end of the movie nicely.

Wahlberg is adequate. He plays low-key well – we get a sense of his massive frustration even from his excellent poker face. The chemistry between him and Amy Adams is palpable and she is well-cast as an ordinary looking woman, not out of place alongside the ‘white trash’ Eklund sisters.  He just seems a bit slow – as a boxer and as a human.  Rather vague.  I would have loved to see Casey Affleck in that role.  Bale steals the show as always, reminding me very much of John Lurie (in Down by Law and on stage with the Lounge Lizards).

There is some clever cinematography. It is not always clear what is being seen from the film crew making the documentary and what is real; dramatic camera angles pull us in to the drama (and rapidly out in one scene early when the camera backs away from the street junction where documentary is being filmed). O’Russell uses a hand-held, free-moving approach and cuts in scenes as they would have been filmed for TV at the time, as well as some unusual multi-camera set-ups which convey the sense of chaos.  There is also lots of natural lighting to add to sense of this being ‘almost documentary’.

I very much enjoyed watching Melissa Leo as Alice Ward as I always loved her in Homicide, Life on the Streets as Kay Howard.   Alice could have been played very differently and would have been less convincing.  Having some strong female characters in a boxing movie was a treat.  Shame that Charlene still had to be seen in various states of undress and subject to the male gaze.

In the final analysis, this film does not grip us emotionally because it is hard to care too much about Micky but it is interesting to watch and has some good moments of filmmaking. 

Shutter Island (spoilers)

I was really disappointed by Shutter Island (dir Martin Scorsese, 2010) - what a heavy-handed waste of cinematic technique!  I get that this is supposed to be film noir and I am happy to make allowances for the dialogue being a bit stilted as this is set in the 50s but do we have to endure 138 minutes of this contrived, corny nonsense?

DiCaprio is compelling, as always, and the other A-list celebs add some cachet, but I found the writing to be extremely laboured and the storyline lacked the necessary punch.

Visually it was great - lots of moody cliff shots and dark corridors in the asylum - and there were some powerful moments; a couple of the dream sequences worked really well and Michelle Williams was effective and convincing.  The story had enough potential interest to carry me along to the end but only just - the exposition and edgy direction became tiresome really quickly.

I am sure a director with Scorsese's chops was very deliberate about every element of this movie but the jump cuts etc did not work for me. Surely he could have created tension and the idea that all was not as it seemed in other ways?  

The scene in the cave with campfire flames leaping in front of the actors' faces drove me mad!  And when use of lighting matches during the conversation with Noyce... good grief! There are dozens of continuity errors (some deliberate, I know).  Kingsley and von Sydow were weak and cartoonish. There was hardly any chemistry between Leo and Ruffalo (who was also totally unconvincing as a psyche doctor, imo).  The music was ridiculous.  

I also found the use of the holocaust flashbacks to be a very trivialising - it seemed like a cheap device.  Totally unnecessary. 

People say that this movie is much better second time around but I suspect life is too short for me to justify giving it another go.  The story could have been much more compact and fast paced and there are many ways this could have filmed more effectively. It raises an interesting philosophical question about what is acceptable in filmmaking.  If a movie keeps secrets from the viewer right up until the end but this makes it a less than stellar experience on the first viewing (to the point of being clunky and annoying)... ? This seems like a failing of the director to me.

Even though I do not agree with his star rating here, Roger Ebert puts it beautifully: 

"The uncertainty it causes prevents the film from feeling perfect on first viewing. I have a feeling it might improve on second. Some may believe it doesn't make sense. Or that, if it does, then the movie leading up to it doesn't. I asked myself: OK, then, how should it end? What would be more satisfactory? Why can't I be one of those critics who informs the director what he should have done instead?

Oh, I've had moments like that. Every moviegoer does. But not with "Shutter Island." This movie is all of a piece, even the parts that don't appear to fit. There is a human tendency to note carefully what goes before, and draw logical conclusions. But -- what if you can't nail down exactly what went before? What if there were things about Cawley and his peculiar staff that were hidden? What if the movie lacks a reliable narrator? What if its point of view isn't omniscient but fragmented? Where can it all lead? What does it mean? We ask, and Teddy asks, too."

Maybe I have missed the subtlety of Shutter Island. Maybe I should read Dennis Lehane's novel. Maybe I should give the film another go.  I just feel let down that this could have brilliant from the sum of its parts but, in the end, the whole was just a bit crap.

Sling Blade (contains spoilers!)

Sling Blade (dir Billy Bob Thornton, 1996) is definitely not a formulaic Hollywood feature film.  It has a strong theatrical feel to it throughout and this allows BBT some leeway with his approach. Many of the scenes have a fixed camera angle and are shot through the proscenium arch, with the actors very carefully blocked to ensure they can all be seen and can work together to move the story forward.

There are some missing steps in the linear narrative progression but it is still an engaging and very emotional movie, which even manages to be humorous in places.

BBT is Karl Childers, who has been in ‘The Nervous Hospital” for many years after killing his mother and her lover. Now released, he quickly befriends a kid – Frank – whose Mom, Linda, is being abused by her boyfriend, Doyle (played brilliantly by Dwight Yoakam). Although Karl seems gentle enough, his jutting jaw, strange voice and brooding face - as well as his much-discussed history - add tension throughout as we move towards the climax of the film. 

Things that did not work quite so well

• The student interview at the beginning is far too expository – especially compared with some later subtleties.  And why the lamplight?
• The mental hospital manager turning Karl loose without any clear idea of where he would go and then being surprised when it didn’t work out. He would never have let Karl stay at his house or left all his daughter’s toys on the bed!  Cheap gags.
• We did not need Frank to say to Karl that he really wanted to kill Doyle.  Too much of a sledgehammer. We already understood where this was going.
• The constant music  (Daniel Lanois) at the beginning, whilst atmospheric and haunting, got on my nerves after a while.
• Frank’s mother goes from looking nervously at Karl in the store to suggesting that he move in with them in less than five minutes. This seems entirely implausible. Surely it would have been easy to write in a scene with Frank begging his Mom to let Karl stay with them?  She would have known that Doyle would hate the idea. If we are to believe that Doyle is a monster, we need to see her showing fear over this.
• Vaughan is just slightly too stereotypical as the gay co-worker/family friend (even taking in account the age of the film).  Apparently BBT wrote this part specifically for John Ritter.  It adds some balance to the ensemble but misses the mark.  I think Vaughan would have helped more during the fight with Doyle – surely he would not have been so cowardly?
• We do not really see the moment when Karl decides to murder Doyle – I think it would have been more satisfying for the audience if we witnessed the switch from Karl seeing no reason why he would kill again to planning this.

Things that worked well

• When we first learn about Karl’s double murder, it seems like an accident caused by his reduced mental capacity but as the film progresses we find out that he has been exposed to a major trauma (being forced to bury alive his prematurely born brother) and has undoubtedly been abused.  The pacing allows time for us to absorb this horror once we have developed some empathy for Karl.
• High and wide camera angles gave this a bit of a voyeuristic/CCTV feel to some of the scenes.
• The way the music stops when he says “killed her”.
• The bad guys were really bad. Doyle is a very realistic manipulative/abusive drunk and J.T. Walsh is positively vile as a bragging paedophile. Robert Duvall as the father is also very convincing.  Although I am not sure if we know whether he was mad before his wife was killed, we do get a strong sense in this scene of how Karl must have been brutalized as a child.
• Good quirky details: Karl’s love of “French fried potatoes”; his explanation for having the hammer when he crashed into Linda’s bedroom;  the way BBT looks at the camera when he is walking down the street as if we are an observer – totally out of place with the rest of his behaviour; Jim Jarmusch as a Frostee Cream Boy hitting has hat on the top of the serving hatch; standing on the V of the bridge supports.
• The use of horizontal strips of shadow to half light faces.
• This film successfully uses stereotypes to explore themes of prejudice – the mentally challenged murderer who makes people nervous but then wins them over, inadvertently; the gay man ostracized by the church and struggling to assert himself; the mother desperate to find a father figure for her kid after her husband’s suicide, falling for the bad guy; the adorable kid, old beyond his years and troubled more than a child ever should be. 
• Fantastic acting – it is hard to believe that Karl is BBT.  Even if this film had nothing else to offer, it would be worth watching for this performance.
• For all the sadness and darkness in this film, the relationship between Frank and Karl is incredibly beautiful and uplifting.  

There Will be Blood (contains spoilers)

It goes without saying that There Will be Blood (dir Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007) is epic and boasts some incredible acting; the cinematography is superb (by Robert Elswit who also worked with the director on Boogie Nights and Magnolia) and it is a haunting story, boldly rendered.  In my opinion however, this is not a great film and certainly not a masterpiece.  I think it lacks a clear central idea and I wonder if some of the essential story-building blocks were lost in the edit?  

Daniel Plainview is a despicable man - a monster - even more stubborn than he is greedy, but we never see his motivation. Why is he so full of hate? We get no real indication of whether he has ever been hurt (emotionally) or why he is so far from home, so disinterested in women, so single-minded...etc  I understand that some of his behaviour can be explained by the fact that he is an alcoholic (but is there a reason?), probably in physical pain and that he descends into madness (possibly from being so detached from other people). I completely 'get' the idea that he is capitalist greed personified. I can see the parallels between him and Eli Sunday and the 'progress vs the church' theme.  To me though, there is just no real cohesion to the story.  

There are brilliant individual scenes, fantastically photographed, but they just seem to exist without narrative context - it feels hollow, possibly because it is based so tightly around such a heartless central character.  DDL is in every scene, except for when Eli attacks his father and in the montage leading up to HW and Mary's wedding. None of the other characters are likeable (or even interesting, bar Eli Sunday) and I did not develop an emotional connection to anyone, which I think is a real failing of the film.

It is also too long and too slow in places - for instance when DDL is talking with Henry, when he first arrives, and even the final scene in the bowling alley.  This is particularly pronounced because there is not enough tension and emotion created. I will happily sit through long scenes if they are blisteringly tense and powerful but there is no point to a lot of this screen time - it is not developing characters, not revealing anything useful and not pushing the narrative further along. Without the context or narrative road-map or the emotional connection for the viewer, it is easy to fall out of the film and Day-Lewis suddenly comes across as just being over-wrought.  

The score (composed by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood) adds a great deal to this film. In fact, it creates interest and tension over some very boring shots of anonymous people on horses and working the oil field machinery, which indicates how powerful a tool this can be.  

There is no dialogue for about the first fifteen minutes - just diegetic sound and then some incredibly intense music when Plainview's ankle is broken. As the camera pans back, we see how big and tough the terrain is for him to navigate across back to civilisation.

The moment when HW goes deaf is also brilliantly done - very subtle and without slowing down the pace of the action, but conveying the muted rushing sound the boy must be hearing after the explosion.

This is a visually stunning movie from beginning to end.  Anderson uses some brave techniques. There are quite a few shots when the character in focus is partially blocked by something or someone in the foreground - it adds a very authentic feel. In lots of scenes we do not get close ups of the faces of anyone except the main characters (eg when they first arrive at the Sunday ranch).  There are also lots of long shots (eg when HW comes back from boarding school).

There are many panning shots (almost too many for my taste) and "trucking in" to the depth of set, as if we are following Plainview and his men on this unstoppable journey.

Memorable touches include DDL's devil face when he is covered in oil in the dark, and is just lit up in red by the fire from the derrick.  I also loved the scene where Plainview drunkenly tells Mary that there will be no more beatings and the camera moves round to show that her father Abel is sitting right next to them and is within earshot.

Things I didn't like

• Plainview chasing Sunday around the blowing alley looked like slapstick to me - took away a lot of the drama from the moment 
• We get mixed messages about how Plainview feels about HW - whilst I am all for complexity, this doesn't quite gel for me
• The final murder would have been much more powerful if he hadn't already killed someone else earlier in the film
• I found it a little confusing that we aren't we told that Paul has an identical twin - for a while I wondered if Paul was just pretending to be Eli in front of his family
• There are no women to speak of and no sense of a community (except via the church congregations)
• We are never really given a convincing reason as to why HW sets fire to the cabin
• Eli Sunday has not aged at all when we see him again in 1927
• There are few clearly defining moments or character development

Things I did like

• There is a great deal of subtlety (perhaps too much!) and this works very well in a lot of scenes. Anderson doesn't feel compelled to show us everything - (eg it would have been tedious to see every stage of DDL getting out of the shaft when he has been injured at the beginning)
• His relationship with HW is very complex, never fully explained and this works (to a degree - hence my comment under 'Things I didn't like') 
• The early part of the film seems very elemental and almost feels like it is symbolic of the quiet beginning of the industrialised world (or at least the beginning of America)
• The ending "I'm finished" is open to a number of interpretations
• The two fake conversion sequences
• Some of Plainview's behaviour is very quirky ("I drink your milkshake!") and this helps to film to be unique and thought-provoking
• The portrayal of hypocrisy and corruption is convincing
• Daniel Day-Lewis is astonishingly brilliant in this (as in everything) - a faultless performance

Interesting elements

• The names in the film have not come from the book by which it was loosely inspired. Could 'Plainview' be an assumed name, designed to make him seem more trustworthy to the landowners? Is Paul so named because he 'converts' from religion to capitalism?  Eli is a high priest/judge in the Bible. Is the father being called Abel important?
  
• Another religious reference is Plainview calling HW "a bastard in a basket"
  
• The name of the film is from the Bible (Exodus 7:19). Is it supposed to be ironic that Plainview has no family (blood) ties?
  
• The (biblical?) title font is called Blackletter
  
• Apparently the director was obsessed by the Treasure of the Sierra Madre and, allegedly, watched it every night while filming
  
• The original ending was for DDL to bludgeon Dano to death with a tumbler and then throw him through the bowling pins
  
• It was filmed in Marfa, Texas at the same time as No Country for Old Men (the derrick fire actually caused a delay in production for the Coen Brothers). NCFOM is, I believe, a masterpiece

Under the Skin

I absolutely loved Under the Skin (dir Jonathan Glazer, 2013) and I think it is a real shame that so many people seem to have been put off going to see it by some of the reviews. It IS slow, with little dialogue, and it IS weird but it will also stay with you for a very long time.  Under the Skin is about vulnerability - human and alien; it is a masterpiece about life and humanity. Eerie, funny, horrifying and devastatingly sad in places.  


And it brings a whole new meaning to the concept of The Gaze.  We are forced to look our world (starting with Glasgow) through an alien lens.  

Ethan Gilsdorf on BoingBoing:  "According to the film's press materials, eight miniature cameras were built into the van's dashboard, headrests, and other hidden locations. They were all wired to equipment in the back of the van, behind a barrier, where Glazer and his team sat watching the eight camera feeds on monitors. Another vehicle followed the van, and after each scene with the men, a crew member would hop out to get release forms from all the accidental actors." 

I won't waste time here outlining the plot as that info is easily available elsewhere but I did just want to mention some of the things I liked about it.

• There are literally dozens of elements to this film which remain unexplained and will keep you thinking for days afterwards - some aspects seem illogical, many are unconventional. This leaves it open to interpretation and fantasy - how often does that happen these days?  One example: we never find out the connection between the man/men on the bikes and Johansson's character
  
• Glazer creates tension brilliantly - the sense of ScarJo hunting from her van in the streets of the town centre is superb
  
• Some of the cinematography is breath-taking - not least the final scene. Absolutely beautiful!
  
• This movie is incredibly slow in places. Scenes are drawn out apparently unnecessarily and this is largely what infuriated so many cinema-goers. I actually felt that this forced me to be properly submerged each scene and to contemplate what was happening - it was almost dreamlike in places
  
• The music - characterised by many reviewers as a siren call - matches, and enhances, the seduction scenes. Insightful interview here with Mica Levi who wrote the soundtrack
  
• Johansson is really good! I have never been much of a fan (partly because she butchered a load of Tom Waits's songs) but it is probably really hard to act well when you are an alien with a mostly blank expression.  She is very convincing, and has a flawless English accent. [This is one of the many inexplicable things about this movie is why she has been plonked in Glasgow with a posh English accent?]
  
• The male actors are authentic and down-to-earth. Their thick Scottish accents help to remind us how foreign she is in this land and the contrast with her sleek, glamourous, immaculate beauty is pointed
  
• My favourite review of UtS on IMDB:  "If you like looking at someone riding a bike up and down roads and someone driving a van, next to no speaking and just gloomy shots of a rainy city, no story, no beginning or middle and an end that is just plonked on you that even then has an annoyingly tedious length of time before the titles role (that I couldn't wait for)', then you will love this."
  

WARNING - the following definitely contains spoilers!  Matt sent me an email a few days after we had seen the film entitled: If Under the Skin was made by Hollywood....

There would have been a handsome male homicide detective trying to figure out what was happening to the missing men.

He would have met SJ and there would have been an edgy sexual chemistry between them. She would have tried to lure him to the house, but he would have gotten a phone call or some other interruption to her seduction that would have saved him in the nick of time.

He would have started to notice the correlation between her presence and the disappearance of the men.

He would have arrived at the beach too late to save anyone but the baby. He would have saved the baby.

He would have got into a big shoot out with the motorcycle men and rescued the elephant man from the trunk of the car.

He would have arrived too late to save SJ from getting burned, but would have shot the rapist. 

He would have cried, standing over her smouldering corpse.

Stalker (warning: contains spoilers)

I finally got around to watching Stalker (dir Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979) and found it to be beautiful and strangely gripping.

This is a story of a guide, the eponymous Stalker (played by Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy) who takes people into a forbidden zone near an unnamed city.  The zone seems to be sentient and within it is a room where visitors can apparently find the answers to their dreams.  The journey there is long and perilous and full of mysteries.

The Stalker – an obsessive, rather pathetic, figure - is guiding two strangers into the zone and most of the action seems to take place in one day. The first of the stalker’s customers is Writer (Anatoliy Solonitsyn) – irrational, emotional, garrulous. He believes in the power of art but has lost his inspiration.  And his hat.  The second character is Professor (Nikolay Grinko) – a scientist who is rational, logical, calm.  He has a bobble hat.  All three men have very different philosophies and this allows the film to explore many conflicts but primarily that of cynicism versus faith. 

This is a slow film with minimal cuts, which really pulls the viewer in to join in the contemplation of the meaning of it all.  It is a story of fears, escape and of hope but one where no one is really sure what they want at the end of their journey.

Tarkovsky does not tell us what to think but lets the dialogue and imagery co-exist beautifully to create a mesmeric adventure.  He uses colour and its absence carefully. The scenes outside the zone are in a grimy metallic sepia with lots of contrast.  Inside the zone is green and lush but never quite welcoming.  We sense a life force – a vibration throughout - something otherworldly. It is menacing but never really terrifying, despite of the Stalkers warnings. 

Nature has reclaimed the zone, with tanks overgrown with grass being the most obvious example of this. We can sense the delight for our protagonist rolling in the grass and the dew – he doesn’t even flinch when a tiny, no doubt ticklish, caterpillar (symbolic?) hunches its way along his finger.

The camera lingers over submerged reminders of the outside world – lots of tiles (not sure if this is symbolic or just typical of Russian décor?), coins, bottles, syringes, guns, religious icons, the Professor’s disarmed bomb, oil…

Most of the scenes are visually stunning. Perfect composition and incredible depth to the shots – leading our eye into the journey.

Water is a strong theme throughout  - in some cases clear and fresh (life-giving) and in others stagnant and polluted. The rain scene shot from the POV of inside The Room towards the end is a refreshing relief.

There is also a crown of thorns (worn by Writer not Stalker though) and lots of fish plus maybe a lot of other biblical references which I missed.

At the end of the film, Tarkovsky uses colour outside the zone – perhaps implying that the Stalker has broken through his obsession with the room? We see him carrying his daughter and leading the way for his wife as they walk home, rather than his customers.

The black dog appears at the point when the men are really starting to contemplate their lives, as they rest in the swamp.  It stays with them and comes out of the zone with the Stalker.

The final scene is of the daughter moving three jars/glasses along a table with telekinesis (she is one of the zone’s so-called mutant children).  She pushes one of them off the end of the table and it (presumably) breaks on the floor. Is this symbolic of the three men with the falling one being her father?

I am also intrigued by the nuts/bandages that Stalker throws ahead and did I miss it or do we never get an explanation of why Porcupine is so called? 

This complex film is apocalyptic but surprisingly hypnotic and I am sure it will stay with me for a long time. I am looking forward to reading Geoff Dyer’s Zona (“a book about a Film about a Journey to a Room”) and contemplating this elliptical masterpiece further.